Over the past few seasons, Arlette Faredin had been inside so many different dungeons and cells that she felt she could write a guide book about them. As far as dungeons went, Crirada’s was by far the best she’d seen. Instead of being chained to a wall, unable to move about, she had an entire cell to herself. The cell, one of the “three solid walls and one made out of metal bars” variety, was surprisingly spacious given what she was used to and even had a straw mattress in the corner. It was still a dungeon, though. The presence of a bed didn’t alter the fact that she’d been locked up beneath the citadel in Crirada for the last day and a half, trying not to lose her mind.

The story of Arlette’s childhood had, as expected, fallen entirely on deaf ears. Erizio Astalaria was, for all his insufferable flaws, an incredibly respected leader and warrior. The most powerful earth Observer known, he single-handedly forestalled any Ubran attempts at tunneling beneath the great wall surrounding the city. Not only that, he and his staff had expertly managed the defenses of the city so that Crirada still stood in defiance of the Ubran armies, something that few would be able to accomplish. But that brilliance came with a level of arrogance and high self-regard that meant Arlette would never be able to convince him he was wrong. Supreme General Erizio Astalaria wasn’t one to let the truth get between him and his conclusions, and sadly enough for her, he’d concluded decades ago that she was some secret Ubran agent.

It looked like Arlette’s role in the Siege of Crirada was over. She’d likely remain here in this cell for the remainder of the battle and be taken by the Ubrans, or Erizio would kill her. She wasn’t sure which was a worse fate.

With a depressed sigh, Arlette fell back onto the straw mattress and stared at the ceiling. It felt absolutely wretched to be so powerless. Here she was, stuck in a cell while Sebastian lurked in the city, free to enact his diabolical plan.

Or was he? Arlette had been so sure this time that she’d found him, so sure that she’d basically bet somebody else’s life on it. Her failure had thrown everything she’d believed since starting this entire debacle into doubt. The siege of Crirada had in many ways been an accident. The disappearance of the so-called “monster” who had rampaged through Nocend was likely the only reason that Crirada hadn’t fallen as quickly as the cities that had come before it. Had the Ubrans planned this? Had there been a limit to how much this monster woman could take before she was out of commission, and the Ubrans had known that meant they wouldn’t be able to use her at Crirada? Because if they hadn’t known, there would be no reason to send Sebastian here as they wouldn’t have thought they’d need him.

Everything that she’d bet her life on, and by extension Sofie’s and Pari’s lives, was based on assumptions, feelings, and guesswork. At the time it hadn’t felt that way, but now, in the cold dampness of the dungeon, she saw her decisions in a different light. She’d become so swept up in her hatred of the Empire and Sebastian for what they’d done to her homeland that she’d made choices based on pain and past trauma rather than cold logic. The very idea that she’d be able to have any effect on the outcome was patently laughable now. She felt adrift like she was falling through an empty void, unable to do anything but spin wildly in turmoil.

“That’s quite a face you’re making, you know.”

Arlette flailed about in surprise so hard that she fell off the mattress. After coming back to her senses, she looked up to find a man in his twenties with long, dark brown hair lying on the straw just beside where she’d been, his hands reaching up to cup behind his head in a relaxed, nonchalant manner.

“Peko, if I could strangle you right now...”

“Hey, Arlette, how’s it going?” the man replied with a cheeky grin. “You really got yourself in a mess now, didn’t you?”

“I don’t need to hear that from you, asshole,” Arlette retorted as she crawled back onto the straw before collapsing onto her back and staring back up at the ceiling again. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Peko shrugged. “I saw a rare opportunity to come out and I took advantage of it. Figured I might as well come to you for once instead of waiting for you to come inside to see me.”

“Mmmm,” Arlette hummed noncommittally.

The two didn’t say anything for a while, instead soaking in the silence of the dungeon. All the other prisoners were gone. The ones who had committed more minor crimes were likely helping with the defenses in exchange for their temporary freedom, while the worst criminals had likely been executed at the start of the siege to save food and resources. Now not even the scurrying of a rodent or a lizard could be heard through the stillness. This was a dead place. A fitting place for her, she surmised.

“Hey Arlette, why did you lock me away after we made it to Redwater Castle?” Peko asked suddenly.

“What? That’s what you want to talk about?”

“Well I haven’t had the chance to talk about it until now! We barely see each other anymore and whenever we do we’re either interrupted or everybody you care about has suddenly died. I went to sleep for a bit when you collapsed in front of the fortress, and then when I woke up I found you’d locked me inside and I couldn’t get out.”

“Well then maybe you should have said something before you disappeared instead of just vanishing without a word. You weren’t around for years, Peko, and guess what? I grew up. Imaginary friends are for little children. When you never came back, I figured that meant that I didn’t really need you anymore and I moved on.”

“I guess you didn’t until recently,” he sighed.

The two grew quiet again for a little while until Arlette finally broke the silence.

“Thanks for not being a jerk, Peko.”

“What, about the whole imprisonment thing?”

“Yeah...” she replied. “When I think about it now from your perspective, I kept you away for years and years and then dragged you out again when after Zrukhora happened and you would have been fully in the right to be angry at me but you weren’t. You really helped me then when you didn’t have to and you’ve kept helping me since even though I haven’t done anything to deserve it.”

“Arlette, what do you think I am?”

“Huh?”

“I had a lot of time to think about that kind of thing. Why do I exist, all that kind of stuff. Eventually, I decided that I must exist because you needed help. You were afraid and lonely and full of all these confusing feelings and so, without realizing it, you created somebody to help you with those things. So why would I be upset over being used for my purpose? It’s what I was made for. I’m just happy that you came back to me. Besides, it wasn’t that bad; it’s not like I was stuck in a dark room like this for two decades. I got to watch you grow up and root for you along the way, even if you couldn’t hear me. You did pretty well even without me, if I may say so.”

