AN: Please note that this was written before Book 8, Supernova, was officially released, and so therefore many elements within it are probably going to be torpedoed and rendered non-canonical by Supernova's contents.
Still, enjoy!
oOoOoOoOo
Emily was alone on a ledge, with no idea how she'd gotten there.
She sighed and scrubbed a chapped hand across her equally weather-beaten face. Some time ago - (a month), Emily decided, slotting in the first length of time that came to mind - such an occurrence would have prompted a lucky dip of frenzied emotions to well within her, randomised each time: panic, fear, and concern, to name but a few of the main players. But now, (htnom eno) on, it just elicited a tired sort of resignation in her, creating the same kind of mild-yet-familiar irritation one would feel when an old injury decided to act up. It was annoyance minus the sting, all the power robbed from it so that it was just a dull shadow.
With another heavy sigh Emily scanned the area, her gaze sweeping across the horizon like a desert wind. Where had her errant body taken her this time? Behind her, a rugged wall of rock rose into the air, like a border enclosing the edge of the world. Judging by the wrinkled stone around her and the sharp slope of scree that slanted away far below, Emily guessed that she'd somehow ended up on the side of a mesa. A mesa that was a stark, tea rose orange. A mesa that had most definitely been nowhere in sight, according to the last fragment of her memory. Great.
She turned her attention further afield. Below, stretching out in all directions, was the accursed desert, as always. It sat, a medley of dunes, wastelands, and stony plains in varying shades of saffron, rust, and portland orange. Here and there the odd valley sliced through the earth, rocky wounds coloured deeply with sienna and vermillion. Tough, scrubby, bushes dotted the landscape, and clung precariously to valley walls. Emily peered carefully, trying to catch any trace of the path she must've taken to get up to such a lofty perch – perhaps there was some faint line of footsteps she could follow, or some disturbance caused by her passing - but it was no use; she might as well have been trying spot ants in Kanalis from the peak of Death's Head mountain.
That just left the sky. Emily stared blankly at it for a few seconds, looking at it without really seeing as her tired mind scrambled to register what it was that it was viewing. Nothing of interest there, but most of the time that was practically a given and a blessing. Just the same rose-coloured sky as always, the same blue clouds drifting by. A hot, dry breeze tugged lightly at her hair, and Emily absentmindedly swept it out of her face.
'At least there's nothing up there now,' she thought, as memories of multi-winged things ghosted across the empty expanse.
So: mesa, slopes, desert, sky. That was about it.
All in all, not bad. Well, not great, Emily conceded, as she glanced down at the yawning drop below her, but it could have been worse. And, she added as a slightly bitter consolation, she'd managed to climb up, so chances were good that there was also a way down.
Her gaze tracked out to the desert once more, and internally Emily shied away from it with some degree of dead fury, like a stubborn horse refusing a jump. Sheesh, how she'd come to loathe the sight of orange sand and red rock, the former sinking under her feet, needlessly sapping more strength than was required, and the latter cracking open the world, creating impassable obstacles that resulted in time-wasting diversions.
In light of that, Emily made a quick revision to her previous judgement of the mesa, bumping it up from 'not bad' to something that was almost approaching 'good'. It wasn't the desert, and since her life for the past (year) had been nothing but desert, it was a welcome change.
It'd begun like so:
The Spirit, floating formlessly in front of her like a king holding court, that same grin plastered over his horrendous mug as he spoke of cleansing and new arrivals. It was a smile that somehow managed to be smug, sharp, and cold, all in one. Emily had stood before him, a subject forcibly made loyal, her back ramrod straight as she stared upwards. She blazed with fury, most of it born from that single moment of failure, of having played completely into the Spirit's hands, but all of it directed at the thing misting before her. Fire thickly coated her, and had Emily been in a calmer state of mind, she would have suspiciously wondered why it wasn't harming her. His speech finished, the Spirit continued to grin, wafting slightly in a non-existent breeze, thoroughly unperturbed by the malice radiating from the small human in front of him.
"Well? Do I have your co-operation?" he said, as if there was only one answer to it in the entire world.
"Go to hell," Emily spat.
The Spirit only grinned wider. Nothing about his mouth had changed, save for the stretching of skin, but now there was a decidedly predatory glint to his teeth. They seemed sharper; the light hitting them had the same effect as a whetstone upon a blade.
"As you wish."
In an instant the fire surrounding Emily was gone; a gasp was torn from her throat as the land buckled beneath her. It warped, no longer solid, and Emily fell into a whirl of colour and noise. She tumbled over and over, and yet at the same time felt like she wasn't going anywhere, like the strange sensation of movement she sometimes got when dropping off to sleep. Colours spiralled past her eyes in a great flurry. They were accompanied by a strong mixture of odours: a bonfire, ozone, jasmine, road tarmac on a hot day. And through it all, his voice, sliding and cutting as it wound around her -
"Nothing personal, but I can't have you running around pell-mell whilst I work. You should find yourself nicely occupied here..."
She'd hit the ground with a soft-but-solid thump, sand grazing her skin as she skidded a short distance. For a moment she simply lay there, too dazed from the sheer amount of sensations overloading her to respond. Eventually though, she garnered enough strength to prop herself upright, sand clinging to her stinging cheek. Around her stretched a vast expanse of desert. Hauling herself to her feet, Emily briskly dusted herself off; a small sandbar's worth of sand drifted away on the wind.
