In morphine-induced twilight, Jessica’s memories and dreams swapped places. Asleep, her dreams filled with the sensation of flames against the soles of her feet. The acrid-sweet smell of burning flesh. The screams from the crowd. Explosions detonated inside her skull so intense she felt her jaw and eardrums twinge.

  Then, when she woke in the castle’s infirmary, she imagined herself talking with Naga or Min-woo or Rosemary Serf. They spoke with Morkal’s voice and she even imagined briefly they had become Morkal, or that Morkal was some kind of god of Tushita who was secretly everyone and everything, passing judgement on her and her choices.

  Slowly her memories and dreams traded places so that her fears and nightmares were back in their rightful place behind closed eyelids and her waking moments became clear enough to piece together what happened at her burning.

  For one, John Serf had been there. Actually there. Not just as a narcotic phantom. Him being there also explained how she ended up dosed with morphine that shouldn’t have existed in this world. Only one other person besides Jessica could make it and it wasn’t John. Apparently Morkal had been looking out for her after all.

  “Sorry, Morkal…”

  It was true Morkal had gotten her into this, but it was also Jessica’s fault adventurers had found the monstress in the first place. And just as Jessica had done her best to save Morkal from being hunted, Morkal saved Jessica from being burned. To think she’d almost given Morkal up to Mystiferia. If the pink-haired sadist had displayed even a little less bloodlust, Jessica might have given her up. Morkal had been saved less by Jessica’s loyalty than by the insanity of her adversaries.

  Jessica suddenly recalled what Morkal had been saying to her through other people’s mouths in her narcotic dreams. All the people speaking with Morkal’s voice had been repeating the same thing to her, over and over:

  “You will live as the rest of us do, as someone who cannot escape their entanglement with other living beings.”

  These were the words Morkal said to her when she took away Jessica’s access to the Tapestry. At the time, it sounded like pseudo-intellectual gibberish. Now she understood what Morkal meant:

  Jessica never had a chance of escaping on her own.

  Severed from the Tapestry, it didn’t matter whether or not she wanted to rely on Morkal and John and Naga. She had to. The only other choice was to end up the victim of someone else. Being saved meant having to save others. Saving others meant having to be saved.

  “Well played, Morkal,” she said with a sigh.

  How tedious. She hated group projects. Her labmate was why she was here to begin with.

  “O-Oh, are you awake for real?”

  Absorbed in her thoughts, Jessica hadn’t heard the door open. John stood on the threshold. She flashed him a small smile, the best she could manage with the crackling pain of her burned and blistered skin peaking through the morphine fuzz.

  “More awake than I have been, unless you suddenly start talking in Morkal’s voice.”

  “Er… hadn’t planned on it,” John said. He shut his mouth to a muffled slit. “I don’t think I can do that mouthless thing.”

  Jessica giggled. “Probably not. I assume Morkal didn’t come with you?”

  John’s eyes widened. “Ya don’t remember much, do ya, big sis?”

  “A lot of exploding and fire and Sir Hayek swinging his sword around. That’s about it.”

  John sunk into a chair across from her bed. “Well, y’see, she came in her toad form…”

  “I’m lucid enough to know past tense when I hear it,” Jessica said.

  John wrung his hands. “Ma’ wishes I had a brain as quick as yours. But uh… somewhere out in the square there’s a pair of nicely-charred toad legs, s’posin’ you feel hungry.”

  She had felt a bit hungry right up until he said that.

  “Well, it’s not like she’s dead or anything,” Jessica said. “If anything that solves the problem of the toad banging around her hivemind.”

  John proceeded to fill her in on everything from his end, beginning with rousing the entirety of Barleyfield on a cross-country journey and ending with Sir Hayek’s execution.

  “What!? He’s already been executed!?”

  John nodded. “Hanged for insubordination, abuse of office, and attempted murder.”

  Jessica’s stomach turned. She didn’t like the guy, but she had imagined during her self-accusatory hallucinations that she would ask for clemency for him. He was a brute and a bully, but he had done everything out of misguided revenge for his sister’s murder. In a twisted way, she saw the logic of putting the fear of reprisal in the minds of adventurers.

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  Had she gotten the chance to sit down and talk with him, Jessica was convinced she could’ve talked sense into him. So much for that.

  “What about Mystiferia?” Jessica asked.

  “Who?”

  “Pink-haired elf lady. One eye. Psychopath grin.”

  “Oh. Her,” John said with a grimace. “She’s… still around. She left a couple days ago with a big cage full of monsters in it. No idea what she’s doing with them.”

  Jessica’s eyes widened. “Was there a lamia in it!?”

  “A what?”

  “A…” Jessica flushed against her will. “A snake lady… sorta… thing.”

  “I wasn’t looking too close. We were just trying to get out of their way.”

  “‘We’ as in Barleyfield?” Jessica asked.

  “Yep. The nobles’re annoyed with us and callin’ us freeloaders, but we were allowed to stay by the Royal Highness’s decree. Your morphine fixed the queen’s pains just like ya said it would. I thought it was strange on account a’ she said her pain was on the inside like emotions and whatnot. I’ve been sad before but never so sad that I had to take medicine.”

