Diary of a Teenaged Mimic

Dear Diary,

Why do motherfuckers insist on testing me? I am proud of how mature and self-controlled I have become, that it takes literal rape or murder to make me lose my shit, and even then I have reached a point where I can, hopefully, deliver pinpoint righteous retribution. By proxy, even, if that’s the right thing to do. But... Fates? Norns? Whoever else is pulling this shit? If you don’t stop it, I will find you and explain things in short, painful sentences even you can’t fail to understand.

So my pleasant evening follow up to what really was a fun day spent with the family? Cut short by seeing Raven stumble out of the door to Lancaster House in bad shape. Before anybody crawls up my ass about it, it was not the interruption itself that shoved a bug up my ass. That came purely from seeing Raven’s condition after waiting so long for the other shoe to drop. Spoiling my enjoyment of my kid’s birthday party and the parental continuation of same? That just covered the aforementioned bug in hot sauce for extra damage.

The moment I saw her, even while screaming out, ”MOTHER! FUCKER!”, I grabbed Lachlan and Larry by the shoulders and stepped us right up to her, pulling the two of me in Phileo back to me as I did. She collapsed, Lachlan barely managing to catch her before her head hit the pavers. Her split lip had swollen, and the entire side of her head from her forehead hairline to the bottom of her jaw showed signs of purpling already. Without waiting for an Assess Health, I slapped a Heal Injury into her. The purple faded away and her split lip sealed itself as something approaching coherence swam back into her eyes. She grabbed at my coat pulling me to her as she said, ”Commander! Bonnie! They’ve, they...” she stuttered to a stop, horror filling her eyes.

I looked at Lachlan, said, ”watch over her,” grabbed Larry’s shoulder and stepped to the Map room. It stood empty, but Bonnie’s carefully placed markers had been kicked around, a few of the apples stomped flat into the ground. My hand never left Larry’s shoulder; we stepped to the door of Bonnie’s room. The lights had been shut down, and with the absence of windows in most of Lancaster House, that left the room in darkness broken only by a few coals in the fireplace. I scanned the room in wireframe as Larry, familiar with the layouts of the rooms in his own house, stepped over to the nearest lamp and slid it open. A couple chairs lay on the floor, one broken, a small bloody smudge next to it. A discarded Cadet’s uniform boot lay next to it. Raven’s boot, I guessed. I hoped.

The suites the Cadets shared had two rooms, unlike the four in the rooms I’d shared with Saffron, Marie, and Isnomi. The thought of that broken chair, that bloody smudge, juxtaposed with thoughts of Isnomi? Lit something deep inside me aflame. Not the kind of fire I’d felt on the Equinox, either. I’d felt this before, in the moment that chunk of rock slammed down. I’d felt it, and thousands of people whose only crime had been living in a City ruled by empowered assholes died because of it. I wouldn’t feel guilty. Saffron had told me not to. I’d done what I’d done on the field of battle, against soldiers of an enemy who’d just betrayed our trust. Even if, at the time, I did not care.

Walking as if in a nightmare, I strode toward the back room of the suite, the bedroom. Larry trailed behind me, examining the smudge of blood, putting the chairs back upright, picking the boot off the floor. I looked into the bedroom and even in wireframe horror assaulted me. I couldn’t take it all in at once; red rage blinded me after every glimpse. Her arms twisted until her elbows met behind her back. Her forearms too short, bound together with ragged strips of linen. Another strip connecting those to the footboard. A single cord, a noose around her neck. The end of that noose tied to her wrists. Her back forced into an unnatural arch. Her knees bent, somehow wrong. Her calves bound to her thighs.

Detritus scattered across the floor, little oddly shaped stones.

Absolute stillness, despite the rage I felt flooding through me.

Larry slid the lamp nearest the door open, and the urge to vomit fought with the urge to scream fought with the urge to purge this room, this building, this land with fire and darkness, to scour it to bedrock and start over.

Teeth. There were teeth scattered across the floor.

I stumbled toward her, fighting every step against the urge to end it. All of it. The world where this kind of thing could happen? Did not deserve to exist.

Larry beat me there, his jacket covering her, yanking the linen tying her back hard enough to shatter the wood of the footboard. Twisting the cord of the noose with his bare hands until it snapped. One hand, trembling, pushing her lids down over her staring, vacant eyes.

