Chapter 1: whispers at the door (let us in, let us in)
Chapter Text
The world wasn’t always so golden. Once, before all this, the world was a wild, untamed mess, characterized by chaos and entropy, inherent in a system left untouched. There were people, citizens, magical creatures running rampant and free, but there was no community. Without leaders, the civilizations of old fell to their knees to outside forces of bandits. Bloody ruins stood tall against the sunrise, leaving only those who managed to hide or fight effectively enough to stave off the outsiders, the riders of Exor.
Then, the Rulers emerged, each painfully human and new. The story goes that they emerged from the skies, the ice, the waves and the earth itself, that they were coaxed forth by Aeor and his pantheon to heal the ruined world and its people. There were a dozen or so of them, some emerging later in time, but each chose a section of the earth or seas to call their home, and together they set about making the world hospitable after the centuries-long bloodshed it had endured. The riders of Exor gave way to more petty, small-time bandit parties as Aeor’s power over the world grew.
Stories say that the Rulers are the gods’ children, or their reincarnations, or even that they are the Old Ones, returned to help the mortals regain what had been taken from them. But stories are often exaggerated, and the Rulers were merely humans— chosen, yes, but humans nonetheless. As a gift to their loves, their beloved Rulers, the ones sent to heal the world, the gods offered themselves up as conduits. Each Ruler would choose a patron to bind themself to, and once the ritual was done, the Ruler would gain eternal life and youth as long as they chose to uphold their title and their faith. Once that time was up, once they grew tired, they would retire to the End Wastes and reunite with the pantheon that created them, entering a final bliss. Their patron would choose a successor to take care of what they had left behind, and thus, the cycle continued.
Pearlescent Moon of the east was a Ruler. She was born of the earth and air just the same as the rest of them. She was chosen by the gods to help just the same as the rest of them. But as the rest of the Rulers chose their patrons, gaining their immortality and gifts, Pearl never completed a ritual. She let herself keep her own counsel in the frigid plains of the east, without godly help or gifts, staring into the wind of the meadow unflinchingly.
Pearl grit her teeth as the pillager party crested the hills behind her little farmhouse. Reluctantly, she laid down the farming tools she had been using to attempt to coax the soil into cooperation, discarding her gloves for diamond armor intricately decorated with carved flowers that she herself had imprinted. Hastily, she tightened the straps of the armor, her heart pounding in her throat. She strapped her sword to her hip and stepped outside to talk to the bandits.
They’d been coming nearly every week since she’d occupied the area. Pearl didn’t really know what they wanted from her— it was all she could do not to starve up here, with the crops constantly dying and no god to help her out, it wasn’t like she had any valuables for them to paw through— but the best guesses she had were… dark, to say the least.
Emeralds gleamed in their eyes as they smirked, hoisting their gray flag high in the air. Pearl sighed. They want the renown of killing an all-powerful Ruler, and I’m the only one without a god .
Their last visit, Pearl had managed to wave them off without any bloodshed, handing them all the gold ingots she’d managed to extract from her mining sessions. She had watched them walk off counting the coins, greedy smiles plastered on their pale gray faces. She had tried to settle it peacefully, hoping that they wouldn’t come back if she established some kind of tribute system, but it looked like they’d just assumed that she was a pushover. Internally, she winced— her stubborn attempts to grow something out of her barren kingdom definitely hadn’t helped her intimidation factor in the slightest. She pushed her palm against the hilt of her sword gently, trying to still the rocking that betrayed her anxiety.
Sweeping her eyes over the valley again, Pearl assessed the intruders. The flag bearer had a shield strapped to his back, the party head had an iron axe, and their backup was carrying a crossbow and a quiver hanging at his hip. It was a much smaller party than some of the raids she’d see them hold on her friends in the other empires, which was slightly insulting, but she supposed that’d make them easier to deal with, and she’d take what she could get.
It was an awkward few minutes of waiting and watching the bandits make crude jokes and laugh with each other before they arrived at her porch. In that time, Pearl managed to get her fidgeting under control and keep her chin up, poised in what she hoped was an intimidating way. She’d seen Scott hold himself like this when he was talking to his advisors, graceful cyan hair accented by the brightly colored flowers of Rivendell. It probably worked better for him, being an elf and all, but it was worth a shot.
Pearl stepped forward, leaving the safety of her porch and fixing the bandits with a perfectly neutral look. “Hello again,” she greeted carefully, “come back for more gold?”
The head vindicator unsheathed his axe, sneering. “Not exactly.”
Pearl resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I think I should warn you, this won’t go well for you.”
“Well, you can die, can’t you?” the vindicator taunted, and lunged forward, axe shining and headed straight for Pearl’s throat.
She jumped to the side, derailing the vindicator’s charge and causing him to crash headfirst into her porch railing, which splintered under the weight of his axe. The archer let off a bolt, which Pearl ducked under, quickly equipping her shield and batting away a second bolt. She unsheathed her sword in a flash, assuming a defensive position to block the cover fire from the archer.
The vindicator’s axe was stuck in the thick spruce wood of her porch’s floor, and as he was trying to free it, she caught another crossbow bolt on the metal edge of her shield. That stupid crossbow was stopping her from truly advancing on the vindicator. Quickly, Pearl made the choice to turn her back on the archer, hoping her chestplate would take care of the impact of any remaining arrows.
Finally, the axe cracked out of the spruce floor, and the vindicator jumped on her with surprising force, knocking her to the ground. His axe smashed through her shield as she rolled to the side to twist his weapon out of his hand, wildly stabbing out with her sword. Her diamond sword found its home in the vindicator’s chest. The wound hissed with the power of her fire aspect enchantment and the vindicator screamed. “So can you!” Pearl said cheerfully.
An arrow lodged itself in the window, shattering the glass and narrowly missing her face, and she hissed, spinning on her heel to face the archer, who, without his vindicator friend to take the brunt of the attention, suddenly looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here. “Do you want to try that again?”
The archer froze. The flag bearer elbowed him in the side and passed him a lit torch, and suddenly the two of them bolted into her fields. Pearl groaned, discarding her splintered shield and the body of the vindicator, and sprinted after them, hoping she could get there before they did.
She didn’t. The meager wheat she had been able to grow in her empire’s frigid air and rocky soil went up in flames of torch smoke, a blaze of amber and gold. Pearl growled and turned her focus to the archer, who was standing off to the side of the field, looking rather pleased with himself. He didn’t even see her coming from behind. She yanked his shoulders to face her, swiped the crossbow out of his hands and smashed it to the ground, and then stabbed him in the chest, quickly removing her blade, kicking away the body, and scanning the field for the flag bearer.
Pearl saw him sprinting away, his still-burning torch discarded into the grass next to the path. She sighed and wiped her sword on her dress. It wasn’t worth the effort to chase him down, especially not with the fire raging in her fields. She let him go, instead opting to rush into her house and grab as many water buckets as she could from her chests.
By the time she was done, the sun was going down. After an exhausting and stressful afternoon spent putting out a literal forest fire, Pearl was pretty sure she never wanted to talk to a pillager again. They weren’t worth the gold and they especially weren’t worth the time. She trudged back through her wheat field, glumly assessing the damages.
Nothing was left. The field was still smoldering, and a few times, Pearl had to stomp out some leftover embers consuming the roots of her beloved crops. She dragged her fingertips down her face, rubbing at her eyes, acrid smoke spreading across her tongue. All that work. All of her hard work. What was the point of being sent to help when none of the gods wanted you? When you were stranded in the most stupidly inhospitable biome possible? Bitterly, she supposed that it could be worse. An ice spikes biome would certainly be a challenge to cultivate, but at least then I could sell ice for resources.
Suddenly, Pearl stopped, squinting at the field ahead of her. Something bright and slightly charred was lying on the ground, and as she approached, she realized it was a bird. Instinctively, she knelt down next to it, carefully pouring water over its smoldering wings. With the steady stream flowing over its feathers, the bird’s brilliant plumage was put on full display, and Pearl stared at it in confusion.
What was a parrot doing all the way in her empire?
Don’t parrots like jungles? This little guy would have had to fly all the way from the Lost Empire, Pearl thought to herself. She poked it to see if it was still alive. Red and yellow and blue feathers shifted ever-so-slightly, kickstarting her heart back to life. She blew out a breath, relief coloring every action. Gently, she picked up the bird, cradling it in her arms.
Pillagers did have habits of stealing exotic wildlife to store in their mansions. They would often parade the poor creatures around on raids, and they didn’t particularly care if the animals died as a result of their violent escapades. She hadn’t seen a parrot with that pillager party, but a cage could have been concealed behind the flagpole. Pearl decided that was the most logical option as she nudged open the door to her cottage with her foot.
Pushing past the hanging glow berry vines that had been a gift from Pix, Pearl searched for a place to set the parrot down for the night. Parrots liked to nest, right?
Shifting the parrot to her left arm, Pearl grabbed a fluffy woven blanket that Scott had given her and shaped it into a little nest by the fire. The bird was shivering despite having been at the center of the forest fire, which was slightly strange, but she figured the water she’d used to douse him had been too cold and had shocked him a bit. Pearl leaned down and nestled the bird’s little body into the fabric and fur of the blanket, making sure that he was far enough away from the fire to not get singed and then moving back to admire her handiwork. She didn’t have any healing potions ready tonight (she wasn’t even sure if those would work on a parrot, actually), though she had enough ingredients to brew one with the nether wart she’d retrieved from her trip to the fortresses with Sausage a couple days ago. Briefly, Pearl debated whether or not she had the energy to supervise a brewing stand right now. Her brain gave her a stubborn NO. and sent her up the stairs to her bedroom, where she crashed onto the bed, still in her bloody sundress and dented armor, and immediately fell asleep before she could get a blanket over herself.
(Her dreams were sweet and calming, not a pillager or a fire in sight. Just a clear open sky and waves and waves of grain around her, sunflowers in bloom, and butterflies hiding in her hair.)
The parrot awoke downstairs, slowly and groggily blinking his eyes open. His brain was scrambled, thick cotton and syrup blending his senses together. Carefully he sat up, still blinking slowly, and took in his surroundings. The walls were a warm brown wood (oak, he figured, with spruce accents) and torches and shining berries lit up the room, as well as a crackling fireplace in front of him. A fluffy blanket was wrapped around his red (that didn’t feel quite right, did it) , feathered body, and for a moment he let himself sink into it, cocking his head to the side and chirping softly with pleasure.
As if waiting for him to get comfortable, the fire sputtered out. The parrot glanced up sharply, searching for what could have put it out. He cawed questioningly, curling in on himself and huddling under the blanket. In response, the torches blew out. The only remaining light source was the berries’ soft orange glow above his head.
The parrot was starting to get anxious, chirping into the darkness. Someone laughed quietly, melting out of the shadows.
A towering figure that barely fit under the house’s ceiling smiled down at him. “Hello, little birdie,” she said smoothly. “Found you here again, didn’t I?”
The parrot twitched and didn’t respond. He wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but the figure seemed familiar—
—consuming darkness all around, freedom and then nothing but stars, ink and pitch and a laugh colder than the night, searing pain between dimensions—
—the parrot squawked, unnerved, his feathers fluffing up as he inched away from the strange thing. She grinned wolfishly and leaned in closer. “You have until the new moon. Tonight would be too bright for me if it weren’t for you, love, but then? It won’t be, trust in that. Now, awake.”
She reached down and ran her fingers through his feathers. The parrot shivered as the tips of her pointed nails dug into his downy feathers and skin until they caught on something. He flinched, feeling the cold of whatever she’d scratched against spread, and then the world seemed to shift. He must have blacked out, because for a seeming split second it was dark as the— as, well, her, the lady standing in front of him, black jewels dripping from her hands and arms and eyes— and then the next second, color had returned to the room and he was… different. He stared down at new, pale fingers and a bright red tunic the same color as his feathers covering his chest.
The thing was still smiling. Dark clouds like smoke filled the room as he stumbled back on arms and legs. He shielded his face with his forearms, trying to say something. His throat closed up, suddenly cracked and dry. Nothing but a forced exhale left his mouth as he doubled over coughing, curled up on the floor as the darkness enveloped the room again. “Have fun, little birdie.”
When he next opened his eyes, a cloak of glittering stars and shining night was pooled on the wood in front of him. It spilled over his hands as he touched it, sliding and moving fluidly like silk made of water instead of thread.
Wings of scarlet and yellow and blue settled nervously on his back, feathers fluffing out, and he craned his neck to inspect them. On instinct, he ran his hands through them as best he could, straightening them out. Something clicked in his brain at the contact with the feathers, one of those impulsive urges to do something that is undoubtedly a bad idea. Thoughts colored in blackened smoke, the parrot ran his hands through his feathers again, yanking out a handful haphazardly. Blood dripped onto the floor of the nice (now very dark) cottage as the parrot stared at the feathers in his fist.
Moonlight was pouring in through the window. A glance outside told him that tonight was the half moon.
Two weeks until the new moon.
Something told him this would be the first of many, many long nights.
Chapter 2: something’s burning in the empty room inside of my head
Notes:
fun fact the second and third chapters were meant to be one chapter. they are not. if i had made them one chapter that chapter would be 12k words. just. yeah.
ALSO the amazing expositionfairy beta’d this fic for me and helped me out by being my conceptual rubber duck to bounce ideas off of. i totally forgot to say that earlier because i have the staying memory of a rock
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Pearl woke up later than she’d intended, judging from the incredibly bright mid-morning light that streamed in through the window above her headboard. Slowly, she stretched, shivering slightly. Not putting on a blanket last night definitely took its toll— she’d have to wear something warmer today to make up for it. The house itself was also much colder than she usually kept it, which was curious.
She finally took her sword, scabbard, and armor off, leaving them in a pile on a chair for her to clean later. Those bandits probably wouldn’t be back for a while, not after she’d killed two of their raid party. Pearl sighed, remembering the loss of her crops as she dug through her wardrobe for new, less bloody clothes. It was devastating, even if she could get food from the other rulers. Nobody particularly hated her or even each other, besides Jimmy’s weird rivalry with Fwhip and his salmon, or something like that.
A crop loss meant she was even further from having something of value to offer the other rulers. She was supposed to be chosen, just like the rest of them, supposed to be helping, but… apparently, none of the gods had chosen her . Which was fine, Pearl wasn’t even sure she wanted a patron. Scott always seemed stressed talking about Aeor. Lizzie and Jimmy were wistful when Naia was mentioned. Sausage seemed… not entirely himself whenever he did things for Exor’s might. Katherine’s Overgrown breathed. She didn’t want to have any of that happen to her or her smallholding.
Smoothing out her hair as best she could without running to the water pump, Pearl grabbed and tugged on a coat sewn from seal skin and kelp that Lizzie had given her in exchange for a heart of the sea she’d stumbled across. The Ocean Queen had promised that the seal skins were harvested sustainably, and Pearl really couldn’t afford to be a choosing beggar in the cold of the meadow. She descended the stairs, clutching her old clothes and bloodstained sword to clean up at the water pump.
Upon glancing at the hearth, Pearl promptly remembered three things: she had taken up that parrot that the raiders left behind last night, that the parrot was injured and probably needed healing potions or at least some food, and that she had definitely left the fire burning last night.
Pearl dropped her laundry on the floor and rushed over to the macaw. His wings were splayed across the floor (somehow he’d shed the blanket she’d given him last night, too, it was currently pooled underneath him rather than around him), and he was fast asleep, but that wasn’t the concerning part— no, the more concerning part was that a chunk of his feathers were missing. A small but non-zero amount of blood had stained the floor under his wings. Pearl knelt down next to him, gently extending his wing out to assess the damage.
Just as she’d first thought, a big clump of feathers on his left wing were missing, primaries, secondaries, and down alike. Pearl wondered how she’d missed that last night; he was clearly bleeding slowly from some of the wounds, enough that her fingertips came away slightly reddened. She decided she’d been pretty exhausted and dismissed the mistake. “You definitely need a health potion, little guy. Can parrots drink those?”
Pearl stood up, hesitating between her brewing stand and her chest of seeds that she’d collected from across the kingdoms. She really didn’t want to kill the poor thing by accident.
Okay. Start with the seeds, then I can message Joey and see if he knows about healing parrots. Pearl sighed and rifled through the chest on the left wall of the room, just above the kitchen pantry. Seeds were a precious commodity out in the meadow; anything but tall grass wasn’t growing in abundance here. She had no idea why it was so cold here— by all means, it should just be a normal valley, but apparently, this valley decided that it was going to be stuck in some kind of frigid rut with the world’s worst soil. Only the mountain grass took root.
But she wasn’t going to let a poor bird starve just because seeds were rare, especially not one that had clearly been abused by some filthy raid party using him as a status symbol. Carefully, Pearl poured some beetroot seeds into her palm (beetroot was pretty useless anyway, it was only really good for seasoning stew), stopped at the second cabinet underneath the seed bank to grab some bandages, and knelt next to the parrot again. He still hadn’t woken up, but his wings had curled up to his sides again, so she figured he must be close.
She gently grabbed his wing, stretching it out to make sure none of the bones were broken. Pearl nearly jumped out of her skin when the bird let out a small chirp in his sleep. She stopped messing with it after that, just using a bit of gauze and tape to staunch the bleeding feather gaps. It shouldn’t impede his flight more than the missing feathers would have already. Pearl set the seeds on the floor in front of the parrot, directly in his line of sight, and carefully rearranged the blanket over his injured wing, trying not to jostle the bandages.
“Whew. Okay, little buddy, you should be all good there!” Pearl ran a finger along the parrot’s head. He fluffed his feathers up and trilled happily, opening his eyes steadily. “There you are! Hello!”
To her surprise, once the parrot caught sight of her, he jolted backwards, nearly tangling himself to the point of tripping in the blanket. She withdrew her hand, holding her palms up placatingly. “Woah, woah, hey! It’s okay, it’s okay, see?”
Pearl chewed the inside of her lip. Of course the poor thing would be scared of humans if those bandits had trapped and hurt him like that. Slowly, she moved to nudge the seeds towards the parrot, making sure that he could track all of her movements. “Eat up. I promise it’s just some nice beetroot seeds.”
She stood up just as slowly as she’d motioned, holding the parrot’s blue-eyed gaze the whole way (were parrots supposed to have blue eyes? She made a mental note to ask Joey about that, too). Pearl picked up her laundry from where she’d dropped it at the base of the stairs and pointed towards the door. The parrot’s eyes slid over to follow where she was pointing, clearly still suspicious from how his feathers were fluffing. “I’m just going to wash up. I’ll leave you alone in here, okay? Don’t chew through your bandages, and make sure you eat all of those seeds. Staying full when you’re hurt is real good. Real nice. Good… good parrot?”
Pearl had no idea what she was doing. Do parrots understand human words?
She left the house, inwardly cringing at the damage the evoker’s axe and blood had done to her porch and pointedly ignoring the corpse of the offender slung over the railing. It would dissolve without her help eventually.
After about a half-hour at the pump, the stains had finally come out of her favorite sundress and her sword. She took a second to wash her face and hair out, too, and to get rid of the grimy coating of soot, ash, and blood on her legs, arms, and feet. By the time she went back to the cottage, she was feeling much better and cleaner, and her mood was only improved by the fact that the parrot appeared to have eaten all the seeds and was now begrudgingly curled up under his blanket, staring at the wall and fidgeting.
Pearl giggled a bit at the sight of the disgruntled bird and set to work stoking the flames back to life again to warm the house. “I wonder— do you have any sort of name,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “We’ll have to sort that out soon, I think. If you’re to be staying here, I can’t just keep calling you ‘the parrot.’ It’s weird.”
The parrot chirped grumpily and buried his head in the blanket. Pearl shot him a confused look. “You’re a very sour little bird, aren’t you? I guess I can’t blame you… you’ve been through a lot, huh?”
He glanced up at her, neck caught in a jerky upward movement, and cocked his head as if listening.
“Oh, of course you look up when I’m sympathizing with you,” Pearl snorted, stacking more wood on the fireplace. “Pesky thing. You can understand me, then?”
Hesitantly, the bird nodded, trilling loudly. “Huh. Good to know, I guess. Did you like those seeds?”
She got a neck tilt from that, swaying side to side, like the bird was indecisive. “Do you need more, or were they just—“ The parrot cut her off with a nod and a harsh cry. “More it is, then.”
After she returned to give him some wheat seeds, he pecked the seeds ravenously from her palm, glancing up contentedly when he was done.
“Jeez. You’re a hungry one. Did those bandits not feed you?”
She got a confused head bob in exchange for that one, which she didn’t really know what to do with. “Okay, I’ll take that as a ‘maybe.’”
Pearl stood, dusting off her hands on her dark pants. “I’m gonna go get my communicator and shoot Joey a message to see if he knows what to do with you. I wanna make sure I don’t, like, accidentally feed you something bad. Or something.” The parrot watched her leave curiously, even attempting to waddle after her. “No, no— no, you! You stay there under your blanket. I don’t want you to freeze!”
Pearl didn’t know if parrots could pout, but if they could, this one was definitely doing so. He turned back to the fire glumly, his neck feathers fluffing out with indignation. She scoffed lightly and headed up to her room to grab her communicator from her bedside table.
[You whisper to JoeyGraceffa: hey, joey, do you know if parrots can have healing potions?
You whisper to JoeyGraceffa: also do they usually have blue eyes
JoeyGraceffa whispers to you: lmao idk
JoeyGraceffa whispers to you: i usually kill them when they enter my kingdom for heads. very pretty
JoeyGraceffa: i don’t think they have blue eyes though haven’t seen any at least]
Pearl sighed. That was mildly inconvenient. Of course our jungle emperor doesn’t know how to take care of birds.
Joey’s empire had always been a little… non-traditional. His patron was Exor, same as Sausage, and he didn’t really seem to value the life of the jungle around him as much as he valued preserving and reviving the past of the civilizations before him. Pearl supposed it made sense; the jungle was full of ruins, it was only fitting for its ruler to build his kingdom on the foundation that was already there.
On a whim, she shot a message to the general chat of the rulers.
[ PearlescentMoon: hey, guys, does anyone know anything about how to take care of a parrot?
PearlescentMoon: some random pillagers dropped this poor bird by my kingdom, he’s a bit hurt]
There wasn’t an instant response. The rest of the Rulers were probably busy at this time of the afternoon, but if any of them knew anything, she trusted them to respond when they were ready. Pearl started to head down the stairs when her comm pinged. Huh, that was faster than I thought it’d be.
[KatherineElizabeth: I don’t know much about parrots in particular, but healing potions do work on most animals! I don’t see why it would be any different for parrots.
KatherineElizabeth: Poor thing. I hope it’s not in too bad of a condition :(
SolidarityGaming: DONT FEED IT A COOKHIE
SolidarityGaming: joel told me to do that once. do not do that
Smallishbeans: lol]
Pearl sighed exasperatedly. Parrots couldn’t have chocolate, everyone knew that— how had Jimmy fallen for the oldest trick in the book? She did feel bad about his parrot, though.
[GeminiTay: pretty sure also that parrots eat like bugs and stuff right
GeminiTay: like they don’t just eat seeds, they like berries and bugs rigjt?
Smallishbeans: pearl i think you should give it a cookie. when has jimmy ever been right about anything
Smajor1995: y’all are crazy pearl do not give that parrot a cookie
Smallishbeans: ^-^
PearlescentMoon: i will not be giving the parrot a cookie. thanks scott, gem, and katherine
PearlescentMoon: and jimmy. you helped too
SolidarityGaming: YAY
Smallishbeans: if you gave the parrot a cookie i think someone would write a children’s book about it
Smajor1995: what
Smallishbeans: oh nothing]
Pearl scoffed and clipped her communicator to her belt as the chat went quiet again. She was startled by a thump on the stairs. Her head jolted upright as she peered down the stairwell to see a scarlet, gold, and cobalt lump making his way up the stairs defiantly.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing over there?” Pearl cried sternly. “Go back and sit by the fire! You’re going to mess up your bandages!”
She shooed the parrot away with the back of her hand, stepping down to his level, but he only stared up at her with big, blue, parrot-y eyes, innocently twittering and cocking his head to the side. “Oh my gods , is this the parrot equivalent of puppy eyes?” Pearl asked exasperatedly. She reached down to scoop up the stubborn creature in her arms and set him down by the fire, but as soon as her hands got within an inch of his feathers, he puffed up nervously and scooted backwards down the stairs, giving her the same suspicious look as he had in the morning.
“Oh, sorry,” Pearl soothed, holding her palms out again. “See? It’s okay. Not gonna touch you if you don’t want me to. All good.”
The parrot’s feathers slowly smoothed out. He scooted further down the stairs, waddling back to the fireplace like she’d directed him. Pearl smiled softly and followed him downstairs.
“Good news, little guy, Katherine says you should be good to go on the healing potion. That should let you regrow those feathers nice and quick!” At her words, the parrot regained some of his spark, chirping happily and hopping from one foot to the other. “You’re a fidgety dude. Bet you’re itching to fly.”
The parrot nodded excitedly. Pearl laughed and went to work.
She brewed up the potion in no time, swiftly crushing the glistering melon seeds into the bottles on the brewing stand with the flat of a knife. Soon enough, three freshly brewed healing potions were sitting on the kitchen counter in front of her. Pearl poured some into a dish, figuring it’d be a little hard for him to drink from the bottle. Carefully, she made her way over to the parrot and sat cross-legged on the floor to feed him the potion.
“Alright, let’s make sure you don’t get too much.” Pearl leaned over, sliding the shallow dish towards the bird so he could drink from it easily. “These things are strong, I don’t want you to pass out or anything.”
The parrot sniffed the dish cautiously as if to make sure that he wasn’t about to be poisoned. Evidently, he found nothing wrong with the potion, because the next second he was beak-deep sipping from the bowl. Pearl gently pulled away the empty dish and clipped the remaining liquid in the bottle to her belt. “I think half the bottle should be enough to heal up your wing overnight without having you bounce off the walls. I absolutely do not want to deal with you being more hyper than you already are, you pesky thing.”
The parrot sniffed at her, turning up his beak. She laughed at how human the gesture was. He was clearly feeling better from that potion already.
Pearl stretched her arms above her head. “Alright, I suppose it’s dinner time. I really slept in, didn’t I?”
The parrot cocked his head smugly. Pearl rolled her eyes. “You slept longer than I did.”
He didn’t seem to agree. She frowned lightheartedly. “Well, I guess someone’s not going out for a walk with me tomorrow, then. Bad little birds don’t get to go find crunchy bugs in the garden for snacks.”
The look she got in return made her burst out laughing. Pearl had never seen a creature capable of such potent disdain in her life, excepting maybe Joel when Scott used him as an armrest. “Be good, then!”
Pearl heard an indignant squawk from behind her as she walked into the kitchen to prep her dinner. The parrot sat on the table the entire time, having parkoured his way up using his talons and beak, and she was pretty sure his gaze never left her back as she cooked. He wanted to make his angry little parrot heart known.
She really, really wanted to laugh at the fact that she was currently getting stared down by a parrot in her own home (a parrot whose life she had just saved, on top of that), but in a move that exercised more self-restraint than she’d ever thought possible, she managed to hide her giggles successfully.
The parrot stole some of her dinner. Pearl pretended not to notice.
The next day, Pearl woke up to the crazy bird asleep on the floor of her bedroom. She woke up and nearly stepped on the weird little parrot, yelping when she realized that he was lying in the middle of her bedroom floor in the dark.
