Source: vk.com

The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode click here. To read it from the start, click here.

With the help of her brother Zack and her friend B’frona, Gina had finally vanquished her monstrous nemesis.

Within seconds, the Beast had become a tangle of moldering tentacles. Then a pool of mucous soaking into the soil. And finally, no more than a circle of dead grass that looked like it had lived too long under a barrel.

The three stood staring at their battleground. Zack spotted the remains of the violet-gold diaphragm that had somehow animated the creature. He picked it up and put his finger through the gash “the letter opener,” the Revealer, had made in it. “I knew we could trust Rhema.”

Then Gina pointed at the two broken halves of the pike B’frona had used to skewer the Beast. She read the inscription on its circular head, and then turned to B’frona. “This your father’s grave marker!”

B’frona shrugged. “It was the tallest.” He was battered and burnt from his encounter with the Beast, and yet seemed more alive than ever before.

B’frona’s sister was waiting for them at the water wheel. Gina smiled. “You were ‘struggling before Uol’ with us in the battle, weren’t you, Sh’renn? I felt it.”

They spoke breathlessly of the night’s events. How the Beast had drawn its ever-changing form from Gina’s mind. How the broadsword had disappeared just in time to save Zack’s life, and how the hauberk had in turn saved Gina’s. How B’frona had skewered together the dragon’s jaws with his father’s grave marker. And how the Revealer, in its true form, had been the only thing that could kill the Beast.

But when they gathered at the table and Sh’renn began to salve Gina’s burns, all four grew silent. Gina and Zack were covered with welts and lacerations from the Beast’s tentacles. Gina had raw skinless patches on her hands, thighs, and ankles, and there were deep claw holes in Zack’s neck.

As Sh’renn stitched together her brother’s wounds, Gina began to shake. B’frona placed a hesitant hand on her shoulder, but she pulled away. Her shaking soon turned to body-racking sobs. Zack took her bandaged hands in his and tried to speak, but instead untapped a wellspring of tears in himself. Wordlessly, he and his sister moved into one another’s arms, releasing a thousand emotions for which there were no words.

Gina finally lifted her head, her back still turned toward the Miller’s son. “B’frona, I’ll bring our dragon back, somehow, I swear. I don’t know when, but—”

“No. Please do not—”

“And I will help rebuild Rennou. I swear!”

B’frona walked over to the girl from Another World, stared at the back of her head, then gently touched her auburn hair. “Perhaps we will do it together.”

Sleep came easily. Finally. Gina lay curled up in front of the hearth, luxuriating in the fact that she could lie in any position she wanted. The broadsword’s harness and sheath had disappeared the moment it returned to its true form as the Revealer. And the nightmares had disappeared too.

Finally.

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Thoughts: No battle is ever won alone. Victors have allies, from the present and from the past, both seen and unseen.

To read the next episode, click here.