In Another Time and Place
Kanaya awoke when a boot collided with her back.
The pressure vanished as her body spasmed, the owner hurriedly removing their leg and taking several steps back, their form coming into her line of sight. The figure wore rusted iron armor covered in deep scratches, and between the alabaster flesh of an exposed midriff and a shocked, wide eyed, intact face was obviously human. Kanaya noticed the sword sheathed at their waist as well, and through the bleariness and confusion tried to speak to assure this stranger that she was not hollow, to deter him from running her through or lopping her head off.
To her horror, she realized she could not speak. The soft spasms that wracked her body did not cease, and she found it impossible to control the movement of her jaw. It jumped up and down sluggishly, and she wasn't sure her attempts to move deliberately were even having an effect. Her limbs twitched at odd intervals, and the realization that she could feel neither her hands nor her feet opened up a chasm in her gut. Before she could even try to rise, however, the strangers face went from shock to a contortion Kanaya could only describe as rage as he crouched down and proceeded to yell at her.
"It's about gods-be-damned time you woke the fuck up! Do have any idea, any mother fucking idea, the shit I've been through while you've snoozed here by the bonfire! Are you all recharged, are good and well fucking rested? Because let me tell you, this dilapidated shit hole gets old after about three hours and I've been sitting here with my thumb up my ass waiting for you to wake up for a lot longer than three fucking hours!"
Kanaya would recognize that cluster of profanity anywhere. She tried to speak out again but found her mouth refused to cooperate. Her eyes searched Karkat's face as his expression went from annoyed to confused then back to annoyed.
"Oh right. You're all rotted to shit. Here, I got something for that. Can you move your fingers any?"
Kanaya was wondering why he'd bothered the asking a question, she clearly couldn't answer, when he moved out of view, stepping over to her side. She heard him rustling around in what sounded like some sort of bag before feeling something warm and soft being pressed into her hand.
"All right, now squeeze that with your fingers."
Kanaya would have glared at him were she able to move anything other than her eyes.
"Ugh, fine. I'll just do everything, like always."
She felt his hand close around hers, forcing her fingers shut against whatever it was he put there. The warm, soft object burst apart immediately, sending an icy cold chill up her arm and into her chest. She heard a nearby fire start to crackle and a prickly tingling sensation work its way through her body. Hands grasped her shoulders and lifted her into a sitting position before draping a thin blanket around her body.
She realized with some relief that she was able to move again. She reached up to grab to the edges of the blanket but froze as soon as she made the movement. She felt different somehow, thicker, more substantial. Normal. She stared in amazement at her bare forearm; the pale brown hue of her skin had returned to a much healthier, darker color and was now wrapped around muscle rather than bare bones.
Quickly scanning the rest of her body she confirmed that she was indeed fully restored. She stared up in amazement at Karkat, who proceeded to drop a pack from his back and removed the sheathed shortsword from his waist before sitting down next to her.
"It's great not being a zombie, right?"
"Karkat this is fantastic! I assume that object you put into my hand was the much vaunted humanity we've been hearing about?"
"Yeah, that was it. Just some shitty black glob. You lose it when you die by the way, so watch your ass. I mean, I've got more if you need some so it's not like this is the only chance you'll ever get to be human again or anything, but this shits hard to come out here so don't waste it."
"What are you talking about? What do you mean when I die? Are you implying I'll die multiple times? And where the hell is out 'here' anyway?"
"Gods damn it slow the fuck down. I'm not explaining this shit to you because I just barely fucking understand any of it myself. I'll take you to someone later who can probably answer all your questions. The answers will be complete nonsense, in my experience, but they'll be answers. As for where we are; welcome to fucking Lordran, land of assholes and bullshit."
"Lordran…"
"Yeah. Well apparently this specific area is called Firelink Shrine, but yeah we are in Lordran. Fabled land of the gods and home of the undead, etc. you've heard the spiel before I'm sure."
"Bullshit."
"That's what I said! But that bitch was adamant, and trust me it's a lot easier to just go along with her than argue pointlessly with the ground for hours. I've learned that lesson the hard way many, many times. Besides, Lordran is a lot shorter than land of assholes and bullshit."
