EPISODE IX

What’s Left Behind

“Name?”

Amaris tightened her grip around her backpack straps. “Amaris Kelvin.”

“Jenny Zero,” Jenny said, keeping her face perfectly level.

The large, grizzled man with one of the most threatening mustaches Amaris had ever seen scrawled their names down on the government-mandated paperwork. His scowl deepened. “Age?”

Amaris’ thoughts let out a series of childish curses that made it difficult for her to keep a straight face. “…Thirteen.” I think, at this point.

Jenny folded her gloved fingers together. “Fourteen.”

“Right… pink or blue?”

Amaris blinked. “Excuse me?”

“All kids under the age of sixteen get their choice of a pink or blue balloon.” He gestured at the bundle of balloons behind him. “Pink or blue?”

“Pink,” Amaris said, graciously taking the balloon.

“Give me the bombastic blue!” Jenny declared, pointing excitedly. She got what she asked for, assuming the pale-blue helium-filled object that lazily drifted with the wind could be called “bombastic.”

The man let the two of them through the gate, which was little more than a picket-fence in the midst of some white tape that separated the ancient ruins of Pinforsa from the rest of the hilly country. Amaris and Jenny took their position behind probably a hundred other kids, all with balloons of their own, creating a micro-sea of jostling blue and pink dots.

“How long until anyone asks us which class we’re with?” Amaris asked Jenny.

“I’m betting never,” Jenny said, gesturing at the various teachers leading the kids along. “These morons aren’t the sort to do head counts until they have no choice. None of them want to be here.”

“Such a shame…” Amaris said, taking a moment to appreciate the ruins all around them. The structures were completely black and were exceedingly jarring, looking like charred carcasses of some ancient metallic golems strewn across the landscape. The nearest large structure was vaguely cone shaped, but the entire eastern half was cleaved off and lying on the ground nearby, revealing the interior to be hollow and studded with various helix-shaped supports. No evidence of wires, however, just raw black structure.

“Now, stay with the group, kids!” one of the guides was saying. “And don’t stray from the path—we don’t want anyone stepping on the priceless history here.”

“Priceless?” a thin girl snorted. “Looks like a bunch of black rocks.”

“And these black rocks are not worth much, that is true,” the guide said, leaning down and picking up a rock. He dusted it off with the hairs on his beard. “However, it is not the material that carries value. It is the uncovering of the mystery! All accounts point to Pinforsa being a major trading hub in ancient times that, overnight, was reduced to black rubble—the very material of the buildings themselves was changed! While this has ruined many artifacts, it has also preserved many things; things we use to uncover the history, secrets, and knowledge of the Pinforsans. And that, my girl, is what is priceless.”

“…So knowledge. It’s like paying to go to school.”

Jenny snickered. “Just you wait, kid, you and everyone else here will be doing that soon enough.”

The girl gave Jenny a weird look before deciding this strange girl wasn’t worth her attention and wandered off.

“…Wait,” Amaris turned to Jenny. “Have you…?”

“Gone to college? Yeah. I have several degrees at this point. Can’t remember half of them. They eventually stopped admitting me when I tried to sign up for a major I’d apparently already had…”

Amaris shook her head; now was not the time to get baffled by Jenny’s nature. “By the way, fourteen? You just had to show me up, huh?”

Jenny smirked. “One, you don’t know how old you are anymore. Two, I am fourteen years old. At least. Plus that’s kinda how I look a—“

“I’m taller than you.”

“Are you going to argue that I’m physically younger than you just because I’m shorter?”

“W-well…” Amaris had a few more points she could make but decided that the embarrassment wasn’t worth it. She turned away, looking at the ruins again, hoping to find wonder in them. And she did; their ancient shapes curved in complex patterns that, at one point, had been aesthetically pleasing in a mathematical sense, and she found it an enjoyable brainteaser to work out what their original shapes had been and why they were chosen.

But then they passed a sign, a sign that had the one thing Amaris had come here to avoid thinking about.

It showed a map of the known world with a big, red “you are here” dot. It was just like all the maps they’d seen in the library, except a little less detailed. But the fact was the same: it looked nothing like the maps Amaris had known back home. They had traveled far enough East to find people with larger world maps, and Amaris’ home was nowhere in sight.

Jenny was already preparing her fist to reduce the offending sign to slag.

“Don’t…” Amaris sighed, holding up a hand. “Don’t make a scene.”

“We came here t—“

“And it was a childish and immature instinct of mine.”

“Amaris, you’re a kid. You have more excuse to be childish than I do!”

“Mmm…” Amaris grumbled, sticking her hands in her jacket pockets and marching forward. At this point, Pitch would normally have slithered out to comfort her, but she had the flaps sealed so he wouldn’t get out and scare anyone. With no reptile to ease her forlorn feeling, she just kept walking with the group, her back to Jenny.

Jenny jumped up to grab the balloon Amaris had released without thinking. “That’s it, that’s it, keep walking. We’ll always keep walking, onward, to new horizons!”

“To what end?” Amaris asked. “For all we know my home is West and it’s so far away we’ll never get to it. Nobody even knows how large the world is, Jenny.”

“The answer, my interesting friend, is why not?” She made an exaggerated motion not unlike a fish, twirling into Amaris’ view. “What would be the point in stopping?”

“I don’t know,” Amaris admitted. “I… guess there isn’t one. Why not keep looking?”

“Exactly! Why not! Why…” Jenny pointed to a circle-shaped structure that looked somewhat like a door. “For all we know the answers to where your home is are right there! Behold, the door to your dreams!”

“Don’t go over there!” the tour guide called back, evidentially having seen Jenny point excitedly. “That is an area of active research! Science must not be disturbed!”

Amaris glared at Jenny. “Jenny, no.”

“…Jenny yes?”

“No.”

Jenny deflated—though the two balloons in her hands made the motion awkward. “You’re no fun.”

“Someone has to be the mature one.”

