_____
“SYSTEM! USE [Enhance Musculature] NOW!” Nata screamed.
Her silver mane whipped behind her, and her otherwise regal features were covered in sand and scrunched into a desperate grimace.
“PLEASE!”
A flush of rose-colored mana infused her muscles, as she heaved the form of her unconscious companion over her shoulder and began sprinting across the billowing dunes, desperately racing away from her pursuer.
The Ataraxian coastal desert was usually unbearably hot, but her frostbitten skin spoke otherwise. Nata heard a sound like the groaning of a mountain, feeling the reverberations echo through her bones. A deep, resonant hum announced the charging of a construct of mana many hundreds of times more powerful than anything she could cast. She dared to look behind her.
A shambling cathedral sculpted from sand and ice cut through the desert at an alarming pace. The towering construct’s many buttresses and spires continuously sloughed off into the sand and reformed themselves out of the surrounding desert as it traveled. Embedded into the side of the main tower like a studded gemstone, a faceted glass display pulsed with stored magic.
At the topmost spire, a grand witch of the royal coven of Ai-Khanoum stood on her creation, charging a spell of immense power. She wore an elaborate, bejeweled dress that sparkled like white lightning in the desert sun, and the upper half of her face was obscured by a massive headdress- a crown of crystalline spikes. Glittering blue and white mana in flavors of ice and wind swirled around the witch’s hands, ebbing and flowing around her. The energy whirled into sharp angles, painting contracts and empty promises in mid-air, invoking the spirits of icy wrath into form.
The witch completed her spell.
The crystal coffin embedded in the sand castle erupted in a cascade of power, and the air around it rippled in anticipation. A great beam of light erupted from the magic battery, shooting out towards the running girl with a droning hum. She ran faster, but the beam showed no signs of stopping. Everywhere the torrential beam touched, massive tree-sized crystals of ice shot out of the ground.
Nata ripped across the sand with no thought spared towards anything except survival for herself and her closest friend. She pushed off the sand with a groan, dashing away from the witch and her sand castle.
Sprays of hail and frost erupted around the desert wherever the beam went. The already haggard ecosystem of the arid coastal desert was ill-suited to defend against the devastation, leaving upheaved patches of sandstone and craters of frost.
Nata nearly lost her grip on her passenger, whipping his emaciated body around into a princess carry.
He winced, the agony of being moved jolting him out of unconsciousness. He opened an inhuman, golden sclera-bearing eye. He looked up at Nata’s focused and panicked expression as her labored breathing beat against his forehead.
He struggled to turn his head over her shoulder and face the coming calamity behind them.
He began to lift a bony arm and point to the structure careening through the sand. His skeletal body shook with illness, and his overdrawn mana fought against him, but he was its commander, and it would answer his petition.
“[Hunger’s Call]” he whispered.
“NO!” The girl screamed, looking horrified at her friend upon hearing his voice.
He smiled up at her as his golden sclera turned brown and muddy. Already, his lips began to crack and his frail cheeks deflated even further.
“You’re going to kill yourself, Iasus!” She begged.
She struggled to push any amount of healing magic into him, as his own class ripped him apart from the inside.
“It doesn't matter… as long as you… live.” Iasus replied. His eyes went glassy, and unfocused as something moved in his stomach.
A jagged line erupted from the heavens with a cracking sound, like a lightning bolt in slow motion. It touched down on the sand, breaking open a barrier that protected the world from another place, and spewing a foul-smelling tar upon impact.
Whatever corruption spilled forth from the tear smelled like warm death- Sulfur, digestive juices, and rotting meat.
The moving castle stopped abruptly, as the witch atop its spire ceased the beam spell and hastily began forming a huge icy shield, and then further layering circles and spheres of defensive wards.
“I call… the Ibis.” The man said.
His eyes began to leak bile as he spent the last dregs of lucidity that he had left, guiding the terror that he had unleashed.
A haunting caw rang out from the crack. A piece of reality chipped away from the edge of the crack with a popping sound, like a chick pecking away at its egg. A gruesome beak of sallow flesh and putrescent magic emerged from the space beyond the tar, and several sets of reddened, uncannily human eyes scanned the area, locking onto their commander.
“Hold off the witch. Eat her if you can.” The man said. The instant the last word left him, his body went limp once more.
Nata began sprinting towards the shoreline.
Each syllable felt like it rattled the foundation of the world itself. The sputtering voice splashed against Nata’s mind like great waves batting against a seawall, threatening to erode her sanity.
