Rye stared in shock at the giantess that had once tried to poison her. She stood right at the newly made entrance to the castle, covered head to toe in blood. The look on her face was mad, the sound of her [Threat music] filled in equal parts with vicious anger and twisted insanity.
“YOU!” Frey pointed at her. “YOU RUINED IT ALL!”
“Can we not do this now?” Rye said, frantically trying to push the golden spear out of her belly. It was really dug in there, and the hooks were getting stuck on everything. “Besides, you’re probably looking for Elia.”
“DECADES OF EFFORT, HUNDREDS OF SACRIFICES, WASTED! WE WERE SUPPOSED TO FIX IT ALL!”
You have been challenged by: Turncoat Frey
With a diplomatic resolution turning unlikely, Sam and Karla closed ranks in front of her. Sam was vibrating with the willingness to throw herself at him. He was huge, and every inch of her spirit spoke of danger. However, Karla was still concussed. In effect, Sam would have to hold the line by herself.
Alone…
Rye licked her lips as she whipped the air into a conjuration frenzy. Bolts and javelins materialized out of thin air, little needles and bits of hail, misshapen globs of ice filled with the most vicious cocktail of influences she could imagine. She was planning to strike her with overwhelming force. One flick of her wrist would be enough to send an entire hailstorm hurtling forward.
I’d rather not kill him though, she told herself. I’ll aim for the legs..
Suddenly, her body lurched. The golden spear wrenched its way out of her, bisecting her along the midline. Frey didn’t share her reservations.
“Crap.” Rye’s spells – no longer held in place by the focused flow of her reservoir – leapt every which way like rabid dogs. It took the lion’s share of her ability just to guide them away from her friends. The stronghold was filled with the sound of shattering ice and violent explosions all around. A part of them even hit her target.
Frey barreled forward in a bull-like charge, chunks of muscle flying away in arcs of blood. Sam raised her newly looted sword up high where it seemed to shimmer and vibrate, then met the wide blow of a conjured gold scimitar right as it hit Karla’s shield.
The giantess pushed them both back, handily, even after taking her parrying boon into account. It was the tyranny of size rearing its ugly head, the tyranny of weight.
Karla pivoted onto his side and took the chance to stab into his side with her wicked sword-dagger, but he ignored the wound, and punched her in the face. It made an ugly crunch. Karla went flying.
If she falls off the mountain, we’re screwed, Rye thought, frantically making calm signs. She tried to pull herself together, but her torso and waist were broken in two parts in such a rough way that nothing fit together anymore.
Worse, her left shoulder ached from all the casting, the creep of white scales all too present. She needed to get another spell out, something decisive. But she needed to keep the fabric of reality in one piece even more, and that was not an easy thing.
With only Sam to interpose herself between them, she was on her in moments.
“No, wait–“s he smashed Rye’s body with a stomp, then reeled back for another. Rye pulled back and out in her ghost form, forced to watch her grind the body Kasimir had spent so long tuning to her wishes into scrap and rubble. There was a sharp cry that came from his side as Sam finally got a good hit in, severing an arm at the elbow.
– which was right when the wave of a miscast crashed through into reality.
Double crap.
The trail connecting it to the sea above turned rigid. Frost flash-froze the room, covering everything in a translucent layer of ice. Sam and Frey looked like statues for a split second before their momentum broke right through. Sam blocked her strike again and was pushed all the way across the room.
“We were supposed to be the heroes,” said the giantess, coldly. “We were going to fix the grail, fix the world. Even if it meant we had to kill our fellow undead and slay every last shard bearer, every last god to do it.”
“Wanton murder is not what I’d call heroic,” Sam hissed. She threw a conjured bolt, but Frey simply batted it aside.
“We were this close,” she said, and tried to pinch her fingers together. She looked down, and finally noticed that her arm was missing. She looked around, but couldn’t find it.
“Yohoo~” a voice called.
It was Karla, standing at the edge of the ice. She looked a bit confused, and very concussed. She grinned as she waved the dismembered arm at her, showing to everyone that she was missing a tooth. “Looking for this?”
She disappeared down a hallway with a cackle. Frey turned to move after her, slipping, grumbling, and failing to conjure something made of gold to break the ice. Rye smirked; she knew from personal experience how hard it was to go from using both your hands to only one for casting.
