The desolate throne room was alive once again. The dusky sky sent rays like subdued spotlights on a stage, and a thick miasma spread like theatrical smoke and fog. Without making any sound, the prized head rolled twice and came to a stop amid formless pieces of rubble. Three steps to its right, Vance stood with his hand bleeding from a brand new cut. Four steps to its left, Hollie stood with another sharp knife ready to be thrown. Their Flames of Revival were both burning like infernos—a sign of inner rage and soon-to-be fury—but they still made no rash moves. Each of them believed that they had lost too much to the other, and neither was willing to lose more.

“You took your sweet time to get here,” Vance said.

“Shut the fuck up!” Hollie shouted. “One wrong move, fuckface, and you’ll find a knife sticking out of your ugly forehead!” She waved her throwing knife at his fallen head. “You’ll lose everything! Everything!”

“Come on,” Vance laughed. “What did I do to make you hate me so much?”

“Fuck you!” Hollie broke down in invisible tears. Was it poignancy, pathos, or melodrama? “You ruined me!” she shouted. “You made me lose everything! You destroyed my whole life!” A pause was necessary to stress the loss. “I have nowhere to go … no one left to help me … no supplies to complete my ascension … nothing …” Repetition is a favored tool among writers and orators. Could she have inserted a rhyme? “How? How could you frame me like that? And how did you convince them I did it? You rat!”

“I love your acting,” Vance said. “Not half bad.”

“You traitor! You scum!” Hollie shouted again. “You’ll come back with me to Argilstead, and you’ll tell them what you did! You’ll tell them that you killed her, that you framed me! And you’ll get what you deserve. They’ll chop you into tiny pieces! They’ll cook you and serve you to the beasts!”

“Oh, so you’re here to take me back to Argilstead,” Vance laughed. “You want to prove your innocence to the whole wide world … And you want me”—he took a sudden step forward—“to pay for my crimes.”

“I told you not to fucking move!” Hollie bellowed.

“What?” He took another step forward. “I can’t hear you.”

“Last warning!” Hollie waved her knife again. “Don’t test me!”

But Vance ignored her threats. They were meaningless to him. In the blink of an eye, he had taken another step and picked up his fallen head. Just as Hollie had warned, the throwing knife came flying toward him. It whooshed through the air and aimed for his forehead. A normal human couldn’t have avoided such a close-range throw, but Vance no longer fit into this boring category. Too slow. With his parasitic feet, he sidestepped out of harm’s way. His fast movements stunned Hollie. For a moment, she froze as if she had been gawking at him, but then she regained her composure and decided on her next move.

“You’ll pay!” she shouted. “You’ll pay for everything!”

The spectral scythe appeared in her hands, and she dashed toward Vance with a thirst for blood. She activated her Skill, Reaper’s Wrath, and swung her scythe at him. It ripped through the air and aimed for his torso, but it never made contact. With a quick backstep, Vance allowed it to pass. Then he dashed forward into a counterattack.

Both of his hands were already occupied—he couldn’t let go of his head or the staff—so he chose to rely on his parasitic feet again. They had been effective against the Galvanic slugs, and it was time to test them on a human for the very first time. The razor-sharp claws elongated. The magmatic heat radiated. The infectious grime overflowed. Before Hollie could complete her failed swing, Vance moved his left foot and kicked her in the right thigh.

Immediately, her leather armor tore apart, and her skin combusted into the color of coal. She couldn’t help but scream from all the pain. It was a piercing shriek of terror, but it didn’t signal her uncondidional surrender. In the next moment, she regained some of her composure. And instead of trying to swing her scythe again, she made use of her current sideways momentum. She turned in place, raised her leg, and tried to retaliate—a kick for a kick.

Her rapid attack almost hit, but Vance moved at the right time. Still too slow. Pushing against the ground, he propelled himself upward into a vertical jump. Hollie couldn’t believe what was happening; she couldn’t understand how he was moving so fast. After a few seconds of flight, he landed on her shoulders. His merciless claws dug into her leather armor. Then, with the force of gravity on his side, with the strength of the parasites as his main weapon, he jumped off her shoulders and knocked her back to the ground.

