Rye awoke to lumbering clouds painted across the static sky above. It was quiet, serene even. No fish-ogre-thing was in sight and the only thing that dampened the lingering fuzziness of her dream was the fact that she couldn’t move her head.
Help! I’m paralyzed, I can’t mooove!
“Oh. Welcome back Rye.” Elia said.
Right. Sleep equals swap. She was not in control now.
At the lack of panic in her voice, Rye herself calmed down.
What are you doing? Did we win?
“I’m on break. 20 minutes per life, remember? Over a dozen lives, that makes for at least four cumulative hours. And yes, we won, brain bud. The checkpoint-bowl water came back as well.” Elia stretched, a small patch of grass coming into view before she turned to stare up again.
Yay? Yay! Yahoo! We won! We did it!
And now that they were at the castle, everything would be a breeze. They just had to find who was in charge, ask them politely for safe passage and continue on to Loften. Elia should be happy too, she should be singing, should be hollering with joy.
Is everything alright?
Elia sighed, and not in a ‘happy to be alive’ way.
“I want some milk and honey too.”
Well, if that’s all then we can go get some in the city, even if the prices are going to be extortionate. Do you have milk and honey where you come from? Actually no, stupid question, of course you do.
Elia let her gaze wander; eyes glued to each unique structure in the sky for a long time. The north–duck cloud was in sight again, though Rye almost didn’t recognize it from this angle.
The silence was so sedative, she nearly missed what Elia said next. “Rye, did you ever wake up and remember something you shouldn’t have been able to?”
I mean, some days I wake up and feel like I’m not quite myself? Haha. Ha…
If someone dropped a pin, Rye was certain it would be heard for miles.
I’m sorry, I’m bad at jokes.
A convulsion shook her vision. An ugly cut off snorting, usurped by hitched giggles filled the air. It was a funny laugh, and the attack only died down minutes later.
“Ow, ow, laugh-cramp.” Elia wiped a tear from their collective vision, turning away from the gentle sky with a sigh. “We’re merging.”
Merging? That did not have a nice ring to it. Like baking a cake, flour, sugar and water becoming dough?
“Good comparison. Yeah, you’re flour and I’m spicy hot sauce and something in our swaps is turning us into batter. Probably the dreams. You know, I distinctly remember roosters having feathers, not scales.”
Well, that sounds like a you–problem. All the dying and concussions have turned you silly in the head.
Elia scoffed. “Oh really? Tell me how a car works then.”
That was easy, it seemed to fantastical yet practical that she memorized it for future reference. It runs on magic, you told me so and that’s why it needs chanting to refuel and… and the furby and…
Images of metal devices rattling in the front part came to mind. Concepts of an engine, of oil, rubber wheels, mirrors and hard glass that didn’t break even when you tossed a brick in it. The speed. Five times as fast as a horse and that was just for the commercially available ones.
Cars run on TINY EXPLOSIONS? And the energy is transferred with pistons, which then transfer it over a set of gears to the wheels and… oh gods. Oh gods, I know. I know but how do I know, I don’t have a boon of knowledge, I never got a driver’s license and– wait, no YOU never got a driver’s license!
Elia shrugged. “Didn’t seem like a good investment of my time.”
… I distinctly remember you crashing your parent’s car in the driveway.
“I was like five, ok!? And while you’re busy with that I’m still dealing with our brain trying to convince me that I have a crush on a certain black–haired, sharp-eyed maid-servant.”
NOOOOO! NO, NO, NO! WHYYY!
To her immediate despair, the lamentations only spurred Elia on.
“I mean, I thought it was obvious with the attendant,” Elia was doing this on purpose. There was no way anyone could make Rye want to disappear in a hole in the ground and die this efficiently on accident, “like wow, I realize you’re somewhat starved for affection, but I never expected you to be so… desperate.”
I AM NOT DESPERATE, I JUST HAVE ROMANTIC INTERESTS!
