Chains.  Chains into Pari’s soul.  Sofie had been sure the worst of her nightmare was past her.  She’d felt the geasa release from Pari’s soul when she’d said the magic words.  It had been the strongest sensation she’d felt from any one person as well, there could have been no mistaking it.  Pari was free of her terrible restraints, she’d been absolutely positive.  She’d been wrong.

Chains.  It wasn’t how she’d envisioned her powers before, but it was now.  Chains binding little Pari down, wrapping around her, crushing her.  Sofie couldn’t unsee it now that the image had implanted itself in her head.

Chains.  Thousands of them, all leading to her.

There could only be one explanation: there was another side to her powers that she hadn’t known about.  It probably wasn’t geasa, or so she hoped.  If this side operated by spoken word, as the other side did, then it was something she didn’t say often, given that the number of chains leading to her sister was so low.  That, or she was constantly clearing them without realizing it.  But if she could feel it when she banished a geas, wouldn’t she have felt something when clearing one of these chains?

No, the most likely explanation was the first one: it only triggered on a seldom-spoken word, one she’d said to Pari a few times... and one she’d said to the children of Otharia during a class.  That was the only explanation she could think of for what the dragon had described as countless chains leading south.  She’d done something, likely something terrible, to thousands of innocent children all over the nation.

Sofie took a deep breath and tried to calm herself.  She told herself that it wasn’t a disaster, that it was actually good.  She knew about this side of her powers now, which meant that she could fix things.  Surprisingly, this worked.  She found her despair dwindling, pushed out by mounting determination.  Yes, she had managed to find a way to figure out and fix the first side of her powers, she could do it again.  She knew what to look for this time, so it would probably be easier than the first.  It had to be.  She would make things right.

An off-tune warbling caught her attention over the sounds of the wind and the loping transport upon which she rode.  What was that sound?  Whistling?  Sofie looked up to find Blake cheerily tilting his head left and right as he whistled a jaunty tune that she didn’t recognize.  He seemed strangely cheerful, more than she’d ever seen him before.

“There’s my baby!” he called out happily as Sofie spotted the Flying Toaster hovering off in the distance.  They were out of the mountains, she belatedly realized.  Had she really zoned out the multi-hour trip back from the meeting point?  Yes, she realized.  She’d gotten so caught up in her feelings of self-loathing and depression that she couldn’t remember anything that had happened even two minutes after the start of the trip.  Even the events before then felt like a blur, barely making an impression on her.

The elevator touched down before them not long after.  Sofie held Gabriela’s arm as the compartment swayed slightly as they rose.  She would have held her hand, if Gabby were willing, but the grooves that Gabby’s fingers were squeezing into the elevator railing suggested that it would probably end poorly for the integrity of her hand.

Once the lift docked, Sofie followed behind the others as the group stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway that connected the various sections of the Flying Toaster.  Gabby split off from the rest as they passed the living quarters.  Once the rest of them arrived at the front cabin, Blake made a beeline for the pilot’s chair.  He lovingly caressed the control panel.  “Yes, how is my baby?  Hm?  Did they treat you well?”

“Weirdo,” Sofie muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” she replied.  “Hey, can we stop by Xoginia on the way back?”

“What?  Xoginia?”

“Please?”

“Eh, sorry, that’s too out of the way,” Blake said with a shake of his head.  “We’re headed home, sweet home, baby!  The faster, the better!”

“Come on!”

“Nope!”

“Tch.  Whatever, I’m going to go check on Gabby,” Sofie said, disgruntled.  This was going to take time.  She’d have to wear him down after she talked to Gabriela.

“Sounds good!” Blake replied with a thumbs up and a grin.  “Tell her thanks again for me!”

As Blake began whistling that same tune again, Sofie suppressed a shudder and retreated from the cabin.  One quick trek back through the hallway later, Sofie found herself at the open door of Gabby’s room.  The Mexican woman had not yet assumed her “lie on the floor and suffer” pose, though she looked like she’d been about to when Sofie had shown up.

“Hey,” Sofie began.

“Yes?” Gabby asked, her voice strained.

“You, uh, notice anything weird going on with Blake?”

“Like what?”

“He’s happy.  Like, not ‘Blake happy’ but actually happy, like... ‘Pari happy’.  It’s creeping me out.  And then he’ll just kind of just space out for a while for no reason, even when I’m in the middle of talking to him, then he’s back to being creepy again like nothing ever happened.” 

“Maybe he’s being mind-controlled,” Gabby offered.

“Can Bazzalth do that?” Sofie wondered, pulling up memories of everything she knew of the dragon’s capabilities.  “I mean, I guess if he made some sort of brain worm, he might be able to...”  Her eyes caught the hint of a smirk on Gabby’s lips, putting a new perspective on the suggestion.  “You’re messing with me, aren’t you.”

“He got his body back.  Isn’t that enough of a reason to be happy?”

Sofie pouted a little.  “I guess so.  It’s just weird that he’s like this when he didn’t even get healed all the way.”

“You’ll just have to ask him, then.”

“Ugh.  If I have to.”

Gabby lowered herself onto her back on the hard floor.  “You have to.”

“Fine,” Sofie grumbled.  “Anyway... thanks for saving me today.  Putting yourself in front of that angry monster took a lot.”

Gabby cocked an eyebrow.  “Don’t know why you’re acting like it’s some brave deed.  I’ve done it before, remember, and he can’t kill me—he already tried.”

“I know, but...”  But that was before Gabby had known of Sofie’s activities.  Even though the older woman had shown far more forgiveness than any of the other adults, Sofie had still found herself surprised when Gabby had leapt into action to rescue her.  Maybe it was the way Arlette looked at her these days or the collar around her neck that symbolized Blake’s thoughts better than words ever could.  “Thanks anyway.”

Gabby replied with only a strained, noncommittal grunt.  Sofie took that as her signal to wrap it up.

