“Wait, hold on just a moment - you have a sister?” Death asked in shock. Art blinked, and took a bite of his croquette, his tentacles squirming around the delicious potato pastry.
“Of course I do. Everyone should - they’re wonderful things. Who else would descend into the bowels of the earth to do battle with primordial monstrosities for you?”
Death stared at the croquette hungrily - it had bits of meat in it, precluding her from taking a bite - but nodded. She had never considered the possibility of having a ‘sister’, but from Art’s description she supposed they sounded fun.
“I’m still trying to figure out what she was doing in the cave network,” said Connor. Art hadn’t bothered explaining any of the preceding events to them, instead starting off with his sister towering over the twitching Bertha. (This was not, to be clear, from any sort of reticence; the main cause of this miscommunication was simply that Art was prone to overexcitement, and was therefore a terrible storyteller.)
“It’s not important. Suffice it to say that she was there for a Very Good Reason; but now, to go on with our story…”
***
“I did lock the door, Tod. The little missy here must have broken the seal,” Gerald the trilobite huffed. He tossed his hand of cards down on the table in annoyance, accidentally revealing that he would have won the game. “How irksome! I worked hard on that seal, you know.”
Joanne vaguely debated asking why, exactly, a trilobite had been working on a powerful formation deep beneath the earth - or even how a trilobite could have been working on a powerful formation deep beneath the earth - but then she remembered that this was a quest given to her by Art; that manifest absurdities invariably attended any quest of Art’s; and, therefore, that while distantly relevant such queries could be put off for the moment.
“Sorry,” said Joanne. “I was just looking for cultivation secrets deep beneath the earth.”
“Well of course you were!” Gerald cursed. “Who isn’t? We got mortal humans up the wazoo down here, tracing the signature of our qi in an attempt to find ancient cultivation ruins and harvest them for resources like some sort of archaeological mosquitoes. Or, if they’re not looking for that, then it’s some other cryptic and arcane matter that’s stolen the strings of their hearts. It’s infuriating, is what it is. So, what are you looking for? Formations? Cultivation techniques? A fighting art? Ooh, ooh, perhaps an escape technique?”
“Oy, now, don’t be rude to the poor girl. We don’t know why she decided to descend down into these depths - for all we know, she was forced down here, or is here searching for a medicine that will cure her poor sick lover,” said the third trilobite reasonably. One small tear dripped down from his eye stalk at the thought of Joanne’s theoretically suffering hypothetical boyfriend.
“Aye, Gerald. Donny’s got a point,” Tod affirmed. He tossed his own hand on the table, revealing that he would definitely have lost (in a thorough and utterly catastrophic fashion) had they continued to play, before proceeding to turn and face Joanne. “So, why are you here, lassie?”
Joanne coughed, and stepped down into a full formal curtsey. “I am here, not on behalf of myself, but on behalf of my brother.”
“See?” Said Donny. “Told you it could be for somebody else.”
“Ah, but what if her brother wants a powerful healing sword escape formation, or something of that ilk?” Gerald snapped in reply.
“My brother doesn’t want a powerful healing sword escape formation. I doubt he even knows what that is - I sure don’t. He has tasked me, his loyal and loving sister, with determining why the path of cultivation has been lost from the world… Though now I wonder if it ever was,” Joanne admitted, “given that beings such as thee have persisted for aeons untold beneath the earth.”
“Oh, it’s gone. Mostly. You’re not in the world right now, you know,” Tod noted, “you’re in a specially affixed side realm of our own devising - a sort of half-land that doesn’t truly exist, ya know? (Same as we shouldn’t exist, at least according ta your records.) Ain’t going to find jack on cultivation where you’re from - which is why all those annoying would-be wannabe cultivators show up in our front yard, demanding the secrets to the Horizontal Horizon Teal Technique, or suchlike. All that can be found up above - all that can exist up above - is the last dregs of an ancient and nearly forgotten magic.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Ah,” Joanne said. So she’d have to keep digging; how annoying. Her face must have registered how crestfallen she was, as the trilobites gave her a sympathetic look. (At least, that’s what she thought it was; it was hard to tell, given that they were, as has been mentioned, trilobites, and had no discernable facial features.)
