I'm sorry. I've managed to run out of pre-written chapters. But I am keeping track of how many I owe you guys, and finishing the Main Arcs of AEtT is one of my main goals for 2017. Also, my muses have returned. So at least I'm getting words down, now...

Here's Part 53. A month late, but I'm doing my best to keep up with work, writing, and all my other responsibilities. (Edit: And then it took my 3 days to actually upload this thing after setting it up to be posted. Hrg.)

Enjoy. Just two more Parts left and then we're on to Chapter 8.

Anybody want to guess Chapter 8's title? Given the massive hints back in Chapter 2.2, process of elimination should leave you with two options. So you've got a fifty-fifty chance... maybe. (You'll have a better idea of which one it is once I get Part 55 posted.)


"Well... Bad news. I'm not as indestructible inside my own mindscape as I thought I was." –Kairi

Overgrown housecats, the lot of them. –Dark


Chapter 7.8 – Will o' the Wisp
Part 53

Dark's POV

I was very quickly getting sick of my mindscape. Not the landscape, oh no. I could have wandered around in here for ages and not gotten bored.

No.

I was getting sick of Kairi shoving me off that damn crevice that she refused to let me put back together. I could feel the strain it was causing on my mindscape, could feel the headache it was causing even past everything else.

Kairi didn't even seem to care that it was hurting me, and while I knew that she'd gone through the same thing—perhaps even worse, as she hadn't had someone to help make the headache go away—I was still bitter over it.

Something she acknowledged, and didn't worry about. She knew that what she was doing was necessary, and that gave her the strength to tell me to shut up and stop whining.

Something I notably didn't do. Really, I probably should have, because I know all too well that she could just as easily stop helping to relieve the headache, but at least it let me express my displeasure without throwing her off the cliff.

I landed at the top, not even bothering to pull my wings back in, and sighed, looking at the black abyss at the bottom once again. Kairi would climb up and shove me if I didn't jump as soon as I could. I hated doing this, because most of the time I would spread my wings and land on the once-again solid surface on impulse. I did not want to end up in that painful abyss again.

I sighed, jumped, and kept my wings tucked to my body. I didn't want to do this again, but Kairi wouldn't let me stop until I had...

I hit the 'barrier' and shattered it a second time, and this time, while the pain from my wings being torn away was excruciating, it didn't feel like the rest of me had been broken as it had the first time. I floated there in the darkness for a moment, looking around.

It was... strange. I couldn't see anything, not even my hands in front of my face...

It quickly started to get to me. I hadn't been in the complete darkness like this since before Koran and I had left Ryndor for Keterburg. Thanks to the snow, there was always at least a little light there. Snow and ice reflected light so well...

I looked around, knowing that it was useless even as I did.

I had no way to regain my bearings. Which way was up? How was I supposed to get back to my mindscape when I couldn't see a single thing that was around me? I panicked, and then, the most glorious feeling.

A hand wrapped around my wrist, pulled me up, brought me back to the surface that I couldn't see.

Kairi pulled me out, and I clung to the rocks with everything I had... even though, once I was free of it, the barrier over the abyss formed up again. I glanced around, the ache in my mind telling me more than enough, even if I hadn't spotted the cracks in the crevice walls that indicated the destruction had spread again.

Kairi stayed put as I took to the sky and cleaned everything up again. It didn't take nearly as long as it did last time.

I felt it before I saw her.

The intrusion.

Kairi and Eraia were already here, already at the top edge of the crevice again, and the girl...

I knew her all too well. I'd seen her tearing up Kairi's mindscape.

She seemed startled to see Kairi here.

I angled down and landed with a light thump a few yards away. "What do you want, Rem?"

The girl took a half-step back. "What is she doing here...?"

I snorted, realizing just how terrified the girl was of Kairi.

She was right to be terrified. I barely understood what I was doing every time I jumped off that ledge and shattered the barrier between my mind and that abyss. Kairi knew exactly what she was doing, what she was forcing me to do.

I stepped over closer to Rem and scowled at her. "So, what do you want from me?" I asked. She glanced at me, then at Kairi, and then shoved.

Suddenly, Kairi was gone, and there was a dark scorch mark where she had been. Rem smirked." Oh goodie. I can still get rid of her if I need to..." She turned to me and the made a slashing motion.

I felt more than saw my mindscape being torn apart, and within seconds, I felt myself falling.

I hit the barrier already knowing exactly what to expect. Oddly enough, the moment I thought about trying to get back to my mindscape, I knew which way was up, and though I didn't have my wings, I was able to move through the blackness with ease, almost as if they were still there.

