“Lilly... is dead...?” Brie asked quietly, as Reurig put a blanket over Lilana’s body. I was about to say “Yes” instinctively, when I realized that, not only was the real answer more nuanced, it also wasn’t necessarily the best response.

They had seen Tomar come in here with her dead body, and they saw that he and Riala had done something, but they couldn’t possibly understand what that was. They were simply looking at the unmoving person they knew as “Lilly.” However, Lilly and Lilana were two different individuals, and our guards had actually had little to no interaction with Lilana. Over the past couple of weeks, I had controlled her body at least eighty percent of the time... She had essentially lent it to me until I could fulfill my promise and she would officially take over as the divine messenger... I had been supposed to have already left her by this point...

God. Fucking. Damn it... I thought, as I teared up.

Was Lilly dead? The Lilly they knew? No, technically not. Was I in any mood to explain any of this to them though? Hell no. And yet, my brain started going over the various paths I could take at that moment.

Tell them Lilly is dead? That’s all kinds of problematic. Ask them to leave? Then they would assume she’s dead. It would be best if Lilly was still alive... and she kind of is, so...

“No, Brie... I’m here,” I said, as I turned to look at them by the door.

“What...?” she asked as she furrowed her brows.

“It’s difficult to explain... but... I’m Lilly right now. Tomar pulled me over to his body, to... save my life...”

Wait... that sounds like we could’ve potentially saved other people...

“As a divine messenger, I’m able to live as just a soul... even inside other people. Together with them.”

“Seriously...?” she said.

“Yea,” I said as I forced out a smile. “Tomar and I are okay. We’ll fill you in at a later time... Could you give us a few moments? And please keep this to yourself for now.”

“Of course!” Brie said as she lit up and turned around to leave the office, while Bren was still staring unbelievingly at the scene before him. “Bren, come on,” she said.

“Right... Yes. Understood,” he said, and turned around as well, closing the door behind him.

I took a deep breath and pulled Riala and Berla closer. Nobody said anything for a little while, although they must’ve wanted to. They would want to know what happened after all, and eventually I let them go and looked at Berla apologetically.

“You were right... Arax... she isn’t just a beast. She’s... something more...” I said. “I don’t know if we should’ve even gone there...”

“What happened?” she asked softly.

“The moment I saw her... I... There was something in the air. Something about her... It was overwhelming. I don’t know why, but I immediately realized that we couldn’t do anything to her. Fighting would be pointless. Running would be pointless. It was like... was that ‘helling,’ maybe?”

“Todooom...” Hati said.

I shuttered for a second as I heard this and the memory became more vivid. “Yes...! That was it...”

“That sounds scary...” Riala said, understanding how to interpret this noise.

“The ones with ‘To’ always are,” Hati said.

“And then there was her mana...”

‘Yeah... What was up with that...?’ Tomar asked. ‘She didn’t have any...’

“No, Tomar. You have it wrong. It’s not that she didn’t have any mana. That silvery fur... That was her mana. It was like... it permeated her entire being... up to the tips of her hair. I don’t even understand what I saw there.”

“I told you this beast is scary...” Hati said.

“Yes, you did... But... We’ve seen gods! Or whatever qualifies as that here, and we didn’t feel a thing. How is it possible that this beast... Anyway... it just got worse from there.”

From the moment I realized we didn’t stand a chance, I felt paralyzed, and it didn’t help that she could not only hear Lilana, it was as if Arax was inside my head. I instinctively understood what she was telling me through her eyes alone, and she knew what I would do, should she let me go. I knew I wouldn’t be leaving that clearing, but I also knew that she was interested in us. That she would use one of us, after she broke him.

“It all happened so fast. I... don’t even remember any pain. From one moment to the next, everything went blank. And then I was here. Tomar, do you want to...?”

‘Yeah...’ he said in response to my question whether he would like to continue.

The second I dropped control, Riala hugged us once more, though she was targeting him this time.

“Tomar!” she exclaimed.

“Hey, Riala,” he said with a sad smile. “So... after that happened... I killed the two bears... and I attacked Arax...”

‘Wait, what!?’ I asked in surprise.

He briefly glanced at Berla, who looked angry, to the point where one might call her scary, but she didn’t say anything.

