The next morning.

Jon closed the door to Alyssa’s room behind him. The new girl was nearby, sweeping the corridor. For a moment, she stopped and stared at him. Jon nodded, looking past her, and started to walk. The girl looked down and continued sweeping.

Jon slowed his walk just as he passed her, ultimately stopping ten paces away. He turned back. “What’s your name?”

The girl stopped sweeping and looked to him — then away, continuing to sweep. Jon turned away after a moment, the girl apparently disinterested in his question. He had better things to do, anyway, like speaking to the priestess waiting outside.

“Amani,” the girl’s voice called after him. He stopped in his tracks and looked back. She maintained a neutral face. All he could reply was a nod, and Amani nodded back, going back to her sweeping.

Jon met with the priestess by the door. She was wearing a gray robe. Three knights flanked her. “Do I have permission to go in?” she asked from the other side.

[She is only free to roam the lobby. The orderlies stay outside.]

“As long as you stay inside the lobby,” Jon said. “No guards.” The priestess nodded, and he stepped aside, letting the priestess walk inside.

In the middle of the lobby were three chairs, but no table. The priestess approached one seat. “How’s Alyssa?” she asked, Jon trailing behind her.

“Fine,” he replied.

“Her condition’s stable?”

“It is.”

The priestess hid a smile. “Shame. I’m quite tired of her antics.”

The two sat across each other. The priestess maintained an elegant but official air, sitting with her back straight and her legs crossed. She spoke with certainty and steadiness. “The Order is placing this city under strict lockdown. 200 knights and 600 of their followers will enter tomorrow, and another 400 knights and 1000 auxiliaries to follow in the days after.”

Jon nodded. That’s about as expected, but that didn’t concern the Theater as much. “The Houses?”

The priestess nodded. “They’ve blundered and captured the lord’s castle.”

“Castle?”

“Thanks to Kinesia Gaelwood’s rampage and recent events, we have sufficient probable cause to raid and investigate the Houses’ dealings and assets. If we did that, however, it would leave them naked to attacks from you, assassins of Ravena, and that has left them with no choice.”

She paused, waiting for Jon to say something, but he didn’t, so she continued. “As this is essentially a coup, the Order is legally treating it as one. We will attack the castle in five days. What will the Theater do?”

[What do you wish for?]

Even Ravena was asking her. Why was everything on him? Still, he considered it seriously.

Alyssa had told him it that facing Lords Bowyer and Wiz together would be a suicide mission. He could still smell the smoke wafting in from the opened doors. He remembered Alyssa’s missing leg and Amani’s sleepless night. “Rest.”

The priestess blinked. “Were Alyssa’s wounds so grievous?”

Something bumped against the edge of a pail, and she and Jon looked to one of the inner entrances, finding Amani mindlessly mopping the floor. She picked up the pail with little energy, moving to the next tile to mop.

The priestess looked Jon in the eyes, finding something in him disaffected. “I understand. I hope to hear from you before the attack, although there is a matter in which I may need you and your...skills, in particular.”

“What is it?”

“The Houses continue to conduct business in secret. We have been shutting them down, but there is a peculiar slave ring which manages to elude us and escape at the very last minute.”

Slave trafficking. Jon winced, and the priestess was quick to notice it. She continued, “Of course, we will be more than happy to compensate you and the Theater for your services.”

He slowly shook his head. “Not until Alyssa’s on her feet.”

“Well, that’s not unexpected.” She handed out five sheets of paper. “These are flying letters. Fold them into a bird and they will fly to me.” She also handed him a bracelet. “My messengers will find you using this.”

He took the items, and the priestess stood. “Do give my regards to Alyssa once she awakens. Excuse me.”

As she turned, Jon called out, “I didn’t get your name.”

She looked him in the eye. “I assume you ask out of ignorance. Knowing the name of a priestess of Lumina is a privilege, and few earn the right to know mine.”

Jon nodded slightly. “Right.”

With that, the priestess walked out the door, while Jon remained on his chair, hunched forward in empty thought.

He returned to Alyssa’s room soon after, finding her awake, sitting up on the bed and flipping through pages of a book. She looked up to him as he entered the room. “Oh, good, I’ve been feeling quite peckish,” she said.

Jon took a seat by her side. “Priestess said hello.”

Amusing. “Yes, well, I imagine she did. So, what did the Houses do?”

“They took the castle.”

“Oh my.” Alyssa chuckled. “The Order’s moving, then? When?”

“Five days.”

“I see.”

