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She stepped through the portal back to her ‘home’ in the abyss, and for the first time in what could have been hundreds of years, Skirk felt exhausted.
There was something. A little inkling in the back of her mind that things were not as they should be- they were not as they once were. Or worse, they were back to how things were long ago, back from a time she’d cut clean from her own conscience. Something broken severed, never to be set back in place. A broken bone left untreated that healed wrong, misshapen and threatening to saw through the tendons with a numbing snap. To make the whole limb useless, just dead weight to drag along. But she had the power to replace that broken bone, the dead appendage. To put something reasonable and numb in its place.
Skirk never prepared herself for the possibility of old wounds coming back to haunt her. She thought she’d been done with that long ago. Forward was the only reasonable direction, after all.
Yet, she willingly let something in. Rather, the cracks in her resolve finally led to something shattering, for better or worse. A voice she never thought she’d hear again spoke with such familiarity and care that it would have made a lesser being sick. Her true self, her emotions, begging to let the pain stop if only for her own sake. Skirk felt something within her shift the moment that they made their way back in. Perhaps Alice was right, in a way.
No matter, Skirk hadn’t the time to think on this change much when it happened. Not when an enemy was still at large, and certainly not the presence of the traveler.
So, Skirk fought forward until she was able to make her leave.
When she stepped through the portal into the oppressive darkness she’d come to keenly know over the years, she stopped.
There was a weight somewhere within her. This was not the same as dark tendrils of the abyss clinging to her, forcing her to fight back just to move forward. They pulled so hard they painfully dug into her flesh, and then they stopped feeling like anything, and then Skirk was able to break free with a single slash of her blade that she’d practiced a million times before.
No, this was dragging her down from the inside. Like her body refused to float in the clear pristine water. And that, in a way, made it all the more terrifying.
Fear was as familiar to her as the weapons she would wield for an eternity. She would use one to combat another. Skirk knew one simple way to overcome any horrific obstacle, and that was to train. If she was at her limit she could push it and be better for it. However long it took, however much it hurt, she would put this behind her too, but…
That wasn’t what ‘she’ wanted, now was it?
Skirk looked out at her ‘home,’ as much as she loathed to call it that, and for the first time in many millennia, she hesitated to reach for her blade.
It was a foolish, weak, terrible thing to do, but she did it anyway.
Skirk began practicing her sword work, dragging along that weight in her chest and the exhaustion in her bones. Good. Maybe the extra challenge would aid in her quest to get stronger.
It was not long before time began to blend together, until each strike became tantamount with the last. Each just as precise as the one before, but they all worked to chip away at something. To create enough cracks to reach a breakthrough. Skirk had done this too many times for even the sharpest minds to keep track of. Maybe one day, muscle memory could take the place of all of her real memories. Her practiced power would be all that remains, and then she’d be strong enough to destroy him.
Today, however, her muscle memory seemed to be working against her. With the strikes coming so naturally, Skirk’s mind began to wander. She wasn’t sure just why she didn’t try to stop it.
She heard a song playing in the wind. One she knew well. It was just as beautiful as the first time she heard it. With each listen she gripped to it tighter, even if it was with artificial hands. They had no need to be calloused when they could not hurt at all. A part of Skirk that she’d drowned away in those polluted waters missed the feeling of guitar strings digging into her finger tips.
She could smell smoke. But it wasn’t from the flames- it couldn’t be from the flames. They were gone now. Everything was gone now. She was all that remained. Why was - it was from a stove. Her parents cooking. Something flavorful and wonderful. Something worth halting her adventures to come back to. Not just for the smell of cooking, but the smell of home. But did she even remember what that smelled like? What it felt like? What the taste of her parents' cooking was like? Or was that all lost when she’d severed the tries in her mind to those moments?
Skirk could taste iron on her tongue, blood a more familiar flavor than water. She’d neglected to indulge in something necessary for survival. It too would be a death sentence when all that water was so tainted. Blood meant that her heart was still beating, that she could still move forward, that she was still alive despite it all.
Beyond the endless darkness of the abyss, Skirk could see the hideous orange glow of flames. She could see her parents with broken bones and with tears in their eyes. She could see the red that covered the ground, seeping to become a stain that she’d never be able to get out. She could see the hands that killed her neighbors, her teachers, her family. She could see the man that saved her, and the sword that he put in her hands.
She saw that sword in her hands now, swinging endlessly without faltering.
And then Skirk felt pain.
