Ayla
<The Moonlit Mage>
(Challenger)
Level 74 Human [Archmage]
STR: 1,204
AGI: 8,891
CON: 4,217
MAG: 342,568
WIS: 683
LUK: 61
My whole body felt like it was on fire.
Resurrection was anything but peaceful. It wasn't a gradual regaining of awareness, like waking up after a coma. It was more like being rudely forced back into your body. And it hurt.
Bad.
"Welcome back," Barney said. Ah man, he was mad.
"Barney!" I sat up on the stone slab and immediately regretted it. I clutched my ribcage. "Good morning!"
"It's four in the morning, Ayla."
"Good very early morning!"
He towered above me, clad in his nightgown adorned with tiny flowers. The very same nightgown he had acquired at the market during the previous spring, claiming it was for "ceremonial purposes." He was wearing slippers. His reading glasses were crooked on his nose. His white hair stuck up in six directions. He held his resurrection staff in one hand and a mug of tea in the other.
"What time did you go in today?" he asked.
"Eleven."
"PM?"
"Eleven AM."
He closed his eyes. He drew in a deep breath. He took a drink from his teacup.
"What were you doing in there for seventeen hours, Ayla?!"
"I took breaks! The lamia's room has a nice ambiance. She does this fog thing —"
"Seventeen hours! This can't go on. You come home every day as remains, and I use the word 'remains' loosely, young lady, because what arrived at my door was more of a gore pile than a corpse —"
"She's really strong, Barney."
"—I had to reconstitute you from fragments. Fragments! Do you know what that costs? Do you have any idea what the material components for a full body resurrection run these days? The sacred incense alone is four hundred gold per bundle and I used three bundles tonight because there wasn't enough of you left to anchor the spell without a triple-layer consecration circle! I am sixty-eight years old and I have been doing this every single night for six months —"
"I'll pay you back."
"With what, Ayla? With what?" He pointed to things in the room. "You had five hundred thousand gold. Do you remember that? Do you remember being a person with savings? Because I do. I remember because when you walked into my clinic six months ago you were flush. I thought to myself, this young woman, she's got a real shot —"
"I do have a shot!"
"You had one shot! One! And you used it, and you died, and since then I have spent... do you want to know the number? Do you want me to say it out loud?"
"Not really."
"It's everything I had! Everything! My pension. My retirement fund. The money I'd set aside to buy a cottage, Ayla. With a garden. One where the tomatoes wouldn't die because I'd have time to water them because I wouldn't be up at four in the morning EVERY SINGLE NIGHT resurrecting a girl who keeps getting EXPLODED —"
"The tomato thing is really sad, Barney."
"DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT THE TOMATOES."
He sank into his chair and took two long sips of his tea. Then he looked at me with eyes so tired they'd gone past exhaustion.
"Ayla," he said. "You need to take a break."
"No, I can't."
"You need to take a break. You've been going every single day for one hundred and eighty days. You sleep two hours a night, and you burn through the stamina tonics before you even reach the tower. You know they are not substitutes for a full night's rest —"
"Barney, I'm fine. "Pinkie swear," I raised my pinky towards him. He slapped my hand away.
"You're not fine. Your mana reserves are depleted before you even start the fight. Your reaction time is shot. You told me last week that you tried to cast a barrier and accidentally summoned a flock of birds. Birds, Ayla."
"The birds were distracting! That was almost a strategy!"
"It wasn't a strategy! Nothing you're doing is a strategy! You walk in, you give the speech, you throw everything you have at her, and then you explode! That's not a strategy! You've been doing the exact same thing for a hundred and eighty days straight!"
"Because it almost works! Every time I get a little closer! The barrier holds a little longer! The explosion takes a little —"
"It doesn't! It's the same every time! The result is identical every single night! You show up at my door in pieces and I put you back together and you go right back in. Do you know what they say about people who try the same thing over and over and over again expecting different results?"
I perked up. "That they're determined?"
"No."
"Resilient?"
"No."
"That they have the heart of a true hero and the unyielding spirit of —"
"That they're insane, Ayla! They say that they are insane! The literal definition! You are insane!"
"That seems a little harsh."
"It's a clinical observation!" He was now on his feet, tea sloshing, nightgown swinging. "If you actually want to beat her... if you truly want to kill the demon queen and not just die on her floor every day like some kind of sadist... then you need to stop. You need to rest. You need to rethink your entire approach from the ground up. Study her patterns. Analyze her abilities. Figure out why your magic isn't working instead of just casting it harder and hoping —"
"Barney. I appreciate the feedback. I really do. You know you're like a father to me."
"I'm not your father—"
"But here's the thing." I swung my legs off the slab. "Victoria is waiting for me."
He closed his eyes again. He did that a lot when he was around me. I think it was a coping mechanism.
"Victoria," he said, "does not know you exist."
"She knows of me. She knows someone is challenging the tower daily. The Royal Gazette did a piece on it — 'Mystery Mage Attempts Hundredth Floor for the 150th Consecutive Day.' She reads the Gazette, Barney. I've seen her holding it."
"You saw her holding a newspaper. From a distance. At a public event."
"The Summer Solstice Gala is not just a public event, Barney. It's the premier social gathering of the Muir royal calendar and as president of the Queen Victoria Appreciation Society, I have a responsibility to —"
"You are the only member of the Queen Victoria Appreciation Society!"