“Peko...” Arlette felt a surge of gratitude towards her strange companion and rolled over onto him while reaching out to give him a hug, only to fall right through.

Peko snickered. “Nope! Still not real. I appreciate the sentiment regardless.”

Arlette rolled back onto her side of the mattress. “So now that you’re back, what next? Are you going to start manifesting outside all the time like you used to?”

“Nah, I think I’m going to keep hidden most of the time from now on. You’re right, imaginary friends are for little children. If I just started hanging around you again everybody would think you’re strange, and people think that enough about you as it is.” Arlette shot him a nasty look, only to be met with that trademark cheeky grin. “I’ll come out when we’re alone and when there’s need for it. If you want to see me, you can come inside and see me any time you want.”

Arlette thought about it. “I guess that’s best. People would probably get the wrong idea about you. I mean, can you imagine what Astalaria would think if he heard me talking to somebody else down here? It would just be more confirmation that I’m some Ubran spy or some shit. Fuck that asshole.”

Peko nodded. “Right. I’ll just have to be your secret for the near future at least. It’s for the-”

A sudden low, muffled boom cut him off as the cell and the entire dungeon trembled beneath Arlette for a short moment before falling still once more.

“What was that?” Arlette asked aloud to nobody. Peko just looked towards the dungeon entrance with a look of concern on his face before saying “I should go” and vanishing without another word, leaving Arlette to stew in confusion alone.

Time was hard to track while underground, so when Arlette first heard the sound of footsteps echoing through the hall outside she wasn’t sure if it had been half an hour or four hours since the strange tremor. Though she’d strained her ears to the maximum, she’d been unable to detect a single sound until now. The cluttered sounds of a group of people walking over well-worn stone suddenly ceased, transforming into the much more ominous rhythmic gait of a single person. Arlette held back a tired sigh. The identity of these footsteps was obvious to her long before they arrived at her cell.

“Don’t you have better things to do than come down here and bother me?” she asked sourly as Supreme General Erizio Astalaria finally came into view.

The man scowled, his long face and neat, pointed beard accentuating his displeasure. “If you had a lick of sense you’d know to shut your trap when speaking with your superior.”

Arlette rolled her eyes. “What are you going to do? Kill me earlier than before? Or is there some secret dungeon even deeper than this one you can stick me in?”

“Silence.” Arlette’s next retort caught in her throat. “I will ask you some questions. You will answer them truthfully, or else.”

Arlette swallowed nervously. The Erizio standing before her today was much different than the one from the interrogation. Gone was the haughty arrogance, the self-congratulatory preening. Arlette could see in the commander’s eyes that today he meant business.

“You attacked a man under my employ. Why?”

“I told you last time, it was an accident. I thought he was Sebastian. Same height, same build, never takes off his helmet. They even have the same walk and carry themselves in the same way. New mercenary band, but a disproportionate amount of success for a group so recently formed.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” he replied with a withering glare. “The odds that you would find one man amongst the tens of thousands of people in this city are preposterous.”

Arlette massaged her temples with her hands. Just being around this prick was enough to give her a headache. “That’s not how it happened,” she insisted. “The only reason I started looking into him was because I was searching for Sebastian and I ran across his group acting suspiciously.”

The general’s eyes went thin and his scowl deepened.

“Look, I know I made a mistake,” Arlette pressed on, “but they’re definitely involved with something that can’t be good. They’re building hidden compartments in buildings all around the Worker’s Quarter. I don’t know what they’re up to but-”

“Enough,” he snarled, his presence beginning to exude an intimidating aura that made Arlette flinch. “You will make no more mention of them to anyone and cease your investigations into their activities. Is that understood?”

“What?” Was he involved with this whole thing somehow? After failing to kill the leader, she had woken up in the Citadel, and the two of them had been there together. Had she completely misunderstood what was going on?

“I asked you a question. Is that clear?”

Arlette looked about at the smooth stone that surrounded her. “What the fuck do you think I’m going to do? I’m locked in a fucking cell, you creep!”

“I had been considering releasing you, but if you cannot follow simple instructions and know your place, then I will have no choice but to let you rot down here.”

“Hold on, after all that before about me being an Ubran, you’re offering to just let me go?” Arlette was getting more and more confused by the second. She couldn’t help but be suspicious by such a bizarre turn from somebody who had considered her an enemy.

“Several respected members of the army have come forward to vouch not just for your skill in battle but also your... enthusiasm. I am willing to release you, should I come to believe that it is a wise decision.”

“...what’s the catch?”

“There is no ‘catch’, merely a simple condition. I will return your freedom only if you drop this silly crusade of yours. Your value to me, marginal as it may be, is as a soldier and only as a soldier.”

“What? No!” Arlette objected.

“This Sebastian, if he even does exist, would not be here in Crirada. I will not tolerate the disruption your activities would generate. Give it up. You are on a fool’s errand.”

Arlette and Erizio glared at each other for a tense moment before she sat back down on the nearby straw.

“I refuse,” she stated with finality. “I cannot rest until I know that that bastard is dead and buried. I will make him pay for what he did, even if it takes me years. If that’s your price, then you can shove it.”

The general shrugged and turned to leave. “A shame. To think that your friends sold themselves to me for your freedom, only for you to refuse to be released.” He walked out of her view. “I will be making use of them regardless. Farewell, Demirt.”

“Wait!” she cried, springing up to her feet and practically throwing herself at the bars to her cell. “What are you talking about?!”

“Oh, did I forget to mention?” he replied with a snide sneer. “Your little companions came to us begging for us to let you out. They demonstrated some very impressive creations, which they will be creating for us from now on to pay for your freedom. You’re lucky what they showed me put me in a good mood, as I have half a mind to execute you just for hiding them from me this whole time.”

