”Sooo… What do you usually do when you’re not at work? Just sit here and get blinded by a hundred lanterns?” Anastacia asked once she and Holly had finished eating the breakfast Rosie had made for them.
The owl girl stopped to think for a bit before answering, almost like she wasn’t completely sure. “Read, write. Sometimes play with dice, but mice took them.” She nodded and picked up a book that had been tossed on the floor next to the nest.
“You write stuff? Like a diary?” The necromancer asked, intrigued by what Holly of all people could possibly be writing about.
Holly shook her head. “No diary. Head noises tell stories, I only write. They say things better, like before. Words are hard to come up with.” She explained and opened up the book.
“Head… noises? Do you mean thoughts?” Anastacia worried. She already had one friend that heard voices in her head and certainly didn’t need a second one.
Holly shrugged. “How would Holly know?” She said and flipped through the pages.
Curious about the owlfolk’s handwriting, Anastacia leaned over to see what was written on the book, only to see that the pages were completely blank. She waited to see if Holly had simply started writing halfway through the book for whatever reason, but even when it was almost done, there hadn’t been a single word written on any of the pages. “Um… Is this like some kind of invisible ink thing to avoid the spy-moths? Why isn’t there anything on the pages?” She asked after getting convinced that there wasn’t going to be anything on the remaining few pages either.
Holly stared at the necromancer with a pitying look on her face. “Moths can’t read, stupid. Moths only steal head noises, can’t let them go or he will know.” She said as if that was somehow obvious to everyone.
When she thought about it, Anastacia figured that moths were probably one of the most likely insects to be able to do so, but that wasn’t exactly a convincing theory coming from Holly.
“Invisible ink? What’s the point? Visible ink is better for reading.” The owl girl continued and imitated laughter again. She flipped through a few more pages before stopping on another completely empty page. “This one is Holly’s favorite. A bit sad but happy at the end.”
“What the… Okay, why don’t you just read it for me? We’ve got time.” Anastacia suggested. She wanted to see if Holly was actually able to come up with a story on the fly or tell one from her memory since there was nothing in the book. At the very least it would be interesting to see how nonsensical it was.
For a very brief moment, Holly smiled and lost the emptiness that was always present in her expressions. “I hoped you’d ask that.” She said, suddenly sounding oddly well-spoken. She cleared her throat and began reading. “In a kingdom forged in death, jewelers and craftsmen from all four corners of the world presented their masterpieces to the one whose servants rule over kings. A crown of dwarven metals from the depths of the earth, a crown of wood from the ancient trees that carry the sky itself, a crown of cinders from the conquered world, a crown of stars torn from the night itself, a crown of blood bled from the divine. All unsurpassed in beauty by the works of mortal hands to this day. Yet none of them pleased the ruler, who saw no beauty in gilded trinkets or jeweled tat, for he was blind for all but one – the one he had conquered the world for. As foolish as it is, in the mind of this ruler, the kingdom spanning from sea to sea was naught but a gift to his beloved – and the crown should be its pinnacle.
“One by one, the circlets and tiaras failed their test, and as the last blacksmith lowered his head in shame, a great beast appeared from thin air. The masked creature chortled at the panic it had caused, as the people around him fled for their lives, but the ruler remained still, for he knew the beast would not dare to challenge him. The masked servant of the fates, a muse by the name of Avaakier had come to offer his creations.
“The beast’s first offering was a crown chiseled from the purest alabaster the ruler had ever laid his eyes on. Though it was not what he had been looking for, it captivated the ruler’s eyes and he placed it on his own head. For why shouldn’t the ruler have a crown as well?
“The beast’s second offering was a crown carved from ivory, so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes of all that gazed upon it. Truly, it was the one the ruler would gift to his beloved.
“But the fates had aligned against this ruler and sent their servant to curse these star-crossed lovers. For his hubris, his arrogance and his pride, the great mortal lord was punished. The beast’s parting words echoed throughout the kingdom: the one to don this crown of alabaster shall lose the one most important to them, and the throne under the ivory crown shall forever remain empty, for its owner can never see the glory of what is rightfully theirs. The kingdom in their feet shall forever remain cursed, its lands barren and its depths without riches, its waters without life and its skies without songbirds. With those words, the muse faded into the wind.
