When Technical Support is Too Helpful

She was breathing, so that was a good thing…right? Her breath escaped her lungs heavily. She was not used to teleporting with magic. She could feel her eyes blinking but her sight failed her—or maybe it was too dark to see anything? She felt weight on her legs. When she tried to remove it, her hands squished into something. The weight mumbled.

“Skaea?” Astraelle whispered.

“Five more… days…” Skaea mumbled in her sleep.

Astraelle rolled her eyes and pushed Skaea off her.

“Huh? What?!” Skaea shot up in alarm.

“About time you’re awake, princess,” Astraelle spoke dryly.

“What? Who’s there?” Skaea questioned.

Astraelle heard her scramble to her feet, “Relax, I’m your conscience; we haven’t spoken in a while.”

“Oh?” Skaea sighed in relief aloud, “Where are we? Why is everything so dark?”

“I don’t know. I just woke up, too,” Astraelle said, “Why not use your fancy magic to locate us or light up the place?”

“Ohhh, right! I can do that!” Skaea’s markings over her body began to softly glow blue, “We are in the ruins of the Ancient capitol of Daz’Senhal.”

“Fantastic. Now, how about shedding a little light?”

Skaea snapped her fingers and a soft, pale, floating light popped up above her head. “Ahh!” she shrieked.

“What?” Astraelle turned behind her, expecting the worst.

“Who are you?!”

“Astraelle,” the young valkyrie grumbled, as she turned to face the lost princess.

“You’re not my conscience!”

Astraelle sighed and rubbed her temples, “Yes, I know that. You teleported us here: what now?”

“I-I don’t remember that,” she fiddled with her hands. “I don’t know,” she answered downcast.

“Of course, you don’t,” Astraelle said aside, annoyed. She could feel a headache begin to form, “Listen: your grandfather, my master, wants me to keep you safe. As much as I dislike you, I will not do anything to disappoint or fail my master.”

“Why do you dislike me?” Skaea asked wounded.

Astraelle rolled her eyes and huffed, “We should get going,” she turned around and began to walk, “We should find some food and water first and—” a cold sensation on her wings stopped her mid-sentence. She quickly did an about face and saw Skaea armed with snowballs.

“Why do you dislike me?” she asked more sternly this time.

“How I feel about you is irrelevant for the task at hand. I am to keep you alive; food and water are a necessity, so we should look for some.”

“No,” Skaea stated defiantly with crossed arms.

Astraelle’s eye twitched, “Skaea—”

“Nope,” the blue robed young woman turned her back to the black-clad valkyrie with a snort, “And it is ‘Princess Skaea’ to you.”

“You…stubborn, prissy, little!” Astraelle gritted with a tightly clenched fist and even tighter jaw. She sighed and exhaled. Oh, the ammunition she had at hand to destroy Skaea, but that was the old her, Astraelle had to think rationally. She cleared her throat and spoke softly, “I… just dislike the fact that with your memory loss, you have forgotten how we used to be such great friends.”

Skaea turned to Astraelle, her deep azure eyes glinting from the magic light, “We were great friends?”

“Yes, mast—Darqlon raised us together like sisters,” Astraelle smiled.

“Really?”

“Really really. Since your siblings were so much older than you and too busy for you, he accepted me as an apprentice so you could have a friend. But…as your talent with magic grew so did our distance apart. Next thing I know, you are a completely different person,” Astraelle started to trail off, “then the…incident happened…”

“What incident?” Skaea had gotten closer to Astraelle and she noticed the valkyrie’s wings twitch.

Astraelle looked up at her with saddened lavender eyes, “Anyways, we need to get going.”

When she had turned around, Skaea saw a long, faded scar, which marred between her black leathery wings, from the base of her neck to the small of her back. “Okay.”

Their footsteps echoed through the vast, desolate chamber. Rows of dust covered benches bordered the crumbled, towering limestone walls.

“Can you imagine all the history here?” Skaea wondered aloud.

“Yup. Boooooooring.”

Skaea pouted at her companion’s retort, “History is fascinating!”

“Whatever,” Astraelle replied. Her stomach growled, “It doesn’t fill an empty stomach.”

“It fills an empty mind,” Skaea whispered. She bumped into Astraelle, “What-”

Before she could start, she saw why her curt counterpart had stopped. Her pinprick eyes stared at the giant gorehind before them. Its blotted, scarred, pelt revealed its black muscle and rotted bones; armed with antlers twice its size, which were serrated and pointed forward; its bloody three-cloven hooves scraped and dug into the granite floor; and its sickly red and yellow eyes were fixed on them. It let out a death curling cry and launched towards them.

Skaea ran away screaming at the top of her lungs.

Astraelle steeled herself and drew the daggers from off her back. She ran at the hellion, slid between its legs, and sliced at the back of its fore hooves, which made it stumble. It could not stop itself from slamming into one of the wooden stands. With it in a vulnerable position, Astraelle capitalized on its predicament, and quickly ran to its side—stabbing it in the heart with both daggers. The gorehind let out a cry before its body slumped to the ground.

She heaved a sigh and removed the blades. A screaming Skaea ran past her. A second gorehind was charging after her from the direction they had been traveling from. Astraelle tried to remove her daggers, but sickly skin began to grow over them. The first gorehind bucked alive which threw her to the ground. With a great heave, it tore off the wood that had it trapped. It turned and snorted in her face. Astraelle sneered in its face and stabbed out both its eyes with the knives from her boots.

It reared back in pain, releasing a dreadful cry. It crashed back to the ground, shattering the floor where Astraelle was at last. Astraelle kicked the gorehind at its exposed rib and duck in time to miss it swing its head at her. At the same time, the wood covered antlers of the first gorehind crashed into the side of the head of the second beast. With both creatures stunned, Astraelle impaled both of them through their skulls with her knives. They both dropped to the floor with a ragged sigh and the flame of their eyes was extinguished.

“And stay dead!” she shouted in victory as she withdrew her knives. She cut out her daggers from the side of the first gorehind.

“Wow,” Skaea said in awe as she walked up to her guardian.

“Don’t ‘wow’ me!” Astraelle yelled, “You could have killed the both of them with icicles to their heads!”

Skaea stared at her blankly for a moment, “Oh yeah…” she realized.

“Ugh!” Astraelle scoffed and pushed passed the clueless princess.

“I was scared!” Skaea admitted after her.

“And I wasn’t?”

“You were?”

Astraelle cast a glance back at the frightened princess following her, “No. No, I wasn’t,” she lied.

After an hour of wandering through the ruins Skaea piped up with a question, “Could we have eaten those things?”

“Hell if I know,” Astraelle replied, “but they smelled and looked horrible. I wouldn’t be caught dead eating one of those things.”

“Do you think there will be more of those things?”

“Yes. There is an army of them waiting for us outside,” Astraelle said sarcastically.

“I hope not,” Skaea trembled.

Two massive, metal reinforced doors loomed over them. Astraelle pushed against them. When they failed to move, she pressed her entire weight against them. When they still have yet to budge, she charged at them with a two hundred foot distance.

She was sitting on her flank, holding her spinning head with her wounded hand, when she saw Skaea walk past her. “Oh, you think you can do better?”

Skaea grabbed a handle and with a grunt, tugged open the opposite door. She beamed down at Astraelle, “I enjoyed your little show.”

Astraelle growled and followed the grinning princess out the door.

A dimly lit, crimson sky and rusty ground greeted them. There was also the legion of demons and abyssal beasts camped outside but the sky and ground caught their attention first.