Is it a dream? She’s not sure. Everything feels so far away.
She catches snippets of scenes like songs in another room: an underlying melody she knows but she can’t quite pick out the tune. There’s a woman speaking into a phone. She is at ease in the chaos of a bustling airport, uncaring about those around looking askance at her foul mouth.
“I can’t believe I’m going to be stuck on an 11-hour flight, then crammed in some shitty hotel with the fuck-wits and ass-grabbers from sales while you’re off galavanting across Europe!”
A voice crackles from the receiver, distorted by distance and mirth: “Hey, I asked you to come! You’re the workaholic who can’t get away for the trip.”
“Don’t remind me. Why did you let me take this stupid job in the first place? It’s one city after another; I swear I don’t even know what time zone I’m in anymore.”
“Excuse you, you were the one who freaked out when you got the call: ‘it’s Blades of Jor, Kaz, my whole entire childhood! If I don’t get this job I will di-i-ie!~’”
“I do not sound like that.”
“Keep telling yourself that; maybe one day it’ll even be true.”
“Oh, fu–“
A voice over the intercom interrupts what is undoubtedly an insult to her life-long friend on the line: “Now boarding Flight A37 to—”
“-you. Shit, Kaz, gotta go. That’s my boarding call.”
“Can’t wait to play phone tag with you while we’re in completely different time zones! Bye, lovey!”
The woman—is it her? It’s so familiar—boards the plane and finds her seat. She settles in like a well-seasoned traveler, putting on headphones and padding her seat with the neck pillow she keeps for the occasion. She doesn’t need to listen to the safety lecture. She’s heard it so many times she could probably recite it.
The takeoff is smooth. It used to be exciting to build up so much speed and lift up off the ground, but the thrill is just a tingle in her heart now. The world outside grows smaller and smaller, cars become roads, become simply tracts of land, and then disappear beneath the clouds. She wants to keep looking, wants to feel the sun on her face when they breach cloud cover, but she knows from experience most seat-mates don’t like having the window up.
She closes it, and her eyes, and instead focuses on the sensation. She feels the vibration of the engines in her bones. She imagines the rush of air on the outside of the plane, skidding off metal skin. It feels so familiar that it’s more than déjà vu; it’s almost nostalgia. She has always loved flying.
Soon, she is dozing. In a life so hectic, she has learned to take sleep when and where it comes.
Time slides, skips.
Then, between one moment and the next, the world changes.
Something crunches, even through the noise cancellation of her headphones. The plane shakes like a frightened animal. The woman wakes up to a high-pitched whine piercing through her earbuds. She rips them out, only to clap her hands over her ears at the volume of noise beyond. The whine doesn’t quite drown out the frightened screams and howls from her fellow passengers. The air rushes out of her lungs and she can’t seem to suck in enough to replace it. On instinct, she claws at her throat, trying to find the obstruction.
A clunk and an oxygen mask falls from the panel above. Clarity returns in one fell swoop. She snatches the mask and hooks it over her nose and mouth. She has to convince herself to breathe even, deep breaths. Hyperventilating will only make the situation worse.
The pilot’s voice is distant and tinny above the din: “We have suffered a catastrophic engine failure! We will be taking emergency action, please listen- !”
The rest of the announcement is drowned out by the renewed screaming. Someone on the other side of the plane has opened their window, and the wing beyond is throwing off tongues of flame like the wing of some great, dying phoenix. Everyone’s windows go up after that. The urge to stare death in the face was such a human one.
Engine failure, ha. Is this really something that could be called a simple failure? The word feels like an understatement. Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen, but she wants to laugh.
It’s oddly beautiful, the red and gold light dyeing the cabin in sunset watercolors. The people are just smudges against the nova.
She peeks under the covering on her own window and wishes she hadn’t.
Forget engine failure; the other wing is gone.
It looks like some monster tore it from the fragile shell. What had gone wrong? Some micro-tear in the hull? Faulty construction? It was such a clear day—it seemed unreal that something so catastrophic was happening. She is struck by the oddest certainty that it should have been storming, lightning flashing across the sky and heavy rain beating down upon their final moments.
She presses her forehead against the window and watches the sky spin away over and over again. She ignores the frantic motion of the panicking passengers, the calls of flight attendants trying to regain order. She can barely hear them over the whine anyway, and besides, no amount of instruction was going to change reality.
Everyone in this plane is going to die.
She feels… not scared, but sad. Resigned. It is an odd calm that steals over her, as the plane plummets to earth, trailing sparks and gouts of fire like a falling star. Between flashes of bluest sky, she can see the ground approaching fast— the shadow of the plane is etched from the blaze and rising to meet them all— and she’s struck again by the sense that this has happened before.
‘A curse on you—on all of you—!’
She is going down in flames and it burns.
‘Your foul deeds will be paid back a hundredfold!’