Hooked claws ripped open reality. Befouled effluvia spilled from the wound, slopping and sloshing all over the icy sand, as the digestive juices began to eat away at the hoarfrost magic. The terrible entity gained color as it moved across the sand. For each bit of magic it absorbed, new mangled flesh would grow upon its gaunt frame. After a few paces, bloody red feathers sprouted unevenly upon its sinewy wings, and jagged black bone grew upon its skeletal beak. The Witch began to try to flee, but the bird’s approach began to cause rapid deconstruction of her vehicle.
A wispy fog of unearthly mana emanated from the Ibis, as it moved with an ephemeral grace that was not anchored to its physical manifestation. The bird cocked its head to the side playfully as it curiously surveyed something within the mounds of sand at its feet.
Its avian skull and tattered wings raised in a show of force as the beast reared back. A curved beak, like a dagger held by a titan, descended upon the crystalline coffin. As the enchantments on it shattered, a shockwave of energy was released from within the blinding enclosure. The bird-like entity absorbed much of the force, as it now began to look closer to a living creature than a ghastly apparition.
“No! You mustn’t!” shouted the crowned witch.
She began to fruitlessly cast magic at the bird, who didn’t seem to notice at all.
The massive spirit took one razor-sharp claw and ran it down the gauzy bindings of the figure inside the coffin. As the bandages peeled away, an emaciated corpse was revealed within, like a stillborn chick inside a ruined shell.
The corpse lurched forward, gasping for air. Ruby red magic flowered outwards from a hole in the center of her chest. She sat up, struggling to support her body with shaking, desiccated arms.
“Thank… you…” Said a raspy voice.
The Ibis nodded, moving forward to peck at the ice witch’s barrier once more. Each time its beak crashed down upon the barrier, a shower of gore and sparks would rain upon the sand below.
“Sister! You’re awake,” the ice witch nervously began to say, gasping and struggling with each word as she struggled to maintain the barrier. “We’ll return you to sleep once-”
More wrappings fell away from the figure in the coffin, revealing dry, papery skin. Red magic coiled into glowing chains that danced along the surface of her flesh, digging in and pumping her full of vitality, restoring her bit by precious bit. She coughed, sputtering out ages of decay from her lungs. She looked upward, craning her neck to see the witch in her castle. She called out with a voice full of consternation.
“Sleep? You have no idea. They told me that it would be a slumber as deep as death! They- no, SHE PROMISED me that I would finally be at peace!” The prisoner sputtered.
She took a few shambling steps across the sand.
“I have been trapped in agony.” She spat.
“A means to an end!” the ice witch hastily replied. “It wasn’t perfect. The binding had to be the way that it is, or it wouldn’t have worked against our regeneration. We… when we started, we didn’t realize that the enchantment would be used to-”
“-To use me like a battery?” The walking corpse accused. “The pain… the hunger… do you have any idea? I command you to tell me how long I was trapped.”
Already, eddies of red mana began to swirl outwards from her, as her glossy skin continued rejuvenating.
“Five… hundred years. I apologize. We shall see that you shall be handsomely compensated for your suffering once you return to your throne in Ai-Khanoum.” The witch said. “Now, please help me deal with this horrid manifestation. ” Her shield was falling apart at the seams, and she held her arms out, as if trying to catch the falling pieces.
The red-eyed woman looked up, catching the gaze of the Ibis.
“Without eyes and flesh, there were few sensations in my prison,” she whispered. Her words, quiet as they were, echoed across the sands. “Did you know? When Hilaria’s curse is prevented from reviving us, the sensation of profound emptiness as your immortal form continuously tries to replenish itself without mana feels like starvation.”
She knelt forward, cupping her hands into the sand, scooping up a big pile of it. She raised her cupped hands to her face and breathed outward. Grain by grain, the sand began to flow out into the open air, grasped by the wind. Her hair, now regrown into a long wavy brown mane, glossy despite her ragged state, whipped up behind her. A singing gale of wind swirled about her.
“At first, I hated it. Every moment of every day, of every week, of every year… I lost count of the time somewhere along the way. All there was was hunger and pain. Mana deficiency of the worst kind.”
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Sand from the ground began to swirl around in tiny vortexes.
“Sister… please…” Begged the ice witch.
Sand swirled around the Ibis, as the wind graced its feathers. A pale light began to glow, blessing the bird.
The cruel and curved beak of the massive bird whipped out faster than before, shattering the barrier with a sharp crack.
The ice witch collapsed, clutching her hands in pain as her magic recoiled. The Ibis loomed over her as the last ruins of her sand castle deteriorated.
“Spirits of the northern winds… I beg you!” the witch cried.
The brown-haired woman rose from the ground. As the remaining bandages sloughed off of her, a wispy shroud of white linens replaced them, as if woven from the air.
“After so long… I realized that hunger can be a gift. A fierce motivator. A blessing. I no longer feel the ennui and desolation that I did when I asked to be put to sleep… I no longer want to die.”
