NOVEL NEXT Chapter 233 - A Fool - End of Book 4
Nar rocked his head to the beat of the heavy bass blasting dully against his chest.
Stuffed full of purple food, and his thoughts happily sluggish from purple booze, he stared down at the dance floor of the club the storm gliders had brought them too, the final destination of their first night of leave, as they called it.
Before dinner, they had been brought to where they would be sleeping for the duration of their stay in Haven, a squat building filled with bunk bed rooms which they had called a hostel, and then they had changed into an all new, flowy, white attire, provided by the establishment itself. And once they had returned to the streets, now under the caressing embrace of twilight, they had found that the whole dungeon was now wearing white as well.
Kids, families, elderly couples and friends… Nar had glided through Haven as though he drifted within a beautiful dream.
The serenity of the joyous chaos. The little care that everyone seemed to be displaying towards anything other than just having a good time. The laughter and singing, the music and dancing, the children playing, the lovers whispering and giggling to one another… All that peaceful joy almost didn't feel right to him, and that had saddened him a little.
He knew that what he was now witnessing and experiencing, for the very first time in his entire life, was probably what it meant to live a normal life. To work for eight or ten hours a day, get the night free for family, friends or whatever it gave people pleasure to do and pursue, get the weekends off and then, once in a while, come out into the Labyrinth in a pleasure cruise filled with fun, booze and good cheer.
Of course, Mynap had warned them that was a decidedly middle class and above sort of experience, which was another layer to O-Nexian society that Nar was still trying to wrap his head around, but at least people weren't being sucked dry by an aura powered recycling machine, or stuck in a dark hole without proper food, or hobbies, or fun, or even something remotely resembling a real life. But even at that, Mynap's cautionary words about the living conditions of the lower rungs of society had left him scratching his head and with mixed feelings… However, such weighty thoughts were now long forgotten, blurred and wiped clear by several purple beers, cocktails and shots, and Nar was content to smile like an idiot as he swayed to the heavy beat.
Three floors below him, under a cacophony of crystals and lights, in a purple haze of moving bodies and drinks, white clothes shining in neon lilac, Kur, Rel, Viy and even Jul were taking pointers from Xer and Kik and attempting their first steps at dancing.
Nar laughed his drunken head out at the idiocy of their attempts, especially Kur, with his big limbs stiffly flailing about… But Viy, though? She was a natural! Even better than her supposed instructors! There wasn't much difference between the way she danced and the way she fought, which Nar had always found mesmerizing, and here, she seemed to be in her natural element, letting herself go to the music, to the cheers of many who caught sight of her movements on the dance floor.
Uh… Maybe Jul has it in her too, Nar thought, squinting down to glimpse the quam in the midst of that undulating crowd. She just needs to relax a little… Maybe with a few more drinks?
But a stray breeze tickled the back of his neck, and abandoning his spot by the sticky handrail, Nar decided he'd had enough of that hot, noisy and stifling inside, and wandered back out into the veranda. A smile spread across his mollified features as he laid eyes over the night scene arrayed before him, the sounds of distant, crashing waves reaching his ringing ears.
The clouds above cast a gentle, but very noticeable silver glow over the town, and the myriads of bright orange lights dotted across Haven combined with the silver to create a mesmerizing scene. And beyond the shores of the island, the lilac sea was now a dark expanse of gentle, glowing silver lines that stretched to infinity…
His head buzzed pleasantly in the sudden quiet, and for a moment, he simply stared out into the horizon, thinking vague, distant thoughts as he leaned over the balcony, the warm breeze playing with his ashen dark hair.
Sometime later, a loud, familiar laughter reached him, and blinking back to reality, he stared over to the tall, sticky and flimsy table that Tuk, Cen, Mul, Mynap, Huk and himself had earlier claimed while the others hit the dance floor. He only spotted Mynap and Tuk there now, laughing their asses off, and he wandered over, curious as to what was the cause of such riotous mirth.
"Ah! The man of the hour!" Mynap said, slapping Nar's back as he approached. "Tuk was just telling me how you caught that warg!"
Tuk hid a grin behind his drink and Nar shook his head.
"And how I rammed into a tree as well, no?"
Tuk spat purple, and the two of them burst into fits of wheezing laughter while Nar tried to look offended, and failed.
Ah, what the heck, he thought, smiling.
