The Reizenbrahm manor was just as Janina remembered it. Mother never skimped on keeping the grounds clean, always making sure to take care of the family’s image, even in the middle of wartime. The topiary was as well-defined as ever, bestial figures etched into the greenery, depicting idyllic scenes of nature and simpler times. The statue above the fountain was a mermaid.

Janina huffed, gently caressing the wide scar on her neck as she thought back to the war. Already a day out of the battlefield and she already missed it.

After all, there were Goldmen that needed killing. Her commanding officer was ‘rewarding’ her for her valor in combat, but really, he wanted any reason to get rid of her, to clear the way for the men to rise, because for some reason, being a level thirty [Elite Swordswoman] was clearly not enough to offset the fact that she had a womb.

Mother would be glad to see her back, and would take any and all opportunity to keep her home even after her leave ran out. She probably had a whole room filled with potential suitors lined up for her, rich and pampered brats who could bring some much-needed capital to their dying estate.

And all it would cost was her standing as heir to the Reizenbrahm estate.

Janina wished to return more ardently than ever, and battle an army of desert-dwelling enemies. She’d face a hundred Goldmen alone in an open field if it meant escaping this farce and going back to her.

One look at her family, however, sapped the ire straight out from her. Despite their faults, she did miss them. A little.

And it would be a nice change of pace to slip into some warm autumnal robes and leave her armor behind just for a moment, even if she was by no means ready to take a break.

The coach pulled up right before them, rounding the fountain and stopping before the pathway that led to the manor, where her parents and three sisters waited. She stepped out and immediately noticed something strange.

Her father was standing unassisted.

He walked towards her. Walked, not limped. “It has been too long, my little hero!” He grabbed around her and lifted her up, twirling her around like he always did when she was younger, only she had never been alive for him to be able to do it while standing.

“Father!” she shouted. “How?”

He put her down gently and smiled. “I hired a talented healer.”

Behind him stood a Goldman, carrying a baby of all things. On her other hand was a staff with a shiny, green orb nestled at the top.

She immediately drew her sword and—

Her father grabbed her shoulder. “She’s the one,” he said.

Janina whirled around to look at her father, utterly askance. She always knew that he had a soft spot for those inhuman monsters made only of greed and hatred, but to go so far as to hire one of these subhumans?

“Well,” Janina looked her father up and down. “Since you can walk now, what use is there to keep her around? Let me personally escort her outside of the premises.”

“Daughter mine,” her mother, Losinda, interrupted. “Please leave your… enthusiasm to the battlefield. You are home now. I want no more of this aggression.”

“You too?” She stared at her mother. For her to jump to the defense of an outsider, one that could potentially hurt her father… this Goldman’s rot had seeped deep in her absence.

Her sisters had all stepped away, fear evident in their eyes at the impending bloodshed.

“Reza is a valued member of the household,” her father said. “Please sheathe your blade and rejoice in the gifts she has provided our family.”

Janina slowed her breathing and slowly sheathed her blade, all the while looking at the woman. She was pretty for a Goldman, but her wariness looked more like a mask than anything, a way she was supposed to look at the sight of a threat.

She was the only threat here, though, and Janina would endeavour to let that be known. Before she returned once more to the battlefield, this wretch would leave the estate forever, one way or another.

She swore it.

000

In the sandy training grounds of the Reizenbrahm estate, Janina cycled through her forms, the culmination of thousands of hours of blood, sweat and tears evident in her every movement. A diagonal slash here, so perfect that even the most seasoned [Ranger] would have to look twice to spot any shakes or deviations in her sword’s course, and a thrust there that optimized all her muscle groups with no frivolous or extraneous effort on her part that delivered her sword in a straight line. It was a thrust meant to maximize damage while minimizing fatigue, the thrust of an [Elite Swordswoman].

