I still remembered what it felt like to be a tree. I remembered the way vibration and tastes were so important to me, I remembered circulating my sap and driving the roots to find foot. I remembered the swell of water and the way light tingled through my leaves. Those memories were just as real as any other, I remembered that day vividly. And yet, a few days later I turned my body into fire, and that is only vague impressions. I barely retain memories of the thing, like it was happening in a vivid dream.

  Though I can remember the cat-and-mouse theatrics leading up to that, and I can certainly remembering the desperate struggle to hold that shape, to keep the fire close, I barely remember what it felt like to be fire, to be a phoenix. I had a vague impression of wanting to fight and kill Braux, and I remember that I did kill her, hunt her, destroy her utterly. But that barely feels like it was me, more like a story from a friend.

  Was it because I spent so many hours as a tree, but only seconds in fire? Or is this part of the effects of different affinities? I had 100% for oak, and barely over 40% for fire, after struggling for so long.

  "You all right? You've been staring at the corner of the blackboard like it's got your betting slip," Quarl said to me. I startled, and my knuckles crackled as my fist clenched on its own. I opened my hand with an embarrassed chuckle and spread my palm on the tabletop.

  "I'm fine," I said. "I've always got too much on my mind. So is everything all right with that Tsilven issue?"

  He grimaced. "I am to commend your results. But now my elder cousins are asking me if you have experience in this field. It seems that there's some confusion on the issue and they need clarification. The client, while responding to our invoices, did ask a few specific questions, and we believe them to be related to some new rumors that have been brought to specialized individuals. Someone, it seems, wants to know if there's a very determined and very efficient freelancer who works in these collections industries who has been called in."

  "It does seem like such an individual should exist, doesn't it?" I asked Quarl. "Someone who only gets called in for special and difficult jobs. And if someone like that did not exist, somebody might need to invent that person just for occasions like this." I said it as if just musing aloud, nothing serious, just an interesting story if it were true. But he was clearly picking up what I was putting down.

  He looked at me with his eyes and mouth opened in the most genuine display of simple joy I've ever seen from him. He looked astonished and a little smitten. And the system message that awarded me five more experience points certainly did agree, I've advanced his romance route another step. "I believe you are correct, if such a bogeyman did not exist, then rumors of their exploits should certainly be circulated in order to prevent these situations from emerging again." He sounded eager. He was enthusiastic for Natalie the Enforcer. Great, I never know what the love interests are going to want from me.

  "I think I would be happy to cooperate for one more sighting, to keep the story consistent," I said. "But the stern and disapproving eye from above is already asking questions about this. Anything involving the head of a Lesser House does stir up some hornets' nests. I believe I can get away with one more contract before I need to let this episode fade into legend and gossip."

  "I'll pass along that stipulation," Quarl chuckled. "I'm not sure there's any situation calling for such attention for the time being."

  "In that case I can remind you that I do travel very, very fast," I pointed out. "Maybe it doesn't need to be a local legend."

  "I'll keep that in mind," he said with another broad smile. "But enough about that, yes? We do not need to be business-business-business all the time! You are very interesting, and you are very impressive!"

  Ah. It's time for the love interest to start acting interested in love, I suppose.

  "Impressive?" I mocked gently. "That's what you went with?"

  "It is a good starting point because it summarizes so much," Quarl said. "I could list off charming regal beautiful brilliant innovative powerful cunning resilient graceful and deft, or I could just say impressive. And because it stops short of saying 'the gods could have hand-crafted you to make me feel insecure about literally everything', which would be true but I have an uncommonly steady sense of self and I resist these well-deserved doubts of my worth."

  "You take a heavy hand with flattery, Quarl Billiams," I observed.

  "If you'll be here when I get back, I'll slather compliments with a masonry trowel, you've not seen anything yet!" He's still a weirdo. He's still a little sinister but in a creepy way. He still leans into my personal space a little too much and most of his reactions feel a little too prepared. He gives school-shooter vibes in a crossbow setting, and he still thinks and acts way too much like a fifteen-year-old. And the parts of him that elevate above "fifteen-year-old-boy" are the parts instilled in him by his House, who are a bunch of murderers-for-hire who honestly seem less competent and frightening the more insight I get into them.

  And yet he's making me laugh.

  "See? We make such a great match," he charged on. "You're amazing in every way, and I am humble enough not to run from that or feel challenged!"

  "And if I would rather be met with an equal as amazing as I am?" I retorted, smirking.

