The Wicked House of Caroline

Growing up as a foster child of the Queen of Kadmus, Beks had always been known to excel. It was expected of her. On one hand, her promise growing into the ideal support for Luther was a good thing. People took her seriously and she was given respect and responsibility. Her concerns and thoughts were seriously considered.

On the other hand, the better the work she did, the more work and responsibility she was entrusted with. There was less and less time to herself as she grew, and the weight of her responsibilities weren’t without their stress. When she found herself frustrated, angry, or disappointed and sad, she’d dive into her work as a distraction.

She’d constrain her emotions and put on a mask of calm, always appearing measured because it was what was expected of her. When Laurence had his accident, she forced herself to work not only for his sake, but so she didn’t fall apart and become useless. No one needed another burden during such a helpless time.

Distraction by keeping her mind occupied was the only way to keep herself in check, and a new body in a new life hadn’t changed her core.

In her heart, she ached for her family and friends left behind. She ached for the life she was pulled away from, and so suddenly, without a word of warning to anyone. There was regret and frustration, and more heartbreak than she could ever remember having.

If she didn’t throw herself into the role she’d been tossed into and assigned herself a mission to focus on, she would break down.

So, Beks put all her effort into assessing her biha. This body of the young woman named “Tana” had exceptional control. She couldn’t help but praise her. Beks was sure she was using her own well, as she hadn’t felt the least bit drained. She also didn’t know how she was able to use at least three types of biha. Was the ability tied with one’s soul?

Did Xeria at least let her have that knowing she couldn’t return to her time?

The younger of the guards had rushed in a few moments after she’d burned a hole in the wall and Beks had casually stood over in front of it shielding him from view. Aside from looking as if she was trying to escape, which she was, the evidence of fire would add more fuel to her accusation as an arsonist. The young guard threatening to make things worse for her was how she found out the young woman’s name.

After some prying, she discovered that Tana lost her last remaining parent a year prior, and that she and her father had made a living catching fish to sell, which she continued to do. While Beks was sympathetic, it was also a bit of a relief, as no one was close enough to her to notice any differences.

She didn’t know if the Great Oracles remembered the lives of their hosts, or even cared to since they had come with a single-minded goal, but she did not. She knew nothing of Tana’s history. She didn’t even know what Tana looked like.

She had black hair and tanned skin with plenty of sunspots, though she was still young. It meant she did a lot of work outdoors. Beks also felt shorter than she was before, but aside from that, she couldn’t figure out much else. What color were her eyes? How did her face look?

She continued trying to get information on the village from the guard, but he was called away. She needed to find out if there was a Heryan family in the village. The Heryans were the birth family of the last Great Oracle. They died when a dam broke and suddenly flooded the valley.

Since the last Great Oracle had made it so she would survive, Beks decided to return the life-saving grace by saving the last Great Oracle’s family.

From the partially open door beyond the cell bars, she could tell the sun was setting. She expected them to come with meager rations for her, but instead, Beks heard them chatting outside before closing the door of the building and locking it, casting her into pitch darkness.

They didn’t give her food.

“What kind of torture is this....” She muttered in the darkness. She wasn’t hungry, but that in itself wasn’t a good sign considering how long she’d been unconscious. Tana was a poor fisherman, as well. It wasn’t as if she had a lot to eat before coming to sell fish, if she had anything to eat at all.

Beks waited for a few moments to make sure that no one would suddenly throw open the door to check on her before creating a small flame of fire biha in her hand. She moved her hand over the scorched hole in the wall. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to blast a whole through the wall with fire considering she had been falsely accused of arson.

“It’s good I have other biha.” She moved her hand over the mud brick. If she was a normal person, it would’ve been difficult for her to break through with sheer force, without any tools. But mud brick was still susceptible to earth biha.

It didn’t take long to get through the wall. It was thicker than she thought it was despite being so old. She peeked outside, and it seemed that it was well into sunset, as the sky was turning purple. Beks put out her fire and sat down, deciding to wait until night to break out. Considering she was the only prisoner and there were only two village guards she’d seen, she doubted there was someone guarding the jail at night.

She poked two more holes at eye level on two other walls to try to get a better look outside. It seemed that the building had a mud brick fence surrounding it several paces away, but after that, she couldn’t see the tops of any houses, just a few trees. Around the area was more hard packed dirt. There were sacks filled with what she assumed was grain, and some empty barrels piled on top of each other along the side of the building.

There were some dismantled drying racks also leaning against the far wall.

She supposed the rural prison also doubled as a communal storage area.

Her guess that she was probably somewhere outside the village, or at the very edge of one, was correct when she widened her first hole and squeezed through.

She really should’ve focused on getting as far away from the dilapidated mud brick storage prison as she could, but Beks wanted to see their reaction when they saw the gaping hole just large enough for a malnourished peasant girl to crawl out of.

She chuckled to herself as she crouched in the shadows. She was certain that a normal, full-grown man would have difficulty breaking through the walls which were at least double the thickness of similar buildings she’d seen in the past.

Beks spent the rest of the night growing accustomed to Tana’s biha control. A few hours into creating a pit for her to hide in beside a nearby tree, she noticed a difference in the way Tana’s body controlled the release of biha.

