Chapter 193: 194: The south

Jubilee draws a line down over the crude map on the table. “We’ll head down this way. We’re gonna have to dip into the south a little,” they explain. “But only about a day’s worth of walking, it’ll be fine.”

“Can’t we just go around the center, to the north?” asks Basil, a little worried about this proposition.

Jubilee shakes their head. “With our luck, some rider will be heading between the north and the center and end up recognizing us,” explains Jubilee. “We’re better off taking the other way. We’ve done well staying hidden this far, despite how blatantly public we are,” they say, glaring at the giant, dark-armoured man for a moment. “No point in ruining that now.”

“But…”

Jubilee taps the map again, making their point clear to the priestess.

Fresh chimes in. “Can’t we just go through the central city?”

Jubilee looks at her. “If by ‘go through’, you mean ‘get executed at the front gate and have our bodies thrown out of the back one’, then yes.”

Fresh frowns, crossing her arms as her eyes drift towards the ceiling. “But weren’t you there before, Jubilee?” she asks, remembering Jubilee’s conversation with the man who had needed his rare-wood staff repaired.

“Those were different days,” explains Jubilee.

“We should get an anqa and a cart,” suggests Basil. “We’d save weeks of travel.”

“We have the funds, but it’ll cut deep into our savings. Plus I’m still convinced we should stay off the roads as much as possible.”

Shamrock looks up from the map. “Time is precious.”

“So is being alive, meat-head,” replies Jubilee.

Basil, still not convinced, jumps back in. “But the south…?”

“We’re not going to the south, we’re making a slight bend towards it, while we head east,” explains a frustrated Jubilee.

Fresh blinks, looking around the room. “Why don’t we just go to the south?” she asks, bringing the question out of the forefront of her mind. Basil and Jubilee look her way, both with very different expressions. “If that’s where the other witches are, then I’d really like to meet them.”

“Fuck off, goo-brain!” says Jubilee, placing their hands on their hips.

“Absolutely not!” exclaims Basil, staring at her with horrified eyes.

Fresh frowns, feeling the harsh, yet worried eyes that have fallen onto her. Feeling a sense of nervousness that she hasn’t felt in a very long time, she notices that her foot has lifted itself up an inch, as if she were about to step back and run away. She lowers it back down.

“Inadvisable,” says Shamrock, shaking his head. “This side still has much to see.”

“Huh? This side?” asks Fresh, a little surprised by her friends’ direct reactions.

“This side,” repeats Shamrock, tapping against, not the map, but the table itself.

Jubilee scratches a line across the sheet of paper from left to right, a hand’s width below the central city and roughly scribbles out the entire area beneath it. “See this?” asks Jubilee, glaring at her as they point at the marked-out area. “This is all ‘get fucked’ territory,” they explain. “If you want to go anywhere near there, my answer to you is going to be ‘get fucked,’ shit-head!” yells Jubilee at her. “The fuck is your problem?”

Fresh blinks, taken aback by the reaction that seems harsh, even for Jubilee. She did something wrong again, didn’t she? She can feel it. Their reactions aren’t in proportion with the question that she thought she was asking. It’s been a while, but she recalls this feeling of melancholic disappointment inside of herself all too well. Her eyes lower themselves down, unable to meet any of theirs and she finds her hand up on her arm again, fiddling around the area with the painful scars.

“Sorry,” says Fresh, noticing a tightening in her chest and a damp welling in her eyes. “I didn’t know that there’s something wrong with going there.”

The others are quiet for a moment. But then, Basil speaks. “Aren’t you from the southern area?”

“That was a lie,” admits Fresh, clearing the air right away.

“Oh…”

Fresh looks at Basil. “I’m sorry, Basil. I had to come up with something when you asked me back then,” she explains. “I was worried you’d find out about my class.”

“Huh…” says the priestess, her hand playing with her sleeve. She looks a bit disappointed, which Fresh understands. Friends shouldn’t lie to each other. The priestess sighs. But to Fresh’s surprise, Basil’s shoulders seem to lighten and her posture seems to loosen itself. “So you don’t know what the south is?” asks Basil. Fresh shakes her head.

The priestess shoots a glare over to Jubilee, whose posture has lost its tension as well. “Honestly! Haven’t you taught her anything?!”

“Shove it!” barks Jubilee. “I’m not a mother-goose. I taught her how to stay alive. Everything after that isn’t my problem!”

