Chapter 74: Mind’s Dilation (Patreon)

“Are you sure?”

Ritz nodded. “It’s not like I can go back to the manor anyway,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The least I can do is stay here and help out, ‘specially if it helps out on our end of the deal for the junk you need.”

I sighed. We’d brought coin, but understandably, the people of Shriver’s Point, the village we’d saved, was less interested in trade than it was in warm bodies and weapons for those bodies to hold.

The angels were hardly the only monsters that walked the wastes of Innistrad.

“Are you sure you can handle it?”

“We’ll only be here for a few more days anyway, before heading to Thraben.”

I huffed. “That’s the part I’m worried about.”

Ritz held her arms open in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. “With the extra weapons you helped them put together, I think I can hold the caravan through some ghoul attacks or things like that. Not the first time I’ve done an escort quest.”

I held back a ‘this isn’t a quest.’ 

“The problem is if we get another bunch of angels. Not sure the extra two or three crossbows is gonna help much with that.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I should go with you.”

“You should focus on sorting your own shit before dipping into someone else’s.” I held back a snort at Ritz’s words. She put a hand on my shoulder before I could reply, before moving to half cup my cheek. “Hey,” she said. I stilled. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

I looked away. “That’s the part that scares me.”

She socked me in the shoulder. “Rude. Don’t make me dock your pay, guildie!”

I gave a small smile. “Don’t make me come after you. It would be a shame if you failed your first dispatch mission.”

“Please,” she said. “I’ve never dropped a quest in my life.

What went unsaid is that usually she had me and Shara and the rest of her clan at her back. I didn’t want to cast aspersions towards the people here, but they were tanners and smiths and farmers when the dangers on the road would need hardened warriors to combat.

“You’ll let me know when you reach Thraben?” I asked. 

Ritz nodded. “Not sure what’s going on with this plane, but if your track record is any indication, you’ll probably want to check it out too when I get there.”

I sighed. “Just…try not to run into any more angels. If there had been more than six things would have been rather difficult.”

“You say that like you aren’t already making plans to counter their advantages,” Ritz said. “I know how you work.” Her grin was far too smug.

I shuffled, holding back a blush. “That’s just being prepared.”

Ritz twirled the moonsilver spear she’d taken from one of the angels. I’d summoned her a copy of the rapier as well, but she preferred the spare weapon for extra reach. “Then stop worrying so much!” she said. “It’s not like this is the first time this has ever happened, you know.”

“That’s the part I’ve been trying not to think about,” I said. “It’s one thing when this all is just a plot in a book. It feels quite different when I’m the one who’s split in two.”

Ritz pulled me into a hug. “Look, I’m sure you’ll find a way out.”

“Never say die?” No matter how all the stories ended.

“Exactly. You’ll find a way out like you always do.” I wish I had the same amount of faith in my own abilities.

It really did feel different when things were happening to you.

“Stay safe,” I said aloud. “I’ll swing by the city after you get settled.”

Ritz gave me a smile as she stepped back, hands still on my shoulders. I could tell that I hadn’t fooled her in the slightest. She looked up at me, white hair blowing gently around her pale face. “You stay safe. I’ll be fine.”

I huffed, stepping back. “I won’t be there to pick up the slack this time.”

“As if I need it.”

Still, if I said my weight wasn’t somewhat lighter because of Ritz, well…

I’d never made a good liar, not even to myself.

I waved as the caravan, in truth, little more than four horses, half that number of wagons, and many many people on foot, trundled past the gates. The villagers looked fearful but holding on to a deeper hope that could not be so easily extinguished. 

Maybe part of that was the white-haired young woman pacing along the length of people trudging slowly away from all they had known. Ritz would see them safely to their destination even if it killed her.

That’s just the type of person she was.

I stayed there after the caravan descended into the first valley. The village was empty save for that one mad priest, left in the moonsilver stockade. It was, they said, the people’s justice.

