The Tale of Tara and Emiko

IX. Tara

My eyes opened. I was no longer on the ground. I couldn't tell where I was. The scenery was always shifting, always changing around me. One moment it was the balcony where I made my first kill. A few seconds later, the body of the prince melted into the wooden ground, wooden walls rising up around me, the homey atmosphere of my quaint cottage replacing the starry sky. The next moment, I was in the ballroom of the palace, couples dancing around me, the matchmaker I would eventually kill mere meters away from my sister, who was luring him into my trap. The elaborate chandeliers shattered, the golden portraits on the walls falling away as I stood in front of my sister's grave that was too simple and modest for such a wonderful person, my cheeks wet. I didn't know if I was crying or if it was the rain.

I forced my head to look up, tore my eyes away to stare at the creature in front of me. Away from the lies, away from the trauma, away from the past, I stared into the eyes of my exact reflection.

"You've brought me another! And rather soon, too. Thank you so very much, my dear." The demon swiped its tongue over its impossibly sharp teeth. I watched as its disguise disappeared, my face melting away from the body of the hellspawn that had roped me into this deal in the first place, leaving behind the skull of a creature that was not quite human. Two bright lights that somehow didn't burn themselves into the back of my eyelids shone from the eye sockets. The bone was not the shiny, clear white of the fake skeletons in the doctor's rooms that always creeped me out. Eh, I'd rather handle the ugly truth than the sugarcoated lies I'd been force-fed the first ten years of my life.

It took a step forward, the shed skin of my appearance now a puddle on the ground. The spirit's ethereal form smiled, its eyes boring into my soul, its mouth opening to reveal a gruesome sight of bloody gums and broken teeth and a tongue sliced cleanly down the middle, almost like a snake. Its body was a galaxy-like flame, flickering black and navy and royal purple, and while I'm usually described as fearless I found myself taking an automatic step back, scared of getting burned.

"She better be the last one." My voice was defiant in the hopes that I'd get my way for once, but as the spirit's glowing eyes turned bloodred I instantly regretted it.

"Don't you use that tone with me! Do you know who I am? I am-"

I cut it off midsentence. "The first soul to die at the hands of this mechanical maze and therefore the keeper of the maze, the one who has complete and utter control over everyone I kill because you also have complete and utter control over the soul of my sister, who was killed in a royal dungeon by a guard who got too annoyed with her lies and bartering, so if I step out of line or disobey you in any way you'll either release her to the afterlife with no way for me to get her back or, the worse option in my opinion, corrupt her so she'll be like you, bound to this maze, destined to cheat, deceive, lie and kill for the rest of her days, yada yada yada. I've heard your villain monologue thirty times over, and it's the same exact thing every time, making you sound a lot like an NPC. Heck, you probably are an NPC at this point. Can we please get to the important part of the conversation now?" I mimed pressing an imaginary button in front of me. "Skip dialogue, skip dialogue, skip dialogue."

The spirit stared at me.

Then it sighed, its spectral body sagging a bit. "Well, you should at least know the fact I promised you about each target you lure here. Your sister was killed in the custody of Emiko's parents."

"Oh, you've bothered to learn her name! Probably plucked it from my mind, like you did for every single little thing you know about me," I muttered, my voice dripping with acid. "By the way, I already knew that. Why else do you think I chose not to slam my door in her face?"

Swiftly turning on my heel, I walked away from the spirit, stopping at a shiny square of glass. Colors blurred on its surface, eventually sharpening into a picture of Emiko and another girl sitting on a plaid blanket in a sunny field. It had to be springtime, since all the flowers were in full bloom. The two were chatting, laughing, as if they didn't have a care in the world. And I was pretty sure they didn't.

"This is why we kill. The royalty in this world are conceited, narcissistic, vain. They let their riches and their power get to their head. They think no one would dare cross them because they are royal. And yet they still kill. They still lie and cheat and sin. They are no better than us. Therefore they must be exterminated, for the world can only be pure once more when all the evil has been eradicated," the spirit said behind me.

"But you and I, we kill too! We are still evil! You kidnapped my sister to force me to obey you, and I'm letting myself be manipulated by you in the hopes I'll get my sister back! Even if all the royals die, even if the power and riches has been spread evenly throughout the world, there will still be evil! There will still be people who think nothing they've done is wrong when it's nothing they've done that's right. And there will still be people who accept the wrong they've done and can't bring themselves to change, because the evil is so deeply rooted in our pasts, because it's a part of us, and we're scared to lose it. You are one. I am the other. We are not the same." Behind me, the scene showed Emiko's friend smiling sadly in a scene that seemed to be months later as they hugged each other goodbye.

"Why can't I ever be happy like they always are?" The words slipped out before I could stop them.

"What do you mean?"

"It hasn't been that long since I learned how to break out of the illusions, but when I was trapped I never had a happy one. Never. All of them were about my sister, or the targets I actually saw as equals, friends, who I still had to kill. Or they were about every time I'd failed, every time I messed up. Because I might be good, but in the grand scheme of things I think I'd be better off dead. I've taken countless lives, and not once has it been for anything other than money, or you."

The spirit's eyes narrowed. "Don't you want to see your sister again?"

"I..." I was at a loss for words. It was either hate myself to get my sister back, or try to be a better person without her. And I couldn't do that. She always made me feel like I wasn't as bad as I truly was, but not in a dishonest way, more like you did what you had to do, the past is the past. I wasn't really anything without her, just a bundle of self-loathing and anxiety and mindless killing that was more a waste of space than an assassin.

I was nothing without her, and everything with her. That was why I had to get her back. She made me feel like the happiest person in the world, and I'd travel to the ends of the earth and back for her. The only question was, would she do the same for me?

The mist cleared from my head.

I woke up.