"Don't you get cold out here?"

We'd been on the ocean for long enough that the stars shouldn't have been novel, but V stared up at the sky in the same place I'd found him yesterday. Perched on the barrel of a disused anti-air cannon on the main deck.

"It is not the worst I have survived." If he meant for that to sound cool, he'd have to erase my memory of him biting my hand first. "Your supplemental maintenance is complete?"

"Yeah, it was nothing special. Used my anti-freeze and got some fancy insulation treatment for my biosynthetic layer."

"How much further to Greenland?"

"Probably another day or two." I walked around behind him and threw my arms over the barrel. "Water's rough this time of year apparently."

He didn't answer.

The inside of the boat was warm, quiet, and utilitarian, but it was also narrow and busy with active crew androids who didn't talk to us but clearly watched us, same as we watched them. Probably not much of a wonder why he kept coming out here, but I got the feeling there was something else too. A hush that had gathered around him like a blanket, woven from heavy but invisible thoughts.

"You doing okay?"

The look I got told me I had intruded by asking but proved my intuition right. "Do I seem otherwise?"

"You've been in your head a lot since we left Sector H," I said. "Worried about Briar Rose?"

"There's no point in worrying before I know what it is."

I was already assuming it would be a problem regardless of what it was. Briar Rose couldn't be someone dangerous or even intimidating. Theta's response to the name lacked the intensity that would have suggested either of those things. Even Hamelin got more of a rise of out her when she showed up on a channel that was supposed to be private. Briar bewildered Theta more than anything. My impression was that it had influence but didn't take direct action very often. It also wasn't a commander, though Hamelin had mentioned superiors.

My efforts to figure out more than that hadn't gotten me anywhere. Theta refused to say more than 'It's classified' and Scheherazade refused to say anything at all.

"So, what is on your mind then?"

"Curious today aren't we."

I propped my face up on one hand. "Is it bad dreams?"

His face scrunched. "Bad dreams…?"

"You slept like a baby all summer when it was just us out in the middle of nowhere," I said with a slight smirk. "But when we got to the stacks you started sleeping like shit again."

"You're mistaking which of those was the abnormality."

"Alright, so we're back to square one: What are you so preoccupied with? You know I'd help you if you told me."

I didn't get an answer and Griffon didn't show up to helpfully pry V out of himself. Probably out at sea where fish wouldn't be scared off by the ship's engine. I'd had him for a moment but the straight punch of offering to help might have been too much.

"What do androids think hell is?"

My mouth slackened, empty as my thoughts tripped to catch up to wherever that had come from. "That's… I don't know. Whatever humans said it was in the records. A big hole where you go to be punished after you die. Fire, demons, big buff guy with a goat head?"

The laugh that escaped him was gentle, almost fond. Enough to let me know I was wrong, but not harsh enough to suggest I was stupid for not knowing any better.

"Hell," he corrected. "Is a darkness without stars."

Whatever V had experienced there, it was still with him.

I swallowed, but my tongue was rubbery and dry. Good or not, a human shouldn't sound so familiar with a place like that. But V had plenty of reason to sound so certain. It wasn't all that long ago he'd been there. Even the ravine wasn't even the first time in his life he'd gone to hell and come back. And while it was true he hadn't been entirely human during his more extended stay, that didn't bring me any comfort. That thought ended in spikes. It ended in Vergil.

"There are plenty of stars here," I offered. It might not be my position to comfort him, but it was my job to keep him safe, and that meant keeping his mind clear enough to focus on real threats. "Try to get some rest, we won't be on this boat forever and I doubt the night kingdom is gonna be a light hike."

I patted the cannon and ambled off, but before I was back inside, his voice wafted through my aural sensors like smoke, low and nearly consumed by the rush of the waves

"Be near me when my light is low, be near me when my faith is dry, be near me when I fade away… The twilight of eternal day."

That didn't sound like anything he'd have read out of Hibiscus' collection. It also didn't sound quite like the kind of poetry V usually recited from memory, though I had trouble putting my finger on what was so different. The way he said it reminded me of the old Fern arranging wrinkly, over-ripe oranges in whatever meaningful shapes she thought would make a better offering. Silent, citrus-scented supplication meant to invite genuine human presence into a house full of her fucked up shadow puppets of humanity.

