Chapter 6

29 days had passed since Iva's last period of rest. She had been laughing for precisely 696 hours, 37 minutes and 14 seconds, straight. She had lost the strength to bellow from day 1, literally. So the remaining 28 days were spent whisper-laughing painfully away, unable to do anything other than that and pitifully hope for some sort of salvation, as futile as such a hope certainly was.

Ezarin had spent that time on vacation in her astral form, visiting places she'd always wanted to visit, which included a long stay at the astral plane. She had decided to pace and distance herself from the torture for a bit so as to not exhaust her vengeance gauge, as vast as that gauge was.

She had prepared a kind of alarming spell which notified her when the 3 days she had planned on staying away were up. Instead of going straight back, she again used sorcery-based chronokinesis to jump forwards 26 days, just for extremely good measure. As much as she felt pacing was a good idea, the only thing on her mind was how bloody much she loved torturing the soul out of her captive queen, Iva, and it was a notion that brought immense pleasure every time it entered her mind, and that was a lot.

Regardless, the day was here. As Ezarin reentered her physical body, she quickly noticed her whole body was aching and withdrew her clutches from her victim, uncoiling herself from her. The millipoid slowly crawled away to rest her sore, mutated body, leaving all the restraining enchantments on Iva active.

A good night's sleep, coupled with medical sorcery aided Ezarin greatly and she was ready and eager to get back to... fun, supposedly. The sight and sound she was welcomed by brought a gigantic, open-mouthed grimace to her twisted face. "Heh heh... heh... heh heh heh... heh... heh heh..."

Despite having been left completely alone for more than 9 hours upon her captor's return, Iva couldn't stop whisper-laughing. "Heh... heh heh..."

"Something funny, my queen?"

"Heh heh heh... heh ha...!"

"Oh, you couldn't possibly imagine how long I've waited to see you like this!" She slowly undid the restraints, letting Iva gently float down to the ground, and watched gleefully as the broken queen lay there absentmindedly, laughing quietly to herself. "Beautiful! Simply beautiful! I could just hug you!"

Right as she was about to grab the girl, a large hole was punched into the ceiling. Ezarin -- almost startled out of her body -- spun her head, along with most of her body, round to gauge the source of the disturbance. A few metres from her stood who appeared to be a cloaked, young male druid archer, holding a partially glowing bow.

Ezarin hissed fiercely, scurrying out of the second arrow's path, narrowly evading immediate death. In spite of her apparent sorceric ability, she seemed to be devoid of any combat ability and so instead chose flight over fight.

The druid slowly walked over to the trembling, laughing, naked girl on the floor, put his cloak on her and gently picked her up. Upon his face lay an expression of slight sadness and much expectancy. "Sister..."

"Heh heh... heh heh heh... heh... heh heh..." He shook his head and walked out with her in his arms.

—

"Heh... heh heh heh... heh heh..."

"Sampson-"

"I don't need nor want your medical opinion, Doctor. I just need you to do whatever it is you can to help her."

"Heh heh heh... heh... heh..."

"I..." The doctor sighed. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you, Doctor. I ask for no more."

"Heh... heh heh... heh heh heh..."

"Where are you going, Sam?"

"To remove that plague of a creature that reduced my older sister to a laugh track from this realm.

"By yourself? I understand you must have strong emotions-"

"No. I don't. I was hoping that Iva would be killed, making my ascension to the throne occur. That didn't happen however. Instead, I have been left with this mindless, laughing mess on my hands." Dr Mason was somewhat taken aback.

"So..."

"Yes, this is personal. No, this isn't vengeance or, as most have dubbed it, 'justice'. There's a bounty on that creature's head and it happens to be because she's a real trouble maker and it just so happens that she annoys me and I'd like to get that bounty."

"Bounty? Aren't you part of the royal family?"

"Originally, I gave up the royal life when I left without a word. After some thought, 'some' being a tremendous understatement, I decided to take the throne, especially after seeing the mess my idiot sister has made with it. I feel like giving it a shot. I'm trying new things. Also, with our mother being our only parent left alive but too sickly and weak to do anything excessive or even meaningful, who's going to stop me? My sister? I reckon I'd win that fight."

"The Azaylian kingdom was destroyed."

"That's what we want you to think."

"Huh... so why do you need the bounty?"

"I don't need it, I want it. Anyway, lovely therapy session, gotta go kill an ugly thing. Bye, Doctor."

"Good luck to you, young one."

"I'm 20."

"You're an adult when you're 30."

"Ah... k." With that, he was off.

"Iva Vasir Azaylia, what kind of mess did you get yourself into this time, eh?" The doctor ran a yellow ring from the top of her head down to the bottom of her feet for a third time. "No physiological altercations whatsoever."

"Heh... heh heh heh... heh..."

"Edith, see again if you can hear her thoughts."

"For the fifth time?"

"You know what they say about the number five?"

The assistant sighed then complied. She placed one hand on Iva's cheek and the other on her temple and closed her eyes, trying to focus. "Nothing. Want me to try a sixth time?"

"You can."

"I was joking."

"I know, but... never mind. Don't bother. There is absolutely zero information out there about this sort of thing. We don't know what did or can even cause someone to enter this kind of state and we haven't a clue who did this or how they did it."

"Yep."

"Heh heh... heh... heh heh..."

"Arrange for her to be taken to The Ward, Edith. There's nothing more we can do."

"Understood."