Elia reached their tower within a handful of hops. The tower had been constructed in the wake of the pact’s relocation just for them, for Elia, Karla, and Rye. It was the nicest place she had ever lived in, with plush beds and bright windows. Now, the top was missing, and out of its frozen caldera a waterfall of ice had washed down its sides, preserving a moment of devastation in clear off-blue.
And yet, Elia’s first thought wasn’t that her entire home seemed to be missing.
Rye. That ice is coming from her room. She’s in there, I know she is.
With barely a second to doubt herself she flexed her legs, propelling her body, armor, and all up and up. The wall was slippery, and there was an overhang where the ice had swelled out over the tower’s top. She didn’t find any hold and slid off, hitting the ground with a painful thump.
The others arrived moments later.
“Woah, that’s a lotta ice,” Erik said.
“Feels much bigger from up close.” Nathan rapped the ice with his knuckles, eliciting a ting. “Hard too. Hey, didn’t you say this was–”
“My home.” Karla scarcely looked like she could believe what was happening right in front of her eyes.
Elia slashed the ice but found that she was barely making inch-deep cuts. She noticed someone nearby taking notes and whirled towards Crow, who looked like he was more interested in his report than anything else. “What. The fuck. Happened?”
He looked up at her with the same cool distance all of the thieves guild treated her with these days. “It’s quite clear actually. Someone attacked, your friend lifted the topmost floor of the tower into the sky where it disappeared, and then she flooded the area in ice. She’s still up there, her attackers too.”
She grasped him by his shoulders. “Why haven’t you gotten her out yet!?”
“That is because this ice is hard as rock. Hacking footholds is dangerous, and melting it takes a lot more reservoir than conjuring it. Rye certainly didn’t do half measures with this stunt.” Crow pointed to the door where roughly half a foot of ice was dented inwards. “It’s best to wait for it to thaw naturally. Now, if you’d stop touching me, I could maybe finalize the report and go for a lunch break.”
Elia could barely believe it. Lunch break. She almost wanted to call him a traitor, but he didn’t remember the raid they had done against Rhuna’s moonstriders. There was no sympathy from a friend here, just memories of a past life she might as well have dreamt up.
“I hope you have a terrible nap,” she said, then pointed at the others. “I am going up. Stay here, don’t wander off, and don’t make any trouble for me.”
No distractions. I need to do this.
But no matter what she told herself, that was a thirty-foot climb up slippery ice. The ice was likely from some weird constellation only Rye knew the purpose of. If she had conjured it by any ordinary means, it should have returned beyond the sky by this time.
But if this ice was from above, then it was at least in some regard magical. She pressed a gauntleted hand against it, and felt a trickle in her oddly empty reservoir.
With the other hand, she focused on the sole fulmination she had been able to learn in two years’ time.
Fire blast.
A ball of embers exited her hand, wavering in place before she let it taste air. It burst rather than exploded, covering the ice and her hand in a thick layer of black soot, draining her already near-empty reservoir in an instant. But beneath that layer was a fist-sized hole in the ice. She flexed her hand, felt the slight burns cool at the touch.
Good enough.
With grim resolve, she began her climb, one foothold at a time. The ice was frigid, and the slight drizzle was not helping her either. She could feel it even through her gloves plus tenacity.
Halfway up, she felt her strength flag. Her hand slipped. She was lacking constitution, a problem that rarely presented itself when she could just drink her fatigue away from a plastic bottle. The handholds weren’t perfect either, and the more she tried to enlarge them, the more small imperfections in her magic sent tongues of flame licking at her skin.
Someone below was hollering something, but she didn’t understand it, nor did she listen. If there was one thing the day didn’t need, it was her embarrassing herself in front of Karla’s students.
Right as she was readying to reach for the next handhold-spot, a red arrow thunked into the ice half a foot next to it.
She smiled, even as she used it to propel herself one step further. Something warm was rising inside her heart in spite of all the cold. Not even the deep cracking of the ice as it shifted beneath heat and impacts could deter her.