  "Then if a second creature so divine does exist then I will watch your happiness with a proud tear in my eye," he vowed.

  He's got the Gomez Addams strategy. I don't think there's a hard counter to that strategy, it's almost undefeatable. Especially because I'm a Morticia all day long. Dammit, he's targeting my glowing weak points! Which, obviously, is my ego.

  "So, all I have to do is bring one Lesser House to heel and I get this attention?" I teased him.

  "No, the Lesser House was to get my family to approve my intentions," he said. "You've had my attention since you first took the last word in our conversation by disappearing in a flare of eye-searing brilliance and a dry, sardonic quip." He has no hesitation at all, he's either a well-trained flirt or he's just really buying in with everything he's got.

  "Since you mention family and intentions," I pointed out, shifting tone and tempo a bit to let him know we're approaching a more serious phase of the conversation, "you must know that with my station, all matches are made by the head of the family, and cannot be considered contractual for three more years, and cannot be formalized for another two- the law does not allow me to marry before twenty or to take official engagement before eighteen."

  "I am aware," he said. "And many things may happen. A lucky man may receive much, unless he gives up early."

  He is correct that there are... several ways that this situation could shift. Some better than others. For example, I could simply go to my parents and convince them to approve a match I desire. That does not often happen for a very desirable match-heir, but my cachet was a lot higher before I went to prison as a mass murderess. I could just refuse their wishes and marry whoever however I feel like it, if I want to get disowned and disinherited. I could earn enough honors and accolades to offset the five-dozen murders that I basically pled no-contest against. I could get fostered to a cadet house and demoted to a lower station with a less-restrictive future. Or, you know, my parents might not be the heads of the family in a few years.

  Spoilers! Ha.

  So clearly this was a subject I needed to be very careful how I speak about, as I sit here with a merit-advancement student from the assassination house. Or I might get surprise-orphaned. I don't want to give him the impression that I'm his for the wooing if he just "natural causes" both my parents. People around here have already shown me how they can take simple comments and draw very drastic conclusions. And his comment about not giving up early, makes me think that he's much more willing to be a persistent man who creates his own luck.

  "Many things may happen to, or for, or with a lucky man," I said calmly. "But the only measure of a lucky woman is how much she is permitted to control her own fate." What do you get for the woman that has everything? The chance to make her own choices!

  He started to retort with a fast-thinking comeback but I saw him pause. "ooo-ooh," he said quietly. "Yyyes."

  "Now, feel free to occasionally overwhelm me with compliments," I chuckled. "I won't lie. I am very into that. Enjoyed it. But I am not interested in advancing that particular deadline, at this time. I would like to make my own decisions, but my brother has wisely pointed out to me that unasked-for help is a burden and not a blessing. Everything should start with good communication and clear signals. Which, I must say, could be particularly a problem for you. I believe you have been intensively trained to never say anything that could be definitely held against you."

  "A fair belief," he said, smirking. He was doing it again. Not confirming, just commenting.

  "Exasperating," I declared. "Fortunately, I do have a backup plan already. I would like to set up a meeting. At a tavern. We will be able to speak with perfect clarity and candor. I will let you know when and where to meet."

  He raised an eyebrow. "Meeting at a tavern? To speak with perfect candor? And this is not a message for me to try to interpret?"

  "The invitation to speak and meet is an invitation to speak and meet," I said.

  "Huh," he said, intrigued at this novel new idea of "saying only the things we mean".

  I'm assembling my team.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Funny thing is, all of it really is just as pretty as I remember. I have let myself get caught up in so much that I've hardly just sat and enjoyed the scenery. It's funny because when I was playing all this as a video game, I absolutely would linger in certain areas and really immerse myself in the atmosphere. The art, the music. The contrast of the stately buildings, the ethereal music, the grand landscapes, and the perpetual twinkling stars overhead.

  Those stars were one of the distinctive features. Glittering. It's an arc word for the whole game. Lights in this game did not glare, they glittered. The flickering of the magical candles, the wavering illumination coming in through windows. And the glimmer of starlight even in the day. A cavescape with a geode ceiling, cloudless and moonless, a shifting sharp-pointed background of lights.

  It was an artistic choice for the game, and they took it seriously.

  But now we're in my version. And the lights here do not shimmer inconsistently with bright isolated blings of facets or points, this is a broad sweeping light all the way to the horizon, diffused and dispersed so that the overhead bridges and aqueducts were nearly impossible to see.

  Maybe my version would need a different name. The Harigold Glare.

