Hi, NBRians! Welcome to my chapter!

"Nyx wanted her to be a warrior, you know. No wonder he didn't really tell me who you were." She rose to her full, short height. Karina did the same, towering over her teacher on wobbly legs she couldn't quite feel.

"I would have been a warrior. I could have been a warrior." Didn't the prospect of battle scare her, though? Wasn't she even frightened of Olga's slaps? Coward suited her better than warrior.

She felt delirious.

"You're not," Baba Yaga hissed. "Sit down, girl."

Karina didn't budge.

"You need to be safe before you can be anything else."

A voice in her head whispered something she couldn't understand. Its tone swore vengeance. She could imagine a creature saying it through closed teeth, spittle flying from twisted lips. "Do you hear it," she muttered, before shaking her head and coming back to herself. "What do you want, old woman?" she asked in a voice more like that of the monster in her head than anything else.

"For you to wait and to be silent, girl." Baba Yaga never moved, though, watching her with sharp eyes.

Wasn't that what she had always done? And what had it gotten her?

The voice in her head sounded again in a deep hiss, this time with somewhat decipherable words. Kill...monster...

Who?

The voice didn't respond, but something else did.

There was a high shriek from outside, like the keening of a thousand dying creatures. With it came a more subtle sound--the sound of wind moving in slow, steady strokes like the movement of large wings. Karina raced out the door on her quaking limbs, which creaked in protest. As soon as she was on the porch, she gripped onto the doorframe to keep balance.

The sky was darkening. Even the stars felt quiet as a shadow moved across the sky and turned the full moon into a scar.

But that was hardly the most significant thing about the surroundings.

The Forest of the Dead, once still and silent save for the movements of a few yagas and warlocks, was teeming with creatures--if all of them could even be called creatures. On one side, surrounding Karina, was a tide of darkness. Moths with ghostlike wings, owls and bats with even softer sounds than the look of the moths' wings, cats with pelts of a thousand shades, a few people, all wearing different garb that was almost as contrasting as their appearances. There was also the quick moving wave of Darkness sliding against the Forest floor that looked like fabric worn away until it was sheer.

Then--ahead of her. Creatures of gold and brilliance, songbirds that sung noisily and tunelessly, golden honeybees that droned a beat, a set of strange creatures that Karina had never seen before, a similar collection of around a dozen people. It felt less striking to Karina, though their eyes caught hers and held them with bright intensity.

A creak sounded behind her. Baba Yaga and Hans. "I hate this," Baba Yaga muttered, her expression just as bitter as her tone.

Karina glanced back up at the sky, biting back the words the voice garbled in her ear. More shadow. The moon was almost invisible now, just a sliver of silver.

Her body felt like it was dancing uncomfortably. She was still.

The armies continued to advance, slow as sunset. A familiar large bird caught her eye. "Nyx."

Nyx turned to her, despite being a good twenty meters away. "Are you here to battle?"

She said nothing but: "Why here?" The sky was ever darkening. Soon the moon would be gone. Her body convulsed yet again, the voice in her ear becoming little more than a whisper.

"Here, we lose nothing. This is the Forest of the Dead, and it has been our battleground for centuries." There was a note of longing to his voice at the word "centuries" that would have been a crack if he were as young as Hans.

Hans.

As she turned toward her once-upon-a-time best friend, the moon disappeared, cloaking the sky in shadow and turning her body into a battlefield. Her bones felt weaker, her muscles more feeble, and everything alternated ice cold and fiery heat save for her vision, which changed from inky night to bright day.

Her chest was heaving, wheezes wracking her body as something invisible lay on her chest and danced over her organs, making her body convulseconvulseconvulse until gasp! A shuddery sigh, a freeing of her body that made it looser and stronger and gifted her back normal strength.

"Karina--"

Images rushed against her skull, dizzying her mind with everything from the first time she told Lilith to comfort her to her courtroom battle to every taunt and lash Olga had ever dealt her to Hans. Hans leaving her, Hans coming back to her, Hans laughing with her.

Tears were rain against Karina's cheeks. It felt as though everything had been kept a secret until now, because this feeling of icy, brutal clarity was unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was as though someone had a glass up to her eye and everything was finally cured.

There was a hand offered to her, and she took it. It was calloused and firm and pocked with scars and the person offering it laughed a little--kindly, like they were sharing a joke--as she stumbled to stand. The feeling of being pulled apart must have made her fall and lose her grip on the doorframe. But he was real. And Vasilisa had once told her that forgiveness was real, even if she had never accepted it until now.

