Chapter Text
Echidna was there.
Echidna, that Echidna, was there.
Right before her eyes, Echidna of Greed, one of the seven Witches of Sin was standing, as in physically Standing in a plane of existence outside the normal laws of physics and optics. That fact alone, seeing your long-dead best friend (A/N: Yeah, keep telling yourself that honey, I am sure you are just that) standing before you that is, it’s distressing and worrying, and also, likely an omen of ‘Some Oddamn Fuckshit’ (as her friends would say). But said friend being there in flesh and blood and spite? Unfathomable!
Especially for Echidna: once she figured out how to create clones and fake bodies, she started using them for everything. Recon, sending messages, dangerous experiments, simple tasks... if she had to do it, she would do it with clones and constructs and golems, maybe out of convenience, maybe out of her physical weakness.
But this? This right here was no copy, this was Echidna. The very Echidna that she met when she was travelling with Flugel, the one from 400 years ago, and not a copy. She wasn’t so easily fooled, no matter what the woman in front of her said, she knew when she was being lied to. And the look in her eyes, their greedy glimmer, her challenging stance, even the that unconscious habit of her, of slightly curling her lower lip inwards for every ounce of mana she gathered… She knew that even if she wanted to, Echidna could never create such a perfect copy.
Her amethyst eyes locked onto the other witch’s onyx black ones, two gemstones stubbornly trying to pierce one another.
It was clear, neither wanted the other to be there; it didn’t matter that one intruded upon the other, it didn’t matter that the other cared about the first as if she was more precious than her own life, or if these feelings were shared, the other woman needed to leave, so that she could live.
But as if being hit with a stick by an ikemen taught her nothing, a certain immortal knight chose to talk in a really tense situation.
“Echidna! What are you doing here- no, better yet, what are talking about, exactly?”
The greediest person in 400 years glanced at her way, only to dismissively roll her eyes.
“Hush now, spare me the ‘inner mind’ talk while I get you out, ok?”
“Wha- who-?” after vocalizing her doubts in her best rendition of Spicanese, Subaru watched as the greatest magician never recorded by history began her assault!
Mana started to condense around her body, as her gate pulsing to life.
“UL SHIHA! -” as she shouted the name of the spell, from the nowhere around them dozens of irregularly shaped orbs water appeared, looking like a mockery of a starry night “-EL REIX! -” and without leaving Subaru the time to gush or explain the situation, the clumsy dollops of water changed shape, now resembling spheres cut in various ways, with the now exposed “inside” assuming the shape and apparent properties of mirrors.
“And now…” the pale Witch steadied herself “AL MEOR!” at this, a thick humid mist was summoned, slowly moving towards Satella, who was surrounded by the mirrors, unsure on how to act towards of the seemingly non-lethal barrage of spells, her elven instincts unable to guide her movements for the first time in centuries, her mind and body unaware of any threat- “MEGGU! DERIAL! CIMU!” just then, as if she read her thoughts and was reminded of this, Echidna generated three spells, a dome resembling tinted glass around Satella, a wave that seemed to distort the space between them as it travelled towards her enemy, emanated from her eyes and a swarm of blinking lights materializing around the Half-Elf’s eyes. Satella immediately tried to move away, not needing her instincts to understand the threats around her, hence she resulted to attempt the First Step on the “Guide to How to Win Every Battle”: not getting hit.
“Eh?!” nevertheless, her valiant attempt at dodging was stopped by an invisible obstacle, feeling stuck in the void of the seal as if she was a piece in a snugly fitted mosaic. ‘This spell… Ul Jirl? No, it was never this powerful…’ Her thoughts came to a halt for a moment, suspicion creeping in ‘… Is it possible that she… but, why-?’
But as she was still distracted, the Magician clad in black kept up her barrage! Different spells flew around her, Goa’s dancing alternated at exploding Minya stakes, all rendered more chaotic by powerful Fura’s and Savku’s encircling her!
Satella’s body acted on her own, summoning tendrils of pure black, extending incorporeal limbs around her figure. With freakishly coordination some twisted around her as shields against the darting spells, while others took the initiative to destroy the very spell matrixes of the incantations around her, making them useless, dissipating them into glowing, fading shapes. Once she carved herself an opening, she turned her attention towards the invader, the shadows lunging towards her like extensions of her body.
And as soon as reached- uh?!
