The cave — Maribelle

I wake up to the sound of running water and the smell of moist soil. I’m lying on a bed of moss. I’m sore all over, and my whole body is covered in something sticky.

I open my eyes. It’s dark, but slowly shifting patches of golden light are projected up onto the stone ceiling above me, casting shadows for the many stalactites. When I sit up and look around, I find myself on a small mossy island in the middle of an underground lake. The light comes from many large glowing fish that swim lazily in the water.

“Cynthia? Hello? Is anyone there?”

I am answered only by the trickling water. I flop back down. The moss is comfortable. I’m still really tired, and I might as well rest a bit more before trying to figure out what’s going on.

“You have awakened?”

I startle at the voice. It’s not Cynthia. Instead, it’s a low growl, almost inhuman. I turn to see a huge salamander crawling out of the water, a creature at least three meters long, with lumpy brown skin like gnarled tree bark. Its belly is bloated, as if it ate something the size of a person.

I leap up to my feet and I summon my blade from the flower that's thankfully still in my hair.

“Children are always so ungrateful.”

It takes me a moment to process the fact that the salamander is the one that’s talking. I put away my sword, and clear my throat.

“Sorry, you startled me. Uh, I didn’t know salamanders could talk.”

The salamander stares at me with big beady eyes.

“Who are you? What is this place?” I ask.

“My name is Wilson and this is my cave.”

Not helpful. To be fair, I might have been asking the wrong question.

“Why am I here?”

“Your friend brought you to me as a gift, so that I may have a fulfilling meal.”

My stomach drops at the thought of such a horrible betrayal.

“Cynthia was going to feed me to you?”

“Yes, she did mention that you’re stupid. You aren’t in my belly, are you? I don’t eat people. I eat magic. Your curses were quite delicious. Three for the price of one.”

I let out my breath. Then, I remember that I’m covered in sticky slime. My stomach lurches.

With great trepidation, I run my finger along my belly, and pull it away. The clear mucous clings to my fingertip, stretching out into a thin strand.

“Um, is this…”

“My saliva of course.”

I leap into the lake. My splash makes the fish scatter. Under the water, I vigorously scrub my body, cleaning myself as much as possible. After a while, I climb back up onto the island.

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel clean again. Thanks, though, for sucking the curses out.”

“It was my pleasure. It has been many years since I’ve had such a satisfying meal.”

“So, where is Cynthia right now?”

“She’s probably up on the surface, doing one thing or another.”

“Are we below Salsvale?”

“Perhaps. The word rings a bell, but I care little about the outside.”

“Huh. I guess I’ll just wait for her, then. I’m sure she’ll come back.”

I lie back down on the moss, looking up at the cave ceiling.

“Did she say why she brought me here?”

“She mentioned something about you causing trouble. I got the impression that, if you stayed on the surface, others of your kind would hunt and kill you.”

“Ah, makes sense.”

“It’s no matter. You can stay in my cave for as long as you wish. I appreciate company.”

“Thank you, mister salamander. Sorry. Wilson.”

“Mister salamander is fine. Names have little importance to me. Wilson is the same, merely a moniker Cynthia chose for me, when we first met.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She first found this place several years ago. After that, she continued to return periodically. This cave is her sanctuary, a place of reprieve from the outside world, or so she says.”

“You must be good friends with her, then.”

“She likes to complain to me about various things, and she likes that I don’t care about them.”

“You really have no interest for anything outside this cave?”

“Of course not. Why would I?”

“There’s a whole world out there to explore!”

“I have everything I will ever need right here. A lake, a rock, and many suncarp to suck on.”

I notice that one of the fish swimming by is glowing less brightly than the others, a thin coat of salamander slime still stuck to its body.

“Those poor fish.”

“It is a symbiotic relationship. I’ll protect them from predators.”

“It still seems like you’re getting the better end of the deal there.”

“That I cannot deny. There are no predators here anyway.”

“It’s a peaceful place.”

“You dislike peace, do you not?”

I raise my eyebrows at the salamander. What a strange question.

“No. What makes you think that?”

“Cynthia mentioned that you singlehandedly plunged the city into chaos. She referred to you as a walking apocalypse.”

I let out a snort of laughter. I really did do something crazy, huh.

“It’s not that I dislike peace. It just has a lower priority than other things.”

“I think your priorities are misaligned.”

“Maybe. It would be easy to live peacefully, I could just go back to Mom, but then I would never see how high I can reach. I think I would regret it.”

“You underestimate the power of simple comfort. Giving up on ambition is the path to true happiness. All you need in life is food, shelter, and company.”

