“Two minutes.” Rye heard Hannah’s voice from above her. The girl said she had a better view on the time from the second floor, but in reality, Rye knew that she was just scared.

Rye curled her toes, watching Sam pace back and forth like a nervous cat. The storm outside was raging. It was impossible to see even the base from down here.

She focused back on her right arm, the last limb still in the process of being repaired to the sound of stone grinding and metal bones squealing.

“How about it, Rhuna? Will we make it in time?”

No. The mechanisms are broken bad, and my bullshit-ass shard is not working like it used to.

Rye looked away, out of the frost-covered window. “Language~” she tittered.

Will you… please be quiet? Rye was, but Rhuna seemed intent to fill the void despite her admonishments. I bet they smashed my statues. Yeah, without those… yeah. Fuck, I had so much balance banked and now it’s all just gone.

“So everything you ever did was useless? Heh.”

Yeah, you’d be the kind to laugh at that. You make a city and a nation without god-mode powers, see how you like losing that.

“One minute.”

Rye got up, joined Sam at the door.

Stay still godsdammit!

“Bean. You look… better, now.”

“Still got no head,” Rye happily waved her hand through her blue ghostly face. “But after all that doing nothing, I’ve banked up a bit of reservoir. I can still feel Elia tugging on it every now and then but… I’m ready.”

Sam nodded. “So, we need to take out one of the invaders. Fire or ice?”

Rye grinned. “If things go wrong, ice.”

“We’re staying inside then?” Sam stopped pacing as Rye opened the door. “Wait, Rye–“

“Can you keep me safe while I conjure? I only have the scaly hand; it will take more than a few moments.”

Rye didn’t need to see Sam nod her approval, nor hear Hannah scrambling down the stairs. She marched out proudly into the winter wonderland, taking the group straight towards the heavily built church they had tried to get in before. The doors were shuttered and the windows too high and too narrow to fit anyone. But this was the only building that didn’t have a chimney, and therefore no fireplace.

No fireplace meant no mister scimitar.

“Thirty seconds.”

Alright, Rye thought, time to get serious.

She focused her reservoir into a simple construct, then pulled its geometry along a single axis. It grew, from a foot to a meter to three and counting. It pulled at her control, begging to be released, but Rye kept it from doing so prematurely.

“Ten seconds!”

Two years ago, a giant spider in the maze had used a similar spell against her, against Elia to be precise. Now, Rye was the one who could conjure an entire pillar of solid blue ice. That was a lot of ice, a lot of weight, and a lot of potential ready to wreak havoc.

“Five, four, three–!”

Rye sent it. A deafening crack shattered the wind-swept anticipation, causing Hannah to jump a foot. One of the church’s double doors was hanging by a single hinge. The other one was missing entirely.

“I think that was… a bit too much,” Rye said as she hurried a few frantic signs of calm. “What are you gawking for? Get in there!”

Rye could already see the outline of a pale figure take shape beneath a spherical streetlamp. Hannah hurried past her, and Sam looked like she wanted to take up the rear, but Rye wouldn’t have it. Her exhausted knight was roughly pushed inside and only then did she follow with icy eyes boring into her back.

Pretty good for you, squirt.

“Don’t call me squirt.”

Yes, ma’am, Rhuna drawled.

Rye watched the ghostly figure walk up to the doorway but not one step further. Just as she thought, it couldn't come inside. Victory. They finally found a sanctuary.

“You dirtlanders always manage to sound so sarcastic about everything. Is my arm finished yet?”

Pretty much. Try it yourself. If you hear a clacking sound, inform your local Rhuna-repair-shop at one eight hundred.

Rye rolled her shoulders, twisted her wrist, and tried pretty much everything she could to stress test her reforged limb, but Rhuna was nothing if not thorough.

“I guess I should thank you,” Rye said. “But now that your work is done, what are you even still doing here?”

Rhuna could be really quiet when she decided to be. Like a statue, there was not a hint of her existence, not a sound of movement, not an uttered half-breath. Hannah was having a stare-down with mister ice and Sam leaned against an old pew for support, completely exhausted.

