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Fantasy Tethered ( ellarose & Syntra. )

Cyrra wasn’t really the thoughtful type. Where others wandered in their thoughts, searching for whatever the fuck they believed was there to discover, the assassin preferred to live in the real world-- you know, in the one place where things actually happened. That only made sense. The gods had given this playground to them, you see? So, while they were still trapped in their weak shells, they had to play by those rules, much like a chess piece could never move outside of its chessboard. Doing so would have been foolish. There wasn’t anything else left to experience, no matter what those charlatans claimed! (There was just you, whatever weapon you managed to hold onto, and the rest of the world, armed with claws and teeth. You had to carve it to pieces, for the future generations to devour. For them to shed the curse that their ancestors had saddled them with, in their blind conviction that they knew the best. Heh. It was always that way, wasn’t it? Too much thinking, the assassin had found out, led you down a dark path. Perhaps their brains just hadn’t been wired for it-- like a machine whose cogs moved too fast, the entire blasted thing just went up in flames. …that being fucking said, though? Watching this entire scenario did inspire a lot of thoughts in Cyrra. A whole plethora of them, actually.)

How the fuck is she still alive? That was the most prominent of questions, loud enough to tower over all the others. Differentiating between the rest of them wasn’t as simple-- thoughts swirled wildly in her head, seeping into each other, and frankly, Cyrra was beginning to think that headache would soon become her default state. “Ugh,” she said, giving up on anything even remotely resembling civilized conversation. “Does she do this often? Losing her fucking mind, I mean?” While the assassin wasn’t about to speak to the fiend in a way that could be construed as friendly, she… ah, scratch that! She was speaking to Endymion that way, but only as a temporary fucking solution. (A temporary solution to being surrounded by weirdos. A talking cat was far from the most normal thing she had ever heard of, and their demonic status also wasn’t exactly reassuring, but they acknowledged, at least, that Faline was an oddball. Therefore, on her own metaphorical scale of strangeness, they moved slightly closer to Cyrra herself! …yes, Cyrra was a shiny fucking example of normalcy, thank you very much. Unlike some people, she understood her role, and played it well. What did it matter that the rest of the world didn’t grasp it? People’s minds were small, too small to fit true greatness within, and not everyone was lucky enough to be raised by Father. Father had… hmm, explained it all to them. With knives. Knives could speak louder than words, you know? And they stayed with you for longer, too, once you got a visible reminder etched into your skin. Heh! Everyone single one of them was a badge of honor, she’d decided ages ago. Pretty tattoos, detailing the story of her journey.)

In all honesty, she should have stopped it sooner. The second Faline decided it was a great fucking idea to walk into a literal alligator’s maw, Cyrra should have intervened-- should have grabbed her by the collar and yanked her away, the same way you did with a disobedient puppy. ‘Bad Faline!’ she should have chided her. ‘If anything is going to fucking kill her, it should be me.’ So, why didn’t she do it? Well… there was a certain appeal to watching, and finding out just how bad it could possibly get. To choosing not to provide the safety net. (It wasn’t too dissimilar to kicking a prisoner down a well, hearing their bones break, and then failing to kill them. No mercy could be found in that choice-- the hope you’d slipped them was but a torture device, masked as the most thoughtful of gifts. As kindness, perhaps born of the sudden change of heart. And, oh, wasn’t it always fucking fun, to kill them with what they believed was their salvation? Subverting expectations was a classic Cyrra move, and one that she loved dearly.)

“Ah. That’s very thoughtful of you, Miss Kairos,” the white cat observed. “I’m afraid that the alligator cannot respond properly, though, as it has an entire tree lodged in his mouth. Surely, you can imagine its difficulties? It’s hard enough to speak while chewing on your apple tart, let alone a piece of wood!” The creature flicked their tail, now in a way that struck Cyrra as playful more than straight up disapproving. “I do believe I can help, though. I mean, it is kind of my job.” At that, the blades of grass around them bowed, revealing a thin, flickering thread. The thread, as the assassin could see, was connected both to the cat and the alligator, and--

“Goodbye, Miss Kairos. You were too kind for your own good, and I am certain that that will make you especially delicious. Despair not, for at least you will finally know true happiness. Never again will you doubt where you truly belong!”

Ah, fucking shit. With a gesture that was quickly becoming instinctive to her, the assassin grabbed the tether. (It should have been simple, right? To pull at it, yank the whelp away from danger, and then reprimand her for being such a fucking dumbass. To break the cat’s spine as well, for no other reason than to teach it that you didn’t want Cyrra Eiréal as your enemy. Again, it should have been simple, but it wasn’t. The first impressions could sometimes be deceptive, you see? And not all the factors in any given situation always worked the way you fucking expected them to-- kind of like gravity, which pulled her to Faline rather than the other way around.)

“Fucking hell, I swear that I’m gonna--”

By that point, of course, the alligator’s maw was already closing around them, plunging them into wet, fleshy darkness. Awesome! Just what Cyrra’s life was missing to be complete, really. Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise, though-- not even digestive juices could compare to the horror of enduring one (1) more dumb comment from Faline’s side. “But mooom,” they could hear a voice, quiet yet all the whinier for it. “I didn’t want that other girl as well. All that negativity is going to upset my stomach, I just know it.”
 
"Miss Kairos is curious. Cataclysmically so-- I will admit-- albeit she is curious because she can afford to be curious." Endymion supplied in a voice as smooth as silk, giving Cyrra a cautious side-eye. They seemed inclined to comment further on the matter, perhaps to ponder the reason why the assassin decided to try and make conversation with them at all, but wisely decided against it and held their tongue. This choice was also made in favor of watching as the scene developed and their mistress approached the alligator's maw. The familiar flicked their tail and squinted, not even hiding to indicate that they're equally suspicious of this whole ordeal. "Content to stand idly by and watch, then? Suit yourself. But I do hope you understand by now that you'll need her if you're ever going to get out of here. The few humans who do manage to enter this realm rarely ever leave it alive. Miss Kairos, however? It is fair to say she has spent more of her life wandering this realm than the one you acknowledge as your reality."

Faline, meanwhile, frowned softly when the white cat's tone changed. "Doubts? It seems that you are making assumptions about me. You would not be the only one to do so, but it is not very nice." She informed it, ignoring the sharp sting of hurt in her chest. Who, after all, could claim that they knew what was in Faline's heart other than Faline herself? "For I am rather confident in my plans to see the ocean someday. I would also like to try--" All at once, however, the bitter cheesecake assassin was slung over to her and the alligator's maw closed around the rest of her sentence and the whole world as she knew it.

Outside, Endymion sighed. Then they rolled their eyes at Atropos. "Oh joy." Sarcasm, of course, dripped thickly from every word. "These two are real fun, aren't they?"

"Well!" Faline exhaled, properly offended by this turn of events. "It was a trap all along. I quite dislike it when that happens." A brilliant observation, really. She was a true scholar, an unappreciated mind in her time. Without faltering in the slightest, she gazed around the wet prison of the alligator's mouth as if this was nothing more than an average Tuesday for her. "Say... can you predict the future, Cyrra? You believed that I was going to eat you, but now it seems we will be eaten together. You were just a little off the mark but your abilities are quite impressive nonetheless!" She prattled on, absentmindedly fishing a chicken feather from her skirt pocket. (Thank you, Hector!) Lifting it, she flicked it experimentally against the roof of the creature's mouth and continued to speak without explaining her reasoning. "Far more developed than my own, I must say. I receive... I suppose you could call them glimpses. Flashes in the night?"

The alligator began to huff and laugh. This allowed light to peek back in as their jaw opened and closed. Their sharp teeth sawing up and down with each laugh would still make it rather difficult for them to escape unscathed, though. "Oh bother... it seems that tickling will not be enough this time." She cupped her cheek in her hand. What to do, what to do...

"I hope you know that Natos does not take too kindly to those who try to eat me like this. I will try and put in a good word for your children... but I cannot say the same for you." Faline informed their captors. She reached for the locket around her neck and pressed the butterfly mechanism in the center. The coppery metal glowed with a soft silver as it flapped its wings with a humming noise. An expansive we of silver threads illuminated the inside of the creature's mouth.

"You mean Thanatos!? Wait, Miss Kairos, please--"

"It is too late, I'm afraid. Natos knows everything. But truly, I thought it was common sense to think about what you decide to put in your mouth?" Clearly getting desperate, the creature tipped their head back to swallow them. Faline was perfectly composed, however, as she held to one of the threads with one hand and Cyrra's hand with the other. With a snap of blinding light, they suddenly found themselves along the path, following Atropos once more.

"Miss Kairos! Please, please, Miss Kairos, can you listen to me for a while?" The scene replayed, exactly the way it had before.

"No, you silly little demon cat. I cannot. Cyrra and I have important business to take care of." Faline smiled, releasing the assassin's hand to give a dismissive wave. "Scurry off and eat someone else while you still can."
 
"Really?" Cyrra deadpanned. "That's very close-minded of you. I, for one, absolutely adore it. There's nothing greater than that feeling of surprise you get when you realize that you've been utterly fucked! The spice of life, my mother used to call it. The salt of the earth. It saddens me to hear that you can be so fucking negative about it, whelp." ...what? If they were going to be eaten by an alligator, the assassin at least wanted to make sure she'd die doing what she loved the most-- namely, twisting the minds of weaklings to the point of ruination. (Murder satisfied her more, come to think of it, but you didn't always get what you wanted from life. In fact, you rarely did. Cyrra also hadn't exactly dreamed about being eaten alive by a demonic alligator in some hellish realm, you know? And yet, yet it seemed that that was the fate the gods had inscribed into the book of her life, in big, golden letters. Heh! Probably still better than being hunted down by Father, in all honesty. Way kinder. As long as the cursed magic dies with me, I didn't fail. Crooked my path may have been, but I fucking won. Nobody, not even the gods themselves, can stop me.)

Or, well, she would have won, had it not been for Faline and her disgusting, Faline-like methods. It was just so like her to turn everything on its head, wasn't it? Cyrra had already gone through all the necessary steps to make her peace with this, and yet the girl decided, without asking her, that no, not today. Just, who gave her the right?! Why did time turn to potter's clay in her hands, so soft and pliable? It was wrong. Wrong and sinful, the assassin knew, and the punishment that was waiting for them both would make them weep tears of blood. The gods had a way of claiming what they were owed, you see? With their all-reaching hands, they took and took and took, until there wasn't a shred of meat on your brittle, broken bones. The price of thinking you could fucking get away with it, essentially. Which, surprise, you couldn't! All of them were just a handful dust, waiting for the spark of life within them to run its course. ...waiting for something, anything, to make this shit existence meaningful. (So far, the assassin wasn't convinced.)

"You can't just fucking do that to people," Cyrra's anger exploded once the demonic cat's plan was thwarted. "Next time you do your... your thing," she spat the word out, as if it was the greatest of insults, "ask me if I want to be involved. I was quite comfortable in the alligator's maw, thank you very much! Not all of us enjoy defying the gods' will."

"My goodness," Atropos sighed. "Just look at the poor thing, not even trying to resist all that brainwashing. I have to say, I liked some of her previous versions more. Do you think, Endymion, that her personality got fractured by those countless deaths as well? I mean, the human mind is notoriously fragile."

"Why you!"

Again, Cyrra wasn't quite sure how this 'familiar' was supposed to be helpful on her journey, and she'd fucking love to see anyone try and justify it. 'But oh, Cyrra, didn't you know that being insulted in 30 different ways at once is bound to deepen your understanding of the divine ways?' That kind of sounded like an argument Faline would make, and... no, no, no. Fucking hell! If the assassin actually started to think like that deranged woman, all would be over. I can't fucking lose sight of what is truly important. As long as I hold onto my blade, things will be fine.

The existential crisis she was currently going through didn't put everything else on hold, though, and so as they walked, the scenery around them changed. No longer were they surrounded by blooming flowers, or even any greenery at all-- the further they went, the deader everything looked, and Cyrra was able to draw some comfort from that. "See?" she asked, not Faline per se, anyone who was listening. "This is how things are supposed to be. The logical end point. All that was born once also needs to die, and only then can true peace achieved. And as for everything in between? Just a fleeting fucking dream. A lie for idiots naive enough to swallow it, hook, line and sinker."

Atropos didn't comment on Cyrra's maladjusted ways for once, as they were too busy being horrified over the Well of the First Spark. It was there, alright-- or rather, its ruins were, white and clean, a shocking contrast over the blood-soaked ground. "Oh no," they whispered. "Miss Kairos, this is a catastrophe! How shall we ever reach that stream now? Not even your magic will help here, now that the source has been corrupted! Who could have committed such a horrifying crime?"
 
"Oh... all right? If that is what you prefer, I shall leave you behind next time. Forgive me for assuming. I could make an arrangement if you would still like to be someone's food in the future. Blunk or perhaps Thanatos would happily eat you." Faline offered sincerely. It was rather strange to her, considering she did not enjoy spending her time in the mouthes of such creatures herself. They were dark and wet and their breath so often reeked of blood. To each their own she supposed? "Although I suppose if your mother encouraged you to adore such... ah, fucked up situations, I can hardly fault you for thinking that way. I never knew my mother. If I did, I would hold her advice close to my heart as well. Well... so long as it was good advice?" Now that she thought about it-- and truly thought about it-- Faline genuinely believed that Cyrra's mother had given her terrible advice in that regard. (Truly. Any advice that led to being swallowed by alligators sounded like bad advice.) Poor thing. Perhaps all she needed was some encouragement to think outside of the box? "Granny usually gave me terrible advice... so now I follow my own advice. And Endymion's on occasion."

"Only on occasion." Endymion sighed, sounding tired.

Faline tilted her head and curiously noted the assassin's abundantly clear disdain. Defying whose will? The gods? (Hm. Did they even exist? She was unsure, for she wasn't sure if she had ever met a god. Perhaps they did, perhaps they did not.) "...But do you not perform the similar acts, Cyrra? When you consciously decide the moment of someone's death, is that not defying the gods' will?" She tapped her chin, pondering the subject more so than picking a fight with her. "Time takes all of us eventually. That is only natural. So deciding when to end the life of another, rather than leaving it up to time... to fate... that rather sounds like the same thing to me."

