In the early morning hours of the following day, Elia was standing at the base of the hill Clearwater Temple was perched on. The four students were also up, against their express wishes and the silent ambivalence of Karla. She had wanted to postpone today’s lesson in favor of seeing if anything could be salvaged from their tower. Elia didn’t know what she wanted, but watching the kittens bitch and moan sounded like a fun way to start the day.
She yawned, then tucked that yawn right back in as she saw the first of them rounding the corner.
“Erik! Look at you; trying to outrun your sleepiness today?”
“You could have been quieter last night,” he shot back with a leery grin. “I could hear your voice all the way downstairs.”
“It’s called high-impact non-sexual cuddling, and it’s a form of art! You try forcing your way around a divine decree during R&R. I’ll have you know, me and Karla were only up stacking jenga-towers and playing uno! We are wholesome!”
He blasted past and Karla patted her arm as Elia grumbled and growled. They weren’t trying to be loud, Clearwater Temple just didn’t have doors. She squinted as Rye and Sam exited the building with a bad case of bed hair. Neither of them seemed particularly hung up about yesterday, with how they were leaning into and poking each other like a couple of giggling drunks.
“Hey Karla. What do you think is going on over there?”
“Over where?” Karla looked over to where she was pointing. “Oh. I think they have been… catching up.”
Elia nodded. They must have a lot to talk about. She could barely keep a puff of anger. That feeling was born from a misunderstanding nobody had known enough to resolve, and as she had already proven yesterday, the student had surpassed the master. Both were content with the status quo. The chapter of Elia and The Old Maiden was done here. Now Rye and Sam could pen their own duet.
Damn, I’m poetic today. Must have been all that high-stakes Jenga.
“Come on, come on, pump those legs!” she yelled at Nathan as he jogged past at a comfortable pace.
“Erik’s just around the corner! I’ll give you a gold star if you can beat him!” Elia looked to Karla, who in turn watched the lanky boy speed up with leaping steps. “He doesn’t know gold isn’t worth anything in Loften.”
“I won’t tell him.” Elia sipped from her mug of hot tea. “Wonder where the other two are.”
“Dunno.” Karla squinted at the corner they should have passed minutes ago. “I do see someone else coming towards, someone we weren’t expecting.”
“Who is it?”
“Cesare.”
Elia groaned. There from around the corner came a pink-skinned man. He had the legs of a goat and the tail of a lizard. His poofy crown of hair was actually a wig of conjured clouds he used to fit in with the rest of the humans. After the battle with Rhuna, he had invested his portion of the loot into a little shopfront, which he developed into the best (surviving) barber in the region.
He had also developed into someone who visited their tower semi-regularly, and always to deliver the same pitch.
“Heya Miss Karla, Miss Elia.”
“Cesare.”
“And who is this?” he asked, nodding towards Sam in the distance. “Part of your new pack of strays?”
“I’ve started a charity.”
“A charity. You? Misses I’d-kill-a-god-for-snacks?”
“I can change.”
“And I can cut hair. Doesn’t mean I do it for no reason.”
They stared at each other.
“Have you considered my offer?”
“I have. We’re not following you to gods know where.”
“It’s a very specific place actually. Just one quick jump away. Considering how you are recently homeless, I can offer you a safe place to stay for a while, even with the city bustling with fire and living tar.”
“And I can guarantee that whatever grand schemes you have schemed up for us scheme-victims won’t be of interest to any of us. This isn’t about us, it’s about what we have, namely two greater shards. And I think I speak for everyone when I say that we are not interested.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Rye doesn’t do adventure anymore. And me and Karla are busy fathering a litter of kittens.”
“Which of us is the father you think?” Karla asked.
“Kittens?”
“I think I’d make a good father,” Karla said.
The conversation fell into a lull as they all gave each other confused glances. Erik came and went another time before Hannah finally rounded the corner. She collapsed onto the ground, heaving, and gulping air like a goldfish on land.
Elia checked her imaginary watch. “Four minutes twenty. Your brother completed a lap in sixty-nine seconds. His first lap was in forty-two.”
“You are so… incredibly hilarious,” the girl panted out.
“I think so too. I also think you could do better. Right Karla?” Karla nodded. “By the way. Where’s Otis?”
