A million stories come to an end, and a million stories go on, retold. Yet there are "tales" in between that go unwritten and thus unheard. They pass on, unspoken.
They pass into memory.
Memory...
For better or worse, memory will not discriminate. A moment in the mind of one, or a moment shared by many, will take shape unspoiled. However innocuous, however tragic, however wonderful, a memory will capture it, though it may never be put to record.
And when unrecorded, what has passed into memory will inevitably fade into ether.
You might think that something forgotten can't have any importance. Perhaps that's true. Why remember a fall? Why remember sorrow? Why remember some sweet taste?
And certainly, the answers to those questions do matter...
...but time does not slow while they're being asked.
As they're asked, as they are considered, an archive ceaselessly grows...
A young girl sits in a café, let in hours before business, slouching in the quiet. The steam from her cup rises and fogs the glass beside her. A cold morning—
Captured.
A lone man draws his sword. Before him, a town burns. Behind, the marauders that have razed it look on the man, laughing. Knowing he will die, the man turns, and raises the blade—
Sewn in.
Friends with ears of cats and dogs laugh uproariously as one of their number, a student of Elementum, entwines light and fire to display a comic scene. To display a memory of another friend's folly—
Crystallized.
And countless others are crystallized. Hundreds, thousands—
Thousands of glass memories fly through a sky of endless day.
Flickering winds, fragmented streams—suspended in the air.
These flows of old thought and moments move in accordance with unknown laws. Or, perhaps, it is merely all a senseless dance. Some, granted, do not flow at all—they stay in place or float along, separate or within crowds of others. Whether they flow or remain still, "glass" defines this place.
Clouds alone have the sky. The light above them fills every soft fold, leaving hardly a shadow below. It is sometimes blinding, like an overbearing smile...
Below, the lands are often clear, empty. Just as often, the lands are filled with endless rows of structures and scattered monuments.
Colorless monuments, like the colorless lands. Wherefore do they stand?
Because "place" is inseparable from memory. That's it, no?
Where your tears have fallen, where you've held another's hand...
Surely you can remember.
Although, even should you... these towers and walls, these buildings and castles don't stand only as memorials or testaments.
This, all of this, is no testament. It is not poetic. It is meaningful, but not of higher meaning.
Its purpose lies at the core of being...
It's something simple, and needed, for thinking and feeling things.
Her first impression was that she'd awakened to a cloud of glass butterflies. "How pleasant," she thought, "that these figures can move as well. Where are the strings?"
She sat onto her knees, fixed her dress, and found that there were no strings, and these were not butterflies. Glass shards, flying on their own. "Delightful!" she felt, and so she said it.
The glass reflected another world than the one in white surrounding her. In it she could see reflections of seas, cities, fires, lights; she rose her hand to scatter them, and laughed in joy.
She didn't know these pieces of glass had a name: Arcaea. To tell the truth, they were so beautiful that it didn't matter the name. She entertained herself by touching them, swirling them, watching them. That was enough, no?
There were six questions to ask: who, what, where, when, why, and how. Of these questions, she asked none and desired no answers, content instead to bask in the glow of Arcaea. This was her meeting with a new world.
Without a clock, she has no sense for how many days or hours she has walked, but there is a new certainty in her head...
There is beauty in a memory, that's what she finds herself believing. Thinking about it, a memory is never certain, can change with the times, and yet is the nearest thing to a concrete piece of the past. It can be bitter or sweet, and she thinks in either case they're quite enchanting.
For now she will see what memories she can, of these other places and people, and appreciate them for their beauty. In the first place, these Arcaea flicker and glow splendidly in this strange and ruined world. It's easy to fancy it all, and that they show memories makes it easier.
Humming, hands aloft, and stepping down broken paths, she brings what seems to be memories fit for an entire world with her, following behind in a shining stream. Memories of an ugly, pretty world...
"How nice..." She sighs, she smiles, and serenity becomes her, it seems, too well. But there’s nothing to worry about. A pleasant, simple world like this need only be pleasant. Nothing more.
A joyous landscape. For so long, she has walked through a ruined yet beautiful world, finding things and admiring them.
For so long she's traveled shepherding glass that the sky has become a mirror bending light as far as she can see, and shaped almost geodesically. The fantastic and glittering roof never leaves her, and with her surrounded by only fancies and goodness, the world has become endless bliss.
She traipses down a spiral staircase that once led into a manor, but the walls have now all fallen and memories replace them. It is all the better: she leaps out ahead and dashes the memories everywhere, basking in sparkling Arcaea that, when she finds them, float up to join the others in her artificial sky. So enraptured now, she laughs with cheer.
A flower, a kiss, a love, a birth: a life followed by a new life in a river of glass flies past her eyes and blends into the rest. She has seen this reflected countless times, and it still pleases her.
She gazes at the wall above. As they've come together, they've grown more vibrant. She smiles, satisfied, before she wanders on again. And, as ever, heedless of all consequence.
They say that this is true: anything in excess is a poison. She either didn't know, or hadn't cared.
The girl now walks past what seemed to have been an old concert hall, the impact of its grandness dulled as it had been split perfectly in twain, as if some higher power had willed it so. Out of the tomb of sound drift memories again: of dances, of performance, hopes, victories.
Her mouth twitches. Has it simply become boring, or is this something else? She lifts her hands and the Arcaea come to her, gently weaving over her palms and through her fingers. Blankly she notes them. How many times has she seen the last hurrah of a retiring band? How many times has she seen two brothers embrace? Too many times she's seen the formation of a love, so frequent it was apparently standard in old and forgotten worlds.
She lets the memories go, and genuinely thinks nothing of it.
They rise. They fly to join with the memories she's still been gathering, and she looks at their destination now. It's grown much brighter since she began her collecting. It seems to grow brighter every day...
How many days has it even been? She winces, and a grimace twists onto her face. She shakes it away.
Maybe she only needs more, then whatever is missing will be found. She calms herself and carries on, not letting it bother her that no matter what, she cannot push the Arcaea following her away.
The truth is, idle peace and thoughtless pleasure are anathema to passion. Imbibing and imbibing of happy things endlessly dulls the senses and makes "happiness" indistinct, blurred, and ultimately without purpose. Now nothing has a purpose. She'd never had a purpose.
The sky is almost blinding.
She may be wandering, or she may be standing still; she isn't sure and it doesn't matter. The sky she's made has her attention, but the memories within it can't be sorted out. It has all become an opaque and overpowering haze compelling emptiness. She is losing her self.
And as she is losing her self, she remains numb to the encroaching dissolution. Though she did not remember, she invited this pleasurable and suffocating cage, and she locked herself within it. Now she lacks even the will to worry.
The sky grows brighter and she loses more of herself. With little time for her left, she stares upward as if waiting. Bright, bright, bliss, beauty above: effulgent memory overtakes her.
Her mind whites out.
And, without meaning, light fades away.
Without meaning, time passes.
And a girl stares up into an empty sky, her mind ended, and thus her story along with it.
The girl is on her knees, her chin brought up, and it is soon that her jagged and pervasive creation will consume her in its light coaxing oblivion. Above her it pulses and glows, gentle but insufferable. She lets it nearly take her, thoughtless.
And from that vast nothingness, something catches her eye.
Distinction alone breaks her from the lull of uniformity, and her gaze swings to it: a single, special piece of glass, just a bit red, and absolutely noticeable. Perhaps in reality or through a trick of her mind, the rest of the sky that it begins emerging from dulls in its intensity. She thinks, it's becoming easier to see. She thinks, and realizes she hasn't thought at all in ages.
The heavens wobble and distort, and a crack seems to run through them, the whole thing twisting around the creation of a new memory: a shard of memory that should not exist. It breaks from the whole, and breaks the sky.
Both violently and calmly the roof of her making falls down, choking the air in scattering light. The spectacle would be magnificent to her, but she remains stuck on the newest piece, which floats toward her amidst the frightening chaos of joyous memories.
It, too, is a memory of joy: that of herself that she has forgotten.
"When was— Did I—?"
She speaks in a fractured voice, her vocal chords having been long neglected of use.
Now in her hands, the odd shard that came from zero revolves, and in it she sees the time when she awoke, dancing alongside glass, traveling the mirror world, and happy. Tears fall from her eyes, and she remembers that happiness left her long ago.
Twinkling glass pieces fall in an unevenly timed rain while reflecting dead worlds as they always do. The girl at the center of it all focuses on a piece reflecting something new, however, and of this world still existing.
Tears fall from her eyes, but the reason is yet grasped by her. Her mind still recovering, she agonizes over the loss of everything she had before, falling all around her. But, also, she agonizes over the loss of her zeal. The memory reflected shows a better and ignorant time, as she walked into a trap she'd created for herself. Even if she knew where it would lead—these shiftless travels inviting senselessness— would she have done it all again, just to be happy?
The red in the glass is that of the red in her clothes, and she grasps the shard tightly to add the red of her hand to it, blurring past and present, running warm over the shimmering surface. She feels, again, but she feels so much more than before. She feels, overwhelmingly, regret.
These were times that, almost with pride, she had moved meaninglessly. She had gathered the Arcaea to enjoy them, and not thought even a bit as to why. She had brought on herself a torturous and tedious hedonistic existence, a manufactured and blinding prison. She had done it all for nothing, and nearly lost herself.
And to a question of "Why?" there was never an answer. Just to be happy? That hadn’t been it either. Collapsed on her knees, choking through cries with the memory over her breast, she knows the weight of her errors. She had surrounded herself in love and life so much that it came to disgust her, and that truth grieves her.
In grief the girl cries, thinking as much as she can, about everything that has happened, and what anything meant.
A few small pieces of old times falling down intermittently break this, but the girl's anguish has settled. She no longer openly weeps, sitting among shimmering glass with dried tears on her cheeks and dried blood in her hands. Fear, worry, and regret have ended, so she now has to look out ahead.
What she had done was misguided. It was, in fact, not guided at all. With the idea of "more happy scenes would only be better", she had filled the sky with good memories, not wondering if there might be any danger in bringing so many of the mysterious shards together in one place. She realizes now that they had threatened to swallow her.
If she wants to press on, she must have a reason.
She needs to answer those old questions that she had forgotten. What does this world mean, and why is she in it? Why are gentle memories attracted to her, although she sometimes saw flashes of hardship in pieces that refused her? Who was she?
Light comes back to her eyes and she stands on shaking legs. As she does so, the Arcaea surrounding her shift. She looks on at them curiously, and lifts her hand. They lift too, and she ponders. She realizes this is different, but that there’s also something different within herself.
The Arcaea will not come to her unbidden again, and she will not allow herself to be caged. She wipes away her tears with the back of her bloodied hand, and lets the shard that has turned her onto this new path go to follow behind her. She will let that be a memory, and face this strange world anew, and she will find all that it is for, be it good or bad.
She'd awakened in a ruined tower, first noticing pieces of glass floating in the air. They led her outside, and into a world of white.
White, white, and more glass. It seemed attracted to her, so she examined the shards with piqued curiosity.
She could see glimpses of something else in them, like looking through the windows of a train car. In one flash she saw rain, in another sunlight, and in another death. She grimaced, and pulled away.
Although it seemed attracted to her, at her attempts to reach out and shatter the glass the shards were naturally repelled. Her grimace deepened into a glare, and she turned her attention to the pale sky. However, as she gazed into it, her expression melted away. Her mouth opened, but she was too shaken to speak.
Glass: churning, glinting, and turning far overhead. There seemed to be a storm of it.
She regretted giving it attention, as now it seemed to notice, and was coming down to greet her.
It's difficult to describe that sensation which overwhelms her now. A riptide of glass that doesn't shatter, cut, or reflect her face, pushing past her in powerful amounts, turning up and swirling as if pulled by a great wind. She stands fast, and watches.
Watches... ...Memories...? ...Of a filthy world. "What is this...!?" She reaches out. "This...!"
A memory of pain, betrayal, envy.
When she stops it, she stops the rest. They stand still in the air around her, frozen. She whips her head this way and that. "They're only..."
Dark? Are they only dark? Wherever it is these shards reflect... she sees little light there. Whatever small sparks she sees fade away in an instant. She bites her lip, and then smiles a smile with no humor. "What kind of joke is that?" she mutters, "A world filled only with misery..."
As she says this, even her bitter smile fades away.
Without a clock, she has no way of knowing how long she's picked through memories, but she's sure it's been quite a long time.
For a while, she'd searched the fragments for more happy memories, just to see if they were there. They were, in small number, but the more miserable shards never ceased to hound her. So, she's come to know places she now loathed.
She now stands at the middle of a vast spiral of glass that turns about her slowly and resembles cosmos. She thinks there are two possibilities here: either the world or perhaps worlds these shards envision were entirely terrible, or since only terrible memories are here... In any case, she's decided to be rid of it all.
Something inside her has switched. Now when she looks at painful memories, she looks pleased. She gathers such memories, it seems, gleefully.
"If I can be rid of this trash, or even better the places it represents..." These places full of chaos and even light. That will make her happy.
It had been a while, and so she'd grown confident.
In the time since she began she'd explored much of this glass and mirror world, and she'd gathered countless shards. Like an unending scarf they formed around her neck and trailed long behind her. Now, she stood atop a fallen tower and looked out ahead with a smile. The terrible memories of other places twisted behind her menacingly.
She was gazing at a place that had always caught her eye, but she'd refrained from ever going toward it. It was some sort of distant labyrinth turning into the sky with insane geometry. Of course, it was more glass. Of course, she could feel its filth pulsing all the way out here.
Although she still had no idea how to go about it, she intended to be rid of the terrible fragments that followed her eventually. To that end she was gathering them. She at least took comfort in having the bad all in one place. That would make clearing it away one day all the more easier. This labyrinth was particularly bad, and she felt confident in gathering its fragments too.
The maze was surrounded by a glittering and ever-shifting sea of good memories. As she made her way toward the maze, the sea parted, only a few shards coming to join the trail behind her. However, while walking the path and scattering the good shards she suddenly hesitated. Now flanked by hope, with despair before her, she chewed on her lip... and her heart wavered.
Once upon a time, surely, things had to have been better.
The girl remembered nothing, and since awaking in the world of glass she'd only ever known other memories. Because of this, she'd drawn many conclusions and had few second thoughts. She'd been assured of the idea that nothing in the glass and nothing in this world held any worth. Filth and awfulness, tears and pain, a small smile, and death.
But once upon a time, things had to have been better. Simple rules are often true: shadows are begotten from light. Shadow lurked at her back, and now she was surrounded by light.
When she'd stepped into these waves of joy and purity, she hadn't given it a second thought. She'd become so absorbed in evil that she had forgotten simple good. To be honest it was more than her heart simply wavering, now. She was overwhelmed. For every glint of hope that caught her eye on the way to the jagged maze, she paused and questioned everything. There was an answer she did not want to acknowledge, immersed in this scene of light and chaos. She didn't want to think about it. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about it.
And, before she really could, she stood before the entrance to the impossible labyrinth.
On impulse, she reached out to the better glass and memories of flowering fields came to follow around her in a ring. She didn't know why, nor if they would help.
She didn't know it, but she had a name. If she knew it, perhaps she wouldn't have entered the twisted black maze. It may have been a meaningful name that may have made her doubts much stronger. But she didn't know, she ground her teeth, and she reaffirmed her beliefs. The light from before would not shake her, the light of the flower ring would not shake her. She entered the dark structure and started tearing it apart.
Each wall pulled away was made of misery, each facet held horrors, and the corners were comprised of fear. This was a castle of iniquity. Simply put, it was grotesque. It was powerfully grotesque.
And that girl, her grin returned. This was it. Climbing through it, running through it, this was the kind of disgusting monolith that had compelled her into action in the first place. She hadn't been wrong. The glass should only be shattered. The mirrors should only be destroyed.
And as she gleefully pulled away great swathes of the maze, hallways tumbling into the air, her smile became warped. She winced; something was wrong with her head. At the heart of the maze, there was *something* worse than any memory before. She could feel it, close now, calling to her. Her enthusiasm had drained, and her progress had slowed, and she saw a wicked shard of glass turning in space, containing the memory of the end of a world.
With a hand on her face, she looked into the mirrored world. She remembered the sea of pleasant realities below her and the flowers now circling around her. She'd taken down part of the maze's roof and the walls had subsequently fallen away. Dark glass rained slowly around her, and in the distance the better memories shone brightly.
She looked into the end of the world between her fingers. She swallowed, and with newfound strength, removed the hand from her face. She reached out, and dragged the end of the world into her collection of memories. With this monolith toppled, she felt an honest and genuine surge of bliss. However terrible the memories she faced from now on would be, it couldn't possibly matter. She was certain now that she was strong, and she would definitely destroy them all. And so, with a genuine smile and a tired laugh, she came down from the sky, and the tower along with her, landing after with power flowing through her and a mere ruin behind her and so marching forth with unwavering certainty: that of a hero's conviction.
Perhaps she should have worried, because her heart was suddenly in pain.
She drew back, covered her mouth, and her eyes went wide in confusion. She had been standing on the floor of a gigantic and bitter maze that doubled as a tower, but she now began to fall to her knees. Before she hit the ground, the structure began to break and fall first.
The memories of sorrowful days that she had gathered came around her like a cloak, the tower's memories turned from a falling slow rain into a downpour. She and the maze fell like stones, and although she should have been terrified to drop so far and so fast, all she could feel was confusion.
She splashed down into a sea of the fragmented happiness of other worlds. The waves she and the crashing labyrinth caused were immense. Glass pushed against glass in a way that could be described as both ugly and beautiful, and she knelt at the center of that storm.
She was confused because she was hurting. Everything hurt. Her heart was bursting. The cloak of memories that she'd collected turned into a grotesque sphere and surrounded her. The world of white disappeared from her vision, leaving only horrible things. Heaving, sweating, and trembling, she looked into the glass, into the Arcaea, deeply. And as she came to realize that her heart was breaking,
that her sanity was breaking,
the memory of the end of the world that she'd seen earlier slowly drifted into view.
The girl had felt many emotions since her waking into the white and ruined world. Mostly, she'd felt anger, but she'd been able to turn that anger into a strange sort of hope. True, she didn't have much of a plan. In fact, she was only walking forward because she believed at the end of her steps there would be something good. She had hope. She was certain that this chaos was leading into light. She was certain that the torments she was facing, that the horrors she was holding, could be completely shattered.
Yes, she was emotional. She felt so strongly that when faced with the idea that no, in fact, nothing had a purpose... she began to suffer.
The cruelest fate is to have hope and see it crushed before your eyes. And so the girl sat on her knees in a malformed circle of death, looking at a world coming to its end. This was the first time she had felt the emotion of sadness, and it was quickly turning into despair. The world of Arcaea was a pointless world. It was the manifestation of worlds gone. It had no substance, only the reflections of such. Even the glowing and joyful memories she had sometimes encountered on her way were still only memories of the past. Like night comes after day, they had to have led into the end she now saw spinning slowly in the air before her. Her eyes welled with tears.
She had felt so much since waking up.
She'd felt joy. Joy left her.
She'd felt fear. Fear left her.
Anger left her.
Hope left her.
Even sadness and despair now left her.
Her eyes went dark and she could feel resonance with the glass. The shell of memories around her began to crack and split open. She emerged from it and stood in the blinding light, and couldn't feel anything at all.
Like an ocean stained with oil, the memories of a cursed labyrinth and the memories she had brought with her all fell and muddled into the soothing glass around her. Most of them churned into a gray mass, some suddenly jutting up from the ground like spikes. She went still, and slowly looked over every shard, just... counting them. Even when memories came shooting up sharply near her eyes, she continued to count.
Eventually she lifted a finger, beckoning some of the shards toward her. And, with a simple thought, the fragments came together in the shape of a fragile butterfly. She commanded it into the sky, to reflect the world of white, and when it came down again to tell her what it had seen, with a simple thought she slowly tore off each of its wings, and let it fall into nothing. Then, she walked forward from the corrupted sea, willing each pillar of lost time that entered her path to explode and shatter.
---
Time passed. She changed.
She no longer sought to collect memories. She walked through the world mostly absently. She discovered things about it and about herself, but she had no ambitions.
Now she walked beside an old and crumbling building, twirling a parasol she had found in the ruins some day. Silently, a creature formed of glass reflecting bitter days glided down toward her from the sky. It resembled a glistening and jagged crow, and it was something she considered no more than a tool. After that day at the now-fallen tower, she'd become more in-tune with the chaotic Arcaea and was able to call upon things like this. In its own way, it whispered to her of places beyond her reach in the blinding white world. Glaring at it, she had it burst and fall apart, and she moved on.
These crows of hers sickened her with news. The world was empty, that's all they said. That she knew. She'd never find anyone else here.
She wanted to. She needed to. But, it was not because she hoped to have someone to share her fate with.
She needed to let this frustration out on something alive. She needed someone to hurt.
The ruin is as common a sight as any other, but the girl in light nonetheless pays it attention as she steps through.
She's been wondering what the ruins are and why they're there— wondering if this world she wanders has a past, or if its decimated landscape is only coincidental.
She feels she has to think about it, not to succumb to the bliss of ignorance. If she wants a reason, then it might help to know the world, too. Perhaps this is a reflection of another world?
She has seen things like it within the Arcaea, but that also makes her wonder if in this place there might be standing towers and buildings that are not in ruin. Maybe she’s only yet to see them...
This ruin seems like it was once large, grand. It must have been a beautiful place where many people came, she thinks. If it did have such a past, then it is a shame.
There is only her, now, moving through pews and broken candlesticks.
There is only her, and she blinks, seeing that there is in fact somebody else.
Somebody else stands still at her left, before a broken wall.
Once, she would have grinned happily, but carelessly at this person. As she is now, she looks at the shadow-covered girl in confusion, but certainly not without a fluttering, insuppressible feeling of elation.
Outside of a memory, here in the world and before her eyes, is a person. All this time she's walked alone, and here is somebody else: one other living, breathing person.
The other girl doesn't notice her. She is standing in place, holding her parasol, and sleeping. Her dark figure cuts so strongly against the rest of the world, which shines so bright in the distance, that she thinks this must be a dream or perhaps a waking memory.
She opens her mouth to speak, and the other girl opens her eyes to consciousness.
She who heralds sad and evil forgotten things opens her eyes and witnesses the changed and white-clad girl before her.
That breathing the light-bearer found so relieving stops short, and the dark girl squints, lips parted as if she means to question. But she swallows instead and raises her brow, tightening her grip of the handle.
Her own twisted elation flows out from her heart, just as unstoppable, but so much more eager. It climbs to her face, and the girl of chaos offers the girl of light an honest, irrepressible smile.
In the unwalled, unroofed church, known only by its skeleton chairs and white candles, the girl in black stands near the remaining old gate, looking at the person she's just met.
It's actually quite simple: she’s been upset for so long, and now a true flesh-and-blood person is finally in front of her. She isn't thrilled. She isn't even excited. The smile on her face is an effortless lie—but it's one she can't help but tell. It says to the white-clothed girl before her, "pleasure to meet you." It means nothing.
"What's your name?" she asks in a dry voice. Maybe, in the past, she'd have realized how long it had been since she'd last spoken.
"My... name? I... I'm not sure," replies the radiant girl. "Do you? Oh—know your own... name, I mean... "
She doesn't answer the question. "That's something..." are her only words as she looks off toward an ornate wall.
The girl in white gives a bothered expression.
This... was turning out to be a strange meeting. Though the one in black doesn't know it, the one in white is beginning to share the darker girl's lack of enthusiasm. Like a fire in a sudden chill wind, her hope flickers and wanes. Now she grows uncomfortable, anxious, and wary. A slight but unshakable atmosphere drifts between them, one that feels unmistakably off. To her, it seems as though their very meeting is something the world finds to be simply... "wrong". The ever-present glass, now scattered unevenly throughout and above the broken grounds, reflects that strange feeling.
Ordinarily, these shards would flock to them without their bidding: "happiness" to the girl in white, "tragedies" to the girl in black. Right now, every piece of glass in the air stands still. Perhaps half a hundred mirrors are quietly suspended around the girls, half-catching images of the empty place that surrounds them. When the girl in white tries to call out to them, they will not even waver. It unsettles her: happiness placed beside horror, equally glinting and equally motionless. The only piece that will follow her is the one she can hold—the one that set her free.
She stares hard at the shadow girl. "If we're in this together," she begins, leaning forward, "then what do you think about staying together? We... We could help each other, and maybe..."
She stops. The other girl is staring into the empty, canvas-like sky with a blank and uninformative expression. She doesn't seem to be listening, but in truth she has followed every word.
"Maybe... " the dark girl echoes. It's faint... After her reincarnation into misery, her soul itself had felt like a dull, grim abyss. However, when she heard this proposal, something inside her shimmered—very briefly and very weakly. However, as she is now, even something as tiny as that was able to pierce the shroud of frustration that had been endlessly choking her since she'd reawakened.
And the remnant of the girl she used to be, the Tairitsu who had first woken up in this world, rebelled against the prospect of "the end"—against the idea of giving up. She wanted a second chance.
But her halfhearted answer isn’t enough to inspire confidence in the girl standing opposite her. Their meeting remains careful, cautious. The Hikari who recently returned to her senses now knows that the world of Arcaea is far more than pretty—and far less than safe.
And yet the two girls will speak, with the hope that it will lead to something better.
"It would certainly be nice if we had names to share," says Tairitsu in a fraying voice. Her eyes are again beginning to lose the shine of life.
The other girl, Hikari, notices that with some discomfort. "Yes, I can't say I like to think about it: not having any memories in a world filled with them," she admits.
At the moment, they sit upon the same pew, though not close. They've gone to what was once the front row, and a few steps in front of them lead up to a wide, flat floor. The girl in white is slouched, watching her new acquaintance with worry painting her gaze. The girl in black is examining the empty place in front of them, the sky, the dead and distant grandiose architecture— but she does so seemingly without concern or interest.
While watching, she begins to speak unprompted. "This glass. Do you know a name for it?"
"Huh? Oh... Well, for whatever reason, I know the name 'Arcaea'."
"Same as me," says Tairitsu, now looking Hikari's way. "So, how are we different?"