Yes, interests. Curiosity, perhaps. Out in the country, there was only so much she could do to unwind from the immense stress of being the prodigy and hope of her entire family. The supply of literature was decidedly unequal to the supply of interesting people.
S–stop laughing. It’s rude.
“Sure, sure…” She wiped away a tear, finally calming down with a prolonged sigh. “If at all possible, I’d like to stay myself. ‘Course, the question is which version of me I’d choose to be. The one back home, or when I just got pulled into the maze, or the way I am now. I realize there’s no turning back, but with magic, boons and de–facto infinite time, why not dream to achieve the impossible?”
Just like that, the mood turned somber. Trying not to bite back when Elia had been making fun of herself moments before took some restraint, though not much. Empathy came to Rye much easier than anger.
She was still going to get back at Elia, one day. Not now though.
Elia? I don’t want to merge with you either – no offense. If it’s a soul–problem, I’m certain the priests and goodly acolytes in the temples of Loften could see to our needs. If it’s a mind–problem, well, we better find a way to split up sooner rather than later.
“Yup.” Elia near jumped from where she was lying, popping knuckles, shoulders and her neck in a way that made Rye queasy. “Also, don’t be shocked if you remember something uncomfortable about my old life.”
Rye snorted. Anything more severe than causing property damage?
“Yeah. God can be cruel to kids.”
I know. I have seventeen siblings.
They stood in place for a while, Elia staring at the massive walls ahead. “… sheesh, alright, you have your own sob story. All the more reason to cut our break short and move through the castle.”
Glenrock Castle loomed high above them, towering stone upon which dozens of sieges had been fought and broken. They were at the foot of the keep itself, the last of the outer walls and the field of slaughter well behind, though looking at the massive construction didn’t fill Rye with confidence.
Must be because she was on the wrong side. Once they politely asked to be let in, they would leave the dregs and monsters outside. Even if the problems continued into the keep, what was the chance that there wasn’t a single upstanding knight left?
Elia certainly didn’t seem to be counting on above zero. “Gonna be a bitch to battle our way through all that. Definitely need some extra muscle.”
Well, assuming we do have to fight – you rather, I am not doing anything like that ever again – why not ask the legionnaires?
“Already did. Can’t help us. Alexander’s dead.”
Dead. DEAD!? And you somehow DIDN’T bother to mention it over this ENTIRE conversation!?
Elia just waved it off, as if someone had just told her it was going to rain later on.
“Chill, he’ll get better.”
He’s dead, Elia. DEAD!
Ignoring her, Elia casually sauntered over to the two remaining legionnaires, who were in the middle of discussing how to best represent such a vertical construction as Glenrock Castle within their stick and stone model. Alexander was sprawled out beside them, his neck obviously broken where the bone jutted out for all to see.
I don’t feel so good…
“Sup,” Elia said.
“Well, if it isn’t the little informant. Maybe now you can finally deign to give a name attached to your person.” Tertius turned, mid constructing an implausibly accurate rendition of the top right tower.
“Elia.”
–and Rye. Hello? Introduce me too, please – or no, wait, don’t. We can be Elia for them. We’ll talk later.
“Tertius.” Tertius said, turning back to his model. “Decurion.”
“Sextus. An’ me mate o’er ‘ere s’ Alexander.” How Sextus didn’t stumble over his smattering of vowels Rye had no clue.
“So, you’re not a spy. Probably don’t even have a good boon for informing. Didn’t exactly mention we’d be facing heavy infantry, or mages.” Tertius gave her a suspicious glance.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Didn’t exactly have the time to get this far.” Elia shrugged. “So, your friend doin’ alright over there?”
They shared a look at Alexander’s corpse. If not for the complete lack of any insects, this would have been the perfect moment for one to poignantly land on his open eyelid.
“He’ll get better.” Sextus said. “No hard feelins, bad luck is all. Should be up in a few days again at the latest. Lose a few memories, maybe ‘is love for pistachios. We’re all undead here, ya know how it is.”
