As she sat on the main deck of the Flying Toaster, her gaze through the windows glued on the jagged mountains to the north, Arlette didn’t know what was worse: the long uncertain wait for Blake and Gabby, the low hum of the “propellers”, or...

“Sofie, I’m going to lock you in a cabin if you don’t stop that pacing,” she told the restless Earthling.

“I... I’m sorry,” Sofie replied. “I’m just...”

“I know, this sort of thing is always hard. But you can’t let the worry overtake you. You’re driving Samanta and me crazy.”

“You’ve dealt with this sort of thing a lot, haven’t you?”

“You know I have.”

“Can you teach me?”

“It’s not really something you teach. Everybody deals with it differently,” Arlette hedged. She didn’t really feel like having a talk about dealing with grief and loss right now.

“Well, how do you do it? How do you handle this feeling of helplessness and uncertainty that just twists everything inside you into knots? Not knowing what happened after we left is tearing me apart. I feel like I need to be doing something, but all I can do is wait!”

Oh, was that what she was talking about? Maybe Arlette could give her a few pointers. “For me it comes down to trusting in others.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. I led a mercenary band, remember? I had to send people off on important tasks all the time. It’s easy afterward to start questioning if you did everything you could, or if they would be okay on their own. But you can’t let that feeling overwhelm you. You have to put your trust in them to do what they set out to do. They can handle themselves.”

“I know they can, but I just... ”

“Look, Sofie, those two might be the strongest people I have ever seen. If anybody can take on a god and live, it would be them.”

“I’m not worried about them, I’m worried about Pari. What if it does something to her?”

“What more could it do to her that would make any difference? She’s already dead.”

“Half dead,” came the immediate correction.

Arlette shook her head. “Whatever. I don’t entirely understand what Blake was talking about when he said Pari wasn’t entirely dead, but from what I got, she’s not about to start running around again, is she? She doesn’t even breathe. There’s no real difference between this and death.”

“Hey, you don’t know! All sorts of crazy things happen in this world! There might be a way to bring her back!” Sofie argued, though she sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than Arlette.

“I see something,” Sam remarked from a nearby window.

Their conversation forgotten in the blink of an eye, Sofie rushed to Sam’s side, her gaze following the girl’s pointed finger.

Arlette wasn’t too far behind, though her gaze went to the skies instead. It wasn’t until she was sure that there was no monstrous beast headed right for them that she breathed a sigh of relief and glanced down at the insectoid figure quickly skittering closer.

The multi-legged vehicle appeared much the worse for wear. One side of the cabin on top appeared half-melted and a bit of the back seemed to be entirely missing. But it still ran, carrying its two occupants towards the airship within which Arlette and the others waited.

Two occupants, not three.

Despite her reluctance to get her hopes up, Arlette’s spirits fell. The other two went quiet as well as they each noticed the same thing and came to the same conclusion about what it meant.

“No...” Sofie whispered, sinking to the floor. She stared blankly at the featureless grey metal, her gaze hollow. Arlette couldn’t help but notice just how terrible Sofie looked at this moment. Since the night of Pari’s effective demise, her friend’s appearance had grown worse and worse each day. Her hair had grown progressively more disheveled, her skin had lost its color, it even looked like she’d lost considerable weight... it was like Sofie was wasting away before her very eyes. Which, given how she’d basically stopped eating or sleeping, made sense.

Now, as Sofie set her head in her hands, her fingers covering the massive, dark bags beneath her eyes, Arlette worried that she was about to fall apart. Sofie had been running on hope, she realized. Now that was all gone.

Arlette placed her hand on Sofie’s shoulder. She wanted to say something but she couldn’t find the words.

Samanta didn’t look much better, now that Arlette turned her gaze towards the child. Sofie had told Arlette that Pari had been Samanta’s one and only friend. Now facing a lonelier existence, the poor child looked crushed. This whole endeavor was horribly cruel to everybody involved, Arlette decided. It had done little other than getting everybody’s hopes up over an impossibility.

