I fumble blindly for a pouch, my fingers stuffy and numb as I pull the drawstring open and dig my hand into the sack. My fingers close around several frost seeds, and I push mana into them as I pull them back out and throw them across the floor.
Enrold’s footsteps stop. I hold my breath. My pulse is a jackhammer. All my nerves are alight with heightened sensation. The rough grit of wood pressing into my hip and elbow. The throbbing pain from where Enrold’s hand had been around my wrist. Spotting burns where the poison had splashed against my skin. I blink rapidly, willing my sight to return, but the smoke won’t clear for several minutes at least.
[Sanity Level: 81%]
His footsteps rapidly stomp a few feet to my left.
“Cheap tricks,” he growls. “But it’s only buying you a few seconds.”
He’s blinded by the smoke, too. The thought gives me a brief burst of hope, but Enrold’s right that it’s only bought me a little time. I’ll have to take it—every second counts.
I throw another seed, this time so it strikes several feet away. Wind gusts against me as Enrold moves, racing toward the sound. And then, finally, I hear what I’ve been waiting for. His boot scrapes across the ground like he’s slipped.
Thud.
The force of the fall shakes the whole room, sending the house swaying. I don’t give him an opportunity to recover. I leap to my feet and feel my way across the wall, reaching for the doorknob I can see in my mind’s eye, only another two paces away.
“What did you do?” Enrold demands, his words slurred.
The poison must finally be taking effect. I Check him even as my hand finally closes around the doorknob.
[HP: 45/120]
Meanwhile, I’m down to 68/90. It was close, but I’m going to make it out. In the end, that’s all that matters. I turn the knob, and the door clicks as it begins to swing open.
Enrold roars, throwing himself at me. I slam into the doorframe as he smashes into my side, and we both tumble to the ground as the front door swings open. I reach for the hearth, for freedom, but he yanks my arm away with a violent twist. I feel something pop, and I cry out as pain lances through my shoulder.
[19 points of Sundering damage sustained.]
[Sanity Level: 80%]
I struggle to twist around, all rational thoughts fleeing me. I’m no longer thinking, no longer planning—I exist only as a desperate thrashing of pain and emotions. Every last one of my instincts is screaming at me: you won’t die here. You won’t die here!
Enrold slams me onto my back, and my vision flashes white with a stab of agony as my arm catches under my hip, now limp and useless. Bile threatens to surge up my throat as the pain overwhelms me. I desperately and repeatedly strike his temple with my free hand, but I might as well be punching a wall. My fist stings, and Enrold ignores the blows, closing a hand around my neck.
[Sanity Level: 75%]
[Status Effect: Suffocation. You will lose 1 HP per second while the condition is in effect.]
I thrash against his grip, kicking and punching and jerking to get free as his hand tightens and I gargle in half a breath. My body flashes hot and cold, every frantic move fueled by terror and hate. I won’t die, I won’t die, I won’t die! I reach for everything, anything I have left.
[Knife removed from inventory.]
The handle manifests in my grip as I draw my arm back to punch him again. This time, when I slam my fist toward his head, I finally feel the blow connect. Enrold jerks to the side with a grunt, his hand loosening from around my neck. I gasp in a lungful of air, then I jerk my arm back—feeling the knife come un-stuck from the hard surface it had been embedded in. I stab at him again. And again.
[Sanity Level: 71%]
Enrold raises a defensive hand as he slumps to the side, tumbling off of me, and I surge upright to continue my onslaught.
[Sanity Level: 68%]
I am rage. I am revenge. I am euphoric with triumph, with an earned victory, hard-fought and deserved. He won’t be a threat to me or anyone I care about ever again.
I bat Enrold’s arm away as he weakly tries to protect himself, plunging my blade up and down like a machine. In the dark, in the thinning smoke, I can’t even see where I strike, and the thump of each blow feels surreal and distant. Like I’m not even here, it isn’t really me doing this. I watch, detached, as Enrold’s HP ticks away to 0.
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[EXP threshold met. Level up!]
[EXP threshold met. Level up!]
[Sanity Level: 63%]
A healing warmth washes over me, but the pain in my mind only continues to grow. I growl, clutching my skull as the static swirls through my brain. I need to do something. What is it? It’s important.
Cut. Chop. Dice.
I shudder, my knife still embedded in the body before me. This time, instead of yanking it out, I drag the blade down, cutting through the flesh.
[Sanity Level: 64%]
A shiver of elation passes through me. That was it. That was the right thing to do. So I do it again.
Instincts take over. After all the practice working in the Starlight’s kitchen these past few weeks, my hand practically moves all on its own. I only catch flashes of what I’m working on in the dark: a distant streetlight casts just enough light to trickle in the door, reflecting off the steel of my knife, and the wet along my arm. An overpowering odor of copper and death rises to engulf me.
[Daily Role Requirement satisfied.]
Gradually, my self awareness returns. The Sanity bar is filled back up. Sluggishly, my mind begins to process the graphic scene around me. What I’ve done. What it is I’m cutting to bits.
