Len V
It's hard.
The end is near, but is it Silva's, mine, or Rin's?
Or perhaps the entire world will collapse?
Where do the Sins go, anyway, if we do manage to destroy Silva? Will they disappear along with their mother, or will they stay?
/ Each step I take, each heartbeat that drums in my ribs, reminds me that I am alive for at least one more second. That comforts me. \\\
At some point into the night, the fighting stops. We were making our way across the floor to Silva, but suddenly everything falls quiet and we stop as well. An eerie wind whistles through the trees. The moonlight shines through the thick stormy clouds. Just out of the corner of my eye, I can see a grayed, dry leaf flutter from the outside to the ground and stay upright for one second before gently laying itself on the road. Even the ghosts of the original holders of the Seven Sins—or perhaps they are the Seven Sins—stay quiet.
Silva's arm is stretched out, as if to make a "halt" sign.
"Rin," Leon whispers, and Aoki Lapis lets out a choked sob, but they can't get near. They can't, because of a peculiar shell between us and them. It's like when Silva stabbed Rin.
This time, I'm with Rin.
"Hello, Len," Silva says softly. "Hello, Rin. So you saw?"
Her hiss sends chills down my back, and gooseflesh prickles on my skin.
"Hello, Silva." Rin grips my hand tightly. Perhaps she's scared too, but she's good at concealing it. Her nails make etches on my skin, and I squeeze her back. It's just us.
Wait, no…The spirits drift in.
—~'~—
"I take it that you remember these Sins," Silva says, "from your brochures."
I don't know about Rin, but I can recognize them. I know them from Galaco's tales and stories that…someone…used to read to me. I stare at Silva again. She cannot be the beautiful woman who I loved so much, who wove her words into intriguing, mythical stories, finely crafted as a river of spun sugar. And what is Silva? Her spindly, bandaged hands could only weave a web of bitter saccharine, designed to trap and intimidate. How can she ever compare?
A tingle runs down my back as I gaze at the purple-haired spirit. Yes, he is the duke who lured all the women from all across.
"It is a shame you do not remember me, Len," Silva says.
She lies.
"Shut up," Rin tells her.
"You know better than tell me to shut up, Rin." Silva's eyes glitter. "I can curse you."
Supernatural powers is another thing we lack and Silva has. I begin to grow doubtful. How could we ever manage to kill Silva? How do we kill her anyway? I don't think sticking a sword through her can work. Can it? Rin apparently has the same thought, because her grip on the knife tightens. I watch her out of the corner of my eye, keeping my other eye on Silva as I begin to try to sort my thoughts.
"On the count of three, let's both try to stab her," Rin mutters to me, moving closer.
"How?" I breathe. "I don't have…"
"Well, try to hurt her."
"You know, it's going to be hard." I aim another nervous glance at her face. Silva seems to be content to let us talk about things, standing calmly there. She's a cat and we're mice. She knows we cannot escape.
"We have to try, Len," Rin insists.
I don't ask why. Instead, I edge closer to her. I'm older than her, but I feel no braver.
"Don't worry, we'll go through this together," Rin says.
The moon seems brighter tonight.
—~'~—
A sheet of darkness falls over me. Dizziness and nausea follow as I spin through space. Rin is close nearby, her eyes wide with surprise. Silva's cackle is still resonant in my ears. What happened just moments ago is already an indiscernible blur to me. I feel a wetness between my fingers, which are clutching the front of my shirt; when I look down, there are red fingerprints on the white fabric. Is this what Rin felt the first time? I look at her again. She still looks surprised, but she seems to find this place familiar.
"The galaxy," Rin says, "in our minds."
I blink at her. "What?"
"You know, we're in someone's mind. The mind galaxy," Rin explains as we fly through dark space. Visions flash past me, but I'm not stationary long enough to catch their meaning. "We just have to find whose it is. If it's Silva's, it'd be great. Though the last time I went in there I nearly turned insane because of all those voices. Silva's practically schizophrenic."
I remember the screaming voice I'd been hearing in my own head before I plunged into this person's mind.
"Did you notice the feeling in here?" Rin asks me.
