2013.10.16 - Exit Light: Amaya

In Amy's guest room, as she sleeps, there's a sound of wordless whispers. An air current blows from under the bed, rustling any curtains or hanging bed sheets. The air current ceases... Then repeats. It is methodical, like breathing. Then the shadows under the bed start stretching up from under the bed, inky blackness in the shape of something long and spindly... The end of the streak of darkness gradually divides and splits into a number of thin fingers. Then the arm of shadow is joined by six or seven or twelve friends who also slither out from under the bed. They hover over Amy's sleeping form, and the whispers rush out to fill the room in a deluge of half-heard voices.

The shadow hands around Amy descend all at once, trying to grab her and pull her under the bed in one swift movement. She might not even have time to wake up if she wasn't already. And if she's pulled under, the room and the underside of the bed are suddenly empty and quiet once more.

Amy is not dreaming. She's too tired to dream. There are still thoughts in her mind, but they are not dreams. Dreams are something physical, something your body does. Her body is exhausted.

Her spirit is wide awake.

Run, run, little goddess. It's not the children with the old eyes or the monsters with the fickle bodies, but they hate you all the same. They're anathema. They're not constructive. Not properly constructive, anyway.

Amy wakes with a sharp gasp. She rolls over gripping at sheets beneath her to find which way is up. Her boots are still on. It's just a matter of getting out of bed in the dark and running.

She finds the ceiling in the black. It's crawling with snakes--no, they're closer. They're not on the ceiling and they're not snakes. The princess reaches for a magical sword that's not there but will be. She is not as fast as the hands reaching for the princess that is already there.

Amy screams like the sound could be her sword instead. It's not. Her head hits the floor as the hands pull her off the bed and her fingernails claw uselessly on the floor as she's pulled underneath.

A nest of shadows, an endless fall down a tunnel of writhing winter, the journey from reality to UN-reality could be compared by someone who had experienced such already to being grabbed by the bottom of a deep dark pit -- not something IN the pit, but the //uncertainty// of the contents of the pit itself -- and then hurled into a corridor of blind terror. The walls closing in, the hands of immaterial blackness still somehow exerting a frigid pressure as they slap against Amy's body in passing, seeking but not finding the purchase they crave, the core that can be seized and smothered in an ocean of endless obsidian that will stay in this place forever.

The whispers never cease. What is behind or within the sound is as unclear as the nature of the contact of shadowy hands that have no solidity. Still, even in this in-between not-place, a conceptual space without time, space, or dimensions, the blindness of suffocating darkness seems to have impressions residing within it. Glimpses as much caught by the mind as other senses. Something short and pale running in place on an upwards sloping surface. A figure on hands and knees, vomitting hands of shadow even as they plunge endlessly through a gaping hole in its back. A hundred, hundred trillion bird skulls worn as masks. A silent voice that chants a rhyme in counter-point to the madness-inducing whispers.

'Something familiar.'

'Something broken.'

'Something wrong.'

'Something unspoken.'

'Burn all bridges, murder the light.'

'If blood's not your fare, two wrongs make a right.'

And then an unseen hand, tipped with claws, stabs itself up into Amy's stomach, and yanks her free of the hands of shadow by her innards. Then, free-fall through empty space, only to suddenly slam into something very solid and very unyielding.

The next thing that Amy would be aware of would be ground. She's lying on the ground. The sky is dark, but there are outlines, silhouettes, shades of purple, shapes like... Like crystals? Did she pass out from the impact? The ground is covered in sharp little fragments that are not exactly fun to sleep on. But at least that hole in her stomach, flowing with blood and entrails after being grabbed straight through, seems to be gone and she seems to have stopped falling. Leaving her...

...Where is this?

Princess Amethyst is a brave warrior from a dangerous land and a clever student with wise teachers. She knows how to hide herself in the Chaos Dimension and has seen the ruins of the Ancient Ones.

This place is not familiar. No text or lecture comes to mind as she is pulled down when she should be falling. She still tries to recall. There's too much going on outside of her body, too many senses being engaged. It's easier to let it wash meaninglessly over her and it seems more productive to think. Her eyes flutter shut.

Her vomit tastes coppery. She hadn't felt like she was going to vomit--no, her stomach hurts. Amy opens her eyes to see blood drenching her shirt and something bizarre coming from her stomach, stretching out. It doesn't occur to her that she's been disemboweled. She's never been hurt like that. She doesn't know that it's possible.

"Nnf." Ground underneath her is a good sign. It's somewhere to start. Amy paws at the surface beneath her and shrinks back when something sharp finds her hands. Trying again, cautiously, she pushes herself upright.

She sits on her legs and brushes the hair out of her reddened eyes. Crystals can mean a lot of things. Nilaa is an artificial place created by the foremost mystics in the world. It is the Gemworld because it would be magically useful for it to be a Gemworld. A lot of weird places have crystals.

Amy stands, clutching her necklace. She doesn't let go of it after willing her armor around her. Ever the planner, she searches her surroundings for landmarks and clues, using her eyes while standing still. Movement may be foolhardy.

There's no smell here. None but her own, at least, and when there's such a total absence of scent that even someone who isn't necessarily 'smelly' per se stands out from the surroundings as an olfactory anomaly, there's something to be said for either sterility or emptiness. To some, they might seem slightly similar, but sterility usually means cleanness, whereas emptiness means there's nothing there. In this instance, the tiny fragments on the ground, the grey dust that coats everything, the silence outside of Amy's own noises, the toppled, blocky chunks of color-drained crystal lying all around her as she sits in a shallow pit or crater of some kind, all indicate this is not a very clean place. Just an empty one.