Everybody turned towards the back of the cabin as they heard the sound of metal boots on a metal deck. A moment later, Blake and Gabriela entered, their shoulders slumped in defeat.

“What happened?” Arlette asked.

“We found her grandfather,” Blake said from behind his mask, his voice tense. He quickly walked over to the controls at the front of the airship and began manipulating them. “Now we’re getting out of here.”

“R-really?” Samanta stammered in surprise.

“What? We can’t head back now!” Sofie protested. “What about Pari?! What about her grandfather?!”

“The dragon was the grandfather,” Gabriela clarified. “Blake and I decided it was best to leave her with him.”

“We’re getting out of here before he decides to chase us down,” Blake added.

“That... that murderous beast raised Pari? How?!” Arlette asked. She couldn’t wrap her head around a walking natural disaster somehow raising a child. It made no sense.

“Yeah, well, he can talk,” Blake explained, “and he’s smart. We found him dissecting her with this crazy biological lab setup, and he was so pissed over what happened to Pari that the ground shook. Kept roaring about a ‘crawler’ and whatnot. Nearly wrecked my skitter, too; we almost didn’t make it out alive. Gabby had to hold him off while we got away.”

“So that’s it, huh?” Sofie huffed “You saw a talking dragon and gave up? Did you even try to get Pari back?”

“Of course I tried,” Gabriela replied. “The dragon put her body in this container of blue slime. I went in after her, but it started melting my body away. It was weird, the goo dissolved me and my outfit, but left Pari untouched. It was harder to regenerate from than normal, too. I’m sorry, maybe if I had tried harder...”

“Maybe you should have!” Sofie shot back.

“Sofie, stop. I made the call to bail, not her,” Blake told them.

Gabriela sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?! You said he was dissecting her!” Sofie snapped through clenched teeth, her hands clenched into tight, angry fists. “How could it be for the best when that thing was cutting her apart?”

“He’s her family, right?” Gabriela argued. “Pari belongs with her family. He was pretty much all she ever talked about.”

“What about me? I’m her sister, aren’t I?” Sofie shot back.

“That’s just what she calls you,” Blake said flatly. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“How dare you say that! It meant something to her! It meant something to both of us!” Sofie spat. “Don’t tell me that she didn’t do the same to that overgrown lizard, either! Or are you claiming she’s at least a quarter dragon?”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Fine, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Blake retreated, raising his palms to ward off Sofie’s rage. “The point is, her ‘grandfather’ has as much a claim on her as you do. If what you say she told you about him is true, then he spent a much longer time with her than you. So Gabriela’s right. We did what we set out to do, in the end. We got her to her ‘grandfather’ and that’s that.”

“What happened to that spiel you gave before about needing to find the person who made her sleeve and how they were dangerous and all that? You’re just done?”

“Well, that person turns out to weigh fifty tons and has a mouth full of teeth bigger than me. Given the way he left us the first time and how he stopped chasing us fairly quickly once we ran, he seems to prioritize Pari more than killing us. I have decided to not poke him because I’d rather he doesn’t change his mind. But just in case, we’re getting far, far away from him immediately.”

“Good idea,” Arlette chimed in. The sooner she was two countries away from that nightmare beast, the better.

“But- but-!”

Blake shook his head. “It’s over, Sofie. I’m sorry. We’re not miracle workers.”

Sofie’s mouth clammed up and tears welled up in her eyes. Letting out a loud sob, she sprinted out of the room.

Blake grunted. “I’m not dealing with that.”

Arlette sighed and went to follow after. “I’m on it.”

Arlette found the Earth woman sobbing in her cabin, her door closed but not locked. She was sitting on her bed with her back against the wall, hugging her legs as she cried. Taking a seat beside her, Arlette stayed quiet. To her surprise, Sofie spoke first.

“I’m such an idiot,” she said softly. “This horrible world kills people every day, but I stopped thinking it would ever happen to the people I cared about.”

“That’s a strange thing to think,” Arlette observed.