"What feeling?" Other than my own, I don't know what she's talking about.
"That feeling," Rin says impatiently. "The way it's everywhere. This one is pressing down on us, and it feels cold—the feeling of terror, maybe. The one I felt in Silva's mind was ominous, like a dark, damp cloud hanging over me. I kept thinking at any moment I'd be caught by someone. You know?"
She's right. Sort of. My spine tingles again, but this time it's from cold.
In fact, everywhere is the frosty, hard feel of fear. It's as if someone's breathing down my back but I just can't turn to see what that someone is. As we progress deeper into the mind of this person, the feeling of fear intensifies, until it's hanging just in front of us. It's getting harder to drift through, and I realize that the indigo darkness in which we're surrounded by suddenly has turned darker—the color of dried blood, maybe, coated on an upstream river and just dissolving. I'm probably just as terrified as the person who I am in, but Rin seems to be interested in all that happens.
"We just have to go find who this person is," she tells me. "It's not Silva, either. I know what Silva's mind is like."
"You dwelt in everyone's mind, right, not just Silva's?"
"Everyone in this room. I can't get into the minds of everyone in the world. This mind does seem a bit familiar. I think I've been in this one's. I can't really tell, though—I stayed in everyone else's mind for about a second each. This mind—…," Rin stops suddenly. "I think this mind is Lily's. Come on. Let me get to the part of her brain that stores memories."
"Why memories?" I ask as I'm helplessly dragged along.
"I don't know. She's always been a hard person to read. Maybe I'll get to know her better."
"Aren't you supposed to refer to the part of her mind that thinks to do that?" I demand.
"Yes, but the entire mind thinks," Rin replies. "Just that each part of mind thinks differently. Right now, I'd say we're somewhere in the depths of her mind, the part that generates feelings."
I don't try to ask how she knows all of this. I only follow and hope we're going the right way.
"You know, Father told me once that time passes much faster in minds than in the real world. If that's true, we've been spending at least ten minutes here, but it's probably only two minutes since we've been sucked in," Rin says as if it makes sense to me as well as her. We fly along each other in silence for a few more minutes, before Rin stops suddenly and quickly darts in a part of mind. I didn't notice it before, but the mind is divided in sections that are very easy to get lost in.
"Come on, Len!"
I have no choice but to follow her into this section of Lily's mind. The moment I step into this place, I'm suddenly whisked away to a flowery meadow of grass. It's on a hill, and I can see purple mountains in the distance. Rin draws a sharp breath.
"This is Lily's mind, all right," Rin says softly. "This is where we live."
It's a beautiful place. The skies are clear, china blue, not a disconcerting gray. Clouds float aimlessly in the sky. A teenage girl with blonde hair that ripples like water in the slight breeze sits among the grasses, watching a much younger girl who runs about, laughing and shouting. There are golden yellow wheatfields in the near distance. It's strange how I see this scene. I seem to share a same perspective as Lily, but yet I see Lily as someone who isn't Lily would see her. The images in this memory are blurred and hard to make out, but somehow I know what is happening. Whatever happens in front of my eyes—or Lily's eyes, if one chooses to think of it in that way—I seem to know, and yet I can't really see any distinct details. It's hard to hone in on anything's features. As soon as I think I know what Lily looks like, suddenly she seems to change and I have to focus on her again.
"I know this," Rin breathes. "I'm the little girl. That's…Lily."
Lily is apparently not happy. She's calling for the little girl. Sound in memories is much like visions in memories. I can't really hear it, but I know what she's saying, and the sound echoes throughout my head, but I can't remember what it sounded like a moment after.
"I remember," Rin says. "I wanted to explore everything, but Lily wasn't happy with that." Suddenly this scene blurs and another scene pops up, as if it's a memory in memory. I can just see little Lily running through what seems to be a golden wheatfield, and her eyes are wild with fear. She trips over her own feet as she runs. The clouds overhead are ominous gray, but just then they part and in the rays of strong white sunshine I see a woman's face. Her skin is milky white, and she's smiling, but just barely. Her eyes are closed and teal hair is held at two ponytails at either side of her head. She has a way of captivating my stare, but just when I begin to lose interest, a look of terror appears on her face; and then her eyes turn red and an insane grin rips across her face. Her fingernails sharpen into claws and her silky teal hair turns oily and a hood is draped over her head. But as soon as I see this, the scene fades out, returning to the Lily in the meadow, but Lily is now looking troubled.
