Chapter XVIII

The world faded to the grey gelatine of the Mana Field as Lich searched for Ark with his mind: no answer meant he was in trouble.

The wooden bridge hulked on his left, the lumber still showing a presence as Mana lingered in it, the memory of pumping it through its veins. He jumped out one side of the car; Ark jumped out the other, so he was away from it, towards him. Lich turned his attention downstream and apart from the little specks of Mana in the algae in the banks and the flying insects, there was nothing except for a tree. He registered it as a palm in passing, judging it by “feel”, and then checked its crown: it was empty, especially of the dark “resonating” Spear. He chastised himself: it was too far from the bridge to jump into, anyway, but he felt more assured in crossing it off his thaumaturgical exploration.

As soon as he done that, he felt a tug, a faint one: a small Mana Shift. The surface of the Field was like it was covered in a tablecloth, and as it was pulled in one place, it flowed across everything around it. Lich followed the pull: out, downwards, slightly off to his right.

There!

Lich got his bearing, snapped his eyes open, threw off his cloak, charged into the water, breathed deep, and dived beneath the surface.

The stream formed a deep pool here, perfect for diving into like Ark had done – Kart knew his locale well. In the darkness, though, it was less than ideal and once more, Lich’s perception turned to the Mana Field.

Ark’s hill-shaped presence was beneath him, turning this way and that, struggling – against what? The Mana shifted again as he tried to use the power of one of the Spear’s attacks to move forward.

Then he “felt” more of Ark’s form on the field as he passed over the top of him; his leg was out behind him at an odd angle. It wasn’t odd enough to break, but…

Lich’s hands gripped metal suddenly and he slowed himself down, bunching himself up against it. A pipe.

He realised. Ark’s leg was caught in a water intake pipe!

Lich turned around and fought through his younger brother’s billowing cloak to put his hands in Ark’s armpits. The panicked Yoshi struggled harder and tried to pull away.

For Undine’s sake, calm down!

Lich flexed his knees and gripped more tightly, his lungs starting to ache. He moved forward slowly and back once, exaggerating the movement, the beginnings of a silent “one-two-three”.

He started on the second, and got his wish. Ark was calm.

Too calm.

All pretence was gone now. He grabbed Ark around his ribs, pulled back, bunched up even more, and then pushed off the pipe with all of his might.

He felt Ark slide forward with him as the momentum carried, but then he jerked as he caught again. Lich let go lest he break his arms.

Stopping on the other side of the pool, he turned around to face Ark, bumping a rock with his foot. It seemed sturdy, so Lich knelt, gripped it between his legs, and reached forward. His lungs were telling him that breathing was desirable, his cheeks were bulging, and he felt like going to the surface, but there was no way he was going back without his brother.

Quickly, he wrapped his arms around Ark’s back, and tugged. Ark only moved forward a few inches. With a groan, he pulled again, but now there was no give. Lich crept forward in a half-crawl half-swim, grabbing down Ark as he moved forward until he found the caught leg.

Come on! Come on!

Clenching Ark’s shin, he prised his brother’s ankle out of the pipe and then away. He stifled his breath, quickly rolled Ark’s body over, clutched his chest and pulled Ark’s back against his front as he kicked off from the bottom and swum to the surface, his chest gulping for breath.

He gasped noisily as he emerged and drew in the crisp night desert air mixed with the weedy stink of algae – ever so sweet to his deprived lungs. Holding Ark close to him, his head above the water, he frog-kicked backwards a few times around his brother’s legs messily until his ankles dragged on the pebbly bank. He then hauled Ark onto the shore under the bridge, turned him onto his side and propped him up with his bent knee.

“Ark?” he spoke, loudly. “Can you hear me?”

He watched for any sign of movement, but none happened. If he had gone limp like that, it meant there was water in his airway, so Lich gripped Ark’s mouth and pulled it open – indeed, water flowed out.

With his throat clear, it meant that Lich could go to the next step. Having magic part of his life while he grew up, he did what he was taught at school.

He reached into his Mana Storage and pulled out an ornate silver chalice, and then pushed on Ark shoulder so he rolled onto his back. The vessel had a metal lid clasped on until Lich undid it. He then raised the grail in a divine plea, opened Ark’s mouth with one hand and then poured the sparkling contents into his mouth with the other until the cup was empty. Then he sat back on his haunches, and waited with bated breath.

