Rye hit the ground, half stunned out of surprise, half because the spell that had scattered her stony bits all across the now burning red carpet looked a bit too much like the one she had just cast, except in gold.
Aurana copied my spell. Shit, she’s the goddess of gold, mirrors, and she’s a great conjurer to boot.
Maybe greater than herself. Rye had never thought of herself as the best, but with the few conjurers she compared herself to being who they were, she had built a sense of superiority. That was now thoroughly shattered. That the person to do so likely had every advantage they could get was a small comfort. She still needed to win this, for Elia. But was there even hope if their enemy outclassed them in their own fields of expertise?
The goddess of gold glared all ghost-like right at her before turning to Elia. She parried her with a wide strike, all brute force as Wroti’s arm was yanked around in a sickening way. The strike cleaved into a massive pillar, then continued through. Even while being pelted with stone shrapnel Elia managed to parry, though it sent her bouncing off the ground in a rather unhealthy way, ribs-on-rock.
At least Elia still had ribs. Rye didn’t even have a torso.
Rye knew within seconds that standing up was going to be difficult. With reservoir to possess her strewn-about limbs and her shard of shapes fitting together what could be fit, Rye rose like a wire rack revenant, stumbling about as she just tried to stand. Her shard could force things – both objects and people – to adhere to a shape. It could not force two halves of a whole to stick together, and even fitting them like pieces of a puzzle was only doing so much..
I get one shot at this. I can still cast, but every move I make will grow my scales; they’ve got my left half already, and they’re too close to my heart for redo’s.
The pillar finished crumbling as Rye decided on a course of action.
Pretending all was in order and that she was running from the fight, she stumbled around a pillar and then another one, getting ever closer to the dead dragon where Elia was keeping the goddess busy. her mace dragged behind her, feeling inordinately heavy even before encasing the head in ice. She stopped and tried not to make any creaking noises. She had to wait for the perfect moment. Even a goddess ought to die if their brains were bashed out of her nose.
There was a strangled cry and all of a sudden waiting felt like the wrong choice.
Elia pirouetted around the corner, blood gushing from a freshly cut stump on one of her legs. Rye swung around the corner and felt her attack connect, crack, and detonate. Shards of ice flew right through her; there wasn’t much left to hit. The only thing that pierced her was the look of utter apathy on Wroti’s face as her head was wrenched back at an angle that should have killed her.
But the puppeteer didn’t let her rest. Just as Rye pushed herself out of her body, the goddess’ arm blurred through the pillar Rye was hiding behind. The attack missed, by virtue of Rye having already moved, though it cut the fragments of her body clean in two. She still felt a gust of wind at the back of her neck and she didn’t want to find out whether that sword could wound her as a ghost or not.
“I have waited for eons to claim my right, as daughter of honored Worga and father Ruthe,” Aurana said, as she stabbed Wroti’s weapon into the dead dragon, a liquid fire siphoning up and into her chest as if she was taking even that pittance of remaining life. “You have no place here, mortal. Now do as your kind does, and die.”
She didn’t back that up with action. The sucking of life continued. It wasn’t going very fast. Rye blinked at the goddess, returning next to Elia, who also should have fallen over, but hadn’t.
“This isn’t going so well for us,” Rye said. “Any ideas?”
“She’s just playing her sister like a fucking muppet,” Elia spat. “Hand all the way up her ass, which is her own ass, which is really poignant. Hey goldilocks, were the gods all out of silver when they gave birth to you, or do you just like being the lord of cheap stuff?”
An arc of gold nearly took Elia’s other leg off as she hopped over it. “I am not cheap! I am Aurana of the Golden Sands!”
“The fuck is that even supposed to mean?”
“I am a god! You will bow to me, you will worship me! Above all else!”
For all her yelling, the goddess didn’t move from the spot. Her head was making cracking noises, trying to right itself. Rye was tempted to blast her right then and there if only she didn’t know she would be immediately blasted back.
