"Curious indeed."
Ivy could recognize the voice. But its presence, and who it belonged to, was far less concerning than the silence that followed. The one person she cared for most had seemingly disappeared from her haunted mindscape.
Lila.
"Where am I?" Ivy looked down at her hands, squeezing them tight.
Anya's voice chimed in from beyond the heiress's sight. "You have a failsafe. Something built into your mind to prevent this sort of…deeper introspection."
"You mean a filter."
"Precisely. I'm not awfully familiar with the intricacies of the Psionic mindscape, thanks to my limited time with Yrix and the woefully inadequate state of my father's library, but it seems someone doesn't want you to have full access to it."
Ivy sighed loudly, "My father."
The princess was eerily absent for some time, leaving Ivy to stare into the vast expanse of dark nothing. It was as if she were vexed beyond the point of simple irritation. But after a good minute or two, her voice approached the heiress once more.
"I had hoped to witness your story myself. But I suppose this will have to do."
"Hm?" Ivy raised an eyebrow.
She had been fidgeting with her hands for some time, praying to some unknown god that Anya wouldn't realize her true identity.
"I can unveil this scrungy patch for you, but only by taking it upon myself. Just…promise me you'll give me an accounting of what you see. It'll just be a brief little look," the princess explained with a more shrill tone.
"Won't that hurt you?" Ivy didn't have to feign concern.
If anything happened to Anya.
Lila would be in danger.
"Nonsense," Anya boasted. "It's as my father always says. No bargain, no breakfast."
"He…really says that?"
"Mhm!"
The veil already began to lift itself as the princess spoke, hurling Ivy into a disembodied state from which she could see the world in new and dangerous perspectives. It was as if she were really there, in the past, as some sort of spectator. Nothing could hide her from the brief flashes of horror then.
A thin scalp of hair.
Smooth and silky.
White as snow.
Long, like her mothers.
A black claw reaches for its highest peak.
Skeletal and sharp, it tugs at the hair.
Pulls and tears with little effort.
No pain.
No scream.
As if brushing aside a loose bit of skin.
"She's rejecting it."
"No cause for alarm."
"Sir, the shell is-."
"This is what she wants."
A pretty pale face folded in two.
Three layers of skin.
One bundle of flesh on the floor.
"Her vitals are-."
"Fine. I know. She's made her decision."
A pair of dead eyes.
Intently, they stare.
Glades of silver wheat across her gaze.
Understanding, not agony.
No need for a shell.
The butterfly reborn need not its forsaken flesh.
"Huh!" Ivy gasped, momentarily convulsing as her neck wrenched towards the sky.
She was in a dark chamber of sorts, standing just behind Anya, her voice echoing across the strange black walls.
She was holding a black cup of sorts.
Was.
It fell.
"Hm," Anya placed a finger to her lips. "Sleep walking, is it? What a peculiar confirmation." Her words fell on deaf ears. "Your body can operate at full capacity, even with limited cognitive awareness. I gave you another snack, we chatted, and walked. And as it turns out…I was wrong," she sighed. "There's no filter. You've been living in a state of partiality all this time. One must wonder what will happen if you ever really wake up."
Ivy didn't respond. She was trying desperately to distract herself. Hope rested on what appeared to be the interior of Anya's ship, and the eerie contents within.
Black statues.
Rows and rows of them like pillars on a path.
Some eight-limbed creature reaching for the stars in agony.
Is that supposed to be me?
"Ivy?" Anya cocked her head to the side. "I'd like to hear what you have to say before my bath."
The heiress was still hyperventilating. A single tear had already streaked its way down her left cheek. Yet still, some semblance of defiance could be seen on her face.
"It wasn't me," she muttered.
"Oh?"
"My mother. Another…thing of my father's doing. I saw her tear off her own face."
"And?" Anya stepped closer, her bare feet curling around the red carpet that paved the way to her bath.
Her guards, both visible and invisible, were looming nearby.
"And…" Ivy hesitated. "And I lied."
She took a deep breath before her next words.
"Lila's not a pet. I love her. That may just be the only real, genuine truth in my life. And you can't take that away. No one can."
