Arc VI Chapter 20: We Need Each Other

 

Delilah awoke in a haze. Caught between the past and the present, the attack of the Lingering Will replaying in her mind as a jumbled, vicious montage, she shuddered and shook. The Lingering Will had touched her, right at the end, right as the Light was separating them from each other. And that touch, that tiny touch, had left her so cold, so cold she thought she’d never be warm again.

And then she’d blacked out. Down, down, down into darkness, consciousness abandoning her, she lost herself.

And now she was back. Back to… what?

She shook again, but it felt different. Her vision was blurry, she was struggling to see. There was light and color — red and orange and yellow predominantly, such warm colors. Why couldn’t she feel warm?

There was a shape in the middle of it all. Dead center in her vision. Calmer colors, black and white, steady, solid.

She shook again. Hard. It wasn’t her. Someone was shaking her.

“Wake up!”

The voice sounded so far away. The only thing Delilah could hear, like she was hearing that voice from the bottom of a deep ocean. She tried to reach for it, but she couldn’t. Whose voice was it? Who called to her?

She shook again. A flicker of clarity struck through her blurred vision, but only for the briefest moment.

“Wake up!”

The voice again, much nearer. Frantic, panicked. Terrified.

A girl. Which girl…?

Delilah gasped. Her senses rushed back to her in an instant, all at once, and she sat up with a panicked start. Her head collided with the other girl’s, hard, hard enough that it hurt, that she thought her brains were sent rattling around in her skull. She wavered, but didn’t fall back down.

She looked up, wincing.

There she was. Alice. She shook herself once and stared at Delilah with wide, frightened white eyes. The fear slowly softened, and she raised an eyebrow. “Honestly, if you’re awake, just say so. Don’t freak me out like that, and don’t go hurting yourself on my skull, you know?”

Delilah lunged forward, wrapping Alice in a tight embrace. Alice faltered, for a moment, then hugged her back. Hesitantly at first, but her embrace steadily tightened, matching Delilah’s own tight hold.

“Stop shivering, geez,” Alice said, her warm face pressed against Delilah’s.

Warm.

Warmth!

“Hang on, wait,” Delilah said, pulling back. She switched around to Alice’s other side, pressing her left cheek against Alice’s.

But she couldn’t feel anything. She was so cold.

“What’s the deal?” Alice asked. “You okay?”

“Do you have a mirror?” Delilah asked, pulling back. “Wait, no, I’ve got something.” She pulled out her phone, thankful that she still had a bit of battery life left — how long had it been since she’d last charged it? Since she’d last used it? — and opened her camera, flipping it around so she could see herself.

She shuddered, and not from the cold.

On her left cheek was the faintest, smallest of marks. A grey line, as wide as a finger, and just a couple of inches long. Like a bruise, or a tattoo. Her skin wasn’t broken or warped or damaged, just as smooth as ever.

But she was marked.

And she couldn’t feel anything but cold on that side of her face.

“What… what do I do…?” she asked, staring at herself. She looked at Alice. “You see it, don’t you?”

“ ’Course I see it,” Alice said with a shrug. “What’s the deal? Don’t just freak out, talk to me about it.”

“I can’t… I can’t feel warmth on that side of my face,” Delilah said, staring at herself. “For a while there, I couldn’t… I couldn’t feel any warmth, and… and I…”

Alice snatched Delilah’s phone out of her hand, and Delilah reached for it, fought for it. “Give it back!” she cried, standing as Alice did, struggling in vain to beat Alice’s quick reflexes and sleight-of-hand tricks.

“Stop freaking out,” Alice said, stepping to the edge of the shore they were on and holding her phone out over the lake of fire. “I’ll drop it, you know.”

Delilah stared. And for the first time since she’d woken up, she saw the world in which they found themselves.

A lake of fire, all around them. Roaring, rumbling, sparking and popping, it surrounded the island on which they stood.

Alone. It was just Delilah and Alice.

