Rye climbed through the trap door, one dream deeper. The crawl space was worse than in Mouggen’s dream this time, and much, much darker too. Every wall felt like it was actively pressing back against her as she squeezed in between dream-bubbles pressed against each other. Through one of the membranes, the smell of some sort of brewed nut crept on through, earthy tones mixed with garbled voices coming from a music box.
A radio.
She blinked. Suddenly, she knew what a radio was, and that it worked by receiving squiggly lines of… not-sound and not-light from a faraway mage tower.
Antenna.
Yes, an antenna-mage-tower. How helpful, that these memories came with their own little trivia section. It was not at all concerning that if she started to learn how to speak and think like Elia, they’d likely merge that much quicker.
Better to move on and forget it all.
The fluttering Snail-Yolon zipped in between two overlapping walls, one rushing like the sea, the other smelling of too much carrot mash. She dove after, trying her best not to give any thought to the words she was picking up via cultural osmosis. However, the dreamscape proved dreadfully insistent on drowning her in the awareness of how cheddar tasted, what the best way to make a slip-and-slide was, or how to clip through the thirty star door with the help of one MIPS the rabbit.
So. Much. Useless. Clutter.
Finally, she caught up to the snail, only to immediately lose sight of it as it wiggled its way through one of the dream-bubble membranes. It left an abysmally small hole, but luckily for her there was nothing smaller than droplets of vapor.
Except the atom.
No! Well, yes, but she had to focus, and to squeeze before the hole shut itself.
With a fizz and a pop, she was in. This empty dream-corridor was blessedly wide, comforting like a reverse hug. Yolon was nowhere to be seen, but the dream didn’t seem too large. Its edges frayed behind her, and as she walked past a lonely door, she saw the dream end beyond it too.
The walls were drab, like unpainted marble, and beige at the worst of times. She looked down to a tray of metal tools she was pushing. Apparently, her clothes had changed as well, some sort of white shirt and… pants.
The horror. At least it fit into this place. Every wall and corner was empty of character, was so sterile, so desperately pragmatic. Whatever place this was, she wanted to be in and out as fast as possible.
Her hand touched upon the cold metal door hinge, like a sideways C, shining like polished armor. Voices were coming from the other side. Now was not the time to be shy.
Rye pushed through and found herself watching the side of a scene. A girl was lying in a bed of white sheets, watching a telegraphed-vision screen while animatedly hacking away at her button-infested control-mechanism. Her hair was incredibly thin, as if a newborn babe had let its first downy wisps grow out to below shoulder length. She was pale, thin, and not at all how she remembered Elia in her dreams. She looked to be having the time of her life.
Rye tore her eyes from the center of the scene, scanning the room for any shifty slug-like characters. Between the messy floor and the strewn about clothing, she’d have to look thoroughly, which presented a problem. This was Elia’s dream. Interrupting her when she looked so at peace was akin to sacrilege. The thought of the necessity, of the danger should she hesitate was enough to trigger her [Danger music], but the sad plonking of some distant instrument only fastened her decision. Desecrating a memory so intimate squicked Rye in a way she’d rarely felt squicked before.
The decision was taken from her as a presence descended on her metal wagon.
“Hello Elia,” she said without looking.
“Hey Rye,” said Elia, and not some recording in the background. Though she looked less like herself, and more like Rye. There was barely a hint of that girl with red hair left, besides maybe the eyes. Rye had to admit, that shade of green gave her a fierce look. “Nice nurse outfit.”
Nurse? Like Karla’s Mum, the legendary healer? Since when did Elia care about what she was wearing beyond if it could stop a longsword or not?
“Thanks? You look the same as always. In a good way?”
Elia grunted, her rotted armor jingling with every twist and turn. It looked like it had been deliberately left to decay, but she recognized by now that the important parts were all there. Few people could look great in metal and rags, but she had known Elia no other way. It suited her, but with a face like that and body too, anything would.
Wait. She was complementing herself. Weird. Super, super weird.
“I lost our souls. And the shards. I’m sorry, I f-fucked up.” The room tensed, before returning to a drawn-out silence. “Please, say something.”
“It’s alright. At least we’re safe.”
