She put a hand above her eyes, on top of her forehead, and squinted to see despite the blinding sun.
In the sky, a trail of afterimages was coming closer. The anti-fun police was coming. She’d waited two minutes so far. They were so slow. Damn, it was no wonder they had been struggling so hard with their “crises”. They just were a bunch of losers who couldn’t get anything done because they lacked the wits to cheese the game.
That’s why she rolled her eyes when the high priestess Lilith slowly lowered herself to the ground while her robes elegantly swirled along her descent. It wasn’t fair that some people had effortless swagger. But no, Vic wasn’t a muddy rat. Nuh-huh. Why should she care, when she was overpowered instead?
The high priestess lightly put a foot on the ground, then the other, made a movement like she was dusting off her robes without touching them, and gave Vic a haughty look.
It wasn’t really a haughty look, though. It’s just that the high priestess was taller than she was.
Gngn. She couldn’t wait to grow tall. If there ever was a height growth spurt skill, she’d give anything for it. And she’d probably shove an unhinged amount of skillpoints into that one. She was very much aware of how much she disliked being smaller than others. Tsk.
To make a point, Victorya activated many layers of her shadow armour, which made her feet be wrapped in their embrace. She’d gained at least twenty-centimetres. Grmmrm. It would do for now.
The high priestess was giving her a weird look. Vic felt judged. She frowned back.
“So? Anything useful to say?” Vic asked.
The high priestess’s raised eyebrows lowered. She considered the question.
“You did this, didn’t you?” she asked, lowly, her gloved fingers squeezing her white, bark-carved staff.
“Care to be any less precise?” Vic asked. Victorya pondered for a little bit and realised that it would be nice to gloat a little. Perhaps have someone bask in her achievement should be a given. Tsk tsk tsk, she had such a huge ego.
The high priestess stared.
She said nothing.
Vic sighed, but it came out more like a grumble.
“Come on”, Vic said. “Compliment me. You know you want to”, she teased.
Lilith said nothing to her. She was still staring.
“Aw, you’re breaking my heart”, Vic said. “I did so great, didn’t I? Don’t I deserve someone to bask in the glory of my achievements? I’ve saved everyone in there! Doesn’t your little god ask you to praise him whenever he lifts a finger?”
The high priestess slammed her staff on the ground. Vic was nearly tempted to make a little “aww” when she saw some frost appear around the street. That was adorable. The glaciers hadn’t done a single dent of damage to her in their last fight, and that goon thought that this would be enough to scare her? Her? Little Victorya?
Vic chortled. Even if she wasn’t in a good mood. Because she wasn’t self-centred enough to think that this was funny to anyone but her.
“Okay, okay, mkay, it’s fine, not in the mood for some quips? Oh no, I get it, I get it, it’s just that you’re not used to me. It’s fine. I’m making sure no one wants me. Because I don’t want to spend any time with you either. M’kay?” she said, and fingergunned at the high priestess.
The high priestess finally spoke.
“Are you always like this?” she asked. It sounded both patronising and jaded.
Vic blinked. Then she chuckled again and patted her own back.
“No! Of course not. I only reflect the behaviour of the snobs I’m facing. I give back what I’m given. You ungrateful pricks”, Vic calmly said with a light, cheering smile.
“Is that what you truly think?” she said back. Vic blinked at this. What?
“I just told you. Are you deaf? Stupid? Insipid? Of course it is what I think. You still haven’t apologised for backstabbing me when I was supposed to get my reward of a hundred golden coins. Playing wack-a-mole with me always has consequences”, Vic cheerily said.
“You are still… hung up on that… matter”, the high priestess said. It wasn’t said like a question. It was said in an incredulous voice, however.
Vic stared. Then looked at her like she’d bitten on lemons. But she said nothing to the high priestess.
There was something weird with her gaze.
Vic finally got it.
One of Lilith ’s eyes was a dark, putrid green, the transition between the iris and the sclera of the eye turning cloudy for a good millimetre. Her irises used to both be light blue.
“I see you’ve both been getting well-acquainted”, a nasal voice said, holy shit what- how-.
Vic leapt away two metres and hung her from the panel hanging from the workshop. She stared down at a goblin that had been right behind her. It was incredibly small. Was that why she hadn’t heard it coming?
