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Like many others in the world, there were three friends on the road together, in search of whatever Amalur could give them.
They had not been friends for long, in the grand scheme of things. Akko had met Sucy in a port town, searching for adventure, and Sucy, who was also from afar, had poisoned her in response. While recuperating from this (for Akko was just shy of invincible), the two met Lotte, who had missed her boat and was now stuck here, far from home, as they all were.
But home is many things, and home can be the road, if you travel it together.
"So," Akko said, shielding her eyes from the bastard sun, "if you had to choose, who would you rather fight..."
"No thanks," Sucy said.
"Aw, come on!" Akko said.
"I'd like to--" Lotte said, and Sucy put a hand over her mouth.
"I know what you want to do," Sucy said, leaning closer, "and I just have to ask: do you have the stones to try it, specs?"
Lotte blushed and looked away from Sucy, but maintained her silence.
"Yeah," Sucy said. "It's true what they say: Finnish people don't want to bite me."
"They say that about Finnish people and you?" Akko said, now walking backwards to better keep an eye on her besties. Her humble espadrilles left nice, even tracks in the dirt road. Sucy's dress made her passage obscure, as Lotte's boots from her homeland were uneven and shuffling--the poor thing was overheating, the curse of her northern birth and favored temperatures. (A sauna she could thrive in, knowing escape was a few steps away, but when everywhere was kind of warm she was a pat of butter on a skillet.)
And the temperature was indeed modest, and modest everywhere; from one horizon to the next were the rolling hills and low mountains of the Basque countryside, and overhead the sun goddess Eguzki, the middle sister of the celestial daughters, was shining proud. For all these ladies were wandering and they did so here, on the bosom of Amalur, in the country of Mother Mari.
It struck Akko then how alone they were in this vast and green country.
"Yes," Sucy said.
"Gah!" Akko said, tripping over her own feet, falling backwards and hitting her head on a rock. The rock lost. Akko rolled backwards and onto her feet, resuming her pace. "Oh, right, the question. Bear with a sword, or a cat with a gun?"
"Cat with a gun," Sucy said.
"Bu-u-u-ut, the cat is a Hemingway cat and they have thumbs and can pull the trigger," Akko said, voice lilting.
"Cat can't aim and shoot at the same time," Sucy said. "Too small, too easily distracted. Bears are always dangerous even if they can't figure out the sword." She dropped her hand from Lotte's face at last. "And it's not gonna figure out a sword, nor does it need to. Not when you're right there and you have so much meat in the face. Bears also survive on the screaming of their victims, as well as fruit and honey."
"But what if the cat's got a custom piece?" Lotte said.
"Did I say that you could speak?" Sucy said.
"It was implied..." Lotte said.
"I was merely assuming you had learned your place," Sucy said. "Which is to say under my heel, which some people have to pay good money to experience. Consider yourself lucky."
"How much?" Akko said.
"You can't afford it," Sucy said.
"Who pays?" Lotte said.
"By the local shapeshifting vampire wolf-god Gaueko, you're stupid," Sucy said. Very judgmentally, but resigned to her judgment being ignored.
Being Sucy was like being a cat, except she claimed to not like cats, and in deference we will not continue this metaphor. For now.
"Probably," Akko said.
For a while they wandered on; and by noon they came to a stone bridge across a river. The trees which grew here were old and tall, and their shadows were deep and kind. So the ladies took a rest in their shade, and Lotte, as was her wont, made lunch; which is to say arranged it artfully, so the three had their choice of bread, cheese, and--
"A fistful of nuts," Sucy said.
Lotte looked her in the eye.
"A fist... full... of... nuts," Sucy said.
"I... will not say it," Lotte said, approximately, through pursed lips and a luminous blush.
"Pardon?" Akko said after finishing her entire lunch in a manic display of nutritional deficiency, or at least the munchies.
"Silence, brand," Sucy said. "I'm trying to torment our good friend."
"That sounds rude," Akko said, and noticed a glimmer in the shade beneath the bridge.