“Alright, I’ll go deal with Blake’s weirdness and keep Pari from blasting a hole in the side of the gondola,” she said, taking several steps towards the doorway.  She paused and turned back, an idea popping into her head.  “Actually, that reminds me.  Now that Grandfather gave Pari a whole hoard of materials for her candles, she could make you one that would put you to sleep.  With how hard you have it with flying and all, would you like me to ask Pari to make you some sleepcandles for next time?  Sleeping seemed to help you when we came back from Stragma.”

“No, that isn’t necessary,” Gabby replied.

“Are you sure?  Pari would be more than happy to make one.”

“I’m fine,” came the terse response.

Sofie couldn’t help but scowl at her fellow Earthling’s stubbornness.  What was it about North Americans that made them so inflexible?  With the way Gabby was acting, it was almost like...

Sofie stepped back into the room and squatted down to better look the other woman in the eye.  “Are you putting yourself through this on purpose?”

The silence that followed provided all the confirmation Sofie needed.

“Gabby, what the heck are you doing?!” she hissed.  “You’re torturing yourself, and for what?!”

“I have to,” Gabriela insisted.  “I have to do this.  I have to do penance for my sins.”

“Penance?!  What, is this some sort of mental self-flagellation?”

“Well, it’s not like whipping myself will do anything!” Gabby responded as she pushed herself up into a seated position

“Gabby, this...”  Sofie let out a tired sigh.  “You know this can’t be healthy.”

“I have to atone somehow, Sofie!  But how?  What sort of penance would even cover the sort of terrible sins I’ve committed?!”

“I’m the wrong person to ask when it comes to making up for massive mistakes,” Sofie admitted.

“It wasn’t a mistake, Sofie!” Gabriela snapped as she rose to her feet.  “I’m not like you!  I made a choice!  A deliberate choice with open eyes!  And nothing you or Chitra or anybody else says can erase the weight on my conscience and the stain on my soul!”

Despondently, she sank down onto her nearby bed, her head in her hands.

“Back home at the orphanage, they once taught us that, should we ever need to confess but have no Catholic priests available to us, we were supposed to find a priest of another religion and ask them for help instead.  But there are no priests in this forsaken world.

“Most of the people on this continent practice some sort of ancestor-revering spirituality; I have no idea if Drayhadans even have a religion; if there’s such a thing as a Stragman priest, they would just tell me that all the people I killed deserved it for being weaker than me; the Ubrans worship the man who I betrayed and helped get killed, so it’s not like I’m welcome back with them ever again; and Otharia had a religion with priests, but Blake killed them all!  There’s nowhere for me to turn!  Maybe I was right all along.  Maybe this really is hell.”

Sofie had to admit that Gabriela’s issue was, in fact, quite the conundrum.  However, there was one point about which she thought Gabby was incorrect.

“Have you talked to Leo about this?” she inquired.

Gabriela looked at Sofie through the gaps in her fingers, her confusion evident.  “No?  Why would he matter?”

“Leo is a priest, didn’t you know?  Blake killed all the high priests, but he didn’t kill all the Voices.”

“I thought Voices were like town mayors and administrators, not priests.”

“They’re... kind of both, I guess?  Though their official religion is dead, if that matters to you,” Sofie told her.  “Anyway, as basically Prime Minister of Otharia, that makes Leo the highest-ranking priest in the country by default.  And you know he would try to help you.  He’s a nice person like that.”

“Is he?  I never really talked to him,” Gabby admitted.

“From what I understand, the Church locked him away for years because he was too nice.  I think you’d like him if you got to know him better.”

“I... guess I could give it a try...”

Sofie stepped forward and leaned in, giving Gabriela a quick, hearty hug.  “You’re only as alone in this as you want to be.  Remember that.”

With that said, she turned around and headed towards the door.

“Hey,”  Gabby’s voice called out before Sofie was all the way gone.  Sofie looked back to find Gabby looking at her sheepishly.  “I, uh... I think I’d like those sleepcandles after all.”

“I’ll let Pari know,” Sofie assured her with a smile.  “But, if it’s alright with you, could you stay awake for a little longer?  I could really use your help with something... if I can convince Blake.”

Sofie found Pari back on the bridge.  To Sofie’s surprise, the child was not making candles.  Instead, she was glaring at a tic-tac-toe board with no small amount of bitterness as Samanta drew a line through a row of circles once again.  Sofie decided to teach Pari not to be a sore loser in the very near future.  But for now...

“Pari, sweetie, Gabby needs a sleepcandle.  Could you make one for her please?”

Pari perked up immediately.  Usually, people were asking her not to make so many waxy cylinders of chaos.  She ran over to her equipment and began setting it up, pulling a small wad of Grandfather’s “wax” out of a large sack, followed by some plants that Sofie didn’t recognize.

“I still can’t believe that she was making candles out of Bazz’s earwax this whole time,” Blake laughed.  “Oh man, watching her scramble into his ear canal like this tiny spelunker was something else.”  His eye fell onto the many tic-tac-toe-covered sheets littering the far corner of the cabin, most of them left over from the trip north.  “Maybe I should make them a copy of Connect Four and blow their little minds.”

“That’s a good idea.  Do it,” she told him.  “Kids need stimulation.  Maybe you could make some other stuff while you’re at it.”

“Yeah!  Maybe I’ll make an improved version of Crossfire, one where you don’t lose all the tiny metal balls three days after getting it for Christmas,” he replied as he leaned back in his chair and stretched.  It was the sort of physical maneuver that she’d never seen him do before; not before she’d bound him to a wheelchair, not even before getting mauled by Gabby.  Clearly, much had changed for the better within his body.

“So, you seem to be feeling better,” she noted.  “What was it like living with a dragon?”

Blake’s brows furrowed slightly.  “We talked about this for, like, two hours on the way back.  Weren’t you listening?”

“No, I was... distracted.”

“Distracted?” he repeated, a little annoyed.  “By what?”  He paused for a slight moment.  “Oh, right.  That.”

“No, I am not in the mood to talk about it,” she preemptively told him.