Vic, still hanging from the roof, pointed with one hand at the speechless wretched tiny demon. It smelt like a demon; it was a demon.
“How did you sneak up on me, you spawn of deepshit town??”
The demon blinked.
It didn’t answer. It stared at her, like it was giving her some sort of judgemental stare or something.
Holy shit. Why were the local god’s goons so snobbish and all high-and-mighty? Was it contagious?
She stared some more.
No one was saying anything.
Why did no one want to speak with her?
She frowned. They weren’t even asking for information.
Was this an intimidation tactic? Were they trying to T-pose until she felt a little sorry? Ah, no, they weren’t. The mood was different. It was nearing awkward now. The high priestess even looked away for a little while.
Vic let go of the roof, landed and crouched, got back up, dusted her shadow armour even if it didn’t need dusting, and raised her eyebrows once.
“Ah, yes”, Vic said, “hello, hello yes, I know everyone had been waiting for me, so here I am. You’re welcome.”
The demon… demoness? The demoness gave her a side glance. Only Lilith reacted by tsking.
…Were they waiting for someone? Was it the Cursedblood Emperor? Had they been instructed not to interact with her for the sake of dramatics?
Well, now that just made her want even more to make them speak.
Vic brought a hand to her face and started removing some grime from beneath her nails. The bath hadn’t gotten rid of all the dust accumulated down there.
“You know, for supposedly benevolent cultists who mercifully spare dark sorcerers of dark designs, you sure are an ungrateful lot. Booh. Posers”, she said.
She saw the tiny demoness lightly step next to Lilith, whose fists were suspiciously clenching. Teehee.
“I mean, man, I found its nest and blew it. Not even a tiny thanks? Can’t I at least get a “thank you” basket with a bunch of fruits in it? Please? Nothing for clearing up your divine infestation?” Vic asked. “And me who thought that a job well done required proper compensation.”
Lilith stilled. Was she going to overreact? Start a fight? Ohh? Vic stared at her intently with a tiny smile, but the high priestess didn’t move at all. Ah… no, the tiny demoness was slightly behind the high priestess, and… oh my, she’d just discreetly removed back her arm. She must have punched the high priestess’s leg right before. Vic was sure of it. She would bet an arm on it. Maybe even two.
“You know”, Vic slowly said, taking a lightly cheery voice, “at this point, I think I’ll politely request double the prize money I’m owed, both because I’ve saved the day and because I’m feeling ignored and my fee-feelings are getting all hurt about it.”
That got a reaction from neither of them.
Damn.
How annoying.
She cleared her throat at them noisily, glaring.
“Tsk, at least the puppet god was more talkative. Damn, can’t believe I’m starting to miss its constant stream of-”
She got interrupted.
The tiny demoness had taken a step forwards.
“You heard its voice?” she said, staring with a tilted head. Was there alarm in that look? No, it was different. A little worse. The way the demoness bit back her lips told her that she hadn’t meant to talk. After a moment of hesitation, she continued anyway. “How did you receive its godly touch?” A pause. Vic’s face was stared at. “How did you resist it?” she quickly added. There was something deeply disturbed in that voice.
Vic waited a little before answering. She rubbed her chin. She pretended to think. After all, she’d been the one so far to be left to ask questions without getting answers. It was only fair that she enjoyed her ability not to reply.
Eventually she did reply. But it did take a while for her to get there.
“Resist what?” she asked.
The tiny demoness’s eyes went from clear silent annoyance to widening briefly out of surprise.
“The charm of its call”, the demoness quickly answered.
Vic snorted.
“The charm of its… call? What d’ya mean?” she lazily said. What was this about?
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“You resisted the appeal of its voice”, the demoness stated. It was a sentence, but it was spoken like a question.
Vic frowned. What was she speaking about?
“Resist?”, she repeated. What had she meant by that? “You’re speaking of the puppet god’s voice?” Vic said, and she was stared at like she was saying something obvious and… fairly stupid.
Ugh. Annoying.
She chuckled angrily back.
“Come on, there’s nothing to resist”, she said. Was there some… magic charm to the puppet god’s voice? She closed her eyes to better remember, and because doing that was a little dramatic. “Its… voice, you say? Oh no, it just makes my ears nearly bleed out each time it enters my mind. It’s like chalk on chalkboard. But it’s also very deep. No, it’s dissonant. No. It’s worse actually. Like a badly tuned reggae song made by a talentless hack who made the mistake of ever believing in themselves by daring to think that they’d have a natural talent for music.”
