Fighter sat on the bed, the mattress giving under her, but not far enough that she felt the wood beneath. Through the window the sun marked the passing time by its rays on the floor and how far it reached to the door. She saw, but didn’t see. And so Fighter had no idea how long she was there retelling in gruesome detail, the story of her rape by the goblin monsters she’d held in such contempt. “And then the big one got on top of me when they put me on my back, I never felt such pain before… and he knew it. I saw it in his eyes…”

Then the sobbing would start, and gentle arms enfold her in a tight grip that held her close, the faint smell of washed linen clothing, the faint scent of sacred perfume worn only by the priests and priestesses of Abbadar, and the smell and feel of ‘clean’ tainted by salty wetness that dropped into small damp off-colored spots on the blue and white clothing of Swan Mother.

“Expel the poison.” Was the only thing Swan Mother uttered.

“They didn’t stop till I stank so bad that even they couldn’t bear it. The smell of salted rotted meat and fear, and they just threw me aside, bored with me when they eased their lust.” Fighter clenched her teeth, the memory hurt less and she’d broken down only six times during that retelling.

“Expel the poison.” Swan mother repeated, and the story began again.

“...Warrior’s hand was still warm, I will always remember that, even cut off, my precious Warrior, his hand was so warm, I held onto it as long as I could, they didn’t even notice, or if they did notice, they didn’t care. The touch of his severed hand was all I had to comfort me as one after another… after another… after another…” As she said this, a dawning understanding came to the dark haired woman.

‘I’m not… I’m not crying now…’ She stopped, and her head shot up to look into the eyes of the Swan Mother. Her little mouth parted slightly, and for a moment she felt the grip tighten on her shoulder as Swan Mother prepared to draw her into another embrace.

But it didn’t happen.

She glanced down at the floor, the rays of sunlight were gone from the floor and gone from the door, night had descended again over the room, over the temple, over the convent, over the sanctuary, over their world.

“How… how long?” Fighter asked, stammering out in half the voice she used to tell her story.

“Does it matter?” Swan Mother asked, and covered Fighter’s hands with her own. “Expelling the poison takes time, you have to spit it out. Not make it part of you.” She put a hand over Fighter’s heart, her fingers rested lightly, pressing through the linen. “Most… most will never do that. They will try to hide it in their hearts, hide it in their minds. The poison of the wrong done to them, the goblin poison in your heart and soul is even worse than the poisonous seed they leave inside your womb. Some… some make it so part of them that they seek out the danger again. It defines their hungers, they seek out predators, unable to escape or heal, it is all they can do… just make it part of them. Most of those suffer till death.”

She took a long look toward the window, a look that Fighter followed. “Others, others never recover in other ways, they live here, fear the outside world so much that they cannot feel safe outside these walls, or will only venture to the fields and no farther. They tremble in dread and no matter who they were before, at the sight of a goblin, even the baby ones we kill, all they can do is cry.” Swan Mother’s hand reached out and up, angled toward the window where the moons hung like watching eyes looking down at them.

Her hand moved in front of Fighter’s face, blotting out her view of the giant orbs in the sky.

“Others… their vision is clouded, they can’t see anything, no future, no hope. They can’t bear it… so they die, they die in rooms like this, and we take their bodies and give them to the earth, far from the goblin ashes. Grandmother Swan told me all of those have happened so often that she now knows within minutes of meeting the newcomers, who we will bury, who will destroy themselves, who will hide, and who will recover. I didn’t believe her, not at first.” Swan Mother let out a rueful laugh and her hand fell away.

She shook her head, “I know better than to doubt her, now.”

“I have a chance?” Fighter asked and pursed her lips, she looked toward the heavy door. ‘How many are here… how many will not be, in a month?’ She wondered.