Beks couldn’t control the amount she released at once, so she countered the power by controlling the duration of release. This made each light beam explosive. She would collect biha as energy through her body and around her hands to direct them, resulting in a cloud of condensed biha that had to be used at once.

Tana’s body collected biha through her body, as well, but contained it in her abdomen and sent biha through her veins to her hands. The result was the opposite of what Beks had used. The power was greatly reduced, but the duration of release could make the biha used more powerful.

If she thought of biha as a river, the dam was her abdomen, and the release spillways were her veins. Her veins contained the flow and if she wanted to use more, or strengthen the use of biha, then she’d collect water in a pool at the end of the channel for use at one time. Beks never considered such a concept, but the more she visualized and put it into practice, the easier it was.

It was almost frustrating that she’d struggled so much in the past, and such an answer was right in front of her. Who taught Tana this? While unlikely, it wasn’t impossible for a gifted biha user to be born in a non-bihar-rich environment. However, in such cases, Tana’s abilities would be very rough without formal training.

Beks practiced control with earth biha to create a pit for her to hide, and then watch from, hidden around bushes that grew below a nearby tree. There, she finally felt safe from any suspicious eyes and settled into sleep.

She didn’t realize how tired she must’ve been. Normally, she would’ve woken up rather early, but it wasn’t until she heard yelling coming from the rural prison that she opened her eyes. Beks rolled over and peeked through the gap in the stones and dirt, which she learned to create and make appear as a natural formation from Rid Callan.

It wasn’t only the young and old guards who were making a fuss, but several more middle-aged men who’d apparently come to see the prisoner.

“What do you mean she’s gone? How could she get out?” A well-dressed middle-aged man was red in the face as he yelled at the two guards.

“Village head, she escaped through a hole in the wall.”

The middle-aged man balked. “A hole?” they brought it to the side that Beks had the best sight of.

She suppressed her laughter as she watched the middle-aged man and the men around him stop and stare at the hole she made, and the pile of broken mud brick just beneath it.

“That’s...that’s impossible!” The middle-aged man began blabbering that the prison was built with double the material. It was meant to hold in grown men. “How can a skinny little girl get out?” He couldn’t contain his disbelief and appeared sure that something was wrong.

“Maybe someone helped her, village head,” someone suggested.

“Who is going to help her? There’s no one left in her family and my niece says that she has no friends!” the village head yelled. “Even that boy Tristan regretted being kind to her once because she started following him around!”

Tana, you poor girl. Beks shook her head.

“Do you think he may have helped her escape because he pitied her?” the younger guard asked.

“Call him in!” One of the other men demanded at once while another ordered for people to form a search party, citing that she couldn’t have gone far.

Well, they’re not wrong. Beks continued hiding, watching people come and go. Other villagers were curious while every so often, someone came to report that she hadn’t been found. She had her first sight of the young man that Tana had admired and drew her head back. She curled her lip in distaste.

Average in height with light brown hair and a plain face. Average build, but better fed than the average farmer she’d seen so far. His clothes were clean and looked pressed. No patches or worn spots indicated he came from a family of some means. Perhaps his family owned a shop in town or some land.

He may have stood out amongst the villagers a bit, but when one woke up to the twins, he wasn’t worth taking a second glance at. Not only appearance wise, but she could almost sense the arrogance coming from him. As he argued with the middle-aged man, Beks heard he was the son of a local small landlord and acted like it. Not only did he deny helping her escape, but he called her numerous names and insulted her family and livelihood.

Even if Beks wasn’t in Tana’s body, her blood would boil at what he was saying. What was worse was that none of the villagers defended her and let the idiot ramble on with his derogatory rant.

If Tana was alive, would she be hurt? Did one act of kindness excuse all of this? How desperate were you to like this fool?

When the sun began to set, despite not finding her, the villagers had to disperse. She found it funny that they still locked the door to the jail and the gate to the property. Soon, the rural jail that had been the center of attention the entire day was empty. Beks parted the dirt to give herself an exit and climbed out.

As she dusted off her ragged clothes, the smell of fires from wood burning stoves wafted in her direction and Beks frowned.

She’d been hiding the entire day and hadn’t eaten. Either this body was used to starving or she wasn’t as well as she’d like to admit, as hunger wasn’t registering. Regardless of whether she felt it or not, she needed to eat.

The wooden gate that closed off the property from the dirt road wasn’t very secure. It only reached her shoulders and was made of horizontal planks of wood with gaps between them. It was a ladder and climbing over took little effort.

Beks had paid close attention to where the villagers had come from and went down the road in the darkness. Her vision in the dark was better than before. She couldn’t see too far ahead of her, but she could make out the road and shapes a few paces around her. It was like she had a very dim, white lantern.

Laz and Lucian had explained that seeing the dark with biha was like seeing in the day, it’s just that the colors were much duller, almost shaded gray. Beks was thankful just to be able to see the road at night.

She approached the smattering of buildings that were built together and determined that this was the village. Unlike Kadmium, Aceria, and even the ruins of Gurani Island, there were no street lights. People would need to provide their own lanterns, but this only allowed Beks to be able to walk down the street unseen and unbothered.

