This time Adila I will not be found wanting.

The knife was the least of her creations. It was also the first. A test, she said, no better than scrap. Adila thought otherwise. It was simple, practical, direct, unadorned, glittering bronze with no embellishment. And it was the first. When it came time to bury herself in the pages of her own book she knew she needed a weapon and this was the only one she trusted to sleep away the centuries with it under her pillow. 

She'd never thanked her devil-princess. She'd hoped just wearing it every day was enough. But it felt like she should have...

Nngh. Distractions. Illuminan distractions. Already starting, confusing her. Keeping her away from what had to be done. Not this time. This time she was armed, she was ready, and she'd purged all hesitation from her heart. She'd [i]trusted[/i] Hyperborea last time. She'd let her guard down. She'd believed that this magical land perhaps was what it showed itself to be. She'd thought she'd found a world without terrors, a world where love triumphed in the end, a world she didn't need to take, and break, and [i]force[/i] into a shape where hearts could be whole. She wouldn't make that mistake again. She'd let Eupheria fall because she hadn't believed that could happen here. And when she'd sat down to write her manual she'd carved the lesson Eupheria had taught her into the bones of the words, the principle from which all others flowed: [i]Trust no one[/i].

She was ready. She would not stand by a second time. The knife was in her hands as she stepped forward, fixated on her target, on the bloody promise of an immortal sin undone. 

And then her gaze was eclipsed. The sun she was fixated on went dark. Her eyes couldn't adjust, couldn't focus. They were blurred and stinging. 

She should step aside, lean low, break into a run. She stepped forwards instead. She should lash out, push it aside, step over, finish the mission. She was blinded. How had Cascade known her weakness, to bedevil her with illusions like this? She should let the knife perform its bloody function, let herself perform her bloody function. Save another world. Be [i]done[/i].

Instead she couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. This wasn't right. She'd underestimated her opponent. She should have had time before she mastered the Caduceus. She should have hidden herself better, found deeper shadows. Should have trusted more in her successor, her strength, she would have been strong enough to keep her fingers wrapped around the hilt instead of being so weak she couldn't even hold that precious blade and let it thud into the floor with a heavy weight. Oh no. Oh no, she was making the mistake again. Oh no. Decades of darkness and war and regret enough for a dozen lifetimes hid within this feeling, this mistake, this failure, this weakness. She should have learned by now. Should have learned when she was committing a crime.

But even now. Even after everything she'd learned. After every lesson she'd written into her very soul, the howling and eternal reminder of TRUST NO ONE, she still couldn't see that this was wrong. It didn't feel that way. 

The tears dropped from her eyes and for a moment, just a moment, she could see Princess Eupheria. As she was when they'd first met. Kind and gleaming and water-sweet and the reason why she would fight to preserve this strange and precious land against any that might do it harm. Void-sick and star-eyed, she hadn't known where she was, hadn't known right from wrong, had only the most tenuous grip on herself at all - but she'd known then that anything that could create such a person was good, and anything that threatened to harm her, evil. 

Her will was iron. She had crossed the void between with her pilgrims behind her. Armed she had come, the core of her being immutable against the ravages of nothingness. All that conviction afforded her three more steps before she fell to her knees at Eupheria's feet and the tears finally took her.