Her three sisters sat beneath a pavilion, protected by the glare of the sun, as they watched her. A whole host of other servants and groundskeepers stopped what they were doing too, to lay witness to the prowess of a war veteran. Rosin, the eldest of her younger sisters, watched eagerly, her golden eyes wide at the spectacle. The middle child, the erudite Rila, drew on her book, likely inspired by Janina’s movements and immortalizing the moment in chalk. Erlina, the pig-tailed youngest, looked away, arms folded and a frown on her face. She ignored whatever could be bothering her youngest sister, instead choosing to pour herself further into the training, imagining herself cutting a swathe through an army of Goldmen.

One deep breath and she was back. She could practically feel the dry air stinging her nostrils and her thirst flaring. The harsh desert sun bore down on her and she could make out the silhouettes of Goldmen legions on the horizon. Natives as they were, they were long inured to the inhospitable environment, and they used that to their full advantage.

It was easy to forget that the Goldmen were indeed just mainline humans—their talent for surviving the climes of their Golden Lands bordered on the supernatural.

When it was over, she stood panting, the illusion forgotten. It wasn’t quite Battle Mania—she didn’t trust herself to initiate that while around allies.

“Marvelous, big sister!” Rosin clapped her hands. Janina almost wanted to shout at her for getting so close, even if that distance was over five meters away. “I can’t imagine there being anyone powerful enough to beat you!”

She mulled that thought over. Her sword was a standard Royal Treasure bequeathed onto her by her father, a one-handed, double-edged rapier with the ability to freeze the blood inside a person’s blood vessels upon making a successful cut. Against an unarmored foe, it was powerful. The fact that it was more or less indestructible made it useful against more insulated opponents, too, even if it lost out on its cutting power. After all, with enough Power, even a twig could decimate an army.

But she’d seen worse.

She’d seen a man wearing wings of gold, summoning sandy tornadoes that scoured flesh from bone with every flap. She’d seen a fan that could drag the very breath out of a hundred men, slowly suffocating them. She’d seen the sun itself descend for a scant few seconds, leaving behind massive wakes of sand transmuted to glass and charred corpses of both ally and foe, an enemy so ruthless that they would sacrifice their own men if they deemed the opposition’s forces too vital to let go.

She’d seen men and women outfitted with the arsenal of gods. Against them, she predicted only defeat.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Janina muttered, trying and failing to summon a smile. “If someone like me was all it took to win the war, then the Goldmen would be nothing to be wary of.” She stabbed her sword into the sand and approached her sister, looking into her bright gold eyes, shimmering like yellow sapphires. “You must be wary of them.”

Finally, Erlina the youngest, jumped up and leaned forward to shout at her, her two pig-tails swaying as she closed her pink eyes. “Reza is different from those people! She healed father!”

Janina huffed and stomped towards the little girl, who remained rooted in her place. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, child. You don’t know how much death and pain her people bring to us. And you’d still defend her?”

“What does it matter what her people do?” She screamed. “I just don’t get it! How is this and that the same?”

“Don’t raise your voice with me,” Janina roared. “I’m your eldest sister, so you should speak respectfully.”

“You tried to kill Reza!”

Before she could try and talk the irrational and hysterical child down, the fourteen-year-old Rila butted in. “You need to understand where your sister is coming from,” she said to the youngest. “She has seen things you haven’t. Certainly, she is much wiser than you. Even if she might be wrong this time.”

Janina’s good mood instantly deflated upon hearing the girl’s amendment. “You too?”

“Sisters,” Rosin butted in, inserting herself between the youngest two and Janina. “We don’t have to talk about her, you know. Can’t we be happy that Sister Nina is back?”

“I was!” The precocious youngest said. “And then she tried to kill the one that made it so father could walk!”

“Yes,” Rosin conceded. “That did put a damper on the mood, but,” she shrugged. “Who cares? Janina is family, and that should matter more, okay?”

Janina could not believe what she was hearing. “Then you all believe I’m wrong?”

“Sister, enough about this,” Rosin pleaded.

“No!” Janina stomped her foot on the ground so hard that the pavilion shook. “You must choose a side, and it is either your sister or a foreign wench from a country we’re at war with. A people that have killed so many of my friends!”

Erlina was first to decide, huffing as she turned her back on Janina, arms folded. The other two’s indecision was answer enough.

