I know what I did.

Where am I? My eyelids feel so heavy, tops and bottoms magnetically drawn together with such force that a lever would have to separate them to allow me sight of whatever pit my body must've collapsed in. My limbs stretch outward in curiosity through silken sheets, the comforting, soft chill gliding over my bristled fur and easing me despite myself. A bed. I'm in bed. A dream… it really was just a-

The robe. It couldn't have been a dream… I'm still wearing the robe. I can feel it scrunched up and piled around my limbs and joints from restless movement, the fabric clinging to every crevice along my body, stuck to each curve from the sweat absorbed deep into the threads. And the robe besides, the scent of this place is foreign to me. It smells like acidic plastic, the sort of acrid musk you'd expect to waft after starting an old computer… but there's more. Lingering hints of high value perfumes with names I probably can't pronounce. That sterile smell of chemical cleaners I'd expect from the halls of a hotel or in a hospital. I immediately think of my father in his hospital bed. Waiting for me. Wondering where I am. Where am I?

I finally manage to pry my eyelids apart, blurry vision slowly starting to crispen as my gaze wanders through the room in an attempt at deduction. It's dim, but I can make out the contents of the environment piece by piece. Some dressers. Drawers. Tables. A few things hang along the walls, one of which being a calendar I can't make out and the others being various paintings of trees in different seasons. My bed sits beside a large, arched window that affords me a view of a city without lights. Not a single bulb alight in any window. Not a single movement I can discern from this lofty vantage point. The only light comes from the moon hanging high above… but it's… different. It's not the moon I'm familiar with. It's some other celestial body looming over me like a constant, dreadful reminder that nothing is the same anymore and that all that's left for me is a desperate cling to falsehoods for succor. There is no going back, is there? This is my new normal.

I'm dancing around the obvious, my lithe form held up by the very edges of my hooves as I sway around the sharp edges belonging to thoughts my mind wants to put in front of me. There are things it wants me to confront and I'm just stalling for time with this pretend act. I know it's not a dream. I've known from the start because I can feel where the sheets have been shredded from that white-hot pain still wrapped around my finger, and even in the darkness I can see where my blood has left its mark in the torn fabrics, mixing with all the sweat my body left behind in its state of duress. The Queen's castle. That must be where I am. I saw it towering over the horizon while I was down there, like a monument to my first moments here in this world… when I was captured by her. When I was so much weaker. She must've taken me again after my legs finally gave out and I collapsed in whatever street I managed to carry myself to. She must've done it after I… after I…

I know what I did.

Everything comes out of me all at once. I lurch over the edge of the bed and choke out the contents of my stomach, gagging on the acidic taste coming back through my gullet consisting of all the things Kris and I had taken from the empty food stalls and stands. A chunk of hotdog, popcorn, chocolates, cotton candy, all catalyzed and bound by the fizzy sting of carbonation from the sodas… I hadn't minded them going down, but the mixed slurry of them all spilling back out from my maw only makes me feel sicker. I instinctively try to keep my hair out of the way as the sludge of street vendor soup drains out of me with enough force to escape my violently clenching throat, leaving my stomach barren as I fall against the edge of the bed in a fit of vile, wet coughs.

I take a long moment to recoup and make sure there's nothing left to exhume from my guts, heavy pants from my lungs the only sound left audible in the room as I gather myself together and slump off the bed with an unbalanced hunch to carry me. A disuniform gait places me in front of the full-body mirror on the other side of the room, giving me ample view of my bedraggled form. My weary eyes are undercut with seeping, contrasting black bags from where my eyeliner has run, all of which adorns my drooping visage of prickly unkempt fur. There's leftover vomit on my chin so I wipe it off while taking note of my frazzled, wild hair that makes some attempt to hold on to how it used to look from the last time I brushed it. In this light it looks like it's lost some of its color. I stare at myself as I run my fingers through it like a makeshift comb, trying to make myself look presentable for… I don't know why. I just do. That is, until, my spiked mark gets caught in the hairs and shreds some of them apart. This ring. The bleeding has stopped mostly but the pain is unending. My hand is shaking with it on, these needling pinpricks ceaselessly trying to force me to remember and also trying to make me forget. Remember. Remember.

I know what I did.

I dry heave and quickly cover my mouth but there's nothing left in my system to expel. I can only stare at myself in the mirror with these tired, ragged eyes. I just want to sleep. I want to put my head down and never wake up again. I'm just so tired.

My ear swivels on its axis as footsteps approach the door to the room, and I recognize the urgency in the movement. It sounds like when those creatures tried to run, only this time it's coming towards me. I look down again to my shaking hand, running the side of my thumb over the prickling sensation of Kris's gift. I'm not sure if I have the energy to dispatch the Queen's guards but I suppose there's no helping it. I must do what needs to be done. I let the magic build up into my fingertips, exhaling slowly as the moment comes.

