Bean.
That single word echoed in Rye’s mind as the Old Maiden raised a gauntleted hand. It couldn’t be. Nobody called her by that name anymore. Only one person ever did, and she was long gone. Or so she thought.
The Maiden was very alive and lucid, which meant their idea had worked. Slowly, with shaky resolve, she pointed at Elia.
“Rye?” she asked, even though she should not have known the name.
Then, she pointed a finger at Rye. Her scale-arm bristled.
“… also Rye?” She leaned back, groaning. “I’m having that dream again, aren’t I? Gods, why does my head hurt so much? Water. Does anybody have water?”
Rye fumbled for her pack, realized that she forgot it at home where it was encased in ice. Elia still had her raiding supplies with her. She was already offering a bottle to The Maiden, and the moment her visor flapped up Rye’s heart did a double-skip.
It was her. It was Sam. The contours of her face were still as she remembered, if slightly aged. The shape of her lips, the dusty-black color of her hair…
With a gasp, she separated from the empty bottle. “Thank Ruthe, that felt good. How does cerulean water get out of the bowls?”
“It’s plas-tick,” Rye found herself answering. “Outsiders brought it with them.”
“Ah. Of course. Outsiders were always the oddest of the bunch.” A hand of leather and metal slowly drifted up to caress Elia’s face, before stopping short. “You feel so warm…”
With a sudden start, The Maiden sat up straight in her sarcophagus. “This isn’t a dream.”
“No,” Elia said, rubbing her cheek in confusion. “Say, Maiden, do you remember me?”
The Maiden’s head snapped to Elia with the rustle of metal. “... you’re not Rye. You don’t talk like her, you don’t move like her. But you have her body.”
The silence stretched, a tension settling in the air. Rye watched the Maiden’s hand hover above her backup dagger. That was a bad tell. Rye knew all of them, and she knew that when she arrived at the obvious conclusion given her lack of information, what would follow was an immediate move to solve the problem at hand. If she had any doubts on what to say, they were gone now.
“Sammy, I’m ok,” Rye said, waving a white-scaled arm, “over here.”
Her head snapped towards her again. Sharp, piercing eyes scoured her mechanical frame, from the face carved from a soft stone down to the idealized shapes and contours of her body. When their eyes met again, Sam’s were blinking away tears, and Rye would have been too if her body had been able.
“It’s you? It really is?”
Rye nodded.
“Why… are you alright? You’re arm… you’re made of rock and metal and...” She shot a side-glance at Elia, who was watching with an overall disimpassioned face.
“It’s a long story,” Rye said, wiping her eyes again and again. “Can we talk somewhere less grave-y?”
“Yes. Let’s.”
They helped her out of the grave and Rye couldn’t stop herself any longer. She hugged Sam and though the armor was cold and hard, it felt as good as nothing ever had before. Finally, her prayers had been answered. Finally, she had found a little piece of home again.
***
Crossroad temple was a humble place only by Loften standards. It's great main hall would have once housed over a hundred with ease. And yet with only nine people, it was starting to feel cramped.
They all sat in small groups around the fire Brod had finished grilling his fish over. He didn’t need prompting from the students’ greedy eyes; he already had a dozen skewers spiced and ready. The drinks came courtesy of Elia, though the only thing Mahdi had in stock was a brownish brew from a bean called chocolate. It was in equal parts sweet and bitter.
“I don’t think this pairs well with the fish,” Rye commented.
“I think you need to open your eyes to new culinary experiences,” Elia shot back. “Take an example from… from her.”
Rye turned to where Sam was washing down her fifth stick of grilled fish with an entire cup’s worth of chocolate brew. She only stopped for moments to breathe; it seemed being dead for a while really gave her an appetite. Rye smirked as she finally stopped, a chocolate mustache hanging above her lips.
“What?” Sam asked.
“Nothing,” Rye grinned harder. “I’m just happy to see you.”
“I’m… happy too.” Something about the way she had said it made Sam freeze again.
“I’m not happy. I am a known, frequent grump.” Elia said, arriving with another fresh batch of drinks. Sam went to grab one, but Elia pulled it just out of reach. “Ah, one question for one drink. First, why did you lie to me about your name, misses Old Maiden?”
