*Gong*
Screaming. Tearing.
The human-shaped thing with five limbs and a forest of thin, brittle needles covering its body grabbed Elia away from the bowl, ignored her surprised yelp and tore her throat out.
You have died
You have lost: Souls x3409
You have lost: Bone shards [Common] x10
Undead curse overflowing
Further deaths will lead to erosion of self. Sacrifice a boon to be granted absolution.
Parrying. Stabbing.
It came again, not pinning her to the ground this time as she blocked the strike with her shield. It opened its mouth and sang a note that turned her muscles into jelly. Next thing she knew she was watching it eat her heart.
You have died
Your souls and shards are lost
Crying. Fleeing.
She woke up, rolled to evade the strike aimed for her chest and scrambled away, away, just anywhere but here. The warbling reached her ears, but she faltered for only a second. She had to run, run, run. And run, run, run.
Run. Run. Run.
Around ten dozen twists in the maze, the adrenaline left her. Her vision grew blurry. Finding a safe corner to cry in didn’t help in any way. The notifications bothered her even through closed eyes.
Undead curse overflowing
All things have a price
The undead curse offers your [Body] in due sacrifice
Undead curse quelled
Her body was wracked with shakes, the skin sinking closer to thinning muscles and bone. A thought was wasted on standing up, but it proved as much a physical impossibility as an emotional one. Again. It happened all over again. No boons, no shards, no strength, no hope.
This was it. She couldn’t go on. She couldn’t even climb the walls for suicide via giant bird. She’d have to find an undead with a dull sword because like the eternal fuckup she was, she left hers where the spiky monster ambushed her at the bowl.
No, where she led them to the bowl. It wasn’t a safe space for rest. Nowhere was safe.
If she was going to die, then it would not gain the satisfaction of killing her. Maybe, when it followed her down into hell, she could pay it back there. All she had to do was find a blade. If the search took too long, she might just bash her head against a wall.
Slowly, she stood back up again. In a slumped stumble, she rounded the first corner and there in a garden was sat knight, ponderously reposed on a sarcophagus, chin resting on a gloved Palm.
“Hmmm. Oh. Hello there,” the knight said. “I didn’t see you approach. You aren’t just a phantom of my imagination, are you?”
Elia blinked. She tried to open her mouth but all that came was a stuttering moan. It talked. A person, a genuine human after all this time?
No. Nothing good could come from hoping. Everything she had, anything at all would just be taken.
“Oh dear. You don’t seem well. Here, allow me to offer assistance.” The knight jumped off the pile of stone coffins. Envy boiled up in her throat. In one swift motion, Elia was swept from her feet and princess-carried across the open garden. It smelled of chamomile and other dried herbs, but mostly algae like the rest of this world. “You must have encountered a bristlefiend. Here, I have wax to share.”
The knight’s dagger was close, and looked sharp. All she had to do was grasp it.
“I must say, I didn’t think anyone sane still wandered these halls. I myself seem to have found nothing but dead ends and further spirals within hoops and loops.” The knight laid her down, the softness of plant matter and twigs stuffed in a coffin almost too much for Elia to bear. “There. May I know your name?”
“’Sorry.” She said, through tears. The dagger was stuck halfway in the scabbard. She didn’t manage to pull it any further.
The knight didn’t comment though she must have noticed.
“Ah, apologies, I have been rather rude. I have forgotten my purpose and name, and so it is that the world has forgotten this old maiden.” Gently, she unfurled Elia’s grip from the dagger and cupped her hand with a force belying her calmness.
She understood. After years and years, finally, someone understood.
“... are you a fuckin’ angel?” Elia asked, barely noticing that the old maiden had begun plucking the spikes from her body.
“No, nothing of the sort. A knight of Loften, if my armor is to be believed, but I don’t mean to boast,” she said. Elia could tell that she was smiling through her helmet. “Now, at the end of time I still remain. Just an old fool who has forgotten her duty, who can’t let go of the past.”
----------------------------------------
Rye woke up and the floor opened up, down, down, deeper and further yet. They must have been hundreds of meters in the air, still being carried by the marbled rock.
“You’re awake.” She looked to her right and saw Karla in the shape of a normal human again where she was hanging upside-down from the roc’s other claw. “My hero.”
“Um. Yeah. Yup. That’s me.” Rye laughed awkwardly. Elia certainly didn’t plan on saving Karla. Her plan probably didn’t even involve using her as a human meat shield against Rhuna, but use her as a shield she did. Even the roc was not planned, but the giant stone creature simply saw two people, saw it had two legs and did the math.
