We had more pressing issues at the moment. The moving trees were falling behind us and were likely to be consumed by Paul’s ifrit, but in the meantime they were apparently lobbing their own burning branches at us; why else would the fire be spreading faster than we could run? Dry forest? I’m not an expert on this stuff. Maybe if I was from California...
Hax came to a dead stop as a patch of growth in front of him burst into flames. I almost tripped over him. We were now completely surrounded by fire (hellish!). If we didn’t do something immediately, we would die... Maybe not Azure, but I can’t imagine she wanted our deaths on her conscience.
“I’m going to try something. Lend me your energy, guys,” Azure said to us; she held out her hands, closed her eyes, and quickly chanted some sort of incantation. Cold blue light cut through the smoke and fire, and the unbearable heat let up for a moment. Hax wasted no time in grabbing Azure’s right hand, and I took her left. Immediately, I felt something important, something magical drain from me so rapidly I thought I was going to be torn apart or ripped from my body again. Something unimaginably cold washed over me. I saw chunks of ice and snow wrapping around us and Hax’s beard freezing over before a blast of wind forced me to close my eyes. Maybe with Azure’s help we could stop the fire, but would I even survive?
I guess I blacked out because the next thing I remember was waking up on the ground somewhere free of trees, free of grass. There was a plume of smoke in the sky, and I traced it back to the burning forest. Apparently, we had escaped.
“I am completely beat, Charlotte! I have never used that much magic in one go,” said a voice. Azure was standing over me and inspecting me for something, most likely frostbite. I sat up and realized that, much to my relief, I could muster some voluntary movement.
“You think you’ve got it bad? Look at Haxabalatnar!” I responded. He was passed out and drooling slightly on the ground. “I think that was the first time I’ve ever managed to use some sort of magic without a computer, by the way.”
“No, that wasn’t you. I think I drained your phone’s battery with that.”
Sure enough, I fumbled around for my cell phone and tried to turn it on, but no luck. I also had to consider the possibility of fire or (magical) water damage, but it was more likely Azure was telling the truth than it was that I had latent magical powers of my own worth developing.
“Also, I’m not entirely sure the world would consider channeling your own latent magical energy into a titan to count as casting a spell, but-” Azure began, before Haxabalatnar cut her off with a loud snore.
“Better not dwell on it,” she decided. “We should be safe for a while. Pity about your friend, though.”
I was finding it hard to muster up much grief for Paul. I mean, he was clearly reckless, and I hadn’t had enough time to get to know him all that well. Besides, I’ve witnessed (and caused) many deaths already. What’s one more?
I needed sleep. So I informed Azure I was going to conk out for a while. I woke up under starlight later in the evening and drowsily opened up my backpack, looking for some sort of calories. Luckily, I still had some granola bars. I pulled one out and devoured it in a flash. Quick energy. I was beginning to think more coherently when I realized, with a shock, that Paul was almost certainly dead. Suddenly, calorie-induced lucidity seemed like a mistake. Even if he was alive, however, I was not going to let him rejoin our company. Haxabalatnar had been wrong – instead of deterring threats and providing daemonic meat to shield us from the worst of hell, he’d very nearly gotten us killed. In fact, Hax wasn’t free of blame either. If he hadn’t tried to debate the forest, it likely wouldn’t have turned on us in the first place, and bringing Paul along was his decision in the first place!
“What’s wrong?” I couldn’t help but notice that Azure was also awake. Hax was still sleeping, though.
“You can’t tell?” I responded.
“I try to avoid running analytics on you, Charlotte, remember? Girls gotta have their privacy.”
That sounded like a reasonable sentiment, but there was something in my mind that refused to translate into words. If only Azure would peer into my brain and figure out what it was I was thinking! That level of negligence was shockingly insensitive.
“I mean, I’m guessing it’s because we’ve had a rough few days out there,” Azure quickly added, which was good, because I would otherwise scream at her. “Were you and Paul particularly close?”
If Azure had been using her telepathy to read my mind, she would’ve quickly noticed how little I cared, or wanted to care, about Paul. Guess she really was telling the truth.
“It’s just... I never expected to be frustrated by how many casualties we’ve taken,” I began. Maybe, if I tried, and used my words, I could explain how Paul’s death made me feel.
“We’ve lost one person,” Azure reminded me.
“But we only started with four! People were dying all the time in the Aux coven, but there were always replacements. What if one of us dies? What if Haxabalatnar dies? If that happens, Sigmar wins!” I stopped to try and stabilize my breathing.
“I’m not even the slightest bit sad about what happened to Paul. I’m just...angry,” I continued. I realize that I probably didn’t sound particularly angry, but Hax needed his sleep, so I was trying to keep my voice down. “I didn’t think he’d fuck up so quickly.”
Azure put a hand on my cheek, as if to wipe away tears, but there wasn’t anything to brush away. “You could set someone on fire with that much anger, Charlotte!”
“Thanks?”
“Seriously, though, I’d guess that if you’re not feeling a certain way, you shouldn’t try to force it. Sadness isn’t much of a life goal.”