When she did catch a rare lantern moving, she darted behind a wall or waited until they passed before continuing on. She wanted to find the market place, which in villages was usually the town square. If she could find a place to hide there, then she could listen to people talk.

If only I still had Nexus, she silently lamented. Since this was the future, she didn’t know if Nexus still existed. If it did, whose hands was it in?

Beks found the square easily and as she was trying to decide on the best place to hide along a green area, she heard a familiar voice. She snapped her head and squinted into the nearby alley before crouching behind some shrubs.

“...returns to her house?”

“Even if she returns to her house, what will she find? We turned that place upside down and couldn’t find anything!” That was the voice of that Tristan person Tana admired.

“What do you mean you couldn’t find anything?” The other voice belonged to a woman.

“I mean we couldn’t find anything of value. You said that your mother said that her mother was from Kadmus?”

Beks perked up at this.

The other woman rushed to answer. “Yes! My mother still remembers the first time she saw Tana’s mother. She was wearing nice clothes and jewelry. Her and the fisherman were living well for a while until she died.” The woman sounded irritated and then disapproving. “Do you think that they sold her good things after she died? The fisherman was poor before they were married and he might’ve sold her things after she was gone.”

“No, I don’t think so. That woman said that her father saved her mother’s things for her when she got married. I asked to see them once, but she refused, saying she wasn’t allowed to take it out until she got married.”

“Hah!” The woman scoffed. “She just wanted you to marry her.”

“Rowena, I’m not marrying anyone but you.”

Beks raised a brow. Rowena was the woman whose vegetable cart Tana allegedly tried to set on fire. That explained the cart they were standing next to.

“Never mind that. If she doesn't want to take it out, it must mean that they’ve been hidden somewhere...but where could she hide it?”

“The river?” Tristan asked.

“It could be anywhere....” There was a pause and Beks squinted. She could barely see the two figures standing in the dark. “Tristan, you have to find her and get her to tell you where the goods are. Without them, I can’t support my ill mother. If I can’t support her, your parents will never let me marry you.”

If she wasn’t trying to be quiet, Beks would’ve laughed. Did they think it was completely fine to ruin a girl’s life for their own marriage? Tana, you fell for the worst man, but I won’t let them get away with this.

“I’ll try, but I don’t know how far she’s gotten. If she’s smart, she would’ve run away.”

“Where would a girl like her go?”

“It isn’t as if she’s helpless,” Tristan seemed to unwillingly admit. “I saw her use fire. They came out of her hands so easily, but she doesn’t show it off, so it’ll be difficult for others to believe us.”

Beks narrowed her eyes. So, it seems that Tristan had seen Tana use fire biha and that’s why they accused her of being an arsonist. And if Tana’s mother was from Kadmus, there was the link to a possible biha-user Beks was looking for.

“What if we get her to use fire in front of everyone? If she’s guilty, my uncle promised me that she’d be exiled from the village, unable to take anything with her but the clothes on her back.”

“We’d have to find her first.”

Good luck with that. Beks remained hidden and was forced to listen to their conversation become affectionate. And then too affectionate. Just as she was about to chide them for having their tryst in the shadows of the town square, Tristan said he knew a better place and dragged her off. Despite her disgust, Beks felt that they’d be most vulnerable in the midst of their little affair, so she followed them.

Before she set out on her mission, she might as well get revenge out of the way.

The ‘better place’ Tristan talked about was a field of rapeseed that had just started to bloom. Beks rolled her eyes.

A field? How desperate are you? Even when they were on a military campaign, her husbands made sure there was at least one sleeping mat with plenty of cushions. She pursed her lips. In retrospect, perhaps she was more used to a comfortable lifestyle than she thought.

Once the two lovers began to shed clothes and lose themselves in each other, Beks put her hands against the ground and released biha. There was a sudden yell of surprise as the earth a few paces away sank, creating a narrow, deep hole that wouldn’t be easy to climb out of, if at all.

Beks then casually gathered what remains of clothes had been tossed to the side under the cover of darkness and rapeseed stalks, and walked away. Whatever happened to the two people who tried to set up Tana was in the hands of the gods now.

As for the clothes, what looked to be a shirt and someone’s dress, were burned when she reached the river, which wasn’t too far away. She wanted to find out where Tana had lived, but there wasn’t time. She still had to gather her own information without Nexus.

Beks returned to the town square well before dawn. She knew that any later, and she’d start to run into people on the road heading to set up stalls. The place she’d selected to hide was a small rocky outcropping that had a large tree growing out of it. The tree would provide shade across the surrounding lawn, so it seemed like an ideal place to set up a stall for shade.

Beks stopped by Rowena’s vegetable cart and picked up some fruit that remained in baskets below. In another life, Beks would’ve felt some guilt and tried to leave money. But this time, she had neither money nor guilt. She even took a few more pieces before going to hide for the day.

After enclosing herself behind the rocks and leaving gaps in different sides so she could peer through, she settled in. The sun was just peeking out of the horizon when the first vendors arrived. By the time the sun had fully emerged, the town square had become a market place.

Information gathering wasn’t as easy as Nexus made it out to be, but she still picked up some information. Much of it was around Tana and how she escaped from prison. No one could find her, but everyone guessed that she left the valley. Apparently, men had been stationed around her family home in case she returned to get any valuables before she left, but she hadn’t returned.

