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Once upon a time, upon an island in the sky, there was a tomb — and within that tomb, there was a riddle.
In those distant days and nights and years, when time itself was new and when the tomb was still merely a chamber, a goddess of light entered the chamber and left within it a blade that would one day become known as the Sword that Seals the Darkness. The goddess left the chamber, but the sword remained, its blade glimmering despite the cold shadows all around it.
Later, when the world had deemed it fated, a person entered the chamber with a mask, closed the door behind themselves to shut out all warmth and light and hope, and waited for a very, very, very long time. Finally, after waiting with the sword for what could have been a thousand years, the man and the mask both left the tomb and did not return for twenty moons.
Finally, after those twenty moons — such a small span of time compared to everything else, yet also so massive — the man and mask re-entered the chamber, retrieved the sword, and left. After that, the tomb was forgotten altogether, and no one ever entered it again.
The riddle, thus, is this: If everything that entered the chamber eventually left, then when did the chamber become a tomb, and what corpse was left inside?
(The only one that could know the answer to this riddle is the sword — because, as the first to enter and the last to leave, it bore witness to everything that happened within that cold darkness. But just because it’s the only one that could know does not necessarily mean that it does.)
You shatter the ice crusting the pond’s surface with your fist. It fractures from edge to edge in an instant, splintering with spiderweb cracks, and the jagged pieces quickly sink to the bottom or melt away to restore the water’s perfectly smooth surface.
You call him into the dream for the first time since the ice formed, for the first time since he became an echo instead of a person — and you stare straight ahead at the center of the pond, at the memory of the moon, until you hear him coalesce and stir beside you where you’re sitting on the shore.
“You can stop now, you know,” you say without turning to look. You hear him turn to look at you instead, but you keep your gaze locked on the water. If you forced yourself to look at him, you wouldn’t be able to remain calm.
(You just want this to be over. You’ve only ever wanted this to be over. But he didn’t release you when the time was right — and it doesn’t surprise you, in retrospect. How could he remember that he needed to release you if he doesn’t even remember that you exist?)
((Earlier that night — if it’s still night at all — you saw him ask the sword if he should have been released along with her, at the end of things.))
(((The irony of it all made you want to kill him for the first time. Which was when you knew you just had to end this, whether he was ready for it or not. You can’t do this anymore. You just want this to be over.)))
“It’s okay, you can stop now. I’m sorry to have burdened you for so long,” you say, and it’s all you can do to keep your voice from stumbling and your tone from crumbling. Even now, at the end of things, you still can’t ask him for an apology, because he doesn’t remember what he did to you — and it makes you hate him even more than you already do. “The Goddess’s prophecy is —” Yours, it was yours, it should have been yours, but it’s just one more thing he stole from you. “— fulfilled now, and you’ve done me… a great… service… friend.” You want this to be over. You just want this to be over. You’ll tell him anything he wants to hear if he just ends this —
“What?” he asks — and then scrambles to his feet next to you. “You! I know what you are now! I read about your tribe in a book!”
You lock your jaw and keep staring straight ahead, remember the moon and ask it to grant you patience and serenity and peace and everything else that you haven’t felt in a thousand years, ask it to tell the sun that you miss its warmth and want to see it again before you fade away forever… and he stomps right through the only good thing that was ever yours, dashes your hopes and dreams and prayers — and you know what he’s going to say before he says it.
“Are you listening to me, mask-maker?” he asks, indignant. Ignorant. Arrogant. “I said I know what you are, and I’m asking you nicely to stop pretending you’re me. What do you want from me?”
You can’t keep your lips from curling into a snarl. “I want you to live a life of your own,” you growl. You slowly stand up — but you keep your gaze firmly on the water at his feet. “To find love, if it suits you. To look at the stars and feel joy instead of dread. To sit on a porch and tell stories with your guests over fine drink and good food. To never feel the weight of destiny upon your soul again.”
(“To say a prayer and have it answered. To feel sunshine raining on your face like a blessing. To die, when the time is right.”)
((“And to never, ever, ever, experience what you put me through.”))
