#mirseleiris

[coreshorts]

Nothingness

She dreamed. Of course she dreamed. It’s not like she was dead, right? She hoped she wasn’t - that she wouldn’t.

It’d all been so sudden, the events that led up to the Au Ra having been left lying near death in the Shroud. Her Ishgardian lover fared better, but wouldn’t wake. Hali lay on a crude stretcher of tribal miqo’te design, carried back to the Naras encampment, to her family, for care. She’d been left with several horrible puncture wounds from the last manifestation of the voidsent possessing Dahlia, Mirseleiris. Dahlia, meanwhile, was transported back to the Outriders’ house by Dail’a and Fiona, accompanied by the others - Naomi, Otto, T’rahven, Shadow, F’manafa, and Keerith. Both lay unconscious... and would for some time.

It’d started as a visit to the Naras tribe, to introduce Dahlia to her family, estranged as they had all been for the last decade. Hali had planned to propose to her that night, after it was all said and done. That wasn’t quite the result, as it seemed to happen so often for the two.

Encountering a pair of forest witches who had a distinctive interest in Dahlia’s condition, and even confessing to having been connected with it in the first place, they began to assault the couple in an attempt to bring Mirseleiris out, breaking the ward stone that held the creature in check and kept Dahlia safe. Though Hali fought them with all of her strength, she was outnumbered, especially when Mirseleiris took over. With a call for aid, not only did Fiona arrive, but so, too, did the Outriders.

The witches fled, attempting to take Auguste’s staff - once belonging to the old Amdapori white mage with whose rituals Hali had managed to interfere, binding the staff to her own anima and winding up with the soul of the man bound to her - though they were unsuccessful in getting too far before Hali’s aether was torn from her.

When she’d recovered the staff, she had just enough strength left between having had a chunk bitten from her neck, been impaled by shadowy limbs, and beaten down already, that, with the Outriders restraining Mirseleiris, she sealed it within Dahlia once more... but not before a beacon-like spell was cast and one last taunt cackled. Then, Hali fell. She remembered nothing else but blackness and the dreams within them that faded when she woke, weak, tired, and feeling so horribly drained...

She learned quickly that she’d been out for moons. Her family doted over her, keeping her alive as best they could through magic and medicine, until she had finally healed, her body a mess of horrid scars and withered, unused limbs. She looked like a zombie, but the moment she put her linkpearl ring back on her horn, she was stricken with fear.

Dahlia had left the Outriders’ house in pursuit of her twin sister, Vivian. When the Cult of the Hierophant couldn’t breach the defences of the house in which Dahlia, like Hali, had laid unwaking, they instead took Vivian as bait the moment Dahlia woke, drawing the weakened witch out of hiding. When they struck, they struck fast, and she was taken away to their ritual site on the edge of Dravania. 

By the time Hali arrived, it had been far too late...

Silent footfalls brought the shinobi closer and closer through the darkened wintry woods toward the site from which the call for help originated. It was a trap. She knew in her head that it was. It couldn’t be anything else, but there was no other way. No time to rally the Outriders, no time to explain to anyone. As it was... she knew she was too late already. She knew what she’d find.

No, the Raen thought as she ran, her Huton carrying her silently as her footfalls would have otherwise crunched down in fulm-thick snow, No, I won’t let anything stop me or slow me down. If there’s even a chance, I can’t convince myself I’m too late. I can’t be. I can’t be.

The thoughts were colder comfort than the biting wind against her face, masked though it was. Jet black robes fluttered behind her, gloves tightening around the staff that was so bound to her. Her glasses threatened to fog beneath her mask but kept from doing so entirely, likely helped by the soft white glow to her eyes that had come from practising white magic - holy arts - without a proper soul crystal. She knew it was affecting her, but she didn’t know how, nor did she care anymore. This was do or die - the final curtain.

When they approached the ritual site, it was obvious: the trap had been laid out, and the cult was ready. Hali - and Auguste through her - could feel the horrible void energy in the very air. The world heaved and threatened to pull her under, but she continued, even as her very being fought against her.

They had prepared for that. They knew she’s press on, and they took advantage of that. The moment she drew near, even cloaked as she was, she was beset by cultists. Ten... twenty... thirty. She snarled. Everything was becoming a blur, and she couldn’t even remember getting to that point.

Just hold on... August prompted, You’ve faced worse odds than this, have you not? Come, now, show me how you handle things like this.

“...shut up, old man,” the Raen sneered, twirling the staff into one hand and letting loose a burst of holy aether that cleared the air at least enough for her to fight. With another flick of her wrist, a blade of white light, like that of a scythe, extended from the head, and she snarled at the cultists surrounding her.

In moments, they were upon her, and cut down like so much fodder. It was nothing new to her. Killing thrilled her, normally. This time, however, there was nothing but anger and desperation.

“Let... me... through!” she roared, cutting down two more as they threatened to pile atop her, kept at bay by the gales of harsh winds she repeatedly summoned with her enhanced conjury, thanks to Auguste. She was met with inhuman silence. Not a snicker, not a whimper.

Another wave of them came, and then another, and then another. She’d begun to grow tired... and then, slowly, overwhelmed. Blows began to land, dagger strikes that lanced pain through her body - poison, she realised, and likely paralysis poison so she could watch her defeat at the prideful voidsent’s hands - and soon, she faltered and fell, lacking the strength to go on. Her body wouldn’t respond. She couldn’t even speak.

The next moments were spent begin carried bodily to the site, out of her sanctified area, and back into the miasma of void magic. She could do nothing for the nausea and her eyes rolled back. She couldn’t even heave. When she was strapped down to a ritual table, she finally saw her: Dahlia... or what was Dahlia.

“I am so very glad you could join us, little shinobi,” the form spoke, chuckling darkly. Dahlia’s voice was wholly eclipsed by that which Mirseleiris used, her body warped in ways that made her hard to recognise, fur, horns and even a tail sprouted from her twisted form. The creature had taken her over completely. She was gone... and still, Hali couldn’t speak. The figure rolled red eyes and scoffed.

“Give her the antidote,” Mirseleris said, “I want to her when this is finished. I look forward to her screams.” Within a few moments, something was shoved into Hali’s mouth, and she was forced to drink, helpless. Slowly, bit by bit, she regained her motor functions, and began to struggle.

“Now, now,” the voidsent crooned, “Enough of that. I’d hate to kill you before I can use you. We need your aether, after all, now, don’t we.”

“...wh- what?” came the struggle of a reply.

A chuckle was all she got in response, dark and sinister, followed by a sharp pain down her arm as a dagger was brought down, slicing a gash into her. She grit her teeth, groaning in pain as blood began to run down her arm, causing her nausea to redouble. She was being bled for a ritual...