Alyssa flipped through the book’s pages, but she couldn’t find the mind to read. The man beside her wasn’t any good at conversation, and neither did he indulge himself in hobbies outside of sitting around and watching the door.

On the other hand, the events of yesterday...they weren’t that bad, were they? Plenty of people died, but wasn’t that just the usual? Regardless, it was obvious to her that something in Jon got stirred from yesterday’s happenings.

“How’s the girl?” she asked.

“Amani,” Jon replied. This gave her pause.

“You got her name?”

He hummed an affirmative. Interesting. “So, how is she?”

“Distracting herself.” Jon slumped back on his chair as soon as he answered. He wasn’t appreciative of what he saw yesterday. It piqued memories he thought he’d long forgotten.

Kinesia had some sort of connection with Ravena, and being a goddess, she’d have clearly seen Kinesia coming. Why didn’t Ravena warn them, then? It felt like he was being played with by an invisible, unknowable force.

If that unknowable force had stayed silent in the world’s background, then he would have gladly dismissed it as religious superstition — but She was clearly real. What did Ravena even want from him? Was she really just playing with him?

Alyssa saw that her companion was clearly more tired than normal. She cheerily asked, “I see. How about you, then?” hoping Jon would answer, but he met her with silence.

Well, what did she expect? The man didn’t want any measure of conversation — that would be too difficult — but she understood that he preferred the presence of proper company who understood just how spent he was.

... Actually, this might be a good opportunity to bond a little bit.

“I see. Would you care for a story, then?” she asked.

He slightly turned his head her way, glancing not to Alyssa, but to the space in front of her. He turned away again.

Well, that was about as much of a confirmation as Alyssa could hope for.

“Okay, well,” she continued, “there was once a baby girl left at the steps of a temple. The people inside heard the cries of a baby, and they found her in a basket, just covered in dirty rags.” Alyssa made a wry smile at the fuzzy memory. “They argued a little over whether to make her the Order’s problem, but they ended up taking her in and raising her.”

Jon glanced at her, and it only took that momentary glimpse of her reminiscing face to tell that this was about her. He didn’t ask for a story like this, but, well, he should just let the young lady be.

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“It was a strange temple,” Alyssa continued, “filled with strange people. You wouldn’t think that any of them would have any experience in raising a child, but lucky for the baby, there was one: a man who had had children before, so he knew what to do.

“When the others did the wrong things for the baby, he would scold them quite harshly. It had gotten so bad that it seemed like he was taking care of an entire temple full of children.

“Oh, but it all turned out well. The baby walked on two legs and turned into a child. The people of the temple eventually learned how to treat the child like a child, and the child learned how to treat the people of the temple like ... her parents.”

They were better than her own parents in her past life. She thought they would find a way to hurt her, but it was strange, because her tantrums were met not with reprimand, but instead an honest desire and curiosity to know her feelings.

It was so unlike anything she’d ever seen — and coming from people who were supposedly killers and somewhat not right in the head?

“It was strange, because all those strange people were kind, as if the more ordinary someone was, the more cruel they would be.”

The next thing she knew, she had begun to hate the ordinary.

... Well, this was all based on a narrow range of experiences, even if taking into account her previous life. She had never been truly set free, having only ever witnessed and understood a whole four ways to live — as a child repressed by their parents, as an assassin and spy with no personal identity, as an overlord who could only survive by controlling everything around them, or as someone who desperately sought freedom — so there was a strong familiarity bias going on here.

As her patron, Ravena could, but wouldn’t, mention that. She firmly believed that these people had to learn the nuances of their own mistaken thinking. She wasn’t motherly enough to hold their hands in any capacity.

“They were her new family,” Alyssa continued, “and they made her an orderly of the temple — just someone to clean the floors and shepherd lost children back to the entrance, really. It was peaceful for a time, but there was a day when there was a fight, and she was in the thick of it — and she was useless in it.

“But she didn’t want to be useless, so she begged her family to train her, and with little resistance, they did — but oh, you know, she was just a child, so she couldn’t do much, and it was just lessons for a while. She learned the most useless basics of fighting and the most useless basics of shooting — but she was a child. She could only do useless things, really, but you need to be useless before you’re useful, right?”

Alyssa flashed a small smile at Jon out of embarrassment of her insecurities showing through. Little did she know that her smile was almost enough to make him remember something from before this world, but she continued her story, stopping his train of thought before it could slip into a logical conclusion.

