It had been a month since Lewis had found her and brought her back home with him. This place had pretty much become her home as well but she didn’t know how long she would be staying or what Lewis planned on doing with her. The entire tower was pretty much her playground as she didn’t leave it and only called servants for food. Not that she ate much. Too much stress on her mind had caused her to lose a bit of weight and her color wasn’t looking too good either. She was a person without too much of a past and as far as she could tell she didn’t have much of a future either.

A tailor had been called in from outside the temple since nothing fit her right and it was beginning to get awkward with Lewis roaming about. She had been told not to go overboard with what she wanted but the tailor had other ideas once he touched even the hem of her old dress. It was clear to Simone that something was incredibly wrong with her. The man acted as if he had known her forever and was in a daze. So much so that he did five dresses for her along with a few blouses and skirts. Enough to last her a week at a time, per his instructions. When they tried to pay him he only wanted enough for the first one.

It troubled her greatly even after she had hung everything up. Today she was sitting down in the lower part of the tower on a sofa curled up. Her blouse was off-shoulder in a sweetheart neckline with the straps being lacy and frilly. Across the top was a slight ruffle that helped hide how small her bust actually was. It had been paired with a high waist skirt in a light blue. The corset-like top of it was tightly tied to show any sign of the hips she would enough get. Towards the bottom of the skirt was a hemline followed by a ruffle of its own. A simple wide black velvet choker was around her neck since that’s all the tailor had and it was easy enough to make it.

It was rather cute she thought and it looked even cuter with her hair partially tied back and left long in the back. Though she had no one to look cute for but Lewis, who didn’t care about much other than his next stabbing incident (lucky her).

So, she just wore it to read books that she had managed to find around the tower or ask for. Simone still wasn’t leaving the tower whether she wasn’t allowed or because she was just scared of it all. In the tower, she knew every corner by now and there weren’t any surprises. It was lonely but it was safe at least when Lewis wasn’t upset about something she did or said. Mostly she kept to herself.

It was mid-morning when she flipped to one of the last few pages of the last chapter book she had found when a red string appeared tightly around her finger. At first, she didn’t notice it but then… it got in the way. Her stormy gray eyes got wide and she chucked the book with a shriek. “LEWIS,” she was screamed as she grabbed her skirts and ran up the tower.

She was surprisingly fast as she got to the top before he even managed to get down to silence her. “LEWIS GET IT OFF,” she cried as she tackled him down. She sat on him waving her finger. “GET IT OFF!” She pulled on it and she tried to get rid of it but the string didn’t budge. The next action was Lewis trying to cut it but still, it didn’t break. “I DON’T LIKE IT. IT FEELS WEIRD,” the girl who was filled to the brim with magic unknown to most sounded oddly weird saying something felt weird as she waved her hand some more after the knife didn’t work.

That was when the portal happened. It was beneath them both since they had been almost on top of each other. A shriek left her lips as she started to free fall. “LEWIS WHAT IS HAPPENING?!” She managed to flail hard enough to make it to him and grab hold of the assassin tightly. The bright blue sky was all around them as the wind pelted against them as they cut through the sky.

Simone managed to look down only once as she saw a deep black swirling mass of water which she had only ever seen on Apoy’s coast. It took her a few moments but she clung harder to Lewis, “THAT’S AN OCEAN! LEWIS WE’RE GOING TO HIT THE OCEAN,” she was scared for her life and his as she held on. She most certainly was not a fan of free falling.

The impact was hard enough to knock her out. Who knew how long they had been out before they washed up on the glass beach. When Simone came to she was under Lewis and her arms were still hanging onto him. How? Her eyes looked up to the sky which had shifted to the later evening colors.

Hard breaths left her as she let Lewis go and took a few moments to rub her face. That stupid red string was still there but that wasn’t what spooked her next. From the sea foam not far from her came a herd of deer. She jumped without a shriek this time as she resumed clinging to Lewis who had started to come to. “Where are we?” The ocean now that she could see it was a vividly bright color as it tossed and turned.

Lewis had been reading in his room. He had just put his book down to look around at what was now a near spotless room. It was something he was slowly becoming accustomed to, but here were still plenty of issues when it came to trying to figure out where the girl had put things. Sure, it was technically organized, but it was organized in a way that he didn’t understand. He was almost furious when he had first seen what Simone had done, but in the end, it was his own fault as he had left her with no instruction and nothing to do.

He closed his eyes, thinking back to the last month. Things had fallen into a routine of sorts. For the most part, Simone was easy to handle. Every so often she would have her weird moments where Lewis did his best to take down what was happening, but they were happening fewer and farther between. He was still no closer to figuring out what was happening with her.

