Aster glanced at a clock. Wow, it took him less than an hour to emotionally adopt another kid. I wonder if that’s a record for him.
It was hard to judge what things they could take with them. Aster found herself falling back on her Lantern training, packing mostly for an extended venture into the Depths.
It didn’t take as long as Aster felt it should’ve. How long could she justify lingering for her own sensibilities? Was there any purpose in that in the first place?
Questions like that were hard, since it felt like she had to answer them in order to know if she could even really spend that time on them. It was something of a paradox.
Not for the first time, Aster had to shake herself out of her thoughts and focus on the next step ahead of her.
As he rummaged around in the spare canes he’d collected, trying to figure out how many they could take, Fennel abruptly whipped out his favorite cane in his off hand, lazily leaning against the table with a careless grin on his face. (Well, at least, the expression didn''t betray the countless cares Aster knew he had swimming around in there.) He held up the cane in an approximate fencing position, leveled toward Aster. “En garde.”
Aster gave a short laugh through her nose. She picked up the nearest sword-passing shape, which turned out to be a chopstick. It seemed unfair that Fennel got to have such a longer, sturdier weapon, so she flipped the second chopstick in the air, caught it first try*, and fell into a stance of her own, facing down her dad.
(*Well, she did have to turn it around afterwards, but that wasn’t important.)
It was an interesting challenge, trying to simultaneously fight and win and also to avoid any risk of injuring your opponent. In that sense, it wasn’t quite as unevenly matched as it could’ve been, since most advantages they could have in one way would mean more work for the opposite goal. Aster had vaguely realized before that they’d taken to doing this kind of thing more and more as they came to depend on each other over time.
Aster and Fennel exchanged a few blows on their “swords” before a small sound pulled them out of their reverie. They turned almost in unison - Fennel had to finish up his poke first - and looked at Mira, who had just cleared her throat, and had an expression of utter bemusement on her face.
Fennel just blinked a few times. Aster awkwardly coughed into her fist. “Uhhh, we’ll call it a draw! I think we’ve gotten a wee bit off track.”
“Hold up, I was clearly winning this time-”
“Daad. Time limit.”
“Oh.” He shook his head. “Clipse, you’re right. Sorry.”
Aster looked around herself at the kitchen, having a vague notion that she’d allowed herself to get distracted so she could avoid having to accept how close they already were to being ready. The kitchen was still partially full to give the illusion that they imagined they’d be coming back, not to mention they couldn’t take much.
This was her childhood home, one of the core locations in which a majority of her memories had taken place. She could imagine countless scenes here, dinner conversations, playing cards together... She clung to the memories with all of them there - her, dad, mom, and Orion - but those memories were fading in time, details blurring together. She’d tried to record what she could, but it never seemed to really capture what she wanted to.
The memories with just her and dad were fresher, though. They’d still be around for a while. And that made it harder to leave this place behind, not knowing if they’d ever be able to come back here, not knowing what might become of it or of them.
Everything she cared about most from here would be coming with her, though. Everyone she could bring right now. She didn’t like to admit to herself that part about what she cared about most, though, because that excluded so many people that deserved her help just as much as the people she happened to be close to. But she’d come back for them. She would.
Aster drew in a deep breath, took one final look, closed her eyes as if to fix it in her memory, and left the house.
Dad was already standing outside, checking over everything they’d determined to bring. He swung his pack over his shoulder and looked at the house wistfully, like Aster had been.
He seemed to tear himself away and shot her a smile. “Time to go help Mira now?”
Aster nodded. They went and helped her finish packing. She hadn’t been kidding, there wasn’t much to be done, though Aster was glad to notice there were at least a few of what seemed to be items sentimental to Mira.
The three gathered, finally ready, at the safest entrance to the Depths that Aster knew of.
“Okay. Here we go.” Aster suppressed the desire to take a deep breath to steady her nerves, and instead just led the group into the tunnel. She checked behind them every now and then, and once she thought they were out of earshot for anyone outside the tunnel, she spoke again. “There are holes in the ceiling along this route, going at least part of the way. We’ll meet up with Hyacinth along the way, then I’ll investigate other routes that should be safe.”
