LoVelly had said that he’d figured out how to use his fen but that may have been a slight exaggeration because while yes, he’d figured out how to activate it to create the portal he had no idea how to aim it. He didn’t know where it was going to take them or what awaited them there.
They were weightless as they fell in a soft descent, drifting like feathers on the wind. He could feel Mez’s hand in his still and he turned to look back at her as they fell. She looked ethereal and strange in the shimmering half-light around them. It made her skin seem almost translucent and he swore he could see dark, reticulate veins pulsing just there under the surface. The light shifted and they were gone and as if they were spinning around the light it created bright starbursts and valleys of shadow that pooled across them both as it passed around and around. Tiny cosmos came to life and faded to dust all in the span of a tes. He wanted to tell her how beautiful it was but he couldn’t find the words.
His eyes caught hers and something in the curve of her cheeks, the brightness present in her eyes, gave him the peculiar sense of familiarity. In his mind he felt the impression of another place, another time. It was warm, hot even, under the light of Sol as both moons closed in on it, almost in position for a double eclipse. They sat high in the sky, somewhere with a vantage point that was unnaturally high. Wherever they were they looked down over the water, at the vast open sea. In the distance a bright burst of green bloomed before it turned white, ballooning upward. Other flashes followed but the force of them and the devastation that came afterward was only felt as a soft gust of wind from where they were. Here it was quiet, just the sound of the sea, waves crashing and wind drifting.
He turned to someone next to him, they were the same as Mezalie, he was sure, but different. The eyes that twinkled back at him were lighter, the face sharper, but he knew them all the same. Their mouth was moving and even though he couldn’t hear them in the memory he knew the words. He’d heard them time and time again in lives before.
Can you feel it? The convergence?
He couldn’t remember what it was but he knew he felt it.
All too soon it was over and the peace of the moment was ripped from them and he was dragged back into the present as they went plummeting into the freezing surf. He hadn’t been prepared for water and the surprise caused him to gasp, aspirating whatever water he’d landed in. He panicked as the water tried to pour into his mouth and lungs. He struggled to find the surface, thrashing about but losing air fast. A hand grabbed him roughly by the arm and hauled him up before he could drown.
He felt himself break the surface and gasped in a lungful of air causing himself to choke and cough wetly and throw up a little bit of water on the cough.
“Can you swim?!” Mezalie was yelling at him as the swell of a small wave tossed them but her grip on him was firm.
“Yeah! I think so.” He choked out. She pushed and prodded him into turning and he saw that they weren’t that far from the shore. Finally she loosened her grip on him and they both kicked their way towards the shore. The closer they got the easier it was as they were able to let the small rolling waves drag them in as they crested.
They were both gasping when they finally dragged their waterlogged bodies onto the fine sand of the beach. Mezalie collapsed face first as soon as she found a high enough point on the beach that the sand went from wet to dry. LoVelly followed suit, falling onto his back and staring up at the sky.
Ahraan was low in the sky now but LoVelly saw that Dhelarly had begun peeking over the horizon now, starting its two-ven trek across the sky. Even with just a sliver of its huge mass peeking out, the sky lit up with the bright pink hue of it, brighter than Ahraan could ever do alone.
“Mez?” LoVelly rasped after a while after he'd somewhat caught his breath.
“Yeah?” She said into the sand. He heard her sputter as she spit and blew sand out of her face and turned towards him.
“New plan. We change our identities and move somewhere remote until this all blows over.” He heard her huff out a little laugh at that across the sand. She rolled onto her back then, toward him so they were side by side pressed together from shoulder to hip. It was cold and they were soaked with sea water, coated in sand like a batter, but it was almost nice like this, together.
Mez dusted her hands together thoroughly before she brought them up to her face and pressed her palms down into her eyes and took several quiet, hiccuping breaths before she quieted and sighed. LoVelly felt a single hot tear escape his eye as he turned to look at her. He hadn’t even realized his eyes had welled up.
“You should go. You don’t need to stay with me.” She told him, hands still pressed to her eyes.
“What? Mez no, I said-”
“I’m not running. I’m going back for them.” She said with finality.
“What do you mean?” He asked, pushing himself up onto his elbow. He waited while she seemed to deliberate on what to say.
“There are others…” She started. “At the temple, there were those other people and they’re doing these awful things they did to my family to them too.” She sniffled once, finally pulling her hands away to rub at her nose. “I’m not going to leave them behind if I can do something about it.”
“But what about you?” He asked. He didn't even realize but his voice dropped to a whisper as he asked, “what about the monster?” as if afraid to say it too loud.
