“You want to go back to the mine? But I thought it was behind us.”
“It’s… it’s important. I need this. Please. For my sake.”
“Okay. Do you wanna hang out at the mall after? I saw a cute shirt at Hollister.”
“No, I’ll pass. We can go out tomorrow, though.”
***
The Empire.
Big, bad, and entrenched into most of the grid. Marpei rules the Empire through unimaginable strength. The grid is a collection of two thousand, four hundred and eighty worlds. The Alliance are the six remaining worlds resisting the inevitable. Magaram included. Callista’s own words, not Cora’s.
Arcego, a founding member of the Empire, was a peacemaker as powerful as Marpei before he died in an unknown calamity called the Unbinding. Many worlds were cut off from the grid and succumbed to chaos. Those left, Marpei and the Transients conquered, including Callista’s home world, Endralova.
Short answer, it’s the exact type of situation Cora expects from a bland fantasy novel.
“This sounds like a bunch of bullshit,” Liam whispers to her. Callista strayed somewhere ahead, audible through branches snapping beneath her footfalls, or bushes uprooted and thrown aside to clear a path.
“Why would she lie? What would she get out of it?” Cora scrunches her nose, feeling a tickling deep inside her nostril. “You remember what we found. That fight that happened.”
He purses his lips and stares ahead. “It’s crazy to believe, though. Are we supposed to be heroes or something?”
“Don’t start with that.”
“I’m serious.” Liam gnaws on his lip. He runs a hand through his stiff hair, fingers untangling several knots. “What, do we get powers? Are we going to go on some crazy journey? Talk to an old wizard, or wait, fight some bad people, go through some drama, and then beat the Empire, call it a day?”
“I broke my wrist. I’m not going anywhere for a few months.” Cora frowns and shudders at the fading sensation of a sneeze that never came. “Maybe you’re supposed to be the hero. You saved me.” Then, in a quieter voice, she adds, “And Callista, too.”
“Well, better start calling me Superman.”
Cora snorts. Embarrassed, she ducks her head away, but succeeds in breaking down into giggles. “Never in a million years.”
Callista emerges from a newly cleared path. Her muscles are half disproportionate, eyes glowing a faint purple. Cora suppresses a shudder, doing her best to keep a neutral face. “We’ll have to start climbing uphill. Cora, are you fine walking?”
“Yeah, Liam’s been helping me.” She smiles innocently at him, trying not to focus on Callista, her magical strength displayed as twin flames dancing in her pupils. “Of course, if I get tired, you did promise you’d carry me.”
Somehow, despite having fought creatures worse than any animal back home, despite facing down Callista, he blushes, his cheeks coloring the slightest red.
“Let’s just keep walking.”
***
Cora’s cheeks ache. She touches them, surprised to find herself grinning.
Because this, after all the painful travel, after all the cuts and bruises from constantly stumbling because she actually doesn’t want Liam carrying her like a little girl, after all the shit she’s put up through since getting dumped into this world, is the best thing she’s ever seen.
The forest cuts off again, but it follows a rocky riverbank, stretching for miles on either side until fine mist hides further view. The stream, having grown steadily bigger, connects to this massive, roaring, stream that she can safely call a river.
On the other side, a meadow comes alive in the cool breeze, flowers rustling and single trees swaying, their golden leaves glittering. The mountains stand proudly in the background. Their snow-capped peaks pierce through the underbellies of swollen clouds, darkened with the promise of rain soon.
“Are we dreaming?” Liam says, feet crunching on the gravel bank. He makes his way down the riverbank and stands a few feet from where the water froths and churns. A fine spray coats him, but he doesn’t move. Instead, he closes his eyes and stretches his arms out, tilting his head back. “This is awesome.”
Callista lifts a large rock from the riverbank. “Do you want to see something interesting?” She turns to Liam, who hasn’t moved from his spot, so she turns to Cora, the barest flicker of light dancing inside her pupils.
Something in Cora's unconscious reflexes–nose scrunching up, maybe, her grin dropping, or the subtle way she steps back–must ring alarms to Callista, because her eyes stop glowing and her arm drops to her side.
"Never mind. Forget what I said.”
