Artesia sank down in the tub and wrapped her arms around her legs with a shiver. Lisa was behind her, washing her hair, and Artesia felt out of her own skin. Like she wasn’t a real person. It had only happened yesterday, and she felt like… the world was ending, mostly. Paladins and imperial guards had recovered the bodies, and no one had let Artesia look at them. She was running wild calculations with her mind, and she was coming to all sorts of conclusions about the state of the bodies.

They had to have been ripped apart. That was why no one was letting her look.

Lisa scrubbed her scalp, her hands warm and firm, and Artesia stared blankly at the wall. She could smell the shampoo. It was ginger and sage. It smelled nice. Artesia felt like she had to throw up. Her stomach was upset, and the food at the temple was plain, but she was fed the finest food they had to offer. Roasted quail, monsters, rich veal and roasted vegetables. She would prefer to eat what the priests were eating. It didn’t seem fair.

“I wasn’t built for this,” she said quietly, and Lisa paused in her scrubbing.

“Your Holiness?” she asked hesitantly, and Artesia swallowed.

“Can you get me a book on combat holy arts?” she asked, and Lisa was silent. “Lisa?”

“That’s not appropriate for your station, Your Holiness,” Lisa said, and Artesia blew up.

“Damn my station, I’m not letting people die for me again!” she screamed, and her voice cracked. Lisa reared back in shock, and Artesia burst into tears. “I won’t do it! I can’t do it! If I can’t fight alongside them, I might as well just die!”

“Your Holiness, I---”

“I’m sick of this! Now there’s men dying for me, and I had to run away! Because I couldn’t fight!” she screamed, the water sloshing around her. “I need to be better than this! I won’t let people die for me!”

Lisa was silent, and Artesia was shaking, panting hard. She lived in the lap of luxury. She was pampered and preened on a daily basis. She had a priest to tend to her every need. If she wanted something, she could just snap her fingers and get it. But, she was trapped. She had to live her whole life like this, and she didn’t want it. She didn’t want it.

She hated this. She loathed it. She felt like she needed to cry, scream, rail against the Goddess for stealing her from her home and putting her in this position. It was unfair, unjust, and she wanted to be more than this. She wanted to be more than this. She had everything, but she was greedy. She wasn’t made for the armor they had given her, these robes and these dresses. She didn’t fit them, and no one seemed to understand that she was miserable. Even without the plot to screw up her life, even without Georgina, she was utterly miserable.

It was unfair.

She was pampered and fawned over, and it just served to make her uncomfortable. She still remembered the way Greta clutched her hand, like she was something holy, come down upon the world to bless it with her grace and beauty. And she was beautiful. In her previous life, she had been plain. Not ugly, not pretty, just normal. That was no longer true. She was stunning, beautiful, and the way men looked at her now made her uncomfortable.

She wanted to run away from all of this.

Artesia took a deep breath in and wrapped her hands around the edges of the tub.

“Get me the book,” she forced out tightly, and Lisa was quiet.

“I’ll get it, Your Holiness,” she promised, and Artesia dunked her head under the water to rinse out all the shampoo before she stood. “Only if you allow me to condition. You can have a fit when you’re done with your bath.”

Artesia sat back down, and Lisa lathered the conditioner in her strands. They used the bars here for it, like those no-waste companies, and Artesia kind of hated it. Well, she wasn’t the one washing her hair. Not anymore.

Artesia took several deep, calming breaths as Lisa worked the conditioner through her hair and flipped it over the edge of the tub.

“Your Holiness… They were happy to die for you,” Lisa said quietly, and Artesia’s breath caught in her chest.

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” she snapped, and Lisa was quiet.

“Even so, they trained their whole lives for this. You are their Saint. I don’t think you realize how important you are,” she said, and Artesia stared at the wall with unfocused eyes. How important, huh? No. No, Artesia thought the problem was she knew exactly how important she was. And she didn’t like it. Didn’t want it. Didn’t want to be this. This was horrible. This was a living nightmare. People had died for her. Mally got run through and would have died if they weren’t doing weird things with their body.

And, honestly, why would they primarily replace their body with mushrooms? That was insane. Mally was insane, and she resented them deeply for dragging her away. But, at the same time, she wanted to still be around them. She didn’t know what her conflicting feelings about this were, but she…

She was torn.

Gods, they were all dead. All twelve paladins they had taken with them were gone. And they would have to bury them. There would be a mass funeral for them, planned by the church, with full honors. Their families would be there, weeping, and Artesia would have to face them, knowing she was the cause. She was responsible. This was her fault.

This was all her fault.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she took a deep breath in. This was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to have this kind of responsibility. This was for someone that wanted it, not someone that had been thrusted into the role. This was not for her. Their blood was on her hands, and she had to live with that. She did not want to live with that. She didn’t want to live with it.

….

Mally had many problems, and the chief of them was that they were a quick thinker, but when it came to processing things emotionally, they were criminally slow. Maybe it was the autism, maybe there was something wrong with them, but when it hit them, they tended to melt down.

Which was why they were now hiding in a crevice, the press of it calming to them, as they panted and shook.

It was fine. It had been fine. They were fine. Except they weren’t. They weren’t okay, because they were a fucking disaster. It was now processing that they had killed people, rather brutally, and they were shivering and shaking with quiet, desperate sobs. They had killed themself, essentially, a second time.

Maybe something had broken in them. Maybe there was something terribly wrong with them. They didn’t know. They were shaking and shivering, tears streaming down their cheeks. They wondered who found their body. They hadn’t spoken to their family in years at the point of their death, and they were probably buried under the wrong name, because they had never married to protect themself. They probably weren’t even cremated like they wanted.