Sam pursed her lips, seemingly measuring her response against a warm drink. “I did not lie to you. As a servant of the decibate – the ruling council who speaks the will of the gods – that is my title. When I came to the maze and after so much time found you… well, I was almost a dreg. I didn’t know my name. It only took one death to push me over, to make me wander about in the fog for so, so long. You know how quick those deaths come in the maze.” She adjusted the cloak Rye had brought her, wrapping it around herself like a blanket. “It's terrifying, not knowing who you are. I know now, I think, bar the normal kind of forgetfulness.”
“And you’re a knight!” Rye clapped her hands together. “That was always your dream, and you did it! Ooh, you have to tell me how.”
There it was again, that uncomfortableness, that sign Sam knew something she did not. “I will, with due time.”
Elia plonked herself opposite of Rye. “Maybe answer me this then: how the fuck did you find us?”
“That’s… an easy answer, which requires a lot of harder answers to make any sense.”
“Yeah? Well, we’ve got time here, eternity even. I can wait.”
Sam exhaled “From the beginning then.”
***
– Loften great Cathedral, ca. 586 –
Sam stared at the stone coffin that would one day be her final resting place. As a once-servant, now-citizen of the eternal empire, she could never have imagined that anyone would have gone to so much effort for her. It was supposed to be an honor, to be interred underneath the greatest effigy of the gods humanity had ever crafted. Perhaps when the day came, her soul would appreciate the detailed engravings, and the small gemstone set at chest height on her lid. That was where the soul ought to rest before going on its journey, she knew.
It’s pretty, but it’s useless for the dead, she thought. They could have carved at least one thing on the inside. I wonder how much this cost?
Quiet footfalls approached. From the weight and cadence picked up via her [Cat ears] boon, she knew that it must be cardinal Oliman, voice of Filia, the gentle watcher.
“Cardinal.” She was already on one knee, kneeling, when he rounded the corner. In being a knight, what often mattered more than righteous thought and action was ritual, protocol, and respect. Especially respect. “What do you require of me?”
He smiled in appreciation. The hard stone was damned uncomfortable to kneel on. Then, with a single gesture he beckoned her to raise. “Does it suit you well, being a knight of the state?”
“It suits me as much as I fit the role of a lowly servant of the divine,” she answered.
“Mmmhh, yes. Servant. I understand that, once upon a time, your former mistress was supposed to be standing here instead of you. A pureborn empire citizen that one, and easy on the eyes.”
“… she passed away, tragically.”
“My condolences. But let us not dwell on the past, nor on your heritage. You ought to rejoice, because the gods have deigned for you to rise one step further, to the highest rank.” He smiled, lips red like weeping cherries. “It is decided. You will be the new Maiden, a high knight under my wing.”
She found it hard to smile. It was good news, better than what she had been expecting, and yet she felt that any reaction she could give would be unnatural. After all, people cried of joy when they finally fulfilled their dreams, or laughed and kissed their loved ones. Sam had achieved hers by the tender age of 33, a new record for such a high rank. She was not laughing.
The Cardinal seemed to hear her unspoken worries. “There is more, of course. From the hospital ward. We inspected the growth you mentioned was on your neck. It’s the sign. You have the disease of the undead, I’m afraid.”
Sam breathed out. So much for her dream then. Undead were hunted after all, chased until they met their end in the forest or were ground to dust. They were a herald of bad times coming, and as was anyone’s sport, people enjoyed blaming the messenger more than the message.
But even as an undead, Sam was a knight, a high knight of Loften. What would Julius say if he caught her not facing her fate with open eyes?
She sorted herself out within less than a couple breaths. “I’m surprised you didn’t arrive with an escort then. Are you not afraid I might run? Or that I might slay your holiness for your blessed soul?”
He shook his head, a knowing smile on his lips. “I gave you these two revelations in the necessary order, and I come bearing a third. You will not leave, nor will you be persecuted. Your affliction is to be hidden.”
“Hidden? What?”
He came in closer, and lowered his voice so conspiratorially it was less than a whisper. “The gods have sent us their decree. The maligning of undead, the hunting and burning? It stops tomorrow, and all records of their plight will forever be stricken from history. Now, they have a purpose, but that purpose lies not in the present. When you die, you will be interred here, as is your right, and for the protection of your body. Then, when the gods require your service once more, you will rise to the tone of a brass bell.”
Well, that was a better fate than burning on the pyre at least.