They weren’t. They really weren’t. “We need to wake up. We’re still fighting Yolon outside and he, I…”
“It’s fine.” Elia said placidly. “Very, very fine.”
“I’m serious, Elia. It’s terrible, he ate Mouggen and then I died and… You can help, right?”
“Five more minutes.” Elia said and Rye didn’t have it in her to say no to that brittle look.
“Ok.” She wrung her hands, slowly scanning the room.
The door flung open and a trio of people barged in. Their features were only half as interesting as their clothing. Colors of every kind were mixed and matched in patterns befitting kings. She nearly forgot to breathe when she noticed the last person walk in with a shirt entirely drenched in deepest purple.
That much dye for that was worth more than the entire bag of coins they had… liberated from the bank in Loften.
“I didn’t know you were friends with a senator’s son.”
Elia just chuckled.
The three figures froze just like she had when they saw the young Elia. Rye didn’t understand much, except that with the sheepish and awkward ‘hi’ of young Elia, someone had done something wrong. An argument ensued, mainly between the girl in the group and Elia.
“You said it was appendicitis!” yelled the girl.
“It still could be!” Elia crowed back. “You don’t know, I might just have really bad constipation!”
“Intestinal infections don’t make you lose hair, Elia, cancer does! Why didn’t you just say it?”
“Because you’d pity me! You’d pity me and then you’d either stay around because you feel sorry for me, or you’d just leave. You two too, Tom, Ricky. But hey, since someone decided to barge into this, I’ll make it simple for you: Leave!”
“So many repressed emotions.” Elia full on barked a laugh as a loud slap shook the halls. “Classic Abigail. Nobody slaps the terminally diseased like Abigail.”
The slap tipped the mood, as the girl started crying. Soon enough, young Elia too was wet with tears. They hugged and the scene seemed so alien, so intimate that Rye once again felt like she didn’t belong.
“Y-you were ill? What did you have?”
“Terminal Leukemia. Like normal Leukemia, except it lives rent-free in your body. Forever.” She didn’t comment on Rye’s confusion. “Cancer, in other words.”
Cancer. Star-sign, shaped like a crab.
“What do crabs have to do with this?”
Elia just smiled. “I spent most of my childhood in hospitals. Dad visited almost daily, but Mom was terribly busy. Someone had to pay the bills, you see, because if the hospital-pharma industry likes one thing more than a diabetic, it’s a terminally ill kid to suck the life and money out of.”
Rye did not see. Or maybe she did and she was missing some context. She understood well enough that this place was meant as a hospital of sorts, that the boy holding the girl’s hands was probably her lover, that the girls were crying over a problem with no solution and only an unhappy end. It was arguably more tragic than her circumstances.
Rye only felt shame that she still felt more strongly about her own issues than Elia’s.
They weren’t even hers alone. The boon-business primarily affected Sam. She’d come to Rye for help and what did she do? Take control of the situation that would and likely did change her life. Did she even ask Sam if she wanted to keep it?
“I’m a terrible person,” Rye said.
Again, Elia barked a laugh. “No, you’re not.”
“I mean, I am though. We didn’t have to go this way. It was all on me for pressuring you into giving into Karla’s pressure – what a weird daisy chain – to go on an outing that in hindsight really was only there to extend our status quo so I could refuse looking at the future rolling ever inexorably closer.”
“Pshaw, screw those big words,” Elia said and for the first time, looked at her. “That just means I was terrible for listening to you. You’re great, you know that? You learned conjuring in two or three months, you always act out of compassion and even though you’re scared, you power right ahead. You’re awesome, and you’ve got a nice personality, whereas I… I just am.”
Rye huffed. “You’re not as bad as I am.”
“Rye, you’re handling the destruction of everything you knew and loved a lot better than I did. You made one mistake, so what? That doesn’t mean I’ll start hating my resident nervous little cuddlemuffin.”
“Elia!” She batted away the hand that was pinching her cheek. “What’s gotten into you?”
Elia stared at the scene. Old-Elia and Abigail were finished hugging. They were now playing the telegraphed-screen-game together, all four of them racing in a game that was about who could throw the most turtle shells at the person in front of them.
