On the Night of the Effigies, the Church of Amirani burned twelve wooden statues embodying the demons through which Primordial Chaos influenced the world. Thought to be the worst, Lazkir, the Spawner of Madness, was burned first at eight in the evening, while Zodkir, the Spawner of Lust, was burned last at seven in the morning, after the sunlight illuminated the world, marking the moment Amirani “cleared doubt” from the hearts of worshipers. Most people couldn’t camp in the churches until morning, but the length of attendance was considered by many as a quantitative measure of faith. The longer worshipers stayed, the more pious they proved themselves to be.

And for the first time in her short life, Shannon stayed awake from eight to seven—a feat that she couldn’t accomplish until she herself had been declared the last of the effigies. Her brutish kidnapper had burned everyone, and it was her turn to die, but she was as unresponsive as was the poisoned soil that she lay on to the silly wishes of ancient farmers. The kidnapper called her class and threatened to whip her if she didn’t climb the ladder out of the pit. He howled and hollered, but she was no longer afraid: she was simply numb, her mind fixating on all that she had lost and ignoring all that she was to lose.

The whip cracked and left a red line across her back. It was hot and burning, even when the rest of her body was icy-cold. But all that she could think of was the end that April had to face. If Shannon had had some courage, perhaps she could’ve been able to prevent this sad end. Everyone was powerless the moment they drank the Prisoner’s Potion—everyone except her. And yet she remained paralyzed. And yet she cried the most. And yet she depended on April. As the whip colored her back red, she only felt that she had been pathetic, that she had failed to live up to the expectations of her family and friends. Fate had made a mistake. It was her sister who should’ve been born with the gift of Geomancy.

“It should’ve been Delilah,” she whispered, without meaning.

Then the large arm of the brute wrapped itself around her waist, and she regained awareness of her surroundings. She was being carried up the ladder. It is the fate of the weak to be paralyzed by inner tyrants and pushed around by external dictators, and she was ready to resign herself to this humiliation. It felt natural. It felt deserved. She had let everyone die … and yet she wanted to live. Yes, she wanted to live … she wanted to live. At this point, this natural desire seemed almost foreign to her, yet it was growing in strength.

When she reached the end of the ladder to hell, the pale sun shone upon the brass knuckles, and they reinvigorated the light and reflected it into her puffy eyes. Looking away to escape the shine, she noticed a dry Venozon root, which had been dropped by a gluttonous cenbear, and reached for it, with the souls of the fallen adventurers guiding her outstretched hand. One moment, she was holding the root tightly. The next, she had planted it into the brutish thigh that was scraping against her body.

“You little bitch!”

The brute threw her harshly on the ground and kicked her in the stomach. As she writhed, coughed, and grimaced, he took the hardened root out of his thigh and threw it away. With two more kicks, he rendered her incapable of much resistance. Then he picked her up again and continued to walk.

Before she knew it, Shannon was inside a cave. There weren’t any cobwebs on the ceiling, so it couldn't have been a spider nest. Perhaps a colony of bats had been living here, but the fur bedroll, ladderback chair, and dusty table revealed that the place had been taken over by a human—the brute, she concluded. She was dropped on the ground in the middle of this cave, and she watched from a prone position as her kidnapper searched a cabinet for a bottle of antidote. She had poisoned him when she stabbed him with the hard Venozon root. It was the smallest victory possible, yet she felt slightly empowered. Perhaps April was watching over her. Perhaps there was hope.

As the brute cured his poisoning and treated his wound, Shannon raised her head and looked around her. Her eyes were first attracted to the mushrooms and liverworts, which told her that the cave floor was empty of toxins. Then she raised her gaze and noticed a torch. To its right, there was a cage full of Verglas Spiders. One, two … six, seven. It was a sizeable group of monsters, and as she stared at their pitch-black eyes, she remembered what the one-armed Archer had said: whoever tried to escape was mutilated or killed by spiders. It was no coincidence then. The brute had these monsters under his control, and he was using them to hunt escapees.

A little to the right of the spider cage, there was a flat wall with words carved in stone. She read:

Fear the silent few, for they are the thinkers.