She may not ever forgive Duras, or Olga, or Helga. But she and Hans were not their pasts, or their parents. They were the future. And he had proved himself, hadn't he?

Though her vision was dim, it was easy to see that the battle was beginning.

The first thing that moved was the darkness itself, sweeping in a tide across the Forest of the Dead. Some of the creatures of Light toppled over, mewling and screaming something terrible that splintered itself in Karina's heart.

Ancestors, she hated it. Violence didn't belong in anyone's hands. Were these creatures--no, these soldiers--not on a pyre of Darkness?

She was no warrior, though. Baba Yaga's smirk confirmed that.

"Baba Yaga?"

"What, girl? Can you feel now?"

The nonchalant tone with which she asked it felt like a dull knife pressed against her neck. Wasn't this crurelty, too? To make someone feel like less than they were?

"Do you want me to be my mother?" she asked bleakly.

The yaga said nothing.

"I'm not her." It wasn't a twisted sense of being too terrible but rather the truth. She could not be Vasilisa. Yes, her mother's words had transformed her soul, and yes, she had made in her mother's footsteps. But she was not Vasilisa.

"You're free," said Baba Yaga.

"Yes."

Hans squeezed her hand. She still hadn't let go of him. He was warm, and she was shivering.

"I'm going to go fight." More screams filled the air. It was the first sign of death she had seen in a Forest named for it. Her stomach heaved.

"Don't, girl. You're finally safe. I don't care what Nyx has to say." As Karina slipped her hand from Hans' as Baba Yaga wrenched Karina towards her with her withered one. "You must stay safe," Baba Yaga hissed.

Karina reached down deep inside her, to a well of things she hadn't known were there until just then, when her body had grown limp then strong. They screamed tears and cried anger and maybe that was why she felt tears and mucus flowing down her face and a silent scream from which something swirled, and that something burned her throat like bile and pushed past her lip like vomit.

I can't see, I can't see, I can't see.

She was feeling.

There was sadness, thick and coming out of her in short, shuddery gasps and long tears. She hadn't wept for a long time, had built up a numbness to it like her body had made itself harder to prevent the slaps from hurting her skin so much. But it was there, a ghost haunting her side, and now she let it take over her body.

There was pride. In her weaving, the way her fingers moved quick and nimble. In herself, for saying something in a courtroom that frightened her now. In Hans, for being more than a puppet. Because he had been, hadn't he? He had been fierce and beautiful and had turned himself into a monster of body to transform into a human of the mind.

There was anger, which now burned her eyes and her hands and her body as she grabbed fistfuls of darkness and let them bust out of her in darts, that felled soldiers on the field in front of the house and--and--

She wanted to weave. She wanted to sew, to move, to feel, to think, to marry each of those things into one perfect, harmonious action. The soldiers of Light cowered at the sight of her, the girl who played with Darkness, and even Baba Yaga had let go of her, a look of horror on the crone's usually smug face. Darkness held Baba Yaga in a fist, and Karina let it free, ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach that came with it.

She didn't want to be a monster. She didn't want to kill anyone.

Blood was slick under her fingers. They weren't good weaving fingers. She wiped them on her dress and started to reach for Darkness to spin into thread when she realized:

It couldn't be a complete tapestry without the some sunshine. What good was a tapestry made only of Dark or Light? She was more than one. The world was more than one.

But there was only Darkness here.

A birdcall sounded. A flap of wings.

There was a golden bird with sweeping feathers on Hans' arm that looked oddly familiar. Its eyes glittered like forgotten gems.

"The Day Bird?"

"The Sun Bird, which the Day Bird follows." He smiled, a quiet smile that she'd never seen before. It made her chest feel warm and tight. "And I'm the SunStriker."

He raised the bird above his head, and light began to pool in threads that reminded her of his hair. The Forest stood still, the side of Night immobilized by the bright gleams. When it got to be too much, Karina looked away, feeling heat press behind her eyeballs like hot pokers. When she dared a glance she saw Hans' true goal.

With unsteady fingers, he began to pluck the strands of light like a fiddler, finally twisting them into threads so bright they were blinding. But, then again, so was her Darkness.

And together they made the most beautiful design. Her hands explored the old, familiar patterns as they searched for new ones. Hans was clumsier, but he always managed to twist the threads into an unexplored direction.

