Hold dear your Hopes and Dreams,
Your power over Karma and dependence of Fate,
The curse of a Soul and the comfort of a Heart,
Balance your Determination, hold it from the Inevitable.
So is the way of the knowing bard.
Warning:
This contains references/songs from the games Undertale and Deltarune by Toby Fox. these include phrased references and the following songs: Friendship, Home, Hopes and Dreams, You Can Always Come Home, Don’t Give Up, Determination, Fallen Down(Reprise), Burn in Despair, Your Best Nightmare, Quiet Water, Field of Hopes and Dreams(My fave. song), His Theme and Reunited. There’s also one Bohemian Rhapsody reference if you can find it. (ALSO INCLUDES SLIGHT GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS! Not very smart of me to post this online, but please tell me of all the flaws and errors you find!)
Here, all the Undertale/Deltarune references will have this thing: *
-Sky Vault-
Chapter 1: Aerial Abduction
Chapter 2: The Gem-Hall
Chapter 3: Fately Voice
Chapter 4: Rushing Depart
Chapter 5: The Topaz Court
Chapter 6: Diamond Deer
Chapter 7: Of Jade and Obsidian
Chapter 8: Desert Harbor
Chapter 9: Dead Smiles
Chapter 10: Bane of Destiny
Chapter 11: The Start of A Spectrum Journey
Chapter 12: And Her Karma
Chapter 13: Foul Determination
Chapter 14: And His Fate
Chapter 15: A Friend and Her Beast
Chapter 16: Path of Hopes
Chapter 17: Lost Illusion
Chapter 18: SAVE Their Will
Chapter 19: Darkfall
Chapter 20: Moonfog
Chapter 21: Final Abnegation
Chapter 22: Battle of Hopes and Dreams
Chapter 23: A Word No Longer
Chapter 24: Your Best Nightmare
Chapter 25: Icelord
Chapter 26: Never a Dream
“Hey, ever wonder if there’s some kind of civilization up there? In the clouds, I mean. They’re so big and broad and well, large.”
“Stop daydreaming Crys, it’s really getting annoying! Now help me with this, the nets won’t pull themselves in for us.”
“Okay.”, I say. Being me isn’t very fun. I do the same thing every day. Get up. Prepare and set the nets at the lake. Bring them in at noon. Sell the fish. Give money to Mother. Repeat this each day.
“Now, we’ve got to sell these. Careful now, we don’t want lose any.”, Kay reminded me again, as if I don’t already know.
We walked to the market, where the fish sells for five stone, a small price compared to what we would’ve sold it for with Father. he was quite a skilled merchant, and had a natural talent for sales. Kay tries to acts like him a lot to prove he’s like Father, often asking the buyer if they would pay just a couple coins more, and usually costs us our sales for the day.
As we go home, I let my mind wander up to the heavens again. Surely there must be something up there, why else would the clouds be so large and broad? Why does no one else even see things like this? Is there just something wrong with me?
Suddenly, I felt awfully alone.
“Oh, come on! You’ve been dragging behind since we started!”, Kay snorted, annoyed ,“You’ll get lost like that, I’m sure!” Kay went back to where I stood, grabbed my hand, and began running along the road toward our home.
Only a few minutes later did he stop, because he was panting and was probably annoyed that I couldn’t keep up. Kay started walking instead, and I, as before, followed behind.
I looked up once more, but the clouds were gone, and I couldn’t see them in any direction I looked.
Finally we were nearing home. Kay slowed his pace at the sight of our cabin.
As Kay got close to the door, he halted. He’d stopped mid-step with his hand about to close around our door handle. I ran up to him, but he didn’t seem to notice, or move, from where he was.
I was beginning to panic. I tried to open the door but it wouldn’t move, just like Kay. I looked around and saw that other things seemed to just have stopped as well.The trees next to the house stopped shaking their leaves, and the wind that was previously blowing ever so strongly had ceased completely. I looked around, and again and again I noticed that things have all stopped, except for me…
And the sky.
The clouds from earlier had returned, and now they swirled until they became one huge, angry mass that almost blotted out all the sunlight so it looked like night time had come early.
I couldn’t take my eyes away from the clouds, especially when some strange bird was descending from the darkened sky. As the animal came closer at an impossible speed, I noticed it was not in fact a bird, but the kind of ship you would find at the main docks, except this barque had fin-like frills extending from under the boat’s keel.
I wanted to run, to hide somewhere in the forest and stay there until things went back to normal, but I stood rooted to the spot, petrified and awed at once.
“Ahoy, Miss!”, a voice from the ship called as its shape enlarged and its distance fell, close enough for me to read the name from the barque’s side: THE SWOOPING KOI.
The vessel landed some length away, though not a single sprig of grass moved as it touched land.
Immediately a wood board came down the side of the ship and a strange, elvish person stepped out-or perhaps she didn’t just look elvish.
“Greetings, child. The Queen tells me that you’re a gem-core,”, said the figure, her voice a calm that was barely kept, “You mind if I ask your name?”
She had long straight hair and a deep voice, if not resigned. She had some kind of blade in a scabbard strapped to her waist and some scaly boots that didn’t look very fake, all of which didn’t make her look any more friendly.
“Why so rude?”, a smooth male voice aboard the ship said before I could respond.
The shorter elf grunted.
A slightly taller elf came down from the ship’s landing board.
“Hello, little ground-person! I’m your premium escort to her majesty’s throne! I’ll explain on the ship, but you need to get on first, dear.”, he said.
I couldn’t possibly leave my home. I was about to yell a ‘NO’ but then I thought. If I stayed, how could I fix anything here? It was obvious that it wasn’t actually an offer, they would probably just take me anyways. And if I did go, they would let time go on.
But for what cost? What could these strangers possibly want? Nothing good.
Yet here I am. About to choose the stupid thing. The risky thing that would no doubt end badly. The thing I want. A world that I don’t already know inside and out.
“Okay.”, I say firmly.
“Cooperation?!”, the first elf exclaimed, “That’s a first!”
“She has agreed!”, the taller elf crowed, “Come on then. I’ll tell you as much as is needed onboard the Koi.”
The lives below immediately resumed, though I could only just notice before the sight was gone.
I was screaming but silent, it seemed no sound was audible at the speed of our ascent. In a blink it was over, leaving me stunned and momentarily deaf for the stuffiness in my ears. A thundering boom echoed about, loud enough for even me to hear.
“As I said child, I will now help you understand a bit.”, the tall elf said, acting as if the sky hadn’t, in fact, just sounded like it was ripped apart.
“You are now in the land of the heaven’s cradle, a dewdrop of beauty strung on the wings of the glorious cosmos, right in between the Earth and the highest reaches of the stars. Such a privilege!”, he cried, obsessed with the thought and fact of being here, where and whatever ‘here’ was.
“I can’t stand you blabbering on and on like that, Reginald! Quiet down and let me tell the Earthborn!”, said the short, in height and temper, female elf.
“Listen closely, girl. This is the Sky. Got that? Ok. You are here because the queen of this place thinks you can help us, and lucky me gets to pluck you off the ground and get you here. I don’t know much, but you’ll probably get to go home one day.”, she said lamely, though she’d been using her hands to make symbols and talking slowly the whole time, like she might a young child.
“We’re coming in towards the docks, General! Get ready!”, the elf steering the ship yelled.
“Keep quiet and brace yourself, girl. I don’t want the queen thinking we hurt you.”, she growled warningly.
Who’s the Queen?
I was soon hurried along a plank from The Swooping Koi to the edge of the docks. As I stepped from the plank to the docks, I made the horrible mistake of looking down. Below me, there was an astonishing amount of empty, wide open, and very, very, clear blue. I stumbled at the sight and cried out, but Reginald, (the tall elf), caught me by my wool coat. “Careful now, crystal, you could’ve fallen!”, he says. At first I think it’s a joke, then I see his face, sincere and concerned. Wow, the people here mustn’t think falling from the sky as a common problem.
“I said, DON’T SCREAM!”, the General yelled.
The hypocrisy.
Within a moment’s notice, the thick cold fog cleared from around the ship, making way for a perfectly clear view of what looked like… a city?
A group of guards marched up to us, all of them wearing a uniform of plain full-white armor coated with yellow stripes.
“Greetings, General, child.”, one said, “Please escort her to her majesty’s court”, he commanded blankly.
“Oh, just come along for now.”, Reginald crows.
“Um… okay?”, I say.
It doesn’t look like I can do anything but follow.
The Guards escort me , General, and Reginald down the main cobblestone road. As we go past, I notice a number of things.
A lot of the people seemed to be elves, with high ears and lean, short bodies. It seems that everyone here is an elf…
As we continued down the road, we passed a beautiful sunny fountain plaza. Near the base of the fountain, were four small, playing animals. I couldn’t completely make out what they were, but they sort of looked like golden cats with… a scorpion’s tail and bat wings? I blinked several times to clear my eyes, but the animals stayed the same.
Reginald must’ve seen me staring, for he explained what they were.
“Are you looking at the manticores? Adorable aren’t they? Well don’t get used to them here, most’ve the adults haven’t been paid in a while. A manticore’s most common job is warfare, but we really haven’t a need for that now. Soon the families will have to move out.”
I try to process that. Manticores, monsters, not even real beyond old myths, are a sizable amount of this land’s workforce. Just makes me think of what kind of person the Queen might be-if the Queen is a person at all.
I was so caught up in my fearful thoughts that I didn’t realize that we’d approached an extravagantly decorated, gigantic, sort of triangular building; all of it either a sunny gold or milky ivory.
“You have arrived at her majesty’s court, crystal! You should be grateful from your feet to your head!”, Reginald cheered, so jubilant he almost sounded hysterical.
“What should I do?”, I ask, very confused.
“Oh don’t worry, young crystal! You’ll be fine!”, he answered, though not very helpfully.
“You are here, crystal. Please leave your tour guides behind and let us escort you to the queen’s court.”, a guard said, his face and voice unreadable.
“Okay.”, I say, trying to seem serious and not run away from here looking for a safe way down.
The guards open the large perfectly white doors and walk in a half circle around me, open only in the front.
When I walked in, I had a small thought that this was the most beautiful structure I could never dream of. The second thought was pure awe, how elegant and large the room was with a high roof and angelic designs carved into the marble. But of all I could think of, the most stunning and beautiful feature was the lady at the center, seated on a high milk-and-honey colored throne.
She had a placid look on her face, as if she spent most of her time away from people and couldn’t be surprised by any human or humanoid affairs. Her clothes were a long white dress with golden stripes, like her guards’ uniform.
And her eyes… inhuman, impossibly otherworldly. They were completely white, and looked like orbs filled with raw light.
“You are welcome to my court, stone-heart. And what is your name?”
“Crystal,”, I say, “Crystal Hydrein.”
“Well then, Crystal, I’d like you to know how important you are to the world now. The Sky is a place of many things, as I think you’ve begun to see.”, says the Queen.
What’s going to happen to me?
“Show her to Ryu.”, she told the four guards who’d escorted us in.
Reginald and the General were left alone in the gigantic room with the queen and the two guards by her throne, all standing in still silence as I left.
“Hiya kid!”, he says. He is a very strangely dressed child, maybe thirteen, fourteen years old.
“You’re new, I can tell! You aren’t in uniform, and the only other gem-core who can go around like that is me. By the way, I’m Ryu.”, he says, and I’m a bit relieved when I find that what he’s wearing is not the uniform.
“Hello? So, um… What do I do?”, I ask, very confused, especially with his attitude.
“Such a docile li’l child, I know you’ll be great here!”, he crows.
Why does he laugh so much?
“Your face is priceless right now, I can say that much. Anyways, you’ve got a room with your new clothes on the bed if you’re so cautious to not do anything at all wrong. Y’know, I think you should experience some good music later, all the trainees do.”, he says, winking, which makes me scared for some reason. Maybe his eyes, because for such a peculiar personality he had, they were the rich growing color of spring forest foliage, flecks of earth-brown included.
“So,”, Ryu said, “Go right through, to the left door closest to the library.”
The directions sounded simple enough, so I started cautiously through the open doors.
But as I entered, I realized I wouldn’t need to look too hard for the library.
The wide stone-brick walls were extremely neat, and each door I passed had a golden plague with a name on it; Redburn: Hyacinth, Maru: BLack Fire Opal, and many, many more.
At last I came to the end of the rock hall, and found the library, marked by a golden sign by the door.
“Hello?”, I say as I open the door.
“Aren’t you supposed to be studying or training?”, she asks.
“I don’t think so yet…”, I trailed off.
“Oh! You’re new, aren’t you then? What’s your name? I could help you find your room if you need me to.”, she says brightly.
“I’m Crystal. I’m a bit confused… ”, I ask, this should all be over soon.
“Of course. Let’s see… here! Crystal Unknown.”, she directed, pointing towards a door on the left, and as that boy who directed me said, it was the closest to the library. It even had a little plague that read: Crystal Unknown. Why did it say unknown?
“Thank you.”, I said, saving the question for later, “ By the way, what’s your name?”
“Calypso,”, she said, “Calypso Larimar, guide for all the newer gem-cores. Also, if Ryu told you anything about music, do not go, it’s just a silly prank. For his high place amongst us, Ryu always seems to do the most useless things.”
Calypso sighs, looking toward another room I hadn’t yet noticed. It had a larger, sloppier sign in gold on white, but I didn’t see how gold could be streaked across a surface like that. I could barely read it, but I think it said Training Roon. Hmm… I guess it’s supposed to say ‘Training Room’ …
“Okay, thank you!”, I call and turn the knob of the door to my ‘new room’, since I don’t think I’ll be seeing the one I share with Kay for a while. It’s so strange… It’s probably just a dream. But… how could it be a dream if I know it is?
Its walls are a blank manilla, with lightly stained and polished redwood crown molding. Beside the neat blue-blanketed bed with white robes on it, there was a crate turned upside-down with a candle-lit lamp sitting on it. Other than the lamp, I didn’t see any other light source, though the room was as bright as it would be if a window was letting in noon sunlight. Peculiar…
There was also a note that I found in the folds of my new uniform, it was a small piece of messily folded parchment with sloppy handwriting: Hi newbie, Crystal, right? Well your chance for that music thing is here! Just come to the Training Room tomorrow really early in the morning ok? It’ll help start the day!
I immediately thought no, mostly because Calypso had said it was just a prank, but that also made me wonder if I would get in trouble if I didn’t go.
I put on the white robes and found a cold, hard piece of metal in a pocket of the cloth, it appeared to be my old gutting-knife from the days when our family had catch to spare, but I had no idea how it got into these clothes, especially since I last left it in the kitchen back home. I opened my room door and stepped out.
There were no windows along the hall, but I guessed it was around late afternoon.
A voice interrupted my gauging of the time, though.
“Greetings, Crystal. We thank you for putting on your uniform, you will now see the Queen for council.”, the guard said. Well, I guess I have a reason not to think about Ryu’s invite.
Of course, I was led by the two guards in their white uniform down the long hall.
I didn’t see anyone but Calypso, still organizing her books in the library, so I wondered what exactly the other people did all day. The only other public room in the hall was the training room, and it would be quite strange if everyone was there.
The guards exited the gem-hall and turned left down another. Unlike the neat stone walls of the previous halls, this one was ivory-white with decorative golden rhombuses at about an arms-length medium from one to another.
Eventually, we came to a stop in front of two large, unsurprisingly white-and-gold-striped doors. The guards pushed them open and beckoned me inside, into the Queen’s throne room, where the General and Reginald still stand, General muttering sourly and Reginald fearfully staring up at the queen.
“Good day, dear,”, the Queen said sweetly, “ Now, I should think you are still very confused, but you must know that being a gem-core is a high privilege and responsibility. You have access to thousands of the most enlightened inscriptions of battle, technology, and evolution.”
“In other words,”, she said softly, “you are a part of the overall evolution and glorification of the holy Sky-beyond that, this world. Now, Calypso is waiting in your library for you. I believe there’s another child who recently came in, maybe you can find your talents with a peer then?”
“Um, yes your majesty…”, I replied awkwardly.
The guards marched me back to the gem-hall and closed the door behind me, then went off somewhere in the labyrinth of golden corridors. I went off to the library, walking down the expanse of gray space to the very end, right next to my room.
I knocked on the library door, and shortly Calypso opened up and smiled.
“Good day, Crystal! It’ll be curfew time in a bit, but you still have a bit of time before then to learn the basics. I was just telling Mr. Hyacinth about the Gen-Lab,
very inspiring, you know.”
“Thank you Calypso.”, I said as I stepped through the door she held open.
Inside, the room seemed a lot more extraordinary than what I’d imagined, (a couple shelves of scrolls, maybe some bound ones too), and had more than just scrolls and bound pages.
Along one wall, there were five black boxes with shiny, flat, black squared plates; with tiny blinking lights around the base of the plate.
“What’re those?*”, I say, puzzled by the strange instrument.
“Those’re computers, they’re from a more recent timeline, discovered by the Time Traverse Department.”
Time travel? I didn’t want to think about that. It’s just wrong, to leave the place in the world you were assigned to by fate, or by what or whomever you believed in your faith. And to go beyond your lifetime just to take some object you found useful, even worse.
“Time traveling?”, I asked, “Isn’t that a bit, er, wrong?”
“A lot of us have mixed opinions on that, Crystal. Religious, mostly. But those of us who aren’t fazed by it are fascinated, and so we have a group for whoever wants to.”, Calypso explained.
I looked down at the boy seated on the red carpet, wide, warm red-brown eyes looking patiently up at Calypso.
“Today you’re going to learn about all of your choices here, so tomorrow you can decide on what you’d like to do after visiting the other hall.”, Calypso replied.
“First, I’d like both of you to know why you’re here. Long ago, the Sky found that the souls of the first dragons ever to live turned into precious and beautiful stones that contained extreme amounts of what we call biovirtue. Biovirtue is what it sounds like: life plus virtues, the rules of the universe, respected and created by different dragons. Except combined, you get a material that can be formed into the shape of any being that has ever existed, and those beings have more power than entire armies. Now what an old scientist here did is send all the gemstones that the Sky had collected over the past couple hundred years back down to earth, except he magicked them to dissolve into the purest air and be inhaled by whichever human in the world most matched their separate virtues. And the millenia went by, and the generations of each of the original gem’s family gave the Sky few gem-cores from around the world.”, she paused.