Echidna’s figure broke apart unevenly, revealing a steam-like interior. Consequently, the real Echidna appeared from the opposite side of the battlefield, only a few meters from Subaru, causing Satella to projectile herself towards them.
“THIS IS YOUR CHANCE! NATSUKI SUBARU!” the act of screaming, in any capacity, was something out of character for Echidna, for any version of her, so Subaru was even more shocked as she heard her name.
“WHA- WHAT?! MY CHANCE TO WHAT? I DON’T-” Subaru stammered, confused. What was she talking about? She knew Echidna as an enigmatic riddle enthusiast, a faker that spoke in half-truths and full lies, and this wasn’t helped by the actual Pandemonium of mana unfolding way too close for comfort. It would have busted her eardrums and tore her flesh, had she had eardrums and flesh to damage in that dimension.
Echidna, annoyed by the flayed woman’s cluelessness, produced a sharp object, in the rough shape of a naked blade. “Here!” she barked, “use that knife to kill yourself!” she followed the statement by sending the knife towards her with a magical gust of wind, as if she was a schoolgirl tossing a pencil to a troublesome, but cared for classmate.
“Okay: BITCH!” the girl a little too familiar with the proposed act answered with an equally uncouth demeanor, only with more feelings of opposition, as most people would when confronted with such a command would. How dare she waltz in, assault her Tella and ordering her to kill herself like she was instructing a disobeying toddler! Afterall, she had something to live for now! …If you stretch the meaning of “living” enough, that is…
Actually, screw the semantics! Her girlfriend was being bombarded with-
“UL QUUL!” Thousands of pockets of air around Satella were quickly robbed of all humidity, compressed and superheated, creating a ludicrous number of incendiary explosions, all detonating within seconds of each other, only causing discomfort to the eyes, and very sensible ears of the half-elf; the booming noise cracked her mind open and shattered her concentration, luminous BANGS! and CRASHES! rendering her very thoughts and actions quiet in comparison. Luckly, that’s all Echidna needed.
She begun to feel the information coming back to her like a gust of wind in a room full of dust and bibliosmia. Images of stained glass and the feeling of cold air overwrote the world around her for just a second. She felt the tiredness and soreness settle inside her form like a phantom from a forgotten time, her hands tingling painfully as the mana settled inside her body in the most efficient way possible, shifting the weight of her spell from her heart to her diaphragm, to her lungs, to her stomach and going back. Heart, diaphragm, lungs, stomach. Breathe, repeat. She felt the mana. She shaped it. Her gate trembled one last time, and she shouted.
“RADIANCE BOUND: EGAC GNAY!” Her voice thundered unlike ever before, her eyes mirroring the light of a thousand days, as the old, powerful spell, more ancient than even the witch herself shook the blacker than pitch black world into coming alive. Pillars, columns of golden light shook themselves into view, crying like shattered glass and booming like storms, over 50 obelisks of pure light imposing themselves onto Satella’s surroundings in two perfect concentric circles! And as the pillars grew, they emitted more light, all of their tops converging right atop their epicenter, better known as the Witch of Envy; now the columns of light resembled a bird cage, the golden lights growing brighter and brighter, but even though it seemed as if the very sun was erupting in rage, they never hurt to look at.
Satella didn’t stay still either: she summoned hands and tendrils of shadows, Yin magic made “matter”, they kept on coming, scratching, tearing and digging their sharp points into the bars, producing brain-trembling screeches, and making the light chirp in pain back. The clash between venomous, all-consuming darkness, Satella’s will and desire given shape, and the unshakable light sounded like a thousand thousand birds dying of heartbreak met the cries of love of a swarm of crickets, the vibration alone capable of cracking rock, and still neither Witch gave away any signals of backing down.
“It’s useless”- Echidna’s voice somehow prevailed over the chaos of the battle- “Even if you try your hardest, you will never be able to sap away EGAC GNAY’s mana. This spell is similar in nature to your Yin Magic conversion: it isn’t just magic; it’s mana turned to light. It is not powered by my mana, nor yours, it uses light to continue existing, from any source. It will continue to self-sustain itself and keep you and your magic inside!”
She turned to look at Subaru “And you.” Her voice carried traces of annoyance, exhaustion and… something else? … Worry, was it? “Now that she cannot stop you, you must reset the timeline. You must go on, Natsuki Subaru, and complete your mission. Be warned, from now on, you must avoid death for a long while, or Satella will trap you in here again. Now go-” She pointed at her, her tone becoming first more technical, and then… somber (?) “I shall remain here to prevent Satella from going on a rampage after you return to life, so-”
“Echidna, what the fuck?! Get Tella out of there!”