“I think…maybe I’ve got it under control now.” She said slowly, testing the words out. She seemed satisfied as she nodded at the end. “Like I said though, you don’t need to stay for that...” She didn’t meet his eyes.
He found her hand between them with his own and laced their clammy, sandy fingers together.
“I’m not going anywhere.” He shook their hands around between them for lack of anything else to do. “I told you you’re not alone as long as I can help it and I meant it. You’re stuck with me now.” He smiled a big smile, teeth and everything, over at her and he was sure he probably looked deranged, waterlogged and sandy, but he didn’t care. Mez didn’t seem to either as she laughed, either with him or at him but it didn’t matter which.
“Ugh,” she scoffed, “Fine. I guess.” she said sarcastically and they both laughed. “It’s so strange… I really do feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”
He felt the same way. They way their hands fit together. The way he felt her emotions ebb and flow through their strange connection like they were one, it had been barely a driev and he couldn’t imagine it being any other way. Suddenly, he remembered the memory he had before they’d been unceremoniously tossed into the sea.
“I think we knew each other in a previous life.”
“Maybe.” She agreed half shrugging into the sand. She turned to look at him. “You think we were seltzetura?” She had a small lopsided smirk on her face, one eyebrow raised.
“Maybe…” He shrugged back. “I’m just sure this isn’t the first time we’ve met.”
They said nothing for a while, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore lulling them into a calm they enjoyed until LoVelly started to shiver when a soft wind blew over them carrying the chill off the water. Wherever they were it was significantly warmer than the last place they’d been. While the water had certainly chilled them they probably weren’t at risk of freezing to death.
“Think you can make a fire so we can dry off?” he asked.
“Fire is my specialty actually. Let's find some things to burn.” she answered, pulling her hand away so she could push herself up.
They both did their best to brush the sand off but they were going to have to make peace with being uncomfortably sandy for a while. They set off in opposite directions to gather a variety of small sticks, bunches of dried leaves and dried out seaweeds. Mezalie had climbed up to the edge of the hill they were at the base of and reported back that there was a city not far off in the distance.
They climbed up past the edge of the sand and into the soft, curly grasses that marked the beginning of a sloping hill leading away from the beach. There in the grass they dug a shallow pit. They left the grass tall around the edges of the pit to contain any wayward sparks that might try to escape.
Once she’d built their sticks around the leafy dry debris Mezalie laid down close and took a deep breath before releasing a huff of smoke on the exhale the first time. She tried a couple more times until she breathed out and a bright flame licked at the target. She repeated it until their little fire had taken on its own life. She sat back, smacking her lips together and coughing out a last puff of smoke.
“I was actually really worried that I'd become a death witch and lost my fen…” Mezalie said, staring into the tiny growing flames. “I don't even understand how I survived.” She looked across to LoVelly who only shook his head.
“Still no answers here.” He said.
“The monster called me dead witch so I thought…” She wasn't sure why she'd believed the creature in the first place. “But obviously that's not the case.” She concluded.
LoVelly held out his hands to the flames and it felt wonderful. He was still shivering and he quickly reached down to pull his wet, soggy sweater over his head to get himself a bit closer to the warmth. Mezalie quickly followed suit, pulling the thermal over her head and laying it out next to his. She came over and plopped herself next to him in front of the flame and they both sat, deflated as they tried to warm themselves.
“Lost the backpack.” She said miserably. What little supplies they’d had had been in there and now all they had were the clothes on their backs which were now drying by their meager fire, sure to be crunchy when they did finally dry.
“It’s okay.” He told her. There wasn’t anything that could be done about it.
“This sucks.” She complained.
“Yeah it kinda does,” he agreed. “So what was your plan from here?” he asked, curious.
“I don’t even know…” She stared past the flames, out at the dark ocean. “To be honest I guess I was just gonna go in and demand they release everyone and take out anyone who stands in my way.” She frowned. “Sounds worse out loud than it did in my head.”
“It’s a good start,” LoVelly said gently, “but I think we could maybe workshop it a bit?”
“Yeah.” She agreed. “We also need to work on your fen. I’d like a warning next time if we’re going for a swim.” She said but she was snickering at him.
“Fair.”
They sat by their little fire to dry while Ahraan disappeared beneath the horizon and the Votton stretched on. They took turns getting much needed sleep but Mezalie refused to sleep unless at least one of them was awake to keep watch. LoVelly had to fight her to let him take the first watch so she could finally get some rest. He reminded her she hadn’t even gotten a full nente sleep the last time they had a moment. He felt bad bringing up the farm house again but he needed the leverage to get her to go to sleep.