“Now, let’s finish this little game, shall we?” the voidsent crooned, stepping away from Hali and out into the clearing, “’Tis time I claimed my real prize.” With that, Hali felt a horrible sensation as a hand lifted toward her, enacting a spell to begin draining her of her aether... along with many of the cultists. A horrible dark visage began rising as those not being drained knelt and chanted feverishly - prayers, she realised - all the while Dahlia’s body began losing strength, but began to show signs of her consciousness returning as the form rose above her, still connected, but becoming its own, bit by bit. Her expression was desperate. Fear chief among all took its place as tears began to roll down her twisted, unfamiliar face.

With mere moments, it began to take shape - like Dahlia before but with monstrous, great arms covered in feathers, taloned fingers, a much more vicious-looking snake-tail that wove around, peering out from behind the main body, grotesque horns, and a wholly unfamiliar face with red eyes that bore no iris or pupil, as if lifeless. 

In that moment, the area fell into utter darkness, the only things visible were faint, red outlines. However, Hali could feel what was happening as the will of the newly-formed primal before her attempted to crush her soul, stealing her will. However, something within her - a light - beat it back, bathing the area in radiance as she heard a voice in her head, Hali! Hali! Now is your chance!

At first, she thought it might have been some powerful entity, sparing her from the tempering... as, she felt, Dahlia had been. On second glance, however, it was clear that Dahlia was still attached to the creature feeding off of her aether... even as it stopped doing so on Hali’s. Had enough, has it...? Auguste asked, Your aether is no longer being drained. It’s distracted! Now is your chance! You can break free of this, can’t you?

“C-course... I can,” the Au Ra wheezed, and with a careful motion, slipped free of one of the straps binding her. Making two quick mudra, she executed a ninjutsu to form a blade of ice in her hand, cutting herself free before she bolted for her blades and staff.

As the darkness faded, she was met with a chortle, echoing and distorted, as if from some horrible, demonic being, “She lives... but she does not bow. The Echo... So be it.”

“My lord! O boundless one!” called a familiar voice. From nearby, two cultists, having been tempered, released Vivian from the bindings with which she’d been held, the red-head grinning with an unnatural zeal, her eyes glinting red as she called out, “If she cannot be made to see your radiance, can we not convince her? Surely she must see, now, even without your blessing!”

“V- no... n-no, no...” Hali could only stammer, wide-eyed. She knew what this meant: Vivian had been tempered. The dear sister of her beloved was beyond redemption. I can’t... I can’t... Not her. She doesn’t deserve it... She doesn’t...

Hali, Auguste’s voice spoke to her in her mind, despite his inability to read it, You know what has happened. This is no life for her.

“I can’t!” she nearly howled in despair, causing Mirseleiris to chortle and Vivian to grow closer, shushing her comfortingly.

“Hali. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. We can all be together, peacefully. Isn’t that what you want? If Menphina can give herself unto her better, why do you not join us? Dahlia has already become one with him. Everything is as it should-” “No, no, no, NO SHUT UP!” she roared, pulling back before instinctively drawing back with her staff, and, producing a spear-like blade at the end, thrust it into Vivian’s chest. The girl choked, hands pressing to the wound as the weapon was drawn back again. The red began to fade as the malevolent being released her from its grasp.

“Please... F-forgive... me...” Vivian gurgled as she struggled to stay upright, “I... I-I... l-love...” She choked again, then again, and fell forward gracelessly, face impacting the frozen ground hard.

Hali’s heart stopped and her body went cold in that moment, only brought back by the shrill shriek from off to her side of, “VIVIAN!”

There was no time to react. The next thing Hali heard was a scream of utmost fury as a multitude of levin bolts raced through the air toward her, catching her and sending her body limp. All the shinobi could do was scream as she was ravaged by Dahlia’s outburst, the trauma enough to grant her momentary control of her own body, twisted and subjugated as she was.

The scene was nightmarish, cultists either lying dead or chanting prayers to their god, Dahlia screaming in fury and despair, Hali screaming in agony, and Mirseleiris laughing all the while. 

This is the end... I’m finished... she thought to herself, even with her screams of pain, I was wrong...

However, Dahlia’s strength had long since been spent and the last of her aether ran dry, causing her to fall back to the ground in a manner not unlike Vivian, leaving Hali to fall, as well, all the wrong nerves firing from the bombardment of electricity. Little by little, though, she gathered herself and began to stand.

“Y-you done?” Hali wheezed in pain, “’Cause... I think it’s... ngh, m-my... turn.”

There’s nothing else, though, Auguste protested, You can’t fight that thing like this. You realise that you’ve no choice now.

“I know...” the shinobi said, bringing the staff to bear as she began to beseech the land for aid, drawing not only on what it would give her, but herself and Auguste, as well. Holy radiance began to shine from her very being as she rose from the ground.

I don’t know what will happen, the old elezen muttered fearfully.

There was a pang of hurt in her heart. She knew this would likely be the end, but she had to try. There was no other option, now. She finally laughed, almost bitterly, but with resignation to her features as she closed her illuminated eyes and said with a smirk, “Shut up, Auguste.”

The elezen felt the tone more than heard it through Hali’s own horns, and even as a possessor - a spirit within her body, bound to her - her felt something stir. It hurt. He felt pity. Much as she had done, she had so much time ahead of her to atone. Should could have. She wanted to, and he knew. After a long pause, the old man’s voice spoke in her head one last time.

Very well. Godsspeed... Hali Naras.

"You're not finished?” the void-primal rumbled, “Ever a thorn in my side... but this time, I will be rid of you, girl..." 

As he raised a massive, clawed hand, Hali rose further from the ground, waves of holy aether washing out from around her. When her eyes next opened, she spread her arms wide, unleashing a torrent of purifying white light toward Mirseleiris. As it connected, there was an unearthly shriek of pain from the creature. It went on, ever further, even as Hali could feel her body wanting to give up. She’d long since reached her breaking point, but there was no giving up, now. It was do or die.

As the shrieking died down, there was a heavy crash of something crystallised hitting the ground. However, with it came a realisation. She was no longer moving, no longer suspended in the air... and she was losing feeling in her body. She couldn’t even move her head to look as pure white crystal began to replace her limbs, climbing up from the ground beneath her as all but pure light embraced her, searing away all and leaving nothing but a crystalline statue behind.

As the look of victorious relief gave way to a dreaded realisation, the shinobi’s last thought was only, “But... I won...?”

With that last thought came the feeling of purity... and then nothingness.

[coreshorts]

Mine

Her mind turned again and again to the sight of the younger girl, slowly withering, her normally plump, hourglass figure starting to shrink, her eyes heavy with dark bags, porcelain skin almost ashen. When she felt her, it was was even worse. Her aether slowly draining away, she felt as though she was constantly slowly dying, something dark and vicious welling up within her to take her place.

The first time the shinobi had noticed her Moon begin to wane, she had frantically begun searching for answers. She needed options, ways to combat what was being done, that she could grasp and bring to bear against this panic-inducing problem. She was given a small number, some of which were far more preferable than the others.

