AotS Chapter 33.m - Deadly Day Trip (Patreon)

Acceptance of the Self

Book 1: Attunement of the Hearts

Chapter 33.m - Deadly Day Trip

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Madelaine

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[ - Sunday, September 15, 2019 - 7pm - Headspace - ]

I focus on putting one metaphorical foot in front of the other as I follow the bridge that Anne built along the connection between our souls. The root structure stays a little clearer in my mind’s eye this time as I traverse the sea of mists, the Aether, between our minds. I find myself in a dreamlike state pushing ever forward along the wide flat whorled bridge. Each step towards the other side takes effort and time, but the amount of each varies wildly between footfalls. Currents of pressure and gravity tug at my mind, pushing my disembodied form this way and that, but the bridge stays firm in my thoughts and I remain attached to it through will alone.

After what feels like both an eternity and a few seconds, I emerge into the relative calm of Anne’s mind. I find myself on the other side of the bridge zooming out of the mists and following the root up to the cliffside shore of Anne’s sanctuary. When I arrive at the top I find Anne waiting for me with bags under her eyes, a nasty cut down one arm, and a smattering of bruises across her other arm. I realize these must be conscious choices, but I don’t understand the meaning behind them. We can look however we want to look in here, or so it seems.

“Hey Maddie they/them,” Anne mumbles tiredly in her native tongue. She looks on edge and guarded, and clearly hurting from her injuries. “What’s up?”

“Um,” I start, not wanting to dump everything on her at once, but also not knowing how to not do that. “There’s ah, sort of been a kidnapping,” I say in english. “Sky’s been taken by someone, and we were hoping you might have magic that could help us find them?”

Anne stares at me for a good fifteen seconds, as she processes what I’ve said. “Artya’s great tits!” she exclaims at last, throwing her arms up in the air and shouting to the cloudy heavens. Then she crosses her arms, winces at the pain that clearly causes, and narrows her emerald green eyes at me.

“Alright,” she says firmly, “I’ll need to sit down with Leah and figure out a locating spell that will work with minimal energy. Sorry, we’re in the middle of fighting off a bandit group. We’ll need some time to recharge our mana before we can send much your way.”

My eyebrows rise all the way up. “You’re fighting off bandits?!” I say incredulously. “That sounds incredible and terrifying! Um, I can come back later?”

“That would be for the best I think,” Anne replies, before the both of us are knocked off our feet by a massive wave of force. I black out for a second, and when I come to I’m staring up at an unfamiliar stone ceiling with a phantom ache in my back and chest that’s fading quickly.

“Luya take these fools,” comes a new voice, Amira’s by the sound of it.

All at once the wall to my right flares open with brilliant sunlight. I wince and rise to an elbow, staring into the light as it clears. The scene spread out before me is one of carnage. At least three bodies lie unmoving on a dirt road with dense forest on either side, with blood liberally splattered about them. I quickly deduce that I’m looking through Anne’s body’s viewing screen, and Amira must be in control of said body right now as I can feel them rolling over and getting to their feet in one fluid motion.

"Ugh, you might want to leave sooner rather than later," Anne suggests from somewhere to my left in the empty stone headspace room. "This kinetic mage is probably going to get some more good hits in before we finish them."

"Where are we?" I ask, somewhat in awe of the memories Anne flicks my way of the enemy they're currently facing.

The lithe femme elf-eared woman is dressed in tight leather armor that's been painted scarlet, and they've been throwing spears of pure kinetic energy with deadly accuracy at Amira and their sister. Amira has just been knocked on their ass by one of the golden bolts of force, and that's what threw Anne and I - and, from the look of it, several other members of Anne's system - into this plain headspace room.

"A safe space within our system,” Anne answers, “and also the first room we ever built here. You should be able to teleport to my isle if you take that door and intend for it open onto the shores of my haven.” She gestures to a plain wooden door at the back wall of the room.

Several people have already disappeared through said door, vanishing into a variety of different locales. I see a castle in a lake, a cave system, a mountaintop, and several others besides.

"Oookay," I reply, stepping towards the magical imaginary door. "I'll see you later!"

"Goodbye Madelaine," Anne says solemnly, "and good luck with finding Sky."

"Thanks," I say, grabbing hold of the door handle. I want to say more, but the door demands my full attention the moment I touch it. I try my best to keep my destination in mind. I slow my breathing and try to focus on the cliffside shore of Anne's isle, but the door remains firmly locked the first time I try it, and the next couple tries after that as I get more flustered.

Anne steps up beside me and puts her hand on the door, and I feel her thoughts mingle with mine as she directs me to her sanctuary with vivid imagery of forest tree trunks under a dark, multicolored canopy that thins out and gives way to bright sunshine ahead. Our disembodied viewpoint speeds towards the edge of the cliff where the root bridge drops off, and Anne sort of settles it on a spot at the apex of the bridge curve.