Swan Mother nodded hard, several times in a row before she spoke. “Yes. You struck back, yes against a baby goblin, but you kicked, you spoke up in a place of silence. You are ‘still’ yourself. Yes, they poisoned you, but look at you already. You are expelling their rot from within, every time you tell the story, it loses a little bit of its power. That is the difference, more than anything else, that determines whether or not you have a future. Do you dare defy the predator’s love of silent victims? Or do you not? Obey them, and they will victimize you again, and again, and again. Every day they keep you from speech, they poison you and hold power over you.”

Fighter felt her hairs stand on end, she blinked back tears that, for once, were not of misery and humiliation.

“What about…” Fighter looked back and forth from the door to Swan Mother.

Bitter eyes shimmered and fingers shook while they clenched into fists, but a voice of deep sorrow ran stark contrast to it all as Swan Mother replied, “The rest? Most, all we can do, is wait. We try sometimes, but it only slows the process down. Some will not speak for twenty years of the days that ruined their lives. Some will never speak, and hold the memory in them until they die, wrinkled, old, and still in the power of goblins that may have died years before.”

Fighter felt her instincts tingle as the woman answered. ‘There is more to this.’ She looked away from the woman, down to her bed, “Say you’re right… what do you want from me? What can I do?”

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‘You can do it!’ The dead man’s voice echoed in her mind again.

“For now, you can rest. You’ve said enough.” Swan Mother slowly rose to her feet. “Tomorrow I will come again. Or Grandmother Swan. When the poison is expelled from your heart, when your eyes are dry and their rape of your body has lost its power as much as it ever does… then, then you can worry about what else you can do here, if you want.”

The voice of the woman was insistent, and her actions far quicker than Fighter expected, Swan Mother was halfway to the door before Fighter could even blink twice.

“A-Alright. Do you think… do you think my nightmares…?” Fighter looked at her, the bright light of the moon coated half of Swan Mother’s body, but her bust was wreathed in shadows of the night.

“Nobody can answer that, but if you dream nightmares, you will wake up again, and they will be dead again, and we will work again tomorrow. You may never be who you were before, Fighter. But you are Fighter. And you can still be who you want to be, if you set your mind to it.” Swan Mother went to the door and closed it behind her.

The door closed with a faint ‘click’ and Fighter closed her eyes, and the last words she heard were in her head again, ‘You can do it!’ Her father shouted to her from the past.

And she knew nothing more until she awoke.

What woke her was a wrinkled hand on her shoulder, “It’s time, my dear, it’s time.”

Grandmother Swan’s creaky voice uttered. Fighter slowly sat up, what she dreamed, she couldn’t recall, she rubbed her sleepy eyes with balled up hands, and saw the faint light on the stone floor of her little room. “Are we going somewhere…?” She asked. A yawn formed in spite of her best efforts, but felt wonderful at the same time.

Grandmother Swan shook her head, “No, no we are staying here. I am going to listen to you, and let you expel the poison. Swan Mother is doing my duties today, she can run the temple. You can remain here, with me.”

A wrinkled smile formed on the aged face, but the grip in her left hand on her staff was firm even at a glance.

Fighter sat up, gnawing at her lip from the ugly prospect, the creaky fingers of the gentle touch were patient, but in the faint shadow from the still not fully lit room, they were like gnarled branches of trees. A dim memory from long ago stirred in her mind. ‘Father, I don’t want to go into the forest at night…’ Little Fighter said and stamped her foot.

‘Why not?’ he asked from far above her, looking down into her stubborn eyes. She balled her tiny fists up and answered.

‘Because the trees will get me!’ She gave her answer in the kind of serious voice only very serious little girls could use.

‘What?’ He’d asked.

‘The trees will get me!’ She insisted and pointed to the many thin branches and their dead, leafless limbs looking like skeletal arms reaching out. ‘They may look like just trees! But they’re monsters! Monsters! I don’t want them to get me!’ Little girl tears filled her youthful eyes.

Her father laughed a deep belly laugh, ‘That’s the only time to get moonberries. So either you want moonberry pie, or you don’t, but if you want the pie, you have to get the berries. And those trees aren’t monsters. They’re only scary because it’s night, they’re the same trees at both times of the day, no matter what they look like. A monster is a monster in the day, a tree is a tree in the shadows. Now do you want moonberry pie or don’t you, Fighter?’ He crouched down, tussled her dark hair while she pouted her lips and pronounced…

‘Pie!’