A horrified laugh burst from my mouth. This isn't real, is it? This is some nightmare. Some other person is sitting here, not me. My hand quivers, and I drop the blade. It clatters to the floor, the sudden noise like a gunshot. I jump at the sound, and then I begin to shake. Even my throat quakes as I take in a shaky breath, and when I let it out it’s more laughter. More horrified, shocked laughter of denial. This isn’t me. I didn’t do this!
I try to stop laughing, but it keeps pouring uncontrollably out of me. I’ve lost my mind. I’m going crazy. I just butchered a person like they were stew meat, and all I felt was relief.
“Sal?”
Cyros’s voice comes from outside. I twist around to look and try to bite down my laughter. I manage to hold it in for a second, but my breath bursts out of me once more—this time as a sob.
Cyros’s face is pinched in concern, but as his gaze trails down to my arms and hands, to the gore-soaked floor beyond me, his expression turns into one of shock.
“Gods’ grace,” he says, taking a half step closer. “What happened?”
“I—I messed up,” I say, my voice breaking. The trembling in my limbs turn every breath into a nervous laugh or sob, and I can’t seem to stay consistent between the two. It’s not funny. It’s repulsive. It’s surreal. “What have I done?” I croak. “What have I done?”
Cyros hesitates a moment longer, glancing around the bridge, then hurries to the door. “Come on,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “We need to get you out of here before anyone sees. If the City Guard realizes you’re involved…”
“They’ll what?” Manic laughter bursts from my lips. “I killed their captain. Oh, god.” I sob, my chest tightening as tears sting my eyes and blur my vision. “I killed him.”
“Come on,” Cyros says. “This is a mess. We’ll figure it out later. Now, we need to get out of here.”
He grabs me under each of my armpits and hoists me upright. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stand, but my feet stumble into position beneath me, and I sway, numb.
Cyros stops to bend back down and snatch up my knife, which he presses into my hand. “If you leave this behind, someone determined enough will be able to track it back to you. Is there anything else in there that could be traced to you that we need to grab before we leave?”
The knife swims in and out of focus in my blurred vision. Its handle feels cold and unwelcome in my grasp. I don’t want to be touching it anymore. I add it back into my inventory, and the blade vanishes from existence.
Cyros shakes my arm. “Sal, hurry! Did you leave anything behind?”
The edge in his voice rattles me out of my stupor. Cyros is putting himself at risk trying to help me. I have to focus—I need to pull myself together.
“Glass,” I mumble.
“What?” Cyros asks.
“And pottery,” I add, forcing myself to speak, even as I’m unable to still the uncontrollable shakes that continue to wrack my body. “Some of my bottles and jars broke. They’re in pieces. In… in there.” My eyes wander over the gore-soaked floor: Bits of broken potion bottles would be impossible to pick out amidst the mess.
“Great Abyss,” Cyros swears. “That might be a problem. I’ll tell Nieve when we get back and see if they can send someone to clean up. For now, there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s go.”
Cyros tugs on my arm, and I let him lead me away.
He takes me on a route I haven’t been, across dark, deserted bridges I hadn’t noticed before. His hand remains tight around my elbow, steering me on, as if he expects me to collapse or drift aimlessly away without his guidance. And maybe I might. My mind keeps circling between numbness and horror and revulsion, settling on neither long enough for me to fully process what I’m feeling. I don’t think I want to.
“Why are you here?” I finally croak, focusing on Cyros instead of everything else that’s fighting for attention in my head.
“I followed you, of course,” he says. “It’s your first mission. Someone needs to report the status back to the Guild.”
“You were watching?” I ask. That whole time I was fighting for my life—all that time after I started carving up the body—he only watched?
“From a distance,” he admitted. “I was waiting for you to slip back out the way you went in. As time passed, I realized something was wrong. I didn’t realize you’d opened the front door until I circled around the house.”
I sag, relieved. He didn’t just leave me to die. He didn’t just watch as I committed an atrocity. Even though he’s an assassin himself, even though he didn’t really do anything to help, somehow, that makes me feel better than anything else he’s said so far.
“I want to go home,” I say, tears spilling over and running in tickling rivers down my cheeks. I brush one hand across my face to rub the streaks away, but instead I feel something sticky smear across my face. I look down at my hands. The world is only black and white to me right now in the moonlight, and my hands are as dark as the shadows, glistening and wet.
“We’ll get you back to the Guild to get you cleaned up,” Cyros promises.
“The Guild,” I repeat.
The Guild doesn’t feel like home. But even as I think that, I’m not sure what home even means to me anymore: not Talia’s house, not Cyros’s presence, not the Starlight Inn. Before that—in my last life—what was home even then, either? Hospital beds? My childhood bedroom slowly cannibalized by machines and pill bottles? My parents?
My heart about bursts when I think of their faces. The faces I’ll never see again. They’re gone forever, left back on Earth, and now I’m starting to think a big part of me got left behind there, too.
I’m not really Sal anymore. Not the same Sal, at least. This Sal has less of her mind. Less of her heart. Less of her soul. This Sal is hollow from all the missing pieces.
Home? No. There is no home anymore.