Chapter 1: A Cryptic Meeting
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Erik slowly shimmied down to the outer corner of the carved crypt wall, keeping his steps light to not make much noise. It had long since become an unconscious habit by then with his thieving career—he’d snuck around ships, mansions, merchant caravans, a casino, and even a whole castle once or twice. But even without the danger of being caught and thrown into a cell this time around, things felt a lot more tense, thanks to the graveyard’s worth of un-deadly monsters prowling around under his nose.
“You’re sure the coast is clear this time?” asked a girl’s grating voice. And, of course, there was also his newfound companions fuddling things up.
Erik couldn’t help shooting a look at the speaker, a short-sized and lavender-eyed blonde girl in a red dress and matching pointed bonnet, lugging around a staff almost twice as big as she was. Veronica was her name, and despite all the boasting that she could take care of herself, Erik desperately wished she’d stayed behind in Hotto, since she hadn’t been much more than a nuisance this entire escapade.
Looming behind and above her was Eleven, the reincarnation of the heroic Luminary, another teenager a few years younger than Erik dressed in a purple tunic with surprisingly smooth brown hair falling above his shoulders. He kept his eyes on their rear, making sure nothing else popped up from the crypt’s dingy shadows to ambush them.
Erik craned his head to look past the wall. Instead of more labyrinth, he saw nothing but a short corridor leading to another set of double doors, with no monsters in sight. “Looks like it,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Veronica grouchily asked. “Because if we run into another group of undead brutes you managed to miss, or fall into another pit, I swear I—”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Erik interrupted. Unlike this girl, he was careful to keep his voice low and even, before they drew any more monsters to them. Before she could snap back, Erik asked, “Eleven, anything behind us?” and he met Erik’s gaze with a shake of his head.
“Okay,” Erik said, turning back to the corridor, “let’s go and see what’s behind this door.”
The three of them turned the corner and jogged down the hallway unhampered, stopping when they reached the door. Eleven and Veronica stepped to either side as Erik moved against it, placing his ear on the crook between each door and listening in. After encountering more than a fair share of walking corpses and bizarre mud dolls from falling into booby-trapped pits, Erik wanted to be prepared this time around. Listening closely, the only thing he could hear was…dripping water?
“Doesn’t seem like anything dangerous is lurking around in here,” Erik reported. “But just to be sure, I’ll—”
“Oh, for Yggdrasil’s sake…” Veronica huffed. Erik felt a prod of annoyance as she shoved him to the side, then forced herself against the door.
“Hey! We don’t know what’s behind there!” Erik pointed out.
“No, we don’t,” Veronica snapped back. She groaned as she pushed against the door with her small frame. “But…of all the things it can be…one of them could be my sister…so we’re barging in anyway!” The door hadn’t budged at all by the time she’d finished speaking, and she stepped back from the door with a frustrated puff. “Give me a hand here, will you?” she asked, gesturing to Eleven.
Erik sighed wearily as Eleven traded places with Veronica. He’d only known this girl for half a day, and yet she was easily becoming the most irritating person he’d ever met, as hard as it was to reason with her. He had to admit, he did respect her dedication to finding her sister, but that didn’t mean she needed to be so tunnel visioned while she was at it.
Then again, that might be balanced out by the fact that she might only have to find her sister…
Eleven put both hands on the door and pushed, and it opened with a heavy groan. Instead of the same crumbling gloomy ambiance as the rest of the crypt, an ornate Goddess statue spring stood in the room ahead, the soft blue light from its clear pool somehow reflecting off the walls to brighten its surroundings.
“One heck of a fountain to be hidden away down here,” Erik thought out loud as they entered. Odd choice to have a holy sculpture in the middle of a monster-infested tomb—or even having having a tomb this big in the first place—but it wasn’t like he could complain.
Something about the room seemed to pull on Veronica’s nerves, and Erik looked past Eleven to find her tense and fidgety. Her eyes darted around the room as if the monsters would crawl out of the walls, until they locked onto somewhere on the other side of the fountain. She called out, “Over there!” before scampering across the room, and they followed to where a girl in a green dress lay on the floor. Veronica fell to her knees by them, and said “Serena! Wake up! It’s me, Veronica!”
Erik was immediately confused. Wasn’t that supposed to be her younger sister? He’d imagined them to be just as small as Veronica, if not shorter, but the girl lying on the dusty floor looked like she would tower over Veronica at full height. “That’s your sister?” he asked.
Veronica didn’t answer him, still focused on the unresponsive girl. “Serena! We said we’d be here for each other, didn’t we? Well, I’m here for you now—so pull yourself together!”
Her fervor hung fruitlessly in the air for a few seconds, and Veronica’s head slumped—until the girl in green began to stir. As Serena sluggishy raised herself from the floor, her straight blonde hair fell neatly below her shoulders, and she rubbed her sleepy eyes as she turned towards her sister. “Oh…I’m…I’m ever so sorry…” she muttered, “It’s just… Well, I was so awfully tired after all that searching that I needed a nap, and…”
Serena trailed off at that last word, turning to face Veronica—and when she finally noticed her apparently older sister, she recoiled with surprise, her lavender eyes growing lucid. “Veronica!? Is that really you? What in the world happened to you?”
“Huh?” Veronica stammered out with her own disbelief. “But…how did you know it was me?”
“Well, we’ve been sisters for so long that we could recognize each other even with a makeover of a Morph, you know,” Serena giggled.
“Oh yes, very funny!” Veronica grumbled, crossing her arms. “What were you doing, taking a nap on the ground like that? Especially in a dusty hole like this? I—I thought you’d gone and well—y’know…” She trailed off, looking away from her sister with a pout. Serena only seemed to find her sister’s anxiety amusing, and she giggled a little more.
Erik couldn’t help finding the entire exchange a little incredulous. “Uh, sorry to interrupt your reunion, but didn’t you tell us Serena was your ‘kid’ sister?” he asked.
Both sisters stood up at his question before exchanging a glance. “Well, if you want to get technical about it, actually we’re twins,” Veronica corrected, looking down at herself. “But we don’t look the same age anymore because of those stupid monsters. They’ve been kidnapping people so they can steal their magical powers, like they did with me at that bathhouse. I didn’t let them have mine without putting up a fight, but the more I resisted, the younger I got.” She shrugged. “I don’t quite understand it, but instead of draining my magic, they drained my…age.”
Veronica’s expression suddenly soured with a groan, and she jabbed an accusatory finger at him and Eleven. “What’s important, though, is that I’m not a child. So stop treating me like one!”
“Okay, we get it, you’re not a kid,” Erik said, taken aback and more than a little surprised himself. He’d shoved down a quip about her bluffing about actually being a spellcaster, since she hadn’t cast a lick of magic since they’d left Hotto, but after seeing the resemblance to her sister, things were starting to make sense. He was a little grateful, too—Erik halfway expected Serena to be just as fiery as Veronica, but what with how she’d gotten calmed down by just a few amused giggles, it seemed like Serena was the breeze that cooled her sister’s temper. “You dragged us out here to find your sister, and we’ve taken care of that,” he said with a nod towards Serena, “but don’t you want to do something about your look?”
Veronica flashed a mischievous smile. “Of course I do! We’re going to go clobber those stupid monsters and see if we can fix this! They’ve holed themselves somewhere up ahead, so here’s what we can do…”
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