Gnawen was a good mom: She could catch twenty fish in an hour, she was as chill as chill could be, and always listened to her daughter. When Elia requested some light exercise, she was chased across the entire forgotten city. When she asked to test the limits of her new body, she tossed her off a cliff and jumped right after.
“Good daughter, very strong,” she said. “Gnawen makes sure of it. Good mothering.”
“I can feel my spleen,” Elia groaned. “I shouldn’t be able to feel my spleen.”
She felt a foot nudge her side. “Tired?”
Suddenly, Elia twisted her wrist and launched herself up from a prone position. Her glowing sword cut a red welt across the bekki Queen’s impenetrable skin. She caught her in a bearhug, grinning down at Elia.
“Sneaky daughter! Clever daughter! Always want to win, yes-yes?”
“Gah, how are you even more unkillable than Rhuna? You are so unfair.”
Gnawen looked at her with a lecturing face. “You will have to do at least this much. You want to help with revenge, no?”
Elia sniffed. The bekki queen could do with cleaning herself in a more queenly way, a way that did not involve licking herself. “You should take a bath. I’m serious. You smell.”
Sullenly, she set her down. “Don’t like water.”
“Oh? Afraid of water, are you?” Elia grinned. “Scaredy cat.”
“Pah. Demanding daughter. Rude daughter.” She sniffed. “Will take big bath. Biggest.”
“Thanks.” Elia smiled as she fed a scrap of fish to one of her head-snakes. The impossibility of their digestive system notwithstanding, they deserved a treat. None of them had bitten anyone for a whole week. “I’ve got to go.”
“Magic-lessons with the human?” Gnawing grumbled and kicked the dirt. “Don’t let him touch your snakes, yes? Come back safe.”
“I’ll be back by naptime,” she said, already taking off toward the lake to take a dip herself.
Arriving there at her fastest pace, she stood over the water’s edge, hands on her knees. Her reflection panted back at her. It looked happy, content. All of her snakes were happy too, courtesy of the constant bribes of fish-bits.
She blinked. “Holy shit, it’s been two weeks.”
That’s because time flies when you’re actually enjoying yourself.
“I am?” She twirled a snake around a finger. “I guess I am. The fish is good. I can talk with almost as many people as I have me’s. This place isn’t half bad, as far as taking breaks is concerned.”
Yeah. Too bad we’re still trapped.
Her gaze was drawn to the hole so far above in the ceiling.
To be fair, she had put her all into her escape attempts as well. Whether it was climbing the wall of the cave, trying to leap from the tallest spires, or trying to build a catapult that could fling her through the ceiling, they all seemed like they could work, at least in theory. Sometimes Pawil helped her, sometimes Gnawen, never both.
In the end, with the exit so close, there was no need to rush. She had scoured the barren city and even some of the excavation tunnels before those led into twisting mazes again. Nothing could threaten her down here, nothing but boredom and a lack of purpose.
“I can see why Pawil isn’t interested in leaving anytime soon,” she said. “This place is… quaint. Peaceful. Far away from everything.”
We can’t stay here forever though. Karla’s waiting for us, Rye and Brod too, and the kittens.
“I know, I know.” She sighed. “Welp, after the catapult decided not to work in the most catastrophic way possible, I’m drained of ideas. A quick dip ought to refresh us.”
There was a collective groan from her snakes.
“Look, I know it’s cold, and that it feels like someone dumped a bucket of nails over our head, but I will not compromise our hygiene.”
She lowered herself down when something tugged at her head.
Wait!
Elia looked up from her cupped hand of water. “Yes Sense?”
I… I think I saw something. Water, ripples, far. What could it be; a predator, a loch ness monster?
She indulged in her most paranoid half and let her eyes wander. There was nothing out there or, rather, her heat-sense didn’t extend that far. The lake was still and completely dark, though perhaps it registered as a bit warmer than before.
Sense-Elia (just “Sense” for friends) could be relied on to be the first to see a threat, she was also the first to see threats where there were none, eleven times out of ten. Just the other day Elia almost had a heart attack because Sense mistook an oddly shaped rock for Karla in her armor.
