Rita staggered backwards before just kind of, plopping down, her legs giving way, while holding her own head with one hand.

What… what had just happened?

She stared, dumbfounded, at the patch of ground where, moments before, the demon, Ixxy, had been on the ground, propped up on her elbows.

She’d just vanished. No fancy special effects, no flashing lights or sounds or anything. Between one moment and the next, she’d simply ceased to be there. No trace left behind except the faint smell of… was that sulphur?

And before that, they’d been in her Mindspace. In… in her soul? Was that what it was? No, that couldn’t be right. It was more than just that, like some kind of general inner-space that touched on her mind, her soul and whatever that magic stomach of hers was. And probably a few other mysterious bits and bobs she had floating around inside her.

“Rita? Rita, are you okay?”

She looked up to find Samual looming over her. His face held its usual intense glare, but was it just her imagination or was there a hint of concern there as well?

“Yeah, Samual, I’m fine,” Rita replied, giving him a faint smile. She didn’t quite feel fine, but it was just a bit of dizziness and confusion. Nothing worth getting worked up over.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Gora, get her a glass of water.”

“Yeah, sure, good idea,” Gora rumbled, heading somewhere to fetch water.

“Yes, I’m okay. Mostly just a bit surprised, that’s all,” Rita replied.

Surprised that she’d caught a demon inside her mind, sitting right on top of Alice. Wait, she’d asked Ixxy to fix Alice, right? Didn’t that mean she was exactly where she was supposed to be? Had she overreacted?

“Here,” Gora said, shoving a large cup of water in Rita’s hands.

“Thank you.”

“That was just supposed to be a diagnosis,” Gora went on as Rita sipped greedily. “Something’s clearly gone wrong here. I’m putting a stop to this. Sorry Rita.”

Rita shook her head. “Wait. Just hold on. Give me a moment to process, okay?”

“What’s there to process?” Gora grimaced. “Demon was supposed to check what’s wrong with you, instead ends up knocking you on your ass. Something’s wrong.”

“No, it wasn’t…” Rita swallowed and took a deep breath. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I was just a little surprised, that’s all.”

Gora cocked an eyebrow. “Surprised? You knew what she was doing…”

But Rita shook her head. “Not surprised by her, surprised by me.”

“Explain,” Samual said curtly. He seemed to be as unsettled by this as Gora was.

“Okay, look. You remember that white space in my head that I told you about?” Rita asked him.

“What white…” Gora began, confused, but Samual just held up his hand, cutting off her question.

“Yes?” he replied.

“Well, I don’t think its just in my head, exactly,” she explained. “Ixxy and I were both just there.”

Ixxy reappeared back in Triorbus Square, poofing back into normal existence on top of the brass summoning circle where she’d left from.

She got to her feet and dusted herself off, still trying to figure out what had just happened.

“Reappearing on your back? That’s gotta be good news,” she heard a familiar voice snicker and looked up to see Leez leaning against the wall, a glass of Red Pepper in her hand.

“Umm…” was all Ixxy said as she stepped off the circle.

No matter how much you had on your mind, it was generally a good idea to get off of the summoning circles as quickly as possible after reappearing. Still being present when the next person got yanked back from their summoning could result in a sudden trip back to the void and a messy cleanup being needed in the portal room.

Safety features were for people who could be killed.

“So did you do it? Did you hook him?” Leez asked, idly swirling her drink in one hand.

“Uh, sort of,” Ixxy admitted, looking back towards the summoning circle.

What exactly had happened? She’d been inside Rita (haha), exploring her soul. And then…

“Well, come on! Don’t keep me in suspense! Spill!” Leez insisted.

Ixxy blinked at her for a few moments.

“You ever heard of a half-human, half-spider in this world?” she asked.

“Uh… can’t say that I have?” Leez replied. “Why? What does that have to do with your mark?”

“Well, I kind of have a contract with one. Her name is Rita.”

“Some kind of magical creature, maybe?” Leez guessed. “Sometimes they find weird stuff out in the plains near the Nightmares. Could be one of those.”

