Now that the tournament is over I can draw all the fan art I want ha ha HA HA
The OCT chat was talking about a high school au and agreed that Kyrenia and Lyonel would be the hot power couple that walks through the hallways that everyone is secretly attracted to.
Alcor walked towards the pillar, which had been firmly fixed into the center of the rough stone floor of the cavern. Amelie and Quinn watched on in gruesome fascination, wondering again what they had paid in order to win a time wish. Thoughts of destruction, of demon fire burning through towns and fields and tearing people apart, of what California had become, these thoughts raced through the pair’s minds.
Amelie looked to the shorter contestant, and when they looked up back at her, she knew that Quinn had just as much fear as she did. They clasped their hands together, mimicking their final stand at the starfield.
As Alcor reached towards whatever prize awaited him on the pedestal, Amelie squeezed Quinn’s hand in a reassuring gesture. She had wished to be able to save people, and if the situation turned sour, Amelie wanted to be prepared to save the first person she could.With fear in their hearts, they both watched as Alcor turned around.
This has been a fantastic tournament and we thank everyone for making this so wonderful!
The Epilogue to the tournament will come out soon. Keep an eye out for it, and all your questions about what Alcor hoped to gain from this contest and what he had planned for his champion at the end will be answered.
Brief explanations of the round under the cut!
Wow, guys…wow.
The final round of TAU-OCT was everything we wanted. You both rose to the challenges presented and answered them in your own ways. We liked so many aspects of both entries, and it was difficult choosing a single victor between them.
@daezil, your entry showed a lot of thought put to the realism of the stage and the physical states of both contestants. The presentation of Quinn’s struggles against both their concussion and the difficulty they had in moving around the area was great. We also appreciated the use of the scattered detritus of the items from Alcor’s life we mentioned as being part of the stage - particularly the grappling hook and the human hamster ball - the explosive false wishes, and the beautiful final binary system with the last two wishes, one true and one not. Quinn was a compelling character - morally grey, selfish, and true to that, but starting to wonder if they’d made a terrible mistake after all. We would have loved it if you could have drawn out some more of Quinn’s backstory, particularly in relation to their mother, which was started in the last round. This is a pretty minor nitpick, though; we enjoyed your entry entirely as it was.
@ordinarydoodles, we loved the emotional impact of your entry. The puzzle-solving aspect of the starfield and the use of Alcor’s circle and all the people symbolized on it was great - Hank’s part was appreciated, both in the meaningful use of a slightly less-prominent canon character (when compared to giants such as Alcor, Mizar, and the Woodsman at least) and in the character development it pushed Amelie through. The Pine Tree and Bill symbols were also poignant, and the continuing influence of the black hole created early on by a false wish helped tie the beginning and end together. This entry did somewhat gloss over some of the current physical limitations of the characters, but the emotional punches of Amelie encountering the circle segments she did, reaching the wish, and then following her character development, choosing to help Quinn rather than abandon them and finally sharing her victory struck us well.
It wasn’t an easy choice in the least. There was a lot to consider, a lot to weigh, and the decisions were close. Unfortunately there can only be one canon timeline for the tournament, and so the vote, in the end, goes to Amelie.
Thalia snorts, nudging Elpenor with an elbow as the two look over the assembled crowd of dead and living alike. It seems, somehow, they had found their way back just in time for the start of a new round - amazing, considering just how long they must have taken to find their way - and it occurs to her that either Hilja or Tomm would now be dead… but worrying over that could wait until later. “E, don’t be rude.”
He returns the jab with one wing fluttering against her, and suddenly half her hair is in her face. “You do realize you just tried to outlaw four-fifths of my personality.” He passes her, looking around at the odd landscape they had entered. Thalia looked too. The wooden boards creak irritably beneath their feet, though no one takes note of it or even notices their approach. The rugged walls are decorated with patterns in the grain, but there are pictures too, held in equally rugged wooden frames and portraying all kinds of people. She recognizes one of them. It’s the same picture she kept in her room, buried under a mountain of letters.
“Well, it was worth a shot.” ‘That’s weird. But this is a pretty weird day.’ She had completely forgotten that photo until now. “Hey, do you see the same pictures I do?”
“Er, odd request, hold on…” He blinks. “Oh, hey, don’t you look happy.”
“Huh?”
“Look, see?” He flicks a fork at the picture she was looking at, but where Thalia sees a stout woman overlooking a clear, bubbling creek hidden away somewhere in the depths of North Carolina, Elpenor must have seen something different. “Looks like you’re not even a gnome yet - you’re still a Brownie!”
“I’m not that short!” She huffs. “Guess that answers my question, though. We’re not seeing the same thing.”
“We’re not? Well then, I see a picture of you partying in college, ignoring your schoolwork. I’m very disappointed in you.”
“Never went.”
“Heinous photo?”
“Nope.”
“Embarrassing family photo shoot.”
“E, that’s practically all of them.”
He sighs. “Fine. It’s a sports thing.”
Thalia looks mortified. “Let’s… not look at that anymore.”
She could hear his eyebrow raise. “What, you don’t like sports anymore?” He squints back to the frame, and Thalia is tempted to leave him behind. “Yeesh, looks like the same bat you have now, too! How long have you had that thing, Tee? Don’t tell me it’s older than I am!”
“It’s older than you are.” She hefts said bat and pokes the head into his side. “Come on, E, the next round’s starting.”
“Why should I care?”
Thalia lowers her bat. It’s actually a little amazing, in retrospect, that Elpenor has stuck around this long - she would have no reason not to suspect him of wanting to leave her behind for every minute, but now they’re out of the maze, and he’s still there. Is it possible that he hadn’t realized yet? Or maybe whatever friendship quest he had in mind at the beginning went better than he expected, not to mention prepared for. It’s not as if Thalia had many attention-grabbing qualities, so there would be no reason to stay out of curiosity. He’s already heard her life story. So why would he care?
Without a word, she turns her back and walks off towards the other contestants.
“H-Hey! Don’t ignore me!”
“Not ignoring!”
She could hear his footsteps of the wooden floorboards and the flutter of wings as he tried to catch up. Amazing. “That was so rude! You should be nicer to me.”
Thalia snorts. Elpenor looks insulted.
“Oh no.” The familiar voice catches both their interests, but Elpenor sees the source before Thalia can even turn. It’s a kid - but this kid is distinguished from all other possible kids due to the outline of a crystal fragment in his pocket and wide green eyes that take in the pair with no little amount of apprehension. Thalia pauses when she sees the blunt end of that crystal peeking out of his pocket, prompting Elpenor’s eyes to go to it as well, but she doesn’t stay frozen for long. “Thalia?”
“… Tomm.” Both boys let out a breath of relief at her tone, though for completely different reasons. “What are you still doing here? I thought you would go home and see your sister?”
Tomm looks away. “I’m just. Taking a break, that’s all. What about you? What are you still doing here?”
She shrugged. “Well, I was going to see how you were doing, but I got a little… distracted.”
“I believe that’s my cue.” Elpenor grinned, wings flared in a mix of greeting and completely irrational anger. “Name’s Elpenor, Sweaters. I’d shake your hand, but I’d probably end up stabbing you.”
The youngest of their party blinks down at Elpenor’s noticeable lack of hands. “Uh, thanks, I guess.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Ellie.”
They pause. “Yeeeeess, Tee?”
He’s pinned with a glare that’s tinged with distinctly motherly origins, and it doesn’t help that Thalia seemed to be purposefully looming over the two - or, trying with all her five-foot-two might. Still, it had the desired effect. “No hazing. You know what I mean.”
Elpenor makes a face. “But-”
“No. No buts.”
He folds his arms and pouts.
Oh hello, back to me. All is right in the world again, as I am now the center of attention. Continuing!
When the contestants all disappear, it takes me a few moments to realize that Alcor isn’t going to send us off as well. The demon is loitering around, looking a little lost in thought, and I finally catch that he’s not going to help us find the victors when he blips out of existence without saying a world to us.
So after this realization that Alcor is an ass who just stuck in the middle of a third version of hell, I turn to Thalia and Tomm, saying, “Want to go vandalize something?”
Thalia gives me a judgemental look. Tomm looks disbelievingly at me. I smile and start walking. “I’ll take that as a yes. Hurry up, shorties!”
Breaching the threshold of one of the rooms, I immediately notice a stale air. It’s too still, almost as if Alcor had locked all the doors shut and allowed the remnants of life in it to decompose, and it smells like one would expect an abandoned castle would. As a spirit with no requirement for breathing, I shouldn’t be this focused on the air, but the suspended nature of it puts me on edge.
None of this is as distressing as the horrible color choices for the walls and floors. The lilac walls clash horribly with the bright red carpeting and make me cringe. I had assumed Alcor to be a demon of style, given the top hat and suit, but today I have learned never to trust the demon as an interior decorator. Not that I would’ve trusted a demon in the first place, but this is extra distrust. This is the distrust where you go out and talk about how bad the person is just so that no one else ever makes the same mistakes you did and hires the worst gosh diddly darn interior decorator they’ve ever met.
Anyway.
I start laughing to Thalia and Tomm, “And here I was, thinking Alcor had style. Look at this tackiness.”
“This is a room in my house,” Thalia deadpans.
ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT “Oh, well, some of it’s nice. I like this picture.” Another successful avoid by me. With some difficulty, as I have fork hands, I pick up a small painting of a house, clearly a child’s by the messiness and seemingly finger-drawn shapes. “This kid looks like they might get good in the future.”
“I made that.”
Shit. Ignore that, maybe she didn’t catch me dissing her drawing. I put the picture back. “Why don’t we look for Amelie? I want to yell at her for stealing my hands when she loses.”
Tomm speaks this time. “When she loses?”
“Yeah, to the demon grandma,” I say, and Tomm looks at me like what I’ve said isn’t the most obvious thing since Alcor having buttwings.
He folds his arms, in a slightly admonishing way, which is odd because he’s like 12. 13. Whatever. “Hilja’s not a demon.”
I scoff, “Oh yeah? How come she’s still alive then? She’s a grandma!”
Tomm opened his mouth, shut it, bit his lip, and said, “I think she’s just very nice. She makes you less panicked until you forget you’re competing, and then she’s already through the portal.”
“Pulls out a granny zoom, huh?” I say, moving towards one of the two doors out of this horribly designed room. I’m going to have to talk to Batsy about style choices later.
The room opens to a hall of mirrors, which I immediately decide is boring. I shut the door.
“Let’s go the other way,” I say, and Tomm gives me a questioning look. Thalia just goes along with it, though, and opens the other door.
She stares at it for a moment, and the only thing she says is, “Well, that’s not my kitchen.”
Inside the room is what one would expect a grade B horror movie to look like. There’s some inconspicuous blood stains, a couple things hanging at eye level that could be mildly intimidating or could just be spray-painted kitchen utensils, and a skull that doesn’t look human. Shelves are filled with jars of things that could just be preservatives, or preserved body parts. A single light bulb sways ominously at the center. There’s dust over every surface, save for the two well cleared tables, one with a couple bloodstained papers on it. There’s shackles bolted to the surface of both, and I’m mildly uncomfortable with the crusted blood on their insides.
