Of Ice, Death & Monsters

Jane’s night was warm, thanks in part to the fact that she had an actual blanket made by the Descendant's.

“Ugh, my head… what… happened?” Charlie finally woke up as she rubbed her temples.

“Shh, go back to sleep.” Jane muttered sleepily.

“W-Wait? Where are we? What’s going on?” She tried to stand up before Jane spoke again.

“Just relax, we’re safe now. Stop worrying."

“P-Pillow?! Huh? Wait, Professor Rook- where is he? Why am I here? Wait… you punched me in the-”

“Shhh, what are you talking about? It must have been a bad dream; come back down here.” Jane waved her hand as she tried to pull Charlie down before the Watchtower agent gently pushed it away.

“A dream… I guess…” Charlie quickly shook her head as she shot Jane a dirty look.

“You can’t get away that easily! Tell me right now, or I'll leave.”

Jane sighed, rubbing her eyes as she sat up. “Fine, fine. That bastard ordered you all to protect and follow him, and I made sure that at least you didn’t go and follow through with that. So, I just did what came naturally. ”

Charlie sat back down. “Why was that what came naturally to you? Didn’t you want to kill Rook?”

“I did, still do, but if I went after him at that moment, then I would have had to deal with everyone else who would defend him. He would have still gotten away either way, so well… might as well save you.”

“Save me?” Charlie turned to Jane with a confused look on her face. “Save me from what?”

“Epithet, of course. Rook is a Magi, and he knew nearly everything that was going on there.”

Charlie sighed as if they had this conversation before. “They’re not all-“

“Terrible people? Sure, maybe they haven’t held the whip, but they watched as we got beaten. They said nothing, did nothing.” The bitterness in her voice was palpable. Her fist clenched, and her eyes blossomed with fiery rage.

“Of course, we couldn’t do much. It’s our job, we can’t afford to act out now, can we?”

“You did enough… You always did… Even that dumbass John managed to sneak in a few things from time to time.”

Charlie looked down, and her hand reached into her vest as she grabbed a dog tag. “Sometimes it didn’t feel like I did enough. Like I could have done more, but… this job, it’s all I have left now.”

“You did, for what it’s worth. You tried as much as you could… which I can’t say about the others. They were like statues, I couldn’t even tell half the time if they even knew what was going on.”

“Some do, some don’t. And some… you’re right to say they didn’t care. But, it’s hard to care when it’s your own life on the line, when it’s your neck on the chopping block if you so much as lean in. I don’t blame them at all.”

“Well, I do!”

There was a silence as both women stared at each other for a moment before slowly looking away.

“I-I know… and I can’t blame you for that at all… I-I just-“

“You just want me to understand their perspective. Yeah, that’s cool and all, but it’s hard to understand when, from their perspective, they can see my friends getting pumped full of drugs and tortured like animals as they get tested on… Like Franklin, do you remember Franklin?”

“… Yeah, I… I remember Franklin. I can’t forget, they really did a number on him.” Charlie grimaced as she remembered the howls of pain she would hear every time she patrolled around his area.

“All he wanted was to have Epithet reduce the prices they had on their medical equipment… And what did they do? They strapped him to a chair and fucked with his body and mind until he was nothing more than just their dog on a leash. Except he’s strapped with enough firepower to turn a city into a wasteland.”

“His raids caused the deaths of-” But before Charlie could finish, Jane turned and held herself back from slapping her. “Those were accidents! And if that’s so worthy of torture, then each one of those bastards should be zapped and burned alive until they learned their lesson!”

“... Yeah… we should.” Charlie lets go of her dog tag before standing up and walking away.

“I-I didn’t mean you! Ugh, Charlie, come on, how many times do I have to tell you that you’re one of the good ones!” Jane got up quickly and chased her down.

“I’m not! I’m not one of the good ones, you just…-I just…” Charlie rubbed her head and leaned against a wall. “I’m not really a paragon of moral goodness… I did what I could to repay the mistakes of my past, but it’s not enough, I’ll always be responsible…”

Jane sighed and grabbed Charlie by the shoulders. “Maybe it won’t be enough… I’ve always wondered if I could ever be enough. If I could save enough people or even do anything meaningful. For every person I managed to help, hundreds more are left hungry, thirsty… dead. But we’ve been given a chance to start again. A new life, a new beginning. You can do enough here, just join me and we can make up for whatever mistakes you had.”

“You’re really adamant on that when I’m still in handcuffs huh.” Charlie lifted her hands up to showcase her handcuffs

“Aww, you want me to free them up for you? But they kinda suit you now~” Jane gave a grin as Charlie frowned. “What does that even mean? Whatever, just get them off, please; I’m not going to choke you out or anything. And how am I even going to help out now? We’re going to need more hands on deck to help gather more of the survivors.”

“Well, that’s not exactly the mission anymore.”

“What? Why? What happened?”

Jane undid her hair braid and revealed a glowing golden feather within it. “Apparently, I got saddled on with an honest-to-goodness quest. I’m gonna have to get a blessing from this Firebird thing, and to do that, I’m going to steal some golden apples right under a dragon’s… do dragons have noses? Whatever, underneath the dragon’s snout.”