With those hopeful eyes staring at Rye like she was some gallant knight sprung from the storybooks, Rye didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. This was all turning into a mixed bag of thoughts and emotions. And what was with that dreadful dream?
“Um, if I start talking to myself, don’t worry, I’m not crazy,” she said. “I have friends. Just one. She’s… invisible she… no, darnit, she is as real as I and lives in my head. You hear me?”
Karla just grinned, then returned to looking at the mountain massif they were currently soaring past. “Weee!⁓”
At least one person was having fun, or maybe that was just the blood making her delirious. “Elia? Hello, Rye to Elia?”
She knew Elia was there. A low hum of jumbled unease rang in the back of her mind, spiking precipitously whenever she looked up at their divine mode of transportation. She drew a circle on her chest, the sign of the divine cycle. All things came to an end, but all ends started something new.
The castle lay behind them, that terrible edifice of tar and stone. Pim was saved, Lim was freed of her curse. Pascal the stone-man was still at the bottom, but hopefully safe.
“Theodore!” The chicken. They forgot the chicken.
Let me go. I want to die.
“Elia, we have to turn around and save Theodore! He must be terrified, all alone atop the castle.”
Sure. Go ahead. See if I care.
There was that bristle again, the sound of accusation hidden behind walls of carefully crafted neutrality. “Elia, I’d ask if you were alright, but it’s clear as day that you aren’t.”
Elia huffed, but there was no fight in it, nor any left in her.
“It’s about the dream, about the memory, isn’t it?”
No, I’ve got my undead period – yes, of course it is, what fucking else?
“I mean… It was a bad time, but you met The Old Maiden in the end. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
And then I imprinted on her. She caught me at rock bottom with a shovel. I’m sure she was glad, she was lonely and I was the stray puppy she could take pity on. There was another empty chuckle. God, I was so pathetic. I should have killed the bristlefiend, gave it a stab through its spiky face. Sure, I might have skewered my arm, but it would have been dead.
The silence stretched as they rounded a peak, the roc gaining altitude by a strong updraft. The bekki siblings must have been further ahead. Maybe they weren’t even going to the same place they were. Where was the roc even taking them? Hopefully not to their nest. Hopefully the thing Elia used to call them wasn’t a dinner bell.
“I believe you did all you could. You must have, no one else would have gotten through years spent alone in the maze with a death wish.” Not without a boon, or without the power of greater souls.
Whatever. You're not the one still paying for your mistakes, you don’t understand.
“Then talk to me and make me understand, darn it!” Rye huffed. “Elia, it’s hard having a conversation with you when I have to pull every little thing out from under your nose.”
Elia huffed. She was finding her fire at least.
Sure, let me tell you: I had it all. I had a boon for controlling fire, I had a boon that transformed me into a pink hulk, I had a boon that made my skin invulnerable to weapons and I had magic, so much magic. I lost it all. I screwed up. I treated this place like a game, but it’s a tar pit imitating the vaguest impression of one.
“But you also had a friend.” Rye said and boy was that the wrong thing to say.
Spiky, hot then cold emotions wafted over from the other side.
I had a friend, one friend before Quibbles came along. I lost her too. I don’t even remember how. It was probably my own fucking fault again and she had to pay for it.
So, it was guilt then, guilt for something she could never take back. Elia must have been aware of the irony, the painful idea that even if she could set back time a step she could not turn around and climb the stairs from the very beginning.
Eventually, the roc reached the peak of the mountain. With grinding flaps it propelled itself further inland, south most likely, towards and soon past the last bits of the mountain range.
Grah, I shouldn’t be depressed, I got over depression like five times already. I’m done with it, done, you hear? I’ll play whatever stupid game you’re all playing up there, I’ll win it! Screw the world, screw everything! I’M AWESOOOME!
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Rye did not get the impression those words were meant for her. After a while of watching the landscape beneath and making sure Karla wasn’t dying from hanging upside down for so long, she felt a mental nudge.
Rye.
“Hm?”
Teach me how to become consciously unconscious. It’s your body, you deserve freedom but if you want to get down with some heavy petting with the attendant, or any number of other people, I’m going to need an off-button in here.
“O-oh. Right. Well, it is actually quite simple if you know the basics of meditation.”
Alright. Assuming I don’t, what then?
