Mary’s fingers played with her new necklace as her brain contemplated her ‘new self’. She was still lying in her hospital bed - she’d only have to leave the next morning for some major announcement. The messenger told her that if she really, really didn’t want to go, there was a way out, but only one.

However, despite everything she went through, Mary didn’t want to die.

Her new necklace was a work of art - it was a rough sphere made of some dark metal wire that seemed to glint as if it was basked in some otherwise invisible light. The thing twisted and turned in a way that somehow escaped the heroine's cognition. She tried to trace it with her eyes, but every time it started to make any sense, it disappeared from where it should have been. According to Bromman, that was part of the point.

“Each day, before you sleep, try to follow the wire with your mind,” her mentor said. “This one is true for any dreamer: to hurt you in your sleep, they need to find you first. And the best way not to get found is to get lost.”

Mary wasn’t entirely convinced by this logic, but she felt lost all right. The other thing the necklace did was provide an anchor for the illusion spell. It wasn’t everything she dreamed of, but it was more than she dared hope for. Her skin looked healthy again, and whatever the dark veins were, they finally agreed not to stay out in the open.

Her hair stayed white - they were too complicated to be altered by an item-sustained spell, or so Bromman had said. And the same went for her eyes - she didn’t intend to go blind just to look better, and only the finest illusionists could do anything to them without messing any important stuff up.

Mary quickly grew lonely - her mentor left hours ago, Mossie was Mossie, and flies on the ceiling didn’t even try to uphold their end of the conversation.

That caused Mary’s thoughts to drift towards the Author and the Creator above. She could barely remember the cathedral she noticed ages ago. Or a couple of days, if you wanted to be more specific. She let out a sigh. She truly needed to visit the place.

She had some questions that only They could answer.

The morning came faster than she’d wished for, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. What she could do, was to prepare for the meeting - unlike the last one she’d been to. The thought triggered a cascade of unpleasant memories, but also sparked the girl’s curiosity - come to think of it, she hadn’t actually known what had happened to the battle's commanding party. She hoped they made it - the leader left a positive impression after the selection ceremony, and she’d started to like Paolo, the boy he’d taken under his wing.

Upon exiting the hospital, Mary almost fell over backwards struck by a red sun's dreadful glare. It took her a long moment to realise what she was really seeing - the dead monster’s eye, now visibly cracked, was impaled on one of the Brutus Saint’s Academy’s walls’ many spikes. The thing was completely still, yet Mary could swear that it was still alive - well, if a spider-shaped robot was ever alive, to begin with.

She still felt observed. Mary rested a hand on the jagged sword of her (former?) party member dangling from her belt - she found it among her personal belongings when she was leaving the hospital, and thought it would be wise to carry a proper physical weapon. Especially now that she had no one to take a hit for her.

Mary flinched. That... was not a pleasant thought. Especially since at the moment, she was too weak to kill a fly with that oversized knife. She envied other heroes their reliable powers - hers seemed to run mostly on autopilot, and she didn't get how they worked.

She arrived at the familiar audience hall with a good fifteen minutes safety margin. Well, calling it an audience hall was a bit of an overstatement, as it was basically a flattened amphitheatre with a purely symbolical roof. At least it wasn’t raining. Mary wasn’t the first to arrive but managed to get a spot close to the main scene anyway. She felt surprisingly lonely with only the overgrown mosquito buzzing above her shoulder.

To her left, Mary noticed a familiar party of wizards - Melanie was with them, looking fully recovered from the fireball incident. She waved to Mary as she saw her, but it lacked the girl's previous energy. It seemed that she bore the scars after her accident, only deeper below the skin.

“Hi Melanie. How’s stuff been?” Mary asked.

“Oh, I’m mostly recovered by now, thanks.” The young girl scanned her top to bottom. “And I see you've gone through a makeover?”

“Um... yes.” She went paler than usual after quickly reliving the experience.

“White really suits you!”

“Thanks.” Mary struggled to find some other topic as the silence started turning awkward. “How do you like your party?”

“Oh, they are wonderful. This is Kevin,” she pointed to the boy with long hair of suspiciously ashen colour, holding the largest and more than a bit smouldered staff, “Cesius”, the oldest one, whose face actually started to show a noticeable amount of beard under the pointy hat,” and Danielle.” To Mary’s surprise, the hooded figure turned out to be a girl. Still, Mary thought that a long, grey beard would fit her face too. “And what about yours? Are they coming?”

“No,” Mary started, but before she managed to elaborate, a commotion started on near the front.

An array of black-robed figures with ominous clipboards entered the scene, escorting a trio of heroes. Mary recognised two of them, led to the edge - they were Paolo and Mr Creep with his floating eyes. The third, the figures led to the very centre, and…

“What happened to this guy?” She whispered to Melanie.

“Haven’t you heard?” The younger girl seemed to recover some of her enthusiasm. “There was a great battle against some kind of a space spider and its army, and I so wish I could have been there! The leader faced the boss monstrosity all alone, and when everything seemed lost, he went through a battle powerup. Oh, I so want to go through one of those myself!”

The creature at the centre was still mostly human-shaped, but huge parts of its skin were replaced by flowing sand, and others by crystalised plates of glass. Arcs of sand orbited him like rings around Saturn. It was mesmerising, but on some level, Mary sensed that it wasn’t the biggest change in the team leader. The way he walked, the posture he took… Mary almost felt the anger burning in the blazing sands, and had trouble believing that they belonged to the friendly boy she had met before.

Suddenly, everything hushed. Behind the scene, a curtain of some sort began to rise and revealed a row of desks and seated clerks, each holding a large cup of steaming liquid in one hand and a non-refillable, cheap pen in the other. Before each of them laid a stack of papers.

The central clerk cleared his throat - it was time for the main event of the day.