I jolt as I hit the ground, rolling with no control over my flailing body as my hands seem reluctant to move from their place behind my back.

Confusion threads through me. Everything is kinda hazy and twinkly, as if I'd gotten some of Momma's dream herbs. I come to a stop, stifling a groan as something… off threads through my veins and I still like a rabbit beneath a wolf.

A headache. It pounds through my brain and tries to make my mind into hotcake batter. I’ve woken in some… situations before. So I know better than to give into the instinct to fight. It’s better to fake sleep until you learn more about the situation.

A pounding I thought to be my head continues, and I realize it’s the beating of a drum. Then I realize something is chanting, and I’m chilled to the bone at the guttural voices around me and the hissing from other creatures.

My eyes are crusty, but I manage to open them a crack. I try to wiggle my arms and legs, but judging by how I can hardly feel my fingers and the rope biting into thin skin, I’m tied tighter than a pig at the harvest festival.

I stifle a gasp as my surroundings come into view. The floor is cold and the area is dark except for orbs floating above me, glowing red and brown. Just at the edge of the shadows, I can barely make out a ring of creatures with cowls pulled high as they chant to the tune of the drum beats that matches the frantic pace of my heart.

I try to reach for my Gift, but it retreats from me as the the orbs glow brighter above me, and black stars are in the ceiling above them, weirdly black in an otherwise white ceiling. It reminds me of the garden in the library, but inverted.

I dig for my Gift, but if feels sluggish and slow. I send a gentle inquiry, asking, seeking, but she moves so slow I can’t even feel her response. And that terrifies me. We were just getting along, dagonit!

I try to dig and eventually drift down into my soul, slower than usual, but land in the place I’m used to seeing by now. Some memories float around me, but most are cowering away from a figure deep within, her long fingernails clutching a memory and not letting go. I feel her in my soul like feces clinging to the bottom of my bare feet. She glances up, and something about her changes. For a second I swear she had red eyes and black skin, and then soft blonde hair and pixie-like looks, but then she goes back to dark hair and large eyes. She frowns, snapping her fingers.

I’m abruptly shoved from the place within that holds my memories and my Gift. I gasp, head spinning as cold heat flushes through me and I shiver on the cold floor, my head feeling as if it’s about to burst. I beat my head on the ground, trying to find some sort of relief. Maybe fight pain with pain.

Spoiler alert—doesn’t work.

“I would have warned you, but some things must be experienced to be understood.” The voice comes from behind me, and I force my aching body to twist and turn until I can peek over my shoulder and see her.

Cold flushes through me and the blood drains from my face as my head feels as if it’s floating free of my body. This can’t be real. It can’t be.

Ran lay still on her side beneath the white cloaked woman with red fingernails, her ears twitching as if she’s dreaming, but otherwise still and placid as the witch sits on her stomach. Sits on her like some footstool.

I see red.

“Get. Off. Her,” I growl through clenched teeth, struggling against the bonds until I feel the bite of the thick ropes digging into my skin. Warmth rushes down my arms but I don’t feel pain. All I see is my beloved wolf and sister. Why did she come? Why didn’t she stay away like I asked?

“All this could have been avoided. All we truly need was the Quantum Opex, but you refused. Now, since it is hidden or destroyed, we need another.” She shakes her head, her hair almost black instead of the brown of earlier. “We wouldn’t have even come for you, our plans excluded you for the time being. All you had to do was stay out of my way. But you are too righteous, too stubborn. And now look where you have brought us.” She holds out her hands, showcasing the dreary gray walls splattered with substances I don’t wish to name and the weirdly reverse sky above with black stars in an otherwise light grey ceiling.

“Why are you doing this? Why?” I ask, my eyes fixed on Ran.

My eyes dart up to the witch. She rises from my bond and walks the few steps to me, her hips swaying with every click of her heeled boots. She bends down, eye level, and her eyes show sympathy and an almost sorrow. “My people are not like yours. We live on a world where water-kind are rampant and humans are the subservient species. We have been used for sport, drowned for laughs, and given near-impossible tasks all for the sake of our overlords. But that all changed when Master came. He gave us hope and all he asked for in return was an army.” She stands, walking back to Ran to gently stroke her cheek. I struggle in my bonds, hissing and groaning as rage so hot it makes me want to scream gathers in my chest. I want to stab her. I want to kill her. But I can’t move. She continues, “He’s given us power beyond our wildest dreams. He’s given us hope for a better world, and, extending it even further, granted peace and equality to all worlds through his might. But there are times when one must challenge what was in order to usher in what is to come. This takes death. Sacrifice.”

She takes out a syringe which glows a shimmering green and plunges it into Ran’s neck. I scream as Ran’s eyes pop open, rolling wildly as she whimpers, trying to pull at the ropes binding her paws. The witch strokes her cheek, putting her body weight on her neck and muzzled nose. “Shhh. It’ll all be over soon.”

I struggle as Ran twitches, and I feel something curdle deep in my soul. Something trying to worm it’s way into me through my bond.

Set it free, a voice whispers within, a voice breaking as much as I am breaking and feeling a sorrow so deep I almost can’t measure it’s worth.

How? I ask, wrenching my entire body to try and break the bonds but unable to and almost dislocating my wrist.

You know how, child. You always have.

