In a lavishly decorated room far removed from all festivities, Jeremia, leader of Raid group Calico, was putting the finishing touches on himself. He was a man who had forsaken his old name, Jerry, and had slithered his way into a moderately high position of power. At the monster princesses’ party he had been hoping to reel in at least one of their important guests for a private talk in business and perhaps more, if the evening went well. Little had he expected what a catch would fall into his lap.
The girl was a nubile beauty like the princess, except with fewer hooks attached. She was exactly his type, chin-length straw blonde hair and that innocent look in her eyes that meant she was still new to the horrors of this stupid world. Thanks to a reliable source, some sweet lies, and a few cheesy lines he hadn’t used since high school, she was now waiting in the other room.
These medieval girls are all so damn easy, he thought.
He adjusted a lock of hair and dabbed a whiff of perfume he’d stolen from a different group’s looting district on his neck. Armed with a grin like he was about to conquer the world, he stepped out to meet her. The girl was sitting on the bed, idly looking out the window.
In spite of all his preparation, he still found himself stopping in the door for a moment.
“Oh.” The girl looked up at him. “Oh, Sir Jeremia.”
“Lady Elia,” he said, bowing to kiss her hand. “It is a pleasure to meet a brave and valiant woman such as you.”
The girl blushed, turning away. The rumors surrounding the girl were just that, rumors. She was not disillusioned like those old-ass actual aristocrats, nor crass like the people from earth, nor like that snake Camille.
That bitch was always so full of herself. One day, I’ll make her grovel too.
Presently, he was making a point of getting this Elia girl to look him in the eyes and activated [Beating heart]. Normally, he used his common buffing mind/body boon to give his dregs a spike of adrenaline. Conveniently, it would flush the girl’s cheeks and heighten her heartbeat. She would mistake excitement for attraction and love and just like that, she would throw herself at him. Or should have.
She was either nervous, or particularly shy, but she had come here under her own will. He was confident that his source had made his terms clear. Shards for some time alone. But when he was done with her, she would be begging to be the one paying him.
“Come now, I don’t bite. Be honest with yourself,” he said, mischievously blowing into her ear. “Otherwise, I’ll torment you like this forever.”
The girl flinched. “O-oh, noble lord, ‘twas fortune that brought me here, not idle thoughts.”
He tutted. “We both know how dangerous it is to adventure outside of civilization, outside the pact, and how expensive. Trust me, girl, as I say that with fifty years of experience. Now, tell me, how experienced are you?”
“Not very,” she said. “Not experienced at all.”
Hmm, boon says she’s lying, but her body language says the opposite. Is this really playing into her fantasy? What a freak.
His grin grew wider. “Do you not fancy me? I can always rent a body from Kasimir’s. I have the means.”
“Umm,” she ummed, peeking past his ears. “...I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”
“Then how about we start with something simple then? A kiss maybe?”
She turned to him, face completely crimson. “Then I kiss thee with a most constant heart.”
Jeremia, aka Jerry, blinked.
“Wait, that’s ripped straight from Shakespeare.” The girl gulped. He stepped closer and cupped her chin. “I like a woman who’s well-read.”
He closed in for the kill when he noticed two masked individuals holding up signs outside the window. They were frantically cycling through cheesy lines. The girl must have been so terribly inexperienced with roleplay that she needed someone to grease the ride along.
The rumormongers are going the extra mile with this. Gotta pay them a bonus later.
“Umm, mister Jerry-mia?” The girl said, voice a husky whisper “L-lay down. I’d like to be on top for the start.”
The hair on his neck rose. In that moment he knew he had done everything right. He didn’t protest as he laid himself on the bed, nor when the girl blindfolded him.
“Shy?” he asked.
“Terribly,” the girl answered. “Now, if thou hearest any noise, desist in… resisting?”
A sudden pressure tightened around his arm with a click. He lifted the blindfold to see that he was now cuffed to one bed post. The girl looked down at him, face still red as a cherry, but missing any pretense of shyness.
“Ah fuck. Welp, hard way it is.” He barely had time to blink before she punched him across the chin. He saw stars, even though she was just a small girl, even though he’d had the first pick of the best souls. He regretted then that his build wasn’t optimized for tenacity. “Aw man, you’re not unconscious?”
“F-fuck!” he screamed, flailing around.
He only succeeded in knocking a seventh century vase off of his nightstand. The girl summoned some sort of metal gauntlet, before jabbing him in the side with its five wicked claws. Jeremia groaned as everything felt tingly, then stopped as he lost all feeling in his body.
He was completely paralyzed.
