She wasn't good, was she?

Selyse hadn't given much care to wondering about her own neutrality as of late. After all, she'd had bigger issues to deal with. A mangy killer cat to defeat, an oblivious village to save, and a distinct lack of hair hygiene necessities; just to name a few.

But in her preoccupation, she hadn't bothered to categorize herself into her three moods. Now, when she tried to label her emotions as Sweet, Snarky or Siren, she couldn't. For once, Selyse's emotions were more of a mix of the three.

Selyse shook off the worrisome thoughts. She'd deal with it later. First she had to heal the looming tree in front of her, and then she'd have to fix her appearance up. After that, then would be the time for a personality crisis.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a tabby cat. Her heart sank. That stupid old bloodthirsty cat. She lifted her knife, but Cat Sith raced past her away from the tree. A frown formed on her face.

What could chase away the Cat Sith?

A roar ripped through the air. It seemed as if Selyse was about to find out. If she could change the world when she healed the tree, maybe she'd use the power to kill that cursed cat. Then he'd regret trying to sabotage Selyse.

Her gorgeous head whipped from side to side. Nothing appeared to be approaching from the other side of the tree. She would have deepened her frown if not for the risk of wrinkles. The guardian had to be somewhere close to the tree, and the cat had clearly stirred it somehow. So where was it?

Perhaps it was so enamored by Selyse's beauty that it had decided to let her approach the tree. Even she knew the thought was more of a daydream than an actual possibility, but she stepped up the hill anyway.

A few feet away from the top of the hill and the tree, the ground rumbled. It shoved Selyse onto her knees. She wrapped her fists around the shiny grass for a grip.

The ground split apart. Its jerk pushed Selyse over to her side, both knocking the wind out of her and ruining her appearance with grass stains. For once, Selyse didn't spare a thought for her dampened looks. Instead, all of her attention was on the creature that rose up out of the crack.

The guardian glowed with a light that burned Selyse's eyes. The ground slammed back together, a few wayward blades of grass the only sign of the fissure that had once been there. Selyse scrambled to her feet.

"You dare to approach the Tree of Life?" The golden guardian boomed in a voice delivered directly into Selyse's head.

Selyse's grip on her knife tightened. Somehow she answered inside her mind, "I come to save it!"

"We'll see about that!" The guardian's blinding light vanished, leaving another figure in its place. Selyse's mouth dropped open.

Mother? Selyse blinked, but her mother remained in front of her.

No, she thought, not her mother. The guardian. For what reason it would take the form of Selyse's mother, she didn't know. Maybe it merely liked to look like the biggest piece of crap in all of Aimsir.

"Hello Selyse," said the guardian mother.

Selyse let her knife fly. It entered the head of the fake mother. Selyse yanked it out and stepped backward. For a millisecond, there was no reaction but a hideous display of blood. Had she been wrong? Was this her real mother after all? Varying emotions ignited in her stomach at the thought.

The golden light returned. Selyse's gaze slid to the ground. When the light faded, she looked up and she sucked in her breath. Now her mother had company. And he didn't look happy to see Selyse again.

Jaxon, she mouthed in a single breath.

She should throw the knife at him, she knew. But the necklace he had given her weighed hot and heavy on her neck. When her dagger surged forward, it entered her mother's stomach. Selyse ripped it out.

The golden glow was faster this time. In only a matter of seconds, her mother was restored to health once again, but she had brought another partner with her this time. A Fae man, with dark hair and green eyes.

Selyse's brow furrowed. Was this supposed to be her father? If so, it was rather a pathetic attempt by the guardian's part. Selyse couldn't even recognize her father, let alone care about him.

Yet her knife entered her mother's chest, and not that of this figure that was supposed to be her father. The guardian, it seemed, was some kind of illusionary hydra. If her memory served properly (and of course it did, it was Selyse's memory after all) then the hydra could be killed through the heart.

But the golden glow came again.

Are you kidding me? Selyse wanted to shout. What would it take to get this stupid creature to die already?

She crossed her arms and waited for the next version of the guardian to come out. Who would it be this time? The woman that had cursed her? One of the lovers she'd had years before her tree quest had begun? Someone Selyse had forgotten long ago?

But when the light cleared, the new addition was an inherently familiar face, complete with arms crossed and the most beautiful hair Selyse had ever seen. The new head of the guardian was Selyse herself.

"Hello Selyse," the mirror girl said.

"This is your last warning," Jaxon said.

"We haven't tried to harm you yet," started her supposed father.

"But we will," her mother finished.

"Leave now," the other Selyse said.

"And you will not be harmed," Jaxon said.

She wanted to save the tree, Selyse thought. She could hear the thought blaring out as a mental response to the guardian.

"If that is so," the Seelie man said.

Her mother continued, "Then you will not mind giving us..."

"A proof of sorts," the mirror girl finished.

"A sacrifice," Jaxon clarified.

Selyse narrowed her eyes. To the guardian, she directed the thought, "What kind of sacrifice?"

"What you," the Seelie man said.

"Value most," her mother completed.

Selyse jutted her jaw out. "And what is that?"

"We both know," the other Selyse said.

And she did. There was only one thing she could say she valued more than anything else in the world.

Her beauty.

"You want my beauty?" Selyse asked in the odd telepathic way. "You- you want me to be ugly? Do you want me to scar myself, or something?"

After all she'd been through, after all the suffering and hunger and searching, she'd thought she'd do anything to complete her quest. And yet here the guardian was, with the one preposition that she wasn't sure she could accept.

"Nothing that extreme," Jaxon said.

"Your hair will do," the Seelie man added.

Selyse scowled. "If I do this, you'll me heal the tree."

"Yes," the guardians all spoke in unison.

The other Selyse handed Selyse her knife. All the guardians stood in a straight line, less than a foot away from Selyse. She raised the dagger as if to cut her hair.

Instead, she swiped it through the line of guardians, cutting all of them in half at once. Their eyes widened. Blood sprayed out from the cuts in the center of their bodies. The light came again, but it glowed red instead of gold.

When it faded, the four people were gone. There was a dragon in its place, with four heads. All but one head had its eyes closed. Blood poured out of a wound in the dragon's chest.

"So this is your true form," Selyse thought.

"You mortals are all the same!" The hydra spat.

"Mortal?" Selyse straightened. "I am no mortal!"

"Humans, vampires, Archons, Fae- it's all the same to me." The creature looked at Selyse with more disgust in its eyes than the real Jaxon had, and that was quite the feat. "You all are selfish, wanting to mold the world to your own desires no matter what the world wants!"

"The world cannot want anything," Selyse thought, "It's not a sentient being."

"That's what you mortals say," the guardian said, "but you don't care."

"No," Selyse thought, "I don't." She stabbed her knife down into the guardian's chest. The second blow caused the guardian to shudder and close its last eyes.

Selyse stepped over the guardian's corpse. She made care not to step in any of the piles of blood that soaked into the ground. She knelt down next to the gnarled roots of the tree and raised the nectar to the tree.

She felt, rather than saw, the tree drink, just as she felt in her heart that right now, she could make any change she wanted to the fabric of the world as she knew it. The perfect request came to her unexpectedly.

"From this day forward," she thought to the tree, "no sentient creature can kill another sentient creature not of their own species."

Was this request good, or evil, or neutral? Selyse didn't know. What she did know was that the words of the guardian kept swirling around in her mind, and the way it had looked at her, like she was evil.

Selyse wasn't evil, was she?