Somehow, she’d been convinced that she was no longer capable of such a thing. Perhaps that was her arrogance talking.
Over the years, she had broken all of her bones a thousand times over; she didn’t remember it feeling like this. This oppressive and damning, like the end of her entire world. Something snapped in her wrist with no warning. It burned too, coiling up her arm, threatening to sever the artificial limb from her flesh.
Skirk screamed when she dropped her weapon.
It was an instinct that she thought she was rid of, to clutch her wrist with the opposing hand in a futile attempt to make the pain stop. To cradle it close to her chest and shield it from the world. To scan the area for any threat, guarded and more alert than ever. To act not in an attempt to destroy the enemy, but in self preservation.
Her wrist stopped hurting in a mere moment, like it had never been broken at all.
Skirk knew rationally that it really wasn’t. It wasn’t able to break. Not any more.
She had heard stories from those who had lost limbs. Phantom pains, they would call them. A simple trick of the mind. It too was arrogance that made Skirk believe that she was immune to such ailments.
Maybe if she just trained a little harder…
She let go of her wrist and took a breath. Her keen eyes ostracized the discarded sword on the ground, like it was somehow to blame for this.
It was another instinct, this one forced into her over the years, to reach for her weapon to continue training. Skirk was able to stop the action as soon as it started. That weight in her chest only felt heavier. She really was exhausted.
There was no use continuing in this state. She ought to get some rest.
Skirk roasted a fish over the fire. The flames lapped at its scales, burning and unforgiving. There was a cruel pang in her chest right where that weight was. She slowly rotated her food to let it cook all the way through. Like how he would toy with his victims before devouring them.
She thought of Ajax’s comment when she ate her meal, about the funny flavor that she could either not taste, or had long since gotten used to.
Skirk felt another pang then, this time it wasn’t painful. It was warm and gentle, like the afternoon sun shining on her face. It was comforting, like the sound of her father singing. With it brought a reminder that she always felt cold nowadays, and that her father was long gone. Yet, a bit of warmth remained. She didn’t know what to do with that.
It had to be the fire, she reasoned. That was all the warmth that existed here.
Skirk eventually laid on the worn down mat of the camp that could be reluctantly called her home. When she closed her eyes, she saw a light so bright it was blinding. Or maybe she’d just gotten too used to living in the dark.
She didn’t open her eyes. No, she wasn’t that weak. She would adjust and move forward.
The sight that she was met with was one that made her second guess her decision.
Once again, she saw flames, and smelled smoke, and tasted blood. There was no music in her ears, only screams of terror. The kind that could only come from someone facing their cruel untimely end. There were tall figures with dangerous weapons in their hands. Skirk had no choice but to run. Her legs hurt, blood dripping down from scraped knees. The air was thick with smoke, near impossible to breathe in. Yet she did not stop, not until she reached her home.
It smelled like nothing for a moment, then there was just more thick smoke that wanted nothing more than to suffocate her.
Skirk went further inside despite knowing what she would see.
Perhaps being wrong was what made it harder to bear, because when she ventured further into the home, she did not find the mangled bloody bodies of her parents. No, it was just dark. The screams from outside grew quiet, and there was no music to fill in the eerie gaps. Each step hurt more than the last. When she looked at her hands, she saw the vague outlines of something real in the dark, not false flesh made from the abyss. Any discernible features of her home became nothing. The scorching heat from the fire soon became cold. Horribly and oppressively cold, threatening to freeze her footsteps.
That burned in its own way, and if Skirk was being honest with herself, it was worse.
She wasn’t quite sure how long she kept walking aimlessly in the dark. What she was sure of was that she was growing weary. Her legs shook under the weight of her body. Worse than that, she was afraid. Her hands shook too, and she’d tell herself it was the result of the cold.
And then, all too suddenly, there was light. It was just as blinding as when she first closed her eyes, an awful flash that could have lasted forever.
When it came, she felt her limbs snap with a sharp accompanying crack. Each bone splintered over and over until she had no choice but to crumple and curl in on herself on the ground with that pathetic instinct of self preservation. She screamed again, but it made no sound. If it did, it was drowned out by the noises of tearing flesh.
She felt each of her limbs torn from her body. She was aware of every tendon that snapped, each evered vein, each bone broken impossibly more to sever the ties. All in an attempt to become stronger. She gagged when she heard the wet squelch of blood. It made her even colder when she began to helplessly bleed out on the ground.