Faline shrugged and skipped ahead along the path, mostly undeterred by the sight of the dead earth around them.

"Hm. It reminds me of the cutting board that day I made vegetable soup. Do you recall, Endymion?" Faline observed, referring to the bloodied ground. "I cut my finger chopping the celery and..." She drew a sharp breath and shuddered. "There was so much blood. I fainted at the sight of it!"

"Yes. I do recall." Endymion answered, humoring her. "But I don't believe anyone was chopping celery here." The cat padded across the earth, stroking their paw experimentally through the blood. They hissed softly and a shiver ran down their body. "I've got a bad feeling."

"Mm. Vegetable soup sounds..."

"Miss Kairos, please." Endymion willed her to get back on task. "Focus. The corruption... the culprit... we need to find the source in order to fix this."

"The source. Of course." Faline hummed and nodded as if she had been thinking quite seriously of it all along. Tugging her braid in her hand, she gazed around and then closed her eyes. 'Can you tell me about the source? Can you lead me there?' She asked silently and listened intently to the voices that swarmed around her. Time whispered to her in various forms, oftentimes gave her little pushes along the path. Among all of the warbled noise it granted her, the sound which stuck out most to her was the distinct croaking of a frog. And when she next opened her eyes, she caught sight of one hopping in the dead grass. Small and green. Quite cute. "Ah. There." She began to follow it without explaining her thought process in the slightest.

"What is it? What do you see?" Endymion asked, following close behind their mistress. They narrowed their eyes suspiciously. "...A frog?"

"Yes. A frog." Faline said resolutely, as if that explained anything. Eventually, the frog flung itself into a giant hole in the ground and vanished. The hole was dark, so dark that one could hardly wager a guess as to how deep it went just by gazing at it. She stopped there, the toes of her boots resting just along the edge of it. "Come along everyone! We need to follow it." And then as if it was the most natural thing in the world, she jumped into the hole.
 
Had she had the time to do so, Cyrra Eiréal surely would have pondered over the exact set of choices that had led her to this moment in her life, stuck in the equivalent of a hell dimension, along with a pair of demons and a girl whose greatest positive trait was... uh, not looking like a cauliflower? (Look, the assassin had tried. She really, really had! Effort could only get you so fucking far, though, and the whelp made it especially hard for her to offer any unironic praise. The whole 'being a witch who spat on the divine creation' probably had more than just a little to do with it.) The thing about time, though? It was a luxury in this chaotic world, full of Falines that just kept embracing every type of danger as if it was a fucking long-lost relative.

"And that's where you're fucking wrong," the assassin barely managed to respond. "I cannot be defying the gods' will when I am their instrument. How does that even make sense? Maybe you haven't heard, but your own fucking hand can not act independently of the rest of your body. There's a higher purpose to all of this." Seriously, the girl's willingness to overlook all the meaningful connections was staggering-- such ignorance must have taken a lot of dedication, and on a certain level, Cyrra did sort of admire that. Putting a blindfold over one's own eyes was quite a feat, wasn't it? (In doing so, you see, you got a few steps closer towards death. Towards that blessed, blessed state, in which all of them were made equal. A beggar or a king, that mattered not to the worms-- they'd feast on the flesh all the same, biting, nibbling and gnawing, till nothing was left. Till they were finally pure.) Cyrra would have loved to elaborate on all of that, too, but that was when Faline decided to follow a thread of logic so fucking thin that not even a magnifying glass could reveal it.

"A fucking frog," she repeated, doing very little to hide her frustrations. "Have you secretly been a stork all this time? Searching for frogs does seem like stork-like shit to me." Well, that, or alternatively like a behavior she could only ever describe as 'chronically idiotic.' Ugh! Why was the world so fucking unfair? Had there been a shred of justice in this miserable, godforsaken universe, Cyrra would have been re-arranging the witch's organs by now! (But, sadly, Endymion had been right. As much as it pained her to admit it, she did need the girl and her inner compass to guide her out of this mess-- out of the weird magical storm, wrought by powers beyond her imagination. Time, the assassin reminded herself. That's all I fucking need. When the stars are right, I will teach her what it means to fuck with Cyrra Eiréal.)

With a sigh, heavy enough to suggest that she was carrying the weight of the world on her wide shoulders, Cyrra followed Faline into the hole. This was good. This was fine. No sireee, her survival instincts weren't at all screaming at her to get the hell out! Everything about this situation was totally peachy, thank you for asking. The confined corridors especially didn't bother her at all, because clearly, breathing was for suckers. Gulp. "I'm not sure what you want to find in this fucking dump," she scoffed, "but aside from your own humiliation, I don't think there's anything there."

It seemed that the gods had crafted their blueprints specifically so that they contradicted Cyrra's opinion, though, because there was something. Very distinctly at that, too.

Once they crawled all the way down, into a darkness so deep it almost rivaled the one in Cyrra's heart, they found themselves standing in a forest of glass, shimmering eerily like snowflakes in the dead of the night. Uh. That couldn't be a good fucking omen, now could it? The assassin may not have had a lot of experience with magic, but she did, in fact, have experience with being fucked over, and the vibes of this place were giving her a pretty intense feeling of deja vu here.

"Ribbit, ribbit," the frog went. "Catch me if you can, you bunch of loonies!"

"Miss Kairos, Cyrra," Atropos materialized right next to them, "I'd advise against that course of action. Don't you remember the alligator? The magical currents here and ancient and deep, and I don't believe you are prepared to face the things resting down here. They are... hmm, not normal. Different than even what you are used to, Miss Kairos!"

And, hey, maybe Atropos was right, because once the duo got closer to the trees? The trees began to melt into each other, orange sparks flying in all the directions like thousands of fireflies, till they were staring at a large mirror. Of course, it was a mirror's job to reflect things, and so their reflections were indeed there! Cyrra, with her usual unimpressed expression, but also Faline, her eyes full of wonder.

"Oh, Cyrra, look, look!" the dream!Faline gasped. "It's us! But also them? Hmm, how peculiar. Do you think we could make a vegetable soup out of them?"

"It wouldn't be a vegetable soup, dummy," her other self rolled her eyes, and Cyrra felt that so deep in her soul she almost fucking wanted to cry. "But sure, removing them would save us a lot of trouble. So, you two? Say goodbye, bitches. You won't be missed." Crack! The sound was loud enough for it to be the shattering of the entire universe, and it might as well have been that-- the remaining trees fucking exploded, you see, and razor-sharp shards were suddenly raining on their heads. Oh. Shit, shit, shit!

('Ribbit, ribbit!' Cyrra could hear in the background.)
 
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"My humiliation? But what do I have to be humiliated about?" Faline inquired earnestly. Before she could receive an answer (or insult) to her question, however, she rushed forward on eager feet as she noticed the end of the tunnel and the sparkly forest of glass that waited for them. Oh! Had she ever seen such a lovely sight before in her life? And who was the artist responsible for creating it? She would have loved to know, for it was a beautiful work of craftsmanship. Bringing her hands to her cheeks, her skirts billowed out around her as she spun in a circle to determinedly to look upon everything the forest had to offer all at once. She was so preoccupied with that endeavor that she did not register the frog's insult in the slightest, nor the first half of Atropos's warning. "Wow! Pretty!" She grinned brightly and then chided the snake, "Now, now. I am not normal either, Atropos. Being different is not such a bad thing. Natos says we are what we are and we must embrace that. And I, for one, would like to explore and commend whoever it was that created this forest... and perhaps ask them several questions. I believe I have about thirty-six of them right now!"

As they walked and the trees melted and burst into a brilliant light show, Faline could only watch with skyrocketing awe. "Fucking jeepers! Make that one hundred and twenty-eight questions."

Endymion merely sighed again and shot Cyrra a not so subtle look, as if to say 'you're to blame for all of this'.

"Oh!" Faline exclaimed, at first a perfect twin of her reflection. "It's u--" She blinked when the reflection reversion of herself inserted Cyrra's name. That was different! Confounding. Frowning when her other self suggested they make them into soup, she was inclined to argue that she knew quite well that vegetable soup was made with vegetables. It was simple, considering it was in the title and everything! Then, of course, the implication hit belatedly when it came to what exactly what her other self was getting at when Cyrra actually agreed with her (which was even stranger!) and cracked the glass.

"Cyrra! Why would you destroy the forest!?" Faline cried, ducking down as the glass came flying at them in all directions.

"Miss Kairos!" Endymion sprang up in front of them, then, and Faline nodded with understanding. She stuck out her hand and the cat morphed... a giant umbrella? She caught the handle and twirled it in front of her, blowing the shards back in a chaotic, windy blast. Glass continued to fall like rain at a leisurely pace from the sky after this, so she held the umbrella that was once Endymion like one would a normal umbrella to shield herself from it. Clink, clink, clink. Little pieces of glass plinked against the umbrella with a sound that was almost peaceful now.

Faline was inclined to follow the frog, as she still firmly believed that it would lead them to the source. But she was also well-versed in noises, as well as the distinct signatures of time in them. Following the frog would loop them, over and over, and not much would change. Nothing would change until something else changed first. That was usually how it went.

"Ah. It would seem I am the teacher now. Funny, as auntie was the one who was meant to teach me. It is what it is, I suppose..." Faline looked at Cyrra, her mismatched eyes very serious for once. "I do not believe it wise for us to proceed under the same umbrella. Because you are you, and I am me. And we do not often walk at the same pace. That is simply how it is." She nodded between Atropos and Cyrra, and then twirled the umbrella in her hand as if that was her way of giving the cat a scratch behind the ears while they were in this form. "As mistress and familiar, there is a powerful magic that you share between the two of you. A magic that you must utilize if you wish to go anywhere in this realm. Nothing happens here without reason... so perhaps the realm is asking the two of you to test your bond before it is ready to test our hearts?" She lowered her voice slightly, as if to address Atropos alone. "...She will not survive such a test without first being tested for the test. That is what I think. I know you are not particularly thrilled to work with someone so disagreeable, but you also must try if this is to work."
 
Rarely did it happen that the assassin was so personally invested in, as she often phrased it, 'ending a motherfucker's entire existence,' but, with her signature grace, Faline was apparently taking a lot of her firsts. Reminder to myself: slit her pretty little throat the moment it's even slightly plausible. Don't fucking hold back. True faith had to be watered with the blood of witches, you see? And Cyrra was so looking forward to the moment where she got to share that bond with Faline! (What noises would she make, with the blood bubbling past her lips? What faces? Witnessing a person's last moments was the most intimate connection you could possibly forge, the assassin had learned. ...the only one that fucking lasted, anyway. The sole mountain among mayflies, towering and eternal.)

"Fuck! Shit!" she cursed unceremoniously, attempting to shield herself from the glass storm. It did and did not work-- it worked in the sense that her face was spared, but her arms were cut up, the skin turning into bloody ribbons. And, what do you think? Did she receive some emotional support in this moment of anguish? No! Instead, that was exactly the instance Faline chose for her fucking lecture, looking down at her from her metaphorical ivory tower. "Piss off," the assassin growled. "You fucking believe this is the time for empty platitudes, whelp? Spout more bullshit like that and I will make sure you won't ever be able to walk again, let alone at my pace!"

"This is no way to be speaking to Miss Kairos, Cyrra," Atropos hissed. "For she is entirely correct. Hate it as much as you want, but you won't be able to hide behind her skirts forever. If we are to succeed, we have to learn how to work together once again, even if it gets more and more unpleasant with each incarnation." ...right, that 'incarnation' bullshit again. Why wouldn't they just let it go? (Reflections were treacherous, and thus not at all indicative of the actual nature of things. They were twisted beyond recognition, so no, what she saw in them couldn't be her true self! Never would Cyrra stain her hands with magic, filthy and reeking of sin. Never.)

"Hold me, Cyrra," Atropos demanded. "Hold me, and let our souls merge. I cannot believe I'm about to say this, but together, we are stronger than we would have been separately. More than just a sum of our parts." And, hey, while the assassin still believed the existence of the snake to be an affront to her personally, the glass ripping her to shreds was a pretty convincing argument. It can't be that hard, right? Not when the local idiot seems to be doing so well. Having received that boost of confidence, the assassin did as instructed, and... bang! Surrounded by a puff of smoke, Atropos turned into a fucking tulip. A tulip that, as tulips generally did, served as a rather poor umbrella.

"Pffft!" the dream!Cyrra chuckled, her laughter bouncing off the walls. "Look at her, so fucking helpless. So fragile, too. Do you think you can bribe me with flowers, little Cyrra? Why don't you beg for forgiveness first? Or should I perhaps turn you into bloody porridge, hmm? Rest assured, because there are many who would like to feast on you!"

"Fuck off," she spat out, too enraged to really notice all the new wounds. (A bloody mosaic was blooming all over her skin regardless, though, and there was the lightheadedness she knew to connect with an impeding loss of consciousness. The thing was, did the assassin care? No. There were insults to be delivered, you see, so she was laser-focused on that mission.) "All of you, but especially Atropos! A fucking glorified legless lizard, I swear. Is this the so-called seductive allure of magic? 'Cause I'm sure as fuck not seeing it!"

Pshpshpsh--

The light that filled her field of vision was blinding, akin to the explosion of an entire galaxy, and when Cyrra dared to open her eyes again, she was standing where she had been before, with the snake encouraging her to pick them up. "More than just a sum of our parts," they wrapped up, somehow managing to sound even dumber than before. Ugh. Just, what an absolute ugh.

"Yeah? I'll fucking show you a sum of your parts," the assassin raged. The dagger, which was her only real friend, slipped into her hand, and she swung it wildly.

"Eek! No, no, no, let go of me, you crazy woman! Do you want to kill us all?!" And, in all honestly, that didn't seem like such a bad idea at that point. What was a little mass murder against the loss of her dignity, after all? Against crawling into the enemy's bed?

Pshpshpsh--

It seemed that the gods didn't appreciate her plans, though, because once again, Cyrra found herself retracing her steps.