"It was cool though!" Tuk said, squeezing his shoulder. "Man, you're so awesome!"
"So are you Tuk, so are you," Nar said, patting the ring tosser's back. "That Thousand Petals of yours is really something. Did you tell Mynap how you downed all those coyotes?"
"Isn't it? And I did!" Tuk shouted, earning him a raised bottle in cheers from Mynap. "But, still… I don't think it compares to that [Aura Blade] of yours… Wish I'd seen it, man."
"You can use [Aura Blade]?" the undead gaped, his expression sobering up. "Are you serious?"
Nar nodded awkwardly.
"Only reason we even got out of that corrupted dungeon," Tuk said, taking another sip of his beer. "Didn't you hear? We fought an illatrian, and apparently, that means something…"
"You fought what?" Mynap shouted, his eerie green eyes going fully wide.
"I thought you knew?" Nar asked him.
"I knew you almost died in a corrupted dungeon!" Mynap shouted. "Not that you faced one of the frozen walking dead, and a corrupted one at that, and lived to tell the fucking tale!"
Nar scratched the back of his neck. "Are they really that strong?"
"Uh, yeah?" Mynap said, swishing beer around the already sticky table. "You start seeing them in mid-level dungeons, around level 70 or 80, and they are always a pain in the ass! Plus, they can go all the way up to level 300!"
"300!" Tuk shouted. "There's that fucking many levels?"
"Crystal, I'm only level 35…" Nar whispered in shock. "Shit…"
So that's why the master said I'm still weak… he realized, his expression blanched.
"Nah, don't worry," Mynap said. "I mean, yeah, it's incredibly hard to get up there, but level 300 is like Named Few kinda levels, so don't think about them… And, after level 50, with the right conditions, you can actually level up pretty fast!"
"What conditions?" Nar asked, leaning in, his tone hungry.
Mynap grinned. "Easy! You just go into all red dungeons, then all purple, and finally all blue!"
Nar scoffed. "Agh!"
"Hey! I'm being serious here! It's called power leveling!" Mynap told him. "Of course, you need a fuck ton of XP to do it… It's not easy gearing up to get into those kinds of dungeons, especially blue, and definitely not one after the other!"
"Experience really is everything in the Nexus," Tuk said, sighing. "Isn't it?"
"And you still have no idea how! Not really…" Mynap said, glancing into the open doors of the club, as a drunken couple stumbled outside. "XP is… Bah! Tsurmirel will be footing your bill anyways, so no need to talk about stuff like that on a night like this! We're celebrating! To you fuckers, for killing a fucking illatrian at level 30!"
"Whoohoo!" Tuk shouted, proceeding to down the rest of his warm beer.
"Still, though, [Aura Blade] before level 50?" Mynap said, giving Nar an appraising look with all three of his eerie green, glowing eyes. "You're either a genius or you're working to the bone, kid."
"Both!" Tuk said, slapping Nar's back. "And all so he can be strong enough to save his dad!"
Mynap twitched, his eyes going unfocused for a split-second as he too, downed the last of his beer, then he frowned at Tuk. "What are you on about?"
Nar glared at Tuk's drunken indiscretion. "Oh, it's nothing…"
"Nah, come on, Nar!" Tuk said. "Nothing to be ashamed of! Nar here wants to head back down to the B-Nex one day, to go grab his dad and bring him back up to the O-Nex! And his dad, man, let me tell you, he's a really…"
"Wait, wait, wait!" Mynap said, raising his hands. "What do you mean head back down to the B-Nex?"
Nar and Tuk exchanged a confused glance.
"Uh… I don't have a plan or anything yet," Nar said, his cheeks and neck flaring. "But you know, find a Gate and… Start from there?"
"Yeah, that. Plus, he was promised by a go…"
Nar kicked the trugger under the table. Now that part was best left unsaid, however Mynap seemed to have frozen solid on the spot, as though under assault by the illatrian's dark and icy mist… Then, the big red man slowly covered his trio of eyes and leaned on the table, risking everything tilting it over.
"Mynap?" Tuk asked. "What-What's wrong, man?"
Mynap sighed heavily and rubbed at his glowing eyes.
"Did no one tell you, kid?" he asked Nar, his voice low in the beating rhythm that filtered from the open doors and windows.