Of course, they did, except not at all. Yes, but no was the true answer since Elia was keeping mum about their whole turning back time situation. Rye didn’t see a need to correct them either. They wouldn’t understand, probably just think she was crazy, especially if they dug a bit deeper as to how they were two people in one body.
Please don’t tell them we’re two people, I really want to make some friends on this trip that treat me like a sane person.
Elia gave a nod, both to Sextus and her other self. Rye was too tired to take the reins, she would be happy if Elia didn’t screw this up half as bad as with Harris the merchant.
“So, you ready to bust open the gates?” she asked.
“Actually,” Sextus said, shaving the stubble off his cheeks. “We’re takin’ somewhat o’ a strategic break or twenty. Mighty fine work ’ere girl, ‘specially towards th’ end. Didn’t use yer magic ‘til th’ last moment. Mighty kick tho’, doesn’t seem easy to control.”
“Yeah. It’s kinda got a mind of its own– Ow!” She got a pinch from her own arm and was offended when Rye released her possession before she could retaliate. Pouting. She was definitely pouting.
“Or maybe, you were luring us into a trap, trying to get us killed. Your performance fell off towards the midline, suspiciously right when things went to shit.” Well, Tertius wasn’t wrong. Elia and Rye had swapped from an unlucky hit and Rye felt like that played a large part in their near failure. Elia meanwhile just grinned as he kept on spinning yarn.
“Not talking eh? Maybe, you wanted to loot our corpses. Or maybe, you’re a spy for the eternal enemy! You work for the witches and the forest, don’t ‘cha!”
He placed his tower in the dirt and it flopped over dramatically. Tertius cursed, but for once he didn’t have a hand near any weapon, busy with his model castle.
Sextus was laughing, and after finishing his shave started rummaging around his pack. “Truth is, we’d be dead a few times over without yer help, lass, no matter the preparations an’ scenarios. Sorry Tertius, truth is truth. Almost died meself even with it.”
“Well, I did kill a giant before, so I guess I’m just awesome like that.”
The two legionnaires almost looked like they believed her. Almost.
“Hey, I’m serious. He was ten foot tall and had this sword the size of Alexander over here. He only had one arm, but there was this weird snake thing too and… you don’t believe me, do you?”
“Well,” Sextus said, coughing awkwardly. “You’d be a bit stronger if you’d ‘ad ‘is soul. ‘Guess it would be a strong common, or even an uncommon one. Me, I’ve a common one o’ some spiky boar we found and Tertius, ‘e’s got a soul o’ one o’ them moor-ogres. Alexander’s got nuffin, but that’ just means ‘e gets th’ next one.”
“I do have a giant soul. I just haven’t fed it yet.”
“Not a lie,” Tertius mumbled as he tried to mold the loamy earth into vaguely architectural shapes. “Now c’mon Sextus, give her what we agreed on and let her leave.”
“Right. Now where is it, where… ah!”
The portly soldier grumbled, but Elia was obviously more fixated on the pouch Sextus handed her.
“Uhhh–“ Elia uhhhed, flagrantly copying Rye’s catchphrase. “Are those dried fruits in there? Nuts? I’m not a chipmunk, but please tell me your empire invented fantasy gummy bears.”
Sextus’s grin was wider than she’d ever seen.
“No bears, no food either. Just yer cut o’ th’ loot, wit’ some little bit extra for pastin’ that moor ogre over yonder. Yeh fought like a demon from hell and lemme tell ya’, they got some nasty bite to them.”
Not bothering with the questionable compliment (how did Sextus even know how demons fought?), Elia took the bag and immediately unpacked the goody box in front of the assembled lot.
There were many goodies to be had.
You have gained: Bone shards [Common] x6
You have gained: Bone shards [Uncommon] x1
You have gained: Large drizzled soul x1
You have gained: Wyckwax x1
I… Elia, that’s a lot, I think. I don’t think I deserve this. Tell him that.
