97. The tenacity of a meowing familiar and a teleported witch

‘Wait outside, Rainbows.’

Those had been Master’s last words. Rainbows had walked away from the door that had separated her from her family, she had sniffed around, glared at her whiskers in the mirror of a wall, then gazed at the dusky sky for a long time. She had also climbed on a plant, pricked herself with the thorns, realized afterwards her mistake, and stared at a little hole on her paw. Reckless. But not as much reckless as First Brother.

A sudden voice made the cat jolt. A human with a black tail was approaching, meowing at her with a tone of voice that Rainbows knew well. It meant the human wanted to stroke her fur. The cat smirked at the tailed human. Well, too bad, only Master can touch me. And she scampered away.

‘Wait… side, Rainbows.’

The order was fading. Human voices from a nearby building were purring in her ears. Rainbows couldn’t understand them as well as she could understand Master, but she recognized two important words: “Ray” and “Armen”. Perched on the roof of the moving stairs, the cat opened its eyes.

The bond was wavering. That was no good. Something was happening to Master.

Rainbows got up to her feet and jumped down the roof to a window ledge, then to the stony, vast square. She passed by the nearby building where the humans were talking and having dinner; she glanced at the light inside and then walked away.

‘Wait…’

Wait by my side, she thought.

She wandered around the garden, sniffed at a thorny plant, then stopped in front of the moving stair again. She put a paw on it and leaped back as she felt herself being drawn up. The house was up but Master was down. As she turned, Rainbows heard her own name being called by a human, behind—the silver-haired girl. Not important. Ignore. She went forward. Downward. Where Master was.

She crossed the vast square. The humans that were talking inside the building a few moments ago had come out and were still talking. Humans talked a lot.

The cat moved faster and ended up going in circles. What was Master doing? Where was he?

Something similar had happened a long time ago. Master had disappeared for days and only First Brother and the Nosy had come to take care of Rainbows. Was Master going to be gone for so many days like last time?

Rainbows ferreted about, passed a threshold, got out through an open window, and turned around a tall human. Suddenly, a scent woke up her senses, and she pounced on a bush, baring her teeth. A mouse dashed out, but Rainbows didn’t let it go: she sprung with all she got to catch it. Blood dripped from her prey. Rainbows gave the final blow and began to devour the mouse. According to Master, humans were too big to be her prey. But mice were okay.

Rainbows gloated over her food, devoured it in a matter of minutes, then remembered her Master. She meowed annoyingly.

Master, Master! Where did you go?

He was with First Brother, so she shouldn’t be too worried, right? Except she was. It was First Brother that was making Master feel so tired and stressed lately, after all. Well, honestly, even if First Brother was a bit scary sometimes, Rainbows liked him quite much. Not as much as she liked Master, though.

Rainbows met a second mouse before she suddenly heard Master’s voice.

‘Rainbows. Good cat. Remember the black-haired human that makes invisible stairs in the air? Natasha. Find her.’

Rainbows purred but walked hesitantly, confused. The human that makes invisible stairs? Oh, did he mean the human that had been taking First Brother away every night? Was it really okay to find her?

Rainbows began to look for the human. She was crossing the big square when she stopped, surprised, recognizing a familiar scent. The Nosy? She approached the group curiously. The Nosy was there, a calm girl and a wary boy by his side. What was he doing there? Rainbows heard Master snort in her head.

‘Dad?!’

Yeah, it was the Nosy.

‘Forget Natasha. Go to my dad.’

Rainbows paced carefully and sat in front of him. The Nosy stopped talking with the humans in the group, looked down, blinked, then grinned. He crouched, grabbed Rainbows’ neck, concentrated, and after glimpsing through the necro-bond, his smile widened as he said with a giggle:

‘Son. Well done. Not only are you okay but you’ve found it. The Elixir of Heavens.’

* * *

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming…”

The weird shadow was indicating a hole on a wall. Unsurprisingly, that one was too small for a person to pass, just like the other ones. Linah sighed. She was starting to get tired of punching rocks to open her path. The most worrying thing was that she had decided to follow that shadow without knowing if it wanted to help her or if it was leading her to her doom. Maybe it was bringing her to its starving Shadow Mother hidden within Phoenix Island or… Who cared. Anyway, the shadow had been quite expressive so far, kindly waving at her when it caught her angrily punching randomly the big rocks that had been surrounding her for hours—and what rocks! As sturdy as metal rocks. She was about to accept the fact that she would never find out where Arkifa had teleported her and she had already given up on ever getting out of there when the shadow had come to her rescue pinpointing the weakness of one of those damn unbreakable rocks.

