Dahlia laughed. Light blossomed through her skin, and inside, she screamed, but to the world, to Tarik, the Fey laughed defiantly, unapologetically. She would not apologize for what she had done and would do it again.

  Where her laughter once held the bright, ringing sound of silver bells over an open grave, a hint of somberness echoed in the joyful peals of the bells that had not been there previously—a seriousness. Dahlia couldn’t precisely pinpoint what had changed; she only knew that something inside of her had become different.

  “Of course I did,” Dahlia said with a grin—wide, sharp, and utterly unapologetic.

  The fairy twisted her wrist, and the miniature scythe bangle on her wrist flowed into her hand, shifting into a more significant weapon to match her Embiggened size. Golden hieroglyphs along the haft shifted, rewrote themselves, and drank in the weight of what she had done and what she had become. With the Scythe held by her right hand, she touched her chest with her left, seeking resonance of the changes in her weapon with those inside of her.

  The journey inward was always an interesting one for Fey, for they frequently had to wonder if they were noticing something previously lost or if they were finding something new when they discovered changes.

  Tarik stared at her, sputtering and aghast.

  “Should I be afraid?” Dahlia asked Tarik.

  “I stole judgment from a god, and yet… I stand.” Dahlia’s smile had never been brighter as she savored the impossible words that no rational being would speak. Fey were not renowned for their rationality, though.

  “That Scythe…” Tarik muttered. “How did you come to possess Mesektet-Kheru? Did you steal that as well?”

  Dahlia laughed, but her eyes studied the curved blade of the Scythe.

  “Mesektet-Kheru, you say? I was told its name was the Scythe of Solar Requiem,” Dahlia mused. When she spoke its name, the Scythe pulsed in her hands, and the information on it updated when she stared at it. It bore the name Mesektet-Kheru.

  “Amun-Ra awarded it to me for handling the mess of Aelwyth Morghaine and the Discordant Chorister therein. What do you know about it?” Dahlia asked.

  Tarik groaned in disbelief.

  “You Fey… how can you be this ignorant of the High God?” Tarik squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at the bridge of his nose as if his brain were causing him great pain.

  Dahlia stared at him. Waiting.

  Tarik exhaled unsteadily and rubbed his temples to try and banish the physical pain that dealing with the fairy had caused him.

  “You mean to tell me Amun-Ra simply... handed it to you?” Tarik glared at her with the weary disbelief of a man in danger of running out of patience for Fey nonsense. “You have no idea what your holding, do you?”

  Dahlia tilted her head to the side. A smirk played on her lips, but internally, she raged. She hated being called ignorant or dumb. It wasn’t long ago she had been clueless and dumb, and being reminded of it chafed and made her feel… less. Dahlia hated feeling less. Her fingers tightened around the shaft of the scythe. It hummed with recognition of its name as if it had always known it, even if she had not.

  Tarik ground his teeth and muttered curses under his breath in a druidic dialect she did not understand.

  “Mesektet-Kheru is no mere relic, Dahlia.” Tarik’s voice bore a weight that made Dahlia uncomfortable. The Druid bordered dangerously close to being… reverent. “Its not a simple, powerful weapon. It is a declaration, a final sentence. From Ra.”

  Tarik pointed at the scythe's curved black blade, which had lines of radiant power flowing through it—light in sharp contrast to darkness.

  “It is the instrument of Amun-Ra’s last judgment—the blade that ended what could not be allowed to continue. It is meant to be wielded by the Hand of Amun-Ra himself, the unseen executioner who passed sentences where even the gods hesitate.”

  Dahlia laughed and ran a black fingernail along the curved blade as if she were stroking Mr. Disapoofer’s fur.

  “That sounds quite dramatic; I didn’t know the old Ram had it in him,” Dahlia said.

  Tarik wasn’t amused.

  “Dahlia, Mesektet-Kheru severs the truly irredeemable from existence itself.” Tarik spat the words like a curse, and he took a step closer to her and the weapon, his eyes burning with intensity. “Numerous Temples, not just the Inquisition, have tried to remove its name from history. Do you know why?”

  “Because it’s inconvenient to have a divine weapon that doesn’t obey the petty laws of lesser gods lying around?” Dahlia answered with a shrug of her shoulders. Her smirk, however, had mainly faded by this point.

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  Tarik growled in the back of his throat as if the Druid wished he were an animal instead of a human.

  “Because it doesn’t judge based on mortal laws—at all. Not the Inquisition’s, Pharoh’s, or even the decrees of lesser gods restrain it.” Tarik gestured at the scythe.

  “I was right!” Dahlia chimed in, and Tarik wanted to cry.

  “That scythe follows only the will of Amun-Ra’s highest law—the truest, purest balance. If someone is guilty beyond redemption, it doesn’t just kill them; it wipes them from fate. There is no afterlife, no rebirth, no lingering spirit. Unless Amun-Ra undoes it, they cease to be.”

  Dahlia stared at the weapon. Its weight shifted in her hands—not its physical mass, but its meaning, its existence. Suddenly, it felt heavier in pathos. Dahlia had to admit that she liked the increased pressure.

  Tarik folded his arms, glaring at her, his voice dark with warning—and disbelief.

  “And you, a Fey, a necromancer, a trickster who follows no laws but your own whims and whatever passes for rules amongst the Fey—you’re telling me that Amun-Ra willingly gave you that power?”

  Tarik stared hard, expecting her to offer some wiggling, squirming half-truth answer.

  Dahlia laughed and smiled—a dark, wicked smile.

