“You have to help them,” she said. “Promise me. Promise me you can save Isabelle and my friends. If you can do that, then I’ll take you. I’ll make sure you’re never alone again.”
The Wisp bobbed, as if nodding, but then sent a wordless question into Chelsea’ heart.
“A name?” Chelsea asked, laughing despite herself. “You kidding me? You want me to give you a name when I need you to go fight right now?” But the Wisp was determined, latching onto Chelsea emotionally and not going anywhere else.
A name… well, you’re the same color as Caleb’s magic. His chains, his discs… you have the exact same white color. It’s uncanny. Would calling you…
Look, do I ever have to say your name out loud?
Wordless assurance flooded into Chelsea’s heart.
Chelsea smiled in her tears. “Fine then,” she said. “You have your name. Now go kick some butt.”
The Wisp finally made audible noise then, emitting a musical cry filled with impressions of hope and life and purpose. Once a shining white ball, it now transformed, until it melded into a being thrice as large as it had started, and a quarter Chelsea’s size.
White wings burst forth, sprinkling white motes of light all around. A body like a barn owl, with a round face and big, black eyes came into being, and the Wisp — Chelsea’s new Summon — took flight, clutching long, winding chains in his talons.
Dashing forward, crying out with a musical voice that seemed to speak directly to Chelsea’s heart, her Summon flew over Anastasia. One set of chains lashed out from the owl’s right foot, snatching Anastasia’s arms away from Isabelle. Another set of chains reached out more gently from the owl’s left foot, picking up the unconscious Isabelle and pulling her up and away from Anastasia.
The woman broke free from the Summon’s chains, but that was enough time for Chelsea to sit up, hold up both lighters, and unleash a barrage of controlled, fiery fury. Anastasia leapt away, only to be beset by icy spears flashing through the air towards her. Dodging from that only brought her into the range of Nekoma and Felix, now recovered and attacking with combined fury.
Kicking, leaping, dashing, and dodging, Anastasia was only pushed farther and farther away from Isabelle, who was carried by Chelsea’s Summon to be laid gently in the grass next to her. Chelsea met Anastasia’s eyes and sent her a wordless challenge with her gaze.
Come and get her. If you can.
Anastasia glared at Chelsea, and then cast her a fleeting smile. Turning aside from Felix’s sword thrust, Anastasia raced in the opposite direction, fleeing the battle and leaving Isabelle safely in Chelsea’s care.
Chelsea found herself smiling as she pocketed her lighters and held out an arm. Her owl circled around her, and then landed on that outstretched arm, folding his wings and looking at Chelsea with those big, black eyes.
You’re so light. You look big and strong and heavy, but… you’re almost weightless.
“I did say not to get too attached,” Gwen said, joining the group and fixing Chelsea with an amused look. “But it seems you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“Not really,” Chelsea said, still looking up at her owl. “But I had some help. And it all worked out.”
“What’s his name?” Delilah asked, excitement clear in her voice.
Chelsea laughed, bring her arm closer and reaching up to scratch her owl on the chin.
“It’s a secret,” she said.
As Delilah and Lorelei groaned, Chelsea just smiled.
Thank you, she said silently to her Summon. And she felt him respond with thanks of his own. She chuckled. We both saved each other, huh? I like the sound of that.
Lorelei knelt down to use her Healing Magic on Chelsea’s ankle. “I bet I know his name,” she whispered with a smile.
“I’m sure you do,” Chelsea said, breathing a sigh of relief as her pain vanished and her ankle mended. “You have a knack for stuff like that.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” Lorelei said.
Chelsea smiled. “Thanks,” she said.
Watching her Summon take off and fly circles overhead, letting out musical cries of joy, Chelsea found herself relishing in a brief moment of peace. Finally, if only for this one moment in time, she felt calm and at ease.
Chapter 25: Remembrance
— G —
The Plains of the Fallen were not what Fae expected.
Neither was traveling from one Location to another in the Enchanted Dominion, for that matter.
She and the Star sisters had stood on the shore of the Cartographer’s Waystation, and then, with one simple step out into the water…
Her feet had landed on solid ground.
The ocean was gone, and so was the Waystation. All around her were rolling hills coated with a brownish-green grass, and… stones.
Tombstones.
“Cheerful, as usual,” Jupiter said, stepping ahead of the group, twirling one of her drumsticks. “So? Any clue where this ‘artist’s alley’ is where we’ll find our art expert?”
“Never heard of Gerick Irsotz,” Neptune said, hands on her hips as she surveyed the expansive surroundings. “And I’ve never seen other people any of the times I’ve been here.”
“How does that work?” Fae asked, finding a way out of her shock. She turned and stepped back the way she’d come, but she landed on grass again — the Waystation wasn’t so easy to return to, it seemed.