“No, I think you did great.” She said.
Tertius swore again as his tower fell over, in the opposite direction this time. “What was that?”
“Shush, talking to my magic dispenser– Ow! Stop pinching me.”
Sextus quirked an eyebrow while Rye tried to frantically dodge her own arm. Hah, there was one thing no amount of skill would make possible.
“I’m assumin’ yer magic comes with some… quirks?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, had a whole person attached to it. Might just be the third–best thing about it, beside the – hey! No tickling. Rye, n–no, I said, s–s–stop! AGH!”
Rye was nowhere close to stopping, determined to squeeze a squeak out of Elia before she could get the upper hand again. Screw not being found out, if Elia was going to embarrass her without so much as a second thought then she better be prepared for the consequences.
This is for fishing around in my memories! This is for calling me desperate! This is for not apologizing to the attendant!
“I give, I give…”
By the time she had meted out her punishment, Elia was on the floor in tears once more. A worried Sextus and more paranoid Tertius peered down at her.
“I swear I’m normal,” Elia sputtered in between coughs.
No one believed a word and it served her right.
----------------------------------------
By the time she had repeatedly assured the legionnaires that she was not insane, or under mind control or being threatened by an invisible person with a knife to her throat, Elia was just about ready to leave and never come back again.
This had turned out to be a lucrative little side quest.
Soul count: 5385
Shard count: [Common] x12, Bone shards [Uncommon] x1
Yep, those kinds of numbers would make any girl happy. They were possibly enough to gain an increase in strength. Or maybe inflation was a thing and she needed an inordinate amount for the next step. Summoning the Forlorn Giant’s soul didn’t leave her with any way to feed it by herself. It seemed reasonable to assume that the attendant made the process possible, like a level-up catalyst. At least that restriction didn’t apply to her boons and the rarer essences.
There was no need to rain on her party with a disappointing roll just yet, not after the last result and not when she could trade them for uncommon shards.
A twinge in her little toe sparked her instincts. “Rain is coming.”
Looking up at the sky revealed the exact same static hole surrounded by climbing cumulonimbus clouds. What a shitty boon. At least the other rewards proved more promising.
Large drizzled soul
A collection of souls once possessed by an undead or a dreg. Can be crushed in hand for a large number of souls.
Though unable to continue their journey, many souls cling together by their very nature, for life seeks life even in death.
“Poetic shit. Now, looting time.”
The small encampment proved a treasure trove for her grubby loot-seeking hands and heart. Around fifty barrels, pots and crates were filled with ammunition and a variety of shields and ammo, though only one in ten were unrotten and unrusted enough for use in combat.
Oakwood Heater Shield
An unpainted shield of heavy wood, assembled in haste. Protects well against piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning, though the smallest spark will see it alight.
“Oh, this is actually a fairly decent shield.” It was heavy for its size, but in exchange it had straps with which she could attach it to her forearm. Neat.
Morningstar
A mace that menaces with many sharp spikes. Useful against armored and unarmored foes alike, though its use is commonly denounced as crude, if not outright barbaric for the wounds it leaves behind.
The Morningstar mace would be a lot more useful if she had an appreciable amount upper body strength, or simply longer limbs to leverage its brutality. The axe had been useful because it focused heavy blows on a single edge, her dagger and short sword because she could put her entire bodyweight behind every thrust. But since her axe was embedded in some shmuck's head a few hundred feet back in the field of undead, this would have to do.
“I really, really need to invest in strength. I– we’re fuckin weak as shit.”
I believe you should invest in a course on proper l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e.
Elia swung the heavy mace a few times. “Nah, seems like a waste of my time. Ooh, is that a leather bandolier?”
It was a leather sash with ten pockets that had easy to unfasten leather buttons. The pockets came filled.
Throwing knives x10
A quick and easy ranged weapon for those with sufficient skill. The blades are dulled from use as diversions or parlor tricks, though the tips remain frighteningly sharp.