There were guesses on where she’d gone and it seemed that the only real way of leaving was to head south, where the valley opened up into a flat farming region. North was a gorge that the river came from. There was nothing much there, except the dam.

This piqued Beks’ attention. When several old ladies were chattering with each other about Tana and the dam was brought up, Beks dared to call out from her hiding place while they were distracted. “Isn’t the dam dangerous right now?”

In the chaos, no one noticed that the voice came from behind the rocks. Instead, people began to voice their concerns over the dam. The villages in the area that depended on the dam didn’t have enough money to pay for repairs. Some blamed corrupt officials and landowners.

“I heard that the Temple offered to pay for the repairs, but I don’t think it’s gone through.”

“With what money can the Temple use?” Another person scoffed sneered at the idea. “All they have left is that complex in the middle of the river and there are less and less worshippers each year.”

“Well, someone better hurry and fix it soon. My son says it may not last through the next rainfall.”

Beks silently calculated based on the growing season, and then silently cursed. She had perhaps two, maybe three months, at most before the harvest season and then rain and snow runoff from higher grounds in the winter.

With her influence and power in her previous life, repairs could be done in that short time. At least enough repairs to see it through before a better solution could be made, but by herself, there was no way she’d be able to fix the structural damage of a dam. She didn’t know where to begin to fix it.

She had more knowledge building a new one.

She spent the rest of the day observing the village people. There were far more than she thought, of varying ages, and they were all from the surrounding area within the valley. This was disconcerting.

After watching them for an entire day, Beks tossed the idea of going to find the Heryan family and urging them to evacuate before the dam broke out of her head. First, there was no guarantee that she could find them in time, and if she did, there was also no guarantee that they’d listen to her, who was technically a wanted criminal.

On the off chance the Heryan family listened and left, what about everyone else? Their friends? Their neighbors? Would they see the Heryan family fleeing and join them? Farmers were unlikely to leave their land unless the situation was life or death.

Her intuition told her that people would stay. If people stayed and the dam broke, then the entire valley would be wiped out by the flooding.

Beks closed her eyes and leaned back against the stone as outside, the vendors packed up to leave.

Even if she hadn’t settled on her next course of action, Beks found herself following the river upstream, into the gorge. It took over half the night to reach the entrance to the gorge, and she continued to walk until sunrise. It was only then that she ate her last remaining fruit and found a place to sleep.

This time, her sleep was short. She woke up when the sun was still up and then pressed forward.

She finally reached the old dam by sunset, and the villagers were right to be worried. The dam was sloping up, covered with crumbling stone and a layer of dirt and grass. It was built quite high and connected one side of the gorge walls to the other. Parts had decayedover time and there were plenty of places where stones that were once at the top had tumbled down. It was not maintained for at least several decades.

Two of the four spillways were locked with dirt and rubble and silt built up a great deal at the bottom. This meant that water wasn’t moving through and so pressure was building behind the dam. That only made the problem worse.

Beks was certain she was in danger just standing there, yet she had to get up and check the reservoir to see just how much water was there.

Not daring to climb the actual dam slope, Beks went out of her way to create crude stairs along the gorge to climb up to the top. It was dark when she reached it and her ability to see was limited, so she went to sleep against a tree along the forest atop the gorge. Her stomach rumbled, but without anything to eat, all she could do was ignore it.

This is your life now, Rebecca. If you finish this, you need to figure out what you can do. Perhaps, go to Kadmus. See if there is any use for a biha user. If she went to Kadmus, she could learn more about the chances her past life put into effect and perhaps even learn about her descendants. Did she have great-grandchildren? Did they look like her?

Did they look like Laz and Lucian? Her eyes reddened and she shut them tight as a wave of heartbreak swept over her. In this world, was there a Princess Rebecca to even have a child?

And what about her family? Did the Carolines still reign on Sagittate? Were her great-grand nieces and nephews diverting beast tides in the Northern Pass? Did Laurence and Eleanor’s descendants make good rulers? What about on the Langshe side?

Her heart ached as she curled into a ball against the base of a tree.

Where she was now, everyone she knew was dead.

Where were her husbands buried? If she found it, she would tend to their graves, if possible.

Stop thinking about it. There isn’t anything you can do about it. Just focus on repaying your debt and save the last Great Oracle’s family. She could figure everything else out afterwards.

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The one good thing about her situation aside from the opportunity to save the last Great Oracle’s family, was that with Tana’s impressive control of biha coupled with Beks’ well and multiple elemental biha abilities, she was her own one-person construction crew.

However, in the limited time she had before the autumn rains and winter snow, it was still impossible for her to learn how to and then implement repairs on the dam.

So, Beks decided to start from scratch.

Further down the gorge, the walls closed in and narrowed, creating an ideal spot to create a dam in a short period of time, as the space that needed to be covered was shorter. However, if the old dam burst, the power of the water crashing down could overwhelm the new dam.

The amount of water that would collide with the new dam needed to be controlled. Beks found that she had water biha, but didn’t have the confidence to stop an entire burst dam of water. What she needed was a place for the water to go before it hit the new dam.

This is what Beks worked on first.

If the dam burst before she could build the new dam, at the very least, the water would have a place to go other than shooting through the gorge and flooding the valley.

