I did not have any awareness of time. No fogginess, no barely-there-ness, no dreamy comascape. I just woke up, and Fwatta the healer was mad at me. She dusted her hands as if metaphorically washing her hands of me.

  "Fuck it," she said. "That's as good as you're going to get, I suppose."

  "What?" I said, but she was already walking away, and loading her pipe. I looked to the side, and Magister Nukhail looked like he'd been through the wars, but he was intact. And he was breathing like a tree rustling in the wind, so I guess he was as healthy as I'd ever seen him if every single thing he did made some sort of sound. "Is everyone all right?" I asked him.

  "There were casualties," he said. "Don't worry about that. You were almost one of them." With an arthritic groan he leaned forward, and patted my shoulder. "You overexerted. Again. Second time in two months. Officially a habit. Ngrrkfh." He sat back heavily again, making that noise.

  "I feel fine," I said.

  "Grnk. Grnk. Grnk," The old man fluffed his beard. He smelled like smoke, even from a few feet away. "Don't tell Fwatta. She'll tell you how hard she had to work for that. I've eaten turkey dinners that would have been easier to restore to health than you were. Now, before we tell your parents to stop worrying: what exactly happened to you?"

  "Fire. Smoke. Nearly separated from my soul. Smoke again. Walking on coals. Inhaled a lot of steam. Some broken glass if I remember right? And I overloaded my void affinity. Badly."

  "Hrrrgh. Yeah, that sounds about right. So, it was the white door that did you in?"

  "I think so. I think I was... kind of coming apart at the end."

  "That's a kind and simple way to put it," He said, watching me carefully. "Your parents are quite disturbed. Your mother has had hellish nightmares every night."

  I blinked. "Ever- wait, every? Multiple nights? What day is it?!"

  "You've been unconscious for six days," he told me, carefully modulating his voice for once. It was a 'don't-flip-out' voice. To humor him, I did not flip out. "Now, some weeks ago when you cursed yourself with oaken affinity, you grew a root system that we were able to reverse. But, all of this," he gestured at me, "appears to be quite permanent. Trying to reverse it just caused more dissolution."

  "All what?" I asked. I checked myself. Still had all four limbs.

  This place was a tent, but a good one. The kind meant to stay up for a couple weeks, not just overnight. A pair of sturdy framed beds with mattresses were flanked by folding cots and bedrolls laid over straw, a school of little ducklings that smelled of a stable. Sunlight came in through the weave of the canvas, time had passed. Notches in the tentpole held scrivener's candles, to add a steadier, more reliable light.

  Now to put a light on this situation. I was owed explanation. The magister grumbled, and tapped his staff, which lit up brightly. And with a hand, he conjured a large standing mirror with a gilt frame and decorations of goats chasing lions, smeared in blood. Gotta be a story there. I would wait for it.

  My hair was shock-white. My skin was paler too, but it wasn't bleached like my hair. I looked almost entirely different, a ghost of who I used to be. Same snub-tip nose, same slight gap in my teeth. Same smallish ears. The part of my hair, the mismatched eyes, those were me. But this washed-out apparition wasn't me. I touched my face. Paper fingers on chalky cheeks. I ran a hand through my hair, and it was more than pale. Not ash-blonde or elder's white, it was almost as white as the void itself.

  The distinctive colors, the Harigold tan, my mother's complexion, my hair... I didn't look like anyone anymore. I would never be instantly recognized as the child of my parents. I wouldn't even pass for Nathan's cousin, let alone sister. Twin. I'd lost my twin. Or myself.

  I put too much of myself into the void, and now I would never come all the way back.

  With a heaving groan that ended... badly, Nukhail pulled his mass upright, and grabbed his staff. "It would be cruel, hmm hmm, to leave your parents in suspense any longer. I'll be back presently." He walked away with the stately methodical pace of an iceberg headed into the ocean to wreck Leo and Kate's whole day.

