The Mirror Guardian

Chapter Thirty-Four: This Is Not Real!

((🎶: Nightcore-- I want you here (lyrics)))

A sharp pain struck her chest from deep within first as she felt Soveliss push the orb in. The voices in her head that normally contradicted each other now screamed in unison and told her to stop what she was doing and find a way out of this misery.

Ferocious cramps completely crippled her and they didn't seem to stop. The pain became disorienting and it started to affect her judgment, but despite this or perhaps due to this she still continued onward. For a second she considered listening to her body which was telling her to stop, to just give up and fall into the darkness.

Mailee felt thirsty and tired and sweat stains were clearly visible now, but she was determined to keep going as she fought against the darkness. However, a wave of blackness slammed down on her. Not oblivion but actual dark, as if a blanket was thrown over her. Mailee knew that her physical body was unconscious but her mind was still conscious at this point.

The water felt like calm waves, but she couldn't see it. She couldn't see anything. Not beyond, not to the side, not behind. There was only her and the swirling black. Blood tickled her upper lip--a nosebleed. The pounding in her ears began to drown out her thoughts, any plan, as if her body was repulsed by the very essence of whatever was happening. The darkness remained, impenetrable, unending.

"Shh. Breathe. I got you." But someone was breathing behind her.

"Soveliss? Or someone else?" The breathing was louder, closer, and a warm air brushed her nose, her lips, licking along her skin. Swimming-- swimming was smarter than just waiting. She took several strokes that should have taken her towards the edge of some kind of land, but--

Nothing. Only endless black and the breathing thing that was closer now, reeking of dirt and make and another scent, something she hadn't smelled for a lifetime but could never forget, not when it had been coating that room like paint. "Oh, gods." Breath on her neck, snaking up the shell of her ear. She whirled, drawing on what might very well be her last breath, and the world flashed bright. Not with darkness and calm waves of water. Not with Soveliss and Mira waiting nearby for her. The room...

"This room..." She was in her father's throne room. And that smell--not just blood, but something else... "This is not real," Mailee said aloud, walking away from the door from which she was standing like a ghost. "This is not real!" Each step brought her closer to the body in the table. But there he was, sparked on the table dead was her Raloric.

She didn't know where to look first. At the fingers that went the wrong way, at the burns and careful, deep sliced in his flesh, at the face, the face she still knew, even when do many things had been done to destroy it beyond recognition.

The world swayed beneath her feet, but she kept upright as she finished the walk to the table and looked down at the naked, mutilated body she had--

She had--

He was slaughtered like an animal. He looked so--so-- Mailee vomited. "This isn't real, this isn't real!" She gasped as set tears ran down her cheeks turning into gem. She fell to her knees, she couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, couldn't--

Her father had taken his time. And though that face was in ruins, it betrayed none of the pain he must have felt, none of the despair. That day she had lost everything, she lost her soul and her father told her everything that he did as he say on top of his throne. On how he had Raloric suffer, the torture that he did, the way her father had ripped out his eyes and--

Footsteps, then her father's hand on her shoulder, a sinister smile on his face, walking away from her out of the room.

"Happy Birthday." A click of it closing as he left filled the air.

She couldn't leave him again like this, in this cold, dark room. She knew she had to leave and get back to Soceliss, but she couldn't stop her body. Wordlessly, she unfastened her cloak and spread it over Raloric, covering the damage that has been so carefully inflicted. She climbed into the wooden table and lay beside him, stretching an arm across his middle, holding him close.

The body still smelled faintly like Raloric. And like the deal soap she'd made him use, because she was so selfish that she couldn't let him have her vanilla bare soap.

Mailee buried her face in his cold, stiff shoulder. There was a strong, musky scent all over him--a smell that was so distinctly not Raloric that she almost vomited again. It clung to his hair, to his torn, blueish lips.

She couldn't leave him again. Mailee closed her eyes. She wouldn't leave him again.

"Why must I go through this torture again? Why must I suffer again to be one with this stupid core? Why can't I just be left alone?" Darkness circled around her body once more. "I want you here with me."