Cora swallows the thick lump in her throat and musters a weak wave. “No, do whatever you’re gonna show me. It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
There’s no forgetting the deep-rooted terror squirming inside her whenever she glimpses even a hint of light in Callista’s eyes. It was an accident. Just like how opening the box was an accident, and Mari was never supposed to be there.
She still got hurt, though, and there’s no forgetting Cora herself getting hurt, either. But maybe she can heal.
“Yeah… yeah. Are you gonna use your power–”
“Gift.”
“Okay. Use your gift, to uh, throw it as far as you can?”
Callista frowns. “Where’s the fun in that? Pick a target. Anything.”
“The mountains,” Liam says, planting his hands on his hips. His hair is tousled, and something about the asymmetry makes Cora itch to plaster it down with some water. “They’re big, but you’ll never hit them.”
“Okay.”
Callista’s eyes blaze a fiery purple. Her arms, shoulders, and chest thicken. Within a few seconds, the change is complete, and she holds the pebble in one thick, veiny hand.
Cora’s jaw drops at the sudden transformation. In an instant, she rivals Liam’s size, and he’s big. Callista pulls her arm back, muscles throbbing, face set in concentration.
And the pebble doesn’t just go flying. It leaves her hand with the force of a cannonball, an artillery shell, a missile. A thunderous clap reverberates down to Cora’s bones. The pebble becomes a speck faster than she can blink.
Moments after, a tiny plume of snow erupts near the lower boundary of the snow-capped mountain. Up close, the plume must be as big as a two-story house, maybe even bigger, if she can see it at such a great distance.
“Oh my God…” Cora breathes out. She stares at this veiny, muscular, girl who didn’t so much as blink when she threw the pebble at several times the speed of sound.
“What the fuck!” Liam exclaims, slack-jawed. “You’ve been holding back this whole time. Last night–”
Callista clutches at her arm, the muscles throbbing. Cramp. If the muscle wavered in size and writhed like a rat soaked in poison. She gasps and doubles over, heaving.
“You told me you know nothing about gifts. Well.” She massages the jumping muscles, her eyes scrunched up in pain. “If we push ourselves too much, it hurts us.”
Cora’s frozen at the sight of the girl half-shrunken back to her normal size. Only her muscular arm remains, limp at her side. “Then why did you do that?”
“I wanted to show my gift to both of you. So you’d understand why the Transients are after me.”
“You can kill them,” Liam says, wringing his hands. “Just throw a bunch of rocks at them. They won’t know what hit them.”
Cora forgot Callista had shoved him like a rag doll. He hasn’t complained about any bruises or potential cracked ribs. Maybe the push hadn’t been so bad.
“No, it’s not that easy. You don’t know anything.” Callista continues massaging her cramping arm, biting down on her lip. Liam steps forward, hands half raised from his sides.
“Is there something I can do to help? A massage, maybe?”
“I don’t need help.” She pushes her fingers into her bicep, working it with smooth circular motions. Slowly, the muscle shrinks, proportional to the rest of her deflating arm.
Liam shakes his head. “Cora tried to tell me the same thing.”
She shrinks under Callista’s gaze. “In my defense, I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“My point exactly.” Liam turns toward Callista. “You aren’t, either.” He offers his hand, such a simple gesture that tells Cora everything. He trusts Callista.
She flattens her palm over the side of her twitchy arm. “Massage the back and front at the same time. It’s what Rhodes did.” She sucks in a breath and shudders. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be talking. Thank you.”
Liam stays silent. He tends to her arm, eyebrows knitted together like he’s doing neurosurgery.
“I know it hurt you, but that throw was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Cora says.
Callista swipes her bangs to the side. She offers the barest of smiles. “What I did was idiotic. It was impulsive. But thank you.”
***
“This is a nice camping spot,” Cora announces once they settle several miles upstream.
Near the river, a new forest protrudes like shaggy spikes stabbing through the sloping terrain. Evergreens jockey for exclusive access to the water, clear enough that she can count each grain of sand at the bottom of the riverbed.
“I don’t know. I liked sleeping next to the purple trees,” Liam says.