“Sure, whatever! I’d like that too!” he yells. You hate him. You hate him. You hate him. “But you know what? I can’t do that if you keep bothering me!”
And then you look him directly in the eyes, stare into them with the entire strength of your spirit, and you smile. And you fill that smile with all of your pain, and all of your rage, and all of your hate — and finally, finally, finally, after a thousand years of waiting, after a thousand years of suffering, after a thousand years of dying, you allow yourself to scream.
“Then I’m asking you nicely to STOP PRETENDING YOU’RE ME!”
In the next moment, everything is chaos. Maybe he tripped and fell, or maybe you pushed him down, or maybe the rising tide of your fury just grabbed him and swallowed him whole — but either way, he ends up looking at you from the bottom of the pond, and you stare back at him with the single look you hate the most in the entire world until he drowns again and you’re left alone.
(He remembers this dream differently, but that’s his choice. This version — this vision — is yours.)
According to the oral tradition of the Igo of the Icespine Mountains — once upon a time, we came into being, and then — there are only a limited number of Igo that can ever exist at the same time. Igo are never truly born, nor can they ever truly die; they simply transition from a state of being concrete and specific to being abstract and nebulous — and back again, with enough time. If humans are from dust to dust, Igo are from illusions to illusions.
In a sense, these legends insist, the Igo do not exist at all — they only pretend that they exist, deceiving reality, the gods, and themselves. They form and reform from nothing but mist that pretended it had a mind and thought to itself, I think, therefore I am, and things that are are real; thus, because I am, I must be real also. And, eventually, at the end of their lives, once the novelty of this deception has worn thin, they will disappear and return to being nothing but mindless fog… until that shapeless smoke — that shapeless soul — decides, once again, that it would like to pretend at being something more.
No Igo alive know whether these myths are truth or fiction; and those same myths say that learning the answer to these questions is one of the only things that can truly kill an Igo. Surprisingly, this part of the lore seems to be almost unambiguously true — as all Igo who have ever sought out those answers have left to find them and never been seen again, and no witnesses have ever returned to explain what happened to their companions.
(The actual truth of the legends barely matters, except to those who wish to die, to kill, or both. And the truth barely matters even then — because the difference between believing that certain knowledge might have the power to kill and that knowledge actually having the power to kill is less a question of that knowledge than of that belief.)
((Theoretically, this also means that death for Igo is a choice. If they choose to believe that something will kill them, it will be able to do so; on the other hand, the inverse — that believing something will not kill them will prevent it from killing them — is not necessarily the case, and has many potential counterexamples. But all of this is impossible to prove one way or the other, much like the existence of the Igo themselves. If the Igo who believed himself unkillable was killed, was it because he was not truly unkillable, or because he did not truly believe himself unkillable?))
(((These questions, naturally, are very popular among Twili scholars, as well as with any other amateur or professional logician, philosopher, intellectual, metaphysician, theorist, savant, erudite, speculator, guru, dialectician, or general academic. There are many camps of interpretation of these questions: some believe that death would truly be a choice, to be rehearsed and played out for theatrics; others that it couldn’t possibly be, because the motives for choosing to die as such would be insubstantial and meaningless in the grand scheme (to which the first group counters back that there can always be meaning to be found in “meaningless” death). Yet others hold that the tradition is to be interpreted in a more metaphorical fashion, with even further fractal sub-camps of different meanings to draw from different interpretations of what “the metaphor” even is; and others still suggest oddball theories that no reasonable person could possibly believe are true, yet no one can prove false, either — and then there are those actively mocking the entire affair by suggesting absurdities just to get reactions, which blend in almost seamlessly with any of the other groups. And all of this is to ignore the discussion of other related questions, such as: Assuming that the Igo can “reincarnate” from “mist” after dying — which is already a bold assumption to make, or so some scholars hold — is an Igo who “dies” and “reforms” the same identity with a different form, or the same form with a different identity?)))
((((One thing, however, remains universally true: No parties involved will ever acknowledge that the base of the entire argument rests on trusting the Igo, the Mirage-Weavers, with their word — as that, naturally, would suggest that the hundreds upon hundreds of articles and essays and tens of thousands of hours of discussion and debate over the subject were all pointless. There may be only-slightly-less-than-literal wars over interpretation, but any who bring up the origin of the debate should expect, at best, to be thrown out of and barred from participating in it forever. To this day, Ikanans the world over are still exploring the furthest extents of that “at worst”.))))