Hikari offers an apologetic smile. "I don't know," she says, "aside from our difference in looks."
"Let's find out, then. What kind of memories do you see in the glass?"
"Almost only pleasant ones."
Tairitsu sighs. "Then we're opposites..." she remarks bitterly, looking to her feet. "Let's say we're the only two walking around this place. If that's true, our opposition could matter a great deal."
"You don't see happy memories through the Arcaea?" asks Hikari, leaning slightly toward her conversation partner. "I'm sorry..."
"...That's just how it is," says the other girl. For a short while they remain silent, until Tairitsu speaks again. "But from what you've said... I suspect even your pleasant memories haven't resulted in a happy life for you here. Well? Am I correct?"
To this, Hikari nods. "I don't mean to make it sound as though I've had it rough since waking up, but... You see, I once gathered enough pieces that they could cover the sky. When I did, that new sky almost killed me... I felt like the light was slowly eroding my mind... I think it was mainly my own fault, to be honest."
They both feel it's best to be honest.
After Hikari tells of her naive and dangerous journey bathed in light, Tairitsu coldly recounts her tragic struggles through maelstroms of dark. The two are certainly different in quite a few ways, but one definite commonality becomes clear between them: a want of sense in a senseless world. The world around them may be beautiful, but it has also been cruel.
Hikari has resolved herself, but it wasn't long ago that her very "self" had been threatened by this strange, unfeeling place. For Tairitsu, it has left her scarred: persistent, panging compulsions toward violence and wrath continue to roll up from within her like tides. Even throughout their discussions here, despite her desire to be amicable, smothering each urge from her breast has been no easy feat. This living, breathing person beside her is too enticing a target to release her frustrations on. The girl in white doesn't fail to notice how the girl in black's hold on her umbrella periodically tightens into a trembling, aggravated grip.
It hasn't been easy—a fact that holds true for the both of them.
But they continue to fight.
"I think I just... I really wanted to meet somebody else," Tairitsu reveals. "Even... perhaps a few months ago, that may have been all I really wanted. However... ever since I stepped out of that black shell, I've found it difficult to hold on to such an innocent desire. I just can't muster it. When my chest isn’t feeling empty, I can't muster anything in it that isn't vile and wicked impulse. Disgusting, broken thing..." She looks at Hikari. "Even now, I keep thinking about how much I want to hurt you."
"That's fine..." says the other girl. "Maybe I'd feel that same way if I’d gone through everything that you did. But I don't think you’re right about one thing. I don’t think your heart is as broken as you feel."
Tairitsu meets her eyes, as if asking how that could be.
"Look—you're holding back," explains Hikari, "even now. That tells me that even after everything, you're a very good person—still. You’re strong." She smiles and stands from her seat. "You're a lot stronger than me," she says, casting a momentary glance into the brilliant sky.
"I was rescued," she continues, meeting Tairitsu's eyes once more. "You rescued yourself."
The shimmer inside the dark girl's chest becomes a faint glow, and an ache pulses through her. That's not true, she thinks. It isn't that simple, she thinks. She failed, and the old her died that day when the labyrinth collapsed. She'd felt nothing after that, and when feeling came back to her, it was nothing but contempt. When she’d met this girl, even, it made her want to do nothing more than take a blade and run her through.
No, she hasn’t rescued herself. However... perhaps she hasn't simply been seeking someone out to harm. Perhaps the truth is that she’s been awaiting something impossible to give her one last ray of hope. Hikari is too meek and unsure to directly comfort her, but her presence and lack of aggression signal this: she may be that last, fledgling ray.
What pains Tairitsu's heart is that very innocent realization.
Her posture weakens. Hikari notices and moves to see if she can do something. But she is still unsure, and so she is ultimately unable to reach out for the other girl. She stands before Tairitsu with her arms half-raised, and in a few moments the girl in black stands by herself. Hikari drops her hands, and takes a step back. Around them, the glass sways with their movement, and one in particular begins to shine a bit differently from the others. In its reflection is something familiar, yet impossible.
It is a vision that, surely, nobody could have seen:
the briefest wicked flicker of a most strange and anomalous memory.
They stand apart, Tairitsu holding a hand over her chest, fingers clenched and struggling as she takes heavy breaths. She is reinvigorated, in no small part thanks to the girl in white. Hikari has given her one precious, final reassurance. It does not have to be the end. One last path out of this white and blinding hell still exists.
An open, albeit weak, smile cuts along her face as she exhales. "Let's do something," she says. "Let's figure out this stupid, absurd world."
"I-It's not that stupid," says Hikari in mild protest, smiling herself with just as little strength. She isn't entirely positive about the other girl, but she can tell at least one thing: despite appearances, she isn’t evil. Quite the opposite, it seems. If anything, that alone is reason enough to join hands with this new potential ally. A "good" person... is not exactly how she'd readily describe herself, after all.
However, while she thinks this, Tairitsu’s mood turns. "What makes you say that?" asks the panting girl, though her delivery of the question sounds much more like an accusation. Her eyes are almost hollow as they bore coldly into her opposite. "You might understand it even better than me. This is the kind of place that would break a girl for the audacity of surrounding herself in pleasures and joys." She stands up straight, calms her breath, and steadies her gaze, bringing the hand over her chest to the handle of her parasol. "That's unconscionable. You don't agree?"
Her strength of conviction puts the other girl down for a moment, but Hikari is no longer one who is incapable of any caring. Gathering a modicum of confidence, she stands up straight herself, and delivers her explanation.
"We're alive," she says, "and if a world can permit that, then it can't be the worst thing."
"Hah...?" The other girl's glare intensifies. "No... If a world can permit life, only to plague that life with ills and grief, then that world is not just."
"W-Well, maybe not, but—"
"But?" demands Tairitsu.
"But that's shortsighted! What is it that you want to do, exactly?"
"Destroy everything. The world, the glass, all of it. I'll find a way. It's only fair, right?" she explains as a matter of fact. "I would think you'd resonate with the idea. What has this world been for you other than an expansive prison?"
"Destroy it...? Even... Even if you could, it would only end everything! This is the only world we know of that exists for certain, isn't it? If we somehow destroyed it, could we not simply destroy ourselves as well? Would you... You’d rather die than live here? Why, that's... that's ridiculous!"
"No, that's fine," says Tairitsu simply.
Hikari, not expecting that answer, falls silent. Tairitsu's words were too frightening, and far too sad.
In her silence, Tairitsu continues her interrogation. "Do you have some other idea? Some other plan?"
"No... I don't. I wanted to find—to find a plan with you," admits the other girl, and dismay is clear in her tone.
And Tairitsu, in her recent recovery, recognizes this. It makes her pause. It had been too easy to lash out at this new acquaintance. She knew she wasn't being reasonable. Indeed, having just found herself with burgeoning hope again, she could clearly see how cold she’d been until their meeting. And yet, when faced with another’s hope, she'd attacked. Truly, was she that petty? In the past, this conviction of hers has never brought her satisfaction or peace, much less resolution. No, her willfulness has only ever led her down a dark, thorny path stained with gloom. With this in mind, she extinguishes the fire rising in her heart that had been so sure of its need to burn. If she wants to take this girl's hand... she cannot reject the ideas it holds.
"I... I'm sorry," she apologizes, her passion now fully relinquished. She lowers her head for a moment. "I... feel the same. I want to work to find something new as well."
Hikari regains a bit of her self-assurance, which had been brought low before Tairitsu. She tells her new friend, "It's alright. You've had a time here I could probably never understand."
But that righteous fire in Tairitsu's heart had been just enough.
Ultimately, it had only burned for a short moment, like a flash— but it was enough to rile a dormant shard in the flock of glass around them.
It awakens and, on its own, begins to drift down to where they are, still unseen.
"Don't lose hope," says the girl in light. "Things can always get better."
A shard, shimmering with faded color, comes directly between them. It catches both their attention—but it will only show its memory to the one clad in black.
The girl adorned in shadows peers through the broken window into another time. Her smile returns.
What a fool she was. Not the girl in white, no. Her.
The vision in the glass is no memory.
It cannot be, of course. What she’s seeing is a future: a future that she should have expected, the fool, the idiot dreamer.
The glass shows an unmistakable image of herself, run through with a jagged pillar of glass, the wound seeming to sear her clothing and body apart in a blistering, pale, and consuming flame.
The blank, barren lands of Arcaea stretch out far behind her, and before her, coaxing the pillar with a lifted hand and a blinding, fiery glow around her shoulders, is a girl clad in white, a very familiar one, though her expression is hidden from this vantage.
It is the girl standing before her now. The one she has only just met. This is no memory: it's a vision of what will come to be.
Faced with this, Tairitsu retreats into herself, and confronts the one truth she was determined to ignore.
Her conviction didn't matter. She will never find anything good for her in this world.
That last hope is dyed black now, drowned in despair, forgotten.
What else would happen? What was her hope for? Idiocy. Tiresome, blind idiocy.
Tiresome, awful, sick of it. Sick of this, sick of herself, sick of everything in this never-ending, mocking play.
Miracles? No...
She'd said it herself. This world is hell. And she knows this, from the fractured ideas of worlds dead and gone: even angels can one day fall and awaken to demonic form.
The girl in light is just like that. In a turn final and damning, what was once a mere pit inside her chest is clawed and spread. It wastes, decays all through in an instant, leaving instead a cold and endless chasm.
As the darkness within it creeps out to coat her insides and choke her thoughts, she sees Hikari very clearly.
Sees her gaze darting to the shard—sees the panic, the clear knowledge in her eyes.
The girl knows. And now she can't face her opposite's stare, won't say a word though she sees clearly.
That anger twists into hate and loathing, spilling over and arriving in her eyes.
Wicked betrayer; wicked, wicked place. She tightens her grasp on her parasol, looking past the shard to Hikari, who is standing still.
Frozen in place, surely, because her ill intentions have been exposed. It's worth laughing about.
Tairitsu's eyes narrow, and she excises the remains of those burgeoning emotions the girl had begun to cultivate within her.
With finality she is emptied, and with that, she knows what she must do.
But this mirror is still one-way, and thus her anger as well. Hikari is unable to see within this peculiar shard at all.
Unaware, she can only watch in confusion as Tairitsu's countenance drains more and more of color.
A sense of danger wells up in her, and though she can't understand why, she can feel it there. In fact, shadows now seem to be crawling up from the earth, light perishing at their touch.
Darkness nears her, and her breathing shortens. She takes a step back. She almost can't believe it. She certainly doesn't want to.
Even after surviving the harrowing ordeal, that blinding light sky, something terrible faces her again without reason.
But still, she had survived it. And now she knows for certain that survival may not allow compromise.
With this thought in heart and mind, Hikari makes a damning mistake.
She reaches for the one piece of glass, the one that gave her comfort and direction in the midst of her lowest moment.
When she raises it to her chest, the hairs on the back of Tairitsu's neck rise up as well.
Fear pulsing through her, along with a conviction to never meet with tragedy again, Tairitsu closes the distance to Hikari in an instant, without warning, ready to once and for all firmly grab hold of her life.
If they knew each other’s names, if they even knew their own, would that change how they had felt from then until now? "Light" and "Conflict"... Names so lofty, in a world so bizarre, so outlandish... Would they have considered the meanings, and found different paths?
Or would any divergence, any turn or taking of a choice, any circumstance or odd spin of fortune’s wheel still have set the two girls into inevitable dissent and discord?
Hikari, who still does not know her name, would be unsure. Tairitsu, likewise, is however damned with fateful knowledge, and knows dissent and discord between them will always be.
Nothing will change. Nothing would.
The girl in white and the girl in black cannot reconcile.
This, all of this, may only lead to—
"Ah!"
Hikari’s voice escapes her when the blade of her foe comes. She raises her hand at once, and with it, glass strikes against glass. It holds, it shines—unbroken, and in her piece Hikari can see her own pale face, agonized and frightened.
A heartfelt conversation has led to this—to a heart-pounding clash.
She takes a single step in retreat as her body bends from the force of the other girl’s strength. Her skin goes cold; she finds she can’t breathe.
She realizes there, looking deep into the now-close eyes of the girl attacking her that her being attacked is not the source of the fright clawing and gripping at her insides. It is not that, nor the fact she can hardly resist as the push of Tairitsu’s blade inches her own nearer and nearer to her taut neck.
No. The sweat in her palm, the breath trapped in her lungs, it’s all because the person before her— the girl who had felt to her a tragic and sorrowful figure only moments before—seems now so utterly changed.
She is not the person she’d spoken to like a fellow and friend. In fact, she doesn’t seem like a person at all. Her stare is so purposeful, her jaw is unmoving, and those fingers of hers, clutched so tightly they’re now stained red—
Nothing but a beast garbed in black. A shade, brimming with malice.
They have both seen and felt the throes of battle within near countless memories, but vicarious recollections are no substitute for a genuine struggle between life and death.
Their impromptu blades meet again, entirely without grace. Tairitsu’s strikes stay vicious and direct, while Hikari’s movements are desperate, forever a hair away from a harmful, fatal slip. She only defends; she does nothing more. If she could stop this without violence, she’d do so in a heartbeat.
Their flurried tussle is hampered by the peculiar surroundings of the broken church: lamps and benches placed under a sky. The two move between the aisles. Tairitsu darts toward Hikari’s feet, but her target remains planted. Hikari lifts the piece of glass that had once served to rescue her, bracing for the rising cut.
But a cut does not come. Instead it is that black parasol: tearing up quickly through the air and cruelly into her waiting guard.
"Gh...! Hah...!" she groans, panting. It feels like fire has swallowed her hand, and her small finger she swears it must have been bent. Her anomalous piece flies from her grasp, and as soon as she is without a weapon, the pained girl withdraws immediately.
To her own surprise, Hikari lands after her first leap with no waver, no fall. She leaps back again, her dress fluttering, and she finds herself standing atop the pews just in time to avoid another coming blow. So close... Can this not be ended with words?
Even if it could, she can’t even find a single word to say. Even if she could, she isn’t given any chance to speak. And even when, blessed, she is afforded both; gaining enough distance from her pursuer and time alone to begin preparing her voice—
a new blade shoots out from nowhere—
it finds her cheek, swift—
and, just like that, it cuts, glancing across her skin.
Hikari loses her breath again. Her hand flies to the left side of her face. She withdraws it, seeing that an unfortunately now-familiar color has tainted her fingers—her palm. Once more... she goes cold.
Still falling back, she grips both of her arms, trying to quell their trembling. She swallows the saliva filling her mouth.
And, quietly, she pleads:
"Stop..."
And only a bit louder:
"Please, stop..."
Another shard of glass drives through the air like an arrow, and she avoids it though she was given only a second for its approach. It goes past where her upper arm, its target, had been.
And she shouts, "Please stop!"
"I know what you want to do."
Hikari stops instead, and in a moment after Tairitsu lands on a row of pews five away from hers.
"What are you? A demon invented by the world?" Tairitsu asks.
"What!?"
"Are you just another fragment from a dead place, come to hound me?"
"I... No!" Hikari yells.
"You don’t know what you are, either..." Tairitsu mutters.
There, Hikari notices: a number of pieces of Arcaea are darting behind and before the other girl like patrolling wasps. She eyes them warily, and Tairitsu continues to speak, voice dipped long in woe. "But, if you found me," she says, "that means you can’t be anything good."
And Hikari, recalling what this girl had told her of her past, is brought still upon realizing that she can perfectly understand what that means.
"I’m not... that..." she mumbles in defense. Another bullet of glass comes, shooting past her ear.
She shuts her eyes, forcing tears out of them.
If she is to survive...
...she cannot give up.
Eyes downcast, Hikari calls a new piece of glass to her hand, not even realizing how strange it is that she can touch it now.
A troop of shards also joins her behind her back.
She lifts her head.
Like this, she once more faces the girl she wishes she could befriend.
They erupt from the gate, crashing through it as if it were a pane instead of metal. Shards of memory whirl around them in chaos as the girl in black lunges at the girl in white.
Pushed back, and never pushing forth; though she has chosen to fight earnestly, there is still a hope in Hikari’s heart that this does not have to end in bloodshed. Yet still, even if her sway over the glass is not nearly as deft, even if she is entirely unpracticed, she truly won’t give in.
Glass shields her back in a slapdash, patchwork pattern, constantly shifting to stop Tairitsu’s roundabout spears from ever hitting their marks. Hikari’s eyes are sharper than that glass, ever vigilant to pin the dark girl down; to end this peacefully, through force.
Nothing about it is simple, however.
Now outside the cathedral-shell, open on the misshapen roads and hills of Arcaea, Tairitsu is free. Keeping close, her movements sweep and her glass flies wide. So doggedly pursued, Hikari finds all she can do is cling to her desperate defense in preservation of her own life.
Her pulse is quick, and the sweat that had begun in her hands is now permeating her entire body with an awful chill. Smashing an invisible knife against an invisible dagger, crashing a swift shard into a shining lance flying true before it can meet her throat.
Blow for blow, for blow, for blow, she is made to realize that their battle has gone from a tussling mess of violence to a vicious clash of two formidable and absolute forces. She cannot match Tairitsu’s strength, but with her wits and will kept about her, she can dampen its impact.
To the torrent of emotions before her, she will be the composed counter: the stone weathered, but never broken; and she will settle this.
They’re even, each holding down her position as points and rays of light shine from the smooth faces of their chosen Arcaea.
They remain even, in fact, until Tairitsu shifts her focus. Instead of aiming past the other girl’s guard, with no tell she decides to redirect and send down her flock on Hikari’s right side.
The impact is massive. With an explosion of glints and glamor, it forces Hikari to stumble down to a knee. Then and there, glaring darkly, Tairitsu lifts and points her black umbrella, its tip revealing the intended destination: the front of her opponent’s skull.
She spares no hesitation. The strike comes in an instant.
Hikari shuts her eyes. Tairitsu’s brow twists.
The thrust is stopped, but not by either of them. Instead, it is something between them.
Between them, that anomalous shard, previously forced from Hikari’s hand, stands still in the air, steady as a wall, immovable against the umbrella-spike. Hikari opens her eyes and stares, disbelieving.
"Eh!?"
"That’s..."
Tairitsu lifts her other hand, a swirl of glass rising up around it.
Not hesitating either, Hikari thrusts her hand against the anomaly, and every free piece of glass surrounding them sways for just a moment before a razor-sharp rainfall begins.
The falling glass, now under Hikari’s command, begins to dart everywhere and every way without order. Though the shards are hers to control, she cannot grasp how to truly use them for a little while.
Tairitsu, aggravation and concern plain on her face, retreats. Hikari is thus left hidden in a swarm of edged memories, crouched and still as she concentrates on her newfound power.
Tairitsu surveys the land, looking to the sky and to Hikari’s storm. She holds a hand up over her head, and thinks: to fight a storm, one must summon a deluge.
Thus, from distant cities and white mountains, the glass of a thousand and more memories are immediately pulled by her call. Unlike Hikari’s untamed flurry, Tairitsu’s flock is a pattern, immaculately composed.
Behind the girl in black, the glass assumes the shape of a giant rose, its petals falling one by one in swirling descents, slicing cleanly through the squall shielding the girl in white.
And Hikari—now standing, though afraid—can only respond in patterned kind.
Bloom after bloom and chain after chain follow in their maddening, frantic, distant combat. From miles off, it seems things are exactly as Tairitsu wished: a clash of two storms. Rain fighting rain, "lightning" flashing throughout, and their undulating "clouds" joining the fray by bursting, spiraling, and flowing in an explosive display—a sparkling tumult of furious natural powers.
And beneath the whirling and silver floods stand two girls, each with a blaze in her heart.
Each avoid volleys of shards by mere millimeters, and they begin to run as they fight rather than holding their ground. Rushing through Arcaea’s plains, they cast glass artilleries and skid along the shining earth as their improvised bullets fall and scatter like shrapnel. Glass pursues, glass cuts off their routes, glass aims for feet in an attempt to pin the enemy in place.
It is madness: frenetic madness, chaotic yet constant. Their movements soon become nearly even, steady and regular.
Evade, and fire, always.
Within this overwhelming row of beauty and violence, they once again find themselves evenly matched.
And thus it is Tairitsu’s turn to gain the upper hand.
Hell from her birth to her first steps—no, even first steps were denied to her, weren't they? She'd ventured outside of where she'd first awakened, and not long after her journey was abruptly and mercilessly stopped by a torrent of misery and tragedy. Ever since then, those two things had been doggedly following her.
It's a joke.
I'm a good person, she tells herself.
I am not these dark clothes I was born with. I am not these dark memories I am tormented by.
I am not a person who is "evil", I am an ordinary person tortured by an evil world.
Without reason, without sense. A completely, horribly, cruel and merciless world. A nightmare one can't wake from.
And the ending, for me, is a pathetic death.
...
That sort of thing, that kind of thinking, has brought tears to her eyes so many times before.
Now, it's over. No matter what, it's over.
With that thought in mind, while she grazes past glass sent at her by the girl she is trying to kill, she notes the presence of something strange.
A familiar, grotesque presence she'd felt minutes before this. The feeling like reality itself has lost correctness. An impossible condition made manifest.
That anomalous feeling is just beside her cheek.
She looks to her right, and the violet-tinged and grossly warped glass of an anomaly comes into her sight. It is only a moment, only a whim.
Yet it tells everything.
As expected of the aberrant shard, it does not hold simple memory—but beyond expectation, it holds impossible answers.
In an instant, as soon as the shine of its surface has met with her eyes—
—with a sensation that the inside of her skull has been bathed in light, almost full knowledge of the world, of near everything that ever and absolutely was, unlocks vivid understanding in her mind.
Their names. Their pasts. This world. Its purpose. Her: "Hikari". Her: "Tairitsu". "Eto" and "Kou"... "Saya" and "Lethe"... "Luna", and—names; countless names.
Even facts of other worlds, destinations of other travelers, ends, beginnings, and elaborated reasons too—all of it.
And the truth, the whole truth, that—
Before her, Hikari stops briefly, noticing the obvious shift in her aggressor’s demeanor. There’s a change. There’s fear.
So, that’s it. That’s everything.
Tairitsu glimpsed the truth of this cage dubbed "reality". With that truth, she’s claimed power. And with both, knowing everything... Knowing everything, what exactly would change?
Her feelings curdle and churn. The endless bitterness packed in her chest flows out of it and courses through her—onto her tongue, into her teeth. Her lips twist into a morose and bitterly maudlin grin. Morose and maudlin, but undoubtedly, strangely, mirthful.
Laugh, girl. Call forth a Tempest.
The path here was blazed by the worst recollections of mankind, and what remains at the end is, and ever will be, the end.
The illusion of an even match shatters, and with its destruction Hikari’s hope finally begins to waver.
Without warning, Hikari’s storm flies to Tairitsu’s side, cloaking the other girl in darkness and light. As they surround her, her eyes shut for a moment—and when they open again, those countless memories unfurl behind her as six gargantuan wings.
Now hanging in the sky in blatant defiance of nature, she lays her sharpened eyes on Hikari.
A simple look reveals to Hikari that the path to victory has been nearly closed. She had thought the girl a beast before, and now she sees her as what she is: above, and nigh impossible.
Glass rises up behind her like a gigantic sheet: a skylight, shimmering and clear.
Below, Hikari has little to nothing to fight what will come. At least, that’s how it feels, but... No... The girl in black does not have everything. This can be survived. It can! Hikari takes up twenty memories as the window to the heavens breaks.
At first, only a handful of shards hurtle down at her, but they do so rather... slowly. It disarms her. She starts to think, "this is possible." As though the elaborate display a moment ago was only that: a display.
As before, Hikari shields herself, quickly blocking the falling glass with unshakable focus, her eyes darting this way and that to keep measure of the flitting, brilliant crowd. It makes her confident—she misses nothing. She allows herself a smile.
At the least, she’ll be able to run from this. At the least, this won’t be the end.
A single piece then flies to the middle of her chest, its delivery interpretable only as a message. It had flown faster than any other piece of Arcaea she’d ever seen. The girl above speaks to her through this glass shard: "Enough games."
"And enough wasting time. Give up—and die."
The shard cuts through her dress, and Hikari looks into Tairitsu’s eyes. The girl in black is smiling now, all the sadness and anger gone from her face. And it’s the most frightful thing she’s ever witnessed in her life and in her memories.
The shard falls out without having reached her skin.
The broken pane whirls into a side-winding tornado. Its mouth barrels down onto her, slicing fabric and skin, but otherwise simply passes by. In this is one more message: before the end, the girl in black wants her enemy to know where this began.
Fear overwhelms her. In this riptide of glass, rushing and cutting past her in powerful amounts, turning up and swirling as if pulled by a great wind, she is made absolutely afraid. So petrified, she stands fast and watches.
She stands, watching memories of a filthy world.
Memories of pain, betrayal, envy.
Death, suffering, and decay.
Dark. They are only dark. Wherever it is these shards reflect... she sees little light there. Whatever small sparks she sees fade away in an instant. This is what the other girl described to her.
The vile reflections of places gone that had been tormenting her since her awakening— she would now use them to torment another.
Glass hooks under Hikari’s sleeves and stabs into her skirt. They drag her upward, up into a domain where she can no longer stand.
Tears fill her eyes as an emotion fills her heart: the emotion that comes when recognizing imminent death. This is not fear. "Terror" is too little to describe it.
Desperation? Hope? An awful, arresting feeling.
Her own memories run through her head. It’s as if she’s searching for one that will stand out— one that will inform her that she’s come across something like this in the past, and this is how to escape.
But nothing comes.
The black storm rages over torso, cutting with little mercy. Pure torturous intent, coming closer and closer, as if the intent alone would inflict a fatal wound upon her flesh...
It is unbelievable.
The situation is so far beyond anything she’s ever borne witness to, whether in her own memories of those of others. This disgusting blend of facing the unknown, yet knowing precisely what awaits her on the other side...
Horror. Not fear. Horrific understanding.
There is no control over glass for her here. Something, anything—an anomaly—a miracle. If something like that appeared, she could make it out. She could step away. She could live.
If there was ever a time, it is now, and here.
The ground below bursts, as if the world itself is rising up to join the hunt. It is now. Now! A shard will come to save her!
She prays with all her being for the will of the world to fly to her side and spare her!