“Cheer up, lassie. It’s a mystery, to be sure, but one well worth investigating - a magical jaunt, if you would. Darn me if I wasn’t delighted when I found out myself,” Tod declared, and Donny and Gerald nodded their agreement.
“May I take it you won’t tell me then?” Joanne asked, her polite tone not matching the irked look in her eyes.
“Nope. No fun that way, ya know? I’ll give you some nice hints, though - now hold on an’ follow me,” Tod said, and climbed out of his chair, putting on his wee little trilo-booties.
***
“He had shoes?” Connor asked incredulously.
“He had shoes, yes,” Art affirmed.
“I don’t remember any artistic depiction of Cambrian life showing them wearing wee little booties.”
“Well then the palaeontologists are wrong, aren’t they? And that’s hardly surprising - it’s not like wee little trilo-booties would have survived the lapse of time,” Art replied.
“But what does all this have to do with you and Yao showing up in a land covered with ads, in company with dozens of goblins?” Death practically cried.
“Oy, oy, he’s getting to that,” snapped the dozens of goblins, all in tune, before snacking some more on their croquettes.
***
While Joanne was talking to the trilobites that shouldn’t exist in the land that was not, Art and Yao were dealing with the fun fun fun caused by her opening the portal.
“Ackh,” Yao cursed, as the mummified stegosaurus slammed into her with its tail, sending the small cultivator flying towards a wall of lumpen blue stone, strands of ethereal flame outstretched to meet her. She expelled her qi, activating a technique, and stopped a foot away slamming into the wall. Strands of hair drifted out of her weimao, and her still braced sword trembled for a moment as she struggled to catch her breath. “Why, in all the Heavens, are these monstrosities coming to life all of a sudden?”
Art tried in vain to shrug from under the stegosaurus’ left foot, his robot arm screeching as he sought to keep the beast from stomping him flat. “Beats me. Maybe it’s something to do with the glyphs bursting into flame?”
“But why is the fire here? Or these, what did you call them, ‘dinosaurs’? Didn’t you say they were supposed to have gone extinct tens of millions of years ago?”
“Hey. ‘That which is eternal may forever lie, and after strange aeons even death may die.’ So said a powerful wizard of my world; and maybe, just maybe, he was right,” and with that, Art gave a great heave, forcing the foot off from atop him and unbalancing it. With a step and a grunt the surprised stegosaurus toppled over, slamming with a THUD against the floor.
“Maybe…” Yao admitted. She sprang forward, taking advantage of the stegosaurus’ state of shock, and delivered a powerful blow to its neck. With a second, smaller thud the head rolled to the floor.
The pair stood side to side, panting, and gazed at the ossified and papery corpse of the dinosaur, lying where it had fallen. It was the fourth such dino they had had to fight, alongside twenty giant bugs, three dozen strangely out of place fish, a space alien, and what Art thought was a mammoth.
None of the combats had been particularly brutal - even Art, who was far from a masterful combatant and only a subpar cultivator, had the strength needed to beat them all on his lonesome (although Yao’s presence was greatly helpful). Yet, strangely, Art noticed that Yao’s face was pale and wan, as if she was struggling.
“Are you alright?”
Yao looked troubled, but shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
This was a clear fabrication, but Art knew never to force a woman to divulge her secrets, so he merely nodded. “If you need someone to vent to, I’m here; if you need suggestions, I’ll do my best to provide.”
But before he could do either, the floor gave way, tilting down at a ninety degree angle, and they slid into the darkness.
***
“Really, we all ought to learn flight techniques,” Connor quipped. “May I take it that the floor giving out was somehow also your sister’s fault?”
“Yes,” Art replied merrily, toasting a marshmallow over the fire. “If your little sister doesn’t nearly accidentally kill you multiple times while fulfilling your surprise request to go on a magical adventure into the bowels of the earth, is she even your little sister?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“The T-Rex in a bathrobe, however, was not her fault,” Art affirmed, but before he could explain how a T-Rex in a bathrobe fit into the narrative the fire exploded. Bits of burning ember and word-coated paper flew about as the flames of fiery ink blazed up and up, roaring with an endless fury… and, from the midst of the flames, strode a portly man in a black suit.