“That’s fine, I know you’ll take care of it,” he replied lightly.  Once again, Sofie found herself wondering who this was and what they’d done with the Blake she knew so unfortunately well.  The old Blake would have seized every opportunity to harass her over stuff like this.  “Anyway, it was kind of fun, actually.  Bazz reminds me of some of my friends from college.  A little awkward and rough around the edges, but that’s to be expected from somebody who has basically been a shut-in for several thousand years.  Brilliant, in his own way.  It was nice to finally have an intellectual peer to converse with.”

Sofie tried her best to not roll her eyes at the man’s conceitedness—he just wanted a reaction from her—but failed miserably.

“Not brilliant enough to fix you, apparently,” she remarked, perhaps a bit meaner than she’d intended.

The tone didn’t seem to bother him.  The lack of snark and peevishness continued to throw her for a loop.  The old Blake would have said something nasty three times already. 

“A result of bad luck, sadly,” he replied.  “His giant capacitor battery doohickey broke before I could fully heal.  But I’m still better off than I have been in a long time.”

“So, he actually came up with a way to heal you completely?  Even your missing arm?”

“So he claimed, yeah.”

“I didn’t think that sort of thing would be possible.”

“A lot of wild things are possible in this world, especially when you factor in mad science,” Blake reminded her.

“So then, are you going to return to finish it once he gets a better battery?”

The hint of a frown, the first one she’d seen all day, flitted across his face for a moment.  “It’s a single-use method, I’m afraid.  If we tried it again, I would die.  So, I can’t exactly just go back.  It won’t be that easy.”

“You would have to go to Stragma,” Sofie concluded, picking up what he was putting down.  “You would need to get rewound to before you were healed.”

“Right.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound that difficult.”

“Yeah, it’s just...”  Blake’s eyes lost focus as he retreated into his thoughts again, as he had been doing off and on all day.

“...it’s just what?”

He shook his head.  “It might be more complicated than that.”

“How so?”

Blake opened his mouth to say something, then paused and closed it again with a shake of his head.  “It’s nothing.  Never mind.”

“Something’s bothering you.”

“It’s just a few idle thoughts—conjectures and assumptions, really.  Nothing worth talking about.”

“If you insist,” she said doubtfully.

“I insist.  What about your trip?  I take it everything went well?”

“It was certainly something, that’s for sure,” she admitted.  “Wasn’t it, Pari?”

“Yeah!” the child exclaimed, putting her incomplete candle down for a moment to beam excitedly from across the deck.  “Gabby-friend was like ‘hah!’ and then Club Lady was like ‘hahhh!’ and then Gabby-friend was like ‘whoosh, bang!’ but then Club Lady was like ‘bam, pow!’ and then Gabby-friend was like ‘clang!’ and Pari’s ears hurt and then Club Lady was like ‘kaboom!’ and then Club Lady won.”

“Sounds... unique,” Blake managed to say.

“Grandfather stronger than Gabby-friend and club lady, of course,” declared the child who took down the ‘great and mighty Grandfather’ with a single stinkcandle.

“It was an experience, to be sure,” Sofie allowed.

“And the big bear woman won?”

“She did, five to three, I think.”

“Wow, she looked strong, but I never imagined she would be able to stand up to our rabid wolverine in human form.”

“Blake, stop being mean.”

“Mean?  That was a compliment, I assure you!”

“Whatever.”

“So... enough with the chit-chat,” Blake said, suddenly dialing up the seriousness.  “Why are you even here, Sofie?  You know the plan was for you to stay as far away from Bazz as possible.  Did you suddenly develop a death wish?”

“Well, I realized that there was something I needed to do,” she informed him.  “Something that really shouldn’t wait.”

“Something in Xoginia, I presume?”

She nodded.

“Alright, spill the details, and I’ll consider it.”

“I want to try to end slavery in Kutrad.”

Blake stared at her for a moment and then rubbed his eyes.  “I’m sorry, say that again.  I thought I heard something absurd.”

“You are aware that one of my current goals is to erase all the geasa I accidentally created since I arrived.  Well, I actually have a bunch on the king of Kutrad.”

“You what?!” Blake interjected with disbelief.  “What did you do to him?”

“Most of it doesn’t really matter anymore, but the big one is I think I took his ability to ‘say another word’, as I put it at the time.”

Blake sputtered into laughter.  “So it was you!  That explains so much!”

Now it was Sofie’s turn to be puzzled.  “It does?”

“He shows up to every meeting with the lower half of his face all wrapped up in bandages and he never speaks.  Instead, he writes it into a book and somebody else reads it to everybody.  It’s been like that for months and nobody knew why!  My only theory was that Arlette had busted his jaw so terribly that even Scyrian healing couldn’t fix it, but it always felt like a reach.  This makes so much more sense.  He literally can’t speak!”

“Well, anyway,” Sofie continued, “this got me thinking.  I’ve been just removing the geasa without conditions every time, but here I have leverage over somebody powerful.  Shouldn’t I use that leverage while I can to make the world better?”

“You should!  I assume you wouldn’t return his voice until he delivers on his end of the bargain, of course.”

“Of course,” Sofie agreed.  “I wouldn’t trust him to follow through otherwise.”

“That’s the most un-Sofie thing you’ve ever said.  Good for you!” Blake chuckled.  “I’m glad you’re finally seeing the light and coming around to my side on this.”

Sofie’s thoughts screeched to a halt when she heard those chilling words.  Had she been drinking, she would have done a spit take.  “What are you talking about?” she reluctantly inquired.

“Well, let’s be honest here,” Blake began, steepling his fingers.  “Mind-control is some serious, fucked up shit that’s right up there with slavery and murder.  I know you agree, because Gabby told me that you’ve made it your latest mission to undo every use of your powers that you can as quickly as possible.  After all, each day is one more day that your victims are being violated terribly, right?  And yet, here you are, willingly condemning a man to suffer when you could just end it today.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?  Did you think you’d show up and he’d snap his fingers and slavery would just instantly disappear?”

“No, I’m not naive enough to think he can just instantly decree it away and everything would be fixed immediately,” she argued, “but he would be taking a huge and critical first step.  Slavery isn’t going to end on its own.  You need to take big actions if you want to change big institutions.”

