The world was a dark blue, with tiny bubbles of white pearling off all around. Water was creeping in through a crack in her shell, and the first thing Rye thought was that it was cold. Damn cold.
It has to be worse for people made of actual skin and bones.
They were under water, having fallen into a frozen lake without Rye’s shell shattering by pure dint of luck. The water had stripped away the outer shell of ice on impact, and most of the middle layer basically didn’t exist anymore. She craned her neck and found that besides a concussed Sam, Hannah was also with her, a face of surprise frozen in the middle layers of her shell that had not been facing the lakeside.
Huh.
She hadn’t been there when the blast wave hit, so someone must have thrown her, and who exactly was obvious. Elia’s whole modus operandi was ‘think fast, regret later’. If Rye had subscribed to that same way of thought, would they still be here, in this mess?
Well, now was not the time to worry, now was the time for action. A little bit of influence from the summer-storm constellation mixed with hot air, and they’d drift upwards in a heartbeat.
Rye looked down at her limbs, which were all pointed at different angles, none of which were natural. When she tried to lift them to make a calm-sign, her joints creaked and sagged sadly.
Huh.
Her wand clattered to the ground. Well, there went that idea.
She tried to project herself out of her body, but her spirit remained in place as if she was glued to it. Flying around as Ghost-Rye took only a little bit of reservoir, but hers was completely empty.
This is… troubling.
“Sam? Could you be a dear and fetch that for me?”
Sam groaned. The impact must have been worse than she thought, and the situation just as grim. Hannah was still stuck in the ice, no doubt having suffered as many injuries or more as Sam. As undead, they would heal, but not before the water completely filled their little cavern or the oxygen ran out and they became stuck in a cycle of death and rebirth. But Rye would not die. Her body was made of stone. She wouldn’t drown, but as she had found out, bowl water didn’t work on unliving material either.
While looking around, she spotted a plas-tick bottle between some of the supplies that had scattered everywhere.
She calculated some trajectories, then steeled her resolve and urged her broken puppet-body forward. The bottle shifted as she bumped into the backpack it was spilling out of. She bumped it harder, and it fell off, down between Sam’s legs where her broken hands couldn’t reach it.
Calm down. This is salvageable.
She bent down, but the only limb still working alright was her right leg, and it was not articulated enough for grabbing things.
I’m thinking of it as my leg. But I am more than my body. What if…
Shifting her spirit around inside her body, she managed to stuff her arm down into the leg. It felt wrong, like wearing pants over her arms.
Now, foot: grab.
Metal creaked and stone cracked, her foot deforming unnaturally around the bottle. Rye tried to ignore the terrifying sound of metal grinding on rock as she lifted it up and brought it to Sam’s mouth.
Within seconds, her eyes blinked wide open and she looked around at high alert.
“We’re under water, I need you to–“
“Yes. I understand.” She took a few seconds, measuring the wall as Rye could basically see the plan forming on her face. With a metallic shink she conjured her shield. “I will hit here. Once the water has filled in, we swim up and find the hole we came into.”
“You can swim?” Rye asked. “In armor?”
“While carrying you? Should be doable.”
“And one extra? Do you need help?”
Sam looked over to Hannah. She said nothing for a while, the water now standing up to their ankles. “I will manage.”
Rye was surprised. There was not an ounce of hesitation in her voice. Sam was as confident as she had ever been plus just that little bit more. It made her feel all tingly inside.
“Ready?”
“No.” The water is really dang cold. “But I trust you.”
Sam nodded and delivered the first shield smash. Their shell reverberated like a gong as the wall gained more cracks. Gong, gong, gong.
Then the wall broke and cold water like a million tiny needles rushed in over them. Rye yelped, and if she had had a head, she would have definitely swallowed a lungful of water and doomed herself to a quick death. Sam wrapped one strong arm around her, and with the other grabbed a barely lucid Hannah.
With a single stroke they were off, speeding upwards like a firework. Up and up they went, Sam kicking the water so much they were leaving a trail of white foam.
They hit the ice above and curse her luck, of course the hole wasn’t there. Sam had a hard time checking as well, with both hands preoccupied, but the barrier above was as solid as stone, and so treacherously murky.
Sam’s chest twitched. She was running out of air. Rye tried to conjure a javelin that would break through, but barely managed half of a bolt’s shell before her reservoir hit rock bottom again.
Are we really going to drown here? How long until I have the reservoir to get us all out? Will Sam still remember me after dying that often?
Suddenly, the ice above them shone with an inner light. She noticed that Hannah was awake, an arm outstretched as her face was torn in a rictus of animalistic terror.
A crack sundered their world and the ice above shattered, shards pelting them all over.
