Her eyes fluttered open. Limbs jerked spasmodically. Gasping and flailing, she sucked in a lungful of warm, briny void from the light-filled depths.
Why was she still here? She needed to be up there. Needed to…
Needed to do what, exactly?
She couldn’t remember. It was important, though; that much she knew. They were important to her. Every fibre of her being ached to go to them. Whoever they were.
Far below, the light of the great winged leviathan circled in the dark like an orbiting star. She could feel its eyes on her. What it was thinking—its distant goals and abstract dreams and nameless feelings—she couldn’t fathom. All she knew was that it was holding her back.
She kicked and thrashed, straining against the thick tangle of fleshy vines that trailed from all of her extremities. Slowly, they began to slacken, and she drifted upward. Not fast enough for her liking, but it was a start.
An eternity came and went, and she drew near the rippling surface. She reached for the light—and pulled back her hand, feeling a sudden jolt of unease. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t where she was meant to be. Not there! Not yet! No no nononono—
This time, she was fully conscious for her emergence. Saskia felt herself exploding outward, her flesh twisting and expanding even as the world tilted and began to spin, and the air screamed and tore at her with icy fingers. She was tumbling down a steep slope, her nascent limbs carving out deep furrows in hard-packed snow as she desperately tried to arrest her fall.
Then there was stillness. Oh splendiferous stillness. She could feel her body now. There were two legs and two arms, a head, a mouth and a pair of eyes, squeezed shut. So far, so good. Although something felt…different. She opened an eye experimentally.
Wait, what was that roaring sound? Oh…crap.
The avalanche swept over her.
When next she came to her senses, ice was pressing in on her from all sides. Her body was bent in ways a body should not bend. She couldn’t breathe. When she tried to flex her arms, agony shot through her left shoulder.
Okay, this is pretty bad, she thought to herself. But you’ve been through worse. You’ve been eaten by a giant worm! Being trapped in an avalanche is a Sunday stroll compared to that.
Saskia kicked with her legs, and surprisingly, one of them moved. She continued to kick and wriggle until her entire lower body came free. Must be upside down. A cold wind swept across her naked backside, which was sticking up in the air for the whole world to see. But never mind that. Modesty was the least of her concerns right now. Her lungs were screaming at her to breathe, her ears were ringing, and an aching numbness was spreading through her extremities.
More wriggling, and some agonising arm contortions, and she managed to slither up out of the hole. She lay back on the snow, gasping for breath amidst a howling gale.
Cold. So c-cold. Clammy eyelids slid open with great reluctance, blinking in the harsh light. Groaning, Saskia lifted her aching head, and surveyed her surroundings.
She couldn’t see crap.
A full-blown blizzard shrieked into her face, obscuring everything beyond the small plateau she was on, and the slope above it. A mountain? Sure seemed like it, and a really bloody steep one at that. Not the kind of place she wanted to be while naked.
She threw up a trembling arm to shield her eyes, wincing as the movement sent a jolt of agony through her other shoulder. A gasp escaped her lips, but not one of pain. In that moment, she saw not the polished granite arms and razor-sharp claws of a troll, but soft, supple skin, covered in goosebumps and a slowly-forming layer of ice crystals.
A quick self-inspection confirmed her suspicions. This body was human. She couldn’t see any of her old scars, and the skin was paler than she remembered, but other than that, she looked like…Saskia. Her original self.
Was this her original body? Was this…Earth?
It was impossible to tell. What she could tell with near-absolute certainty was that she was no longer on Arbor Mundi. Humans didn’t exist on that world, so a human avatar had been off the cards as long as she remained there. This wasn’t just speculation. In one of her dreams, her father had confirmed that she could only take forms native to that world. Calburn had also told her she’d only get one avatar per world. If her troll body died, that was it. She couldn’t go back.
Was that what had happened? Had she died?