The gods of this world had been dead a long time. The ones that weren't, V had killed with his own hands. If it was prayer he was offering, I was the only one around to hear it.

From Greenland, through the northwestern passages, down through the North American tundra, to a location which had no name. That was how Scheherazade described our route, and that was exactly how we proceeded.

I discovered along the way that she had neglected to mention a few details.

Like the scrambler that transformed the small square of my built-in map functionality into a useless mess of distortion and static. We entered the operational range right after we left the Greenland outpost. It was so bad that even Pod 042 was affected. The moment I was beyond line of sight, he had to start employing special scanners and triangulating based on the signal strength of my black box. The absence of sunlight meant a limited power supply, so we couldn't waste his energy on things like that. For the most part, he was relegated back to the backpack. We'd relied on only what I could see ever since.

Which happened to include a lot of dragon weapons. I identified them by the red radio-tower glow from the crowns of horns over their heads and matching lights on the tips of their wings. Otherwise, they were black voids against the backdrop of silver-dusted night and grey ghosts above our heads when the clouds left us with only the lights on the ship. No matter how I strained, they never came close enough for me to make out what they really looked like.

The northwestern passage was the kind of glacial nightmare I'd only ever read about in the old records of the arctic. The lights on the ship illuminated mountains of ice with pure blue-green caps grading down into oxidized rainbows from trapped chemicals and trace elements left by thousands of years of pollution. One of the crew said we were actually sailing through channels between islands that had been iced over for thousands of years, but that didn't stop me nearly kissing the ground when we reached it.

On land, we were treated to fully operational vehicles. Not the rusted, salvaged relics or hammered together function-only trucks found in the day kingdom, but sturdy, well-maintained trucks. With functional headlights and windows of tempered glass and covered beds that wouldn't spare you from the ambient temperature but kept the bitterness of the wind out even when it so frequently threatened to overturn the whole vehicle. We didn't walk on foot more than seven hours out of a week-long journey, so I had plenty of time to observe the night kingdom's infrastructure, minimalist as it was.

Gravel sprinkled on roads of packed snow. Not a single building anywhere. Frequent checkpoints. Squads of three to seven androids every few kilometers, bundled up so tight they looked like little bears. Every single one of them did the same thing: ask us where we were going, confirm our way wasn't blocked, and warn us how long we had until the weather turned bad. Despite consistently gruff demeanors, no one asked even once who we were or what our business was.

The strangest thing was that it wasn't that even that cold once we got away from the ocean. Not the way it should have been. Trees started to crop up. First in patches around pipelines and ice-coated comms towers, then in scattered stand-alone clusters, and finally into dense, dark forest that stretched as far I could see. I caught V looking at them sometimes, as perplexed as I was by the frigid but far from punishing environment.

I knew we had reached our destination when the dark was abruptly broken up by harsh white rays shining into the sky and bouncing off the few sparse clouds. We left our transport behind and climbed a cliff-face partly illuminated by one of those lights. Near the middle, I realized it was a plateau. An artificial one with barely any frost on it. Seven sets of red horns glowed on and off and on again from the high edge where dragons perched just out of the light. Below, all the way out to the horizon, comms towers glowed that same red light in the same slow strobes.

Scheherazade rustled beneath her cloak and pressed something into an odd-looking scanner. It didn't make a sound, but it lit a dull green and the door opened with a heavy mechanical growl. I glanced at the words still blinking on the panel as we passed.

key: rubrum v03.5733 registration: zera-c-08

Beyond the entrance, the facility stretched away in a ring. Natural grey-brown stone forming the outer walls while panes of black glass blocked out the interior in a smaller, concentric circle. The floor hummed, and the air had the kind of mild heat I associated with heavy machinery in an adjacent room, yet I didn't see so much as a switch for the few bright lights recessed into the ceiling. We passed one or two doors in the outer wall, but overall, it was a barren place. Dusty and unkempt and without so much as a cobweb.

I'd have branded it lifeless if not for the persistent feeling we were being observed.

I glanced at Theta's face for signs of what we were about to be faced with. Any fear or discomfort. Neither were there, though her gaze roamed from time to time. I checked Tau's face too, but she had the same lazy look to her as ever. Like she'd rather be sitting down.

They've never been here either.

"Inside," said Scheherazade.

We'd reached a tinted glass door nestled in between two black panes. My head throbbed the moment it opened, and V stood a little straighter, his eyes narrowing.