It’s easier to hate him now that he’s just you.
In the day, you watch his progress with a quiet disregard. That, or you disregard him entirely — but it’s harder and harder to do that, as the maddening quiet of the void tangles your thoughts within itself more and more.
If you don’t watch him, you’ll lose everything; you don’t want to watch him anymore.
(Those thoughts connect, but how do they connect? Why do they connect? What word would you even join those thoughts with — you’ll lose everything, but? You’ll lose everything, and? You’ll lose everything, so?)
You’re forced to watch as he wanders around and around these people he knows, friends and lovers and things in between, and it makes you hate him all the more. In another life, these people would have been your friends instead, your lovers, your enemies, your confidants and your allies and your strangers, your conversations and your spars and your awkward interactions, your bedroom and your sheets and your hobbies and your interests and your —
(And the whittling — would that have been yours too, or was that just a holdover from a fragment of a shadow of a ghost?)
And in the night, when he’s asleep, you watch his memories play back across the ice. Or his dreams, or his nightmares — and even after the worst of those, even after the ones where he wakes up shaking and unable to breathe, you still can’t prevent the jealous thought that you would do anything to switch places with him. That you would warmly embrace a million years of nightmares like your own and only friend just for a chance to feel real again.
(Every night, you pray to a goddess that you don’t know if you ever believed in, and every night she neither acknowledges nor answers your prayers.)
And eventually you get sick of it. You can’t stand to see his face in the mirror anymore, or hear his voice in the air anymore, or watch his mind through the glass anymore. So you torment him, too. You carve images into the ice, slowly chipping away at it like it’s crystal or engraving it like it’s stone. You show him, every night, the only thing that you would have nightmares about if you could still dream.
And you sing to him, then. You sing to him the song that once upon a time he sang to you. He doesn’t even remember it, but you have to, because it’s written on your soul in your own blood, traced on the back of your face by your own fingers, and you hate him. You hate him.
You hate him — and he doesn’t even remember who you are.
(You’ve hated him ever since that first sunrise. It was the last and only thing you ever wanted in the entire world and he didn’t even look out the window until it was over.)
((He is you, and he didn’t even look out the window until it was over.))
In the universe where Ghirahim had just a fraction more knowledge, or was perhaps just a sliver less detached, he still — just as in every universe — examines the illusory wall through the lens with the rampant satisfaction of a curious cat. And, just as in every universe, he carelessly lowers the artifact to his side as he finishes his examination — and then listens rather than watches as the knight goes rigid and bites back a scream.
In less than a heartbeat, Ghirahim turns on his heel and brandishes the lens like a weapon — as if it would be able to fend off any attackers — but there’s no one there. No one except him, the ever-staring lens, and his traveling companion, paralyzed and trembling near the wall.
“Stop looking at me,” the knight whispers, desperate and out of breath and entirely outside of the usual parameters Ghirahim would normally expect of him. “Stop looking at me,” he says even more quietly, like he can barely manage to speak.
A quick glance through the lens reveals nothing… until he realizes what that actually means.
In this universe, though — in this universe where he cared about other people just a little bit more, or cared about his own skin just a little bit more, or maybe just didn’t care as much about his constant flair for theatrics to consider it important to maintain in the moment — Ghirahim says nothing at all as he stows the lens with a reverence suggesting it to be both unbearably holy and unspeakably cursed.
As soon as the lens is hidden, the knight collapses forward against the wall. He shakes ferociously, holding his face in his own trembling fingers and sobbing like a child — and the demon lord can’t find anything in himself to fault him for it.
He approaches him slowly, averting his eyes all the while, and barely rests a hand against his companion’s shoulder — who jumps and turns too quickly, staring at him with wide, wild eyes.
“Are you alright?” Ghirahim asks in a whisper.
The knight stills his chattering teeth with great effort — but the crack in his voice gives him away. “Yeah.”