When it came to armor her options were vastly limited. This was a camp for soldier’s gear which all adhered to some norm that definitely didn’t take the frame of petite women into account. Most of the breastplates would simply hinder her more than the protection was worth. The merchant back in Crossroad Temple had stuff in her size but walking all the way back simply for a new fit seemed wildly disproportionate.
She found some assorted bits only slightly too large for her, strapping the pieces to her shoulders, elbows, and knees. They were horribly mismatched both with each other and the rest of her gear, but such was life. A worn surcoat toting the yellow dog fit a lot more easily over it all, masking the most egregious crimes against fashion.
“I wonder if they have armor in the kids’ section. Dammit brain bud, why couldn’t you just be a bit taller?”
Well, EXCUSE ME for being born short.
“Apology accepted.”
Wah– you… I wasn’t serious, people just say that!
“I know.” She swung the Morningstar a few times more. It was definitely too heavy for extended use. “I too was joking, but on a level you are simply not equipped to deal with.”
Silence reigned as she thought on what to do next. She was currently in the best position she’d been in since… forever. Her armor and gear wasn’t falling apart, she had two boons to her name, one of which was actually useful in a scrap, and her companion even had a boon she’d call unfairly good if Elia hadn’t gained and lost a few of the sort as well over the years.
She could work with this. Better yet, she would use this success as a springboard, set the foundations for her secured future. She likened it to investing in stocks, if you could bludgeon someone to death or block a bullet with bonds.
The new armor clattered, and her skin chafed uncomfortably against the leather bindings. As far as discomforts went, she could live with it, though she resigned herself to walking all the way back to the Crossroad temple sometime in the future.
She passed the ogre, its mostly missing upper skull a sign that even these kinds of obstacles could be overcome by the brutal law of probability. Then again, it didn’t even have a name, wasn’t even a true boss, as far as video game jargon could be considered applicable. Whether on earth or here, too many missteps led to a game over. Here, the lines between failure and success were only more clearly drawn.
Rye didn’t seem to care, her voice reinvigorated with wonder.
Holy grug, I still can’t believe it. We were like the stories of Herculeon and Iudodeces. We didn’t defeat a giant with a needle and a bundle of straw, but we won.
“Yeah. We.” A shake of the head banished the thoughts. “I’d go far enough to say it was mostly you.”
I had help! Without the soldiers, without you, I wouldn’t have come this far at all.
“I didn’t help you with the ogre, Rye.” The ogre was the kind of obstacle she would have avoided had she been on her own. “Now shut up and accept your praise. You’re a good magic bean.”
She didn’t expect that to short-circuit Rye.
I… you really mean it? I mean… I did do a lot of running…
“–yelling, screaming, crying.”
Hey. Rude.
Rye really loved using that word, almost as much as Elia enjoyed teasing out fun reactions. “I mean, I’m not complaining that you didn’t piss our only collective loincloth.”
Somehow, you’ve made me regret waking up in only a handful of sentences.
Elia laughed, though the gaiety died down as she stood in front of the checkpoint. She treated this whole business of two people, one body as just another absurdity of this world thrown into her face. The idea of coming out as one–but–two filled her stomach with a feeling she thought she had forgotten. Dread.
It was silly, after all she’d been through. She was undead and though she paid for every mistake, she learned, adapted, survived. Heck, she was the only one whose death locked her into reliving her actions again and again. There should have been nothing she was afraid of, least of all herself.
She knew she wasn’t perfect. Perfection wasn’t achievable; too much was stacked against her. She was small, weak and had already lost much of her ability to the curse due to pride, overconfidence, and stupid mistakes. The fear that she would have to pay for them forever was not banished, merely quelled but sometimes, accepting ‘good enough’ as a measure could do wonders.
*Gong*
She touched the checkpoint, let a few gulps heal her wounds and continued on towards the keep.