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“She looks like me.” Thought the girl, the corpse, the creature.
Or rather, the woman looked like her from months ago before her old clothing tore to dirty, grime-covered ribbons and the voice forced her to change.
Yes, there it was – a feather in her hair similar to the one she had found in her own tangled locks so long ago.
Furs hugged the woman’s shoulder and the abomination the girl remembered the softness of it as she stroke it before falling asleep for weeks if not months after she awoke that first time.
The dark gloves were the same and the blue accents reminded her of her old tunic and-
Wait.
No, she was wrong. Not everything was the same. For one, there was a noticeable lack of belts around the woman’s waist, and the armour shining beautifully like snake scales in the sun was something completely new to the girl.
Both, the similarities and differences, were mesmerising. And uncanny.
How do you react when a clone of you that's not-quite-a-clone walks into your home? A home that is also not-quite-your-home. Do you intruduce yourself? Offer appetisers?
Well, that wouldn't do. The girl was currently out of both a name and any food, unless the strangers liked squirrel bones or spider legs.
The woman tilted her head, scanning the chamber, and her long elven ears – half-elven, her mind helpfully supplied – became ever more visible.
The girl pressed a shaking hand to her mangled earlobes. Suddenly she saw the resemblance. Though, she noted, her ears were much smaller…
She covered them with her hair.
Still, there were so many similarities! Enough to send her mind to the early days, to the stench of death and the enormous boughs shattering the sky, to the grackle, so disappointed when she stirred underneath it, to the feeling of rough rope coiled around her throat, to the screams-- oh the screams! – no, no, don’t think about it now, don’t—
A feeling of delicate hands braiding her hair. A voice, honeyed but cutting when—
STOP
The gates of her troubled mind shut close. The memories behind them clawed at the wings.
And the girl – half-dead, maybe, certainly, not-all-the-way-alive-girl – smiled. She didn’t know why exactly but it surely could do no harm. In fact, she was feeling better already!
She didn’t dissolve into a puddle of tears and hysterics and that, in her book, was definitely and undoubtedly a success.
Her attention sluggishly returned to the two figures, the unexpected visitors to the castle underground maze.
There were more of them. She already saw the antlered lady (horns hammered to the skull, red hair made even more red by the clumps of blood) and the scary, glasses man (white paint in the hair, white bloodless skin, white film over the eyes that stared in her direction). She had been dancing at that time, wrapped in old fabric that might have been tablecloth at some point, and rocking to a vague memory of a melody when she heard them. She barely managed to hide before they so rudely barged into the room and started looking around.
But these two were different, they ventured further into the bowels of the castle, unaware of all the ghosts and abominations surrounding them.
The girl couldn’t take her eyes away from them.
Who are they? Asked one of the dolls, or maybe she imagined it asking that. It was hard to tell anymore and the girl wouldn’t bother with such trivial questions anyway.
“I don’t know…” she whispered and her rarely used voice scratched her throat.
Familiar, another doll chirped. Its single remaining eye rolled around on its thread, then settled on staring at her. Something’s familiar about them. Do you know them?
“I… I don’t think so? Maybe?”
It was all so confusing. She sifted through her scattered memories, like picking up pieces of broken glass and looking them over, searching for something that would fit together.
Dinner.
Long table, red dishes.
Yes, that must be it.
“I-I must have met them,” or someone like them. “At a dinner.”
The girl was satisfied with this explanation. After all, if she wanted to probe deeper, she’d have to open the fortified gates inside her head and she very much did not want that.
“What is all this?” the half-elven woman asked.
“It’s some sort of laboratory,” the man walked further into the darkness and closer to the big broken tank.
The man was a different flavour of surprising.
What an odd creature, the girl thought. He has the woman’s face. Well, not really. There were differences, it wasn’t like he took her face and stitched it onto his head. But the eye shape, the sharp eyebrows, the upturn of the nose, it was all the same.
How peculiar. Wasn’t it bothering the woman that he had her face and the girl was once in possession of her clothing? How much can one take before it becomes a problem? Could she have something right now? She very much liked their eyes. Their skin was nice as well, with a healthy tint to it and all.