“Yeah yeah, eat the irony up like some deranged vampire.”

~~~

About twenty minutes later Amaris noticed Jenny wasn’t walking with her anymore.

“…Sassafras.” Amaris allowed herself to fall to the back of the group. When she was certain the guide wasn’t looking, she ran back down the path. She knew exactly where Jenny was.

Sure enough, there Jenny stood, in front of the circular door-like structure. She was just standing there, waiting. “Took you long enough to realize I was missing!”

“Jenny, don—“

Jenny lit her fist with an orange burst of energy and punched right through the circular covering, reducing it to rubble and revealing a smooth pipe-like interior that gradually sloped downward into the earth. “Don’t what?”

“Jenny I swear I am going to wring your neck one of these da—actually, hold that thought.” She jumped off the path, ran to Jenny, and grabbed her by the neck and started shaking.

“You… aren’t even breaking… my neck… properly…” Jenny gasped with a dumb grin on her face. “You… want to… twist a bit to the left…”

Amaris’ was suddenly struck by the monumental absurdity of the situation and couldn’t help but burst into giggles, loosening her grip around Jenny’s neck.

Jenny gave Amaris an exaggerated wink. “Nobody can resist Jenny of the Red Gloves’ charm!” She put her fingers to her eyes in a mock “cute” pose and took a step back to add to the illusion.

The ground crumbled under her feet. With a panicked yelp, she reached out and grabbed Amaris by the collar in vain hope of stopping herself from cascading down the pipe she’d just opened up. To her credit, Amaris tried to dig her heels into the ground, but it was too fragile, turning to powdered dust. With a panicked scream of her own, she was dragged after Jenny into the pipe.

The pipe was too smooth to grab onto anything, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. Both Jenny and Amaris attempted to push their arms and legs as far out as possible to stop their descent, but the opening was too large, and soon their speed was too high to do so safely. Fortunately, the pipe only adjusted its direction in small increments, so there were no sudden turns that would have resulted in two rather unsightly impact stains. Instead, they were subject to burns, scrapes, and bruises due to friction with the black stone walls. However, the further down they went, the less they could feel the stone. Not because their nerves were getting overloaded, but because the stone was gradually transitioning into a metal-like substance that felt partially soft, a contradiction that confused Amaris considerably, taking her mind momentarily off their precarious position.

In time, the pipe eventually started to level out, slowing their descent to a much less precarious speed. At this point the pipe abruptly ended and the two of them launched out with their remaining speed, slamming into a smooth wall before comically sliding down onto the ground. Several of Amaris’ belongings had been knocked off the backpack while they had fallen, and all these things joined them shortly after—including a loose arrow that embedded itself in Jenny’s back and the various components of the tent, among many other items that annoyingly pelted the two girls.

Despite having been fully clothed, Amaris still had numerous scrapes and burns over her skin, the worst of it being on her left jawline where she hadn’t been able to adequately protect herself. She could feel it bleeding. It needed attention.

Unfortunately, attending to her injury would require something she didn’t have at the moment: light. It was utterly pitch black.

“Jenny?” Amaris asked, finding that she could still annunciate perfectly fine.

“Here,” Jenny said. “Dizzy, but here.”

“Light one of your hands on fire. I need to find the flashlight.”

Jenny did as requested, illuminating the area. It was a roughly rectangular room composed of a dark, metal-like substance that shimmered and yet felt somewhat rubbery—both hard and soft at the same time. There were two circular exits to the room that led to darkness, in addition to the pipe they had just come out of. Otherwise, there was nothing of note in the room besides the two of them and Amaris’ various belongings.

Amaris noticed her bow first—somehow undamaged, to her relief. Finding no flashlight among the bits and pieces lying around them, she took her backpack off and found the flashlight somehow still in its little pocket. She turned it on, gesturing for Jenny to turn off the fire—they didn’t want to die of smoke inhalation. Checking inside the backpack, she noted that several things were busted and broken from the fall, but Pitch’s enclosure was only cracked, having been protected from the worst of it by the other belongings. Pitch himself was huddled in a corner, waving his head in the signature sign of “I’m very very dizzy right now.”

“Your face,” Jenny pointed.

“Yeah, yeah…” Amaris pulled out the first aid kit they’d procured and started cleaning her injury. The alcohol stung something fierce, but at this point she knew what real pain felt like and found the old memories of her crying when her mother tended to her scrapes somewhat laughable. She took the bandage wrap and tightly wound it around her head. It looked absolutely ridiculous, but it kept pressure on the wound, and that was all that mattered for now. It would be a little awkward to talk, but not impossible.

Seeing her complete her task, Jenny held up her hands. “All right, this is my bad. I…”

“I think we both know this is just my curse at work,” Amaris said, starting to collect the rest of her belongings and place them back in or on the backpack.

Jenny was visibly relieved that she didn’t have to deal with a long and drawn-out apology. Instead, she set to helping Amaris with all her things, until the backpack was fully loaded once again. Though it didn’t look anywhere near as neat as before.

“So…” Amaris stood up, bow and arrow in her hands. “We just fell a really really long way and I doubt we can climb back up that tube. Thus, we must explore this… place.” She frowned. “Any idea what this is?”

“Nothing beyond my usual sense of déjà-vu,” Jenny reported.

“Right… well, in that case…” Amaris turned on her heels and pointed at a random opening. “This way, I suppose.”

Despite Amaris’ take-charge attitude, Jenny ended up taking the lead since she could take the pounding of any traps that may have been lying in wait. They left their original room and found themselves in a much larger one shaped a bit like a cylinder with the far end much larger than the small end they were coming out of. This area, too, was featureless and seemed to contain virtually nothing of interest, though they did find some lettering scrawled into the wall.

Amaris frowned, examining the swirling, flowing, cycling language. “I have no idea how to read this.”

“I have a third of an idea,” Jenny said, frowning. “For some reason, when I’m looking at it I can’t stop thinking about cake and airplanes.”

“Might that be because it looks kind of like a cake?”

“Either that or I’m half-remembering something. You know how it is.” She ran her fingers across the engraving. “Still, fairly sure I’ve seen this kind of writing before.”

“No idea where?”

“No idea where.”

Amaris took a step back and looked up at the empty ceiling. “What even is this place?”

“The deepest part of the ruins that didn’t get blackened?”

Amaris shook her head. “Who builds something this far down? And… more than that, why is it all featureless? The Pinforsans designed their buildings with both math and functionality. This is just… empty space. It doesn’t seem to serve any purpose.”

“Storage?”

“Then why’s there nothing here?”

“Art project?”

“This is the most boring art project I’ve ever seen.”

Jenny let out a low whistle. “You must not see much art.”

“Or maybe we’re just not seeing the whole picture…” Amaris scratched her chin, trying to think of something they’d missed, but came up with nothing. Jenny took this as a sign to forge onward, so she guided them to the next room.

This one was utterly massive, easily able to hold several houses within its cylindrical confines. Unlike the previous room, whose entrances were at the ends of the cylinder, this room was upright and had five circular openings along the curved edge, one of which Jenny and Amaris emerged from. The floor and ceiling were domed and covered with what looked to be screens, though none of them were functioning and a few were visibly cracked or just simply missing, revealing exposed wires beneath. In the center of the great chamber was a pillar with five helical ribbons twisted around it, dominating the entire enclosure.

“Woah…” Jenny said, blinking. “That’s a big one.”

Amaris narrowed her eyes. “Jenny, turn off the light.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it, I want to check something.”

With a shrug, Jenny clicked the light off. It took a few seconds, but Amaris became convinced that she was right—the central pillar was glowing a very, very faint yellow. “You see that?”

“Amaris, it’s pitch black in here.”

“Look at the pillar, it’s glowing ever so slightly.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Did you forget which direction the pillar was already?”

Jenny didn’t respond to this.

“Just turn around until you see something.”

There was no response.

“…Jenny?” Amaris realized with some concern that she had no real way to defend herself in absolute darkness. Shooting arrows blindly would just be a bad idea. If something had grabbed Jenn—