Sucy continued to bother Lotte as Akko rolled off their picnic blanket slash conference table to investigate the light. By her reasoning, if it was nothing, it at least got her stretching her legs, and if it were something, it would make for a nice story. It could be a piece of glass, maybe a little lost mirror, it could even be a shiny silver piece. At last, silver! They'd be rich! Compared to those long dark times before they found a silver piece.
There was another glint, and Akko saw that it was none of these things. For one, the light was gold.
For another, the glint was at the edge of a silhouette. Someone was here.
Akko bit her lip and darted for the cover of a slightly larger rock than the one she had cracked earlier in the day. It was worthless for cover, but trying to hide felt better than not. It was rude to stare, but it felt wrong to look away.
(The altar of her gaze.)
She was looking at a woman, or at least someone giving strong femme vibes. Their hair was long and wet; they pulled it out into long locks, straightening them a bit with their fingertips before drawing their comb through it. With each stroke, the comb caught a little light. It seemed odd that sunlight would somehow bend under the bridge and illuminate just the comb while the bather was combing.
The bather pulled out the longest lock of hair yet, and as they--as she, perhaps--drew her comb along that length, a spark flashed from its teeth and along the bather's arm. A second brush sent a cascade of sparks down the figure's back, revealing pale skin. And on the third stroke, a rainbow cascaded from the comb down to the water. At last, the woman was illuminated.
Her hair was pale; streaks of it were darker, though the precise shade Akko couldn't tell with the tinting of the rainbow. Her back was rippling with powerful muscles. Her knuckles were raw and red, the backs of her hands heavy with veins; a laborer's hands.
She was singing.
She...
Oh, boy.
The bathing woman looked over her shoulder, still singing.
Akko's ruby eye met a pale blue gaze.
"Good day," the woman said, turning to face Akko. She wasn't angry, or was hiding her anger well. Her abs were as taut and potent as the muscles of her back.
Akko tried to stand and instead, against her will, propped her head up with her arm, which she rest on the rock like a pillow. She shot a flirty finger-gun at her new acquaintance. "Hi. Hey. Name's Akko. Come around here often?"
"I live here," the woman said.
"Oh, hey, nice," Akko said. "Under a bridge?"
"Beneath," the woman said, turning to face Akko. Her long hair gave her the illusion of modesty, not that most of her powerful body wasn't on proud display. She stood at last. Her legs were long and potent, like a horse's, and her feet were broad and orange and three-clawed and webbed and--
"Duck feet," Akko said.
"Duck feet," the woman confirmed.
Sucy and Lotte, at last, caught up with their friend. "So," Sucy said. "Muscle girl with duck feet. Someone's into this. Not me, for once, but--"
It was Lotte's turn to shut her up, although she did so by stepping out in front with an offered hand. "I know of your kind," she said warmly. "You're one of the lamiak."
The woman nodded.
"A what?" Akko said.
"A spirit of the land," Lotte said. "They build bridges and dolmens, they work fields in exchange for a day's meal... and they comb rainbows out of their hair." She bowed. "A name to conjure by."
The woman nodded again.
"What's your name?" Akko said. "Do the lamiaks have names?"
"'Lamiak' is the plural," Lotte said. "She's just one lamia."
"Oh... right, foreign language," Akko said in English, for the benefit of the audience.
"You keep well-read company, traveler," the lamia said. She tucked her comb into her hair. "Thank you. It is so rare that I may know anything like company. And rarer still that someone would..."
She looked away.
"Well. I appreciate the gesture."
She slid into the water.
"I am allowed only a little time beneath the empty sky. My aunt has need of me, and so I must depart."
"...but what's your name?" Akko said, a little quaver in her voice.
"If you knew," the lamia said, "it would only hurt you more. Goodbye. And safe travels."
The lamia slipped beneath the slow waters of the river, and before Sucy could say something mean or Lotte sing a farewell to the spirit, Akko threw off her overshirt, kicked out of her long pants, and dove in after her.
