“...and from life came civilization, and from that so many wonders. ‘But master Sorrow,’ the young boy cried, ‘If they dam the water, won’t all the others die of thirst?’. ‘It is my water, mine!’ said the builder on the mountain. ‘They can drink the rain’.”
Rye stared at the open pages for a while longer.
“Let me guess,” Hannah said. “‘And then he slew the boy on the spot?’”
Rye closed her book. “Something like that.”
“Predictable~.”
“Better than whatever you’re reading.” Rye couldn’t help but stare at the paper sheet as large as her outstretched arms. “You’re ready to go first?”
“I’m going to blow this tall mundane woman’s mind.” She slapped her poster, one of the diagrams coming loose. “It’s no PowerPoint 2.5, but I was part of the theater group, and I heard my dad used to hold presentations like this in school. It will be a breeze.”
“What’s the title?”
“The Industrial revolution and its consequences.”
“Riveting,” Sam said as Rye perked up.
“It really is. It’s what makes the glass towers possible, what makes Otto-mobiles go and planes do plane things.”
As Sam continued taking fervent notes and Rye made plane noises, the silence was interrupted by the clear snapping sound of a pencil. Hannah was staring at her something fierce, and she was clearly not impressed by Rye’s emotional support.
“What?” Rye asked.
Hannah licked her lips, weighing whether what she said next was worth it. “With all due respect, Sam and I have been laboring for weeks to find some answer to this riddle. All you’ve been doing is reading novels and dipping your toes into a bit of everything. And on top of that, I was promised that you would teach me magic. We haven’t done any of that. I’ve learned more about self defense from your girlfriend than from you.”
Rye shrunk as she met Hannah’s gaze, which seemed to bore into her with physical disappointment. She really liked to keep things inside until they boiled over.
It’s like looking into a mirror.
Maybe she was right. If all she needed was to represent some idea, then it would have been better to pick one subject and stick with it. Sam was looking into medicine and ancient alchemical texts. Hannah apparently didn’t even need that much, only requiring a pen, glue, and paper.
It wasn’t that simple, it couldn’t be; this was a test given by the goddess of knowledge herself. The books were a trick, a lie. If the answer could be gleaned from any one of these tomes, then what was the purpose of giving them a glorified reading assignment?
But what if it was that simple? If the goddess was bound by the laws of the mountain to be their challenger, but in truth wanted them to leave her be?
“It’s fine,” Rye countered. “There isn’t any time limit.”
“There is,” Sam reminded. Rye scratched her scale arm. There was a tone to her voice that implied Rye had been trying to forget it on purpose.
“We all only get one shot per person. No telling what happens if we all fail. Which is why I am taking things this into my own hands.” Hannah stood up gruffly, posters and personal notes falling out from under her arms. “Don’t wait for me.”
And then she left. Rye couldn’t help but hope that she was carrying an actual plan that was only hidden by the paper and confidence. If not, well…
“At least we might find out what happens when someone fails the test.” Rye mumbled. She stretched herself until she was draped over the back of her comfy chair, staring at a Sam as busy with being studious and as she was being upside down. “
“Bean, hand me Olafs Treaties on Uncommon Ills, Curses, and Heresies please.” She had rings under her eyes and was tapping the ground nervously. Her efforts in diving into medical texts were growing more esoteric by the day. Things weren’t looking great for her, but just as Rye turned back to staring at nothing in particular, Sam spoke up again. “She’s right, you know. I’d like to see you put in some more effort to preserve your skin. Watching you not seeming to care… even I have my limits.”
Oh. Oh, she’s … really not happy. I guess she’s right. I have been kinda laid back.
Rye pushed herself up and though she still had no idea what to do, at least she had found an inkling of motivation. “Alright! Study mode, activate!”
***
It was well into the night when Hannah came back, a blank look on her face and more paper in her hands than she had started with.
“She knows about the industrial revolution,” she muttered, before collapsing into a worn leather sofa. “She gave me notes and recommendations. She corrected my grammar.”
It turns out, the goddess of knowledge was a huge nerd. Go figure.
“Wait,” Rye said, “the gods know about combustion engines? Why haven’t we seen one so far then?”