But there was more. The man was alive – she could hear his heartbeat if she concentrated hard enough – and yet there was a thick vapor of death hovering around him, grasping at his chest, hanging off his shoulders, trailing behind him like huge feathered wings.
But he’s not like you, the first doll noted, voice high-pitched but grim.
“No, he’s not.” She acquiesced with sorrow so deep and painful she refused to think on it.
“For what?” the woman’s voice again.
“Nothing good.”
Something shifted in the shadows and the shadows inside the girl responded.
He was there.
Tension rippled throughout her body. She felt him more than saw him. In truth she couldn’t see much through the hole in the stone ceiling – or floor as it were – but she saw enough to know that the half-elves were unaware of the danger lurking in the dark.
If the girl wasn’t using her hands to cling to the walls she’d be wringing them out right about now.
He’s here, the dolls chorused around her, some in horrified squeaks, others with a morbid kind of glee. Wooden limbs trembled. He’s here! He’s here!
Every now and then the monster would venture away into the tunnels, intrigued by some noise or other. He never headed to where the others were kept however, mostly he preferred to roam the long corridors. But always, like clockwork, he’d return to the laboratory. Something must have been drawing him back there each time, although he didn’t appear to really know what.
Admittedly, it was hard to tell what he was thinking if anything at all. He’d stalk the halls, surprisingly quiet, rest in darkened corners, then go back to stalking or hiding away inside the lab. The girl avoided him the best she could but each time she decided to stop by and take a peak, he’d look hungry, tense and… terribly lost.
She pitied him.
Maybe because she could relate to him on some level. Not that long ago she was not much more than a wild animal herself after all. A lost, scared little thing.
Still, she never dared getting near. Some part of her was terrified of him, could read the threat in his posture, his bared too-long fangs, his intense gaze.
Her head hurt if she looked at his face for too long.
She did leave out a doll for him though. Not that he did anything with it. She wasn’t wholly certain if he even noticed it or had any feelings about it whatsoever. He didn’t destroy it though which was good, she supposed. And now…
He’s here!, a court jester puppet hanging next to her chanted. For once it appeared serious.
Glass shattered against stone, and the chatter overhead stopped abruptly.
It might have been a bad idea to go out above the surface tonight, she thought as the screams and the snarls started.
Now the mysterious ghosts of her past would die and end up as minced meat and a sad pile of bones, and she’d have the front seat to it all.
Sounds of a fight reached her from above and in the chaos of it all she spotted her chance. Laughter of exhilaration built behind her teeth but she sucked it up. Now she had to act.
The girl breathed the musk of the underground and her senses sharpened. The darkness within her coiled, ready for release, and she skittered along the wall.
“Vax!” the woman screamed and the girl flinched.
Better be quick, she thought. And then: What is a vax?
As her nails grew and the brittle bones of her hand popped out of their sockets, she flicked her wrist and breathed magic into the stone. And then her collection of dolls. The ceiling opened up like a maw and the numerous wooden appendages reached in and grabbed her target.
Glee and relief filled her to the brim, she’d say she was drunk on it if she only knew what being drunk felt like.
And just like that the woman was swallowed without much noise nor fuss.
She did it!
Exhilaration and relief run through her veins like lightning strikes. Her smile was so wide, the skin on the edges of her lips started to tear. The darkness around her rippled with pride.
And then the excitement gave way to fear when she realised she just trapped herself with a stranger in one room.
Uh…
Faster than she thought possible, she dived into the safety of her tent. Instinct ordered her to hide and yet she couldn’t help but peak out. The dolls were so curious too.
She could finally take a closer look at the mysterious woman and she was very pretty. The girl was suddenly very aware of her uncombed hair, the dirt caking her legs, the black ichor dripping down her fingers like liquid rot. For the first time in a long while, perhaps the first time in forever, she put any thought to her appearance and felt lesser for it. All on her own too and not because the voice told her she should.
There was a sharp intake of breath and the girl focused back on her surprise guest. Their eyes met.
She froze, mortified at the prospect of being seen. Bad things happened whenever she was seen.
