She flattened herself against the cliff face as the wind howled. It had a malevolent hooking motion to it, trying to get around her to the side and peel her from the cliff face. Inch by inch she progressed, scrambling as quickly up the cliff face as she could in the wind's lulls. Her heart struck in her chest when her hand reached nothing but air, and then slapped down on a rough and flat surface. One final struggle and she rolled onto her back on the mountain peak, hands fastening around the brilliant sapphire, struggling for breath as she stared up at the pale blue ocean above her. She watched as whales broke the surface above her and caught her breath and senses in the mountaintop cold.

Was it cowardice? Was the Cat right? What kind of hero wouldn't fight? Perhaps she'd been spoiled, leaving others to do the hard work. And it was true that her reasons for not fighting were selfish...

She crouched down, coiling her muscles underneath her - and leapt. As she jumped she passed from gravity altogether and floated weightless in the sky above the mountain, subject to the breeze. She folded her arms in front of her as she passed into the gravity of the ocean, momentum reasserting itself and dragging her straight downwards into a magnificent dive. She slashed into the water like a knife and swam down, down, amidst the silvers and magentas of fish and coral.

Hadn't the lion tore away her weaknesses? When those claws had torn through her they'd caught on everything that had held her back. But it had left this feeling with her. Didn't that mean that this feeling was pure? Wasn't she, ipso facto, the greatest and most perfect version of herself as sculpted by the rending talons of the divine beast?

Her hands sank into the soft sand at the ocean floor, illuminated by a thousand anglerfish. From silt as fine as air she drew forth a shining amethyst, such a radiant colour that it turned the black into violet. She set it onto her belt alongside the sapphire and then began to dig with her hands in the sea-floor sand. Deeper and deeper, until the earth cracked open and she fell into the molten depths of the underworld.

Hell awaited her here, fiery and mighty. Vast industries, molten metal and molten earth, great rolling ramps that engines moved down with ceaseless purpose. The water stayed above knowing that it had no place her, and she stood upon the ceiling above the roads and conveyors. She leapt and ran with surreal swiftness against the flow. The conveyors pulled her in the wrong direction, the stampeding stone bulls came at her headlong, the ramps were all uphill and every motion brought conflict. On she ran.

There were three possibilities. Either she was perfect, she was not perfect, or she had been perfect but had somehow acquired a flaw. But which was it? She trusted the lion. She couldn't doubt it's gift. It had freed her from her shell of flaws, let her rise above everything that had held her back. But had it brought her into line with platonic perfection, or had it raised her to its ideal of perfection, or had it raised [i]her[/i] to her ideal of perfection? Something foreign had gone through her mind and made changes - changes she'd [i]craved[/i], changes she [i]celebrated[/i]. But now she had to decide if she was going to stand by those changes or continue to evolve...

She tore the ruby from the claws of the dragon. It smiled at her and shifted aside to reveal the sunlit passage out of the earth's depths. She emerged blinking into the light above a city with tangerine rooftops. It was a place of vines and waterfalls and verticality, a spiral staircase up towards the distant sun. She took a breath, whirled herself onto the back of a horse, and touched her heels to it, driving it at full pelt through the streets of the city. It leapt over wagons, darting through narrow alleyways, dream-creatures leaping from its path as she charged, up and up, galloping across rooftops as often as she crossed cobbled streets.

Maybe she was distracting herself with all of this. Maybe this was all besides the point. Maybe this wasn't about the lion, or even about her. Maybe... it was about Tirzah? Perhaps everything was in the end. Tirzah, clever and acidic. Tirzah, honest and wise. Tirzah, the princess she'd fought to save, Tirzah, the destination of this great journey...

