Take Up the Cross – Chapter 103: How the World Deceives

“Forget the fear, they do, they do!

… Unseen and unheard of, all the worst watchers and listeners peek just past the gate…~!”

 

Shapes of red, sweetly beating along with their inclinations for catastrophe, play between the eye-catching waves that shred and scuttle the waking reality swept over by supernatural forces. A side of existence that few others witness, the subtle currents of shadow now surrender to the onrushing tide from gaping holes in what should be.

 

Shimmering eyes with glazed pupils begin to widen again at the singsong bitch’s warning. Crackling ideograms of no mortal invention peel at the boundary between the safety of vital sight and the conceptual existences always carefully stowed away past the limits.

Siege engines constructed of immaterial matter tower behind the sage, staring down the castle they’re called to overcome.

Green becomes fiercer on their haphazard lattice supports, emerald of madness that sticks in mind as all attempts to shut out the whispers grow feebler. No matter how sane witches try to make this space, a frolicking madwoman commits to its further undoing with zeal that no proper weaving of magic may easily correct.

 

“Sweeps easily away with proper current’s strength, though. Upon the edge of the swell, sight’s futility is announced with…?”

{I know the words! “Abhorrence” and “vindication”, coated with “ignorance”!}

 

While one hand fluidly gestures and heated intent convey straight through to her master’s unnatural vitality, the other grows fervent as the emotions needed are recalled to give form to.

A fingertip marked with the sweetness of life’s blood announces by laying the words into the strands of semi-clear, floating fluids wafting above the smashed garden’s floor. Demarcating the boundaries of a witch’s territory, when those strands lick on her gift, they drop back to the grooves they were called up from and boil without heat.

 

 

 

At the completion of her new addition, an eight-fingered, double-clawed hand reaches for Still’s face to tear it free.

 

 

 

—Even among the gentry and ladies, her hands in youth were the most uselessly trained with blade… and the most pleasing with touch. They were able to bring forth sighs from hard-faced men who had never melted before with their wives’ caresses.

They’d also invited shock and longing from the same laughing men whom she’d curtsy before. Always thrown into disarray, their virile confidence stolen when she’d advance swiftly to bat away blade and secretly touch swiftly into their stances upon manhoods—!

 

 

 

The stabbing point that rushes to tease this monster drinks deeply of the fond memory, giving it an edge few others have.

 

“UUUUGHHRRRRIIIIIII!?”

When the slick anathemic oils upon the deft steel contact the darkness from beyond this world, delicious screaming is earned. Severing a terrible thing’s appendage and forestalling its owner from breaching weakness in the barrier, Still withdraws from the zone of turmoil at the boundary.

The thing’s suffering lifeblood fuels the channels below as much as her own addition, stumbling backward when a slender dirk takes its dripping, focusing eye before it can flare up to take her mind.

 

 

 

—Victory over an enemy was titillating, almost as ecstatic as the touches once garnered by demonstrating innocuous wit that enticed men…—

 

 

 

(I have no need of the blades of men or their preening showy dances, no matter the circumstances! The [Craft] is my domain, a woman’s ultimate rulership of heaven and earth, for my name is…!)

 

From the oldest recollections, the orders for advancement continue to stream forth unbidden, if only to satisfy her master for the moment. No longer needed to be spoken, the learner continues to write upon the world, her back turned toward the slave driver who taught her this craft!

A black-meshed finger rips off a cork to let silver, weightless cloth breathe in the air. It’s carefully nicked by a deft pinch as it floats, to be forced into the grooves of glyphs written below. The knowledge-less fabric sighs when it soaks into the hateful mix coursing through.

 

(… “And with carefully cultivated ignorance, comes inculcation from knowledge which would only taint the truths of brotherhood and simplicity…” If only she understood how ignorant she is of life outside of her haven…!)

 

“Annoying, annoying! I’ve so much to share, but deny it still, this enlightenment you both do!?”

Coruscating fires once more surround, but surrender when a skull screams.

“Neither flame nor sight pierces? As expected of a legendary foe. Then, let’s move on to the next tests, we shall…!”

 

Still facing outward in her master’s hand, the crystal skull grown fat on an enemy’s magic ceases to glow. As the woman in mourning of the world’s passing continues to whisper dreadful promises to a clump of dimly shining threads gripped tightly by her thin hand, Still traces their destinations as they falsely vanish into the misty world around.

 

“Ah, so worthless to waste wonders on a crude power sink! How does that gem-studded thing even hold so much!?”

 

(Only a true fool expects a recluse like Master to explain secrets. Only a bigger one overlooks the ensorcelments she threads through your defenses.)