I could not respond intelligibly to this.
“You’ll only find yourself old and bitter if you spend your life trying to control your emotions with an iron fist. Go with your own internal flow, and you’ll find yourself happier for it.”
What? No! My “internal flow” is a cesspit of festering violence! I knew I was on a quest that would probably get people killed, but I didn’t want to go back to that. None of us would like it if I played by coven rules. So as much as Azure was trying to help.
“No, I definitely have to control myself,” I ended up saying. My voice cracked like a pubescent teenage boy’s, but it was too important not to say. “Going with the flow got me into coven life, and you know how well that turned out for me. You have to find a way to keep yourself from going off the deep end. Titans are so powerful that they don’t learn anything in the way of restraint, but I don’t have that option.”
“Hey, I can control myself! I think,” Azure snarked; I’m not sure that even she believed it.
“To be honest, I feel like I’ve been too easily distracted by trivial junk for the last few years. I’m trying to fix it, but it’s a long process.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” It seemed sincere, but I didn’t have an answer for Azure that wouldn’t come out vitriolic and nasty, so I held my tongue.
“I’m going to try sleeping again. Hax has the right idea,” I informed her.
I slept, but I woke up before too long. Funny how that works out. I’d had a weird dream I couldn’t parse, and that I was already forgetting. I was about to ask Azure for help recalling it (admittedly a long shot), but then I got a sudden, intense whiff of cinnamon and smoke. The source? A fire on which Azure was cooking something in a dutch oven. Maybe the world of dreams could wait.
“I figured the least I could do is make those baked apples I was telling you about,” she explained. Then, she stuck her delicate hands straight into the fire for a moment. I couldn’t help but wince.
“Just checking the temperature. It’s fine,” she explained, though by this point I should’ve been used to that. We waited a few minutes for the apples to cook.
“Where’s Hax?” I aske
d.
“Relieving himself. I’ve learned to keep track of his psychic signature over a few hundred feet. He feels bored. And constipated.” Is that why she’s cooking apples? I blushed.
“Azure! I didn’t need to know that.”
“Guess not. Wish we had some nutmeg.”
We switched off between staring at the pot of cooking apples and looking at each other. I finally remembered what I wanted to talk to Azure about.
“I had this bizarre dream last night, but I can’t remember it anymore. Is there anything you can do with your powers to help?” I asked.
“Wish I knew. What’s so interesting about this dream?”
“Can’t remember, remember? I know there was this war, and people I knew were getting killed in ambushes at the frontlines. We had to storm a castle, and once we got in there, the walls and corridors kept shifting.” For whatever reason, the details were coming back to me as I related them to Azure. She just nodded and took a quick look at the apples baking in the pot.
“We kept going higher and higher, and when we reached the highest tower, everything caught fire… And, it’s about Paul. I understand now,” I continued.
“These things take a while to process, from what I’m told,” responded Azure.
“I just… If I’d been paying attention, I would’ve been able to stop him from setting the entire forest ablaze! I was too busy to check on him!”
“You can’t change the past, Charlotte! Believe me, I’ve tried. You can only move forward.”
Azure was right. Barring time travel shenanigans that were out of my grasp, I had to let it go before yesterday’s blaze somehow consumed me. But there was something else that I needed to think about.
“I won’t be so careless again,” I said, just as Haxabalatnar finally joined us. From his relaxed saunter, I figured the bowel movement had been a success.
“What, wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?” he quipped, with a wry smile.
“I’m going to watch you two like a hawk,” I countered.
“Or a spy satellite. They have those in orbit of Earth, right?”
“Too many.” Then I did a double take.
“Hax, does hell have its own outer space?” I asked. He shrugged.
“I don’t think there’s been enough astronomy to say for sure, but I could be wrong,” he responded. That didn’t sound right.
“Is pointing a few telescopes at the sky that hard?” I snapped. This also didn’t sound right; why did I say it?
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” I wanted to shout something...but then I remembered what happened to Paul. It was probably best just to drop it. We were stressed – maybe a bit less so once Azure handed out plates of baked apples and spiked our blood sugar levels, but enough that I didn’t want to cause further conflict. As far as I was concerned, that meant paying more attention to my companions’ emotions. This whole “awareness” thing was turning out to be an addictive proposition.
Yet again, I woke up in unfamiliar surroundings. Still didn’t care about Paul. It was cold again. Had to bundle up to survive the insane temperature shifts.
My mind functioned better once I’d suited up for the outside... Okay, maybe that’d be a bit overkill given that our camping equipment kept the worst of the Chippewa cold out, but I have to get my core temperature up in the morning. Azure helps sometimes, but she sometimes likes to sleep in the snow for some reason. Didn’t I say I was going to cut back on the innuendos? Warm temperatures clearly aren’t enough to get me really functioning. Let’s try eating something.