Sucy and Lotte looked at each other. Without words, they knew what to do; a pity it wasn't the same thing. Sucy turned to flee, Lotte seized her by the collar, and in a mess of thrashing limbs and curses (magical and simply rude) Lotte dragged her into the water after Akko.
By rights, there should have been no hope of catching up; the lamia's feet propelled her through the water with casual grace. But Akko was headstrong, motivated, and while she was aware that she was mortal had not given death permission to haul her off yet. So as Diana surrendered to the pull of a deeper darkness, Akko was a few strokes behind her. She halted for a moment, waving one arm behind her; she caught ahold of a bedraggled and drowning Finn, and through her an already-surrendering-to-the-deep Filipina.
With one final kick all three witches followed the lamia into the darkness, and the river spat them out into a cavern.
The ceiling of the cavern was the river, slow and dark; it murmured and sighed far overhead, as tall as the three ladies stacked on top of each other twice over. The ground beneath was stone, worn smooth from long occupation and careful tending. The walls glittered with precious stones that made their own light. And there was someone seated in the darkness ahead where the gems shone dim.
The lamia knelt before this darkness, dripping and with her magnificence undimmed. Akko, Sucy, and Lotte had to disentangle themselves from a sopping knot into something more presentable, though still not very. It was not Akko's turn to take point but she did, and said: "Hello? Hey? What's good?"
There was a voice from the darkness, low and feminine: "Diana, sweetness, it appears that some rats have swum through the door."
Diana looked over her shoulder. "You should've stayed above," she said.
The darkness laughed, and frightening pale eyes glinted far overhead. Slowly, the form of the speaker crept into the light.
She was a woman, both clad in black furs and sporting a glossy blonde coat, streaked green. Gold and jewels dangled from her long limbs and clattered around her neck. Her taloned fingers combed through her proud pompadour. And she was crouching, for she was twice as tall as the cave's ceiling would allow.
"Lotte," Akko said, "what the heck is that and do they have any outstanding weaknesses to like silver or something? And do we have any silver?"
Lotte finished blowing water from her glasses, re-affixed them, and caught up with being terrified. "Th--that's a basandere! A wood-lady!"
"You can talk about me like I'm here," the basandere said, narrowing her blue eyes at them.
"So... you gonna eat us or so--" Sucy said, and while it was Lotte's turn to silence her, Akko did so faster with a punch. ("Mmm!" Sucy murmured in appreciation.)
"Don't be gauche," the basandere said. She produced a pouch from within her fur coat; she tamped out its contents into a pipe, and bore it out to Diana. Diana, in turn, unlatched a length of steel and flint from a hook built into the pipe (it was the size of a washtub) and struck the two, producing massive sparks. The bale within the pipe caught flame, and the basandere took a deep drag. She held her hit in for ten seconds, and blew a chimney-like plume of weedsmoke upon them.
Akko coughed productively into her fist; Lotte greened out immediately, fumbling onto Sucy and feeling her own face as though it were made of putty. Sucy continued to be resistant to poisons and other drugs, even the ones she would rather be affected by, and said, "Would it be too much to ask you smoke something harder?"
"Listen carefully, sub-creatures." The basandere clenched the pipe in her teeth. "I shall smoke what I please, as I please. You, in turn, will kindly assist my niece in the tending of my home and the maintenance of my domain. You shall do what I ask of you, when I ask of it, without complaint."
She puffed on her pipe, savoring the quiet tension.
Akko was tensed like a spring, but Lotte's hand was on her shoulder, keeping her pressed down. Sucy, of course, had little care for her own life, so long as something would shock her out of complacency.
"And one day, I may grow tired of you," the basandere said. "And maybe then, I'll let you go."
She sneered at them.
"For now... I have many beautiful things growing in these walls. Put those hands to work."
"Like, mining?" Akko said. "Don't we need like a pickaxe or something? Or some rock and sticks to make a pickaxe?"
"Improvise," the basandere said. "You'll do fine."