“Right,” the demon lord says quietly, clearing his throat to cover up — anything else. He keeps his eyes averted. “I should apologize, firstly. That was very rude of me.”
“Wh… what…?”
“I was studying this room through the lens, of course. I didn’t intend to see you through it,” Ghirahim explains. “I didn’t realize… Well. That certainly clears up your so-called mystery, but —”
“I… I don’t —” the knight interrupts, swallowing thickly like there’s a stone in his throat. “…Please don’t tell me anything else.”
And in this universe — in this universe where he knew just a little bit more, or cared just a little bit more, or was slightly less arrogant and slightly more scared, or just generally was some sort of kinder — Ghirahim just looks at the knight for a long moment, with concerned eyes and worried lips, and says nothing.
And then his expression becomes pitying, and he says exactly one word.
“…Alright.”
This dream begins no differently than any of the others — the quiet pond’s surface is as smooth and still as glass, and reflects nothing but the empty white void all around you — but you know that he can sense it just as well as you that this is the last meeting you’ll ever have like this for a very long time.
(Or that he could sense it. You don’t know what he knows now. After that final confession outside — because what else could it possibly be called? — it’s obvious that he knew, then. But whether he still knows is another matter entirely.)
((It… it’s uncomfortable to watch, in a way that’s hard to quantify. Yes, you may have previously almost resented him for not being there when needed, even if you would never say so directly — because all that’s really left for you is a thousand thousand years of being dead, while he gets to fulfill your destiny for you — but you weren’t aware of the catch to his side of that exchange.))
((He might have known. He probably did know, from the beginning. But there’s not enough left of him to ask: did you know what it meant when you failed? There’s nothing left at all but a shadow of a shadow by now — if even that.))
((It makes you wonder, in your loneliest moments, what really happened on that day when he sang you into eternal sleep. Which one of you died that day: you, whose flesh had expired but whose essence remained endless? Or he, who had accepted his fate in so few words and allowed you to overwrite his soul for the world’s sake?))
((Maybe, from an outside perspective, this mutual borrowing of body and soul looks like a fair trade, or even a partnership. Maybe it looks like the best and only way to fix each of your mistakes. But as far as you’re concerned, both of you have done nothing but successfully ruin each other’s lives.))
(((You didn’t… you didn’t want this. You don’t want this. Why did he do this to you? Why did he make you do this to him? Why didn’t he just go home? Why couldn’t he just let you die? Why did you give him permission to take your face — why didn’t he tell you the cost that he would pay for doing so?)))
((((Why is he younger than you? Why is he still a child?))))
(((((…Why were you still a child?)))))
You sit there on the shore like that for a long time — for far too long for you to be alone with just your own thoughts. It makes you think that something has gone horribly wrong… until the fog begins rolling across the surface of the water, and you realize that everything has gone exactly as he had expected it to.
The mist doesn’t coalesce into anything, anymore — instead, it looks at you with a shapeless, eyeless, yet strangely tangible gaze that almost feels… hungry.
Why did you call us here? it asks. Its “voice”, if it could be called that anymore, sounds simultaneously like a chorus of uncountably many voices and nothing like a voice at all. Who are we to you?
“Your name is Link,” you lie, “because my name is Link. And I am you, and you are me, and we are the same person.”
In the next moment, the fog is gone. Instead, your reflection stares up at you from under the water — but it’s not really your reflection anymore. It’s a reflection of the person that destiny has been waiting for this entire time: warm flesh with blue eyes and the ability to draw breath. Everything that used to be but no longer is you.
(It gives you the feeling of looking at a ghost, which is ironic. For many reasons.)
“Are you sure this is right?” the reflection asks soundlessly from beneath the surface.
A dribble of cold blood falls from the eternally-bleeding wound in your chest and lands in the water with barely a ripple — but it disturbs the reflection, in more ways than one. For half a second, or even less, it looks like someone else.
(You, or him?)
((Does it matter?))
“It’s not right,” you say. “It’s necessary.”
You recognize the smile that it gives you, then. It’s that same pull of the lips that’s only a smile so that it isn’t a grimace or a frown — it’s the expression that you always made when something was horribly wrong but you didn’t want anyone to worry about you.