 

Deep within the ranks of the screeching things called forth by dark demands…

 

“You’re the worst, Granny and child! While that crazed Orloss plays with a lamia and his mongrel wastes much time, victory, sweet victory, is at hand should they only rise to my example!”

The mad sage that flirts with sanity lets her tome flip back open, its pages of peeled skin sweeping to a new entry and presumably novel spell with which to torment the living with.

{An example of empty boasting, beast-smelling bimbo, like the rest of your works?}

“… Oh, apprentice speaks for master? How cute~! Do your studies reach the same heights of your affection for her~?”

 

(WHO IS AFFECTIONATE TO THIS… SCHEMER?)

 

{You’ll choke on the truths you hunt for, soon…}

Withdrawing once more into the heart of the “castle” built to shut out the tall siege engines of sightless eyes, Still relishes in taunting their mutual enemy before the black-tarred monsters leap at the transparent, hanging curtains at the edge of safety.

Visions of tranquility, like pastoral scenes and idle rural villages, are sewn colorfully into the cloth. Of dubious danger, despite a witch drawing them from quaking holes in the space around her, what is shown is not what waits to be potentially revealed.

 

(Now you learn what fear is.)

 

When summoned horrors claw at them with gleaming talons, the phantasmal drapes tear and fray…

Then sweep out like a cloaker’s wings to wrap around the foes, strangling as they tighten and drag victims deep into their parting depths.

 

Castle is both fortress and tomb.

 

“Hnnn?”

An interested humming comes up from the robed specter in the midst of shuffling cruelties, as she dissects the crunching end of her spawned minions.

Into fanciful curtains vanished they went, stuck somewhere else as hidden bodies sound out with popping, splorching, and ripping flesh. Screams of pain echo louder as the curtains intentionally project their fates to every listener.

 

No method of murder is witnessed, though.

However these creatures die, only the wicking of the curtains over their struggling bodies demonstrates how little remains with each passing [Turn].

 

Into the thin channels of sorcerous writings in the floor their flesh reappears when curtains sweep over them, dribbling from the bottoms into the malicious concoction which this circling moat contains.

 

“Hoh, the louder the claim, the less legitimate the contents thereof, heeeh? Would that all present have bothered to learn this by now…”

The flowering witch at the center of this island of hanging pain scratches her sternum with sharp metal nails, while clinical, unseen eyes hidden by a veil of brass coins grade the work that both master and apprentice have writ upon an enemy’s garden.

 

(“Every coin stands for a domicile’s obeisance. Pretty is the heart that remains unblackened by doubts or problems greater than its own limits of understanding. When they surrender the icon of their false, worldly god, the contract with Hearth and Keeper is made.”)

 

Of the outer-most designs, the area tasked of another, the light sigh allowed out betrays her master’s thoughts as an apprentice’s work is found…

 

“How many years must go by before fundamentals become fundamental?”

 

(Spare me your lessons and fight, old woman! Not everyone has decades to spend weaving intricate plots and vengeances, like you do!)

 

No air moves in their place of power, a stagnancy settling in that Still cannot, to this day, endure without focusing within to survive its emotional toll. Though slender and seemingly frail, the woman taller than a sneak’s witchy hat’s tip masters a presence none can surmount as threads of subversion continue to erode and expand.

The ground flakes up as it turns black, death settling in as a previous enchantment of perpetual chaos is terminated. “False face” succumbs to the accelerated rigors of time, turning into floating detritus that billows around like a feather pillow burst open.

 

(I’ve no time to “guide” her as you would! We’ve only one night to win!)

 

Behind these two shepherds sits a comically ignorant girl.

Captive and bound to the lap of a fiend, only her ignominious fate drove a witch to pierce into this protean villa.

 

(You sully her very clothing with your touch, bastard male. I’ll never let her become a tool for others’ pleasures.)

 

“Despite the hierarchy of concerns, the weak are always worried about the top-most issues before dealing with the bottom-most essentials.”

{?!?}

A voice without emotion pierces through to a painful truth, before its owner’s hand sweeps toward the enemy looked away from.

“Learned so much in my absence my apprentice has, that this formation is of no concern. Happy is my heart~.”

 

(Your heart doesn’t even work! … What is brewing over with this mad woman?)

 

While the sage’s eyes shine with the emerald storm growing before her sweeping rod, the spinning direction of her words of power sends Still’s body plunging into coldness when its intent is read.

 

“Our origin is stillness, and to the depths which maintain it we must descend! To live forever, eternally sealed within splendor!”

