Sarafyna

It happened again. But it's worse this time. She's in pieces. I can see her. Broken. Bloodied. Dismembered and impaled. It keeps happening. With whatever she did, I had hoped it wouldn't happen again. But this was more than her cancer. This was a far darker malignance. This was torture and I felt every stab. Every slash. Annie screamed out. She sobbed. She wept with pain and I was too far to help her. I hate it when Annie is in pain. I hate it when she feels helpless, just as much as she does.

"You know you can't keep this up. Day after day. Hour after hour. Minute after minute. You have to rest eventually."

One more time. Two more times. As many times as it takes. I will not leave her. I will bend and break the world to keep her safe. To keep her alive.

"Why are you so certain she even wants this? Don't you think this hurts? Don't you think this is miserable for her? Exhausting? What if you are hurting her?"

Nearly every night since I have been here, this has happened. The cancer has caught up to Annie again, and again, and again. And each time, I have fought it off. Each time I have brought her back. Until that night she came here and visited me, this happened to her every single night. Twice on that last day. It felt like it would never end.

"You know it will have consequences. There is a reason sages only push the world so far. There is a reason it resists you when you try to change her body more. There is a cost for this."

I realized it, back in Tumult. When she fought the city lord. And I became certain when I found her at her desk. I had always felt connected to Annie. From the moment I met her. Before that, really. The moment she got anywhere near the Radiant Woods, I knew she could save me. I knew she would save me. And with the realization, came the images. The resistance. The insistence of reality that I was wrong. Every single time I have done this since I have been assaulted by the images. I push at the boundaries of the world. I push at reality, and I reject it. I will not let Annie go. I will never let Annie go.

"Don't you wonder, why she remembers the first seven years like they are hers? Why she considers herself 'Lillith'? Do you really think that doesn't matter?"

I tell the world no, and it shows me the reality. It demands I acknowledge the truth. Annie is dead. She was beaten. Hacked at. Killed. Her cancer came back when she lost her arm. The fabric of reality shows me, tries to prove to me, that she is dead. I reject it. So it shows me another image. Her corpse in bed. Exhausted. Overworked. Overstressed. Taken by cancer. I reject it again and it shows me this image over and over again. On different days. Different nights. I can tell it isn't the same night. She will always adjust. Shift. Her cat will move. But one thing is always the same. She is always dead.

"It's because she is Lillith. She has always been Lillith, and she has always been Annie. What do you think that means? What do you think that implies about what you have done to her? About what you keep doing to her?"

I reject all of them. So it keeps going back. It keeps trying to force me to acknowledge what should be true. The scene finally shifts to a new room. A room back in our old community. It shows her, collapsed at her desk, a whisper sphere in a pool of blood from her mouth. Godfrey shouting from the other end. She is dead. I reject it. Again the vision changes. Her body is on the floor of a mansion, torn to shreds by shrapnel. Another man lies near her. Some kind of explosion has gone off, killing them both. She is undeniably dead. I reject it.

"We are supposed to move on when we die, Sarafyna. We are supposed to move to something new. Something better. A new chance to live again. We are not supposed to keep fighting. We are not supposed to be relied on by the living."

Now she is in the Radiant Woods. I feel a stone in my gut as I see it. She has been impaled by some kind of stinger, because I failed to protect her. She should die. This should kill her. She should not be able to survive this. But I am there, by her side, and I reject it. I put her back together. Now she is on campus. There is so much blood around her. So much anger. Sinew runs down her chin. She is impaled on a spear of bone, protruding from a corpse's arms. She is dead. I reject it.

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"We have new lives waiting for us. She has a new life waiting for her. A better life. Without the death. Without the suffering. She could have started it so many years ago. But you are holding her here. Holding her captive."

She is a child now. Crumpled on the floor. Pain is etched into her rigid face. Her hand is gripping a needle and she lies next to an open bottle of ink. She is dead, and mana swirls mockingly around her corpse. I refuse. She is in bed. Surrounded by her younger family. The sweat of a fever decorates her head and soaks her pillow. She fought as hard as she could, but she couldn't beat the sickness. It was too much for a child her age. A tragedy, but a common one in commoner households. It's simply not plausible to keep every child healthy into adulthood. She is dead.