“Fuck!” Hollie screamed in pain as she slid on stones and pebbles.

After this acrobatic move, Vance landed a few steps away. He had a chance to escape the fight now, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he walked toward his pitiful ambusher. She doesn’t seem to have any new tricks up her sleeve. She stood up and swung her scythe, but he evaded with ease. Were the Dullahans wrong to think she was a Necronette? She took out a knife and tried to stab him, but he kicked it out of her grasp and burned her fingers. There are no undead in the vicinity … no liches, no skeletons, no Skull Jaws. She banished her scythe and tried to punch him with her unburned hand, but he deflected her fist with the Staff of Galvani and kicked her hard in the stomach.

“What’s wrong, Hollie?” He looked at her as she lay on the ground. His claws had penetrated into her stomach and infected her with malicious parasites. She was bleeding and suffering without an end in sight, for even death was beyond her reach. “You probably have the stats to one-hit me, but what are stats when you can’t land a single attack? Am I right?”

“Why?” she moaned. “Why is this happening to me?”

“What did you expect? You learned nothing from our last fight. You’re using the same strategy. Aggressive offense, overcautious defense. You don’t want to waste Become Spectre on anything small. Well, guess what? Damage piles up.”

“You son of a bitch!” Hollie punched the ground. “You freak!”

“Still shouting? I thought it’s beg-for-your-life o’clock.”

“Fucking murderer! Psychopath!”

He said nothing and aimed the Staff of Galvani at her. Pure-Mana Beam.

“Fuck! Give me a break!”

The colorless beam traveled in a path of crystalline dust—subtle and delicate, lethal and elegant. Seeing herself in this desperate situation, without shield or ward, Hollie finally activated Become Spectre, which gave her five seconds of invincibility. Her body turned into a semi-transparent ghost, and she started to scramble toward a wall. She moved like a fleeing rat or a paranoid psychotic or a chimerical mixture of the two. Her defiant spirit was a thing of the past. Her morale hit rock bottom. It seemed as if she had lost all hope in defeating Vance, as if she was already imagining the Spectral Execution that would end her life. And she wanted to bail out as fast as she could.

“What a waste of Mana.” Vance followed her ghost as she struggled through the rubble. “Do you think you’ll make it to safety?”

She said nothing and moved faster to escape the Pure-Mana Beam.

If her ghostly form could only pass through the walls of the throne room, she would have a chance to survive. If she could only make it to the castle bailey, she would escape the clutch of fate. Her fingertips almost touched the goal line, but then the short duration of Become Spectre ended. Her body returned to normal. All hope was lost. She started to hammer the wall with her unburned fist. She vented her frustration, anger, despair—all in the form of countless strikes against the unempathetic stone. Then the beam hit her in the back and pinned her to the wall. She screamed. She cried out. She cursed and cussed.

When the powerful beam finally subsided, she fell to her knees and stopped moving. She was still alive; she was still conscious and aware of the situation. But she had exhausted all her options, and there was no way that her Mana would regenerate fast enough for her to escape.

“So … When will you drop the act?” Vance stood behind her. “Isn’t it about time you summoned your friends to help you?”

“What friends?” Hollie moaned.

“You know, all the skeletons and liches and whatever. I’m waiting.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, motherfu—”

He grabbed her neck and threw her violently to the ground. Before she could crawl away, he freed his right hand by carrying his head under his arm, and then he drew his Larval Dagger. A slash across her ankles was all that it took to incapacitate her. She screamed in pain, but he felt no sympathy for her. With more force, he grabbed one of her bleeding legs and pulled her behind him to the center of the throne room. Her body slid like a sack, and she left a trail of infected blood. At the end of this humiliating ordeal, she lay still at the same exact spot where the Lord of Lightning had been vanquished.

“Kill me already!” she shouted.

“If you’re not a Necronette, why did you murder Shannon?”

“I didn’t murder anyone! You stabbed her!”

“Shannon died from an overdose.” He stepped on her burned fingers.

“Stop! Fuck! That hurts!”

“You stole my patches. You drugged me and killed Shannon.”

