Group Cohesion Is Important for Group Projects

I was speechless. Utterly speechless.

The signs had been there from the start. Py Pir’s strange little mannerisms whenever I stayed in her room with Yuree-El, the outfit Yuree-El insisted I wear, her rigid morning routine, the almost mechanical precision with which she carried herself in public…

It wasn’t just habit… it was all in preparation for one day ascending her homeland’s throne.

I should’ve been offended. Furious, even. But… when you were keeping a secret as big as being the princess of a goddamn empire, maybe everything else made sense.

But why was she here?! Why was Py Pir trying to court me?!

And why—of all times—did my power finally awaken the moment she revealed this truth?

Why hadn’t Py Pir needed to sign the golden contract then? Was her royal blood what exempted her?

STOMP. STOMP.

The ground quaked under heavy footsteps. I jerked my head up.

Right. We weren’t done.

Up until now, it had just been the mob enemies. But the real boss had finally decided to step forward.

His underlings lay scattered across the field, dead or writhing in pain. Only he remained.

The orc chieftain.

He was enormous—easily the size of three Pipers stacked together. His shadow swallowed the clearing.

And on his brutish face, a glint of something unnatural.

…A device. The same kind of mind-controlling mechanism the dragon had worn.

My stomach turned. Engelklein was involved. Somehow. But this wasn’t her fault. It couldn’t be.

Still… that left the problem of what to do with our newfound powers.

“Any ideas?!” Py Pir shouted.

“I haven’t used my Ultimate spell today, if that counts,” I said.

Daisy grimaced. “I… you wouldn’t want me to use my Ultimate. I can barely hold Malmitres back as it is.”

“Then we do this the hard way!” Piper readied herself, spear crackling with faint energy.

“Py Pir, wait—!”

SHRIIINNGGG!

She froze mid-charge.

Py Pir eyes snapped toward me.

“Cotter… I can feel your intentions. How can I feel your intentions? How does that even work?!”

“Don’t you see?!” I pleaded. “This power requires us to work together!”

Daisy’s eyes glazed, trance-like. “Yes… I see it. An Ultimate spell between all three of us forming. But it requires all of us.”

A chill ran down my spine. Somehow, I knew Py Pir was seeing what Daisy and I saw. And she knew that we knew she knew.

A cycle of certainty.

Yet, Py Pir trembled. “But C-Cotter! I don’t want to mess this up again! I can’t lose you! I can’t wield magic like you do! The last spell—it wasn’t skill, it was just bloodline instinct! I’ll ruin it!” Tears spilled down her cheeks, even as the chieftain’s thunderous steps closed in.

“It’s okay! Py Pir—look at me!”

Her wet and desperate eyes met mine.

“If not for you, I wouldn’t exist,” I said.

“…H-Huh?”

“I am not Cotter. I am another soul inhabiting his body.”

Py Pir stiffened and she desperately looked like she wanted to say something before deciding against it.

I knew that she knew that I wasn’t lying.

“Perhaps my soul killed Cotter’s soul. Perhaps the Chills got to him first.” I was crying now too. It was just so much to process all at once! “Either way, you gave me, a wayward soul, a second chance at life!”

“But… why would you hide that from me?”

“Because I was scared! Scared of what you’d think! You matter so much to me—I couldn’t stand the thought of you hating me!”

“I-I…”

The surge that ripped through us at those words was madness. A firestorm of emotion, raw and blinding, coursing between our souls.

And in a split second, all three of us became one. Our power ignited!!

[COMBINED ULTIMATE ABILITY: WHITE FLAME!!]

ZZZIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!

For five seconds, morning became noon.

All around us was flame and fire, and neither of us seemed to be too affected.

The spell tore through the chieftain’s chest, ripping heart from bone in a searing pillar of white fire!

The massive orc staggered, choking on nothing, before finally collapsing with a ground-shaking thud.

Their corpses that once oozed black were simply fading into dust. Good. Didn’t have to hire a clean-up crew.

Oddly enough, while I didn’t feel much sense of progression in a literal sense, I felt myself get stronger all the same from their deaths.

I needed to earn more money to be able to access the stats screen to confirm it for myself!

“You did good, Engelklein,” I heard Yuree-El say. Of course, she was the first to go straight to business after what had transpired. What I’d revealed. “Really good. You gave us good information and at the correct timing.”

“It doesn’t take a lot… of effort. Suppose… it’s the one area I don’t mess up, because I’m not doing any of the important work.”

Uriel patted the small golem as it hovered near her. “Information is as valuable as my ability to swing my knife at the enemy. Information is half the battle. Don’t put yourself… where’s Py Pir?”

The only reason I knew Piper left for sure was because I felt my connection between her weaken. Since she wasn’t physically here, this newfound ability must be location-based.

“Where’s Piper going?” Engel cried. “She had to know Cotter was lying in the moment to get her motivated, right?”