“Redburn, aren’t you listening?”, she asked, probably not expecting an answer because Redburn was asleep with his head in his lap.
She tapped his shoulder gently a few times, and Redburn sat bolt upright.
“Yes! I’m listening!” Redburn cried.
He looked around himself for a moment, then seemed to remember he was in the library, learning the history of the gem-hall.
“Sorry, Calypso…”, he murmured.
“Please pay attention, Redburn! Sometimes I wish I didn’t turn down that offer for Assistant General. Now, you should learn about the classes you have to choose from.”, Calypso said.
“You were offered a promotion and you didn’t take it?”, Redburn cried.
“I don’t care for fighting as much as you might, Redburn.”, she replied blankly.
“Sorry.”, he murmured.
“Again, you have only a week to learn the basics for every class we have, so please pay attention.”
And so we sat and listened to Calypso’s coverage of all that we could learn; the Gen-Lab, where you could add new features to animals or give plants and even people higher endurance rates, though she explained that both of those were only for seniors in the class.
She told us about the Training Room’s main purpose, to host combat practice coached by Ryu, (I have decided not to go there more than I have to).
She said that even the library hosted the Tech Class where you could use a device’s memory to record, chart, and test any inventions, web sites, or online training programs. Apparently they also wrote books and made online 3D animated worlds, mostly centered around collecting kawaii creatures, whatever that meant.
Next, Calypso explained the purpose of what she thought was the most important class, the Gem Finder. The Gem Finder class did many things, but mostly they spent hours finding the special abilities of their individual core gems, so most people from that class could do all of the others easily after taking it for a year.
If you take it for more than a year, however, you move on to the more wanted things like learning sorcery. Not many people went to the Gem Finder class for more than two years though, so Calypso couldn’t tell us anything beyond that.
“And there you go. Basics on every class, and I hope you were listening Redburn, because I will not repeat myself. Of course, though I expect you to remember this, you will still go to the Beginner Course for all of these classes, starting tomorrow. Now, please get to your rooms and prepare for bed.”, Calypso finished. She seemed to care about her role as the teacher for everyone new, though at some times she might’ve been trying too hard.
Me and Redburn walked tiredly down the hall to our rooms, but I was so sleepy I didn’t notice I’d passed my room next to the library until Redburn had found his room. I trod, head down and eyes almost closed, back down the hall to my room. I turned the cold metal knob and entered, and barely walked a step before tripping over part of the bed and falling on the blanketed mattress head-first.
I didn’t even turn to be more comfortable, leaving myself half hanging over the side of the bed. Welp.
A blaring horn awoke me with a start. I bolted upright, my eyes opening about twice as wide as normal. Hmmmph… why must I wake up so early? Well, at least no one’s ever late with something that loud.
I try to clean myself up a bit, and find a hairbrush on my bedside table. Don’t remember that being there… must be like the lighting.
I brush my dark hair down, so it’s not quite so messy, but my face is still a bit of a problem. I turn around, looking for some kind of water source, and a door seems to have been added to the wall to the left of my bed. I walk over and push the door open. Inside I find a strange metallic curved spout, a large mirror, and a bathing tub. I don’t know how long I’m supposed to stay here before I can go home, but I do not want it to be very long. These randomly appearing objects are unnerving.
I turn a handle on the spout, and water gushes from it, emptying into a large white bowl embedded in the countertop.
“Ah!”, I gasp as it continues, but the bowl never fills. At the bottom of it, there’s a small round metal thing, and the water seems to disappear under it. I turn the handle to turn the water off, though I accidentally got my hands wet in the process. I wiped my hands over my face as a makeshift washing. I think it’s probably time to go to the training room and meet Ryu, but as soon as I walk out of my room, I see him and Redburn walking down the hall.
“Ha! You actually came, and I thought no one would.”, Ryu told Redburn loudly, Redburn blushing in discomfort.
“Nice of you to come out on time Crystal, but you should’ve come earlier. Then you and Redburn would be early for the day!”, Ryu snorted, still laughing.
“Sorry?”, I tell him, because I don’t really know what else to say.
“That’s okay. Now I think you should go meet Calypso in the library, she said something about you guys visiting the Gen-Lab for ‘extended basic coverage’.”, he snickers.
“Um, thank you Ryu.”, I say quickly, then walk with Redburn to the library.
Calypso meets us at the library door.
“Good, you came. And Redburn, I told you not to go to the training room with Ryu. Now, I’ll take you to the Gen-Lab to see if you want to take your classes there later this year.”, she says matter-of-factly.
She walks us to the back of the library, all the while explaining where all the other classrooms are.
“So you see, most of the other rooms are behind the library, in the Lab Hall. Not all the other classes are considered ‘labs’, but all of them have a scientific base.”
She finds the back of the library and turns the handle on the dark oak door. She leads us inside, and we enter the side of a long hall lined with two large sets of doors. On one side, the double doors was elaborately decorated with many different colors of gemstones, in a symmetrical pattern different from any decor in the rest of the building.
On the other side, the doors looked strange in their shining blank and metallic gray, with steel handles and hinges. Labeled in neat print hanging by the door was a sign that read Gen-Lab. So the other one must be the Gem Finder room.
“Today we’re going to the Lab, as said before, so we’re seeing the Gem Finder tomorrow or later today.”, Calypso explained, “So, go in and I think there are some chairs on the right. I’ll be out here if they ask for me, ok?”
Me and Redburn nodded in unison and Calypso opened the door for us.
As soon as I stepped in, a wiry child about my age greeted us.
“Welcome to the Gen-Lab, friends! You will soon see the power of what we can do here!”, he said, “By the way, I’m Alex. Ryu told me to shorten my name when I became pres., so it’s like that.”
Alex led us through the labyrinth of low gray tables, incubators, and glass boxes to the back of the room, where a another gray table sat, though this one had a few chairs around it. In the middle of the table, a large glass box held what looked like a sleeping dog, though it’s fur was among the lush, leafy shades.
“This is Mjol. He’s our powerful and beautifully derpy mascot, and I want you to examine him thoroughly while he is still in this air-flow box. See what you can find, and you can ask these guys here questions if you’d like.”, Alex said, beckoning to the other children seated around the table.
Me and Redburn glanced at each other briefly, then we each took the empty chairs around Mjol.
The dog, apart from being green, seemed to have many visible differences from the average dog. He had tiny jade scales instead of fur, which you could only see if you looked closely. He had small curved lines along his flanks, and his tail was a gradient of forest green to light coral, even ending in a vibrant blooming flower.
“Hello Crystal. I am Mjol. I like buttercups. Do you like buttercups?”, the dog muttered, his lips moving humanly in his sleep.
I jumped away from the table. Did Mjol say that? Did they change a dog so deeply that it could talk?
“Well, do you like buttercups?”, Mjol murmured again.
“Um, sure Mjol. I like buttercups.”, I say, surprised to be rushed to answer a dog.
“I guess you’ve found one of Mjol’s most complex features, Crystal,”, another kid explained, “we’ve given him the ability to speak, it was voted for too. Can you imagine how many people want to support animal voice projects?”, another kid chuckled, “So keep looking for Mjol’s cool stuff, and you might have an eye for our kind of work.”
The kid walked over to Redburn, who’d pointed out some small detail on his legs, and joined another white-coated boy in explaining it.
I came to a conclusion that I could find most of the dog’s features through inspecting him bit by bit, so I started at Mjol’s deep green head.
Like most of his body, his head and sleeping eyelids were covered in tiny scales, so I tried to find out more about those. I pressed down gently on a small area of his neck, finding that unlike snake’s scales, they were extremely hard and didn’t give way under pressure. Wonder why they would give him scales like this, why would a flowering dog ever need armor? I decided to ask, so if anything they could tell I was observant.
“Um, why does Mjol have such hard scales? Do you put him in combat or anything?”
“Well, the queen suggested we start making prototypes of battle-ready animals so we’re ready, which is why we gave him a bit of armor. ”, Alex said.
I look at the small spots of slightly lighter green beneath Mjol’s eyes. All of them were the same shade, and the dots were only around his nose and under his eyes. They seemed to be glassy and smooth from a glance, but when I tried to look at the spots from a different angle, they looked opaque and liquid, like a molten mix of forest colors.
“What are those spots around his eyes?”, I ask.
“Those are Mjol’s jade freckles. Why does he have them? I don’t know, but Blackroar wanted us to add them on, for luck, she said.”, Alex explained.
“Though you may be wondering why it’s me talking to you, instead of the other students, hmm?”, Alex asked.
Not really. Well, if he wants me to notice something, let’s just see what it is.
“We wanna get out of here, of course.”, he says quietly, “And the Queen seems a bit excited about you. The reason probably isn’t good, so we might speed up our plans-if you join us.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d just got here, and for some reason everyone in the hall was around the same age, though some seemed to be from entirely different eras. What if I became immortal here, terribly stuck youthful forever… A nightmare.
“I suppose,”, I whispered at last. There was no way I could even guess what would happen, but isn’t that the point?
“But Alex”, I whispered, “What about everyone here?”
“Did you honestly think I’d leave my friends behind? After I’ve spent the last twenty-seven years with them? Of course not, I don’t plan on leaving even Mjol. So you’ll help us see our families again?”, Alex asked.
“Yes.”, I reply.
Even if I don’t plan to…
“Good. Mallem and Kumu should be telling Redburn. We have been working on something to help us, but we still need a lot more people if we want to leave.”
He seemed to ponder something for a moment before saying more.
“Could you help us get more people? Like maybe… Calypso?”
“I could ask her.”, I say, trying to seem confident in this strange world that I wanted to understand.
“Okay then,”, he said, then louder: “I think we’ve found two new peers!”
“Red, don’t you think your deer thingy will go better with a more icy color scheme? Might seem a bit more mystical anyways.”, I suggest.
Combat training with Ryu’s been simply exhausting, and after that I have to come back down here through Calypso’s library door. I remember I was kind of shocked when I found out Calypso already knew about us trying to go home, she just didn’t say anything. Now, though passively, she helps around every now and then-delivering supplies and reporting any signs that someone’s detected our work, a couple months ago I thought our project was blown when she said some new recruit was found alone at night leaving the lab-but he joined us after Alex interrogated him.
“I don’t know Crys, why not a more, say, night-ish color-like violet or something akin?”, he responded.
“Okay, if you want to.”, I replied, I guess I shouldn’t care so much about his animal’s color. I still don’t understand why he even wanted to ‘force-evolve’ that baby fawn into a superpowered stag. He said it was to represent a true form of Hertloia, the fictional spirit of continuation. Why he would want to include anything mystical in our plan to go back to normal, I don’t know.
“I just don’t know. I don’t know what to symbolize, I just know I need to show something-something important…”, Redburn trailed off.
“How about… hmm, the terrible stuff the Sky represents? Like how it’s all decked in golden glory but these elvish things employ children to do work? I don’t know. I don’t even want to be referred to as a child anymore because of this place.”, I reply, and it’s true. I feel like I’m not a child anymore at all.
“Yeah! I get it, so he should be violet because that’s the darkest color of the sky!”, Red exclaims.
Come to think of it, that really does make sense. The Sky is a dark place, so we should show it.
“So I guess all I’ve got to work on now is command-channeling…”, I groan inside. Those ‘concentration training’ sessions are exhausting and Leon is the only gem-core that can actually do what he’s asking me to.
“You’ll be ok Crys, your next session isn’t for another two days. Besides, all you say you do is sit in a dark room and try to feel really happy. If you can’t do that, you must be depressed, and you are definitely not depressed.”, he assures me, or tries.
“Okay, okay.”, I wish he’d stop trying. He misses home too, but he doesn’t know what’s been going on in my head.
For a couple months now, I’ve had a strange voice in my mind. It wants me to explore. Just explore. I have no idea what or who it is or why it’s in my head, but I feel like it is taking up more and more of my mind.
Explore, discover, save, conquer. Those are the four words going through my head day and night, and I feel like one day they’ll take over my mind.
“You okay? You look really troubled.”, Redburn asks.
“I’m fine.”, I say dismissively.
A beeping drone picks up from one of the machines around Red’s fawn. It goes on, getting steadily more rapid.
“Oh deer! He’s waking up!”, Red cries out, “Get the mask! And the emergency kit!”
I run to the far side of the large laboratory, ignoring surprised glances and annoyed yelps until I reach the Bio-waken area.
This small closet has most of our medical and emergency supplies, so I throw open the doors and dive inside.
There’s a lot of oxygen masks, so I shuffle through them looking for one of the right size for a premature fawn.
“Aha!”, I say as I pull out the right one. I get the emergency kit like Red told me to, and rush back to his fawn’s table.
“Loia, please stay awake! I’ll give you celery! Please!”, he cries, bending over the lightly breathing fawn.
Seeing me, he exhales in a flurry of explanations and questions.
“I’m calling her Loia for short of Hertloia and because it’s a she.”, he explains hastily, “Did you get the mask? And the kit?”
“Yeah, right here.”, I gesture to the heavy metal case hanging from my left hand.
“Good,”, he exhales slowly, then inhales as best he can, “then let me get her up.”
Redburn works quickly and with near complete silence, accompanied by the worried breaths of the other spectating children in the room.
He attaches the small oxygen mask to her tiny snout, then turns up the heat in the room so the deer will be more comfortable.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to her, Crys,”, He says after staring at her again closed incubator.
“She’s mostly okay, but the amount of biovirtue might have been too much for her to take at this age. Predicting anything at this point is impossible.”
“Well… You did keep her alive. Loia’s mother would probably be thankful of you right now.”, I try. He did quite a bit of labor successfully, he should be happy.
“I don’t know. I simply don’t. Anyways, it’s a few moments before curfew, we should clean up.”, he responded, still gloomy.
“Yeah.”, I agree simply.
Everyone goes back to their own workspace, cleaning up and preparing the Gen-Lab for the morning class. I gather the half-used vials of different kinds of biovirtue into their case and take them back to the supply closet.
I groan inwardly as I realize it’s time for concentration practice.
Leon, the head of the Gem-Finder group and the instructor, is a very difficult person to work with, especially when he boasts over and over again of his special ability to call upon his spirit, the Gryphon.
I rush out the laboratory door and down the hall to the large double-doors to the Gem Finder room where Leon awaits.
“Welcome, Crystal. Have you been well today? I certainly have, in fact I’ve had quite the time! My Gryphon showed up again, and I’ve figured out that the creature is a true piece of my soul! You learn something new as the new day comes, eh? Well enough about my day, time to get on yours.”, Leon says cockily as I enter.
I seat myself at a tall wooden stool next to Leon in the small, dim room and try to focus on pure happiness. See… there’s that day when Father took me to the season market and I got my coat… that was wonderful. I try to focus on that single moment when it was bought, fine and new. I’m able to do so for only moments before a quiet rasping voice spoke clearly in my mind and soul.
You just don’t understand. Happiness is nay what will set you afoot, pay instead your attention to the blackness. The blackness of the truth. The blackness that swallows all but Fate. All but what must happen. Try.
I, unwittingly and uncontrollably, sank into an endless void of darkness that went both down with me as I fell and climbed above. It was everything, and everything to me was nothing. The blackness. The darkness. It was the both the purest truth and the most hurtful lie. And at the very end, or the beginning, or somewhere in the eternal mass in between, lay Fate. And with a single catching glance-I saw and see the eye of Fate.
I bolt upright from the cold floor. Sitting cross-legged beside me is Leon, pure shock on his face, the blood drained from it and turning it bony white.
“No. You promised that I wouldn’t live to see the day of my doom. You-FOOL! YOU’VE FALLEN TO THE TRUTH! The truth that resides in me! The truth that will SLAY YOU! ”, Leon cried out in a hoarse bellow. His-no, the-voice resonated awfully around the small area of the room before I fell, unable to move or feel anything but the purest of pain.
“Crystal! Wake up! Please! We need to know what you saw!”
I jump from unconsciousness with a start, immediately triggering a thousand headaches at once.
“Huh?”, I say faintly. I want to go back to sleep…
“NO! Crystal stay awake! This is could be really important!”, Calypso yells.
I open my eyes again. I’m on a bed in a bright room with blinding light, and many people stood over me.
“What happened?”, I ask feebly.
“Crystal, we found you knocked out on the floor of Leon’s room. What happened?”, she asks me urgently.
The yells echoed around in my head again, causing more pain to reverberate across my mind.
“Leon was yelling.”, I say simply.
“What? Then how were you knocked into such a condition? What did he say?”, she asks.
I don’t know why she’s bombarding me with such questions. Hopefully I’ll soon find out.
“I think- you’ve fallen to the truth? Then he said something else… I’m sorry, already it fades from my mind…”, I mutter.
Suddenly I remember a certain someone who should be here.
“Where’s Red?”, I ask her.
“Redburn is at the lab. Says his experiment caught some kind of sickness.”, Calypso answers.
His deer? Hmm I hope it makes it out okay… Why do I think of his deer now, when I’m in some bright room thinking back to a disaster that’s cloudy in my mind? I feel like there’s something very wrong… Could it be related to Red’s Loia?
“Crystal, I know your memory of the event is clouded, but any information you could give us would help greatly. Please, Crystal. Just tell us what you remember.”, Calypso pleaded.
My clouded recollection of events cleared for a moment, allowing awful images of a pale Leon and a great, swirling and eternal sapphire eye to sweep through my mind for a single moment. Though by the next second, all memory of the events of yesterday were gone. Gone, except for one thought.
“Eternal sapphire…”, I muttered quietly.
“Sapphire, you say? Where was this sapphire? Do you know what it means?”, Calypso asked urgently.
“Sapphire… Fate’s bane… Fate’s bane is sapphire.”, I said, knowing it was true as soon as the thought was formed.
“Fate? Crystal, Fate is a part of an old and odd religion. The only people known to ever practice it were-”, the breath seemed to catch in Calypso’s throat. “Spirit Patrons, as they’re known. But how? The only Patrons in all recorded existence were- simply terrible…”
“What’s a Spirit Patron?”, I ask. If such a being was dreadful enough to hush calypso’s speech, they must be one of the most awful things ever to live.