“I didn’t kill anyone! I stole your patches, but I didn’t kill anyone!”

“Am I supposed to believe that?” Vance scoffed.

“It’s the fucking truth!”

“The truth, right?” He stepped harder on her fingers.

“Fuck!” she screamed. “What do you want from me? Just kill me!”

“I want to know what happened on that day in the House of Turncoats.”

“You know what happened, shithead!”

“Do I?” He stepped even harder.

“Fuck! I’ll tell you! I’ll spit it all out, so please stop!”

Vance removed his foot.

“I met Shannon the same day you arrived,” Hollie started, with her body still prone and motionless. “The little fuck was helpless … It didn’t take me long to earn her trust. I drugged her, yeah. But I didn’t want her dead! I had no reason to kill her like that! I’m no traitor! I’m no Necronette!”

“Continue,” Vance said, ignoring her denials for now.

“I drugged her. Then I stole your patches and drugged you … That’s all I did! I swear I did nothing more than that!”

“Why did you do it?” Vance asked.

“I had a nice thing going for me,” Hollie said. “You’re not the first couple of morons I drugged, and you weren’t going to be the last. I search for little fucks like Shannon and horny pricks like you. I play them, drug them, convince them to sleep together. People are so easy to control during a Redspine High. You just have to whisper happy words into their ears, and they’ll do anything … It’s just like hypnosis, but it works for real!”

“And after you gather your victims in the same room?”

“That’s when the real fun begins!” Hollie laughed but then moaned. “First, I pay one of Himilco’s deputies to give me an alibi. The guy used to be a Trickster. He disguises himself to look like me and sits on the ground floor. It works every time. And he doesn’t rat me out or ask stupid questions as long as I pay.”

“That’s how you kept Eleanor and the Dullahans off your back.”

“Yeah, exactly … That bitch Eleanor was onto me, but she never had enough proof to open an investigation. And she never even thought of vetting Himilco’s deputies. She was always one step behind. Always coughing in my dust. That goody two shoes! Our very own Priestess Trust!”

“I see.” Vance paused to think. “So you get the perfect alibi, and then?”

“And then I use it to make easy money,” Hollie continued proudly. “I activate Become Spectre, sneak into the bedroom of my two zonked lovebirds, and steal their golden keys. They wake up much, much later and start fighting. ‘You stole my key!’ ‘No, you stole mine!’ ‘Thief!’ ‘Rapist!’ ‘Blah, blah, blah.’ ‘Yadda, yadda, yadda.’ Before it turns into an ugly scene, they notice the little note I left them: ‘If you want your storage and items back, leave a Targrass torch with half of your remaining time at the corner of X and Y street. Tell the Dullahans, and you lose everything.’ No one remembers me after the Redspine High. No one. I got away with it every single time until—”

“Until you messed up and killed Shannon,” Vance said.

“No! No! I didn’t kill anyone!” Hollie said, vehemently. “I got my alibi and entered your little love nest. I was gonna steal the keys and leave as usual, but then I noticed something weird. There was only one Flame of Revival in the dark. I raced to the bedside. I lit a torchlight. And that’s when I saw the truth for the first time. Shannon was dead, and she had three extra patch marks on her frail body. I checked my pockets. I panicked. I asked myself, ‘How did these extra marks get here?’ And that’s when it hit me: I had for some reason drugged Shannon twice! By mistake!”

“Oh, really?” Vance laughed.

“No, no, you have to believe me!” Hollie shouted. “It was a mistake! It was all just a stupid mistake! That’s why I stabbed her! That’s why I stabbed Shannon with your steel dagger three times! I had to hide the extra patch marks! That’s all I could do! I had to make sure no one discovered them! I dropped your golden key. Then I bolted. I figured I could get out of this pickle if I pretended to be the hero, but … well, you know how that went … I didn’t kill anyone! I’m a thief but not a damn traitor! I’m a victim just like you! There are no fair trials in Argilstead, so what was I supposed to do? It looked like a murder, and all the evidence pointed at me! I would’ve been sent to Sizensya’s Hut!”

