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332. Within the Shards
🕑 Added 2025-03-14 14:00:11 +0000 UTCLeaving the shattered puppet behind, they strode into the crystal shards. Shadow fell over them, leaving them in darkness. The crystals glimmered in the shade, gently twinkling like oversized stars. Refracted sunlight twisted through the crystals and played over the ground before them, distorted into strange geometric lines and shapes of gold. A quietude fell over them as they stepped into the shards, as the shards protected them from the relentless wind that whipped over the vast open expanse of the deadlands. Ike had grown so used to it that he hadn’t noticed the wind at all, until he’d stepped into the protected space within the shards. In the sudden quiet, only a gentle tinkling sound broke the silence, as if one crystal were slowly decaying and falling apart down into its fellows.
It was breathtakingly beautiful. One of the most gorgeous places Ike had ever seen. And yet, his skin crawled. Every single part of him warned him to turn tail and run. There was something wrong about this place. The stagnation in the air, the silence, even the stillness of the wind—it was all wrong. He instinctively hated this place, and wanted nothing more than to leave.
Is it the skill’s emotions, again? Ike wondered. One glance at Mag told him all he needed to know. The bird boy hunkered, his head low and his eyes big, taking in everything around him.
“You look uncomfortable,” Wisp said.
“Yeah, yeah. Spiders don’t feel fear, huh?” Ike replied, rolling his eyes.
She shrugged. “I kinda feel the ick here. But it doesn’t make me want to stop.”
Ike shook his head at her. “You’re crazy.”
“Ayo, and you?”
Begrudgingly, despite the spooky mood, Ike cracked a grin. “Me too. Hell yeah.”
They wove their way deeper into the shards. The shards closed in around them, forcing them to wind left and right around their edges. They stood in a kind of rose arrangement with overlapping shard ‘petals,’ so there was no path directly into the heart of the shards. The further Ike walked into it, the harder it was for him to recall his path back. Abnormally so, in fact. It was only a few turns, something the mortal him would have had an easy time remembering, let alone the mage him, but it somehow slipped right out of his mind. A few petals in, he paused and looked over his shoulder.
“How did we get here?”
“Doesn’t matter. Mag flies, and I can climb the shards. If we need to escape, we’ve got ways to scout the exit route,” Wisp replied with all confidence.
Ike pursed his lips, then nodded slowly. “You know? That makes a lot of sense. I don’t know what I was getting worried for.”
She thumped his back in a friendly manner and grinned. “It’s that sensation, the icky nervous feeling! It’s getting to you. But don’t worry. I’m a powerful spider, and I can take care of you.”
“That’s more terrifying than anything else,” Ike informed her.
“What? Why would you say that about your good friend Wisp?” Wisp asked, mock-hurt, but she grinned at the same time. Gesturing him on, she jogged ahead, and Ike pushed himself to a run. She had a good point, even if she didn’t say it aloud. The faster they passed through this place, the less time he spent feeling that ‘ick’ that they both disliked. If he ran, he got through it all the faster.
Mag hunkered down, narrowing his eyes, then burst up. Feathers flew. Ike waved his hand in front of his face, squinting after the bird. “What…?”
Wisp glanced up after him. She and Ike slowed to a halt, watching Mag fly upward.
He got about a hundred feet up, then smashed into an invisible wall halfway up the shards in a poof of feathers. He fell for a few feet before he caught himself and circled back down, landing beside Ike and Wisp. Resuming his human shape, he shook his head at them and rubbed his neck. “Ow.”
“What was that?” Ike asked.
Mag wrinkled his nose. He hopped in place, annoyed. “I can’t get out. There’s a wall. A ceiling.”
“We saw that. Could you see anything up there?” Wisp asked.
“No. I couldn’t get high enough. The shards blocked my view,” Mag reported.
Ike glanced back. He couldn’t remember his way to the exit, and now, the route up was blocked off, too. This was a maze. A trap, maybe.
But then, didn’t that just mean that whatever waited in the center of this maze, this trap, was valuable enough that someone had built a maze to hide it? And not only that, but the maze was still powered. The spell had to be powered by something. The skill, maybe? Or maybe like the previous trial they’d gone through, the maze would collapse when the central object was removed. Either way, facing resistance was promising. Facing resistance meant there was a reason to prevent people like them from progressing this way.
Still, it was resistance. If they kept wandering around the shards, they’d only continue to get more lost. Whether it was getting in or escaping, that wasn’t ideal. They were just wasting time here, when he could have the skill in hand and be working on taking control of the King already. Impatience welled up inside him, and he frowned. Playing by this trial’s rules rankled him. He’d already had enough of dealing with trials from the King’s realm. He was tired of that kind of bullshit. All he wanted to do, was kill things and get more powerful.
A thought came to him, and he grinned. Ike turned to Wisp and waggled his brows. She grinned right back, on the same exact wavelength. He looked at the path ahead, then looked at the shards all around them. “You remember Lord Nors’ castle?”
“Huh? Oh, Shopkeep? You mean…” She smiled, then nodded. “I remember.”
“What? What are we remembering?” Mag asked, confused, looking from one to the other.
“Stand back.” Ike walked up to the next shard and drew back his sword. Green shockwaves built up around the hefty blade, and his body flickered with lightning and storm clouds. Aether rushed all around him, circulating through him with such force that it kicked up a wind. The shard stood opposite, the bare dark granite back of it facing him. It was a wall. A blockade.
The enemy.
Ike dashed forward and unleashed his strike into the back of the shard.
