Dusk and Liz

This short story is set during the events of the Twin Trials. If you’ve not read up to chapter 44… Watch out. Here there be spoilers!

-

Dusk found herself awake on a pebble beach, one that reminded her of the ones in Mossford, and glanced around. 

Oh, interesting. 

There were lots of bodies on the beach all around her. The closest one was Liz, and she scampered over and poked the tall woman’s cheek over and over until Liz finally murmured something. 

Liz sat up, knocking her off, but she used her slowfalling spell to catch herself and land gracefully next to Liz’s hand. She chided Liz for being so careless, and Liz looked down at her. 

“Dusk?” she asked, sounding confused. Dusk nodded and agreed that she was Dusk. 

“What… Happened?” Liz asked, and Dusk shrugged. Idyll was gone now, and this place was pretty different. She wanted to eat it, but she was too full to take in such a large meal. 

“Oh primes my leg,” Liz said, as she tried to stand but fell, thumping into the ground with a groan. Dusk let out a soft whimper and pulled one of her brother’s healing potions out. The vial was massive in her hands, and Dusk had to exert her power over the vial to stop it from tipping over. 

Liz took it and drank, but her leg was in bad shape. Really bad shape. 

Dusk flared her mana senses out around her, and felt something that could help. She turned and scampered off into the thick woods to find a unicorn. 

She didn’t know why, but the unicorns always fled when she was with her brother. She thought they were skittish, and he was too big, scaring them away, but he never even seemed to  sense them. Maybe he felt bad about scaring them? 

It didn’t take her too long to find one, bend over and drinking from a stream. The unicorn’s placid mana seemed to be roughly third gate, but new, about as  Dusk rushed up and whistled to it, telling it to come quickly, because she had a friend who was hurt. 

The unicorn raised its head to look at her, and tilted it slightly, rearing and shaking its head. It didn’t want to go to the edges of the realm.

This unicorn wasn’t entirely sapient, not like Dusk was, but it seemed to have some degree of understanding. Like an octopus! Or maybe even a little smarter. 

Dusk let out a huff, but accepted. She ran back to where Liz was lying, and started channeling power through one of her new spells, creating a stream of wind, force, gravity, lightening the burdens of the flesh, and other smaller things besides. 

“What are you doing?” Liz asked, and Dusk let out a sound of annoyance before telling Liz she was going to get her healed – obviously! 

Dusk then focused her nascent truth, still-forming dominion, and the natural control that her legacy gave her. She commanded Liz to move, and Liz did, pulled by Dusk through the air, suspended on a cushion of spellcraft.  

If she hadn’t been a friend, accepting the power of the spell and not fighting against Dusk’s control, this wouldn’t have been easy, or necessarily possible. 

As was, it didn’t take long to escort Liz through the forest and to the river where the unicorn lay waiting. The unicorn let out a whimpering neigh and lowered its head. Mana flowed through the unicorn’s horn, spiraling down and out into Liz’s leg. 

She got a mental message from her dad then, asking if she was okay. Dusk tilted her head. 

Why wouldn’t she be okay? There was a way out right there. Could he not sense it? It felt pretty obvious to her, the portals to the other small realms and the outside world wiggling at the edge of her consciousness, like an itch that couldn’t go away. 

Maybe he was concerned about Liz? That would make more sense. 

She responded, letting him know she was fine, and that she could get out, just in case he really couldn’t sense it himself. Then she focused and attached a mental image of Liz being healed by a unicorn.

There, that should be enough for him. 

The unicorn then removed one of its hairs with an effort of will, and it looped around Liz’s leg, tying up like a bandage. Liz tested it out, pushing up against the ground and standing. 

“That’s so much better!” she said, hugging the unicorn. “Thank you. for everything.” 

The unicorn reared and then blinked its large eyes. It seemed to be offering to come with them, at least for a little bit. 

Dusk whistled her agreement. It would be good for the unicorn, she thought. If it took a human form that looked like Liz, that might help its intelligence grow to the point that it was as smart as she was! 

Even if it didn’t, her brother’s partner had been knocked to a different realm, one that was located further up than hers or her brothers. 

Up, of course, was relative. Each astral plane existed in non-space, a pocket of reality where there was normally none. Not some eldritch void, like the spaces in the stars above, but simple nothing. She knew, because she could feel that nothing at the edges of her too. 

Within nothing, there was no spatial mana to provide reality axes, of course. But these realms were linked, so there was a sense of it. 

“Of course,” Liz said, and Dusk blinked. She didn’t normally space out like that. Maybe she’d been spending too much time with her brother – he did that sometimes. Especially under his new medicine. It helped, but did sometimes make him spacier.

Oh, she was doing it again. 

She focused, and then looked at Liz, suggesting they either decide to go to the trial, or to explore the lands around here and the other portals. When the Craftsman’s artifact had activated, it had reformatted all of the energy into a much smaller space – there had to be some goodies about!

Liz, who was petting the unicorn and naming it Selene, turned and glanced down at her. 

“Really?” 

Dusk nodded, though she never understood why Liz would ask that. There was no reason for her to lie, after all. 

“Well,” she said, swinging up onto the unicorn’s back. “Hop up and we can discuss this while we ride!” 

Dusk happily sketched her spell and floated onto Liz’s shoulder. Liz nudged her heels in, and Selene the unicorn took off at a gallop.