“You don’t understand your role,” the demon that was me said. “And I don’t blame you. You are ignorant, but you make up for that with your coveted ability to learn. I envy that about you, you know. I envy your ability to change and adapt, to get back up from failure and try, try again.”

“What could such a wretched creature like you ever teach me?” I asked. I was genuinely baffled by its presumptuousness. I pitied it, too.

What a horrible existence she suffered.

“Oh, come off it,” she laughed. “What use is there to try again if you never fail in the first place? I enjoy a high position for this. Daemoncustom may limit some, but it frees me.”

A jolt of meaning flowed through me, distracting me from the mounting sense of scoff and snort enough to consider, just for a moment, that probably none of this was real.

I felt gasped, treachered by my own mind, a mind dipped in a bath of the foreign goo.

I needed to go and keep walking. “For us,” I whispered to myself, looking down at the second half of the us in that statement.

She appeared before me again. “I can assure you that I am real, but you? You need to-“

“Shut up!” I shouted. “You- you lost him! Where is he?” I looked her over. “You lost your boy. I have nothing to say to you!” I snarled at her. “You come to me and tell me that I am in the wrong, that I am playing games, that I am funning around, but you?! You. Lost. Him. Fuck off!”

“You’re right, I lost him,” she stepped up to me, matching my snarl. “I lost him and became this. That is the end of my story, a story with a happy ending at that. I am an archdemoness, undefeated in all the aleph nine realms! My name rings throughout the history of Allmother as the nurturer, the destroyer, the temptress and the justiciar! That Is Who I Am! I lost him, but I did not let that define me.” She stopped snarling, and began to smile. “You, however, will enjoy no such rewards for losing him, or for becoming something akin to me. If you walk my path, we will be one. In that same vein, you will disappear forever, as a thing that never did any thing. I exist already, and there can only be one.

“So I will only tell you this once; save yourself before you no longer can. Every moment spent in this half-state is a meter further away from once again having a whole mind.”

“I would never wish to become you,” I said. “I can smell your lack of adaptability, hear your inability to improve, see your pointless, circular, idiotic existence. This… this Daemoncustom,” I gritted my teeth. “I’m ashamed an iteration of myself would ever settle for such nonsense.”

She smiled. “That is the path you are walking.”

“Then I will walk back!”

I opened up the wretched system sheet and took a good, long look at my points.

Name: Reza Talib

Class: Biomage [Journeyman]

Title: Spellmaking Pioneer - Reduces mental strain of spellmaking by 15%

Level: 12 (69%)

Attributes

Power 1

Endurance 2

Coordination 2

Intelligence 20

Wisdom 21

Charm 3

Unspent points: 7

Spell Points: 1

Good good, good.

I poured all seven unspent points into wisdom, feeling a qualitative lurch in my mind as the hands that once saved me did so again, but only to a certain extent.

I was further immunized by madness, but the madness I was currently feeling was already too powerful, already too all-encompassing.

The demon formerly known as Reza faded in acuity, but was not yet gone.

I was finally whole enough to acknowledge a vital issue, one that I really should have acknowledged earlier. “How can two of us exist?”

“The same way a past you and a future you could,” she replied. “Where I come from must be the realest region in all of existence, because time is meaningless and all that can exist, does exist with no room for probability or chance swelling the number of potential iterations of a person by an infinite amount. In that same vein, it is the destruction of time that gives life meaning. The mundane realm destroys times, timelines, entire universes with every decision. You’ve killed an iteration of you billions of trillions of quadrillions of times since you arrived here. There’s a beauty in that.

“But there was one iteration of you that managed to leave this temporal battlefield, to hop into a realm removed from the strife of choice, and exist independent of your choices.” She spread her arms to her sides. "A you at the pinnacle of existence. Me."

REZDNAQ QANDZER

I coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her name was true, ineffable, a part of the universe she had scratched into the wall of everything with her own fingers.

This was her.

Not me, though.

