Chapter Text
“Bzzt. You have been summoned to save the world, brave hero. Bzzt.”
“Is this a joke?” Janie Anong knelt inside a glowing cube. Blazing white walls surrounded her, identical whether she looked up or down. A translucent figure floated before her, washed-out and colorless, twice the size of a human woman with hair flowing to the ground. At first it seemed like a ghost, then it flickered in and out like a hologram. A sound like static crackled the air.
“Are you the usual goddess character?” Jaine reached out to touch, but her hand went through the other’s robe.
“Bzzt,” the figure answered.
“This can’t be real.” Unfortunately, saying it out loud made everything feel more real. “How did truck-kun even find me in America?”
Janie’s last memory did not involve a truck. She remembered a step breaking under her foot, a moment of panic, then the sharp pain of her forehead slamming against the tile floor. “I told my landlord that the steps were loose! I texted him three times. There’s a paper trail, he’s going to be in so much trouble. My parents will sue his ass.”
Unfortunately, speaking about her death only made it feel more real. This would devastate her parents and her older brother. The local author exposition would be tomorrow, and she’d been preparing for weeks at the library where she worked. She’d intended to ask a beautiful redheaded romance author out on a date after the expo finished and it would no longer be awkward if she got rejected. The last chapter of her latest favorite manga would be released in three days. She shivered, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “Excuse me? Lady Goddess?” It wouldn’t hurt to be polite. “Is this an isekai story where I can return home after completing a mission? I would like very much to return home, please. Even if I’m already…d-dead…you can give me a new body or turn back time, right?”
“Pick your power, brave hero. Bzzt.”
Janie swallowed hard. “Could you at least give me a clue about what kind of enemy I’m supposed to fight? That would be useful in figuring out the optimal power. For example, if you want me to fight dragon, it would be a problem if I pick fire. Unless it’s an ice instead of a fire-breathing dragon—there are many cool types of dragons. I love dragons, I can’t promise not to defect if they’re the enemy.” She was babbling. “Um, I would really like an answer to my question about going home.”
“…Power. Bzzt.” The ghostly figure held out her hand as if offering to shake.
Slowly, Janie stood up and crossed her arms. She summoned what will she had left in her frazzled state. “I’m not going to fight a demon king or whatever for you unless you agree to let me go home afterward.”
“Bzzt.”
Janie did not know how much time passed while she argued with an image. It had been long enough for her to bargain, plead, and regret ever signing a lease in her dump of an apartment. At one point she’d collapsed sobbing to the ground and apologizing to her family for dying. Throughout the ordeal, the presumed goddess had not once spoken or moved. Although Janie had tried to hold out as long as possible, she’d never once felt thirsty or hungry. She did not know if that meant there was no need for food and water in this place, or if her willpower hadn’t lasted that long.
“Fine, if I get out of here then hopefully someone can answer my questions.” Janie rubbed her swollen eyes. At this point, she realized something possibly more horrifying than being isekaied into a strange and violent world—being stuck inside a glowing cube with a malfunctioning system and no way out. What if she picked a power and nothing happened? She did not want to contemplate the very, very real possibility that she’d be trapped in here for eternity, unable to die.
Shaking her head, she focused on the important dilemma at hand. She was tempted to pick the power to transfer between worlds so she could go back home—but then she remembered she was dead back home. Without a guarantee she could obtain a new body, that power might actually be ability to commit suicide. What would be the strongest ability? Time-stopping had always been at the top of her list of cool powers. But the goddess character had said something about saving the world, and if she was expected to fight an indestructible demon king in order to go home, then stopping time would be only good for letting her run away. She really didn’t have the patience for a thousand-year-long training montage. The power to reset to the past or come back from the dead would maximize her own safety, but she’d read too many horrible stories about main characters trapped in time loops repeatedly dying. An indestructible body could become a curse for the same reason. A black hole-type destruction would be useful against nearly any foe, but that seemed like a power that could destroy allies too. Janie desperately hoped she wouldn’t be ordered to fight alone. No matter what power she considered, she could also remember some villain from a fictional story who could easily counter it.
How could she figure out the best power when she didn’t have the faintest idea what she might be up against?
