Chương 68: Chapter 67: Freedom

++My view of the world changed in some small ways following my rebirth, but much of what I believed in my old life remained true all the same. The world is made out of rules, and the most powerful thing a person can do is choose which ones they adhere to. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Cooking meat flooded the room with its smell, and I looked down at my body with horror. It was a ruin. The damage would never come undone, I knew that much.

Perhaps I could have mended it in my prime, or maybe the Gods themselves could revert the devastation, but as I was… no, this dress would never be suited to wear again.

"I had considered bringing my best clothing, as a test to myself," I thought aloud.

"To see how well I could preserve it. I ended up deciding not to, only because I needed to keep a low profile. I am a lot happier with that decision now." A new reek touched my nostrils, following the sound of thudding and retching. I turned to see Paula down on her knees, being sick.

"Stop that," I told her.

"It is disgusting." She stared up at me through teary eyes.

"What…what…the fuck?!" She looked so very young, then. Funny. Her body was nearly twice the age of mine, but then, in the end, she was still a young woman. Twenty four. It was really not very old at all, certainly not with so much of her life spent cooped up under the Winzorth Institute's protection. This may have been the first time she had seen death by the hand of another.

"I solved your problem." She stared at me like I was a stranger. I actually was, in fairness, for all intents and purposes.

"You murdered people." She said the word like it was a slur.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"W…What the fuck?"

"Are you stuck in some sort of loop?" I asked, growing genuinely irritated now.

"You had a problem, I solved that problem, now you can relax and avoid being sexually abused by some noseless kingpin. As far as I am concerned, you have just been done a great many favors. You may thank me now." She vomited again. This time I simply waited rather than attempting to reason with her. Paula clearly needed time to get over her ridiculous shock. She certainly took that time, a long minute of it before I was finally forced to speak again.

"We must leave," I told her.

"My magic is a lot quieter than gunshots, and I do not think there will be any investigation of this building for some time soon, but I do not want to be caught here." I still had means of disguising myself of course, the amulet provided by the Grandmaster all those years ago was as effective as ever, and my own illusory powers had grown stronger still. That did not mean I invited the risk. Paula did not respond, though.

"Paula," I repeated, growing angry.

"Paula, listen! Listen to me!" I paused, cursed under my breath.

"... Alira." That drew her attention to me, the personal name striking home harder than the family's.

"What are you?" she asked. A dangerous question that I had no intention of seeing answered.

"I am in a hurry," I growled.

"Now you have a decision to make." I grabbed her chin and turned her head to face the last survivor, Wick himself. Leaning by the bed and whimpering as his mangled legs remained folded beneath him.

"Does he live or die?" Paula's eyes turned to me, and I saw her face explode with realisation.

"This is your plan!?" she snarled.

"Do…this, put me in this position."

"Does he live, or does he die?" I repeated.

"He has seen your face, knows who you are. He will seek retribution for this. He will have to, or he will be seen as weak, and lose everything he has."

"N…No…" The man tried to argue, but words seemed beyond him. Paula just glared at me.

"You'll do it," she tried.

"It doesn't matter whether I do or don't."

"I am prepared to leave here now," I said simply.

"If you want to take that risk, and make your family take that risk, then by all means; leave him alive." Her hatred could have melted steel.

"Why are you making me do this?!" This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"Because you are weak," I told her.

"And you should be strong."

"So it's fucking punishment?"

"No. Weakness is a choice, I am giving you the chance to stop making it. To master yourself, and your destiny. The morality you have had inflicted on you is just a shackle, wrapped around you by petty people who fear your potential." She vomited again, though this time it was little more than acidic water coming up from her throat.

"I…I can't."

"Then your family will die." Paula sobbed.

"It's not right."

"This man wanted to rape you," I told her.

"He would have succeeded. Because despite your magic, you could do nothing. You would not have been around all the time, and the Winzorth Institute does not care enough about a female commoner among its students to afford any protection to your family."

"Shut up."

"You are scum to them, nothing. A resource to be expended and thrown away. Wick saw you in much the same way." He tried to argue, but I silenced him with a mass of aether wrapped around his mouth.

"Are you a resource, were they right? Are you so harmless and easily abused that nothing comes of threatening your family, your dignity? Are you that weak?" Paula screamed. It was a shrill, high noise that seemed akin to the death rattle of something vast and furious. I barely had time to mute the space around her with magic before it rang out of the room. She started beating her fist on the ground, trembling, and I simply watched her tantrum. Slowly, my interest dwindled. What had I come here for?