This time, she hadn’t overslept— it was still very early, just as the sun rose. Her little friend was clearly still fast asleep, so she tried to tiptoe around him to keep him in that state. She was starting to grow fond of the bird already, with his grumpy chirping and indignant feather ruffling, but she didn’t need to deal with his hyperactivity this early in the morning.
Pearl went down to the pump to watch the final fragments of the sunrise and wash her hair out. She tried her best not to feel awful about the now-barren fields before her as she wrung out her hair. It was just another obstacle to overcome. She’d be okay. It’d be okay.
She looked over to the little boxes of plants that she kept growing under her windowsill and around her house. A wide smile spread across her face— her berry plants were still alive! The pillagers hadn’t tried to burn the plants in her personal gardens, just the ones in the wheat fields.
That gave her an idea. She should build a little greenhouse! Her crops would do much better in a controlled environment that wasn’t easy to burn, and if they were in a building, she’d be able to protect them much more easily. And that greenhouse would come with a barn to house any animals she happened across; the parrot wasn’t an outlier, she had a few cows that she tried to keep fed with any grain she had in storage mixed with molasses, a horse that helped her get around to the other empires, and a little farm cat that slipped in and out of her life at random.
Grinning, Pearl headed inside to plan out the builds and gather materials.
The parrot finally climbed his way into the kitchen after Pearl had been working on her blueprints for a while. Blearily, he blinked at her, using his beak and talons to hoist himself up onto the table and stare down at the plans. Pearl giggled. “Sleeping Beauty’s finally awake, huh?”
He shot her a scathing look, neck feathers fluffed. Pearl laughed harder— he just looked like a mean, rich old lady! The parrot squawked and glared out the window as if wishing he could fly away and never come back.
“Aw, come on. I’m sorry I upset you,” Pearl offered. She slid the plans toward him, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. She didn’t think parrots could read. “Here, this is what I’m working on.”
To her surprise, the bird leaned in to stare at the plans, head cocked. He chirped excitedly, glancing up at her and wiggling. Pearl definitely didn’t think parrots could read, but this one definitely could. For… some reason? She’d ask Gem or something later.
“That’s gonna be the barn,” she explained, pointing to the first of the blueprints. “It just needs to store my grain and my animals, really. And that’s the greenhouse! That’ll be where I grow my plants. It should be warmer there than it normally is outside, since the glass traps heat inside the dome. The soil might be a problem, but I’ll try to use some natural fertilizer and plant some beans first. They have really good nitrogen output.”
The parrot nodded at her. Pearl smiled. She really wanted to pet his fluffy little head, but considering how he’d reacted yesterday, she didn’t want to spook him. Which reminded her.
“Hey, can I check out your wing,” she asked softly. “I need to see what the potion’s done.”
The bird hesitated, eyeing her nervously. Pearl just waited for an answer either way. After a few long seconds, the bird carefully unknotted the bandage around his own wing and spread the feathers for her to look at them— a compromise. Pearl nodded in understanding, leaning forward to inspect the remaining damage.
Feathers were growing back quickly (mainly the primaries). The down under the wing was still missing, but the feathers looked like they’d mostly filled in. Blood had stopped flowing from the open pores, the gold feathers unmarred by any crimson. Pearl wasn’t a doctor by any means, but she was pretty sure that his wing looked good enough to fly on. Healing potions worked fast. She leaned back in her seat and gave the bird a thumbs up. In response, his eyes widened and he immediately took off out of the broken window that the pillager had shot an arrow through a few days before. Pearl winced. She probably needed to fix that thing.
Hastily, she followed him outside, tearing through the door and shielding her eyes so she could look up at the sky. The parrot was doing circles above her farmhouse, chattering excitedly and zooming around in random patterns. Pearl laughed.
“You ever coming back down?” She teased. The bird did a flip in midair. “Don’t overdo it! I don’t want you to fall, okay?”
Begrudgingly, the parrot landed on her porch railing. “Your wings are still healing, you nugget. Don’t hurt yourself.”
He let out a little scoff breath. Pearl wondered if she was taking care of a bird or a sassy child at this point. She turned from the porch and snatched her efficiency axe from where it lay on top of a wood pile; diamond never rusted or wore down in the rain, so she often just left her tools where they were typically needed.
“Alright. It’s wood collecting time. We’re gonna start with the barn, and then I can grab some sand from the desert tomorrow to smelt into glass for the greenhouse,” Pearl said, mostly to herself.
To her surprise, the parrot landed next to her. He looked up at her as if to ask where next? She blinked at him.
“Uh, well… there’s an oak forest not too far from here. We’ll have to make a wall around the barn to make sure nobody can burn it like last time, probably with some stone, but I can easily get that from the quarry out back,” she responded. “You make sure you don’t use your wings too much, okay? They’re still pretty thinned out.”
The parrot shifted his gaze to the ground, fiddling with his talons. Pearl’s eyebrows knitted together; he looked almost guilty, somehow. She shrugged. “Right. Let’s get started, then.”
By the time they returned home with enough wood for the barn, the sun was going down, and Pearl’s arms were about to give out. She stacked the last of the lumber in a chest, sighing contentedly as it went in smoothly. The parrot came by and happily dragged in an oak branch that he’d dragged in from the forest. Pearl suppressed the urge to laugh at the admittedly very adorable image of this little parrot dragging a branch twice his size as she carried the lumber in trips. He just wanted to help, it wasn’t his fault he was about a foot tall and had no hands.
“Dinner time,” Pearl noted. She turned to the west to watch the sunset as the sky faded to purple. “Here, tonight, I have some berries for y—“
Pearl turned. The parrot was gone. Wildly, she turned to look for where he could have flown off to in the ten seconds she had her back turned. “Hey, um— parrot? Parrot,” Pearl called, looking over the top of the farmhouse where he’d been flying earlier. “Parrot, where’d you go?”
She chewed her lip. It got cold around here at night, she really didn’t want the poor bird to freeze or anything, but he’d just vanished, and he wasn’t responding to any of her calls. Pearl really needed to give him a name other than just the parrot. Maybe then he’d understand that she was calling him— somehow, though, she didn’t think that was the problem. He seemed to understand her perfectly well when she called him a parrot.
Pearl sighed, electing to just put the berries out on her porch in case the bird stopped by anytime soon. It didn’t help the nervousness in her chest, but it was the best she could do. She usually left out food for Nugget, her cat, anyways, it wasn’t that different, really! She tried not to think about the fact that Nugget was fine hunting in the woods and foraging in the cold, and a tropical bird in the middle of a plains biome wouldn’t have the easiest time foraging for himself.
She picked a handful of the sweet berries from her window boxes, careful not to prick herself on the thorny bushes, and poured them on the floor of the porch. Pearl stepped inside, letting the warmth wash over her, and tried not to think about the blanket still folded in front of the fire. It’s fine. He’ll come back. He probably just… ran back to the jungle when he could fly again to visit his cousins!
That answer didn’t really make sense to her, but it was the best she had. The bird had clung to her every step as she cut the lumber, enthusiastically trying to help her lift things and even at one point trying to use her axe in his beak. He seemed begrudgingly beholden to her rule of no flying, even if he did wistfully and dramatically look up at the sky, hoping that she’d give him the go ahead. If he’d wanted to go somewhere, he would have done it before it got really, really cold.
It didn’t make sense, but all Pearl could do about it was leave the shiny red berries on her porch and make herself dinner.
The parrot nearly forgot about the passage of time. He’d been having fun! The lady with the shiny hair was nice. She let him have a healing potion, and those tasted like watermelon and sugar, which were both tastes he liked a lot. He wanted to help her build her barn; he didn’t know what exactly happened to the fields outside her home, but he could guess based on the charred grass on the outskirts of her home. Also, she’d offered him sweet berries for dinner, so of course he was gonna help her. Even if she told him he couldn’t fly.
Normally he wouldn’t bother with following anyone’s instructions like that, but the potion lady was nice, and he was a bit scared of making her mad at him. So he stayed grounded.
He realized that it was almost twilight very abruptly. In a panic, he’d broken the nice lady’s rule about not flying on his still-healing wings and darted back to the forest as fast as he could. Twilight must have come just as he entered the outskirts of the trees, because he nearly ran face-first into a tree trunk when the sickeningly familiar roiling darkness overtook his vision.
He wrapped himself in his wings as the nausea of a form change hit him full force. He hated this part and he hated that he knew it so well, even though he’d only done it twice so far. At least last time, that terrifying thing hadn’t come back.
As if on cue, of course the shadows started moving around him in the dark of fading twilight. He curled in on himself, trying to cover his ears with his arms as his wings grew and fluffed out.
You forgot something.
He tried to tell the shadows that no, he didn’t, that he knew exactly where the cloak was and that it should stay there, but just the same as all the other times that he’d tried to speak at night, no sound left his throat.
The awfully familiar fabric draped itself around his wings, spilling down his feathers and chilling him to the bone. He snatched it off of his wings before it could do any damage; the cloak itself hadn’t done anything to his precious feathers, technically, but all the same, his prized primaries and downy feathers laid stitched into its surface.
Please don’t make me— please? They just healed in again, this can’t be what she wants, not truly.
Do you want us to take you, as She did? the shadows whispered back. She has given us Her power to hunt you, silly ember. We can move you as we wish.
The parrot stared down at the cloak. He really didn’t want the nice potion lady to have to give him more of her stuff. She obviously needed those seeds for replanting her crops, he couldn’t keep taking potions from her. I— I can’t do that again, please—
We gave you a chance. Have it your way, bird.
Darkness filled his vision even as he whimpered, trying to block out the fog over his head with his wings. It didn’t work. The smoke poured into his lungs, his throat, piling up in his eyes and making him go weightless.
When the sun rose and he woke up, both of the parrot’s wings were bleeding, missing all of their primaries. He desperately tried to preen out the stains, but they wouldn’t come off. He was a long way from the farmhouse, too. It would take a while to get back like this.
Behind him, the feathers missing from his wings lay stitched into the dark cloak. Half of the fabric was covered now. The parrot wanted to rip the stupid thing to shreds, but he was smarter than that, even if he was also impulsive enough to do it. He knew this was Her idea of a warning to him— if he continued to hold out against Her, She would just send more of her minions, and the damage would get worse and worse.
Stupid cursed feathers. Stupid shadows wanting stupid fashion accessories.
The parrot kicked the ground with a talon and exhaustedly began the wobbly journey back to the farmhouse on foot.
Notes:
that’s what it feels like to drive the new ford f-150
Chapter 3: finding bones, finding ghosts
Notes:
for the best experience during this chapter listen to hit song baby shark by who fucking cares. or rickroll yourself idk
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Pearl woke up to make herself breakfast, wash up, and check the berries on the porch. They hadn’t been eaten yet, and she felt her heart sink. It’s fine. He’ll be back soon.
She washed out her clothes, watered her surviving plants, and ate an apple with some nice buttered toast for breakfast. Still no sign of the parrot.
Sighing, she went to work on the barn, marking out the areas where she wanted the logs to go. Still, the berries sat on her porch, untouched.
Pearl marked out the walls around the barn. The berries were still there.
She set up the supports. Still no sign of her parrot friend.
She started work on the actual structure of the thing. Still nothing.
It was only when she went inside to grab lunch and take a break from working so much in the sun that she saw the berries were gone.
“Ah— what?” Pearl leaned down to inspect the spot, and there curled up in the corner and fluffed in fear, was the parrot. He didn’t look at her.
Pearl’s smile could have lit up her entire house for days on end. “There you are! Do you have any idea how worried I was? Don’t ever run off like that again!”
The parrot didn’t move and didn’t give her a glare back. His eyes were unfocused and blurry, the usual chipper blue irises seeming gray with the lack of energy. He shivered. Pearl frowned and knelt next to him carefully. He had been out in the cold all night. She would have to get him back inside the house somehow.
“Hey, hey,” she soothed, “it’s okay. You’re back and safe now. Here, I can take you inside if you want me to—“
She reached out a hand. The parrot shrank back as far as he could go into the corner of the porch, fluffing up even further. The stare he fixed her with was wild-eyed and terrified, nothing like the usual looks of sharp and clever emotion she got from him.
Pearl retracted her hand. The bird relaxed slightly. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you, you nugget. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. Just follow me inside if you can, okay?”
She swiveled back towards the door, her eyes still trained on the parrot. He only looked at her with the same terrified eyes. “It’s warm in there, remember? You can sit with your blanket by the fire. I’ll leave you alone so you can rest. It’s okay, little guy.”
Slowly, he untangled himself from the porch corner and made his way up to the door. Pearl couldn’t stifle a gasp when she caught sight of the state of his feathers and his poor wings.
His primaries had all been plucked clean, and feathers were missing from his back in almost a starburst pattern. Blood stained his remaining gold secondaries. She couldn’t get a close enough look to see the full extent of the damage without grabbing hold of one of his wings, but it looked bad. If he had flown to wherever he had run off to, then he would have had to have walked back here. No wonder he’s so tired and cold. He must have been out there for hours.
She waited for him to make his way over to the fireplace, closing the door behind them. Carefully, Pearl unclipped the remaining healing potion from her belt and grabbed some alcohol and cotton from the kitchen cabinet to clean out the wounds.
“Alright. This is gonna hurt a bit, but it’s going to help you in the long run, okay?” Pearl tried to use her most calming tone of voice, and it seemed like it was working. His feathers smoothed out slightly. Tentatively, he offered out his left wing to her.
Pearl tried her best to be gentle with the cleaning, but there was no way to avoid the sting of the alcohol in the wounds. To his credit, the bird didn’t flinch away or run at any point, only making soft squawks when she accidentally dug too deep into a bleeding pore. She repeated the process with the right wing and with the little patches on the bird’s shoulder joints and back. Pearl couldn’t see any blood in those spots, but it was better safe than sorry— less work for the healing potion to do if she took care of the cleaning now, leaving it with only the important stuff to do.
“Here you go,” Pearl said, setting out the same dish she had used before and sliding it towards the bird.
He drank it with no fanfare or excitement, just huddling in on himself after it was done and shivering. Pearl frowned. She wanted to pat his head and let him know it would be okay, but she didn’t want him to completely panic, so she settled for giving him the fluffy blanket again.
Pearl made herself some lunch and headed back outside to continue her work on the barn. When she looked back, the parrot was fast asleep in the blanket, curled up in front of the fire.
On a whim, Pearl pulled out the rest of the broken glass around her porch window. If the parrot needed to get out of the house quickly, she’d try to always have a way for him to do it. It was either that or have him bust his way through a broken window like last time, and though it worked out then, she wasn’t too confident in the parrot’s chances on a second run with half his flight feathers missing.
The parrot was still sleeping when Pearl entered late that afternoon. The first of the barn walls was built and assembled on the ground, and she’d have to raise it soon, it just needed an extra touch. She wasn’t quite sure what it was, but she’d figure it out with a bit of brainstorming, to be sure. She ate a quiet dinner and went to sleep, completely exhausted from her backbreaking work that day.
The parrot woke up at twilight with a cloak wrapped around his shoulders rather than a blanket. He sighed soundlessly and went to work on his ruined wings, trying to find feathers that would grow back naturally.
Another row of scarlet feathers shimmered on the cloak by sunrise.
He spitefully shoved the thing under one of the cottage’s couches and went back to sleep.
The walls of the barn were giving Pearl more trouble than she thought they would be. Firstly, raising a barn by herself was going to be tricky. Barn raising practically demanded other people involved by tradition, but nobody was around for Pearl to ask, so by herself it was. Secondly, she was running out of logs to make the roof from. She’d have to make another run to the forest at this rate. And thirdly, she still couldn’t figure out what else the barn walls needed. Originally, she had just planned to make the walls from sheets of oak on the inside and outside panels, and the spruce supports were all the accenting she was going to use, but when she went to look at the walls, they just looked too basic. Pearl was absolutely stumped on how to better accent the barn, and again, nobody was around to bounce ideas off of.
She huffed in frustration and jumped down from the woodworking station she’d set up in order to strip the oak logs of their bark, make slabs and stairs of spruce for the roof, and stain the flooring so that it wouldn’t warp with water. Maybe another look around the farmhouse could lend her some inspiration.
Before she could even get started, a rainbow ball of energy came rocketing out of her house, chirping happily and dancing around. Pearl laughed, barely following the little bird’s movements.
“Glad you look like you’re feeling better, little fella! You had me worried for a second there,” Pearl scolded happily. “Is this because of the healing potion or are you just happy to see me?”
The bird moved his wings in what looked like a shrug. Pearl laughed again, grabbing hold of her axe. His weirdly human movements were incredibly endearing, even if she was about 90% sure parrots weren’t supposed to know how to effectively shrug. While the bird was here, she might as well go back to grab more wood. He seemed to like that.
“C’mon there,” Pearl called, walking towards the forest. “I have to grab more spruce for the roof.”
After a few seconds, Pearl realized the parrot wasn’t following her. She turned to stare at him. “Hello? Forest time?”
He was staring intently at her barn, unmoving. Pearl shrugged and continued onward; this shouldn’t take her too long anyway, and now that she thought about it, whatever had mauled the poor bird like that probably lived in her forests. No coyotes or falcons would come close to her house, and Nugget was too lazy to mess with something as big as a parrot.
When she came back with an armload of cut spruce logs, the parrot dropped a glow berry vine at her feet, wagging his tail feathers almost like a dog. She raised an eyebrow. “What’s this for?”
He tilted his head towards the barn, trilling happily. Pearl blinked. “Is this… to put in the barn? Are you adding a suggestion to my pallet?”
The parrot nodded. Pearl grinned hesitantly. “Ah. I see. I’ll take that into account, thanks!”
Pearl turned away, tucking the berries into her apron pocket. She set down the lumber she was carrying and walked back to the forest to pick up another load. Okay, this is getting weird now. It’s cute, but there’s no way this bird is just a normal bird. Normal people do not carry conversations with parrots and have them actually respond. That’s not a thing that happens, right?
As she cut the wood, the bird contentedly preened himself on the ground next to the workstation, and Pearl continued to ponder what exactly he could be. She settled on the fact that either way, he was a weird parrot, and if he was, in fact, something else, he would have to be under some sort of curse. She knew evokers walked among the pillagers; maybe he’d been one of their freakish experiments. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to be touched.
If it was a curse, then Gem would be able to help her figure it out. Gem’s patron was the deity of magic and amethyst, Ametri, and as such, she was known as the wizard of the Crystal Cliffs rather than by any sort of traditionally royal title. All of the citizens of the Cliffs were students of magic under her patron, who simply wanted to spread their knowledge among the mortals who wished to learn it. Gem would know what to do to undo any curses that may be placed on this bird.
Pearl took a second to consider that it might be a little weird to just roll up to Gem’s domain and ask if a random parrot was magic, but then again, she had a feeling that Gem had seen stranger things.
Briefly, she considered asking the parrot if he was magic. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she wanted to bury herself in a hole and never come out. That was definitely weird and ridiculous— what if he was just a normal parrot and she was hallucinating or something? At least she could probably explain herself to Gem. She wasn’t sure she could justify asking a bird if it was magical to herself.
Pearl finished the cutting and finishing stain on the last spruce log and set it out to dry with the rest of the roofing, feeling very embarrassed about her thinking session. She gestured to the parrot to follow her.
“C’mon, I have to weed the garden. If you hurry, you can look through the beds for bugs and seeds!”
The next morning, Pearl set out thick clothes, including her sealskin coat, and prepared food for the trip. Heading to the Crystal Cliffs was a bit of a journey, but with the help of her horse, she’d probably be able to make it within the span of a day or so.
Pearl chewed her lip, trying to think. How was she going to transport the parrot? She didn’t think he’d take being caged well if that was how the pillagers had carried him, plus she didn’t have a cage in the first place, but he also wouldn’t let her touch him, so it wasn’t like she could carry him. His wings were looking better, though some patches never seemed to heal no matter how many potions she gave him, and he wasn’t quite ready for the arduous flight, especially not on his own. Pearl sighed, drumming her fingers on the kitchen table. She would have to ask him if he could just hang onto the saddle or something of that nature.
She glanced over to the fireplace, where the bird was sleeping (thankfully not splayed out on the floor of her bedroom again). Pearl supposed she could get her horse tacked and ready while she waited for him to wake up; it was pretty early in the morning, and she wanted to make sure he had some extra time to rest in case he couldn’t sleep on the way to the cliffs.
About a half hour later, she’d gotten all the equipment oiled up and strapped to her horse— a sweet, older honeyed mare. Pearl stroked the mare’s forehead, quietly whispering encouragement to her. It wasn’t often that Pearl journeyed all the way out to the other empires, but she always loved visiting Gem, even when she didn’t have a parrot exorcism to perform.
She tied up the horse’s lead to her porch, still cringing at the leftover vindicator damage to the structure, and poked her head in through the door to see if the parrot was awake. He seemed to have just gotten up, still fluffing out his feathers and blinking sleepily.
“Hey, sleepyhead!” Pearl called. The bird’s head whipped around to face her. “We’re going on a trip today. My friend Gem is the head wizard of a cool magic academy, and I need some amethyst to help that farm really pop. She has loads. ”
He made his way towards her, half hopping, half flying to move more quickly. Pearl stifled a giggle. “Yeah, yeah. I get it, you’re all better and can fly now. I’m still not letting you get there by air. If something goes wrong I wouldn’t be able to help out, and it is very likely to do so.”
The parrot squawked indignantly, wiggling in annoyance. He turned up his beak and stomped out the door, and this time Pearl couldn’t help laughing. He was just so much like a human! The more she watched him, the more steady in her conclusion about the possibility of a cursed bird she became. This cannot be how parrots usually act.
She boosted herself into the saddle using the stirrups as a jumping point, as if demonstrating to the parrot how to mount a horse. He looked up at her, climbed up the porch railing, and jumped into the extra room at the front of the saddle, curling up as he sunk his talons into the polished leather.
“Well, that went better than I thought it would,” Pearl remarked, nearly scratching his head before thinking better of it and setting both hands on untying the lead from the railing. “Here we go.”
Pearl set her horse to a canter with a cry as they left the confines of her smallholding and ventured out into the open meadow beyond. As they rode, she made sure to keep an eye on the bird in the saddle, watching to see if he’d fall off or get too cold, but he seemed to be doing okay for the most part. At one point, he attempted to crane his neck around the horse’s head to see where they were going and got nothing but a faceful of wind. He sputtered and blinked rapidly, settling in on himself cattily. Pearl laughed and rolled her eyes behind her riding goggles.
It was incredibly obvious when they reached the Crystal Cliffs. For one, the mountainous terrain was towering , and for another, the towers were towering. Pearl prepared herself for some precarious horsemanship to get herself up to the marketplace at the base of the tallest peak, the one with Gem’s tower perched on top.
The empire was bustling, alive with people and sounds. The parrot didn’t seem to like that; he didn’t let himself look around more than a cautious peek out from where he was sitting fluffed in the saddle. Pearl made sure that he wouldn’t have to leave just yet, even though she knew where the stables were from previous visits. This was partially because something had just occurred to her— she didn’t really know how she was going to transport the parrot across the city. They couldn’t stay like they were because the cliffs were too sheer to keep everything stable, and she didn’t want to risk hurting her horse or herself if they hit an incline that was too much of a spike. She hadn’t brought a cage and the parrot probably didn’t want to be held. He couldn’t walk around behind her without the risk of getting kicked or stepped on in the bustling city, and he couldn’t fly up the peaks because his wings were still stubbornly refusing to fully grow their flight feathers back.
Eventually, Pearl had to stop messing around in the city after her horse nearly barreled into a few merchants. She muttered hasty apologies and promised that she would find the stable immediately to house her mare. She couldn’t blame the merchants for being a bit rude about the whole thing; most people didn’t ride horses in busy public spaces for that exact reason.
At the stable, she forked over a gold coin to the stablehand, but refused his help in housing and untacking her horse. She knew how to do it herself, and she needed the time to come up with something to do with the parrot nestled in the saddle. Pearl began untacking with the bridle, then moving to the horse’s decorative forest-green armor, then finally, the saddle.
Pearl held out her hand. “Hey, parrot?”
The parrot looked up at her with those blue eyes curiously.
“Okay. I want you to meet Gem. She’s really nice and I think she’d really like you. She always has amethyst on her and she smells like ozone, which is mildly terrifying, but also pretty cool, I think.” Pearl took a deep breath. “In order for me to take you with me up the cliffs, I’m going to have to carry you, on my shoulder or my hand or— something like that.”
He didn’t move, didn’t answer. Just kept staring.
“I promise I won’t do anything to hurt you or touch you any more than I have to. I have gloves in my pack, if it’s the skin contact that makes you upset, and also to help with talons if you wanted to perch on my hand!”
Hurriedly, Pearl grabbed the thick canvas gardening gloves that she usually used for heavy-duty weeding. She pulled them on over her fingers, offering out her hand again. “So, uh, yeah. You could also stay here, I’m not going to make you come with me or anythi—“
Soundlessly, the bird clambered up her arm and sat on her shoulder, settling in quickly. He perched stiffly, as if not quite sure what to do with himself, but his talons seemed safely inserted in her coat, so Pearl figured he at least wouldn’t fall off. He was a bit heavier than she’d expected, but he was a pretty big bird, all things considered.
“Thank you,” Pearl said, “and I do mean that.”
She undid the saddle and hung it on the outside of the horse’s stall, and together the two of them set off across the glittering crystalline plaza.
There were displays everywhere here. The cliff merchants absolutely knew how to sell their products— Ender Crystals hovered above their palms as tokens of skill rather than deadly explosives; several students at the end of a street were showing off their pyromancy skills; beautiful floating orange crystals lit up the plaza rather than typical lanterns or torches. Pearl could tell which residents were students of Gem’s: they all wore the same lavender shade that she did, and many of them had amethyst jewels covering every inch of free skin they could affix jewelry to.
It was a lot, and though it was absolutely beautiful, Pearl elected to forgo any of the pleasantries in the trading plaza in favor of reaching Gem’s palace before dusk. The sun was hanging low in the sky, and though they had left early enough to beat the sunset’s light on the cliffs, Pearl didn’t have much confidence in how much time they had left. The way to Gem’s towers was clearly marked with bright large crystals similar in lighting to the orange crystals in the plaza; the path was still too steep for a horse, but it wasn’t too hard of a climb for a person and her parrot.
The climb up to the towers was uneventful, for the most part, but Pearl still found enough time to enjoy the gorgeous view from above everything. The clouds were so close, she swore she could just reach up and touch them, and Gem’s tower had grown since her last visit. A huge number of the orange crystals hovered everywhere in the air above the castle, almost like little fallen stars. Pearl couldn’t even imagine what they looked like at night.
“You seeing this?” She asked the parrot, nudging him with her shoulder. The parrot chirped and nodded, still clearly nervous, but he seemed to enjoy the view as much as she did. “Good. This is part of why I wanted to bring you up here, I’m glad you’re at least appreciative!”
The parrot hadn’t made much noise on the trip, really, which was unusual, given how much he typically squawked and almost begged for attention. He usually liked engaging with her enough that he’d instigate conversations on occasion, like he’d done with her build pallet. Pearl chalked it up to nerves and kept walking up the path.
She was thankful for the gloves she’d put on earlier to deal with the parrot’s talons— as the sun dipped lower, the temperature followed, and while her gloves weren’t made to insulate, they were far better than nothing at all. The sun still hesitated to set as she approached the huge double doors of Gem’s tower, but it sure felt like the cold was jumping the gun, setting in this early before nightfall.
