COMPASS OF TRUE LOVE - CHAPTER 36

Chapter 36: The Trinkets we Lost and Found

-Sephie-

“Hey Sephie…“ Cassie began, still cuddled up with me in bed. Rays of sunlight flittered through the blinds; It was already late morning, but neither of us – nor our next-door-neighbours for that matter – managed to roll out of bed just yet. “When you said you loved me… Did you… really mean that?“ She had a deep frown on her face and quickly bit her lip after the heavy words left her mouth.

Honestly, this woman… Even after everything that happened yesterday, even after the confession she still has doubts about us? I suppose when your ‘rivals‘ are a smoking hot succubus and a giant nine-tailed-fox divine champion, you would have some insecurities. But I certainly had feelings for her. Romantic ones – otherwise I would never have done the things with her that I did. I am horny, but not desperate.

Gently, I pressed her head into my chest and kissed her on her messy jungle of hair. “Of course I meant it, Cassie. I love you, deeply, with all my heart.“ I kissed her again. “I would never lie to you about something like that.“

She squirmed between by boobs and slowly extracted herself from my grasp. “It‘s just…“ She bit her lip again. “Your compass.“ She carefully pulls the artefact from my chest and holds it between us. “It points towards your True Love, but it still doesn‘t point at me.“

I frowned at the magical device between us. “Well. Who says you can only love your True Love? I‘m sure most people never meet their True Love but still fall in love and are happy all throughout their lives. I mean, what does ‘True Love‘ even mean exactly?“

“I think it means that you can‘t help but love this person,“ she answered thoughtfully.

“So True Love is when you fall in love with someone at first sight? When simply meeting this person is enough to make you fall? That… would exclude you in my case, so it might be like that… When did you fall in love with me?“

Cassie’s face quickly flushed red. “I uhh- I fell in love when you… When you rescued me from the goblins.“ Her looked away from me, blushing an even deeper crimson. “You were so heroic… That just… did things for me, I guess.“ She breathed deeply, then faced me again. “When did you fall in love?“

Now it was my turn to blush. It was rather embarrassing on my end. “It was when you… kissed me in the bathhouse,“ I replied sheepishly. She arched an eyebrow.

“I‘m that good of a kisser, huh?“ A wicked smile crossed her face.

“Don‘t tease me, okay? It was a very… heated moment!“

“Did you just make a heat pun?“ Her voice was deadpan.

“Was it funny?“

“No.“

I mock-pouted.

“Okay, it was a little bit funny. But hey! Now we have a good theory what True Love means. Someone you can‘t help but fall in love with, if you meet them,“ Cassie exclaimed.

“Inevitable love, if you meet each other,“ I summarised.

We both nodded approvingly, before there was a knock at our door.

Nydia had finally crawled out of bed and decided that if she had to suffer awakedness, then everyone else had to, too.

The rest of the ‘morning‘ went by as normal – some awkward looks between Cassie, Nydia, Shyleen and I aside – and during breakfast we decided to move on today. There was a ferry leaving for Lin Shu in the evening – we‘d already missed the morning one – which would take us into the Empire of Xien within two-and-a-half days. Until then, Shyleen would lead us to the local Temple of Craw, where Ashe could try and commune with the goddess of death about her artefact.

Ashe – naturally – wasn‘t happy about the idea of having to give away her prized possession yet, but none of us wanted to face Craw‘s wrath, so we eventually persuaded her to try and talk with the goddess. “Maybe she‘ll let you keep it for now.“

When we arrived at the temple and explained our matter to the priests, without giving too much away, they asked Ashe to enter the meditation chamber alone to communicate with Craw. All of us kept a suspicious eye on the priests who waited outside the chamber, fearing they might want to take the artefact by force.

They didn‘t exactly know that we had it, we only told them that Ashe had vital information about the whereabouts of the missing divine artefact and needed to commune, but it wasn‘t that hard to figure out that she was carrying it. She practically exuded divine power ever since she took it, in the same way the Old Man had.

*****

-Ashe-

The chamber was dark and had an eery feeling to it. Not something I had much of a problem with; I was used to being in total darkness, cut off from all light, constricted by tight tunnels and overcrowded hallways.

That was the part I had a problem with. It reminded me of ‘home’. I hated calling it that. ‘Home’. I was born there, I grew up there and I was expected to die there, but that place became darker even than your typical lightlessness. A Shadow had crept in, tainting it, warping it, warping us. We were scavengers, builders, a community united in a singular purpose: Survive.

But the Shadow took over the hearts of our leaders. The council changed, rapidly, suddenly. Toolsmiths were tasked to cast weapons and armour instead of tunnelling equipment. Scavengers were trained to fight, to kill. ‘Survival’ became an afterthought. Expand, conquer, destroy, kill, feed. Those became the tenets of our council.

I was sent out with a group of ‘scavengers’ to a remote outpost of our colony – far away from the human city above. A lone mansion in the countryside. Years ago we had tunnelled into their storage cellar, stealing whatever supplied would go unnoticed on occasion.

Now our mission was a different one. The Shadow had tasked the council with occupying the caverns below this place and to secure a hidden ‘laboratory’. One of the council members, Helsnitch, once a wise leader, a visionary to our people, accompanied us.

It was my first time on a mission that wasn’t scavenging and all the way through the tight tunnels that led to our outpost, my heart was racing like crazy. When we finally arrived, Helsnitch quickly set our workers on fortifying the caverns while he took us away to a secluded chamber of the cave. A man-made structure sat here. Stairs led down in between two chasms. Eery green light crept up from the depths and cast the entire place in an ethereal light. At the bottom of the stairs, they reached up to the other side of the cave and set into the wall was a massive steel gate, great enough to easily fit a cave troll.