Charlie gave a blank stare for a full minute as she tried to comprehend what Jane had just said. “So… wait, just wait…” She took a deep breath, focusing on herself for a bit before answering.

“You have a feather, and you need to get a blessing on some kind of bird, and to do that, you need golden apples from… a dragon? Did I get that right?”

Jane nodded along. “Yeah, that’s about it. I have to focus on that, and I don’t think I can bring along the survivors to something like this unless they want to be reduced to cinders.”

“Why exactly do you need the blessings of a bird?”

Charlie’s question duped Jane for a bit as she tried to recall her conversation from earlier with Koschei, only to realize she never actually asked why she needed to do it. “Huh… I uh hmmm, I guess I was so caught up in the moment that I didn’t realize I forgot to ask why… I guess it should power me up, make me even stronger because he said it’s one of many quests I’ll be doing.”

“One of many? What are you, leveling up? How could you grow even stronger than you are now? You already shoot fireballs without even needing to do anything fancy.”

“Maybe I can become bulletproof or something like that. Maybe I can just think, and suddenly, flames come spewing upwards. Maybe I could fly by shooting the fire from my body like I’m a jet, or maybe I can get fire wings, maybe a flame sword too.”

Charlie rolled her eyes at the last suggestion. “What? There’s no reason to get a flame sword at all; again, giant fireballs make melee combat unnecessary.”

“Counterpoint, it would look really cool.” Jane took out a ritual knife that Koschei gave her, holding it with two hands as if it were a sword, before she waved it around, making strange noises with her mouth akin to a heater’s hum.

“Like hiya! Zamn! Boom!”

“Boom?” Charlie raised her eyebrow at that specific onomatopoeia.

“Yeah, like, I hit something and it goes boom.”

“You can just make it boom with your fireballs.”

“Again, it’s cooler when a sword does it.”

“Uh-huh, sure, whatever you say. So, what’s this about a dragon and their apples? Do you need to fight it? Or just steal it?”

“I just need to steal it, like I said, right under its snout. I don’t think I can take a dragon on, and if the stories are true, I don’t think anyone could, not even if we brought the whole Watchtower here.”

“I’m sure a few missiles could do the trick. Maybe even a TJ or two if they’re that hard, blow them up before they could know what hit them.”

Jane shook her head. “I’d like to think it’s not that simple. We didn’t even make it to land, and already we got absolutely destroyed… I wonder what happened to the ships, though. Were they also destroyed?”

“Probably. If they weren’t, they’re all floating somewhere in the sea now. I don’t think we can make it there now with what we have.”

“Guess you’re right… Now let’s stop the talking and get back to sleep. I haven’t had a peaceful rest like this in ages.”

“Sure sure-“ Charlie was pulled by the arm as Jane led her back to the beds. “Ow ow, are you sure we can’t get the handcuffs off? It’s chaffing my skin at this point.”

Jane stroked her chin as she lay down as if she were in deep thought.

“I mean, I’m not that much of a threat, am I?…” Charlie looked at the walking fireball maker with a look of disbelief before they finally relented.

“Hmmm, Alright then~” Jane took out a pin from her hair and began to pick the handcuffs, finally releasing Charlie from her entanglement.

"Finally, thanks." Charlie lay down on her bed, and so did Jane, both of them taking a deep breath as they closed their eyes, soon falling asleep as the strange, magical flames of the cave crackled, echoing throughout the caverns like white noise.

And yet, even though the light of the flame, darkness came over both girls in the form of nightmares that never seemed to end.

Charlie sat by the side of a building blown apart by a missile. She cradled the rifle in her hands as one of her fellow soldiers ran by her side in the cover, peeking out of the rubble. "I think the coast is-"

Yet before he could say anything, a sniper shot him through his head. His body fell down in front of Charlie's lap, staring back at her as blood pooled from the hole in his forehead.

She cried a little, wiping her tears as she carefully replaced his helmet with hers before using a stick to prop up his body again for sniper bait. It didn't take more than a few seconds for the body to be shot once more.

Carefully, Charlie pulled the body down, studying the trajectory of the bullet before taking a deep breath. Gambling with her life, she rolled out of cover, aiming up into the nearby building as she saw the faintest glint of a sniper scope, aimed at it, and fired.

She closed her eyes, waiting for death, waiting for that one bullet to finally put an end to her... Yet, it never came, and Charlie realized that she had to continue, no matter what. She gripped her dog tags and ran further into the city.

Jane was surrounded by old friends from the Choir in the middle of the night, huddled by the streets wearing makeshift masks and hoodies. They were hiding behind a truck, using sign language to communicate the plan to steal the machine that gives Names.

She remembered this day. It always played in her head, always mocking her. She looked down at the map she had drawn, using the street lamp to illuminate it.

‘Maybe this time…’ A thought that always played in her head over and over again. Maybe this time she’ll succeed, maybe this time they won’t get caught.

Did it matter that it wouldn’t change anything? That it wouldn’t transport her to the past and save her? It didn’t matter in the slightest to her. She just wanted to know if there was anything she could do to change it.

A fool’s errand, but she always knew that. It was her insanity to bear, to hold, to endure.

She looked up from her map towards all the friends who fell with her on that day and painfully smiled while signing to them.

“Alright, let’s go!”