The guards at the door stopped her before she went in, which she expected, but it definitely made the parrot more nervous. Pearl could feel the tips of his talons even through her thick coat.
“Halt! Identification to enter the wizard’s tower?”
“I’m Pearlescent Moon, of… um, of the meadow over there.” She pointed for emphasis. The guard who had told her to stop glanced over to look. “I’m the ruler there.”
“Oh,” said the second guard, “I remember you! You came to visit the Grand Wizard when she had just built her first tower. Welcome, Empress Pearl of the meadow smallholding, I’m sure the Grand Wizard is expecting you.”
“Thank you!” Pearl bowed as best she could without spilling the parrot from her shoulder. After the guards bowed back, she stepped into Gem’s tower, and the sound of the huge doors swinging shut behind her made her jump slightly. She always forgot how huge this place was compared to her farmhouse and fields. Gem was running a whole city over here. Pearl swallowed the lump of embarrassment that rose at that train of thought and kept walking, peeking around tunnels and walls, hoping to find Gem somewhere around.
She’d actually forgotten to message her friend before she just… showed up at her doorstep. That probably would have saved her some grief, because as it was, Pearl’s search was turning out to be completely fruitless. Sighing, she pulled out her communicator.
[You whisper to GeminiTay: hey gem?
GeminiTay whispers to you: whats up pearl]
Pearl blinked. That was fast. She shrugged. It was pretty late, Gem was probably through with classes for today.
[You whisper to GeminiTay: i may be standing in your tower atrium as we speak
GeminiTay whispers to you: WHAT REALLY
GeminiTay whispers to you: GIVE ME LIKE TEN SECONDS I’LL BE THERE SO FAST
You whisper to GeminiTay: why am i worried.
GeminiTay whispers to you: no clue i have never done anything insane or over the top in my life :D
You whisper to GeminiTay: don’t do anything that will spook my parrot
GeminiTay whispers to you: YOU BROUGHT THE PARROT? omg]
Pearl smiled exasperatedly. With Gem’s magic, she could probably just pop out of a wall at any moment, and knowing her, she really wanted to do just that.
Gemini Tay, master wizard of the Crystal Cliffs, chosen Ruler to Ametri, deity of magic and amethyst, did not pop out of a wall.
Gemini Tay dropped from the ceiling chandelier riding a dragon instead.
Pearl wasn’t ashamed to admit that she screeched. Who wouldn’t scream after being jump-scared by a dragon? Gem was grinning ear to ear as she dismounted, her wild red curls frizzing out underneath her pointed purple hat. Her typically neat braid was looser and messily-bound. She’d probably just finished up teaching and hadn’t had time to fix her hairstyle.
“Hello there, Pearlescent Moon, empress of the meadow,” Gem said professionally, as if she had not just appeared out of thin air riding a dragon, “how are you today?”
Pearl wheezed, trying to still her heart, which felt like it was trying to tear her ribcage apart. She could definitely feel the parrot’s talons under her jacket now, and his wing was wrapped around the back of her head. He seemed just as surprised as she was, poor thing. “Hello to you too, Grand Wizard Gemini Tay, and if I may , I would like to inquire where on earth you got a dragon.”
Gem’s smile got even wider. She reached over to rub the dragon’s scaly black snout, whispering a few words to it, and before Pearl’s eyes, the creature shrunk until it was no bigger than her palm. Gem picked it up and deposited it in her hand. Pearl realized it was a figurine, sculpted of clay and fired with black glaze for the scales.
“Picked up a new hobby with some of the terracotta imports from Mezalea,” Gem said, her eyes sparkling. “They’re great conductors for life, much better than typical river clay.”
“That’s… interesting,” Pearl responded, still trying to catch her breath.
“Is this the little guy you were talking about a while back? He’s so cute!” Gem cooed.
“Yeah, um, don’t touch him! He gets nervous about that sort of stuff. Really smart though, aren’t you?”
The parrot puffed out his chest proudly, seemingly forgetting his nervousness at the chance to show off. Pearl resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him for what felt like the twelfth time today. Gem smiled, leaning in to inspect his feathers. She seemed completely enamored with him, her excitement incredibly clear.
“We don’t get many parrots up here,” Gem said by way of explanation. “I’ve only seen them in books, really! They’re such colorful birds, I’ve always thought they were very cute.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d say the same about this one—“ Pearl started, earning a nip on the ear for her troubles. “—HEY!”
Gem giggled as the parrot stared at her smugly. She huffed and shrugged him off her shoulders. “Go on, you brat. You can walk around here, nobody’ll step on you.”
Pearl tried not to feel offended by the speed at which the parrot dismounted her shoulder and hit the ground. She was happy that he felt more comfortable walking, and proud that he had held out long enough for them to get up to the tower, but she couldn’t help but feel a little sad at the idea that he still didn’t feel comfortable enough to willingly stay on her shoulder. He did settle right next to her ankle, though, which soothed the bitterness a bit.
“Does he have a name?” Gem asked, clearly trying her best to resist the urge to pet the parrot’s admittedly very fluffy feathers.
“Oh! I— um,” Pearl stuttered. She had, in all honesty, completely forgotten to give the bird a name, which was a bit embarrassing. “…Scarlet.”
“Scarlet? Like his feathers?”
“Uh— yeah! Yeah, he seemed to like it.” She glanced down at the newly named Scarlet, who gave her a strange look, but didn’t look entirely displeased. Scarlet it was.
“Well, hello there, Scarlet! You should probably be careful— Goose is around here somewhere, and I haven’t quite been able to break his habit of chasing feathers. The students probably aren’t helping much. They like to summon feathers and play with him,” Gem said, straightening up. “So, Pearl, not that it isn’t a great occasion to see you, but is there a reason you’re here?”
“Yes, actually! It’s… it’s a bit embarrassing, though,” Pearl admitted. She lowered her voice, though it felt a little silly, and continued. “Scarlet here has been… acting a little weird? I’m not sure that parrots are supposed to, like, be this weird.”
Gem nodded attentively, motioning for her to go on. Pearl really hoped that Scarlet couldn’t hear her, or at least wasn’t paying attention— at the moment, he seemed preoccupied with the huge crystal chandelier that hung above them. She lowered her voice anyway.
“Well, I know parrots are supposed to be smart—“
“—mhm, they’re one of the best at problem-solving, and their mimicry is unmatched!” Gem interjected excitedly. “Sorry, I read about them. Their feathers are very good for spell quills. Something about adding extra vibrancy to ink. Keep going.”
“No problem, but… yeah, parrots don’t really seem like they’re supposed to hold full conversations with humans, right? He doesn’t do the mimicry thing, but he’s very expressive, and he even suggested an addition to a barn that I’m working on. His feathers keep falling out in specific patterns, and they don’t really look like animal wounds. I’m not sure he’s, um, actually a parrot?”
The more Pearl talked, the more absolutely mortified she became, but to her credit, Gem did seem attentive still, not judging her. “Yeah, so, I came to you because I wasn’t sure, and I was hoping you’d be able to tell if he was cursed, or… something?”
Gem nodded, squinting at Scarlet. “Hmm… parrots do pluck their feathers when they’re stressed, but I don’t think that he’d be incredibly stressed under your care, to be honest. You seem to care about him, and he’s not exactly an anxious bird right now, is he?”
“I mean, I tried my best. He gets really stressed when I try to touch him, it’s a small miracle that he even got close enough to sit on my shoulder for the trip up here. Usually he just walks around behind me, since his flight feathers never seem to stick around long.”
Gem frowned. “That doesn’t seem normal, you’re right. I’m not too experienced with curses, not as much as with creating light or projectiles or anything like that, but I’ve done a bit of research into it. Curses are tricky, especially stronger ones— they often require a very specific breaking condition. I can try to read him, at least! That should tell us if he’s a parrot by nature or not.”
“That would work! Thank you so much, Gem,” Pearl said. “I can’t even tell you how relieved I am that I'm not, like, entirely insane, or something.”
“There’s always a chance that Scarlet’s just a normal bird, but considering the curses I’ve seen students pull here, this would probably be one of the less strange ones.” Gem shrugged. Her staff appeared in her hand with a brief burst of light as she turned to the bird in question. “Scarlet! C’mon, we’re going on a field trip.”
Scarlet blinked before shooting Pearl a confused look and following the kind wizard off into a hallway. Pearl, feeling equally confused, trailed behind.
When they crossed an open-air bridge, Pearl had to stop. Gem’s empire was massive. She had little buildings branching off from the main towers, each full of light and life. There were farms of nearly every material imaginable, and several natural geodes melded together in the heart of the castle’s courtyards. Everything was shining and glittering, polished to perfection, and somehow even her structures in progress were beautiful, calcite bricks lifted on dark oak rigging that accented its color beautifully.
Pearl caught sight of a small greenhouse carved into the side of one of the cliffs. She swallowed the insidious and persistent lump in her throat again at the sight of the little bees and the flourishing greenery that surrounded them.
“It’s beautiful here, Gem,” Pearl muttered, “you’ve done so much work since I last visited.”
Gem laughed, spreading her arms dramatically. “All this, thanks to the blessings of Ametri. They’ve been a great help. I talk to them frequently, actually! Don’t tell anyone, but they’re a bit of a huge book nerd.” She paused, leaning in on her staff. “Well, the blessings and a little elbow grease.”
Pearl raised an eyebrow. “A little?”
Her companion blushed and leaned back, fiddling with her messy braid. “Okay, maybe it was a lot! But still, it’s not so bad. Everyone at the Academy helps as best they can. Their efforts and kindness are how we’re able to stay safe up here in the cliffs, and of course I owe a lot to our researchers— it’s a lot to keep track of!”
“It sounds nice,” Pearl responded, still staring out over the open sides of the bridge. Though the sight was tinged with bitterness as Pearl imagined what her kingdom could be like, it was overshadowed by the sheer love that this place seemed to inspire in Gem. It was infectious, and Gem was her friend; she was happy for her friend and all she’d built no matter what. “I’m glad you’re happy here, Gem.”
“Aw, Pearl, don’t get all sappy on me now! We still have the whole way to the alcove to catch up, okay?”
They continued onward until they reached what Pearl assumed was Gem’s equivalent of a wild badger’s nest. Ink and quills were scattered across every surface, books piled at random across the floor and smaller niches on the walls. Raw amethyst glittered on the walls, emitting its own soft purple glow and casting the room in a ghostly lavender. Gem stepped into the geode calmly and snapped her fingers. The crystal at the end of her staff flashed purple as the room shifted around her, revealing a huge, shimmering mirage where a wall had just been.
Gem turned, grinning ear to ear, and beckoned them forward. “Secret tunnel, secret tunnel,” she sang. Pearl looked at her, bewildered. “Through the mountain! Oh, c’mon, Pearl. That song is epic.”
“Either way,” she continued, gesturing forward as they walked through the false wall, “welcome to the wizard’s office! Or, as I like to call it, my room.”
The room was exquisitely and chaotically decorated. Gems dripped from every surface in a myriad of assortment colors, shapes, and cuts, set in every imaginable variation of metals— gold, iron, diamond. Some were even set in redstone, somehow. Pearl had a feeling Fwhip was definitely responsible for those; his formal earrings were an amethyst and redstone blend, usually. The ink and paper arrangements were in the same state as the opening geode, haphazardly set down anywhere where room was available.
This room, however, was different from the first geode in that it was absolutely cavernous. It reminded Pearl of a jungle crossed with a cathedral crossed with a ravine. There was no way something like this had been entirely hand-made. It was huge, and plants sprung up out of the slurred amethyst and stone tendrils that melded with the walls. A skylight was opened up at the very top of the room, lending some natural light to the whole thing, which was good, because Pearl couldn’t imagine having to stop creepers from spawning everywhere without that skylight.
Though she supposed it was easier for Gem, given how nearly everything in the room glowed. Small shards of glass hung in the air above their heads, fine enough that they were barely noticeable save for the white glow they gave off in the dim light of the newborn sunset.
Scarlet was losing his mind at the sight of the glowing room. Pearl could tell because he was completely motionless at the entrance, the same look of concentration and awe in his eyes that he’d held when scrutinizing her barn. She left him to his admiration, following Gem to the center of the room, where an amethyst bridge led up to a center plinth in the very middle of the room.
“This,” Gem said, motioning to the small spire in front of them, “is where Ametri manifests. Gods can’t really manifest entirely on their own, right, so when I chose them to be my patron, I built them this little centerpiece so they could more easily concentrate their energy. It helps my magic to be near it. Something about being closer to my patron, or whatever. Maybe it just eases the nerves!”
“It’s beautiful,” Pearl said reverently.
“It is, isn’t it?” Gem said softly. “Ametri really helped a lot with the design. I was still learning, so they sort of hung out here and helped me put everything together. I come here when I need to do some special spells, or when I just want to show someone my favorite place in the tower. None of my advisors have ever been here— I think it’s just been Fwhip, actually. Been planning to show you and Sausage for a while!”
“Thanks, Gem.”
“You’re welcome to it anytime, Pearl,” Gem smiled. She whistled, smacking her staff against the ground. “Scarlet!”
Scarlet jumped, his feathers ruffling. Gem waved from beside the platform. “C’mere, you! We’re gonna do a little experiment.”
Pearl chewed her lip as Scarlet approached. She didn’t want the reading to hurt him or scare him, and she said as much to Gem, but she was waved off quickly. “Don’t worry,” Gem reassured her. “It’s a harmless projection spell. It’ll just track the last contacts he had with magic. It won’t hurt and it shouldn’t stress him out at all.”
For his part, Scarlet seemed more curious than he did nervous. He was still admiring the room as he walked across the bridge to the plinth, seemingly mesmerized by the magical lighting.
Gem patted the amethyst spire. “Up here, Scarlet! Don’t worry, it won’t do anything bad.”
Scarlet eyed her warily, but his curiosity must have won out, because he stepped forward and nestled onto the amethyst without protest, still glancing around at the lights and the rapidly darkening sky above. He seemed nervous when he looked at the sky, shifting uncomfortably at the sight of the bright purple glowing through the glass.
Pearl shot Gem a questioning look, silently asking if she needed to do anything else. Gem waved her back, so she went to stand on the outskirt of the stone platform.
“Alright, experiment time, begin!” Gem said cheerfully. She struck her staff against the platform, shooting white sparks through the air, and let go of the staff, leaving it wedged in the stone, throwing sparks like a firecracker. Quickly, Gem grabbed the line of white sparks, spinning them around in her hands.
The light danced across the room from crystal to crystal. It reminded Pearl of lightning arcing between clouds during a dry thunderstorm, graceful yet spontaneous. Gem said a few strange words, none of which Pearl understood, and touched the center pedestal, where Scarlet sat. He looked a bit scared, his wide blue eyes looking to her for an answer as to what was going on, but Pearl didn’t have one. She was starting to doubt that this was a good idea— the bird wouldn’t let anyone touch him out of anxiety, a spell was probably way out of his comfort zone— but it was too late now, wasn’t it?
Pearl pursed her lips and trusted that her friend knew what she was doing.
Gem lifted her right arm and slammed her fist down on the pedestal, and the sparks stopped flying, their arcs suddenly easily visible instead of quicksilver in the air. The world around them seemed to slow as the floating crystals shone brightly. Images started flickering between them, shaped of pure energy.
Pearl glanced over at Scarlet and her heart dropped. He seemed completely frozen, feathers fluffed out, eyes wide. He didn’t seem to be breathing, though he was clearly awake.
“Pearl, look!” Gem called, her right arm still dead set on the pedestal. She pointed to the crystals. “It’s starting!”
The projection formed a deep red, flickering and bright as a flame. It was a bird, flapping its wings, before bars formed around it out of thin air. The bird struggled against the new bars, eventually managing to slip out, flapping its wings desperately, until the world went dark .
Every single crystal in the dome went out. The white sparks around Gem’s right hand were the only light source; the darkness blotted out every outside light. Pearl spun around to face her friend. “Gem?”
“What on—“
The bird ignited again, red and orange piercing the dark. It struggled desperately, seemingly trying to escape wherever it was, before the projection fully lit up again, showing a forest. The bird’s image shivered before taking on a more humanoid shape in the blink of an eye, like a candle flame flickering in the night, and then the arena went completely dark.
The sparks around Gem’s hands fizzled out.
“Oh,” Gem said, her voice small.
YOU SUMMON MY MAGIC, a voice echoed from the darkness. A BOLD INVOCATION.
Pearl yelped, spinning rapidly to try to figure out where the voice was coming from.
INSOLENT MAGICIAN, the voice repeated, growing louder.
“I— he’s not yours,” Gem yelled back defiantly. Her voice was quiet, unsteady, but firm. “That’s his past, not yours, you don’t—“
“Gem, what’s—“
THAT THING OWES ME A DEBT. YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF HIS PAST IS IRRELEVANT. I HAVE LET HIM WANDER FOR TOO LONG, the voice bellowed, manifesting out of thin air. The grating sound of shattering glass filled the air. Pearl covered her head as a hand manifested from the dark crystals, reaching for Scarlet, still frozen on the pedestal.
Pearl had her moments where her decisions would be considered foolish or irrational. This was decidedly at the top of a highlight list of those moments.
She dove forward, intending to snatch Scarlet away from the hand. Gem gasped. “Pearl, no!”
What happened instead was that the crystal hand grabbed her by the hair, pulling her with it into the air. Gem screamed and removed her hand from the pedestal, and in an instant, the crystals shattered and fell to the ground in pieces. A wave of violet energy ripped through the room, knocking Gem off her feet, and Scarlet tore out of the room as fast as he could, flying straight through the shattered skylights. Pearl fell to the ground as the hand crumpled with the projection.
Gem sat up, breathing heavily and leaning on her staff. Tiny cuts from the broken skylight covered her face and hands. Pearl laid on the floor, the wind knocked out of her entirely from her fall. She counted herself lucky that she hadn’t broken a rib, though something in her chest definitely felt bruised, and her back was protesting loudly. Her scalp ached.
“Well,” Gem panted, “that was not how I was expecting that to go.”
Notes:
jesse, we have to go find that damn parrot, JESSE
Chapter 4: fill it up with doubt, let it in, let it spread
Notes:
i wrote this entire chapter in one day. today. right now. unfortunately that means that there’s gonna probably be a delay in the final chapter’s release, which i’m SUPER sorry about, but there’s not really much i can do about it! this is the longest fic i’ve ever written now, too, and i don’t think it’s even been a full week so. uh. yeah. i’m dying a little bit. i’m gonna go take a nap
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Pearl stared up at the dark sky, trying to catch her breath again. Gem hobbled over to the amethyst pedestal, carefully picking up her hat and affixing it to her head again. “Okay. Okay! Um, yeah. That’s… yeah. That’s fine!”
Slowly, Pearl sat up as the feeling of air slowly filled her lungs once more. She winced and fell flat as a shock of pain ran up her spine. “Gem, what just happened?”
“Well! Well,” Gem said, staring at her hands, “that is a very good question, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think I can get up right now,” Pearl admitted weakly. The sky was dark, the last purple bits of twilight rapidly fading. She didn’t like how dark the room was getting without the crystals or the natural sunlight around; soon, mobs would start to find their way in.
“Oh, of course, yeah!” Gem lifted her hands off the pedestal and moved to help Pearl up, holding out her hand to grab onto. Pearl groaned as she stood up from the fall, leaning slightly on Gem’s shoulder. Evidently, Gem was thinking the same thing that Pearl was, because as soon as Pearl was up and walking, she began to lead the way out of her room.
“Gah, dealing with that mob farm is about to get really annoying, but it’s a problem for another day.” Gem shifted her staff to her right hand, since Pearl was leaning a bit on her left shoulder, and waved it, snapping her fingers to close the door in the nest-like entrance geode.
As they walked out of the geode, Pearl realized that Scarlet was gone. She had been there when he’d left the tower, of course, even had a front row seat view to his exit through the skylight from where she’d been thrown by the strange hand. “Wait, Gem, where’s Scarlet?”
Gem’s brow furrowed. She stopped walking. “What do you mean?”
“He flew out of the tower when the spell… did whatever that was. We have to find him, I can’t have him running away again,” Pearl explained, “the last time he did that, he came back with all his primaries missing. I know it was probably a coyote or something, but that… the, y’know, giant terrifying hand has me a bit on edge.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get that. I’m a bit worried about him, too. I didn’t see him fly out, I guess, I was kinda preoccupied with you getting grabbed, but if you saw him leave, then he can’t be far,” Gem said. “His wings were still healing, right? He can’t have had that much energy after the hard flight to the top of the tower.”
“You’re right. Okay, that’s good,” Pearl sighed, massaging her temples. “Ugh, everything hurts.”
Gem laughed, but it was nervous, masking a concern betrayed by the grip she had on Pearl’s shoulder. “We aren’t really in the best shape for this right now, huh? Especially not you.”
“I guess, but we have to try to find him. I’m worried about letting him wander around, y’know? It’s not like I’ll die or anything, it just aches.”
“We’ll try, I promise, but I also promise that there’s nothing in this castle that could hurt him bad enough that he can't recover. He won’t be in any danger,” Gem reassured her. Despite her anxiety about what had happened last time, it was working— Pearl could feel herself relax. Gem wouldn’t keep anything dangerous to animals, cursed or not, on her campus. Goose was probably the worst thing that Scarlet could possibly run into here, and the cat wasn’t exactly a skilled hunter. He was only slightly less lazy than Nugget, and if he was presented with an interesting bug, he’d go after that rather than bothering with a bigger animal like Scarlet.
“Okay,” Pearl breathed, “where do we start?”
Gem tilted her head thoughtfully. “There’s three towers next to my room. They’re there so guards can keep an eye on any attacks through the skylight that may occur, but I really don’t think that’s necessary— most people can’t see my room unless they know where to look. Funky magic stuff,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “Nobody should be up there right now, excepting our dear Scarlet, of course.”
Pearl nodded. “Alright. Lead the way, Grand Wizard.”
“At your service, Lady of the Valley,” Gem grinned.
Together, they searched the towers surrounding the hidden room. Pearl didn’t quite understand what Gem meant about the fact that people couldn’t see the spire from outside if she didn’t want them to, but it was probably, as Gem so eloquently put it, “funky magic stuff.” Pearl could see the tower quite clearly, but she figured that was because she’d been invited in.
Gem lit up the end of her staff with a bright white light, even though the crystals outside the castle’s walls did a very good job of keeping the place bright enough to both see and to prevent mobs from finding their way in. She had been right during the day; the crystals hovering everywhere looked splendid at night, their warm orange glow casting the perfect amount of light to be considered moody without obscuring functionality. They were even better than looking at the stars, and she had a feeling Scarlet would have loved them.
Her heart sank as they searched the first tower with no sign of the bird. The second and third towers passed the same way. Nothing.
Gem was clearly trying to make her feel better about the whole thing as they walked away from the third tower without so much as a feather. “It’s okay, Pearl. We said we’d look, and we did. He’ll be back soon.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s just…”
“Yeah. Last time, he came back in the morning, though, right?”
“Afternoon. I went in to make lunch and he was on the porch.”
“Right! We’ll just take a break to rest with the rest of the castle and then we can keep looking around for him to turn up. It’s okay. There aren’t even any classes tomorrow, the students don’t have a chance of finding him.”
Pearl chewed her lip. “Gem, I’m so sorry about your room.”
Gem blinked. “Oh, oh— the crystals? That’s fine, Pearl. All I need to do to fix that is just kill a few stray creepers and summon Ametri, and it’s been a bit since we last spoke anyway. It won’t be a problem.”
“Where will you sleep? There’s broken glass everywhere,” Pearl said.
“We’ve got plenty of guest rooms, Pearl,” Gem replied gently. “I’m just gonna stay with you for tonight. I do it all the time, really, the cave isn’t exactly the best place to sleep willingly. A bit too energetic to let me sleep peacefully. The magic of it really wants to mess with me when I try to sleep.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, magic is weird like that sometimes.” Gem rolled her eyes. “Like a weird dog. Always wants your attention. It’s why I have all these crystals set up. It always has something to do that way, and then it bothers me less.”
“Huh. Neat, I think?”
“It is, yes. I’m a very intriguing person,” Gem said matter-of-factly, her lips curling slightly with the effort of a suppressed smile. “Now come on, we have a room to visit. It’s got bunk beds, Pearl.”
“What are we, five?” Pearl scoffed lightly. She didn’t mean it, but it was a little funny to see Gem so excited about something so frivolous.
“Oh, come on. It’s bunk beds. You’re never too old for bunk beds.”
“Fine. I will take note of these Crystal Cliffs amenities,” Pearl laughed. She was still nervous, but Gem was very, very good at getting her to relax. Her stomach wouldn’t quite unwind from the tight knots that the night’s events had tied it in, but it was loosening, and that was enough.
Sure enough, there were bunk beds in the room that Gem led her to. They were more spacious than the bunk beds Pearl usually imagined, carved out of discarded geode scraps (they had so much amethyst it was a bit ridiculous, Pearl had to wonder where on earth they mined it all from), and she couldn’t help but sink into the soft pillows that sat at the end of the bottom bunk.
“Get up real quick, I have something for you,” Gem said from across the room.
Pearl gave her a muffled groan through a pillow by way of response. “Can’t. I’m dead. The poison finally reached my brain. Carry on without me. My kingdom goes to Nugget. Scarlet gets custody of my seed bank.”
“I don’t get anything in your will?” Gem sounded offended. Pearl looked up from her pillow.
“You have, like, a bajillion crystals out here. It won’t hurt you,” she said.
Gem gasped in exaggerated offense. “I want something to remember you by, oh Pearl-who-is-laying-dead-and-poisoned-in-my-castle!”
“You can take care of Scarlet. I’d trust you with him. He’s a brat,” Pearl mumbled into the pillow, “but you work with wizards-in-training. It can’t be that different.”
“Scarlet seemed like a lovely bird, Pearl, I think you’re lying to me,” Gem giggled. “But seriously, sit up! I have a potion for you.”
Pearl glanced up again to see Gem standing at her bedside holding a bright pink potion. “Gem, I don’t need a regeneration potion, that’s way too much for, like, bruises—“
“I know, I know! Just to be safe, to heal us up, we’ll share it. Half each. Deal?”
“You’re not going to drink it if I refuse, aren’t you?”
“Nope,” Gem said cheerfully. Blood was matted in her hair from the small nicks and scratches she’d gotten. Pearl sighed.
“Alright. Halfsies it is.” Pearl took the bottle and drank half the contents before handing it back to her friend. “Why do you even have those on hand?”
“Wizards-in-training. It’s basically a requirement to have them on hand at all times.”
“Mm. That makes sense.” Pearl rolled over and fluffed another pillow over her face. “Now leave me to my rest, you horrid sorceress! You and your magic healing potions and your caring about your friends. When will you stop your callous torment?”
“Pearl! I know how to be mean,” Gem gasped, seeming genuinely offended this time. “Once when I was showing Fwhip around, I told him that redstone didn’t work in the Crystal Cliffs after I’d swapped all his redstone out with crushed red dye when he wasn’t looking. He freaked out. It was hilarious.”
“Dear Aeor, I can imagine,” Pearl said, cracking an eye out from under her pillow. “He’d lose his mind without that stuff.”
“I know,” Gem said smugly. “Now, let’s go to sleep. We can find your sassy lost parrot in the morning.”
“Pssh, goodnight Gem.”
“Night, Pearl.”