“Rawr!” Jenny shouted, turning on the flashlight right in Amaris’ face.

Amaris jumped back so quickly she almost fell over. She had to take a moment to put her hand over her pounding heart. “J-Jenny!”

Jenny broke out in devious laughter. “You should have seen the look on your face! Utterly priceless! Oh, I’m gonna treasure that reaction for a loooong time.”

Amaris, having calmed herself down enough to breathe properly, couldn’t help but smile. “You know, in an actual emergency…”

“You would have heard punching, yelling, and me screaming bloody murder.”

“Just…” Amaris couldn’t help but smile and shake her head. Jenny will be Jenny… “Did you see the pillar glow or not?”

“Oh, yeah, easily,” Jenny said a little too dismissively. “Maybe it has power or something.”

“That’s what I want to find out.” Amaris set off down the curved floor to the pillar itself, bow at the ready just in case something went awry. At the base of the pillar they found a ring of screens mounted upon it, none of them working, and a few exposed panels with more strange writing on them. However, this writing wasn’t hastily scrawled, it was clearly engraved by some kind of machine or precise craftsmanship.

“Jenny?”

“Uh…” She stared at the writing, furrowing her brow. “I’m getting thoughts of ‘center’ and ‘dance party.’ “

“Mmm…” Amaris continued to hum to herself as she investigated the pillar itself. It was made out of the same contradictory metal-yet-soft material as the rest of the area. Peeking under one of the open hatches, she found crystalline nodes connected with colored wires in a variety of patterns she couldn’t even begin to wrap her head around.

Jenny opened up another panel. “Hey, check this out!”

Amaris moved over, more than a little surprised to see a glasslike ball of yellow coloration sitting within a nest of wires, glowing softly. It was badly cracked and had numerous gashes in it.

“Some kind of power source?”

Jenny shrugged, reaching in and yanking the ball out, receiving a minor shock for her efforts that was of little concern. She juggled it in her hand for a moment, and then turned off the flashlight. Sure enough, the pillar was no longer glowing.

“Right, so this is all the power this area had left,” Amaris surmised. “And, clearly, it’s not enough.”

“Might be enough power for something else though.” Jenny tossed the ball to Amaris, who quickly stuffed it in the backpack.

“So this is likely the center of the area,” Amaris said. “Five ways out, one of which is where we came from.” She couldn’t help but frown. “We’ll just have to pick one and see where it goes since neither of us are tech-savvy. I’m not sure we can use this center pillar to get out, even if it is what I’m thinking it is.”

“A computer?” Jenny asked.

“Yeah, a computer, or a large portion of one.” Amaris closed her eyes and started tapping her foot. “If we had some kind of interface, maybe I’d be able to look at the data within, but none of the screens are working so that’s bunk.”

“Then we must go, onward with the quest!” Jenny declared, twirling on her heels until she was facing a random path. “This one looks good.”

“That’s the one we came from.”

Jenny tilted her fingers slightly to the left. “That one, then.”

With a shrug, Amaris followed Jenny through the opening, finding themselves in yet another tapered cylinder room, but this one had no writing on the walls. However, instead of simply being empty, this one had several open panels and loose tools lying around—at least Amaris assumed they were tools. She didn’t really have a clue what they might be used for.

Walking up to the closest one she picked it up. It looked vaguely like a pickaxe, except it had three points and there was no handle, in its place was a hollowed-out cone. The best Amaris could do was stick her fist in the cone and hold it up like some kind of pickaxe-glove that was way too large for her.

Jenny picked up another tool, also mounted on a hollowed-out cone, but the head was some kind of interlocking drill bit. She twisted her fist inside the cone and got the drill to rotate a half-turn, but no further. “Out of power.”

“Just like everything else around here.” Amaris pulled the yellow ball out and tried to place it within the tools, but it wasn’t the right shape to fit in the cone and it didn’t stick to anything. “It was worth a shot.”

Jenny lit her hand with a silvery light and drove it into the drill-bit tool. A loud crack rang out as the force from her punch split the tool down the middle, revealing numerous wires and crystals within that were devoid of all light. “Nothing.”

Amaris plucked out one of the crystals, frowning. “You know, I don’t think the Pinforsans used crystal-based interfaces either. They definitely didn’t have this level of technology…”

“So if they didn’t build this place, who did?” Jenny asked. “Aliens?”

“That’s as good of an idea as any.”

“Sarcasm, Amaris, that was sarcasm.”

Amaris rolled her eyes, pocketing the ball once again. They tested a few of the other tools but found nothing of use in any of them—and most of them had no clear purpose. The most bizarre was a hook that appeared hard but was actually soft and moldable like clay, but they couldn’t separate any pieces from it.

This all makes perfect physical sense. Yep. Amaris pushed her snide thoughts aside as they moved into the next chamber, which was rectangular. However, unlike the chamber they’d appeared in, it was not empty, for one of the walls had four holes in it, each just barely large enough for a person to fit into. Shining their lights into the holes, they found miniature chambers large enough to hold one of them.

Jenny put her hands on her hips and glanced at the writing on top of the opening. “Release…”

“Release?”

“Amaris, I think these are escape pods.”

“Escape pods… So, what, this is a ship?” Amaris glanced at the hole uneasily.

“Maybe?”

“Or some kind of… military installation.” Amaris took a few steps back from the pod entrance, frowning. “It doesn’t help us if they’re not powered.”

Jenny stuck her hand in one of the holes, waving it around.

“Jenny don—“

“What’s it going to do? Eat my hand?” Jenny cocked her head to the side with another of her exaggerated winks.

Amaris took in a deep breath. “Right, you’ll be fine…”

“You doing okay over there? You suddenly seem…”

“I’m just getting a bad feeling,” Amaris said, somewhat dismissively. “Escape pods… abandoned ‘ship’… almost no power… there’s something I don’t like and I don’t know what it is and that’s also bothering me.”

Jenny nodded in understanding, poking her head into another one of the pod holes. “I get that a lot. The sense that something’s wrong. Not here, but elsewhere. Like, for some reason I don’t understand, I’m deathly afraid of starfruit.”

Amaris felt a chill go up her spine. “Starfruit?”

“Yes, the completely innocuous and, I’m told, bland fruit.” Jenny inspected the other pod holes, finding no easy to access points. “Gives me the willies. No idea why.”

Amaris merely stared at the floor, blankly.

“Well…” Jenny cracked her knuckles as she stepped back from the pods. “Even if that ball of ours might work, I don’t see where to put it. So we’re back on square one.”

“To the next room?” Amaris asked.

“To the next room.”

Relieved for a reason she couldn’t fully understand, Amaris moved to the next room… and froze. There was only one entrance to this vaguely cone-shaped room, and it gave them a brilliant view of the dozens of compartments lining the wall on all sides. The dozens of star-shaped compartments somewhat larger than an adult human.

“Huh,” Jenny said, walking in like this was perfectly normal and nothing was wrong. “Odd shape for…” She poked her head into one of the holes, taking in a deep breath as though she were a bloodhound. “I have no idea what this is for.”

“Beds,” Amaris whispered.

“Huh?” Jenny pulled her head out, smacking herself on the pointed edge of the star shape. “Ow…”

“They’re beds, Jenny.”

Jenny knocked on the interior of the star-shaped hole with her fist, demonstrating it to be quite solid. “Some kind of bed this is.”

“You don’t get it.” Amaris took a step back. “They’re beds. For them.”

Jenny looked to Amaris with legitimate confusion. “For who?”

“Them! The stars!” Amaris all but shrieked, her voice cracking. “We shouldn’t be here. Any second they’ll find us and vaporize us with their rainbow death lasers.”

Jenny snorted—but had the decency to realize now was not the time to chuckle and slammed her hands over her face. As far as Amaris was concerned, however, she was laughing out loud.

“You think this is funny!?”

“Uh…”

“You do! I bet you think ‘death by rainbow’ will just tickle a little and be another one of your outrageous stories and and and…” Amaris took a few heavy, panicked breaths. “I… You…” Wild-eyed, Amaris gripped the doorway as tightly as she could, every limb in her body trembling.

“Amaris, let’s calm down…” Jenny said, holding out a hand. “I don’t know what’s going on and… uh… something something it’s okay?”

“Okay!? It’s okay!?” Amaris pointed at Jenny and opened her mouth wide—but then she froze again and all the determination went out of her eyes.

“Amaris?”

Without another word Amaris turned tail and ran back down the way they had come, stumbling over the doorway in the dark, clattering further and further into the shadow.

Jenny remained alone, with the flashlight. She let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “You’re supposed to be the emotionally supportive one. I suck at it.” With a shake of her head, she set off into the darkness to find Amaris.

