I was back in the cave with the giant spider. I didn’t have control over my body; I was just a passenger. I watched myself go through the motions of my first adventure with Stephanie, Bill, and Claudia—the same mission I told Fiametta, Orsa, and Chiara about. The subjugation mission where I met the three of them. We were walking along the cave passage with that familiar edge of trepidation. Our light wisps swirled around above us to give. No one commented on the spiderwebs, so this must be right before we enter the large chamber with the giant spider.
As I completed assessing my surroundings in the mana vision, my group came to a halt before the mouth of a large chamber. My wisp went flying up to the ceiling and revealed those same writhing bodies and the, still, horrifyingly large spider.
“Fuck,” I heard myself say as the spider dropped to the ground. “Claudia, stay near Stephanie and share Stephanie’s light. Send yours with mine to scout out the chamber. We need to make sure this is the only thing in here with us.”
“Got it!”
My body dove to the side as a leg came crashing down where I was standing. As a passenger to this memory, I was limited to focusing on the things my mind was able to conjure. My body darted around the side of the spider; I could feel myself manually manipulating the mana through the familiar resonant patterns. Even now, I have to do these manually. As I finished and the enhancements settled, my body burst forward with improved speed.
There was a weird disconnect with my memory of what had happened versus what I was experiencing in the vision, like I remembered moving faster. I chalked it up to being faster now when I use the enhancement and try to dismiss the thoughts, forcing myself deeper into the vision. I knew there’d eventually be a discrepancy somewhere, but I needed to be in tune with the vision first to find it.
After my body’s attack was deflected, it rushed off toward Oliva and Stephanie. I heard the loud clang as one leg connected with Bill’s shield, and the combined breaking of glass and thunderous crash as the other leg broke Stephanie’s force shield and crashed between them. I knew how this would play out. Claudia’s ice lance launched into the spider moments before I arrived.
“Fuck,” she yelled. “It’s chitin is too hard.”
Bill’s line is next.
But it never comes. I made it to the girls, and shifted my body. “You need to saturate it with water or superheat it,” my body said.
This isn’t right.
Now that I’m between the girls, I can see Bill’s prone form. I can’t tell if there’s blood, but this…
“Fire it is! It’s gonna get hot! Jack—”
“I’ve got it.” Still a prisoner in my body, I felt myself circulate mana and shove more into the strengthening and durability patterns. The pain was immediate and more intense than I remember. My muscles almost locked up; my body struggled to move with so much mana circulating through it. The legs of the spider came down in a rapid assault, and I parried the strikes I could and sidestepped the ones I couldn’t.
Until my focus was disrupted by a scream. I turned back to look behind me, and there, impaled on a leg, was Stephanie. She screamed again, wailing in pain and anguish. Claudia screamed too; hers was one of rage. Claudia let loose her stream of fire prematurely. It was far weaker than the one I remembered.
It shouldn’t be like this.
I struggled against my prison, the body of my memories, though it wasn’t idle. It had moved to strike against the leg piercing Stephanie. My sword clanged off it over and over again.
And over and over again.
And over and over again.
A wave of lethargy crashed into me. I felt enervated, listless. What was the point of this? She was dead, there was nothing I could do to save her. I was too late, too slow, too weak.
“That’s right, Jack,” came a hauntingly ethereal voice from the spider. “You were too late. You were too slow. You were too weak. You always will be.”
“No!” I scream at her, and with those words I realize I have control of my body again. I circulated my mana in different resonances and patterns. I was still limited to C note mana, but I was a better mage now—a more experienced one and a more learned one. Rather than being limited to my two tattoos and two manual patterns, I combined the Strength pattern and the durability pattern to give myself a slightly weaker version of both. Next, I vibrated some of my mana in a counter melody to the spell I wanted and pushed it out of me.
This was a trick I learned that was, probably, unique to me and how I could manipulate mana. It was a call and response melody and counter melody. I would vibrate the counter melody as my call and receive the melody back from the ambient mana. With a little focus, I could time this with my swing and—
As I swung my sword down on the leg impaling Stephanie a couple of joints above her body, the responding melody came back and my sword erupted in the Impact spell, shattering the leg. The spider shrieked; Stephanie’s body dropped to the ground. My mana rioted inside of me. The call and response was too much at C. I gripped the center of my chest just above my sternum, my core. It felt like glass was churning around inside of it.
Claudia and Bill were silent and motionless. I rushed to Stephanie, who was still groaning in pain.
“Steph, I’m here. I’m here,” I said, grabbing her hand. She looked up at me, fresh blood coated her lips from what she coughed up. She wasn’t going to make it. I closed my eyes. It wasn’t real. I knew it wasn’t, but it still hurt. I still felt like a failure.
Wait. Why? This didn’t happen. I didn’t fail to protect them.
A quiet anger slowly consumed my grief and self loathing.
I succeeded here. I protected them.
I opened my eyes and looked at Stephanie. It wasn’t Stephanie anymore. Holding my hand was Vittoria. She licked her lips through her too wide smile.
“Jack. I didn’t know you’d be so forward.”
