Chapter 24: We Make a Good Pair, Right?
What a beautiful view. At some point I’ve forgotten, we stopped at a makeshift overlook with a view of the lowest part of the Scorn, where the underground tracks intersect like veins and the artificial lights flicker like the heartbeats of a dying beast.
Using that analogy, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that the ground beneath the Imperial City houses some kind of dead creature. There’s no specific mention of this in the novel, as if the author would include it, but it’s quite interesting to analyze the landscape and think in that way.
Ravenna is beside me, sitting on the edge of the low wall, swinging her legs over an abyss that leads to a vast network of tracks. After causing so much chaos back there, we managed to shake off our pursuers and come here, supposedly a place she wanted to visit and quiet enough for no one to bother us. The space behind us is quite enclosed, with only this crumbling low wall preventing certain death.
Anyway, it’s a cool spot, even if it’s macabre. Goths really have a taste for bizarre places.
"You ever thought about... disappearing?"
I turn my face toward Ravenna, the one who asked the question, and rest my elbows on the low wall. Not the biggest fan of these kinds of questions, as I’ve never been one to philosophize or lose sleep imagining things at night.
"Like, really vanish? Vanish for good?"
"Yeah, vanish for good. Not die. Just... cease to exist in what people expect of us. Stop being the monster, the witch, the noble... I don’t know. Escape the versions they’ve invented."
"I’ve thought about it many times, but then I realize that even if I vanished, someone would put my face on a rumor. There’ll always be someone inventing stories in my place. I remember a friend who told me about dead people who don’t even find peace after going to the other side. Well, considering my position, I guess the same applies to me..."
She laughs, but this isn’t funny at all. This life really sucks, especially when you’re at rock bottom. Witches in this world are hated as much as bastards. I’m a stroke of luck that for some reason the duke decided to take in, while Ravenna is a miracle of nature for existing.
From this perspective, we actually make a good pair.
If it were in another situation, maybe back in my past life, we would have met and made a great duo for causing chaos.