"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering."
Ben Okri, Nigerian Poet
They spent the remainder of the evening seated cross-legged in their living room as Rain began to enchant the mismatched clothes she had purchased from the Emporia.
Rain’s crafting talent was limited by her magic attribute. Adding a second enchantment or trying to add an advanced enchantment wasn’t possible at her current magic level, so she decided to experiment with lower level single enchantments instead.
“Mils, let’s enchant new shoes for both of us. We can’t keep wearing what we have on,” Rain announced as she grabbed a pair of work boots from the pile. Comprised of tough, brown hide, and with a steel toe, the boots could have owned by any construction worker, yet somehow, they also fit with Rain’s overall aesthetic. They blended with her tailcoat perfectly.
“These’ll last me a while,” Rain said, pleased with her choice. “Your turn to pick.”
“Can’t you just enchant the shoes I have now?” Milly inquired. She’d found her simple black sneakers in a thrift store three years ago and Milly had grown comfortable with them.
Calista laughed and retrieved one of Milly’s shoes from the wall next to the elevator. It was covered in sand and muck and was heavily stained with gore as a result of their battles. The sole had come half-unglued and flopped about as Calista held it up for Milly to see.
“Milly, I’m so old,” Calista said, flapping the shoe so the sole resembled a mouth. “Why won’t you just let me die.”
“Shut up,” Milly chuckled, embarrassed. “I guess… are there any other black sneakers?”
“Oh, I know just the ones,” Calista said excitedly, abandoning Milly’s shoe in the middle of their circle. She tore through the pile until she lifted out a pair of black, thigh-high gothic platform boots. A dozen silver buckles stretched up the length of the boot, and twin silver chains danged down its tongue. The elevated soles added an extra four inches to Milly’s height, making her nearly as tall as Calista. “You’d look so badass in these.”
“… Okay,” Milly responded with only a moment’s hesitation.
“You’ve got to try them on, beautiful, before you say no. It’ll fit so well with your witch aesthetic and… wait, did you say okay?” Calista asked, stunned. “You never just say okay. Did you… Oh. My. God. You’ve worn something like this before, haven’t you?”
Milly blushed fiercely and reached for the boots. “I found a pair when I was fourteen, in the trash next to my foster home. They were already pretty old, but they were my favorite thing. I had them for four years, and they… um… may have started my goth phase.”
“Mils, weren’t you wearing a black pentagram hoodie when we first met?” Rain asked slyly.
“Well, maybe it was more than a phase,” admitted Milly. “Though, really, it was just me wearing black all he time. Being a real goth is expensive. But they helped me get through some hard times, especially when I had no home and nothing to call my own. They finally gave out when I was eighteen, though I tried everything to keep them together. They just… fell apart one day. I couldn’t afford to get new ones. Just my five-dollar thrift store sneakers.”
“Then goth boots it is,” Rain said sweetly, as she plucked the boots from Milly’s hands and set them on the ground in front of her. “Which enchantment would you like?”
Milly remembered the mountains in the north, and the maze of passageways that had led her nowhere.
“Cally’s improved perception talent,” Milly answered. “The further we get from the Castle, the stranger this world is becoming. Remember the memory orb? Cizen, that decaying god, was responsible for the contest’s deepest secrets. Think about that – an entire God dedicated to nothing but secrets. I don’t want to risk missing one that could be critically important.”
“Milly, that’s a really clever idea. I wonder if I should try the same, though my Only the Original penalty may limit what I can do,” Rain said after a moment’s thought. “But let’s give this a shot.”
Rain placed a hand across the toes of the gothic boots and held onto Calista’s arm with the other hand. Her body began to glow with a faint metallic hue, and then a bright flash erupted over the boots, flooding their living room with light. Passiflora, who had been playing with one of the trinkets in the box, shrieked in surprise and nearly fell off the couch.
Rain felt her magic reserves drop, and the light faded away.
“Done,” Rain declared, a faint line of sweat beading her forehead. “Check them out.”
Milly held up her new platform boots.
Milly’s Gothic Boots
Fabulous fashion for the witch on the go!