In Kadmus, the dam she’d help get approved to be built and funded had channels that led from the spillways into secondary reservoirs underground. The channels could be opened when there was too much water or pressure to relieve the dam and manage water flow on the river.

And once more, Beks found herself digging a glorified hole in the ground.

“If I ever run into Rid Callan in rebirth, I will make sure he and his family live the most comfortable life,” Beks muttered to herself as she climbed down a crude, tiered pit she'd cut little-by-little into the gorge walls. She made that old man do so much work and now that she was doing it herself, she knew exactly how difficult it was.

She spent a day estimating how much water was in the reservoir to figure out how big the emergency spillways needed to be. Before the gorge began to narrow, she cut into the walls to get into and under the gorge walls.

A series of wide slits facing upriver would lead into reservoirs beneath the gorge walls that were both deep and wide. In addition, the direction of the slits made it difficult to notice from downstream.

Another factor she had to consider was keeping this all hidden from the villagers less than a day’s walk downstream. The only thing that was helping her was the harvest season. For farmers, everyone would be involved in the harvesting and there was little chance groups would go up stream.

Regardless, most of her work above ground was done in the late afternoon, when most people would be preparing to go home. At night, she moved the chunks of stone like puzzle pieces by cutting them apart with biha and then using the ground beneath those chunks to move them up to the location where the new damn was going to be built.

It was a seemingly endless task that both mentally and physically wore at her. It didn’t help that she didn’t have a steady supply of food. Beks was worried about being caught if she went into the village, so she opted to fish for food and forage. Edible plants didn’t change much in less than three centuries, thankfully.

She was already a month into her project when she finished the first emergency reservoir. Beks made the slits for the reservoir on the opposite side before aligning the chunks of stone she’d cut out into a crude dam.

If she wasn’t moving earth and stone around, she would go to look for food and trade with caravans for something more than berries and fish. Even when her body rested, her mind was reviewing everything she could find about dams and how to build them. The library in her mind was limited, as she hadn’t spent much time reading on construction techniques, so she did the best she could.

The foundation alone took two weeks.

Time was moving fast and Beks began working at night, foregoing sleep in order to have enough time to hollow out a new reservoir for the water to go.

Every few days, she would walk back up stream to check on the status of the old dam. Her heart quickened each time she saw it.

It always seemed as if there was new damage, new cracks, or the silt was going to block the spillway. She almost suspected that there was someone sabotaging it, but she didn’t have time to sit there and watch the old dam.

She still had the new dam to finish and the second new reservoir was only halfway done.

Beks paid close attention to the flow of the river. The spillway she created for the new dam was built around the existing river to avoid cutting it off and alerting the villagers downstream. Though she tried to avoid blocking it, some sections were unavoidable.

At least, by the time the villagers noticed and sent someone up, the new dam was mostly complete.

Confusion as to why a new dam suddenly appeared became the talk of the village.

With the second reservoir yet to be completed, Beks was forced to retreat further up river to avoid being seen by the villagers who came to see the new dam. After the third day of their investigation, Beks followed a road she’d seen from the top of the gorge that went east.

If her memory served correctly, there were bound to be caravan routes there. During the days when she couldn’t sleep, she fished and foraged, and took what extra she had to trade in those caravan routes.

She’d managed to buy some rough cloth to sleep in and traded or sold some raw, semi-precious stones she’d collected during her digging for other goods. Her clothes now were still nowhere near as fine as what she wore in her previous life, but there were no tears, patches, nor was it ill-fitting on her frame.

It was good enough. At least she was presentable, which made caravan merchants more willing to trade with her. Of course, being presentable also brought more attention. Tana was thin and average in height, but her face cleaned up well. Beks’ posture and the way she subconsciously carried herself combined with that face was enough to attract unwanted attention.

After the third merchant tried to lure her into joining him, Beks bought a cloak with a hood and sewed a portion in front to cover her face. It allowed her blue eyes to be the only thing visible. The blue eyes were her favorite feature because they reminded her of her husbands. For some time after she first caught her reflection in clear water, Beks found herself wishing that her children would have blue eyes like their fathers.

She had to force that thought out of her mind to keep from crying once more.

After trading for some coins and then buying flat bread from a passing caravan, Beks tucked her things away in the pockets she’d sewn into the cloak and decided to follow the top of the gorge down to the valley. There were few paths that led down, but villagers rarely left the valley.

When they did, it was always through the southern area, as that led to a more populated area that was now the joint territory of the Empire of Langshe and Kadmus, according to what the caravan merchants told her. It was referred to as the “Empire”, as it was the only true empire of the continent.

A few coastal cities had resisted, and even the naval power of Paraxes was pushed to its archipelago territories, with the mainland having been conquered. Beks almost wanted to spit out ‘good’ when she heard this.

After checking to see if her area was still crawling with villagers, and being disappointed when she saw them climbing over the structure she built with her blood, sweat, and biha, Beks headed into the village.

Unlike when she left, the vast swaths of yellow and green had either been harvested or were about to be harvested. It was easy to see where one plot of land ended and another started, as nearly all the farms had workers and animals on the land.