Three long seconds later, Ark gasped. His eyes shot open, and he snapped into a sitting position, before he twisted towards Lich and bowed his head, coughing and spluttering. He drew a few settling breaths once the fit had passed.

“So I take it I’m not dead yet,” he spoke plainly.

“Well, it turns out that we’ve been wrong all along,” Lich sighed, and flashed a grin. “Eriputos looks exactly like the Koopa Kingdom.”

Ark gave his brother a quizzical look.

“No, we’re not dead,” Lich answered in resignation.

“Just making sure,” Ark said dismissively. He winced. “I suppose I wouldn’t feel awful if I was.”

“Awful? What sort of awful do you mean?”

Ark pulled the side of his mouth, and removed his waterlogged cloak. “Like…I don’t know. Not sick, but…I feel light and heavy at the same time.”

“You’re probably a bit shocked,” Lich replied. “Do you want to stay here for a while?”

Ark looked around and threw his cloak to where Lich had flung his. “I don’t want to get us in danger, Dy.”

“I have the Cyan Arc and enough energy for spells and to sense the Mana Field. I don’t mind either way.”

Ark gave the decision a moment’s thought and then nodded.

“Alright,” Lich replied. He put the empty chalice back in his Mana Storage. “I figured you might have wanted that, considering you’re only wearing one boot.”

“I am?” Ark jumped, looking down at feet. One was inside an emerald-green boot, while the other was bare.

“You did bring a spare pair, didn’t you?” Lich asked, concerned.

Ark nodded, and then jumped again. “Spear!” he yelped, looking around frantically.

“Over there in the water,” Lich answered, pointing. “If you’ve still got its protection enabled, you’ll have to grab it.”

Ark closed his eyes and felt the Field. Lich frowned. Why didn’t his brother take his word? He paused, and then thought, Well, I don’t know if I’d take his, either…

Shaking his doubts aside, he waited for Ark to open his eyes again. He didn’t, but he lay back on the gravel, putting his arms behind his head as a pillow.

Lich got up and walked over to the cloaks. He thought that it was about time they needed a wash, but, as he scooped them up and folded them over an arm like a waiter’s towel, he tried to work out how they could be dried. Apart from providing protection against the elements, they were their disguises, and now that everyone was presumably looking for orange and magenta Yoshies, the less skin they could show, the better. The cloaks would dry fairly quickly once the sun came up, but they’d have to go without for now. Firelight was too risky. His mind made up, he scrunched his way over to a trestle and threw a cloak over a cross beam.

“Dy?” Ark called.

“Yeah?” Lich answered, spreading out the other cloak.

“Remember the pool? At the bottom of the waterfall back home?”

Lich closed his eyes and smiled, bowing his head in pleasant reflection at their childhood playground. “I’ll never forget.”

“Being here’s sort of like that. It’s by the stream, quiet, there’s a tinge of forbidding… Promise me you’ll take me there, Dy.”

Lich turned. “I promise.”

Ark grinned and settled back a bit more comfortably. Lich smiled and got back to spreading the cloaks over the beam, not that it was going to do much, but it would help. His brother’s smile showed that there was still some good humour left in him; the flood hadn’t washed all of his mirth away.

“Dy? Can I ask you something?”

Lich turned again, noting the slightly nervous tone, seeing Ark look towards him. “Go ahead.”

“What did happen the first time you were here?”

Lich flinched and looked around suspiciously.

“You don’t have to answer if you…don’t want…to…” Ark trailed off, grimacing at his brother’s reaction.

“I want to.”

Ark propped himself up with his arms as Lich walked over and sat cross-legged beside him. He bowed his head as he gathered his thoughts.

“Like Popo used to tell us, Yoshies who are in great need and go to Olympus get rewarded. The pantheon tends to be good at differentiating between deep-seated selfish desires and genuine, heartfelt petitions of need, but in my experience, just because they’re immortal doesn’t mean they’re infallible.”

Ark cocked his head.

“You’ll see what I mean when I take you there. But anyway, mortals do this in the Aurorium, the place where the Gods and Goddesses converse with each other and let everyone know what’s happening and all those sort of things; pretty much the centre of the Olympus community.

“So, a few months after I met the Markior, I was hanging out in there when there’s this tapping on the door. In flew an owl, flapped around a few times, perched on the rostrum and made her petition.”