As always I decide to laugh my discomfort off.
“This isn’t mine,” I say. “Anyone here need to go to confession as soon as this is over?”
Tomm shakes his head, “Not me, either.” Thalia similarly denies recognizing this place
I shrug. “Well, another competitor then. How about we leave? There’s another exit there.” Gesturing to another door, I begin to walk over when I see a name. It’s on one of the papers and half erased so as to almost be unreadable, but I try my best. “Delacroa? Dedcrix? Can anyone read this?”
Thalia, having passed me and already standing at the door, says, “Elpenor, let’s just go. You wanted to find Amelie, right?”
I pull away from the paper, and say, “Oh, yeah. I have some yelling and threatening to do.”
“So come on, E. This room is considerably less creepy.”
And somehow we end up in a room decked in toys and dolls and monster truck figurines and all the things one would expect a little girl to have.
Tomm inhales sharply, “This one’s mine.” His body is tense, and I can tell that if he were to breathe he’d start shaking.
Thalia is concerned at this statement and puts a hand on Tomm’s shoulder. He flinches, but doesn’t remove her hand. Meanwhile I’m rolling my eyes at both of them. There are dolls in here! Let’s create an overly complicated scenario and pit them in battle against each other! Why are you two sad?
I try to pick up a hand-sized doll wearing roman armor. First, I can’t get my forks under it. Then, I realize that I can’t touch things in the mindscape. Now I am sad.
“Let’s keep going. There’s nothing for us here,” I say solemnly, and Thalia looks at me with approval. I think she thinks I’m trying to be nice to Tomm, but really I’m disappointed that I can’t recreate the conspiracy of Catiline with the stuffed animal dinosaurs. I let her believe that I mean well though, because it’s nice to rack up brownie points before I inevitably piss her off again.
I look around for an exit, but I am slightly dismayed to find that the only door in the room leads back to the DIY torture kitchen. I’m about to say something about giving up and turning back when I notice the windows. Where there should be light, a dirt tunnel makes itself apparent, and I smile.
“Guys, we’re going on a field trip! Get your army crawl on,” I say, and walk over to the window. Poking the glass a few times with my forks, I turn back to Thalia, “Help.”
Thalia blinked a few times and she looked at Elpenor with a slightly ticked off expression. “We’re not going through the window, Elpenor.”
“But-”
“I think we should,” Tomm interrupts. He’s looking around at the stuffed animals and the broken toys, occasionally trying to run his fingers over them. “I kind of want to get out of here, and I don’t really want to go through the dungeon again. Besides, we’ve been there, and we’re looking for Hilja, right?”
“Thalia, won’t you listen to our child? We must away!”
Batsy looks like she’s about to say something, but she just shakes her head and says, “Fine. If you get stuck with your massive wings, I’m not getting you out.”
“Sure thing, Bat Attack!” I say, and as soon as she opens the window, I push her into it.
—
I get stuck twice.
—
We come out in a room without windows, climbing through a person-sized hole in the corner of the floor. The first time I look, there appears to be absolutely nothing there, but soon I realize that before us, there is a door. Other than that, not a single piece of furniture. The walls are grey. The ceiling is grey. The floor is grey. Even the gouges torn into walls and the scrapes at the door and the scratches along floor are grey, only slightly tinted with red crusted flakes of what could be blood.
My throat feels tight, and my muscles are shaking, but I turn to Thalia, “Eh, seems kind of boring. Let’s go back.” Turning back towards the the tunnel, I whistled until Thalia cuts me off.
“We just army crawled uphill to get here. Let’s not,” she says. “Besides, why don’t we just take the door?”
“I think it’s locked,” I say. I don’t know why I say it.
Thalia realizes the flaw in my logic. “You haven’t even tried to open it.”
“That’s true. It just looks like the kind of door to be locked though. Just look at that nice bolting system it has! And all the scratch marks. Someone went full out here. Bravo, whoever you are.”
Tomm interjects, “I think the term is ‘all out.’”
I slap a fork over my heart, “Such disrespect from my own son. I’m wounded. I really am.” After a pause to let the words sink in (though I doubt they do, Tomm is just staring at me with a typical annoyed teenager expression), I slink over to the door. As I did to the window, I poke the handle a couple of times.
“Mooom, the door won’t open,” I whine.
Thalia makes her way over to me, “Weren’t you just calling me your wife?”
“Yeah, but you’re like, 15, and I don’t want to be a creeper.”
“I’m older than you, you ass.”
“I am not an ass, I am a sass. Now would you please just open the door, or fail and prove me right? Alcor’s top hat, I want to find Apricot and the zoom zoom granny, and I just really don’t want to be in this room anymore!”
Thalia scans me again, and I recognize this as a wary gaze by now. She takes a small step forward but still asks, “Do you recognize this place?”
Sorry, Thalia, your friendship level is insufficient to unlock this part of my tragic backstory. “Nope!” I exclaim cheerfully, “But someone was trying to get out, so I think the best course of action would be to leave very quickly.”
Thalia regards me again with suspicion. Honestly, it’s very rude, but I refrain from commenting for the sake of time. Instead, I gesture to the door with my forks. “Well?” I say.
Contemplating, she rests her weight on her hip and almost doesn’t notice when Tomm walks up, saying, “I may be 13, but you two are the children here.”
He opens the door.
It’s a hallway.
Thalia looks around and immediately backtracks indignantly at the smell permeating the area. To be honest, it smelled like something died and then spent the next hundred years dying over and over again. She had never been around bodies long enough to know what kind of stench a human corpse emits, but Thalia had seen plenty of roadkill in years past, and this was ten times worse. She slaps her hand over her nose and nearly flinches back into the room, bumping into Elpenor on the way. “Good god, that stinks!”
“Excuse you, I shower on the regular.”
“Ugh,” Tomm’s covering his nose as well, and Elpenor snickers until he catches a whiff and almost dives back into the other room. “Can you guys not do this right now? Thalia? Where do we go?”
“How should I know? It’s a-” She waves one hand. “Stupid- hallway. We have two options.”
“Well, we could go in another room.” He didn’t sound particularly fond of the idea.
Thalia shakes her head. “No, no, we’ve already run across two torture chambers and a little girl’s bedroom. We should stop before this place gets any more terrifying.” She pauses for a breath. “E, pick where to go.”
“I feel like you’re going to regret this.”
“Don’t care. Pick.”
“Eeny, meany, miney, moe…” He grins at their identical glares before pointing right. “What are those looks for? Now come on, I don’t have hands and rotting flesh smell doesn’t really agree with my stomach.”
Thalia nods and takes the lead, one hand still slapped over her nose but looking curiously around at the decor. It all just reminds her of bleach, but every once in awhile she spots a splash of color in an old picture frame or spattered on the wall. Looking back, she sees Elpenor pushing Tomm in front of him so the kid is in the middle of their little parade - he probably only did it to make sure they’re all moving, but it makes her feel better either way. Tomm notices her glance. “Um, Thalia? Is this smell really…?”
She nods. “I’ve come across a few bodies in my time, but the only things that ever smelled this bad would’ve been roadkill. It’s probably not a person, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Or it might be!” Elpenor chimes. “You never know!”
“It’s probably not. E, don’t traumatize the kid.”
He snorts. “You’re one to talk, miss easy-freezie.”
Thalia only rolls her eyes at his taunting. “Hey, we are past that. I’m fine, Tomm’s fine, everyone’s still just as annoying as ever -” Elpenor places a fork over his heart in mock offense. “And I forgive him for killing me. What’s in the past should stay… in the…”
There’s a person.
Hilja looks like she’s been run over by a truck. She boosts herself into standing, her dress and coinciding apron tattered and torn, even spotted with holes that look like they had been burnt through with a branding iron. Her neat bun’s lost in a mess of thin white hair, and one of the lens in her glasses has a crack running down the very middle. Their small party stops in their tracks with a small gasp from Tomm, and Elpenor takes the time to poke at Thalia with one fork. “‘Probably’, huh?”
“Goodness gracious… what happened to her?”
“Looks like Amaylay is slowly spreading her murderous rage through the ranks. Sorry demon grandma, you will be missed.”
Tomm steps forward. “That… wait, that’s not Hilja.”
“How could that not be her?” Elpenor laughs, almost ruffling the kid’s hair before stopping himself. “Look, she’s got the rainboots and everything!”
“Because… she’s looking right at us…”
He’s right.
The ‘demon grandma’ looks even more demonic than before, and a set of blank, beady eyes are set on Thalia, flicking to Tomm and Elpenor as well before settling again. The Neph stiffens at the attention. “Er, Thalia? Batsy? Maybe we should get moving…”
Suddenly Elpenor isn’t only standing behind her, but in front of her as well, standing hunched against the wall Hilja had been leaning against. “Batsy, maybe you should come over here…”
Thalia gasps when a fork is placed on her shoulder. Looking over, she see’s E smiling at her, but it looks even more forced than usual. “Well, looks like we found the shapeshifter! Whaddya say we get the heckie out of here?”
“Tommy?” There’s a little girl now, and Tomm flinches. “Tommy, I thought you said… you said you would…”
“Guys I’m serious if you don’t hurry up I am leaving without you!”
“Tee, c’mon, let’s go.” He budges at her, but she’s frozen, staring intently at the shapeshifter - the little girl - that’s now slowly approaching. “Thalia!”
“… Yeah. Let’s go.”
“Elpenor,” It’s a woman with green skin, beckoning him forward as the three back away. “Come here, honey.”
He laughs, nudging Thalia a little harder. “Ha, yeah, I don’t know you, and I don’t talk to strangers, so goodbye!”
“No?” The shifter pauses, placing a delicate hand on it’s chin before, in a flurry of movement and color, changing into a man, one hand scritching at messy hair while the other clutches and oddly familiar blanket. “How about now? Remember me, Ellie?”
“… Ben…” He frowns, but stops retreating. “No, you’re dead. Thalia…”
“Aw, come on, Ellie! Let’s run away together, go on adventures like we used to.”
“That is -” Elpenor takes a step forward but laughs. “That is not fair, you’re not playing fair.”
“Nothing?” ‘Ben’ sighs. “I guess I’ll have to try something a little more comfortable…”
And he changes.
It’s an older man now, with cropped brown hair and broad shoulders. He’s skinny, wearing ratty jeans and a normal white t-shirt, but Thalia stiffens all the same. The man grins at her expression.
“Thalia.”
Elpenor blinks, looks at the shorter girl, and yanks his fork away.
She looks murderous. “William…”
“Oh man, this is great. You know,” William places his hand on his hips, looking around happily at the blank scenery. “I always wondered how you were doing without me. Who knew you would be consorting with demons and criminals…” Thalia steps forward, hands twitching with restrained anger and hefting her bat up to her shoulder. “Well, you were already friendly with a bunch of filthy murderers, but who am I to judge? Oh! That reminds me! How’s our little Lei-Lei, huh?”
“You.” Thalia hisses. Elpenor backs away like a smart person. “You don’t get to speak her name.”
“No? Fine, moving on. Question two! How’re those burn scars now-a-days? I know they must be throbbing with how big of a storm you’re stirring up!”