“It’s the fuel.” She turned her head, so she wasn’t mumbling into the upholstery. “Hydrocarbons take ages to form – literally millions of years. Apparently, hell just burns all deposits before they can carbonize. Your planetary crust is ridiculously shallow, which would normally mean that there would be a heck of a lot more volcanoes than there are, but that’s not the case either!”
Rye nodded empathetically, listening to her ramble and list off the things that were wrong with her world. She tuned out halfway through the explanation of magnetic fields. The only thing that stayed with her was that apparently, the only punishment for failing the test was that Hannah wasn’t allowed in this secret home anymore.
“There are worse outcomes than having to sleep in undead-filled catacombs, y’know,” Hannah said as she packed her gear. “If all of us fail, that means we’re never leaving this city.”
On the plus-side, if one of them succeeded, the others would be allowed to accompany them without a problem.
With the name of the game concretized, Rye finally felt the fire light under her butt. It was a small fire, like being prodded with a warm candle tip, but it made her want to go and finally get things done.
Sort of.
Finding a thesis was supposed to be an easy step one, but there was just so much knowledge in the library. She could write her thesis on the physics that allowed birds to fly, on the evolution of conjuring, or the societal influence of Ruthe’s invention of the wheel (a feat which, as one book claimed, ‘humans would not have achieved without divine intervention’). But none of that was unknown. Sam was certain that finding the cure to her curse that twisted the spirit and body was enough.
Rye sighed, putting down another almanac of dubious worth.
If I’m to surprise Uovis, I can’t just copy something out of a book she owns. It needs to be a synthesis of ideas, or come from a completely new source, or else it’ll never be original.
She leafed through a few more pages of Bridge Struts, Arches, and You, before drifting back to reading old fairytales and waiting for the problem to solve itself.
“Bean. Rye.” Sam poked her arm, rattling her awake.
“I’m awake, I’m awake!”
Her love smiled, though it was marred by tiredness.
“It’s my turn to try. Wanted to see if you’d like to come watch.”
She didn’t have to tell Rye twice. Before long, she was sitting in a chair in the weird ice and stone forest, attention captured completely by Sam’s explanation of her incurable disease. It was fun if she pretended that all the horrible stuff was happening to someone else. And the way Sam talked with restrained surety… what if she really had happened upon a cure that nobody else had before?
“… in conclusion, the living tar is no curse or sickness. It acts like a command telling the spirit how it ought to be, and the body follows, but the reverse is true as well. Treating just one side of the coin is useless, as the damage in the other will simply cause more distress to the patient.” She was not looking at Rye. Nope, she was just staring at the wonderful trees and the frozen lake above. “And a cure for either spirit or body does not exist.”
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Uovis smiled, like she had done throughout the lecture. She took pleasure in seeing others seek knowledge, that much was clear. She even egged them on, peeling back layer after layer until a point where everything unraveled.
“And how would thou treat it then, if it cannot be cured?”
Sam pursed her lips. It must not have been easy to say what she did next. “If the infection is in a non-critical spot, cut the affected area with a shard-knife, then burn out the remnants with demonic fire.”
There was a pause which turned into a longer silence.
“Thou art correct by half,” the goddess said. “This method is the most commonly used among us gods. It was used on sister Wroti, to carve out her heart. I must commend thee, for happening upon this answer yourself. But thou hath failed in producing erudition truly novel.”
Sam’s face fell. “I was expecting as much. If I may ask, which part is wrong?”
“The grail can fix all ills, or rather, once it could. Concerning thy method, demonic fire doth burn bright enough, yet it is a wild flame, an untamed, unsightly thing that would consume thee whole. Thou wouldst need to bind it to thy will and supplant its nature with thy own. To this day, only our great sister Wroti hath accomplished such feat, and she gave her flame the nature of death.”
“Wroti, our red sun, the executioner?” Rye asked.
“The very same, first and greatest of Ruthe and Worga’s progeny. What a grand couple they make, mother and daughter.” Some people had a smooth way with words. The goddess could give compliments that felt like she was slipping a knife into somebody’s chest, then twisting it with a smile. Suddenly, she turned to Rye. “Wouldst thee wish to make thy bid as well?”