Arlette’s legs grew weak and she slowly sank down to her knees as she suddenly connected the dots. That tremor... it must have been one of Pari’s bombs. Those fools! They’d put themselves in danger to try to save her. Now that Supreme General Astalaria knew of what Pari could do, there was no way he’d leave them alone. A veritable geyser of guilt erupted inside her. She’d put her friends in danger...

“Fine. You win. I’ll do it.”

“Swear to me on your life—no, on the lives of your little ‘family’—that you will obey my conditions to the letter.”

“I swear.”

The man’s sneer widened into a grin of victory. “I’m glad we could have this little discussion,” he said as he walked off, leaving Arlette feeling empty inside.

*     *     *

The night was in full swing as Arlette finally stepped out of the citadel. After the general had left, the others who’d come with him had released her and escorted her from the dungeon before returning her weapons and armor and practically shoving her out the front gate. As she exited the fortress, a sudden impact slammed into her waist, staggering her slightly.

“Arly-sis!” her attacker scolded as she buried her head into Arlette’s hip. “Arly-sis didn’t tell Pari that Arly-sis was leaving and Pari got really worried! Arly-sis is a big mean poopy-head!”

A Sofie-sized figure appeared in the gloom on the other side of her and wrapped her up in a tight embrace. Arlette could hear the young woman sniffling and holding back tears against her shoulder.

“A big mean poopy-head? Sofie, you’re corrupting Pari with your vulgar language,” Arlette joked, trying to lighten the mood. She could see the red puffiness around her friend’s eyes that told her all she needed to know.

“Shut up, stupid!” Sofie retorted with another long sniff. “I was so worried that something was going to happen to you!”

“I’m alright, I’m alright, don’t worry,” Arlette replied.

“Hey, there she is!” called a familiar voice a bit of a way off. Arlette looked towards the sound to find her squadmates approaching with smiles on their faces.

“What are you all doing here?” she wondered.

“Your sister came around looking for you, asking if we knew where you were,” Sergeant Muga answered.

“We’d all figured you’d had too much to drink and passed out or something,” Kima added with a laugh.

“You moron!” Lezo said with a wide smile on his face as he slapped her hard on the back several times. “Why didn’t you just tell us who you were all along so I didn’t think you were some sorry guardsman this whole time?”

“You told them?” Arlette asked, sending an accusatory glare Danel’s way.

“It was me,” Sofie admitted. “I needed their help so I decided to tell them a bit. I didn’t know that he already knew.”

Danel shrugged. “I figured that it didn’t matter once the secret was already out. Better than keeping silent and having you stay locked up when we could really use you.”

“Is it really true that you punched a king in the face and got away with it?” Lezo inquired with a starry-eyed look of admiration.

“Haaaaaaahhh...” Arlette sighed. It looked like her life here was about to change. Whether it was for the better, she wasn’t so sure.

*     *     *

Arlette sat in her small living room sipping on a meal and enjoying her regained freedom. The meal was soup again, which, while a bit of a bummer, was to be expected at this point. Soups and stews were about the only things the defenders had enough food for anymore. Though today it tasted weak and watery, to Arlette it was one of the best meals she could remember.

“Hey, Sofie,” she said after a while, “thanks for coming to my rescue like that-”

“Of course!” Sofie chirped with a smile as she sat across the table with her own bowl of diluted soup.

“-but you shouldn’t have done that,” Arlette finished.

“Arlette, if you try to tell me that you’re not worth rescuing, I’m going to scream,” Sofie warned. “The price we paid was nothing compared to getting you back.”

“I don’t think you understand just how serious it is that the Eterians know about what you two can do. You’re now persons of interest to them. If we survive this siege, there’s no guarantee that they’ll even let you go. They might keep you around and make you make bombs and whatnot as long as the war keeps going... maybe even after that.”

“I thought that Eterium doesn’t have slaves,” Sofie objected.

“They don’t, but desperate people do desperate things. They could just lock you away somewhere and pretend to themselves that it’s not the same. You’re just two people. The only person who would notice if you disappeared would be me. Honestly, I’m shocked they didn’t stuff you in a room in the citadel already for ‘protection’ or something.”

“They tried, but we demanded that we stay here with you or we wouldn’t cooperate. I can drive a decent bargain when I want to, you know,” came the smug reply.

“You can’t just assume that they’ll honor that bargain though. This isn’t like your world, Sofie. You can’t trust people here. I mean, he demanded that I stop looking for Sebastian if I wanted to be freed, even after you sold out to him, and he even threatened to kill you both if I disobeyed! That’s the kind of man that you’re dealing with here!”

Sofie put her bowl down, a somber look on her face that Arlette hadn’t seen in a long time. “Look, Arlette... I get that I don’t exactly understand everything about this world. I know you want to protect us and that you want what’s best for us. I get all that. But at some point, you have to start giving me and Pari a little bit more respect. I’m not a child, I’m an adult—I can vote and everything. I’m old enough and informed enough at this point that I can make my own god damned decisions about my life. Pari and I helped you because we decided it was what we wanted to do, just like how we decided that accompanying you here was what we wanted to do. We knew that there is risk involved going in. We did it anyway. It’s time you acknowledged that.”

Arlette didn’t respond, instead just staring into her soup. What Sofie said was true, but that didn’t make Arlette feel any better about it.

“Besides,” continued the Earthling with a sudden bright smile, “you promised that you’d help me find a way home, so there’s no way I’m letting you die in a cell somewhere if I can help it. It’s going to take a lot more than the Eterians to split us apart.”

“Heh,” Arlette chuckled. “I did promise that, didn’t I?” Arlette had been so wrapped up in her own problems that she’d totally forgotten about that. The thought brought a fresh wave of guilt. She was somebody who believed in honoring promises as best as she could, but she’d done absolutely nothing to help Sofie towards the other woman’s end goal.

