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She was asleep, dreaming. She had to be, or at least hallucinating as she began to doze off. She felt the strange out-of-body sensation for that slow moment that passed like pushing through a barrier of some kind, and then the world asserted itself around her, bit by bit, as she noticed its various features.
It was a manor, strangely familiar, though the Raen, dressed in little more than the oversized shirt and underwear in which she fell asleep, exposing chubby thighs and scaled arms and legs, swore to herself she’d never seen it before.
Portraits lined the walls of the worn and broken-down manor, so distant as to be unreachable, but so massive that they were unmistakable, but they, each, were charred and blackened. A crimson carpet with gold trim spanned the length of the room, from the open double doors far, far behind her that led into naught but a yawning maw of nothingness to the next set of doors that seemed to change their shape every time she looked at them, though were always chained shut. The massive room had furniture, broken down and sometimes in pieces, strewn about haphazardly. Some intersected with the carpet behind her, and she realised her body bore bruises and wounds from when she’s tripped over what was in her path. In fact, a tear in the carpet lay just behind her, soaked in her own blood, she knew. The tear was familiar, too, but she, again, swore to herself, I’ve never been here, so… why?
“Have you? Or’re you simply not rememberin’?” came a familiar voice that caused her spin around.
Standing not ten fulms down the carpet toward the chained door was a knight, a lance strapped to their back. However, the armour was very much that of a dark knight she’d met: iconic blackened, spiked plate with a crimson shawl and wicked, horned helmet. Two purple ears sprouted from it, though, and, as the figure removed their helmet, the familiar voice was placed: Keerith.
“Think. Remember what we talked about, Hali,” the purple-haired Keeper told her with a stern, yet comforting look that soon melted into a smile as Hali felt herself remember facets of the conversation she’d had just the night prior. “Y’got a lot to think about. Got a lot to recall, too, huh?”
“Like… this place?” the Raen asked softly. She realised that, though she was wounded, she felt no pain, here, no fatigue. Keerith nodded.
“Look around a moment,” she said, casting an arm off to the side, “Tell me what y’see.”
As she turned to look around again, the portraits on the walls shed dust and char, as if they’d been burned, though the walls, despite showing wear from age, were not at all singed.
“Remember what those were?” the knight asked her patiently.
“I…” she started, but instead, the lance on Keerith’s back was unsheathed, and the Raen was blown back by a single, mighty swing. She found herself flying backward, away from her body, and landed on her backside on the other side of the tear in the narrow carpet where it’d been sewn back together atop her blood.
As she looked around again, the portraits’ char fell away, revealing face, people. Figures from her past: the Naras Matriarch, the Crawford Brothers, the Immortals, the Fustuarium, Dahlia as she was when possessed by Mirseleiris, and the Outriders. Behind Keerith was one more, though, that she hadn’t seen, even covered by soot: Dahlia and Vivian, their backs turned away. The portraits struck her with a wrenching pain as she saw various gestures or expressions or body language indicating hatred, frustration, and contempt.
“This… this… but it’s not what I deserve,” she protested, standing and walking forward toward her body, frozen as if in time.
As she crossed the tear in the carpet, each of the portraits around the room on those much-too-distant walls burst into a familiar black-and-violet flame. It licked at them, charring them to nothing. Her heart shot into her throat, however, when she saw that all of the portraits had begun to burn, even that of Dahlia and Vivian.
“No, no!” she cried, and broke into a run, calling out, “I can’t- they don’t deserve that either! They didn’t! Stop!”
She collided headlong with the back of her own body and felt herself stumble, feeling and seeing her arm outstretched, wretched with that same dark flame as it threatened to char her beloved and her sister to nothing but black. The flames died, and the portrait was whole again as her arm dropped.
“Remember yet?” Keerith asked, “Y’know what you’re fighting, now, no less what you’re fightin’ for.” She gestured up, above and behind her to direct Hali’s attention back to the portrait.
The de Bellechier twins beamed down at her, their expressions full of love and affection for the poor Raen, they hands both extended as if to free them of the portrait and offer to bring her with them. Her eyes teared up and she sniffled, the warmth of the two she’d loved so wholly - Dahlia and her sister, Vivian, alike, her family - calling out to her and bidding her to right herself.
Unbidden, she felt and heard herself speak in tandem with Keerith, her own voice different: harsher, sharper, almost angry, “I need to remember. Every night spent feeling loss and guilt and self-loathing. Every morning waking in tears, forgetting, and denying. Every day stumbling and suffering. All of it. I need to remember… me.”
She winced. It wasn’t from pain, or against a light, but almost reflexively. When she looked back up again, a familiar figure took Keerith’s place: Hali, dressed in that black dress she’d come to love so. She wondered why she did, as it was so new, but it came to her as the other her twirled on the carpet, miraculously not ruffling the gold-trimmed crimson at all.
“Yes. That’s why I had this made,” she said to herself, prompting her conscious self to look down and see herself in the same outfit, “To remember. But it didn’t work well, did it?” She laughed a bit bitterly.
“Time after time after time. Every night for moons,” her other side said, frowning and taking slow steps to approach her, hands upturned in a prolonged shrug, “I danced this dance with myself, ignorant. Making my own pleas to my own deaf, deluded mind. Stuck in fear and denial. In confusion.”
“You’re… you’re one to talk,” she told the other Hali, “If you’re part of me.”
This got a look of utter glee from the one she recognised, at last, as her darkside, as crimson eyes and an aura of abyss flared up and she clapped her hands together.
“I remembered…! I remembered! Yes!” they both said at once, one in shock and the other in joy, “This is me! You are me and I am you! We are no different! And there is no shame… in being me. Is there?” Both shook their heads, one hesitantly, the other with a wolfish grin.