Benefit: Grants the Improved Perception (beginner) talent to the wearer.
“They are wonderful, Rain. Thank you,” Milly whispered. She felt like a long, lost piece of herself had been returned. She slipped them on and twirled around their living room playfully. She found herself laughing with delight, until she grew dizzy and stumbled. Calista caught her.
“Careful there, honey,” Calista said as she stared at her happy girlfriend as they stood eye-to-eye. “Gods, you’re beautiful.”
“You’re blind,” Milly said, as she leaned in and gave Calista a gentle kiss. She didn’t feel self-conscious about Calista’s compliment. Deep inside, behind all the self-doubt, a little piece of her had started to believe that Calista may actually find her beautiful.
Stolen story; please report.
By the time Passiflora had fallen asleep on the couch, they had enchanted a handful of new items to help them in their journey.
Rain had tried to enchant improved perception on her own work boots, but her Only the Original restriction had prevented her from doing so as the enchantment on Milly’s Gothic Boots was at beginner level and there was nowhere below that to go.
Instead, Rain channeled Calista’s Defensive Tactics into her boots, but narrowed the talent to a defensive skill that only involved her feet. The result was a talent called Fancy Footwork, which increased the speed and responsiveness of her footwork while in combat.
“This way, I can branch Calista’s Defensive Tactics talent into a number of other, lesser talents without worrying about duplication,” Rain surmised, feeling proud of herself. “It's not as powerful, but I can be more versatile this way."
Rain’s next experiment was to enchant two trinkets with the same talent that could grow weaker to observe how her Only the Original restriction worked.
The first trinket was a small reddish brown clay pot. Rain imbued it with Milly’s Healer’s Aura. The finished object projected the aura across a one-hundred-foot radius and increased the efficiency and power of healing spells within the aura by thirty percent, which was only slightly weaker than Milly’s aura, though Milly's would grow more powerful as she leveled up whereas the trinket would remain static. It could be turned off by flicking the side of the pot with a finger and had a one-hour charge. After that, it required six hours to recharge.
“Not bad, Rain,” Milly praised. “We should give it to Ying for the medical clinic.”
Rain nodded. “That’s what I had in mind. I owe her for taking care of me this past week, and I hate being in someone’s debt. Now, let’s try the next one.”
Rain enchanted the second trinket, a sandstone carving of a bison, with the same Healer’s Aura talent. Unlike her attempt to enchant the work boots with improved perception, this time the enchantment worked, though it had a fifty percent reduced efficacy. It only projected out in a fifty-foot radius and increased healing spells by fifteen percent. It had a thirty-minute charge and required twelve hours to recharge.
“We’ll give this one to Whitewing,” Rain decided. Drenched in sweat, she had started to realize the physical toll that consecutive enchantment took. She would need to increase her toughness attribute, alongside magic and agility, as she leveled up.
“So, if my math is correct, if I enchant a third item with Healer’s Aura, it would only increase healing by about seven percent, last for fifteen minutes, and require a day to recharge.”
“Hardly worth it,” Calista concluded, and Rain nodded her agreement.
Next, Rain grabbed a small black collar from the pile and enchanted it with an altered version of Milly’s telekinesis called Invisible Hand. The talent allowed the wearer to move objects less than one pound in weight a distance no greater than ten feet away.
Rain called to Anchovy, who was napping on Passiflora’s lap as the child slept. He lazily opened one eye and glared at Rain with displeasure for waking him from his seventh catnap of the day.
“Come on, you silly goose. You’ll like this,” Rain promised as she held out the collar.
Anchovy gave an exaggerated yawn, his annoyed eyes never leaving his master. He got up deliberately slowly, careful not to wake Passiflora, and hopped down from the couch. It was another minute before he finally arrived at Milly’s side, having taken his time to sniff every object along the way.
Rain, a beacon of patience, slipped the collar around his neck when he arrived. The cat scratched at it, displeased.
“You’ll get used to it, Anchovy,” Rain promised. “You’ll be able to help me mind Rain On My Parade with this now. You can grab potions from the shelves, brew tea, and take a customer’s gold. Everything that comes with running the shop.”
