by Turtle Me
“I don’t need you,” I hissed.
A frown flickered across her face. “Don’t you think I notice how they treat you? Like you’re a child, like you don’t have anything to add? Like you only have value in your connection to Arthur? Don’t you think I know how that feels?” Tessia rose to her feet, her jaw clenched, her expression somewhere between stoicism and desperation. “I hear what the others whisper about me behind my back, Ellie, and many don’t bother to hide their doubts, but say it openly for all to hear.
“But you’re different… you’re so much more than a hero’s sister and I want to prove that to everyone. I’m not asking you to forgive me—I could never ask that of you after what I did. I know that if I hadn’t run away, Arthur might still be here with us, but nothing I can do now will bring him back, and—”
“You don’t get to just accept it and move on, princess. Arthur shouldn’t have saved you! You should be dead, and he should be here, with me!”
She smiled at me, sad and beautiful and infuriating. “I’ve thought the same thing. Over and over and over. If Arthur was here, now… and I was dead…” Tessia paused, took a deep breath, and forced the sad smile back on her face. “But he’s not. No matter how much I wished he hadn’t, Arthur sacrificed himself for me. And the price he paid for that is something that I will never be able to repay.”
Practically shaking with rage, hot tears starting to run down my cheeks, I opened my mouth to tell her off, to curse at her, to empty my anger into her, but the words died in my throat. I wanted to hate her so much, but I just couldn’t.
I couldn’t hate her, because Arthur had loved her. He had loved her so much that he had traded his life for hers. That’s what she meant. Her life was my brother’s last act of heroism.
It’s not fair, I thought. Why’d you do it, Arthur? Why did you leave me for her—again?
Tessia waded carefully across the shallow stream and walked up to me. She hooked the chain she wore around her neck with her thumb and pulled a pendant out from under her shirt, holding it up to me.
“Arthur gave me this, Ellie.” It was a small, silver leaf pendant. “He gave me this, and a promise.”
Caught off guard, my voice squeaked slightly as I practically whispered, “What promise?”
“A promise only one of us could keep, it turns out. So I’m going to live, Ellie. I’m going to live for Arthur, do you understand?”
I stared as Tessia stroked the pendant like it was a newborn. The elven princess was a powerful mage on the cusp of being a white core, a beast tamer capable of leveling mountains… yet, her narrow shoulders and her thin, pale arms seemed so delicate.
Then those same thin arms were around me, and my face was pressed into her shoulder, my tears soaking into her shirt. I broke. I let the sadness and anger and fear and loneliness pour out of me, my entire body shaking as I sobbed.
“We’ll get through this,” Tessia repeated quietly, her hand caressing the back of my head. “And we need to be strong, because even if these people curse me and belittle you, they need us. Both of us.”
“It just feels so pointless now, so hopeless,” I said breathily, my crying nearly exhausted.
Squeezing me tighter, Tessia said, “That’s how I felt too. Grandpa Virion held me and let me cry until I passed out, then when I woke up I kept crying. I lost my parents, I lost Arthur, and I lost hope. But Grandpa Virion wouldn’t let me give up, and I won’t let you either.”
I pushed away from Tessia and wiped the tears from my face with my sleeve. “What are we going to do?”
Tessia looked over my shoulder to the center of the hidden village. “Dicathen may be lost, but it’s not gone. And if that means we need to train or we need to fight, we’re going to do whatever we can to get it back.” The elven princess looked at me, brows furrowed in determination. “No more sitting on the sidelines.”
258
A Healthy Appetite
ARTHUR LEYWIN
Preparations didn’t take very long. I tore off what was left of my tattered shirt, revealing milky white skin with little muscle definition.
Great, I thought. One more thing I worked so hard for, gone in an instant.
My pants were mostly intact thanks to the leather cuisses. Taking off the thick sheets of leather that had been protecting my thighs, I created a makeshift vest by tearing off pieces of the leather with my teeth and using strips of my shirt to tie them together around my waist and over my shoulder.
With the remaining strips of fabric, I created a mask to cover my mouth and nose, then wrapped the rest around my hands.
“Why the mask? Are you just trying to complete your ninja ensemble?” Regis asked, floating up and down as if inspecting me.
I curled and uncurled my fingers, which were wrapped up to the second knuckle by the cloth. “The Alacryans that passed by had different types of armor, most likely made to fit their fighting styles, but all three had masks around their necks, and, unlike ourselves, they seemed to know what they were getting themselves into.”
“Oh, I didn’t notice,” Regis said.
“I wonder why?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“Yes, okay, I concede the point,” Regis replied. “Tell you what, you be the perceptive one, I’ll be the charming, attractive, intelligent one.”
This is going to be a long journey…
After going through a series of movements and martial art forms to loosen my clumsy new body, I walked up to the large metal door feeling even less prepared than I had felt before readying myself.
Every time I moved, there was an almost tangible resistance. It felt like the air around me was congealing, pushing back against me so I had to force my way through it. Had moving without mana always been so difficult?
I placed my hands on the rune-covered door and let out a sigh. “Are you ready?”
Regis’s dark fire blazed. “Let’s go.”