(It’s the same expression that you probably wore right before he sang you to sleep — assuming that you were able to maintain it through the pain of your wounds and the pain of your failure and the numbness of the cold seeping into your body.)
((Either he’s fully gone and this is all what you would do, or he’s giving both of you one last reminder of your mistakes before he disappears for a very long time.))
“…Alright.”
(((You can’t do this anymore.)))
“Go,” you say. “Just… go.”
Your reflection looks up at you with concerned eyes and worried lips — and that makes it worse. “Are you sure?” it asks, and it’s all you can do to not scream back at it.
“I said go,” you whisper with your jaw locked and your lungs empty of air — and that’s just another reminder that things will never be okay again, because your “lungs” are entirely vestigial, and the only reason you look like this at all is because you can’t let go of it, and another trickle of blood leaks out of the wound in your chest to fall in the water, and —
And there’s a hand reaching out of the water to touch your face, still dripping with water… or maybe just the tears that you suddenly realize it’s wiping away from your eyes.
“I’m sorry,” the reflection whispers.
“Do you even remember?” you ask, cruelly. “Why you should be sorry?”
It says nothing in response. It just keeps running its fingers — your own fingers — back and forth across your face to smear away the tear tracks.
Eventually, it withdraws its hand, brings it back down against its side under the water. It settles to get comfortable in the bed of sand and clay… and then, after a moment, it takes a deep breath of cold, dead water and closes its eyes.
Slowly, starting from the edges, the surface of the pond begins to freeze over. The ice is paper-thin and thickening as it goes; you watch its progress until it becomes a tight circle around the reflection’s face, at which point you look away until it’s over.
And you know when it is, because the ice stops reflecting the white void and instead becomes pitch black. You watch the barely-shifting color, hoping for something — anything — and eventually it does change, just not in the way that you’d hoped.
Abruptly, the darkness becomes less all-encompassingly black, and tinged faintly with blue… and reflected on the center of the frozen pond is the perfect circle of the pale moon.
(You don’t remember the day that he brought both of you into the chamber because you have no memory of it. The mask that is your vessel — because yes, he told you about it, but not because you asked; made of oak heartwood, he’d said all those years ago, for strength of soul and resilience of spirit — is entirely inert, except for your own soul bound to it. It wouldn’t have been able to see the world around it or feel the sun across its face.)
((But you hope, regardless, that those last moments outside the chamber that became your home happened at noon — so that at least one of you felt the sun on your face for one last time before locking yourselves away forever.))
(((You had hoped, after that thousand years of waiting, that your reflection would step outside at last and feel the sun on its face, and that some part of you would become and remain at peace as a result. But the timing was all wrong — it stepped outside in the middle of the night instead. It didn’t know that it was supposed to wait just a little while longer for the perfect moment to emerge. But there’s nothing to do about it now.)))
(((You’ve waited a thousand years to feel the sun on your face again.)))
(((You can wait a few hours more.)))
The darkness is strangely tangible, now — as if it’s the only real thing left in the world. Or maybe it’s just as real as it always has been, and it’s him that has changed.
(That’s what he’s been waiting for, isn’t it? For him to… for him to not be real anymore? So that he can become… someone…)
((It’s so hard for him to remember. It’s… it’s so scary for him to forget. But… but he needs to. If he doesn’t, you…))
(((You…)))
He’s… he’s so tired, now. He just wants to sleep forever — but he’s also terrified. His panic and exhaustion fight with each other without allowing him rest, combining into an emotional numbness that prevents him from feeling too much of either.
He climbs to his feet — which might as well be a mountain in and of themselves, for how much effort it takes him to do so — and nearly stumbles on his first step as he begins to pace along his well-worn path that might as well be a rut in the floor.
He can almost remember… a thousand years ago, when he first woke up in this room, there was an invisible eye in the darkness. It stared at him and back then it scared him — he did everything he could to flee from its cold, calculating, burning gaze and collapsed, trembling, in a corner when he couldn’t find anywhere to hide from it.
