Chapter Text
I felt my fingers move before I could even remember my own name. Fingers. Huh. That’s what they were called, right. Of course. Fingers. I have fingers now. Well I’ve always had fingers. But also never had fingers. It’s been so long. The only people with fingers are people with a form. Do I have a form now? I guess I do. I used to have a form, right? The same way I used to have a name. I assume I used to have a name. Most forms have names and clearly I used to be a form because fingers have forms and I have fingers and I can move those fingers however I want.
I looked at my fingers, the fingers I could move. I didn’t have skin covering them. Just a mess of nervous systems coiling around bone, moving as I determined necessary. I moved my pinkie finger (yes, that’s what it was called) up and down, up and down, up and down. Good. I have control of my motor functions. I decided to try my middle finger this time. I moved it up and kept it up, still, stationary, extended. Good. I could still maintain concentration on a certain action if I so willed it to. It took a lot of effort from me, mentally, but it was possible. More than possible, actually. It was easy. Almost as if I was used to this. Well of course I’m used to this. I used to have a form, which is why I have fingers, which is why I used to have a name. What was that name? Surely I must know it.
I circled through every option in my head. Name, name, name. Surely there must be a name. Oh! Skin! I have skin now! I saw skin overtaking my arm, covering my nerves and bone and that thing called muscles? Weird. Weird weird weird weird weird. I examined my fingers again, watching as the tips of them hardened into perfectly shaped material. Fingernails. I had perfect fingernails. Well, of course you had perfect fingernails, Veronica. You always do.
Wait.
Veronica.
That’s my name.
Veronica Sonya Elm Rune.
Holy shit I remembered my own fucking name.
I shook my head, letting my wavy brown hair touch the sides of my ears, a sensation I… missed? Why did I miss it? What was going on? I was too busy staring at my own fucking fingernails to really even comprehend where I was? What was going on with me? I guess I was just trying to focus. The mind gets scrambled, y’know? Especially when I was apparently… reforming?
I tried to dig through my own skull, search my noggin for some sort of clue as to anything. The last time I felt something like this was when I reformed myself during that bottomless pit thing a while ago… God, yeah, how long ago was that again? Surely a hot minute. That was when…
Oh.
That was when I died.
Like…
Died died.
Wait.
Hold the fuck on.
Did I…. ?
I looked around, seeing if the surroundings looked at all familiar to me. The good news was I wasn’t falling down a bottomless pit again, so it wasn’t a complete retread of last time. Love that for me. It also wasn’t what I remembered of the afterlife either. No, it didn’t look quite right. I was surrounded by… pillars. Marble pillars and stone brick walls, with a sense of… classical refinement to them, plants and vines hanging to complement and add a sense of personality to the elegance. Something about it looked… familiar. I was here before, wasn’t I? What was the last thing I remembered…?
A dorm room.
But this wasn’t that.
This was-
The sound of a door opening behind me. A voice. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was a man, 27, golden brown hair, pale skin. Name was… I never learned how to read names with psychic energy. That was always an Elrich thing. “Ah. Good. You’re awake. I shall alert the Empress.”
“Empress?” I turned around to look at him properly but by the time I did, he was already gone, the doorway closed again. Fuck. This was NOT how I wanted to spend my time after I had… died? I guess I died. Fuck me. Ew. Weird to think about.
I tried to parse through my memory. Did I recall anything that happened beforehand? I… I grabbed Raven to babysit. Babysit… someone. Yeah. Then… there… was a dagger.
There was a dagger.
An emerald dagger.
Those were from…
The door opened. A woman, accompanied by two guards, walked in, her light skin contrasting against her elaborately braided dark hair, one strap of a regal and intricate jade dress resting off her shoulders, as if it had slipped off, as if she had been running here, despite how calm she was trying to appear. A grin appeared on her face. “Ah! So it is you. I thought it was once we started seeing the ball of flesh forming in the old courtyard.”
“The… I’m sorry, what the fuck?” Who was this woman? She looked vaguely familiar.
She winced a little bit and touched her head. Geez, did she really mind me swearing that much? She shook her head and tried to regain her composure. “My apologies. You must have a lot of questions. It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, Veronica. I’d love to catch up, but first I would like for you to get dressed, if you don’t mind.”