The parrot— Scarlet, he was now called— nearly fell off the castle roof when the twilight rolled over him. He scrambled to keep his hold on the shingles as his thoughts raced around his head, fragmented as a mirror dropped from a cliff. Scarlet realized he was way too big to stay on the roof, now that he’d changed, and the guards would definitely notice him if he didn’t move hide hide hide.
Hastily, he dropped down from the roof and crashed into a nearby garden, nearly crushing his wings under his own body when he managed to land flat on his back. Luckily, he’d hit a bush. The hated cloak drifted down from the roof after him and landed directly on his face. He sighed.
Scarlet repeated the annoying, painful, and pointless process that he’d done every night for countless nights now. As more feathers shimmered on the cloak, he felt… strange. His brain wasn’t focusing as well as it usually did, even when doing something as mindless as this. Something seemed to vibrate around in his skull, as if a tuning fork had been pressed into the base of his neck. Something like fire, like flames in a strangely sterile place, like darkness in his eyes and mouth and lungs and throat, clinging like oil.
Pearl didn’t sleep. She did, for a while, but when she woke up, the moon was still high in the sky. It appeared to be just past midnight. As the meager, dying light of the waning crescent shone through her window, she stared out into the dark sky, the crystals outside dimming slightly.
She blinked, slowly rising from her bed. The ache in her chest had vanished already with the help of the potion Gem had given her, so she had no trouble opening the door latch to walk out over the marble balcony that overlooked the open air bridge in the heart of the towers.
“Hello, Pearl,” a voice said from behind her. Pearl whirled around to face a strange woman standing in her room. Her hair was so dark that it didn’t seem to reflect any light, her skin so pale that it seemed made of the white light of the moon itself. She wore a wide-brimmed, pointed black hat, almost similar to Gem’s in shape, that veiled her face and features. Her dress was silky and smooth-looking— Pearl couldn’t locate a single stitch or seam line on the entire garment. Smoke rose from behind her.
She held out a hand, her fingers stained with… something dark. Her fingernails looked sharp, but the way she held herself was so elegant and confident that Pearl was inclined to look her in the eyes as best she could with the veil on. “Care for a walk, Lady of the Valley?”
Seeing no other option and no reason why she shouldn’t take the chance, Pearl took her hand.
He stopped working for a moment. There was something to that, something about that fire that was familiar, but it was detached, like it didn’t really happen to him. It was as if he was simply watching the thoughts in his head rampage around, catching scenes that he’d never experienced before.
The projection— that projection, did that really happen to him? He didn’t remember any of it, but… it did seem real, somehow.
The feathers he was pulling were duller than usual, more gray.
He frowned, staring down at the dark cloak before him. My name isn’t Scarlet, is it?
What is my name?
“So,” the lady in black said as they walked across the bridge, “Pearlescent Moon of the east, who is your patron?”
Pearl glanced up at the towering woman. “I do not have one.”
The lady, because surely she had to be some kind of royalty, at least, frowned sympathetically. “Really? A talented young woman like yourself?”
She blushed, slightly embarrassed, and scuffed her shoe against the stone bridge.
“Yes. I haven’t found the right god yet, I suppose. It’s quite the choice to make, isn’t it?” Pearl said. She folded her hands over each other, trying to hide how they were shaking.
“Mm. I suppose it is. Are you considering anyone?”
“Not at the moment, no.”
“Just as well. The pantheon is… fickle, to say the least of it,” the lady said, wrinkling her nose. “I prefer to spend my time on my own.”
“I… see?”
She smiled, her teeth glistening behind the veil. “That parrot is a strange one, isn’t he?”
Pearl jumped. “How do you know about him?“
“Well, I am a goddess, Empress of the Meadow,” the lady— no, the goddess— said brightly, her smile still wide. “It’s my job to know.”
“Are you… Anthea, Katherine’s grove? I know she likes mysteries,” Pearl guessed, her fingernails digging into her palms. The hair on the back of her neck rose when this goddess spoke. She didn’t like it.
“Oh, no, no! I don’t have a name, per se. The mortals never bothered to give me one,” she scoffed, “so I never got one.“
She paused, glancing over at Pearl. “Sound familiar?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Pearl absolutely did know what the goddess meant, and it irked her immensely. She didn’t know why this goddess just… knew exactly why she hadn’t chosen anyone and nobody had chosen her. Her hands stayed folded neatly.
“Of course. In any case, I saw how that spell backfired. That bird isn’t a bird, as I’m sure you know by now,” the goddess told her, her voice soaked in concern. “The bird you’ve found is no botched experiment, by pillager or god. He is a demon, intending to use you to power his own soul.”
Pearl sucked in a breath, trying to contain her surprise. “I see.”
The goddess nodded sympathetically. “He landed in the mortal world because he tried to burn down the gods’ domain. The bars you saw in the vision were the bars of the cage that the gods trapped him in for his crime. He was an outstanding arsonist, so the bars were entirely fireproof. His fire came from his very soul, even. One day, he escaped with the help of an accomplice who used to be his best friend, and he ran to my domain. Hungry for power, he tried to pass through to get to the mortal realm. I cast him out, took his voice, memory, and attempted to hide his power away so that he couldn’t use any of himself to harm mortals. It seems that he’s found his way to someone he thinks he can take advantage of.”
Pearl blinked, staring anywhere but at the goddess’ face. Scarlet was a demon? She nodded for the goddess to continue, standing still as a statue and gazing out over the mountains.
“If he gets ahold of your soul, he will be able to take his power back from my realm,” she continued gently. “He took an innocent form to trick you. His disappearances have been to steal animal souls and slowly gain back his power. The feather loss is because I am trying to contain him by forcing him to use his last remaining power to make me a cloak. The more feathers he uses, the less of his own essence he has, and the less harm he can do.”
Pearl stared out at the mountains. “That makes sense, yes.”
“I am not just here to warn you, however,” the goddess said. “I am here to make an offer. You can think about this offer. I will be back on the new moon, two days from now, when it is easier for me to stay here, and ask you for a final answer. Pearlescent Moon of the east, I am the goddess of night, and I am offering my hand and my power to you as your patron. Together, we can easily banish this demon, and my power can aid you in building a more powerful empire than you could ever imagine.”
Pearl didn’t respond. Her throat was dry. This was… a lot, really. She wasn’t sure if she believed the goddess, but it was the only explanation she’d received about why the bird made such a simple spell go haywire. Gem didn’t seem to know, and though Pearl wasn’t in the business of trusting the gods unconditionally, she didn’t have any other options.
“What about the hand?” Pearl asked suddenly, turning to face the goddess. “The hand that appeared. And that strange voice?”
It was the goddess’ turn to look embarrassed at that. “Ah. Yes, that was me. I interfered with the spell to try and stop your Ametrine friend from accidentally uncovering some of the demon’s memories. I had them buried, but witnessing the projection like that would have brought some of them back. I apologize for the damage done, I swear I did not mean it!”
“I see,” Pearl said. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to, yes. I’ll keep an eye out when he returns.”
“One last thing. His feathers may begin to darken if he is, in fact, a demon. If he remembers his past, his feathers will fade to a cold black. That’s a safety measure I put on his memories as he tries to access them, so that you can see proof of what I’m saying. You’re too smart to take it without evidence,” the goddess smiled.
Pearl nodded silently, staring into the goddess’ eyes. They were slightly mesmerizing, and Pearl would be lying if she said that she wasn’t tempted to take the offer. Her appearance was unsettling, but she seemed to genuinely be trying to help, and Pearl had long ago learned not to judge gods on appearances or even on domains. They were just as difficult to read at a glance as anyone on the street.
This goddess was powerful enough to shatter one of Gem’s spells so thoroughly that it destroyed her cave, yet nobody had ever given her a name. Pearl felt a twinge of sympathy; even though the comment had felt slightly out of touch earlier, she did understand how that felt.
Her eyes were a solid black, flecked with tiny stars. The goddess of night, Pearl thought to herself. I could work with that, I think.
“Think about my offer,” Empress of the Valley, and be wary.” The lady held out her hand again. Pearl took it, just the same as before.
When she next blinked, she was standing back in the guest room. Sunlight was peeking over the horizon.
When the sun rose, the question vanished from his mind, taking with it both the answer and the stars from the sky.
Gem was still sleeping, which was fine, because Pearl decided that she was going to try and make breakfast for the two of them in the room. The pantry across the room was stocked with food, some of it kept in a special cupboard that felt cold to the touch. Wizards are cool, Pearl thought as she grabbed a bottle of ice-cold milk from the cupboard.
She decided that she could just scramble some eggs, cook some bacon, and make some toast with the bread that sat in near-perfect condition on top of the shelf. A basic breakfast, but a classic one nonetheless.
Gem woke up when Pearl was halfway through the bacon and the sun was confidently strutting through the sky. It looked to be about 9 in the morning; not too late, but not as early as Pearl usually woke. Which was fine, she was an early riser for several reasons, the reasons being that she liked to watch the sunrise and usually had a lot to do with as much daylight as she could get.
“Good morning there, Sleeping Beauty,” Pearl joked. Gem huffed, crossing her arms. Her face looked a lot better than it had last night. The cuts were healed up, and she must have cleaned up before she went to sleep last night, because the dried blood that had stained her hair and cheeks was gone. Pearl probably should have cleaned up, as well; she was still wearing her riding clothes, which weren’t exactly the cleanest even without the collapse of ten thousand crystals and a roof on her head.
“How’d you sleep?” Gem asked, crawling down from the top bunk. She rubbed her eyes and finally laid her messy braid to rest, letting her curly red hair roam as it liked, since her hat was still sitting in her bed. “I was out like a light that whole time. Slept like the dead. Not even a single dream.”
Pearl chewed her lip and flipped the bacon. She had to tell Gem what had happened— the bird that was questionably a demon was currently loose in her kingdom, and Pearl had brought it right to her. Pearl still had a lot of trouble believing that Scarlet, of all people (birds? Demons?), was a malevolent spirit escaped from a magic prison, but, well, it was her only lead. Gem deserved to know.
“Well, uh, not that well,” Pearl started. Gem frowned, looking as though she wanted to apologize for the state of the room, but Pearl cut her off. “Not about the room. I had a visitor last night, I think.”
“You think?” Gem asked.
“Yeah, it… it could have been a dream? I’m not sure. Either way, a goddess spoke to me. She was really tall and dressed in all black, with a veiled hat and sharp fingernails. She said she was the goddess of the night, and she… told me a bit about Scarlet.”
Gem nodded, her eyes intently curious. Pearl flipped the bacon and continued. “The goddess told me that Scarlet was a demon that the gods had imprisoned, that he’d escaped their prison and entered her domain, where she’d taken his power and memories so that he couldn’t hurt anyone again, and then he crashed in my garden.”
“The parrot? The parrot is a malicious demon?” Gem said incredulously. Pearl nodded hesitantly.
“According to what the goddess said, yes. I don’t… I don’t know if that’s true, but she provided explanations for why his feathers are thinning. She said that his feathers are vanishing because she’s forcing him into penance, or something like that, to contain his powers. If he was remembering anything, his feathers would darken and fade to black, so we should be on the lookout for that.”
Gem scrunched up her nose. “Hmm. Yeah, I think that makes sense. Scarlet’s so sweet, though, and I didn’t sense anything mean around him. If he was truly that powerful, I think I would have felt something was off. Are you sure?”
“Yeah, that’s what she said. I’m not completely convinced on the whole thing, but it’s all I’ve got right now.” Pearl shrugged. “And Scarlet sure isn’t talking, y’know?”
“Yeah. Was Scarlet the one who broke my spell, then?”
“No, that was the goddess. She apologized for breaking your cave. She said that she had to step in to stop you from accidentally retrieving Scarlet’s memories with the projection images.”
“Hm. There was no need to call me an “insolent magician,” though,” Gem huffed, indignant. “I am insolent, I just wasn’t being rude there and I resent the notion that I was.”
Pearl laughed. “Alright, insolent magician, your breakfast is ready.”
She handed Gem a plate of food. Gem ate angrily, but it didn’t seem like very deep anger.
If Pearl had told Gem about Scarlet to protect her kingdom, then Pearl had to tell her about the goddess’ offer as her friend. It felt wrong, even though the goddess had never said that she couldn’t tell anyone. Between bites of egg, Pearl set down her fork. “There’s one more thing, too, um…”
Gem looked up from where she was ravenously consuming her plate of bacon. Pearl continued. “She offered herself up as my patron.”
Gem grinned, nearly dropping her fork on the stone floor. “REALLY?”
“Yeah! Um, yeah,” Pearl nodded. “I’m not sure if I’ll go along with it, but… she offered.”
“Naturally, naturally. I have to do background research on this lady, Pearl,” Gem rambled, her food suddenly forgotten. “I have to make sure she’s the right patron for you, and of course it’s your choice ultimately and I would never intrude on that, but you can’t always trust the gods to tell you everything, right, and I don’t want you to get trapped in a soul contract that you don’t want, and I can ask Ametri when they visit to fix the cave, and oh this is so exciting, Pearl!”
Pearl always forgot how excited Gem could get, and how fast she could talk when she did. Her enthusiasm never failed to bring a smile to her face. “Slow down, slow down! Just a bit, yeah. I’m going to do research, too, trust me, but if you want to help out by asking Ametri you can. She gave me two days, until the new moon, to give her an answer.”
“Look at that, Pearlescent Moon receiving an offer from the goddess of night! Destiny willed it.” Gem nudged her with her elbow.
“S’pose it did, didn’t it? I haven’t decided yet, though, don’t jump the gun, there!”
“‘Course not! It’s still all your choice,” Gem amended. “Gosh, I’m so glad you came to visit. I’ve missed you a lot, Pearl.”
“Aww, Gem! Don’t be all sweet, now, I don’t have any candy to give you back.”
“Pearl, you don’t have to give me anything back.” Pearl didn’t respond to the comment, going back to eating her food.
“You know that, right?” Gem’s tone was suddenly more serious than Pearl had expected. She blinked, looking up from her eggs.
“Yeah, I know. I just feel like—“
Gem clapped sharply, cutting her off. “No. No ifs, ands, or buts. You don’t have to give me anything. Friendship isn’t a trade deal or an alliance, and though we’re allies, we’re also friends, okay? You don’t have to give me anything. Your companionship is enough, alright?”
“Yeah, I know, I know,” Pearl said.
“But do you really?“
“…I’ll try, Gem,” Pearl promised. “That’s the best I can do.”
“I’ll take it. For now,” Gem said, narrowing her eyes in mock suspicion. “Keeping my eye on you.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do all that! I know I’m a lot to look at.” Pearl posed with her hand under her chin. Gem flicked some scrambled eggs at her. She squealed and ducked under the flying eggs. “I may have deserved that, honestly, but still, how dare you?”
Gem smiled smugly and opened her mouth to say something, but a knock on the door cut her off. “Oh, I’ll get that. Probably some confused students in the wrong tower.”
Pearl watched as she made her way across the room and opened the big oaken door at the entrance. Instead of a student, the lavender uniforms of the Cliff’s royal guard peeked out of the doorframe. They bowed, and Gem bowed back. “Oh, hi! What’s going on?”
“Good morning Grand Wizard, and good morning, Lady of the Valley,” the head guard said, nodding his head at Pearl. “We bring bad news, unfortunately. A raid party has been spotted in the valley.”
“What?” Pearl stood up, her food forgotten. “My valley?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the guard said. “Waves of them. Evokers, vindicators, and even a few ravagers.”
Pearl was stunned, standing stock-still in the center of the room. Gem quickly took action. “Okay, yes, thank you for the warning. You did well, you two. I can go and fight them off before they make it to Pearl’s—“
“No, Gem,” Pearl said, kindly but firmly. She moved slowly to pull her boots on, draping her coat over her shoulders. “That’s my home. I have to defend it, as empress.”
“But, Pearl, you’re just one person and those are evokers, the worst kind of magic!”
“Exactly, Gem. If you went there alone, your magic would go haywire with the vexes around. There’s no way you’d be able to stand it. You are just one person, too, and you have a kingdom to take care of here. I need to take care of mine.”
“Pearl, you—“
“You just told me that I don’t owe you anything, right? Because I’m your friend? That goes both ways, Gem. I’m an adult. I can solve my own problems, okay?”
“I know that, but you can’t come back if you’re sent to the Void, Pearl, please!”
“The solution to that is easy, Gem. I just won't die.” Pearl shrugged casually, as if she was talking about the weather. “I took out a pillager scouting party no problem. They only got my crops because they were fighting dirty. It’s fine.”
“They always fight dirty! You cannot go by yourself.”
“Gemini Tay, Grand Wizard of the Crystal Cliffs, there is a potential demon loose in your kingdom. I have just informed you of this danger. You must dispatch that threat before you take care of another kingdom.” Pearl straightened, pushing her chin out.
Gem sighed frustratedly. “Fine. You’re right. I have to stay and find Scarlet. But I’m not letting you go without aid.”
The guards were still standing in the doorway awkwardly fiddling with their weapons. Gem glanced over at them as she led Pearl out of the room. “Thank you two for telling us. My apologies about the conduct just now, you know how it is. You are dismissed back to your posts.”
They nodded, seeming relieved, and set off towards where they were stationed.
“Alright, Pearl, we’re headed to the treasure room,” Gem said, and then she was off, sprinting like lightning down the hall.
“How many rooms do you even have in these towers?” Pearl called incredulously as she took off after her friend.
“Wow,” Pearl breathed, “this is crazy.”
Gem smiled, the slight wobbling of her chin the only sign of her trepidation about the whole affair. “Yeah, yeah, we don’t have time to stand around.”
The room had been hidden behind another door, similar to the tower, though it was much smaller than Gem’s room. Its contents included two sets of diamond armor inscribed with protection, unbreaking, and mending runes, as well as the insignia of the Crystal Cliffs, several sets of weapons and tools, and two pairs of shimmering gossamer cloaks hanging on hooks at the end of the room.
“Elytra,” Gem said, grabbing armor from the walls. “It’ll let you get down to your valley much more quickly. I was planning to give these to you once we figured out how to press enchantments into them, but, well, the best-laid plans of mice and men, like the saying goes.”
“They’re beautiful, Gem, how did you even—?”
Gem cut her off by stacking a pile of diamond armor in front of her. “Put those on. I’m sure you have your sword, right— the elytra are from the Wastes— and I need to go get potions—“
Pearl obliged, strapping on the armor she was handed. “I do have a sword, yes— Gem, slow down, I don’t really think—“
Gem whirled around on her heel. “If you’re not letting me come with you, I’m giving you as much as I can, Pearl. It would be a lonely existence without you. I refuse to be responsible for your death, okay?”
Pearl didn’t respond, slightly shocked by her friend’s intensity. She stood and watched Gem open an ender chest, pulling out several vials of normal potions and a few bottles with strange energy trapped inside.
“Okay, okay,” Gem muttered, sounding incredibly panicked, “these are potions of instant healing, obviously, and I have a few regeneration, some instant damage— here, put on that elytra, quickly, I need to make sure you know how to use it— okay, okay. Okay.”
“Gem, stop.” Pearl grabbed her friend’s wrist tightly. “Take a breath. This will be easier if you explain it slower, okay? I’m not going to die. I am capable and I am good at fighting. I promise I will not do anything stupid.”
“I— oh, Pearl, I know that, it’s just the possibility that you could, it’s driving me nuts and I want to go with you!” Gem sighed.
“I know. Your people need you here. You are helping me as much as you can. Now, slowly, explain what these all do and how I use this,” Pearl reassured her, holding up the reflective cloak. She wasn’t sure why she felt so calm, given that she was quite possibly about to single handedly fight an entire army, but the jitters and shock had long since given way to a cold determination. They weren’t going to burn down her kingdom again and they weren’t going to kill her. She was Pearlescent Moon, she was mortal, and she was not going to be underestimated.
“Okay. Yeah. Yeah,” Gem said, taking a deep breath. “So. These bottles, the ones with the energy in them, those are stored spells. Most of them are simple lightning spells, when you throw and break the bottle, they’ll shock whoever they hit in a certain range. These bottles, the purple ones, will grow a crystal structure on any living thing they hit, good for trapping any pillagers riding ravagers. And this one, the one blue one at the end there, that will release a wave of water through the area. Only use that as a last resort, obviously, it’ll affect you too. Vexes don’t do well in water, though, it causes them to lose form a bit, so if you get overwhelmed, it can help.”
“Got it. White bottles are lightning, purple bottles are amethyst growths, and the blue one is a tsunami-in-a-bottle,” Pearl listed. “And the elytra?”
“That’s a little tricky,” Gem said. She scrunched up her nose and dug around in her ender chest, coming back up with four firework rockets. “The elytra cloak will let you glide from a high place, but since it doesn’t have any kind of bones, you can’t really fly. Fwhip took a look at these when we first ventured to the Wastes to find them and engineered these rockets. They don’t hurt when they explode, so they should be able to help you take off, but there’s only four, so use them well. He never has enough paper to mass produce them, though he’s got tons of gunpowder. You should be able to get to the valley entirely on your own, without the rockets, but if you get outnumbered or anything you can use them to get back to the Cliffs, okay?”
“Of course, Gem,” Pearl said warmly. “Thank you.”
Gem threw her arms around Pearl, who tensed up slightly at the sudden movement before relaxing into the hug. “I will not die. I promise.”
“Okay. Yeah. Of course you won’t. You’re the Lady of the Valley, the empress of wheat. It’s fine. You’re fine.”
“Right. Thank you, Gem.” Pearl grinned, swinging the elytra over her shoulders. As she fastened it, a golden sheen spread over the fabric, shaping itself into a more opaque, layered, gilded cloak rather than the simple gray sheen it had once had. “Oh, that… that’s interesting.”
Gem smiled nervously. “Yeah, they do that. It’ll function the same. I promise. Please don’t die?”
“I won’t! I did, I did promise,” Pearl said. “Where can I take off?”
“Anywhere, really.” Gem was wringing her hands. “Off a balcony, the bridge, wherever. The higher the better. Please be careful on your landings, they can break bones if you hit the ground at too high of a velocity—“
“Thank you for the help, Grand Wizard, but I have to be off now. My kingdom is under attack, you see, and I have to go help my home,” Pearl said, her head cocked easily. She could do this.
“Right, yes. Thank you for the visit and the company, Empress, I’m— I’ll see you soon.” Gem bowed, and Pearl bowed back.
And then, without hesitation, Pearl left Gem’s hidden treasure room and jumped off the bridge outside.
Flying was fun. She now understood why Scarlet was so antsy to take off when his wings were hurt— this was beautiful. Pearl could see the entire countryside from where she glided over the valley, including, she noted with distaste, the same raid party that the guards had mentioned. It was a lot bigger than she’d realized, but it didn’t deter her. She set her jaw and made sure that her cloak was spread behind her, catching the wind.
Elytra travel was a lot faster than horseback, too; it would have taken her the better part of a day to make it across the valley with her mare, but with the elytra, she was nearing her home in about twenty minutes. Pearl realized that as she glided down, she was gaining velocity, and, remembering what Gem said about the landing, quickly angled up her elytra to slow herself down.
Her landing wasn’t perfect by any means— she hit the ground and rolled, nearly crashing into her own house, but she managed not to break any bones or die on impact, which she supposed was good.
Pearl stared up and out into the woods. She couldn’t see the pillagers coming through the trees yet, but she knew she didn’t have long. Quickly, she ran into her empty house and grabbed her flame enchanted bow and a few stacks of arrows.
She checked on the cows, boarding up their pen so that it’d be more difficult for the raid to potentially kill them. This was the only time she’d ever been grateful that nobody else lived in her kingdom; she didn’t have to worry about hiding anyone else away, just the animals.
Pearl climbed up to her roof and waited for the raiders to show their faces, her bow at the ready. When the first wave of vindicators and archers arrived, Pearl didn’t wait for them to make their way out of the woods. She drew back her bowstring and fired immediately, unflinching as the arrow aimed true and took out an archer who was closer to her.
The raid horns sounded, an eerie, howling call that echoed off the surrounding mountains, signaling the party to attack.
Pearl nocked another arrow. It was going to be a long day.
Gem heard the raid horns sound off from her towers. She hadn’t moved since Pearl had left, still staring out over the valley and searching for the telltale gold of her new elytra. After the horns went off, she finally tore herself away from spectating.
Pearl said she’d be fine. I believe in her. She will be fine.
Gem decided that the best course of action would be to do what Pearl had told her; after all, her friend did have a point. If a demon was roaming her empire, then she as the ruler was responsible for keeping her people safe, even if that danger looked like a fluffy little parrot.
In either case, she didn’t want the parrot to be found by a student. The chances were low, since it was a break day in the tower and most of the students would be hanging out in their dorms or in the marketplace, but there was always a chance. He didn’t seem to react well to large crowds of people, and a commodity like a tropical bird would certainly be swarmed by the wizards-in-training. It wasn’t like they wanted to hurt him, they were just curious, but he’d still have a horrible time. And in the case of the parrot being an actual demon, well. That was pretty self-explanatory. Pearl had already told her about the black feathers, she’d just search him for any of those as best she could and hope that her soul didn’t get eaten.
Right. Simple. Look for Scarlet, find him before the students do, and don’t get her soul eaten. Hope to all the gods that Pearl didn’t die in her fight.
Simple.
Finding the bird was easy enough, she realized. Last night, she hadn’t been in the right state of mind or strength to try it, but she did know a location finding spell. She just needed to find one of his feathers around and use it to track him, and she guessed that he’d hopefully shed one or two in the entrance geode.
Once she was standing in the den, she realized that Scarlet had shed a feather— another primary, still bright and vibrant— and left it by her quills. Gem stared at the feather in her hand. She’d said something about how parrot feathers made excellent quills and he’d… he’d left her one. To use as a quill.
Gem sighed. She knew she wouldn’t be using this specific feather as a quill, but hopefully she could get another one at some point, and the more she knew about this parrot, the less sure she was that he was any kind of demon.
She held the feather in her palm, laying her other hand on her staff to draw power from its crystal. The feather began floating, enveloped in purple light. Find Scarlet.
The spell fizzled a bit at the name, as if confused, but upon sensing the feather, the magic began pulling her down the stairwell of the main hall.
“Okay, okay, I’m going, I’m going!” Gem ran down the halls, following the pull. Tracking spells were always a bit finicky, overly excitable at best and outright controlling at worst. This spell was manageable, but she’d had a few students who tried to cast tracking spells that were too far away and woke up stuck in a snowy peaks biome.
Soon, she was standing in the gardens next to the main entrance of the castle, the raised beds of potatoes and carrots surrounding her. Glow berries wound around the tops of the canopies that protected the crops from the elements, for the most part. The pull loosened, leaving only a gentle, contented hum in her chest.
Gem cleared her throat. “Scarlet?”
No reply. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. The guards would probably give her weird looks for this, but at the moment, she didn’t particularly care. Gem tried again, raising her voice. “Scarlet! Scarlet, are you there?”
This time, a small rustling came from one of the bushes that lined the tower walls nearby. “Scarlet?” Gem asked, crouching down to look.
The tracking spell in her hand twitched and the feather drifted to the ground in front of her, landing just in front of the bush. There was no doubt: Scarlet was hiding, concealed in the brush.
“Hey, hey,” she said softly, “C’mon, Scarlet, I’m not gonna hurt you. Promise.”
Carefully, the bird peeked his head out from under the leaves of the azalea bush he was loafing under. His back feathers were puffed, his wings tucked tightly against his sides. The crest feathers that lined his head were pointing up, displaying his curiosity.