“Joke’s on you, William,” She made it sound like his name was a curse. “Fynn fixed me up, no thanks to you.”
“Aw, that’s no fun. Question three…” He grinned. “How’s your sister?”
“You motherfucker!”
He dodged the first sliver of ice by a hair. It caught on his shirt and stabbed right through - he stood with a grin like he was watching the end of the world go by, poking a finger through the hole. “You’ve gotten better! But you still weren’t good enough!” Thalia looked shocked at her own movement, but the goading pulled her back in as she threw another ice dagger. This one he had to dance away from, but it still made a small cut at his lower thigh. She could almost grasp the blood in his body, but it was still just out of her reach, just like last time.
The shapeshifter skipped away, William’s laughter echoing in the halls as his body retreated.
Thalia grounded herself.
Hissed out a breath.
“… Fuck it.”
And gave chase.
benbenbenbenbenbenbenbenbenbenbenben- shut up me goodness how sad are you you little-
Wait, where is Thalia going? I am an easily lost duckling, please come back.
Turning to Tomm, I say, “Well, your mother’s off to kill fake-demon grandma, want to follow her and eat imaginary popcorn?”
“Not re-”
“Good plan, let’s go.” I go to grab his hand, remember my forks, and lock arms with him instead. As we ran, me sprinting and Tomm flopping behind me, I say, “I always come up with the best plans. I should be a guidance counselor. Tomm, lesson one: fake crying is effective. It throws people off guard. Real crying is not. People don’t like dealing with actual sadness-”
Tomm pulls his arm from my grasp. “You give horrible advice. Let’s just find mom- I mean Thalia. Ugh, you’re corrupting me.”
Smiling, I reply, “Hey, this advice got me through quite a few trials in my life. I am the murder bird you see today because of this!” As soon as I confirm that Tomm is running after Thalia and not leaving, I sprint to catch up. My leg doesn’t even hurt much where Darren shot me. Maybe it’s the bandages Amelie put on. I ignore that thought. Hating Amelie is necessary, because if I don’t, I’ll hate myself.
Tomm retorts, “That’s not necessarily a good thing. Murder.” He laughs a little, but I can tell it’s slightly self-deprecating because he’s clutching the white rock too tightly to be for mere security.
After deciding whether or not to soothe the troubled child, I say, “Murder, in some situations, is acceptable. Self-defense and nonpermanent murder can be understandable. Though to be fair, I kind of stabbed my best friends, so I guess that’s my bad. But you’re good! Nothing here is real!”
“I’m good? I wasn’t talking about myself,” Tomm scoffs, but he releases his hold on the white rock a little. Yes, good. My people skills have not yet failed me.
As we run along, I hear Thalia shouting, “Where did you go, you asshole!? I will beat you into the floor!” She sounds like she’s close by, just out of earshot, and I smile. The white washed hallway isn’t as boring when you get to listen to death threats while you run.
I call to Thalia, “Batsy! Shapeshifter’s only going to find you faster and beat you up if you shout like that!” Thalia doesn’t respond, and I keep running until I turn the corner to where I’d seen her go.
The first thing I saw was Thalia standing there, staring intently. At first I thought I was lost in thought, but soon I realized that her eyes were too focussed, too intent to be drifting off into space. I followed her line of sight, looking over to see what she was watching so closely. The shapeshifter is nowhere to be found, but instead Thalia was focussing on a pair of competitors: Apple seed and Granny.
“When I was fifteen, my parents learned I had been practicing magic and threw me out of the house,” Amelie says, and I realize with horror what I’ve walked into.
I groan, “You’re kidding me. You’re actually kidding me. I have to sit through your sob story, Azalea? I just want you to lose already so I can yell at you!” Thalia glares at me, and Tomm looks slightly offended, but I pay no attention to that. I want to rant, and no one is going to stop me.
Amelie keeps talking, “Our pastor always used to give these huge, angry sermons…”
I talk over her, “Oh, boo hoo! Look at me! My parents didn’t love me enough, and now I’m running around casting magic spells and ruining lives! Grow up, you asshole.” I stick my forks up, “I’d be flipping you off, but you let the woodsman cut off my hands! Funny how that works.”
“..nobody ever did anything. At least, not at first.” Amelie paused.
“Oh no, it must’ve been so hard for you, a human, in a world where humans are assholes to magical creatures. I’m sure you were crying over the kids dying in the news as you sat where you were, safe from all that as your stupid human self.” Tomm and Thalia both seem kind of offended. “Oh what?” I say to them. “It’s not like she’s ever been called a freak by strangers in the street just for walking to school.”
I realize that as I’ve been speaking Amelie has continued, “When I was about nineteen, a group came in the middle of the night, wearing hoods and carrying torches. They went from one family to the next, setting the houses on fire with everyone sleeping inside, and they shot at the ones who ran away.”
Anything I was about to say is frozen. I lower my forks.
“I was in a different town when it happened, and by the time I was able to get back it was already over.”
“Wait, wait,” I protest. “Stop. I’m supposed to be mad at you. Stop being sad. Stop. Stop. I have to stay mad at you! I have to be able to blame you! Stop being depressing.”
“Greg’s family were better to me than anyone else ever was, and I wasn’t there when they needed me, and they lost everything.”
Shit. Shit shit shit. No no no no nonon on o I have to hate you. I have to hate you otherwise I can’t explain these feelings I have to be able to blame you and that’s why I’m mad I’m not I’m not I’m not
“I’m making sure I always get there in time if someone needs me. No one loses their family, or their home.”
i just want none of this to have ever happened I can’t if amelie’s justified then what even am i i can’t can’t help please i just want to go home i want not to be dying and i don’t want to be sad i’m not sad i have to be angry no one will care if i’m sad they’ll only pay attention if i’m violent and angry i can’t be alone again please please please stop
Turning to Thalia, I snicker and say, “Well, that’s possible.”
why am i such an asshole goodness couldn’t i say something not sarcastic for once in my life i’m in the process of slowly breaking down i shouldn’t be trying to crack people up i know that my brain is stupid but goodness i need to listen to it every so often i need help not a comedy tour
Tomm is the one who answers, jokingly but still a little mad about how I insulted humans a couple moments earlier. “She wants to use it to help people. I’m pretty sure that’s a lot better than whatever you had in mind, Mr. Murder bird.”
please sorry please i never meant for anything to get like this i just wanted to live i just want to reach twenty i want to live is that so bad but amelie is so selfless and i’m selfish and oh god i am a monster
I laugh, “Probably true. Oh look, they’re fighting. Let’s watch Armadillo and speed demon Granny go at it.” Not waiting a for a response, I sit down.
Hilja is shouting out random spells, and Amelie seems like she’s floundering at least a little bit, but now any satisfaction I had at seeing her fail is rotten. I know that Amelie is fighting for a good reason, and even though I’m angry I feel compelled to root for her. Even as my forks remind me exactly what she did, part of me accepts that I probably deserved it.
Thalia sits down next to me, “Are you okay?”
I respond, but I don’t take my eyes of the fighting pair. “Always. That’s a lie. Sometimes I’m great.”
“Mhm,” Thalia hums. “You’re shaking.”
Realizing that she’s right, I force myself to still, though I’m pretty sure that by the end I’m shaking from the effort.
She puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Did you not just hear my amazing jokes? I’m really not affected by this. There is nothing to not be okay about.”
Thalia looks ready to speak again, but she is interrupted by a giant crevice in the ground. From where I’m sitting, it’s possible to see Amelie scrambling away from the drop, and my breath catches in my throat.
Amelie is falling. Crap, can she survive that? Throwing off Thalia’s hand, I run over. Down in the abyss, Amelie is plummeting, hands gripped tight onto her cane. Her expression, peaceful, seems out of place given her imminent peril. Her eyes are cast up, but they’re unfocused as if lost in thought. I wonder if she’s thinking about death.
My decision is practically made for me. Amelie is plummeting. The ground is crumbling. I’m standing too close, and part of me wants Amelie not to be alone when she wakes up dead. Without thinking, I let myself fall in.
Folding my wings in, I try to be as aerodynamic as possible so as to hurtle through space faster and catch up with Amelie. As I plummet, I think I hear Thalia shouting. This probably wasn’t what she was expecting me to do, and I’ve probably worried her, but I don’t really care.
Catching up is easy, and I unfurl my wings slightly, slowing my descent to match Amelie’s. In what’s probably a fit of insanity, I start talking to her, “Hey, do you know where the bottom is? Because this is going to suck if you’re just falling for eternity. I mean, eventually you’ll pass out, but that’ll take awhile. And just watching you fall is kind of boring.”
Amelie, of course, doesn’t respond. She can’t hear me, as I am essentially a ghost. I continue anyway.
“I was really mad at you until like two minutes ago. I still want to be mad. But dammit, you had a much better reason for fighting than me. And now you’re losing too.” I laugh. “This isn’t fair.” More silence from her. Yep, still not deemed out of the competition.
We fall in silence for a few more moments. Her face starts to be more panicked, and for some reason I feel guilty. At least Amelie gave me a fighting chance. If I had just tried running instead of fighting the Woodsman, maybe I could’ve made it to the end. But Amelie is falling into a void, and she doesn’t get that chance.
When her expression changes to a silent scream, a cross between a cringe and a shout, I wonder if her time is up. Before I can comment, though, I notice her throwing her cane between her legs, and suddenly she’s above me.
She’s flying. I realize pretty quickly that yes, she is flying. I snap my wings out and stall midair as I watch Amelie zoom upwards. I flap my wings to catch up the entire time launching a tirade in my brain.
Why did I even bother. Of course she can fly. It doesn’t matter that flying was basically the only thing special about me. Amelie can do it too, so I guess I’m not that special! Actually, what ever could I do that she couldn’t? Sob story? She’s sadder! Fighting skills? Well, she certainly knocked me out. Self-deprecating jokes? The only thing that that proves is how much less of an awful person she is. I’m unnecessary here! Why did Alcor even choose me?
Pushing those thoughts out of my mind, I reach the top of the hole, and Amelie and Granny are gone, their fight taken elsewhere. Thalia looks relieved to see me, and Tomm looks like a weight has come off his chest.
“Avocado isn’t the only one who can fly, you nerds. Did I have you worried about me?”
Tomm’s expression says, “You’re kidding me, right?” but Tomm actually says nothing. Thalia is similarly speechless, but I think it’s more out of concern than frustration like Tomm.
I speak, “Well, we wanted to watch the deathmatch, let’s go! Gosh diddly darnit why is half of this just us running around looking for those jerks.”
“I’m pretty sure this wall was not here before…” Tomm says, touching said wall.
Thalia snorts, looking away from Elpenor for a moment. “I’m with Hilja. This place is ridiculous. And I still want to beat that shapeshifter into the ground, so… let’s get moving?”
At this, Elpenor flies over and lands in front of her before she even takes a step. “Oh no, Munchkin, you are not going after that thing again. I’m lucky you didn’t get too far away last time, because then your poor son would have to spend the rest of the round with me! I’m not the only parent here!”