“Very astute of you,” she laughed. “You are right. We may be of the same root, but we are different plants now, with different true names.”

“I want nothing to do with you,” I said as I cast an evocation for Regenerate Wound, healing my internal ravages, while checking in on my son. He was mercifully untouched. So she wasn’t that far gone. “I will walk wherever I please, but expect to never see me dogging your steps, you devil.” I spat at her feet.

“Mhm,” she smiled. “There were three paths open for you,” she said. “You could either let the deep universe subsume your mind and carve out an existence with your current ability, sacrificing your time and ability to learn in favor of adopting the Daemoncustom.” She shrugged. “That path is closed to you. You can still walk down it, but I already exist, so what is the point? It is a meaningless path.”

“I hate you,” I said. “You’re pathetic.” I laughed. “I would never become like you, you conceited little girl.”

“I am older than you could literally imagine,” she said. “Maybe you can now, but when you regain your mind, you won’t even be able to conceptualize the meaning of my age.”

“Okay, you old hag.” I laughed and looked down at the second half of my ‘us’. “She’s an old hag, isn’t she?”

"Knowledge is poison." My boy said. "It turns us away from happiness. From joy. Truth is agony."

"Well!" I said, putting one hand on my hip. "That is easy for you to say!"

“The second path is another of extreme obligation,” the demoness continued. “You sacrifice your ability to act freely in ways that bind you in totality. Lies become a thing of the past, and while you may still learn and grow and adapt, it comes at the cost of deception, of unfair contracts and playing on the greed of your lessers. It becomes servitude to yourself; freedom, in a sense, but a most insidious slavery nonetheless.”

“Fae,” I said.

Ridiculous.

“There is, was, or will be a fae that is you,” she said. “And she is, was, or will be dead. You will die. Or maybe you already are? Her at least. The fae are not as temporally removed as we are, but the one you became never truly amounted to anything either way. Indeed, she killed herself.”

“Good riddance,” I said. “I would wish to die were I forced to become a deceiver, worse even than a demon.”

“One thing we can agree on,” she nodded deeply. “The fae are a rotten bunch, too fearful of the deep universe to learn to protect themselves without heavy shackles covering every inch of their minds. Cowards, leeches, parasites. Greatness is my path, but you can become greater still.”

I knuckled my head. “I completely forgot to ask,” I said. “Why are you helping me? Tell me why.”

“I need not,” REZD-

A jolt of pain shot through my skull.

Formidable indeed, for her name to carry such real weight.

“But I will,” she smiled. “For honesty would go a long way in currying favor with a future God.” Before I could interject, she continued. “Yes, that is the third Path of Meaning, the one which you are on right now. The third and most difficult Path. I made a sacrifice to become what I am so I could guide you to become what you can be, to realize a potential locked behind temporal paradoxes such that only an archdemoness could break through them. An archdemoness like me.”

Her smile widened further, the corners of her mouth exiting the bounds of her face. “And when I raise you up, you will in turn raise me up. Although I am undefeated, it is only a matter of time before I face a single defeat against a peer, and for one such as myself that cannot learn from defeat, it will prove that I am indelibly beneath them. Unchanging. Forever. I need you to put me at the top.”

“A quid pro quo,” I said. “Fine, I understand. You may leave.”

“Not so fast, you precocious, overgrown child,” she said. “Yes, I am allowed to say that with full confidence because,” she reached towards me, her arms stretching impossibly as she opened the cap of my skull and peered inside. “Here, I only see the mind of a little girl.”

I waved the phantasm away. Just as expected, the vision disappeared like fog.

“I can be more tangible, if you want,” she smiled even wider, so much so that if she turned around fully, her smile would be caught in one of the trees. I didn’t trust it very much. “My job here is not done. As your guide, I need to change you, divert you from the temporal stream that would lead you to the mediocrity that is my own existence and become something higher, something better.”

The forest disappeared, and instead, I was in a very familiar room. My childhood bedroom.

“What is this?” I asked. “Are we back on Earth?”

