I blinked, trying to wipe the hot blood from my lips. Roel Bluestar. The name echoed in someone else's memory in fragments, like an echo in an empty cave. White hair falling over her forehead. Blue eyes. A small-time bandit working for a bearded bastard named Grote.
"I'm asking for the last time, Roel" Groth said softly, wiping his bloody knuckles on his cloak. "Where's the stone you were supposed to deliver?"
My stomach tightened. But not from fear — from a sharp, crystal awareness. This scene... She was eerily familiar. From the book. A dumb action movie that I was flipping through on the subway to kill time. "Flaming shadows," I think. There was such an episode — a minor extra. Roel Bluestar was tortured and then killed in the very first chapter to show how cool the main character is when he takes revenge. His description is white hair, blue eyes, and a face beaten to a pulp.
I was that extra. The one who was supposed to die. Now.
The thought struck like a hammer on an anvil. I'm not just resurrected. I found myself in a fictional world, in the body of a doomed extra.
The grotto moved towards me again, its masked shadows moving.
"Wait!" I said hoarsely. My voice, Roel's, sounded strange and cracked. Survival instinct, cold and calculating, broke through the fog of shock. I remembered. In the book, the stone was not just a stone. It was the "Star Fairy Tear Stone" an artifact that reacts to strong emotions. Adrenaline, panic, pain... or rage.
I looked down at my strapped hands. On pale skin, on thin but sinewy fingers. In the book, Roel was a loser, but not an idiot. He hid the stone, sensing something was amiss. But didn't have time to use it. Because didn't know how.
But I knew. I remembered every line of that cheap novel.
"The stone... Here" I whispered, causing my eyes to widen in apparent animal fear"In a boot. The left one."
Grote grinned, satisfied. He nodded to one of the thugs. He bent down roughly and began to pull off my rough leather boot. All their attention was focused on this movement.
And I was concentrating. Not in pain. Not out of fear. On pure, white, icy rage. Rage for taking Carl's life. For Roel's battered body. For all this dirty, unfair trap. I imagined this rage flowing from my very heart, coursing through my veins, gathering into a fist.
The thug straightened up, holding a dull, moon-like, gray stone in his hand. Grote held out his hand.
The moment Grote's fingers touched the stone, I released my rage. Mentally. A silent scream.
The stone in the Grotto's hand flashed with a blinding, unbearably bright azure light. The same light that I saw before I died. Only now it was not soothing, but withering.
The grotto roared in pain, hurling the stone away. He fell to the dirty floor with a thud, but continued to burn with a cold blue flame, illuminating the room with an eerie light. The thugs recoiled, shielding themselves with their hands.
Their confusion lasted for a second. I've had enough.
I jerked my arms, straining the straps to the limit. Loose, worn buckles are a weak spot that I, as a reader, have always ridiculed. Now was my chance. My right arm has been ripped free, skinned to the bone. The pain was the background. A furious, raging background.
I didn't try to free my other hand. Instead, I reached—not for the knife at the belt of the nearest stunned thug, but for his shin. There, in the boot, was the handle of a short, thick stiletto. The weapon of last chance. The rat's weapon.
I pulled it out and, without changing my position, plunged into the thigh of the same thug with all my strength.
He wheezed and collapsed. The second one came to his senses, grabbing his sword. But Grote, blinded, with a burned, smoking palm, blocked his path, rushing and screaming.
I yanked with my left hand again, and this time the buckle wouldn't hold. There was an azure stone lying next to me, still smoldering. I grabbed it with my left hand. He burned his skin, but not with pain, but with a strange, pulsing energy. He responded to my rage, fueled it.
I knelt down, the stiletto in one hand, the flaming artifact in the other. Blood flowed from his nose and flooded his mouth. My head was buzzing. But I saw all three of them: the boss, blind from pain, the wounded bandit, and the second one, who now looked at me not with contempt, but with primal horror.
He didn't see Roel Bluestar, the pathetic thief. He saw something else. A ghost with white hair and eyes burning with blue flames, clutching a fragment of a star in his hand.
"You... what are you?" the thug muttered.
I bared my teeth in a bloody smile. Carl was dead. Roel was supposed to die. Now there was a third person here. And he had a rock in his hands that had just burned the boss, and a stiletto that smelled like someone else's shit.
"I am" I said hoarsely — «An unforeseen consequence"
And he threw a smoldering stone right into the Grotto's face. The flash blinded everyone. The next moment, I was at the door, slipping out into the dark, smelly hallway, leaving behind chaos, pain, and my fate-ordained end.
I was running. Through the pain, through the fog in my head, through the fragments of someone else's memory, which was now mine. I was Roel Bluestar. A minor extra from the novel. But I was also Carl, who read this novel. And I've just ripped the first page of my doom out of my mouth.
There was a main character out there somewhere. Strong, handsome, carrying justice. Sooner or later our paths will cross. But now the script has a crack. The rat that was destined to be crushed bit.
And she decided to survive.