She shuts her eyes and prays that she dies on impact. If she doesn’t, if she’s just left lying there, broken and beaten and waiting for death, it will be so much worse. The snow is turning red with blood, the ground is turning to mud and she is–
She is–
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
‘You cowardly worms! I’ll acknowledge your pathetic victory, and grant you a boon– and a curse. Your own descendant will bring about your downfall—I brand you with my name—Drak-’
“-uhl! Heir Drakuhl! Your Highness, please wake up! Oh no… what do I do, I’ll be killed for this- ! Oh, my Lady, please- !”
Who the hell was screaming in her ear while she was dying? Damn it, she was dying. Was a little peace and quiet too much to ask?
The pain was so intense she couldn’t believe she wasn’t already deceased.
This was why she had wanted to die quickly.
‘Tibitha! Wretched girl, she’s older than me but what’s the use when she has less sense!’
The thought came to her without any process—a stray phrase seemingly without origin or meaning. She didn’t know anyone by the name of Tibitha. Yet it felt like a well-worn shoe, broken-in and comforting, something she just slipped into. It was instinctual, habitual, and it was all the more startling for it.
She couldn’t dwell on it, though, not when her head felt like it was going to split straight down the middle.The rest of her body could have been fine, or it could have been gone, for all that she could feel it. There was nothing but the blinding migraine.
She tried to crack open one eye to get her bearings. She regretted it immediately. There was a searing halo of lights all around her. A murky figure hung in the middle—Tibitha, likely. She turned her face into the floor, to hide the pain and the tears threatening to spill. Agony pounded like her heartbeat across her fracturing skull.
‘I knew it was stupid—ugh, every time I listen to Tibby, I end up suffering!’
Thoughts rose to the surface, things she didn’t understand, yet it felt more and more like she was their origin. Everything was a cluttered, tangled mess of thread drawing out other ideas, other thoughts, other memories. She felt like she was coming apart. She felt doubled, one half folded over the other incorrectly. They didn’t align properly and the friction was going to drive her insane.
Focus, she told herself, calm. Think. She struggled through the soup that pain had made of her higher functions. Pain. Actively being injured? Or aftermath? It felt like aftermath. She couldn’t sense any continuing trauma. Then, what had caused this? What had she been doing before this pain?
Her memories were a lifetime away. She’d been in… a crash? An accident? No, she’d caused an accident, trying to show off for her stupid cousin-in-law. But then what happened to the plane? The other people?
Was it just a dream? But it felt so real… which was it, the princess or the marketer? Were either correct, or was there someone else lurking in the fringes of her mind? Was she nothing but a fragment, caught eternally in someone else’s pain?
She could not puzzle it out at the moment, so she focused on finding her teeth and tongue. The teeth were clenched tight, tongue arched like a cat’s back, and her lips were pressed tightly together.
With effort, she pried open her jaw and ground out between her teeth: “Tibby, you idiot,” she was trying to move her jaw as little as possible. “Go get the physician!”
“Yes! Yes, right away, your highness!” She sounded relieved to finally have direction—or maybe she was just happy her mistress’s brain hadn’t been scrambled past the point of giving orders. “Don’t move, I’ll be right back!”
Her footsteps stumbled away and broke into a run.
Don’t move, she said, as if she was in any position to do such a thing. Like she was going anywhere when she couldn’t even open her eyes without wanting to scream.
She tried to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth. She’d read somewhere that it helped with migraines. It didn’t seem like it was doing much but it did give her something to focus on apart from the hammering of her heart.
The more she thought, struggling to piece together what was real, the more the woman and the plane seemed like a faraway dream. The pain in her head, the raw feelings of shame and embarrassment still hitting her in waves, the silly smile Tibby had on until it turned to fear—those things seemed real. The crash, the airport, the phone—those were all fantastical things. They receded somewhere like a tide flowing back out to sea.
----------------------------------------
She must have passed out, because the next thing she knew she was being prodded carefully by cold, calloused fingers. A crackle of foreign energy danced along her skin. The physician? It had to be. His cool fingers against her forehead were a balm to the fevered sweat sticking her hair to her face.
When he spoke, his voice was small and kind, but still demanding.
“Your Highness, I need to ask you some questions to determine the extent of the damage. Please answer as well as you are able. Now, what is your name?”
She knew these questions. She knew the answers, too.
Didn’t she?
“L- Liz,” she stumbled at the first syllable, torn between two answers that both sprung to mind.
“Lis…?” The young maid echoed from the side of the bed.
“Liz- Lis- Lisbette,” she finally forced herself to say. It was Lisbette, wasn’t it, who played with Tibitha because she was all alone in this big wing of the palace? “Lisbette Drakuhl, fi- first daughter of the North. I- I live in Zenith, the capital.”
“Very good,” the physician praised. “Some confusion, then, but the information is still available. Your mind hasn’t been damaged by the magic surge. That’s very, very good.”
The maid squeaked guiltily. “I shouldn’t have asked, your highness! This is all my fault.”