“All a decree like that would accomplish would be to put his head on a pike by the end of the year.  Then, all your leverage goes up in smoke while Kutrad stays a slave state,” Blake insisted.  “Didn’t Arlette explain to you how slavery works here?”

“Ah, no,” Sofie admitted.  “After what happened to me, the last thing I wanted to think about was anything involving slavery and Kutrad.”

“Then let me spell it out for you the way she spelled it out for me.  Here’s the problem, Sofie: the noble houses are actually the people with the most power in Kutrad, and they love slavery.  The only reason King Morgan is able to maintain power is that those blue-blooded shitheads all hate each other and would rather backstab their counterparts than work together.  But they probably would unite if he gave them a reason strong enough to overcome their petty feuds, and nothing would do that better than the threat of slavery’s end.  They’d take him down and put up somebody else in his place who would keep slavery legal, and then nothing would be accomplished.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes.  She told me that the nobles use slaves for tons of things like mining and farming that make up massive swaths of their income.  They would all view an action like taking away their slaves as the same as taking away their money and power.  That’s the equivalent of a declaration of war in their minds, and it’s a war which King Morgan would lose.

“That isn’t to say that the mission is impossible.  Given enough time, he might be able to find a way to pull it off through backroom deals, and bribes, and targeted assassinations, and... you know, fucking politics bullshit,” he said with no small amount of venom and distaste.  “But we’re talking years here, maybe decades.  Not days.  So, the question is, is Little Miss Sofie ‘I Want Good Things To Always Happen But Without Paying The Human Cost Needed To Make Them Happen’ Ramaut willing to allow King Iorweth Morgan to suffer until the deed is done?  Do you have it in you?”

Sofie didn’t know what to say.  It had taken her several days of hard thinking before she’d decided that it was alright to keep King Morgan voiceless for another few months if that was what it took to end the injustice that he willingly tolerated every day.  She was no fan of the spineless monarch; in fact, she pretty much hated his guts.  But was she willing to continue effectively torturing him for years on end to get what she wanted?

The answer came to her far more clearly than she’d expected, by and large, because she could not view the question in a vacuum no matter how hard she tried.  Her old memories would flood in and color her thoughts with visions of beaten down, newly captured slaves being force-marched behind the wagon where the slavers kept her, of the way the slavers and buyers talked about her like she was a piece of meat, of a red hot brand get closer and closer to her skin until it was just centimeters away, ready to mark her forever.  If she could save thousands of people with just one man’s suffering and her own guilt, then she would do it.

“Yes.”

“So, finally come around to the winning team, have you?” Blake smirked.

“No, Blake,” she retorted, fighting back the desire to smack the smug grin off his face, “this is a one-time exception, okay?”

“Sounds to me like I was right and you were wrong.”

“That’s not what it means at all and you know it!”

“I don’t know, Sofie, I really feel like heading straight home,” he said, scratching his head lazily.  “I think I’m gonna need you to say ‘Blake was right’ out loud so I can get the motivation I’ll need to delay our travels.”

Sofie stiffened as a wave of pique washed over her.  “You can’t be that immature,” she protested in disbelief.

“Oh man, I’m just so tired, you know?” Blake snickered.  “Living with a dragon is so exhausting!  I can’t wait to get home and sleep in my own bed after so very long!”

“I can’t believe you sometimes.  You’re the most childish person in this ship, and yes I’m including the literal children in this assessment.”

“Those sure are a lot of words that don’t convey how right I am,” he commented.

Sofie’s hands balled into fists and she barely contained the urge to slug him.  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  She didn’t want to say the words—really, really very much didn’t want to.  Yet, as much as it vexed her to her core to give him this sort of satisfaction, she’d already condemned a man she barely knew to years of suffering.  Saying some dumb words was nothing in comparison, right?  Right, she told herself, though the glee coming from the insufferable man across from her made it a lot closer in her mind than it should have been. 

“Blake was right,” she said stuffily.

Blake’s sly smile grew into something far more wicked as he seemed to have an idea.  “I couldn’t hear you very well.  Gonna need you to say that again.”

“Blake!”

“Sorry, what?  Speak up, please,” the bastard laughed.

“I swear, one day I’m going to just... rrrrgh!” Sofie growled as he cupped a hand to his ear.  “Fine!  Blake was right!  Now, will you help me or not?!”

She swayed as the Flying Toaster suddenly swung around, reorienting eastward.

“Of course!  How could I ever turn down a request from my star pupil?” Blake asked.

Sofie huffed indignantly, prompting another round of guffaws from her tormentor.

“Come now, my dear protege,” he giggled as a small round table rose into existence between them.  A large cube sprouted from the table, slowly shifting into a mildly accurate model of the King’s castle.  “Let us not waste time over petty quarrels!  We have two hours before we arrive!  Planning is afoot!”

Sofie crossed her arms with a sniff, refusing to dignify his buffoonery with a response.  It seemed that a happier Blake was even worse than she’d thought.

*     *     *

“The bridge to the tower?” Blake asked as the two of them each looked through a spyglass towards the rapidly growing palace of Iorweth Morgan, King of Kutrad.

“Yes, if you can put us down on top of it, that would be great.  Drop some robots too to cover the ground.  Gabby can hold the front.”

“It will be a little tricky but I can manage it.  You should head to the elevator.  We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Sofie nodded and made her way towards the back of the ship.  Before she went towards the elevator, she took a detour to Gabriela’s cabin, where she found the woman sitting on her bed already fully dressed in her battle attire.

“Oh good, you’re ready,” Sofie remarked.

Gabby nodded.  “So, what is it you need me to do, exactly?”

“All I need from you is a few simple things,” Sofie explained.  “I need you to protect me, which shouldn’t be hard since the only enemies to worry about should be in front of us.  Just as importantly, though, I need you to be as coldly intimidating and imposing as you can manage.  What you need to do is make an impression.  Oh, also, I’m going to be acting different, too, so try not to react if I say anything weird, okay?”