“Apparently, you didn't!” snaps Basil back at them. The two of them devolve into a fight. While they sort things out between themselves, Fresh looks around the room. She’s happy that nobody is mad at her anymore, but she still doesn’t understand her friends’ reactions.

There is a tearing sound, as Shamrock rips off the entire scribbled-out section of the map. He tears that piece in half as well, before turning to her and drying her damp eyes with the two scraps.

“Thanks Shamrock,” sniffles Fresh. He nods to her, before then crumpling both of the bits of paper into two balls and throwing them. The first one donks against Basil’s head and the priestess yelps in surprise. Just as Jubilee starts laughing, they too are silenced, as the second ball thuds against their forehead, before bouncing back onto the table. Both Basil and Jubilee stare at Shamrock in deep agitation, having been unceremoniously torn out of their verbal scuffle.

“Enough.” He taps the table again, its legs wobbling as he applies a significant amount of force with his hand, perhaps being annoyed as well, though at them, rather than at her.

The two of them look his way and then at each other. Jubilee and Basil seem to come to a silent understanding, both of them standing next to each other at the table again.

“Sorry,” says Basil.

“Sorry,” mutters Jubilee.

Fresh blinks, now entirely lost. “Guys…?”

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Basil, Jubilee and Shamrock look at each other. Fresh’s eyes wander between them all, seeing that they are once again coming to a silent conclusion of some kind together, without her. Jubilee nods. Basil seems hesitant, but she nods quietly as well. Shamrock gives his blessing to their arrangement as well.

“Too heavy,” explains the giant man. “The world is sinking.”

Fresh watches her friends. “Huh?”

“Too many heavy souls,” he explains. Fresh remembers him speaking about this before, back in the forest on their way here to the west. She had assumed that he was being metaphorical.

Basil takes over. “The south has been vanishing, it’s been sinking into -”

“- It’s fucked!” explains Jubilee, cutting Basil off and getting to the point. “If you go to the south, you aren’t coming back. It’s a one way trip.”

Fresh looks at them. “It’s sinking into the ocean or something?” she asks, scratching her cheek.

Shamrock exhales, his powerful breath causing the small ball of paper to roll across the table towards Jubilee. “Black-water has taken the surface,” explains Shamrock. “Black-water has taken the souls there.”

“Black-water?” asks Fresh, her eyes going wide.

Basil sits down, not wanting to stand anymore as they speak about such a thing. “The south is sinking into the spirit world,” she explains. “To ‘go there’ means to die. Forever.”

“Wait, then the other witches? The sect?” asks Fresh, her eyes going wide. “I thought they’re still alive.”

“They are,” explains Shamrock. “But they have given up,” he says again, like he had told her down in the basement a few nights ago. He breathes for a moment. “They reside in the south. There is no return.”

Basil nods. “You can go to the spirit world. But once it has marked your soul, there’s no coming back to this side,” she says. “I bet they’re content with the world sinking away, honestly.”

“It wouldn’t sink, if it wasn’t heavy,” explains Shamrock with unusual verbosity. Basil looks at him, clearly about to object, maybe because of what this statement of his implies. But she stops herself and looks back down to the table, perhaps realizing that he has a point. The souls in this world are too heavy, too cruel and so, the world itself is sinking back down into the realm of the dead, from which it, as well as all life here, had once emerged aeons ago.

“So… they’re not dead?” asks Fresh.

“They might as well be,” says Jubilee. “Look. The south is fucked, okay? If you want to die, then tell me, so I can slit your throat myself,” says Jubilee.

“I don’t,” says Fresh, realizing that this is essentially what she had told her friends. Or at least what they had initially understood from her statement. It was no wonder that they were so mad at her.

“If you die here,” explains Basil. “You’ll be able to return to the well of souls. But…” she shakes her head. “If you go to the south, that’s it. You’re done.”

“Done?” asks Fresh.

“Done,” nods Basil. “No afterlife. No cosmic bestowance. No reincarnation. You’re done.”

“I don’t know about any of that kooky bullshit,” says Jubilee, waving Basil off. “But I do know that if you go there, it’s the end,” they say, pushing the map back onto the table and swiping their hand over it, to get the ball of paper off. It flies away, rolling across the floor until it hits the wall.

“The end,” nods Shamrock in agreement.

The four of them quietly stand around the table, looking at the torn map. The frayed, torn off edge on the bottom of the sheet of paper still carries the ink stains from Jubilee’s wild scribbling and as Fresh stares at it, she can’t help but notice that the black ink is still seeping just a little bit further upwards, ever so slowly, bit by bit.

Razmatazz

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