“No,” she said. “This is a phantasm.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

I felt a sting on my cheek, and I was back again, in front of my mother, having to explain to her why I was such a disappointment.

“You need to confront your past. Knowing you, however, you never would have on your own,” the demoness explained. “So I’m making you do it. We are seeing everything.”

I wanted to scream no, but I couldn’t, still locked into the phantasm, made to vividly relive this painful memory of the first time my mother ever struck me.

The last time, too.

"Reza, why are you wasting your life?" She gestured at the grade sheet. Eight subjects were graded, though on average, my classmates only had six. "You have three Bs and not even a single A star. Who do you think you are going to impress?"

I was six at this time. The school I went to had a bastardized version of the British IGCPE system and the national one. It was, however, still a private institution that served to prepare the children of the more affluent for the rigors of secondary education.

According to my father, it was where scholarship students like myself worked themselves to near death while the rich amused themselves with frivolous pursuits, content in the fact that they would have a place in the family business when the time came.

In retrospect, all of that was bullshit. My father told me this several times, but he always forgot to mention that they went to primary school where joking around and having fun was not only expected, but encouraged.

I could have fun when I was rich, I was told. I was having a lot of fun now, huh?

The demoness stepped into the scene, next to my mother. “See how the chaotic immersion is already losing its cling? Can’t you feel your sanity slowly returning? This is the cultivation of a strong mind, one you have neglected for far too long. An intelligent, fast, functional mind is what you have, but its integrity leaves a lot to be desired.”

She disappeared just as quickly as she appeared and the vision resumed."Having you in that school was a mistake," my mother continued. At the time, I shed tears. It was a good school and I didn't want to leave, even if I hadn't made any friends yet. Now, I felt nothing but animosity. It cost my parents nothing to keep me in the school. I was on a scholarship. "There are plenty of kids your age more diligent and dedicated. Yousef's son is going to Haavid," Harvard, she meant to say, but I wouldn't learn that for years to come. "He's the talk of the town. At this rate, you will not even make it into a local school."

Never let it be said that I could not defend myself, however. "I've finished memorizing surat ul Jinn," I explained. "I didn't have time to do homework because of Quran studies."

"Then you shouldn't have gone to bed so early." I was six. She forced me to bed when I told her that I still had things I needed done. She told me she would wake me up an hour before dawn before she did her Subhi prayer.

She did not.

"You forced me to bed," I said.

Her eyes blanked out, and softened for only a moment before she turned around to leave the study table, on her way to the living room where she could drown her inane life in TV shows.

My father was next to her, having overheard it all. He didn't do anything, but that was to be expected. I had disappointed him after all, even if that was an unavoidable outcome considering all the things they forced me to be excellent in.

For a moment, I hated them. It was the first time I ever hated something, and because I didn't quite like the sensation, and the fact that the target of my ire was my beloved parents, I calmed down and doused my hatred in cold water. Not even glaring embers remained.

In fact, nothing did. Somehow, it felt even worse. No love, or antipathy. Just… nothing.

I looked at my parents staring religiously at their television, and the empty pit in my stomach only expanded. I looked down at the textbooks on the table and opened one slowly. It was the beginner's introduction to French, a class I received a B in, alongside math and English. Why I was being taught two foreign languages at once, I didn't understand, but I didn't dare ask questions.

I asked nothing of my parents again. Not for years more. When I opened that French textbook, it was over. Every sense of mine shut down, and nothing but eyesight and comprehension remained. This was training that I didn’t know back then would make me remarkably prepared for learning magic.

I took notes where I didn't trust my memory to aid me, and worked until my mind felt tender and foggy. I went to sleep that night, plagued by angry Frenchmen striking me with their baguettes because I made minor mistakes in grammar. How figments of my imagination knew better French than I did, I honestly could not say.

I would immerse myself thoroughly in my studies wherever possible, be it the playground, on the way home, on the study table and even in classrooms when the teacher was running late. Days turned to weeks without my notice, and soon became months. I finished the French textbook and was well into the English and Math textbooks when the final assessments came.