“No idea,” Ixxy replied as she started to look around for her clothes.

You could teleport with clothes, but it was slightly more expensive in magic and for most of her work, she’d just have to take them off at the other end anyway. A total waste. She picked up her shirt, rubbing her fingers idly over the chest area and musing how itchy the course thread was. “She had the most awesome bra though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It was made of, get this, spider silk!” Ixxy gushed.

“Seriously?” Leez asked.

“Yeah!” Ixxy replied, pulling her shirt over her head. “She spun it herself! I think I might ask to have it thrown in as part of the payment. Bit of padding would be so much more comfortable on the assets, you know?” Ixxy added, cupping her breasts in her hands.

“Woah there,” Leez said, gently grabbing Ixxy by the shoulders. “You don’t even have a contract yet? Your first priority should be getting paid.”

Ixxy grinned widely. “I kinda do, actually. Two of them.”

“Two?”

She nodded as they set off side-by-side out of the summoning room and through the hallways of Triorbus Square.

“Timothy signed one. He agreed to act as intermediary for getting the soul I need.”

“Good job! Congratulations! I knew you had it in you!” Leez exclaimed, punching her lightly on the arm. “Did he go for the one-year-slavery option in the end or did he hold out for more?”

“That’s the best part! Neither! All I have to do is accept this second contract…”

Leez slapped her forehead and gave a loud sigh. “Ixxyyyy!”

“No, it’s fine this time! I swear! I have it under control!”

She shook her head in exasperation, then turned and grabbed Ixxy by the arms.

“Ixxy! Listen to me! You’re a newbie! What you need is a few simple contracts to get your feet wet before you try this kind of advanced stuff! Basic tit-for-tat jobs where you screw someone’s brains out and grab a piece of soul. None of this contract for a contract for some hypothetical future payout bullshit!”

Ixxy pursed her lips and looked Leez firmly in the eyes.

“Will you let me finish?” she asked.

Leez dropped her arms to her sides. “Fine. Tell me how you’re getting screwed over this time.”

“I’m not,” Ixxy stated flatly. “This time, I was the one setting the contract.”

“But it’s not a paying contract, Ixxy.”

Ixxy shook her head, a wicked grin spreading across her lips. “No, it isn’t. It’s better than that. It’s a trap contract.”

“A trap?”

She nodded. “The moment they sign the next contract, I got ‘em.”

“Well, obviously we can’t sign this.”

Timothy and Rita were both seated at the table, Rita’s spidery lower body hidden firmly under a blanket, going through the contract that Ixxy had left behind.

“Why not?” Rita asked from across the table, gesturing towards the contract. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Damn demon wrote it, that’s what’s wrong with it,” Gora grumbled from the kitchen. After Timothy had come down, she’d stepped into the small kitchen to make them all a quick lunch. She was dressed in an apron that had ‘I hack my own meat’ stitched on the front, along with a stylized image of a decapitated monster.

It was kind of cute on her.

“While, yes, it’s true that you generally have to be careful with contracts written by demons,” Timothy explained, “in this particular case there’s a far more obvious issue. This contract is a dud.”

“A what?” Rita asked.

“A dud. Look.” He turned the parchment around and pushed it towards Rita. “Read here. While she describes in rather significant detail the process of removing the abnormal structure from your soul, at no point does it actually say that she’d actually do it. It simply neglects to mention it at all.”

“So she was trying to trick us,” Samual stated coldly. He’d taken a seat next to Rita after Ixxy had disappeared, apparently satisfied that there wasn’t any immediate danger.

“I don’t think so,” Timothy replied. “I kind of expected this. She couldn’t have set up a valid contract to do what we want, even if she’d wanted to. The Grand Contract blocks her from doing so.

“If we want to waive some of its protections, we have to be the ones to set up the contract. It has to come from our side of the deal, she’s not allowed to offer. A safety measure to prevent people from being tricked, added in the… uh… 3rd iteration, I think?”