“Not long after, the beast’s words became true, the lands of the kingdom became barren and lifeless, and the ruler’s beloved passed without ever seeing the unparalleled power and wealth gathered for them. Driven mad by his sorrow, the ruler declared war upon the fates themselves and initiated his second campaign. As he had previously traveled the lands to tame them and bring them order, he now walked the blooming earth to slaughter and scorch it all, only to lay his hands on those that pulled the strings behind everything, only to inevitably fail.
“Old, defeated and crushed, the ruler secluded himself on his throne, only to be seen by his most trusted followed, the ones now stained crimson by blood. Without the will to live on, the ruler was not long for the world of the mortals. As his end grew near, an unexpected visitor sought audience with the ruler.
“Hidden from sight by darkness no light could pierce, the visitor spoke. He had deemed the fates themselves to be shortsighted and of ill judgement when they had acted against the ruler. Though the visitor could not undo what had been done, nor remove the curse, he made a promise: a day would come, when out of despair, the fates would allow the crowns of alabaster and ivory to come together once more, and it was then that the visitor would arrange the lights of the night sky itself to guide the bearers of the crowns and lead them where they were needed.
“Though small, the promise brought comfort to the tortured mind of the ruler and the knowledge that the fates were doomed to not have the last word brought some twisted peace to his soul, enough for him to pass on.” Holly ended her story, sighed and closed the book.
Anastacia stared at the owlfolk and was very confused by what she had just heard. “What… how did you… but there’s nothing on the… what?!” She mumbled and grabbed the book to see for herself that the pages were indeed completely empty. Their surface hadn’t been scratched and holding the pages against a light didn’t reveal anything either.
“Good at hunting, bad at reading?” Holly asked and returned to her usual blank expression.
“I can read just fine, but there’s nothing to read here! And you can speak normally too! I just heard you recite an entire story perfectly.” Anastacia exclaimed annoyedly.
“Why are you being mean?! Holly doesn’t know!” The owl yelled back, clearly not understanding why the necromancer was getting so riled up.
Anastacia took a deep breath to calm down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. You see, as the queen of the goblins, what doesn’t make sense at all is normal to me. There’s no meaning behind anything they do, it’s all just pure chaos that ends up being successful after every possible mistake has been made. So when you start off with making no sense at all and then pull off something like that, it caught me off guard.” She explained as well as she could. “It’s just that when you suddenly start making sense like that, I get worried that everything you do makes sense. Like, what if I all of a sudden need to start worrying about gawobbles and moths spying on my thoughts?”
“Gawobbles are good, like Anna, no need to worry. Moths only spy on Holly too, he wants my head noises, not anyone else’s.” Holly reassured her friend but looked a bit sad. “Wants them back because I stole them. A bad child.”
The necromancer rubbed her temples and leaned back. “Oookay okay okay okay… Okay? Okay.” She mumbled and tried to piece everything together in her head. “So what you’re saying that you stole these ‘head noises’ from someone and now they’re sending moths to spy on you so they can find you and get the head noises back?”
Holly gasped and clapped in excitement. “Yes!”
“I’m going to need to know who this guy is so I can fuck them up for bothering you. Does he live in Valor?” Anastacia said and cracked her knuckles. “We’ve got plenty of day left, might as well go now.”
“Not good. Father lives everywhere, sees all in the night. Busy at morning and evening, so Holly can sneak into work. At day he searches, so mustn’t go outside.” Holly warned the necromancer, who was already getting up and ready.
“How bad can it be? Even if he is your farther, you shouldn’t put up with this stuff. I’ll whoop his ass, so you can go outside without having to worry about that douche.” Anastacia shrugged while heading to the door. “To tell you the truth, I’m not big on parents anyway, so I’m more than happy to do this. You should have told someone about this earlier, he’d be in for a beatdown he’d never forget.”
Intending to coax Holly to come with her, Anastacia pushed open the door, but instead of the shadowy alley they had entered the room from, the door opened into what appeared to be nothing but endless darkness. The necromancer slowly closed the door again and made absolutely sure it was locked before quietly walking back to the nest and sitting back down next to Holly.
