The gravity of my actions hits me like a tank to the face.

  Did I even have to kill him? I’m trembling, too shocked to even sit down.

  He was incapacitated. I could have found a way to tie him up, take his weapons, question him. He couldn’t have done anything to me. It’s exactly what I thought then—I had him in a checkmate. Tie him up with what? A belt, my jacket, anything! There’s no point in rationalizing it. I should have saved killing for an absolute last resort. You were under stress. So? It should have at least occurred to me. Do you really think he would have spared you? I’ll never know that, because I didn’t give him the chance to explain himself.

  The answer is no. I know. I know that, but it doesn’t make this acceptable.

  You know what? This is getting repressed. I need to do something else, focus on my next step. How long has it been since the zone started? Five minutes? Ten? What do I even do now? Stay here and hide?

  I should check the bodies for supplies or weapons I can use.

  Bad idea. I collapse to my knees, leaning over, spear dropping to my side with a clatter, and retch.

  Okay, let’s start with the first one then. I stand up slowly, keeping my gaze carefully averted from the corpse. My legs are still shaking.

  The body is still warm when I reach it. I clumsily drop to my knees again, before I realize I didn’t bring my spear with me. Part of me expects the man to suddenly flash a knife in my face, force me to kill him too. He doesn’t move.

  Still, I reach a trembling hand to his chest, feeling for a pulse. Something, please. For some reason, I almost want him to still be alive. I don’t know why. His chest is still.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper to the corpse.

  As if that will make things better. I check his belt for anything I can take, though the thought of looting a dead body makes me glad my stomach is empty now. His armor is interesting, especially the thing on his arm, but I don’t think I want to go through the whole process of taking it off. I doubt I could even bring myself to wear it, anyways. His belt is a simple thing, with a scabbard on one side for his sword, a dagger on the other side next to a small pouch with some sort of… candies?

  I take the dagger and its sheath, before realizing I have nowhere to wear it on my person. I so do not want to take the whole belt.

  A couple minutes later, I stand up again, a sticky red leather belt around my waist. The scabbard lies on the ground beside the body of its rightful owner. I don’t need a sword; all it would do is weigh me down. Spear and dagger is enough.

  Chin-Scar has much the same, albeit two daggers instead of a sword and a dagger. I take both daggers. May as well have three of them. I also take his pouch of probably-candies. I’m sure that the last thing these two would have wanted would be for their supplies to go to waste. Right?

  Standing, I walk back to where I left my spear. Now that I’m not desperately running or fighting for my life, I realize the thing is lighter than when I first got it. A bit shorter and thinner, too. It feels comfortable in my hands, the weight balanced and just at the edge of what I can carry.

  Heh. “My” spear. When did I start thinking of it as mine? When Minerva gave it to me? When I drew my first blood with it? It’s not mine. I should return it to its rightful owner.

  I didn’t even consider that while gearing up. I stride back to the scabbard, picking it back up and buckling it back on my left. I move Chin-Scar’s daggers to the right side, where the first is sheathed. The sword itself is missing, a cursory scan of the room suggesting it is still in the pulpit. I pick my way up the stairs, careful of each step around the destruction. It’s right where I expected it to be, on the side of the platform, laying in a half-dried pool of blood where I first incapacitated its owner. The handle is tacky and red, but then, so is everything on me.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I’m probably supposed to wash it or something, but I’ll have to figure that out later. It’s not like I have any running water nearby, anyways.

  ?????

  The statue of Minerva is blessedly the same as when I left it. I’m not sure which would have been more terrifying, finding it reverted to its original, normal state, or seeing it had taken a new pose in my absence. I resolve to absolutely not think about that any more than I need to.

  I walk a slow circle around the statue, scanning it from every angle just to be sure. Yep. Minerva is still crying tears of blue blood from the cracked holes where her eyes were, the same azure filling the chalice in her hand. The cup is still level with my head, slightly tilted toward where I stood. I peer inside, finding it still full.

  Finish it.

  I can’t! The damn thing refills itself, there is no end! I almost shout my frustration, only my wariness from my encounter stopping me. I clench my fist, fingernails digging into my palm. The sting doesn’t help me manage my emotions, but I like to pretend that it does, and somehow that makes me feel a little less… whatever it is I’m feeling right now.

  Also, the stuff tastes ungodly. Heh. I almost chuckle at my own joke.

  Finish it.

  What good does it even do me? I should be looking for a way out of the zone right now! This is like, the best way for me to run into… whomever those people are, again! What am I even doing here?

  Right. The spear. I only came back here to return it, so…

  Hefting the weapon with both hands, I carefully lift it toward the statue. I have plant one foot on the pedestal to get the reach I need, angling the shaft so it slides back into the curled fingers of Minerva’s hand. This close, her presence is almost unnerving, the details of her skin and clothes so lifelike I swear I can hear her heart beating. I almost expect her to close her hand before I can settle the spear down, or at least tighten her grip on it once I’m done. Nothing happens. I step back, but can’t bring myself to turn away, my eyes lingering on the destruction where those blue gems used to be.

  Still, the insistence grows stronger, until I find myself consciously restraining my own arms from grabbing the cup and putting my lips to it. Somehow, that foreign influence reassures me that I can, and should, finish drinking. Deep in my gut, I feel the sentiment ring true.

  “Ugh.” I swallow, trying to brace myself. A mote of foreign emotion bubbles up in my stomach, like something is annoyed with me. Then, the insistence grows by an order of magnitude, so suddenly I have no time to process it before the cold stone presses against my mouth. So that’s how it is, huh? Fine. Nothing for it.

  ?????

  “Hrungh!”

  I groan, still reeling from the unsavory, metalic tang coating my mouth. My tongue stings like it was steeped in a slightly acrid, salty mix of expired milk and blood. It feels like I stood there, gulping down the vile fluid, for hours on end.

  My entire body is tingling and numb, like it fell asleep after standing in one place for so long. I lost track of how many cups worth of that stuff I went through, but at some point, I felt like I was physically at my limit, like any more would stretch me like a balloon. It hurt, physically and on some deeper level, until even the pain faded into a repulsive fever dream. My fingers are stiff, the kind of paralysis you get after standing for too long in a blizzard without gloves. Not quite enough for frostbite, but enough to make it a worryingly feasible possibility. My neck aches from holding one angle for so long, my back is sore, everything is sore.

  Except, something feels off about that.

  I feel like I missed something, something that should have been important.

  I feel a frown tug at my lips as I concentrate. Too many things happened in too little time. I was in class, then the alarm came, and then I was alone in the dead zone standing in front of Minerva. I took the spear and drank from her chalice, then those two showed up, and I ran into the church. I grimace. It was a bloody… fight…

  My thoughts peter off into realization, and I feel like I was hit by a tank for the second time today. Of course I was missing something. How did I completely forget about my wounds right after fighting for my life? Was I really that shell shocked from killing that man? Even then, it shouldn’t have been that easy to forget about. Now that I think about it, I lost a lot of blood. Hell, why wasn’t that the first thing on my mind? My first step after that battle should have been to check over my wounds and staunch the bleeding, find some way to wash the…

  Wait.

  I look down, scanning my body. My abdomen is smeared with maroon flecks of dried blood, already flaking off in some places. Yet, underneath that is unblemished skin, without so much as a scar. With one hand, I gently feel the bridge of my nose. My fingertips pass over smooth skin, no trace of the damage done to it.

  It’s all too much for me. I don’t even notice as my knees give out, and I collapse to the ground, laughing maniacally. Hah! What in the everloving fuck is going on?!

  I freeze, chills suddenly shooting down my spine.

  “My, I was just thinking the same.”