‘Then go on in there tonight, you know the patch, and grab the berries, then come on back and tomorrow we’ll make a pie. Go on, you can do it!’ He tapped her nose with his forefinger, and she did exactly that. Just as he predicted, no trees tried to get her.

She came back to herself from the memory, and tried to ignore the reaching shadowy hand of the old woman, and began to speak again.

“...The weight of the goblins when they held me down, it was worse because any one of them, I could have handled. But any time I tried, the big one, the hob, just hit me again. I stopped fighting. I’m ‘Fighter’ and I stopped fighting…”

This time, Fighter watched the light creep over the floor, minding the time as she retold the story to the old woman.

Unlike Swan Mother, Grandmother Swan said a bit more. “Yes. Take away their power. Take back yourself, and then you can take revenge.”

She never explained her thoughts of revenge, but Fighter did as she was bade, repeated it again and again while the light crept over the stone, so intently was she speaking that she never gave a thought to hunger until Swan Mother appeared at the door with a tray of bread, some thick sliced pieces of beef, some cheese, and a simple wooden cup with a pitcher of water.

Fighter ate slowly, the flavor of cheese was rich, and paired well with the bread and well cooked meat. She held the cup in both hands and drank greedily when Grandmother Swan poured for her, the sound of clear clean water sloshing into the cup was the only one in the room for several minutes as Fighter drank one refill after another to sate her already dry and cracking throat.

Then it went on again. She watched and minded the passing hours until the light rose along the wall and began to disappear.

That was how the next few days went, with Grandmother Swan or Swan Mother coming to her alone, though how many days it was, Fighter lost track.

Until the day she told the story… and not a single tear fell.

Fighter didn’t notice it. Not at first.

Not until Swan Mother got up from the bed, it let out a low creaking noise, and she stood in front of the young dark haired woman. “You did it.” She said with a faint smile.

“I…” Fighter reached up, and touched her eyes, they were dry, her fingers traced her cheeks, they were dry. She looked at Swan Mother’s clothing, the white and blue had no spots where salty tears had briefly darkened their shade, and she checked herself and found her linen clothing equally dry.

Swan Mother leaned forward and rested her hands on Fighter’s shoulders. The slender woman’s hands tightened where she held Fighter, “This does not mean you’re ‘well’. It doesn’t mean it’s over. In some ways, maybe it never is. The only real victory is no longer letting it control you, it is in taking back what power they had over you, Fighter. And that… that leads to the next thing to know.”

Fighter’s eyes went up with brimming expectation as she listened, she asked nothing, but waited instead for Swan Mother to speak.

“You wanted to know before about how you could help. Today, today we begin to show you. We begin to teach you another lesson of this place, and how we… we who were the victims of goblins… punish them for what they do.”

Fighter’s pulse began to race.

“Kill goblins?” She asked.

“If you hate them enough. And you want to. Do you?” Swan Mother asked with a cocking of her head and a knowing smile.

“Yes, yes I do.” Fighter answered, with not a tear falling from her eyes.

“Then come with me to the inner temple, the place where we worship Abbadar. But…” Swan Mother took her hands from Fighter’s shoulders and straightened up.

“But?” Fighter asked, not yet standing.

Swan Mother’s right hand rested on her hip, and her left hand went toward Fighter’s face, her index finger raised and the rest into a fist. “But only… only if you’re ready to do what it takes, and kill more than just their babies. Are you sure you’re ready?”

Fighter stood slowly to her feet and looked through hard steel blue eyes at Swan Mother. “I am. For Wizard. For Warrior. And for me.”

Swan Mother didn’t reply except by walking to the door of Fighter’s room, and Fighter was only a step behind her, and as she passed the heavy oaken beams that made up her door frame, she heard that much loved voice whisper again, ‘You can do it!’