Silhouette opened her eyes and set the blade on the ground. To our astonishment, a woman formed whole, her skin as black as midnight, her hair like silver webs.
"This is Feyt," said the Ice Empress.
Feyt gave a polite nod in greeting. "When I'm not in a physical form I exist almost entirely in Silhouette's mind. Is this similar to the bond you share with your demon, Miraj?"
"Yes! That’s exactly it!"
Feyt and Silhouette looked dubiously on one another. Finally, the dark woman acquiesced to her host's apparent decision.
"Binding yourself to another soul is an irreversible process," Silhouette repeated. "I survived for thirteen years in that state. The only way you can negate the danger is by fusing completely, so your souls are indistinguishable from one another."
I cringed at the notion of being bound to Koronos so intimately. He gave me a mental stab.
Do you think we have another option?
"Do you think I can do it?"
"That depends entirely on you," Silhouette replied. "I can tell you for a fact that it will be the most dangerous thing you ever attempt. And your odds of surviving the process aren't very high. It's your choice, Miraj; live for as long as your souls can exist in the same body, which, my guess would be about fifteen to twenty years. Or risk dying now in exchange for a lifetime to spend however you wish."
I looked at Marvin. While pained at the options presented, he merely shook his head.
"It's not my choice to make."
"I… I need to think about it."
"Good." Silhouette winked at me. "I wouldn’t allow you to jump right into it anyway. Now, if you don't mind, I have a question of my own."
We each nodded, willing to offer up what we knew in exchange for the help she'd already given us. Ayasha be praised -she killed the Crone! What a dozen skeletons and several necromancers couldn't do she managed in the space of five minutes without a single scratch.
It was humbling, to think someone like this could exist.
"How hungry is everyone? I need to know how many servings to make for dinner."
…and baffling all at the same time.
Epilogue
The home of the Ice Empress was a modest series of cottages built on stilts and bridges over a sand bank.
She did not live alone, as was apparent by the shrieking of childrens' laughter as they tore across the water. Several bounded towards them with a chorus of, "Aunt Sil!" when they spotted her guests. Older residents ushered them out of the way, giving them much-needed time to adjust to this setting.
Miraj, with her horns and tail, saw why the woman didn't react negatively to her appearance. Not every child here was human. Some were elves, others stemlings, another was a gnome… this was woman without a discriminating bone in her body.
Leo regaled the children with stories of Sand Whales over dinner. Will startled his companions by freely offering to lug little ones on his back in pairs. Marvin hobbled after another who thought it was a good idea to steal one of his legs.
Miraj burst into tears of laugher as the precocious child tossed the shin to Will. The Doll taunted Marvin with his prosthetic. A cruel game of fetch ensued, resulting in the necromancer heaving on the grass in exhaustion.
Silhouette sat beside the demoness on the edge of one of the bridges, their toes touching the water below.
"What is this place?" Miraj asked, looking around at the tiny pocket of paradise. "I thought Faespeare was supposed to be one of the most terrifying forests in the world."
"It is," the woman replied. "But its guardians and I have reached an understanding. They shelter me and ensure no harm comes to the children, and I help them with their occasional pest problem in return."
"But where did all these children come from anyway?"
"Some lived in these woods to begin with." Her blue eyes lingered on their smiles, bringing one to her own lips. "Others, like Ian, are war orphans. I seem to pick them up nearly every time I venture outside. It's a bit of a habit, honestly."
"It's a good habit."
"I like to think so, too." She cast her eyes to the water, her lashes like fans of snowflakes, framing their depths.
"You're not at all what I was expecting."
"Oh?" Her eyes crinkled at their sides. "What sort of person did you think I would be?"
Miraj bit her lip, sheepish. "Cold. Unyielding, potentially a hermit?"
Silhouette laughed. It was the type of sound that could only be produced by feeling joy in every fiber of one's being. Miraj found that she would never be able to picture this woman without a smile, as her face almost looked incomplete without it.
"The archetypal Ice Empress!" She wriggled her fingers into the night air. "I can't fault you for having that impression if you're only going off of the title." A shadow belied the sparkle in her eyes. "My entire life feels like a lesson in reading between the lines. The longer I live the less anything is as it first seems to be."
Miraj, with her glowing demonic eyes, snorted into the darkness.
"I can relate."
"And you have my deepest condolences for the fact." The sorceress shook her head at it all. Neither woman knew very much about the other, but with kindred spirits little needed to be said. They sensed, rather than saw, the layers of complexity in one another, a series of trials and sacrifices that led them to become the people they were today.
"I'm going to try what you suggested," Miraj said suddenly. "I have to take that risk because I have-"
"-someone worth living for."
They exchanged empathetic glances. Silhouette smiled in her faint, enigmatic way.
"I knew you'd choose that option."
"I'm starting to wonder whether you know everything." The mage cackled at that comment. Miraj coiled the end of her tail around one of her fingers. "Would you be willing to give me an opinion on something?"