Hali was forced to settle upon an option which was the best she could hope for in such short notice: She had been told by a close friend - an incredibly accomplished mage by name of Naoh Tayoon - that her best bet without outright killing the girl she had come to so adore was to obtain a charged Amdapori Wardstone. However, the ruins of Amdapor were heavily-guarded and access strictly forbidden. She, herself, had one, but it was not charged, and the only person who came close to knowing could not remember.

"...charge one...” Fiona had muttered over the private line, “I- I think I remember. Just- nnnh. I remember doing it. I don't remember how."

The only other solution would be to use an Onmyouji ritual which not only required multiple practitioners, but would cut the girl off from her aether use entirely - forever - even though it would mean that she could never be possessed again. It was beyond that last thing that Hali wished to do, and the half-elezen’s response chilled her blood.

"...we should keep it in mind. Just in case."

Thus, she turned to Naoh, who instructed her on where to search in the ruins to find Wardstones. She was, after all, not only a shinobi, but one of very high aether sensitivity, which would help her not only infiltrate the ruins, but potentially locate a stone, as well. Loathe to go alone, however, she brought her former teacher - her best friend and sister in the shadows - Kaori, seeking her help to sneak in and out while keeping one another safe.

It was a fortunate thing that she had. The ruins of Amdapor were crawling with horrible creatures. Due to the way the entrances and perimeter were guarded, the two were forced to take a back route through the abandoned keep in order to access the city. 

Though it was suspected that the keep ruins might hold what they sought, it was quite the opposite. The absence of long-established Amdapori artefacts of white magic to stave off the Mhachi void magic and wild beasts that roamed the area has left the entire structure to be overrun by the void in the wake of multiple attempts by the Lambs of Dalamud - some of whose reanimated corpses they had found, already slain - to summon their god back to the star.

Hali found it funny. If Dahlia truly was Dalamud incarnate - if she was some kind of god, they were all wasting their time. She almost thought to tell the mage upon her return, but not knowing her relationship with the cult, she assumed to likely be negative.

It was rough going after they’d fought their way through the maddened flora and fauna both, both of which fought them at every turn in the overgrown keep. She had visited once before, but it had never been quite as overgrown as it was then, she’d thought. By the time they reached the passage needed to slip through catacombs and into the city, Hali had wound up sick nearly twice due to the sheer amount of corrupted aether in some areas. Guarding the passage, they had even encountered a powerful voidsent who struck Hali as mildly familiar. A man she had met before, named Resh, who had been heavily voidtainted and even possessed, bore a very similar voidsent which could materialise separately from his body. Fortunately, the two shinobi made short work of most things in the keep, void included.

The passage put them right by the entrance to the city, and the two made their way down. Mould assailed their lungs, giant insects assailed their bodies, and doubt assailed Hali’s mind. The investigation of the keep had proven fruitless, but her initial scouting of the area around the Lost City had some promise. Deep within the city, she could feel something, and it was very close to what she sought. For a mercy, it had begun to rain, clearing much of the spores in the air, but bringing out insects much larger than either of the two Au Ra. However, they managed to dispatch most of them with ease, even having moments to admire some of those less hostile.

Despite their skills in combat, it was no easy task. In what Hali regarded, in hindsight, though not at that time, as a stroke of irony, Kaori had been assaulted by a massive moth - a creature almost resembling the guardian spirit of their village - and stuck down. Thankfully, Hali had managed to bring supplies enough to complement her admittedly-weak conjury, which, she had found, grew significantly easier and more potent in the ruins, which gave her some hope. Once Kaori was healed properly, her arm set and functional again, and Hali’s panic abated, they moved on.

Continuing deeper in, they were best by ever-increasing wonders. A seemingly-bottomless chasm surrounded them with platforms that connected with aethereal bridges, old wards still present, lingering from when their source stones were once in place, though nothing remained within them for them to protect. Hali’s hope grew again at that, and ,especially,when they found a host of voidsent and reanimated magi who had been attempting to breach a heavily-warded door. After having cleared them out, the two were able to set to work on breaching the door, themselves, seeming unaffected by its protecting wards.

What they saw on the other side was something akin to another world. Blissful, pure, and almost heavenly, they had found themselves in something akin to another world, constantly shifting ivory and gold pillar surrounding bridges and platforms that seemed to manifest from nothing. Sprites of pure light and torches of white fire that sang melodically lined the bottomless - and skyless - expanse of pure radiance.

The two shinobi found themselves almost unnaturally enraptured by the purity and bliss of it all, resolving themselves, one day, to return, though their aims were significantly different. Kaori wished to calm herself and to find inner serenity to better herself, but Hali found herself giggling at the thought of a pocket world created by mortals; it was her ticket to unlocking secrets that would allow her to shape reality to her whim, and she would, one day, have those secrets.

They, finally, reached what seemed to be a council chamber of sorts, empty of all things but a massive winged statue, armed with stone sword, shield... and three charged Wardstones - smooth, red, fist-sized stones that emanated a pure aether - set in its breast and behind both hands. In her excitement, Hali rushed in headlong, Kaori on her heels. The statue, like many others, was a gargoyle, enchanted by Amdapori magic, inset with Wardstones to make it effective against voidsent in the War of the Magi, she assumed. Fortunately, between their skill with ninjutsu, despite the stone being highly resistant to their poor blades, dinged and damaged from assaulting stone creatures, they managed to exhaust the statue’s animating magicks.

Prying the still-gleaming stones from the statue, Hali made one last attempt to contact Naoh, asking how to work the stones, and what she could do with three, rather than one. There was no response. Wherever they were in Amdapor, they were cut off entirely from the outside world. She and Kaori decided to beat a hasty retreat, vowing to return in the future in order to pursue their goals in that wondrous place.

When they neared the entrance to the Lost City, Hali’s heart jumped into her throat as a familiar presence became apparent in the patterns of aether around her: Dahlia. However, it was not simply her Moon. Her aethereal presence had all but winked out, and swirling about it in a writhing, chaos mass was the void-tainted aether of the voidsent that had possessed her, driving Hali to their task in the Lost City in the first place. Kaori and Hali immediately followed their shinobi instincts and made themselves scarce, watching the warped woman, clad in a strange outfit and mask, descend the stairs toward the landing where Hali has used her Vanishing jutsu to hide herself from him.

“Naras... wasn’t it? Come out...” the possessed woman crooned in an unmistakably male voice.

Hali’s heart pounded in her hiding spot. Dahlia’s form had shifted ever-so-slightly in the imbalance between her aether and that of her possessor. Her normally-mis-matched green and brown eyes had turned a deep red, one darker than the other, the edges dark and almost sunken. Her nails had grown into long, sharp claws, and she had a terrible, deathly pallor to her. The voice that came from her was not her own. It was Mirseleiris.

Securing the stones to herself as she frantically called Naoh for help over a linkshell that she knew Dahlia did not have, she was given an idea: all she had to do was get them close, so if she could grapple Mirseleiris, the stones would be able to do their work and suppress him, forcing him into stasis within Dahlia and giving her back her body and her control so long as they remained near. From time to time, she threw a small rock, skipping it on the stone stairs to make it seem as though she was sloppily fleeing further into the city. Fortunately, it seemed to distract the voidsent.

