It was over.
It was done.
Craig was stopped.
She could stop pretending now. She didn’t know what she was doing. Without Mark’s warning, everything would have gone differently. The Shafted had done this themselves. Sara had only let it happen and organized around them.
They had claimed this land.
It was theirs.
Numerous Shafted grabbed Craig as everyone dispersed, portaling him away with the rest of the invading forces.
Sara held Raven’s hand and her shanked stomach and looked up at the skylight they had just created. After all this time, nearly a year, she could see the sun in a town that finally had a name.
Etokuso.
It didn’t roll off the tongue, but she was sure Kaori would get a kick out of it, and that was fine by her.
“What are we gonna do now?” Raven coughed and strained her beaten body to pull closer to Sara.
“We’re going to change the world.” Sara coughed blood as her friends gathered above them.
She looked at all of them with a kind of love she still didn’t know how to explain. They had trusted her to give them jobs, and she had trusted them to make those jobs their own.
A team of medics swarmed, and her friends moved aside. Two stretchers were laid out, and they hoisted Raven onto the first.
When they reached Sara, she shook her head.
“No.” She held out one hand while keeping the other against her stomach. “Help me up. Please.”
Radley Knoll looked concerned, but his first training, like everyone’s in Etokuso, was consent. He took her hand and carefully helped her stand.
“I don’t advise it with a wound to your stomach like that.”
“Thank you, Radley.”
Sara fought off a scream as she rose.
The medic smiled.
“Any time, Sara.”
Clap.
Crunch.
Clap.
Crunch.
Clap.
Crunch.
Sara turned toward the sound and looked up.
Fuck.
Her head spun. Radley held her steady as she processed the scene before her.
A young woman in golden armor approached while slowly clapping. She wore the red and blue colors of King Dong and moved in a way that suggested far more experience than her age allowed.
The royal seal on her chest was a variant Sara had never seen before. The familiar five-point crown displayed across Dong’s other holdings was cracked down the center.
Her long black hair was pinned back beneath a helmet. A simple shortsword hung from one hip. On the other was a thin metal tube stretching from her waist to her knee.
But the woman wasn’t what shocked Sara.
It was the horizon.
A line of soldiers on foot and horseback stretched as far as she could see from east to west. Siege machines loomed over the figures.
Shit.
“I applaud your defense.” The woman looked Sara directly in the eye. “You did a fascinating job of removing the fodder through portal mechanics.”
“Who are you?”
Sara tried to sound tough.
It didn’t work.
“General Dicktoria Cumberland,” she replied in the fanciest British accent Sara had ever heard.
“What do you want?”
Sara noticed the Shafted moving behind Dicktoria and tried to silently signal them not to act.
“Your complete and unconditional surrender of arms, forces, land, and self.”
The Shafted pounced.
Dicktoria flicked one hand.
The tube at her hip extended into a massive halberd. She swept it around, freezing the three attackers in place with the blade against their necks.
Her eyes never left Sara.
“Back down,” Sara said clearly. “Back down now.”
They did.
The Shafted retreated, and the space around Dicktoria cleared.
She pressed a button. The axe head folded inward, the weapon retracted into the tube, and she returned it to her hip.
“Take me,” Sara offered. “I won’t surrender their homes or their lives. But you can have me.”
“The surrender is unconditional, Sara.” Dicktoria sounded almost disappointed. “I would hate for all of this to have been for nothing. They will keep their lives.”
“What about their dignity?” Mark asked.
“Dignity is a foolish thing.” Dicktoria scoffed. “Dignity does not put food in your mouths or clothing on your children’s backs.”
“It does here.”
Lacuna stepped forward. Her rainbow battle gear was as beaten as the rest of her.
“No one pays for anything. Everyone contributes. Everyone gets included. No one gets left behind.”
For the first time, Dicktoria’s composure slipped.
Her eyes moved across the Shafted, their armor, and the town behind them.