"So it isn't actually Lordran?"
"Fuck if I know. But that's what everyone calls it."
"Alright fine, I'll submit to conformity with this enigmatic everyone you keep referring to. Speaking of which, who is everyone?"
"Ugh, it's not really an 'everyone' so much as it's this one bitch who likes to gossip. I'll take you to see her after you've been caught up to speed."
"Catch me up to speed on what? Because so far you seem to be either unable or unwilling to tell me anything."
"Gods damn it, I fucking restore your humanity and set you up in the safest place in this putrid shithole of a city and all I get is sass and bitching! Well fuck you!"
Karkat stood up and made to leave. Kanaya quick reached over and grabbed his forearm, halting him in his tracks. "Karkat wait. I'm sorry; I really do appreciate your helping me. But clearly you've had more time to acclimatize to all this than I have. Karkat, the last thing I remember was being held in the grip of that large bird that snatched us from the asylum, and the next thing I know I'm woken up in a strange place with both of us human and you going on about mysterious 'she's' and 'everyone's.' How do you expect me to react?"
Karkat sighed before dropping down back next to her. "Yeah, alright, fair enough. I'm just a little on edge lately you know? Shit has been fucking stupidly insane lately. Aside from that whore in the tower I've been pretty much alone out here for a while. Neither of us knew why you weren't waking up, everything was trying to kill me, and that fucking bird," he pointed up at the treetop stretching out over head, " has just been fucking watching me, and this is the first interaction I've had that wasn't laced with hostility and resentment and didn't involve anyone trying to murder me. So yeah, sorry. Didn't mean to be an ass. Or that much of an ass at least."
Kanaya rested her hand on his forearm and studied his face. For the first time since waking up she was seeing him without an angry scrunched up expression. His features went from tensed and pursed to relaxed and the change amazed her. That hard manic glare had fit him so well she'd been beginning to think that angry was just his default expression.
"It's all right Karkat, I understand. We just need to re-acclimate you to normal human interaction. Or whatever passes for that anyway. Now, explain to me exactly who this woman you want me to meet is."
"I think it might be the same one who saved us at the asylum. The one who wrote all that magic shit on the floor."
"Really!"
"Yeah but don't get your hopes up. I don't know if it's true or not but according to her she's talking to us from somewhere else by writing magic messages on the ground. I respond by writing my own with this magic rock she told me how to get."
"What do you mean somewhere else?"
"I mean she writes them on the ground from wherever she is and they appear on the floor of this tower I stumbled across. And the ones I write show up wherever she is."
"And where is she exactly?"
The sour look returns, and Karkat looks for moment like he's going to launch into another rant, but he suddenly deflates. "Just, ask her when you talk to her. You'll see. The fucking bullshit that bitch just exudes."
Karkat rose with a sigh before standing, one hand going out towards Kanaya. "C'mon. Let me give you the tour before we head out."
~)
Karkat walked Kanaya around the ruins of some sort of shrine, a once impressive complex reduced to nothing more than dubiously standing walls and a few sections of stone jutting out from underneath the grass. The ruins spread out uphill away from the bonfire, which overlooked a view of the largest city either of them had ever seen, and culminated against the trunk of an impossibly large tree growing out of the side of a cliff-face rising up into the clouds. Most of Karkat's so called tour consisted of showing Kanaya various exits to the small plateau they were on before warning her off of ever going in that direction.
The last stop was a small outcropping behind and below the bonfire, at a set of stairs that appeared to circle around down the side of the cliff.
"And don't go down their either." Karkat said, pointed to the first ruined arch at the top of the stairway.
"Duly noted", Kanaya said, resolved as she was to letting Karkat get it out of his system before bombarding him with questions. As she turned to stare back at the path they came down however, she saw something in the earthen wall rising up towards the bonfire that froze her in her tracks.
"And lastly," Karkat continued, turning to face her, "oh. You already see it…well, yeah. That."
Kanaya looked on with unabashed horror at the woman kneeling in a prison cell built into the dirt, iron bars framed with stone bricks. She hurried towards it, shouting back at Karkat "What the hell is this?"
