Book of Fates ✔

Her cris de coeur

...he stands alone in the wide world; he has no contemporaries to whom he can attach himself, no past he can long for... no future he can hope for, because his future is already past.

Søren Kierkegaard, «The Unhappiest Man»

Daphne was enraged beyond the point of return. She was barely holding on till the end of the meeting. She struggled not to scream, not to cry, not to jump to her feet and run off while Naaek was giving another of his scientific speeches.

It wasn't her goal-to piss everybody around her off. Though that's what Daphne learned to do best. She simply couldn't help it.

All those comments of the others? Like the war was just a game. Rill bringing the earthling along. Nikk defending her... Ugh. It was infuriating. They all acted like children who saw no danger in being struck by a lightning bolt!

But Daphne knew that was no game. She knew it since the day long ago. Or was it just yesterday? So it seemed...

The battle on Da'Ariya. The bleeding daitias and the bloodthirsty fomoires. The battle that took him away from her. The battle that left her alone.

Forever.

When Eleutheray died, every single person was so commiserative, so sorry for Daphne's loss. She hardly had a minute to stay by herself, to think of what had happened, to get used to the idea of him being gone. Then, they forgot. They forgot and went on with their lives, as if nothing had changed. As if the guy named Ther had never even walked among them, had never even been one of them.

Was death a part of the game?

Was it really that simple for others to say goodbye? Or they didn't say anything only when Daph was around in order-as they say-not to hurt her feelings. But Daphne wished none of that customary pity.

She desired justice.

Vengeance.

That was the reason Daph burst out of the meeting room once everything was decided. She felt her temper burning close to the surface, sucking air out of her lungs. She hurried to her friends. New friends. Who shared her unpopular opinion.

The fomoires has to pay.

Now, Daphne and the two other daitias settled in the recreation, hidden from the hallway behind the wall of convolvuluses. Here were a few wickerwork chairs and a small artificial pond with white lilies. This atmosphere, meant to calm you mind and help find peace within your inner self, supposedly, only made Daphne more wrought up. The pond looked pathetic in her eyes, and resembled a big muddy puddle.

It was comforting to talk about the fomoires' execution though. It was one of few things worth living for.

"What are you saying, Toai?" Daph frowned at the guy sitting opposite her. His close-cropped dark hair made his roundish face seem even larger, the same dark eyes bold and determined, but rather witless. And his huge biceps indicated that the lack of brains was quite substituted with physical strength. But who needs to think while beating their enemy up, right? "Since when the fomoires can hide better than us, uh?"

"I don't know, Daphne," Toai rubbed his forehead, frustrated. "I'm just saying that during the last couple days I've checked about a hundred locations the fomoires previously visited. I found not a single clue, none of their faces on surveillance cameras. Nothing. As though they vanished into thin air."

"Perhaps we should go to the apartment of that earthling," the girl next to Daphne suggested, Jayanta. "They could return looking for the map."

Toai shook his massive head. "I've checked that place, too. Empty. Leir and his friends know how to cover their tracks. Everything looks like these scoundrels have never been there."