“Where… are we?” Delilah asked.

“Dunno,” Alice said, pocketing Delilah’s phone. “Haven’t explored yet, but it doesn’t seem likely anyone else is here.”

The island wasn’t very large, but it was big enough to support the ruined remains of… well, not a city, and not even a town. It was quite small, with the remnants of six houses winding their way up a central hill on which stood a lone chapel, two of its four stained-glass windows shattered, open to the scorching air.

It was hot. Delilah realized it now, could feel it now in all but the left side of her face. Dry and hot due to being surrounded by a lake of fire, with no sights on the distant horizon in any direction. Where were they? Why were they here, and why were they here alone?

The last time they’d leapt through a Door of Light to escape the Lingering Will, the explosion had sent all of them to the Final Frontier’s Westward Plains. It had taken them time to find each other, but they’d all been in the same Location.

Now… had things gone differently? Alice and Delilah had been the last ones through the door, and their entire group had been much more spread out in their flight through the door. Not only that, but this time, the Lingering Will had actually touched Delilah. Had that influenced things?

“Kinda feels familiar, don’t you think?” Alice asked.

Delilah was about to say it wasn’t, until she realized…

She knew this place. She’d seen it, just once, just briefly.

“It was in the Book,” she said, pulling the Book of the Key from her bag and finding her way to the right page. “Here!”

An illustration of a city, surrounded by an ocean of fire. It was haunting, yet somehow beautiful, a bombed-out city, charred and ruined, and yet… there was something serene about it. Captivating. But…

“It’s not the same,” Alice said. “That place is a ruin, too, but it’s huge! There are all sorts of crazy buildings and roads. This is just a little island.”

“No… it is the same,” Delilah said, comparing the illustration to the real place they were in. “Emmeryn wrote and illustrated this book thousands of years ago. The city was a city back then; it was huge. But now…”

“Time hasn’t been kind to it,” Alice said. “Just a little island left, a few buildings barely hanging on. But…” she looked at the illustration again, then out at the lake of fire, “doesn’t it seem like everything’s smaller? In the Book it looks like this endless, vast ocean. But here… it’s just… a lake. The horizon isn’t far off, but there’s nothing there. The world just… ends. And it’s not a very big world.”

“Locations can be like that,” Delilah murmured. “But I wish I knew if Locations could shrink like this.” She read over the Book’s text regarding the place, refreshing her memory. “ ‘To go where all else nigh availe to tread, there lies untraveled road. Loste travails help shattered souls meet, collide, in pyurifying ascent. One, three, toogether is all, apahrt is lost. The fires will choose.’ ”

“And Terevalde didn’t feel like sharing what all that meant,” Alice said with a sigh. “It’s a heck of a riddle. ‘Loste travails’ is that thing about a journey that comes at great pain, right? Something’s lost in the quest?”

Delilah nodded. “That’s all that he explained, though. He said this place shouldn’t be relevant to the Keybearer, but then Maribelle said we should know everything, and he was about to tell us, but then…”

“We got interrupted somehow, right?” Alice asked. “Oh! That was when Twelve arrived, and told us about his Bastion being taken by Darkness, and then Kodoka and Siegfried came back with the message from Sal, and… yeah. It all just kinda spiraled. We never got back to talking about this.”

“And now we’re here, without anyone who can explain it,” Delilah said. She grimaced as a hot, dry gust swept over them, and she took a step back from the shore. A flaming ocean, self-perpetuating and smokeless, beneath a crimson sky — it felt like something wicked, or apocalyptic. But judging from the Book… perhaps it was something else.

“We’ve done the ‘figure it out ourselves’ thing before with something complicated,” Delilah said. “Remember the Bastion on the Moon? We figured out the Light Catcher, and how to use a Relay, and got back to Grimoire in time to save it — without any Paladins to show us the way.”

“We had a library, though,” Alice said. “Not just one book.”