They abandon the pew and burn it to cinders.

Darkness awaits, but in darkness they grope

For the clean slates, for a future of hope.

Answer me, Thurvik; heed my desperate call.

I will be your tool; I will be your thrall.

The six verse-like lines weren’t written only once but were repeated at least a hundred times, in varying sizes and with varying skill. Some were chiseled with deep, angry strokes; others were scratched on the surface like the marks left by a lousy cat. And next to this monolithic cacography, there was a metal door that resembled the mouth of a furnace.

As soon as she saw that door, Shannon remembered the eleven slams that she had heard throughout the harrowing night. This metal door must have led to the grim execution chamber, where the ashen remains of the adventurers—and April—must be waiting. Without wasting any of the few precious seconds she had, she memorized the relative location of the potions cabinet and the spiders’ cage with respect to the metal door. Her mental map was hardly finished when the brute picked her up again, but the few blanks that remained in it she filled using logic and instinct.

The metal door loomed like the gates of hell, but she looked down at the brass knuckles and promised April that she wouldn’t give up. She would survive, and she would lead the authorities back here to arrest the brute. The gates of hell opened, and she was tossed into a cubic alcove that was four meters wide. The slam followed. She stood up slowly and looked around her. It was dark. She had no idea whether she was alone or in company; she couldn’t tell where one wall ended and where the next began; she couldn’t trust anything except the ground on which she was standing. Then she couldn’t trust anything.

The kidnapper pulled a lever outside the suffocating compartment, and then Amirani said let there be light. Sixteen flamethrowers erupted like miniature volcanoes—from holes in the walls, from secret recesses in the ceiling, from the ground that Shannon had trusted. These were the flames that had devoured her best friend; this was the evil inferno whence no one had escaped—the death that she had to conquer. And at that moment, with the metal door sealed tight and screening her from the Medusan gaze of her kidnapper, she delved into her powers and revealed her well-guarded secret.

She tried to use Geo-manipulation with zero Mana, and although such an action was destined to fail in the case of a normal Geomancer, it was in her case the key for a game-changing transformation. Her eyes turned white. Then they developed the color and texture of rock. Scales like those of Earth Slimes and Armored Salamanders covered parts of her neck and arms. Her feet rose off the ground, and she floated in the air like a shaman in a trance, with her hands glowing red and her torn fur dress moving in sartorial waves. She had activated a special Class Ability called Lifeforce Geomancy. Her Intelligence doubled, and she could now use her Skills—her spells—at the cost of HP instead of Mana.

Against a gang of Verglas Spiders or an overpowered bandit, there was not much she could do; but against the raging inferno, she was a goddess—graceful and unconquerable. She waved her hands, and the servile earth listened to her commands and moved to protect her. She formed a barrier in the shape of a sphere around her body. Then she began to move back until the barrier started to merge with the walls of the cave. She would hide inside the walls, breathing through tiny holes and waiting for the Prisoner’s Potion to release her from its debilitating clasp. Then she would escape unnoticed by digging a tunnel with her restored powers.

So far so good. In less than a minute, she would become a sleeping beauty in an earthen coffin. In less than a minute—

There was a crash of steel against rock. A pigeonhole opened in her barrier, and when she looked through it, she could see the metal door ajar. Fear sent its paralyzing minions—the goosebumps and shivers—along her spine, through her arms, and to her sooty fingertips. The red flames receded, and darkness fell; the inferno was extinguished. But she wasn’t safe. The brute picked up the steel hammer that he had thrown, and hit her flimsy defenses again. His eyes glared through the holes in his mask and into the holes in the rock. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel their gaze and menace.

“Did you think you could escape, you little bitch?”

The steel hammer opened a third hole in the crumbling barrier, but it was this strike that awakened Shannon from her stupor. She mended the broken barrier and continued her retreat into the cave wall.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

The hammer opened a new hole, and the hand of the brute reached in to grab her. She could hear it fumbling in the dark for her neck.

“Leave me alone!” she shouted, and with a bit of rational thinking, tried to close the hole on the bearlike arm.