She stepped into the air, flying up to caress the beak of the Ibis.
“I thank you, truly… and I thank the Queen. For showing me such awesome cruelty… For showing me hunger.” The woman finished.
The desert shook as the Ibis coughed out a thunderous laugh.
“I do.” replied the woman, smiling.
She turned to the ice witch, regarding her former coven-mate with unbridled disdain.
“Stop your whimpering, Echini. That you have the gall to fear pain after inflicting years of it on me is astounding,” the woman said.
“P-please, Lara… don’t do this! You know what she’ll do to you!” Echini screeched. The crown of ice had fallen from her head, leaving her humiliated, kneeling in the sand.
“I do not fear Vera,” Lara said. The wind around her caused her white shroud to billow gracefully behind her as she stepped forward.
Lara Siabhra-Baraccàre, Grand witch of the eastern wind, approached her so-called sister. Kneeling in front of her, Lara gripped Echini’s face so hard that her lips puckered, dragging her off the ground.
“Now… I am going to feed you to Hunger’s manifestation.” Lara whispered sweetly. “Do not fear, as I sense that the Aspect who summoned the Ibis did not make it powerful enough to hold you in the realm of famine forever. In months, or perhaps years, when your ragged scraps are excreted as waste from the darkness in between worlds… I want you to crawl back to the coven. Tell them that I have returned to reclaim the Throne of Air. Tell Queen Vera that I shall see Ataraxia laid waste for what she has done to me.”
_____
Nata - several hours later.
An old sea-salt bootlegger spat to the side, scowling at Nata.
“I know wit ye’ar, lass. An’ whimst I’ll not be ‘andin ye or’ to the Whitchesss me-self, I’ll not be essposin me crew to yer foul curses neither.” The sailor drawled.
“Please, sir. I don’t have any gold, but I will work. I’ll work hard enough for the both of us.” Nata said, supporting the limp form of Iasus on her shoulder.
“Now I’m not in the ‘abit of essplainin meself twice. You lot are gonna git-”
“Armus, I hardly think that an extra two passengers will cause too much trouble.” Said an old man, approaching from behind Nata.
The man was unassuming, wearing simple, clean farmer’s clothing, sporting a wide-brimmed hat, and leading a mule loaded with goods onto the boat.
“Mister deGloria… While I appreciate yer business, I don’t think-” The sailor began.
The old man handed the sailor a wrapped parcel.
“From the old lady. Should be enough there to share with the crew. An old sturgeon like yourself surely can’t be worried about getting caught? I’ll cover the fare for the young lady and her… sleepy companion.” Said the old man, accepting no argument.
Nata suppressed a tear, trying to keep herself from collapsing.
“Thank you, sir. Thank you so, so much.” Nata said, trembling.
The old man put an arm around Iasus.
“None of that. Those of us less fortunate folk need to help each other. Today, I help you… Perhaps tomorrow, you’ll help me. You can sit with me and old Horus here,” the old man said, motioning to the mule, who gave a hearty whinny in greetings.
The sailor looked dejectedly down at his parcel. As he unwrapped it to reveal a tray of sweetcakes, he shouted with glee down the gangway.
“BOYS! I WANT TO BE UNDERWAY IN THREE DINGS! WE’VE GOT LEMON POPPYSEED FROM MISS D!” He screamed.
A chorus of rowdy voices rang out as ropes began swinging and cargo was secured.
_____
“Thank you, Miss deGloria,” Nata said, accepting a warm mug of coffee.
“Please, sweetling. Call me Mary.” Said the older woman.
Mary deGloria clasped her arms on her husband’s shoulders from behind as he sat in his chair.
“I don’t mean to prod… especially after all you’ve done for my friend and me…” Nata began
Mariano deGloria smiled at his houseguest.
“I do what must be done to keep my community fed. As you’ve noticed on the ferry over, our humble island chain is largely un-cared for by the Grand Coven of our nation. We live outside of their sight… and so, too, outside of their graces. This far out at sea, we are continuously harried by the Hole’s children. Without support from the mainland, some of the other farmers have resorted to associating with bootleggers and pirates to make ends meet. They’re good folk, mainly. Old Armus treats his crew like family,” he said.
“The Hole…” Nata muttered.
“Yes. The Hole in the World. We’re hundreds of knots away, but the sea doesn’t care. We get storms and beasts aplenty regardless. You’ll be passing it on your way to the west.” Mariano continued.
“This… Ringed City… is safe?” Nata asked.
Mary cast a pitying glance toward Nata.
“My dear… I’m afraid that nowhere is safe from the witches. We simply hope that distance will buy you time. You’ll need to figure out how to hide from their magic. I wish we could help more… but I’m afraid all I can do is feed you and clothe you.” She said.