Janina left to pick up her sword and go to her room. She’d seen enough.

000

“—and I’ve just recently managed to raise my coordination to six, so it became much easier for me to perform the dance of life. My tutors all praised me—mother, can you tell father about it?” Rosin eagerly looked towards her mother, who was seated diagonally from her on the thin long-table, now arranged in the shape of two horns, customary when welcoming a family member home from the warfront. At each horn, both their parents sat. In the valley between the two peaks sat Janina, as she was the family member in question. Dinner was always such a traditional affair in the household, and the welcoming banquet was no less opulent. On wider, rectangular tables next to the main arrangement sat plates of more food, a whole bird, mashed potatoes, boiled and salted vegetables as well as boats of gravy, to be brought to the main table by the waitstaff upon request.

“You should have seen it with the music on,” mother smiled proudly, beaming over the achievements of the daughter she always wanted, a ladylike woman that succeeded in the pursuits that her station demanded of her. “She danced with the grace of a swan. You should have seen it, dear.”

“Very well,” father smiled, his deep voice always a balm on her soul. “I shall make time to see my daughter’s recitation. I have all the confidence in the world that you will shock and awe everyone at your debut.”

Just the word ‘debut’ alone was enough to trigger horrible memories in Janina. Being fussed over in her dress fittings, having to slowly grind up her Charm through constant conversation and pleasantry day in and day out, singing lessons to help improve the attribute as well, and enough face powder that she could still almost smell it from time to time, like this very moment for instance. It was just as well that she was allergic to the stuff when it was mixed with a reagent that her governess forgot to tell the apothecary not to add in, and she made a fool of herself at the autumn harvest ball with a puffed up face and a runny nose, constantly sneezing.

The dancing lessons were a lot more fun, however. And in some days, the instructor would bring in her daughter, who was a vastly better dancer than Janina herself despite only being a commoner.

Janina could still remember Scarlett’s touch when she washed the powder off her face after the ball, and they decided to go to the commoner’s festival instead, together. They held hands while they watched the fire spitters make like dragons and release wild conflagrations over the heads of the audience.

A decade later and they were fighting side-by-side to protect their homeland even when no one expected them to. Scarlett never cared about that sort of stuff, and she loved her all the more for it.

She almost pitied Rosin and the others. They would never have something that real. Only a pale imitation of the love one could attain with freedom.

“In case you ever feel some strain from your training, Rosin, I will always be available to you.”

The words sounded entirely innocuous, without even a foreign accent to it. Altaluvian to the extreme, the Goldman was just as well-spoken as any other noble she’d met. It was so eerie that she was too stunned to even talk.

“Yes, of course!” Their father said. “Reza does good work, so do not hesitate to see her if your training takes a toll on your body.”

Rosin nodded, smiling towards the Goldman. She smiled back, and as she angled her head towards Janina’s sister, she caught a glimpse of a golden flicker of light in her eyes.

Eyeshine. The Goldman had eyeshine. Janina’s eyes fell to the baby she clutched, the one she carefully spooned mashed baby feed into their mouth. Gods knew what the baby was mixed with.

“Leave the mongrel be, sister,” Janina chuckled. “Else she might get the wrong idea and think herself a member of the family, when she can hardly be called a citizen of our country.”

“Janina,” her father raised his voice, sighing afterwards. “Must you continue bringing this matter up?”

Janina raised her hands up placatingly. “If you think I’m being harsh, you should know the sort of things they do to mongrels in the Golden Cities. At least I haven’t threatened to turn her into human chattel, or,” she looked towards her mother. “Marrying her off to the highest bidder. All the things that her people would find normal. All the things they would have no compunction with bringing to us.”

“If you must know,” the mongrel raised her voice, and Janina glared daggers at her. Still, she would not back down. “I have never actually been to the Golden Cities. I am only a quarter Goldman on my mother’s side, and half-Aellian. I was raised in Filomena and educated there before I moved here for other opportunities. I have as much to lose as you if the Golden Cities were to win.”