She seems to consider something, and looks to Tomm for his reaction to this. When he doesn’t seem to care, she grins. “But husband, I want to go wipe the floor with that smug face of his!”
Elpenor laughs and places a fork on her shoulder. He seems to be doing that a lot lately. “I know, darling, but forcing Tomm to your schedule is not a very good parenting technique! Now, apologize to your child.” Tomm snorts as if he’s enjoying the show. Eh, he might be, but that doesn’t stop Thalia from turning to him with a grin.
“Hey kid, you wanna see Momma cut up an asshole?”
He chokes on laughter, recovers a bit, laughs again, and takes a breath. “Do I!”
“Good kid. Let’s go!”
“I can’t believe I managed to corrupt two people in one round. I’m so awesome.”
Thalia just sighs, wanting so badly to check if her friend’s alright but unable to do so with their ‘child’ present. “C’mon E, if we can’t find the shapeshifter, then I’ll put on another show. Sound good?”
“More dolphins? Sign me up.”
“Dolphins?”
She hears shouting from somewhere a little further ahead and turns toward the sound. Elpenor quickens his pace a bit - he probably doesn’t even realize it. “What, you think I can only do icicles and storms? Here, hold on -” A bit of air pressure here, a pull there - the air inside the shack rushes towards the trio as she collects water droplets in the air around them, each bubbling into one another before shaping itself - or Thalia shaping it - into what appears to be a small flower on a stem. “Morning Glory. Here.”
“… That’s… really cool.”
A scream echoes through the hall. “… Maybe we should check on them. You know, before demon grandma ends up destroying the place.”
“Seconded. C’mon.”
They make good pace, turning down another hallway as the commotion gets louder.
There are a few more screams. They quicken their pace. Thalia watches with a slight interest as Elpenor’s wings begin to unfold and wonders, like his speed, if he’s actually aware of it.
Two corners later, and they find what they’re looking for.
Amelie and Hilja are both suspended over what looks to be a fire pit, the black and grey smoke almost consuming their forms as Hilja kicks and flails just above the coals. Thalia just barely manages to hold Elpenor back before a loud snarl echoes through the room, drawing all attention to an alcove somewhere above them. She watches as Amelie stalls in her retreat, waiting just above the coals, and realizes what’s happening with a start.
“Oh, god. Back! Back, back, back, back, back!”
She pulls at the boys, stumbling and falling with their combined weight. They have enough time to shout before-
FWOOSH
They flinch with the heat of the flames kissing their skin, and the shapeshifter’s screams assault their ears with a sound like a train whistle combined with a dying cat. Thalia continues pulling the two away from the door, one arm around Elpenor’s shoulders and the other trapping Tomm’s elbow, and they scoot away along with her until the heat reaches a more comfortable level.
She takes a breath, stands, looks over the two, and laughs.
“Well!” They blink at her. “That was fun!”
They glance at each other. Elpenor looks at her with the most serious face he can muster.
“I never should have corrupted you. You’re terrifying.”
“Nah!” She pulls Tomm upright, mussing his hair a bit when he doesn’t stumble before extending an arm to Elpenor, grasping his wrist. “I’m just getting into old habits, is all! Helps that the shapeshifter died. I feel so much better now.”
When all three are on their feet, she looks over them for burns and realizes something. She just used both arms to yank them out of there. “Oh, goddamnit, I lost my bat.”
Elpenor gasps. “Then you can’t be Bat Attack anymore! Quick, son, think of a horrible nickname for your mother!”
“No, enough, stop.” She heaves a sigh. “I’ll ask Alcor to find it for me. It must have been when I was chasing after William… Let’s see if the others managed to survive that last blast, huh?”
We look out over the fire. On the other side, Amelie and Hilja are slowly landing, Amelie’s flying cane approaching the ground and letting the pair’s feet make contact. Closer, the shapeshifter’s cries die out, and I cringe thinking about how that must sound to Amelie, whose closest friends all burned to death like the creature between us.
I have a horrible thought.
Turning to Tomm, I ask, “You felt the fire, right?”
He nods.
I look to Thalia, “But you were there when we figured out that we can just walk straight through people, and objects to an extent. Remember the books?”
“We couldn’t pick up the- no.” Thalia stops mid-sentence. “We are not going to try walking through fire.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that I walk through fire, just that you two do. I,” I flourish my wings, “can fly.”
Thalia sighs in frustration, and I grin. She can’t quite figure out how to respond, so she just lets silence fall for a few moments.
“Can you carry people?” Tomm asks.
“Only for a short distance, and it depends on how heavy the person is. Also whether or not I can hold them.” I stick up my forks, with considerably less malice than when I was pretending to flip Amelie off.
Thalia groans, “So that’s not an option.” She pauses. “I have a bad idea.”
“But Lack-A-Bat, you just shot down my bad idea,” I protest.
“Yours involved literally walking through fire,” Tomm points out.
“It did, and I stand by it.”
“I could try to put it out,” Thalia says.
I look at her. Tomm looks at her. We’re both a little confused, and Thalia doesn’t provide any more information, so our confusion stays.
Instead, she walks over to where the fire pit starts, a little bit further than standard marshmallow toasting distance, and she flourishes her hands. Water springs out of the ground and the air, rushing towards her form, balling near her head. With a final gesture, she sends the water out over the fire, and lets it fall like a blanket over the flame.
It does absolutely nothing.
“Well, that didn’t work,” I say as I look at over the still very much on fire room.
Thalia puffs, “I can see that! You don’t have to rub it in.”
“Which is why I say that we should try the firewalk.”
“Do you know how painful that would be?” She’s got this disbelieving look, but it’s sort of amusing so I continue provoking her.
“Actually, I was set on fire three lives ago. And besides,” I snicker, “it’ll balance out all the freezing you did round one.”
If steam could actually fly out of people’s ears ,Thalia would be creating a sauna to compliment the fire before us. “You want to bring that up? You don’t have hands!”
“Yeah, but I have wings! I’m not the one who’s stuck here. I could leave you behind any time I want.”
“Then why don’t you? Just leave then!”
“You want to do this now? In front of the kid?” I gesture over to Tomm.
Thalia throws her hands up in the air. I wonder if she’s just realized that I’m not taking this seriously at all.
During her frustration, Tomm speaks, “So you can’t fly us across.”
“I can’t hold you. Plus, we’d probably make it like 20 feet before I dropped you.”
Tomm puffs. “So we’re staying here.”
Around us, the house begins to shift. Hallways crack and fall apart, leaving gaps where walls should’ve been, and the ground beneath us is giving way to void. Ahead, I can make out that Amelie is gone, probably won somehow, though with my eyesight impaired as it has been for awhile, I can’t be sure how she managed that.
Frantically looking about, Thalia asks, “Got any ideas?”
“Inventories! What do you guys have?” Tomm shouted.
Thalia speaks first. “Well, I did have a bat. Not anymore though.”
“I have a comb. And a blanket. I lost my ferret.”
“I have an amulet? And a rock.”
The cracks seep closer, and I ask, “Can the amulet do anything?”
“Nothing useful here!”
I always come up with bad ideas. That’s the one thing I’m good at. So it’s a surprise when Tomm comes up with one.
“Counterweight.”
“What.” I ask. It’s a fair question, as that word has absolutely no context.
Tomm turns to me suddenly, his eyes lit up. “You have a blanket, right?” He spins around to Thalia, “You’re pretty much the same height as me. How much do you weigh?”
Snickering, I comment, “Rude.”
“Is that relevant?” Thalia asks. By now we’re teetering on the edge, almost being thrown into the fire to avoid the destruction.
“Counterweight! Give me you blanket,” Tomm says. Part of me is defensive of it, it was Ben’s after all, and I almost refuse him. But the slightly more rational part of me realizes that the mindscape isn’t technically real, and I hand it over.
Tomm throws it over my arms, keeping hold of one corner. “Thalia, grab the other side.” She does so, a little bit confused. “Now you can hold us.”
What. “Son, did I not just tell you how we’d crash land?” As I say this, the edge we’re standing on starts to give way. “You know what, what the heckity, why not. Jump!’
And there’s a moment when we’re just suspended in the air. Thalia, to my left, is squeezing her eyes shut, probably bracing herself in case we crash. Tomm, on the right, looks absolutely delighted, despite the fact that our feet barely reach over the flames. I’m bracing myself for pain, because even if we don’t careen into the tongues of flame, my wings are going to hurt from all the extra weight.
But I can’t let them crash.
As the weight of the situation dawns on me, I flex the muscles in my back, flap my wings, and block out everything.
—
I won’t call it a crash land, but it’s pretty darn close. When I finally get out of my focus mode, I realize a couple things: 1. I am in so much pain right now why did we try this. 2. Thalia and Tomm are heaped on the ground. They don’t look too injured though, so that’s good. 3. We managed to tumble through the portal to the final round. 4. There is someone in front of me.
Simple. The thought echoed in Quinn’s mind, strangely unaccompanied by others. It pounded in time with the throbbing in their head as their eyes darted from the wish on the counter to the woman standing beside them. It’s so…simple.
Touch the wish. Just reach out and touch it. They had done much worse to get here; it should be so easy–
And the yet they couldn’t move just as surely as the woman beside them wasn’t making any moves either, eyeing them as much as Quinn couldn’t help eyeing her.
Another witch. The steady hum of magic belied her, even if it was much nicer and somehow more familiar than the sound of the witch from the first round. An unasked question hung in the silence between them: Who’s going to go for it first? If I take a step, what would you do to stop me? They had only had a couple of moments to restring in the mindscape before they had ended up in this mundane touristy hell. The new G-string wasn’t even fully tuned and wasn’t likely to hold a consistent note anyway for a couple of play throughs. It was only a couple of steps across the room to the counter anyway–not nearly enough time for a good spell, even if their opponent looked even worse than they felt.
Seconds ticked away. Eventually, the witch heaved a heavy sigh.
“Look,” she said, and her voice was more kind than they would have expected from someone who made it this far into a demon tournament, “I’m tired. You certainly look like you’re tired. Let’s cut the crap and go for it at the same time so we can get this over with, okay?”
Simple. On principle, they considered going along with an opponent on anything a shit idea, but…
But their headache had never fully gone away from when they had smashed it against the mirror last round, and they were pretty sure that the room wasn’t supposed to be tilting…If the witch didn’t want to fight, that was fine with them.
They nodded, pretending that the motion didn’t make them want to throw up.
Simple.
The witch made a count of three. They both lunged, but not towards the time wish.
In the same moment that Quinn Foley swung the lute in an attempt to knock the witch sideways off of her feet, the witch brought up her cane and shoved the butt in front of their ankles to trip them. Quinn tumbled forwards, and the lute swung wildly and ended up clocking her between the shoulder blades. They both landed on the floor with a hard oof. The witch did some impressive swearing.
…Okay, they realized, trying to push themself to their feet while the room spun around them, apparently neither of us is planning on playing fair.
Vertigo aside, Quinn still made it to their feet a little faster, only to almost trip again when they ducked to grab their lute and the cane (humming a pleasant and loud middle C) whacked their left ankle again. They bit their lip to bite back a yelp. Calm! Keep calm; it’s only a couple more steps.