I looked down at myself. Oh. I was buck fucking nude. That’s weird. Last time my clothes regenerated with me. I guess this time was different because I’m not in the afterlife… or…
… Am I?
Wait.
Oh holy fuck wait.
Now I know why this woman looks familiar. Why this place looks familiar.
I squinted my eyes at her, suddenly feeling a sharp pain in my head as well. “T-Terassis?”
“Empress Terassis.” She said, almost on instinct, before smiling again. “Oh, why insist on such formalities with old acquaintances? An old friend of Aster’s is a friend of mine.”
Aster.
That was…
That name…
FUCK. My head hurt.
Why did hearing the name Aster make my head hurt…?
I took my hand away from my forehead. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’ll get dressed.”
One of her guards handed me a green silk gown and I snapped my fingers, causing the dress to appear on me. It was a bit tight so I altered it a bit at the hips.
Terassis smiled. “Good, good. It suits you. You look like a true Sheoran.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded and looked around. “Are you going to explain any of what’s going on now?”
“Oh! Follow me, let’s leave this godforsaken old room. Let’s walk and talk, shall we?”
She guided me into the hallway, her guards walking a few feet behind us. This felt… different. I looked over to the Empress. I didn’t know much about Sheora - we didn’t have one in the universe I was from and a lot of instances of Sheora throughout the many potentialities were blocked off from Shepherd interference, even if I did want to mess with it - but still, I could tell that there was something… off about her. I don’t know if it was just because we were both in the afterlife and she was dead or something else fucked up. I wracked my brain. Sheoran history, Sheoran history… Two women, an empress named Terassis and a religious bitch named Aster, date and then break up over differences and want to kill each other because OH. Fuck. That’s right.
“This is a great dress. I look fucking hot in it,” I said, looking down. “You didn’t have to give it to me, though. I can just materialize clothes. Plus don’t you have a silk shortage right now or something?”
“What silk shortage?” Terassis tilts her head a bit. “Are you thinking of the last time you were here? Then again, I don’t think we had one then either…”
“Last time I was here… When exactly was that?”
“Oh, gosh, well… not since Aster and I were teenagers. I think that was around the time her and I were still dating? You were there for….”
Almost in sync, we grasped both our heads in pain. Jesus Christ. What was it just thinking about this time that was causing so many fucking migraines!? But at least I knew the answer. It had been a few years. Had I really been dead for years…? Or maybe I still dead and this was just our afterlife. Was this Terassis’ preferred afterlife form - one where she had no bags under her eyes and was less fucking stressed?
I shook my head back and forth, hoping that would make the pain go away even a little bit. “So it’s been years. Aster and you aren’t… dating?”
Terassis giggled - I swear to god, the fucking Empress fucking giggled - and said, “Oh, god, no. No hard feelings, though! Sometimes people just grow apart. She seems very happy with her wife and kids these days.”
That threw me the fuck off and I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing. Trying to think of someone marrying Aster - god, who would that sad sack be? Low fucking standards, especially since Aster is a fucking snak-
Wait.
That’s right.
Aster… snake…
Neska.
Neska Neska Neska Neska.
The words rang through my brain. Aster becoming a snake. Becoming Neska. That was the last thing I remembered seeing before I… before whatever happened to me happened.
We walked out of the hallway we were in and into the wide exterior courtyard of the Sheora palace. I knew what to expect. Tall buildings, lots of vines. Trees. It’s Sheora. I don’t know what you expect me to say.
Okay, there was one thing that caught me off guard: people in T-shirts and cargo shorts walking around with plastic bags. A lot of them, actually. In between people dressed in the usual Sheoran noble guard and people dressed in… school robes?
I turned to Terassis and pointed to a man in a polo shirt with his sunglasses tucked into the collar. “That man looks like a tourist.”
Terassis shrugged. “He probably is a tourist.”
That took me off guard for a moment. “What do you mean he’s a tourist? Sheora has tourists?”
“Oh, sure! I mean, ever since the portals opened, we’ve always welcomed visitors. It’s been a big help and a nice little addition.”
“The… portals?” A sudden burst of panic rose up in my chest. The portals. That was it. That was the fucking problem. It was all coming back to me. I wasn’t in the afterlife. No, no. The last thing I was dealing was another convergence of potentialities - The Second Smush.