"Told me what?" Nar said, his heart beating painfully fast in his chest. For some reason, he suddenly found it hard to breathe, the air hot and stifling now.
"Crystal Almighty and the 24 Radiants, and All the Spirits in the Great Divine Hierarchy…" Mynap breathed. "Kid… I-I don't know how to tell you this but…"
He exhaled deeply, emotions warring across his face.
"But what?" Tuk asked. "Dude, you're scaring me, man…"
"I-I'm sorry kid," Mynap said. "But… You-you can't go back down."
The sound of the distant gentle waves, of the drumming music, the shouts and laughter and the clinking of glasses in happy cheers… It all faded away into a sudden, ringing silence.
"What do you mean?" Tuk whispered.
"I-I mean what I said!" Mynap told them, his face a grimace of defeated regret. "You can't go back in. It's forbidden! No one's allowed back down… And-and it's a rule! And a pretty big fucking rule at that, too!"
"No one…" Tuk whispered, his eyes misting. "But then… We can't… We can't…"
"And, I-I mean… It doesn't work like that, right?" Mynap added miserably. "With the whole thing about earning your forgiveness and all that shit… You need to be the one to Climb! And once you're out… You're out! Anyone trying to go back in… Well, capital punishment and all that! Ah… That-that means death…"
Darkness descended upon Nar, leaving only the undead and his trio of glowing eyes before him.
"But… But someone told me I could go back," Nar whispered. "They-They promised me!"
The undead shook his head, his eyes glowing less and less in the darkness taking reality around Nar.
"Nobody can go down there, kid! I-I mean, my mother would've loved to go back for her parents, you know? But it's really not allowed," he said, his tone dropping further. "So, I don't know who lied to you like that, but with the System being housed down there, as well as all the cubeplants which recycle the aetherium the Nexus lives on… It-it's a security measure, and one that has been in place since-since… Well, since forever! Not even the Church goes down there!"
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"No…" Tuk whispered.
The ring tosser shook Nar at his side, but Nar didn't hear his desperate words. He barely even felt the trugger's long fingers clasped around his arms, as the ring tosser shook him with ever increasing panic… For Nar was not there anymore. He had plunged into a pit of the deepest darkness, and in that darkness, a single, sterile, white light, a crystalight held aloft in the dark.
"Your work is over and you are Unclean no longer," Bey had said. "Climb. Stay safe. Live a happy life. Forget the aura. Forget the cubeplant. Forget us. Go and find your freedom."
"I… Alright. I'll see you again, son. Just don't go into the Waiting Dark before I do. Or ever. Freedom and forgiveness, son. You hear me?"
"Go, son. And keep going until you're out."
A burning pressed from behind his eyes, and in the end, had it not been staring right in his very face? Had the truth not been obvious, even before he had left?
No one had ever come back to the cubeplant. No one…
Was he the only one that loved his family? No, of course not! And Mynap had just provided one such example with his own mother!
In the eternities they had been jailed down there, surely someone would've returned by now if it was possible! Nar wasn't unique in his desire to save his dad, or likely in receiving the promise of a god, right? After all, his master himself had told him that gods meddling around with Climbers wasn't such an unheard of occurrence, and even Rel herself had received her penitent class directly from one of Them!
But, on his way up he'd simply thought that… Well, he had no idea what he had thought anymore, what kind of hope he'd hold on to, or what lie he'd told himself to keep going… And it didn't matter anyways. Here was the truth, laid bare before his eyes, and if not even the Church, the direct servants of the Radiants, bonded to the damned sacred spirits and gods Themselves, were allowed to go down into the B-Nex, why should he? He was a nobody ex-Climber! Worse! He was an ex-sinner who had already been suspected of potentially flipping sides and who still harbored that impossible to let go of resentment against the Crystal! Why would he ever be allowed to go back down of all the quadrillions in the Nexus? Of all the multitudes of people that had come before him? For Radiant's sake, of course not! He would never be allowed back inside!
PERSIST, AND YOU WILL EARN THE RIGHT TO SAVE YOUR DAD AS WELL.
But was that not what he had been told?
And you believed it? A voice asked, dripping into his mind. Oh, what a fool you were…
He clenched his hands into fists, and something shattered distantly in between his fingers, warm liquid dripping down his hand.