(Now, he can imagine this story like it happened to someone else… and that’s the goal, isn’t it? To…)
((Someone else…))
His mind feels like it’s full of fog… or maybe it was never anything but fog. Never anything but mist — never real at all…
(There’s… something about a… a question, he thinks — you think — and the answer is that it’s not the knowledge that kills you but the learning of it — the belief…)
((He’s almost… over, even if he doesn’t understand why anymore, but… he can’t help but hope, or wish, or pray, that someone…))
A quiet chime sounds, but it’s louder than anything he’s ever heard in the cold darkness. It makes his panic win for a few moments, makes him fall to his knees and trace the edge of his inherited face with his own shaking fingers — but it’s not until he feels the burning gaze of that invisible eye that he regains some resolve.
He doesn’t bother rising to his feet again — he just crawls forward, under the eye’s paralyzing stare, to its source. And when the weight of its gaze finally proves to be too much, and he can’t move his limbs anymore, he starts babbling words he doesn’t even understand in a first language that he doesn’t even remember. He just repeats the same phrase over and over and over — ištum dār, šumu-i abši Ursang u anāku abši kēnu — until it loses all meaning and recognition, even as words, even as syllables, even as sounds —
(…Le'ûm atta ḫasāsu-nāši?)
— and the invisible eye blinks.
He begins weeping, then. He doesn’t even know why — but he knows that the eye’s gaze no longer burns, that its touch feels like sunshine running down his face, that it feels warm and safe and comforting, and he just…
He curls up on the cold stones under the watchful, warm eye, and he’s not scared or exhausted anymore — just tired, and warm, and safe, and…
He sleeps.
And in this universe, in the universe where he fixes your mask and — you don’t even know what would have to change; you don’t even know if anything would have to change — he puts your mask back on and you drag him into the dream with such a violence that it leaves you both reeling in the aftermath: him because he can’t comprehend what happened in those brief seconds after he activated its spell, and you because you’re suddenly swaying and can barely see straight through your fury.
You stumble forward on wobbling feet and slap him as hard as you possibly can, and the only reason you don’t tackle him to the ground and wrap your trembling fingers around his neck and squeeze is because your legs fall out from under you before you can.
You scramble back to standing as quickly as you can, but your feet keep slipping in the water and sand and clay — and by the time you finally manage to stand, still dizzy with rage, he’s recovered from the shock of your sudden assault and has reached his feet as well.
He’s a mess. He doesn’t entirely look like you anymore, but he doesn’t look how you remember him, either. His skin is blotchy and discolored, a formless mass of gray and tan with jagged red stripes that look like open wounds tearing and bleeding across his body. His face is a mishmash of mismatched features, his teeth with your lips and his nose with your cheeks — and you’re very satisfied to see the bright-red handprint from your slap painted across them. He’s taller than you but not as tall as he should be; his eyes are different colors and only a single horn pokes out of one side of his hairline, which appears thick and full like your own bangs but hangs loose and long like his mane. His hair is unevenly colored, nothing but irregular streaks of random tints ranging from dirty blonde to off-white, and the green tunic he’s wearing looks three sizes too small — like children’s clothes.
(Not a single aspect of his body can decide what it’s supposed to be, except for his hands, which are still entirely yours — thick, calloused palms meant to be wrapped around a hilt, short fingers meant for making a fist, fingertips with gnawed-off nails instead of sharp, curling claws.)
((The only part of this information that you consciously process is that he’s taller than you.))
A feral yell rips free from your lips as you run at him, get in close and dodge around the defensive hands trying to grab you or shove you away. He may not be unfamiliar with how to fight — hand-to-hand combat was part of the curriculum at the Knight Academy, after all — but he doesn’t know how to brawl.
You circle around him, always staying two steps ahead of his hands trying alternately to push you or punch you, dodging in for strikes with knees and elbows against his sides. He was taught how to fight, but you were born for it — born for parrying blows and cutting back, born for taking fewer punches than you deal, born for thinking fast and striking even faster, born for bones crunching under your feet and blood drying under your nails, born for fast and loose and dirty and so focused that you only realize you’re bleeding out after everything else in the vicinity has stopped breathing.