Anchovy cocked his head. Helping run Rain On My Parade interested him, though, as a proud feline, he couldn’t let her know that. He activated the Invisible Hand, used it to grab a soft penguin plushy from the trinket box, and threw it at Rain. The plushy struck her in the forehead with a high-pitched squeak and fell to the floor.
Milly and Calista burst out laughing as Anchovy hopped back onto the couch and curled up on Passiflora’s lap, no longer scratching his collar.
“Let’s call it a night,” Rain said, her magic and body nearly exhausted.
“You are amazing, Rain,” praised Calista. “With all these new inventions, you’re like our own personal Q.”
“Q?” asked Milly, confused.
“From James Bond. The guy who makes all of Bond’s gadgets.”
Milly shrugged.
“Gods, honey. Let’s hope this contest has a TV for a reward. We’ve got so many movies to watch together.”
Milly headed to the couch and lifted Passiflora into her arms over Anchovy’s protests.
“Mountains tomorrow?” she asked as Rain scooped up the grumpy Anchovy and placed him on her shoulders.
“I’m going to open Rain On My Parade tomorrow. I’m worried about Gabriel, Susan, and the others,” Rain replied. “After tomorrow, I think my leg will be strong enough to walk without the crutch. Just in time for the hearing.”
Milly felt the happiness that had built over the course of the evening seep away at the mention of the hearing. For a wonderful few hours, she had let herself forget about that quickly approaching mess.
“Let’s plan for the mountains, my love,” Calista said as she watched the anxiety settle into Milly. “Alison and Elmer should know more details about the hearing tomorrow. Until then, no sense worrying about it.”
They said good night to Rain and tucked Passiflora into their bed as they had the night before. Before long, Calista drifted off to sleep and her snores filled the room.
But Milly couldn’t sleep. She spent the next few hours staring at the ceiling, her mind filled with thoughts of what was to come. Her anxiousness felt all-encompassing, and she climbed out of bed so she wouldn’t disturb Calista and Passiflora.
She sat at the kitchen table and stared forlornly across the moonlit waters of the eastern ocean. From their fourteenth-floor window, she could see the edge of the first island out there, just at the edge of the horizon.
How many more islands lay beyond our sight, nestled in thousands of miles of ocean? How long are we going to be here? How long do I need to endure Stone and Brass as they cast me as someone I am not? I know Rain is right – we need to be subtle as we fight back – but I feel like I’m caught in someone’s grip, and they are starting to squeeze.
It wasn’t just Stone and Brass that haunted her darkened thoughts.
The corruptions in the game are an even bigger threat than the CEOs, or so Luna says. I haven’t come across any bugs since the Arena of Protection, but I know they are out there, and Luna is counting on me to fix them. Every player is counting on me, even if they don’t know it. If Luna and I don’t deal with those bugs, none of us stand a chance.
Milly opened her inventory and pulled out the small antidepressant potion Rain had made her. It felt heavy in her hand.
I thought I was doing well. These three weeks have been so crazy that I haven’t had time to think about my depression. It was always there in my previous life, and I had through I had left it behind. But did I? I… I want to believe Rain is wrong. That I don’t need this. I really want to believe.
Milly stared at the vial for a long time, trying to convince herself of that. Her life had changed so much that it was hard to compare herself now to what they had once been. Yet she knew, deep beneath it all, lay the dark river that could carry her away as it once had before.
It’s not weakness, Milly. You had the same thoughts when you first got your medication. You didn’t take it at all that first month because it felt like you would be admitting failure - a weak girl, unable to fix her own mind. Remember where that got you – you went to a dark place. You have Cally now. And Passiflora and Rain. You can’t afford to do that to yourself again. You owe it to them to be healthy.
Before her resolve disappeared, Milly popped the cork on the vial and swallowed a half teaspoon of the liquid. It tasted faintly of decomposed leaves and Milly clicked her tongue in displeasure.
“Yuck. I hope Rain’s flavors improve as she gets better at alchemy,” Milly said. She placed the vial back in her inventory and returned to their bed.
Her head hit her pillow, and she was asleep moments later.