“You think I give a shit where you were born?” Janina smashed the table with her hand, creating an indent into the wood. “You think you can claim to have the same stakes we have when you flit around the world like an itinerant flea, without any roots to speak of? You can leave whenever you so please, but we are not so lucky!” Before she could talk again, Janina cut her off. “And just dare say another word in front of me again, and I won’t be so talkative.”

The Goldman’s gritted teeth expression slowly morphed to utter anguish as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this treatment,” she said, and despite Janina’s earlier warning, she couldn’t help but stay her hand, a seed of guilt worming into her heart. “I have given so much to this family, for the sake of my own,” she looked towards her child. “I would-“ she hiccupped. “I would not be so presumptuous as to impose if my presence offends you so.” She stood up to leave.

“That’s enough,” her mother stood up with a start. “Reza, your presence is valued. We wouldn’t dare throw you out for all you’ve done, so you are welcome to stay for as long as you’d like!”

“I wouldn’t dare upset the heir to the Reizenbrahm estate,” she shook her head frantically.

Everyone was looking at her now in varying degrees of horror and anguish. There was anger there too, from Erlina, and disappointment from her mother, though that was never anything new.

She looked at the tear-streaked face of the Goldman lady and heard a treacherous voice in her mind whisper to her: what would Scarlett think?

“Fine,” she growled. “She can stay. But don’t ever let me catch sight of you.” She stood up to leave, her plate of stew half-eaten. She’d lost her appetite anyhow.

000

The Goldman had already won the hearts of her sisters, tending to them with games and stories aplenty. Though she always rared to leave whenever she caught sight of her, Janina’s sisters always assured her that nothing out of sorts could happen with them around.

And so Janina was forced to leave them. Few places became safe for her to wander around without catching sight of the timid Goldman, so she mostly stayed in her room, or went to get dinner. Mercifully, the Goldman had stopped attending altogether after the first night, which gave her sisters ample opportunity to try and smooth things over with her and the Goldman.

Never could they just talk without a request for apologizing to this Reza coming up. Erlina all but hated her, and Rila was hardly interested in any of her stories.

She was no doubt a monster to them. Rosin did her best to smooth things over, but her words could only go so far when they were in fundamental disagreement.

Janina wanted Reza out, but her sisters did not. The girls wouldn’t budge. Not even for family.

She spent less and less of her time outside her room, and trained during the night, when her sisters were asleep. She stopped coming to meals shortly after, and had the help deliver her the food that she wanted.

If they were so eager to make nice with some outsider, she might as well not make it so hard for them.

One morning, a messenger arrived from the war front, and Janina eagerly rushed towards the courier, standing next to the fountain by the path leading to the manor, to receive her summons.

It came in a letter. She opened it, and read through the contents carefully.

They were asking her to come back. Her battalion had been hit. Scarlett was among the dead, listed no doubt because of her rank rather than any special relationship they may or may not have had.

Scarlett was dead.

The courier had long-since ridden out as Janina read over the letter again and again.

It was an effort, making it to her room without crying, without showing any of the help her inner anguish. There, behind closed doors, she uncorked a bottle of hard liquor, on a cabinet facing the inner wall of her room, and drank it all in seconds.

She dropped the bottle and reached for another. This one took longer, and her stomach wretched in protest, but through iron will, she kept it down.

The third bottle, she sipped sparingly as she felt the telltale signs of inebriation finally settle on her like a heavy blanket, the speed at which she ingested the alcohol finally catching up to her. She slid her back down the wall and continued drinking as the tears stained her shirt.

She could die right now, and nothing would be better than that.

She didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until she woke up with a banging headache, but what hurt worse was the clarity that sobriety brought forth. The sharp edges of her grief cut her deeper than before, and she resisted screaming just for long enough to reach the other bottles, to drown herself fully in a collection of expensive liquors until she ran out completely.

By then, she did the only thing that came to mind, the only thing that might alleviate some of her pain.

Finally take care of that mongrel gnat.