She wasn’t the least reliable and consistent version of her, but she felt the most real. But chasing after down-to-earth worries all day was getting tiring.
“Look, maybe there’s an alligator out there, maybe it was just a big fish. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but if you could contain your alertness to casting lessons, I’d appreciate that. Maybe then we can finally get a clean flame going.”
She muttered that last sentence and went to take a dip.
“I see you are thinking about our lessons even in my absence,” Pawil said, interrupting her train of thought.
With an annoyed grumble, she gathered her scattered clothing. It wasn’t like he had ever shown interest in anything besides his carvings. Sometimes, with how still he could sit while staring at them, it was as if he too was made of stone.
“Hello to you too,” she said. “And no, I was just thinking about cutting the lessons short. A bit of cleaner fire won’t help me get outta here.”
“If that is what you believe.” He swashed a skull-pot through the water, then sat down on a stone and inspected an obelisk he was in the middle of finishing. He copied his entire collection once every century, paranoid that if and when he died, his legacy might be lost.
Quiet, even tinks of chisel on rock filled the air. For some reason, today the annoying sound was unbearable.
“Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the time you take out of your busy day to teach me. But when I’m with Gnawen, I learn so much about my new body, like how high I can safely fall from, or how to twist in a way that turns a lethal blow into a bruise. And we actually try to escape! Hatch up schemes and ideas.”
“And has that gotten you any closer to the way out?”
She leveled a glare at him. He ignored it. “And then all you do is ask questions. How am I supposed to know if there really is a sea of fire beneath the earth? What does it matter why birds are gone?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t focus on the answer but on your continued disinterest in answering them, hm?” He continued busily chiseling like a gardener trimming hedges. “Why do you even bother trying to escape your current situation when you don’t know what you want to do after–”
A sudden cough wracked the old human and Elia was not beneath exploiting such a convenient opening.
“Yeah? Why do you spend half an eternity plotting revenge when you don’t bother to take even a single step to get it done? Seriously, you’ve been at this at least five times as long as I have been alive, and I am over two hundred.”
It didn’t feel like she was that old, not when she left the maze, not now in the presence of millennial ancients. That that was why the both of them were treating her like a kid when they were the ones too childish to consider cooperation still irked her.
Pawil raised a hand, but this time she ignored him. “You have consistently proven that you’re willing to sit on your ass until the world has crumbled around you. And what use will your revenge be then? It won’t serve anyone, ‘cause they’ll all be gone. It will only serve yourself, and I don’t want to be remembered as selfish.”
She was expecting some clever retort as measured and well-said as straight out of a history book. But when she turned around, Pawil was buckled over. His cough was now a deep rattle. There was blood on his hands.
W-what’s wrong, is he sick, is it contagious, is he finally kicking the bucket after two thousand years?
Elia rushed over, slinking one of his arms over her shoulder. “Hey, Pawil, talk to me.”
“Water,” he croaked.
“Ok, water. Here, let me get your cup–”
He grabbed her arm as she tried to move away. If he tried to say something it was overshadowed by the sound of retching and a wet splash of flesh. A piece of his lung splattered in a puddle of of thin gore, still twitching.
“Orb, water, urk.”
Before the next convulsion shook him, he put a hand to his chest and a red light flared inside it. The air suddenly smelled of scorched flesh and his next cough came with a lungful of soot.
“I smoked the wretched thing out,” he crowed. “I was telling you, the water I drank was infected!”
I knew it! I knew something was in the water!
“Infected? What?” On the one hand, he’s immortal, but not undead-immortal. On the other hand, which disease has an incubation period measured in seconds? Maybe some sort of a magical parasite?
For a moment, Elia imagined Pawil accidentally eating a brainslug, or some other nasty business that was now rummaging around in his belly. She shook her head. They were far away from Loften. “You mentioned an orb?
“Yes. Below the bowl. Bring me to it.”
She helped him stumble along. At the bowl, he ordered her to bend down and pull a misshapen rock from a hidden nook beneath. It was a half-cut crystal with many oddly shaped pieces jutting out, straight pillars and others twirling like horns.