Karkat walked towards her in a manner she found disturbingly nonplussed, answering "Yeah, fuck if I know." He followed that declaration with a shrug.
As she neared the kneeling figure Kanaya noted it was a human, or more likely a restored Undead like her and Karkat, with a head of scraggily blonde hair reaching to the ground and garbed in a strange white robe with what looked to be dried blood around the wrists and ankles. A dirty blindfold obscured her eyes.
"Hello?" Kanaya asked, hands clutching the bars. " Can you understand me?"
The woman gave no response. Kanaya realized with disgust that her lips had been sown together.
"Don't waste your breath." Karkat said, his voice sounding nothing short of exhausted. " Screaming, spitting, poking; she doesn't react to anything."
Kanaya shoved her arm between the bars, but the hem of the woman's sleeve was just beyond her reach. He fingers closed around empty air. "Well we can't just leave her like this, can we?"
Karkat just shrugged again. "I…I don't know what to do. She was bricked up in there too, when I first found her, but I knocked those down." He motioned to the shattered stones lying around the sides of the cell. "Some of the bricks had weird runes etched into them. And look down at the ground."
Kanaya did so, noticing for the first time the faint runes scrawled in the dirt, a circle stretching out past the bars and back around into the void behind the woman, encircling her at the center. Kanaya tried to wipe away some of the marks with her foot, but found that the dirt around them had been frozen solid.
"What is this?" Kanaya asked, looking back to Karkat.
"Magic Barrier. Some powerful shit indeed. Whoever put her here, they damn well made sure she'd stay put."
~)~)
Karkat and Kanaya walked through a portion of the ruined city, Kanaya staring in awe at the dilapidation above, below, and around her while Karkat impatiently hurried her through what was to him long familiar territory. Her eyes lingered a few extra seconds on the bodies littering their way, and he mentally berated himself for not having the forethought to chuck the damn things over the edge and down below before leading Kanaya through.
The silence was punctuated only by their footsteps until Kanaya suddenly blurted out a question. "What happened to Dave?"
Karkat stopped for a moment. He'd forgotten all about the errant knight/bastard they'd met back at the asylum. He assumed he'd left and gone on his way. Or else been killed. He told as much to Kanaya.
Kanaya muttered a quiet "ah" in response as the pair resumed walking, a giant bridge looming overhead coming into view. It became evident that Karkat was leading them to a support pillar stretching down from the middle of the bridge past the walkways he and Kanaya traversed and down into the depths below. An opening on their level allowed them access inside, which revealed what Kanaya surmised must have once been a store room, judging by the broken remnants of wooden barrels piled in the corners. A wide staircase led around the walls of the room up to a higher level, but portions of it had long since collapsed, and a rusted ladder once used to circumnavigate this had come free from its hinges. Her eyes were most strongly drawn to the bonfire in the middle of the room though, a little flame just barely rising above the ashes feeding it that nonetheless continued its slow, soothing dance.
Karkat withdrew a thin white stone from the tattered satchel at his waist and began writing obscenities on the ground.
Kanaya opened her mouth to ask Karkat what the hell he thought he was doing, but she realized that the marks he carved into the ground were not just bright; they were luminous. In much the same way as the guiding instructions she'd found in the asylum. So Kanaya kept her peace, at let Karkat continue defacing that ancient structure with the foulest language she'd ever seen. Not long after, someone responded.
Kanaya let out an audible gasp as elegant blue lettering appeared on ground next to Karkats angry scrawling. It was the same shade and style as her mysterious benefactor from the asylum, the letters floating just off the ground, though these shone with a near blinding radiance and were written in the common tongue rather than the old language
"Hello Karkat." It read. "It's always such a pleasure to hear from you."
Karkat thrust the stone towards Kanaya, a sour look on his face.
"Here!" he exclaimed, "It's your turn to deal with her horseshit now."
He let the stone fall before heading towards the exit, Kanaya only just barely managing to catch it before it hit the ground. She was surprised to find the stone warm, and soft, as though it were made of wax.
