The dagger slipped from my hand, its point burying itself in the soil. What had happened to my fingers? To my hand? Was this some spell, or some poison, delivered at the point of my mother’s blade? I stumbled back, my left leg unsteady beneath me, weakened. I felt as though I was going to fall, to relent to the effects of whatever this woman had done to me.

  But a firm hand grabbed my arm. Val. Looking into my eyes, silently communicating that she was here with me, that this was terrible, yes, but we were about to face it together. As I steadied myself, Val squeezed my arm once more before releasing it—a final reminder that she was with me. I forced myself to turn back to the assassin who had already demonstrated that she could kill us in an instant.

  And then, I realised. This was no poison. This was simply the trauma of talking to a parent.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. I’d meant to spit the question at her, make it an accusation, but instead the words came out shaky and ineffective.

  ‘I’ve been here for a while now.’ The woman looked at Corminar, who glared back at her. ‘Only one of you had any idea.’

  ‘Well, he’s an elf and a tracker, isn’t he, so he’s gonna—’ A glance at Val cut her off; this was no time for bickering.

  I glanced at Elinor, already far into the distance, the last fire spirit floating along at her side. That battle was over, at least for now. All that remained was the battle with the woman in front of me. ‘That’s not an answer,’ I told her.

  The woman stared back at me. Even at this distance, I could see that there was something dark, something deeply unsettling in those otherwise ordinary eyes. In those eyes that otherwise looked just like my own.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I repeated. This time, my words came out strong—this was not a question, it was a demand.

  ‘To make you an offer,’ the woman replied. ‘Come with us to—’

  ‘Oh, spare us!’ someone shouted. It took me a second or two to realise that that someone was me. ‘We’ve heard this offer before. Stop killing you, join you, come to the Ascended World and live as gods—that’s about the gist of it, right? Does Tana and the Council just make it a standing order for all of you to make this deal? Why do you think we’d agree with time?’ I caught myself. ‘No, better question: why do you even care? You’ve made it perfectly clear that you could pretty easily kill us all, so why don’t you do that? Get this over with?’

  ‘Mm, Styk?’ Arzak tried to interrupted. I ignored her. I was on a roll. Something was pouring out of me, some weight that I hadn’t realised I’d been carrying for all these years.

  ‘So why don’t you do that, kill us, rather than wasting time trying to convince us to come with you?’

  The woman looked at Lore. ‘For one, he needs to be there.’

  ‘No,’ I shouted. ‘No lies. He’s gotta be there, sure, I heard Niamh’s prophecy. But that’s not why you’re here. So tell me. Why are you here? Why are you really making this offer?’

  Silence swept over the abandoned farmyard. Silence except for the distant crackling of flaming remnants.

  ‘Tell me!’ I bellowed.

  ‘Because you are blood.’

  There it was, the answer I’d been waiting for. An answer that inspired fury, and only fury, within me. ‘Blood?’ I repeated back to her. ‘What, you think of me as family? That’s why you dumped me on my idiot father’s doorstep, I take it? That’s why you abandoned me?’

  ‘I had work in the Badlands. Work that I had to—’

  ‘No!’ I shouted. The woman looked taken aback; it wasn’t often that people dared interrupt her, then. ‘No, not good enough. Not a good enough answer. You know what damage that did to me, growing up with my father? You know what he turned me in to? A thief. A criminal. Someone who could only be alone. And then I had to watch all his friends stab him. That messes with a kid’s mind, you know. It messes with a kid’s mind even more than having to grow up on the street. And you know what?’

  The woman looked as though she was going to actually answer that question, so I kept talking, snarling all the way. ‘He was an idiot. He was a drunk. He was often a pretty nasty man. But at least he was there.’

  Across the farmyard, the woman held my gaze. There was still something unsettling in her eyes, but it had shifted. My words had knocked her off-kilter.

  ‘Explain yourself!’ Val shouted. This interruption I did appreciate.

  Still, the woman didn’t respond. Not for a moment, at least. I thought I was going to need to prompt her once more, when her mouth finally opened. ‘We created these worlds for entertainment, initially. I didn’t know we could…’ She paused, gathering herself. ‘I didn’t know that anything your father and I did would result in… you.’

  ‘So you abandoned me.’

  ‘I was not a mother.’

  ‘Yes you bloody well were!’ Again, my mouth shouted these words before my brain could really catch up.

  My mother—yes, my mother; that is what she was, that is the reality I had to face—held my gaze. She was good at this, as if her very existence was unflinching, as though she refused to be ashamed. But she should be. She reached into her pocket, and brought out a gem glowing with the red magicks of Illusion.

  ‘What’s this?’ Val asked. ‘What are you doing?’ Elsewhere, both Lore and Arzak looked particularly nervous about this development. We’d encountered too much Illusion on the road to this moment. Yusef had used it to control his cult. Tokas had used it to hide her crimes from me. We’d grown cautious of it.

  ‘It’s a sales pitch,’ my estranged mother replied. ‘An illusion, yes, but an illusion of the world that Tana intends to build. It is an illusion built for one.’ She stared pointedly at me.