The door opened easily at my touch, revealing a long, dark corridor on the other side.
Looking at Regis, I jerked my head towards the door.
“What? Why me?” the will-o-wisp asked, bobbing in quick, agitated motions.
“Because. You’re incorporeal,” I said flatly.
Regis did as I said, though he let out a string of curses to make sure I knew how he felt about it. As he approached the other side of the door, Regis jerked to a stop all of a sudden.
“Ouch! That actually hurt,” he said, more confused than in pain.
“What’s going on?” I asked, carefully waving my hand in the area where Regis got hurt. Unlike Regis, though, I was able to go through.
“Ouch! Stop that!” Regis said, his form quivering.
I did it once more, and Regis yelped in pain again, glaring at me.
“Just wanted to make sure.” I gave him a content smirk.
“I don’t think this is just an entryway to another room,” Regis grumbled. “This is the same kind of pain I get if I move too far from you, but this is a lot more sudden and, well, painful.”
“This must be some kind of portal,” I replied, looking at the room on the other side of the door. “Wait.” I turned to look at Regis. “Why did you try to leave me?”
The little fireball bobbed up and down, shrugging. “I’m a sentient being. I wanted to know what my limit was, and it’s not like I was born inherently loyal to you.”
I shook my head. “I’d be a lot more upset if you were actually useful as a weapon.”
“Touché.”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen when we cross through the portal. You better, you know…” I trailed off, but Regis only continued to look at me expectantly, clearly not picking up on my meaning. “You better… get inside me.”
Regis’s fiery form flared as he snorted with laughter. “At least buy me a drink first!”
Glaring at him, I reached out toward the portal again.
“Okay, okay, no need to resort to torture, you
madman. I’m coming.”
Once Regis had flown into me, I stepped up to the doorway. My heart thumped against my ribcage. I had no idea what we would face outside of this sanctuary, but we were as ready as we could be.
“Here goes nothing,” I said aloud to no one, then stepped through. There was a hum and a click from the door closing behind us, then silence.
The marble floor underneath my feet was flawlessly smooth, but unlike the circular room we were in before, this one was a long straight hallway with a ceiling that arched high above our heads, ending with another rune-covered metal door on the other side. Two rows of sconces lined the patterned walls, illuminating the hallway in a warm, natural light. To either side were giant marble statues depicting men and women armed with swords, spears, wands, bows, and even what appeared to be archaic firearms.
Apparently, Regis was just as surprised as I was. ‘Are those… ’
“Guns? I think so.”
My gaze shifted away from the stone statues for a moment, landing on the door straight ahead, roughly three hundred feet or so. Regis floated free of my body and drifted a few feet ahead of me.
“So we just… walk past these giant stone statues and go to the door on the other side. That’s not ominous at all,” Regis muttered.
Rather than walking straight ahead, I moved to the wall to my right, searching for any sort of hidden side exit. After searching both walls, I let out a sigh and looked down the middle aisle again between the rows of stone statues.
“You don’t suppose these statues will start moving and try to kill us once we get near them, right?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Regis said, perching himself on my shoulder. “Onward to victory, m’lady!”
Walking cautiously, each footfall careful and quiet, I began moving up the hallway, my gaze shifting from one statue to the next, watchful for any signs of life or movement.
“Are you scared or what?” Regis whispered by my ear, snickering softly. “You’re creeping along like a teenage boy sneaking out of his girlfriend’s bedroom.”
Not looking at my companion, I whispered, “Hey, what happens to you if I die?”
Regis stopped laughing. “What?”
“Do you become free, or do you die as well?”
“I never really thought about it, but…” Regis went silent, and I could sense his uncertainty as he pondered my question. “The foundation of this form comes from the acclorite that was placed into your body, but my life force is tied to you, so if you die, I suppose—”
“You go back to being a hunk of rock?” I finished, scanning the statues now surrounding us. We’d traveled a quarter of the length of the hallway, and so far there had been no sign of hostility. “That’s nice to know.”
“Are you smiling?” Regis was staring at me with his unblinking, star-bright eyes.
“I’m just glad to know that we’re in this together,” I said, swatting him away.
“You’re dark, you know that? And that’s coming from someone partially made of Uto.”
Ignoring him, I continued searching for any signs that the statues were a danger to us. We had only taken a few more steps when my vision began to narrow, blurring out everything but the statues in front of me.
“Well, I’ll be. No stone statues came to life and started attacking us,” Regis said as he floated closer to a statue holding what looked like a shotgun.
Suddenly the room shook and the lights from the sconces dimmed eerily.
I looked forward at the exit, still over two hundred feet away. The aetheric runes carved on the door had changed, and the handle that used to be there was gone. We wouldn’t be able to escape that way.
For a moment, I stood paralyzed. Clearly I would have to complete some trial in order to progress, but without mana, would I be strong enough?
Knowing the answer, I whirled back around and bolted for the door we had come from; I had no idea if we would be allowed back into the sanctuary, but it was either that or face whatever was about to happen.
I had only taken about ten steps when the statues around me began cracking open like ghastly eggs. Large fragments of stone broke off and fell to the floor… and as more and more of the statues began crumbling, I could make out more of what was inside them.