The room was like the rest of the facility. Circular, circular, circular; all the way down in rows of concentric rings bound in gray stone, each smaller and lower in continuous steps to a bottom level where water flowed freely around a stone pillar with an intricately carved bust of a rose on top. That was likely the dead center of the facility. A wide circular skylight took up most of the high ceiling enough though it couldn't possibly show any real sky. Instead, a diffuse yellowish light filtered down on the bizarre contents of the room.

It was a garden.

Flowers erupted out of every level of the carefully terraced auditorium, right down to the center. The imitation sunlight bounced on healthy green leaves that swayed in the cross breeze provided by a few silent ventilation ducts. After Gibraltar, it wouldn't have impressed me at all if the whole room were filled with lunar tears, but there wasn't a single one anywhere in sight. Normal wildflowers, top to bottom, filling the room with the fresh scent of the recently bloomed as well as the faded, sweet-rot scent of blossoms past their time.

It took Scheherazade walking ahead before any of us took a single step. She led us to the center, and I saw the rose atop the pillar was made of steel.

"Hmm. You must be V."

V's expression blanked. I did my best to keep a straight face and immediately accept that the fully synthesized voice was coming from the flower. A flower that was likely just a harmless-looking extension of the vast but invisible system buzzing faintly up through the soil into the soles of our boots.

"You'd be Briar Rose, then," I said, scrutinizing the fixture like it might decide to get up and walk. "What are you supposed to be."

"Were you not briefed ahead of time?"

"They don't have the necessary clearance," Theta pointed out dutifully.

"The unknown and the dark are great fears for a human. Surely it would have been better to alleviate at least one given the conditions of the night kingdom?"

"If it was easy for me to ignore high-level confidentiality orders without permission, I wouldn't be an effective command model."

"This statement is accurate. Understood." The petals sprawled and stretched open with a creak that made my knuckles crack. "Welcome. I am the generation, management, and installment administrator responsible for the dissemination of false memories into every android that has been manufactured since the end of the first Machine War. Operational code: Briar Rose."

My eyes wandered again over the garden. "False memories all come from here?"

"This statement is inexact. However, a technical explanation would not be comprehensible to you. According to Theta's reports, you accessed certain records about Sleeping Beauty? That was my predecessor. I was created from what remained when it shut down at the end of the Gestalt Project. It is best if you think of my construction and capabilities as mostly identical."

"I see," V said with a hint of amusement. "You are also a computer operating through maso."

"To a more limited extent. There isn't much left in this world, so I run on more traditional sources of power with maso reserved for high-priority programs."

I shuddered to think what I might be feeling if Briar was more like its predecessor. "What kind of high-priority programs?"

"You might best understand it as R&D."

Out here, that could only mean one thing. "You made the dragon weapons?"

"This statement is false, though I cannot deny involvement. The dragon weapons resulted from an experiment I deemed a failure. The associated research was repurposed for military use."

"But you also kept us out of Army hands. I don't get it—whose side are you on?"

"Humanity's."

I tilted my head backward, eyes rolling toward the ceiling. "We were all built for humanity, Briar. I'm asking whether you're HHRMO or Army."

"If a binary choice must be made, I am likely the former."

Seeing my lip curl at the wishy-washy answer, Theta helpfully stepped in to fill the gap. "The relationship between the two is malleable, Unit 8E. On the dayside, the Army is the primary operations group and holds eminent jurisdiction while HHRMO influence is largely limited to preservation endeavors completed in conjunction with local resistance forces. The power balance in the night kingdom runs opposite, in part due to the success of the dragon weapons. Differences in priority leading to subterfuge are not uncommon."

"This statement is accurate. There are many things I can do, and many more that I cannot. If androids were to be destroyed completely, the number of tests I would be able to complete would fall to zero. A symbiotic relationship with Army forces is mutually beneficial. Theta was provided to the day kingdom for this reason."

Theta scowled, but nothing short of her taking a swing at me could've stopped me leering at her. Out of the deep well of my good manners, I hid it behind the tips of my fingers. "Briar built you?"

"Indirectly," Theta said frostily.

"The directness does not affect the correctness of the statement," said Briar. "I did not manufacture you, but I did create your design documents and submit the original proposal for your and Hamelin's creation."

