4

Firstly, she thought she had been very kind. 21 mentors, one extra for them to take care of their mental health and emotional well-being. She pursed her lips and shook her head.

"Instead of thanking me, I'm asked for. Must it be that way? Do I have to lift a finger for every little thing? Why can't I be left alone quietly?" Loralie uttered in a drunken tone. No one knew how she made it through all those years of nothingness. It was there that she developed an intense taste and addiction for wine. It numbed her senses and kept her alive but barely. From someone who almost viewed alcohol with disdain to someone with an intense interest in them - to some, her change was inevitable but to her, it was everything. It was worth it - yet so very pointless.

Nothing could possibly bring "him" back. Could it?

She sighed and placed her forehead on the cool ice floor that held the being there, frozen and encapsulated in that casing that held his fragments together.

She traced the outline quietly. Her fingertips bled pink and she stared, frozen sinking into her usual wooden state.

"We'll have to tell her about the discovery," Fate One told the rest. Fate Two and Three shook their heads.

"It'll change the course of everything."

"It's alittle too cruel," they murmured and Fate One looked forlornly at them, "And this isn't? Knowing that "he" could be salvaged but not giving him the chance to? That fragment of him left..."

"What fragment?" a gentle but stern voice broke their conversation. They sighed collectively before turning to look at Loralie, who looked eevey bit the goddess of war that she was.

"It's this..."

The Fates explained to her.

She heard it but her mind didn't register. All she heard was a fragment of him survived and that there was a chance to preserve his state and bring him back to life

The rest didn't matter.

Something about doomed flowers and unleashing a great catastrophe and her needing to lose four fifth of her prowess leaving her weak and bleeding didn't really stick in her mind.

"So you get it then?"

She held her palms tightly, she couldn't believe that her hope could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

She nodded her head, "What do I need to do?"

The Fates got together, "Come here in 7 days. You understand that once this starts, it can't be reversed."

Loralie nodded. Her eyes lingered on the being one last time and she murmured, "He deserves a second chance, more so than me. I was just a flower he had picked up and saved. He had the gentlest smile and was the fairest - I can't see how giving up my life means anything in this process. I was nothing then, and then I came into existence. Let me return to that then," she said and Fates nodded their heads.

"In 7 days then," they murmured sternly but sighed when she left.

"Such a silly child, if only she knew the entirety of things" they sighed and felt a good 100,000 years older.

"You've been away for far too long, master. Don't judge us for this," Fate Two said his piece.