  I was wearing a hospital gown. Fuck that. This was worth a spell, a little mana. I was dressed in riding leathers by the time the tent flap opened and my parents rushed in. My father almost leaped to tackle me, but held back just enough to still call it a hug instead of an assault charge. He was making inarticulate sobbing noises, and my mother was on the other side, just repeating my name while she ran her hand over my head, over and over. With a little foresight I'd have crafted plate mail instead of leather. My father lifted my right hand, and gingerly turned it over, back and forth, running his hand up and down my forearm, pressed his palm to mine. He seemed really fixated on that one hand. He made me roll up my sleeve to the elbow and show him. I should probably not ask questions, I think that putting all of that behind us needs to be a priority.

  After I freed my arms I got one around each of them and we all held onto each other for dear life. And we cried, and it was awful. It wasn't even a good healing thank-gods-that-is-over-with cry. This was just us all reacting to the awfulness of this whole thing.

  After the tears turned to dust and the sobs turned to hiccups, we sat together on the mattress. My parents were actively grateful that I didn't remember anything after the fireplace at their bedroom, and damned little of that. And neither of them would tell me how many people died inside the house. Our guest quarters and servants' wings held a lot of people. The family's favorite way to spend our money was to hire people and keep them close. Most of the people that worked in that house had a rough history, something that they could not go back to. A family they never talk to, a background they never talk about when I'm around. The wounded strays that would be abandoned by a more callous society. I know that my parents hand-pick them.

  Who was missing? Who would I never speak to again?

  "Nathan?" I asked, my voice sounded hollow.

  "Over in Farfield, gathering supplies to send back to the camp," the duke said, patting my shoulder like he needed to be convinced I was still there. "First salvaging, then rebuilding."

  "Salvage- oh." I stopped. "Everything's gone."

  Hundreds of years of mementos and letters. Hope chests and bridal gowns in the attic. The portraits, the carvings, the tapestries- "Oh, no, your tapestries," I said, looking at my mother, eyes wide. I could not cry any more but I sure seemed to be trying. "Father, your accounts, your ledgers.. Nathan had all those letters. He was going to learn all those signatures..." I felt my heart drop hard. "The library. Father, the - the books.."

  His pride and joy. The first time he took me out to carry his infant daughter around his palace, he had bragged about his books and his family's legacy of literature.

  He was saying something, probably about how it was all right, as long there is life there is hope, we can rebuild all of those things and replace them, we need to focus on the living.

  Look, I know that human life is valuable and precious, every one of us a world of multitudes that briefly dances with each other, casting faint webs of words to convey the kaleidoscope that is our innermost souls. And that books are paper and ink. But while my moral self may know that any human life is worth more than any number of books, my emotional self felt like ten thousand innocent souls had died trapped on those shelves. I had a personal connection to those books. I had not been able to rescue any of it. I barely got out with a score of people, and that almost killed me, even with sorcery.

  I felt a numbness growing in me. It hurt, a lot. Like I was crumbling inward, breaking off in layers.

  Well fuck that. I don't have to hurt. I channeled steel, and the spreading scream inside of me froze in place, before it could grow large enough to shatter me. "Mother," I said, holding Duke Mathew's hand. "We have been attacked by cowards."

  "And you are the descendant of Idnelps Daria," my mother said, her voice hard. "Go to war, my child."

  I kissed her hand, and his cheek, and I stood up. I opened a portal and walked to it.

  Behind me, my father asked "Id who?"

  I wanted to go after Kralcit; she would have been the one to order the hit. But I know that I have to keep her alive for three more years. I was not making these decisions impulsively. By the time my mother told me to take the fight to them, I already had my list. Which minions were expendable, which plotline I could cut down early. This was a list that I had been working on ever since I asked permission from my father to take the fight to our enemies. He told me no. I had refined my target list just in case.

  I teleported to the Three Week Inn, and found it empty, abandoned at least a week. Not a speck of evidence left, no documents of any sort, no indication which way they went. I lashed out with sorcery, I tumbled stone and timber from their roots until the building was leveled. The robbers and murderers that had made this their home were efficient, nothing for me to attack here. It's a pain in the ass, when the enemies are professional and qualified.

