It took Luci everything she had not to bite her nails. Stella, lips pursed, stuffed her phone back in her pocket. Each movement from the fence caused Luci to wince just a little more. Any second now, she was going to be scolded over how poor her enma was. Yet Stella was taking her sweet time getting there.

Unable to take the pressure, Luci blurted out, “I know it looks bad. Even the testers were really surprised by the results of my test. The looks they gave me were…”

“Yeah, of course they were surprised,” Stella said. “It’s stupidly high.”

Luci blinked. “Um, sorry?”

“I think I’ve only ever seen five people with spikes this high,” Stella said, fiddling with her half-empty beer glass. “Those were all from top level dungeoneers. S-class and above. Now, I know melding is a lot slower and less convenient than using aftos. That’s why your passive is usually more important than spike. Still, a spike of sixty-one is insane, even if it’s for just one form.”

Luci forced a laugh. “Oh, come on. It’s not that great.”

“No, it is. You’re insanely strong. That’s why if someone like you thinks they’re a bad dungeoneer, then what chance do mediocre trash like me have in this world?” Stella leaned back and downed the rest of her beer. She slammed the glass on the table. “Nothing. I’m worthless.”

Luci’s cheeks burned. She ran a thumb along Lunacogita, which sat wrapped up in her lap. She never let it too far from her sight. “I don’t really know what to say.”

“Alright, then let’s start with you answering my question.”

Stella waved a hand to catch Mori’s attention, who’d just moped out of the kitchen, then mimed for another beer. Mori grumbled something before turning on his heels and stomping back through the swinging door.

She turned back to Luci. “With your talent, you could work for any guild you wanted to. You’d get paid heaps and have a good career with good prospects. But not only did you run away from a life of luxury, you chose to work with me. Why? Why live this sort of life?”

Luci’s mouth worked as she tried to think of what to say. Rage was bubbling in her stomach, from little frustrations that had been festering for years. Provoked, relaxed after her rest and meal, and comfortable around Stella, she forgot decorum and spoke her mind.

“My life wasn’t luxury,” she said venomously.

Stella waited for Luci to continue, but the angry girl had clammed up, squeezing her staff with all her might. Stella sighed and said, “Oh, that the thing where rich people have everything but complain that they still don’t have enough?”

“It’s nothing like that!” Luci snapped. “I had to train every day, and it was gruelling. I got so many injuries, hurt myself so many times falling over from enma fatigue, broke my bones at least twenty times. Whenever I was injured, I’d get healed up and thrown straight back into training.” She rounded on Stella. By the way, do you know what would happen if I didn’t meet my instructor’s requirements?”

Stella turned her chair to face Luci, leaned back, and folded her arms.

“Well, I’d be placed atop a raised platform. The ladder would be removed and I’d have to sit there in the freezing cold, all day and all night, absorbing the moonlight. Do you know how cold the mountain air is in Praessumus? I used to shiver so much that it would break my concentration, and that way I couldn’t meditate. That didn’t matter to Praetor Gallus, or to Mother. I’d have to sit there for days on end until I finally showed some growth.”

“That sucks,” Stella said, not insulting. “I’d have run away too. Nothing to be ashamed of with a crap family like that. So, what’s the problem?”

“I—I didn’t want to leave,” Luci said. Hot tears welled up in her eyes. “But I couldn’t stay.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Luci’s voice caught in her throat. She couldn’t utter the truth. She couldn’t give it life. She didn’t know what would happen if she did.

“Because you did something you regret, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t mean to!” Luci screamed.

She was standing. Her nails clawed into the table. Her staff had tumbled out of her lap and clattered on the ground. The whole inn was silent. Luci knew she should have been more aware of her environment, but she was so angry. With herself, and nobody else. She didn’t care if anyone heard. Not anymore. And now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop.

“Praetor Gallus kept pushing me. He kept pushing and pushing and pushing. And Vesi was so good at everything! He’d show her a meld and Vesi would learn it so quick, sometimes on her first try. Honestly, she was a prodigy! Meanwhile, I had to struggle for weeks on end just to do the simplest things. All I had was power, and this stupid staff!”

She grabbed the staff from the ground and hurled it. The staff’s end twirled over Stella’s head and struck the wall behind her with a thunderous bang. Her anger released, Luci felt hollow inside and slumped back down into her chair.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The proprietor, Mr. Dagan, was about to raise his voice, to tell Luci to leave, but Stella shot him a glare so stern that he immediately snapped his mouth shut and retreated into the kitchen.

Stella let out a long sigh. “Mori’s taking forever with that drink.” Then she got up, rounded the table, and sat down beside Luci. “And what did you do with your stupid staff?” she said, urging Luci on.

“They used to make us spar,” Luci said in a quivering voice. “But ever since I was fifteen, and Vesi was ten, she would win every match. Power doesn’t matter when you know how to get around it with technique, at least not until the difference becomes really extraordinary, and I’ve always struggled to make any meld work. The only time I ever beat her was when I connected with the staff, but…”

She sniffed. She wiped her nose. She took a couple ragged breaths. “I’d finally crossed over to level thirty-one. I’d just bound with the third core, going up from the second. I’d already had a hard time controlling two cores and I wasn’t confident using the third. But Praetor Gallus kept pushing me. And Vesi—I was so frustrated. Not with her, but with myself. I was never jealous of her. She was my little sister. She’d looked up to me ever since she was little, and I thought, if she was better than me, then all of that would change. She’d stop talking to me because Mother would decide to invest her efforts into the better sister. I would have been cast down into a branch family and we would have never seen each other again. I didn’t want to lose her, so I…”

Reluctantly, Stella put a hand on Luci’s back. At the moment of contact, Luci’s tiny body jolted. Then it all came pouring out.

