It was dark out now, and the light from the surface was no longer reflecting into the main shaft.

“Gods, It's all coming back.”

I’d begun babbling at this rate, plugging piece after piece of my tattered mind back together like some fucked up puzzle. It was a repeat of the night I’d first broken the seal on the sword, only a hundred times more visceral. Her entire life–

Fuck me, my entire life? I can’t see the difference anymore! It’s blurred! My truck! Starting my truck! And being born?! It was as if it was a continuous flow! Fuck! What did I do to myself?! The memories!

I clasped my free hand across my scalp.

“Fuck, everything– so– so hazy.”

I stumbled from Sabine’s grip, slumping against the lift's corner.

“Is that the subject of your hurrying earlier?”

“It seems so, though she happens to be in a poorer standing now than I assumed she would have been.”

What the hell do you mean ‘assumed she would have been.’

“I’d be a hell of a lot better if you’d not punched the fuck outta me.”

My eyes were planted on the ground, unable to see if Sabine and whoever else were gesturing at me as they remained silent.

“To which level?”

Wait, the memories. The test! The deja vu! It was– god damnit!

“I have lodging on the second level. I’ll leave her with the innkeepers until I can find her party.”

“Oh? Who, perchance?”

“The Wanik’s. Someone had snatched their second floor and their study, so we’ll be out of the first floor while we wait for our business to finish here.”

Wanik, why is that familiar? Oh, wait, stomach again! Motion sick-

“Urp- ble-”

I vomited where I sat, and the world passed underneath me as the lift ascended.

“Oh shit, was I always afraid of heights?”

I mumbled.

“What in the actual hell is she on about?”

Sabine asked aloud. The ascension took roughly another half hour, giving me sufficient time to balance myself nearly. Sabine still had to raise me from the floor, though, helping me shuffle the long distance to where she stayed.

Huh, the statue of Tyr. I should– where was it? It was near here, right? Fuck, still fogged.

“Sabine.”

“What is it?”

She grunted, her voice nearly in my ear as she hefted me along.

“I think we’re close.”

“To where?”

“To the lodging Beryl got us.”

She shook her head, her blond strands of hair falling to obscure my sight some.

“I still will be dropping you off. You do not look the part, but you are particularly heavy, like a dead weight. We could both use a seat, but not out here.”

I waved my hand at the ground.

“Ko? You don’t understand, really close.”

When the fuck did I start saying ‘ko?’

“What the hell is with your accent? Your shit was not that blended earlier.”

On that, we agree. I’d say if I even knew! On second thought, didn't I see some weird octopus person?

The day's events came back to me as Sabine guided me up the steps of a porch.

Shit, the deja-vu, was that? The tests? Wait, the seraphim! A sungrinder! It was a memory, my– her memory, as clear as day! By the gods, it was! It was in this world, not some hazed fuckin dream from earth!

“Sabine, I have to tell you something– urp.”

I nearly dry-heaved at the door, Sabine cringing as she swept my bangs back for a moment as I tried to collect myself.

“Miss Jagoda is a nice woman; do try to stay out of trouble with her. Will you?”

Wha-? Jagoda, I swear, that’s so close to-

Sabine rapped at the door, someone hurrying to the entrance as the sound of feet creaked against wood flooring. Opening the door, Mizzel greeted us.

“Evening, welcome baaaa- holy dragon shit!”

“Mizzel, language!”

Jagoda could be heard scolding from the background, as well as Beryl, Vaughn, and a few other familiar voices snickering or joking with each other.

“May we enter?”

Sabine asked, and feeling the need to emphasize my sense of weakness from the fun little escapade, I added to it.

“Please?”

Mizzel slowly moved aside.

“Come in.”

She said meekly.

“Baba!”

“Ya?”

“We’ll need warm towels for the baths! As soon as we can manage!”

“I’ll place them over the oven.”

We stumbled past the kitchen and into the living room. Awaiting us couldn't be the worst possible combination of factors. If one were to equate the shit show we’d been set up for on a scale of one to ten, it would have remained a fairly firm eight. Beryl, Vaughn, Marissa, Logan, Jeane, and Marek.

“What the hell?”

And Beryl’s pupils immediately began to slit.