“So we’re putting on a performance?” Gabby asked, looking Sofie over from head to toe.  “Is that why you’re dressed all weird?  Like some kind of... techno-wizard?”

“Exactly,” Sofie replied, inspecting the long ornate robe she’d picked up in Otharia before their trip.  The darkest robe she could find, it had long, drooping sleeves and a hood, much like the stereotypical wizard’s robe that somebody like Gandalf would wear.  She’d felt it lent an air of spooky mysticism.  Then, Blake had gotten his hands on it.

Claiming that her robe was not mysterious and remarkable enough, the infuriating man had proceeded to alter the garment to his satisfaction whether Sofie wanted him to or not.  The final result could have been worse, she supposed.  Filaments of grey metal thread now wove through the fabric like silver blood vessels, while a variety of strange-looking ornaments in a variety of three-dimensional geometric shapes hung from all parts of the robe, including the sleeves.  The trinkets made little ‘tink’ noises as she walked, which she supposed added to the effect.

The biggest addition, however, was something other than the robe itself.  “You need a mask,” Blake had vehemently insisted.  “A good mask multiplies the creepy and menacing vibes by at least ten times.”

After receiving her mask, she couldn’t help but agree.  Blake had decided to go for his interpretation of the well-known comedy theater mask, giving it a well-executed, if not quite original, evil slant.  Blake had claimed that it was actually based off an old Mario game that had given him nightmares as a child, but she had no idea what he’d been talking about; Mario games weren’t creepy at all, not like this thing.  Its crescent moon eyes leered with malicious intent, while the wide, mocking smile hinted at unknown danger.  The mask covered her face entirely; combined with the robe’s hood, nobody would know who she was unless she desired it.

Donning the mask, she spread her arms wide as she looked at Gabby through the thin eye slits.  The mask did limit her vision a bit more than she would have liked, unfortunately.  “Well?  Do I look appropriately sinister and darkly threatening?  Like an evil, callous warlock with powers beyond a mortal’s understanding?”

“It’s pretty good, given what you have to work with,” came the reply.  “It might have worked better when you were all bony and thin, though.”

“Yeah, the skeletal look might have helped, but nothing I can do about that now,” she agreed.  Sofie had been feeling great ever since Pari’s revival, the burden of guilt that had been crushing her no longer weighing on her shoulders.  This feeling applied to the physical as well as the mental.  Just days later, her gaunt appearance was no more, her body having filled out and returned to her normal physique.  “Anyway, I think it’s time to head out.”

Blake was waiting for them at the elevator.  “We’re almost there,” he told them.  “I’m going to start with the skitter drops like we planned.  Ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Sofie replied.

“Cool.  You two stay here,” he said as he entered the bot bay.

Sofie peeked into the bay from the hallway as the bay doors rotated open, revealing the city of Xoginia lit by the mid-afternoon sun below.  The howl of the wind and the drone of the propellers screamed in her ears as the rushing air whipped through her hair.

“Alright, here we go!” Blake hollered over the din.

Suddenly, the drone of the propellers exploded into a roar and the craft leapt forward.  One by one, the robots dropped out of the bay, lowering down at frightening speed from cables attached to their tops.  The Flying Toaster banked hard as it flew a relatively circular loop around the castle, the cables retracting one by one as they deposited their payloads around the area.

The first part of the plan was relatively simple: drop the skitters down around the castle, with the vast majority of them on the side farthest from the king’s panic room tower, and herd the king towards the bridge that connected the tower to the rest of the castle.  Once they had him where they wanted him, the rest of the plan would commence.

As the airship slowed down after completing its bombing run and moved to hover over the bridge, Blake returned to the hallway.

“Alright, it’s go time,” he said.  “Get in the elevator and I’ll lower you to the bridge.”

“Wait,” Sofie interjected, pointing at the collar around her neck.  “This needs to come off.”

“No way!” Blake shot back.  “What’s the point of it if you can just take it off!”

“Nobody looks fearsome with a collar like that one,” Gabby pointed out.  “And, given the slave trade, they would probably take it to mean she’s a slave of some sort.  Is that the impression you’re aiming for?”

“Hmmm, fine, but it’s going back on the moment you get back up here,” he decided.  He reached forward and pulled the collar off, the metal flowing around Sofie’s throat like water.  “Good luck with your LARP session.”

“Blake, just shut up for once, would you?” Sofie moaned as she climbed into the elevator, donned her mask, and pulled up her hood.

Gabby joined her a moment later, tenser than the cables holding the compartment aloft.  She only grew tenser as the elevator began its steady descent.

“It’s going to be okay,” Sofie told her as she moved behind the Mexican and began to massage her shoulders.  “All you have to do is look menacing, like the big burly bruiser in the movies who does all the dirty work for the kingpin.”

“I’m not tall enough to be one of those,” Gabby muttered.

“It’s fine, your sword more than makes up for it.”

Their timing could not have been better.  A man emerged from the palace and onto the bridge only twenty meters away as they touched down upon the center of the stone arch, the elevator compartment nestling in between the raised stone sides of the narrow span.  The rough stone ground against the lift’s walls as the box settled in, and Sofie could practically hear Blake’s whining about his “baby” getting scratched up.

The man screeched to a halt as he spotted them, only for more people to push him forward in their desperate rush towards safety.  Soon, a small group of maybe twenty people stood on the edge of the bridge, looking at the elevator and the airship with great apprehension.  None of them seemed ready to take another step forward.

Sofie didn’t recognize most of the people; outside of a scholar or two, most of them looked like soldiers of various sorts, bodyguards and the like.  However, about a third of the way into the group, Sofie spotted two people who caught her eye.

One was a woman in her mid-twenties with long fiery hair that rolls down her head and over her shoulders in long twisted red curls.  She wore a large and exquisite blue dress adorned with beautiful red flowers that matched her hair perfectly and her angry scowl.  Atop her head sat a gorgeous golden tiara covered with an array of different jewels.  A queen, perhaps?  Sofie had not known that King Morgan had a spouse, but it seemed to be the case.

