rumi mha

“Oh, that was nothing, Mom,” I laughed. “Don't worry! It's just his knot stuck inside me, is all. You'd think, with how long I've been letting him do this, that he'd have figured out by now he can't pull out right away! But you can't fight instincts, I guess. Now I just have to wait until he shrinks down enough to get it out again. It shouldn't take too long.”

I left her there, naked and bleeding, and the next time I saw her, she was at the base of the west tower, having jumped to her death. Galvin told me not to concern myself with her, that she was simply a broken toy, and that I would find another. But I knew different. She wasn’t a broken toy, and though she made her choice, it wasn’t suicide; it was murder. I killed her. I hurt her, I violated her, and made her life so painful that I might as well have pushed her off that tower myself. I knew it, but I didn’t want to accept it.

During Foley and Saimallah’s matches, Noah dealt with Reiss’s corpse. He laid the body on the ground and pulled out two magical tools, each with a different enchantment. All the time spent runecrafting was for situations just like this. He stabbed the body with the first tool, the hollow rib of a powerful aquatic monster, prompting blue runes to glow along the side, and then water began to shoot out like a straw. It was water magic, draining all of the moisture from Reiss’s body and causing him to shrivel up like dried fruit.