TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 2 (RAW)

Book 3: Chapter 2 - A Time of Loss

“Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.”

- Earl Grollman

Morning light pooled pale and silent across the rafters when Mina opened her eyes after a fitful rest after watching the dawn. The house, normally alive with the breakfast clatter of kettles and Levine’s off‑key humming at such an hour, lay utterly still. It was as though it had drawn a breath in the night and forgotten to release it. Outside, birds twittered on the thatch, yet their song sounded distant. The girl rose, slid bare feet over the cool floorboards, and padded down the corridor to look around. She ventured sheepishly into the dining room downstairs and saw that the hearth embers had gone grey and brittle, likely abandoned hours ago.

She called softly—once for Levine, once for Gaellan. No answer. Only the steady drip of the leaky gutter outside and the creak of beams settling. Something else was off. The wall beside the dining table stood naked: Gaellan’s curved sword, always there like a silent sentinel, was gone. Its absence left a shape in the air, a gap she could almost see. She brushed trembling fingertips over the iron hooks. Had Levine borrowed it? Impossible; he would never touch his father’s blade. Last night’s whispered argument ghosted back to her: Gaellan’s warning that reckoning would come, that secrets could not stay buried. A knot cinched in her stomach.

Had that time come?

Unease tugged her toward Levine’s room. She hesitated at the threshold. Sun angled through half‑shuttered slats, turning drifting dust into gold confetti. His bed was unmade, blankets twisted as though he’d left in haste. Urgency hummed in the air like a plucked string.

As if possessed, she knelt, ransacking the chest at the foot of the bed—folded shirts, spare boots, a wood‑carved whistle still rough with knife marks. Nothing. Determined, she tapped floorboards until one sounded hollow. A forceful tug pried it free, revealing a dark pocket beneath.

A lacquered small walnut box glimmered in the gloom. Her pulse hammered as she lifted the lid. Nestled on pale linen lay an emerald pendant, the very necklace Gaellan had mentioned the night before. Seeing it stole her breath. Levine had hidden it well—hidden her past from her. A flutter of recognition stirred, bright and bittersweet. She brushed the gem; warmth tingled through her fingers. It belonged to her the way her heartbeat did, undeniable and intimate. She slipped it into her pocket, replaced the board, and hurried back to her room.

Before the mirror, she drew the chain of gold and platinum links over her head. Cool metal kissed the nape of her neck; the emerald settled at her collarbones, heavy as memory. A voice, bright and frantic, bloomed in her mind, “Mother!” 

One desperate word, ringing like a bell struck inside her skull, layered with terror and fierce hope. She staggered back with emotion, only just able to catch herself. This was no echo of the past but a living summons—someone, young and frightened, reaching for her through an unseen tether. She pressed both palms to the stone. It pulsed once, twice, tugging her toward the forest where she had collected a bounty the day before.

Panic and purpose collided. If Gaellan and Levine were gone, had they felt the pull too? She forced her limbs into motion. Clothes flew from pegs: her roughest trousers, new boots, the forest‑green cloak Grena had gifted her. The young girl belted a knife at her hip, more for reassurance than for fighting, and barreled downstairs, each footfall echoing like drum beats in the hollow house.

The latch lifted; she burst onto the porch, breath catching at what met her eyes. Smoke feathered the sky above distant tree‑tops, turning the morning sun a sickly orange. Villagers hurried along the lane, shepherding children toward wagons, loading sacks of grain and battered heirlooms. Their faces carried the stunned look of people upended too early and asked to flee.

Arnell the smith came pounding up the road, soot masking his broad face, hammer still tucked in his apron. “Mina! You must head away with the others—now!”

“Where are Levine and Gaellan?” she demanded, though dread already whispered the answer.

“Deep in the forest,” Arnell rasped, shaking his head. “Adventurers from Meridian reached us before dawn—six of the Silvers, one of the Gold ranks. Gaellan took command when they saw the serpent’s trail. He and Levine went with them to hold the beast and buy us time. They have his sword and plenty of steel besides, but…” His voice cracked like cooling iron. “The creature’s bigger than the stories say. We felt its passage under our feet.”

As if summoned, somewhere in the direction of the wild woods, trees splintered with a muffled boom. The voice in Mina’s head wailed again, “Mother, please!” stronger, closer to panic. Every heartbeat drummed against the emerald, urging her onward.