“Hey, it’s just me,” Gem said. “I’m Gem, yeah?”
It was so strange. Gem didn’t feel anything bad from this bird, and though it wasn’t as though she could automatically sense a demonic presence, she’d met demons before, and she’d always been able to tell when she really tried to sense them. She was really searching now, trying to find any trace of demonic features within this bird, but all she found was a blankness, something intentionally wiped clean of all personality and history. Gem frowned slightly.
“Can you come out of there, just for a second? I promised Pearl I’d take care of you when I found you,” Gem said, trying to coax him out of hiding. Scarlet only retreated further back into the bush.
She realized he was scared, eyeing his back feathers and low stance, and then remembered that the last time they’d talked, she’d frozen him in a spell that searched his past, a time that he didn’t seem to know much about, and evidently, it had shaken him, because he immediately flung himself out of the tower despite his injuries as soon as he was able. Gem awkwardly cleared her throat with a cough. Maybe he had a bit of a right to be scared, then.
“I’m sorry, Scarlet,” Gem offered, “I really didn’t think that spell would go so badly. I’m not sure why it did, exactly, if I’m being honest, but it hurt you, and I’m really sorry about that.”
“If you come out of there, I can try to fix your feathers,” Gem offered. A figurative olive branch to the very stubborn macaw. Plus, if she got a look at his feathers, she could see if they were black.
Begrudgingly, Scarlet emerged from the bush. She smiled at him. “Hey there! Sit still. I can fix it.” Under her breath, she added, “hopefully.”
She didn’t typically like to do this spell, it felt a little cruel, but she’d given Pearl the last of her backup healing potions, so she didn’t have a choice. Grabbing one of the glow berries from above their heads, Gem whispered a few words. The berry shriveled in her hands, fading into a soft orange light that she blew towards Scarlet. It circled him once before settling into his skin.
His feathers grew back quickly. Gem had to suppress a gasp at the realization that the ones produced by the spell were black as night. That didn’t make sense— no demon could hide itself that well from a sense like hers, and yet his new feathers were still sitting before her, completely dark. Something didn’t add up here.
“I— okay, I, yeah,” Gem stammered. “Scarlet, do you know why your feathers look like that?”
He shook his head, hopping anxiously from foot to foot. Scarlet spread a wing to stare at his new primaries, nearly trying to pluck them out before Gem stopped him with a cry.
“Okay, well, you’re technically good to fly, now,” she said awkwardly. “Do you know how to get back to the smallholding?”
Scarlet nodded, still anxiously shifting his weight. Gem tugged at her hair, trying to decide what to do with the bird.
Impulsively, she decided that the best way to figure this whole thing out would be to ask him. “Scarlet, are you a demon?”
Scarlet stared at her with wide blue eyes. He stopped hopping, instead drawing in on himself and cocking his head, staring down at his talons as if to ask “is that what I am?”
Gem sighed. He wasn’t a parrot, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe that he was a demon, either.
“Well, you have two options. You can stay here with me, now that I’m like, 90% sure you’re not actually a demon that’ll try to murder me or my students, or you can go help Pearl in the valley.” Gem wasn’t sure why she’d consider something that was not a parrot but certainly had all the attributes of a parrot useful in a fight, but, well, crazier things have happened. “She— um, she’s fighting a raid, and she told me I couldn’t help her fight, but— she didn’t say anything about you being forbidden to help, so… can you help her, Scarlet?”
She felt stupid asking a parrot to help her friend fight an army, but again, she’d done weirder things.
Scarlet took off immediately after she told him that Pearl was fighting a raid, which helped her nerves, if only slightly, leaving only the million diamond question:
If the bird wasn’t a demon, then why had that goddess lied to Pearl?
Notes:
the crystal cliff’s national mascots are those little wizards is an animal sticker guys and the stickers are on the most random places because the students think it’s funny. pearl doesn’t think they’re real. gem insists they are
pictures here (they’re so real. so real you guys): https://wizardsisananimal.tumblr.com/tagged/wizards%20is%20an%20animal
Chapter 5: in the darkness, slowly crawling over my skin
Notes:
bro god threw like every obstacle at me to get me to not release this chapter. too bad. he couldn’t hold me down for long. i only had to go to urgent care ONCE for suspected pneumonia
(I’M FINE I PROMISE)
this chapter brought to you by: listening to sleeping giants by the crane wives on loop for hours on end
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Pearl stood on the roof, firing arrow after arrow after arrow at the advancing onslaught of pillagers. For every one she cut down, two more seemed to take their place, granted that they mostly seemed to be vindicators rather than archers. It was exhausting, and she’d only been fighting for minutes.
Maybe I should have taken Gem’s advice, Pearl thought. It was too late now— the archers were readying their arrows, giving her no choice but to hunker down behind her shield as the volley of arrows thunked into the wood. By some miracle, she avoided getting speared in the face with any of the projectiles they were flinging at her, standing and drawing her bow again.
Luckily, there were only a few archers left, but they were now being guarded as the remaining vindicators took their axes to her house. She sniped them down before they could do any serious damage, but the fact that they were trying something like that off the bat was worrying. What was she supposed to do when the ravagers came, the beasts that were literally engineered to destroy as much property as possible?
Pearl took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down as best she could while still blocking arrows. The final archers fell to her flame arrows; nothing was on fire around them quite yet, the blood of the archers extinguishing the enchantment before the fire could spread to the nearby flora.
First wave done. This was fine, this was okay.
The second wave passed mostly the same way, just alternatively sniping and ducking under her shield from crossbow bolts that the archers were sending her way. The poor banner design painted on the outside of the shield looked more like a pin cushion than a flat shield, but it was still holding strong so far. Pearl thanked the gods that pillagers had horrible aim as the second wave ended.
And this was where her problems started— with the witches.
The witches emerged from the woods, their faces defiant and their magic potent, and Pearl sucked in a breath, bracing herself for what she knew was going to follow. They had long range weapons with their potions of harming and poison. Unlike the arrows, the potions had a much higher chance of hitting her through her shield, if the witches could get them onto the roof, because they splashed farther than arrows did, since they were liquid, and arrows notably were not.
Pearl yelped and spun out of the way just as a poison potion smashed right next to her heel. Poison was not ideal right now, especially not now that the archers were replenishing for this wave, and though she carried golden carrots on her person nearly all the time, Pearl still didn’t want to risk the lowered health.
Alright. Focus the witches, then the archers, and finally, the vindicators.
Mechanically, she fired arrows, never missing. Pearl had to move fast to escape the barrage of potions, and on several occasions, she had to duck under her shield to escape harming potions just before they hit her full force. The witches were going down, but one was hiding somewhere— there was supposed to be 3 around here, and she’d only seen two go down. Pearl bit her lip, searching for the third witch.
Something creaked behind her, and she realized too late where the third witch was. A potion crashed in between her shoulder blades, sending white hot pain through her spine and lungs. Pearl doubled over, gasping, and slammed the witch behind her with her shield, pinning her with the metal edge and stabbing her with an arrow she’d been about to nock.
Pearl nearly stumbled off the roof from the pain of the harming potion. Those things hurt so badly, more than they had any right to. She was half convinced that they were brewed using some kind of acid instead of a normal awkward potion.
One of the archers managed to get in a bolt that lodged in her right arm. She growled, digging out the bolt and firing back her own arrows, which stopped the archer from ever firing again. Now that the witches were down, it was the archers’ turns, and, having dealt with them before, Pearl dispatched them quickly. She bit into a golden carrot, and though it wouldn’t heal her as quickly as a potion, it did make her feel better as the flaky gold skin spread across her tongue and warmed her throat.
The vindicators had seen that they couldn’t get to her on the roof, so they were still ransacking and trying to damage her house. A lot of them were smart enough not to show their faces, knowing that she’d be able to put an arrow between their teeth, which was irritating, to say the least. Pearl scanned her surroundings, looking for a route of escape— she’d have to clear this wave of pillagers before the ravagers and evokers arrived with the next wave. She decided that she could fly above the mess if things got hairy and perch on a tree; it would use one of her precious rockets, but it was the only feasible way she could think to get rid of the vindicators. Their axes would just go through her shield, especially considering the state it was in, and without an escape plan, she’d be dead in minutes.
And she couldn’t do that to Gem. She’d promised.
Pearl sighed and hastily glided down from the roof, unsheathing her sword and clipping her shield to her belt. Immediately, a vindicator was on her tail, but the good thing about vindicators was that they were like rhinos— they could charge wildly, but they couldn’t follow up well, and though their axes were heavy, they didn’t fire off very quickly. Pearl sidestepped the vindicator’s charge, catching his axe’s handle and managing to yank it out of his hands, planting it in his chest instead.
Another two came up on her left and right. She grit her teeth— this was going to be tricky, but doable. Pearl had practiced axe combat with Scott for a long, long time, she knew how someone moved with an axe and how someone moved with a sword. Even someone as stupid as a vindicator.
The vindicators seemed to be considering their options to attack her, unwilling to take the first move or risk what happened to the first vindicator that Pearl had killed, which was fine. Their hesitation gave Pearl the opportunity to dive at their feet and swipe her sword at their legs. They toppled like dominos. She quickly dispatched both of the vindicators while they lay disoriented and stalked into her house to take care of anyone trying to help themself to some loot.
Pearl immediately caught sight of a vindicator with an armful of emeralds. They blinked at each other as he fumbled for his axe, struggling under the weight of the stolen goods. She sighed and struck the flat of her blade against the wall. A loud clanging noise rang out, startling the vindicator, and she smirked. “Dude, just go home.”
He dropped the emeralds and ran. Pearl allowed herself a few seconds to bask in the success before continuing upstairs— by her calculations, there should still be one more vindicator left up there.
She was right. He spun at her from the darkness with surprising force, nearly toppling her down the stairs, and growled, his teeth bared. Pearl managed to catch his axe blade in the hilt of her sword without snapping it, unsuccessfully attempting to twist the weapon out of his hands. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was still perched precariously on the edge of the topmost stair to her room. This vindicator had the high ground and she didn’t like that.
Pearl squirmed as the blade leered closer and closer to her face. She couldn’t maneuver her sword away without taking the force of his strike and probably falling down the stairs, too. On a whim, she kicked her legs out, attempting to throw the vindicator off his feet and slink behind him. It half-worked; the vindicator stumbled, releasing the pressure on her sword, but he didn’t fall like she was hoping he would. She did manage to get behind him, standing in the middle of her bedroom, and the two of them faced each other tersely.
“Well,” Pearl said, “you’ve lasted longer than the rest of them, I’ll give you that.”
The vindicator’s face scrunched up. He ran in for an attack, swinging his axe in a powerful arc, but Pearl just stepped to the side, and his shot went wide. She stabbed him in the back as she swirled around his side and then cheerfully left the room.
“Not by much,” she muttered as she exited the house.
The third call of the raid horn brought thunderous cracking sounds from the forests. Pearl’s eyes widened. Right. Ravagers. The plan.
She fumbled for a rocket in her pocket as the first beast reared its head from inside the forest’s edge. Quickly, she sparked it, and true to Gem’s word, the rocket exploded harmlessly, the momentum carrying her upwards and through the trees. Her elytra caught the wind automatically. Despite the situation, Pearl found herself grinning and laughing as she sailed above the confused raiders.
Perching in a tree was harder than she thought it’d be, which made sense, considering that she’d never actually flown before today, but she managed to grab hold of a sturdy branch after a few failed attempts. Dangling from the huge spruce, Pearl pulled herself up and quietly thanked the gods that she had great upper-body strength from having to build things in her empire by herself. From atop the tree, she could see everything much more clearly than on her roof, and the ravagers wouldn’t target the trees. Their riders would tell them to go for her own structures, which was annoying, but at least in this one aspect it worked to her favor.
It seemed like there were only three of the animals; more than enough to do serious damage, and really annoying to take out, but she’d once heard a tale of a village that had to take out seventy, and if they could survive, so could she. She drew her bow and arrows again, aiming for a rider that was getting too close to her crops.
Her aim was true. The flinted arrow went straight through the rider’s arm. He screamed. She fired another one. He did not scream again.
The ravagers were still threats without riders, but at least they’d have less direction. She just couldn’t be spotted. If they saw her, they’d try to go for the trees, and that wouldn’t be ideal. She only had so many rockets, after all, and a botched landing wasn’t something she could afford if the ravagers were led into the forest.
Luckily, ravagers were even dumber than their riders. They didn’t bother looking back to see where the arrows hitting them were coming from, and she managed to sink about ten flame arrows into the hide of the crop-trampler before it finally collapsed with a final, rattling grunt. Pearl sort of felt bad killing an animal like that, but she couldn’t do anything about it, so she kept aiming at the rest of the beasts.
Something slashed at her back. Pearl gasped, feeling it tear into her elytra, and nearly fell out of the tree, only barely managing to lean against the trunk for support as she panted.
A squeaky little laugh tinkled behind her, and Pearl groaned. The evokers were arriving.
Her elytra were definitely torn from the stupid creature’s sword, even if it was only stone. She couldn’t just glide back down, and there were more giggles filling the air as the purple-robed magicians broke the treeline below her. Vexes were a lot smarter than ravagers, and they were way harder to spot, too. Pearl squinted, looking for the tiny shimmer that marked a vexation pack.
The laughter was almost unbearable now. She could hear so many of them, but the evokers could just be playing tricks on her with other kinds of magic. Regardless, as another stone sword came at her, she struck out with her sword and managed to disperse one of the spirits into the air.
Think, think, think— how can I get down without elytra?
Abruptly, Pearl remembered the spells hanging off of her belt. If she could trap the ravagers with amethyst and then kill them with the lightning, they’d be out of her way, and the wave would break her fall as well as weaken the vex chasing her.
Pearl’s brows furrowed in concentration as she unclipped the two purple vials from her belt and lobbed them at the remaining ravagers, who were still being ridden and trying to break apart her house. The crystal spread along the points of contact against the ravagers’ hides, and within seconds, both rider and ravager were stuck, with only half their bodies exposed out of the crystal shell.
This next part was the hard part. Once she had the wave down, she probably didn’t want to be playing with lightning, so this was her one and only shot. Pearl would most definitely not survive a fall from this height; her elytra couldn’t save her, and even if she somehow survived the initial impact, the vexes would make quick work of her. Their sharp, grating laughs filled her ears as they taunted her, floating around her head. She managed to catch a few when they came at her, but the number of laughs didn’t decrease at all. There was just no way to tell what she was dealing with.
Pearl aimed and threw the energetic white vials, and the air exploded.
A huge clap of thunder rolled in as bolts of white-hot electricity struck the half-statues where she’d thrown the bottles. The former ravagers and their riders were reduced to ashes.
Pearl grinned, but this was no time for celebration. Another vex came swinging at her, and this time she couldn’t stop it in time. Its blade collided with her chest. She stumbled backwards onto— thin air—
And then she was falling. The ground was approaching rapidly, rapidly, and oh my gods she was going to die she’s going to—
The last blue bottle was in her hand. She flung it down, watching it crash over the rapidly approaching dirt, and then the sound of the ocean filled her ears.
Gem wasn’t lying. The wave that came crashing to catch her fall was huge. Pearl didn’t hit the ground, but she fell at just the right speed to hit the cresting tide as it rushed to fill her area, thinning the vexes that still swarmed her.
Her head was underwater. She felt like she was being spun around by some sort of convoluted machine. Pearl’s head and face kept scraping against the ground as she fought for breath. Eventually, she managed to see blue sky again as the wave’s memento crashed into her house. She was proud of the fact that it didn’t go down immediately, but the structure groaned, and Pearl knew she’d have to rebuild the poor thing later.
The evokers were still underwater, and their vexes were hissing as they touched the surface of the wave. They blinked into visibility, and Pearl grinned. She let the spirit of her sword take over as she eliminated all of those stupid, catty little creatures, until their ghostly laughter was completely banished from her ears.
The forest was quiet. Pearl panted as the wave around her drained and vanished into purple mist, which made it pretty hard to see anything, admittedly. Only the corpses of evokers were left littering her kingdom’s land, and they’d dissolve eventually. Maybe she’d even get a totem or a few emeralds after they vanished.
One evoker stood gaping off to the side, coughing and hacking up water. This evoker looked younger than the others, with dark, curly hair. She stared up at Pearl with wide green eyes. Pearl drew her sword, prepared to try and deal with the threat, but the young evoker yelped and drew back quickly. “Please don’t— don’t do that! I’ll go, I— I don’t want to be with them anymore, I’m sorry— actually, I don’t think I did, in the first place, I can’t, um, remember, but you’re the empress here, and they just kind of take me to raid places, I can’t, um, summon vexes or anything—“
Pearl gave the kid a strange look, because surely this was a child. She honestly wasn’t aware that pillagers had kids among them at all. “Are you okay?”
“Uh, I think so! I’ll just be on my way now, um, it’s a long walk back to the mansion. Bye?” The weird evoker gave her an awkward little wave and limped off into the woods again. Pearl stared after her. Um, okay?
Someone drew their sword behind her, she could hear their blade leaving its scabbard, and she whirled.
It was the same stupid flag bearer she’d let run from her burning wheat fields when she’d found Scarlet. How he had survived the flood, she didn’t know, but he was coming at her with a sword now and she wasn’t sure if she had enough energy left to effectively block it.
His iron sword batted at her wrists. Her diamond sword slipped from her fingers as he aimed for her fingers. She yelped and jumped back as her precious blade clattered to the ground. The pillager stood on top of the blade, clutching the raid banner in one hand and lazily holding his iron sword in the other.
Pearl continued backing away. This cannot be how I die.
He sneered at her, cockily kicking her sword around in the dirt. He looked like he was even weaker than the teenager Pearl had just talked to, really, and she had no doubt that if she could just hit him hard enough he’d go down like a sack of bricks. Unfortunately, he had a sword, and she did not, which did change things quite a bit. If she tried to dive at him, he’d just stab her, and she knew this because she’d just done it to a whole raid party of pillagers.
“Hello again, little queen,” the flag-bearer grinned.
“Hello again, noodle-arms,” Pearl spat back.
“Big talk for the little lady without a sword.” He tsked under his breath. “What, are you out of magic tricks that fool wizard gave you? No more lightning? No more statues or huge waves? I thought you Rulers were supposed to be powerful, where’s the fight without the help?”
Pearl gritted her teeth, desperately searching for a weapon as the pillager continued to wave his sword around. She ignored him as best she could, trying to come up with a plan. There was nothing— she was too far from any of the other bodies to grab an axe or a crossbow, and the branches on the spruce trees wouldn’t come off discreetly.
Just as Pearl was preparing for the desperate final play, a charge that would probably end in her getting stabbed, a flying rainbow blob dropped down from the sky, screeching as loudly as possible, and landed, talons out, directly on the pillager’s face. He screamed, because there was currently a 3-pound parrot clawing and biting his face, and dropped his offensive stance, trying to get the bird away from his eyes. It did not work. The bird was very determined to be as annoying and harmful as possible.
Pearl took the opportunity to push the pillager off her sword. She snatched it up from the dust, her slash wounds from the vex pulling painfully, but nevertheless she assumed a fighting stance. The pillager was scrambling around frantically, so much so that she couldn’t get a good stab in, but it was quite hilarious to watch him flail around with a parrot clawing his face.
“Damn bird!” He screamed, roughly snatching the parrot up by the torso and flinging him away. The bird hit a tree with a small thud, slumping over himself at the base. Pearl’s heart dropped.
“Scarlet!” She yelped. She wanted to make sure he was okay, but this annoying prick would have to go first.
Pearl was right. This guy was even weaker than the teenager she’d accidentally chased off. She disarmed him as soon as he didn’t have the element of surprise and she wasn’t fighting off vertigo from a tsunami crashing into her. Her sword found its home neatly in his chest. She twisted the blade as it went in, cheerfully whispering, “that was for my bird, idiot.”
Said bird was still hunched over at the base of the spruce tree. He was still breathing, and when she went to pick him up and check for wounds, she was relieved to find that he had opened his eyes, though they seemed slightly unfocused and bleary. He looked a little confused, as if he wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten there. Can birds get concussions?
“C’mon there, Scarlet,” she cooed. His talons were bloody— he’d really done a number on that pillager. Somehow, a parrot had just saved her life, which was a little funny to think about, if she really considered it, but nonetheless, it had happened.
Pearl caught sight of his black primaries and sharply inhaled. Suddenly, she remembered what that goddess had told her about Scarlet and black feathers. She frowned. Scarlet really didn’t seem like a demon to her, just… a bird with an attitude? The last time she’d seen him, those black primaries had been completely missing, and he must have flown himself all the way to her. Gem must have healed him up and judged that he merited sending home, or she would have stopped him, unless this bird had healing powers that he’d been hiding to his own inconvenience and hers.
Pearl’s frown vanished as the bird yawned, squawking softly, and fluffed up, climbing onto her arm. She froze. Is he… voluntarily going to let me carry him?
He always seemed to be more comfortable with things like that when he was injured. It was strange; it seemed as though his panic wasn’t a product of being held, since he did voluntarily sit on Pearl’s shoulder, albeit somewhat anxiously, but… it was almost as if he was easier to hold when he didn’t think about it. He was letting his guard down from something, and she suspected her earlier theory about pillagers experimenting with him may have been correct. He really didn’t hesitate to wreck that flag-bearer.
Pearl didn’t think he was a demon at all, really, that goddess seemed… too off for her to be telling the full truth, even though she did feel foolishly excited at the offer of patronage. She didn’t think she’d take it when the goddess came back, as much as it pained her. There was just too much that didn’t line up. Maybe when she came back, she could clear things up— maybe Pearl was wrong about something, but at the moment, it didn’t seem like it. She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t chase a patronage she wasn’t entirely happy with—if she had doubts about this one, then she simply wouldn’t do it. It was fine to stay alone for a bit.
At least she had Scarlet.
She chewed her lip. The marred feathers on Scarlet’s wings were the same sort of all-consuming raven black of the goddess’ hair. His feathers shone slightly, however, some kind of spark hidden in the wing bones, but the goddess’ raven locks, Pearl remembered, reflected no light at all. Strange.
Whatever Scarlet was, he’d just mauled a pillager to death, and Pearl was sporting a broken elytra that she’d have to figure out how to mend as well as several slash marks across her chest and back. Her arms ached something fierce from all the arrows, her ears were ringing from the thunder of the lightning strike she’d released, and she was dripping from the tsunami she’d summoned to get out of the tree. She figured that they could both share a potion and sleep outside for tonight, since she wasn’t… confident in the structural integrity of her house at the moment. A stiff breeze could probably send it crumbling.
Whatever he was, he wasn’t a demon, and he wasn’t just a parrot. Pearl knew that he was her friend, and as she carried him inside to gather her potions and camping supplies, she carefully tried to rearrange the black feathers on his wings so that they wouldn’t be visible under the red.
And besides… even if he was a demon, she was sure she could be friends with a demon. Maybe he just needed a chance. He clearly had good intentions, and she was pretty sure anything that looked even remotely like a parrot had a minimum capacity for serious evil.
Yeah. Friends with a demon. She could do that.
The question continued to bother Gem as she went through her daily routines. What is going on here?
As she left the garden, she made sure her guards knew she was alive and present in the castle, since the last time they’d seen her, she’d kind of been on the verge of doing some very dangerous things. As much as it pained her to admit, Pearl was right— using straightforward godly magic in a fight against evokers wouldn’t end well for her. Evokers were antithetical to everything Ametri stood for. Being there would have hurt Gem a lot, but she still couldn’t help feeling like she could do more.
Gem purposefully didn’t look out of any of the east windows as she trudged to her study. She didn’t want to see what was happening to Pearl’s lands, but she also very much needed to know, but if she looked she’d have to go help, and—
She groaned, dragging her fingers through her hair. It was going to be a long day.
Her study was still how she’d left it, which was to say that it was trashed completely. She frowned and started picking up papers from their haphazard piles on the floor, stuffing them into every available crevice in the room around her so she’d have space to write. Gem was sure none of this was that important. If it was, someone would have yelled at her about it by now.
She tried to write for all of about half an hour before slamming her face into her desk in frustration. How was she supposed to focus when Pearl was fighting a raid right next door and she wasn’t there?
Gem sighed and crammed her quills away, impatiently snapping her fingers to open the secret door. She hummed a jingle under her breath as the false wall vanished in front of her and testily stalked into the cavern. Gem paused at the sight of the shattered crystals on the floor.
“Of course they’re shattered. Of course!” Gem stormed, stomping her foot. She already knew they were shattered, but right now, everything just felt so monumentally annoying and she just wanted to flop down in her bed and pass out and not think about the fact that one of her friends could potentially permanently die right now while she waited and turned a blind eye.
She took a deep breath, counted to three, and exhaled. It helped a little. “Okay, this is fine. I can fix this place up, and then take, like, a nap. Or go to sleep early, depending on when I finish. It’ll give me an excuse to talk to someone anyways.”
Gem made her way to the center island of the cavern where the amethyst pedestal sat. She winced slightly, remembering how panicked Scarlet had looked when he was sitting on this thing, but there was nothing she could do to fix that right now. She just hadn’t thought about it at the time! He was like nothing she’d ever seen, with that weird black projection, plus it’d shattered her crystals, and she didn’t think that could even happen with a spell like that.
Plus, she wasn’t lying about the fact that it was supposed to not hurt. Not that… she wouldn’t lie about that part, just that she didn’t this time. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d accidentally put her curiosity over someone’s feelings. Fwhip often had to remind her that people were, well, people and not just interesting experiments, and she had to remind him the same, sometimes.
Gem summoned the same white sparks in her palms that she’d used for the projection spell, but this time, she laid her staff across the pedestal rather than using it. Immediately, the crystal on the end lit up in a deep purple, bouncing and curious.
“You know the drill,” she told it, smiling in spite of her general annoyance at the world today. Gem cleared her throat.
“Ametrine— Crystal Witch, Keeper of Minds, Lustrous Jewel of the Sky— the Crystal Cliffs and the Grand Wizard request your presence,” she said, the titles and incantation flowing off her tongue like a waterfall. The staff’s glow flashed a bright gold. Gem’s grin widened. She knew they wouldn’t have anything better to do.
In the next split second, Gem’s deity manifested in a shower of gold and silver sparks. They were wearing a full cupcake skirt, layered with many petticoats underneath, and their dark skin shimmered with the telltale luster of their titles. Their hair seemed even fluffier than usual today, as if they’d been preparing for something.
“Gemini!” Ametri squealed, bouncing forward to hug their host. “Oh, stars, it’s been so long, you have to call me more, you little—“
“I get it, I get it,” Gem giggled, detangling herself from their long limbs. They let go, trying to keep their enthusiasm under control, but their deer-like ears were twitching, betraying their excitement. “I’ll call more, I promise, but I do have a reason this time.”
“Oohh, what is it? Do you need—“ Ametri glanced around the cave, suddenly realizing the amount of shattered amethyst underfoot that was scattered throughout the place. “Oh. Is that why?”
“Partially, yes,” Gem nodded. “I, um, tried a spell, and it… broke.”
“Hm. That’s a bit weird, isn’t it?” They bounced back on their heels, scratching their scruffy beard with one hand. “Don’t think that’s s’posed to happen, now is it?”
“Not really, no, but we can fix it, I assume.”
Ametri nodded. “Oh, yes, of course! I just need to know what caused it. A normal repair incantation wouldn’t seal these crystals without addressing what they remember.”
“I figured,” Gem replied, slightly embarrassed. “Well, um, you know Pearl right? Empress of the Meadow, all that jazz?”