Could… could half-elves see in the dark?
She was given her answer the moment a flaming arrow was aimed at her face.
Fear surged through her. She couldn’t die but she could feel every hit, every cut, every arrow and rock thrown at her.
“Who are you and where’s my brother?” the woman was suddenly close and very, undoubtedly, horrifying. Everything about her, from her dark gaze to the actual weapon in her hands was a dark promise of violence. “Talk!”
Heavy boots and armoured fists raining down on her. Pounding, stomping, kicking.
Heartbeat thundering in her ears, the crack of bone. The awful feeling of her sternum caving in, of ribs puncturing the lungs…
The girl recoiled.
“No! No, please!” she whimpered.
She shrunk into herself and shielded her head even when she knew it wouldn’t help much in the end. This time though there would be no mercy of death coming to save her from this torture.
She wished her dolls didn’t have to see what came next.
“I’m sorry… I’m not here for you.”
Confusion reared its head tentatively.
Was she… apologising?
Before she could react, however, the castle howled.
The air vibrated with echoes of ghostly wails as a certain presence entered the space. A magical signature – vile, powerful, familiar – appeared, and the energy running through the girl’s veins reacted. Call and response.
It was…
Oh, dear. What have they done to this place...?
“My mistress?”
No, it couldn’t be. Here? Now? How?
“Who?” Right, the woman was still there. The flaming bow was gone and she watched her, puzzled but much calmer than mere moments before.
Who…
Who indeed?
“The witch inside my head. The voice that never leaves,” the girl explained. It really was her, wasn’t it? The quiet pulsating at the back of her skull, the sensation like hands catching her heart and squeezing without mercy?
She thought of the voice, the words. One minute gentle and soothing, another scathing and cutting. A voice smooth like silk but with something cold and hard underneath. A voice that gave so many awful, awful orders.
“You remind me of myself when I was younger. Just before I came to ascendancy. I was so diffident. Meek, even.”
“I hate to say this, but if you had enough potential to be trained, someone would have come for you a long time ago.”
“Come, now. I need you for something very special.”
“Be mindful of the face.”
The girl trembled.
“She did things. Bad things. Things I can’t remember and…” Blood on the floor, a steering hand on her shoulder, purple magic putting together a shattered story. “…can’t quite forget. The voice won’t let me.”
The woman put the flashy bow away, her expression growing progressively concerned. “If you help me find my brother, maybe I can help you.”
Help?
Missing brother?
A mystery!
“Is he a ghost?” She knew ghosts. She saw them, heard them, sensed them inside the walls. Shame they weren’t always happy to sense her. “So many ghosts in Whitestone. I can feel them stirring. Drawing me back here. Warning of her return.” Not merely as an echo of pain and cruelty anymore. Not only in spirit, but in flesh as well. She’d return again and again and there was nothing anyone could do about it. “No…”
She didn’t want to believe it but it was inevitable. The dull ba-dum ba-dum coming from somewhere at the back of her head told her so. As if someone was standing behind her at all times, pressed so close against her she could feel the heartbeat jolting her body.
“What?” the question seemed to come from under water.
The girl turned away. She didn’t want to think about any of this, she didn’t want to remember!
Too close! Too close!, the dolls warned. Or maybe, it was her own subconsciousness crying out because it was the only thing left to do as the heavy gates threatened to burst and drench her in in her own entrails.
”Who has returned?”
A hand on her shoulder, a pitiful smirk, a magic that poisoned. A passion that burned worlds.
Scratching against the door. Hinges creaking like shrill cries.
“I decided I’d have you be the very first to see what ***** and I are working on. Your father helped so very much.”
The gate exploded outwards.
Images and sensations assaulted her.
It was too much, way too much.
A pile of clothes and dark hair. A familiar kind face, blood spilling over ice.
The creaking of branches.
She wanted to throw up. To scream.
No no please, don’t- don’t make me do this again, don’t- I can’t!
please
Please!
PLEASE!
It was too early, the memories still too fresh, too painful.
Emotions filled her lungs until they burst and deflated; pain poured out her eyes, her ears, her mouth; sorrow clogged her arteries and regret smothered her organs one by one.