"If I feel I have a comment worth contributing, sure."
"What do you think about revenge?"
As Miraj glanced from the corner of her eyes, Silhouette felt like an entirely different person. Her warm and welcoming aura was gone, replaced by a haunting, empty expression.
"Could you tell me a little more so I can better understand the circumstances?"
"I… belong to one of four Tribes in the west. One day mine was slaughtered by my kin." The demon's lime green gaze pierced through the veil of night, seeking out the face of her sleeping husband on the lawn. "If it weren't for Marvin and his friends, I probably would've died as well."
"And all this happened suddenly, without any warning at all?"
"Yes."
Silhouette set a finger on her chin, sighing at the story.
"How long ago did this happen?"
"A month, give or take."
"Gods above, Miraj! I'm so sorry for your loss."
Miraj forced a smile she didn't feel. Her tail sagged as an honest indicator of her emotions. Silhouette, after a moment's consideration, slung an arm around the young woman's back and pulled her against her side.
The last time she had this kind of embrace from another woman it was her mother cradling her the day she died. Miraj choked on a knot in her throat.
"I wish," Silhouette began with obvious hesitation. "I could tell you that it's a bad idea… but the truth is that would make me a hypocrite." She stroked the demon's hair as she recounted her story.
"There was once a man who changed my world. He gave me a new home, a new history, even a new name. I hated him for it, but not to the point I wanted to kill him," she confessed. "Then one day he was the one who changed. I'd taken everything he'd given me up to that point and made a life for myself. I had friends, a family, and dreams for the future. He destroyed everything, and it almost destroyed me."
She stopped running her fingers, just holding her hand on Miraj's head, lost in thought.
"Revenge should be a last resort, when you can't move forward without leaving death behind."
"Do you ever regret it?"
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"No." She resumed stroking her hair, her smile returned to her lips. "Once again, it doesn't sound like the responsible adult thing to say. Don't kill people. You'll regret it, but that would make me a liar. I killed that man, I enjoyed it, and then I was satisfied. I hated what he'd put me through, but I no longer hated him. And then I closed one of the darkest chapters of my life so I could finally start a new one."
"But-" Miraj craned her neck at this caveat. "If you want to move forward, truly move on from the past, then you'll wind up having to make sacrifices. We can spend our entire lives chasing a single dream, then once we achieve it we find ourselves so changed from the people we were at the start that it no longer matters."
She gazed down at the demon, her expression as heartbreaking as it was beautiful.
"I did almost anything for power, Miraj. I wanted it so I could protect the people I loved when they needed it most."
Miraj went still. Silhouette's words may as well been her own. They resonated on the deepest level of her being.
"By the time I was satisfied, that strength became the very reason I couldn't be near them anymore." She breathed deeply. "Success has a funny way of revealing our greatest failings, and once it's achieved we can no longer take it back. Only once I obtained my power did I realize how powerless it made me. I wish someone told me this when I was your age, back before it was too late. I hope your story has a happier ending… or at least a different kind of despair."
THE END
A Note From the Author
Thank you for finishing A Different Kind of Despair! If you enjoyed the story and have the time, I'd love it if you could take a few minutes to post a review either on its Smashwords page or on Amazon.
As a note on my work as a whole, all books I write take place on the fictional continent of Dalani.
What this means for you is that if you liked the world and fell in love with the characters there are many opportunities for them to cross-over into other storylines!
If you read Ghostwalker or Soul Shatter then you probably recognized Silhouette in this one!
If you'd like to contact me you can reach me through
Twitter: @MissMartinsen
My Website: www.nicolemartinsen.com
Or send me an email at: [email protected]
Happy Reading!
Bonus Trivia!
Marvin was based on the Necromancer character class from the computer game, Diablo II.
His personality was modeled after Courage in the cartoon Courage the Cowardly Dog.
In this book he uses Courage's catch phrase: "The things I do for love."
Miraj, surprisingly, is not based on the Shaman class from Diablo III.
Leo is based on a personal friend met through an MMORPG.
In A Different Kind of Deadly, multiple references are made to Leo's ancestor Leeroy. This is the result of a joke that Leo's Leeroy is none other than Leeroy Jenkins.
Tully's first incarnation was a chicken as an extension of that joke, because "at least I have chicken."
The whole subplot about Sand Whales, pirates, and Tully was a jab at Moby Dick.
Technically, Leo already found a Sand Whale, or at least a partial one. This may or may not be expanded on in a third novel (but The Spiderlily Chronicles must be finished first. If there is a third in the "A Different Kind of…" titles, then it will have to wait until the New Year of 2016).
A CHALLENGE TO THE READER!!!
If you can spot the Sand Whale and shoot me a message telling me who/what it is, I will make you a character, and he/she/it will be the point of view narrator for the next novel!
A Different Kind of Despair Page 13