  “He did,” Dahlia said honestly. “Unless the Voice of Nantes lied about who a quest came from or the rewards given?”

  I did not.

  Tarik’s entire body stiffened at the absolute, undeniable weight of the System’s response. He had expected Dahlia’s casual mockery, flippant deflections, and her irreverence towards all things divine. He hadn’t expected the Voice of Nantes itself to answer.

  Tarik’s fingers twitched slightly as if his body couldn’t decide whether to clutch his staff or a bottle of strong liquor.

  “I need a drink,” Tarik said with the desperation of a man who knew there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to drown his sorrows.

  Dahlia’s wicked smile only deepened, and she rested the scythe against her shoulder, its weight a perfect match for her mood.

  “Poor Tarik,” she said not at all consolingly. “You heard the Voice of Nantes confirm it. Amun-Ra himself signed off on me.”

  Tarik let out a strangled breath, his head tilted up towards the heavens, as if he might find an answer up there, or perhaps he sought divine intervention—or, maybe, he just wanted to pretend he hadn’t heard what Dahlia said.

  “I don’t understand,” Tarik muttered. “Why would he—how could he?” Tarik’s face lowered, his brown eyes focused on her, burning with frustration and something dangerously close to awe.

  “You shouldn’t be worthy of that Scythe.”

  Dahlia’s smile didn’t fade—if anything it widened even more, and the fairy might have grown another inch taller to spite him.

  “And yet,” Dahlia purred, tapping a single nail against the shaft of Mesektet-Kheru to create a soft drumming beat with each impact of her nails against the hieroglyph-covered shaft. With each tap of her nails against it, a faint divine glow pulsed within it in acknowledgement of its master's touch: "Here we are.”

  Tarik closed his eyes. He didn’t speak, but Dahlia could practically hear the curses and questioning of the divine within his mind.

  Finally, the druid spoke again.

  “I’m going to need several drinks. Maybe all of the drinks,” Tarik said. Then he remembered Riverwatch was still a ruin and groaned.

  “You go do that, you poor thing,” Dahlia said. Unless Tarik imagined it, her voice might have been momentarily touched with compassion.

  Then she snapped her fingers, and reality twisted around Riverwatch.

  Tarik stared, eyes refusing to blink, fearful that it might all fall away like an illusion if he blinked. He struggled to process what happened with a snap of the fairy’s fingers. The streets had been slick with blood, the walls blackened with fire, the town itself a veritable corpse.

  And in a mere snap of the Fey’s fingers, it was as if nothing had ever happened. The cobbles were clean, the homes were unburned, and the market stalls looked like they’d never been overturned. The air smelled ordinary, with no smoke, blood, or divine wrath.

  Yet there was an imperfection to it all, a haunting absence. Where had all the corpses gone? The unnatural absence of so many lives could not hide the decimation Riverwatch had suffered.

  “You—” Tarik stopped, and shook his head. “I was going to say you can’t just do that, but obviously you can.”

  Dahlia tilted her head, a self-satisfied smirk resting naturally on her lips. “I can, and I did.”

  Tarik looked around the town, and an uneasy feeling grew in the back of his head. “How much did it cost you?”

  Dahlia considered her Glimmer points. She’d hit the Lordly total of 151 before spending 35 to restore Riverwatch to its previous state. Even though she couldn’t resurrect the dead, 35 Glimmer to restore a town entirely seemed like one hell of a deal. Had the bones of Nantes aided her, or perhaps Heka himself?

  The mischief faded from her smirk, replaced with something else, something… softer.

  “Enough,” Dahlia said.

  Tarik studied the fairy, but he didn’t push. If Dahlia didn’t want to say something outright, pressing her would only lead to more riddles at best or her wrath at worst.

  “There’s only 52 survivors,” Dahlia warned him as his eyes turned towards Graystone Manor, where voices rose in disbelief. The remaining villagers were discovering their little town was whole once again, and would soon be looking for answers.

  “They’re going to think it was divine intervention,” Tarik said with a sigh.

  Dahlia laughed and twirled Mesektet-Kheru in her hand, showing off the divine relic, before she leaned on it as if it were a standard staff or walking stick. “I won’t correct them.”

  “Of course you won’t,” Tarik said. He gave her a flat look before another exasperated sigh escaped him. “Fine, I’ll ensure they don’t all collectively lose their minds.”

  Laughing, Dahlia lifted her left hand and blew. A golden pink stream of fairy dust flowed from her palm towards the manor. The flow of glitter performed impressive aerial acrobatics before it blew the front doors of the manor open and created a flash inside.

  “Go on, then. Find those drinks you were so desperate for.” Dahlia shoed him off with a wave of her hand. The Druid stared at her for a few seconds before he turned and stalked towards the manor and the recovering people within. Her violet eyes, gleaming in the night, watched him walk into the manor.

  Riverwatch had been restored, but that didn’t mean it had been saved. More than most, Dahlia knew how fragile magic could be, and miracles were the most delicate of all magics.

  Alone, at last, Dahlia regarded the Feywoven Satchel on her hip—and ran a mental finger along all of the corpses it now contained. Tarik hadn’t wanted death to linger in Riverwatch, so it wouldn’t. Dahlia hadn’t taken all of them, only fifty or so. The rest had been laid to peace in the cemetery, and the Inquisition corpses had been shunted to Vesperis Morghaine.

  “Soon, darlings, soon,” Dahlia whispered to the remains of Adeline, Amelia, and Zorah.