“Eh?” The greedy witch’s speech was interrupted, and for the first time in centuries, she did not know was going on.
“So” Echidna was sitting on her legs, somehow her weak physiology didn’t apply to posture (?), “YOU wanted to stay here, since, after a certain someone betrayed you, your name was eaten.” Subaru nodded along, trying to look as serious and concerned as possible. The reason why she felt so unbothered now was another whole can of whales she knew Echidna wanted to open, and she knew damn well that once it was opened, she’d have to lie in it for a loooooooong time. Thankfully, she had learned that time wasn’t really an issue in this alternate dimension. It was a complicated concept, but from what she had gathered from Satella’s instinctual understanding of it and Echidna’s more scholarly approach, time essentially passed as it was “needed” or “necessary.”
You see, the essential difference between these two instances is-
*Poke-poke*
A delicate finger dug into her shoulder recalling her to attention, Satella quickly returning her to a more conscious plane of existence to avoid interfering with Echidna’s already uneasy cooperation. Just because she sinned in Greed, that didn’t mean she was a stranger to Wrath, as her trademarked “Stone Face of Glacial Burning Anger” demonstrated. This time, however, Satella recognized that expression not as her friend’s oxymoron of fury, but as some sort of… d-disappointment? It was like she was staring at a child forced to eat Green Peppiris while the rest of the family gets desert, and not as a Witch able to annihilate flocks of dragons with a flick of the wrist.
“Ummm… Sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to space out”, Subaru apologized weakly, her time in the cell evidently didn’t help her with talking with (cute as hell girls) people “Please, go on”
Echidna only sighed. Out of all of them, she had to forget that one brand of spells, uh? Why didn’t she install that “ecseteronaru memori” she told her about? ‘Because you wanted her to teach you from scratch, you pathetic sentimentalist!’ -a voice in her mind answered her, and she stifled the desire to punch herself.
“As I was saying” she gathered herself quickly “After having you name eaten by Roy Alphard of Gluttony, you were found, rendered unconscious, by auxiliary members of the Felt Camp, some sort of knights, right?” she didn’t wait for conformation, “and after a sometime, while you were still unresponsive, Beatrice awoke, and on the basis of the presence of a contract that she didn’t remember and the copious miasma emanated by you, you were declared Suspicious, and taken in for interrogation. Then, after waking up in what you described as ‘an uncoherent and pathetic panic’, you gave your version of the last 14 months, from your position in the camp to your accomplishments, from your encounter with Emilia to your involvement in the Civil War and the Great Disaster in Vollachia,” once again, Echidna didn’t wait for Subaru’s nod “And after a ‘consultation’ that only lasted 13 hours and a summary, skewed process, you were declared an Archbishop, imprisoned and held ‘in custody’. While you were supposed to be safe guarded and undergo interrogations, you were instead tortured, under flimsy pretenses, such as you having manipulation powers, being uncollaborative, aggressive, annoying or ‘just because’.” Quietly cursing all of them under her breath, Satella failed to notice the slight additions of adjectives not present inside Subaru’s previous explanation.
“Actually, some of them were… frustrated, angry at the cult” Subaru begun, in an apologetic tone “so, they decided that I was good enough as a proxy for their venting” she finished in a far more resigned, almost venomous one. She had stopped trying to justify them around 20 ‘years’ ago, but she still felt like there was no reason in haphazardly describing the events, especially to someone like Dona Echidna!
“I- see.” She flinched, then something unreadable spread across her lips for a fraction of a second, only for her to retract it right after. “And this resulted in ‘compliance treatments’, ‘obedience training’ and a deluge of different psychological and physical punishment, which you neglected to describe…” Echidna sighed. She likely wanted to know more, after all she could clearly identify the scars on her body from spells and faulty healing! (Or at least that’s what Subaru thought)
“A-And,” Echidna regained her bearings, cursing the day in her stasis she got closer to her emotions in a stifled breath, “This all resulted in you being killed, multiple times, over the course of the year you were imprisoned, leading up to your execution. Ultimately, you spent the equivalent of a century in the cell, being lashed, burned, abused and often quote, ‘Lavinia’d’, unquote”. She exhaled one last time. “Did I get it all right?”
“…” Subaru stayed silent. “…Pretty much. This is also why I decided to stay here, consciousness/mind/soul-wise anyways.”