No meditation? She could see why Elia was always so agitated and on the jumpy all the time. A good part of that was the maze and a life of bad things. Rye couldn’t relate, it would be an insult to compare her experiences in Glenrock to decades of the same, but she could empathize.
“Now,” she said uneasily as the roc dove down and her stomach followed with some delay, “for meditation, you must establish a stable central line of breath. Follow after me. First, breathe in through the nose and feel the air enter you.”
Rye breathed in, slowly and evenly, and Elia followed suite.
“Follow your breath. A straight line from head to chest, chest to stomach. Do you have your line?”
Yeah. I guess.
“Now. Let the breath percolate. Feel its weight, feel it flow into you.”
… what does ‘percolate’ mean?.
“It means that you let it sink in, let it diffuse through your body. Then breathe out, forcefully yet as evenly as you inhaled. It helps to make a sound while you do it. I like to say ‘Rammm’. Now, breathe out, Rammm. Breathe in, hold. Breathe out. Rammm.” She did so, noting how Karla was now also following her instructions.
After a few more repetitions, it felt like Elia was ready. The background thrum of emotions had quieted down to a whisper. They were approaching a nearby peak topped with a toppled stone structure and behind it the disarrayed outline of a city came into view.
Now what?
“Well, I’d be remiss to claim that you now know how to meditate. Mediation is all about habit, about regularly emptying your mind, priming it so you can fill it with what you need most.” She breathed in again, slowly, feeling the roc settle in for the coming updraft. It lifted them further, and with a single flap of its massive wings they crested the last hurdle and before her a view opened up like no other. “Now, imagine that you are like an ocean, moving but unchanging, calm like water, calm like, like…”
The last mountain peak was behind them and in front the city grew in each direction like a bowl, thousands of buildings, millions like a carpet of moss flanked on all sides by a rim of mountains. Single houses made from wood, stone, burnt clay bricks or smoothed rock crawled over or into each other, twisting roads cutting through layers and disappearing beneath bridges and dilapidated aqueducts. Towers with machicolations mixed with minarets, the closest one still only taking up as much space as her thumb and leaning precipitously to the side.
Every type of architecture mingled here, from the mansions of the rich and square insulae to the older temples-fortresses of Thalia to the humble ostentation of godly shrines, pantheons and government buildings. There was more, more architecture with arches and towering windows decorated like metal boughs, blood-red brickwork with all unnatural corners and edges, and everything so entirely alien that Rye thought they must have been carried to the wrong city.
It all looked so wrong, so cluttered, like an amalgam of anything and everything the minds of human and god could imagine.
“Lo Loften,” Karla said. “Home of homes.”
Holy shit.
That was the only accurate expression for a city on fire. The south – or whatever direction lay opposite of their entry glowed with the ember-lights of a thousand fireflies, darkening the skies where wind blew the resulting front of smoke and ash to join the ring of clouds in the sky.
“Oh gods. Oh gods, oh gods…”
What was more, an ocean where none should be seemed to be eating into the eastern city, its stillness growing into the horizon. To the west, a tar pit had opened up in the city, the pitchest black and with headache-inducing smell that reached them even up here. Buildings leaning into the pit gave it the impression of a giant, cavity-ridden maw. The rest, well, the rest was green, sometimes nibbling at the scattered districts like a mold, sometimes seeping in between the buildings, sometimes crashing over them like waves.
Rye teared up. She searched for anything, anything at all that still seemed familiar, still seemed normal as her world was turned sideways and brushed off the table. She didn’t want to believe that this was Loften, though as if to prove itself, the oblong shape of the great circus still stood, the crowning golden chariot statue reflecting in the half-light even up here. It was at the edge of the firefront and she saw the great temple too, where the head of the twelve greater cults, the decibate, heard the orders of the gods, though it thankfully stood at the opposite end of the city. A lone mountain rose past the clouds behind it. Mount Gatheon, atop which lie the abodes of the greatest gods themselves, stood out as an island might in a tepid pond and with it she couldn’t deny it any longer.
Lo Loften, city of the empire and gods, crumbling, burning, sinking, drowning. Lo Loften, where all things end. Lo Loften, lo and weep.
So, about that war with the dark forest? I think the trees won. Fuck man, I can see why Tertius & co. thought this place might need some reinforcements. Rye, I think I just saw a building grow an eyeball and stand up. Shit, is that tower floating upside down?
Rye closed her eyes, imagined she was an ocean and as quick as she could sunk within herself, cutting the outside world away and hoped against hope that when she opened her eyes the nightmare would be over.