“I don’t understand,” Rita interjected, frowning. “Then why bother making the contract anyway if you were going to see through it immediately? Was she hoping I’d just sign it without talking to you? That seems kind of dumb.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it either,” Timothy replied, shaking his head. “What I think this was, was just a clever way for her to communicate to me what needs to be done so I can set up the real contract. Rather ingenious.”

“Ingenious?” Samual asked.

“Yes,” Timothy explained. “You see, she needed to message me, but her summoning was running out. So to make sure I got it, she loaded a new contract onto the city’s contract backbone and manifested it right here. She effectively left me a note.”

“Hold on a second, can we go back to the bit where I have an ‘abnormal structure’ in my soul?” Rita interjected. “Does that mean I have, like, what? Soul cancer or something?”

“That I don’t know,” Timothy replied, flipping the contract back and scowling down at it. “All it says here is an ‘abnormal structure’. What that means in the context of a soul I can’t say, but…”

“But she can fix it?” Rita asked, a note of hope in her voice.

“Apparently,” Timothy confirmed. “Now, I’m going to have to cross-reference these with my notes on that particular section of the Grand Contract, but it doesn’t seem like she needs anything particularly crazy. She’s going to need to be able to cut parts out, but it shouldn’t be too hard to restrict her appropriately. There’s actually quite a bit of literature...”

“And that will fix Alice? She’ll wake up?” Rita asked, staring hopefully at Timothy.

He squirmed awkwardly. “Well, that’s a different…”

“Will it help or not?” Samual insisted.

“Yes. Ixxy believes it will,” Timothy confirmed. “Unless she’s lying, which is a possibility, since she isn’t bound by a contract that specifies otherwise at present. But even if she is lying, she won’t be able to do anything that she doesn’t honestly believe will help with your recovery. That much I will be able to guarantee. No cutting for the sake of cutting.”

“But you can’t guarantee that this will fix Alice?” Rita asked, her face falling.

“Look,” Timothy sighed, “I will be honest with you. The language used here is very circumspect, quite intentionally I believe. She makes no guarantees about whether this will save your… erm, friend. But you have to realize your situation is likely completely unique. I don’t think anyone can know what will or won’t work. What I will say is that she seems pretty adamant that cutting out that abnormal growth will do something.”

“Yeah, it might kill her,” Gora snorted, appearing at the table and dropping plates of sandwiches in front of everyone. “Sorry about the tomatoes, they’re not super fresh, but they should still be good. And this is the only cheese I had.”

“That’s fine, thank you Gora,” Rita replied, digging into the food in front of her.

While she was indeed starving, it was her other hunger that was really gnawing at her. It had been getting steadily worse ever since they’d entered the city and regular food wasn’t doing anything for it. And now that she’d had a look inside her own ‘magic stomach’ or whatever that giant pool of glowing sludge inside her was, she kind of understood why. She was running on fumes. She really needed to get her hands on some Essence, soon.

The glowy, almost radioactive looking stuff that was supposed to be highly poisonous was what she was really craving. Unfortunately, it was also the foundation for magic in this world and therefore very expensive. But that was a problem for later. From her brief glimpse in there, there was still some left, so it wasn’t an immediate worry, even if she could starve.

Alice, on the other hand, needed a decision right now.

“You have enough to set up everything for when the demon comes back?” Gora asked Timothy between bites.

“Yeah, shouldn’t take me more than an hour or so,” Timothy replied, dusting his fingers off above his plate. “I actually have most of it already, just need to figure out the correct wording for what she’s allowed to do to Rita and then pen down the final version. We should be good to go.”

“What about the price?” Gora asked again. “What’s this going to cost Rita?”

“If we assume the number on the contract Ixxy left is correct, she’s asking for a full third soul.”

“A full third?” Gora exclaimed, spitting crumbs all over the table.

“What?” Rita asked. “Is that a lot?”

Timothy frowned. “It’s… high, yes. But I think there’s room for negotiation. I’m going to put point-two-three on the contract to start with and we will see where we go from there. Does that sound okay to you, Rita?”

“Uh… you mean…?”