“Playing dead halfway on the track.” Hannah gulped down another lungful of air. “You do know that humans are unbeatable in long-distance running? No other mammal can compare, because they don’t have sweat glands and they overheat real easily. She could have died.”
“From running? Huh. I never thought of that.” She turned, only to find Cesare watching it all with a tired expression. “You’re still here? You swung and whiffed; you can leave now.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Not today.” Something in the way he said it raised Elia’s hackles. She took a step back, eying him with one hand near Moonlight. If he tried something here… well, they were in the middle of the pact. He wouldn’t be getting away.
But he didn’t try anything. He just sat down on a toppled marble pillar with a sigh, head hanging so low he could have kissed his knees.
“Oh, hello Cesare!” Rye asked as she and Sam joined their little group. They both were way too happy this early in the morning. “What’s this all about?”
“Just Elia not lending an ear to my usual pitch about saving the world, using your power for good, et cetera.”
“Your previous 279 attempts weren’t very convincing.”
“283.”
“Is the world in danger right now?”
“A little bit.” He shuffled his feet. “A lot, actually. Not every problem got fixed when we… when you slew The Rhuna. Some even got worse. A couple that we weren’t even aware of jumped out of the woodworks.”
“’We’ being your little clandestine group of friends. Frey’s rebels?” Elia raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be honest, that sounds like a political group. And you know how me and politics mix.”
“Explosively, yes.” Cesare sighed. “I was hoping to introduce you sometime. Shardbearers are people of national importance, and what is more, you two don’t just know how to handle yourselves, but have powerful allies.”
At that last part, his eyes came to rest on Elia. Right, he didn’t know that she was also a shardbearer. And to be fair, she was quite powerful. Nobody in the pact could fight her, not one on one. One reason why she kept on going on little daytrips with Karla was that there was nothing left to challenge her.
But the other reason was that she enjoyed the feeling of gaining souls and shards. And so far, there was nothing hinting at her receiving any rewards for following Cesare’s wishes, only responsibilities.
He had always been polite in his advances. Sometimes he even just came by to chat, and he always undercharged them for even the most demanding hairstyles.
And now Rye is giving me that look again.
Elia crossed her arms. “I demand to be bribed.”
“… what kind of bribe?”
“The purple kind. I want an epic bone shard.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Cesare looked a tad uncomfortable. Epic bone shards were incredibly rare. Only the most dangerous of enemies had a chance of dropping them, like Yolon or Rhuna. Barely anyone had enough shards for a full epic boon as a result, and that was the one thing Elia had not managed to achieve in all this time.
“Ok. Ok… I can organize that. Maybe. Will you come with if I promise to do my best?”
“Sure. I’ll even meet your friends and hear them out. What happens after that, well, who knows. But if this is some kind of trap to guilt-trip me or my friends into helping you do whatever, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
“Regret how?”
“I’ll tell everyone that the last time I went to you for a haircut, I got lice.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
They stared each other down.
Finally, Cesare relented. “Alright. I accept.”
Elia grinned, then whirled to where Erik was running laps around his sister, heckling her. “Kitten squad! Gather your gear, we are going on a field trip.”
***
As it turned out, the nearest bowl to the Rebel’s hiding place was still quite a way away. Karla didn’t mind though, even after a quick day of rest she was ready to go adventuring again. Hooray for constitution and tenacity!
“We’re back in the swamp again.” Hannah sighed. “Joy.”
Nathan looked up at the massive stone twin doors set into the side of the mountain range. “Hey, this is the place we came from.”
Cesare clapped his hands. “Alright people. We will have to make a short trek through the Catacombs of Xandria.”
“Is it full of skeletons?” Karla asked. It looked like it ought to be. She had never seen skeletons move before.
Cesare nodded. “That and traps. Mostly traps. Watch your steps, this place is a maze. Oh, and don’t break the pots unless you want to be cursed by a jumbled dozen angry spirits”
Rye and Sam shivered while Karla did a little happy skip. They were going into a lost catacomb, what joy! Graverobbing was a staple of the adventuring genre. She had a whole stack of her favorite books, telling about hidden dangers and secret monsters imprisoned beneath the earth. Or well, she had had those books.
Remembering that tragedy took some wind out of her sails.