For some mechanism of fate, for the wheel of fortune itself, to produce a "god" that will grant her victorious power!
Beg for it. Hope for it. Hold that piece which once brought you salvation close to your bleeding chest once again. That symbol of rescue, of redemption... It will surely—!
Another shard pierces her body, a hateful stake driving at her heart. It does not reach through, does not strike the heart itself. But its message—a final message—does. One last message from the girl tormenting her: a simple, merciless message.
"No."
The almost lethal blade in Hikari’s breast holds the memory of a vast and all-consuming fire.
So close to death, her heart thumps, reminding her she’s alive.
Her pupils shrink to points.
Like that memory of flame, her body burns. It burns with a fluid, vicious heat. Pain. Agony. Blood—
Her savior shard falls from her hand as she reaches that hand for the terrible wound.
And then, a jagged piece of glass whirls out of the tempest and finds the back of that hand.
Sound escapes her.
Run twice through, her breath has gone as well.
Her gaze is steady on the trio of unthinkable sights before her.
This reality, horrible and unimaginable as it is, nonetheless "is".
And now, instincts begin to lurch, old and forgotten, in the wake of those thoughts.
They haven’t yet taken hold, those discarded yet practical sensibilities. They have only stirred. She is still afraid. She clings to hope by a little finger.
Somehow, she manages to pull on ten memories to aid her, striking out the needle-glass that had been keeping her in the sky.
Ingloriously she drops to the now-deformed ground, her chosen pieces afterward hovering over her crumpled, aching body. Oddly enough, she finds herself smiling now, too.
She pushes herself up with her left hand. For all the enmity evident in Tairitsu’s assault, she had taken too much pleasure in inflicting torture on her enemy’s body, rather than inflicting any sort of mortal blow.
Even the shard now in Hikari’s chest, so near to her beating heart and flickering with horrid, wrathful flame, did not do the deed.
Maybe it wasn’t intended to. Regardless, Hikari is still alive.
She feebly sends forth an attack, which is quickly swatted down by the girl flying above her. That girl now looks worse than any described devil Hikari has heard of in old memories.
A veritable dark queen, ruling night in a world of day. That ecstatic, yet obviously empty smile...
Seeing this, Hikari can feel it: how her own feelings are beginning to slip away.
Stark reality is sobering her more and more, and rather than dread it, as she had been only minutes—no, seconds ago, she begins instead to register each fact present to the situation.
Slowly—or, as slowly as Tairitsu will allow. Her attack is unending.
Shifting her body left and right, guarding her weakest areas with what few memories remain to her, Hikari examines their field of battle.
It has been torn asunder, and now looks more a wasteland than ever before. Ripped, ruined all through, like a town in the aftermath of military bombardment. The glass around them is uncountable. The power Tairitsu has is immeasurable.
Hikari herself is weak. Not only in terms of strange abilities and control over glass—her body has been run ragged. She doesn’t have much left before she falls from weariness alone.
Perhaps she could find an anomaly, but say she couldn’t. What then? She couldn’t, so "then" is "now".
So? How do you go on when the way is completely obstructed? Should you...? Go on?
Glass strikes her shoulder, shining with light. Hikari stares into its reflection. So, the other girl can control light too, now. Well...
She decides to think over what she’s observed once again. She recognizes that she could die here, or she could not. These are the two possibilities, and knowing that, she finds herself in acceptance.
This could be the end.
In a moment, this could all be over. And while she’d rather it not, she can’t help but echo the idea: "So it goes."
After thought, hope, and feeling... determination is the last to fade from her.
This.
This...
This is not... a laying down of arms. No...
When she pulls the shard from her hand, her eyes briefly dazzled from the white flames licking up and searing closed her wound, she does not press it to her neck.
She would certainly prefer to live... but she would not mind. She wouldn’t mind, with the odds being so impossible.
Hikari stands in the wind of blades, barely a shard in her employ. She can’t discern Tairitsu’s face anymore. Her domain has become pandemonium, and seeing through it is too difficult.
Eventually, while trudging through the flying glass, Hikari notices that some segments of the whirlwind are reversing in fits and starts. The bizarre movement is so unnatural she genuinely wonders if the girl above her is doing it on purpose.
It’s reminiscent, she thinks, of a skipping video. It isn’t any better or worse than the bullet curtains she’s been facing so far, but it is quite peculiar.
The earth quakes.
She utters a "Wha...?" as she feels it. The earth, quaking? Here?
It could be that the ground will break again. Thinking that, Hikari shields her face and chest with her arms. When nothing comes, she remains curious about the phenomenon.
If it wasn’t the girl above her, Tairitsu wouldn’t have noticed it—after all, she was flying now.
More of the blade storm is shifting and roiling in rough, rigid movements now. She decides to throw a crew of glass the other girl’s way again. It passes easily through the waves again, but then it suddenly turns very bright and breaks away.
The shards don’t break themselves... They vanish, and the space where they were looks as if it is cracked. Once she sees this—once she recognizes what she’s seeing—everything around her enters stasis.
In this instant, the obsidian-glass which had been flying all around her is stuck fast within reality. To her, it looks absolutely beautiful.
A smile crosses her lips without her wanting. "How pleasant," she whispers, chuckling to herself. Something so beautiful here: where she could soon find her grave. It’s so bizarre that it is... to laugh. So she does. She makes earnest yet sad, dry laughter...
But as motion gradually returns to the objects around her, and to the one above... Above... The sky...?
A fracture splits across it. It widens, carving a shape out of heaven, and that immense segment begins to plummet. Even more bizarrely, hundreds of images flash across it, blinking rapidly from one to the next.
The world begins to fall into strange ruin. As Hikari bears witness to this, more satisfaction rises to her smile. The storm is still slow, the image—too fantastic.
The sky—the genuine sky, not an artificial one—is falling, stopping, and falling again, as if grand pieces of a celestial puzzle are being moved and switched by some befuddled god.
And... watching it... her smile begins to gradually recede.
The look in her eyes grows colder, her breath slows, and the faint glimmer of excitement provided by this cataclysmic view is snuffed out, replaced with objectivity. Her opinion on the disaster destroying all is delivered in a single word.
With a little appreciation, in a mostly hollow tone, she says, "Delightful." As if the word has any meaning. As if the fall has any meaning.
For a moment, she was remembered. That was enough.
The world bowed to the girl marked by red, as white fire rose from her body. Now cloaked in flames that will not burn without her say, she wonders why this has come to pass. Her foe was stopped. The battle, for a moment, was stopped. And there is more. Above there is more.
All because she has touched on what once was; when faced with the thought of dying, she was not afraid.
However, dying was also the last thing that she wanted. And still, now, she refuses to die.
Now, in a valley of nothing, beneath a sundered sky, her blood falls but does not strike the ground. Only beyond here can a single tower be seen: the bell tower of a hollow church, jutting there between the divide as if to mark it for those below.
The conclusion approaches now. It was expected.
Was it fate?
Now, there is starlight in the heavens. The veil is rent, and the darkness behind it is glittering. Is it within her notice? Does that matter? The pictures have slowed, and stopped. The fall of the firmament has slowed, and stopped. Her blood is hot. Her eyes are dull.
And Tairitsu knows: despite their dullness, those eyes promise "demise". She knows. She swallows what little spit dampens her otherwise dried-out tongue and throat. She meets those eyes. Wordlessly, she vows to defy them.
In Hikari's heart, "emptiness" threatens. However, it isn't the emptiness that Tairitsu can view through the silent girl's stare. "Will" lurks, but not in weakness. There is a sincere will to survive, unkillable in Hikari's soul. It will not perish. Wordlessly, she vows to live.
Tairitsu moves forth like a dragon.
The world holds her back, and still, like an untamable beast, she resists. Is this atmosphere? It is force— ripping at her skin, and yet she drives forward still, to the true beast standing on the earth. That beast turns her head.
The world seems to turn on its side, and at once Tairitsu meets the ground. Glass falls in a tumultuous clatter, splashing and scattering and flying out. She cannot feel her arm for a moment, but forces it to return to recognition. She drags herself onto her knees, and spots a white tongue of flame flashing through the shards beneath her. She flies backward then.
The earth is set ablaze.
The world turns again.
Her stomach lurches with motion, though she soon stops and stands still.
And with no warning, before her stands the girl in white, a scarf of flames of the same the same pale color burning over shoulders.
Once again, Tairitsu makes to retreat.
Glass flies up—and down—to ensnare her, forming a great prism around her body. Her body trembles once before not moving at all.
And so again, she looks into Hikari's eyes. Hikari does not look back. She looks only into the cage she's made.
And, she whispers something, but...
...it is nothing that the girl in black wants to hear.
Tairitsu's grasp shatters through the rough glass, aimed at Hikari's open neck. Hikari lifts her eyes to the hand.
Seven colors ring out, and the flow of time goes still.
Hikari can feel everything trying to tear away from her.
In this frozen moment she can feel herself wanting to stop. From that feeling, frustration threatens to build.
Because the sentiment asking for her to stop all this is not kindness, but lack of care: a frightening and deeply seated apathy. This is what she always had. This profound indifference—she must have felt it before.
Within her soul, two wills are at war.
I can't, she thinks.
I have to, she thinks.
And these thoughts—they fight against those building sentiments of "should" and "shouldn't".
But she feels a fire flickering in the depths of her heart; yes, her true wishes are much too strong to lose.
Hikari stands before Tairitsu, whose hand is out and whose face is contorted with rage. Around them, a rainbow has been torn apart and is bleeding through the air. Tairitsu cannot move. Hikari cannot move.
Inside of her, hope asks, "When you bring back time, can't you just push her far away?" Her will-to-be considers it.
That's fair, she thinks. Hope can't be a worthless thing.
The world begins to move again, and Tairitsu is sent, in an instant, behind that distant chapel's gates. Her impassioned grasp closes around one of its bars, and glass comes to help her tear the metal construct from its hinges. At once, she realizes what game the beast has played. She takes hold of whatever other glass can be found around her, and sends it all to the air, each flickering and each reflecting. She finds Hikari soon, and then she moves the earth.
Things twist beneath that earth, and within the world's fabric, as Hikari plants down her foot in quiet rebellion. In a sudden but frightening way, she realizes that Tairitsu still has the aim—and the means— to take away all of this. So, to hope?
She chuckles.
She already knew that hope was gone.
The space between them warps. Which of them asked for this, neither can tell. They face each other behind the broken gate, within the shadow of that cathedral.
And, with a smile, Hikari repeats herself. She tells Tairitsu, easily, "I said... you don't have to do this."
It is nothing that the girl in black wants to hear.
"What 'has' to be done? Are you joking?" says Tairitsu.
"You don't know why you're here, do you? Does anyone, other than me?"
"What has to be done? You're right: nothing has to happen. Nothing in this place matters, and you... you don't even understand. You don't know anything."
"I've kept it up long enough. Do you think I care to be here? You know, honestly, maybe I'm the 'hero' of this worthless story. Maybe I'm its 'villain'."
"Whether I am, whether I'm not... Honestly, whatever; it doesn't really matter. Maybe... you ought to die."
"You're right. I don't have to do this."
"Neither did you."
...The words, pointed as they are, seem to roll out of her like smooth and heavy stones, bowling over and through Hikari before her.
To Hikari, it sounds only like insanity. She feels now like she and the other girl have been connected... but all that's in the other girl's mind is madness.
Tairitsu knows that her mind is madness. And what of it, she thinks? It has been driven there. There is nothing to lose and nothing to gain.
She speaks one final time, saying, "If you want to live, then kill me."
"But you should know this first..."
"I want to die."
Her words are sincere, and her sincerity and wickedness are manifested. Might fills Tairitsu's stomach and burns into her hands.
She will force the ending now, no matter what it will be.
With that sentiment guiding her, she calls upon the shards to which neither girl has laid claim:
The fragmented segments of the sky. They begin to fall, and the horizon darkens.
Rather, her control was lost very quickly after she had gained it.
A tug of war...
No, this would be better referred to as a struggle—
This would be better called a beating.
As the first part of the sky falls to the earth, crushing a part of the cathedral and showering everything in dust, it falls very near to her. This cannot be coincidence—it's too close to be chance. She understands, as more comes down, that Tairitsu has the sky.
And that... can only be called absurd.
The land and the air—the glass, the wind—all of it is being heaved up, pulled down, turned and tossed. She can disappear some of it. She can point at some of it, and make it vanish into nothing but pale and transient fire. She can even pull parts of the sky to her thrall. When Tairitsu throws the world at her, she can catch and throw it back.
It is cataclysmic: as if giants have descended, and now stomp down on the earth.
And amidst the white there is black she cannot touch, called from the distance. There are shards that Tairitsu will not give back. This, everything, is now being taken.
As she battles back—as the plains and gates and buildings rumble—her teeth are forced to chatter. She plants her feet again, but can still feel tremors into her fingernails—into her skull. The cathedral standing over them groans as it is beaten by the debris of the heavens. But, it does not fall. Nor will she.
...She should have stopped this sooner. She had had a chance.
Her heart beats. Her eyes narrow, only a bit—
Is the core of the world going to break next? That's what the other girl wants, right?
As she thinks that, as she holds the landscape together and thinks—so quickly thinks about how to stop her, if that is the case—
Her chest is leashed. A line of Arcaea flies from the darkness and wraps her chest in a pointed embrace. Fire burns this away, but her chest is leashed again.
Her arms are leashed. With effort, she turns her head. Her legs, her feet, her thighs are leashed.
Her stomach is leashed. Her body burns again, and her body is bound again.
These shadows—these memories of woe are keeping her trapped.
That... There's some black humor in that.
Tairitsu approaches, and Hikari breaks some of the bonds around herself, freeing her leg. She takes one step backward with it, and finds a spike just behind her. Some hideous formation, aimed at her unshackled limb.
So, she simply stares into the glass, and wills it to be set ablaze.
Yet it refuses to.
She is tied down again. She is brought low. She is tugged, suddenly, down to her knees. There might still be a way out.
Or, there might have been.
...When did it happen?
When she lifts her head, Hikari finds Tairitsu standing motionless before her.
Though they do not speak, the two have locked eyes tightly with one another. They stare, unflinching, as the sounds of their finished battle echo.
Through the rumbling of broken earth, through the whistling of scattered wind, and through the dust and debris cast and rolling out from ruined, beaten monuments... both girls are unmoving, their eyes only on each other.
And yet despite that, Hikari can see it:
In that girl's eyes, an ember of the passion which had brought Hikari down still distantly burns. This is not a suggestion for a truce, it is a wordless threat.
Hikari swallows, and Tairitsu eyes her open neck: eyes that throat that she hates; that voice that she hates.
Her will and her desire prick at Hikari's skin.
Now Hikari asks for time to go still. It flows on.
She tries to destroy her bindings with flames. They remain.
The earth will not yield. The sky will not bend.
With nothing else in mind, she finds herself holding her breath.
"..."
The sky has finished falling... The cathedral is still breaking...
Dust lingers between and above them.
And that sharp and wicked will is still flickering in Tairitsu's eyes.
Those eyes begin to gently narrow. In this moment, although ruined, the world is calm.
...Tairitsu smirks at a memory, then. Hikari maintains her stare.
"We're back here," Tairitsu says. She tilts her head, only a little. "Are you going to do it? Are you going to wish for a miracle again?"
But Hikari will not answer.
"...Miracles are miracles because they're too convenient—too perfectly timed to ever actually happen. You've seen enough broken worlds through these shards... through Arcaea. You know, then, that miracles are the same as 'hope'."
"And besides, with or without miracles, you live... you die."
Hikari breathes. Tairitsu gently straightens her own back.
The girl in black goes on, "You know: I would much rather just forget. Forget everything."
Another attempt to move. Another reminder that she has been brought utterly still. Her shoulders strain. Her toes curl.
"I'm going to kill you," Tairitsu says, "and this world... 「your world」 is going to die."
Again, she pushes a smile across her lips. She breathes in, and forces out a laugh.
With her other hand, she takes Hikari's cheek. She lifts the bound girl's chin.
"You really are right," says Tairitsu as she brings her palm nearer, "I really don't have to do this... for you."
Her smile disappears as she leans forward.
Tairitsu's eyes... have a familiar look.
It is regret, and sympathy.
Her wings of black have folded down.
Above, the night sky continues to glitter.
Although all the fury has passed... Hikari's heart continues to pound.
She admits to herself: it won't be enough to just "stop" her.
Tairitsu begins to bring her left hand away from Hikari's throat, and as she drags it back...
...something black and pointed glitters in her palm.
To end this, Tairitsu says this:
"I'll let you know clearly: my name here was Tairitsu, and yours was Hikari."
"Please..."
Hikari whispers a word forced.
She almost hisses: "Please stop..."
And Tairitsu tilts her head.
"...This again?" She thinks for a moment, and adds, "Nothing's going to change."
Hikari breaks her bonds with a show of blinding light. She stands and holds out her hand to wish for a weapon—
Her wrist, her waist, her legs are all pulled back down.
Still, she wishes, and within her palm a sword begins to manifest. It is something "new". Something created. Not a memory: though still made of glass.
An impossible blade... Along its edge, space seems to be bending, glistening. Arcaea rewrites itself, and slowly allows the weapon to be.
Tairitsu thinks: How funny this is...
She has seen that jagged pillar before.
And immediately once more, Hikari breaks free. She turns her sword in her palm, and thrusts it into the earth. With this, Tairitsu is forced backward by a queer gust—pushed so far away.
Hikari brings the blade back up, raising it toward Tairitsu, and as she does she sees her own hand shaking.
Tairitsu lands despite still being pushed away, and her gaze falls again on the familiar sword.
She stares.
She waits.
...Her teeth grind together.
She looks into Hikari's face, and sees that the girl can't focus at all.
The game of bounding back and forth, the hesitation—
She has no patience for even a bit of it.
Glass walls push up from the earth around Hikari, each bearing Tairitsu's approaching figure. Reflections, or maybe true images—? Something is strange about them, and to see them, to feel them coming and see the glinting in their palms, fear pulses through Hikari's body.
That hand is lifted, and it will land nowhere else but her waiting throat.
With both hands now trembling, the girl in white holds onto her sword.
Something sounds off loudly in her head: a painful ringing, followed by the sound of her heart once more in her ears.
Reason tells her that this can go on forever.
If she turns her sword back and thrusts it down again, the walls will fall away, and Tairitsu will be easily pushed.
If she turns her sword back and thrusts it down again, the walls will fall away, and Tairitsu will be easily pushed.
So, why—?
When she feels Tairitsu's hand gently holding her right cheek...
When what is clearly Tairitsu's flesh and blood body appears before her, why does she thrust her sword upward, and through the other girl's chest?
Her emotions power her through the strike. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a dark shard of glass drop from Tairitsu's hand— her right arm having been brought back in reflex and pain.
A blinding shine grows slowly, and soon rapidly. An aura surreal: above and beyond reality—
—and, a cry for life roars out, so consuming life in return. The shout pulses and vibrates through the earth, and also through Tairitsu's body.
And ends.
Like that, sound dies, and so too does the girl.
As soon as it stabs through her—sets within her body—the blade swallows her life, her blood and essence quickly filling the glass. And then, the glass slowly begins to shatter and fade. In an instant, she is completely extinguished, and her body begins to fall.
Quickly, without thinking, Hikari takes the hand Tairitsu had placed on her cheek. In seconds, the other girl is quickly gone, leaving only a cold and silent form behind.
Yet... warmth runs over Hikari's fingers as the sword of glass continues to break and disappear. In her other hand, she can feel the strength of Tairitsu's grasp completely vanish.
The girl's feet now reach the ground, and like that only Hikari's wet and warm hand still supports her. Her eyes are closed now. Her brow is furrowed... and then is not. Like this, without peace: she is dead.
And only now, with her own eyes wide and her own heart still beating, does Hikari understand this.
She slowly pulls back her left hand, and the girl's body begins to fall. She returns her hand to the lifeless body and holds the girl as her stare continues to widen. She squeezes the girl's dead hand tightly, and the two come down to their knees.
With her hand against Tairitsu's motionless chest, she feels warmth again, and brings her eyes to the wound that she made.
She has wounded the earth and sky as well... though she finds it difficult to look anywhere other than that disfigured hole, as everywhere else around her has become flattened. The strength she had put into her strike must have been immense...
The scene has been leveled entirely; the sky has gone completely still; the cathedral is all but no more.
Behind Tairitsu some fractured brick wall has flown out from the blast and fallen. Evidently, it was shielded and kept from disintegrating by the powerful girl's body. But, still... the shield had been pierced.
Stupidly, Hikari brings her face near to the other girl's, and waits for a breath that will never come.
She squeezes the dead hand tighter, and when it does not hold her back in return, she throws it down in anger. She digs her nails into the front of the other girl's clothing. Feeling something warm once again, she looks and realizes that tears have begun to fall on her hand.
And though she knows what had warmed it before—she had to have known— seeing her own hand dyed in red and cut through by her own tears... throws her suddenly into panic.
She straightens her back in terror, then nearly falls backward.
Her face contorts and her lips tremble.
She sobs, brings her clean hand to her face, and sobs more deeply.
Now, she falls, Tairitsu coming down along with her. Hikari pulls her stained hand down to her dress, and the corpse leaning upon her collapses back instead against the cathedral's debris.
Her own words echo inside of her head—
Her own sardonic chastisement—
You never had to do this.
...It isn't funny.
The reality of everything is becoming so impossible to ignore. Leave your hand down all you want— the heat that burns through your skin isn't going to disappear like the sword.
A girl is dead, and you were the one who took her life. You killed her.
You knew how much she suffered... Did you really try to understand her?
"What will you do now"...? No, don't you understand?
You can't just move on. You want to pick yourself up, continue your journey? This world already remembers everything that you did.
What? Where's your sense of triumph? You won, didn't you? You are alive.
Do you hate it?
Didn't she?
Does that justify it? Does that make things better? "Justification"?
...Is something wrong with you?
Even now...
You're only thinking about yourself.
With this thought, her heart feels as if made of paper, all falling away. She grips her own hair, but still cannot bring up her left hand.
She cannot stop damning herself.
Herself. Herself. Herself.
And something lingers, telling her... ㅤ ...is that anything new?
Her first impression was that she'd awakened to a cloud of glass butterflies. "How pleasant," she thought, "that these figures can move as well. Where are the strings?"
She sat onto her knees, fixed her dress, and found that there were no strings, and these were not butterflies. Glass shards, flying on their own. "Delightful!" she felt, and so she said it.
The glass reflected another world than the one in white surrounding her. In it she could see reflections of seas, cities, fires, lights; she rose her hand to scatter them, and laughed in joy.
...I didn't know these pieces of glass had a name: Arcaea. To tell the truth, they were so beautiful to me that it didn't matter the name. I entertained myself by touching them, swirling them, watching them. That was enough, no?
No.
And you knew it all the while. Maybe you almost saw it once as well— but it's impossible for people to truly change.
That, too, is something that you always knew.
The curtain will not draw to a close. This never "ends".
There is no meaning to be found here. Like you wanted.
Just another crying girl, alone in a world of the dead.
At least there is one truth you could take comfort in, one fact irrefutable, now etched into you with the blood of the one girl who had been so near to taking you out of it.
Paradise. After life, "heaven", the world of the dead. It should come as no surprise that the departed might linger in a place like that, at least for a little while. Or perhaps they will linger just above it.
That's where I am. That's where you are.
"...So that's it? My hand on her cheek? Her running me through with glass? I can't feel either anymore. I can't feel anything—can't feel her... ... ...Let me go... "
Why? You're here, but... isn't there something still stirring inside of you? You've got a few little pulses of life left... a little more to go.
"No... "
No, it's not quite over yet... Listen... remember. Remember yourself... It's been much longer than this, hasn't it? You've already seen so much worse. Now get up, fight. Fight agai—
"Stop it."
...Alright. Let's just talk, instead.
"You're not listening. I don't want to talk. I already said, I just want to... to..."
I want you to remember.
"...You're pretty annoying, you know. Then do you remember? If you do, you should know why I... ...
...Ugh... ...These memories... aren't going to leave me easily, now that I know them. Even if I don't want to, I really am starting to remember every little thing. And... if I'm remembering right... Ha, I've thought this before, but... is this a joke?"
...
"My old life... I loved being alive, but... Living... was awful. How many times was I thrown down? How many times was I spat on? Hate followed us everywhere even though we just wanted to... to take our powers and... Just... help."
We scared them.
"'We'? And who are you?"
Well, who are YOU?
"Well funny thing... that's actually the one thing I don't remember. ... ...I guess you might as well call me 'Tairitsu'."
Then... call me that, too.
"You're kidding... Really? Are you... Are you telling me that I'm right?"
About what?
"That when she made this world, she didn't think about a single part of it. If you're... If the life I had here was... ...She's... awful."
...I'd say she just never learned.
"...I don't feel sorry for her, if that's what you're getting at. We may have come from different realities, but she must have understood what she could do. She had to know, and she just didn't care. And that's why... I don't care that she wasn't brought up and taught like I was. Just... look. Look at what all my training with the Shapers got me. I was different from her because of who I was, not what I learned. If I'd had the strength... If I'd really had the power to change things, for the whole world—"
I would've, but I couldn't, and I didn't.
"...And that's what I got: another go, because that's what she wanted, and in her stupidity she gave that to everyone else, too. So... dumb. It's dumb, right? You have to laugh. Come on! Laugh!"
...
"What, you can't? Of course you can't, I mean—what kind of second chance was this? Just some kind of... terrible... ironic reflection. Struggling while alive, while everything claws and rips at you. Getting up when you're broken and bleeding—I DID that! I kept standing up, kept fighting even though I KNEW it was pointless! Why would she make me live all of that again!? Answer me—why!? I...! I wanted things to change... I never wanted... to give up..."
...Did you? This second time around?
"I... did. ... Hey... I know I'm dying. Could you tell me something? Can I still see outside, before I go? Through my birds... Can I see her little prison, one last time?"
...You can.
"Great. ... So many small and unknown corners, with trapped souls wandering around them. I guess you can't call them souls. Everything here is only a memory—even us. What are they thinking...? I only caught a glimpse of that shard, and it didn't tell me everything."