The man of the hour, however, was whom Sofie truly cared to see, and she found him just two people over from her.  His lower face was wrapped in white bandages, just as Blake had described, and he had a nervous glint in his eyes as he surveyed the situation.

The compartment door slid to the side and out stepped Gabby, much more composed now that she was on semi-solid footing—though being on a bridge high above the ground probably wasn’t helping her much.  The soldiers gasped and pulled out their weapons as she took a casual step forward, then another.  Sofie stepped out behind Gabby, letting them focus on her for now.

“Ancestors have mercy!” the one in the front gulped.  “It’s the Monster!  We need to retreat!”

“What manner of cowardice is this?!” the redheaded woman snapped.  “It’s only one woman.  Strike her down!”

“My Queen,” the front man responded, not taking his eyes off of the slowly advancing Mexican, “I witnessed her at Crirada.  Even if we had a thousand fighters, we would not stand a chance.  We must leave and find another way out!”

After a short moment of consideration, the woman’s face hardened.  “No.  If she is who you claim her to be, then we would be dead already if she wanted it.  She is here for a different reason.”

“How very astute of you,” Sofie observed, stepping out from behind Gabby as the two came to a halt about five meters from the group.  “Perhaps there is hope for your country yet.”

Sofie knew that she would never be able to pull off the physically intimidating vibe, but she didn’t need to.  That was what Gabby was here for.  So instead, she did her best to channel an amalgamation of every single evil mastermind and puppet master villain she’d seen in movies and television shows.  The sort of person who didn’t appear physically dangerous, but still somehow projected an aura of menace anyway.  The sort of person who didn’t raise their own hand to strike another because they didn’t have to.  The sort of person who was always, always, in control.

“I see you know my pet,” Sofie remarked as she stepped out from behind the sword-wielding woman who probably didn’t appreciate being called a pet—Sofie swore to apologize later.  “She will only bite those who misbehave, so I suggest you all try to be good little boys and girls, yes?  Because, as you already know, she bites quite hard.”

“Who are you, to dare to invade our land and threaten the rulers of this great nation?!” the red-haired woman snarled at her.

Sofie frowned behind her mask.  The woman’s anger was blunting the impression she was going for, giving the onlookers more courage.  Despite her mysterious appearance, the Queen seemed far too irate to fear her properly.  Fortunately enough, Sofie knew somebody who would, and whose terror would set the group’s mood appropriately.

“Perhaps you should ask your King who I am,” Sofie replied with a tilt of the head.  “Do you see, oh mighty King?  I was right when I told you we could return at any time and you would not stand a chance at stopping us, was I not?”

The king, who was already looking at her with confused trepidation, froze, the confusion vanishing as he put an identity to her voice at last.  “Huaaa!” he screamed, backpedaling in a sudden panic.  Tripping and falling onto his rear, he continued to scream as he kept scrambling backward until he ran up against the stone wall of the palace.

Sofie offered a mocking bow.  “Greetings, Your Majesty.  It’s been ever so long.  Did you miss me?”

The king let out another horrified shriek that was only barely muffled by the bandages wrapped around his face, his eyes darting about like prey cornered by a predator, looking desperately for a way out.  Like the scream before, Sofie noted that the sounds carried no meaning within them.  He could manage nothing but ineffectual bleating.

The effect of the king’s reaction proved immediate.  Where before, they regarded her as a mere curiosity beside the imposing Gabriela, she could now see the anxiety in their eyes.  It was time to drive it home.

“Mmmmmm,” Sofie hummed as the king whimpered pathetically from the rear of the group.  “What a lovely voice.  It’s such a shame, I hear you never use it anymore.  I wonder why...”  She cupped her cheek in her hand and pretended to think for a fraction of a moment.  “Oh, yes!  It’s because I took your words, didn’t I?”

“You!  You... foul whore!” the woman howled.  “You did this to him?!”

Sofie cackled.  “All I did was impart upon him an infinitesimal fraction of the suffering he’s allowed under his rule,” she informed the blustering woman.  “A mere drop of suffering in an ocean of agony.  Truly, it seems that I may have been too lenient... should I take your words as well?”

The threat finally shut the loud, brash woman’s mouth, which brought a wicked grin to Sofie’s face.  She could see the woman sweating in fear, her strong facade starting to crumble.  The last bout of resistance was falling apart.  She had them in the palm of her hand.

“Perhaps it is lucky for you that I am in a great mood today,” she told the queen.  “I will spare you from the consequences of your insolence just this once.  After all, as you said, we are not here today to fight.  In fact, I have come to give you great news!  I have decided that I shall restore your monarch’s ability to speak!  All you must do is one simple task.  You must end all slavery in this country forever.  Only once the people of Kutrad, all of them, are free of their chains, will I return what I have taken.”

The group went still.

“W-what rubbish is this?” the queen finally sputtered.  “What would even possess you to make such an absurd demand?!”

“I do not have to explain myself to anyone, least of all a trumped up, self-important bitch like you,” Sofie haughtily replied.  “The terms are clear.”

“But that impossible!” she cried.  “The nobles would never permit it!”

“Hmmmmm, that sounds like your problem, not mine,” she told the woman as the redhead stewed in frustrated, futile anger.  Sofie offered a wide smile behind her mask.  “It was so good to see you again, Your Majesty.  I hope you make the proper choice.”

“Come, Gabriela,” she commanded, turning her back on the assembled people and heading towards the elevator, “let us be away from these pathetic creatures before I change my mind.”

The two of them entered the compartment and the door closed.  She heard the sound of the clamps releasing as the elevator rose into the sky.  The last sounds she heard from below were the soft sobs of a despondent queen.

“How’d it go?” Blake asked once they got back aboard.  To Sofie’s dismay, he wasted no time forcing the collar in his hands back around her throat.

“About as well as I could have hoped,” she told him with satisfaction.  “We’ll find out if it accomplishes anything in the future, I guess.”

“Great, let’s round up the bots and head home, then.”