Breaths, the rustling of fabric, her own heartbeat like thunder, such an intense absence of sound -- even the air here seems to almost be missing a temperature. Almost, but not quite. It's a bit cold. There's an outline just over the rim of this crater. Something standing out from the surrounding darkness with its own darker form. The fragments on the ground seem to be crystal, much like the larger, not-as-broken ones.

It shouldn't take too long to trek up the slope, and it shouldn't be any harder than the hills that Amy has walked up and down many times before in a different place. Somewhere in the background of thought, of consciousness, she might feel almost as though she knows this place. Perhaps even knows what she's going to see. For someone as 'genre savvy' as she is, she might be able to guess. But just as much there is probably a stronger desire for it to not be true. The fervernt wish to be wrong this once.

And yet, regardless of suspicion or disbelief, there's still one thing waiting for her outside of this crater. The capital city of Nilaa. Buildings fallen, broken. Fragments and pieces. More craters. More shattered crystal. All of it bleached of color, life eradicated. But where is the palace? Is the palace intact? Her mother...? There's definitely a towering structure in the distance. Vast, oppressive, stretching up and down and left and right. It looks like no royal palace as designed by a sane human mind. Even its outline, though unclear in this murk, shows a greater resemblance to the skeletal remains of several giants who died fighting dragons, now equally skeletal. There is no way that is the royal palace.

And that is only fitting, that is what is due, for it is no palace of Nilaa.

Because what was once the palace is the crater wherein Amy currently stands.

Amethyst--she is now properly Amethyst since the tiara is on--takes a tentative step. Alright. Another. Still fine. She presses her foot into the ground, toe first. Hm.

Satisfied, she raises her left hand and invokes a practiced symbol, then flattens her hand palm-up. A will o' the wisp flares, bobbing above her hand and casting a dim light. It is a fair trick that the light is visible only to her.

That done, the princess begins walking. She keeps the steady stride of someone who is familiar with the word league as a unit of measurement. That she's in a crater is shortly obvious and she is already considering the possible terrain that could surround her. It's a great way to keep the mind engaged on a long journey, aside from the obvious benefits.

Even cracked and torn and savaged, parts of the emerging crystal skyline are familiar. Amethyst stops thinking about terrain. She hurries, all the way to the crater ridge.

What is there to make of this? The eye and teeth are fresh in her mind. She knows she's about to consider the possibility that it ate Gemworld and her mother. Instead, she begins planning a route to the distant, unfamiliar structure. The best path, the expected time, how long she'll be able to go without water, without food. It's a lot of numbers. Numbers, not dead mothers.

This place doesn't feel like Gemworld, anyway. It feels like it hates her. It doesn't feel magic.

Amethyst continues down the other side of the crater.

Hatred is right. Hatred and hunger and fear. No, wait, that last isn't directed at her. Well, perhaps it is, but it's also simply there. Impressions. Flickers of almost-thought. The very foundation of this realm -- whatever it might be -- is equal parts corruption and fear. One leads to the other and then back again. Like the only thing holding this all together is the fear of coming undone.

The distance to the structure in the distance is difficult to ascertain. It could be an entire day. It could be half that. It could be weeks. The distance is hard to grasp since the entire horizon seems to have been replaced with something that wouldn't be on Gemworld.

'Something familiar.'

Like a half-remembered dream, words Amethyst has not quite heard before -- //discerned// may be a better term -- come back to her. Or maybe they are being repeated by some silent invisible something. As she makes her way down the slope, something may nearly trip her. Something that produces a dull, yet metallic sound that -- in this quiet, where her very footsteps are like thunder -- echoes across the whole of this city that is not Nilaa and yet looks like what a broken version of such might appear as in some other time and place that hopefully will never come about. Partially-buried under rubble and soil and dust, and almost right underneath Amethyst, is a long cylindrical object. Either by magic or manual inspection, its nature should be relatively easy to determine.

It's a missile. An ICBM. The kind that can have a nuclear warhead. Is this meant to be what destroyed the palace? Unlikely. See, this one is unexploded. Any initial concern that stepping on it might set it off can be dispelled as dirt tumbles out of the missile as it starts to roll down the slope. It's hollow inside, like instead of what payload was supposed to be in there was left out. All sorts of sophisticated electronics and machinery, just not there.

But something else was. Unmistakably regular, finger-like scratches on the inside of the casing reveal that much. The missile starts to tumble more and more, producing an enormous racket just with the displacement of dirt... And if it falls any further, it's likely to make even more noise. But who is going to notice? A world held together by fear to hold off the poison that is eating it alive? Or maybe that white something peeking around the corner of a gem forge at Amethyst, only visible thanks to her self-specific light?

"Nothing familiar," Amethyst says. She is sullen to be rebellious. It is a safe rebellion because the very act of living is noisy here. There is no ranger's stealth to be had here, no fox's cunning. At least there's no hounds.

Amethyst doesn't know how to talk to herself about the way this place makes her feel. She knows some vocabulary, but the grammar escapes her. She doesn't have any native speakers to talk to. This place is a heat on her skin that's not hot, a chill in her heart that isn't her actual heart. The best way she can think of it is that it makes her feel gross and sick.

She trips. Her foot catches, but she doesn't fall. The princess balances precariously mid-stride, carefully bringing her foot back to confirmed solid ground. She steps back, looking down to see what bedeviled her.

A missile is too much. Amethyst snorts despite the place. She briefly feels foolhardy, but she can't feel truly embarrassed in front of no one. Her traveler's light illuminates the length of the thing as it goes rolling down--with a crook of her finger, she attempts to magically lift it into the air. Her attention is on it, and not the figure.