The final handhold broke away just as she stepped off of it and in through a window.
Rye’s room was warped by the ice, less like it had been washed away by a sea of water and more like the air had chosen to simply stop moving around natural swirls and eddies. Elia only had to follow the music to find her. There in the middle of it all she was still frozen in place, a six foot sword poised to stab her, only inches away from her throat. It was one of those tarry bastards. Where had he even come from?
Doesn’t matter, gotta get her out.
“Rye!” She yelled, thumping against the ice.
Rye’s eyes followed her, the nervous music making way for a string of hopeful notes.
“Can you hear me?”
Her eyes bounced up and down, to the high-note of a nervous violin.
“Alright. Good. Hold on, I need to think.”
Exploding the ice around her was not a good idea, not unless Elia wanted to blow her up as well. But with how thick everything was, she was going to have to do something.
Elia brandished her sword. “I’ll cut you out at the joints. Kasimir can put you together again afterwards.”
Rye’s eyes vigorously bounced left to right.
“What, not a good idea?” [Cutting Cutlery] would only empower her specifically if it hit a joint. “Right, let me power up.”
With one hand she slurped the residual magic from the ice, which she immediately fed into her sword. The blade hummed as it began glowing blue. She raised it high over her head as Rye continued to signal frantically with eyes blinking in morse code.
“What do you mean, ‘no?’ If we wait for the melt, that shit-ass knight will un-thaw right with you.”
Rye rolled her eyes.
“Well, what do you want, then?” She followed her gaze to the right. “My gauntlet?”
Elia focused on turning magic into reservoir, but without immediately using it this time. She watched as the air bubble slowly expanded around Rye until she could move. The ice turned liquid where she walked, re-solidifying behind her as she dug her way out.
Right, how could she forget, even after everything, their reservoirs were linked. Elia’s had been empty because Rye’s had been, and she had consumed the small amounts gained immediately on her climb.
With a series of cracks, the ice separating them gave away. Something about the way her lips were drawn together told her that Rye was not as happy as she was.
“I–“
“Where were you? Do you know how long I was stuck in the ice? You were supposed to be back hours ago!”
Elia blinked. “I… I guess I shouldn’t have expected a thank you. We were held up. And couldn’t you leave your body anytime with your astral projection?”
“[Dream-haze projection],” Rye corrected. “And no, I could not. My reservoir was empty after encasing them in a thousand tons of ice, a type which I specifically asked to constantly sap reservoir so those tarry fucks couldn’t use a trick to spread their sickly selves all across your home.” She punctuated the last three words with a jab of her ivory arm at Elia’s torso.
Elia blinked some more. “Well, good thing we got to you first then, right? Seriously awesome work by the way; did you manage this much with one of your staves…” she trailed off as she got a closer look at Rye’s left arm. “Your scales. They’ve grown.”
Rye followed her gaze, which wavered for a second before returning to its icy chill. “It happens. You know what else happened? An assassination attempt. They came from underneath my bed. Moments after I woke up. Any other time they would have either killed me, or escaped out into the pact and wreaked untold havoc. Do you know what’s under my bed?”
“I don’t know, normal stuff you wouldn’t want lying around? Wood carvings, old baskets, snacks, unwanted gifts, or…”
Or the staves she didn’t want. The ones I took from every failed ambush.
Elia’s breath hitched. She leaned on one arm against the frozen make-up table she always snuck eyeliner from.
It’s my fault. I didn’t check for residue.
She sank further. The tar twisted whatever it touched, spread until it could form a portal. Bowl water didn’t revert the changes either.
I almost killed Rye.
Two hands gently clasped her cheeks turned her to look up at Rye’s gemstone blue eyes. They both looked like they were close to tears.
“Your room, it’s… I couldn’t think of anything else in the moment. It’s gone. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
Elia blinked away a wash of emotion. “Yeah, yeah… I know. Not your fault.”