Most of them are happy. Very, very happy.
"...Now that's just evil, haha... I... ...I feel like crying... you know? I just want to cry—about everything. Why'd I do all this? Why did I die?"
...
"...That's a good look on your face. Have you got an answer for me? Tch... I'm... I just... It all hurts... Everything hurts. It's like I finally, really get it, and it's... It's just horrible. I can't even cry anymore..."
Well, that's it.
"...?"
You didn't really want to die, so why did you?
"...When I first lived, the road ahead was dark... But I knew that it would branch into countless others. I could find death somewhere, sure, but I could find anything else if I just walked down the right path. It was never like that here, and looking back, I feel sick for ever thinking that it was. These roads are barren, and there's no place to stop. Anyone, no matter their path, will march and march on blindly, until their legs give out and they see the truth of it: that it doesn't matter what turns they take. Every single path leads to nothing at all."
...I actually don't think so. I think... there must be a road here that leads to something else.
"What makes you say that, when you're trapped out here only able to talk to the dead? Are you stupid? Were you paying attention, even once?"
...I just can't believe that. I have to have hope... I don't want to believe that... that...
"This is just what I was saying. You don't want to see the truth? Nothing here mattered at all."
No. It can't be the truth. I can't let it be the truth. You understand. If that's the truth, wouldn't it be... gross? Wouldn't it be too sad?
"... ...I do remember that, from back when I was living. Thinking like that was what kept me alive. You really are me. She really copied me out and... it really is true for all of us—we're all hollow, copied souls. It's true... She's still alive. We're all dead."
...
"But then... why are you here? Where are the originals for everyone else? Where are their souls?"
...I don't know, and I don't know.
"Alright, but... Actually, you still haven't said so... so, just... just tell me, alright? Are you really the real me? Are you my soul?"
Yes... that's what I am. Yes, I've been all alone out here, and yes, I've been watching. And you're pretty annoying, huh? Aren't you also real, Tairitsu? Aren't we all?
"Maybe we are. Maybe I was."
Yeah, annoying. I doubt someone as annoying as you could be fake.
"Ha... ... Thank you."
I'd never have guessed I'd be watching myself experience a terrible fate again in a second life, only for things to change.
"What changed?"
You said it yourself. You gave up. I wanted you to... I don't know. I really wanted the change to be... good.
... Do you really think it still can't be? The "villain" is dead, after all...
"I know you're joking, but... I'm sorry. I was just angry. I don't want to completely give up on it either. I don't think it's hopeless. I mean, you're still here after the end, aren't you? Maybe you'll still be here after I'm gone... And... if you still are watching after I'm gone... ...I really think you shouldn't give up hope like I did. Maybe, I don't know... ...No, I know it: The girls left here might be able to save themselves. I want to believe that. A change, just like you said... That's all I want. If I don't go away forever, if you can find me after all of this, let me know when they do."
I will.
"This is funny too, huh... When I was alive, when the others weren't there, I remember I always... talked to myself. But, you know... I never felt alone."
No one alive is really alone.
"That was it... That's what I always told myself... ...I want to see the world again.
A ruined tower, and pieces of glass floating in the air. A wide world of white. White, white, and more glass. Drawn to departed souls... But I can see it on their faces: None of these girls are lost anymore."
..."None of them"? Looks like you finally forgot about her.
"'Her'...? Oh, you're right, her... I actually can see her, too—well, she's really torn up about this... ...But isn't that a good thing? It's... different. She's upset, she's hurt... It's better than 'nothing'."
Hm... Yeah.
"I'm not sure if she'll be okay, but I am sure she'll take this with her. Honestly... I'd even apologize to her, thinking about it now. I think I did the right thing, but—"
You didn't do anything right.
"Pff...! Hah. Okay. but... I don't think I did anything wrong. I'd apologize to her. I mean... Why wouldn't I? We're real. And if she's real... then she's just another fool ghost, punished for nothing and knowing nothing. ... This is really it, huh...?"
"Sorry to say, but... I can't just do that. I'm honestly... barely here..."
...
Tell her.
"...Yeah. ...Hikari... Honestly, I'm sorry. I don't have any regrets, but... the hate I felt wasn't even... for you. The other... you... She's still out... there. Still a...live... I still... hate her. But you... ... You should know that... you're stronger than her. That's why, Hikari... ...I know you'll stand up again."
Close your eyes.
"They're already closed."
Don't worry anymore...
"I'm not worried."
I'll see you again.
"I don't think so. But that's okay. I accept it.
I had everything to suffer, but I still wanted to change everything for the better...
I fought FOR something... no matter what it was I had to face. No matter... how misguided... I became...
...
I'm sorry... that I chose to die. I'm sorry for throwing it all away. ...Even if I wasted it... I was lucky to get another chance. So... I accept it."
I know.
"I want her to kn... tha... I don't... don't want a... pathetic... I don't want a... stupid finale... to be all I'm remembered... for.
...If you can hear me, I want you to know this, Hi... Hikari... I mean it. Don't... forget... ... ... I accept this life."
A girl weeps before her remains now.
So anguished, so crippled with grief, the girl misses the final smile on her face before it fades.
Some of this tale remains untold. The truth is, some tales end without ever being fully told.
And their pieces—their shards are what remain, to be put together and understood.
This has always been a world of shards, a world of pieces.
The girls have always been left to pick those pieces up.
Believing that reflections have meaning. Believing that being, at all, is why anyone would ever be.
Now the girl in white crumples down to the earth, hurt and alone.
But she will find and carry pieces too.
Memories will live on, here.
All will be remembered, until and past the very end.
I see her there... Her folly has ruined her. Self-pity has ruined her.
As she gazes through her fingers, her hand still on her face, she finds, once more, the sight of you, my second self, dead.
And the apathy which brought about your death— the apathy which brought about this all—must be threatening to encroach again.
I know it: the girl in white and red can feel it. She can feel that she was meant for this. That you were meant to die, and she was meant to kill you.
Her back relaxes... The world itself... Arcaea... She can likely feel tension releasing throughout it. Relief...
The disorder is gone... It's safe now... But I can hear it too... Something like a whisper, easing into her heart, seems to ask her to embrace this state.
To embrace herself, and embrace Arcaea. ...However—
"...Tairitsu..."
...She whispers something to herself: a name. Her voice is shaking, barely audible through her crying.
"What did you mean...? That our names 'here' were those...?"
She falls silent, and seems to wonder.
The whisper comes again, telling her: if you want it, those answers will arrive. This place—it is an archive to all memory... ...And yet still, she remains silent.
"..."
Beneath her building apathy is a sheer and shining hatred. She cannot stop hating herself.
Obviously not. After all that's happened... how could she allow an ending like this? What would it mean? What would it mean for her?
She... She, who walked here, could never accept it.
With nausea eating at her stomach, she clenches her jaw.
"..."
Hikari puts her hand to the dirt and sand below her and lurches up onto her knees.
And she asks, "Arcaea... Were you here to heal me?"
Her arm relaxes... like a cool sensation has woven up the limb.
"...I can feel it," Hikari mutters as her eyes slowly close, her voice still hoarse.
"...Paradise, for someone scared, tired, and weak..."
"..."
She swallows the dry nothingness in her mouth. Opening her eyes, she grabs up sand and begins to rise to her feet as much of it pours out from between her fingers.
"I don't know what to do..." Hikari goes on, "...but would it be right of me to let you hold me again?"
"It... absolutely wouldn't."
"I... don't want this..."
"I don't want it...!"
— "Mmf—!"
Hikari suddenly bends over, gripping her stomach and pushing her other hand against her mouth. She sways heavily.
Her "refusal" seems to be enough to make this world recognize her once more. As she holds her mouth shut, eyes wide in fear, she suddenly winces. I can hear it too: a sharp noise, flying suddenly through her ears—through her head—
And inside her heart again—no longer a whisper, but almost a vibrating bellow. A silent, yet powerful voice filling her and saying: decide, and speak your heart's intent.
"Speak... my...?"
As she is... ...Hikari is nothing but a girl moved by her heart. And it is heart that brought her here—long before she first opened her eyes.
Is it instinct? Does that "body" remember how this all happened...? How she was before...?
Ha... I don't really care. I just... find it very funny, and ironic, that this new heart would undo it all in a single beat.
Her answer... after her breathing has become shallow, after her heart has trembled long past a minute, is ultimately clear and resonant:
"My intent... is to reverse."
"I have to bring her back."
"This world... doesn't make any sense! You think I'd die for it? You think I'd let someone ELSE die for it...!?"
"I can't! I won't! Whatever I need to do, whatever I need to give up... I'll sacrifice it all for that...!"
She holds the earth in her palm, firmly, before throwing her hand out and scattering the sand.
She declares, "I'll die if it means I can change all this—!"
The world's heart beats, and its sound silences her cold. It would never give her up. It will not. The voice fills her again—
And its sentiments, and knowledge, enter her chest and run to her fingertips.
It says, You cannot die. You were born here to live, and living is what you chose.
Hikari... knows this. And guilt—apology—forces tears to well in her eyes.
But, the world's heart beats again before she can cry. Do not die, says Arcaea.
— Only let it end.
...And so her lips tighten. Tears break past her eyelid, and trace down her cheek. And she nods.
A heart beats again... And like that—
—Arcaea begins to lose its light.
And in so doing, it floods into her, flows into her hands and heart. It drives her down. It nearly causes her to collapse.
For that while, memories flash across her eyes, but I can tell... they are memories ignored. Her eyes fix upon your lifeless corpse instead.
I think all she knows now... is "what she has to do". And I can feel myself being tugged there already... down, down... down: to where you were slain.
... Does she... truly understand what it is she's abandoning? Does she truly understand what is "ending" by this?
I don't know.
...You won't either.
...Actually, if she's taking me, then... will I remember any of this? Will I understand?
No... probably not. But... she seems so sure of herself now.
...
I'm going to let that heart of hers be the beacon for whatever comes after.
...I trust it. You would, too, wouldn't you?
After all, you were right...
The two of them... are completely different.
..."Tairitsu"...
...I'll be going now.
But don't worry.
I will surely take you with me.
The skies are forced down again, and the earth rises to her will. To die, and to make Tairitsu live again.
Lives and souls cannot truly be brought into this world of the dead. Only their shapes, only their echoes...
And to begin with, the souls of the girl of light and the girl of conflict... were never quite ordinary.
Truly, the world was not meant for this. Surely, the world will shatter for this. But it will do everything to rewrite it all—or at least try.
It would need both the girl in black's "first soul" and what fragments can be found of her second self's...
And now one fragmented soul calls out to a full other. Swiftly, that other soul is torn from beyond the pale.
A tornado flies around Hikari then, ripping the veil of reality around her apart in a torrent of shadow and light.
Arcaea "remembers" the other girl, and at Hikari's command those memories come rushing back as glass. They seem almost instantly born. Or perhaps they have always been here. ...Will they even suffice? Can this world weave two fractured souls?
...It will. The rules do not matter. Hikari will make it so... With these memories of the girl named Tairitsu... Glinting through the storm, those glass memories come swiftly.
There was a girl here who once walked the lands in agony. A girl dogged mercilessly by sorrow and grief... Yet she strode onward to save herself.
To save herself and to grasp freedom. She had only ever wished for one thing: the chance to have some reason to smile.
To make this world a better place, she was a girl who stood and faced it, even if "better" would mean turning this world over.
The memories flash across Hikari's eyes, distracting her even more from her own encroaching recollections.
Few of the other girl's tears pass through the storm. Much of her pain seems to have been forgotten.
It seems so... but in truth, as a soul of light, still pushing away the cruel truth of that soul as she is, it is all Hikari can do to find even the fleeting moments of the other girl's sincerest despair—the rest, the longer of them, lie beyond her grasp.
...However, knowing where that truest pain had led the girl in black, Hikari gives that sorrow up, and so too gives up the moment that they met, which she cannot find.
The Tairitsu born of this all... will be one who has not seen the true depths of her plight, but will still know herself as one who was born and lived in the midst of struggle.
New energy booms out from Hikari. Four columns of light, immense fonts of power, erupt from the ground. It is the world protecting her, as the shadow soul to which she called finally descends.
She almost fails to recognize it at its approach. What floats before her and begins to block the sky is something like Death: the immense and chilling shape of a phantom. It gently slows as it nears, and there, at once, the dark begins to flow into the rotating glass.
There she truly comprehends it. With a firm nod, she eases the process, guiding soul to glass. The lost soul of Tairitsu "before" thus becomes the living essence of the new body to come, with that of Tairitsu "after" stabilizing the rest of the shell.
The shaking beneath Hikari's feet becomes almost too much to bear. Hikari remains as still as she is able, and steadfastly directs the new life between her hands. With a thunderous groan, she feels the world bending in agony, and yet she holds onto her will.
Without being deterred, in her heart she reaffirms her vow.
She twists the core of the world itself. It, too, will fuel the rebirth of a fallen deity. Like this, finally, once absolute rules are rewritten, and with Hikari's sound and silent order new death spikes solidly into that core.
In an overwhelming pulse of light and shadow, Arcaea begins to die.
The wish that made existence is overturned. The skies run rapid overhead, and what light remains of this reality cascades to her from every horizon. As she pushes the crafted soul into Tairitsu's now-floating and deeply effulgent body, with sweat dripping off her brow, Hikari pushes, too, the entire world—
She channels the life of the earth.
She abandons Arcaea.
Below the now-ending daylight, twin girls watch as clouds rush past above them.
Below the half-night sky, a noble gazes at a rift slowly tearing apart the earth, and gazes above to see star after star fading.
A girl who tends and cares, a girl who wanders and seeks, a girl who watches and wishes—
A soul of joy, a soul of hunger, a soul of ambition—
A heart of war, a heart of song—
—they see the end, as all the life of the world is taken now to one, distant place.
And soon...
...Hikari feels the last wisps of that life flow into the body of the girl she wishes to save. Tairitsu's form begins to drift back to the earth as the life fades out from Hikari's hands, and as it does...
...the girl in white feels, too, that a part of herself is being lost in the current.
...None of that concerns her.
When the winds die down, and as Arcaea's skies above are left slowed, dull... she feels very lightheaded and plants her foot down before she might fall.
She tries to calm herself, trying to grasp what she, truly, has done. But... she can't. And overwhelmingly, her thoughts focus on this:
Is Tairitsu alive?
—
Dust drifts down from the sky again.
She does remember this...
...at the end, at that lowest point...
Nobody was there, and she closed her eyes to tears.
She opens them now, slowly...
...just as those memories leave her entirely.
Hikari sees the motion in her brow. The girl in white holds her own fists over her mouth and her breath catches in her throat.
For all the splendor, she thinks, it was all so simple—
Too simple— Could her wish have been granted for so little as hope and effort?
Hikari shakes her head of these thoughts. She steps forward, shaking. Tairitsu's eyes open fully, and blink once, before their lids fall again halfway.
Hikari rushes forward then, falls to her knees, and hugs the other girl.
"Wh... What...!? What are y—!?"
The girl is silenced as Hikari clings to her, embracing her more tightly than anything else before in her life. And, Hikari starts to sob.
She uncontrollably cries into the other girl's shoulder— the girl who stares back in disbelief, unsure of anything.
...Many more rifts have been carved through the landscape. The light which once eternally poured from the sky has been suddenly, and starkly dimmed. The world... is wounded.
And yet, Hikari's focus remains on "what"—"who" remains. Tairitsu lifts her hand, and places it gently upon Hikari's shaking back. Each unknowing, the two comfort one another at the end of the world.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." Hikari endlessly repeats.
"...Whatever you did," Tairitsu replies, "you made it right, didn't you? So why are you apologizing...?"
Hikari slowly pulls herself away, though she still holds the other girl. With her eyes and nose reddened, she gazes on Tairitsu with misery, and tugging elation.
She suddenly buries her face in Tairitsu's chest, and Tairitsu holds her in return, softly. The scene begins to quiet, and the girl in black allows the girl in white to weep.
— They set out into the gray world.
For a while, Tairitsu holds the other girl's hand to walk her forward, but it doesn't take long for their paces to match.
She does not remember her tragedy—at least, not the worst of it.
And the black shards... They don't take interest in her any longer.
For Hikari too. Those white shards which were so fond of her no longer dance nearby and close.
One has lost some aspect of dark, and the other... and the world... continue to lose light. Though... ...to smile sincerely, Hikari no longer needs the light of glass.
The girls walk to a cliff's edge. They look out to see a land of lost memory, slowly falling to decay. And it will decay. It will collapse, fade, and crumble to nothing.
They stand there, not knowing this, and only "knowing" each other, foregoing the past, and foregoing memory.
Tairitsu looks to Hikari with a steady, and quietly warm expression— It is the expression she wore once, whenever able, within another life. Hikari, seeing it, smiles with the simplest ease.
"What awaits"...? What awaits could never matter.
That sense of "completeness" they each feel... cannot be shaken.
And... Implicitly, Hikari knows this journey is at its end. The road to the future lies ahead, and there a new journey will begin.
...She takes the time to acknowledge that she cannot know what, precisely, that journey will bring. She can never know what might happen.
She acknowledges this, and closes her eyes to another thought: ...Did she know, before, where her steps would take her? She only, always, stepped forward.
...
If you've chosen life, then choose to live. Live in this world. See this world. Feel it and truly accept every last moment. With this sentiment, she chooses to hold firm.
She lets her eyes open and she breathes in the air. The unknowable winds ahead, the girl beside her, the faces she has not seen, and the hidden places beyond...
A barren, empty land rested in silence; newly cold, and newly empty, under a sky leaden with dense clouds. The green leaves and red flowers had turned gray, and only the footsteps of the living remained to tell that they all had once been there. White now fell from the heavens and covered up their steps. No snow fell; only ash.
All had frozen, and winter had yet to come.
On the ash and ice-covered earth, on her knees, was a girl with her neck craned up to face what light now bled through the gray. Her eyes were wide and staring. Before that light was an angel or, maybe, a god.
There was no home to turn to. Her mother and father were dead. Her guardians were dead. Her fellow fledgling Shapers were dead. Her people, who had always scorned her, were all dead. All that remained of what she knew was a shard of glass in her hand—a fragment from her window. But still, perhaps, there was a chance—
She was chosen, and special.
She was young, but learned.
She only had to try.
If she tried, very hard, there was perhaps the smallest chance... to reverse time's flow. To strike back.
To even, maybe, turn into a sort of "god" herself.
Thinking she could stop all of this.
Thinking she could bring everyone back.
The girl looked at the shard of glass in her hand, and wished to save the world.
—However...
...she could not.
Will alone cannot create strength from nothing. She had all the will that one could imagine, and her will was worthless.
Knowing that, she began to cry.
The will of the god above was worth more. Its wish had been for her and her kind to vanish, fall, and fade into dust, and that wish would be granted, in moments, by its hand.
The girl saw her eyes in her own reflection, and watched as the image became distorted with her tears. She could see her grief through her shaking jaw, and her impotent, overwhelming pain.
Nothing mattered at all. Nothing she had ever done, and nothing now.
The black-haired girl kept her head bowed as the angel descended. When it reached her, it raised its hand.
And shortly, she was gone.
That child's name is forgotten.
The reasons for her death... were beyond her.
Her life would not be remembered by anyone.
But when she died, another wish took her away.
—
It wasn't much longer ago than that...
Somewhere warm, though still dark...
She had made it dark. Another girl in another time and another place, with all names forgotten. She had drawn her curtains. She had locked her door. A chair was beneath the knob. She sat on her bed, and kept her eyes wide and staring.
She hugged her knees.
Staring.
She stared into nothingness.
She was overwhelmed by "herself".
A memory played endlessly in her head. She could see the view from atop the stairs, and vividly hear her parents' words, whispered from beyond her sight.
They weren't saying anything against her, but they were still discussing her.
It wasn't that they didn't love her.
She could not love herself, and she felt that inside of her, something was missing that would allow her to love them.
She very well could still see the view from atop the stairs. She had felt everything tugging at her to let go of the banister then, and fly to the marble foyer below.
But what if it didn't work?
The girl had managed to return to her room after that and quietly lock herself away.
Why couldn't she disappear? Why couldn't she walk off into nowhere? Why were her thoughts like this? Why was her mind like this? Why couldn't she disappear...?
Her nails dug into her calves.
Her stare widened. Her breathing quickened.
And she wished that she could run away.
The girl with white hair was troubled. The girl with white hair was a god.
She was not troubled because she was a god—her godhood was a fact she never knew.
In her heart, she made a sullen wish for refuge, and that wish was granted:
"Somewhere else, where I can be happy."
—
The girl with black hair died, and a wish called her soul away.
In a distant world, in another reality, a girl more powerful than her had made that wish.
The white-haired girl was so powerful that her wish had created a world.
A world with a meaningless name: "Arcaea".
Arcaea was a sanctuary meant to save the dead.
Though she'd been alive when she'd made her wish, she still keenly felt that sense of "death".
She'd given it no consideration, none at all—in fact, she couldn't have thought straight if she'd tried. She only wanted something there for herself. It's possible, really, that if she knew the fate of those caught in Arcaea's web, she would see herself as having done a very good thing.
The world reached out to countless other places across time, across separate realities.
It was alive, and though it had no thought it nonetheless "wished" to share life with those dead.
Unguided, it caught any it could that spoke to its "heart".
In a space crafted between the seams of the real, in darkness spotted with soft and distant purple starlight...
...so many souls were wrapped into the weave, and brought to a new and shining border beyond the black.
The world of white...
From there, the world made a perfect imprint of each, and also released each. It gave each imprint a warm place, gave them a new shape...
It gave them infinity, to view and relive endless life in safety.
But it could not truly save its maker...
It was able to take true souls, double them, and bring the doubles into new bodies, releasing those first souls to whatever else awaited them... However, the soul of the one who would be known as "Hikari" was fixed back in its first world. She was still alive.
...Arcaea, always unthinking, instead forced a copy of that soul as best as it could.
And much later, it found a soul more tragic than any other it had yet to find, similar to its mother's...
Strangely, that soul could not be properly kept either. When released, it could not leave the false world's border like the rest... and so began to watch its star-crossed copy on the new, white earth instead.
Tairitsu... woke in a ruined tower.
—
And time passed...
Unthinkably, one of the saved had threatened everything...
But mercifully, the one who had made this all returned, and soon the world was safe again...
Arcaea was only crafted to exist. It had called out to its maker, and that maker had heeded that call. Like Arcaea had made a monitor for the shards... like it bid that monitor to swallow up any anomalies that fractured its fragile existence...
So now, it exists, and has existed.
It has existed, ever since, for over one thousand years.
The red blood that stained the earth was erased, leaving behind pure, white land. Tairitsu's body was burned away...
Warmth filled everything. The sky grew bright.
The pearl and nearly endless landscape came together again.
And now, it is a truly beautiful world...
Dotted in figures: of girls who chose to rest in a land of endless travel. They chose to be frozen, and to stare eternally into this world of the lost. And if they are thinking at all... it is of a very distant past.
And that was surely the better choice…
That was surely better than walking and watching other places forever...
They must be happy. They need to be.
Arcaea had nothing else to give them but that choice. The world was still buried "inbetween", and escape was—
—and... any realms outside of it... were outside, and away, and could never be seen again.
So, the twins, the girl with a blade, the traveler, the noble, the girl with a song...
They and others are angelic figures.
And the glass shards of Arcaea often come to rest now, too. They gather along walls and pillars, compacting in great and plentiful formations. Like crystals.
Like corrosion.
—This beautiful world is overseen by a god. Above it all, Hikari watches passively...
...and remembers…
She remembers everything old worlds have forgotten. She sees them, with marginal warmth or interest. An indulgence, of sorts, for the mind of a faded and listless god.
Maybe... she has transformed. Who she was and who she is... She must be "higher" now.
She cherishes a truth she can only pray that others would understand—though if they will not... She has only chosen to watch the world.
Yet... though she watches it passively, she knows she has given them "everything".
...
...Outside her purview, a philosopher and satellite wander.
Beneath it, a horned woman tends to precious memories.
A woman with a flower in her eye... trudges through silent lands.
It is vain. It is vanity.
Arcaea now—is vanity.
And that... is better than the alternative.
Better than the world which spits at you. Better than yourself, who loathes your very way of being.
Living to love being alive, and succumbing to vanity...
...Reality, in all of its facets, is an empty, worthless, and inconsequential thing. The only thing one could ever want would be to take what one can out of it.
Take pleasure. Take love. Take hope. Take power.
And with it...
...
Hikari believes this: one has no need to do anything.
Take. Live. And, sincerely, love being alive.
Love that...
Though not even for a thousand years, nor even a thousand more... will life ever mean a thing.
After all, reality marches on with no discernable "end" in store. And Arcaea, specifically, was never anything more than a vessel for memories.
Incorporeal, contained, silent memories—while the outside remains unseen, unnoticed, and uncared for.
And those memories will exist forever here in that silence, together with those lost lives Hikari has saved, and with her turning no eye to those lives, as always.
Because here there is no memory unseen—no emotion not felt. This is "all", which Light shines down upon, and which Light grants.
It is for happiness. It is for eternal peace; unlike in any life you might have left behind. This: she loves. This: Arcaea—
—Given to lost lives with neither favor nor condemnation.
And so, like this, the wheels of fate here continue to turn...
To many of those come to Arcaea, the world once white also appeared as a world of endless day. But, in time, night fell. A border between day and night formed. On the darkened side of the border, two new lives drifted down to the earth like fallen stars. She was the second, and in her very form she showed herself to be a mirror to the first.
A dark and purple-dotted sky, a cloudless firmament, a night with no moons...
Maya woke to all this through a blurred view. Her eyes were full of tears. When she could think, when she could feel, she became overwhelmed by grief and she sobbed into her hands.
When one comes to this world of glass, they are made anew— given "nothing" as a blessing, as a kindness.
But this place, found after the end, is broken— in ways it tries to be perfect, but it is a broken place to its core.
She actually welcomed the dark, and felt at ease within silence.