I hadn’t heard Alistair come in, but I recognized his voice. ”Apologies, cousin. We seem to have broken your play...”

Darkness and silence flickered.

I turned, teetering on the edge of Apocalypse. Larry stood two steps beyond the doorway, just beyond where Alistair leaned against the jamb. Alistair’s mouth worked, but no sound came out; his eyebrows rose the faintest bit in surprise.

Then his body slumped to the floor, his head rolling away.

A voice had been speaking in my head from the moment I stepped into the room. Screaming. Whispering. Praying.

Beloved Goddess. It is your power and privilege and right. But I beg you. Please. Do not. An image of our daughter, looking up at her mother with terror lurking behind her eyes.

That image twisted the fire inside me, turned it back so it burned me. I hate you.

As is your right, Goddess. End me, if you wish. But please. Not her.

Something that could have been mistaken for a smile crawled across my face. She didn’t know. She couldn’t know. Isnomi had no fear for herself. None at all. At world’s end she would surf the currents of destruction gleefully.

But her mother would not survive that. And that terrified her. Terrified my daughter, the first and only thing to do so.

I’d done that.

Not you. Not her. Not everything. Not now. Not ever. I would rather end myself than you, love.

When you finish, return to us. Please.

As I sent her wordless affirmation, I walked over to where Alistair’s head lay on the floor, eyes still blinking in confusion. I poked him around with my toe until we could see each other clearly. ”I’ve read that it takes like six minutes for a brain to run out of oxygen. So I really hope you feel this.” I raised my foot, brought my bootheel down on his face. Again, and again, and again, until I felt the floorboards beneath my boot.

The entire time the part of me that saw the faint glimmer of ley lines, that heard The Smith’s Workshop shifting? Heard the agonized screaming of a soul being rent asunder and fed to the Boon I’d gifted to the one who called me Patron.

The rage in me gloried in that sound. Found comfort in it. It burned no less hot, but for the moment I had control of it, rather than the other way around.

I walked over to Larry. He hadn’t moved since he’d cut Alistair’s fucking head off. His whole body trembled with barely controlled rage. It called to the barely suppressed rage in me. I stepped around in front of him; he’d squeezed his eyes closed, and his mouth worked in unsaid words. One word, rather, choked out silently. Over and over. I saw him teetering on the edge I’d leapt over during the Battle, and echoes of guilt pushed me, made me realize what I needed to do.

”Laurence Lancaster.” His eyes snapped open, and desolation stared at me. ”I ask you, as your Patron. Would you have Justice, or Vengeance?”

Rage, barely chained, lit the desolation in his eyes. ”You would force me to choose Justice?”

I shook my head. ”Say the word, and the rest will envy him.”

”Who else?”

”All of them. Any of them. Name them. Tell me, and they will beg for the merciful destruction of their souls.”

”Anyone?”

”Anyone.”

He closed his eyes. Inhaled, then blew that breath out through his nose. ”She believed in me.”

I nodded. ”And?”

”She believed I could do better. Be. Better.”

I nodded again. ”And?”

”I will. Be. Better.”

I nodded one final time. ”Choose.”

He opened his eyes, and the fiery desolation in them had frozen over. ”I choose Justice.”

I stepped past him into the room. I stepped over to horror imperfectly covered by a jacket as red as the blood that soaked the bedding. Inhaled, deeply. Stepped back to Alistair’s body, kicked it up to grab his jacket and smell him just as deeply. ”More than just him.” Lancaster didn’t ask, just nodded. ”Follow.”

I stalked from the room, following the intertwined scents of blood and body odor. He followed. By the time we made it halfway up the steps to what I’d so blithely referred to as the ’old boys club’, we heard them laughing. He stepped around me, and I put a hand on his arm. He stopped. ”I will confirm which, if any. I am with you, Laurence Lancaster, and you will have your Justice.”

He nodded without speaking, then headed up the steps. I leaned on my Blend as I walked up the steps, until by the time I reached the top of the steps I was the echo of a nightmare. As he strode across the room to stand before the fireplace, seven sets of eyes tracked him, the sublimely confident eyes of a pride of young lions lounging in their den, utterly unafraid of the hyena that had dared trespass. He turned to face them, and his voice carried across the room.

”Heroes Lancaster. I have come seeking Justice for the rape and murder of Phileo City Heroic Academy Freshman Cadet Bonita Obol.”