“A Spirit Patron is an unlawful being, and for now, that is all you must know. Crystal, I know well that you want to understand what you saw, but there is no time to waste.”, she replied gravely.
I tried to stand, and after a few tries and a bit of assistance from Kumu, I slid off the bed and my old leather slippers touched the tile floor.
For the first time since waking up, I noticed that I was clad in my old dress; my wool-and-leather coat, my slightly-holed dark green shirt, and my worn leather leggings.
“Um, why am I in my old clothes?”, I ask Kumu, whom I’m leaning on.
“Emergency Protocol.”, she says tiredly.
She helps me walk to the Gen-Lab to tell Red what’s happened. When we get to the door, she tells me she’ll wait outside for me and that most of the Gen-workers are packing up their equipment.
“Red?”, I ask once I go through the door.
“You okay, Crys? I heard about what happened yesterday. Might be a warning that Fate is not happy with us.”, he replies wearily.
“Fate? But Calypso said Fate was an old religion practiced only by the worst kind of people, Red!”, I cry, surprised.
“Really? Fate is the all-knowing, the single most lonely being and the strongest. In my faith, at least.”, he explains, surprised as well.
“Hmm. How might your deer be doing?”, I ask, not wanting to dwell on talk of religion.
“I really don’t know, Crys. She might not even get through tonight. Her sickness is so fatally parlous it’s a sad wonder she’s even still alive now.”
Red is usually curious and hopeful, and rightly so, he sometimes said.
But now, he seems so wearily depressed for the sake of his fawn. It just didn’t seem right to see Red in this state.
“Red, you’ve overworked yourself by quite a bit. Maybe you should take a break, to sleep at least?”, I ask him, trying my best to sound determined, “I could even watch Loia if it helps.”
“No, Crys. You just woke up from quite a situation, so you need to rest more than me.”, Red told me, “Anyways, I can ask Siyang to watch her if I need to. He says he’s working on something that could help us in an emergency. Won’t tell anyone what it is, though.”
I left he Gen-Lab feeling hopeless and useless.
“I’m done, Kumu.”, I inform her.
“Kay. You can go and rest in your room if you want, I’ll be in the lab for a bit.”, she replies.
Hmm. What would Kumu need to do in the Gen-Lab? Usually she just trains with Sophi…
“Kumu, I haven’t seen you much around the lab, what is it that you do?”, I ask her, curious.
“Aye, not much. I’ll just see if anyone needs help in there.”, she says vaguely, though it seems she’s hiding her true reason.
I trek down the dark hall, through the library and to the Gem-Hall. As I enter my room, I find my Gem-uniform folded on the bed.
I finger through it, trying to see if Ryu put any notes within it this time, and after unfolding it a bit, I find one.
Hiya Crystal, it reads, I heard you had a bit of an accident yesterday. I’ve just written this to say hehe beware of my half-sis. She has quirk.
The next character on the small paper was one I didn’t quite understand: (; From Ryu.
“Hmmm. I wonder why he still does this”, I thought aloud.
I wash my face in the small room with the strange basin, then try to get myself to sleep in my comfortable, old clothes.
“Come on Crystal! Get ready, we’re leaving soon!”, I wake up to hear Calypso cry.
I open my room door, but Calypso is nowhere to be seen. Leaving, though? What did she mean?
I decide to ready myself anyways, so I try to comb down my hair after I’ve cleared the sleep from my eyes.
All this… Why can’t I go home again? Why… After all that’s happened do I still believe I can wake up one morning and find myself on my creaking old bed back home. I never should’ve risked it… Too late now.
And now… Now it seems I’ve finally realized that I can’t go home, that this is not a dream at all.
“Come on Crystal! We’re due to leave within the hour!”, Calypso yells through my door again.
I rush to finish cleaning myself, and with no belongings to pack I step out of my room.
“Oh thank goodness you’re finally out! Come on now, I’m to lead you to the Back Dock and the boat.”, she says again.
A logical question hits me for the first time since the accident.
“Where, exactly, might we be going?”, I ask Calypso.
“Oi, Crystal,”, she sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose, “I believe I haven’t yet told you that we’ve decided to launch the escape.”
“What? Now? We just aren’t prepared!”
“Crystal, we’ve always been prepared. Try to remember that some of us have been here a very long time.”, she gave a bittersweet smile.
“Okay, if you are very sure”, I reply carefully.
She leads me through another, seemingly older hall as the gold-and-white colors have lost their shine. There seem to be no guards at the corridors either.
Calypso grasps my hand and runs, pulling me forward like how Kay used to…
“If we are to leave before the sunrise, Crystal, we must be going a bit faster!”, she muttered, frustrated.
We run all the way to the end of the long, older hall. When we do reach the end, she pushes open the large marble doors, each laced with catastrophic webs of reaching cracks.
I’m blinded for a few long moments, as it’s been a very long time for me without seeing the grand beauty of the rising day-star.
Calypso takes my hand again and strides forward, squinting to the point of nearly closing her eyes.
I look up once my eyes have adjusted to the light, and see a huge ship a short distance away. It looks quite familiar, and as we near it I’m able to read the slanted gold lettering just above the keel along the whole length of the vessel:
The Swooping Koi
How did our lot manage to get The Swooping Koi? Last time I’d seen it, (which’d been a particularly astounding experience), it was fully well in control of ‘The General’ and her low-heighted crew. I hoped it hadn’t been stolen, but I couldn’t think of another explanation.
“You’re finally here!”, Kumu’s slightly deep voice rang out in the open space. “And thank Fate you are, we’re due to leave very, very soon. In fact, if the sun rose any higher we’d leave! Well, you’re here now and the ship is fine and ready.”
“Oh! Well I’m sorry I’m late, but I’m glad we’re finally going. Do you happen to know where Red is? Last night he was quite weary over his deer.”, I ask her.
“He’s onboard all right. We had to load everything his fawn might need, though. Sometimes I do think he’s forgotten about our sakes and hopes!”, she replies, and though she cunningly hides the messages of her last remark in cheer, it’s apparent she’s telling me to remind Red of his place. This might even end sourly if we aren’t careful…
“Oh, and Crystal?”, she says, “Ryu told me that you’re due for training now. But of course, you can’t go so… Is it okay if I told him that I’d test your skills myself?”
“Oh, um… Well, sure I suppose?”, I reply.
“Didn’t think you’d have to keep up your training now that we’re on the open sky, eh? Well let us board the Koi ourselves, we’re wasting good time.”, she chides lightly.
“That’s quite true, Kumuharu. I think we’ll do well keeping her and Red in line.”, Calypso, just as cunningly reminds her. Truly, all of these twisted pleasantries are greatly distasteful.
So we quickly walked along to the Koi, the sun rising as we went.
“Late! We could get caught any moment now!”, Kumu hissed and began running toward the ship.
We struggled to follow her remarkable pace before we reached the huge vessel, and when we did finally get to the base of the Koi Kumu began rapidly climbing the side of it.
At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, then I realized there were small wooden pegs nailed hastily to the side of the ship.
Once Kumu had ascended the wall, she beckoned for Calypso to follow, then to me in turn.
After all three of us had boarded, Calypso ran up to the forecastle to take the wheel, because she’d said that she had learned to sail well in her old land.
“Hoi, cheers to our lot and may karma play out for us all!”, Kumu yelled out once she’d joined Sophi and Siyang.
They seemed in high spirits together, which was hard to believe when the current operation was critical to their lives. Maybe happiness could be gleaned from every moment, no matter the circumstance.
After I’d taken orders from Calypso, I continued to observe Kumu as she worked with her friends, raising the towering sails of the barque.
I’d been assigned to the crow’s nest because Calypso thought my eyes seemed somehow more keen than anyone else’s, so after we’d left the Queen’s Dock about a league behind I was basically free to watch the gentle wisps of cloud rolling out beneath our vessel.
Well, it seemed they were wisps of cloud, but they also seemed to be twirling around-and they appeared to have thin, transparent wings.
Since I didn’t know what they were and I was in the crow’s nest, I called to Kumu, who was now sitting on a barrel, jotting something down in a notebook.
“Kumu! I see some kind of creature! They’ve got wings and they’re under the ship!”
Kumu seems to hear me, as she climbs the rope ladder up to the crow’s nest.
“What a sight, Crys! What good we’ll do! I’ll tell the lot now!”, Kumu yelped, extremely excited over the monsters.
“Wait! Aren’t they dangerous? What are they?”, I ask her, scared and surprised.
“Oi, Crystal, they’re cloudy wyverns! They are a remote species of dragon, and are therefore regarded legendary-by me at least. Well, to answer your question they aren’t dangerous unless you have ice on you. They love ice.”, she answered.
I decided not to ask, so I stayed up on my perch watching the wyverns. They were quite beautiful, their graceful spinning and twirling was miscellaneous and different every time.
As I spectated their friendly jubilance, I couldn’t help but remembering the beautiful gray dolphins back home. These dragons seemed just like the smaller whales-except with the wings of an angelic dove.
Is that what a dragon really was? A graceful, peaceful animal with nigh a care in the world? As angelic as a winter dove, as grateful as a playing dolphin-but all the stories told of a darker side. Armor harder than bronze, wings made crimson from the skies over battle, and eyes of burning hell.
I look back down to the deck.
I see Calypso with her hands on the large wood wheel, her eyes flicking from it to her compass. I see Kumu and Siyang still looking over the edge of the boat at the wyverns, A warrior-hearted amethyst girl called Quilli practicing her skills in a spar with Maru. But from all that I could see, I couldn’t spot Red.
I supposed he was below decks with his deer, but I was sure he hadn’t seen the sun for a while either, considering he’d loaded all of his belongings into the barque before dawn. It seemed I’d have to wait until evening had come before I could see him.
I let my mind wander for a bit, but I kept coming back to wondering why we hadn’t been caught.
I knew this plan had been in the making for a very long time, but it was very possible that such an unnerving queen and her men could capture our lot. Maybe she knew we were going to leave? But why would she let us, then? The queen did seem very strange, maybe she wasn’t trying to build an army all this time at all…
“They’ve left, your majesty. Though there’s no doubt they are going to be quite suspicious of why you let them go.”, I tell the ethereal, gold-eyed queen of our stupid standing.
“Nevermind that, Greivroar. I’ll send out a few wyverns to distract them. They’re children, they’ll forget. Anyways, how goes their flying?”, she asks, her voice clear as the peal of a ringing bell.
“Fine. Though your general was a bit difficult about the use of the Koi, they’ve done an excellent job of hiding the details of their plan until now. I’m afraid their idea of exactly where to go is still vague to even them, however.”, I report.
“It doesn’t matter where they go, in fact like this I believe it’s for the best. Fate will find them anywhere, and I will have told a fine story indeed. By the way, how is King Blackroar? I think she’s finally overcoming her heart, yes?”, the queen asks lightly, though if the queen takes time to ask anything, it’s never a light subject.
“I believe so, my queen, but I don’t know if her er-companion-is a help or a dilemma.”, I tell her. The relations of my far-off relative shouldn’t be of interest for the queen, but many of her reasons are unknown, and it it would be stupid to even talk back to the queen in anything more than a report.
“Oh, nevermind that, child. It is a help, I can assure you.”, she chuckles, which is a thing she rarely does.
“Now, I think we’ve reached the end of our audience, Ryu. Thank you, and next time would you give me a report on our dragons?”, she asks, and I curse in my mind when she uses the name given to me by my foster parents-the ones I will never see again.
One day… one day I’ll be back, and you won’t be the one with that twisted crown.
My shift in the crow’s nest had just ended with the set of the orange sun, and I was free to go below deck and have some food, but I wanted to find Red first.
As I was just about to take the narrow stairs to the cabin, I noticed Kumu watching the stars swiftly ascend, as they do in the sky without the clouds and lights to hide them.
She looked such a way I’d never seen before, and though wisdom had always been apparent in her jade eyes, it’d never shown so clearly in her features.
Kumu sat, serene and alien to her usual self, her eyes now lightly closed as a gentle smile formed on her lips, as the last bit of light in the sky slipped by and the stars shone like shards of lost sunlight.
The sight was so different from what I’d known of her, I barely resisted the urge to ask her what’d happened.
I heard a light chuckle, and it took me a bit to realize it was from Kumu.
“Crystal, I know you’re staring at me. You mind if I ask why?”, she asks wryly.
“Sorry Kumu…”, I told her, the moment growing awkward, “It’s just, I’ve never seen you so-at peace.”
“Oh, this? I’ve always been like this, Crystal. It’s just that I didn’t want anyone to notice before now, so they didn’t. Ever hear the saying ‘everyone has three sides’? The closer you get from being a triangle to a circle, the closer you are to being whole. When I left the ground, I lost the side that was built upon some crazy knowledge of a country in the sky. Now… Now I think I’ve fused the others.”, she paused and cocked her head, thinking with that strange smile still upon her, “Do I seem whole to you?”
I hesitated for a moment. It was apparent she wanted an honest answer, and though I barely knew her, I tried to give her one.
“I don’t know, Kumu. You seem so different than you usually do, I find it hard seeing you as the same person.”
“Ah, I see. Well, all it proves is that I’ve still got a lot of years in me.”, she chuckles, and I notice how different her current speech is from the usual confusing slang.
“Well, good night to you, Crystal. And please do check on Red! He might go insane without you.”, she says after a moment, and the remark is so unexpected that I find myself stopped mid-step long enough to see her turn her head back to the stars.
“You okay?”, I ask Red as I enter the onboard lab, which is currently filled only with his equipment.
“Fine.”, and he seems slightly more relaxed, though his eyelids are still tired and low over his hazel eyes.
“You are definitely not fine, Red. Stop keeping yourself up for the sake of some venison and get some sleep! I can’t allow you another day over that deer or you’ll exhaust yourself!”, I yell, startling myself.
Red smiles broadly now and says: “Well, that won’t be a problem. I’d like you to see”, he pauses for effect, “my diamond deer.”
He gestures to a small fawn in the colors of midnight, flecked with light lavender spots that seemed to glow, even adorned with softly glowing hooves like small yellow moons.
“Wow… You really worked hard on it. Why so much attention to detail, though?”, I ask him, surely he knew the situation was too dire for decoration.
“You think I’d waste time on that stuff? Oi no, all I did was add some liquid biovirtue very, very carefully. All of its beauty is from the world, not me.”, he laughed.
“Well…”, I say after a pause, “I’m glad you’re done. Though next time you plan for a huge experiment, try not to dream of more magical animals, ‘kay?”
“Okay,”, he laughs, “just not until I find a baby dragon to give my talent to.”
Both of us bend over in laughter and happiness, and a serene aura sets over us.
It seems we both know by now…
“Well, I think I can finally go to my own room for a night instead of dozing off here. I’m not sure I can leave her unattended, though…”, He trails off.
“Red, are you kidding? You’ve worked on Loia for so long, she’ll be fine. Come on, it’s long past time you left this room.”, I tell him. He’d be more than stupid to spend yet another night in the lab.
“Okay,”, he says, but pauses and whispers to his sleeping fawn, whom is covered up to her neck in faded blankets, “G’night Loia.”
We both exit the makeshift lab, down the hall of the particularly large quarters of the barque, which Alex says were made such by magic.
Red finds his room before I do, as mine is farther down.
“G’night Crys. I probably should’ve come here earlier th-”, he cuts himself off with a yawn.
“Yes, you should’ve. Well, bye until tomorrow, Red.”, I tell him. There’s hardly anything to say after all.
I continue down the cedar halls until I get to my room, near the back of the vessel. Once I enter, I’m too tired to do anything but throw myself on top of my blankets and lay there.
I’ve no idea why this crap is required of me. My plan is in motion, and yet she expects more of me. Even when most of the trainees left, there are still new ones to come and give me more work.
And today, since none of the few new kids are into fighting, she tells me to use witchcraft to see how my weird half-sister is coping with fusion issues, because for some reason Jade doesn’t have a cell phone.
I pull out that stone tablet the queen sent me and carve into its flat face Blackroar Summerwing, one who is both Jade and Obsidian with the strangely strong quill that came with the tablet.
At first it didn’t work, so I rephrased it and carved it out again, Blackroar Summerwing, one who conquers Obsidian in the likes of Jade.
Now the tablet seemed to carve into itself the words of her abbreviated slang:
Hoi. Why the call?, she thinks back, and I remember that before she left the queen had her learn to communicate telepathically with the tablet.
Queen says you need a check-up., I tell her.
Oi. Well I’m fine, and if she’s wondering, I’m fine with the fusion too. I’m definitely more jade now. No more scowly jerk, happy to be fully chiptunically quirkiously naive, lol., she says in her mind, saying lol like loll.
Good, I guess. Just don’t make yourself deaf-or forget who you were., I write out to her.
Think we gud then, right? People still look at me weirdly when I say ‘yeet’ and Crystal surely thinks I’m a changeling. Welp, have nice karma and bye, Soap lost her fire dog.
Yeah. Cya?
Oi, don’t try it if you can’t do abbreviations right. Bye 4 real!
I smile at her leaving remark. If only she knew… Well, I’ve no right to assume she’s had a fine life either. Still don’t understand why she likes chiptune… Well, I suppose some things just can’t be gleaned from a wayward world like this, even if it’s the real one.
Or in her words, it would be too easy to glean real truth from a world like this, instead of in truly terrifying and timetaking social interactions. Some friendships I had there, but none were apparently good enough for the queen to keep… Sometimes I wish I’d been the ‘Obsidian to Jade’, not the other way around.
And that’s why I’m like this, I thought, ‘cause that alien on the throne needs someone to get back at Fate.
“Ho! We’re somewhere, since our navigator can’t tell us.”, Kumu shouts as she runs down the hall.
Calypso got us lost? Well at least we can explore this blasted country a bit.
I throw my legs off to the right of my bed, and when I leave my room and the hall, I’m immediately hit by a heatwave.
“It’s so hot!”, I yelp.
“And rightly so! The whole place looks like those desert-ee places in Arizona.”, Kumu tells me, “And anyways, you’d better take off that coat. It’s probably like ninety degrees or something, record high for this time of year, I think.”