~~~

Darkness. There was only Darkness.

This is the truth, Amaris thought to herself, legs pulled to her chest. This is what there really is. Just the Darkness. Nothingness. Empty.

At least it’s safe. No rainbows here. No death. Just… darkness.

She opened her eyes. Or did she close them? She wasn’t sure, it didn’t make any difference. The tears fell down her face either way. Her stupid eyelids weren’t properly sealed. Or they were working exactly as they were supposed to and she just hated it.

She didn’t have her bow anymore. All Amaris knew was that she had it when she’d started running, and she didn’t anymore. Running… what was she running from?

The stars. The stars were after her. They had to be. They were back to finish the job. That’s why they left her alive. So they could come back now and end her once and for all. Of course, it wouldn’t be that simple. There would be a long, drawn-out process of hunting, tracking, perhaps enslavement. Then they’d burn her to pieces one part at a time—maybe starting with Pitch.

She couldn’t stop herself from seeing her beloved snake disintegrating in a beam of rainbows shot from the heavens above. She closed her eyes as tight as she could, but the image remained, replaying over, and over, and over.

This is their torment. This is why they didn’t kill me. So I could be amusing to them. Trapped in their own little game.

Amaris wanted to run, but where was there to run to? The entire ship was one of them. A core with five arms.

This is why they didn’t kill me, so they could digest me and use my curse to fuel their war machine. That has to be it. That has to be it.

She felt something moving around behind her. All she could do was let out a strained cry, too weak to run. Too scared to run. Already she could feel the drilling power of their beam tearing away at the skin of her back, sliding up her neck, and licking her cheek…

…Pitch?

She felt the snake do what he did best: flick his tongue in and out to let her know he was there. And, somehow, with him came a sense of warmth… a deep-seated, calming wave of heat that slowly took Amaris over and brought down the shivers. But there was still fear—fear that this was just a dream, and the moment she opened her eyes to see, all would be gone. All would be lost.

But Pitch was persistent, and a snake licking at the corners of her eyes made her blink a few times.