Sam swallowed a clump in her throat. “I obey. But as an undead, can I even die?”
He nodded. “All things die, even those thought immortal. Now, go along, get some sleep. There is a ceremony to prepare for. Remember your oath as much as your calling.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
With that he left, leaving her to digest it all. She looked at the carvings on her soon-to-be bed for eternal undead-rest. A passage in the carvings that she had not yet understood seemed as a stark contrast.
“All paths must end in Loften.”
Perhaps they had to. She only knew that if she found hers in this city, it wouldn’t be the first time that she thought she had died.
***
Everyone was silent as Sam took another cup of warm chocolate. Elia and Karla’s students were huddled close.
“Where are your [Cat ears] now?” they asked.
“I lost them,” Sam said. “I had boons aplenty after they found out I could naturally hold three. It was a complete coincidence, really, and I wasn’t treated too differently after that.”
“You’re 33?” Rye asked. “You look… great, actually. And what about your first boon?”
Sam coughed and slid a ring off of her finger. One of the students gasped as her face aged a hundred years, two coiled horns jutting out the top and to the side. Her legs were still hairy and hooved. That was likely why she walked so oddly, the illusion ring of humanity only being able to bend perception and reality so much.
“I still have it,” she said, the illusion reasserting itself as she slid the ring back on. “I actually came to enjoy it.”
“So, we didn’t manage to swap it?” Rye asked.
“No. The local priest of Arvale was a friend of your parents. He refused us, then tattled, and then, well, events unfolded.”
Rye looked at the floor, sullenly wondering what else had gone wrong between then and now. But she was not going to breach the topic, not while under so many eyes.
Karla’s students however were very interested in questions.
“What’s a high knight?”
“Who’s Julius?”
“What happened then?”
“Then?” Sam thought for a good while. “I don’t remember seeing Cardinal Oliman again. Nor do I remember a day after that. I… I think I was murdered in the night. It was probably poison, or a hidden blade. The gods often gave decrees, but never told us how to follow them. That place was a den of snakes; the pontibate were the voice of the gods, but since the gods were immortal, they had long ignored sudden changes in mortal leadership. The next thing I remembered was…”
***
The shaking of the ground tugged Sam awake. She groaned as light seemed to pierce through her eyelids and strangle her brain. A face was looking back at her, undead as undead could be. He was smiling.
I think I should punch him, she thought. Should I? But I’m undead too; maybe this counts as fratricide. Nope, I should definitely punch him.
She punched him, her swing going wide. An invisible force lifted her out of her sarcophagus, to the general laughter of a whole lot of people who apparently had nothing better to do than raid the Cathedral’s catacombs.
She took a second to look around. The person holding her aloft was some sort of small man-rat-creature, and by his side was an old woman in star-adorned, flowy robes, chewing on a pipe. To her other side side was an assassin, and a giant of a man – likely an actual giant – who was laughing so loudly it was shaking the walls.
“Welcome to the land of the unliving,” the assassin said. The giant howled again. If this kept up, everyone in this room would be deaf.
Wait a second. I died? When, how, why?
There was another quake. A clap of hands caught her attention. The old woman eyed her from under her hat.
“Welcome, miss knight, to the future. If you’ll stop trying to hit my subordinates, then maybe we can get out of before the grave wardens get hold of us.”
“Put me down!” Sam yelled.
“I’ll take that as a maybe.”
She quickly found the ground below her, and just as quickly ran through her options. These people were undead, and graverobbers, which meant she was in her right to enforce the law. She could kick the rat man across the walls, then throttle the mage. The giant wouldn’t attack her if she had a hostage, and while the idea wasn’t very chivalrous, she had never sworn that kind of oath.
That was when she noticed the wall at the end of the crypt bulge inwards, and shatter. A knotted ball of dirty bones crawled out, pouring into the catacombs like fluid.
“Alright, time to go, go, go!” The old woman grabbed her hat and – much faster than she had any right to be – began running for the exit. Sam found herself having difficulties keeping up to her, and when the assassin and even the stubby-legged rat man bolted past her, she knew that whatever was coming for them, it was coming for her first.
The giant, or rather, the giantess tossed her over her shoulders like a bag of potatoes, and chugged right along. The flood of skeletons clattered and clicked behind them as she was carried towards the light. The moment they were outside, she saw the old woman stand next to a younger one, who mumbled a few things, then called out in a booming voice.