“That’s right,” Sofie stated with a wry grin. “Don’t think you can get out of it now. You’re stuck with me for the long haul.”

There were worse things than that, Arlette decided.

*     *     *

Things weren’t going well up on the wall this morning. It was her first day back after her imprisonment so perhaps something had changed while she’d been away, but it seemed like there were far fewer defenders guarding the northwest side of the wall than there used to be. The number of Ubrans, however, remained the same.

Arlette threw herself backwards as a large mace swung through her former position. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t entirely fast enough, and the edge of the weapon clipped her side and sent her tumbling. She grimaced as she staggered back to her feet, her hand feeling the large dent in her new armor. She’d just replaced her last chest piece too!

Her opponent, a stocky woman clad in thick armor from head to toe, was proving to be a tough match. Thick armor was one of Arlette’s weaknesses since she couldn’t overpower the defense like some others. Instead, she had to aim for the weak spots like the seams between the pieces, which made her attacks predictable and easy to defend. That meant that Arlette’s best chance was to fight defensively, avoiding attacks and waiting for her opponent to make a mistake.

The problem was that this woman wasn’t making mistakes. Her form was composed under pressure and she absolutely refused to over-commit. Instead, she had methodically worked Arlette into a corner with smart attacks and positioning until Arlette couldn’t effectively run anymore. Arlette didn’t have the strength to block this Feeler’s blows, which meant she was in real trouble.

Ideally, this was where she’d switch with somebody like Lezo; his greater strength and large axe would give him the advantage against this woman. Unfortunately, all of her squadmates were in fights for their lives as well, their normal squad tactics broken by the overwhelming numbers of the Ubrans. Lezo himself was currently busy with not one but two opponents, and just her voice might be enough to distract him and cost him his life.

Speaking of which, Arlette suddenly had an idea for a trick to get her out of this mess. It was a trick that she’d used many times before with varying success. She could only hope that this time it worked, as she would have to bet everything on it.

Just as her opponent’s weapon reared back, a voice shouted “Behind you!” in Ubran from behind her. The woman flinched and twisted back, trying to see what threat was coming her way. There was nothing. The voice had been an illusion, created by Arlette using her experience with the Ubran dialect.

The moment Arlette saw the woman begin to turn, she launched herself forward, stabbing her sword as hard as she could towards the small crease on her opponent’s neck between the helmet chest armor. The woman spotted Arlette coming for her and tried to twist out of the way. For once the Ubran’s armor worked against her instead of in her favor as it limited her available movement and slowed her down. It was just enough that Arlette was still able to land her blow, tossing aside any pretence of defense and using everything she had to push her blade through the resistance of the leather between the metal. With a victorious “shuck!”, the metal ripped into the woman’s flesh, ending her life and preserving Arlette’s own.

Arlette stepped back with a breath of relief... and immediately dove to the side as a blast of flame came flying through. With a series of curses, she pushed herself to her feet as a series of three horn blasts rang out from the gatehouse nearby. It was something she’d hoped to never hear: the order to retreat.

“Fall back!” Sergeant Muga shouted from somewhere nearby.

Arlette wasted no time, rushing for the nearest staircase as the rout began, confused and angry at what had just occurred. Where had the rest of the defenders been? Why hadn’t any jaglioths come through when they’d been in trouble? She didn’t have much time to think about it, however, as she descended the stairs taking the steps two and three at a time while avoiding a variety of projectiles falling all around her. Defenders were dropping left and right under the onslaught, sometimes tripping others as they fell and causing a small cascade that left soldiers tumbling down the steps or trampled to death under the feet of their own fleeing brethren.

Somehow, she made it to the bottom alive, though she’d had several close calls. The rest of her squad, amazingly, had survived the descent as well, though not entirely intact. Danel had an arrow sticking out of his shoulder, while Lezo and Kima each had severe-looking burn wounds on their back and front, respectively.

“Head for the citadel!” Sergeant Muga cried over the din, and together they ran through the Worker’s Quarter towards the city center. Their first priority was to regroup at the citadel for a possible counterattack. Though the northwest portion of the wall had fallen, that did not mean the city had to fall. The passages between the quarter and the rest of the city would be sealed, with forces being sent over to reinforce the walls and barriers that marked the quarter’s boundaries. With luck, they could keep the Ubrans contained within the Worker’s Quarter long enough to mount a counterattack and perhaps push them back out of the city. The odds were slim, but thanks to the compartmentalized layout of Crirada there was still a chance for survival.

That chance wasn’t looking so good at the moment, however. Arlette glanced behind to catch a glimpse of Ubran soldiers streaming down the multiple staircases that led up and down the wall, slicing through anybody foolish enough to still stand in their way. In just a few moments, they’d take the nearby gatehouse and open the North Gate, releasing a flood of bloodthirsty Imperials into the Worker’s Quarter. Those hundred thousand or more people would sweep through the area, killing anybody dumb or unlucky enough to be caught in this part of the city after the retreat horns were sounded.

A bad idea, unbidden, entered Arlette’s mind. What if...

“I have to split up,” she called to the sergeant up ahead. “I need to check that they got out.”

“You taught them the codes, right?” he replied, understanding immediately who ‘they’ were. “They surely left as soon as they heard the horn, if they weren’t already gone.”

“But I don’t know. I have to make sure!”

“Then go! But be quick! The Ubrans will be upon us all soon!”

Arlette nodded and swerved towards an upcoming cross street and worked her way towards her home. The streets of the city had never been busy since the start of the siege, but now they were absolutely empty, speeding up her progress. Shortly, huffing from the prolonged, exertion, Arlette threw open the front door to her small home.

“Sofie! Pari!” she called, but she heard no reply. Quickly, just to make sure, she ran up the stairs and checked the room where Sofie did her translation work. The books that the other woman kept were all missing. They’d run like they were supposed to.