He put his hand to it and pondered it for a moment. It glowed blue. It… didn’t do anything else overtly magical. Maybe this was what the conjurers of old used as a conduit for magic before they realized how convenient it was to only have to carry around a stick.
With shaky hands he gave it to her, gently cradling it as if it was worth more than his own life.
“Do not let this break. It is worth more than my life.”
“Oh, I, uh,” Elia tried to ponder the orb, failing to make it glow. “I’m not good at keep things whole. More of a wreck-shit person myself.”
He gave her a flat stare.
“Stuff it in your backpack,” he finally said. “The infection… it is in my body, and spirit. I have never heard of – that shouldn’t be possible. I don’t suppose”–he coughed again–“suppose you would know of this malady?”
When he put it like that, one thing instantly came to mind.
“Living tar,” Elia muttered.
It was here, down in her safe space. Watching the lake with her eyes didn’t tell her more besides that it was slightly warmer than before. The tar must have sunk below and was busy growing upwards, infesting it like maggots inside a rotting apple.
We have to warn cat-mom.
Elia almost dropped him as she realized what Gnawen was about to take a bath in. Her thoughts returned to Pawil. Despite her misgivings, she didn’t hate him. He couldn’t walk without support, but if he met Gnawen the results could be disastrous. However, leaving him was also not an option. There was no way in hell she was leaving anyone behind to fall prey to that kind of torture.
“I can’t… I cannot remember.” She shouldered Pawil as he muttered. “I forgot… what was I writing on that obelisk again...”
Soul damage. Shit, if one sip does this much, what about all the other undead, the dregs?
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
We’re looking at an infestation, city wide. We can’t stay here, we have to leave.
***
As she hurried into the city, she was waylaid by the same sort of dregs she would have normally jumped over. But upon looking closer, there were small changes in the wandering dead. One had all fingers in his left hand elongated twice over, another was growing horns out of his ears and eye sockets.
She was just about to circumnavigate them when one with hooves and a triple whip tail jumped at her. With a parry and a draw cut, her sword slashed into his wrist. But neither limb nor bone was severed.. What was more, as the others fell upon her as well, she felt that their bones were harder and their muscles hard to cut like dry rubber.
You have gained: Soul x374
You have gained: Soul x281
You have gained: Soul x499
She killed them, but with one Pawil slung over her shoulders she needed to use precious reservoir with every slash to give Moony a cutting edge. With a nervous glance, she looked at her blood-drenched sword and at the bisected body at her feet. It was still alive, and its guts were busy rearranging itself into octopus-like limbs.
Elia finished it off and hurried along, before too many others could get on her tracks. But there were many, many dregs in this city. Despite that undead did not require sustenance, it seemed a lot of them had either drunk from the lake, bathed in it, or otherwise propagated the infection of tarry mutation through their daily habits.
“Join us,” she heard a puddle speak to her. “Live with us and become more.”
That was all she needed to make a large detour around that part of town. She was still hacking and slashing whatever she could not evade, but she was starting to notice the strain, if ever so slightly.
Still no sign of Gnawen.
“If I were a cat-mom, and my daughter told me to take a bath, where would I be?”
Probably taking a nap.
Elia nodded and went towards one of the many prominent nap-spots around the city. The old man she was dragging along had long stopped complaining. She only hoped it stayed that way once they encountered his rival.
Just as Elia was about to round the corner, a distant explosion of force caught her attention.
That’s it! That has to be her!
But Elia was not feeling confident. Gnawen was strong and quick, yes, but she didn’t use any weapons. If she was fighting the tar with her bare fists then…
Elia redoubled her speed, hopping on top of houses and then from roof to roof. She found the bekki queen engaged with four large moor-ogres, their long catfish-like necks and mouths dribbling tar onto what was once a public square. A fifth enemy, a knight of sorts, was watching it all from a vantage position high above. He was right on Elia’s level, and had his back to her.
She jumped on the opportunity, and charged her shortsword with a good chunk of reservoir before slicing his head off. She must have missed by a slight margin, because when he turned to her it was still dangling by a sliver of skin and dripping tar.