Whenever a rare ray bounced from the glass fragments surrounding her, instead it seemed to her like sudden intense light in horrible colors had bombarded her vision. If a nearby ruin creaked or fell apart, the resulting sounds seemed more like a cacophony of wretched noise accosting her ears: lighter scraping, and the heavier, guttural, almost primordial groans from the earth; with a noise all throughout like high-pitched wind, rising and rising—
If anything broke the shadow and quietness of the night, memory would accost her. And while she did not belong here, she was nonetheless pitied.
This unusual girl with two-toned hair and eyes— This strange girl who would often sleep, yet still cry—
Arcaea pitied her. Unfortunately, she quickly grew to fear its glass.
Shards met with her often enough under the open sky that—although she liked the calm and stillness of the endless night—she began to seek shelter. Maya rested within the fractured shells of buildings, and made herself familiar with any cave in this world she might find. Glass was always there too, yes, but without a clear view of the sky it reflected very little. And besides...she could not—and would not—peer within. She would travel through mountains, only seeking peace. She would step through pitch-dark tunnels following forgotten roads.
Until she stepped out of a shadowed hall one day, and her eyes caught sight of the daylight border, so very near.
Those sounds she heard were screams. Those sights she saw were the cause. Bright light fell from the sky in violent pillars, tearing at the earth. Her home became ravaged in what she'd hoped would be seconds, but instead it had been a nightmare of hours. Agonizing, she had—she had...
She knew people on the other side of the earth, and heard they were dead. She froze under commands from soon-lost voices. An entire connection she shared with an entire world was lost over a slow, thorough, and merciless course. And, with it all gone, she had woken up here—alone in Arcaea.
And the horizon before her now was like sunset, or—it was like a world on fire.
Maya crumpled alone at a tunnel's exit, hearing and seeing things that weren't there. She shivered and cried, feeling as if a spike was driving through her heart. Through horrid pain, nausea too began to plague her. Horror after horror, all of it impossible to bear, and one thought worse than all others weighed on her mind like an anchor. One truth that seemed ready to almost kill her:
"I am still here."
And her pain, and her heartache, it all cried out beyond her voice. Arcaea would hear all of it.
She sits now at a precipice. Outside, she sits between darkness and light. Inside, a tone blares through her ears as she stares wide-eyed and wanting, wishing to no longer think.
It is too late now. These made mistakes are set and done. The suffering caused, the damage caused—it is all finished. The past cannot be reset. But can something be done to heal? Can anything, anything at all, be done for a crying girl? A single piece of glass drifts down from above. Another. Another. A slow rain of glass falls, until it is a solid wall before and around her, blocking the unseen sun.
Take her mind away? No, it can't be done. Distract her, coax her? She is too distracted by herself. What to do for her? What to do, what to do...
The glass uncharacteristically dims. Parts of its shard wall fold down almost like fabric with innumerable parts until she is covered. What a silly thing—for glass to think itself soft. But, odd...But, still: Maya flinches once, and she lifts her head. She finds memory in these shards.
These shards hold memories of others. She finds memories of sorrow, of hurting, and of humans' faults. It is all that Arcaea can show to her, and she watches...
...not bloodshed, not battle, not war...
...but people alone in their pain, nobody there to share it or understand. What can one do when they know they are alone?
She thinks. She sees men and women, girls and boys, all crying. She sees people near the end, with faded photographs in their hands and faint smiles on their faces.
That is the message from this world to her. You may feel you will never smile again. You may feel you want to quit. But what is the point in that?
The past is behind you, but it has left marks upon you that you cannot erase. Some, perhaps many, are marks that you left there yourself. But you are still here. A world is gone, and you are still here.
A whisper for a whisper. Her voice cracks with this: her first word within Arcaea. Through a stinging, dry throat, she repeats half of what she heard.
She bites down and grimaces. She drags teeth against teeth.
Her response to the care the world has shown her...
...is resentment.
She sharpens her gaze, peering more closely into the mirrored wall before her. The images shift as the glass moves. Shards of Arcaea find her new glare and present themselves. Moods somber or gentle are all pushed aside...
The sheet of glass ripples as if struck. Maya watches memories—
—of a man looking back at himself in a mirror with darkness beneath his eyes. —of a woman standing at a shore at night, her feet dipped into lapping, shallow water. She stares at a necklace in her hand for some time, then eventually holds it out before her and drops it into the sea. —of a young child dressed in a small black suit. Her sister reaches for her hand, only for it to be struck away.
Maya smiles. She laughs, quietly. It's as if these shards are resonating with her—and how terrible if they are.
And of course, they are.
The attempt, the gesture... She wants to spit at it.
As her breaking, twisted heart twists and breaks all the more, the glass hears her misery all the more well, and brings itself closer— turns itself over, piece by single piece— each reflecting more memory than only one: the shards show the other halves of these shattered lives.
One by one, growing brighter and brighter... ...they begin to show how those lives shattered to begin with.
She is gripped by their flashing memories of disaster, folly, and failure. She is gripped in turn by her own memories of a ravaged world. She is gripped—physically—by the glass itself as it crawls to her body and binds all around it, twisting about it, tightening and linking like glinting chains until its sharp edges slide up to press at her throat.
She grins wryly.
A weak heart beats... ...but it is not hers.
The glass shivers. It almost even seems to undulate. The light of the shards is all snuffed out in a second, and as the chain pieces tighten, and tighten over her body—
Suddenly, in an abrupt burst of black glitter and a twisting rush of air, the glass all breaks around her, leaving her to fall to the earth and be once more bathed by the far-off dawn.
Maya looks up into the dark sky. She looks out at the glowing horizon. She shuts her eyes.
"What...?"
Confusion. Anger. Disappointment.
The feelings pour into her shaking fist as the distant light warms her shoulders...
However, her shoulders soon go cold.
Cautiously, she opens her eyes once more to darkness.
Fragments of Arcaea have found her again, and formed new walls.
Maya pushes herself partway from the ground. She looks into the dot of far light, and no old memories come to her. She turns her head to gaze behind, and the yawning maw where she stepped from only minutes ago gazes back more dark than ever before. In that darkness, something glints now and then. More glass, surely. She lies between, forced to think.
There is a choice.
There is a choice here.
Let easeful nothingness consume you, or welcome the frightening light.
Maya climbs to her knees and thinks on it.
Angrily, she mutters, "What do you want from me...? To face everything, or to go?"
Her question is answered with a question. Faintly, just faintly she can hear it:
What do you want?
To that...
...Once, at least, she thought she had answers.
I want to stop thinking, she'd thought. I want to stop remembering. I want to disappear. I want to suffer. I want to be hurt. I want to be happy.
Now that she's been asked again, she finds one of these answers is likely still true.
Her memory is not only of the end. Everything she'd had in life is with her.
Most of that short life had been wonderful. Every happy moment added that much more weight to the miserable loss.
And guilt... Guilt seems to eternally stain her for being the one to take it all away.
"..."
Silent, she looks ahead again.
Say that you have the chance to be happy, but don't deserve it.
Say that you have the chance to face judgment, but deeply fear it.
In that dilemma, you may not even feel you ought to have the right to choose.
But, still, say you came to a choice... To some miracle, where the future for you is presented as two clear paths rather than having you blindly walk only one.
What then?
A nebulous age has passed. An age of uncertainty and empathy—an age brought about by a fool—is over.
Eyes are open, and what clouds flew under half the sky have thinned.
The stars have faded. The unseen sun's light has dimmed.
And what Maya wanted as she was bound – to be inflicted with pain at the precipice of despair – was summarily rejected.
She was instead presented with a choice...
...for Arcaea wanted this.
She stands up to face a wall of glass. The shards comprising it have all gone black again; no memory is cast out from any one of them. Instead, her own face stares back at her. She stares into her two-color eyes, and those eyes drift to the red-bordered petals over her chest...
To her right lies one path, and to her left another. Wind passes over her, running through her hair.
Inside she feels...new.
As if someone has seen her. As if a steady hand has been placed at her back.
There isn't any shame in wanting to be happy... And there isn't any shame in sadness.
Passing on always seems so sad, and wouldn't it be wonderful if it could be more than that?
When a soul parts from the body, and flies into the air...
When it passes all boundaries, when it is, thereafter, adrift...
There is a world that feels the same way. "Wouldn't it be wonderful? Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful..."
You see, that world called out to you.
Ah, you: you fell into a world of light. Ah, wasn't it wonderful? You fell from a soul like a tear, beautiful and new. You sparkled as you fell. You crystalized, and came alive. Ah, the beauty of it as you came into a world of memory and, rare thing, still bore a bushel of memories yourself...
A girl with two-colored hair and two-colored eyes. Telling. There was another like that already here, you know? But her two and two colors are pretended. You: you are real.
This last tear shed of a forgotten and departed life came down from on high, and down through a sky without clouds, resting finally amidst endless old ruins. It was a dark night that you fell into. Half this world in fact is dark, and you would wake beneath the stars.
The stars in this world—this world called "Arcaea"—are actually violet. You opened your eyes to a mauve-shaded sky, and squinted at the strange shapes dancing and glinting across it. Glass, in the sky: something magical, and called, too, "Arcaea". They are shards, it seems, of memory.
You knew all this; you knew the name "Arcaea" but you—you "remembered" nothing of the place. No, no...
You only remembered "yourself".
Oh, such a terrible heartache filled your chest. Oh, what dreadful things you had done. You had left a world behind. You had left a world to ruin. A veil of sins felt as if it was weighing upon your shoulders and blending with your body, seeping in. An ichor-like thing it was; you felt as if you carried what was left after that great and terrible wound which you yourself had dealt. You cried, you sobbed into your hands. Ah, ah, a beautiful sorrow...
There was one thing you forgot: your name. You do not truly know who you are. Is that a shame?
Shame or no, you dried your tears and stood to your feet.
In truth, you may have never "been" anyone at all...
But your feelings were so very real. Those memories were real—no mistaking that.
And your new name... Hm, "new name"? Were you ever even bestowed a name—? Oh.
It seems this world did indeed decide to give you a name, and what a lovely name it is.
Maya, you are exceptional—do you realize that? You are made of stuff that no one else here is.
"Made of stuff" can be taken two ways, in fact. You are made of stuff unusual, stuff none of the others have when they come here. But, also, you are made of "stronger stuff". That is a turn of phrase, Maya. It means your "heart" is strong. You are, perhaps, the most wonderful thing in a world of endless wonder.
Although, that is hard to say absolutely.
To most, this world has always been bright. An endless daylight once shone down over everything from an unseen star. But after you awakened, you wandered the darkened world.
For you, shadows were all around, and yet you still stepped bravely into the unknown—maybe unthinking, but it was no doubt admirable. So, Arcaea, Arcaea...
You found a world of mirror meanings. You found a world of the dead, giving life. You found a world of day, and also night. You found a forgotten place full of memories of light and conflict. It seemed to remember elsewhere always, however—and never itself. Does "Arcaea" fear itself and what it has done? Do the girls here also feel that way...?
It's a question for philosophers: is this world of second chances worth anything at all when most can only see this chance as their first? Is this sealed world worth anything at all, when it can't seem to progress into anything beyond itself? It is a question for scholars. It was also, indeed, a question for you.
Given what you were, who you were, what you'd done—why were you here...? Memories after memories flocked to you, showing sorrow, and what point was there in that...?
At one point, when you stood between light and darkness, it seemed almost a mockery...
But the secret answer is very, very simple.
Arcaea is a meaningless world.
It is simple, yes, but that is why it is admirable. And you, Maya; you came to notice it, right?
The world came to warm you. When you felt sadness and horror, the world brought you the gentle embrace of old stories, remembered here. Yes, you... found it distasteful for quite some time, but after you walked into the light! Poetic! Meaningful! What a show it was!
To think this world of a shattered heart could put on such a marvelous show...
Torn between two paths, and brought low by your suffering... you wished for ease and received it! You wished for pain and received it!
And so suddenly...! Everything changed! Or, had it changed long before? When did it change, when...? Difficult to say, really...
Why, it doesn't matter. A burst! A shadowed path appeared before you to Heaven, and you walked it, Maya!
You faced the guilt inside of you and chose to pursue the light. Ahh...
So selfish... though you deserve only judgment, Maya...
Maya, we haven't yet met—it's tragic. Yes, you and I, we are unfamiliar, but I feel like I "know" you.
And it is frustrating... Ah, it is frustrating how little that I do "know". It might be the first time—I swam in floating seas once, you know? Seeking "mermaids"... I had read about them, and felt that I knew them too. They were so simple when I found them, though...
You, Maya: I know your name. I know your heart, and your pain. I know that you are still sad, Maya. I know that when you sleep, the remnant shadows of what "you've" done continue to haunt you and you always begin to cry. But, why should you cry when you weren't even responsible? How cruel! Why should you smile, when "you" were? How audacious. I need to see you.
I saw you through an eye I had cast through a hundred thousand veils and when it spotted you, well, I couldn't help but watch. I had seen, too, this world's history, but I was so very drawn to you. Of course, it wasn't only you that drew me—it is that you are "two". I said that, right? "Telling". Two- colored hair, two-colored eyes—you aren't only you, Maya, and you aren't meant to exist, and yet you are. You seem more than what could ever be shaped... You are a miracle of miracles amidst a miraculous place.
Miracles, really, are rare outside. Where I'm from we had miracles in all our hands, but—I left there. We had a song, a lullaby, a prediction—and why, I will admit that it unsettled me. Quite literally, I left where I was settled. I wanted to find "true" miracles, not from hands that would one day fade into dust.
So I will come in, with my aim being you and one other.
Hands fading into dust... What did I mean? There was a song...
"There are no angels, only here What we shape, what we hold dear We shape together, never ending.
Where ever: the sky, the earth, the meer I shall hold you very close, my dear Even as strange light finds us, descending."
...A sad song. It would leave anyone miserable. I try not to think of it. Now—Arcaea, Arcaea: how many have come down to its pale soil? Well, a duller pale, now... And you know I feel it as I circle it, near it—why, I daresay it doesn't seem to want me here at all, Maya.
But, shame of shames: Arcaea is weak, you know? Absolutely powerless to do anything about it. I will "be". I am alive. That place needs to prepare for a third aberration.
I will burst into that world, even if it rips at my skin and rejects me, and when I am there: I will listen only for you, Maya.
I've traveled across starlight to see you. I've traversed stormful skies for you. I have bent so many realities and torn others asunder to reach you, Maya! And it is awful! The journey here has been awful, for while I have traveled I could never hear your voice, Maya! Your voice—! You like to sing, too, right? Or, you always sing so it feels safe to assume. I've remembered your songs while going to you, Maya. Those sincere, driving memories...
You may be the first to set my heart this much to flame, but a flame, a flame—it really is always like this. I love—so very much. I love with all of my being. I love what I can find amidst what has been left throughout All by dead creators, by pantheons, by human hands—I love these worlds that I find, and oh, those lives which one may pluck out of them... I have lost count.
And finally, it will be today... Ah, today we will finally meet!
A graying white film like the surface of a giant's eye is before me now!
Just you wait...
Whatever it takes, I shall make my way in...!
I draw closer to Arcaea's sky from outside; to this pale and too-massive sheet, crawling with some queer feeling of "memory", like fingers running through shining, blissful dirt... I grab hold of it with my own fingers, and dig deeply in—
The world at once rises against me. Light and clouds launch out the atmosphere and latch onto my body as tendrils. The air around me vanishes, even as I create more to replace it. I am pushed, rejected—rather strongly, too, I'll add. Automatic, fierce, and the trajectory always remains true no matter how I cast it away, my... But, I could swear that "rule" was abandoned, here. Arcaea... might it still have its own heart? And a heart that seems to hate me...
Because I'm not dead? Why, let me make my case before you try to take my life!
I'll have you hear it once I'm on the other side...
I will open eyes again on the other side. I bring an invisible gaze to life, staring up to above.
The skies all converge on one point. A vortex—a funnel forms, as vast as that sky itself. The firmament is shaped as if it is draining downward, and then suddenly it shifts entirely in a hundred, thousand ways. Color spreads out across the heavens.
A maelstrom of color, all draining downward and crackling!
The purity of light finally and utterly shifts to colors more than prismatic...
New color! Heretofore unknown and powerful color!
And ah, yes—I think it's the perfect timing! Let's start a storm!
Below, Maya witnesses my entrance, until the whole world's sky turns red.
That color inverts. Shifts—Shifts—Shifts! And finally, my hand passes through.
Lightning and rain begin to fall with might. A storm, a storm! Winds turn and throw towers down— throw walls and buildings down! Snow and ice pelt the earth. The sky ripples as my own colors bleed all around me—coat me.
I descend into Arcaea, as weather—as life—as nature all come with me, and I grin. For I will leave the sky unbroken, hmhm...
Amidst the chaos and storms I have brought, I land gently to the earth before you and of course I curtsy, and I bow. As my hair and yours are cast all around in the gale I say—
"Hello, hello, Maya—
I have so wished to meet you."
When do I reach you...? I take no time stepping over to you... holding you, embracing you... Feeling you...
These shoulders, your spine... Your stomach and side, your fingertips... this hair of yours, oh... Don't you tremble, now. I am only looking.
Ah, and of course, your face... I softly hold your breaking, crying face.
What might you be thinking as you look upon me with those quivering, two-colored eyes?
I am thinking about plucking out your red eye, and examining it more closely. It, in particular, is intriguing and beautiful. Oh—don't worry, I will leave it there, and instead simply find who you took it from...
But what are you, Maya...? What are you in this world already so incomprehensible...? I simply must have "you".
Holding you with one hand at your back, I snap the fingers of my other and take "time" away.
Listen now: every world is made with something in mind, but I already knew that Arcaea stood out with exception.
It has been said and said: Arcaea was made with "heart".
Still, without fail, within every world I have been able to find three "parts": The surface world, the law underneath, and underneath both of those the seed of a wish and its tangent desires spreading like roots.
As I stop time in Arcaea, and look past the first and second layers, all suspicions are solidly confirmed that this world's fabric has no "weaving" at all.
No, it is instead more like a sea. Arcaea's fabric exists as an ever-shifting, almost incomprehensible thing which one tends to describe with terms of emotion: calm or raging, dark or peaceful.
Ebbing, and flowing...
You would ordinarily see gorgeous lines of order establishing a world's rules beneath the first layer, and yet there are none in that gold and cobalt underneath.
The only establishing lines there are a strange and sketched mess past the second layer—frenzied white scrawlings vaguely marking the bounds of an almost infinite black canvas. Each twisted and errant thing there is a clear-cut "wanting". It is all sorrow... and hope. Only these define this world.
And like you, Maya, I love it. It is wonderful...
But as I try to add a new idea as a line amidst all the others, perhaps to wrest some true control here, Arcaea rejects me again. Why? That makes it tougher and tougher to manifest my domain...
It seizes my fingers and stiffens my arm. It even seems to want to rewrite "my" existence—until in fact it removes my whole spasming limb. My arm separates from me and begins color-shifting, dithering in midair, rapidly vanishing and unvanishing... Time even resumes, and in this new chaos you, Maya, witness a very terrifying sight.
My apologies...
It takes great effort as Arcaea tries to pull me out of this reality, and even sever my body along space and time, but I would do anything for you, Maya. Through any storm, through any sickness, through any power overwhelming I would and can do anything...
With snaps and pain and nausea, feeling not "here" but "there" and with a strange vision of a dark room in midday filling my head, I will my arm back to my body and reach out to Arcaea's fabric. Reach out... Reach, reach!
Leave "me" here! World of memories! From this day forth, you shall never forget me!
I carve the last and most beautiful idea—the most beautiful line in Arcaea's fabric: I carve into Arcaea my own true and hallowed name.
And it's set, and it's done: an eternal and immutable change. I am now "here", forever. So, I'll waste not a second more.
I begin to split time and space apart myself—behind me. At last I open a black and shining gate to "mine" and gently, Maya, while you're so still from shock and fear and confusion, I begin to pull you in.
And there, there, you begin to unravel.
As your fingertips meet with the boundary, your voice is lost and you start to unravel into glass threads.
You unspool from your hand, past your arm, and to your chest and your body in a beautiful, silvery sight. Little wondrous splits without a single spot of blood continue all throughout your skin and where there might be inner parts... In waves of countless, brilliant, almost prismatic threads, you are drawn through the dark hole I have opened.
Your shape now is like a melting harp waving through the air; its strings made of the prettiest white quilt being split down slowly at its seams...
Ah, ah... Fall into the best place, Maya...
And stay away from here forever.
When the last thread of you passes time and space, I close the gate shut.
White begins to overtake the sky once more.
I gaze up above as the storm begins to die down.
And watching it fade, I remark to this world that hates me:
My storm finally and completely disappears. The last vestiges of the color I left in heaven die.
But oh no, no, I am still here, Arcaea—still here.
What an agonizingly long journey it has been.
Yes... I am here now. I, who saw this place through a passing glance between realities and simply had to visit.
I am thinking, even, of staying.
You know, this world is broken now... but it's still here. That is beyond incredible. I have never seen something "shaped" this terribly and this greatly; I really need to dig into it—I need to know more about it. I need to learn about it, I need to find those who live their second lives here. In one case: a third! So, so incredible! And ah, what a lovely story of three lives!
I run my hand through my hair as I think of it. Rainwater runs down over my skin, and I cannot help but laugh again. I hug myself, and soon find myself chuckling, and laughing, and laughing all the more until it almost hurts...!
Because isn't it a shame? It's a shame, you know!? You see: this world has been missing a god! Ah, it had a god but for an instant! For a fleeting moment, it was whole and just after—ah, it shattered at its very core! Have the people here been worried ever since?
Oh, oh, there's no more need to worry. No, no, none have need of worry at all!
This fading, sorrowful, wonderful world has been once again blessed...!
In my grace, in my providence, you will all find happiness again...
Yes... a god has come here to set everything right and well for you all.
What do we need in order to live, and does such a stupid question even matter?
I preoccupy myself with such questions often.
I am the lonely fool in a pristine garden another god created.
Welcome to Heaven and Hell. Welcome to the fragile after-world. See me, here, striving for reason.
I have been very sure of myself for a very long time. Since before one could find stars here—though even that was a very long time ago. I learned my name long after that. I learned the name "Saya", and it didn't matter at all.
What would anyone even want to poke into my mind for?
When I was more naive...
When I had been here a little while, and gotten more familiar with it all, I woke up once to the endless daylight. Sunlight streamed into my eye, and I smirked at the clouds. I woke up to another day in the world of white.
I'm not sure, but I must have awoken to a rare warm mood. Most days I felt frustration. Most days I watched things intensely, and thought about them. That day, fragments—glass—"Arcaea" drifted around me showing memory as always. They showed me different facets of life: all of what makes life real. Sad things, and joyful things. Life is real for its pains and pleasures both. Both kinds of memory seemed fond of me.
Because the truth is: in this world of white—in Arcaea—memories are drawn to like-souls. My soul "wants" more than most others, and so Arcaea gives me all that it can. And, putting my soul aside: consider my mind. Scattered, or "hungry" I suppose. With those fragments, I always felt "fed".
Radiance streamed above and around me. The light, surely, of "God". The warmth, and the might, of something greater than everything else. It drew me in, and I was spellbound. Because it was more than that, even. It was more than a world of infinite imagery—the world, itself, was a puzzle-box. It was mystery manifested. Arcaea is a world of every kind of ruin.
And why is that? Is it a world gone? Is it a grave of places? Is it a dream? Is it paradise? Is it a prison? Is it, even, a world at all? What is it? It's something that dragged me in.
I wandered this place with drive and passion. I was so driven in fact that in this empty place, all empty save for only myself, I nearly missed the sight of another for the first time. I nearly missed a meeting with a fool and stubborn woman who, much as I would come to loathe her, would nonetheless shape my life forever.
I took my fingertips to one of the flower petals blooming from my face. My face itself was stinging. I glared across the way to a dull, brainless woman. I must have misspoken. Immediately, the stubborn woman and I did not get on.
Our meeting went on like this:
The dumb cow-woman said something stupid.
Understandably I called her a fool.
The dumb woman explained her position.
And of course, I called her moreso a fool.
She struck me across the face, and turned away.
A fool, fool brute.
Her name is Lethe, and as appropriate for someone bullheaded: bull-horns sprout from her head.
I found her at the end of a charming cobblestone road. She was surrounded by beautiful glass, but it shimmered in a way I had not ever seen. Glass always glows, or takes the glow of light away in this world. It's a dreamlike marvel that dots the air and sky, but here—here wasn't quite the same. "Warmth", which I felt all the time in crowds of glass... I felt "a" warmth here, but not the heat of divinity.
How could I say... it was like the world was bowing its head, rather than demanding one lower theirs.
I might hate this dumb woman, even to this day, but to see that... ...I can't deny it arrested me at my core.
We could make a world from these memories—that is what I told her. Rather, that must be why we were born here—I could feel it, and I told her that too. That collection of hers, in particular, was special. If we could harness it, connect its parts... we could enter into it all, with a new "reality" manifesting from fragments of others.
She told me the glass shards were in fact ghosts. When pressed, she explained her memories of life tending to not-glass spirits as the likely explanation.
I almost laughed, told her twice she was foolish, and she slapped me across the face. In a world without meaning, she went and made something up. Desperate, dumb, and sad.
Oh but I thought differently. No, no: I knew the "Truth". Yes: how my heart resonated with that vast glass collection—how the world I revered day to day felt like it gave reverence to Lethe's collection instead—it was sure: a sure thing.
In this pristine garden another god created, other gardens can be grown by us—the gardeners.
"I will do what I must, and pick up the shattered pieces of worlds to build something more, better, perfect, and new."
I searched through many memories—many old worlds to craft a new place.
I bent those worlds' limits. I drank in them, made fire in them, flew in them, killed in them.
I saw men die and children born. I made corpses breathe again, and the crying young silent.
Why? Because it was all "to be experienced"—bereft of any true consequence.
And be them from God or no, I—an avatar of Creation—was designed to design on my own, and had every right to do as I would.
So can I be called arrogant?
Foolish question, easy answer.
I built my try at a new world within Arcaea.
It began as a globe of glass, ever-shifting, and as large as an ancient tree. I would pluck memories from my travels that were suitable to "experience" as a whole, and I would enter them—add them. I would find Lethe now and then, and hiss at her as she hissed at me. But, I would largely keep to myself—building, building.