One of them, not Charlie, lazily called out, ”how can she have been raped? She’s just a Bag.”

Even from across the room I could see the way fire lit Lancaster’s eyes for a moment before he replied. ”I could respond that she is... was a Cadet, and this entitles her to Justice. But it has come to my attention that if Justice does not apply to everyone? It applies to no one.”

Another one, again not Charlie, laughed as he said, ”oh, please, cousin. You sound like one of those Phileo blowhards. What next, will you stand on a street corner waving placards the Bag can’t read and the Dan won’t, protesting our treatment of our lessers as they deserve?”

This time the fire didn’t flare. It froze even harder as he turned to face the cousin who had spoken. ”No. I will discover the identities of those who performed this abomination, and I will execute them.”

Yet another not-Charlie cousin spoke up. ”Oh, this should be rich. How will you ’discover our identities’?”

Lancaster’s gaze should have made the asshole piss himself, but apparently the cousins were mostly just as stupid as Alistair had been. ”Are you admitting your guilt in this matter?”

”So what if I am? Sure, I took my turns teaching her her place. What are you...” Darkness and silence flickered. This time I watched in wireframe as Larry spun and, wrists twisting, quartered the head as it slumped off his cousin’s shoulders. A short, faint shriek echoed as if from far away.

Charlie leapt to his feet, hands clear and ready to draw. ”What right have you!” he screamed. ”We are Heroes of Phileo City, and we are due a full Court Martial to Impeach us if you seek to impose some sad, stupid notion of ’Justice’ on us!”

Larry didn’t move from where he stood, empty hilt in his hand, still crouched from the end of his swing. ”Are you admitting your guilt in this matter?”

”I did not say that! I asked by what right you would stand in judgement over us, Heroes of Phileo City?” His hand hovered over the hilt of his sword. The rest of the young lions, realizing far too late that this was no hyena, but something far faster and deadlier than any lion had ever faced, stood and laid hands on the hilts of their swords.

Without moving, Larry smiled as he replied. ”I am Heir to Lancaster House. In the absence of my father from the House, Justice both High and Low are mine to dispense as I see fit. As you so cavalierly implied, forgetting the corollary implication, Lancaster House has ever borne the yoke of Phileo’s due process lightly.” He finally moved, looking up at Charlie as swords were drawn around the room. ”And yet...”

”And yet?” Charlie asked, his sword still sheathed.

While his cousins demonstrated their abysmal understanding of who and what they faced, as well as proving their piss poor survival instincts in general, I’d drifted through the room, smelling each of them, confirming by scent that they had, every one, participated. The only other smells in that room belonged to Bonnie and Raven. I Co-Located a line of myself across the end of the room, just close enough to each other that I could clothesline anyone who tried to run past me. Then I lowered the Blend on my middle self enough to be heard and seen and called out, ”Heir Lancaster, I confirm for you, all of the perpetrators are in this room, and all of your cousins in this room participated.”

”Thank you, Commander.” if I hadn’t had a dozen sets of eyes watching, I might not have seen him move. He wove through the room, little more than a dark, silent blur. Where he passed, heads didn’t roll. They fell to the floor in pieces. Two of his cousins got their swords up to block his strikes, and it mattered as little as anything short of a Mana Shield. One even managed to slash him straight across his chest, and red leaked through his exposed shirt, gleaming on the exposed, severed chain in Larry’s jacket. He didn’t slow, didn’t bother to acknowledge the injury.

I’d known since we first met the cousins that Charlie was the smart one. He’d never bothered to draw his sword. He sprinted for the stairs the moment Larry blurred into motion. He never saw the three of me that converged on him. Ignoring the tunnel vision and feedback whine, one of me hit his knees from the side, while another grabbed ankles from behind, and the third tackled him around the waist from the far side. The sight and sound of his knees bending sideways until his feet hit his fucking ass from the side? A priceless balm to the fury that still burned inside me. Nearly as beautiful as the scream when one of me grabbed each of his wrists, lifted, and another pair of me stomped his elbows sideways.

Finally, as the last of the inaudible shrieks sounded through the room, I collected my Co-Located selves, reached down, and yanked Hero Charles Lancaster from the floor by his fucking hair.

”Mercy! Mercy! Please! I beg you! Mercy!”