“Magic,” Mercury said, grinning. “The Enchanted Dominion is coursing with magic at a cellular level. Everything you see, hear, smell, feel, taste… if it’s here, it’s got magic in every single molecule.”
“I don’t know exactly how the Locations work,” Neptune said. “No one’s been able to explain it effectively to me so far. But from what I understand, every Location is a sort of… bubble? Like its own self-contained world, all these Locations float around in the giant bubble that is the Enchanted Dominion. And since they’re always moving, the connections between them are always changing.”
“But this is where we entered,” Fae said, stepping down forcefully, expecting something to happen. But nothing — she was still where she was, with no change in the scenery. “So why does going back the way we came not take us somewhere else?”
“That’s how exits and entrances work between Locations,” Neptune said. “They’re almost always one-way. When you step out of one Location, you end up at a whole other space within the next Location, and it can take anywhere from minutes to days to find your way to the next exit. There are exceptions, though.”
“Yeah, like the ship from Hollow Island,” Jupiter said. “It’ll drop you off right at the boundary of a Location, no matter which one it might be.”
“And URS trains have predefined disembarking points,” Mercury said. “They’re tied to specific Locations, so no matter how much those Locations move, a URS train can always find it.”
“And there are some Locations that can only be accessed through special means,” Neptune said. “Like Hollow Island — I don’t know how your siblings ended up there, but I know it can’t have been easy… and probably wasn’t intentional. It’s good they were able to get off the Island so quickly.”
“And what’s that other place, the Location that people think is lost?” Mercury asked, finger to her lips. “I don’t… agh, what’s it called?”
“It’s a library, right?” Jupiter asked.
“The Library of Solitude,” Neptune said, nodding. “No one seems to know where it is or how to get there.”
“Okay,” Fae said, looking up at the sky. “So we’re where we need to be right now, and when we need to leave, we’ll have to find some other spot to exit from, right?”
“And I know where all of the exits are,” Neptune said, smiling. “So we’re all set once we’ve finished here.”
“Is the sky different everywhere?” Fae asked, still looking up. The Waystation’s sky had been a white field with lights bursting into life and then fading here and th
ere. Over the Plains was a very different sky that cast a strange gloom over the place. Grey and murky, there were hazy yellow lights that made it seem like a cloudy afternoon. But it didn’t feel right. Looking around, Fae got the sense that the colors of the grass and trees, the stones and rocky formations, weren’t actually what she saw. Maybe it wasn’t just the sky. Everything looked like someone had put a sepia-toned filter over the world, and then tried to add the color back in by painting over it, but ended up with a pale imitation.
“The Waystation’s sky is what you see in most Locations,” Mercury said. “But other Locations have their own… unique charm.”
“Charm,” Jupiter said, rolling her eyes. “Not how I’d put it.”
“It’s dreary here, that’s true,” Neptune said. “But it isn’t raining. Let’s hope the weather holds. We don’t even know where we’re going.”
They walked onward then, cresting a hill and then hiking back down, winding between two hills, and then cresting yet another. At the top of each hill, Fae marveled at the sheer space around her. Wherever the exits from the Plains of the Fallen were, she hoped they weren’t all at the borders of the Location. It could take weeks to travel everywhere there was here, and so much of it looked exactly the same. There were no signs of borders or an end to the Plains — they could be miles from the nearest exit.
And then there were the tombstones. Varying in size, shape, style, and the amount of text on them, there must have been millions. Sometimes they were widely spaced out, and other times they were so densely packed together that the four girls had to detour around the entire group of stones. Conversation became scattered, as it often did in a cemetery.
Silence, out of respect for the departed.
Even Jupiter, the energetic chatterbox of the sisters, was more subdued than usual. She carried herself in a carefree fashion, still twirling her drumstick, sometimes tapping a rhythm against her leg, but she didn’t talk much.
Fae was fascinated by the stones themselves. She always loved exploring Grimoire’s three different cemeteries, examining the epitaphs on the stones. Combining words with a stone’s size and style and placement, Fae felt like she could get a sense of people she had never — and would never — meet.
The Plains of the Fallen felt very similar, if on a much larger scale. Fae didn’t recognize the language on most of the tombstones. She could usually at least recognize different writing systems, having a good eye for languages, but there was a certain type of script that was very common in this place that Fae had never seen before. It used simple, blocky shapes, rather like Nordic runes, but then there were symbols that were more complex, combining elements of the unfamiliar runes with a pattern of lines and shapes that reminded Fae of Japanese kanji, if those symbols were made out of runic shapes and winding spirals intertwining with each other.