“Your pet?” Gabby asked as the two of them entered the sleeping cabin section of the ship.

“Sorry,” Sofie sheepishly apologized.  “I went a little overboard.”

“A little?  If you had chewed the scenery any harder, you would be spitting out pebbles right now.  You sure seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

“No, not at all!” Sofie protested. 

Gabby gave her a witheringly skeptical look, hot enough that Sofie melted under its glare.

“Okay, yeah, maybe a little,” she confessed.

“Trust me on this one,” Gabby told her.  “The worst thing you could do is lie to yourself about what you are doing and why you are doing it.  Don’t repeat my mistakes.”

“I understand.”

“Good.  Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to use one of these sleepcandles and knock myself out for as much of this trip as possible.”

Sofie turned into her room and removed the costume, dropping it onto the bed for the moment, too busy with her thoughts to care about mundane things like tidiness at the moment.  As much as she didn’t want to admit it, it had been fun to be in total command of the situation, to have everybody in the palm of your hand.  After spending so much of her time in Scyria in chains or hounded by others looking to put her in chains, she had finally been able to look down at some of those responsible.  She had the upper hand, now.  She had the power.  That sensation, for a few moments, had given her a rush that she hadn’t felt before, a sort of sadistic joy that terrified her now that she looked back upon it.  When she had threatened to take the queen’s voice, it had been an empty threat, but if she were honest, not as empty a threat as she would have liked.

She swore two things at that moment.  The first was that she would not allow herself to travel any further down that path.  The call of her powers was too enticing, able to solve so many problems in a simple and easy but terrible way.  She could never allow herself to succumb to the idea that “a little more wouldn’t hurt”.  This torture she was willingly inflicting upon King Morgan would be the first and last time she would allow herself such transgressions.

The second thing she swore was that she would never, under any circumstances, let Blake know how much she’d enjoyed it.  The man was insufferable enough already.

*     *     *

The first thing Sofie noticed as she approached her rooms was the smell, a highly unpleasant odor that reminded her of particularly noxious wet farts mixed with rotten eggs and a hint of skunk.  Unfortunate past experiences meant that she was well acquainted with this particular scent; somebody had set off a stinkcandle.

Out of all of Pari’s candle-based creations, Sofie found the stinkcandle to be the absolute worst—worse, even, than the powerful and destructive boomcandles, including the massive, barrel-sized versions she’d made with Blake.  Boomcandles, at least, had productive uses, like blasting for mining operations or construction.  Stinkcandles, however, had no beneficial utility whatsoever.  They were used for one reason and one reason only: to give somebody a very bad day.

The original stinkcandle, discovered on the plains of Eterium on their initial flight to Stragma, had been little more than a glorified stinkbomb, a prank for naughty and mischievous little catgirls.  The stinkcandle of the present, however, had been “upgraded” and “refined” in the months after the Ubrans had retreated, to the point that nobody would ever think it a toy.  No, the only term Sofie could find in her mental lexicon that accurately captured the truth of the modern stinkcandle was “chemical weapon”.

Once a stinkcandle erupted, belching toxic fumes that covered a wide area, the first thing everybody would be hit by was the “new” and “improved” smell.  This new stench, at its full potency, was enough to utterly incapacitate most anybody, overwhelming their sense of smell with an odor so putrid and foul that it felt like your entire respiratory system was on fire.  The rest of their body wouldn’t fare much better.  Their eyes would burn and fill with blinding tears, while their skin would itch to the point where they would find themselves scratching themselves raw.  Several people had projectile vomited on the spot.  Others had started to choke and had gone into convulsions.

The smoke from the initial explosion would dissipate rather quickly, but that didn’t mean that the suffering was over.  Not in the slightest.  The smell of a new stinkcandle persisted for many hours.  Any soul unfortunate enough to be hit would stink for several days, ruining their ability to do much of anything other than sit alone and inhale their own stench.  Nobody would be willing to step within ten meters of them until the smell wore off, and any food you tried to eat would taste terrible.  Washing didn’t seem to do much of anything, either.  You just had to live with it.

Sofie knew all of this, of course, from personal experience.  Pari had been a little too enthusiastic with her testing and the two of them plus Samanta had paid the price.  Or, at least, Sofie and Sam had paid the price.  The little rascal hadn’t had an issue in the slightest, even though Sofie knew her sense of smell was exponentially superior to theirs.  Perhaps she could smell all the subtle “mini-scents”, if those were something that existed, and isolate them all so they didn’t bother her, like how somebody with superior hearing might be able to hear individual melodies in what others would experience as only a wall of noise?  Sofie didn’t really know for sure, and she sure as hellfire wasn’t going to be running experiments to find out.

Sofie entered her room to find the smell inside a little weaker than the already weak levels in the hallway.  The candle had probably gone off a while ago, somewhere else in another part of the fortress, with the lingering scent transported to other areas through the building’s ventilation system.  To her relief, she found that the odor, while unpleasant, was nowhere near strong enough to make her room unlivable at the moment.

Looking around the chamber, Sofie reflected on how alien it felt to her, even though she’d only been gone for a few days.  Yet, what little she had was still exactly where she’d left it.  Her bed remained messy with her bedsheets piled up in the lower-left corner, her small closet still featured the same small set of outfits hanging from hangers, and her books remained untouched where she’d left them weeks and weeks ago.  Nothing seemed to have changed.

Perhaps, it was her who had changed.  She’d last left this room thinking she’d uncovered and solved her greatest mistake; now, she didn’t know what to think anymore.

She glanced at the books again.  She hadn’t been in the right mind frame for translating since Pari’s death.  Maybe now, she could begin to make progress again.  Her mind felt muddled and uncertain, yes, but no longer clouded by despair.  The hobby might be what she needed to take her mind off of the latest complication in her life.

Sofie almost jumped when a hard series of knocks came from outside her door.  Blake was outside.  She must have been too in her own head to notice the clanks of his approaching steps, but she knew it was him.  That knock had the distinctive timbre of his metal glove striking the metal door that nobody else could replicate.

