Elia woke up, looked up, stood up and decided today was a great day for murder. Not even for preemptive self-defense. There was no justifying what was already done and scarred. No, it was time for an artful evisceration that just so happened to involve reclaiming a portion of what she had lost.

They killed us. They killed us! I… it was that Simon fellow. I KNEW he wasn’t to be trusted.

Undead curse overflowing

Further deaths will lead to erosion of self. Sacrifice a boon to be granted absolution.

Wide eyes, pin-prick eyes stared at Pim.

“You better start running,” she said and Pim looked as though he had wronged her himself as he crawled away with all the dignity of an earthworm on crack.

Elia, what are you planning?

She plunged her head into the streams of the bowl of respite and screamed. And screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. It didn’t help.

Elia, it’s fine, we won, we can leave this horrible place. We can get help in Loften, cure our undeath and get you a body. Elia, it’s fine, I-

You have offered a boon: Heavy Hailstone Bolt [Uncommon]

Undead curse quelled

Elia took one deep, simmering breath.

It’s fine, Elia, I-I forgive them. Ruthe, Elia, Ruthe’s peace… we can leave, w-walk a-away and… oh, why me, why oh why oh why?

Elia didn’t know how much time passed as she stared at the bowl. It must have been barely a minute, but felt like an hour. She could feel the tingling at the edge of her senses, the silent erosion of purpose suddenly put to the foreground.

Rye’s sobbing was the final straw. The world was unfair, but she could bear it if it was just unfair to her. It hurt more when she had to watch it happen to someone else.

Elia? Elia!?

Rye sniffed. Elia’s right hand froze inches away from the summoning script. She tried with her other and at the last moment Rye caught it too.

Elia, wait, I-I just need a moment! I-I know what you’re thinking, heck, I can guess down to the word what you want to say to him, but maybe he had a reason for what he did.

That reason was greed, born from necessity or egoism. He was right, as a fellow undead she did understand.

“And?” Elia waited for a shaky second. “I’ll bite. What was I going to say? Spell it out.”

Oh, gee, I mean… Ruthe forgive, but you would have pulled Simon from the bowl by his hair and said something along the lines of ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you and your whole godsd-darn family! I’ll wake you at four AM, pull you out from your covers and deck you in the schnuts!’.

She felt an acrid fit of laughter boiling up her throat but it was strangled by dozens of popping veins. “Sounds about right.”

Now, onto the murdering.

Her arm stopped again.

Eliaaa, w-what I’m trying to say is… in the grand scheme of things, whether he delivers the souls to Loften or we do, it matters little. You can always find more souls, more shards and hey, you don’t need them anymore. We won, we can unite Pim with his sister, travel to Loften and find a way out of this whole mess. Don’t you want your own body back? Is that not the most important thing right now?

Some days, that girl living in her head had a point. Some days, she also had a ludicrous ability for self-deception that nearly eclipsed her own at the worst of times. Forgive them. That she could say as much when she lost her boon, when their armor was broken and torn and the traitors who took their souls were still on the loose spoke less towards her compassion and more to her ability to evade confrontation to her own detriment.

There was one direct path here, one way that led out. Elia touched the script with her foot.

NO!

A hand emerged from the waters, a man and a woman followed after. They brushed themselves off, looking like just the same corpses she had fought side by side moments before. Simon pointed at her chest.

“Is that a cheese–”

“Yes,” Elia interrupted him.

“Oh.” He blinked, readjusting his hat a bit. “Nice hair. How’d you get it to grow out and stay so nice?”

“Boon.” It was the answer that everyone believed and technically correct.

“Huh. Figures. You also here to slay Lord Commander Hall?” He asked the obvious, obvious at least if he could remember.

“I hear he’s an immortal.”

“That he was, but even immortals can catch undeath.” The skull-side of his face looked like it was frowning. “Tragic, truly. I’d complain to whoever birthed the curse, had it not saved my life. I’d be quite the hypocrite if I did. We fellow undead should be rather thankful to be alive at all.”

“Alive thanks to the shards stolen by others.” Elia cut him off before he could say something further. “I hear the commander gives eighteen thousand souls. Six thou’ for each. That puts me at six thousand, what about you?”

There was a brief silence as they all stared at each other.