“ ‘It was all just a stupid mistake.’ ” Vance repeated and laughed at the sheer absurdity of this one sentence. “What an excuse … Couldn’t you have thought of anything more convincing?” He sheathed his Larval Dagger and equipped his spectral one. “I wanted to give you one last chance to defend yourself, but you just wasted my time with your bullshit.” He stepped on her back, pinning her to the cold ground. “I lost both my feet because of your ‘stupid mistake.’ I watched them melt away into nothing. I was left to crawl to my grave.”

“Wait! What are you doing?”

Spectral Execution.

“No! Stop! I didn’t kill anyone! Hear me out! I’ve got more!”

The dark green mist covered his arm and part of his torso.

“Please! Please stop! I probably miscounted! I didn’t mean to kill her!”

His hand plummeted; his dagger rushed toward her back.

“It’s all a mistake! I swear!”

The moment the Spectral Execution landed on target, however, the earth itself suddenly rumbled. Without warning, with much absurdity and even more arbitrariness, a rocky spike rose from the ground and punched a wide hole into Hollie’s chest. Her heart and lungs ruptured. Her whole body jolted upward. Her Flame of Revival was completely extinguished. Vance couldn’t help but tremble in shock. His dagger was inside her back, but it wasn’t his Spectral Execution that had claimed her pitiful life. She had been killed by a geo-magic attack. And this fact alone, at this time, at this place, in these particular circumstances, sent shivers down his spine.

***

The moment of Hollie’s death was transformative. The worlds before it and after it weren’t the same. And nowhere was the difference more stark than in the throne room of Rocca Galeazzi. All around Vance, pillars of rock rose from the ground. They reached for the distant sky like towers and opened like iron maidens to reveal stacks of targhouls, skeletons, and liches. An army of undead surrounded him before he could even utter a word of surprise. He had nowhere to run, and not even a teleportation could save him, because high above there were skeletal dragons patrolling the skies. His only way out was to complete his ascension—his only escape was a leap to the human world—but how could he place his head where it belonged when a thousand bone arrows were aimed at him from point-blank range? His chances were slim to none.

“It’s good to see you alive and well, Vance,” a familiar voice suddenly said.

Vance looked beyond the bones, beyond the weapons, beyond the pillars. His heart began to beat fast. A pang of pain ripped through his chest and carved a deep fissure. It was burning. It was hurting. At that moment, he saw Shannon sitting on a sedia gestatoria—a portable throne that was carried by four centaur skeletons. She wore a black dress made out of raven feathers and had a tiara of human bones on her head … yes, her head. She looked just as she had in the painful nightmares. The brown hair, the delicate nose, the thin brows, the rosy cheeks, the innocence. Everything was the same, except her eyes—they were red like the blood moon, and their gaze was as cold as Frostgeist Forest.

“Sorry I stole your kill,” Shannon smiled.

Vance remained speechless; between his feet Hollie lay dead.

“You don’t look so happy to see me,” Shannon continued. “You didn’t forget about me, did you?” She gestured with her hand, and the undead army split to allow her to pass. “We went on an exciting adventure together, remember?” The four centaur skeletons carried her throne toward him. “We traveled far and wide. We laughed and cried. We shared our deepest secrets. I showed you how I ‘murdered’ my best friend, and you showed me how you ‘murdered’ your dear mother. Oh, poor April! And even poorer Jana!” she laughed. “What a bonding experience those nightmares were! A true heart-to-heart! And we owe it all to our gluttonous friends, the Honeydew Flies!”

Suddenly, there was a buzz in the air. It was loud and deafening. Hundreds of Honeydew Flies appeared around Vance. One moment, there was nothing; the next, they were there. They hovered in a protective formation and prevented the throne-bearing centaurs from taking another step toward Vance. Then one of them confronted Shannon with a hypersonic wave that shook her dress and hair. It wasn’t a preemptive strike; it was the equivalent of a verbal warning. “Don’t worry, my insect friends,” Shannon smiled. “I’m not here to tarnish our unholy deal.” A tense moment followed. After the Honeydew Flies evaluated her words, their ear-deafening buzz calmed down into a gentle drone, but they still didn’t cancel their defensive formation and remained on high alert.