“You’re nothing special, Geomancer.” Feeling the cold bite of the stone, the brute retracted his endangered arm and then hammered the barrier. “You’re just another effigy, and you will burn like all the others.”

Although these words were supposed to fill Shannon with more despair, in a moment of panicked thinking, they seemed to have inspired a plan. As her HP continued to dwindle toward the fatal zero, she closed her eyes and imagined a windy path to the spiders’ cage. When her inner eye reached its destination, she waved her hands, and a pillar of rock emerged from the ground under the cage. She heard the sound of the impact, and the noises that the spiders made after they broke free were almost deafening. They scattered on their long, hairy legs. Most crawled toward daylight, but a few found the open metal door.

It was the distraction that Shannon had hoped for. As the surprised brute turned to look behind him, leaving the barrier intact as if she were still behind it, Shannon opened a cavity in the ground and descended into it. She continued to use her magic to dig a tunnel out of the room. And above her, the frightened spiders were causing the brute more trouble than he had asked for. She didn’t expect them to attack their master like that, but it seemed that the dark and the chaotic confusion and the smell of the Venozon toxins that still emanated from the brute’s leg—all these factors were contributing to the arachnid hostility.

By the time the brute had killed the two spiders that were attacking him, as he turned around and started hammering the meaningless barrier—the empty shell left behind after a lionhearted metamorphosis—Shannon was already out of her underground tunnel and out of the execution chamber. She pushed the metal door until it slammed shut. Then she turned its lock and pulled down the lever that activated the flamethrowers. The inferno was rekindled. The blaze drew a line of light that delineated the silhouette of the metal door. A loud bang echoed throughout the cave. A second one followed. A third rocked the door, leaving a dent shaped like the face of the steel hammer. Then there was silence.

With the little HP that she could spare from her remaining life, Shannon raised another barrier around her. She encased the potions cabinet and herself in an earthy integument. Outside, some of the spiders were still roaming, but inside, she was as safe as she had been in her mother’s womb. She dropped to her knees and deactivated Lifeforce Geomancy. Then she took off April’s brass knuckles and put them against her chest as if she was hugging them. “You were right, April,” she cried. “You were right … I had enough HP to save myself.” The knuckles fell, and she followed them. In a fetal position, she continued to sob and ululate until she passed out—not from exhaustion or weakness, not from cold or starvation; but from pure grief.

***

There were four gray walls; 144 black floor tiles; an Ezran lamp that dangled from the ceiling and shone with a pale light; a wooden table made of a chopped Sadist’s Delight, twice as long as it was wide; no windows; no ventilation ducts; one slit-equipped door that was shut tight and locked from the outside. And there were two chairs, situated spatially opposite one another but functionally in non-convergent planes of existence. On the mahogany chair to the right sat an inquisitor—middle-aged, shaven-headed, fleshy-nosed, heavy-jowled, with a belly that was always a few steps ahead of him when he walked. And to the left chair helpless Shannon was strapped—belts wrapped around her neck, waist, and thighs; rope tying her arms to the arms and her legs to the legs.

“Why am I here?” Shannon said. “Why am I … tied like this?”

The inquisitor laughed.

“Please tell me … Why am I here?”

The inquisitor laughed more loudly. Then he said, “It’s always the same. Oh, it’s always the same.”

“I told the priestess everything that happened. Please … Why am I here?”

The inquisitor pounded the table once and stood up. His belly flapped as he circled the room. Then he stopped next to Shannon, gave her the side glance of an appraising merchant, and said, “How old are you? 16? 18?”

“What does my age have to do with anything?”

The inquisitor checked a paper that was lying on the table. With a laugh, he said, “You’re already 20. Ha, I couldn’t have guessed it in a thousand years.” He recoiled with sudden heartburn but recovered and continued, “I can’t imagine how you killed so many people at your level and age.”

“I … I didn’t kill anyone. What are you talking about?”

“But a lot of the sinners we capture have contradictions in their data.”

“I didn’t kill anyone. I told the priestess what happened. You can ask her.”

“Some are born with sin. Some are nourished by sin. And all end up doing the most gruesome things.”