My grin evaporated. I was still trying to digest that when V let out a quiet huff of a laugh. "I see. That is how she knew immediately that I was not a weapon."

"Hamelin holds the body of research regarding mankind's experiments with maso and magic. She's also the lead designer of the dragon weapons. I've been in contact with her about you ever since the legion… demon attack." Her expression darkened, and she let her eyes fall, heavy and hooded. "I suspect your reaction at Gibraltar was the reason she opted to come to the Horizon band personally."

Information overload was starting to creep up my spine like the mercury in an old analog thermometer. I knew of the scanner's research, but the old Fern hadn't made it her business and neither had I. Everything I knew about Sleeping Beauty I had learned in the past five minutes and the only bit I cared about was the skillset it had passed on to its descendant. Managing memory. Distributing memory. Those did seem like things best left to an automated system, same as construction and installation of AI. But to my knowledge, none of our factories could think the way Briar did. They didn't ask to meet people and I highly doubted they came up with new types of androids to build all on their own.

I needed simpler information to focus on for a moment. "Did you make the rest of Legacy Reclamation's androids too," I asked, hiking a thumb at Tau. "Like her?"

"To a lesser degree."

If that answer could be taken at face value, Briar had only taken an active role in models who had archival data pre-installed. Someone else had taken point on Rho and Tau, and probably a few more like them that I hoped I never had the displeasure of meeting.

"You haven't said why you wanted to meet me," said V.

"There is no point." The petals curled with another tiny, unpleasant scream. "You are not what I hoped."

"You mean he's not human," I muttered.

"This is neither an accurate nor inaccurate statement. It is irrefutable that he is the most human presence this world has seen since the start of the Gestalt Project. But he is not what I need. His presence is a grand and useless accident."

V smiled with eyes so flat I couldn't parse the emotion behind them. "Has my existence has disappointed you?"

"This statement is built on a faulty premise. Disappointment relies on the presence of hope. I have experienced neither."

Not that Briar had tried to hide it, but it sank in at that moment that it was a computer. One that ran on a certain amount of magic, but still a series of algorithms working on a few set tasks for thousands of years. A glorified, flower-shaped pod that didn't care about the war and never had. I doubted it cared about androids either.

"What does that mean for me now?" asked V.

"Should it mean something?"

The innocence of the question seemed to jar V more than any other single thing about the conversation. Despite his lazy attitude toward worrying ahead of time, the assumption of danger in the present came naturally to him. Briar Rose defied that sort of tension. It lacked malice. Skepticism and intimidation found no purchase on it.

"Briar," said Scheherazade. Her first words since we came in here, and I could tell I wasn't the only one who'd forgotten she was in the room with us. "You should shelter him."

"This isn't a hospitable location. I would suggest Node #10 instead."

"No fish there."

The flower twitched and shivered through its petals. "An accurate statement. Understood."

"Understood?" I repeated incredulously, still trying to absorb that Briar's primary objection was that this place was a shithole and we could go somewhere nicer. "Aren't you the one in command here?"

"There is no chain of command. Scheherazade and I are beholden to the same authority."

"And that authority is?"

"Humanity."

That was the second time it had said that. I pulled in a deep, carefully silent breath as it settled on me like the slow onset of night that it might be a serious answer.

"If you're feeling accommodating," said V. "The location of the dragon would be useful."

"Unfortunately, that asset has been lost."

Theta's shoulders stiffened. They wouldn't be talking about the red one then. They'd lost the white dragon from Gibraltar. I wondered how that might have happened, and whether lost meant 'missing' or 'destroyed'.

Or, given the number of artificial dragons we'd seen, if it might mean 'used up'.

"He's looking for a way back to his own world," Theta explained. "I don't know the full details, but finding the red dragon appears to have some connection to that."

"The red?" My stomach sank. If even Briar's respectfully uninterested cadence could take an incredulous turn at the idea of knowing where the red dragon was, that wasn't a good sign. "You won't find that. No one ever has. But there may be an answer nonetheless. A moment while I locate them…"

"Friends of yours?" V asked.

"Experts in magic-related research. If anyone can help you, they can. Ah, they're at Node #17. It would take you longer to reach there than it will for them to come here. You may wait if that is satisfactory."

"Isn't this…" I ventured weakly, over a heavy, painfully dry tongue. "Aren't we in a highly classified location?"