She grabbed the hand, her fingers going through. Her skin became cold as long as she lingered inside a ghost. “I would like to be a hundred times more powerful than anyone else—” No, what if she got sent to some horrific death world where she had to face more than a hundred enemies at once? “Redo.” She jerked her hand away, then stuck it back. “I would like to be a million times more powerful than anything or anyone in the world where you send me.”
A million times stronger had to be safe, right? Surely she could kill any demon king with such power? Or she might just threaten whoever had summoned her into sending her back home. She was not in a charitable mood toward interstellar kidnappers. Besides, she’d read plenty of stories where the summoners of the hero turned out to be the real villains.
“Your request has reached the limits of my abilities. System overloading. Drawing on ancillary power.”
“Wait, a hundred times should be enough—” Janie screamed. Electricity arched through her body, turning her words into an incoherent howl of pain. Every nerve in her body disintegrated. Unconsciousness came as a relief.
Janie woke up surrounded by bones. Whiteness rose up around her like a wall. Only when her eyes reached a knee joint did she realize the things embedded in the dirt must be bones, and so was the hardness against her back. She leapt up.
The giant bones dwarfed even dinosaurs in museums. Her head only came halfway up a leg bone lying on its side. The crisp air smelled dusty and metallic. When she panted, her breath came out in white gasps. She was still wearing the sweatpants and T-shirt she’d died in, offering little protection from the cold. She didn’t even have shoes, only slippers.
Slowly, she turned in a complete circle. There were too many bones spread too far around for her to tell what kind of creature might have died here, or if it had been more than one, but it had been massive.
What if she’d been summoned to fight this already-dead monster? The system had clearly been malfunctioning. If the threat was already dead, then did she have no way home?
Janie swallowed hard. She couldn’t give up this easily. If there existed magic to transport her here, then it logically followed there must be a way home.
Even though it felt disgusting, she climbed on top of a flat round bone and looked around.
The bones spread across a dirt field. From this height, she could make out the shape of wings and four clawed legs. A dragon, perhaps? If so, this one made Smaug look like a toddler. Her breath hitched. Although she felt grateful to never need to fight this behemoth, she had to admit it was cool.
Eventually the flat, barren ground met a forest surrounding her on all sides. The trees resembled pines, but with silvery needles. A forest seemed promising. There might be people who lived there. The pessimistic thought crossed her mind that she could have been sent to an already-destroyed world with no inhabitants. She pushed that fear away because she could do nothing about it.
Janie imagined herself teleporting to the forest. Nothing happened. What kind of power did she have, anyway? What if she had no power because she’d made a dumb wish the system couldn’t handle? What if the system had been broken and she never would have gotten a power from the beginning?
This speculation wasn’t helping. Janie set off across the field, walking around the bones.
She probably went in circles a few times. She had to climb on top of a bone again once to get her bearings. When she slid down, something crunched under her slipper.
She’d landed on a human-sized fingerbone.
Janie leapt backward with a squawk. A human skeleton lay at the base of the larger bone. The clothing had long ago decomposed, but a golden cross necklace remained. A Christian symbol could have only come from Earth. This must be the last summoned hero.
Janie clasped her hands, bowed over the body, and stood silent for a moment. Being raised in a nonpracticing but traditionally Buddhist family, she did not know any Christian prayers. She simply expressed a wish to the universe for a stranger from the same world who had died far from home to find peace. Then she kept moving, determined not to lose her path again. Maybe the previous summoned hero had been killed by the dragon, but it had also crossed her mind that the other person could have been summoned to a graveyard, then slipped off a bone and broken their neck.
By the time she reached the forest, her slippers had been shredded. It got even worse when she stepped among the trees, with twigs and pinecones digging into her feet. The trunks were colored silver and felt like metal, not wood. The damn pinecones felt unnaturally sharp and released a dark mist when they fell from the trees.
“Hello?” she shouted. “Is anyone there?”
There was no response. The forest seemed uncannily silent. She shivered, not just because of the cool air rustling through the needles. A forest with no animals seemed like a very bad sign.
But what else could she do? Sit in a cemetery until she died of exposure?
As Janie walked gingerly across the fallen needles, she tried saying things like: “System window” and “Tutorial, please.” Nothing happened.