“I didn’t do anything! I was attacked! April and I were completing a job—”

“That’s what you want us to believe, right? By Amirani, you’ve been using your Intelligence for much more than Geomancy.”

“You … You don’t … believe me?”

“Believe you?” he laughed. “Why should I care about anything you say when your Chaos Factor has already spoken loud and clear?”

“My Chaos Factor?”

“Yes, the little number that you forgot all about.”

“My Chaos Factor is normal. I checked it at the guild.”

“That’s not what the priestess told us. And we’ve confirmed it.”

“There must be some kind of mistake.”

“The Church does not err, sinner!” the inquisitor bawled in unfiltered rage, and suddenly slapped Shannon on her right cheek. “We found the papers.” He reached for a pile of dirty, crumpled papers. “You made them all write the same thing, the nonsense about imprisoned philosophers and freedom and whatnot. Then you slipped your own version of the statement among the papers of the victims.” He picked the paper that Shannon had signed from among the rest. “Look at it. Look at all the jittery letters and the frozen snot. You made it look all too authentic … All too authentic.”

“I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill …” She hesitated, remembering that she had killed her kidnapper—the brute in the burlap mask.

“You did it, and you will confess!”

“But I didn’t do it!”

“Confess!”

“By Amirani, I didn’t do it!”

“Don’t take the Holy Name in vain!” He slapped her. “A sinner has no right to speak the Name!” He slapped her again. “If you don’t confess now, I will make you confess!”

“I didn’t do it!” she said, through her tears. “April and I were kidnapped by a masked man. We were kept in a pit, and I couldn’t save anyone. I let them die … I was too weak …”

“You killed them! Confess!”

“I didn’t!” Shannon shouted.

She expected another slap to silence her, but the inquisitor walked away. He headed to the room’s only door and knocked on it thrice. A few moments passed as the world seemed to pause with self-reflective shame. Then the door opened, and someone walked into the interrogation room. At first, Shannon thought that he was just another inquisitor, but then she noticed that he was wearing a black mask and carrying a burdensome toolbox. He was a torturer.

“Confess!”

“I didn’t kill anyone! He had Verglas Spiders. He used them to chase anyone who tried to escape. Maybe … Maybe there are survivors. If you ask them, they will tell you all about it!”

The torturer approached Shannon with an iron nail and a sledge hammer.

“I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill anyone! What are you doing?! Stop! No! No!”

The first hammer strike drove the nail into the back of her hand; the second shattered the bones of her thumb. Her screams reverberated around the room, and her chair jumped and almost tumbled to the side. At the last second, it was saved by the attentive torturer, who couldn’t let his work be interrupted.

“ ‘And the sinners shall lose their instruments of evil, and Chaos shall not be allowed to spread. Justice is served through the wisdom of the Church. Justice is the command of the Divine.’ ”

“I didn’t k-kill anyone.”

The third hammer strike drove another nail into the back of her hand; the fourth shattered the bones of her forefinger.

“Confess!”

“I d-didn’t do it.”

The fifth strike drove another nail in; the sixth destroyed her middle finger.

“ ‘In their faces you see darkness; in their hearts you find hate. They are the enemies of humanity, Chaos incarnate.’ ”

“Did … not—”

The seventh and eighth strikes.

“Confess!”

“I … I … did it,” Shannon finally said, through her tears.

“Who were your accomplices?”

“I worked a-a-alone.”

The ninth and tenth strikes.

“April!” She cried for help, as the hammer broke her. “April! Save me! April!”

“I see … So the Martial Artist is on the run.” The inquisitor picked out April’s statement and put it aside with Shannon’s. “Were your actions motivated by the recent arrest of Thomas Adler?”

“Yes … Yes, Yes! You’re right! That’s w-why I d-did it!”

The eleventh strike followed despite the acceptable answer.

“Why did you do that?” the corpulent inquisitor asked in astonishment.

“She confessed too soon,” the torturer explained. “If I don’t do the rest of her fingers, they’ll think she’s lying. It’s for her own good.”

“Get it over with.”

Blood splattered with a count from twelve to twenty.

“Is there any other information that you wish to impart to the Inquisition?” the inquisitor said. “You should answer no.”