Clearly, I am just making sure you don’t go and break my work again.

Rye huffed. As if she had any concerns in mind besides her own. She was probably bored playing at being a mayor, her fiendish desire to do dastardly deeds outweighing the relief of peace. But Rhuna had kept her word. She was a fantastic repairswoman, able to mend anything from sheer rock to fine metal mechanisms. Why shouldn’t Rye grant her a bit of leeway?

Rye took a few steps, then froze.

They were on the mountain. The mountain Rhuna specifically prevented people from ascending. The snowstorm had blocked the view of it, but if she found out they were on it she would be furious. And then, if she did anything untoward, Rye would be forced to kill her.

“I will be careful from here on out. Why don’t you go back into your little city-place?”

I dunno, are you going to descend in all your divinity and fix the issues I raised earlier?

Rye winced. “If it is just a small fix. I don’t have a lot of time.”

That place isn’t large enough to be self-sufficient forever. You need to create more amenities, more places, more basic resources. Just enough to keep Littleton from catastrophe.

And then when Rye was done with that, she would wake up and realize a few months had passed in a manic artist’s fugue. “Later.”

Great. Guess I’ll go back and pray. You should check in more often. An absent god is as bad as a cruel one.

And with that, Rye felt Rhuna sink back below the surface. Rye breathed a sigh of relief. No matter how cooperative she was, being this close to that woman made her feel all kinds of icks. She had business on this mountain dangit, and would suffer no party poopers.

Maybe putting my sense of fear into the forever-box was not such a good idea after all.

“Away, bad thoughts, away into your box,” she muttered. “Oh hey, a bowl.”

*Gong*

They drank deeply from it, Rye more for the taste than anything, and refilled their water bottles. Then it was time to explore, which didn’t mean much as the church was barely more than a main room conspicuously lacking any variety of statues.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Bean!” She turned to Sam, who pointed at a rough note etched into the pedestal of the church. “Can you read this?”

“No.” Rye squinted, then squinted some more.

“That’s latin,” Hannah commented. “It says: The light outshines all truths.”

“It’s a riddle.” Sam said. “Is it a metaphor?”

“Well, you see, light is a symbol of Worga and her daughters, which means…” Rye scrunched her forehead. “I have no clue.”

Hannah rolled her eyes and walked up to the chandelier sitting atop the altar and tugged it. It bent like a lever and a rumble went throughout the structure as the altar drew back into the wall. Beneath it, a set of stairs stretched downwards in a dark spiral.

“Oh.” Now Rye just felt silly.

“Looks like a secret entrance,” Sam said as she tried to light her evertorch with flint and steel. “If the choice is between exploring outside and exploring down here, I think we all know which place is more inviting. Any objections?”

“No,” said Hannah.

“None.” Rye threw one last glance at the altar of a woman cradling a raven and at mister ice still standing in the broken doorway, then moved along.

***

The spiral stairway stooped after a long while, having grown not rougher, but more delicate and refined along the way. Rye put a hand on a railing of metal artfully twisted into entrancing geometries. Their torch clearly showed where the wall turned from mass-produced brickwork to carved stone slabs.

“If the ground bends forward any more, we’ll start sliding off,” Hannah noted.

But from up ahead, a dim blue light started to break the darkness. A crack in the wall had caused an influx of ice, blocking the stairwell.

“Hannah dear, could you…”

“Yes, one moment.” She focused on the smooth ice, which immediately began to gain cracks. “Don’t want to shatter the entire wall here.”

Fist sized pieces slowly rolled off and down the stairway, which ended just beyond through a simple stone archway.

“Alright,” Sam said, “we need a plan if mister ice decides to ambush us right outside. I know you used a lot of magic, but could you…”

Rye nodded. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Good. Stay behind me, you two.”