It was terribly boring to sit and listen to the waves crash and the fire crackle and do absolutely nothing else for lof after lof. Mezalie’s breathing had leveled out rather quickly as he’d expected with how ragged she’d looked, eyes just barely staying open. Once she was out, head pillowed on their mostly dry pile of clothes, he’d picked his way up the rest of the hill they were on. He could still see her if he looked back and he turned to check back on her occasionally as he meandered up.
At the top of the hill he saw that they weren’t too far from the coastal city she’d spotted earlier. There was a road just down the slope on the other side of the hill from them and it snaked back and forth down to the outskirts. The city itself was well lit and the lights twinkled brightly in the darkness. The city was clearly built around the harbor and he could see great tall ships anchored there in the distance.
The wind chill brought him back down to the fire eventually. He couldn’t go anywhere for now, especially without his clothes, so there was nothing to do but rest and stay warm while he did his best to detangle his hair.
At some point, despite his best efforts, the calming sound of the sea lulled him to sleep. He woke with a slight start as something popped in the fire, probably a seed pod they'd missed. The sound had him upright and blinking blearily. When he looked over to where Mez had been sleeping and found her and what he assumed were her clothes missing he let out a sigh that sounded weary even to himself.
He'd managed to pull his clothes back on sleepily and barely stumbled to his feet when he heard movement and looked down toward the beach. Mezalie was walking up the beach back toward him. She saw him up and waved at him so he gave a little wave back and sat back down, feeling a little ridiculous for panicking. The last couple of driev had given him reason enough to jump to panic so he felt at least a little bit justified. He leaned in to stoke what was left of their fire while he waited for her. When she wandered up she dumped an armful of burnables beside him and he threw a couple onto the embers.
“I felt you panic when you woke up.” She said as she set down next to him, shoulder to shoulder. It wasn’t much but the barely there touch was comforting for the both of them. “You should go back to sleep.” She swayed just enough to bump him.
“Nah. I’m up now.” He shook his head. The flames had picked back up and he poked at it with a long stick he’d found in his wanderings of the area.
“Well, I guess if we start walking now we can probably hit the drievett markets.” She offered.
“We don’t have any money.” He sighed. They hadn’t had much to begin with but they had nothing now. Mezalie reached up and tapped at her earlobe until LoVelly looked over and realized she was pointing at something.
He’d never even noticed that she was wearing tiny dark earrings in both lobes. They were small so he guessed he’d just missed them.
“They’re urite. It won’t be much but it’ll be enough to get by for now.” She shrugged limply. “I always joked they were for emergencies but I never thought I’d ever actually have to…” She paused a moment before she huffed and then took the earrings out and pocketed them. “We can warm up a bit, make sure the shoes are dried out all the way before we leave.”
They’d set the boots up against the edge of the pit, unlaced and open to dry and she leaned over to stick her hand in one to find they were very nearly dry now. LoVelly wanted to say something but again he found himself at a loss for words. It didn’t matter though because Mezalie broke the moment by standing, letting out a yawn and reaching her hands high over her head in a stretch.
“So did you aim for the water or what?” She asked with a hint of humor in her voice. LoVelly groaned and put his face in his hands.
“Nooo…I don’t know.” He whined. He huffed and plopped his chin in one hand, elbow on his knee. “I thought since I figured out how to make it happen it would just work but I have no idea how to aim.”
“Do you think it’s places you’ve been before? Or completely random?” Mezalie pondered.
“I don’t know.” LoVelly whined again. “I wish I knew anything but I’m really just going into all this blind.”
“Sorry,” she sighed, “I know it’s frustrating.” She came around the fire to drop down next to him. She reached over to pull the boots from beside the heat, handing LoVelly’s over first. she started on lacing her own back up.
“It really, really is.” He agreed, grabbing his own laces and starting to thread them through a still warm boot.
“Well, when we get into town let’s see if we can’t find out who we can go to for some info on you, maybe an oracle…?” She wondered aloud. “The temples are out of the question for now. Not until we know what’s going on…how far this all goes.” She waved her hands to indicate ‘this’ meant ‘everything’, their whole situation.
“And maybe we can scope things out, make a solid plan on how to handle the situation in the temple?”
“Sounds good, yeah.” She agreed. They laced their boots and smothered the remnants of their fire before heading up the hill and climbing down to the road leading toward the city.
It didn’t take them all that long to walk into town considering how far it looked. The streets were already alive with people when they wandered into even the furthest outskirts. The further in they got the denser it got with people moving things both up from and down to the docks. Goods were unloaded off of ships and appropriately sorted before being sent off where they needed to go. Palettes of fresh goods were then loaded back in to go across the seas where things were still too harsh to grow well or were out of season.