"Where...?" Emily muttered to herself. Loudly, she addressed the Spirit. "Where is this?"
Her only answer was the whistle of the wind, laced with a faint, unnerving chuckle that soon died away.
"Fine," Emily growled. She spun sharply on her heel, kicking a small amount of sand into the air, and began to march away. "This isn't over!" she bellowed over her shoulder. "I'm getting out of here, and I'm coming for you!"
Spine set, she'd marched off into the desert.
In time, Emily had come to learn that desert wasn't a normal space in the Void, like the places she'd visited previously. Whereas those had been the safe, insulated bubbles of Stonekeeper memories, the desert was more akin to a liminal space that filled the gaps between said memories, sitting between them and dividing them up like the walls of a honeycomb.
And she was stuck in the thick of it.
Even though Emily was now above the desert, it seemed that she still couldn't escape a certain aspect of it. Somehow, this little ledge, high in the air and clinging to the side of a monolith, still had a gritty covering of sand. Not much, mind, just enough to make Emily's footsteps have a hint of a grainy crunch. Emily resisted the urge to sigh again, instead opting to roll her eyes. Dropping into a crouch, her knees popping like the snapping of fingers, she swept the sand from a small area, then settled herself on the rock. It was blisteringly cold, like everything else in the Void, but she didn't notice. She had the bird to thank for that.
Emily narrowed her eyes, glaring at a great expanse of nothing. Even in a lawless hellscape such as the Void, there were rules chugging away in the background; there was always a purpose, there was always a reason. The reason that Emily had tagged out, only to find herself on a gosh-forsaken spire of rock was…
The blasted bird had subsumed her mind again.
The bird, the bird, it was always the bird. Emily's face automatically creased into a frown at the thought of it: not her, not herself, just the bird. It was easier to think of it that way, easier to carry the guilty weight of her failure that cut into her shoulders like a brand. She and the bird were locked together in a twisting paradox, cleaved in two by the Spirit and yet simultaneously one and the same. At the very moment Emily was sitting on the rock outcropping in the Void, she was also high above the world, soaring through the atmosphere like a meteorite that refused to break up or burn out. And yet, she also wasn't out there, since she was trapped in the Void whilst the bird was stuck in the real world, and yet at the same time she was both in the Void and the real world and yet at that moment...
Emily shook her head. The last thing she needed right now was to start going in circles over a pointless piece of frippery that she'd come to terms with (seconds) ago.
The point was that she and the bird were like a single tree, with its roots aflame. Slowly the fire would rise, consuming the tree bit by bit until the entire organism was alight and burning. Over time Emily would feel a greater and greater connection to herse- to the bird, until she could practically hear the crackle of its wings, feel the heat from its flames, see an odd haze occasionally waver and lick across her skin.
Or hear the screams of its victims.
Just when it reached the point where the veil between them was thinnest, where in certain lights Emily could swear that she saw the blasted thing, then it would happen. Emily-in-the-Void would blank out, forced to ride around what'd once been her body, now reduced to a glorified bonfire, seeing things from its viewpoint, whilst her Void-body merrily ran around on autopilot. On this occasion, it'd decided to scramble up a cliff, because it was there, and why the heck not, apparently.
Eventually the ride would end, Emily tagging back in to see where she'd ended up that time. Meanwhile, the metaphorical tree would be reset, fire at its roots, and ready to climb anew…
Emily sat back, her shoulders slumping under an unseen weight as the memories from the most recent flight rose in her mind, poking through the surface like poisonous blooms. So much blood, so much screaming...
With some difficulty she shoved the memories down, back into the soil of her mind, where they were contained. Not safely contained, mind, just... contained.
Man, she was exhausted. Not in body, no; though she'd been tramping around the desert for (days) without food or rest, her energy levels hadn't majorly depleted. Granted, they'd still depleted a little, but it was nothing compared to what they should've been: non-existent. Then again, the Void was strange; she didn't explicitly need sleep, or food, or water, and truth be told, Emily wasn't even sure if those things existed within the realm outside of the pantomime of stonekeeper memories. They seemed like foreign concepts, ones bound to the fleshy, living world of Alledia. Even time itself came under this umbrella; it didn't work properly here, Emily's body clock rendered useless by both the unchanging Void, and a lack of human markers such as eating and sleeping. The amount of time she'd been there seemed to fluctuate wildly from (day) to (second). One moment it felt like Emily had been there for (months), then next she could swear that she'd just been there a few (minutes), only to feel in the moment after that a great expanse of (years) had passed by.
One thing was certain though: she knew that whenever her energy did finally run out, after however many (weeks) or (years) or (seconds) spent in the Void, that'd be the end. Full stop.
So, no, she still had the strength to move, and her body would keep chugging along whilst she did; it was her emotional energy that was gone. It'd left nothing but a bloody, rotting cavern where it'd once resided; a single, crystalline nerve growing through the centre, horribly exposed and all too easily agitated. Any emotions that managed to survive were covered by a drab blanket of a feeling, muting everything it coated.
