If pressed to describe where she was, Gabriela Carreno would have found it quite difficult. Descriptions generally rely on sensations, you see, and wherever Gabby was lacked them almost entirely. She couldn’t see, hear, feel, or pretty much anything else. Only the rare thought meandering through her dormant consciousness reminded her that she even existed at all.

Said thoughts were immediately pushed out of her mind as quickly as they entered. Gabriela didn’t want to think anymore—not now, not ever. She preferred to just... be. It was better this way.

No more killing. No more blood. No more orphans. No more pain. No more.

Gabriela wasn’t sure how long she’d been in this formless space, wherever it was. She wasn’t even sure if she was alive or dead. Perhaps this was some sort of purgatory? She couldn’t say. She didn’t really care. If she was dead, then this was where she deserved to be. If she were alive, then this was the closest to death she could get. Either way, this was where she belonged.

Strange lightning ran through her suddenly, the first real sensation she’d felt since the pain of the boy’s knife stabbing deep into her chest. The jolt coursed throughout her entire being, filling her with an electric fire that she had never felt before. The energy coursing through her felt strong and mighty, but even though it was pervading every part of her, she could tell that this energy was not hers. No, this was a foreign power within her, and it was forcing her to do the one thing she didn’t want to do: wake up.

Her first breath in over a month was a sudden, shuddering, gasp that rocked her entire body before turning into a series of weak raspy coughs. Something was off. Her body felt strange like it wasn’t her own. Everything felt far more difficult than she remembered, especially breathing. It was like her diaphragm was barely functioning, though she didn’t feel any pain coming from that area. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; she felt pain from her torso, just the same pain she felt throughout the rest of her body. Her whole body burned with the same electric blaze that had first infused into her spirit and dragged her unwillingly back to wakefulness, causing her whole body to scream in pain. That said, the pain didn’t really bother her too greatly. She’d felt far worse agony than this many a time in the last year.

Her entire body felt sluggish and weak. She tried to open her eyes, but couldn’t seem to find the strength to break the crust that had built up over her eyelids. As if reading her mind, a soft, wet cloth gently wiped her eyes, clearing away the dried gunk that had sealed her sight.

Gabby’s gaze was first greeted by the beige blandness of a tent cover, its soft color tinted red by the flickering of flames somewhere nearby. Then a familiar figure came into view.

“How do you feel?” Chitra asked, concern painted on her face.

“Wrong...” Gabriela wheezed out, her voice a whisper. “What... happened?”

“Many things have occurred since we lost you, but we can discuss them in a moment. First, you must heal yourself.”

Gabby blinked slowly in incomprehension. “Why?” she rasped.

“You are-” Chitra’s words caught in her throat. She reached down beside her, pulling up a polished bronze mirror about the diameter of her head. “Look for yourself,” she instructed, holding it up over Gabby and slowly tilting it to give the prone woman a good look at her entire body.

The state of her body told Gabby everything. She looked like a corpse. Her skin was pallid and nearly translucent with dark blood vessels running through her body just visible beneath the skin.

That alone would have been enough for her to believe she was looking at a dead body, but her torso was what really did the job. The area from her ribs down to her belly button was covered in stab wounds, revealing torn organs and sliced muscles deep within. Well... that explained why it was so hard to breathe, at least. What it didn’t explain was how she could breathe in the first place. She hadn’t healed herself, so how was she even functioning at all?

“What did you... do to me?” she rasped.

Chitra gently scooped up Gabriela’s hand and held it with gentle affection between her own. “Please, Gabby, heal yourself first. I’ll explain everything-”

“What... did you... do?”

Chitra squeezed Gabby’s hand a bit harder, a slight twinge of guilt crossing her facade for a moment. “I gave you a special drink to wake you from your slumber. It is a secret recipe passed down within my family for generations that can bring back even the most injured person from death’s door for a few moments.”

Anger and outrage spiked inside of Gabriela. “You... had no right...”

“I had no choice!” Chitra replied with some distress. “We need you! We need our Champion! Please... everything is falling apart...”