The edge of Larry’s Dark Blade hovered an inch from Charlie’s eyes. ”So. Charles who was Lancaster. Did you and your fellow criminals ever actually leave Lancaster House? Or did you lurk here hiding until my brother and I were both absent?”

”You have no...” Charlie’s scream cut off as Larry’s blade slid incrementally closer. ”Of course we did! We travelled to the west bridge, crossed and headed south and east, laying waste to their hovels as we did. We even destroyed a small unit that tried to stand against us at the walls of their reeking pit of a City!”

Larry’s voice came out flatter than I’d ever heard it. ”You attacked Calverton.”

”Yes! Yes! We showed them our strength, taught them their place!”

”Taught. Them. Their. Place?”

Charlie was the smartest of Larry’s cousins. Apparently not smart enough to stop digging when he found himself in a flooding hole. ”Yes! Yes! It was easy! So many of them could barely stand from their filthy diseases! We killed those who could fight, and taught the rest of the bitches how to serve real men, real Lancasters!”

Larry took a deep breath, then let it out. His sword never wavered. ”Cousin Charles?”

”Yes, merciful cousin Laurence?”

”I have decided. I had thought to have a High Priestess of Loki ensure that his daughter shoved your filthy soul in Niflhel’s deepest, darkest cesspit.”

Charlie tried to nod, mostly just waggling his shoulders a bit, because the only thing that held him upright was my grip on his hair. ”But you’ve decided on mercy?”

Lancaster nodded, once, slowly. ”Yes. I will show mercy to Hel, because she has done nothing to deserve having to associate with you.”

Larry didn’t slice. He pressed the blade forward, slowly, as Charlie screamed and tried to break free. That pissed me off, so I popped a blade and sliced his arms off at the shoulders, and his legs at the waist. Larry reached out, grabbed him by the neck, and pushed his blade forward as slowly as I’d ever seen him move.

The audible screaming ended about thirty seconds later, right about when Larry’s blade reached Charlie’s ears, and the weight of his body kind of ripped it away. The inaudible screaming went on for a while as I lowered what remained connected into Larry’s blade.

A very little bit at a time.

Eventually we stood there in silence. The bravest or stupidest butler in all of fucking Lancaster House broke that silence, clearing his throat where he stood at the top of the steps.

Larry put his Blade away and straightened up, his back now ramrod straight. ”If you would be so kind as to organize the cleanup of this filth, Oscar?”

Oscar clicked his heels together, nodded quickly, but with a motion that pointed his eyes straight at the ground before coming back up, and said, ”very good, sir. Pig slop, sir?”

Larry shook his head. ”I wouldn’t want that taste in the bacon. Tanning waste.”

Click, nod. ”Very good, sir.” Oscar looked a little uncertain. ”Regarding the guest...”

”The Commander and I will attend to that, personally. Have Master Lancaster and Cadet Aetos sent to me when they deem themselves ready.”

Click. Nod. ”Very good, sir. I’ll be about it then?”

At Larry’s nod, Oscar spun and trotted away down the steps, calling for mops and buckets.

Larry turned to me, and the world exploded in sound and light. Blinking away reverse wireframe afterimages, I saw Larry turned to the source of the thunder and lightning. Eight statuesque women stood there, fancy armor with stupid boob plates shining, their hair poofed out with static. The one in the center of the formation opened her mouth, and the voice that boomed out rattled the furniture around on the floor. ”MORTALS! WHERE ARE THE SOULS WE WERE SENT TO ESCORT TO VALHALLA?”

I didn’t think. I Co-Located, pushed my Blend, threw my arms around her, Translocated to the empty easternmost farmstead on Lancaster lands, and made a living Iron Maiden of Mana Blades out of my body, all in the moment before her voice stopped echoing through the room.

Her sisters blinked, like they knew someone had been standing between them a second before, but couldn’t remember who, or even if there had really been anyone there. I sauntered forward, quietly saying, ”stand ready,” as I passed Larry, smiling as seven pairs of glowing blue eyes fixated on a smudge of dark silence behind me. ”Really? You’re here to take these shit tier assholes back to Valhalla?” As they stood there gaping at me, I laughed and called out, ”Hey, Boss?”

Loki’s voice echoed through every brain in the room, mortal or not. Yes, Tabitha Diaz?

”Yeah, let Hel know she can stop worrying about the whole Ragnarok thing.”

Oh?