Frey stomped angrily on the ice, completely ignoring Sam and Rye. Sam rushed over to her body just as she popped out of the wall in her fully ghost form.
“Rye, are you–“
“Alright? Yes.” She looked down at her mangled, headless body. “I seem to have lost some weight.”
Sam didn’t laugh. “Can it be–”
“Replaced? Yes. Repaired? We’ll see about that.” She tried to cup Sam’s chin, but her hands just phased right through. “You go and help Karla. I’ll join you soon.”
Sam nodded and then she was gone too, leaving Rye alone with her rapidly deflating confidence. This situation was turning for the worse. She needed a fix, and she needed it now.
“Rhuna,” she hissed. “Hey Rhuna.”
I am here, yes.
“Fix my body.”
There was a silence, and the sound of someone licking their lips.
That’s a hard ask. Convenient that you only call on me when you need something.
“Do it, and I’ll build whatever you want inside my dream. That’s what you want, right? A cushy life, infinite resources?”
I don’t think you understand my position. You should be dead ten times over, and every risk you take threatens me as well. Now things are turning south again. Take this as a sign to give up and turn around. You gave it your best shot. Sucks to suck, but not everyone is born a winner.
Rye’s eye twitched. “This isn’t the time to be contrarian, Rhuna. I won’t turn around.”
Then I won’t repair your body.
“You will if I tell you to. Remember, you are only alive as long as I want you to be.”
Ah. About that. I found your box.
Rye blinked. “What box?”
Don’t play dumb with me. It’s the scary box. You know, a looter brought this to me from that haunted roman-esque house. It wasn’t all that cleverly hidden, under a bed and beneath the floorboards. Honestly, if I could have put all my embarrassing memories and worst fears inside a box, maybe I would have too.
That wasn’t all that was in there. It was so much worse.
A hot chill run up and down her body and for the first time in a long while, Rye felt caged. “I will unmake you if you so much as dare to think about opening it.”
Yeah, well, the box will kinda break if you kill me, since I put it inside my body. Oh, this isn’t a threat by the way, just a statement. I want both of us to get the best out of this situation. I didn’t think that it was fair that if you self-destructed, that I would too, but not the other way around. We’re in this together after all, aren’t we?
Yells came from down the halls, followed by a crash and another quake. Sam and Karla couldn’t win with only the two of them. They needed her. And Rye needed a body to be able to cast well. In perhaps the greatest of ironies, Rhuna would have likely not found the box if Rye had spent some more time fixing her dreamscape. But now, the problems she had been running away from had caught up.
If she failed, Sam would die, and Karla too. Frey would make sure none of them could come back. They wouldn’t make it up the mountain. And Elia would be left to herself.
Oh. So this is what it feels like, to know you royally screwed up.
“You know, I was born a Prima, a first daughter of a wealthy farmer’s house,” she started. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I was blessed.”
… I fail to see how this is relevant.
“Because you said not everyone is born a winner. I was. It isn’t easy when your adequate is most people’s perfect. I had to work as hard as I studied, always be the first to wake, and never disappoint the will of the family. Then I died, and was pulled here where everything I had learned didn’t matter and nothing I did could change a bit about my situation. I was afraid, I think, because even after such a large upheaval, that one thing stayed the same.” She rubbed a ghostly lock between her fingers, staring out of the hole where a titanic burning snake was writhing to put itself out against the mountain. “I think the scariest thing I’ve done was put my fears away. After all, they’re an important part of me. I think it’s time to face my mistakes.”
No wait, don–
With a thought like popping a zit, Rhuna was gone, and Rye felt the flood of negative emotions hit her in one enormous wave. What followed were her nightmares, and the ones every person in the world had dreamt for close to two years.
I hope I did the right thing, she thought. But this really is a lot.
***
It’s coming, it’s coming. Running up my veins.
Can’t run, can’t hide. It’s crawling in my gut.
My chest.
My neck.
Can’t breathe.
It’s here, it’s here, I hear it eating the back of my brain.
***
The warm glow of the earth met the small crow as it landed on a branch. It had gone far up the rocky stump. It didn’t bother to think why it was here, or where its brethren were, it had always been a reclusive crow. All it knew was that the air was filled with the hum of life. This was a place of plenty.
Ooh, a worm. Peck!
This place was a paradise without nasty predators. As it gobbled his newest catch down, it found another, and another. It hopped from mud to mud. The blue pond had the juiciest worms.