It made no sense. It was hardly the most productive use of her time; the war had called her back and there was still a fight to be fought. Still, she couldn’t find it in herself to care, or scrounge up any motivation to return. If she deserted, they probably wouldn’t look for her regardless of her tactical value.

They could all burn. Her stupid fucking country and all the idiots running it, enslaved and raped for the rest of their lives by the savages to the east.

She stumbled through the hallways, traveling directly to the place she’d avoided for so long, a place she knew by virtue of seeing her sisters always go there, but never to hers.

She stumbled through the door and saw the healer preparing her child for bed when she turned around and looked at her with… pity?

Yes. Pity.

“I heard,” she said. Before Janina knew what to do, even, Reza had already wrapped her soft arms around her, hugging her tightly.

She’d heard? Then what about her family?

“Let go,” Janina growled, and Reza didn’t resist at all as she backed away from her drunken flailing. “You don’t know anything about us. You don’t know anything about her.”

“You loved her,” was her simple reply. No judgment, scorn or disgust in her voice. Pure acceptance. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

Janina fell on her knees and started sobbing. For how long, she couldn’t tell. Reza kept her distance and simply watched as she fell apart on the floor, wailing in an ignoble heap.

She could already feel herself sobering up, and the grief stabbing her deeper, making it harder to even breathe. This was a pain unlike any other. She’d lost friends before. Gods knew she’d known loss.

But this was Scarlett.

Why did she have to die? Why couldn’t they have died together? Why did she have to be called back so quickly, and for nothing at that? Father kept trying to reassure her that she was, indeed valued, that her commanders did it only to reward her.

But her father hadn’t been there, or seen the things her fellow women at war had to endure. It was enough to make them all question why they were even there in the first place.

And now that she no longer had any intentions to return, she realized why. She did it for Scarlett, and now Scarlett was gone.

“You let this happen,” she found herself whispering, and realized it was true. She looked up at the anguished expression on the Goldman outlander. “A healer capable enough to heal my father… you should have been in the warfront.”

The headaches and the grief kept her movements sluggish enough that she couldn’t immediately push herself up on her feet, and from her angle on the floor, she caught sight of something in the deep darkness under the Goldman’s bed. A transparent, faceted orb fastened to a thick, wooden branch. An orb that glowed a subdued green, a tiny hint of light that, to her gem eyes, might as well have shone like beacons in the pitch darkness underneath her bed.

It was an object that Reza so conspicuously kept her feet in front of, as if hiding it.

Her hand shot underneath the bed, and it was all the outlander could do to dodge in time, else have her ankles crushed. She caught the branch and pulled back while slowly standing up, getting a good look at an instrument that she was almost certain was the girl’s Royal Treasure.

Of course. How else could she possibly heal her father? Even with some sort of class skill, it couldn’t have been possible in his advanced age, when wounds usually either healed slowly or not at all.

“Your father knows that I have that,” Reza said. “Please return it.”

“This shouldn’t be with you,” Janina said. “What I’ve said applies to you by a hundredfold now. You should be fighting for a country that your brown self had parked yourself in. Instead, you’re living the high life, here, when people like my… when others die so that you can have rights.”

“It’s not safe,” Reza said, her voice calm. “Just put it down, and I’ll surrender to you. You can bring your father and we can clear this up, but I promise you, that thing is not safe for you to wield right now.”

Janina scoffed. Lies and trickery was all her kind was good for. Mercenaries, the lot of them. As long as money was in it for them, as long as luxury and riches unearned was in reach, they would take it, and would resort to anything to do so. Even if it meant enslaving a whole country, they would.

She put her hand on the orb, a green core swirling inside the crystal. Her mind snapped towards a… list. A field of dots with meaning, more like it. It was ordered by name. “Regenerate wound,” she whispered. “Purge poison… Satiate…”

The more she read, the more angry she became. What an incredibly useful tool, wasted on some lazy wastrel who wanted an easy life. This was a conman of the highest order, someone that would pass off the workings of a Royal Treasure for her own work, unheeding of all the good it could do in the right hands.

