Annie's Death

Annie had often wondered how she would die.

Strangely enough, she did not want a clean death. She had dreamed of dying horribly, yet felt neither fear nor unease. Once, she dreamed that she died peacefully in a hospital bed. People held a beautiful funeral for her, and Michelle stood silently before her gravestone, offering her a bouquet of lilies.

She woke from that dream in a cold sweat, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep again.

Ever since meeting Michelle, all of Annie's dreams seemed to have become connected to her... There had even been one where she and Michelle made love in a filthy little inn, though when awake, she had never entertained such thoughts.

Until she decided to betray Michelle.

The thought of betraying Michelle had begun when Michelle stopped trusting her, but that had not been the first rift between them. Before Sally appeared, Michelle had been her faith, her spiritual pillar—Michelle was the god in her heart.

Michelle could kill anyone. Michelle could obtain anything.

Just like when she first met Michelle. In a small inn late at night, Michelle had descended like a deity and cut off a customer's head with a single stroke.

That scene felt like yesterday.

Whenever she received a customer, she could only focus on the inn's ceiling, trying to forget that nauseating smell.

That smell was so much like the bedsheets of her childhood, always reminding her what a lowly, wretched person she had become.

To escape that smell, she would open her mouth wide and breathe. Sometimes customers took it as encouragement and became even more vigorous, but she did not care much.

Looking back, throughout her five-year career, the only things that had truly left an impression on her were the ceiling she stared at blankly and the hateful smell on the blankets.

So when Michelle killed the customer, Annie was not afraid. Instead, because the blood diluted the moldy stench, she felt a trace of relief and pleasure.

Then Michelle put away her sword, looked at her expressionless face, and said:

"Follow me, and you will become a mage."

At the time, Annie did not even know what the word mage meant.

Yet she nodded and etched those words firmly into her heart. Even now, she could repeat them without missing a single word. That moment was like a frozen oil painting: every detail of Michelle's clothes, the angle at which the door stood open, the shape of the stains on the wall... Everything felt as though it had just happened, as fresh as a fish hauled from the sea.

Michelle was just such an incredible existence.

Perhaps that was why Annie became so furious when she realized Michelle no longer trusted her.

The turning point came in the third month after she began studying magic under Michelle.

That day, Michelle brought back a woman as skinny as a bamboo pole. It was dinnertime. The unfamiliar woman followed Michelle through the door, then, before anyone could speak, sat down with a cheerful smile as though she were the mistress of the place and casually took the only sausage from the plate.

That had been the dinner Annie saved for Michelle.

Annie stared blankly at the woman, at her high cheekbones and sharp, mean brows. Annie was shocked. She did not know who this woman was, nor did she know whether she ought to be angry.

The woman met her eyes and grinned.

"Hello, my name is Sally."

Sally. What a stupid name. Only the most foolish peasant woman, after drinking three barrels of ale and accidentally falling into a dung pit, would name her daughter something like that while half-conscious.

Yet Annie did not lose her temper. She did not slap that shameless woman. Instead, she cautiously looked at Michelle. Michelle did nothing, merely tossing her a sentence—or rather, an order.

"From today onward, she is our companion."

Annie felt as if she had fallen into Pearl Lake in winter: cold, stinging, her bones aching.

That feeling was far too familiar.

It was as though she had suddenly returned to her childhood, to the ignorant and bewildered little girl she had once been.

When she was five, her mother had done the same, carrying a wrinkled newborn boy before her and saying, "From today onward, he is your little brother."

How similar.

Her mother was a notorious abandoned wife in the village. Her father had left on the day she was born. To find her husband, her mother sold their fields and cows and set off in search of him. Sometimes she would be gone for three days, sometimes five. Annie could only rely on a little charity from the neighbors, waiting in their ruined home for her mother to return in disappointment again and again.

When Annie was five, her mother left for ten days, then finally returned with an infant boy—her little brother. She heard he was the child her father had fathered with another woman. As for where her father was, Annie did not know, and her mother never mentioned it after returning.

After that, her mother seemed to give up completely. She stopped searching for her father, but became obsessed with ale. Her drunken mother frightened Annie. Sometimes she would wake in the night and find her mother staring at her, with eyes that did not look upon her daughter, but upon an enemy.

But her mother's gaze toward her brother was entirely different.