“That you pay about a quarter of your soul in exchange for the service Ixxy provides, yes.”

Oh. Right. Payment. As in a piece of her actual soul. She’d kinda… forgotten about that part. Well, no, she hadn’t exactly forgotten, exactly. Intellectually she’d known all along that obviously she’d have to pay for this thing somehow. She’d just been so fixated on whether she’d even have the option that it hadn’t truly sunk in that she was going be literally selling her own soul.

Rita closed her eyes and shuddered. Was she really okay with that?

“Guys, I’ve got a question about this whole… ‘selling your soul’ thing,” she asked. “Surely that’s not okay?”

“No, it most definitely isn’t okay,” Gora grunted, polishing off her last piece of sandwich. “I wouldn’t trust that bitch an inch.”

Timothy rolled his eyes. “Gora, no other devil is going to be any better. I at least have kind of a handle on Ixxy.”

“Hah! You mean your eyes have a handle on her chesticles!”

“Guys, stop,” Rita interrupted the brewing argument before Timothy could protest. “That isn’t what I meant. I was talking about the mechanical aspects it. Are there any long term health consequences?”

Timothy nodded. “Yes, as I’ve explained to you, the process damages the soul slightly, so overuse will result in diminished soul function over time. However, none of that should matter to you since you have no intention of doing this more than once, right?”

“Okay, but what I actually want to know…” Rita tried before giving up with a sigh.

Her real fear was that if she went through with this, if she literally made a deal with a devil, then she’d be condemning herself straight to hell. Which was silly, because this world didn’t even have the concept of hell. Even the idea of an afterlife was a fuzzy and nebulous thing. Perhaps what was really putting her off were her memories of pop-culture. She remembered seeing at least a few horror movies that somehow incorporated deals with the devil, back in the before-times. It never ended well for the college girls in those.

“Gora,” Rita asked, changing the topic “Why do you hate demons so much? I mean, you’re like, half-demon or something, right? You’ve got the same red skin, horns on your head… Shouldn’t you be more, I dunno, sympathetic?”

“Yeah, I’m a half-demon,” Gora rumbled, idly reaching up and touching one of her horns with her big, meaty hand. “But how do you think that kinda thing happens?”

Rita shrugged. “I don’t know? When a human and a demon fall in love…”

“Demons don’t love,” Gora cut her off coldly. “Doubt they understand the concept.”

“Umm…” Rita scratched her head awkwardly. “One night stand?”

“Yeah… no,” Gora replied, her voice gone noticibly cold. “That assumes both parties are willing.”

Ah. Ah. Suddenly, that gave Rita a whole new perspective on the confrontation between Gora and her ‘father’. Deeply awkward and mildly terrifying.

“Gora,” Rita started gently, “I am terribly sorry about what happened to your mother. It’s horrible that something like that happened to anyone and in no way do I want to diminish what happened. However.”

“Oh, here we go. This should be good,” Gora rumbled, leaning back in her chair and crossing her massive arms in front of her chest.

Rita pursed her lips. “However, I don’t think it’s right or fair to judge an entire species on the actions of one misguided individual.”

Gora regarded her silently for a few moments, then calmly turned to Timothy.

“Cuz?” she prompted him.

“Umm,” Timothy stammered, “actually, in every single historically recorded instance of demons unbound by contracts, they behaved like complete and utter psychopaths. They slaughtered and destroyed and defiled everything that came across their paths. Usually for no other discernible reason than ‘fun’.”

“I just spent twenty minutes chatting to Ixxy and she was perfectly polite and friendly and helpful,” Rita argued. “A little forward, perhaps, fine, and it was a bit unsettling to catch her crawling around my inner mental landscape, but in her defence, that was exactly what we’d asked her to do. If anything, I think she was being very reasonable considering how hostile Gora was to her. Which was totally understandible, now that I know,” she hurriedly added.

“Timothy, tell her the story,” Gora rumbled. “The one you told me last time we saw each other.”

“Gora, I really don’t think…”

“Do it, Timothy. She needs to know what she’s dealing with.”