It was a beautiful tapestry. It was an unclaimed destiny.

The battle stood still.

Darkness and Light perfectly complimented each other. They were a perfect contrast that seemed less different when put together than originally thought.

Karina took the tapestry to the battlefield, ignoring the blood and shadow that surrounded her. One dark figure with red eyes circled above like she was prey.

It did not matter.

When she set the tapestry down on the ground, Light and Darkness spread underneath their feet, banishing everything they touched to wherever they had come from. In the end, the only things that stayed was the destruction and the two Messengers. Nyx and Luma.

"You killed her for me," Luma said, her voice loud and filled with almost-laughter. "You stopped the battle."

"I won't ever kill anyone for anybody," Karina said. "Why do you ever need a battlefield?"

"Night and Day have always been at war about who controls the sky."

"What always has been shouldn't always have to be." She was surprised by her own resolve, the feeling of having words to say. "This is our Forest now. Leave."

They both did. Hans walked to her. "It's ours now, 'Rina?" There was a question in her tone that left her with no hesitation anymore.

She smiled. "I'm done with hosting wars and battles. In me, around me--anywhere. And Baba Yaga has a house that can move, and she can leave and right now--right now, this belongs to us."

"I'm glad it does."

Karina looked up. The shadow above was still there, and now it swooped to Karina's side. Something prodded behind her eyes, hissed at her brain. She stuck her fingers in her pocket. Heat collected in the cloth of Lilith's body. Let...me in!

No.

There were no monsters in her head but herself. Not anymore. She would not let Lilith back in.

Ka...rina...

No.

Her limbs began jittering again, her foot tapping. Her very bones felt cold. She could feel the blood pulse through her body, each slow, steady beat.

I...don't care!

And her vision changed completely.

The first thing she noticed was the way the ground beneath her changed. Once in a constant state of movement, it now felt unsteady but solid beneath her feet. Her new standing ground was a pile of wood, a few feet away from scorched earth. Moracia made itself clear in the distance as a huddle of houses and huts, painted golden by the fast-fading sun.

She was on a pyre.

Her wrists burned. Her eyes did, too, and when she squinted, she saw a shadow that swirled black, purple, and red. Its figure kept changing shape, but the two things that remained constant were its beady red eyes and black hole mouth.

"Let me in," said the shadow, which sounded like a mixture of Olga and Duras and Lilith--all gravel and hissing consonants--"or burn."

Karina could smell smoke.

Ancestors, her stomach was knotting something fierce. "No."

She was not her mother. She was not going to be a yaga on a pyre. And living in fear, living in someone else's thoughts, was the first step towards being that.

She was entirely different.

Her body may have been tense and her vision may have tearing up and Ancestors, and she was scared of any concept of fire, but she was more certain in her answer than anything else. "It's been a long eight years, Lilith. But I'm through."

It felt good to laugh as herself, so she did. "You're a robber. And I am done with letting you steal my will."

The vision changed, ever the same yet ever different.

She was standing in Moracia.

Karina...

It was night there. Busy, with the usual crowd of people bustling around the marketplace. Yet no one noticed her.

Will you...give...me your feelings?

She was holding a lantern in her left hand. The handle felt hot against her fingers, like it was bound to burn her. She made sure it wasn't too close to her skirts.

...Karina?

She began to walk, closer to the town center. Where everything was kept, where everyone was walking towards. She wondered why they were all going there. It felt odd to be one of the masses when she'd been ostracized from them for so long.

The closer she got the heavier her steps became. Until at last she saw the reason of her walking.

Olga, Helga, and Duras stood on the stage. Wood had been stacked at their feet, iron had cuffed their hands. Helga's face was shadowed, but when light flickered over it Karina noticed the hollows beneath her once-sister's eyes and the way she held her chin high. She noticed the way Olga tried to slink into the shadows of the stage, the way Duras' eyes still glittered fiercely and coolly.

Something stirred in her chest.

Kill...them...

Her chest felt hollow, a candle unlit.

Maybe that was the only reason she had survived.

Lilith's voice was a cold caress. Light them up, Karina.

She didn't want to. Where was her vengeance? Where was her fire, her fierceness?

Gone, with Helga's confidence and Olga's freedom.

Karina lifted her lantern. And blew out the flame.

Then, ignoring Lilith's voice, she waited for dawn.