Their care was unwarranted, as no person greeted them on the other side. Instead, what they saw was a massive natural dome of ice in many hues of blue. Looking up, they could see the foundations of buildings, and the cobbled walkways by their shadows. The stone trees were seemingly just the tip of a branch, as the rest went on downwards, even past the layer they were on. And at eye height, there were buildings too, and people suspended chaotically in the ice.

“Woah,” Hannah said. “These people all have three arms. How weird.”

Sam kept her head on a swivel. “They are Vili, a construct race. But I see some giants mixed in, as well as humans.”

“I see a dragon.” All eyes turned to Rye, who just pointed at the ceiling where a thirty-meter behemoth hung, its eyes closed and its back half stuck in the ice. It looked so well-preserved that Rye thought it might have just been sleeping.

That was when a fourth voice joined their observations.

“Yes indeed,” it said. “Viln, true birthplace of magic, home to our lord.”

She looked around and there, she saw a figure only half-encased in the ice, barely moving. It looked like an Erethel’s head on an emaciated, naked human body.

“H-hello?” Rye asked, getting close enough to make out individual feathers, but not too close. The way its head lolled in small circles disturbed her.

“Come sit, sit and rest. Let the comet flow around you. The cold is a comfort, you will see. Yes, you will.”

“He’s insane, clearly,” Hannah said. “How long do you think he’s been locked in the ice?”

“A long, long time. Maybe it was a punishment?” Rye said.

“…oh blessed rime-comet, allow us to rest in your embrace. Oh, how they fell upon us, oh how they yearned for our peace. And now we share it, until he devours us at last.” The madman descended into a fit of giggles.

The group moved on, through winding swells and swerves of ice, up crooked stairs and through the ruins of houses and places that looked so alien. Even the statues seemed to devolve the further they went, growing less human, more serpentine and avian. At some part, the first statue they had seen appeared again but reversed, a humanoid crow swaddling an infant in a bed of whorls and downs.

“I don’t see anyone who was conjuring the ghosts up on the surface.” Rye looked to Hannah, who was clutching her staff as if it would ward off evil spirits.

“It was a theory. Maybe they’re further down.”

They walked in silence for a few steps. Hannah slipped on a flash-frozen stairway, but Rye caught her with her scaly arm. Rye didn’t know if she was uncomfortable because the white scales reminded her of the great serpent, or if she just didn’t like their texture.

“You know, you can ask if you have questions, or tell me if it’s too much. I won’t hound you like Elia.”

“I only have long questions. And it’s not too much but… it is a lot.” She paused. “I miss my brother. That stupid, reckless idiot is probably out there, trying to fight a dragon or something. He thinks he is brave, but he just doesn’t have a sense of self-preservation.”

“But…?”

Hannah sighed. “Nothing but. He just spent too much time at the VR arcade. I just hope he hasn’t gotten himself incinerated, or liquified or, or whatever kind of punishments this place has for people like us.”

Rye thought on it for a moment. “Don’t worry, he is either with Elia or Karla, or maybe both. Between you and me, if either of them was here those ghosts would be fearing us.”

Hannah snorted. “You’re just saying that so I don’t worry, so I don’t slow you down.” She looked forward and if Rye was not mistaken, she was walking with a bit more surety to her step. “Now let’s move so we can get to a warmer ring of hell.”

***

It was taking days to explore the underground cavern. It was so large and interconnected with smaller ones, that grass was growing in places beneath the ice. In others, the root-like growths of the stone trees grew so dense they looked like a forest, with the ceiling as their canopy.

They were not as alone down here as they would have liked. Undead that had thawed from the ice, that had fallen from a hole in the ceiling, or that simply still wandered this place since eons ago proved a constant threat.

Some were passive, content to lie in beds of snow. Others, not so much.

There were knights of a sort, three-armed folk who coated their weapons in magic and who fought more in a dance than anything else. There were dregs, who – barely capable of lifting their long spears – stumbled towards them with deceptive strength. There was a gargoyle – only one – whose head was shaped like a human scholar, but the rest of his body was a bird, with an oversized shortsword and buckler on its long limbs, fell wings and a tail that ended in a limb grasping a wand.