“It only took some years before she was old enough to stop being a child and start being a girl, and the people of the temple also decided that she was old enough to kill. They watched her kill someone at 300 yards, and they even clapped for it, like it was some sort of school event” —

Alyssa held her tongue as she feared Jon’s scrutiny; she realized that ‘school event’ wasn’t even a term in this world.

A second passed, and that question never came. Well, he mustn’t have been very attentive to the features of this world. He’d always been so serious and focused on his mission. He hadn’t changed.

But damn it, she’d almost slipped.

“What happened to her?” Jon asked.

He...he’s curious? A smile tried to force its way to her face, but she clenched her teeth to try and keep it away. “Well, she kept growing, of course,” she continued. “Don’t get it wrong, she didn’t want to take up her family’s work. She just didn’t want to feel defenseless and dependent on others for her own safety, so it was just more training, mostly, but sometimes when she was doing really well, her family took her...sightseeing” — low-risk missions, more like.

— “But, oh, you can’t have everything. There were quite some unpleasant people in the temple.” Her face warped into one of contempt. “Would you happen to know who sold the utter lie that ‘elves are gentle folk’ ? Well, there was this utterly uncute one who could stoop to undiscovered depths when it came to being petty towards children.”

Her every memory of Kinesia incurred displeasure from high heavens ‘til the lowest levels of hell. Even her death didn’t make her feel any better about it. Oh Lady, I hope she went into the recycler.

[She did.]

Thank You.

Even with that, though, it didn’t change something very important... “I should’ve known that she was the beginning of the end for us, though,” she said ... regrettably.

Her companion connected the dots easily enough. The light stones in the catacombs were beginning to fizzle out when he first saw them. Those things lasted around five years, give or take, so something must have happened five years ago.

“First real sign of anything was an attack on the doorstep of the Thea — temple.”

Jon honestly thought she should just speak in first person at this point. He couldn’t dismiss the possibility, however, that it was just a peculiar way of speaking that they’d unfailingly picked up from Ravena — who happened to be the very first person he’d ever heard speak in such a way.

If that were the case ... he didn’t want to imagine a future where he’d begin speaking that way, too.

“She was there,” Alyssa continued, “against fifty men attacking the temple from the front, at a time when her entire family was away. Well, that episode is a whole story in itself, but the short of it is she, a young maiden of 14 years, proved herself more than just a simple orderly with some fighting skills.”

That was the time when Ravena rewarded her with Guntalker. All she’d done was manually reload sixty muskets and blunderbusses, arrange them in three rows of twenty, and shout fake orders into the night before using magic to pull the triggers on those guns one rank at a time, making it sound like an entire rifle company was raining hell from the windows.

The Skill was a joke at first. She was only able to control a single baby-sized pistol with it, but still, she diligently trained it up.

She didn’t think she’d have had to use it so soon.

“That was just the prelude,” she continued. Her voice had become sullen.

Jon heard her inhale and exhale deeply. “How did it happen?” he asked.

Alyssa was surprised that he’d caught on quickly — or rather, it should be expected. “It was an inside job,” she explained. She felt nothing but contempt for those people. Her blood nearly boiled just thinking about it, but she disciplined herself. “And a few betrayers in the temple’s numbers.”

Jon nodded unconsciously. An attack from inside would decimate any organization. He’d know.

“The girl had been alone since then,” Alyssa said. She looked at Jon, and he saw this from the corner of his eye. She looked away. “But not for long,” she closed.

No other words came out of her mouth.

Truthfully, Jon found himself relating to her on some level. As a child, he had also been taken in by some people when all he had was nothing.

He looked at Alyssa. She’d gotten the better end of the stick, just between the two of them, but comparing her suffering with his was just an exercise in futility. She was also ... thinner than he remembered — or had he just never paid attention to her physique at all?

He looked at the stove to the side of the room, then got up. “Where are you going?” Alyssa asked. Jon moved over to the kitchenette, unhooking a pan from the wall. “Where do you keep the knives?” he asked back.

The corners of Alyssa’s lips turned upwards. Her memories overlapped with what she was seeing. “First drawer.”

Alyssa watched as Jon prepared a meal on par with a four-star chef — five-star would be giving him too much credit. Still, when he put the tray on her lap, there was care in how the tea, napkin, and cutlery were arranged. It surprised her, but she didn’t let it show.

Later that evening, Jon opened the door and seemed to stare outside for a moment. Alyssa was surprised as Amani came in. Neither had uttered a single word, and yet, wasn’t that an invitation to dinner with Alyssa just then? She found it incredible, sad, and endearing all at the same time. They didn’t want to talk, but they also didn’t want to be alone. That was all it was.

