Raiten:

  My body disobeys me: tongue wars against mouth, hands against chest, breath against lungs. I growl at the pain of the spasming. It's different from the other truth serums. More forceful.

  And I don’t understand why it's trying to make me say that—

  “Yes,” the words slip out. “I—” I try biting on my tongue but the jaw locks and the slithering pink snake in my mouth waggles anyway. “I love Thraevirula.”

  But it isn’t true! I know that. I’m not some idiot who gets seduced by one kiss. I know she’s just trying to fuck with me—not the other thing. And though I understand that she genuinely feels sympathy for me, I’m not one to misconstrue that for… for love?!?

  Someone scoffs. Zyla. I expect her to glare at me or reprimand me, but she looks even more confused than I am.

  “You can’t be serious right?”

  “I–” I’m not. It's a lie. A trick. “I don’t know.”

  I force my eyes to lock on Saegor. His face is perfectly neutral. Interrogative.

  “Truth serum doesn’t lie, Zyla. Raiten here has been… influenced.”

  Kiren taps my shoulder. “Is that true?”

  “I don’t know,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Has she tried turning you against me?” Saegor asks.

  The resistance I put up is getting stronger—the effects of the serum must be fading. Yet, still, my traitorous tongue practically jumps at the question.

  “Yes. Multiple times.” And not without good reason.

  “I see. And, were you planning on betraying me? Betraying us?”

  Ah. I see now.

  This is a setup.

  He’s a clever bastard, I’ll give him that. This serum he gave me—its probably not a truth serum. It's some concoction of his own choosing. This game must be a guise: a way to prove the efficacy of his other truth serums and then, saddle me with this.

  And now it's going to force me to say yes.

  Time seems to slow as my mind brews a desperate plan.

  Once I say yes, it gives him and Zyla leeway to attack me. He’ll probably start. Zyla might hesitate or she might follow at his heels. I have to believe Kiren will also hesitate, otherwise I’m dead. Umbrahorn is hopefully on my side still—don’t know how he’ll take this though.

  My hand reaches down as my mouth opens.

  I clutch at my sack of amulets.

  Pop one. Blast lightning at the campfire and then use the smokescreen to flee.

  “No,” I say. I blink a few times, surprised. My body, which had gone tense with the anticipation of a fight, now relaxes slightly. The serum wears off and I regain control of my functions.

  “Good,” Saegor says, breathing a theatrical sigh of relief. “That’s good Raiten. I didn’t want to have to kill you.”

  He stands and walks over to me, taking a seat on my log. His arm snakes around my shoulder, grasping it and bringing me close.

  “She’s tricky. She can get in your head very easily. I understand that. But I’m glad you’re still on our side.”

  I look down, refusing to meet Kiren or Umbrahorn’s gaze. My head is a haze—its as if a fog of war has obstructed every sensible thought.

  Saegor slaps my back: “This is a good warning for all of us. Don’t blame Raiten here for being coerced by her. She might try doing the same to you lot. But, no matter what happens, you have to remember—she is the enemy. And we are allies. Which means, we must trust each other fully. Totally.”

  Saegor gives me one last look. A knowing look.

  Then a smile.

  I just stare at him blankly—no words need to be said. After all, he could’ve made me say yes to his last question. But he didn’t. Meaning, that this is just a warning.

  ‘Back off—or else I will ruin you.’

  Or at least, I think that’s the case, before the old man stands again and reaches for the last vial by his log, raising it up to the fire.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “In the interest of that trust, I’ll tell you all about my relationship with her. Ask away.”

  He opens the knob and downs it like a drunkard, some of the contents spilling from his stubbled chin and dripping into the fire with rumbling sizzles.

  No one asks for a precious ten seconds. Kiren is shocked—still reeling from my interrogation. Zyla would never ask.

  I don't even have it in me anymore. He’s completely outplayed me here.

  So I’m not the one to open my mouth.

  Rather, Umbrahorn broaches the topic: “What is your relationship to the Witch of Plagues, Saegor?”

  Saegor takes a deep breath in. He looks so calm—so in control. It's pissing me off.

  “She was… my daughter.”

  Kiren perks up at this. “You never told us that you had a family.”

  “I didn’t have a family. I adopted her,” he says, pacing about the fire now. “It was many years ago when I met her mother. I was still a traveling young mancer. I traded with her mother often. Poor woman was a widow raising her daughter alone. They lived in this nice little cottage at the outskirts of a village near Catolica.”