"I'm the president and the only member, which means I have a one hundred percent attendance rate, which is more than most organizations can say."
"I am begging you to hear yourself."
"And the gala was important! She wore the emerald circlet! She never wears the emerald circlet! I wrote about it in the newsletter!"
"Nobody reads the newsletter, Ayla!"
"You read the newsletter."
"Because you stand over me while I do it!"
He was right about that. I did stand over him. But only because the newsletter required a lot of effort and I wanted to make sure he appreciated the formatting. I had started including hand-drawn illustrations in the last few issues, mainly portraits of Victoria from memory. Art wasn't my strongest medium, but effort counts.
I glanced at the wall, where Victoria, smiling, looked down on me from seven different angles. The official coronation portrait was above my bed, the one taken right after the king died. She wore the silver-and-pearl crown for the ceremony, the one he used to wear, resized to fit her. Her face in the portrait was calm, but you could see the grief and the quiet fury of a woman whose husband was murdered by a monster, and who had decided to turn her pain into something useful.
King Cealgach was a good ruler. Everyone agreed on that. He was fair and kind, and the people loved him. And the demon queen had killed him. Personally. He'd led a campaign against the tower—the only king in Muir's history to do so—and she'd destroyed him and his entire army on the hundredth floor without breaking a sweat. The kingdom had nearly collapsed from the loss. When Victoria ascended the throne, she did so in mourning. Her first official proclamation, written in black ink on white parchment with the royal seal still wet, altered the course of my life forever.
To the one who slays the Demon Queen and avenges my beloved, I offer my hand in marriage, my crown, and my heart.
Her hand. Her crown. Her heart.
She was a widow and a queen, the strongest person I had ever witnessed from a distance of about three hundred feet. She was waiting for someone to accomplish the impossible, and that someone was going to be me.
"The Midsummer Address is next week," I said. "She's speaking at the Royal Pavilion. I already scouted the sightlines. There's a balcony on the east side that has a clear view of the podium and I measured the distance and if I bring the magnification lens I bought from that merchant on Fourth Street I should be able to —"
"Whatever you're about to say, the answer is no. I'm not going to the Midsummer Address with you."
"Barney, you have to come! You're the vice president."
"I am not the vice president of your fan club!"
"I filed the paperwork. It's official. You're in the charter."
"What charter?!"
"The charter of the Queen Victoria Appreciation Society. I drafted it last month. I used your name because you need two officers to register with the city. It's legally binding, Barney."
His mouth was open and he stared at me. His tea was going to get cold.
"Ayla," he said in a slow voice. "You forged my signature on a fan club charter?"
"I didn't forge it. I approximated it. Based on your prescription handwriting which I've seen a lot of because I live in your clinic. It's very similar, Barney. You'd be impressed."
"AYLA!"
"So you'll come to the Address?"
"NO."
"What if I promise to take a rest day after?"
He became motionless, and his eyes narrowed. This was the first time I had ever said anything close to “rest day” in 180 days. He knew it as well, and so did I. The silence between us was a silence of negotiation.
"One rest day," he emphasized. "A full day. No tower. No fighting. No dying."
"One full day. After the Midsummer Address. Which you are attending because you're the vice president and we have a banner to hold."
"There's a BANNER?"
"I commissioned it, Barney. It's beautiful."
He placed his mug on the table. He covered his face with his hands. He might have been sobbing.
"Fine," he agreed after about a minute. "Fine. I'll go to the address. I'll hold the banner. And you will take one full rest day afterward or I swear on every god that has ever existed in any realm that I will not resurrect you again."
"Deal!"
"I mean it, Ayla."
"I know you do! You're the best, old man."
"Don't call me old man."
"You're literally sixty-eight."
"And getting older by the second! Every second I spend in this conversation, I age a year!"
I hopped off the slab and kissed him on the top of his head. He swatted at me, but missed.
I did love him. He was the only person in the world who hadn't given up on me. Although he threatened to leave me every single night, he had found me in an alley six months ago with a stab wound and no memory of how I'd gotten there. He healed me and fed me and gave me a room and listened to me talk about Victoria for six straight hours without throwing me out. He was grumpy and old, but he was the closest thing to a family that I had.
I refused to disappoint him. I was going to kill the Demon Queen and avenge King Cealgach. And I was going to stand in front of Queen Victoria—up close, not from three hundred feet, not through a magnification lens—and I was going to say, "I did this all for you."
"I'm going back," I said.
"At a reasonable hour this time?"
"Hm... Six AM?"
"That's in two hours, Ayla."
"I know." I grinned. "Better set your alarm, old man."
Barney buried his face in his hands. "I was retired," he said. "I was growing tomatoes. The tomatoes were doing well. And now I haven't slept a full night in six months and my tomatoes are dead and I'm the vice president of a fan club I didn't join."
"Rest in peace to the tomatoes."
"Go to sleep, Ayla."
"Going! Love you, old man!"
I crawled into bed. The coronation portrait gazed down at me. Victoria's eyes were brimming with sorrow and determination in equal measure. She had experienced loss, just like I had. Tthe death of the one she held dear above all else in this world. Instead of succumbing to heartbreak, she had transformed it into something worth living for.
"Soon," I whispered. "That stupid demon queen doesn't stand a chance."
I quickly covered myself with the blanket and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep in under a minute. Resurrection is exhausting, and I had a busy day planned ahead.