Me and Ardenidi went out for ice cream later that evening.

  Though most of the restaurants were still crowded, enough of them had opened to thin the crowds, allowing conversation.

  “You got the same thing again?” I asked, absently twirling my cone.

  She stirred a chocolate sundae, smiling under her scarf. “Says you, medium-vanilla-cone-with-chocolate-syrup-and-small-water-on-the-side.”

  “This is strawberry syrup,” I huffed. “Obviously.”

  Ardenidi rolled her eyes. “I just prefer sundaes. Not that there’s much of a difference. Ice cream is ice cream, right?”

  I squinted. “Having or not having a waffle cone is a pretty substantial difference.”

  “Agree to disagree.”

  The din of the restaurant rose as a very important player entered, muffling any conversation before it could start. After they’d been seated, it grew quieter, but not by much.

  “Look at that,” Ardenidi chuckled. “Never thought I’d see Master Fred in an ice cream parlor.”

  “Everybody needs a treat once in a while.”

  The bald old man gave us a wave, before wolfing a platter of fifty scoops, collectively larger than his entire body.

  “Couldn’t he summon his own food?” I whispered.

  “I dunno. Maybe the real stuff tasted better.” Ardenidi had another scoop of chocolate ice cream, tucking it under her scarf. “Although the chefs here probably summon everything too.”

  “I’m curious how food summoning works.”

  The blob of ice cream ontop my cone tipped dangerously to one side, forcing immediate action.

  After stuffing the remaining ice cream into my mouth, I grabbed my forehead, sinking to the table with a groan of agony.

  {You have been afflicted with [Negligible frigidity]}

  [No effect]

  Ardenidi raised an eyebrow. “Brainfreeze—?”

  “Brainfreeze.”

  She smirked. “And that’s why I have sundaes. They’re not nearly so stressful.”

  “And I’ll bet they’re easier to eat,” I said with a smile. “I can’t imagine trying to eat a cone with a scarf on.”

  Her expression flickered. “Yeah.”

  I had to ask.

  “You wear that a lot. It’s honestly impressive how well you can eat with it still on.”

  “Oh, I take it off when I eat at home,” she said, forcing a chuckle. “There’s just a scar underneath, I don’t like getting looks for it.” She smiled bright, finishing the rest of her dessert in a rush. Too fast, actually. She sank to the table, grabbing her head. “Stupid ice cream…who’s side are you on?”

  She grit her teeth, taking a sip of water. “You know the weather’s been…uh…weird lately right? You wanna talk about that?”

  “Ardenidi, did something happen?” I asked.

  “Just some stupid fight,” she groaned. “You’ve had a few of those too, right? I lost my temper and—” she waved her hands in the air. “It was a whole mess.”

  “I know what you mean.” My mood soured. I propped up my chin on my knuckles. “There was one time…” I took a deep breath. “There was a couple in the first area.”

  She blinked. “Odd. Most people wait until at least copper before they get all lovey-dovey. What happened?”

  “I beat them up.”

  “You.” She just stared at me. “Okay. Why?”

  “There was a girl I was taking care of, and they were cruel.” I clenched my fist. “I guess I’m still mad about it, so…I don’t know. It felt like the right thing to do, but I know it wasn’t.”

  “You were taking care of a girl?” Ardenidi shook her spoon at me. “You’ve always got some little tykes under your wing, getting you into trouble. I know you want to help people, but you can’t help anybody if you’re not helping yourself.”

  “I don’t think I’d be myself if I just let good people get hurt,” I sighed, taking my first bite out of the waffle cone.

  My train of thought catastrophically derailed.

  I blinked hard. “Eh? The flavors are weird.”

  She blinked. “Weird how?”

  I broke a piece off and chewed on it. “The waffle cone tastes like strawberries, and the textures’s kinda rubbery.”

  “Maybe it’s strawberry flavor?”

  She broke off a piece.

  Ardenidi choked, eyes watering. “That’s a lot of strawberries. Somebody messed up a summoning.” She coughed into her scarf.

  “Hey,” I start, touching the top of my lip. “Ardenidi, your scarf is a little—”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  She scrambled to set it back into place, tightening the knot, gaze flicking around the room like a wild animal.

  “Nobody noticed—” I started.

  “What did you see?” Her eyes were wide.

  “Just a little pink scar.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t seem that bad.”

  “Alright.” Ardenidi grabbed her head. “Alright. Thank you.”

  I quietly kept eating, locking my eyes on the floor.

  “Harva and I had a fight,” Ardenidi blurted.

  I perked up.

  “Harva?”

  “We had this duel and there was a guy and,” she gritted her teeth. “Look, I really, really lost my temper, okay. She did too, for the record, and it was all downhill from there. I got banned from the courts for a week and got dropped to the eighth, so I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  We sat in silence, surrounded by the cheerful noise of other patrons.

  Finally, I took a deep breath and spoke up.

  “Do you need to talk about it?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Let’s go for a walk.”

  We left, tossing our remaining food in the trash.

  The streets were no longer quiet.