It snagged a water beetle that had suddenly popped up and drank a mouthful of water with it. It felt odd. Suddenly, the crow knew for a fact that it was a he. He felt himself grow and with growth came knowledge and sudden awareness.
He looked up and saw a twinned face, one made of stone, and one with eyes that burned with ambition.
“Another one,” intoned Burning Eyes. “This cannot go on.”
“Why not?” Said Twin Face. “From water comes life. From life comes death. From death comes a new beginning.”
Stone-person did not look happy, or sad, or anything. “Not all beginnings should be. I will complete my work. I will be needing all your assistance. Even you, little crow.”
He reached a featherless wing down and the crow stared past it, right into his eyes.
The crow shouldn’t take his wing. It didn’t know what would happen then, where it would take him. But one thing he did know.
If he didn’t take it now, they would eat him.
***
A girl climbed the mountain. It was cold and dark, and she was stuck. These arms that pulled her didn’t belong to her. These legs that burned were not hers. So many strings pulling her, up and up. Attacked by a lion, saved by a doll, ambushed by tar, distracted by old hang-ups.
Why did they think she was worth it? What had she ever done besides run and kill?
She was no one.
When she died, what will they say? Poor girl? She had it coming? After a long fight with entropy, we welcome her into the embrace of our heavenly father?
But she wasn’t anyone, never would be. Just a piece of a broken girl, a shard of a shard, a dead thing that cannot die. You could say that she never was alive in the first place.
She was done waiting. She was done letting things happen to her. The mountain was right there and so she would climb and make something of herself, make someone.
But the mountain rose and rose, higher and higher. She turned back to see how far she’d come, but all she saw was a loop. The mountain was a circle. She was still stuck.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
***
It felt like years had gone by when Rye awoke in a feathery bed, feeling like herself for a time. She knew it wouldn’t last. Her heart beat like a drum and a directionless terror pressed in on her from all around, because she knew she wasn’t getting a break. This was still a nightmare. The heat of an oppressive summer forced her to get up and look around.
This was her room. This was home. The hallway seemed to stretch for eternity. So many doors for her to not open, for her to run away from.
You have to do this, Rye. Whatever it is, you have to face it to wake up from the nightmare.
She walked down the hallway, step after ethereal step. There was the door to her father’s study. Whatever was on the other side was… well, it didn’t matter. It was there.
The cold door handle felt like it was biting her as she pushed it open.
“You forgot to knock.”
Rye jolted in place. There he was, her Da’ sitting at the table he used for crunching the estate’s numbers. He had a face like chiseled granite and lips that seemed destined to sag in disappointment for eternity.
“Sit,” he said.
She sat. It was not a question of whether she wanted to or not. He was her father, head of the household. He declared what was right and what was not and just looking him in the face for more than a moment felt like an affront.
Don’t be intimidated. It’s just a dream. You’ve dealt with worse than parental disappointment. You beat Yolon. You beat Rhuna. You beat–
“Ooh, my little prima,” her Mum cooed. Her voice was just like she remembered, made of all the sugar in the world, to better drown her in. “How was your party? Did you catch the eye of any enticing young men?”
Enticing. See: rich, affluent. That was all she seemed to care about these days. Money and Manners, capital M. And drown her she did, as Rye fell back into the role of a demure, honest daughter they could be proud of. It happened easily, like putting on old boots.
“Not really, no,” she muttered. Da’ sent her a single glance. Rye straightened up immediately. “No, mother. I had a pleasant chat with a few, but lately they all feel so superficial and… boyish.”
For some reason that set Mum’s face into a smile. “That’s a sign of you growing up! And I understand you. Boys your age still need to learn to think with their heads instead of their vigor, and you need to learn not to doll yourself up so much. And you’ve got no time to be dallying about with flings and flights of fancy anyways. How go your studies?”
For a second, Rye felt guilty. She had cheated, just once. Her tutor had appointed a deputy for two weeks while he was taking care of his daughter, who was suffering from lung rot. The way the new, fat astrologist had drawled about how – as a woman expected to raise a family – it would be difficult to get anywhere without a perfect score, well… she knew that look, could read between the lines.
Did what I had to. Did what I’m good at.
Maybe Mum’s right. Maybe I am too pretty.