“It was a reflex... The bears went down easily, but Arax... our scripts did absolutely nothing. I hit her twice, but the attacks only pushed her back a little. She didn’t have a scratch on her, even after she crashed into a tree. And then she suddenly stood right in front of me... In the blink of an eye. Well... that’s when I realized we never stood a chance... and that we wouldn’t have any choice but to do what she wants. She said she would leave the body with me as a reminder... I don’t know how long it took me to realize that there might be a small chance that Miles and Lilana were still there... I guess I was too late...”

‘We don’t know that... Maybe it was never possible to begin with. We didn’t even know for sure whether it would work with me...’ I said, trying to console him, and failing miserably.

“Still...” he said.

For a brief moment, I was overcome with both happiness and sadness, as he raised his hand out of reflex, to signal to the others that he was talking to me. We had been separated for a little while, but this move was still ingrained in him. It felt familiar. A little like coming home. However, at the same time, I had to think about how Lilana would never make this gesture again...

The meeting had gone oh so wrong. Arax knew that we were using scripts, and she had come there to demand that we create scripts for her, whatever she wanted with those. Additionally, the old rules would stay in effect, making this new deal even worse than the old one. Knowing that I would never stop searching for a way around all of this, however, she decided to kill me on the spot. Both to nip this problem in the bud and to scare Tomar, who she believed would crumble to pieces the moment he realized he couldn’t beat her. She had been wrong though. There had at least been enough defiance in him to do everything he could at that moment.

‘I know I suck at consoling people... but you know that I wouldn’t just say this. You did good. Hell, even attacking her... I mean, it was risky, but that told us new things.’

“Yeah...” he said.

Sometimes I hated my brain. Lilana was lying just a few steps away from us, but while I was trying to mourn her, and be understanding and caring towards the others, my mind was already going into overdrive, trying to figure out where to go from here.

What exactly had stopped Tomar’s attacks? Was there a way around that? How had she been in our heads like that? Was that how she knew our names? How did her mana work? And why wasn’t she destroying herself from the inside if she didn’t let it out as an aura? What did she want with random scripts? Would she be able to use them? But if she couldn’t write them herself, she might not be able to read them either, in which case we might be able to trick her.

She was probably right to kill me... I don’t know if I would call it defiance, but I’m obviously obsessed with solving mysteries and using the results to my advantage...

“Miles...” Berla said. “The way you described her knowing what you think... I might have an idea what that was. Earlier, Hati explained to us that he can smell emotions. And he was rather accurate.”

‘Smell emotions...?’ Miles said in my mind.

“Really...?” Tomar asked, and the wolf in our midst nodded.

“His leader could hear and feel more than Hati, and Arax... seems to be even more capable. All of this could be connected, right?” Berla asked.

“‘Yes, absolutely,’” Tomar said for both of us.

This didn’t sound outlandish at all. It’s said that dogs can smell human emotions to a degree, and whatever kinds of senses beasts had going on, they were clearly stronger than those of normal canines. Not to mention the whole “helling” business.

Tomar glanced over to Lilana again. “And maybe that’s related to them hearing people on the backseat as well...”

‘Yea...’

“What will happen to her...?” he asked quietly, still staring at the blanket under which her body lay.

The usual, official process for taking care of the dead in Alarna was to burn them. Not only because burying them would require a lot of space, but also because it was believed that dead bodies would attract beasts. Of course we now knew this official process to be a lie, but the tools were there, and maybe that’s actually what people did at some point in time, before Arax came along.

‘I suggest we cremate her. That’s what’s supposed to happen, and she might actually be the first one to go through this in a very long time... It would be a restart,’ I said, and Tomar relayed my words to the others.

“Okay, let’s do that,” Berla said.

***

After a couple more minutes, all of us had gotten up, and we made our way to a building in the east of town. Conveniently, it wasn’t far from the entrance to the tunnel, as officials would need to be able to transport people and bodies there, instead of actually burning them.

It was a rather small building, with little more than a furnace inside, but it was surrounded by a nice, small garden, to suggest a peaceful passing for the dead. Bren and Brie were helping us out, as we stood outside and waited. Eventually, we saw smoke come up from the chimney at the side of the house, rising into the night sky.

In a way, Lilana had been a side character in our group, but it was still as if a piece of me had died with her. It was a weird feeling. What was worse, I couldn’t even remember her last words. My memories of those precious few seconds before the end were blurry. Instead, the last words I remembered hearing from her were the ones she had said on our way to that cursed clearing.

‘It sounded like you were saying goodbye.’