“I lost control. The whole world started lifting up, all these bricks and stones, and I just threw them at her. I just kept throwing and throwing and throwing. I—I wanted to show her how strong I was. I wanted her to recognise me. I felt so alive. I just couldn’t stop myself. She was blocking them for a while and doing okay, but then…”

Luci was sobbing. Tears ran down her cheeks. She couldn’t wipe them away fast enough. “Her face got crushed in,” Luci barely managed. “Her arm was all mangled. Her eye was coming out of its socket. It was horrible. And I didn’t even realise until I dropped the staff that—that I nearly killed my sister.”

She leaned her elbow on the table to prop herself up. Even sitting up was too hard for Luci right now. “They wouldn’t let me see her in the hospital. She was really bad. But I didn’t want to see her anyway. I didn’t want her to see me. I was so disgusted with myself. So I ran away. I don’t know how she’s doing. I don’t even know if she’s alive. Mother won’t tell anyone. But you know what the worst part is?”

She banged her fist on the table. It didn’t hurt, so she banged it harder. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t return until I mastered Lunacogita. But at this rate, it’s never going to happen, so I can never go back. I’ll never… I’ll never be able to tell her that I’m sorry. I just want to tell her that I’m sorry!”

Luci was in inconsolable mess after that. She’d held it in for over three months, carried it with her as she fled across monster-stricken fields, as she spent the last of her money on transportation to Logos, and struggled to survive in the laissez-faire city of Anypaxia.

Now that she’d ruptured the seal on her traumas, all that fear, self-loathing, and anxiety came pouring out at once. She buried her head into Stella’s shoulder, gripped tight onto her hoodie, and cried and cried into the evening.

Stella didn’t dare move the whole time. She waited patiently, rubbing Luci’s back as she let everything out. Her drink never arrived, but she didn’t seem to mind. Luci never noticed that she’d shed tears herself.

*****

Wip waited behind the kitchen door holding a cake, that he’d asked Mr. Dagan’s wife to prepare this morning. The portly, elderly woman had been more than happy to oblige. A welcome to one’s party was enough of a reason for her to bake a cake, and she even offered to do it for free once Wip had told her an abridged version Luci’s run-in with the Cartel. Somehow, Mrs. Dagan was the polar opposite to her venomous husband: warm and gentle and lenient in every possible way.

Mori, however, wasn’t happy about the situation. “You’re getting wax on the floor,” he said.

It had been over an hour since Wip had taken the cake off the kitchen’s cluttered bench, with Mrs. Dagan’s permission, of course. In his excitement, he’d lit the candles before taking it out to Luci—he wasn’t aware that candles were for birthdays only and had decided they were appropriate for a party welcoming. Since then, they’d burnt down to stubs. His consistent jittering and shifting had ensured that not only did the wax get all over the cake, but that it fell on the floor too.

The wax had fallen into a crack, one that had formed over the years by the earth shifting beneath the building. Getting that out wouldn’t have been worth the effort and so, like most buildings in Anypaxia, it would have stayed that way until someone tore the whole building down.

Mrs. Dagan put a reassuring hand on Mori’s shoulder. “There’s no need to worry about that, dear.”

“Yes, there is, Mrs. Dagan,” Mori sighed. “I’m the one who has to clean it up.”

“Sorry,” Wip said. “I’ll leave soon.”

“Yeah? When?” Mori demanded. “When that girl stops crying? You’re her friend. Aren’t you supposed to make her feel better?”

“I don’t really know,” Wip said. “The only thing I’ve ever been good for is—”

Images forced themselves into his consciousness. Blood. So much blood. Fighting. Surrender. “Kill him, Two-four-nine-eight.” Following orders. Laughter. Screaming. Laughter. Laughter. Laughter!

He screwed his eyes shut and mentally recited Chian’s rhyme: The Hyena’s in his cage, now; he’ll hurt you no more. The images faded, but not the bitterness they’d brought with them.

Wip forced a smile on his face. “Beating up monsters!” he said in a cheery tone. His hands trembled and he nearly dropped the cake.

“Just leave him be, dear,” Mrs. Dagan said to Mori. “Our sweet Wip will be out there when he’s ready.”

Mori sighed, wiped his hands on the towel hanging at his waist, then walked back into the common room.

Mrs. Dagan blew her nose on her already filthy apron then went back to her cooking, grabbing things out of the mess stacked around her and pouring them into bowls and pans haphazardly. Wip had no idea why the Dagans had stayed with each other for so long. People who were so unlike would only end up hurting each other. That was one of the many reasons he’d been so fussy about who he added to his party.

There was only one thing he was good at. It was what Luci needed right now, more than anything. She needed someone to make all the bad things go away. And there were many bad things after her right now.

A smile eased onto Wip’s face. His mind was made up, and that gave him a sense of comfort. He’d wait until Luci was done crying, then they’d all eat cake together, even if it was covered in wax.