Jake let out a tired yawn, glancing beside him where Alice was curled up in a ball asleep and sound. He’d noticed by now it seemed like a habit of hers, throughout the night she’d curl up more and more till her head was practically buried in her lap. Looking up above, he could see the first signs of sunrise begin to break through the forest roof above. The faint purple glow of the early morning sun with the purple leaves above created an almost ethereal effect that shone down on the pair, sending a shiver through Jake’s spine.

Seeing the telltale sign of the sun's rise drawing closer, Jake reached over and shook Alice awake, as gently as he could. She snapped awake instantly as he touched her shoulder and sat up, looking around with a frantic look in her eyes. Her demeanor quickly calmed down as she caught sight of her surroundings, and with an embarrassed look, she gave Jake a small wave.

Returning the wave, Jake stood up from where he’d been resting and went about repacking the supplies in the bag. He’d started this earlier in the night as he struggled to sleep, scooping handfuls of berries and the other miscellaneous gear acquired back into the bag. This made the final prep work trivial, and soon Jake had the bag saddled onto his back. He turned around to find Alice lost in a trance as she looked up at the ethereal glow emanating from the leaves above.

Jake walked toward her, pausing a moment as another yawn escaped him. They’d stayed up late into the night, reading through the book (well he’d been the only one reading but she often provided input or had him reread sections she found interesting) in hopes of finding some answer to her body’s deteriorating condition. It was still early days, they’d barely made a dent into the contents of the book, yet Alice’s situation no longer looked hopeless at the very least. She had been fascinated by the concept of internal and external magic and even more so by the idea of manipulating and controlling these magics.

According to Alice, the Broken grew up learning they were feared and hated due to their deformities, and so they were cursed. This curse would activate randomly, slowly splitting them apart and any Unbroken who went too close to them ran the risk of being cursed as well. As such they were fenced off, separated to control and detain them. She’d wanted to keep reading further into the book, but they hit a roadblock as any further progress into understanding the contents of the book required being able to successfully feel one’s internal magic.

Alice had never tried to feel the curse writhing within her. It simply came as it pleased. A hopeless feeling began to rapidly overtake her as it looked like the singular ray of hope she might have was quickly disappearing before her very eyes. Then she could recall Jake just setting the book aside with a smile and a shrug saying,

“First time for everything, right?”

This set off a cycle of endless frustration for Alice where she would find herself trying to dig deep inside to draw out whatever it was that ravaged her body when she began to Crumble, whatever it was that currently tore her apart. She’d hoped that she might make some sort of rapid breakthrough, and find progress instantly, but that was not the case. In the end, she fell asleep taunted by bitter frustration which gnawed at her newfound feelings of hope.

Yet she couldn’t hate this frustration, this bitter annoyance at being unable to successfully move forward. At least now she had a path forward beyond the grim acceptance of her death she’d come to know since childhood. Even now, as she sat admiring the glimmering glow coming down from the sky above, refracted by the purple leaves dancing in the sky above, she couldn’t help but find herself trying to drag whatever flowed within her forward. She only stopped once Jake grew near her arm extended.

Taking hold of his hand and letting herself be pulled to her feet, she smiled and took one last look at the purple-hued beauty around her before the sensation of falling, quickly growing familiar to her, swept through and the duo silently slipped through to a new world. She managed to stay upright this time, stumbling forward a few feet but held aloft by Jake who kept hold of her this time. She turned around with a smile,

“Thanks.” She said, letting go of his hand and dusting herself off. She looked around as she did so, Jake mirroring her movements, yet neither was very impressed by their surroundings. The world was entirely white. Flat and unblemished, nothing could be seen around the pair for miles. The floor beneath them felt hard and unbending, giving soft tinks with each footstep they made. Looking directly down, the ground was shined to a mirror surface, their reflections peering back at them if distorted slightly from the angles. Something about the reflection looked off to Jake, and he noticed with a start as he cocked his head it was perfect, not mirrored.

Yet the perfectly reflective ground was all there was to see. The sun had already risen into the sky, shining down to provide the perfect lighting needed to survey the landscape, yet there didn’t seem to be anything interesting within the next one hundred miles. Setting the bag down to the floor, Jake opened its top and pulled out two handfuls of sweet berries. Their sickeningly sweet odor had now faded slightly with time. He offered one handful to Alice, who took it gratefully.

Sitting down on the reflective, slightly slippery surface of the ground below the two dug into their berries. They still tasted sweet, bursting with flavor in the pair's mouth, yet an almost unnoticeable sour flavor intermingled with the berries as they chowed down. It was not a problem now, but Jake figured it wouldn’t be long before they would have to completely throw the berries away.

Stomach full of the berries, Jake found his throat to be agonizingly parched. This had happened before the last time he’d eaten the berries. It seemed that though they helped to fill his rumbling stomach, even with all their juice they could not satisfy his parched throat. Now as they ripened and went off they made the problem worse. Standing up and looking around Jake turned to Alice, now done with her berries, and said,

“I’m going to see if I can find water anywhere. I doubt it…” He said, gesturing wildly around the barren land he now stood in, “But it’s worth a shot. You coming?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

She looked at him for a moment before shaking her head no. While it was true her throat felt equally parched from after the mini feast of berries it felt much more important to focus her efforts on finding some way to draw forth the magic, curse, or whatever the hell it was inside her. Now she had some hope of survival she felt she wanted to hold onto it as hard as she could and make progress before Jake got sick of trying to help her. She hated the idea of being left behind, forced to fend for herself all hope of survival extinguished as she lay trapped in her crumbling body. With an internal shudder, she shook herself from her thoughts and looked at Jake,

“Go on ahead, I’ll watch the bag. Bring me a cup back when you find some.”