  The city had healed over the past few days, with some merchants and customers crowding the sidewalks. Additional raids were being posted all over the side of buildings, dedicated to the extermination of any remaining traces of the unknown infection with enormous rewards up for grabs. In the wake of this rush merchants had gone ballistic with their gear, offering even relatively poor equipment for supercharged prices. Despite these increases, players were still as eager as ever, flocking to their stalls.

  It was a cold night with warm chatter.

  The slave market still hadn’t been set up. Since their wares were all monsters, each one had been infected and then killed, leaving the entire industry desolate. Unlike in-game merchants with respawning inventory, the majority of the slavers were players, unable to restore their business.

  It was a night in the capital that felt like home.

  Ardenidi walked stiffly next to me. I gave her hand a squeeze. “So.”

  She nodded. “So.”

  “So.”

  “I…” her face reddened. “It’s weird to say. Can we go back inside?”

  “Would that make you feel better?” I asked. “It’s really your choice.”

  She started nodding, stopping herself halfway through. “No. Okay I used to like this guy. Leo. You’ve met him, right?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s strong and passionate and he does his work well, so I was going to talk to him, but by the time I got around to it he already started dating Harva, so he turned me down.”

  “Were you three friends at the time?”

  Ardenidi bristled. “We’re still…friends. It’s just weird now. I guess I didn’t really mind that Harva was dating him, or you know I wouldn’t. But she just kept rubbing it in,” Ardenidi hissed. “All the time, it was always ‘me and Leo’ and Leo Leo Leo and she just wouldn’t shut up!”

  Ardenidi stopped walking.

  “That was rude. Sorry. I don’t actually mean to say I hate her. I don’t. I just…” she clenched my hand. “She just wouldn’t stop talking about him. She was head over heels, but I guess I’d lost my mind too.”

  “And?”

  “We had a duel, and it was already a pretty bad day since I ruined breakfast and failed an assignment beforehand, so I said a lot of things I should’ve had, and she started crying, so I felt bad, but then she just got so angry.” Ardenidi looked at me. “I’d never really seen Harva angry, so it took me by surprise. You know her staff, right? She stabbed me with the sharp end and messed up my face.”

  Ardenidi shrugged. “That’s really all there is to it. We fought like we were trying to kill each other and the refs took too long to respond, so both of us got pretty hurt. Since I escalated the fight, I got punished. Harva was going to get a punishment too, but I took the blame, so she got off pretty easy.”

  I simply kept listening.

  “She wasn’t trying to be mean, when she was telling me about Leo. I don’t think she even knew I’d asked him out, so I guess that was a shock when Leo explained everything. That and…well it’s a little complicated, but her injuries healed pretty easily, along with most of mine, so it’s not like we actually hurt each other. However, I-I couldn’t heal my face.”

  Ardenidi pulled her scarf loose, revealing a web of thin pinkish scars, from the top of her lip around her cheek on both sides, distorting the skin. “Despite what the healers tried, nothing they could do could fix it.”

  “Odd.”

  “I know. Potions just don’t heal everything, I guess,” she sighed.

  We kept walking.

  “Well, that’s me in a nutshell,” Ardenidi grunted. “When Harva realized what she did to me, she felt bad, and we apologized, so things are alright now, though I guess we don’t see each other nearly as often. It was all an immature mess, so we went out of our way to keep it quiet and it wasn’t like anyone was watching our fight, so other than you, only the ref, Harva, and Leo know the full story. And I guess a bunch of Union executives, but who cares about them, right?”

  She looked at me.

  I blinked back.

  “So?” She whispered. “What do you think?”

  “It explains a lot,” I stated. “And you clearly have anger issues.”

  She snorted. “I know that already.”

  “As far as I can tell, you can get in your own head sometimes. I’d really just recommend you think things through a little more often.”

  Ardenidi stopped walking. “I thought you’d have more of a reaction. At least what you did was justified.”

  “If you can recognize why what you did was wrong, then there’s hope for you yet,” I chuckled, bonking her on the shoulder. “You’re not the same person you used to be, are you?”

  “Well.” She looked at the ground. “no.”

  “You’re consciously trying to be a better person. That’s all anyone can do.”

  Ardenidi smiled. She nodded. She laughed. “We make quite a couple. Two nutjobs trying to help each other.”

  “I think we’re doing alright,” I stated.

  “I guess we are.” She jabbed me in the side. “Has Xoiae talked to you yet?”

  “Eh?”

  Ardenidi tied the scarf back onto her face. “She’s going to kill you once she sees you broke the cuffs.”

  I stopped walking, looking slowly down to my bare wrists.

  “Oh shoot.”

  “It’s fine,” Ardenidi stated. “I don’t think she noticed yet.”

  Headmaster Xoiae laughed like whistling chimes. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  Ardenidi glanced behind us, to the lady in white, sipping tea at a table by the side of the road with a puffy white cat nestled into her lap.

  Headmaster Xoiae waved.

  Ardenidi waved back, whispering in my ear. “You’re so dead.”

  “I know,” I whispered back. “Wish me luck.”

  // {Notice} //

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