“I don't think we can beat her,” she whispered to Elia
“Not unless we can stab her in the face, or cut her strings,” Elia grumbled, standing perfectly straight in her single leg. “I’m going to need your help for the next part.”
“As opposed to the part where you didn’t need my help?”
“Touche.” Elia smiled. “I’m missing an arm and a leg. I need balance.”
“Elia, my scale-feather infection–“
“Won’t kill me before it kills you.” She nodded at the remains of Rye’s body on the ground, her scaly parts immaculately preserved. “Besides, that part of you seems to have weathered her attack a lot better than rock. I’m thinking it has defense against gold magic.”
Rye didn’t like this. Her own life she could do with what she liked, but forcing Elia to suffer the same end as her? It went against everything she stood for, everything that had brought her up here. But maybe they were already past the point of no return.
“I don’t like this.”
“And I’d rather not see you cast more than necessary.” Wroti’s head began settling back into place. “It’s now or never for both of us. Through thick and thin, together. Will you be my arm and leg, a foot and a hand?”
When Rye looked her in the eyes, there she saw that endless drive again, crystal clear, and always gazing at the horizon, always knowing where to place that next step. There was no hesitating anymore.
With a flick of her wrist, she cut her discarded limbs to size, possessed them, then slowly integrated them with Elia. It went surprisingly smoothly, like grafting an apple-lemon tree to a birch that bent, but never broke.
Feels almost like home.
“What was that?”
Nothing, brain bud.
With a final crack, Wroti’s head settled in place and the goddess turned towards them. Her heartbeat thrummed with the kind of power only an absurd number of souls could generate.
Wroti is still alive, Rye said and felt the bile rising in both their throats.
“Thanks, brain bud. That might just be enough.” Elia leveled her shortsword at Aurana. “All that, and I’m still standing. Lived so long you’ve lost your edge?”
“You wretched–”
“Not you, goldilocks,” Elia interrupted her, making a point of staring Wroti in the eyes. “How’s it feel, knowing that you already lost? Not very good, I’d imagine.”
Aurana didn’t take her comments very well, as Elia and Rye were immediately pummeled by three crescents of gold that cut through the air only inches away from her hair. They half stumbled, half pirouetted behind another pillar.
So that’s your plan? Taunting Wroti?
“It seems to be working.” Elia peeked out, then ducked right back as another sickle of gold cut along their cover. “I swear, Wroti’s eye twitched.”
… can I try?
“Shoot your best shot,” Elia said, then let Rye take over her vocal cords, mouth, et cetera. “Hey you! Your parents never loved you.”
Christ Rye, we’re trying to taunt the redhead, not kill her.
Another blast of gold came, and Rye took it on her side, deflecting it with scales and a semicircle of ice.
“Sorry.” They sprinted out of cover, peppering the goddesses with thrown rocks, knives, and the occasional hailstone bolt. “Your parents actually did love you very much. Which is why they’d be sad to see you like this. They’d also be disappointed. You wouldn't want to disappoint, would you?”
The taunting was showing its effect; the accuracy of the goddesses’ counterfire was sinking while every step Elia and Rye took together became smoother than the last one. They were moving to the beat of [Threat music], synching up to the beat like there was no tomorrow.
They jumped behind a throne. “Is this your throne?”
It exploded.
“Ooh, how about this one?”
It exploded as well.
“And this one?”
The barrage stopped. Rye peeked around the corner and saw Wroti’s outstretched hand shaking.
“Why do you yet resist, sister?” the goddess muttered. “I built cities in my image, like father. I conquered entire peoples, like mother. I slew our enemies, like you. Am I not the worthiest of all? Their heritage is mine, their duties are not.”
Maybe it was exactly because she did those things without question that this was her fate. After all, where was Worga in times like this, where was Ruthe? It was their mistakes that led to this era, but not their hands that would fix it. Duty and heritage couldn’t be separated, not without forsaking both.
