‘Perhaps we should find someone who can materialize gold or silver,’ said Mehlsanz.
Helen stopped climbing the steps to look at her reaper. ‘Do you know of such a person?’
‘No, but I’m sure they exist.’
She started up the steps again. ‘Yes, well, when you find someone like that, let me know.’
‘Knowing our luck, they probably work for Abolish.’
Chapter Eighty-Four: ‘With thy shroud, endure...’
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As she stared into the mirror, Emiliana tried not to hate what she saw. She hadn’t been confident in her looks even before growing horns in the middle of her face and losing some of the vision in her left eye.
Chergoa and Shenado kept telling her that this mutation ability wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Emiliana did not believe them, frankly. And she wanted to say as much to their faces, too. She wanted to argue and complain and even throw a tantrum like a child. But she never could quite bring herself to. Each time the anger welled up, heating her face and chest with irritation, something in the back of her mind always got in the way. It felt like a pit, dark and endless, and it swallowed her every feeling, good or bad.
She knew what the pit was. There was only one thing it could be. A wound, without a doubt. Still so fresh that hardly anything else even seemed to matter by comparison.
Before leaving the bathroom, she put her mask back on. Essentially, it was just a simple, jet black plate, convexly curved so that it didn’t require an indentation for her nose and bearing two long, flat slits for her eyes. Along with her dark gray hoodie, she’d taken to wearing it wherever she went, sometimes even when sleeping--not that she’d slept much, of late.
The mask certainly attracted its fair share of attention from the attendants around Red Lake Castle, but it was still better than the kind of attention that her horns attracted. It made being seen by strangers bearable again. Already, she’d begun to wonder if she would end up wearing it for the rest of her life.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.