“Well, that is quite rude of you to ask. Why, I’d almost think you were planning on stealing them–“

“I,” Karla interrupted Simon, raising a hand. “I have… seventeen thousand souls? I have seventeen thousand souls! Simon look, it is a miracle, it–“

Elia dodged his spear, grabbed it when Simon launched himself backwards against the wall and stared him in the eye. He knew. He had known all this time, but he kept up a good act. He almost fooled her, really, he almost did.

“I can explain,” he said and off went his head.

“Wh-what? NO!” Karla screamed but before Elia could snatch the shards her mace came down to break her hand. “Traitor!”

Murderer!

“He stole them!” Elia yelled, backstepping a follow-up swing while she was bashed by a gallon of blood that tried to smother her right after. “Fuck you! You were all lying in wait, waiting to betray me!”

“Never!” Karla yelled and for a moment, Elia saw the tears in her eyes, had doubts crawl up. “I just wanted to leave!”

No, no doubts. Squash them. They had to die.

“He took my souls! My shards! He fucking stabbed me in the back!” she yelled, parrying an overhead strike with her buckler before punching Karla in the face with the same.

In one second, she was fury incarnate. In the next, snake-like chains wrapped up and down her body and she flopped to the floor in a metal burrito.

“Gah! FUCK!” Elia tore back and forth, screaming like a rabid animal but unlike Commander Hall, to her the chains were practically immovable. “Screw you all! You’re all snakes and fucking hypocrites!”

Karla coughed up a molar, massaging her broken nose before trying to scowl at Elia. The expression did not really fit her. “Simon was with me all this time. He couldn’t have stolen your souls. He is innocent.”

“Just check his pockets!” She struggled some more. “Fuck!”

“Oh yes, please do.” Simon said. They both looked down at the disembodied head. It moved quite normally, talked even while his body writhed in place like an insect. “What? Don’t look at me like that dearest, you never told me about your second boon either.”

“I-I’m not… don’t you ‘dearest’ me now you sweet talker, you…!“ Karla stomped her foot, making a variety of exasperated noises as she searched through his bags and quickly happened upon a sizable stash. Elia was still boiling with fury but giving Simon a shit-eating grin while the narrative turned on him was a hell of an outlet.

With a stone-faced expression Karla stood up “I call for a truce. This… devilish rogue is my responsibility. Why Simon, why?”

“For you, my flower,” he whispered in a husky tone, “anything, even the world.”

Elia, make him shut up! Look at him, look at her, she is smitten! He’ll twist anything anyway he wants, and she’ll be inclined to blush and look the other way. I know this, I have lived it. Elia, do something – oh, wait, I know.

“Umm, can the flirting wait?” Rye asked. “I think I peed myself a little.”

Karla sputtered, pretending to be a helicopter while Simon gave her a baleful eye. Rye meanwhile just smiled. Mood perfectly ruined. It was almost as effective as lying about having the rash, though that was a last resort considering how it had a devastating effect on one's reputation. Quietly, she slithered back into the backseat, only to be overwhelmed by a wash of loathing and unbridled fury.

“FUCK. YOU. ALL.”

Elia, calm down. It’s going to be alright. Karla’s a good one. Trust her.

“TRUST!?”

Trust me. Rye quickly corrected herself.

“E-excuse me, I shall get you undone post-haste,” Karla stuttered. She cradled Simon’s head, affixing it with some rather clumsy smoothing to his neck. With a crack and a pop, movement returned to his fingers, and she settled down next to Elia, who tried to skewer her with a stare.

“Wait, does this end go up and around… no, oh this is a terrible knot .” She tugged on one end of the chains and they only wound tighter. “Um. Well. I-I’ll just hand you my half of your souls first.”

Karla placed a bag presumably containing her shards in front of her face. In the same breath, her hand glowed and a cool fog rushed up Elia’s nose.

You have regained: Soul x17181

You have regained: Bone shard [Common] x7, [Uncommon] x5, [Rare] x1

“There.” She turned to her companion. “Now, Simon, I don’t know when or even how you could sneak this past me, but as princess I order you to apologize and give the good lady her souls back.”

“The mistress says I should be sorry,” he drawled, baiting out a few seconds of disbelief, “and I am, for my part, regretful of how this turned out.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Meanwhile, Elia bit back a choice few words, mostly involving Simon’s mother and where in her anatomy he could shove his apology. He even had the gall not to die when she killed him. She opened her mouth, finally having decided on the correct insult for her level of passive aggressiveness when a familiar lion-shaped helmet and face peeking from the nearest bowl sent all her fury down the drain.

