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The Exorcist stared out the window of the crew deck at the cosmos in front of her. In the far distance, a blue speck sparkled—not a star, but her reason for leaving her ship behind: The Wizard’s Wife. Flashes of glory and of riches, of technologies even she hadn’t seen before, had danced before her eyes, tantalizing her. It would be a shame if the spoils ended up in someone else’s hands; they wouldn’t know how to effectively utilize the artifacts. Therefore, it was up to The Exorcist to make sure The Wizard’s Wife wouldn’t be lost to the ravages of time. Only she could ensure that the massive cruiser wouldn’t wither away, forgotten.
As her reconnaissance vessel neared The Wizard’s Wife, The Exorcist took in the sheer size of her target. It was at least a hundredfold larger than her own ship she had left behind, with patches of metal and wood and ominous neon light. Here and there, gaping holes vomited out miscellaneous bits and pieces, creating a halo of debris that The Exorcist was now flying through. She tuned into another eye to scout out the other sides: all around the ghost ship, smaller aircrafts like hers darted to and fro. This was to be expected; on her journey here, she’d always seen the vicinity buzzing with activity. After all, it isn’t every millenia where a glitzy megacruiser is left behind.
The moment The Exorcist’s ship bumped into an open hangar, she was already leaping out. Her boots click-clacked against the floor, leaving puffs of disturbed dust in her wake. The Exorcist’s plan was simply to explore, but to do so, she had to first find a way to push further inwards. A quick vision showed her a swirling portal nearby, an orange pentagon filling a dark room with its glow.
A clang resounded across the cavernous room, causing The Exorcist to shift her eyes to her right. There, a slight figure, decked out in pink from head to toe, looked up, a pipe clattering on the ground.
“Hello,” she called, slowly inching in that direction. “What brings you here?” To move through The Wizard’s Wife with a partner would be like having a crew, and The Exorcist was a damned good captain if she said so herself. Plus, even if this traveler turned out to be useless, she’d just disappear within The Wizard’s Wife’s maze-like innards.
“Laris Amalthea. I’m here for… the pursuit of knowledge.” She extended her hand towards the Exorcist, who shook it firmly. “And you? Are you headed off in a particular direction?”
“A scholar!” The Exorcist beamed. “I’m here to adventure and to discover; in fact, I was just headed this way.” She pointed towards the edge of the hangar, where a ladder was barely visible. Laris nodded, seemingly indicating deference to The Exorcist’s leadership. The Exorcist didn’t notice this, though—she had already started off, leaving her new companion to hurry along.
The ladder, it turned out, connected the hangar to a little alcove with the portal that The Exorcist had seen. She reached out a hand, brushing a stray spark that had flown out from the middle of the luminescent orange pit. But before she actually touched the portal, Laris had whipped out a blade and whacked her hand away.
Laris stuck the tip of the weapon into the portal, where it sizzled and melted immediately. “Heed where you tread,” she said, showing off her now decapitated sword. Annoyed at this offense to her intelligence, The Exorcist rubbed her hand, glaring. Unbeknownst to Laris, the blade had smacked the corner of an eye on her wrist, which was now tearing up. Little Miss Know-It-All certainly didn’t know about that, she thought (she did not think to consider that that was because it was covered by her sleeve, similar to the numerous other eyes that dotted The Exorcist). But nonetheless, she simply turned around and grabbed a handhold on the wall, hauling herself up to the ledge above.
That girl, on the other hand, was preoccupied with a small black box next to the portal. The Exorcist watched her fiddle with it, until it croaked out a crackly sort of beep. “How do you find people you’ve lost?” Laris murmured, seemingly lost in her thoughts. While Laris interrogated the box, The Exorcist walked about, picking up the odd keepsake. She’d scored two different ornate knives and a curved spyglass-like tube before a tap on her shoulder (thankfully missing an eye this time) informed her that Laris was finished with her questioning.
The two set off exploring, leaping across the exposed scaffolding and jumping from platform to platform, passing through garages and docks and walkways.
By the time they paused so that The Exorcist could take a swig out of her flask (Laris had denied a sip, citing her aversion to the belladonna juice), she had pocketed so many trinkets that she was already looking for somewhere to stash her first bag of goods.
