I don’t know how long I sat there. I could have just logged out of Dis, but I wanted to know what was going on. So I waited.
Suddenly, one of the cell walls lit up from the outside. It turned out to be bars on that side. I tried to reach them, but couldn’t. Just an inch too far.
A girl appeared behind the bars, a dark elf. Like all her people, she was tall and stately. Her thick snow-white braid thrown over her left shoulder hung down to her waist. Fire burned in her eyes.
Eileen, dark elf, level 390 Sticking Blade oflnnoruuk
Clan: Widowmakers.
So it was the Alliance of Preventers after all. And everything that was happening matched with what Snowstorm called ‘part of the gameplay.’ The Widowmakers were a young and daring clan that accepted no authority. They climbed the ladder of success rapidly, reaching the top of the leaderboard just last year, but they were accepted into the Alliance and respected. The Widowmakers scorned no methods, easily came to agreements and just as easily broke them. Nonetheless, people kept doing business with them.
I realized why when the inseparable couple that led the Children of Kratos appeared next to Eileen. It seemed Widowmakers was a puppet clan of the Children of Kratos, against whom even Modus and the Azure Dragons refused to stand up.
“Good work, Eileen,” Vivian said in a velvet voice. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
“Very good,” her husband Joshua Gallagher agreed. He came closer to the bars, looked into my face, the real one, with no Imitation or Cloak Essence to hide it. “Undead after all. Hinterleaf was right.”
“How dreadful…” Vivian shivered. “Undead… It’s a good thing we decided not to switch to this disgusting race.”
“It’s wiiat’s inside that matters,” I answered with Uncle Nick’s words. “What do you want?”
Shaking their heads and not answering, the Children of Kratos disappeared in the darkness, leaving me alone with Eileen. The dark elf girl approached.
“We don’t need anything from you. You feel no pain, you can’t be killed… So you’re just going to sit here. Forever.”
At that, Eileen left without another word.
Interlude 2: Eileen
HER NAME was Eileen Waters, and this day promised to be the most magnificent in her life.
A knock at the office door, then Jade’s head appearing at the entrance, press secretary to the Widowmakers. Eileen nodded for the twenty-two-year-old girl to come in. Without walking all the way to the rest area occupied by the Widowmakers clan leader, she stopped and made her report: “The journalists are gathered, Miss Waters. Even Clark Katz is here.”
Torn from her thoughts, Eileen glanced at the clock in annoyance. After making sure that there were still ten minutes left before the start, she pinned Jade with a look. The girl drooped. She shivered, Eileen thought with pleasure.
“He’s editor-in-chief at Disgardium Daily,” the intruder explained.
“I know who Katz is. I hope he didn’t bring that old ghoul with him… What was his name?”
“Ian Mitchell? We didn’t invite him, but if he turns up, we have to let him in. You know he…”
“I see!” the Widowmakers leader raised her voice. “Anything else?”
Jade’s eyes flashed. She shook her head and started to pull at her skirt nervously. Eileen felt annoyance—she didn’t like the girl, she was too… perfect. A perfect figure, a beautiful aristocratic face, and she did her job perfectly. Her popularity among the clan’s fan base was almost as high as Eileen’s. That was infuriating, but Vivian Gallagher had vouched for Jade’s candidacy, and that old witch always got her way.
“Alright, leave me. I need a minute—I must gather my thoughts.”
Jade obediently left the room, carefully closing the door behind her. Eileen didn’t like to hear doors slammed, and everyone knew that. Especially the press secretary.
Eileen approached the window looking out across the city of Brussels. She wanted to stretch out these moments before her triumph, savor them, especially considering how long it had taken her to get here.
From a young age, Eileen lived for the approval of those around her. First it was “Clever daughter!” from her father for assembling a jigsaw, or “You’re my little helper!” from mother for washing a cup. Then stars and plastic medals in kindergarten—for good behavior, for the best drawing, for learning a poem. The praise of parents and teachers was for her the finest reward. It gave strength, inspired her, made her happy.
In school, the stakes were raised, and Eileen encountered grades of success. Now it was no longer soon-forgotten words of approval that were the most important to her. Far more important were school grades—something that would remain with her for her whole life, and with time would help her to achieve a new level. The better the grades, the higher the chance for a high citizenship category. Simple, easy to understand.
She was called a nerd and quietly hated… She persevered, kept smiling, at least in public. Then she understood that girls are far crueller than boys, who simply didn’t pay her any attention. Eileen’s classmates might outshine her in everything, but never in study. All they could do was try to wipe the happy smile off her face after yet another A. They failed, and that just made the bullying worse.
She was strong. Sometimes (often) at school, she wanted to cry, but Eileen held back her tears, envisioning how she would get rich and punish her bullies, laughing under her breath. She wrote the name of each into a black workbook and only regretted that she began to do so too late—in the senior classes. Every last drop of those unshed tears poured through the ink of her pen into that notebook, and by the time she was twenty-five, it was full. It held the names of all the losers (she liked to think of them like that) who didn’t understand who they were dealing with:
