I was back in my dorm room. Alive and well. Not worse for wear. Quite the opposite, actually.
I was feeling well - very well.
Immediately, I could see Shadowboon. Both of us were sitting where we had been before.
If he was here, I assumed he had the same type of confrontation with Kyregash as I did with Lirbech.
I stood, guitar still in hand, and put it on the bed.
"You're alive!" I said to him.
"You are too!" he said back to me.
He stood and took my hands, and we celebrated in a circle.
We were both exhausted and drained, but we were alive.
It was almost too good to be true. I checked myself for anything that could be off - things like new scars or missing digits. Shadowboon did the same, then we examined each other.
Nothing was amiss.
"How?" we both asked at the same time.
We stared at each other for another second.
Shadowboon sat down. He fell into his chair and almost melted away.
"I'm so hungry right now."
"You can eat something later," I said and lifted a hand before he could say anything else. "I'll go first. I have seniority."
"Alright," he said.
"So, when I was playing the guitar, I was suddenly whisked away to Lirbech again."
"Uh-huh," he said, with a lot of interest.
"And apparently I'm still alive because he realized something very obvious."
"Which is?"
"I don't need romance, or marriage, or my own children."
"He realized that just like that?" Shadowboon said, a bit confused.
"Not just like that. But I mentioned the girls, and they count as a 'love' in his eyes. Parental love."
"Parental love?" he repeated.
"Yeah. Turns out raising kids - even ones that aren't yours - checks a lot of boxes."
"Wow," he said, letting the word trail. "That's retarded."
I shrugged, but I couldn't disagree.
"So that saved you," he said.
I shook my head. "I think I rather postponed my death. Who knows what a god could be thinking? Or when they want to mess with us again? They did it once already."
Shadowboon rubbed his face. "Yeah... Alright, my turn now. Kyregash also let me live."
"But you didn't kill anyone?" I said.
"Yeah, but she really loved the theatrics and the fight."
"I wasn't there. How was the fight anyway? For someone alive, you don't look like you won."
"I didn't - not a fistfight, anyway. Other than that, I got the crap beaten out of me."
That earned my full attention.
"With armor and magic, and you still got hurt that badly?"
"I barely used any of that. I thought using only fists and as little armor as I could would make for a better fight. But there was this woman, and she bashed my brains in. She was like a chihuahua in human form. She was insanely strong and fast, durable too, but not magically so - entirely physical, almost like the girls are."
"Strange. I haven't seen any signs of anyone like them in years. But you still won."
"Generous use of that word. If I hadn't used magic, I'd be dead. It wasn't very close otherwise. She would have won."
"Wow. Why didn't you just kill her?"
"Why should I have? You'd rather die than marry some underage girl, and I'd rather die than randomly kill someone. The woman looked like she had already suffered a lot. She had missing fingers and teeth, ripped-out hair, and scars.
She doesn't deserve to die just because I had to kill someone.
I mean, I value my life, but that just didn't seem right. During the fight, when I used chaos magic on her, I thought of something to say - like a signature attack or something. I thought maybe 'Tachyon' or something cool, but in the moment I couldn't think of anything, so I said, 'Catch this.' Which didn't sound very cool."
"It doesn't matter if you look cool or not if you're about to die. Kyregash liked that?"
"She loved it," Shadowboon said more grimly than I expected.
Then he told me all about his night - the first fight against the gang called the Hopeless and how he called them out, how he was mobbed and mocked by Alice Burr, their leader, and how he beat up a lot of normal people.
And then the fight against that woman, and how he decided to let her live.
It was heavy stuff, and we sat for another moment in silence.
Then I told him about my night. Compared to his story, mine seemed insignificant.
I also told him, just to make it clear, "I need you to know that I tried to make it less weird. I had a list of every girl on campus over eighteen, but each and every one of them said no to marrying me. I didn't know who else to ask, and Io seemed like the perfect candidate. The only other girls who might say yes were the girls, and I would definitely not ask them."
I also mentioned that it was under divine duress. And who knows where Lirbech would really have been satisfied? Marriage, and then what?
"That does help," he said. "Do gods - especially the god of love - not believe in true love? Some people are just one and done. And some need time. We're getting off topic."
"What now?" I asked, because I knew he had something in mind.
"The past few days taught us two things. One: gods are powerful. And they're narrow-minded, absent-minded, and both stubborn and easily swayed. But what does that mean to us?"
"That they may come in unannounced to mess up our lives?"
"You think that's it?"
I put a hand on my chin. "What else could it mean? You think more gods will come to us now that the ice is broken?"
"Maybe. We just don't know. I hope that's not it."
"If the other gods are like Lirbech and Kyregash, they will, and we need to be more prepared next time."
"Agreed."
"What's the second thing?"
"Two," he lifted two fingers. "There are people walking around the world who can beat the hell out of us. We need to get stronger. During the fight, I really wished I could just brute-force my way through it, but even with the years of training we had, that just wasn't an option."
"And other times we can't bullshit our way through."
"What options do we have left? I don't think we'll ever get naturally as strong as a woman. So it has to be magic, right?" Shadowboon suggested.
I thought about it. "I guess so. But strong magic really tires us out, even now. I can maybe use one four word spell and a dozen three word ones per day. Even less when I use chaos magic - maybe twice per day. Maybe a different type of magic? I don't think we really looked into that, did we? Alchemy is barely an option because, even with new creatures and animals, it seems like its as fake as in our old world."
"There's one other thing."
"What?"
"Chaos tattoos."
"I was thinking about that for a moment, but I don't think Gregorio will teach you how to make them for a long time."
"Good question. I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem like we have a time limit anymore. Maybe we'll think of something."
"For now, let's just go to sleep."
"Maybe take a shower first," I said. "You smell."
He took a whiff and held his nose. "That's true."
He started to undress. "You know, I wonder what Gullyman is thinking right now. The stuff I did must be puzzling from an outsider's perspective."
"You took Gullyman along, the office-worker? Why?" I asked.
"I like him. Plus, he was a former assassin, and I needed someone to carry rope."
"What'd you need rope for?"
"To hang the dead."
"That's pretty grim."
"I had a more-than-edgy plan to string up those killed as a sort of sign. Even if I had to kill someone, I didn't want it to be completely for nothing. If I could signal to other gangs and syndicates not to fuck with mine, that would be something."
"Still morbid thinking."
He shrugged. "I didn't do it in the end. Better for it."
He went to the bathroom, and while the water started running, I changed out of my date clothes and into pajamas. I lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling.
I turned to look at the desk, the guitar, then turned my head again to look out the window. It wasn't fully closed, so if anyone decided to jump up to it, they could enter our room.
Maybe that was a mistake now, but an open window on the second floor wasn't going to stop anyone like the gods, or that woman.
But after today's events, I couldn't just go to sleep.
Just because I was alive and unhurt didn't mean I - or Shadowboon - was safe.
How could we really get stronger? And not just a little bit. It takes years to grow naturally. Was that really the only choice?
I'd have to come up with a way to get Gregorio to teach me how those tattoos worked.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe slowly. I couldn't solve any of it tonight. Thinking wouldn't make me stronger.
Eventually, exhaustion won over worry.
Sleep came - not peacefully, but it came.