The sides of buildings that faced the sea were all dusted with a coating of sparkling white; crystals that formed when the wind blew in the mists off the ocean. They dried, layer after layer of [baardot] building up until it formed tiny white crystals adorning each building face like shimmering jewelry.
They found a drievet market down near the docks as Mezalie had predicted they might. They wandered between the stalls for a while, looking for someone that might be interested in their meager offerings. Finally she spotted a stall full of a variety of shiny, glittering objects and she [bee lined] across the aisle they were in and between two others to get to it. She made eye contact with the owner as she approached, shoving her hand in her pocket and pulling out the earrings.
“Are you interested in buying?” She asked, as pleasant as she could sound about it.
“Depends. What’dya got?” The old woman asked in thick accented Hecten. LoVelly hardly understood her through it.
“Urite,” Mez told her. The woman held her hand out over the table beckoning for the tiny stone to take a look. She held a light up to it, twisting it this way and that, seeming pleased with it, if LoVelly had to guess based on the warbling noise she made. It sounded pleased, he hoped.
“Give ya devdrabek for the pair.” The woman said, holding onto the earring and beckoning for the other. Mezalie pulled the remaining earring back.
“Debekdev.” She argued. The woman harumphed at her, grumbling before she finally relented. They may be small but urite was hard to come by if you didn’t travel much. It was more than a fair price to ask for them. They were beautiful work with the thin shards of dark urite inlaid in bright gleaming metal. The shards themselves formed a tiny, simple flower. The hand craftsmanship was obvious in the detail of such small pieces.
The woman ducked down for a moment before popping back up with several coins in hand. She handed them over to Mezalie, who quickly rolled them in her hand, counting them, before she handed the other earring over to the woman. She felt a pang of loss in the finality of completing the exchange. The earrings had been a gift from Vell once upon a time but the echo of the other woman’s voice in the back of her mind said ‘be practical, take care of yourself first’.
She gave her thanks and bid the woman a farewell as they turned back to the market at large with coin in their pocket. It was about what she’d hoped to get out of them, enough for food and if they were lucky, enough for a real bed and a real nente's sleep somewhere. She looked around at the stalls around them, letting her nose guide her towards something down the way, LoVelly just a few steps behind her. She laughed when she turned and saw he was so easily distracted as he kept stopping to look at this or that.
She’d settled on a kebab stand when LoVelly finally caught up to her. She handed him the one she’d already got for him and he took it with glee. They were wandering away when LoVelly quietly asked around a bite, “So how are we doing on the…other hunger situation?”
“Fine.” She took a bite of her own kebab, “for now at least.”
“But it’s going to need to eat again.” He said quietly.
“Yeah.” She chewed but as she did it felt wrong in her mouth. Too chewy…too slimy. She couldn’t decide which but she did decide to spit it out as soon as she was able. She held her stick out to LoVelly. “Maybe I’m not as hungry as I thought.” She grumbled. LoVelly looked worried but he took it from her at least. She looked down at her hands, frowning. She turned her hands over, like somehow the answer would be written on the other side maybe.
“Are you sure you don’t want to try get some help before we jump back into things?” LoVelly tried. “There’s a port here. We could take a ship somewhere far away from here and find someone who can help you and maybe both of us.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“No.” She said with finality and pushed off the wall and slowly picking down the aisle again. “I wonder if word of what happened in [last place] has spread at all…” She looked around them, suddenly wondering if they should be hiding or making sure nobody recognized them.
They both looked around for a moment and realized that nobody was jumping to point them out or raising any kind of alarm. As far as anyone was concerned they were just any two people passing through with a ship.
From where they were they could hear the bustle from the docks. Shouts and directions were heard over the din. Flocks of palm sized drak fluttered up in a burst as someone wandered too close to where they were picking apart a stolen [fish]. On the peaks of the tallest buildings and the tips of ship masts sat the occasional weather faerie. They sat solemn and unmoving, their wings tucked tight to their sides as they watched the people go about their business. Their slightly too human eyes always watching.
“I suppose we have the advantage for the moment.” LoVelly said, thinking it over. “I’m sure they haven’t worked out where we are yet since neither have I.”
“We’re in Desmek. It’s on the signs.” Mez pointed out, looking at him with a curious expression, eyebrows pinched together.
“What signs?” He asked.
“All of them?” She tilted her head, looking more worried now. She turned and pointed to a banner on a stall across the way from them, then to another sign hanging above a building next door to them. “Any of these?”
“Oh…” LoVelly followed her directions and sure enough there was writing all over the place and now that he really looked it did look like the same thing was written in the same place but even as he stared at it it didn’t make any more sense to him. “I don’t think I can read.” He said with confusion as he tried his best to make sense of any of the words written on anything around them. So far nothing was really making any more sense than the first squiggles.