My entire body relaxes. I know what I must do. Tingling begins behind my eyes and I close them tight, drifting to my internal soul vault.

And there, I walk through the meadow of memories that are blackening from what I’ve done and what’s been done to me. The betrayal I’ve done to so many. I’ve misused what was Given, and it’s slowly killing me. When I kill others… it slowly kills her. She takes the brunt of the pain, the brunt of the consequences, for me. And I didn’t even know what I was doing. My Gift isn’t fighting me… she’s dying. The little tree in the center is wilting, its leaves turning a burnt orange.

It had been so long since I had actually taken a moment to see. To look inside my soul, to find what I was becoming.

How my Gift could help, protect, and genuinely forgive me for what I'm doing to her is absurd.

I glance around, finding my most precious and most terrible memories all around, floating and bobbing. And the red and black orbs are present both physically and here, too, and somehow I feel how they are connected to the witch. So her abilities are not innate, but stolen.

Threads are all around me, reaching out into the world and intersecting like the most beautiful tapestry in the worlds with all the different colors and clouds and souls.

A small, sad smile tips my lips. So many going about their daily lives, never knowing the danger they are in of everything changing in a split second of time.

If I can help it, they will keep living and thriving, even if it means I give everything.

Ran was right about one thing. I won’t stop fighting. But I am done.

“I. Am. Done,” I whisper.

Before me, a cottage pops into sight. It’s old and decrepit, the door sagging and I can barely see into the shadowed depths where the fire used to burn so brightly and my loved one used to sit, rocking and sewing as she taught me life lessons I would never forget.

I walk inside, trailing a hand over one of the tapestries of a golden dragon and another of Timber Wolves surrounding a dark-cloaked figure laying prone on the ground and others still that I have no context for, the tapestries as pristine and beautiful as if I’d never left.

I reach the rocking chair, feeling the rough wood grains beneath my calloused fingertips.

I could imagine my grandma there, as if she’d never left. She looks up with her bright eyes and wild grey hair, her regal bearing making her plain, homespun dress look like a fabric fit for a queen.

You’ve come for it at long last, eh, child?

I crouch beside her, feeling tears prick my eyes but shoving it back. “Yes, Grandma, I have at long last.”

She holds up what she’s been working on. It’s a red so deep it is almost black. Along the shoulders, it has two golden filigreed doves carrying olive branches resting on the head of a Timber Wolf with her fangs bared and eyes glowing a low ruby red. The wolf and doves are wrapped within a wreath of phoenix feathers shaped into a heart. The hood is absent, instead it has a clasp at the throat and a mask built in that can be pulled up over the nose but just bunches like extra fabric when left around the neck.

I knew someday you would need this. So I saved it for you here long ago. Do you know now what you must do?

I bow my head, a tear dropping from between my eyelids and tickling my cheek as it makes its way to wet my lips and sprinkle the taste of salt on my tongue.

“Yes, Grandma. I do.”

Somehow I feel a phantom tingling, as if a hand were set on my cheek. Perk up, dear child. There is a time and place for all things, including letting go of things which no longer fit. Sometimes, a new wardrobe is needed as we broaden from child to woman. And the old, shaggy rags we once wore are no longer needed and should be cast into the fire.

I nod. And when I open my eyes, the fire blazes. I feel the warmth touching my cheeks and drying the tears.

I take off the red cloak from my shoulders, reverently folding the fabric as my tears create darker dots along the fabric. I clutch it to my chest for a moment. A hand rests on my head of short hair, and I throw the fabric into the fire before I can rethink it.

An ugly sob erupts from my lips as I cast what Was into the fire. The things of the child, clinging to the past, not wishing to move into the future, are no more. As is the loathing I held against myself for what I had to do which I placed on the Gift until we came to an understanding… and I realized she’s taken my punishment. I had a choice, there was always a choice, but I chose my life and the life of my family above those who threatened us and my city.

And that is the crux. Whose life is worth more? And how do I know that those people didn’t have families and friends who now mourn their passing as I do Grandma and Pa?

But as soon as they threatened the life of my family or the freedom of my city, their lives were forfeit. As soon as they subjected others to their wills and made slaves of others, their lives were done.

I understand now why Father would leave us and go into the woods to release what had happened. And I know why he wanted me to be different than him. To not feel such an… emptiness, where the soul used to be.

But… just like with any hole, it can be filled.

I watch my cloak as the flames catch, something within me breaking open and releasing a deluge of sorrow mixed with a joy so acute it nearly breaks my heart.

I open my eyes to find the cottage gone and I am back before the little tree that somehow seems less wilted than before, with Grandma’s new cloak about my shoulders and the mask pulled up above my nose.

Never will you have to leave your cloak behind. Now it shall stay with you, my dear, now and forever, just as my love will never cease.

Who are you? I ask the voice that sounds so much like my grandmother but seems… multiplied. As if there are depths beneath the surface that I cannot fathom, much like the waters of the ocean.

I am what you see and what you do not see. I am a thread your grandmother left for you to find when the time was right. I am soul and I am Queen and I am nothing in between.

Are you… Essence?

Somehow I feel her smile. Perhaps, child. But perhaps I am more. And less.

I blink, and before me is a shimmering, roiling, inky pool that glows brightly before me and is about the size of a small cottage.

I smile, reaching out, gathering the threads.

But it’s time to let it free. Ran needs me.