Rye did not like the hunger in the bekki’s eyes. It was a leering, intensive gaze. It was a look that treated her like a cut of red meat, savage and reductionist. It was insulting.
She backstepped the initial swing of the bekki’s oversized cleaver. The woman was fast, but despite her wiry muscles she was anything but graceful. Every swing of her weapon was made with the entirety of her strength. One swing after the other she missed, and cut straight through a tree, then a boulder, then a stone sarcophagus. The undead trapped inside gurgled in surprise as it too was cleaved in two.
You have gained: Soul x31
But she was being so obvious about every move. Rye did not even need her [Threat music] to suddenly spike in tone to warn her of the next incoming hack or slash.
“I see that you can murder her pride,” the Wolf growled. “But I’d rather you start retaliating before that beast of a human gets lucky.”
Rye nodded. She reached for one of the many weapons Elia no doubt had gathered, but only found spoons, forks, and kitchen knives.
Maybe I should have come prepared, she thought. Maybe I’m an arrogant kind of god.
She almost slipped at the thought. Her, Rye, a god? She was not a god, nothing could be further from the truth. And yet, some part wanted to think that line through, to see what lay at the end of it.
In an unusual lull in combat, as the panting bekki retreated to reevaluate whether this was a worthwhile fight, she took a mental step back and distanced herself from the fear of blasphemy.
If she were a god, then what kind of god would she be? She enjoyed learning new things, so she would definitely be affiliated with Uovis, goddess of wisdom. But she was specifically the goddess of umbrous wisdom, of that which was not yet known or should not be known. And Rye was not much of an explorer, she was too indecisive and too afraid.
But fear was a very human emotion. Maybe it would be good not to feel fear.
She ducked under a surprise lunge, and with all her might tackled the bekki to the ground. They wrestled in the mud, their struggle turned into a dirty affair.
Rye accidently grasped a boob and for that, the bekki bit her arm. In a knee jerk reaction, Rye flooded her with all the dream power she was able to harness on her own. The bekkis jaws went slack, but within a second the struggle was on again. The bekki could not bite nor could she strike with her weapon, but Rye also could not cast. Neither of them could gain the decisive advantage, which meant it was just the time to ponder greater things again.
Now, where was she? Right, pondering hubris.
If Rye were affiliated with a god simply by action, then Rokokoko was an obvious second choice. The unsleeping princess was vain and proud of it. Rye was vain too. The moment she stepped outside, she yearned for the clean comfort of Clearwater Temple’s baths. It was not wrong to be vain, but after seeing her past self in a lot of how Karla acted, she thought that maybe, maybe a more practical approach to life was necessary.
So, Rye gave up her left foot, as the bekki grabbed it and broke it with a twist. Rye cried, but she had already wormed around to the woman’s backside. Her arms closed around the bekki’s neck and no matter how bad Rye felt, she did not let go, not as the bekki’s growling turned to mewling and choking.
“H-hungry,“ the bekki grunted. “All… mine…”
She raised a hand and only then did Rye notice the bulbous ring on her hand. With a quick flick, the bekki made the fake green gemstone pop open. A small, tar-black worm oozed its way out.
Rye paused, already straining against her desire to not feel fear. Elia and her had encountered something similar, back in Glenrock with the tar knights. The worm then had only to touch their nose before twisting the flesh into something wicked and alive.
The worm landed with a plop, right in the bekki’s mouth. In seconds her skin turned wet and hot. She was sweating an entire bodies’ worth of fluid in a second, but it did not stop. The woman convulsed and to Rye’s horror, the throat beneath her hands bulged with muscle.
Stay calm. Stay cool. She should run out of air any minute now.
A hot breath ran up her throat. Rye looked down, and noted that the space in between the woman’s ribs had opened up. In the spots in between, eighteen pairs of holes were growing like black cavities on ivory. They had tongues. They were breathing.
One of them licked her and Rye decided enough was enough. She took a kitchen knife and screamed as she repeatedly stabbed it into the mutant bekki’s everything. She tried to flood her opponent with the power of her greater shard, but her control was empty and it was like trying to squeeze a bar of wet soap.
“Zippo!” she yelled. “I need more dream-juice.”
The little slugfly appeared in her mind, tittering and tooting at her little predicament. Oh, was she in a little pickle? Was there a problem? Did she not like hugging strong, large and scantily clad women?
