Chapter 103: 104: Emergence

“I’m sorry,” says Fresh quietly.

“Shut up,” replies Jubilee in a loud, sharp tone.

Fresh isn’t sure for how long they’ve been running down the underground tunnel which is lined with dozens, if not hundreds of her handmade lanterns. They never sold this many to any one person, not even close. Does that mean that the thieves’ guild had bought all of these through other people? How many of them had been in their store? How often? Have they been watching her? Watching them this entire time?

Fresh hangs there, laid out over the man from the sect’s shoulder as they keep moving. Her head droops down and she stares at the dirt that she wants to be buried in.

They slow down for a moment and then turn with a sharp turn towards the left. Voices can be heard from behind them, echoing down the tunnel. Their furious tones ring out so loudly, as if they were right there, standing next to her and screaming into her ears.

A snap rings out, the sharp tone bouncing off of the dirt walls as a pillar of glass erupts along the roof of the tunnel, cutting through the intersection as it slices diagonally across the compacted dirt on both sides.

The heavy weight of the world above crashes down in an instant, just as the glass reaches the other side. The beam of glass shatters as the dirt above it presses down on it, snapping it in half like a stick over a knee, as it begins to rain down, setting the area around it into movement in a chain reaction just seconds later as they continue their escape.

They keep running, quickly retreating as the intersection behind them collapses.

“I’m sorry,” says Fresh quietly, not sure if Jubilee can hear her over the crashing world behind them.

“I said shut up!” barks Jubilee back at her, apparently having heard her after all. Fresh can’t see her friend, if Jubilee even still is that, as she is facing backwards. But she is sure that Jubilee didn’t bother looking at her as they spoke. She doesn’t blame them. Who would want to look at her? What are they going to do now? The store is gone. The house is gone. Their home is gone. Basil is gone.

Why didn’t she just stay inside? If she had stayed inside, everything would have been fine. Everything would have been okay. What did she even do? Drag a sword outside? One that the man perhaps didn’t even really need? She rushed into a situation again, just like on her first day here. She rushed in and didn’t think and this time, it cost her everything. What was it all for? Her eyes, staring at the dirt, look at her empty hands which dangle limply down below herself and occasionally slap against the giant’s back as he runs. What was it all for?

They slow down, coming to a halt.

“That fuck-head,” hisses Jubilee. “He didn’t say anything about this.”

Fresh looks up, looking back around herself. They’re at a second four-way intersection.

“Fuck! FUCK!” yells Jubilee, their voice echoing around the chamber. The sounds of Jubilee’s hands clapping together rings out as they slow themselves and take a deep breath, trying to calm down. Fresh flinches as Jubilee swears. They must be upset too, for good reason. They had lost their home because of her stupidity. Jubilee had gone so far out of their way to help her and this is their reward for it. The same thing as it had been since their very first day together. She's nothing but a pain in their ass. That’s all that she was. All she caused.

“I’m sorr -”

“Will you SHUT THE FUCK UP?!” yells Jubilee, the sounds of their boots scraping over the dirt as they turn around back towards her. “If you say one more word then I’m going to shove a piece of glass so far up your ass that you’ll feel it rattling around in that empty skull of yours!” they say in one long, quick, breathless threat. Fresh looks back and away, silently turning her head down back towards the dirt. “You! Meat-head. Set her down and help me figure out which way leads out of here,” orders Jubilee, snapping their fingers at the man from the sect. “If we take the wrong tunnel and pop up in the cardinal’s bathroom, we’re going to be royally fucked!”

“No.” He lets out a heavy breath. Fresh stares vacantly at the ground as he lurches, as she watches the odd wet trickle down from his battered armor. She wants to remark that he’s hurt, that he should let them check on his injuries. But what is she going to do? Just make it worse. Fresh doesn’t say anything.

“She can walk just fine on her own!”

“No,” repeats the man, his fingers pressing down tighter.

“It’s fine,” says Fresh quietly. “Please go help Jubilee.”

He exhales loudly. Loosening his grip, the man from the sect grabs Fresh with both hands, his metal gauntlets digging into her gut as he pulls her off of his shoulder. It hurts, but she doesn’t say anything.

Slowly, he sets her down against the wall and gets up, walking over to Jubilee. They stand there for a time. It’s mostly just Jubilee talking to themselves, trying to pinpoint where exactly they are, so that they could decide which way to go. The man from the sect does little except to answer with either a succinct yes or no or with simply nothing at all apart from another heavy breath that explodes out of his body.