Callista presses her lips thin. “I used to camp when I was a little girl. My dad liked to take us fishing sometimes. He always picked different places.” She paces down the length of the stony riverbank, glancing at the roaring water. “This is a very good camping spot.”
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“It looks safe.” Liam spreads his arms wide. “At least we’ll know if something tries to ambush us.”
“The creatures,” Cora says, grimacing.
Callista breaks her trance. Whatever memories that seemed to plague her are all but gone when she frowns. “Creatures?”
“Mutated monsters. Terrifying.”
It’s all too-easy remembering the claws raking her side, their weight crushing the breath out of her, their rancid breath and folded faces and howling that…
Cora pinches herself, gently, using her fingertips rather than nails. Pain has a way of sobering the mind whenever things get out of hand. Too much pain, and the opposite happens, fragments struggling to piece themselves together.
Like when she lay on the dirt, broken and bleeding, seconds from death when Liam swooped in like a superhero, his blanket flowing behind him like a cape.
Which she now wears. And feels unworthy to wear. Because the person who owns it is strong, invincible in the face of danger, and she’s nothing.
She resists the urge to undo the knot and throw Liam’s blanket back at him.
Stop it.
A long, pent-up cry of frustration works its way up her throat. It is a hot, vile thing taking residence in her vocal cords, about to explode.
Liam seems to recognize what’s happening, because he bends over and drapes an arm over her shoulder, hand lightly squeezing.
“It’s okay,” he says, softly. For a second, she almost believes him. He carries an aura of trust and respect that she’d be hard pressed not to cave into.
“I’m broken, Liam,” she snaps, ripping her eyes away and moving back. “I can’t forget what they almost did to me.” Her hand grazes the side bandage, a lump under her skin-tight shirt. “Actually, what they did. If you weren’t there…”
“Stop.” Liam’s arms go to his sides and he turns his palms up, taking a step toward her. She studies his feet, how they’re angled to take another unwelcome step.
“You don’t know me,” she hisses. The words burn like acid on her tongue. She claps her hand over her mouth, but the damage is done. He shrinks back, stuffing his hands into his pockets, turning away.
“You’re right. I don’t know you. But I know you’re not broken.”
The old flame reignites. She huffs, squaring her shoulders. “I am. Look at me.” She waves her bandaged arm and pats the side bandage. “I can’t even think about them because they scare the shit out of me. God, that’s why it’s not gonna be okay. We’re stuck here and–”
It’s all your fault. Mari sounds smug. Tell him, Cora. Tell him about your crimes.
“There’s no going back. This is our reality now.” She scowls, eyes tearing up. She hugs her arms to her chest. Her voice feels tight, barely more than a squeak. “I don’t know how you can be so calm.”
“One of us had to be strong,” Liam says. “And frankly, it helped us.” He smiles, reaching up to wipe something away from the corner of his eye. Cora looks up. A bead of water trickles down his cheek.
They’re too far from the river. She recoils in horror at how selfish she is. Never bothering to ask how Liam is doing.
For how long? Three days total? Fighting, bleeding, talking, bonding?
Like she did with Mari. Her eyes widen.
It’s all my fault.
Liam’s smile drops, and he suddenly ages a decade. His shoulders drop. His proud posture breaks, and he sags forward. His eyes are cast downward and his frown deepens.
“Heh. Frankly, I’m not doing too well either.”
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” Cora says, rushing forward and hugging him with the one functioning arm she has. “I'm so fucking selfish. That's why me and my friend were fighting right before I ended up here. I–I was too selfish and didn't care enough about her. And I'm doing the same to you.”
“It's fine,” he says, but he lifts his arms and hugs her back, grunting. “I should've worded myself better. I know you're not broken, because I've seen some fucked-up shit in my life, and broken people are beyond all hope. But you’re hurt. I want to help.”
“Me too. You deserve better.”
“It won’t happen again.” Liam's body goes rigid, and in that second she wonders what exactly is Liam's story. “Those monsters hurt you. I promise you that next time, I'll keep you safe.”
“Liam.”
“Yes?”
“My arm.”
Somewhere in the heat of the moment–she swears she does not have a crush on him–they'd closed the remaining gap between them, and Cora's injured arm is smothered between them.