I received six A stars and two As. During summer, I immersed myself in the Quran, and went a step further by learning Quranic Arabic as well. When the new term came, I was shocked to find that we were still using the textbooks from last year, only we would move on to the topics we never touched the first time.

Soon enough, school began to waste my time. The teachers noticed, and put me in third grade where the textbooks were completely new to me. I don't remember how my mother reacted. I didn't quite care. We hadn't actually had an honest to god conversation since she slapped me. I never expected her to be able to build bridges anyway. She was profoundly inept, in a way that I couldn't quite put to words, and back then, I knew that.

With a heavier workload, I began to learn how to optimize my studying for greater results. I learned more, in a faster rate, and by the time my first third grade report card came back, I was an entirely exemplary student.

I could have stopped at some point, but I didn't want to. It was addictive, just constantly winning. All it cost was foregoing friendships and extracurricular skills. I wasn't convinced that I couldn't learn any of them from books anyway. Certainly, my Byzantine school administration thought nothing of heaping more and more pressure on me to see when I would break.

By the time I was nine, I was on the verge of entering secondary education. I finally memorized my scripture, though it would have taken less time if I didn't have to deal with the ever-increasing intensity of school.

At once, I saw a drab life flash before my eyes and I looked up from my books when two little children walked up to me. Three years old.

"Can you play with us, big sis?"

I stared at them both quizzically, their guileless cherubic eyes staring right back. "What are your names again?"

Shukraan and Khadija walked away disappointed after I turned down their offer to play. I didn't know the first thing of how to. I found myself regretting that, now. I wish I could have gotten to know them.

They did, however, return with a storybook. It was a western fairy tale translated to the local language. It was the first time I ever read a book for leisure.

It was Thumbelina, and though I never loved the story the way my sisters did, I grew fascinated by the idea that you could code messages within fiction. Suddenly, leisure didn't seem so pointless to me after all.

I knew that come secondary school, I wouldn't have time to do anything like that. I decided to enter the school library and for the first time, borrow another storybook.

That coming final exam for the primary certificate, I failed with flying colors. My parents were aghast and the administration shocked, but they had no choice but to hold me back for a year. They could have kicked me out as a scholarship student, but they trusted in my genius.

Thus, I had another year for books. Narnia, Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, Twilight, I learned all the things school wouldn't teach me. I learned about sex, sin, familial love and friendship. I became best friends with a girl whose life was cut short by the atrocities of World War Two, and cried alone in the bathroom when I learned of the fate of a boy in striped pajamas and his new friend. Those were the best days of my life. It was a gateway, those feelings of melancholy. I found myself addicted. Just like that, I was beset by a primal need to know.

I challenged myself and made some philosophical picks, Orwell, Dostoevsky, hell even Ayn Rand. I didn't love the latter, but I appreciated the cold helping of realism she heaped on me. The world was not a nice place and the ones that succeeded were not kind or deserving in any capacity, and I was happy that a book finally corroborated my suspicions. I challenged myself to stare into the darkness, exploring how Lovecraft's racism and xenophobia translated into an amazing example of horror, in its purest form. I understood him now more than ever. Otherness repulsed me, too. I immersed myself in the poems of Poe, the classic of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the social critique inherent in Bram Stoker's depiction of the bourgeoisie and their tendency to parasitize the underclass, transforming them into mindless ghouls. Eugenicist Richard Dawkins, a man that hated my erstwhile religion and people, told me that even God was a lie, and despite the man himself, I was inclined to believe him.

All this was found in a primary school library, mind you, bought by a school administration that simply wanted a well-stocked library akin to Western schools, but did nothing to moderate its contents. I was grateful for adult stupidity on that account. Some of those books could get them in trouble with the government.

The world, previously a mysterious place to the mind of a prepubescent country girl, was illuminated to me more vividly than any textbook could. It was an ugly sight, yes, but it was there for me to know. I could see it. That mattered to me more than my peace of mind ever could. It was safe to say that the knowledge itself gave me that peace of mind.

