“Your body’s all shut down, and yet you just won’t shut up,” said the soft voice of another girl.

Rick sat at a bar that was a lot like the “Four-Leaf Inn.” But everything there was a knock-off. The beer taps had no labels, the menu had letter-like runes that melted to nonsense when read, and instead of alcohol what Rick had in front of him was two warm glasses of milk.

And besides him was the worst knock-off of all: Riona, flush and healthy when she should have also been completely dead.

“So the Gatekeeper’s finally decided to show their face,” Rick muttered.

“I’m not Riona,” Riona said. “I’m just a delusion that’s lived in your mind for a long, long time. You know how messed up that place is? I’d find a mental bedroom to lay myself to rest, but your intruding thoughts would always break in and wake me up again.”

This was definitely her. What she said was nonsense, so it made perfect sense she was Ri.

“I can’t believe it. I’ve beat him, I’ve killed him!” Rick said. “Did you see that, Ri!”

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“Quit acting like you’re hot stuff; we’d already beat him once,” Riona said. She touched a deep scar, a rift of red in her light brown skin.

“But…”

“But?”

“But you bled out, and he was gone.”

“It was my fault he escaped. After what I did, I thought you’d chase revenge—but you tried to chase down a healer instead. Sweet, sensitive, Card.”

She smiled as she guided his hand to her wound. Blood welled from it as if it were freshly-incurred, and he wiped his palm on his clothes.

“I was the one who let him go, but Pern and I were the ones who killed him. Now the failure in me’s all been made right, and while I can’t quite forget you—you can finally get the rest you deserve. Cheers, Ri?”

He took the milk and raised the glass.

“To be honest, I’m a tad bit jealous,” Riona said casually. “But, cheers—to a young man who’s found another partner that can serve him better than these old bones ever will.”

They drank the white, and it tasted like a dream, which of course was to say it tasted like nothing at all. The wood planks cracked and shattered; the faceless patrons writhed into thin, wisp-like smoke and floated out into an abyssal ceiling.

Soon there was nothing left of the “False-Leaf Inn” except the dead Riona and him. She smiled as she nodded off, just as Rick knew she would if they’d ever met again. But then she gave a voice to a thought so hidden inside him that it took him by surprise:

“But you know it’s not over, Rick,” Riona said. “And it never really will be, will it?”