  Well, Kralcit would have a harder time shutting down Kudder's Ironworks. I stepped into a portal and went there next. A foundry factory in the middle of a major city does not dismantle as fast as a bandit camp in the wilderness. You can't just ditch that many employees without leaving a huge paper trail. Even a vicious and cutthroat crime lord like Kudder.

  I teleported to Byeview and landed in a busy street. Laborers in denim and shop ladies in headscarves all stared at me, the air was almost choking with dust from the unpaved roads. I ignored all of them and traveled back into a portal, and out again at the top of the semaphore tower.

  "Gods' toes!" the flagger yelped, springing away from me.

  "What a fucking thing to say," I snorted. "Oi. Which way to Kudder's?"

  He pointed, and I spotted a lot of smoke belching from one building. "Thanks. And stop using toes as an oath. It's so weird."

  The front door of the foundry was unlocked, but it was meant to discourage visitors- it was huge, and too heavy for me to move. Until I channeled steel into my muscles, then it was fine. I grabbed the handles and whisked the doors open, and stared into the hellscape that is a a crucible-poured iron-casting facility. Sparks and embers, the honey-gold pour of molten metal, the way that the extreme brightness of the fires throws everything else into darkest shadows. I turned left and headed for the stairs up to the management office. My course took me straight past two big guys in sweat-stained leathers, leaning against railings as they chatted. They stared at me as I walked past, incredulous.

  "Hey, who let you in here?! Where are you going! Get back here! Stop!"

  I did not stop, and I did not turn back around. Anyone who's ever lived in a bad neighborhood already knows: you don't stop just because someone tells you to. My whole family would be surprised to find out that their Natalie has that distinction. They'd have told you that I don't even know what a bad neighborhood looks like. I headed up the stairs, my new leather boots ringing on metal grating. Shouting behind me, the tough guys calling for backup. Just two big strong men weren't enough against a twelve-year-old girl, obviously.

  Smart of them.

  Kudder's was not an important step in the enemy operations. A profitable one, but not vital. But, it did have the benefit of being a decently-important story beat for the Belisa rescue in Act 5. The hard part was hitting all the correct dialogue trees to get the information that would lead here, and earning the meetings to have those dialogues besides. By just walking in I skipped days of set-up and investigation. Benefits of game knowledge- I know where the story beats for the quests are. Not all of them. Just the ones I can remember years later. It's a good start.

  I flicked myself through the void to get around his door, letting myself in. The first time you visit Kudder's office, he's always out, visiting city council. But you don't have time to search the office before his goons bust in and either kill you or chase you out. I didn't need to search his office. I grabbed the desk drawer, and pulled. Locked. I channeled steel and pulled harder- it was really locked.

  Well shit. I guess I do need to spend time searching his office.

  Fortunately, that's when his goons busted in to kill me or chase me out. And the one in front had a long knife, the second had a length of chain, and the third was holding a crowbar. Lucky me.

  "You got five seconds-" the first one was saying, and I pulled mana to conjure void. He had a moment to look startled, and then his whole body folded into his chest, and his chest folded into a tiny speck, and then was gone. Air roared as it rushed towards the space he had been standing, the miniature black hole siphoning atmosphere quickly.

  Air pressure dropped, my ears popped. Papers rustled, shifted, then leaped off the desk to swirl up and in and away, gone as if they had never been. The dead did not leave behind a drop of blood. Wind sprang up, the air falling into the void, loud and growing. Gusts of it streamed my hair out in front of me, I had to use both hands to push it back out of my face. I raked it back and gripped to secure it, but a wreath of whipping white surrounded my face.

  "I need your crowbar," I said to the third-now-second goon. He was staring straight at where his companion had distorted, died, and disappeared. Yeah, being touched by conjured void is a terrible way to die. I had to speak up to be heard over the runaway wind, small pamphlets were being pulled off the desk and streaming into the empty space. The hole in reality was too small to see, quite microscopic. But everything that got close was distorted by its monstrous gravity well, compressed and condensed to disappear into microscopic density. The papers seemed to swirl around, rip apart, shrink to nothing and vanish.