“We use the Book,” Delilah said. “And we explore what little is left of this place. We figure this out, one piece at a time.” She started towards the few buildings that remained, finding the air a little more bearable the farther she was from the shore. While she walked, she read and thought. “This place is ‘where all else nigh availe to tread.’ It’s not a place people normally come to. A place for ‘shattered souls,’ whatever that might mean, to meet. But there’s this thing about ‘pyurifying ascent’… fires aren’t just destructive, they’re used to purify, too. We have to stay together, that’s the second to last line, we can’t be split apart or it’s over. ‘The fires will choose’… that sounds so ominous. This whole place…” She spun in a slow circle, taking it all in. “It’s like… a test?”

“A test of what?” Alice asked. “If people don’t normally come here, what would people come here for? I don’t like the sound of ‘shattered souls.’ Sounds kinda like what was going on with Fae and those other two who look like her.”

“Yeah,” Delilah murmured. She didn’t like the sound of it, or that comparison, any more than Alice did. “Come on. There’s not much left, but maybe there’s some kind of clue still here. If this place is even still functioning for what it was made for, that is.”

“What do you mean?” Alice asked, following Delilah as she started up the hill towards the chapel. “Still functioning? You think the whole test thing might be defunct?”

“It used to be a huge city,” Delilah said. “As ruined as this, sure, but it was so much bigger. It could be that, as this place shrunk, with all the constant burning, the most important things have been lost. We can’t know without looking, but… well, we’d better be ready for the worst.”

Alice eyed her curiously. “If it’s not functioning anymore, then it isn’t a test. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

“Not if the test was originally the way to escape this place,” Delilah said.

Silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the sounds of their footfalls crunching up the dry, crumbling path.

“Can’t you just call Solla?” Alice asked. “That’s what you did in the Final Frontier, and that got us home just fine. We could never really be stuck anywhere, if you think about it.”

Delilah bowed her head. “I’ve… been calling her. In my heart. Just like I did on the Western Plains, but… she’s not answering.”

Alice stopped, staring at her. “Not answering? Or… she can’t hear you?”

Delilah stared back at her. But she didn’t trust herself to speak. She hated to admit it, and she covered it over with her analytical way of tackling their new circumstance, but…

She was frightened. If Solla couldn’t hear her, were they trapped where no one would ever find them? And if Solla could hear, but just wasn’t responding, what might that mean? Did it mean that Delilah couldn’t hear her? Had the Lingering Will done more damage than she knew? Had it severed their connection somehow? Why would Solla just not answer her? She couldn’t think of any reason, and that left her thinking that the problem was either this Location…

Or herself.

“Whoa, whoa, hold the scary expressions,” Alice said, gripping Delilah by the shoulders and staring at her with white eyes. “If you’re worried about something, say so. Don’t keep the heavy stuff to yourself. That’s what you taught me, you know.”

Delilah was caught off-guard by that simple assessment.

That’s right. I’m her big sister. I promised myself I’d do right by her, and I’ve helped her so much. After all she’s been through, all she was made to be, all she’s done… she needs someone to show her the right way forward. I’ve been able to be that. If I falter now, that’s the worst thing I could do. She needs me to be my best, no matter what.

So Delilah told her about her fears. What if Solla couldn’t hear her? Perhaps this Location was cut off from the rest of the Dominion, or even the rest of the universe. But what if it was something worse? What if the Lingering Will had cut Delilah off from Solla?

“Whatever he did to you, we’ll figure out how to fix it,” Alice said, cupping Delilah’s left cheek — the one with the mark left by the Lingering Will — in her hand. She chuckled. “I kinda sounded like you and your siblings there, huh? That’s just what you would say, normally. And besides, we don’t know if he’s cut you off from her, you know?” She jabbed a thumb towards the chapel’s open doorway. “Let’s finish investigating this place before we jump to conclusions. That’s the Delilah way.”

Delilah smiled, nodded, and started into the chapel. “Thanks,” she said.