For a moment, Rye’s thoughts just stopped. They restarted tumbling down a hill as Rye realized that she had absolutely nothing. Why could she hear her heartbeat, how could she even feel nervous, she was half rock, half gears, and one hundred percent ghost! Emotional detachment at a flick of a lever was supposed to be a boon in this body, why did her emotions decide they couldn’t be ignored now?
“Umm, I will require more time.”
Uovis nodded. “Thy companions must leave at their earliest convenience. I may not enjoy the company of a dullard. It is now up to thee to prove thy wit.”
Sam gave her a small smile. “We’ll be waiting outside. I know you can do it.”
***
“What do I do? I’m totally screwed! How can I surprise her, she’s the goddess of knowledge, and I’m just me, I can’t just – gah!” Rye raised a tome that weighed an annoyingly large amount, ready to throw it.
She stopped herself at the last moment, reminding herself that these books belonged to a goddess. Well, ex-goddess. It came out to the same thing, because when Rye next dared to speak in front of her, it had to be with a surefire way to surprise her.
Rye groaned as she rolled off the couch. Her mind was spent after days and days spent looking for any hint of a thesis. She had a few worked out quite far, but halfway through an itching feeling always told her that they were not going to be enough. Copying half-baked knowledge from earth wasn’t going to go any better than Hannah’s attempt. It wasn’t like she was smart enough to just invent something neither world had seen either.
I did this to myself. Though on the plus side, if I hadn’t stalled so long, then I might have failed before Sam. Yes, that’s right, avoiding my responsibilities was exactly what I needed to do. Haha.
It was getting lonely here without Sam, or anyone else to talk to. She was no Elia, who could go two hundred years with nothing but herself and a friendly toad.
Sam was with her too. How long were they together again? A year? Twenty?
“Great, there you go trying to distract yourself again,” she muttered to herself. “You’re supposed to be a genius. A prima. Get it together.”
She set her book aside and tried some breathing exercises. They didn’t seem to work, because as far as she understood it a flesh and bone body could be signaled to be calm if one's breath led by example. Without lungs, there was little she could do. The roiling cocktail of emotions was all in her head, or wherever else spirits kept them. It was entirely self-made, and that did not at all help to stop herself from spiraling more and more.
Suddenly, Rye shot up. “I need a bath. A good bath.”
To her great surprise, Uovis’ quarters did not have any bathing tubs or other implements. Maybe the bodies of gods didn’t secrete all the layers of ick a human body did after days without water, let alone undead bodies. Maybe they were so used to having attendants dust off their bodies that they forgot what baths even were.
There was one place she did know that had a bath.
Rye sighed. “A dream is fine too, I guess.”
With a shlorp like getting out of a leathery armchair in summer, she entered her white dream. It was still hard to control her shard of dreaming, but she could worry about what it meant to be worthy another time.
She entered it within spitting distance of the great baths the people of Littleton had appropriated for their own use. For once, the sounds of children screeching and water splashing didn’t grate against her nerves. She set herself down behind an unused stall that was folded together, undressed herself, then quickly redressed herself in parts as she noticed how everyone else was wrapped in white smallclothes.
When in a dream, do as the dream-people do.
Water gushed from the mouth of a carp statue as she pondered where to go. The larger pools weren’t exactly overfilled, but they were brimming with activity from the people who were doing laps inside them. The steam baths were completely empty, but she didn’t come here to sweat.
Luckily, when she arrived at the hot pools, there was only a young couple enjoying themselves. With a nod she lowered herself in and basked in the warmth filling her. Swimming in water with clothes on felt weird, but she wasn’t going to be someone who went against the grain here. For a moment, she wasn’t Rye-whom-all-hopes-were-resting-on, just Rye the unassuming pool guest.
This is nice. I should take Sam here more often.
She opened an eye at a distant commotion. A group of boys were coming towards her pool, the kind of group where people egged each other on and were a bit too loud for comfort. They were clearly eying her, and boy did that bring up memories of the good old times, when all she had to worry about was chores, studying, and boy troubles instead of death, diseases, and eternal imprisonment in a city sunken in ice.
She had gone to plenty of parties and revelries, flirting and mingling as she liked. For appearances, she told herself, and because it was important to know the sons and daughters of Arvale’s finest class. But Sam had made it clear that she was out to monopolize her, and in light of that wish, Rye decided not to engage with anyone else.
The boys however, had their own ideas.