She knew exactly what to do with such a traitor. “You scum,” she spat. “Worry not for the child. I’ll set it up somewhere and it can live out its life in full, but you? You must die.”

She concentrated on the right spell and pointed the staff towards her with both hands cupping the orb. “Purge Life!”

A haze of nothing slipped out of the crystal and struck Reza dead-center.

After a precious few seconds, nothing happened at all.

“Put it down,” Reza said. “That thing almost hit you. What if it hit my child? I beg you, put it down.”

Janina shook her head. “You’d want that, huh?” She took a step back and picked another skill, one that she really liked the look of. “Boost… power by ten?”

Reza’s eyes widened in shock. She raised her hand in warning. “No, no, not that one! You can’t! The orb hasn’t replenished!”

More lies. At least her nervousness had revealed to Janina enough. This one would work.

Though she could easily dispatch the Goldman with her own strength, she’d rather do it with the orb. It was poetic justice after all.

“Boost Power By Ten!”

The green from the crystal immediately seeped into her body.

A harsh crack separated the orb immediately, followed later by a crack in her mind, out from which gushed a fountain of all the things that had happened, could have happened, and would always happen and nothing at all.

The starscape from which the other things originated was laid bare to her mind, a foreignness more offensive, more alien and more unknowable than any of the Golden Land customs she could recount.

“Of course!” She whispered, tears in her eyes as she gazed into the very crack in her mind from which it all started. A crack that she had healed over long ago, a crack of her doubt in what was considered conventional wisdom, right and wrong as dictated by society itself. Loving a woman as a woman, doing war as a woman, leveraging the very Gods-given gift of the system that should have equalized all people across societal strata, yet failed to do so in Aellia and the Golden Lands.

A madness, a seed of it, now finally sprouting.

“I found one!” Someone shouted. Her? No. Someone else, separate from her, but largely the same. “I finally found one!”

“A demon,” Reza whispered. “You’re a demon?”

Janina fell on her knees and stared at the ceiling, singing in a language she had never heard before in order to please the thing that held all things together.

A whole new world had opened up for her, and she was ready.

000

This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this made sense. None of it was even a little rational. The situation felt almost contrived, designed this way for the sole purpose of fucking with me. Why did she have to come to my room in her grief? Why did no one check up on her? Why did she have to try and kill me with the fucking staff and not with, say, the very hands she’d trained with for her whole life?

I took a gambit by sobering her up so she’d be more rational. I did it precisely so she’d know the consequences of her actions, realize that her grief was no excuse to have a worker killed. I knew she’d respond to that at the very least.

But instead, her heightened perception allowed her to spot a thing I had no business having in my room, a thing that Reizenbrahm specifically told me to keep so I could do more covert research. The first aches of his advanced age had started to manifest, reminding him once again that yes, I did a hack job on his behalf to keep him spry and healthy, and no, it was no real long-term solution.

Just by being an impatient, entitled old man with an inability to reign in his homicidal heir, he’d doomed her. And perhaps even myself, at the same time.

All in all? Literally none of this was my fucking fault.

The ethereal mirror to Reizenbrahm’s heir was dancing around, elated beyond belief at having found her corporeal counterpart, a sister in madness. A demon. Just like the one that visited me the second time I went insane. It was good to have confirmation that they were real, beyond just hearing a name repeated in an unrelated story.

The being was formed in part from the unknowable dimension of otherness, enough that in my sane state, I couldn't make out its shape, size or length, or anything to really identify it beyond the words that it spewed forth; glyphs that carried meaning, more accurately.

I wasn’t sure if there was a way to banish or kill it, or if it was even visible to anyone else except the gibbering mess on the floor that was Janina. All I knew was that I needed to get ahead of this whole situation, and quickly.

I improvised a spell for losing consciousness and shoved it straight into her head. The level disparity was too much and the spell failed to take hold.

The second time, I Manipulated more Magic into the spell, overcharging it for almost an entire minute to the point where the evocation was weighty, veritably waterlogged with potential, and drove it directly into her. The demon winked out of existence and Janina slumped on the floor, her tonedeaf song finally over.