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~ NO! No Super-Haunted Swords Allowed in My Bed!! ~
Mercymorn woke up from a restless, fitful sleep to find the little bone gremlin lurking in the doorway of her bedroom.
"Ugh... Harrowhark, what are you doing here?"
"I can't sleep."
"You want me to put you to sleep?"
"It isn't that I can't physically fall asleep," Harrow explained, edging further into the room. "I simply find myself quite terrified of being murdered in my sleep."
Mercy didn't know what to say to that, since there was a distinct possibility of it happening. She made an inarticulate sound in response.
Undeterred, Harrow carried on, "May I sleep here with you?"
Ah, so the child had come to her for protection, which was a burden of responsibility that Mercy extremely did not want. She especially didn't want to have to fight Gideon if he did manage to locate and attempt to kill the little gremlin child, but she was also reasonably certain that he wouldn't think to look for her here, since Mercy had very publicly and vocally made it known that she did not care for Harrow one bit.
Mercy let out a heavy sigh and said, "Fine."
Harrow did not take this as an invitation to walk normally over to the bed, instead doing her weird little gremlin creep-shuffle. Although maybe that had more to do with the weight of the giant sword she was lugging around than anything. And speaking of the giant sword...
"Leave the sword on the floor," Mercy told her, as Harrow started attempting to climb into bed beside her, sword and all.
The little gremlin obeyed this order almost too easily. Mercy was tired and didn't think too hard about it. She just wanted to go back to sleep.
Mercy didn't dream of her cavalier very often anymore, and when she did, it wasn't with the crystal clarity with which she was now seeing her. Time had dulled her memories to the point that she didn't remember the finer details of Cristabel's face anymore, but she could never forget Cris's eyes because she saw them in the mirror every day of her cursed eternal life.
This was wrong. This had to be a dream. Her eyes were wrong. The color was-
"Shh, Mercy, shh," Cristabel soothed as she pulled Mercy into her arms.
Mercy hadn't realized she'd been making some kind of sound until the apparition of her cavalier called attention to it.
The embrace felt warm and real (but this couldn't be real!) and Mercy collapsed into it, wrapping her arms around Cristabel and burying her face against her neck.
"Cris-" she started in a shaky voice, but didn't get any further because she found herself quite suddenly on the verge of crying.
Cristabel hugged her tighter and said, "It's okay."
"Cris..."
"It's alright, sweetheart."
"Cris, what color were my eyes?"
"You don't remember?" Cristabel asked, her tone falling somewhere on a scale between surprise and disappointment. She pulled back from the embrace slightly as she answered, "They were pink. It was an unusual color mutation. Matched your hair beautifully."
Mercy lifted her head and looked up at Cristabel's face. At her eyes. At her eyes.
She tentatively placed a hand against Cris's cheek.
Cristabel smiled, her nose crinkling in a way that was adorable and achingly familiar.
"They probably don't look as good on me," she said.
Mercy would have protested, but their conversation was interrupted by the sound of screams and gunfire in the distance. It wasn't until now that Mercy noticed anything at all about their surroundings, which were disturbingly familiar and also at the same time somehow not. (Why were the walls covered in veins full of human internal organs? This definitely had to be a dream!)
"We should go," Cristabel said. "You need to wake up."
"I don't want to go," Mercy said, clinging to her cavalier desperately. "Not when I can see you like this. I don't-"
More screams sounded in the distance.
"Mercy." Cristabel cupped Mercy's face in her hands. "We need to get out of here before she notices us. Before any of them notice that we're here. We need to go back to our body."
Mercymorn's mouth dropped open but no words came out. If this was more real than she thought it was, then that meant-
Cris smiled and pulled her close once more.
"I'm always with you, Mercy. You know that."
The rest of the Mithraeum's inhabitants were awakened by the sound of Mercy screaming. When John, Gideon, Augustine, and Ianthe gathered in the doorway of Mercymorn's bedroom, the sight that greeted them was a panicked Saint of Joy standing at one side of the room, with Harrowhark at the other side, sword drawn, and a veritable army of skeletons filling up the half of the room in which Harrow stood.
Upon noticing everyone else standing there, Mercy yelled, "Get the super-fucking-haunted sword AWAY from her!"
With a mere wave of his hand, John reduced the skeleton army to powder. He stepped into the room and Augustine followed him. Ianthe and Gideon remained hovering indecisively in the doorway.
"Harrow," John said, in the most kind and gentle tone.
Harrowhark dropped to her knees and began to cry as she realized that there was nothing she would be able to do at this point to keep the sword from being taken away from her. Great wracking sobs burst from her as John removed the sword from her grasp and passed it off to the Saint of Patience.
Augustine inhaled sharply when his fingers touched the sword, and jerked his hand back. Then he took off his Lyctor's cloak and wrapped the sword in it, and carried it out of the room. Ianthe stepped aside to let him pass.
"So the haunted sword is what was wrong with her?" Gideon inquired, sounding somewhat relieved.
"So the sword was actually haunted," Ianthe commented in a surprised tone.
Ignoring the comments from the peanut gallery, John gathered Harrow into his arms and cradled her against his chest. Harrow did not react to this in any significant way, and continued to wretchedly weep.
"Mercy," John said, without looking up. "What happened?"
Mercymorn let out a heavy sigh and moved to sit on the edge of her bed before answering.
"Harrow was terrified of being murdered in her sleep and she asked if she could sleep in my bed." She conveniently didn't mention her actual feelings on the matter, just the actions that had taken place. "So I let her. I told her to leave the sword on the floor, not bring it in the bed, but obviously what she actually did was waited until I was asleep and then brought it into the bed anyway. Not only that, she put it in the middle of the bed, between us, and at some point I must have moved in my sleep and ended up touching the thing." She pointedly did not mention what her soul had experienced upon making contact with the haunted weapon. "Then I woke up screaming and you know the rest."
"Are you okay?" John asked her.
To which Mercy responded: "No."
John had his hands full with Harrow already, so he sent a beseeching look to the two Lyctors who were still standing in the doorway. Ianthe and Gideon both looked sidelong at each other, then Ianthe slid into the room and went to sit beside Mercy, and put her arm around her.
Mercy did not appear significantly comforted by this action, but she allowed it.
It was at this point that Augustine returned, and reported that he'd stored the sword somewhere secure.
Harrow sobbed harder upon hearing this.
"So... the haunted sword is what was wrong with her?" Gideon tried again.
"Obviously it's not the only thing that's wrong with her," Mercy said. "But now that we've gotten the haunted sword away from her, it should be easier to figure out and fix the other problem."
"Can you fix me too?" Ianthe piped up.
"Why, what's wrong with you?"
"I wish I could tell you."
~end~