"How much nexus energy does this take you? To bring her back, over and over and over again? To sustain her? To keep the blood running through her dead veins? To grow her into a woman? How much could you do for other people with this power? Wouldn't she want that? Wouldn't she want the massive amount of Nexus energy to be used to feed the poor? To fight the nobility? To end suffering, instead of wasting it on her?"

She is dead.

She is dead.

She is dead.

She is dead.

No. No no no. She is Annie Beckett. She is Lillith of Endings. She is the Mage of Mourning. She is the hope for the people in the world. She is the savior of so many people. She is my savior. She is the woman I love. And She. Is. Alive. I will not accept a world where she is dead. I will not accept it and I have the power to deny it. Annie is not dead.

"How much power does it take to sustain her? To let a corpse grow, and age, and change, and bleed? How much are you wasting to make the world pretend she is still alive? You know that's all it is, don't you? Pretend? She is nothing more than a moving corpse. Nothing."

She is on the ground. Ground like I have never seen in a city I don't understand. People in clothes that make no sense surround her. She is... unrecognizable. Not because of her curled hair. Not because of her brown eyes. And not because of her differing build. Because of the impact. She is unrecognizable. She is dead. No.

"How soon could you have escaped from the Nexus, the Radiant Woods? If instead of reaching out and demanding the world send you help, you used this power yourself? You were only there for what, a year when you started spending your massive power on this? Begging for help? Bringing a child back from a peaceful death with memories she shouldn't have? Feeding Nexus energy to her body so she could age and eat? I know you were a child. I know you weren't even aware of what you were doing. But don't you see what a waste that is? You spent eight more years in the Nexus, waiting for your pet corpse to come and save you!"

"Shut up!" I finally shout. "I am trying to focus, and I have nothing to say to you, Rune!" The boy shakes his head at me as I try to focus on Annie again. I can still see her. There are priests surrounding her for some reason. They think they get to decide her life, but it is out of their hands. It almost feels like cramping throughout my entire body as I wrestle with the world. Rune was right, I am getting stronger. But he is also right that this gets harder, and harder, and harder. I feel like I am folding in on myself and lifting a boulder at the same time. Like my skin is growing too small for the rest of my body and I have to struggle to move.

"Drop. The. Dead. Weight." Rune insists. I refuse.

I am not the one that needs to move. Reality is. The Nexus is. Anything that insists that the woman I love is dead. She is not dead weight. She is not dead anything. I will not allow it. I don't care if they tie me up. I don't care if they lock me here. I don't care if Rune keeps watch on me so it is too dangerous to bring Annie here. I don't care if they feed me poison day after day and refuse to give me a place to shit. I will use everything I have to deny a world where Annie is dead and I am alone.

I push. I bend. I break. And I feel the breath enter her lungs again.

I look at Rune. "No. I do not care about you. I do not care about your plans. No. Annie is not dead weight. Annie is everything. And without her, this power is nothing." I say. He sighs and straightens up. No longer leaning against one wall, he brushes off his jacket.

"Then you were a waste of my time. I have other duties to attend to than a lovesick child and her meat puppet girlfriend. Rot here until you learn to let go," he spits back in disgust. Then he knocks on the door, and unceremoniously leaves. I only smile. I did it again. Everything about reality tried to stop me, but I did it one more time. And I will keep doing it, as long as I need to. Annie is alive. And I can feel how angry she is. I would hate to be the man that did that to her.

And if Rune is serious, if he is finally giving up hope on me... I would hate to be the woman that put me here. Because Rune is wrong. Annie is not holding me back. She is not dead weight. Getting back to her is the desperation that pushed me this hard. Harder than that child's taunting ever could. She is why the poison is holding me back less and less.

Annie is why I am now able to shift and mold my arms into slick, formless flesh, and slip from my restraints. As soon as I can't feel Rune's presence anymore, Annie will be why I was able to break free.