  A reminiscent, nostalgic look overtakes the old man for a brief moment. He shakes his head.

  “I fell in love with her mother. I promised myself I’d confess that love next time I visited. But… Well, when I came to their cottage, I found it burnt. And her mother was nothing more than a charred corpse attached to a pyre. The village accused her of being a witch. But Thraevirula—or at the time, she was called Tia—she was still alive. I took her in. And… we fled.

  “My studies continued. I learned magicks from all over the continent, even going south of the Fickle Plains and venturing into Fimbul. But I took her with me everywhere—trained her as my apprentice in magicks. She was incredible. And I grew to love her as my own daughter.”

  He grows silent now, a feeling of genuine sadness passing over his face. His singular eye blinks away a tear.

  Umbrahorn hesitates, but presses on, for time is running out. “What happened?”

  “She…” he sighs. “Tia was a witch. She had killed one of the children in the village and tried performing experiments on his body. The villagers assumed it was her mother. When I was teaching Tia the most basic of dream magicks, I found out this truth. And then… when I confronted her about it, she took my eye.”

  Zyla gasps. But my eyes narrow.

  By the flicker of the campfire light, I see a mark on Saegor’s hand.

  He presses on. “We had a fight. I didn’t want to hurt her—I wanted to help her. But she thought I wanted to kill her. So, she beat me. Ran. And ever since, I’ve been chasing her. But, throughout the years, she’s left a trail of destruction too heinous for even me to ignore. Dark magicks are only excusable when used for the right causes. And she has been abusing them for half a century. Which is why…”

  He looks at me now.

  “I need to kill her. End what I started.”

  Silence reigns between all of us and we are all suspended in this moment of time, save for the dwindling light of the dying campfire as it crackles its last, smoky breath into the dark.

  And I know for certain only one thing:

  He’s lying.

  But I can’t prove that. I can’t say that. Because after all of this, who would believe me?

  Saegor knows it too.

  He claps his hands together: “We can talk more in the morning if you’d like. But, I hope that, as we near the end of our mission, you can excuse me for my… secretive ways. It's still a very, very sore subject for me.”

  As my eyes flicker across everyone in the group, a cold sense of isolation creeps its way into my heart. I am alone again, standing on a tower in a realm where everyone is my enemy.

  I look up to the moon as the group silently readies themself for slumber. Umbrahorn tries talking to me, but I shoo him off.

  I miss Sorina. I chuckle pathetically at that stupid realization. But it's true. If she were here, she would be on my side. She would see through Saegor’s lies and tricks. She would support me, unwaveringly. Because that’s what friends do, right?

  In my time at the tower, I received books for killing monsters. Usually, it was Kai that gave me those novels. But once, and only once, Daichi sent me a package.

  It was a children’s tale.

  I loved it at first, for it was a story about a soldier who had fallen in love with a princess and promised her that he’d come back to her after the war. And every day during his five year campaign, no matter what enemies or hells befell him, every night he’d look upon the moon and tell himself that she was looking upon the same moon. And that she was waiting for him.

  On the last page, when he comes back, there’s a happy illustration of the two embracing. The princess then tells the soldier that she looked upon the night as well. She also wondered if he saw the same moon in the sky.

  And at the end cover of the book, a poster had been taped on: a sketch of Hui Long, dressed in fine armor, with a headline saying “The Heroes of Catolica!” And next to Hui was Gareth Rathkar—whose name I did not know at the time. But his arm was wrapped lovingly against her waist, pulling her close, and he was smiling.

  At the bottom of that poster, a message had been scratched out in Daichi’s handwriting.

  “She’s not looking at the same moon as you bastard. The bitch has gotten another dog—”

  I burned the book with the tower’s eternal flame.

  And as I watched it go up in fiery ash, I realized that I might never feel the same way about anyone. Ever.

  Oh Raiten, I shake my head now. You always fuck it up, don’t you?

  You can’t reach Sorina.

  Kiren probably doesn’t trust you anymore.

  Who will care once you die?

  Does it matter?

  Does any of it matter?

  That’s the last thought which echoes through my mind as I fall asleep.

  …

  “Of course it matters, Raiten,” a familiar voice says. I open my eyes to the darkness of the void.

  A shade of red hair pierces the black.

  “After all,” the Witch of Plagues—Thraevirula—Tia, begins, stepping forward and carefully parting the hair covering my eyes.

  She tilts her head and gives me a warm smile.

  “I will care.”