“Welcome, honored one,” it gurgled despite lacking a head. “You are much like us. Why not stay, and rot in peace?”
Her body stiffened as the adulation took hold, the sound-magic restraining her if only for a moment. It was a moment long enough for the knight to brandish his claymore and move to repay her in turn. But Pawil stirred and with an outstretched hand, he summoned a jet of flame of red fire that turned blue turned hot-white.
The knight was obliterated, melting into a puddle, armor and all.
Ascender slain
You have gained: Soul x9,000
A weakness! I mean, obviously tar burns, but this quickly? Using a single fire blast is more economic as well.
“S-see?” Pawil coughed as the hold on Elia’s body relaxed. “That is how you conjure fire. Clear purpose, clear flame.”
“Good to know, but not the time for a lecture.” She hopped down and this time, she cut through the moor-ogre’s head in a single strike. Another one fell to her fire blast, though she hadn’t put that much power into it.
“Gnawen!” Elia yelled as the woman finished off her last opponent with a tossed rock.
“Daughter.” She leveled a nod at Elia, and a glare at the man draped over her shoulders. “Human.”
“You, I remember,” Pawil dripped with pained disdain. “I cannot help but notice how you destroy even the pavement you stand on.”
“You make rocks look weak,” she answered. “Daughter, leave him. He is a fool.”
“You are the fool, dear. You wish to kill each and every god, but you never thought that if they beat you once, they can and will do it again?”
“Who left Gnawen under the willow-tree, to die? Who promised and promised, and then ran away?!” She snarled at him, baring her teeth. “I am not cowardly like you!”
“Hey, um, not to rain on your rivalry, but considering the city is overrun with infectious tar people, maybe you can bury the hatchet and work together just for one day? We need to leave, pronto.”
“Leave?” Pawil asked. “You may do so after you put me down at the bowl again. With the spread of this... mutative sickness, there are entire libraries of obelisks I must relocate with utter swiftness.”
Elia pursed her lips “Pawil, the tar won’t stop at people. It will take over the entire lake, and then where are you going to get your water from? This isn’t something you can wait out.”
“I will stay,” he said, coughing. “Carry me now. Then you and the monster queen can leave, and rail against the gods, and die like all the others. At least this time I won’t have to carry the guilt of watching.”
“Haha, yes. Stupid guilty human.” Gnawen chuckled, then paused. “You were watching?”
“How you fought against the impossible, dear, and nearly won? How much of my life do you think I have spent recording that? Ah, but if I could go back and choose again… I’d have run the other way.”
The bekki queen had the look of someone whose gears were turning behind their eyes, slowly but surely.
She turned away with a harrumph and muttered to herself. “Stupid human.”
Elia meanwhile looked at Pawil, then Gnawen, then back at Pawil, gears turning in her own head. “Jesus, you two need a room.”
“No!” they both yelled.
“Fine, a counselor then. Now, this tar business, it’s rather serious. The stuff didn’t touch your hands did it?” Elia asked Gnawen.
“No?” At Elia’s stare, she hurriedly showed her hands. “Yes, but am alright. Look.”
They didn’t have any sign of tarry mutation. There were a few red welts along them, but nothing worse than a sunburn. Her skin really was impervious to harm. They’d likely have to submerge her fully or attack her from the inside like they did with Pawil.
“Good enough. Now Pawil, unless you can walk, you’ll have to suffer me carrying you out.”
Pawil had the good sense not to protest as she hefted him onto her back, tying him fast with ropes. Her bekki-mom fell into lockstep with her as she slowly but surely made her way towards the tallest building in the city.
“Were all our daughters so unruly?” Pawil asked.
Gnawen grinned. “Like a bag of snakes, Pawi.”
***
The underground prison of Tartazon was large enough for a city to grow within it, made from cut stone and scavenged bricks from further above. Towers were stacked precariously like giant toys, giant aqueducts and bridges too. It should have been hard to find anyone, let alone follow them in the labyrinthine buildings stacked upon buildings. They were moving through one of them when suddenly, Gnawen froze.