On instinct, Emily's hand rose to her chest. Once upon a time in another life, there had been a heart there, a heart filled with fire and rage and love and determination and every other emotion that was tightly packed into a human body. Now there was only a – chasm, yawning and terrible in the way it echoes. The words cut across Emily's mind too quickly to be hers, and were followed by a burst of adrenaline. In a heartbeat she was on her feet in a feral crouch, automatically reaching for a magic that was no longer there. Her head snapped around, primed to catch a glimpse of a shapeless miasma, streaked with swirls of purple. Where, where was he? What trick was that cursed Spirit playing now?
For a second the world was as one frozen in ice, frozen in time.
Time…
(6h minutes)
(an hour)
( ̡̝͓͔̮̩̻̱́ń͏̶̯̘͔̦͉̤͚͎͇̗̻̫̗̭͔̞ ̕҉͈͓̺̗̯͕̫͖͈̖́ͅo̶̡͟͏̴̘͎̙̭̭̹̺̖̦̼̬̮̞͎ ̺̯̻̱̦̳͉̝͉̘̳̀͠͝?̴̧̢͔̺̖̹̻̖̰̹̞̻̮͙̺̮̟̙̺͖̻̱̟͖̰̪̣̲̬̝̩͇̮͢ͅͅ )
…passed.
Nothing.
There was nothing there at all; just Emily, the rock, and the sky.
A small amount of tension drained out of her, stealing a bit of her precious energy as it left, but it was nowhere near enough for her to properly relax. Emily flopped back down onto the rock with a dull, muted thud.
'You stupid fool,' she thought. 'It was only a bleed. You should know better than to be jumping at shadows.'
With a sigh, Emily slumped back against the freezing rock. Behind her, the rock wall rippled ever so slightly as if viewed through a heat haze. Ahead, the distant sky began to waver, clouds warping at the edges. There was a certain sparkling shimmer in the air, but Emily did not notice it. A strange feeling trickled out into the Void as the wind abated, and Emily felt an odd tickle in her chest. Some mild feeling of openness descended upon her, draping over her like an old coat.
'Who was it this time?' she found herself wondering with a tired dread. At the back of her mind, past experience whined, warning her that she was on a dangerous path, but it was lost in an open expanse, and easily overridden; being stubborn and hard-headed was threaded into Emily's very being. In short, she had to know.
In the distance, a shimmering wall began to rise, crystalline, solid, and almost entirely invisible; the only clue to its existence being where the light reflected off it. Unnoticed, it grew slowly but steadily, surrounding the mesa and curving in on itself to form a dome...
Emily focused and slowly it came; the scent of saltwater lingered on in the air, tracing a delicate trail, and yes, listening carefully, she could just catch the faintest rush of a choppy sea. Hmm. For a fraction of a second saltwater beaded over her, stinging her chapped skin and making her wince; in the next heartbeat it was gone. Deep within Emily's chest, the openness bloomed into a curious sort of comfort. She had not been here, wherever this was, but there was a sense of familiarity woven through it. There was something else there though, something lingering beneath the surface, if she just reached out a little further-
Experience finally broke through, sending a sharp jab of panic through Emily.
'Oh n-'
The bubble sealed around her, and the memories poured forth.
The familiar scent of lavender hanging thick in the air - words were spoken but she could not make them out, her body wracked with sobs – the eyes of another sitting heavily on her, eyes that had seen both a wife and son die, eyes who had carried the news to her – her daughter, her daughter, gone, gone-
Adrenaline sang in her veins like acid, as a damp stench filled the air – golden eyes with slitted pupils ghosted around her in a storm – her heart felt like it was about to burst as she skidded down another narrow alleyway, a shock of blonde hair ahead – "Come on, Nav!"-
The click of car keys in the lock – the soft rumble of an engine – lights flashed by in an intermittent pattern – she thought her daughter would be dozing in the back seat, but she's as wide awake as ever – there's a man up ahead, what's he doing in the middle of the roa-
They came faster, like servants responding to a summons, the memories rising within Emily like flowers towards the sunlight; no longer fully-formed things, but brief snatches of experience here and there -
- her insides felt full of gears, whilst floppy ears crowned her head, desperately clinging to her creator's hand - the sensation of coarse fur rippling along her skin, accompanied by the weight of a blade in her hand as she slipped through the forest - the acrid smell of tobacco along with a lifetime's worth of flight experience written into her bones - an ocean's worth of water in the sky, her stormbird crying out in distress as they both plummeted – there was a crick in her neck from sleeping at the table, but oh, someone else is there and it's her, she's sitting there – the children were starting up at her, the boxy robot carefully cradling their swaddled mother, and all she could think was that they are so young -
"ENOUGH!" Emily bellowed, shrieking into the sky, the word ripping her throat raw.
With an almost enraged expression, she slammed the lid down on those memories, confining them once more to the back of her mind. Immediately the dome cracked; in a split-second it'd gone, dissipating into nothing, the rock and sky becoming solid once more. It was almost a shock how quickly the residue faded away, leaving Emily alone on her ledge with only the wind's hiss for company, and the bird's flaming body warming her from some distant shore. The space behind her sternum felt like it'd been doused in acid, the nerve shrieking in pain. She slumped back against the rock, grimacing, the outburst having torn the energy from her. Give an inch, and they take a mile.
The thing was, life in the Void, and especially in this slice of liminal space, was like living on a gossamer veil. Sometimes things bled through from elsewhere.
You are a Stonekeeper, it said. You have memories, as do those connected to you. Let me do something about that.
And once that happened, it was all too easy to get stuck...