Amaris found that she was huddled in-between the helical edges of the central pillar. Pitch’s heat-lamp was active next to her, warming the nearby area. Sitting cross-legged about a meter away was Jenny, flashlight in her lap, looking at Jenny with the saddest, most concerned look Amaris had ever seen on her face.

“H-how long have I…?” Amaris asked, wiping her face.

“I… haven’t really been checking the time,” Jenny admitted. “A while. I let you sit for some time before I let Pitch out.”

“Mmm…” Amaris looked at the heat lamp.

“You looked cold.”

“I was. …Thank you.”

Silence fell over the two of them, punctuated only by the occasional hiss of a little black snake.

Jenny awkwardly placed her chin in her hands, furrowing her brow.

“…Aren’t you going to say something?” Amaris asked.

“Hey, when I talk, bad things happen,” Jenny forced a sad smile. “I’m an idiot, remember?”

“I mean, obviously, but you’re my idiot.”

“Bold of you to claim ownership.”

“Bold of you to call a crying girl… bold.” Amaris had to force her eyes shut, trying to keep from devolving into a blubbering mess again. “I’ve been messed up, Jenny.”

“I don—“

“This curse. It’s… it’s done things to me. I’m a kid, Jenny. These kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen. I’m not supposed to watch people die, watch myself die, get forced into slave labor, or… or…” She pulled Pitch to her chest, taking a moment to breathe slowly. “…I’m scared.”

“You know I’ll do whatever I can to protect you, right?” Jenny pointed at herself with a smug grin. “Jenny, immortal bodyguard.”

“The fear’s… more than that.” Amaris looked Jenny in the eyes. “Why did Freddloi curse me? How far away from home am I? How many people around me will this curse hurt? It’s been so long, how are my parents doing? Have they been able to go on this long? If I get home will I just bring the curse to them?”

“Amaris, I want you to listen to me: this here’s a Jenny-certified promise. I’m going to do whatever I can to get you home, and when you get home, I’ll stay around to protect you and everyone around you from your curse. However interesting it may get. Understand?”

Amaris stared at Jenny in disbelief. “Jenny, I can’t ask you to throw your life away…”

“You’ll live, what, a hundred years?” Jenny smirked. “Amaris, a hundred years is nothing.”

“This is silly. You can’t make a promise for something that long!”

Jenny folded her arms. “We already established that I’m your idiot, right? Thus, I shall continue to be stupid. And such. Q.E.D.”

“You don’t even know what Q.E.D. means.”

“Not in the slightest, but it sounds fancy and official.” Jenny gave Amaris a mock salute. “Jenny the idiot, reporting for duty. I’ll take all the arrows, anvils, demon-traps, dark assault critters, masterminds, and other ‘interesting’ enemies to the face!” She pointed extravagantly at her face. “My face Amaris!”

Amaris couldn’t help but giggle. “Moron.”

“Yes, see, glad we’re on the same page.”

Amaris jumped Jenny and pulled her into a hug, squeezing exceptionally tightly. “Jenny… I’m so lucky I found you.”

Jenny let out an awkward laugh. “I’d, uh, say likewise but this has been pretty terrible luck all things considered. Good thing I love terrible luck!”

Amaris made no vocal response, she just kept holding onto Jenny far, far longer than Jenny was comfortable with, but she had no heart to break the thing off herself. She just glanced awkwardly around until she locked eyes with Pitch.

Jenny was sure he was laughing at her every time he stuck out that tongue of his.

With time, Amaris eventually broke the hug off on her own and stood up. “Uh… I think I dropped some of my stuff.”

“I put it over there,” Jenny said, pointing the flashlight behind her at the bow and two arrows. “It’s amazing that your bow hasn’t snapped in two already.”

Amaris plucked it up and put the arrow to the string. “Did I ever tell you exactly how I got this?”

“Uh, that Coleus girl, right? Plants?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Amaris smiled. “I… think I should tell you everything from start to finish once we get out of here. You’ve only heard bits and pieces. For now, though… escape.” She looked out to one of the passages they hadn’t been down.

“You sure you’re up for it?” Jenny asked.

“Not at all.”

“That’s the spirit!” Jenny twirled the flashlight in her hands and pointed down a random entrance. “Onward!”

“Jenny, that’s the one we just came out of.” Amaris tilted her head. “With such a bad sense of direction, it’s a miracle you even found me in the dark.”