Gabriela had never seen her companion worked up like this. Chitra was a woman trained in composure. The sight of her losing her cool caused a small amount of concern to bubble up inside her. “What happened...?”

“It’s a bloodbath. Without your strength to pierce through the defenses, our warriors have been throwing themselves at the enemy’s walls over and over. Tens of thousands of people are dead. Every day, there are so many bodies that we have to pile them up into giant mounds and burn them. Everybody on both sides have become so desperate that they’ve started to cross lines that should never be crossed no matter what. Yesterday... yesterday the Eterians... they let our troops take the northern gate and push into that section of the city, and...”

She shuddered. “I could hear the unnatural wails even all the way over here. Our people never stood a chance. An entire seventh of our army vanished yesterday. Not even their bodies remain to be mourned by their loved ones. His Exalted Highness was so enraged that he executed General Maldi for falling for their trap. He’s becoming more and more...” She nervously looked around the empty tent. “...unhinged as the siege drags on. Please, Gabby! I fear for what will happen if you don’t come back! We need you more than ever!”

“I’m sorry.” Gabriela felt deep sorrow for the senseless loss of life, but what right did she have to do anything about it? Arguably, this was all her fault! All this pain, all this misery, did she not bear the blame for it? The faces of those children emerged from the briny depths of her memories, their vacant, traumatized eyes drilling deep into her.

“What?!” Chitra blurted out, shocked. “But what about Javier? What about Anahi? They need you!”

“I don’t... deserve... to be their... mother...” she replied. “I am just... a monst-”

Gabby's body seized mid-sentence and she let out a pained cough. Something was happening inside her. The electric fire within was starting to die down, while the pain was suddenly getting worse.

“Already? No!” Chitra gasped. “Please, Gabby, please! Heal! Once the potion runs out, there is no going back! You will die forever!”

Gabby closed her eyes and felt the energy continue to ebb. “Good.”

“...that’s it? You’re just... giving up?” Chitra asked, stunned. “After all you’ve been through, after all that you put yourself through, you’re just giving up?! What happened to giving everything for your children?! What happened to doing whatever it took to save your family?! I thought you were like my mother, but you’re nothing like her, you... you... liar! You LIAR!”

Gabriela weathered the Batranala’s tirade with grim determination, ignoring the woman’s sobs and focusing on her own steadily-increasing weakness. It was time for her to leave this world for good. This was her penance for the sins she'd committed and the suffering she'd caused. This was what had to happen. Soon it would all be over for the last time.

A drop of warm wetness landed on her forehead, then another on her cheek.

“Why, Gabby? I... I believed in you...”

She couldn’t do it. Gabriela knew that she deserved to die. She had thought she was ready for that one final journey. But she couldn’t do it. Not like this. Not to only the second person in her life who had ever truly cared about her.

A cold fire bloomed.

“You’re not fair, you know that?” Gabby said with a sad smile, giving her friend’s hands an affectionate squeeze back. Plumes of red smoke materialized around her body and rushed into her wounds as if sucked in by some unknown force.

Chitra let out a squeal of surprise and delight that was without a doubt the most unrefined noise Gabby had ever heard her make. In a flash, Gabby found her upper body pulled from the small bed she’d laid upon and wrapped in the most smothering embrace she’d ever experienced.

“You stupid...” the attendant sniffed. “Don’t you ever do something like that ever again.”

Gabriela didn’t reciprocate as her newly-repaired diaphragm heaved and she let out a resigned sigh. In a very real way, this felt like more of a defeat than a victory.

“What’s wrong?” Chitra inquired, sensing Gabby’s reluctance. “Are you not happy to be alive?”

“Being alive means more killing and death,” Gabby replied.

“That’s what a soldier does. Don’t you want to go home? Don’t you want to see your children again?”

