“Katia, are you okay?” Donut asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m not even a little okay. Nothing about this is okay.” She rubbed her eyes, looking about the gore-filled room. “Goddamn it, there’s nowhere to sit down and have a breakdown in here.”
We all just looked at each other and started to laugh. There was no reason to laugh. None of this was funny. But we laughed. We laughed long and hard. It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense, but we were alive, for now at least, and we had each other, and that was something.
The moment ended as quickly as it started.
“Carl,” Donut suddenly hissed. “There’s someone in there. In the mantaur apartment. They’re trying to hide, like they have a spell or a skill, but I just saw a blink on my map. It’s a blue dot. It’s someone small.”
Fucking hell. I suddenly felt so very tired.
“Silfa, is that you?” I called. “Come out. We’re all done fighting. We’re done hurting each other.”
The door to the apartment flew open, and the small fairy burst from the room. She rocketed toward the exit door and tried to unlock it.
Donut leaped from Katia’s shoulder, bounced once off the wall and landed atop the screaming fairy, pinning her to the floor. The fairy gurgled as her head went below the line of liquid gore. The blood in the car was slowly draining away, but there was just so much of it.
“Don’t you fucking hurt her,” someone cried from the other side of the door. “I swear to god if you hurt her I will kill you all.”
“Let her go!” another woman screamed, frantic, banging on the door. “You let her go right now!”
I reached down and grasped the healer. She was bigger than most fairies, bigger than the ones from the second floor and that manager from the Desperado Club, but I could still hold onto her with a single hand. She screamed and struggled. A weak ice spell shot from her hand and blasted down, hitting me in the leg. With my ice resistance, I didn’t even feel it.
“Calm down,” I said. “Silfa. Jesus. Calm the fuck down. Quit wiggling. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Traitor,” she yelled at Katia. “She saved your life. She saved all of us, and you killed her. What are we going to do now?”
“Silfa,” I said. “I am going to let you go, and we are going to talk. We don’t want to fight. We are just going to talk. Okay?”
The fairy stopped struggling, but she glowered at me.
Donut returned to my shoulder. She hissed at the fairy. “If you try something, I will rip you from the air and eat off your wings. I’ve done it before.”
“Okay, everyone chill,” I said again. I let her go, and she flitted into the air, buzzing up to the ceiling and against the wall. She crossed her arms. Blood dripped off her body. The train bumped as we hit something on the tracks, and the healer hit her head and winced. I stepped back, grasped the throttle, and slowed us further. I did not like driving blind. As long as the monsters on the tracks were only in ones and twos, we’d be okay, especially since the train was much heavier now. But still, we needed to keep it slow.
“You’re a murderer,” Silfa said to Katia.
“Katia didn’t want to kill Hekla,” I said. “But Hekla did intend on killing Katia, and I believe she was planning on sacrificing you, too. I’m pretty sure I know why. I’m not mad at you guys. She gambled and lost. It’s done. It is pointless for us to fight now. We’re all on the same side.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Silfa said. “Hekla would never sacrifice me. She was protecting us.”
“Hekla was protecting you. You as a group. She told you to stop healing Katia, didn’t she? And she told you to hide in the apartment. Not leave the car, but to go into that room. She told you to hide in the room if anything went down. Didn’t she?”
The fairy didn’t answer. She just glared. I took that as an affirmative.
“Look, I didn’t know her very well, but someone once told me that she was a very practical person. She was playing this like a game of chess, and she was willing to sacrifice others for what she thought was the greater good.”
“Hekla would never hurt me,” Silfa said. “My girls wouldn’t allow it.”
“But she told you to stop healing Katia, didn’t she? Probably waited until the end to make sure we got through that last horde first, right?”
She paused. “Eva told me to do it. Not Hekla.”
I nodded. That made sense. Eva was Hekla’s fixer. Her lieutenant. Like I thought, the one who did the dirty work. “And she told you to wait in the train car. Not leave.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Don’t you see? You were the bait. Why do you think she wanted you nearby? She wanted Katia to die, and she wanted me to get angry. I wouldn’t have gotten mad at her or Eva. I would’ve been mad at you. She thought I would’ve attacked you. Maybe even hurt or killed you. She thought I was unhinged.”
“You are unhinged. You’re crazy, and everybody knows it. We’ve seen the videos. You get mad for no reason. You laugh when you pick up body parts. Hekla would never have let you hurt me.”
“Just like she wouldn’t deliberately shoot Katia with two of those invisible bolts from her crossbow?” I pulled the broken bolt from my inventory. It remained invisible in my hand. I dipped it in blood and held it up. Its shape appeared for a moment before everything flowed off it. I stepped forward and handed it up to her. She didn’t move. “Oh, just take it. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She hesitantly reached forward and grasped the broken crossbow bolt. Her eyes went big as she examined its properties. I took it back. “This means nothing. This could be yours.” She didn’t sound so sure anymore.
I continued. “She would’ve been forced to kill me if I attacked you. There was probably a whole plan in place, something to distract Donut. It would’ve been quick.”
“Why? Why would she do this?”
I sighed and thumbed at Donut, who remained on my shoulder. “With me and Katia dead, Donut would’ve been all alone. She would have been forced to join you guys. And so would Mordecai, our manager. That’s what Hekla wanted. How many healers do you have in your party? It’s a lot, isn’t it? I saw all the fairies. It was an acceptable trade off. One healer plus Katia, who hasn’t been in the party since the end of the second floor, in exchange for one of the dungeon’s best assets? If it had worked, the party would’ve been better for it. No offense.”
“I would never have joined with Hekla if she’d killed you, Carl,” Donut said.
I thought about that. “Maybe she would have sent Eva to kill me. Or those two mages she had posted right outside. And once that was done, she would’ve had them killed, too. Or banished just to keep you happy, Donut. Who knows? She was a shrink. She probably had some big plan worked out. I don’t know the details, but I think I’m right.”
“I still wouldn’t have joined her,” Donut grumbled, though not as loud.
“Is Eva still alive?” I asked Katia.
“Yes,” Katia said. “I don’t know where she is. I think maybe she got back on the train. I sent her a message, but she’s not answering.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I said to Silfa. “Ask Eva if she was supposed to protect you from me. I bet she was. Maybe Hekla was planning on sacrificing her, too.”
“It wasn’t Eva,” Silfa eventually said. “My daughters, my real daughters, were standing guard right outside. Hekla told them if anything went wrong to kill you first. Damnit. I shouldn’t be here. I own a bakery. I just want my girls to be safe. I just want to go home. I shouldn’t be here.”
“Your daughters are the two right outside?” I asked. They were the two mages who’d jumped into action once the shit hit the fan.