“What’s going on?” Vance finally asked. He was shocked; he was confused; he didn’t know how to choose the right words. “Shannon … Why are you here?”

“I’m here to talk with you, Vance.” The centaurs placed the throne down, and Shannon stood up with the elegance of royalty. “It’s always nice to catch up with old friends, right?” She walked among the alert flies. “Last time we met, we were both Turncoats on the road to their first Class Ascension … But look at us now.” She stopped only a couple of steps away from him. “You’re the Heir to the Galvanic Throne, and I’m a Princess of Decay. Just as you told me before, it’s really a strange world.”

Vance said nothing.

“Don’t you want to know how it all happened?” Shannon smiled.

“I already know,” Vance said. “Hollie handed you over to Decay.”

“No, silly,” Shannon laughed. “Hollie was just a petty thief.”

“What do you mean?”

“I died because of you, Vance,” Shannon smiled. “I died so that you’d live.”

“This can’t be true.”

“During your Blood Pilgrimage, you were attacked by Galvani. The Lord of Lightning stole your head and almost destroyed your body, but the Honeydew Flies defended you with all their strength.”

“This has nothing to do with your death,” Vance interrupted.

“Oh, it has everything to do with it,” Shannon laughed. “The flies couldn’t repel Galvani. They couldn’t oppose the storm. So they called upon my mistress for assistance. They offered the Witch of Decay a deal: she grants you refuge in Rust Lake, and they deliver her my corpse as payment. You get to return home with all your new powers, while I become trapped in Middlerift forever.”

“Enough! Stop making things up!” Vance blurted out. “Why would the Witch of Decay accept this deal? Why would she want your corpse over mine?”

“You already know the answer, Vance,” Shannon smiled. “I have a gift like no other—a rare power that, once corrupted, turns me into a Princess of Decay. You saw it with your own eyes.”

I saw it with my own eyes? Vance paused for a moment and began to think. What is she talking about? He started to remember the details of the Redspine nightmare. A gift no one else has? The traumatizing memories of the Geomancer rushed through his mind. He saw the forest, the wolves, the masked brute, the cave, the spiders; and then he remembered. Lifeforce Geomancy. He stopped at these two words. A unique power that she got for respecting the lives of monsters and humans alike … Her Intelligence doubles, and she can use her geo-magic at the cost of HP instead of Mana. It was the only “gift” that he could remember.

“You’re talking about Lifeforce Geomancy,” he said slowly.

“Correct,” Shannon smiled. “I knew you’d get it right.”

“But it’s only a limited power.”

“Oh, you’re being silly again,” Shannon giggled softly. “Necronettes have no lifeforce, Vance. When my mistress raised me from the dead, the nature of my gift was corrupted forever. I’m no longer bound by the shackles of my limited Mana or health.” She waved her hands, and the entirety of Rocca Galeazzi began to collapse. The high walls, the stately buildings, the castle towers, the giant statues—everything was leveled to the ground in a matter of seconds. And she continued, “My power comes from a well that will never dry, from the deep Abyss of Ash. I have accepted my throne as the Twelfth Princess of Decay, the Princess of Cinders. This is who I am now.”

“But …” Vance stood dazed after the whole castle had vanished from around him. “If what you’re saying is all true, if everything happened because of a deal between the Witch and the flies, who the hell is Hollie? And what does she have to do with all of this?”

“I already told you. Hollie was just a petty thief.”

“She was the murderer!” Vance shouted.

“No, she was the murder tool,” Shannon said calmly. “The strings of fate put her in my way, and the Honeydew Flies made use of her.”

“They used her?”

“The flies are not allowed to harm Headbound or Necronettes. They are, and will always be, the peaceful gatekeepers of Middlerift. But to fulfill their part of the deal, they had to murder me and deliver my corpse to the Witch of Decay. They had to be … subtle. They had to keep their interference minimal, or they would’ve risked the wrath of the Maiden of Revival. So they used Hollie.”

“How? How did they convince her to murder you like that?”

“Convince? Who said anything about convincing?” Shannon laughed. “The flies didn’t need to do any convincing. They only had to eat one memory.”