“Quiet.”
Elia blinked. “It is. Where are all the dregs?”
Gnawen growled. Elia heard it only moments later, a sound like heavy boots wading through a swamp.
From all around, tarry figures emerged from alleys and atop buildings, some large as an ox, others even half as small as Elia. Leading the pack was a man whose head had been so deformed, it cracked his helmet open like a flower, growing ceiling-ward like a reverse mushroom. At a gesture, the shambling horde stopped.
Elia crouched. If she had to dodge with Pawil on her shoulders, she couldn’t afford to make a mistake. But instead of pointing his sword at her, he offered a dripping hand.
“Oh, honored beauty,” he said. “We watched your struggle in the dark. We feel your pain. Join us, and you will behold the wonders your flesh can be. Come, and we may slay the gods together.”
Elia scoffed. “Really, is that the best pitch you have?”
Gnawen bristled, fur standing on edge and eyes growing bloodshot. “They are MINE! MINE TO KILL AND REND!”
“Alas, you yet cling to your furry hide.” He brandished twin hammers, one twisted and wicked, the other fat and stubby. Tar dripped from his orifices, marking the stone around with a sizzle.
“Do you stil have my orb?” Pawil asked.
“Yes, but–”
“Good. Run on my signal. Gnawing will keep you safe.”
You have challenged Lieutenant–
Pawil screamed. “What do you think you are doing to my home?”
A wave of fire washed out from his hand, catching the knights head-on.
But these ones dripped like candle wax instead of melting in an instant. A wave of quarrels came through the wall of flames. Elia twirled to the side with impossible finesse, turning a well-aimed strike to her heart into a glancing miss. Gnawen didn’t even bother to dodge, as they fell off of her bronze skin like raindrops.
Elia’s heart fell as she felt Pawil twitch in her arms. A feather was sticking out from his gut, and half a crossbow bolt with it. But unlike what she had expected of the man, he pushed himself off her back and screamed defiance with a breath that turned into a wave of cold.
“Defilers! Truth-twisters! Lies, lies and sin,” he called as crystals of ice as tall as buildings burst out of the ground.
Elia wanted to pull him back, she really did. But the bekki queen stepped in front of her to block another volley coming from all sides.
He’s going to die here.
“We leave,” Gnawen called.
“I know.” She took one look back at him and then followed her up the stairs.
It was a hard ascent, because the staircase was broken in parts, or hanging at a slant in others. With [Frog leap], she should have been able to range ahead quite far. But no matter where she turned, a volley of projectiles pelted her skin from out through tears in the masonry. She had to stick close to Gnawen, and after she noticed her hiding beneath her form, she decided to pick Elia up and sling her over her back.
“Beautiful magic,” she said and with a forlorn sigh took one big bekki step.
Their ascent accelerated then. Higher and higher, until all that was left of the fighting below was a deep rumbling. They reached the top and Elia looked up to where the single crack seemed so tantalizingly close. But she had never made it up at any point and just thinking of attempting it again, now, gave her a sinking feeling deep inside her gut.
“We’re not even halfway to the nearest stalagmite,” she said, gesturing to the house-sized formation of limestone. “We can’t make that jump.”
“Will.”
“How confident,” she huffed. “Once you’re out, are you really going to kill every god?”
“Yes.”
“Even if there’s a good one or two among them?”
“YES! THEY WILL WEEP AND THEIR PRECIOUS THINGS WILL BECOME THE PAIN WE TASTED LONG AGO! ALL WILL DIE, ALL!” Gnawen huffed and huffed. “But that won’t bring kids back. They gone. Not again. Not ever.”
Elia stared harder at the stalagmites then, as if trying to shoo away that foreboding feeling of wrongness. The tower shook, shapes slithering in its shadow. Gnawing shouldered her backpack as it was getting in the way. There was nothing of import left in there besides the orb. It would be safer with her.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Was Gnawen good mom?” For a moment, the bekki queen had a look of deep sadness. “Gnawen was lonely, so had many children. But if you not want to be Gnawen’s daughter, then…”
“What? Obviously I do. You’re the best mom after all.”