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

“Bullshit, you didn't do anything! Look at her! She's rarely ever been like this!”

Beryl, please. I need to–

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

A tremor in my legs.

“Beryl, stop, not now. If there's an issue, she’d tell us herself.”

Damnit, Vaughn, let me handle this!

“The hell do you mean Vaughn? She won't even tell us about her nightmares! She plays the tough girl act all the time! I won’t stand for it! Not this time! Not if it makes her go mute!”

Beryl, I– this– just–

“Listen to your shield bearer, mage. Is this how you handle your team, girl?”

Logan was at the forefront of Sabine’s group whilst I was silently trying to push back against Beryl’s shoulders to edge her away from the confrontation that she had started. Jagoda, Marek, Mizzel, and Andrea were all confused as they watched from the sidelines. I was apparently too much of a mess to outwardly voice my sudden revelations to Sabine, and just as much so, why she carried me back a bloody mess. When we came into view, some switch had flipped in Beryl, some surge of violent protectiveness. She saw something, something in me I was too weak to hide.

“Handle her team? She’s gone non-vocal on us! And look at her! You get a handle on that bitch! She just keeps– Look! She won’t even–”

“Be-ryl!”

I growled her name through gritted teeth. Pushing back against her shoulders, she suddenly stopped mid-thought. Beryl knew I’d never use my strength against her or Vaughn, and my use of force, withdrawn as it was, was an anchor to reality. Thankfully, she took enough note of it to shut her mouth.

Let me handle this.

I looked over my shoulder, Sabine still staring. But for once, it seemed to be different. Like she wasn't under a constant need to assert herself as an adversary. It was something pissing me off, as if she somehow took pity on me as opposed to her earlier struggle with carrying me, hiding her intermittent trembling.

Do I look like I fucking need that?

Either directed at myself or Beryl, I couldn't tell nor could I care enough to address it. All I wanted right now was to reach our room, to clean myself, and to lay in bed. To have the space to calm my nerves. I needed to process what happened to me, and I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn't finally snap if I was made to interact at this point.

“Sabine.”

Marissa spoke next, standing at Sabine's side, looking up at the larger of the two with a frown.

“Nothing at all? I know how your father is. Are you sure you should–”

Sabine placed a hand on Marissa’s shoulder, her brows furrowing as the girl tried to assist in de-escalation.

“Nothing happened, Marissa, on my honor.”

Marissa nodded, clutching her staff closely before hesitantly trailing her eyes back to us.

“Nothing–happened!”

I gritted my teeth again, my voice wavering as I struggled to force the words out.

Later. I will tell her later. For now, I need somewhere to–

“Beryl–”

I choked on my words a moment, pushing one shoulder harder than the other.

“The room.”

The behavior almost floored Beryl, something I was at least able to understand, considering I’d never asserted a show of strength to them, not like this.

“To the room?”

I nodded, Beryl’s anger softening to calm understanding. Her shoulders relaxed, and with that sudden fact in mind, I realized she was tenser than I’d seen her in a very long time. I looked at Vaughn as well, his brows furrowing as he attempted to speak but found himself lost for what to say. He moved closer, eyeing Sabine's group before placing one of his hands on my shoulder as I did for Beryl. She looked to Sabine once more, her eyes sharpening for a moment before she relented.

“Apologies, Miss Jagoda. I trust we can amend this later? Perhaps by helping around the house somehow?”

Jagoda sounded tired for a moment.

“Aye, aye, for now, dinner is only an hour from being ready. Will you be joining us?”

Beryl nodded to the side.

“That depends on Kiyomi.”

I shuddered for a moment, trying not to let my trembling be seen outwardly. She looked down as I nudged her again.

“You want to go up to the room, Kiyomi? We’ll go up to the room.”

Beryl spoke softly, forcing the words out with a weary sigh.

The big sister act, you know just when to fill it… thank you.

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

I was registering everything now, the relative silence of our room enabling some sense of perceived safety.

“Urp– ur–”

I vomited, voiding the contents of my belly in its entirety. The chamber pot's mana crystal glowed each time the bile I spewed landed in the clay vessel. My throat and sinuses burned, I was near crying, and I could scarcely collect my thoughts between each heave. Vaughn held my hair back for me, Beryl watching from the doorway with her arms crossed. Both of them looked worse for wear, and it didn't take a genius to know they were torturing themselves mentally over having seen me like this.