“Yes. The portals. Did we not have those last time you were here? I could’ve sworn that’s how you came in… Unless you used one of your shepherd powers again! You shepherds are always surprising me with what you can do!”
I’m sorry, ex-fucking-cuse me?
Shepherds?
Plural?
“What do you mean other shepherds!?” I said, a bit louder than I meant.
The guards turned their eyes to me, and I could tell their hands were gravitating closer and closer to their weapons. They were eying me, seeing if I was a threat. The tourists were eying me too, though mainly because they were weirded the fuck out. Why the fuck were they staring at me when the empress of this place was literally right here?
Oh, that’s right. Smush. None of this shit makes fucking sense.
Terassis held up a finger. “We’ll discuss this further when we get back to my quarters. I don’t want to discuss such sensitive matters in front of the locals.”
I did as told and kept quiet, mainly muttering to myself how the fuck this could’ve happened, what the fuck I needed to do now, and what the fuck had all gone down in the time I was gone because clearly this had all gotten worse. Way way way worse. Shepherds… I know in the old potentiality I was stuck in, back in the original smush, they made that box thing the Shepherd. Keepsie. Was that it’s name? We never really talked much. I didn’t really want to figure out how to deal with two people with shepherd powers in the same potentiality, nor what would happen if they ever made contact. I didn’t even want to figure out what that would do to time and space. And I guess if that’s what’s happening here, that there are other shepherds, then…
It was forming in my head. People obtain shepherd powers, at least in my case, by killing the previous shepherd. There are probably other methods for obtaining it, like however the fucking Anxiety Chest got his abilities, but that was the main one I knew. And considering how I was pretty sure I was killed, and killed by someone powerful, that means…
Someone killed me. And whoever killed me was the other one with the shepherd powers.
I followed Terassis to a nice little room in the palace, decked out in way too many fucking plants, with a wide window so one could get a great look at the courtyard down below. As soon as we walked in, Terassis guided me towards a chair at a tiny white table while she snapped her fingers to warm up a kettle and began bagging up some tea leaves. She set the cup of in front of me and then poured the water in. “Here you go! It’s a special blend I made called Moonlight In The Jungles Of Sheora. Your friend taught me how to make it!”
I waited for the tea to set for a bit. “I’m sorry, my friend?”
“Yes. Whitney Tremors? That girl you used to babysit sometimes, I think.”
Babysit…
I asked Raven to babysit someone.
Whitney?
Whitney… she was a student in the event planning committee with…
Mira.
Not my Mira. Another Mira. A student Mira. A Mira I had talked to before, that my cat had talked to before.
Mira.
God, as soon as I said the word, acknowledged her existence again, it was like a flood pool opened in my brain. I did my best to quell it down and focus. You’re a professional, Veronica. You can’t let your old flames get in the way of things, especially not when there’s smush shit happening. I inhaled a deep breath, regained my composure, and asked, “Terassis. What’s the last thing you remember happening when I was here?”
“When you were here? Well, you were… in the courtyard with… that girl you babysat, she’s Aster’s friend I believe. I’ve seen her once or twice. I know some children here go to her school. And then Aster… and then she…” I could see some weird black mark on her temple. I tried to get a better look at it. Wait. No. Fuck. It wasn’t a mark. It was a crack. Her face was cracking.
Shit. I forgot. This happens to people when they’re stuck in a Smush. Their minds can’t handle conflicting information and their body starts to break.
Which means…
Something here is conflicting.
So my hunch was right. Last time I was here, I was killed.
And it was Whitney and it was Aster who were with me.
I took a sip of my tea. Sure enough, it tasted like moonlight in the jungles of Sheora. It’s hard to describe what a place tastes like, only that I could feel it on my lips perfectly. “Okay. Okay. And… you said other shepherds. What other shepherds are there?”
“Oh gosh.” She leaned back, holding the tea cup in one hand and the plate in the other. “Well, Aster is the main one of course, but last time she was here she was telling me about this new protégé shepherd of hers she’s training called Raven.”
I almost spat my tea out. First because of the shock of RAVEN? FUCKING RAVEN? TRAINING TO BE A SHEPHERD? WAS THIS SOME SMUSH BULLSHIT?