Opening the door, Sofie immediately reeled back, gagging as the pungent odor of stinkcandle invaded her room, far stronger than it had been even in the hallway before.  Gagging, she hit the door button and retreated, but the door didn’t budge.  Blake took a step inside.

“What did you do?!” Blake wheezed accusingly.

“Ack!  Get out!” she coughed, backing even farther away.

“Did you make her do this with the chains?!”

“Get out of my room THIS INSTANT!”

Blake stepped back out into the hallway as a large rotary fan rose out of the floor between them.  The fan rapidly spun up to the point that it generated a strong cone of wind blasting out of the doorway and into the hall, pushing all of the airflow out of her chambers.  The smell weakened significantly, though Sofie didn’t look forward to traversing the nearby halls anytime soon.

“Better?” Blake yelled over the din of the propeller.  It wasn’t until now that she noticed the stuffed-up timbre of his voice, as if his nose was entirely clogged.

“What the heck is wrong with you, Blake?!” she shouted over the din.

“What’s wrong with me is that your little cretin turned my rooms into a biohazard site!” he hollered back.  “It’s like somebody dumped a sewer into a landfill and then set it all on fire!”

“That sounds terrible, but I fail to see what I have to do with it!”

“I was too busy coughing to catch most of it, but she definitely mentioned your name!  What did you do?!”

“I didn’t do anything!  I haven’t seen her since we got off the ship hours ago!”

“Oh yeah?!  No invisible mind-control chain bullshit because you’re unhappy about the collar?  She did it all on her own?”

“She’s her own person, Blake.  She can make her own decisions.”

“Well, in that case, then so can I.  I’m kicking her out and she can go find some other place to stinkify that isn’t my home!”

“What?!  You can’t!” Sofie cried.

“I sure as hell can!  I will not tolerate somebody who thinks it’s alright to make my fucking rooms smell worse than a toxic waste dump living under my roof, no matter if they’re seven or seventy!”

“You tolerate somebody living under your roof who literally severed your spine, Blake!”

“That’s different, and you know it!”

“Kids overreact to things, Blake!  That’s how they work!  She’s just a little girl!”

“She’s a fucking terrorist, is what she is!  It’s been hours, and I can still barely keep myself from coughing!   I had to stuff tucrenyx into my sinuses just to be able to function!  You want her to be able to stay?  Make it worth the pain and I’ll think about it!”

Sofie squeezed her hands into fists so hard that she could feel her nails cutting into her palms.  What an absurdly bizarre scene she found herself in, hollering arguments over the drone of a large fan at a man so smelly that he could fumigate a house with just his presence.  It would have been funny if he wasn’t so infuriating.

“Go talk to her, not me,” she replied.  “I’m sure there’s something she can do to make it up to you.”

“Like what, make me a candle?  No thanks, I’m good.  Let’s be clear, Sofie, I only let her stay here in the first place because you wanted it.  That means you get to pay.”

Why was Blake being so insistent that she make it up to him?  The question kept bouncing around Sofie’s head.  After all, in her mind, Pari could do many things that would be far more useful to Blake than anything Sofie could offer.  Blake claimed that he didn’t want candles, but that was oversimplifying the catgirl’s capabilities and they both knew it.  So, then, why was he here?

“What could I even do to make things right?” she asked.

“Hmmm, how about this?  You’re still translating those ancient texts, right?  Give me a copy of everything you have translated so far in those books of yours, in English, plus updated translations every day as you continue to translate more.”

Suddenly, Sofie felt like a light had gone on in her mind and she could see everything for what it was.  Blake seemed to want quite badly to see her translated books.  This set off alarm bells immediately, as Blake had never shown much interest in her translations before.

Clearly, Blake didn’t have it in him to simply come and ask—and if she were honest, she very well might have rebuffed him regardless, for reasons including but not limited to a certain ring around her neck.  That was why he was using Pari as leverage, trying to extract this concession from Sofie over something in which she had little involvement.  It felt like extortion or something.  Well, she wasn’t about to give in that easily.

“No,” she told him.  “I refuse.”

“Really?  I thought you would care about your so-called sister’s wellbeing!” he retorted.

“If Pari’s gone, then I’m gone.  We’ve lived on our own before, we can do it again.  I’ll get a job and we’ll be fine without you.  If you want my translations, then you’ll have to do much more than that for me.”

“Yeah?  Like what?”

“You know what,” she told him, lifting her chin.

Blake stared at her in thought for a few moments as the winds ruffled his short hair.  “In the fortress only,” he finally said.  “You have to keep wearing it outside.  And you have to translate every day, as much as you can manage.”

Sofie blinked.  That had been... shockingly easy?  He’d pivoted straight to bargaining!  Where was the bluster, the arguments, the bile?  How desperately did he want these translations?

“I want this gone for good,” she insisted.

“Sorry, in here I can install at least some measure of control and containment.  Out there, it’s necessary.”

“Oh, you’re going to just put stuff in the walls instead?  How is that any better?”

“You won’t have a collar that can choke you to death around your throat all day.  And I have some new ideas, now that we know more about your abilities, which should be able to work without having to threaten your life to do so.  But outside, it stays on.  Also, you have to actively work on the chain issue too, and report to me or Arlette what you find.”

Sofie didn’t know how to reply to that.  On the one hand, she wanted that damned collar gone for good.  On the other, this was a massive improvement and all she would have to do was... something she was going to do anyway?

“...alright, deal,” she finally agreed.  “It might take a while to translate into English, though.”

“Deal.  I’ll check and see if there are any books left in Otharia that can help you, as well.  Might make things easier for you,” he replied.  The collar around her neck popped open with a snap.  Sofie wasted no time removing it from her body.  As much as she wanted to throw it away, she instead placed it on a side table.  Meanwhile, the fan receded into the floor from whence it came.  “Alright, I’m going to go wash for the third time today.”

Sofie smirked as he left, but didn’t bother telling Blake the sad truth.  Instead, she decided to go visit a certain naughty catgirl, give her a big hug, and talk to her about proportional response.