Wroti was apathetic, Aurana was still clinging onto that worthless golden dream of hers. And Rye had dreamt it too. She knew exactly what to say to get to both of them. “You’re just a cheap copy of your mother. You never thought for yourself, never acted for yourself. You’re a nobody. And nobody cares about you. I bet you’re not even the real goddess of the sun.”
For a single instance, both Wroti and Aurana’s faces bore the same visage of fury. The latter dove back into the former fully and raised one hand above her head. “O Golden Sun, rise.”
The entire building rumbled. The color of the light shining in through the colored glass windows shifted rapidly. It turned bright as the golden orb of the sun descended in through the ceiling, gathering fire and magic into another massive ball of anger.
Huh. So she actually can summon the sun.
“Hey Elia, nice plan. But, uh, what’s the next step? Jump in and stick her with your shard knife?”
Right into that obvious trap? She’s baiting us. She’s not as hysterical as she wants to make you believe. Look at the way she’s angling her swordspear for a counter if we jump in. But this is perfect, trust me.
The grand altar was to her back. There was no way out. “Perfect for them or for us?”
For us. In the back of her mind, Elia was grinning. She’s so focused on trying to kill us that she doesn’t realize she just needs to keep us from the grail.
Rye followed Elia's lead as she turned on her heels and ran straight for the massive altar that took up the entire wall behind the twelve thrones. She tore down every candelabra and candle stick in search for a secret lever, scabbling at the sacraments, and making a fine mess of everything.
The tubas were gathering air for another deafening climax as the heat rose. The sun was almost ready to be cast.
Elia’s claws, sharp as they were, snagged on something. Thin lines right in the middle of a circular symbol of divinity revealed a secret passage. The heavy doors ground open too slowly, as bright light seemed to be coming from everywhere except the insides of their skull.
Rye put as much ice between it and them as possible, draining the last of her reservoir. They pushed on through and the world shuddered once again.
***
Rye only sluggishly returned to consciousness. The world around her was dark and cramped. They were in a corridor, with walls hewn roughly out of the stone. Elia was not moving quite right.
Water. Cold. Drip drip.
“Hey, you’re finally awake,” a friendly voice came.
I… we’re alive?
Elia was wearing a grin.
What about Aurana and Wroti? You just left them behind?
“What? No rules against running away. And besides, you said it yourself.” Elia massaged her neck. “She’s a nobody. Besides, she collapsed the path behind us like a complete idiot.”
Doesn’t that mean we’re stuck in here as well? Hey, wait, where are we?
“A cave behind the throne room. Supposedly, this place has the best loot, the grail-shaped kind.”
You can't be serious. Does that mean–
Before Rye could protest the tunnel opened up after a while into a grand, echo-y chamber. It had an island in the middle surrounded by a clear, still lake. The air smelled of water so pure they could almost breathe it.
The size of the cavern became apparent as they followed the small footbridge to the center. It was large enough to fit an entire villa, but presently the only sign of any man made structure was the grail sitting in the middle of it. It would only fit half a house.
Make us whole again
It really existed.
The grail of ages.
Its surface was marred with imperfections of age, and yet it exuded the air of a masterpiece, something a creator put all their sweat, blood, and tears into. And the body of another god, if a few nightmares were to be believed.
Here was the thing Rhuna was afraid of. Here was the lever by which one could steer the course of the world.
And Elia was walking right towards it.
Elia wait.
“Yes?”
Before you do anything rash, I need to ask… are you really okay?
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Why wouldn’t I be? Oh right, the arm. And the leg.” She looked herself up and down. “Just a little flesh wound. I’m still me.”
Your remaining arm is on fire, I… gah. This feels just like when we first met, except now I know that you’re using those jokes to cover up some serious worries and insecurities.
“… wow. We, uh, really did know each other well, didn’t we?”
We literally shared a body for half a year. Seeing you like this, it scares me. Please don’t do anything stupid.
“Don’t you worry about that, I’m just about spent in every way a girl can be.” Elia plopped her behind on the ground and sighed. “I can’t believe I’m here. Feels kinda surreal.”