And then secondly because the moment she said Aster, it all connected in my head - and by that I mean it hurt like a motherfucker, the sharpest pain I felt in a while. Aster. Aster the Shepherd. Of course Aster was a shepherd. Of course of course of course. Aster. Neska. She killed me. She fucking killed me. She used and Emerald Dagger on me, killed me, and turned into Neska. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Did that really happen last time? Yes. Of course it did. I was trying to fix The Second Smush. She shouldn’t have been there. Sheora shouldn’t have been connected to Wildcliff campus, and yet it was and then she fucking killed me and now she had Sheora powers? Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
I didn’t even realize I had dropped my tea until I had heard the glass shatter.
I grasped my head in pain. “S-Sorry, I… I need to go find someone. I… fuck, I…. Sorry…”
I made a portal out of there, trying to focus on seeing if I could feel where Raven was. Last time I went to her, she was in that damn pirate universe. I had to try that again. I had to ask her about this shit. I had to see what she knew about Shepherd Neska and if it came to it, would she help me put her down. I stepped through the portal and ended up where I was last time - a basic ass kitchen decorated like a TGI Friday’s mixed with the Halloween clearance section. And much like last time, there was Raven, looking like she always did - pale skin, blue hair, way too much fucking makeup, and enough goth clothing to make even a Hot Topic worker say, “Bitch, you live like this?” Except unlike last time, she looked a little bit older. Not a huge amount. It wasn’t as drastic of a shift as last time I had seen Terassis. Probably because of the vampire thing, or maybe difference in time dilation, or maybe the Smush, I don’t fucking know. Point is, she looked a few years older, a little bit more mature.
Raven’s eyes widened. “V-Veronica? Holy fucking shitballs, is that… is that you??”
I grasped my head in pain. “Who else would it fucking be?”
“But… you’re…”
“Dead? Not anymore.” My head wasn’t hurting as much now, at least not since I was away from Terassis and Sheora and all that shit that happened there. “What the fuck has happened since I’ve been gone?”
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” Raven looked around nervously. “Ummmm. A lot. And by that I mean nothing! Nothing at all!” She paused and then her shoulders slouched. “I’m… not in trouble, am I?”
“Depends. I need the full context before I see if I need to shove a boot up your ass or not.”
“I missed you too.” She smiled, weirdly enough sincerely. I thought we were going to have rival repertoire. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed that we weren’t. “It’s actually good that you’re here. We could really use your help and someone with more expertise on all this.”
I inhaled, calming myself a little bit, as I tucked a stray hair back into place. “Yeah. I’ll help. That’s what I do. Always fucking helping everyone.” Then it hit me. “Wait. We?”
“Oh!” Raven perked up a little bit, the same sort of dumbass excitement she gets when she was about to tell someone new info because she gets off on the rare moments when she’s the one in the room who knows things, before it was suddenly replaced by something else - hesitance. “Uhhh maybe it’s best you didn’t actually. Or sit down a bit. There might be some things you need to unpack and deal with and establish before you meet her.”
“Meet who?” a new voice said as a small figure entered the room.
It was a child, no older than 12, with brown skin and striking bright green eyes. Messy box braids rested at her lower back. She opened her mouth into an earnest smile, a weirdly earnest smile, that would’ve been oft-putting even if it wasn’t for her fangs. She was wearing a rainbow long sleeve shirt under pink overalls. Her eyes sat on mine and then grew wide. “Oh! I know you! I have seen pictures of you! You are my Mom’s dead ex!”
Raven seemed to wince a bit. I was more confused and concerned. “Your mom’s dead…?” Then it hit me. This girl. She looked familiar. Way too fucking familiar. “Who the fuck is your mom?”
The girl perked up and jumped a little, almost as if she was surprised that I didn’t know this. “Oh right! You have been dead so you do not know this! My Mom’s name is Mira Marchand. Not to be confused with my mentor Mira Marchand or my other mom, Mom 2, who is Aster, though I do not know if you knew her by that name or by her old embarrassment name Neska. Are you here to help us out? Me and Raven are trying to help fix The Third Smush and we cannot ask Mom 2 for help because we might break her. My name is Magnolia!”
I felt a sharp pain in my skull as my right eye twitched.