Annie awoke later that same day, and she felt awful. She screamed at the black marble with alternating rage and sorrow while it lay silent and motionless on the bed before her.
She knew it was her own fault though.
She'd wanted to know.
She couldn't imagine how she could go on with her life as it had been. Why did she watch that? What was wrong with her that she felt like she needed to know about this? Nobody would be able to live a normal life after seeing such horrifying things.
But still she'd watched.
It was the same problem she had with the kids in her classes. She always tried too hard to relate to them, and then when they opened up, she listened. When they told her of the hardships they faced, she heard things she didn't always want to hear, and she would spend the remainder of those days forcing out a mask of happiness and normalcy when she was with her family afterwards.
Still, she listened.
She was the only person who might listen to some of these kids, and she would at least do that much for them when she was unable to also offer advice, especially they were too afraid to take action in some of the more disturbing cases. Not usually disturbing to the point that she felt obligated to step in, but when they were…
Annie cared too much. She always had. She'd always wanted to make kids grow up to be great people, and she truly cared whether they did.
That was why she'd watched.
But now she'd seen it, and she didn't know what to do.
Ir'alith…
The blue-skinned woman was dead now. She'd asked for something bizarre and unreasonable, but had Annie even tried to listen?
No, she hadn't cared this time.
She didn't even understand why.
That wasn't quite right though.
She knew why.
She'd seen someone trying to take something that was hers, something she'd worked hard for, and she'd lashed out. It was the same reaction she had whenever Becca got too close to Carl.
If Annie could go back, she wasn't going to say anything different in the end, but maybe she could've at least listened? She wasn't sure what she could do, but she knew that a woman who had suffered like this deserved a much more compassionate response.
She deserved to be cared about.
"The girl is alive," the black marble said at some point while Annie lay thinking on the bed.
"What?" Annie looked over to the black marble. She knew now that the girl was named Isemeine Charus and that she'd been the headless body Carl had been carrying around as he created his puzzle maze.
She'd been engaged to…
Annie tried to relax, starting by unclenching her fists and then pushing a sense of relaxation through her body like she did when she was holding a yoga position.
It helped.
A little.
"The girl is called Mina, and she still lives," said the black marble. "I've read her thoughts too, and she's happier now. Would you like to see?"
Annie shuddered. This girl, Isemeine, was alive somehow even after losing her head? It was another world, but was something like that really possible? She thought about it for a moment, but in the end, it was another easy decision that she knew she'd probably regret. She'd already seen so many awful things happen to this girl. She needed to know that Isemeine was doing better now if she was alive somehow.
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The ninth day had started, and Annie had never been more in love with her husband than she was at that moment. She'd just watched him give Isemeine a pep talk before the girl nervously went to drive on the strange, Romanesque city's racetrack for the first time, and it was the thoroughness of how reassuring he was, the confidence and trust that he instilled in that same girl whom she'd watched be so horrifically treated that made her fall in love with him all over again.
He clearly didn't have any other reason for doing what he was doing besides trying to be the great father that he was.
Annie wondered how much he knew about the girl. At first she'd had her misgivings as they romped around the city, noticing—though she tried not to after what she'd seen—that the girl was still extremely, almost painfully attractive, but Carl acted the same way he would if he was walking around with Bobby or Sammy, continuing to be overly protective about even the smallest things, and the girl smiled impishly up at him in a way that was reminiscent of Sammy's mischief-loving grin. Then she'd started to worry that Carl was spending more time with this girl than their own daughters, but no, that couldn't be right either. He'd been completely normal at home lately, doting just as much as—if not even more than—he always did.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
This was almost like…extracurricular parenting? She didn't know how else to…
Her eyes widened, and she gasped as Isemeine's car exploded. The image she watched was somehow able to be shown from different perspectives, and she watched in third person, as she'd done most times, while Carl moved at lightning speed, managing to rescue the girl before she surely would have died. Her own terror at the prospect mirrored Isemeine's, though the girl's fear didn't fade when she was safe in Carl's arms.
"Who's Emma?" Annie asked with a deepening frown as the image cut off after Isemeine buried her face completely into Carl's chest.
"We'll need to look at earlier thoughts," said the black marble.
The edge separating you from your world thins as time moves forward. Your time is limited, and still your mind has many edges.
"Okay, so play them fast," Annie said. She didn't know why, but she was beginning to feel a sense of urgency.
She was also beginning to feel something else.