So, yeah, that shadow was, for now, her only mean of salvation.

She positioned herself in front of the hole, held out her fist, and began concentrating qi around it.

“Step back, shadow.”

She let go of her fist as fast as she could. The wall cracked around the hole. She kept punching it, enlarging the hole. Finally, the rock crumbled along with a myriad of scintillating tiny orange crystals embedded in the ruined wall. Linah drew back, coughing and cursing. Thanks to the orange crystal, the cloud of dust was strongly attracted to the ground and fell quite quickly. The air was nonetheless rather scarce, and Linah was starting to huff and puff. The shadow floated in front of her, gave her a thumbs up, and drew a question mark. Linah wiped the sweat from her forehead and gave a nod.

“Of course I’m okay. Let’s keep going.”

The shadow got through the hole, and Linah followed it into a room covered with rubble. Strange half-faded signs were carved in the ground.

“Yet another room, huh?”

It was the third one, and it was almost identical to the others. Wherever they were, it was clear that the place had been unoccupied for a long time. She didn’t want to think badly of Arkifa: the demon had only wanted to save her from crashing into the ground, and she was a good friend of the Straw Head’s, so she could not have possibly sent her to this place on purpose. However, it was disturbing to think that, if it had been Armen, or Zeeta, and not her… they would have most likely died in here. She clutched her fists. Even a martial artist like her was having trouble opening a path. She was thirsty and sleepy. And, despite strengthening her fists with qi, her knuckles were beginning to hurt quite a bit.

The shadow swirled under her eyes to catch her attention. Linah shook her head to snap out of it.

“What rock do I have to destroy now?”

She followed the shadow towards a part of the room that was hardly lit. She walked behind her guide so trustfully that, suddenly, she wondered if the Straw Head hadn’t rubbed off on her a bit. She hit something hot. The Shadow Mother?!

“I knew it! You…!”

Before accusing the shadow, she shut her mouth as she realized she had just hit a door. A door? Why was it so hot? It was a metallic door. So… what was behind that door for it to be hot? A mountain of lava. A dragon. A hungry dragon.

Her stomach growled.

What did a dragon taste?

No, no, no, but if it was a parent of the shadow’s, she couldn’t kill it. Besides, she was too tired to fight a dragon.

At each Linah’s silent gesture, the shadow drew a question mark.

“Er…” Linah smiled at the shadow, a bit embarrassed. “So… You led me to your home, right?”

The shadow looked surprised, but then it confirmed and added with gestures something like, “Thanks for your hard work, without you, I wouldn’t have made it here”. Linah chuckled.

“Hwara-hwara, the same goes for me! Then, let’s go! … It’s either blocked or locked from the inside. Should I just knock on it for your family to go open?”

The shadow looked surprised again. It drew a punch. Linah grinned.

“Got it.”

Her fist crashed into the metallic door’s hinges. After a few more punches, the panel finally banged to the ground.

A ground made of pure orange crystal.

Linah walked in and scanned what looked more like a vast cave than a room. The perfect place for a dragon. Except there was no dragon. The uneven ground was desert aside from some heaps of rubble.

As she lowered her eyes to the glimmering orange ground, she could see beyond it a pack of shimmering jellyfishes leisurely swimming in the ocean.

The ocean?!

Wait a sec… She crouched and confirmed after a moment.

“Jellyfishes. They’re jellyfishes, shadow! As I thought, we’re still on Phoenix Island.”

Or should she say inside the island? Was it part of the dungeon? She was clearly on the lower part of the Phoenix Turtle. Its throat, maybe, or its belly. In any case, only a few centimeters of crystal separated her from drowning in the depths of the Blazing Sea.

After a moment of amazement, she looked around for the shadow. Above her, in the dim light of the orange crystal, hanging from some sort of long ropes that disappeared in the darkness, there were about hundreds of yellow eggs. Eggs? They did look like eggs, but they were just so big they couldn’t possibly be eggs, right? Some had shattered to the ground, and as Linah examined the broken, thick shells, she grimaced. Maybe there were dragons, after all? She shook her head.

What was with that surreal view?

Fear of the unknown squeezed her pounding heart. Her right hand detached itself from her body. She recovered it and mustered some courage, then tried and failed to imagine she wasn’t alone… Something her grandma had told her once came to her mind:

‘Just as witches have a lot of secrets, so do the World, the Awqi, and the Crystals. Do not fear what you don’t know. Be wary of what you think you know.’