From her writhing rod shoot out rivers of emerald stone, twisting in flight as they gather above!

 

“[Great Tomb of Xinethos]!”

 

Crashing down at seven corners, the stones clatter into standing columns. Between them weave crystal lattices of light-eating force.

In the darkness which spreads from their visible boundaries, an eternal sleep rushes for Still with grasping hands of cold smoke.

 

“Keke, even varmints can be dangerous unless you trail them to the heart of their warren.”

{Shut up!}

 

(This is no issue, I’ve seen much worse! “Columns are eternal, so long as ground supports!” As the primary component of the spell, they fix the boundaries of the…)

 

A leather-wrapped bundle comes into Still’s hand as she works, strewn upon the floor as she drops pearls into the bones contained within. Attacking this newest threat is within her ken, for Still is a true purveyor of secrets.

 

(Pearls for purity, bones of the form, and… it’s… I am more than just a boiler of herbs and maker of bespelled knives…!)

 

The reagent needed is so close, but she can’t name it when frustration settles in at the thought of being reduced to a tool maker.

Even a supremely annoying child resorted to prodding her, demanding what he shouldn’t, refusing to accept refusal until Still finally…!

 

—Through the streets I raced, chasing after a boy that stole from me the last thing I possessed. Mocking me the whole while, he’d said that I’d be his for all time so long as he held it!

But, the next day he’d been kicking his legs, trying to reach for the rope around his neck as another man held my…!—

 

 

 

(WHY ARE YOU OUT THERE WITH THAT THING, THEN!?)

 

Unsettling it is, to feel something cleaved so brutally from one’s soul that had almost been taken for granted.

A comforting source of warmth is the worst possession to lose, especially when it’d been offered with such honeyed words by a man with a delicious shadow.

 

The sweet lies he told, the touches he forced on her body, all with the impossible assertion that they belonged together!

 

(… Partner, am I!? WHO IS YOUR PARTNER…!? You make these oaths, and then…!)

 

 

 

That ocean of anger rises, only to be shut away at the last moment.

 

When she thinks of the noose that stole away that boy’s life back then, she settles on the method of reaching the columns through the eroding smoke.

 

(Out last comes a sliver of rainbow glass, shining proof against darkness to—!)

 

“Keke!”

{Huh!?}

A mentor snorts at the brilliant choice, looming closer with the posture of a buzzard to whisper.

“Lasting long enough with its brightness being nipped at? Truly? Sustenance to span the distance, rather than repelling the erosion, shouldn’t we embrace it?”

 

(Always looking down on me!? If you know better, then why not do it yourself…!?)

 

Still pockets the glass to instead pull free a ball of slickly scaled yarn. Even more expensive to obtain, its method does make a sense as she dredges up difficult to recall memories.

 

{“Rapacious”, “witnessed”, “vicious”! Give life to that which yearns to share suffering!}

The signs she makes over the assembled magical goods give fell animus, as the hatred within her heart spills out to breathe tragic life.

“Good, good, the method is recalled at last. Then, let’s see the result while properly hedging our wager of master and pupil…”

 

As Still focuses herself upon her hex, that clinical master sweeps a gauntleted hand over the ground while murmuring unspoken words. She tugs at the strands floating before her, rearranging the pattern that registers only as a thin wake in the air.

 

When an external will intrudes over Kestner’s manse, the earth audibly groans as what is visible changes angle ever so slightly, before correcting.

 

(How deep has your influence penetrated that you can control the mansion itself…!?)

 

 

 

The sleep-bringing dark mists rolling in from the columns eat finally at the billowing drapes, setting them ablaze with blue fires that burn through each layer and devour the moat’s contents.

Unable to remain stupidly shocked by her master’s audacity, Still picks up the amalgam thusly made and heaves it into the air.

 

(You know nothing of true power, follower of Gold!)

 

The growing mass of squiggling creep bursts out, its children filling the night sky as they fall!

 

“GLOPPA!”

Smokey eels of impossible length plunge into the sea of mist, winding through the grasping hands to wrap around the distant columns.

Two magics war on each other, with one born of manipulating the vast depths of grievances while the other hones in on the madness at creation’s end!

 

“OH, oh? Did you figure it out? How vexing…”

Even though the crackling columns boom out with lancing whips of energy at the hopping sage’s command, resists the eel-like mass does. Wrestling and pulling, yanking eels eventually force the columns to succumb to the sinking ground as the gray mass continues to flake away beneath.

 

(Even the earth dies at your behest…)

 

The columns crash into the deathly vapors one after another, allowing the sage’s trap to dissipate to the roar of angry whispers.