I remembered Helsnitch’s laughter, his joy and cheer at the eeriness, the green lights and the rumoured laboratory. He had me pick the lock – the keyhole of which large enough to fit my entire hand – and after some fiddling the gate swung open with an ear ringing screech.

Neither I – nor my comrades – were ever permitted entry. Helsnitch and his assistants were the only ones allowed to pass behind the steel gate. Manic cackles often filled our nights as the councillor worked away at whatever the Shadow had demanded of him.

One day, finally, he had succeeded. I stood guard at the steel gate when it swung open and Helsnitch shuffled out, a fiendish grin on his face. His eyes, I’d noticed, took on that same green colour that the chasms emitted. It looked almost as if there were tiny flames dancing inside them.

“It is complete Ashe! Oh how the world of man will crumble under our might! Behold: Our newest weapon!” The flames in his eyes grew taller and his manic grin spread even wider.

Then the ground shook. Again and again. The sound of metal grinding on stone screeched out of the darkness. Steps grew closer, out of the laboratory and then I saw it. A hulking behemoth, rat-like but giant as a cave troll, covered in muscles. A long, serrated blade jutted out of where one of its hands should have been, dragging across the ground and leaving a deep gash with a soft green glimmer inside.

“I call it ‘Helbeast’! Isn’t it beautiful?”

My voice was stuck in my throat. I gulped, staring up at the behemoth towering above me.

“Breathtaking, as I expected. Worry not, you are let go of guard duty for now. The Helbeast will be more than sufficient!” He patted me on the back, his claws much larger than I remembered and unnaturally serrated.

“Y- yes councillor.” I quickly stumbled away from the gate and into the quarters that were set up in the cavern.

*****

“A defining moment for you, was it not?” The voice reverberated through me, infinitely far away, yet close enough to embrace.

The dream around me faded away and I stood in a pool of water. It only reached up to my knees, but I immediately fell into a panic. I hated water, for good reason.

A soft, firm hand steadied me on my shoulder and a figure emerged from behind me. Tall and pale enough to appear nearly white. She had long black hair with streaks of brown and dark blue. Her eyes were black as the night and behind her flowed two massive black and blue crow-like wings. She wore dark blue and violet robes that clung tightly to her form and were fixed by leaf-like metal clasps and plates. Her lips were a dark violet, nearly pure black.

“It is rare I deign to communicate with a mortal directly, though I believe you have earned it, Ashe.”

Her voice still reverberated through me, but now I could place it directly. Her lips curled into a soft smirk but quickly rested into a neutral expression again.

“You’re… the goddess, right?” I asked carefully. My voice echoed slightly across the water surface, a tiny ripple emanating from me.

“I am. You may call me Craw. The water makes you uncomfortable?”

It wasn’t phrased as a question but I could sense it, nonetheless.

I gulped. “It- umm. It reminds me of bad things.”

“Like the Helbeast?”

I nodded slowly.

“I see. I will try not to keep you long, then. You have something of mine, do you not?”

“Yes. I- I took it off a bad man.” My voice was shaky and I tried to steady my breathing.

“That you did. An impressive feat, certainly.” She extended her hand to me. “Will you give it back to me?”

I bit my lip. I hated parting with my treasures and I had never found a treasure that compared to the divine artefact. It wasn’t as shiny as the other things, but it felt better. I felt better just by having it.

I steadied my voice. “Do I… Do I have to?”

The goddess arched an eyebrow. “You came here to give it back, did you not?”

I swallowed. “My friends said you might… want it back.”

“I do. It means very much to me. It is a part of me, you see. If you lost a part of yourself, you would want it back as well, would you not?”

Her voice was soft, but there was the tiniest hint of stress. This wasn’t a negotiation.

“Not all parts of myself are worth getting back, but I understand what you mean.”

I carefully heaved my sack off my back and retrieved the illuminated skull that was my greatest treasure. With a heavy heart, I slowly placed it onto the goddess’ outstretched hand.

She smiled, relief rippling through her cold façade.

“Thank you, Ashe. I do believe all parts of you are worth getting back, even if they might remind you of unpleasant times. They are still ‘you’.”

The artefact in her hand vanished in a swirl of blue light. Her now empty hand cupped my cheek lightly. “You did good, Ashe. Greet my daughter for me.”

She disappeared, leaving a scattering of crow feathers in the air as the world around me crumbled once more.

In my hands was a familiar serrated dagger, a green glow seeping through canals in the blade.

A part of me I cast away long ago.

*****

-Sephie-

It took nearly an hour until Ashe left the chamber. She was trudging out of the doorway, her tail hanging low, dejected looking and notably without the powerful aura around her.

“She took it,“ the rat girl mumbled sadly, tears were cascading down her face. I hugged her close to my chest as the tears turned to sobbing. I held her there for a good five minutes, until the tears stopped and she extracted herself from me.

The others also checked up on her, hugging her, assuring her.

“You’re amazing, with or without a divine artefact, Ashe,” Cassie said, running her hand through the rat girl’s long black and white hair.

With one last sniffle, Ashe rightened herself up again and heaved her sack back on her back.

“We still have a ferry to catch,” she stated firmly “our window’s growing close.” She stepped out of the temple, leading the way over to the port.

Thankfully, we arrived at the right pier in time. The long-stretched two-master was still towed and Nydia paid for our passage. We dumped our bags in the two rooms we got and the ship took off, across the lake towards the sunset.

Towards an entirely different world.