“Since when have you been able to control me? I d- did it because I wanted to. It has nothing to do with you,” Lisbette spat. Her cheeks burned. She was the master, not Tibby. No one but the Duke and Duchess Drakuhl could make Lisbette do anything she didn’t want to do. She wouldn’t have anyone saying otherwise.
“Of course, I- I’m sorry, my Lady.”
With his magic soothing the ache in her head, Lisbette could finally focus on what went wrong. He had said ‘magic surge’, hadn’t he? But as far as Lisbette knew, a magic surge was the result of a magician taking in more environmental mana than they could process. The excess ‘spilled’ through the body and ended up frying the user’s insides. How could she have had a magic surge when she had only called upon her own magic?
She posed the question to the physician, whose wrinkled visage she could finally stand to look upon as the searing light resolved itself into gentle afternoon sun streaming through the window.
He frowned in consternation.
“Are you certain, my Lady? You didn’t pull in any mana at all?”
“I said so, did I not?” She scowled. “Must I repeat myself?”
“N- no, your Highness,” the man stammered, paling at her irritated tone.
Why was he so scared of her? She was six, and she was laid out on the floor after passing out from failing to control her own magic. It was pathetic.
She was pathetic.
Wait, was this to do with the supposed curse? She fought the urge to roll her eyes. She’d thought a logical man like the physician wouldn’t bother with superstitions, but…
Well, rumors about the curse had vexed her whole existence.
It was said the Drakuhl royal line rarely appeared in high society because of the ‘Dragon’s Curse’. Bette thought it was just an excuse to avoid the annoyance of pretending to be nice to other nobles, but it was hard to deny that those who associated with the Drakuhl family often experienced misfortune. After a snowstorm on the day of her birth buried the imperial procession sent to congratulate the dukedom on the appearance of an heir, she’d been dubbed ‘the Dragon’s Descendant’. Subsequently, she was avoided like the plague by servant and citizen both. Her parents, even, rarely visited her.
Her heart squeezed painfully. That had more to do with their incredibly busy lives, she thought. She hoped.
Hang on— why did that sound so… familiar? It felt as if she’d heard it laid out like that before. Or read it.
Like a flash, Bette could see herself (no, it was the woman… who was her as well?) holding a booklet with glossy pages. A rendering of a young woman with a haughty expression accompanied a summary of her character and past. The name at the top of the page… hadn’t it been ‘Lisbette Drakuhl, Daughter of the Dragon’?
> ‘This character will hinder your story and besiege you with every chance she gets! Her competitive nature drives her to come out on top of any exchange, so get ready to fight for your love!’
The words were so clear in her mind’s eye. She could feel the slippery pages between her fingers, could see the vividly red eyes of the antagonist judging her from the character portrait.
But that’s me, Bette thought, incredulous. I’m Lisbette Drakuhl! That’s my name, and that’s my life! Those were her red eyes, slit pupil and all, the mark of the Drakuhl family line. That was her black hair that shone navy in the right light. The illustration showed a woman that was older than her, true, but the rest of it was hers.
No… it had to be a coincidence. Whatever the woman had seen, had been just coincidentally close to her own story. It wasn’t possible— a prophecy wouldn’t be set down in a flimsy little book with silly drawings!
But did such coincidences actually happen?
It hadn’t been a prophecy, she recalled, it had just been a game. A video game. How? Why did she even know what a video game was, when she’d never seen anything like it in (this) life? How was it possible that this woman—that she (?) could have seen herself in the pages of a book meant to summarize the story of a silly romance game?
Which came first? Was that the future or the past?
Bette felt frustrated tears fill her eyes, and she resolutely closed them. She set her jaw against the sniffles threatening her nose.
“My Lady, are you still in pain?”
It can’t be. Her whole life couldn’t be condensed to a couple paragraphs in a book, a few strings of code and some pretty graphics. What about Tibby? What about her parents? What about her duty to the dukedom?
I die, she realized. I die in the end. I’m just a silly puppet for the real villain, and I’m cast aside before the final act.
She could barely feel the man shaking her shoulders, could barely hear the girl shrieking her name.
I’m going to die? I’m going to die before I take the crown. I’m going to fail, as a leader, as a daughter, as a person.
I’m not a failure, she wanted to cry out. But it was all laid out in front of her now, a little box with little drawings showing her tragic demise.
Her breath was coming in tight, fast bursts that did little to get her oxygen. Tears scalded her cheeks, burning her shame onto her face.
“My Lady! Your highness, what’s wrong?”
“I- I- c-can’t,” she choked, unable to convey the enormity of what she couldn’t do.
“What’s wrong with her! You have to fix her!”
‘Useless child.’ ‘Cursed child.’ ‘What kind of leader brings destruction wherever she goes?’ ‘Better off-‘
Leave me alone! Leave me be! I haven’t done anything wrong!
‘-better off dead!’
It was a relief when the physician muttered a sleeping spell over her head and put an end to the thoughts threatening to overwhelm her mind. The fight went out of her limbs, and she sank gratefully into Tibby’s arms and into oblivion.