The girl meanwhile rummaged through drawer after drawer and when she was finished with this room she went onto the next. She was a spy, she had to be, and definitely one of Rhuna’s. Anyone else’s would have been too inhuman or more obvious.
She returned within minutes, holding up a stack of old photos.
“Holy shit, Jerry? Really, that’s your name?” He cringed as she flicked through pictures from their high school trip before it all had gone so wrong. “Man, really lost the genetic dice roll. Says here you were the only member of the comic club. I’d be more sorry for a fellow nerd if I hadn’t found all this dirt you apparently collected on your ‘friends’.”
She leaned in close. “And by the way, next time, don’t trust an archaic sliding bolt lock with your blackmail, kid.”
“Fugg you bish,” he slurred.
“Yeah, yeah,” she was about to leave when she spotted something out of the corner of her eye. “Wait, is that a sharpy?”
No. Not the magical sharpy.
----------------------------------------
“… and then I gave him a black nose and whiskers. He looks like the rat he is now,” Elia said, concluding a stunning retelling of her duplicity atop the rooftops. She took another swig from a bottle, trying to forget every part of their interaction. “Ugh, remind me to never let you guys put me at the center of a plan like that again.”
“He was one of the most egregious offenders,” Cat said, checking their list of people who had wronged Karla. “He’s a council member who’s completely skilled for leadership, which incidentally also makes him very good at gathering incriminating information. This would have come back to bite us in the future, but not anymore with all these documents. Geez, if we release some of these, Camille might be able to convince the rest of the council to have him castrated.”
“That is funny,” Karla said, “but I do not see how this helps clear my name.”
“Karla, Karla, one step at a time.” Elia drew her close with one arm and hiccuped. “We’re punishing the people who are still actively shitting on you. Doesn’t getting revenge feel good?”
“I mean, I would not know. I am glad that with ‘revenge’ you meant a series of pranks, and not murder.” The princess fidgeted with her tunic. “And it does feel weirdly cathartic. Are you sure we are giving them back exactly as much as they did to me?”
“Pshh, sure, this is super even-handed.” Elia took another swig. “Crow, tar- and feather-bomb down this chimney please.”
Crow took a dripping leather bag and cast a boon on it before dropping it down a smoking chimney. Screams of shock and horror followed them as they hopped a few roofs further.
“You know, sharpies conjured from earth are actually permanent,” Cat said as she marked a name off the list, and continued flipping through the collated evidence, blackmail, and snarky poems. “Bowl-water doesn’t count them as an injury, and the only way to get them off is by making an offering to the god of cleanliness.”
“Who is dead, by the way,” Crow added.
“What the hell’s up with that anyways?” Elia asked, as Karla caught her from swaying right off the side of the building. “Couldn’t you guys have left some gods for me?”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“If by ‘you guys’ you mean ‘the people that came to Loften before us’ , then no, we didn’t have much of a choice in the matter either,” Crow said. “When we arrived, it was right before the schism between outsiders and the gods, or what was left of them. The real gods, the important ones, closed their gates up on the mountain ages ago, and ordered their servants to keep everyone from barging in. Some people believed that the key to going back was hidden up on that mountain, a majority in fact.
“War happened, immortal servants, lesser gods, and outsiders died by the droves. The gods had their greater shards which could remake reality, but they had summoned a lot of outsiders, outsiders which had been killing monsters, demons, and other things for close to two hundred years non-stop by then. We had the numbers, and the shards can’t be used for free either. The crimson pact was formed in those days, when people still arrived frequently enough that they could treat saving the world like some big adventure game.
“Now we’re here, the survivors carving up the rest of the city for themselves. Nobody really believed that we won. We never fought one of the twelve either. Ruthe, Aurana, you know. Of course, the prophecy of the undead still leads you up to them, but that way lies suicide. The last person to attempt the climb was–”
Cat roughly elbowed him. They shared a non-verbal back and forth. Elia and Karla just stared at them for a while.
“Sheesh, alright. Way to kill the mood,” Elia said.
Karla meanwhile had an odd stare about her. “Do you think there is a chance our chance to save the world is up on that mountain?”
“We haven’t found anything anywhere else in the city,” Cat said. “And, to be honest, nobody can get to the top since the only known path is right behind the cathedral Rhuna uses as a base.”
And yet, even Rhuna refused or did not want to ascend the mountain. Another reason not to ever go there. This place here, this oasis of civilization was fine. And Elia was about to make it even finer for her friends than before.
“Hey, that’s misses Mephisto down there. She on the list?”
Cat gave them a thumbs up.