I gripped her hand tighter, breaking the bones with my still enhanced strength. “I’ll kill you,” I choked out through gritted teeth.
“You are too weak, Jack. They won’t let you beyond the walls. A liability. A burden.”
“For now. But I am moving forward,” I said. I drew my secondary weapon, a parrying dagger, and shoved it into one of her eyes.
She screamed and shattered like glass; the shards tumbled to the ground. Claudia and Bill shattered as well, then it was the cave’s turn. I found myself in an endless expanse of blackness.
“What’s next? What else do you have for me? I’m not scared!” I shouted into the void. Suddenly I was falling, but I couldn’t feel any wind. I just knew I was falling. And I was picking up speed.
Just as quickly as I started falling, I stopped and spiritually slammed into my already sprinting body. I stuttered in my steps and almost stumbled. I had full control from the beginning. I regained my balance and continued my sprint, eyes darting around for anything I might recognize. The corridor was lightly shrouded in fog. The Bloodpaw Dungeon.
Fuck. Please don’t let it be the last time I was here.
A wall made itself known through the fog. A false dead end. I knew from memory that it was just a fork, but one designed to look like a dead end, to trick those who would come down this way that they should turn back and get lost in the illusion of a loop. As soon as it opened up, I took a right and had to immediately jump back to dodge a horizontal claw swipe leveled at my head.
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
It was a Bloodpaw scout, which meant that if this was a memory, this was the last time I was here. The last time the four of us adventured together. The time when we lost one of us.
I summoned my sword from my ring, my hands already adopting a long point guard. I had replayed this memory countless times, telling myself ‘If I were faster. If I were stronger’. I had thought of all of the different ways to handle this scout.
He’s going to lunge.
The Bloodpaw scout lunged at me. I adjusted my guard slightly and sidestepped the exact amount necessary for his claws to glance off the gut of my breastplate. His throat impaled itself perfectly onto the tip of my blade, sinking down the first third. With a flourish, I flicked the dead body off the tip of my blade, and I ran. I overcharged my enhancements, and I ran. I knew it wouldn’t matter, but I needed to get there sooner this time. I needed to see. I needed to know. Could we have all survived?
I encountered two more solo scouts and then a duo of a warden and a ranger. When this happened for real, it was this duo that ate up so much time, but just like the first scout, I knew what they would do. I had been obsessed with this dungeon run, this disaster. I blamed myself. Of course I did. We all did. We all thought ‘If I had been faster. If I had been stronger.’
Because we survived.
I rounded another corner, dove over a low swinging axe trap, and rolled into the chamber with the floor boss standing over a prone woman.
And Claudia didn’t.
“I’m afraid you’re too late.” rumbled the rich baritone voice of the Bloodpaw werewolf.
Fuck. I closed my eyes and clenched my fist. That was what he said last time when I was the first one here. The time it happened for real. I knew it wouldn’t matter. I knew I couldn’t save Claudia, and even if I got here in time and created some false illusion from memories of something that didn't happen, it wouldn’t bring her back. It wouldn’t heal Bill’s broken heart.
Because he’s dead now, too.
“You monster. You think this is a game? You think making me relive—”
“Bill! Stephanie! Jack!” cried Claudia as she exploded through one of the other passages, fire streams trailing behind her like the angry discharge of an airship.
No. No nononononono.
I ran at the werewolf. “I’ll kill you,” I screamed. The words felt cheap. They weren’t enough, and this wasn’t real. But the pain, the hurt. That was real. Seeing the bloody heap of a half eaten Stephanie, of my fiancee, that was real. Tears flowed freely now. This was worse than the fall somehow.
I swung my blade up catching some of the fingers on his left hand, separating them from him.
When she fell, I was confident she either died from the head injury from the gate or would have managed to survive the fall. There would have been no pain, no trauma she had to endure. This… Bill wouldn’t make it until the floor boss was dead. He wouldn’t see Claudia until after I was able to clean up the mess. Stephanie and I had taken care of him ourselves, fueled by our rage and a thirst for vengeance, but truthfully Claudia had done so much of the work for us. She had fought desperately as she was eaten alive. We staged the scene to look like she had merely died from her slashing wounds. But this time Stephanie… and I see everything.
It’s not real.
I dodge the incoming swipe, then flick the tip of my sword upwards to score a long gash along his right forearm.
This isn’t real. His movements are the same as before, and Claudia isn’t helping.
I danced around his lunge as he attempted to pounce on me and use his weight to bring me to the ground. With a final swing downwards, I caught his neck, and blood pours freely.
I turned around and screamed into the boss’s chamber, “Face me yourself, coward!”
Like before, the werewolf’s body shattered, then Stephanie’s and Claudia’s, and lastly the world itself. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. During the slow exhale, I opened them again and saw my city, my home.
Not my home anymore.
I went up to my door and summoned my key from my storage ring. I tried it in the lock; it worked. I pushed the door open and stood in the doorway.
“Stephanie?”
There was no answer. I walked in, slowly, tentatively.
“Stephanie?” I called again.
Silence.
I walked to our bedroom. It looked exactly as we had left it.
“A heart demon isn’t a person you know? Or a thing, really,” came my own voice.