The missile is lifted into the air. There's decayed pigment that fails to identify what country, if any, it originally came from -- or would have come from is this were the outside world. The SANE world. But there are other marks. Unlike everything else in this place, the hate in the awful marks is just part of the nature of the realm, rather than incarnated in the sharp edges, the sallow curves, the little jigsaw-like connections that bring to mind images of a mortician's tools. Sutures and bonesaws and the like. No, these little things are not so much hateful as coldly malicious. Perhaps still meant to bring fear, but also containing their own meaning seperate from the environment they are found in. They are probably supposed to be letters or symbols but mostly just look like someone scrawled death in as many forms as possible onto the side of what could have been a nuclear missile.

It's magic speech. It may have even once held magic in whatever material was used to paint it on the ICBM. But now it's just the words themselves. They are orders. 'Fly.' 'Strike.' 'Open.' 'Empty.' Commands for an object to follow, or what was inside?

As the missile rises, that which watches Amethyst moves further out of concealment, trying to get a better look. The thing is short, emaciated, with long, tangled, stringy hair that may have once been blonde but now is pure white. It might be female. Almost assuredly is. She wears a mask upon her face -- currently bearing an expression of curiosity. A ragged white dress hangs loosely on her frame. The girl plods silently up the rubble that was once a street, advancing much closer, perhaps still not realizing she's visible. Her gaze tracks between Amethyst and the floating cylinder. One, then the other. Then sticking to the former. There's nothing else as colorful as Amethyst right now. Is this another magic-eater? Something attracted to her power and intending to consume her? If so, she's doing a poor job, just standing there staring from behind a mask.

Amethyst beckons the ICBM closer and it obeys. She turns it over and over in the air, considering the words. Word-commands are a very old kind of magic, one that is of current interest to her. There are some ancient tablets back at the Sanctum Sanctorum that work on that concept.

A narrative forms in her mind of what this place could be. It's almost certainly not Gemworld. Kind wishes.

The movement from down the slope finally catches her eye. Amethyst gestures the missile aside, coasting it into a safe landing spot. Mission control, eagle has landed.

The princess does not make any immediately hostile gestures. Her traveler's light is still her own, so there is a chance that the girl (creature?) is unaware and simply feels safe approaching. Politely disabusing it of that notion is a good first step.

"Hello?" Amethyst calls out. "Who are you?"

The girl is not-quite-part of this place. She doesn't feel like corruption and fear. She doesn't feel like hate. There's hunger there, to be sure, but it is not like the other hunger -- and it not directed at Amaya specifically. It is not the almost elementally ravenous sensation that lurks just beneath the surface everywhere else -- even in the scentless air. She is also, aside from the princess, the only thing encountered thus far with a smell of her own. She smells stale, like dried sweat. Not the most pleasant of smells, but still perhaps somehow better than a total absence. When trapped in a total void of sensation, anyone will eventually leap into a fire just to feel. This is not quite as bad as a void, of course.

The girl quickly places her hands over ears unseen amongst the tangle of white strands at Amaya's words. In a world without sound, a whisper is a scream. Speech is an explosion. A shout is the whole of everything being unmade. Quivering, the girl backs up quickly, her mask having changed at some point as her hands passed over it on the way to her ears from an expression of curiosity to one of pain and dismay. She turns and starts running away, but with her obvious ill-health it's a stumbling, slow, uncoordinated shamble and she tires quickly. She makes it back to the corner she emerged from before stopping and turning to look back at the colorful princess. The mask has a hesitant expression now. Troubled, reluctant. Furrow-browed.

She 'writes' in the dust on a chunk of wall with her fingertip, very slowly, very carefully, so as not to make any sound. It may be hard to make out from here, but if Amaya approaches, she does not flee again. Either way, it's Russian. 'Sasha'.

'Something broken.'

Amethyst is familiar with sweat and other emblems of vigor. She never stayed at a school long enough to join a team, but she is an athlete. It breaks the spell. This place is no longer an emergency room without doctors.

The princess watches without judgment, a daringly garish statue in an austere hall. She does not pursue the raggedy girl, allowing her to pay the price of retreat. Her makeshift stronghold is close enough that Amethyst can see what is written. She has good eyes. It's in the blood.

Sasha. Something broken. Whoever's in the control booth has a flair for the dramatic. Or is this a semi-sentient apparition, illusion, or conjuration? Amethyst has never been haunted before.

She raises her free hand. With fingers spread, the princess carves delicate, willowy symbols in the air that blossom into lurid letters. It's Russian, too.

Amethyst.

Are you okay?

In a world without sound, a whisper is a scream. But what is a silence you can feel on your skin? There already seemed not to be any sound, but from the direction of the towering palace or fortress or maybe just a mound of giant dead things, a wave of pressure unaccompanied by tacticle sensation emanates suddenly and washes over everything.

Even heartbeats go silent.

In the Sane world, when there is a sudden great quiet, a ringing can sometimes be heard in one's ears. Just a soundless pitch that shows how quiet it is. That ringing is the only sound now. The sound that is not sound. Then a pair of baleful eyes, glowing with a hideous pale-grey not-light that dissolves the light and life from what it falls upon, appear ON the fortress. Then suddenly the structure boils with eyes of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions. Eyes ringed with teeth.

The silence is broken when the palace with all its many eye-teeth begins to laugh. Thousands of hideous, inhuman voices, laughing hysterically, madly, deeply, high-pitched, sporadically, all bombarding this dead place with noise. It goes on for what may feel like hours but is probably more like a couple minutes. Then the laughter ends, though it continues to echo for a good long time.