Timothy sighed, staring down at his lap. Without looking up, he began to speak.

“In the first year of Diabolism studies, in the very first class, they always tell the students a story. Every word of it is true, according to my professor and while I’ve never done so, supposedly you can go check out the historical records in the Academy library.

“Many years ago, around about the time that the Grand Contract was first developed, a caravan of travelers on the road to Silkhaven was ambushed by a group of bandits. Most of them were slain, except for one woman who was taken prisoner by the bandits, either for ransom or… you know.” He cleared his throat.

“Anyway. Soon after her capture, the woman heard a commotion in the bandits’ camp. Sounds of shouting and screams of pain. Thinking that rescuers had arrived and that she was saved, the woman called out, over and over again, until finally a demon stood in front of the cage she was being kept in. All the bandits were dead.

“Some accounts say it was a Blade Devil, others say it was a Spine Devil, but all accounts agree that this particular demon had broken free from its contracts. Its previous master had either been slain or had died from some other cause, something which wasn’t completely unheard of considering how dangerous the life of a diabolist was those days and how long a demon could bide its time. It had been wandering the countryside and happened upon the bandit camp, possibly drawn by the noise of their latest attack.

“The woman, realizing that what she’d believed to be her salvation was in fact her death, fell to her knees, sobbing. She begged the demon to finish her quickly instead of drawing out the end, the best she believed she could hope for. The demon proceeded to rip the door off her cage, but instead of killing her it just… left.

“After recovering from her shock, the woman ran after it, thanking the demon and offering it a place to stay in her village, which was just a bit further along the road. Accounts vary on what followed, but whatever happened, the demon ended up agreeing and followed her home.”

“That part I don’t quite believe,” Gora interrupted. “I don’t see any woman being dumb enough to tempt fate by trying to go after one of those damn things after just getting lucky to avoid being turned into a bloodstain.”

“Do you want me to tell the story or not, Gora?” Timothy asked, giving her an annoyed glare.

“Sorry, go on.”

“Anyway, at first the demon caused great surprise and consternation among the other villagers, but as the days passed and the worst it did was to stare blankly at people, they gradually came to accept it. The woman’s husband had been one the other travellers in the caravan that had been massacred, so the demon lived in her house.”

“Let me guess,” Rita said sceptically. “They fell in love?”

Timothy had to suppress a chuckle. “If you’ve ever seen a Blade Devil or a Spine Devil, you will realize why that was so funny. No, there was no mention of any kind of romantic element. Rather, it sounded like it almost became like a kind of very intelligent pet, possibly like a mascot of the village. It did what it wanted, went where it pleased, but never seemed to hurt anyone, even going so far as to stop in to protect other villagers against threats like wild animals. Eventually, it even got to the point where it was trusted to play with the children of the village who seemed to treat it like some kind of big dog or something.

“Word of this ‘tame’ demon began to spread, and it wasn’t long before it began to draw curious travelers who wanted to see it for themselves.”

Timothy’s voice grew hushed.

“Then, one day, a group of these travelers arrived at the village to find almost every living thing in it massacred. Men, women, children, dogs, cats even the chickens had been ripped to pieces. Even the woman that had invited the demon in was found as little more than a collection of bloody limbs decorating the inside of her house. The only survivors were the ones that had fled the village as fast as their legs could carry them.

“For some reason, all of a sudden, it had simply killed everyone it had known.”

“That’s horrible,” Rita gasped, “but did anyone actually see it do this? I mean, how do you know it was the demon that did this? Maybe it was the survivors…”

“The story isn’t done,” Timothy said. “The atrocity prompted a local team of hunters and warriors to set out and track the demon down. They found it, not far from the village and, after a brief battle, managed to kill it.”

“Wait, they just killed it?” Rita interjected. “Without bothering to try to talk? Now that’s very suspicious.”

“Rita. Let me finish,” Timothy said. “Word of these events reached the Academy here in Grailmane, and, thanks to the survivors of the massacre, so did the name of the demon in question. So they summoned it again.”