“So we don’t have much of a plan then, do we?”
Aster briefly closed her eyes, and had to stop herself from pausing longer where she was. “There are too many variables to be able to make a solid plan beforehand. We know what our goals are, we have precautions to keep us safe... and we’ll figure out the rest as it arises.”
Mira let out a breath that seemed like it would’ve been a sigh if she’d let it be. “Alright. I trust you.”
Those words shouldn’t have twisted her stomach the way they did. I’m going to fail them, I’ll end up dragging them down with me when I fail- Aster jumped into a puddle, letting it splash around her and stirring around its bits of algae with her foot, checking for traces of anything dangerous. She hoped it would seem more like a little quirk than as her trying to interrupt her own thoughts. “And I trust all of you.” Aster turned to give her a smile, hoping the hesitance didn’t show in her eyes. “We’ll do this together. We’ll protect each other, and we’ll get out of this. There’s a place for us on the other side.”
Aster didn’t wait to see the responses of her companions. She didn’t want to make them affirm it any more than they actually believed. She should try not to make them pretend too, at least.
As they neared the area Hyacinth would be in, a thought struck her and refused to leave. She sped up, gradually at first, then more and more without fully realizing it. A part of her was suddenly convinced that when they made it to the meeting spot Hyacinth wouldn’t be there-
Aster stopped as quickly as she could, gasping a sigh of relief as she saw he was there. Of course he was, she’d left him in the safest place she could. It wasn’t like fate directly conspired against her. (Well, at least not as far as she knew... that would be a concept to keep an eye out for.)
“Are we ready to go, then?” Hyacinth asked, giving a nod in greeting to the other two.
Aster discussed her planned route with him for a moment, trying to ensure she wasn’t crazy or leading them all to easily preventable deaths. Not that any of them could see, so they set off.
The deeper they traversed into the Starless Depths, the less it felt like it could accurately be called the “first level” anymore. The ground rarely stayed completely even and flat, and the rocks faded from earthy browns to more subdued colors. This was reflected in the lower levels too, especially stark if one was descending from Well to Well one after another. Without intentionally descending, though, it only became noticeable after traveling a good distance toward the heart of the mountain range that separated their settlement from the rest of the world.
Aster took a slow, measured breath, trying to calm herself without making it obvious she was doing so. She’d never liked the feeling of descending deeper into the Depths, whether they were moving between levels or not. It still felt like crossing a threshold either way, from the familiar to the unfamiliar. They lived with the Depths out of necessity, and they did what they could to adapt to it, but it never quite lost its edge of danger and mystery. Aster tried not to forget that, as routine as it was for her to journey inside.
It seemed to be a widely accepted certainty that one day this place would finally succeed in swallowing her.
Aster refocused on her breathing and took a drink from the water she carried.
As they traveled through the mossy, humid caverns, passing into territory mostly left untouched, they started to find the first echo crystals growing on the rock. From the rock? Most of what they knew about them was about their ability to fend off the Dark and its denizens. They still didn’t have much information on why, when, or how they formed, only that they seemed to appear in some kind of cycle, and it tended to be most efficient to collect from accessible areas in scheduled batches.
The crystals tended to glow white, yellow, or cyan, with varying brightness. There were a few rarer colors, but they knew more about those three. Echo crystals were fairly consistent in size, with some minor variation - generally around half a palm’s width, and a little less than half the length of someone’s forearm.
The thing that varied most about them was the… sounds they made. They’d always fascinated Aster, and she was sure she wasn''t alone in that. Most of them whispered, or hummed, at least in their natural state. Once they’d been cut and polished for Lantern use, all they did was echo - quietly reverberate any sound that touched them, as well as quickly dwindling echoes of their own crystalline chimes.