“Zippo!”
She knew what she had to do, oh yes she knew. Friendship always went both ways. For all the time she had spent crafting her own dream, she had spent oh so little managing those of others. Rye did not have enough credit. And asking a greater power to go against its purpose, like all things, had a price.
“One hundred dreams!” Rye offered.
Well, it was a start.
Ten thousand.
“One thousand.”
Five.
“Three!” Skin tore. Bones lengthened. With slow, staggering steps, the bekki stood up with Rye now awkwardly grug-backing off her. “F-fine. I’ll personally manage and sort five thousand dreams.”
Power filled her hands and flowed into the mutant beast. The world shuddered as its snarls grew quieter and quieter. With a groan, it toppled over. Rye gently lifted her arms from under it, but there was no danger of waking it. The mutant bekki was snoring in a deep, comforting sleep.
The Wolf looked unimpressed, as always. “You should have used your conjuration.”
“She was too close. And I was working through some issues,” Rye said. “I am now all settled.”
She took a swig from her plas-tick bottle and immediately felt refreshed. Hah, god’s disease. Nothing so base could take her down. Look at all the introspection Rye had gone through. And all it took was a battle for life and death to start it off. Cesare would have no choice but to retract his words.
“Then finish that thing off and be done with it.”
Rye paused, staring down at the peacefully sleeping bekki. She looked like an overly muscled bipedal tiger now, with hand-length fangs and mouths on her back. In spite of the horror she had become, her sleep looked so peaceful.
When she started pawing the air, Rye turned away. She could not do it.
“You’re leaving her?” the Wolf asked, rightfully incensed. “She’ll eat whoever decides to come around next. Her appetite has grown thanks to you. This is more than negligent.”
“I’m getting your arm already,” she said as she fished it out of the cooking pot. “You can grump later.”
“This is unacceptable.”
Rye whirled around to face him. “Is it? Am I really the monster for not wanting to kill people? I practically forced that corrupting worm down her throat. I am taking responsibility, and for that you will show me leniency.”
The Wolf refused to answer.
“Where is the rest of your body?” she asked, looking around for it. “Don’t tell me I have to find every piece on my own.”
“The bodies of my kind are valuable to some. This is part of why you are here. See it as an exercise in building character.”
“But I’ve already built so much!” Rye groaned. This was going to take a while.
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Rye stomped through the graveyard sinking into the swamp with her head on a swivel. With the Wolf’s guidance, it did not take long to find his left leg. It was lodged in a hole in the ground. When Rye went to pull it out, an eel-like fish popped out of a nearby hole and bit her.
That eel was now thoroughly dead.
You have been poisoned
“I hate this place.” Rye grumbled as she took a swig of her quickly dwindling supply of bowl water. “Where to next?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“The tick fields,” he said. “I do hope you packed red beetles to resist blood loss.”
No, Rye had not. She strode out into the field anyways, relying on the small amount of leftover power she did have over the greater shard. With it, she knocked out any of the head-sized fleas that jumped at her from out of the long grass.
But the more she used it, the more the power became intangible, and slippery. It was the imbalance, Rye knew. She would have to serve the shard’s whims if she were to get into its good graces again.
They found a leg in the fields, and his head inside a nest when Rye climbed a large, knotted oak after the fleas called for backup.
“You are truly a paragon of divinity,” the Wolf said as she squished a bug in the sea of red below her with one casually conjured bolt after the other.
“Shush!” A flea jumped at her leg, finding purchase on her sabatons. “Go away you stinking bug! Ow! Stop biting me! Gaaah, I hate bugs!”
It was to her great dismay when the giant fleas started flying, and to her great pleasure that it was neither under their own power, nor voluntary. An over-armored berserker had come and was squashing all the filthy little things under their great and mighty boots.
“Karla!” Rye called. “Up here.”
Rye carefully descended from the tree, checking the area for any survivors before brushing her pants off.
Pants. Ugh. So constraining. I will never get what Elia sees in them.
Karla meanwhile was looking at her with an odd stare that basically screamed that she was losing respect for her by the second.
“What? Do I have something in my hair?” Rye asked, turning this way and that.
