"Kill Malphas? Don't you think that is a little bit impossible?" the copy asked.
Honestly, Lemony did not have a good answer.
He did not even know why the words had come out of his mouth. He could have just let go. He could have let his soul dissolve into the dark and finally found the peace he had wanted since he was a small child.
But then he saw the image of Sissy in his mind. He saw her falling through the air and dragging her bloody, broken body through the dirt just to survive.
He felt a strange weight in his chest.
It was a feeling of being completely helpless toward the people in the Leftovers.
But, why was he even trying to help them?
He did not know. He did not want to be asked about it. It was just that he could not stand the thought of anyone staying in this miserable place for eternity.
The copy narrowed its eyes. "If that is your choice, then I will revive you. But you have to do what you promised. If you fail, or if you go back on your word, you will be tortured for eternity. Do you understand?"
Lemony felt a sharp chill run down his spine.
What am I even doing with my life? he thought.
He looked at his copy while the metallic contraption spun faster and faster. He looked exhausted, and looked at the copy with such a miserable face.
He blinked, and suddenly the darkness of the void was replaced by the smell of damp earth.
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He woke up in a shallow hole. Dirt was scattered over his legs and chest.
Did Sissy try to bury me? he wondered.
That meant she was alive. She was fine, and she had probably found someone to help her.
Lemony pushed himself up and realized his body felt brand new. The broken bones were gone. But his red coat was missing.
Oh, that's right... I gave her the coat before dying.
A high-pitched screech tore through the air.
He looked up and saw a swarm of black shapes diving straight for him. He barely had time to throw his hand up to defend his face.
Slash!
One of the bats caught his forearm, leaving a deep, stinging scratch with purple hue. Lemony reacted purely on instinct. He lunged out and grabbed the bat by its leathery wing while it tried to pull away.
Then, he slammed the creature's head against a nearby rock over and over again until it stopped moving.
But it was only one. The rest of the swarm began to dive, clawing and biting at his newly fixed skin.
Why am I always this unlucky? He stared at the dead bat in his hand.
But, at the grave moment, he remembered his master and his son back at the Pamon mansion talking about a process called Blazoning.
He did not really know how to do it. He had only heard snippets of conversation. He thought it had something to do with holding your hands a certain way and hoping for a miracle.
Please work, he begged in his head. If I die here again, that copy is going to torture me forever.
The scratch on his arm began to turn a sickly purple. The poison from the bat was already spreading. He did not have much time.
He focused everything he had on the dead creature in his hand.
Suddenly, his palm grew hot. The body of the bat began to dissolve into grey smoke, disappearing into nothingness.
Lemony doubled over and coughed up a thick spray of blood.
The effort of the Blazoning felt like his insides were being shredded.
The other bats saw him stagger and swarmed him again. He started punching wildly, knocking them out of the air, but he kept his eyes on the spot where the first bat had vanished.
There it was.
A single, thin black strand was hovering in the air. Lemony did not hesitate. He grabbed the strand and swallowed it whole without hesitation.
The pain was immediate.
It felt like his veins were filled with liquid fire.
He crawled out of the burial hole, vomiting more blood onto the grey dust. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard it hurt to breathe. But then, the fire started to cool.
"ARHHHHH!"
He let out a scream as the change took hold.
When he finally stood up, the stinging in his arm was gone. The purple color in his veins faded away. His body had absorbed the strand and changed his chemistry that he got from the bat. He was no longer vulnerable to the poison.
In fact, he felt like the poison was just a part of him now. That had been his plan from the moment he saw the bats.
One of the creatures dived at him again. Lemony didn't move until it was inches away. He threw a punch so hard it cracked the bat's skull mid-air.
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A distance away, Sissy was walking with Fiji.
She was trying to figure out how they would ever get back to the top of the mountain. She could not fly yet. Her hair-wings had started to grow back a little bit, but trying to carry herself and a giant moss creature up those cliffs would be suicide.
Suddenly, a raw, pained scream echoed through the abyss.
"ARHHHH!"
Sissy stopped dead in her tracks.
"Lemony...?" she whispered.
Her eyes went wide.
"Lemony!"
Without thinking about the danger or her own healing leg, she turned and started running back toward the burial site.
"Stop! Danger!" Fiji yelled, his heavy feet thumping as he tried to keep up with her.
Sissy didn't wait for Fiji to finish his warning.
That scream had been raw and full of life. It was definitely him. She felt a surge of energy that made her forget the dull ache in her stump.
"Lemony is alive!" she shouted over her shoulder.
She started running back toward the burial site, her breath coming in gasps. Every step was a struggle, but the thought of him standing up from that cold hole kept her moving. It took her nearly twenty minutes of limping and jogging through the terrain before she reached the clearing.
When she arrived, she stopped dead.
The ground was littered with the small, broken bodies of dozens of vampire bats. Their black wings were twisted and their skulls were crushed into the grey dust.
But when she looked at the shallow hole they had dug, it was empty.
Lemony was gone.
"He left," she whispered, her eyes darting around the dark abyss. "
If he wasn't here, then he's probably working his way up back to the top... But–
She couldn't just stand here and wait for her wings to grow back perfectly. She couldn't let him go alone after everything.