“They summoned it again?” Samual interrupted from the side where he’d been listening. “After having gone through all the effort to kill it in the first place? To what purpose?”

“Research,” Timothy said, turning to Samual. “The Academy is a research institution and at the time there was an ongoing study of demon behaviour. So they summoned it inside a containment circle and, through complex magical rituals, compelled it to speak the truth.

Then they asked it why. Why did it spare the woman in the first place? Why did it then suddenly kill everyone? And do you know what it said?”

“They did something, didn’t they?” Rita replied. “Made it angry, somehow.”

Timothy shook his head. “No, Rita. It got bored. That was it. It spared them out of boredom, and then it killed them when it became bored of not doing so. That was all. All of the supposed ‘friendships’ that the villagers had built up with it had meant nothing to it. At no point over the nearly three years it spent in the village, did it feel anything more than mild bemusement towards it’s human ‘friends’.”

“This is what I want you to realize, Rita,” Gora rumbled. “Demons? They aren’t your friends. They’re monsters. As bad as anything you’ll find in the Nightmare Domain. And they might pretend for a very long time, but at the end of the day, they do not consider your life any more valuable than that of a bug that you step on. And Pleasure Devils are the worst, because they look the most like us. Do not trust them. Do not think they are nice. Because they are lying to you,” she finished.

Rita swallowed nervously. If that story was true — and like most stories, she was certain it was neither wholly true nor wholly false, but contained at least some elements of both — that cast her discussion with Ixxy in a whole new light.

“Are you happy now?” Timothy asked, turning to Gora. “Now you’ve made her completely change her mind about this.” He turned back to Rita. “Rita, demons are terrifying, yes, but they are not unstoppable. It is possible to have productive working relationships with them, as long as the contracts that keep them in line are correctly set up. And that is why Gora asked me to be here.”

He pointed towards the stack of books in the corner. “Those are the collected knowledge of some of the most brilliant minds over three hundred years of dealing with demons. I can do this. I can keep you safe.”

“Gora?” Rita asked after a few moments of silence. “You’re the one that set all this up. Yet now you’re the one arguing against me going through with it. Why?”

Gora sighed. “I’m not arguing against it in principle,” she said. “I’m just in favour of caution. And that means, when something smells funny, you wave off. You back off and walk away.”

“But everything is going perfectly according to plan!” Timothy argued.

“No, Cuz,” Gora replied, “our demon showed up butt-naked with tits like a hooker. And you’re a young man at an age where you have only one thing on your mind. Two plus two equals fucking four, Cuz.”

“I’m telling you, nothing happened between us!” Timothy insisted. “I swear that I have never had any kind of intimate contact with Ixxy!”

“Cuz, I’m not even a contract mage and I can drive a fucking cart through the holes in that statement!” Gora snarled.

“Okay, stop!” Rita exclaimed, holding out her hands. “That’s enough, both of you.” She turned to Gora. “Gora, do you have anything specific that makes you think that Timothy’s judgement is compromised in any way? Other than Ixxy’s breast size?”

Gora took a breath as if to say something, then deflated. “No. Nothing concrete,” she growled. “Just gut instinct.”

Then Rita turned to Timothy. “And is it really your professional opinion that Ixxy is my best chance at getting Alice fixed, if it is at all possible?”

“Yes,” Timothy nodded. “You can try to work through a different contract mage, but then you’ll have to pay them on top of what you’re paying the demon. And if you work with me, Ixxy is the demon I feel I am best able to keep under control.”

“Alright. Then that settles that,” Rita said sternly. “If I’m doing this, I’m doing it here and now. But I’d like some time to think about it, if that’s alright with you, Timothy?”

“Of course,” he replied. “I’ll start penning down the contract so long. Even if you end up deciding against going through with it this time, then at least you have a starting point for next time, maybe.”

“Thank you. Gora?”

Gora lowered her hand. “For the record, I’d like to say that I think this is not a smart idea. Not that I have any better idea, mind you, I just… I don’t want to see you get hurt because of stuff I organized, Rita.”

