“That is your mother?” Dawn said, her voice so quiet Reeve had to rely on her rudimentary lip-reading skills to make out the words.

  “Ehhh, yes,” Reeve said.

  “Keep holding still,” Millie said, her eyes closed and her hand gently resting on Dawn’s wrist where it lay by the side of the supine half-elf.

  Dawn’s eyes were also closed, and her cheek rested against the icy stone floor. Reeve examined Dawn’s face, which was only inches from her own, and wondered if it’d be safe to reposition Dawn soon, as Reeve’s arm, which was still pinned beneath her companion’s body, was throbbing.

  “Wanda seems to have broken your ribs,” Millie said. “All of them as far as I can tell. We’re lucky she didn’t totally pulp your organs.” The caster slumped slightly as she finished her healing spell. “I think I got them all, but you’re going to probably be wicked sore for a while.” She opened her eyes and gazed vacantly for a few seconds before focusing on Reeve where she lay. She frowned at Reeve’s moving lips. “What?”

  Reeve mouthed the words again.

  “I have no idea,” Millie said.

  “Pins and needles,” Reeve said quietly.

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s really starting to burn.”

  “Suck it up. Your mom caved in Dawn’s whole chest. Count to ten or something.”

  “Reeve,” Dawn said quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Have my sister and I affronted your parents?”

  “They really don’t mean it.”

  “The frequency with which one of us incurs a not inconsequential injury at their hands is, well—”

  “—no, I get it,” Reeve said. “But they literally don’t mean it. They’re barely in control of anything they do in here.”

  “Sounds from what you told me,” Millie said, “that your dad played a part in holding off the elf army during the fight at the Deiluyne.”

  “They do have their moments,” Reeve said.

  The sound of shattering glass from the room down the hall caused Dawn to open her eyes and return Reeve’s gaze.

  “She is still within?” Dawn said.

  “Haven’t had a chance to do anything about it,” Reeve said. “Millie’s been patching you up, and I’m…” Reeve flexed the fingers of her left hand.

  Feeling the muscles of Reeve’s forearm moving beneath her chest, Dawn nodded fractionally. After a few seconds, she pulled her hands up her sides and gingerly pushed herself off the ground onto hands and knees.

  “Take it slow,” Millie said.

  Reeve stuck out her tongue in relief and pulled her left arm toward her as she shook her hand to wake nerves and disperse the blood that had been trapped there.

  “Slow is undoubtedly the only means by which I would be taking anything if I couldn’t…” Dawn’s words trailed off as she shifted back to sit on her heels. Exhaustion and pain clouding her face, she slowly shaped a spell that took nearly half a minute to complete. As she finished the motions, she turned her palms inward and clutched them to her chest.

  Reeve and Millie watched, breaths held.

  “That’s better,” Dawn said, her voice strong. Keeping one knee against the ground, she swung her other foot forward so that she was in a deep lunge, from which she rose quickly to a stand.

  “Um. You’re just totally better now?” Millie said.

  Dawn nodded and turned to face the open doorway at the end of the hall.

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  “I assume it’s not because I’m a bad-bass healer?”

  Dawn turned her head to look at Millie. “Your skill was indispensable in returning me to action. But I did indeed finish the job.”

  Rubbing her left hand with her right, Reeve sat up into a cross-legged position.

  “What all does that entail?” Millie said. “‘Finishing the job.’”

  Dawn didn’t take her gaze from the doorway as she spoke. “This form,” she said, gesturing down at her body, “must constantly seek to maintain itself in response to the—what’s the famous saying I once read from your literature—‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’?”

  “You’re quoting Shakespeare at us now?” Reeve said.

  “As a result, it is never static, always dynamic, shifting resources between systems as those slings and arrows take their toll.”

  “I feel like I’m in both English class and some weird math class at the same time,” Reeve said.

  “If left unattended, its resources would spend much of their time at less than optimal levels. I,” Dawn glanced at Millie and then Reeve, before looking back down the hall, “simply returned all systems to their optimal levels. At least, as optimal as I am permitting this form at this time.”

  “At this time?” Millie said.

  “Pardon me,” Dawn said. She took a few steps down the hall toward the door and then stopped. Tilting her head to the side for a moment, she chuckled, nodded, and began to craft a cast.