“But it–”
“It is not your fault,” Elia insisted.
Negligence, ignorance, forgetfulness. I should have been better. I should BE better. Fuck. FUCK!
Elia slammed the knight encased in ice, only hurting her scorched hand further. She felt a gentle hand rest on her shoulder.
“Come on. It is time to leave.”
Elia let herself be led off the tower. They jumped, the overflowing ice below turning jello-like for a split second before re-hardening as a deceptively soft-looking bulge. Rye always did have a new trick every time she emerged from her seclusion inside her dream. There really was no better teacher for conjuration than her, but now was the poorest of times to mention that whole thing.
Especially since Karla rammed into her, sobbing.
“I-is it really gone?” she asked.
Elia breathed in once, calming herself. “Everything above Rye’s room is. I’m sorry.”
Her girlfriend clenched her even harder. “My mangas. My-my armors. My everything!”
She levied a dark glare at Rye and when she spoke, it was in the voice of Justice. “She took our everything. She gave it away. A thousand nights of pain. A thousand days of suffering!”
Her emotions were fair and valid, but realistically there was nothing Rye could have done. She was a genius when it came to conjuration, but even she couldn’t conjure so much magical ice out of nothing. All things had a price, but who was she to foist the cost onto others as well?
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Did Rye have to do that? What if she did it out of envy of our happiness, out of spite?
One look was all she needed to know that Rye felt at least as bad as she did about this whole situation. There was hesitation and doubt tugging at the edge of her lips. Elia looked away. She had the wrong culprit here. There was always one, big solution to these problems.
“Who’s the leader of the tar knights?”
“That would be Avon, witness of holy tar. He disappeared after making a truce with the legion.” Rye and Elia made eye contact. In that moment Elia knew that Rye knew. It was because they were still bits and pieces of each other stuck together. Their shared reservoir was one expression of that. Even if they were worlds apart, there would be that one connection between them. “Elia, before you say what I think you’re about to say–“
“I’m going to kill him.” She felt for the shard-knife resting in a hidden pocket inside her gambeson. This was the right thing to do. The world would be safe one day if she just kept on removing threats one after the other.
“Listen!” Rye grabbed her hand with her left. It was sleek, and cold, and yet if she pulled away she would cut herself on the scales that bristled sharply in turn with strong emotions. “This is not an existential threat. This was a mistake. A simple, stupid mistake that thankfully didn’t turn for the worse.”
“It wouldn’t have happened at all if not for him. If not for me.” Elia closed her eyes, swallowing the rising fury inside her. “I can fix this.”
“How are you going to do that? Throw yourself head-first at this maniac who can corrupt not just your body, but your spirit? Are you going to take Karla down with you, maybe a few other people while you’re at it? You can’t pretend that you’re alone against the world anymore. You have a future. You have a place to be.”
Rye was right, but it was not supposed to be a place only for her. She wanted it to be a place where she could explore forgotten crypts with Karla, go fishing with Brod, or watch Quibbles laze away in murky ponds. A place where she could listen to Zane’s mistrustful nagging, where Rye could pursue art and magic at her leisure. Where every bodily ailment could be fixed by Kasimir’s backup bodies, where nobody who needed food or water would be denied, and where her friends could lie lazily in sun-tanned grass all day long.
It was a place for everyone.
But there was no direct sunlight left. Zane was a bird-man-creature and no matter how often Rye said it was fine, the torturously slow healing of her right arm and the mutation of her left left nights of agony. Elia knew; it was hard to miss when they lived in the same building. She had promised to fix it, like she promised to fix every other problem. But here she was, running in circles again and again.
Over the years she had begun to believe in Karla’s idealistic ideas. She wanted it to be true that every monster she slew contributed to the betterment of the world, even just by a percentage of a percent, because she was good at it and it was fun. But if every problem could be solved with a fist to the face, well, she wouldn’t be here.
The rage had left Elia, or rather it had sunk to a deeper part of herself. Meeting Rye’s eyes, she breathed out evenly and answered the unsaid question.