The door bursts open and I turn, twisting myself towards the intrusion to readily correct my unwelcome visitor's mistake in a flash of white… but my hand trembles even more when I get the "enemy" in my sight. Those cold yellow eyes burrowing through hefty tufts of self-cut bangs, smooth, leather-like purple skin as thick as armor, clothing studded with spiked accoutrements and hefty axe at the ready. I'm aiming at Susie. I clench my hand into a fist so hard that I reopen the wounds on my ring finger. I almost… I almost…-

"Noelle!"

I can taste the bile on the back of my buck teeth.

"S… Susie." My voice carries towards her without emotion to spice it. "Why are you… why are you here?"

Does she know what I've done? Is she here as some form of divine punishment for my actions, chosen by the caretakers of the Universe as a cruel joke that my life should be answered by her axe? My empty stomach growls. Why is that thought so… exciting?

But what if… what if she got to Kris first?

My fist grows tighter, more blood leaking to splatter down and stain the purity of my white robe. That tingling sensation of magic's call hums through my skin, standing my fur upright in the ecstatic anticipation of release.

Those yellow eyes look me over.

"I know I'm not, uh, like the typical knight in shining armor, but what do you think I'm here for?"

My body manages to relax enough to let my head tilt, signaling her elaboration.

"I'm here to... rescue you? Is that not, uh, obvious?" Her booming tone strikes so matter-of-factly even when she's framing a question. Straight to the point as always. "Rescue you from Queen? Like… y'know. You're here in her castle all damsel in distress style. Trapped in the tower. Needing to be swept off you- uh… hooves?"

"You're here to… rescue me?" I can hardly contain my disbelief. Susie is here to… rescue me? I'm so exhausted… I can't even begin to process it all. I just stand dumbfounded with my heavy eyes locked onto her bigger form.

"Well… yeah." She answers. "Just don't get used to it, okay?"

"Kris." I state his name flatly, singularly pointing out the real question I want to ask.

"Kris?" Susie looks back towards the door before landing her eyes upon me again. "Kris. Kris is…" She points a thumb behind her. "We're all… here. Ralsei, Kris, me. I came to- we came to get you out of here and seal the fountain. Maybe suplex Queen."

Kris is here. Kris is safe. He came back for me. He came back. After I wandered off away from him he's here, now, for me. My body starts shaking again, whipped into a tremble by the rapidly growing pace of my heart bouncing away inside of my chest with reckless abandon. I feel a lot less tired now, a second wind billowing into my sails and partially renewing my vigor.

"He came back for me." My voice is trembling along with me. "He came back for me." I repeat.

"Yeah he… Noelle are you like… okay?" She takes a step closer towards me, leaning a little inward so that she might get a better look. "You look awful… your face… what… what the hell happened to you? Why's your robe all junked up? Is that… is that your blood?"

I meet Susie's eyes and dig back into them with my own. I've never been able to look at her like this before with such intent clarity. Back before I'd cast my gaze away from hers out of fear, but now? Now it feels so easy to make eye contact with her. Am I smiling? My lips are curled but I can't understand why. I just feel like I need to show her that everything is alright. Or am I just trying to prove that to myself?

"Nothing's wrong." I assure her. "I've just been… getting stronger."

Susie's eyebrows tilt inward just enough for me to notice. "Getting stronger… how?"

My eyes go wide. That's just what he said before… that's just what Berdly said when he… That's what Berdly said… That's… Berdly… Berdly…

I know what I did.

My trembling hands grip my temples, trying to keep my skull from fracturing into pieces as his name thrashes around in my mind like a cyclone of razor-edged, jagged debris. The tempest grows more deafening every moment as it tears through me like a freight train barreling directly through my eardrums, laying on the horn in a pointless struggle to warn me before I'm smeared across the rumbling metal tracks.

Something inside of me snaps.

My swollen tear ducts somehow still manage to force more liquid from my bloodshot eyes, the water droplets turning to crystal as they slide down my face and tap against the tiled floor. The lingering trail highlights a path down my features, forced to twist and take a curved route over my raised cheeks that are desperately attempting to throttle my twisted grin. My eyes fixate on nothing, shakily staring into the devourer that's long lurked underneath me… that all-encompassing, ever-growing shadow of unshrinking immortality that only had to wait and bide its eon-timed life for me to slip far enough for it to ravenously consume me, snapping me apart piece by piece in its insatiable maw to be endlessly digested throughout lightyears of twisted, gnarled guts in eternal punishment.