“[Kaori,]” she had said in Hingan over that same shell, “[I am going to do something very stupid. I am counting on you to back me up.]”

“[I will do what I feel is necessary,]” the other shinobi had said, adding, “[Trust me.]” Trust was something Hali had learned to put in Kaori. Though she could hardly trust the whole of the world - it was, after all, most assuredly out to get her in any way possible - she trusted Kaori to be able to handle things, every time.

Having slowly climbed atop the archway above the city’s entrance, she leaped from it, using a Shukuchi to rapidly get closer to Mirseleiris as he searched for her, taunting her. Arms wide, one Wardstone tied tightly to each of her palms and one affixed to the chainmail beneath her ningi, she attempted to embrace Dahlia’s possessed form, only to have the voidsent controlling her move her quickly away.

“Another new trick?” he crooned, then, realising what she had attempted to use, the proximity alone causing his head to spin, hissed, “Wardstones...”

Kaori, however, had been ready, and popped up from a ledge below the landing on which they had engaged Mirseleiris. Grabbing Dahlia’s ankles, she wrenched the Ishgardian’s legs from under her, causing the voidsent to tumble and temporarily release his grip on her. When she landed, it was Dahlia’s voice again, claws and eyes changing back slowly as Mirseleiris‘s presence faded.

However, when Hali straddled the girl, beginning to affix the Wardstones to her, she wound up in, she realised, a trap. Mirseleiris quickly took control of Dahlia again, one hand shooting forth to try and slash at her face and the other attempting to take her by throat. Thanks to Kaori’s quick reaction, smascking the first strike with the spine of her katana, the swipe only managed to tear part of Hali’ hood. However, the voidsent managed to take the heavyset Raen by the throat, choking her with vicious claws sinking into the skin at her neck.

Hali did everything she could not to lose control. It was chaos. It was fear. It was pain. It was rage. The thoughts had started to become murmurs, voices telling her what to do.

Kill her. Kill them both.

Knock her out.

Kill yourself.

She could hear Kaori, but no matter how she tries, she could not understand what she said amongst the din. Then, it got worse as a scream shook her very soul: Dahlia was screaming. Before her, Kaori had thrust the tip of her blade into the mage’s abdomen and drawn it clean, causing her to begin bleeding profusely.

“WHy... WOn’T... yoU... lEavE HeR?!” her body screamed in a disturbing dual voice, one belonging to Dahlia, the other to Mirseleiris, his grip slipping between the mageling’s intense pain and the Wardstones weakening him.

“W... why w- won’t... youhhhh...” Hali wheezed amongst the chaos and pain, before finally being released as Dahlia wrested control once more from her possessor. 

With the time the distraction gave her, she began fastening the second stone. The chaos in her head reached another crescendo as, Dahlia now fully in control and aware of her state, began screaming in agony again.

“Hali... Kel... help...! GahAHAhAHAhAhAHAHAAH!” she pleaded before Mirseleiris began to emerge again, mad dual-toned cackling beginning again, “She’s mine, mine!”

That tipped the scale in Hali’s head from fear to blind rage, and she screamed in response, “SHE’S MINE YOU WORTHLESS SHITSTAIN! SHE’S MINE! I’LL SODDING KILL YOU FOR THIS!” She couldn’t help, after the fact, remembering what she had yelled and how, deeply embarrassed at such melodrama, but she couldn’t help herself. Her mind was slipping, and fast.

“TheN If I cAn’T HAVe hER, I’Ll taKe hEr WIth mE!” the dual voice cackled maniacally, and the claws that had gone to Hali’s throat when, instead, to Dahlia’s poised to tear her own throat out in desperation.

Kaori had busied herself with activating pressure points and calling out to Dahlia, given Hali’s panicked and addled state, in order to try and help. At the same time, despite the start of a protestation from the other Raen, the hand holding the third stone rose, abandoning attempting to tie it to the girl’s choker, and came down hard on the side of her head, immediately knocking her out, as Hali, too, attempted a rather desperate manoeuvre, giving in to the voices as they screamed at her to do it, do it, do it, DO IT. 

Mirseleiris could tell what was coming and, instead of attempting to prevent it, lashed out one last time with claws and a kick, sending Hali reeling backward as not only did she gain two deep gashes across her nose and an eyebrow, she was hit in the death wound at her stomach, sending a massive cramp through her that caused her to lose her breath and fall over.

Silence, however, was the next sound, rain falling lightly upon the three, heavy breathing from them all following the struggle. Hali recovered just enough to carry Dahlia, and they managed to return to the Bountiful Chest. All three were in dire need of healing. Kaori’s arm was still in poor shape from the behemoth moth’s awful bites, and she had some minor wounds and inhalation of mould besides. Hali, too, suffered from inhaling the mould, though not as much, but the slashes across her face and puncture wounds around her neck required treatment. Dahlia’s were, thankfully, only superficial thanks to Kaori’s skill with her blade and proactive tactics, save for the concussion from Hali’s desperation.

Hali, once healed, could only lay in her bed in the medical ward and cry, her mind racing. They had done it. Dahlia could be safe - or even just relatively so while the stones were near or on her - until they had a more permanent solution. They had discovered in their hunt amazing things beyond description. Hali had a new lead into bettering herself, even to the point gaining the power to alter reality to her whim as she had seen done in Amdapor. Yet, she still could not stop panicking.

"Oh, gods, what did I do? She's going to hate me. This is all my fault... Fuck! Why did I say anything?! I knew he was listening! I shouldn't have done any of this... I should leave her alone, but... is she okay...?” she thought to herself on and off in a mad train of thought between bouts of panicked crying.

Slowly, eventually, once she had overheard that Dahlia had been healed and her concussion faded in the process, she shakily got up from her bed, sniffling, to move a few beds down toward hers. Silently padding across the floor on the other side of the curtain, she carefully climbed into the bed in which Dahlia slept. She curled up next to her and just cried, silent and shaking, almost afraid to touch her but still wanting to be close. Everything was still chaos. She needed something.

She’s not yours, you worthless creature; she is my Moon, and, with any luck, will always be mine.

[coreshorts]

Open

She was asleep, dreaming. She had to be, or at least hallucinating as she began to doze off. She felt the strange out-of-body sensation for that slow moment that passed like pushing through a barrier of some kind, and then the world asserted itself around her, bit by bit, as she noticed its various features.

It was a manor, strangely familiar, though the Raen, dressed in little more than the oversized shirt and underwear in which she fell asleep, exposing chubby thighs and scaled arms and legs, swore to herself she’d never seen it before.

