Chapter 297: clockwise

Fresh flies off into the night, holding onto the broom for dear life as she zooms across the ocean. The wind howls, pressing past her ears as the broom twists around in a spiral, brushing over the crashing waves of the ocean that she shoots out over, just above the surface of the water. As she cruises past the burnt wreck of the ship that had been set alight a few weeks ago, she assumes that she’s going to be blasting off across the sea, which terrifies her even more than any concepts of dizzying heights or frightening speeds.

The ocean is deep. It’s dark. It’s cold. She’d rather get lost at the bottom of the deepest, loneliest dungeon in the entire world than to fall into the ocean.

Thankfully however, the back of the broom sweeps sharply to the right, the bristles of its tail pressing against the headwind coming from distant shores, carrying with it a smell of destruction that is different from that of the shipwreck.

In that instant, as she herself makes a sharp turn towards the left and she hangs on for dear life, her eyes gaze the distant, dark horizon from which the powerful winds emerge and if she didn’t know better, she’d say that the thousands of clouds covering the night sky were twisting and churning, coming together like a pool of thousands of contorted and twisted faces, lost in the skies above the black waters of the ocean, like souls, trying to rip themselves free from an underworld current.

The broom shoots off together with her and they, having made a bend to get out of the line of sight of the city, shoot off northward-bound.

Why is this happening? What’s going on? She didn’t get a warning or a message or anything, she’s just been kidnapped, more or less. Fresh howls, clambering around the broom as they zoom over the coast, over the inward facing crescent of the eastern bay and off over the stretch of desert leading off towards the north. Or, the north-east, more aptly said.

Did she do something wrong? Is she being punished? Or did something happen in the world, something unexpected that the fountain is hoping to take advantage of? She has no idea. She wants to go home, she wants to go to bed, she wants to crawl into her bed and then drag Jubilee kicking and screaming into it with her, like a predator pulling its prey into its den to be devoured.

But home is further away than ever now. The world rushes past her face as she shoots over the sands, shoots past a ring of carts set out in the desert for the night to make camp.

The lantern, having latched onto its hook on the broom, guides their flight as she mutters beneath her breath, trying to recite some prayer that she heard Basil say once. But she can’t remember the words.

After a while, the world changes. The desert begins to fade and a grassland comes to her sight, the lush, dewy fields and rolling hills reflecting the moonlight that has now come to be seen back up into the sky, painting the world below herself as if it were the ocean she had just left behind. Even now, in this late autumn, the meadow is covered in flowers and she can even see a few sleeping animals or wild monsters of some kind in that split second as she flies past.

The broom rises higher. Lights come into sight. They look like villages and towns. Nothing like the grand cities that they had always resided in, rather, these are just little places. Though, ‘little’ is relative. There are of course some homesteads or farms here and there with only one or two houses. But some other clusters of lights and silhouettes are far larger. Not quite cities, but large towns with easily a few thousand people each.

She flies further and the further she flies, the more of these hamlets begin to appear and the more of them appear, the higher she rises into the air. It all looks oddly beautiful from up here. If only it wasn’t so cold.

It takes what feels like an hour, flying over a landscape that she can’t even begin to identify, some fields covered in rocky outcrops and crystal-clusters that stretches on for ages, until the broom takes another sharp turn towards the left.

Fresh blinks. She’s leaving the north-east and heading to the northern-city? If she hasn’t lost track of herself, that seems to be what’s happening.

Another hour passes and sure enough, a familiar sight comes to her eyes. The towering spire of the cathedral. The broom shoots up higher and she flies up and over the city, staring down at it from above.

This is where it all began. Fresh stares down, from below the clouds, down at the little clearing outside of the northern-city, down at the long, winding road which she had decided to take towards the left, down at the entry-way plaza and then further still, down at the dungeon-plaza, to where Jubilee’s house once stood. Now the spot is empty, with only a statue of some kind sitting where their home once was.

Why is she here? Why is she back in the north?

The broom starts to lower itself downward, floating towards the city.

Fresh gulps as she, the broom and the lantern descend down back to the world below. They fly down through the empty streets and right into the gate of the northern-dungeon.

The blue fog envelops her and Fresh flies down the staircase, still not getting off of her broom, until she arrives on floor one, in front of a small hole in the root covered wall.

Fresh blinks. “Mr… Mr. Mushroom?” she asks, bending down to look into the hole.

“Nyah~?” asks a sleepy voice, coming from the darkness. Sounding a bit confused, the mushroom monster begins to pull itself out of the hole. Seeing her, it blinks. “Nyah?” asks Mr. Mushroom, sounding annoyed at her unexpected disturbance.

“Nyah, nyah,” explains Fresh, shrugging. She just realized why she’s here. “Nyah, nyah?” she asks, clasping her hands together.

“Nyah…” Mr. Mushroom shakes his head.

Fresh frowns. She’s going to get into trouble if she doesn’t get through. She looks around, before reaching into the pockets of her robe. There, she has a single coconut cookie stashed. It’s her emergency cookie, she had placed it there for a midnight snack, where Basil wouldn’t find it. The priestess had cleared out her nightstand and closet, after finding some crumbs the other day.