Shannon neither answered nor moved. Her head hung low and lifeless, like the meat of an exotic animal on display at a slaughterhouse; and her disheveled hair covered her unseeing eyes with a purposeless veil—or perhaps it had a purpose, for is it not customary to cover a corpse with a dignifying shroud?

“Father Gregor,” the torturer finally said, “she answered no.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. You must’ve missed it over the sounds of your belly.”

“I skipped lunch because of her.”

“Second or third?”

“I only eat two lunches, you idiot. It was the second.”

“They’re still serving food upstairs. If you hurry—”

“I’ll go, but first, there’s something.”

As the torturer cleaned and put away his hammer, the corpulent inquisitor moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue and approached Shannon. He swallowed with difficulty and looked at his right hand. He stared at it as the heartburn grew stronger—acid regurgitating like a geyser to his brain. Then he leaned forward and cupped Shannon’s breast in his hand. “It’s a shame you strayed from the right path. You could have made a good wife and made your husband really happy.” He squeezed, with a lecherous look on his face. “But now you don’t amount to much. A sinner like you should be grateful that I’m doing this. A man of god has deigned to touch you.”

At that moment, Shannon raised her head, looked Vance right in the eye, and said with calm and assurance, “Kill me.”

***

The torturer and the inquisitor turned into dust. The room was swept away as if by the turbulent winds of a hurricane. And Vance regained physical form. He was no longer a vagrant consciousness, no longer a wandering apparition, no longer an invisible stalker inside the memories of another. And with a pained expression on his reconstructed face, as the cold gusts blew his hair to one side, he met the eyes of the adult Shannon—the nymph that he had lost on the foggy shore.

How different her current appearance was from when she had first walked through the gates of Castle Somnus, or from when she lay in his arms in the rowboat. She now looked dirtier, uglier, more dejected. She seemed to have lost a charming innocence. But wasn’t she all the more alive this way? Wasn’t she all the more human in his eyes? It was not her ugliness that had marred her looks but the ugliness of the world. The scars on her hands weren’t self-inflicted. And beneath this exterior, there seemed to exist an untainted something. Could it be that the original innocence wasn’t lost after all but that it had metamorphosed, shedding a pretentious cocoon of silk to reveal tattered but authentic wings?

He rushed toward her, but she stopped him with a calm gesture.

“You’ve been watching me all this time … ever since we got separated on that shore. You did nothing to help, but I can’t blame you, Vance. No one can change the past; no one can bring back April or convince the world that I was innocent … But maybe we can change the future together.”

“What do you mean?” Vance said.

“You’re strong. And I’m not talking about Skills or Perks or levels. You’re stronger than I’ll ever be. And I want you to use this strength once for my sake. If you don’t kill me now, I will murder many people … innocent and guilty … deserving and undeserving.”

A steel dagger appeared in Vance’s hand.

“It hurts me when people die, and I want you to end my pain.”

“No, Shannon. I don’t want to.”

“Do it as a friend. Do it for my sake. Do it before I lose everything.”

“No … You still lose everything if you die.”

“Please.”

Suddenly, his body moved on its own, and he stabbed her.

“Thank you,” she smiled.

“Shannon, I don’t want to do this.” He stabbed her again.

“Don’t stop.”

“Why is this happening?” He stabbed her again.

“You saved me, Vance,” she smiled. “And I will always be grateful.”

From the stab wounds, flowering vines started to grow, and colorful birds took flight. The Geomancer had looked like a wasteland at dusk, but now she was a meadow at sunrise. She laughed, turned in place, and watched the vines as they lengthened and twirled. She let the birds perch on her shoulders, which neither felt heavy nor hurt anymore. Even her fingers recovered by the same rejuvenating magic that had brought forth the current and unfolding spectacle. The nightmarish past seemed to be fading away forever, and her tale seemed to be parachuting into a happy ending. Komm, süßer Tod, komm selge Ruh.

Would a new psychedelic landscape be born with another oscillation of the narcotic pendulum? No, the string was cut.

Status Alert You have recovered from Redspine High.

And Vance opened his Mental Eye.