Nata smiled, the first in months. “You’ve done plenty.” She answered.
Footsteps alerted the table to the figure in the doorway, rubbing at his eyes.
“Nata… where… oh!” Iasus said, gawking at the deGlorias.
“Ah, there he is. Slept like a rock! Come, eat!” Mariano ordered.
Iasus shambled towards the table meekly. The clothing that Mary had provided him was very baggy, making him look smaller than he already did. His tan skin and golden eyes struck a handsome figure, even with his gaunt cheekbones and thin wrists. Nata flashed a pulse of inquisitive life mana in his direction, frowning at what she sensed. His body was shutting down.
“Iasus has… a special diet…” Nata began, cringing at how she even dared to ask these kind people for more when she was already indebted to them.
“Minerals, Metals, and Stone,” Mary said, smiling gently.
Nata gawked at her hostess.
“Deary, I am a high-level [Scullery Maid]. Keeping people fed and hearty is what I do. It took some elbow grease to figure out a way to make alum and talc into something close to edible… but I did. My skills tell me that he can tolerate most regular human food, too… just keep him away from roughage. No leafy greens for him… which is not usually what I say to growing boys.” She smiled.
Iasus looked at the plate set before him, inquisitively sniffing at a muffin. He nibbled at the edge, his eyes widening. Within moments, he had cleared his plate.
“Now now, no need to go chasing after crumbs! We may not be rich, but we can afford seconds!” Mariano said, laughing.
“And maybe thirds. We insist.” Mary frowned, forcefully refilling his plate.
Nata struggled to find the words. Her voice caught in her throat as she finally failed to stop the tears from coming. Mary wordlessly put a hand on her shoulder, offering a knowing nod. She was finally safe, at least for the moment.
She wanted… no- needed to do something for them. Life mana flowed into her eyes as she surveyed their bodies.
“Miss Mary… could you please give me your hands for a moment?” Nata asked.
Mary was confused for a moment, but accepted, putting her wrinkled and calloused hands into Nata’s young and scarred hands.
Nata saw the telltale signs of skill strain. Clearly, whatever the older woman had used to prepare food for Iasus hadn’t been as easy as she made it sound. She recalled her time in the dreaded Spire of the Art. She spent days upon days healing her fellow inmates and experiments, each of whom had been forced by the wardens to use their skills in increasingly unnatural ways.
She closed her eyes, envisioning a ball of light flowing from her core and into Mary. Mary gasped.
“You… you’re a healer!” Mary exclaimed.
Nata smiled.
“My hands… and my back… they feel like new,” Mary said incredulously.
“It’s the least I could do. Mister Mariano, please let me see your hands, now.” Nata said.
“Lass… I don’t have nearly the money that we’d require to pay for a healer,” he said grimly.
Nata looked deeply into his eyes.
“I hadn’t bathed for weeks. I had barely slept. We have been on the run for months. Nobody besides Iasus has shown me basic kindness for as long as I can remember. You saved me.” Nata said.
Mariano placed his hands in hers. She saw a story in his arms. A lifetime of hard labor and stress, all written in his muscles, joints, and old scars. Just like with Mary, Nata’s life magic softened the scars and eased the pains, washing away the things that had served their purpose and inviting new life into his old body. She made sure to leave just a bit of extra life in there, just in case.
“I feel like I could run for miles.” Mariano grinned.
Mary looked at Mariano, making deep eye contact with him. She nodded, leaving the room and coming back with a small box.
“Are you a woman of faith, Miss Nata?” Mary asked.
“Not particularly. I have a… strained relationship to the spirits… nevermind gods.” Nata answered, curiously staring at the box.
“Many do. Some people believe that the spirits exist only to cause suffering… personally, I’m inclined to disagree. I don’t claim to know what their aims and intentions are… but I don’t believe in coincidences.” Mary said.
She opened the box, revealing a small bone amulet carved into the shape of a butterfly.
“I was planning on giving this to my eldest granddaughter once she came of age… It’s nothing powerful or valuable, but it’s a charm that is tied to a hearth spirit,” she continued.
“I can’t… give it to your granddaughter.” Nata refused.
“Bah, passing a charm like this down from grandmother to granddaughter is just an old tradition anyway. All of my grandchildren are safe with my children. I sent them off to the west so that they might grow… and they have. They do not need my hearth. You… on the other hand, could use a little slice of home to take with you.” Mary said, moving behind Nata to put the charm around her neck.
The butterfly flashed with a brief glow of warm orange light, like from a fireplace.
“I… thank you,” Nata said.
“Think nothing of it. Now… let’s discuss how you’re going to make it to the Ringed City.”