“It agreed, sisters.”

“Perfect. It will be on our side.”

“And if not?”

“It is bound by the Mark.” 

“Thanks.” I said to the two of them.

“You are welcome, mortal.”

“The name’s Kate.”

“Kate...” the Necromancer repeated me, “a female by name, though not by appearance.”

“Yet still female in being.” I genuinely felt insulted by that; in my head I still was Kate, a female Khaei, not a Subject. “Could I know your names?”

“We are of many names. They called us The Spirits of The Ethereal Plane; they called us The Ethereal Hunters; they called us The Reapers; they called us Death, but we are not.”

“Is there any way I can refer to you individually? Not as a duo, I mean.”

“The Mage.”

I looked at the Mage’s friend, expecting her to say which name she was given. It stayed silent.

“What about you?” I finally said.

“I…” I saw her head turning towards her friend.

“She was called the Archer,” the Mage answered my question for her.

“Can’t she—”

“No.” He briefly interrupted me. I could hear from his voice he didn’t want to explain it to me.

“Why—”

“What brings you to our Plane?” It was the Archer who interrupted me this time. She didn’t show any sign of wanting to avoid the matter, but rather genuine interest.

“The King under The Mountain passed away recently.”

“Another one?” The Mage said annoyed. “There have been at least forty others who claimed to have that title…”

“Yes, another one…” I resumed, “Do you have any idea where I could find him?”

“Same place as where he died. City under The Mountain, probably.”

“We will take you there,” the Archer fell into the conversation.

“What?” her dear clearly didn’t like the sound of that. “Friend, we don’t have time for that. We have Marks to claim.”

“Marks… can wait, dear. She needs our help, let us be someone’s help just this one time.”

Contrary to her Hunter, she stayed calm under the whole situation, not changing from her calming voice.

“No friend, The Marks cannot wait. You know of their importance!”

“You know full well I can’t,” Her voice had a shift in atmosphere. The neutrality faded and made place for a strange sense of emotion. It wasn’t so much sadness as it was disappointment, but even that’s not accurate to the feeling it gave.

“Of course I do, but…” he gave up trying to argue with her, it’d only make things worse probably. “We’ll take you there, Kate, but from there on out, you’re on your own.”

“Thank you.” I mostly thanked the Archer, even though I didn’t ask them to do so in the first place.

From The Tree of “Life”, they started walking towards the Mountain to The North-East, with us following their lead. It is silent for a long way. I only hear the breeze blowing through trees made of clouds; through flowers shimmering like stars; through bushes with mud instead of leaves, with earth-berries growing on them; and the glassy, wispy, electric, sparkling sounds Valentina is making besides me – I still don’t know if those sounds are just her natural being, or her trying to say something.

“Kate,” the Archer then said. Contrary to her friend, she didn’t spit out my name like it’s an insult. “where are you from? We haven’t seen any of your kind enter The Plane before.”

“I’m not from The Lands, I came from the place above them.” I tried to stay vague.

“So this is what The Starfolk looks like?” the Mage drew his conclusion out of that.

“I’m not of The Starfolk.” I said, while subtly avoiding giving an actual answer. “Besides, wouldn’t you know what they look like, seeing how they are sent here upon dying?”

“Starfolk don’t enter The Plane on death. Not of The Forsaken; no Mortis.” He explained in very few words.

“And you haven’t marked them yet?”

“Against our Laws,” he continued. “Under the protection of The Forsaken; our Mothers forbid it.”

“The Forsaken?” I kept hearing this name pop up, but I still didn’t know who or what they were.

“The Forsaken.”

“What are they?”

“Not relevant anymore.” He made it very clear he didn’t care to explain it further, so that’s how the conversation ended, and I was none the wiser about those supposed ‘Forsaken’.

The same silence as before returned. It was evident the Mage wasn’t much of a talker, and he definitely wouldn’t start a conversation himself unless absolutely necessary.

I felt uncomfortable floating with them. I wanted to start a conversation with them; I wanted to ask them all these questions about themselves, about their supposed mothers, about The Hunt, their Laws, and so much more; but at the same time I didn’t, I understood the Mage wouldn’t let his Huntress explain the things to me, and he, himself, would just avoid the questions with vague answers.

