“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

  Marcus Aurelius, Roman Statesman

  “A bowl of root vegetable stew for our brave fairy girl, and a plate of crab legs for her mom,” Billy announced as he handed his delicacies to Passi and Calista. Passi, ravished from their afternoon hunt, snatched the bowl from Billy and began shoveling its contents into her mouth.

  “Passi, slow down. You’re going to choke,” Calista said instinctively, cracking open her first crab leg. “And don’t forget to thank Billy.”

  “Fwank youb...,” Passi said, her words slurred from the mouthful of stew. “Ish so goods.”

  “Isn’t it?” Billy replied proudly, glancing over at the simmering pot over the low fire. “This island is full of herbs and spices we don’t have around the Castle. Really let me elevate my cooking game. Makes me wonder what other ingredients are on these islands.”

  Billy gazed across the ocean, its surface sparkling in the setting sun. Sapphire and Samson swam in the bay, diving beneath the gently rolling waves and surfacing with stones, coral, and shells clutched in their hands. Their playful laughter echoed across the bay, joining the joyful rhythm of the camp.

  At the edge of the jungle, Rain had set up her Emporia. Elmer, Alison, and Ying crowded around Tutoria’s counter, excitedly selling items earned from the day’s hunting and turning in completed missions. Tutoria’s catalogue of items was quickly expanding as Xavier, Minerva, Lucy, and Samson – Rain’s designated product scouts for the evening – explored the island and its bays under the sun’s dying light.

  As they traded with Tutoria, Rain explained wills to the players and encouraged them to fill one out.

  “I suppose I’d better get a will too,” Billy sighed as he handed a bowl of the stew to Cosmo. “If anything happens to me, and I leave Ying in the lurch, she’ll will never forgive me. She’ll probably pick some necromancy talents so she could stick my ghost in a punching bag and beat the crap out of me.”

  “You’d deserve it too,” Calista added, sucking on a crab leg and savoring its delicious flavor. “Damn, Billy. You’d better not die any time soon. I don’t want to go back to eating shitty roast boar and fish. Not when we could be eating like this.”

  “Yah, no shitty food,” Passi eagerly agreed.

  “Pumpkin, don’t swear,” Calista scolded half-heartedly. “Your mom will kill me if you’ve developed a potty mouth when she gets back.”

  “Listen to your mom, fairy girl. She’s one of the good ones,” Billy laughed, ruffling the little girl’s hair. Passi swatted away his hand in feigned anger and he laughed again. “You have a good night. I’m off to sign my life away to Ying.”

  Billy headed over to the Emporia, leaving them to enjoy their supper.

  They ate their meals in silence as the night darkened and the stars came out. Eventually, an exhausted Passi fell asleep in Calista’s arms. Calista held her close, listening to her daughter’s gentle snores.

  “It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?” Calista whispered, more to herself than to Cosmo. “To find love in such a place as this? A daughter, and the love of a wonderful woman.”

  “Do you still think she’s out there?” Cosmo inquired. “Your witch, I mean.”

  “She’s alive, Cosmo,” Calista replied, staring into the fire as she gently rocked Passi. “Milly is a survivor. Life has thrown everything it could at her. It tried to break her, over and over again – and she’s still here.”

  “Calista,” Cosmo warned cautiously. “Denial… it’s part of the grieving process. I know. I’ve been there. At first, it helps deal with the pain of loss, but eventually there comes a time when you must move on. It’s not healthy to hold onto such faint hope. For you or your daughter.”

  “She’s alive, Cosmo,” Calista repeated, struggling to keep her voice from cracking. “She’s alive… because if she’s not, I don’t know what I’m going to do. So I’ll keep searching. I’ll turn over every stone in this world until I find her. The Relentless Hound until the very end.”

  Cosmo didn’t press the issue. Serving himself up a second helping of stew, he removed his notebook from his inventory and stared out across the moonlit ocean.

  “Perhaps I shall add the witch and the huntress to my rock ballad,” he muttered, tapping his pen thoughtfully on the page as he composed lyrics in his head. “A tribute to unassailable love, forged strong in the darkest of times.”

  Calista rose from the sand, cradling Passi to her chest so she would not wake. “Perhaps you should. Good night, Cosmo.”

  “Good night, Huntress,” Cosmo replied with a note of sympathy. “Find your rest tonight. For tomorrow the darkness returns, and who knows what we shall find within.”

  “That’s good. You should use that,” Calista advised.

  Calista carried Passi to their tent and tucked her in. Passi gave a tiny whimper and clutched the blanket in her hands. Gently stroking her daughter’s purple hair, Calista waited until Passi’ breaths grew deep and quiet before giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead and leaving the tent.

  Seated on a log outside the entrance, she let the sounds of the waves as they rolled into shore wash over her. She tried not to think about anything, but inevitably, her thoughts returned to Milly, and the doubt that festered within her. Though she would never say it aloud, with every day that passed, that doubt grew just a little, and as it grew it became more and more difficult to ignore.

  Eventually, Rain sat down next to her, the Emporia closed for the night. They exchanged no words. Rain simply shuffled close to Calista, and Calista buried her head in Rain’s shoulder so she could finally let her strength fall and allow her tears to come.

  * * *

  A thousand miles away, in an archipelago hidden beneath a death god’s veil, a storm rolled over a rocky outcropping occupied by a flight of wyverns. At the head of the storm, a veiled witch soared through the air, arms outstretched, and eyes flared with violet fire.

  Just beyond the storm, an undead capybara and an intelligent mantis watched from their rainbow-colorful ballon as their witch dove towards the wyverns, the storm’s lightning following alongside her and illuminating the night sky. Ocean waves grew angry and crashed against the rocks, soaking the wyverns’ wings and turning to ice. The rocks beneath them liquified, and the wyverns quickly found themselves sinking into molten earth.