"C'mon, pull yourself together," Emily muttered. The words lacked her usual fire, but she stiffened her spine regardless. Sometimes a little is enough. Sometimes you've just got to fake it till you make it.
With a grunt of exertion Emily rose to her feet, her legs protesting at the movement. She'd wasted enough time up here, mooning about like a lost cow. Reflecting wouldn't get her out of the Void, and the longer she lingered in one place, the more she stood out like some great, fiery beacon, just waiting for the Spirit to fling some new torment at her.
Peering over the edge, she eyed the rocky wall suspiciously. Time to find a way down.
How hard could it be?
oOo
Emily paced back and forth across the ledge, little clouds of sand kicked up with each step. This was... fine. It was fine. Actually, no, it wasn't fine! For while she had managed to get up, well, there was no clear way down. Not for the first time did Emily curse her lack of magic; if she'd been able to use her stone's power, then a descent like this would have been a piece of cake. But with her stone sitting heavy and unresponsive against her sternum, its colours faded to a washed-out grey, she might as well have been wearing a rock. Well, technically she was wearing a rock, it was just a fancy one that'd originated in outer space, could do magic, and acted as a telephone for an eldritch abomination.
Emily shook her head. She was getting off-topic.
Pausing so that she was standing in the middle of the ledge, she studied the wall, picking out a path as her gaze tracked upwards. It hopped from tiny outcropping to tiny outcropping, carefully considering and appraising the handholds available to her. Finally, her imagined path reached the top, and Emily nodded once to herself.
If there was no way to get down, well then, the only way was up...
oOo
Climbing the mesa, Emily soon found, was more of a trial than she'd first imagined. Not that she'd been expecting it to be easy, she mused, her fingers stretching almost painfully for the next handhold, no. This was the Void, which delighted in being slippery, tricky, confusing, and frustrating, like a Rubix's cube designed by MC Escher.
What'd been a mild-but-hot wind on the ledge, had transformed into a relentless assailant, boiling and battering Emily as it filled her ears with its whistling. In fact, the noise almost sounded the same as the one made by the bird's wings, an uncomfortable little fact that lodged within Emily's mind. She shook it off. It was far too soon to go for another ride.
Furthermore, there was a curious stench in the air, and not for the first time, Emily found her lip curling up in displeasure. Scratch that, Emily reckoned, curious was entirely the wrong word here; it was just plain horrible. The smell was an element that'd only become apparent once she'd really started making headway up the mesa, gradually gaining in strength the higher she got. While some smells sort-of wound their way into your nose in a delicate fashion, this one decidedly did not. It was like being punched in the face, forcing its way in and making Emily feel like her nose was trying to turn inside-out just to escape. Heaving herself up onto a small ledge, dirt-coated hands briefly scrambling for purchase, Emily halted for a moment to rest and catch her breath, back bent, hands on knees. She immediately regretted it as the stench coated her throat; she spluttered and coughed, mouth wide open as if she could physically eject it from her system.
Emily coughed once more, wrinkling her nose, and came to a very sudden conclusion.
Death. It smelt like death.
The realisation sent a tiny splinter of ice through her, and she found herself wondering whether it was really wise to be clambering towards such a strong odour of the dead. Perhaps it was time to maybe consider giving the idea of descending another thought.
Grabbing onto the mesa wall once more, Emily carefully leaned sideways to peer over the tiny ledge's edge.
There was a moment's quiet consideration where, despite herself, Emily's knees gave a brief tremble. Then-
'That's quite a drop,' Emily thought. 'Wait-' She narrowed her eyes. Far, far below, a small series of dark specks were congregating on the mesa's scree slope. They weaved around, heads to the ground, as if searching for something. It was near-impossible to tell at this distance, but Emily could've sworn in the next second that one of the specks looked up.
"Blast," she muttered softly. "Wulvers."
Now Emily really didn't have a choice; she didn't need to be near the monsters to see their quad-jaws, two muzzles pointing off in a fork, both hiding a second set of pharyngeal jaws in the throats, or to see the poisonous barbs rising in a ridge along their back; she didn't need to be near them to smell their rotting hides, covered in weeping wounds, fur hanging off in matted clumps. No, her memory of the few scant encounters was enough; she'd had her fill of wulvers and their ilk.
Emily continued climbing, thankful that the wulvers could not.
oOo
After what felt like a (a fortnight) of climbing, the end was finally in sight; the mesa's edge sat above Emily like the diving line between horizon and sky. The stench was strongest here, almost throbbing. Emily paused, clinging to the rock with scuffed hands. It was partially for a rest, but mainly because of what lay ahead. And that was...
A mystery.
A mystery that smelt like death.
Emily's mouth twisted into a frown as she considered it. She risked a quick glance below, her head darting too fast to make out any proper sort of picture, leaving her with a blurred glimpse that contained the vague impression of dark specks. Her left arm gave a quick twinge of protest at the awkward position it was locked into, pressed up against the wall. Not only that, but Emily felt like her body was boiling, whilst the wind's whistling roared around her. Staying here wasn't an option.
Fingers protesting from the exertion, Emily slowly hauled herself upwards, until she was just under the mesa's edge. Steeling herself for whatever sight was awaiting her, and with a snail's pace, she gradually raised her head until her eyes were just peeking above it. They swept back and forth suspiciously, scanning the area.