 

“Haaaah, how annoying, annoying! What haven’t I tried yet…?”

 

(Overpowering, encirclement, insensation, and erosion have failed. Now, you try…)

 

“Oh, let’s just end this quickly! Attendant!”

 

Through the ranks of the shambling horde which surrounds witches, of jagged bodies of broken glass dulled down by the muck clinging to it, strides a single warrior.

One who wears a blue-turban upon his head, flashy clothing of a pompous duelist, and a wicked blade of fleshy bone.

 

(HIM.)

 

“Well, well, well, I’m not one to turn down an easy victory, so, this puppet’s turn is now~? Orloss’ pet mentioned that he had unique memories of you, a smiling weakling hiding hideousness behind a mask…”

 

Though Kaskin’s face is still picturesque, with a single eye showing that burns with a masculine fire that juxtaposes his feminine styling and bodily charm, nothing of the handsome warrior’s artful posture endures in the simulacrum born of fiendish birth.

 

“Recall the words of lying crones, and cut through their condemnations!

[Witchkiller]!”

 

Mockery that swoops in with his advance reeks of deep carnal obsessions, seeking to pierce his blade through a billowing “castle” before claiming the females within.

 

(Just another man who succumbed to his instincts, suffering the fate he wished to inflict on others! JUST DESSERTS COME TO THOSE WHO DESERVE THEM, MASTER! All men are the same, with their vaunted “civilization” and arms of iron ready to stab the useless orphans…!)

 

But, when she sucks at the taste of revulsion to reinforce it, the thought of men, even this abomination’s father, brings a recollection of a different attitude…

 

 

 

—The memories that flood in are of another braggart who danced over a fine rug. His blade sang and shone as he glided, seemingly never touching the floor as a lady’s own sword was plucked from her hand time and time again. Within a vaulted hallway they often dueled, a forbidden, sleeping place far from town and at the top of the mountain.

Never once did his grinning, roughly shaved features betray the condescension that she picked out in others, though. His smile always turned sober when declaring why the weapon had been taken from her grasp and how to keep it, before it grew boyish when speaking of the next time they would fight, as her hands slid over his chest…—

 

 

 

(… Pointless memories and whorish affections! I don’t meet enemies with blade, but with this…!)

 

A long, golden sewing needle pulled free sparkles as Still weaves her words around it with a long finger, placing minute glyphs along its shining surface before pricking a finger on the tip.

 

(Teacher, you taught me the finest secrets of how the world’s seams can be mended or cut…)

 

Male bravado has steel to carry out its evil ambitions, while women can only brandish their tools when unseen.

 

“HAH!”

A dozen strokes with a ghoulish saber slice upon the castle’s walls, freeing curtains to unravel into dust as they flutter away.

This foul blade incarnated by a mother’s rank womb carries all of the original’s enhancements, while the peacockatrice’s own mimicked words are drawn upon its grooved body.

 

(You steal our language, one made to fight the depravities of conquerors, and use it against us!? TOO MUCH… IT’S TOO MUCH…!)

 

Subdued before, this demonic sensation thirsting for the fake leaves the red, black, and white world around Still too bright to cling to sanity in.

Though this Kaskin is red like all the rest of the spawn, his vitality links back by invisible currents to the distance where a flaming mutt lights the sky itself with her internal heat.

 

(I will avenge myself upon ALL of you…!)

 

Still’s needle flies at the direction of her fingers, threading with speed which leaves it a blur of color. Phantasmal curtains weave together as the hateful opponent pounces. Thinner cloth grows much thicker in layers, stealing sight ever more powerfully as she pulls on her master’s creations to coalesce into something more.

 

Dumbly staring when fabric animates into a cordon surrounding him, the tall man whips around his sorcery-killing saber with high expectations.

Upon the thicker cloth, it sparks as it cuts.

Each cut takes so much inner strength, dulling the edge’s hateful, shining words when the threads that are freed rub over them.

 

At the last stroke, it becomes ensnared.

 

(You’re dead.)

 

The protection of the “castle” becomes a weapon, reaching out to completely devour the meal thrown against its cushioning.

 

(HOW YOU HUMBLED ME! HOW YOU LONGED FOR A BODY THAT WAS NEVER YOURS TO OWN…!)

 

“GAH!? RAH!?”

An arm is snatched up, drawn into the hungry curtain which makes a slopping crunch as it twists. A man’s body vanishes with each traveling layer, eagerly drinking upon the rage of the seamstress that drives them.

 

Unseen teeth bite.

Gnawed limbs soon fester with poisonous saliva.