She opened back her eyes and blinked when she realised how weirdly she was being stared at.
She stopped speaking. She’d been about to continue roasting the puppet god’s voice but there was something weird going on.
Holy shit. She wished she could take out her phone to take a pic of Lilith. To preserve it, for posterity.
The tiny demoness opened her mouth, hung it open for a little while, and closed it.
It was Lilith who spoke, slowly.
“That’s…”, she said, and she stopped. It looked for a second like she was going to say something a bit insulting, but it didn’t happen. Instead all she got was a bit strange. “…An interesting perspective” the high priestess said, oddly neutral. There was no way the high priestess was being diplomatic after Vic’s taunts. How had she kept her cool? Instead of seething, she was speaking clearly and intensely. “The call of the Many-faced Cave is believed to be the primotheolorian archetype of sirens and their defining hypnotic voices. Myths regarding the degeneration of elves into sirens date back to the godly experiments of the Age of Contempt, where countermeasures and their failed attempts to replicate their master’s-
“Cool story”, Vic said to interrupt. She wasn’t here for the lore, she was here for the grind. “Your point, being..?”
The high priestess seemed to redden. From anger. Or embarrassment, maybe. Welp.
Now she felt like an asshole.
All was as it should be. Vic felt like her crops had been watered and her skin moisturised.
Nice. She wasn’t even going to pretend to like any of those cultists. They were all stupid enough to follow some megalomaniac instead of trying to trust themselves with their own power.
“…The point being”, the high priestess said in shortly said words, “that the physical call of sirens can be tempered with a sound spell or some wax in the ears. It can be distorted, and furthermore, deaf people are effectively immune to it. But to deny its… voice? The Cave’s voice itself? It’s not… it’s nearly…”
She stopped there, giving Vic another look, and oh. It looked like she had decided to hide something when she started speaking again.
“It’s unheard of”, she finished. She gave Vic a studying, surgical look. “How did you… distort it…? How difficult was it to start the spell before being caught up in that evil god’s grip? Could…? Could you-”
Vic started silently as the tiny chicken sized demoness gave a firm punch at Lilith’s leg again without taking her eyes off Vic’s own stare. Damn. Now that was a show Vic could get behind.
Lilith stopped speaking.
The tiny demoness didn’t speak either.
Looks like the silent treatment was beginning anew.
“Mmmmm”, Vic said. “Dunno. Mm. It nearly… how to say… Yes, yes… I think I… Mmm…”
There was definitely interest in her audience. But… oh. Were they trying to hide it? Yes they were. She’d nearly missed it, but she was such a great actor that her performance had inevitably sparked their interest. And perhaps a little bit of annoyance. Mm. A good mix.
“Ah!” Vic said, and passionately slammed her fist against her opened palm. “Yes. It nearly made me fall over the first time I heard it. It’s just… it’s got that bad quality, you know? It was always off from the start.”
Yes, it’d been like the sound coming from a mic that’s old, dying, and full of dust. Oh, and also it sounded like it came from a video file that suffered from being too compressed. On top of already being dissonant enough. And annoying. So very annoying.
But she couldn’t really say that, now, could she?
Did she really want to explain what an audio file was? No, she was far too lazy. They didn’t deserve any of her explanations. They didn’t deserve to understand whatever it was that they wanted to understand.
“What happened the first time you heard its Call?” the chicken-sized demoness asked.
Vic frowned.
She rubbed her hands together as though she felt a little cold.
“Well, that was my first real great adventure when I stumbled here”, she said. Although she’d call it more a misadventure considering how unforgiving it was. “I barely had any of my current powers back then”, she lightly said. “It started innocent and PG rated enough. But then… well, to cut it short, I barely managed to escape a wizard that called itself Gadeast. But when I… killed him…”, she said, and stopped. It’d been a shame. She’d never gotten to ask for his recipe for his emo black lipstick. It was the only thing she’d like about this whole thing. Haha. Ha.