“An owl?” Ark asked. “But isn’t it for Yos–”

“Yeah. She was a Yoshi, but a curse had turned her into an owl.”

Ark nodded his understanding.

“Her name was Rose, and the witch that had turned her into an owl had the foresight to tell her what objects were needed to break the curse. Not what I’d have done if I’d made the hex, though, but I guess she was overconfident in her abilities, and underestimated Olympus’ power and resolve.

“Most of the items were fairly simple to get, easily found around Olympus or in the holy abodes, and thus I didn’t commit them to memory. But there were two more required: one was a golden cauldron to make a potion in, and that’s a tale of its own. You wanted to know why I was here.”

“Kart said something about a gold tooth,” Ark mused. “And Karkok seemed to think what you did was pretty bad.”

Lich nodded, looked around suspiciously, leant close and whispered in Ark’s ear, “It was Bowser’s gold tooth, and I took it clean out of his mouth.”

Ark guffawed and pulled back, and looked at Lich incredulously. Then, he remembered Lich’s connections, and his face turned from amused to awed disbelief.

“You…took…”

“Shh! Not so loud!” Lich whispered hoarsely.

Ark gibbered silently. “But…but how?”

“I broke into Bowser’s Keep, went upstairs, came across him, threw the Boomerang so it was gone before he knew it, and fled,” Lich explained. “Oh, and I even had time to note the new model of Mechakoopas – I would have stolen one for you.”

“But…but isn’t it full of guards and…how weren’t you noticed?”

“Yes, and I just walked in the front door claiming I was there on official Fa’Diel business, being a Guardian and all – it’s quite open-door for such a sensitive institution, and guards tend not to be noted for their personal intelligence. Once inside, I had to be careful, though I had some insider knowledge from Karkok when I met him in Va’kotiku, and material from the Aurorium archives helped. I also had an electronics tracker with me so I could neutralise the cameras with this,” Lich said, patting the Boomerang. “However, that got destroyed as I fled. Pity, I could use one again while we’re here.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” Ark asked.

“She was very thankful for our efforts, and disappeared soon afterwards. We were all very welcoming to her and she could have stayed a lot longer, but as soon as she was returned to her Yoshian state, she was gone. Interesting type, too. I guess if she’d stayed around longer, history might have been different, and we mightn’t be here.

“But, here we are. I guess you can say that since I’ve studied Koopan at university so I can speak it fluently, as you know, and I’ve been able to penetrate the most important building in the entire Kingdom to take a part of the most important Koopa, getting three Koopas out to the border should be easy. That is, should have been easy,” Lich sighed. “I’ve been a little too confident in the lack of Koopan decorum. They’ve come at us much faster than I expected they would, no thanks to Va’kotiku. I’d just thought we’d be able to come in and make our way around quickly but cautiously. Honestly, if you told me even two days’ ago how we would have ended up under this bridge, I’d have laughed at you. But, thanks to them, we’re actually ahead of what I planned. I thought we’d be in Talk’gu tonight, and–”

There was a metallic rattle on the other bank, ascending the hillside, and stopped. Ark sat bolt upright.

“That’s the Spear, isn’t it?” Lich asked his brother, glancing at him askew.

Ark closed his eyes and felt the Field. “Gulto,” he swore, and pulled a black pair of boots out of his storage while Lich got to his feet. The rattling started again as he started to don them and got further away. “Can’t you encase it in ice or something? Trap it in the pipe?”

Lich began his invocation, and blue flares appeared around his feet. He then focused his mind in the Mana Field and sought the Spear’s dark form: across the stream, up the hill, and…there! He extended his arms to full length and formed a picture frame with his thumbs and forefingers around the Spear’s presence in his mental vision, and drew a deep breath.

It caught and he coughed. Little flying insects suddenly found themselves trapped in ice and falling out of the air while the Spear rattled on. He stretched his fingers, held his arms out and kinaesthetically pushed the spell aside, leftwards, cancelling it. Before he opened his eyes, he heard Ark groan in frustration and charge into the water, his rattled nerves set aside for now.

“Oi! Wait for me!” Lich called, and dashed about their resting place. He grabbed the wet cloaks and put them into his Storage. He growled as he noticed Ark’s discarded boot, just waiting for a KBT agent to find; it was duly added to the collection. He then swept his foot from side to side, clearing their footprints in the gravel as he moved backwards to the waterline. Once he was standing ankle deep, he turned around.