The spiritual assault is far worse, as the power of [Soul] dissolves the victim to absorb-able quintessence.

 

(I KNOW WHAT LURKS INSIDE. THESE MONSTERS SHE HID, THEY ONCE LINGERED IN THE SHADOWS, WATCHING ME FAIL TO SLUMBER…)

 

All that is concealed is inflicted with direction from the silently laughing girl.

Like a conductor, her arm swings exuberantly with the threads of death she stitches, joining more curtains to spring to life and envelop.

 

(YOU WANTED INSIDE ME, TO FORCE YOUR MARK LIKE THE REST!? THOUGH NOT THE SAME, ENJOY THE VELVETY APPEAL AND TEXTURE OF A SUBSTITUTE…)

 

Into juices he’s pressed, false flesh weaving into new cloth as pieces torn away feed the rapturous revenge. These new threads wrap back in, aiming for the beating heart.

 

(GASP IN JOY, A SUPERIOR JOY AS YOU… AS YOU ARE TAKEN BY THE WOMAN YOU SOUGHT TO THROW YOURSELF UPON, SOUGHT… TO…!)

 

Black-and-blue fumes escape through the flowering web, while delicious screams are muffled by the same cloth the beast uses to strangle his conquest!

 

 

 

A porcelain mask paints with a horrible smile.

The hand raking over it leaves it streaked red where it touches, heightening the night’s torrid pleasure.

 

Without a heart to beat for herself, the girl leaning in to claim another’s must be called what…?

 

(ALL WILL… DIE… JUST LIKE…

 

I… DID… SCREAMING… BUT NOT HEARD…)

 

 

 

“Surrender yourself to the hunger of a mouth which has never fed, despite eternally wanting!”

With many curtains sprawling upon the body pinned to the ground, a stupefied apprentice wises up to the thinning of their defenses.

The teacher had calculated the depth so easily, but the student toyed with the figures without any comprehension?

 

(… AH? WHAT AM I…?)

 

“Kyaha~! How willingly you surrender… to [Mind Eater]!”

 

Ranks of starwrought creatures slide to part, allowing the lunging sage to crash down her rod from above.

It strikes solid air when horizontal, the clang cracking out along with the beam of a luminous mouth.

 

Swirling as it races toward Still, the curtains can’t be withdrawn in time to keep the glowing void-snake’s head, with its innumerable blind eyes, from chomping onto her own, piercing through cowl and cover to…

 

 

---

 

 

“Such fine skin~.”

 

A few soft-spoken words ruined their first meeting and forever dyed their relationship in lingering terror.

Unable to withdraw from the incredible grip of this shadow-drenched, doom-born witch of the deep fens casually inspecting its prize, the apprentice that was chosen from amidst the bodies attempted not to shake.

 

— How she arrived there can’t be recalled;

but, she knew instinctively that any disrespect or fear demonstrated would thread her worst nightmares into reality at the tip of this woman’s needle.—

 

“… Do children starve if left alone with the dead?”

Asked abruptly, the second sentence spoken by the old woman with a young voice defined the paradigm of their relationship ever after.

 

Questions with obvious answers were ever her favorite.

Always making a child feel like one, even when adulthood blossomed.

 

 

 

(I hate you. And how I can never escape your shadow.)

 

 

 

That was her assessment of her “savior.”

Even if she only understood later how terrible her fate would’ve been, at the time it still seemed worse to be saved.

Because the third sentence was so cold that the heat escaping from a child’s hand into an adult’s began to draw away all remaining warmth.

 

So cold that the burning wagons, with their smells of cooking pork despite no pigs being stolen to load into them, with people crowded in by slavers instead…!

Wagons that spread over with wisp-like fires as the devil-in-blue’s hidden face smiled grandmotherly in feel…!

The chosen bodies fell forever into a bottomless swamp conjured by unspeakable magics, not even allowed the reprieve of rotting away…!

 

 

 

“Would a clever child learn to nibble the flesh of the dead of her own volition, if that’s what it took to awake to another fine morning with singing birds and sunshine?

Will you demonstrate if you’re clever or not, as quickly as you can?

Kekeke!”

 

 

 

That sort of laughing monster deserves the blade now held in a child’s hand.

Her, and all of her ilk who spoke of sisterhood, yet conspired as much against each other as the world they chided.

Their cause was never a child’s own.

 

Blade and needle, aimed straight for the unbeating, evil heart is her cause…!

 

 

---

 

 

“Clever, but missing the grand design as always… kekeke!”

 

An evil heart doesn’t bother to beat, even with the needle piercing through a robe nearly immune to the harms of mundane metals.