“I think… that I’m ready,” she told her darkside as it reached out to gently carress her cheek as one would a lover, “Once and for all. And…”
“No forgetting,” they both said at once. Both nodded.
The darkside raised her other hand, both resting on her shoulders, and she did the same, looking up, past her own face to see Dahlia and Vivian beaming down at her, beckoning. Even through the darkness threatening to take command of her very sight with such close proximity, those faces, one to protect with all her might and one whose memory deserved so, so much better, shone like burning beacons.
“Listen to our heartbeat,” her darkside said softly, closing her eyes, “Listen for my voice. Listen… L i s t e n . . .”
Darkness began to take her, rising up over her ankles, pouring from her chest, embracing her, choking her. She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to wake up. She wanted to run, to deny, to- to fight.
I have to fight, she thought to herself in the midst, For them.
With the choking grasp of the abyss closing tight around her, those faces, that warmth, almost vanished entirely. She couldn’t see anymore. She couldn’t feel. It became like a cold, dark maw, comforting, yet obliterating.
“This is where I belong,” she heard from her own voice, neither from herself or her darkside, echoing around her, and then it repeated, “This is where I belong.” She sank. She felt oblivion. It was cold and inviting. It was alone.
“Non, mes étoiles,” came a voice, speaking in Ishgardian, its delicate, feminine tone and flowery accent unmistakable as that of her wife, “You do not belong there, but here. With me.”
“Hali, ma chérie,” chimed in another, sweeter voice that she immediately recognised as Vivian’s, “Don’t leave her just yet. She needs you. I am waiting… but the longer I wait, the happier I will be. Go to her, ma sœur bien-aimée.”
“Hali…?” called Dahlia’s voice. She sounded worried, distant. Not like before. She was falling away from her...
No, Hali thought, but the darkness pulled.
She growled, “No.” It pulled.
She roared it, “NO!” Everything stopped.
The hold the abyss has had on her stopped dragging her down and, instead, she felt it fall away. She, too, fell, and landed in a heap on the carpet once more, just in front of the chained door, the portrait of Dahlia and Vivian above her shining with a burning, violet light. It was unlike the darkness, but still cool and comforting. Her beacon, she realised, was here, pulling her back from the brink of oblivion.
“What... now?” she asked herself, reaching for the chains that barred the door before her. Her hand wreathed itself in dark flame and passed through one, then another, and they fell away with a heavy clatter, melted through. However, not all reacted so, and when she grabbed one that she could not melt, she heard a voice again.
“Child of darkness,” came a deep, cold voice from behind her, though when she turned, there was nothing, “You have your beacon, your guiding light in the dark. Do not lose yourself to evil or oblivion, for that is what it means to be a Dark Knight. If you cannot master yourself, the nightmares will never stop. You must prove yourself - master this power within you. You must become more. You. Must. Be. Free.”
She sighed, rubbing at her face beneath her glasses. Great. Now he’s a Mysterious Monologuing Disembodied Voice, she thought to herself, only to feel the tip of a blade press to her throat.
“Mind your goal. If you lose yourself to the darkness, I will destroy you. It is my duty. My charge.”
She had no snarky comeback about immortality for the man who called himself “The Unrelenting”: a tall, imposing figure wearing armour much like Keerith had before - his armour, she realised - and keeping a greatsword’s tip barely pressed to her throat as he warned her, “Master your power, ere it masters you. You will lose your wife, your soul, and all you cherish. You will fail, lest you heed that which keeps you tethered - your light, your love.”
She backed up, but impacted the chains. The Unrelenting lowered his sword and gazed up at the portrait.
“This door will not yet open. You are not ready. You will be,” he said, cryptic as she remembered him in the waking world, though his voice abruptly changed, sounding like her own as he continued, “I will be. Or I will be devoured. Where that leads… not even Vivian awaits.”
The figure turned, began to walk, and the armour crumpled, as though there was no one wearing it, the greatsword all that remained as the armour turned paper-thin, leaving Hali there to stare at that blade and contemplate. She didn’t have long; she was seized by a shoulder and jarred.
“Hali!” . . . . .
“Hali! Please!” begged Dahlia, shaking the Raen awake as she laid in their bed, cold sweats drenching her from horn to tail, her skin nearly a pale blue and her breathing shallow.
All at once, Hali took a deep, laboured gasp, and shot up. The world spun. She laid back down.
“N-no, no. Just… just lie down. Are- what happened? You- you-” Hali blearily allowed Dahlia’s face to come into focus. She was crying, this time, looking panicked.
“How,” Hali coughed as she croaked, “How long was I…?”
“It’s barely sunrise, ma chérie,” the Ishgardian said, worried, “What- what happened? You… y-you started tossing. You woke me up and… then stopped. You were… so cold. You’d stopped breathing for several seconds and I-” She was overcome by a heavy shudder and collapsed against the Raen, sobbing, “I thought you…!”
Hali chuckled tiredly, getting a look of disbelief from the younger girl, “I’m… I’m okay. I know… what happened. What’s been happening… this time. I’m sorry that I… mh… frightened you. Daijobu desu.”
She smiled, taking a long breath and sitting up, guiding Dahlia up with her.
“What… are you talking about?” she asked, only to be met by a smile.
“Do what you need to do with, ah… Aoife and Aedremor,” she said, reaching of to cup the witch’s cheek with a hand and leaning over to kiss her, “I trust you. I love you. And... ahah... I’ve… a bit of explaining to do… but I’m going away for a little bit. I won’t ever be far, and... I will always be there to protect you. I promise. But… I’ve, ah…”
She chuckles to herself at the ludicrous, dramatic thought.
I’ve got a door that I have to open.