“None of it?” Mezalie asked him, astonished.
“Not so far.” He swiveled his head back and forth as he tried to find anything that made sense to him. “Nothing.”
Mez crossed her arms and stepped back to lean against the building face they had stopped near and thought about that development and what that told her about LoVelly.
“You can speak both Yoshkish and Hecten but you can’t read it… Or anything for all we know.”
“I must be able to read something. I can’t be illiterate. I don’t feel illiterate.” He defended.
“How would you even feel illiterate?” She snarked at him.
“I wouldn’t know because I’m not illiterate.” He snarked right back at her. She pulled a face at him, sticking her tongue out.
“Fine. It’s good to know though. There are a lot of worse ways we could have found that out I guess.” She relented, pushing away from the wall. “You’re right though. We probably still have an element of surprise going for us so maybe it’s best to just get in and get out before they wise up.” She reasoned, setting off down the street they were now on.
It led deeper into the city. Just like back in [previous city name] the temple was located near the city center. In larger cities like this they often had inner city trolleys that would all intersect at the center station. It made sense for the temples to be there.
Once they’d sifted their way through the market crowds and back onto a main street Mez grabbed his hand and pulled him along as they ran to catch a trolley before it pulled away. The trolley didn’t go terribly fast thankfully so they managed to catch up before the next block. The both of them had wide grins on their faces as they caught their breath, both clinging to a hand rail at the back of the car. They rode the car all the way to the heart of the city and just as she’d suspected they saw the grand looking building that was the city’s temple rise above the buildings around it.
Also like the one in [previous city name] it was beautiful and ornate. This one much more so. Where the other one had had beautiful trims and some glass work this one was even more of a piece of art. Mezalie saw the pieces that were either excellent replicas or extremely well preserved pre-war style pillars standing tall near the entrance. The face of the building was ornately carved stone accents laid over the shell of the building.The front doors were a set of tall intricate filigree double doors. They were propped wide open and people didn’t seem to be giving it any suspicion or keeping their distance.
“How do we find out if they’re here or not?” He asked her as they meandered through the city center. It wasn’t as packed as the market streets had been but it was still bustling with people running errands and on their way to shops or businesses.
Instead of answering him Mezalie marched straight up to the building and walked right in the front door and LoVelly was both exasperated and didn’t know what else he’d expected. He’d heard Mezalie’s original intent and they’d never gotten around to planning out anything more intricate. He could feel the heat of anger, the burning torrent of grief, begin to well up inside him and he hurried after her, stepping into the building himself.
The inside was even more immaculate than the outside. Where the other had had a thin pink layer of dust in the corners and the baseboards, which wasn’t unreasonable in the countryside, this one was clean from the ceiling to the grout between the tiling of the floor. The hallway to the worship hall was lit with hundreds of tiny lights strung from the ceiling in gossamer strands that shimmered and sparkled in the light.
Mezalie walked just ahead of him, as casual as anyone else they passed on their way. He saw her turn her head to get a look into a side room they passed but she continued on down the hall until she got to the end, just before the main hall. There was a door to the side of the entryway, closed but also obscured by the grand entryway. Peeking around them she crossed over and tried the handle and when it turned she pulled the door and slipped in. LoVelly quickly did one more scan around them and followed after her before the door closed behind her.
Like the other temple, the halls off the main one were significantly less ornate. This one was still nicer and he wouldn’t call this one plain like he would the other but it certainly wasn’t as dressed up either. There were a variety of doors down the hallway and he saw now that many of them had a little plate on them with writing on them and Mezalie appeared to be reading them as they went along before deciding if she was going to open the door or not.
“What are we going to say if there are actually people in one of these and not the kind we’re looking for?” He asked. He still definitely couldn’t read as he tried to decipher the lettering on the most recent one.
“I'm sure one of us will figure something out.” Mez shrugged as she swung another one open and it swung open to a staircase. “It’s not even locked.” LoVelly looked up and down the hallway before he followed after, unsure about this but following after her anyway.
As they came around the turn at the bottom of the stairs a man came into view. He was sat in a chair settled at the doorway to another chamber off the small room at the landing. He was leaned back, the chair tipped back on its hind legs and leaning on the wall. He had a book in hand. He wore the thick gray uniform that they’d seen the other group who’d detained them wore. He looked up as he heard them approaching. He looked at them, in their scruffy clothes and narrowed his eyes at them, immediately suspicious.
“What are you doing down here?” He demanded. LoVelly froze, unsure what to do. Mezalie however did not miss a beat and immediately replied.