Fiji finally caught up, his rocky chest heaving.
"Sissy! Stop! Too strong wind!"
"I don't care about the wind, Fiji!" Sissy turned to him, her eyes bright with a frantic kind of hope.
"He's alive! I can't stay down here while he's up there fighting. I'm going back up!"
"But wings broken! You die!" Fiji pointed at her tattered hair-wings.
"Then I'll die trying!" Sissy yelled.
She didn't give him a chance to grab her. She sprinted toward a nearby ledge and leaped into the air. Her wings felt heavy and stiff, but the high winds of the abyss caught her. With a pained cry, she beat her wings with everything she had, spiraling upward into the dark clouds.
Fiji watched her disappear, looking completely devastated.
"Sissy... wait..."
But from the deep shadows of a nearby rock, a pair of pale eyes watched her go.
Lemony was leaning against the stone, his breath hitching in his chest. His hands were stained with black bat blood.
He had hidden the moment he heard her coming. He didn't want her to see him like this, not after what he had become to survive.
"Don't die... Sissy..." he muttered.
He waited until she was long gone before he stepped out into the dim light. Fiji jumped, his rocky skin rattling with a loud clatter.
"Gah! Ghost!" Fiji screamed, stumbling backward.
"I am not a ghost," Lemony said. He looked at the giant moss creature, feeling a bit of a headache forming.
"Where did she go?"
Fiji blinked his large, slow eyes. He looked at the empty hole, then at Lemony, then back at the sky.
"Sissy fly. She think you dead. Now you here. But you dead in hole?"
"I was in the hole. Now I am out of the hole. It is not that complicated," Lemony said, rubbing his temples.
"But you have here. Sissy have here past. You have hole. Sissy fly to top because hole empty. If you not in hole, why Sissy fly?"
Lemony sighed. Talking to Fiji was like trying to walk through thick mud.
"She flew because she is stubborn. Now, I need you to help me climb. I cannot fly like her."
Fiji scratched his mossy head.
"You want climb? But Sissy go that way. You go this way? Why not go together? Fiji confused. My head hurt."
"Forget it," Lemony said, waving a hand to stop the giant's rambling.
"I have a different request. You have lived down here a long time, right?"
Fiji nodded slowly.
"Fiji stay here many snows."
"Then you must know the way. Do you know a path that leads to the lair of Malphas?"
Fiji's entire body went still. The happy, confused look vanished from his face, replaced by a deep, stony fear.
"The Big Bird? The King of Shadows? Why you want go there?"
Lemony didn't blink.
"I have a promise to keep."
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Sissy beat her wings until her muscles felt like they were tearing off the bone. The air in the abyss was heavy and thin, dragging at her like invisible hands. Every time she gained a few meters, a sudden gust of wind would slam into her, nearly throwing her against the cliffs.
I can't fall, she told herself, her teeth clenched so hard they ached.
Her mind drifted back to the smell of expensive perfume and iron bars.
She remembered the day she and Cutie had been lined up like cattle, their wings groomed and their faces painted to please some rich noble who wanted something pretty to look at. They were supposed to be toys.
But Cutie, her big sister, had never been one to stay quiet.
On their very first day, Cutie had spat in the face of their buyer. She had chosen the abyss over a life of shame.
They were thrown here as a punishment, but to Cutie, it was a chance to be free.
You always protected me, Sissy thought, a tear blurring her vision before the wind whipped it away.
You were the one who taught me how to fly in the first place. You told me that as long as we had the sky, we weren't slaves.
Cutie had been her role model since they were children. Even back when their parents were alive, it was Cutie who showed her how to find the warmest updrafts and how to dive without fear.
Now, Cutie was somewhere far away, maybe even dead, but Sissy could still feel her sister's hand on her shoulder.
"I want to soar just like you!" Sissy screamed into the storm.
She gave a massive, desperate flap of her hair-wings. Something inside her snapped into place.
The pain didn't go away, but it became a fuel. She began to move with a speed she had never reached before, cutting through the freezing air like a spear. She broke her own record, spiraling higher and higher until the dark clouds of the abyss finally broke.
With one last surge, she cleared the edge of the mountain. She rolled onto the snow, gasping for air, her chest heaving as she tasted the familiar, crisp cold of the peak.
She had made it back.
She stood up shakily, her legs trembling under the weight of her body.
The young Moth-Soul looked down at her chest and saw the crest glowing. The brown color was getting a bit brighter than it was before. It looked like a better version of the Common Paws crest now, though it was still just below rank 1.
The wind in front of her started to shift suddenly. She watched as the air swirled and the snow on the ground moved around. New words began to appear right there on the snowy surface.
"Deed Of Soaring Completed."
"Rank 0: Common Paws."
I'm near the first rank. She always heard about these crest from her sister. Cutie would tell her that the better the rank, the more valuable it was. She was fascinated back then.
She still is now. But, she continued soaring just above the snowy plains of the Peak of the First Rib.
She expected to see the quiet, skeletal ribs of the base in the distance.
But as she looked toward the horizon, her heart stopped.
A massive, angry orange glow was eating the sky. Black smoke spiraled up, thick and choking, blotting out the stars.
The base!