Portraits lined the walls of the worn and broken-down manor, so distant as to be unreachable, but so massive that they were unmistakable, but they, each, were charred and blackened. A crimson carpet with gold trim spanned the length of the room, from the open double doors far, far behind her that led into naught but a yawning maw of nothingness to the next set of doors that seemed to change their shape every time she looked at them, though were always chained shut. The massive room had furniture, broken down and sometimes in pieces, strewn about haphazardly. Some intersected with the carpet behind her, and she realised her body bore bruises and wounds from when she’s tripped over what was in her path. In fact, a tear in the carpet lay just behind her, soaked in her own blood, she knew. The tear was familiar, too, but she, again, swore to herself, I’ve never been here, so… why?

“Have you? Or’re you simply not rememberin’?” came a familiar voice that caused her spin around.

Standing not ten fulms down the carpet toward the chained door was a knight, a lance strapped to their back. However, the armour was very much that of a dark knight she’d met: iconic blackened, spiked plate with a crimson shawl and wicked, horned helmet. Two purple ears sprouted from it, though, and, as the figure removed their helmet, the familiar voice was placed: Keerith.

“Think. Remember what we talked about, Hali,” the purple-haired Keeper told her with a stern, yet comforting look that soon melted into a smile as Hali felt herself remember facets of the conversation she’d had just the night prior. “Y’got a lot to think about. Got a lot to recall, too, huh?”

“Like… this place?” the Raen asked softly. She realised that, though she was wounded, she felt no pain, here, no fatigue. Keerith nodded.

“Look around a moment,” she said, casting an arm off to the side, “Tell me what y’see.”

As she turned to look around again, the portraits on the walls shed dust and char, as if they’d been burned, though the walls, despite showing wear from age, were not at all singed.

“Remember what those were?” the knight asked her patiently.

“I…” she started, but instead, the lance on Keerith’s back was unsheathed, and the Raen was blown back by a single, mighty swing. She found herself flying backward, away from her body, and landed on her backside on the other side of the tear in the narrow carpet where it’d been sewn back together atop her blood.

As she looked around again, the portraits’ char fell away, revealing face, people. Figures from her past: the Naras Matriarch, the Crawford Brothers, the Immortals, the Fustuarium, Dahlia as she was when possessed by Mirseleiris, and the Outriders. Behind Keerith was one more, though, that she hadn’t seen, even covered by soot: Dahlia and Vivian, their backs turned away. The portraits struck her with a wrenching pain as she saw various gestures or expressions or body language indicating hatred, frustration, and contempt.

“This… this… but it’s not what I deserve,” she protested, standing and walking forward toward her body, frozen as if in time. 

As she crossed the tear in the carpet, each of the portraits around the room on those much-too-distant walls burst into a familiar black-and-violet flame. It licked at them, charring them to nothing. Her heart shot into her throat, however, when she saw that all of the portraits had begun to burn, even that of Dahlia and Vivian.

“No, no!” she cried, and broke into a run, calling out, “I can’t- they don’t deserve that either! They didn’t! Stop!”

She collided headlong with the back of her own body and felt herself stumble, feeling and seeing her arm outstretched, wretched with that same dark flame as it threatened to char her beloved and her sister to nothing but black. The flames died, and the portrait was whole again as her arm dropped.

“Remember yet?” Keerith asked, “Y’know what you’re fighting, now, no less what you’re fightin’ for.” She gestured up, above and behind her to direct Hali’s attention back to the portrait.

The de Bellechier twins beamed down at her, their expressions full of love and affection for the poor Raen, they hands both extended as if to free them of the portrait and offer to bring her with them. Her eyes teared up and she sniffled, the warmth of the two she’d loved so wholly - Dahlia and her sister, Vivian, alike, her family - calling out to her and bidding her to right herself.

Unbidden, she felt and heard herself speak in tandem with Keerith, her own voice different: harsher, sharper, almost angry, “I need to remember. Every night spent feeling loss and guilt and self-loathing. Every morning waking in tears, forgetting, and denying. Every day stumbling and suffering. All of it. I need to remember… me.”

She winced. It wasn’t from pain, or against a light, but almost reflexively. When she looked back up again, a familiar figure took Keerith’s place: Hali, dressed in that black dress she’d come to love so. She wondered why she did, as it was so new, but it came to her as the other her twirled on the carpet, miraculously not ruffling the gold-trimmed crimson at all.

“Yes. That’s why I had this made,” she said to herself, prompting her conscious self to look down and see herself in the same outfit, “To remember. But it didn’t work well, did it?” She laughed a bit bitterly.

“Time after time after time. Every night for moons,” her other side said, frowning and taking slow steps to approach her, hands upturned in a prolonged shrug, “I danced this dance with myself, ignorant. Making my own pleas to my own deaf, deluded mind. Stuck in fear and denial. In confusion.”

“You’re… you’re one to talk,” she told the other Hali, “If you’re part of me.”

This got a look of utter glee from the one she recognised, at last, as her darkside, as crimson eyes and an aura of abyss flared up and she clapped her hands together.

“I remembered…! I remembered! Yes!” they both said at once, one in shock and the other in joy, “This is me! You are me and I am you! We are no different! And there is no shame… in being me. Is there?” Both shook their heads, one hesitantly, the other with a wolfish grin.

“I think… that I’m ready,” she told her darkside as it reached out to gently carress her cheek as one would a lover, “Once and for all. And…”

“No forgetting,” they both said at once. Both nodded.

The darkside raised her other hand, both resting on her shoulders, and she did the same, looking up, past her own face to see Dahlia and Vivian beaming down at her, beckoning. Even through the darkness threatening to take command of her very sight with such close proximity, those faces, one to protect with all her might and one whose memory deserved so, so much better, shone like burning beacons.

“Listen to our heartbeat,” her darkside said softly, closing her eyes, “Listen for my voice. Listen… L i s t e n . . .”

Darkness began to take her, rising up over her ankles, pouring from her chest, embracing her, choking her. She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to wake up. She wanted to run, to deny, to- to fight. 

I have to fight, she thought to herself in the midst, For them.

With the choking grasp of the abyss closing tight around her, those faces, that warmth, almost vanished entirely. She couldn’t see anymore. She couldn’t feel. It became like a cold, dark maw, comforting, yet obliterating.

“This is where I belong,” she heard from her own voice, neither from herself or her darkside, echoing around her, and then it repeated, “This is where I belong.” She sank. She felt oblivion. It was cold and inviting. It was alone.

“Non, mes étoiles,” came a voice, speaking in Ishgardian, its delicate, feminine tone and flowery accent unmistakable as that of her wife, “You do not belong there, but here. With me.”

“Hali, ma chérie,” chimed in another, sweeter voice that she immediately recognised as Vivian’s, “Don’t leave her just yet. She needs you. I am waiting… but the longer I wait, the happier I will be. Go to her, ma sœur bien-aimée.”

“Hali…?” called Dahlia’s voice. She sounded worried, distant. Not like before. She was falling away from her...

No, Hali thought, but the darkness pulled.

She growled, “No.” It pulled.

She roared it, “NO!” Everything stopped.

