Vasilisa the Brave - Epilogue

Vasilisa the Brave - Epilogue

She was named by her grandmother. 

That woman had been good to her, to everyone. Tough as nails, but with a heart of burnished gold. She believed in fairytales and magic, and on seeing a new baby girl in the family, she decided that her name would be Vasilisa, and she would be brave.

And brave she was. Too much so, maybe.

When she grew, she found that others were sometimes in the wrong. She never shied away from pointing it out. It got her in trouble, but she was smart, clever even. 

She had a knack for physics, for the science that would allow one to peek under the curtains of the world, and her grandmother had gifted her with a good work ethic. Vasilisa rose in prominence, achieving much in a short while... until her bravery hit a wall.

She discovered errors. Exceptions in the rules that all believed to be true and sacrosanct. Pointing these out was a cardinal sin, and yet she was brave. It earned her scorn. Her papers were turned down. Her research was left unfunded.

That was fine. She knew that she would uncover the truth one day.

And so the opportunity came. They didn’t quite have a name, but they did see her potential. They told her that she could do good, that she could uncover the truth, that she could help. 

The flattery worked. 

At first her job was simple. Researching known truths, running experiments that had been done before to see results that were known. 

The machines they had were better than any at the universities. Years, decades, ahead, but still not so farfetched. Questions outside of her remit were strongly discouraged.

Eventually, however, new things were introduced. Items that were... abnormal, that defied the laws, that broke the patterns. 

They weren’t magic, because that was impossible, but they were definitely something outside of the ordinary.

More items came. Some of them seemed ordinary, others were extraordinary. She catalogued, studied, and learned what she could, but... there was more.

On visiting her ailing grandmother one day, one of the few times away from the lab, she heard the aged woman mutter of magic and fairytales. The last delusional speak of a woman whose brain had aged past senility.

It hurt her, to see the woman pass.

But she was brave. Brave enough to try the impossible.

Magic was real. Or perhaps it was something beyond mere physics. The experiment was done in secret, but when it came out, she expected ridicule and consternation.

They rewarded her instead. A loftier position, more staff, assistants, greater and more complex projects. They lauded her as brave and as a free thinker, as someone who would help them save humanity one day.

She didn’t pretend to understand it all.

The deeper she dug, the more delusion she found amongst those around her. The truth was closely guarded by people above the people above her. 

It didn’t matter. Her work forged ahead. She wrote laws and found exceptions. It was a new field that needed to be mapped out in its entirety.

She became the map-maker, and she was good at it. The praise continued to come in, even when it took her longer than expected to uncover the mechanisms of this non-magic.They were patient.

One day, Vasilisa looked at herself in a mirror and realized that she was aged. She was as old now as her grandmother had once been. Her legacy was a treasure trove of hald-uncovered secrets for the next generation to uncover.

She was old enough to be told some of the secrets that they kept. Old and trusted enough.

Magic was real, but it was in the hands of uncontrollable, dangerous creatures. And one of these had been captured.

She was excited to see it.

She didn’t expect a girl.

She looked like a child, stuck in a sarcophagus of iron and glass, plugged into a dozen machines. The readings were incredible. There was no doubt that this child was... something special.

Vasilisa watched. She studied. She worked on the machines. She grew close to her subject even as she tried to uncover the strange way physics bent around the girl.

Then the dreams started, the glimpses in shadows, the mornings where she woke up and was very much certain that she’d lived the current day before. 

Vasilisa wanted to do the right thing.

That would mean being brave. 

And she was brave.

She unlocked the right things, she set things up just-so. It was all a breeze. So easy. It felt like she was floating along on a cloud as she sent employees away, gave breaks to those that would otherwise be the most suspicious, and promoted some so that they’d be out of her hair. 

She started to unlock the sacraphagus.

And then they betrayed her. She died. But she had something to accomplish. She had made a promise. She had sworn. 

And so a girl awoke out by the edge of the Zone and started to make her way in.

By the boundary of the Zone, a girl awoke and set her sights on venturing deeper.

And a girl was jostled awake on the edge of the Zone and walked towards the centre. 

On the threshold of the Zone, a girl was roused and wandered toward its core.

Awoken by the murmur of the Zone, a girl rose and ventured into its shadowed depths.

Vasilisa watched as Alice and Crystal were sucked up and away by a spinning torrent of magic. The air recoiled and twisted. She felt her bones bend and her eyes bleed. The Zone snapped. Time paused. 

For a moment she was herself. Dying over and over again, on a quest that would never end.

And then she was falling. The Zone was a crater now. A hole so large, so wide, that its edges were barely visible from its middle.

She fell, but her crash was whisper-soft, gentle. 

Vasilisa sat up. She felt fine. 

Her hands were that of a young woman. Younger than she had been. Older than she had been.

Water started to gently fill the bottom of the crater from fresh rivulettes coming down from above, but for the moment...

For the moment, it was just her, in the middle, alone.

She had done it.

***