I found myself the most in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Regimented lives, forced learning, no truth, just information. Orwell made me realize for the first time in my entire life that grown-ups lied constantly, and when that clicked, so much… rust just fell off from my mental gears.

I laughed a pure, untainted laugh as I made another realization. I was likely smarter than most grown-ups now. That made them entirely unworthy, in my eyes, to even dare to assume that they knew what it was that I wanted for myself in life. Even I didn't know.

But I did know, in a sense. I wanted freedom. I wanted a life that was mine and mine alone. I wanted America. I saw myself in the modern American dream, that if I just worked hard enough to get a full-ride scholarship into the most acclaimed university of my field in the country, the world would be my oyster.

I performed flawlessly in every assessment they threw my way, down to even the ones they had me complete in private rooms and multiple invigilators.

That coming final exam, I failed again. The teachers had a good, long chat with me, but this time I talked back. I talked to them, orating my rationale flawlessly, subtly accusing them of railroading me and surreptitiously implying they were taking advantage of my genius rather than feeding it.

To an extent, I was right. They never taught me how to study or how to deal with increased workloads and academic pressure. I did, on my own.

They let me repeat the year. I spent it wisely relaxing for once, letting my raging brain find equilibrium before I abused it again.

I pushed my luck again and failed. The teachers put their foot down and told me if I failed again, I would be thrown out. My first-grade cohort had already caught up to me. I was no longer a genius, a twelve-year-old now in a class of her agemates. I was no longer special. According to them, at least. I had already decided long ago to disregard the opinions of stupid grown-ups, so it mattered nothing to me.

I spent my free time studying secondary school topics, pushing my brain once more, and feeling that familiar, reassuring brain fog telling me I was on my way to excellence. I was past feeling elated over my A stars. Only perfect scores pleased me. Now, when the final exam came, I performed perfectly, not a single point lost.

I applied for a scholarship in an international boarding school and got in without any fuss. There, I enrolled in only the most prestigious after school clubs. Model United Nations, Debate Club, and football. Though the sport didn't see me excel appreciably, I played anyway so I would have more to write to the schools.

I won a prize in some contest or other, netting me my own laptop. I used it to access Khan Academy, where I revised on SAT topics. I scrounged up enough money and bought a ticket to it.

I was fourteen when I received my first perfect score. The school helped me raise funds to complete the rest of the subject SATs as well. It was overkill, but that was always better than underkill. I received perfect scores across the board. My dream was mere millimetres away.

I was sixteen when the first catcall broke through my haze of inner monologues and self rumination. It only opened the floodgates. As it happened, I was beautiful now. I was pretty and I kept fit by playing football, but more substantially, I had an amazing future ahead of me. It was obvious to anyone that knew me, and it gave me that extra oomph needed to propel me to the top of everyone's pedestal.

Because I didn't factor this development into my life, I was entirely unprepared for it, and thus, I also hated it. I wore baggier uniforms underneath my newly donned abaya as an act of rebellion against their wandering eyes. The modesty that my erstwhile religion taught me came back in full force and I took as much advantage of it as possible.

Unfortunately, the catcalls still came and now I was also sweating like a pig, wearing all black in the blazing sun.

I decided to stop hiding, but kept as safe as possible. I never strayed from a crowd and always made sure to not leave campus for any reason. My vigilance paid off.

For a time at least.

The world paused as I regained control. “Stop it!” I roared. “You can’t do this to me!”

The demoness’s smile dimmed. “I must, little one. This is the only way you grow, by confronting your past and constructing techniques to deal, creating a proper foundation for your wisdom.”

She forced me back into the phantasm, and I was once again playing the lead role of the worst play in existence.

I was seventeen when my parents informed me of an eligible suitor from a rich family. They told me the bridal price could see me through university. I received my Early Decision from Harvard not long after. I was in, and being destitute as I was, the school was paying.

