A deal worth making

Zewrepa is composing a dual song. The occasion calls for combing her death chant with a declaration of defiant retaliation. She would like to sing a song of pure vendetta, but her life force is dropping steadily, draining to the entity in the shining shell, joining her mana already there. That has cost her the usage of her powers, which she would need to crack that shell. She can only hope to wreak an empty vengeance on the abandoned product of her foe’s endeavour and that only if she lives longer than she expects to.

Nevertheless she jerks on the chain restricting her right upper arm in the rhythm of her song, feeling the screws starting to give.

I see a face. It fills me with joy. I do not know the reason for that. An old man’s face is not intrinsically a source of joy. The face is slowly fading. I expect to feel frustration at the loss of a source of joy. Instead I feel an expectation confirmed. I have no expectations. In fact I do not even expect the absence of disembodied faces. Why?

I remember words being spoken. Not the words themselves, merely that words were spoken at all. That seems more important than their content. I would follow words this face spoke without deliberation. I do not know the reason for that. I know very few things. In fact, how do I know that I know few things?

I also feel calm and tired. The die is cast. Again, I don’t know why that is so. I just know that I did what I had to do.

The fastening has partially detached from the stele she is chained to. Now what? The other sacrifices are still in the immobile state the ritual has induced. Humans and dryads are weak. Should she eat them to delay her perishing, confined by the barrier she has no hope of bringing down while her powers are blocked? Are people suffering the same sacrifice allies? A question nobody not having completed a single quest should need to answer. The best option is likely to not answer the question, as it is rendered hypothetical by the constant drain on her life force.

What else is there to do? There will be no rescue. She has not completed even one quest. Nobody will pay ransom for her. In fact her mother may already have laid a new clutch of eggs, if she got word of the loss of the caravan quickly. She could wreck the equipment inside the barrier, yet this seems petty. She could try to find an imperfection to squeeze through in the barrier. Chances of that are low. Her best option seems indeed to be just to wait. She keeps jerking.

I see a yellow light. It is unpleasantly bright. I would like to close my eyes. I have no eyes. I understand that I need a body to close my eyes, yet I do not understand how I know this. I find it hilarious that I would need eyes to not see. Do I want to have eyes? Would the joy of this irony go away?

Her upper right hand is free. She is hammering the mannacle against the bolts of the fastenings holding her left upper arm.