“Collapse!”
The cathedral, which had stood for so long, crumbled in on itself in a massive plume of dust.
“Y-you! That was a cathedral, THE cathedral of Loften. Do you have any idea… if there were any people inside there, I swear–“
The invisible force grasped her again.
The old magus walked over on soft boots. “Alright. Second try. I am Xilomaya, and under the voice of Uovis my title was The Magus, high knight of Loften, year 112. This is my assistant Rattigan, from 791, and Misses Watson, an outsider. Those louts over yonder are the Viper of Viln, from year 11, and Lydia the giant, from 1284. You are dead, and as per your fate as an undead, you were awoken in the time of the gods’ greatest need. Congratulations, that time is now.”
“… what year is it?”
“Somewhere in the 1500s. We’re not sure since the sun stopped setting.”
Sam blinked. A thousand years in the future. Cardinal Oliman was dead. Her friends were dead. Julius, her husband, was dead. Everyone she had ever known and loved was gone, leaving her to drift on a raft until she reached a stranger’s shores.
She looked around. She only knew where she was because she had just left the one place she went in and out on a daily basis. The town square in front of it was unrecognizable, from the shape of the houses to the style of the cobbling on the streets. A crooked sign she couldn’t read stood among tumbled stalls.
Once more she felt an all too natural fear start to overwhelm her. But there was no time to be afraid; she had come back for a reason. “The eternal empire is in peril.”
“The quote-unquote eternal empire.” The Viper of Viln guffawed, pointing at her with one of his claw-gauntlets. “You really got an old one here. You sure she hasn’t expired and gone sour?”
Sam ignored him and turned to Xylomaya. “You are a high knight like me. I recognize your title. Where do you need me? Where are the others? What–”
The Magus stopped her with a raised hand. “The situation is complicated. Suffice to say, we will be getting no divine intervention. The gods had a… dispute. From what we gather, souls had been becoming less frequent for a while, and the gods need souls. We are what’s left of those who are supposed to facilitate the continued existence of Loften until the situation can be resolved, and our first order is to rebuild its people entirely.”
“Less souls?” she asked. “And wait, are you insinuating that its people are gone?”
“More like, dead and dregged.” She paused. “Apologies, undead terminology. We don’t know for sure what happened, except that some hundred or so years ago, Worga went out with her great host, taking every immortal soldier with her to fight the eternal war against the forest. They did not return and thus, when the sun stopped in the sky just before dusk, the city and its populace devolved into anarchy. We are left to mop up what’s left. My question is, can I count on your assistance?”
Sam massaged her hand. “The… the sun?”
The assassin sighed. “Oh, this is going to take a long time to explain.”
***
“Despite coming from an unfamiliar age, they called me friend. I didn’t belong, but still they opened their arms to me. And after I had accepted my place and mourned the past, I found a new family among the ruins of my old life.”
Sam sat there in silence. When it was clear that she was not going further on her own, the questions poured like a waterfall.
“[Collapse]? That sounds like a boon I’d want.”
“No, the rat’s telekinesis is leagues cooler.”
“What’s the difference between a male and a female giant?”
“You have… a husband.”
Elia just looked at her gauntlet, lost in deep thought. Eventually, she cut through all the hubbub with a single piercing question.
“What were you doing in the maze?”
Sam’s expression went from reminiscent to tense.
She grasped her chocolate cup tight. “We were trying to revive the empire. We did succeed as well, consolidating people from old times and outsiders too. When a god took interest and deigned to talk to us, we thought ourselves blessed and our purpose to be the wardens at the foot of the mountain confirmed. But we had expanded too quick, took in too many. We wanted to save the world, but there were bound to be dissidents, bound to be those who didn’t believe in our cause.”
“It was war, as so often, that tore us apart. In what was supposed to be our brightest hour, we found that even gods could lie, and they did so with great frequency.”
***
Sam struggled even after completing her ascent to Glenrock Keep with the knife stuck in her heart. Xylomaya was dead, struck down by a bolt of lightning together with Rattigan. As was the Viper, though in perhaps the greatest ironies, it was poison for him. She didn’t know what happened to Lydia. Watson ran away, and that had perhaps been the smartest decision of the night.