  The flight panicked, all semblance of order quickly abandoned. Teeth and claws lashed out as the frenzied creatures attempted to use each other as leverage to pull themselves free. The world filled with terrified roars that were quickly silenced.

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  The trail of lightning struck the island, cutting through the wyverns without hesitation or mercy. Those wyverns that didn’t die instantly were blinded by the flash and deafened by the thunderous boom that accompanied it.

  A heartbeat later, the witch was upon them, her obsidian fists cracking open the sturdy skulls of the survivors. A wyvern at the edge of the pack managed to free itself from the earth, only to become engulfed in a twister of flame that scorched its hide and drove the breath from its lungs.

  Another managed a blinded chomp at their foe, but the witch vanished before the attack landed, reappearing above the beast and slamming the wyvern's head into the liquified stone. The stone solidified, trapping the wyvern’s face beneath the earth.

  The final living wyvern – the alpha of the flight – belched a spit of flame over the entire flight in a blind frenzy. The attack rolled over the witch as she finished off the alpha’s mate, burning the hair on the witch’s arms and leaving welts on her skin and face. Yet the witch resisted the heat, and the alpha’s life ended as a sharpened slap of ice and stone pierced its eye and skewered its brain.

  As the alpha collapsed, life extinguished, a blue screen appeared in the darkness.

  The witch kicked off the rocky outcropping and soared back to the balloon as the storm began to dissolve, returning a deathly calm to the world below. She spotted her reflection in the water below – the powerful, confident, and beautiful stranger in the flowing gown – and struggled to recognize her.

  By the time she landed gracefully in the basket – greeted by Coco’s enthusiastic chirps and Jinora’s celebratory waves, she had completed her level-up and elevated her regeneration and telekinesis talents to master level. The welts on her arms and face were already half-healed, and it only took a few seconds of her master-level Healer’s Touch to heal them fully.

  “It’s time we head back,” the witch announced, channeling the wind to return them to Core Research Station. As the current caught the balloon, she let Salem’s Fury fall away, and the violet fire in her eyes returned to its usual subtle simmer. “We gave Oracle her three days. With or without her, we're headed for the Castle of Glass.”

  The witch leaned over the edge of the balloon, staring towards the setting sun.

  “We're headed to find my family.”

  * * *

  The door to Luna’s bedroom creaked open, and Tutoria #0788 stuck her head in.

  “What do you want?” Luna spat bitterly. Wrapped in Milly’s black hoodie, she watched the monitors with tears in her eyes as she observed Calista crying into Rain’s shoulder.

  “Tutoria Prime… she’s growing impatient with her inability to access the God Contest’s master controls,” #0788 replied hesitantly, glancing over her shoulder towards her sisters. “She’s decided to take more… um… drastic measures tomorrow to… convince you to release the controls.”

  “And why are you telling me this?” Luna asked, her hands clenching the edge of Milly’s hoodie nervously. “Trying to scare me into compliance before the torture begins, so you won’t have to get your hands dirty? I won’t give in. I won’t hand over the keys to the God Contest to a bunch of traitorous Tutorias.”

  “No! I… um…,” #0788 stammered, taking a deep breath as she entered the room and closed the door behind her. “We… we can’t let Prime get control. I’m here to break you out.”

  “… What?”

  * * *

  The Ashvins – the twin gods of medicine, health, dawn, and sciences – spent their final, madness-driven moments strangling each other. Their frantic, violent flailing – an utter distortion of whom they had been in health – was enough to cause even the God of Death to avert his gaze until the madness finally collapsed their minds.

  They died in the great hall, hands still clutched around each other’s throats.

  Cizen gave a regretful sigh as he rose from the dining table. The crackle of the grand fireplace and the echo of his footfalls were the only sounds to pierce the deathly silence. He moved to the dead gods and pried their hands off each other.

  “My apologies, Ashvins,” Cizen whispered as he laid them down and gently shut their eyes. One of his rats tried to nibble on Nasatya’s leg, but Cizen shooed it away. “I shall always be grateful for your aid when I first arrived in this prison. It’s a shame mental scars are so much more challenging to heal than physical ones. No matter how hard you tried, I was never able to forget her.”

  Cizen left them lying beside one another – brothers in life, brothers in death. As he left the great hall, he locked the doors behind him. This place would serve well enough for their tomb.

  Only two gods remained. Omoikane – the right hand of the High Lord – and the High Lord himself. Omoikane lay in his library, surrounded by the precious knowledge he’d spent eons writing. The madness had stolen his ability to understand it, and he spent his days tearing away the pages and burning them. It wouldn’t be long now before he, like the Ashvins, succumbed to his disease.

  Cizen would let the madness take Omoikane into oblivion. He owed the old man that much.

  He owed no such mercy to their High Lord.

  Cizen pulled the black dagger from under his cloak – a dagger crafted from the stolen fabric of the Nexus itself.

  A weapon designed to murder a god.

  It wasn’t a necessary act. He could let the madness take the High Lord as it had the others. Yet, despite his better judgement, Cizen couldn’t find it within himself to grant the High Lord peaceful end. Syune’s death – the vengeance owed – demanded something far greater.

  And when it was over, Cizen would finally be allowed to rest. He would wait until his Seed was powerful before he finally abandoned this prison and returned home.

  Reunited with the family he’d lost long ago.

  For those of you keeping track, Milly gained 6 levels, adding 6 to magic, 4 to agility, and 2 to strength. She upgraded Healer's Touch, Earth Magic, Regeneration, and Telekinesis to master level. The Anklet of Wyvern Scales adds 10 to her toughness.

  The Non-Canonical Aftermath: