We Are Forever Chastoinette

Chastity and Toinette spent about nine days recuperating. Toinette grew to look up to Chastity a lot. The woman was clearly very experienced, and didn’t mind being hands on. Toinette, for her part, enjoyed getting her hands dirty, and would spend many days under the tutelage of the fire-wielding firebrand. The trials involved were often hard. Sometimes the Fae ended up in more tight places that she would have thought, but Toinette could feel herself reaching her peak performance as she worked. As long as she was methodical and took her time, everything turned out great.


The editors would like to apologise for that last paragraph, and let you know the people responsible have been fired.

---

“So tell me, Toinette...how long can you hold your breath?”

“Real long. Why'd you ask?”

“Well I ask, because up at the top of the mountain the air’s real thin and I’m gonna have to be wearing a breathing mask.”

“... Why’re we going up a mountain? I mean, sounds rad, but…”

“You can’t have steak every night without getting tired of steak. And since your redhead hasn’t shown up to bring you back, and with the crime issue handled…”

(It had been damn brutal, from what Toinette had picked up by osmosis. Chastity knew some nasty people, in ways that were not even remotely fun.)

“It’s time to go do other fun stuff. First up, Peak-Racing. We’re gonna get on top of a mountain and go back down the fast way: on big ass kites.”

“That sounds super dangerous and incredibly awesome. I'm in. Let's gooooo.”

They did not actually have to climb the mountain: there was a series of greased rope crank elevators manned by other people. It still took nearly four hours to get to the top, but that was better than actual climbing: it would have taken potentially a week. Three hours into the upward trek, Chastity had put on her breathing mask, constantly inserting small pills into the front of it every twenty minutes.

Toinette was coping by deciding not to breathe. She was an Astral being and technically didn't need to do anything. Unfortunately, this made people look at her funny. The illusion of her glamor kept up only as long as she consciously pretended to be "normal”, and not breathing violated that. She hoped she didn't look like a zombie or anything. A zombie swaddled in furs (Chas had insisted, she hadn't felt like saying no, and anyway she looked pretty cute in them).

It also helped with the fact the temperature was dropping the higher they went. Toinette was as much affected by that as a need for air, but while Chastity had changed battle outfits…

This one a kind of combination of a minidress and pants...well, one legged pants. Chastity wore armor on her right arm over the dress’ sleeves, and a gauntlet on her left forearm, but between the lack of leg, the shortness of the dress, and the fact that Chastity had cut a massive, plunging neckline down the front of her outfit, it barely covered everything important. And of course, boots, belt with pouches and packs and her whip, swords on her back, and having let down her hair and had it tied in a tight braid that ran down her back. And the necklaces, which Chastity had added to with some weird length of metal she’d inserted into the middle of her braid. Toinette mainly noticed these details as part of her usual ogling.

That neckline. Yeeeeees.

Anyway, it still left an immense amount of skin exposed. Fine when you were down in a town with mildly summer weather. Up here where snow was falling and the wind carried a bitter chill that would have tested heavy duty coats, she barely seemed to notice the cold. That was attracting more stares than Toinette, more than what stares Chastity already attracted.

“We're a real odd couple, huh?” Toinette disregarded another guy’s slightly-too-long stare as they got off the final elevator.

“Odd enough. By the way, don’t touch my bare skin for now.”

“Why?”

“My internal body temperature's been increased so much you might actually burn yourself.”

“...shouldn’t you, like, start dying if your body heat goes up like more than, ten degrees? I dunno. My friend Rory told me about someone she knew who had a fever of like 105 and this was real bad and they should have died but I don’t know what normal body heat is…”

“98 or so. 105 is lethal fever, yes. I’m not normal. Body’s at 200+.”

Toinette whistled. “I'm right. You are hot.”

“As fuck.”

When Chastity had said ‘kites’, what she had really meant were ‘hang gliders’, or at least, a mechanism that skewed closer to that concept than a kite.

“Pretty simple. Strap it all on and run and jump off the side, it opens automatically, you race across the land to the finish line. No fair using your wings.”

“Fine, fine. Ya killjoy.” Toinette stuck her tongue out. Then she considered her kite.

“What happens if it doesn't open? Asking for a friend.”

“You basically fall into a really big pit filled with gross slime, and you slide down through the slime which keeps you warm until you get pooped out into a cave where you get medical treatment and stuff. That’s why you need to jump off a certain side, or else if it doesn’t open, well...you hit mountain.”

Toinette considered the slime.

“...Cool. Alright, let's do this!”

“You want to make a bet on who wins?” Chastity was assembling the framework onto her body.

“Sure!” Toinette followed suit. “What we bettin’?”

“Well, if I lose...I’ll introduce you to some fine company and hang around.”

Toinette forced herself to stay calm. “And if I lose?”

“..of COURSE I have a whip.”

“...This all seems like a win to me. But hell, let's do it.”

Toinette finished assembling her kite, waited until it was their turn to go, JUMPED -

Chastity had clearly done this before, but Toinette had wings and was more accustomed to the sensation of flight. As such, their feet both hit the ground of the finish line at the same time, or close enough that Toinette couldn't tell the difference.

There was a slightly awkward moment as she untangled herself from the kite.

“...So, who's this fine company?” She asked, trying to stay casual.

“Oh, they prefer ropes.”

----

Another day...another mountain.

“Ever skiied?”

“Nope!” Toinette looked down at the slats of wood strapped to her feet. “Does this involve going down at high speeds? The mountain, I mean.”

“Yeah. I, however, am going to use a board. Because that’s what I know. You can’t break your neck, right?”

“Nope! Uh… why do you ask?”

“Well normally you need to learn stuff or else you can go out of control and fall down and crash into things and get hurt and die...but you have wings and stuff. So basically...point the skies down and go down. You can try and mimic me...and I guess if you fall and stuff, just use your wings. I won’t race you to the bottom the first time: this requires a little use of the ol’ noodle.”

“Sure.”

Toinette pushed off and hit a tree within 5 seconds.

“Fuck.”

“As you can see, I only brought you up here because I can’t break you.”

The Fae picked herself up, brushing the snow from her clothes. “‘S okay! I’m okay! It’s my pride that’s hurt, not me.” Her wings glittered into existence on her back, carrying her back to the start point. “Let’s try this again!”

She took off and went over a cliff edge.

“Don’t say a word,” she grumbled as she flew back after a minute or two.

“My lips are sealed.”

Toinette managed to actually go down the mountain on her third attempt... with about a thirtieth of the grace that Chastity did. And with about 100 times the crashes.

“No joke or insult here...maybe we ought to try sledding instead?”

Toinette, looking disheveled and with blue bruises on her skin, looked up at Chastity. “What’s that involve?”

“Same thing except sitting down on something.”

“I like that idea a lot. Let’s do that instead.” Toinette considered throwing her skis down the mountain.

“I just have to find a…”

There was a howl.

A weird howl. In that it could very well have not been a howl at all. Being up on mountains had shown Toinette that the wind could make plenty of weird, scary noises just by hitting this and that at the right angle. That might have been that, the sound echoing across the mountain.

...except something on it gave her goosebumps. Chastity had cocked her head.

“...I think that WAS just the wind…”

“But you’re not sure?”

“Well, no.”

“Then what could it be?”

“...nothing that will bother us.”

“...is it an ogre?” Toinette cocked her head. “I have ogres back home. They make noises like that sometimes.”

“No, not an ogre. They have bass.”

“Hm.” Toinette’s fingers twitched. “By ‘nothing that will bother us’, do you mean it’s gonna leave us alone, or we can totally beat it no sweat?”

“The former. I think. Ugh. It’s nothing. Just the wind.”

“Cool! So, sledding! Do we sit together?”

“We can.”

---

The sledding went fine.

The bad stuff happened elsewhere, which is why Toinette, the next night, found herself deep in a wintery forest, having tracked down Chastity who had left. And met up with company.

“You sure you want to hang out during this, Nette?”

“Everyone else in that damn cabin-mine place is either walking around like a spazz or drunk. I think I’d rather be out here doing whatever.”

“Tracking.” The giant man said. Chastity was indeed kneeling by a set of tracks in the snow. Human feet.

“Toinette, keep up above the snow. Need to keep these things clear.”

“Sure.” Toinette’s wings blurred and she levitated upwards. She looked up at the giant man.

“You’re tall!” She said, for lack of anything better to say. He just grunted, and then said something in a foreign language, one that Chastity replied in.

The man actually looked dressed for the weather: he was covered in black furs, five or six layers of them. His head and face were a mess of scars, like he’d come out the wrong end of a few fights with bears. And when he growled at Chastity’s reply, Toinette was pretty sure she saw teeth too sharp to belong in the mouth of a normal man.

“Could still be a Sapspawn.” He said.