And there was no way to go back, they realized. There was no way to go back to their life before, not that they wanted to go back. It had been a miserable existence as a data entry tech. They had been evicted before they killed themself because they couldn’t keep up with the rising cost of rent. They hadn’t wanted to be a homeless trans person, so they just offed themself.

It was easier that way.

It was just easier.

And now they were in this mess. In many ways, they were responsible for the deaths of those men. They had changed the genre. Of course, they knew people were dying anyway, horribly, but they had done that. They were shaking in fear, and they knew they were responsible for all of this. They had gotten those paladins killed, because they changed the genre. That woman wasn’t even supposed to exist. She never came up in the manhwa, and now she was here, running amok, because of what they had done, and they had no idea what Artesia would choose to do. How Hye-Su was coping with all of this.

They hiccuped on a sob, and Tuna pawed at the crevice they were hiding in with a whine. They gave her a shaky smile, and she tilted her head.

“I’m okay,” they rasped to the wolf, except they really were not okay. They were not okay at all.

Tuna whined and backed up before she came forward a few paces, bowing as her tail wagged in discomfort, and Mally hiccuped on a sob. They had killed Georgina’s body. They had killed it, and all they could think was that they were a monster.

They were a monster. That detached way they killed people, the way everyone called them heartless, and all they could think of was the drops of blood on stone floors as the man struggled for air. Caesar’s sharp, mocking smile as Mally shook in place, horrified. The way Caesar finally disembowled him, and Mally, like the coward they were, ran.

They were a coward, at the end of the day. It was relatively easy to kill someone. It was harder to leave them alive.

They thought of bodies dropping, one after another, and wondered what possessed them to do that. They had no idea. They had just done it. They hadn’t considered the consequences of that decision. They never thought before they acted, did they? Of course they didn’t. Why would they? Why would they consider the fact that they were a cold blooded killer, just like their father.

“Baby,” Dad said, drunk and swaying. “You know, there’s five percent holes out in those hills out there.”

“What?” Mally asked, and Dad blinked at them.

“Five percent holes. Everyone has a five percent ability to kill someone,” he said, and Mally stared at him, wondering where this was going. “Take a shot.”

He poured them a shot of Jagermeister, and they swallowed down the burning liquid and grimaced. They were seventeen and not supposed to be drinking, but it was with their dad, so it was fine.

“Five percent holes are the holes where the bodies will never be found,” he said, and Mally was quiet, staring at their father with wide, wide eyes. “I think you’re more at a ten percent, personally. There’s something… wrong with you.”

They didn’t know why they thought of that memory. It was old, faded, but their father’s brown eyes were as bright as always in their memories of him. They shuddered, hiccuping on a sob, and wondered what he would say if he could see them now. It had taken ten years after that to get their diagnosis. They had died three months later.

It was…

What had they done? Had the wires gotten crossed somewhere? They were fatherless, motherless, and didn’t even know where their mother was nowadays. Not in this life. Their father had taken them from her the day they came into Georgina’s body. They only vaguely recalled a woman with pink eyes and blonde hair, sobbing as she clung to Mally’s body, and Caesar dragging them away.

Finding her was a risk. Caesar probably ordered her killed to tie up any loose ends. Mally knew better than to reconnect.

Mally hiccuped on a sob, and voices came around the corner.

“Man, Mally really left fast, huh?” David asked, and Mally froze. “I’m worried about him…”

“He can clearly handle himself,” Alyssa grunted. “Don’t worry about him. We have our own problems.”

“He’s just a kid, Alyssa,” David said. “We were all kids at some point.”

“He’s creepy,” Alyssa complained, and Mally hiccuped on another sob, muffling their noises with their hands pressed to their mouth. “There’s something wrong with that kid. Who can heartlessly kill bunnies like that?”

“They were going to eat him if he didn’t,” David pointed out.

“He could have just not taken the quest in the first place.”

“Is that really your only complaint about him? He’s a kid. He needs to make money.”

“Well, no, that’s not my only complaint. He’s too full of himself, leveling up like that.”

“Oh, my Goddess, Alyssa---”

“What?”

“Really? You’re mad because he’s good at his job---Oh, hi, Tuna. Where’s your master?”

Mally squeezed their eyes tight shut as David peered into the crevice Tuna was waiting outside for Mally to come out of.

“Mally…?” he asked hesitantly, and Mally slid out of the crevice, grabbed their sword, hurriedly belted it back on, and turned around. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” Mally snapped and hiccuped on another sob. “I’m just---”

“Aw, Mally, Alyssa didn’t mean it---”

“It’s not that,” Mally interrupted, and David stared at them, startled. “I have to go.”

With that, they turned and hurried down the tunnel as all three of them stared after them, startled. They didn’t know what to do, and neither did Mally, because when was the last time they had cried? This was humiliating.

They hurried away, walking as quickly as they could, and took several deep, calming breaths. They needed to prioritize. They couldn’t be spending their time crying when there were scorpions to catch and kill. They needed to get the scorpions for the party, and they only had three days to do it.

Mally took a deep, shuddering breath in and squared their shoulders. They were Mally Mack, and that was nothing to sneeze at. They were going to be an S rank relatively soon, and they had to act like it. They may end up the youngest S rank in history, and they would be invited places and needed for things, and they couldn’t afford to have meltdowns like this.

They stole down the tunnel and drew their sword as they held up their lantern. They were in a massive cavern now, and it was empty. There were four exits, and they set down their lantern to study their map.

It was going to be a long three days while they hunted these scorpions. Dammit, why did they have to take a quest for such a rare animal? Annoying. Whatever.

They needed to get it together. Quickly.