She tried to give herself a peptalk. She’d been transported to another world. It should be the dream of any nerd. Maybe she’d get to ride a dragon, since the skeleton proved they existed here. Dragons had always been her favorite creature. She loved all kinds of dragons: big or small, Western or Eastern, kind or cruel, intelligent or savage—they all possessed a unique majesty. She told herself that a world with dragons couldn’t be all bad.
It didn’t work. She felt cold and tired. She’d liked reading isekai manga, but she’d never wanted to be sent to a land without heaters or toilets. She preferred her adventures to be from safely behind her phone screen, cuddled up under a heated blanket on her sofa. Her genre-savviness was not making her feel any better, because she’d read as many stories about people from Earth being sent to horrific death worlds as fun fantasy lands. From the moment she’d seen the out of order goddess, she’d developed a bad feeling about what kind of world she’d ended up in. There had still not been the slightest sound or glimpse of even an insect.
It was a relief to spot a glimmer among the fallen needles. Janie knelt down and picked up a ring. What appeared to be a diamond was in the middle of very, very tarnished gold. She could not tell if this ring had come from her world. It looked a lot like a wedding ring, but other cultures besides Earth had rings. This time she did not see a body. The thought crossed her mind that the bones could have decomposed straight off this ring. She dropped the ring, then hastily clasped her hands together for another moment of silence.
The same fear returned: what if everyone in this world had already died and she was completely alone?
When Janie heard running water, it jerked her out of her depressing thoughts. She immediately turned toward the sound. People created settlements along rivers. Follow the water and find people: that should be a universal truth.
The river at least looked normal, with clear water falling over stones and twice as wide as she could jump. By the time she reached the bank, her throat ached. She knelt down and nearly cupped the water in her hands to drink. Then she hesitated.
Books had drilled it into her head that random river water was not safe to drink. It seemed even more dangerous to drink inside a death forest. If this water was safe, then why had she not found the slightest trace of an animal? Why where there no hoof or paw prints around the river bank?
On the other hand, she didn’t think she could continue her journey much longer without water. It would also end her adventure if she collapsed on the bank. The water burbled as if to tempt her. She licked her lips.
If only she had a way to boil the water and make it safe. It seemed unlikely yet possible that her too-vague wish had granted her fire powers. Janie held her palm over the river and said half-jokingly: “Fireball!”
Flames exploded in all directions, burning into her retinas. The boiling water and crackling trees vanished in an ear-piercing shriek. Janie got to experience the singularly unique sensation of her skin being burned off at the same time her insides cooked. She would later consider it a mercy that she forgot the worst of it.
When she next returned to awareness, she lay on her back on a pile of ashes. The instant she tried to move, the parts knitting themselves together under her skin tore again. She lay very still and tried not to dwell on the pain.
In retrospect, it became humiliatingly obvious that “a million time’s the strongest power in this world” had been too much for her body to handle. It had also been too much power to use for a small task such as boiling water. She was lucky her power set came with regeneration. Although she didn’t feel lucky at the moment.
Janie did not know how long she lay staring at the grey sky. It was long enough for the sun to begin to set. Her knees groaning, she stood up.
Ashes spread about her as far as the eye could see. She could no longer find any traces of the river or graveyard. The ground was flat, yet the ashes seemed to stretch off into the horizon.
“Oh, dear,” Janie said in a small voice.
There did not seem to be any choice except to start walking. She picked the setting sun as her guide and trudged in that direction. With each step, she sank ankle-deep into ashes.
Janie had started out thirsty. By the time two moons rose in the sky, she was too exhausted and parched to even feel a sense of wonder. The cold raised goosebumps down her arms and legs. Her teeth chattered. She collapsed to the ground.
By the next morning, the ache in her throat had turned into a roar. Her stomach rumbled. Despite her fear, she summoned up the nerve to try to use magic again. She attempted to create water, then summon water, then transform ashes into water, then wish away the thirst. Nothing happened.
She’d wished for the power to fight. She had not requested immunity to thirst or hunger. She had not even considered the ability to create food—that had seemed useless at the time. She’d expected to fight a monster. But the monster had already been dead, and she’d become trapped in a lifeless hellscape. Even teleportation would have been a better choice than her foolish attempt to become the usual overpowered isekai character.