“I won’t go after him. Promise. And before you ask anything, I’m fine.” She put her other arm around Karla, gently stroking her hair. “Does your arm still hurt?”
Rye rolled her shoulders, shrugging ineffectually. “I’ll figure something out. Either that or I’ll turn into a lizard.”
“Or a dragon.”
Rye laughed, and shook her head. That was the first time she seemed to notice the assorted gaggle of Karla’s and Elia’s students. They all wore expressions varied from impressed to sad to unbothered. “Elia, not again.”
“What?”
“Why do you keep on picking up strays?”
“It was one time! And it was a cat with rainbow scales. Who wouldn’t want a cat with rainbow scales?”
“Because it breathed fire, and had the greater shard of meowing,” Karla said in between sniffles. “Sorry, but we all knew it was a bad idea. I just went along with it because I thought it would make you happy.”
“It did, until he ran away. I miss mister Blognarth Junior the Third.” Elia sighed. “Alright, I think it’s time we all got a hot bath. These are Karla’s students, by the way. In lieu of any better loot, we found them.”
Hannah scrunched her nose, but didn’t say anything further. Together, they walked towards the baths, after telling Crow that Rye’s room ought to be thoroughly scorched to destroy any and all remnants of the living tar.
Elia didn’t fail to notice how Erik was slowly making his way to her side.
“What were you looking for, in the swamp?” he asked.
“Souls. Bone shards. I’ve almost got enough to roll an epic boon, or well, a decent chance at one. Gods are known to screw me over.”
“Why do they call you ‘the unbidden’?”
Elia shrugged. “I think they find my existence insulting.”
He looked her up and down. “Heh. Figures.”
“Prick.”
“Cunt.”
Elia shot him a slack-jawed stare. “Nobody ever hits me back like that.”
“Maybe they should. Healthy competition and all that. Mark my words, when we get our souls and boons together, I want a rematch and you won’t stand a chance.”
“As if.” She shook her head. The more she thought about it, the more it appealed to her. If he offered himself as a dummy for her to vent her anger on, who was she to say no? Maybe after a decade or two of beatdowns he would be a rival who had a chance to be her match. “Alright, I’ll be honest. We were in the swamp ‘cause we were looking for big baddies to bash.”
“Like boss-monsters?”
“Like boss monsters. They are hard to beat, but usually drop a whole heap of goodies. What we’re after is a shard of the grail of ages.”
“And why is that? They give you some cool buffs?”
“The bigger ones do, but we weren’t looking for those. I have a knife made of one but, well, all it does is cut spirits instead of melding into them. If it were normal, it would just help shield against the influence of the curse of undeath. Some say that they are so powerful, they can even turn a dreg back into a normal undead.”
“Ah, so… basically, the small ones are revive potions.”
Elia stared at him for a long moment. If he was trying to tell a joke, then it was a remarkably poor one. But by his look, he was completely serious: this world was like a game to him.
“Something like that,” she said, then settled for a lower, more serious tone. “There’s a person I want to get back. Someone who meant a lot to me. Someone… I didn’t part on good terms with.”
“And these grail shards, do they look like a piece of pottery stuck inside a boss’s head?”
“Yeah, but how do you–”
He reached into his pocket and showed off what looked like just an ordinary piece of pottery. Gingerly, Elia touched it, and [Psychometry] bloomed with a saga of history stored within the object’s spirit.
Yewen’s minor grailshard
Stab yourself to imbue its power within you, increasing your number of boon slots by one and curtailing the influence of undeath from one of your characteristics. Wards against further reductions for that characteristic.
After being gifted the ball of polished ice holding his memories, he left Crossroad temple on the search for a path deep into the mountain where his mentor resided. Yet before he could reach the city of Tartazon, he fell to a twisting madness born from his age, from undeath, and from the dangers that lurk below. When enough shards are gathered, the world coalesces in your palm.