Saskia remembered racing through the city streets with Ruhildi, heading for Spindle and a probable showdown with Thiachrin. And then…what? Her thoughts were fuzzy, and her brain felt like it was trying to crawl out of her skull. Even panting as she was, she couldn’t seem to get enough air.
If she had died, it would explain the missing memories. It would explain a lot of things. And if that were so, she’d never see Ruhildi or Rover Dog or any of her dwarven friends again. The realisation hit her like a punch in the gut, and she doubled over, feeling suddenly nauseous.
She couldn’t deal with this. Right now, she had to focus on surviving here, in this frail human body. And her prospects weren’t looking good.
She must be at a really high altitude for the air to be this thin. Between hypothermia, frostbite and altitude sickness, she wouldn’t last long up here. Not without clothing, boots and climbing gear. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, completely boned.
Oh, and her shoulder was probably dislocated. Fan-frocking-tabulous. Maybe she should deal with that first.
Saskia grabbed hold of her wrist with her other hand, and pulled the arm out, whimpering as the agony stepped up a notch into ‘let me die’ territory. Her bones rubbed together in ways bones weren’t meant to.
Letting loose an unrestrained yell, she wrenched the arm forward as hard as she could. The joint went back in its socket with an audible pop, and she sagged forward, trembling. Without some kind of sling for her arm, it would probably pop back out if she sneezed. Still, it felt a bit better now.
Maybe she could build a snow cave; hunker down until the weather passed. The avalanche had dumped a thick layer of softer snow on the icy slope; more than enough for the task. But she had no gear; nothing she could use to light a fire, and nothing to dig with except these soft human hands. So small; so vulnerable. Her inner mountaineer knew all too well that she wouldn’t survive a night up here, with or without such meagre shelter. Her only hope—though it barely qualified as such—was to get down off the mountain before it killed her.
Time to blow this popsicle stand—or become a standing popsicle. Saskia gave a half-hearted giggle at the cringeworthy pun as she took her first wobbly step. Her foot sank up to her ankles into the displaced snow.
She took another.
And another.
Step.
Step.
Step.
She could do this. If she made it out of here, her toes would probably turn black and fall off, but right now, she didn’t care. She was walking. And she wasn’t dead yet.
Without thinking, she tried to call up her minimap. Nothing happened. Her entire oracle interface was gone. Of course it was. This wasn’t Arbor Mundi. She wasn’t an oracle here.
So distracted was she by this revelation that she almost stepped off a cliff. Pulling back with a cry of alarm, she skirted the precipitous drop until she found a more gradual—but still scarily steep slope. Here, the churned-up powder gave way to some more hard-packed stuff—not quite ice, but quite slippery nonetheless—beneath a softer dusting of newly-fallen snow. She slithered down the slope on her butt—her bare butt. Best not to think about how that too would probably fall off.
A rumble sounded from above. She cast a frantic gaze upward just as another avalanche came tumbling down the slope beside her. A few metres to the left, and she’d have been swept away with it.
Continuing her steep descent over rocks and snow, the pain and chill and wailing wind became background noise. Time passed. Her brain refused to tell her how much time, exactly; how slow her progress really was. Head in the sand. Sand in the head. Thoughts like sand, slipping away…
At some point she found herself working her way across a knife-edged ridge. The gale was even worse here, driving snow into her eyes, almost sending her tumbling over the precipice. She crawled across slippery ice and jagged rocks, tearing gashes in her feet and hands and knees. Later, with no other viable route in sight, she slithered down a near-vertical cliff slick with ice; a climb that no-one in their right mind would make without ropes and harnesses (or at least troll claws). But here she was with her bare butt hanging over the edge of a gut-wrenching drop.
The next thing she knew, she was walking down a snow-filled gully, with no memory of how she got there. It was getting dark, though thankfully the wind had died down to a whistle. From somewhere off in the distance came the rumble of another avalanche.
