Roxanne and Cassandra met the other four outside the hospital. Xander was drinking a cup of hot water while Kwadwo was talking on his phone. Cecilia stepped in front of the girls, enthusiastically shaking their hands.
"So, you must be Julian's friends!" She exclaimed, rapidly wrapping her arms around both of them in for a group hug. Roxanne didn't fight it.
"It's tonight?" Kwadwo asked as she loosened her grip on the girls.
"What's tonight?" Cassandra asked.
"Look, I got it." Kwadwo whispered before closing the phone.
"Okay, so. The mountain you have to climb to get back to the skies. The ships will pass by that tonight. You only have about twelve hours to get up the mountain. Because if you don't, you'll have to wait a year before it comes back."
"I'm sorry, what?" Xander asked, grabbing Kwadwo by the shoulder. He tried grabbing him by the other, because his brain hasn't fully grasped the fact his arm was gone.
"Hey, I'm surprised about this too, okay?" Kwadwo said, worming his way out of the grip.
"Look, shouldn't we just get started?" Cecilia said, pushing them away from each other.
"Fine." Xander muttered through clenched teeth.
Aspasia handed them a bag of supplies. It contained the usual stuff. Food and a couple of metal water bottles. No sleeping supplies, because that they wouldn't need. Each person got a knife. Cassandra didn't like the quality of hers, and looking around, it seemed all the knives were of a similar build. This seems like the type of thing that would break if used more than a few times. She sighed, put it in her pocket, and prayed that she would never have to use it.
"So, do you have everything?" Aspasia asked.
"Yes, mom. I'll be fine."
"I…I know, dear."
Aspasia looked ready to cry as she stood opposite the city gates in front of the group. In front of her was the outside world. A world that she didn't dare venture into, where barely anyone roamed. A world who's existence was considered too much to handle to most of the world. A world that most likely didn't know she existed.
"So you're all ready to go, Roxanne?" Davina asked.
"Should be." Roxanne nodded.
"Just remember. We were born for this." She whispered as she grasped Roxanne's necklace. Roxanne stood still. It was her mother, yes. But having someone else just grab her necklace felt…violating. She hated it, that was the conclusion. Also, born for it? She was barely born before being dumped to the skies, she didn't feel born for any particular actions. All this just seemed to happen.
"I'll remember." She nodded. That one phrase was the only thing to slip out of her mouth while she tried to avoid eye contact. She didn't really know what else to say.
"We leaving, Roxanne?" Julian asked with a hand on her shoulder.
"Yeah, we can go."
The four left the walls to their parents waving at them from behind. Roxanne kept looking over her shoulder to see them until she couldn't see the gates anymore.
"You do know how to read maps, right?" Xander asked Cecilia. Cecilia turned around him with a grim expression.
"I have used the resources of my upbringing to learn as much as I could during my youth! I think I know a thing or two about reading maps. See, we're around here." She affirmed, pointing just south of the town on the map, tracing her finger to the contour lines.
"These circles indicate how high above sea level something is. This one has the most circles, so it means it's the highest peak. And it's just about…directly west."
Everyone else turned their heads west, and in front was a bunch of incredibly dense forest.
"Is that the best option?" Roxanne asked.
"It seems like the quickest, and that's the best we can ask for." Cecilia said, folding the map into a makeshift weapon, swinging it downwards several times, quickly aiming for Xander and hitting him over the head. An exclamation of pain let her conclude that it was a suitable tool of war. New knowledge in hand, she marched her way into the forest, and the other four reluctantly followed.
The jungle darkened as they walked through it. Parts of the morning sun briefly peeked out to hit the group with a small morsel of sunlight before the darkness. A few small noises were heard as soon as they stepped in, but all seemed clear at the moment.
"Hey, Cecilia." Roxanne asked, trying to mask the urge to scream building up inside her. "How much longer do we have to walk through the forest?"
"I wouldn't know, it's too dark to check the map." Cecilia replied calmly.
Roxanne swallowed the scream and kept walking. She felt something hard brush against her leg. Through her hazy vision, it looked like…a skeleton. Almost human, but uncanny in just how many small differences there were.
"Cecilia, where did you lead us?"
She felt a hand of some kind hit her, but it was gone when she turned around to react. Another scream was heard from Julian, who quickly elbowed whatever appeared behind him. It fell behind him and allowed him to hide behind Cassandra and Xander. The creature let out a primal scream before lunging for Cassandra. She landed a solid punch to it's stomach, but it grabbed her hair and didn't let go. She felt her scalp tear as it kept pulling. She felt more eyes circle around her as she fought. Another tried clinging onto Xander, jumping onto his face and grabbing the hood of his hoodie. He tried fighting it off, but it's stomach was even further into his face. He tried grabbing his old knife to stab it with, but the weak slashes didn't seem to do anything but make it even angrier.
"Hold this." Cecilia said, leaving her stuff with Roxanne, trying to stay silent through the whole ordeal. She felt something else on her back, but it was gone, like a momentary itch.
Cecilia leapt behind Xander and Cassandra, baring her hands behind them. A mild hissing noise was heard as small tendrils emerged from under her fingernails. Cylindrical, limply dripping from her hands. Until all ten sprang back to life after she raised a hand, and the clear tubes quickly had red shoot through them. She plunged a hand into Xander and Cassandra, stepping back afterwards to cover Julian.