“No, you’re wrong. Obviously true happiness is being queen of the universe.”

“Do you know of the calamity?”

“Of course. It’s my goal to surpass him.”

“Do you think he’s happy?”

“From what I know of him, no, he’s not. Though, if I was in his place, I think I would be.”

“Idiocy.”

“You think? Surely you can understand. You’re happy because you’re the master of this little cave, right? In the end, I’ll be like that too, just for all of existence. That’s clearly better.”

“A bigger cave is not always better. There’s a sweet spot around the size of this particular cave. If it was bigger, there would be predators that I would have to fight, and if it was smaller, I would not have a sufficient abundance of food.”

“Well, I personally want my life to involve more than sitting on rocks and sucking on fish.”

“The foolishness of wayward children is always a sad sight.”

“Whatever. I’m bored. How do I get out of here?”

“The cave is sealed off from all but groundwater. Teleportation is the only way in or out.”

“Ugh. I seriously have to just wait for Cynthia to come back? I guess I’ll swim some more.”

I jump back into the lake, swimming after the fishes. Sadly, they can swim way faster than me. It’s impressive that Wilson can catch them. I bet he uses an ambush strategy.

Something about Wilson’s attitude annoys me. He reminds me of Mom a bit. There’s nothing wrong with the way he lives, but he shouldn’t act like he knows everything. He’s a damn cave salamander, completely isolated from the world. How much wisdom can he possibly have?

I like Bezvillia much better, even if she’s a bit hung up on her vengeance. She has a dream.

A knot of uncertainty forms in my stomach.

I miss Mom. I want to see her face again. It’s been so long.

I can already hear her words, though.

Just come home. You shouldn’t be chasing these pointless dreams. You’ll get yourself killed.

I grit my teeth. Mom is a shackle on my spirit. Do I really have to throw her away?

Pushing the awful thought out of my mind, I float to the surface of the crystal clear water.

It’s annoyingly hard to pass the time.

When Cynthia finally teleports onto the island. I leap out of the lake and hug her.

“Ack! Maribelle, you’re wet!”

“Cynthia! You finally came back for me! You took so long! I was seriously worried that you were just going to leave me with Wilson forever!”

“What’s wrong with Wilson?” She asks sharply, finally managing to push me off.

“He’s boring, and he think’s I’m an idiot.”

She sighs.

“I probably I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t get along with him.”

“So, what’s the plan? I need to get stronger before fighting Theonius again. I’m thinking I’ll train by hunting down the royal guard one by one. Also, I need to find a way to cover my weakness against aeromancy.”

“Maribelle, you should leave Salsvale and never come back.”

No, not her too. I won't allow it.

“Cynthia, I already decided I’m the empress. I’m not leaving.”

She rubs her face with her hands.

“Gods.”

She looks up at me with a serious glare.

“Let me be clear. If you want to live, you need to run away and take the loss. Don’t interfere with the tournament, and let Theonius have his coronation. You’ll be harmed by breaking your word but it won’t kill you, right? You’ll recover.”

“No way. I’m killing Theonius and taking over the city.”

“Don’t be stubborn. Running is the right decision here!”

“Was letting him make you his chair also the right decision? What about letting him stab you?”

“It was that or death!”

“No. There was also the option of kicking his ass.”

“He’s too powerful! It’s a miracle that you even escaped.”

“No. I fought him. He might be strong, but he’s within reach. I can beat him. I promise you that by the royal tournament, I’ll become powerful enough to defeat him.”

She looks at me with a quiet, considering stare.

“You’re asking me to gamble everything on you,” she says.

“Yes. That’s what I’m asking.”

She crosses her arms.

“If you fail, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Yes!”

I wrap my arms around her, squeezing her until she squeaks.

“You’re going to help me, right?” I ask.

“I think you’ll need all the help you can get,” she says.

“How long before they fix the teleportation trap?” I ask.

She laughs

“That’s not even close to the city’s top priority right now. Important banks and vaults have backup teleportation wards for precisely this kind of occasion. It’ll be months before it’s fixed.”

“Fantastic. In that case, I want you to teach me spatiomancy.”

“You’re planning on learning a completely new right in just a week? That’s insanity. Even if you do somehow learn how to teleport, it won’t give you the power you need to fight Theonius.”

“I’ll also become stronger by hunting down and fighting the remaining royal guards. Oh, and I’m going to assimilate my manifestation.”

“All that in a week? That’s absolutely impossible.”