“Thank you, Gora,” Rita replied. “I appreciate your concern. But at the end of the day, this is my choice and you’ve both given me plenty to think about. So…”

“Yeah, I get it,” Gora said, getting up and gathering up the plates. “You think about it, we’ll leave you alone.”

“If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to ask,” Timothy added, also getting up. “I’ll be over there, working on your contract.”

“Thank you. I will.”

Gora got up to do the washing up from their lunch, leaving only Rita and Samual still at the table.

Rita sighed. She would have liked to get up as well, just to stretch her legs a bit, but Timothy was sitting on the other side of the rather small apartment, trying to concentrate on the delicate task of putting together an iron-clad contract for her. The last thing she wanted to do was distract and potentially terrify him by wiggling her legs out from where they were wrapped snugly under her blanket.

She had a big decision that she had to make.

On the one hand, there was no guarantee that this was going to work. To call the treatment that Ixxy had suggested ‘experimental’ was an understatement, to say the least. Furthermore, not only was there no chance of success, but she was going to have to fork out a quarter of her soul just for the attempt!

Rita rested her face in her hands. She wanted to save Alice. She owed it to her. But if she died in some ill-advised attempt at a risky medical procedure performed by some demonic Doctor Kevorkian, Alice would be dead anyway.

And not only would Alice be dead, she’d never forgive Rita.

But if she decided not to go through with it, where did that leave her? Where did she go from there? She believed Timothy that she was not going to get a better deal from anyone else, so if she bailed out of this one, that basically took the whole demon idea off the table. And without that, she was basically stuck. Alice would be doomed.

Damn. What she really wanted was a chance to sleep on her decision, but it was mid-morning for her and she was far too amped up to sleep. Ixxy was also going to be back in an hour or two according to what Timothy had organized with her, which wasn’t enough time to settle down for a nap.

“Hey Samual,” Rita whispered instead, “what do you think about all this?”

The warrior turned his intense gaze to her, just staring for a few moments.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “It’s your decision.”

Rita scowled. She wasn’t half as intimidated by that piercing stare of his as she had been before moving in with him.

“Oh no, you’re not going to get to keep dodging the question like that! Tell me! If you were in my position, what would you choose?”

Samual took a deep breath. “Rita, not influencing your decision is my choice.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been thinking about this these last few days, and I realized I’ve been approaching this incorrectly. Protecting you is supposed to save my life somehow, correct?”

“Supposedly, yes,” Rita replied, rolling her eyes. She still didn’t put much stock in the Tree’s supposed ‘prophecies’. She’d met the damned thing.

“That means, logically, something about your path leads you to a solution that my own does not. Agreed?”

“Yes, that makes sense.”

“That means,” Samual finished, “if I influence your direction, you’d be walking my path and not your own. And that could result in us missing that solution that I need. I refuse to take that risk.”

Rita pursed her lips. “So you’d follow whatever decision I made?” she asked.

Samual nodded. “Whatever choice you make is the correct one, as far as I am concerned. Unless it leads to your immediate demise.”

“Then my choice is to ask my friend what he thinks,” Rita insisted. “Because that is who I am. And to deny me that is to influence my path just as surely as telling me what I should do. Now, tell me what you would do in my shoes!”

For a few moments, Samual just stared at her silently. Then, finally, just as Rita was about to give up, he spoke.

“Do you want this? Do you want to save this ‘Alice?’”

“Yes. Absolutely,” Rita replied firmly.

“And do you believe there is an alternative solution?”

“No,” she admitted. “I think Timothy made quite a good case as to why this is my best chance.”

He slowly leaned forward until he was looking Rita right in the eyes.

“Then do it. Don’t let fear hold you back. Seize the opportunity. Forget the cost. You have no way of knowing if you will ever get another chance.”

Then he sat back in his chair and shrugged. “Or give up and find a more achievable goal. That’s my advice. Do with it what you will.”

Rita swallowed, then closed her eyes and nodded.

“Thank you, Samual. I think I know what I have to do.”