  I snapped my fingers, made a "gimme" gesture. "The crowbar," I said.

  The goon with the chain was still staring, but the guy holding the thing I needed looked down at the prybar in his hand, and up at me. I reminded him that he was holding it, and he looked at me, the girl who had just annihilated his cohort. So he did the logical thing and threw it at me, trying to injure or kill me. The crowbar whisked to the side, tumbled in the screaming air, spiraled and spun, and was collapsed into the black hole.

  "Oh, you fucking-" I growled, really annoyed now. Fine. More mana, I cast my spell, I curved iron.

  The man with the chain found it snaking around him like a constrictor, and then it lunged to the side, dragging him into the singularity. His scream dopplered away, dropping into bass notes before it was too low to hear, and his body rippled and creased before he was funneled into the empty space that absorbed everything. It was getting hard to breathe this close, the room's air pressure was dropping too much. The exterior windows broke inward, glass sucked into the void. The thick glass windows that separated the office from the work floor were thicker and stronger, not ready to shatter yet. I turned my attention back to the mission. The desk.

  I curved the iron in the locking mechanism and the drawer popped open. I pulled out the large flat tin box, and held it tightly. I had retrieved the blackmail material.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  [ You have earned 25 experience points. You are now a Level 3 Sorceress. You have 11 experience points. ]

  I curved iron, and yanked the last man in by his belt buckle and about a pound of iron filings trapped in his clothes. I dragged him in, but to the side along the wall instead of straight towards the black hole that was consuming everything. He gets to live to the end of this. Then I curved void to teleport myself outside of the office.

  That moment inside the blank white void was not just painfully bright, but also eerily quiet. Straight out of gale winds, into utter quiet. I emerged into the world again, and the shrieking sound of a collapsing banshee filled my head. I grabbed the door to the office, and slammed it closed. That's when I dropped low, reinforced my body with channeled steel, covered my ears, and dispelled the void.

  Two men were inside that void when it collapsed, and all the missing matter was returned simultaneously. The sound of it- just imagine the wettest explosion ever. The shockwave blew out the windows above me, the door behind me, and lifted part of the roof off the building. The exterior walls were burst outwards, tin and steel and wood falling in shards out on the street. Screams everywhere, people panicking. I stood up, glanced around. Everything in a direct line from the explosion was painted bright red. Vaporized blood.

  Gross.

  I was up to 12 experience points already; the man that was inside the office did not survive the re-entry of his two friends getting un-singularity-ed. Or just un-imploded? Whatever. I got experience for killing him. I glanced inside to see. He'd been pulverized by the shockwave, not much left above the knees. Both of his boots were in different corners, and technically he was still wearing them.

  I turned around, and surveyed the ironworks. Shouting, clanging, noises in the darkness. Probably more trouble. Kudder and his thugs worked for the people that burned down my house. I could not feel bad about what happened next. These were the legbreakers, murderers and torturers that worked for the notorious loan shark Kudder, and helped him launder the money through this factory that sold cheap pikes, shields and smallswords to the child-soldier armies of Lasoinset. They used arms-dealing to launder the organized crime. There was not a single innocent here.

  So, I curved iron, inside of a crucible foundry, and what happened next was very familiar. Very reminiscent of what had happened to Harigold Manor. Molten iron flowed where I willed it, and I took no prisoners. From the elevated catwalk outside the management office I had a command view of the work floor. I lifted the monster free of its crucible cradle and set it free. The heat breathed on me, stinking and full of screams, just like last time.

  I did not get any XP for it, because I think this was treated as a set-piece cutscene rather than a combat. Still, I did okay here, all told. It's hard to level with combat. An enemy of your level or higher is worth 1XP. An enemy of lower level is worth nothing. Plot points and story beats, development milestones, those are worth a lot more. After all, the game has combat mechanics, but first and foremost it was a story-driven visual novel. Still, I was pretty sure I'd level up again before my day was over.

  I opened the portal and stepped inside; I was done with Byeview. There was a lot more revenge to be found.