I could not think. Paula was not as magically powerful as Agrian, though I suspected she would have been near his equal were she trained early enough the time for that was now past. She was intelligent, but not a towering intellect I would stand to gain grand advantage from recruiting. She did not have resources or connections, nor was she possessed of any esoteric knowledge. She was just… normal. Oh.

She was an outcast, a person who had known magic early and been surrounded by none of the people who would have nurtured that talent. She had been scorned for it, and then scorned more when she met her fellow magicians. Just as I had once been. It was so terribly pathetic that I considered killing her on the spot out of sheer humiliation. I had brought her here in the hopes of finding a kindred spirit. Me, Lord Dread. I had been looking for companionship. I almost laughed.

What was the world coming to, when I of all people would try and find common ground with a mewling beast like this?

"Pathetic," I growled darkly. I was not sure if I was talking to Paula or not. I turned for the door, then froze as I felt magic on the air and whirled just in time to see the magic missile fly. Two years had passed since Paula and I sparred regularly, and her power had swollen since then. I watched the bolt strike home in Wick's head and render it down into little more than chunky gas.

A jet of brain matter was squirted down over my dress, while a chunk of bone struck my forehead with such force that it activated my personal shield and splintered on impact. The man's whimpering stopped in an instant, and the room was dead silent. Paula stared at the corpse, breathing harder by the second. Her lungs sounded like they were going into convulsions, and when I moved to look at her face I saw the eyes wide as if she were trying to see into the heart of night. She said nothing, did not look at me.

Just stared at what she had done.

"We need to leave now," I told her.

"We have delayed too long already, this will be investigated locally. If we are found here, there is ample evidence to implicate us should more well-funded bodies search for it." The woman remained silent, save for her rapid breaths, and so I firmly took her by one shoulder and guided her to stand. She let me. She also let me drag her to her feet and out of the building, with my magics wrapping around us both as we went.

There were already people gathered outside as I had feared, none too close, all just watching the building from afar as smoke drifted out of its open door. Light refracted around us, footsteps muted. Paula seemed to stare at everything and nothing, but she followed me without question at least. I led her on a simple route; slightly curved to give a wide berth to the site of our killings, but mostly straight.

I wanted to flee sooner rather than later and give my mana the longest time possible to fade before any magicians could be called on to investigate it. Once we were only two city blocks from the scene, I halted the active magic effects and slowed us to a less-suspicious walk, trusting in our staying relatively far from others to keep from habing the gore noticed on me. By then, Paula seemed to have regained something of her nerve.

"I'm a murderer now." She did not address me with her statement, it seemed to just escape her unbidden.

"So am I," I told her. Apparently this was not the most comforting thing to hear. She rounded on me instantly.

"Fuck you." I did not flinch at the curse, and she did not leave things there.

"You came this whole way just to make me do that, from the start. How could you?"

"Well, I knew from the beginning that you were being blackmailed, and being familiar with the sorts of men who tend to gain positions like Wick's I suspected—" —"I'm not asking how you worked it all out, you fucking moron, how could you just do that to me?"

"Free you?" I challenged. Paula's face spasmed, like the muscles were trying to wriggle out from under her skin.

"Free me." She spat the words out, backing away now.

"You're not just different. I…I thought you were like me. Struggling to fit in, picked on for being a girl. But you're nothing like me. You're nothing like any human, you're a fucking monster."

"I am a human," I told her icily.

"You have simply been taught a very narrow and very feeble view of what humanity is capable of." She turned away from me, trembling. I waited for another explosive retort but heard none, instead just being treated to the sight of Paula standing there with her back to me…trembling.

"How do you feel?" I asked her. She turned at last, scoffing.

"How do you think?" I said nothing, and the silence seemed to draw her into another racking sob.

"I…fucking…"

"You enjoyed it," I guessed. She did not meet my eye.

"You felt powerful at last. You held his life in your hand, and in his life you held every injustice ever inflicted upon you. And then you squeezed." I took a step closer to her, unable to help myself. I reached out and held her head, my palm cool against the burning heat of her cheek.

"You have been freed." Paula spun away and rushed off, not saying another word. I let her go. A kindred spirit. It was no less pathetic to hope for it than to search…and yet I could not help but wonder…