“That’s it. That is it.” Elia practically squeezed the life out of his shoulders. “I will pay you any price for that.”
Erik, who had been looking more nervous than ever, smiled.
“Anything?” He tapped his chin with a cheeky smirk. “Pay us your bounty, exactly on the soul.”
That was a lot of souls. He knew how to get back at her alright. She could respect him for that. But he was vastly underestimating her.
Elia pulled a storm of souls out of mouth. So thick was the collection that one could barely see past their hazy stream, and hear them, a thousand whispers of past lives passing from one hand into the other. He was expecting her to at least blink, he must have been, but surprise soon made way for greed running calculations behind his eyes.
Before he could ask for more, Elia shoved them roughly down his gullet.
You have given: Soul x167,000
Soul count: x134,000
The boy stood there in wide-eyed shock, an ecstasy running across his face as the potential for power settled inside him. She didn’t care if he shared them or not. In this one moment, only one thing mattered.
“Give.”
He dropped the shard in her hands, regaining just enough poise to ready a snarky remark.
“Hey Rye, Karla, we’re going to Crossroad,” Elia said as she turned away, ignoring him completely. “And you guys… heck, you’re invited even if you don’t want to tag along. Today, we raise the dead.”
***
Rye slowly plodded along as a whole menagerie of people followed Elia back to Crossroad Temple. It was the kind of walk where people talked casually, exchanged gossip and in-jokes. It was the kind of walk that she was seemingly just there for to observe and meld into the background.
At least Elia listened to me, and is taking the tar seriously, I think. The last thing any of us need is a repeat of the Rhuna.
Just thinking of her name seemed like a bad omen that might summon her. Nobody had yet noticed that she was living inside Rye’s head, and nobody was going to find out anyways. Everything was fine, except for one, tiny issue.
I need to make up with Karla. I traded her home away too without even blinking.
She walked up to the armored girl, who now that she had extricated herself from an excitedly babbling Elia, seemed just that bit more lost. Rye gave a small wave as she noticed her approach. A small change went over her face, and the voice that came from it was not the normal one.
“The traitor shows herself. She deserves nothing but scorn. May bugs crawl into your boots and a centipede slither up your butt at night.”
Her [Threat music] spiked, just a nervous little jig. She hoped that Karla’s other half hadn’t planned an elaborate scheme of retribution just yet. “Hello Justice, hello Karla. I’m… sorry, for exchanging your room for magical ice.”
Karla blinked. “No, don’t listen to Justice, it’s… well, it’s not fine, and I am very angry, but I don’t want to be mad at you.” She sniffled, wiping away a tear. “Elia explained it to me. You had no choice.”
“There always is a choice. But we all know how dangerous an infection of the living tar is.”
“A lesser injustice now to forestall a greater injustice is still a crime.” Karla nodded. “I just never thought the greater good could hurt so much.”
Rye inhaled and with all her willpower, moved her right hand to take Karla’s in hers. “I’ll make up for it. Somehow.”
And that was that. They walked to Crossroad temple in silence, Elia all the while talking about things she had probably told them a thousand times before.
“… and then, she told me I could just remove the pommel if it didn’t suit me. I didn’t know what a pommel was at that point. But when push came to shove, I unscrewed the ‘dangly thing at the bottom’ and hucked it right into the seven-armed corpse-collector’s eye.”
… Elia had never shared that particular story with her before. Rye tried to listen in, but it seemed that Elia had caught a hitch in her flow. She had stopped to lean on a gravestone, legs wobbly like trees in the wind. And of all things, she blinked away tears.
Crying twice in a single day? That can’t be good.
But a second later she smiled and laughed and went on. It was so out of character, but so quick, that for a while Rye thought she must have imagined it.
“We’re here.” Elia’s voice finally shook her out of her thoughts. “Where I buried my mentor.”
“It’s the maze,” the taller one of these new undead commented. “Didn’t you say we shouldn’t go here?”
“Eh, I say a lot of things.”
“She really does,” Rye whispered to Karla.