Arnell seized her wrist. “No, lass. They left word: you’re to travel with the evacuees—”

“I can’t.” Her reply was quiet steel. Something vast uncoiled in her blood, a power awakening. She twisted; Arnell’s fingers slipped as though she were made of smoke. He tried to bar her path; she set a firm hand to his chest and pushed. The giant of a man flew back, eyes wide. 

“I have to reach them,” she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head

He looked at her, eyes pleading. “Mina—wait! You don’t know…”

But she was already running, cloak snapping behind her like a banner in rising wind. Boots pounded the packed earth; the world blurred—abandoned carts, toppled crates, dogs barking in confusion. Fleeing villagers shouted warnings and pleas, but she streaked past, a green‑cloaked arrow aimed at the forest’s heart.

Memory and instinct sharpened into one razor edge. She vaulted a fallen fence, skirted a spooked ox, and hit the tree line without breaking stride. The forest swallowed her, trunks rising like pillars of an ancient hall. Light dappled the path in flickering coins; her cloak swished through ferns, scattering dew.

Each bound carried her nearer the invisible thread throbbing from the emerald. She pictured Gaellan’s weathered face set in grim determination, Levine’s broad shoulders squared against fear, gold‑rank adventurers fanning around them with shields locked and spears outthrust. Branches clashed above, echoing sword‑on‑scale. She imagined the serpent—plates overlapping like cathedral roofs, eyes like twin furnaces, rearing amid shattered and broken trees. The thought should have frozen her; instead, it lent speed to her limbs.

Roots and rocks seemed to move aside, as though the forest itself guided her steps. Deeper, always deeper, the pull insisted. The voice in her mind quieted to a tremulous whimper, sensing her swift approach.

A new sound broke through—the clash of metal, the roar of some colossal throat, men shouting orders. She crested a low ridge and glimpsed flashes of steel through the undergrowth.

Mina crested the ridge just as the forest ahead erupted in white fire, its glare washing out the dawn. A clearing yawned beneath her—trees ripped out by the roots, crowns hurled sky‑high, trunks sizzling and collapsing where rivers of acid hissed through bark. 

At its center writhed a colossal, three‑headed serpent: a hydra of night‑tale proportions, each neck as thick as an ancient oak, every slick scale the color of untouched snow. One head loosed a jet of caustic spittle, dissolving a pine to bubbling ruin; another swung wide, felling two sycamores in a single scything sweep. Its third maw rumbled with a bass growl that rattled needles from treetops.

Ringed around the monster fought nine adventurers—now eight, now seven as the beast’s tails lashed. They were a ragged band of would‑be heroes: a Knight in burnished plate, throwing up radiant wards that cracked each time a tail slammed; a lightly armored Rogue vanishing and reappearing in knife flashes that barely nicked alabaster scales; a red‑robed mage hurling orbs of crimson flame that burst against the hydra’s hide like dying suns. Icebolts, lightning lances, crescent arcs of conjured wind—spellwork painted the clearing in flashes of raw magic. 

The ground steamed where frost collided with fire; ozone and sap stung the air. For every wound they carved, the gouge of a broadsword, the impact burn of a fireball—the hydra’s flesh slowly knitted, filaments of its pink crystal magic stitching alabaster skin whole again.

Mina’s breath hitched as the voice in her mind blazed, “Mother!” 

The cry rang clearer than ever, bright as a trumpet in her mind, and she suddenly recognized the voice’s owner. The serpent itself. Not a monster, but Cornelia, the Hydra she had raised from an egg. Memory broke like dawn: Seraphina de Sariens, highborn of Aranthia, giggling as she fed the small serpent anything and everything Cornelia had wanted. Tears welled, only to evaporate in a rush of rage at the sight of peasant sellswords wounding her most precious of companions.

And she remembered the necklace. A relic older perhaps than the Kingdom of Aranthia itself, the Beast‑Lore Amulet, a prize taken from a Trial of the Goddess where she had bested a Banshee at its own game. With it, she could speak to the beasts of the wild.

Seraphina drew the small knife at her belt—then nearly laughed aloud. This tiny thing against armor? Absurd. 