"This is an accurate statement. And one of apprehension if I have interpreted your concern correctly. You did not infiltrate, you were invited. You are where you were intended to be." Without waiting and with one last small shriek, the steel flower closed. "There is no need to remove you."

V and I shared a look, and the next moment we were back up the terraces and back out into the hallway. That was enough for him, but it wasn't for me. I led us further, back to the entrance, only began to calm down when the heavy door cracked open and blasted us with cold air.

"Watch the weather." I stifled the self-preservation protocol that tried to run. Scheherazade walked after us in no rush and passed through the entrance ahead of us. "It is sudden. The dragons, sometimes unpredictable. I will wait."

I didn't make it to 'for what'. She crossed her arms and stood right beside the scanner. Right. We couldn't get back in without her key.

The click of a sensible cause and effect relationship pushed information overload back, but it bothered me that she wasn't concerned enough to follow us. Then again, I'd have been hard-pressed to find something that didn't bother me at that moment. At the plateau's base, I dropped down on a stump that had long since petrified, staring out into the dark tangle of evergreens. I kept trying to organize my thoughts, but they rushed by like the steam venting up from under my shirt.

"How much of that did you actually understand?"

"Enough."

"And how much did you think was bullshit?"

After a few seconds of consideration, V answered carefully, "Everything Briar said, I believe to be true." He wagged his cane to preempt me saying anything hasty. "But there are many things it did not say."

"Like how it didn't actually tell me who it answers to?"

"Didn't it?"

"I'm the only android on this planet who can claim to answer to a human and not be full of shit, V."

I watched that information circle uselessly behind his eyes. It had no place to go. No correlating actions, nothing to get immediately suspicious or riled up about. Who Briar Rose answered to was too far outside his sphere of concern, and having nothing to anchor it to, it was bound to end up forgotten.

"It also did not answer what it wanted." He rolled the cane across the backs of his fingers. "Since I am not what it hoped I would be."

"I have a lot to say about that, but I'm still trying to figure out how it knew that from just looking at you."

"Another thing it did not say." He shrugged. "But it is a magic computer."

"Yes, V. It's a magic computer built from a different magic computer, and it's out here in the middle of goddamn nowhere running experiments that can apparently result in a few thousand dragon weapons, handling the administration of the entire android false memory system as far back as the First Machine War as a low priority job, and casually designing new androids while claiming to serve humanity and being completely detached from any known command structure."

V stared at me without judgement, which was more than I could say for the inky shape that took form over his shoulders. "Sheesh lady bot, you gonna blow or what?"

I dragged my fists up over my face and through my hair. "I can't get a read on that thing. Or anything out here."

"First time in a different world?" Griffon sneered. "We haven't known shit since we first arrived, and we've been gettin' along fine so far!"

V pushed the cane up under Griffon's beak. "You seem unusually upset."

"And you're unusually calm," I sighed. "I'd love a reason to be relaxed because right now I feel like there's something wrong and I just can't put all of this together in a way that explains why."

"I am interested enough in the possibility of a different way home to engage with Briar as if its indifference is genuine. Don't mistake that for evidence that I am putting my trust in Briar."

"Then where are you putting it?"

"In my instincts." The cane hooked around my chin, tugging my face his way. The ambient gray light bouncing down from the rays pointed over our heads was enough for me, but I could tell he was tracking my face by my optic lights. "And yours as well."

I swallowed, the chill of metal sharp against my throat. "And if my instincts said that we should get the hell out of here?"

"Have they?"

"…Not yet." I broke my gaze first, my fingers folding and clenching around one another. "Not if there might be a way home for you if we're patient. But something a lot bigger than us is going on, V. Something I can't make sense of, and we came very close to getting drawn into it. The only reason that didn't happen is because you're—I don't even know."

"Not human enough."

"You're plenty human. Enough for the gods. So all I heard was that a computer wants more from you than gods did."

"Or merely something very different," he countered, looking up to the plateau. "Hold tight to your suspicions. But remember as well that we are neither trapped nor out of options."

My laugh yielded to a lethargic sigh. Honestly, it was nice to hear his bottom line and know he was keeping an eye on it. I stood, feeling stiff and a bit creaky from the cold. "Come on. We're down here already; might as well see if Scheherazade was right about the fish. Save BB's stuff for an emergency."

A sly crinkle appeared at the corner of V's eye. "He's BB now?"