We stared at her solemnly. My eyes were cast down.

Engel shook her head as she floated there. “I-I thought soul possession was just a myth…”

\\

“Pip—Py Pir, wait! Wait!”

Turns out, a snake body beats two puny legs any day of the week.

I still needed to work on my cardio.

She didn’t slither to the direction that I thought she would. She slid further away from town.

There was no mistaking it: I made a terrible decision by not being upfront about my circumstances from the get-go. I thought by keeping this a secret, we’d keep our group harmonious, happy, and when the time was eventually right, I’d confess everything.

But I’d kept delaying because I thought the time wasn’t right.

I thought…

I thought.

And therein lies my sin.

I finally caught up with her.

She stood alone in a snow-white expanse, sunlight spilling over the drifts and turning her scales to a field of tiny stars. For a moment she looked remote, untouchable—every inch the royal she’d been raised to be.

“Cotter… leave me be.”

“If that’s what you want—”

“No, wait! Please stay,” Py Pir cut in. “I… I don’t know what I want anymore.”

Py Pir turned to face me fully.

“I was responsible for all of this. That much is clear now. I stole the afterlife that should’ve been yours and dragged you into a kind of hell—all because I was insecure about a spell. That day, when Cotter fell sick with the chills, I reached for the bloodline art. It misfired.” Her hand drifted to her chest. “And it landed here. Square in his heart.”

“Py Pir…”

“I did it because I’m a prideful, foolish girl in far over her head,” she went on, words gathering speed like a stone rolling downhill. “Every time I feel small, I try to sound like a queen who can carry fifty million lives on her back; that’s what awaits me back home. But the truth is... I’m not fit to lead anyone.”

She looked out over the snow.

“I keep talking like a commander because if I stop, I have to sit with the truth that I killed a boy and replaced him with a stranger, and that stranger is kinder than I deserve.

“And the worst part is… I will never get to apologize to the real Cotter. Whether he’d hate me or not does not matter.” Tears fell from her eyes now. “My parents u-used to say that life is the practice of letting go. But there’s n-no lesson for not getting to say goodbye.”

Her voice thinned to a thread.

“I am mourning the silly, prideful boy whose smile could cure leprosy—who, these past three months, I thought had finally grown past his immaturity. And now I know… that boy is gone.”

The wind moved the surface of the snow in faint ripples. Her shoulders trembled, then eased. The light shifted; the stars in her scales dimmed to a softer glow.

“For what it’s worth… that queen you’re terrified you’ll never be is standing in the snow, telling the truth when it hurts the most. A leader must be able to face reality in the face, even when that face looks down upon you. That’s worth something.”

“Stay,” she whispered. “Just… stay a little longer.”

“Sure.”

We stood side by side, watching the bright, empty world. The cold bit at my cheeks. Her tail left a long, careful line in the snow.

“Out of curiosity…” Py Pir piped up. “How old would you be had you not been… killed?”

“Twenty-three.”

“The peak of beauty itself. My arranged to-be-wed, before he was assassinated, would be your age by now.”

“Wouldn’t that make you a bit young?”

She huffed, cheeks pinking. “I appreciate the compliment, but I’m not a puny hooman who follows silly hooman conventions. I’ve been a grown woman for years now.”

“Which makes you hiding in an orphanage even creepier.”

“Hey, not my fault my physiology lets me pass as a teen here.” She snorted, laughing. “You are very strange for a ghost.”

“And your fiancé?”

Her gaze drifted to the horizon. “He was… kind. Quiet. He listened even when I was performing royalty at him. I didn’t love him yet, but I think I could have.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Gods, I feel so icky. Putting on this face for you and Cotter to get what I want. Well, it’s not what I want, but what the Golden Oasis has dictated. I feel used, to tell you the complete truth. Which isn’t fair because you are the victim here and—”

I hugged her. “Let’s just stop thinking and head back inside. The others are waiting for us.”

For a second she froze—then, to my surprise, melted against me.

“O-Okay.”

\\

Py Pir’s parents were part of a ploy to try and reclaim the throne from a bunch of usurpers. Apparently, she’s the last of her line. Her brothers and sisters were assassinated. So they sent her here to wait out the goings-on in Oasis. The place any wayward assassin would least suspect.

Those were the brass tacks of what she told me as we reached the orphanage. It was getting dark now.

Soon enough, I heard the sound of Yuree-El’s voice.

“Are you done divulging the secrets multiple people died for yet, Py Pir?”

Py Pir nodded. “Quite.”

“Good news on my front, regardless,” Yuree-El half-sighed. “The guards don’t seem to notice our… scuffle. Or they did notice and decided that since there was no more noise, they didn’t need to investigate it.”

“We pray for the simple things…” Daisy remarked.

“Now! We have much work to do tomorrow, rau! I can think of a hundred different ways we could’ve made it out of that fight less scuffed up. We need to prepare for next week’s ever-important test, so rest up, rau!”