Beast Speaker, Monster Tamer

79: Fields Upon Fields of Blue

They say dreams and nightmares are the deepest corners of your psyche, a conglomeration of things long repressed and forgotten. Elise had known nightmares her whole life, only suffering through worse and worse in the recent weeks. Good sleep was rare, and good dreams even rarer.

Tonight, she had a dream.

Elise opened her eyes to a brilliant sapphire expanse. The air was filled with a hazy blue glow and smelled faintly of honeysuckle. Looking up, she saw the soft, watercolor dome of a sky, and beyond that, she saw stormy darkness, raging shadows battering against an invisible barrier that encapsulated the area. A sacred sanctum holding the last lines of defense against the ghosts haunting the vestiges of her subconsciousness.

"So this is who it went to," a voice hummed behind her.

Elise whirled around to see the short figure of a young woman, almost a girl. With pale skin and even paler hair, and her eyes as blue as the flowers beneath them. She was hazy, like the rest of the world, and after a moment, Elise realized she could see slightly through her. She blinked, reaching a hand up to rub at her eyes, but doing a double-take upon seeing what was there. Or wasn't, more accurately.

Her arm was unscarred. And the aches that plagued her were absent from her body.

The person was still there when Elise looked back up, confusion and a bit of fear in her eyes. "W-What's going on? Where am I? Who are you?"

She raised a pale, placating hand. "You are safe."

A wave of calm, so potent it almost made her drop, swept through Elise. It clung to her, submerging the building stress she felt. "Is this a dream?"

"For you it is. For me, this is my eternity until I find peace."

"Who—Who are you?"

The spirit smiled, placid and doll-like. "The original owner of the quirk you now wield."

It was then that Elise realized that the shade of blue in the opposite's eyes was the same as the bond whenever she used the second quirk. If she was the owner, then that meant she must've encountered All For One. Beneath the artificial calm imposed by the ghost, Elise felt a tangle of emotion welling up in her throat. Grief, guilt. Enough to fill an ocean and drown her if she dipped her hand into their vastness.

"You—I—How? How are you here?"

"I believe I'm a lingering remnant because my quirk still exists. And... because I still hold much resentment for our mutual aggressor, I suppose. It has been a while since I've felt the use of my quirk and the first time I've felt the presence of someone else using them," the girl hummed. "I wanted to see who and what happened to attract my attention after such a long time under that man's thumb. Now, pray tell, how did you come to acquire my quirk? And encounter him?"

Elise swallowed thickly, not even the artificial calm able to keep the spike of fear from her chest. Above them both, the dome groaned, and a distant howling was heard. "My friend and I were taken. We were on our way to escaping before I encountered All For—All For One. He—He wanted my quirk but couldn't get it easily. He thought that forcing a second quirk in would make it easier for him to take."

The apparition of the ghost girl flickered, almost too quickly to notice the warped bloodied visage of rage beneath, but then she was back to the pale waif of a figure that stood in front of the teenager. "It seems like you've had a much more difficult time than I. For us, it was a marriage of convenience, but by the time I found out what he was, it was too late. He took my quirk and life to create my silence."