I saw the cold pragmatism in the decision. A vulnerable caravan couldn’t risk a crazed, half starved, hunter tracking them down in the dead of night.

Best case scenario, he brought the real predators down on their head.

I’d let him go in a day or two, after the man had a chance ton consider his own sins.

Remove the board from your own eye, before commenting on the splinter in your brother’s, and all of that.

Raven came up beside me while I was waiting and I nodded to her. “Rose?”

“Already heading back to the manor.”

I leaned back against the wall of the now abandoned village. “We should head back too,” I said. Raven nodded. Neither of us moved.

“Should I just get it over with?” I asked. Raven tilted her head. “I haven’t been thinking about it. Haven’t wanted to think about it, really, but in every book I’ve ever read, this situation.” I gestured to myself. “Ends in one of two ways.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Raven said. “I never had access to much leasure reading back on Azarath.”

I tilted my head back, continuing as if I hadn’t heard. “It ends when the two of us get over our issues and merge, or it ends horribly.”

Raven shuffled, sliding closer. “It isn’t wrong,” she said quietly. “To want to be something different than what you are forced to be.”

I blinked, looking back down.

Here eyes glinted in the evening light. “Don’t tell me it’s wrong.”

I sighed. Of course. Raven was the daughter of a demon. She didn’t speak much about her home, but it was clear that she’d never been allowed to forget that fact.

There was a reason people like us didn’t talk about our history.

“Of course,” I said, pushing myself off of the wall. I nodded. “I’m sorry, I’m being maudlin.” I gave her a smile.

Raven wasn’t fooled either.

Where had my ability to project an unreadable front vanished to while I wasn’t looking?

She reached out, almost convulsively, and snatched my wrist. “It’s not wrong to do the selfish thing, for once in your life, Taylor.”

I blinked as she stepped away. “The selfish thing?” I asked, before laughing. “It’s not about being selfish or not, Raven, don’t worry.” I bumped her with my shoulder, “Come on, let’s head back.”

Raven waved her hand and with an ‘Azarath Metrion Zinthos,’ the supplies we’d bargained for rose up into the air. It was mostly crude metal, whatever the people of Shriver’s point couldn’t or wouldn’t carry. 

Still, the question weighed me down even as the two of us rose up into the air, weighed me down as surely as metal rods and nails Raven carried in a construct of shadows.

“Raven,” I said.

She turned to me, brow raised.

I shook my head. “Nevermind.”

We flew on in silence.

By wing, Liliana’s manor was only an hour or so away. We’d walked, in large part, to give Ritz time out of the scroll, and also to avoid alarming the villagers.

For all the use that turned out to be.

Rose lagged a bit in the air, we caught up to her as she was lazily drifting back towards the highlands in her armor. She flicked us a jaunty salute as we linked up, forming the left wing of our V with Raven at the head.

“Something on your mind?” she asked. Her voice sounded tinny over the speakers of her suit.

“We’ll talk when we get back,” I said. “Have to start setting up your foundry don’t we? I have some summons for that.”

“Heck yeah! Break out the dragons why don’t you.”

Despite myself I smirked. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“What really?” She shook her head. “And here all I have is some iron legion summons.”

I cocked an eyebrow at that. “Then why didn’t you drop them when Liliana was threatening to munch on us with zombies? The only summon I can reasonably throw out is half undead already.” Left unsaid was that they’d just be more fodder for Liliana.

She laughed. “Didn’t want to torpedo negotiations anymore than we already had, yanno?” She coughed. “…and also I kinda need to be moving and in my armor for the spell to work?”

I half fell out of the air. Rising back up, I glared at the unmoving metal visage of Rose’s armor. “Sounds like we have more work than I thought.”

“Hey now, I’m not the one who had a supreme sorcerer as a teacher.”

I sighed. “The best teacher was Liliana, actually.” As much as it hurt to admit, a few days with Liliana had done more for my magic than the half a month I’d spent under the direct tutelage of  Kent Nelson.