Even when drunk, her mother would only use the gentlest arms to caress her brother, sing him lullabies, tuck in his blankets, and steal milk for him from the neighboring village. Sometimes Annie felt that the way her mother looked at her brother was not like a mother looking at her son, but like a lover looking at her beloved.

What was more, he was not even her mother's son.

Annie hated her brother, but there was nothing she could do. She went up the mountain to dig for wild vegetables, did all the housework, and helped the neighbors with farm labor. The money she earned, aside from paying for her mother's drink, was all spent on her brother: the finest clothes, the best food... Everything was only to satisfy her mother. Whenever she mended her brother's clothes, she could feel her mother's gaze toward her soften a little.

That made her feel that her mother still loved her.

As time passed, her mother grew ever more despondent and treated her ever more cruelly, while Annie became ever more attentive to both her mother and brother. At last, everything accumulated to its peak.

The turning point came.

When she was twelve, she was taken to an inn by a bald middle-aged man to earn money, and experienced her first time. That first time, she fell in love with the filthy, moldy ceiling of the inn. As she stared at the ceiling, she thought about how much food the money could buy for her brother, how happy it would make her mother. That made her happy too.

But when she returned home with the money, a neighbor told her that her brother had drowned in Pearl Lake.

She would never forget the way her mother looked at her when she returned home that day.

From beginning to end, her mother did not make any comment on her brother's death. As usual, she sat on the bed half-covered by a ragged quilt, holding a half-empty bottle of liquor, staring coldly at Annie.

Annie understood the words in her mother's eyes: "I wish you were the one who died."

So Annie said nothing either. She silently walked to the bedside, took out the small bag of money she had just earned, and placed it beside her mother's hand.

Her mother looked at her once more before finally speaking.

"Trash."

The next day, Annie found her mother's body in Pearl Lake. Like her brother's, her mother's features had distorted, and her face was swollen like fermented bread. The moment she saw the corpse, Annie thought that her mother must be happy. Now that her brother and mother looked so alike, no one would ever say they were not related by blood again.

At her mother's and brother's funeral, she shed many tears. It was the first time she had cried, and she felt very relieved.

After the funeral, she left the village.

Until she met Sally, she never understood how she felt about her mother and brother. She thought she loved them. She had given them so much. Their deaths had saddened her, so she left her hometown and drifted from place to place.

But the moment she saw Sally, she woke up—she hated her brother, just as she hated the Sally before her.

She wished she could slap Sally, just as she had wished she could strangle that infant boy to death from the very beginning.

But she did not. Maintaining a wooden expression, she watched Sally eat the sausage and said timidly, "Hello... I'm Annie."

She had walked into a new dead end.

Sally was smarter than her. Sally had greater talent for magic. Sally was more eloquent... Everything unfolded exactly as Annie had expected. Michelle's scales gradually tipped toward Sally. No matter how hard Annie tried, no matter how obedient she was, Michelle always paid more attention to Sally than to her.

Every night, she wanted to quietly rise from bed and slit that woman's throat with a dagger, letting blood cover that disgusting fake smile. But she did not dare.

Just as she had not dared to kill her brother, she did not dare touch a single hair on Sally's head.

That made her hate herself even more.

She also realized that she was this sort of person: the worse others treated her, the more she could not help treating them well. It became a driving force, making her try to escape her own baseness. She wanted to change herself completely.

So she became increasingly extreme. She tortured every hostage Michelle captured and killed enemies by the cruelest means. It made her happy. She felt that she had changed, that she had become formidable, no longer the humble, foolish girl she once was. Everyone feared her.

But before Michelle and Sally, she still did not dare breathe too loudly.

She had not killed Sally.

Annie was shocked that Michelle did not believe that. How could she possibly kill Sally? How could she dare kill Sally? Her dead mother and brother had long since become heavy chains, binding her in place. She could never take that step.

After Sally accused her, Annie did not even go argue with Sally. She knew Sally was that kind of unscrupulous person, and it was not the first time Sally had spoken ill of her. It had happened several times right in front of her; there must have been even more in private. Yet Annie had never resisted, nor had she ever uttered a single complaint.

Sally came to find her on her own.

"Annie, don't be angry. I didn't accuse you earlier because I wanted to hurt you."

That was how Sally explained herself.