Sam heaved them out between the shelfs and tossed them over the top, one after the other. Rye skidded across the ice, coming to a halt at Hannah’s boot.
She looked up at Hannah. Hannah shivered, looked down at her with wide eyes.
“Hello there. Nice save.”
Hannah vomited. It was mostly water at first, then whatever she had had for breakfast. Sam propelled herself out of the water, panting heavily while surveying the area. She looked so wonderful in her full plate, and even though her cuirass was cracked across her sternum, nothing looked quite as lovely as something fitted to her love’s body.
“You’re so cool,” Rye said and Sam blushed. “My knight, in shining armor. Come, we must make mad love.”
“Rye!”
“Take me.” She wiggled her broken limbs back and forth. Oh wait, they couldn’t see her face while she was hiding in her torso. “Just joking. Hahah. Unless…?”
“Ugh,” Hannah said, the first thing approximating a word since she had surfaced. “C-crap, It’s f-f-freaking cold. H-how can you joke around like that, we almost d-died!”
“High tenacity.”
“I am very repressed.”
Sam gave her a look and she did her best to shrug affably.
“Hannah is right, the wind out here will chill us out in minutes. You two can warm up while I go retrieve our gear. I think I dropped my sword.” She muttered that last bit, then dove back into the water.
Rye was left right there on the ice next to a coughing and hacking Hannah. Once she was finished purging her lungs, she took one look at the dark depths, curled up into a ball, and fixed a distant ridge with a thousand-meter stare.
“Don’t like water?”
“No,” she muttered, then added after a moment, “Thalassophobia.”
The fear of deep oceans. Yikes. This must have been a nightmare-scenario for her. I think now is not the time to talk about who else may or may not be alive.
“You broke the ice, didn’t you?” Rye asked. “That was really impressive.”
“Not really. It’s just a boon I have.”
“Then you have an impressive boon. Hooray!”
“How can you be so cheery? We were attacked by a-a thing, a titan right out of greek mythology. We almost died drowning in the dark, and now we landed so far away, the mountain doesn’t even look like it’s the same one from this angle!”
Rye looked up. She was right, the serpent had launched them way beyond the nearest hillside. They were still on Mount Gatheon though, and from the looks of it, they had actually traveled a ways up. The cloud coverage was heavy and the mood was dim, but through bits and pieces she could see small twinkling pinpricks of light.
Are those… stars?
“I’m not afraid, because I have everything important with me. That is, me and Sam. I am also not afraid because I don’t have a brain or heart to make me feel fear, though I don’t recommend turning yourself into a ghost just for that.”
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Hannah snorted, but otherwise shivered in silence.
“If you want, I can teach you some breathing exercises. I used to get afraid quite a lot, though mostly because of crushing duties.”
“First child?” Hannah asked.
“The firstest. I was a prima, back before I… came to this place.”
“Sorry. I lost my family too. Now I only have my idiot brother. He helped me get my footing when we arrived after the car-crash, but I realized all too soon that he was treating this like some big game. I mean, come on, souls used as currency, magic dice, just, magic in general? That’s right up his alley, he reads nothing besides wish-fulfilling junk on his phone.”
“I thought a phone was something you used to call things, not read.”
“It’s a smart-phone. He doesn’t use display-lenses like the rest of us. He’s a technological luddite and a real piece of work,” Hannah said, then added in a small voice. “What if he’s dead?”
“Then he’ll come back as slightly less of a piece of work.” Rye shrugged. “Relax. Elia saw this coming. She brought your brother to safety. He’ll be fine, you should focus on yourself.”
Hannah grumbled. “Fine.”
Sam came up from the water a short few seconds after, carrying her pack, and Hannah’s. When she dove back down, Rye made sure to sit closer to the hole’s edge, so that she would be visible as point of reference for Sam. Together, they managed to recover most of their gear.
“So, we’re down to three plas-tick bottles,” Sam said. “Rye is broken and they can’t fix her. Our soggy jerky has frozen at least, so it’ll keep.”
“Where the heck even are we?” Rye asked. “I can’t see from this position, describe to me what’s around us.”
“Well, we are on a big lake. Very deep too, at least a hundred meters or more. I bumped into something in the darkness down there, but it didn’t seem interested in eating undead.”
Hannah whimpered.
“All in all, I’d say we’re out of danger, but so far off-path that we won’t find back. The question is: do we still try, or do we make our way up on our own?”
“Make our own way.” Rye sighed. “We just wanted a cure, getting to the top is just the last resort. I’d feel worse for leaving Karla to herself if I wasn’t a pile of scrap and didn’t know what she was capable of.”