“Looking for a bathroom?” she said seriously. The man briefly looked bewildered as he tried to work out if she was serious or not. When nobody moved or said anything for several tes the man started to look uncomfortable and clunked his chair back down on all four legs and stood, starting toward them but Mez didn’t give him a chance. In the brief pause before he could react Mez launched herself down the stairway, barreling into the man and taking them both to the floor with a shout.
They wrestled around as the man tried to reach for something at his belt but Mez was able to grab it and kicked it across the floor in the tussle. LoVelly hopped down the last of the stairs to grab it before the man had the chance to get it back. He looked at the face of the device but sure enough he couldn’t read any of the labels on it.
“LoVelly! A little help?!” Mez yelped as the man tried again to throw her off, managing to get an elbow into her ribs. She used her weight to slam the man back down to the floor.
“I’m trying!” He panicked and pressed the largest button on the side of the device and yelped as it whirred to life and shot a burst of energy from the end of it and into the wall, leaving a small scorch mark where it hit. Mez looked from the mark to LoVelly again, eyes wide. She hadn’t seen a gun in Solcen; there were hardly any operable ones left these driev'.
“Okay look,” she managed to get the man’s arms secured behind his back and his chest to the floor, putting all her weight on him to keep him there. “If you cooperate I won’t let my friend shoot you with your own gun. Accidentally or otherwise.” She told him.
“What do you want?” He asked into the floor.
“Keys.” She demanded.
“Front pants pocket.” He groused. She looked to LoVelly and tipped her head, indicating for him to get said keys. LoVelly came over to her and somewhat awkwardly fumbled the gun from hand to hand before ultimately handing it off to Mez as she allowed the man to roll to the side so LoVelly could extract the keys from his pocket. With leverage in hand Mez backed the man up to the wall. She looked between the gun and the man, making a show of it.
“I have no desire to hurt you but if you give us any problems you’ll wish I’d used this on you instead. Do you understand?” She said to the man while LoVelly made himself busy figuring out which of the keys on the ring opened the door. The man being questioned nodded and stayed where he was.
On the second try the key slid home in the lock and LoVelly opened the door. Inside the scene was similar to the last time he’d found himself in this position. In the room were a handful of people, thankfully looking unharmed save for the shackles around their wrists keeping them apart from each other and firmly in place. From the looks of them they hadn’t been kept as long as the others he’d been with had.
LoVelly rushed into the room and immediately got to work figuring out which keys opened which lock mostly by trial and error. He could feel the adrenaline pumping in his veins and he could see his hands shaking as he quickly tried to jam the key into the lock. Like the last time he ushered the first freed man to help untie the next and so on. There were significantly less people trapped in this temple than there’d been at the last, which gave him some hope that they might be able to make this work. He looked around at the remaining few, quickly taking a head count when he heard another shot fire in the hall and shouting from the doorway that was definitely not Mezalie. He looked to the young man he was currently helping before placing the key in his hand.
“We’ll clear a path. Just get everybody out as fast as you can.” He said to the room at large as he leapt to his feet and ran for the door.
Mezalie had stayed with the man in the hallway as LoVelly got to work helping the others. She kept the gun firmly trained on him but he didn’t seem particularly interested in trying to escape or call for help which caused an unease to settle into her stomach.
“What are you doing with all these people?” She demanded. Nothing had made any sense since she’d awoken that driev on the TVE and even that felt like a lifetime ago now.
“None of your business.” The man said frankly.
“I’m obviously making it my business.” She snapped back at him. She took a step forward, gun trained on his chest. She’d never fired a gun before, only seen one fired from a distance. She knew the concept behind it, how to channel her fen into it to activate it but she didn’t know if she could do it in practice but this man didn’t know that. He shifted and she snapped to attention at the motion but he simply leaned back against the wall.
“To be honest with you, I don’t really know what they’re doing with these people, I’m just here to keep them here.” He shrugged. Mez watched his shoulders rise and fall with nonchalance and it made the fire in her burn a little hotter as she took another step closer. She felt the anger bubble up in her that everyone she knew was gone and this man didn’t even care what they were doing with the people he held captive.
It felt senseless.
She took another step toward the man, blinded by her anger, hands shaking slightly where they held the gun now. She felt a tear slip down her face but paid it no mind. Now was not the time. She didn’t notice the two people that now stood in the doorway at the top of the stairs, looking down on her. She didn’t see one of them take aim at her.
She felt oddly disconnected as she felt the pain explode in her gut. It felt more like someone was describing the pain to her than experiencing it herself. She felt the shot pass through her from front to back. It was hot like Sol, it was bright and red and blinding. It was all she could think for several moments. She heard a noise but she wasn’t sure if it was the sound of the gun hitting the floor or the sound that came out of her mouth. Either way it was a roaring in her mind as the pain saturated her consciousness.