The Valkyries had started to shake themselves free of their uneasiness about their numbers when I called out, ”yeah, I just got a read on the warthogging vomitous masses Odin’s been gathering in Valhalla.”

”You dare?” one of the Valkyries hissed at me.

”Oh, yeah, sorry, that was mean of me. Warthogs and Vomit don’t deserve to be compared to the shit Odin’s collecting.”

As Loki’s laughter filled the room, the Valkyrie who’d taken charge drew herself up and shouted, ”WHO ARE YOU, WHO DARES CALL THE BACKBITER TO...”

I disappeared her and left her remains in the empty farmstead’s pigpen. ”I’m sorry, Ladies. I’ll introduce myself properly. I’m Phileo City Heroic Academy Cadet Tabitha Diaz, Commander of the Phileo Relief Expedition to Lancaster House.”

As everyone in the room listened to the sounds of snickering interspersed with a rustling paper bag, another Valkyrie sneered. ”You Mortals and your ’institutions’.” The bitch actually lifted her hands to make the scare quotes. ”They mean nothing to us.”

”Oh. Okay then. I’m also Loki’s High Priestess. The chief one, not that it matters.”

Ah, incorrect, Tabitha. At my mental side-eye, he explained. Sarah Pesce. Marie’s mother.

”Really?”

It occurred to me that you’re rather busy, and someone ought be available to my growing Phileo Citycongregation.

”Aw, shit. I’m sorry, Boss.”

Never fear. You’re still my favorite, Tabitha Diaz. I suspect you always shall be, no matter what.

”YOU WILL STOP IGNORING...”

Five Valkyries stared at me, blinking. I looked up at Mister Slither and asked, ”hey, you feeling peckish?” At his nod I dropped the Valkyrie’s smoking remains and stepped back into myself. ”I’m also Loki’s Champion.”

The Valkyrie in their center crouched, eyes locked on me as she said, ”Sisters! Be on your guard! The Backbiter’s whore...”

Conrad looked up at me and I asked, ”hey son, can you salvage anything useful from this?”

He stepped up and grabbed the corpse’s hair, a perfectly fake, yet still perfect expression of gratitude on his face as he exclaimed, ”Mother! How thoughtful of you!” I stepped back into myself.

The Valkyrie on the left end drew. Her body from the hips down hit the floor first, followed by her forearms, belly, and the bottom half of her tits, and finally her shoulders flopped to the floor in the shower of confetti that used to be her head.

The three Valkyrie spun to face Larry, their swords coming out as they did. As he locked eyes with them, sword out in a simple long point stance, I dropped my Blend, Co-Located to just behind each of them, and said, ”Boo!”

They spun to face me, and I stepped backward to where I’d started, my Blend coming back up to normal as I did, my hands clasped behind me. Larry slid to a stop, looked at me, and with reproach clear in his voice said, ”I wouldn’t have hit you, Commander.”

”Never thought you would. But I didn’t want that mess all over me.” I nodded to where bits of Valkyrie were still landing in a messy pile.

He put his Blade away, flicking it before doing so. Purely ceremonial; that Blade would never need cleaning. ”Fair point. What gave you the idea of appearing as a dark Maenad?”

I shrugged. ”Figured they’d spend a moment looking, a moment registering what they were looking at, and a moment deciding what to do about it. More than long enough for you to take care of things.”

For the first time since we’d arrived, I saw something like a smile cross his face. Bleak, but still a smile. ”Ah. I suppose it was. Thank you for your confidence in me, I suppose.”

”Hey, you handled seven Lancaster Heroes, I figured four Valkyrie would be a cakewalk if I gave you an opening.”

He snorted out something like a laugh, then got a curious look. ”Why would they only send four for eight souls?”

”No fuckin’ clue. Maybe they were looking to get double teamed?”

He just rolled his eyes at me, shaking his head at my awful humor before remembering. His eyes slid closed, and tears leaked out. ”Fuck. Sorry.” I walked over, reached out and took his hand gently. ”Come on.”

I led him down the steps as he sobbed. Lachlan met us as we reached the third floor, Raven in a princess carry with her arms around his neck helping support her. She looked at each of us, then asked Larry, ”did you get her letter?”

”Letter?”

She hadn’t reached the point of crying yet. Rage still held sway behind her eyes, but she said, ”yeah. She dictated most of it to me. Made me promise to tell you about it if...” fury and sorrow choked her to silence.