  I sat on the corner of the lintel over the natural philosophy building, looking down over the quad. A familiar landscape from a different angle, seen under a light that the game had never shown. I had my legs tucked beneath me, sitting up on a corner that could not be reached without magic. Nathan never got the option to climb or fly up here, it's just not in his pathing. This is all mine.

  I have conjured my flute and I play it, just simple tunes. Nothing from the game, but just some licensed video game music that travels well from 8bit to flute. Doot doot doot do-do-do-doot, easy stuff. Music never heard in this world until I brought it. My stamp. My mark. My choices. I am remaking this game in my image. I'm taking it away from him.

  So much familiar. The grass, the verge. The crushed-marble gravel walkways that throw back glinting sparks of quartz, the rolling shapes of the green grassy quadrangle, the stylishly asymmetrical bench seating spaced here and there. Below me, beautiful people walked those lonely paths and sat those lovely seats, in pairs that talked close together or singly to take their internal experience.

  Each of them living their own lives. Sometimes I need to pull away from myself and just watch. Just to reassure myself that everyone else here is living their own lives. That while they might look up and smile or point out the bleached-white sorceress sitting on the corner of the roof playing flute music, that once they were done they would go about their own business for their own reasons.

  Sometimes it feels like a room that I am not in doesn't exist. It feels like every conversation is about myself and my plans. If I'm not watching people, they will stand in place like mannequins. This is not sustainable, I need to take breaks. I need to ground, to center, to reorient myself. My situation is too weird, it messes with me, sometimes. I'm walking a middle path between a world that I know as being a work of fiction, and a fate that I'm trying to bring to reality. I don't think that a human mind is meant to live in that kind of space.

  The first time that I walk past the Groaning Gullet tavern, there will be a bar brawl that rolls out into the street and brings the guard running. Only the first time you walk past it for sure, and after that a 10% chance. When I play the game, I always save that path for moments that I'm in a hot pursuit. You can use it as a distraction to get an enemy to break off a chase, or to pin an enemy that's trying to get away.

  I have not walked or ridden down that street of Hearstcliff, because I know that at some point I'm going to need to summon a large number of the city guard on short notice.

  I know that the creepy groundskeeper hints at eerie mysteries but nothing ever comes of it, it's just atmosphere and set dressing. I know that every building of the campus has the same internal layout but different color skins. I know that Skeici Gianwen owns an unused fuller's shop down in Old Town under an assumed name. I already knew the name and location of a spider-infested inn for Nathan to train up against monsters.

  And this messes with my head sometimes. How am I supposed to know all this, and still treat this like a real world where everything really matters? To know that in the right circumstances almost every part of this world is going to respond like a video game, and yet somehow I am not supposed to behave like a murderhobo maniac? The first test of insanity is the inability to distinguish between fiction and reality, and that's basically a summary of my mental state. But with good reason. Half the time my reality is indistinguishable from a fiction.

  Early on I tested it. Even with minor disturbances, certain speeches are exactly as predicted. The homeroom speech, the tapman at the Final Form. That man never scoffingly offers anyone milk, except the player character the first time they walk in. The carriage drivers only have four greetings when you flag them over. My homeroom teacher has a voice actress that I've seen playing a very different role on a syndicated sci-fi show.

  Not to mention that I can call up a Status menu at will that lists off my abilities and affinities, and the precise amount of XP I need to level up. And the fact that I can level up, that's not something normal to a real non-fictional world. I periodically get pop-up windows with assessments of the challenge in front of me and how much damage I will take if I fail. I rely on the game's mechanics. Probably too much. I should not have been blindsided by Magister Braux the way I was- she never responded to Nathan that way. What can I count on? What should I be suspicious of?

  Seems like whenever I try to count on this being a game and acting like it's a game, I get smacked down. And when I try to treat this like a real living breathing world that reacts realistically, I get smacked down. The common thread here is I'm gonna have a hard time and I better learn to adapt.

  I don't like that as a common thread. I'd rather have one solid system I can rely on. Either one, really. Either as a game I have to win, or a world I have to live in. But not both. That's asking too much. Which would be harder, living in a game as a game, or beating the whole world?

  Given a choice, I'll try to beat the world. Winning. It would be hard, but easier than the alternative.

  And "Queen Natalie the First" has a nice ring to it.

  And, to enjoy it. I smiled across the campus. It really is a very pretty game. Maybe I can let myself have fun. And it would be nice to rule over all of this.