She drew back into her chair and answered meekly. “Fine. I’ll have my diploma come springtime. A whole year early – the grand philosopher Vitellus said he was even considering taking me in as his student after…”
Her parents didn’t look like they approved, or even thought it was all that impressive. Even though she was good in arithmetic, even though that achievement was built on her own effort.
“…whatever.”
The world around her wobbled. She felt the dream grow terribly unstable, reacting poorly to going off-script. Like realizing that your endless fall was about to come to an abrupt stop, Rye knew that if she lost the dream here it would propel her back into the morass of other people’s problems. And when she returned, there might not be much of herself left.
Rye focused and tried to be herself just a little bit more. She would never have been so dismissive back then. She was… on edge. Tired, wrung out by the triple attack of farm work in the morning, studying in the afternoon to evening, and going out on parties, orgies, and what have you to make herself seen and known to the people who mattered.
They didn’t matter to me, only to the me that wanted to please my parents.
Her dream re-solidified and as if surfacing from water and she caught the tail-end of a one-sided conversation.
“… no old coot who thinks smarts comes from rhetoric. That isn’t what we paid your education for, dear. Think of your siblings; do you think Marcus would do a good job in your place?”
“No…” Philosophers were paid in respect, and whatever money they made from selling memoirs and treaties nobody would ever read.
“Then get all that academia and philosophia out of your head. Your father has been very busy and, as I’m sure you know, his investments have finally borne fruit. Citizen Paulus – the younger one – just so happens to have a seat just for you at the council of land grants and taxation. You remember him, don’t you?”
“I do.” Paulus was a sniveling kid she had met once during a meeting both their parents had set up. He constantly clung to his mother and when she had led him around the farm, he had called her a country pumpkin. Only later did she find out it was apparently because he was grading people by how purple their tunic was. No doubt he had grown up some by then… by now, but she couldn’t imagine him any other way besides with a string of snot clinging to his toga.
She hung her head. She barely had to act anymore. She was home, back in that suffocating cage. Now, it felt like it was lined with spikes and bearing down on her, pressing deep into her chest.
“You planned for this?” She asked. “Since when?”
Her parents looked at each other. Da’ went back to his numbers and parchments. Mum’s smile suddenly felt a tad strained.
“Don’t be mad, but when you were just a little child, your father and citizen Paulus had a quite fruitful conversation. He has secured a sort of prestige you see, and the city entrusts him with a large portion of collecting their taxation year after year. If one of our family were to work under his office, then there is no doubt we could gain some benefits for our land.”
The way she pronounced ‘benefits’ felt a tad odd. She let the constellation of familial, political, and economic ties form a web inside her mind and with a start, she realized what Mum had meant. “You want me to evade taxes for us?”
“I wasn’t finished. In exchange for these benefits, your father would use his considerable base of clients – the tenders, millers, subject farmers, all people the city-folk cannot easily reach – to strengthen Paulus’ position and broaden his support among the populus. Who knows, if Paulus becomes a Senator, we might be looking towards a bright future indeed.”
That still didn’t answer why she was supposed to take the job as a tax mismanager. “Couldn’t Califer have taken my place then? He’s plenty smart and I’m the prima, I should be managing our estates, no?”
Her mother tutted. “Rye, the estates will manage themselves just fine. But you will be working together with Paulus – a fine, strapping young lad might I add – and rise up the ranks with him. Paulus the elder is old, and the younger will inherit his father’s position soon and you...”
“You want me to marry him.” She stared ahead, shocked. “You set it up years ago. You promised that I could choose who I wanted to marry.”
“Oh, dear, but that was such a long time ago.”
What are you saying? Does time make promises worth less?
“So was your plan, your deception. You promised!”
“Don’t raise your voice,” Da’ warned. “It is unbecoming.”
“U-un-unbecoming!?” You broke your word. How am I ever supposed to trust you now?
But something felt off. Despite the heat rising to her cheeks, this was not the crux of the matter. What was bothering her, what was…
“Where’s Sam?”
“Who?” her mother asked.
“Your favorite errand girl. Sharp eyes? Black hair? Does the same amount of laundry as five other maids? She’s been gone for a week now.”
“Oh, the servant girl. I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss about her.” A lie and accusation in one. Her mother knew that she and Sam were a thing. She just wanted her to admit it so she could put up a strong front together with Da’. “She is with one of our tenders, at the plot ten kilometers down south. Tiberius is his name – such a polite southern lad, hardworking, and handsome too. He was in need of a hand and you know how it goes: we draft a contract, he pays a lease. She will be staying with him over the winter as well, to make sure he isn’t… mismanaging.”