“It’s just that... we always got out of trouble pretty much intact, you know? Like when the Stragmans rescued us from those bounty hunters, or when Jaquet freed us the day before our execution in Kutrad. I used to worry every day when you would go up that godforsaken wall and fight the Ubrans, but you always survived.”

“It wasn’t as easy and carefree as you make it sound. I almost died countless times during the siege, you just weren’t there to see it,” Arlette reminded her.

“But you never died, that’s the point. It happened over and over and over. You would go out there, the odds worse every day, and then you’d come back. You’d be covered with wounds, but you’d come back. Even when you were up against Sebastian or Gabby, you survived and everything went back to normal. Eventually, I started to think of death as something that happened to other people, people I didn’t care about. Not you. Not her.” She laughed a small, pathetic laugh. “How stupid and self-absorbed can you be, right? I didn’t appreciate how precious every moment with you all really was, and now it’s too late. Now I can’t even say goodbye. I can’t tell her I love her.”

Arlette put her arm around Sofie and pulled her closer so that their shoulders leaned against each other.

“She knew you loved her. You loved her every day. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Her spirit is joining those of her ancestors right now. I bet they’re already sick about hearing about how wonderful her ‘Sofie-sis’ is.”

Sofie let out a small, empty laugh. “Maybe. But I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault that she died in the first place. I keep thinking about that time. Could I have been faster? Could I have done something differently? Could I have saved her?”

“Sofie, you need to stop blaming yourself. Nobody can live a perfect life. Only a crazy person would think that possible. Especially weaker people like us. It’s important to accept that you are not all-powerful. You can’t save everybody and fix everything all on your own.”

“‘Weaker people like us’? Since when are you weak?” Sofie snorted. “You constantly put your life on the line and live to tell the tale. I just cower in a corner, terrified.”

“Oh, come on. I seem to remember a certain terrified cowerer telling the ruler of a country that he was trash directly to his face. Even most of the strongest warriors in the world can’t boast of doing that. That takes courage.”

“That wasn’t courage, that was just stupidity, anger, and having nothing to lose.”

“Alright, alright. You’re weaker than a wilted flower in a drought. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

The two of them drifted into silence for a while. Arlette let the silence carry, unwilling to be the one to break it. Sofie needed to take this at her own pace.

Eventually, the younger woman did.

“It’s almost funny,” she chuckled. “Looking back, I suddenly understand why she never seemed scared of danger that frightened you and me. It would be hard for anything to be scary if you lived with a killing machine every day.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Arlette snorted. “I always did wonder about that. Really, when you think about it, this explains so many things about her.”

“Right. It answers so many questions but opens so many more. Like, where would a dragon get wax for candles?”

Sofie laughed again, a better, less empty one this time.

“You’re the best, Arlette. I don’t know where I would be without you. Actually, I do. I’d be dead.”

“Glad I could help.”

“Don’t you die on me too, alright? I don’t know if I could handle being stuck with Blake all by myself.”

“I’ll try my best. I would never want to inflict that on anyone,” she snickered.

“Thanks. Now, I’d like to be alone for a while, please.”

“Of course.”

Arlette got up and left the room, her ears picking up the sounds of the door locking behind her and more sobs coming from behind it.

----------------------------------------

The journey back to Wroetin was a somber one. As they passed by the crater that once was Zrukhora, Arlette noticed the fires of civilization burning around the massive hole. A new city was already springing up around the grave of the old one. Progress marched relentlessly forward always, even when the path was littered with corpses.

Arlette talked with the others very little during the trip. An aura of failure hung over everyone involved. Yes, technically they’d succeeded in their mission, at least in part, but it didn’t feel like success to any of them.

The grey metal tower of home peeked over the horizon two mornings later. Home... it was funny, but Arlette realized then that she did think of that giant fortress as a home. When was the last time she’d had somewhere that could legitimately be called that? Crirada sure hadn’t felt such. Maybe not since the day she’d left Gustil?

Half an hour later, she and the others trudged into the castle, weary and ready to have something, anything, to distract them from the events of the last few days. Arlette hadn’t expected her distraction to come in the form of Gunta Izkapts, Minister of Justice, but she found the stern-looking woman waiting for her as she disembarked.