The gods have never cared for you, nor your dad, or all the other Unclean and workers still toiling and suffering in the dark… The voice whispered from the darkness closing in tighter around him, embracing him. And what about all those Climbers you were forced to leave behind, in the hands of those cannibals? Or what about that rain of lightning blue death that They unleashed upon you all? The Raid Boss was destroyed, and you had earned your freedom! But They… They just wanted you dead! So why would you ever believe Them?
A fool… Such a fool he had been.
And this, now, was the truth revealed before him, and the truth was, his dad had sealed his fate in order to give Nar hope, and their goodbye had been final.
Bey would die alone, sick, in that eternal darkness, his remaining friends slowly turning to strangers as the sickness ate at his memories, at who he was, until his dad forgot the great man he was, and all that he had done and sacrificed for Nar and for so many other Unclean…
Something cracked and shattered within Nar, and it all came pouring out of him, accompanied by the grieving howl of his broken soul.
Glass shattered, people screamed, and Mynap pulled Tuk away from him, their shouts fading and their expressions reducing to pure blankness in his eyes.
It was all so faint, in that existence of deep, deep darkness, but in the distance, he was sure he heard Mul's sudden shouting, followed by Wolfie's panicked barks… And Nar headed in that direction, moving on sheer instinct.
"Give him back," Mul said, his voice now dulled by the suppressor.
"Only when you apologize, kid!" a man shouted, holding wolfing up in the air by the scruff of his furry neck. "You need to…"
The two of them went quiet as Nar approached them, the lights, the speakers, and all the electronics erupting into fizzes and angry sparks. The whole club was plunged in darkness, eliciting shouts and cries of surprise and fear.
"Nar?" Mul whispered.
Before the brawler, there was something barely even recognizable as the sapient he knew… Bright white eyes, blazing from beyond a cloak of shadows and darkness, and in shooting motes of black and white, a halo upon Nar's head, his hair ruffled by a wind the brawler could not see nor feel. And pouring out from him…
Mul clasped at his heart.
"What happened?" he asked Nar, tears streaking down his face at the depths of that grief that crushed at his very heart.
But Nar ignored him, and stared instead at the man of race unknown, and undetermined features, and slowly, that blank man handed a coy Wolfie back to Mul, and the cub was quick to disappear within Mul's chest with a pop of blue.
"Uh… Look, kid. I just wanted your boy here to learn some manners," the man said. "If he's going to be rude and start shit, he better be able to back it up. I know the whole brawler thing is tough on the low levels but, you can't fuck around out here, you know? This isn't the B-Nex anymore, yeah? Anyways… Yeah. Peace, man. And… For what's worth, I'm sorry."
The man beat a hasty retreat, and Nar drifted forward, heading… Heading anywhere, anywhere but that club, filled with staring and gaping people.
"Nar!" Mul shouted after him.
"Don't!" Mynap said, pulling him back. "Let him go!"
"You let go," Mul said, that damned suppressor triggering once more. "What the fuck is your problem?"
"That's [Presence], Mul!" Mynap shouted. "You can't do anything about it!"
"That's what?" Tuk asked, mutely.
"He's just unlocked his [Presence]!" Mynap explained. "I've already called the faculty here, and they'll handle it. But there's nothing we can do for him now, and it's safest if we stay out of his way too…"
Nar reached the exit, the doors held ajar by the big, buff security man and woman duo who had inspected them on their way in, and he paused once he found himself on the street. People were staring and pointing at him, and a bubble of curiosity was quick to form around him, but he cast his blazing eyes up, to the silver clouds… And beyond the city lights, he spotted the silver horizon of that tranquil sea.
Tears ran down his face as he realized that his dad would never see it in the end. He would never see any of it, eat any of it, or live… Anything at all. In the end, all of Nar's promises and reassurances had been hollow after all.
The cloak of darkness around him burst into a snapping and snarling living creature, tendrils flashing around him, and people pulled away, shouting and screaming as his aura smashed into buildings and cracked the floor beneath him… But a sudden pull reached out to pacify him, and Nar found himself unable to resist its call.
Gnashing his teeth at it, and already knowing who he was going to find at the end of it, he followed that call, his footsteps leaving cracks in the cobbled streets behind him, as he was only vaguely aware of people clearing a path open for him.
Sometime later, his feet touched sand, and the crowds at last faded behind him. He walked alongside the crashing waves, sand exploding in a vortex under him and water parting around him in big, angry sprays, until he reached a tiny and secluded alcove.