I do as she directed and quickly take off my thick wool coat, taking care to remove my small blade so I don’t poke myself later.
As I rush off to put it in my room, I hear Kumu mutter something that sounded like ‘tyrant-tantrum could help now!’ under her breath.
When I returned to the deck, Sophi, bleary-eyed and droopy, had joined her friend Kumu by the point where the rails of the barque stopped for a foot so one could climb into the boat more easily.
They were talking loudly of strange, fused words but continued more quietly once they noticed my presence. Their conversation ended when Kumu dashed off to her room.
“Is she getting something?”, I ask Sophi, a girl dressed in a fuschia t-shirt and strange, bright leggings that seemed unnecessary. Her appearance was topped with dark, violet eyes and a short curtain of unnatural mint-colored hair.
“Yup,”, she winked, “just you wait, we’ll have a fine way getting around this desert.”
I pondered what she meant for a moment, then Kumu came up from the stairs.
“I got Hades,”, she told Sophi, “but he’s going to have trouble carrying more than three of us.”
“Oh, your weakling dragons. I’ll have to get our mascot one more time.”, she snorted, taking a small, red-and-white ball from her pocket and tossing it up and catching it, “I never put him away.”
“Oh you packrat young hag, there’s a reason I don’t carry Kaiatsu around these days.”, Kumu retorted with a smile.
“We all see how being without that hideous beast has changed you at all, right? You old hag, your ego is still killing you.”
They continue arguing good-naturedly for another few minutes before Calypso walks up to them and scolds them for their ignorance of their purpose here. She tells them to take two others each with them to scout the area for civilization.
“And good thing we don’t have to find shelter out here for repairs, thanks to the wind.”, she finished, and returned to the wheel, which had been simultaneously turning and steering itself.
“Remember, we’ll hit land in mere minutes!”, Calypso shouted from the wheel.
I looked back to Kumu and Sophi to see strange animals standing by each one.
By Kumu, there was a huge beast that slightly resembled the dragons in the old stories, except it stood on two legs and it’s front legs appeared to be short arms. Its scales were a deep rusty shade speckled with a lighter orange, much like that of baked earth, and its neck was ringed with a spiky white mane. The beast’s jaws looked especially scary, with long fangs extending from the rim of its top jaw and going past its closed lower jaw.
The second animal seemed more like a great dog, but its fur was the color of fire and its poofy, cream-colored mane was growing outwards in such a way that the rising sun made it look like it was truly on fire.
“What are they?”, I ask them, bewildered.
“I can’t say their species in this land, nor the genus they share. Though this is Hades, and that-I don’t know what his name is.”, Kumu answered.
“Arcan!”, Sophi snapped.
“Okay, Arcan and Hades. Well, we got you here so we need,”, Kumu paused to count on her fingers, “three other people.”
“Did you really just use your fingers? We learn that stuff in kindergarten!”, Sophi yells at Kumu.
“Oi, it doesn’t matter. Now come on, I think Arcan will be easier for Crystal here to ride. Warm and fluffy, eh? Well I’ll get Siy and bring ye-”, she stops for a moment, in deep thought, “How many more people?”, she asks Sophi.
“THREE.”, Sophi shouts.
“Oh, yeah. Well, Hades is good by himself so don’t be scared. Unless you have beef jerky. Then he’ll want it.”, she says, rushing down the nearby stairs that lead below deck.
I’d given up deciphering her strange phrases, so I turned to Sophi in confusion.
“Well, since Kumu thinks she can dump ya on me for today, might as well get to know ya. Of course, my name is Sophi, and Kumu is a veeeery good friend of mine.”, she tells me.
“I’m just a bit confused about one thing, Sophi. How exactly do you ride a giant dog?”, I ask her.
“Hmm. I’m not very clear on that myself… Seems like our plans have a few flaws. I’ll check and see if anyone has some leather… or some rope. Be right back.”, she says, and runs down the stairs, leaving me with Arcan and Hades.
They stare down at me, angling and twitching their heads. Hades snorts and sits back, causing a thump loud enough for Calypso at the wheel to hear.
“Oi! I told you to get ready! Land is coming fast!”, she shouts and crosses the deck to see me and the two animals.
“WHAT ARE THESE BEASTS DOING HERE? What are they, Crystal? And where are Sophia and Kumuharu?”, she yells, exasperated.
“They’re getting people and supplies, so they left their-”, I pause, not sure exactly what the animals’ purpose was, “steeds here.”, I tell her.
Hades snorts again at the word, and Arcan growls.
“Are you quite sure they’re just like horses? Because that lizard looks especially armed.”, she says quietly, scared.
“Well, no. But they plan to scout the place with them.”
“When I told them to prepare a scouting party, I did not mean on the backs of such monsters.”, she mutters, “Well, if they can figure it out it’s fine with me. But if we lose anyone today, Kumu and Sophi will learn well not to have such dangerous plans.”, she said, then paused, thinking.
“Do you know if they’ve ever ridden the animals before?”, she asks me.
“I don’t know that, but Kumu seemed especially sure of their plan, so maybe she has.” I don’t like being helpless when something is asked of me, but I really don’t know what to do now.
Sophia returns from below deck carrying a large strip of leather and a thick coil of rope.
“I got some stuff!”, she yells.
“And about time!”, Calypso snaps, “Time we don’t have, now! Land will be upon us very soon, it only hasn’t yet because I’ve slowed us. I want your parties ready when we touch land, and not a second later! We’re running out of time.”, she storms at Sophi.
“Okay! I’m hurrying!”, Sophi says, and scrambles with her supplies to Arcan.
“Sophi, will we need any other supplies? If it’s a desert, we certainly need water.”, I ask her.
“Of course! Sorry, Calypso… It seems we didn’t plan this too well.”, Sophi says, to me and then to Calypso.
“I give you a simple, effortless job you were trained for. Well, I can’t delay our landing any longer, so you might as well keep preparing.”, she sighs.
A gust of warm, dusty wind blows over the barque. Its intensity makes my hair whip my face, along with the sharp blows of the sand in the force.
I try to ask Calypso what’s happening but my voice is hushed and my jaw jarred shut in the ever-changing direction of the gust.
Kumu rushes from below deck, followed by Siyang, Quilli, and another gem-core I didn’t know by name. All duck back down the stairs when the force hits them, trying to yell.
Calypso struggles to take a step, but she’s blown off her feet. Hades roars, and leaps over the edge of the ship, against the wind, with an audible crash as a dragon would dive from the sky.
Kumu struggles against the wind to the nearest rail at a crawl. She’s blown back many times, so she just stays where she is, hugging a support of the railing.
I didn’t know if it was my imagination or not, but as time seemed eternal and the sand battered all exposed skin on me, the wind seemed to lose a bit of it’s gripping force.
The constant, furious roar of the wind is accompanied by a barely audible shriek, and the push of the gust seems to decline swiftly, easily noticeable.
I’m about to let myself sigh in relief when a soft, looming shadow twice the size of our barque hurtles toward it, darkening as it nears.
A heaving roar sounds, loosening a blast of wind stronger than the sandstorm and knocking all but Kumu onto our backs. The shadow reaches far beyond the bay of clouds we seem to have arrived in, its vague outline hardly visible on the horizon.
I stare to the heavens, but seeing much of anything beyond the thickening swath of golden dust running ‘cross whatever lay above the sky is impossible. Whatever’s making the shadow must be truly magical to be able to cast a shadow through a substance so thick…
Unless-
Something breaks within my mind, and I’m struggling to comprehend more than a human should.
That shadow-that dark expanse-isn’t caused by anything too large. It only seems…
that the beast is right above.
Another shriek, and everyone among the crew on deck looks up sharply. The gleaming gold sand thins out, and the shadow over the ship does, too. Yet another shriek breaks out above the clamor, and the sand-the gleaming, sun-golden sand-is swirling up and off into whatever lay higher in the atmosphere.
In its wake, now constantly uttering a spine-chilling screech, was a horrific beast the size of the Queen’s court and adorned with metallic scales gleaming like a second sun.
Its body was extremely long, and every bit of it save for its fearsome head was reflecting the sunlight so intensely the beast’s exact shape was obscured and hard to look at, and I had to squint and crane my neck to get even a glimpse.
And the monster’s eyes-the eyes were dull and so lacking of the luster the body held. The age they’d endured echoed in the veined cracks that lined their surfaces, giving the crescent orbs the appearance of old, filthy glass.
It surprised me that I was able to see all of the creature’s features in fine detail, and the whole of it made it look like the serpent was on a different layer, a greater clarity, then the rest of the world.
“It doesn’t have a shadow…”, Siyang whispers, and I realize he’s right. The thing is twirling and hovering a good twenty feet above the deck, but its shining apparition sheds no shadow. His voice gives me a sudden realization. I concentrate on my ears, but there isn’t a sound to be heard besides the animal’s screeching, which grows ever fainter. What is this creature, a deity? What animal can bend the usual goings-on of the universe?
My heart is racing in fear evolving into panic.
I feel a warm hand laid on my shoulder, and I look up to see Kumu, calm with her face clear, looking up at the beast.
“Don’t fear, Crystal. He’s in pain.”, she says softly, her voice cracking.
I look up, startled to see a single tear about to fall from her chin.
“Aqmaren.”, she acknowledges the serpent with respect, and it gives out a final screech.
The beast bows its head, and after its eyes search each of our faces the beast’s gaze rests on Siyang.
The serpent growls softly at Kumu.
“You needn’t worry. You’ll have no fight here, Great Aqmaren. We’re all children anyways.”, she adds with a chuckle.
Aqmaren floats over to Siyang, who’s still standing by the stairs to below.
He stiffens, then his face turns serene and sympathetic to the creature.
“Thank you, Great Dragon.”, he says, and bows. Aqmaren nods his grand head and touches his muzzle to Siyang’s forehead.
So a dragon is what Aqmaren is. But he doesn’t have wings of any sort, and his body is like a great snake with legs.
The shimmering being shrouds himself with a whirlwind of golden sand, battering my eyes to an instinctive close.
When the sand is gone from the wind and I’m able to open my eyes again, I find Siyang and Kumu kneeling and staring wistfully into the glowing golden orb in Siyang’s hands. Another tear falls from her cheek, and Kumu’s smile broadens.
“Sorry guys,”, she says as if nothing happened, “poor buddy. Welp, do we still need to scout this place?” Kumu snaps and terribly fails at a wink from her still-red eyes.
I’m speechless. We’re speechless. A dragon, a huge, shining gold dragon, as old and magnificent as could be had just swooped down on us in a sandstorm-and now, now it was gone.
Calypso is the first to break the silence.
“So,”, she says coldly, “which of you dragon-souls has tempted Fate, Spirit Patrons?”
Kumu stares at Calypso, a wry smile on her lips and a dream of what could be in her eyes.
“This wasn’t my choice, Calypso. You should know by now, if anything, that Fate is as tortured as Aqmaren was-if not even more. I won’t lie to you, I knew it’d come to this… but what are hopes and dreams for?”, Kumu responds softly. More tears are welling in her eyes, and in Siyang’s as well.
“Who-who are you?”, Calypso asks, mortified by her calmness. I’m very confused, so I make a small note in my mind to ask her what in the world is going on-but not now, this moment is too precarious.
“Many names. Many things. But not too many, Calypso. I’m still just a person. Please, Calypso. I only need to stay with you for a while longer-then I’ll end your troubles and go as I should to the place I belong.”, Kumu says, as sad and calm as ever.
“I-I’m sorry. I cannot let you stay-not unless you tell me exactly who you are.”, Calypso stammers in rising fear.
“And I can’t tell you what I don’t rightly know. Calypso, please, I can’t let you face him alone. I just can’t. He’ll kill you all.”, Kumu tells her urgently, desperately.
“Who?”, Calypso asks. I’d like to know the core of all this, too.
“To say his name would be to anger the last humanity in Fate. I really can’t.”, Kumu says.
“I don’t know what to do.”, is all Calypso says.
“I don’t blame you. You’re human, you aren’t meant to understand. You can’t comprehend. But you have to, Calypso, have to. I mean it. Me and Siyang are here in the first place so we can prove ourselves worthy of the final battle of Fate and Karma. Here to set Destiny in motion. Your choice now-”, Kumu cuts herself off, then forces the words out, “Your choice now is what tells the successor of Fate.”
Something. Something, anything among the spectrum of the universe, something just went wrong.
I rush to find my tablet, running from the Training Room. It’s down the hall, the first door, actually. Why does my room have to be so far away?! All the layers of the world are at the risk of instant and permanent corruption!
I let the randomest scenarios play through my mind, all the same as the more probable ones. True names spilled? Immortal died? It could be ANYTHING. Fate seems to choose the stupidest and most ridiculous things become the certain special happening that kills everyone. Not that you disagree, a smooth voice in my mind chides. I hate the truth. Hate it. More than anyone should ever hate anime, that awful prospect that completely ruined storytelling!
I don’t know why my mind goes on like this when I’m frantic or scared. I hate it, I try to stop it, but thinking about the fact of thinking just makes me think more until I’m too confused to do anything right.
See? Just happened again. But how do I stop myself from thinking if I have to think of it first?
“ARRRGGGHHH!!”, I growl in frustration. Surely I’d be to my door by now!
I haven’t even been watching where I’m going, and somehow I’ve ended up in a hall so old, the paint has near completely fallen away and the wooden rafters(yes wood exists in this darn gold place) are broken with large pieces of them strewn across the room; the extending splintered bits of what remains on the ceiling holding out in desperate await of a repair that would never come.
I groaned and let myself fall into a cross-legged position on the dusty stone floor, but I fall back as I do so.
I smile into the empty room. Not a real smile, just of failure that’s only beginning to sink in. The tips of my mouth come so close to my eyes, it hurts.
It hurts.
I failed her. I know-I knew it was something to do with her. I knew, and yet I didn’t let my mind know. So I wasn’t urgent enough, and she’s probably dead.
Dead.
Dead, my only family. However quirky, however broken. No, she was never broken, she was perfect. Perfect. She cared-she was the only one who did. The only one.
And now…
My mind runs through a simple equation, but it can’t comprehend. I can’t comprehend. Eventually… It seems the simplicity of the equation turns it to an inequality.
The inequality that is now me.
Without her to hold me back-
I’m free.
The pain from my smile increases as it broadens, and my mind is chaos.
I CAN DO ANYTHING!*
The pain is amazing. It fills my mind, and the eternal amount of human emotions inside are a cacophony of chaos. Beautiful, misunderstood, brooding, faking, dying, desperate, loving, happy, hating, fearing, fiery, bloody chaos.
CHAOS, CHAOS!*
It’s all I hear, all I think. I scream, a scream of joy as well as a desperate fearing plea. I need help. There must be someone-anyone, anyone! Any someone could free me! No! Someone must! I need freedom! I need help! I need any something within the spectrum of anything!
An image, startling and of the coldest of deep and dark, disrupts the storm of fire and blackness.
I await, youngling. If you succeed in the trials I have laid on your route to me, you will overcome Fate, for no one is the almighty.
I wait and silence my mind, wondering if the voice will speak again.
Do you know what you should do?
Instantly, I want to say no. Most certainly no. I’m so confused it must be no.
But it’s yes.
Of course I know what to do. I have to leave this hecken place and find the voice. How? I’ll find a way. It even said ‘on your route to me’, so there must be a route to follow. When? Dawn, I decide. And finally, why? Why the heck am I doing this crap-because nothing matters, nothing’s real? Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. But truth never mattered, no, not to me. I’d been lied to too many times. Heck, I am a lie. They say I’m their best warrior, and I’ve been dreaming of the queen’s death.
Anyways, I’ve nothing more to lose. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, there’s not a single soul who would care.
“If you knew so much, Kumuharu, why didn’t you tell anyone?”, Calypso asks, astonished but keeping her voice icy.
Confusion. That’s all there is to it.
“Please, we didn’t say anything because in one way or another it would lead to him!”, Siyang pleaded.
Calypso death-stared him down… What’s happening to us? Under an hour ago, weren’t we huddled on deck, together against a sandstorm?
“Siyang is right. There’s a reason we didn’t say all we knew, Calypso. We can’t tell you who he is, but there’s no way we’re letting you face him alone.”, Kumu reasoned, her voice a bit less desperate.
“Just tell me, who is he? Names aren’t very different from one another, you know that. Every name is a common one.”, Calypso retorts, dangerously calm, deep frustration behind her voice.
“Not this name, Calypso. It means something to you, so you will recognize it. Just please, Calypso, let us go onward with our journey and forget this.”
“No.”, Calypso said simply. A small word, no. Probably the most powerful one, however short or simple it was.
“Calypso… Don’t.”, It was all Kumu said, quietly and fearfully.
“Yes. I don’t think I can trust you any longer, Kumuharu Summerwing.”, how different her first word was, as deep and simple as ‘No’ but in this case, far more powerful.
Kumu gaped in astonishment.
“I never told anyone-”, she started, then the breath caught in her throat. Siyang’s mouth hung open in fear as well.
“Your voice never did, but it was very clear. Is Karma really the most admirable thing?”, Calypso continued. Somewhere behind me, Sophi let out a resigned sigh.
“And you, Siyang Summerwing. I didn’t think you’d be one to do this. To bind your soul with a true name?”, she persisted, gaining an accusing tone.
Both Siyang and Kumu were silent.
“As previously said, I don’t think I can trust you any longer, Kumu. Siyang, I may begin to understand, I haven’t gotten the chance to get to know you.”, she paused, ending her reign of mock-kindness, “So… Will you accept exile, Kumu?”
“Calypso, you don’t know what you’re doing. He’ll kill you all!”, she cries.
How did we get to this? We’re still all just children.
“Who? Really. I shan’t have to do this, Kumu. If you don’t accept, you know what’ll happen.”, Calypso says sharply, with a note of finality.
“If you’re sure-I don’t see another choice.”, Kumu sighs softly.
“You can’t, Kumu. Please…”, Siyang pleads. There are small twinkling spots beneath his eyes.
“So you accept?”, Calypso asks, a bit confused.