It was the first time I couldn’t even start talking to Valentina. I wanted to ask her questions which I somewhere knew she wouldn’t be able to respond. The only thing we could do is follow The Hunters, and I silently hoped the Archer would say something again. But she didn’t.

After about three hours of waiting (I surprise myself I waited that long…), I was sick of floating in silence, and decided to try and start up some sort of conversation.

“So… What’s the difference between The Lands and The Plane?”

“We are.” I could’ve predicted The Mage’s answer, really.

“Anything else?”

“Our Mothers lie here.” The Archer told me. “The Spirits protected them.”

“Protected? What happened? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

“We do.” The Mage’s voice attacked me in a strange way. “It’s none of your business, outlander.”

“Not an outlander, dear. She is a friend of The Hunt now.” The Archer tried protecting me

“Doesn’t matter. Spirits are long gone. Forgotten.”

“Don’t you miss them?” I asked.

“We don’t.” The Mage said without any empathy.

“We do, dear.” The Archer protested with a sense of confusion in her words.

“I don’t! I… I can’t… You know this, friend.” He stopped and bowed his head. It didn’t feel like it was in shame or anything resembling it; he just bowed his head. After a second or two, he resumed his steps, again in silence.

Both the Archer and I (and Valentina, obviously) didn’t respond anymore, and for the better, probably; we – she probably more than me – didn’t want to get into a discussion with The Mage. The rest of the trip was filled with the same silence I had learned to accept by now.

After another seven hours of traveling (give or take an hour or two) in complete and utter silence, The Hunters held halt before a gigantic mountain.

“We have arrived.” The Archer said.

“Let us go, friend. We have Marks to claim.” Her Hunter responded, while already turning his back to us.

“Hold on a second…” I noticed the mountain was off, as in… terribly off; it didn’t even look like The Mountain I had seen on The Lands.

“Is there a problem?” The Huntress asked me.

“This is not The Mountain to The North-East.”

“False. It is.” The Mage said.

“It doesn’t even look like the version on The Lands. I thought The Ethereal Plane was pretty much an exact copy of The Forgotten Lands?”

“It is; in essence, it is.” He was already turning away from me again, taking his friend with him. “But even an exact copy can be altered.”

That was the last thing I heard from The Hunters before they both swiftly turned into a vortex and dissipated, leaving Val and me alone – yet again.

“This is not The Mountain to The North-East, no matter what you tell me.” I finally could start talking to Valentina again.

She blinked a physically warming red. She didn’t think so either.

It wasn’t the gray piece of art, getting lighter the higher it went, topping off with ice and snow. It wasn’t a mountain towering above everything else with its atmosphere of victory. There was no stripe of clear blue waterfall on its side, starting in a cave, followed by a glimmering green bundle of roots. This was not the glorious, magnificent, beautiful mountain I knew.

Though the mountain did have its gray color, it was interrupted by a plethora of giant gaping holes in its side. Each and every one of these holes looked like they were made by great force; something that broke through the mountainside. The top wasn’t covered in ice and snow, but in a blackened rock. At this height, something resembling a gigantic nest was made, but not from twigs and leaves and all those other materials you’d expect a nest to be made of; it was made completely in rocks and stones, with some soil hanging over the edge.

At the foot there was no peaceful lake with an eternal waterfall pouring into it, but the landscape was instead completely ruined by giant blocks of stone, which had made small craters in the surface. Some of the stones were just chunks of the mountain, but some looked like pieces of statues. The whole mountain was in ruins, and that’s only talking about the outside.

We stood there looking at it all, taking everything in. It kind of hurt, to be entirely honest. This impressive being which once had “glory” written all over it, was nothing more than a depressed lump of rock that could barely keep standing up.

“What do you think? Should we enter?” I asked, as if we had any real choice.

As I said that, I looked over at Valentina. Apparently she had already been shining blue, faintly shivering in mid-air. I couldn’t tell if she was shaking blue from fear or sadness (or both for that matter).

“Don’t be afraid, Val.” I tried to reassure her. “I’m sure that whatever caused this, is now long gone.”

I don’t think I have ever been less confident in my words than when I said that, but at least she found some sort of comfort in them. Her blueness was beginning to lessen little by little.

“Now… shall we?”

She blinked green, and slowly floated a slight bit upwards, then down again, as if she was taking a deep breath. Afterwards, she slowly went over to one of the holes in The Mountain.