Once I got back up to the top, and noticed how ravaged my mindscape was, I glared at Rem.

Who, to her credit, was at least looking disturbed. She took a half-step back and shook her head.

"No... no, that should have... you shouldn't..."

Things suddenly clicked into place. That darkness that Kairi kept shoving me into, the abyss that she'd torn a hole in my mindscape to reach...

That was what swallowed up someone who'd been shoved out of their own mindscape. It really was an abyss...

One Kairi had been training me to escape, knowing full well that even with Eraia doing her best to distract Rem... If the little girl managed to tear enough of my mindscape apart, I'd fall without trying.

I growled.

Kairi had shoved Rem straight out of her mindscape, hadn't she?

Even as I felt around, subconsciously pulling my mindscape back together—including that crevice Kairi had created, because I didn't need it anymore—I knew what she'd done.

This was my mind. I allowed Eraia haven here...

Rem was not welcome.

I raised my arms and made a shoving motion, feeling my mindscape simply ejecting the light-elemental menace.

I got a surprised yelp for my efforts as Rem disappeared.

Kairi managed to slip back in not long after, and I frowned at the still-bleeding wounds she bore. "Kairi..."

"Rem tore apart the illusion, forcing it to take its true shape. At that point, however, she stalled, too shocked to actually damage my mindscape properly. And then..." she stopped and grimaced. "You and Asch convinced me not to change it back... So when she shoved me just now, she tore a few holes in my mindscape. The problem is... I'm... not certain I can just pull myself back together the way I used to without..."

I knew what she meant, when she stopped.

"You don't want to accidently shift your mindscape again while trying to put it back together."

Kairi nodded, and even as I watched, the gashes across her astral presence were slowly starting to heal. Quickly enough that I could watch, but not as quickly as I knew they should have.

"So... you got rid of Rem on your own...?"

I nodded, then sighed. "I'm still kinda pissed at you for throwing me off that cliff... but thanks."

Kairi hummed. "Your Energy Core and astral presence can only be separated for so long. If Rem had thrown you out of your own mind, and I hadn't been able to get to you in time, you'd have died, and very well could have taken me with you if I were searching for you when your body gave out. And..." She sighed. "The first time's always the worst. It breaks you, irrevocably."

I nodded. I didn't need her to tell me this, but it seemed to be helping her, because the gashes were healing up even faster.

Kairi sighed again and crossed her arms. "I don't think there's much more I need to—you little bitch!"

The sheer number of wounds to suddenly spread across her body told me enough, even if Kairi hadn't just vanished.

Rem might have been shoved out of my mindscape, but she'd apparently gotten over her initial fear of Kairi's.

Deciding that I had no more reason to linger, I let go.

*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*

Kairi was bleeding. It was just a thin trickle of blood from her nose, but...

This terrified me, had me pacing back and forth along the end of the bed I'd put her in when I found her slumped against the wall. Something was wrong, why was she bleeding, she could handle Rem—

Couldn't she?

A soft groan, a cough, and I was at her side instantly, even as Asch came racing in, hands glowing green almost before he made it to Kairi.

Hands pressed against her head.

If I hadn't been looking for it, I never would have spotted the flash of utter panic.

Asch was panicking.

"What happened?!" he managed to ask, Scan's glow fading even though he didn't move his hands.

The faintest of blue-green glows had taken its place.

"Rem was trying to tear our mindscapes apart. I managed to shove her out, but she went after Kairi..."

Asch grimaced.

And then the relief, a far-too powerful expression that meant Kairi had come way too close to the edge.

Again.

Gold eyes blinked open, any green lost behind that startling gold that always seemed to dominate Kairi's eyes when she was using magic.

"Well... Bad news. I'm not as indestructible inside my own mindscape as I thought I was."

I let my head hang, fighting back the initial reaction to reach over and smack her. It was just so like Kairi to unleash sarcasm upon waking up from a near-fatal incident. And from the way Asch had been about to panic, I was under no illusions as to how near-fatal it really had been.

"Good news, Rem is going to be out of commission for however it takes her to figure out just what I did. Which should take a good few weeks, at least. Ow."

I sighed, shook my head, and headed for the door. "Stop trying to get yourself killed, please. We kinda need you alive..."

"I don't do it on purpose..."

I couldn't help rolling my eyes.

Count on Kairi.

"Dark, you're awake again!"

I stopped and smiled over at Natalia as she ran up. "Yeah. And between me and Kairi, we've given Rem quite the headache."