“Eat a memory?” Vance was dumbstruck.

“Yes,” Shannon said. “Eat one delicious memory.”

“You mean … They manipulated Hollie …”

“Yes,” Shannon said. “They made her drug me twice instead of once. The first time, she stuck three patches to my body while I was trying a new dress at the market. Then she mysteriously forgot about that, and stuck five more patches to my arm while I was sitting at the House of Turncoats. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

“The flies manipulated her.” Vance repeated as if in stupor.

“Yes,” Shannon smiled. “Of course, they didn’t know that you’d end up with me in the same bedroom, or that you’d be accused of murder, or that you’d be punished for the crime. No one told them about the strange laws of Argilstead. My mistress certainly didn’t.” She laughed loudly. “Chaos or Luck or Karma, whatever you choose to call it, almost destroyed you. But you still managed to live … and disappointed us all. Well, to be fair, you earned your prize. We’re actually impressed.” She turned to her undead army. “Let’s give him a warm clap.” The skeletons and zombies looked at each other. Then they started to clap their hands and bones. “Louder!” They sped up their tempo in desperation. “Congratulations on your successful ascension!”

As the applause continued, as he heard these surreal congratulations, Vance didn’t know what to say. He was still dealing with the shock. Hollie was only a tool. The Honeydew Flies and the Witch of Decay had a secret deal all along. The deal saved his life from Galvani. The deal condemned Shannon to an eternity in Middlerift. How could he wrap his head around all these facts? How could he accept this truth? The events that had taken place in Middlerift proved to him how little control humans had over their fate. My fate. The word reminded him that he was still alive. My fate hasn’t been decided yet.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he said, with a sense of urgency. “Why are you here, Shannon? Why are you telling me all of this? Did you pity my ignorance? Or do you want me to feel guilty about what happened?”

“No, Vance, I don’t pity you,” Shannon said. “And I’m not here to make you feel guilty. All Headbound are trapped inside a cage of gross ignorance, limited perspective, and debilitating mistrust. But you struggled well inside this cage.”

“Then why are you here? Answer!” Vance lost patience.

Shannon said nothing. She took two steps forward and stood right in front of him. Her delicate nose almost touched his chest. The hem of her dark dress was brushing against his parasitic claws. She reached with her small hands and grabbed his prized head from under his arm. Her unknown intentions made his hair stand on edge, but he surrendered his head without a fight, because there was nothing he could do. She looked at his pallid face and smiled with strange frigidity. Her fingers cleaned the dirt off his forehead. Then they caressed his cheek. Then they tidied his hair behind his ears.

“There is a lot you don’t know about Middlerift, Vance,” Shannon said. “And there is a lot that you will never know.” She rotated his head in her hands. “But you are now the Heir to the Galvanic Throne, and so you have to start learning. About the past, the present, the future. I’m here to give you your first lesson. An important warning. A message from my mistress.”

Vance felt tense.

“Revival and Decay will soon battle for Argilstead. A war will brew. Armies will march. Houses will burn. Necronettes and Headbound will lose their place in the world. And Middlerift might change forever … If you want us to leave you alone, if you want to retain the Galvanic Throne, you must not interfere in this war. And you must not use your Anima Elettrica on Headbound or Necronettes or Middlerift Beasts. If you break neutrality or give in to ambition, we will erase you from this world. The Honeydew Flies have seen in you a rare potential, and it would be a shame for you to throw everything away and disappoint them. So mark our words, and heed our warnings.”

Shannon raised herself on tiptoe and placed his head where it belonged.

“Goodbye, Vance,” she smiled. “Have a safe trip home.”

When he saw this last smile, Vance suddenly remembered the last part of his Redspine nightmare. He remembered how he stood face to face with her, how she had looked so desperate, how she had begged him to kill her: “If you don’t kill me now, I will murder many people … innocent and guilty … deserving and undeserving.” “Do it as a friend. Do it for my sake. Do it before I lose everything.” But it was too late to kill the Princess of Cinders. As soon as his head was on his neck again, the world began to spin and reel. A curtain of darkness descended to blind his Mental Eye. Then there was only the buzz of Honeydew Flies.