How am I still alive? she marvelled. By all rights, she should have died within minutes of her arrival on this world. And yet, not only was she not dead, she was actually beginning to feel…better? Not good, exactly, but no longer on the brink of death.
Her shoulder had stopped aching. The cold might have numbed her nerves, but she suspected something else was happening here as well. She could move that arm freely, without more than a slight twinge of pain, and it didn’t feel as if it was about to pop back out of its socket any time soon. More telling was the fact that she couldn’t see more than faint scars where earlier there had been angry red gashes and scrapes.
Huh, okay then. So perhaps she wasn’t entirely human after all. Some of her trollish resilience and regeneration seemed to have carried over to this body; this world.
That makes no sense, she thought to herself. But who am I to complain when reality bends a little in my favour?
Water trickled down her clammy flesh; not sweat, but melted snow. Beneath her skin, faint lines of light traced out the paths of her veins and arteries. Was that…arlium? By day, it probably wouldn’t be visible, but right now, she looked like a ghostly apparition. The arlium must be generating heat as well as light—not a lot, but enough. So that was how she hadn’t frozen to death. It was the same source of heat that had fended off the adorribles in the fighting pit. Thinking of those little murderfloofs, she felt a pang of regret. They’d love this place.
With fresh hope spurring her forward, Saskia kept going through the night, with only the faint glow of her own flesh lighting the way. By morning, it was getting noticeably easier to breathe. Thick clouds had settled over the mountain, and a light dusting of snow drifted down from the sky.
All in all, things were looking up. She still had all of her extremities, and the cold was hardly bothering her any more.
Toward the end of the second day, Saskia was about ready to collapse from hunger and exhaustion. Where the hell was she going to find food around here? There was nothing but bare rocks and ice and snow in every direction. Finding shelter was also a problem, without her oracle abilities to guide her. Fat chance she was just going to stumble upon a cave.
In the end, she settled on a little hollow beneath a large rock at the base of a cliff. Probably not the safest place to be, but at this point she didn’t care any more. She piled up a low wall of snow in front of the rock, blocking out some of the wind. Then she curled up into a ball, utterly spent.
Daylight stabbed at her eyelids. Her stomach let out a complaining rumble. She felt like a block of ice, but as she’d hoped, the arlium flowing through her veins had kept her from dying.
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Wearily, Saskia stumbled out of her makeshift shelter and resumed her gruelling march down the mountainside. This was a true monster of a peak. She’d climbed some pretty impressive mountains on Earth, and more on Arbor Mundi, but none as inhospitable as this.
As the day progressed, she finally—finally came upon signs of life. Small tussocky plants at first, then as darkness fell, a forest of mountain pines. There, on the edge of the treeline, she saw something that almost made her weep with joy.
A clay brick house with a thatched roof, heaped high with snow. Smoke billowed from a wide chimney.
Those final steps to the house stretched out for an eternity. She staggered and stumbled. Her knees threatened to buckle beneath her. When she drew near, a mouth-watering smell set her stomach growling anew.
She stood at the door, and gave a hesitant knock. There was a shuffling from within, then the door opened, revealing a woman in a colourful garment with a headscarf, silver leaf-shaped earrings and a bindi on her forehead. The woman’s eyes slowly widened.
“Yona!” she whispered, dropping into a deep bow.
Saskia looked down at herself; naked, emaciated, and glowing faintly in the dark. Yeah, she was quite the sight.
A little girl, perhaps five or six years old, stepped out from behind the woman, her eyes adorably wide. She spoke in a language Saskia didn’t understand.
The woman pushed the girl back through the door. She hesitated for a moment, then beckoned for Saskia to enter. Letting out a relieved sigh, Saskia followed them inside. Her stomach gave another growl, and she flushed as the woman sent her a sharp look.