The mesa's top was completely empty, save for a solitary spire of rock.
Emily narrowed her eyes, feeling leery. Something wasn't quite right here - but what? As if on cue, her arms twinged again.
'Aw, what the heck; here we go,' she thought.
With a final surge of energy, she scrambled over the ledge and flopped onto the mesa's crown. Emily lay there, fanning herself absentmindedly as a sigh escaped, drifting out and away on the wind. Man, she was hot.
Are you sure it really is just the wind? whispered a small voice at the back of her mind.
Emily scrunched up her face. True, she was hot, and there was a suspiciously familiar noise in her ears but... the bird never came back this quickly. Ever. It took its sweet time, drawing the whole thing out like the mindless monster that it was. Besides, she'd jumped to conclusions and being thoroughly wrong about the wind before.
After (a moment), Emily rose, heat seeping through her bones. With quick, practiced movements born of experience, she dusted herself off, dislodging gritty little clouds of sand that dissipated in the breeze.
Enough dalliance, it was time to find a way down before she choked on the smell alone.
Emily cut across the top of the mesa in a straight line, her footsteps making a soft scrunching sound against the slightly sandy surface. The reek was strongest here, a thick presence that she practically waded through. As Emily passed by the spire, her eyes automatically tracked to it; it was a strange structure, the same tea-rose colour as the rest of the mesa, but oddly lumpy, more like a cairn than a proper spire...
A distinct feeling of unease trickled up Emily's spine as she looked at it; it seemed to emanate a cold sort of… Light? No, presence, Emily decided. Like it was almost watching her somehow.
She wrenched her gaze away and hurried on by to the edge. Preparing herself for the sudden drop in her stomach, Emily peeped over-
- And was promptly greeted not only with her stomach lurching, but a steep, sheer, insurmountable drop. Below her stretched a vast plain of rock with footholds that were few and far apart, the wall almost bordering on being smooth.
"Great," Emily muttered.
Still, there was more mesa than this, and for the next (ʇᴉɯǝ ᴉs ɐu ᴉllnsᴉou) she carefully skirted around the edge. It was a slow but steady path that Emily traced, as she thoughtfully eyed up what felt like mile after mile of orangey-pink rock, her eyes darting from outcropping to outcropping, handheld to handheld, looking for any hint of a feasible way down. But before long she was back where she'd started, viewing a downward vista of smooth, almost-glassy rock, having completed a full circuit of the plateau.
Dragging a hand down her face, Emily hissed in tired frustration. The wind sang in her ears, warmth was flooding her form, and Emily could almost swear that she heard the bird laugh. She shook herself to dispel such thoughts, almost as if she could shake the flaming nuisance right out of her body. Chance would be a fine thing. There had to be a way down. She was certain of it. Clenching her scuffed, greave-clad hands into fists, Emily swung her gaze back and forth across the flat top. It came to rest upon the spire, and Emily's eyes narrowed. Now that she properly looked at it, full on and whilst standing still, she could see the rock rippled and divided towards the spire's base, creating shadowy crevices. That had to warrant some sort of investigation, even if it was merely because the strangely-shaped spire was the only thing atop the mesa aside from herself and a scant amount of sand.
She padded over to it, and as Emily drew nearer, what appeared to merely be a bumpy surface resolved itself into many neatly-stacked rocks.
'A cairn?'thought Emily. 'But who'd build such a thing? And here, of all places?'
A dim spark of something that almost looked like hope sparked in Emily's chest. Outside of Stonekeeper memories she'd never seen anything approaching a man-made structure like this. Was someone else here? Was this evidence or a former resident, or a marker of some sort, some clue to escaping? For the first time in (days) Emily felt her spirits begin to lift. But the next second she immediately shot them down. She- she couldn't do this. She couldn't let herself be deceived again.
'Maybe it's a grave,' thought Emily, bitterly, trying to tie an iron weight to her thoughts.
She tried to scrub out the frail hope, tried not to let herself bathe in its reassuring light. Hope hurt. It was a fickle friend that could all too quickly be corrupted into an enemy. Hope had whispered in her ear as she'd stared at the face of father - safely cocooned in the car held aloft by her magic – and she had bitten so hard on the bait that the hook was still lodged within her at the junction between oesophagus and stomach. Stupid, stupid stupid. Emily clenched her fists, the cavern in her chest fizzing with an acidic upset.
'Focus,' she thought. 'Remember what you're doing.'
Despite her misgivings, Emily edged her way around the cairn, looking for something, anything, she didn't know what. A way down, her mind whispered, in an attempt to guide her back on track. She leaned in close, trying to peer into a particularly shadowy gap-
And a rotting hand shot out.
It clamped down on Emily's wrist in an iron grip. Emily shrieked - the sound erupting out of her before she bit down on it and cut it off – and slapped at the hand. Once, twice, three times. It didn't yield, the grip as cold as ice. Something was looming forward, a face slowly emerging from the gloom. Panic spiked in Emily, and she wrenched her arm free, almost yanking her shoulder out of the socket. She shot backwards, half-stumbling over her own feet, adrenaline spiking through her.
She skidded to a stop, halfway between the spire and the mesa's edge. What on Alledia was that? On instinct, Emily's feet shifted into a light-footed stance, ready to either attack or spring away.
"Child." The voice cut through the air like a dull knife, and Emily felt a weighty dread drop into her stomach at the sound.