At the corner of her eye, Cora catches Callista staring at them.
“I thought it was cute,” Callista says, looking away.
“You’re unbearable,” Liam says, but while he might’ve meant it the first time they met Callista, now his voice sounds light-hearted.
Cora rubs her slung arm, palm spread wide over her forearm. “If you’re wondering, we met each other when we came here. Never knew each other before.”
“I still think it’s cute.”
“Yeah, okay.” But she lifts her head and smiles. The ghostly tendrils of her terror recede into the abyss. They’ll come back to torment her, she knows. “I feel better already.” She hugs Liam again, the impulse overbearing. “Thanks.” She gestures to Callista to come over, which she does, clasping her hands behind her. “You too.”
***
Cora stares into the churning waters. Logically, she knows the riverbed is a foot below the surface, but as she lowers her foot into the water, it feels like she’s plunging into the abyss.
It’s the soft sediments caressing the bottom of her feet that convince her otherwise. She wiggles her toes into the sediment, savoring the silky sensation.
Dried blood from the southern end of her jagged cut dissolves into the water. The churning waters quickly take the hazy cloud of red away. Goosebumps ripple over her skin, but the sheer relief that her exhausted legs feel makes up for the freezing conditions.
“Cold?” Liam says right behind her.
“Gah!” Cora whips around and glares at him. “Could you at least let me know you’re sneaking up on me?”
“That kind of defeats the purpose, though.”
She scoops a handful of water and throws it at him. His arms shoot up and he turns away, water droplets splattering his neck and clothes.
“Let me know next time,” she warns, submerging her hand again.
“Fine, fine.” He doesn’t sit so much as collapse next to her, like his legs turned to paper. His head hangs back and his lips part open, eyes closed.
“Are you uh… dead?” Cora says.
Liam lazily opens one eye and focuses on her. “Brains.”
She can’t help the squeak of laughter from forcing itself up her throat. She turns away, cheeks flushed. “Goddamnit. You’re not funny.”
“Sure didn’t seem like it.” He smacks his lips. “I am funny.”
She shakes her head. “You're delusional. No.”
“Totally am.”
“Nope.”
This type of silence that befalls them isn’t awkward or tense like the silences that came before. For once, she feels a sense of communion with him, a comfortableness shared with only two people back home, and one of them is probably stranded on some world and the other…
It’s not fair to compare Ben to Liam. But in half a week, Cora’s gotten closer to Liam than she ever approached with Ben. Maybe it’s because Mari was always there, and Ben had his own things to do. Maybe it’s because Cora went through hell and back with her, and now with Liam, but not Ben.
Either way, she craves the peaceful silence, where even her thoughts have fallen silent.
“That water you threw at me felt cold,” Liam says sometime later, when Cora’s feet have numbed and he is sprawled on the ground, arms tucked behind his head. “How can you stand it?”
“I got used to it. It actually feels nice now. The sun’s warming up my body and the water’s cooling it down at the same time.”
“Mmm.” He turns onto his side, facing her. His bangs fall low over his face. “How are you going to dry your feet, though?”
“The sun? Wind? It shouldn’t take that long. And we’re gonna have sunlight for a while.”
Liam sucks in a deep breath and pushes himself to a cross-legged position.
“Okay, you convinced me.”
Before she can ask what she convinced him for, he unties his laces and kicks off his shoes. One of them flips upside-down and lands on a puddle, splashing his sock.
This time, Cora lets loose the laugh that hadn’t quite come out earlier. He scowls and plucks the shoe away, water dripping from its dangling laces. “You’re unbearable, too, by the way.”
She freezes, returning to that day when Mari slammed her into the wall.
“You’re unbearable!” she screamed into her face, her words burbling acid.
“I was trying to do something important!”
“Fuck that! And fuck you! You used me, you sick… ugh. Argh!” Mari’s fist slammed into the wall. Cora jumped, her lips drawing back in a snarl, all those months of brewing bitterness surging to the surface.
“Leave me alone. I’m trying to do something important right now and you just don’t wanna listen!”
Cora’s lips and tongue coordinate before her mind whirrs up to speed. “Thank you, thank you.”