My collection became a mountain. I found that fashioning a library from glass inside of the earth was more fantastical, and I wanted that. I wanted more. I wanted more, and more—because as a globe, the glass did not make any demands of Arcaea. It did not scream or even whisper at the world. It murmured, at best, confused words likely caused by my haphazard lack of organization. If I wanted more, if I wanted what the horned-woman had, I needed to do more.
So, more organized: a library. Parts here, and parts there—specifically. Divvying life and experience by rank and sense. Making an archive of memory... I did my best to do that, and it was better. I began to hear it whisper now and then. I would sleep there, as it spoke words I could hear but could not understand.
But surely I was close.
...
That was my "Purpose".
And, it was indeed fantastic. The world that I was making looked out of an abstract and divine painting— yet you were able to walk within it. Or... "without" it I suppose. The image of the cave was nothing short of magical, even if the collection would not connect—would not let the memories merge and bring forth a new "realm" of existence you could swim through, walk through, or fly through in full, wild, and blended memory. At least this "library" alone... Only my hands could craft that. Only my mind could conceive it.
Without a smile on my face, I considered myself happy with it all. Satisfied with "Meaning".
...I think...
...I know:
...That if things lasted, and a thousand years went by...
...I would wander white plains endlessly throughout them and thereafter, fruitlessly changing my "world" again, and again, and again.
Because... this is what I need.
...
...Some time after the sky split in two, I found Vita crying within a ramshackle ruin's corner.
I am that type of person, I suppose: the type to refer to a smaller half-blond and ruby-eyed human as merely "child". I heard her sobbing, and thought it might have been that fool Lethe. When I looked to her and saw that she was not, she choked her tears back. I wasn't sure what to say beyond that. I simply... approached her.
She asked me, "You... are you real?"
I told her, "Dry your tears, this shouldn't be a world one cries in."
"I—But I... I was—I was so..."
"Scared", she seemed to want to say. I had no words in return. She began to cry again, and I wondered about all of us.
Because I did not know anyone was here other than myself until I met Lethe. When I met Lethe, I considered her to simply be my enemy at worst and a confused, misguided idiot at best. I wagered there must be others but, surely, they were others as driven as we two.
Yet this was just... some child.
A child? Responsible for mending, or making, new worlds?
...Was that really it?
I folded my arms and leaned against the wall beside her. The cape I wear, long as it is, brushed against her ear and she looked up at me.
"Use it," I told her, and after a moment's hesitation she dried her face and blew her nose with my clothing.
...In that wall-shadowed, dirt-scattered place, I started to look around until I could find some fitting memory... Something, ideally, with two participants. And, when I did find it, I bid it toward me.
"Stand up," I told her, and she did—quivering. I held the glass up between us. "Take my hand," I instructed.
She did take my hand, and with her acceptance we went into the glass together.
In that memory—
...our memory:
Vita told me her name as we sat in the dining room of a warm and quiet inn.
I was surprised to hear her name—I hadn't known mine at all until at that point recently. I asked her, "What do you want to eat?", and she asked me, "Does that even matter? This is a memory".
I was surprised again, enough to have my brow twitch. I asked her after, "What did the participants get in this memory, then?" When she told me what we both knew by merit of having entered I asked again:
"Then, what do you want?"
"What would happen if I asked for something else?"
"It's only right that you ask, and we find out."
"Will the memory break...?"
"Why would you ask that?"
"Because the memory doesn't remember anything else being ordered..."
"Does that scare you?"
"I just..."
"You just what?"
"...I just don't want this memory to end, yet."
...
The memory did not end there.
I got to know that little girl, and what little she knew about herself.
She asked about myself as well—many, many questions.
Hm.
Well, when the memory did come to an end...
...We two left it, and that ruin, together as well.
The only name I have left is "Saya", and I have learned since coming here that we are only shadows of things that once were.
Saya is dead. Saya lives on, here.
When I learned that, it was no awesome revelation. In a way, I had always felt this place to be something "after".
But it made me think on the others...
It made me think on whether there was any reason to any of this at all.
People have died, but not all of them are here. Those who are here... travel toward various ends. We all have different wishes, but it was not wishes that brought us here. The dead often wish for life in the end; near none of them are here.
Some of us come without a wish. No wish was held in Vita's heart. No wish was held in "Kou's".
It isn't that that brought us here. It isn't fate. It isn't anything in specific. It is that: "God", isn't it? God, and its whims.
And that god is neither laughing nor smiling.
That god may not even have a face.
I have been with Vita for very long now, with her acting as my assistant and... I suppose "colleague", in a way.
It has been trying. She's prone to tears—prone to worry. She clings to me when she sleeps. She asks more often than simply seeking answers. Her sneezes are alarming. She is heavier than she looks to be. She has a sharp mind.
It has been trying, but would never be something I regret. For I regret...
I regret, and ask questions of myself often.
"Saya, what is that...?"
Vita asked me that during the end of the world.
We looked on together as light cascaded from the earth, and life was drawn into the sky. We watched as Arcaea gasped a final time, all its "breath" converging on one distant place.
I don't know for what reason it happened. I don't even know what happened precisely, only the result: a horrible certainty, that I was certain we could both feel.
When she looked to me and asked what it all was, I answered:
"...Some phenomenon, but phenomena are nothing new in this place."
I began to try to build a new world more desperately, because with that "end"—of light, of Arcaea—the lands began to crumble.
In bits and pieces at first... and then greater and greater slabs—great sheets of earth, sliding down into a vast "nothing" underneath: into that abyssal place forever scratching at the world's edges...
Into the Void.
...
The archive I had built remained stable through it all, but "stability"... that isn't what we need. It isn't what any of us need.
We need more. We need something "beyond" here.
We need to live in a proper, perfect place.
I cannot say that I am the one who will make that place anymore.
...I can't say when it was that I began wishing again.
Sometimes, at the end of a day of travel, I would return and be given new questions from the little girl who follows me that I had no answers for.
Questions, questions, questions... There is simply no time for them anymore. And in uncomfortable silences between us, it feels like that is being screamed throughout the caverns.
But I know I began wishing before that—subtly, for answers to questions I myself have.
...
This story of mine is silent. I may only speak it to myself.
Nobody hears it. It will quietly die like the hills and mountains and dried seas of this world, with nobody to notice or remember them.
And there, there will be "Nihil": a vacuous, self-aggrandizing, and worthless story. A story untold to anyone but the teller.
A story that stole another's, and clinging to it brought the other to drown.
Tell me: am I arrogant?
The answer is that I am.
I believe in myself.
I believe in finding what lies past limits, in forging new reality, in doing "anything".
I believe in the future.
And I wish for the future.
As I walk from here, with a young girl following behind me by stepping in those footsteps that I leave wherever I may go...
I want my wish to ring out, though I can't bring myself to say it.
I believe in a last stand. I believe in that glass that made the world bow down.
God, Lethe, Vita...
Expel me from Heaven and straight into Hell...
...As I walk to tear that glass all away from that horned fool's hands.
Vita came to me in a corner of my glass library, and told me that. In the bright and dark cave, I looked up to her from where I sat, and then I looked away. Rain...
In all my years in this place, I had never seen rain, and now rain and snow and thunder and lightning all had been seen by us on the horizons every so often. And now it was there.
I stood. "Vita..." I began, "we will be going, and when you follow: you will follow and hide behind."
"'Going'...? Where?"
"To Lethe," I said, "to kill her."
I walked past her and, after descending, made my way to the mountain's lowest exit. Vita was delayed, but followed just as instructed.
"...'Kill'—what!? No!"
She shouted at my back, followed me all the way down, and trotted out behind me as I went into the rain.
She protested, protested.
She grabbed my cape and I pulled it from her hands.
She picked up a stone, and threw it at my back. I kept on, and finally she screamed:
"Why!?"
Rain fell on and between us as I stopped and turned to face her. She met my eye. Her red and white eyes were shimmering.
"Vita..." I said, "this world is dying."
"Yes..." she muttered and at the time I thought—Ah, so she knows. "So... So why would you want to... kill...?"
"I felt something in what she gathered, something I have never felt in what we have built," I explained.
"If... I want to rescue us all, I reason that I must discover what that something was, and take and use it. With it, I might make the miracle that will build a new world. Lethe, however, won't understand the theory, and we have no time to try with her."
"Her belief... How she lies to herself would never let her reason. Her heart is a fire. She will aim those feelings at me, and we will come to blows."
"You won't try?" she accused me, and I smiled. "You should at least try!" Her face bunched up, and her fists balled.
And, when I turned from her again— as the rains around us slowed, and then stopped— I said, lightly: "Fair. Watch safely away when I do."
I have taken much of my own glass to Lethe's place. As I approach there, our collections almost meet, but never blend together.
It is bright. On this cliff's edge, the world is bright from glass. Lethe, beneath it, is cloaked in shadows. Over the edge, the Void yawns.
"Reaper," I call to her, "let's put pettiness aside. Help me."
"Help you?" she spits. "After you've done all this!?"
Ah. She must think I'm responsible for cracking this world at its core. ...She thinks so little of me.
I glance behind myself and, unable to see Vita, I turn back to Lethe and continue our conversation.
It goes, and ends, as terribly as one can imagine.
Shouting. Insults. And her scythe: swinging down on me.
I travel from shard to shard with a little trick of the flower at my eye. I refrain. I turn around her. I try. I am trying. Until I no longer can.
I swear to her I will take her memories. She swears to me she will mend Arcaea's shattered core.
I feel disgusted...
It begins to rain again.
Blade clashes against glass. Water sprays between us.
I dance a violent dance alongside hers, vicious.
She swings, aiming to kill me. I cut across her face with glowing glass.
My head is pounding.
Sickness twists inside my stomach.
I have failed, and nothing I am doing here matters at all.
This is no clash of great powers. This is no immense and weighty battle.
In this struggle between myself and Lethe...
When I win, I will win "nothing". And when I lose, I will lose "nothing". I know it.
We are only two misguided women believing in a better ending for us, but it is not to be.
We are nothing. Our lives have meant nothing.
But I still want to try, and nausea is plaguing me for feeling so.
As Lethe pulls back, and with surreal strength drags her scythe toward me again— As I cast glass upward and downward to stop the blade and pierce her chest—
Our battle is ended by a finger falling between us.
"!?"
"What—!"
A slender, gloved hand touches down where our edges were ready to meet.
When it does, my entire body pulsates and pain almost cripples me.
My glass scatters, Lethe's scythe flies from her hand. We both are blown horribly backward.
The earth itself pounds as if it is a great drum being beat once by an immense rod.
We are then stopped in the air—
The air itself violently pulls back—
And I strike against the ground as Lethe's scythe flies forward and cuts me deeply across my side before skidding down behind me.
For her, for Lethe, several shards of my glass burrow into her left arm.
We both crash down on our knees, being made to bow.
And though I feel torn apart... I raise my head, I do not let it fall.
Standing still between us is a strange new woman, with long and pale hair, and strangely piercing eyes.
She looks to me, she looks to Lethe. She is smiling.
"Enough of all of that, you two," she says.
"If you play so roughly, you might hurt something precious in your process."
I step up, best as I can, still only able to kneel and now breathing raggedly. Her way of speaking worries me...
Deep within a giant's body, and above a heart no longer beating, a girl stepped into a pool of red. It was too dark to see the color, but she felt the liquid rise like upward raindrops on her face. She touched it after it touched her cheek, and she frowned.
It was good that it was dark. Not for hiding what the monster in this place had left behind, but for the sight of the monster itself. She knew it without needing to see it; she had seen it three times before and even the memory of it made her shiver, yet—
—she was a Shaper with the hands of God; taming monsters was a matter of course. She shaped her voice from her tongue and there sent it off to the place where her apprentice awaited her, asking: "You're ready?"
An answer soon came back to her ears: "Idiot. Of course." She whispered, "Shut up," and lit an Air-light hanging from her hip, swiftly pulling the illumination out of it and in front of her—spreading it throughout the gallery.
Now she saw paintings of ancient angels. She saw paintings of God. She saw paintings of great bones—the hallowed Spine and Ribs of Lephon. And she saw the great beast itself she was here to hunt, lurking at the far wall and staring steady at her with a single eye at the end of a long and thick stalk. Its body was hiding behind eight feathered wings. Seeing its eye, she cursed under her breath—and moved.
The beast's eye shone with plasmatic heat, and the area behind her—and now at her side—was blasted back with immense and rippling power. The beast pulled away two of its wings, revealing a mouth bereft of lips or teeth and—the pale thing—it screamed.
The Shaper threw up her hands and stopped its voice before it reached her. That voice beat down around her and cracked the floor. The frames of the gallery paintings ruptured, and the monster— the Power who had chosen to rage here—flew fast toward her.
It spread all eight of its wings to reveal its lean and muscular body—contorted and non-human, non-animal. Its ridged spine arced with violence and there, and suddenly, the roof above burst apart. The stained glass above, the stone and wood above—before fully falling, much of it coalesced into the shape of a spear, and above that spear was the hand of a child.
The child threw the colossal weapon down with a great and pulsing force—clear through the Power's spine. The beast exploded to the ground, and the pale-haired child above gazed down upon it with piercing eyes.
And, "Now, now, sit," she said.
With the beast now struggling, but in a sense "stilled", the first Shaper went toward it and laid a hand on its neck. "Return to the Air," she said, "and have the other Powers take care of you." The beast's body then suddenly pounded and shone with light. Its shape compressed out the hold of the spear, forming a small sphere of light before her palm. She looked backward, and cast that light out of the door, and finally, "...Showy!" she said, glaring up at the child now seated on the end of the gargantuan glass-stone-wooden spear. "Nice going, L, now we'll have to lie about it. We can't pay for the roof!"
"My dear Nell, we have always been the arbiters of truth," was the child's reply, and she smiled cutely. Her mentor threw a piece of wood at her head, and after it struck she fell down into the debris.
"Good thing Horrors like that tend to make a mess," said the mentor as her apprentice roared with anger. "They'll probably actually believe us. Look at all these bodies... it didn't even finish eating. Ugh."
"Nell, you just hit me!" said the child.
"Shut up," said the mentor, not looking at her student as she began looking through the place for survivors.
...Do you believe in God? Not gods, but "God". Do you believe in "The One" that exists beyond you?
No matter your belief: God is real. And, God is dead.
This, here, is the story about the birth of the new God.
...But, the question is important. It echoes through time, eternal. Belief is what makes almost everything. It makes men and women act. It makes "truth". It made Arcaea. But God, the world: "Lephon": Dead though He might be, He still exists, and is Father to all, and of course to those with the hands of God.
You know them. The Shapers. "Tairitsu"—actually, that isn't her name. The 8th. And ———— / //.
Deep within a giant's body, and above a heart no longer beating, a girl stepped into a pool of red. It was too dark to see the color, but she felt the liquid rise like upward raindrops on her face. She touched it after it touched her cheek, and she frowned.
It was good that it was dark. Not for hiding what the monster in this place had left behind, but for the sight of the monster itself. She knew it without needing to see it; she had seen it three times before and even the memory of it made her shiver, yet—
—she was a Shaper with the hands of God; taming monsters was a matter of course. She shaped her voice from her tongue and there sent it off to the place where I, her apprentice, awaited her, asking: "You're ready?"
An answer soon came back to her ears: "Idiot. Of course." She whispered, "Shut up," and lit an Air-light hanging from her hip, swiftly pulling the illumination out of it and in front of her—spreading it throughout the gallery.
Now she saw paintings of ancient angels. She saw paintings of God. She saw paintings of great bones—the hallowed Spine and Ribs of Lephon. And she saw the great beast itself she was here to hunt, lurking at the far wall and staring steady at her with a single eye at the end of a long and thick stalk. Its body was hiding behind eight feathered wings. Seeing its eye, she cursed under her breath—and moved.
The beast's eye shone with plasmatic heat, and the area behind her—and now at her side—was blasted back with immense and rippling power. The beast pulled away two of its wings, revealing a mouth bereft of lips or teeth and—the pale thing—it screamed.
The Shaper threw up her hands and stopped its voice before it reached her. That voice beat down around her and cracked the floor. The frames of the gallery paintings ruptured, and the monster— the Power who had chosen to rage here—flew fast toward her.
It spread all eight of its wings to reveal its lean and muscular body—contorted and non-human, non-animal. Its ridged spine arced with violence and there, and suddenly, the roof above burst apart. The stained glass above, the stone and wood above—before fully falling, much of it coalesced into the shape of a spear, and above that spear was the hand of a child.
The child threw the colossal weapon down with a great and pulsing force—clear through the Power's spine. The beast exploded to the ground, and the pale-haired child above gazed down upon it with piercing eyes.
And, "Now, now, sit," I said. I was terribly cute.
With the beast now struggling, but in a sense "stilled", the first Shaper went toward it and laid a hand on its neck. "Return to the Air," she said, "and have the other Powers take care of you." The beast's body then suddenly pounded and shone with light. Its shape compressed out the hold of the spear, forming a small sphere of light before her palm. She looked backward, and cast that light out of the door, and finally, "...Showy!" she said, glaring up at the child now seated on the end of the gargantuan glass-stone-wooden spear. "Nice going, L, now we'll have to lie about it. We can't pay for the roof!"
"My dear Nell, we have always been the arbiters of truth," was the child's reply, and she smiled cutely. Her mentor threw a piece of wood at her head, and after it struck she fell down into the debris.
"Good thing Horrors like that tend to make a mess," said the mentor as her apprentice roared with anger. "They'll probably actually believe us. Look at all these bodies... it didn't even finish eating. Ugh."
"Nell, you just hit me!" said the child.
"Shut up," said the mentor, not looking at her student as she began looking through the place for survivors.
...Do you believe in God? Not gods, but "God". Do you believe in "The One" that exists beyond you?
No matter your belief: God is real. And, God is dead.
This, here, is the story about the birth of the new God.
...But, the question is important. It echoes through time, eternal. Belief is what makes almost everything. It makes men and women act. It makes "truth". It made Arcaea. But God, the world: "Lephon": Dead though He might be, He still exists, and is Father to all, and of course to those with the hands of God.
You know them. The Shapers. "Tairitsu"—actually, that isn't her name. The 6th. And Lacrymira.
The two girls received payment for completing their task outside of a building—people didn't like "Specters" having free trespass in government offices. As Nell leaned against a tree, and L sat above her on a branch, they listened to the debriefing of the official who had given them the exorcism job. Although it wasn't spring, cobalt flower petals drifted through the Air from nothing. They all paid this no mind: a typical event on Lephon.
"...and finally, if you two could take a look at the town's Air-spinning engines, it would be a great help," said the official.
"Ahh... we will," Nell answered with a light smile, and she turned and began to walk away. She added, "Don't do that, L," and the official looked upward to find the pale-haired child aiming a floating rock at one of the nearby building's windows. The stone fell, the child looked at her teacher, and after sticking out her tongue she dropped as if weightless from the tree.
They'd been working together for three years—since L was nine. Nell was seventeen herself now, and yet she felt like an adult for having to deal with the girl. The girl was capricious, volatile, and "funny". It was easy to be charmed by her, and easy to want to hit her over the head. The two weren't sisters or family, but it did feel that way at times.
"Engineering...? Again...?" L complained as they walked through the quiet town. Her hands were behind her head, and her eyes were scanning the Air for anything more interesting than that drudgery.
"Non-Shapers just can't handle Powers like we can. It's reliable work," said Nell. She had fished a little tablet from her things and now flipped a switch at its side. It began to breathe, and its screen lit up. "Though I can't lie, I'd love more gardening work, myself... Gah, this town doesn't have any coin-exchanges? Why did they pay us in coins?"
"Coin from the third Terra! Very stable currency!" L mocked, almost repeating something the official had said earlier.
"You don't even know what that means, shut up."
Listen for a moment: A "third Terra" was just mentioned. It hasn't been mentioned but these "Terra" total to eight.
Each "Terra" is "an earth", and these earth expanses extend from a certain spire: the Spine of Lephon, and so of course the Spine of God. His Ribs, too, protect... God's lifeless body is this world, the cradle of life, and His Spine holds every piece together—
This is a real world, not one invented or one "after". It is a world of certain logic, bound by rules, unlike another made by a fractured heart:
It is the old world of Shapers, where Shapers once meant everything and then meant nothing... The corpse world of a giant with might and presence beyond measure. Seven discs of land, each like a separate planet spread out and flattened, are shelved above the largest below. This largest one is not a "disc", but akin to a filled bowl—akin to a stomach of dirt, and the people of Lephon call that Terra the "Heart".
And, what it all means...? Is another important question, and its unknown answer has split the world apart. ...Meaning "culturally". Lephon has always been this way.
The two girls received payment for completing their task outside of a building—people didn't like "Specters" having free trespass in government offices. As Nell leaned against a tree, and L sat above her on a branch, they listened to the debriefing of the official who had given them the exorcism job. Playing in the Air a great distance above us, a Power made a hundred cobalt flower petals. While I paid it no mind—it being so typical—I did briefly think of playing along with it and turning the flowers another way.
"...and finally, if you two could take a look at the town's Air-spinning engines, it would be a great help," said the official.
"Ahh... we will," Nell answered with a light smile, and she turned and began to walk away. She added, "Don't do that, L," and the official looked upward to find the pale-haired child aiming a floating rock at one of the nearby building's windows. The stone fell, the child looked at her teacher, and after sticking out her tongue she dropped as if weightless from the tree.
They'd been working together for three years—since L was nine. Nell was seventeen herself now, and yet she felt like an adult for having to deal with the girl. The girl was capricious, volatile, and "funny". It was easy to be charmed by her, and easy to want to hit her over the head. The two weren't sisters or family, but it did feel that way at times.
"Engineering...? Again...?" I complained. We'd done such drudgery so often, although rambunctious Horrors were very much around there. I was thinking, at the time, of taming them instead. Of making my own fun.
"Non-Shapers just can't handle Powers like we can. It's reliable work," said Nell. She had fished a little tablet from her things and now flipped a switch at its side. It began to breathe, and its screen lit up. "Though I can't lie, I'd love more gardening work, myself... Gah, this town doesn't have any coin-exchanges? Why did they pay us in coins?"
"Coin from the third Terra! Very stable currency!" L mocked, almost repeating something the official had said earlier.
"You don't even know what that means, shut up."
Listen for a moment: A "third Terra" was just mentioned. It hasn't been mentioned but these "Terra" total to eight.
Each "Terra" is "an earth", and these earth expanses extend from a certain spire: the Spine of Lephon, and so of course the Spine of God. His Ribs, too, protect... God's lifeless body is this world, the cradle of life, and His Spine holds every piece together—
This is a real world, not one invented or one "after". It is a world of certain logic, bound by rules, unlike another made by a fractured heart:
It is the old world of Shapers, where Shapers once meant everything and then meant nothing... The corpse world of a giant with might and presence beyond measure. Seven discs of land, each like a separate planet spread out and flattened, are shelved above the largest below. This largest one is not a "disc", but akin to a filled bowl—akin to a stomach of dirt, and the people of Lephon call that Terra the "Heart".
And, what it all means...? Is another important question, and its unknown answer has split the world apart. ...Meaning "culturally". Lephon has always been this way.
The two fixers always had to travel. In time, they made their way toward the fifth Terra through the Spine. The inner caverns of the Spine were always busy with invention across many bone and manmade ledges; too crowded and busy to allow travelers to walk and climb among them. People had to ride higher or lower via "spithra" instead.
Jerking, gargantuan, metal: these frankly worrying machines were designed to (loudly) climb inside the bones of God. The girls always rode them to travel between Terra as well. This day, they reserved seats beside one another and as the spithra climbed in fits and starts, they shaped the sound between them so that they could quietly speak. Other passengers without such luxury scowled to see them.
"So... the Song of Angels is all total nonsense?" L asked, her voice leaping with the crab-like transporter's terrible movements.
Her teacher haltingly answered, "No, the Song of Angels is one of the 4th's prophecies and... while we did go through that bad time in the Lightless Age, I'm pretty sure the song just coincidentally rhymes with history."
They kept speaking.
"Is the 4th dead?" asked L.
"No... she should still be around: her and 'Faith'," Nell replied.
"The 2nd? I wonder when I'll get a 'number'... aaand what 'name' I'll be given~" L sang lightly.
"'When'?" Nell repeated, looking annoyed. "You'd need to be lucky enough to have Lephon whisper into your ears, and last I checked only your eyes were special, L."
"I can see sound, you know?"
"Mhm..."
"Hey Nell. Sing a song for me."
"No."
"...Nell, will I really never become a Seeker?"
"I never said that. I was joking about your ears. It's... random, practically. Nobody can guess what Lephon is thinking. Lephon is dead."
"'God'... huh."
"And God's voice hasn't been heard in a thousand years—"
—The transport came to a stop. It had to, periodically, to allow passengers to rest.
"...Nell, look," said L, and her mentor looked: through a gap between vertebrae and out into space itself.
Behind God's back are countless and immense lines. These Strands are threads of gold extending, waving, out into the dark of space—and they do connect:
To Lephon's back itself—to His Spine, and, to also-countless worlds so distant that near-all are unseen, and some few look like stars. Ships fly to and back from them, riding along the gold like brilliant and darting lights. That's the "cradle of life"—not magic, but miracle, and in this reality the "world", all worlds and life, came from God. Isn't that always true? It's true, in a way, also of Arcaea.
Hungry Arcaea... this history is being brought there now, although no Strand connects, and although it too is dead. No, Arcaea was not born from Lephon, and nor was its creator. ...But, Nell was killed, and that satisfies the world once white all the same.
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—Nell wasn't dead yet in this story. Nell dies later, and then dies again.
—Eventually, the girls came to find the 2nd Seeker of Lephon, whom God named "Faith".
An Ascendant Shaper. A strange woman who spoke breathily and always carried a large and shimmering spear... The two girls took up a job to suppress the Air that involved her, and so found her now at the fifth Terra's edge. It had been a month since they'd arrived on this land. They were a little tired, and very ready to rest...