The doors ground open, the giant Brod huffing and puffing as he pushed them inwards. They wouldn’t need to worry about any dangers with him and so many others around, and Elia, her love, would also be close enough by to reel in any wayward adventure-seekers.
Unless that adventurer was her, in which case they would both dive into the danger head-first.
An arrow flew past Karla’s head. Elia caught it out of mid-air mere inches away from Erik’s face.
“Damn, this place doesn’t pull its punches,” she said with a grin. “I love it already.”
“Thanks,” Erik muttered, “I hate it.”
“Oh?” She had that grin on her face that signaled either a great idea, or a terrible one. “Heads up kittens, this just turned from a Sunday stroll into hardcore parkour. Since you said you were sick of running in circles, you get to lead the front. Show me what you got!”
The following hours were spent on a casual stroll through age-old catacombs, which were much like Karla had expected them to be in some ways, and not at all in others. The grand chambers and pillars that stretched tens of meters above endless pits were carved from blocks of sandstone, some of them a ruddy brown, others creeping closer towards red. The walls were filled with neatly stacked bones that clattered as they walked past. They were undead as much as Karla or Elia, but lacked the pieces to put themselves together, except on rare occasions.
The trip was interspersed with the panicked screams of her students. Elia was right, they needed to learn some things the hard way and this was just the place to do it. Karla had never seen undead whose bodies were only skeletons before, but her excitement faded after finding out that due to weighing around fifteen kilograms apiece, none of them could create enough force to really harm her.
It was funny though, watching them twist and twirl in comical ways just to make their rusted blade attacks that little bit more dangerous.
“Die, die, die!” Hannah screamed as she tried and failed to bash a skull in with her staff.
“Aaaugh!” In the corner of her eye, Rye saw Erik stagger back, a poison dart from a trap sticking out of his eye. Elia was next to him in a flash, roughly yanking the dart out and then forcing water down his throat until he began choaking. “Gah! How much of that water do you even have?”
“I never carry less than seven bottles around with me, ” she answered, and picked up a limp Otis, “just in case. And you. That dart wouldn’t have gotten around his shield if Erik hadn’t stumbled over your prone ass. Get over your instincts and stop playing dead.”
The opossum girl hissed, but had the good manners to look somewhat embarrassed. Karla meanwhile beamed with pride. She couldn’t wait to get started on the lesson on boons and watch them build their little portfolios. Her students were adorable immature murder machines, and Elia was such a mature big murder machine.
She watched with a restrained smile as Elia home-runned a skeleton’s skull with its own femur.
The violence, the unrestrained power. It made her want to do things to her. Sneak up and rustle her hair, pick her up and smooch her here and there. But the moment she tried to act on anything, that damnable invisible force tugged at her neck like a chain.
Indecent behavior, the rule of princesses rang in her mind.
That always managed to wake Justice up and soon enough, her mind was filled with her ranting too. UNJUST RESTRAINT.
Uncouth contact, un-princess-like thought, it rang back in a monotone voice.
SABOTAGE OF LOVE LIFE AND FREE WILL. PUNISHMENT! PUNISHMENT!!!
It was grail shard against grail shard. There was no winner, nor would there ever be. Not until she found the source of the issue, or a loophole big enough to fit all of their combined being.
“We will get our justice.” Karla whispered. “Be patient.”
With a grumble, Justice went back to sleep. They walked a few more paces, her students gathering more arrows and souls.
You have gained: Soul x9
Not that they were a lot of souls after being split ten ways. They walked some more. So many opportunities for adventure were passing her by. Maybe she should come back here with Elia on her next date?
“Feels a bit like we’re already ascending the mountain, doesn’t it?” Cesare walked up next to her, nervously puffing his wig.
The mountain. When people talked about it like that, they could only mean one. “Aren’t we? We have been going on an incline for a while now.”
“Well, yes,” Cesare started, then bit his lip. “Climbing mount Gatheon is a different beast though.”
“How so?” Karla asked.
“Well, it’s not a normal mountain for one. The gods live at the very top, beyond the sea of clouds covering the summit. There are many paths that lead there, and many more dangers. Those in the past who dared try to reach the top were called ascenders, and those that did successfully were given immortality in exchange.”
“I see.”
“Why do you ask?”
