The purple pigeon flew at me, but it wasn’t a pigeon. The wings unfurled into a set of interlocking wings, that receded around and heralding what I could only imagine is an angel.
“Brufo!” I shouted as the angel came in fluttering and perched like a bird of prey on the railing.
She was purple-haired and had glitchy reality-distortion effects around her. At least that’s what it seemed like. She had two purple wings sprouting from her back. I fled, rounding the corner. Ahead of me was the same walkway I had just come from, but reversed like a mirror.
The angel was perched on the railing. She chuckled.
“He isn’t here, Daniel.”
“What? Who are you? Why do you know my name?”
“I’m Maea. Don’t you recognize me? I’m just checking on you.”
I stared at her closely. Her irises were purple too. A glitch bent the halo over her head. Then it hit me.
“You were there when I had to choose! When I picked Driften Waker!”
“No thanks to me to be clear. And yes, Daniel, that’s part of the reason I have come to check on you. For you see there are certain…parameters of Weywyrd that have become fulfilled. One of them is a Driften Waker being seen again.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know about that--” I started to say.
“The second is more complicated to explain. For angels, time is not an arrow but a broken mirror through which runs a river. We are here, in one of the fragments, but others can bear shards of another time, and even the future. There are some paths you should not walk down. The girl must survive her Trial.”
“Val?”
“That’s right. She fights an impossible fight right now. She fights her enemies. All of her enemies. How much has Valietta auz Varlanes told you about herself?”
“Some,” I admitted. “Probably not all. I haven’t known her long.”
“Even you will have trouble fighting all her enemies. But you’re lucky, because you have me too.”
“I’m not all that good at--”
“Not yet, perhaps, but you will be young Driften Waker.”
Maea aligned her hands and made a [Void Tunnel] appear in the wall of the church. On its far end I saw spinning darkness with light glyphs. Was that Val’s trial? Then I saw an explosion of [Blaze Radiance] and knew.
“No time to waste, right?” I said.
I dove into the tunnel, flying and accelerating. Somewhere in the back of my mind Val telling me people don’t help with Trials spoke, but the thing I was thinking about was what the angel said. Even you will have trouble fighting all her enemies.
I plunged out of the far end of the tunnel flying. The things here were just figments of people, dark renderings with neon highlights of green and red and white on them. It all looked like a bad computer program to me. Some dark airships flew in, their guns firing as they strafed me, but I cut down under them and then looped back up. I slashed with Lancie and they fell away.
The [Aether Weapon] had transformed herself into a slightly more wieldable version of a lance. A flotilla approached, each ship flying a flag with a bunch of different color circles on it. Something purple was streaking toward the flotilla.
On the ground further down, Val fought outnumbered against shadowed soldiers and others. I dropped down next to her.
“What the aether are you doing here!?” she shouted hammering one shadow into three others, which all dissolved into darkness.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I got a sneak peak you might say, and you were way outnumbered.”
The purple streak arrived at the flotilla. It was the angel Maea. She wielded two energy weapons that glowed against the darkness. As she passed and crossed through each ship it exploded garishly.
“Is that one of your friends?”
“I guess.” I punched a shadow soldier down. “She’s, you know, Fate. Angels or whatever. So you just need to survive this and you win?”
She didn’t answer. She ran deeper into the melee, most of which were focused on her. I punched two more, my strikes being powered up by [Adaptive] pretty well by now, then flew over to Val who was staring at a mound of roiling shadow as it approached her.
“Hey! Get ready, Val, okay?”
I saw her hands were shaking. The shadows formed into a woman’s appearance as they came in. Val spun her hammer but fumbled it. I took that as my cue to go in.
“Yah!” I shouted and sped in like a bullet.
I hit the shadow person all right, but she did not fade like most of the others. She laughed. It was a fiendish laugh, a cackle. She grabbed me and lifted me up. Blue flames enwreathed me. It was like a sweater coming undone, like the last bit of spaghetti. I was the thread.
“Nooooooo!” Val screamed.
A purple flash. I tumbled to the ground. The darkness was suddenly receding like water. Maea’s blades coiled back into her hands. She bowed to both of us.
“May we meet again, Daniel, Valietta.”
She opened another [Void Portal] in the wall, and flew in. It closed behind her.
[Trial complete: Valietta auz Varlanes]
[Class Upgrade: Jewel Reaver (levels up to 50 unlocked)]
“So let’s go fight some Drovers now right?”
Val smiled, but it was halfhearted. “As long as it’s not those monkeys again I would fight just about anything.”
She turned to leave.
“Wait. That angel told me you were way outmatched. Is that true?”
“I could have taken them.”
“All those shadow airships too?”
Val’s eyes flashed. “I didn’t know what would be coming for me. You never know, apparently. It was a whole army…”
Outside Brufo was incredulous.
“D-Daniel!?!” he sputtered when I emerged after Val.
“That’s right. I met an angel with reality distorting powers and she got me in there and we took care of it.”
Brufo shook his head. “That’s highly unprecedented. Daniel, do us all a favor and never tell that story again. If anyone catches wind of that it’s a surefire way for a visit from a Storiographer.”
Val shook her head. “We don’t want that. Agreed.”
Brufo said his goodbye and ambled off for provisions. Val and I began to walk back to the ship. We passed an ice cream shop, one that Lancie and I had drooled at earlier. Val stopped, noticing my gaze lingering on the place again.
“That’s called ice cream Daniel. Do you not have that on your world?”
“We do. It’s pretty good. It just sounds good right now. I don’t have any money, though.”
“Yeah.” She considered something. “Well come with me, because I doubt you have had ice cream like this.”
When seated at the parlor, I explained to Val that I had to also include Lancie, so I transformed her and all three of us sat around a table and ate. The ice cream Val had explained was infused with vapors from the nearby skies, which resulted apparently in much different tastes and consistencies. And flavors like banana, chocolate, mango and…strawberry! I wondered if that was Reed’s doing, and then I felt a little bad.
“So are you like a human girl? Or are you a weapon?” Val asked.
“I’m a magic weapon, mostly. But I get what you like about ice cream, good call there.”
“What do you make of all this?” Val asked Lancie. “Him saving me at the Trial or whatever?”
“That angel girl is pretty strong, but also dumb.”
“What about the fact that no one has ever broken into a Trial before?”
“I don’t care.”
“I see,” Val said.
I hid a smirk as I ate my ice cream.
“Are you done now Lancie?” I asked.
She transformed back into a lance. I put the lance under the table.
“You’ll see. I think of her as half-girl half-weapon if that makes any sense.”
“It’s starting to. That angel I was asking about. She saved your life. You were about to be [Soul Harvested] by my sister.”
“That was your sister?”
“Her shadow or whatever. She’s scary. She tried to kill me. Is trying still, probably. That’s what I was trying to tell you before. I have to live like this, in the winds. There are bounties out there. And she has a lot of people who would come for me.”
“Armadas of people?”
Val nodded seriously.
“Who are you anyway?”
“Isn’t Val enough?”
I shrugged. “Of course.”
I ate my ice cream with Valietta-who-wanted-to-just-be-Val, then we returned to the airship. Lorlux was still gone, so it was just us. We settled in the dining room, talking. Brufo Junior came in and served plates of fresh bananas.