They tried and tried to snatch the Seeker's attention, but she was only interested in the unintelligible words of the Air surrounding them. L kicked her in her shin, and Nell kicked L's calf in response. And, they scowled at one another. Unfazed, Faith finally looked at them—just as a flock of lesser Powers obscure in shape began to graze through the Air between them. Softly, "You're talking to me?" asked the 2nd.
"Yeah—Yes," Nell corrected herself. "I'm sure you would've wanted the 4th to help, but we're a skillful pair! Aha... ahaha..."
"She doesn't have time," answered Faith, meeting the younger Shaper's eyes.
"Ah... yes. I've heard the 11th came back recently and is resting back home on the Heart, but..."
"The Air is bitter, and won't let us speak between Terra," said Faith, finishing Nell's thought with a stoic face. "Even Air transmissions will fail, and of course we can't fly through it so... Nothing can be done about it... hm."
"You could do something," L interjected, and Faith looked down at her. "Why don't you?" the child asked.
But Faith didn't answer.
And Nell thought to herself—Because she can't, only Lephon could.
After getting through to the strange woman properly, the details of this suppression task were conveyed: curb Lephon's Breath and cast it back to the realm beyond the Terra—to the swirling vortex that wraps over itself endlessly in a dance both seen and unseen, the Place of Powers called the Air.
That sea of life flows throughout the Terra, and while it can't slip into Lephon's bones or behind His back, on occasion it will flow too greatly across a Terra and cause... malfunctions, in everything from machines to nature itself. There are a few similar concepts outside this world. Think of them as spirits or angels coming in all manner of shapes, moving through themselves and acting whim- and willfully to change the world around them, to spur spontaneous growth, to harm and... so on. And they are truly "Powers"; at times, even one capable of wishing can't fully stand against them.
And so, the two girls were there to help.
The pair of them worked apart from the 2nd Seeker, and as they worked the weather became strange. As their clothing waved around them in the winds—their arms raised, with hands and fingers moving great and invisible beings—dark clouds began to brew across the ground. Clouds formed, also, at their feet, and soon rain began to fall upward around them. Then it became a matter of managing lightning, too...
While it may have looked fantastic and interesting, the work was rote. Therefore, L quickly grew dissatisfied. While taking hold of an arc of lightning and twisting it into a flower's shape, she asked Nell a question that she had asked perhaps a dozen times before: "Why do we do all this?" And, when Nell ignored her, she asked a couple others, "Is it just penance? Is that all this is?"
Now Nell answered her: "...Don't overthink it, L. It's just the right thing to—"
"Even though it's worthless? It's all just because we... LORDED over others in the past? I didn't! And even if I could rule—so what? Come now, tell me why. Why do any of this at all? Who are we proving ourselves to—God? Lephon is dead, and—"
"L, be quiet—"
"—we Shapers killed Him, right?"
Nell dropped her hands and turned to look at her student. The child was giggling, but all her teacher would give her was a glare. Lightning flew up at their sides, lighting the Shaper's eyes.
"...You are beautiful, Nell," L remarked, looking back at her with a wry grin. "Shame you really are stupid."
The Air flooded around them, and grew hot. Little fires came in and out of the weather as Powers whispered between themselves unintelligibly. L snickered again, and Nell stepped toward her.
She grabbed the child's clothing by its front, and lifted her one-handed.
And, her teeth grit, she began, "Why do you always—!?"
But she went quiet, and L lost her smile.
After all, it had been a thousand years...
The Shapers said that they had killed God, others said God simply perished, and others still said that God gave Himself up: to birth this beautiful world from His body. Others, and others... but the one certainty was His death. And yet: the Shapers said that God still had a voice.
For their arrogance, their tyranny, and for their claim to the greatest transgression, people had prayed to Powers to punish near every Shaper alive—to have them face a reckoning. And, as Powers do listen to prayer... in ancient times, the hands of God were nearly cut fully from Lephon, and the few who remained were humbled in the wake of it all.
But still, in faith, Shapers said that the voice could still be heard down on Lephon's Heart and only by they, His chosen people; yet here so far from the holy land two young Shapers heard Him:
"Lephon" spoke to the two girls, and told them of a coming End.
—Nell wasn't dead yet in this story. Nell dies later, and then dies again.
—Eventually, the girls came to find the 2nd Seeker of Lephon, whom God named "Faith".
An Ascendant Shaper. A strange woman who spoke breathily and always carried a large and shimmering spear... The two girls took up a job to suppress the Air that involved her, and so found her now at the fifth Terra's edge. It had been a month since they'd arrived on this land. They were a little tired, and very ready to rest...
They tried and tried to snatch the Seeker's attention, but she was only interested in the unintelligible words of the Air surrounding them. I kicked her in her shin, and Nell kicked me back in response. We gave one another quite the glares with that. Unfazed, Faith finally looked at them—just as a flock of lesser Powers obscure in shape began to graze through the Air between them. Softly, "You're talking to me?" asked the 2nd.
"Yeah—Yes," Nell corrected herself. "I'm sure you would've wanted the 4th to help, but we're a skillful pair! Aha... ahaha..."
"She doesn't have time," answered Faith, meeting the younger Shaper's eyes.
"Ah... yes. I've heard the 11th came back recently and is resting back home on the Heart, but..."
"The Air is bitter, and won't let us speak between Terra," said Faith, finishing Nell's thought with a stoic face. "Even Air transmissions will fail, and of course we can't fly through it so... Nothing can be done about it... hm."
"You could do something," L interjected, and Faith looked down at her. "Why don't you?" the child asked.
But Faith didn't answer me.
And Nell thought to herself—Because she can't, only Lephon could.
After getting through to the strange woman properly, the details of this suppression task were conveyed: curb Lephon's Breath and cast it back to the realm beyond the Terra—to the swirling vortex that wraps over itself endlessly in a dance both seen and unseen, the Place of Powers called the Air.
That sea of life flows throughout the Terra, and while it can't slip into Lephon's bones or behind His back, on occasion it will flow too greatly across a Terra and cause... malfunctions, in everything from machines to nature itself. There are a few similar concepts outside this world. Think of them as spirits or angels coming in all manner of shapes, moving through themselves and acting whim- and willfully to change the world around them, to spur spontaneous growth, to harm and... so on. And they are truly "Powers"; at times, even one capable of wishing can't fully stand against them.
And so, the two girls were there to help.
The pair of them worked apart from the 2nd Seeker, and as they worked the weather became strange. As their clothing waved around them in the winds—their arms raised, with hands and fingers moving great and invisible beings—dark clouds began to brew across the ground. Clouds formed, also, at their feet, and soon rain began to fall upward around them. Then it became a matter of managing lightning, too...
While it may have looked fantastic and interesting, the work was rote. Therefore, L quickly grew dissatisfied. While taking hold of an arc of lightning and twisting it into a flower's shape, she asked Nell a question that she had asked perhaps a dozen times before: "Why do we do all this?" And, when Nell ignored her, she asked a couple others, "Is it just penance? Is that all this is?"
Now Nell answered her: "...Don't overthink it, L. It's just the right thing to—"
"Even though it's worthless? It's all just because we... LORDED over others in the past? I didn't! And even if I could rule—so what? Come now, tell me why. Why do any of this at all? Who are we proving ourselves to—God? Lephon is dead, and—"
"L, be quiet—"
"—we Shapers killed Him, right?"
Nell dropped her hands and turned to look at her student. The child was giggling, but all her teacher would give her was a glare. Lightning flew up at their sides, lighting the Shaper's eyes.
"...You are beautiful, Nell," L remarked, looking back at her with a wry grin. "Shame you really are stupid."
The Air flooded around them, and grew hot. Little fires came in and out of the weather as Powers whispered between themselves unintelligibly. L snickered again, and Nell stepped toward her.
She grabbed the child's clothing by its front, and lifted her one-handed.
And, her teeth grit, she began, "Why do you always—!?"
But she went quiet, and L lost her smile.
After all, it had been a thousand years...
The Shapers said that they had killed God, others said God simply perished, and others still said that God gave Himself up: to birth this beautiful world from His body. Others, and others... but the one certainty was His death. And yet: the Shapers said that God still had a voice.
For their arrogance, their tyranny, and for their claim to the greatest transgression, people had prayed to Powers to punish near every Shaper alive—to have them face a reckoning. And, as Powers do listen to prayer... in ancient times, the hands of God were nearly cut fully from Lephon, and the few who remained were humbled in the wake of it all.
But still, in faith, Shapers said that the voice could still be heard down on Lephon's Heart and only by they, His chosen people; yet here so far from the holy land two young Shapers heard Him:
"Lephon" spoke to the two girls, and told them of a coming End.
The girls may have had the hands of God, but they were only girls, and those hands would one day fade into dust. They were simple, only with some little ways that they could shape the world around them and, in L's case, a way to gaze within the world. They had not become Ascendants, Seekers; they could not shape reality itself nor spur new creation. They could not fight with gods. They were only two girls, now in an overwhelming situation. It sounds familiar.
They forgot what had heated them only seconds before. They looked around themselves, wondering if they'd merely heard some miraculous Power that could speak in humans' tongues. But it couldn't be. It was too warm and too clear. It was felt too sincerely in their hearts and not their heads. It was Him, it was Lephon, and He had told the two the same thing:
Nell repeated it: "The 2nd Seeker... is going to sever Lephon by His Spine...!?"
"You heard that too, Nell!? So it was—it was Le... That was Lephon!? Lephon talked to us?"
"You heard it t...?" Nell asked, not having heard L. She then stammered to the child, "Ah, yes—yeah I heard it... that was..."
Worriedly, L asked her, "What... What did He mean by 'when they sleep and wake'?"
"The Powers beyond the Terra..." Nell began, "He means when they rest and go dark for night, and wake and glow bright for day. Lephon has no suns or moons, only them, and He said it twice, so—"
"Two days?"
"Two days..."
"..."
They were quiet, but the storm of the Powers around them raged all the same.
"She'd have to go behind Lephon's back..." Nell muttered. "Some Power would stop her otherwise, but—cutting through Lephon's Spine... is it even possible? Even for a Seeker—"
L placed her hand on her mentor's—Nell was still lifting her by the front of her clothes after all. Nell put her down, and looked out over the edge of the fifth Terra.
"If it's in two days..." she said quietly, "then there's nobody else to stop her, only us. We can't call anyone else about this—and if we could who would believe us? We're just... We..."
"We don't have to," L finished, and Nell looked back on her confused.
"Lephon... said 'This is death, this is done.' We don't have to... do anything. We don't even need to stay here."
"L, you mean..." after saying this, briefly the teacher went silent.
"If you leave by a Strand," said Nell, "the Strand and the world it goes to will be destroyed with the Spine's collapse. It happens with any Strand being severed."
"Yes... but if Lephon's spoken to us, soon we won't need a Strand."
Nell narrowed her eyes upon her student.
"L... I'm not leaving," said the teacher. "If Lephon blesses me with Ascension, all the better that I can stay here and stop Faith. You... don't understand. I know that you don't, but... If you want to leave, then... go on and do it, but I won't."
Nell turned, lifted her hands, and resumed her work of suppressing the rampant Air. She spoke only one more time to the little girl staring up at her back:
"You want to be a god, L, and I know what you believe a god to be but Lephon is Himself the example. A god isn't a being of power and whim;
a god is a savior and protector, and that's why we call one's favor grace, and a blessing."
...L did not leave. She helped finish the job, and the two of them shared a moment of tension between themselves and "Faith" when the Seeker returned to them.
Before the 2nd left, they did not tell her what Lephon had told them. After all, they did not understand her, and did not want to. They feared her.
However, they would need to face that fear: to face an End unforetold by the Song of Angels.
And in two days when they would meet once again...
They would shape the world itself—everything, anything—if only to stop her.
We have always had the hands of God, but at the time we were only girls, and those hands would one day fade into dust. They were simple, only with some little ways that they could shape the world around them and, in L's case, a way to gaze within the world. They had not become Ascendants, Seekers; they could not shape reality itself nor spur new creation. They could not fight with gods. They were only two girls, now in an overwhelming situation. It sounds familiar.
They forgot what had heated them only seconds before. They looked around themselves, wondering if they'd merely heard some miraculous Power that could speak in humans' tongues. But it couldn't be. It was too warm and too clear. It was felt too sincerely in their hearts and not their heads. It was Him, it was Lephon, and He had told the two the same thing:
Nell repeated it: "The 2nd Seeker... is going to sever Lephon by His Spine...!?"
"You heard that too, Nell!? So it was—it was Le... That was Lephon!? Lephon talked to us?"
"You heard it t...?" Nell asked, not having heard L. She then stammered to the child, "Ah, yes—yeah I heard it... that was..."
Worriedly, L asked her, "What... What did He mean by 'when they sleep and wake'?"
"The Powers beyond the Terra..." Nell began, "He means when they rest and go dark for night, and wake and glow bright for day. Lephon has no suns or moons, only them, and He said it twice, so—"
"Two days?"
"Two days..."
"..."
They were quiet, but the storm of the Powers around them raged all the same.
"She'd have to go behind Lephon's back..." Nell muttered. "Some Power would stop her otherwise, but—cutting through Lephon's Spine... is it even possible? Even for a Seeker—"
L placed her hand on her mentor's—Nell was still lifting her by the front of her clothes after all. Nell put her down, and looked out over the edge of the fifth Terra.
"If it's in two days..." she said quietly, "then there's nobody else to stop her, only us. We can't call anyone else about this—and if we could who would believe us? We're just... We..."
"We don't have to," L finished, and Nell looked back on her confused.
"Lephon... said 'This is death, this is done.' We don't have to... do anything. We don't even need to stay here."
"L, you mean..." after saying this, briefly the teacher went silent.
"If you leave by a Strand," said Nell, "the Strand and the world it goes to will be destroyed with the Spine's collapse. It happens with any Strand being severed."
"Yes... but if Lephon's spoken to us, soon we won't need a Strand."
Nell narrowed her eyes upon her student.
"L... I'm not leaving," said the teacher. "If Lephon blesses me with Ascension, all the better that I can stay here and stop Faith. You... don't understand. I know that you don't, but... If you want to leave, then... go on and do it, but I won't."
Nell turned, lifted her hands, and resumed her work of suppressing the rampant Air. She spoke only one more time to the little girl staring up at her back:
"You want to be a god, L, and I know what you believe a god to be but Lephon is Himself the example. A god isn't a being of power and whim;
a god is a savior and protector, and that's why we call one's favor grace, and a blessing."
...L did not leave. She helped finish the job, and the two of them shared a moment of tension between themselves and "Faith" when the Seeker returned to them.
Before the 2nd left, they did not tell her what Lephon had told them. After all, they did not understand her, and did not want to. They feared her.
However, they would need to face that fear: to face an End unforetold by the Song of Angels.
And in two days when they would meet once again...
They would shape the world itself—everything, anything—if only to stop her.
Through Umbral Field 26 where shadow hail fell— Over the Sunken Mountains— Past the frozen capital Non, beset by frigid Air— The girls marched, rode, and flew through the fifth Terra, reaching a gate city and finding their illegal trespass through Lephon's back. They tried a little subtlety, but not much can be managed in a rush. Even when shaping light around oneself— the invisible can be quite visible.
But still, they made their way. And then there they were, behind Him: where the thousand Strands were laid out—where they bled oxygen to flow throughout space itself—at least here, behind the back of God.
It was a forest of gold and giant threads waving out from a tower Spine. And a woman was already there: wielding a spear that shimmered strangely against reality. She, the 2nd Seeker, looked out to them.
"...You two," she said, looking upon them dully. "I know the two of you. Why are you here? To watch the comings and goings?" When they didn't answer, she nodded gently. "Ah," she said, "it must have been that Lephon spoke to you."
Nell asked her, "Faith... did Lephon tell you to do this?"
And Faith replied, "I believe this to be what He needs." She shook her head sadly. "Nothing I tell you would be anything you'd want to hear."
"You're right," L answered, and Faith nodded her way.
"Lephon's 'death' is a cruel miracle," said the Seeker. "You two who haven't seen any world apart from this... you think that His love is all that matters. You move along lines that you think He wants you to move along. You are all slaves to Lephon, and Lephon slaves to you all. This is a bad place, worse than you can even imagine, and it doesn't need to be."
Faith lifted her spear, and while it seemed certainly "off" to Nell, to L staring at the blade caused her to reflexively wince. That edge hadn't been made "here", and merely by existing in a space to-it-foreign, it was already cutting at the world. To look at it made L feel as if her eyes had been cut, too. It wasn't simply a spear to kill, but something forged to "erase".
"I won't bother telling you the plan," said Faith, "only the result: rebirth."
"Through countless deaths...?" asked Nell, her voice beginning to shake.
"Erasing a board isn't a big deal," Faith replied, "even if you don't remember what was written there."
Hearing this, Nell had enough and launched herself forward.
Breath was pulled from lungs. Storms were summoned within space. Matches were lit, and fire was cast from them... Force was thrust forward. Force, and power.
It's how Shapers fight. With "everything"—everything.
...Although, to call this a "fight", sincerely, would be a lie.
In time, Faith simply pointed a finger at Nell, and just with that the young girl was violently forced back.
Nell struck against Lephon's Spine with a terrible sound, soon tasting blood on her tongue. She shook, almost paralyzed, and when she looked up she saw that Faith had her hand at her apprentice's neck. Her thoughts rushed. She wanted to cry out. She prayed. Yes, she prayed.
...It is hardly ever enough to "want", or even to need. What bends the tide of what some might call "fate" might be a miracle, but often it is instead born from old seeds.
Seeds of passion and effort may in time be recognized.
To the erudite and assiduous, should you speak to God, He might hear you.
For something like that, you don't need faith.
...And yet Nell, that girl: she believed in God.
And it may have made her think: faith is why Lephon heard her then.
There is mystery here in Lephon. In a thousand years, Lephon had spoken to no one; Lephon is dead and has been far longer than even two millennia. Has He desires? Has He wants? What compels God? Why did He Speak to Nell?
A thousand years before, why did He speak to Faith?
To some "End", surely. God has plans for all of you, after all.
Nell heard Lephon's voice again. His sound bled into her and the Spine behind her grew hot. As something deep in Lephon's Heart resounded, her heart soundly beat back. Her eyes and tongue had changed, and after she was left with a piece of God in her palm and another name.
The 2nd briefly lost breath as radiance erupted from the bones before her. She gazed through the waving Strands, and could see a new "number" being called down. With this hesitation, L seized the opportunity and moved the air around them to push the Seeker away.
After, both looked back to God. They there saw Nell, swathed within gold fragments, and with images of unknown past, present, future and beyond reflecting all around her.
Lephon told her to arise eternal. She, Nell, would be the "8th Seeker" and "Compassion".
Her body began to heal, and her eyes once more set upon the 2nd— —and so, as a new "god" was born, Lephon's voice receded again.
Through Umbral Field 26 where shadow hail fell— Over the Sunken Mountains— Past the frozen capital Non, beset by frigid Air— The girls marched, rode, and flew through the fifth Terra, reaching a gate city and finding their illegal trespass through Lephon's back. They tried a little subtlety, but not much can be managed in a rush. Even when shaping light around oneself— the invisible can be quite visible.
But still, they made their way. And then there they were, behind Him: where the thousand Strands were laid out—where they bled oxygen to flow throughout space itself—at least here, behind the back of God.
It was a forest of gold and giant threads waving out from a tower Spine. And a woman was already there: wielding a spear that shimmered strangely against reality. She, the 2nd Seeker, looked out to them.
"...You two," she said, looking upon them dully. "I know the two of you. Why are you here? To watch the comings and goings?" When they didn't answer, she nodded gently. "Ah," she said, "it must have been that Lephon spoke to you."
Nell asked her, "Faith... did Lephon tell you to do this?"
And Faith replied, "I believe this to be what He needs." She shook her head sadly. "Nothing I tell you would be anything you'd want to hear."
"You're right," L answered, and Faith nodded her way.
"Lephon's 'death' is a cruel miracle," said the Seeker. "You two who haven't seen any world apart from this... you think that His love is all that matters. You move along lines that you think He wants you to move along. You are all slaves to Lephon, and Lephon slaves to you all. This is a bad place, worse than you can even imagine, and it doesn't need to be."
Faith lifted her spear, and while it seemed certainly "off" to Nell, to L staring at the blade caused her to reflexively wince. That edge hadn't been made "here", and merely by existing in a space to-it-foreign, it was already cutting at the world. To look at it made L feel as if her eyes had been cut, too. It wasn't simply a spear to kill, but something forged to "erase".
"I won't bother telling you the plan," said Faith, "only the result: rebirth."
"Through countless deaths...?" asked Nell, her voice beginning to shake.
"Erasing a board isn't a big deal," Faith replied, "even if you don't remember what was written there."
Hearing this, Nell had enough and launched herself forward.
Breath was pulled from lungs. Storms were summoned within space. Matches were lit, and fire was cast from them... Force was thrust forward. Force, and power.
It's how Shapers fight. With "everything"—everything.
...Although, to call this a "fight", sincerely, would be a lie.
In time, Faith simply pointed a finger at Nell, and just with that the young girl was violently forced back.
Nell struck against Lephon's Spine with a terrible sound, soon tasting blood on her tongue. She shook, almost paralyzed, and when she looked up she saw that Faith had her hand at her apprentice's neck. Her thoughts rushed. She wanted to cry out. She submitted herself. Yes, she prayed.
...It is hardly ever enough to "want", or even to need. What bends the tide of what some might call "fate" might be a miracle, but often it is instead born from old seeds.
Seeds of passion and effort may in time be recognized.
To the erudite and assiduous, should you speak to God, He will hear you.
For something like that, you don't need faith.
...And yet Nell, that girl: she believed in God.
And it may have made her think: faith is why Lephon heard her then.
There is mystery here in Lephon. In a thousand years, Lephon had spoken to no one; Lephon is dead and has been far longer than even two millennia. Has He desires? Has He wants? What compels God? Why did He Speak to Nell?
A thousand years before, why did He speak to Faith?
To the End of His design. God has plans for all of us, after all.
Nell heard Lephon's voice again. His sound bled into her and the Spine behind her grew hot. As something deep in Lephon's Heart resounded, her heart soundly beat back. Her eyes and tongue had changed, and after she was left with a piece of God in her palm and another name.
The 2nd briefly lost breath as radiance erupted from the bones before her. She gazed through the waving Strands, and could see a new "number" being called down. With this hesitation, L seized the opportunity and moved the air around them to push the Seeker away.
After, both looked back to God. They there saw Nell, swathed within gold fragments, and with images of unknown past, present, future and beyond reflecting all around her.
Lephon told her to arise ephemeral. She, Nell, would be the "6th Seeker" and "Forlorn".
Her body began to heal, and her eyes once more set upon the 2nd— —and so, as a new "god" was born, Lephon's voice receded again.
Two Seekers met and clashed. New light cascaded around them, and power whipped out between the two like typhoon gales.
Although she was young, "Compassion" was determined to have Faith's head. Faith saw this, saw that L was still trying to help her teacher, and so went to L instead.
She left their fighting briefly, and went straight to the child. She grabbed the child's right wrist, pulled it up—
—and using her spear, she took the limb from L.
L looked at the limb she'd lost as the 2nd dropped it callously to float through space, and she soon felt her consciousness fading. Nell shivered and froze on seeing this—so Faith returned to her.
Faith took Nell's shoulder— drew back her spear again— and, quickly—
She ran the spear through the young woman's body, the seams of reality warping upon contact—undoing "who" Nell "was".
So, in almost an instant, Nell had gone. The child meanwhile... went still, and cold.
L... believed in nothing. Belief drives, but it's fickle and can change. Knowledge, logic, certainty— the stuff that makes Lephon the better place; that all drove the girl.
So now Nell was dead. She watched the 2nd cast aside her teacher's body through a wide and quivering stare.
She breathed heavily. Though gravely wounded, her thoughts were now clear again. She turned her eyes to Lephon's back, and as those eyes began to dry—began to bleed, brain pounding, she stopped the flow of time.
The name her first love gave her was "L"—simple and honest, but it became affectionate. Still, it was only one letter of her true name.
Her name is special. A name without meaning apart from what she grants it. Now hallowed within Arcaea's heart, it is the name of a new being beyond all.
This is true: "Lephon" is One God.
"Lacrymira" is Another.
She looked into His Spine, into His Heart, and she saw there the shade of His soul. ...So, she commanded Him.
—Lephon, is in many ways inscrutable. He does not hear prayer for He cannot hear. He does not listen to His children.
But still: to command Him—that's no miracle. That is only the end of a hundred thousand ways; divine. And to call it "fate" would be trite, too.
It is undeniable: Lacrymira was deserving.
Hollowed and dried nerves long quiet of synaptic pulse warmed now with recognition. That stoney back stirred with old feeling. The Heart of God shook, and, for a moment, the Air went still.
This reality changed then. All "knew", all innately recognized that girl. Changing Lephon at its core, she became Rule itself.
The girl spoke to God and made Him hear. She made her voice reach depths that only her eyes could see. Those eyes Lephon had blessed her with, and the hands and fingers He had given her too.
She spoke in a tongue she did not know, but felt; told dead Lephon her desire. Give a number, give a name—give perfection in these symbols, and grant this holy one everything.
Not just any number and name: "hers". Nell's. Nell was one person who did not deserve grace. Lephon agreed. Lacrymira would instead become his Legacy.
She raised her arm toward His bones. And there, she shaped the lingering will of God.
A new color was born amidst the forest of giant's gold threads. It was Her, Lacrymira, and it shined cold throughout all of space, into His Ribs and Spine, and beyond to the Terra and the Air.
Power filled Her body. Her right arm found its way back to Her, and She began to re-shape Herself to seal any wounds.
Lephon had listened to Her, and now He spoke again. She would arise here, behind Him—and after Him: Lacrymira, or—The Ascendent - 8th Seeker:
"Insight".
After the flow of time resumed, She set Her healed eyes on the 2nd. Witnessing the risen Insight, Faith realized with pain that Lephon's will had been set. She fought against it—she did, but it was with the same futility as to fight a wave.
Lacrymira overwhelmed her, and pressed her down against new land She had made. She summoned a miniature star above Faith's back, and made it collapse there— rending the Seeker's body to nothing in only a few moments.