----------------------------------------
The air smelled wet, of mud and fish. Though the southern Loften barracks were grand stone halls, they were also built near a marketplace and today was Joosday, a day for fishmongers and skyfish hawkers.
Rye was not here for the market. The clang of metal on metal rang out as she watched two armored men go at each other like giant muskrats. Their steel was dulled, but a face could still be wrecked by a blow with the guard, with the pommel or with the accompanying shield. They must be getting hot in their armor, even in the cool morning air. She certainly was and she had only lost three bouts today, out of three. She was aching all over and gunning for seven, though like her fellow squires she thought she might learn more from this bout between the school’s best and second best than from tasting the ground again.
Second best slipped up, ate an elbow and loose teeth, then some dirt for breakfast.
“Alright, enough!” Instructor Gnaeus (pronounced Gnay-us, and mercy on whoever mispronounced it) barked.
Gnaeus was a springy man, the kind that always had a bouncing energy to every step, like every movement was just full of energy waiting to be released. Sure, he had a boon too, but nobody ever figured out if that was the reason why hairs stood all on their own near him or if that was just them standing straight in fear. There was a sizable pot for whoever found out the truth, and the only time Rye tried to she’d earned chainmail cleaning duty for a week.
He walked up to the victor, looked up at the man easily a head taller than him. “No blows to the head dammit. You all need your teeth for more than eating; this isn’t the army, Primus.”
“Honest mistake Sir, he quite recklessly fell onto me.” Primus whose actual name was something else said.
“Oh, he was the reckless one then?” The small man nodded. “Ah, I see. My mistake.”
Nobody really saw what happened then. They all blinked, belatedly realizing that there was one person being carried to the infirmary, and one to the temple of healing. The knights of the empire had an arrangement with the temples of Rhû and a few others. Having the acolytes heal the kinds of wounds gained on the training grounds was a good way to ensure their eventual boon would be headed towards that same purpose.
Maybe one of them would get a bone-setting boon. The chances were good today.
“There.” Primus said, looking at the assembled men and women in armor. “Playtime’s over. You are to be knights, sirs and ladies, servants of the empire and not ambition, pride or petty principles. The age of hunting monsters and contesting the conjurers in their towers is over, because the former are largely the provinces’ problem and we built libraries to herd the latter.”
That got a round of smirks and half smiles, up until he stopped in front of a half-bekki woman, stomping the mud with deliberation so it would hit her cloak.
“Clean that.” He said. He was the one who ordered mock combat in full regalia today. The half-bekki didn’t move and that was the better decision compared to falling out of line as he splashed each and every one with dignified stomps. “Not a spot on it by the time dinner is served.”
He then turned to the rest. “And that counts for all of you! We are an institution and as an institution we represent the empire at its finest. If the bekki or the giants or any sodding outer province sees you rolling in the dirt, they’ll think the best we have is swine and then there will be a war. Squire Hansen! What are you to do in a war?”
The tall and lanky Hansen – quite a boring fellow, Rye had checked – straightened up so much the instructor looked like he was about to use him as a fishing rod.
“Sir, we uh, we fight?” He blinked, quickly realized his mistake. “We fight sir, for our empire, and we will damn well win.”
Instructor Gnaeus scoffed. “You are not paid to fight, squire, you are paid to squire, squire. You will follow orders, shine boots and clean the filth out of mail. But until you have gained the eye of any of the orders or cults, have earned your first plate or first boon you will fight only if the order comes from me, got it? Your sword does not belong to you, neither does the armor nor the bed you sleep on or the earth you tread. You serve! And your service will be just enough to pay for your privilege and pretty capes.”
The lunch bell rang.
“Dismissed.” The instructor left and everyone relaxed.
Rye was just glad she wasn’t used as another example of how to handle children and womenfolk in a confrontation. Nobody ever went as gentle as they should because they knew that she was used to hard labor at home and that the padded armor would protect her bones from breaking, at least most of the time.
“Squire Rye.” Rye let out a small ‘beans’ as the instructor practically materialized behind her. “Meet me in my office after lunch.”
Suffice to say, she didn’t manage to eat much after that. The ever-present smell had come from a stew that was decidedly too green for something that fishy and Rye decided to simply have some bread and check in with the servant’s quarters later to see if they had any tastier gruel.
On her way out, a gaggle of servants carrying laundry passed her by, an exhausted Sam squeezed among them. They didn’t so much as exchange a word. This was all not supposed to be happening this way. It wasn’t Rye’s dream to be a knight, but the way she was living it in front of her best friend… it all felt like every step was an insult.