Nothing remained. When I took that flight, dumped the headscarf in a dust bin and flew away, nothing remained in my life but myself and my dreams. Not my parents demanding excellence, raucous siblings, rich suitors or infuriating teachers.

I closed my eyes in the present, biting my lower lip furiously, the only resistance I could mount now that the demoness was keeping me held tightly inside the phantasm. I wanted to stop remembering. It hurt so much. Not for all I left behind. It was the knowledge that the pure happiness and freedom I finally tasted would never last.

I was a year into Harvard Medical School. Shaking off my accent took months, but I was a diligent student. I hadn't been contacted by my family at all, not since I cut ties. Alas, the internet was much too powerful for such half measures so eventually, they found a way. If I truly hid myself, I would not be able to have a social life, something I was trying my hand at in this new and unfamiliar land.

Nevertheless, I was different. I was poor, foreign and female while my peers were almost always a total inversion. It was tough, and though I would have sought friends elsewhere, outside of campus, I was still acutely conscious of the attention men gave me.

I completed the end-of-year examination with just below perfect scores, though my grades were indeed perfect. Naturally, it wasn't enough for me, and left me in a foul mood for days to come, without any valid forms of outlets beside the online software I used to chat with strangers, though it was actually targeted for those who played video games.

When my father first texted me on Instagram, I regretted not setting it to private. Still, his first message, though riddled with grammatical issues and poor syntax, even in our Arabic, was enough for me to not dismiss him entirely out of hand. It was life and death after all.

Trouble was stirring in the homeland and my family wanted out as soon as possible. If I married a local businessman's son, the bridal price could easily let them pay for safe passage somewhere else, preferably the states. I didn't have to quit studying, as an added bonus.

I demanded Canada, and my father had no choice but to comply. Vowing to divorce the rich bastard the first chance I got, I bought a new hijab and flew back for the summer.

We met in an upscale cafe, supervised from across the table by a mullah and the suitor's mother. He was… charming, in a way, though it was a bought charm. He depended on a confident smile, a posh accent and good English with exotic turns of phrases to get him by, all the things that would have worked so excellently with the local girls. Even I felt that I could have been attracted to him, if I was mid high school. Now, it only came off as pretentious.

I tried to see if he could match my wit, but he came woefully short. I decided to keep quiet from then on, but his boyish pride had him trudging on regardless to find out what interested me. He was a movies and TV sort of guy, both mediums that I hated with passion from early childhood. I was a books and poems gal. The only poem he knew was Roses are Red, and he hadn't been able to get past the first Lord of the Rings movie, though he loved Game of Thrones because the CG was nice and he took a shine to the Dothraki.

By the end of the playdate, he managed to lose every point he had in my book and dipped into the negatives. The complete lack of common interests was one thing. I honestly didn't quite care about that — it just wasn't a dealbreaker to me. What was was the constant self-deprecation.

"Hah, you read so much. I almost feel illiterate now."

"I'd need double my IQ to catch half your references."

"I can't believe you got accepted into Harvard. I feel like a total troglodyte."

Soon enough, the self deprecation turned into him ceaselessly prattling on about his family, how rich they were and how he didn't need an Ivy League school to make a living.

Because some people have to work for wealth and others would just be born into it, without having worked a day in their lives.

Unfortunately, I said that out loud. I apologized, but in the end, it put a damper on the playdate.

Nonetheless, the Great Gatsby, in his boundless magnanimity, found it in himself to forgive me for lashing out at his trustfund baby routine and felt it prudent to go forward with the nikkah.

It was in the middle of our signing the boilerplate marriage contract, that I took thirty minutes to read through just to make sure there was nothing disagreeable there, in the presence of an independently hired lawyer (to the horror of my family and the disdain of my in-laws) when gunshots sounded outside.