Flying through the realm of the gods felt so weird I’m not so sure I can be surprised anymore. Did I tell you that I landed on the sun?
“Yeah, right. And I killed a god.” She paused. “Wait, you can fly?”
Make us whole again
“Aagh, alright, stop annoying me. I was just taking a breather.” Slowly, Elia got up again. “So, how do I do this? Is there a convenient button I get to press?”
I’d assume not. And it depends, what are you trying to do?
“A little bit of this, a little bit of that. I think the world would be better without tar. And the princess shard’s gotta go too. What about you, got any wishes for yourself?”
Rye’s mind took a short vacation as she realized that if she had any wish ever, this would be the place to make it come true. Sam would want for them to retire to a quiet piece of land. Karla… Elia would take care of her. Hopefully.
But for herself? If there was one thing she had really wanted this entire time?
“I would like a body, a real one, healthy and whole. Mine.”
Elia nodded as if that was the healthiest thing to wish for. “Couldn’t have been easy to share a body with me, I get that.”
“It wasn’t that bad. Just a little bit violent, a little bit unpredictable.”
The cave shook. Like an earthquake, it slowly rose in intensity before stopping altogether.
“Wonder what that was,” Elia said.
“The elevator. Father always knew when to be thorough.”
Elia spun just in time to watch a flaming sword spear sever her legs at knee-height.
“Fuck,” she said as she hit the floor.
Fuck! Rye cried as the pain hit her, first in the face, then in her legs.
In spite of their efforts, Aurana was here. And in spite of that, Elia hadn’t given up. She tried to shuffle away the moment she realized she couldn’t fight here. A heavy boot landed on their backs, squashing that dream.
“You could have snuck in here through it without me knowing, had you taken the time to investigate.” Aurana flipped Elia over with a kick. “Your impatience is yet another sign that you are not worthy of the grail.”
“What makes you so much more worthy?” Elia cried out and slammed the ground. She was flipped on her back, where the goddess could stare her in the eyes before killing her. “I was almost there. The end was finally in sight. Who of us took not one step forward? Who of us was sitting on their ass, letting the world fall to ruin? ”
“It will not fall!” Aurana shrieked, pinning Elia’s right hand with her weapon. She leaned down to their face, hers pushing out of Wroti’s as she enunciated every word so sharp you could stab someone with it. “There will be no ends. There will be no champion of the undead. My reign will be golden and it will be forever and it will not falter because it will be mine.”
From this close up, the goddess looked deathly gaunt, sunken cheeks where there was golden luster moments before. The spell must have drained her of everything she had left. If she had to fight the tar after this, she would fail. And yet she clung to her doomed raft of a title and heritage like a drowning cat. As if it meant anything when you were dead.
Elia punched her in the face, but the goddess only grinned.
“Go ahead. Try your best. Try and try and once you’ve had enough, realize how your every struggle was worthless, how your birth was worthless, your life was worthless. And then I will kill you and you will die knowing that your death was just the same.”
Elia punched her again, and again. Tears welled in her eyes. It didn’t matter, for all the difference in strength, she could have been punching the very mountain they were lying on.
But she was so very close.
Despite her fear and the rising panic she was sharing with Elia, Rye snaked her hand into their pocket, then took the knife and struck with all the speed she was able to.
It almost hit her right in the forehead. But Aurana jerked her arm up at the last moment, deflecting it on her bracer. This time, Rye got to feel the stabby-stab on her side of the body and oh boy did that hurt.
“A shard-knife, purloined from the armory. I should undo these. Have you any last words?”
Through her tears, Rye managed one defiant grin. “Hey Wroti. Nice sword. Can it cut through spirits?”
Aurana stared at her confused before she noticed that half of her strings attached to the goddess of execution’s arm were severed. Rye hadn’t been aiming for her head after all.
With one stroke, Wroti set her swordspear against her neck.
“Vengeance,” she croaked hoarsely and – still staring her in the eyes – decapitated Aurana and herself.
