The ride back was short, I stepped out and nothing followed me.

  “Hey I’m gonna call you null actually, I think that’s cooler right?” I say, my voice has a tinge of manic energy to it.

  Null nods needlessly, “it is a wonderful name, are you aware of the culture around naming people?”

  I step a little bit ahead, the forest trees painting a nice view towards the cabin, yellow sun rays of the morning hitting the stone path, “no?”

  “It means… in your culture it’s close to marriage.” She speaks in an awkward tone, not confident.

  “Oh?” Oh. “Really?” Really.

  She keeps up with my pace, walking beside me, “it means to settle down with someone, if they accepted that proposal everyone must call them by that name.”

  So they do have names… just for… this is a joke right? “Yeah right.”

  “It’s complicated, many friends accept each other’s names. And as your servant I will accept my name too.” She looks displeased with this.

  “Lilith is just messing with me.” I really should have called her something gross, I wasn’t aware of that piece of culture.

  We arrive at the cabin and to my pleasure she started to prepare toast.

  “Where’d you get the bread?”

  She pulls out a little bag from her pocket, “this bag holds 6 years worth of food.” The bag stretches as she reaches inside, she pulls out another piece of bread.

  “Come here.” She places paper on the kitchen counter, writes a few symbols, one looks like an awkward campfire, and another is the damage multiplier.

  She takes a sip of blood then activates the spell on the bread, cooking it a perfect golden brown.

  “Your turn.” She hands me the pen and paper, I copy the exact symbols, I reach for the vial to drink some blood but she slaps my hand.

  “You need to work on blood potency, use your own blood, when you activate a spell without blood in your stomach it takes the reserves from your body.”

  That makes sense, a lot of sense.

  “Morva eris.” I say sorta bored, it turns the perfect golden brown, there’s not much of a magic feeling to magic anymore.

  Null grabs the toast and spreads jam on it.

  “No butter?”

  “I will acquire butter tomorrow.” She spreads the jam and holds it to my mouth.

  “I can feed myself.” I grab the toast and take a bite, it’s the perfect toast texture.

  Null begins to clean up, mostly focusing on dust and eventually moving outside to trim weeds, she is truly a servant.

  I finish my toast and walk out to see her, “don’t I need to learn tracking magic to find Jackson?”

  She looks up at me, on her knees pulling a certain pesky weed from in between two stones, her doing this in a black dress seemed crazy, “you need a ring for that.”

  “When will I get my ring?”

  “Today or tomorrow…” she pulls it out with a yank, landing on her butt.

  “Surely you have magic to make that easier.” I help out with the other weeds, but I’m not much stronger than her due to malnutrition.

  “I do, but I find the process fun, for the journey not destination.” She hums a bit as she finds more weeds, “you’ll die when you put on that ring you know.”

  I freeze, “huh?”

  “The only reason master Lilith’s boss is letting you prance around is because she knows the ring will kill you, no human in the history of humanity has ever put one on and survived.” She continues to hum, waiting for my response patiently.

  A faint distant part of me thinks, ‘no surely not, I’m special, I’ve always been special.’ But that drowns out in my practicality.

  “How many humans have tried?”

  She sits on her toes, her knees rising, “I’m unsure, I know the test results of 100 humans they made do potency spells, they all died.”

  That’s not a very big research pool, “I survived a potency spell.”

  “Indeed you did, but a ring is a constant potency spell, whatever reaction you did have, although minor, would be constant.”

  Yeah that’s no good, I’m fairly sure I had a seizure, along with vomiting blood and bleeding from the nose.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  I hear footsteps, it’s Lilith in her armour “good day co worker.”

  “Hey Lilith.” I let out without thinking.

  She stops, “yeah.” She stands around for a second before tapping null on the shoulder, “I need a word, maybe a couple words, possibly a sentence.” Her voice sounds shaken behind all that nonchalance.

  Null stands up, formally following her down the path away from my cabin.

  “I’ll help you with the rest of the weeds master Fay.” As I watch null walk down the path I see another version of her, she seems like a less expensive copy.

  “Hey, how long have you been alive?” I let out the worlds worst icebreaker.

  She begins to move leaves off the path, “33 minutes and 11… 12… 14 seconds.”

  Weird, this is weird. “Well thanks… I’m going back inside.”

  She bows, letting me go.

  So obviously I need to find a way to delay this ring thing as long as possible, I have 6 days to find Jackson… but I don’t want to kill him.

  If I get null to clone Jackson, kill the clone then leave the real Jackson alive, all will be good right? That’s the best option. I show them the dead clones body, everything will be forgiven.

  The old man I had taken to kill was buried… I could use that as a body for her clone magic… save Jackson, meaning that death was not for nothing…

  I walk outside and ask the clone, “hey when you die, does you body remain the same?”

  She shakes her head, “I am unsure master Fay, perhaps you should ask someone else.”

  Annoying, okay, I go back inside of the cabin and open up the 50 page book, its basically those 10 pages they gave the town and 40 more are full of various variables.

  Combination variables are very interesting, they have a certain blood burning number, BB, some being around 10, others being at 4000.

  I hear metal boots walk into my cabin, Lilith is standing around the doorway holding a black box.

  “She really didn’t want to give you any time, this is probably our goodbye.” She places the box on the table.