“Hey pretty girl,” one of them said. “Come join us for a drink.”
Rye slowly turned up to look at him. He was handsome, tall and lightly muscled, black hair carried in a frazzled mop.
“No thanks,” she said and sank a bit deeper so she could blow relaxing bubbles.
But they didn’t leave. The couple tensed as all six poured into the pool. She felt an arm around her shoulders, a hairy, muscled one.
“Guess she’s not into your wiry ass, ain’t that right, girly?” This boy was built like a dockworker, a slightly fat frame hiding strength beneath.
Rye shot him the kind of glare that could skewer a person. Even if she placed so much importance on physical appearances, she certainly wouldn’t give this guy a chance after what he was trying to pull. The boys and girls of Arvale were no less open about their desires, but they had the good graces to actually try and be flirtatious instead of just bulling through everything like a horny mole.
Rye sighed, and he apparently mistook that for a swoon and an invitation. His hand wandered lower, but instead of her chest, all he found was a block of immovable force.
“I don’t know if you can’t take a hint, or just don’t care, but I don’t want to see you guys ever again. You are banned from the baths, permanently.”
“What–“
With a flick of her wrist, she hoisted them up by their under-wraps and tossed them into the sky, where they disappeared with a twinkle. They’d land somewhere soft without being hurt too badly. Not that they deserved it, but they didn’t deserve death either.
Moderation in all things. That’s me, moderate, normal Rye.
She eyed the couple, which had gone from uncomfortable to genuinely mortified. It wasn’t hard to spot the point where they recognized her from all the statues Rhuna had built.
“I think we, uh, should leave.”
Rye deflated, just a tad. “Oh. Have fun. And sorry for… everything.” She watched them scamper away and sank until the water was just below her eye line. “Ugh.”
Even in my dreams I can’t find peace.
As if on cue, the water sloshed as another visitor settled in the pool. Rye didn’t open her eyes as the waves rippled around her. She didn’t need full control of her shard of dreaming or shard of shape to know that Rhuna was sitting opposite of her.
“That was pretty hardcore,” she said.
“Ngh,” Rye mumbled. “They deserved it.”
“Not saying they didn’t.” Rhuna sighed. “Alright, what’s got your tits in a twist?”
Rye opened a single eye. “Hypothetically, if I had to come up with a presentation on something that nobody has ever known anything about, how would I do that?”
“By lying?” Rhuna scoffed. “Everything has been thought of before, there is no original, no first. Just plagiarize something from a less well-known source but make what you’re saying slightly better. If it worked for Edison, it’ll work for you.”
“I rather doubt it will,” Rye grumbled. “Not when I have to impress the goddess of knowledge.”
They were both silent for a while.
“So, you’re ascending the mountain.”
Rye coughed as she inhaled a mouthful of water.
Oh shit. I screwed up.
Rhuna held up a hand to stop her.
“I know the story of Viln. You’re stuck, aren’t you? Let me help.”
Rye blinked in disbelief. “Why are you helping me? You said you didn’t want anyone to go to the top.”
“And as long as you promise not to, I will get you out of this hole you’ve dug. Swear an oath.”
“Heck no.”
“Then make another dozen orchards, but with real fruit. And grassland, a lot of it, and some rivers maybe.”
Rye blinked. “That’s all?”
Rhuna nodded and offered her hand. “You told me I’m still dreaming too big. Guess I’m learning. Shake on it?”
Rye looked at it, then up at Rhuna. Was it really that easy? Did she really just have to ask for help and she’d give it? There had to be a catch, there almost certainly was. But she couldn’t muster the will to look for one and so she took her hand.
Rhuna didn’t grin. She was all serious and business-like. It almost made her look likable, like a reliable leader, or a wizened matriarch.
Idly, Rye noticed a few people staring. It must be great publicity to be known as the mayor who had an in with the goddess. Was that the whole reason for this, popularity and elections?
“To hell with it.” Rye grasped her arms and shook. Whatever hidden price Rhuna was planning to get her to pay was worth not being stuck in Viln forever. She couldn’t just think about herself, Sam and Hannah were relying on her too.
That’s it. Good prima. Put the others before yourself. You can do that much.
“So, what’s your plan?” Rye asked.
Rhuna smirked. “Well, I have a couple ideas…”