The flame-bladed short sword, aimed for the same point, sparks within the witch’s clutching talons. Its hex of punishing malice remains silent, for how could it harm the one who invented it?

 

(Another secret I gleaned from her…)

 

Face-to-face, Still’s mask can’t protect her from the sweetly scent of her mentor’s breath. How it both alleviates tension with its inviting, homesick flavor and leaves Still begging for an escape further unbalances her feverish thoughts.

 

(… Ahhh. I’m… so… stupid…)

 

“IT HURTS, IT HURTS, IT HURRRRRRTS!?”

“KREEEE!”

 

One hand pulls free the sword and tosses it, dragging an insubordinate apprentice into an uncomfortably affectionate embrace. Turned toward the source of the malice which briefly stole her mind, Still shakes with understanding of what the open shears trapping a squealing parasite’s shimmering body represent.

 

(… She held more than just the wisdom to tether! Also the mastery of severing…!)

 

The parasite’s owner staggers in mind-numbing pain, jumping when the long, viscous link between her own mind and the foreign spell’s effect is cut deeper into by closing blades.

Withdrawing into the sage’s midsts, the bleeding body of Kaskin maintains its life and power. Rage burns in the peacockatrice’s eye as he breathes hard while chanting a spell of forced recovery.

 

(… he… escaped…)

 

“To return my needle in such an uncouth manner, after ‘borrowing’ it for so long…”

 

(OH… THE NEEDLE…)

 

With green slickness stuck now on its golden length, Still’s needle is held before her face for inspection.

A mentor’s humored voice stays as such, but the words betray the real impression as it taps Still’s mask.

 

“… one would think I raised a thief, instead of a successor…”

 

(… RIGHT! Why are you here!? You can’t be here…!)

 

 

 

—No mentor should be present, for she remembers it quite clearly!

Though very little is recalled, it’s so clear what is there!

 

On a truly unordinary day, when the window glass frosted as the festering swamp froze, the apprentice had taken the opportunity handed by god above. She’d freed the seal on her mentor’s circle, plucked a priceless needle under the watch of a red moon the whole time, and…

 

… never looked back when she ran—!

 

 

 

(You’re not here to save me! You can’t…

You can’t be real…! Because you would absolutely de-de-destroy…!)

 

“What is it you fear, little one? This cute little occultist who hides her true name…?”

 

Shears snap shut with a clamorous hissing!

When black severs, the finger attached to the stream of an otherwordly biting creature explodes into golden Vigor.

“GYAAAAH!” The sage paints the ground with her lifeblood as she reaches for a glistening poultice from within her robe. “ YOU… MAD, NO GOOD, INSUFFERABLE PUPPET…!”

 

“… a partner who leaves free of his mind to wander in a dark place…?”

 

(I can feel where that fool boy is treading…!)

 

As bad as the horrors surrounding her, an always apprentice witch quakes at the storm which has begun to rage around a terrified friend with a long tail.

At first like the catastrophe at the Chapel, it is quickly taking on another flavor as the stretching shadows which announce the natures of their owners start to yawn and scream.

 

… Vengeance buried deep within herself starts scratching, growing furious at the presence of another like it, as the hidden black moon above beats that much stronger at the birth of a new nightmare…

 

“… or is it the joyous reunion you share with dearest mother…?”

 

(YOU AREN’T MY MOTHER…!)

 

Still’s arms cannot muster the same monstrous purpose a mentor’s can.

The true master clenches with a current of innate witchcraft arcing through her embrace, denying Still’s ability to alter her body’s agility.

 

“… a mother you took so much from, yet never bothered to write…? Even though she would sacrifice a-n-y-thing to save you…”

 

(… ANYthing… to… preserve your investment… I… stole the needle, but it’s because…)

 

 

 

A mind threatens to shatter, because the memories needed to hold it together aren’t convincing.

With the fear of her very soul shattering too, the storm sweeping through the manse’s grounds only feeds more generously upon her personal concept of existence.

 

(… I couldn’t do anything, because you were…!)

 

“If you won’t call me mother, then what name should you know me by, dear?” As if to read her very thoughts, the cooing slave driver holds the struggling girl tighter.

If breathing was still required, Still would expire by now.

 

(… Your name!? Your… name was… “Witch of…”

… You… had a name… a real one, too… what was it…?)

 

“What a shame! You can’t recall? How easily my very excitable apprentice forgets what should be important, while grasping the most difficult secrets so readily! I admit, despite appearances…”

Still’s hat is patted lovingly, as the entity which tormented her with cutting words and devilish games grows soft and teary.

