I'm on my way back to my room when Victoria bursts through the front door, covered in blood, and tosses a backpack on the floor.

“Shit, are you alright?”

“Yeah, I'll be fine,” she pants. “Trust me, I've seen worse.” She moves to walk down the hall, then pauses and turns back toward me. “Oh, bad news though. I wasn't able to get your clothes.”

“You weren’t? What happened?”

“The combat demons that were searching the place were still there.”

She turns around and continues down the hall, forcing me to go with her if I want any further elaboration, which of course I do.

“The c- Is that what happened to you?”

“Yeah. Big demon with a big hammer. Has Penny finished combing through that thumb drive?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t really been keeping up with her. Little busy resting and trying to piece my worldview back together.”

“Oh, don’t do that, just build a new one,” she replies nonchalantly.

“Right, of course.” In another moment we reach Penny’s workstation and Victoria opens the door and enters without knocking. Penny’s sitting at her desk, pouring over notes strewn across its surface and occasionally glancing back up at her computer screen.

“How’s it looking, Penny?”

The witch jumps slightly at the sound, swiveling around to look at Victoria. “Hm? Oh, Victoria, are you all right? I can get you som-”

“It can wait. Have you figured anything out?”

“I-... Yes. We’ve got schematics for combat dolls, as well as documentation on production logistics. They’re mass producing the things, there’s no doubt about that. As for the cores, what I was able to piece together of their process for ensouling them bears more resemblance to the kind of spellwork you’d use to transfer a doll’s soul from one core to another, not to make a new one. But it’s not a perfect match for that either. The only way I can make sense of it is by concluding that they’re not using doll souls for the process at all, new or existing. They’re using people.”

“People?” I interject. “Would that even work? I thought the question of whether people have souls was a little up in the air.”

“It is,” replies Penny. “We don’t know if humans have souls, and we do know that if we do, they don’t look anything like what witches create to animate dolls with. This is unprecedented, and I can’t say I fully understand it myself, but it’s the only conclusion that makes sense. Especially in light of some of the other information I’ve managed to glean.”

“Yeah? What else have you got?” Victoria has started leaning against the wall at some point. I can’t tell if she’s just bored, or if standing up with those wounds is getting tiring.

“A pretty good idea of where they’re getting their supply of humans, I think. There’s a paper trail here for a joint venture with various private prisons, creating a ‘work program.’ Not just Herrid, either, there are multiple divinities involved here. Only one reason I can think of for that to be mixed in with the rest of this.”

Victoria sighs heavily. “Fuckin’ hell. So what can we do about this?”

Penny turns back to her desk, looking deflated. “I don’t know. I’m working on reverse engineering the spellwork they’re using to do it, which might give us something useful, but… I wouldn’t hold your breath. We’ve got information they don’t want us to have, but they’re still at an advantage in terms of… Well, everything. We can’t just go to war with a divinity, let alone several of them.”

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Well, lemme know if you figure anything out. I'm gonna go bandage my shoulder.” Victoria turns around and leaves the room, and I follow her out.

“So uh… Combat demons searching my place, huh? I guess that pretty much confirms what you said before, about people looking for me.”

“Seems like it, yeah.” We arrive in the kitchen pretty quickly, and she starts rummaging through a drawer. “I definitely wouldn’t recommend leaving the house, especially not while you’re recovering.” After a moment she finds a roll of bandages and begins wrapping them around her shoulder.

“Do you need any help wi-”

“No.” I stand there awkwardly watching her bandage herself up for a few moments before she speaks again. “Listen, you’ve got a lot of dangerous people gunning for you now. I think we should keep up your combat training, once you’re recovered.”

“What? I thought I was just gonna stay here?”

“You are,” she replies with a steely gaze. “But if there’s a divinity after you, or possibly even more than one, you can’t just rely on the idea that they’ll never find you, and it’s not like I’m gonna have much better to do while we wait for Penny to figure more out. Even learning to properly fight probably won’t be enough, honestly. If you really want to stand a chance, you’re gonna need a little more of an edge.”

“What are you talking about?”

She wordlessly materializes her halo above her head and taps it a couple times. “You can do a lot with skill, but at the end of the day they're gonna have a magical trump card on top of whatever they've learned in training. You should probably do the same.”

“I- Victoria, I just got rid of one of those, do you really-”

“What did I tell you before? You can make your own. It doesn't have to be a collar. You can make it a crown.”

“What does that even-”

“I'll tell you more once you're recovered. You're gonna need to be in one piece if you're gonna do this. For now, you should probably get some rest. Focus on healing up.”

I grit my teeth, glaring up at her. “That’s it? Drop this insane bombshell on me and then just send me back to bed?”

“I don’t really have a better option, you’re in no state to be dealing with this stuff right now. I’ve given you fair warning that you’re gonna have to make a decision on this at some point, there’s nothing more I can offer you until you’re in better shape. And I mean much better shape, your previous peak condition is nowhere near resilient enough to withstand forging a halo. You’re gonna need a good bit of training just to bring it into the realm of possibility.”

“So in the meantime I just wait?”

“That is generally how healing works, yes.”

I huff and cross my arms. “Y’know I can’t say I’m feeling a whole lot freer now than I was before.”

“I don’t think I asked.”

I don’t really have anything to say to that, so I just head back to my room. It’s impossible not to be frustrated. I finally got rid of the control collar that’s been literally hanging over my head all these years, and a fat lot of good it’s done considering I’m still confined to Penny’s house and stuck on bedrest. It’s hard to feel like I’m really out from under Herrid’s thumb when his enforcers are now trying to hunt me down and I’m forced to take orders from Victoria just to have the best possible chance of surviving. I want to punch a hole in a wall but I’d probably just injure my hand, because she’s right. I’m useless as I am now, pathetic, I could be taken out by a stiff breeze. It’s not just that I didn’t get to do things before, it’s that the things I didn’t get to do then are going to keep stopping me from doing other things. I’m struggling to just tread water here but I need to somehow swim fast enough to escape the ripples created when this ring-shaped rock got thrown into my pond. I don’t want to keep learning to fight, I definitely don’t want another halo, I never asked for any of this shit and I shouldn’t be forced to deal with it. I’m absolutely fucking exhausted just from existing for all these years and now I’m suddenly being asked to stand my ground against a divinity? I just want to lay down and die.

I settle for the next best thing. Much as it pains me to admit it, Victoria is also right that I need to focus on resting up and recovering right now. Just walking around and having a conversation has left me completely exhausted, it’s clear that my body is a long way from being in even acceptable shape. As much as I hate not doing anything, it’s not like I really have a better option right now. I lay down on the bed, and the frustration sticks with me until I fall into a fitful sleep.