Sinewy humanoid creatures, scabrous flesh covering patches of their exposed muscles and bones, squirmed within the coffin-like statues, apparently awakened by whatever magic controlled this place. They did not carry the weapons depicted in their statues, but the weapons were instead grafted to them, or grown from them, elongated bones and exposed muscle fibers twisting into the shape of spears, swords, and other implements of death.
It was like some lunatic had ripped apart a very large man and then tried to piece him back together again but had done much of it inside out.
The first of these patched-together creatures to fully hatch out of its stone encasement—a statue of a man wielding a bow and arrow—let out a guttural screech from its crooked mouth and leapt from the podium the statue was on, sending shivers throughout my entire body.
“Well, at least technically the statues aren’t trying to kill us,” Regis mumbled.
I raced toward the door back to the sanctuary, less than a hundred feet away. However, after just a few steps, I heard the heavy thrum of a bowstring.
I dove to the side and rolled, narrowly managing to avoid the bone arrow that carved a fissure in the ground from the force of its impact.
Scrambling to my feet, I glanced back just as the creature snapped off one of its long, spiked vertebrae and nocked it on the gut string of its bow.
“Axe monster finished hatching as well!” Regis called out from above, just a few feet away.
Caught off guard by Regis’s warning, I turned toward the second chimera, which had wide-bladed battle axes in place of arms. This brief moment of distraction turned out to be a near-fatal mistake.
A burst of pain erupted from my side and I was sent flying back from the impact. Letting out a hoarse cough, I looked down to see an arrow of bone protruding from just below my rib cage.
I crawled to my knees. My brain pounded against my skull as blood surged through my body. My vision narrowed again, blurring out everything but what I needed to focus on. I’d had this feeling in battle before, but nothing as extreme as this.
I threw myself backwards, narrowly avoiding one massive axe. Just as the axe-armed monstrosity was about to cleave me in two with its other arm, a black shadow whizzed by.
Regis hovered in front of its sunken eyes, obstructing its vision and allowing me the opportunity to limp away.
I only made it another few steps, though, before a searing pain bloomed from my left leg.
Stifling a scream, I toppled forward, twisting awkwardly to avoid landing on the first arrow and pushing it further into my stomach.
“Arthur! There are more hatching!”
“I know!” I said through gritted teeth. A grunt of pain escaped me as I snapped the shaft off of the bone arrow inside my body, and I nearly passed out as I did the same with the arrow on my leg.
My vision pulsed yet again, as if my body was trying to forcefully expel my soul. What little color there was within the dimly lit hall faded, revealing soft purple auras around the animated monsters. The same purple haze surrounded the two broken arrow shafts in my hand.
Aether.
These chimera-like monsters were sheathed in aether. I didn’t know why I could suddenly see it, but there would only be time to puzzle over it if I survived.
The aether tingled against the palm of my hand, and I felt the energy within it, like I was absorbing it through my skin. A wild idea flashed through my mind. With no plan and little hope for surviving this battle, I leaned forward and bit down on the aetheric aura surrounding one arrow, consuming the aether like meat from a bone.
“What in the unholy hell are you doing?” Regis cried out.
My veins bur
ned as the aether from the arrow flowed through me, filling me with a strength that I hadn’t felt since waking up with a new body. Eagerly, I devoured the aetheric fire from the second arrow as well, and the aether moved into my core, then split, moving warmly down to my stomach and my left leg.
I watched with shocked fascination as the wounds in my leg and side began to knit back together. As the flesh closed around the wounds, the bloody arrowheads were forced out of my body, falling with two heavy thuds onto the stone floor.
As quickly as it had come, the sensation of power faded, but I was whole, the pain was gone, and I was able to stand without trembling.
The ground shook as a third chimera smashed free of its statue-coffin. It leapt off its podium and galloped toward me at a breakneck pace, its huge, sword-shaped arm held in front of it like a lance.
Controlling my breathing, I let my enhanced senses pick out the details.
The bow chimera released another arrow with a sharp twang, but this time I was able to actually see the path of the bone arrow piercing through the air. Dodging it, I steadied myself to face the charging chimera’s sword.
It swung its pale white broadsword in a brilliant arc that just missed carving through my hip.
My heartbeat quickened as I considered my options. With my body healed, it seemed likely that I could reach the door, but now I saw that path for the trap it was. I would return to the sanctuary having gained nothing. But if I could claim more of that aether…
Lunging forward as the chimera’s large blade skidded on the smooth marble surface with a screech, I grabbed its arm and bit down, consuming the purple aura surrounding it.
The chimera let out a mournful wail, revealing a mouthful of needle-pointed teeth. It flailed wildly, but I clung on, focusing entirely on consuming the purple-tinged aura surrounding the chimera’s sword-shaped arm.
As I absorbed the aether, I felt my strength growing.
An explosion resounded from the walls of the hall and the entire room shook madly, allowing the chimera to throw me off. It followed this with a kick to my ribs, and I slid across the marble and slammed against the wall, coughing up blood and a couple of teeth.