They had staggered across forward again and were almost to the counter when they heard a soft whisper of words and hrrr of magic behind them before getting hit like a ton of bricks with some kind of stunning spell that knocked them (once again) off of their feet. The little momentum they had going this time carried them forward to bang their shoulder into the counter as they went down. So close! The time wish wobbled in place, rolling towards the opposite edge of the counter. The witch limped doggedly after it, barely a step away.
Their fingers pressed into the lute’s strings. Their feet scrambled to get them back standing. Start playing! Grab the wish! Do something!
The witch stumbled into the counter, grabbing the edge to keep herself steady as Quinn finally wobbled to their feet, head spinning. The wish tilted on the far end of the counter, swayed, and for a moment perched on the very edge, equally persuaded towards steadying or falling. In this moment the Quinn Foley and the witch, out of the primal instinct that is to catch a falling thing, forgot magic and forgot reason and leaned forward, arms outstretched to grab the time wish before it could roll out of reach.
It became immediately apparent that this was the wrong move on Quinn’s part. The witch was taller than Quinn by several inches, giving her just enough added reach to stretch her hand forward that extra little bit. In that moment, time seemed to freeze, their vision shrinking down to the blinding sight of her fingers brushing the time wish, skin just barely meeting its smooth round surface but meeting it nonetheless. And in that instant they felt it–the unspeakable terror of someone suddenly without excuses, without meaning, without a way forward. It left a curious, empty feeling in spaces once too full. It felt numb, they thought. It felt like death.
It was a sound that brought them back to life.
The sound was not a victory sound–no blaring trumpets or shouts of exaltation. Nor was it a song by any musical sense of the word.
The sound was a pop. A pop as a second time wish appeared right next to the one that had just rolled off of the counter under the witch’s touch.
The sound didn’t stop there, though the frozen way that Quinn and the witch stayed sprawled across the counter, staring in confusion and abject horror felt a lot like its own kind of silence. The little plips of time wishes popping into existence continued until there were five, twenty, seventy, too many of the glowing spheres to count, rolling across the floor only to bump into others as they appeared out of thin air. Plip, plip, plip. In time with the pounding in their head and the rushing of lungs that dared to breathe again.
“Oh you have got to be kidding me,” the witch said under her breath. In the proximity of their still immobile states, Quinn heard it clearly, along with the sweet humming middle C that mingled with the magic clinging to both her and the cane. I know that sound. They realized, deep down underneath the relief and horror building inside them. They knew it like the brush of wind through summer leaves and the dancing of pixies in the woods behind the sanctuary, where once long ago they had heard its whispers and named it music.
Faery magic, something stirred in Quinn Foley’s chest, and thankfully this time it was something kinder than guilt. How the hell did she learn fae magic?
This they pondered, racing heart and pounding head, as the number of time wishes grew and grew and grew until they filled the floor, brushing against their ankles, rising up to their waist, rising to fill the entire room and surround both contestants until they were drowning in the very object of their own desires.
Just as Quinn began to wonder, rather detachedly at this point, when the multiplying would have to stop, the walls of the gift shop began to swell, groaning and stretching under pressure from the mass of its contents. Quinn wheezed as the spheres pressed against them, pushing up around their chest, their stomach, their face, and they clutched the lute desperately, as if it were an anchor.
And then, with a clamor and a creaking snap, the walls, the floor, and the ceiling of the room burst, falling away to reveal a limitless void of darkness and madness, lit up by hundreds upon hundreds of newly born time wishes that spread across the space like stars in the night sky.
Simple, Quinn Foley thought, but by no means easy.
The fear of falling only lasted an instant as the floor disappeared and gave way to a vast nothingness. Strangely enough, Quinn did not fall away with the frame of the room they had stood in but instead found themself floating in mid-air, weightless.
“No gravity,” the witch said next to them, seemingly to herself as she gazed around at the array of time wishes, “but obviously there’s still air–we’re breathing…”
Air or no air, Quinn was quickly beginning to realize the problem with the ‘gravity free’ thing as they waved their arms around in an attempt to propel themself further away from their opponent and only managed to spin their body slightly to the right. ‘Touch the time wish,’ the demon said. They could only assume that the rule still stood, assholeish plot twist or no. How the hell are we supposed to do that if we can’t effing move? A sharp turn of their head to watch as a golden sphere floated by just out of reach sent their vision blurring slightly, and they concede that maybe it was time to admit that they might have a concussion. Gods, please tell me this can’t get any worse.
It got worse.
That humming middle C of fae-touched magic spiked, building into a steady purr, like the sound of an engine. Quinn snapped their head around again (Ouch, ouch, ouch–no more sharp movements!)just in time to see the witch mount her cane as if it was a magic broom stick and go zooming forward, swerving wildly towards the nearest wish.
…Oh, that’s just not fair. Quinn Foley was really starting to hate witches. They really, really were.
A thing like panic began to pound through their veins–in their heart, in their head. Do something! I’ve made it this far, just…
Instinctually they clutched the lute close, watching their opponent zoom further into the field of wishes. Music magic could do many a useful thing, but as of yet it could not make them fly and it could not give them wings to serve the purpose. At a loss and at the end of their mental rope, they did the only thing they could think of and grabbed the lute by the neck with both hands. They made some clumsy rowing motions as if the instrument were an oar. It felt like they moved a couple centimeters, but the action mostly just sent rotating in place, which was doing monstrous things to their head.
The only noticeable change around them now that their opponent had sped off towards almost certain victory was that their eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness. The stabs of violent colors bleeding from rifts that cut through the mostly empty dimension offered little illumination. The golden orbs of countless fake time wishes did a little bit of a better job, meaning that as their vision settled they could now see shapes moving in the darkness, some gently floating and spinning like items cast aside in a stormy sea. Others…others moved more slowly, large and shapeless forms creeping deliberately at the edges of their vision.
They tried again with the lute, aware of unblinking eyes staring from the dimensional cracks, watching, watching, watching as they struggled. Flailing bought them a couple more centimeters. It lost them their breath and what little calm had managed to survive thus far. In the distance there was a soft whump from the direction the witch had gone. They wondered what had caused it–they didn’t want to know what had caused it. They didn’t know what they wanted. They swung the lute again. Swung and swung, putting all their strength behind it but getting nowhere closer to the goal in front of them. Damn Alcor and his stupid buttwings too! How was this even supposed to be possible?
It was probably by pure coincidence that a wish happened to float just near enough that if they stretched their fingers they could reach it. The demon’s instructions (touch the wish, touch the wish) were so urgently playing in the forefront of their mind that it didn’t occur to them until too late that touching a fake wish might have its own consequences.
Their fingers brushed the sphere, warm to the touch and vibrating with something other than magic. Instantly and much to their shock, it popped under their hand, releasing an outward burst of energy that sent Quinn spiraling backwards into the nothingness around them, cartwheeling through space. With nothing to stop their motion it took ridiculously long before they finally slowed to a halt, and even longer before their vision stopped wobbling and their head stopped throbbing. Had standing been at all necessary they probably would have been down for the count. As it was, they were so nauseas from all the spinning (and possibly from concussion as well) that they bent over and retched…only to find that instead of any sort of gross stomach contents they coughed up a stream of rainbows instead.
What the actual hell…They managed to think once they’d recovered enough for thought. Maybe the fake wish had given them some sort of disgustingly cute disease. In the distance they heard the humming of the witch’s magic again, flying in uneven patterns away from them. They wondered idly why it was that every time there was a witch around bright colors were somehow involved.
Since there weren’t any fixed landmarks in the field of time wishes, Quinn had no way of knowing how far they had been thrown and still no way of moving effectively. The wishes were fewer and farther between here, so maybe they were near the edge of the field, if there were any sort of edge at all. There seemed to be more miscellaneous objects floating around in the void here. A blue baseball cap was lighting a couple of meters out of reach. A little closer, a couple of pages fluttered without any wind, covered in elaborate drawings and text that they couldn’t make out. Over to their left it looked like there might have been an eight ball cane drifting around, this one without a witch attached, and off in the distance it looked like–
Something hard and metal bonked their head and Quinn bit off a curse. Clutching the lute in one hand, they instinctively reached up and snatched the offending item out of the air with the other before it could get away. Their fingers closed around a cool metal handle that fit easily in their grip, and when their eyes focused on the item their dead, tired expression turned to one of utter disbelief.
This is a…grappling hook gun? How the hell would something like that have gotten here?
As Quinn Foley stared at the item in their hands, the hopeless feeling dragging their limbs seemed to drag a little less, as a clear, calm, inspiration struck them. A smirk curled their lips. Their hand cocked the new instrument experimentally.
I’ve got a grappling hook.
They had a chance.
A grappling hook wouldn’t propel them, but it could certainly pull them, if it had something to latch on to. And the field in front of them was full of things. Lute firmly grasped in one hand and grappling hook gun in the other, Quinn aimed at the nearest time wish, counted their lucky stars, and shot, holding on for dear life.
The kick from shooting off the gun jolted them backwards a couple of centimeters, but otherwise they didn’t move. The hook missed the wish on the first shot. They retracted it and tried again. Another miss, but closer this time. The third shot barely caught, but it caught nonetheless, and suddenly Quinn was being moved again, this time by their own volition.
The time wishes weren’t fixed in their locations, as had been apparent by the way they seemed to float aimlessly through space. Because of this, there was nothing to anchor Quinn as the grappling hook pulled them towards the wish, and as it was they were not so much pulled towards the wish as both the wish and Quinn were pulled towards each other, yanked through space by the grappling hook until they met in the middle. The wish smacked into Quinn’s chest before they could even dare to hope it might be the right one. It wasn’t, obviously, because the moment contact was made, the thing burst, just like the first. Once again Quinn was sent spiraling.
I think I want to die. It took longer for their head to stop reeling this time when they finally came to a halt. When they could focus again, they faintly heard the purring sounds of the witch’s flying cane off in the distance somewhere, so it looked like they’d been pushed closer to their opponent. Great. At least they didn’t start puking rainbows again. Something definitely felt off, though, and it took them a moment to realize that half of their field of vision was dark and there was a small pressure over their right eye. Concerned, they tucked the grappling hook between their feet and reached up with their free hand to feel at the cloth covering part of their face–an eyepatch. When the cloth was removed from their face without any problems, they breathed a sigh of relief…only to suck it back in again when they opened their eye only to find their vision still gone.
Blind. The word pounded in their head. Their head pounded of its own accord. Blind, blind, I’m half-blind. It was hard to breath. Like someone had sucked the air from their lungs.
Calm, calm. They told themself. You can still do this. You don’t need both eyes to win. Breathing came a little easier. Their head did not stop spinning.
They were so caught up in their deliberately not panicking that they didn’t immediately notice how close they were to one of the rifts, with its staring eyes and shifting colors. They also didn’t notice the shadowy shapes moving among the free-floating objects, just on the edge of their now narrowed vision. They didn’t notice any of this until a cold feeling dragged their limbs, and the heavy, inescapable feeling of being watched stabbed through them like one of Zee’s knives.