Gnawen grinned, then fixed the ceiling with concentration. “When I say jump, you jump.”
“Wait, what are you–“ The bekki queen jumped. In an instant, she was a hundred feet in the air and rising.
The largest stalactite raced close to the point that Elia thought she was going to skewer herself. She hit it with considerable velocity, claws scrabbling for any handhold. She jabbed them in the rock, then aimed for the next jump.
That was when a crack rang through the air. The stalactite didn’t enjoy being perforated, and there was no larger one nearby that could hold their combined weight.
Gnawen leapt regardless. She shifted Elia onto one forearm as she reached the zenith of her parable, far away from all stone and as close to the crack as she could get.
With wide eyes, Elia stared down, and her green eyes met hers.
“Jump!”
Elia couldn’t, but Body-Elia could. She took over her legs and propelled them up and up. They blasted past the breach with enough power that Elia felt her elbow shatter as she grazed a rock. Tumbling and bouncing off walls, she finally rolled to a standstill in a cave.
Why? she thought. Why would you do this? You can’t avenge your kids like this.
Water dripped on her forehead, mixing with her tears and the pain, Gnawen’s last words still echoing in her head.
“Gnawen best mom! Ha-hah!”
***
Time passed. Elia was still in the cave, hanging listlessly. The mountain loomed outside, the bowels of Tartazon behind her. She was free, in the most technical of terms.
Bekki Mom! Whyhyyy?
She was a better mother than she was a fighter. I salute you.
So much knowledge, lost…
Her snakes were still in mourning. Elia wasn’t sure she should be done with hers yet, but as thoughts did, they roamed wild at the most inappropriate of times.
“Are we cursed?” she asked. “Does our suffering amuse some higher power?”
One of her snakes, namely Mind-Elia, drooped down in front of her.
I mean, we did piss off at least two gods. Goddesses. But with the way boon-exchanges work and the general lack of divine lightning, I don’t think that they can directly involve themselves.
“Go on.”
Think about it. Their communication has been entirely through the haze or paper snippets we have to pay for in boon shards – literally paying in power. And what, they want us gone but can’t be bothered to do more than put a bounty on our head?
“Maybe that’s what we’re getting from all the other ascenders,” Elia said. “Maybe that’s why the numbers are always so perfect.”
Hm, yes, I was thinking as much.
A moment of silence passed.
“I don’t want to end like them. Or like Pawil and Gnawen. I don’t want to live day-to-day for a thousand years, only to die to some stupid coincidence or upstart punk.”
I mean, fair enough. We only really lived on a year-by-year basis in the before, with the cancer and all. Don’t think any of us are made for the two hundred we’ve survived so far.
“I don’t just want to survive. I want my life to have meant something.”
Like what? Are you planning to carve your name into a tree, or maybe kill that giant snake, or – Oh.
Elia was still staring at the mountain outside.
“This place owes us. But I can’t make big decisions like this on my own, can I?”
Idly, she tried to [Psychometry] herself. But for the first time in a while, it didn’t work. All it did was give Elia a headache.
Well. That says much on its own.
Elia smiled thinly. There never was an original Elia, just broken bits and shattered tatters. “I never thought of myself as overly spiritual.”
And you don’t have to be. Whether you’re the kind that believes in forces on the outside, or the force within yourself, none of us will mind. You’ll still stay yourself, the glue to hold us all together.
“Thanks, Mind. I think I should listen to you more in the future.” She stood up, the pain in her arm still aching. “And I know what you all want out of this too.”
I want to find the truth.
I want to prove that I’m awe– a great individual.
I want to feel good sometime, and not go into any awful mazes again.
“I know where to find all that and more.” At the very top of the world, where the gods who have abandoned it lie. “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, the ascent is going to be terrible. But it has to be done. For everyone we care about; for everyone who can care at all. This is our chance, we won’t let them have the same fucked-up life we had.”
She raised her sword and finally, the tears came in streams.
And when we reach the top, we’ll find a way to flip this fucking board.