She vanished again into the dark, the glow of her pipe the last to disappear. Diana huffed, popping her knuckles. She walked up to a wall, her duck's feet slapping the ground gracelessly. She lined her middle knuckle up with a glittering ruby, adjusted her stance, and punched the wall, full-strength, cracking the surface and loosening the ruby. She pried it from the wall, blew dirt from it, and set it at her feet; and she repeated the process, aiming now for a glinting sapphire.
Akko hiked up to her.
"No, seriously," Akko said. "Where's. Like. Your tools. Your PPE?"
"Potential psychic energy...?" Diana said.
"Personal protective equipment."
"I don't know what that is," Diana said, cracking the wall with another mighty punch.
"It's handy for not-dying when doin' work that could kill you," Akko said. "Even Sucy pops on a gas mask when she's mixin' up somethin' completely crazy."
"As a professional courtesy," Sucy said, sidling up to Diana from the other side. "It's not my business if you die from fumes or whatever... as long as you die eventually."
"If she gave me anything," Diana said, "that would be less for her. These things of the earth are her desire and her sole happiness. To lose a little wealth to arm me for this task..." She punched a lump of iron ore from the ground, and set it to her left, versus the right-hand and growing pile of gemstones. "...would be an incomprehensible act of suffering."
"So!" Lotte said, flipping open a notebook that had been ruined by her dive into the lake. She tried to write on a sodden page and succeeded only in jabbing straight through. She threw the notebook behind her. "So, uh, basanderak need earthy treasures to live?"
"No." Diana admired a diamond, briefly, before continuing her task.
"...then..."
"She just likes it," Diana said.
"That's nice of you," Lotte said.
"It is," Diana grumbled.
Akko put her hands on the wall by Diana, scanning for something that looked especially juicy. "Here we go!" she said proudly, and reared back and smacked her forehead into the wall. A crack ran up the wall, and a fat block of fossilized amber fell free and bopped her on the top of the head, bouncing off and onto Diana's gemstone pile.
"One rock down," Akko said, "two rocks to go. What's our quota again?"
"Until Eguzki retires to her sleep and Ilargi shines her light upon."
"Oh. Isn't it summer?"
"Yes."
"Jeeeez," Akko said, looking for another rock to pop free. Lotte bit her lip and got prying rocks from the wall with the blunt end of her pen.
"And I," Sucy said, "will make refreshments."
She shuffled off a few steps.
"Where's a fire or something."
"Mari's fire is not welcome here," Diana said.
"Motherfucker," Sucy said. "This actually does suck."
"Mm. No comment," Diana said.
And though Eguzki bowed her flaming head beneath the horizon of Amalur, and though her elder sister Ilargi climbed into the velvet night sky, they worked on, lost to the darkness. It was not until late into the night the women were freed of their task by the basandere's twin daughters.
The daughters stood at full extension, their striped hair barely brushing the ceiling. Together they set a dish on the ground.
"Eat well, and chew slowly," the daughter to the left said.
"Mother dearest needs you so," the daughter to the right said.
The daughters ran their hands across the gathered pile of precious stones, which stuck to their hands as if magnetized. The ladies giggled, whispering to each other as they vanished back into the depths, leaving the women with stone and common ore.
Akko and her band knelt by the dish. Sucy was the first to take from the dish, turning the food around in her hand in an attempt to discover what it was. She gnawed it with her pointed, amphibian fangs.
"What's on the menu, Suce?" Akko said.
"Marron-glace fishbone," Sucy said, spitting the bone out contemptuously. "At least it has calcium."
Akko took a bone from the dish, placed it into her mouth, and gently bit. The length of candied bone snapped between her teeth and turned into dozens of razor-sharp fragments. "...hm!" Akko said, trying not to move her tongue. "Y ouf ih uhhl oh o'hen hlahh. ... Hep"
Diana stepped in. She took two graceful pins of of calcium from the bowl and bid Akko open her mouth. With care, she plucked the shattered meal from within Akko's mouth and set them back in the bowl. From here, she showed them how she came to draw nutrition from them.