Okay, since she had absolutely no idea about her current location, she needed not to fear—Wait, what was with that absurd logic?

“Hwara-hwara-hwara,” she chuckled quietly. “I’m not alone, anyway. I’m with a quiet shadow friend…” She fell silent and turned around on the slippy surface of the orange crystal and rectified: “I was.”

Where did the shadow go?

* * *

My gaze was fastened on the spectral woman sitting on the throne of bones as she slowly said again:

“I’ve been waiting… for so long… for someone… to come…”

“…”

“I’ve been waiting… for so long… for someone… to come…”

“She goes on like a broken record,” I commented.

“She?” Ray and Zeeta turned to me, surprised.

“Oh, can’t you see her? She looks like a woman, but she’s just white energy, so guess I should call her… a ghost? It’s funny, but even though she’s a ghost, I’m not really scared of her.”

Suddenly, Ray flinched. I got worried.

“Ray? Are you all right?”

He raised a hand as if asking for silence. For a while, only the sound of drums could be heard in the throne room. I glanced at Zeeta funnily. He… really was the one making that noise, huh. Then Ray snorted and explained:

“I was talking with Rainbows.”

“Huh? Rainb…” I blinked, then exclaimed: “But of course! You can communicate with Rainbows and tell her where we are! Ah, but… How can a cat possibly save us?” I muttered.

“Let me rephrase it. I was talking with my dad through Rainbows.”

“…!! The Lord? How?”

“Hah… He did say he would come. Anyway, I let him see through your eyes, Armen, and he says that that ghost is warding an Exilir. Sorry, an Elixir. I’m doing… a lot of things… at the same time… Dad’s being annoying… like, super annoying…”

“Another broken record,” I teased.

We waited patiently for Ray to finish his conversation with his dad. Finally, he explained:

“The ghost in the throne is the soul of the former owner of the Elixir of Heavens, or more like what remained of it. From what my dad says, the Elixir only appears every two hundred years and can grant tremendous power. It’s obviously a dangerous item.”

Tremendous power, huh? I would have gotten excited if that was a game, but honestly, right now, I only wanted to find Erma and get the hell out of here. I shook my head.

“So, you’re telling us that that ghost I’m the only one able to see is a super powerful Elixir?”

Ray sighed.

“No. The ghost is the guardian. The Elixir must be in there.” He pointed at the golden receptacle in front of the throne of bones. “But, Armen, you’d better avoid going near that ghost: she’s made of a heavenly type of lifeforce. Just like Cesarine. If you touch it, you die.”

“…!” For the Crystals’ sake… Another heavenly girl? And there I was thinking we had reached some kind of ancient goddess who would give us an extraordinary reward… But guess a goddess would only want to kill me, an undead, just like that red sphere just earlier had taken me for a dying soul to be reset. I swallowed hard. “I see. As expected, ghosts are scary without exception. I won’t go near that guardian. Looks like she doesn’t want to leave her throne, anyway. Oh, come to think of it, she stopped repeating her sentence. Maybe she got bored? In any case, does your dad want you to do something with that Elixir? Steal it?”

Ray grimaced, looking warily at the throne from downstairs.

“Well… Something like that. Damn… Back in Farskyer, my dad told me, ‘be careful not to show you’re a necromancer, or your mom will strangle me’. And now he shows up on Phoenix with all his familiars—”

“All of them?!”

Ray looked weary as he nodded.

“All of them, aside from Uncle Adrian and some ghouls he put to sleep. A quite joyful trip in the water train, he said…” I burst out laughing just picturing the scene in my mind… Ray puffed out his cheeks with a painful expression. “Bah, I don’t want to even think about it. Anyway, he told me he will try to help us find a way out. I just hope he doesn’t talk too much with the trainers, or my mom won’t be long to catch on to why he’s been able to figure out my location so easily. If she finds out that Rainbows is an undead cat bound to me…”

As if a burden had just fallen on his shoulders, he crouched on the tiled floor, clutching at his head. He had just confirmed he was an “evil” alien prisoner sent who knows how many thousands of years ago to conquer a planet, but now all he was afraid of was that his mom might discover he was a necromancer? I couldn’t help but laugh softly.