“So yeah, I’m getting this feeling I’m missing a piece from this puzzle. Did you forget to mention that your father was some kind of an otherworldly eldritch horror of eternal darkness, or did I just miss that part?” Anastacia asked and kept staring at the door.
“Night follows father.” Holly said worriedly.
Suddenly something extremely heavy slammed against the wooden door, causing the entire doorframe to shake and one of the jar stacks to fall over. Understandably, Holly shrieked from the bottom of her lungs and even Anastacia may have let out a slight scream of terror, as she couldn’t feel whatever was on the other side of the door. After a few seconds, it happened again and then a third and a fourth time, and on each hit Holly panicked more and more. She buried herself into the beddings she had used to make the nest and kept mumbling that her father was going to find her.
It was clear that the door could only take so many more hits before the hinges or the lock would give up and let the intruder inside. Feeling like she was responsible for what was happening, Anastacia wrapped her hands around Holly and hugged her tight. “Holly, listen to me. I’m going out there and handle whatever is on the other side. You hold still and read your book, okay? I want to hear another story when I get back, so pick a good one.” She said quietly and got up.
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“NO! Anna won’t come back!” The owlfolk protested with tears in her eyes and grabbed Anastacia’s sleeve.
“I’m sure I will. In your story, there was a muse that tricked the most powerful ruler in the world, right? Well I beat the muse I met, so whatever is on the other side is barely an inconvenience.” The necromancer explained and smiled, full of entirely faked confidence. She walked over to the door and pulled out her enchanted knife. “Make sure the door locks after me, and do not open it for anyone else! I’ll quote something from the book when I get back, since no one else besides us knows the story, you’ll know it’s me for sure.” Anastacia advised Holly and quickly slipped through the door, before she had the chance to regret her bravery.
As soon as the door behind her closed, the darkness spread and grew over it like vines, quickly hiding the only point of reference in the infinite field of darkness surrounding Anastacia. Weirdly, being surrounded by the dark wasn’t that much unlike swimming, she could feel it seeping into her lungs on every breath she took, as it offered a bit more resistance than regular air. The resistance also made her movements a bit floatier and slightly slower while causing a constant feeling of pressure from every direction.
“Well this was fucking stupid.” The necromancer admitted to herself and swiped the darkness a few times with her knife to see if there was anything around her. “What now?”
There was no sight of whatever it was that attacked the door, nor anything else for that matter. Necromancy turned out to be equally useless, but the absence of all life around her was actually pretty refreshing, even if Anastacia had regained her control over her powers after the curse had worn off. Closing her eyes still allowed her to focus more on her surroundings, and she could make out what was clearly whispering from everywhere around her. Nothing about the whispers was particularly threatening, so instead of scorching everything within a ten-meter radius, Anastacia chose to sit down, close her eyes and listen some more.
The langue of the whispers was something completely alien to her, but they almost certainly weren’t hostile. In fact, it sounded like they were gossiping about the strange creature that had just appeared in their midst. As the voices slowly approached her, Anastacia tried to peek at them with her left eye, but the view opening up in front of her quickly made her forget about everything else. Instead of the darkness, the night sky above her was filled with countless stars that seemed to be far closer to the ground than normally. The scenery around her was still largely covered in shadows, but the silhouette of a ruined city that had been reclaimed by nature was apparent. Large trees had pushed their ways through roofs and their roots had collapsed the walls around them. What little of the cityscape had survived, was covered in overgrown vines and large strange mushrooms that gave off a very dim purple glow. Perhaps the oddest part of it were the massive silhouettes of almost inconceivably large giants, that were seated here and there in the distance. Though mostly human-like, their forms appeared impossibly thin and starved, almost skeletal, and their faces were featureless outside of a single vertical slit that glowed much like the stars around them. The darkness made it hard to tell exactly how large these beings were, but that didn’t trouble the necromancer for long, as when she glanced directly up, she could see one of these titans staring directly at her.
Stiffened by sheer terror, Anastacia couldn’t do anything but awkwardly wave at the massive being. But to her surprise, the giant waved back. With slow and labored movements, it lifted its hand and waved it back and forth a few times.
Encouraged by the greeting, Anastacia spoke up. “Hey! I need to find whoever is running this place, I think!” She yelled as loudly as she could.