Minutes later, she was seated at the table with a family of four, clad in one of the woman’s most fanciful dresses, with a silver disc adorning her forehead. Why the woman had insisted she wear the ornament, she had no idea, but now wouldn’t be the best time to refuse it. All that mattered was the food being heaped in front of her. One of the dishes looked like lichen. The other was a bowl of stew or soup with lots of beans in it.
Saskia devoured the meal like a ravenous troll. It was quite possibly the best thing she’d ever tasted, although right now, the same could be said for anything even remotely edible. Only when she was done did she look up and see everyone staring at her. Heat rose to her cheeks as she realised she’d probably just violated some sacred dining custom by diving right into her meal.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t eaten in days. Thank you so much for the food. I don’t have any money, but if there’s any way I can repay you…”
Smiling, the woman refilled Saskia’s bowl.
While Saskia ate—more sedately now that the edge had been taken off her hunger—the woman pointed at herself and said, “Amlya.”
Was that her name? Her theory was confirmed when Amlya pointed at each of her family members in turn and spoke their names. The man (her husband, presumably) was Mig. The older daughter, Khenshing. The youngest, a tiny tot, was Numya.
Nodding, Saskia repeated their names, then gestured at herself and said, “Saskia.”
Amlya tilted her head and said, “Yona?” There was an edge of doubt in her voice.
Saskia shook her head. “Not Yona. Saskia.”
The woman pointed up at the window in the direction of the cloud-covered peak and spoke in a hushed tone. Most of what she said was gibberish, but the word Sesayung stood out. The back of Saskia’s neck prickled, and she had this strange sense that she knew what the word meant. It was the name of the mountain. Or at least one of its names.
“I came down from Sesayung,” said Saskia. Probably best not to mention how she’d gotten up there in the first place.
The family began to speak excitedly among themselves. Occasionally they’d look to her expectantly, as if she were supposed to say or do something, but all she could do was look on in bafflement.
All too soon, her eyes began to droop. Before she knew what was happening, Amlya was ushering her into a small bedroom. Gratefully, she burrowed under the thick quilt, and was out before her host had even left the room.
She awoke to the sound of chittering at her window. Pulling aside the blinds, she let out a surprised squeak. A white monkey was perched on the windowsill, peering back at her with inquisitive eyes.
At that moment Amlya came bustling into the room. She looked between Saskia and the monkey, frowned, and shooed the monkey away with a flap of her hands.
Saskia glanced down at the expensive-looking dress she’d been sleeping in, and looked to her host with what she hoped was a suitably remorseful expression. Last night she’d been too tired to care about such things. The woman spoke in a soft voice, and her expression made it clear there were no ill feelings. She led Saskia to an outhouse with a long-drop toilet. Oh yeah, she needed that. Afterward, she found herself being ushered into a room with a steaming tub.
Is this heaven? thought Saskia as she sank into the hot water. It sure feels like heaven.
After she’d bathed and donned another sumptuous dress, and eaten a large breakfast, Amlya herded her out the door.
“I can’t thank you enough for all of this,” said Saskia, throwing her arms around the startled woman. “You’re literally a lifesaver.”
Amlya eyed her quizzically as Mig came around the bend, leading a large, hairy bovine. A yak?
Then they were leading her down the hillside and along a well-trod dirt path through the forest. The whole family came with them. The little girl, Khenshing, trotted at their feet, while the toddler, Numya, sat on Mig’s broad shoulder. They walked for hours though the woods, and Saskia marvelled at Khenshing’s endurance. Their pace was not slow, and the girl’s tiny legs worked furiously to keep up.
It was late afternoon by the time they reached their destination: a colourful multi-tiered structure perched on a ridge overlooking the verdant snow-covered forest. Painted statues stood on either side of the main doors; one male, one female.
A middle-aged woman came out to meet them. She was garbed in even more fanciful adornments than Saskia and Amlya: a silver nose-ring, huge moon-shaped earrings, and a circular ornament on her forehead, like the one Saskia still wore, but larger, decorated with gemstones and exquisitely-carved figureheads.