Power was currently absolutely no use to her survival.
She’d tried to fly, to become faster, and to teleport many times. Nothing worked. In the end, she had no choice except to keep moving in the same direction and hope there would be people somewhere. As a city dweller who’d last gone camping in high school, she had no illusions about her ability to survive alone in the wilderness.
On second thought, she would have done anything to have gotten the forest back. The forest had plants and water. With each burning, painful step, she regretted not drinking from the river.
Janie carefully counted out days by the rising and the setting of the sun. By the third day, she wondered why she wasn’t dead from lack of water. Her throat kept getting more and more dry without ever quite pushing her into blissful blackness. She couldn’t be certain that an Earth day was the same length as a day on this world. But her dizziness, headache, and cough meant she must be dehydrated. Her stomach felt like it had caved in. The cold had turned her fingers numb, but they never progressed to blue.
She’d healed from being burned alive, could she heal from frostbite and starvation too? Apparently just enough to stay alive, but never enough for the pain to end. She’d completely stopped urinating or sweating. From what she’d read, dehydrated people urinated less but it didn’t stop. She took this as a sign that her body should be dead.
On the fifth day, Janie bit her own arm and started drinking her blood. The sight of blood usually made her feel ill but now she couldn’t care. She gasped in desperate relief at every last drop of liquid going down her throat, licking at the vein in her wrist. The wound healed up. She sobbed, no longer having enough liquid for tears.
There was no choice except to keep going. It wasn’t as if she could die even if she gave up.
One foot in front of the other, she continued. Surely there must be something out there. Surely. She summoned up memories of her parents and brother, reasons why she had to return home. When she got back to Earth, she would go straight to her family home in Santa Monica (not that unlivable apartment) and treat herself to a long bubble bath. Sometimes she promised herself treats from Earth like the manga updates waiting or chocolate chip cookies. Other times she tried to imagine something worth living for in this world, like a dragon. She imagined thousands of dragons, scales with colors across the rainbow or with feathers or even with fur. Whatever kept her legs moving.
Everything blended together. On the twelfth day, she finally fell on her face. The bruises did not register compared to her screaming hunger. She couldn’t breath with her nose buried in the ashes. But apparently her body could survive without oxygen too.
She should have wished she could go home. Even if she’d died, wouldn’t that be better than this? In her current state, she couldn’t even die no matter how much pain she experienced.
What if she remained suffering like this until old age?
What if that damn evil goddess had given her immortality?
Janie lost track of time trying to smother herself in ashes, but eventually she realized she wasn’t going to die no matter how long she held her breath. If death didn’t end her pain, then she had no choice except to keep going.
She bit her arm again to drink blood. Then she crawled forward, away from the rising sun. She had to at least keep moving in the same direction, or her situation would be truly hopeless.
Sometimes she prayed. She hadn’t set foot in a temple for years, but right now she would appeal to any god she could get. The one who had brought her here and cast her into hell never responded.
“Mom,” she begged, calling out deliriously to the person she knew she couldn’t help her with a childish desperation. “Dad? Mom? I’m sorry. I don’t think I can make it back home.”
At least ten more days passed crawling in the dirt, then she lost track again.
I want to die. I want to die. I want to die.
The steady chant in her head was poison. It made her fall on her face and stop moving again. That would have been fine if she could actually die, but instead her suffering never ended.
She told herself whatever lie kept her crawling forward. She was going home. She was going to see a dragon. She was going toward food.
When her fingers finally touched grass, she didn’t believe it. She hadn’t risen her face from the dirt for a long time. She looked up. A yellowish field spread away from her. In the distance, she saw a hill with tiny buildings and smoke rising.
Sobbing, Janie shoveled grass into her mouth, sucking out every last bit of liquid.
Rema’s village was located about as close as anyone dared get to the Cursed Lands where the Last Calamity had fallen. The forest had a creepy aura that scared away anyone with a bit of common sense. People who lived nearby had two things in common: 1. Absolutely no ability to sense magic; and 2. Nowhere else to go.