“Haha… Sorry. I mean, your mom is your mom. She knows you are a Spawn of Darkness since you were eight, right? Yet she tried to protect you—”

“She doesn’t know.” Ray’s lips twisted into a sardonic grimace. “She convinced herself his son couldn’t possibly be a real Spawn of Darkness. That’s why she wanted me to awaken to my power so eagerly. To prove to everyone I had just an ordinary dark energy-based power and nothing more. But seems I’m a really ungrateful son…”

His smile grew creepier. I got worried. He wasn’t going to transform again into the Bossy Master, was he?

“Guys,” Zeeta intervened, on the first steps of the stairs in front of the throne. “Be quiet for a sec, will you? There’s something I want to hear.”

Oh? There was a silence, only broken by a faint sound of drums.

“I knew it,” Zeeta whispered.

“Do you mean the drums?”

Zeeta gave me a surprised look.

“You can hear it?”

“Of course I can, since we entered this place, you’ve been playing drums.”

“… Did you hit your head, Straw Head?”

“I didn’t. I’m telling you you’ve been making strange noises since I ate the door and we got in here—”

“What I’m hearing is as if someone is knocking against that trunk over there from the inside,” he cut me off, exasperated, as he pointed at the golden receptacle in front of the throne of bones. “Who knows, it could be the Elixir of Heavens trying to get out of the sarcophagus… But, Straw Head, I can barely hear it. Are you telling me your hearing is better than mine?”

The drums around Zeeta got louder.

“It’s not that, calm down,” I said. Could he really not hear those drums?

“I can hear it just like you, Armen,” Ray chimed in. “Zeeta’s being noisy. Since when are you able to emit sound, by the way?”

Zeeta was getting more irritated and loud by the second.

“What are you talking about, you two?”

“You are making sounds,” I explained. “Back at the door, when you got mad at Ray, there was a super loud bong that made Ray come back to normal.”

“Then there’ve been drums all the way,” Ray added. “Maybe because you are nervous. As I see it, either it’s a temporary phenomenon caused by this dungeon, or your power mutated in the red sphere—”

“Oi.” Zeeta looked at us, half-incredulous half-anxious. “Is it some kind of joke?”

“…” I drew closer and put a comforting hand on his arm. “Looks like you make sounds whenever you’re angry or nervous. The power’s kinda cool, so you don’t have to worry—”

“That’s not funny at all, Straw Head!”

“I’m not lying.”

“There’s no way I’m making a sound I can’t hear!”

“But you do. The drums are louder now. That must mean you’re very nervous.”

Zeeta abruptly grabbed me by my orange coverall. The glint of distress in his eyes was getting more intense. The drums sounded more like frantic heartbeats now. They were thrumming in my ears. An old memory surfaced in my mind. Oh, so… that was how a living heart beat. I had almost forgotten about it. A smile crossed my face.

“Zeeta. I wouldn’t lie to you like that. I know it’s hard to believe, but your emotions make noises. No, they play music. A wonderful music.”

Zeeta breathed out without releasing me:

“A wonderful music?”

“Mm.” My eyes smiled and almost closed as I said: “It’s as if I’m listening to the music of your heart.”

In a matter of seconds, the heartbeats around him turned into a rabid string of electric guitar notes. He was flushed. My smile broadened. So anger and nervousness weren’t the only feelings his new power could express. What I could read in that new music struck me to the core. Was that qi music? Was that the same technique I had used subconsciously when I had played the violin the other day and wrapped my deathforce around the melody? Anyhow, it was such a beautiful sound. Such a shame Zeeta couldn’t hear it. But that sound…

“Zeeta, you…” I said, moved to tears. “You’re such a nice guy. I’m so glad we’re besties.”

A dissonant sound of confused flutes came to blend into the concert.

“Wha—?” Zeeta let go of my coverall and cleared his throat. “Wasn’t Ray your best friend?”

Arching my eyebrows, I turned to the concentrated young necromancer that was seemingly talking again with his dad through Rainbows’ necro-bond.

“He is. A best friend. And a nice monster.”

Zeeta couldn’t help but snort with laughter.

“Look who’s talking. Well, he better be nice to you or I’ll turn into a monster myself. Anyway, if it’s true that I’m making music and am the only one who cannot hear it, that must mean something prevents me from hearing it, right? Do you think a cellphone can record it? It’s not like I don’t believe you at this point, but since it’s said some adventurers can go crazy inside a dungeon—”

“I’m in my right mind,” I assured, taking out my cell. “But your idea is not bad.”

“Then let’s give it a try while the monster talks with his dad and finds a way to save us.”