He peels off his socks and throws them behind him. A second later, she hears the splash of his feet entering the cold water, followed by a gasp hissed between clenched teeth, but she doesn’t see it happen.
Mari takes his place and she’s furious. Her dark brown eyes glow, her face twisted into a grimace, a caricature of the caring friend Cora once knew.
You thought I would let you forget, huh? The Mari-apparition scowls. She flips her middle fingers out and spits. Fuck you. You ruined my life.
Cora reels, slapping her hand over her chest, feeling like the twisted apparition ripped the oxygen out of her body.
Light-headed, she shakes her head and rubs her temple. Before she knows it, Liam’s familiar bulk scoots next to her. Not touching, but the distance could be a million worlds for all she cares, because she’s been reminded of the damage she’s done.
The lies she told. The truth that pricks Cora’s insides and holds her heart in a noose. There’s a friendly bond between him and her. But it’s built on a tower of lies.
“Hey, are you okay?”
God, how badly Cora wants to tell him. She shouldn’t be eyeing his knife strapped to his side, or his muscular bulk, or his blood splattered clothes. She should be eyeing his warm, friendly eyes, the bangs swept over most of the upper left side of his face, telling him that she’s doing fine, that she hasn’t been pushing her torturous thoughts down since arriving here.
I can’t do this anymore.
Approximately three days ago, Cora punched Mari.
Approximately two to three days ago, Cora learned she trapped Liam in this hellish world.
Cora offers her hand to him.
“Please,” she says, catching her lip between her teeth.
He reaches out, hesitates. That’s enough. She tucks her hand under her armpit and turns away. “If you don’t want me here, that’s fine. Just tell me and I’ll leave you alone.”
She can hear the hurt in his tone, hear how the cadence of every word wavers. Like Mari. Damn the dense cloud crushing Cora’s insides.
“I have something to tell you,” she says quietly, barely audible over the rush of the river.
“Then why are you acting weird? Just tell me. You know I don’t judge.”
“Yeah, I know, but–”
“I brought elikanders!” Callista shouts. They whip around at her arrival, carrying three squat, bulbous, pale disfigurements in her arms. She gently deposits them before patting the biggest one.
“Elikanders?” Liam says.
“The best fruit in the grid. You must try it. It’s food for the soul.”
“I’ll tell you later,” Cora says, but Liam already got up, back turned to her, heading toward Callista. Cora pulls out her legs, dripping wet. The sunlight feels glorious as it heats them up.
She pushes herself to her feet, wincing when she takes a step to balance herself and several pebbles dig into her heel. The short walk to Callista might as well be miles. By the time Cora sits cross-legged next to her, the bottoms of her feet hurt like hell.
“You start from here and go here,” Callista instructs, using a claw to draw a line from the apex of the elikander to the base. “Then use your fingers and then do this.”
As she separates the halves, dark green liquid oozes from the cracks. Flecks of purple glitter inside the gel-like liquid. Then with a thunderous crack, the rind splits and the elikander’s insides are exposed.
Splotches of royal purple creep into the pale green flesh. More gel oozes from pores within the fleshy part, coating the halves in a glistening layer.
“That’s the second coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Cora says, trailing her fingers over the gel. It’s like hand sanitizer. It wets her fingertips and dries before she tastes it.
“Is it safe?” Liam says, staring at the two halves of his elikander.
“Parity fixed it. Don’t worry about it. Anybody can eat it.”
“What’s parity?”
“It changes the stuff that makes things up to fit whatever world they’re in. Like you and me. Our bodies changed to adapt here.”
Apparently, it’s enough to convince him. He dips his fingers into the ooze and sniffs it. Cora does the same, surprised at how citrusy the aroma is. She dips her index finger into the ooze and tastes it.
“Oh. Wow,” she says, eyebrows rising. “That tastes delicious.”
Liam’s eyes widen, too. “You’re right. Callista, did you find more?”
“I found a whole patch out by the forest. It’s enough until we’re recovered and able to move again.”
“Won’t the Transients reach us?”
“They are far, far away. We have time.”
And yet, Cora is on a timer.
Because bit by bit, she’s losing her sanity.