When an unnaturally red fire had burned the entire forest down in seconds and taken out a grassy hill too, people had been understandably panicked. Especially because the strangeness had breached the boundaries of the forest for once, even if it hadn’t quite reached their village. But the incident had been good for the village. Strangers had come to take ash samples and wave around magical devices. None of them dared actually venture into the Cursed Lands. They stayed at the village, where people charged them triple for rent and food, but they never seemed to notice. Then they all left, leaving everyone with a bit more money.
A woman covered in ash crawled into the village a five days later.
At first, a few brave people approached asking if she’d belonged to any of the scholarly groups (though none of the ones who had stayed locally had lost anyone.) She stared blankly and begged for food. Her limbs had grown so shrunken, she looked a stage past starvation. To be more exact, she looked like an undead.
People in the village were not cruel. But they were not particularly well-off either, and they believed their survival rested on having as little to do with the Cursed Lands as possible. Several people left out food, water, and a towel—at a safe distance to avoid contact with the ash. Taking someone possibly cursed into their homes would be going too far.
The stranger gobbled up everything and tried to eat the towel, then collapsed on her back. Everyone hoped that she would either become saner or go away, but she stayed like that, lying next to the road and staring at the sky.
By the time Rema passed by carrying a water bucket, she’d gotten used to treating the stranger as a peculiar road decoration. The stranger was a short little thing with hair that looked black under the dirt and very dark eyes. Some locals thought she’d been cursed to have black eyes but realistically she was probably a foreigner.
“Hello, can you understand me?” the stranger asked. “What’s your name?”
Just Rema’s luck that the cursed woman had finally decided to talk to her. With a reluctant sigh, Rema did stop. “I’m Rema.”
“I’m God is Gracious.”
Rema blinked. “What an odd name.”
“Well, of course, I’m from a very distant place: The Angels.”
Rema’s village worshipped many gods, who all had their own angels. “Sounds like a very religious place if people have names like God is Gracious.”
“Huh?” The stranger gaped. “No, my name is God is Gracious.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Your name is God is Gracious.”
“It’s not! My name is Godddddd is Graaaacious.” The stranger drawing out the words did not change them. She clutched her head. “I don’t believe this! The magic must be literally translating my words into your language. I guess God is Gracious does technically mean God is Gracious but I’m not religious or Belonging to the Anointed One. My ancestors came from Thailand.”
“What’s Thailand?”
“You could hear that word but not my name?! I would drink my own blood again for an instruction manual. Damn it! That shitty goddess gave me the worst power package!” The stranger waved her arms at the sky, then turned back to Rema with a sheepish expression. “Thailand is a country where my great-grandparents came from before immigrating to the United States of Home Ruler.”
This stranger had clearly completely lost her mind. None of those places existed. The blasphemy was also concerning. Rema picked up her bucket and resumed walking.
“Wait,” the stranger begged, her voice turning heart-wrenchingly desperate. “Can you please answer a few questions? Where am I?”
Rema stopped. “Will you leave afterward? It would be better if you leave before anyone has to drive you out of town.”
“Why would anyone drive me out?” The stranger looked wide-eyed and panicked. It made her seem much less frightening. She was only a short and skeletal young woman. Under the ashes flaking off, her skin looked tanner than the villagers and her hair ebony-black, but she seemed like a regular human.
Rema took pity. “You’re covered in cursed ash, and it makes people nervous. There’s been a great deal of talk. Everyone agreed that if you don’t leave within three days, something will have to be done.” In the meeting, people had argued about what length of stick would be necessary to poke a cursed person away. “To answer your first question, this village does not have a name and we are independent of any country. The last group of strangers called us the base of the Cursed Lands. The closest place to go would be the city-state of Uvom. You can make out the white roofs in that direction.” She pointed at the mountain with walls at the base and buildings floating up the side, the castle so large it could be seen even a day’s walk away. “You should wash off the ash before you go there. You still have a towel.”
“Oh.” The stranger looked down at the dirty towel on the ground. She rubbed her hands on it, but only succeeded in transferring dirt around. “Could I convince people to let me stay if I worked? I’ll take nearly any job.”
“No.” Rema reached for her bucket hintingly. “Do you have more questions?”