Though, he had left me other forms of inheritance, hadn’t he.

“Yeah, I get why we’re still here,” Rose said. “Better someone we know has the skills, even if we can’t trust her all the way to the bank. Believe me, I get it.”

‘But I hate it’ echoed in the silence.

I nodded, trusting the myriad of sensors in that armor to pick up my expression, and the rest of the flight passed in silence. We landed at the mansion, traded polite greetings and barbs with our hostess of innumerable virtues.

Raven I ‘gave leave’ to return to the room, where she would be spared Liliana’s casual remarks about my ‘demon handmaid,’ while Rose and I saw to the materials we’d collected.

And then, as Rose and I carted crude metal and parts into the tower we’d been given for research, I asked for the third time:

“Are we sure we don’t already know how this one ends?”

Rose paused, helmet folding back to reveal her face that was a mirror of my own.

For once she wasn’t smiling.

It was very clear what I meant.

“If this was a book or something, a bad 90s sit com, whatever, then sure,” she said. “But life doesn’t follow those tired old tropes.”

I said nothing.

Rose sighed, dumping a load of iron ingots on the ground. We’d have to refine them into steel later. Rose turned back to me.

“What’s even the point then?”

I looked away, clenching a fist in my cloak. “Because I promised I’d save everyone I could, after the last time I failed.” After Kent, I didn’t said. “It would be one thing, if this plane was handling its own problems, but if that were the case then Angels wouldn’t be running people down in the streets.”

“Ah fuck me,” Rose muttered. “This is what I get for trying to be a hero.”

Neither of us said the obvious fact, if we were effective apart, we’d be more than twice so together, with all of our knowledge and experience combined.

“It would be,” she said. “A little bit like dying, don’t you think.”

I cracked a wry smile. “Since when have we been afraid to die?”

Her laughter was sharp, harsh. It formed a lovely accompaniment to my smile.

And for a moment, there was silence.

But then, if I was thinking about these things, then no doubt Rose was as well. 

A part of me was yelling just to lunge at her wrist, get it over with, like a bandaid. Whatever came out the other side would a Taylor. Even if it wasn’t…this Taylor, or that one.

But I owed it to myself, or at least, this other version of myself, to ask.

“So why not give it a try?” Rose said, half to herself. “Who knows, if we start bleeding out of our eyes, there might even be time to pull back.”

It hadn’t even hurt, the first time. It had been a mess of me becoming her becoming me on and on ad infinitum, yes.

But if everything good for you was easy, it would be easy for you to be good.

I felt her emotions flicker and ebb in the depths of her soul, arriving at a conclusion that I couldn’t rightly say I’d reached. It almost felt like cheating to just offer up the possibility, knowing that I could except whatever outcome my doubled offered.

Maybe that’s why we needed each other then?

I felt the moment she came to her decision. I couldn’t tell you what it was that pushed her over, maybe her own sense of heroism. Maybe her distrust of Liliana.

But she held out her hand. “Sure,” she said. “Why look when you can leap.”

I swallowed, grabbing her hand. “See you one the other side.”

“No you won’t.”

And there it was again, the feeling of the entire world canting in towards the center. Of me becoming her becoming me becoming—

!!—*mR&#(l    #@e    %*(O)*s$%    *N*—!! 

As one as more we threw ourselves apart.

I didn’t know at first, which one of us screamed.

Then I realized it was both of us.

Our eyes met, as we panted for air. Rose shivered, one hand coming up to her sweat soaked brow. “That wasn’t just us this time.”

This time, it was my turn to swear.

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A/N:  Had some people in the SB thread wondering about why Taylors didn't just merge and get it over with, especially because they should both be genre savvy about it. I figured I might as well show the reason why.

It's good foreshadowing, anyway.

As always, thanks for your support, and I hope you all enjoyed the chapter!