Everything is laid out before Misery like a map. The once-dark and messy void of her past, present, and future have been illuminated by legend, scale, and objective. Scatters of dust have been grouped into constellation, the broken points of her life joined into a meaningful route. She no longer drifts through a cold and hostile universe, but floats above it all, seeing the truth of what things are. Before, in the muddle of her doubts, she considered the people before her tools that she could use for her means. With the clarity of enlightenment, she sees that they are tools she must use for her means. But not for personal, selfish purposes. They are the chips and stone of the Demiurge’s great plan for humanity, and she must move them and use them as Zie sees fit. She must break them and make them anew, just as she has been broken and made anew.

Duke Argan slouches in his chair, consumed by thought, hands folded in a wiry ball over his stomach. He says, abruptly: “The Lady Alodia Lightning. Why did she come with you?”

“You could ask her that when she wakes up. I didn’t make her come with me. She chose to.”

“When she wakes up?” The Duke laughs. “If she wakes up.”

She can read nobles like Duke Argan so much better since she’s accepted the Demiurge into her life. He’s worried about the princess, of course, but more importantly he wouldn’t know what to say to Pyrex Imogen. They entrusted the girl to him. He was supposed to protect her in any way he could. He failed.

“All will be well,” Misery says, to comfort him. “Her fate lies in the hands of the Larex Forge.” And Zie will not let her fall, she’s sure of it. Her hands, loose in her lap, close into fists.

“You should have come to us first,” Diamond says.

“I was compelled to act by a higher power.”