I spun around and summoned my sword, and there, standing before me, was me. Eating an apple, no less.
“I’m not one of the tests,” said… Other-Me?
“What are you then?” I asked.
“Well, you, obviously, but no, that’s not a satisfactory answer.”
I squinted at him. He sighed, and spoke again, “Look, I can’t explain it well because you yourself don’t understand it well. I am you. I am just an incarnation spawned from our soul because of a very weird and coincidental series of events. Mainly the fact that we’re dealing with a heart demon while simultaneously trying to break through.” The Other-Me chuckled. “We don’t do things in half measures, do we?”
“What did you mean the heart demon isn’t a thing?”
“Ah, that. A heart demon is just… it’s a deviation in your path. Think of it like a string quartet playing together, except one of the violins is out of tune. That state of being out of tune is the heart demon. Not the violinist, and not the violin. But you know that.”
“So why am I fighting things? Why is it always Vittoria?” I asked.
“We have no idea.”
I gaped at him. At myself.
“Yes, yes, I agree. This is stupid,” he said to my silence.
“Why are you here now? Not before?”
“Because we’re almost done. This is the day we lost her, but you knew that. We need to face it. And we need to accept it.”
“Then let’s go.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I was down on one knee in front of Stephanie with the engagement dagger held reverently in both of my hands.
“Jack Wright, you are not doing this right here in front of the fountain on the first day of the fertility festival,” Stephanie squealed and did a happy dance.
I smile despite myself. This was her: perfectly Stephanie. Her silly dances, the bursts of bubbly attitude sandwiched between a sharp tongue when you step out of line. Shy around new people, but boisterous and surprisingly gregarious once she got to know you. My Stephanie. I cement this moment in my mind. Things were happening too fast the first time; I was so focused on getting my proposal out, I didn’t, couldn’t, take all of her in.
“Stephanie Klutz,” I began, heavy tears teetering on the cliff of my eyelids, “you won’t lose me, but I lost you. I failed you. I’m sorry. We’ve been together for years. You were my world, my family. You were the best part of going to bed, and the thing I looked forward to most when waking up. I wanted to do that for the rest of our lives, but I can’t. Not anymore.”
The Stephanie in front of me warped into Vittoria again, and sneered at me. “You failed her, Jack. You lost her. You were supposed to protect her. And the moment you promise her forever, you can’t keep it.”
I stand up from my kneeling position, still holding on to the monster’s hand.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry, Stephanie. But you’ve gone somewhere I can’t follow. Not yet.”
“NO!” Not-Stephanie shrieked.
Glass shattered in the distance. Then the explosions went off. First all over the city, then it was the fountain’s turn. We stood, unphased, locked together as I held her hand and stared her down.
“I’ll always love you, Stephanie. But I have to go now. And you…” I choked off the last of my words, a sob escaping violently as the sounds of more glass shattered in the distance.
“And you need to move on, too.” I pulled her into a hug. “I will miss you. I will remember you.” I felt her shatter like glass that dissolved into mana. Then I heard her screams as my memory continued with her falling. My own voice came bare moments after, yelling her name.
As the world crumbled around me, I played. My mana was riotous, but I pulsed a powerful thrum from my core, an E note. I would never hear Stephanie’s melody again. So I would have to play. I would unlock the colors, the notes, everything, whatever it took to paint her symphony again. I refused to live without it. I would take one more step forward, and then another, and another. I would paint. I would play. I would compose. But today was only one more step, and that step was E.
Everything broke, shattered, and crumbled away. I opened my eyes and inhaled sharply. Immediately a mouth was on mine. It was simultaneously chaste and hungry, starving even. Just as quickly as it started, it ended. Ippolita pulled back from me.
“Mio teroso, I am so sorry. That was inappropriate of me, but I was so worried. It seemed like you were making progress, but these things… Well, they can sometimes fail at the last possible trial. I—” she coughed and cleared her throat. “I am sorry, Jack. I overstepped.”
While she was right, it was an overstep, I couldn’t find it in me to be mad at her. This was only possible with her help. Without it, I’m not sure what would have happened to me, and I was tired. So extremely tired. It was night time now.
“H—” I tried to talk, but immediately started coughing. My throat was unbearably dry. Ippolita handed me a waterskin.
“Drink slowly, carissimo. You’ve been meditating for over a day and a half.”
That made me choke on the water. Once I managed to get the fluid out of my lungs, I asked, “A day and a half? What the hell? It only felt like a few hours.”
Ippolita just shrugged at me. “That is simply how things are when you dive into your soul like that.”
Ippolita was still kneeling next to me, her hand on my shoulder. “Jack, I’m proud of you. What you’ve endured, what you just went through, was a trial most will never know. You are strong. You are a warrior, tesoro mio.” She squeezed my shoulder and stood up.
“You should get some rest. You’ll have a new schedule tomorrow.” She turned and started walking away, but stopped and looked back at me, “But please, shower first.”
I raised my eyebrow at that, and lifted up my arm to sniff myself.
Yeuck. Alright, fair enough.
Stephanie as she's falling away from Jack during the events of Chapter 1.