She clenched her fists, and continued: “…and when I finally thought I’d won for good after that… week of hide and seek and chasing and running that never ended, the god… well… it swelled over the carcass of its dead preacher, uhmm, splitting it in two and uh, well, apart, and nearly… uhmm, I don’t know how to say. It was a bit confusing to the eyes to be perfectly honest.”
She was going to change subjects but as soon as she finished someone asked a question.
“It manifested?” the high priestess asked. The voice was different now. She had wide, disbelieving eyes.
Vic shrugged. She didn’t want to remember.
It had looked like a creature partly emerging from the cocoon that had been the body of the preacher, pushing its sides apart to be born anew. It’d been incredibly gory. She’d gotten black blood all over her face and her original clothes when it had burst out. They’d been ruined. It’d been incredibly gross. Like from an anime that wanted to do gore and did it too much.
…Wait. Was that why she’d been handed a butterfly themed clothe-piece? Were cocoons a part of that god’s aesthetic?
“Mmmm”, Vic said, thoughtfully rubbing her chin. She licked her lips. “Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
Her eyes fell on the shade of the building. The stark contrast between the sun-dipped stone and the untouched one was growing further apart. Shadows from nooks and crannies seemed to slowly deepen. It nearly looked like they were gaining… substance, like there was an object there that could be touched.
Vic intently stared there. The more she looked, the more swirling, meaningless patterns shifted in the shadows, making them look thicker than they truly were.
She stared at the source of that agitation.
“Nice trick, I like it”, Vic said to the tiny demoness. That would have been interesting to deal with in the last fight. The demoness was glaring at Vic from all the height that her chicken sized body could offer her. Heheh, tiny.
“Answer”, the demoness bit back. “Did. It. Manifest.”
What was “manifesting” supposed to mean? Was that a word used when a god made their true self appear in reality? Like a super duper ultra powerful form that was hard to beat up?
“Ugh, no idea. Maybe”, she rambled. “It was only an arm that burst out of the body. It came out to touch my forehead with a single finger.”
It might not have been a “manifestation”, then. It hadn’t been a full body that had come out.
Both the high priestess and the demoness were now staring at her like she’d gained two heads and one of them was sporting a very evil little grin.
Huh…
Well, from their reactions alone, now that truly confirmed it. That god had always needed contact to spread out. That had indeed been an attempt from a god to transmit its divinity. In some way. Her former mentor Ava had never said how that worked.
“That whole situation really sucked back then”, Vic said to her frowning audience. There was silence after she spoke and some pairs of eyes staring at her, but at least, now she had an inkling of what this was all about.
“That was certainly not its manifestation”, the high priestess interrupted. “It does not fit the Many-faced Cave’s modus operandi. It would never settle for a single limb. We are far from the point of no return. Praise be my Lord.”
Vic squinted. She wasn’t talking of her cult leader, now, was she? Ew.
But huh… if it hadn’t been a manifestation, what had it been?
She shrugged, and tilted her head.
“Well, anyway, even if that was or wasn’t a manifestation, it sucked. Three cheers to that”, Vic said.
“Could it be…” the tiny demoness said, “that you made it botch its attempt? The connection had to be made, as you do hear the Cave’s voice. But it’s not a simple resistance. Its charm is simply lost on you.”
It somehow managed to sound like an insult. Vic squinted.
She opened her mouth to reply something lightly mocking, but a sensation like the rustles of leaves coursed through the ground.
She looked at her surroundings. Nothing. She closed her eyes.
There. Yes. It came from the down below.
She opened her eyes. It wasn’t an attack when roots slowly burst from the ground and spread apart smoothly to reveal a self-important, pompous hack dressed up as royalty.
Vic picked her nose as the Cursedblood Emperor spread his arms, one holding his staff that was used as a walking stick or a shepherd’s staff.
“Took your sweet time, you tall midg-”
“Not here”, he interrupted. He made an inviting movement as the platform of roots expanded a little. “Come with me. We have much to consider.”
Vic grimaced back while she stared at him make two hand movements at his goons. The high priestess stepped next to him while the tiny demoness lightly bowed. Vic thought that if that demon tried to properly bow, it would disappear from anyone’s eye of sight and never be seen again.
“Nomora, do not risk it. They have retreated within the depths as the odds have been balanced by our kind guest, but they need to know they are observed. You know the rest” he said, sounding so poised and sure of himself that it was making something within Vic feel a bit vindictive.