I looked at Larry and said, ”wait here.” When he opened his mouth, I raised one finger and strode toward Raven and Bonnie’s suite. Once inside I checked the desk; some evidence she’d used it, but nothing like a letter. I looked everywhere I could think of until I finally got back to the sodden bed. Looking everywhere but at her, I saw a rectangular lump in one of the pillows. I reached in and pulled out a single envelope, sealed with wax and simply labelled, ’Laurence Lancaster’.

I carried it out to Larry, who leaned against the balcony railing, head down, eyes closed, arms crossed across his chest. Somehow I got the idea from his posture that the only reason he hadn’t thrown himself over it was because he knew he’d survive. From the floor above I heard a string of blood curdling cursing in Spanish. Lachlan’s voice carried down, ”Miss Raven, I don’t think you should...”

”You! Be silent until I say otherwise!”

”Yes, Ma’am.”

The strings of curses resumed, interspersed with the sound of one boot stomping and some suspiciously... liquid... sounds.

I walked over to Larry, lay a hand on his shoulder, and said, ”I found it.”

He opened his eyes, and where before I’d seen fire and ice, only desolation remained. He took the envelope from my hands then stood there holding it. After a bit he whispered, ”I... if I don’t open it, it’s like she’s still going to tell me something. Like she’s not gone.”

I took a deep breath and channeled my best Mom voice. ”Laurence. Open it. Read it. Now.”

He looked up at me, tears streaming freely, curses dying on his tongue as he looked at me and realized I wasn’t asking. With an angry twist of his wrists he snapped the wax seal, snatching the pieces that flew off out of the air and stuffing them into his jacket pocket with the envelope. Eyes watering, he silently read the letter. It took him longer than I thought it ought, but then it seemed every line he had to stop and clear his eyes. When he shuffled to the second page of the letter he froze.

”What did she say?”

Without taking his eyes from the second page, he wordlessly handed me the first one. It took me a moment, because the first few lines were written in childish, almost illegible block letters.

DEAR LARRY,

I DIED. KNEW I WOULD. RAVEN WRITES FOR ME.

The rest of the letter was written in beautiful cursive, almost calligraphy.

Beloved Laurence, I beg you not to think me forward, much as I beg you not to blame yourself.

I’ve known since long before I joined the Academy that, should I journey west of Phileo, I would meet an end like this.

It’s funny, in a way. The source of our long animosity, that our family spent money on paying an Oracle to foresee a use for me, rather than pay her apprenticeship to a professional artist.

They saw her talent, her shrewdness, her wicked mind and saw profit from all of them. I had nothing but a sweet voice, sweet face, sweet nature, an ill fit for a tannery.

Like they do, the Oracle told only me, threatening dire consequences would befall my family and yours alike should I tell a single soul.

A simple prophecy. So simple. So terrifying to a sweet natured child.

The next few lines returned to the earlier block writing. Someone writing with their off hand. Because something had eaten their writing hand.

’SHOULD EVER YOU JOURNEY WEST OF PHILEO, YOUR LIFE AND MAIDENHEAD ARE FORFEIT FOR THE SALVATION OF LANCASTER HOUSE.’

After that, the rest of the letter returned to Raven’s beautiful handwriting.

I had Raven leave space there for me to share it with you should the worst befall me. Hopefully I can fit it all in writing with my left hand. Hopefully, now that the worst has come, the Fates will not dole out further pain on you or Raven.

For a while, after the wyvern, I thought maybe, just maybe, that my fate wasn’t sealed, that I would surrender both my maidenhood and the rest of my life both to you, Laurence Lancaster.

Know that I would have. Gladly, had you asked. Gleefully, like the silly, useless, pretty girl I am.

Some tiny hopeful part of me still hopes that in defiance of Lancaster House Law and Custom you’ll ask me. If you do, if we do, if that really is my fate? I will burn this letter and gift you the picture behind it on the night you make me the happiest woman in the world and take me as your wife.

But if you are reading this, I have pre-deceased you. Not in battle, even. In the most horrific way I can imagine.

Know that I did so without fear. Pain, yes. Shame, probably. But never fear. Because for just one shining moment of basest degradation, I will not be a silly useless girl. I will be useful, at least to the one and only person who matters.

I will die, debased, and so my soul will wander until I find myself in Hel.