Relief filled Arlette and she ran back outside, her steps now just a little bit lighter. Turning towards the citadel, she ran off.

Arlette’s primary worry had been that the pair would have instead hidden in their house instead of leaving. Back at the start of the siege, she herself had told Sofie to hide for at least two days if the city fell. At the time she’d thought that, as “civilians”, they wouldn’t be killed once discovered. That notion had changed over time, as she’d fought the Ubrans more and more. Now, she wasn’t sure that they would survive being discovered at all. There was an edge to her opponents that had worn away at her earlier belief. Plus, now that Pari was helping the Eterians by building bombs, they weren’t noncombatants anymore. With that in mind, she’d recently changed her instructions from “hide” to “get the fuck out”.

It was good that the rambunctious pair could follow instructions these days. If this had been the Sofie and Pari from back when she’d first met them both, she would have put at least even money on the odds that she would have found them still in the house. But over time they’d both matured, though admittedly Sofie far more than Pari, and she felt like she could trust them with-

“Arlette!”

Okay, maybe not.

Arlette skidded to a halt and turned around as Sofie rushed out of a nearby alley, her one arm filled with her precious tomes. “What are you doing here?!” she hollered at her idiotic companion. “You were supposed to get out, you moron!”

“We were, but we found somebody on the way! We gotta help him!”

“What, are you crazy?!”

“He’s stuck inside one of those hidden compartments you were talking about!”

“I don’t care where he—wait, what?”

Sofie grabbed Arlette’s hand and pulled her into the alleyway and around a bend, where they found a confused looking Pari standing beside her massive sack of things and a compartment that had been built into the back of a building. The building’s back had been extended out with a false wall so that the compartment seemed like just a part of the building if you weren’t looking and the compartment’s sides were fully shut.

The one side of this one, however, was open, revealing to Arlette a thin, haggard man contorting in pain against the compartment walls. A strange incense burned inside the small space, filling it with a noxious purple haze. Opened shackles rested at the man’s feet alongside charred rope.

None of this really registered with Arlette; she was too busy staring at the man’s eyes. Everything in the man’s eye sockets was gone, replaced instead with a black emptiness that seemed to absorb the light around it. Arlette’s breath caught in her throat, and her body began to subconsciously tremble. She knew what this was. This was a Severed.

“Run.”

A wisp of black smoke began to leak from the voids that were the man’s eye sockets.

“Wait!” Sofie objected. “What about-”

“RUN!” Arlette screamed, sprinting for the alley opening.

“But what about him?” Sofie called as she and Pari ran after Arlette.

“JUST GO!” Arlette’s mind was falling to pieces. A Severed. There was a severed in that compartment. There’d been compartments all around the Worker’s Quarter. If, stars forbid, there was a Severed in each compartment, that far along...

There was no way they were going to make it to the citadel in time. Quickly Arlette wracked her mind for the closest way out of the quarter using the mental map she’d developed by skulking about the entire city this last season.

“This way!” she shouted, turning down a nearby street. “We have to make it to the wall between the quarters or we’re dead!”

“Arlette, what’s going on?” Sofie cried.

Arlette glanced back to find that Sofie was close behind her but Pari was falling behind, her short legs combining with her heavy load to slow her down. Cursing her own softness, Arlette stopped and ran back, grabbing the sack from Pari and swinging it over her shoulder before taking off once more. “There’s no time! Just run! Faster than you’ve ever run before!”

Arlette’s lungs ached and her legs screamed in agony but she pushed herself anyway, powering through the pain with adrenaline and fear. It would be happening any moment now. If they weren’t fully out of range...

The wall that separated the Commerce Quarter and the Worker’s Quarter was just up ahead now. One of the four walls inside the city, it ran from the citadel all the way to the larger outer wall. With the gates between the two sections closed off to stop the Ubrans who were currently pouring through the North Gate, there was only one other way out: six flights of stairs that, like those on the outer wall, periodically ran up the side of the wall from the surface all the way to the top. Arlette’s goal, the closest stairs from where they’d started, was finally in sight.

A frenzied sprint later, the three arrived at the stairs. Arlette didn’t stop for an instant, ignoring the protests of her entire body at this point as she forced herself to climb the stairs as fast as she could. The other two, thankfully, were not far behind, their own fear stoked by the panic they saw in her. She could feel her body giving out, all the fighting and running having exhausted her beyond her limits, but she knew she could not stop. Not yet.

Just as they neared the top of the stairs, Arlette felt it: a spike of wrongness blooming within her, twisting and roiling her insides. Then the rest of the senses followed. Low, inhuman wails echoed all across the Worker’s Quarter, the sounds sending vicious waves of panic and fear through her body. She threw herself up the final steps with everything she had left inside her, Pari’s sack of things falling from her hands as she fell unceremoniously on the stone as a panting Sofie and Pari collapsed right beside her.

And then the whole world below them became a nightmare.

Translucent dark hemispheres exploded out from all around the quarter, consuming the entire Worker’s Quarter with giant domes of void. Within those pitch black bubbles, Arlette could see a bizarre, distorted version of what had been there just moments before. It was as if something had sucked away all the colors, leaving only various shades of white against the inky emptiness. Everything inside seemed to bend and stretch, undulating much like how the world seemed to shimmer when looking through hot air rising from a stone road on a warm summer day. It was as if reality itself was being violently warped almost to the breaking point on the other side of the black film just below her. Her body reflexively shivered at the sight.

From her high vantage point, Arlette could see thousands upon thousands of people, primarily the Ubrans who had been pouring in through the open gate, inside the otherworldly fields. They ran about in a frenzy, trying to escape, but there would be no escape for the vast majority of them, she knew. Almost nothing survived a Severed event.

