It took her a while to make her way back to their room. Thankfully, nothing else exciting happened along the way because she was really getting close to done with the bullshit of this day. She guessed that it had to be around four in the afternoon and she had nothing left. The fight, that slaughter she’d witnessed, that Zed guy, it was all just… a lot, and dealing with that while also dealing with a constant dull throb isolated on her right temple? Just too fucking much.

She plopped down on the bed with a bit more force than she’d intended and winced as more blood rushed to her head, homing in on that dull throb and making it worse. She managed to drink some water and just closed her eyes for a bit, hoping to pass out. Unfortunately, her body had other plans. Tired as she was, that headache managed to kick up a notch any time she got close to actually passing out, and she was beginning to suspect that was intentional. She couldn’t exactly remember what had happened when she’d done that pact thing, but she remembered talk about how the price was non-negotiable. Apparently she couldn’t just sleep her way through as much of this annoyance as possible. Still, laying in bed doing nothing at all was preferable to running around dealing with people while under the effects of this thing.

She wished Kila were here. Sure, the bubbly behavior would get on her nerves a bit, but having a friend in her corner for no reason other than she was a friend was a nice change of pace for things. Most of her friends in her old life had been the very definition of ‘fair weather’ and if she wasn’t up for partying with them on a given night, they had no use for her. It had been getting old lately.

She spared a thought (the first one since coming here, she realized) on Charles. Now there was something she’d been pretty glad to run away from. If all this was just some sort of mental break, she had to admit that’d be a good cause. The real problem with being bedridden and miserable, is how your mind has a tendency to stray into territories that you’d otherwise prefer it to avoid and now she was stuck thinking about the fiance she’d never really wanted, but hadn’t had the guts to walk away from.

There’d been nothing WRONG with Charles, really. He’d been a decent enough guy, practical, good prospects and all those things that one’s supposed to look for in a mate. She’d never had much spark with him, but she’d never had much spark with anyone, so that wasn’t an issue. They’d started out as roommates and one thing had led to another. After a seven years of it, he’d proposed and she’d been unable to think of a good reason not to accept. The wedding had been set for a year later, and about a month after that, she’d woken up in the middle of the arena.

The past month really put that nonsense in perspective, now that she was thinking about it. She’d had no problem telling a pack of leering monsters that she sure as fuck wasn’t gonna let them have a say in how she lived her life, but she’d been content to just go with the flow on marriage? Somehow, that felt infinitely more insane than anything she’d come across to date, including the shadow creature that now occasionally graced her nightmares (not participating, mind you, just kinda… there). She bolted upright as the thought set in. She’d been a gods damned idiot!

The dawning realization did nothing to alleviate the pain, did nothing to solve any of her current predicament, and really didn’t do much to resolve things if she actually did find her way back home, but it did make her feel a bit better, and that was good enough. She managed to pull herself out of bed long enough to eat some of the stale bread that had been left in their room. Hardly a feast fit for a hero, but it did fill her stomach after entirely too much chewing.

She took a moment to observe the tournament brackets. They were indeed set to take on those embarrassing failures of Orcs in the next match. If she were a paranoid sort, prone to imagining that someone was out to get her in all this, she’d have guessed that they really hadn’t expected her to get past the Ogres, and hadn’t bothered stacking the deck past that point. It was a stroke of luck that they’d been such poor planners, and she was grateful for it.

Tracing the various brackets, it looked like their next fight after that was anyone’s game. She hadn’t seen most of those teams in action, so she hoped the goblins were getting some good intel. The fourth fight, though? There was a chance it’d be Krel and company. Sure, they had to get through two more teams themselves, but assuming they could do that? He’d get the rematch he was probably starving for. What fun.

Of course, that was several days off, and not her biggest concern. Really, she worried about what continued abuse of her one trick would do to her. For that matter, she had no way of knowing what it was doing to the trio. She had no reason to assume that it was causing THEM any permanent harm, but it was also the sort of thing that she had very little info on and no real way of digging for more information at present. Maybe she could do that incantation thing again, but that seemed risky given that she didn’t know anything about the creature she was making deals with either.

The more she thought about it, really, the more it nagged at her that she couldn’t remember any specifics of what had gone down. She didn’t have any particularly strong feelings about the interaction with… whatever it had been, but she still knew specifics like the actual rune she needed to cast, that the headaches were absolutely a price that she’d willingly accepted, and that more power was there if she was willing to ask for it.

But ask her for any details of what had transpired, even what the thing she’d negotiated with had looked like? She had a big old blank spot in her mind. It was frustrating. More than that, it was a pretty definite sign that she shouldn’t deal with it further until she’d learned some more about it. Hell, if she had half a brain, she probably would never interact with it again. Still, it was the only thing keeping her in the fight at the moment and she had no intention of giving up.

“Man, it’d sure be nice to go back to having a future of boring mediocrity with a man I like well enough, but didn’t love,” she muttered to no one in particular.

She spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between trying (and failing) to take a nap, brooding over her past and the ones she’d left behind, and wondering what exactly her next step after this whole ‘Proving’ nonsense was good and over with. She didn’t come up with answers to any of the things that she was concerned about but if nothing else, it passed the time.

She’d almost managed to still her mind enough to fall asleep when the trio of detestable creatures barged in loudly laughing and cavorting. She had a momentary flash of absolute rage, but managed to force it back down before she opened her eyes, sat up ever so slowly, and glared at the lot of them. This stopped the three in their tracks.

“Ah, sorry about that boss, we kinda forgot that you were here.”

“Oh, how nice for you,” she said coolly. “Do tell me, what was so thrilling that you could think of nothing better than to barge in here, hooting and howling like a bunch of idiots, and disturb me right as I was about to fall asleep after hours of attempting it?”

He blinked once, considered his words, then replied:

“Well, see, there was this guy out there, he was really cool.”

“A… guy.”

“Yeah, like some sort of necromantic knight. He fought alone and summoned waves of skeletal soldiers. It was pretty awesome.”

“How wonderful,” she said, her voice dropping a few more degrees. “Now. Go. Somewhere. Else.”

She punctuated the words with a glare at each of the Goblins before leveling her gaze at all three of them, sending chills down the goblin’s spines. They scurried out of the room, closing the door carefully. Len dropped her head back on her pillow and got back to trying to fall asleep.