Amlya pointed at her and murmured, “Minganha.”
The two women talked at length. Their frequent glances in Saskia’s direction made it abundantly clear who was the subject of their conversation. The words Yona and Sesayung came up repeatedly. Minganha’s expression remained sceptical, but eventually they seemed to come to an agreement. She offered Saskia a curt bow, and beckoned for her to follow her inside.
The building’s interior was even more sumptuously decorated than the grounds outside, with a line of statues down the middle of a long hall, and all sorts of mosaics and ornaments hanging on the walls. Several colourfully dressed men and women stood inside, cleaning statues and speaking softly amongst themselves.
This is a temple, she thought, looking at the scenes of worship depicted on the mosaics. A temple in the middle of nowhere.
Minganha, who must be some kind of priestess, led Saskia into a side room, and pointed at a chair. Saskia sat and waited while the woman stepped out. She returned with a wooden box, which she unlocked and set on a table in front of Saskia. The expectant look from the priestess made it clear she was supposed to open the box. So she did.
Sitting on a bed of satin inside the box was a strange yet eerily familiar object. It was a dodecahedron—a twelve-sided shape—perfectly smooth, and so dark a shade of black that there were no visible shadows across its facets.
Saskia’s breath caught in her throat. She reached for the object, and it began to vibrate on its perch. Minganha stared between Saskia and the object, her eyes going wide. Trembling, Saskia picked up the dodecahedron. It wasn’t heavy, and its shuddering ceased the moment her fingers made contact with it.
A voice rang out, seeming to come from all around her. The words weren’t English, but she could understand them all the same.
“Say your command, mouthlet.”
Saskia released a breath. So it was a keystone.
Visibly shaken, Minganha dropped into a deep bow. She led Saskia into another room, and down several flights of stone steps into an expansive underground chamber. Along the walls, hundreds of scented candles burned. There was a round slot in the floor. Without needing to be prompted, Saskia inserted the keystone in the slot, and hurriedly stepped back.
It rose smoothly upward, forming a pillar of impossibly dark stone.
She placed her hand on the stone—and yelped as a beam of light sprang from the ceiling, engulfing her.
“Analysing…” said the keystone.
She waited in tense silence.
“Essence source detected,” said the keystone. “Local essence suppression field exceeds maximum viable threshold. Installing anti-dampener.”
Something whirred beneath her feet. She glanced down just in time to see a robotic arm emerge from a panel on the floor. Before she could react, it jabbed a needle into her leg.
“What the frock!?” she squawked.
The arm retracted. Her leg began to tingle. The feeling quickly spread across her whole body, from head to toe. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it felt…good. Her head was beginning to feel clearer; her senses sharper.
A ghostly shape sprang into being in the corner of her eye, quickly coalescing into a familiar form. Her minimap! It was back!
Several seconds later, the beam of light winked out.
“Anima equivalency suggests mouthlet belongs to the master’s lineage,” said the keystone. “Setting permissions accordingly.”
“The master?” she asked. “You mean my father? Calbert or Calburn, or whatever he calls himself now?”
The keystone remained silent. Saskia tried to call up a message scroll, as she had on Arbor Mundi, but nothing happened. She turned to Minganha.
The priestess’s legs were shaking. “Forgive me for doubting you, Old One,” she said.
“Who’re you calling old?” said Saskia. “I’m only twenty three—wait, twenty four now, I guess.”
Only after the words left her mouth did she realise the priestess hadn’t spoken English. Her magical translator had kicked in at the same time as the rest of her oracle abilities, it seemed.
Saskia shifted mental gears, attempting to speak in this other language. The day she’d spent with Amlya’s family must already have given her translator enough data to form a good vocabulary, because the words flowed effortlessly out of her. “Do you know the one who made this?” She gestured at the keystone.
Minganha looked at her in bafflement. “You did, Old One. For thirty generations we have kept it safe, awaiting your return. Never did I dare to dream it would happen in my lifetime.”
