Chapter 1135 (2/2)

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Gasping, Vualla jerked upward and wildly kicked out with her leg. Her entire body was clammy and twitching. That she swore furiously as her bare foot smashed into one of her gauntlets that she had left lazily strewn next to her bed area. As her twitches and spasms slowly died down, Vualla cradled her foot.

Then there was just the silence of the dark tent around her and the feeling of the cooling sweat on her brow and down her back. Her thumping heart sluggishly drifted back down toward a normal number of beats per minute.

Even as the memory of the vast darkness that had attempted time and time again to drown her receded like a chilling tide, Vualla couldn’t escape the sense of helplessness that had been the most agonizing part of the dream. It lingered on the back of her tongue like a bitter and pungent green tea.

Vualla closed her eyes. Trying to sleep was a bad idea…

But even if the host of boogeymen that resulted from Vualla learning the truth about her existence were waiting in the darkness beneath her eyelids, Vualla had no choice but to reluctantly go to meet them. It was only while asleep that Vualla noticed any improvement to the wound on her Fate, as small as that improvement usually was. Perhaps just hair’s width of crystal would grow per six hours of sleep, but the changes reassured her that she could improve.

She could change. Her actions had meaning. The things that she had done-

Vualla reached up and tugged in exasperation at her hair as she collapsed back onto her sleeping pallet. Then she rolled back and forth, allowing her blanket to tangle up her limbs in an ungainly clump. Gah… I can’t believe you said something as melodramatic as ‘I’m not real, am I?’... and then you let him kiss you…!

Ceasing her rolling, Vualla looked up toward the roof of the tent. We are both such idiots…

But much of her scolding toward herself had no teeth to it and there was no avoiding the wide smile that stretched across her face while she was thinking about it. Even now, her lips and chest felt warm with the lingering proximity of Randidly Ghosthound. And by what it meant that he had stood in front of her with his emerald eyes and didn’t look away or hesitate.

You’re real, Vualla.

Slowly, however, that grin faded away. Vualla could only twist her mouth as she stood and slowly began to strap her armor onto her body. And even as she pulled leather and cotton over her limbs, she couldn’t suppress a shiver that lingered from the visions she had seen. Although the dreams had been chaotic since her Fate was wounded, this one…

“Fuck me,” Vualla muttered as she pinched some of the flesh of her midriff in the brass clasp of her belt. Grimacing, she sucked in her stomach and pulled her pants up a bit higher. Then she rolled her shoulders and went over to the low table by the entrance to the tent and took a long sip of water. And even though Vualla was very pointedly was not thinking about the… problems of her current existence, her gaze caught on the glove Randidly had given her.

The Fate from her past existence. The Fate that proved that she was duplicated. And no matter how she looked at it, she could find no difference from her own. Despite the fact that it was an inert glove where hers was a matrix of image and power, there was an impossible to counterfeit sense of familiarity that Vualla felt form it. This item was hers.

Mine… but also not mine. Vualla thought determinedly as she looked at the Fate. For my Fate is beginning to heal. I will recover from this, and grow even stronger.

Sighing, Vualla finished getting dressed and prepared to leave. But as she hesitated at the door to her tent, she finally grabbed the past version of her Fate and placed it into her pocket. It seemed foolish to simply leave it laying out where anyone could grab it. Especially because normal missions had been suspended while the Aether forces had to deal with the looming threat of the Nether King’s army.

In fact, Vualla was free for several more hours. But after that suffocating, freezing darkness of her dream… Vualla shivered and headed for the familiar supply track. She considered visiting Randidly, but they had parted only a scant few hours ago. Rushing to a man’s side after every bad dream was something that the childhood Vualla had swore to herself she would never do. Although they had become… more than simply comrades, that didn’t mean they weren’t adults who could control the wild rush of joy in the pit of there stomach that surged upward whenever she thought about the warmth of Randidly’s smile-

Coughing lightly, Vualla began to march forward, walking in the midst of the supply train that was trooping slowly past. But then she saw a familiar figure with navy blue hair and stopped dead. Both the warmth of her connection to Randidly and the chill of the dream were both wiped away by an impossible silhouette. “Is that… Hey! Elliot!”

The navy-haired man, who was lifting a box, turned around. And then he beamed at her. “Ohoho! Little sister, how the hell did you sneak out to the front lines. Mom is going to finally kill herself when she finds out, you know.”