Heidi burned and writhed in agony, bending on her knees, screaming like a woman possessed. Monica didn't smile, smirk, or have any particular expression. She just watched as the Obsidian Flame started ripping off the skin of the woman and consuming her flesh.
Everyone had been startled by Heidi's banshee-like scream. And now they all watched as the blonde—well, the girl that was blonde since all her hair was being eaten up by the Obsidian Flame. The former blonde, now rapidly becoming bald, squirmed and twitched.
A few seconds after Monica had started dousing her with Obsidian Flame, she summoned the Golden Flame as well. Now, the layers of flesh and skin began knitting themselves together, trying to resist the onslaught of the Obsidian Flame.
It was a horrific scene. Ted turned to the side and bent over, puking everything that was left in his stomach from the night before.
Heidi was agonizing, but right when she was about to perhaps lose her senses and fall, Monica stepped forward, holding her by her arm so that she would not fall on the ground. The woman was still in blinding, torturous misery, but Monica made sure that she could hear words, relenting with the Obsidian Flames from her face and scalp for a moment.
"You're halfway through it, Heidi," Monica said. "Don't fall. Don't give up. And you'll get a Class so strong you won't even believe it. A Class beyond any of your dreams."
Heidi barely understood Monica's words and looked at the woman while the Obsidian Flame and the Golden Flame rotated over her body in a cycle of destruction and creation, taking her flesh, mangling it, and soon after recreating it.
Monica knew that since her Golden Flame was currently still slightly stronger than the Obsidian Flame, and since Monica was taking very much care of outputting more Golden Flame than Obsidian Flame, the Healer had no way of dying in the process. But the pain she was going through—burning oneself with a flame in order to get a Fire Mage Class would have hurt a lot. Being burned alive from head to toe was excruciating.
Heidi, determined and understanding what was at stake, placed both flaming arms on Monica's shoulders, who couldn’t be hurt by her own flame. By now, all her clothes had been burned away, and the naked, bald woman hung for dear life onto Monica as the cycle of Obsidian and Golden Flame ravaged her body.
About thirty seconds later, Monica dispelled both flames, instinctively feeling that it should have been enough. Heidi collapsed the moment she retracted both flames. Her nervous system overwhelmed, her entire body shutting down.
Monica swooped the girl's legs and took her in a princess hold before she could hit the ground, looking back at the men.
"Don't look. I need to go help her change."
The flames had given Heidi some propriety during her ordeal, hiding her most intimate bits. But now she needed to clothe herself again and make sure that she would come to her senses, not naked among a bunch of men.
"Dotty," Monica called out. "Come. I need help."
* * *
“Is she going to be okay?” Dotty asked as she slipped a pair of pants over Heidi’s cleanly fire-shaven legs. She looked at the woman's bald, eyebrowless face and cringed. She wasn’t big on makeup or even brushing her hair. But she had to admit she would have been quite upset if Monica had given her a complete shave from head to toe as she had done to Heidi.
“She should have already gotten the Class notification,” Monica told Dotty. “She will be fine—at least physically. When it comes to her mind, I don’t know. Being burned alive is not good. It might have traumatized her a bit.”
“Why didn’t you tell her you were giving her a Twin Phoenix Class immediately?” Dotty said. “I would have liked to be told why you were about to burn me alive. She would have probably accepted days ago if you made such an offer. You just gave her a Twin Phoenix Class.”
Dotty sounded still perplexed.
“I did,” Monica smiled, “and I know she would have agreed to that. She’s tough.”
“So why didn’t you?” Dotty asked, confused.
Monica tapped her chin after they rested Heidi against a tree trunk. “I wanted to see how she would react to this being sprung on her. It helps me see what people are really made of if they don’t expect something.”
“Is that why you had me fight a wolf while I was tired and without you intervening?”
Monica nodded with a serious expression. “Yes. It wasn’t nice—”
“But nice gets you killed,” Dotty finished the sentence.
Monica sighed, looking at Heidi’s bald head.
“If I had had another choice, I would have taken it, but some risks are worth the pain. Will Heidi hate me for this? Maybe. In fact, do you hate me?” Monica asked, looking at Dotty.