The holes were enormous. They had a radius of somewhere between four and six feet, and their shapes were all but regular. Not only the outside of The Mountain was filled with debris of itself, but these tunnels were too.

We stood before the entrance of one of them, looking inside to see if we could see anything. We couldn’t. It was the same familiar darkness I had known from the tunnels inside The Mountain on The Lands. You’d think it would comfort me, seeing something familiar in an entire dimension of unfamiliarity, but it didn’t. If anything, it made The Plane feel that much eerier. We just kept hovering there and looking into the darkness. Both of us hesitating to enter.

That was until we heard a silent shriek from above, followed by a gigantic piece of rock falling down at us from near the summit of The Mountain. I saw some flows of a water-like liquid inside the rock as it hurtled towards us.

“Watch out!” I shouted, even though I knew Valentina had also noticed the rubble; and even though I’m sure she could’ve gotten out of the way in time herself, I pushed her out of the area where the rock would make impact with the earth. Only after I was sure my wispy companion was safe, I jumped (metaphorically speaking, can’t jump without legs, obviously) out of the way.

The stone just about missed us when it hit the ground, and then pretty much exploded in small pieces of debris flying everywhere, and small, cold streams of water started flowing out of it. The shrieking that all started this, still hadn’t stopped. It was a high-pitched, cracking sound, and it seemed to come from far way. Looking up revealed how the water-filled rock came from the nest-like structure we had seen before.

“Do you think it hatched?”

A very clear green. We both agreed on the fact this rock was actually the shell of an egg that just hatched. However, we didn’t know which creature the egg was of.

“We… eh… we should go inside The Mountain. Before… you know… its mother arrives.” I’ll be the first to admit I was scared at that moment, and I assume Val was too, since she was already entering one of the tunnels before I was even able to say “inside”. Obviously I followed her closely.

The tunnel we were floating through felt similar to the ones in The Mountain, but wasn’t, somehow. It had the same calming darkness (which, truth be told, didn’t calm me one bit right now), but they were highly irregularly cut out, compared to the tunnels we floated through before.

The tunnels on The Lands were obviously cut out with a clear plan: connecting places together, even if I didn’t even know five percent of them. They were clearly made by the Dwarves: little to no stalagmites (or stalactites), a fairly low level of humidity, almost completely clear of fungi and mosses. Even the directions they were cut was all planned out: all of them straight, making sharp turns whenever needed, and almost never going up or down a steep hill.

These tunnels were entirely different. They were filled with irregularities in the walls, as well as the ground, and even the ceiling. It was practically filled with moss on the walls for a big part by the entrance, the same was true for fungal growths. The air was humid and felt damp. The tunnel made both sharp and soft turns at irregular intervals. Its height level also constantly changed, drastically as well as subtly. It didn’t make it feel more natural, but way more… “forced”, if you get what I’m saying.

“Hey Val…” my voice echoed against the moss-coated, gray walls. “Do you happen to… you know… remember where we’re supposed to go?”

We were hovering before an intersection, a way going left, one going right. Both were equally dark, equally damp and equally eerie.

She blinked red, for which I already was afraid.

“Great. I suppose we’ll have to take a guess then…” I said, except we didn’t. When I said that, I felt the walls of the tunnels shake, like it was some sort of earthquake. It felt like it was clearly coming from the left, so we went and looked around the corner. The corridor was still filled with darkness, but some pebbles lying on the floor started to jolt more heavily as time went by. Whatever made this happen, it was coming from this corridor.

We kept our eyes (well… “eyes”, like either of us had them) looking to the left, waiting for anything to appear. I didn’t know what I expected, actually. Somehow I expected a gigantic mole digging through The Mountain – which, truth be told, doesn’t make any sense, but it would’ve been pretty sweet! – or an earthquake causing a small cave-in. In actuality, it was neither: after about thirty seconds, something appeared far away in the corridor. I couldn’t really see what it was, but in the motion blur I saw glowing red lines scattered over its body. It rapidly flew past the passage we were looking into, when the steady shaking of The Mountain stopped for one second. The next one we heard a loud thump, along with a giant cloud of smoke or dust coming from the way this creature was heading, and once again, the tunnels started moving vividly.