Is there something in here with us? It was not a good thought. In fact it was a very dangerous thought given how far they were already slipping from composure. The eyes from the void were staring at them. Staring, staring, staring. Unblinking and accusing like so many other eyes they’d seen before. The eyes were getting closer, closer, closer–they could feel themself moving towards the tear in space and time as if being pulled.
Shit, shit, shit! Shakily they raised the gun in their right hand and tried to take aim at a wish. Their hand was trembling too much. They shot and missed. They reeled in again, and felt themself sinking closer towards those awful, awful eyes. They aimed again. Missed again, this time by an even wider margin because their vision was swimming. Their head was throbbing. Their eyes were stinging. Do something, do something, do something…!
Music floated to their ears. Curiously it wasn’t their own.
The witch flew in from the right–their blind side, that’s why they didn’t see them before they heard them. Before they could properly flinch away, a hand grabbed them by the their jacket collar, and they were being dragged away from staring eyes, from bleeding color and despair by firm hands and a jerking cane.
“Hold on!” the witch said as they lurched away. “I don’t have the best hang on this flying thing yet!”
She…helped me? At this point the thought was just one of many baffling thoughts floating in their shaken mind.
“Why?” One of the thoughts managed to escape their lips somehow, even though they hadn’t meant to make a sound.
The cane slowed to a near stop, swerving to avoid plowing in to another sphere, and the witch tossed them a curious look over her shoulder.
“Well, why not?” she said.
Because I might be out of the picture otherwise. They thought. Because it would be so much easier if you’d just left me. Quinn didn’t say any of that, though. From the grimly determined look on the woman’s face, she knew these things as well as they did, which made it all the more curious that she had helped anyway. When they didn’t respond after a while, she sighed, shaking her head as if to shake away a troublesome thought. “You got a name?”
Oh, why the hell not. They had told that Zee kid anyway. Maybe this person would actually remember it. “Quinn.”
“Amelie,” the witch said. Then: “Well, Quinn, I hope there’re no hard feelings, but I’m going to drop you now.”
Quinn barley had half a second to take that in before the hand holding them up let go.
Shit. Their teeth dug into their lip angrily as they watched to only reliable form of transportation in the entire damn space zoom away, faery magic dancing in their ears like laughter. Never trust a witch!
They watched through one eye as Amelie swerved to avoid most of the time wishes in her path. At first they thought that curious as well. Sure the time wishes were apparently a crapshoot, but they still had to somehow touch the real one if they wanted out of this crazy place. In order to touch the real time wish they were going to have to sort through the fake wishes as well, so avoiding them seemed counterintuitive.
On the other hand, Quinn pondered as they watched the golden spheres rotate in the air (were they really doing that or was that just their vision still settling down?) while they themself were significantly hindered in their ability to touch time wishes, Amelie could easily touch any within reach. Amelie could afford to be selective and careful with her choosing. Quinn…Quinn was finding themself rather limited to the nearest spheres within grappling range, consequences be damned.
Whenever we get out of here, I want to have words with the Dreambender. Probably a bad idea, given unlimited demonic power and all, but right now it was so much safer to be angry than to fall into panic again. Anger was productive. Anger bore schemes. And they could use a damn good scheme right now.
What do I have to work with? They had a lute, a grappling hook, and their backpack. Nothing in the backpack would be very helpful so far as they could see, especially not with their hands already full. The hook they could move with, if clumsily. The lute was usually the most valuable item in their arsenal, but as it currently stood…
Tucking the grappling hook between their feet again, they plucked at the new G-string. The string made a flat, muted sound, vibrating too loosely. They sighed, resting their forehead on the neck of the instrument. New strings take time to hold a tune. The new string simply wasn’t broken-in enough to hold a steady note yet. So, either I play without a G-string again or I don’t play at all. Which meant Cacophony might once again be their only good option playing-wise–a thought that wasn’t exactly filling them with warm, fuzzy feelings. Singing was another option, though it wouldn’t have as powerful an effect as playing. The other thing they had to consider was…
The problem is that the targeted person has to be able to hear the song for it to take effect, Quinn realized. At least for the songs that affect the mind, anyway. And the problem with having a flying opponent in an endlessly open space was that she had every ability to fly out of hearing range and they had no practical way to pursue her without breaking the song.
So, no practical lute use, and nothing to keep Amelie within listening range and under the effects of most of their spells. That…really, really sucked. But that did leave one song left. One possibility that might be able to shake up their opponent. In fact it had already worked on one witch this night.
They grabbed up the grappling hook again. For a moment they contemplated putting the lute back in its case, safe and easy to carry. Their fingers tightened around the instrument reflexively. It’s my only weapon. Well, the only one they had practice with, anyway–they didn’t count the grappling hook. It deflected Zee’s lightning; it might help against any spells from Amelie as well. And if their thoughts were turned to the fear they felt at the very thought of facing down an opponent with too-empty hands, well, no one need know that.
They hooked a time wish on the second try this time. When they touched it, though instead of anything changing on their person the fake time wish changed from a sphere into an angry looking gnome that almost bit their hand off. They panicked and whacked the creature with the grappling hook gun, sending it flailing wildly into a cluster of brightly colored sweaters. The next shot they thought they had in one, but the wish floated to the side at the last moment, making them miss.
It’s not my imagination, Quinn realized after two more such occurrences that resulted in bad pop songs playing out of nowhere and a large question mark appearing on their shirt, the time wishes are moving deliberately. Oh, it was slow, for the most part, but the deeper into the cluster of time wishes they made it the more they noticed. The time wishes were floating in fixed patterns. Some drifted up, some down, some to the sides and all around, but all of them were moving inwards, as if rotating around something. It should be illogical since there was no force of gravity present to drive the motion. But, well logic didn’t seem to be a common trend in these challenges.
The time wishes look like little stars. So, what if they act like stars as well?
Their head was still pounding, but they noticed it a little less as another smile tugged at their lips. This was Alcor’s game, after all, and while Quinn might not be well versed in demonology as other forms of lore, even they knew that the guy had star motifs coming out his ass.
When they could see Amelie as more than just a dot flitting around in the distance, they let themself stop and float in place. They couldn’t play their lute, true, but lute playing was not the only way to make music. And even with a tired throat, Conflagration was not a hard song to sing.
Without an instrument to play they couldn’t create a harmony to focus the magic with. That was fine, because for once Quinn was in an open space–the perfect setting for a rain of fire. Right as Amelie grew to be about the size of an acorn in their field of vision, Quinn parted their lips–breathed in and out and in again. In the half second before that first sound left their lips, that familiar weight settled in their chest, heavy and accusing.
She did save you. The particularly annoying place in their mind reminded them.
They breathed in, breathed out again. Being nice was her choice. They gripped the lute neck and gun handle hard. Zee had been nice too. Look where that had gotten him.
…Is it really worth it? All of this?
The nice thing about singing spells was that there were no fingers involved to freeze on strings, not hands to fumble and falter. One last time: a breath out, a breath in.
There were no words this time–there was no need since they weren’t trying to focus the magic. It was just a simple, eight note tune, a little shaky at first, as voices were wont to be under direction of a shaken tongue. Only the first two notes wavered, though. The third came out strong and clear, a mezzo-soprano that sang louder without words and somehow rang with more purpose. Under the singing they heard it: the buzzing of a building magic, creeping into the air and shaking with anticipation of becoming.
Five measures in, the first flame blazed to life.
With no lyrics to designate one point to set alight, the magic that sat like a crouching cat burst to life, sparking and catching and condensing into balls of fire. Had gravity been a factor, the fireballs would have fallen towards the ground, causing a deadly rain that would catch and spread. As it was, there was no gravity in this place, nowhere for the flames to fall, so instead they flitted happily wherever they pleased, mingling with the star-like spheres around them.
They heard Amelie’s stream of curses filling up the air even before they heard her magic this time. They ignored it. They sang on, letting more and more fire blossom to life. And if some of it bloomed a little too closely for comfort, well, they had their jacket, and the lute should be able to hold up against a little fire, even if the flames were born from magic.
With their right field of vision out of use, once again they almost didn’t see Amelie come careening to a stop only meters away, clothes and hair singed, and a pissed off tilt to her eyebrows. She dismounted her cane, floating just within what most magicians would consider proper casting range. Shit on a stick. Their next note cracked dryly, making the flames leap and stutter, but they kept on, looking the witch in the eye as the melody fell from their tongue.
“Are you insane?” Amelie shouted, cupping her hands over her mouth, presumably to be heard over the singing.
No, I don’t think that one’s been added to the list yet, Quinn mused. A ball of fire sparked right next to Amelie’s foot. (Completely a coincidence. Amelie didn’t look amused.)
“This place is dangerous enough without adding fire to the mix!” she shouted. That was true enough, they knew from experience–their sightless eye still a glaring hole in their vision and that gnome was still drifting around somewhere, glaring at them. Amelie obviously had seen her fair share of fake wish effects too: there was glitter falling off of her in a shower of sparkles, and they were too far away to tell for sure, but it looked like there were more fingers on her hands than there had been earlier.
It didn’t matter, they told themself. As long as the flames were burning, their opponent was close to immobilized. Maybe they couldn’t sing forever, but Amelie couldn’t avoid the spreading fires forever either. If only they could just incapacitate her until they could think of a plan. If only they could just get rid of that damn cane. If, if, if…
Apparently realizing that Quinn wasn’t going to be stopping to join in the discussion, Amelie raised her cane, moving it in a sweeping motion, through the air. That was odd; Quinn hadn’t seen anyone cast with such a wide motion before–
Fire gathered around the tip of the cane like moths chasing a light, condensing all of the nearby flames into one massive blaze in front of the metal tip–was that a hammer at the end? Quinn kept singing, partly on instinct but mostly because they weren’t quite sure what they were seeing exactly. Over their own song they heard the buzzing of fire magic (louder, louder, so much louder than it was just a moment ago, how was that?) mingling with the steady middle C of Amelie’s magic.
Amelie knocked back the end of her cane, as if shooting off a bullet. The fireball flew from the end, straight towards where Quinn was floating. The song dropped from Quinn’s lips in shock. Their hand pulled up the lute in front of them–instantaneous, instinctual after facing down multiple magics with nothing other than the instrument’s wooden frame for a shield. They heard the sound of too loud, too powerful magic in their ears–heard the vibrations of their fire spell ringing with the sounds of someone else’s song.
They felt the impact like a griffin bowling them over. They heard the snap of strings and the crackling of wood as the amplified version of their own spell overpowered carefully placed enchantments. It echoed in their ears, more haunting than even Cacophony’s madness.
No, no, no, they thought, flailing in the air to get a purchase on where they were, to make everything stop moving for a second, they just wanted everything to stop. The grappling hook dropped out of their hand, and they barely had the presence of mind to grab it between their legs so that it wouldn’t drift away as they cradled familiar wood in both hands, flipping it over to inspect the damage and telling themself that it wasn’t so bad–their lute had withstood lightning, it could withstand this too.
