Before the man who intended to have sex with her instead cut off her head, Saint Winifred is thought to have said, "I will in no wise consent to thy foul and corrupt desire." Where is the resolve of the Christian women before me, I wonder, when I feel the stress of the world constrict me like pleather? 

This is not a good time, I remind myself as I shift my attention to Elden Ring Nightreign, because that's what I guess I'm meant to do. Continue my day. Gaze at the Undertaker with my pupils dilated, because I want to believe the feral nun is a truer version of myself. I wish for her mystic calm, which she seems to keep in spite of how the Lands Between and her mind torture her.

The forsaken abbess is always anticipating pain – she wears her clean gloves way past her elbows, like she's preparing to plunge her fist into a bird and remove its soul. In reality, ICE agents kidnap a child, then they kill a man. They've already killed 32 people in their custody, and though I will myself not to imagine it, I keep picturing my parents getting pushed into an unmarked van. I start making dinner. Potatoes and chicken. 

ChatGPT gives my friends medical advice while I think of ways to avoid my psychiatrist. I think I need to increase my medication dosage, but I'm embarrassed about it. Every time I wake up, the rest of the day continues like it's supposed to – work, lunch, TV, unsatisfying sleep. I've been carrying on like I'm normal, because I'm terrified there's no hope for me in the unsentimental world if I'm not. 

But the Undertaker isn't afraid to change with her tragic circumstances. Her monastery wants her to butcher the Nightlord, Nightreign's most powerful bosses who only appear after sunset. This is just one of the Undertaker's loathsome tasks – the lady with a hammer is also often assigned what her description calls "the unenviable task of burying the dead." Like a pocket full of posies, the Undertaker has become lovely proof that oblivion is hungry.

The role has altered her. She was young once, slouched over a bowl of pears, yogurt, and fingers – her journal reveals the "loathsome affair" of her childhood, the beasts she would eat raw in the woods. Shunned by both children and adults, the Undertaker must have used to sprayed the rust-red blood of her prey across her nose and freckles, like gruesome blush. Now, she's more accepting of how "the power of Night spreads across the land. To me it feels like a blessing and a curse." Her face is the bluish white of abalone shells, but she covers it with her gloved hand like it's unimportant. 

This is the part I try to pay attention to – maybe it is unimportant. As demanded by Nightreign's cyclical nature, the Undertaker's body is weak; she dies nearly as often as she causes death. But then she is resurrected, as equally self-assured as before. She continues to say about the Night in her journal, "its taste is bitter, and it makes me nauseous. Yet somehow it soothes my ever-churning mind." 

Medieval Christians anticipated something like this. After all, Saint Winifred's severed head was seeping into the grass just seconds before God brought the virgin back to life. For the rest of her long and pious life as a nun, Winifred bore a red scar around her neck like a lace ribbon, and nothing more. So the earthly flesh is ruled by earthly laws. Gravity, time, and bruising. But it seems powerful to think of pain as an accessory instead of as a burden. 

The Undertaker confronts her aggressors like she knows this, like a cat. She shrouds herself in supple, black leather, thus communicating her job as Limveld's Grim Reaper with surprising honesty. She is nonetheless destroyed by the cruelty of the Lands Between – the creamy breasts and stomach under her habit can be easily shattered by a Nightlord. But even in his embrace, the Undertaker's wild faith flourishes. It's like an oak that grows around a stop sign. 

Among The Undertaker's stats, Faith and Strength are the highest. I'm beginning to see her as both a product of her detestable world and as a protest against it. 

Meanwhile, I'm too worried about things with no answer. I know that scars wrinkle. They pucker. My mind races. History repeats itself, and I clumsily linger on the fact that Nazi Germany is no longer an example on my world history exam – it's happening. This is a juvenile way to think, but it parades through my melting brain: I'm scared. I don't like this. I want to go home. 

Though, I am home. I'm in New York, regrettably without the Undertaker's impressive hammer. I should stop pretending to have strength. 

Faith must be waiting for me, then, someplace in the carnage.