That one was one heck of a challenge.

Another group of soldiers seemed entirely out of place, carrying a round symbol upon their torsos that ran with blue light from deeper inside. These prowled the streets like predators, and they did not differentiate between Rye’s party and the other undead.

“Girls, I think there’s a war going on.”

Rye turned to Sam. “Right now?”

“There was, maybe once, and the dregs are still fighting it. Look, you can see it on their crests. These three-handed people all carry the same symbols of ice and fire. But those big lugs, they’re a knight house that died out long ago. And that, that round thing is the sign of Ruthe’s Deindolen Knights.”

“You’re saying the god of creation and engineering invaded this place?” Rye could scarcely imagine it. After all, war was supposed to be Worga’s domain. “Do you know why they did it?”

“Well, between the conjuration of fire and the statues of Uovis… she was one of the adopted daughters, so if she made a hidden realm to keep forbidden knowledge then I can see why Ruthe would become incensed.”

“No.” Rye squinted at a statue of a human body mangled with feathers and scales. “It doesn’t fit. Uovis was not adopted, she married into the family. Her husband was Rhû, the kind man.”

“And still no sign of a way out.” Hannah sighed. “We need the… what was it again? The blessing of the daughter of the father of…”

“The Erethel, a symbol of Uovis and her worship of hidden knowledge.” Rye said. “Which leads me to believe that this is not her realm, but that of her father. But ‘daughter of father of’ is so weird, because it implies a sort of impossible idea that he… I don’t know, birthed himself? That he is himself, but also his daughter at the same time?”

“Ah, yes, very pagan,” Hannah commented dryly.

Rye rolled her shoulder, happy at how even miniscule old imperfections had been smoothed out. “Either way, we ought to seek out the big places for big answers. The old temple maybe, or that large, domed palace.”

“I vote palace.”

“Palace please.”

And so, they went to the palace, hoping to find a legal document worth one (1) blessing. Ruthe’s Deindolen knights had a strong presence here. They could defeat one at a time, or two if need be. But there were easily a dozen strewn about in the gargantuan building, all on rigid patrols or in one case, staring at a painting in a small side chapel built into the architecture.

Hannah got better at aiming her bolts and making them detonate right next to their faces if she missed. Rye meanwhile had a swell time cleaning up her miscasts which, luckily, allowed her to rest her reservoir a bit. There were few if any bowls of respite nearby, not because they were smashed like in the pact, but because they simply seemed to avoid this place. Whenever they needed a refill, they would have to go all the way back, and risk encountering any enemies they had missed or that simply wandered in.

The largest chamber was built as a great amphitheater, a half-circle ringed with broken thrones hewn from a dark rock. It was much like the senate, but it felt older, the thrones themselves radiating power by their sheer size. Diminutive figures sat upon them, shriveled things with gilded clothes and crowns atop wispy hair.

They were all undead. They were all dead. And among the field of corpses stood a figure like a demented knight. It had no breastplate to hide its undeath-shriveled chest, but all the other armor was present. Its helmet was a sleek marble, but when it turned it showed a mask of steel, two round cutouts for eyes, and iron teeth.

It was the face of death. And it carried a blade much like Elia’s, a curved, dull-brown thing like cracked pottery that could flense a spirit from a soul.

You have challenged: Passing knight Paulus

This was a terrible time to stumble into something like him. Rye’s reservoir was not full, and Sam was trying not to put too much weight on her left leg where a frankly ridiculous two-hander had smashed her armor in.

But the thing did not move towards them.

“We leave now.”

Slowly, they slunk back into the dark edges of the palace. And as they left, Rye saw the Passing knight simply turn back to staring at a painting on the wall. It was a painting of a great warrior woman, red hair the kind that could only belong to Worga, goddess of conquest and wife of Ruthe.

But this place was neither her place, nor Worga’s. So why was it hung in such a prominent position, where everyone could see? Why was a passing knight, shown on tapestries as messengers of doom, here?

What the hell was this place?