“I think she likes the sound of her own voice,” the girl commented back with a sniff-giggle. “Not that I’d blame her. Her little rants are always so adorable.”
Elia eyed them suspiciously as they smiled and waved. Eventually she turned to the field of broken swords and bodies, passing the oversized sarcophagus wrapped in a gnarled tree. There was a lot to say about the new blood, as they immediately began checking if the weapons were worth looting. But all Elia had eyes for was the unadorned stone coffin lying to the side. The stone lid was unmoved from where they had last put it. It seemed as if, for all the changes they had gone through, this part of the world always stayed the same, eternal and unchanging.
Elia lifted the lid with her enhanced strength and Rye immediately felt something was wrong. An armored gauntlet shot out for Elia and crushed her throat. As she stumbled back, the rest of the lid glided out of her grasp and slammed to the floor, attracting all eyes to the sarcophagus.
Metal creaked. A thin sheen of ice crept up and over the rim, where the scattered dried flowers stuck to and frosted over.
Karla was over there immediately, pressing a plas-tick bottle into a coughing Elia’s face.
The Old Maiden did not care about her plight as she rose, fully armed. In hindsight, they really shouldn’t have buried her with her sword. Rye called a dozen heavily modified balls of ice and blasted her all at once with a sticky, cloying kind of substance.
But the ice sloughed off her armor, which seemed to glow as it took the strength in for itself.
“Hold her down!” Rye called.
To her entire surprise, Karla’s students were quick on the uptake. The tall one and the armored one piled down on The Old Maiden, roughly shoving her back into her grave. They should count themselves lucky that she was still moving sluggishly after being roughly woken up.
“Fuck – don’t hurt her!” Elia’s raspy plea was put against the reality of the feral dreg pushing and thrashing at everyone around her.
“Then – OW – get over here and do the thing!” The armored one swore again as he clutched a hand missing a finger. The Old Maiden had bitten it off, which was entirely un-maiden-like behavior. Elia arrived shortly before Rye chose to forgo magic and add her mechanical body’s strength to the equation. “Fuck, this had better be worth it.”
“Don’t be a baby, fingers grow back,” Elia muttered as with their combined might, they just managed to hold her down. She still struggled as Elia reeled back and jammed the shard right through her visor slit. There were perhaps more graceful ways to administer a shard, but at the moment Rye didn’t see another way either. Shoving it through the eye socket right down to the brain seemed the best way to increase the chance that it was bound to the mind, and not the body, spirit, or other senses.
Then again, they didn’t know exactly how this worked for those undead turned mindless dregs, and they sure didn’t have enough shards to start widespread tests. In the worst case the shard could bind to The Old Maiden’s body, or her spirit, giving her either more strength or conjuration ability to the point that they had to put her down violently.
But neither of the two happened as their patient’s body shook in a fit. Slowly, she seemed to calm down. Rye peered at the metallic shell of this person that had meant so much to Elia. She was tall, and her limbs lithe in a way that belied her strength. Her legs were a bit crooked, and there were two holes cut out of her helmet, where warpicks or something else had likely penetrated. She could see how in another life, she radiated a kind of controlled ease and reassuring comfort.
All her movement had ceased. There was nothing to do now but stare and wait.
Sense or Mind? Which is it, come on, which is it?
A groan came from her throat, not empty like the husks of man, but full, living, and almost sultry. Her helmet rattled quietly as she leaned up, her featureless helmet turning back and forth between the assembled people. It seemed to settle on Rye, on Elia, jumping between them in slow, plodding confusion.
The violence was over, and Elia quickly shooed away her proteges. Her eyes zipped unsteadily from here to there and her hands were trembling. Rye had never seen her so nervous before.
“Hey, Maiden… you alive?” she asked in a careful voice.
The Maiden’s gaze finally settled on Elia.
“Bean?” The Maiden asked.
Elia froze. And in that moment, Rye knew that whatever was between them, between Elia and Rye, it was all about to change.