But there were some that Fae could read. Two so far had been in English, and had been by far the most simple of the tombstones. One grey slab less than a foot high simply read “A Loving Father.” A slightly larger black stone was embossed with the message “I Will Not Fear, No Matter What May Come. 1856-1912”
Other than those, Fae was confronted with unreadable text for her. French and German, Russian and Arabic, Japanese and Korean, she saw every language she recognized, even if she couldn’t translate them. And again and again, over and over, there was that unfamiliar writing that she’d never seen before. Maybe it was unique to the Enchanted Dominion. But the maps in the Waystation had all been labeled in English, so the answer eluded Fae.
There weren’t just tombstones, either. A pair of wide, low hills were covered in simple unmarked white crosses. They were so small and densely packed together that there must have been millions. After seeing two other hills just like that one, Fae’s heart began to ache. Every cross was exactly the same in size and shape, with no writing whatsoever. They were like memorials to mass deaths on a scale Fae couldn’t believe. Overcome with unbidden emotion, she found herself crying.
How had so many lives ended, and been left with not even names to remember them by?
Unable to linger, on she and the Star sisters went. There simply wasn’t time to stay.
Deep in her heart, Fae vowed to remember those four hills covered in crosses forever.
A few hills were topped with massive structures — crypts and mausoleums and sepulchers — so massive and ornate that Fae couldn’t help but marvel at them even as she was dwarfed by their sheer size. Many were dedicated to groups of dead, but the largest monuments simply had a single name carved on them.
What was so important about Diedrick Bartholomew Ferrius IV? And why do you need a door this tall? Were you a giant? And why is your name the only thing in English? Everything else is in that strange other language… who were you? Where did you come from? And if you have such a gigantic burial vault…
Fae turned, looking out over the desolate, empty plains. She and the Star sisters were the only humans for miles and miles around, as far as the eye could see.
…why put it in a place where no one will visit? Why leave such a huge monument behind in a place where you won’t be remembered?
Why were any of these people buried here? The question hung in Fae’s mind as their journey continued. Those buried in Grimoire’s cemeteries were there because they had died in Grimoire, or they had family in Grimoire, or Grimoire was their birthplace. Whatever the reason, Grimoire held significance for them. Being buried there was the best place for them to be remembered.
But here? The Plains of the Fallen seemed like the loneliest place Fae could imagine. And there must be millions, possibly billions, of people buried here.
What terrible fate had they met with to end up memorialized on a lost field beyond the human world itself?
Fae expected the questions about this place would never be answered. But at least she could take it all in, carve the sights and feelings into her mind. She shifted the strap on her bag, and it jostled with the wealth of drawing supplies within.
That was the other magic of drawing. Memories need not stay secrets of the mind. Sights and emotion could be shared with others.
“I didn’t believe the Meister,” Jupiter said, “but there do appear to be signs of civilization here.”
She stood on the top of a hill between two towering gravestones, at the lead of the group, so Fae, Mercury, and Neptune had to climb up to see what she saw. Joining Jupiter at the top, Fae looked out across the plains. The entire landscape sloped down suddenly, forming a smooth, grassy valley. Nestled between two hills in the heart of the valley was a small scattering of tents and ramshackle buildings. It was a long way still, so it was hard to make out details, but Fae couldn’t imagine more than thirty people living there.
“An expert on magical artwork lives here?” Fae asked as they walked towards the camp.
“Let’s hope he lives up to his reputation,” Jupiter said.
“You find important people in the weirdest places here in the Dominion,” Mercury said, grinning. “It’s part of the world’s charm.”
If you say so.
But Fae could imagine Shana and Delilah feeling the same way as Mercury. She felt some of that sense of wonder, of curiosity at how this strange world worked and why someone so knowledgeable and important would wind up in a tiny little camp in a giant graveyard. And she had to admit, wandering a giant, foreign cemetery had quite a charm for her. She was glad she’d chosen this place over the City of Anguish — a city full of incredibly sad people did not sound like somewhere Fae wanted to go.
In that case, can this Gerick Irsotz have all the answers I need? That would be great. Or if he doesn’t, can he point us towards somewhere other than the City of Anguish? The more I think about that place, the less I want to go there.
They came to the camp, and found the grass running down the center to be worn, in some places all the way down to dry dirt. Things looked even more haphazard and dingy up close. Tents were simple wooden poles holding up torn, faded,
and poorly patched fabric that looked centuries old. The ramshackle buildings were more like stalls — hastily built wooden walls and (sometimes) a ceiling, left otherwise open to the elements.
And yet, it seemed the living conditions were poor because of disinterest for that aspect of life, rather than destitution. The people sitting within the stalls and tents or walking throughout the camp were dressed rather nicely, with clean and well-tailored clothes. They were an eclectic bunch — one man was dressed in a waistcoat with a golden pocket watch that Caleb would have been so jealous of, while the man he was talking to wore blue jeans and a denim jacket. One woman dressed in a flowing, elegant kimono, while another wore beige shorts and a grey hoodie. The group of men and women throughout the camp could have come from several different centuries and countries judging by their dress, but one thing was a constant among them:
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