Dark trees filled to bursting with phari swung in the idle breeze, surrounded by cliffs of sharp, dark purple rock, and sitting in the middle of that alcove, was Tys. Unlike everyone else, her pained expression was sharp and clear to his eyes.
"What do you want?" Nar hissed at her.
"Careful, kid. I'm still your COO," she said.
"And do I look like I care?" Nar snapped.
The sound of his voice blasted her hair, the sand and even the water behind him, and Tys grimaced, not at the perceived disrespect, but at the pure, cloying grief that emanated from Nar. And reaching forward with her own [Presence] she saw it. She saw it all.
"I must have been such an idiot to you all!" Nar whispered. "How did I not see it? It was so obvious!"
"I'm sorry, Nar," Tys said, and with their [Presence]s joined together, he knew she was being genuine in her apology. "The call came from above, and there was nothing any of us could do… You have the makings of a very powerful delver, Nar, but you had to stay focused for the crucial layering of your foundations during these first months with us. We needed you to stay driven and focused…"
"And you used my dad for that?" Nar roared.
The winds picked up, howling in agony, and the waves crashed in blind rage behind him.
"My dad sacrificed everything for me! Everything!" he shouted. "He's the only family I have left in this damned Creation, and getting him out and healed is the only thing I ever wanted! The only thing I ever asked for! And it was still too much for me to have? This one thing?"
His tears evaporated from his face as he slammed his chest so hard, it sent a shockwave blasting around them.
"All I've done… All I've lived for… Was to get him out," he whispered. "If I can't do it… If I knew… Then I would have just stayed back there with him!"
"The Wasting would have claimed him sooner or later," Tys said, shaking her head. "And if not that, anything else would… And then what? As an Unclean, you would've died alone yourself."
"Then I would've jumped into the fucking Pile, and leave the Clean to mop up the mess!" Nar shouted, his voice cracking like thunder. "And that would've been the end of it, Tys! Now, he's going to die alone in that dark, surrounded by people he doesn't even remember anymore! Sick! Weak! Gasping for air! Unable to move! Unable to…"
"Nar."
"No, Tys. No!" he shouted. "What am I supposed to do now? Do I just go on, living the great life while he slowly wastes away to nothing down there? Is that what I'm supposed to do? Uh? Tell me, Tys! Tell me! Am I supposed to just laugh and forget him? Am I…"
Nar stumbled and dropped to one knee, his halo of darkness and light crumbled, and his cloak of darkness and aura faded and retreated back into his blazing, white and black pathways… And Tys rushed forward to hug him before he collapsed over the soft sand.
"What do I do now, Tys…" Nar whispered, silver tears shining down his cheeks. "That was all I ever wanted… That was all I ever asked for… There's no point now. No point to anything… And I promised him. Swore by the Crystal, Tys… Swore that I would save him… And he promised to wait for me…"
She passed a hand over Nar's hair as the last of his [Presence] evaporated, that massive aura bar of his reaching 0 at last.
"There is still hope left," she whispered. "You'll see…"
She gripped him against her, as though defying Creation Itself to come and take him from her, and her heart bled at the depth of Nar's pain, of his grief… She had thought that nothing could compare to her own loss, but Radiants, she had been so wrong.
She pressed her eyes shut, shaking with rage at the unfairness that Nar had lived through and at the fact she knew it wasn't over yet… And was reminded of what she had herself suffered. Of what they had suffered…
"Tys?"
She took a deep breath, and unfurled her crushing hold on the boy to lay him down gently on the sand. Then, she raised her hand and flickered a series of quick gestures, and around her, the alcove shimmered and warbled as invisible barriers came down, screens being quickly furled into neat, shimmering rolls once more.
"Well done," said the Master of Emotion and Hand Combat. She crouched beside Nar to check up on him, with a very coy looking Lut quickly doing the same.
Tys merely grunted. If she stared at the woman now, she would probably punch her… And vaporize that whole island in doing so.
"Results?" she grunted instead.
"Will need to confirm back on the ship, to be sure," Lut said, holding out a device directly over Nar's sternum. "But it's looking like it worked… From 73% down to 57%. Damn…"
"It worked," the Master of Emotions said. "I can see it in his core."