When LoVelly stepped back into the hall he saw that Mez stood between the door to the prisoners and the others that had come to investigate. The gun lay discarded on the floor to her side. A man in a green robe stood at the top of the stairs and a woman stood beside him with another gun in hand and LoVelly felt his blood ice over as he followed the gun’s line of sight directly to the gaping wound in Mezalie’s abdomen.
He watched in cold horror as the black splotch of blood bloomed on her shirt. Nobody moved at first. They all watched as the blood pooled and then gurgled out of the hole left by the gun. It dripped and pooled on the edges of the fabric and Mezalie dropped her head to look down at the wound.
She looked up to the two at the top of the stairs. She looked back to her blood and LoVelly saw her eyes widen slightly before she looked to him and then finally back to the first man, still against the wall where he’d been. He was clutching at his bicep, teeth grit in pain. She could see the dark blood beginning to seep out around his hand; fingers coming away bloody as he adjusted his grip and pressure. But she never fired the gun, she was sure of it. She looked back down again to the blood oozing from her wound and realized that the shot that hit her had passed right through and hit him as well.
A laugh trickled out from her mouth, high and hysterical. It was short, just a single burst that quickly became panicked, squealing breaths as she began to hyperventilate. When a light burst forth from the wound, both front and back, everyone, LoVelly included, shielded their eyes against the brightness of it. When he blinked back against the light he saw the tail end of it recede back into the once bleeding wound. Mezalie reached up to touch where the wound had once been and when she pulled her hand away she brought with it only the blood still sticky on her clothes telling her it had been there. She dragged her hand through the blood that had soaked into her borrowed clothes.
“I warned you.” She barked out before LoVelly felt his ears pop from the pressure drop, just like he had before. He knew before the shimmering, oily, sheen began to engulf her body.
He knew that the monster was coming.
He felt a presence at his back and was reminded that there were other people present, people they were trying to protect. He quickly turned to see one of the women from the group behind him, waiting for some kind of direction. LoVelly quickly looked between the two scenes and made a snap decision, unsure if it was the right one or not. He quickly ushered the people back into the room behind him, slamming the door shut, his back against it.
Mezalie was vaguely aware of the door slamming behind her and she was only briefly concerned that there were in fact other people present. As the creature took over, so did its wants. All it wanted was to consume, consume, consume. Nothing else mattered in that moment. She heard the gasps of the remaining people in the room as her view rose up, even taller than she already was, towering over the pathetic beings that thought they could stop her, harm her.
The man in the green robe- her mind flashed to a man in green robes back on the TVE, the one with the cold eyes who’d ordered her dead- he was the first to bow. He bowed low and held it there before the other two in the room followed suit as well. This interested the creature. She felt its curiosity bloom in the front of her mind as the man in green rose back up.
“Infinite creature, we humbly ask for your forgiveness in our lack of a proper meal ritual. We were not expecting you quite yet. However, we have prepared an offering just through that door.” The man said calmly but she could still see the almost imperceptible shaking of his hands as he spoke. He was terrified of her.
they should be, the voice told her.
they do not understand what we are
“What do you want from me?” She felt her words push to the front of the storm she felt inside and they spilled from the mouth of the creature in a hundred strained voices. The sound was surprisingly hushed. It spoke like a quiet organ playing the same notes in different octaves all at once.
Mezalie realized she had at least some control over the body they shared in this state as she reached a hand out toward the man on the stairs and a long spindling limb extended toward the man, too many joints, not enough bones, but it was indeed an arm. It beckoned the robed man closer. He took one hesitant step down, and then another as he descended the steps. He followed as the arm beckoned him ever closer as it receded back into itself until he was before the creature.
“Why have you done this to me?” She asked in her chorus of voices and the noise filled the room like a wave, sloshing into every corner. The man was visibly shaking before her now but he stood tall with his head held high. His eyes flickered back and forth as he wasn’t sure what to focus on. The creature was ever changing form and it was impossible to pick a solid point to focus on.
“The prophecy foretold You, the Vott, turning the world anew, bringing the fen back like before the shift…” The man trailed off as he stood in awe of the thing before him. Despite his fear it was impossible to deny the beauty of a thing beyond understanding.
Mezalie tried, despite the thrashing of the dark waves in her mind, to file that information away for later. She knew it was important but it was so difficult to hold onto thoughts while the creature was out. Like she was just floating in a soup of her own mind and she could only clutch onto what drifted by her, but she wanted to remember what the man had said. She remembered the people from [diynen] addressing the Infinite Creature.