The next day, Alyssa could walk and move around without feeling that burning heat in her organs. The priestess’s magic was still at work, but as long as she didn’t move too much, she’d be fully healed by tomorrow.

She noticed the slight limp in Jon’s gait. It had always been there, but Jon had never expressed any pain about it — or maybe the man was just keeping it to himself. Three hours and a messenger later, and the priestess was in the lobby again, this time treating Jon’s leg. It was a malformed bone from being injured too often.

The priestess left after applying a slow-acting magic on his leg so the bone would properly reshape itself over the course of a month — slowly, so he wouldn’t have to consciously adjust his gait.

During dinner later in the evening, Amani’s first words after all these days were, “Miss Alyssa.”

Alyssa looked up from her plate, seeing Amani’s calmed eyes. “What is it?”

“May I use the stage?”

Alyssa finished her food before she answered. “What do your people normally do?”

“Sword dance.”

“Aranai?”

“Yes.” Amani turned to Jon. “Please watch, too.”

He finished his food and put aside the cutlery. He stood up. “Last patrol. Find me at the lobby,” he said, leaving the room.

An hour later, Alyssa found him taking a peek through the boarded up windows. “Anything out there? She’s ready,” she called out. He turned around and nodded, joining her. There wasn’t really anything out there but platoons of knights making their rounds, announcing their presence in the dead of night.

They found their seats together in the audience. In the middle of the stage, illuminated only by candles and a pillar of moonlight, was Amani. She was dressed in a simple white dress, although Aranai custom demanded her to be in battle dress. Even so, what was most important to Ravena weren’t the props, but the performance.

Amani wielded a saber in one hand, while a pendant hung by a brass chain from the other. Eight candles were lit, encircling her, and there, she danced in place, slow and steady, letting the pendant touch each of the flickering candles.

In a single motion, she slashed the wicks off the candles, extinguishing their light, engulfing the audience in darkness, leaving only a sliver of moonlight to hit the stage. She thrust her hand up into the moonlight and sliced it, letting the blood flow down the brass chain and drip from the pendant.

The blood erupted into flames, the flames crawling up the chain and engulfing her hand, but it was warm, like a hand holding her own. The remaining candles burst into jet-like flames, lighting up the whole chamber ... until there was nothing left.

Amani wiped the last tear from her eye. When she looked at her palm, there was a scar where there should’ve been an open slice. The pendant was gone, a prayer forwarded to her friends.

Her eyes glistened. In Jon’s eyes, she looked so free, unbelievably unbound from the chains of grief that pulled her arms down all these days. It teased envy out of Jon’s heart — a feeling he never thought he’d ever feel.

Alyssa helped Amani down the steps, comforting her as they walked up the aisle and disappeared from the theater chamber. Jon stood up and followed, but as he took his first step up the aisle, he looked back. There was a candle there, still burning.

He gazed at it, pulled by the soft glow.

[It’s for you.]

He took the picture from his breast pocket. It was still there. Somehow, it was still there.

The theater was quiet. His mind was silent, floating in space. The rational, focused machinery of his brain went dead, suppressed by many other pictures — memories — flashing past his eyes: of the war of nations, of the people who took him in, of the love he found and lost, and the war he waged on his own just to regain a semblance of humanity.

He hated it. He hated all of it. He saw himself in the destitute children in the streets. He saw too many lightless eyes. He saw himself in Amani, losing everything and taken in by killers who knew nothing about living with a soul.

So he threw the picture of his wife, pulled out his pistol, lined up his sights, and shot it in the moonlight, the bullet finding the picture and the candle’s flame beyond it. His gun, the picture, and the candle light, for a moment were frozen and all connected by a golden flame. He pulled away his gun, and still, the line of flame remained in suspension — then quickly collapsed and shot right back at him, nicking him in the shoulder, bypassing his suit’s in-woven armor.

Just as quickly as the pain came, it also went. He peeled away the lapel of his suit, and where there should have been a gaping hole, there was only a burn scar the size of a fist.

The picture in the moonlight floated, then burst into a golden glow, and vanished. The candle light was no more.

[I will make sure she knows.]

If he could save even one child from this kind of life, then that was all he could ever ask for, wasn’t it? He turned and left.

Alyssa stowed away the picture that showed up in her palm, scurrying to find an appropriate lockbox in which to hide the picture and, along with it, her fluster.