“You mean...?”
“Oui, oui. You guessed correctly.”
The Great Sorceress looked at Tanya, her pale pink hair glowing in the darkness. Her expression... was one of abject misery.
At this, Laplace shut her eyes tightly.
Oh, Tanya. This injustice is three centuries old, and yet you’ll mourn it with me all the same, won’t you?
This evoked in her a most peculiar sensation—not unlike butterflies in her stomach.
It was time to finish the story.
“You can probably guess what happened next. My father... Maxwell... He blamed the entire orichalcum coin incident on the ‘Wicked Dragonwhore.’ Me. His own flesh and blood.”
Tanya sucked in a breath.
“They tried several times to execute me, but fortunately—or unfortunately, as the case may be—I was already immortal. So while it hurt quite a bit, ultimately, I just couldn’t die,” Laplace explained casually, like she was commenting on the weather.
Tanya could only imagine what it must have felt like to survive an execution. Not only that, but to be sealed in a mountain in the Western Wasteland, where no one would ever find her... all at the hands of her own father...
In the end, the orichalcum coins were lost, only to be “rediscovered” many years later and put on display as antiques. And so the history books were forever altered... with Laplace, not Maxwell, recorded as the villain.
“...But...”
“Hmm?”
“But... you’re so powerful, Laplace! Surely you could’ve put Maxwell in his place if you’d tried!”
“That’s just the thing, Tanya. I didn’t try,” Laplace replied quietly.
Tanya’s soft gasp echoed off the stone cell walls.
This was the woman who could control the weather if she pleased. She could levitate. Hell, she was immortal. But when Maxwell sold her out, it wasn’t anger she felt—it was despair. It was heartbreak. It was regret. She’d asked herself, why? What did I ever do wrong?
She’d tried so hard to be the perfect daughter. She’d endured so much. Destroyed so much. Killed so many. Surely her father would never abandon her... and yet he did... which meant...
“I told myself that... I deserved it for being a bad daughter.”
Tanya’s breath hitched.
“I told myself... if I wasn’t such a failure, then maybe my father would have listened to me. Maybe then he wouldn’t have sealed me away. But by then it was too late, so I just... shrugged my shoulders and gave up. But then you showed up, Tanya. I watched you scream and vent your anger right there in the wasteland with me. And then I watched you carry out your revenge on that asshole Ryan...”
Laplace let out a hollow laugh. The smile on her face was one Tanya had never seen before—bitter, pained, like she was holding back tears.
“And I thought: if only I’d stood up for myself like that, things would’ve been different, you know?”
“...Yeah...”
For 300 years, Laplace had asked herself again and again: Where did I go wrong? How did I screw it all up?
Eventually she decided that if she was ever unsealed, she wanted to experience a life of freedom—perhaps as an adventurer or something. Maybe then she could make some friends... For her, it was an ambitious dream.
“But I never imagined it would actually come true one day,” Laplace muttered to herself.
Just then, something warm brushed against her. It was Tanya’s hand—the one bearing the gleaming golden ring. She took Laplace’s hand in hers.
“Listen, Laplace...”
“...Yeah?”
“I, um... I think it’s my turn to help you get revenge,” she declared after a moment.
The way Tanya looked straight into her eyes... Somehow, it made her feel seen.
“I appreciate that, but... while Maxwell may not be as powerful as yours truly, he’s still a capable spellcaster in his own right,” Laplace warned her. “Not only that, but he’s the Court Grand Mage. If we rise up against him, we might just turn the whole country against us... Are you prepared to risk that?”
But Tanya Artemiciov wasn’t the type of woman to back down. And Laplace knew that better than anyone.
Sure enough, Tanya smirked. “Laplace?”
“...Yeah?”
Her smile was contagious, and soon Laplace was smiling, too. There they were, sharing a moment in a prison cell Laplace could easily break them out of with a mere snap of her fingers.
At the same time they shouted:
“Let’s kick his ass!”
“Can we go kick his ass?!”
This was followed shortly by a clap as the pair exchanged a high-five.