Ark was floundering in the water as he tried to cross, the current already sweeping him about ten yards downstream. Lich splashed into the creek and swam towards him. He saw Ark’s shock of blond hair before him, easy to spot, trying to make a break towards the shore. The current was pulling at him, dragging him along.

The trees rushed by like green and brown walls.

Lich put his face in the water and began to swim.

The water was cold from the melted snow.

He brought his head up to take a breath and watched Ark flounder against the pull of the current, dragged closer and closer to the waterfall. He kicked his legs rapidly, closing the distance between him and his brother.

Ark made a break for the shore with a sudden lunge, but did not succeed. He tried again, and failed again, growling in frustration.

Lich had to protect his younger brother from harm. It was his duty, greater than all other duties. And as he drew near, he saw Ark aim for a fallen tree.

Ark grabbed the saddle of a leaning palm tree and began to inch his way towards shore. He looked behind him towards Lich and the pipe, about thirty, forty yards upstream, wincing as he heard another distant rattle.

Focused on saving his brother, protecting his brother, Lich also aimed for the tree. Ark was stuck at the end and needed his support to get to shore.

Ark worked his way towards the palm tree’s base. The trunk ascended and he let his feet dangle beneath him, touching firm ground with his boots once he was stretched out.

Lich rammed into the tree and started to climb onto its trunk, except it was hard to do with the current.

He looked towards Lich curiously, not letting go just yet. What was he doing? That wasn’t a good way to get to shore; he would have known that.

He stretched his leg and let the current push it up and over the log.

“Dy,” Ark called softly.

“Dy!” Ark cried out fearfully as Lich clambered on, pointing towards his brother.

“Shore’s this way, Dy,” Ark called to the back of Lich’s head.

“Give me your hand!” Lich barked, stretching his out.

Ark grew frustrated and tried to attract his attention. “Er, Lich, I’m over here! I don’t need this…”

He trailed off as it clicked in his mind.

“No, Lich, I can help myself!” Ark spoke. “I don’t need yours!”

Ark splashed into the waist-deep water as he let go of the tree and then lunged at his brother.

And then Ark was suddenly gone, and he could hear nothing but the rush of water and the distant rumble of the falls.

“Dy, stop it, you’re scaring me!” Ark hissed as he grabbed the tree with one hand and pulled at Lich’s leg with the other.

Lich yelped as he toppled into the water. He resurfaced a few feet downstream, treaded water for a moment and found his foot hitting the bank, so he stood up and looked at Ark, wading towards him. “I…I…”

“Come on, I cannot afford you going insane,” Ark said firmly, and guided his brother up towards the shore.

Lich stammered as he was helped up the bank. He turned to Ark with a blank expression once he was out of the water. “I…I’ve lost my brother,” he spoke weakly.

“Dy, I’m right here!” Ark said emphatically. He gripped Lich’s shoulders and shook him roughly. “Snap out of it!”

Lich made a sort of whimpering groan and then shook his head from side to side. Finally, he gripped Ark’s wrists and pushed them away. He then stamped off for a few steps, still clearing his mind. Ark watched him go.

Then, Lich turned around suddenly and with two strides he was before Ark. “Don’t you ever,” he pounded his fists on Ark’s shoulders, “ever,” and again, “ever,” once more, “do that to me again!” Lich growled.

Ark jumped back after the third hit and raised his fists protectively. “What, by Drepatos–”

“I almost lost you not even fifteen minutes ago and here you go rushing into the water again and get carried by the current and I have to follow you,” Lich hissed. He thrust his finger out and held it beneath Ark’s chin, who noticed his reddened, puffy eyes. “You’ve only been back in my life for a number of weeks. Weeks! I can’t lose you again! I just – can’t!”

He looked up into Ark’s eyes, his lip trembling as he tried to find something else to say. Then he fell apart and latched onto Ark, sobbing on his shoulder.

Ark stood there blankly for a moment, stunned. Cautiously he returned the favour, first his left, then his right arm, but not firmly – a token. He didn’t know how Lich was going to react.

Soon Lich settled down, sniffed, pulled away and rubbed his eyes. “Let’s find your Spear,” he muttered.