They’d never seen something like this before. I’d hope–

“Urp- ble–”

I dry-heaved, nearly bending myself into the chamberpot as I braced myself against it.

I’d hope not… I didn't think realizing the tests– gods, it was precisely like earth! Dear gods!

“Urp– eu–”

The panic slowly began to set in, Kiyomi’s memories settling, and the full weight of my deja vu began to disturb me at my core. The safety, the thoughts of simply giving Kiyomi her life back, of leaving her with some sense of a future the moment she awoke.

Why here?! Why again?! Please, god—Solah! Please, for fuck sake!

A flash of memories from two different lives aligned.

Why me? Why the fuck am I here? Is this some kind of joke? Answer me!

Every moment I ran through my head the worst possible scenario as I’d experienced before. Every moment I closed my eyes, I saw them again. The mutants, the monsters, the sun-grinders, the suicides, the cults.

Mike, Oh god– no. No no no no no no– I– What about them?! Vaughn, Beryl? Mom? God, Juro, I had years to recognize it! I had to watch it! To watch the same monster kill her father!

“Eu–”

I dry heaved once more, and this time, thanks to the lack of bile, I screamed into the pot. I nearly collapsed on the thing, my legs kicking from underneath alongside my tail as I tried to curl myself in the fetal position. I tried, at least, but Vaughn wouldn’t let me, suddenly falling in behind me in some fear that I’d brain myself on the floor, when the floor probably couldn't even withstand it.

Leave me be, please! For fuck sake! Let me be so I can reign it in!

He pulled me close to him, overpowering my attempts to push him away as I cried and trembled past my ability to assert my own strength. He pressed me into his chest, giving me at least some solace in giving me a moment to hide my face against his chest.

“Ber– som– ater?”

Vaughn said something, but it was hard to piece together over my sobbing. I couldn't think straight, my ideas, my objectives, to keep Kiyomi– to keep them– to keep everyone safe. They were blown to the wind, obliterated in the knowledge that earth can happen again. Kiyomi’s memories, the nightmares and hallucinations I had, the monster that Sarah and Joro fought against. The monsters that killed Joro, my siblings, the festival goers, and everyone else. Those monsters were real, and they were the same as I’d seen on Earth.

The tests were so familiar because I’d failed them before! Oh gods! Their faces!

“Luc–”

I muttered involuntarily.

“Lucas– help me– I– I– I don't want to– to die.”

Someone shook me as my words were broken apart.

“I don’wanna– die.”

“Shhh, we’re here. We’ve got you. We’re here, Kiyomi–”

The world faded around me.

“Kiyomi, we’re here.”

And then silence.

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

“Aidan.”

I tore at the MRE with my knife, resting it across the rifle in my lap.

“Aidan…”

Can I eat in peace?

“Hey, fuck head!”

The knuckles of someone's hands rapped against my helmet.

“What in the actual fuck do you want, Lucas?”

Dropping my hands onto my rifle, I looked up at Lucas, one of the few friends I seemed to maintain through the rank and file. He was Czech, or at least he was before the eastern European countries slapped themselves together as part of the Adriatic Slovak alliance. It lasted for a whole three months before they were forced to cede land to the rifts and monsters. It was like a loose ghost of what the old French Republic pulled during the Second World War, backing off to allied territory to regroup. They ended up getting pushed back to Greece and Spain on two different fronts, being forced to rely on the returning French foreign legion, the German Bundeswehr, and whatever the Swiss called their army, not that there was much left to name after it was wiped out. Lucas, I met him where he ended up, in Spain. The UK was done, and it was cut off as a possible staging area thanks to everything south of Manchester being overrun.