Ametri nodded thoughtfully. “Pearlescent Moon. Very sweet woman. I believe I considered her for patronage, but I had my hands full with you, didn’t I?”
Gem snorted. “Yeah, sure. But yes, that’s the one. She came in to ask me to do a projection spell on her parrot, because he was acting weird, and she wanted to know if he’d been a product of some weird evoker experiment.
Ametri’s face soured somewhat at the mention of evokers, sympathy and disgust mixing together in their round features. “Poor thing. I wouldn’t put it past them to attempt a transfiguration spell like that. Go on.”
“Yes, exactly— I assumed they’d tried a transfiguration spell, but, well…” Gem gestured to the ruined crystals around them. “It wasn’t. The projection shouldn’t have hurt him, but when I started it, he looked terrified, frozen in place. It could be that he just didn’t like being restrained, but I should have stopped either way. He didn’t like it, clearly, I should have respected that.”
“Oh, Gem,” Ametri said gently, their jewelry clinking as they stepped forward, “it’s okay. You’ll do better next time. It’s hard not to get too excited, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, a little,” Gem said. Her pale cheeks were flushed the same red as her hair.
“But, um, anyway— the projection worked, but it was very dark. There was a glowing bird, and then he was stuck in some kind of cage. He slipped out of it and fell into the darkness, and then this weird hand came out and called me an insolent magician. It told me to return its “pet,”” Gem made sarcastic air quotes around the word, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t, obviously, and then it reached out and tried to grab Scarlet—er, that’s the bird—but Pearl dove in the way, and so I managed to cut off the spell. I guess that sudden cancellation was too much for the crystals, because they shattered along with the top skylight right when I did that.
Scarlet escaped from the broken skylight, though I didn’t see him go (and his wings were injured, I don’t know how he managed it), and Pearl and I went to go clean up,” Gem said, anxiously playing with her braid. “And that’s how it broke.”
Ametri had gone quiet, staring at the skylight with wide eyes. “Oh, stars,” they exclaimed softly. “A glowing bird, you said?”
Gem nodded hesitantly. “Yeah, why? Is that, like, bad, or—?”
“It’s bad that he’s here, yes.” Ametri turned to her, lips pursed. “Um, ugh, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say anything about this— Aeor will have my head if I talk about an escaped trickster—“
“A what?” Gem cried. “Hang on, Aeor?”
They sighed, smacking their forehead gently with their palm. “Well, that was a bit too much, wasn’t it?”
“Ametri, if you know something about this— we were told by a goddess that he was a demon of some kind, but I didn’t think that was right at all, was I wrong?”
“Oh, a demon? No, no, not at all! He’s… he’s much less temperamental than a demon, but a lot more dangerous. I don’t understand how he would have ended up as a parrot, you said?”
“Yeah, a scarlet macaw, I think. I don’t have much experience with parrots, because I live all the way up here, but… pretty sure he’s a scarlet macaw.”
“Hmm. And… oh, stars, that hand… which goddess told you he was a demon? Stars know that Naia isn’t in any state to give out information, and… that stuck-up floral princess is stuck in the Overgrown, correct? I can’t think of anyone who would lie like that.”
“Pearl only said that she showed up in the middle of the night. I didn’t meet her, but she wanted to speak to Pearl about patronage. Pearl seemed a little… not nervous, exactly, just unsettled? Telling me about her. She was dark, and Pearl didn’t seem to remember coming back to our room.” Gem twirled a stray lock of frizz around her finger, brow furrowed.
If it was possible, Ametri looked even more ill at ease with that revelation. “She offered Pearl patronage? I don’t… she didn’t consider it, did she?”
Gem nodded. “She said she’d think on it? I don’t think she’s going to take it, though, now that—“
Ametri grumbled. Gem blinked. She’d never seen them like this. They were always so bouncy and intrigued by everything, incredibly optimistic and positive. Now, they looked stormy and a little scared, conflicting options flickering in their violet eyes. “Ugh, okay, I… Aeor be damned, I have to help you two. Pearl cannot take that deal. It would consume her.”
“Consume her?” Gem cried, shocked. “What kind of a goddess—“
“Not a goddess at all. That is the Void Herself, the darkness between the wastes incarnate. She seeks to consume the Lady of the Meadow, from what I can tell. She can only provide energy for Herself by stealing power from others, since her domain is so blisteringly occupied by Nothing. Typically, she can only manifest on the darkest nights, the nights of the new moon, but there should still be another day or so until that happens, no? I don’t understand how she…” They fell silent, scratching at their beard. Their amethyst antler jingled with the weight of the pendants they’d draped over it as they tilted their head to the side.
Gem’s hands were shaking. Stars, was Pearl going to be stolen to the Wastes ? She couldn’t picture any force of nature taking her friend anywhere that she didn’t want to go; Pearl always wanted to do things on her own terms, it was partially why she didn’t have a patron yet. She wanted someone who really fit. “Then She’s the one who broke the sanctuary?”
“Most certainly,” Ametri responded solemnly. Their eyes widened as they froze in place. “Oh, stars, I’m a fool.”
“What is it?”
“She took him. All of him,” Ametri whispered, their mouth slightly open. “Of course She did. He must have— okay. Okay, Gemini, you know a bit about the gods, correct?”
“Of course. I try to use knowledge from all of them to teach my students,” Gem said, and she couldn’t help the tinge of pride that tinted her voice. There was power in variety.
They smiled warmly. “Of course you do, dear, you learned that scholarly habit from me— oh, did you ever get those Matral clay dragons working? I swear, antlers like mine would look great on you, or even a wizard’s beard, if you wanted—”
“Um, not to interrupt, but I think you were saying something, Ametri,” Gem said gently. They had a tendency to veer off track easily when asked about something that piqued their interest, like magic.
“Oh, stars, right. Yes. That’s important. So sorry! Anyways, there are smaller gods that aren’t part of our pantheon, which isn’t really common knowledge among mortals, even the Rulers, because Aeor— well, he has his reasons, I suppose. Two of those smaller deities were these tricksters, a jackal and a firebird. They, well, they were tricksters, played pranks and jokes on anyone they could find. Nearly inseparable when they could help it, if one of them was alone, it was a surefire sign that you were about to get scammed. Stole a lot of stuff from the gods. One day they tried to steal Aeor’s antlers, just for fun, and it… didn’t go so well for them. The jackal managed to run from punishment, but the firebird was frozen with Aeor’s ice and caged. He stayed there for centuries as entertainment.” The corners of their lips turned down slightly. “I can’t comment on whether or not I approve of that, but, well. It doesn’t matter. The point is that the firebird escaped a little while back, and Aeor’s been flaming about it— hah, pun unintended. He hasn’t been able to find the bird anywhere, not in the mortal realm or in the divine plains.”
Gem gaped. “You’re saying that Scarlet is this firebird, and… oh, stars, you can’t mean that…”
Ametri nodded grimly, their skirt swaying slightly. “Aeor cannot find the firebird because he isn’t in either of those realms. He escaped straight into Her arms, somehow, and She took his divinity and memories. He’s only a body now and a spark of something else, and when the new moon hits, he’ll be gone entirely, I’m sure of it. With a divine spirit like that, She’ll be able to cut off all contact with any of us in the pantheon, and, ah… maybe take Pearl against her will. I do not know if She would do such a thing, but I tend not to put anything past Her morals.”
“Is there a way to fix it?” Gem asked. No matter what this bird did, she didn’t think anyone deserved that slow of a fading death. She shuddered at the thought of his slick black feathers marring the rainbow of his wings, how they seemed too thin and spindly to support flight.
Ametri hummed quietly. “I think… if you could reach into Her domain and pull some fragments out, he’d be able to retain them. The only problem is that I don’t know how you’d do that without getting lost yourself. Her wastes are made to suck in any lost soul like a spider’s web.”
Gem sighed in irritation. “Ugh, yeah, I see… is there anything else we could do for him?”
Ametri frowned. “I don’t know… let me think on it. Do you want to raise this sanctuary again while we brainstorm?”
“It’d give us something to do, I guess,” Gem shrugged.
Ametri smiled, though it didn’t quite thaw the worry in their eyes. “Yes, yes! You remember how to do it, yes?”
“‘Course.”
“To use your words, ‘epic,’” Ametri said. Gem scoffed and held out her staff.
Ametri took the handle, placing their right hand over Gem’s, and both of the wizards closed their eyes. This incantation didn’t use words, which was why Gem loved it. The magic that just felt right was her favorite, no matter how neatly and clearly the words of incantations drifted through the air. She loved reading the scrolls, learning pronunciations and lilting letters, but there was just something so sweet and happy about a spell based in feeling. It was like being a little kid splashing around in puddles.
Gem closed her eyes, allowing herself to simply feel the amethyst energy roll over her shoulders. It soothed her, calmed her mind, and she took a deep breath before opening her eyes to take in the repairing crystals. The little shards on the ground were glowing faintly, wriggling towards each other like magnets, as if they were alive. When the crystals touched, their seams knitted smoothly back together, warm gold light spilling from the newly-fixed seams.
Soon, the crystals were airborne again. Helpfully, no mobs had found their way in through the skylight or the windows, though she was sure she’d probably find a spider or two later that she’d need to get rid of.
Ametri was glowing a light lilac-pink color, their eyes mirroring the aura. They smiled as they looked around, their ears pricking upwards in delight. “Never gets old, does it?”
“Not really,” Gem responded, similarly awestruck. She closed her eyes again, trying to savor the taste of the spell on her tongue.
A hand grabbed her wrist, startling her out of her reverie. Wide, solid purple eyes met her own. “Wait, Gem— Gem, he’s a god. Pearl doesn’t have a patron. She could— she could choose him!”
“Oh,” Gem said, her mouth slightly agape. “Oh! Oh, stars, stars, do you think that’d work? Would she want to?”
Ametri paused at that. “Hm… well, the firebird is obviously a bit of a troublemaker, but you said Pearl had named him as a parrot, right? If she’s friendly with him now, I can’t see that changing much, even without his memories. He’s a less powerful deity, especially now that She’s stolen his power… would Pearl want someone stronger?”
“No, no.” Gem’s lips curled upwards into a hesitant smile. “No, Pearl wants to do everything herself. Wouldn’t even let me help her with a pillager raid on her home earlier. And, yeah, she seems to care quite a bit for him, I think? That… that might work. Ultimately, it’d be her choice.”
“It would kill two birds with one stone,” Ametri offered. Their nose scrunched as they realized what they’d just said. “Pardon the phrasing, but—it would protect Pearl from harassment on Her part, and it may give the firebird a chance at regaining his spirit.”
“Okay. Yeah. What kind of ritual item would he use…?”
They grinned, their hair bouncing. “Oh, that’s easy.”
Ametri twirled and snapped their fingers. Within seconds, a beam of sunset light streaming through the newly repaired skylight pooled in their hand. They blew on it gently. It cooled into a prism, emitting a soft white glow and reflecting rainbow light.
Gem took the prism from their hands. “Wow. This… this’ll work?”
Ametri nodded. “It should. If Pearl decides to go this route, however, she must perform that patronage ritual before She gets to either of them. I don’t think she quite values your Scarlet’s life, considering… what She likes to do to the humans in the Wastes.”
“Yeah,” Gem agreed, “I really would prefer my best friend and her parrot un-end-ified, thanks.”
Ametri bit their lip, flapping their hands nervously. “Ah— I suppose, if you’re doing a ritual, I have to give you the firebird’s Name, then.”
“Oh, right.” Gem cleared her throat awkwardly. “I won’t do anything bad with it, I promise.”
“I know, I know, it just feels… weird,” Ametri responded. “It shouldn’t be my secret to tell.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Gem said regretfully, “if this fails, he’ll definitely die. Those feathers did not look good at all.”
“You’re right.”
Ametri leaned in and whispered the name to Gem. It was strangely similar to learning Ametri’s name, but that could have been because Gem didn’t know any other gods’ names. Regardless, the words ignited a flame in her chest, thawing her limbs from a cold she hadn’t even remembered feeling. It sort of took her breath away. She had to pant a little bit to get the air to stick in her lungs.
“Jeez, that’s like hot sauce,” Gem said, struggling for breath.
Ametri laughed musically. “Oh, you baby. It’s not that bad!”
They tilted their head, their teasing expression fading. “I think I have to go now. I don’t want—well, Aeor, he’s very particular about his secrets, and—ah, he was technically the only one who knew the firebird’s name, besides the jackal, I think—but, well, you see, he let it slip during a meeting, trying to get the bird to sit still and stop trying to melt his cage—“
Ametri’s mouth snapped shut. Their eyes were wild as they rocked back and forth on their heels; Gem knew that meant they were trying to figure out if they’d said too much. She figured they probably had. Gem smiled softly. “It’s fine, Lord Lustrous. You don’t need to tell me everything. You’ve done enough.”
The deity stared at her. Without warning, they launched forward and wrapped Gem in a crushing hug. They smelled of lilac flowers and paper (not that Gem could get a good breath in with their surprisingly strong arms wrapped around her torso), and their skirt was unimaginably soft.
“Thank you, Grand Wizard,” Ametri said, “and good luck to all of you. You can fix this mess. I know you can.”
Ametri released their hold on her chest and saluted her with two fingers as they vanished into a cloud of glittery purple smoke. It smelled of lilacs.
Gem laughed to herself. It wasn’t often that she saw Ametri these days—she was just so busy teaching her students, rarely left any time for deity chats—but every time she did, it was a pleasure.
The crystals behind her glowed as she left her room behind, her strides armed with the knowledge that she’d needed to save her best friend and a lost godling.
Gem had to get to Pearl’s base right away. The night was creeping in fast, and she needed to hurry if she wanted to explain before She showed up.
The Void. Stars, was that really the Void herself? The Void had taken an interest in Pearl?
Well, she always did say that she was special, I guess, Gem thought jokingly.
Her best bet for fast travel would be her spare elytra and the tops of the towers that littered her base. The eastmost tower would work well, if she could get there quick enough.
And, well, if she had to hope that there was a conspicuous lack of dead human bodies at the site, then that’s what she had to do.
The elytra fit snugly over her shoulders as she snatched it from a chest, haphazardly grabbing up a sword for good measure. Gem didn’t have time to put on any armor, but with any luck, she wouldn’t need it. The sun was nearly dipped to the horizon now, painting the sky in delicate reds and purples and pinks. It was beautiful, but she didn’t have time to stop.
Gem didn’t think twice before bolting out of the armory full-speed down the east corridors. As she ran, the elytra chimed on her back—they appeared to be made of amethyst now, as they bounced into her peripherals—and her sword smacked her hip. She got a few weird looks from the stationed guards as she skidded around a corner far too quickly for someone wearing heeled boots, and a group of students looked like they had seen a ghost when she barreled through their conversation with a hurried shout of “excuse me, sorry!”
It wasn’t very teacher-like, she’d admit, but her decorum went out the window fairly quickly in emergencies, anyway, and if that’s what it took to save Pearl from some all-consuming entity of hungry darkness, then that’s just what she had to do.
Gem slid into the eastward tower in record time—so much record time, in fact, that she ended up smacking her head on the spiral staircase in front of her. Her elytra hit the ground with her shoulders and a loud tinkling protest groaned underneath her weight. She sat up, rubbing her forehead, eyes scrunched tightly closed.
“Ow,” she muttered. “Wizard’s beards, that stings. No running in the halls is a thing for a reason, I guess.”
Gem opened her eyes.
Or at least, she thought she did.
She blinked. The entire room had gone pitch-dark. There was no difference between open or shut eyes. She couldn’t make out any distinguishing features of the room anymore, couldn’t see the sunset through the window, couldn’t even see her own hand in front of her face.
“Um, hello?” Gem called, her voice rising nervously. “Is—did someone turn the lights out or something?”
No response. The tower remained eerily silent. She stood up, shakily throwing her arms out in front of her to feel around her surroundings.
Just as her hands touched the stone steps she’d hit her head on, a hand grabbed her shoulder. Gem shrieked, her hand falling to her hip to yank her sword out of its sheath. A smoky, wheezing laugh filled the air.
Hello, then.
“What the—“
Ah, ah, ah! Quiet. We need you quiet.
“I don’t think so,” Gem sniffed indignantly. She unsheathed her sword, feeling the edges in her hands, even if she couldn’t see the blade itself. “Stay back, whoever you are.”
The thing snorted. Its voice was layered eerily, noise upon noise upon noise stacked on top of each other. As if you could aim for us now.
“Oh, shut up!”
Well, either way, Grand Wizard, you’re stuck here. Our mistress told us to keep you here until she’s done with that little grain girl. The voices unanimously dripped with contempt on the Grand Wizard part of the sentence.
Gem’s eyes widened. “You—“
Yes, oh beacon of knowledge. We are Hers. You’re not getting out of here.
Oh no, Gem thought, and then, she was falling, nothing but darkness around her and nothing but a sword in her hands.
The bird’s feathers ruffled as the sun went down. Something was wrong. The air tasted like… rot, like death, like decay.
He blinked, both trying to figure out what exactly it was and trying to prepare himself for the change. Thankfully, Pearl was asleep. She deserved the rest. He didn’t mind the blood in his feathers if that horrible pillager was dead.
Scarlet stared off into the sky. He blinked again as the answer hit him.
No stars.
The moon and stars were gone. The new moon had risen.
Notes:
SORRY FOR SPLITTING THE FINALE CHAPTER. it was going to be. SO long. and i didn’t want to leave you guys hanging for that long!! i’ll get the last one to you asap i prommy
(my friends made me put my empiressona into this chapter and i think he’s a pathetic wet rag of a man. just so you know.)
Chapter 6: i won’t be sleeping, there’s too many monsters in the backyard
Notes:
HEY GUYSSS hiii hiiiiiii um. this is long. haha. um. shuffles my notecards. THERE ARE SOME CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:
tw: emetophobia (vomiting), mild description of parasitic possession (like the venom symbiote a bit?), mild descriptions of violence and gore, mild mind manipulation, mild memory manipulation, mild derealization (a literal trip down memory lane), temporary character death
if any of these things squick you out, please leave a comment and i’ll tell ya what you can skip and provide a summary of the events!
otherwise, this really is the final chapter. seeya on the other side :^)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Honestly, if Gem wasn’t so constitutionally averse to swearing, the empty tower might have been fully cleared by the sheer force of the expletives she currently wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. It would be a funny thought, taking down the Void’s minions by simply shouting swear words at them, if she wasn’t currently entrenched in a situation where that laughably stupid train of thought was her only plan.
Correction. Not her only plan. Her current plan A was to fall and scream, which was arguably a worse plan.
Her sword was still flailing with her hands as the wind whipped around her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to catch her breath and her wits, failing to ensnare either boon.
The violent crunching of crystals along her spine threw the realization that she was currently wearing wings directly into her face again. Suddenly, she didn’t know how she’d forgotten about the elytra she’d equipped to fly to Pearl’s—this could be her saving grace, if she could just… calm down. Breathe. Breathe!
Gem slowly opened her eyes. The tower was as pitch-dark as before, unfortunately, meaning that she had to be incredibly careful about how she timed this. If she deployed the wings too fast, they’d hit the walls and shatter, and if she was too slow, they wouldn’t help her fall at all. The darkness did not help her directional gauging skills at all, let alone the fact that she also had no idea how fast or far she was falling. That was probably by the shadows’ design, now that she thought about it. They would have wanted her to panic like this. The thought that this was what they wanted was enough to help her steel her resolve, clutch the ends of her elytra tightly, and pull.
The crystalline structure miraculously held the weight of the flowing air as she fell, slowing her down. Gem nearly rocketed backwards into a wall as the first wave of momentum hit, but she threw her sword out behind her as hard as she could to break the impact, saving her elytra from taking the brunt of the attack. Diamond screeched against stone as the blade grated on the tower’s walls and Gem went flying forward. It was kind of like going caving, like that one time she and Fwhip had found a ravine and jumped in with two leads as their only tether to the surface. If she focused on that rather than the all-consuming darkness, she could almost convince herself that she wasn’t about to die.
With a jolt, her sword slid into the wall’s stones with a loud screech. She stopped falling. Tentatively, she opened her eyes. Now what?
Gem inquisitively ran her hands along what she assumed was a wall in front of her. The stone was colder than usual, its roughness stark against her fingertips. The shadows must have done something to this tower in order for her to fall like that—the tower wasn’t even that tall. Something more was going on here.
If only she could see.
A claw ran a chilling edge along her spine. She flinched, gasping as she clenched her fists around the hilt of her sword.
You’re never leaving, the swarm hummed, or, at least, not until she’s gone.
“Gods above, can you go back to being quiet?”
That earned a laugh, though it was eerie and full of malice. It filled the air like viscous, vicious molasses, making Gem cringe as the sound slithered into her eardrums. Mmm. Feisty. Didn’t expect an academic to be so… fiery.
“Yeah, well, maybe, if you wanted me to be more passive, you shouldn’t have tried to kidnap and—and assimilate my friend, you idiots!”
The amusement rolled off the darkness in waves. Another claw tugged at her braid enough to make her sword slip against the wall where it was stuck. She yelped and shoved against the handle, wedging it back between the bricks. Her elytra jingled against her back, a musical warning.
Amethyst from her patron. Amethyst. Okay. She was an amethyst wizard, the Grand Wizard of the Crystal Cliffs. She was strong and capable and a little bit of darkness wasn’t going to beat her for good. She was Gemini Tay, born of magic, and she declared that this was stupid.
These shadows didn’t seem to obey any kind of magical law. They hadn’t said any incantation, and though Gem knew a few antigravity spells, this was different. These beings weren’t made of magic like the old creatures, like the elven people of Rivendell—no, when she took a breath and reached out, there was simply nothing there. This was the cold isolation of the Wastes, the very place she’d retrieved the crystalline wings that settled restlessly on her back. The endless stars, endless souls of the End Wastes had been replaced with pure malice. Nothing remained, no human souls to help, no Celestial stars above.
Gem blinked, nearly dropping her sword. She could just summon a light. That was generally one of the things she was quite good at, summoning lights, considering the entirety of her empire had floating, glowing crystals to drive off mob attacks.
She hesitated before moving to cast, however. The last time she’d cast a spell and the Void had gotten involved, she’d ended up nearly killing Pearl and maiming Scarlet. Gem really did not want that to happen right now, to her, in an isolated tower that nobody could enter without presumably getting trapped inside with her. Plus, her staff was somewhere lost in the endless depths below—she’d dropped it when moving for her sword. She’d have to summon it without the help of her patron’s token gift, a more difficult endeavor requiring more concentration and stability. Unfortunately, she didn’t see any other option.
Gem took a deep breath in. The shadows shifted around her, possibly about to begin heckling her again, or worse, trying to grab at her.
She stared directly ahead, gingerly freeing her left hand from its grip around her sword hilt. Her right arm shook with the exertion of holding her whole body above the chasm. It was now or never.
“Lux,” she whispered. Gentle white sparks ignited around her hands. Gem clenched her jaw and focused on the remaining bits of her energy and resolve to find Pearl again.
A hard purple amethyst burned into existence in front of her. Horrible hissing noises began to scratch through the air as the shadows shrank back from the harsh violet glow. Gem caught sight of a window at eye level from where she was hanging.
Gods, she didn’t even know if that thing led anywhere. Her arm felt like it was going numb.
The shadows screeched, finally gathering their collective courage again. They clambered to snatch her amethyst, their raking claws yanking and tearing at her composure and her skin. Gem’s last light went out with a sputter, obscuring her view of the window.
“No!”
The room melted and shifted, laughing at her. Foolish wizard. Your parlor tricks mean nothing. You will not escape to free her.
If Gem wasn’t constitutionally averse to swearing, oh. Oh the words she would have been having with this thing right then.
As it was, she kept silent. She knew what she’d have to do.
She’d have to jump.
If she was to have a way out of this tower, she would have to jump to the window across from her. Her elytra couldn’t help her much with a level leap like that, and she would have to leave her sword and staff, which was irritating, but it was her only option.
Now was a great time to thank the gods she wasn’t scared of heights, really. Gem squared her shoulders as best she could while dangling from her sword, gathering her courage.
She swung backwards, hitting her back against the wall to gain momentum. A horrid shattering sound crackled as she made impact, the sound of broken amethyst. Gem cringed as her elytra shattered, but she had to keep going. She flattened herself on the stone walls, poised to spring.
The shadows realized too late what she was doing. By the time they reached out to stop her, she’d already let go of the sword and sprung into the air.
The window was not open before she hit it, but after, it definitely was, and if that opening involved body slamming a glass pane so hard that it shattered, Gem still considered it a win. She stumbled out of the tower into the extinguished night, perched precariously on the windowsill with glass shards lodged in her skin and a stinging pain in her shoulder.
The moon was gone, stars blinked out. Her crystals, so like the one that she’d summoned to help her, were fading and flickering under the power of the new moon. Spiders and skeletons were wandering the roofs of the towers. She’d have to run damage control later.
A clawed, sharp hand grabbed hold of her throat from behind. Gem choked, gasping for air as it dragged her back into the dark tower.
Clever little thing. We said you’re not leaving. Now stay.
“No,” Gem panted, clawing at the hand around her neck. “I’m not a dog!”
She bit it. The thing recoiled, obviously surprised, and its grip loosened. That was all she needed. Gem threw herself forward, breaking the hold on her throat and landing back on the windowsill, and she was free, free, free—
And she was falling, oh gods, stars she was falling—
The momentum of her escape had gained her her freedom but lost her her balance in one fell swoop. She tumbled out of the tower at breakneck pace, her elytra dangling uselessly to stop her fall.
In a panic, she searched her pockets for any kind of solution as the ground drew closer and closer. Come on, anything, anything.
Her fingers closed around a clay figurine.
“Violet!” Gem cried, tossing the homunculus into the air. “Viva!”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Falling was such a bad way to die, even if she’d respawn—and she didn’t have time to respawn— please, Violet had to work—
Her thoughts were interrupted by a strong roar. Gem screamed in delight, scrambling for a grip as Violet’s dark scales appeared under her. The full-fledged dragon beat her powerful wings, carrying them higher and faster into the sky.
Gem whooped. “Violet! I’m so proud of you, oh my goodness! To the east, quickly, girl!”
Violet swooped down over the plaza square, sending huge bursts of wind pulsing through the air with her massive leathery purple wings. A particularly early or foolhardy vendor screeched as she sent his cabbage cart into an overturned frenzy. Gem called out an apology that was probably lost in the wind as they zoomed past the plaza and into the horizon.
She pulled her communicator out of her pocket, praying to any god that happened to be listening that it had remained undamaged in the scuffle. To her delight and a stroke of positively divine luck, the crack that ran across the screen seemed to only run skin-deep on the little device. Quickly, she typed out a warning message to Pearl, explaining everything as best she could. Gem didn’t know how much she knew, but given what the shadows had said, it was possible the Void was currently at her friend’s doorstep, just waiting for a chance.
Find Pearl. Make a plan. Banish Void.
We’ve got this.
Pearl awoke to a small shift. She was instantly alert, staring up at the sky from her makeshift cot. It was dark still, but she felt mostly well-rested—strange. It took her a few seconds to realize what exactly woke her up.
Firstly, the stars were completely blank. Secondly, the moon was hollow, emptied of all substance. The darkness around her was all-encompassing; if she didn’t have such a big clearing to sleep in, she wouldn’t be able to see a thing . As it stood, she could only see the dim light coming from the glow berries planted around her fields and the depth of shadows cast by the forest and its trees.
