The gorilla was more resilient than I had given it credit for. The thing managed to stay alive far longer than I expected, resulting in more than a few close calls as I underestimated the speed it could still manage. The gorilla tanked all the attacks it received with a blind rage that paid no heed to the pain it was feeling, even taking the full brunt of Ren’s blades without backing down.

It was obvious by that point that it had given up on the notion of winning the fight, but the pure hatred in its veins drove its body to its physical limit, utterly destroying its own flesh and bone in an attempt to drag me down with it. Pain seemed to become a foreign concept to it, and I almost felt bad for it by the time it finally collapsed to the ground in a heap of scorched flesh and matted fur. The stone armour had fallen apart at some point near the end as the gorilla lost control over its own Flux, and what was left behind on the ground was a mere echo of the majestic animal that had once been.

The clearing still raged with flame, and I could see that the surrounding trees were finally beginning to catch on, too, which meant that it was likely that the fire was going to spread until it naturally came to a stop. That worked in my favour, since I didn’t want to deal with all the other animals that had their eyes on my Flux Cores at the moment. Not only was my Flux reserve running low, but my body was also incredibly exhausted. The constant pressure I’d been dealing with was quickly catching up to me, and my limbs were already feeling leaden.

Ren, much to his chagrin, was unable to enter the fire either, but I was kind enough to throw him a couple of Cores. The Cores, which had spent the entire time being cooked in my flames, were still completely unblemished, somehow retaining their unnatural perfection. And I was grateful for that, because it would have been a tragedy if I had fought so hard just to find that I had destroyed all my treasure.

With all threats held off for the time being, I decided to have more fun with another Core. I had no delusions that I’d be able to trigger another upgrade with the next Core, but that didn’t mean that it couldn’t offer me a great boost, and hopefully speed up the recovery of my Flux reserve.

However, just as I sat down with a Core and closed my eyes, moving my senses from the physical and into the world of Flux, I suddenly realized a massive pool of it sat just a bit to the left of me. My eyes shot open as I immediately figured out what it had to be.

With excitement spurring me on, I jumped to my feet and raced over to where the dead gorilla lay. As I approached, I closed my eyes again and double-checked, and sure enough, I could feel the gravity of a massive pool of Flux drawing me closer to the corpse of the beast at my feet.

Opening my eyes again, I grinned to myself and got to work. It wasn’t dignified work, not for me and especially not for the gorilla, but I had no other choice. I wasn’t about to let a treasure like the gorilla’s Core slip by me just because I was too spoiled to get my hands dirty.

The gruesome work was made all the worse by the fact that I had no sharp blades to get through the thick pelt of the animal, but thankfully, the fire had weakened it to a point where it wasn’t very difficult to rip apart the corpse of the animal.

Ren had said that the goblins had searched in the centre of the animals’ chests for the Cores, so that’s what I aimed for, too. And sure enough, as I ripped open the gorilla’s rib cage, a perfectly spherical glowing ball sat under its heart, with a glass-like surface and swirling smoke trapped within.

The only difference was that it was glowing red, not the blue of all the other Cores I’d seen. But it was undoubtedly the Core of the gorilla; I could tell by the amount of Flux that I could feel – and see – leaking out of the sphere. There was so much Flux leaving it every second that I could see it rising out of the thing, like there was a layer of water on its surface that was constantly evaporating.

With an eager grin, I plucked the thing out of the animal and dropped it into my lap, crossing my legs around it. As I felt the weight of the ball on my legs, however, a strange thought floated by my brain. A moment of introspection overcame me as I stared down at my bloody hands, at the hands that had just desecrated the body of an animal for selfish desire.

The face of me at five years old appeared before me in my mind, and I wondered what she would think of me now. Would she be disgusted by the sight of me?

My mind was silent for a moment, a serene moment of quiet that passed through me at the thought. But eventually, I shook my head, both physically and mentally. There was a reason why I strived to live my life the way five-year-old me had wanted to. She had understood something that I had forgotten at some point in my journey. She understood that life wasn’t the romanticized, rose-tinted epic that I had begun to believe it was. She couldn’t have, given the world she lived in. She understood the darkness of humanity, maybe better than even I did at the moment. And she had embraced it, incorporated it into her dreams, into her image of the person she wanted to be. I knew that, because I had once been her.