Arlette worked with Minister Izkapts more than any other high-level Otharian official, and their relationship could best be described as “frosty, but functional”. She was not what Arlette would call a “free-thinker”, her Otharian beliefs coloring her view of people like Arlette and the other non-natives. However, the woman was a professional above all else, and so she managed to keep her views to herself well enough for them to work with each other.

“How can I help you, Minister?” Arlette greeted her.

“There was a disturbance last night, a small bar fight that resulted in several arrests.”

“And this concerns me how?”

“Two of the detained individuals are Els-” She caught herself and frowned. “-were not Otharian. Specifically, they are elves. One of them claims to know Madam Ramaut-”

The elf knew Sofie?

“-while the other wants to speak with you.”

Arlette couldn’t help but blink. That was indeed something that fell within Arlette’s purview. Otharia, as a country, was not a proponent of open borders. This had been the case before Blake’s arrival and had not changed much since. As far as she knew, there was only one elf in Otharia: the man who’d helped Sofie escape Crirada and make her way here without being caught by the Ubrans. If there was a second, that meant that there was another hole in Blake’s border system. And for that elf to want to speak with her... Could it be Artiermius? She needed to check it out.

“Thank you, I’ll investigate it shortly,” she told the Otharian, who simply nodded and left.

One meal, a wash, and a change of clothes later, Arlette left her room refreshed and headed down. Blake had built a small dungeon for holding people of interest beneath the fortress at her request. He called it a “containment facility”, but Arlette knew a dungeon when she saw one. It was located just a few paces below the ground floor, with another larger “facility” even deeper. Arlette didn’t know what was in the deeper basement; she wasn’t allowed anywhere near it. Neither was anybody else, as far as she could tell.

Arlette believed this dungeon to be the most inescapable dungeon she’d ever seen. The outer door required her to press a series of buttons in a specific order, followed by a scan of her hand. Then later, there was a second door that looked at her eye and required a spoken password. Both were far too thick to break through. Anybody who tried would find themselves disabled by the many automated weapons systems that guarded the interior.

Arlette punched in the code in a rush, hoping to get in and out quickly. She understood the need for a place to hold people like the leaders of terrorist cells and the like for interrogation, which was why she had requested the prison in the first place, but after the last year, she would be happy if she never set foot in a dungeon ever again. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, the “facility” had sat unoccupied until now.

The first door opened and Arlette stepped through, entering a chamber filled with guns pointed in her direction. She ignored them as best she could and approached the second door, letting it scan her eye. “Rinemma,” she said softly.

The second door slid into the floor and she stepped into the dungeon proper.

There was only a single row of twenty cells within this space, ten on each side, as the dungeon had never been intended for mass-detention. That made finding the people she was looking for a simple task. The first elf met her gaze from within the first cell on her left, his eyes steady. Arlette recognized him as Jerithim, the elf who’d helped Sofie make it all the way from Crirada to Wroetin. Arlette had met him several times since her arrival in Otharia, as Sofie considered him something of a friend. The Earth woman had even made a passing effort at getting the two of them acquainted, saying that elves were “sexy and attractive”—they weren’t—and that the two of them would make a good pair—they wouldn’t. He currently served as an informal representative of the Drayhadan regime. Jerithim was not who she had come to see. She’d ask him a few questions and let him free in a bit.

Moving on, Arlette’s ears picked up the sound of somebody humming a formless tune, the melody bright and unconcerned with these dour confines. The humming cut off as she approached the final cell on the right, and a few steps later, Arlette found herself staring in at the person of interest.

She froze.

No.

Arlette rubbed her eyes in disbelief, but when she looked again, she still saw that same face, those same eyes, and that same roguish grin.

This was impossible.

The man’s grin widened as he saw her and he spoke, his words removing all doubt yet explaining nothing.

“Hey there, Letty!” the elf chuckled. “We really need to stop meeting like this. It’s bad for my health!”