"Have you finally calmed down?" Atropos was looking at her with accusatory eyes now, and had she felt anything but the deepest contempt for the demon, perhaps that would have triggered something similar to regret within her. (Only perhaps, though! Mainly because Cyrra didn't do inconvenient emotions like that. Empathy, as she had learned, was but a shield protecting weaklings-- a dated mechanism, meant to perish with the rest of the old world. To drown in the fires of hell.) "If so, let's try once again. The gift of repetition is yours, so don't squander it."

"A gift? You call it a fucking gift?!" Everything, everything about this hurt like motherfucker, and Cyrra couldn't imagine wanting to be stuck in the loop for literally any reason. Even to the point that... well... "Got any tips, whelp?" she asked Faline, hating herself a little more with each word. "Since you're the fucking well of knowledge here." (Admittedly, that was the scariest thing about this.)

"Just so you know, she will never succeed," the other Cyrra informed them. "Because her heart is fucking rotten. Empty." She turned to her Faline, pressing a small kiss on each of her closed eyes, and then she pinched her lip. The other Faline let out something that could only be described as... uhh, a squeal of delight? Yeah. Weird, mildly speaking. In other words, what the fucking fuck?! "Come on, darling. You'll be much, much better off with someone who knows how to treat you right." And, with that? With that, a ghostly hand emerged from the mirror, attempting to drag the real Faline inside.
 
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"Tips?" Faline brought a hand to one of her sunset-pink cheeks, noticing that her face felt just a smidgen warmer than before. Cyrra wanted tips? From her? And also thought she was, in her words, a fucking well of knowledge? She had never received a compliment of this nature... at least not from another human before. It was satisfying, she decided, as if her insides had been filled with cobwebs and those cobwebs had been swept away to reveal something worth loving underneath. (Well, then. If there was something in her worth admiring, she might as well do her very best! She couldn't let her down!) She clapped her hands together. "If I had a little more time, I'd have prepared a song! I love turning my lessons into songs. It makes them so much easier to remember, doesn't it?" She hums softly, as if trying to find a tune in the wind or something, but unfortunately their current circumstances do not offer much for her to work with. There is no birdsong to be heard in the glass forest. She also feared that Cyrra might retract her question if she took too long to come up with something of value. Hurry, hurry, silly goose! "It is simple, really. You just need to be better friends. Endymion and I are the best of friends! They know everything about me, for they watched me grow up. I understand you have had considerably less time together, but..." She wagged her finger chidingly at the knife the assassin held in her hand. The one that she only just tried attacking poor Atropos with. "Think of your friends, think of how you treat them. Admittedly I do not understand much about human friendship myself, but I suppose you do not wave your knife at your friends... do you?" If that was the case, then it was apparent that Faline still had very much to learn on the subject of friendship.

"Perhaps try sharing fun facts about yourselves? Or we could leave for an hour or so and you could make Atropos here a daisy crown to say 'I am ever so sorry for waving my knife at you'. Apologizing is an excellent start! A step forward is precisely what you need to break a time loop. Even if it is a small one." Faline nodded, quite liking the idea of them making up. She smiled softly and paced, playing with the end of her braid as her skirts swished around her legs. "Trust is very important as well. I do understand that trust is complicated, that it takes time... because Natos told me so, you know. So if you cannot trust in each other just yet, at the very least trust in the fact that you both would like to proceed!"

Faline managed a rare glare when she was interrupted by none other than... her student? Or, no. Rather it was the mockery of her student in the mirror who was causing so much trouble for her imaginary class. It was very rude to interrupt!

"Cyrra, you need to be nicer to Cyrra! And to your claims? I say pish posh! Do not be silly. No one is empty... look at her arms! She is bleeding. For we are all filled with blood and organs, and--" Faline pursed her lips. Her cheeks were glowing pink again, although this time for an entirely different reason. She strangely found herself fueled with that same defensiveness she felt when Blunk was insulted earlier. "I do not believe that her heart is rotten, either. Someone who can wave a knife so passionately could not be rotten. For I believe all of that passion must come from somewhere."

Faline could not have expected the scene to develop as it had, however, when the other Cyrra began kissing the ninny Faline who did not understand the concept of vegetable soup. (That Faline was not a fucking well of knowledge!) Huh. She had never witnessed a kiss before. It was especially strange, watching herself be kissed. Especially by a woman who was, decidedly, rather pretty. The prettiest woman she had ever laid eyes on, if only because she was the only woman she had ever seen. (Well, aside from the other assassins. But it was dark and she had not been paying them much attention, as she had been too busy climbing into a tree to hide.) She gulped, finding her throat was rather dry. "Ah... um. Do humans kiss each other's eyelids, too? I thought it was only lips... and sometimes pecks on the cheek?" She asked wonderingly, if a bit weakly.

Granny had never wanted to talk to her about intimacy. In fact, she had always seemed viciously adverse to it. ('Keep it from your mind, Faline. Dunderheads like you should never procreate,' Granny had always said. 'It is much too dangerous.') Aside from granny, there was no one else she could take advice from. Natos told her that a monster would not understand the niche concepts of the relationships that humans had with one another. That made sense, she supposed. So she was not a fucking well of knowledge in this subject, to be sure. Her legs were jellying beneath her for some reason. Perhaps it was from being told she would be treated right, being called 'darling' for the first time in her life. It was a much better name than whelp, that was to be certain.

Faline blinked, finding that she was being dragged over, and was helpless in that moment to stop it.

"Oh. It would seem I am going over to the other side for a bit." Faline observed the obvious, unbothered. (Mostly unbothered, if not for her wandering imagination.) She managed a wobbly little smile and waved. "Perhaps this is a test that I must face? Well... do be careful, Cyrra! It seems I will not be around to protect you the next time, so please try your best to treat Atropos with respect. Remember what I told you!"
 
“Tips. Pointers. Any fucking idea on how I do this without sliding into goddamn madness,” the assassin helpfully supplied, perhaps coming to the conclusion that Faline did not know what ‘tips’ were. And, really, would that have been that weird? It was difficult to gauge where to draw the line with a girl who was a) well-versed in the profane arcane secrets, b) somehow ignorant of the basic features of humanity. (If she didn’t know any other people, then how the fuck was she communicating at all? Cyrra could only imagine that her knowing human speech was a direct fucking manifestation of magic’s malevolent will-- a personalized ‘fuck you’ to everyone who valued their sanity. Cursing them all to having to withstand Faline’s ramblings… no, not even she had thought that they could possibly stoop that low.) The girl apparently did understand, however, and for a pained, pained moment, Cyrra wished that it hadn’t fucking been true.

“Ah, good. That should be simple enough. I make friends with demonic messengers of hell on the regular! My favorite fucking move is to serve them the heart of an innocent child, perhaps roasted with some garlic. Or do you want thyme with that instead?”

Atropos, however, wasn’t too impressed. “Your sarcasm is uncalled for, Cyrra. I’m sure you know, but that very much goes against the spirit of friendship. Is that so hard for you to follow simple instructions? As deplorable as you are, I do not turn my nose up at the idea of becoming close to you. Partially because I do not have a nose, but still! Besides,” their cheeks reddened, despite the fact that them being an amphibian should have disqualified them from that, “I do not handle spices well. If you cared to get to know me at all, you would inquire about that first.”

“That is your problem? Not the fucking kid?”

“I refuse to be shamed for the way my digestive tract works,” Atropos frowned. “And just so you know, your eating habits are disgusting to us as well. Why on earth would you swallow anything that was formed in the ground? That is like stealing Mother Earth’s bones!” Yeah, no. If there ever was a tiny, tiny hope of her actually befriending the snake, somehow surviving amidst the mountains of contempt for the concept, that statement effectively squashed it. (You see, the assassin fucking had standards. They weren’t employed too often, mostly because she tended to bypass the annoyance of the vetting process via rejecting most people pre-emptively, but underneath the layer of dust, the writing was still clear. ‘Do not fucking befriend child killers, Cyrra. Those are cursed by the gods.’)

“Oh no, no, no, don’t pull that bullshit ‘cultural differences’ defense here. It didn’t fucking work with Eysran drinking blood,” what, “and it isn’t going to fly here, either. Do you not see how wrong this is?”

“You kill people for a living, Cyrra. How is that any different?”

“It just fucking is!”

“A compelling argument, I have to say. Each and every day, the humanity keeps finding a new rock bottom to crash into.”

Pshpshpsh--

The time galloped backwards again, and Cyrra was no fucking closer to getting literally anywhere than she had been at the very beginning. Ugh! Was magic this useless just to spite her personally? (In case you were interested, it very much was working. The only thing currently keeping her from flying into a murderous rage was knowing that, within a few minutes, her efforts would be undone-- Cyrra was an artist, you see, and watching all those thoughtful carvings disappear would have been too fucking heartbreaking. In all of them, she put a piece of herself! …that, and also the pieces of others. The souls of her victims torn to shreds, sharp enough to leave scars behind.)

“You won’t cut your way out of this one, Cyrra,” Atropos sighed. “As usual, Miss Kairos is so very right. Something has to change here, otherwise we will be running in circles. Don’t you know any tactics to use when you wish to establish an emotional connection?” She did, but ‘wishing to establish a connection’ was kind of key in the entire fucking process. A key factor that was fucking missing! Despite not saying a word regarding that, it must have seeped into her expression, for the demonic snake rolled their eyes. “You may start with asking me questions. That can make one feel noticed, in case you haven’t figured it out.”

“Aww, not feeling loved enough?” the assassin smirked. “Fine, bitch. How has your fucking day been?”

“Since meeting you? Rather horrible!”

Unfortunately the world continued to have its own fucking agenda, and that translated into the girl getting dragged into that fucking mirror. (Rude! The assassin hadn't even been able to tell Faline just how much her rushing to her rescue wasn't needed. Cyrra defended Cyrra-- that was the natural order of things, and going against it was pointless. Stupid. Soft, enough for you to get totally destroyed by the wheel of fate.) Needless to say, though, the tether did not stop existing. Oh, it sure as hell didn't. The brief feeling of tension in her chest was the only warning she got, and it was a useless warning to boot-- noticing it didn’t fucking save her from crashing into the mirror head-first, nor from the pain accompanying it. Fuck, she saw fucking stars!

“You stay there,” the other Cyrra grinned. “For what I’m about to do, you shall not be wanted. The same goes for you, Endymion-- your overprotective tendencies are fucking concerning. Now, my darling!” she turned to the girl, smiling from ear to ear. “I can’t even describe how happy you made me. Finally, I have my very own Faline.” …her very own Faline? What? And, yeah, that did start to make some amount of sense because, from up-close, it was obvious that the other Faline’s face was melting. (Worms were writhing in her eyes, small and pale. With thousands of tiny mouths, they leaned towards Faline, like moths towards a flame, and--)

“Come, dear,” Cyrra caressed Faline’s cheek, with a tenderness previously unseen in the assassin. “Won’t you kiss me? I may have fucked up in the past, but I know better now. I will treat you right.” How very nice of her, wasn't it? Except that then a shadow ran across her face, and the caress turned into a painful pinch. "The way you deserve. Which, what do you think you fucking deserve for killing my Faline?!"

“Fucking hell,” the real Cyrra cursed, looking around frantically. “Shit, Endymion, can you get me to the other side somehow?” …no, she didn’t care about a witch’s safety. How fucking preposterous would that be? This specific witch happened to be her ticket out of this hell, though, and the assassin was damned if she allowed some cheap fucking knock-off version of her to steal her away. Over her dead fucking body!
 
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Faline wasn't quite sure what to expect when she was dragged to the other side. As for what she intended to do, she had supposed she might as well explain to her double what vegetable soup was, if the other Cyrra had not done that properly already. Did that not sound like a noble enough task to warrant a test? Except that was simply not to be when she watched as the other Faline's face rotted away like an old apple and rapidly became food for the worms. Hm. Well! Was she meant to confront the truth of her own mortality, then? She had found granny's body in the morning and auntie's in the evening, so she supposed it might have been a reflection on the depths of her own subconscious. (Would that not be the most appropriate conclusion, when dealing with mirrors? Confronting the inner self was what it was all about.) It had passed through her mind quite a few times on her travels that one day she, too, would die. The time which chose her as its mistress and wove itself around her fingers like knitting thread would eventually take her as well. It never bothered her much. That was just the natural way of things.

What finally drew Faline's gaze away from the sight was... the other Cyrra's hand on her face? Her fingers glided feather-soft against her skin. It was not a smack across the face, like she was used to, but just the brush of her fingers? And they were as light and gentle as she might treat herself. She cannot recall a time anyone had ever touched her with this much care. 'Perhaps...' She tried to reflect upon her own feelings amidst the tidal wave of emotion crashing down upon her. 'Perhaps I was sad to think I might die knowing no one ever knew me.'

Because Faline's only friends in the mortal realm were chickens and ducks. And they would not remember her. It was not their fault, as they were indeed just chickens and ducks, but that simple fact bore a gravity which weighed her down. 'My darling', the other Cyrra had said before. That was the sort of things humans said to each other when they belonged in each other's hearts, right? There had never been space for Faline's in granny's, nor in anyone else's. Every word she used, every subtle flick of her hand stroked whatever fire was burning in her stomach.

"...Kiss you?" Faline said airily, so lightly that she might as well have not even said the words at all. Her peach-pink cheeks deepened to a bold rose-red and she wobbled on her legs like a newborn fawn at the implications. (When she was held like this, would it really be so bad to entertain such a request? And yet she was shivering too violently to dare to lean forward and grant it.) It was a jarring change after having been treated like an irritating whelp by Cyrra in the short time that they had known one another. So why? "My. I-I do not think I ca-- ouch!"

Evidently there was not a reason why. The pain was familiar enough to break Faline free of whatever mockery of warmth she had discovered in those fleeting, empty promises. Ah. There it was. The pattern righted itself once more and she was once again standing firmly alone upon her own two feet.

Goodness. Was it marked on the calendar, perhaps, that today was the day which all women named Faline Kairos must endure the cut of a thousand false accusations? Because it certainly seemed like it!

"I have done nothing with your ninny Faline." Faline noted, wrenching herself free. She pressed a hand to her cheek. It ached... and strangely it was still warm. This particular heat prickled uncomfortably, though. It was taking her a while to name the emotion it belonged to, for she did not feel it very often. "And if pulling me through the mirror resulted in her demise, you only have yourself to blame. I was in the middle of teaching the true Cyrra a valuable lesson about magic! You did not have to interrupt it with your games."

