Home had mixed feelings for her. It was fine at first—her childhood wasn’t especially horrible, at least. The happy memories were good enough, then came the sad times and the meetings that she grew to enjoy before that, too, grew bitter. She couldn’t say she had any friends left, but at least she wouldn’t have to kill a person she was still on good terms with. It was inevitable, after all, that one or the other would fall.

She wandered around the area for a little while. She would visit this once, then head off—with that in mind, she let her thoughts wander.

——

The place had once been grand; there was a large decorative garden, although a few were more akin to statues than living flora due to mostly-barren ground Relan, and the house itself was beautiful. The artificial plants, carefully constructed out of clay and colored or pieces of other plants to look like those that were unable to strive in the environment, almost looked real. Many visitors thought they were truly plants that could only strive in nations like Cheryn—there were one or two that imitated plants from Letrela as well.

Iaspis was the middle child, with older and younger sisters. There were three all told; Zanna, Iaspis, and Delora, when said from oldest to youngest. He was little less than a year younger than Zanna, and he was three years older than Delora. All of them were pampered, in a way—their family was removed from Relan’s monarchs by only a few generations, so they were very well-off and close to the capital. The children’s great-grandmother had been from the royal line and married a man from the Lorenzi family, and since the latter had previously struggled with losing power and money the family’s immediate response was to spend as much money on as many things as they could so their lives had some kind of challenge; the dowry of that woman and future wives, however, was enough that the money was almost entirely replenished for the next generation to spend.

There was one morning when Iaspis was getting ready for the day. He liked wearing his hair long—if only because he wasn’t supposed to and it drove him insane that he couldn’t—but he had to put it in a specific way so his father wouldn’t notice. It was the only thing the servants didn’t help him do.

It was also the time Delora usually burst into his room, as she had that day. “Brother!” She said loudly. “My servants are lying to me again; can you help me find a good outfit?”

“Let me finish this,” Iaspis replied.

“Oh! I can help,” Delora said. She wandered in, still in her nightgown, and took over—he knew by now not to protest, and it looked better if it wasn’t just his work. “Since I’m helping you,” Delora began after a little while, “You’re helping me, right?”

“As long as none of your servants see me looking through your clothes,” Iaspis said.

Delora smiled. “Of course—your strange-ness is too nice to give up.”

“Is it strange to feel like you have more freedom in appearance than I do?” Iaspis asked, meaning for it to be rhetorical.

Delora laughed and responded, “Yes, actually, because you’re the only person who would wear their hair long and not complain at all. I can’t wait until it gets really long—you’ll be glad it has to be short! Whoever you end up marrying is only going to like how you can help her get dressed in the morning.”

“She’ll have to deal with it,” Iaspis said simply.

“Well put!” She finished with his hair, tying it in such a way where it appeared to come just above his shoulders. “There, that’ll do! Now come on—I need help!”

She pulled him out of the chair forcibly, and he had no means by which to deny her. She dragged him by the sleeve to her room; half of her dresses were already laid out on her bed. Iaspis helped her pick an outfit and she thanked him as she was shooing him out so she could change.

Iaspis went downstairs, dressed in his own outfit of choosing, and spoke a bit with his parents. Later that day, guests came—other nobles, two women and their father—and Iaspis had to speak with them. It was their parents’ way of getting around the law against arranged marriages; the conditions only said that they had to meet each other prior to the engagement, and didn’t specify anything else. He didn’t mind, since it was usually only a way for families to grow when the heirs didn’t show any interests in romantic endeavors.

He spoke with the two women as he had to, and one’s chosen topics of conversation were…fascinating, to say the least. The lightest way he could put it was that she didn’t give a single damn about anything—not the gods, not the situation, not social standings. Her sister often tried to rein her in, but the result was just more protests. It was one of the first times Iaspis ever heard some of his beliefs said out loud—he was always pessimistic in his worldview, to be honest.

When it was just him and the blunter woman, she said, “You seem to have agreed with me. Knowing that, then…you agree that everyone is flawed.”

“I do,” Iaspis said.

“Have you ever wondered,” she began, not even the least bit cautiously, “Why we are all flawed? What do you think happened, that we live in the world we do now?”

“A fall, I’d assume,” Iaspis replied. “Punishment for a past or future deed—the same reason they say that Relan has such barren land. Humanity has failed once and will fail again, and the only way to prevent that is for humanity to be lost.”

“Do you think we’ll live to see that?” She asked, almost wistfully. “I don’t mind that I would die, too. Bad things happen for good reasons, and that would be the best bad thing to ever occur.”

“It’s a long way off,” Iaspis said. “I don’t think any of us living now will see it—at least not as mortals. Perhaps we can be lucky enough to see it as ghosts or angels.”

“Perhaps,” the woman replied.

Their conversation ended there, and shortly afterwards the two women and their father left. Iaspis didn’t tell his own father whether or not he would want to marry either of them, and he never needed to make the decision; it was only two months after that day when Iaspis died, a victim of the conquest that first joined Relan with Cheryn.

——

After a while, a man came up to her to break her reverie. “Miss Lorenzi,” he said.

“What is it?” She asked, turning towards him with a little frown.

“We have reports on that person you wanted us to find,” the man replied. “There are a few with the description—three or four in Letrela and two in Cheryn.”

“What about the name?” Jasper said impatiently. “Unless their name is Matali or they won’t give a name, I don’t care for them and they’re not who I’m looking for.”

The man paused for a moment, then said, “None have the name ‘Matali,’ ma’am—but there is one who hasn’t shared their name. He’s traveling with two people from Cheryn; they crossed the sea a little while ago.”

Jasper knew that was the person she needed. Firmly, she told him, “Keep on watching that group. Tell me if the person ever says their name, or if someone ever refers to them by name.”

The man bowed. “Of course. I’ll head there now.”

As he walked away again, Jasper sighed. She employed mortals to help kill mortals—there was no other way to ensure their demise—and many of them actually believed her reasoning was sound. Only a few knew that they would also die, however; the only ones she told were the ones she knew would carry on despite it. Jasper wished she could still do all the things a mortal could do—she didn’t want to have any regrets for when she finally died as well, when everything was said and done. As long as no one interfered, she would be the last tainted corpse to walk this world—and perhaps the most tainted of them all.