“Alright. Hannah, I am sorry we had to involve you in this. But Rye is looking for a cure to a terminal disease, and we can’t spend the time getting you off the mountain. I hope you understand.”
“Y-yes.”
“So, in light of that, what would you like? You get a vote too, you’re part of the group now.”
“I vote f-f-for making our own path. Can’t be worse than going back to that s-snake.”
“Then it’s settled.” Rye said. “Alright, carry me away to victory. Let’s get off this frozen lake.”
“Y-yes please.”
***
They didn’t have to go far until they reached their first landmark. What had looked like a collection of boulders jutting out of the frozen lake turned out to be buildings.
And they were beautiful buildings. Great spires towered above frosty winds, fighting with clock towers for supremacy among the skyline, where clouds hung thick and low. The streets seemed permeated in a thin, endless mist that Rye had failed to notice out on the ice, though it had doubtlessly been there before as it seemed to reach throughout the entire valley.
The streets were cleanly cobbled and the houses of an immaculate, light stone. Every couple of steps there were neatly ensconced gardens, which were either empty, or dominated by leafless trees of stone, some coming in pairs, some alone, and others as a small forest. All of it was illuminated by wispy white lights that hung in the air, close and far.
Hannah touched one and it seemed to wink out, then appear some distance further down the ingress to the city. Coupled with the mist, the lights gave the city the impression that it was only half present in reality, that it wasn’t real.
“What is this place?”
“Some sort of forgotten city. But I didn’t pay a lot of attention to history-lectures,” Sam mumbled, looking to Rye.
“Well, for starters, the architecture tells me nothing. It could have come to be at any point in the literal thousand years after our time.” Rye squinted. “But it doesn’t look too new. There, that style of round windows is something I saw in Loften before. But it was on an ancient building, which means this place actually predates–”
Sam swatted a light away and inadvertently took a step forward. Immediately, the haze twitched, and formed into words.
A home beneath the stars lies beyond.
Only those blessed by the father of the daughter of the Erethel may leave.
“Home beneath the stars?” Sam muttered.
“An Erethel is a harbinger of wisdom and truth.” Rye furrowed her non-existent eyebrows. “Father of the daughter of. What an archaic expression.”
“Think they’ll be bothered by visitors?”
“Who cares? If they don’t, you can just shoot them with magic, and you can just… punch them I guess,” said Hannah. “I just hope we can find a place to warm up.”
They entered the city and walked across cobbled paths. This place seemed to enjoy an aesthetic that was not too dissimilar from old Yorivale, except for its symbolism. Trees stood in respectfully arranged garden beds. Erethels were hidden everywhere, carved on doors or on the sides of houses, sat atop the spires or turned into a crescent, which statues of a robed woman appeared to cradle.
Not like a mother, Rye thought. The gaze was too sorrowful, too distant, and with a different kind of love. Man, I really wish I could move more. Being a pile of me sucks.
Sam tossed a common shard at the statue and muttered a prayer. The shard disappeared. After a moments’ hesitation, Hannah followed suit, though with a very different prayer.
“Something smells divine.” Hannah said
“I dunno,” Rye muttered. “Do you feel that too?”
Sam looked around, one arm on her longsword. “It is too quiet.”
“Where are all the people?”
Probably undead. Maybe they’re frozen in the lake. And then, they’re going to burst out and grab us by the ankles… now! She looked down, then remembered that she couldn’t even do that much. I am starting to sound like Elia. For once, I feel that paranoia might be justified.
Sam shouldered a door open, shaking shaved snow off its hinges. The inside was warm, and the crackle of a fire came from somewhere inside.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
Nobody responded. They moved further inside. The fire was real, as was its warmth, and the cauldron that was sitting on it. It didn’t smell burnt, which Rye could tell even without a physical nose.
“Nobody here,” Hannah said.
“It’s as if they just up and vanished into smoke – Sam! Don’t just stick your finger in there.”
Sam looked up guiltily from the cauldron and licked a finger. “The soup is still good. We can stay here, and if anyone does still live here, we can pay them later for their hospitality.”
“It still feels like we’re trespassing.”
“Like someone’s watching?” Sam checked a pantry, finding a solid chunk of bread frozen in ice. “If they are, they’ll show themselves. Until then, we should fill our bellies.”
“Yeah, and get rid of those rations. I trust Elia, if she said they are bad, then they are bad.”
***
Rye was watching the outside through a window covered in flowers of frost when she saw it. A clock struck three without a sound, then a gust rattled the windows until all she could hear was the sound of spoons scraping the bottoms of bowls.
At first, she thought she saw a ghost. She leaned out of her body, straining a reservoir that was barely recharged, when suddenly a gaunt face walked past it. The figure was lined with robes of too thin silk that hung in the air as if submerged in water, rippling with every step.
