chapter 41

The discarded lantern illuminated QiLeren’s surroundings with bleak lighting, twisting Anna’s soft features into a sickening echo of what it was. Even the demure lilt of her voice carried cold malice in its newly animated cadence. “You’re pretty quick on your feet. I’ve killed so many idiots with that trick.”

“You’re a player too?” QiLeren responded absentmindedly, mind racing to find a course of action. This was not a hopeless situation. It was a good thing he had waited out the cooldown before entering the cave or he’d really be in trouble. It was not impossible to fight back if he timed his skills carefully.

“Uh-huh, what else would I be? What did you think of my acting?” Anna stepped towards QiLeren with a cheery smile, brittle bone shattering beneath her feet. “I suppose it’s fine that you’ve evaded me this once, since now you can bear witness to my magnificent performance. Go on, thank me for allowing you to witness this incredible show before you die.”

Pausing, Anna placed a light touch onto the card slots on her belt. Almost immediately QiLeren could feel the temperature around them plummet, and a flash of pain made him retract his hand from his sprawl on the ground; a mere second of contact with the ground had evoked a pain akin frostbite.

There was a rustling noise in his ear. In the restless chaos, the white bones previously on the ground have risen to form a sea of skeletons.

“Come with me, my departed ones, to dance our tango of the afterlife,” Anna sang with a theatrical flourish, daintily gathering her skirt to curtsy into the void. With the sabre in her hand, the skeletons rose like marionettes under her lined fingers into an undead army.

“But first,” the smiling girl pointed the tip of her sabre at QiLeren, “a seat for our audience.” The bones under his feet formed an ashen throne with extraordinary speed at her command, twisting into shackles around his ankles. QiLeren’s heart sank; he had gotten too distracted by the startling sight, but at this point he was curious enough to watch this performance play out.

Perhaps he had died enough times to become numb to the thought, enough to calculate for the best time for his own death with indifference. That…was a worrying thought.

“Please allow me to introduce our many esteemed guests for today. First, this long-extinct sabre-toothed tiger.” Brandishing her blade with a smile, the skeleton of a colossal beast strode towards QiLeren. The glowing blue flame of its soul piloted its limbs with the ease of a living creature as it rested its front paws on the throne, deadly fangs centimetres away from his throat as if it was going to bit down at any second.

QiLeren quashed down the panic in his chest and levelled Anna with a calm look. Rather than fearlessness, his bravo mostly stemmed from the fact that he had an ace up his sleeve; if worst came to worst, he could do what he did with the giant and take them down with him.

Anna arched a delicate eyebrow. “It seems our audience is unsatisfied with your performance. Then let’s invite out our next guest, the also long-extinct Titanoboa!”

More sounds of bones clacking against each other joined the echo of her cold yet inexplicably exited voice. Beyond the glow of his lantern, a blue flame flickered to life and with it a huge creature of some sort awakened from its death. It swam, slowly, towards QiLeren on the ground of stone and bones.

“But the one that I love the most is him, after all,” Anna sighed. She runs a loving finger lightly along the skeletoned wing of a slumbering dragon. “It’s truly a pity it takes a sacrifice to rouse him from his sleep… Poor, pitiful little girl, would you help me?”

QiLeren did not reply.

“You should be thanking me,” Anna continued quietly, as she commanded the Titanoboa skeleton to constrict its bony body painfully around QiLeren. “Maybe you’ll get to go home after you die. But not me. I don’t want to go home at all. How could I give up all the wonderful possibilities this world has yet to offer me?”

She smiled, dipping into another curtsy. “Goodbye, little girl. I wish you a safe journey.”

A glint of light deeper into the cave made QiLeren hesitate as he prepared to save. The head of a silver arrow pierced through Anna’s chest a second later, freezing the smile on her face as she slowly crumpled to the ground with wide eyes. When she touched her hands to her chest, they came back stained a sticky crimson. “No…” she wheezed, “this…can’t…”

Lacking the strength to look back at her murderer, she could only fix QiLeren with a venomous glare. A bloody hand weakly rested upon the belt at her waist. “Come…with me…” she gurgled weakly, retching up a mouthful of blood before slumping over, lifeless.

In the resulting cacophony of bone on bone, the flames of the undead army flicked and died as skeletons fell apart and back to the ground. QiLeren hit the ground with a yelp on his tongue – the throne he sat on had, similarly, been reduced to pieces.

A series of footsteps from the depths of the cave drew QiLeren’s attention as a tall silhouette emerged from the depths over the bone-covered surface.

It was her!

“My Goddess!” QiLeren scrambled up from the ground and excitedly jogged over to greet her. “Thank you for saving me!”

His goddess’ footsteps halted as an uneasy expression overcame her lantern-lit features. Before QiLeren could take advantage of this opportune time to strike up a conversation, the black bird on her shoulder screeched a sharp “Enemy, enemy!” in warning.

QiLeren stared at it in disbelief. It was a wonder how his goddess hasn’t roasted it yet considering it lied even to her.

At the bird’s warning, his goddess unsheathed the knives from their scabbards at her thighs without wasting a single second. Almost at the same time came a system notification:

[Rain-Day Laundry]: Remaining uses: 0/3. Cooldown remaining 23:59:59.

The bird was right?!

A faint light glowing from underground filled the dark cave; it was not the green of the ghost lights from before, but a cool blue like the flame of an undead soul. Flames and beams of light erupted from the ground beneath their feet, forming a dizzyingly complex magic circle that encircled the two with alarming speed. Within the rumbling commotion, falling debris sealed the entrance of the cave.

Something – his goddess’ hand – clamped around QiLeren’s wrist and without warning pulled him firmly deeper into the cave. QiLeren stumbled at the sudden motion, nearly falling as they fled from the roar that shook the cave behind them.

The skeleton of a dragon had awakened from its deep slumber of death, QiLeren realised as he glanced back while running. The blue flame of its soul burned brightly in its skull as it emerged from the grave of its peers, back in the world of the living once again as its ruler like it once was. With its resurrection the legions of the dead raised itself, having been granted another life, and advanced on the two fleeing humans.

Dragged by the wrist, QiLeren ducked into the shelter of a stoned passageway. He soon realised that it wouldn’t be quite enough when the dragon flapped its wings of white bone and charged at the opening – their surroundings trembled with the resulting bang as the two narrowly dodged a rocky avalanche. The dragon landed at the passageway before the dust could even settle, raising its head as the flame licked up its spine to gather at its mouth until it was blasted into the stone walls.

The walls crumbled into sand.

Instead of death, what awaited QiLeren was, surprisingly, an underground canyon. With her hand still clenched tightly around his wrist his goddess tugged both of them over the ledge, falling into the water amidst the raining debris. The two sank deeper into the canyon as they drew further away from the sluggishly sinking chunks whose impact had been softened by the water.

In the chilling darkness, his goddess’ hand was a soft warmth against his. He could make out her faint mermaid-like figure pulling him smoothly through the water when he opened his eyes, her hair drifting behind her like a halo among the gentle neon glow of algae.

Suspended in the dizzying dream of light and shadow, all QiLeren could hear was the gentle cadence of her coaxing as she gently pulled him from hell back to the living.