The gigantic creature slowly looked around for a while before pointing in the direction of one of the more intact parts of the ruined cityscape.
“Thanks! You’re awesome!” Anastacia yelled and waved with both of her arms.
The shadows in the ruins of the houses around the necromancer kept whispering and moving about during the entire exchange. Without a clear shape, the smaller inhabitants of the city appeared to be little more than blobs of shadow that scurried away as soon as they were noticed. They peeked through whatever gaps in the walls they found and hastily retracted themselves into the cracks between stones and planks every time Anastacia tried to get a better look.
“Well this is considerably less awful than I thought, wonder why Holly was so scared?” She wondered out loud and started to walk along what was left of a brick road in the direction the giant had shown her.
Keeping track of her direction by using the massive creatures as landmarks, Anastacia zigzagged between the destroyed buildings and climbed over roots and fallen trees. If she hadn’t been on a trip to whoop someone’s ass because they harassed her friend, and possibly stuck in another dimension, she felt like it would have been quite a fun adventure. While surveying the area for the best route to take from the roof of one of the buildings, she noticed a moth near one of the bigger glowing mushrooms.
“Guess she was right about them spying on her, huh?” She shrugged and climbed down to continue her journey.
From atop of the buildings, she had seen that the city appeared to continue forever in every direction, possibly even rivaling Valor in size. Aside from a few odd-looking spires here and there, none of the buildings seemed large enough to be palaces or castles from which the city could be ruled from. The layout of the streets made absolutely no sense either, so the entire place looked like it had been built by someone who had seen a city once, but never thought about functionality. There were no market squares or other places where the citizens could gather, nor aqueducts or other infrastructure to make living there even possible, only an endless maze of buildings that made the whole place appear artificial, as if it had never meant for anyone to live in.
The temperature in this dark realm was somewhat cold, like a late summer night, not quite cold enough to be a problem but not quite comfortable either. To warm herself up a bit as she rested, Anastacia gathered up some of the fallen branches that littered the streets and tossed a fireball at them to make a small pyre. The bright flames blurred their surroundings into a pitch-black mess again and prevented the necromancer from seeing much besides the bright stars above her, but her back was against a wall so she figured that nothing was going to surprise her without her at least hearing it first.
Not quite sure about how long it had been since she had started walking, nor how much ground she had covered, Anastacia started to feel the fatigue from staying up for well over a full day and sitting down only made it worse. She actually considered closing her eyes just for a few minutes to try and get at least some rest, but the sound of a twig snapping somewhere in the darkness erased all the grogginess from her mind.
“Who’s there?!” Anastacia asked and pulled out her knife while stumbling back up. She could barely make out a relatively short figure standing in the middle of the road. At first she thought that the person had a pair of antlers growing from their head and a second pair from their shoulders, but as her eyes got used to the dark again, she could see that the stranger was completely clad in armor and the horns appeared to be attached to the helmet and the shoulder guards. Though barely taller than the necromancer herself, the mysterious knight somehow still had a downright menacing prescience and Anastacia took a step back when she noticed the sword they were holding. Easily as tall as the knight, the sturdy-looking claymore seemed like it would have been extremely inconvenient for even much larger people.
The knight rested the sword on their shoulder and began calmly walking towards Anastacia and only stopped when noticing the knife in her hand.
“What do you want?” Anastacia asked and pointed her weapon at the knight.
The intruder remained silent but lifted its arm and pointed at the fire the necromancer had made.
Anastacia lowered her knife. “You want to sit by the fire?” she guessed. “Go ahead, I suppose.”
The silent knight nodded and walked past her to find a seat in the warmth of the pyre, where they sat down with their legs crossed and the obnoxiously large sword on their lap.
Since it seemed like there wasn’t going to be any trouble, Anastacia returned to her seat as well, but kept an eye on her guest just in case.
Like everything else she had met in this strange realm, the knight appeared immune to necromancy and the heavy armor further hid any traces of their identity. Besides the antlers attached to it, the armor itself was in no way special. Slightly worn down and dented, it lacked any type of emblems or insignia that would have given away where the knight was from; in fact, they looked like any other adventurer, and if they had passed Anastacia in Valor, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
“Sooo… you don’t happen to know who runs this place do you? I think I have some business with them. It’d be great if you could help me find them. One of the big dudes already pointed me their way but honestly this city is a mess and I have no idea if I’m close or not.” Anastacia said, hoping she could get at least a word out of the knight.