Echidna furrowed her brow, fluffy eyelashes not fully meeting as she squinted her deep, captivating unsettling, black eyes “To escape the pain? To terminate the cycle?” she was quiet, for a brief moment that for some reason felt like a stab wound, “Are you truly… ‘Natsuki Subaru’?” And if the previous moment felt like a stab wound, the split second that passed after this felt like death by a thousand cuts- actually, did she ever die this way? She didn’t, didn’t she? Well, better not give the universe any ideas… but, come to think of it, were they even in the ‘universe’ now? Was the Shadow garden a universe in its own right, or was it outside? Was it something like a quarantine zone? A natural phenomenon or an artificial dimension? A sovereign territory? Or-
*POKE-POKE*
“Uh?”
Subaru snapped back to reality to Satella poking her shoulder (again), this time seeming more irritated than usual, and Echidna… uh? What was she doing?
“Echidna, why’s your arm on your fa-”
“Anyways!” she interrupted “you were saying, why did you decide to stay in here with her?” Subaru did not like the sudden shift in tone, but starting another fight just seemed too- oh.
…
“It’s because… I was- no, I still am- … tired.” She delivered these words with some sort of shame, mixed with a hearty dose of resignation. We could say Echidna was surprised, but it would be far more appropriate to call her intrigued “I am tired. Really tired. I am tired of the pain that comes with every day of torture, tired of being the innocent victim at the end of the story, tired of dying, tired of that cell, of those cold stone walls stained in blood, of it’s old, stale air, of the beatings, of t-the humiliation, of…” an image was brought to her mind. Two opposite primary colors and two achromatic colors, question and disgust and hate and pain and blood and then the floor and then the blood and then the blood and the plea and then the floor and then her Հᴇᴟ---
She sucked in a breath. ‘No, don’t think about that.’ Her eyes closed for just enough time for Subaru to return to reality.
“And most of all. I am tired of everything being… wrong. I know I sound selfish, but this… it isn’t how it should have went. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong. I… don’t think I should have ever ended up in this cell. And” she took a breath, as if filling her lungs with courage, as if preparation was necessary for the consequences of her next words “and I don’t think I deserve this.”
…..
…..
…..
“WELL DUH! ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME GO MORE INSANE?! OF COURSE YOU DON’T DESERVE TO GET THROWN INTO A CELL AND TORTURED YOU NINCOMPOP! YOU DIZZARD! MOONCLAF! NINNYHAMMER! DODDYPOLL! YOU PLATONIC IDEA OF A GOWK!” Satella exploded, expunging from her system a shower of profanities so antique, one might mistake her for a talking almanac of historical diss tracks. In doing so, she also unleashed a torrent of little punches, not strong enough to leave injuries, but certainly enough to make her feelings on the matter abundantly clear.
A/N: Uh, this explains how Minerva and Satella became best friends
“Ouch, ouch! Okay, okay! I said I don’t think I deserve it, Tella! Ouch! Why are punching harder?! Ouch!” the glaring woman pleaded, but the malicious witch didn’t give in! Spousal abuse! SPOUSAL ABUSE, I SAY!
“Mph!” the half-elf pouted “And if you ever try to say something so mind-numbingly Coxcombic I will smother you for a decade!” at this last threat, Subaru looked puzzled, cocking her head like a canine first looking at something new. “What?” she harrumphed one last time.
“Is that supposed to be a punishment or a reward?”
“…” As a result, Satella had, once again, climbed the evolutionary ladder backwards and took a left, turning into a steaming red tomato as a result. She resumed hitting her spouse, this time with even less strength, and muttering about the ex-knight being a seducer without any care for her own words.
“Tch.” Was the only thing a certain guest had to say.
“Bitch.” Actually, there was another one.
NOTES:
- Echidna was summoned inside the Shadow Garden due to a failsafe she herself installed inside the seal, secretly from Flugel. Its function allows someone to invade the seal while keeping their reason and memories in order to either check on the inside of the seal or (in this case) automatically enter it in order to extract Natsuki Subaru if Satella ever kept her inside for too long
- Echidna was constantly coinscous inside her seal. This was due to an inherint flaw of this counter measure: if the subject ever loses coincousness, they might never be able to awake, since this magic keeps the subject "locked" in the same state for as long as it is needed.
- The different spells used in this chapter are all made by me. I will update this chapter later with all the info about them.