Because the salvation of your House? Will never be on the battlefield, where Lancaster after Lancaster has thrown themselves, clamoring for Valkyrie’s attention.

I saw the pain you hid as we found farmstead after farmstead dead or dying. I saw you wanting to fight against their fate.

I saw the moment you realized that you fought against something no sword could slay.

I saw the moment you realized that you, not your beloved beautiful idiot brother, (I wonder where you learned a fondness for such), were the one who would fight it.

Without weapons. Without Spells. Without the strength of your arms, though you will need that to remain Heir, I think.

With the true legacy of your father. With your mind, finally cleared of the lies you told me your family told itself.

You will fight it that way, because only then will you die in your bed.

When that happens, know that I will come for you.

Know that whatever happens, this silly, stupid, pretty girl loves you.

And, in the fullness of time?

I will see you in Hel.

Your Bonnie Obol, forever and always.

Carefully, trying not to ruin the letter, I stepped over to Larry’s side.

Tears dripping from his chin, he stared at Raven’s finest drawing yet. She’d captured the smile I saw on Bonnie’s face whenever she looked at Larry and thought he wasn’t looking.

I stepped up to him, lay a hand on his shoulder, and barely managed to catch the picture and keep it and the letter both safe as he collapsed, his face against my jacket as he clung to me and sobbed. I stood there, waiting, one arm around him, murmuring the kind of quiet bullshit you mutter to someone who’s too deep in grief to see anything else.

Eventually the sobs subsided. I looked down at the top of his head and asked, ”So. Was she right?”

He pulled away, confusion and hurt in his eyes. I grabbed his wrist, wiped his hand clean on my jacket, then put Bonnie’s letter and picture back in it. ”Wha... what?”

I leaned forward the tiniest bit, to look directly in his eyes. ”Was. She. Right.”

Hints of smoke rose from the desolation behind his eyes. ”How... how dare you.”

I stepped forward, never breaking eye contact, until we stood almost nose to nose. ”By her own admission she was a silly, stupid girl. Now that you’re using your head to think with instead of as a butt plug, we both know you’re more than capable of fooling one silly, stupid, crippled Cadet whose whole life had been fucked with by some bitch of an Oracle.”

Fury and confusion in equal amounts raged behind his eyes, but he didn’t back up another inch further. ”How. Dare. You.”

”Because in case you forgot, I am your Patron.” He opened his mouth to let out some furious retort, and I interrupted him with a barked, ”Lancaster!” Before he could recover, I asked, ”did I or did I not save your brother Lachlan?”

Something other than confusion, pain, and rage flickered in amidst all those in his eyes. ”You did, but...”

”Lancaster! Did I or did I not give you Justice?”

Confusion overcame pain and rage, and the tiniest blossom of the most terrifying emotion of all flickered to life in his eyes. Hope. ”Yes?”

”Now. As your Patron, who aided you before you declared for me, who gave you Justice not only against your cousins, but against the God and Demigoddesses who have supported them and their like for I don’t fucking know how many generations from this fucking fortress and palace, I ask you. Was. She. Right?”

”About what?” he breathed out, his voice hoarse from screams and sobs.

”Are you going to fix this shit show your family has inflicted on Lancaster House and everywhere they could spread their filth?”

Hope flickered, and the same determination I’d seen in him when he looked at his brother’s Valkyrie, his cousins, and the Valkyries who came for them slid into his eyes. ”For as long as I live. Should my Patron allow me to do so.”

”Allow you?” I barked out something superficially similar to a laugh. ”I would straight up tell you to do it if I didn’t know you doing it for your own reasons would work better.” I paused, then once again asked him. ”Now, was she right?”

Confusion again, but laced with tentative hope still. ”About what?”

”Would you have done so if you’d married her?”

Finally something snapped inside him. ”I’d fucking have to, wouldn’t I? Not like I’d be able to keep all this ’no wives’ bullshit going when Lord fucking Larry Lancaster got married, would I?”

”And the rest? The oppression of the women, the Bag, anybody who isn’t a Lancaster?”

He rolled his eyes. ”Like she’d stay with me if I didn’t.”

I shook my head, never breaking eye contact. ”Not good enough, Larry.”