Completely ignoring the necromancer, the knight took out a bottle of oil and a whetstone from a pouch on their belt and began honing the oversized weapon they carried. Watching the knight calmly work on the edge was oddly captivating and suddenly Anastacia didn’t feel like she needed to chat anymore, she would rather just listen to the sound made by the sharpening and maybe even pick up some pointers on the technique. It quickly made the necromancer lose the track of time and she only snapped out of it once the knight was done and started to wipe the blade on a piece of black cloth before shoving everything back into the pouch.
“Your sword is pretty cool, I only have this knife that makes things bleed mead, it’s pretty good but honestly I’d rather learn how to use a sword.” Anastacia said and flipped her knife in the air a couple of times. “I like your helmet too, mine is pretty similar with the antlers and such. The goblins I rule over have this habit of tying stuff on themselves, so I do the same and the antlers always end up full of garbage.”
The knight just stared at the flames and kept quiet without so much as glancing at the necromancer.
Slightly annoyed by the lack of reaction, Anastacia got up and cleaned the dust from her clothes. “Well, if you don’t want to chat, I won’t bother you. I need to be on my way anyway, so thanks for keeping me company for a bit, I suppose.” She said and left the fireside to continue her journey to who knows where.
All of a sudden, the knight sprung up from the ground and walked past Anastacia, gesturing for her to follow.
“Uh… You’re going to show me the way?” Anastacia asked, more than a bit suspicious about the knight’s sudden willingness to help.
The silent knight nodded and pointed roughly in the same direction the giant had done earlier.
The necromancer shrugged and hurried to catch up to the knight. She was basically lost already, and probably in massive trouble, so on the off chance the knight ended up actually being friendly, it was probably worth it to trust them for now.
They continued walking down the dilapidated roads as Anastacia persistently tried to start a conversation and the knight kept ignoring her. At least making headway was considerably easier when the pocket-sized travelers could help each other over some of the larger piles of rubble and avoid having to find a way around.
“Is there something here you need that sword for? Should I be worried? I mean I can usually handle myself but there’s some shenanigans going on here and I can’t-“ Anastacia was about to say, but stopped in the middle of the sentence as she picked up something living in the distance. “What the shit? There’s someone over there.” She pointed out, intending to ask the knight if it was the person she was looking for, but just as suddenly as they had appeared, the knight had left her side. She could have sworn she saw them from the corner of her eye only a few steps back, but it was as if the entire knight had faded now into thin air. Though she had personally felt like they had, in a miniscule way, bonded over the short trip, Anastacia didn’t want to risk losing the track of the only living thing she had found in the whole city by sticking around to look for the knight for too long.
Instead, she rushed around the corner as fast as she could and ended up in front of a wide set of stairs that had once led to a building that had been bigger than almost any of the ones she had passed so far, but now just led to a huge pile of rubble and a couple of trees that had knocked over the walls from the inside.
On these stairs was a figure that was completely unhindered by the darkness and almost glowed in comparison to her surroundings. She was wearing a rather revealing gown made from the blackest fabric Anastacia had ever seen and was working on crushing something with a mortar and pestle while humming quietly and swinging her feet. Perhaps the oddest part about the whole thing was that Anastacia recognized the glowing figure.
“Estreya?” The necromancer asked out loud and approached the owlfolk devotee of Ciel, the god of the night, she had technically briefly worked for while her party had visited the city of Merfall.
The devotee stopped what she was doing, picked up a stick and poked Anastacia with it a couple of times. “Oh, it is you! The little necromancer!” She greeted Anastacia happily.
“What are you doing here?” Anastacia asked and still couldn’t believe her eyes. “And where is here?”
Estreya laughed. “I’m here for my actual job, just not the one that brings the food on the table. Sorry about the poking, the night is many things, but trustworthy isn’t one of them, so I had to make sure it was actually you.” She explained and hugged Anastacia in the overly friendly manner she always did. “But why are you here? Did you come to play cards again?”