Mount Gatheon was supposed to lie quiet as they approached under the banner of the god of travel. It was a banner of peace and reconciliation. Any resistance that popped up could surely have been dealt by them, or by the god himself. But the mountain bristled at the premise of so many little things on its back. And the gods… they knew none could come down from Nos Deindolen, their city above the clouds.
And all it had taken was one. One single figure, wreathed in flame and death and hate.
And vengeance.
How could they have ever deluded themselves into thinking they had a chance?
“Are you certain I can take–“ she clutched her chest where the knife still burned, then looked up at the stone-carved roc. “This one. Will it take me where I need to go?”
Commander Hall looked at her with tired, soot-stained eyes. The dragon that had harried her all the way here was dead now, though she was loath to force the cost onto him, on top of everything else.
“The roc will fly, as is its design. They listen only to true servants of the gods, pure of heart.”
“Up,” Sam said and the marble bird rose under her hips.
“And there you have your answer.”
“And you?” Sam asked. “This sham of a war is done. We lost.”
“Someone did. But perhaps it was not just us.” He looked out to the wide expanse, where the world didn’t just seem to end a handful of kilometers out from the castle walls. “I will do what I have always done. Close the gates, gather my knights, or those still loyal to me. Maybe we’ll leave, burn down that thrice-damned swamp once and for all. Something’s brewing beyond; I can almost smell it.”
“You’re not planning to leave,” Sam said.
“I’m an old dog of war, miss high knight,” he said. In his voice, it was neither mockery nor derision, just an acknowledgement of her burden. He had always admired her kind, so much that the mage invented an entirely new branch of conjuration just to appear like the chivalrous few. “You know what they say about old dogs.”
“Can’t learn new tricks.”
The auromancer laughed. “That too. Let sleeping dogs lie, but let undead ones die. I am sorry that we will likely not see each other again, but I can see that you want to go down doing what you think is right, too. Don’t ever lose those eyes, lass, make sure they ever look forward unclouded.”
He gave the roc a smack and with a jerk it lifted off into the sky.
Sam flew. She flew far and wide, away from the city, away from all her thoughts and fears. When she was too exhausted to sleep, she followed the paths in the maze whizzing by below. When she was too tired to do that she imagined that she had wings herself, free to go wherever she pleased. Only her heart led her way, and the pendant on a metal chain around her neck.
Perhaps tragically, perhaps inevitably, her ride was cut short. A giant arrow – fired from a bow made for the giant soldiers of the gods – struck her ride upside the belly. It tumbled and twirled and when it hit the ground, it shattered into a million pieces.
As did Sam. When she awoke, she knew by the taste of blood and the deformed armor that she had died. Even with the rarest of greater souls, that kind of fall was deadly. But she was undead and for the undead there was no resting from their purpose, no respite. Their existence was an endless dark tunnel without a light at the end, always stumbling forward at the behest of another, sometimes forgetting the way and walking back.
Today she would stumble forward on her own account.
She stood above a grave that had been dug up. Most stone sarcophagi carved to keep the undead inside them first were just stacked like large bricks, but this one had once been buried; a sign of wealth or standing, or perhaps a different time.
Her amulet tugged against her neck. It felt so heavy. It was going to pull her down into hell, where a demon would grind her soul into dust for what she was about to do.
Not yet, she thought. Need to do one more thing.
The stone lid ground to the side with the weight of four men.
She reached into her chest past her broken chestplate and plucked out her heart. She found the shard that had been bothering her, glowing like a white-hot ember. It didn’t approve of her flight, it was against its very nature.
“If there is anybody with the power to listen: Please, let this work.” She took the shard and jammed it straight into the dried undead’s chest. “I never managed to say that I’m sorry. I never managed to thank her for giving me this chance. I have no one, nobody else in the world. Please, I don’t ask for much, just give me this one thing.”
The glow subsided as the shard sank into the undead girl’s body. Nothing much happened; Sam knew the chance of success had always been against her. She had failed, finally and utterly.
With lead in her limbs and a bleeding heart, she staggered off. At least now the weight of responsibility was off her mind. At least now there were no chores, no duties, no desires to appease and supplicate and live and die for a greater cause.
It was freeing, in a way.
She sat down, some steps away from the last thing binding her to this place. And when she took a break, and closed her eyes, she died once more.