Anya seemed strangely satisfied with that answer. Not to the extent of caring for Lila, of course. That primitive was just as worthless to Anya as Ivy's facisionation with her. Though it was rather enlightening to see a fellow creature find an anchor she could rely on.
In a world of tattered illusions.
"Very well," Anya's shoulders drooped.
She hadn't even finished speaking before Ivy stormed out of the room. The heiress was visibly shaken. And for that, Anya could find no fault in her actions.
I believed.
So foolishly.
That I could forget.
Replace the memories of her with freckled girls and smiling plushies.
Was there hope for such a departed soul? Gracefully descending into a world of horror she never chose. Ivy was done pondering that mystery. All she wanted to do was go home and cry.
Like a real girl.
Wherever that was supposed to be.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Silent, brewing rage filled her with the vigor to push forward. That had always been the case. Long before Sonera became a Psion.
Or perhaps, she always was a Psion. As the laser projectors from a horde of rifles covered her body in a sea of red, piercing through the smoke she so carelessly created in her fiery descent, Sonera found herself growing increasingly agitated. As if she had something to prove.
That had been the case all her life. Yrix was right. She was a Psion. No amount of sundered nostalgia could change that. Sonera's life on Mars was merely a prelude to what she would become.
"They'd be here," she groveled to herself, sliding across the floor as a hail of high-caliber rounds soared over her head.
She'd fallen into a trap, obviously.
Some sort of hangar bay deep within the Mountain Shaper.
Filled with snipers and two lumbering tripods.
Sonera had never seen anything like it, the armored beetles her enemy called tanks, their open carapaces belching hot plasma that rained down on the girl with lethal intent. But she was too busy fretting over her mood to even notice. That sort of ignorance, loathed as she was to admit, was the sort of behavior Yrix would exhibit.
"They'd fight," she continued to babble to herself, twirling in a circle before kicking a Vesper with a flaming heel, the heat of which disintegrated its shields completely. "You'd hurt them."
Sonera fought as if her enemy had personally wronged her. Not in any physical way, of course, not even as that same Vesper swung at her throat with a blade of liquid metal. No, the wound she perceived so caloussly had more to do with the growing anxiety Yrix had caused her.
"And for that," Sonera huffed, finally sensing a bit of soreness in her thighs. "You die."
The hangar bay was easily comparable to a football field, though instead of stands, it featured a variety of loading bays and ramparts for her enemies to slither out from. That champion of the Daregen she sent tumbling down seemed alive and well, coordinating the small army's attack with a laser pointer that jutted out from its wrist. A great roar signalled the next barrage, causing Sonera to grunt with annoyance as a hail of plasma came writhing towards her from those same scuttling tripods.
"Zircon is the human way of saying it," Sonera mumbled, not realizing she was filling in the blanks herself. "Made from a smelly sort of alloy you'd find in a mountain on…you wouldn't know the planet."
Typically, Yrix would convey that sort of information. In fact, it was word-for-word what she knew. But Sonera hadn't the time nor the patience to question why she had chosen those words.
Mimicking was for Ivy.
Ignoring her problems was for Sonera.
She'd rather just feel miserable and fight.
The projectiles from the two Zircon bounced towards Sonera with suspicious precision, causing roiling blotches of plasma with each impact. Had it been a few weeks ago, she and her entire family would have come up with some spunky way of getting themselves burnt before avoiding the attack with narrow luck. But the assasin was past that.
She had wings.
And hate.
Leaping into the air, Sonera clutched a set of radiant knives in each hand, throwing them out like fans that stuck to the floor before detonating in a spectacular explosion. It was the blunt and easy way of making herself some space. But it came at an increasing cost.
She could see that same Daragen staring at her in the distance.
Waiting patiently for her to clear a path.
Taunting her desire for more.
The Zircons were rather unceremoniously defeated when Sonera was finished, kneeling on the ground in a smoking heap. Unfortunately, that last bit of flair had spent her reserve of Psionic fury, leaving the Assasin with only her blade and a whole army to fight.