Keeper of the Lost Cities: Elysian

Chapter 59

Sophie gasped.

"The abyss," Sophie whispered. "Just by holding back a scrap of power, Elysian unleashed the abyss."

"Now you see that she isn't as perfect as you probably think," Merida responded flatly. "She was like your friends, susceptible to the control it possessed."

"It...," Sophie said slowly. "That means... the abyss is behind everything?"

"You are slow," Merida stated condescendingly. "After all you've been through, you still miss the key details and don't question who the true masterminds are."

"What does it want?" Sophie asked. "If it's the mastermind, what is its end goal?"

"A different world," Merida replied casually. "A different world of different places and people. A world where people don't have feelings, so nothing can ever change. That's the only solution for permanent peace and order."

What?

A world without feelings?

Sophie considered the concept. A force was pushing on her mind to support it, but she couldn't just give in like that.

Feelings.

They could corrupt the world but also give it meaning.

Without them, what would happen?

She remembered Wyrden saying, "If there is anything you remember about life, it is feeling. Highs and lows, the good and the bad. In my eyes, life without feeling would be like an empty void- a pool of existence with vacant shells."

That was the abyss's vision of the world, wasn't it?

It wanted to remove the feeling, remove the meaning of life.

That was as bad as killing everyone- possibly worse.

"And you support this?" Sophie demanded bravely. "You're going along with it without doing anything?"

There was tense silence for a moment.

"The abyss is the only reason I'm here talking to you," Merida said in an odd voice. There was a trace of faint emotion Sophie couldn't place. "Without it, I would have been forgotten long ago. It listened to me when I needed it and it still cares."

She broke off abruptly, leaving Sophie in stunned silence.

Merida wasn't an evil, broken, empty shell. She still had feelings inside her.

She sounded like the girl in the memories Sophie had seen.

Sophie looked at the puzzle in her head.

There were more pieces now- it was coming together.

Everything she had experienced in the last few days revolved around Merida, Elysian, and the abyss.

Everything that happened two thousand years ago up to this point.

She was understanding everything little by little, but there were still questions.

What role was she going to play now? What did the abyss want with her?

Also, there had to be more to Merida.

If she could talk to her, truly talk to her, Sophie had a feeling it could lead to a way out of this mess.

"There's no use trying to prevent the inevitable," Merida said as if she had heard her thoughts. Her voice was stiff. "You'll understand eventually that there's no reason to fight."

"No reason?" Sophie asked. "The abyss wants all the power in the world. It wants to control everything. Are you just going to blindly follow what it wants and allow everyone to suffer?"