A part of him wondered if he should just lock her in a safe and sink her into the ocean and be done with the problem, but there was just something about her that made him think it was a bad idea. He picked up the book again, and was suddenly shocked to hear a scream from the rooms below. He rolled his eyes, and started to toss the book aside when a sudden Simone was at his door. While his room was by no means large, it was still an impressive feat to see someone so mundane launch themselves several feet. Lewis started to react like any assassin would, and immediately reached for his dagger, but instead of stabbing her, took the full brunt of her.

She was panicking about a string, of all things. Lewis groaned, rolling his eyes. Of course it was something stupid. He took his dagger to it, and pulled. Nothing. The blade slid against the string, but severed nothing. Confused, he tried it again. Nothing.

“Fine, I’ll just cut a finger off. It’s not like you nee-”

Suddenly, things were a lot different. Instead of his cool room, he was now in a humid environment. There was wind rushing past him, and it took his brain a moment to understand that gravity was pulling him towards the ground. Fast. Simone screamed about the ocean, and Lewis trie to think of something, anything to stop them from hitting the ocean and dying almost immediately.

In the end, he braced for impact, slamming hard into the ocean. The world went dark for but a moment before he regained consciousness. Somehow Simone was still gripping tight against him, which in the short term was a problem. Trying to keep both of them alive in this instance would be near impossible, but luck must have been on their side as the ocean seemed to pull them to shore as if by magic. Even with the ocean helping, it took an immense amount of effort on Lewis’ part just to get them to the shore without drowning.

It was all he could manage to pull them up onto the shore before his exhaustion of the whole situation took over, and his sight faded to black.

He stirred when he heard Simone shriek, and her suddenly re-clinging herself to him jolted him the rest of the way awake.

“Got off,” Lewis said roughly as he pushed her to the side, standing up and dusting sand off of him. “Where the hell are we…?”

He had heard tales of the other gods realms, but had yet to visit any of them other than Lord Raith’s. Due to the fantastical nature of the area they were in, Lewis could only surmise it was one of the gods. But the question was who, and why.

“Who would dare pull a follower of Lord Raith from his own home!?” Lewis called out defiantly. “Show yourself!”

Simone was shoved from Lewis almost immediately once he came to. She looked a little more than dazed and confused as she stood up with him. “If I knew I wouldn’t be absolutely terrified right now,” she put her hands on her hips with a displeased look towards him. “Sorry that a bunch of sea deer scared me half to death.” It was understandable at least to her that she had been scared. “Especially after being dropped from the sky.”

Still, he had an intolerance for her and she took a breath as she calmed down. “No point in being mad at you. You wouldn’t get it.” She huffed before he started to yell. Almost instinctively she clamped her hand over his mouth and gave him a glare. She had a low whisper that followed, “That isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had Lewis. The last thing we want to do is piss a god off in their own fucking realm.” She had a rather good hold on his mouth but she let go and she seemed to calm down. “Imagine what Lord Raith would do if someone did the same thing. There wouldn’t be an us.”

She held up her hand and the red string had lengthened. She tilted her head and began to follow it, “Well, I’m not waiting around to find out. I’m going to go find them and ask them what they want.” It was almost defiant as she began to walk forward. Phoenixes flew in as she neared the woods landing on poles. They soon became torches that lit the way. “This way, I think…” It was progressively getting even darker out with only the ocean and the torches giving off soft lights.

The hot sticky jungle was what would follow and she was sure she wouldn’t like it. "HEY!" Simone yelled out at a pink-haired woman not far from her. She looked at Lewis and looked back at the woman running away deep into the jungle. "Follow her!" Simone immediately was dead set on running after the woman. The red string was going the other way through the lighted path.

It wasn't long before Simone ran straight over a cliff of sorts and fell down the steep incline into a deep pit of flowers. Her body hidden from sight but the impression of her fall was left.

Lewis was caught off guard when Simone’s personality almost completely flipped. He had been mad, yes, and perhaps a bit too haughty (an unfortunate side effect of Master Raith), so she was displaying the correct amount of cautiousness, but this was nothing like the girl he had come to know in the past month.

Still, no God or Goddess came to greet them, which could have meant any number of things. The only clue they had was that the red string that was tied to her finger was still present, almost willing her to follow it. If that didn’t scream trap, Lewis wasn’t sure what did.

Simone moved quickly to follow, and Lewis rolled his eyes, standing up. “Hey wait! Slow down, you’re going to-” He looked down at his own hand. On his left hand’s ring finger was a similar red string. Lewis groweld, “Oh hell no!” He pulled out his dagger, and with full intent, aimed to slice his own finger off.

As if it had a mind of its own, the red string yanked him down, causing him to miss and stumble. Then, as if to tell him to hurry, started pulling him towards the direction that Simone had gone. The girls as already far ahead of him, and as he started to move into the jungle that edged the beach, he heard her call out.