Her gaze caught on a young sapling, and she smiled. Fury lent her arm iron. She seized the tree with both hands, veins standing proud, and ripped it free in a geyser of loam. The sapling became a massive club. With a feral cry, she charged downhill into chaos.

The Rogue blinked to intercept—eyes widening an instant too late as if his eyes could not quite comprehend the sight. One swing shattered his ribcage; he flew back boneless, landing in a heap. 

A message she could not read appeared across her vision, as irritating as buzzing gnats. She snarled and blinked them away.

A cleric in silver plate-and-mail chased forward, holy sigil blazing, chanting a smite that cracked the air. Seraphina hurdled a fallen trunk, whipping the sapling overhead; wood met helm with a metal‑ringing crack that snapped the club in two. The cleric collapsed, light sputtering from his icon. Cornelia struck at the same heartbeat—one maw darting down to swallow a spear‑wielder whole, armor and screams muffled by serpentine gullet—while a second head’s acid dissolved the ground where a Frost Mage stood moments earlier.

Seraphina tossed the half‑shattered sapling aside as the flame‑caster shrieked an incantation. Fire blossomed; surviving wood exploded to cinders. She dove and rose miraculously beside two abandoned straight swords half‑buried in churned mud. It was as if they had been placed there for her, for this very moment.

More text appeared across her vision that she could not read. Again, she dismissed them.

They were heavier than what she thought she was used to; these were weighed more for brutal war than a courtly duels. The Grace-blades of her instructor at the Academy… And, as her fingers closed on the hilts, another ghost surfaced: a golden‑eyed tutor with an irreverent laugh, tapping her elbow, correcting her stance. Muscle memory flooded back. She stepped into form, pivoted, parried the mage’s panic‑born lash of living fire, and severed his staff in a single ringing stroke. Sparks cascaded; terror widened his eyes until Cornelia’s tail whipped him off his feet.

But steel alone could not hold against such spellfire forever. Bolts of frost tore through her cloak where she mistimed a parry or failed a dodge. They carved crimson crescents along her shoulder and thigh, and worst of all, spread a numbing cold that slowed her movements. A spiked mace clipped her ribs hard enough to crack bone. Unarmored, she bled freely. Pain flared—then her heart answered with a song most holy. The Song of the Covenant… Heal. Righteousness and forgiveness made manifest. For there could be no Justice without Mercy. 

Words unfurled as golden sigils in her sight, lines of Holy. Her lips shaped the syllables; radiant warmth surged through wounded flesh. Torn skin sealed, and the girl was made whole. The mage who watched her wounds vanish stumbled back, shocked.

“How dare you lay your hands on me… You PEONS!” she shouted with all of her Strength.

And in the echoes of that violent shout blossomed another memory.

Seraphina smiled, teeth bared in triumph. Another memory blossomed: Wail of Judgment, dread hymn of destruction. She drew breath, loosed a note threaded with the Holy Covenant. Air warped; sin was judged; the clearing rang with silence so profound it cracked eardrums. Three adventurers froze, eyes glazing as life drained, bleeding from their eyes, nose, and ears. Two more collapsed, weapons falling from spasming hands. 

More text appeared, but the girl could not read them.

The note of destruction died. 

Miraculously, two figures remained upright: Gaellan, old breastplate dented, sword trembling, eyes wide with confusion; and Levine, slack‑jawed, blood seeping from a cut above his brow. Horror and love waged a visible war in his gaze.

They had been spared from the song of Judgment.

“Mina… why…” Levine’s voice was shredded with so much pain.

“My name is Seraphina,” she hissed, each syllable dipped in ice. “And how dare peasants give me a dead pet’s name!” She launched forward.

Gaellan sprang to meet her, grim resolve etching tired lines deeper on his face. He raised the curved sword she once had faintly dreaded on their dining‑room wall. She moved as she had been taught, but he moved with all the skill the years had of training had gifted him. 

Edge met edge. Sparks danced. Her borrowed blade skidded, slid past. But Cornelia saw the opening that no one else did. One snowy neck whipped sideways, hammering the mayor with bone‑crushing force. Armor folded like tin. Gaellan vanished beneath a mountain of serpentine flesh as ground and bone broke together.