Dotty hesitated and then shook her head. “I don’t hate you. I’m just a bit afraid of you. Sometimes, you act like a monster.”
Monica nodded. “I have been cruel to you, to Heidi, to Ted, and a little less to the other three idiots. The more I care about someone, the more I need to make sure they’re ready. I like to think there is a price to everything. When I’m cruel, Dotty—I want you to understand this—I am paying a price myself. There’s no being cruel to someone without being cruel to yourself. We all want to be loved. We all want to be revered and treated like gods. So when we get the choice, we prefer pleasing people, or at the very least giving them the impression that we’re pleasing them, even though we might be hurting them beyond what they can understand.
“The real monsters,” Monica continued, “are those who trick people and are cruel to them while they let them believe nothing wrong is going on. Was I cruel to you? Somewhat, yes.”
“But you own up to it,” Dotty realized with a frown.
Monica shrugged. “I don’t know that it’s enough. I don’t know that inflicting pain and feeling guilty about it exculpates you. I actually don’t think it does at all. But you can now kill wolves that would have torn apart your entire village. You got to the point where you can face one alone, maybe two while taking just the slightest bit of damage. I have to believe that without me putting you through a hard situation, without making sure you were ready to die, it wouldn’t have happened.”
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“But Heidi would have gone into the Class all the same,” Dotty said, not fully getting the point of what Monica had done yet.
“Yes,” Monica nodded. “She would have. That’s why I warned her three times before dousing her in Obsidian Flame. Now, I know that she understands the difference between cruelty and sacrifice. She knew I wasn’t asking her to suffer in my place, and she knew I wasn’t dishing out suffering without a reason. Otherwise, she would have stepped away. She would have gone out of the fireplace or fallen and given up. But she put her hands on me because she trusted me. That’s why she stayed. She looked me in the eyes while her flesh was being burned and consumed. That told me what she’s really made of. It might not sound logical or nice, but it touches on a layer of trust that cannot be built in any other way. She trusted me and said that I was doing what was best for her. Otherwise, she couldn’t have stayed with us. Now I trust her, and I’m sure she will trust me.”
Dotty found the entire reasoning a little convoluted but it actually, perhaps too weirdly, made sense. Maybe she was getting too attached to Monica’s violent ways of teaching lessons and helping people. But she had to admit that so far the Avatar of the Twin Phoenix had definitely tilted the scale toward helping others more than hurting them.
Dotty smiled with a half-crooked lip. To be fair, she had also hurt her and Heidi a lot, but only time would tell whether she had been truly right about her actions. Hopefully, in time, Monica wouldn’t have to burn people alive to do so.
“Go now,” Monica told Dotty. “I need to talk to Heidi when she comes back to her senses.”
* * *
“Why would you give me such powers?” Heidi asked, stunned. That was the first thing she had asked as soon as she had regained consciousness. She hadn’t complained about the hair and the eyebrows even though she had touched them with a strong hint of displeasure on her face. She had stared right in front of her, probably checking out the notifications she had gotten, and had left her mouth hanging wide open.
“This is too much,” Heidi muttered.
“No, it isn’t,” Monica smiled. “Life is not a transaction, Heidi. Life is about giving a chance to those who have nothing. I am arrogant enough to say I saw something in you. Now, I’ll just wait to be proved right or wrong, but there’s no being proved right ever unless you take the chance of being proved wrong a few times.”
Monica hadn’t told either Dotty or Heidi that if Heidi had been loudly complaining and blaming Monica after coming back to her senses or during the test, she might have considered leaving her to burn alive. Considered, though not guaranteed. She would have just made a decision on the spot based on her instincts. It would have been extremely cruel toward the woman. But Monica didn’t want to risk giving an evil person these powers.
Heidi had complained a lot before, but she had also shown changes in the few days they’d been out. So Monica decided to take a big chance, a bet that, if it paid off, would make the world a better, more just place.
And yes, it was arrogant on Monica’s behalf. But she was indeed the Avatar of the Twin Phoenix. She considered arrogance a side effect of the job.