“I destroyed the anchor. There’s no need to be all antsy about the puppets”, she said.
“They were not our only assailants”, he cut. “But I thank you for your contribution.”
Vic stared.
By contribution, did he mean that she’d been the one to carry this unwanted team of good-for-nothings? There were high chances that she’d been the only one to make a meaningful “contribution”.
“Wow, that’s so sweet, so kind. So heart-warming, I’m feeling all fuzzy and nice. But katching-katching”, she said, rubbing her index fingers with her thumbs, “my services are not free of char-”
“Not. Here”, he interrupted coldly. He hit his staff on the ground, and it oozed of red, but the magic wasn’t released. Was that a warning? “We will discuss those matters out of hearing range.”
“Geeze, no need to be so-”
“You are invited to climb up to be warped back to safe grounds”, he interrupted. He was so rude. And wrong.
It wasn’t like his palace was full of holes like some yellow cheese that was also full of holes.
She wasn’t going to tell him that though.
“Fiiiiiiiiiiine”, she said, half-groaning like a lazy cat, half-groaning like a lazy human. “Whateeever, I don’t care. You better give me some pretty good comp-”
“Not here”, he cut off. Vic rolled her eyes. What, did he think they were being overheard? It had to be pretty obvious by now that Vic was only here for the money. That she was rightfully owed. That she deserved. Duh.
She stepped on the pale platform of roots, standing near the middle but not too close to the cult leader and his number one fan because she didn’t like them, half-curious about what being teleported felt like.
“Go on, my fair chariot, bring me to my riches-”
“Victorya.”
Damn, he was so annoying, and no fun at all. She tsked. Branches began wrapping them, forming a large sphere that began retracting.
…
Vic stared and blinked rapidly as she watched them form a cocoon that cut them off from the world.
…
…
Was it really wise to let this happen?
A notification suddenly popped in front of her.
Vic frowned.
Vic blinked. Dark purple sparks where bursting around her shadow armour. Like a wet firecracker that barely worked, they blew out, they hit the branches and made them jerk back.
“My lord?” the high priestess said. That was a very strange intonation that Vic didn’t have the tools to decipher.
“Victorya?”, she could hear the Cursedblood Emperor say, and he sounded incredulous, “What are you doing?”
He had stepped away, but not far, because of the enclosed space they were in. He was abruptly leaning all his weight against his staff, nearly slumped over. The high priestess stepped in between them.
Holy shit that was going up fast.
“Victorya?!” he said.
WAIT HOW DID SHE TURN THAT OFF??
There was no button to turn it off!
No! Bad game system! She was just about to be given her rewards after having done this shitty unofficial quest!!
“Uh! Give me a minute I’m- trying to figure it out-!”
The dark green ooze that had dripped between the pale roots became obvious as the wooden tendrils were forced apart. What the hell was going on?
Before she could compute what to do, she saw the branches retract on their own and retract back to the ground. Some of them had dents in them with a pattern of imploded, organic sparks drawn within the pale wood.
The spell had been cancelled. By the mob boss. He hadn’t waited for her to figure out how to cancel it.
Vic felt her lips become a thin, long line as she didn’t try to find out if she was being stared at.
She looked emptily in the air.
She heard someone take in air, but didn’t let them start their speech.
“It wasn’t on purpose”, Vic quickly said in a loud mutter, hands jointed together awkwardly, still staring emptily in the air, because yep, she was fully absorbed by a single point in the middle of space where nothing special was happening.
“My bad”, she added.
Please don’t take away the money you owe me.
She stared back at the masked mob boss. His tree mask was turned towards her. He was staring. He was still fully leaning on his staff. She couldn’t read him. The high priestess was gaping just a little. She didn’t seem aware of it. She was just… staring.
Vic made a clicking noise with her tongue against her clenched, bared teeth. She was bearing a fairly awkward smile.
It was the Cursedblood Emperor that interrupted the silence.
“Can you willingly not disrupt my spell?” he said. It was quiet.
“No idea”, she said back. This was weird.
“Was it an instinctual response?” he asked.
She didn’t reply to that.
“Maybe I’ll just walk instead”, she said. It would be nice if they could point her in the right direction.
They didn’t reply.