Cassandra felt a tingling sensation flow through her spine. It felt nice as it rippled through her body, briefly distracting her from the pain. The sensation rushed to her arms, and she quickly got the creature off of her. It screamed and lunged once again, but Cassandra laid one punch into it's chest, and her hand burst straight through. Xander matched, throwing his creature to the ground and choking it out until it stopped moving. Another creature rushed past Cassandra to fight Xander, and then another. Julian ducked out of the way of the attack, plunging his hand into the fresh corpse Cassandra made. There was enough leftover life to make the body twitch slightly, so he brushed the creature's hand like a sock puppet against the hand of the thing clawing at Xander's face. it turned around, allowing Xander to get up and punch another creature down. Julian quickly took his hand out and threw the twitching corpse into the distance, and the other creatures followed. He ran the opposite direction, and the other four followed, Xander and Cassandra quickly taking the lead. They kept running without a second to breathe, as more and more light started to make it's appearance in front of them. Eventually, the trees were replaced with a series of mountains.
They made it.
"See? And with enough time to spare." Cecilia said. She either didn't notice Roxanne shooting daggers at her, or didn't care.
"But uh, are you two okay?" She asked, looking back at Cassandra and Xander.
"I feel…like everything in my body is ready to fight anything. I could take on anything. If something approached me I'd dodge it and rip the arms off whoever threw it at me. I could kill Chelic with my bare hands right now!"
"Oh, seems I overdid it." Cecilia mumbled, looking at a confused Julian. "If her heart doesn't give out, she'll be back to normal in an hour or two."
She merrily began skipping to the mountain in front of them, and Cassandra and Xander followed suit. Julian slowly began following her, and Roxanne followed.
The mountain took some adjustments. The flooring being so uneven compared to anything Roxanne had known to that point was throwing her off, and she would have fell face first into a jagged rock if Julian didn't grab her hand in the nick of time.
"So Roxanne, I've been thinking about something."
"What's that?"
"So you're the daughter of the people running the town, and Cassandra's the daughter of a goddess. Got that right."
"Pretty much."
"So like, can I have a cool title? Seems like the kind of thing you can ordain me, right?"
"What are you thinking?"
"Something like…fallen lord of death. The guy who helped bring you two back to your heritage, and will control the very essence of life itself. I'll workshop it a little, but what do you think?"
"Sounds good. And sure, I'll try to get you the title."
"Nice."
It took a good while before the two got up there, but they made the climb. It was actually not that bad of a trek. The only danger in terms of wildlife was a few surprise birds that they startled and what looked like a goat. Cecilia, Xander, and Cassandra were already at the top of the mountain. Outside of looking generally dishevelled, both of them seemed okay.
"So you've made it." Xander said.
"Yeah." Roxanne sighed. So this was the fresh mountain breeze she read about. She didn't see the hype herself, but she did always live higher than it, so it probably was more impressive to people who lived lower down. She was surrounded by clouds on all sides when she looked down.
"Okay, so I have an idea of how we're getting up." Cecilia said. "I'll pump one of you full of blood. Then we all climb on that person if they can handle it, and they can hopefully claw their way up to a main ship."
"Will that work?" Julian asked.
"It's pretty much our only choice." Xander sighed. "Guessing how Chelic did it, he probably used a chain to attach himself, and we don't have that."
"Although I will say this. This'll require most of the blood in my body. If I move wrong on the way up, I could die."
"That a problem?" Julian asked.
"Not for me, I've died before. But I do run the risk of overloading whoever takes this until their heart gives out."
"Doesn't matter, I'll do it." Cassandra said, getting in front of her. She opened her bag and began eating whatever was packed for her and washing it all down with water. She needed all the energy she could sneak out. She emptied the bags of everyone else, nodding to Cecilia as a ship came over the distance.
The shadows of the ships emerged in the evening sun, and Cecilia began pumping Cassandra's back with blood. The rippling was intense, and Cassandra's eyes bulged as she gasped for air. Xander picked up Cecilia as she fell back, pressing up against Cassandra and jumping on her back and wrapping his legs around her waist. Julian climbed onto Xander's back, and Roxanne held on to dear life to Julian.
The thruster of a ship appeared before the group, blue streams of flame burning underneath them. Cassandra jumped up, digging her hands into the steel. She climbed up and away from the flame, letting the cold of the unfeeling steel take over her hands. She slowly made the first marks this side of the ship had seen in two hundred years. She kept climbing even as the weight of the other four began making it's presence. But she could see the steel flatten. She kept going, even as everything around her kept screaming. Her muscles were in agony, her heart felt like it was about to burst out of her against the grey steel. She stopped for a brief second, feeling her fingers slip downwards. She clutched the steel again, climbing up to the horizon. She climbed over the edge and gave herself one final push upwards. She turned around to let the others fall off her, collapsing on her back after letting out a last primal scream of victory.
Julian checked to see if she was out cold.
"Cecilia, is this normal?" He asked. He was trying not to show it, but his eye was beginning to tear up out of just a little dash of desperation.
"Well, she looks better than I thought she would turn out, but we should still get her to a hospital."
"Okay, cool." Julian said as he picked her up. "Now, where are we?!"
"No way." Xander whispered, taking a good look at the blocks of colourful houses in front of them.
"Hey Julian, did you ever go back to Roperia?"