A few calories also help. Besides, eating food gets my metabolism going, which in itself helps with the whole “not freezing to death” shtick I’m trying to popularize up here. Food supplies are iffy now. I’ve seen animals up here, and I think I saw a half-eaten carcass of a goat a few days ago. It didn’t look like it was immediately poisonous or mutagenic, so if things get really desperate, we could stretch out our supplies a little further by hunting and killing...unless someone’s vegetarian. I’ve seen Hax and Azure eat meat at times, though.
You know what really must be causing this scattered brain problem? Oxygen deprivation. That’s got to be it. I mean, we have to be at least a few thousand feet above sea level...is there really a “sea level” in hell? I know there are things that resemble oceans. I’m not really in a position to ask how air pressure works in hell, but if it’s anything like Earth-
“Charlotte, what are you babbling on about? You starting a comedy act or something?” And just like that, Haxabalatnar brought me back to something resembling a reality. The more time I spent on this journey, the more his grounded disposition contrasted with Azure’s flights of fancy. Their contrasting perspectives (and overall knowledge of exactly how hell works) came in handy when we had to make tough decisions.
“Remember that time you were wrong about Paul?” I interjected because reality sucks. Sigmar is real, need I say more?
“Stop rubbing it in. He already cost us a bunch of supplies,” he snapped at me.
Morale was in the dumps. We didn’t want to admit that the incident in the forest had pushed us to our breaking point. I was tiring of mountains. I so desperately wanted to break through to infinite, featureless, monotonous plains that if I focused hard enough, it would probably flatten the Chippewas. But we didn’t have the supplies to level the mountain. The best we could do was bundle up and make a fire every day so that we didn’t straight up die from exposure. If my dead reckoning was right, this was the highest and most desolate point we’d hit before we made it to Las Médulas. The next point of interest was likely Mount Novell (who named these things?), which was a worthless chunk of rock notable only for being infinitesimally taller than its surrounding peaks. If our eyes wandered from the difficult terrain ahead of us, we might catch a glimpse of its unattended summit. Alternatively, we’d slip, fall, and kill ourselves because we were too busy to watch for slick ice in front of us.
After a few hours of disgruntled trudging, it began to snow; intermittently at first, but gradually more as time passed and we gained altitude. Something in my mind told me that this was likely to become a problem. I took a quick glance at Azure and Haxabalatnar behind me. Azure didn’t seem too phased, but I’d already discovered her great resilience in the face of extreme temperatures. I contented myself with imagining her dancing naked without the slightest hint of discomfort in the snowfall. It fortified me for a few minutes before a blast of glacial wind brought me back to reality.
“Guys, did you just hear something weird?” Azure suddenly asked us. Both Haxabalatnar and I shook our heads, which agitated her. Is Azure’s hearing more sensitive than ours, or was this some part of her psychic sensitivity manifesting itself? But she dropped the subject. Maybe it actually was just a strange noise. As we trudged through the snow, we weren’t wanting for those – the wind picked up, whistling through nearby crags and otherwise gradually leeching the precious heat from our bodies. I wondered how much longer I’d be able to feel my face. One time many years ago, I’d stayed out too long in the snow and gotten frostbite. It hurts like hell, so I didn’t want to know how bad it could be in hell.
“I just heard it again! It’s a bunch of people chanting gibberish, just over that hill!” Azure said this time. She was trying to conceal her voice a bit. “Rattling metal, too.” I’m glad Terminal wasn’t here to follow that up by saying that was so metal...but now I could faintly hear the rattling myself. When Haxabalatnar provided no objection, we scaled the hill, and through the biting cold and gradually escalating snowfall, we saw a dark red pentagram and robed figures below.
“@&%*@ *@)#%( *#&@* *#%&!@,” one of them shrieked, apparently completely unaware of our presence. We dropped as prone as we could in an attempt to keep it that way. This was presumably in some daemonic language I’d never heard of.
“That’s something in
Borean. I thought all the native speakers had given up and started using English or Spanish,” Azure whispered.
“You don’t understand it?” Haxabalatnar asked.
“No, definitely not! I am monolingual to a fault.”
The shrieking figure raised something shiny and dangly above its head and beckoned for a second figure to come forth.
“(*! #(@* %(@*& (*_*) #(%*,” said the second figure, pulling down the hood of a robe to reveal menacing spikes before raising its own dangly bit. If I squinted, they looked like metallic chains... And then a third figure (who almost certainly was a chthon, unless that was some sort of horned headdress) holding something that glowed molten red and burst with gouts of steam whenever an unfortunate snowflake landed on it.
“What are they doing? It looks stupid,” Hax said. We didn’t have to explain or even guess. The first two figures promptly joined their arms together, making sure to wrap the shiny bits around the sleeves of their robes. Then, they tried to pull their bound arms apart; once the third figure deemed this sufficiently unsuccessful, it tapped the chains with its superheated welding torch, and thus were the cultists bound for battle-
Azure’s mind was broadcasting so intensely that it was beginning to override my own thoughts. Even Haxabalatnar was picking up on it, at least if his raised eyebrow was to be believed.
“Guys, I think we found the cultists,” she whispered.
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