With the US mostly secure, everything south of the border, all the way down to Panama, was annexed. To top it off, things were tense with the Canadians after good portions of both British Columbia and the Yukon were also annexed. Anything and everything was done to keep the country together, including appeasing what Allies we pissed off by guaranteeing positions of authority, aid, and damn near giving an entire carrier strike group to the canucks. We were a hodge podge here, with one Canadian regiment, three Mexican army regiments, the entirety of Three Core from the US, and Lucas’s engineering company underneath the Adriatic army. We’d all made landfall in Spain and continued fighting through France, attempting to link back up with the Bundeshcwer outside of Luxembourg for a quarantine zone. We were two hours outside of Dijon, our company hunkering down for the night after establishing a checkpoint. Someone had to keep the roads clear for further transport.

It was still afternoon, so there was always something to be done before the all-clear to start taking shifts came down. For now, lunch was our task. Ensuring we were fed and ready for more fighting in the evening and going into the night. The monsters didn't have a set day/night sleep schedule, so we took the peace we had at the moment and ran with it.

He’s just standing there, shaking his fuckin head.

“Are ya gonna keep standing there with your thumb up your ass? Want some fuckin spank material? Beat your dick to some nasty sweaty-ass dude covered in mud? Stop looking at me like that. There’s plenty of fuckin locals trailin us. See if they’ll trade a handy for some bullets or rations and stop harassin' me.”

He lay his rifle next to me, shaking his head.

“And let my favorite butt buddy eat in peace? Haha, haaa… No.”

“Hardy fuckin har, shithead.”

Pulling out a French MRE, along with the stamp steel stove it came with, he took a match to some kindling.

“Give me your canteen cup; I watched you nearly pass out while on the radio. Making coffee.”

He sat next to me, laying back against his rucksack he’d dropped. Pulling out the metal cup, I poured water into it from the aforementioned canteen and let him do as he pleased. Back to my business, I tugged at the package inside my MRE, pulling it free to reveal its contents. Kippered turkey bites, some shitty bread, jalapeño cheese spread, orange powdered sports drink, a pack of sour candy, peach cobbler, and a package of chili-Mac.

“Sours?”

I held out the package, Lucas passing his tongue over his teeth before nodding.

“Sure, want anything?”

I stacked the food to the side, opening the chili-Mac with little care to heat it with the chemical heater.

“I’ll take one of those caramel-“

A handful of hardened caramel cubes landed in my lap before I even managed to finish my sentence, some falling between my legs and into the dirt.

“Thanks.”

I grumbled, handing Lucas the package of sour candy with a modicum more politeness.

“No problem, buddy… Got any smokes?”

“Nah, just chews, snus, so I can keep my intake in mind. Someone sent a crate of the shits along with American cigs'.”

Lucas nodded, scrunching the packet of instant coffee he'd pulled from a commissary. Pouring the contents into the canteen cup, now all we had to do was wait for the brew to steam. I pulled out the can of snus I had in my pocket, opened it, and held it out for Lucas to grab a pouch. Tossing it between his lips and gums, working the thing around to get the flavoring out of it, he seemed calmer for it.

We were tired, more so than I thought I’d been leaving Kings Bay in Florida. The fight through France was hard, having changed as much as the rocky mountains and then some. Lucas described it as worse than his first trip through, claiming it was clear before the Swiss failed to hold the hordes off.

So, here we sat. A Czech and an American, holding down for a shitty day and just as shitty a lunch. It was silent save the roar of diesel and turbine engines, the popping of gunfire and tanks, and artillery in the distance.

“Thanks. Needed the fix.”

Lucas muttered, fumbling with something in his pocket.

“My company was dissolved yesterday.”

“That right?”

I asked, chewing at the chili mac I'd shoveled into my mouth with a spork.

“Was told–”

He paused.

“Was told to link up with you guys. Said they could use some mercenary types, from now on. Said something about the adriatics on this end of the front dissolving. So if I want to keep my job? I'll have to join you all. Fight all the way back to Czechia.”

“Part of our unit now?”

He nodded, though he seemed to be staring off into the distance something fierce.

“That's so.”

Another pause.

“You'll deliver my letter if I- you know?”

I nodded, having already agreed to the same request before countless fights already.

“Will you give me some head so I don't die without blowing my load?”

“Lucas?”

I turned my head to face him, pointing my spark. He was sporting the same stupid smile he always gave, and I had to stop myself from chuckling.

“Go fuck yourself.”

He nodded, laughing all the while.

“Sure thing, Cat, sure thing.”

"Dickhead."

Love you too, buddy."