"N-Noelle… wh-...wha…-"

It all comes out at once. My shrill laughter pierces the air, howling through the room with unbridled restraint and squealing with maddening delight. The cackling escapes from me like a dormant volcano that's long been overdue to quake the earth and shatter the mountaintops in a celestial roar loud enough cleave the heavens in twain, consuming all skies above and lands below in magnificent clouds of choking ash thick enough to strangle out all the pitiful life left in its terrible wake. It feels so good to let go. It feels so good to be free.

"You don't know what I've done, do you?" I put forward finally once I'm eventually able to peel back my laughter. "You don't know anything at all." Her obliviousness to my actions amuses me to the point where my howling chuckle echoes through the room again. Blinding me to her approach.

Her hand grips my shoulder.

"Noelle, get ahold of yours-"

She's touching my shoulder. She's touching my shoulder the way only he should be touching me. She has no right to- She can't assure me the way he can. How dare she? Only Kris… only my leader… my love... only he can touch me like this. There was a time when Susie's hand upon me in this way was the only thing I'd dreamed of, but that era is finished. The era of my frailty. I'm strong now and it's because of HIM. NOT. HER.

The flats of my teeth grind together and I wildly strike her arm, swatting her hand off of my shoulder with all the force I can manage to put behind it. "Don't you dare touch me!" The temperature drops at my anger, frost forming over my fur while the fire in my lungs escapes through my lips in vivid vapor.

"Ah! FU-... sh...!" Susie yelps and reels backwards, dropping her vanishing axe to instead grip her forearm where I had landed my shot. My ring of thorns. It must've connected with her skin and sliced her open. I'm so used to the pain of it now that I didn't feel the excess pressure. She's bleeding with hefty droplets splotching the tile where my crystalized tears had previously fallen.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" She snaps after gathering herself, those pointed ivories on full display, glistening white in what little moonlight the room has to offer.

"I-..." I don't have an answer for her. My tongue moves to form words but nothing manages to come out. What am I doing? Why did I… hit her? Why did I hit Susie? Why would I ever…?

The room's gravity shifts like a carnival ride, sapping me of my balance and dragging me into inescapable vertigo. The vigor I had so barely reclaimed vanishes alongside it and I fall down to my knees, my view fixating purely on the blood that had seeped out from Susie's open wound. The blood I'd drawn from her. I attacked her. She was just trying to… and I just…

"It's… fine." Susie murmurs under her breath.

I can't bring myself to look upon her, however. All I can focus on is the blood, my body too paralyzed and too weary to do anything else.

"Look just… this… none of this is real, okay?" She continues. "This is all just a bad dream. Soon you're gonna wake up and all this will be over. You'll go back to being the smartest girl in class. You'll go back to only worrying about your school project or whatever. You won't have to look at or deal with me anymore. You can just… jeez where's Ralsei when I need him? He's better at this sort of thing than me."

I can sense her magic… a healing magic? She must've closed her wound but I still can't raise my eyes to check. Those circles of blood demand my vision as if they were portals to sights beyond contemplation.

"Just… go lay down or something until it's over, alright?"

The door shuts tight and I am alone in this place again. "Alright let's go!" Is the last thing I'm able to audibly hear from Susie as she explains my condition to those among her. Explaining to-

Kris.

Why didn't Kris come inside? Why didn't Kris come in and put his hand on me instead of Susie? Why didn't he comfort me? Why didn't he want to come see me? Is it because I walked away from him? I… I didn't mean to. I was just… I had to go. I needed to leave.

Kris I…

Kris did I do something wrong?

Kris… didn't I do good for you? Please just… just tell me I did good. Tell me I did good, please.

I'll do anything. Kris. Please.

I double over in my knelt position, hunching over myself in a struggle to keep the weight of it all from crushing me, my trembling lips coming just before more crystalline tears patter against the tile and bounce like glass beads. Didn't I do good? Please. I did good, didn't I?

A memory pushes forward to the front of my thoughts and I'm unsure why. I can taste the night air. Hear the soft buzz of the streetlights. No cars. No voices. It was just the quiet city, Kris, and I, when we took the opportunity for respite once clearing the block of all the enemies we'd managed to track down. Chocolates he'd procured from the abandoned food cart were divided up between our choosy fingers. He and I always shared a sweet tooth… some things never seem to change I guess. Kris had the misfortune of getting one filled with coconut and he spat it out over the railing into the water below and we both laughed at the misfortune.

But the cart offered more than just food. At the ends of so many delicate strings hovered a host of colorful and shapely balloons of all different types and designs, all bouncing against one another as the breeze made them rally against their imprisoning tethers. Something about it had forced my attention. Something about the way they were trapped there, inexorably imprisoned at the behest of those simple strings, yearning to ascend high up in the heavens.