Aster strained to hear the subdued sounds emitted by the crystals, their subtle echoes as they clinked against each other on her group’s clothes, the way the sounds of trickling water interacted with them…
Among everything else, she barely had time to react as she heard a soft creaking sound from directly below her. She tried to jump backward in time, stop her companions, cry out-
She half-succeeded. She managed to be the only one to fall through the abnormally thin section of ground.
Time seemed to jolt unevenly as she fell. She tried to orient herself carefully, tried to figure out what was most important to protect, tried to-
Aster hit the ground foot-first, awkwardly, and crumpled into the shallow water. A shock of pain shot through her legs, mostly the one that had been first to impact. “Aghk...!” She gritted her teeth, trying hard to focus on her breathing, trying not to panic.
Of course. Of course. Maybe I was incompetent after all. She tried not to choke on the growing lump in her throat, tried not to hyperventilate. Blinked back tears.
Tried to distract herself from the pain and rising panic. Well, I''m getting all kinds of insight into my pain tolerance. I''m sure that''ll end up being useful, if I don''t also just pass out alone deep in the Depths. She switched to a different strategy quickly, since that line of thought wasn''t exactly helping.
It’s okay. I know what to do now. They’ll... they’ll come look for me. No, they can’t do that... They will anyway. No no no... what have I done?
“Can...” Aster winced, searching the dark air above her. How far had she fallen? How far up was the ceiling? How risky would it be to call up to them? “Can you hear me?” She yelled, trying to scrub as much of the pain and fear from her voice as she could.
“Aster!” Her father’s faraway voice came. “Are you o- how bad is it?”
“It’s... I think at least my ankle is broken. But I’m... okay. Don’t come down for me. Please.”
“We can’t just leave you there like that. Please, Aster. We need you.”
“I can’t let you Darken because of me.” Aster blinked hard, traitorous tears streaming down, but mostly not affecting her voice. “Please. Hyacinth knows the route. So do I. Just... get as far as you can, and I’ll try to find you as soon as I can.”
“We can at least try to pull you up by rope.” Hyacinth said, and started lowering one through the hole. She could hear it scraping against the side of the ceiling, but she couldn’t see it yet.
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“I don’t want to slow you down.”
“And we don’t want to risk losing you. Please, Aster,” her father said.
A clacking sound came from the ceiling. Something clattered repeatedly against rock. “Clipse, the hole is closing,” Hyacinth’s voice came, and the rope started scraping against the rock faster. “It’s swallowrock.”
“I’ve dealt with it plenty of times,” Aster called back, trying to put confidence into her pained voice. “I’ll be fine.”
“Aster, please-”
“Trust me.”
There was a pause.
“Okay,” Hyacinth finally called back. “Okay. We’ll trust you, Aster.”
“Don’t you dare not come back,” her father called.
“Please, be careful,” Mira said.
“I’ll be careful. I promise.”
And the hole closed, cutting off the last bit of light from above.
Aster still had her crystals, though, and her lantern, which had managed to stay unbroken in the fall. She closed her eyes briefly, controlling her breathing, trying to focus on that instead of the pain. The breaths came shakily, but she managed not to hyperventilate for now.
Okay. Okay. This is easy enough. I know how to get out of this, and I still have a map with me. I know my maps pretty well anyway. There’s nothing overwhelming about this. The throbbing of her ankle kept ramming into the mental walls she was trying to put up, to block it out. The alarms in her head wouldn’t stop ringing, trying to tell her that something was wrong that she needed to address - but she couldn’t mark that message as received, it would just keep pressing and pressing and...
Breathe. C’mon. There. If she was going to fail anyway after everything she’d done to this point, it couldn’t be to something like this, it wouldn’t be now. Not when she was so close to finally making a difference.
She finally thought to check the crystal plating on the bottom of her boots, there to add another layer of light protection and another measure to prevent shadow pooling.
One of them had shattered, and the light was gone.