“I dunno. I guess seeing all this is making me nostalgic. Makes you think how much more I could have forgotten over two hundred years.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Rye’s eyes bulged. “Two… hundred?”
“Hundred. You take two years, then you take those ten times, then ten times that–”
“Are you alright?” Two hundred years was more than two decades, and even two decades had been her upper estimate. Elia survived in the maze for two hundred years without losing her mind. That was insane. It was amazing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were my first friend in a while. A whole long while.” Elia inhaled deeply and it felt like the dream was shaking from how nervous Elia looked. “When we first met, internally I was so nervous. I didn’t want to screw things up. Make you think I was weird. Because I was, you know. And I thought if you found out, well, then you’d leave, somehow.”
“Elia, we are literally sharing one body. How could I leave?”
“I dunno! I was scared!”
“You? Scared!?” The world felt like it was tilting and turning. Elia, the immovable, unstoppable, unflappable warrior, scared? A look at the girl with barely a wisp of red hair and Rye felt ten times as guilty for relying so heavily on her. Like glass, she was sharp, but brittle. “I guess that means we’re both terrible?”
Elia chuckled. Rye did too, if somewhat more nervously.
“You’re totally wrong about that. We’re both awesome.”
That was a lie she could live with. “Ok, but I still need to find Yolon. You haven’t seen a slug with wings zipping about, have you?”
“I noticed him enter, but not leave.” She squinted at the television. “Well, since I am kind of lucid dreaming, I guess I have a lot of control. I can just…” Elia twisted the air and suddenly the walls teared until they were screaming blood. She stopped and the dream reasserted itself, albeit slowly. “Nope. I control the dream, but this little fluffer, he’s got resistance like you and me.”
“We have to find him by hand?”
Elia nodded. “But for that, we’d have to interrupt that.”
They both looked at old-Elia and Abigail laughing.
“I don’t want to screw up your memories,” said Rye.
“There’s no going around it.” Elia sighed. “Turns out, we were screwed from the start.”
Quibbles croaked in affirmation. They both turned to the frog.
“What the heck are you doing here?”
Elia grinned. “He’s come as my backup, of course. Quibbles, we’re looking for a void-slug. Go fetch.”
Rye sighed. “Elia, he’s not a dog, and I doubt he understands your…”
Quibbles hopped forward, jumping about like he owned the place. To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t fit in all that poorly; the attention was entirely centered on the flickering screen. He checked under the bed, emerged from a pile of clothes, and even checked behind and in between the old heater.
“Do you know what is up with that toad?” Rye asked, to which Elia only shrugged.
Then, from one second to the next, everything burst into motion. The buzzing flap of Yolon filled the room as he squeezed out of an old slipper, ascending quickly before Quibbles’ tongue wrenched it out of the air. It tried to wiggle, tried to shed its skin for another metamorphosis, but Quibbles was nothing if not a thorough toad. It crunched inside his mouth and the first thing Rye felt of being awake was the sudden rush of wind on her face.
She looked up Yolon’s nostrils as he lifted her body towards his mouth. With moments to realize that she was still in the backseat and they were about to be eaten, she possessed an arm, took her staff and jammed it in between the tongue and palate of Yolon like a support beam.
“Karla, not-Karla, help!” she yelled as the staff creaked under the pressure..
It bought them seconds, seconds which were enough to roll out of its cold mouth and fall down on a cushion of clouds placed just in time. Gods, she was going to kiss that pink horned man.
As they flopped out of their cloud bed, Elia blinked awake, finally.
Elia, some heeelp please!
“Sure thing,” she said, twirling out of the way of a large palm slam. She reached for a weapon, but remembered too late that she had lost her spoon. “Um. Shizz. I’m completely unarmed. That hasn’t happened in… wow, thirteen years. Damn I’m old.”
While I’m glad you’ve finally made peace with your age, I’d like to do a bit more moving!
Elia did just that, bouncing back until she was out of melee range. Mouggen and Cesare were beside her, looking a bit more banged up than someone stuck in a dream were supposed to be.
“How long have you been fighting?”
“Half a minute,” Mouggen said. “Would’ve been much less if it weren’t for your friend over there.”