I looked at my cell. The battery was low, but I still could use it. Just as Zeeta’s and Ray’s cell, though, mine was out of range, so we couldn’t use them to communicate with the outside. I opened the audio recorder application, but it was taking so long that I pressed it again, only with a bit more energy… Suddenly, my cellphone cracked and split into two.

“Wh-Wh-Wha…?!”

Zeeta gaped at me.

“Seriously? You broke your cell?”

“It broke on its own!”

“Yeah, sure, you monster.” Shrugging, Zeeta took care of the recording with his own phone, waited for a moment, then concluded: “I hear nothing.”

I shoved my dead cell into my bag with a last sad goodbye and shook my head.

“That’s because you’re not feeling enough things right now. Let me do it.”

“Like hell I’ll let you break my phone!”

“I’ll be careful… Okay, if you don’t trust me—”

“Nothing to do with trust.”

“Haha… Start recording.” When his finger pressed the record button, I looked him in the eye. “Zeeta.”

He pouted, annoyed.

“What?”

I smiled sincerely.

“I love you.”

An explosion of sounds washed over me, just when the receptacle made a bang—but I barely noticed that last detail. I was so overwhelmed by Zeeta’s chaotic melody that I fell to my knees and exclaimed, amazed:

“Is that… LOVE!?”

But Zeeta was no longer looking at me. As I followed his gaze to the sarcophagus, I noticed that the golden lid had been knocked over and had shattered into the floor. Arising from the box like a vampire, a piece of broken stone in her hand, Linah Sunclaw stood with a bewildered face. Erma! She was safe and sound. A wave of relief struck me closely followed by confusion as a dark mass of energy arose from behind her.

“Lil Witch… You… You’re not an illusion, are you?”

Why was Linah’s hair so pale? Why was her skin so gray? Erma put a foot on the border of the receptacle, as gray as her face, and huffed.

“Tell me it’s not an illusion that you three are here, Straw Head, and I’ll tell you I’m not an illusion myself.”

I stared at her, baffled, then understood she was just covered in dust from head to toe. That meant… she was real!

“Stay away!” Linah warned, holding up a fist. “Dungeons are full of illusions.”

“What are you talking about? I’m the Straw Head! I’m Armen Moon!”

“So why were you confessing to Zeeta?”

“…!! W-Wait, what? I wasn’t confessing. I love him as a friend!”

“What’s my favorite plate?”

“Pork cutlet!”

“Wrong. It’s Kushari.”

“Eeeeh? What’s that?”

“Where’s your red cap?”

“I lent it to Arkifa. W-Wait, don’t attack-e us! Lil Witch-e, believe me, I’m the real deal-e!”

“… It’s really you.”

As she lowered her fist, finally convinced by my Taipei accent, a din of joyful cymbals filled the throne room as Zeeta burst out laughing, in front of a dusty witch, a concentrated Spawn of Darkness, a smiling Daeva, and a deadly ghost that trembled and muttered from her throne:

“I’ve been waiting… for so long… for someone… to come…” She suddenly lifted her head toward the high ceiling and thundered sluggishly: “Thou opened… the nest. Angry. It’s angry. Take the elixir. Save me. Angry. It is… GOING TO KILL THOU ALL.”

It? What did she mean by “it”?

Suddenly, something burst out of the walls.

Everything brutally quaked.

I had no idea that, at that very instant, on the island, the dispute between a nosy necromancer and an adamant fairy came to an end when, propelled by the sudden contraction of the Phoenix Turtle, both of them brusquely tumbled and unwittingly clung to each other; a silver-haired girl in search of a tabby cat fell safely on a squishy plant; a crimson guy beside her, less lucky, crashed into a spiky cactus and began cursing loud; in the infirmary, an injured firefly demon was ejected from her bed and barely managed to keep her red knit cap; in the whole city, one million two hundred thousand Phoenicians were shaken. Children heard a long high-pitched scream coming from under their feet. A prophet in a night pub warned his public that the end of the world had come. Massaging his aching forehead after hitting the bedside table, Gorka Soulberg sat up, mumbling. A gloomy Sunclaw studying an old plan of the Phoenix Dungeon raised his eyes as he felt a wave of wrath. A chill ran down his spine. Who could get so angry that he himself would get intimidated? He frowned and muttered in the Silent House:

“Little sister, what kind of monster did you wake up now?” He ran a hand through Curry’s short fur to calm it down and stood up with an unusually excited smile on his face. “Or was it you, Ray Styxer?”