“I definitely do,” the stranger said quickly. “Um, what is city-state of Uvom like? Is it a good place to live?”
“Uvom is ruled by the half-dragon, half-human Duchess Amaranth. Monsters don’t go near dragons.”
“A dragon,” the stranger breathed reverently.
“Uvom draws people from all around the world because it accepts all types of magic, even those forbidden in other places. But all the manual labor in the city is carried out by golems and wisps. It will be hard to find a job unless you have skills. The last time men in our village went looking for work, they returned emptyhanded. Two women stayed and became prostitutes.”
The stranger looked a bit ill. “Oh, dear. Any other places within walking distance?”
“No one lives near the Cursed Lands.”
“Um. You mean the place that burned to ash? I hope…no one was hurt?”
“No, because no one goes there. A summoned hero brought down the Last Calamity there, tainting the place with its death curse forever.”
The stranger sat up straighter. “Summoned hero, you say? Can you tell me about those?”
This should be common knowledge around the world. Rema’s lips tightened, feeling like her time was being wasted. She resolved only a few more questions would be allowed. “The Four Calamities were Ancient Dragons who brought down natural disasters whenever they awoke. A thousand years ago, the very last one awakened and a hero got summoned from another world to kill it. An entire empire was destroyed in the process, but that’s still a cheaper price than the first three. At least now no calamities are left and there will be no more summonings. Half the royal families in the world claim to be descended from that hero.”
“The hero didn’t return home?” the stranger asked in a small voice.
“No, the gods only bring over people who are dead in their own worlds. They cannot return. Their existence has already ceased and their own world would reject them.”
“Oh. Then…what’s the point to anything?” Tears rolled down the stranger’s cheeks. Her eyes sunk into her skull as if she’d lost all reason to live. It was uncomfortable to witness.
Rema thought this was her moment to escape. But as soon as she picked up her bucket, the stranger asked, “Would people give me food and water if I agreed to leave today?”
“Yes, definitely,” Rema said eagerly.
It was so much easier when impoverished vagrants left on their own without needing to be forced out.
Janie trudged down the dirt road toward the City-State of Uvom, sipping from her new water flask. She still felt weak, and the glimpse of herself that she’d seen in the water had horrified her. Her arms had lost all muscle, but she could somehow move them. Each step hurt her legs. She didn’t want to look at her feet.
Back to walking again, with nowhere to go.
Even if she reached Uvom, what would she do next? Janie had come to the unfortunate realization that her godlike powers were completely useless. She couldn’t control them, they caused her horrific pain, and there wasn’t much call for widespread destruction except under unusual circumstances.
Being the strongest person in the world ought to count for something, but in practice Janie had already learned that strength didn’t get her food. She could threaten people for food, but she didn’t want to do that. She’d never hurt anyone before, and she hated the sight of blood. Besides, if she went around acting like a dick then someone would slit her throat in her sleep. Although she could heal from that, people would probably bury her alive next.
Humans weren’t made to survive alone. She needed allies. From a pragmatic perspective, her best option would be to demonstrate her ability to someone powerful and then cling to their thigh to survive. Except she didn’t want to murder people on orders, either. Anyone who fed and clothed a weapon of mass destruction would expect murder at some point. That kind of person didn’t seem worth obeying. As a purely selfish concern, the last time she’d used her abilities, it had caused her such agony that she seriously thought death might be a better option than doing that on a regular basis. Just imagining sent remembered pain through her body.
That was how the most powerful person in the world got stuck with the exciting career options of beggar or prostitute.
On that depressing note, Janie sat down on a rock to eat the meal she’d been given in exchange for scramming. Her hands trembled as she unwrapped the sandwich. Apparently sandwiches were rather universal. That comforted her. It looked like ordinary wheat bread with a white meat inside resembling chicken.
Janie bit into the sandwich. The meat tasted slightly tangy, like fruit.
“WHAT THE HELL?” Janie leapt up and threw the sandwich on the rock. “THIS IS NOT CHICKEN! IT DOESN’T EVEN TASTE LIKE MEAT AT ALL!” She kicked the rock, then collapsed on the ground in a ball and sobbed.