“No. Not exile. I can’t live knowing I let all of you die. That would inspire some awful karma.”, Kumu replies softly, her last line sounded like it contained a wry smile, but I’d covered my eyes a while ago. The sadness amongst the lot of them was too much.
“Then… You’d rather face… the other thing?”, Calypso trails off, astonished.
“Yes.”
The word comes again. The power. The simplicity. The wrongness of acceptance of something unknown… What, really, really what is going on?
“Then… Let us prepare. When you are ready, I’ll be there-”, she pointed to a clear patch of cracked desert earth a slight ways from the ship.
“Okay.” Another simple, powerful, vague word. When will the lot of this madness be cleared?
Calypso promptly and slowly walks over to the end of the railing, where the stepping-pegs lie.
As she turns and starts down, a tear, bright as freshly fired glass in the free desert sun, is only just visible for moment before it runs swiftly down her cheek.
Just a couple more hours before dawn, and I think I’ve got everything I need…
I walk slowly around my small room. Already got my IPod, earbuds, too. Got enough clothes… I think. Doesn’t matter, anyways. ARRGGHHH! Just thinking of music got some of Jade’s chiptune crap stuck in my head…
I’m frustrated for a moment.
Then time and memories catch up with me.
I go back to packing in silence.
For some reason… Some weak, stupid reason…
I can’t forget that song she made me listen to. And now… I feel like I’m glad I listened, if only to have a part of her still with me, out and up here…
I remember that song every day. When I wake up, it’s already playing in my head. And it’s not even that good. Home, she’d said it was called.
A nice word… A nice meaning to go with it. I had one, once upon a long, cold time ago. The thing-no, the people I wish for the most. It’d been too long, soo very long…
And then she came along.
Younger, more naive, more carefree, a complete nerd, speech impediment included. She wasn’t actually blood-related to me, something to do with a different layer of the world-but none of it mattered. She treated me like a brother when she thought no one would notice, and she really was a sister to me. She even told me the stupidest things-like how she was confused when her best friend dumped her BF. Jade’s reaction was priceless.
But thinking about her…
It brought back the facts, and the sad smile that’d somehow crept up onto my lips disappeared.
It brought back more than just those facts… Now there was even a beast in my mind. I don’t quite think I’m scared of it… Am I? It’s there to help me… Right?
Surely.
I push it out of my mind, I still have to finish packing. I just need to focus-
I stop when I reach the stone tablet.
I don’t think I have a doubt that she’s gone… But surely it won’t hurt to try?
I lift the tablet from the desk it rests on. I wonder if she ever finally got to teach that Crystal kid how to fight…
I take the quill out of my pocket-for some reason, I kept it. I let my fingers draw it across the surface of the stone:
Are you there?
Nothing. Nothing in the spectrum of anything, but anything is just a small bit of everything… right?
Please. I don’t know what, but something went wrong that day. Tell me-tell me you’re okay. Please. PLEASE. Don’t leave me behind!
My fingers tell me anything and everything my own mind wouldn’t let me realize. I see my own desperacy, as a fact, a terrifying, truly awful fact. But it’s now what I know, and I know what I believe because believing and knowing are one and the same.
So…
Does this mean I’m willing to finally let her down? Jade… Jade was better than this.
I cry out, pain and confusion causing the sound. She would know what to do. She always did. Always… Until now.
The tablet falls to the floor with enough force to shatter it to a thousand tiny bits. I HATE METAPHORS. I HATE HER FOR LEAVING ME HERE. Do I really? I don’t even know what I think, what I really think. I can’t do ANYTHING. Anything at all! Not without raging confusion taking over my mind. I JUST WANNA KNOW THE HECK’N TRUTH! Is there really no one who knows? No- there must be someone out there who does. Fate does. Fate, who took everything. Fate, the almighty who isn’t even the real almighty.
…
That’s it. All the raging part of my mind has to say. Good.
I feel the pain of a too-jolly smile creep back on my face, and I return to packing quietly. Only there’s nothing left to pack-
‘Cause the sooner I get out, the sooner EvERyOne WhO wATcHEd HEr DIe WiLl KnOW THe sAmE HaPPiNEss I hAVe!
I sprint through my room door, the smile still climbing higher on my face.
Gone. Before I understood how she could change so fast, before I could register who she was.
Gone.
I was sad-but for all the wrong reasons. I wasn’t sad because I missed her, because I didn’t. I wasn’t sad because she was just a kid, her potential taken away. No.
I was only sad because I regretted not being able to get to know her. It just added to my confusion. More things never to be understood, more that I would probably think were just weird attributes of an even weirder dream.
And now that I’ve come to it…
How long can I stand this dream before it breaks me?
All I feel is confusion. More and more of it, piling up and taking over. The single emotion that’s become the basis of everything… Confusion. Confusion spiraling into frustration, into fear, into-
I cut myself off.
I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself, not now-not yet.
Even if it’s probably the cure to the confusion…
No. It’s too cowardly, to use it to drive away a problem. I’ll have to find a way to deal with it.
But if it really is the solution…
I think I made a choice then. But then I lost it.
Apparently I was still too scared to do anything that needed to be done, even if it was the only way.
I suppose I might’ve cried before, back down on the ground where things made sense…
But not like this. I’ve never found myself as lost as this… All I can do is rock back and forth and yell at myself in my mind-I’m not broken! But it didn’t help, because it wasn’t true.
Though I tried to calm down so many times, I just couldn’t. It got worse. And worse. And in some point of time, I was lying face-down on my bed, sobbing into it. This day, after one so full of sadness, is even worse. Confusion will most certainly be the bane of my existence…
Apparently, someone hears me. There’s a knock at the door to my small room.
I try to quiet down, even hold my breath, but it’s no use. I just end up hiccuping, when I try to say something, my voice won’t come out. My throat aches terribly.
I find that it’s Redburn at the door as soon as he opens it, a stray strand of his burnt red hair visible out of the corner of my eye. I struggle to sit up.
“You okay, Crys?”, he asks, concern heavy in his voice.
I still can’t talk. I try to say ‘I’m fine’, but I can’t even cough.
“Oi.”, is all he says. It’s also what he says whenever he gets himself into a situation he doesn’t know how to solve.
I struggle to raise a hand, give him some signal that I’m okay. But before I can lift it from my bed by more than a couple inches, it falls back. I really, really thought I was stronger than that…
Hmph. I think I might be able to write something if I had any paper…
“Oh! I know,”, he smiles for a moment then rushes back to his room. He comes back a moment later with strange lined parchment and a weird metal pencil.
“There!”, he says as he hands me the stuff, “So what’s bothering you?”
Everything, I struggle to write and show him.
He smiles.
“Yup, if I had any time to think about stuff other than-uh-Loia, I’d probably be something like this right now.”, he replies. When he stutters, he turns the slightest bit red. Maybe he’s thinking of resorting to the same thing as me?
I smile.
“Anything I can do? Don’t you dare say ‘nothing’. Then I have to leave knowing you’re still sad.”, he says, a slight smile still on his face.
Are you free for a bit?, I write. I don’t exactly know what I’d like to do-but I do know, don’t I?
“Of course. Everyone’s kinda moody today, so Calypso couldn’t make us do anything.”
Then… I don’t know., I write.
“That’s the problem with everything. The real root reason could be anything, but then it gets mixed up with all the other stuff.”, he says it as if he’s tried to find the reason for his own misery before.
True. Well… I guess I do know-part of it. I’m just confused., I write. It’s basically the truth, but the other thing probably shouldn’t be said yet.
“About what? I don’t rightly see how giant dragons that throw sand or Skislands could confuse you at all.”, he says, his voice filled with a half-cheerful sarcasm.
Skislands?, I write. What word did he invent now?
“Yeah, Sky-islands. It’s a great name, I know.”, he says, snapping and pointing his index finger forward with his thumb pointing straight up.
I almost fall back over, laughing. It’s a stupid pun-actually, it’s not a pun at all, it’s just so much of a Redburn-ish thing to do, though he’s never done it before. He’s usually a bit too shy to do things like that.
“Brilliant,”, I tell him, since laughing brought my voice back. I’m too busy laughing again to say any more, so I just clumsily put my paper down on the bed beside me.
“So I cured you!”, he says, mirth fills his voice.
“Mostly.”, I say, letting happiness creep in. Why did I choose to risk this?
“What? I thought my pun was good enough to fix all of you, Crys. Well, what else? I’ve all the time in the world today.”, he says, his voice is of concern masked with laughter.
“Nothing too bad, Red. It’s just-I don’t think I can actually say it.”, I let my voice carry in full the happiness that started the thought in what seemed so long ago.
“In that case-all I have to say now,”, he paused for a moment, “is…”, he trailed off.
“I guess I can’t say it either.”
We smiled.
A word-or a name, whatever it was-flowed throughout the air of this small speck of a spot in the universe, perfectly in tune with a strange kind of song-
Chiptune. That’s what it was. The genre of Fate. Just the right word-or name-to fit the clear singing peals of its kind.
As for the name of the song-that too flooded into our minds from somewhere or everywhere.
The name fit the song perfectly-but it clearly wasn’t the true mood of the song. It was a Friendship that’d been something different all along.
And for once…
Everything was understood.
Even if everything in that moment only meant the person beside me and the thoughts we shared.
More and more things were understood-the answers to questions that hadn’t even been asked, questions different to anything we would think.
Wait… how do I know I’m thinking the same things as Red?
But the answer is already there, it’d been there since the song started. It is the song-I can feel the presence of Red’s mind.
Now another name-it’s definitely a name this time-flows out in tune with the sharp buzz of notes.
Snowhearth.
I look at Red, and he looks at me.
He nods, and so do I.
The song fades out of existence, but it’s still playing in my mind.
This might not be such a terrible day…
Well, to be fair, I basically knew it way before today… But I guess I didn’t say anything before, either.
“Snowhearth.”, I mutter. Sounds nice, and it reminds me of sitting by our old hearth when Father was still there.
“Snowhearth.”, he says in turn. So it really wasn’t just me…
“So…”, I start, still recognizing the fact with wonder, “This is her Karma?”, I ask. I know it’s true, but it’s so strange. Maybe Fate isn’t cruel all the time.
“Maybe she knew. Kumu did always seem kinda different.”, Redburn acknowledges.
“No, she really did know. Remember that night when you were in the Lab with Loia? She actually told me to go see you.”, I tell him, remembering that night.
“Oh wow, Crys, I thought you actually decided to do that yourself.”, he says with mock hurt.
“Whatever, I just feel bad for Siyang and Sophi now. If Kumu sacrificed herself for all of us, she probably knew what it would do.”, I say as I realize it. Oi.
“Well, she did fight back.”, Redburn replies.
“With a dagger no larger nor sharper than a kitchen knife. All her blows were just off by enough to avoid Calypso by an inch.”, I remind him.
“Fair. Should we go see them?”
“Probably.”, I reply.
I follow him out of my room to see if Siyang and Sophi are okay, but when we find both their rooms empty, we go up to the deck to find Sophi screaming-
And a strange Siyang whose grief-stricken, darkly calm face hardly looks like Siyang at all, standing face-to-face with a petrified Calypso.
So far, so good. Getting a boat wasn’t too hard…
I accidentally glance down at my long dagger, the blade exposed and bloodied by my side.
All for a worthy cause…, I assure my mind.
I swing the paddles harder. Somehow that works up here… Maybe even this stupid thing is magic? The elf guy who had it looked kinda shady…
My thoughts-now that they were subject to some alien scrutiny, so of course not truly my thoughts-echoed retorts back at me at every turn, and now another one came.
How can I think like this? I’m just so confused. Confused, that’s all I know. All I truly know. And really, it’s nothing at all… WHY DO I KEEP THINKING LIKE THIS? IS IT EVEN ME WHO’S THINKING? HUH?
I hate this so much. I keep letting the same thoughts cloud my mind, maybe not my thoughts, but the same every time, even if a few words here and there are different.
I try to focus on something else, but my eyes immediately land on the shiny crimson spots of my blade, Pixnote. I try to forget what I used Pixnote for a minute ago, to instead think of why I named it Pixnote.
I get as far this:
Pixnote, for the pixels that forever sing the voice of her mind.
Pixnote, as a permanent note that I let her down.
Pixnote, in two parts to remember the emotion behind her chiptune voice when I last spoke to her with the tablet. Someone was lucky.
Pixnote, to remember what chiptune once was, who she once was.
Pixnote, sharp and full to remind me that I’ve never matched blades with anyone who knew my next move so well.
Pixnote, there to show me that my mind can scatter into a thousand-million pixels with a single touch.
What was I doing again?
The thought is so stupidly recurring that I double over in laughter.
But it’s not real laughter. It’s only there to remind me I’m no longer someone worthy of mirth. I’m…
I’m not really a person anymore. Somehow, I know it’s true. I believe it, so I know it. That’s just how things work.
Oh heck, now I’m just sad. Apparently, I’ve still been rowing the boat pretty steadily, but as soon as I realize it, my sequence breaks.
I growl inwardly. I want to yell. I want to scream. I want someone in the spectrum of anyone at all to notice what’s happening to me. Please, please stop me. Tell me I’m still a child, anyone! Tell me I’m still capable of being a person! SOMEBODY JUST NOTICE AND TELL ME I’LL NEVER HAVE TO KILL ANYONE!
So that’s the truth. I’ve believed in the back of my mind a thousand times, but never admitted it aloud in my mind. It is the truth. I am the truth. I know the sinister workings of the world. And what do I want now?
I WANNA FORGET IT ALL. Ignorance really, really is bliss. Darn stupid human curiosity.
“Hey, Ryu!”, I hear a girl’s voice. Oh heck, it’s that Yowah-Opal kid. How the heck did she even manage to leave Queen’s Dock?
I turn around and see her face, light pale skin, muddy brown eyes, and a shoulder-length curtain of dirty blonde hair to top it all. And-Oh Gawd is that a manticore?
“Oh! Hiya Mabel! Are you sure you’re okay, ugh, riding a heckin manticore?”, I yell across to her. Weird kid.
“Wah? You know Entei Jr.! We just wanted to see why you’re all the way out here. So uh, why’re ya all the way out here?”, she yells back.
Her manticore, Entei Jr., seems to be in a playful mood. He dives and swoops around my small boat, able to under because it’s only air. I notice Mabel might be able to see Pixnote’s red edge, so I frantically tuck it beneath me.
“Um, the queen let me out for a bit. I’ll be back later today.”, I lie. I hope I don’t sound too conniving… Earth-borns like me have to ask the queen for permission on everything. And most of the time she says no. Mabel, on the other hand, is from some well-off family of Sky-native folks that originated from some long-ago gem kid that actually got to grow up. She can do stuff like this without permission, her house is literally down the street from the Court.
“Cool. Can I come with you? I don’t have anymore classes today, so I’m free, too.”, she asks, not having to yell because Entei Jr. is level with my boat. She’s a bit younger, too, so she’s got less classes. She may also be the only kid who doesn’t take me seriously.
But could she help me? If I get her killed, I’m pretty sure I’ll get executed or at least a life-sentence. But that’s only if they find me… Oh Gawd how’m I supposed to deal with this kid?
I know. The truth.
“Ryu, it’s okay if you wanted to go by yourself, y’know.”, she says. I must’ve hesitated a good while.
“Actually, yeah, it’d be nice if you’d come with me.”, I tell her. Eventually, I was going to end up telling someone what the heck is going on with me, and Mabel kinda just volunteered.
“Yay! If it’s only for today, I don’t think I need anything else, either. I had a large enough breakfast to last me the whole day!”, she yelps. Optimist, no doubt.
“I’ll tell ya where we’re going after we get a bit farther from the docks.”, I tell her.
“Okay. I’m so excited!”
It’s a true pity I’ll have to dampen her mood later.
We go on swiftly and smoothly for another half-hour. I’ve the route in my mind, laid out before me by the being behind the voice.
“We far out enough yet? I can barely see the pier.”, Mabel asks. She’s quite impatient at times.
“Yeah, think so.”, I tell her subconsciously. Spies could be anywhere… But they aren’t. I hate my mind.
“So why’d ya come all the way out here, Ryu? I’ve a feeling someone like you is always too rushed to go somewhere only for a view.”, she asks. Too impatient.
For a moment, I do look out across the cloud-thatched sky. I look all around me, a three-sixty. Not a speck of gold or ivory in sight.
“Okay,”, I let out a long sigh, “my reasoning may take a bit to tell, it’s a long story.”
“That’s okay,”, she says, excited, “I like long stories. They’re way more fun.”
We awake from the sight into a horrifying duel. And that’s not even the worst part, it’s all quiet. All the more like an awful trance. An awful, monstrous nightmare of a trance…
Siyang isn’t quite Siyang. He’s barely human… Floating above a patch of white-lighted pale earth faraway from the barque-the same place Kumu had died.
All around us, above and below, were clouds. Clouds that should never have occurred in this climate, clouds so full they turned the entire scene for as far as one could see to a sad, pale-as-death mass. And we-
We were the center.
Siyang, his skin lighter in shade than the clouds, was as tranquil as the word. His face was gaunt, his blue-and-now-black-flecked-eyes wide but empty. His hands and arms moved apart from his still figure, impossibly swift with a short, recently-sharpened dagger, a carving of a snake set in its looped handle.
Kumu’s dagger, Inkchip.
From his back spread eight shadowy tendril-like wings, each one an elegant spider’s leg, tipped with red and lined with a small crystal for every color in the rainbow.
Colorful. Like that crystal Father showed us, the one his friend mined out from far within the earth. Colorful… Every color the spectrum had to offer, but in shattered, crack-webbed pieces, though all of it was still a single rock… What was it?
I remember all the cracks and veins were black, and it was in a way that made the rock look like a polished black stone with a shimmering cracked rainbow covering.
But why is it so important now? Oh… Siyang’s gem!
“Red! Remember when Leon said that a person’s strengths and weaknesses reflected their gem?”, I ask him hastily.
“Yeah. Why now, though? We can’t seriously fight Siyang. He was literally the nicest person I’d ever met!”, Red replies.
“We might have to. And to note your grammar, you said ‘was’. Yesterday changed him, Red. And not for the better.”, I try to reason.
Our eyes meet. He nods.