The hold the abyss has had on her stopped dragging her down and, instead, she felt it fall away. She, too, fell, and landed in a heap on the carpet once more, just in front of the chained door, the portrait of Dahlia and Vivian above her shining with a burning, violet light. It was unlike the darkness, but still cool and comforting. Her beacon, she realised, was here, pulling her back from the brink of oblivion.

“What... now?” she asked herself, reaching for the chains that barred the door before her. Her hand wreathed itself in dark flame and passed through one, then another, and they fell away with a heavy clatter, melted through. However, not all reacted so, and when she grabbed one that she could not melt, she heard a voice again.

“Child of darkness,” came a deep, cold voice from behind her, though when she turned, there was nothing, “You have your beacon, your guiding light in the dark. Do not lose yourself to evil or oblivion, for that is what it means to be a Dark Knight. If you cannot master yourself, the nightmares will never stop. You must prove yourself - master this power within you. You must become more. You. Must. Be. Free.”

She sighed, rubbing at her face beneath her glasses. Great. Now he’s a Mysterious Monologuing Disembodied Voice, she thought to herself, only to feel the tip of a blade press to her throat.

“Mind your goal. If you lose yourself to the darkness, I will destroy you. It is my duty. My charge.”

She had no snarky comeback about immortality for the man who called himself “The Unrelenting”: a tall, imposing figure wearing armour much like Keerith had before - his armour, she realised - and keeping a greatsword’s tip barely pressed to her throat as he warned her, “Master your power, ere it masters you. You will lose your wife, your soul, and all you cherish. You will fail, lest you heed that which keeps you tethered - your light, your love.”

She backed up, but impacted the chains. The Unrelenting lowered his sword and gazed up at the portrait.

“This door will not yet open. You are not ready. You will be,” he said, cryptic as she remembered him in the waking world, though his voice abruptly changed, sounding like her own as he continued, “I will be. Or I will be devoured. Where that leads… not even Vivian awaits.”

The figure turned, began to walk, and the armour crumpled, as though there was no one wearing it, the greatsword all that remained as the armour turned paper-thin, leaving Hali there to stare at that blade and contemplate. She didn’t have long; she was seized by a shoulder and jarred.

“Hali!” . . . . .

“Hali! Please!” begged Dahlia, shaking the Raen awake as she laid in their bed, cold sweats drenching her from horn to tail, her skin nearly a pale blue and her breathing shallow.

All at once, Hali took a deep, laboured gasp, and shot up. The world spun. She laid back down.

“N-no, no. Just… just lie down. Are- what happened? You- you-” Hali blearily allowed Dahlia’s face to come into focus. She was crying, this time, looking panicked.

“How,” Hali coughed as she croaked, “How long was I…?”

“It’s barely sunrise, ma chérie,” the Ishgardian said, worried, “What- what happened? You… y-you started tossing. You woke me up and… then stopped. You were… so cold. You’d stopped breathing for several seconds and I-” She was overcome by a heavy shudder and collapsed against the Raen, sobbing, “I thought you…!”

Hali chuckled tiredly, getting a look of disbelief from the younger girl, “I’m… I’m okay. I know… what happened. What’s been happening… this time. I’m sorry that I… mh… frightened you. Daijobu desu.”

She smiled, taking a long breath and sitting up, guiding Dahlia up with her.

“What… are you talking about?” she asked, only to be met by a smile.

“Do what you need to do with, ah… Aoife and Aedremor,” she said, reaching of to cup the witch’s cheek with a hand and leaning over to kiss her, “I trust you. I love you. And... ahah... I’ve… a bit of explaining to do… but I’m going away for a little bit. I won’t ever be far, and... I will always be there to protect you. I promise. But… I’ve, ah…”

She chuckles to herself at the ludicrous, dramatic thought.

I’ve got a door that I have to open.

[coreshorts]

Inexplicable

She’d been dreaming lately. That, in itself, wouldn’t have struck the Raen as odd if it weren’t for the recurring feeling she got every time, waking with a deep-seated rancour in her heart, recalling all the pain she tried so desperately to hold down. She never remembered details, and that bothered her more than anything.

She lay next to her fiance, the Ishgardian witchling fast asleep, curled up against her, but facing away. Hali lay in silence, in the dark, listening as the cats tore around their house in a late-night craze, either after each other or nothing at all. She smirked a little at the sentiment, the thought rising unbidden, I know the feeling, I suppose. It’s all I feel like I’m doing some days, chasing after nothing at all just for my own - or someone else’s - entertainment.

Rather than amusement, however, the thought brought her sense of resentment back. She scowled to herself, her thick, scaly tail giving a twitch of the side of the bed in her irritation. There was so much injustice in the way she’d been treated for so long. She wondered why she put up with it.

As her tail gave a heavy whump against the side of the bed, it gave her a start and caused Dahlia to turn, groaning softly in her sleep, a hand reaching out for her. When she met it with her own, a sleepy smile crept over the girl’s features as she fell into a deeper sleep once more.

It brought peace, the touch and that smile. They’d worked hard and suffered so much to get to the point where they could both sleep easily like that - or relatively more so, given the issues plaguing Hali’s own sleep. Within a few moments, she began dozing again, and blackness took her.

When she was once again aware, she found herself in an endless expanse, like a manor room where the walls seemed distant, ever out of reach, their expanses covered in cracks and peeling crimson paint, revealing blackened stone beneath. Cracked, and, in some places, crumbling, pillars of dark marble rose ever into the ceiling, shrouded in darkness from its sheer height. Hali briefly wondered to herself if there ever was a ceiling. Beneath her were tiles, like that of a kitchen, ornate and geometrical in design, but where she stood was a vibrant red carpet with dark golden trim. It extended ever off behind her, but before her, it ended abrupty, frayed, as if torn just there.

She stared at it for some time, pondering silently as to where she was, tryig to decide if it was more wise to return along the carpet or to venture past the frayed portion. One by one, notions occurred to her, as if explaining her situation: This room was hers. It had always been hers. It was only waiting for her, and now she was here.

It brought a sense of satisfaction, but it was hollow, as if an empty victory. She felt betrayed. Was there not some reward for reaching her final destination? This place was hers, but felt so unwelcoming. Unbidden, the thought crept into her mind: This was what she deserved. The faces on the portraits on the walls turned grotesque, becoming mockeries of people who had brought her misery. Looking behind her, the face of the old Naras Matriarch leered in disapproval, finger extended as if to shoo her away. Three more set alongside of her, all men of indeterminate origin clad in Thavnairian turbans with faces shrouded, all with weapons drawn and hate in their eyes: the Immortals. On the On another wall were the Crawford brothers, smug and condescending, Maximillian most of all, his stomach an open wound. A portrait next to that shifted unsteadily between two forms: one Dahlia, sporting demonic horns, red eyes, sharp teeth, fur, feathers, and claws, grinning madly, and the other a massive, hulking form with similar features, but monstrously contorted, the same mad grin still in place with a clawed hand holding two featureless bodies in its hands. On the other side was a portrait of the IIIrd Legion, Zheng at their head, staring in cold contempt, the rest faceless, but giving a feeling of the same. A second frame bore a picture of the Outriders, their faces weary and annoyed, fed up as they stood mid-way to turning their backs on her.