She didn’t know why she was acting like this over a sandwich. Except she did. Because the not-chicken had been another reminder that she would never go home.
The entire time Janie had survived in the field of ash, she’d promised herself that she would be going home. To learn it was impossible had cut her all the way to the soul. She would never see her parents and her brother again. She’d never see her friends. She would never experience a hot shower or a toilet. Chocolate was gone forever. She’d never read another manga or watch anime. Books probably existed in this world, but they’d be completely different from the stories she loved. Everything smelled bad, from the people to the homes to the ashes she couldn’t manage to wipe off herself. No one in this world cared about her. She’d been greeted with cold stares. Thanks to this stupid translation spell that literally interpreted Janie as God is Gracious, no one would ever even call her by her name again.
Then what made life worth living?
Janie had used up all her will to survive starving and crawling across the ash. She had nothing left. No matter how hard she tried to think up plans, her brain swam. She was out of fucks to give. When she tried to imagine living on in this strange world, she could not. Everything so far had been bleak, and everything ahead looked bleaker. Her entire future had been taken away from her. It left her spinning through space dizzily. If only she could find a single reason to keep on going, then she could have pulled herself together. But even the chicken tasted like fruit and she hated this world.
It would have been easier if she had someone to blame and take revenge on. That could have been the start of a great dark hero arc. But from what she could tell, the goddess figure hadn’t been intelligent. She’d been summoned here by a freak accident. (She probably hadn’t been the first accident either—there had been a human skeleton at the bones but the hero of legend had survived.) She’d been taken from her world to fight an already-dead monster by a goddess who was either dead or broken. The villagers had not been kind enough to give her hope or cruel enough to force her into a fight. Most her suffering had been caused by her own stupid fire spell. Spite could be a great motivator but she didn’t even have a revenge target.
There was no reason at all for Janie to get up from the dirt. So she didn’t. She lay there and thought it would have been better to die on her own world, quickly and cleanly.
Janie’s stomach chose that inopportune moment to rumble, and suddenly she hated her own body with a passion that rivaled her hatred for this world. Her body had tortured her for over a month with hunger she could not satisfy. She had an irrational desire to make her body suffer for causing her so much pain. Burn that damn hunger out! Her hand crept up to her throat.
If she activated the fire spell on herself, then surely being burned to ashes would kill her. If she was the most powerful person in the world, then her power ought to be able to destroy herself. She could aim the magic into the ground, since she didn’t want to hurt anyone else. Or the sky would be safer, maybe?
Janie looked up at the sky, and a dragon flew by.
Scales the color of diamonds shimmered in the sun. Massive wings twice the body length made the air hum with each flap. The beautiful creature had four clawed feet, magnificent curled horns, a long neck with spikes running down, and an even longer tail. A shadow cast down that blocked out the sun. Janie gasped, caught up in the magnificence of a creature capable of dominating the sky. Radiating magic held her in place, frozen by the gravity of a power as old as the wind and clouds. This was a legend. A being drawn from human dream and imagination somehow made flesh. A natural wonder. Her heart beat frantically, blood pulsing through her veins, the feeling of life filling her.
The dragon veered away, landing near the base of the mountain. Though the figure was small in the distance, the gemlike scales gleamed like a beacon.
Janie stood up, grabbed her sandwich, and walked toward the mountain. One step in front of another, faster now, with renewed determination. She bit savagely into her food, chewing and barely tasting it. Her eyes were fixed on the mountain. She had a reason for living now. She wanted to touch a dragon. Even the Janie back on Earth would have longed to do something so cool. The current Janie had no other reason for living.
If she found a dragon, then there would finally be a reason for coming to this hell world, and she could always die afterward.
Srella had been lady’s maid to Duchess Amarnath for the last five years. During that time, not a single person had every dared disturb the lady’s bath, the punishment for which would be execution. Although Amaranth, being a dragon, didn’t need to wait for the headsman.
Amaranth lounged in the sparkling lake, her massive body pushing the water higher. Wings spread, she floated on her stomach and soaked in the sun. Her scales filled the lake and clearing with radiant light. Her tail wagged slightly. She was on the smaller side for a dragon, which still meant a human would only come up to her knee. A sound between a growl and a purr meant she’d drifted off into semi-slumber.