As a result, the town square wasn’t half as lively as it was when she left. During the harvest, everyone who could help was out on the farm. Unsurprisingly young children and the elderly staffed the stalls and carts.

Except for Rowena Grosh’s vegetable cart.

Though Beks had focused on trying to find out about the dam when she was hiding in the town square, she wasn’t deaf to the brief commotion caused when the village elder’s niece was found ‘naked’ with the landlord’s son in the rapeseed fields that didn’t even belong to the landlord. Of course, Beks had only taken two articles of clothing to destroy when she left them trapped, but being half-dressed had still so easily turned into ‘naked’.

Rowena’s vegetable cart didn’t have many customers, but with her was Tristan, who looked defensive and even yelled at any passers-by who gave Rowena a critical look. Beks raised a brow. No wonder she had few customers.

Interested in the gossip, Beks adjusted her cloak and walked through the marketplace, looking at wares and acting as if she were just passing through.

As she looked over some pickled vegetables, she glanced at Rowena’s vegetable cart, and asked the old woman if there was something wrong.

The old woman sneered and shook her head. “She’s the niece of the village elder. It’s just her and her mother, but because the village elder is her uncle, they were given respect. All for nothing, if you ask me. She ran off and had an affair with the landlord’s son!”

“Scandalous,” Beks said, drawing her head back a bit, as if it were shocking news to her. “But they’re young and in love. Sometimes, this happens.”

“The landlord’s son was engaged!”

Oh! This is getting good! Beks almost jumped. This was more exciting news than she’d heard in the last few weeks exerting biha to move stones. “Who was he engaged to?”

“The daughter of the fisherman and his late wife, who was formerly a guard to a Kadmus noble family in the north.” The old woman shook her head, disappointed. “I always thought Tana was such a nice child, but to think that she’d try to burn down Rowena’s cart out of jealousy.”

Beks choked back her cough. What…why does this always happen? She looked up at the sky. Is this a joke? Beneath her hood, her face twisted with disgust. “Why...why were they engaged? A landlord and a fisherman's children? That doesn’t really match, does it?”

“The landlord was promised a substantial dowry. To his death, the fisherman didn’t spend any of his wife’s money or belongings, preferring to live in poverty just to save it for his daughter.”

There it is. Beks nodded. “Tragic.”

She bought a small scoop of pickled radish to munch on as she continued to walk. She bought some more food that she could bring back to the gorge, but as she left the village, she felt as if she were being followed. Dressed in a dark cloak covering one’s face attracted attention while in the town square, so Beks didn’t think twice about the gazes she felt.

But now that she was out of such a large public setting and was walking up the road, even with farms in their fields on either side of her, it was clear that this time, someone was following her.

She glanced to the side, but didn’t slow her pace. All she had on her was a small, chipped knife she had bought from a caravan. It wouldn’t make too deep of a cut if it was sharp enough to cut human skin.

Regardless, she reached into her cloak and made sure it was close to her body as she walked. She planned to cross over the river on one of the bridges and head back to the gorge. She was almost over a wooden bridge when yelling was heard behind her.

She looked over her shoulder and frowned as a small posse of about five young men had been following her and finally dared to try to stop her. She looked them once over and then continued walking, as if they’d made a mistake and tried to stop the wrong person.

“Wait!” Tristan, the landlord’s son and would be fiancé of Tana, rushed to the front of the group. “Stop where you are, Tana Leyta!”

With a heavy, but poor attempt at the accent of the caravan merchants, Beks raised an arm and tried to dissuade them. “Wrong person.”

“I would recognize those eyes anywhere!” Tristan shouted. “Tana, wait! Let’s talk!”

Beks continued to walk, this time quickening her speed. The footsteps behind her quickened as well, and Beks did not slow down. She sprinted forward, pumping her arms and legs to get as far away as possible.

She spent weeks using her biha, mastering some parts of it, even, but her body wasn’t the same as her well-fed, better trained one of her past life. Tana’s body was still a malnourished peasant girl.

And as her lungs burned and her legs began to tighten, Beks realized she couldn’t outrun those men. Gritting her teeth, she opted to stand her ground. While not as strong and not as fast, not to mention lacking in stamina, Beks still knew how to use a small weapon. Perhaps her technique would be enough.

If it wasn’t, then at least someone would get stabbed.

She kidded to a stop, but her stomach lurched. She’d eaten more in her day wandering in the village than she had in the last few weeks and her body reacted. Her eyes widened and she felt her stomach contract. Unable to stop herself, she tugged down her cloak and threw up on the side of the road.

The five men running after her stumbled to a stop as they saw her heaving up whatever she ate. She didn’t notice their disgusted expressions, but she did sense their hesitation to get closer.

As Wrath says, a win is a win. Beks coughed. She wiped the bile off her mouth with the back of her sleeve and lifted her head to look towards them with a pale, gaunt face. “What do you want?”

Four of the five men looked at Tristan, who was grimacing with disgust after she threw up in front of them.

“You...where have you been?” he asked as he narrowed his eyes.

“You wanted to exile me, didn’t you?” Beks asked. “Since you so desperately wanted to be with your lover. Heard they found you two in the rapeseed fields.”