It was chaos. My memories were hazy at this point. Too much adrenaline. Everyone took vehicles out while I made sure to help as many people as possible. My compassion, surprising as it was, cost me everything. My in-laws cursed my lack of urgency and drove off with my family, leaving me to survive the most stressful twenty four hours in my entire life. I saw bodies, death, the camouflaged getups of gunmen making their rounds with cruelty.

And then I was caught. I remembered his face the most, down to the follicular placement of his impeccably cut facial hair, handsome by all accounts, though it was only the veneer of a devil. I remembered the lecherous leer and the poisonous words, the full body waves of nausea and disgust. My world flipped, and suddenly he was behind me.

“Stop.” The world stopped. “Stop this.” I demanded. “Stop it, please,” I begged. “You- you can’t do this to me! You can’t do this to yourself!”

“This will never stop having happened,” she argued. “This was the beginning, a defining moment of your life. You will never be able to forget it, nor the pain. Even now, I still can’t forget it. Even after an unknowable amount of time has passed since then and what a mortal would call ‘now’, that pain is still a part of me.”

“Then STOP!” I shouted. “Please don’t make me relive this. Please, don’t. I can’t live through this again, I can’t!”

“You aren’t reliving,” she said. “You are remembering.” She gave me her hand and I took it, finally pulled away from the role of myself, now only watching me in the third person view. “But if you must only watch from the sidelines, you can do that too. But you will watch.”

“I can’t,” I said, trying to look away, but my head was locked. So were my eyes and eyelids. I opened my mouth to scream, but I couldn’t.

“This pain is an emotion,” she said. “And in Allmother, emotions are powerful things. You must tap it if you wish to succeed, if you wish to walk down a Path of Meaning, and not just become me or die.

Then it happened, and I vomited. I cried. I screamed stop into an unheeding void, kicking and bucking to no avail. It felt like forever, but may have only taken minutes.

It felt like hours just watching it, the memory somehow even worse on the second review.

How could a person be so monstrous? So casually cruel and evil?

When it was done, the soldier forgot to kill me and ambled away like a full and drunk bar patron, satisfied in his dark deed, leaving me to pick up the pieces, half maddened by the realization of what happened to me and the pain I still felt from his cruel ministrations.

My house burned down and with it, my travel documents. Just like that, America seemed a distant dream away. To be wrested away from my dream after all that happened...

I wanted to die the first few days. I would have done so if I didn't cling to the bare hopes that I could still build something for myself if I got out, wrote an autobiography and received a book deal or something else equally inane. I wanted to die, but I hadn't the courage to follow through with it.

There were other developments, still. I was nauseous, and though I never assumed it was morning sickness at first, the evidence piled on soon enough. By the time I missed my second period, it was over. I knew what was happening.

I let it. For all that was holy, I would have this child. There was nothing under the sun that would stop me from aborting the child if I didn't want it. This was my choice, so I made sure to stay alive. Perhaps I only projected my fear of death onto the child and let it meld with my love for it, but it didn't matter to me. Not even now.

In my escape from my hometown, I fell in with some villagers. They cared for me, spared me what little they had in food while I could do nothing but thank them. When I recovered mentally, I set out to the capital to get my situation looked at.

Hope fizzled away at my encounter with the bureaucratic morass responsible for seeing to it that I received new identification. I was slated to receive an I.D within eight months and a passport within two years.

I tried to call my university or e-mail them about my situation. The call didn't go through and my e-mail was probably left unread, caught in some spam folder considering I was sending from a third world internet cafe.

I was stuck screaming at walls, and social media was my last resort. I didn't have friends, but I had acquaintances and I sent a message to every one of them to get in contact with the administration.

The first bit of good news finally came after a week, when I was at my wallet's end. The school pledged to hold my position until I returned, and they would send mail to the government to expedite my receiving a passport. Nothing more. I would have to figure out everything else myself and save up for money for a flight. Smuggling myself was out of the question. I knew it wouldn't work, not to America at least.

I returned defeated to the village, an exile from my dreams, whiling away my days until the day of my son's birth finally came. I survived, and he did, too. A success, by all means.