“Hey, it feels good being able to give you some of your own advice,” Alice said, grinning.

Inside the chapel, they found only a pair of pews remaining, charred completely black. When Alice lightly tapped one, the edge of it crumbled away. Uncountable shards of stained glass and metal reinforcements littered the floor. The two remaining stained glass windows were hard to make out, occluded by uncounted centuries of inattention. No one had ever been here to dust them, or clean them, or maintain their integrity and splendor.

Across the ruined chapel floor was a simple altar, just a block of stone upon which rested a book, open to somewhere in the middle.

And Delilah and Alice both stared.

In the midst of all this ruin, all this fire-bombed devastation, there remained a book, with thin paper pages, untouched by the destruction.

“If that isn’t a clue, nothing is,” Alice said, as she and Delilah approached the book. It was a thick tome, yet it seemed like all there was lay written right here in the very center, just three simple lines:

“The test of bonds awaits. Pass, and escape. Fail, and burn.”

“Okay, just be ominous about it,” Alice said, turning the page. There was nothing written there, and when she turned another, and then another, and then flipped through to the end, there were no words anywhere else in the book.

“Has the test already begun?” Delilah asked, turning around, looking everywhere for some sign.

“Waste of paper,” Alice muttered, flipping the book closed and turning away. “Well, if the book’s here, that probably means the test is here too, right?”

“How do we tell, though?” Delilah asked. She gripped her keychain Talisman, calling upon Divination Magic, but she didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Not that she necessarily would. She hadn’t trained her Divination Magic as broadly as Shias or her mother. She had it primarily focused around keeping track of her Summons and teammates, and occasionally to synergize with their own abilities. Gazing at an unfamiliar place and understanding the nature of it, what belongs and what doesn’t, what’s normal and what’s changed, was something she simply couldn’t do.

“The test no longer functions as intended,” said a cold, wicked voice that immediately set Delilah and Alice on edge as they spun around to face it.

Jormungand. White hair slicked back, a jagged scar running from one high corner of his face to the opposite side of his jaw, dressed all in black, he stood behind the altar, watching the girls with a cunning, malicious gaze.

“How’d you get here?” Alice asked, stretching out her left hand. The silver rapier pin on her shoulder-cape gleamed with light that leapt to her hand, forming into a full-sized silver sword.

“Surely you’ve noticed,” Jormungand said, stepping around the altar to reveal living Darkness pooling around his feet. “We agents of Darkness can come and go where we wish. Even to Locations cut off from the wider world.”

“So it’s the Location, then,” Alice said, shooting Delilah a smile. And Delilah nearly smiled herself, because that was a mild relief. Whatever the Lingering Will had done to her, it wasn’t what separated her from Solla now. “I guess the only way to get here is to get blasted through a breaking door of Light, huh? Or your stupid Darkness portals. Why are you here, anyway, scar-face? I’m the last person you should want to show your face to.”

Jormungand sneered. “And why is that?” he asked.

“Because I’ve got a proper personal vendetta against you for what you tried to make me into,” Alice said. She brandished her sword. “Unless you’re ready to die, you should probably find someplace else to be.”

“And she isn’t alone against you, either,” Delilah said, Summoning all four of her Felines.

Jormungand raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t come here to die,” he said. “I’ve been trying to track you for some time, Dark Eater. You’re trying to reject who you are. It appears you need some hands-on correction.”

“Gross,” Alice said, making a face. “And no thanks. I’ve got a better idea!” She darted forward.

“Don’t you want to know why the White Whale fears the Dark Eater?” Jormungand asked. Alice stopped in her tracks. “Don’t you want to know why Emmeryn fears the Dark Eater? Why the Lost Bellkeepers fear the Dark Eater? You have no idea what your power really is, what your purpose truly is.”

“Whatever it is, it’s failed,” Alice said. “You called me a marvelous success, but I’m not doing anything that’ll help you. Get your eyes checked. I’m not what you made me.”