Sara noted it.
“No matter.” Dicktoria shook off whatever had reached her. “Surrender or be destroyed. This is your only chance.”
Sara looked at everyone surrounding her.
These were the people she loved. These were the people she had promised a future different from everything they had known before.
Something shifted inside her.
Part of her screamed.
Another part said it in the gentlest voice imaginable.
Never.
They had reached this point because she had refused to stop believing in them.
She looked at Mark, Simone, and Cody.
She didn’t need to read into it.
They had her back.
They were ready for whatever came.
So was she.
Sara forced herself away from Radley.
Fire ripped through her stomach as she hobbled toward Dicktoria, who looked increasingly intrigued and baffled.
Sara stopped close enough to place one hand on Dicktoria’s shoulder for support.
Dicktoria stiffened.
Sara looked up at her through the pain.
She lifted her other hand and lightly tapped the cracked crown on Dicktoria’s chest.
Dicktoria shoved her away, eyes wide.
“Destruction it is.”
She turned on her heel and walked back through the Shafted. They split around her, furious but unwilling to move against Sara’s command.
Sara barely remained standing until several hands caught her.
A horn sounded from the ridge.
Thunderous hoofbeats rattled the ground.
Mounted soldiers and infantry began creeping forward, filling the entire horizon.
The Shafted formed a shield between the army and Sara.
They were vastly outnumbered.
“We didn’t plan for this.”
Raven struggled upright on the stretcher, reached for Sara’s hand, and clutched her ribs.
“Let’s go!”
Sara felt the tug but didn’t let Raven pull her.
“No. I won’t leave them.”
Lacuna broke through the group of Shafted.
“PLAN Q!”
The Shafted sprang to work.
Chino grabbed Mark and disappeared. Cody’s eyes widened with shock, but Rob grabbed him and portaled away. The Shafted quickly seized the others and pulled them off the battlefield.
Those who weren’t close enough portaled themselves.
Sara started to protest, but she and Raven didn’t have a choice when Lacuna grabbed their joined hands and slammed her other palm against her chest.
The portal activated.
Agony ripped through every fiber of Sara’s being as she was molecularly torn apart and reassembled.
Then it stopped.
She was in the void control room, which was rapidly filling with friends and Shafted.
Sara collapsed. Her dead weight dragged Raven down with her.
Medics swarmed and started working.
Within another minute, the ground above rattled beneath the sheer number of troops.
The Shafted ushered everyone out and down a rocky path between the portals, deeper into the void.
Sara clenched her teeth and tried to sit up, but Gerald, the half-giant who had come with the Wang’s crew, picked her up like a baby and hurried behind the other dwarves.
Raven followed in Chadwick’s massive arms.
Then Sara heard it.
The sound of her heart breaking.
The sound of destruction.
She didn’t just hear Etokuso being demolished.
She felt another man who thought he knew best demolishing the lives of people who had proven him wrong in the first place.
“No!”
She struggled, but Gerald held her tightly as he maneuvered through the narrow quarters and past the owlbear enclosure.
“Let me go!”
No one answered her.
Her body went rigid in Gerald’s arms.
Her breath stopped working.
Not this again.
Not after everything.
The Shafted kept moving.
Gerald kept carrying her.
The corridor opened into a large cavern, and several Shafted waited at the entrance as everyone filed inside.
As soon as the last person came through, the team slammed Draggin scales together and sealed the cavern shut.
“Put me down!”
Sara spent a handful of her last few hit points to soak the pain in her core. She twisted free and landed hard on her knees.
As she pushed herself up, she faced Chadwick.
“Put her down!”
Then she turned wildly toward the Shafted guarding the entrance.
“Open that up!”
The dwarves did not comply.
They stared at the ground with pain written across their faces.
“Sorry, Sara.”
She seethed.
Anger consumed her.
So did a profound, primal sadness.