“My mother. She went to climb the mountain and never came back.”
“Oh. My condolences.”
“It’s… well, it’s not fine. I would have liked to see her one more time, just to ask why? Why did you do that? Why leave us, why me, what’s so important that you can only find up there and not down here?”
“I can think of a few things,” Cesare muttered, almost imperceptibly.
“Are your friends somewhere near the base of the mountain? If so, why didn’t we start walking from the pact? It is much closer, we’re practically at the opposite edge of Loften.”
“Ah, well, the catacombs are mysterious and maze-like. I’m leading you through the path that I was taught by those before me, but it still doesn’t make much sense to me.” With a raised hand the group came to a halt. Next, they backtracked until they reached a bend in the tunnels.
Karla pointed at it and then the way they had come with her best goldfish expression. “What, that… that wasn’t there before!”
Cesare shrugged. “The Catacombs are weird, because of this and because distances aren’t what they ought to be. Just… don’t think too much about it. I can guarantee that we won’t exit where you expected us to.”
“That is so weird,” Elia commented from the side.
Karla nodded. “Really weird.”
Some time later during their trek, Elia saw something loot-worthy in the distance and immediately ran off, derailing their entire expedition. Karla would have gone after, but Elia had the annoying habit of [Frog leap]ing off to places nobody else could follow.
And so they waited. And waited. And waited.
“Hey Cesare?” Karla asked after checking the hole Elia had descended down into for the seventh time. “Who are Frey’s Rebels? What do you do and why haven’t you joined the pact?”
“That’s a lotta questions.” Cesare looked down, hoping that Elia’s return could forestall this conversation. There was a small gout of flame and a distant whoop in the darkness. When she was having fun like that, she was not coming back anytime soon. “We… have a mission to see to it that nobody with the power to change the world does it poorly. Think the grailshard bearer of Air suddenly declaring the atmosphere to be non-breathable. We are devoted to our task; we wouldn’t fit in with the pact and all its small rules. You see, the pact is made up of exactly two types of people: The old aristocracy that still holds onto their perceived place in society, and the outsiders, who being outside of the hierarchy are only expected to act beyond the usual.”
“Oh,” Karla said, thinking on that for a second. “So, you’re poor people.”
Cesare winced. “… yes, among other outcasts and downtrodden folk. We don’t prescribe to using dregs as slaves to live an undead life of luxury. Most everyone values gaining things only through their own hands. I suspect they would quite like Elia. And you, by association.”
“And because I have the shard of justice.” They were the complete opposite of the people in the pact, who watched her with trepidation for it. And yet, Karla felt ill at ease. “I know what an abduction looks like, and if I didn’t know you I would have been very suspicious. I am not going to be bound and gagged to be exploited, am I? Because Elia would be very disappointed. Do you remember the last person who disappointed her?”
“Scarcely, considering she never bothered to talk to me much.”
“It was the Rhuna,” she said, noting with a grin how he seemed to shrink at the simple mention of the name. “But you will treat us nice and fairly. And after all that, maybe Rye will leave a pretty permanent ice statue on your doorstep, so you have something to remember her by.”
The structure underneath their feet rumbled. Karla always thought people only built bridges outside, and not underneath the mountain. She peered over the side of the one she was standing on, while everyone else was carefully stepping away from the ledge.
She spotted something in the distance, a small flame hopping in the dark.
“I think that does it. We can go now, Elia has had her fun.”
“How do you know?”
You have slain: The beast below
Karla smiled as everyone blinked at the notification. Like a praying mantis lying in wait she snatched Elia out of the air as she hopped up and twirled her round and round.
“Lootbug, did you just go on a mini-adventure without me?”
Elia yelped, then devolved into laughing as Karla went faster until her bystanders were a blur. “I get it, I get it. Lemme dooown! It dropped a thing. Look, Karla, look!”
Essence of rancor
“That does look nice. Did you get something for me as well?”
“Umm, I, uhhh…”
“Just kidding! But next time, you are either taking me with, or you won’t go on your own little adventures anymore, is that clear?”
“Yes Karla.”
“Good!” She sat Elia down and tussled her beautiful Rye-blonde hair. “Alright, let’s get a move on and get to meet these anti-establishment folk. I’ve never seen a poor person before, this is going to be so exciting!”