Faline looked at the other mirror, at everyone peering in at her, and the uncomfortable warmth in her face resurged. Ah. She had found her humiliation in the tunnel after all, hadn't she? Cyrra truly was a talent to behold in the act of seeing into the future. That was precisely what she said would happen when they entered, wasn't it? Ignoring the uncomfortable pull of the tether in her chest, she spun on her heel and took off, not wanting to hear whatever more the horrid fake Cyrra had to say.

On the outside, Endymion tossed their body against the mirror repeatedly to no avail, trying to get inside. "No. Seeing as you're incapable of forging even the slightest bond with your familiar, you're going to be useless here. Stay out of the way, Cyrra Eiréal." They hissed as they watched the scene develop. "Miss Kairos! Wait!" The concern in their tone rang clearer than ever without any of the usual layers of exhausted sarcasm piled on top. Clearly getting desperate, they sharpened their claws, much longer and far more deadly than any real cat in the mortal realm, and raked them across the glass with an unnerving 'screeeech'. Instead of opening up a path inside, though, the mirror simply shattered into several pieces. The familiar cursed under their breath. "Right. The time loop! We need to reset it."

Pshpshpsh--

And the timeline did reset, just as it had so many times before. But this time around the real Faline was nowhere to be found. Endymion hissed upon realizing this and paced, visibly distraught. "She's gone. I can't sense her, either." The cat whirled around to face Cyrra, then. "...The tether! Which direction is it pulling you in?"
 
“No. No! It’s all your fault,” the fake Cyrra screeched, her voice harsher than the winds of winter. “Nothing I did ever fucking made her like this.” ‘I did, I did, I did,’ the echo repeated, as if it disagreed with the sentiment. Well, did it? And if so, was it right? The real Cyrra would have provided sarcastic commentary, but the real Cyrra also wasn’t there-- maybe the power of her cynicism didn’t stretch far enough to conquer a single fucking mirror. Food for thought, certainly. “Magic is to blame,” she decided, in a very Cyrra-like manner. There wasn’t much weight to the statement considering that the assassin probably also blamed her morning constipation on impure magical energies, but honestly? In this case, she might not have been entirely wrong. (…but also not entirely right. Magic was but a tool, wasn’t it? Whose hand wielded it, then? Not Faline’s, that was for certain, and there weren’t too many other fucking candidates there.) “Take the fucking responsibility!” Cyrra growled, promptly dodging her own in the process. “You must. You can’t just barge into my life, fucking kill her and then pretend that everything is all peachy. Not how this works, darling. At the very least, you have to take her place!” Ah. Ah, so that had been her angle all along, huh? Had the other Faline been just… bait, shaped like her? Most interesting!

Meanwhile, the real Cyrra and the duo of familiars outside were not having a good time. Not really. In fact, they were existing so far from the concept of ‘fun’ right now that the assassin practically forgot what that even felt like! “Useless?” she raised her eyebrow. “Me? Last time I checked, you weren’t fucking doing any better than me, catnip-for-brains. No idea if you noticed, but you are standing on the same side of the mirror as my useless fucking self.”

“I do adore how you always have a kind word to brighten anyone’s day, Cyrra,” Atropos sighed. (Moans and sighs appeared to be their primary mode of communication, and briefly, the assassin wondered whether she had anything to do with it. That moment of self-awareness came and went, though. It wasn’t Cyrra Eiréal’s fucking job to coddle demons’ pathetic feelings, so they would do well to remember that! …the opposite was true, in fact. A blade resting in its scabbard isn’t fucking lesser, she reminded herself. You gotta hide it from time to time, otherwise the edge will dull. That was a more convenient way of thinking of it, wasn’t it? That she was just waiting for her opportunity, like a wolf tracking its prey, rather than… ugh, no, Cyrra wasn’t fucking thinking of that. Not now, not ever.) “Can’t you shut up when you don’t have anything worthwhile to contribute? Endymion here is attempting to cast high level magic.”

“We all have to face our struggles alone,” the assassin nodded sagely. “I, for one, am trying not to lose my fucking mind.”

“Too late for that, I’m afraid.”

The bickering might have continued for the rest of the day, but unlike the two of them, it seemed that Endymion actually knew what they were doing. Well… to an extent. A pretty fucking small extent, if you asked Cyrra. “Relying on the useless old me, huh? How the mighty have fucking fallen,” she mocked, not even trying to hide her enjoyment. “What if I told her I couldn’t sense her at all? That your golden child is dead?” Which, by the way, wasn’t really true. If the assassin focused, you see, she could sort of locate her-- a faint, fading light in the distance, a candlelight more than a star. (She was warm, too. Pleasantly so, akin to the sun shining down on grass and kissing the morning dew away. One perfect summer day, contained in the chaos of abstraction. …which, fucking what? That comparison was, um, certainly something. Something that Cyrra would take with her to her fucking grave, and perhaps even beyond that.)

“Cyrra!” Atropos seemed to be getting desperate, and not without good reason. “Won’t you at least think of yourself? Do you truly wish for all of us to perish here just to prove a point?”

Ugh. Is he trying to make it look appealing? Because, really, that would have been the best outcome. Instead of a traitor, she would have been a martyr-- beloved and revered, in the way only those who sacrificed their own life ever were. An entity greater than an assassin could ever be, whose name would be whispered in prayer. (Why was she hanging onto it still? On that miserable fucking thread of existence, already almost severed? …if this was some sort of trial, then it was safe to say that Cyrra Eiréal had failed. Repeatedly.) “Fine, fine,” she sighed. “I do sense something. Follow me.”

The tunnel was narrow, hardly spacious enough for an adult woman to stand upright, but maybe it also wasn’t-- reality itself was flickering before her very eyes, as if it couldn’t decide what the fuck it wanted to be. (At one point, they walked through a meadow. A castle grew from the ground, pearl-white and shining under the moonlight, but then it exploded, spattering the ground with blood. …wait, wait, wait. Was it a castle, or that fucking well? No. No, don’t fucking think about it, Cyrra frowned. Wrapping your mind around pointless bullshit breaks it.)

It only took a few minutes, but also an entire eternity. The tether was pulling her forward, gently but insistently, and when the force finally relented? They were standing in a hall lined with countless diamonds, glittering so aggressively that she feared going blind. Somehow, that wasn’t even the weirdest thing about it. No, the rows upon rows upon rows of Falines were, all looking at them with the same vacant expression in their eyes!

“Gods,” Cyrra moaned, “I knew it. The scourge is fucking spreading.
 
"No. I will not take responsibility." Faline's voice was exceedingly calm in comparison to the other Cyrra's, a calm spring day standing unaffected by the raging winter she seemed insistent on creating. Her place in the world was quite clear to her and she would not be convinced into blaming her for an act that she did not commit. (Perhaps their was an alternate timeline Faline, or a Faline of the future who deserved to hear these accusations. But she was not that Faline. It was that simple.) She continued to press forward to put more distance between them, even as the tether made feeble attempts to pull her towards the mirror where the true Cyrra stood. Except it would not open for either of them, at least not now. Hearing the screech of Endymion's claws upon the glass, feeling them reach out for her and failing to reach her, she knew that fact rather instinctually. She had been cut off from her group and was meant to walk alone. And although it was not quite as fun... it was nothing she was not familiar with already. "For I did not kill anyone, nor do I belong to anyone. I have never belonged to anyone before... and most certainly not to you."

Faline rubbed her cheek and peered through heavy lids at her surroundings as they melted and stirred round and round, very much like the pot of vegetable soup she was craving and...

Meanwhile, Endymion stayed quiet as they followed Cyrra through the tunnel, analytically taking in the sights as they presented themselves without comment. They finally broke their silence when the scenery unravelled into the sparkling hallway they found themselves in then.

"Strange. This is nothing like Miss Kairos's palace. It's too sparkly." Endymion mused to themselves, pinching no small amount of judgement on the word 'sparkly'. (Yes. Rather than diamonds, their mistress's castle contained halls which were filled with full-length, arched windows with soft cream curtains. The kinds that allowed for lots of natural sunlight to pour in along the polished marble floors. Since she was a child, one of her favorite pastimes had always been to laze in whichever strangely shaped beams of sunlight she could find in the cottage and give ever glimmering mote of dust a name. In the magical realm, Faline's palace was a whimsical palace of warmth and safety for all who sought shelter within its walls. This hall, however? Sparkling to the nines with the glamor of fine diamonds overtly boasted the kind of terminal avarice that their mistress did not possess. In fact, the disgusting extent of it sent a tangible shiver raking down the cat's body.) They ignored Cyrra's comment and stared with horror at the rows upon rows of Faline. Each one looking as if she'd had all the life and joy siphoned from her. "This is disgusting. Who is keeping her in here? Hoarding her as if she is to be coveted like one of those diamonds...?"

Endymion flicked their tail and sniffed the air. "Ah, but of course. It smells like human interference to me." The cast a glare in Cyrra's direction. "You humans just love to overcomplicate everything, don't you?"

One of the Falines giggled, the sound sparkling like the bejeweled walls all around them. Almost as if she was struggling to keep up with the serious shtick of the zombified rows all around her, pretending to be one of them like it was just a silly game. And while it certainly seemed like something the real Faline might do, something told Endymion that was not the case.

'You will not find her. The real one, that is.' A low voice echoed, as if determined to ignore the rouge Faline. 'She belongs to me now.'

"Oh, you are such a silly goose! I do not belong to anyone." The laughing Faline sang out playfully. Endymion sprinted to try and locate the one that did not sound like the rest.

'Quiet, you.' The voice sighed, clearly annoyed and... the Faline who did not comply with the rest vanished in a puff of smoke before Endymion could reach her. Oh. But then another one of the copies giggled, as if to take her place. This one was condemned to vanish in a puff of smoke as well. And then another giggled. One after the other, this pattern continued until there were no versions of Faline left standing at all.

As if that had sequence of events had unlocked something deep within the hall, an echoing 'click' opened a hidden door in the room, encrusted with diamonds like the rest of the wall. It was heavy and moaned like a haunted wind as it swung open, blasting Cyrra and the familiars with a chilly breath of air. It was dark within, a stark contrast to the blinding hall, and smelled musty to boot.

"Careful where you step, Cyrra. I sense this place is chock full of traps." Endymion approached the doorway on cautious, light feet. "And not just 'spikes shooting from the walls' kind of traps... but mental ones as well. Those which are designed to mess with your head, for you humans are so... unnecessarily emotional and complicated. Miss Kairos did have a point when she said that your passion must come from somewhere. I think she worded that rather generously, by the way, for I see you more as a raging asshole." The cat sighed and shook their head as they proceeded into the darkness. "I do understand you humans do not hold up your guises without reason. You're obviously holding onto a lot. But that is going to make our lives a living hell."
 
“Ah, yes,” Cyrra deadpanned. “Human interference. Sorry for fucking existing, I suppose. What should I do to make you happy, crawl into some hole and just die?” Now don’t get her wrong, the assassin understood the resentment-- she understood it intimately, for that very same fire burned in her own heart as well. (The fuel for that never seemed to run out. When all else failed, the voices from her past were there, dragging the whip across her back. ‘Faster!’ they shouted. ‘Don’t look back.’ And, if she did? Cyrra knew the sight would fucking burn her eyes, as if they were kindling. Hay in the middle of the hottest summer, just waiting for that single spark to change the course of its fate. Maybe that would be more tolerable, though? Because then, at least, she wouldn’t have to continue seeing shit like that!)

“Then fucking keep her,” she mumbled, earning Atropos’ caustic stare in the process. (Boo fucking hoo! Every night, the assassin would cry into her pillow and wonder how, oh how she might appease the wise snake. Would giving him her soul on the silver platter suffice? Ah, right, she didn’t have one anymore! Not since the vile magic had infected her, turning her into… well, into one of them. A foot soldier in the legion of the damned, wielding a weapon as broken as she herself was. Heh. In a way, Father had always predicted it. For all of his faults, the assassin supposed, he really could lift that veil, and look at what lay beneath. Did he somehow know about this as well? Fuck, now that possibility gave birth to more questions than answers. Always, always more fucking questions, like rats emerging out of the walls of an old, decrepit house! And, just like she would have done with rats, Cyrra shooed them all away.)

“Why do you think I even want her? Just let me out of here and you can, dunno, bake apple tarts with her for the entire goddamn eternity. Tis for fucking tat.” Not that she expected it to work, but it never hurt to examine your options, right? Yeah, except that the mocking laughter ringing in her ears vanquished all of her hopes faster than an army could trample over a field of flowers. Ugh.) ‘You say that now,’ the voice accused her, ‘but I know how fucking fickle your heart is. After all, it is my heart as well. No, no, no, you pathetic fake! I won’t let you destroy what I’m trying to build here. Unlike you, I have a vision. You can watch it unfold, or you can get out of my way.’

‘Getting out of her way’ did sound like an appealing solution, but Cyrra had a creeping suspicion that it was actually a code phrase for ‘die, you stupid bitch.’ Sigh. Why did everyone wish that on her lately? Was the mindset infectious? (…she couldn’t oblige. Not yet. The gates weren’t ready to receive her, and unlike certain people, the assassin didn’t feel like banging her head against them. Everyone had a debt to be repaid, you see? And her fucking debt towered over the others like a mountain, so high that it was touching the clouds.) “Alright, so how about we try cutting them?” the assassin proposed. “I bet the real one would scream in a more authentic way.” Or maybe not, but hey, at least she would get to murder a few witches and that was always a plus in her fucking book! It didn’t hurt to try and bribe the gods, especially while walking a path this dark. Before the plan could be implemented, though? All the Falines disappeared in a puff of smoke, depriving her of that chance. Of fucking course. Why had she bothered in the first place? “I am not fucking holding onto anything,” she pursed her lips. “Don’t pretend to know anything about the human fucking heart beyond its taste. Someone like you could never understand what keeps me going.”

“Something tells me you don’t get it yourself, either,” Atropos mumbled. “Stupid.”