Heidi slowly got up, looking at her hands, flexing them, and then summoning fully black flame in her palm. She looked at it and then at a tree. Then at Monica. “Can I?”
“Yes, it doesn’t burn like a normal flame. The Obsidian Flame consumes instead of burning. It won’t set the forest on fire.”
Heidi placed the hand on a tree trunk and saw her fingers starting to sink into it. Monica was right. It wasn’t burning. It consumed the wood as if it was just devouring it, grinding it to dust. She removed the palm, seeing the print of her hand going several inches deep into the thick tree.
“I don’t have the Golden Flame, though,” Heidi said, looking at Monica.
“When I got the Phoenix Healer Class before my Title kicked in, I didn’t get the Obsidian Flame offered to me. Only the Golden Flame. I don’t think you can get both unless, well, you’re the Avatar. This is pure speculation, but if I had to guess, we get the flame we’re most in tune with.”
Heidi raised an eyebrow toward Monica.
“And you got the healing flame as if you were… nurturing?”
“I did just nurture you to a Class tied to an Ancient Beast,” Monica pointed out with a smile.
“Monica, you just burned me alive.”
“Alive is the keyword. You’re not dead.”
Heidi raised her hands, giving up, and raised her missing eyebrows.
“Ok. Just… thank you. I will repay this debt for the rest of my life—”
“What debt? Yuck.” Monica made a shooing motion. “Don’t say that. I’m not your God. Lucas said Avatars don’t have followers. You can be part of the team if you want, but not a follower.”
Heidi, who had assisted at the discussion between Monica and the Healer God, couldn’t help but ask the same question her former God had asked.
“Why do you do this? I mean, why do you help? What are you trying to do?”
“There’s a justice scale,” Monica said, raising her palms pointing upward like plates. “I don’t have people I care about here—I don’t have family. So, I don’t have ties. Otherwise, I would have worried about them, about those I love. Therefore, I have to use a scale that’s usually on the back burner. On the one plate,” she said, wiggling the fingers of her right hand, “there’s what’s good and just. I know that the long-term outcomes, regardless of how they make me or others feel, will most likely be positive. You getting a Class that will help kill Crystal Wolves infused with Corruption is a net positive.”
Monica then stopped wiggling the fingers of her right hand and extended the left one.
“On this one, instead, there’s danger and pain. For every good action, you might have to inflict pain upon someone or suffer yourself,” Monica looked emphatically at Heidi since she was the perfect example of this. “Some of this pain I might feel as a result of what I have to do. Since I’m not a mindless drone, I would weigh the pain of having to lose a child against a thousand, a hundred thousand, or perhaps even millions of lives of strangers. But I don’t have children here. So…”
“So you can make very rational decisions without being burdened by the ties with your loved ones because you don’t have any,” Heidi realized. “So, you do this… for yourself?”
Monica winked.
“Sort of. It might look easy and, at times, a bit aimless. But I’m making judgment calls to stay in the right game—justice. Then, if I ever find a nice lover and have children, I might change. For now, I like two things: killing Corrupted monsters and making things around me better. I apparently also get Quests, which makes it easier to decide what’s next. If it hadn’t been for the system, I wouldn’t have known about the Crystal Wolves, and I would have had a very hard time finding them. I would have been aimless without it.”
Heidi had had a very different opinion of Monica up to this point. She had seen her as this sort of inhuman being who reveled in inflicting pain upon some and randomly testing others. She had seen her as an herald of chaos, if she had to be completely honest.
But now that she heard those words, she understood that Monica was just trying to make the best out of a terrible situation where she ended up in a place where she knew no one, had barely any memory, and everything was unfamiliar. On top of that, an Old God was trying to corrupt the very zone she had appeared in.
Heidi actually laughed out loud, shaking her head.
“What?” Monica asked, amused.
“You’re just… enjoying yourself. I thought you were chaos. Or maybe you had esoteric plans. No, you’re just trying to have a nice time while staying on the right side of things.”
“Glad you understand,” Monica smiled. “Now, let’s go, we need to get your Class up to speed.”