Rhuna lazily waved a paw. “Hiya. Don’t mind me, I absolutely love drama.”

All Elia could respond with was a hiss of air and no one else was faring any better. Karla looked as if a spell had drained the blood from her head. Simon was quiet, subdued.

“Do what I say mistress, this one is a menace.” He whispered as Rhuna pulled her full height from the bowl.

“But-“

“No buts, just do it.”

“Am I interrupting something?” Rhuna asked, addressing Karla. “Karla, it has been such a short time. Slipped out of your control freak of an aunt’s hands again? Le-mao, don’t answer, you’re killing the mood. And you, two-face.”

“Simon.” he gnashed his teeth and she shot him a pair of finger guns.

“Same thing! Playing both sides, desperate for souls again?”

“I want to parlay for an exchange–”

“Yeah, hah, no.” Rhuna looked down at burrito-Elia. “You’re kinda ruining my street cred with my friend over here and this is just too good a damsel-in-distress setup, sooo… sorry, but I ain’t payin–"

Simon interrupted her with a flurry of stabs to the face. “Get back you fiend, I am Simon! Windcaller and swashbuckler! Menace of the ferrish sea! I decry your existence you people-stealer, you soul eater, you inhuman shapeshifting whore! Die, die, for mistress Karla, for my face, for–“

To be fair, the three seconds Rhuna let him buy were enough to shake Karla from her stupor and she began running. Elia saw the swipe coming that decapitated Simon for the second time today. It didn’t look any less block-able just for lack of speed, as while his body fluttered like a leaf it bent around his guard like putty in one second, then turned into a sharpened cage of blades in the next.

“You’d think he’d learn after the seventeenth time. Anyways, Elia! Bestie! Defeated a shard-bearing ex-immortal, grew out your hair. Big achievements, nice, I like it. Moving up in the world real quick, good for you. Almost makes me believe you were hiding something from me.” She played with the accusation, letting it linger at the tip of her lip. “Like that you were two people instead of one.”

Before Elia was given as much serious consideration as gum pasted to the sidewalk. Now, it was as if that gum had grown eyes and Rhuna was a passing child fascinated by poking at those googly bits.

“Haha, yeah, just kind of slipped my mind.” Elia blew away a strand of strawy blond hair as Karla’s steps grew ever more distant. “The runner’s getting away.”

“Oh, that’s alright. We’ve got a bit of a predator-prey relationship. She ransoms for a lot.” Rhuna stared ahead where Karla sounded like she had just shattered a window and jumped out. “Not that I intend to let my money bag leave, but she gets a head start. I owe her mom that much.”

She has the same look on her face as my brother Marcus when he goes on a moledog hunt.

Elia concurred. That was the look of someone who enjoyed shooting rabbits with an anti-material rifle.

“We’ll catch up in a bit. Maybe I’ll give you a tour of my dungeon. Until then, don’t roll anywhere, haha!” She shot the still chain-burritoed Elia a pair of finger guns and settled into a runner’s stance. “… four, three, two…”

Rhuna took a step and it looked like a leap, covering the distance of a world-class athlete with all the casualness of a jaunty stroll. This place was crazy. Rhuna was crazy. She was all bad vibes and smiles. When she returned to pick her up Elia had precisely zero reason to still be here.

“Hey Pim, help me out,” she hissed, looking around for the bekki boy. Right, she had shooed him off. Man, that emperor could crawl if it came down to it. “Ugh, god-fucking-dammit.”

I think you should rather worry about vacating the premises. You are supposedly experienced in lockpicking, could you undo these chains?

“Well, they don’t have a lock for one.” Elia grasped the sack of shard with her teeth and wiggled towards the great stairs leading towards the upper floor.

Even screwed, she could still struggle. One step at a time, she wormed her way up with a six out of ten caterpillar impression. After brushing off the rust on that ancient technique, she managed a respectable pace. It pained her to leave half the souls and bone shards behind, but the most important thing was not the loot, it was not getting caught by that psycho.

She would totally find out how her timeloop business worked. And then, everything would be over.

“Hey, you’re not gonna leave me, are you?” Simon yelled from the bottom. “Take me with you. I’ve got many talents a girl like you could use. I know places, I’ve got enough charm even as a disembodied head.”

Elia gagged as he made an obscene gesture with his tongue. “Fuck you creep, you stole my souls.”