Then it's just the eye-teeth, watching, staring. The eye-teeth, and the dead that begin to rise from the rubble. Dry, withered, nearly-mummified. Some faces might be familiar, but most don't belong here. But a dozen of them arise, and then two dozen, and then three, and four, and they all look empty sockets on Amethyst and Sasha. They advance with all the patience of the dead.

Sasha's mask once more seems curious. She writes below her name, boney fingertip with long fingernail rasping on the wall faintly as spells out something longer than she has ever written.

'How can I tell if I am okay?'

Then the silence comes. The silence she can feel. The mask turns to one of abject terror. She immediately plugs her ears with her fingers regardless of what damage might be done with those long, dirty fingernails, and curls into a ball on the uneven ground, waiting. When the laughter comes, screaming, howling, gibbering, she stays where she is endures the torment. The moment it ends, even as the echoes continue, she gets to her feet unsteadily, and gestures urgently, still with a terrified mask, trying to urge Amethyst to follow her. It's not long before the princess can see why she is so eager to flee.

The dead rise and advance, their gait slow, methodical. Even in such poor condition as she is, she can probably outrun them with difficulty. Someone healthy, let alone athletic or mystically empowered, can do more. But right now she is starting to climb up a toppled wall to get onto a rooftop, trying to drag herself up the cracked slab by determination as much as physical effort. If Amethyst follows, there's a virtual rooftop highway of scavenged materials laid out, linking one building to another. Despite perhaps being able to get herself to safety if she just MOVES... Sasha hesitates, checking to make sure she is being accompanied by this stranger.

The princess frowns. The drama mask the girl wears makes her feel more expressive. She doesn't feel like hiding the sadness the response brings. If I knew the answer to that, she thinks, I'd feel a lot better about a lot of things.

Thump. Then no more thumps.

Amethyst breathes in when the sensation squeezes her lungs, wordlessly but also soundlessly now. She covers her mouth with her hand, fruitlessly trying to hold her breath in. It takes her a second to realize the pressure was a symptom, not a sickness.

The tower. The princess is transfixed. She watches with challenging eyes as it creates form. There you are, you bastard. Amethyst lowers her head, clenching her fist, a small defiance against the gale and storm of laughing and giggling. A target gives her form, too, it gives her meaning. Something to build on.

Filled with courage and a dire purpose, Amethyst takes a step toward Sasha, raising her free hand and showing an empty palm. See, nothing there. It's okay. The masked girl responds, and the princess looks over her shoulder. No one makes that kind of gesture unless there's something to run away from.

Oh.

The princess is quick; now is the time for ranger's stride and fox's elusion. Sasha checks behind her and Amethyst is right there, nodding with urgent encouragement. Be fast. I'm with you.

'Something wrong.'

Walking among the dead, there is something else. Something a little bit faster. Something not mummified at all, and yet still not among the living. She is dressed in regal garments, though falling apart from age. But the wearer herself is pristine. Pristine and dead, and yet still with the movements of a living person. It's not that she CAN'T run, it's that she chooses not to. She bears a crown, and a sword. She has stitches criss-crossing her skin, with tiny little dark gaps inbetween to show just how empty she is. Her face is intimately familiar, even if a bit older than last she was seen.

It's definitely not Amaya's mother or anything.

It's just Amaya herself. Queen Amethyst, ruler of a world of death. Other-Amaya has eyes. As clear and alive as Amaya's own, but set in a face that is dead by pallor alone. Much like the others around her, she has no scent. She does not speak.

But her lips bear a small smile.

Sasha continues on up in relief, focused on the practiced maneuver of fleeing for her life -- or whatever passes for such in this place. Her mask is a study in focus, not fear, as she navigates across ricketty boards, makes unbalanced leaps from marble block to crystal ledge to petrified tree. It's difficulty work for someone with no muscle tone, her breaths audibly rattling in her mask from the effort involved. But she seems to know where she's going.

Other than 'Away from the Queen Beyond the Pale.' that is. Roof to roof, the dead may have trouble keeping up, especially with the gaps between buildings. Gaps that Sasha herself can't seem to leap without assistance. Eventually, they make it to a structure that wasn't part of Nilaa's capitol originally. The fact that it's from Earth may or may not slip notice, but it's distinctly different in design from everything else. It's a simple Russian dwelling from around the late 1300s, of a type used for centuries prior. Not fancy, mostly wood packed with clay and stone, half-buried in the ground. There's a hole in the roof, through which a pale glow emanates and a ladder lays atop of.

Hands shaking, Sasha tries to pick up the ladder and lower it within, but can barely support her own weight. The ladder clatters as she drops it, and there is a single distant laugh of dark amusement that echoes across the whole world.

Amethyst nimbly follows Sasha, reels of zombie movies playing in her head. Or maybe Aliens. Sasha is taking her back to her hiding spot, where she survived while all the warriors died.

Not all the warriors.

The princess has had wariness drilled into her. She glances up to get her bearings whenever there is an unchallenging stretch of makeshift road. The zombies are well behaved. The floor is lava, not freeze tag.

When Sasha hesitates at the first gap she cannot cross, Amethyst quickly understands, extinguishing her light. With the purposeful slowness of someone who has been taught how to act in urgent situations, she gets the girl's attention with a gesture, and then indicates toward herself. It is ungraceful, but necessary. Sasha is like a doll in her arms: slender, solid limbs and nothing else. Even without her unusual strength, Amethyst could probably carry her.

She leaps across. Another glance around. There is color--and Sasha seems to notice. Amethyst looks over the edge of a crumbling roof and into mirror. Her breath hides in her throat. Strange said to pay no attention to what Mephisto was saying, but to try to understand what he meant.

Pay no attention to Dead Amethyst. As far as the princess can tell, though, all this means is the instinctive shiver of looking at something close but not quite human. She leaves, over the next roof with Sasha safe.

