Callix never thought of herself as a particularly violent person (although during different lives she had involved herself with the military, killed demons and shadows, and especially in this life became known as an executioner for good reasons), but there were a few things that would make her snap.

Teyva:  It was two years after Teyva had tried to kill her (and Teyva was long gone living with Fallon in Marius' castle) and she still hadn't recovered.  It didn't help that Darien whenever he was around (which now seemed like never) acted very similar to her.  As much as Callix told herself that Teyva (now known as "someone who used to torture me") was sort of gone and she shouldn't be thinking about her, she couldn't let go.  Her friends Markel and Antero didn't see anything wrong with that, except that when she did think of Teyva she needed somebody to physically stop her from storming to Marius' castle and doing something.

Joren:  Joren wasn't as big of an issue as Teyva in some ways.  When she first met him she thought "Oh, a random boy."  He didn't inspire any thoughts one way or the other.  Even now when she thought of his name at first it didn't register what he had become and she still thought "Oh, a random boy."  But Joren wasn't a random boy.  When the tribals split when Darien became the leader, Joren became the other leader.  He didn't make her angry because of anything he did.  For the five months she had known him he was one of the helpful ones who made her adjustment to tribal life easier.  And he was never nasty to her like Darien was.  But now that he had split along with his part of the group, he had become another rival.  And he needed to go.

The demons (Eriko and Raiden):  Callix couldn't believe that in one hundred and fifteen years she could've gone to sometimes loving/sometimes hating Eriko and Raiden to flat out hating them.  Of course, they were another rival and that didn't help.  But they were also the most hateful creatures she had ever had to deal with.  She rarely had to because Aiviled (the demons' base planet) had its own problems that usually didn't involve her.  But every once in a while, like when they killed Elix, Esseme, and anyone in the castle with them, they dropped by to see her too.  Only it always turned into a bloodbath.  Because Raiden and Eriko were strong they were always able to regenrate so it didn't matter what happened to them.  In fact, they seemed to welcome it.  It was another reason for them to hate Callix, and it was another way to make her angry.  One of the weirdest things about her was that she may not have been pushed over the edge before fighting, but once it was finished she wanted more.

The demons (Vasilic and Astrixto):  Callix had always had issues with Vasilic.  In her previous life in Simballa/Aiviled, when she had lived with them for four years, he liked to torture her and make her miserable.  Back then she wasn't able to do anything about it, but now that she was older and stronger, she was going to make him pay.  Astrixto, the demon king, surprisingly never tortured her.  At least, not physically.  But he messed with her mind and always managed to make her feel icky.  That was one thing no waiting in the death realm could erase, and she was determined to let him see that.     

Although it seemed like people were the only things that could push her over, there was one other major non-people thing.

Space:  Space was the name for the Desean desert where the tribals lived.  She hated Space.  She had thought the Wastelands in Simballa (the hottest part of the desert where prisoners were kept in the daytime) were bad, but it was nothing compared to Space.  At least in the Wastelands there were a few rocks.  She was told that Space had one rock cave called Sanctuary (for good reasons), but as of yet she hadn't seen it.  Every day she begged Darien to find somewhere non-Space to live, and he said "No.  The desert is good for you.  Now stop being a girl."  So she absolutely hated it, but unlike people there was nothing she could do about it.

If there was one thing Callix hated more than Teyva, it was Desean politics (even politics she agreed with).  For starters, the royalty, commoners, and tribals followed their own rules.  She had been living on Desean for close to a year now and still wasn't sure what rules applied to what group.  Even worse than that, by the time she thought she figured it out it changed.  It was enough to make even a dedicated strategist like herself want to curl into a ball and cry.  On the plus side, she was able to list the main issues all the groups involved themselves with and decide her thoughts on them.

Rulers:  Overall royalty believed that the correct way to choose their leaders was to let the white energy ball decide who it wanted to live with, and it wasn't their call to make.  Therefore, relatives didn't always get the throne.  This idea, however, didn't work with the rebel king Deangelus.  He believed the position of being king should be passed down from family to family.  The commoners didn't have their own leader because they were expected to follow whatever the high king and lesser king (particularly the high king) said.  This was a weird time when there was no high king, so lesser king Elix was the one they followed.  It wasn't their dream and sometimes late at night some of them would get together and discuss setting up their own form of ruling, but because Elix was a decent king they did follow him.  The tribals had removed themselves from the royalty and commoners and were rejected by both, and therefore had their own system.  The first ever tribal leader was selected by the entire group of tribals, and following that the position was passed from father to son.  It was always a son not because they discriminated but because all tribals were men.  Anytime they reproduced it was with someone from another death world (usually from Oloccin) and the child was always a boy.  Now that Callix had pushed herself into the group, there was a chance she would overthrow Darien and become the new leader.  For the chance to finally be a leader she preferred the tribals' rules.  But there were so many problems with being a tribal that she wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not.

Women:  This was another issue the royalty differed on.  King Elix believed that his queen should be his equal in making decisions (if that was what she wanted) and nobody should be limited in the jobs they could get because of their gender.  His top advisors happened to be men, as were his top guards, but Callix had been his press release secretary and there were five or so women still in his military.  King Deangelus didn't even bother with a queen and saw women as toys.  The commoners saw everyone as people and were indifferent.  The tribals had little experience with women before Callix and weren't sure what to think about anything dealing with them.  Darien was insistent that nobody would take his place, including Callix, and therefore tried to keep her in her place as a sometimes strategist.  He would've done that to any of his men, however.  Callix fully supported Elix in his views, having felt that way on Simballa too.  Deangelus' stance made her stomach slosh.  Darien was making it tempting to unseat him, even though she really didn't think she could lead the tribals.

 

There was something Callix didn't want to admit to anyone, not even Markel and Antero, the two boys she had come to know and maybe trust.  It wasn't that she really didn't want to admit it, but she wasn't sure they would understand if she did.  They honestly believed the deaths of Desean's lesser king and queen bothered her when in truth she rarely thought about it and if she did felt nothing.

She knew she should've felt more about it.  After all, it was thanks to King Elix and Queen Esseme's hospitality she wasn't like most dead people, living on the streets or in the desert.  They were decent people (the first decent people she had met in a long time) but didn't usually take in the newly dead, especially not newly dead people like her.  Honestly, she should've been on the streets or in the desert.  Guilt trip aside, Elix and Esseme deserved better than essentially being forgotten about.

Markel and Antero wouldn't understand why she felt so indifferent to their death.  In fourteen years they had lost everyone close to them and found time to mourn for them.  But then again, they had good relationships with those people.

Callix hated herself for thinking that.  As she had thought before, Elix and Esseme were the first decent people she met.  She hoped that in the short month she had been working as their press release secretary she had just as good of a relationship with them as Markel and Antero had with their friends and family.  Obviously not.  But at least she could justify that.  

She had a hard time trusting anybody.  After her father in Mistfire and Symo and Marria in Simballa, was it any surprise?  Then came Elix and Esseme on Desean, and they were different.  But by that point she found it hard to believe that.  It seemed like the night she was ready to open her mind to the possibility, they were dead.

Callix was quickly realizing that death was a hard concept to grasp, maybe even harder than opening her mind and letting people in.  She had already died once on Earth, once on Simballa, and again on Earth, and it still didn't make any sense.  She was hoping that in this life somebody would help her understand it better.    

Better yet, she hoped somebody would help her understand everything better.

"Markel!  Antero!" she called, awakening two sleeping boys.  "There's something I need to tell you."