Aster felt a stab of panic, but tried to redirect her focus to fixing it. What were the chances of a creature of the Depths noticing this particular moment of vulnerability? True, that could be... bad, this deep in the Depths, but she had time to fix it, then continue as she’d already planned. She didn’t carry replacement footplates with her - she wasn’t in the habit of falling this far on a regular basis, and hadn’t been able to bring much - but she did have assorted echo crystals, and some first aid supplies.
First order of business. That’s right, get into the rhythm of ‘working’. Pretending to be a capable person. Anyway. She set a snapper on the ground nearby and lit it with a jolt of light and heat she produced. It lit up and started crackling and making loud, repetitive snapping noises, meant to keep creatures of the Depths at bay for now. The swallowrock wouldn’t start closing in in the early stages of the snapper going off, while the small creatures that spurred it on hesitated because of the light and noise. It’d buy her a bit of time. Swallowrock tended to be one of the more lethargic hazards anyway, especially in the upper levels where they seemed to get fed more often.
Aster found a medium-sized crystal in her pack, chipped off the remaining shattered pieces of the broken footplate using a knife, and wrapped the replacement crystal in its place with a long reinforced bandage. She wrapped it a few times, then used the rest to complete the makeshift splint.
She stole a moment to take a few slow, deep breaths, then made herself sit up in a better position, splashing in the shallow water at the bottom of the cavern. There didn’t seem to be a current to it. That was probably good, since water and swallowrock didn’t mix well - or too well, depending on the perspective - but it also meant it was harder to coax open a way out.
Of course it’s an enclosed swallowrock cavern. Good for them. She let out a frustrated breath. Y’know what? Fine. I don’t have the patience to stagger around in the dark to look for the core.
Aster opened up a channel from the light she’d stored in her hair, letting it pool in her hand until she’d estimated enough, then tossed it out in a wide arc around her like she was throwing paint. She repeated this in a few calculated patterns, and only had to go through four total iterations before the splatters of light revealed a pale mass of thick threads in a vaguely spherical shape on the wall. The core of this cavern’s swallowrock creatures’ hive mind, or whatever it was. Aster hesitated. She could simply destroy the cluster now. Lanterns were encouraged, though not required, to do so. She wasn’t sure what good the swallowrock caverns did for anyone or anything in the Depths. But... why should it be her that decided? Why should her uncertainty be what determined their fate?
If she cut the core from the wall, it wouldn’t kill the creatures, somehow. Something about the duller threads connecting the core to the wall weren’t necessary for their survival. They would burrow down, seeking safer habitats deeper in the Depths. But still, was that risking another person’s survival for these creatures she didn’t understand?
Swallowrock was far from the most dangerous thing people would confront if they ended up being that deep. It was well known nowadays, so most people at least knew the basics of what to do about it. It’d probably do much more good for the creatures than the potential harms that could come from it. Right?
Aster didn’t have enough information to truly weigh the decision. Maybe it was ultimately just to ease her own conscience a little, but she staggered over to the core and cut it free. She heard chitters of alarm from the ceiling and wall as the creatures felt the change. They rushed toward the core, and Aster stepped back a safe distance as she heard them scrambling to care for it and work on their upcoming move. As they did so, the artificial portions of the cavern would weaken. Aster made her way to a portion of the wall a safe distance away from them and held up her lantern. Sure enough, the discoloration had already begun, and with a few choice kicks from her good leg, Aster was able to break through the weakened swallowrock.
Aster pushed through and shouldered out of the gap she''d made, swinging her lantern around in front of her to check the area ahead.
She took out one of her maps and planned a route to get back to the previous level and meet up with the others. For a moment, she was able to fall back into her regular routine. She''d traveled alone as a Lantern hundreds of times by now. She could think of it as... normal, when it was useful to.