“… I’ve always been fond of my clever child.”

 

(… Are you… telling the truth… this time…?)

 

“Oh, woe is me. Very well, if not my name to jog your memory, then…”

 

(Why can’t I remember it…?)

 

Like the storm, Still’s own soul seems to be swirling.

The memories vanish one by one along the threads connecting them to each other.

 

At every important stop in recollection, a chasm looms that will consume her if she tries to leap it.

 

“What is…?”

 

(… Where is… where are… my memories?)

 

 

 

“… the name you should call yourself?”

 

 

 

Emotionless now, the unnamed mentor taps on a protective mask.

One created to hide…

 

(My name? What a joke, you old bitch! I told you it the day you abducted me!

 

My name is…!)

 

 

 

The forthcoming answer releases all tension from her body.

Slumping into her eternal savior, Still can only gasp confoundedly behind a concealing mask.

 

 

 

(…

… What… was…

… my name!?)

 

 

 

Where one chain of memories reveals itself to be broken and missing nearly every segment, another taken up as an escape holds many fonder links with much more regularity.

 

“Oh?”

The witch stands taller as her apprentice kicks and shudders, before an unusual confidence is delivered with a slap to the older woman’s arm.

 

{My name is Cyrene…}

“Is it, now?”

Some shock registers in the woman’s teasing tone, but then she giggles when Still finishes her sentence.

{… and your name doesn’t matter, because no god would let a hag like you live again after your death, so very long ago.}

“Kekekeke! Correct! A perfect rebuttal!”

Fragile mirth corrects itself when the slender woman pulls Still straight into her springy breasts.

“This new apprentice would be considered possibly an improvement?”

 

(… Rubbing me in, are you? Even you were larger…

UGH!?)

 

A familiar feeling expands like the rushing of fire.

Upon delicate mesh this fire burns, unseen but felt as Still’s body screams out silently.

 

 

 

For the sun has just been born within an evil priestess girl’s useless hands, to be dropped stupidly upon the ground and consume all helpless creatures that have committed the dubious crime of refusing to die when others decided they should’ve!

 

(AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!)

 

Too directed for simple spells of resistance to survive, even when inoculated by the enemy’s own power this sort of banishment can’t be forestalled.

A girl named Still is about to become ashes.

 

(I HATE THAT INNOCENT GIIIIIIIRRRRRRRLLLLLLL!)

 

At least, until black stones are flung out into the approaching luminance.

 

“Calm yourself, my child!”

 

(YOU ARE JUST LIKE MY MOTHER, AFTER ALL…! ONLY MANIPULATING ME FOR…!)

 

The spiraling stones weave a comet trail of darkness to hide the two bodies within, freed of the nova of holy might washing over the garden.

 

“I won’t let you go up like a tar pit struck by lightning, no matter how entertaining it might be to watch! Kekekeke!”

 

(I… I… won’t… die again…)

 

 

 

When the nova’s expansion skirts off the walls and escapes into the sky, the storm that was repulsed begins to billow toward two lonesome souls.

“Hoh, this might yet have utility. What think you, alternate?”

{… What is he…?}

 

Both of them whip with the sudden wind that springs up.

When visibility returns when raving winds vacate, there is no false garden remaining.

 

 

 

An army of indeterminate horrors aims its mass toward the center of a battlefield full of bodies.

Two witches take in a duo of threatening wraiths, standing back-to-back at the top of a heap of the brutalized fallen.

 

Above, a thick layer of black clouds swirls ominously centered over the lord and lady of hacked-off limbs.

 

“That answer would be… a very rare specimen indeed.”

 

 

 

The woman with black hair like the night sky hunches over after, coughing and having a fit. Soft petals of white and pink, drenched in stinking red, seemingly grow from her hair all the way to the end, leaving a gentle crown of them wreathed upon her head.

A simple white drape hangs over her face, made of rough linen tied around her hair and seemingly contrived to stop the life splattered upon it.

 

No eye holes are cut into it, but they aren’t necessary.

Just like the evil boy, every sense this bloody woman possesses licks over Still’s shivering body.

As if the sneak’s very existence is being tasted, as if all living things within sight are being graded, the woman’s body shakes with the flavors.

 

A brutal hatchet sword, shining like it’s coated in a rainbow, drips upon the soil. Its dulled, broken edge hums with an unnatural sharpness radiating also from within this venomous spirit that lifts it.

 

 

 

“… AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”

 

 

 

The woman begs for aid with a soul-crushing scream that can never be forgotten, before swinging the chopping blade.