Her eyes darted this way and that, ready to espy a surprise attack from any quarter, but always bouncing back to the spire, as if they were affixed to it with elastic. As Emily watched, a thin, lanky shape peeled itself from the shadows at the base. It moved slowly, and yet with a certain grace, stepping out into the sunlight.
At the sight of it, despite the heat and the wind, Emily felt her blood turn to ice.
A... thing stood before her, and at first Emily thought it was a rotting corpse. But the next second she realised that that was wrong. It was alive, and yet it bore all the hallmarks of one dead. A fusion of the two states, Schrodinger's cat condensed into one being. Living skin and rotting flesh covered it in great, definite patches. Clad in a ragged and tattered robe that might have once been white, the garment was half fused to the dead portions of its body, both skin and material rustling like paper as they walked. The fingers were long, tipped with broken claws that bordered on being talons. What little remains there were of rotting ears pointed off into the sky. Up this close, the stench bordered on being unimaginable, and Emily banished all thoughts of ever being free from it ever again. There was something horribly familiar about the half-decaying brow and jawline, some ghost of an imitation that she'd seen worn on someone else's scarred, scowling face.
"You," Emily gasped, but the sound was lost in the wind.
Emily had never seen the Elf King in person, but she'd heard enough about him, and seen too many pictures in books to not recognise him, even without the mask. She could hardly believe it; he was here? In the Void? After all this time? And still he kept coming, step by smooth step. The gait looked wrong on him, like should be shambling or shuffling along instead; for a second Emily's eye flicked to his one exposed leg, and she repressed a shudder. There was so little muscle mass that standing, let alone walking, should have been impossible for him.
The implications of the full situation dropped onto Emily like a stooping hawk: she was trapped on the top of a mesa with the Elf King, with no clear way down, as he cut a slow, implacable path towards her. Oh heck, she did not want to find out what would happen when he reached her. Gritting her teeth, Emily raised her fists. Well, she'd just have to reach him, first! Seized with a blind madness, Emily charged. She might not have magic anymore, but she could still put up one heck of a fight. She leapt, her dusty, torn cape billowing behind her, arm locked and curling around for a swing-
In that thin sliver of moment where triumvirate of body, brain, and instinct are moving so fast that time seems to slow, Emily saw the Elf King raise a hand, metacarpals and tendons showing through a flaying patch of skin; she had just enough time to think 'Oh no,' and-
CRACK!
Emily felt herself go flying, the sound of the strike reverberating in both the air and her ears. She hit the ground, skidding and rolling, clouds of sand knocked into the air, her cape tangling around her, before she finally lost momentum and flopped to a stop. Tendrils of wind tugged at her back, as the pull of empty spaced opened behind her. She was right on the edge of the mesa.
'Get up!' yelled a small, sharp little part of her mind, the piece that kept its clarity during a fight. 'You've gotta get up!'
Dazed, Emily pushed herself up, her jaw aching and her body sore.
'Get away from the ledge!' shot through her mind. She lunged forward, the world a brief, orange blur, before her foot came down, stabilising her once more.
Slowly, Emily felt the fug leave her mind, clearing like the mist in sunshine. In the brief moment she'd been downed, the King had kept advancing with that horrible, smooth gait. Emily winced, and spat a bit of blood out. Her tongue probed where she'd bitten her cheek. By the stars, that was one bulldozer of a hit! How in the heck did the Elf King strike so hard when he had such little musculature? Emily winced, and tried to stand tall as she eyed the King. At this range, if she attacked him again, she'd probably be sent flying clean off the edge.
"What do you want?" Emily said loudly. Her voice filled the air, sounding hoarse from disuse.
At that the king paused and halted where he was, giving a small snort of derision. "So, there exists a tongue in that hollow skull of yours."
His voice sounded like the echoes of the wind through a metal pipe, all edges and no substance, no real voice at all; it cut straight through the wind, almost as if it bypassed the air entirely to arrive immediately at the brain. Listening to him speak made Emily want to rub her ears to check that they were still working.
Three metres separated the pair, and less than a meter separated Emily from the open sky. Her eyes flicked briefly back and forth, from King to drop to King once more. King, drop, or wulvers: pick your poison.
The Elf King regarded Emily like a collector looking at some rare curio, his grotesque head flopping to one side in a curious tilt. She tried to coolly stare back, despite the gorge rising in her throat and the aches blooming across her body. She got the distinct impression that he was looking right through her, at something else that lay beyond. It was entirely creepy.
"Where's your master?" she asked, her tone hard, unable to bear the silence and the staring any longer. After all, Emily reasoned, if the King was here, then perhaps the Spirit was somewhere nearby. And if the Spirit was somewhere nearby, then maybe it'd be possible to exploit some sort of exit. Ah, this was too valuable a lead to pass up.
"Foolish girl," hissed the King. "He is your master as much as He is mine." He raised a half-decaying hand – the one he'd struck Emily with - and regarded it for a scant moment before continuing. "His lands are otherwhere; He treads not in this forgotten hollow, where abandoned puppets languish."
"Yeah, like I'm gonna believe that," said Emily. Despite her wish to appear tough, she couldn't help clapping a hand to her aching ribs.
"Believe what you wish, little goshawk, for it still remains the hallowed truth. This is our oubliette."