“You are exactly what I made you,” Jormungand said with a wicked sneer. “You just aren’t using your powers properly. Which is why I’ve come to find you. Your perspective needs some fine-tuning.”

Alice rolled her eyes — and then attacked. She leapt the ten yards between her and Jormungand in a single bound, her sword a blurred arc of silver light as it swung for Jormungand’s neck.

Jormungand was faster. Darkness shot up from the ground at his feet and around him, dozens of pitch-black, lancing tendrils that all stabbed into Alice’s body, holding her in midair. Delilah cried out, and Felix, Nekoma, and Redmond leapt to action, but Darkness blasted out to stop them, and they were walled off from Alice, taking care not to be similarly impaled, fighting their way to her as quickly as they could.

“Idiot,” Alice said, chuckling. “Darkness can’t hurt me. You made me this way, so you should know.” She struggled a bit, and broke free from half of the spikes holding her in place.

“I know more than you, clearly,” Jormungand said. “You’ve been spitting the Darkness out, forcing it to pass through and out of you. That is not your true function, though. You are the Dark Eater. You aren’t supposed to vomit up the Darkness, foolish child. You need to be digesting it. And if you get enough that you can’t expel quickly enough, you’ll begin to understand the power within you.”

Darkness blasted at Alice, a wave that engulfed her entirely. Felix and Nekoma both cut an opening in the wall of Darkness, just enough for Delilah to squeeze through, and she darted forward.

But she was too late. Darkness rose up, blasted her back, and she lay reeling for a moment.

When she scrambled back to her feet, the wall of Darkness was parting. But what it revealed…

Was a very different Alice.

The Darkness that had engulfed her rolled back like the tide, and Alice stood on the floor before Jormungand. Her arms were at her side, her sword pointed at the floor unthreateningly. Her eyes were black, and her pale skin was veined with thin black lines that pulsed and flickered with a dark fire. When she turned to face Delilah, there was no liveliness or spunk in her expression, none of that fire that defined Alice. She was like a puppet, like a statue, like some dark pawn in a wicked master’s game.

“Let the Darkness flow through you, and understand your purpose,” Jormungand said, beaming with pride. “Dark Eater, created to destroy the Key of the World. The only being in all of creation that can do so. Now… fulfill your purpose!”

Alice turned her black, emotionless eyes on Delilah. Slowly, she raised her sword, pointing it at her.

“Alice, stop!” Delilah cried. But she struggled with what to do. To step forward, or to step back? Was what Jormungand said true? Could Alice destroy the Key of the World?

Could Delilah stop her if she tried to do just that?

Felix and Nekoma stepped to Delilah’s side, while Redmond and Reginald stood back, watching, ready for a command. But their formation revealed something to Delilah. Because they responded to her inmost desires and feelings.

None of them stepped between her and Alice. None of them tried to protect her from Alice.

That’s right. I told her I’d never be afraid of her.

“Am I allowed?” She asked that, asked if she was even allowed to fight for the Light, given what she’d done, and what she’d been made to be.

Alice…

“I won’t give up on you,” Delilah said, taking a step forward. “And I’m not afraid of you. I never will be.” She raised her left hand, pulling back her sleeve to reveal the bracelet around her wrist, adorned with gemstones glittering with the colors of her Summons. “Wherever our path leads, it’s together, to the very end. And I don’t believe that you’re going to end it all here.”

“What luck that the Key decided to entrust itself to a child,” Jormungand said. “That makes things easier than ever. Dark Eater, my marvelous creation… end the Keybearer. Destroy the Key of the World. Do what you were born to do, here and now!”

Alice stared at Delilah for a long, silent moment. Delilah stared back at her, stared back with confident hope, her bracelet raised for Alice to see clearly.

Alice shifted the grip on her sword, tensed…

And lunged.

Delilah didn’t flinch. She trusted Alice, even now, even flooded with Darkness.