Then, she was in front of the office and after a knock and a bow she stepped in to sit on an upholstered chair. Gnaeus was nearly buried behind a mound of books, notes, and files.
“Squire Rye. Twenty-one, female. Daughter of… Lautitia, former camp companion and now land owner, and Octavio, centurion of the thirteenth legion, sixth cohort and now land owner, third son of – third?”
“Grandpa was not good at counting, Sir. Or names, Sir.” Rye said, wringing her hands as she eyed the regalia decorating the room.
“Right. Got some letters from him as well, in case you’ve recently gained an interest.” She stayed silent. There was not much to say after running away from home. There was not much going back to either, but the way forward - this whole debacle - was not how she expected knighting to be. “Now, squire Rye, let me be frank: Your performance in the physical exercises has been falling behind. Evidently you aren’t sick, the healers’ records are clean, you aren’t known to drink much or indulge in red sugar and so I have only one conclusion to make.”
Evidently. There wasn’t much she could do. She was short, she was already grinding herself to cramps and having a few days a month where all she could do was lie in bed didn’t help her situation either. Comparing her to the only other woman at squire camp - the bekki going by the name of Nowi - was infuriating as well because while she had her problems for one month a year, unlike her, Rye did not get ‘heat-leave’.
“I understand, sir,” she said, “I will try to pick up the slack, sir.”
The instructor looked her in the eye where the remnants of a black ring was still visible in spite of her efforts to look presentable, which was hard when your maid had to sneak you the necessary beauty products. She’d even gone all the way and put on some perfume, an expensive rose and berry mix.
“Quite honestly, if it weren’t for your wit, your impeccable record and your tutor’s recommendation, I’d have long had Hansen deck you so hard and often you’d want nothing more than to leave while cursing his name and mine.” He smiled at the look on her face. “It’s what we’d have to do, we can’t send you back after you’re this far in, not without due cause or personal incentive. Attrition, regulations, you understand.”
She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her neck as he rummaged around in his stacks of papers.
“I am looking for knights. I am not looking for knights made of glass though,” he drawled, handing her a pair of resignation papers. “But consider this a gesture of goodwill. Go home, deal with whatever your parents are sending mountains of letters for. You’re not a bad girl, Rye, you have a future there.”
Even though that was the largest compliment he had given anyone in two years, her blood felt like ice. She couldn’t return home, not ever. If she did, she’d have to face that they were right, that their plan for her was the better one, that this was all just a huge black mark on her record and not the sanctuary she had hoped for herself, nor the dream for Sam.
She wasn’t wrong. She’d rather dig a hole and bury herself.
“W-well, sir,” she started, leaning forward and batted her eyelids prettily in that secret way she’d learned from Mum. “You can’t say I’m completely useless. Surely, I have some features you’d find… charming for a knight.”
“Uh-huh.” He stuffed a slab of garlic-onion bread into his mouth. “You are quite proficient at the seven dialects. Math, too.”
Rye faltered for a second but let nothing betray her outwardly. She leaned forward, letting her loose tunic do the work for her.
“I am eager, intellectually and… otherwise,” she said, wincing as he annihilated a second helping of garlic bread, “b-but I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty and my face isn’t mashed (yet) and… aw beans, sir, I can’t go home. They’ll string me up and dress me down. They’ll kill me!”
She blinked at him prettily, working in a tear. It did it for him last time, it always did for his type.
“I’m sure you won’t get more than a flogging.” He licked his fingers, then looked at the still unsigned resignation paper. “You’re a riot to have around, but too damn hung up on being a knight.”
He couldn’t be any more wrong. He snatched the paper from her hands and reached around to find another which he quickly carved up with crinkly penmanship. That grumbling could not be any good.
“There,” he said, handing her a paper. “The ordo monetaris of the Avalonia province need muscle and someone with a head for pens and numbers. I figured I’ve got just the exemplar squire here who can do the work of bodyguard and tax-collector.”
“I…” Was he sending her away by force, despite his initial declaration that it was impossible? Avalonia was her home province. Dangit, it always came down to where she came from. “Sir, I don’t know what to say.”
“Say ‘thank you’. You’ve been promoted, graduated, even.” He shook her hand and it felt more like a bite. “Congratulations Lady Rye, you’re a knight. It’s been a pleasure, it truly has. Now get out of my sight, or do I have to start with the tomato-bread?”