Tristan’s face heated up as the four men behind him seemed to turn away to keep from laughing. “What does it matter to you! How dare you escape-”

“Why are you pretending you didn’t have any part in it?” Beks asked as she lifted her mask up. “You dug me out and told me to go! Are you mad because even though I left, I didn’t tell you where my dowry was?”

Tristan began to balk as the men with him turned back to him with a frown. “You told us you had nothing to do with her escape!”

“I didn’t!”

“Then why does she say you did!”

“I don’t know! She's a liar!”

“I’m a liar?” Beks sneered. “Didn’t you and your lover accuse me of arson even though there was no evidence? Even the guards said that they couldn’t find anything on me that would constitute evidence!”

“What evidence is needed? I saw you use fire with my own eyes!”

Beks squinted at him. “Are you crazy? What would I use to start a fire?”

“You don’t need to use anything!” Tristan threw his arms in the air as he grew flustered. “You use fire! Like those people talk about from Kadmus! You can create fire out of nothing!”

Beks looked at him as if he were crazy. “Wow, if you didn’t want to marry me, you should’ve just said so. You would lie so brazenly to be with another woman.”

“I’m not lying!” Tristan shouted. “I saw you! You can use fire!”

Beks glanced at the men with him. “Is this what he’s been telling you?”

“First I’ve heard of it....” One man said, looking at Tristan strangely. “Tristan, are you sure-”

“I’m sure! Do you know what, never mind that! Just capture her! She’s still a wanted criminal!”

Beks stepped back and held out her dagger. “I’ve been away for a few weeks. I’ve learned some things.”

“Tana, put the knife down,” one of the men tried to urge her. “If you come with us willingly, no one needs to get hurt.”

“I don’t want to come with you. If someone needs to get hurt so I don’t, so be it,” Beks replied.

Tristan rolled his eyes. “Just grab-”

A dull thud seemed to echo from the far north end of the valley. The men in front of her immediately looked towards the opening of the gorge, causing Beks to drop her guard and turn around.

“What was that?” one of the men asked as a birds began to fill the sky, squawking and flying downstream from the gorge.

“Is the Empire doing military exercises?”

“No,” Beks said as her eyes widened as her heart sank. She knew what it was, as she’d been dreading it for weeks. “The dam-”

“The dam broke!” A farmer shouted in the fields.

“But there’s a new dam!” one of the men said. “My father went there yesterday and-”

“I also went there yesterday. The new dam is too small! All that water coming from the reservoir will tear it apart! Everyone was saying that when they were looking it over. We need to evacuate!”

Beks looked back at the men and found that two were already running off while the third was shouting for those remaining in the field to get to higher ground as the damn burst.

“My brother’s still there,” one of the men said, his eyes wide. “He...he went there today-”

“Gabriel, it may be too late for him-”

“No-”

“You need to get to your mother and sister!” The man who was yelling at the farmers dragged his friend forward, urging him to go evacuate his remaining family.

Tristan shook his head. “No...that can’t be the dam-” Beks turned around and began running. “Tana! Where are you going? Are you crazy? That’s the wrong direction!”

Beks didn’t bother to answer her. The second reservoir wasn’t complete. It was barely half finished. The new dam wasn’t completed either. It didn’t reach the height she originally wanted.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she raced to the path to the top of the gorge. It was suicide to run up the river, but she still needed to see if the new dam would hold. She ran until her lungs felt as if they’d explode and her legs began to shake.

As she approached, she realized that the water that should’ve burst through the old dam hadn’t reached her yet. She slowed her jog until she limped forward, but the river below her barely swelled. She narrowed her eyes, her chest tight as she prayed that the new dam would hold.

Sweat poured down the sides of her head as she dragged her exhausted body far enough to see the dam.

To her relief, it was standing.

Beks let out a cry as her legs gave way beneath her. Her skinny knees hit the hard dirt and she covered her face and cried.

Several people were standing at the top of the dam, cheering as the water lapped near the top. It appeared wet, so at one point the initial wave had gone over, but it wasn’t by much. Most of the water had been diverted to the reservoirs she’d carved into the gorge walls. Since the water was still so high, it meant that there weren’t enough to hold all the water, but at least it held most of it.

The gorge now acted as a tiered system and for the time being, the new dam and reservoirs would prevent a massive wave of water from washing out the valley.

“That’s it...that’s all I can do,” Beks said. She did what she could, even if it was to delay and mitigate what was inevitable. She didn’t have the strength to keep going and lay down on the ground. Her body ached all over. Her legs felt boneless as her heart and lungs burned. She tried to take deep, even breaths, but she was so at a loss that she continued to pant.

Beks closed her eyes. She was so tired.

Rest, she told herself. She wasn’t under the shade of a tree or had anything to lean on, but it didn’t matter. Beks laid on her stomach, her arms crossed under her head as her eyes grew heavy.

╔═════════════════ ∘◦ ♔ ◦∘ ═════════════════╗

It felt as if she’d just closed her eyes, but when she woke up, she felt surprisingly well rested. Her body still felt heavy, but the burning sensation in her lungs and her pounding heart had subsided.

Beks opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry, but as it cleared, she jerked her head back and screamed internally.

The floating eye was back.

“You could’ve just saved her family,” a curious voice asked in her head. “Why did you work so hard to save those who imprisoned you?”