Choosing not to pay any attention to that, Cyrra stepped into the darkness, and… uhhh, there were ghosts floating above the ground? Pale, silvery whisps of energy, just barely holding onto their shapes. “W-what the fuck?” the assassin whispered, obviously not scared at all. If she sounded that way, then that was, uh, just a camouflage tactic! Once you deceived your enemy into thinking you were afraid of them, you gained a tremendous fucking advantage. Duh. “W-what s-should we do?”

Meanwhile, Faline found herself in an entirely different room. In direct contrast, it was light and airy-- pleasant, one could say, if it wasn’t from the guillotine blades falling from the ceiling. Slash! (The other Falines were there, too, but they didn’t seem to have much of a will to live. Instead of dodging, they just stood there, indifferent even as the knives bit into their flesh. “Oh!” one of them exclaimed, wide-eyed, as her arm was separated from her body. “That is very much new. How will I ever cook my soup properly now? You cannot stir it one-handed, I’m telling you!”)

“Well, my Faline?” the voice from before laughed. “Do you like it here? I hope you do, for you will have all the time in the world to appreciate it. I’m not fucking cruel, though. If you want to, I can bring you some flowers to make it feel more like home. Are hyacinths still your favorite?”
 
"We keep walking." Endymion said plainly in response to Cyrra's question, leading the way through dark, haunted corridor. Occasionally, though, the cat got a bit distracted tracking the wisps with their eyes. They clearly had to fight the feline instinct to chase and catch them between their paws. "We keep walking until we find something. Don't tell me you are frightened?"

The wisps gradually began to change shape, however, taking on the shape of a woman. To be specific, they began to resemble Faline. Various gruesome chopped up states of her that was. Some were headless, others were armless or legless. And the combinations of the three were endless. Some were cut right down the middle. Whenever the flickering lights took her shape, they began to fall the ground around them like a thousand birds dying suddenly in midair. The ones that were no longer recognizable disappeared in a puff of smoke. The ones that were still intact stayed around for longer. Some of them were pondering why they had to die. Some of them were crying in misery.

"Miss... Miss Kairos?" It was Endymion's turn to sound afraid, apparently. The cat shook their head firmly afterwards. "No. This means nothing. It is just a trick."

"Oh... why did this have to happen?" An armless Faline ghost asked, as if they would know the answer to that. "I only wanted some vegetable soup!"

***

"Nonsense, you ninny." Faline shook her head scoldingly at the armless Faline. (Somehow, it was the most natural thing in the world to call herself a ninny. And weren't all of these versions of herself ninnies for allowing themselves to be chopped up like... well, like celery?) Blood stained the floor everywhere except the small, pristine spot where she herself stood unharmed among it all. "You can stir any soup one-handed if you are determined enough!" But the armless Faline collapsed, then, clearly dying. "...Oh. I should not have been so cross with you in your final moments. I am sorry." It wasn't an excuse, but she was indeed in a peculiar mood. This room evoked feelings of immense disgust. Were the reasons why not obvious? And she would have left already had the blades not been slamming up and down in the only feasible route to the exit.

Faline crossed her arms, quite irritated as the voice rang clear among the sharp slicing of the guillotines and squishy, gory splatter in the room.

"I do... fucking not like it. And perhaps it bears repeating that I do not belong to anyone?" Faline tapped her foot, growing rather impatient with this game. And yet she couldn't help but soften, if only just a little when the voice mentioned flowers. Ah, how pleasant. Flowers were indeed a beautiful finishing touch to any room.

"Hyacinths are nice. But so are lilies, hydrangeas, snapdragons." Faline recited as she tapped her chin, distracted as she thought of a field of endless flowers bobbing on the wind. She thought of just how much more peaceful it would be to be standing in one instead of... wherever this was. Luckily for her, staying in one place for so very long meant that her imagination was strong and plenty capable of supplying the sights she wanted when she wanted them. "And anemones, because it is a very fun word to say. Have you ever tried it, voice? Oh! And the smell of lavender is divine. I always put some under my pillow. Anyway... must one choose a favorite flower at all when they're all so lovely? I would quite prefer to be free to see them for myself, however."

And then two things happened at once, shattering Faline's focus on the subject of flowers. An ear landed near the toe of her boots. A bloodied ear that had undoubtedly off of one of her copies. And then a distinct vision of a line of colored doors flashed before her eyes. Hm. There was an opportunity here. She felt it in the tingling of her fingertips, in the rhythm of the strings pulling in her chest. "Say, voice? I am curious. If you were to bring me hyacinths, which color would you choose?" She asked, stroking her fingers thoughtfully over her braid. Hunkering down so that she could angle her voice towards the ear on the floor, to be sure it could hear her clearly she again considered the colors she had seen upon the doors. "They come in such a variety of colors, after all! From violet to pink, and yellow and blue and white."

***

Endymion encouraged them to keep walking until a ghostly ear dropped from the ceiling in front of them. Rather than disappear, however, it transformed with an unsettling 'craaaack' into an... ear-shaped gramophone of all things? And from it, Faline's voice came crackling in through a fuzzy broadcast. "Say voice? I am curious. If you were to bring me hyacinths, which color would you choose? They come in such a variety of colors! From violet to pink, and yellow and blue and white." As if those words had triggered something, the dark tunnel rumbled and five different doors came rising out of the floor in a sweeping fog. One was violet, the next pink, the third yellow, and the fourth and fifth blue and white. "Oh... and red?" Belatedly, a sixth and extremely unsettling red door croaked out of the ground behind the rest. It seemed to be dripping with fresh... paint? Well, they could hope it was paint, anyway.

"My clever mistress!" Endymion praised as they circled the gramophone like they would often circle her calves. "Listen closely. She will give us the clues we need to proceed."

"The meaning of a flower can differ depending on the color. Violet begs forgiveness while pink and red are playful. Yellow indicates jealousy, blue constancy, and white is loveliness." Faline's voice continued. "You can learn a lot about a person's intentions based on what kind of flowers that they send you. Isn't that fascinating?"
 
“Frightened?” Cyrra repeated, examining the texture of that word. In her mind, she rotated a few times, looking at it from all the possible angles-- not one scratch, not one irregularity escaped her attention. And, you know what her verdict was? That Endymion was fucking wrong! “Bullshit,” the assassin bristled. “I do not frighten. I, um, was just wondering about our strategy here. Is that such a fucking crime? Look where all that baseless conclusion jumping has gotten you,” she accused the demon, because duh, offense was the best defense. “Had any of you had enough fucking sense to stop and think, we wouldn’t have been in this mess right now.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” Atropos pointed out. “From the woman whose brilliant escape plan included breaking her own neck! No matter, though. I’m going to let that one slide. Well then, our resident master tactician, how should we have avoided this? Let’s hear it.”

“By not selling your soul to the forces of evil,” Cyrra countered. “Without your weird magic bullshit, everything would have been fucking fine.”

“Ah, so your solution hinges on us… not existing?”

“Sounds about fucking right.”

Honestly, Endymion’s panic did lessen her own fears-- perhaps there was a finite amount of horror in the world, and the demon cat had just absorbed some of her own. (That, or maybe it was the soothing, soothing images of death. Nothing like watching a witch get fucking dismembered, right? If the gods are good, then this is a snapshot of the future. The fate that is awaiting her for tampering with the forbidden arts. Witches always fucking seemed to think that the rules didn’t apply to them, but oh, were they wrong! Consequences were like a spider’s web-- the harder you fought to shake them away, the stronger they clung to your skin. The stronger they bound you, too. From those invisible threads cocoon was spun, and when you could no longer move? The spider crawled out of the darkness, ready to fucking feast.) “Oh, don’t tell me you are frightened?” she grinned. “You, the great Endymion themselves? Come on, it’s just some fucking limbs. You can try eating them if you want to get truly close to your loony mistress.”

Unfortunately for Cyrra, though, Faline herself wasn’t the only loony aspect of this clusterfuck. Far from it. When gramophones and doors began popping out like mushrooms after a rain, the assassin took a few steps back-- shock was etched in her features, along with some incredulity. “Oh, gods,” she moaned. “I miss the times when severed ears had the fucking decency not to… well, not to do that. I never wanted much else from them, but they still fucking found a way to disappoint.” The world in general did! Who would have guessed that she’d ever feel nostalgic about, you know, corpses fucking staying dead? Back in Cyrra’s time, the things that you murdered didn’t bother you anymore. You could even argue that that was the entire point behind murder! “And now we also gotta pick our own fucking poison. Awesome. I just hope your mistress is as clever as you think.”

***

‘Hmmm, I haven’t thought about that,’ the voice admitted. ‘How careless of me. If I had to pick one color only… then violet, maybe?’ And, ah, wasn’t that interesting? Violet, which according to Faline herself was associated with forgiveness. With some great sin committed against her, if you extended the analogy a little bit. Again, who was the owner of the voice? What were its intentions, aside from wanting to keep her like one might keep a favorite doll? ‘But sticking to that color scheme honestly seems drab. To you, I’d gift the rainbow in its entirety. So, first violet, and then red, and then white. Not blue, though, because constancy is fucking poison. But say, Faline, what color is associated with love?’

***

“Violet it is, then,” the assassin decided, unwilling to listen to the drama unfold for longer than what was absolutely fucking necessary. (Love? Really? That word made her skin crawl, let alone in this fucking context. Seeking happiness in another was the equivalent of handing them a blade, and then sharpening it with your own bones-- concentrated foolishness, in other words. And to do it all with someone you had only known for five fucking seconds? Oh, someone had a fucking death wish here, alright. Good thing that I am uniquely suited to helping them with that.)

The violet door screeched, and shortly after that, the sound of countless wings filled her ears. Which, fucking what? As far as the assassin was aware, birds didn’t fucking live underground! Except that, you see, they weren’t underground anymore. The room wasn’t a room at all-- instead, they’d somehow arrived in a wheat field, with its stalks tall and golden. (They were reaching her neck, almost. If Cyrra didn’t look down, she could see neither Endymion nor Atropos, and that was a lovely fucking version of reality, indeed. A dream come true!) Above them, in the azure sky, thousands and thousands of doves were… uhh, stuck in mid-air? They were flapping their winds desperately, trying to fight against the force that was holding them back, but not one of them moved by so much as an inch. Somewhere in there, she felt, a metaphor was hiding. “No point in even trying to figure out whatever that fucking means, right?” she asked nobody in particular. Shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun, the assassin looked up, and realized something else entirely.

“The shape. It looks like a fucking star, doesn’t it? A star means being stuck.”

***

“The shape. It looks like a fucking star, doesn’t it? A star means being stuck,” a different voice, this time the one belonging to Cyrra, resonated throughout the chamber.

“No!” Faline’s companion protested. “Don’t listen to that witch, my dear. She, um, didn’t mean anything important by that at all. Besides, if you were to start thinking about it, I’m afraid that I’d have to kill you,” she announced, in a tone you might hear from a shopkeeper who was oh so very sorry that they didn’t have the candy you wanted to buy. “You see, it is dangerous to keep pets which are infested with parasites. And, really, what are stray thoughts but the most dangerous parasites of them all? I’d hate to wait for another Faline to come along, but if I have to, I will do it. You do know that, don’t you? So, instead of that fucking nonsense, tell me what you would like to eat. I will make you happy, if only you give me a chance.”

A star, though… hmmm. A star. When Faline looked around, there was a star, wasn’t there? Etched right in the middle of the ceiling, carved from what seemed to be raw diamond. It was flickering faintly, and with each pulse, the blades fell down again! …huh, what an interesting connection to make.
 
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"Ah. Perhaps because you are sorry for locking me in this strange room?" Faline guessed innocuously, tilting her head to the side. But then the voice continued to include a whole rainbow of options... excluding blue. If that wasn't curious enough, however, they go as far as to mention love of all things. Goodness! This all seemed quite complex coming from someone she had only just met. (Met? Except they had never met face to face. Unless the voice was like the doorman in that they were only just a voice, which was also valid.) "...Love? Oh. Are you planning to propose to someone you love, voice? Good for you!" Right! She wouldn't assume that the voice was referring to her. That would be excessive. In fact, it was unfathomable that the voice could be speaking about loving her. She had never been loved by anyone. "Well, usually it is red." She tapped her chin. The room she was in was overflowing with the color red... but it did not inspire any warm feelings of love within her. "But if you give the flowers to someone who does not understand the language of flowers, that might not matter. After all, what if they hate the color red? You could also try giving them their favorite color. It would show them that you pay attention to them. That you care for them. That is my perspective, anyway."

Faline silently wondered what Cyrra's favorite color was. 'Hm. I bet it's yellow!' She nodded resolutely to herself. 'I will ask her later.'

Then none other than Cyrra's voice interrupted all of those color related thoughts. Stars? Now that Faline considered it, the other woman did have that star on her face. '...I shall ask her about that later as well.' She reminded herself, compiling all of the questions into a list. Soon enough, she was sure to have seventy-eight of them. Give or take.

"I have many, many thoughts. I cannot help that, voice... and I believe the same will be true for any Faline you manage to capture in the past, future, or present. If it is me that you want, you will need to accept that. Because that is who I am." Faline pursed her lips then with no small amount of indignation. "...And I dislike like the implication that you mean to keep me as a pet. I do not want to be your pet." Endymion said long ago that they thought the word an insult whenever granny used it. They took the shape of a cat, yes, but she never had never once in her life considered them a pet. Her familiar did not have the mind of an ordinary house cat and was free to come and go whenever they pleased. They were so much more than a pet. As was she!

"Really?" Faline asked incredulously. While the star on the ceiling did indeed interest her, as did the voice's implication that they would bring her something to eat. (Ah. Vegetable soup. It was so clear in her imagination that she could practically smell it.) Would she finally meet whoever it was face to face? "I must be honest, voice... you are doing an abysmal job of making me happy. But I do become rather cross when I am hungry. I have not had dinner yet, you know. If you make a nice cup of vegetable soup, you might persuade me to be a touch more agreeable."

Assuming the voice was now busy preparing soup, Faline reached for her locket. It had been long enough now that she felt she had the strength to use it again. Watching the star above carefully, she clicked the side between the pulses and froze the room around her still. The bloodied blades paused in the air. When she truly looked, she saw that all of the Falines inside were dead now except for her.