Jake nodded at her, not prying any further, and set off in a random direction across the tinkling ground. It was difficult to walk at first, several times Jake found himself slipping forward and sliding sprawled out across the stark white floor below. Eventually though, after a minute or two of effort, he managed to get the hang of maneuvering across the slippery ground and slowly made his way across the barren planet. He found it helped to keep his head focused low to the ground, as this helped him to both survey the landscape while also controlling his footing.

It didn’t take him long to walk far away from where Alice still sat. Even though he’d only been walking for ten minutes or so, the ground was so barren it was easy to make forward progress with no distractions in his way. Even when he did slip and fall, his momentum would usually carry him forward causing him to keep sliding across the ground in the direction he’d been moving in.

Still, his initial prediction proved correct. There was nothing around him, save for the ever-stark sheen coming from the floor, the reflections of the sun that bounced out at his head, and his shadow, ever dancing and stretching across the ground. Jake paused mid-step suddenly, watching as his shadow danced below stretching out far to his right. That wasn’t possible. He’d only been here for fifteen minutes, twenty at the most. Even including the breaks he’d taken to eat with Alice, they’d barely been in this world. Yet already his shadow had moved from his left side to his right side.

Looking up above for the first time in the last few minutes he saw the sun had rapidly flown through the air while he wasn’t paying attention, and now threatened to disappear without notice, plunging the planet into total darkness. Already the first signs of night were coming, the blue glow of the skyline fading into dull orange and the twinkle of distant stars beginning to come into view. Jake gulped and turned around quickly, losing his footing in the process.

He hadn’t walked for long, maybe five to ten minutes max, yet still, it was too much. Too much distance between himself and Alice. As soon as the sun set, there was no telling what sort of state the surface of this barren place would be in, how clearly, he’d be able to see in front of him. He needed to make it back to her now while he could still see her clearly, faded off in the distance. Breaking out into a run, Jake soon found himself flailing forward as his footing gave way against the slippery surface of the planet below.

The ground simply had no traction, it wasn’t designed to be run on. To make progress it was best to inch your way forward, slowly walking with each step deliberate and calculated. Yet Jake had no time, he couldn’t crawl his way forward anymore. In desperation he began running forward, throwing himself into the slide as he rolled across the ground in hopes this would allow him to move faster across the surface of the planet. This worked surprisingly well, and though the rough, unbending, surface of the ground repeatedly slamming into his chest and sides was painful he was growing ever nearer to Alice.

Yet he froze when he rose from his next slide. His time was up and the sun was gone, and with it any chance he had of making it back. He couldn’t see anything, the faded outline of Alice he could see that was growing ever clearer with each flailing slide across the ground was gone, faded into the endless nothingness of the skyline. Jake inched forward slowly, too uncertain of where he stood to commit to a direction. If he chose wrong he could launch himself too far of course from her and destroy any chance of ever reuniting again. Even simply inching forward seemed too dangerous now.

As he stood there stuck in the dark, unsure of what to do, certain the only way forward was to wait for morning and hope he could make it to Alice in time before he fell somewhere new, a sudden blip appeared dead ahead. It was faint and disappeared soon as it appeared, but soon after it appeared again flashing once and fading away into the dark. Alice sat, staring into the dark, long having noticed the setting sun and yelling at Jake in hopes he would turn round.

Yet by the time he noticed it was too late, and he found himself stranded now, stuck in the dark. Panic began to swell up in Alice. She didn’t want to be left behind, stranded right after having been gifted hope for her survival. There was no beauty to this place in her eyes, no hidden sight of nature she could enjoy. It was cold and dead, and she hated it the longer she stayed. Looking into the dark, panic swelling up inside her chest, a thought crossed her mind. Though quick and mixed amongst a dozen other panicked thoughts it was this one that took root.

“I need to find a way to get him back here…” She thought to herself, looking around for something she could use when suddenly she froze. She’d felt this way before a few times in her life. Her curse was firing, rapid and randomly set off she looked down to notice a bright glow surrounding her hands. As soon as she noticed it, it was gone. The glow had barely lasted a second.

Just like that the curse came and went, as it always had her entire life. Yet this time, something was different. Perhaps because she was actively looking for it, perhaps because something inside her had changed as it activated, she felt a string. Connected deep inside her it snaked throughout her entire body looping around itself in a bundled mess that was knotted and overflowing with… something. Now the string struggled and pulsed in her hands, vibrating rapidly before suddenly fading away.

She looked down at her hands astonished, before closing her eyes tight and focusing hard on the feeling that had just swept through her. Focusing hard on the feeling of the pulsating of the strings that lay buried in her skin, in her fingers. Pulsing the power that lay under her flesh, she opened her eyes to find her hands flashing again, a bright glow shining out that burned brighter and longer than before it once more faded away.

Alice closed her eyes, ready to focus herself to once more resummon the light into her hands before she heard a loud crashing noise followed by a weird squeaking noise. This repeated itself a few times before Jake slid into her line of sight, spread eagle looking ridiculous. Her hands rose to her mouth as she let out a laugh, watching Jake crawl across the slippery surface below till he sat beside her, panting now out of breath.

Eyes closed Jake cursed under his breath, recalling a memory he’d forgotten. Buried under the sudden revelation of Alice’s impending death, he’d completely neglected the near miss they’d already had the day before, how close he’d already come to leaving her behind. Opening his eyes he glanced at her and said, still out of breath,

“We need to get better at this…”