Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Despite my rash behavior yesterday, one should not rush into one’s end. One should think about it carefully. I think the fog is a plausible answer to my dilemma. It might not kill me—in fact, I’m quite certain that it won’t kill me. That would make the choice so much easier, actually. No. It’s not going to kill me. It’s going to… release me. It’s going to sever the tether I have to this world and allow me to wander. Aimlessly, I hope. Unconsciously would be a nice perk as well. If I could just start walking, and get lost, and wander, then wander some more…
Then maybe, perhaps, I might pop back out at some point in the future when this town is gone and this god has moved on.
That is my hope.
I choose defeat.
Because my wrongs cannot be fixed. I cannot go back in time and be the woman I was meant to be. Oh, and I know what the other strong women of the world would be thinking. ‘Callistina, one only needs perseverance to succeed.’
But it’s a load of bullshit, isn’t it?
It’s utter crap. I mean, there is no alchemist to apprentice with here in Savage Falls. Not even a little herb store. What am I supposed to do? Walk around these hills chipping on rocks until I bump into a crystal?
There is no possible way for me to be the alchemist I was meant to be.
And I was meant to be a great one. I know it. I would’ve been so good. I was already making progress by the time I was fourteen. And just the week before Pie’s Caretaking Ceremony I had discovered that my true magic was in using bottles.
I hadn’t even told anyone yet, it was so recent. I only got to experiment with the bottles a few times before that treacherous Eros ruined everything. But I knew that my gift led in that direction and I was going to do great things with magic inside bottles. I was testing potions and had one in particular that really, really mattered.
My labmate—what was her name? Gods above, I have not thought about that girl in almost twenty years. Regardless of what her name was, she was properly impressed. Nearly green with envy. Hardly any of the apprentices discovered their true intrinsic potential until they were well past the age of sixteen and there I was—the one and only bottle-magic maker.
Sounds stupid when you say it like that, but it’s actually quite powerful. I could put any potion at all inside a bottle and with the right additions, and a little bit of time, I could double or even triple the power.
And that was just my first set of experiments. I can only imagine how powerful my bottle magic would be now, after twenty years of perfection.
I resent this loss. I resent being taken from my true path and put on Pie’s. I resent being mated to Tarq, and all those dead babies, and what I became because of it.
Fine. I will accept responsibility for my part in this outcome. I was a terrible queen.
This makes me scoff and chastise myself out loud. “Terrible, Callistina?” Then I huff. “Fine. I was an evil queen. There. I said it. I was an evil queen. But does fate not bear some responsibility for the monster I turned into? Can I not share some of this accountability? Was it really, entirely my fault when I was taken off my path?”
No one is here to answer me.
No one has ever been around to hear my confessions, or prayers, or begging for guidance. And that’s part of the problem too.
I ruled an entire kingdom, had a royal guard, and that stupid alchemist, Lyrica, and the worthless Tarq—who left me to perform all the royal duties so he could be left alone in his pursuit of power. Power that was going to be much more than a king’s, that’s for sure.
I had subjects everywhere. People bowing to me.
But the entire time I was in Vinca, I was alone.
I almost never thought about my life in terms of solitude or companionship. What was the point? I was married to Tarq. I was the queen. It was a loveless marriage, of course. I never hated him, but in the later years he hated me very much because I discovered his greatest desire—his search for doors, first and foremost, but also his attraction to Nysta, who he was hiding from me.
His reasons to hate me were legitimate.
All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that I have nothing to live for. Nothing to look forward to. And maybe, if I had a God, I could find some strength within to persevere until I found my new purpose. But the gods are fake, and imperfect, and fallen.