Lotte volunteered the hem of her skirt to a cooking-fire, for her clothes had dried in the hours of labor; Sucy had herbs and certain seeds which would impart flavor but not too much poison to the final concoction; and Diana took a brief leave to the waters above, returning with a bucket of fresh riverwater and a handful of wriggling elvers. With Akko striking raw flint and unworked iron, they bid a flame grow beneath the bowl, and watched an improvised soup begin to take form.
As they waited for the bones to surrender their nutrients and the herbs to suffuse through the broth, the ladies told stories.
"My mom sent me out to have adventures," Akko said. "I told her, one day, I'm going to be a great witch, like Chariot du Nord! You know, from France. North of here."
"I wanted to go forth and become friends with all the spirits I could find," Lotte said. "I love the spirits of my home, but there are so many beautiful and powerful things out there... I just had to go roaming. And while I wandered, I found these two." She pulled Akko and Sucy into a hug. "And I've never been happier in all my life."
"My past is none of your damn business," Sucy said. "And my future is POISON, all caps, size 16 font." She scooped up broth with her bare hand and slurped it loudly. "Also, this tastes pretty alright. You're welcome."
The humans (and Sucy, whose origins were more obscure) got sipping. Diana watched, her hand stayed for a while. After a few sips to restore her strength, Akko set her spoon balanced on the edge of the dish.
"Hey, Diana," Akko said. "Who is that basandere, anyway?"
"My mother's sister," Diana said. "Some call the giants mairuak, and say they are the brothers of the lamiak; the truth is somewhat uncertain, even to us. But my mother thinks of Daryl as her sister, and so an aunt she must be.
"We lost my mother years ago to a particularly awful summer and a great drought. My mother's home river lost its flow, and no rain came to save us. Aunt Daryl and her daughters, Mril and Maryl, went forth to find water. They returned with... well, without enough. And my mother said: my time has been long. Protect my child. And Daryl did as she was asked, and though I was sickly and weak, I lived long enough to feel the rain of Mari and Sugaar bless the land again."
She regarded the food, still not making a move to taste it.
"Daryl took me under her wing in the summer after my mother passed. She kept me from the world, in the shadows where I may sleep without fear. And one day she said: Diana, won't you be a dear?' And I owed her my life, and said 'yes, I am, for you.' And so I began to hammer the earth, to grow her home and fatten her coffers.
"And for long years, that is all I have done. And I think that is what I shall do for a long time to come."
She hugged her knees to her chest, and looked into the guttering cooking-fire.
"Some are born who never see the world beyond their homestead, and every day, they witness the coming and going of people and things that have no such limit. Birds who count the world entire as their home; travelers to and from strange and far places; the clouds which are born seeing far and knowing much before they return to the world as rain.
"I should be thankful. For I know, as surely as I know the sun will rise and the moon will set, that I will never leave this place. I am unburdened by hope. I will simply live until my body gives out or my river dries, and that will be the end of me down here in the dark. And my mother's sacrifice will have not been in vain, for I will have lived longer, and for more."
Akko reached out to her. She did not spurn her; she allowed Akko's hand onto her shoulder. Akko ran her thumb along that pale skin, feeling the tension of her muscles, the sturdiness of the bones to which those muscles were anchored. The subtle twitches and trembles of muscles overworked and rested little. She saw the bags under Diana's eyes. She saw, in the ghostly blue, a more perfect sorrow than she had ever known.
"Diana," Akko said. "I'm going to ask you something. And maybe it'll be a bit much. But..."
The eyes. The glow of the pipe. The presence.
Daryl the basandere loomed out of the eternal darkness.
Daryl began to say "Diana," her voice low and sonorous, but instead, Akko shouted "MONSTER!" and grabbed a chunk of stone. She threw it at Daryl and beaned her directly in the forehead.
She collapsed in the Family Guy death pose. I'm sorry, but that's exactly what it was.
As Daryl lay there with a gushing head wound and a bad concussion, Akko looked down at her hands in shock. "Oh," she said. "Oh, snap, I'm sorry, I was going to ask if I could throw a rock at her head, and then I guess I did? Reflex."