Grief ate through her marrow, shattered her vertebra, grew teeth inside her throat, set her tendons aflame and buried eggs in her flesh.
She could remember her parents and it was insufferable because it meant she lost them and the way in which she lost them was simply too horrible for words to describe.
Her poor heart was tender and way too frangible and it couldn’t take it.
The girl, the corpse, the creature, wanted to scream but something wouldn’t let it.
It grasped at a memory, still painful but a bit more manageable, and clang to it with all its meager strength.
Ravens cried somewhere nearby. Buildings faded into focus.
The mind felt impossibly heavy as it sunk into blissful nothingness, and the fool, the victim, the anomaly, hung on by a single thread.
Or, in this case, a single rope.
Ah.
How could she had ever forgotten? Yes, there she was, swinging on the wind alongside the mysterious strangers.
No… they were just other poor souls, made to look like them. Painted and cut up and stitched and dressed like dolls.
Makeshift effigies, the lot of them.
It was difficult to think, the thoughts came slowly like tree sap. But, the longer she stared at her own face, the easier it was becoming. Any lingering echoes of panic seizing her throat and shaking her limbs lessened as well.
She’d given in rather quickly, hadn’t she?
Yes, she’d lost everything in a single evening after all. She lost her family, the little pride she had, the hopes for a better future. And she lost her mind in the end. Her dreams burst like a bubble and the elegant charade did as well.
It all happened so quickly, she thought numbly.
The girl flinched when someone appeared next to her.
Ah, it was the woman from before. She was there as well and she extended a hand towards her, eyes wide and horrified.
Slowly, the girl held her hand up.
She could see the moment the woman was taken aback by how cold and clammy she was, but she didn’t let go. She didn’t push her away.
It was the first physical contact she had since… waking like this.
They stood next to each other, looking at the looming Sun Tree. In this brief mental bubble the three of them – the ranger, the effigy, and the dead girl – existed peacefully at the same time.
“How are you showing me this?” the half-elf asked.
“I’ve always had a spark, even as a girl,” she said, remembering what she’d managed to forget thousands of times. “It scared people.”
It made the city kids call her names, and caused the fellow outskirts ones to avoid her unless absolutely necessary. It made some adults evade her gaze when speaking with her, and made others eye her with suspicion each time she perused goods at a market.
It gave her parents false hope that she could be something better than her young, silly self. It gave her hope she was meant for more. But, at the very end, it wasn’t even enough to safe her.
But it wasn’t all bad, a part of her insisted.
She felt so free whenever she used her magic! She could remember clumsily mending a dress for her mother, scaring the crows away from her neighbours’ vegetable garden, spinning carefree in the fields as shadows played with her.
“She said she would teach me how to control my magic, but instead…”
The pity. The deception. The twisted joy at her suffering.
Her life had been dull and unremarkable, unworthy of acknowledgement, and even her death was but a warning to someone else.
“If you died, how are you…?”
The big question.
“No idea.”
It was still so blurry. Vague sensations and quick flashes of images came back to her, then scurried away like scared rats. She must have regained some dregs of lucidity at some point, only to lose it all, again and again.
“And just when maybe I thought I had been given a second chance, she came back. In here. The voice, beckoning me.”
Her animalistic brain had only wanted to hide, to find shelter. And so she had. Only later did she realise the voice talking to her hadn’t been hers at all but by then it was already too late. She had her broken mind in a vice, and each time she strayed too far away, the invading whispers of “Whitestone” would return and her legs would carry her back to the dark corridors beneath the ground.
Something horrible was near. The cold stone of the castle traded stories of atrocities of the past and those yet to come, and her mind was unstable, full of shifting sand that buried what hurt the most.
“If your mistress is back we are all in danger. Unless…” the woman’s voice brought her back to the present. It was so nice, so gentle. Completely at odds with the horrors around them. “You say you know magic?” There was no fear, no disgust nor reproach. Only… hope?
The excitement she felt was new but welcome.
