"Come on, Mira! Hurry up with the healing! We don't have much time!"
True and false, cause and effect, justice and crime - everything is interconnected, all bound up in knots of fate like a mad woman's knitting basket.
"Watch your step! How dare you fall here, Mira! Don't you know we're here because of you?"
A human's face is like a picture, paint and glue spread thick on canvas so you can't see the threads beneath. These people; were they really my friends? Had they always been like this?
"Hurry up Mira! Start the spell and close the door!"
Looking at them, fighting so horribly, no kindness even for the weak - I can't see the difference anymore. Humans and demons, beasts and goblins - which ones are the monsters? Who am I supposed to save?
"Mira, just heal me already! I visited a few brothels and paid for pregnancies just to make sure the boost would be strong enough!"
How can they easily sacrifice so much, just for a moment of strength? How can they ask me to sacrifice so much for them? Don't they understand how much it hurts?
They were my friends, my companions - my protectors and fellow saviours.
When did we become monsters instead of men?
…
Tinnitus rings in my ears, and shadows loom high around me. The last door of fractal light ripples closed and knits tightly like a zipper.
My 4 friends stand together, laughing with glee, while I sit and shudder in pain. The spell to close doors requires sacrifice from the caster - every inch closed feels like a gash torn open in your own soul.
After so long, my soul is full of aching tears, but this is the last door, and after this I will be free.
"Now, there's no time to lose! Mira, get up! It's time to heal the world!" Lucius announced grandly, and the other three clap with wide and manic smiles. A chill creeps down my spine as I see their mad eyes.
"Lucius, it's over - the doors are closed, no more monsters can get through." I don't want to do it. I can't do it. They can't make me do it.
"Mira, there are so many monsters still in this world - they clutter the land and sea with filth! They are an infection, and you are the cure! The world needs healing, Mira. It's time."
No matter what I say, or how I reason, these people who I once thought friends wouldn't change their minds. Like puppets following a script, they insisted I do it.
Caine took his poison dagger and stabbed my thigh, Faith used an arrow to scrape my skin, Belinda cooked my flesh and froze it alternately - and Lucius just watched it all with a gentle, mad smile, reasoning with me.
It's the last spell, the final piece, the last step to fix everything…
Minutes become hours, then days, weeks, a month…
I caved.
With broken hands and rotting flesh, I clasped my staff, and healed the world.
I watched as the land disintegrated around me, and everything on and above it.
The trees, and grass, and stones, and air.
The birds, and beetles, and worms, and moths.
And the four people who were not my friends, I watched as they collapsed bit by bit, flesh becoming water and sand, then gas, and finally nothing left.
Time and space, light and heat, matter and energy - everything around me collapsed out of existence - and finally myself.
In the final cold darkness, I ceased to live, and the world entirely was 'saved'.