“No, it is alright.” Karla said and sighed faintly. “Do you know what this place is? I think it is some sort of graveyard for royalty.”
“Don’t be silly.” Rye scoffed. “This is the empire. There are no kings, nor queens, or emp…”
She squinted at an inscription on one of the sarcophagi.
“High emperor Clodwig of the eternal empire, died in the year 884 to a pulmonary rot.”
“See?” Karla said, “As a princess, I know my insignias, and sigils, and other bib-bobs.”
Rye looked to the right and the left. The sarcophagi were arranged in a linear order by time of death. Curious, she stalked past the final resting places of Julians and Augusti, of Merowing and Maillards, of Karls and Georges of which there were far too many.
Finally, she stopped at a cluster of stone coffins, with one name ringing all too familiar.
“Pim Sai-ren the third of the eternal empire, died in the year 771 to an assassin's blade laced with gargoyle poison.”
She balled up her apprehensions about grave robbing and threw them away. The sarcophagus lid was closed. And inside of it was a bekki dreg, desiccated like so many others. So, even a bekki could become emperor. It must not have been a very serious office then. He was not Pim, or maybe the Pim she knew was not who he claimed to be.
Interesting.
Suddenly, a scream echoed throughout the graveyard.
“That was not a girlish scream,” Karla said. “Which rules Cesare out. Zane is in danger.”
They rushed down winding pathways with upturned cobbles and sarcophagi that were sinking into the muck. They found him in exactly that muck standing all the way up to his waist as he held what looked like the Wolf’s torso over his head. The torso was attracting every insect in the entire swamp, and they in turn were attracting everything that fed on insects.
“Finally! Don’t just stand around, help me!” he called pitifully, choking on an errant fly. “Fuck! Argh, I shouldn’t have listened to you, coming here was a mistake!”
A frog that was eying a juicy fly jumped on to his head. Its fellows stared at it, the tallest frog in the room.
Rye giggled, and when she realized that she was, let out a loud laugh.
“Well, if you want me to play nice, you ought to get used to us shard bearers bossing you around a bit.”
Karla, picking up on the implication, snippily raised her chin. “Y-yeah. Or we’ll leave you to the frogs.”
The frogs would like that.
“Get me out.” He sunk another inch. “Please!”
Rye finally stopped her giggling for long enough to lift him out with a conjured hand. The strain was quite large, but with a chunk of her reservoir set against the task she yoinked him out with a squelch.
To his credit, he hadn’t let go of the Wolf’s torso. “Aw, for me? How kind of you.”
Something about the childish indignance in his eyes made Rye want to pick on him like some of her younger brothers.
He did not thank her or look her in the eye. Rye just grinned as he handed her the severed torso as if it was a valentine’s day present and then took his spot behind the both of them.
Rye clapped her hands. “Alright. Now, all we need is his right arm. That can’t be too difficult to find, can it?”
----------------------------------------
They did not find the arm. Even after meeting up with Cesare, and searching the entire graveyard from front to back, it was as if it had been swallowed by the earth. It likely was, considering the boggy nature of the ground all around.
“Can we revive him already?” Zane asked, drinking some water to heal a broken arm. “And please tell me it will be worth it. If this results in some oversized dreg, I will be very disappointed.”
Rye looked at the Wolf. He sighed.
“I can find my remaining arm on my own, once I have fully taken to my body. The process will take some time. I would rather be in a safer place than this swamp.”
She nodded. “Alright, we’re carrying the parts back to Crossroad Temple.”
Zane groaned, but affixed the body parts like everyone else.
The walk bag through the bog was a slog. They found two water-logged rafts, but decided to return on foot through the shallower parts instead of entrusting their fate to them. The many undead critters of the swamp soon slithered around their ankles once again. Rye could not force them into a dream like before. She was drained on a deep, existential level and it made the sludge sloshing in her boots feel all the more raw and visceral, as if it was filled with tiny bekki stabbing her with tiny knives.
This smell is never washing out.
But at long last, they reached the road to Loften, climbed along the precipitous path, and came into view of the domed temple atop the world’s end.
“The air should be thinner than it is up here,” Zane commented, peering over the edge where the towering ground stretched down into distant mountain peaks. “Do you think there’s anything down there? Assuming you survive the fall.”
“No one knows but dragons,” said Cesare. “What do you expect to find there?”