“Just… just point me down a path we haven’t gone through, okay?”

~~~

The end of the next pathway was sheared clean off and separated from the main body. Between the two segments, there were clods of dirt, immense plant roots, and various rocks with some evidence of burrowing animal activity. The inner workings of the structure’s walls were exposed, the various wires and crystals on proud display. Unlike the various consoles Amaris and Jenny had opened up earlier, which only had a few easily resolvable crystals with traceable wires, these areas were not meant to ever be seen and had hundreds of snaking threads surrounding an equal number of colored crystals. Every now and then, a spark would come out of one of the severed wires on the far side.

A visible spark.

“There’s power over there,” Amaris said. She walked to the edge where the earth had severed the ship. Somehow, an underground fissure had formed here, creating a deep canyon-like gash that went so far down the flashlight couldn’t show them the ground. It was only about a meter wide, and the rest of the ship appeared rather stable on the far side, though notably a little lower in elevation than the area they were currently occupying.

Amaris looked up the crevasse—she was able to see the closed-off top. No hope of climbing out, though if it had come to that she would rather have tried to scale the massive pipe. Instead, it looked like they were going to need to cross the crevasse if they wanted to figure out what was powering the wires on the other side.

Amaris took off her backpack, placing Pitch on top of her head. Carefully, she unspooled the rope, attaching it to the back of one of her arrows. She aimed…

…and Jenny had already jumped the gap, slamming her chest awkwardly on the jagged edge before pulling herself up and over. “Made it!”

Amaris released her arrow anyway, embedding it in the tangle of wires hanging out of the severed ceiling. She yanked on it as hard as she could just to make sure it was really in there.

“You could just jump too, you know, it’s not that far.”

“I’m thinking ahead,” Amaris said, tying the other end of the rope to a hook-shaped outcropping on her side. She attempted to put it as high as possible, but she couldn’t reach the ceiling.

“How so?”

“See, your end is lower than this one.” She tied another section of rope to the rope already going across, affixing the other end to her waist. “We need a way to get back up.”

“Oh. Right. But wait, I’ve seen y—“

Amaris did a cartwheel off her edge, performing a flip while in the middle of the air, landing perfectly at Jenny’s feet without even straining the rope whatsoever.

Jenny put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t even need it!”

“Never hurts to be careful,” Amaris said, detaching herself from the rope. “So… let’s see what we’ve got here.”

They passed through a circular opening into another cone-shaped chamber, but this one had no “beds.” Instead, it housed what appeared to be several desks with screens on them—and one of those screens had a little yellow light blinking softly on top of it.

“Right, stand aside,” Jenny said, holding her finger into the air. “Let the demolition expert press the mysterious yellow button.”

“I don’t think that’s a button.”

Jenny tapped the light and nothing happened. “Another brilliant deduction by Miss Kelvin. Now, perhaps you can tell me how to turn this screen on?”

Amaris shrugged.

Lazily, Jenny knocked on the screen like it was a door. “Hello—woah!” Apparently, touch was the answer, for the screen lit up all at once. However, no picture resolved itself. It attempted to project some kind of hologram but all it could do was produce black and white amorphous static that pulsated in the air like a sickened amoeba.

The sound, however, was perfectly clear. It came through with beeps and whirrs like party blowers mixed with chirping birds and ‘magical’ spark effects.

Amaris closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It’s just a recording. It’s just a recording.

“Holy mother of potato farms,” Jenny said. “I understand what he’s saying.”

“What!?”

“It’s a language composed entirely of cutesy noises,” Jenny said. “I… must have learned it at some point, probably why the writing was all familiar to me. He’s… using a lot of words I don’t know but I think I’m getting the gist of it.” She stopped for a moment, looking to Amaris. “You… okay if I take some time to decode this?”

Amaris hesitated for a moment but ultimately gave Jenny the go-ahead. She nervously petted Pitch on the head.

Jenny leaned down, craning her ear to the speaker with closed eyes. “Right… yeah… that’s weird… hmm…”

Amaris started listening herself. It was clearly the same kind of vocalization Buddy had given to her, but with several more sounds layered over top of each other in many complex ways. She was unable to make out words but it wasn’t that hard to imagine it being used for speech.

Monstrous killers speaking to each other like plush cartoon toys.

She saw the rainbows again, eating away at everything…

No, she told herself. Not again. Please, just… help me, I can’t do this. She opened her eyes, focusing on Jenny. She’s here to help me. She’s here to help me. Repeating the phrase over and over in her mind, she calmed herself down long enough for Jenny to finish listening to the message three times in a row.

“Okay, this is a… very confusing mess.” Jenny stood up, scratching her head. “So… this is some kind of military guy, I think, and he’s reporting on the ‘ship death time’. He reports an attempted invasion of a ‘local thing storehouse,’ and that the ‘Hexagon blessing’ was on them. Then the ‘black stone’ attacked them and they ended up crashing at ‘big retreat’ in the wrong direction. The only way to be sure the ship could be recovered and not ‘black stoned’ was to disintegrate the entire crew.” Jenny pressed her hands together and frowned.

Amaris ground her teeth. “That… that doesn’t make any sense…”

“Well, this ship isn’t like the ruins up there… it may have worked.”

“Except nobody came to claim this ship,” Amaris said. “This has been down here for… I don’t know how long, a long time, that’s for sure. And…” Amaris took a moment to breathe a few times.

“You know what, doesn’t really matter,” Jenny said. She surrounded her fist in a blue aura and smashed the screen with several shards of ice, ending the message in an instant. “It doesn’t help us get out of here to know that, so… who needs to hear it?”

Amaris smiled weakly. “Right. Can you…?”

Jenny pulled a yellow glass ball out of the wires she’d just smashed to pieces. It was in about as bad of shape as the other one they’d found. “Probably not all that helpful.”

“Maybe there’s some other stuff here…” Amaris started searching around to distract herself, finding that the various desks all had drawers. Opening one, an utterly brilliant yellow light shone into both of their faces, blinding them for a second.

Despite the pain of looking. Amaris couldn’t fully look away—it was too beautiful. It was a perfectly smooth sphere of golden-yellow energy with no damage, no cracks, and the luminosity of a floodlight.

Amaris picked it up and grinned. “I think this will do nicely.”

“Back to the pillar?”

“Back to the pillar.”

They scrambled back—almost in so much of a rush that they forgot about the crevasse. With an awkward chuckle, Amaris started tying herself to the rope.

Jenny decided to try and jump it. However, jumping up is a lot harder than jumping down, and she slammed facefirst into the lower edge and promptly fell down into the crevasse. It was small enough that she was able to wedge herself in it by spreading her arms and legs out, but she’d still fallen a fair distance before she came to a stop with several sickening cracks.

Amaris poked her head over the edge. “You okay down there?”

“Never… better…” Jenny grumbled as her bones twisted back into their proper places.

With almost no effort whatsoever, Amaris jumped to the side with her backpack and all the tools. “Right, let’s get you out of there...”

~~~

It took a good twenty minutes to fully pull Jenny up and out of the crevasse, at which point the both of them ran right back to the central pillar. Jenny all but tore the panel off, revealing the crystal nodes the broken orb had occupied.

“Just so I know we’re both on the same page…” Amaris pulled out the fully-powered orb. “We plug this in, and then... hmm.” Amaris paused. “Actually, how is a powered ship going to be able to help us?”

“It survived crashing into the ground… if we turn the engines on…”

“Under this much rock?”

Jenny shrugged. “Or maybe the pipe going to the surface will suddenly become a vacuum jet, I don’t know. Ship’s useless right now, nothing more than a death trap. So, go on, plug it in already!”

Amaris frowned. This is going to have some unintended consequence… Who am I kidding; there’s no way I’m going to be able to resist putting this in there. Muttering a quick plea under her breath that this would get her out somehow, she pushed the ball in.