"I still don't agree with this," Tys muttered, raising to her feet. "And I still know that this isn't going to work. He is who he is, and he's been through what he has… Nobody can change that but himself."
"Then we'll just push him to do it," the Master of Emotions said, his eyes vacant as he stared down at the boy.
Around them, wearing unmarked dark clothes, the crew busied themselves with screens, devices and a myriad other actions in a rush to dismantle their stealth operation, while far, far away from that sandy cove, somewhere in the O-Nex, a whole other operation was underway, scrubbing all footage of Nar's [Presence] awakening from the 2NET, before it could go viral.
"Thank you, Lut," the Master of Emotions said.
The affinity assessor gulped, staring in between the two mighty women before her, then rushed away without another word.
"At the very least, we managed to break his trust in whatever god's been talking to him," the Master of Emotions said, a flicker of darkness passing behind her eyes. "That alone was worth all this."
"But at what cost?" Tys said, trying to keep her voice neutral at the thought of that woman slipping her way inside Nar's head. Fortunately, she was forbidden from outright taking control of him, lest they damage him and lose everything. "And what kind of affinity are we going to end up pushing him to instead?"
The red woman shrugged. "Anything is better than that… Even grief, if it comes to that."
She shook her head. "I always thought my brother just had it rough… But I guess it's part of being a champion. Or maybe, I should say it's a requirement. To suffer and suffer and…"
"Please, shut up," Tys said, her fists trembling. "I did what you wanted. Now go away."
The Master of Emotions glanced back at Tys, her expression undecipherable.
"Whatever you're thinking, or feeling, or hoping… Forget it. The Path of the Champion found us again," she whispered. "And you know there's no point in fighting it. You and I, we're just along for the ride… Again."
And with that, she scooped Nar into her arms, and vanished.
Tys forced her expression to remain neutral in front of her people, and oversaw their quick and efficient dismantling operation without really paying attention to what they were doing.
It had been the shock of her life to see Nar's last strike on the screens, at the end of that Ceremony of Final Atonement, and there had been no way for her to not recognize it, and him for what it was… For not seeing in him what she had lost, nearly three years prior.
A new champion, fresh out of the dark bowels of the B-Nex, and coming out the Gates right where she was recruiting…
She had to move fast, ordering her people to break the machinery and blanket the whole arena with petals, to block all the cameras, and then she rushed like a madwoman through that hospital, in search of him. And when she found him under threat… She had nearly flipped those meaningless wastes of air thugs inside out, and she had nearly spilled it all to the boy right there and then! And after recruiting him, she had to fight her urge to seek out Nar at her every waking moment to tell him everything, and she had barely held herself back on that night when they had sparred.
In so many ways, Nar had reminded her of him so damned much… But she had managed to keep herself out of it, and to obey her orders, letting it all roll and grow beyond her… But she couldn't do it anymore. Not when she knew what awaited Nar.
And she wasn't a lost, weak little apprentice anymore. She knew the Nexus and the Labyrinth far better than the vast majority of people out there did, and she knew the path that Nar was going to have to thread... Plus, she was powerful now.
"COO, we're done here," a crew member informed her.
"Good. Move out then," she said. "Before someone notices you."
Tys stood where she was as her team filtered out of the cove, leaving it nearly pristine once more and going so far as to even erasing most of their footprints from the white, shining, silver sand, to remove all signs of a large group having been there.
I am strong now, aren't I? Tys realized.
Even if she couldn't tell him anything, she could still train him. She could do her damndest to prepare him for what she knew was to come, and no one could stop her if she went through the official channels… If she did, no one could deny her the right to train him, not even the higher ups. Not without risking drawing unwanted attention to themselves and Nar.
Yes... That could work, and maybe things would be different this time! No surprises. No lies. No failure…
The only question now remaining unanswered was whether or not she had the stomach to do what needed to be done in order to make him strong…
She eyed the crashing waves lapping against the sands, the whole scene lit up in a surreal haze of silver light. Her emotions warred within her, who she was clashing against who she needed to become… Then she unclenched her fists, not even realizing that she had been doing so.
It's the only way, she told herself. No, she justified it to herself. And who needs happiness, when you can have true power?
The decision was made, and while Tys had thought the play was over, here she was, with the curtains rising once again to find herself under the spotlight once more, on this second, and likely the final act of what was about to begin. And she was going to make it work.
She would not lose another champion...