  I stared back. ‘So I see this world while my friends protect me from you, is that the idea?’

  ‘Your friends couldn’t protect you from me.’

  It was a very concise answer. And its brevity only pushed me away, rather than convincing me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I’m not seeing this illusion of a new world. I’m not interested. I wasn’t interested in the offer when Niamh made it. I wasn’t interested in the offer when Yusef made it. And I am definitely not interested when you make it.’

  That woman glared at me for a moment, seemingly considering my words. Then her skin rippled in a way not dissimilar to what happened to my skin when I activated Titan Husk, and she disappeared from sight. I caught flashes of movement, of shadows that shouldn’t have been there, of the air rippling, all momentary glances of where my mother was moving, but not enough to truly locate her.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  And then she reappeared, not two feet in front of me. I didn’t have time to react before she smashed that glowing red gem into my chest.

  * * *

  I saw Tana’s new world.

  I saw mountain ranges, taller than any I’d seen before. Much taller; those in Alterra didn’t even come close. Their peaks towered above me, not just capped in snow but the bulk of their image dappled with white and grey.

  I saw a canyon stretching far over the horizon, deep enough to fit Coldharbour’s Tower of Hope several times over. The setting sun cast shadows across the canyon onto the exposed layers bright orange stone, too low in the sky to reach the river at the bottom.

  I saw waves of green light shimmering in the sky. I saw a cliff edge coated in waterfalls, a plume of steam drifting off from the lake at their base. I saw vivid, lush reefs, and I saw bright green-blue oceans, and I saw a dormant volcano, its crater wide enough to fit my whole home town.

  I saw red sunsets and green farmlands and yellow flowers and black rock.

  And I realised that nothing that they could possibly show me would convince me to let my own world die.

  * * *

  The illusion faded, and I awoke—waking up was about as close a description as I have for returning from an illusion—to chaos.

  Arrows were flying, swords were swinging, and Val’s crackling magicks were soaring across the singed farmyard. None of these attacks hit anything but air.

  ‘Where is she?’ Corminar shouted. ‘Where is she?’

  Nobody had a good answer, at least until my estranged mother appeared at Arzak’s side. Before the orc could react, the Player sliced her blade along one of Arzak’s wrists, and then the other. The woman had disappeared again before Arzak could react, but it wouldn’t have made any difference; the attacks had caused the orc to drop both her weapons.

  Corminar, ever the first to react, sent an arrow soaring through the space where my mother had been, but again, it hit nothing.

  All the while, I stood still, taking stock and still pretending to be under the effects of the illusion. If my mother came close, I could use that to my advantage. I could use the element of surprise. I might be able to land an attack when none of my friends could. I kept my eyes as glossy as possible, standing still as a statue and giving every outward appearance of seeing visions.

  It was easier said than done when my friends were being hurt. My estranged mother next appeared at Corminar’s side. Before he could react, she sliced the strap on his quiver, sending it—and the countless arrows therein—scattering across the ground. In a flash, she was gone once more.

  That could have been a slice to the neck, I thought. If my mother had had just an ounce more bloodlust, I could be down a friend. Every part of my inched to move, but then, what would I do? I would have just as much luck facing down this woman as the rest of the team. No, it was better that I tried for the surprise attack.

  The moment soon came.

  Val, who hadn’t left my side throughout these illusions, tried a life drain spell on our enemy. Her magicks missed, but it seemed that they came close enough to draw the Player’s attention. My mother appeared at Val’s side, and then my gut twisted. Val was a witch; she had no weapon to disarm. If the enemy was going to stop her attacks, then she’d need to—

  I struck out as my mother lunged forward with her knife, stabbing my own blade through her weapon hand. Her eyes widened with surprise, but otherwise there was no outward reaction. If she was in pain, she kept it to herself.

  I pressed the attack, wrenching my knife and her hand back towards her chest. About five inches away from her chest, the woman’s strength won out, and I could push it no further.

  ‘Your offer,’ I said. ‘I’m still not interested.’

  At this distance, all I had to do was activate Closed Reach, and my blade would enter her heart. It might not be enough to kill her, not by itself, not when the woman was this strong, but it would surely be enough to turn the tide. Sooner or later, we’d win.

  My mother stared back at me, those eyes almost daring me to do it. I reached within myself, finding the appropriate magicks, meaning to activate them. Really, really meaning to.

  But they didn’t come.

  I could see in those eyes that my mother knew what I’d wrestled with. She pulled away, sliding her hand off my knife, and retreated. Before Val could attack her, she had disappeared once more. There came no more attacks on either me or my friends. My mother’s job here was done; she’d made her offer. It maybe hadn’t gone that well, but she’d tried. But we both knew that our paths would have to cross again, that our destinies were entwined, that the Council had to enact their plan and the Slayers had to stop it. When that day came, maybe more blood would be spilled.

  That was when I realised that, even after everything she’d put me through and everything she sought still to do, I couldn’t bring myself to kill her.