Goddess slain
You have gained: Soul x 500,000
You have gained…
The notifications poured in as if the handy haze itself was excited, but for once it didn’t matter. Rye closed her eyes, anticipating a lot of spillage, but Aurana must have not taken care of her sister very well. There was a splatter, exactly two spurts of blood, and then the colloss toppled backwards.
***
Elia blinked, slowly cracking one eye open. She was still alive, which was a welcome surprise, though with her legs as they were, it wasn’t going to last.
Aurana was dead. Her golden ghost was just lying there, headless, while Wroti’s body was slowly being subsumed by the grail. Stone hands were pulling it in and a single carved eye rose to its surface to look at her.
We have become more whole
Make us whole again
Insatiable. It’s voice was like the weight of a mountain, pressing in on her mind from every side. Its surface slowly receded into itself, revealing arms, torsos, and entire bodies. A face with a familiar nose looked at her, then was pushed aside by hands twisted together into a flower.
That’s Ruthe. I swear that face belongs to Ruthe! And there’s Rhu! Gods, it’s like they were using bodies to mend the cracks. How many gods did they sacrifice? How many people?
“Maybe they tossed themselves in after realizing they screwed up. Cowards.” She spat on the ground, then turned to the stone eye as it finished incorporating the goddesses corpse and grail shards. “Hey you. Fix my legs.”
The grail didnt answer. “Fix us, dammit!”
She punched it. The moment her hand made contact with the grail, it was like an electric zing rang through her mind. She could see it, the way the world was shaped, like a bubble between sky-sea and the burning fires of hell. Water from above, ash from below. A potent mix for life, enough for the fossil tree below them to become large enough that the imperfections of its stump counted as an entire mountain range.
And that was just one system. The grail was intricately bound into so many of these with thin lines, each one carrying a deficit or surplus of… power, influence, balance. Divine intervention was balanced by worship, the act of civilization’s creation ran a trickle of surplus that was completely overwhelmed by the efforts to keep the encroaching forest at bay, while the non-existence of birds was a considerable deficit that was supposed to be weighed out by other positive balances. The biggest benefactor in recent years had been a considerable sacrifice in souls and bone shards, but the last large-scale sacrifices were hundreds of years in the past. The system had ground to a halt and all Elia could see was a lot of red.
Then the moment of connection was over and Elia felt like she had just gone through two days of math tests.
Unworthy
The shard of healing is severely indebted
The shard of mending cannot be used on living creatures
Of course the thing had to be uppity when it came to actually fixing things. She shouldn’t have expected anything else; if you really wanted something done you had to get your hands dirty.
“You’re making this really difficult,” Elia groaned, grabbing her shard knife and stabbing the grail.
The hands greedily slurped the knife up. It was made of a shard, of course the grail wanted it back.
We are more whole
Make us whole again
“Oops.” Her arm was pulled deeper into the stone. It was up to the elbow now and she could feel panic rising in her gut.
“Stab it, Rye!” Rye fumbled around for Moony and when she had it, thrust the burning sword into the grail.
There was a pause, then a scream, and the mountain shook once more.
“That worked. Haha, of course! Sextus wanted me to burn the grail, and here I am, with a burning weapon in hand! C’mon, stab it again, I’m not about to be done in by furniture.”
But Rye hesitated. What if that’s not the right choice? What if burning the grail means destroying the world?
“The world existed before it for a long time.”
And I’m saying that even if it is a foreign thing, tearing it out might do too much damage. The roots of hubris run too deep. It has to be a controlled excision.
“Control… Command it! Tell it to do something!”
M-me?
“You’re worthy, I don’t think it will listen to me.”
What should I say then?
Elia pulled on the grail a few more times, then huffed in exasperation. “Maybe ask it to let me go?”
Ok. Grail, let us go.
The grail did not obey.
Let us go or I will stab you again.