"Nothing 'hallowed' about here," Emily snorted. She glowered at the King. Shoot, there was no way this... aberration was going to be straightforward. Ignoring the quiet warning signs in the back of her mind, Emily addressed the Elf King in a loud voice. "Trellis was right. You are dead."
The Elf King looked immensely, irrevocably, bored. "Out in the world beyond this sifting either, yes, but here death is merely a second skin that has grown and taken root upon me." He paused, neatly folding his half-maimed hands in front of him, and for a moment Emily was struck by the sheer aura of coldness that emanated from him as he continued. "The whelp knows? That is of little concern to me."
"Well, Luger knows too," Emily hastily added. "And Gabian. In fact, all of Gulfen knows!"
Still the King seemed unruffled. "What of it? You peep that Luger kens, but his soul no longer swims in the Void; instead he sits within his own shattered bonds where he and Void were rent apart. 'Gabilan knows' you proclaim, but what can a backwater assassin do to one who is already dead? Furthermore, what trust, what faith could someone of his station spur in people, when he deals in death and has made it his trade? Let the world sing out that the Elf King is dead, let the birds of the field carry it in their beaks to the farthest corners; for soon state lines will matter not. Scratch and squawk all you want, little goshawk, but your talons will not reach me."
Emily almost couldn't believe her ears at what she was hearing, a cold anger filling her. "You really don't care? How can you just sit here and do nothing whilst something else rides around in your body? You're nothing but a worthless puppet!" She spat the last word as if it were a hateful oath.
With alarming quickness, the Elf King's decaying face twisted into a foul expression, one that was made all the more gruesome by the fact that it was entirely impossible on a living face, muscles and tendons stretching and warping in a way that made Emily wince. Fear bloomed within her, as her mind whispered hurried words: That was a mistake.
"A puppet? A puppet?!" he bellowed, empty echoes with razor-sharp edges. He lunged at Emily with fragmented talons, and she barely managed to lurch to one side in a clumsy dodge, feeling the displaced air whisper against her cheek. Again, the King swiped at her, and again Emily dived out the way, her bruised muscles screaming in protest. That time she didn't escape unscathed as pain bloomed in the back of her leg, a scratch torn there. Still the King continued, words punctuated with violent attacks that Emily scarcely managed to avoid, amassing small nicks here and there from where she was too slow to evade. "Peccant waif, you dare address me so? It was through mine own hands that I ascended the throne, through mine own will that I bent the Stone's magic for my purpose! Like the lotus, I grew from the mud and shed my former origins to become the most splendid of all! And now, you would dare stand before me and-"
Suddenly, like a tree growing still after a sudden gust of wind, the King halted, becoming calm. The hateful expression left as his face as it flattened out once more, back into one of a neutral bent. Heart pumping like it was fit to burst, and bleeding from several tiny lacerations, Emily skittered away to the other side of the mesa. But to her surprise, the King laughed, a hollow, hooting sound that sounded like someone rapidly blowing over the end of a metal pipe.
"Ah, yes, yes! I should have guessed that you would possess such a fiery tongue to match your fiery form, little goshawk." A smile touched the corners of his lips, a malicious, cruel thing made worse by the rotting flesh. "My, it has been years since I was provoked into such true, burning anger. But with all our commune, I had forgotten myself; indeed, I had forgotten the purpose of this confluence."
"The purpose?" said Emily, unable to stop the words escaping.
"This etheric world is one of monotony, little goshawk. The seasons do not change, nor is there any place one might escape to, in order to espy new sights, and in doing so, relieve the ennui. Thus, I make my own entertainment. And you, little goshawk, you will make excellent sport."
There was a dark weight, a presence behind the word 'sport', that spoke to Emily of dusty, heavy tapestries on stone walls, of enclosed forests and dense thickets; the rolling eye of a panicked hind, its sweat-soaked flanks heaving as it flew across the forest litter; the flash of a fox's brush as it fled, disappearing into the underbrush; heavy-bodied pheasants rising into the air with a great clattering of wings, as the coneys below vanished into their warrens; the bell-like baying of hounds, teeth gleaming, many blood-red tongues lolling out of many blood-red mouths, eyes focused, paws churning up great clods of earth as they rampaged; their masters following behind with whips and horn, a tolling death knell; the neigh and whinny of horses as their iron-shod hooves pound the ground flat with their passing.
In that moment, 'sport' tolling in her head like an iron bell, the stench of death surrounding her like a miasma, Emily's eye suddenly caught on one almost-insignificant detail on the spire.
One of the rocks had an eye socket.
It peeked out, almost hidden in the shadowy curve between it and its neighbouring rock. Looking, Emily saw others similar to it, eye sockets, and nasal apertures, but all the rock-like objects had been stacked so that they were turned inwards, effectively hiding these details, with only scant ones peeking out here and there.
Everything fell into place.
With a sinking horror, Emily realised that her earlier snide guess, her attempt at demotivation, had been correct: it was a grave. But not for one person, oh no, and formed out of the bits of the bodies of those it sought to remember. No, not remember, display.
'Trophies,' thought Emily, as she looked at the pile of skulls.
It was like that realisation opened a hidden floodgate within her; heat surged through her veins anew, evidence of a second forge suddenly roaring to life, as the sound of the wind rose to a howl, whipping and tearing at her hair. The bird screamed in Emily's ear. Flames licked across her skin.