Her blue, blood-drenched antique clothing, of a foreign design like a funerary doll’s wrappings, flap with the scarlet energies that barrel out from her edge.

 

The answer to this plea is for a quarter of the horrors assembled by a sage to explode into shrieking dust, as the blade sorcery the killer lashes out with in a petulant rage cleaves a furrow through Still’s section of the battleground.

It snakes along until slamming into the garden’s concealed walls, revealing them with a flash before they fade from view once more into the false reality of a devastated wasteland with shattered, floating islands in the distance.

Pressure from the impact alone nearly bowls the sneak over, leaving her hanging from her mentor’s arm as the witch calls forth rotating barriers of curtains.

 

“W-W-W-What is this… nonsense, nonsense…? Kack, kack…!” Coughing from a cloud of debris, the once bombastic sage shifts her rod away from witches. “You’re…! Wait! You’re… that… boy?”

 

(Not anymore…!)

 

 

 

While the swordswoman falls onto one arm, almost like a feral cat with how she growls in exquisite pain while holding her glowing sword out to menace others, the man behind her just lazily turns to face them while dragging a ruined long spear across the ground.

Encased in very similar lamellar armor, Still can’t place the same affectations of a foreign design that make up the rest of the ensemble. Very much like Still’s concept of a wild hermit, the older devil who is a little taller than her former master rests one hand in his half-worn robe with an impious irreverence while tapping his weapon.

 

Always wearing the same caliginous mask, its artful design fits his older body, granting a subtle regal presence that would leave Still quaking at the knees had she not grown up among aristocracy.

Although not truly handsome, a gentle world-weariness, combined with a dashing haircut and a winning smile that invites one to approach him with open arms, cultivates the sort of persona that leaves her shifting uncomfortably. It takes deliberate introspection not to succumb to the temptation she feels trying to hoodwink a seasoned temptress.

 

(I see, a purposefully uncultivated, roguish appeal with the bleeding aura of a bad boy; yet, maintaining that sense that there’s more depth to him than you’d scratch past on first touching. It’s not fair for me to have a “type” that you can exploit, Adris. But…)

 

 

 

Where the woman’s anger and grief reflect off the blade she repeatedly lodges into the ground with wild swings, this man’s seemingly serene self offers no hint of the workings beneath.

 

If Still were not certain of his character before now, this charlatan would not be readily revealed as…

 

(That is not the smile of a kind man. Yours is of a complete bastard’s, the kind that we both feared dwelt within you. The type to stare at the damned moments before death takes them and discover perfectly salvageable humor in it.)

 

A man who shares too many interests.

 

 

 

“[Identical Gemini].”

 

 

 

Naming them breaks the trance.

 

The moment they experience it, both fix their preternatural sights on the evil witch.

 

 

 

That heap of bodies stays a distant island no longer,

as the huntress leaps down from the gore to stalk forward at the tap of his foot.

 

(Naming a fear is the same as challenging it, as you are well aware!)

 

As Still produces a new vial of liquid to coat her blade with, her mentor nods appreciatively.

“That’s a terribly rare [nightmare] your paramour decided to incarnate as, apprentice.”

{I see that this is going to be our relationship, is it?}

“Oh, something bothering you, dear? Despite achieving an incarnation, he doesn’t appear committed to this concept, yet. Make note of that…”

 

(Make note of what, you obtuse mystic? As if I can personally fault what he’s chosen to become…!)

 

A grinning emissary of dread exchanged obsidian cross for rainbow spear.

Severing clean all oaths, he now wields a weapon when earlier in their relationship she covertly witnessed constant failures to accomplish this.

 

(And out of fashion I go, for that flat-chested woman to fail to capture the same style… Hmmm, he lost entirely in that exchange~.)

 

Still tracks her descent into near mental collapse to this calamitous birth. Were she any less self-composed, she might’ve fallen into the same trough that altered him.

 

(Someone distracted me…)

 

“Now begins our ‘justice’ in joyful earnest, self-assured successor. Make yourself useful now.”

 

 

 

Just like the worst monsters to be born upon Zennia,

Adris fehl Dain has become an incarnated nightmare, one birthed of desire and darkness. For him, another thing that shares his realm is purely competition.

 

(He deals with competition in only one manner. And only I know what he’s become, or how to save him.)

 

The man she has to save stares at her with smoldering red eyes, without a single emotion exciting his calm heart.

A spear earns his caress instead.

 

 

 

(Fine, fine~. Come over and let me give you a kiss, then, TRAITOR.)

 

 

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Glossary:

Chapter 102         Table of Contents          Chapter 104