The artist's brush whirled. The orange of the rooftops caught on a whirling brushtip, drawn up and struck out onto paper in a whirl. As she stepped back to admire her work, Canada's hand reached onto the canvas to pull the apricot gemstone free and set it onto her belt with its sisters. And then she was climbing again, up past rows and rows of paintings, going up forever. Up to the centre of the dome, and then out and up along the flagpole that went towards the sun itself. She lifted herself, legs swinging about acrobatically, and then she came up to stand on the metal flagpole like it was a tightrope. She walked, arms stretched, only the sky above and beneath her as she walked from the city to the sun.

She stepped down onto the fields of golden grain that made up the surface of the sun. She hefted her backpack, heavy with everything she needed, and walked. The wind cut across the vast fields and gently rolling hills as she pressed her way slowly through the rolling yellow ocean. Night time came as she passed to the dark side of the sun, so she cleared a space and made camp, sitting alone by a small campfire and tent, staring at the stars until morning. Then she was up again and continuing her trek.

Tirzah who she should have stopped.

That was it, wasn't it? If she'd had her sword then how could she justify not having used it to save the world? How could she have had a blade and kept it sheathed? If she could hurt people then that meant... logically, inevitably, that she'd at some point have to hurt Tirzah who started all of this. Once she accepted that power she'd have to follow it through to its logical conclusion.

She picked the topaz shard from amidst the shards of grain. This one stalk, alone amongst all the millions, had grown a perfect gemstone. Such was this place it had been all but indistinguishable from everything around it. But this was the end of the plains, and ahead loomed a vast and twisted forest, branches interlocking and only sharp angles of sunlight cutting through to a surface laid with moss. She cast aside her backpack, her jacket, tore her dress into a short skirt. 

Each footstep was so soft, falling upon gently flowering moss. Above the wind spoke in clinking clatters as green glass bottles impacted on each other. This place was a descent, jumping down and down along the mighty and roiling chains of roots. The sunlight was dimmer and dimmer, dark green except for those moments that it wasn't. Distant clouds rolled across the sky, making the light in this living cavern turn on and off. Those spots where trees had fallen were explosions of new life, hundreds of tiny trees and vines eagerly stretching up to drink deeply of those puddles of light.

It was clear to her now that she'd been the one who'd broken her blade. It hadn't been a fortunate coincidence. It had been [i]deliberate[/i]. She'd tried not to think about it. Tried to gloss over it mentally. But she hadn't wanted to make that choice so badly that she'd made it subconsciously and pretended it was fate. 

Could it be undone? Had she permanently cut that part of her off? Had she purged something from herself in the same way that the lion had? If it could be undone, did that mean that the other flaws she'd freed herself from could come back too? Had the lion missed a vice, or had she destroyed a virtue?

She took the emerald from the cauldron in the woodland hut, the heat from the broth leaving her hands an angry red. She stared into the reflection for a long moment, looking at herself with helpless honesty. She blinked and was on the other side of that reflection and when she looked up she was in the city of night, dark and sleek and modern and lit with streetlamps. She hugged her bare shoulders against the chill as she walked through the dark, into and out of the office buildings still illuminated in pale blue light.

Goudan was wise, in that same way Asterion was. He'd said that by the end of this she'd either change or decide not to change, and either way she'd be done with these thoughts. But despite meditating on it for an adventure of 70,000 leagues she didn't feel a single step closer to a decision. All she'd learned was the lengths she was prepared to go to in order to avoid it. The right thing to do felt so inevitable. It felt so necessary. Save the world, blade in hand. As soon as she held that blade there'd be no stopping it, no excuse that could slow her. But at the same time she was breaking her very self to prevent the inevitable from beginning.

She plucked the indigo gemstone, a shard of liquid darkness, from the government computer screensaver that was still filling the shadowed office with light. Seven flawless jewels, the raiment of a princess. She wished they'd guide her. She wished her heart knew the answer, deep down, and would tell her in love and light.

But these were as silent as she, leaving her lonely, confused feelings to voicelessly whisper.

She stared up at the Sealed Tower. Perhaps here she'd find her answer.