The steps echoed distantly in her mind. Clack, cla-clack.
Rye nervously shifted from being a pile to a slightly more lopsided pile. “Uhh, Sam? We might have a visitor?”
Sam looked up from her emptied bowl, nodded, and made her way to the door, picking up her sword on the way. She opened it a split.
“Hello? Sorry for intruding, but we were really hungry–“
She couldn’t even finish that sentence before a ghostly sword made to stab her past the door. She slammed it shut, startling Hannah and getting her attention.
“Sorry! Very, very sorry! We can pay you back!”
An icicle a meter long thunked into the heavy door, protruding next to Sam’s face. That was conjuration, and the figure outside hadn’t been carrying a wand.
Rye gulped and Sam finally managed to put the latch on the door. The cold wind outside took over, frosting the window until it was impossible to see at all. A few more impacts rung out, but soon enough the pursuer seemed to give up.
“W-what’s up? What was that?” A frazzled Hannah came running in, dazed by sleep.
“We’re being attacked. I think it was a dead person.”
“What else could it be in this land of the dead.” Hannah threw up her hands. “I was just having a nice dreamless nap when all of a sudden – WHAM! Back in limbo. Back in hell.”
“Technically, we’re pretty far from hell up here,” Rye commented. “Closer to the gods, further away from the fire.”
“They’re not real gods, they’re effigies! Idols! False pretenders who deceive with gambling magic, which makes them closer to the devil than anyone. Gah, I hate it when the Old Testament is right!” Rye had never seen anyone stand up with so much vitriol. “I’m getting more soup.”
Something about the tone set Rye off. “Ok, first off, they are gods because they each control a part of the world. Secondly, just because Dirtland hasn’t found their gods, doesn’t mean they – watch out!”
Hannah leapt back from the flame as a hand reached out from it to grab her leg. It caught her, sparking and sizzling for a hot moment. Then Sam was upon it and hacked it off.
“What the hell!” Rye yelled. “What is that?”
The limb of flame retreated, then burst alight, spilling the soup-cauldron all over the floor. From her vantage point on the floor Rye could see a figure rise from the embers. It was tall and missing features a human would have, but it was very clear that it was here to fight, a scimitar of flame in one hand, a ball of dripping heat deforming the air in the other.
Hannah finally noticed her wounds and screamed, sending small bolts everywhere except forward. Sam blocked a fiery impact and continued into a clean riposte. Sadly, the figure was wearing the cauldron as a helmet, and her strike dinged off, while every one of its own flowed around her shield, singing her armor.
Rye formed a single hailstone bolt and sent it off, which was evidently a mistake as she felt a force tug her back into her possessed body.
“Kill it!” she yelled. “Kill it!”
“I’m trying, love. But this thing is not. Exactly. Cooperating.”
“My leg,” Hannah yelled- “ffff–“
“The left! Other left!”
“–uuu–“
“Die! Die you wretched thing.”
“–uuudgeee–“
“You cut one arm off, just do what you did again!”
“It has three! Why does it have three arms?”
The fight raged on over kitchen tables and toppled chairs, up the stairs and around the attic. The homey air had turned dry and stuffy and with every step, the floor beneath the fire-fiend crackled dangerously.
Then, suddenly, a bell rang from outside. The devil stopped mid swing. It walked back down the stairs and sat down in the fireplace, where its outlines waved apart until it looked just like a normal fire should.
“…did we win?” Hannah’s voice came from above.
Rye looked around at the burning curtains and the smoldering floorboards. Sam arrived with scorch marks across her armor and a nasty cough.
They pressed outside into the biting cold, and the house went up in flames behind them.
“Crap. I guess we’re arsonists now,” Rye said.
Hannah wiped some soot off her face. “So, I think we can all say that staying in these houses is bad.”
“Not that the outside looks any better,” Sam commented, looking around. “Our friend outside didn’t leave any tracks at all.”
“Ooh, a mystery. I like good mystery.”
“Bean.”
“Yes, Sammy?”
“I love you, but please for the love of Ruthe take surviving ice and fire ghosts more seriously.”
“But I am.” And once her reservoir was full, the problem would solve itself easy-breezy. “I can’t help that my existence seems so silly. I mean, I’m a talking torso with limbs attached. Look at me dance!”
Sam watched her wiggle. “If you don’t stop, I am going to think of a punishment.”
“Yaaay!”
“No, not like…” Sam bit back an exasperated sigh. “That’s it. I am revoking your kissing privileges.”
“Nooo!”
“You people seriously need God.” Hannah muttered.
“What? Nooo, we are doing so well for ourselves.”