'What a mess.' Faline thought as she took advantage of the stilled blades, running across the room towards the exit. Her boots squished on the insides of her own corpses, the hem of her skirt was splattered with her own blood. Eek! And then she slid in a particularly deep pool of blood towards the end, waving her arms like a frantic bird to reclaim her balance as she stumbled through the doorway and into the winding halls. Whew! What a mess indeed.

***

When time stilled in Faline's room, the room Cyrra and the familiars were in (if one could even call it a room) sprang back into motion. The wheat swayed on a breeze and the doves beat their wings violently, scattering in a number of different directions, effectively breaking the star pattern they once formed.

"Ugh. Birds." Endymion sighed irritatedly. As if birds were the bane of their existence. (Which they might as well have been! What in the world did Faline see in Hector, anyway? That cross-eyed bird was ridiculous in every possible way.) The cat strode through the wheat with the gait of a predator before lunging into the air to catch one of the nearby doves in their claws. Pinning the bird down onto the ground, they didn't lean forward to kill... but rather to interrogate it? "What is your business here? Tell me now! What does this curse want with my mistress?"
 
“Ooof! Let go of me, you undistinguished, wild monster! Cats are the fucking worst, I swea… uhh, I mean, chirp chirp?” If Cyrra Eiréal was asked to describe the absolute worst moment of backpedaling she had ever seen, then yes, this fiasco would be competing for the top fucking spot. Was the bird thinking it was dealing with a school of goldfish? Too bad, because unlike them, the assassin preferred to retain her hard-won information! Alright, my time to shine has come. With a scowl that screamed ‘murder,’ the assassin knelt down next to Endymion and pulled out her knife. (Faintly, it glimmered in the sunlight-- in her eyes, it resembled the surface of a sea, ever-changeable, with all of the secrets resting deep, deep underwater. Apt, wasn’t it? For knives were just the tool to carve those secrets out of closed, petulant mouths.) “A little bird once told me,” she grinned, “that feathered fuckers don’t enjoy pain. Want to test that hypothesis out, sweetheart?” Something in the cruel arch of her smile must have convinced the birdbrain that its pathetic ruse wouldn’t work, for they proceeded to scoff. “Yeah, that would check out. No living creature does, so I don’t think you are making the grand fucking point that you think you’re making. Still, Cyrra Eiréal, to you, I will say nothing. Nothing! I will die like a martyr, and earn the love of my kin.”

“Who said anything about dying?” the assassin asked, her tone light and conversational. (It was the exact demeanor of a clerk who had just realized that you’d counted your taxes wrong-- and not in the direction most people would prefer. ‘You’re fucking screwed, motherfucker,’ her eyes said.) “We can have much, much, much more fun together when you’re still alive! You’ll fucking beg I had the mercy to kill you, though. Mark my words, you useless little shitstain.”

At that, the bird visibly paled. (Somehow, they managed to convey that despite their feathers being ashen in color. Honestly? The feat was pretty fucking impressive, and Cyrra would have loved to know the mechanics behind the phenomenon.) “I’m not afraid of the likes of you,” they shrieked. “Do your worst, murderer.”

“For the last fucking time,” she sighed, “it’s an assassin. What, should I start calling you a fucking crow?” Unwilling to wait for more answers, Cyrra lowered her knife, and-- “No!” the bird cried out. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I will… I will tell you everything. The curse centers around Miss Kairos because of… multiple factors, I guess. The circumstances of her birth would be one of them, as well as her relationship with Miss Murder over here…” (“An assassin!” Cyrra cried out, though the bird paid about as much attention to it as you would to a rotten, maggot-infested corpse of a rabbit lying by the road. Fucking rude, if you asked her.) “…but mainly, it’s her fault. The threads of fate are complex. Sever them too many times, and they are going to reconnect elsewhere. There, uh, there will be knots there, though. Tangled hair that you can never really get to be straight again. You will run across such anomalies no matter what you do, you fools! Reality always strives to correct itself. Then, of course, there’s the emperor as well, and he won’t let you rest.”

“The emperor?” Cyrra raised her eyebrow. “His Majesty Trystane, you mean?” What did he have to do with this? Trystane, the Witch Slayer? Fuck, this was getting stranger and stranger with each new puzzle piece revealed.

“Is that what he’s called this time?” the bird appeared confused, though not necessarily surprised. “I would suppose so, yes. A big guy with a big crown. Does some pretty big things with his big name, too, and…” What were they going to say? Cyrra could only guess, because that was the moment their belly fucking exploded, showering them all with this lovely mix of blood and organs. “Fucking hell,” the assassin cursed. “In which world do they use birds as bombs?” But, apparently, that wasn’t the only change the world was going to bless them with. When the bird let out its dying cry, the rest of the doves responded in kind-- they shrieked, in a way that almost shredded her ears, and turned fucking red. (Red, both like blood and the color the voice from before had said would follow violet. An interesting fucking coincidence, huh? Cyrra had little time to ponder over this, though, because the birds charged against them, all beaks and claws.

“Any other smart fucking ideas?” she shouted at Endymion.

***

Meanwhile, Faline was dealing with her own ‘red’ challenge. The corridor she had picked led her to another room, if you could even call it that-- a river of blood was taking up most of it, with there being just small patches of ground on both sides. Uh oh. Well, maybe she could just cross it?¨

“I wouldn’t do that, young lady,” a dove, larger than her and grotesque, advised. “Or you shall find out just how boiling hot it is. Wouldn’t want to become part of that delicious vegetable suit, now would you?” Again, why the fuck did everyone seem to have issues grasping what ‘vegetable’ meant? Seriously, that wasn’t a difficult thing to wrap your mind around. “I suppose I could take you to the other side,” the bird scratched their beak. “But I know not whether that would be a wise course of action. I mean, you have super powerful enemies. If I help you out now, how will you ensure I don’t suffer for it? You and your fancy magic will disappear, but I will still be expected to stay live with my choices. Well? Where’s my incentive for betraying the other Cyrra?”

“Any other smart fucking ideas?” the real Cyrra’s voice cut through the silence, which… oh. Reflected within the river of blood, Faline could see exactly what was happening to her not-friend, and it wasn’t pretty. Not at all.
 
Endymion's expression mirrored Cyrra's almost perfectly when the bird exploded all over them. "Ugh. Revolting." With a hiss punctuated by a nose twitch of disgust, they melted into the ground as a shadow and then reemerged a cat again. Newly spotless after that transition, they lapped at their paws and gave another irritated hiss. "Birds. Vile, vile creatures." Without the captured dove around to interrogate anymore, they aimed a quizzical glare at Cyrra instead. After all, that dove had dropped some pretty vital information... information that the resident assassin had at least some context on. "So? What do you know of this em--"

Apparently there was no time for questions, though, when the chorus of shrieking rang loudly in their ears. There was a loud 'whoosh' as their wings flapped in unison and every hair on the cat's back stood up straight as pins. Those damned birds!

"Worry about yourself, Miss Murder! Sassing me will get you nowhere in this world." Endymion claimed smoothly, slinking back into the ground as a shadow before one of the birds could snap their beak over one of their ears. "We must leave through the door we came through! Obviously. Or do you not understand how doors work, coming from your supposed 'doorless land'?" Their voice continued to echo although they were out of sight, slithering towards the violet door they had used as their entrance to this strange place. "Be vigilant if you don't want your eyes pecked out! We shall reconvene at the red door."

***

"I cannot promise anything, for I've no idea what to expect next. Not until I See something, anyway." Faline explained honestly. She nodded sagely at the gigantic dove. "I do very much appreciate the offer, though. I will find my own way around as not to cause you any trouble, ma'am." Although most of what the bird had said sounded rather ridiculous if you asked her! This was not vegetable soup, first of all. It looked much more like tomato soup. (And tomato was a fruit!) And enemies? What enemies? Goodness. She did not have any enemies as far as she knew. Unless the dove was referring to wasps, perhaps? Ah. Well, they were quite powerful foes indeed with their stingers.

She considered the supposedly boiling river again, wondering if she ought to stick her hand in briefly to test and see if it really was as hot as the dove claimed it was. (Sometimes the label of 'boiling' was a simple matter of opinion. Perhaps the bird was like granny in that she exaggerated temperatures to extremes they actually did not warrant on any factual basis.) Before she could, however, the image appeared on the surface and Cyrra's voice floated into the room.

"Aw. Endymion, Atropos and Cyrra get to dance in a field of birds." Faline said longingly, as if she was sorely disappointed that she was not there to play with them. Watching them bond without her caused her feel the tiniest twinge of loneliness. "That looks like a great deal of fun, doesn't it?"

The big dove gazed at her skeptically.

Hm. Was it possible to travel to the other side through this surface, the same way she did before? Maybe going in the way she came (more or less) would bring her back to the real Cyrra's side! It was different in that this was water and not a mirror... but it was a theory worth testing! With a deep, hopeful breath Faline dipped her finger experimentally into the vision and... Ouch! She immediately flinched and stuck her finger in her mouth to suck on as it burned. Hot, hot, hot! Based on metallic taste, that was indeed blood and not tomato soup. Definitely not vegetable soup.

"...I told you so." The big dove's judgmental gaze became increasingly more judgmental by the second.

***

Inside of the violet room (if one could even call it a room at that point) a void opened up in the sky... as if a giant finger had poked a hole through it? The red doves swerved away from Cyrra, flew towards it like moths to a flame, and then disappeared through it and out of sight. All that remained of them were a few red feathers drifting down from up above.

"Oh... I only wanted to try and join them. I cannot believe Endymion got Cyrra to dance with the birds!" Faline's voice echoed softly, "My. I wonder if she would ever dance with me if I asked?"
 
Going back? That was Endymion's glorious plan? Cyrra might not have known much about magic (nor did she wish to), but she was familiar with how the concept of returning worked-- namely, that you'd end up at the exact fucking place you'd been trying to run away from. (Yes, she had tried. No, it hadn't worked for her. The past had a funny way of clinging to you, you see? It was a tattoo on your skin, and while not everyone automatically understood its significance... oh, there would always, always be someone who would interpret those lines for what they were. For the marking of a target, outlining the weak points. The creaks in her armor. And, hey, didn't she know from experience just how easy it was to stick a knife in there? Heh.) "Forget it," the assassin growled. "I, ouch, am not going back! If you want to do the same thing over and over and fuck up in the exact same way, then be my guest. You love the taste of failure that much, hellspawn? Dine on it alone, then!"

"I can't believe I'm about to say this," Atropos glanced at Endymion, traces of horror in their coal-like eyes, "however I believe Cyrra might be right. Her way of making her point is as deplorable as always, and I do hate it very much that she can't conduct herself with nearly as much grace as Miss Kairos, but that doesn't erase the validity of her thought processes. Aren't we trying to escape from this loop? Bending to its whims could reinforce it, I think. We both know that things happen because they happened already, so this does check out to me. Cyrra, what do you propose?"

"For us to piss off!"

"Ah, marvelous. Indeed, your strategic genius is unparalleled."

Which, what the fuck did they even want? For her to craft a master plan with at least twenty different steps, based on a deep understanding of priest Eyrill's Higher Arcane Mysteries? Newsflash, assholes: there just weren't that many things to do! When the sky fell down on your head, you fucking ran. (This was a punishment, Cyrra knew. A clear sign from the gods that she was no longer favored, no longer remembered as the bringer of justice. But, hell, she was still alive, wasn't she? Damned, yet the spark of her life was still burning bright, struggling against the encroaching darkness. That must mean I can win their love back, the assassin thought. If I read the signs right, that is. ...how cruel, to dangle that hope in front of her. How fucking senseless, too. 'Potential' was just a code word for 'uncertainty,' dressed up in colorful veils, and... no, it wasn't a gift. A curse was what it was, spoken with the voice of fate. Why the fuck did everything have to be so complicated? Cyrra only really wanted to kill people, and somehow, even that goal proved to be much too ambitious!)

The assassin did try to run, but she didn't get very far. To her credit, it wasn't because her legs got tired or because she couldn't pick the right direction-- no, it was the damn tether in the middle of her chest, stinging worse than a scorpion's kiss. "You fuck off, too," Cyrra exploded, pulling at the thing instinctively. It was... kind of like scratching your nose? Except that, you see, innocent nose-scratching generally didn't lead to loony girls being pulled through holes in the sky. Here, on the other hand? There was a swish, sharp enough to cut silk, and Faline fell right into her arms. Ugh! Forget cheesecakes and brownies-- she was the human fucking equivalent of cockroach, seemingly indestructible even after you severed its head.The sole advantage of being this empty-headed, Cyrra thought. Can't destroy what isn't there.

"Miss Kairos!" Atropos exclaimed, clearly overjoyed to see their kindred soul once again. "I am so glad that you are alright. What it is that you are wearing, though? I don't recall being dressed like, well, um..."

"A harlot?" Cyrra supplied. And yes, that was actually a kind way to describe it. Faline's chaste dress from before was gone-- gone, and replaced by a flimsy thing made of red feathers, barely covering up her private parts. (No, the assassin's eyes didn't fucking wander. She wasn't at all interested in those things, thank you very much! ...even if the contrast of the deep, deep red against her skin was kind of aesthetically pleasant. Because it looks like blood, she convinced herself. And she was made to be painted on like that, with a blade instead of quill. Hah! Indeed, the assassin sometimes forgot that even the vilest of witches had their uses. Where else would she find such convenient scabbards, hm? So much soft, delicious flesh for the gods to devour?)

"Cyrra!" Atropos scolded. "It is not nice to judge others by the way they dress. Has your mother taught you nothing? I don't even have a mother, and yet I know not to treat my peers like that! I am certain Miss Kairos has her reasons."

The debate over the (im)morality of their dress was to be cut short, though, because the ground beneath their feet began tearing. Before they could so much as grasp what was going on, the once solid earth transformed into numerous tiny islands, each floating on a river of blood. ("What the fuck," Cyrra muttered.) As if that wasn't strange enough, a sweet melody swelled in the air, burrowing into her brain like a worm might. Ouch, ouch, ouch!