She dismissed the destroyed star and after: all was quiet again.
The story steadily draws to its conclusion.
Lacrymira did not leave Her mentor dead, She brought her down to the land She had crafted and revived the young woman, bringing her soul back and healing the body's wounds.
But, with the two of them all alone there behind Lephon, Lacrymira standing and Nell on her knees, Nell knew at once what Lacrymira had done in her absence—and she went a new kind of cold. In all that it means: Nell had failed her child.
"..." Lacrymira looked down upon her silently. She looked deeply into her—into the core of her being. And She asked, "...Nell, why won't you come with me?"
It hadn't been said. She could see in Her sister's heart that the two of them were not aligned. Within, She could see that her teacher wanted to "beg her not to go". Because She had floated that idea so many times before: to become a god, and leave the world behind.
"Nell... you're alive again so SPEAK to me," said God. Nell looked up at Her and finally replied, "'Why won't I come'...? Why do you want to go?"
They both knew Her answer, and yet Lacrymira still gave it: "I can't live for anyone but myself."
"You shouldn't either, Nell. You don't need to. You won't be thanked for it. You won't be praised. You will die at the hands of an angel, and no one but I will remember you."
"We don't have to die, L," her teacher answered. "Stay, and we..."
Lacrymira slowly shook Her head. "I can see it," She said, "there isn't any saving us from that end. Every Shaper here will die."
And Nell hung her head and shook it in turn. "No," she said. "I won't allow that—"
"Shut UP!!"
Lacrymira roared. Her voice struck throughout everything, and made Nell for a moment still. When Nell looked back to Her, Her eyes stared back wrathful.
"I told you a lie, Nell," she continued in a trembling voice—trembling with rage, "I can live for you. Do you need me to say it? Do you need me to enunciate? To put it to paper? To say so obviously that I love you!?"
Hearing this, her mentor shook and broke in expression. Her eyes brimmed with tears, she hiccupped then. Tears fell from her face. She cried. She continued to cry.
And Lacrymira, She shouted over Her mentor's tears—
"Of course I love you! Why would I still be standing here if not for you? I won't leave you. I can't. You're too charming not to love."
"You're nearly everything to me... I don't want you to die! I hate the idea of you dying, Nell!"
"And great, now you're crying. Crying... And now you won't answer me! Forlorn Nell, always caring and caring...! I could hate you for it. I do. I hate that in you, completely. You waste everything you are on people so much less than you!"
She stopped speaking. Her body was trembling now. Her cold eyes fell on the girl beneath her. Nell shook her head. She would not abandon anyone. Anyone, but for L.
And Lacrymira told her, with a voice like ice: "You're sad."
"That's right," God repeated, "you're 'Forlorn', and 8 can't belong to you."
Nell stared up at her student, who was now staring into Lephon's back.
"You deserve a mark of ruin," said Lacrymira. "You deserve a hex. You will be '6'. Bear that cursed symbol forever."
Deep in Lephon's heart, something new was scrawled upon a black canvas, and it became the new truth. Now changed, the only words "Forlorn" could give her student were "I'm sorry..."
And Lacrymira answered, "You are. But, Nell... I love you for that, too."
A tear in space opened behind the new God: a gate to elsewhere.
She bent, and held Nell's face gently by one hand. She laid Her lips on Her sister's cheek.
She lingered. She thought, for a moment, to stay.
...She stood, and She turned; away from Her teacher, and away from Lephon. For longer, Her hand stayed at her sister's cheek.
She took it away. She hid Her face. She stepped through the gate.
...It closed, and She was gone.
One final story remains for the Shapers, but it has already been told by another—in another place.
The story of when the one you'd call "Tairitsu" died, where Nell had died before her in vain. Because "Powers" are "power". One can coax them, one can shift them, but on Lephon they always "are".
An Angel descended. For the second and final time, the Shapers had a reckoning.
But... The Eternal One was not there. She remains, and has remained for a very long time. Many years have passed. Centuries, maybe—although another might order events incorrectly, and tell you on top of that that "it wasn’t long ago..."
On Her journey, She found Arcaea. And with Nell's death, Arcaea has found Her old teacher too. ...No: Lacrymira doesn't know this.
But—Arcaea's stories are not Lephon's. They can be told by another. This history has been conveyed. "Stolen", maybe. At any rate: recorded.
Now... The new God's will is whim, and She is a capricious girl. Her aims? Wouldn't you like to know them.
Well but, have one truth before you go: Don't believe in Her. Belief makes "truth", after all.
Because you see, while the creator of that place has lost her power— and while Arcaea may be dead or dying... this is so:
There is no rule to divinity, rule is set by the divine.
Law, and order, are established by the will of gods.
Why, there is a god called "nature", and there is a god of "nothing". Brilliant gods with brilliant names, idiot gods and gods with names unspeakable. And, us human gods.
I am 8. I am Insight. But, little devil: my true name was not yours to know. You've been listening to some secret words, haven't you?
Shaper, Ascendant, Seeker; I "am": perfection, infinite, all-seeing. What else? But "god".
...But now, I, your magnanimous god... I seek to stitch torn seams back together, and repair a graying veil. Yet: the world itself still always tumbles down into nothing.
Ah, that so-called "sister" of mine, and her new friend... I can see the two of them through another eye. Stumbling through this world, walking Arcaea in its dying.
They've become blind: rejected "god" to accept "life". And like Arcaea has, this means to have wholly accepted "death". It's sad.
You know? You know: "I" remember: that old history that was brought up, and which you've bore witness to. But? That history? I don't like how it's said.
I've decided to tell the tale a different way. For if old rule is useless, the rule may freely be broken— and new law made to spite it.
Remnants of the self, darker parts of you that might recolor your soul; they are best off forgotten.
Though, while some history is worth forgetting... ...You would do well to remember your name.
It's early evening. Outside, the twilight amber flowing out from the sun tries to slip by without pause, but the devices within the surrounding meadows catch and spool it, changing it to rays more similar to what might be cast from the moon.
The party has a certain atmosphere. Though there are no eyes without the manor, the fact is that maintaining an image is paramount to those of upper echelons. She knows this, all of this, innately. Sitting in a darker place, with sunlight captured and held at ceilings and staircases presently beyond her reach, she considers the implications of this knowledge in calm and in silence.
"Lavinia."
She looks up from her glass. The fiancé (dressed very well, almost stuffily, but in casual posture) is standing before her.
"What have you decided to drink tonight?"
She looks at it through her one proper eye. She answers: "Plum juice… Donovan."
"Keen," he says with a smile, looking out toward the rest of the room. She looks at his expression blankly. He smirks. "Mum and the rest prefer cranberry—for health, they say— but…" he says, glancing at her again. "It's a bitter taste, isn't it? You don't like it either, do you?"
She thinks, wincing. "I don't."
"And that is to the good." He chuckles, then turns away. "I'll go speak with Morgan. Join us whenever you like."
She nods, and Donovan moves to their mutual childhood friend near the fireplace.
As always, images need to be maintained. The fire throws its light only a few feet out from the pit before the threads of it are wound away, stored into lanterns on the floor. The rest of the room is dark, but comforting. It's a setting to relax within. A few lanterns above give just enough illumination for reading, seeing each other's faces, and the spread of carefully selected portions of food along with bottles of drink. Just outside the room, through half-glass walls, an almost untame scene of wildflowers, stones, and streams is dimly visible: wrapped in a midnight blue, almost like satin. There are twenty guests at the party, half in this room, the rest in the halls or somewhere in other studies—perhaps the library. This is as much as she knows.
She drinks her juice, tastes it. She notes the sweetness, not having had much experience with plum juice herself. She recalls something about a better taste and sensation, but in the moment now she is compelled to focus on how the liquid feels along her tongue. However, she can make no true determination of it. It is remarkably unremarkable.
She puts the glass down on the fanciful doily of the short table beside her. She sits, listens, and watches, touching the flower petals blooming from her other eye rather absently.
She hears Donovan say, "But to think they’ve done so much already. When I first heard of the idea, I was sure it wasn’t possible."
"Well, Charles is quite sure it is," says another of the guests—not Morgan, but Nathalia.
"Astounding," Donovan grants, running his fingers through the top of his hair.
"A whole entire world, made by human hands," he says. "Mankind is quite something."
Her eye had wandered to the flickering of a lantern, and now it seeks the expectant husband. She reaches for her glass and takes a sip; it's enough to make her remember why she had put it down in the first place.
The matter of a created world is only really a fickle fancy of theirs. They do not discuss it much. They do not much understand it. What little they might have to say of true interest, she can't, in fact, properly remember. Irritating. At times, it even feels to her like they aren't speaking at all.
The girl grows impatient. She stands and passes out of the sitting room into more lavish, more evening- themed halls, passing rooms with which she's familiar, but only vaguely. She explores, finding stretches of unlit, pitch-black paths, and doors that seem to be locked though their knobs bear no holes for unlocking. What doors are open show rooms of a few men and women each, chatting too quietly to discern. If they ever notice her presence, they only look her way a moment before returning to conversation or rest.
She wants to go outside.
The manor has some technological sophistication to it, but is married to its ideals of old "class". Yes, the dimming canisters are curious, and the manufactured wilds are peculiar, but what interests her the most are the light-transforming machines in the gardens. She knows of them, but has yet to see them firsthand.
In a word, she is "curious".
The humdrum of a social gathering so often repeated that this day feels like a thousand identical others is not something she wishes to dabble in long. Lives and creations are too fascinating to ever take either for granted.
But as she approaches the doors to the front driveway...
As her fingers slip upon the wood of the grand handles before her...
She knows, innately, that there is nothing past there, nothing for her. In the entire world, there is nowhere else she could be. Her place is not in the meadows admiring mechanisms, it is in the sitting room with the husband-to-be.
"Outside" is only an idea. A fruitless, ephemeral concept.
That is not a favorable realization.
Dropping her hand she turns and stands below the chandelier, each of its shards showing an image of somewhere else in the world, at this moment. Shifting, always, and speaking of places she cannot go. Fading, almost celestial illumination hangs around the fixture, giving this place and that object a too-unreal quality. Her eye, her lips, say nothing. She trudges back into the mansion, with a small fire of discontent born within her.
A windstorm scatters petals around terrain behind the walls. Glints of white and sapphire catch the eye, and the youths of the party speak of the change favorably. Like magic. Wonderful.
She comes back into the lounge and witnesses the swirl of artificial nature, the splendor of a farce.
She remembers the first time those flowers were scattered and thinks: she’s rather had enough of "remembering".
During the past several hours, she’s tested the boundaries.
The windows were locked, the patio doors were barred, and the ventilation ducts were bolted. The question she had to all this was: "Are these shut because people shut them, or because I’m trapped in here?"
Metaphor and emotion often swayed the hearts of young girls, she found. It was difficult to determine the reality.
When she’d had enough of poking, prodding, turning things over, and wandering, she began to prattle on with other guests she knew to be acquaintances or friends.
"The weather..." "The King..." "You know, the week before..."
Tedious, and uninformative too. Certain lines of questions were met with incredulity or with nothing at all, as if the questions hadn’t been asked—as if she hadn’t spoken.
What she mainly wanted to know about—engineering, technology, progress— seemed to especially draw out nothing from the other guests. With her frustration growing, she took to listening in instead, and eventually heard:
"It’s little more than a globe of dirt now. We’ll terraform it soon, I’m told."
And asking about that... led nowhere as well. That was quite enough to know, however, and so she entered the lounge again.
She stands in it now, watching the storm, and relating to it.
The girl steps past the fiancé, who smiles at her presence. He greets her with, "Lavinia, you’re back," and she rests her gaze on his lapel. He takes no particular notice of this.
The players always seem to act in such a way. What stands out, what’s unusual, is given no mind. Bolder and bolder she’s gotten, but they remain always steadfast to their routines.
To maintain the image, correct? She decides to ask, outright, one question she burns to have answered.
"The man-made world... it isn’t made of glass?"
"...Hm? What on...? Of course not, Lavinia. It’s not a bauble."
Her eye goes wide. Her pupil constricts.
Of all the things, that had been it.
Donovan looks over her shoulder and through the walls, saying, "At any rate, isn’t it lovely? Almost as lovely as you..."
But she doesn’t reply. Recognizing his answer as confirmation, she settles on a decision.
As the spiral of flowers beyond flow almost serenely through the air, she moves to the table of foodstuffs, and stops before the breads.
Donovan continues. "I’m told the world they’ve made will have shows like this across sprawling, endless valleys. Right now, it’s only barren. A concept, you know?"
She stops her hand over a handle, listening.
"But it’ll surely be a delight in time, for those who can afford a spot on it. And think of the potential, Lavinia."
She exhales. It’s been another fruitless trip. Her hand closes on fine, smoothed wood.
She turns swiftly and steps to the awaiting husband, swinging her hand out toward his neck.
The bread knife’s teeth stop in his skin.
Without feeling—without even a spark of animosity—she wordlessly cuts across the boy’s throat, and watches closely to see what comes out.
The gentleman's throat is cut in what should be an awful way... but the memory lacks a concept of what "awful" would be. Instead of a shredded, vicious image, his neck now looks akin to torn and crumpled paper. Inside is not "shadow" but "negative space": a void inside his body. The edges of the wound flicker weakly with some white light, and off the blade of the knife she'd used to strike him, vibrant shards float aloft... simply hanging in the air.
And Donovan can't comprehend it. Many of the patrons, too, are in awe and horror of her act. People fall, women faint, and Donovan reaches for his neck. Some men leap for her, pull back her forearm and hold her at her neck. She grips the knife tightly, and with a dull expression stares into the husband's bewildered eyes.
While she hardly struggles with the guests apprehending her, she spots behind Donovan a girl in absolute hysterics on the floor. The sound of her voice becomes increasingly distorted, beginning to crackle and fluctuate in volume. Already, then: the memory has broken.
This wasn’t how it went. Even the most time-changed memories could not be altered so. For a wife to, unprompted, attack her husband this way during a moment of peace...
She’d hoped to provoke a reaction, and is thus satisfied by this result. Although a few of the other people in the room are unfazed by the commotion, and some even seem to have lost their faces entirely, alteration of a memory to this extent is a veritable first. This, at least, has been a success.
The world begins to crack, fractures appearing wherever she can see. Reality afterward looks almost wrinkled from it.
She says to herself, "Making entire worlds for vacation... Surely there would be better uses for that."
She lets go of the bread knife and sighs, seeing how it can’t move from the space where she’d abandoned it.
"Not a peep about ‘memory’, ‘echoes’, ‘reflections’—importantly, not ‘glass’..."
The room constricts.
"This was another worthless dream."
The planet divides.
White blears and obscures, briefly flashing everywhere as the image is demolished. In a rush of every remembered sound contained in that recollection, in that slip of glass, she stands with her eye shut until luminescence and noise fade. She opens her eye to faintly glittering empty space, her mind twists, and after another wave of effulgent pain she sees again the world with which she is both most familiar with, and most confounded by:
The world of white and ruins. The memory-shaped realm of Arcaea.
"I’d had a good feeling about this one," she mumbles, watching the rotation of a shard just above her palm. "But it wasn’t responsible for this world’s creation, and it was almost empty to boot. Hmph. If I can watch them, let me remove them too..."
She dismisses the glass, not looking as it returns to the space where she’d found it: a glinting, sharpened river flowing above the ground. The girl named Saya stares off into the plain horizon, stepping forth while touching her lip absently, and reviewing the events of the recent memory, comparing them all to the wealth of a thousand others.
Each one awakens in the world of memories with nothing in her head. She is no exception.
However, as light filters through her cornea the sensations that grip her are unusual. Her heart stirs first, passionate, and she almost snarls at the building frustration. She grips the clothes over her stomach, and thinks her ears might be deafened. Her eye squints involuntarily, and she realizes with that that she only has a single eye rather than two. She feels around her face.
"Wha...?"
She coughs, and pushes herself up. What she felt through her glove was something almost soft, surrounding something very solid in the place of her right eye. She realizes she's wearing gloves. Looking over her body, she wonders why she's wearing these clothes. She wonders next why she knows what clothes are at all.
She had been sleeping against a wall, and upon an inspection of her surroundings sees that there are three others to make a four-cornered place around her, and every one of them is in extreme disrepair. Looking up she sees that there's no roof, and questions why it is she'd expected to find one in the first place. In fact, she recognizes where she is... vaguely. She trudges along the wall she'd slept against until she finds one she can step over. As she clears the bricks, she notices that they are entirely white. Looking up, she sees that it isn't only this wall, but the entire world that's white. It is an infinite landscape of an old, defeated, human society, or rather a pastiche of several societies. It's bizarre... Moreover: it is bizarre she finds it bizarre. Why?
Before she even stumbles upon any reflective glass, she has already bet on tens of theories behind what she's seeing, and who she is. Even that she is alone, and that she doesn't know her name, tells her much about the potential truth.
And, over time, she finds more reason for one theory in particular.
She was born with conviction and curiosity. The world of white presents questions but no answers. Days pass, and there are no answers within the ruins. Weeks pass, and there are no answers within the glass. Indeed, the world is full of glass, taunting always with views of other, more vivid and varied places. Echoes, imprints of something real, exactly the world itself, so full of what must be copies of human invention. After two months, though it could be more, she feels she has seen enough to believe something, and with confidence.
While atop a broken stairway someplace far away now from where she'd awakened some time ago, she gazes at an undulating and segmented portion of the sky: a seemingly broken window to nothing, crafted from over a hundred shards of Arcaea. She becomes sure of herself in this moment. She can bet her judgment is the truth.
But it's not enough, and never enough. It can't be settled with speculation.
So she vows: this realm is a mystery, telling nothing and offering little, so she will solve it and find its reason. As the only being of this realm, it seems, this will be her first duty.
And as she fully accepts the Arcaea... So too do the Arcaea fully accept her...
...as a vast and seemingly endless archive, not only to be read, but to be lived through.
The girl with a flower in her eye closes the book of that memory in her mind. It hadn’t been completely worthless, only mostly.
It had frustrated her at first: the world she had visited was one she had quickly deemed frivolous, but the frivolity revealed something important to her about the potential of mankind. Still... for now... that wasn’t very important.
More than theories on "how", theories of "why" compelled her onward. This had been another of her journeys out through the ruins of the world in a scattershot hope of discovering that answer, or to even brush against it tangentially. That was always her focal drive, but a secondary one had been made manifest after she’d witnessed about two hundred of the memories.
"It didn’t have anything new for a potential reconstruction," she whispers, beckoning a shard from a nearby, sparse stream of glass, "but I suppose it’s good that it had some sort of value."
She lets the gleam of the new piece catch her eye, and she scrutinizes the vision of the past it offers, muttering absently, "Almost home..."
She carries the fragment over her palm, crossing a bridge with which she’s become very familiar. On her left is a haphazard pile of what once might have been cities, on her right is a chaotic mass of glass and stone—recognizable as nothing. She marches the long way back to the place where she was "born", uncaring of how many steps it takes.
She takes however long she needs to reach and stop before a place of four fallen walls, between them an immense sphere of shimmering crystal—an unfinished sphere broken apart, like a cracked shell. Smiles, tears, deaths, and celebrations flicker in and out its facets. Flowers, plains, deserts, oceans... Animals, people, technology...
She doesn’t know if she can recreate a world by piecing together memories. She doesn’t even know if she can truly "connect" them at all by gathering them together like this... But she can try.
She squints lightly to the gleam of the new piece she’s brought. "Let’s see how much you can show me," she says aloud.
So it opens, and the girl fades into a new time. In short order, she sees a world brimful with artificial glow, crowded by endless and nigh-infinite towers of man reaching through clouds of an evening sky, and dark vehicles roaring through the air. An unpleasant atmosphere flows into her lungs. Cacophony fills her ears. As she assumes an identity, assumes a new past, she looks on, unmoved. A hundred questions rise in her mind... She will have them answered. No matter what that takes, no matter what needs to be done.
An endless day could be dull. Spending too long under an overeager sun—anyone would start to yearn for a moon.
Even for her, that sentiment holds true.
"Eighty days of light?" "Seven months of light?" "A year... maybe..."
The white of the sky has once again broken through the cracks in the walls of this place she calls home, and it seems her sleeping body had found the rays while rolling over the floor.
She grumbles, "Turn it off already..."
But still, she picks herself up. Still, she rubs her eyes and stretches her arms. She stands and finds the door, ready to face another "day" in the seemingly boundless world of Arcaea.
An adventure that hasn't always been a delight, and travels that haven't always led to discoveries. Despite that, ever since she'd first awakened a tabula rasa, two things have always remained consistent:
both her heart and the sky have always been shining.
"Alright...!" she says under her breath. "Some exercise first!"
She holds out her hand before her and a section of glass flies her way. Not memory glass— Not "Arcaea"— It is an ordinary, typical sheet, albeit a large one. When it spins close, she jumps onto it, and immediately calls another.
The home she found is an old beach house on a lonely island apart from the abandoned mélange-cities found everywhere else in the world. It's a beach without an ocean, houses scattered around its shores like abandoned shells; and deeper inland is a field of strange, gigantic poles of white wood. The homes have been picked apart over time, from within and without, in her tampering. Now she whisks away their walls and windows to create a makeshift set of stairs— to make a racing track, and then a tunnel. She quickly leaps and runs through the gleaming passage, if only to give her legs feeling.
All this took was a little acceptance. Days after awakening, it was a simple matter to make the world of Arcaea bend to her whimsy.
But far below her, just above the sands of the phantom sea, something glints: something sparse and scattered throughout the water.
Throwing a glance that way, she huffs a breath from her nose, and sports a weak smirk.
The glass beneath her feet bends so easily, but the peculiar glass—the Arcaea—has always been somewhat... no, absurdly recalcitrant with her. In this world of memories, hardly any recollections will follow her, and most can only be viewed or visited.
In an almost childish huff, the girl jumps from a crystal platform. Behind her, the structures she's made all collapse, piece by piece. Before gravity fully takes her, she holds out her right hand, calling for the blanket from her bed and swirling into it joyously. Then, she calls for something heavy, something soft. In a few moments after falling, she is caught by a throne of indolence: a hefty, colorless armchair. Thus, she sits, hanging in the skies above her home, half-gazing at tombstone horizons.
She exhales again; she's pleased, satisfied. Another successful lovely "morning" run. Still looking out to the distance, her thoughts drift to less pleasant places: to questions about the size of this world, and what else it might contain. Has she even seen a third of it? Even a sixteenth? It's a too-big place, and there are too many assorted memories. As she rocks along the windless air, she lets her eyelids drop and she considers that fact. It's some immense place; it's some old and mish-mash, jumbled place. She feels it probably can't just be a world of wonders and oddities exclusively meant for her.
She opens her eyes to the bright sky again.
Somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the world, that sky is full of stars. Under that sky, perhaps other girls are gazing upward and wishing for daylight.
The girl in red grips the front of the blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
Days without end mean it's always a new beginning, and no telling what a journey will hold.
She mutters to herself, eased into her flying seat.
"Is there a sun up there, I wonder...?"
She squints at the heavens above, and quietly contemplates.
What makes the light so evenly spread throughout this place?
Until now, her travels have always been forward, so… Why not try upward?
A mischievous smile flashes across her face.
She stands in her chair and drops off the blanket, letting it fall toward the ground. As it drifts drown, a wooden column launches up past it. She jumps from her chair and grabs hold of the new arrival by a short, metal bar. With her feet planted against the column's side for security, she gives it a longer glance. It is a pillar, she knows, used in other worlds to convey power and communications. She puts one foot down on another bar below, and like that—with one leg and one arm free, far above the ground—she stands boldly on a broken piece of an old world.
She gazes to the urban and suburban sprawl on the horizon one more time, and then turns her gazing upward. She can't be sure how far flight will carry her: she knows she'll need a ladder to be safe.
The houses below, hers excepted, start breaking down even more. Panels, bed frames, armoires and windows glide upward, and the debris she used and let collapse before is torn out of the sand. Everything begins to amass, surely and steadily, into a defined structure. But the girl is not an architect. Her tower is ramshackle, slowly building toward the heavens at odd, sharp, and often sudden angles.
Unfortunately, her island is not replete with usable material. After running out, she frowns halfway at her design, feeling annoyed that it cannot even reach a kilometer into the sky.
Grumbling, she turns her eyes on the horizon again and lifts her palm toward it. She concentrates, pulls... and nothing happens.
But that's only natural. That is of course.
As powerful and masterful as she may be, she is no god.
She drops her hand in defeat and decides it's time to renovate. Instead of a tower, a spiral set of stairs. After an hour, and another hour, and another hour, and two more, her work is finally done and she is impressed with the result. It still looks ridiculous, and more than a little haphazard, but this amalgamation, she is certain, is much more sensible. She figures she deserves a pat on the back.
With the new formation complete, she wastes no time in beginning her ascent. One by one, step by step, she rises with her armchair floating close by, ready to catch her should she fall. As the girl makes her way, she pulls from the bottom of the stairs and sends those steps to the top. Soon after, she finds herself climbing an ever-building, ever-breaking staircase. Through layers of fog, to the highest point.
The trip becomes a long one, during which she sometimes must have a seat or even sleep through the "night". And, maybe after what would be four days, heaven comes within her sight. And she learns this: "heaven" is an immense and impenetrable wall of clouds.
Her progress is halted when a step she sends from the bottom refuses to become the top, stuck on the fluff of the air and unable to move any further up. She withdraws it and leaves it to hang beside her. And, with a determined gaze, she rushes her way up the final flight.
At the top, the girl fans the pieces, panes, and pillars out underneath her for more of a platform, and she lifts her hands over her head—into the clouds. Here she finds that the white resists her touch, but still she pushes on, standing on the toes of her boots to see through if she can.
And here, she finds, she cannot.
"Really...?" she wonders aloud.
But in her moment of despondence, something catches her eye.
Out the corner of her right: a glint. In fact, a bevy of glints, dropping from the clouds after she's gone and disturbed them.
She looks, to find a small crowd of perhaps twenty Arcaea—perhaps even more—coming toward her.
And the girl in red realizes.
In these sunless skies of Arcaea, standing on an invented ground, she has found the first group of memories in this world which are inextricably attuned to her.