Lifting her head, Fresh looks at the crossroads that they find themselves at and a strong feeling of uncomfortable familiarity comes to her as she stares at the blue lanterns adorning the walls. It’s like back then. It’s like when she came to this world. If only she had gone right. If only she had gone right, then none of this would have happened. If she had gone right, then the world would have been a better place.

She looks at the two of them who can’t seem to make up their minds. “We need to go right,” she mutters quietly.

Both of them look back at her.

“What?” asks Jubilee as the man from the sect already makes his unquestioning return. She lifts a hand, waving him off as she gets up on her own.

“We need to go right,” repeats Fresh, pointing down the tunnel.

“Why?” asks Jubilee, placing their hands on their hips. “How do you know?”

“I just know,” says Fresh, turning towards the tunnel.

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“So what you’re saying is that I should go left here?” they ask. “Because I clearly don’t trust your decision making abilities!” snaps Jubilee and Fresh flinches, not arguing back.

“I’m sorry.”

“SHUT UP!” yells Jubilee. “’Sorry’ doesn’t fix shit! It just makes you feel better, but not anyone else!” They lift their finger, pointing to the man from the sect who has already started marching down the tunnel. “You! Where are you going?!”

He turns around, looking back at them. “Right,” is all he says, as he turns his head back around, marching forward down the dark passage on his own.

Jubilee lets out a frustrated scream, clenching their hood and tearing it downward to cover the front of their mask. A moment later, after they have screamed themselves empty, Jubilee stomps past Fresh, walking down the right tunnel as well. They turn around, looking at her as she still stands at the crossroads. “Get the fuck over here! You made your choices, now live with them!” barks Jubilee as they turn around to keep walking after the man from the sect. “If we die, we better not become fucking ghosts! After this, I’m going to need my eternal sleep!”

Fresh watches her companions vanish into the darkness and then, looking around and seeing that she is all on her own, she runs after them. The tunnel doesn’t stretch on much further. After a few minutes of quiet walking, all of them brooding in their own manner, they reach a small incline that steadily rises upwards.

As they march along, the corridor tightening, as the ramp grows steeper and steeper, they slowly come to what appears to be the end of the passage.

“There’s fucking nothing here. It’s a dead-end,” sighs Jubilee as they look around. “Go right, she said. It’s this way, she said. Fuck me!”

Dirt rains down from above. Fresh yelps as she covers her face with one hand, holding her other arm over Jubilee as they both look up at the giant from the sect, his fist breaking through the dirt ceiling of the tunnel that they had risen towards.

Smashing his other hand up into the dirt, he pries his hands apart and rips a hole into the ground which tears open beneath his fingers. Roots tear and pop with audible snaps as he gores the world from the inside-out. Air rushes past them in a sudden breeze, as the hole above him opens wider and wider. A strangely familiar sound fills the air that sends the hairs on Fresh’s neck up on end. The splashing of water.

A gentle, red light shines in from above, tinged with the stain of a dewy forest-green.

“You just need to have some faith,” says the man from the sect, looking at Jubilee.

“What the fuck are yo- IAGH!” The man from the sect grabs Jubilee under their arm, pulling them up into the air in an instant. “PUT ME DOWN, YOU SHIT-HEAD!” yells Jubilee, kicking the man’s helmet as he hoists them out through the hole. A second later he grabs Fresh who was already backing away with a nervous expression. With a single hand he tosses her out of the hole as well.

She lands with a thud on the grass above the tunnels, next to Jubilee.

“Fuck me…” mutters Jubilee in an oddly surprised tone, as Fresh flops down next to them onto the dirt above the tunnel. A warm, flowing air covers her body as the breeze of the summer’s morning comes to greet them all to this bright morning. The clearing, just outside of the city, the one she had been reborn in, is illuminated by a ruby light. The water of the fountain splashes on loudly next to them, as something heavy pulls itself out of the darkness just behind them. The water of the fountain laughs and laughs and laughs as Fresh lifts her head to look at the point of her rebirth. The sound of the water is almost giddy. As if it were grateful for her having played its game for today.

All three of them stare at the thing, the entity, in the fountain, the gestalt covered in black-water that stares back at them with lost, agonized and deeply confused eyes. Like a bloody fawn, fresh from the womb. Its pure body is stained and befouled and covered in rich smears of black-water and afterbirth with only two clean streaks under the damp eyes.

Fresh howls as she claws into the dirt, pushing herself up as she sprints forward and jumps into the fountain. As she wraps her arms around a very confused Basil, who sits there in the middle of it, water dribbling down from above over her dark, strawberry-blonde hair that is tinged with a deeper red, by the crimson sunrise that dawns just over the horizon, just beyond the forest that wakes up to greet a brand new day.

Razmatazz

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