Throughout the whole ordeal, The Exorcist had the feeling of being haunted by that shitty-sounding beeping noise. She had tried to look around to find its origins, once even seeing a glowing orb before suddenly losing all vision in that eye, to no avail. Thus, it only seemed reasonable that she try her backup solution: at the next black box, The Exorcist whipped out a pistol and fired.
A crunching noise was all the warning she got before a searing pain slammed into her left torso. She collapsed, heaving as she tried to switch her vision to a different eye. In the corners, mechanical arms retracted into the wall.
Laris immediately crouched down beside her, already unwrapping bandages and ointments. “No, don’t move, it’ll make the wound worse,” she whispered, placing a steady hand on The Exorcist to keep her lying down. The girl moved with incredible speed and precision, though The Exorcist saw a look in her eyes, something indecipherable.
Behind them came the crunching noise again, but The Exorcist was prepared this time, already firing away with her right arms. Laris, on the other hand, created a sort of barrier, translucent but glowing, shielding the two from the onslaught; her eyes glowed in the same way.
“Move!” The Exorcist shouted, nudging Laris out of the way to line up for a shot. She’d managed to disable two of the ship’s weapons and was now focusing on the final one, although out of an eye on her neck she saw new ones popping out of the ceiling. But as she advanced forward, she slipped on a sheet of metal serving as a makeshift floor, sending both of them tumbling through. Laris landed on top of The Exorcist with an ungrateful thunk.
She dusted herself off, making sure to blink out whatever had landed in her eyes. “Well, I suppose we get ourselves out of here and try again against that blasted room. Let’s find a way out.”
Laris gaped at her. “We just escaped, no? Would you want to go back?”
“Well, yes, obviously I would. I’m not just going to be bested by a godforsaken wall, am I?” The Exorcist scoffed, looking around for a ladder or stairs.
“Shall we discuss with it? I am sure we are able to work out an agreement.”
“It’s not going to listen if all it does is shoot—plus, I’m not going to demean myself to that level. It’s a wall.”
“We could traverse back, only to be mercilessly assailed once more. Alternatively, we could pursue peace, thereby both reducing our harm and their anger.”
“That’s stupid. We’d be talking to an inanimate object that only knows how to fire guns. There’s no point. Let’s just go teach it a lesson.”
“It would be unwise to go back without formulating a plan, at the very least. It need not be complex.”
The Exorcist glared, but Laris didn’t seem to be backing down. “What’s your master fucking plan then?” The Exorcist threw up all four of her hands, sighing.
“We talk to it,” Laris offered. The Exorcist simply huffed and took a hold of a latch on the rafters, pulling herself up to climb back to where she and Laris had fallen from. This time, instead of the beeping, the black box emitted a bright blue light, similar to a laser beam.
She cleared her throat. “The Wizard’s Wife, we would like to-”
A dark object zipped through her field of sight, all sharp angles and fangs.
Beside her, Laris tried. “We are cognizant of the err-”
Chills ran up The Exorcist’s spine: she could feel someone—or something—watching her.
“We’re sorry!” She shouted, cutting off Laris. “We should not have sho-”
Out of nowhere, the wall in front of them collapsed. An army of oddly shaped creatures, angular and circular and large and small, loomed threateningly. The Exorcist shot back in fear, nearly stumbling back into the hole she had gotten out of, as she scrambled around for a gun. Laris wielded a lance and a shield, already swinging at whatever entities had come their way. The Exorcist shot left and right, blindly aiming in the direction of anything that moved.
Together, even as it seemed like they were pushing the crowd back into the wall, more and more entities seemed to be spawning in. They drained The Exorcist not physically, but in a psychological way; she became more tired with every shot, almost as if she were withering away. Next to her, Laris seemed to be fairing just as badly—she sluggishly slashed her lance around, and her shield had shrunk.
The edges of her sight were darkening, something basically unheard of when you had as many eyes as The Exorcist did. Multicolored dots peppered her vision, and she sank to her knees. Maybe if she lay on the ground then she could rest for a bit, then regain her strength…
And just like that, The Exorcist was no longer fighting those wall-creatures. She shot up, looking around the warm, peach-colored room she apparently had teleported into. One of those dreaded beeps blared again, though this time muffed by a wall. She focused her eye into the outer layer of The Wizard’s Wife and sure enough, where she and Laris had been fighting, there was nothing any longer. No sign of Laris, either.
How had she suddenly made it into the ship?
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