And when Alice came charging towards her, it wasn’t with her sword outstretched.

It was with her free hand, her right hand that bore the bracelet, outstretched. Halfway to Delilah, she dropped her sword. Her right hand clutched Delilah’s left, and their bracelets touched just for a moment, sending a pulse of warmth through Delilah.

“Help…” Alice murmured in a soft, trembling voice. She gripped Delilah’s hand with a strength far beyond human, crushing Delilah’s fingers, and yet Delilah fought down any cry of pain. “Please…”

“I’m here,” Delilah said, and she pulled Alice close and hugged her tight. Darkness fumed from the lines crisscrossing Alice’s body, a black fire that burned wherever it touched, but Delilah didn’t let go. Tears stung her eyes, fell down her face, and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

But she didn’t let Alice go.

Please… I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to save her, but please…

I love her. She’s my sister, I don’t want to lose her, I don’t want to fail her. Please, let me save her!

She was burning, and her hand was crushed in Alice’s grip, but… a new warmth blossomed in the pain. A kind warmth, a gentle warmth. Deep in her heart, it slowly grew, spreading outwards.

Healing.

White tongues of flame flickered from Delilah’s bracelet. Feeble, weak, but they were there, and they weren’t going away. They reached for Alice’s bracelet, and missed. Again, they reached, tiny little tongues of fire, stretching as far as they could, and missed.

They came back, one more time, reached again, stretching a little bit further, a little bit stronger.

They connected.

Alice’s bracelet burst with white light, a light that spread all over her and exploded outward, enveloping both her and Delilah. Darkness was banished, pouring out of Alice’s body like a festering, grotesque poison being drawn from a thousand wounds, straight back towards Jormungand.

The light faded, a band of white flame linking Delilah and Alice’s bracelets together, but going deeper than that. Delilah could feel it bursting within, deep inside.

Their hearts were bound together. Dark Eater she may be, but Alice was filled with light, light that called out to light, light that Delilah’s own heart responded to and took hold of.

Alice looked up at Delilah with white eyes, tears welling up within them, an astonished smile on her face. “Thanks,” she said, breathless, handling Delilah’s left hand gingerly — those fingers were still bruised, bones probably broken.

Together, the sisters turned and faced Jormungand.

“Impossible,” Jormungand said, squinting against the glare of the white fire that blazed between the pair. “Whatever hope you find here, it won’t last. I’ll rip it away from you!”

He stretched out his hand, and Darkness surged forth. But Delilah and Alice raised their hands in response, and white fire roared upward in a wall, defending them. Light against darkness, fire against water, a violent struggle exploded within that small chapel.

When it subsided, Jormungand was left reeling, gasping for breath, staring in shock and fear at the girls. “You… you won’t last,” he said, shaking his head. “Light is not yours to wield. Light is not your nature. You will fall.”

“Not as long as I have her,” Alice said. She started for her sword, but Jormungand was swifter. He melted into the floor with Darkness, vanishing into a portal that snapped closed behind him.

He was gone.

And just in time. For all that they’d done to stand against him, both Delilah and Alice were suddenly exhausted. Alice, mid-step towards her sword, suddenly fell, her legs giving way beneath her, and Delilah followed. They both lay on the floor of the chapel, staring at each other, struggling against unconsciousness.

“I… really need you… you know?” Alice asked, smiling.

“Yeah,” Delilah said, as astonished as ever at the truth of it. “And… I need you, too.”

It was all she had left. She was fading, and Alice, too, from the looks of her. Her eyes fluttered closed, and as she was drifting off, she thought she heard the soft creak of a door being opened. A voice, one she didn’t recognize, murmured something, and footsteps sounded on the stone floor.

“We made it in time,” the voice said, closer this time, close enough for Delilah to barely make it out. If it was even real. Perhaps it was just a dream.

Consciousness failed her, and Delilah sunk into a deep sleep.

 

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