“I thought I did. Everything I did was so I could go back and save them. But now...” Her head drooped and her body seemed to sink down under the burden of her sins. “If I went home, they wouldn’t even recognize me. After all that I’ve done, after all the blood that I’ve spilled, they wouldn’t see me. They’d see a monster with their mother’s face, dripping with the blood of a thousand victims. I told myself that I’d do anything to see them one more time, but I didn’t realize what that really meant until it was too late. I tried to run from it. I tried to hide and pretend that it wasn’t true, but eventually I couldn’t. I’m not their mother anymore. I can’t be... not after all that I’ve done.”

“Nonsense. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. They would embrace you in a heartbeat.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they and I are the same. Gabby, listen. Let me tell you about my mother.” Chitra’s eyes stared off into the middle distance as she dove into memories of a time long ago. “You know, I grew up much like your children. My father died when I was too young to even remember his face. My mother raised me on her own. She was incredibly strict and fierce with me, to the point that I sometimes even hated her. But when the attack on my home came, my mother gave everything to keep me safe. She held the attackers off all on her own and bought enough time for the last rescuer to escape with me. Every breath I take I do with the knowledge that it was bought with my mother’s life.

“After I lost her, it was like there was a gaping hole inside me that could never be filled. It hurt so much for so long and no matter what I did it never seemed to heal. Even now I still feel it every day. I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to burn the whole world down to the ground for taking my mother from me. If she were to come back, I wouldn’t care what she’d done, or who she’d killed, or anything. All that would matter is that I would be able to see her again. You are fighting for your children just like my mother fought for me. They will understand that, Gabby. All they want is to have their mother back.”

Gabriela didn’t respond as guilt and love warred inside of her. Would they really welcome her back? Would they blame her for leaving? Would they even know who she was?

“Sometimes,” Chitra mused, “I wonder if it would have been better to be like you and never have had parents instead of having mine torn from me. Maybe it wouldn’t feel so horrible.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Her friend’s words broke the stalemate inside of Gabriela. Her head shot up and she turned to stare the Batranala straight in the eyes, a sudden fire inside them. “You have no idea what it’s like to grow up an orphan. Nobody knows who my parents are or why they abandoned me at the orphanage. I grew up asking myself why I was left behind. I wondered if I was simply an unwanted accident. I questioned if there was something wrong with me. ‘Why,’ I would say to myself, ‘why wasn’t I good enough?’ That doubt, that blame... it cripples you. It destroys everything you are from the inside out until you’re just a shell of a person.

“You might not have anybody anymore, but your parents made sure that you knew that you were loved. Yes, it hurts that they’re gone, but for the rest of your life you will always know that they loved you. Nobody will ever be able to take that away from you. You had a place. You belonged. You were wanted. You have no idea what I would give up to be able to say that.”

Chitra stared back at her, momentarily speechless. “I apologize,” she finally said, clearing her throat. “It was incredibly rude of me to speculate so brazenly.”

“No, it helped, actually. I remember again why I have to push forward no matter what. No matter what I become, I can’t allow my babies to grow up thinking that I never loved them.” She let out an embarrassed sigh. “I’m such a fool. I got so caught up in all the death and misery of my actions that I convinced myself that my own babies would hate me for what I’d done.”

“They would never do that,” Chitra assured her. “No matter what you do, you will always be their one and only precious mother.”

“Yes, I realize that now, thanks to you.”

A series of horns called out nearby, their sound quickly joined by the shouts of tens of thousands of people.

Chitra perked up. "Oh! It looks like the attack has already begun."

Gabby stood up for the first time in a long time, her legs wobbling unsteadily for a moment before finding strength. "I guess it’s time for me to go," she said.

"Not yet. We need to get you cleaned up first," Chitra replied, shepherding her towards a cloth flap that led to another ‘room’ of the tent. "You just came back and you're obviously not at full strength yet, and you haven't bathed in half a season. Let's get you washed and ready, and you'll be able to join the battle in just a few hours."

Back at the start of her journey, she'd sworn to pay any price to save her children, and she still would. Now, however, she knew just how steep the price would be for everyone.

Gabriela Carreno let out a sigh.