“You are telling me that you sent Sam, our best servant, to some random tender because he needed a hand?” Jealousy, anger, indignancy. “What were you thinking?”
Her mother’s face was the image of controlled politeness. “Rye, you need to focus on your studies. Dalliances and little flings will just distract you.”
“Sam is not a fling. To me, she’s the most important person in the world, but you already know that. You just want her gone because—” A light flickered on in her head. “You’re playing matchmaker again.”
“Rye, I would never–“
It all boiled over. Rye never thought that she was capable of getting so angry. But here she was, standing up and pushing against the heavy wooden table with such clarity that for a moment, the world around her felt so real.
“You!” she said, her mother physically recoiling. “You think that I’m going to forget about her after one winter, that you’ll get lucky and he seduces her? Do you know that Sam is trying for state knighthood, that she has been training relentlessly in her shrinking off-time, that she has been getting sleepless nights all because… because you don’t want us to have any time together?”
It felt ridiculous to accuse her mother like this. But her face said it all. She was terrible at hiding her thoughts.
“We adopted her as our own flesh and blood, deary,” she said, nervously glancing at Da’. “She ought to pay us back at least that much. It’s only right.”
“Only right? Only right!? Screw me over, fine, but how dare you talk of duties when you abuse her loyalty to rule over her like some petty tyrant. I was born to you, but Sam, she entrusted her life to you, after her parents died of the plague. Do you think you’re better, just because Da’ pulled you out of the legion’s whorecamp like some messiah?”
“That is quite enough Rye.” Her father’s face was showing emotion for the first time. A genuine displeasure was scrawled across his craggy brows. “You are our prima. The firstborn. Forget that and your duties again and you will see what the consequences are. Until then, you are confined to the house for one month.”
“You lying snake.”
Her mother quivered, grasping her father’s arm as she yelled in a shrill voice. “All I did… all we ever did was for you!”
“Two months.”
“And you!” She pointed directly at her father, who at this point had set down his metal quill.
“You better chose your next words carefully.”
“We don’t talk much. We live in the same house and I barely know you. But I think I do now, just a little bit. I think,” she said, searching his face for a sentence that would cut him like a knife, “that to his death, grandfather was right to be proud about the estate he built up from nothing. And that he would be oh so very disappointed to see his son selling his granddaughter and the daughter of his best friend LIKE FUCKING GRUGS!”
Rye heaved and huffed as she stared her father straight in the eye. She wasn’t afraid of his lash, of missing dinner or any of his other punishments. Because the more he lashed out now, the more he would prove how right she was.
“Do not show your face outside of your room until the day of the exam. You will take it. You will go and work under Paulus. I can’t force you to marry him but mark my words young lady: I will make sure you will never see that servant ever again.”
She was already leaving before he had finished talking. The last thing she noticed was her mother throwing herself into his arms to be consoled because her evil, evil daughter wasn’t grateful that she had whored out her fucking girlfriend.
“I hope that mean-eyed vixen gets knocked up by that stupid southern hick!” She heard her scream between sobs.
The door slammed behind her and Rye stalked down the hall with a vengeance. A vase depicting the ring of the twelve gods fell victim to her as she took it and hurled it against a wall. Then she was in her room and finally had the time to focus on crying.
“Da was shaking,” she told herself after the tears had dried up. “H-hah. Really showed him.”
But nothing she could do would change that she was living under his house. As long as that was the case, he owned her. What use was it to be legally free when her parents could just turn off the tap, disown her, and let her come crawling back after seeing how nice it was to be chained to their money?
“They wouldn’t do that,” she muttered. “They’ve already invested too much in me.”
An education took time, and money. She had needed a tutor to come all the way out from Arvale and to their farm, just to give a few hours of lectures and leave her with a pile of homework. And from those legal texts she was forced to translate, she knew that if Sam was with some tender then she was there as a servant. Her work was legally leased out. As if she was a thing.
Non-citizens didn’t have many basic rights anyways. The tender could do whatever he wanted with her, short of killing her.
He won’t be punished. Not by father. Certainly not by mother. Not by the law, because their words hold more weight than Sam and mine together.
