Can’t believe I’m writing this last entry, after all these years. 

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I was looking back over the previous ones as I sit here against the stone. Nothing better to do and they left you for me as a small kindness. Some kind of kindness, that. Now all the fun I get is reading back over every mistake, every little thing I could have done better. I started with the boundingball bet I made when I was thirteen - remember that? First time I ever lost any money. Strange that it felt so good. 

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The cell isn’t as bad as folks tell it. I mean, I guess I’m in the holding cells - they call them “decision cells” here. Supposedly it can get much worse, depending on what I choose. Except that’s the thing, isn’t it? I’ve never been one for making good choices. 

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Like my sixteenth birthday. I know you remember that one. That was the first day I met Beltram, and he was already sick of me. I guess he made some bad choices in life, too. Except, last I heard, he’s now got a little piece of land and a responsible wife to run it with him. They’ll do well, those two. And I honestly wish them the best. He didn’t really deserve what happened to him, not as much as I was involved. 

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When I look back on my early entries, it seems so strange - it’s like I’m reading something a different person wrote. She’s so confident and sure, all stuffed-full of emotions. She doesn’t hesitate when she writes. She doesn’t stare at the page thinking of the right word - she writes the first thing that comes to her head. Everything is so… real. But at the same time, it’s very not real. Like she’s living in some kind of drawing that she made herself. 

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I’d scratch out that last line, but I’m trying to be like her again. Just to feel confident once more.

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And now I’m starting to cry. Picture me, flicking away the tears so they won’t stain this last page. Why does it even matter? Not like anyone’s going to end up reading it. It’s not a fun story, or an exciting one. The mistakes aren’t big and adventurous, they don’t lead anywhere. Just here, in this little cell, trying to make one last decision. 

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Choices are funny things. Here I made every wrong one I possibly could, and yet the one that baffles me the most is keeping you. Just because of a promise to Gramma. That old toad died when I was ten, nary a bent chit left to put her on the pyre, and I still kept you and wrote every week. What did I think was going to come out of it? 

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Every city exile put down onto paper. Every time I’d win high and then lose it all. The tavern ships of Boar’s Bay in the Spire. The dice houses in Kalin. The Great Games of Alugare - now THAT was a laugh. Sun above and Boliovor’s blind eyes, I got kicked out of the fucking Commune. And yet every time I was starving, I never sold you for bread. Every time I was spending a night in the gutter, I didn’t barter you for a room at an inn. Never even thought of tearing out your pages to send a note to anyone. I could have been a courier - some rural folks don’t know how to write and they would have paid good coin. 

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I could have been a lot of things, I guess. That’s the point, isn’t it?

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Now I’m here in Hondrouk. 

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There’s only one choice left, and it’s the only one that matters here. Every slave gets to make it, no matter what they’ve done or where they come from. In that way, it’s completely fair - more fair than someone like me deserves, anyway. Except, like I said, I’ve never made a good decision in my life. 

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The choice is this: mines or magic. I either work the entire rest of my life in the dreamglass mines until I can’t lift a pick anymore, and then they let me live out the last few years in Zetia. Or I become a magic slave, reaping magic from my moonborn until it reaps my soul from me. The first option is long, drawn-out, and probably agonizing. The other is quick and relatively painless. Well, they SAY it’s painless. I still think being Woken hurts every bit as much as dying. 

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It’s another small kindness that they let you choose. If you have a lot of reckoning to do, if you want the option to talk to your family again, you can choose the mines. If you want things to just be over quickly, if you’re ready for the long rest and Boliovor’s waiting army, you can choose the magic. 

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The only decision left to make, and I don’t like either of the two choices. I have no reckoning to do - anyone I’d want to talk to would never see me, except Beltram, and I don’t deserve him. But… I’m scared of dying quickly to my moonborn. I’m scared of leaving nothing behind but this Sun-damned journal and a string of failures. 

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Is this all I was worth? Is this everything my life came to?

 

I guess there is a third choice. A last bet, I could say, and Sun knows I’m fond of bets. I’m certain it wouldn’t go well for me, but when has that stopped me before? See, despite all my vices, I really haven’t taken very much magic. I have a very low tolerance, but my family line has always had a very high capacity. And I heard in my stint in Alugare that some folks have actually overdosed from magic - they daydreamed too hard and too fast, and their minds never came back to them. Imagine me, in the yard, taking my magic from the moonborn and when it comes time to transfer it over to the guards I just… don’t. 

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Imagine me standing there, crushing every spark of magic in my chest, flooding over with bliss. One last high, one last gamble. Oh, sure, they might run me through with a spear or two, but if it’s enough magic, I might not even feel it. And then, well, the other slaves, maybe they see what I’ve done and they talk about it. Maybe I become a tale - a slave folk story. Maybe I can be known as something other than a string of bad choices. Maybe I can become something more.

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Something more… I  like the sound of that.