Skirk could not attempt to crawl toward help, or even to a dark corner to die in. She could only scream towards unhearing ears. Her heart was beating erratically in her chest. She could taste blood. No, not taste, she was choking on it. She couldn’t breathe. She was so cold, she was being burned alive, she was terrified, she couldn’t feel anything anymore.
She was going to die here.
Then, just like that, the pain stopped.
Skirk felt absolutely nothing. Her limbs were all back in place. Her throat was clear. Her eyes could see that she was in a field lit by a full moon. A pleasantly cool breeze blew through the air. Yet, Skirk still felt like she could not breathe.
She sat up and childishly hugged herself with arms that could not feel. She gasped and choked on blood and smoke that weren’t there. “...Mom, dad..?” She managed to whisper out between gasps.
There were no screams to drown out her voice, only the sounds of nature in the night. She tried again, a little louder, “Mom, dad, where are…? What…?”
She looked up and saw nothing out of the ordinary; there was a stinging feeling in her eyes that she never thought she’d feel again. Whatever question she wanted to ask got trapped in her throat. An ugly sob stuck in its way.
There was a song on the wind, then. It was more beautiful than ever.
“I’m sorry,” Skirk breathed out. She gasped when the weight in her chest threatened to hurt her all over again. “I’m sorry!” She screamed this time. “I didn’t ask to survive… I didn’t… I-” her words were stopped by another sob.
She wanted it to stop, not only the emotion but her actions. She was beyond this. She had stopped this so long ago. She had learned how to fight through darkness in search of her own light. The water had been cleared, her walls had already broken, she was supposed to stop hurting. That’s what she had wanted. So why? Why now did it hurt more than ever?
“Never thought I’d see you in such a state, master,” came a cocky voice. It was familiar, but not the same as she knew it to be.
She turned her head to look over her shoulder towards the source of the voice. Her eyes were wide and red with tears she didn’t know she was still capable of shedding as she hunched in on herself on the ground. A pathetic sight, surely.
A young man with ginger hair and lifeless blue eyes approached.
His steps were confident, a little cocky. He smiled and gave a small wave, “I guess you must be surprised to see me too, huh? I went ahead and did some growing up since the last time we saw each other!”
“Ajax?” Skirk hated how shaky her voice was when she said it.
“The one and only. But I go by a different name now, y’see-”
Skirk didn’t listen to the rest of his words, not when she saw a different familiar figure approach from behind Ajax. It was taller than any normal man clad in dark armor that seemed to kill off any light that shone on it, much like the abyss itself.
Surtalogi was raising his sword before Skirk could blink. She was upright in the same amount of time. She had no sword to draw.
“Ajax!” She screamed like a broken record.
It was all in vain. The sword struck Ajax’s body with the terrifying sound of tearing flesh, and then Skirk woke up.
She didn’t think before she took her sword and slashed so swiftly that nothing could have dodged. Not even her master.
But there was no one there for the blade to strike. Just a fire that had long since gone out and the oppressive darkness of the abyss. Skirk looked around over and over just to be sure that that was the truth. She hand twitched, overly eager to swing at whatever next moved. She was a livewire; her heart was pounding electric blood into her veins. Her breathing was erratic, but other than that she was steady, ready for anything, mustering her strength for whatever was waiting.
When Skirk reasoned that there was no threat, her breathing evened out.
She let the dark be just that, the dark, and she let her nightmare fade from her mind.
Her hand, her artificial hand made real through the power of the abyss, tightened around her blade. I brought with it no sensation. Somehow she was disappointed.
It made her feel nothing when she opened her portal to leave her ‘home.’
It was still night time when she stepped onto the surface. An hour had passed up there at the very most. It was still more light there than in the abyss.
Skirk looked up at the false sky, rotten and beautiful. It was just another affirmation that everything was in its place. There was comfort in that.
Her hand never loosened around the handle of her sword.
When her true self said that she wanted to stop her pain, Skirk thought such a claim was unreasonable. She’d neglected to comment on it at the time. She believed she had long since moved past pain, both physical and mental. That it wasn’t something that burdened her anymore, not after all these years. Not after everything she’d been through.
Yet now that those walls were down, with the river flowing freely in her mind more pure than ever, and the light shining more brightly in her soul than it had in years, her pain had nowhere to hide. She could not run from the flames from her past and she was on fire.
When Skirk looked at the stars, she hoped that one day they would look back and see a world that was more kind than the one that had done this to her. Right now, she could only hope that she could turn this weight in her chest into more power to make sure that such a future would exist.