Stolen story; please report.

And somehow, at some point, as I lived through Toronto, I had forgotten that.

But I understood once again. In a world of darkness, shining a light would never achieve anything. Life wasn’t parallel to the story of the night sky, where brave twinkles of light fought off endless onslaughts of darkness. No, here, the stars of the world were devoured by the monsters of the night, who thrived in the dark and fed off the bright fools who didn’t know how to dim the light they were born with.

The only way to survive in the darkness here was to embrace it. The only way to beat the monsters that hungered in the shadows was to be better than them, hungrier than them.

And that was exactly what I had to do. I would learn to dim the light that Ocean had sparked in me, and I would survive in this universe, no matter what. No, I would do better than survive. I would thrive. I was never one to settle for less than the best, and this would be no different. I would take the name of Rosefire and rise above all else, all others. And I would do it for the lives that had paved the way for me; I would do it in the stead of the person who had given up her freedom so that I could have a chance for my own.

Ocean. The person to whom I owed a debt greater than could ever be captured by mere words.

A strange thing happened as I remembered Ocean’s face. A strange memory bubbled to the surface of my consciousness, a memory I was sure I’d never experienced but, at the same time, was undeniably mine.

I remembered Ocean standing before me, with a face that glowed with happiness I was sure she’d never experienced. She wore a long, flowing white dress that I was even more certain she’d never worn. The picture was blurry in my head, and when she spoke to me, her words were muted, as if some force wouldn’t let me experience the moment fully.

Shaking my head, I dismissed the memory as a conjuration of my distressed mind, and the moment floated away from me. Bringing myself back to the present, I once again looked down at the glowing red Core in my lap, and the bloody hands that held it.

Maybe I was simply coping with my own fall from the morals that I’d held, but I no longer felt disgusted as I looked at myself. And I was sure that Ruby, at five years old, would feel the same way. If anything, she’d be proud of me. I was finally embracing the world as it was, in its entirety. And once I did, nothing could stop me from reaching what I wanted.

With my heart and mind settled, I took in a deep breath and began to revolve my Flux within myself once again. Just like the last time, the Core responded to my own Flux, seeping in through my fingers with every cycle it ran through my body. I immediately felt the difference, the sudden spike of Flux in me. My body seemed to have no problem incorporating the foreign Flux in my own pool, and I could feel that I had the same level of control over the new as I did the old. So that wasn’t something I had to worry about, although I had admittedly not even considered if that would be a problem when I had begun.

Time slipped away quickly as I sat in the cradle of the waning flames, my mind entirely preoccupied with the raging Flux within me. When I did finally wake up for a moment, I looked down at the Core and realized that it was close to halfway emptied. The proud red glow had dimmed noticeably, and it no longer smoked at all. A spike of desire and greed stabbed at me to continue consuming the thing until it was completely emptied, but the selfish emotion wasn’t able to take control of me this time. That unique flavour of greed was an unpleasant reminder of how I’d been after the first Core I’d tasted, and the thought of being controlled by any emotion into a state like that again repulsed me.

And so, driven more so by spite for the greed within me than any notion of kindness, I picked myself up to my feet and walked over to where Ren sat at the edge of the clearing and threw him the half-empty Core. It wouldn’t have the same amount of Flux as the blue Cores that Ren was using, but I could tell that the Flux that came out of the red Core was of much better quality, in a way I couldn’t really explain. It just felt more powerful, more potent. Ren would undoubtedly benefit greatly from it.

Ren, who’d awakened from his meditation the second I approached him, caught the Core without a word and studied it curiously for a second. It didn’t take long for him to realize what it was, and what a treasure it was. He looked at me again, and wordlessly gave me a short nod that conveyed his gratitude better than any words could.

I responded with a small, happy smile and turned back to the clearing, ready to return to taking everything I could from the Cores.

And waiting for me, sitting patiently in the middle of the burning clearing, sat a sleek black panther, watching with almost bored blue eyes.

“Huh,” I said to myself, giving a small little snort. “Nice.”