It was received readily. The wires coming out of its niche blazed to life in a yellow glory, feeding the energy to the endless crystal matrices within, each crystal becoming a technicolor star amongst the golden lattice. The metallic-rubbery material that made up most of the ship reacted as well, transforming into a cartoonish yellow material that felt slightly fuzzy. The various screens in the central room turned on, though about a third of them could produce nothing more than static. The rest projected swirling loops of color and light in the air of many colors, though mostly a brighter shade of yellow than the walls. With that, the darkness and silence were banished, replaced with the warm glow of a mostly fully operating ship with cute noises coming out of every single wall.

Amaris couldn’t decide if she should be amazed or extremely afraid of what was going on around her. There was such beauty in the way the holographic lettering danced with various diagrams and charts, while on the other hand every noise came with it a painful memory. The two warring sides of her essentially canceled out and she did nothing more than stare at it all blankly.

Jenny, on the other hand, was grinning like a kid in a candy store. “Now we’re in business! It’s talking, haHAH! Let’s see…” She closed her eyes and listened closely. “Okay, we’ve got a startup sequence running, it noticed that one of the arms is broken off, fun, fun… oh hey, it’s trying to retract the ‘tether,’ probably the pipe we fell down… oh sweetness!”

“Huh?”

“It’s moving!” She pointed at a hologram displaying a five-pointed star with a single red segment. Slowly, but surely, it was moving upward toward a flat line. “It’s… I have no idea what half those words mean but it expects to be out in… some amount of time.”

“How are we not feeling the earth shaking!?” Amaris spread her arms wide. “Something this big moving through rock should be causing earthquakes! We should feel that! You don’t just swim through rock!”

“Apparently this ship does. I wonder if we could see what it’s doing at th—“ Suddenly, a very loud catlike wail permeated the ship, and several red lights turned on.

“Oh no, they know we’re intruders!” Amaris shrieked, clawing her hands through her hair. “Oh no oh no oh—“

“No, that’s not it,” Jenny said, turning toward the central pillar, eyes wide. One of the helical cords winding around it had developed a spark. “It found an energy overload.”

“That’s… that’s worse, isn’t it?”

“I mean, it’s going to explode.”

“Is there anything we can do about it?”

Jenny rammed her hand into the circuitry where they’d placed the ball. It was hot enough to melt the flesh clean off her fingers, but she managed to smack the orb out of the hold anyway.

Nothing happened. The ship had already absorbed the energy. With a sickening twang, part of the helix broke off and slammed to the ground, revealing a large blue crack within the pillar that was growing before their very eyes.

“Escape pods!” Jenny shouted. “Now now now!”

The two girls scrambled out of the main room, running through several panicked holographic letters displaying increasingly complex warning messages. They quickly made it through the room with the dead tools and arrived at the escape pods, all of which were glowing an inviting yellow.

The words above three of them were glowing red.

Amaris knew exactly what this meant. “Jenny don’t you d—“

Jenny shoved Amaris into the functional escape pod. “No time to argue.”

Amaris twisted herself around in the cramped enclosure, trying to come back out. “We’ll find another w—“

“I’ll be fine,” Jenny said, lighting up one of her fists with a crackling blue aura. “Now get in the escape pod, Amaris. I don’t want to have to knock you out.”

For a moment, Amaris felt betrayed—but this feeling quickly passed. With a dejected sigh, she pulled herself all the way back into the cramped escape pod—there was barely enough room for her and her backpack. Pitch coiled nervously around her arm.

Jenny held up a gloved hand, preparing to knock on the words above the pod’s entrance. “…Amaris, I…”

“It still hurts, right?” Amaris asked.

“…Actually the exploding part is rather painless, it happens so fast. It’s the coming back together part that sucks.”

“You’ll be okay?”

Jenny let out a bitter laugh. “Me? Okay? I’m always okay. You’re the one I should be worried about…” She glanced nervously at the red lights coming from the central pillar. “You need me around.”

“I’ll come back,” Amaris said. “Dig you out if I have to.”

“For all I know, this escape pod warps you to their homeworld or something,” Jenny said. “I… I’m sorry.”

“It’s… okay.” No it’s not okay this is the furthest thing from okay Amaris why are you just letting this happen!?

“Look, it’s been f—“ Jenny stopped in the middle of her sentence, eyes wide with fear. She slammed her fist on the words, sealing Amaris within the pod.

As soon as she was enclosed, the walls immediately became clear and Amaris could see the outside of the ship: glowing a brilliant yellow amongst flowing red magma. That’s how it’s moving, it’s literally melting the rock!

When the pod launched, Amaris didn’t feel anything lurch—it was essentially as though she weren’t moving at all and that the world was instead moving around her. Almost immediately it was impossible to see the ship through the layers of magma flowing around.

But then came the explosion. She didn’t feel it so much as see it. One moment she was in molten rock, the next she was flying through the night sky amidst several chunks of flaming rock. She saw the ruins, now the site of a circular smoking crevasse, prompting several of the ancient stone structures to crumble into the hole. The raging flames and lava flows were much more intense than the pitiful moonlight shining upon the land.

Amaris hoped none of the archeologists were sleeping inside the ruined city. They weren’t Jenny. They would be at the mercy of the star-ship’s raw explosive power.

The various rocks that had been blown out of the earth with Amaris started to fall back down. Amaris’ pod didn’t—it kept going, up and up and up, higher and higher, until the ruins below were so small Amaris couldn’t discern them. Soon, she was forced to rely on geographic features to figure out what she was looking at. She saw the triangular peninsula of Irest… the obsidian fields of Genk… She saw further than any world map had permitted her to.

As she rose higher and higher, the masses of oceans upon oceans and continents lost the appearance of a map, resolving into a weaving sort of pattern. Land in the distance seemed to curve one way and then another, almost folding in on itself before vanishing into nebulous darkness. Some patches were dark and others were light, the regions stitched together like a quilt without a pattern to follow. Only at this point did going higher stop revealing more—the edges of her perception became clouded by more and more darkness, as though it were all suspended in a great black mist.

Looking up, she saw the stars, but no moon. Where had the moon gone? She looked every which way, but saw no sign of it, despite the ground having clearly been lit by the moon. And those lighted areas, those should be able to see the sun… but there were multiple lighted areas and no visible sun?

Amaris was struck by how little she understood the world. How little any of them understood it.