“Okay. What do you suppose he is?”, he asks quietly. We’re still on the boat, away from the fight, but it’d be impossible for Calypso to keep going against someone like this.
“I don’t know. The gem he reminds me of-it’s like opal except the sparkly color bits are more geometric. Almost like Black-Fire-Opal.”, I say, remembering the short time we spent studying actual rocks.
“Hmmm. I really don’t know, Crys. We have to do something right now, though… I think we may have to fight him.”, Red sighs.
“Fine.”, I can’t say I see an alternative now, anyways.
We run back below the deck and get as many people as we can to come up and help Calypso. We end up with a sad Sophi, Quilli, Maru the actual Black-Fire-Opal, a slightly disoriented Leon, and an Azurite boy who’s never lifted a weapon. Can’t say I’m any better…
We all run (or jump-Quilli did) down the stepping pegs or rails, slowly gathering on the pale parched earth. Too slowly.
As soon as me and Red get down(lastly), we clasp hands and run as fast as we can to Calypso’s losing duel.
I take a moment to realize that I don’t have a weapon on me. I look around frantically, but there isn’t an extra to be found. Even the Azurite, Dylan, is struggling with a short sword.
Red apparently doesn’t have one either, so we’re stuck racing towards a battle at the front of our small army, defenseless. I need to know the name of that gem!
As we get closer, it’s apparent that Calypso’s taken a lot of blows. None of them bleed, but the scene of the battle is in the same kind of higher resolution as Aqmaren was. A layer of power.
Once we were only a matter of a few feet from the duel, most of everyone behind us yelled a notoriously loud battle cry and rushed to Calypso’s side, even Sophi. It’s probably really hard for her right now, being forced to fight the person closest to her best friend.
Siyang takes no notice other than lowering himself back to the ground in order to fend off other attacks with the barbed red tips of his wings, each as thick and hard as swords.
His gaze stays, unwavering and punishing, on Calypso, so intensely it seems his other attacks are effortless. He’s forced to take a stance now that he’s on the ground, and his dagger-blows become harder and cut deeper, still bloodless. Calypso doesn’t seem to notice any of it, though, and she just keeps trying to defend herself, but every blow is as pitiful and pointless as an infant’s touch, glancing off Siyang’s dagger every time.
“So this is the Karma that everyone talks about. Not the return of kindness, the power that comes back on those who commit such wrongs.”, Siyang says quietly, almost a whisper. His voice isn’t his voice, it’s hollow and pained.
Calypso can’t respond, but Siyang continues, almost unaffected by the fight surrounding him.
“Why’d you do it, Calypso? We saved a pained dragon. What part of that deserved death?”
Calypso struggled to hold her long blade, beads of sweat dotting her face.
“Just because you don’t understand… I guess that really is human nature. If you would’ve let us explain, you wouldn’t die right now.”, he says, this time it is a whisper.
Too late for us to have done anything, we notice we’ve just been staring. Red stutters, unsure of what to do. Unsure. Confused. Not knowing. It’d been the cause for all the worst things in the world because-
Because all of it became fear.
And fear, for all its atrocities, was the reason. The reason for a lot of things.
And it would’ve been the cause for yet another.
“All I have to do now,”, he said, “is give up.”
Siyang stopped fighting, and I think the world stopped, too.
Before Calypso collapsed, before the last second hit…
I let a song play. I know how I did it, but it was another thing that couldn’t be explained in human terms.
It was a song of renowned cheerfulness, a song of togetherness. A song that told of dark times ended, ages long gone, forgotten as the world moved forward. It was the song of mistakes forgotten and sweetly forgiven, of memories kept for eternity.
It was You Can Always Come Home.
He stopped. He looked at me, his blue eyes looking for a moment as if they were coffee brown.
He smiled. A real smile. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he looked again like he should.
Then he looked at Calypso. She was stopped mid-fall, and she looked kind of faraway. Everything did, actually.
It was as if I was in the same kind of strange layer-of-power. It was very, very weird.
“Sorry, Crystal. I-I know we all miss her, but-”, Siyang’s voice died.
“It’s okay. Humans don’t understand a lot of things, but it’s not our fault. We’re weird like that.”, I found myself telling him. It wasn’t something I’d normally say, but it was a small truth. Maybe because of the clarity needed for this strange dimension…
He came back up to hover next to Calypso’s still moment-frozen body. The spider-like attributes of his wings faded away, leaving Siyang, coffee-eyed and sadly smiling, now affixed with just two wings, each still keeping the rainbow-hued crystals. Around his neck was a red-and-white scarf, and hanging from a string below it was a blocky green-and-blue heart that read KARMA in sloppy handwriting.
Maybe he and Kumu really were different from the lot of us.
Time seemed to resume, but when Calypso hit the parched earth all of her previous cuts and gashes were nonexistent.
“Sorry.”, he mumbled with a small smile, and helped Calypso to her feet.
She stepped swiftly away from him as soon as she could stand, then looked at him guiltily.
“No, Siyang. I’m sorry. I-I was scared.”, Calypso said sadly.
His eyes were blue again, his wings gone, the scarf and pendant, too. His clothes were again an indigo shirt, a black cotton jacket, and those weird blue pants.
“What happened?”, Red asks quietly. I follow him a few feet away from the cluster of people.
“Yeah, I haven’t seen him like that in a very long time.”
We turn around and see Sophi, weary and bruised but otherwise fine.
“What do you mean? You saw it, too?”, I ask her. Maybe Sophi’s different, too.
“Yeah. I mean, that moment when looked like he used to.”, she answers.
“Okay, let’s all just go somewhere safer.”, Red says and starts back toward the ship.
“Hey! All I’m saying is some things are better left out, so y’know just forget it!”, she yells at us, staying rooted to the spot.
“Fine.”, I yell back. We don’t need to know things we’re not supposed to know. Not everything is just here for us to understand.
“I think I can tell you a bit,”, I tell Red.
“Thanks. Sophi’s kinda annoying sometimes.”, is all he says.
“Yup,”, I’m about to start when I catch a glimpse of Siyang, and for a strange moment his eyes are brown again.
So far I’ve told her my tale as far as the leave of most of the gems, at which point she hadn’t been enrolled yet. But the only noticeable event after that was…
“So what happened after they all left? Oi, the queen sounds kinda scary now.”, she asks.
“Well, she’s only scary if you don’t know what she is. As for what happened next… Well, it wasn’t very nice.”, I tell Mabel. If I follow the sequence of events after Jade died, I’ll have to tell her what happened to me. I guess it’s for the best…
“If you’ve ever heard of a student named Kumu,”, I started, “well, I was given a tablet-thingy to communicate with her when she left with all of them, since she was still undergoing a gem-transfer.”
“Okay. Was she close to you?”, Mabel asks. Impatient and heedless.
“Well, in a way she was kinda my sister. More like a distant relative, but she was still the only family I had, so I treated her like a sister.”, I explained.
“You don’t have a family? Oh well. Ya can go on now.”, she interrupted.
“Well, one day I felt something. It was just wrong, Mabel. Like some random but important thing that wasn’t supposed to change changed. I knew at that moment-Kumu was gone. I don’t know how, I just did.”, I tried to explain. My throat was starting to hurt. Oh heck, just heck.
It’s okay. You’ll make it right soon.
THAT STUPID VOICE.
“Sorry, Ryu. I wish I’d met her.”, Mabel said pitifully. No. If you dare pity me, think you’ve seen as much as me, dare to empathize… No. I need to calm down.
“Well, what’s happened has happened. And that gets me pretty close to where I am now. Okay, so after she-went away-some super weird stuff happened.”, I start.
“Sorry, but so far I think you’re the weirdest person I’ve ever met.”, she says.
This kid is getting hard to deal with…
“Well… After that it gets… complicated. When I realized I didn’t save Jade-Kumu, sorry, something changed. I just kinda found out that-well, I’m free now, I guess. She was the only thing that kept me at Queen’s Court. So that brings us to now… I don’t know why I left out the strangest part, Mabel, but I didn’t really just ‘realize’ it on my own. I know this sounds really bad, but there was a voice.”
I look back at Mabel, as it’d been too hard to look at her while I talked. Her face is serious for what I think is the first time from what I’ve seen of her.
“Ryu, this could mean all lot of things. And, to be honest, I don’t think any can be good.”, she responds, worry heavy in her voice.
“I think you’re both right and wrong. I might not be the same as I once was, but it really is good in a way. I’m all the way out here to get rid of Fate once and for all. Fate is the root of all troubles, Mabel. If it goes down, we’ll have a happier world. That’s all I wanna do.”, I tell her, my voice growing desperate. I can’t lose her now. If she goes and tells somebody-anybody-I’m dead.
“Ryu, ‘fate’ is just a word, it’s not a real thing. You can’t get rid of something that isn’t there in the first place, Ryu. Why don’t ya just come back home, Mum taught me how to bake bread last week and I could try to make it! Just-please don’t do this kind of thing. It sounds very risky, y’know.”
Just as I thought, but I hoped for too much. One last try…
“Mabel, some risks are worth taking. Jade said that when she took a risk, it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to her. It’s okay, I know it’ll be.”
Why did I even try to tell Mabel anything. She’s just another one of those smart-alecs who end up with a heart somehow. No one knows my experiences, not the least bit of the hell that I’ve seen, the hell that somehow ended up becoming my whole. Oh, this is sure helping.
“Well, I think you’ve left me at one, and now… it seems more a choice then a risk. Ryu, you really, really are risking a lot. I don’t know if I could turn down a chance-but also a risk-at real adventure, but I do know that I can’t let you die where no one will know you.”, Mabel replied, serious and concerned.
“Thanks, but y’know I didn’t ask you to come.”, I say. This is my choice.
“You clearly want me to, Ryu.”, she says, on the verge of a laugh.
“Maybe.”, I tell her. I shouldn’t have to deal with people like this…
Red had been quite surprised at my description of Siyang’s momentary appearance.
“Where do you think he really is from?”, he asks, curious and awed.
We were sitting outside the cabin, watching the cloudless sky and talking through hours of wait. Siyang, after the battle, was immediately brought in for a private council with Calypso, for her and all of our curiosity was too much for our lot to go onward without knowing.
“I don’t know, but Sophi told us it’s not something we should wonder about. If we ask him, he probably won’t give a straight answer.”, I tell him. The previous day had been both wondrous and catastrophic, and I didn’t know how to even think of it yet.
The cabin door arcs outward slowly, and Siyang steps forth and sees us.
“I’ve told her all she had the right to know.”, he says tiredly.
Calypso exits the cabin a few minutes later, walking quickly to the center of the deck.
“Could you gather everyone, Crystal?”, Calypso asks me.
“Yes, Calypso.”, I say obediently, and run down the stairs to get everyone else.
I return with the other gems and go back to sit with Ryu on the deck.
“Okay.”, Calypso said, “I’ll be getting us away from this blasted place.”
We all turn and look at Siyang, who now stands where Calypso was.
“Okay. Apparently, I’m told I need to tell you quite a few things.”, Siyang said heavily.
We sit and wait in silence.
“When the dragon Aqmaren came and granted us his soul, he told us where we had to go to revive Fate. I’d no idea what it meant at the time, and neither did Kumu. Now, I don’t think the meaning matters as much as the place, given where we are now.
“Calypso set us on this journey because of Fate and one-sided beliefs about Spirit Patrons. Technically, a Spirit Patron is just someone whose soul has been through more than one part of the universe, but a lot of them used what they knew as an abused power, so basically superpowered dictators. Me and Kumu are-were-Spirit Patrons as well, but we just wanted to help.”
“Okay, now I’m just salty.”, Sophi huffed from my left.
Siyang looked at her resignedly.
“That brings us a bit closer to now. Well, the point is-Fate might just be real. Kumu talked about Fate like it was some kind of mysterious being, and she might’ve believed in it, too. Besides the fact that Kumu had a serpent’s soul, she seemed to pity Fate when I asked her what she thought of it. Aqmaren’s soul said the same, always referring to ‘Fate’ as a name. If Fate is real, then ‘it’ is a ‘who’ as well. And maybe if Fate is a who, it’s a misunderstood being. It-they-could be just like Aqmaren!”, he finished, trying to give us a bit of hope.
“If Fate really isn’t just philosophy…”, Maru started, her mouth gaping open in wonder even after her words had left.
“But we don’t know if it’s true or just some madman’s speculation! We could be going about and wasting time for no good reason!”, Quilli yelled in protest.
“We haven’t a plan or schedule beyond this, Quilli. Right now, it’s all we can do. You might just learn something from it-isn’t that what life’s for? Whatever we do, it’s a life-and-death case, so why not risk a little?”, he tries.
“So,”, Quilli begins skeptically, “what would you have us do with all this?”
“Aqmaren’s soul won’t say anything but a name-but I think it’s a place. He says it’s called Corotrossen Frostrock, but I’ve no idea where it is, if it is a place. Aqmaren is willing to lead us, however.”, Siyang says hopefully.
I don’t know if I’m ready to go anywhere-if it is a place-that’s yet to be proven real, especially of it’s directed by a beast such as Aqmaren. However hurt he was, he was still a beast with claws and horns and teeth and a whirlwind of sparkling, biting sand. And his ancient knowing eyes…
But do I-we-really have a choice? If all this really is a dream-but it isn’t. It can’t be. Whatever happens here, I won’t wake up if it goes bad. No, I just don’t like this…
But what if-
What if I could just believe that it’s all a dream? It doesn’t have to be true, but a good lie can’t hurt, can it?
It can.
If all this is just a dream, then when I wake up Red will be gone. Gone. Before I can even let my own mind tell me whatever future hopes I might hold.
It can’t be a dream, I won’t let it be a dream. Never.
Then what choice is left?
“Red… What should we do?”, I ask him in a hushed tone. I have no honest opinion-my mind is too full of quarreling sides.
“I don’t know-Oh, why do I still say that? Of course I know.”, he says with a deep breath, talking to himself as well as replying, “Crys, I know it’s a risk. ‘Reviving Fate’ is certainly key to danger, but if we don’t we have an even more vague path.”
“Okay.”, I say softly. He’s right, I know it.
Siyang has been waiting quietly, glancing desperately at all of us from time to time. The faces of the surrounding children are a mixture of hope, awe, scrutiny, and fear.
Quilli still scowls, but repeatedly casts searching looks over at Calypso, who is behind the wheel with a large map of the Sky. Quilli never was one to put her trust in any kind of religion, so she probably wants nothing to do with this mess, but it seems she’d never disobey a superior, either.
“Siyang,”, I start-
“We’re willing to go wherever you need us to go.”, Red finishes, looking about the lot of us.
Don’t know how long it’s been. How long, in moments of pain and moments of fear. How long it’s still gonna take…
I reluctantly glance at the too-shiny scarlet edge of Pixnote. I can’t stop the last bit of humanity from escaping my eye, falling and weighing heavily for a moment within a moment in the air, then disrupting the previously perfect coat of red, scattering off in drops within drops within drops of lost, desperate time.
I really, really didn’t think that I’d let anything and everything go so fast. Well, it’ll be okay in the end. It’s gonna be okay. Just fine…
Oh, for all the stupid lies I’ve told myself, the stupid lies I’ve been told, the darn monster of a lie I’ve always been…
Why do I keep lying? I don’t even have to say a word, not even a thought these days-it’s already there. My mind is fine with all the lies, so okay with it that I really believe them, too.
More lies. There’s no way out this time. Every side is another darn lie. No comfort in revenge, no hope in a friend, no capability to ever be human.
Maybe-
Maybe that’s a lie, too? It should be.
I’m still me on the inside…
But am I really-
If my inside was broken first?
I sink to my knees in the wet grass, but no tears come for me. Not anymore. I take Pixnote away from myself, about to toss it away and make sure it never hurts anyone ever again-then I stop my outstretched arm and its stained steel extension. Maybe I really can be good again…
A nice thought. My own thought, but still a sorry one.
A good thought, but maybe more?
“I’m gonna help you, world.”, I whisper, “I’m gonna SAVE YOU!”
A real yell feels nice, it’s been so long…
I get up and look back at my blade knowingly. It’s time I put things right-for anyone in the world of everyone. Maybe someone else can deal with the Queen?
I plant Pixnote’s worn leather hilt in the moist earth-of-Sky, the small emerald sphere set right above or below(depends on how you look at it)the hilt reflecting the morning glory of the rising sun-always so much brighter up here.
I take a few steps away from the shining metal, and my mind feels for just a beautiful, serene moment like it did long ago, back when I still had both a blood father and mother and a good life ahead.
And now…
Now I’m sadly sure that I’d made the right choice. I know in my soul that I’m no longer in control, so why fight it when all I’m doing is hurting people? Just the words hurt. But now, I really, really can SAVE the world*. I finally have the chance-
To be the hero.
I run and leap a fine, truly and sweetly jubilant bound.
For Jade,
Pixnote’s point is only a fragment of a moment away.
For Mabel,
And for you!
I tripped in surprise, but the stumble only pitched me forward. Pixnote still found its mark, and it’s gleaming expanse still ripped greedily through the left of my chest.
Except I would never put it like that.
I smile grandly. The true last tear falls swiftly sideways from my eye, watering a small golden-yellow flower*.
The buttercup almost looks like it’s smiling*.
I turn my head and look to both sides, and see the grass splattered with red. I reach out and dab my index finger in a drop of it, the stuff is hot on my skin-no wonder they use red so much to represent love, it’s pretty accurate.
The world changes. Or I do. It’s all a bunch of lies, anyways.
I’m cradling Mabel’s head in my lap, her brown eyes still and unseeing, for once her voice quieted and her rich skin wrongly pale.
“No…”, I whisper. Why is all this done to me? Well-
I did it to her. Why did I do it? I didn’t, did I…
Who cares…
Not me.
I close her brilliant brown eyes, and for what should be my saddest moment, all the tears are gone. I’ve let free more than my share, I suppose.
I look down at my chest.
Where Pixnote had previously or never actually cut through, there was nothing but a deep, gushing slash. Somehow Pixnote was back in my left hand, hovering beside Mabel’s head.
I crossed her hands over her reddened chest and let her lie for a moment in the grass, looking even less like she used to in the rising sunlight.