The doorknob shivers in my hand, and the door opens outward. Anne draws herself back from my mind and withdraws her hand from the door. I find myself back in the stone room, looking out at the sunny cliffside of Anne's sanctuary through the magic door.

"Thanks," I say, mentally sending Anne the feeling of a warm hug.

"You're welcome," she replies with a small smile. "Thanks for the hug."

I blush as I turn and walk through the door. Once I'm on the bridge I decide to ignore the many, many questions I have about what I've seen here and instead focus on the important part.

"Stay safe," I call back to Anne.

She waves. "You too," she replies, before closing the door. It perfectly matches the background of the isle behind it, and the entryway completely disappears as she shuts it.

I turn back to the bridge, and start running with superhuman speed down it towards the great wall of mists beyond.

I’m about halfway there when I feel another gut-wrenching blow to my back. I’m knocked clean off the bridge and tumble towards the sea below, but I never make it to the water.

Instead I wake an instant later staring up at that stone ceiling again, in Anne’s system’s safe room. I groan softly as I roll onto an elbow to survey the room.

Anne’s standing in front of the viewing screen with another tall dark skinned woman. It’s only when she speaks that I can place her: Ania, the third core member of Anne’s system.

"We've got to do something about this cretin," Ania says, as the viewing screen in front of her narrowly dodges another gold bolt of force from the scarlet-clad warrior.

"Leahna may still need our help too," Anne adds.

"Little busy right now," comes Amira's voice through clenched teeth, "suggestions welcome."

The bandit we're fighting is hiding in the forest of trees to our right, flitting between giant trunks as they hurl another spear of force our way. This time as Amira rolls to the left I catch sight of the ground she'd been standing on as it's obliterated in a cloud of dirt. The shape left behind in the earth is a perfect hole that's deep and sharply pointed in its center.

"You're getting hit with that?" I ask incredulously. It looks like there's enough force behind the attack that it would shatter every bone in this body, not to mention spear it clean through.

Anne startles and turns around to look at me. "Oh fuck, you're still here. I was hoping you'd escaped."

"No such luck, that hit knocked me into the sea," I explain.

"In answer to your question, yes we're getting hit with that. Our enchanted armor is the only reason we're still alive," Ania says, glancing back at me with her light brown eyes.

“Holy shit,” I say, getting to my feet. I take a few steps closer to the two tall amazonian women, but stay back so I don’t get in the way.

“Indeed,” Ania replies, then she turns back to the viewing screen and raises her voice. “Amira, I suggest you close the distance between us. Anne and I will deflect the next attacks as best we can while you can get in close to use those swords you love so much.”

“Understood,” Amira says out loud, their voice filling the small stone room. I feel them take a deep breath, then break out into a sprint. They zip out from the tree they were hiding behind and make a break for the last place we saw the scarlet warrior, a curved scimitar-like sword in each hand.

Almost immediately the kinetic mage ducks out from behind another tree and shoots another spear of force our way. This time though, instead of dodging, Amira doesn’t slow down. Ania and Anne both hold out their hands, fingers splayed, and I catch sight of a shimmering swirl of green and red light manifesting a few feet in front of us and moving with Amira. The golden spear of light makes contact with the magic barrier and immediately changes course, skittering off it soundlessly and slamming into the ground to our left with a loud thud.

Amira makes a beeline for the yellow-barked tree that the mage last hid behind, and it’s clear our enemy isn’t thrilled with this development. The red warrior leaps out and hurls two more bolts of force at us in quick succession before running the opposite direction. Both golden spears cause Ania and Anne to wince as they make contact with the magic shield they’re projecting. One shoots off into the sky and the other slams into a tree to our right: causing an explosion of wooden shrapnel that lights up the right side of Amira’s body with pain.

“Healing!” Anne shouts, her brow furrowed as she spreads her hands with her palms facing down and closes her eyes. Green shimmering light gathers around her hands and suffuses the viewing screen. I immediately feel a balm of coolness spreading around the various wounds in their right arm and shoulder.

Amira, for their part, hadn’t even flinched at the shrapnel wounds. They keep running at a dead sprint and close the distance between them and their quarry steadily. The enemy mage ducks out of sight behind a blue barked tree, but we’re hot on their heels. Amira turns the corner just in time to see their prey’s foot vanish farther around the curve of the tree, and we obligingly chase them around the tree a few times before Amira doubles back and nearly manages to slice the enemy’s arm off with one of their swords. The scarlet armor blocks our blow though, and the mage thrusts their hands out, panic written clear across their features, and blasts us square in the chest with another kinetic bolt of light.

content warning: blood, death, beheading

Ania and Anne already have our shield up though, so the blast actually ends up tearing a huge chunk out of the tree we’d been running around. Dark blue hued wooden splinters explode outward, cutting deep into the enemy mage’s exposed hands and face. There’s rather a lot of blood, and I have to turn away. I still can feel it though, as Amira’s left arm swipes forwards with deadly accuracy and removes the mage’s head from their body.

end cw

I feel a little dazed as I walk over to the stone wall opposite the viewing screen and lean against it, sliding down to the floor and hugging my knees to my chest.