Levine’s scream ripped through the air. He charged—yet grief made his swing wild. She sidestepped, slid steel between plates beneath his arm, through the mail of his armpit. The blade sank deep. He gasped; blood welled scarlet. For a heartbeat, their faces were inches apart—hers twisted with rage, his contorted in disbelief and such deep sorrow.

“I love you,” he rasped. Shock melted into tender grief. Knees buckled; he sagged against her. She let him fall.

She could finally read the messages that blocked her sight. 

You have slain Levine Traellis.

You have gained 123 experience.

You have reached level 26.

3 unassigned attribute points.

1 unassigned skill point.

There it was, the accusation of her sin.

But, almost automatically, as if rehearsed, she put three attribute points into Luck even as the words blurred behind sudden saltwater. Tears spilled, hot and senseless. The skill point she placed into Blind Fighting.

Seraphina’s chest convulsed in a sob that felt foreign, unwelcome. Cornelia’s central head lowered, nuzzling her shoulder with a perplexed rumble.

Why was she crying? The Hydra was safe, foes scattered, her power rekindled. Yet Levine’s still form carved an empty space beneath her ribs. Salt mixed with blood on her lips. She wiped tears with a shaking wrist, but they returned, unstoppable.

The heir to the Sariens Duchy could see all of her skills and abilities now, her Status window open for her perusal. They looked obscene against the carnage. She dismissed her Status with a ragged breath, gaze locked on the corpse of the man who had been simple smiles, who had taught her the forest songs. He ought to have been nothing, but grief speared her with every heartbeat.

And then, she truly remembered. Remembered that she was not even Seraphina de Sariens and that once upon a time, she had been common, too.

The world was always trying to take something from her.

Cornelia, still wary, curled protectively, three heads weaving slow circles above ruined ground. All was quiet save for the crack of settling timber and Seraphina’s uneven breaths.

Then, faint but insistent, new memories rose to the fore. The numbers climbed. Images surfaced: a red giant Dragonslayer tumbling from the heavens, her neural link flaring out like severed nerves; a domineering mother, a loving father, a silver-haired rival, a treacherous boy-prince, a girl who was her once-reflection… all of these and more. Last of all were the memories of a golden‑eyed woman, teacher, laughing as she drilled sword forms, as well as teaching her true humility. The very technique that had slain the man who had loved her… and that she perhaps had been falling in love with as well.

She staggered back from Levine’s body, almost tripping over a fallen shield. Her knees hit scorched loam. Cornelia’s heads hissed in alarm but did not strike. Seraphina pressed both palms to the emerald amulet, its rhythm thumping like a second heart. Tears fell, dotting forest soil.

For a moment, she wished she could curl into a ball or run away, retreat to a morning kitchen filled with a simple but lovingly made breakfast. But that Mina was a borrowed shell, cracked beyond repair the instant the sword slid home. Seraphina de Sariens knelt in her place. 

Yet grief remained, raw and bewildering. Levine’s final whisper looped through her ears. I love you. Three words, fragile as spun sugar, somehow weighing more than titles or kingdoms. She tasted their sweetness and their curse. 

Above the trees, clouds drifted, indifferent. Cornelia’s heads scanned the tree line. She rose on shaky legs, straightened her torn cloak, and placed a trembling hand on Levine’s cooling brow.

“I did love you,” she confessed in a cracked whisper she barely recognized, “or Mina did, at least. I will give you that.” Another sob slipped free. She let it, for there was no audience left alive to judge.

But beneath all of the grief was a rage. A rage at having been humiliated and manipulated. During her time as Mina, she had endured humiliation after humiliation in her ignorance. In her grief-twisted mind, she concluded that the people of Milani Village would have made her a slave, an indentured servant at best, in all but name. And this one at her feet would have made her his concubine.

They might as well have raped her.

Stoking the fire, Seraphina de Sariens remembered that Gaellan had attacked her first. And rage, it made a fine antidote to grief.

She straightened and kicked the corpse. Up, high above, a winged Wyrm-drone flew over the forest. Perfect, the young girl thought with an evil smile.

“Eat them all, Cornelia,” Seraphina de Sariens commanded coldly. “And be quick about it. We have business in Milani village. There will be a few more snacks for you there.”

“Yummy!” her cute pet replied, munching down another corpse of an adventurer whole.