“Fair, but in my defense, I thought you’d be too dead to care. How does that work anyways, you dying and the clock ticking backwards?”

Wait, he knows? How does he know? Since when?

“Was it that obvious?” she asked.

“When it happens more than once in front of your nose it is. I’d rather not imagine what Rhuna would do to someone as, well, priceless as you. Probably put you in her collection with the rest.” He looked up at her a tad more seriously. “But you’ve evaded her notice once before. You have an out, surely you do.”

And if she didn’t include him in it, he would rat her out. Great. Fantastic.

“Well, you can probably guess what it is.” She said as she struggled to the top of the stairs. Standing up was as much an ordeal as getting this far, but by some miracle she managed, looked over the balustrade at the gaping head below and flung herself down headfirst.

You have died

You have lost…

AAAAH!

Elia stood up, kicked the summoning sign, grabbed her souls, shards, and an incredibly spooked Pim and was down the hall just as Karla poked her head from the bowl. They could slow down Rhuna for all she cared and Rhuna had no reason to believe the swashbuckler without proof. Everyone who stabbed her in the back got off scott-free. Not this time.

“Hello, excuse me, why are you running? We’re here to help! Hello-o!” Karla yelled as a desperate Simon tried to yank her back through the portal.

Elia, t-that was cruel, she’s not evil.

“Still mad,” was all she said and filtered out the rest of Rye’s increasingly desperate pleas to turn around.

She needed to find Lim, leave this castle then find a nice garden where she could play at being a garden gnome until the heat died down. She’d get a red hat and live off the land, growing carrots and linseed while listening to the birds and sleeping in on weekends and weekdays.

Pim bopped her on the head. “N-no, Lim’s that way!”

Not questioning how he knew she followed the outstretched fan for directions. Left and up and right she zoomed, all the while Rye blasted her with the best imitation of an overactive conscience.

I never thought you’d be such a heartless monster! Rye cried. How can you leave that innocent girl behind?

Elia opened her mouth but her words remained stuck. She imagined Karla going through the most terrible things she could imagine and found that she cared not one bit. If it happened to be Lim in her place, she’d maybe waste a few thoughts before moving on anyways.

“Every single time I open up, I get stabbed in the back,” she said, running past a hallway and catching a glimpse of a tail. “I’m not a bad person, but all the problems I ever had are people.”

She turned around, followed Pim’s guidance until she reached a large bedroom door and tore it open. A gust of wind met her from the balcony door, but still no sign of Lim. A distant scream shook her concentration for a moment, followed by the sounds of combat. Elia ignored it in favor of ascending the ladder Pim was directing her towards.

‘Climb, climb, climb and don’t look back.’

Elia, you can’t just judge the batch over a few sour apple-lemons. Face it, you have it in you to care about Karla’s fate.

“The hell’s an apple-lemon?”

Don’t try to sidetrack me! You can do good Elia, I know it.

Except she had just as much capacity for spite. Karla would be fine, she’d just cost her aunt some money and that would be that. Though that was all going off of one very untrustworthy source.

After hoisting herself and Pim up the ladder, he pointed ahead, and boy was Elia starting to get tired of running back and forth. Rhuna would catch up any time now.

Elia, if this ends poorly for her I won’t forgive you.

Out of the corner of her eye, Elia noticed a blur moments before the nearby chimney exploded into rocky shrapnel. She stumbled, slipped and came to a stop at the far edge of the rooftop. A thudding impact announced the arrival of Rhuna, a basketball-shaped Karla hanging sadly from her paws. Rhuna had a wildness to her eyes and the casual smile of an insurance saleswoman.

“Elia! Friend! My oh me, are you trying to avoid moi? Wow, I’m hurt – not really – but I’d expected you to have gotten further with that much of a head start.”

“Not again…” Karla whimpered. “I don’t wanna go home.”

“Shhh, you can help me decide on the price for your blackmail.” She leaned towards Elia, whispering conspiratorially. “I’m going to fleece her aunt for so many magic items.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, good for you.” Elia casually scooted backwards.

She was peripherally aware that there was a ledge behind her, just as she was peripherally aware that Pim was nowhere to be found, having either dissolved into thin air or dropped off said ledge. She’d loved to have followed his example, but Rhuna shot a dozen paper-thin pseudopods out of her arm to catch her.

“That being said, you sure found a nice soul there.” Rhuna laughed while the half-translucent swarm of tendrils dove into the hole in her chestplate and then yanked on some place deep inside her.