After a while she started to notice a repetitive sound that seemed always just beyond her range of clear hearing. It almost had a rhythm to it, but was too indistinct to be familiar. Sometimes it''d pause and she would think it''d stopped, but it always came back. No matter how she swiveled around or took steps in different directions to try to get closer, its source or direction or rhythm never became clearer. Aster could feel her anxiety rising as she tried to make herself stay calm. Maybe she was imagining it, or it was some strange tactic of a creature of the Depths here. She had no reason to believe it was a threat to her. Then again, she didn''t really have a reason to believe it wasn’t.
Aster began to feel herself drooping. From... drowsiness? She couldn''t place a reason for it. She was never without some level of exhaustion, but she could tell this was recent. She fought the lethargy, then eventually decided to sit down and check her injury in case it was somehow the cause of these strange phenomena. She arranged echo crystals around herself and pooled a thin layer of light below herself to protect her as she took off the shoe with its protective measures.
As she carefully slid her foot out of the shoe, she was able to see that the ankle injury seemed entirely internal. She didn''t see any broken skin, even when she took her foot out the rest of the way and found something that made a pit open in her stomach.
Unbroken skin and no blood, yet a different dark liquid like ink dripping lethargically from near her heel. A pool of the substance was at the bottom of her shoe. She hadn''t been able to feel it.
The exhaustion compounded suddenly, despite her mounting panic. She reached for her lantern, but her consciousness blinked out before she could get far.
“Aster” took in a few deep breaths, calming the fast-beating heart. It felt a little strange.
“Aster” took back as much of the pool of light as she could, channeling it back into her hair. It''d been so long.
Next came checking all the echo crystals that were set out, turning them over and over with her hands. None of them sounded right, felt right.
“Aster” checked the maps, carefully planning a route based on the little information they had available, then put everything away, eased the foot back into its shoe, and stood up. They walked several paces before remembering the injured ankle. Right. It was best not to damage it further. The pain from it was slowly becoming more defined, but there was still somewhat of a... haze? Over the entire body. Was that normal? How much of it would resolve?
It probably wouldn''t matter.
“Aster” tried to accommodate the injury this time. Walk more carefully, step more gently.
“Aster” took a few barely maneuverable shortcuts that weren''t on Aster''s maps and soon made it up to the previous level. Then they headed straight toward a lesser-known exit sloping from that second level, one that didn''t have a checkpoint.
None of it seemed to take long, but then “Aster” reached the exit and stopped short of the light. “Aster” felt this body shaking. Well, that seemed unfair. Aster had no reason to fear the light, and neither did her body, even in this state.
“Aster” closed their eyes and stepped forward. They took several more steps, wavered again briefly as the light reached their eyelids, and pushed onward until they managed to convince themself to crack an eyelid open for a peek.
“Aster” hadn''t been sure what to expect, but was struck at how bright it all seemed in that moment. And... colorful. Had colors really always been that distinct? They couldn''t help but cringe back a little, but the pain didn''t come. Not yet at least.
There wasn''t time to stall like this. “Aster” continued forward with a determined stride. It''d been great luck that Aster had just packed for a journey.
They had to stop every now and then to check the maps, both to avoid the nearest town - Aster’s hometown - and to stay on track toward the place they only had inklings of memory about. Those fragments of memory had been contained in the echoes of a crystal they’d found. That was the only real clue they had.
The sun peeked through the scaly fan-shaped juniper leaves above. The sun was a waning gibbous that day, so despite how blinding it seemed to them, it wasn’t quite as bright as it could’ve been. It was strange to think about the solar phases again, after so long spent trapped in the Depths.
“Aster” couldn’t help but wonder, would any of their hometown look familiar to them? The sun seemed familiar, which was a good start, but it had never been personal to them in particular. Anything else was all so… vague. Amorphous, like trying to catch the mists of morning dew. They could imagine those impressions if they didn’t try attaching them to any particular experience. They could sense and feel it, but couldn’t hold on to it for any significant amount of time.
Even the one memory they’d managed to reclaim seemed somehow indistinct, almost like it kept swinging in and out of focus. They’d been able to grasp some details of it, but some of them continued to escape - they could tell that the faces had been there, could make out some features of the people, but couldn’t picture them again.