She waves it at him. “Nyah?” asks Fresh.

“Nyah, nyah nyah?” asks Mr. Mushroom.

Fresh nods, giving him the cookie. Yes, she is trying to bribe him. “Nyah.”

Mr. Mushroom does the mush-mush equivalent of a shrug and bites down on the cookie, crawling back into his den. Fresh gets off of her broom, lays down on her stomach and crawls in after him. The lantern illuminates the tunnel and they reach the end after only a moment. Mr. Mushroom sets down the cookie and bites down onto a long root, pulling on it. The ground shifts, pulling away, revealing a secret-staircase that leads downward.

“Nyah nyah,” nods Fresh.

Mr. Mushroom rolls his eyes, gesturing with his head to the hole to tell her to get in so he can go back to sleep. Fresh nods, holding out her arms for a sideways hug.

Mr. Mushroom does not oblige.

She narrows her eyes, gesturing inwardly with her hands. He shakes his head.

“Pleeeease?!” she begs.

Mr. Mushroom sighs and moves in, allowing her to bestow the gift of her friendship upon him. Mr. Mushroom is not only very delicious, but he’s also extremely huggable.

Having fulfilled one of her life’s goals, Fresh lets go of the annoyed mushroom monster and heads down the staircase, listening to the crunching of a cookie and the closing of the secret passage behind herself. She should have taken some root-flowers… dang. Oh well, it’s probably not important and it would have been rude to plunder Mr. Mushroom’s home, especially while he’s still alive.

Getting back on the broom, she flies down the staircase. Down. Down and then, after she feels like she’s reached the bottom, she finds more stairs to go down. Even on the broom, it takes half an hour at full speed to blast down the staircases, until, eventually, she reaches the bottom.

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The lighting shifts from a dingy, dungeon firelight to a pale, otherworldly white as she enters a void, similar to the dungeon-master’s home from the eastern-dungeon.

Fresh clears her throat, getting off her broom and standing at the precipice. Best to mind her manners this time.

“Excuse me?” she calls out.

“Good evening,” says a calm, collected voice from next to her. There is the sound of a wooden shutter sliding open and Fresh looks to her right, seeing only the top half of an entity, as if it were looking through a window at her.

Fresh blinks, she straightens upright, taking after Basil, she grabs the sides of her robes and does her best to curtsy. She feels like she did it wrong, mostly because she stumbles as she does so and falls down. “Sorry to visit you so unexpectedly,” says Fresh, dusting herself off as she gets back up.

The entity tilts its head, looking at her for a moment. It looks exactly like the other one, except for its build and color. This one is more blueish and a little taller and lankier. Its color is an off-white blue, rather than blue-blue.

“Ah!” Fresh realizes that it’s expecting something. She gets up, dusting herself off. “Uh.” Fumbling around, she reaches up to take off her hat to be polite. She’s indoors, after all. Seeing the spot of color on it, she pulls out the flower that was tucked into the ribbon there. “Here, for you,” she says, handing it to the creature.

“Thank you very much,” says the dungeon-master, taking the flower from her and smelling it. “Please, wait there,” it says. “I’ll be out in a moment.” Fresh nods. The unseen window slides shut and the entity vanishes. Despite not seeing anything, she can hear it walking around the house. But rather than trampling and swearing angrily like the other one, the steps that she hears are measured and collected.

A moment later, the door that she couldn’t see opens and the entity steps out, the dried-flower tucked beneath its ear.

“Thank you for visiting, Perchta,” says the dungeon-master, lowering itself with a formal bow with a spinning of its right hand. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” replies Fresh. She’s never met the creature before, but it doesn’t seem to know that either. “Uh, so…”

“Is it time?” asks the entity, lifting itself back upright.

Fresh tilts her head. She doesn’t know what that means, but if she’s here, then she supposes so? Otherwise, why would the fountain have brought her here? “It is,” she nods.

The creature lets out a sigh of relief. “Ah… I wasn’t sure if it would ever happen. I’m looking forward to getting this weight off of my shoulders, you know?”

“I bet,” nods Fresh, trying to stay polite. Her legs shift. “Sorry to leave as quickly as I came, but I gotta go now, uh…” she thinks. “To the west.”

“I’ll wait for the sign then,” says the dungeon-master,” bowing again. “Say ‘hello’ to Charcuterie for me, yes?” It points to the side. “Take that door, it’s faster.”

“Thank you. I will!” promises Fresh, not sure who that is, as she heads back up onto the broom. She flies towards a door that sits next to the staircase. It opens up and there is a blue-fog behind it. It’s a shortcut. She waves goodbye to the entity.

Fresh sets on her hat again and flies through the fog, blasting out of the dungeon-gate a second later, past a very surprised adventurer who falls down, back into his group as she shoots off into the night and heads west, back towards the mountain.

Razmatazz

Looks like we're bringing things around full-circle =)

Nyah~

Thank you kindly for reading!

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