He pointed to Karla, who was dancing out of the way of a barrage of conjured bolts like it was the easiest thing ever. Rye had rarely seen someone so ecstatic to be nearly skewered. She flinched as one bolt tore clear through Karla’s hip, but the wound knitted closed in seconds.
“I am the wound maker, the heart taker, the queen of crimson!” she cried and pointed at Yolon the increasingly irate void slug. “Justice! Justice for me and justice for mine!”
A tear appeared along where its vestigial legs dangled from its side, mirroring the wound Karla had taken.
“What’s up with her?” Elia asked,
Umm, well, that’s hard to explain. Karla has a not-Karla in her head, with sharp teeth and well… I think she’s a bit like us, maybe?
“Oh. A super powered evil side. Awesome, that’ll help murk this dude a lot.”
Cesare and Mouggen shared a look as they dragged Nali behind some cover.
“We aren’t seriously considering killing the thing that hatched from a dragon’s corpse, are we?” Cesare asked.
“We might stand a chance,” Mouggen hedged, pointing towards Karla. “That’s the power of a greater shard if I’ve ever seen one.”
“That privileged little shhh-uh, girl.” Elia was clearly jealous, but not enough to distract her overmuch. They needed a plan, and she was already on the ball before Rye could even think past step one. “Ok, plan: Me and Karla lure him out. When I say so, either you or Cesare touch the witch-princess and summon Rhuna’s friendly hitman.”
“You mean this isn’t what you warned us about?” Cesare screamed over the sound of the air tearing from the sheer influx of influence from beyond the sky. “Also, what was that about Rhuna?”
“Don’t worry,” Elia said, “I’ve done this before, everything will be fine.”
Suddenly, a wave of frigid air washed over them, followed by a Karla-shaped projectile which left a Karla-shaped outline in the first three iron cages she blasted through. She quite happily jumped back up, with a smile on her face and only one broken arm.
“Ha-hah, fear not, little mortals, for it is I, here to tear the fear from your bodies and plunge your puny existences into an ocean of savory-safety-ness.” She wiggled her arm, but the wound didn’t transfer to the slug. “You don’t have any bones! How dare you be so conniving?”
Yolon didn’t look like he thought of himself as all that deceptive. He was quite honest in where he was aiming his dozens of different spells. Elia tackled Karla to the ground as they blasted the area around her.
“Is your arm alright?” she asked.
“Hah, pain is but the path to justice and more wounds – OW!” She winced as Elia poked her right in the arm. “Stop that, or I shall poke you twice.”
She was probably just making sure this was the same Karla and not some fake.
“Don’t take the attacks head on like that,” Elia said. “Use your legs.”
“I did!”
“For dodging.”
“Oh. I’d rather collect more wounds though.”
Yeah, umm, maybe this development isn’t all sunshine and roses.
Elia sighed. “Just follow my lead Karla. We’ll beat the evil out of this slug yet.”
The word ‘evil’ drew a smile across her face like she was about to commit the most hideous prank. They rushed out into the open, peppering Yolon with ineffective conjured ice in one case, and exceedingly bold taunts on the other. Its human face drew together in a scrunched up scowl as it floated after them to the sound of an orchestral choir suite.
“I think this guy doesn’t like your music, Rye.”
Yeah, well, tough luck. I like it, I can’t do anything about it, and it’s here to stay.
“That’s my girl! Assert yourself. Dominance!”
The violins suddenly went wild as Elia dodged a pillar-sized bolt with a hop that sent her coasting on the blast wave. Her armor crunched as she rolled the rimes of frost off and was back on her feet again. Rye followed her eyes to a spot sixty-odd feet to the side of the princess.
Are you thinking–
“–what I’m thinking? Heck yeah I am.”
She reached the point and pushed Karla to keep on going. By the time they’d reached the far wall with the large clock, Yolon had already gained a lot of ground on them.
Elia signaled Cesare and Mouggen, then turned to face the void slug. “Come and get me if you’re hard enough.”
The ceiling cracked. The bell tolled one final, dull ring, as Partlight rode it down onto an unexpected guest. It didn’t hit Yolon square in the chest, the bell merely slamming into his shoulder before it completed its journey groundwards. That didn’t keep Yolon from uttering a cry that utterly wrenched Rye’s spirit through and through like a thresher.