Already she could see the tentacles emerging from the epicenter of each of the bubbles, where the Severeds had been hidden. Thousands, no, tens of thousands of things that the human mind refused to even fully process undulated outward faster than any person could run. When Arlette stared at them, it felt like she was only seeing a fraction of their true form, like they broke the rules of reality in ways that she could not even comprehend. It was like they weren’t made up of solid matter, but almost rather the absence of it.

Arlette could feel Sofie’s hand trembling as together they watched the multitude of impossible appendages quickly overwhelm the terrified Ubrans. Some people had the presence of mind to fight back, chopping at the tentacles with their blades or blasting away at them with fireballs and the like. Their efforts were effective on the micro scale, as the appendages could be cut or burned, but they mattered little on the macro level. There were always a hundred more tentacles to replace the single one that fell, smashing, grabbing, stabbing, killing.

The wall they stood upon shook as tremors wracked the Worker’s Quarter. Unnatural roars and screeches emanated from the black zones, the sounds making Arlette’s skin crawl. She wanted nothing more than for this whole event to be over, but there was nothing she could do but watch, wait, and hope that the Severeds burned out soon.

“What is this?” Sofie whispered in horror. The woman’s face had gone whiter than the purest salt as she stared, aghast, at the carnage before her.

“A Severed attack,” Arlette replied. “Observers, on a fundamental level, are altering the world. You see the flame, but you also see the world and how the two come together. Your flame is not manifesting in nothing, and so you must paint your fire upon the canvas that is reality itself. But there is a risk, however. A few people with strong soulforce and ill minds, often old people losing themselves in the final years, run the risk of losing their grip on what is real. They become... severed from reality. This is what happens.”

“It’s so terrible! Just that one man caused all of this?”

“No. Each of those bubbles is a person. This is...” She grit her teeth in outrage. “Anybody that is about to become Severed must be killed immediately. That rule is maybe the only rule in the world that every single nation follows. Eterium is no different. These people should have been killed a long time ago, but instead it looks like the Eterians were keeping them alive using tucrenyx and drugs to hold them for some reason. This is a crime. A horrible crime. It goes against everything that living beings stand for.”

The tentacles continued to writhe as they reached out further, wrapping around the buildings and the surrounding environment. The tremors increased in intensity and the unearthly howling increased in volume once more as the entire Worker’s Quarter was overtaken by writhing blackness. Then suddenly existence itself seemed to break. The world inside the bubbles broke, fracturing into smaller and smaller shards. These fragments of reality began to fly towards the middle of their bubbles like leaves circling a drain, more and more of them every moment getting sucked into the gaping, insatiable vortex that now stood where the Severed had each been hidden. Then there was an audible “pop!” and the bubbles vanished just as suddenly as they’d appeared.

“Oh my god...” Sofie breathed, staring out at the aftermath. Almost nothing remained of the Worker’s Quarter. Nearly the entire quarter had been covered in those terrible domes, and all that remained now was nothing but a barren, empty crater where each dome had stood. The buildings, the people, none of it was left except dirt and the aura of death.

“This was the Supreme General’s plan from the start!” Arlette realized suddenly. As if to confirm her conclusions, she saw a wave of jaglioths crashing down the wall from both sides towards the breached section. Suddenly a series of massive explosions erupted from around the open gate, severing the flow of Ubran troops that had already come to a halt from the Severed attacks. Eterian troops were already pushing the Ubrans from the gatehouse and retaking the entire area. The gate would be closed and sealed soon. Arlette’s hands balled into fists. “That crazy bastard! What the fuck was he thinking!?”

“Our house!” Sofie gasped. “Our house is gone! All our stuff! It’s all gone! What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Arlette seethed. All they had with them were Arlette’s weapons, Sofie’s book, and Pari’s candlemaking equipment. Everything else, from their clothes to their food, had literally vanished into thin air. “I don’t know.”

That night, the three of them sat in a small room in an inn in the Commerce Quarter in relative silence. Sofie seemed completely miserable by the loss of their house and everything inside it. Pari, on the other hand, was busy making some boomcandles at Arlette’s request. The beastgirl seemed far less affected by their shared experience than Sofie or Arlette. Not that she hadn’t been scared, but the level of fear Arlette had seen in her eyes was far less than normal, especially for somebody so young. Then again, Pari never seemed to be scared of threats to her life. Arlette wasn’t sure if the girl was incredibly courageous or just too stupid to realize how close to death she kept coming.

“So, uh...” Arlette finally said, breaking the silence. After hours of equivocating, she had finally made a decision. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to put you both in danger. I’m going to go back to hunting for Sebastian.”

“But what about the Supreme General’s conditions?” Sofie replied with concern. “You promise that you’d stop.”

“Fuck that bastard and fuck his fucking conditions,” Arlette growled. “I don’t care how desperate he is. Nobody who would commit such a terrible act is worth respecting.”

Sofie grunted approvingly. “You’re right. Fuck him. He ruined our house just to kill a bunch of people. But still... even after last time you still think he’s out there?”

“I do, and I’m going to find him. I already found one secret plot, it just was the wrong one. I think I’m going to head out now, actually. Get a little done tonight.”

“Not tonight,” Sofie stated firmly.

“But I want to get-”

“I said no,” Sofie replied with finality, grabbing Arlette’s arm and dragging her towards a nearby bed. “You have no idea how tired and frazzled you look. It’s been a long day and we’ve all been through a lot. It’s time all we got some sleep. You too, Pari. Time for bed.”

“Awwww,” Pari whined. Arlette echoed the child’s sentiment in her head but decided it wasn’t worth the fight tonight. Sofie didn’t look like she was going to accept any arguments right now anyway.