They knew it was a lie even before they stared down at the charred wood in their hands. Most of the body was a splintered mess, just from the impact of the blow. The strings had all snapped and were hanging from the tuning keys; the sudden release of tension had sent them lashing across their hand, leaving blood dripping off their fingertips. They barely noticed. As they held the instrument close to their chest–five years of experimentation, practice, and love worn into every surface–the remaining wood split and crumbled, leaving all but the neck to break free and drift into space. Between the loss of vision in one eye and the wetness setting the other half of their vision swimming, they barley saw.
It’s not real. They told themself. It echoed in time with the throbbing of their head. Not real, not real, not real. They had never felt so eager to wake from a dream before. Never so torn between wanting two things at once. This is all in the mindscape. Breathe, just breathe.
The fire had all died down by the time they looked up again. In the air there hung a heavy silence. It was not the comfortable sort of silence that might have come after the ending of a song. It was not even a stunned silence that might be expected after a blow to one’s heart.
No, the silence left in the wake of this destruction was a loud silence, one that screamed of a harsh reality and choked Quinn Foley’s lungs with every breath. It was a silence as audible as the humming of magic still floating in front of them, as audible as the lack of lute strings to play.
This was not the silence that lies at the end of a storm, but one that builds in its wake.
Amelie stared at Quinn, and Quinn stared at Amelie. Then, moving quicker than they might have thought possibly with limbs that felt frozen and a mind that was replaying the same two seconds over and over and over, Quinn snatched up the grappling hook again. They shot before they aimed properly, and the hooks missed both the witch and her cane. It gave Amelie enough time to hop back on her cane to speed off again, this time with no flames impeding her progress. And in the hollow place where there once was guilt and there once was doubt Quinn Foley knew that if that were to happen–that if they didn’t do something right now to force themself forwards again, then they were going to lose, and that all of this was going to have been for absolutely nothing.
They readied to fire again, but they didn’t have to, as it turned out. They would never be sure exactly why Amelie decided to fly towards them rather than away. The best they could guess was that she had reasoned that they would be more reluctant to shoot at her if she shortened the distance between them, increasingly the likelihood of self-injury. As it was, Quinn didn’t have a chance to reload and shoot before Amelie came soaring directly overhead. On reflex born out of climbing trees and catching clumsy fledglings who thought they could fly, Quinn’s right hand dropped the useless neck of their lute and shot up to grab the back of the cane before it could shoot away.
There was a glaring problem with this course of action. This was the unavoidable fact that they were now holding on for dear life while shooting through the dark field of fake time wishes, jerking at every turn as Amelie tried to dislodge them.
“Get off, get off!” She shouted into the air whipping around them both as Quinn struggled to not let go. A time wish zoomed by below, and they pulled up their feet to avoid hitting it. “I can barely fly this thing as it is!”
“No!” Quinn shouted back stubbornly. They sounded like a petulant child but they couldn’t quite bring themself to care just now. They were still blinking past tears, and wetness was lingering on their cheeks. They didn’t even bother telling themself it was from the air whipping their face. “Make me!”
“We don’t have to fight this round,” there was something a little pleading in Amelie’s voice.
“So don’t, then,” they said, letting the snarkiness that fell from their tongue cover the pain that wanted to come seeping out instead. “Fine with me!”
Amelie sounded like she was about to say something, but another time wish floated into their path at the last moment and she swerved sharply to avoid it. Quinn gritted their teeth and gripped the cane harder, head throbbing and spinning almost enough to distract them from how horrible everything else was currently. Once their vision came properly into focus again, they watched the golden spheres floating around them, moving noticeably quicker than most they had seen. They were deeper into the wish field than they had been before, and it seemed like everything–the wishes, the random objects, everything floating around seemed to be floating just a little bit faster. And just like on the outer edges everything seemed to be moved around something. Orbiting around a central point. Like stars in a galaxy.
“Turn left!” They shouted without thinking, right as the cane was already turning to do just that. “Towards the–“
“The center,” Amelie nodded. “Yeah, I noticed too.”
The problem, though, was getting there.
The closer to the center of the wish field they flew, the more time wishes there were hanging around, which made it much harder to dodge. It didn’t help that, just like everything else in this damn tournament, the space they traveled through didn’t make much sense. In the outer parts of the field, even with only the grappling hook Quinn could zoom past multiple spheres and travel a significant distance in only a handful of seconds as long as they had the right propulsion. Here, in over a minute it felt like they barely moved forward at all.
Between getting whipped around like a flag in the wind and not thinking about the hole in their chest, they didn’t have much time to ponder too deeply. Just find a way to get to the real time wish. Find a way to get the witch away from her cane. Calm, calm–I can still do this! Their shaking hands were not so sure.
They had finally started gaining a bit of ground (space? void?) and Amelie seemed to be focusing less on shaking them and more on navigating when a time wish floated into their path and Quinn didn’t pull their foot up fast enough to avoid kicking it.
Shit, they barely had time to think before there was the familiar whump of a fake wish bursting. Except this time the thing didn’t just burst–it exploded.
In the shocked moment of ‘what the hell’ that followed Quinn was barely aware of a couple of things: their hand being yanked from its hold on the cane, Amelie’s arm flailing out and hitting them in the face, and their back hitting something distinctly solid that stopped them from careening wildly into the unknown. When their vision finally stopped tilting for what felt like the hundredth time, it came to their attention that they were trapped in what appeared to be a giant bubble. Worse yet, they were trapped inside a giant bubble with a witch.
Quinn stared through the clear, pink, and seemingly plastic material surrounding them. They looked at Amelie. Amelie looked at them. They leaned their head back against the plastic and groaned.
“Great,” Amelie said, rapping her cane against the plastic. Her cane let out a low trill with every tap. “Fantastic. Is this…is this a giant hamster ball?”
Quinn glanced up and spotted a circular hatch in the plastic, exactly like the type you would see on a hamster ball. They decided it wasn’t worth much questioning.
“You’re taller,” Quinn pointed out. Ignoring Amelie wasn’t going to get them out of here. Whipping out the grappling hook and shooting her with it wasn’t going to solve anything either, even if they really wanted to. “Think you can reach it?”
It took a bit of maneuvering, but Amelie was able to poke at the hatch with her cane. The cane made a few more low sounds at the contact with the plastic barrier, but it didn’t budge. She muttered some choice words under her breath as gradually her experimental taps turned into harder shoves until she was practically beating the door with the hammer end of the cane. Quinn flailed back a bit, wishing that there was more space between them and the blunt object being swung.
“So,” Amelie said after a moment, a bit out of breath, “any other brilliant ideas? What can you do, exactly?”
Oh, and if that wasn’t a calculated question under all that irritation, Quinn was a unicorn princess. “Well, you know, I might have been able to do something. If only someone hadn’t broken my lute.” And, no, there wasn’t wetness pricking at their eyes again. They didn’t have time for that. Breathe, just breathe.
Amelie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Can’t you just…I don’t know, do that fire magic thing from earlier? That might weaken it.”
“Oh sure,” Quinn said. They laid the sarcasm on extra thick. It made it easier to talk around the knot in their throat. “I’ll just do that. Of course there’s no guarantee that the fire won’t pop up inside the stupid hamster ball–then we’d be trapped in our own nice little oven.”
Amelie made a frustrated sound. “Okay, fine…this is…fine. There’s still air in here obviously, so propulsion should still be possible,” she was looking thoughtfully down at her cane. “This might work actually. If we can still move, well, it looks like this ball is pretty sturdy. While we’re inside we can’t touch anything outside, obviously, but by the same turn–”
“Nothing can touch us, either,” Quinn realized. “Including the fake time wishes.” Oh, maybe they could make this work. They were still going to have to figure out how to get out of the glorified bubble eventually in order to touch the real wish, but for the now, this could work.
“I’m going to try flying again, see if I can steer us,” Amelie said. It kind of sounded like she was talking to herself. She mounted her cane again, and sure enough the magical object shot forward under her guidance, pressing against the inside of the ball and pushing it through the mass of time wishes once more.
Amelie let out a delighted little laugh. “I’ll never get tired of that!” There was a smile on her lips, like she was witnessing a miracle.
Admittedly, it felt a little bit like a miracle. As the ball shot forward, the stray time wishes flying by bumped harmlessly against their new plastic shield, leaving them completely unaffected. Quinn watched the fond smile on Amelie’s lips grow. They listened the steady flow of magic from her cane, echoing the stronger hum that emanated from her own being, easy as breathing. A stab of jealousy hit them, falling numbly through the hole in their chest. This was the magic that their professors spoke of. Well, okay, maybe not exactly, because Quinn was pretty sure that mimicking fae magic wasn’t well received in most academic circles, but the ability itself was natural. Born out of honest talent that could be shaped to fit a mold. Sure, Amelie’s magic was a little bit strange (which, in fact, made it all the more wonderful), but this was, at the core of its being, what magic ability was supposed to be: faithful, stable, consistent. Not the wild, feral thing that Quinn plucked out of the air, barley tamed, barely focused.
Magical talent. And an object that was so sturdy, so connected to the user that it could focus that talent with barely a word. It was everything they’d ever wanted and never could have.
Quinn Foley wanted to hate Amelie. For her magic ability. For breaking the lute, even if it was their own spell that had acted at the weapon. For simply being. And yet in that moment they couldn’t help but be a little bit in awe of her.
I have to win. They thought. Not ‘I want to win’. Not ‘I can win’. Not anymore.
In that emptiness, once filled with guilt, uncertainty, and now the echoes of pain, there poured a fire that had been missing for quite some time, and Quinn felt something like excitement. Something like eagerness. Something very similar to that feeling that had moved their hand to sign a demon’s contract in the first place.
I have to win that time wish!
Outside their bubble of quiet, golden spheres danced around, flying faster and faster by as they moved towards their goal. Quinn broke the quiet with a question, one that had been bubbling up inside them for a while now.
“How did you learn fae magic?”
Amelie jumped, jerking the cane and sending the ball banking to the side before she could get it back on course. Quinn’s shoulder slammed against the barrier. That’s what I get for being social.
“What?” She asked, glancing back at them with wide eyes.
“How did you learn faery magic?” they asked again.
Amelie opened her mouth to speak, closed it again. Opened it again. Furrowed her brow. A couple of fake wishes bumped against the bubble again, and both of them were too occupied in the question to notice them pop on impact with the plastic unlike all the others before.
“That’s not…” She finally managed to say. She stopped, frowned, and tried again. “How in seven hells could you possibly know that?” She glanced through their bubble at the giant red letter ’S’ floating amongst the time wishes. “Don’t tell me there’s more personal crap floating around in this round!”
“Not that I know of.” But, gods, wouldn’t that just have been icing on the cake.
Amelie squinted at them suspiciously. When they didn’t offer any other information, she reluctantly admitted, “I…I learned from pixies and dryads. Who told you?”
‘Learned from pixies’ she says. As if fae folk didn’t target most humans for mischief or mortal peril the moment they laid eyes on them. Fascinating. Oh, right, they had been asked a question, too. “Well, you did, actually.” She gave them a confused and dirty look. “How the hell did you get pixies to teach you?” Answers for answers, Ms. Witch. Conversing wasn’t their usual cup of tea, but this was a game they could play.