It was getting late. Rye lit a candle and pressed herself and her pillow against her desk. The meaningless passages of the last codex she was supposed to translate chapters out of lay splayed out right there.
The law.
She flipped a few pages, until she reached a single important paragraph under state officials and civil services.
“…any state official is answerable upon their inception to no one but the empire, the empire and the empire.”
Time seemed to stop.
Hold up, maybe I can do… something. Something drastic.
She found another passage; one her tutor had dictated to her before.
“… when sworn to an order under the direct purview of the government of Loften, a knight may choose up to three loyal servants, friends or relatives. These candidates may accompany them to work the menial tasks and labor expected to appear under extended deployment, among them being…”
One more. One more. I know it’s in here somewhere.
“… the imperial state extends its legal protection from all but godly intervention to the direct servants accompanying a knight and working within the order holdings, namely…”
She pulled out an empty piece of parchment to note her facts down.
When’s the next knightship exam? Where, when?
It was after new year’s. Her heart sank again. She wouldn’t have her degree then. If this plan was to work, she needed some sort of qualifying factum. She knew she was overqualified in terms of academic stuff, but for everything else…
Rye didn’t even know how to hold a sword.
Does Sam know how to hold one? Wait, I can’t meet her, Mum and Da’ will be watching, and ten kilometers is too far to sneak. They think I’ll be taking the state exam in summer. But if I take the one in two months…
Then she would have her degree, and with it a chance at becoming a knight. Then, she could take Sam with her, and though she would officially be her servant, there would be no one but the two of them.
Freedom.
She checked the dates again, just to be sure.
I can do it. I’ll cram like hell while pretending to sulk. I’ll keep in correspondence with Sam through Califer; he’s got a kind heart, he’ll have to take over my duties while I’m in here anyways.
The sun was already rising when she finished her scheme.
This will work.
And it did. Rye leaned back as she left her body, as she remembered clearly how her parents had gone from stand-offish to trying to woo her, giving back her privileges piecemeal and treating that as a grand gift. They didn’t know that the bridge was burned for good, and they didn’t know either why Rye had asked for a horse as a present.
Horses were expensive. She couldn’t become a knight if she had a bounty for stealing one on her head. Hers was called Rudy, because he always rudely mistook her hair for hay.
But why then did Rye feel a sense of foreboding? The dream was won, the nightmare was over. She was ready to move on to the next one.
She waited in place and watched the nightmare move on. Running away from home was not the happy end she had so desperately dreamed of. Being a knight was stifling in its own way. Rye was well equipped to handle their challenges, and every day that Sam had to watch her live her own dream, she felt the rift between them grow.
Was it her fate to never be in quite a comfortable place? Was life just like this, an unsatisfying assortment of boxes that nobody quite fit?
She had just wanted to forget all her troubles for one day. And there she was, just her and Sam on Rudy’s back, galloping across the countryside.
Stop it, come on. Don’t run away.
But the Rye of the past couldn’t hear her. She watched the tragedy unfold, as the weight of two people strained her horse, as the strain of the past weeks made her hold the reigns too tight. Rudy was a good horse, who complained little until the very end. It was in her third year of knightship when Rudy tripped and fell on top of her, and Rye saw how she died for the first time.
It was a freak accident. None of her choices were singly responsible, and yet they all played in at one point or another. Maybe if she had been more open with Sam she wouldn’t have felt so stressed. Maybe if she had decided to fully commit to being a knight, and tried just as hard, then she wouldn’t have felt like she had put herself into another cage. Maybe if she hadn’t reacted to the betrayal at the hands of her parents with a betrayal of her own, she wouldn’t have even gotten a horse.
No. That last one is true, but it’s not right. I always knew my family had something planned for me, that they took my sacrifice for granted, that what they wanted and what I wanted was so, so far apart.
But if all that hadn’t happened, I would never have learned magic. I would never have had the chance to talk to a goddess and to hear her plight. I would never have met all the wonderful people I know now. I would never have met Elia.
Two people to look forward to for when she was done with this. Sam and Elia.
I think we both wanted to carry the world on our backs. And we both made the mistake of thinking we’d have to do it alone.
She took a deep breath. The nightmare didn’t seem so bad anymore, nor did however many were awaiting her. They didn’t all have a neat solution, but there were sure to be some.
Unique nightmares left until balance is reached: 415,929
Alright. You can do this. Even if it looks impossible, you can be happy.