The trend of bath peepers had been started by a rumor that Amaranth bathed in the lake in human form. This was untrue—the duchess had a nice heated human-sized bath at her own castle. Only the lake was large enough for a dragon to frolic. However, some of the local men had dared each other and placed bets about who could successfully spy on the duchess’ bath. Amaranth had been unamused and suggested raising the stakes to death, at which point the game had lost appeal.
Since Amaranth hardly cared about being seen in dragon form without clothing, her concern had probably been more for her personal maid, who sometimes bathed in the lake with her. Today, Srella didn’t feel in the mood for swimming. Instead she lounged in a chair under a canopy, reading and waiting with a towel and fresh clothing for when her lady tired of the water.
Srella’s book had reached the climax when the main character’s secret identity as a chivalrous thief and roof gargoyle got exposed. Embarrassingly, she was so engrossed that she did not notice the intruder until a splash.
A dirty figure stood waist-deep in the water and patted Amaranth’s leg. “Your scales feel hard as silver, but warm,” she said worshipfully.
Srella winced and covered her eyes. She waited to hear either the crunch of jaws snapping down or feel the icy blast of frost breath.
The lunatic laughed. “You’re even more beautiful up close. A diamond would turn into a pebble compared to you. The air around you tastes like the beginning of a winter storm. You’re even better than I imagined. Where I come from, when people think about magic, they think about you. Dragons. You are the embodiment of myth and legend. You are all that is wonderful and enchanting. It is my profoundest honor to be in your presence.”
Dragons tended to be susceptible to flattery. It was their second most defining characteristic after the greed. Srella dared open her eyes. The suicidal person was hugging Amaranth’s leg like a tree trunk and nuzzling her scales. Srella closed her eyes.
“Thank you for existing.” The lunatic’s hoarse voice filled with reverence. “Thank you for being born into this world. Thank you for being right here, right now, so that I could meet you. Thank you for being perfect. Thank you for making everything that I endured worth it so that I could find you. Thank you for being my reason for living.”
It should have sounded like obsequious lies, but the strange woman spoke with the blazing, brilliant conviction of the insane, so certain that the world around her seemed to stand still for one brief, impossible moment.
Then the madwoman toppled forward into the water. She did not resurface. Bubbles rose up from where she’d sunk.
In a crack that shattered the air, Amaranth transformed. In her human form, she stood a head taller than any man. Her skin was flawless and pale as snow. Long white hair hung straight down to her waist. Her bangs stopped just before her silver eyes. Even her lips were colorless.
Amaranth reached under the water and dragged up the lunatic by her collar. The duchess raised an eyebrow quizzically. The lunatic hung limp and unconscious.
“Allow me to help you, my lady. You’re getting dirt on yourself.” Srella rushed forward with towels. One she placed on the ground, so Amaranth could set down the lunatic. She presented the other towel to the duchess, then a silver robe after her lady had dried herself.
The lunatic became even more pitiful up close. She looked starved and wasted. Her withered fingers ended in cracked nails caked in soot and blood. Tear tracks ran down the ashes on her face. It seemed more like she wore dirt than clothing. Her feet were the most horrific sight. She must have been walking barefoot across the hot stone. Horrible cuts covered her feet, yet they were healing before Srella’s eyes. The soles of her feet looked oddly grey. A pebble stuck out one heel. To Srella’s horror, she realized that this woman’s cuts had been healing her skin on top of the debris, so that dirt and fragments of rocks had gotten stuck under her skin. Yet she’d kept walking even as the rock dug into her flesh with each step. What could make someone so desperate?
Bile rose. Srella put a fist over her mouth and breathed deeply until the desire to vomit passed. When she could speak again, she said, “My lady, this poor madwoman clearly did not mean any harm.”
“Of course I’m not going to execute her, Srella. I created that rule for voyeuristic perverts, not a delirious foreigner who didn’t know.” Amaranth leaned down and examined the lunatic’s face. For some strange reason, the grievously injured woman smiled in her sleep. Amaranth chuckled mischievously. “I just received quite a unique compliment. That’s at least worth a visit from the castle healer, a meal, and a night’s rest in a guest bedroom.”