When she turned to face ahead, past the torn carpet off of which she had been so hesitant to tread, she found a swirling mass of bloody red and black, tendrils of visible aether and palpable anger writhing wildly in place before taking shape. Within moments, she faced down a familiar figure: herself, standing off of the carpet just a yalm away. Her heart sank. She could go no further, she found herself unintentionally knowing.

“Really?” her reflection asked, irises ringed in hateful red, a flowing black dress with heeled boots, fishnet tights, and fingerless gloves, all decorated in the same dark gold as the carpet beneath her feet, “That’s it? That’s where we stop?”

The angry shade pointed at Hali’s bare, scaled feet on the edge of the carpet, then glared at her. She slowly looked down and, at her feet, lay a body, halfway on the carpet and soaking it with blood from a knife in the stomach. With red hair, similar features to the woman with whom she fell asleep, and a sweet, serene smile, eyes staring lifelessly up at her. Her cold lips were unmoving, but she heard the voice in the air as Vivian - Dahlia’s twin sister who had been tempered… and who Hali killed, herself - repeated her dying words, “I’m… sorry…” Her heart wrenched and she felt herself tear up as the body crumbled to dust, leaving nothing but a blood stain. She could go no further.

“We came this far,” the reflection continued when Hali twitched, unsure of how to respond, “Look at everything we’ve done. Look at all the people who we showed we were better. Fuck the rest!”

“How- how c-can you say that?” Hali argued, tears in her eyes and voice quiet, looking up at her own face, contorted in anger as it stared back at her from that simulacrum, “It’s not enough. I’m… I-I’m never going to be enough. Not… n-not to… make up for all I’ve done a-and everything I’ve failed and… how? How- h-how is this enough?” She was so close to crying. She would, and she knew it.

The other Hali growled in anger and reached a hand out to her side, head held low as she glared forward over her glasses. In the hand appeared one of the portraits: Mirseleiris, in his primal form. She held it up in front of her, showing it to her conscious self.

“See this? We killed it. We saved Dahlia. And we lived,” the shade said in anger, punctuating the last word by punchig through the back of the painting right where the void-primal’s face hung grinning in mad glee at Hali, leaving nothing but a fist, wrethed in violent, swirling red aether that began to turn the portrait black from the hole outward until it all grew dark and she tossed it aside. Its frame clattered noisily against the floor, shattering… and then appeared on the wall again.

“Wha-” the shade looked over and stomped a heeled boot in anger, “You can’t be serious! Why are you fighting this fight? You know it’d make things better if you just listened to me!”

Hali’s gaze dropped as she shivered, staring down at the blood-stained carpet that still ended in such an abrupt tear before her, muttering, “I… I dunno.”

“You gave me a chance, already,” the darker Hali rumbled, “What happened to that?”

The knowledge was there, suddenly. She knew the Hali before her. The voice in her head that had been growing louder, the feeling of wanting to just unleash all of her pain and not try to hide herself anymore, all of her anger and rage stood before her, as her. She knew what this was from the descriptions she was given: her Darkside, the persona borne of the abyss that raged within her, brought forth and given a more perceptible form by the soul crystal Naomi had lent to her to help keep her from being devoured by it.

“That may be what I am,” the shade said with a scowl, knowing her thoughts, “But I’m still you. I’m still us. I’m still a part of you, and vice versa. But you won’t accept me. Why?”

“You still lost,” Hali said with a dejected sigh, “You p-promised you, um... could- could win. Against Shadow that night. But y-you lost. We had a deal.”

The Darkside growled in irritation and rolled her red-limned eyes, “That’s not what I meant. You know what I mean. Answer me. Why won’t you accept me? Why does it have to be deals and bargains and games?”

Silence.

“Fine,” she sighed in exasperation, “But you know you can’t outrun this. You’re stuck for a reason.” She threw her arms out wide, staring Hali in the face with a look of annoyance.

“You can’t move forward if you can’t acce-”

“SHUT UP!” Hali nearly screamed, teeth grit and staring daggers at her own shadowy reflection, “Just… just shut up…!”

“If that’s all you’ve got to say to me,” her Darkside said, shaking her head in disappointment, “Then you’ve already lost. Just tell me. If you can’t be honest with yourself, with whom can you be?”

Again, Hali stood in silence, her gaze dropping.

“Exactly,” cooed her reflection, “If the world won’t have you… if it would betray you, look to kill you or worse, why not trust yourself? We’re all we’ve got, Hali. Me, myself, and I.”

She couldn’t respond, even as her eyes drew toward the picture of the Outriders to her right. All of their backs had turned to her, the painting radiating a familiar sense of exasperation… abandonment.

“You’re just setting us up to fail,” the shade sighed, “I’m not going to let that happen. You know that. We have to make it. Even if we can’t truly die, if this keeps up… don’t you think that’d be preferable?”

A pregnant pause hung between them as her Darkside watched her expectantly, before, “...isn’t it already?” Hali’s eyes closed as she tried to look away, but she saw the eyes on her - all the portraits, their hatred, their resentment - including those of her own inner darkness boring into her.

“Then accept me.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Hali swallowed hard, then answered her own question in barely a whisper, “...because I’m… I-I’m not good enough. I’m too… t-too… weak. I’m falling behind…” The response was for the Darkside to extend her hand, smiling calmly, saying with unnerving gentleness, “Just listen… Listen to our heartbeat. Listen for my voice. Listen…”

She hesitated. There was so much she needed to know, so many warnings she had been given, but if this was the only way, she had to take it. There was no other way she could be safe.

She reached. Slowly, hesitantly, she reached for the hand, out over the carpet’s edge. She didn’t make it. The room abruptly collapsed around her and silent blackness took hold as she awoke, feeling that pain again as it all began to slip from her memory.

“Hali?” came Dahlia’s voice with her notable Ishgardian accent, then her concerned face as she opened her eyes, “Hali? What’s the matter? Are you alright? You were crying in your sleep.”

“Huh?” was all the Raen could muster. Her eyes were wet. She was a bit congested. She had been crying… but why? “I… I dunno… D-don’t, um… remember…”

She couldn’t remember why, but she was certain of what she felt: the pain, the frustration, all completely inexplicable.

[coreshorts]

Learn

“I’m afraid,” she’d said, “That they might... What if they try to kill me?”

The Raen smiled ominously beneath her hood, “Then I’ll kill them first.”