"Annie, don't you think Michelle is strange? She clearly knows so many things, yet she never tells us. Even now, we don't know what good things are in the Treasure Vault. Tell me, why does she have to keep us beneath her? I really don't see where she's better than us..."

That was how Sally complained to her.

"Annie, I heard Michelle has a treasure on her that can multiply a person's magic power in an instant. Let's take it from her! Don't be afraid. Michelle isn't nearly as formidable as she looks. As long as we strike while she's resting..."

That was how Sally incited her.

"Annie, don't do this! Don't go tell Michelle, no! Michelle will kill me! Please, don't tell Michelle that I wanted to betray her, all right?"

That was how Sally begged her.

When Annie defeated Sally and bound her with magic, she realized that she had already become so much stronger than Sally. Sally's usual arrogance was nothing but a bluff.

She still did not intend to kill Sally. She would tell Michelle and let Michelle handle everything. Michelle hated traitors most of all. As long as she saw Sally's true face, she would surely kill Sally—how wonderful, to have someone else do what Annie wanted to do but did not dare.

As long as Sally died, Michelle would surely value her again. That was what she thought.

She had merely underestimated Sally's resolve.

With no way out, Sally made an even more tragic decision. Though Annie's bindings prevented her from escaping, she could at least still control her own life. So before Annie could react, she detonated her own magic from within and killed herself.

"Annie, she will never trust you again."

Those were the last words she left behind before dying.

Annie was pushed into an abyss of despair.

Sally had framed her with suicide. She did not know how to explain everything to Michelle. Compared with Sally killing herself for some convoluted reason, it was clearly more reasonable and believable that Annie had killed Sally. And in Michelle's eyes, Annie and Sally had long held grudges against each other.

Not to mention all the traces of fighting on the ground.

"Sally, Annie, it's time to leave!"

Sally's warmth had not yet faded when Michelle began calling for them. In her panic, Annie realized she had done another foolish thing—she hastily disposed of the body and fabricated a lie, trying to make Michelle believe Sally had gone missing.

However...

"Annie, did you kill Sally?"

Those words from the nobleman exploded in her mind like a thunderbolt.

Sally had been right about everything. Michelle would rather believe that useless noble than believe her.

She found herself becoming that cowardly, helpless little girl again, unable to do anything except repeat pale excuses over and over. Michelle's attitude chilled her to the bone. Though Michelle said she believed her, that look in her eyes was exactly the same as her mother's when her brother died.

After many years, Annie understood that look again.

Michelle was going to kill her.

Washed over and over by despair, a powerful thought finally surged from her heart.

She had to change. She did not want to become her former self again. She could not repeat the same mistakes.

Annie decided to betray Michelle.

She would surrender to the pursuing forces of the Riser Family and tell them Michelle's plan. Though The Church's ban on mages was strict, many nobles secretly maintained ties with mages, seeking the power of magic. She was willing to work for the Riser Family. The Riser Family would spare her life and kill Michelle.

Kill Michelle...

At the thought, Annie began trembling all over.

Annie convinced herself that she was trembling from excitement.

After running through the woods for some time, Annie finally saw that group of knights. They had to be members of the Riser Family! That was what she thought. So she ran toward them at full speed, waving and shouting:

"I mean no harm, your family's..."

A beam of Holy Light greeted her.

Within the Holy See, Holy Light actually came in many forms. There was Holy Light used to baptize knights, gentle and sacred; Holy Light used to torment heretics, capable of roasting people until death seemed preferable; and Holy Light used to kill enemies, immensely powerful, able to purify someone completely in an instant without leaving the slightest trace.

The Holy Light Annie faced was the third kind.

The terrible heat vaporized her robe and skin in the blink of an eye. The intense burning pain prevented her from casting even the simplest protective spell. She could see nothing. Blinding Holy Light filled everything.

Before she could betray Michelle, she was purified by the Purifiers.

Fine ashes drifted through the forest in the dead of night, fluttering like butterflies, then trampled into mud beneath the iron hooves of the Purifiers like butterflies.

Annie died.

At the moment before death, she suddenly thought...

No, she did not have time to think of anything. She did not have time to judge this manner of death—she did not know whether being vaporized by Holy Light was gruesome enough for her. Nor did she have time to regret betraying Michelle, or anything else. Her life did not flash before her eyes. Neither the happiness nor misery of her childhood surfaced in her mind.

She simply died.