Rhuna has used her boon [Yoink!] to steal an item of her choice

Your greater soul, Soul of Commander Hall has been stolen by: The great Rhuna

S-she’s a thief! A soul thief!

Elia’s eyes went wide as she saw the woman holding Hall’s soul. It was hers, she earned it, deserved it after the Simon-debacle. “Wait, wait, wait, stop. This is a great joke, wonderful, absolutely riveting. But I was in the middle of leaving, so could you just give… that… back?”

“Sure thing.” Rhuna said and crushed the soul in her hands. Elia would have loved to have said that the soul struggled like fusion against gravity inside a star, that there was some great struggle between the essence of a person and physical violence. But the soul popped and turned into white soul mist flowing up the noses of all three present.

You have gained: Soul x6000

“There we go. Friends share, right?”

Karla whined as Rhuna gave her a dribble. Elia shook.

“Screw you.” She hissed. “Fuck this place. The gods can suck my toes and eat my ass. You’re not my friend, you’re delusional, a sick fuckin’ psychopath–” A good distance behind Rhuna, Pim floated along the roof held up by an invisible force, or person.

He gave her a sorrowful look and held up his bell in the same moment as Elia glanced at her wrist. The oath script was gone. It had been for a while. She just overlooked it, didn’t dare to think that he and Lim would sneak out and leave her behind while she was busy fighting for her life. She didn’t hear the bell and by the time she looked up again, he was gone.

“... and fuck you too.” she said softly, holding back tears.

They left us…

There were a few seconds of silence as a variety of emotions seemed to play behind both her and Rhuna’s eyes.

“Sheesh, it’s just some piddly-ass rare soul. Way to blow up over nothing. It’s cool, don’t worry, I don’t actually care about having a friend like you anyways.” Rhuna cracked a knuckle and her neck in the same motion. “But man, you are so not ready to have me as your enemy – h-holy shit, are you actually crying? Hah, what a pussy! Phew, dodged a bullet right there.”

Elia felt her retort die in her throat as Rhuna threw the ball of Karla at her, sending both of them tumbling off the roof. A quick ten foot fall ended on a wooden table on some open-skies brunch area, a table which crashed to the floor as Elia felt a good few ribs crack. One foot further and she would have flown clean off the half-circle terrasse to enjoy a good few hundred-foot-long fall.

Rhuna landed on the nearby cobblestone mosaic floor with a shattering crunch.

“Man, you are weak, like, really weak. I mean like, what? Are you even trying?” She laughed as Elia held up the quickly deflating Karla in front of her as a shield. “Using my hostage as a hostage. That’s pretty low, you know?”

“Fuck you.” She scooted closer to the edge, frantically digging through her pockets. “I’ve been stabbed, shanked, stomped, squished, maimed, flung and stabbed in the back twice, just today.”

You have used: Bearing ash

Your bearing ash becomes: Loft ringer

“Boo-hoo. Cry me a river–“ In a flash, Elia unveiled her secret weapon and flung it against Rhuna’s face where it bounced off harmlessly. “Was that a cheese grater?”

Elia leaned back, ringing the bell as she, Karla and the rest of the table plummeted over the edge of the cliff. Rhuna stared at her, stunned, before her body burst into a swarm of tentacles with toothed suction cups. That moment of hesitation was enough. Two great vices locked on Elia’s shoulders and Karla’s blobbiness and she yelped as they were yanked off the ground, catapulted a hundred feet into the air and carried away.

Her vision grew dim at the edges before the acceleration softened. Down, deep down in the distance she could see Rhuna fail to keep up despite burrowing through the air first as some sort of white snake, then a dragon, then a bird.

She really wanted to keep looking down. But she looked up and saw the chiseled underside of a white roc carrying her high and higher.

“I-I am not being ransomed,” Karla stuttered next to her. “I am not being ransomed!”

Aaah, Elia look, we’re flying!

“AAAAAH–” Elia yelled.

The roc readjusted its grip, carrying putty-Karla with some difficulty. “You saved me!”

Elia! We’re so high up.

“AAAAAAAAH–” Elia kept on yelling.

“You’re my hero!”

THIS FEELS AMAZING!

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAH–”

… you should really take a breath Elia.

She didn’t. With the twinned peaked mountains and the castle beneath growing distant, seventeen thousand souls and a bunch of shards left behind and carried away by a roc, she preferred to pass out and did so shortly after.