The bird was rising, claiming her once more. Had the circumstances been normal Emily would have fought it with a painful desperation, not wanting to succumb, to be pulled under again as the cycle began anew. Instead she let it happen with a strange sort of stoicness; she had other things to focus on. Emily glowered at the Elf King, her bones feeling like they'd been transformed into steel.
"Try not to die too quickly," said the King. "Now that hunt has begun, I would hate for it to be cut short before its apogee."
He rushed towards her, he broken remains of his dagger-like nails poised to slice Emily's throat; behind her was open sky, before her was death; fine, if this is how it was going to be then so be it; she dropped into a fighting stance, ready to go down swinging-
A living wreath of flames exploded out from Emily, accompanied the inhuman screech of a monster. As darkness rose to claim her, the last thing Emily heard was the anguished sound of something in pain, entwined with the crackle of flames, and a furious, throat-ripping scream of rage.
oOo
Emily came to, sprawled on her side and half-buried atop a dune. For a moment she simply lay there, surprised at the simple fact that she was still alive. Bruised, battered, and scratched, but very much alive. She sat up, sending small, hissing rivulets of sand streaming off her in every direction. A large amount of it was plastered to one side of her head, coating her hair. Half-dazed, Emily looked left, then right, before twisting to look behind her. An expansive sea of sand dunes stretched out around her in every direction, a faux-ocean in shimmering orange. Off in the distance, a small cluster of trees marked the entrance to a canyon, its walls slowly rising from the sand to create a natural pair of gates. But-
'Where's the mesa?' thought Emily.
Hauling her legs out of the sand, Emily stood, sending more streaming away. Without even brushing herself off, she scanned the horizon, pivoting neatly on one heel. Any moment she expected to see the mesa's pinkish-orange rocky bulk, a squat figure against the sky, but…
It was nowhere in sight.
A breath whooshed out of Emily as a sweet relief filled her. Even now, she could still feel the unyielding grip of the Elf King clamping around her wrist, accompanying the sting of her wounds. She flexed her hand, opening and closing it as she tried to banish the gripping sensation. That'd been close, far too close for comfort. If it hadn't been for the bird-
Emily paused, her hand half-closed. The bird had saved her; she knew that as an indisputable fact, one that lived within her bones and was as familiar to her as her own nose. She had no idea how, but somehow, through some miracle, it'd gotten her out of there. She tried to think of the exact events that'd lead to her ending up in the sand, but as usual, they were a blank; the only memories she had - ones of flying above Windsor in the bird - felt muzzy, all jumbled up and confused, like a shattered egg sitting on the floor in a pool of its own yolk and shell fragments.
Emily frowned. That wasn't supposed to happen; the bird was the bird, an aggrievance tied into her very bones. It wasn't a saviour, it was a destroyer, impeding her progress in escaping the Void. But this time, for one, shining moment, it'd helped her.
'It was probably just so I'd stay alive,' thought Emily.
She wasn't certain, and didn't have any proper scientific proof other than 'We're the same entity', but Emily had a feeling that if one of them was extinguished, then that'd be the end for both of them, the burning tree doused in water and felled by a lumberjack.
Emily swept most of the sand off, and then on instinct, began to slowly walk towards the canyon entrance that sat neatly in the distance. Her body protested the movement, a string of aches and pains making themselves known all across her body, but she soldiered on. Internally her mind was quietly chugging away, turning the events over and over. The bird had returned so quickly, but how? What had been done to make it come with promptness? Well, she'd climbed the mesa, and in hindsight, oh, what a fool she'd been! The signs were so clearly there, attacking her body with the heat and wind and noise! And yet, in that most wonderful of human ways, she'd dismissed it, ignored it. What a fool. Emily shook herself. No time to be beating herself up now. Continuing on that little train of thought, she'd climbed the mesa, only to encounter the Elf King, and ah, there it was. The King was the lynchpin behind this whole endeavour, the key that'd caused the bird to return with such swiftness.
"We're not going near the King again," said Emily, as if she was addressing both herself and the bird, formulating a plan between them. "Let's just hope he can't get down from that little hellspire he calls a throne."
So, not only was she no closer to escaping the Void, but there was now a new danger on her radar in the form of a decomposing, sadistic monarch whose body belied a terrifying strength.
"So how it that any different from the real world?" Emily said to herself in a vague, flat attempt at humour.
Memories of her Mom and Navin swam through her head in an enticing little stream, but Emily shut them away. She could dwell on them later, when she'd escaped from the Void.
As the bird soared on thermal updrafts in the real world, Emily padded across the desert sand. For now, she still had a long way to go.
oOoOoOoOo
AN: This is an odd fic; according to the data I started writing it back in May, but I could've sworn that I started it earlier…? Anyway, it began when I was going through a rough patch. And since then I've only ever worked on it when things have been, well, not the greatest. Look closely and see the truth of my bones that lie beneath, I guess. I wanted to get it finished in time for Supernova, so for a single, shining moment it would be canon-compliant, just before Supernova steamrollers through everything lol.
If you caught the tiny Futurama reference, congratulations! Also included are fun little reference to Hands, Scars, Hand, Pinfeathers, and My Heart Is High Above. Because apparently I must make everything link if I can lol
Final Fun Fact: I sorta ended up basing the King's voice off the Lingering Will's voice from KHII