She would be right, but the divine voice causes spiritual power to accumulate faster for me than for mortals. If I can’t do something as simple as this, I’ll never catch up to the gods.

“I thought you decided to trust me,” I say.

She frowns.

“Well, if you’re going to surpass Theonius, I suppose it’ll at least require something as crazy as what you’re suggesting. At least it seems that you understand the magnitude of the strength difference between you and him.”

I nod.

“Fine. I’ll teach you spatiomancy. However, in exchange, you have to make me a promise.”

“What promise?”

“If you can’t gain the right of spatiomancy in two days, you give up and leave the city forever.”

“Deal.”

She opens a bag and tosses me some clothes. They’re simple, casual things, replacing the delicate party dress that had become ash in the wind.

“Thanks.”

As I put the clothes on, Cynthia crouches down and starts ripping moss off of the rock, clearing off a smooth surface. She pulls out a piece of chalk, and starts writing runes on the stone. I feel magic stir within her, and the spirit of the rock begins to twist and warp as she writes.

“What are you doing?”

“Laying down an anti-divination enchantment. If we’re going to be here for a while, we don’t want people to find us easily. That’s why I was out. I was getting materials for this. Also, I got some food.”

“Oh.”

“Hopefully they won’t find us. When I first teleported away with you, the cryomancer followed me somehow. I’d teleported to my home. When he appeared, I teleported here, but he didn’t follow me the second time.”

“Maybe he just predicted that you would go home.”

“No. Without a manifestation, long distance teleportation is only possible to locations that you’re highly familiar with, places where you’ve spent years of your life and which have had a large impact on your spirit. He had never been to my house before, as far as I know.”

“So he followed your teleport using a manifestation?”

“Most likely. That’s probably why he didn’t follow me the second time. The manifestation would have been on cooldown.”

“So we’re safe here.”

“Probably. This is a pretty hard place to find.”

“How did you find this place anyway?”

“I used to spend a lot of time exploring the caves underneath the city. There are some places that can only be reached by teleporting through walls. After I stumbled upon this place, I came down here almost every day.”

She pulls out a vial of a silvery liquid and pours it on the stone, the liquid spreads out along the lines of her enchantment, glowing with a soft blue light. The changes she made to the rock’s spirit solidify, her enchantment finalized.

“Well, that’s that. Ready to learn spatiomancy?”

“Yes! For entropomancy, I learned it by just making a few violent spirit declarations, but I’m not sure what kind of spirit declarations would be space related.”

“If you were able to learn entropomancy that way, you must have already had a natural inclination towards it. Don’t expect picking up spatiomancy to be that easy. The second right is infinitely more difficult to obtain than the first. I obtained spatiomancy through years of rigorous study and training, and my second right, enchanting, was bestowed upon me as a reward for excellence in the academy. Very few people have ever obtained more than one right naturally.”

Something about her tone annoys me.

“You’re expecting me to fail,” I point out.

“Yes. Is that going to stop you?”

I shake my head.

“What kind of stuff did you do in order to learn spatiomancy?”

“Lots of things. I read theoretical treatises on the nature of space, I examined artifacts with space related enchantments, and I practiced a wide variety of training methods.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“Obviously.”

I sit down on the moss and look at the ceiling. I only have two days, so I’m not going to waste my time reading theoretical whatevers or playing with toys.

“What are those training methods?”

“Somehow, I feel like you might prefer to keep things simple. The most basic training method is just to have someone else repeatedly teleport you, so you can get a feel for the sensation. I can do that for you if you want.”

“Sure. Sounds good.”

Cynthia touches my shoulder. The world twists around me, and I splash into the lake. Cynthia giggles as I climb back up onto the island, soaking wet.

“Again,” I say.

This time, I focus my mind on the feeling of space distorting around my body. It’s incredibly distinctive, but I don’t have the faintest clue of how to make it happen with my own power.

“Again.”

Many hours pass as I am teleported into the lake over and over. To Cynthia’s credit, she is incredibly patient. In her place, I would have been bored out of my mind ages ago. She just sits there quietly, teleporting me every time I ask. I don’t speak abut anything else. I am in a state of intense concentration. From every teleportation, I get another tiny shred of wisdom, another indistinct impression of the power I wish to wield.

Eventually, I begin to develop a vague sense of the space around me, but when I try to manipulate it, it’s like I’m trying to stir water with a piece of string. My magic just isn’t equipped to influence space at all. It’s frustrating.

“I’ll admit it, Maribelle. You’re a genius. In half a day, you accomplished what took me more than a month. Sensing space is the first step.”

“I’m still not on track for acquiring the right of spatiomancy in two days, though.”

