Chapter 3

The water was cold as death as Hate plunged through it. To her right, a rock spire hidden under the surface narrowly missed skewering her from below. To her left, a giant falling chunk of stone plunged into the water. It would have crushed her had it been a few feet closer.

She yanked a hidden knife from her boot as she hurried into the growing woods. Trees rose out of the ground around her, their branches popping and cracking as they grew. She wasn’t sure if Lust had spotted her yet.

The sounds of battle still echoed across the mountain range. Angels, Haters, mecha-beasts and mages still clashed up above. Hate hoped they could get along without her. As a rule she tried not to give her Haters too much free will, but Greed’s beast-tamers seemed to be pretty decent thinkers. Maybe one of them would rise to the occasion.

The pool was clear and pristine, it’s surface could have been a pane of crystal, despite the chaos all around it. Chunks of the island rained into the sea, the mountains all around were alive with the sound of magic and gunfire, and the forest around it was growing inordinately quickly, but there wasn’t a single ripple across the water.

It was very obviously a trap. Or Lust had stepped away to use the bathroom. Or she had imagined Lust being here and there was nothing to be worried about after all. Hate’s grip on her knife didn’t falter as she slowed, taking cover under under a grove of bushes that grew around her. She was completely hidden, like a tiger waiting for her prey. When Lust stepped into the pool, she would strike swiftly and certainly, and then she’d finally be able to see what had been going on in the world our

She stood there for a minute, looking into the water. It had been a pretty long time since she had been at the edge of one of these pools. Since she had felt the power of being the driving force behind the decisions. If it was a trap, Lust would have sprung it by now, wouldn’t she? Hate looked around quickly. There really was no one here.

“Maybe just a peek,” Hate muttered to herself, and tentatively stepped into the pool. She could feel things rushing to the forefront of her mind. First it was a vague notion, then it was a question, than a situation slowly formed.

“No!” Hate barked as the full picture formed, “No, no, no, no-”

She was still saying it as she dove beneath the surface of the pool.

“-no, no, no,” I said looking in the mirror. This was stupid. I’d tried on like thirty different outfits. When did this become so hard?

“She’s already seen you in all of these, Danny,” I muttered to myself, “why are you getting nervous about it now?”

The thought came bubbling up in my mind, dragging itself out of the anxiety like a drowned rat. I knew why. Because I wanted her to want me again. I wanted her to see me and regret everything, to fall into my arms, and then what? Then we’d be right back where we started. God, this was so stupid, what was I even doing? The breakup was only six months ago, why was I breaking no-contact?

My phone was sitting on the bed, staring at me from under a flannel. I could still stop this. All I had to do was send a text. Take a rain check. An awkward excuse and we were back on track, back on being broken-up. I wasn’t this desperate for a lay. I just wasn’t thinking clearly. I reached for the phone and-

Hate screamed as her head was yanked free from the water by the hair.

“I stepped away for two minutes,” Lust snarled, “I know you’re stupid skeleton-cops are still fighting on the eastern slope, so what the hell are you doing here?”

Hate spat in Lust’s eye and the knife stabbed at her throat. Lust caught her arm and they both fell back into the pool in a tangle.

I stared at the phone. It’s not like I had been planning on doing anything explicit. We could be civilized, we didn’t have to make this as messy as Mom and Dad had made their break-up. Couldn’t two people be friends?

“No!” Hate shouted with a mouth full of water, trying to crocodile-spine out of Lust’s headlock, “cut her off!”

“Shut UP!” Lust shouted, trying to squeeze harder. Hate saw dots in the edges of her vision. She slammed her head back and felt Lust’s nose snap gloriously. The grip around her neck loosened and her turns broke her free of Lust’s grip. The yellow-haired woman fell straight backwards into the pool. Hate dove in after her.

I threw the phone back on the bed. It didn’t have to mean anything, we were just getting coffee. I couldn’t avoid her forever, the town was just too small. I was getting tired of checking every room and store to make sure she wasn’t there. I had hid from her long enough.

I looked at the outfit I was wearing. I didn’t care if she liked it or not, I didn’t care what she thought of me. This was just a way to kill an evening. Actually, if that was really all I was after, I could just stay in and play video games… I glanced back at my PC.

I sighed. I’d been playing video games all evening every day for months now. They weren’t really scratching the itch anymore. Nothing really was, that was part of the problem. No one told me it was going to be like this. No one had told me that after high school there be so much… Nothing. It was like I’d spent my entire life on train tracks, and the train had suddenly just flown off a cliff as the track abruptly ended. I still had the feeling of falling.

I picked the phone back up and stared at it. I swiped past the texting app and into the pictures. There were still three albums that were just pictures of Marissa, and a part of me was disgusted by that.

But it wasn’t like I had to obliterate all signs that she had ever existed, it was just a break-up. That’s just two people deciding that they aren’t compatible anymore. My feelings on that hadn’t changed. But really, it was way too small of a town to try and avoid someone forever. And I needed to get out of the house.

My finger hovered over the text app, waffling back and forth. Even I didn’t seem to know what it was thinking.

My thoughts were interrupted by the door opening. Mom leaned against the frame nonchalantly.

“Still going to Charlie’s tonight?” she asked. I had almost forgotten I’d lied to her.

Split decision. No more questions, or debates.

“Yeah,” I said, “I was about to head out right now.”

Hate and Lust stared at each other, rivers of blood pouring down their faces. Lust’s yellow slip was completely ruined and bloodstained. Hate had lost her knife, but only because it was lodged in Lust’s upper arm. She could feel her eyelid starting to puff up where Lust had bashed her head against one of the carved sea shells.

She struggled again against the arms of the angel that held her, but the thought didn’t budge. There were more than a dozen of them standing around the pool anyway, she couldn’t have fought them all.

“My queen” said one of the angels, “we came to report that the foes have retreated, the island is ours once more.”

“Good,” Lust tried to say, but with her busted lip it sounded closer to “gooah”

“Take ‘er to da ‘ortress” Lust commanded. The angles saluted her as she dunked ungracefully under the bloody water. Hate kicked and struggled, trying to get free.

“How could you bring her back?!” Hate demanded, “Do you have any idea how hard it was to leave that girl?”

She knew Lust couldn’t hear her in the pool, and the angels were taking flight, dragging her up to the tallest peak in the range of mountains.