Amethyst lets the girl down when she seems to want it. As Sasha deals with the ladder, the princess turns around and waits for herself. The clatter behind her makes her whirl around. After another quick glance in the direction of danger, Amethyst taps Sasha on the shoulder and then wraps her arm around her waist. She leaps into the hole, knowing her magic will catch her.

Until now, it has been this world and the things in it that have been matching the rhyme or 'prophecy' or whatever that soundless speech was supposed to be on the way in. But now Amethyst is taking an active role in making them come true.

'Something unspoken.'

Other-Amethyst follows where the other dead can not. She walks, and when she must she performs skilled leaps that belong to a living being no less capable than the real Amethyst. She easily navigates the rooftop highway, but at some point, she loses track. She loses track of her quarry because they've gone where she can't find them. A 'blank spot' in the world. A place left behind by a prior visitor -- not meant to be part of this particular nightmare. Refusing the advance of corruption. Amethyst and Sasha descend through the hole, and land -- one carried by the other -- after perhaps a seven or eight foot fall. Nothing major, but enough that a frail girl like Sasha might simply break if she attempted to jump down rather than use the ladder.

Inside is the interior of a cabin-like building. There's a fire in the hearth that produces no heat, smoke, or light. Just that hideous pale not-light. They can both see clearly inside not because it is illuminated but because the 'fire' is dissolving the darkness. Not light. The absence of darkness. Lying on the floor is a long wooden crate or box of some kind. It is chained shut and padlocked. A scrabbling sound comes from within, like something scratching to get out.

This box was not here when Sasha left her hiding spot last time.

Other-Amethyst's voice carries easily in the quiet of corpses padding through the dust in the distance. "Do you know who you're helping there, sister?" She even sounds like Amethyst! "She's, like, probably one of the worst people possible to buddy around with -- oh, except, you know, Mephisto, but we already did the whole deal with a devil thing, so I guess maybe this is kind of a step down?" The voice seems to change volume and what direction it's coming from as Other-Amethyst searches. "She'll stab you first chance she gets. Don't turn your back on her." The scratching inside the box repeats itself.

Boney hands grip so loosely at Amaya's own arm as Sasha is carried, but from the way they shake with effort she might very well be gripping as hard as she can. And it's barely even able to be felt. Even after they land inside the dwelling, Sasha is careful to remain in physical contact. The girl's mask has an expression of exhaustion as she huffs and puffs. If she's set down she wobbles. If she's still carried, she's still shaking. Tiredness and fear. And when she sees the box lying there, her mask changes to one of surprise. Kind of like a, ':O' expression. It would be comical or even cute in other circumstances. The scratching sound makes her wince. Then the voice of Other-Amethyst or Dead-Amethyst or whatever her name is carries in the muffled scraping of withered feet through pebbles and dust, and she presses her face -- or mask, rather -- into Amaya's chest, trying to bear the sound because she can't bear to let go long enough to plug her ears.

She does cast a fearful-masked look towards the box when it scratches inside again. Lying around the one-room structure are trinkets and old furniture pieces. Antiques. Ancient. Hundreds of years old and unlikely to support weight. Paintings with their images almost eradicated by the hateful glow of the not-light. A gold locket turned to porcelain white. A wooden cot that has already collapsed under the weight of the disintegrating blankets that cover it. How long has Sasha been living here?

How long has she been exposed to that 'flame' that burns without fuel, sizzling away at light, life, and... Mental stability? Is Sasha really dangerous? She isn't acting like it. If she is set down or not, however, she attempts to indicate a chest seemingly carved of obsidian lying in a corner. The only object in the room other than the chain-bound box that isn't falling apart. Unlike the box, however, the chest is still rather dusty.

A puff of wind slows their descent, allowing Amethyst's boots to gently alight upon the ground. She looks around with a raised hand, briefly lingering on the animated box. When she attempts to turn around to look behind her, she realizes just how eager Sasha is to cling to her.

Amethyst next breath is ragged with emotion. For how well she fortified against fear she erected in her heart, she left a secret path unguarded. She is terrified for Sasha, now. She wants her to live.

Oh my god, is that really what she sounds like? The princess glances up at the noise, hugging her ward firmly but not restrictively. Her mouth opens but she shuts it. Yelling won't do anything, and it has a good chance of freaking Sasha out again. She looks down, then follows the girl's gesture to the obsidian chest.

Amethyst nods, then holds up one finger. Just a second. She taps one of the gems set at her belt. A beam of light zigzags through the air into her hand, forming a crystalline dropper. The princess brings it in front of her face and squeezes, producing a bubble that wobbles in front of her eyes. The dropper disappears in a glimmer of sparkles.

It is water from the well of vision, imbued long ago with the true way of seeing things. Through the bubble, Amethyst gazes at the scrabbling box.

Inside the box is a pale thing that resembles a child, with a nest of writhing black surrounding her head, and a pair of glowing red eyes peering out of the face of a little girl. Japanese. Perhaps 12 or 13 years old. Younger even than Sasha, though with a healthier amount of skin on her. No one that Amethyst has ever met, most likely. But she's still familiar somehow despite being a complete stranger. Her right hand is covered in blood. Without even needing to think about it, if it's the magic or just more of the weirdness of this place, Amaya should be able to tell that is the same claw-tipped hand that 'injured' her in order to pull her out of the darkness and hurl her into this world. She is scowling. No wicked smile, no evil expression. She just looks really, really, really pissed off.