"I can't believe you'd abandon me for someone like her," the voice from before whined."Very well, though. So be it. I will just wait for another Faline, perhaps one who isn't quite as ungrateful. As a goodbye gift, though, I will grant you your last wish. Dance, my dears. Dance your little hearts out, if you wish to survive! I'm afraid the islands won't let you pass if your performance is terrible. They are quite the merciless audience." The blood sizzled in response, as if to voice its approval. Shit, now what? "Great, murdered by the resident whelp and her subpar fucking dancing skills," Cyrra rolled her eyes before putting Faline back on the ground. "I don't suppose you can do more than tripping over your own feet?" (She certainly couldn't, but again, deflect, deflect, deflect! The best way to assign blame where it was supposed to be assigned, ie. not to her.)

(In the distance, near the final island, a white door was shimmering. Could that be their exit?)
 
"...A harlot? What's that?" Faline asked, not even remotely embarrassed by her new getup. Honestly, she was more preoccupied with the feeling of Cyrra's arms around her. It was indeed a strange sensation to be held, but she did not comment that she had never been held before. That would have been untrue. Because common sense dictated that someone had to have held her quite a few times when she was still a baby. Not that she could remember such a time in her life. And like with Blunk before, she had been held in particularly large hands like one might hold a doll, as many of the creatures in this realm were much larger than she. This was indeed different, though. Warm and nice, perhaps, in the way that hugging had been. (Nicer yet for the fact that Cyrra hadn't dropped her unceremoniously the way she had before.) Once she was finished musing over that, she blinked bewilderedly at her feathered undergarments... and then she stared curiously when Atropos indicated that the assassin had been judging her in some fashion. "Ah, but I do not have any reasons, truly. For I never chose this for myself. I suppose the other Cyrra decided that this is what I should wear." She brushed a thumb skeptically against one of the soft feathers. "It is quite itchy. Do you know why your other self would choose undergarments for me, Cyrra? Or is this perhaps a swimming costume? Although feathers seem a rather poor choice of material for..."

A swimming costume seemed fitting for the island setting that unveiled itself. But it seemed rather odd to Faline that she should be the only one to wear one. She stared down at herself when Cyrra set her on the ground, at the faint, criss-crossed scars that were revealed on her bare arms and legs. The scars she'd received from testing the boundaries around the cottage over and over until the message solidified itself permanently into her skin. Something about seeing them alongside this voice's request for gratitude boiled her insides much like the rivers of blood around them.

"Pardon me, voice. I must admit that I do not believe any Faline would be grateful for this world you've created. You ought to find somebody with a different name if you are looking for gratitude." Faline noted in response to the voice, deciding that she would give them some advice. It was kind of weird to refer to herself in the third person this way, but after confronting so many versions of herself it was really not so weird after all. "Faline has been waiting to be free for a very long time now. Imprisoning her again and again... well, that may be the quickest way to destroy a relationship with her. Forgive me, but I feel you really must heed my advice if you are lonely and yearn for some company." She played with one of the feathers on her costume. "...I do not like this very much, either. I quite liked the dress that you stole from me. It was my favorite. That is why I chose to wear it on my first night of freedom."

Faline's eyes stung a bit, although she knew it was a very silly thing to cry over clothes. (Again, it wasn't out of shame or anything like that. Showing skin was not something she was ashamed of.) But that patchwork dress had grown with her over the years. She'd had to make adjustments to it as she grew older, as she was never allowed to go into town to purchase a new one that would fit her right.

"Really. Do you intend to make a mockery of my mistress? She is most gracious if you treat her right." Endymion hissed, breaking through her short-lived reverie. Her eyes widened when the cat rematerialized with her trunk in their teeth. "Miss Kairos, here you are. Do not cry."

Faline managed a wobbly smile and gave her familiar an affectionate stroke behind the ears. She hunkered down next to her trunk and rifled inside for a change of clothes. Because she had packed light, her only other option was her ruffled blouse and trousers. Truly exemplifying the fact that she was not ashamed of her body, she peeled off the feathered garments without so much as a warning to everyone present as she changed into a fresh set of clothes. She did a little twirl when she was again fully clothed, feeling rather stylish in clothes that better accentuated her figure. According to granny, the creamy blouse had been her mother's and the brown trousers her father's. And she had lovingly given them the little tweaks that they needed to fit her good and proper.

"On the contrary, Cyrra... I love to dance! I took ballet in this realm ever since I was six." At last, Faline addressed the assassins remark about her dancing skills now that she was confident enough to do so. She had taken these lessons from Lucinda. A lithe, shadowy creature who had three mouthes full of sharp, sharklike teeth. One where the eyes would have gone on a human face, the second where the nose would have gone on a human face, and the third where a mouth typically went on a human face. Lucinda was a beautiful dancer and when Faline had observed as much, she was so flattered that she had decided to take her under her wing. However, that did not mean she was perfect. Far from it, in fact. "Ballroom dancing, though... that could be an issue, as I have never had a human dance partner before. But it seems we must try if we are to make it out of here. I suppose you can make up for my weaknesses in that regard?" She offered her hand, "Shall we?"
 
Something dangerous sparkled in Cyrra's eyes. "A harlot? Well, a harlot is a woman who--"

"--is very generous with her affections," Atropos interrupted her, giving the assassin a murderous glare. 'No, you shall not ruin Miss Kairos with your depravity!' their eyes said. 'Utter another word and I shall seal your lips forever.' "Some narrow-minded individuals judge them for it, but as I see it, that only proves their own inherent lack of warmth. Those are some sad, sad people. Being stuck in that mindset must be horrible, don't you think?"

"For sure. Similarly, it must be horrible to be stuck in your scrawny, pathetic parody of an actual body. Lecture me when you don't look like an overgrown earthworm, alright?"

There must have been an insecurity in there somewhere, because immediately, Atropos bristled. "And whose fault is that, I wonder? Certainly not that of my incompetent mistress, who can't spin the magical threads to save her own life. I will have you know that, when I served Miss Kairos' auntie, I was so large that I could have swallowed the world!"

"Why the fuck didn't you do it, then? And where were you when I slit her throat?" Atropos opened and closed their mouth, and then opened it again, but no explanation came to them, it seemed.

"I... I know not. This was supposed to happen, I suppose. Reading the lines of fate is a difficult discipline." Ah, sure, the 'lines of fate!' It was always abstract nonsense like that, and never 'my incompetence' or even 'I was just taking a massive dump and couldn't come in time.' (Excuses, excuses. That was a drug Cyrra knew very well-- Father had mixed it into each meal he had ever shoved down her throat, rotting and full of worms. 'Next time,' he'd said. 'Just one more job, and you can see her.' Heh! Honesty, it seemed, was a rare fucking spice.)

Before the assassin could slip deeper into her memories, however? The reality started being... ah, distracting. In very revealing ways. "What the fuck are you--!" Absurdly enough, her cheeks colored red, but Cyrra did not turn away. This was a matter of principle-- no witch could best a champion of gods, and averting her gaze would have been an admission of defeat. A proof of resolve shaken. What else could she do, then, other than watch as hard as she could? For, uh, many good reasons. Many good reasons that she couldn't articulate that well right now, possibly because most of her blood was not reaching her brain at the moment. (With something not that far from gentleness, her eyes caressed her skin. The scars shone against it, like stars on the night sky, and... Beautiful, she couldn't help herself. A-ah, fuck, beautiful handiwork, I mean!) "Who gave you those scars?" Cyrra asked, as if that was a totally normal conversation opener. "I can see they were rather skilled with a blade. Frankly, I'm a fan." Anyone this close to pain, the assassin thought, must have been a gods' man. A saint, serving as the true bridge between the heavens and the ground.

Being accustomed to disappointment now, Cyrra Eiréal only expect another fucking dosage of it, but then... then Faline actually mentioned being good at dancing. Oh. Oh, shit. Well, perhaps the audience wouldn't be as cruel as the other Cyrra had suggested? (Dream on, her inner skeptic recommended her. Usually, Cyrra's inner skeptic was also her outer skeptic, but in times such as this one, she did sometimes lean on... uhh, less accurate portrayals of reality. You know, the ones in which she wasn't absolutely screwed.) "You bet," the assassin replied, deciding to employ the usual 'fake it till you make it' strategy. When you looked at it from a certain angle, killing wasn't even that different, now was it? Both of those involved movement, and in every bad poem she had ever read, the bards compared combat to dancing of some sort. (Maybe the fact that Cyrra now considered those to be a reliable source of information should have come across as a red flag. It didn't, though! Mostly because her world was already drowning in scarlet.)

"I will have this dance, then," Cyrra accepted her hand. So, dancing was mainly about closeness, right? Closeness and athletic ability. The assassin had never actually tried it, but that was the idea she'd gotten from watching some of her clients, and imitating that couldn't be too fucking hard. Idiots danced all the time, after all! Deciding not to hold back, Cyrra wrapped her arms around Faline's waist... and then she threw her into the air, with all her might. Always strive to impress, right? And, hey, that might have worked out had Cyrra also managed to catch her, which, um, didn't happen. Haha.

(The blood sizzled in disapproval, like a thousand snakes. Uh oh.)
 
Faline remembered Lucinda's advice and paid careful mind to her stance and posture as Cyrra's hands circled around her waist. She needed to do her instructor proud, now that her life was hinging on her dance experience! This was her moment, truly. "Cy--" The question as to which of them should lead vanished from her lips when Cyrra decided to implement a rather fancy lift-- or a throw as it turned out-- right from the beginning!? (Whoa! Excited butterflies fluttered about in her stomach as her feet left the ground and she sailed high into the air. Goodness. Was this some new form of dance she was not aware of? Perhaps the assassin was also a dance master? That possibility vanished much like the words from her lips, however, when she landed unceremoniously with an 'oof' to the ground. Ouch. The poor little excitement butterflies got crushed in the fall and perished quite tragically as a dull pain rattled through her bones.) "Miss Kairos!" Endymion was at her side immediately. Then they shot Cyrra an accusatory glare. "What is wrong with you? In what world does anyone begin a waltz by attempting to chuck their dance partner into the sun!?"

The hissing blood wasn't just for show, either. As if to further the reprimand of their performance thus far, a giant geyser shot out beneath their island in particular and shot them all high into the air. Endymion yowled and sunk their claws into the ground. Unable to cling to anything solid, Faline went airborne again and giggled while she floated and 'oof-ed' once more when she and the island both landed on the ground again. Ah. She would surely find herself covered in bruises the next morning... but such bruises were often indicative of an eventful adventure. And what was this experience if not an adventure?

'Any more of this nonsense and the island will chuck all of you fools into the sun! Dance, damn it!' The voice commanded. Then, as if nothing had happened at all, the sweet music resumed once more from the beginning. 'Do it properly!'

"The sun is very far away, so that would be an impressive feat. Forgive me for saying so, but I do not believe that you are nearly strong enough to chuck us into the sun." Faline mused softly, brushing off her trousers as she finally gathered her bearings enough to bring herself to her feet. "My skin also burns quite easily. In fact, I burned my finger in your vegetable soup earlier. Oh. Speaking of which, I also must regretfully inform you that your 'vegetable soup' was not vegetable soup. For someone who misunderstands a soup with the main ingredient written in the title, perhaps you should not go as far as to call us fools. It appears to me that you are the most foolish fool here."

In response to her claims, another infuriated geyser shot them into the sky. When they dropped down again, Endymion exchanged an unimpressed glance with Atropos and then turned on them both. "Do the both of you mean to tempt fate on purpose!? I just lost three of my nine lives in the last five seconds thanks to you." The cat looked from Cyrra to Faline. "Focus. Or we're never getting out of this place. Don't you want to leave this place and see the sea, Miss Kairos?"

"Indeed!" Faline brought her hands to her cheeks delightedly as she imagined it, unfazed by her familiar's reprimand. (It was clear Endymion knew just what to say to incentivize her.) Springing to her feet, she offered Cyrra her hand again. "That was a... fancy trick, Cyrra. For a moment, it felt like I was flying!" Until she hit the ground that was. But even so, she decided to be nice about it. Perhaps there was no opportunity for her to learn to dance in the tragic doorless land from which she came. "But perhaps I should lead this time around? Also, we ought to stay on the ground. At least until we work our way up to lifts and such."

Faline placed one hand on Cyrra's shoulder and continued to hold her hand with the other. Thinking of the sea, she closed the distance between them and began to sway the way she imagined the waves did. "Just sway along with me, see? Like we're in the ocean." Ah. She wished she was still wearing her skirt, so it might swish prettily about her legs while they moved. Determined to distract herself from her missing dress, she decided to keep talking. "We can chat while we dance! I will answer your question." About her scars. Yes, right. "If you've decided that you are a fan of the inflictor of my scars, then you are admitting to being a fan of magic, Cyrra." She smiled ruefully and averted her gaze as she thought back to it. "For as long as I can remember, a spell forged a powerful boundary around the cottage where I lived. Whenever I tried to cross it, it would... it would, ah..." The way fear fogged in her eyes like ghosts while she hesitated may have provided the additional context without her needing to say anything more. On second thought, this may not have been such a good distraction to lean on after all. "The spell was designed to break when my granny died. I found her dead this morning... hence the reason why I am here now, dancing with you. I was finally free to pass it unscathed."

"Shall I ask you a question in return? I have several, but I suppose if we are sharing scar stories..." Faline watched her curiously, "What about your star, Cyrra? What is the story behind it?"
 
“Nobody said anything about waltz,” Cyrra protested, a hint of blush on her cheeks. “How was I supposed to know? Read that bitch’s fucking mind?” (Indeed, there was a world in which musical cues existed, and pointed to obvious conclusions. A world where people people’s feet moved on their own based on the first few tones, thanks to an instinct as automatized as breathing itself. As for the assassin, though? She certainly didn’t live in there. Instead, Cyrra dwelled in the swamps of musical ignorance-- a blessed place where all people should dwell, as far as she was concerned. No, really. Why the hell should they waste their efforts on a pursuit so empty? So fucking senseless? ‘Ooo, look at me! I know when to move my feet in accordance to nonsensical, arbitrary rules. That makes me better than you, and not a dog in human skin.’ Again, why would anyone be proud of being this easily trainable? The gods had granted them the gift of reason, so that was the light they should follow! Not a bunch of stupid conventions, doubtlessly connected to something deeply sinful.) “Besides, this is complete bullshit. I won’t be judged by… by a river of blood!” the assassin folded her arms on her chest. “It doesn’t even have a fucking brain. How can it evaluate my performance properly when it’s missing such a crucial component?” And, yes, it may not have had a brain, but what it did have was enough raw power to chuck them into the air. That, and also the willingness to do so.

