Maybe I should invest in getting myself a small journal.

I could write myself some long logs, vent out bottled frustrations that I could never say to anyone else, ramble on and on about things I found peculiar throughout my life… y'know, do the whole 'Day 1, Day 2' like some sole survivor of nuclear fallout.

Think perhaps these wiki pages are starting to be a concerning influence on me psyche. So much history spanning years and even decades at a time, half of them trivial, the other half a mishmash of everything else - all archived and cataloged by a passionate group of fans on a website that contained countless more articles written with just as much detail and passion.

In a way, I was reading a journal in and of itself. Or maybe a memoir would be a more accurate term.

>

Has a nice ring to it.

How about I try throwing my hat in the ring too? Alright, here goes...

'Day one, log one.

I learned to do some magic by bouncing balls over and over again. Some guy named Jay caused the Blight. Mom came to visit, baked some cake…

Mrs. White died tonight.

End of log.'

It could have been better, but then again so can everything I ever set my heart out to do, this was as good as it was gonna get… least just for now.

Though day two has yet to fully unfold still, I do, however, know just how the opening statement would definitely go.

'Day two, log two.

The sun came up finally… and apparently, so has Amanda… apparently, I'm being graded now for my homework assignment… to be continued.'

Yeah, somewhere between the twilight hours of early morning, just as I was about to take a stroll downstairs to the classroom and see whether the teacher was ready to teach, Amanda came all the way up to the sixth floor instead.

There she was, shambling through the entrance with a drawling yawn, still splotched and blotched all over like crossbreed between a panda, a skunk, and pretty much anything else that was either black or white or both.

"Where's the teach?" I asked the raccoon that slowly crept towards me.

Amanda simply raised a stained hand beside a face that looked to desire nothing more than the sweet release of death. "I'm your teach, now."

"What?"

I looked to Ash who was hovering over Amanda's shoulder and cradling Mr. Black in her arms, but it looked like even she was caught dumbfounded by this sudden change of tutor.

"Didn't hear anything about a substitute," I said.

"Trust me, neither did I," Amanda responded back. "Not till about an hour ago, anyway. Don't worry though, won't stay a teacher for long… just a little pop quiz to make sure you got everything right."

I raised a brow. "Regarding?"

"Sera Nas," She replied, settling herself down on the ground cross-legged. "Who she is and what she is, down to the smallest detail. Irene wants to make sure you know her better than you know yourself. Err, I guess my hundreds of hours of playtime makes me a scholar of sorts in this particular field, so, uh, yeah… first question, then - what does Sera Nas look like?"

Looks like we're going right into it. Honestly, I'd have rather just get on with the second lesson already, and the sooner the better… still, if Irene thinks playing a round of Fantasy Jeopardy is what's needed, then who am I to question her?

"Well… beats me, I suppose," I said, plopping myself back down to the ground, pressing my palms against the dirt and dust. "And I'm pretty sure it beats you too."

Amanda nodded, giving me a bold, bright checkmark with the glint in her eyes. "Correct…"

And that's how mostly everything else played out over the course of several questions later. Not to toot my horn, but I was kinda on a roll with my answers.

Hair color? Violet.

Eyes? Yellowish white.

Exact age at the start of Asteria? Amazingly only twenty-four, making her the youngest out of all the servants.

How old was she when she heralded the title of the one true arbiter of death? Eleven, an age unheard of when it came to the blasphemous art of necromancy.

When did she join Terestra as one of her devoted servants? At a tender young age of twenty, after the aforementioned Demon Queen herself approached the young lady with a personal invitation.

How's her personality? She's a hard-ass.

I got bonus marks for that last one.

Yet not everything was all flying colors, wish I could say I had green tick marks for every single question but sadly I wasn't yet to the point where every detail came to mind so easy… unlike Amanda, who was like an encyclopedia personified as a sleep-deprived panda, stretching her lips wide into a yawn after every second question.

"Wrong," she muttered after the subject of her favorite pastime arose. "She dissects dead bodies in her spare time… not resurrect them."

"Her pet's name is Nelo, not Nero, and she's an Anster not a scaly freaky spooky lizard - there's a difference."

Could have fooled me, then. It looked like a chameleon in the images, how was I to know?

She even asked questions that the wiki didn't have any answers for and the only way I could possibly answer them is to guess.

Guess wikis aren't as reliable as I thought.

"She does speak," Amanda said. "We just don't hear her. It is hinted in-game that Eshwlyn is able to communicate with her at least."