Cynthia smiles. I click my tongue.

“Teleport me again.”

A day passes. I train the whole time, except for a short break for sleep and a snack.

When I obtained entropomancy for the first time, fighting the drakeling wood mage, it was so easy. I just let raw violence burst out from within my heart, and everything was torn to shreds. It had been as natural as breathing. Even when I had been trying to conquer the power within the destructozonicus tail bone, it had never felt this impossible. Unfortunately, space and destruction are concepts so fundamentally different from one another that they’re almost incompatible. Destruction is the annihilation of structure, whereas space is the structure in which everything resides. Trying to manipulate space feels uncomfortable. My natural intuitions push me in the wrong direction.

“It doesn’t come naturally to me at all,” I complain.

Cynthia laughs. She looks at me like I just said something utterly ridiculous.

“I felt something wobble when you tried to teleport just now, and you’re saying it doesn’t come naturally to you? You’re like a princess who complains about being poor. It shouldn’t be allowed for anyone to be this good at magic. You’re a freak of nature.”

“Thanks for the encouragement, but I only have a few more hours left to get this down. I still feel like I have a long way to go.”

I close my eyes, sending out my will into the space around me. I connect myself to a nearby location and pull.

Nothing happens, except for Cynthia snorting incredulously again. Apparently she thinks I’m doing something impressive. I disagree.

“Ugh! I just want to be able to teleport already!"

I jump into the water, submerging myself with the glowing fishes. I’m getting frustrated again. Under the water, I close my eyes.

It’s peaceful down here. It’s quiet.

I connect myself to the space above the island. I let the connection deepen. I form my will into a bridge that will warp space itself. I pull.

Nothing happens.

There’s a barrier that feels impossible to overcome. For teleportation to occur, I need to be in two places at once for just an instant. It’s something I instinctively resist. I can’t force myself to let it happen no matter how hard I try. It’s deeply unsettling somehow, like a violation of the wholeness of my being.

I let myself float up. My face breaches the surface and I take a deep breath as I float in place. I’m tired. Maybe I should take a short break and try again later. I still have time.

“Maribelle, is that you?” Cynthia asks.

“Huh?”

“I feel space magi—”

The whole lake becomes ice.

‘Absolute Zero.’

The curse hits Cynthia, freezing her solid.

“Good. We can’t have her teleporting away with you again.”

I release my aura, shattering the ice in which I am encased. As I leap up to my feet, I see the cryomancer from the royal guard standing on the frozen lake.

“How did you find us?”

“My spatiomantic manifestation, Hunter’s Pursuit, allows me to teleport to the last person with whom I have engaged in combat. That would be you. Sadly, the cooldown is over forty hours.”

“I see. Then the only way to hide from you is to kill you.”

“That will not happen.”

“What’s your name?”

“Parson Bluedane of the Salsvale Kingsguard.”

“I’m Maribelle.”

“I know. You’ve caused quite a stir. The revolutionaries are hailing you like some sort of saint. As if a saint would murder a man unprovoked, destroy the salsvale church, and kill hundreds of bystanders with the collateral damage of her actions.”

“It’s Theonius’s fault for pissing me off.”

“You need to be put down.”

I summon my sword.

“Too bad. I’m going to live forever.”

“So you’re a fool. It is well known that no magic can extend one’s lifespan forever. The gods reclaim the spirits of those who have overstayed their welcome. Though, maybe your ignorance should have been unsurprising. You won’t live much longer anyway.”

I smirk. It’s almost sad that he misinterprets the situation like that. Without a strong enough voice to hold it together, a being’s spirit will naturally deteriorate in at most a couple centuries. That’s all aging is. The gods aren’t reclaiming anything.

“You’re mistaken. I’m practically immortal already,” I say.

According to Bez, there are ten stages of development for the divine voice, ten steps from mortality to absolute omnipotence, though not even the calamity himself has reached that theoretical final step. My divine voice is currently in the third stage, which Bez called the transcendental stage. This should already have the effect of extending my natural lifespan significantly. Once my voice advances to the next stage, the eternal spirit stage, I will simply cease to age at my physical prime.

Parson seems shocked by my confidence in my immortality. Is he distracted? I dash forward.

I slam my sword into his face. My entropomancy dents in his enchanted helmet but fails to break through completely. Still, he is sent flying into the wall of the cave. The impact shakes the earth and makes stalactites fall in droves from above, each one spearing into the ice.

“Sorry. Were you expecting our conversation to continue?”

“We’re done talking, foolish girl. I will end you without mercy.”