“Aargh!” (Eloquent? Not really. Fitting? Very much so. Cyrra certainly did not appreciate losing the firm ground beneath the feet, and she wasn’t ashamed of vocalizing those feelings.) “Shit. Fuck. I swear I am going to…” Uhh, a quick question, but how did you threaten a fucking river of blood? Via claiming you were a vampire with a huge appetite? Ugh! This was exactly why these abominations had no right to exist-- that which did not have any weak points was unnatural, and laughed in the face of the gods themselves. (It also offended Cyrra personally, which was a crime almost as obscene. Don’t tell anyone, though, alright?)

The biggest surprise of this day so far, though? Never had the assassin thought that she would agree with Faline out of all people, but here they fucking were. “I concur. Seems too fucking unrealistic to me. If you’re going to make threats, you should be able to actually pull them-- ooof!”

“It’s called a hyperbole, Cyrra!” Atropos yelled. “H – Y – P – E – R – B – O – L – E!” Which, by the way, wasn’t an actual thing. Hyperboles, ie., not telling the truth, were just common lies-- as someone fully committed to the art of lying, the assassin knew one when she saw it. No, there was no fooling her. Those who hid behind terms such as ‘hyperbole’ or ‘exaggeration’ were both liars and cowards, and with every breath they took, they only cursed themselves to a deeper circle of hell! “Get it through your thick skull,” the snake continued with their rant. “This is ridiculous, first day serving you and I have already been beaten within an inch of my life. This never would have happened with Miss Kairos’ auntie.”

“Yeah? Then follow her to the oblivion, you waste of skin!”

Atropos shot her a glare that could only be interpreted as ‘oh, if I wish.’ “I will have you know, Cyrra, that we cannot die. We familiars are… well, ideas more than living creatures. Try as hard as you might, but you won’t kill a thought.” Heh. Really, though? Obviously, Atropos, Endymion and company hadn’t met Father yet. (Thoughts, you see, had to be hatched in people’s heads first. And heads were… hmm, oh so removable. Easy to mess with, too. Feed some poor fucker poison, and all of a sudden, he’d be singing a very different tune! Exactly the one you wanted to hear, as luck would have it.)

Either way, it seemed that their humiliation could only really be ended through complying with the request, and so the assassin gritted her teeth. “Very well,” she agreed. “Let’s see if your style is more acceptable to the bitch. It’s always fucking terrible when people hate innovation, though.” Faline putting her arms around her like that was, uh, interesting, in the sense that Cyrra had never really been treated like that before. Touched, yes-- enough times that her skin had turned into the chronicle of that, covered in large, inelegant letters. Each instance had a corresponding scar. The way Faline touched her, though? When she closed her eyes, it almost reminded her of… of… No. I can’t fucking close my eyes. Especially not now.

“Oh?” the assassin raised her eyebrow, shoving that weird feeling under the metaphorical rug. Fucking focus, she reprimanded herself. You want to end up in that blasted river this time? Definitely not, and so Cyrra shifted her attention away from the warmth and towards her legs, towards her feet. Move. Move like you’re a machine. A familiar script, wasn’t it? One she could follow even with her eyes gouged out, not just closed. “Sounds like a prison to me, then. Not a fucking home. You must have been happy to learn she kicked the bucket.” Crueler comments had spawned in her mind, things like ‘it clearly knew what it was doing’ or ‘I will mourn its heroic death,’ but… well, let’s just say that it wasn’t that hard to see the parallel now, between that cottage of hers and the temple where she had been reared. (Father, her sisters, her brothers. A whole happy family, devoted to their service! How fucking overjoyed she had been, to bring all the sacrifices they’d asked of her. Fulfilled, for the first time in her life.)

“My scar?” Cyrra laughed, shocked by the girl’s audacity. (There was an impulse to tell her to fuck off. That very same impulse told her to wrap her hands around her throat and push, till her eyes bulged out. Just, how dared she?! Who gave her the fucking right? The fury came and went, though, only leaving behind a strange breed of awkwardness in its wake. That, and a bitter aftertaste.) “My scar is a mark of honor. You see, back when I was a whelp as well, I tried to run away from my responsibilities. Father taught me the meaning of the word ‘consequences’ then, and he taught me well. With a hand lighter than he should have, too. I should have been killed for that crime, but I was his star. Do you know what it’s like, Faline?” The name spilled past her lips without any resistance at all, as if they’d been made to pronounce it. “To be that fucking important to someone.”

Silence followed her words, heavy and uncomfortable, until… “My turn.” Not that there was a reason to go along with the nonsense, of course, but what else was she supposed to do? Get lost in her pretty eyes? To hell with that shit. "Why the sea? Shouldn't you be trying to, I don't know, corrupt people's hearts? The sea is fucking boring, too-- water as far as your eye can see, and the fish won't tell you any stories. They smell, too. Why don't you want to do something more interesting? There are things better than an oversized fucking pond! What do you even want to do there?"
 
"It was a cottage." Faline said simply as Cyrra referred to it as a prison and not a home. It had only ever been a cottage to her. Perhaps she refused to acknowledge the metaphor, however apt it may have been, because she understood on a visceral level that the moment she began framing it as anything else, her life there would have become that much more stifling. It would have been infinitely harder to pretend that she was anywhere else as she daydreamed and watched the clouds float by in the grass. Hm. Was I happy that granny died? She turned the subject of her happiness around in her head and examined it like a strangely shaped stone on a path. "The fact of her death itself did not make me happy. Granny was the only one who knew me in the mortal realm." That was true. If she did not care at all, she wouldn't have gone to the effort of burying her in the ground. And it did take grueling effort on her part as well to clean up the mushrooms, tentacles and slime that granny's corpse had left behind. "But it is true that the corresponding events did bring me happiness. Now I can meet more people. Real humans, just like me. For instance, I've already met a few assassins!" She smiled brightly. If Cyrra wasn't present to see how that had gone, she might've assumed the assassins had offered her tea instead of trying to capture her based on her cheery disposition.

For once, Faline went utterly silent as she listened to Cyrra speak. The other woman answered her question without a dodging remark, without calling her a whelp... and so she owed it to her to be a good listener in return. Several more questions sprang to mind when she answered, of course. Such as... why did she run away? What responsibilities did she have? What was her father like? But the story rendered her speechless, with a strange tightness in her throat that kept the words in. Perhaps because the speak of scars serving as a consequence for running away was something that she, too, had experienced. She wondered if Cyrra had felt that same devastation that she had. The agonizing pull in her chest, the inner voices begging her to go out in the world while she stayed perfectly still. The realization that there was no way to save yourself, no way to escape a fate of someone else's design. A star means being stuck, hm? It seemed they both had firsthand experience with that, however different their circumstances might have been.

"No." Faline answered, quieter than before. "I have never been important to anyone."

Needless to say, Cyrra's next question was a most welcome change of conversation. She even went as far as to say 'my turn', as if to turn this into a fun game!

"Why not? I want to see the sea... and so I will." Faline responded matter-of-factly, as if that explained everything. Goodness. How could Cyrra say that it was uninteresting!? "Endless water that waves to you sounds very interesting to me. And magical. Like something out of a storybook. All my life I could only imagine what the the waves sound like and I'd like to hear it for myself. My first order of business will be to wave back and introduce myself properly. Oh! And I would like very much to walk on the sand as well. I've heard it is very soft. Kind of like chicken feathers... but apparently it sticks to you as well? You can also sculpt it into miniature castles! That sounds delightful. I could also collect colorful little shells instead of the same old garden rocks." Lost in her fantasies, she lifted her and Cyrra's joined hands to do a little twirl mid-dance. When they pulled together again, she wore a conspiratorial little smile. "I have never seen a seabird before, either. I would like to acquaint myself with them." (Endymion sighed at that and Faline ignored it.) "I intend to watch the sunset as well. Endless water, endless sky... and watching as the sun sinks to meet the sea? Nature can be so romantic."

Faline's heart felt full with the thoughts she built up, it renewed her desire to see this through and escape. She was very happy that Cyrra decided to ask her about the sea, it washed away her sadness very much like the ocean waves might one day wash over her feet.

"Corrupting hearts sounds like the most uninteresting thing in the world compared to the sea. I do not know why anyone would waste their time doing that." Faline twisted her lips, revisiting the initial assumption. "Enriching my own heart with the things I have never before experienced before sounds much more fun. I would also like to make friends and perhaps fall in love."

Faline's cheeks turned pink with the admission. Not because she was embarrassed, but because the idea of falling in love had always seemed so very distant and far beyond her reach. But now that she was free? That potential day was steadily approaching. And oh was she was excited for it. It was true, as she said before, that she had never been important to anyone. But that didn't mean she never would be. She couldn't help wonder what her future love was doing right that moment. (Perhaps her future love was wondering what she was doing as well. She rather liked the thought that someone was thinking of her... even if they didn't yet know her name or face.) Then she recalled the voice asking her about love, and flowers, and remembered the question she had thought up.

"My turn! What is your favorite color, Cyrra?" Faline paused. Yes. This was a very important question. "Wait! Wait. Let me guess first. Is it... yellow?" She grinned eagerly, her mismatched eyes bright as she awaited the answer. "Am I right?"
 
Slowly but surely, Cyrra was beginning to regret that she had asked at all. Actually, no, scratch this! Her frustrations were rising at a rapid pace now, the initial small waves of annoyance turning into a full-blown fucking whirlpool. (Just, ugh. What was the point to replying in so many words? If there was any justice in this shit world, the assassin thought bitterly, she would have run out of them ages ago. Ah, what a beautiful fucking fantasy! Faline, with her lips sewn together, and then her, enjoying the blessed silence. ‘Did you want to say something, whelp?’ she would have asked, so many times. ‘I can’t understand you. Louder, please. I am dying to hear your thoughts.’ And the witch would have fucking exploded, the assassin just knew it. All those unreleased words would have accumulated in her chest, just like steam sometimes did under a lid while you were cooking, and then, boom! Fucking dead. No Faline, no problem. The tether would have dissolved into nothingness, too, and… and then nobody would be looking at her like that, as if her thoughts were plain to see. As if she could cut off the top of her skull, and peer inside. The bitch had no fucking right, you hear? No fucking right! …she had no right to remind her of her, either. Those memories were sacred, and letting a witch anywhere near them could only ever be seen as betrayal. The gods just… didn’t let these things slide, you know? Cyrra had promised, promised in front of the tortured heart, and so her own heart adopted the same rhythm. You couldn’t fucking run away from that, the same way you couldn’t escape from the reach of your own shadow.)

“A favorite color?” the assassin raised her eyebrow. (Not much changed, and yet, yet her voice felt colder by several degrees. Freezing, actually-- even existing anywhere near her would turn you into a statue of ice, it felt like. Which, good. The physical closeness had almost tricked her into something more, you see? A rookie fucking mistake, and one that Cyrra wouldn’t make again!) “I don’t have a favorite color. What a stupid fucking idea. A red blanket isn’t any more useful than a yellow one, so I see no reason to favor one over the other. Only spoiled brats think in such narrow terms.”

“Cyrra!” Atropos scolded. “And you were doing so well for about five seconds that I genuinely thought you weren’t quite as hopeless. The most tragic thing about it is that I know you will regret this, too. Well,” they flicked their forked tongue, “I am certainly not going to shield you from the consequences of your own actions. Don’t you dare to come crying to me!”

“What? I was just answering the damn question,” she bristled. “I’m being perfectly civil-- not that I’d take etiquette lessons from a defective fucking lizard. You sold your legs for pocket change?”

“Why you--!”

The argument that was brewing could have been an epic one, indeed, but like a flower bud touched by frost, it wasn’t allowed to unfurl. Not fully, anyway. Because, the moment the word ‘yellow’ slipped from Faline’s lips? The islands once again connected beneath their feet, accompanied by a silent ‘whoosh’. The path was safe now, and they could easily walk it-- the only problem was that, instead of the shimmering white door, it led to a deep, crystal-clear pond. (There it was, a small oasis of water surrounded by blood. The two liquids should have mixed, as they always did, but for reasons beyond her understanding, they just… didn’t. Fucking great! More weird magic bullshit was exactly what they needed here, the assassin was certain.)

“Oh,” Atropos leaned over it. “This appears to be a simulacrum. A…” they glanced at Cyrra, with their coal-like eyes full of doubt, “…a mirror of sorts. It reflects things that exist, but also the things that don’t. What you can see in there is their spiritual form-- the idea behind the physical shell.”

“Uhh, any fucking way to make it at all relevant?”

Once again, the familiar sighed. “Perhaps, but not to someone whose greatest intellectual accomplishment is remembering their own name.”

“I’m going to dance on your fucking grave, hellspawn!”

“…which only proves my point,” Atropos rolled their eyes. “How many times do I have to repeat that I cannot die? Not all of your problems can be solved via stabbing something, Cyrra. Shocking, I know, but one day, you will have to accept this terrifying conclusion.”

Despite the ocean of doubts in her mind, one thing was certain-- the conversation was going fucking nowhere. Realizing that, she looked into those deep, deep waters instead, and… huh. Was that a key, half-buried in the sands? A yellow key? A key that also happened to be far outside of their reach? Atypical situations required swift decisions, which was a principle that the assassin understood well. Deciding to follow it even now, she scooped Faline into her arms. “You wanted to see the sea, huh?” Cyrra smirked. “Well, you’re gonna need some training for that. Too many dumb earth-dwellers thought that they could underestimate it, and now they’re fucking food for fish. So, you can start now! Your first task is to retrieve the key. Remember, you shouldn’t breathe underwater. Good luck.” And, with that? With that, the assassin just dropped the girl into the raging waters.
 
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