“Damn it!” he said under his breath as he rushed forward through the forest, weaving in and out of the trees. He heard her cry out as she fell.

Close. He came to the cliff, and stopped. “Simone!?” Silence.

“Simone!?” Lewis clicked his tongue in annoyance. She wasn’t dead at least. He jumped down, landing in the pit of flowers, and looked to where her indent was.

She was gone.

“For the love of the gods…” He turned around, and froze.

How did she sneak up on me? His eyes were wide as the Goddess of Life and Love stood there. But to the assassin, she was nothing more than a threat. He tossed a dagger at her, attempting to scramble back to make some ground.

But it would be futile.

It had been amusing watching the two of them. They could be described as fire and ice but one look at the girl’s aura and Angela realized that what she was dealing with were fire and hellfire. She wasn’t sure if even the girl was aware of it, but she would spill out as Angela was watching. The girl was smart and the boy… The boy was too much like his master.

So Angela began to instruct Raine to bring the girl to her for a few moments longer than the boy. It would be easy enough to separate them. The girl wanted answers and the boy was now acting against it. Probably out of precaution. Good. This worked in her favor.

When Angela did appear she took the dagger right into her stomach with a sick thud. Once Lewis was on even ground Angela took it out with an even more sick pulling noise. The blood seeped back into her wound and her clothes were fine. Lewis had plants that held him in place now so Angela could approach him without him running away. “My my. You would certainly be a dead boy if I were anyone else,” Angela approached and wagged her finger at him. “Think carefully about your next step or I’ll have you bound and gagged on the floor faster than you can think about it.”

She put the dagger back in his hand and the plants released him. “Come with me. QUICKLY LEWIS,” Angela snapped as she walked through the meadows. “Your girl is this way. And to answer your question: It’s because I am everything here. If I don’t want you to see me you won’t.”

Once they cleared a hill there was a small pond filled with large lotus. In the pond floated Simone. She looked like she was being held up by the plants. “I’ve knocked her out for her own good so I could give her a look over before I spoke to you. I wanted to see what trauma the girl has been there.” There was a stack of papers that was higher than she had ever made before. “I had to be quick since you were right behind her… In short, this girl should not only be permanently dead but she shouldn’t be sane. Burned alive, raped, forced pregnancy, and whatever else has left all these all over her body. Her lungs are scarred from being underwater for centuries from the looks of them. I would estimate three. This is no weak girl.”

The pink-haired girl from earlier came skipping over with some plants, “I brought what you asked for Lady Angela.”

“Thank you, Raine. I need you to transform,” Angela did a little spin with her finger and Raine looked at her with tears in her eyes.

“YOU WOULDN’T.”

“Raine, please. Don’t make this any harder. I’ll take a molting one.” In a burst of fire Raine was a rainbow phoenix and she hopped over to Angela and turned around so Angela had a pick of her tail feathers. Angela found a loose one and gave a tug as she pulled out a long rainbow feather. Raine let out a cry.

“MAALIKKKK,” tears flowed everywhere as the phoenix took off and ran away to the Bastion.

“Don’t mind her. She doesn’t like having her feathers plucked… I didn’t lie though I did take a molting one.” Angela went over to a mortar and pedestal where she began to grind everything up. “You wanted to ask me about what’s happening with her… Didn’t you?”

Lewis understood immediately at the woman’s inaction that he was far in over his head. The vines were on him in an instant, restricting any further movement, not that Lewis had any desire to act further against the enemy. Every part of his senses was telling him to runa way, that this woman before him could kill him faster than Lord Raith could. Which meant they found the owner of the realm.

The assassin was surprised though at the Goddess’ next action. She merely removed the dagger, and placed it back in his hand, as if chastising a child for not cleaning up his toys. And perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, he was nothing more than a naughty child to be scolded.

Lewis started to move as he was told, following behind the goddess. He wasn’t going to question fate at this point. He didn’t really have a choice. Lewis’ thought of a series of different questions, but ultimately dropped it when she seemingly answered it, as if reading the teen’s mind.

“Then you are Lady Angela, I presume,” Lewis stated as a fact, finally speaking for the first time in their exchanges. Still, she seemed more engrossed in Simone and what she was. There was a lot that was seemingly happening, and Lewis was only partially grasping what was happening. The Gods were…unique with the way they interacted with the world. It wasn’t on the mortals who served them to truly understand.

It was after a lot of words and…confusion involving a crying phoenix that Lewis got to what the point was. Simone was suspended in a sleep, and something about being impossibly alive and sane. But ultimately it came down tot he question that Lewis truly had.

“What will it take to kill her?” He paused. “Permanently.” Whatever deep magic was affecting her, Lady Angela would know. After all, she was one of the most powerful beings alive, was she not?

“Sharp kid. I would expect nothing else from someone Raith let live with him. I am Angela.”