Diana stared in shock.
"Was that not okay?" Akko said.
Diana's mouth worked. "I... uh..."
Daryl's daughters loomed from the darkness.
"Mother?" the one on the left said.
"Wha--" the one on the right began, and Akko shouted "MONSTERS!" and threw two other rocks, one for each head. History repeated, and three basanderak lay on the ground in identical poses.
"Perkele!" Lotte said.
"Can't fault this bitch's aim," Sucy said. She had been drinking handfuls of soup throughout the affair.
Diana looked in fright between her new friends. "I... what--"
"Hang on," Akko said, standing up. She worked out the cricks and creaks in her back. "Yeah, I'm, like, super tired from the forehead mining--and let's be real, the headbutting was kind of my idea and kind of my fault, but--"
She scooped Diana up into her arms.
"We're bustin' you out before those chicks wake up."
"Will they?" Diana blurted. She sounded worried; not for her aunt, to be clear.
"Let's not find out," Sucy said, hopping into Akko's arms. "C'mon, blondie. Other blondie. First blondie." She patted her belly. "Room for one more."
Akko wasn't bowing from weight yet, and hesitantly Lotte flung herself at the growing pile of people. Akko knelt, for Lotte's leap was sub-par, and with her allies in hand she ran for the far end of the cave and hopped up the wall in great leaps until the four of them were in the river.
Once again they were a tangle of arms and legs and insufficient breath. From the center of the tangle, a steady head prevailed, and the humans (and near-human) clung tightly to the lamia, who swam through the dark, to the surface. And in a burst of cool, clean water they took breaths redolent with Pyrenees sun-flower and evening dew.
Diana swam to the pebbly shore and with due care set her rescuers down.
Akko shook out the river-water like a wet shiba inu. "Brrrrrrrup! Okay!" she said. "Come on, let's mosey."
"But what if--" Lotte said. "The picnic stuff! We kinda gotta--"
"What's more important, folding up some cloth or not getting our asses kicked by a hairy giant?" Sucy said. "Because I know what I'm voting for, but..."
"Where are we going?" Diana said.
Akko reached out her hand. "There's a town a few miles off," she said, nodding in the direction they had read. "We just gotta follow the road 'til dawn."
"...basajaunak and basandere don't like towns," Lotte said. Akko was already leading Diana away, Sucy right behind them. With hesitation Lotte took drag. "They're solitary, dwelling out in the woods..."
"We'll be safe," Akko said. "And you'll be free."
They picked up the pace, going from a walk to a trot. Diana could not move especially quickly owing to the awkward waddling gait her feet forced upon her, but she kept up. Her legs were plenty strong, of course; there was no part of her which was not blessed by powerful muscle.
And as they hiked to freedom, Diana saw, for the first time in years, the night.
She saw fireflies lazing through the air. She saw an endless field of stars overhead; she saw the haze of the Milky Way, the home of countless alien beings she may never meet, who may not even suspect that she existed. A universe bereft of the gods of the Earth, who dwelled beneath its surface, as her aunt dwelled.
A universe beholden to nothing but itself, beheld by nothing but the eyes of little living things. Things like her, separated by light years of distance, by aeons of drift, by existential questions of chemistry and entropy. The universe itself was more vast and lonely than any of its constituent matter could hope to understand, could begin to convey, even in its vastness.
But.
Though the stars were apart, they were not alone; and though the planets were separated, they could see each other, feel each other, touch each other in the dance of their orbits. And though each man, woman, and other on the Earth were born alone, a prisoner in their heads, they did not have to be.
For the first time since her mother passed, Diana was not alone, and as they put distance behind them, as the past became more remote and the future was suddenly here, new and beautiful, she smiled.
And as the watch-lights of a sleepy town lit, as a lone guard raised their lantern to see who was approaching the little town at such a lonesome hour, she laughed. And as she laughed her face shone with hot tears.
And when she set foot behind stone walls wreathed with sun flowers,
she was free.