Soon, she was so far away from the ground that she could see it no more; there was only darkness. And, one by one, the stars began to go out. The meager pinpricks of white snuffed out until there was nothing but utter, absolute darkness all around her. The escape pod must have been producing some light since she could still see herself, but there was nothing else. For all she knew, she wasn’t even flying anymore, but floating in nothingness.

Don’t let it end like this. I don’t want to starve up here in this thing…

Pitch hissed in her ear. She managed to turn herself over and get him in front of her eyes.

“Oh, Pitch…” She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes tight, trying to keep herself under control. Panicking in such a small area would be very very bad and she had to keep her wits about her. Had to keep her wits about her. Just be quiet, breathe, and be still. You are not riding in some insane death-trap. You were saved, and you will not starve inside the pod of murderous disintegratory alien mastermi—

Pitch liked her in the eyes, forcing her to blink open.

There was a single star in view. Then two. Then three. Then all of them appeared at once.

Amaris allowed herself to smile. We are going back down. It’s going to be fine.

This was followed quickly by the sobering realization that the stars had appeared much faster than they had disappeared. She must be moving much faster than she had been going up.

Whirling to look where she figured down was, she was proven to be right. It had taken at least a few minutes to get high enough that she couldn’t see the ground. This time, she could already see the ground of an unfamiliar continent rushing toward her so fast it boggled her mind.

“Brace for impact!” She shouted, holding Pitch and herself tight. She took in a deep breath and held it, hiding her head under her arms.

There was only silence.

Pitch hissed at her.

“…Right, you can’t feel anything…” Cautiously, Amaris opened her eyes. The pod was embedded in the ground, as evident by the spike-shaped hole in the mossy ground beneath her. Invisible though the hull may have been to her, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it was star-shaped.

With a grunt, Amaris started pushing on the walls of the pod, finding that they wouldn’t give. “Hey! Let me out!” She started tapping and clawing at the smooth walls, finding no buttons to open the hatch. They must have been stuck.

“How am I getting out of here!?” Amaris wailed. “I don’t have anything that can cu—“ Slowly, she reached for her quiver, pulling out one of the magenta-tipped anti-magic arrows. Cautiously, she dragged its edge against the wall. Immediately the invisible nature of the wall failed, reverting to a solid pitch-black.

Sticking out her tongue, Amaris fished around until she found the flashlight. Clicking it on, she discovered that there was a very clear cut in the pod’s material. So she cut again, and again, and again, creating an ever-deeper square into the hull.

Even with the absurd sharpness of the anti-magic arrow, it was still slow work. As she plugged away, she began to sweat like a dog, drenching herself, Pitch, and her various belongings. And yet she continued to cut, plugging away continually no matter how tired, hot, and sweaty she was getting. Until, at long last, light began to pour in. With a satisfied yell, she kicked the square with all her might and popped the section of the hull out, allowing cold fresh air to waft in.

She all but leaped out of the pod, the only restraint being that she stopped to grab her backpack on the way out. Without even bothering to sling its straps around her shoulders, she ran from the pod, her feet slamming into the wet damp moss in a haphazard, desperate pattern. She even tripped a few times, and a lesser acrobat would have fallen flat on her face at that moment. However, Amaris was able to balance herself and twirl around, eventually coming to rest on a large rock sticking out of the moss.

Taking a breath, she looked back the way she had come. The star-shaped ship stood there, numerous red lights flashing along its edges, no doubt in response to her having cut her way out. Surrounding it and her were many tree-like mushrooms of various colors, all glistening softly in the morning dew. Were it not for the presence of a few birds in the sky, Amaris would have taken the mushrooms as a sure sign she was on some alien world. But now that she thought about it, she had heard about fungal forests. They weren’t the most common of biomes, but they sure existed.

As she was pondering this, the core of the star-shaped pod lit up. In a flash of blue and green it exploded, the shockwave carrying enough force to knock the closest mushroom-trees down. Even Amaris, at her distance, was thrown off her rock and rather painfully fell to the ground.

Shakily, she got up, looking at the smoldering crater where the glowing star had been not moments before.

In a sudden moment of insight, she realized something. That probably hadn’t been an escape pod at all. That had probably been a weapon she had been riding in. It was just so defective it hadn’t exploded until now.

“That… that… that’s absurd!” Amaris kicked a nearby rock. “How can I be so lucky and unlucky at the same time!?”

The smoldering crater had no answer for her. It only sent more clouds of smog into the morning sky.

With a sigh, Amaris sat down on the mossy rock again, going through her supplies. She took out a few fruit bars and ate them while she cataloged everything, tied everything back down, and cleaned out Pitch’s enclosure. She stopped to play a bit with him and feed him a dried bug.

Once she was done, she changed out of her sweat-drenched clothes and cleaned herself as best she could with the morning dew and a washcloth. She removed the bandage wrapped around her head, finding that her chin had healed enough to no longer require constant pressure. Then she stuffed everything back into the backpack, zipped it all up, hung her quiver and tent supplies off it, and slung her constant companion onto her back.

Amaris stood tall, the humid air blowing across her face.

“I’m alone again.”

The only response was a hiss from Pitch. Normally, that would be enough to immediately cheer her up. Today, though, it didn’t feel like anywhere close to enough.

She’d come to rely on Jenny, to count on her to be there no matter what. To expect to wake up to her doing something stupid and hilarious at the same time. To have someone to share this curse with.

Guess the curse can’t let me have anything.

She looked toward the rising sun, gripping her backpack straps so tightly her knuckles were turning white.

I’m never going to find anyone else like Jenny. What if it had been me and Coleus down there? Me and Suuk? Jenny could take it. Nobody else could. Nobody else can.

I’d just hurt them.

Her face was impassive, but tears were rolling down her face. She ignored them. She turned away from the sun and started walking. She had no idea where she was going, and that was fine with her. What would be the point of having a destination, anyway? The curse would follow her, force her to move, throw more “interesting” things her way. Why would she go home if she only brought desolation and destruction with her?

It’s better for everyone if I just stay away, Amaris thought. Stay far, far away… She glanced to Pitch as he rested calmly on her shoulder. I wonder if I’ll eventually hurt you.

She retreated deeper and deeper into the mushroom forest, leaving the smoldering crater behind.