The voidsent, Mirseleiris, who inhabited Dahlia’s body and constantly vied for control, be it for direct experience with the world, attempts to isolate the Ishgardian, or just for the sake of having some form of power, had made itself known in front of a group tasked with eliminating a different voidsent in Yanxia. Mothra had been beaten down, the giant moth-like demon beaten to within an inch of its existence before putting Dahlia to sleep with a strange song. It was then that Mirseleiris took control and the girl’s body contorted violently, black tendrils of pitch-like void-tainted aether finding purchase about the thing and draining it of its own stolen aether until it was nothing more than a husk.

Those around them were horrified. Hali had cut a deal with the Onmyouji, Sasori, in order to allow it and keep Dahlia safe for the moment. In exchange fore her own services as a shinobi, Sasori would help her when the time came to deal with Mirseleiris.

The standoff was tense. The look of confused disappointment Kaori had given Hali was heartbreaking, and her tone moreso when the girl had threatened the Confederates accompanying them with a swift death should they lay a finger on Dahlia. There would be a lot to explain to her former teacher. The only other from Gold and Glory was Aedwen, a newer member, but an Imperial medicus. Hali feared that she might take that back to the Empire in order to have Dahlia exterminated as a threat. She would have to be watched.

The walk back to Namai was one tinged with anxiety and uncertainty. Dahlia feared retribution for the presence, no less the actions, of the creature within her. Time and time again, Hali reassured her: no harm would come to her; she would kill anyone who tried.

I want to think it’s romantic... she’d thought, But... it’s just another excuse to kill.

The thought was interrupted by an admission of guilt from Dahlia’s part, “I won’t hesitate to kill them to protect myself or you, either, you know.” The tone in her voice made Hali’s heart wrench; Dahlia really had no idea how messed up she was, did she? She had no idea how easy it would be for her to simply kill those who threatened either of them. Her conscience was as withered as that moth demon had been.

“Why don’t w-we, um, g-go for drinks. Um, a-at the springs,” Hali had suggested, “I think we, uh... b-both need to relax after that, huh?” Dahlia seemed enthused by the idea. The Bokairo Inn would be a good stop on their way back to the Shirogane Branch of the Gold and Glory offices.

After taking a moment to retrieve their things from the inn where they’d left them for convenience, they met. Hali realised rather quickly that she hadn’t planned on seeing quite that much of the very full-figured mage and her worry about her gratuitous scars - especially the death wound from her dealings as Katsu with a particularly lethal Venture in the Sagolii - when Dahlia accidentally dropped her towel. She declined to ask about those she saw on the other girl, given they seemed to be a deal different that her own.

The feeling was a strange one. For someone who had no interest in anyone for the most part, save for some aesthetic appreciation, she found herself staring from her peripheral vision, the feeling of a sudden dropping in her chest, like her heart had skipped a beat making her pause and her face flush a deep crimson.

Though she got over it, the curiosity at the reaction remained, even as they sat, talked, and drank. For a time, it was idle conversation, back and forth about conjury, Hali’s past as a miqo’te, drinks, and more. It darkened for a time as the concern about what had happened not a bell before was brought back up, but, after a few reassurances, the topic changed to food and drink again.

Then, the topic that Hali had been dreading came. Not days before their weekend trip to Kugane together, she had been written into a list of karaoke singers for an outing she attended with the Outriders. Naomi had penned Hali in to sing, knowing both the Au Ra’s ability for it and persona as a songstress. The shinobi would have been far less vexed by it if she hadn’t chanced to run into Dahlia at the very same place. They’d sat and drank and talked... until Hali’s name was called.

The anxiety-stricken Raen had nothing else to sing but a song she’d had stuck in her head, and it was all-too-related to her own anxiety and feelings for the mage with whom she’d been sitting all night. After her song, she returned to find the girl blushing and flustered, though they talked a deal more throughout the next bell.

When the topic of the Fighter’s Forge, a training event held in the Shroud, came up, they group opted to leave for it, and Dahlia, already mostly-drunk off of the umeshu that Hali had bought as a means to help her calm down, went along. The training session was short, and Dahlia spent most of her time in a drunken stupor, though she still had her wits about her enough to cheer Hali on in a crack spar against Naomi. When they left together, she was asked if she and “her girlfriend” wanted anything to eat before they went, and, though Dahlia was oblivious, Hali coaxed her off in a fit of shy anxiety.

Thus, she had dreaded the moment when “her girlfriend” came up, and it had, as Dahlia asked her, leaning on her and cuddling into her in the springs, about a restaurant they’d been discussing. 

“Have you ever gone with your girlfriend?” she asked, causing Hali’s heart to leap into her throat.

The ensuing back and forth was almost painful. Despite her insistence that she didn’t have a girlfriend, Dahlia continued to press, asking for whom she sang. When Hali said Naomi had signed her up without her knowing, she took it to mean that Naomi was her girlfriend, causing Hali to become ever more flustered as she denied that, too, repeating that she was, in fact, without one. Eventually, she became too flustered to speak and clapped her hands over her mouth.

“Are you well?” Dahlia had asked, then started to stand. In her panic and fear, Hali had assumed she was getting up to leave and shot up, begging her to stay before, finally, forcing herself to try and explain.

“It’s... it was...” she started, then simply finished with, “...you.” The Ishgardian’s face with a mixture of mild surprise and confusion as she asked for confirmation, to which Hali affirmed that she had, indeed, sung for Dahlia, and that she had been referred to as her girlfriend. However erroneous, it still struck a chord with her when it was said, and, explaining it as best she could, she waited for the negative reaction she expected.

It didn’t come. To Hali’s continued anxiety, Dahlia’s response was tame and nearly unreadable for the panicked Raen, prompting from her repeated apologies in the lack of anything better to say.

“No apologies,” she said, cuddling back up to the flustered, confused shinobi, “It’s okay. I am not bothered.”

The relief was mild, but it was there, when she had said that, and, though Hali was tense, with a few errant sniffles to try and clear her head of the impending fit of crying, she tried her best to relax again.

As the night grew late, they had begun to speak of when to retire before the alcohol wore too much on them with the heat of the springs. Hali couldn’t even word a response before an unexpected shock rendered her stark still, freezing solid in the otherwise hot water. The feeling of Dahlia’s lips pecking her cheek flipped her mind upside down, having been entirely unexpected, and with no idea of how to respond, she sat there for a long moment, eyes wide and face nearly as red as a tomato. Her heart seemed to beat with some insane, erratic rhythm and she felt butterflies in her stomach for possibly the first time that she could remember. The only thing she could manage was nervous giggling for nearly a bell after, between the shock, the alcohol, and the exhaustion from the night before.

It was unexpected, to be sure, but it was welcome. For perhaps the first time, her heart had sent her reeling for someone with whom she could have a legitimate chance - someone for whom she felt things she had not felt with anyone else prior - and it was wonderful. The nagging doubt remained for the rest of the night, though: what now? She knew nothing about love or how to do anything related. She could barely function as a person. Her thoughts drifted from possibility to possibility, from plan to plan, before she arrived at once simple conclusion:

If it was for her, she would do whatever it took to learn.

(( With @umbralhearts‘s Dahlia! ))