And she's writing on the inside of the box with her fingers. Writing in Amethyst's blood. 'Burn all the bridges.' What is lying in that box looks like a girl, but with the magic water being used, it should be plenty clear. She's both not a native of this place and she's already dead. A ghost, with an ordinarily invisible mystical tether leading from where her heart should be all the way back to Earth. There's a hole in the box that the tether dangles through. Not a hole, exactly. More like, the box is a doorway. A portal? A way out? But this girl is not looking exactly safe to let out either.

Gleaming eyes stare angrily up at the closed lid, and she allows her hand to drop down on her belly. She waits. She waits like she already knows what's going to happen next.

"No, for serious, I know you must be just dying to call me out. I would be too! I know how it is! Not every day you get a chance to yell at yourself without looking all kinds of crazy!" Other-Amethyst continues. "But this is 'important' with a capital 'I-M-P-O-R-T-A-N-T'. Getting out of here is going to cost you more than what it did to get info from Randall Flagg. It's easier this way. She's the one who's going to kill Gemworld. She's going to kill Earth, then she's going to come here. On my coronation, can you believe it!? Like... Who even does that!? Not that I was dying to become queen exactly, but you already know that." The sound of boards creaking under someone's weight starts to come closer. "Compassion is fine until it gets you and everyone else you know and care about killed. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I were you. Doing the right thing is more important. But here I am. Dead. You know, incase you couldn't tell. And she's gonna' get you too if you don't do it first. She WILL."

There's the sound of foot falls on a rooftop, someone pacing back and forth. Several long moments of Other-Amethyst not trying to bait herself. "Who else is in there?" Other-Amethyst's voice is suddenly very cold. No joking. "I swear to every unicorn that has ever existed, if any more of you roaches have slipped in here, I am going to puke!" Pause. "WHO ELSE IS IN THERE!?" This shout is followed quickly by, "ANSWER ME!"

Sasha tries to tug on Amaya, tries to pull her in the direction of the chest, but she pauses to observe the trick with the water. Curiousty warring with worry on her mask. The persistent scratching inside the box draws glances too, only for thin little neck to crane up towards the hole in the roof and the voice that will not stop causing her so much pain. It's an ordeal just to keep changing what direction she's facing so much. When Other-Amethyst insists that Sasha is going to be the death of Earth, Gemworld, Amethyst, and everyone she knows and cares about, Sasha shakes her head, a crying expression on her mask. She's saying, 'No, I won't. I wouldn't do that.' Then she tries to climb down herself, unable to remain where she is any longer, no longer able to stay away from the chest.

Unless physically restrained or Amethyst decides to go ahead and carry her to the chest (with restraining not being hard exactly), the emaciated girl attempts to make her way across the room. And either way, she wants to open it. If that chest is opened, inside are a number of things. The most notcieable is the parts comprising a fantasy castle of some kind, painted in vivid colors absent from everywhere else outside of Amethyst herself. They're almost painful to look at after the dull grey monotony everywhere else, and yet even more beautiful for that brightness. There is also a golden crown fit for a queen, and a long sharp knife. It's the castle she wants though. The castle, with all its many little wooden walls and towers and... Bridges.

The bubble wavers and shimmers, then pops. Amethyst looks down to Sasha again, who seems equally conflicted. At least Dead Amethyst upstairs is carrying a fine conversation with herself.

The princess nods again, reassuring. Of course not, Sasha. Don't listen to Mephisto. Understand what he means. She walks with Sasha to the chest, letting the girl have her way while maintaining contact. It gives Amethyst a moment to consider what she saw in the box. It's a way home, if she's clever.

A crown and a castle, yes, but also a knife. Amethyst watches--it's the castle. The knife remains safely in the box and not in her back. She kneels down and pats her chest, smiling with sad eyes. Me too. I understand.

Who else is in there. She changed tones. Two points make a line. You can plot a line and get meaning. Amethyst looks over her shoulder at the other box. For Sasha's sake, she'll be clever.

Amethyst turns back to the other girl and raises her hand. Slowly, for Sasha's sake. The princess makes sigils with sure fingers again, conjuring words.

There is an angry girl in the box.

She is dangerous.

If I let her out I can take us away from here. I will protect you.

Amethyst takes up the knife--slowly--and offers it to Sasha, hilt-first. She gestures toward the far side of the room. Hide there.

More angry pacing in silence. Then it suddenly stops. There's no more sound above. Certainly not breathing. The dead don't breathe. Seems Other-Amethyst finally wised up and decided to stop trying to psych out the enemy and just make use of their own flaws against them. Listen. Listen for the flaws of the living. And just like that, all the echoes of a yelling voice fade away... And it's just them again. Heart beats. Blood rushing through veins. Breathing suddenly far too loud in the silence.

Thankfully the ghost in the box doesn't resume scratching.

Sasha is, perhaps strangely, not focusing so much on the dangerously close yelling woman but on attempting to set up her castle. She seems to almost obsessively arrange the pieces. Place the towers, the stable, measuring out the courtyard exactly, but even as her hands tremble with the light-weight objects, she keeps finding her escape -- her way of slipping away from this nightmare, this dull reality -- becoming less important than this woman who just entered into her life and is already so much more fascinating. Being carried, guarded, smiled at. A big sister? A mother? Whatever she has been missing from her life, she finally has it. And she hesitates as she starts to set up the wooden bridges. She hesitates, and then rises tremulously from the castle where she likely imagines it is her who is queen -- her who is the princess or whatever else she comes up with.

Her only escape...

Until now. She accepts the knife first with hesitance, then with eagerness. Her frail form seems to have a bit more strength in it suddenly. Her mask, as she strokes her long-nailed thumb over the handle, and reads Amethyst's words, is suddenly quite unreadable. No expression at all. She rises with more stability than previously exhibited... And turns her back to Amethyst as she quietly creeps towards the broken cot and hunkers down. Her mask remains expressionless as she hides behind a decayed wooden frame to the best of her ability.