"What?" Rin asks, just as bewildered as young Lily. But the pieces are beginning to shape up in my mind.
Silva's been haunting pretty much everyone she chooses, branding a memory into their minds forever. Why, I don't know, but it seems like a reasonable explanation to me. The lady's beautiful face before it morphed into something—
Oh.
That's who I remember.
It's not Silva, either. Silva's taken control of that body.
But if that's true, then why does Mom call Silva "Great-grandmother" like Silva's been like that ever since? But if Silva's been like that ever since, why do I remember Mom's happiness? Have my memories been altered, or has Mom's been altered, or has both of ours been altered? Simply standing there, hundreds of questions overwhelm me. I don't know which to begin with first.
"Let's get to the next one," Rin says to me, her voice quiet.
"How?" I ask.
"…I don't know." Rin pauses for a while. "But I want to go forward in time, so I guess we step forward. Anyway, this is a memory, so we won't actually proceed up the hill…well, I hope not."
We don't. As soon as Rin and I drift forward, the scene in front of us falls away and is replaced by another. Lily is a little older by now, and her formal dress tells me that she is being courted. She is sitting on a mat beside her father, near the place where Lily had seen Silva's face. Lily smooths the poufy sleeves of her white dress, and fingers with the embroidered gold lace of her sash. Her fidgeting tells me that she's nervous. It is an eerie twilight, and day is breaking through.
A young man appears, riding on a horse. His liquid golden eyes travel from Lily to Leon; a slight breeze lifts some strands of black hair from his ponytail. A bow is slung across his shoulder, with a quiver of arrows. He is dressed well, and is rather handsome.
Lily looks fearful, however. She presses closer to her father's side.
"That's Rei Kagene," Rin says, as if it explained everything. "I liked him a lot, but he was just too scary for my taste. I mean, he's not 'scary,' but a bit dark and unpredictable. I guess Lily didn't like that point of him either, so she didn't—oh." Rin suddenly grabs my arm. "That's why she's scared of towns. Rei is from the town Ira. The place with…Hell's Graveyard."
I feel as though lightning had come out of the twilight sky of the scene in Lily's memories and actually struck me. "But why is Lily scared of towns?"
"I don't know. Well, I do, but I'm not sure if it's the right answer. Ira was the first town Lily had been in, so I guess she thought all towns were creepy like that."
"Let's go on," I say.
—~'~—
We pass through more memories. Some of them aren't very significant, and some are just a glimpse, but others might have gone on for hours if Rin hadn't pulled me through, stating that they were "boring." After a few more minutes of that, we land on seemingly the most recent memory Lily has had.
"It has to be about tonight," Rin says.
She's right.
It's a replaying of the scene in which Rin was stabbed but not killed. Upon seeing the gist of the scene, I look down at the gash mark made by Silva's materializing dagger. Rin has another mark too. Maybe that's how it works. Silva sticks the dagger into someone, and that person automatically is transferred into the mind of someone else, and their mortal bodies are working machines, with no soul to guide them because the soul of the person stabbed is in someone else's mind and exploring their deepest secrets. I can see how it could be useful sometimes. The gashes on Silva's hands…were those because she tried to stab herself with it and go into the mind of someone, to kill that victim? And if Silva stabs someone else, but not to kill, she could destroy the living body of that person. I don't know whether the soul could still return, but it's not a very happy thought to hold on to. It's scary, but it works really well, although I don't know why Silva sent us into Lily's mind, of all the people there are.
Rin pokes me. "Len, watch it. It's kind of interesting to watch in another person's perspective."
Lily's standing there, unmoving. I stare as Silva shrieks and the dagger's tip drags against Rin's skin, and Rin crumples. Silva raises the knife and brings it down on the nearest victim, Haku, as well. Dell looks terrified and furious at the same time as Haku falls. Silva speaks.