And then I noticed her beast, Entei Jr., lying with his neck tilted too far back, a long cut along his left flank leaking crimson.
For all the good I’ve done, for all the bad I’ve never done, I just wanna go home. Home, a place I never truly had. A place… that I’m gonna get if I keep going.
I can’t move, though. As soon as I try, my being fills with the false joy of pain. I try to embrace it, but no matter how vigorously I move, it’s never enough to take me.
Eventually I stand and leave Mabel and Entei Jr. to lie in the cold light of noon, no matter how glorious the sun may have been, it holds no true warmth. I don’t go back to get the boat from the rocky shore of the place, either. It’s useless now.
So I’m left standing there, for minutes or hours or forever.
Did I lose the Earth? Did I already get to my dream? Did that one priceless illusion finally end… No. It couldn’t have. I-I sense that my destiny is still a bit away.
But something’s still different.
Is this my last moment?
My true final moment-
As me?
Well, I might not be able to save the world after all…
But I can try. It’d be a good use of my time.
A warning. Now that might help.
“FOOL! YOU’VE FALLEN TO THE TRUTH! The truth that resides in me! The truth that will SLAY YOU!”, I yell in a crude, raspish voice that isn’t mine. Not mine, not me…
I’m too late.
My last moment is already up.
I couldn’t even say goodbye…
Though not everyone agreed, the majority of our childish lot was almost happy to take the risk. Later that day we learned that even if we disagreed, Calypso had already decided to try to find Corotrossen Frostrock anyways.
And it wasn’t going too well…
“Are you sure this is the way? We left all land behind a while ago.”, Calypso asks, unsure.
“Aqmaren says so.”, Siyang replies firmly.
Calypso stays silent and keeps the barque on a slow, straight path.
The chilly fog about the deck(and basically everywhere around us) is thick enough to obscure everything more than ten feet away, and Red went down to check on Loia as soon as the fog appeared. He apparently doesn’t like the mist too much.
Speaking of Loia, she’s had a couple unexpected growth spurts since we left the desert-like ‘Skisland’. She’s far past staggering around like a normal fawn usually does at this age, and keeping her on the ship has disappointed Red a bit.
All this… It’s given me a bit of time to think, not that I want it.
Thinking always leads to confusion, and confusion leads to misunderstanding to fear to a great many bad things.
So here I am, thinking when I don’t want to, waiting for any kind of something to happen. I’m trying to make use of this time and my mind, but it’s all an otherworldly web of everything I don’t know, what I’m not meant to know. I don’t even know what I want to do… And now I have a headache.
All this… I’ve no idea what to do; what I should do.
I look up from my interlocked hands.
Sophi sits on a part of the railing almost directly across from me, fidgeting with her red-and-white ball.
Maybe I can try to understand?
I slowly, quietly walk over to Sophi and sit beside her.
“Hi, Crystal.”, she says blankly.
“Hello.”, I start. I don’t know what to do.
“What do you want?”, she asks.
“Sorry, Sophi. I just want to understand, I’ve been so confused. I have no idea what to do.”
“Welp, I think I told you about your limits on that.”, she says.
“Sorry, Sophi…”, I tell her. I start toward the stairs belowdecks. I didn’t mean to pry…
“Oh, what am I saying?”, she calls after me, “It’s been long enough, I think Kumu would be okay with it now. We only kept cover because we thought it’d be better this way, no one would think we were different… But I guess that’s impossible now, anyways.”
“So…”, I begin cautiously, “Why?”
I think my lack of knowledge is apparent here, I mean I don’t have anything else to say.
“Well… Before we knew the Sky even existed, me, Kumu-she went by Jade at the time-, and Siyang were just normal nerdy kids. We weren’t exactly a trio, though. Kumu was my best friend and; later on; Siyang was the person I shipped her with, and though she would’ve denied it I know she thanked me for it.
The three of us were introverts who loved playing Pokemon with our real friends, mostly because none of us had many friends outside of the free online version we played. We felt that our little world was one worth defending, so me and Kumu eventually became leaders of a not-so-famous clan called Dragons of the Wolf. We kinda developed a large, loose circle of friends within the clan, but people came and left over time.
Eventually, our dream had become a wish for a world in which we could all be together in real life, hearing laughter instead of reading lol, seeing actual expressions instead of waiting for people to find the right emoji.”, she paused, a small sour smile hanging wistfully of her lips.
I’m even more confused, if possible, for almost all the words she used were words I don’t understand.
“I think I get it a little bit…”, I mumble.
“Well, I don’t think it can get any easier for what happens next.
Kumu had been trying to figure out a real way for us to be together using dreams. She had a theory that we could literally enter an alternate universe if we were conscious of sleep, travel through multiple until we found the right one… and she thought she did. We were together, truly together, but we got… here.”, she points upwards.
“We found that we’d also been turned into gem-cores, as they put it. Kumu was her namesake, Siyang became an ammolite, and I became ametrine.”, she says, “We got up through the ranks enough to be recognized as some pretty strong gem-cores, so much that the Queen noticed and gave us some silly ‘honor’ names. I got Faerenflare, Kumu got Blackroar, and Siyang got Karmatheos. Kumu actually thought it was cool, though… For a time, it was pretty nice.”
Sophi’s wistful smile droops a bit.
“Then we realized what was really going on. There were kids who’d been taken from their families, lost and scared, sometimes even suicidal. They didn’t know anyone, didn’t have anyone to turn to. And to top it all, they were being trained for either war or the kind of genetic science that people from this century don’t even understand. It was just wrong, Crystal… We ended up joining the rebellion, too. Not really for our own sakes, though. Kumu never really wanted to go home, she’d believed in something, some kind of fantasy land that could free her from the world back on the ground, she basically already knew everything the Earth had to offer. In the end I had to agree, though only because of the injustice.”
Now she frowns.
“So here we are, lost kids chasing a dying fantasy-a dead dream. And she’s dead because of it.”, Sophi finishes sadly.
“Well, you are helping them.”, I try to point out. It’s pretty futile now…
“Helping them? At one point, me and Kumu were a useful bit of the rebellion, but now? Now we’re just tagalongs, even less than that since she’s gone. And her death-her part of who we were as a crew-all it did was bring chaos. We’re just children playing a bad game of pretend here, Crystal. A very bad game.”, she says sourly.
Something strikes me as suspicious here…
“Wait a minute, why did the Queen only take children in the first place?”, I ask. It’s a wonder I didn’t notice it before.
“Kids are more naive, and with gem-core logic, they’re just as powerful as any adult. Why?”, she explains lamely.
“Just a thought… But are you sure that’s it? That’s quite a small reason.”, I ask. Maybe.. just something, maybe…
“What’re you trying to say? Let’s see… Well, we’re definitely more headstrong how we are, but that’s the only other advantage I can think of.”
That was it. ‘It’ wasn’t my thought, though… Maybe it was just what was needed-for what, though?
“Maybe… Maybe she really knew what was going on, the Queen. She was mysterious enough, and I think she’s enough years to know what we’d do. Considering that, she probably knew we’d rebel against her like this… And remember when we first set off? No one came after us. What if everything we were ever told there was to provoke us?”, I figure. It makes sense. Something finally makes a little bit of sense.
“And think about it, did the Queen ever really need any kind of warforce? Reginald himself told me that the peace’d caused manticores to lose their jobs.”, I find as I say it. So many true thoughts, I think.
“Yeah… But what could she possibly be hoping to accomplish by sending trained children off somewhere that they-we-don’t even know ourselves?”, Sophi queries, apparently stumped.
“Maybe we should tell Calypso.”, I suggest.
“Definitely.”
“I’m surprised we didn’t think of it before.”, Calypso thinks aloud, “Well, I’m glad we’ve gotten somewhere, but I don’t think it helps us much.”
“I don’t get it. She could be leading us somewhere… How, though? How did this even work? She’s too old and smart to be the Queen. It’s so unfair, she just knows so much that she’s not even human.”, Siyang groans.
Confusion. The complete and total lack of logic… No. Not yet, not ever.
“Maybe we don’t have to know.”, I suggest. It’s simply inviting negative feedback…
“I mean, we didn’t know anything before, but we still kept our plan.”, I try.
“I’m sorry, guys, but we don’t know enough to actually make use of this. Overthinking it will only make things worse. It might just be best if we moved on.”, Siyang says.
The hopelessness that hangs over us is emphasized by the cool fog, and we stand: me, Sophi, Siyang, and Calypso all in sad silence.
“We can’t dream anymore, but we can still hope. It’s all we have.”, Siyang mutters quietly.
“We just need to stay determined. And maybe… Maybe we already have it.”, he continues.
Siyang looks across our frowning faces. We start to look around at each other, offering small sad smiles.
Their need, their hopelessness, it seems to fill my mind with a strange hard courage-
Determination.
Something starts, a spark or a forest fire of perseverance, of a hot, hard energy from the depths of my soul-and a song starts from the tense atmosphere.
Siyang looks up, seemingly seeing through the fog. He mutters something that sounds like ‘under tail’.
“I guess we just have to keep going.”, Siyang says.
“I suppose so.”, Calypso agrees reluctantly.
“What would you have us do?”, Sophi asks. ‘Us’?
“There isn’t much to do except wait. We can’t even use the crow’s nest in this fog.”, Calypso sighs.
“Fine, then.”, Sophi says, “I’ll see if I can do anything.”
She goes belowdecks.
Maybe Loia is done eating by now? I was never too good with animals, but it’s something to do…
That was it. The Darkfall. The last moment of me.
DARN THAT SORRY WORD! Heheheh!
Me. My. I. You. Love.
All sorry old StUPiD lies. Stupid, stupid lies! Hilarious lies!
And Jade? We thank her, oh we thank her for what she started all right…
“Thanks Jade!”, we yell, our voice great and jolly.
We start running, not to any known place but to Fate. Fate is both everywhere and anywhere, but a part of us knows the real way. The right way. And when we get there-
FAtE wIlL KNoW tHe pRIcE tHeY mUSt pAy.
Yes, they. It was quite obvious. Funny how for all we tried to make people laugh and smile, the real joke was the world. It was just a darn cringey prank, leading us to believe in love, then telling the truth. Oh, not telling, just sitting and waiting for us to find it. The world is a dark, dark place. It’s blend in or lose the illusion. Jade was just stupid, so she lost it. Simple. Mabel was kinda dumb, too. Not our fault.
We speed up. No need to watch for anything that might trip us, that first stumble took with it all precaution. Now we have what we’ve always wanted-needed, really. The determination, the power to take the needed risks, the power to have a chance to chance it all.
Determination.*
Sounds a bit familiar… Why?
We run faster, our feet pounding the moist earth loudly. But we can’t tire.
DETERMINATION. *
What’s so special about it?
What’s-what’s that noise? It’s so strange…
It’s like a threat that knows what’s gonna happen… And it’s not happy. It’s just… Knowing and honoring. So weird…
We run as hard and fast as we can. Our clothes are uncomfortably drenched.
What is this? What’s going on?
There’s hardly any energy left in us for thought, yet we still think as we run ever harder.
Why, Jade? Why did you lead us to this?
We keep going, faster and faster, kicking off that last bit of stored energy-all to outrun a song. A gosh-darn StUPiD song.
Then we run out of land.
The fall is eternally better than the Darkfall, and the song finally ends. Why were we trying to outrun it anyways?
Welp. It’s just another experience. It won’t kill us anyways, so we keep falling, our limbs constantly changing position in an earthward tumble. But it’s impossible to go back to Earth once you’re in the Sky. If just anyone or anything could go about as they pleased, NASA would’ve already found it. No, we’re gonna hit the Paradox.
Oh heck, why does all this crap have to happen to us? It stopped being funny the day we came into existence. How long ago was that? Nevermind.
The strangely breathable air rushes past. It shouldn’t be long now…
The fall continues seamlessly except for a weird pause of that awful butterfly feeling in our stomach. The Paradox.
This is gonna go on forever… We gotta find a way out.
But what?
How is it even possible to think while we’re hurling downwards at such a speed?
We cross our arms and legs as we fall. Think! How the heck is this possible?
No. That’s not the answer. We need to calm down… But that’s something impossible for us now.
Try. We have to try.
So we do.
We’re falling down. What happens after we fall? We’ll have fallen down, usually. But if it’s a magic paradox… No. Magic’s always been a stupid explanation for everything that people don’t understand. They just need to think deeper.
And so do we.
Okay… if second-nature says it’s magic, it’s a mental thing. What if we just think it’s gonna end?
The butterflies pause again. No, that’s not it.
…
What about…
Accepting eternity? It’s kinda cowardly, though… Not something we would do unless it’s the last resort.
Is it, though?
Maybe it is. No bad in trying, anyways.
We try to calm down and accept the end-
It almost works, we can almost wind down enough to close our eyes and let the fall go on forever, just like the void-but a part of us won’t let go. A part is too determined and ancient to stop trying.
So it breaks the balance and stops the fall anyways-just differently. Not naturally…
We awake aching on loose, rocky ground, or at least that’s what it appeared to be at first. It actually just seems to be vibrating-but that’s all we can pick up on before a headache hits.
Another song starts up-if it can even be called that much. It just sounds like the essence of a sad, lonely and hopeless headache. Oh heck, I should’ve known…
We know we’ve ‘fallen down’, you don’t have to yell it at us in a darn stupid bunch of headache-inducing sounds!
Wait… is it sympathy? After all this time…
iT’s ToO dARn lAtE.
Too late for Hopes or Dreams*, maybe.
But just in time for the chaos-
We’ve reached it: the land of Fate.
Loia trots about the deck, restless and probably annoying everyone on the barque.
She’s been like this for a while, and even Red can’t calm her. He says that she thinks there’s something wrong, but we think it’s just the fog.
The fog.
It’s been getting colder and thicker, and I had to put my wool coat back on. Red had to borrow a green wool bear-faced hat from Siyang because his ‘ears were cold’, though he was a bit reluctant to let Red borrow it.
“I don’t know why you guys think it’s so bad, this is nothing compared to New York.”, Sophi mutters, though she’s shivering a bit too.
What’s New York?
“We’re heading towards something, but I can’t make anything of it.”, Calypso informs us.
I wonder if it’s a Skisland. It would help quite a bit if the fog cleared. It keeps most of our surroundings in shadowed obscurity, and the cold humidity isn’t very comfortable.
Quilli, Maru, and Sophi look out over the front rails to see what they can, but I’m too cold to feel like moving. Don’t think they’ll be able to see much, anyways.
Loia abruptly gets up from her spot on the deck and trots to stand next to Sophi, her luminous moon-yellow hooves shining through the fog wherever she stepped.
“Hi there!”, Sophi says in surprise as Loia nudges her hand.
Loia jumps up and finds herself with her front legs hanging over the rails, leaving her in a near-standing position.
“Loia!”, Red yells and runs to her, but I still feel too cold to do anything.
The fawn/doe(I really can’t tell if a regular deer’s growth speed is accurate for her) keeps herself propped up on the rails, her bright yellow eyes locked ahead.
What is she doing?
The fog ahead gains a stronger shadow-we’re getting closer. But to what?
“There’s definitely some kind of land!”, Calypso yells from her place behind the wheel.
Nothing to do but watch and wait and try to stay warm…
Loia leaps over the rail too quickly to be stopped, her bright hooves hitting something hard on the other side of the rails.
What?
There’s a deep, crashing tremor and I’m knocked to the hard wooden planks of the deck. We’ve hit something.
“What was that?”, I ask Calypso anyways. The shock of it is still raging on as a headache.
“Land. Rough land, it seems.”, she replies.
Red runs down the peg-ladder first, shouting for Loia.
Quilli, Maru, and Dylan hurry down to see whatever’s going on below, and the rest of us follow slowly, Siyang at the end.
“This place feels weird…”, Siyang mutters as he climbs down the pegs.
The landscape is grey and rocky, and the stone steepens to a peak at what looks like the center of the small Skisland. It looks like there’s someone at the top…
“Is that a person?”, I tap Calypso on the shoulder and ask her.
“What? Actually-”, Calypso stops abruptly.
The figure moves a bit and the gleam of metal is visible through the thinning fog… Wait, since when has light been able to reflect through fog like that?
The figure holds the shining blade above its head for a moment, then lets it fall back and hang limply beside itself.
Calypso stares up at the figure atop the peak, shaking her head in disbelief.
“How? How could this even happen?”, she mutters under her breath.
“What?”, I ask her.
“It’s… It’s Ryu.”, she whispered.
How could she see that much from so far away? Maybe she’d just known him long enough to tell…
“It’s him…”, Siyang muttered from my right, “Him, finally. Did we fail…?”
aRE yOu FatE?, a voice echoed.
That crude, rasping voice… it’s too familiar…
TheN YOu aRe FIt To sUFFeR yOur CHoIcEs!
The climb up this big rock was a bit tiring, and we don’t even know why we did it.
But the people below-
Among them were the two people closest to Jade-Karmatheos Summerwing and Faerenflare of No Binds.
But of course, she wasn’t there herself.
Her best friend was there.
Her ‘certain person’, how she put it.
But. Not. Jade.
iT’S noT FAir. tHeY aRe wHat CauSeD HEr DeAtH, THEY ARE FATE. thEy wIlL DiE.
We start slowly down the other side of the peak, towards them. They, the ones who did nOThINg to help her.
Are we right about that… ?
What’re we saying? oF cOUrSe wE’rE rigHT.
A wide smile creeps onto our lips, and we walk slowly, taking our time.
We casually glance down at Pixnote as we walk. The edge is a shining silver, the red all gone. Must’ve came off when we landed.
We turn our head and stare directly into a familiar face at the front of their bunch-Calypso.
Why?
We stop for a moment.
What isn’t to be understood? Wha-
wE kEep WaLkIng.
These stupid jerks. They let Fate ruin their lives, let Fate kill Jade… Yet here they are. They Who Refused to Fight.
But we’ll make them.
We start running down the sloped rocky surface of the peak. Closer and closer to them.
Maybe, during some other better time, we would’ve slowed down so we wouldn’t trip. But not now, no, not at all. Every trip or stumble only brightened the mood-the final act before all revenge was taken and the world equalized for once.
But what after that?
No mAtTeR.