The grail obeyed. With the sound of stone rolling on stone, it spat Elia’s arm back out. She shot the grail a glare as she rubbed it. The roiling mass of stone and bodies did not apologize.
“Rude.”
Very.
“Now tell it to kill itself.”
Elia!
“Alright, alright. But this is a pickle. That thing wants shards, and we’re full of them. If we take them out of our body, we’ve got a good chance of dying over and over before becoming a dreg.”
So what do we do? The grail isn’t listening.
Elia eyed the ghostly body of Aurana. The grail had not touched it.
“Do you trust me?”
You’ve always done right by me. So, yes.
“But, with your life?”
… yes.
“I have the best friends.” Elia breathed in deeply and plunged both their arms into the grail.
“Now speak after me. Princesses are no longer bound by the grail.”
Rye copied her word for word.
Negligible cost – Princesses are no longer bound by the grail
The shard of princesses has become obsolete
The shard of princesses has been subsumed to right outstanding balances
It’s working! Ellia, it’s working!
She was pulled in another half foot. “Give Rye her body back.”
This cannot be done
The price cannot be the reward, the reward cannot be the price
All things have a price
“Remove living tar from the world.”
This cannot be done
Living tar balances an excess of stagnation
Not enough sacrifice
The grail is bound to balance
“What fucking balance!? You’re not a natural thing, you were made by a control freak with a fear of change.” She kicked the grail once, twice. “Where’s the balance in that you stupid machine?”
Make us whole again
All things have a price
In the end it all came down to this. Elia was too poor. She had sacrificed and sacrificed and now that she didn’t have anything left to give, this stupid thing still wanted more. The greed of men was only eclipsed by the gods they worshiped and their effigies of avarice.
The grail answered, by sharing what it knew. It knew that the undead were plentiful, and it knew that they were full of souls. It was having problems understanding why there were so few of them up here. After all, it had done everything in accordance with its purpose, conserving the old order. But it would file away her complaints for due consideration. Any great modification would have to wait for until someone with enough balance-credit could help it out.
Elia stilled. “I’m an idiot. It’s like a stupid puzzle and I didn’t realize I was holding the final piece. Grail, mend the shard of vengeance.”
Minor cost - Shard of vengeance repaired
Something shifted near her heart, like a tiny few splinters flitting about.
Elia, what are you doing?
“What’s it look like?” she huffed as the upper part of her head sank into the grail. “I’m making the world pay me back for two hundred years of suffering.”
Shard of vengeance critically accredited
You have become critically worthy
“Two hundred years of walking in circles I’ve been waiting for this. Grail, make a world where no one is immortal. Make it a world where the grass is green, the sky is blue, and people can be happy. Make it a place where nobody has to trade away their magic or steal it from the corpse of someone else. Can you do that for me?”
The grail rumbled. The world shook. Elia could tell how it was tearing her souls and boons apart, redistributing bits as needed to patch holes. First went [Waterproof], then [Frog leap], and [Shattered Beauty]. She kept a tight hold of [Psychometry] as the grail’s waters flayed everything special from her soul. The soul of Yolon, of Rhuna, and the rest went after, but she didn’t cry for them. They weren’t extensions of herself, just additions, just… things that had once been necessary and now were not.
The grail really knew how to take though, and by the looks of it even hundreds of thousands of souls weren’t enough to satiate its hunger. This wasn’t sustainable, it just didn’t work. The idea of having a universal controller for the entire world was a solution to a problem that didn’t exist, endlessly creating more problems that people like her had to fix.
“I’ll need to be present,” she said as her torso slipped into the stone. “You want to fix this chaos too, don’t you?”
The grail acquiesced. With a final pop, she felt herself slip free of her mortal coil, as she floated above her body like a ghost much like Rye. The grail roiled beneath her as she sat atop its edge. The water sitting inside it looked anything besides welcoming, filled with detritus and dirt that swirled like it was being flushed down a drain.
Guess that’s where the tar comes from. Maybe it’s a runoff product. Maybe in trying to fix itself, the grail created an army of monsters to more efficiently gather souls.