Tears poured down her cheeks as the fury peaked and boiled over. Her chest rose.
Then the tears took over.
Sara collapsed to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.
This wasn’t just an ugly cry.
This was the first time she truly wished she had died.
The only sounds were her soul-crushing weeping and the annihilation of the only place she had ever felt truly at home since Tsuruhashi.
What had to be trebuchets launched massive boulders into the homes of her family. Each impact rocked the cavern.
Sara raised her head, her sobs choking off beneath the terror.
The faces of the people she loved were grim.
The Shafted, the brilliant, warm dwarves cast out from society, had thrived there. Their children had truly been raised and guided by the community.
There wasn’t one whose name Sara didn’t know.
She had failed them.
She hadn’t taken the threat seriously enough.
Simone had thrived there. She had become the town’s gender ambassador and a true sister and confidant.
Despite struggling with things Mark wasn’t ready to talk about, he had been happy there.
Every person in town looked at Cody like a big brother. His natural charisma made everyone feel completely safe around him.
The family she had come from Earth with…
Sara had never seen this kind of emotion on their faces before.
They had trusted her with their happiness.
And she had failed to protect it.
“Sara.”
Chadwick stood tall.
“This was my call.”
The tears began to burn as she turned toward him.
She looked at the massive minotaur who had put every bit as much vision and effort into this place as she had.
Her anger melted so quickly that her lip turned downward.
“Thank you!”
She took two steps and wrapped her arms around him.
Chadwick wrapped her right back.
Sara buried her face in his chest and let the tears flow again.
“Thank you for saving them!”
Chadwick didn’t let go.
“You gave us lives worth protecting, Sara. I just made sure we had a plan for when everything went wrong.”
Her sobs turned into baleful cries muffled by his fur.
A hand touched her back.
She knew that hand.
Raven.
Sara turned and wrapped her arms around Raven’s neck, careful to keep her weight off the woman who had given her everything she had ever needed by never giving her anything except unconditional acceptance.
“It’s gone!” she screamed into Raven’s neck. “It’s gone! Everything they built!”
“They’re right here,” Raven replied softly. “Safe.”
Sara choked.
She pulled back and looked into Raven’s eyes.
The same solidarity as always.
No questions.
No directions.
“Safe? Their homes…our home…”
“Are things.”
Lacuna stepped forward. She had started attending Sara’s Cards Against Humanity games early on and had become her ride-or-die.
“It’s wood and stone and steel. We have enough of that to make ten Etokusos. I sent for our cousins from the south. We’ll rebuild bigger and better in no time.”
Sara stared at her.
“But I couldn’t stop this…”
“Neither could we,” Chino said as he stepped forward. “You aren’t responsible for us, Sara. You gave us room to choose, so we chose. We stayed. We fought. We made a plan. None of us saw this coming, including you.”
Sara stopped.
She just stopped.
Hearing the words from Chino and seeing them reflected in everyone around her, something hit her.
She didn’t know how to handle it.
“Sara.”
Mark placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You don’t have to know what comes next tonight. We trust you. When you’re ready, we’ll figure it out together.”
“We’ve done it before,” Simone said.
“Jeffersonville,” Mark added.
Sara remembered the first apartment she and Mark had shared away from her parents.
She remembered it erupting in flames and consuming everything she had built.
It had broken her.
Her grades plummeted. She retreated further into Erin. She lost most of her friends, and her family cut her off.
It had broken her.
It just hadn’t ended her.
This was fucking painful.
Unbearable.
But this time, she wasn’t alone.
She took a deep breath.
She would try.
Not tonight.
Maybe not tomorrow.
But she would try.
“I…” Sara held Raven and stammered. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything.”
Chadwick folded his arms across his chest.
“I’m going to oversee the rebuild when this mess is over. You rest, then…just be you.”
Sara looked across the sea of faces.
They were beaten.
They were scared.
But they were survivors.
Just like her.