“Alright, Karla, here’s your mandatory bucket of stinky sewage water,” Elia said, picking up a bucket of water. “Want me to color it? I’ve got [Watercolor touch]. Khaki or piss-color?”
“Umm,” Karla ummed.
“You’re right, throwing piss-water at political enemies is beneath a princess. And besides, you’re too nice. It would be a very not-Karla thing to do.” Elia took careful aim, when suddenly the air was filled with a feeling like standing next to an open nuclear reactor of violence.
“Bucket!” A voice that did not sound like Karla’s came from her throat.
She tore the bucket out of Elia’s hands, a considerable feat, then threw it down twenty feet where it didn’t conk miss Mephisto over the head, but some other lanky fellow. He collapsed right to the floor, blood pooling around his head.
“Seven years ago, he poisoned our drink. And the lady Mephisto! Slander and lies, stewed for years. A wound she has given us, and an injury we shall return.”
The girl pointed at the lady in shock below. Something in the air shifted. Elia was suddenly aware that the woman below still peed her bed when she was fifteen. She was also known for cheating on her husband with a bekki girl, stealing funds from the pact’s council, and a dozen other things Elia knew for a fact, but also knew that less than half were true. Lady Mephisto suddenly burst out into tears, sobbing.
“Justice served! Justice for eternity! Oh, how delightful.” Karla shivered. “Like plucking an old splinter from underfoot. Again! Again!”
Everyone stared in horror at Karla, rather, at whoever it was that was clearly not her. Elia took one look and decided it was time to drink the healing water from her plastic bottle and instantly un-drunk herself.
“Umm, yeah. So, everyone, this is probably the Karla you are all afraid of. Cat, Crow, meet not-Karla. She’s really nice once you get to know her,” Elia said, despite knowing very little about Karla’s alter ego besides that she could apparently trade physical and mental wounds between people.
“The monster princess,” Crow whispered.
“She-who-gives-wounds,” Cat muttered.
“Flattering names of a part of a piece of myself. I am not-Karla!” Not-Karla yelled, raising to her entire unimpressive height. In a remarkable feat of athleticism, Cat and Crow backflipped, landing in a perfect kow-tow pose. Her gaze swerved over them briefly before coming to a rest on Elia. “And you are… not Rye. Yet you summoned me. A sister ought not summon a sister.”
“I’m Elia,” Elia said. “She and I share a body. We fought together, remember?”
“Against Yolon!” Not Karla yelled. “Yes, what a scrap, what an exchange of debt and retribution.”
“Shit on a stick,” Cat hissed. “You killed Yolon? No one knows about this. I’m pretty sure even we are not supposed to.”
Not-Karla nodded vigorously. “But that outcome was a given. Brother dreaming could never compare to his sister justice.”
Elia’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not the shard of wounds. You’re the shard of justice.”
“And you are my newly appointed royal anarchist.” She nodded, satisfied. “Justice is a bloody affair, and a wound for a wound is my favorite fare. You will assist me with this. It is allowed.”
“Fuuuck,” Crow echoed.
“Not-Karla?” Elia asked, “Maybe be a bit quieter? You’re making things a bit more difficult for Karla’s… everything.”
Not-Karla inspected Elia from way too close.
“I see the girl fancies you both. If you were a prince or princess she’d already be carrying. We could become whole together.” She licked her lips as she eyed Elia’s neck. “But I enjoy being a person. Now come, I must give you another wound so I may stay in your debt.”
“Alriiight,” Elia said, slowly backing off.
“Just a bite,” not-Karla said, licking her lips.
“You’re throwing a lot of reveals at me all at once,” Elia answered.
“I bet you taste sweet, too.” The girl lunged and clung to her neck like a limpet.
“Karla? Karlaaa!?” Elia took one last step backwards and realized too late that she was completely out of roof. Together, they plunged down and into a shallow fountain. Elia felt the prick of sharp teeth on her neck, and the crack of her head against a rock. The last thing she saw was Zane with an entire crew of shadowy figures closing in from all sides.
‘They kind of look like ninjas,’ she thought and promptly passed out.
----------------------------------------
Elia flopped back into the white dream. She couldn’t make out if the ground was coming closer or getting further away as she struggled to stay on her feet.
“Ryyyeee,” she groaned, tumbling in the white void, “heeelp!”
If Rye was still here she was nowhere to be seen. But gravity did assert itself, and with it up and down. She watched as the same pencil-dot appeared as before, drawing out a sketch of the world with rapid flicks. Elia sat down on a bench as she watched the skyline take shape. There was no exiting this dream unless Rye kicked her out or she woke up. For once, it didn’t feel bad being under the complete control of someone else.