He closed his eyes, sighed, and said, ”you’re right. It’s wrong. All of it. I will fix it. I will fix it or die trying.” He opened his eyes and, with a lopsided, hurting smile, said, ”in my bed, of old age or illness or whatever the fuck eventually kills me.” I barely heard his next words, and only because I still hadn’t gotten further from him than nose-to-nose. ”Just to see her again. That alone would make it all worthwhile, even if it wasn’t right.”

I mirrored his smile back at him. ”So you get it, knowing that you’d die a villain just to make her happy?”

He sighed. ”Yes. Yes, I would.”

”Now, final question. Was she right?”

”About fucking what this time?”

”Were you going to ask her?”

He shook his head, glaring at me. ”Yes. Yes, I was. Does that make you happy, knowing that I was about to throw everything I knew away to ask her for her hand in marriage?”

”No. You know she endured something that leaves people broken.”

”So did Lachlan. You healed him. Are you telling me that you couldn’t heal her?” A bit of the Lancaster sneer found its way back into his voice. ”Or that you wouldn’t?”

I smiled at him and shook my head. ”I absolutely would if I could. But I can’t. But maybe? Just maybe? If you can fly in the face of everything I know about Lancasters and be gentle, and kind, and patient? There’s the tiniest chance that you could.” He stood there, holding his breath. ”Would you? Would you do all that, and everything else, knowing that she might never be the silly, gentle girl you knew? Would you?”

He deflated. ”Yes. Yes, I would.”

”Even if she screamed every time you reached for her, and couldn’t bear to be alone in your company?”

He started to bristle, then laughed. ”If I can’t be patient with you, it’s not a good sign that I can be patient with her, isn’t it?”

”But you just were. Nobody’s fucking perfect. But you do your best, and catch yourself when you’d slip and fall. And catch her when she can’t catch herself.”

”Yes, Diaz. I would. I would have. I... why are you even asking me all this? Yes, I loved her and love her and will spend the rest of my life hoping that at the end of it I’ll be worthy enough to have her love me back! If I could undo what they did, I would do it. If I could have her here in front of me right now, I would ask her, no matter what she thought of me after what my fucking cousins did to her! I would! If I could I would, gods damn it! But...”

I clapped my hand over his mouth. ”Lachlan! Raven! Down here, on the double!” When they thundered down the steps like we were under attack, I pointed at Larry. ”Hold him here. Not one fucking word, Larry. You stand right there, don’t move, not one fucking word. Nod if you understand.”

He nodded.

I spun about and marched into Raven and Bonnie’s outer room. I might have slammed the door behind me, because I was pissed off, but it wasn’t the same as my rage before. Before, I’d have shut the world off in an instant, because any world where that kind of thing could happen...

Was a world. A world where people had the free will to be evil fucking bastards. I could change that, for certain. Just end the whole fucking thing. Everybody fucking dies.

But maybe. Just maybe? I could do something better.

Without looking, I lay a hand on Bonnie’s body. I carried it to Metaphoric Space, to the land of gods and myths and souls.

I dropped my Blend. I reached out, or reached in, or whatever. I could kill every living thing in existence. I could break the fucking planet if I wanted to. I could do this.

I glared at the bindings twisting her unnaturally. ”Go.” They evaporated, like they’d never been there.

I focused on Bonnie’s body, laying a hand on the still not quite healed stump of her right arm. ”Be Whole.”

Power seared through me, blackness whirling around Bonnie’s arm, her face, across her whole body.

”Revive.”

Funny, the power that had wrecked my arm for months? Barely a flicker.

Bonnie lunged upward, heaving a breath. I caught her before she could fall backward, slipped around behind her before she could really register who I was, and whispered in her ear. ”Cadet Obol. Do you trust me?”

She giggled a little. ”Not with my lunch. Or with makeup. But anything else, sure.”

I pushed my Blend back up. ”You’re braver and stronger than you know, you realize?”

She shook her head. ”Right now? Here? In the afterlife, where nothing else can hurt me? Not really? It’s easy to be brave.”

”Come with me.” I turned and led her out of the shadowy bedroom into the misty front room, then to the doorway. Without turning to look at her, I said, ”I won’t force you to go back. I could, mind you. I want to. But I won’t.”

She paused not a moment before asking, ”is he there?”

”Yes.”

”Is he hurt?”

”Physically? Not at all as far as I can tell.”

”Does... does he still want me? After...?”

I stepped us both to the far side of the door and back to the Mortal World at the same time.

”Why don’t you ask?”