We’re almost to the base, and they haven’t moved much at all. To be fair, it’s only been a moment-even less. They just can’t catch up, they’re too darn BlInd. They can’t see the truth, only the useless lies that brought them here. They’re all gonna lose their gosh-darn illusions, alright!
We’re at the base of the rock, but they’re still just standing there-oh yeah. We can feel their uncertainty, their stupid fears.
And of course, the time. The clock hasn’t struck a full moment, all the work we’ve put in to get to this moment won’t let it. wE cAn MakE THiS moMeNT laSt FOreVer!
We abruptly slow our pace to a leisurely walk, and finally to a stop in front of-
Calypso…
…
We raise Pixnote from our side…
Our left side.
And then came the Memory.
That was the moment I got to know her… that August afternoon. We were at Karakmaan Plaza, on that old bench next to the fountain, and we’d just been let out for a late lunch break. She’d had a canvas bag with nothing but an apple and a rice-cake.
I’d wondered if anyone still ate rice-cakes and why the Queen gave us the stuff in our lunches at the time, but I bought some extra food for myself(for some reason, they accepted American money) since I thought the supplied food wasn’t enough.
I offered her half of my PB&J, but I had to tell her that it’d only cost a bit before she’d take it. That was when I noticed that she was left-handed, too.
It was a silly and useless thing to notice, but I felt so alone up there that anything, any similarity was amazing.
“You’re left-handed, too?”, I’d asked her, my voice still openly astonished as it was.
“Yes.”, she’d said.
It wasn’t a blunt kind of ‘yes’, like she was confused of why I might ask or if she just wanted me to shut up, it was just her version of ‘yeah’. There was probably a proper formal word from her time that she could’ve used if she wanted to.
But she didn’t, ‘cause she was just like me.
I started asking her a few random nerdy questions like “Do you know what anime is?” or “Do you like Root Beer?”, but of course she didn’t know what any of it was, so I basically asked her to get to explain all this random useless stuff. It felt really nice and weird, though.
Eventually, it went from that to stories from our lives, and I was pretty sure we should’ve gone back inside for the rest of our classes, but we stayed and talked, happily lost track of time til the sun began to set and we were reminded. All of this and I never ate my lunch, which would be the remark that made her smile at lunch the next day.
A good memory.
My best memory.
…
And now?
Now… I was about to end it for her.
She hadn’t even seen any anime yet… Why did I ever tell myself that I hated it?
No. It just wouldn’t do.
I lower Pixnote a bit, and settle into a proper defensive stance.
Can I still make anything fair after all I’ve done?
No, no I must stay focused and do what I must before Fate forces this moment to end…
“So much I’ll never get the chance to say, senpai.”, I chuckle sadly, looking into the eyes of Calypso for the rest of my moment.
Anime memes are seriously the best kind of last words.
“But now…”, I trail off. The End of me is near… For real this time. Once this moment ends, I go under. Forever.
Maybe now of all times I can quit being a coward for a bit…
“Love ya.”
Why did we stop? Their pain will be the song of our heart!
We swing Pixnote strongly and swiftly in a circle, formally ending that awful bit of no time.
The world has long since yearned for justice-
And now is the time of our calling!
There stood a ghastly alien form of Ryu, his lips twisted in a cruel smile, his abnormally bright green eyes burning with a mixture of both hate and joy as he stares at Calypso. How did he even get here…
What happened to him?
“Ryu…”, Calypso whispered.
You-your stupid bunch of traitors hides the true enemy. They-they let her die. You all did. But even beyond that, you are cowards. Bastards, more like. You all let Fate ruin everything you should’ve cared about, but of course, it seems you never really did.
The crude voice controls the realms of our minds-the amount of hate and fury beheld within it is astounding.
We can’t do much but stand and star at Ryu in fear. I can’t even feel my legs.
All you have the right to do now is suffer. Suffer in the name of that stupid metaphor Fate, the name you gave to your wrongs so you could have a clean conscience. Well, we’ll see where that got you, won’t we?
He raises his sword, as do Quilli, Maru, and Leon; ready to fight back.
The rest of us either don’t have any weapons or are too surprised to draw them, and though a simple gutting-knife isn’t really a weapon, I take it out for it’s all I have.
Sophi tosses her red-and-white ball up into the air and Arcan appears in a blue flash beside her. Loia rushes frantically across the rock to Red, giving a low grunt to accompany the loud clack of her hooves.
Siyang steps forward, a seven-foot-tall yellow-orange dragon with small blue wings by his side.
“We said we wouldn’t leave them to fight him alone,”, Siyang whispers, “and we won’t.”
Huh? You of all of people, the nice one? Why should you step forth and try us, Summerwing, one of Hope and Karma? Well, if you really are the best, I’m grateful for your choice. Let your silly metaphor DIE with you!
“No.”, he said quietly.
The most powerful word had come again. Simple yet strong and unabiding.
A kindly calm aura set over the world of the moment. This place had and has many names, and so the Field of Hopes and Dreams was one.
It seemed to could turn out to be as wonderful as it once was fatal.
Siyang held out a glassy orb of jade, its opaque dark green surface shining with light from no derivable place.
And from it?
There was Kumu, toothy smile and green eyes shining dimly.
Just what between Earth and Sky’s happening? IT’S JUST CONFUSING ME TOO MUCH!
“Sorry. But I seriously thought y’all would suspect something, I mean I’m not really the selfless type.”, she says casually.
Casually.
Ryu gives a rasping, crooked laugh.
“Thanks. For too much, dud.”, she says to Siyang, “Well then… Ryu?”
You should know by now that our name cannot be put into any language. That word was a part of our being, but no longer. You-Blackroar Summerwing of Dreams and Fate-are by far the most hell-deserving person here. You were the first to know the ways of this world. You knew what would happen, did you not?
“Knowing anything is useless if no one else does. Certain things don’t apply to people if they don’t believe in them, and to believe you have to see. I was dang stupid for knowing anything, Ryu. I was the only one who believed, but it happened to everyone. Mental laws are made and broken.”, she says.
Don’t call us by a name that no longer exists. This world has suffered under Fate for too long. The end of all of you here will end Fate as well, so LET US KILL YOU.
“Fate’s a metaphor. It literally just means ‘the stuff that’s gonna happen’. You can’t end a word, then you’d have to reprint a bunch of dictionaries without it.”, she argued.
They were really starting to seem like children bickering over the ‘chicken or the egg’ paradox.
Stupid. Whatever it is, you are going to die for it.
“Of course. Welp, I guess it’s time.”, Kumu says, then takes a step back and takes Siyang’s hand.
“Okay then,”, he says.
“Wonder what Aqmaren meant, anyways.”, she mutters.
“More like Asriel now.”
Hovering in front of us is a dragon, its four wings(one large blue/green and two smaller black ones on each side, all rimmed with a red stripe) beating softly. Its quadruped figure is covered in scales with swirling colors of green, light blue, and black with a face framed by two curled rams’ horns and two smaller ones that pointed straight up, all of them swirling red and black.
The dragon lowers itself gently to the ground. Even from a sidelong view, its bright pupil-less eyes shine with a light of kindness and a readiness to save.
The only things that’ve kept us going us going this far. The cause for many good things.
Dreams kindling hope to keep them going, hope sparking dreams of happiness.
And so the hopes and dreams had come.
The Oyang danced about Ryu, deflecting blows from his sword with swift counters from their strong tail and trying to get behind him and strike him with their sharp claws.
Ryu is weakened dearly by the Oyang’s constant onslaught, so the rest of us try to join the attack, Arcan charging and blowing fire, Quilli trying to strike him with her sword(except he’s unnaturally fast and strong enough to parry most), and even Loia tries to poke him with the sharp edges of her front hooves.
Then I remember that all I have is a kitchen-safe knife. Maybe I’m just not meant to fight, anyways.
Then what can I do?
Red is trying to see Loia amongst all the commotion, but he doesn’t have a weapon himself.
Well, I suppose I’ll just try.
I start towards Ryu, but I stop a few feet away.
Calypso stares at all of it, crying, and drops her longsword to the rocky ground with a loud clatter that put all of us off a bit.
Just enough, apparently, for Ryu to take us.
In his own artificial moment, he slashes at Quilli’s leg, throws Loia away from himself, and finally drives his emerald-studded blade through Arcan’s fluffy cream-coloured mane.
Even the Oyang stops, frozen within the moment that shouldn’t have been.
The time has come, fools. May all of you who remain Burn in Despair!
Such darn fools! They think Fate’s just a word, even when one of their own’s core is Fate!
Well, now? Now they’ll know it’s a lot more than a word alright. They’ll know the power of everything the world’s done!
We snap merrily. Let’s just get to the point of this.
The beast was getting very irritating indeed, but it’ll be GREAT to see what it makes of us now.
Their eyes are so confused! They just don’t understand us anymore. They don’t get how we’re just as powerful as them-no, we’re MORE POWERFUL!
We strike waving holes in their outspread wings, our power raising us to the same height.
The beast cries out and tries to go higher above the rock, but with their holed wings it’s impossible.
We keeping slashing their wings till it’s a tattered mess that can’t support them, and they fall to the hard rock below, splitting back into weak individuals.
Now everyone who ever dared to challenge us is plain useless…
Maybe now at least we can enjoy our position? Punishing them will be LOVELY.
Well then, let our power reign over their minds and let their final illusions commence!
All around are flashes of sleek metal penetrating the cold emptiness of the world.
No. No! It just can’t have been a dream… Yet here I am, lost in the dark with no way out. Lost in madness, I think. Kay was right all those times he said I was going crazy, wasn’t he? This is the real world, isn’t it? Deep and dark and awful, and I thought I could escape.
Escape to a dream of all things! And now…
Now I’m about to die. I was so foolish! My whole life was a daydream…
The knives are coming. The price of insanity, all the pain it’s yet to make me endure.
Why, oh why me? I was always an idiot, but what did I do to deserve this?
“AAAAGHH!”, I yelp in pain.
A burning hot pain overwhelms my back and I crumple to the cold rocky ground, tears forming and falling swiftly.
This is reality.
No. Even if it’s the truth, it’s a bad truth. There are good lies, so there can be bad truths, too. There has to be. I just have to switch it round a bit…
This is just a dream. A lie. The real world is somewhere out there, away from here. Safe.
Yes.
Another hot explosion of pain goes up in my forearm, and I scream in agony.
“It’s just not working… I’m a lost cause here, no one’s about to come for me… Maybe I can just-”, I say to the emptiness before I cut myself off.
If I don’t let myself go, I’ll be here, locked in my own mind forever.
Well…
“Goodbye, then, Red, everyone. I know I’m ending it now,”, I say with tears, thinking I’m also talking to the people of my dreams, “but I care about you no matter what.”
I sit back on my knees.
Another knife bites my leg.
I smile, and a tear rolls over my lips.
Quiet Water.Heh.
Thanks Red…
Thanks Calypso, for your kindness.
Thanks Kumu, for the adventure you let us have.
Thanks Siyang, for your determination. I guess I don’t have it myself anymore. I’ll remember you, if there’s something beyond the void.
Pain blossoms in my left shoulder.
“Thanks for everything, guys.”, I say softly.
It’s really gonna end. And to think I only had to let go and wait for the world to catch up and get me.
A fine reflection, clear, calm and icy as sapphire.
The last of them are wasting away in their last bits of insanity, and it’s just so fun to watch the people who took everything from us fight what isn’t there.
WaIt…
whAt?
That new girl… She… gave up?
…
…
…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
We’re the only one with the power to do that. The nerve!
Yet…
How can anyone let themselves be so vulnerable-to just die in vain like that? The power of giving up-it’s just unimaginable.
AnD iT’s tOo mUCh…! HoW CaN shE poSsIblY bE moRE PoWeRfuL tHaN uS?
Everyone else is still fighting their illusions: Calypso of Unknown Binds, Karmatheos and Blackroar Summerwing, Redburn Snowhearth, Stonencrash of No Binds, Sunnflight of No Binds, Faerenflare of No Binds, and that azurite kid.
So why doesn’t she?
It’s impossible to understand, yet we need to so badly. How could she possibly declare the battle won by not fighting at all? It’s fair but not, cheating an uncheatable game and winning.
She’s it, then. The Icelord. The one with the power to end fate-end all words. The power to bring everything back down to an Earthen level, to a nonverbal understanding.
iT’S toO haRd fOr bOtH oF us To eXisT WitH suCh pOwEr! WhAt’s HapPenNinG?
The dark’s going out.
nO. wHy… ?
But of course, it’s with a price.
I can feel it-their pain is ending. Not their illusions, though. They live.
But I won’t.
I can’t.
One of her favorite songs is getting stuck in my head again…
Whose theme? Mine?
After all this time… I finally stopped their pain.
Maybe too late, though. Everything, all of their unhappiness…
It’s my fault.
I look out at them. Jade is sitting criss-crossed with Sophi and Siyang, and they all seem to be leaning on each other. Redburn is leaning next to the Icelord, who’s crying now. They all are…
Because of me. I was so awful…
And Jade’s here. I did all this… and all it did was hurt her.
I’m such a jerk.
Calypso was there, too. She stared at me for a while, but I couldn’t tell what she thought-or what she wanted to say.
It was over by then. I saw myself end. Saw myself die… I never really saved the world, now did I?
Welp. That’s just how things work. You know what you believe and believe what you know. And I wouldn’t let myself know the truth until it killed me.
Well…
At least I can say my last goodbye*, even if no one hears it:
Goodbye, everybody, I guess I’ve got to go. I have to leave you all behind and face the truth.
It’s over. The nightmare, I mean.
And thank goodness it was just a bad dream. If it wasn’t, I’d really be dead.
Death. Caused by a dream, of anything.
“Are you okay?”, Red asks me. His voice is strained and hoarse from crying.
“I think so,”, I tell him.
I look myself over, but I can’t find any wounds from the knives-the dream.
“What happened?”, I ask him, though it’s unlikely that he knows any more than I do.
“I think Ryu’s… dead.”
Ryu? Dead? How, we couldn’t defeat him at our most powerful point. How could he possibly die?
“What? Who killed him?”, I ask Red.
“Don’t know. We just woke up and saw him smile for a moment, then he was completely gone. He didn’t look all weird like before, he was kind of normal.”
I’m lost to pondering it. Everything, actually. The entirety of our journey this far was based on what, exactly?
Well… It’s over now. It’s okay now… Right?
We’re safe now. I can feel it.
“Well, it’s okay now. I think-I think the journey’s over, Red.”, I tell him.
“What do you mean?”, he asks, confused.
“I think”, Kumu says with a wink and smile, “she means that you’re free to do whatever you want. Both of you, I mean. The Queen can’t get to you now, but I think you’ve satisfied her anyways.”
“Well…”, I start.
I don’t know what to do with my life after today. I don’t think I can go home after everything I’ve seen here, I’d just be restless all the time. No, I think…
I think I belong here. With Red.
“Don’t worry about anything now,”, says Sophi, “we can do all the hard stuff tomorrow. In the meantime, I don’t think we’ll all be together for very long after today, so why don’t we be happy for once?”
“How do you suggest we do that?”, asks Siyang, but he’s smiling, too.
“I know! We have a bunch of stuff in the cellar, right?”, Kumu asks Sophi.
“Well, yeah. Depends on what stuff you need though. What do you have in mind now?”, Sophi asks.
“I’ll see if we have the right stuff first. You’ll probably like it, though.”, Kumu says excitedly.
Kumu runs back from below the deck with a large bag of flour under one arm and a bag of sugar in the other.
“We have the right stuff! Wait, have you ever baked something before?”, she asks Sophi quickly.
“Once or twice, yeah. What do you want to make now?”
“Cookies, of course,”, Kumu says, “but I think we’d also need some food. Like… pasta?”
“Yeet!”, Siyang says, “Do you think we’ll be able to make mochas, too?”
“I think you’re forgetting the cellar’s complementary feature. It’ll have whatever you need it to have, credits to Siyang for that.”, Calypso adds.
“Oh yeah,”, Siyang smiles, “I forgot about that. I only added it so we could cook more stuff!”
“Then come on! The kitchen’s at the end of the hall!”, Kumu yells and starts down the stairs.
I think for once we’re-happy. Just happy to be alive… Happy for being free.
Free. Finally… The confusion’s been answered.
I think that voice that left my mind when we left-I thinks it’s back. And it’s still calling for the same thing.
Exploration.
I’m free, I can’t go back home, Red’s here, and the voice is calling.
Maybe a life here really is possible, I think with a smile, then a laugh.
“What’re you laughing for?”, Red asks with a smile.
“Nothing much,”, I tell him, “it’s just that we’re truly free, Red. We can go anywhere, do anything!”
He pauses and looks at me, his warm brown eyes deep in wonder and dreams-Hopes and Dreams, I think happily.
But here we are-together and happy before anything we choose tomorrow can change us.
Despite all of our troubles, in the end we’ve always just been some children together against the barrier of dreams and reality. This world defies both for us, a place where we can truly be happy and well.
It’s over, isn’t it? Our adventure, however confusing or perilous it was, I don’t think I’d turn it down even if I knew what was going to happen to me. Especially because of Red.
So, I think I can finally tell myself:
~The End~
Fantasy
Comments are closed.
2 Likes
1123 Views
Share:
I hope you write another chapter. I would honestly love to know what happens next! I am specifically curious about “the others” in the gem quarters.
I only read the first chapter, and you already got me hooked. Thanks for posting this. I love stories about Elves and I’ll be reading it in it’s entirety. Your main character is named after a friend of mine whose designing the cover for a book I just finished.
Thank you for even reading it! I’m so happy I almost feel like crying but whoah there that’s a bit much oh deer–welp, thanks! I still must warn you that less than a couple weeks after I finished writing+editing I immediately came to hating it… I didn’t spend enough time editing. Not nearly enough… Apologies in advance? Just thank yeeeeeee! ;>;
Honestly this story doesn’t make sense or repair the grand host of plot holes it created.
I don’t remember who said but, “Stories are never finished, only abandoned.” I still go back and reedit stories I wrote 20 years ago.
Just finished chapter two. I like the idea of a green dog that can talk. I wonder how intelligent he actually is. This is a strange world you’ve created but intriguing.