That's news to me.

I looked over her shoulder again, where Ash was standing guard in the distance. "So if we bring her here, Ash can talk to her?"

Amanda pulled a face. "Err… I, uhh… mmm, eh…"

"You don't know."

"I mean, the Eshwlyn that you got here, like you said in the car, is two centuries from the start of Asteria's story. By all accounts, they're complete and total strangers. Ash doesn't know her."

"But Sera knows her."

"Uh-huh…"

I lowered my voice. "Think she'll listen to her?"

"I don't know, maybe if Ash pretended she knows her?" Amanda said, helplessly shrugging her hands. "It's a big maybe, though."

Not even a maybe. "Ash can't lie, she's terrible at it. Plus making her act the part of an Evil Ash is kinda…"

"I get you," She stretched her arms, yawning again. "Evil Ash bad. Don't wanna remind her of that."

"Yeah."

"Okay, never mind that for now, moving on," She huffed, brushing away strands of her hair on her face. "Can you recite to me Sera Nas's early history? Her birth? Her childhood? How she come upon the abilities she now holds within her?"

I straightened up. This, I undoubtedly had in the bag. After all, it was the one thing that really left a huge enough impression on me to be worth remembering even with an exhausted brain running on fumes. I remember this… no problem at all.

"Sera Nas was born of a Fey father and a Human mother. Her Mother, Alestra Nas was both the Queen and wife to the King of the kingdom of Astra, Heral Crest. The Queen fell in love with a member of the Fey one day while strolling the many gardens of the castle. A Fey employed as a Herbalist of the castle happened to be plucking herbs that day. Y'know now that I think about it, why do all these stories start with love at first sight… getting kinda cliche here."

"Yeah, so says the dumpster-diving Elf lover," Amanda rolled her eyes. "Don't poke fun at the lore, keep going."

I readily complied.

"The Fey was named… something I'll never be able to pronounce."

"Secez Neslt."

"Yeah, Secez... that, so anyway," I breathed in. "The Fey are an inclusive bunch, falling in love outside of your own species is a big no-no for them. But neither the Fey nor the Queen cared at all for that matter. For months they met in secret, then for years… then eventually, the Queen discovered that she was pregnant with his child.

"The King took notice of his Queen's ever-swelling belly. Having bore no children of their own even after countless of attempts, King Heral was overjoyed by the news. Queen Alestra, on the other hand… not so much. The King was notorious for his ruthlessness. Once when the cult of Terestra began to infest his kingdom's streets, He had a Magus split open a hole in the earth deep enough to throw the countless dead bodies of the cultist members into and never hear them hit the end.

"Ever since, the hole now serves another role as an execution ground for enemies of the Kingdom. Knowing this, Queen Alestra feared that if her husband were to discover the truth, she herself would end up at the bottom of that hole.

"As for the Fey Herbalist, he had convinced Queen Alestra to run away with him together. The Queen agreed. The Fey proposed a plan that they return to his homeland of Creekwood where most Fey lived. But first, he had to convince the council of sages to accept her as one of their own… so he left on his own first in order to do so, assuring his lover that he will definitely come back with good news… that she'll only have to wait for his return.

'The Queen waited, and waited… for days, for weeks, for months… but the Fey never returned for her. Eventually, the day finally came, she was about to give birth…"

I trailed away… I remembered reaching this point, and I remembered my stomach churning.

"Continue," Amanda quietly muttered.

If you say so…

"King Heral was behind closed doors on the Queen's insistence. The midwife aiding with the birth was an old friend of Alestra… and as they were in the process of labor, the Queen admitted to her old friend that the child was not the King's. That she will… and had given birth to a crossbreed instead.

"The birth was a success, and Alestra was blessed with a healthy baby girl. But the Queen noticed that the child's skin was a milky white, and the color of her round eyes glimmered yellow - an obvious indicator of a child born with Fey blood. The Queen pleaded with her friend to push forth a lie, to tell the King that his child simply did not make it and that the Queen wishes to be alone for the time being.

"Her friend agreed, although reluctantly, and that night, still aching from the pains of childbirth, still wounded in heartbreak, grief, wrought in the mindset of panic and fear… the Queen snuck out of the castle, bringing only a dark purple cloak and her newborn child in her hands.

"It had started to rain that night when she slowly approached the large gaping hole in the earth. It thundered, it stormed, her baby cried and cried… Alestra, wrapping her baby with the cloak, tossed her child into the hole… and listened as her baby's cries gradually faded into silence."