Angela tapped her fingers against her lips as Lewis asked her the question he so desperately wanted. “What would it take to kill her…” Angela stepped away from the mortar and got close to Lewis. “That’s the end all be all question, isn’t it? We are all bound by contracts Lewis even the gods. Some contracts are so well written that not even gods can break them without severe consequences. A curse like this,” Angela waved her hand towards Simone, “isn’t one I’m willing to break without being able to read the whole curse. To do so would be dumb and in my long life I’ve learned that what sits at the surface isn’t what’s in the bottom.”

Angela put her hands on Lewis’s face and her thumbs rubbed against his cheeks. “I tried to look at the curse and it bit me. It’s missing a singular keyword. A passcode of sorts like a secret knock to get in.” Angela’s green eyes were drilling into Lewis at this point. “And I could… potentially read the curse if I had such a keyword but she won’t let me in. She will, however, let you in.”

There was a smirk on her face. “Because she wants you to kill her as fast as you can and end a few millennia worth of suffering. Will you do it Lewis? Will you enter Simone and talk to her? Because if you want to… I should warn you that what’s waiting for you is worse than hell itself. If you die in there I can’t bring you back.”

The Goddess was getting too touchy, but Lewis dare not speak against it. The lady was speaking quickly, going through the concepts of contracts and curses. A powerful curse and a powerful contract. Lewis was grasping the idea, but only barely. He knew what a curse was, and of course he knew what a contract was, but a curse written as a contract was an entirely new concept to him. But he was piecing it together. Whatever was written into the “contract” meant that the curse had to be upheld lest the contract be broken.

“The fae,” Lewis said softly. He had run into their kind only a few times, and knew the general rules. Don’t eat anything of their realm, and mean what you say. Never give your true name, and the most important…never make a deal with them. Was this the cause of a deal being made? Or worse…?

Still, there was something that the Goddess needed him to do. Lady Angela couldn’t begin to understand the curse without a codeword of sorts. A cipher? It didn’t really matter. She needed it. And that would be the key to ending her life.

“All right then,” Lewis said. “I’ll do it.” He had glimpsed the true Simone a few times. He would be entering her mind…the mind of someone who had such lifeless eyes. He was reminded of the orphans that had seen brutal things that no human should ever see. Whatever was behind her eyes was one thousand times worse.

“What do I need to do.” Lewis would kill her. Was it a mercy? Or was it just a challenge? Not even the boy could understand his motives…

“Exactly, the way this is written is like the fae. This is a fae curse. I have a feeling that she can tell you more than I can.” She sighed a bit and looked back at Simone. “I knew stories of the Auclair family. They were wealthy and had a kingdom that was small. The father had a gorgeous little girl that he loved very much. Tragedy struck and the kingdom burnt down. No one knew why but her being here with this curse makes me wonder if it has to do with what happened to her. Three hundred years ago, which is the in the time of just before she was drowning… There was a fae kingdom that burnt down with hellfire. I investigated this but ultimately couldn’t figure out why they all died. It was hellfire, Lewis. A fire that cannot be put out until it does the deed the owner of it wishes. I believe that all of these things are connected to Simone. Simone is either directly the reason why or she is the one who killed countless innocents.”

Angela was pleased to hear he wasn’t backing down. She went back over to mortar and she finished up the elixir she was working on. “I will need you to drink this and partially give some to her as well. A kiss works best. You’ll be pulled into her like the ocean dragging you in.”

She filtered the drink into a bottle and handed it over to Lewis. “Be safe and be wary. This girl is dangerous or at least a part of her is. You need to get to the real her and I’m not too sure you’ve met her just yet. She’s locked herself away behind barriers so that insanity doesn’t set in. So that her deaths don’t actually affect her. Lewis this girl is smart but that also makes the other versions of her deadly. Proceed with caution. Now go and make sure the kiss is tight so not to half-ass the elixir between the two of you. It will act as a bridge.”

It was amazing for Lewis to have held his tongue for as long as he had in front of the Goddess. But, as with a raging river, his temperament could not be tamed so easily.

“You damned Gods and these stupid rules. ‘A kiss works best’, you’d think a bloody goddess could figure out a better method.” Still, he took the potion and took a violent swig, and immediately gagged, spitting out a portion of it. “What the hell are you trying to do, kill me!?” He glared at the Goddess, who simply gave him a look of “Are you really going to question me?”

Lewis scoffed, and took the potion into his mouth, making his way over to the suspended Simone. He had done this before with herbs to save Xeik when he had been poisoned, so the process was pretty much the same. He locked lips with her, and forced her mouth open just enough for the vile liquid to be exchanged.

If he was lucky, maybe the potion’s vileness would break the curse on it’s own.

But alas, the world seemed to grow dark as the potion did as it was supposed to, pulling him into the darkness that was Simone.