With audible cracking of bones she extended a hand and channelled some of her energy. The massive roots of the fake Sun Tree came to life, slithering and wriggling like a nest of snakes. She watched with glee as they spurted wooden fingers and then, they launched.
A wide smile stretched on her face.
“La la-la, la la-la¬”
The night air was cold and crisp. In an hour or so the sun would rise and paint the sky pale pink but right now it was still blissfully dark and mostly cloudless.
Tonight was full of surprises.
From unexpected guests in the tunnels, to meeting the woman she’d died as, and standing face to face with the voice in her head for the first time since… since…
Eh, it was difficult to gather her thoughts again. Details escaped her like the fireflies she tried catching.
Well. No matter!
The important thing was: the magic in her was singing and she did things she had never even considered. She tricked the dark lady and for the first time in her life, and un-life, she felt powerful.
And, and! For the first time ever she was called a friend! By a very kind, regal-looking lady -- her lookalike no less! And it wasn't just in her head! She couldn't be happier!
And then the world fell down on her head. Quite literally.
She was running alongside the half-elf siblings as the ceiling collapsed. Suddenly the scary glasses man appeared, then the antlered lady as well, and her undead heart was overcome with fright.
They were all heading towards the surface, she realised abruptly. But she… no, no, she couldn’t do it. Not so openly, with no cover of the night and no escape route in sight. She couldn’t be there again, surrounded by echoes of people killed and hung alongside her, cornered once more by the Pale Guard and their heavy fists.
Panic seized her and her steps slowed.
And then a big piece of stone struck her between the shoulder blades, pinned her to the ground and crushed her vertebrae. Her head hit the floor with a sickening craunch and all the lights went out.
She woke up to the darkness whispering in her ears and the peculiar feeling of her spine and skin putting itself back together piece by piece. Black ichor dripped out of her eyes and nose, and an unnatural green glow permeated her vision. Soon both of those things faded away and the girl was left to (very) slowly dig herself out of the rubble.
It took some time to find a way out – her hands and nails kept fracturing as she attempted to lift the heavy stone. Eventually she made it, thanks in no small part to the skin slick with ichor and her ability to dislocate her shoulders without much effort (or, in some cases, intent). With most of the tunnels in ruins and what remained standing becoming a permanent cave-in hazard, she didn’t have many options to consider.
And so, she pulled a sheet of fabric from the rubble to cover herself with, said goodbye to her dolls buried under stone and pieces of past life, and left the castle.
It was probably wise to take advantage of the silence in her head and distance herself from Whitestone and any doom that would befall it next. The voice would surely return at some point, it always did. They were connected. And once it returned, it would likely not be happy with what the girl had done.
Her body was cold, her insides even more so, and yet a violent shiver run through her.
Maybe… maybe it would be a while before she returned. After all, she apparently had more pressing matters to attend to. Holding grudges did no good, and how long can one be mad about having their head blown off anyways?
Normally, the threat of retribution would result in more anxiety gripping her chest, maybe even lead to her shutting down again, but right now she was still riding the high from tonight’s events.
And how could anyone worry with such beautiful sky overhead?
The remaining clouds parted and revealed breathtaking pathways of glittering starlight. The girl could stand in place and stare forever up at this fragment of cosmos as if it was a painting made for her and her alone.
She’d love to cut a piece of it and carry it with her in her pocket.
But the time wouldn’t stop for her and the sky behind her began to change colour, heralding the morning’s arrival. There was nothing else to do but move forward.
So, that she would do.
“Laa la-la, la-la, la-la…” and back to humming she went.
She grasped the hem of her skirt and spun around like some upper-class lady at a fancy ball, delighted at how the low morning mist dispersed and coiled above the wet ground. The trees leaned towards her, applauding her superb dancing skills, spindly hands raised in awe.
She could mourn over losing a place to live, lament her situation or agonise over the painful memories returned to her for another brief blink of time, but the night was beautiful. And if there was a choice between the crushing weight of her existence and a beautiful sky, then her mind knew just what to pick.
The girl, the corpse, the creature, danced happily as the heavy gates in her head drew slowly to a close, and the red light of Ruidus guided her through the depths of Parchwood and towards her fate.