“I dunno. Something different. This whole world, I’ve only realized now, it’s… it feels cold. Stale. Like someone cooked a ragout and left it out in the open for a day.”
“And parts of it have started to rot.” Cesare nodded wisely. “A good metaphor.”
“Thanks?” Zane looked at him weirdly. “I just think it’s weird that some of the mountain tops are green.”
“Boys,” Rye called. “Let’s just… arrive first before we start philosophizing.”
They walked the last stretch without any further interruptions. The attendant greeted them with the same even voice that she always did. Rye sighed, content that this little adventure was over. Only one thing remained to give it a neat little bow-tie.
Soul count: 29,914
Just barely enough, she thought and approached the attendant. “Twenty-eight thousand into my spirit, please.”
The souls flowed all around her as someone in the back had a coughing fit.
[Mind/Spirit] Soul of Yolon the Lunatic [Rare]
Yolon was a great mind who studied the moon and found a fell secret within it. After surviving the Passing Knight sent from up high to claim his life, he renounced the authority of the gods and declared himself the emissary of the moon.
28,000/28,000 Massive increase to channel, moderate reduction to Subtlety
11,000/11,000 Great increase to Reservoir
7,000/??? Moderate increase to Flow
5,600/??? Minor increase to Processing and Conviction
There it was, that feeling of success and accomplishment, of risk that was worth the reward. Here there was no gambling and uncertainty, just an offer, and a price. She tugged at a strand of stellar influences and they flowed with such ease it almost made all her efforts before laughable. She conjured down a prism and marveled at the smooth surface. With a movement of her hand, one side became round while the other bristled with spikes.
Asymmetry get! Whoop-whoop!
Rye breathed in, conjuring first two of them, then four, reaching eight before she felt the impending strain that came before a miscast. Casting the calm sign for so many conjured blips was almost harder than calling them in the first place.
Just like the dream. I can make anything and be whoever I want.
Rye giggled. She twisted one strand into a small geometrically abstract horse, then made the horse trot happily in place.
“Earth to Rye!” Zane waved an arm in front of her face. Her horse turned into a mist that puffed into the ether. “Are we putting this man together or not?”
“At least one mortal does not consistently forget that I exist.” The Wolf said.
Karla and Cesare had already arranged the Wolf’s limbs correctly. They were large and wicked and just as mean-looking as the man in the spirit. All that remained was for the Wolf to do… whatever it was that spirits did during times like these.
“Remember your promise. I can ask one thing of you, but since you don’t like being in debt I’ll ask now: protect me, and Elia, from Rhuna, or the Rhuna, whichever you prefer.”
“Forever?” he asked.
“Until three years have passed, or Rhuna is dead.” Three years should be plenty to get a handle on her grailshard and conjuration to the point that she could defend herself. And then, she would send Rhuna to sleep and Elia would stab her through the neck.
Or something.
The Wolf looked at her, intently. “What a small wish. It shall be so.”
An unseen force tugged against Rye’s heart. It felt so similar to taking an oath, but she didn’t find any oath-script on her body, and instead of a heavy weight, she was feeling lighter instead. Was this what it was like to be on the opposite end, the one receiving the vow? She looked to the Wolf and indeed, she knew that she had some hold over him as if connected by an invisible string.
The Wolf didn’t comment. He turned to his body and stared at it.
“Aren’t you going to mock me one last time?” Rye asked.
“You are small,” he said like an insult. “You should work on that.”
“Wha–”
His spirit disappeared into his body. It shivered, dismembered limbs and head nestling into their sockets with clicks and wet squelches. Karla looked on with fascination.
“You know, I’ve never seen someone recover from so much decapitation before,” she said.
“People tend not to.” Cesare looked like he was ready to puke. “But I suppose he isn’t undead either.”
“Are we supposed to recite some sort of chant for him to awaken?” Zane asked.
“I have no clue.” Rye idly poked it with her boot. “Well, he did say this was going to take a while. So, I am going to open a portal to the pact and you can all go ahead, get a bath, and get ready for Rhuna to attack while I check up on Elia’s weapon. Is that alright with you all?”
There was a muttered chorus of yes’s. Rye hopped down to the large bowl and held her hand with Mahdi’s tattoo into the water.
The first thing she saw was fire.