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331. Crystal Shards
🕑 Added 2025-03-14 02:08:01 +0000 UTCThe run over the barren lands was largely uneventful. The wind blew, dust stirred, and the three of them raced over the hard earth. Nothing attacked them, nor did anything threaten them. It was them, the earth, and the wind.
The crystal shards loomed. They were larger than they looked at first, dwarfed by the enormous mountains, but without the enormous mountains, they were easily taller than the tallest city Ike had ever seen. They rivaled a foothill in height, an absolute pinnacle in their own right. If not for the world-splitting mountains nearby, the ones they’d just crossed through that were so high they seemed to pierce the heavens themselves, the crystal shards would have seemed enormous. As it was, they felt large, but unimpressive. They were many times Ike’s height, many times the towers in Shopkeep’s city, even, but compared to the giant mountains? They might as well have been tiny lumps in the ground.
When they grew close enough that the crystal shards arced high overhead, casting impressive shadows down on Ike and the others, Ike pursed his lips. He had to admit, from this close, they were impressively large. The outside of the crystal shards were dark stone, while the inside was lined with crystals, like a shattered geode. The shards were so large that the crystals that lined the inside of the rock at the ground level were as big as houses. The smaller, finer crystals at the top of the shard were easily as large as Ike. He stared, flabbergasted.
“I wanna climb on it,” Wisp muttered.
“Yeah, me too,” Ike agreed. There was something about it. Something about the crystals and the almost stair-step way they climbed into the heavens, that was infinitely appealing. The monkey deep inside him wanted to climb all the way to the top, and dangle off the shards.
Mag stared up in silence. Abruptly, he launched off the ground and hurtled toward the shards.
“Even the bird can’t escape their climbable allure,” Wisp remarked.
Ike shook his head. “No, that’s… that’s not…”
Mag latched onto one of the smaller crystals and pulled back with all his strength. He flapped his wings wildly, then hopped down onto the crystal, using all his strength to waggle the crystal back and forth. It groaned, then snapped. Mag dropped, only catching himself after he fell a dozen feet. With effort, he flew up, then swooped over to them and landed, transforming back to human to hug his prize with his whole body. “Shiny…”
Wisp sighed, finally understanding what Mag had been after. “You can’t pluck all the crystals, stupid bird.”
“I can, with enough time.”
“Mag,” Ike said, already tired.
“Maybe I’ll make my nest here. Live in the shiniest nest,” Mag muttered thoughtfully, lost in his own vision.
Ike opened his mouth to counter him, then stopped. Who was he to tell Mag what to do? If the bird wanted to settle down somewhere, more power to him. It wasn’t as if he needed Mag. He liked the bird’s company, and it was nice to have a scout, but if Mag really wanted to settle somewhere, then he’d peacefully part from the bird and wish him all the best. He had no claim over Mag. Whatever claim he’d had from defeating Mag in the field of skulls had been paid off when he’d found the other half of the King’s skill.
“Yeah? With that nasty, stagnant energy hanging around here, you really want to make a nest here?” Wisp asked, untroubled by Ike’s hesitations.
Mag paused, then sighed. “I thought my dreams had come true, but you’re right. There’s no such thing as a perfect nest.”
Stagnant? Ike reached out to the aether around him. As Wisp had indicated, it moved slowly, almost sluggish, as if it were thick, or cold. It wasn’t like lunam, icy cold and ominous, or solam; it wasn’t a temperature difference. It was the emotional sensation of ‘cold.’ If ordinary mana or aether were ‘neutral,’ then this energy was ‘uninterested’ or even ‘reserved.’ There was something wrong with it. Almost as if it were all being pulled into something, or sucked away.
Ike stepped forward. It was time to find this skill. Time to conquer the King!
A dry rattle behind him. The rasp of porcelain.
“Again?” Wisp muttered, even as Ike whirled, Hungry Sword already in his hand.
The ragged figure from the mountain stood there behind them. It lunged at Ike, as Ike lunged at it.
It was a foregone conclusion. Ike barely bothered to empower himself, using only the lowest extent of Storm Clad. One sweep of the Hungry Sword, and he battered the puppet back into dust. It blew away on the wind, its ragged cloth drifting off a ways, its powdered body spreading with the wind.
But it would be back. It had come back every time, all the way across the badlands. The first time, Ike had been shocked. The second time, confused. The third, tired. And since then, day after day, the puppet had appeared, like clockwork, made its mad lunge—and died at his hand.
No matter how many times he turned it to dust, though, it always reformed and followed him once more. Whether he burned the dust or froze it, buried it or washed it away, even if Wisp bound it up with spider thread and tossed it into a deep crevasse, the puppet always reformed and returned. Doggedly, it lunged for Ike and Ike alone, as if this time, it might strike him down, only for Ike to destroy it time and time again.
It wasn’t a real threat. He could hear it coming, and if he didn’t, it couldn’t seriously wound him in its one lunge, not with Body Reforming Art and its somewhat pitiful Rank 2 power level. What it was, was annoying. Like a fly he swatted, just for it to get up and keep buzzing.
“Can you stop?” he shouted at its dead dust in frustration.
The dust had nothing to say for itself.
“Think it’s gonna follow us in there?” Wisp muttered from beside him. She crouched, poking at the puppet.
“I guarantee it,” Ike grumbled, in a dark mood. He swung his sword, freeing the dust from it, and sheathed it once more. How long would this stupid puppet keep chasing him? If he couldn’t free himself from its gaze, it’d be a dead giveaway the next time he tried to infiltrate somewhere Brightbriar had reinforced. Not to mention, it might be a spy for Brightbriar right here, right now.
Somehow, he didn’t get that feeling, though. It had no black gunk in it. In fact, it almost felt as though it were completely disconnected from Brightbriar, living by its own rules, according to its own strange desires. As if it were a ghost, maybe, an echo of whoever’s soul had been stuffed inside it, forced to replay the same actions day in and day out.
The same actions, which in this case, meant chasing Ike down and stabbing him.
Why is it fixated on me? Is it just because I was the one who disturbed it inside the mountain gap? Now that he was thinking about it, though, maybe that was it. He was probably the first one who had encountered this puppet after it had been destroyed in the mountain battle, and it had latched onto him as a result. It didn’t explain why this puppet was apparently coreless, gunkless, and immortal, but at least he had a guess as to why it followed him so relentlessly, now.
Ike huffed, still annoyed. He gestured, leaving the puppet behind. “Come on. Let’s go get that skill before this thing wakes up again.”
“Good plan.” Pushing back to her feet, Wisp followed him. Mag hugged his shiny crystal for another few moments, then, with a gesture, sent it into the storage pocket on his head tassel and followed them in.