This was your grand plan? You may have noticed that Yolon isn’t dead. Now we have to fight TWO strong enemies. And you already did this back in the maze!
“Are you saying I’m unoriginal?”
Rye had a point though, and she knew Elia knew. They could barely deal with Partlight with all four of them. Just as she was about to voice that complaint, a crescent blade of blue light streaked across the room, impacting Yolon across his flank. The void-slug’s face grew from surprise ever so sluggishly towards rage.
“Moonlight,” Yolon crowed. “Moon-thief. Moon-moon!”
A silver-blue sphere coalesced at his finger-tips, cratered and sown with spots like a moon sunk down to yoga-ball size.
“I think we’ve found the lunatic.”
The sphere accelerated slowly at first, but by the time it impacted Partlight, it had built up enough energy to push him nearly off his feet. He didn’t seem keen on distracting himself with Elia and the others, so Mouggen and Karla were allowed free reign to harass the void slug’s sides. Elia was eager to join them, but Rye didn’t see how she would without a weapon.
Ok. You don’t have a weapon, and my conjuring doesn’t do much. We can maybe hang back, make a plan together.
Elia summoned her spike-tipped glove.
Elia no.
“Elia yes!”
She ran towards the violence, intent on more than a participation medal.
How could she be so vulnerable in one moment, then be like this in the next? Maybe it was like how Rye did it, stepping into the shoes of one ideal after the other. She’d always feared being herself, because normal Rye was weak, nervous, and not at all what everyone seemed to need from her. But Elia had her back entirely. And as far as she was concerned, she wanted Rye to have hers.
She picked up one of the rather unsafe wands and used it to fling snowballs at particularly dangerous looking projectiles. Yolon peppered the area with many of them. Even with their combined efforts and the strength of Partlight, the scales were tipping against them.
The man in question sent a few shots of his handgonne at Yolon. Finally, the void slug alighted on the ground. A leaky fluid was pouring from its wounds, dancing in the palm of Karla not-Karla as she cackled manically.
Not enough. They needed a lethal blow. But slugs were very… sluggy, and made of a single mass of muscle and goo. The only place that seemed human enough to be vulnerable – its head – hovered high above the fight, inside a storm of quickly conjured mini-moons.
“Moon-moon!”
That didn’t stop Elia from enacting a thoroughly stupid idea. She had run all the way behind Yolon and was intent on using his back as a ramp to run up. The footing was terrible, slippery, and way too soft. By the halfway point, Elia was climbing up, using her jagged [Gauntlet of the Viper] as a handhold by jabbing it into Yolon’s soft flesh. He didn’t seem to notice, as he was being pressed hard by an unusually persistent Partlight.
A shudder suddenly went through his body. Yolon reared up on his flippery hands, seemingly sucking in a river of conjured influences through his mouth. In one moment, there was a stream of light, blue, white, and blinding. In the next, Partlight looked like someone had scooped out his right side, taking an arm, a leg, and much of his torso.
The giant voidslug hummed with content.
We’re out of time!
Elia grunted. “Almost. There.”
Another pull of influences broke apart Rye’s snowball. Yolon was sucking in more essences again. This time, he aimed for Karla, who had picked up the broken sword and was charging it so much the blade was glowing a dull white.
“I shall fell thee, evil dragon, and take all your princesses for myself!” she cried and promptly kissed the ground, unconscious from overdrawing her reservoir.
Elia reached the top. She didn’t waste a beat, she never did once in the entire time Rye had been with her, and jabbed her gauntlet right into the eye of a very confused Yolon.
He groaned, wrenching his head back and forth. She heard more than felt something crack in Elia’s arm, even through both their screaming.
The jolting ride stopped, quite suddenly, with a slam. Rye looked up and down to see part of its neck was twitching, paralyzed. But already its see-through body was pumping some terrible liquid to the bloody mess where Elia had jabbed it. Yolon stirred beneath her, the roiling whirl of energy in its throat twitching erratically with no outlet as he rested his head on the ground for a scant few seconds.
They were enough. Mouggen was already standing at the ready, one pre-charged sword raised above his head.
In a single blow, he cut Yolon’s head clean off and the world was bathed in blinding moonlight.