Natalia stopped and looked off to the side slightly. "That's... nice and all..."

Uh-oh.

"Who needs Kairi, and where?"

"The Isle of Feres has been beached in northern Rugnica."

Which meant... "Twilight."

"Yes. And all of the replica ligers," Natalia murmured. "Sorylle wants to go, and since it was Twilight, I thought..."

"And you'd need me to come along anyway since I'm the only one who actually speaks liger."

"Yes, that too."

I glanced over my shoulder, back toward the room Kairi had been in.

It wasn't safe on the ground... but this was Twilight. Kairi's brother.

"Kairi should stay here. Rem managed to hurt her pretty bad, even as Kairi put her out of commission for a couple weeks," I said. "If you can find someone willing to take the three of us, I think we can get away with just you, me, and Sorylle going with whoever takes us."

I pointedly didn't mention the fact that as this wasn't really all that important, no one would be amused with us running off. And Natalia seemed to notice.

"Well... Sylph said she'd be willing to take us. And she's the one who told me, so..."

I raised an eyebrow. "I hope she's not planning to try to carry us."

A familiar giggle had me turning, spotting the three-foot-tall fairy easily as she zipped around a corner. "'Course not! All of us can teleport!"

Sorylle growled softly as she padded up behind Natalia. "We will not be missed if we vanish for a few hours... or days. Teams have returned to the Archives, looking for more information."

Which meant, if the three of us took off, no one would notice immediately.

I nodded and pulled Natalia close, and Sylph giggled and floated over toward us, waiting for Sorylle to tuck herself half-between me and Natalia before she flew a couple quick circles around us.

The whirlwind that started up made seeing anything outside it impossible, until it simply cleared away, leaving us on a very familiar beach.

This was right where we'd seen the Eastern and Western Clans off when the ice bridges had formed.

Two growls caught my attention.

The first was a territorial warning growl.

The second was so familiar that I knew, even before Sorylle took off to go tackle the silver liger, that Twilight had already found us.

I smiled, glancing over my shoulder and watching the two ligers as they tussled.

Slowly, so slowly, more of the ligers started to come over, drawn by curiosity. Sylph flitted around here and there, and a few cubs—dear forests they'd had cubs already—took off after her, clumsily tripping over themselves and the sand trying to keep up.

Natalia hummed, and growled a general greeting to the liger that was sniffing at her hand.

It—no, this one was female—recoiled for a moment, paused, and then shoved her head into her hand.

Natalia giggled, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

Overgrown housecats, the lot of them.

Sylph's giggles drew my eyes back over to her, and I saw the way she was dancing around through the air, much closer to the ground than she normally would, playing with the liger cubs.

Twilight padded over with Sorylle and nudged my arm. "Fire-mane... is she..."

I smiled. "She's fine. Managed to hurt herself incapacitating an enemy, but she'll be fine." I glanced around. Most of the adult ligers were female, and Twilight was the only alpha... I knew he and Sorylle were mates, or had been at one point, but even so... "So how many of the little ones running around are yours?"

Twilight made an irritated-sounding huff. "Four. The rest were sired by a pi that had escaped the mass destruction caused by the Southern Clan."

I smiled, even as Sorylle stuck her head up under his and growled soft assurances that she wouldn't have minded more little ones to help look after.

I glanced at her belly again, knowing full well why it was coming up.

Largo had gotten in that one, good shot... And no, we weren't certain that she couldn't bear eggs... but there was still a very good chance that he'd left her barren.

Still...

Twilight growled back, ever as stubborn as his sister, and Sorylle glanced at me.

I looked over at Sylph. "Don't look at me. She doesn't seem inclined to go anywhere any time soon."

Sorylle was padding off a moment later.


Fun Fact: Yeah, remember that chapter back in Re:A Spatial Tear where Dark was bitching about getting attacked by Largo and then Natalia was trying to console Sorylle but messed up and had to be coached through growling it properly? Yeah, I'd actually forgotten about that, for one simple reason.

(Semi-spoiler alert for something that will come up in about five Parts.)

Sorylle is NOT barren. She got lucky. Largo hit her while she was still young enough and the scarring didn't affect her badly. I can safely say this because I've had it planned for some time that her granddaughter would be Kairi's partner in the Future Arcs, much like Sorylle is to Dark and Twilight is to Kairi in this time period.

Also a semi-spoiler: This is the last time we'll see Sorylle for a while. What does this mean? It means you'll have to wait until 8.1 get posted to start figuring out what happened. :P