Arcaea: The World of Glass

[Side/Short] NULL APOPHENIA

[Continuation of Ambivalent Vision]

It was her. There can't be any other explanation. And now, she's here.

Lethe grips at the handle of her scythe and swallows. She remembers her duty, and steels her heart.

Though your life may have ended, your duty has not.

The sky flickers with glass above. Earth crumbles from the sides of the plateau where she has knelt. The horned reaper picks herself up from the ground—out of her prayer and contemplation.

She stares hard at the other.

"Even now," the woman says, "you don't want to understand... Is that it?"

"You... can't even talk," Lethe replies. "Why do you even bother?"

"I try to talk," says the other. "I even like to believe I've gotten better at it."

With a tremor entering her voice, Lethe tells her, "It certainly doesn't seem that you have."

The other woman doesn't answer. With a still face, she stares off at the earth. "You really
don't like me at all, hm?"

Lethe does not answer. Her tight grip on her tool is all the answer needed.

"Unfortunate..." the woman says, turning her eye to Lethe. "Though I can't say that I'm
concerned about you much one way or the other."

"I... don't..." Lethe begins through clenched teeth, then shouting, "CARE about your opinion of me!"

The woman stares back. Without words, she says: "It is clear that you do."

"I won't let you..." Lethe continues. "I can't let you soil their souls like that!"

"Souls?" the woman repeats, baffled. "Is that how you've thought of them all this time? WE have souls. THEY are only the echoes of dead souls' thoughts."

The woman looks behind herself. The jagged "clouds" shift eerily overhead.

"For what little it's worth..." she mutters, before meeting Lethe's eyes again. "I will tell you again.
Whatever they are, they can be used. And, we are here to use them."

"Be SILENT!"

Lethe rushes forward and lifts her scythe high, swinging it down the instant she is near her enemy.

The blade cuts only through an image.

"Because you've never accepted this place for what it is," she hears as the image collapses into smoke, "you can't even 'use' the glass."

Her left ear perks up. She turns and sees the woman at the other edge of the plateau, emerging from light. That woman continues to speak.

"Whatever your foolish motivations, I will pick up the pieces of these lost worlds and bring about one better."

With her hand at her face, she fixes her posture and turns to face the reaper.
She brings her hand down, and behind it the flower blossoming from her eye shimmers.

"Because even now," says the woman, Saya, as she fixes her clear eye once again on the woman who hates her, "I'm sure that we all have a part to play here... except for, evidently, you."

At once, Lethe grows furious, and prepares to fight again.

It is infuriating...

That sentiment is shared, and mirrored, between them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When they met while the sky was still whole...

When they met after half of it had fallen to night...

Every moment they have met before and since, every time they have spoken,
Lethe's resentment has grown, and it boils out of her heart now.

She has to have come for the dead.

Always, always, she's kept her eye on that.

Every gathered soul, every gathered sentiment—

She thinks that she is a god, and she thinks she can play with the dead.

But the dead are sacred.
The reaper will never allow it. Lethe flies at the callous woman, who, unflinching, vanishes again.

You have to remember what brought you here. You have to remember what saved you.

Glass flies between them and around them. Saya, however, simply studies Lethe.

You remember the heartache. You remember the bliss.
Those feelings can't be lies.

Lethe's scythe strikes against the earth. From afar, Saya continues to watch.

Those feelings AREN'T lies.
You REMEMBER who you are. She is GUESSING for want of belief.

"Lethe..." says Saya.

And Lethe stops.

"Did you know that was your name?"

She turns and faces the flower-eyed girl. Her heart pounds through her chest.

"I know..." Saya reveals. "I've seen you, across memories."

"L-Liar—"

"Does it resonate?"

Lethe flinches, biting her tongue.

"When I learned my own name, it resonated.
There are more of us here than you know, reaper.
We don't all keep our names from the past, but you have."

Warmth threatens her heart and blood. Lethe swallows again, and tries to push it down.