Amethyst kneels and waits, letting Sasha come to terms with the situation at her own speed. They have some time, it seems, and it must have been so strange for this girl down here. The princess does not miss the change in Sasha's posture. She recognizes it. It's the same place your body goes when you've been running so long that it gives in and lets you have all the energy it was hoarding. A second wind. A sudden understanding about what you're really capable of.

It can be frightening. Her mask must be her armor. Amethyst smiles again, points to Sasha, and then puts her palm over her own heart.

She approaches the box with quiet steps. On Earth, her mother encouraged her to learn about the supernatural and the mystical, hiding it as a new age openness to the possible. On Nilaa, she trained with the finest sorcerers and proved to be their finest pupil. In the Sanctum Sanctorum, she is the promising growth that the Sorcerer Supreme seeks to cultivate. She has never met a ghost, but she knows a thing or two.

Amethyst spreads her hands over the lid and begins weaving a way: a way for the ghost to be trapped in a circle, a way to hobble the reach of her bloody hand, a way home. The tether dangling through is a path and she is has tread many hidden ones.

The princess steps back. The box opens itself. The magical circle is strong.

Suddenly, the ceiling is punctured by a magic sword that is aimed not at Sasha, and not at Amethyst, but at the box in an attempt to impale it. The only thing in the cabin that isn't hidden by whatever went into making the place hidden to begin with. And then Other-Amaya's face peeks through the hole in the roof, with a cheerful smile on her face. "Heeeeere's Amy--" The box opens, pulling the sword out of Other-Amethyst's hand, and then a sub-zero hurricane blasts up out of the box, along with something else, and suddenly Other-Amethyst isn't on the roof anymore.

Instead something with eyes and tendrils and mandibles and skin that doesn't belong to it comes slamming down several long moments later, causing the entire area to shudder under the impact. The magic circle is strong. So is what came out of the box, though she still likely couldn't have violated the circle if she tried to.

But other things in the area are not protected by the circle. As the Other-Amethyst is revealed to be a Soul Chimera, the screams and howls of beasts that have never set foot on Earth are intermixed with a distorted version of Other-Amethyst's voice cussing out the ghost inbetween screams of rage and pain.

'Burn all bridges, murder the light.'

"YOU'RE THE REPLACEMENT, SISTER," the monster starts yelling. The hideous pale flame in the cabin 'goes out', though it was never really providing illumination to start with. The darkness does not rush in to fill the void. But the box remains dark -- with a safe passage back to Rain's mansion actually visible inside the box. "YOU'RE THE REPLACEMENT FOR OUR PACK MATE! YOU CAUSED THIS WITH YOUR COMPASSION! YOU'LL REGRET IT! YOU'LL REGRET HELPING HER! BUT EVEN IF YOU DON'T DO IT, THEN THERE'S STILL ONE MORE--" There is a loud crunch. Then the gruesome sounds of eating. It doesn't sound like it's the chimera doing the eating. It wanted to turn Amaya into a Soul Chimera too?

'If blood's not your fare, two wrongs make a right.'

The wind that tears up out of the box so painfully loud is not quite as painful as it should be. The circle protects even against this. The screaming of the Soul Chimera is another matter, but even that is somehow... Shunted aside. Just like the wooden castle with its vividly painted pieces that go flying through the air.

Sasha's mask is twisted in a malevolent smile as she charges at Amethyst from behind... Knife held in both hands, blade ready to stab into the princess's back...!

Sasha brings the blade home.

The magic circle protected them against the ghost and perhaps even other things. But it didn't protect against one thing that Amethyst probably didn't expect.

Sasha slows down her advance a couple feet away, and falls to her knees. With the knife handle protruding from the center of her own chest. No blood comes from the injury. But rot starts to spread outwards rapidly, psuedo-flesh turning to the form it possessed before she even came here and was left behind. Her mask is no longer a malevolent grin. She felt it. The intense need to eliminate this person. This woman who had what she had always wanted. What she had used up her own life to achieve and not been able to obtain. Fleeing from death when she was already among the dead. She felt that urge for vengeance. But before she felt that vengeance, she felt other things she had been denied. Things the woman she was carved from didn't receive in time.

Her mask is expressionless as her hands, wrists, and arms crumble in quick succession. Then the mask cracks as well and falls off. Underneath is the haggard face of a teenage girl, with bright blue eyes that seem out of place in a ruined body. Throat muscles unused to speech manages to get out hoarsely over the sounds of meat being consumed, "It wanted you to choose. Wounded by me, and easy prey. Kill me, and damage your resistance." The effort of so much speech makes her wince and close her eyes as she continues to fall apart. The knife actually clatters to the ground when there is no more torso for it to remain in.

"Me going with was never an option."

Just before her face completely crumbles, she says, "I'm glad I met you. I just wish the real me had too."

Her eyes are the last things to disappear into dust and decay. But her mind lingers behind a bit longer even when she can no longer speak. 'I know you'll be a good queen someday, even if she does come for you.'

Swords from on high, swords from below. Amethyst leaps back and, with a flash of gemstone, brandishes her mystical blade. She locks eyes with her counterpart, lips curled in a silent snarl. Dead Amethyst found the lioness in her den.

A slight creak is all Amethyst gets in warning--it's enough, coupled with her desire to protect Sasha, to send her dancing lightly backward. The ceiling caves in before her, leaving her to stand defiantly over the rubble and congealed flesh.