Lying down on the bed, she closed her eyes and tried to calm her mind. She’d been through a lot today, and it had dredged up memories that she didn’t want to deal with. Sofie must have been right because sleep came quicker for Arlette than she’d expected. With it came dreams.

*     *     *

“Arlette, come here please!”

Arlette perked up at the call. It was her mother’s voice coming from the kitchen. Quickly dropping the blocks she’d been playing with, Arlette ran from her room, down the stairs, through the living room, and into the kitchen as fast as her tiny legs could carry her.

“There you are!” her mother said with a warm smile as Arlette entered the room. She handed her a small coin. “I miscounted my ingredients and I need some more eggs. Go over to Mister Adar’s house and ask for three eggs and give him the coin, alright?”

Arlette paled. “But he’s scary!” she protested. Mister Adar was an old man down the road who raised a flock of docile egg-laying birds known as “parins”. Arlette thought that the parins were cute, especially the baby ones she’d seen this last spring, but Mister Adar himself was a different story. He was old and mean and she didn’t like the way he would glare at her.

“Come now, you’re four years old, that’s old enough to handle this,” her mother replied, rubbing her head affectionately. “Now hurry, I need them now if I want to finish dinner before your father gets home.”

Forlorn, Arlette slowly made her way out of her family’s house and onto the main road in the village. The house was one of the larger ones around, with two floors and a large backyard where her mother grew all sorts of vegetables that Arlette hated but her mother made her eat anyway. Reluctantly, she turned towards the outskirts of the village, where Mister Adar lived.

“Hey there, dumpling! What’s wrong?”

Arlette looked up in delight to find her father walking in the opposite direction, his spear in his hand and an amused grin on his face.

“Can you go with me to Mister Adar’s house?” Arlette begged, tugging on his pant leg. “I have to get three eggs but he’s scary and I don’t want to go alone.”

“Sorry, I have to make one more round before I’m done. But you’re a brave girl, right? I know you can do it!”

“B-but-”

“Now now, Arlette, remember what you said last night? Remember you said that you wanted to be a knight when you grew up so you could protect everybody like me?”

“You’re not a knight!” Arlette objected.

“That’s right, I’m just a lowly sheriff,” he chuckled. “But you’re going to be better than me, right? You’re going to need to be very brave if you want to be a knight. Knights aren’t afraid of harmless old men.”

“I...” Arlette’s face scrunched up as she thought over her father’s words. She really didn’t want to go but... “Okay, I’ll go.”

“That’s my girl!” He gave her a loving pat on the back and resumed his patrol. “See you at dinner!”

Arlette continued down the street towards Mister Adar’s house, her steps now filled with purpose. Mister Adar wasn’t really that scary, she told herself. Besides, his house was far, sure, but it was still within sight of her house. If he was mean, she could just run back home and her mom would go punch him or something. The thought made her giggle.

Soon enough she arrived at her destination. The area was fairly quiet, save for the rustling of leaves in the early autumn breeze and the clucks and calls of the parins coming from behind the house. Taking a deep breath, Arlette knocked on the door.

Nothing.

She knocked again, as loud as she could manage. “Mister Adar?” she called.

Nothing.

Strange. Not sure what to do, Arlette rounded the home to check the parins. Perhaps he was busy feeding them and didn’t hear her? He was old, after all.

Indeed, the old man was in the backyard, though not exactly how she’d anticipated. Instead of standing with a basket of parin food, surrounded by hungry flightless birds, she found him collapsed on the ground, twitching and spasming, while the parins were nowhere to be found. She couldn’t see his face, but it looked to her like he was in a lot of pain. As she approached, she could hear grunts coming from him, as well as some gibberish every so often, making her even more uneasy.

As soon as she got close enough to see his face, her body instinctively stepped back. Something was definitely wrong with Mister Adar! Specks of foam flecked his mouth, which was stuck in a perpetual grimace. His whole face, really, was contorted in agony. But what set off her alarms were his eyes. The entirety of his eyes was a black so dark that they seemed to absorb the light around them. Staring into those unnatural eyes, Arlette felt a chill of danger down her spine. A moment later, an equally dark smoke began to slowly seep out from the dark wells in his eye sockets. Arlette couldn't take any more of the danger signals her instincts were screaming at her. She turned around and sprinted back towards her home. Something was terribly wrong with Mister Adar. She didn’t know what it was, but her mother would surely know.

Then suddenly everything changed.

A terrible low-pitched howl came from the yard behind her and shook her to her core, just as the world itself turned black and white. Arlette cried out in fear, tears of terror already streaming down her face, but she kept running. She felt the ground tremble and staggered but quickly recovered and kept going.

Horrified, panicked screams rang out from the other nearby houses, but their voices were quickly overwhelmed by the horrifying noises of hundreds of somethings moving behind her. She was too afraid to look back to find out what the source of the sounds was, but she knew one thing: the noises were getting closer and fast.

She could see her own home just up ahead, it also shaded in black and white. An impact slammed into the back of Arlette’s right shoulder and something pierced through and out the front. With a shriek of agony, she found herself lifted up from the ground by some horrid tentacle that was sticking out from her shoulder.

“Daddy! Mommy! Help!” she cried at the top of her lungs, her body twisting in pain. She could feel the thing worming inside of her, an abominable sensation that made her hair stand on end and her skin crawl.

“Arlette! No!” a voice yelled out not too far away. All of a sudden there was the sound of metal cutting into flesh and she tumbled back down towards the ground, only to land in her father’s strong arms.

Before she could say anything, her father had turned and was sprinting towards their house as quickly as his Feeler-enhanced strength would allow. It wasn’t enough. First, a tentacle wrapped itself around one of his legs, causing him to stumble. Then another snagged his left arm, which was what was holding his spear. Arlette heard her father grunt and strain against the terrible things, but his strength alone was not enough to drag them both free.