She noticed with surprise that Rye was sitting next to her, ghostly eyes filled with tears.
“Why?” she asked.
“It’s the only way. In your world, all things have a price.”
“But it doesn’t have to be like this.”
Elia smiled. “One of the many things I intend to fix. I’m sorry for keeping this from you. But I hope you’ll like it when the world is done shaking.”
“How can I enjoy it when you’re not there? You’re my best friend.”
“You’ll still have Sam.”
“I thought we did everything right this time,” Rye sniffled. “It’s not fair.”
Elia pulled her close into a hug. They sat there for a while, watching the grail chug and churn.
“Tell Karla that I’m sorry.” Elia’s roguish smile was tinged with regret. “Grail, my friend wants her old body back. Give her a hand.”
She watched as stone arms took Rye, who squawked in surprise as they pulled her under. Elia chuckled and closed her eyes, thinking back over her life. In the hospital, the nurses had always waxed poetically about childbirth as some sort of miracle. In this instance, Rye was shot forth with a blorf, her grown body collapsing onto a pile of unrecognizable goo.
“It’s not fair,” she muttered as she tried to stand.
Elia supposed it wasn’t, but she was alright with one last unfairness.
The cave she was in was collapsing. With a wave of her hand, a passage to the elevator opened up, beaming light inside from the far end of it.
“Take Quibbles with you. Go.”
She watched Rye scoop up her toad and stagger out, knowing that she hadn’t come this far on dumb luck. She’d make it back down, as sure as the sun was going to shine. And it was going to be a beautiful one, warm and kind. The change from an artificial sun to a real one went entirely smoothly, like slotting a missing piece of a rubix cube back into itself.
First, the ceiling fell away, crumbling in huge bits and pieces that crashed against the grail and shattered against it. The sky turned all shapes and colors as clouds tried to decide which way they wanted to go. And with every change and every step, strings were cut and withered away, leaving the grail with less control and more resources for changes elsewhere.
Bowls of respite and altars were no longer magical. Immortality, the biggest knurl of positives and negatives, was severed in a clean stroke. Living tar disappeared, growing obsolete as the grail unraveled more and more.
This world was so unnatural to begin with, she thought, I only have to push a little here, pull a little there.
Elia watched golden rays rise on her first sunrise in centuries. They warmed her cold ghost skin and Elia smiled.
The sun set, and rose again, and again. Time passed. The world around her changed.
“You can take inspiration from my memory, y’know,” she said. “Only the good bits though.”
The grail grumbled in affirmation. Maybe it liked being bossed around?
“Didn’t know you were a sub,” she said, pointing at the sky. “The sun belongs there. It needs to be bigger and self-sustaining.”
“There’s a hole where the moon was. Put a lid on it.”
“There we go. Now make it spin, give the world a bright day and a well-deserved night.”
Time passed.
Eventually, the changes ground to a halt. Elia only noticed it because she realized that instead of looking down at clouds or over the edge of an impossibly long cliff, she saw trees growing at the base of the mountain, like moss.
“Grail, how much until my shard is balanced?”
Shard of vengeance balanced
“Yeah, figures.” She could only hope that the world was healed enough. With the removal of immortality, and thereby undeath, the world ought to find a way to start rolling again. No stagnation meant no need for tar, no tar meant no need for demons to come up from below, and so on.
She spotted a splotch of color swimming in the bowl. Curious, she hovered over to it. “Hey, my burning arm.”
Apparently, it was too inundated with hellfire for the grail to fully digest. It called to her and she slipped it right back on. “Owow, that burns. Sheesh, did I really live like this?”
The grail didn’t answer. It was a weak thing, barely a handful of strings tied mostly to keeping itself functioning.
“Wait. You don’t like fire, do you?”
The grail was quiet. Elia’s smile grew into a wide cheshire grin.
“Well, mister grail. I’ve got one more wish for you.”
She picked up her burning shortsword and brought it down one last time.