You punch his lower back with such force that you can hear the bones in your fingers creak, then shift your weight to whip around and kick his shin as hard as you can from behind. The combination of blows causes him to lose both his breath and his footing, and the way he collapses forward into the shallow water reminds you of another fight — of yet another thing that was supposed to be yours — but he recovers more quickly than you expect him to. You’re already circling back around to his head to wring his stupid neck as revenge for everything that you’ve done to him, but just before you get there he grabs your knee in one hand and the back of your shin in the other and uses his superior strength to snap it forward.
You don’t bother suppressing the ragged scream that tears from your throat as your knee breaks. He lets go of your leg and runs away from you, still half-stooped, as you crumple into the water in turn — but he looks terrified instead of expectant when he sees you come crawling after him on bruised hand and broken knee with hellfire burning in your blank eyes and your own cold blood coating your bared teeth.
You grab his foot after it sails forward to kick you, barely cognizant of the fact that it connected with your face half a second before, and yank it further forward until he falls again, onto his back this time. It’s been so long since you’ve been able to fight like this, and you’re so frustrated that you still have to deal with limited stamina even now that you’re dead — but either way you manage to claw your way up his chest and pin his shoulders to the ground and scream:
“What’s wrong with you!?” Spit and blood mingling together and dribbling out of your mouth, teeth clenched far, far, far too tightly — “What’s WRONG with you!?”
And he doesn’t even say anything; he just looks up at you with trembling jaw on his mishmash face and absolute terror in his mismatched eyes, and the rest of your energy drains out of you all at once.
Your arms finally give out and you collapse on top of him. Every part of you aches and you can’t help but savor it — you’ve never felt more real or alive in a thousand years, and a part of you can’t help but feel desolate at the fact that this pain will be temporary — but you’re still not calm, even if you can’t fight anymore.
“What’s wrong with you?” you can’t help but ask, can’t help but keep repeating in a strained whisper — and your next breath comes mixed with a sob. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I…” His voice, when he finally speaks, is entirely his. It’s the first and only thing you like about him, and it almost makes you want to forgive him. Almost. “I’m sorry, I have to —”
You laugh, bitterly, and thank a goddess you don’t believe in that you didn’t. “Then go steal someone else’s face to hide behind, mask-maker, because I will not let you use mine.”
“But —” he says, swallowing thickly, eyes unwillingly locked with yours. “But I can’t —”
“Can’t what?” you snarl, grabbing the fraying collar of his too-small tunic — and the only thing you can think about is how good it would feel to grab his neck instead. “Can’t what!”
“I can’t go home!” he cries, and you hate him you hate him you hate him — “So just — just let me do this, just take my memories again, and then we can go home and everything can go back to —”
“NO!” you scream, and now you’re weeping openly, crying like the child you are — “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME DO THAT AGAIN!”
He stills under you, but you don’t even notice. Your entire body is shaking, wracked with sobs you barely understand — but they seem like the only suitable reaction to the all-encompassing despair that filled you at his suggestion.
You hate him; you can’t do that to him.
(Yet another set of thoughts that connect in a hopelessly unquantifiable way. You hate him, but; you hate him, and; you hate him, so.)
A moment later, you feel your own fingers on your face, wiping away your tears. You don’t even have to open your eyes to know that they’re his.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, trying in vain to conceal his own uneven breaths. “I didn’t… I didn’t know it would hurt you this much.”
It takes everything you have left to prevent yourself from jerking your head up at his words. You lift your face slowly from where it’s fallen against his chest and glare as harshly as you can at the tears leaking from his mismatched eyes.
(You want to ask him to repeat it. Just to make sure you heard him correctly. But you can’t form words.)
((Your hands are shaking. Your lips are trembling. Your eyes are blurring all over again with tears.))
(((A thousand years. A thousand years and however many extra days and weeks and months — and he’s finally given you an apology you can accept.)))
((((You realize, abruptly, that this is the last time you’ll ever see him like this — face to face like this. So there’s only one thing left to do.))))
(((((You take a deep breath, and you gather up all of the tears in your eyes, all of the years in your soul, all of the pain in your broken heart, and whisper three words that you had only ever dreamed of uttering in his presence — and you haven’t dreamed in a thousand years.)))))
