As I pass by the compound, I catch a glimpse of white hooded people carrying a sack out of the gates, and rushing toward the river. Special forces, maybe? I don’t know. I need to hurry. I want to make sure I’m not the one holding us back. According to Lawrence, a life is at stake.

My tent sits near the front; right behind the two houses built for Janet and Shawn; more close to the main base of the compound, and closer to the communal showers as well. It was close to the female marines as well. I had gotten close to a couple of them, but after hearing Lawrence’s explanation, I’m not sure who I could trust. Perhaps all of them were already compromised.

I push through the tarp and into the small room. My order was sitting on top of my mattress. I pull off my layer of clothes and place them in the laundry hamper I kept near the door. The chain mail is beautifully made the dark metal shimmered in the dim lamp light like obsidian; the blue cloth lay on the underside of the chain jacket so that the metal rings didn’t pinch at what flesh was exposed. I roll on some deodorant before changing into some sportswear; a black crop top over a black sports bra, and a pair of pants made from the scales of a black serpent over a pair of boy shorts before sliding on the chain mail tunic.

The tunic fits comfortably; though it drapes down to my knees. Luckily, he also provided me with a bit of that same blue cloth to tie in place around my waist. That, too, fits incredibly well. Wilhelm is an incredible craftsman. It would be a shame if he were working for Roki.

I slip on a pair of black combat boots, and tie up the laces, fastening them beneath the tongue. Almost ready. All that remained...

I toss open the top drawer of the dresser, pull out the saber that my patron had given me when first starting out, and slide it into the sash around my waist. I also slide my dueling dagger next to it; the weapon I mainly used to parry. As I slid the dresser shut, the framed photograph on the top fell onto the ground. I bend down and pick it up. It’s a photograph of me with my family when William and I were 14. He was so outgoing then, and I was still in my chair. I hated looking at it; the grim reminder of the ALS I had lived with my entire life up until two months back.

I hadn’t seen my mother and father for nearly over a decade; when I was 15 they put me out and relinquished custody of me. They did so tearfully; saying they couldn’t take care of me the way I needed, and that they were sending me to live with my grandparents. That lasted two years; they would come over every so often; holidays and the like, but I never wanted to see them. After that, my uncle took me in. He was...well, he was evil. When it was discovered what he was doing to me, he was arrested and I was moved between family members for a year, and each one treated me worst than the last. Without William sticking up for me, and using the money he made from his jobs to get me an apartment so I could continue my education, I probably would have died. Over the years, I’ve tried to apologize to him, but he’d brush it off — he was living with Mom and Dad still, so he didn’t really need the money, and he made plenty with the freelancing he did, or so he said, to be comfortable. I offered for him to come live with me, but he said if he did that, our parents would most likely come around, and that, he thought, wouldn’t be good for me. Luckily, I was given a full-ride scholarship for a school of my choice, and a had a full-time caretaker to make sure that I got to all of my classes

William had come to visit that day; there were big plans for Christmas, and like always, I hadn’t been invited, so he decided to come to my place to celebrate. My caretaker was taking the evening off, so it was just the two of us. He had brought me a gift of a DVD set of Pirates of the Caribbeans; my favorite movie series. I had liked it since I was a kid and it first came out, and I had gotten him a new laptop. He told me what was going on with Mom and Dad, and I would sit there and communicate as best as I could with my text-to-speech program. Midnight came, and William had fallen asleep under the influence of a heaping glass of eggnog, and I was watching the DVDs that my brother had gotten me when my television went black.

I was convinced that there had been a blackout, but the Christmas lights that my caretaker had hung around my rooms were still glimmering their small golden glow. Then the smoke-like text appeared

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

If you were given the choice, would you fight for your world?

The words ‘yes,’ and, ‘no,’ danced below the sentence. My eye darts to yes. That was when I knew it was something not natural. A hallucination? No, I had never had hallucinations in my life. A prank? No. William would never be that cruel. Then something else. Perhaps I had died, and this was like some isekai anime and I’d be reborn in some fantasy world as the new hero chosen to destroy the demon lord. Perhaps it was the alcohol working through my mind; I don’t think I would have normally taken that line of thought seriously.

I followed the prompts, and when I got to the part where I was able to choose my skills I had one image in my mind that I wanted to emulate; I wanted to be like the swashbuckling Jack Sparrow or Elizabeth in the later movies. At the very end, I was offered the choice of a miracle. So I wished for a perfectly healthy body that would always be perfectly healthy. I never wanted to be stuck in a wheelchair ever again. I never wanted to be

The pain that followed was excruciating. I tried to scream but my vocal cords — as weak as they always were, felt as if they had been shredded to bits. All of my bones felt as if they were constantly breaking, melting down reforming, and breaking all at once. Eventually, I slipped into unconsciousness from the pain.

Morning light woke me from my sleep, and the pain was gone. The television had shut itself off at some point, and I could hear the sizzling of something in the kitchen. I had first thought that the events of the night had been an intense dream; something that I was actually accustomed to whenever I would get fevers. This, however, felt different. My body, itself, felt different.

I started, at first, by turning my head. My head! I hadn’t been able to turn it since I was 20! I was able to swivel it around without pain. On top of the white sheets of the hospital bed Next, I took a deep breath. A breath! Without the aid of the oxygen tubes still in my nose. After that I raised my arm; something I hadn’t been able to do since I was 13, and pulled it out. It was real. It had happened. I still am grateful to Ariel for looking past my disability, to free me from that eternal prison.

I move my other arm and grab hold of the arm of my wheelchair, and slowly, but surely, push myself up. Standing was difficult; I hadn’t walked since I was ten. That first step was uneven, and I almost fell down but managed to steady myself by holding out my arms for balance. I stumble over the chord to the adjustable hospital bed but catch myself on the plastic railings.

“Monica? Is everything alright? I’ll come to check on you here in a bit. Making your breakfast.”

My breakfast was usually something pureed and fed directly into a tube that was connected to my intestines and stuck out of my stomach. I suppose whatever god had healed me deemed my PEG tube as something to be healed because it no longer poked from my stomach, and instead sat on the floor by my wheelchair. I straighten myself up and stumble to the door that led into the rest of the small apartment out of my bedroom.

“Will...William.”

My first words spoken in nearly 13 years.

The whirring of the blender stopped and William turned away from the counter.

“Monica? Monica? How?”

He rushed forward and grabbed hold of my shoulders.

“You’re standing! You’re walking! You...you talked!”

He hugged me, and I nearly fell down again.

“How? How?”

He let go of me.

“How?”

I told him the story of the night before. The strange message on the television, and the questionnaire.

“So you’ve been...gifted this healing but in return you have to fight?”

“I do.”

“...I’ll go. I’ll go and help you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you hear that, gods? I’ll go with her.”

His eyes darted here and there; behind me beyond me, and to the ceiling. As if responding to his demands, his phone blared to life.

If you were given the choice to defend this world, would you.

Perhaps there was still a part of him that doubted my story, but that doubt had melted off of his face. As he pulled away, I noticed the stench coming off of me. A shower...for the first time in...god, I don’t know.

As I stepped into my room to get some items; clean underwear, a towel, fresh clothes, I noticed the Shard on my hospital bed, and a short sword, and the rest is history.