They’d done this to her on purpose.
They’d killed her family to make it happen.
Prophecy the man had said.
Mezalie felt the pang of hunger roll through her that was not hers. It was an insatiable hunger, something that would never be satisfied but the need to feed it was overwhelming and all consuming all the same.
With barely a thought at all, long thin spikes of matter that the creature was made of shot out, straight through the other two people in the room. There was no struggle and barely any sound. There was no time. In the blink of an eye the spikes that had shot through them swallowed them. They became two small gaping black holes in the backdrop of the room. They became spaghettified information forever circling the event horizon of their own personal black hole.
What was left over was a mess of blood, bones and viscera that was unnecessary for the transfer of information and the creature left that to slough off into a puddle of gore as it retracted its spikes and with it what it took from them. The man in the green robe that was still standing, but only barely, before them was breathing too quickly as he took in what had happened around him in only the blink of his eyes. A whimper escaped him.
“I will not be a tool in your very mortal games.” The chorus of voices boomed down at the man before launching a spear through him too and devouring everything it could of him. Like the others all that was left was a slick mess of gore where he’d once stood. Mezalie felt the pang of hunger recede only slightly, like scratching an itch that was always present.
Before she even realized it she’d climbed the stairs and on entirely too many legs the creature filled the hallway with its bubbling mass. In the back of her mind though she felt a pull back toward the basement. What about the others and LoVelly? She didn’t think she wanted to leave LoVelly behind, plus where was she even going?
eat
She got the mental impression of people, of bright glowing beings full of energy, of the green robed wizards, brightest of all. The hunger was overpowering once again and it clouded her mind, thoughts of anything else drifting away. LoVelly drifting to somewhere in the back of her mind.
We can’t just eat everybody, she thought back at it eventually. She tried not to think of all the blood on her hands already.
Instead of an answer she was sent a barrage of memories; of being shot through so recently, of the beach and her home destroyed, of her family staked out and burned alive. Of her own experience being burned alive…
She felt the anger and the anguish burble to the forefront of everything. It obscured any protest she may have had for sparing the others. She felt the instinct to curl in on herself, to protect herself from the hurt that hadn’t had enough time yet to settle into an ache. It was still rough and jagged around the edges, tearing and digging in wherever it touched.
She let the creature eat without protest. She wasn’t even really paying attention to what it was doing, too focused on her own hurt. It wasn’t until she felt the warmth of flames licking at her that she was able to feel herself within the cacophony of the monster. The heat washed over her in a wave as she opened her eyes and saw through the strange vision of the creature the blinding bright light of fire all around her.
She hadn’t meant to use her fen but all she could feel was burn, burn, burn singing in her veins.
Uncurling, she pushed herself to the surface again- towards the fire and out of the suffocating darkness at the bottom where she’d been adrift. As she got closer the crackling and popping of a blaze became clearer. She started to feel the creature recede, folding in on itself and packing itself away. It was such an indescribable thing to become herself again knowing what was hiding within.
When she realized she was left in her own body again she found herself in the Grand Hall, the benches and tapestries and leaflets all burning. Anything that would catch flame was burning. There was smoke choking the room. There was blood and viscera in puddles around the room from people she’d never know but had taken the lives of. She didn’t even remember doing it. She didn’t know if they’d all been acolytes or just unlucky temple-goers.
It didn’t matter at this point. It was already done.
She turned and dragged her heavy feet back toward the main doors of the temple but moving felt like fighting through syrup, thick and resistant to her attempts. She felt herself stumble but like before it was like it was happening to someone else. She felt herself fall but hitting the ground felt more like laying down for a much needed nap; a welcome experience.
She took a deep, smoky inhale.
She heard the fire crackling around her still and thought it would be nice to drift off like this in front of the fire, almost cozy. She felt the pull dragging her down into the depths of slumber but then came the voice.
up Dead Witch
She ignored the command. She was tired of this. She was tired of everything.
She thought about the shot from earlier. It went all the way through her and she knew it should have killed her.
“Mez!”
A louder voice, one she realized was coming from outside her mind, broke through the crackling blaze.
“Mezalie!”
She blinked her eyes open. She hadn’t even known she’d closed them. She saw him running towards her, through the flames and the carnage.
Why was he always there?
She tried to tell him to go, to leave her, but the words came out slurred and messy even to her. She tried to sit up but the motion was clumsy. As he reached her he was saying something to her but what it was she couldn’t say.
Questions piled up behind her eyelids as they shuttered and closed up shop. She felt her equilibrium shift once and then she felt it fall away completely and she hoped against hope that wherever LoVelly landed them this time it wasn’t in the water.