Then the image clouds over, and it's like a memory in memory again: Lily remembering what Silva had said before. The words bounce around in my mind.
"I'm terribly weak for a sorceress my level, but it's just enough to kill you and obtain the jug of water…"
Suddenly there is another voice, crowding in on the first. It's more wounded, sadder, and quieter.
"I am mentally unstable as well. I am not strong. I am not—No! You cannot stand against me. You are too weak. G-give up now! Silva borrowed me…but that is all for the good!"
That's strange. It sounds familiar, like a tale someone used to tell me.
"Ira," I say, without realizing it. "Ira…Silva used the Sin of Wrath to further her revival. She only needs the water from the Spring of Immortality now. But now Wrath must be weak from Silva's borrowing of her power, and Silva is not yet out of the danger zone. So we can destroy both of them…if we want to."
Still, Wrath is weak. And life—…
Have I just realized this?
Life without Sins would be just a dream. There must be the Sins for the world to go on, forever countering Morality. The unforgivable actions were needed. Or else, what would it be? But the Sins shouldn't roam the earth. They should have another place…
"Oh," I say.
"What?"
"Remember…about Silva's mind being unstable? Well, then she could probably be defeated by thoughts. Thoughts, as in positive thoughts. We just have to find a way to get into her mind…"
A light dawns on Rin's face. "But the dagger is the only way we can get into there. So we're going to wrestle her for it, or something?"
I bite my cuticles. It's a very risky plan, but I don't want to think what might happen if Silva got to drink the water from the Spring of Immortality. "If that's what we have to do, that's what we'll do. After that, then…well, you're going to have to lead me to the place where she hears everything. We're going to act like those possessing spirits."
"Actually," Rin says mildly, "they're everywhere."
"What?"
"They're everywhere. I mean, once you get into her mind, you can hear a dozen different voices shouting or whispering or saying random things. They're the reason why she's so crazy and could win a fight so well, but they're also the reason why she's so frail. …Am I starting to sound like you?"
"Then we'll be the loudest," I say, trying to figure out how I can possibly be loud.
"Actually, no, I found out that the softest-voiced spirits get the most notice. That's because they have a good choice of words and Silva listens to them most often because she finds the loudest spirits annoying. Oh, and if you're wondering why I know this, it's because I was in her mind long enough to realize," Rin explains.
"How do we get out of here?" I decide to ask.
Rin frowns. "That's what I'm trying to—"
Right on cue, suddenly a bright white light blocks out everything else, and I'm falling, then plunging, and suddenly I hit the ground.
—~'~—
"Well, you're back," rasps a voice familiar to me now.
I raise my head and study Silva's eyes. A vision of the woman I knew has begun to form in my mind, and I'm trying to find any likeness. Perhaps there is, but they are drowned in what appears to be a mask of indifference, insanity, and cruelty.
"I couldn't let you stay in Lily's mind too long," Silva says, with the same infuriating softness. "It would make me quite impatient."
"Why didn't you attack us when we were in Lily's mind?" I ask.
Silva smiles. "Such ignorance. Don't you know? It would do no difference to attack your mortal body. I cannot kill it, how many times I damage it. When your soul comes back, all wounds automatically heal—except for, of course, the ones I have inflicted upon you before you have gone into someone else's mind. It is only when your soul is in your body, can I do anything."
Another piece of the puzzle fits.
I nudge Rin. "Rin, do you want to accompany me?" I whisper.
"I don't have anything else to do, Len."
"But we could die."
"We could," she agrees.
"You could die."
"So could you."
"So we'll be doing it?"
"Anything you say."
"You have a knife?"
"I'm ready when you are," Rin smiles and shows me the glinting knife Luka gave her.
With that, manic fire builds up in my veins and I will this rush of adrenaline to never end.
Well that was a long chapter. But it feels good to be writing again, and I am working on the next chapter. My eyes are tired... ;n;
In any case, whoa, look at this beauty! For some reason, I was thinking about The Mark of Athena while I was writing it. I don't know why. Maybe it's the stuff about fighting. I'm weird.
Thank you for reading and/or reviewing!