“And just who do you think I am?” asked Saskia. “Who is this Old One?”
“Is this a test?” said the priestess.
“Just answer the question.”
After a long, awkward silence, Minganha stammered, “Y-you are the spirit goddess Yona, guardian and mother of this world.”
Saskia opened her mouth to deny it, but then she stopped herself. Clearly she wasn’t this Yona person. But Yona could be a relative of hers. The keystone had said that Saskia was of the same lineage as its master. She’d assumed its master was her father. She’d assumed wrong. Thirty generations, Minganha had said. That was around nine hundred years. Old One indeed!
This was an awful lot to take in. She needed to get some air.
Stepping out into the temple proper, she froze, listening intently. There was a faint rumbling, thumping sound coming from somewhere far off in the distance. It sounded a lot like…
Heart smashing at her rib cage, she ran the temple door, ignoring the stares of the temple workers and Amlya’s family. The sound grew steadily louder, becoming unmistakeable. Squinting up at the sky, she felt her mouth work a silent prayer. Then she saw it. Her hand went to her mouth, and a prickle of tears formed in her eyes.
Passing through a gap in the dissipating clouds was a helicopter.
Tears clouding her vision, she turned to Amlya, who had rushed out after her, clutching her daughter’s hand. “Where are we?”
“You speak Lingya!” said Amlya excitedly. “I mean, of course you do, Old One.”
“Mother, is she really Yona?” said Khenshing. “She doesn’t look old.”
“I already told you, child,” said Amlya. “Yona wears many guises.”
“Where are we?” repeated Saskia. “Where in the world is this place?”
Amlya looked at her in puzzlement. “Why, Lingyawon, of course. In the shadow of Sesayung, your mountain abode.”
“What country?”
“Nepal, Old One.”
Saskia closed her eyes and exhaled. Now that was a name she recognised. She was somewhere in the Himalayas, and these people were…what, Sherpas? They didn’t look like the pictures she’d seen of that culture, but she was hardly an expert on the subject. Ivan had spent months trekking in Nepal. He’d be right at home here.
Anyhow, the important thing was that it had really happened. She was back on Earth. She could see her friends again. Her mum. Her mum…
Dogs, they must all think she was dead!
“Do you have a phone?” she asked Amlya, trying to keep the desperation from her voice.
“I’m sorry…?”
Saskia sighed. She’d used the English word for phone. She mimed holding a phone to her ear and repeated the word.
“Oh!” said Amlya. “No, but Minganha does.”
She went running to fetch the priestess, who returned with a bulky handset. A satellite phone, presumably. They wouldn’t have ordinary mobile coverage all the way out here.
Saskia reached for the proffered phone. After taking a moment to figure out the rather antiquated device, she dialled a number.
The voice that answered was dull and listless, but Saskia would recognise it anywhere.
“Mum,” she said. Her eyes were streaming now. “Mum, it’s me.”
“Who is this?” Alice Wendle’s voice sounded angry.
“It’s me. Saskia. Maybe you remember me? Your daughter?”
“Is this some kind of perverse prank?” said Alice. “My daughter is dead. I saw her…”
“Vanish in a puff of tentacles? Yeah I know. But I didn’t die. I just…went somewhere very far away. And now I’m back. Back on Earth, at least. I’m in Nepal, Mum. Would you believe that? I always wanted to go to Nepal.”
“Sass?” There was a heavy thump on the other end of the phone, then silence.
“Mum!” cried Saskia. “Are you okay? Speak to me!”
“I just sat down, hard,” said Alice. “I think I put my back out.”
Saskia laughed through the tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Sass, that really is you, isn’t it?” Alice’s voice cracked.
“Yeah, it’s really me, Mum. I’ll explain everything when I see you.” Feeling the weight of constant hardship slide off her, Saskia spoke the words long hoped for, but never expected. “I’m coming home.”