"It's shorter, shut up."

We didn't have to go far. The area was riddled with frozen lakes easily identified by a conspicuous absence of trees. The ice was a pain to get through, but nothing a few punches couldn't solve. V stared up at the sky again while we waited, gone back into his own head the same as before.

It occurred to me that V might be looking for the moon. That cocky scanner did say V would miss him, but somehow, I didn't think that was it. It wasn't like V to get distracted by something like that, especially in a situation where he didn't believe he was safe.

"What will you do if Briar is able to send me on my way?"

The question slammed into my chest like the fist of a goliath. If it was that easy…I was done, wasn't I?

Mission complete.

The line tugged, and I threw myself into tugging back. Couldn't say I recognized the creature on the other end of the hook when I finally managed to pull it up, but it only had one head, so it was probably fine. I glanced back the way we'd come, but V took the fish right out of my hand and stared at me expectantly. The scent of burning scales had extra bite on the cold air.

I smiled too wide. "That your way of asking if I'll miss you, Shakespeare?"

"It is my way of suggesting you give the matter some thought, given the company you would be left with." He plucked a bone from his tongue and wiped his mouth. "It's possible you will need to disappear, and quickly, if you remain sure you don't want to be reset."

I shivered. I was still sure I didn't want to be reset. Knowing what I didn't want came easy to me. It was the other thing that never seemed to coalesce when I dared to consider it. I didn't want to think about having to live past this mission.

And I really didn't want to think about why my first response to the idea of V leaving was that it was too soon.

This was meant to be work. Atonement was supposed to include suffering, but when I thought of what had happened since I chose to help V, I didn't think of Sector H, or Tau, or any of the bad or painful things that had happened.

Instead, I thought of a truck that smelled like piss whenever it got humid and 49 navigating with one arm because V had fallen asleep on the other one and how I finally got what all those old books meant when they mentioned wind that smelled like summer. Of sitting behind rolled-up windows, just the three of us in our own small, safe world; misted glass and dull metal a barrier between us and the outside and all the things that had ever happened to us or because of us. Like the only versions of us that had ever existed were the versions that waited on the side of the road for the storms to pass. I thought of an android I had targeted and used but not killed, wishing me luck in my bloodstained shirt that was too big for her, and fleeing everything she'd ever known in search of a place where flowers grew.

The old Fern might have called those moments blessed. For me, who'd only ever asked to be cursed and destroyed, those contented memories did nothing but twist my insides until I thought they would rip.

"I'll figure something out." He stared right through that half-feigned negligence like it wasn't even there. I had no other refuge. No other way to deal with this unexpected interest in what would happen to me when he was gone. That should have been well beyond the horizon of his concerns. The little things he did that were not real kindnesses always felt like being warmed by a passing light, but whatever this was felt like being scalded. "What," I went on, half-defensive, half clinging to indifference. "I will. Even if it's just finding a snowdrift to have a nap in until the coast is clear, I'm not sticking around to deal with Tau and Theta at the same time."

"I could always buy you time, lady bot~" Griffon fluttered over and latched onto my shoulders with a low cackle. "Really light up the night for our first date."

I snorted, and out of a helpless sense of gratitude toward that dumb bird, I scratched under his beak. "Do a good job, I might consider agreeing that it's a date."

"Wah—really?! Do I get a kiss at the end?"

"Maybe. If you don't end up as dragon snack."

Griffon puffed up, full of pride and electricity, already hooting and making boasts he couldn't live up to. Wisteria's warning lingered in the back of my mind. I thought for sure I had chosen once but being content threw that into doubt. I didn't want to think about anything. Not about whether I was fighting to live or fighting to die. As long as I kept fighting it didn't have to matter, and V wasn't gone yet. I glanced aside, expecting to catch him making that inconvenienced but long-suffering expression he usually leaned on when I riled Griffon up. But his attention was sidetracked again. This time by something in his hand.

Snow seemed to be falling through his fingers, even though when I looked up, there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

A/N:

I got 2 comments about SinoAlice and I appreciate how down y'all are to be insane right along with me, but lord would I not put you guys through the task of knowing what is going on in that game.

Fun Fact: Nier's original concept was more like SinoAlice, which is why all the shade-based bosses in the game have fairytale names. Sleeping Beauty is the name of the Divine Tree in the forest of myth from OG NieR.