"But what am I…"She began, but when she looked up Karkat had already stormed back out onto the walkway outside. Hesitantly she squatted down next to the mysterious blue writing and, after examining the tip for a moment, set the stone against the ground.
"Hello?" She wrote, hand shaking slightly, unsure whether she should introduce herself, unsure of where she stood with this mysterious voice on the ground. Her letters hung on the floor without response for several seconds. She noticed Karkat's colorful curses begin to fade away.
After what felt like several minutes had passed she added an addendum to her original question, which faded away as she did so.
"Is anyone there?" She wrote.
Immediately blue letters appeared in reply.
"Oh! Apologies, that first hello had me worried I'd accidentally stumbled across the wrong Karkat, and I'm afraid this me is simply not up to a repeat of that introduction."
"I'm sorry, I suppose I should have identified myself earlier. Karkat just left."
"He does that often."
"My name is Kanaya Maryam."
"Ah, the mysterious Kanaya. So you've finally risen from your unprecedented nap? Karkat must be relieved."
"He is. Though I'm surprised he admitted he was concerned to someone."
"Oh he didn't. But I read between the lines, so to speak."
Kanaya sat cross legged on the ground by the bonfire, getting comfortable and writing in smaller script to conserve space. She was a little shocked at herself with how quickly she taken to this strange method of the communication; it was liberating, in a way.
"I hope I'm not coming off as rude, but I've got several questions about all of, well, this."
"By all means, ask away. It's what I'm here for."
"Well, what is 'here,' and who are you? And how are we communicating like this?"
It took several moments for the reply to appear, and when it did Kanaya found herself hanging on every elegant word.
"Where I am is a little complicated. As for the soapstone's, they are a little invention of mine to facilitate communication between myself and my friends, which ended up having the unintended effect of allowing people like you and I to talk. As for me, my name is Rose."
Kanaya reached down to reply, but was interrupted by an extra line coming into view.
"I believe you and I are friends, in another time and place."
"What do you mean 'time and place'?"
"And that leads back to your question of 'where.' I've been over this with your angry acquaintance several times before so forgive me for being short."
Kanaya had to adjust to prevent the increasingly hurried blue scrawl from disappearing under her leg.
"I am sitting in the same room as you are, an indeterminate number of years in the past, trapped due to you and your friends astounding fuckup."
~)~)~)
Together Kanaya and Karkat made their way across the top of the wall towards the great bridge, having cut through a large portion the Undead Burg Karkat had yet to explore. He was tense the entire time, sword out at the ready, and he expressed no end of incredulity that Kanaya was following the bridge witch's instructions for them to visit the enclosed parish on the other end, which jutted up above the city and almost hugged the edge of the mountain.
"I do not understand." Kanaya said. "I was led to believe most of your time spent while I was incapacitated involved running errands for her."
"Because she was helpful! She led me to humanity, and a sword, and that fucking soapstone, but that was before she started vomiting that festering guilt trip of a story she's concocted about time travel and demons. Before she stopped giving suggestions and started giving vague instructions! Don't tell me for a second you actually bought that slavering drivel, please Kanaya."
"All I'm saying is a think we should give her the benefit of the doubt."
"About time travel?"
"About being helpful. If you have such strong reservations you know you are perfectly welcome to wait for me back at the shrine."
"Yeah, like I'm just going to let you wander out into unknown territory at that bitch's fucking behest all on your own."
Kanaya smiled at that, and they passed through the turrets overlooking either side of the bridge in comfortable silence. They continued down a stone staircase set into the far turret on the wall, coming out at the far end of the bridge. Both of them were stopped in their tracks by the sight of the dragon.
It's corpse lay stretched across the center of the bridge, it's body compressed by the short barriers on either side. It's body was covered in wilted red spines, between which protruded a variety of swords and spears and other unidentifiable weapons. One wing had at some point been severed and the stump stuck up in the air, while the other tattered appendage lay trapped beneath it bulk. Vacant, hollowed out eyes stared back at the pair of Undead at the head of the bridge.
"Holy shit," Karkat breathed.