Something told her she shouldn’t move. So she stayed quiet, eyes lightly closed, hand curled around the sword at her side, and listened.
She had no clue what she was listening for, but she knew it instantly when she heard it. It was a quiet whispering, layers and layers of loose voices all condensed into a single current of air. It blew through the clearing, too quiet to make out but too loud to fully ignore even if she wanted to.
There was a ringing, venomous laugh from somewhere to her right. She kept her eyes shut.
Little songbird, you’re out of time, aren’t you?
Silence. The laugh came again. Mm. Your spirit is misplaced.
Pearl’s hand tightened around her sword. She didn’t like not being able to see who she was close to, even if she knew who was talking. There was only one person she’d ever seen talk like that—the goddess who’d lied.
Another beat of silence. Pearl inched out of her bedroll as quietly as she could, moving as if one of Joey’s raptors was after her. Her sword was still clutched in her fist. She dared not look behind her to where the voice was coming from.
Suddenly, the world blanked out even further. The glow berries that lit up the inside of her house were completely dark, snuffed out in an instant. Without hesitation, Pearl shot to her feet and sprinted towards where she knew her house was. She counted herself lucky that she didn’t have her armor on. It would only give her away here.
Slowly, the thick, souplike darkness began trickling away from the air, gathering around a specific presence again. Pearl dove behind the horse stable before the lack of a smokescreen could give her position away. It didn’t seem like the goddess was paying any attention to her right now, but she’d said something else, something about a songbird…
Pearl’s realization was punctuated by a loud clanging noise and a laugh. If that was what— who— she thought it was—
She whipped her head around and over the side wall of the stables. Through the gap in the wood, she could just barely make out a dark, foggy shape with a distinct pointed hat and a form-fitting black gown. And then, to her surprise, the colors of a scarlet macaw stood out even across the clearing, though… the wings were huge, big enough to carry a person, easily 10 feet across even halfway extended like they were now. She couldn’t make out enough of the scene to get a full sense of the commotion’s source, but the sound was familiar enough. Whatever the macaw-like creature had done, it had been an attempt at an attack that had clanged off of some hidden armor that the goddess held.
Stars, was that Scarlet? Gem’s vision had shown him as a humanoid, after all, but she couldn’t be sure with all the fog around and the light of the sky completely out. Pearl hoped it wasn’t Scarlet. She really didn’t want to see what a goddess could do to an already-injured bird, though with all this darkness floating in the air, she was starting to get a sickening feeling that she’d already seen it.
The goddess snarled. “ Mind those talons of yours, boy. You made a deal when you entered my domain. You should be dead. But no, I saw a use for you, and you repay me by running? You dare sink those pitiful little needles into my dress? You failed to even get me a new accessory. What kind of a weakling, pathetic little godling are you? With a snap of my fingers, do you know what I could do to you?”
Another clanging noise rang out. Pearl flinched. She really hoped that the thing hadn’t just—
“Right. I’ll take that as a yes.”
Pearl heard the snap. She drew in on herself, trying to block out the sound with her hands. To no avail, but it didn’t matter either way; the clearing was suddenly deathly silent. Too silent. It was worse than the horrid, grating voice of the goddess across the clearing, Pearl found.
In a moment of horrible timing, her communicator buzzed softly in her pocket. She stiffened, biting her lip to keep from screaming or squeaking at the noise. The buzzing was incredibly audible in the clearing’s dead silence, as was the shift of the hollow lady’s dress against the dirt as she turned towards the noise. Pearl mentally kicked herself for forgetting to mute her comms.
Quickly, she ducked down under the stable walls again and risked a glance at the screen she was holding. If the goddess was going to find her, she would do it with or without the communicator screen’s glow, and Pearl needed to know if this was at least important. Instantly, she was glad she’d looked—it was a message from Gem.
<GeminiTay:> PEARL I GOT LOCKED IN A WEIRD TOWER WITH A BUNCH OF SENTIENT SHADOWS THEY WORK FOR THAT GODDESS WHO WANTS YOUR PATRONAGE IS ACTUALLY THE VOID AND SHE’S TRYING TO MAKE YOU HER VESSEL. SCARLET IS A FALLEN GODLING AND AMETRI GAVE ME HIS NAME I’M ON THE WAY NOW WITH VIOLET. STALL FOR TIME IF YOU NEED TO BUT I WILLBE THEFER TOBHELP
Pearl’s first reaction was rather ridiculous, all things considered: Who is Violet?
Her second reaction, beyond that astute observation, was complete and utter bafflement. Pearl blinked at the message. That was… a lot to take in, actually, but she could roll with the punches. Three things: the goddess can control shadows, Pearl should not become her host (not that she was much inclined to the role, anyway), and most strangely, Scarlet was a fallen godling. She swallowed a lump of anxiety in her throat and took a deep breath. That meant that the strange creature who the goddess—the Void—had just silenced was likely her bird—her friend .
“Pearl? Pearl,” the Void called, the words dripping with concern that Pearl knew to be faulty. “Please come out. I don’t want you to get lost in all this darkness.”
Stall for time. Like Gem said.
Pearl cleared her throat and stood, chin up, shoulders back (just like Scott stood when Aeor was there to inspect him, same guarded expression). “I’m here. What matters do you wish to discuss?”
The glow berries flickered back to life, but Pearl couldn’t take her eyes off the Void. Her face, illuminated by the orange glow, was twisted and different. She seemed to have some kind of skull fused to her face—not a human one, more like a wolf—and her bottom jaw had huge, long fangs spiking upward and ending just below her eyes. The eye sockets and nose of the skull appeared to go over her face like a mask. She smiled, baring her fangs, and then Pearl’s vision blinked and it was all gone.
“Sorry. Sometimes I forget to put that away,” the not-really-a-goddess said smoothly. “Now, are you going to invite me in?”
Pearl stepped aside, trying her best not to fumble in the dim light as she walked up the porch stairs. “Sorry for the mess,” she said, without much of an apology behind it, “we had… a bit of an incident earlier.”
Standing in her kitchen, Pearl could see the face of the deity better. No half-skull flickered over her cheekbones, but she could clearly observe her as she arched her brow. “We?”
“Yes,” Pearl said, and did not elaborate. Her silence did not go unnoticed. The raven-haired woman inclined her head to ask for more information. Pearl refused to give it to her.
“...Right, then. I trust it isn’t that demon, correct? The insolent one, the one who—tried to take a swing at me.” She smiled smugly and Pearl realized that she already knew the answer to her own question.
Pearl didn’t answer. She busied her hands by making tea, slowly and steadily boiling water over the fireplace. She was being watched like a hawk, the dark gaze of the woman—the Void— behind her burning through her back. Pearl ignored the heat, refusing to melt, imitating the cold, stark mountains on the horizons of her valley. Nevertheless, she wished Gem would get to her soon. She could use the backup to handle this.
“You do know the danger of keeping him around. I warned you, Pearl. He will ruin you,” the Void said, her voice taking the same slightly patronizing, smug tone it always held. Pearl bristled at the comment but didn’t dignify it with a response, continuing to ignore the dark presence in her living room. “I know you think I’m a liar, but he has many godly enemies, child. I was not exaggerating. His friends and allies assume him dead. They mourn. His enemies know better. They are furious.”
Pearl finally turned, a cup of tea in hand, and slowly sipped from the chipped ceramic mug. It had been a gift from Lizzie. The Ocean Queen wasn’t the most skilled of potters, but it was a sweet gift, and it functioned as well as any cup. It was lumpy and glazed unevenly with a dull cyan and a patchy pink that seemed as though it had stolen all the color from the cyan dye. Pearl adored it. She was not in the business of abandoning things that seemed ugly. “I’ve thought about your offer, ma’am.”
The woman arched her brow. “And? Your response?”
Pearl set down the mug after another long sip. “I think,” she said, leveling her gaze with the infinitely dark eyes posed across from her, “that I am better off alone for now. Thank you for the offer, but I am managing well without a patron.”
She scoffed, raking her sharp fingernails across a huge gash in an oak support beam. Pearl continued to meet her eyes, unflinching, though her hands were growing clammy. She didn’t like the way the atmosphere was shifting. The air seemed to be growing thicker, more angry; she was walking a line as thin and sharp as a blade with a height twice the size of her mountains.
“I suppose I cannot change your mind, then, Pearlescent Moon?” The woman sighed. Pearl shook her head.
“Fine,” she conceded, after a beat of tense silence, “it is your choice.”
Pearl unclenched her hands. Her fingernails had been cutting tiny crescents into the skin of her palms.
Then the woman smiled, though it seemed more like a baring of teeth than an expression of contentment to Pearl, her face once again flickering into the visage of a skull. Pearl’s hand immediately jumped to the netherite sword she’d placed on the counter, lying in wait.
“Though, it is a quite unfortunate choice, I will say,” the woman said, and her voice unfolded , screaming through the dark and dark and dark as the glow berries in the house dimmed. The echo bounced unnaturally across the oak and spruce, the moss withering and cowering beneath her cutting words. Suddenly, Pearl had no doubt this was the god, the demon, the something, that had shattered Gem’s spell, sent Scarlet flying, stolen the power of a god and kept him as a pet. Desperately, Pearl grabbed a bunch of lustrous berries and crushed them between her palms, emitting a dim glow from her hands where the shining juice sparkled. Her impulse proved useful as the rest of the vines hissed into the hungry, unnatural night, but the juice on her palms remained bright enough to lend her some comfort and visibility.
The only part of the woman that she could still see was the grinning fangs of the golden skull when the shadows began to laugh, slashing and hissing as they grabbed the vines from the roof of her house and ripped them from their roots, leaving them discarded and limp on the planks of the floor. They crowded her, squeezing the life from her skin, endlessly inviting and endlessly terrible. Pearl untangled herself from the sudden mess of semi-corporeal forms around her, gasping for air that didn’t feel thick and squirming as it worked its way into her lungs, only to direct her glare at the same macabre mask, illuminated by the glow from her hands.
“It is also unfortunate,” the woman continued, her voice still as smooth as ever even without lips or a tongue to form the words, the grinning skull frozen in a cruel sneer, “that your friend has just arrived.”
Pearl’s eyes widened as she realized someone was approaching the porch door. The house creaked, the shadows pulled and pulled the vines, and Pearl realized what was happening a second before it did. She snatched up her sword and bolted out of the collapsing house as best she could, staggering on the last step before the porch, and completely bowled Gem over in what amounted to a flying tackle onto the ground as her house imploded behind her.
Violet touched down just outside of Pearl’s land, partially hidden by the forest. Gem squinted in the darkness, trying to make out if anything was happening outside the farmhouse, but she could barely see the house itself, let alone any movement or even any mobs. No rattle of skeletons nor the hissing of errant spiders pierced the darkness of the forest, which was strange, but Gem didn’t have time to think about it—she was on a mission.
She laid a hand on Violet’s muzzle. “Thank you, Violet. Your work is done.”
Violet sniffed at her hand, nuzzling her, and then shrank back into a clay figurine. Gem slipped the sculpture into her dress pocket and stared out over the land, contemplating what to do next.
She still didn’t have her staff. Any spells she’d cast would have to come directly from her, and a light would draw attention to her right now; however, the only light she could see was the dim glow of the berries that Pearl grew around her house. The only thing she could do in this kind of all-consuming darkness was hope she didn’t hit a root and fall on her face immediately.
Cautiously, she lit a small purple crystal in her hand, concentrating intently on the simple spell. Gem was mildly out of practice with hand-casting, a fact she was coming to regret as she caught her breath from the effort of the magic, but her lungs quickly loosened and she could breathe again. Slowly, she advanced on Pearl’s farmhouse, trying to be as quiet as possible. Those shadows could pop out of anywhere, as could the Void.
Gem was almost to the door when the glow berries blew out. She straightened in surprise, the crystal in her hand flickering a bit with the spell, and then Pearl flung herself out of the house and directly into Gem’s chest.
The sudden weight knocked the breath out of Gem and broke her concentration. Her amethyst fizzled and died as she wheezed on the ground, Pearl’s head solidly slamming her stomach. A massive cracking and twisting of wood thundered from beside them; Gem assumed it must be the house.
Pearl panted, her palms glowing with an unknown, vividly orange substance. Gem gasped under her weight, trying to untangle herself and catch her breath enough to ask about what had happened.
“She’s here,” Pearl said simply. “She knows you’re here.”
Gem knew the situation was dire. She knew that already. She could handle this. She could do this! “Right, yeah,” she croaked. “I figured.”
A slow laugh trickled from the rubble of Pearl’s house as the Void herself leaked out of the night. Her golden bones glinted with the light of Pearl’s hands. Reminded of her own spell, Gem summoned more crystals, sending them flying around the clearing and finally illuminating the whole of the land where Pearl’s kingdom had stood hours before. Pearl scrambled to her feet, clutching her sword in her fist as best she could. Gem was still wearing her armor, thankfully, but she had no weapon, and Pearl’s netherite was laying next to her open sleeping cot.
And as Pearl focused on the Void, Gem realized something else was happening in one of the distant edges of the clearing. A humanoid man was kneeling, his form illuminated by the light she managed to keep up with her crystals. His shoulders were shaking with some form of silent exertion. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of the blackened, slicked feathers that clung to his feverish skin and the similarly snuffed out pair of enormous wings that sprouted from his shoulder blades; among the voided feathers, spots of bright scarlet and yellow and indigo shone. It was definitely Scarlet.
Void and stars, she couldn’t do anything about that right now. She was concentrating on the lights, trying to find them a magical anchor anywhere in the vicinity so they could act independently, but it was rough. All essence of godly power seemed to have been sucked from the surrounding atmosphere, even the all-powerful Celestial magic of the world itself seemed to have vanished completely. On top of that, Pearl and the Void were clearly facing off to fight. Gem guessed that they’d already had a discussion about patronage from the snarl bared on Pearl’s face. From that expression, she probably knew what, exactly, the Void had done to Scarlet, too, which was a lot more than Gem knew.
Her hypothesis proved correct in about ten seconds when Pearl lunged forward, brandishing her sword, and the Void had the audacity to laugh. The dark woman caught the blade in her hands and twisted, forcing Pearl to fall back, bouncing on her heels as she skidded in the dirt. Gem huffed under her breath, still desperately trying to anchor the lights so she could help as soon as she was done.
There—!!
A spot of magic, just enough. The stars smiled, flashed a grin for a split second, and Gem grabbed hold of the opportunity they gave her with the ferocity of a starving animal. The lights anchored themselves to the spark contentedly, humming softly with lazy amethyst light. Gem looked up sharply, her braid nearly flipping over her face, to see Pearl sprawled on the ground with the Void leaning over her, a sickening screeching noise screaming through the clearing as Pearl held her hands against the netherite blade, trying to keep dark, razor-sharp claws from raking across her face.
Gem felt her power flourish as she took a determined step forward and shouted, sending a purple blast towards the Void that knocked her off-balance and away from Pearl. Attack spells were easier, somehow; less concentration, she figured, a shorter duration than lights. Purple sparks licked eagerly at her hands as she summoned another burst of magic. “Come on,” she demanded, “pick on someone your own size, you… you vulture.”
Unnervingly, the Void grinned. “Wizard. There’s your little parlor tricks.”
“Too bad this isn’t your house, then,” Gem said, “…or, something. A parlor is part of a house, right?”
Pearl looked at her like she was crazy. Gem blinked, refocusing on the task at hand— right. Void lady. We have to beat her up.
She strung up an amethyst blast, making sure her breathing aligned correctly and that she didn’t send herself to an unpleasant respawn with amethyst in her lungs, and lashed outward with the white-hot magic that pooled and flowed around her hands. The Void’s shadows hissed on the outskirts of her floating lights, but didn’t advance any further. Like mobs, they were afraid of it. Gem briefly considered that it might blind them as Pearl hefted her sword to her left. Whatever the case, it was holding the shadows back, and it absolutely was not holding back the Void herself.
No, the Void was facing them, the full, grotesque glory of her bared skull and saber-like fangs catching the light of Gem’s spell. The golden material was metallic, almost like real gold; as Gem advanced, she could see little refractions of herself and Pearl in its surface.
She shook her head, making sure her concentration stayed intact. Gem could feel Pearl’s footfalls thumping next to her, easy as breathing. She slipped into the rhythm of walking, and together the two rulers surged forward, powerful as a wave to meet the tempest that brewed over the horizon
It was all a blur, at first. The Void was fast, for all her vastness, and her attacks stung like the nettles that Joel liked to use as pranks on occasion. It was all Gem could do just to keep up with the speed of attacks, using her blast like a coiled rope to block the materialized darkness that was being flung at her and Pearl. The shadows may have been held at bay, but the Void apparently had her own claws, and they hit like a full-force wave.
Pearl slid behind their attacker, smooth as silk, and Gem covered her instinctively, summoning a huge blast of amethyst shards. The Void deflected her projectiles with a wave of her fist, but Pearl managed to get in a good hit to her shoulder blades before she was forced to fall back to avoid the swiping, hungry claws that came her way. Pearl ducked under the claws as Gem took advantage of the opening. Another wave of sharp crystals flung themselves at the Void while her back was turned, dealing with Pearl, but again, they mostly bounced off. Gem noted with some satisfaction that a small trickle of nebulaic blood was running in rivulets down her back, however, so she could be harmed, monstrously difficult as it was.
As it was, they needed to get creative. The tag-teaming would only work for so long, and Gem didn’t want to find the limits of the strategy anytime soon. Her projectiles clearly weren’t working all that well, and she knew at least a little bit why. Void magic was antithetical to the light, airy amethyst-centric magic style that Ametri’s students performed. It made sense that she could just eat what Gem threw at her, no problem.
The good thing about losing her staff was that, at the very least, she could get so, so much more creative with things. Her staff traded that flexibility for extra durability during casting and better reliability. While her spells were naturally difficult to keep up and liable to fizzle and pop themselves out like a candle, she could do whatever she wanted with her own magic without the confinements of her staff.
And as the Void got a little too close to Pearl, Gem realized what they needed was a moment in the quiet to plan. She had too much to share, she couldn’t do it on the battlefield, and she couldn’t risk the Void overhearing Pearl’s options. She already had too close of a hold on Scarlet, Gem didn’t want to give her more of a reason to kill him or take anything else from the godling.
Her eyes darted around wildly, trying to search for any kind of inspiration to latch onto. Gem always tried to get her students to think creatively, not just hone their understanding of magic but to deepen their connection with it, to try and think outside the box when things got tough. Unfortunately, she hadn’t taken her own advice in a while, so she was left with the advice that she gave first-year students or particularly by-the-book cases: simply find something in your environment to draw your strength from. Take in energy like a tree takes in water through its roots and release magic just as the leaves transpire oxygen into the atmosphere. Let it all happen naturally.
So, naturally, all the thinking about nature and roots immediately sent Gem’s mind down the path of flowers. Within seconds, she’d scooped up Pearl and held her close as a huge amethyst flower encased them like a cocoon. Slightly shaky, she stood to inspect the structure; unorthodox, sure, but functional as a shield? Absolutely. She winced as something slammed the crystal petals, holding out a palm to stop the damage, but thankfully, it held.
Pearl blinked twice, sprawled out on the ground, her sword still tightly grasped in her white-knuckled hands. “Gem, stars and void, what did you do?”
“We don’t have much time—“
“YEAH, I KINDA FIGURED FROM THE WAY MY HOUSE JUST COLLAPSED!”
“Shh, Pearl, it’s okay, it’s okay, we’ll be safe in here, I just need you to calm down so I can tell you what Ametri told me and we can make a plan, okay?”
Pearl blew out a breath, still lying face up on the ground. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. Okay. Gods.”
Gem explained the situation with Scarlet as she prowled the edges of her makeshift shield, looking for cracks or weak spots. The Void was continuously slamming against her handiwork constantly, and it was getting draining to fix everything inside the flower, but she didn’t have a choice, and at least this way she could explain everything to Pearl, who listened silently from the floor. Gem internally cringed at the lack of a response she got from her friend, but, well, as she’d said, her house had just collapsed and she was being accosted by the personification of the dark force that kept people in the End Wastes when their time was up, so. She had a right to be a little inconveniently stressed.
To her credit, Pearl pulled herself together remarkably well, given the circumstances and everything that Gem had just told her. She sat up, but didn’t let go of the sword in her hands, staring directly at Gem. “Do you have a plan?”
There it was. And Gem did have a plan, which was great, because if she didn’t, this was going to get messy, but she did! So there was no need for things to get messy, except that Pearl’s house imploded, so. Maybe they were already messy.
“Yeah, ‘course. What do you take me for, some kinda baby wizard? I know how to think ahead,” Gem said lightly, though some of the strain of keeping the flower alive was starting to show in her voice. Pearl frowned. “It’s fine. Anyway. Yes, I have a plan.”
Pearl nodded. “Enlighten me, then.”
“Well, so, Ametri helped me come up with something—hang on, I just need to get this spot here—okay, Ametri helped. I got Scarlet’s actual name, like the magic godly one, so I can give that to you, and to prevent the Void from messing with you, you can choose him as your patron and use his power to banish her! Easy peasy, right?”
“What if he’s got nothing left, Gem?”
Gem, squatting to repair a large crack in the sparkling amethyst floor, looked up sharply. “Mm? What do you mean?”
“What if he’s got nothing left? Like, you just said he spent too long in the Wastes, that has to do a number on even a god, y’know?”
Gem’s mind immediately responded by flashing an image of Scarlet, curled up and shivering, in the grass behind their battlefield, his once-bright wings darkening out to a dull black. She bit her lip, banishing the image.
Gem herself responded slowly, trying to catch her breath as another tidal wave rolled over their bubble. “I don’t know, Pearl, if I’m being totally honest, but I have to give you the name now before she bursts this place like a bubble. If we have to, we’ll fight her off ourselves.”
Pearl set her jaw and nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Now come here. I have to give this to you.”
Gem had never given someone a godly name before, but she knew how it was done. Simply saying the word wouldn’t make it theirs, you had to put some kind of intent or magic behind it. You had to have the knowledge of what the name meant for it to have any power. Saying the word out loud wouldn’t cut it.
Luckily, it seemed to work, as the same blistering heat she’d felt when Ametri gave her the name brushed across her lips, cracking the skin, and Pearl coughed slightly, her eyes watering. Gem grinned. “Alright. Does that work? You’ve got the plan?”
Pearl nodded, still looking a little worse for wear after drinking in the full power of a god’s name, but otherwise alright. “Where’s your staff, Gem?”
Gem scoffed, finally letting her control over the flower fade from the strain of maintaining it. “Long story. I’ll tell you later.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Pearl grinned, and with that, the flower’s petals shattered, a wave of roiling darkness barreling towards them. Gem grabbed the remaining amethyst shards, fusing them together, and blocked the wave over herself and Pearl. When the shield cracked, she threw the sharpened pieces over at the Void, who, surprisingly, screamed with the weight of them.
Oh boy. She was not happy with Gem, was she? Better me than Pearl, Gem thought, summoning another white-hot crystal cord in her hands as they started up the tag team routine.
Pearl swiped at the woman’s back, drawing an outraged roar and the ire of a huge mass of darkness, but Gem jumped in with the cord and slashed at her neck, attempting to choke the goddess out. She screamed gutturally and grabbed the crystalline rope, yanking it as hard as she could in front of her, and Gem didn’t have the energy or reflexes to dissipate the spell before she went flying and hit the dirt. The wind flew from her lungs, leaving her gasping and stunned as the Void advanced.
Pearl yelled, trying to distract the Void as she stalked Gem, but she wasn’t as stupid as a bird or wolf that could be taunted with food or calls. Gem cringed on the ground, still trying to find enough breath to at least spit something rude at the goddess, because how dare she, how dare she do this to Pearl, the Lady of the Valley, how dare she lie and steal a god’s life from under him, all his friends and power and memories and his very name, but nothing came.
The Void ground her heel into Gem’s chest as she struggled to breathe, the darkness around her suddenly suffocating, and oh no, she knew what this was. She had heard tales. She had done this before, to get the ruined crystal elytra that hung from her shawl, that was pressed into the dirt beneath her. Gem squirmed under the weight of the goddess, struggling like a pinned butterfly against a board, but there was no air, only oil, and Pearl couldn’t get any closer. She couldn’t let Pearl get any closer. If she tried, she’d be killed.
Desperately searching, Gem’s eyes caught on a reflection in the grinning gold mask pinning her down. She followed the line of sight from the mask and landed on the huddled, haunted winged creature shivering in the grass. With the last of her magic, energy, and air, she sent a spark of life to him, something bright and whole. Her last thought was please, please help her.
Everything went dark.
Scarlet was awake when She came, all cold winds and no stars, and, defiantly, he had kept her from getting close to Pearl’s sleeping form. She had laughed at him.
“Even now? This human? I suppose it would make sense for you to forsake your fellow gods, given what The Golden One did to you.” She bared her fangs in a glimmering of an illusion. “He’s still searching, you know. Still looking. I can protect you.”
Scarlet, who had no idea what she was talking about but knew he had to wake Pearl before the dark lady overpowered him and took her in her sleep, did the only thing he could think of. He set his jaw, took on a cold expression (Pearl did that when she was nervous, but it made her look scarier, he thought), puffed out his feathers even through the shaking numbness that was starting to trickle through them, and bared his teeth as well. He may not have fangs, but it was the best he could do, and he thought it got the idea across rather nicely.
If only he had some kind of fire. Fire would make this easier, somehow, he knew it in his bones, deep in his marrow.
She took a step back at that, though it was more humoring him mockingly than a movement provoked by any kind of fear. Scarlet frowned. If he wanted to wake Pearl, he’d have to get Her to use Her power. The shift in the air would wake Pearl up, for sure.
Scarlet made for a lunge at her face, mouth contorted into a snarl, but she simply dodged. She didn’t dignify his attack with any sort of physical touch, but she did push him with a blast of darkness. It stung like hell, but it was what he’d been aiming for.
Near him, he could sense Pearl waking. She moved her hand subtly to her sword. Scarlet suppressed a grin as he stood staring at the lady. Something wet was trickling down his forehead; it was probably blood from the attack she’d just flung at him. He didn’t care much.
Things got a little fuzzy from there. He remembered lashing out at Her, his talons sinking into something cold and not at all like flesh. He remembered the way Pearl snuck away, silent in the night. He remembered, most clearly, the spark of fear in Her eyes when he lashed out again, this time scraping against something that felt like bone, and the subsequent snap.
The snap, he remembered, hung in the air for a mere half-second, before something rushed at him in the blink of an eye, and that was what had made everything fuzzy. There was darkness in every angle, contorting and moving to form a familiar shape—that damned cloak, the one She’d forced him to use his own feathers for. It pooled around his shoulders, smoothly settling into every nook and cranny around his feathers. He could do nothing but shiver under the weight of it.
And then, it continued moving. It was no longer solid feathers and fabric; it was flowing like molten lava down his back and shoulderblades. It forced itself into his lungs and out through his nose and mouth. It was slick, potent, and sour, tasting of gas and highly viscous liquid at the same time. Some kind of grit found itself in his throat, scratching against the raw skin of his mouth and the back of his teeth.
It tried to make its way through his nerves, through his feathers, and that was when he took the opportunity to stop drowning his brain in the substance and kick his way to the surface. He had to get it out of his body. It was thinking, wrapping itself around every part of him, slow and insidiously calm; if nothing else, it was complacent, and Scarlet didn’t want any part of him to be complacent. In the darkness, if nothing else remained, he needed to at least be able to fight.