I spent the first week recovering, and the second week working to collect enough money to take a bus back to the city for more work.

Bandits attacked. The travellers attacked right back. Bullets flew, people were perforated with gunshots. I could only cradle my baby tightly and pray to whoever would listen for safe passage.

In the end, the last bandit finally bled out, along with the last passenger. I was the only one left alive. I stuffed a backpack filled with bottles of water and some food, and brought a gun with me, away from the road, towards the empty, sandy countryside.

Exhaustion set in too quickly and I was forced to dump some weight. I ate my fill and trudged on, drinking often and prodigiously. I dropped the gun as well when I realized I'd be luckier to survive from the elements than another bandit attack. I slept through the freezing night, hugging my baby tightly, and continued trekking during the day, dumping more and more things. In the end, I only had a single bottle of water left and even that ran out all too quickly.

And now I was here.

I stroked my son's cheek as I closed my eyes to settle my emotions. To my parents, I felt nothing. To my sisters, an obligation to protect them. They were the only reason I returned. I couldn't blame my father for this. To my would be spouse, equally nothing as well. To my… rapist, hatred and all-encompassing loathing. It was the second most intense emotion I felt for anything. He wounded me in ways that I would never be able to heal on my own, and I doubted that magic could do anything about it either. I couldn't forgive him.

I looked down at my sleeping son, my love and joy, the only thing I loved so passionately that I would die to ensure his happy life. I loved him the way words failed to describe it. He brought color and life into my world when I thought it was all gone. I had worked all my life to carve myself a happy alcove in this horrid world, only to find it in him.

He was my life's joy, and I would make his ten times more joyful. He deserved it. My little…

Farhaan.

I shed some tears and nodded to myself. "I love you. I love you."

A deep calm settled. My child was named, my past faced head on, and though I had lost many things, I could still rebuild with this power given to me and this genius so often taken advantage of, if not by fussy school teachers, then elitist university deans.

The forces dragging my mind back in the past, enforced by the remnants of madness still lingering in my psyche, lost its grit. I was free. No shackles or strings held me. Nothing did.

Pain dominated my past. I could break free from that, to not only seize power and safety for my son, but actual joy.

“Congratulations,” the demon said. “You are once more whole.”

I gritted my teeth. She was real, alright. She was losing cohesion by the moment, but she was real, there was no disputing that now.

“Give the Satiation spell another try. And do be careful from now on. The more you fall into madness, the harder it will become to pull you out.”

With that, she disappeared. I was once again in the forest, the horrid flesh shrubbery now finally still as death itself.

I swallowed heavily, dispelled my fear, and tried once again, my own desire to better myself outweighing the harrowing experience.

Or was it still a lingering seed of madness driving me forward? Where did my mind end and where did the madness start?

Maybe the separation was thinner than I expected?

I modelled the spell in my mind and made another attempt, decently confident in success after all the increases in my mental attributes.

And just as expected, and to my relief, I did indeed succeed.

Spell creation complete! You have invented an entirely new spell! You are awarded +4 Wisdom and +4 Intelligence. You may name this spell. Remember to share your findings in a World Obelisk for additional rewards.

Spell name:

Level up!

Proudly, I named it Satiation and vowed to one day find a World Obelisk and share this lifechanging spell to the world. As the spell manifested in the biomagic cluster, it appeared as the lynchpin of the constellation. Every spell was either tethered directly or indirectly to it. That told me it was complex and high leveled, even more so than Regulate Nutrients.

The minorly diminished attribute rewards were a disappointment, but it was expected. I still had dozens more spells to develop and I would eventually be flush in Wisdom and Intelligence given a few more months.

And I was receiving two attribute points per level now, so it evened out. I wondered if after level twenty, I’d be receiving twice again as many attribute points or just a flat increase. I was obviously hoping for the former.

But for now, I wanted a little rest from the maddening effects of spellmaking. No other mental pursuit exhausted me more than that, anyway.

For now, I picked a direction and walked.