While the witch was still speaking, some people came from the house of Zimran, the king.

“Your son is dead,” they said. “Why bother her anymore?”

Overhearing what they said, the witch told him, “Don’t be afraid, your child is not dead but asleep.”

But they laughed at her.

- Andanian Chronicles

“All is well! Lily’s alive!” The princess hummed cheerfully to herself as Krall deposited her within the battered confines of the Vaishyan campsite. The shell-shocked soldiers that were scattered about the compound barely reacted and his limbs slithered away unopposed. “Aryan! Good news, I have finally found this Lily person!” The wolf giggled. She fumbled about blindly as she entered the large white tent before her, her toe caught on an outstretched limb, and the weakened princess tripped and fell flat on her face.

“Honored princess,” A pair of burly hands wrapped around her waist and lifted her gently back to her feet, “the healers tried their best to save him… but…” The soldier broke down and wept bitterly.

“Ugh… I can’t hear properly from my left ear anymore.” Laura twisted her head around slowly to face the weeping man. “Say that again, mister. And where is Aryan? We had a promise, he was to meet me after the battle!”

“Don’t you recognize me?” The soldier blurted out in disbelief, “I was the knight that brought you the zither. We rode off to fend off the Saadians but were overwhelmed by their numbers, the High Prince fought bravely but the backstabbing Dagon cursed cowards… he was…” His sorrowful voice choked off with emotion.

“I can’t see! I’m blind!” Laura pouted as she tapped her foot impatiently, “And I don’t care about some random battle, why isn’t Aryan coming for me? Where did he wander off to?”

“High Prince Aryan is lying before you, honored princess. He perished from wounds inflicted in battle and he remembered you with his last words…” The morose soldier folded back the sheet covering the deceased prince and guided the princess down to the cold stiffened corpse.

The princess swore furiously as she bent down and traced her hands across his pallid features, “What wounds does he have, what treatments have the other physicians attempted, tell me immediately!”

An exhausted healer rose up and bowed deeply, “Honored princess, he perished from multiple stab wounds to the chest. A punctured lung, a ruptured spleen and liver… we tried out best to fix the damage… ten men offered up their lives for the chance to save him, even a drop of blood from divine enchantress Phoebe herself…”

“I’m not interested in your dithering excuses.” Laura snapped, “Is that the complete list of his injuries?”

“It was impossible!” The healer protested, “The dagger was lodged straight through his heart… there was no way we could have repaired that much damage in time, even the gods…”

“Get to the point, any other wounds?”

“Honored princess, we found several fractured ribs and a shattered thigh bone. And he also has multiple minor cuts and abrasions on his skin, how does that even matter? A heart wound of this magnitude is always lethal!” The confused healer answered.

The princess stretched out a scarred trembling hand towards the healer, “The dagger, give me the weapon you found.”

“Please have mercy, honored princess!” The healer begged as he prostrated before her.

The princess sighed, “I won’t hurt you, or anyone else. Give me the dagger and get out, everyone get out!” The nervous man pressed the blade into her waiting hand and fled from the enclosure with his remaining aides. The princess turned to the grieving soldier as he prepared to leave and allow the princess some moments of privacy with her fallen prince, “Hey wait, I wanted to know one final thing,” she questioned the heartbroken man, “who is this Aryan? And what was my relationship with him?”

“Huh?” The soldier finally noticed the ragged condition of the girl swaying before him, “Are you alright? You are badly wounded, we must get you to a physician immediately!”

“I hit my head accidently and lost some of my memories,” Laura lied. “Um… don’t worry, I’m totally fine. Just give me a brief synopsis of our relationship.”

“Aryan is the High Prince of Vaishya, and you are the Crown Princess of Andania. When he went missing on an extended voyage to Andania, the entire nation mourned his loss until the day the both of you descended from the stars like the gods themselves and declared that you were inseparable! And he loved you loyally till the very end…”

‘Go me, amazingly extravagant as usual!’ Laura bit her lip to suppress her giggles, “And what about this Lily person? Was she my rival in love or something?”

“Who’s that? I served as a guard in the Vaishyan palace and there’s no noble with that name…” He scratched his head with confusion, “Maybe it was someone you knew from back in Andania…”

“Oh whatever,” Laura answered lightly, “I’ve said my goodbyes to her anyway…”

“You need immediate medical attention! You must be suffering from a terrible concussion if you can’t even remember who you are!” The soldier protested as he peeked out from the tent and opened his mouth to yell for the nearest healer.

The princess carved a bloody rune into her palm with the dagger and darted forward to stamp her spell into the soldier’s back. The man’s jaw slackened as he stared dreamily into the distance at nothing in particular and the wolf tiptoed and whispered into his ear, “You will stand outside this tent and turn away all visitors until dusk. You will say that the princess wishes to grieve alone.”