He curled his fists, feeling his talons draw blood in his palms. The sting returned feeling to his body, allowing him to at least move again, and he retched, trying desperately to get the darkness out of him. No sound escaped his mouth, the silence of his breath unnaturally solid even as he shook and clung to the wet grass with clenched hands, but curtains and curtains of the dark, living thing She’d tried to put in his head came tumbling out in sheets of thick, wet oil.
Scarlet sat and shook, not bothering to wipe his mouth, still trying to get rid of the rest of whatever it was. He probably looked like a mess. Good. It was better than being assimilated into the starless sky that She tried to drag him into. Another wave of the stuff came up, another minute spent retching in silence, like a muted film set on repeat. Distantly, a muffled explosion ruffled his feathers, the sound not reaching his ears, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. His limbs were shaky at best, the fever burning and burning (but it was never hot enough, never close enough, was it) to keep the pathogen away from his nervous system.
Some time later, he stopped retching. He sat, curled up in the grass, covered in pitch stains and slicked in oil, and shivered against the dark night. There were lanterns, at some point, bright and purple. He liked them. There was still something sticking in his chest, something he couldn’t hack up, as hard as he tried, but the incessant quiet in his bones had at least subsided. Scarlet didn’t think it’d be back.
Cautiously, he ruffled his feathers, wincing as he realized the state of his primaries. Voided. Gone completely, stuck together in a mass of dark oil spreading from his shoulders where that stupid cloak had sat. The feathers that were still bright responded well despite everything, so, at least there was that, and the muscles moved the way he wanted them to, not the way the silent dark would have stilled them.
The cloak he’d torn off his shoulders was sitting in front of him, expectant in the dew. He stared blankly at it. It—he needed it, but he didn’t want it. It was his, his feathers stitched with blood into the bare cloth, but he had never hated to look at anything more. Slowly, he grabbed it, carding his fingers through the cloak’s feathers. The thought of putting it on around his wings made his throat close up with panic, but he couldn’t leave it here. He tied it around his waist and stood, shakily, slowly.
His eyes were unfocused. He had to make an effort to stare out over the clearing, trying to remember where he was, who he was, what was going on. An amethyst blossom shattered under a tidal wave of darkness. Scarlet winced—whoever drew that much ire would be in bad shape when She was done with them.
He watched as the Lady pinned a wizard beneath her. Who was that, again…? Everything was so unbearably fuzzy, all he could do was watch.
The wizard locked eyes with him. Her eyes were a bright violet, nearly glowing in the dim light of the lanterns, and in the moment before she went limp, a spark jolted down Scarlet’s spine, refreshing and warm in the frigid maelstrom of black ice.
He blinked. He knew where he was, he knew—oh, stars, Pearl, Pearl, she was screaming, and all Scarlet could do was—
Pearl watched Gem suffocate and dissolve into a pile of armor. And she knew that Gem would come back, she knew that, somewhere in the back of her mind, but her rage at the undignified manner of her best friend’s death was a living, breathing monster, a python crushing her chest and guiding her hands, a lion’s fangs lending her their roar and bite.
But for all the strength her rage had, she was still just Pearl, a human farmer with no divine gifts. She didn’t have amethyst magic, a sense for life, owl wings, antlers, or even a torch. She had glow berries crushed into the creases in her palms, a chipped netherite sword clutched in her fists, and enough fighting skill to beat any emperor, if they fought fairly, which this— thing would most certainly not. Was it enough to face down a parasite masquerading as a god? Would it ever be enough?
Pearl took a deep breath and decided that she didn’t care if it was enough, she didn’t care that Gem would come back, and she definitely didn’t care about the rules this parasite played by. She hefted her sword and lunged while the Void was distracted, stabbing her blade neatly through her stomach.
For a moment, they locked eyes, Pearl’s blue eyes burning with rage and the Void staring back in shock, and then the moment flickered out and faded.
There wasn’t a single warning so much as Pearl felt the air shift again, in that dangerous way it always did when something was about to come hurtling at her in a blaze of malevolence. She tried to yank her sword out of the Void’s torso, but to no avail; she was forced to abandon her only weapon and flee as the pressure built around her, as all of it collected and pooled in her ears like she was rapidly rising above the mountains.
It all came closing in on her, the same way it had when she was stuck inside her house, the walls crushing her in moving, writhing, frigid non-corporeal bodies. Pearl braced herself for the impact, hoping that it wouldn’t hurt too much and that these things responded negatively to biting, but it never came.
Before they closed in on her, a shadow raised itself out of nowhere and slammed the Void to the ground. She choked, giving Pearl no small amount of satisfaction, and fell on the sword stuck in her torso, driving it further through. The fall put enough pressure on the blade that Pearl could just barely see the netherite tip through her back (though it appeared to have missed her spine, unfortunately). The Void gasped, struggling back to her feet as her hat fell to the ground, her hair plastered across her face, the neat jet-black strands completely wild in the light of Gem’s remaining lanterns.
Pearl looked up, nearly giving herself actual whiplash from how hard her neck snapped up to stare at her savior and then nearly giving herself emotional whiplash from who it was.
He looked terrible, first of all, his skin waxy and slick with sweat. His blue eyes were bloodshot and tired, and his blond hair was messy and knotted, as if he’d not brushed it in ages. He staggered on his feet, his dulled wings nearly dragging behind him as he approached the woman he’d somehow just hit. Void was smeared around his mouth and stuck to his hands, his feathers; it clung to him like an aura. A huge gash on his forehead made him look as though he’d tried to box a lion and lost badly. In short, he looked dead on his feet, but he had still taken her out, insane as it was.
Scarlet made eye contact with her, the feathers that framed his eyes as bright as she’d always seen them despite how much he looked like a shade. The shadows seemed to gather around his fist as he retracted it—but, no, that wasn’t quite right, Pearl realized; he moved his arm and the shadows dissipated, he had used them as an extension of his limbs to knock down the Void, using her own power against her like some kind of superpowered punch.
She blinked at him. He blinked back.
In an instant, the Void roared from behind them, animalistic and angry above all else, and in the next instant, Scarlet had bridged the gap between them, grabbed her hand in his talons, and taken off running to the edges of the dark forest that surrounded them. Pearl yelped at the sudden movement but was too surprised to fight it. Within minutes, they had left the Void behind in the clearing, still gathering her wits and strength, completely enclosed in the thicket of towering oaks.
“ Celestials ,” Pearl panted, leaning against a tree, “what did you do ?”
Scarlet shrugged. He looked about as exhausted and confused as she felt, his massive wings unkempt and stained. She tilted her head quizzically. “Can you talk?”
He shook his head. “Ah. I see.”
It was weird to see him as something resembling a human, though this form was more common among the gods. The wings really gave him away; otherwise, he could have just been a bit of a strange elf, or maybe a forest spirit. Something decidedly magical, either way, but the wings… wings were always divine. Always . That was why it had caused such an uproar when Scott emerged from hibernation with fluffy owl wings one night.
Still, it wasn’t nearly as much of a shock as she would have expected—his body language was still much the same. His wings would twitch as he looked around them to see if she was following them. He had a strange mark on his face, now that she was looking at him through all the grime. It spiraled in an imitation of liquid gold, pooling under his left eye and continuing all the way down his shoulder and arm. It felt incomplete.
“...Well, um, whatever you did, do you think you could do it again?”
He blinked, blue eyes wide, and stared at his talons, squinting. Pearl flinched as wisps of shadow curled around his palms, gathering in a non-corporeal imitation of his hands. Scarlet jumped back, shaking his wrists as if he’d been burned and looking up at her. She shook her head and shrugged as if to say you’re the one with the magic hands, I have no idea?
“Right. I will… take that as a hesitant yes?” Pearl ventured. He didn’t respond, which she took as another confirmation. “I don’t have a sword right now, it’s stuck in her chest, but—but Gem gave me a plan. I just need enough cover to get it done, and then if all goes well, we should be able to take her out for good, okay?”
Scarlet nodded. Pearl hesitated for a moment—it didn’t seem like he was under her influence at the moment, but she didn’t like whatever power he held over the dark. Whatever it was, it wasn’t his, entirely, and she could figure pretty easily that it was a battle of wills. He could only have taken her completely out like that if he caught her off guard. Now that she knew it was a possibility, the Void would likely point all her power towards Scarlet. Maybe she already had , given the way the oil clung to him like a second skin, dripping from his skin and mingling with the drying blood on his forehead.
Could she trust him with the plan?
It wasn’t like she didn’t trust him, exactly, but she didn’t trust the things that kept making themselves at home in his head. The way the Void talked about him like a pet was sickening. It sat wrong in her stomach, and, tragic as it was, it made her doubt whether or not he could be informed of everything. If she told him the plan, would the Void know? Could she prepare herself?
But on the other hand, a godly patronage had to go both ways. Pearl didn’t think she could bring herself to force one on him even if she wanted to. It just didn’t work like that; certain things had to be agreed upon before the ritual began, such as the participants involved and the amount of power given. Customarily, the god themself gave their host their name, but she doubted Scarlet had enough presence of mind to be able to do that even if Gem hadn’t gone ahead and done it for him.
Pearl took a deep breath and made the call, her ears ever vigilantly listening for any broken branches that might give away their pursuer’s position. “Okay, so, here’s what I’m gonna do. Do you know what a godly patronage is?”
To her surprise, he thought about it, then nodded. “Oh. Okay, that makes this easier.”
“...Out of curiosity, do you know your name?” Pearl received a blank look at that one. “Cool. Not a problem, just… interesting.”
“Anyways. Gem gave me your name for the ritual. I need you to distract her so I can name you and perform it, and then hopefully, with your remaining power, I can… um, banish her, or something? I haven’t… quite figured that part out yet, but, ah, you know the old saying about burning bridges.”
A faint smile. She returned it, the suspense in her chest at the thrill of being hunted threatening to boil over. “Okay, so, I’m asking how much you want to give me. I will need… everything you have left, if I’m gonna beat her, but I will not take anything from you that you don’t want me to.”
There was not the slightest bit of hesitation as Scarlet nodded resolutely and spread his hands wide in front of him, his wings following the motion. Take it all.
Pearl blinked. “Alright, then.”
She didn’t have time to question his weirdly enthusiastic choice of letting her have access to any godly power he had left. One second, they were alone in the forest, and the next, the darkness had come alive around them, hissing and sighing. It was quieter and less layered than before, Pearl noted with satisfaction.
The Void came crawling out of the brush, slithering in on monstrous hands with huge, dark claws. Her skull-mask didn’t glint—they were too far away from Gem’s lanterns to be able to see its luster—but it was decidedly still visible. Defiantly, Pearl clutched her hands into fists, squared her shoulders, and puffed out her chest. Her opponent was still slipping, her hair not as neat, the sword Pearl had planted covered in a sluggishly bleeding black wound. Behind her, Pearl heard the rustling of huge feathers as Scarlet presumably readied for the fight.
It was strange not to have access to a weapon in a situation as dire as this. Pearl desperately wished that her sword wasn’t currently stuck in the abdomen of a raging goddess-parasite-entity-thing as said entity-thing growled, furious and entirely too much like a desperate hyena, and screamed.
“YOU DARE! AFTER EVERYTHING I GAVE YOU, AFTER THE LIFE I ALMOST LET YOU HAVE—YOU COULD HAVE LIVED PAINLESSLY AS ONE OF THEM,” she screeched, her feral eyes sparking the same gold as her mask, entirely trained on Scarlet, who froze. “YOU DARE TO USE WHAT I GAVE YOU TO BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS?”
Scarlet shook his head and stepped forward, the world shifting around him as he walked. Pearl worried her lip and took a backseat reluctantly; she had told Scarlet to draw the cover fire. He was doing his job beautifully. But she hadn’t expected the unhinged rage of the goddess at all—it was worrying, to say the least. Scarlet was already so battered from something she hadn’t been there to see. Nothing could be done about it now, though. Pearl needed him to come through and survive. She just had to trust he could do it. Let someone else help.
“YOU BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS? FINE. THEN STARVE, STARVE BEFORE HE FINDS YOU, DIE LIKE A COWERING, FERAL ANIMAL.”
The fight began. He started summoning the strange thing with his hands again, his limbs seeming to stretch and bend reality as they encased themselves in a protective shell of dark matter. A screech of talons cutting through metal grated on Pearl’s ears harshly.
She flinched as the sickening snap of Gem’s ribs under the Void’s heel crunched between her ears again. Pear told herself that her friend would respawn, that she was probably armoring up to help again at that very moment, took a deep breath, and bravely ducked behind a tree to desperately attempt a ritual to bind godly power to her soul that, if she was being honest, she only half-remembered. The mini-Gem in her head scolded her for not paying attention to the lecture they had all received courtesy of Aeor upon their arrival, but in her defense, she’d been quite distracted by the wicked trident that Naia had been wielding behind him.
Pearl shook herself into focus and bit her lip as she tried to remember if there were any components she desperately needed for the spell. She didn’t think there was, just an object to imbue the god’s favor in and the gift of their name, but—Void, she didn’t have an object close enough to him to use as a vessel.
Frantically, she searched through their hiding place with the ferocity of a Grand Wizard looking through her bedroom for a gala invite she’d forgotten a month ago. For her efforts, she was rewarded with an eagle feather. It definitely wasn’t as colorful as Scarlet’s plumage, but he was currently engaged in a fight to the death, so it would have to do. She hoped he wasn’t picky.
Oh, sweet Celestials, Pearl thought to herself, if this works, I am the luckiest person in the three realms.
Pearl clasped her hands around the feather and began to utter the ritual. On the battlefield, Scarlet flinched as she began reciting his name, the tattoo on his cheek glowing a white-hot, molten color. It distracted him enough that he missed a strike from the left by the hive of shadows, their claws raking open his pale skin. The force of the swipe sent him flying into the trunk of a huge live oak, back-first. Scarlet gasped and slid down the trunk slowly, heaving desperately on the ground, and Pearl wanted to help so badly , but she had to keep going.
The Void sneered, her metallic bone illuminated by Scarlet’s tattoo, but her eyes were unfocused. Her dress was ripped at the edges and she sported several gashes around her wrists and cheeks. A few bite marks even appeared in tints of bruising gray around her palms. Pearl noted to herself that Scarlet sure fought like a demon, even if the Void had lied about him.
His exhaustion was catching up to him now, though; he didn’t seem to be able to breathe properly, and one of his wings was hanging at an awkward angle, probably broken from the impact of the attack. The Void wouldn’t look directly at him, Pearl realized. It was probably from the pulsing glow from his tattoo. It hardly seemed to slow her down much. She continued advancing, staring at the splintered dent in the tree he’d just been slammed into rather than at him, and the grin on her face had Pearl instantly on edge.
The Void began to say something, but rather than let her talk, Pearl spoke the ritual louder, determined to drown her out. It drew attention to her, but she found that she didn’t much care. The eagle feather in her hand glowed the same white-gold as Scarlet’s tattoos, the same light pooling into the dark feather cloak that was tucked in at his waist and wrapped around his shoulders.
“Firebird, Phoenix, Trickster of Ash, I call you to me,” Pearl shouted, brandishing the feather as if it could do as much damage as her netherite, “I ask you to lend me your spirit, your power, yourself, for as long as I remain on this Overworld—”
The Void hissed dangerously. Despite herself, Pearl’s voice faltered. Something about that hiss activated the deepest flight instinct in her mind, something that cowered and shook at the sight of the darkness, that whispered to her that it was alive every night.
“Read all your words off, girl, peasant, farmer,” the Void challenged, stepping closer to Scarlet’s kneeling form, “but you cannot complete a deal with a dead godling, can you, and this little thing seems far past his expiration date, don’t you think? Besides, he’s changed since the gods have last coddled him in their cages. You’re missing information.”
Pearl’s mouth hung open in horror. “No, stop—!”
The Void grabbed him by the throat and squeezed. Scarlet kicked and scratched, fighting like a wild animal in a trap, his wings beating and flailing behind him. He bit her hands, drew blood, even, but she held fast. It took only half a minute before he was going limp before Pearl’s eyes. The tattoos on his face flickered, pulsing weakly. The feather in Pearl’s hand sputtered.
“GRIAN!” Pearl shouted desperately, darting out from the underbrush, the name both an attempt at finishing the ritual and at waking some latent instinct in her friend.
He didn’t move. The tattoos continued to putter out, but they didn’t die, not yet, and oh stars, gods never respawned. He didn’t have a successor. What kind of havoc would a domain like his wreak on the world given a taste of Void as an animating force?
On top of it all, Pearl didn’t want to watch another friend die. It was as simple as that. And Scarlet— Grian , that was his name—was her friend now. He was her friend, and it was as simple as not wanting to watch him die.
Pearl’s mouth has never moved faster than her brain, at least, not chronically. But that night, she didn’t think her brain got more than three minutes of combined screen time before it was shoved almost comically out of the way by the artificially strengthened combination of adrenaline and sheer desperation.
“STOP! LET HIM DOWN, LET HIM LIVE,” Pearl begged, “Let him go. Let him go, and I will restart the ritual. It’s not done yet. I can still—I can still host you.”
The Void loosened her grip on the unconscious godling. Pearl blinked in surprise; she hadn’t expected that to work, really, but she supposed they were both desperate.
“Fine, Pearlescent Moon,” she conceded. “Become mine, and he will live, however pathetic his further existence is.”
Pearl nodded. Her mind was starting to formulate something like a plan, as Grian slumped into the dirt again, dropped roughly like a rag doll by the mock goddess. Slowly, she straightened herself up, allowing the feather in her palm to sputter out completely, and summoned a confidence that she hadn’t ever realized she possessed, a kind of unshakable calm that settles only when a person is surrounded by a pack of wolves over a ravine. “Yes, of course. Thank you. I… I need something of yours, then, for the power to use as a vessel.”
The Void snorted and bent down to untie the cloak wrapped around Grian’s waist. She wasted no time in digging her claws into the open wounds on his face. Even unconscious, he winced, and Pearl had to fight to hold her tongue. She was handed the dark cloak roughly, though she took great care in making sure none of the feathers snapped. If she was right about where these things came from… well. She hoped she wasn’t.
“It’s hardly finished,” the Void scoffed, an inkling of frustration tingeing her tone, “but it will work for your purposes, no?”
“Yes, of course,” Pearl responded, faking a smile. “This next bit is tricky. I don’t know if it will work the same for you as it would for a god—”
“I AM a god,” the Void hissed. “I am one of them. Anything they can do, I can do. I am better. I am—it will be the same. It must be.”
Pearl held up her hands placatingly. “I’m sure it’s fine, of course. I need your name.”
She stilled at that. There was a pause, a pause so long that Pearl thought she’d pushed too far too fast, but she wasn’t lying about needing the Void’s name. She must have picked up on Pearl’s honesty, because after the pause, she simply clenched her hands into fists. While she waited, Pearl subtly stepped closer, sidling up to the Void’s left side, the soft feather cloak clutched in her hands. She sent a quick prayer to the Celestials that this would work. Prayers were all she had.
“Malaise,” the Void answered quietly. “That is what they have called me.”
Pearl only nodded, not giving up an inch of expression as she stood face-to-face with the newly named Malaise. That name was a true gift, too, she could feel it in the air, the way everything smelled sharply of iron and how the colors felt too dim and too bright at once. Names were power. Names were power, Pearl thought, the first lesson she’d ever learned thudding against her skull, the blood roaring in her ears, and for the first time she could see Malaise, all her brittle gold bones, all her parasite-ridden blood, her rotted, fractured lungs.
Inside her chest was a cavity of infinite space, of infinite sky and stars. Trapped Celestial essence. Trapped flames .
“Thank you, Malaise, truly, and now I think…”
Without warning, Pearl struck, clutching the hilt of her sword in her hands, the blade still embedded in Malaise’s abdomen. She grabbed it and held on tight, using her entire body weight to twist the blade as hard as she could.
“I think you should go to hell,” Pearl said brightly, and, on an impulse, she reached out, plunging her left fist deep into Malaise’s chest and grabbing her heart.
It didn’t beat, didn’t move under her grasp. Malaise didn’t scream, didn’t so much as move. Without a heart to beat inside of it, her form imploded with the force of a black hole, consuming the entire patch of forest; all the shadows vanished, breathing black smoke into the air. The grass bent, tree branches stretching and arcing towards the anomaly, and then there was stillness. Utter silence.
Behind them, a bird left to die stirred slightly in the dirt, stained by his own blood.
Pearl was not around to see it.
There was a huge room made of marble, the walls pristine and shining, and the sky was blue and cloudless. Everything was silent in the heavens, no birds, no moving water. The only things that lived here were the divine.
More specifically, the pantheon. This was their court, and maybe he had known that, but also, maybe he didn’t care. He was there to visit a friend. What were they going to do to stop him? Kill him?
He grinned as a jackal sauntered sneakily behind him. Or, at least, there was enough of an attempt at stealth that he gathered the intent of the action. S… that is to say, his best friend was never good at stealth. More liable to get spooked by his own reflection than actually sneak up on someone.
And the thing about this room, frankly, was that it was boring. The pantheon may be powerful, but personally, he didn’t understand why everything had to be so… blank. He was always a fan of shiny things, that part was great, but none of it truly sparkled like the diamonds he and—and his friend had found among the mortals. It was all just glossy, no character or value, all shine.
He frowned. His friend still followed along behind him, but this wasn’t—what was his name? Who were they going to see?
The faces blurred together. Every time he thought of his best friend’s name, it shorted out like a lightbulb overloaded.
Where was he, really?
Who was he?
He blinked and the white marble was gone. In its place hung golden bars above an extravagant room, decked out with fancy chairs and plush pillows. The curtains were a deep, sickly gold. Instinctively, he knew he hated that gold. He hated this cage, he had hated every moment of it, every time the gods stared at him with either pity or smug satisfaction or utter despair. He knew one of them was his friend. One of them was his, his alone, and nothing the Golden One said could change it, because his friend never wanted to even be here and neither did he. A bird needed to be free.
Even a bird without wings.
…but he had wings, didn’t he?
The scene changed again. Everything was dark.
And, oh, if he thought he hated that gilded cage and those gilded curtains and the gods’ pretty, fake, gilded reality, then he hated the dark even more. He hated it with twice the ferocity, with a ready, terrified defense springing to his fingertips, a thousand words swimming to the surface of his mind—
—and these were a god’s memories, she didn’t belong here, they weren’t hers—
—and he wanted to scream but it stole his voice, it forced itself down his throat, curled up in his gut—
—and she knows who she is, she knows who her friend is, she needs to complete the process, she needs to take his name from the depths, retrieve it like a pearl diver surfacing for air—
—the dark the dark the dark, it was inside him, his fire will never come back, despair despair despair des—
—Pearl gasps for air and grabs hold of the cavity, recenters its gravity around herself instead of her friend’s memories, incomplete and moth-eaten, and skillfully reaps the seeds of his identity.
You are Firebringer, Phoenix, Trickster of Ash, the other-half of one god, the best friend to another. You are the Branded, the gold on your skin tells us all, and you are the Lost, the darkened feathers along your spine sing of it, and you— you are none of these things, you are all of them— you aren’t a god, you aren’t a realm, you are simply Grian.
Please. Wake up. We must wake up.
There’s a dark, dark presence at the end of the sword Pearl held. She wanted, with all her might, to slay the dragon. She wanted to be the knight, to tell everyone that the great evil had been defeated. Something held her back.
The moon whispered to her and only to her. She holds her own place in these realms. You must hold back, Pearl, she does not deserve death. The world does not deserve her death.
There wasn’t time to ask anything else of the moon or the stars or the sun. Pearl sheathed her sword, in the end, and the darkness shrank back, scattered helplessly before her.
Pearl closed her eyes and breathed in air that didn’t exist.
And, eventually, she did wake up, clutching the eagle feather she’d brandished, its surface stained a flame-red, shining in the dim light of dawn.
Her friend was stirring, walking the line between dead and unconscious and alive as he’d ever been. The forest around them was charred, marked, seeming to have been struck by lightning half a dozen consecutive times, but she knew that wasn’t what happened. Black smoke rose from the entire area.
Pearl pointedly did not take the time to process what had happened, nor what she knew she must have done, because the feather wasn’t gold or completely dark, and that was good enough for her.
She limped over to the half-awake form of her friend, every bone in her body aching, and she simply sat. The garden where she first found him was visible from where she rested. Her home lay in ruins, but despite all of the violence, the gardens were still visible.
The sun rises, as all celestial forces do. The new moon sets, as all celestial forces do. Together, they watched it.
Eventually, Gem came to find them again, drawn by the smoke and completely decked out in armor. Pearl took great pride in having known that Gem would immediately prepare herself and throw everything she had back into the fight.
They met again rather embarrassingly. Gem had landed on another, messily formed and imbued homunculus dragon, and the poor thing hadn’t even landed fully before Gem had launched herself off its back and into Pearl’s arms. Pearl, utterly exhausted and riding off the adrenaline high and subsequent crash of the century, had simply fallen to the ground rather than catch her best friend. That was how they’d ended up in a tangled mess in the dirt, too tired to laugh but too relieved not to smile like hell, and they had just lain there, staring at the all-too-welcome blue sky above them.
Grian woke up fully a few minutes after Gem’s arrival. He didn’t move, but Pearl could sense he was awake. The red feather in her hand hummed pleasantly when he finally groaned, raising a hand to his forehead.
“Good gods,” Grian said, not the least bit confused, somehow, “that hurt.”
Pearl would have hugged him, too, if she had been able to figure out how to do it without jostling his definitely broken wing. Later, she would realize that was the first thing he’d ever said to her. Later, she’d realize that his power had returned, but not his mind, and she was thus the only one alive who knew even a fraction of his past life. Later, she would learn that Malaise had only been dissipated for her crimes, sent back to her realm and forced out of corporeality, but not killed.
But then, she was laying spreadeagle on the forest floor, her hands splayed between patches of grass with a wizard who kept dragons as pets and a former parrot-turned-godling who’d crashed down into her garden from space, and the absurdity of the situation was not lost on her.
Gem had to carry them painstakingly inside when they all finally got up again. Pearl knew she could probably just respawn and heal up easier, but she didn’t particularly feel like asking Gem to stab her in the chest so soon after trying to avoid being stabbed in the chest. And, besides, watching Gem struggle with the weight of Grian’s wings was funny.
Pearl laughed until her ribs hurt, her body not giving a damn if it was too tired because she was alive enough to laugh, to be happy with her friends, and what she would find out later wouldn’t change her opinion of it at all.
Pearlescent Moon of the Valley had found a patron and an ally, and if that meant she had to start again from the ground up, then she’d gladly do it. Phoenixes are always reborn, after all, and it was only fair to her new god to respect his domain.
Notes:
THAT’S A WRAP! shoutout as always to my amazing beta reader expo, the work of red and darkle on their fic everything turns to gold for inspiring a bit of the aesthetics of this chapter, everyone in hermbi who shook me by the throat for this fic, and last but certainly not least— robin, my hermbimas giftee, whom without this fic literally would not exist.
this is (hopefully) not the end for the hostile stars universe! i’m planning more stuff for it now that i’ve actually watched empires smp lol. i’m gonna take a sec to write some shorter stuff, in the meantime though.
thank you all so much for the support. you’re all so kind and i hope you have a lovely evening! if you wanna further engage with me or the stuff i make, my tumblr is the same as my ao3 user. shoot me a message!!
love from luna <3
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