“When we start finding the tracks further and further apart, you’ll have to come to terms, Purr.”

Toinette said nothing. This seemed personal between them. Purr snarled, though it seemed more in general anger than anything towards Chastity, and then turned and stalked off into the woods. Within seconds, between the night and his black furs, he had vanished from sight.

“...You really should go back to the cabin, Toinette. That wind we heard earlier? Wasn’t wind.”

“No shit? Yeah, I'm staying. What's the worst that could happen? I fought a giant penis monster two weeks ago. I'm ready for anything.”

“Best hope it’s a Sapspawn then.” Chastity said, as she formed two fireballs and hovered them around her shoulders for light. “And before you ask. There tree. Hard bark. Sap rarely leak, but sometimes do. Smell sweet. Taste sweet. You have baby....it damage baby. Very, very badly. Turn baby into monster that should not be. Sapspawn. If it’s one of those we could just be dealing with a very, very mean wolf, or bear.”

“That was an unnecessary terrifying backstory.” Toinette's fingers sparked and hissed. “Good thing Fae don't have babies like that.”

“The sapspawn would be better. Stay VERY close. Like you’re trying to crawl inside me and not in a fun way.” Chastity was starting to follow the tracks, her steps unnaturally light. Some sort of special boots. Toinette would have known for sure if she’d ever met Christine, who had footwear that let her kick off thin air. “But tracks like these...well, it’s really bad. We’re talking you, I, and Purr might have to run back to the cabin, get everyone, and put as many miles between us and this mountain as we can.”

Toinette followed, silently wishing Julius was here. Her fingers flexed, sparks playing off of them.

“That… sucks.”

“And blows.” Chastity was following the tracks, measuring something at swordpoint. “Fuck.”

Along they walked, and the tracks were getting wider and wider apart. Even Toinette, who knew nothing about tracking, knew human beings could not made strides that long. You’d need some sort of outside assistance.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Chastity kept muttering, before kneeling down and prodding a finger in one of the tracks, the finger coming up with the faintest trace of blood on the snow. “Ithaqua.”

“That's not a nice name.”

“Where you come from, do you have wendigo legends?”

“Cannibalism and stuff? The ogres have some legends. Is this the same deal?”

“Yeah. They say that if you kill and eat another person in the wrong place...it’ll call a spirit on the wind that will hunt and devour you. Body n’ soul. It has a few names, but this...this is worse.”

The tracks were impossibly wide now, like the man was doing one legged long jumps every time.

“There was an avalanche that happened here about six weeks ago. Five men missing. Found the bodies...gnawed on. One of them killed at least one of the others while they were trapped in a pocket under the snow, cut meat off in desperation...didn’t save him. He froze to death. But the crime was still committed and the foulness on the wind was called...it got here too late. It can’t find its prey. It’s confused. It thinks it’s being concealed. So...it will find out where it is. Take you away. Drag you along at the wind’s pace...as your feet crack, bleed, and burn away. And more than that. Until you tell it where what it’s owed is. And...it doesn’t understand that its prey is gone. Just that it’ll find it, until it runs out of liars. Ithaqua.”

“...Is there a right place and time to eat someone?”

“From the stories Purr would tell, you might not be seen if you did it without knowing. Or if the corpse died on its own, and you’re just...helping yourself to the meat. It’s killing...killing and then eating...that’s the crime. Or maybe nothing will save you. Or us. Even I don’t know if I can stop the wind.”

“Thanks for the answer.” Toinette looked at the insane tracks and really, truly wished Julius was here. He knew how to deal with crazy shit like this. It was his job. Well, was.

Chastity stopped.

No more tracks.

She glanced around. Trees were thinned out. Pristine snow and darkness, and the wind.

“...You might want to start singing again, Toinette.”

There was something WRONG in the distance. Something that even Toinette’s eyes couldn’t puzzle out. Was it watching? Coming for them? Or calling to them?

Chastity drew her other sword, and with a quick snap, both were set on fire.

Toinette began to hum, this time something a little jauntier. Something that might be danced to in a tavern. The fire in her fingers intensified.

Something came, on the wind…

---

And with that, Chastity stopped, and with a smirk, putting her legs up on the table, she hoisted her empty mug.

“And so, gentlemen...if you want to hear what came NEXT...you’ll need to pony up for another round.”

Toinette grinned at the chorus of grumbling and good-natured jeers, and drained the contents of her own mug.

“Get me the next strength up!” She hollered, slamming it down on the table. “I’m gonna be up all night!”