Their destination was only a couple hours away, and it didn’t seem to take long as they allowed themself to become immersed in the familiar novelty of their surroundings. The crunch of dirt and rocks and scaly juniper leaves, the rustle of grass underfoot, the way the ground sloped unevenly but steadily downward…
It brought back a feeling of wordless longing, for things painfully unfamiliar now. That longing felt more familiar and real than any memory or experience that should be familiar. Everything from this world that could withstand the light felt like a dream, the kind of dream they would keep slipping back to sleep to try to reach again, the kind where they would scramble to record and hold on to the details and every piece of the experience after it seemed immutably over.
A part of “Aster” was convinced it was all already irreversibly lost. Weren’t they just denying it now, for their own comfort?
Well. Time would tell.
“Aster” was getting close to their destination, now able to make out the port town spread out in the distance. They weren''t sure how they felt about that. A mix of things, for sure, but they weren''t sure what was foremost in it. Apprehension, maybe. There were so many more ways it could go wrong than right.
The shapes of the buildings and landscape gradually resolved into clarity.
There. That was the house. They wavered for a moment, comparing the vague, fluctuating details in their memory to houses around it, but none of the rest fit its silhouette as well as this one. “Aster” had a vague, fleeting impression that it was supposed to be full of life.
They stepped up to the gate. The house was a moderate size, with a large property that appeared to be a large part farmland. It seemed partially neglected, though some crops still grew. A few outdoor children’s toys lay scattered and overgrown on the lawn.
This didn’t seem to bode well.
“Aster” stepped up to the door and knocked. No one answered. They tried the door and found it locked. They let out an exasperated sigh.
After circling around back, they found a small shed to the side of the backyard. It was unlocked, and inside they found a collection of garden tools.
As “Aster” stepped inside, though, their left hand automatically traveled down to the side of the doorway and touched a wooden panel. They weren''t sure where that habit came from, but it occurred to them that maybe their muscle memory knew more than they consciously did. They seemed to have interrupted the automatic response, though, so they stepped to the side and felt around the area their hand had indicated. Sure enough, there was a small, nondescript loose panel, and when they opened it, it revealed a little alcove with a key in it.
Heck yeahh. “Aster” checked the back door, found it locked, and tried the key. After turning the key one way, trying the door, then turning it the other way. That time the handle turned, and they pushed the door open triumphantly.
Sunlight filtered in through the latticed windows and door, lighting motes of dust floating lazily in the air. From all “Aster” could tell, it didn’t seem like there were any lights on in the house. There had been no indication of anyone here.
Around the lump forming in their throat, they called out “Hello?”
They waited. No one answered.
“Aster” swept between each of the rooms, poking their head in, looking for people or any traces that they might return soon. Nothing of the sort.
This house, the only trace of memory they’d been able to grasp to this point, was empty.
“Aster” allowed themself to fall to their knees in the bedroom they’d found themself in as they came to this certainty. Surely they had a moment of safety to give in to despair for some time. It wasn’t like anyone was watching… well- was Aster, now? How soon? It wasn’t as if either of them had any - or much? - experience with… uh, possession. Yeah, about that-
“Aster” wasn’t sure what it would feel like when Aster “woke up”, but their question was quickly answered as one of Aster’s hands moved without their intervention, toward the shoe of her injured foot, and her body shifted so she could reach it.
“Aster” jerked back as they realized what she was doing. They turned to try to get away, but the shared body was receiving mixed messages, and twisted painfully. “Ack-” “Aster” hesitated, very aware that this body wasn’t theirs, that they were intruding, and that they couldn’t forgive themself if she had any permanent effects from it.
Aster seized upon that hesitation and managed to get the splint and shoe off. “No…!” “Aster” said, but weren’t able to stop her before they were stunned by the light of an echo crystal Aster had slid across the floor to shine on the entry mark “Aster” had left.
That bought Aster enough time to splatter light across the floor and her foot. As the light contacted the mark, “Aster” was cast out.