Silently, she duels with the edges of the thing. A tentacle whips and she parries. A mouth on a fleshy stalk snaps out and she meets it at bladelength. A scythe-tail sweeps and she boldly lunges forward, pinning it to the floor and slicing it free. Her conjured sword is sharpness made manifest, but it would not be enough. Amethyst herself is made of light, a light that is both despised and longed for, a light that dries up shadowy horrors.

That cuts. That cuts deep. It cuts because there is some of it inside the chimera. If there wasn't, it would just disappear before it.

The flesh-thing goes stiff and loses its malevolence. It is struggling. Amethyst, merely playing at swordmaiden and ignorant of the brightness within her, shrinks back, en garde. Stay aware. It's a relatively safe moment, so she glances over her shoulder and finds Sasha stabbed.

"--no!"

Amethyst whirls around, slashing her arm through the air as she goes. The hut groans and splits, bisected by a wall of dazzling purple gemstone. The princess leaps for her ward, casting her magical sword aside and once again ending up on her knees before the girl. Even with the rot spreading through her, Amethyst does her best to cradle Sasha in her arms.

Her eyes are wide and uncomprehending. This girl's not human. She must be from here. It must be another trick. But Amethyst wanted her to be safe so very, very badly. Her fingertips, unfeeling, touch the crumbling mask. She says nothing, this time for her own sake.

As the monster dies, cut into pieces by Amethyst, slashed to ribbons, its essence harmed, its component parts violently seperated, with portions of it dangling through the smashed outer wall, a malevolent ghost girl tearing the half of it outside apart with her bare hands. The Japanese teen takes great handfulls of a chimera made out of the souls of things that have been exposed to this wretched plane and twisted beyond any semblance of what they once may have been. She eats the corruption, and welcomes the pain it brings. Because the pain means she's getting stronger. And the stronger she gets, the better she can protect her mother.

Her mother...

She looks down at Amethyst kneeling before the fast-forward decaying girl, only a few years older than her. She has not had empathy for others since her own death and then over a century being a hateful specter. A murderous monster who measures her relationship with others by whether she hates them a bit less than the others.

Ever since one of these monsters took a bite out of her, that hate has been disrupted. She isn't just a pure murder-machine anymore. She still has so much rage, but she can see beyond that. Think for herself.

She's here for vengeance, but also to gain the strength she needs to protect. Because if one moldy monster biting her can disable her, she's clearly not good enough to serve mother. And now... Seeing Amaya kneeling before a crumbling mask and a pile of rot that once looked like a girl...

Sally gets a flash of memory. Watching, hovering above her own body, uncomprehending as her own mother cradled the body of... Kanami. her birth name. She sees the scene super-imposed over the princess and the dissolving remains. In a ragged white night gown, the angry ghost floats closer, but skirts the edge of the circle, unable to approach any closer than that. The ghost girl explains, "This place takes things from those who visit it. Those things remain behind when they leave and become twisted. Sometimes people don't leave, and that twisted fragment takes over the original instead." Her face is still stern, her tone is not friendly, but that's just her way. Her eyes look to the mask again. "She was real," she assures, as though reading Amaya's mind -- but she's just guessing. "But there is another her out there somewhere who already left. This nightmare was meant for you, not her. Someone like you should be grateful for my involvement." Then she starts dissolving into a mass of black centipedes that go crawling around the ruins. "She would have had to stay -- as your killer or as a piece of your new chimera body -- if I had not been here. This way she can finally go home."

Saying that all so arrogantly, so matter-of-factly... That is not exactly typical of her either, and it may also not exactly be the height of compassion... But this is the first time she has tried being sympathetic in over a hundred years. As she finally goes crawling off into the ruins in the form of several hundred creepy crawlies, she has one last twinge of conscience. That soundless voice again, says, 'There is one more to be rescued. Your witch friend is waiting for you already. But there is a third.'

Amethyst slips her hands from underneath the pile of tattered cloth, leaving it where it lies. She stands mechanically, forcing herself into action, turning to the gem wall she created. It recedes with another gesture. There is another girl on the other side.

Their expressions match. Amethyst knows what this girl is and knows what she has done. She narrows her eyes.

"That is the worst thing I've heard ever."

The girl begins collapsing into centipedes. Amethyst steps forward, through the ruined floor. "You're terrible. This whole thing sucks." She jabs a finger at the dissolving apparition. "I swear--" the witch-friend, Rain, of course, "--if you try to get 'involved' again, I will trap this whole Ringu mess you've got going on in the prettiest diamond I can find."

The centipedes retreat. Amethyst clenches her fists. She advances to the exit in the box, picking her route carefully. At the edge, the princess looks down inside--and then turns and makes her way to the other box. Carefully, she puts the pieces of the castle back inside, then closes the lid and hefts the entire obsidian thing.

She passes the knife, still threaded through Sasha's gown. The princess regards it for a moment, then continues to the box without it.

Amethyst lowers herself inside, obsidian box and castle and crown hugged close, knowing that her magic will catch her.

Amethyst lands safely. Or rather comes out from underneath the bed in the guest room. Just kind of sliiiides right out as though it were a chute instead of a vertical drop. The ruined cabin can still be seen in the darkness under the bed as though at the other end of a tunnel. The obsidian chest comes with of course, but this is clearly not yet over. Not until one more person escapes... Or becomes part of the Pack.

If Amethyst opens the chest at some point, she'd find the contents a bit different than last she saw. The castle is still perfectly intact... But the colors are dulled from age, the paint chipping. The crown appears to have been made of wild flowers woven together -- now so dry and old that they might crumble if the 'crown' is picked up. The knife is still back in that cabin. But something else has taken its place. A brass locket in the shape of a heart, tarnished heavily, but with a faded painting inside of a mother with her infant daughter.