Kris's sword appeared in his hand while I had been transfixed on those brightly colored marvels and with a liberating swipe did he grant them freedom. Each one of those individual balloons rose up into the sky as we stood by the railing and watched them float away to find their place somewhere above, shrinking smaller and smaller from view until they had escaped our sight entirely.

I felt a kinship with them in that moment, though I didn't mention it. I had felt restrained too, just like they had. And it was Kris who set me free. It was Kris who let me blossom into something more. Kris who let me go and showed me the power that I had within myself. I just needed the push… I needed encouragement. I just needed to put my faith in him and believe. Just like I need to do now. I don't know why I got myself worked up. Kris knows what he's doing. Kris-

"Noelle."

My fur raises on its end. That voice… Where did that voice come from? Kris? Kris! Kris... I can hear him but where? My ring… it's burning. It's white hot on my finger and pulling me to stand upright. I'm tired but… I can't rest. I begin to move. I have to move.

I begin running and I burst out of the door. I don't know where my hooves are taking me but I'm going there as fast as I can. Running out of the castle and onto the path that will lead me… somewhere. The ring… it's spurning me forward. Kris's voice… I'm running towards it. I'll be there soon, Kris. I'll be there as fast as I can. I have no energy left but I force myself to continue. Just like before. One step, and then another. Each second feels like an eternity keeping me away from him. I should've been there for him. I never should've left his side… Kris, I realize that now. This black monolith in the sky, a monumental pillar of draining darkness so tall that I can't even crane my neck high enough to see the end of it. The fountain. That's where I'm going. That's where Kris is. I can feel it.

I turn a corner and I see him. My leader. I nearly call out to him but… I see something else there, too.

What is that thing? Its mismatched glasses and angular features with a jagged, rigid body like an assortment of shapes suited for teaching children. It's… hanging from something. Hanging from threads? It's being puppeteered? I look up to see but like the fountain I can find no end to it, simply going up and up into infinity. What's happening? That thing, it's… it's attacking Kris. It's trying to hurt him. It's taunting him.

"...HER? YOU'RE STILL TRYING TO [Use] HER?!" The thing guffaws in a snappy sort of way that sounds like electricity jumping between power lines. "YOU THINK SHE CAN [Hear] YOU NOW, MUTTERING HER NAME!?"

That thing. I know it.

I know exactly what it is. The voice is unmistakable, sounding like the old advertisements from my earlier memories stuffed into an electric blender. It's that same creature Kris spoke with in the dumpster before. The one that charged nearly two thousand for this very ring christening my finger. The one Kris didn't give me the satisfaction of killing.

This is his gift to me. This is his reward for my obedience. For answering his call. For pushing myself and arriving in his time of need. He's been saving this for me, hasn't he? He really does care… and to prove it he's given me the honor of wiping this disgusting thing out of existence.

"WHAT'S SHE GONNA DO? MAKE ME AN [ICE CREAM]!?" It cackles again in that decrepit, machine-like droning.

Laughing at me as I take my place behind it.

Laughing while I take aim.

Laughing while I look directly at Kris, and as I look into my leader's eyes that familiar smirk of approval adorns his face and he gives me the gentlest of nods to proceed.

My magic builds through my body and every last morsel of energy I can scrounge together collects within my ragged and depleted form, the ring's pain focusing all that's left of me into this moment as the chill starts to whip through the air.

"HEY, IS IT COLD IN HERE OR IS IT JUST ME?"

By his command I aim stalwart and unbroken. By his command I raise my hand and unmake.

I am his angel of death and I wear his mark with pride.

There was nothing left of it but frigid, geometric chunks.

I collapse to the ground again, barely clinging to my own consciousness as my body fails me. I've gone as far as I can go, Kris.

I look at him wordlessly. Expectantly. I look up to him for his approval. His armored body closes in and looms over me and the last thing I see is his hand falling to my shoulder and his simple acknowledgement relayed through a lurching tilt of his head. The pride wells within me as I let the rest of myself fall against the ground, just like how I had forced so many others to do the same. I need to rest.

As my mind fades away into slumber I again am forced to recall that street cart and the balloons that had been attached to it. Kris's sword had cut them loose. He'd given them freedom, hadn't he? Like them I wanted to be unrestricted. I wanted to ascend into something greater and taste true freedom… but it wasn't until now that I considered what comes after we all float away. Eventually the balloons will burst from the pressure, won't they? Eventually their spent husks will spiral down back towards the earth. I was so entranced with the rise that I hadn't stopped to consider the fall that comes after.

I hadn't considered what it meant to loosen the things that keep me grounded.

It was just like that thing, wasn't it? It had strings, too. Just like those balloons. Just like me.

...Did I cut my strings loose?

...Or did I just trade them in for something worse?