That was when she felt him pick her up with his right hand, and, with a mighty holler, he threw her with every ounce of his strength as far away as he could. Confused and terrified, she sailed through the blackness, and then suddenly she was out and the world had color and light once more. The ground came rushing up to meet her, but as she came closer her mother appeared, using her body to awkwardly catch Arlette and knocking the wind out of them both.

“Darnol! Get out of there!” her mother shouted, but it was too late. A tentacle stabbed into his thigh, dragging him to the ground. More wrapped around him and began dragging him forcefully back, and then a second tentacle pierced into his gut.

“Nooooo!” her mother screamed as he coughed up blood.

His time running out, Arlette’s father opened his mouth one last time. She could see him trying to say something, but his voice was drowned out by the sound of the abomination overwhelming him. He smiled a bloody smile, and then he was gone.

*     *     *

The woods felt barren and empty in the autumn gloom, an appropriate match for the contents of Arlette’s heart. Even days after the disaster, neither Arlette nor her mother had come close to recovering from the massive blow to their lives. Their house, and all their belongings as well, had vanished into the void along with her father. They, like all the survivors of the disaster, had been relocated to hurriedly constructed cabins built around the outside of the village proper. Arlette hated living in hers. Though it was tiny compared to her old house, the cabin felt empty without her father there with them.

All her mother seemed to do now was weep. It made Arlette feel horrible, partly because it made her want to cry too, but mostly because nothing Arlette tried seemed to help her mother feel better. After a few days, Arlette had started to go back outside again just to be somewhere where she wasn’t always reminded of her father. Unfortunately, all that had happened was she’d ended up feeling even more alone.

First, there was the area where her old home had been, a constant reminder of events of which she didn’t want to be reminded. All that remained of the disaster site, where once eight homes had stood proudly, was a large shallow crater and an ominous, foreboding aura. Quickly a fence had been constructed around it, the adults saying that the area was now “blighted”, whatever that meant, and that nobody could go in for a long time. Arlette didn’t know what would happen specifically, and she didn’t care. Nothing would ever make her want to go back to that place.

Second was the way the rest of the townsfolk had started treating her. The other kids in the village avoided her. She’d tried to seek them out, but they’d often disperse when they saw her approaching. The adults, meanwhile, seemed to look at her with some strange mix of concern and judgment that she couldn’t understand. The whole village felt foreign to her now, which meant that she no longer had a place that felt like home.

That feeling of isolation had led her here, to a large, gnarled, seemingly-dead tree atop a hill in the forest outside the village. Her mother was likely very worried about her, she knew. She wasn’t supposed to be this far into the forest. Honestly, as a four-year-old she wasn’t supposed to be in the forest at all, at least not alone. But right now she couldn’t take the stares and the whispers and tears. Up here on the hill, surrounded by the evening fog, it felt like she was in her own little world, cut off from the rest. Nobody would bother her here.

Arlette tucked her legs up against her chest and hugged them tight, burying her head between her knees, and just welcomed the silence. She didn’t know how to deal with this grief. She was too young and inexperienced for it. She’d cried for days, just like her mother, but eventually those tears had stopped. She still felt devastated, of course, but for some reason she couldn’t seem to process it like her mother. It made her feel like there was something wrong with her. She was supposed to cry, but she couldn’t anymore. It made her feel guilty.

Absentmindedly, Arlette scratched at her wound. It itched almost constantly now that it was nearly healed. A normal wound of this sort would have fully healed already, but the progress was slowed for some reason. It was like the lingering essence of the horrid tentacle was still fighting her even now, long after it had been banished from this realm. Arlette smacked her forehead into her knees and tried to think of anything else. The last thing she wanted to think about was-

“Ah? Who are you?”

Arlette jumped to her feet at the unexpected voice just a few paces to her right and let out a small shriek. Standing there was a boy about her age with short, dark brown hair and a vacant stare. Though he was dressed in a normal village child’s outfit, Arlette had never seen the kid before.

“Who are you?” Arlette asked back, staring into his blank eyes, his irises a shade of grey so light that they almost blended into the white sclera.

The boy didn’t answer. A moment passed as he stared at her with unfocused eyes, and then another moment, and then another. Finally, just as Arlette opened her mouth to yell at him, he spoke.

“I... don’t know?” he replied, seemingly as confused as she was.

“Why are you here?” she inquired.

“I don’t... know...” he mumbled, his head drooping to stare at the ground in front of him

“Well, what do you know?”

“I... I don’t...” The boy’s lips began to tremble.

“It’s okay! Don’t cry!” she exclaimed with a surge of panic. The last thing she needed now was one more crying person. “Uh... I’m Arlette!”

The boy looked up again, his eyes focusing on her for the first time. “Oh! Okay!” he replied, nodding his head in understanding. He looked around the area, the general aura of confusion around him returned. “Where is this place?”

“The woods,” Arlette answered.

“Where’s that?”

“Outside my village.” Arlette pointed off in the distance.

“Oh,” he replied, as if that answered everything. “Why are you out here alone instead of in your village? Won’t you get in trouble?”

This time Arlette hung her head. “Yeah... but I don’t want to be there. I feel all alone back there. All the grown-ups treat me weird and I don’t have any friends anymore.”

“I could be your friend,” the boy offered.

Arlette perked up immediately. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay! But... what should I call you if you can’t remember your name?”

“I...” the boy went silent for another moment. “I don’t think I have a name.”

“Well I have to call you something,” Arlette insisted. “What about Pernasalo?”

“No, that’s dumb,” the boy immediately replied.

“Okay, Koppamaratta!”

“That’s also dumb!”

Arlette scowled, her eyes furrowing as the wheels in her head turned faster and faster. “Pe... Ko...?”

“Peko...” The boy’s face brightened up tremendously and he smiled a wide, innocent smile. “Yeah! Peko! That’s a great name!”