  “I’m assuming,” Reeve said, “that means she just reset all of her stats.”

  “Like a long rest in a TTRPG,” Millie said.

  “She can just do that whenever she wants?”

  “It wasn’t like it was a quick cast, that looked complicated. Nothing I’ve ever seen. Meliá for sure.”

  “Yeah, but still. Just reset all stats?” Reeve pursed her lips. “And I’m assuming with no mana cost.”

  “Can you imagine?”

  “But, what was that stuff at the end about ‘optimal she’s permitting at this time’?”

  Millie shook her head.

  “Come,” Dawn called over her shoulder. “Let us greet your mother, Reeve.” She strode toward the door.

  “Whoa, wait up,” Reeve said as she leaned on her non-numbed arm to shift out of her seated position and rise to her feet, still flexing her left hand. “It safe in there?” She bent to pick up her naginata.

  “As safe as any room—any world—one shares with your capricious parents.” Dawn reached the door and continued through without slowing.

  “WT flip,” Millie said.

  Reeve started after Dawn. “Come on, and don’t riff on the profanity filter.”

  Millie sprang forward lightly on the balls of her feet to run after Reeve.

  When Reeve arrived at the door and stepped through, she had to stop and steady herself for a moment, as the chaos she found brought back swirling memories from a tavern, a cave, and a basement, all of which had seen the utter destruction that could be prompted, accidentally, by Walter or Wanda Willams. “All a little misunderstanding,” she said quietly to herself.

  “What?” Millie said as she stopped next to Reeve.

  “Something my dad once said. More than once, actually.”

  “No. I mean, what the flip happened here?”

  Reeve shook her head and stepped over a crushed wooden table to get a better view of the remnants of Dawn’s carefully protected room. She found it hard to imagine what it might have looked like before a frost giant spawned into the not-particularly-large space. Now? Now it just looked to her like a room that had been totally trashed, in the same way that any house reduced to rubble by a hurricane or tornado just looks like any other house that’s been reduced to rubble by a hurricane or tornado. Lips pinched tight, Reeve inflated her cheeks and looked slowly around the disaster. Her eyes eventually fell on those of Dawn, who was staring at her, face blank, where she squatted next to…something Reeve could no longer identify.

  Reeve let the air out slowly through her pinched lips. “You,” she said, “probably wouldn’t have warded this room if it didn’t have some pretty important stuff in it, huh?”

  Dawn raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so. You understand that I can’t do anything about it, right? I’ve spent pretty much my entire life trying to change them and…” Reeve shrugged.

  Dawn took a slow breath of her own and then let it out all the more slowly. She looked down at the pile of fragments next to which she squatted. Shaking her head, she reached down to pull a torn piece of parchment from underneath a splintered piece of wood. “It would likely behoove me at this moment to remember that my mother—or someone claiming to be her—overthrew an entire empire. And I suspect my actual mother yet lives but has managed to avoid my tireless search for her for almost a year.” She looked back at Reeve.

  Reeve smiled uncertainly at the olive branch being offered.

  Dawn dropped the parchment and looked across the room, her stare vacant.

  Millie cleared her throat. “Speaking of mothers,” she said. “Where is mamá Williams?”

  Dawn snorted almost inaudibly. “Reeve, fortune finds you this day, as you may not have been able to change your parents, but…” She nodded toward the corner of the room to the left of the door through which they’d entered.

  Reeve turned and squinted into the dark corner. It took her a moment to see that something small was moving there. Small and furry and…she tilted her head and frowned. “Is that, a, um—” Reeve said.

  “—Miniature Cherokee Wampus Cat?” Millie said.

  “I was going to say tiny six-legged mountain lion.“

  “Same difference.”

  “Confused, preening, tiny six-legged mountain lion. And also—”

  “—your mom.” Millie cleared her throat. “Hi, Ms. Williams.”

  The creature was sitting on its rear with what were its currently lowest pair of legs spread before it. Its head was craned downward and was moving slowly from one side to another as it inspected the other two pairs of legs not supporting its seated position. At Millie’s words, it looked up at the trio, looked back down at its three pairs of legs, looked back up, and spread the top pair of legs wide in an unmistakable gesture of disbelief.

  “WT flip,” Reeve said.