  Jessica bit her cheek. Getting the queen hooked on opiates felt not great. If Morkal was right about this whole ‘entanglement’ thing, then she was now entangled with a junkie of her own creation. But if that’s what it took to finally be in a position to change things, so be it.

  “Her Majesty said when you’re healed up to come get you so you two can talk,” John said.

  “I’m as good as I’m gonna get. Let’s go see her,” Jessica said as she moved to stand.

  “I don’t know if that’s—”

  Immediately Jessica had two problems. One, she was currently in only her underwear. Two, her legs from the knees down were wrapped in linen for reasons that were apparent the second her foot touched the floor and sent a dagger of pain shooting up her leg.

  John jerked his head away. “I’m sorry! I didn’t—”

  “It wasn’t you, John. I was already burned by the time you reached me. I’m sure there’s some magic or whatever that’ll fix me up. Don’t sweat it,” she said.

  “That’s not— not what I—”

  Jessica looked down at herself. “Oh, dude, I don’t care. I’ve been through undergrad. People have seen me in worse than my underwear.”

  Despite her nonchalance, John refused to turn around. His ears, where they protruded from his mop of sandy hair, were as pink as her second-degree burns.

  “B-Be that as it may, I-I’ll give you time to— ahem— that you need to uh… to—”

  “Any chance you could get me a healing potion?”

  John sprinted off and came back with a Priestess of the Ocean who cast healing magic on Jessica’s legs. This required her to be conscious and capable of performing a call-and-response mantra which was why they hadn’t done it yet. No doubt adventurers could just cast a heal spell, but she was glad to not have to deal with any right now. Enough time had passed that Min-woo had almost certainly told the adventurer’s guild about her.

  After her legs were healed a maid fetched a simple blue dress in her size and a pair of leather shoes and she was finally able to stand without corrupting John’s morals.

  “I’m not sure what an ‘undergrad’ entails, but I’m glad you’re through with it,” John said as they walked to the throne room.

  “You and I both,” Jessica replied.

  Guards outside the throne room opened the way for them when they arrived.

  The inside was a heterogeneous mix of imposing and welcoming. The vaulted ceilings, portraits of stern, dead monarchs, armored stone statues, and ranks of knights felt like a spear point pushing Jessica out the door. Simultaneously, a bespectacled, white-bearded man appeared from nowhere to tug at her sleeve and beckon her in.

  “You’re Jessica, I take it? Come! Come. Let me announce your arrival before his Royal Majesty,” the man said, eyes wild with excitement as he yanked her forward.

  She would have asked the man his name except something told her she wasn’t allowed to speak until spoken to.

  Contributing to that impression was a man in navy velvet robes holding a scepter. King Capra, no doubt, though he had the expression and appearance of an uncle who was already hammered before thanksgiving dinner. His face was round and ruddy and jovial and his hair and full beard resembled neatly-groomed fire.

  The woman beside him had an appearance Jessica could only describe as ‘news-castery.’ Mature, high cheek-boned, and with a hint of wrinkles, she also had a self-assured confidence about her and a penchant for demonstrating it through flowing dresses. She was also absolutely, positively, and utterly zooted off morphine and puddled sideways across her throne like a sleeping cat.

  “Helllll~oooo, Jessica! Jess, Jess, Jess, dear… I’ve heard so much about you!” the woman called out with a lazy wave.

  Jessica glanced sidelong at the knights and found their reactions suspiciously neutral.

  She approached the steps to the throne and knelt. “Your… Majesty? Highness?”

  The white-haired man escorting her cleared his throat. “Majesty.”

  “The first one then,” Jessica said.

  “So you’re the one who invented this wonderful, wonderful medicine? And to think! That buffoon Milton wanted to have you killed! What a waste, don’t you think, dear?”

  King Capra grasped his wife’s ankle as though it were her outstretched hand.

  “An alchemist of such skill is born so rarely,” Capra said, stroking his beard. “One comes to think that all which can be discovered has been discovered, and then along comes a genius who invents something simply miraculous. I haven’t dared try it myself but I can see the results on my dear Samara here.”

  “Oh yes! Such… results,” Queen Samara said. “Soooo nice.”

  “Glad you like it,” Jessica said with the thought that she ought to synthesize some naloxone pretty soon too.

  “Naturally,” King Capra continued, “we will need a consistent supply of this morphine. Not only for my queen but also to supply the castle infirmary and eventually, I hope, my kingdom’s hospitals. Accordingly, I would like to offer you a position in my court which will allow you not only to brew up more of this medicine but to instruct others in its creation. It is my belief you have a rare gift and I would like to cultivate it.”

  Here it was. After all the toil and sacrifice, Jessica was finally going to be able to implement scientific advancements and accelerate the world of Tushita into an industrialized, techno-magical utopia. If she was going to be a part of this world then she was going to leave it better than she found it. She hoped Morkal was ready for everything to come.

  “For this reason I would like to make you my concubine,” King Capra said.

  Jessica’s head slowly, slowly, slowly, like a rusty winch, ratcheted up from the floor. “Your what?”