  “Block the door.” She orders null, opening the box to reveal a dark wooden ring with golden swirls, “it’s cool looking too.” She inspects it for a moment before putting it on the table.

  “I had one plan, I’m not sure if it’s going to work, might as well try.” She takes an empty vial from null and extracts her own blood using magic.

  It fills to the brim with a purple liquid, it bubbles like it’s acidic, “just drink this, it’s not scientifically proven but it might help with the transition phase.”

  I look at the door which is fully blocked by null and the clone of null, I’m not going to be able to leave, “okay yeah fuck it.”

  I just need to be alive for as long as possible to keep my town safe. I’ll force myself to be alive.

  I take the vial and gulp it down, it burns my mouth to throat to stomach. Lilith grabs my wrist and puts the ring on hastily.

  My fingers start feeling tight, like they’re being pulled, I look over at null and she is boiling the kettle.

  A sharp pain strikes up my back, like a bead going from the bottom to the top, hitting my brain over and over again.

  It speeds up, the bead in my spine shoots up every second, then every half a second, then every quarter.

  I fall onto the ground, my legs completely stop moving and my vision loses focus, I’m about to die, I’m genuinely about to die.

  I crawl to the desk I had setup on the drawers, grabbing paper, I look over at Lilith who is just watching apathetically.

  I try to open my mouth but my jaw is shut, like some force is holding the top of my head and bottom of my jaw shut, a huge hand.

  I slice my finger and crudely draw that general healing spell, it’s riddled with potential mistakes. My finger that holds the ring is completely black, decaying, rotting.

  I lose all vision, everything going dark, I thought I fainted but I can still feel physical sensation, I’m awake, just blind. I try to fill the rest of the variables without vision off by heart, even though I only used the spell once, not nearly enough muscle memory.

  Once I think I’m done I lose the ability to use my right hand.

  My head slams against the drawer, I must’ve lost balance, I can’t hear anything anymore, I can just feel. I grab the paper whole and slam it to my chest, realising I can’t activate the spell with my shut jaw, I use my remaining hand while laying backwards, keeping the paper on my chest.

  I have to pull my jaw open, moving with my tongue, “morva eris.” I say without hearing anything.

  I pass out.

  …

  I was with my parents, somewhere in a café, eating pancakes with bacon and eggs, I had just poked a yoke and watched it make a little yellow river onto the plate. Someone walked in, he looked strange, odd colour… I assumed it was a crack addict.

  He searched the café, I noticed he was wearing a fantasy robe, nobody had noticed him, nobody at all.

  He stood by the table where my mom and dad were both sharing a poached egg.

  “Can you see the guy staring at us right now?” I asked, they don’t reply, weird.

  I turned towards the man, his eyes glowing a dark purple, illuminating the inside of the cloak. His hand slowly rose from his side and reached towards my face.

  His fingers were unnaturally large, his hand covers my face and... and…

  I felt mud on my feet, mud everywhere, all colour had been drained, everything had been drained. There was screaming, fighting, people begging for god.

  A woman comes up to me and drags me into a hut, her ginger hair was a bit dirty, but she seemed safe…

  Why did I feel so calm? People were screaming, crying and lashing out, why did I feel more calm than I was in the café?

  I feel water poured onto my face, “if that doesn’t work he is dead, great, I’m done for, it’s over…” I hear Lilith’s voice faintly.

  Then a kick to the side of my body, “FUCK YOU, YOU WORTHLESS HUMAN, YOU RUINED MY LIFE.”

  My eyes pry themselves open from the pain, I gasp for air, my hand clutches at my chest, my vision regained.

  “Stop.” I say weakly, my voice sounds coarse.

  Lilith is above me looking incessantly annoyed, “oh, you actually lived.” She gets me to stand up, “what were you thinking? Doing another healing spell?”

  I tilt my head, “to heal? Obviously, I was dying.”

  “Solution to poison being more poison.”

  I look at the paper and it isn’t even burnt up.

  “You activated it using the eris ring, because you were visualising it.” She picks up the paper, “thank god because this would kill you if you activated it. It’s a mess.” She rips it up, null walks over and collects the scraps to throw away.

  “So… I used the ring to heal myself?”

  “Not at all, you tried using the basic heal spell again, with your own blood.” She sits down, clicking her finger towards null, “tea.”

  I begin to feel light and vomit on the floor, the vomit had an otherworldly purple color, she giggles, “well that’s a waste of my blood. Clean it up.” She snaps at null again.

  My piercing headache comes back, a stabbing through my brain, it’s so much worse than it used to be. Lilith grabs my arm and takes me outside.

  “Let’s begin training.” She pulls me harder, I fall onto the ground and vomit again, “really?”

  My head feels like it’s splitting open, a knife being stabbing into my skull over and over again.

  Blood starts dripping from my nose, “huh, that’s weird.” She wipes my nose with her hand, the liquid looks dark blue. “That’s your brain.”

  Great, my brain is coming out of my nose as a fluid, awesome. I vomit again, the blood being purple still. That vial did not have this much purple blood.

  I vomit again, a pain goes down my brain to my spine.

  “Urgh, suck it up. Everyone has a hard time with the ring at first, you haven’t died, so man up.” She kicks my side, making me roll over, “oh you look pale.”