Chapter Text
It tastes sickeningly sweet, like sugar, at first. It tingles in your mouth like an itch, and then explodes and stings and burns and burns and burns until it tastes more like ash than sugar, and then the taste burns away with your tongue. Your face is melted and burnt and numb and it travels to your throat and down into your gut. You start to feel more void than person, everything torn away from you in chunks of burning meat until all that’s left is an aching hole.
And then, nothing. Emptiness.
You realize, suddenly, you are dead. It’s unlike any other death you’ve experienced, but you are dead. You still burn, like a star, still bright.
And, as with any other death, you awaken in Dormont. It’s familiar. It smells the same, it feels the same, you’re sure it will look the same when you open your eyes.
… Eye.
… Eyes?
If your body was burned, shouldn’t you have less not more? Why is your eye…?
In your confusion, you open them, and you realize you aren’t in your normal clearing. You don’t normally loop to a different point in time. It’s disorienting. You expect to hear your Housemaiden’s voice calling for you, and instead you hear a crackling noise like a small fire.
You’re in front of the Favour Tree, collapsed on the ground in front. You don’t see the Fighter, maybe this is after he already left?
You don’t want to see your party right now. You failed them. You did something wrong, you must have, or else you wouldn’t have looped back last time. And you don’t know what else to possibly do. You’ve given up. You’re wrung out, you’re numb.
You asked the tree for a new favour. For some reason. You should’ve known it wouldn’t have worked. You don’t know why it made you loop back, though.
Maybe it was just meant as a stage reset. Get back to your place, Traveller! You have a show to put on! You feel less willing to play your part than you ever have.
You hear footsteps. You start climbing the tree in your panic to hide, even though you’re tired and don’t want to move. Because if someone sees you, you will have to talk to them. You will have to act. You will have to play your blinding role.
You look out from the foliage. It’s… the Fighter.
The Fighter doesn’t normally come back after leaving, does he? You haven’t looped all the way back to Dormont in a while, you suppose, maybe you’re misremembering. Your memory has always been unreliable. You think you know his script well enough, though, and this is throwing you off.
When did you loop back to? What… is this?
You realize it’s not as dark as it should be from your perch, hidden by leaves. It’s strangely bright. You look down at yourself and-
?????
What happened to your cloak? Or any of your clothes? Or your skin?
Maybe the light was hitting you strangely. Maybe your eyes- eye- eyes were playing tricks on you. That reminds you, you…
You still can’t see out of it. But you can feel it. Your face feels different, you can’t…
What is this?
Maybe you’re dreaming. Maybe you touched a tear and just forgot. Or you’re asleep in the clearing, or the Clocktower. You can’t really make sense of anything otherwise. You feel detached, like an observer; you can’t see the script anymore and you’re on the other side of the stage, everything turned around.
You close your eyes to try and shut out everything, mind racing but thoughts slipping away, and-
You don’t see darkness. You see an entirely different space, like you’ve teleported with a blink. You’re looking out at the Blind One’s field of vegetables.
You open your eyes. You’re back in the tree. You feel off balance and it’s making you nauseous.
You’re panicking. Something’s wrong. You don’t know what this is. You don’t know when this is. You don’t know what happened to you.
You close your eyes again.