“…I forgive you.”
(“…Please… please come with me?”)
((Searching fingers, searching eyes. Shaking like a leaf in the wind.))
(“Please,” he whispers again. Begs, almost. “I can’t… I can’t do this alone.”)
((He can’t find anything in his heart to judge him for it.))
(“…Alright.”)
The ritual fire crackles warmly on the floor of the Sealed Temple as the wind blows soothingly outside. The four people standing inside gather in front of the flame as if to reconsider what they’re doing.
(The demon lord, the Igo, the goddess, and the man — they’re an odd group to consider each other friends, in retrospect.)
The flickering firelight casts cold, dark, shifting shadows across the entire temple. It makes the chamber feel more cavernous and vast and empty than it ever could during the day — and it reminds one of them of a story that happened to someone else.
(The demon lord snidely remarks to the man that his hair would be much more “festive for the occasion” if he lit it on fire, and the goddess leans in to shush them both — but can’t quite banish the smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Not quite.)
The ritual fire the Igo has created contains four woods — redwood for eternity, ash for sacrifice, birch for new beginnings, olive wood for peace — each gathered by his own hand from four corners of the world.
(Many months of traveling, the Igo thinks, turning the mask over in his hands to trace his own fingers on its face, but it was worth it in the end.)
The four winds keep blowing softly outside. After another moment, the four people become serious and gather even closer still. The demon lord leans in to set a hand on the Igo’s shoulder, and the goddess to set a hand against his other side. The man, for a moment, almost can’t find a place to stand and still see — the Igo is much taller than he’s used to, still — but then sets one hand against the Igo’s back and the other on the goddess’s shoulder. The Igo remains standing in the center, holding the mask so, so gently in both hands and trying, in vain, to compose himself.
And then he kneels, so, so slowly, and sets the mask in the fire so, so carefully with trembling hands, closing his eyes as he does — and then there are five woods, burning together in the fire. And five winds: the four blowing outside, and the fifth blowing straight up into the sky, bearing the soot and ash from the flame.
And suddenly, there are five people — the four standing in front of the fire, and the fifth slowly forming out of the smoke.
(There is a small but constant stream of tears flowing down his cheeks as you open your eyes to look at him; you can’t stop yourself from reaching out with your own ethereal, soot-stained fingers to touch his face and wipe them away.)
((But, and, so…))
He finally opens his eyes, then, and looks at you in return — and can’t stop his own fingers from reaching out in turn to get coated in ash.
And then — the illusory sound of a chime, and then —
There are six people?
(Is she real?)
((Does it matter?))
You turn, despite yourself, and look — and see her hanging there like a specter half-hidden in the gloom. Like an eye burning in the darkness.
(The sword’s blade, well out of view from the ritual flame, glimmers despite the cold shadows all around it.)
She looks between the two of you, barely angling her face to do so, and then closes her eyes to speak.
(“It is hardcoded in my most core data,” she whispers, if she makes any sound at all, “that both of you are my Masters.”)
In the next moment, she’s gone, before either of you could tell if she was ever there to begin with.
You turn back to look at him again, and his face is streaked with more fresh tears.
(You reach out with your own ghostly fingers and wipe them away, leaving in their place more stains of ash and soot.)
You don’t say anything else, but he knows — you can see it in his eyes that he knows. He shakes his head at you, ever so slightly back and forth… and you just smile at him, gently and happily, as you let yourself disappear.
(You let yourself linger beside the stone windows, ever so briefly, and listen for a moment more as he sobs like a child.)
((Which is when the goddess turns her face to look at you at last. She closes her eyes solemnly and nods up at you in the rafters — and your vision blurs too badly to read her lips as she silently whispers your own prayers back to you.))
You allow yourself to drift upward on that fifth wind, let it carry you along with the smoke and the ash, floating higher and higher into the air, and then —
And then. You notice it.
In the distance.
So far away. So close.
Just over the hills.
(It was the only thing you ever wanted in the entire world — it was the last and only thing you ever wanted in the entire world —)
((And he remembered.))