"I've always thought of you as some starry-eyed believer, mistaken in her drive.
But after 'finding' you, I can understand why.
Am I right? You 'remember' yourself. That is unusual."

"Why are you still talking?"

"..."

Saya stares at her.

"You even hate my voice?" asks Saya.

"I have NEVER said I hated you."

"You've never needed to."

A pang flies through her, and she shivers.

But eventually, she laughs.

"Pretending at knowing hearts? You? Ha! Yours is as cold as they come. You don't know hearts."

Saya looks again at the dirt beside her feet.

"...I know them," the flower-eyed girl replies, almost too quiet to hear.

"What?"

"I know them," Saya answers in a clear tone, meeting Lethe's gaze unwaveringly.
"I know the contents of a heart."

"...Hmph. Really?" Lethe queries in turn. "Listen to yourself. Even the way you say that reveals that yours is hollow."

Saya does not answer, but she does not look away.

"I've already told you that I don't care for whatever's bouncing around behind the petals in your eye," Lethe continues. "I will stop you. You know what I was? You know what I am? Then you know that I can't let you desecrate what is here."

Still, Saya stares.

"This is my purpose," Lethe declares.

This is what I need, she feels.

She turns over the scythe in her hands, readies herself again.

"Whatever your reason, I will stop you here."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

he light of the sky is given by glass. The souls Lethe has gathered, the memories Saya has gathered; at a border they meet, but never intersect.

Thousands of forgotten lives, remembered here. In her mind, the reaper remembers, too,
the sight of a well of spirits.

What was the reason you gave for wanting to walk this path?
Still, she can't remember how it was that she answered.
But she has answered it for herself since.
This feels right. She doesn't need any more than that.

And yet...

"—!? You...!"

Once more, she has swung her blade at the other woman. To this, Saya has lifted a finger. At its pad is a shard of glass which deftly catches the blade's edge. Crouching, Lethe stares up and grimaces at Saya. Saya stares back down, as always giving nothing away. The casual insult and abuse of lost life at once raises the hairs across Lethe's body.

"You...!" Lethe roars. "What do you get out of taking this from me?"

Still holding Lethe back, she keeps her eye steady upon the reaper's. "...Get?" she asks.

The glass at Saya's fingertip glows. Her flower shines once more. Again, she becomes a reflection, and Lethe's scythe swings uselessly through the air. She reappears as light far away.

"If all our time together has taught you anything, then you should know I've never been a liar," Saya tells her as the flower from her right eye flickers. She pauses, and says clearly: "I 'get' nothing out of this. None of this is... personal."

And though she can feel that that is the truth, Lethe almost can't allow herself to believe it.

"And, if you know that... if you know 'me'..." Saya continues.

And ten shards come down from the sky, flickering as well at her shoulders and behind her back.
"Forgive me, I'm getting a bit passionate, but..." she mutters, her eye closed. Coldly, she opens it
upon Lethe again and pointedly asks her, "Why are you still getting in my way?"

"YOUR way?" Lethe spits. "What, are you about to claim that we can finally become gods now,
or some other ridiculous wish?"

"Who ever said anything about wanting to be god..."

"You're PLAYING god! You think you aren't?"

"I am doing... whatever HAS to be done." Slowly, Saya lifts her finger and points at Lethe. "I have already told you: this world is not only 'you' and 'me'."

Between them, a silence falls.
Between them, the land is gray.

"Allow this world to die if you want," Saya tells her, still firm in her direction, "but I have had enough of death. And if there must be a last death... I'll have it be yours."

The flower-eyed woman's glass begins to point as well.

"Give up your memories, reaper, or I will take them.
We have no time left."

Give up your souls, she means...

Absolutely not.

"I won't let it die," Lethe replies. "I will find a way to heal it."

"Idiot," Saya says damningly. "You are an idiot, and if I'm being honest, I've become sick and tired of hearing you speak."

Lethe chuckles.

"Another thing we have in common..." She stands up straight again and picks up her scythe.

For this heartless, soulless woman...

Next, she will swing to kill.