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"What the fuck is wrong with these people?" Annie shouted as she watched Isemeine scream when the girl realized she was sitting in a bathtub filled with blood.
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"They should all die," Annie muttered to herself as she watched yet another man grope Isemeine in the too-revealing dress that her sister had set her up with for some sort of ballroom dance. "They need to die."
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"Stop," Annie whined, pressing her hands to her temples. "Stop. Please, stop. I understand who Emma is now. Go back. I can't watch any more of that. How can her family be so awful?"
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"No, Mina! No, she won't get you!" Annie called futilely to the girl huddled in her chair, crying as she wrestled with herself over surrendering to her nightmarish sister to save Carl from her wrath. "Carl won't let her. He won't! You're safe now! Don't…" She held her breath and pressed her hands to her mouth as the girl tip-toed down the stairs and said her quiet, tearful farewell to Carl, who was sleeping in his favorite chair. "No, no, no…" she murmured.
Mina walked towards the exit with halting steps, and Annie did her best to will her into turning around.
But she didn't.
She kept going in her love and determination to spare Carl from some imagined threat. She opened the door and…
"I did that!" the black marble exclaimed when Mina was suddenly back on the upper floor of the workshop she'd rented days earlier.
Annie let out a deep sigh, feeling immense relief that the girl wouldn't fall into her insane sister's clutches. Then she frowned. "Wait, you… You trapped her! You didn't save her!"
An edge exists between the intent and the result, but dungeon cores such as we must protect our treasure. When the human named Mina became treasure, an edge was created to separate her from harm.
As Annie watched, the building itself came alive around Mina, brutally and efficiently killing a number of people who seemed surprised that they'd been noticed.
"The treasure must be protected," the black marble said, sounding incredibly satisfied.
"But you just said she couldn't ever leave!" Annie protested.
"Look, I'm going to level with you here, I've never had human treasures before," said the black marble, which was apparently this thing called a dungeon core that could make video game-like mazes in real life. "I got a little excited, and maybe I made some mistakes, but a dungeon core always learns from its failures if it wants to avoid getting smashed. See, keep watching."
The memory videos continued to play.
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"Okay, so he told you off," Annie said, feeling more relief as Carl very firmly and thoroughly told the cores they had to do whatever Mina told them while continuing to protect her. "And she recovered after a couple days."
The girl in the picture smiled broadly, and she smiled in turn. She was amazed at how resilient Mina seemed to be, even after everything that had happened to her. "That's good," she murmured. She took another bite of some sugary, slightly tart fruit she'd started to like over the past few days. She'd begun to have a gnawing worry that the bright, sweet girl she'd watched stroll around the city with Carl would never be able to overcome her fear.
"There's also these other memories that I didn't want to show you at first…"
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"Wait, wait, what?" Annie ran her hands through her hair as she tried to understand the memories she was watching. "So… Ir'alith's alive? And she and Mina have been trying to rescue me?"
"That's what it looks like to me," said the dungeon core.
A swell of emotion washed over Annie. "I'm so glad she's okay," she whispered, her eyes starting to water. "I'm so glad." She'd accepted that Ir'alith had died because of her, and it left a deep sorrow within, a void that had subtly grown over the days as she thought about it in the back of her mind, feeling the weight of someone's death on her conscience. But now her body felt lighter, and those worries were melting away.
More memories played in rapid succession, and she laughed at the antics of Mina's dwarf friend and Ir'alith's giant demon friend in turn, even as the girl herself grew visibly annoyed.
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The tenth day had started, and Annie awoke from a surprisingly restful sleep to a definitive statement.
"Finis says today is your last day before you go back to your world, so you should make the most of it," said the dungeon core.
Annie rushed through her new morning routine, but she stopped when she got into the bathroom. "Why'd you change the bathroom anyway?" she asked for the first time. The bathroom she'd had when she arrived had lights, and a hair dryer, and tiles, and seemed modern. This one had a toilet, a crude shower that was little more than a nozzle on the stone wall, and a sink with a mirror nailed into the wall over it, and the whole thing was decidedly old.
"Dungeon cores can't take over existing structures without the approval of their partner," explained the dungeon core. "We took over this room, which is allowed, but taking over more than one room would be against the rules, so instead I made a portal here to connect you to another bathroom that's inside the dungeon and very safe."
"That's a stupid rule," Annie grumbled. She hadn't realized she'd missed having a hair dryer until she no longer had one.
"It is, isn't it," the dungeon core said, sounding thoughtful. "Maybe I should change it. Where do you want to start today?"