“By asking nicely,” Amelie said, slowly turning to look back at where she was driving them. (Another fake wish slammed into the top of the bubble, and this time it burst with enough for that Quinn glanced up and caught a nervous glimpse.) “What do you mean I told you?”
Quinn worried their lip, considering. If I answer she might be more willing to tell me about her magic. But in return they’d be giving up their own secrets as well. It wasn’t a thought that settled well with them. But…on the other hand, the lute was gone. She already knew they could sing fire to life. Would Amelie really gain anything from the exchange?
“You sound like fae magic,” they said finally. It came out as nearly a whisper.
A beat of quiet again. Then, “Really?” she asked, sounding utterly fascinated. “I’ve never met anyone who could hear magic, before. I’d probably call you a liar just on principle, but, well, I guess it could make sense with the singing spell you pulled earlier…”
Before Quinn could think of how exactly to respond, the ball started rocking furiously as more and more fake wishes burst against it on every point of contact. Quinn noticed now. Amelie definitely did too. By some turn of luck the same thick wall of plastic that was keeping them from breaking out of the hamster ball also seemed to protect them from any physical effects.
This is bad. The fake wishes only reacted when I touched them myself before. Otherwise every strike of the grappling hook would have burst the spheres on contact. Why were they more sensitive now? Was it because they were getting closer to the real time wish?
Simple. Not easy. They somehow doubted they would be able to get away with tapping the real wish against the side of their ball and have it count.
As they both eyed the golden spheres flying by outside nervously, Amelie’s voice dropped to something softer than her suspicion from before. “What’s a kid like you doing in a demon game, anyway? One of the other opponents I faced was pretty young, too, but, well…”
“I’m not a kid.” They realized almost immediately how childish they sounded. Then, eager to deflect that knowing look it got them, they asked, “What about you?”
“I asked first,” Amelie pointed out, apparently not very eager to answer either. “Listen…I was talking with that old lady, Hilja, last round. Something’s wrong with this tournament, Quinn. Alcor has to have some sort of ulterior motive here.”
Quinn stared at the back of her head, frowning. Why was she telling them this? “Okay…like what?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But whatever it is, it can’t be good, and whoever wins this…one of us is probably going to have to deal with it–whatever it is.”
“Okay,” Quinn had a sour feeling they knew where this was going. “And?”
“And,” Amelie said, and they could practically hear the careful words being picked out of her head, “whatever Alcor’s up to, it’s probably going to be a real bitch to deal with. Especially after all of this.”
Dealing with an out of control demon. No, that didn’t sound at all appealing. And they knew…they knew objectively that this should be a big concern. They should care that the big scary demon was probably up to something…but wasn’t that what demons did? Weren’t there people who were supposed to deal with that sort of thing–magical girls and special investigators and the like? Why did that have to be their problem? They were in this to win a time wish–why was it that everyone they met lately was so eager to play hero?
“Well,” Quinn said slowly, drawing out the words every bit as carefully as Amelie had, “I bet it would be a lot easier with a time wish.”
Amelie glanced back at them again, looking like she couldn’t quite decide if they were being sarcastic. “Yeah…” she said measuredly back. “It really would.”
If the tension that had sprung between them were any more present it probably could have gained sentience and started calling Quinn names. Quinn was just starting to wonder at the wisdom of whipping out the grappling hook when the heavy rocking of the ball settled abruptly as they shot out of the thick mess of time wishes and into a clearer space.
The area was maybe the width of a football field, though it was hard to tell here. A couple of stray wishes flitted about like darting flies, but they were much fewer and farther between. There, in the center of it all floated not a single time wish as Quinn had expected. No–it was a pair, just as identical as the rest, spinning around each other in a cheerful dance while all the other countless time wishes rotated around them both.
“A binary system,” Amelie breathed. It sounded a lot like a curse.
Well, Quinn thought past their own irritated thoughts, one of his titles is the Twin Star, I guess.
For a single moment, both contestants sat perfectly still in the ball, staring at the twin wishes, wondering which one was real and which one was fake.
It was a moment too long, because in that moment one of the spare wishes darting around crashed into the back of the stupid hamster ball.
The resulting explosion was much stronger than the ones before, and it was enough to destroy the protective shell of plastic that had been allowing them to move so freely. It was enough to throw both Amelie and Quinn forward into yet another dizzying spiral.
Oh gods, gods, gods, Quinn thought, resisting the urge to retch again when they settled into stillness. Something was wrong again. Something felt off. Frantically, they looked down at themself. The vision in their left eye was still intact. There didn’t seem to be any damage or pain, and the grappling hook was still miraculously in their grip, so what…?
It took them a moment to realize how everything looked just a little bit bigger than it should. Their fingers, upon inspection, lacked the calluses built up from years of lute practice and stupid mistakes. A curious sensation, like something brushing their neck had them reaching up to feel at the stubby pig tails poking out of the back of their head.
Quinn stared down at their younger self and scowled. Oh this just keeps getting better.
From only a little further away they heard Amelie laugh, “You look like you’re twelve!”
Quinn turned to spit something irritably at the witch and their jaw dropped. “Holy shit!” Amelie’s hands, still wrapped around the cane, were wreathed in demonic blue flames.
It took her a moment to realize what they were staring at, and when she did, she yelped and started waving them to put them out. After a few heart stopping instants, she calmed though, adopting a more fascinated expression. “It doesn’t hurt.”
With that immediate crisis solved, both of them turn their attentions instead to the two wishes. The last blast had brought them conveniently close to their goal. The twin time wishes spun maybe seven meters apart. Quinn and Amelie had ended up almost exactly between the two, and now floated at the center of it all, watching the twins spin around them.
“How do we tell which is the real one, though?” Amelie wondered. She was only a couple of feet away, watching, watching, watching the time wishes–trying to figure them out.
Quinn was not watching the time wishes. Quinn was watching Amelie’s cane.
I don’t dislike her, they realized, with probably not the best timing in the world. They really wanted to hate her, and yet they couldn’t quite manage it. It was a thought that made them hesitate, just for half a second. I really don’t, but…
I have to win. It burned inside them, almost loud enough to drown out everything else. Loud enough to make everything else feel so much less important–all the echoes of ‘monster’, of ‘selfish’ and ‘cold’. If they could do it, maybe those echoes would fade away again. If they could just do this one last thing…They raised the grappling hook.
They aimed and fired. They didn’t hit a time wish. They hadn’t aimed for one.
The grappling hook hit Amelie in the side, knocking her clean off of the cane. From this close they heard the breath leave her lungs in a pained whoosh. They heard the humming of her magic. They heard the soft shink as one of the hooks miraculously caught on the hammer end of the cane on the rebound, pulling it back towards Quinn and bringing Quinn halfway forward to meet it.
Quinn took up the cane without thinking, really. It was a motion born of an instinctual want to touch the magic, to feel it vibrating through wood and metal. It felt alive.
“Stop!” Amelie’s voice rang through the space between them, wired with so much distress that it almost made them drop the cane on instinct. There was a desperate look on Amelie’s face that put a ball of ice in the pit of their stomach. She wasn’t looking at the time wishes anymore–she wasn’t sparing them a glance. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, but much more strained. “Give it back. Please!”
Quinn stared down at the cane in their hands. It’s important to her. Of course it was. In every thrum of magic coursing through the cane, they could practically hear the years of wear, the whisper of spells, the fondness, the love that had been poured into it. Reflexively, Quinn’s thoughts turned to their lute. It wasn’t really the same, they knew. The lute couldn’t carry magic, couldn’t focus it–it was the music that did that. Despite years of love, of practice, without Quinn’s guiding hand it was still just an ordinary instrument, no matter how familiar, no matter how loved. What Quinn now held in their hands was something much stronger, something maybe even more precious to its owner than the lute was to them.
Out of the corner of their eye, they saw one of the twin time wishes gliding toward them in its orbit, either real or another fake. And all the warm, nostalgic feelings in the world did not stop the awful idea that crept to their head.
This close, the fake wishes explode when anything touches them. And with how strong the last impact had been they worried about what effects touching the wrong wish here would do–both in terms of bodily harm and how far away the aftershocks would throw them. The explosive force that had broken them out of the hamster ball alone probably would have been enough to take off an arm.
“Listen,” Amelie was saying. “There are two time wishes here and two of us. If we each go for one it’s a fifty-fifty chance! That’s a fair shot!”
A fair shot. Quinn watched the nearest wish creep closer. Since when was any of this fair? ‘Fair’ was almost as bad as dumb luck. ‘Fair’ was what their teachers had called it when they’d banned them from the magic classes at school.
This was a demon tournament. It wasn’t supposed to be fair.
The wish crept closer. It was only a few feet away. They weren’t practiced enough with the grappling hook to get the timing right. They took aim.
“Quinn!” Amelie shouted, her voice several shades of panicked.
How selfish it was, to want to be more.
“I’m sorry,” they said over Amelie’s shout, over that humming middle C of magic, over the pounding of their heart. They meant it.
The cane flew from their hands. It spun through the air, hammer end coming down to strike the nearest time wish just as it passed. In the space of time it took for this to occur, Amelie reached after the cane instinctively. Quinn steeled themself.
It wasn’t a perfect shot, but it did the job: upon contact, the fake wish exploded, blowing both of them straight backwards. Quinn barely saw Amelie out of the corner of their eye, wide-eyed as she stared at where her cane had split apart on impact. They tried not to notice–didn’t give themself time to notice. As the force of the exploding fake wish hit them, they spun themself around, arms stretching out as they were blown straight towards the real time wish, which had continued happily in its orbit.
The golden sphere was warm to touch as Quinn’s hand closed over it. They dropped the grappling hook and pulled the time wish towards their chest. I did it? they thought numbly when it didn’t burst. I…really did it. Hot tears spilled over their cheeks. They weren’t quite sure if it was relief, joy, or self-loathing that had set them falling. They weren’t sure what to feel, which of the emotions warring inside of them was supposed to be the right response. They didn’t have much time to mull it over.
As the sound of the exploding fake wish faded, new sounds took its place. Curious sounds, like the small plips of thousands of fake wishes blinking back out of existence. Loud, trumpeting sounds mixed with sounds like noisemakers from every birthday party they had ever attended as a child. Awful sounds, like the quiet sobbing from where Amelie floated.
A popping sound as the Dreambender stepped into space right in front of them, a delighted gleam in golden eyes that made every hair on the back of their neck stand straight up.
“Alcor has to have some sort of ulterior motive,” Amelie had said. It hadn’t seemed very important at the time. It suddenly seemed a lot more important now.
“Congratulations!” Alcor the Dreambender said. His voice echoed through the void in multi-tones that sang of something dark and dangerous. His smile was too wide, too sharp. It looked–well, it looked outright demonic.
Quinn Foley stared up at what was quite possibly the most powerful being in all existence. The time wish in their hands pulsed warmly, leeching all of the heat from their body, all of the blood from their veins. A single thought pulsed in time with the throbbing of their head, the pounding of their heart:
OK, confession time: I have no idea if that dog appeared on an earlier episode and you guys added it in as a callback or if you guys made it up and this was some weird coincidence. Answer my stupid question, please.
It’s Das Flavör Pup from The Inconveniencing--aka the Smile Dip dog!