The soldier nodded absently as he walked out to stand beside the entrance, “Oh yes, yes… The princess is grieving, please leave her alone, it is only proper…” He muttered to the bystanders.

“Okay now… it’s one heart, one liver, and one spleen. And the lung, bones, and other superficial injuries must be regenerated before he regains consciousness to minimize his pain. I remember that Mother began with a marrow transfer, that will do the job… ugh this is so much tougher when I can’t see anything… how did Mother do it in this condition?” The princess fumbled about until she finally managed to obtain a bundle of bandages and she uncovered the prince before shrugging out of her own tattered clothing. Laura sat herself down slowly before the comatose boy and stretched out again to confirm the sites of his numerous injuries.

“Here goes nothing…” Her face contorted with an anticipatory grimace as she stuffed the dressings into her mouth and bit down tensely, then she stretched out her left leg, clutched the dagger in her trembling hands and raised it high into the air. Laura’s screams of agony were snuffed by the cloth in her mouth as the blade amputated her limb at the knee. She slowed the blood gushing from her wound with a clumsy tourniquet, before turning her attention to her detached leg. Sweat beaded on her brow as she worked quickly to dissect the bone from flesh and she cracked it open to scrape out the marrow within. “There, please work!” Laura moaned as she loaded a syringe with the extract and injected it into Aryan’s thigh. His body jerked suddenly as a slow warmth spread upwards from the site of the inoculation, but before the princess could sigh with relief, the overwhelming coldness dominating his flesh began creeping back down.

Her eyes widened as a dreadful feeling of panic fluttered in her heart, ‘Curses! Why didn’t that work?’ The princess thought fanatically, ‘Mother was… oh yes, Mother was bigger so she had more marrow in her bone, and I was also smaller then.' The princess did not hesitate as she stretched out her remaining leg and her blood splattered across the sheets as she repeated the gruesome procedure.

‘No breathing, no pulse, but whole. I was in time, and I can still fix this idiot lover of mine!' The slender princess smiled as she straddled across Aryan’s waist and cut out the ruined organs from his body. A tortured cry escaped her lips as she slit open her chest and tore her liver from her own flesh.

“Is everything really alright? We should and examine the princess and see if there’s anything we can do to help…” A pair of concerned healers accosted the lone guard standing outside the entrance.

“Leave me alone!” Tears of anguish trailed down Laura’s cheeks as her haunted wails drove the Vaishyans away. The princess worked quickly as blood cascaded from her wounds, she dug her sticky reddened hands into her opened chest and shoved aside her ribs to tear out her spleen, then she pushed the organs into the gaping emptiness in Aryan’s body. And the princess sighed with respite as the dagger cleaved cleanly though the arteries tying her heart to her body and she clutched at the precious beating organ in her cold trembling hand before prodding it into Aryan to fill his being with vitality. The emptied girl carved her final talisman on some scraps of surviving skin and she fell weakly to embrace his warm comforting chest, “You can have my life,” she whispered, “everything…” as the soft fading rays of golden sunlight began drifting slowly beyond the horizon.

“The sun’s setting… dusk… Laura!” Aryan jerked awake and swung his head about desperately.

“Hey that hurts,” Laura complained as she was almost thrown off by his struggles.

“Laura! You are alive, and I am alive!? Or are we in heaven?” The prince babbled as he gazed affectionately into the princess’ crystal blue eyes.

“Hi, miss me?” The girl and the boy faced each other as their bodies melded together in the deepening shadows. The girl smiled shyly as she brushed at the unruly locks of her matted fiery hair, and the boy wept with relief as he clung tightly to her and traced his hands down her delicate familiar curves.

“I, Aryan Ishmael Zimran, love you.” The boy whispered tenderly in her ear, “Be mine to love, and cherish for the rest of time.”

“I… ugh…” The girl’s eyes clouded over swiftly as she failed to recall her own name, “I… love you too, Aryan.” She answered meekly as her warm blood flowed freely and formed a widening puddle around their bodies.

“So much blood!” The boy shuddered with horror as he finally recognized the sticky coppery fluid bathing their bodies, “Laura! Your feet… what in the world…”

“Gah… my everything hurts. Please don’t shout anymore… I’m so super-duper tired. And I’ve kept my promise to meet you, so be nice and hold me again for a little while, I just need to sleep it off…” The girl blushed innocently as she pressed her breasts against his bared chest, a trickle of icy blood escaped her stilled lips and traced its way down slowly to her chin, and her eyes sealed shut as she slipped away silently in tranquil rest.

As the prince’s anguished howls echoed through the encampment, the soul of a witch and the soul of a boy brushed reluctantly past each other as they returned to inhabit their original hosts. And the ring of calamity clattered loudly to the ground, along with the shattered shards of a blood red ruby.

But in the darkest unlit corner of their tent, a pair of eyes crinkled with relief as they averted themselves from the weeping prince. And they crept away unnoticed beneath the earth.