It wasn’t until she felt Rye’s presence focus on the spot next to her that she realized this was not an image from Rye’s dream, but from one of hers.
“Hey, you fixed the river,” Elia said, gesturing towards a band of cleanly flowing ripples.
“That’s supposed to be a road.” A blob of squiggles next to her sighed. “I didn’t get the size of the skyscrapers right either. And I’m just a blob of squiggles.”
“You look like a spaghetti monster,” Elia said. “Is that bad? Are you alright? Should I be worried?”
“No, no. I’ve… spent some time thinking who or what I even am without anything or anyone to go back to. I’ve decided I don’t know. This shape is also convenient if I want to try and catch that dang Yolon-fly.” A streak of tongue shot out from the Rye-blob, snatching a flower. A mocking buzz-buzz echoed in the distance. The sky grumbled in annoyance.
“You’ll catch him eventually.” The skyline grew, until small sketches of hills and trees littered the horizon. “So, how’s it feel, using the power of a greater shard?”
“It’s… odd.” Spaghetti-Rye deflated until she was a squiggly puddle. “I can go into a dream that has been dreamt before and go forward or backwards in it, but never sideways. I have complete control in the white space, but outside of it I cannot change a single thing about other dreams. It’s as if I’m… missing some part. I’m not great at crafting my own dream either yet so this is all you get.”
Elia watched some of the closer buildings ever so slowly gain a granular shading. Rye was trying to make her feel at home. She smiled, completely forgetting all her worries for just one moment. “Did you draw a lot when you were alive?”
“I didn’t have a lot of free time.” The blob of Rye wobbled indistinctly. “And paper was expensive.”
She let a few seconds of silence pass before continuing.
“I liked to draw the shape of trees and the clouds in the sky. Later, I learned to draw people. Sam posed a lot for me. It was nice. Mum’s smile was so warmly condescending when I showed her the first work I was truly proud of.”
A streak cut through a skyscraper in the background. The ground grumbled with frustration as some omnipresent power erased the building, and put a rock in its place.
“No offense, but your parents didn’t sound like they listened to your wants and needs.”
The ball of Rye huffed. “They had their own idea of my happiness. And I had mine. And Sam had hers and – argh! Let’s talk about something else. Please. What have you been up to these past few weeks?”
“First off, it’s been about a day since I came in here,” Elia said. “And I’ve been having some problems with every hot girl or guy throwing themselves at me.”
“The curse of being pretty.” Rye-blob nodded. “Any spicy romance talk you’d like to share?”
“No.” The ball of Rye deflated. “I think Karla has a crush on us. I don’t see her that way at all, and I don’t know what to do about it. Buuut, I did manage to help Karla get back at some bullies and make some friends.”
“That’s really sweet of you, Elia.”
“…aaand then she scared them by turning into her not-Karla alter-ego, who is actually just the embodiment of the greater shard of justice. And then we got caught by the Pact’s secret police. So, yeah, we might be in a tiny amount of trouble.”
The drawing in the distance paused for a moment. Spaghetti-Rye slowly opened a single, judgmental eye.
“Look, Rye, I can handle it. What I’ve been meaning to ask is… will I be able to see you again?”
“Awww, you miss me.” The eye crinkled in a smile. “You can check in whenever you like. Just call my name before you go to sleep.”
“I meant in the outside.”
Rye seemed to think about it for a while. Eventually, she shrugged, as if to say Elia should not worry herself. “The shard of dreaming listens, but only in part. This sounds weird, but I need some time to… negotiate? It can’t do whatever it wants in our body, mind, or spirit, but I just can’t seem to force it to listen. Just so you know, no, you can’t help and I will not accept it even if you offer. I am fine. I am just working on being more than fine.”
“Alright,” Elia said, and didn’t say how much of a relief that was. “If you start to hear the evil call of slug-Yolon, don’t hesitate to call me.”
“Hm.”
“And if there’s some nonsense dark-pact business going on, I can help you with that.”
“Sure.”
“And–“
“Oh no~, you’re waking up,” Rye said as the canvas of the world grew fuzzy. “Bye-bye Elia. Nice of you to peek on in.”
Elia was convinced she was being booted out, but that was fine. In the next moment she was awake in a dark room. Cat and Crow were nowhere to be seen. For a brief second, everything was calm.
Then Karla popped into her vision, arms flailing so much she was about to start making helicopter noises.
“Elia! Oh my gods we are in so much trouble!”