Holy fuck, I think to myself. What have Ellie and I gotten ourselves into?

“Sorry you had to be here for that,” Anne says some minutes later, walking over to me calmly.

“S’okay,” I mumble, staring at a tiny crack in the floor in front of me.

“It doesn’t look or feel like you’re okay, and you don’t need to be. Your life is far more removed from death than ours. It’s natural to feel shock or worse when you witness a death firsthand,” she says.

Try as I might, I can’t muster up the energy to look her in the eye. Instead I look over at her tan sandal-clad feet and make a noncommittal ‘mmhmm’ sound.

“Take as long as you need here,” Anne says with sympathy. She kneels down then sits cross legged beside me, smoothing out her green skirt carefully.

“Thanks,” I say, and this time I can pull my head up, so I turn to look at her. “But I need to get back to Ellie soon. How long do you think it’ll take before you’re ready with that locating spell for Sky?”

Anne grimaces, but nods. “First we have to go make sure our sister is okay, then we need to find a place to camp that’s far from these bodies. Then we’ll see about getting you that spell. So maybe tomorrow morning?”

I nod back. “Take as much time as you need, we’re going to be meeting one of Dawn’s dads’ friends who is a witch this evening, so she might already have the magic we need.”

Anne’s eyebrows rise. “A witch you say? That’s exciting, I hope she does have what you need! And I’d love to talk to her about magic in your world, that could be just what we need to figure all this mind connection stuff out. I’ll be ready to visit your world and cast the spell once we set up camp and get some food in us most likely.”

“Thank you Anne, I really, really appreciate your help with... everything,” I say quietly.

“You’re welcome Maddie, it’s truly my pleasure,” Anne says. “We’re bonded together by some force far greater than either of us can imagine, we may as well make the most of it.”

I nod thoughtfully. “Fair enough.”

Anne takes her leave to go stand by the viewing screen again. It takes me a few more long minutes of silence and contemplation before I’m ready to try leaving again, then I get to my feet and actually pay attention to what’s going on around me.

Amira’s running at a fair clip towards the last known location of their sister, and Ania and Anne are front and center in the safe room ready to assist in any way they can. Their body’s stamina amazes me, as I normally get a bit winded going up a few flights of stairs. They’ve been sprinting steadily for what feels like forever.

It’s not long before they return to where the other three bandit bodies are, and thankfully Leah appears from out of the shadows of a black-barked purple-leaved tree.

“Did you get them?” she asks, hugging herself tightly.

“Yeah, they’re dead,” Amira says.

Leah shudders, glancing down at the bodies around us. “Good,” she says, “that should leave this area a little safer, I hope.”

“We may even be able to collect a bounty on the bastards at the next free people’s town: Sorrowwood,” Amira replies.

“How do you know if they’ve even got a bounty on them out here?” Leah asks.

“You read the signs they post around their towns,” Amira explains, “there were only a few at the last place, but I’m positive I saw the kinetic mage I took down listed there. Maybe some of these others have bounties as well.”

“Oh I hope you’re right, I would kill- er,” she glances down at the bodies again and seems to rethink her sentence, “I would fight ten more men for a soft bed and some good food.”

“Artya’s blessings to that, sister,” Amira says with a smile.

I edge towards the magic door at the back of the safe room and call out, “Goodbye Anne, Ania, Amira, and everyone else!”

Anne and Ania turn give me warm smiles.

“Good luck on your quest to find Sky,” Ania says.

“Uh, thanks,” I say, surprised she knows about it, but then again we are in her head. Anne must have shared my purpose in coming here with her system.

“Go with speed and strength, Madelaine,” Anne calls back.

I smile, wave, and turn to face the door. This time I carefully clear my head of all thoughts except Anne’s isle and the bridge back to my own mind before I touch the doorknob. I follow the bridge in my mind’s eye out to the point just before it disappears into the mists and fog beyond, and twist the handle.

The door opens easily and I nearly fall through it, having expected resistance, before I catch myself. I step through and immediately feel a temperature increase out above the ocean of Anne’s isle. I carefully close the now-invisible door back to the safe room and turn to face the mists.

Then, with a deep breath, I take the plunge into them and begin my way back home to my own body and, hopefully, Ellie’s waiting arms.

End of

Chapter 33.m - Deadly Day Trip