Beks closed her eyes once more and relaxed. Xeria wouldn’t kill her. In fact, Beks felt almost safe with the goddess’ floating eye.

“Plenty of people hate me; that doesn’t mean that everyone else deserves to die by association,” Beks replied. “If I have the ability, why would I allow such a tragedy to happen?”

There was no expression visible on the eye, but Beks could feel its satisfaction. “Good answer, Inheritor of the Divine.”

Beks let out a small laugh. “That’s what I’m actually called?”

“The name must have come from somewhere.”

Beks took a deep breath. “Now what?”

“Now?”

Beks opened her eyes and glanced around. Like the summoning, she was once more floating in a blank space. “If I’m here,” she said. “I’m not in the future any more. What happens now? What happened to Tana’s body? And the late Great Oracle’s future now that her family is alive?”

“Tana has already passed.”

Beks shut her eyes. She thought so. “Was it the wound to the back of the head?”

“Yes.”

“Poor thing.”

“I will see to it that she is reborn well,” Xeria said. “Is that not what I am the goddess of?”

“What about the late Great Oracle’s future?”

“There will be no late Great Oracle.”

Beks narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean? If she doesn’t go back, I won’t exist-”

“Inheritor, are you misunderstanding? In this future where you saved her family, the Muil Stones no longer exist. She cannot go back, even if she wanted to. As in the original life, you survived well into adulthood, were married, had children. The only difference is there are no reborn oracles. She was supposed to go back to kill you, and she refused. It is the same as if she never went back.”

“But isn’t it a cycle? If she doesn’t go back how will I find out about the Muil Stones and destroy them...how were they even destroyed?” Beks asked. Now she was completely confused.

“A summoning consumes the Muil Stones. Each time one of them has been reborn, it is to the past. To a time when the Muil Stones weren’t used, so each time, the Muil Stones existed until they were needed. They could be used over and over because they reset the course of events. That was the cycle we could not break without your assistance,” Xeria’s voice sounded angry. “Now, there are no more Muil Stones. I am no longer at the whim of those people. Inheritor, don’t overthink it. I am the goddess of chaos and rebirth; I know what I’m doing.”

Beks took another low, even breath. It took all her strength not to doubt that. “How was such a thing discovered to begin with?”

“An Inheritor.”

“What?” Beks looked at the eye with irritation. “You said that Inheritors were meant to do the will of the gods-”

“But they can be corrupted. The owner of the heart discovered such a summoning by accident. She went back after the death of her loved ones to save them. From then on, every so often, a so-called priestess would appear, requesting a specific person’s body....I’m sure you know the rest.”

Beks let out a low breath. “I see...”

“Do you think you did something useless building the dam and saving those people?”

“No. I don’t. Besides, the late Great Oracle had worked hard to go back in time to make sure the Temple did not kill me. This is the least I can do for her.”

The voice in her head chuckled. “You are resigned to your fate.”

“I can summon a god, but I can’t control fate, can I? Eventually, it will right itself. All those priestesses sacrificed themselves for what? For the Temple to collapse...for me to live. To end your summonings.”

“Yet, you are filled with uncertainty.”

“Because I am uncertain!” Beks almost snapped. “I’m floating...gods only know where. My host body is dead! I can’t go back to when I want to! What can I do now?”

Xeria was quiet. Beks dropped her shoulders, briefly wondering if this is where her consciousness would linger for eternity.

“Do you not want to return?”

Beks shut her eyes tight and clenched her jaw, trying to restrain her bitterness. “You said I can’t.”

“You can never return to the moment you summoned me.” Beks felt her eyes fill with tears at the reminder. “But I can send you somewhere else.”

Beks let out a small, cold laugh. “Another corpse?”

“No, this time the rules have some...flexibility. You are not bound to the limitations of a summoning,” Xeria’s voice echoed.

“At least tell me about this person. The last time, I had no idea who I was or where I was.”

“She is a pregnant woman in a coma.”

Beks narrowed her eyes at once as she thought of the last pregnant person she knew. With her luck, it was some divine joke. “It better not be Iris El-”

“It is not.” The voice cut off her thoughts at once. “Tell me, Inheritor of the Divine. What does your intuition tell you?” Beks was taking a deep breath. “Does it tell you to trust me?”

Beks closed her eyes once more. “It says to just accept it.”

Laughter filled her head. “That’s good enough.” Beks tried to open her eyes, but found that they weren’t obeying. Her body grew heavier. “You have my gratitude, Inheritor. Rest assured; we shall not meet again.”

Beks felt her body being pulled upwards, into a vacuum before all her senses stopped and her mind went blank.

The faint trickling of water was the first thing that seemed to register after what felt like both an eternity of silence and a snap of a finger. Beks didn’t have the strength to move, but reveled in the relaxing sound of water.

As she listened, she heard the sound of birds in the distance. She wanted to smile.

Then she felt the cool water against her skin. It was much cooler from the shoulders down. From the shoulders up, it was warm...and humid.

Humid?

She heard shuffling and felt a gentle movement beneath her. She was propped up on something in the water, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.

A man’s gentle voice reached her. “Snowflake, you don’t have to hold her up with your tail this whole time. She wouldn’t want you to be tired.”