* * *
Michelle emerged from the dust with a slightly confused yet still determined look. Ilisya glared at the redhead; even though she had known the girl wouldn't be dead. It would have been too easy that way. But she still didn't appreciate the feeling of the girl's presence. She wasn't sure if it was her expression or because of her past experience with the Goddesses, but her the look of her eyes...
'Wait, daughter of Din,' the sorceress thought calmly. 'Just wait and you shall see the true power of Chaos.'
Rynita's mind was in a while different world all together. At first, she thought she had been hallucinating when she saw the two shadowy figures of Michelle and Aholya walk into the large room. Then she saw their faces and knew that it was somehow going to work out for them.
'Stupid logic,' she cursed at her mind for making her believe that the situation was hopeless.
Nobody said anything for a minutes or more, and then Michelle decided that she had had enough.
"Ilisya," she said in a strong voice. "There is only one thing I want to know." She paused. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Blowing up doors? Come on..."
Rynita's jaw dropped at Michelle somehow even slightly sarcastic tone. Aholya looked surprised and like she wanted to smack her or something for sounding that way during the situation. Ilisya just continued to smirk. It was the Daughter's character, after all.
"I really didn't expect you to say anything much more intelligent than that and still manage to put on some kind of bravado," Ilisya scoffed. She suddenly smiled and narrowed her eyes. "I do not expect to be doing anything but giving the Triforce back to its rightful owner. I don't know that there's anything you think you can do, but I assure that you that there isn't."
"I really don't believe that," Aholya muttered, while at the same time thinking that Michelle's sarcasm had rubbed off somewhat on her.
Ilisya only stared at the two of them with the same look she had had.
Michelle drew in a breath audibly, and said, "I think you probably, for whatever sick and twisted reason, think that this is the right thing to do. I have no idea what that could be, nor do I really want to, but I want you to know that no matter the circumstance, people like you always get theirs."
"Oh, like I've never heard that before," Ilisya said smoothly, glancing slightly in Aholya's direction.
Michelle unknowingly clenched her fists at her side.
"So what exactly is it that you want?" Rynita said, suddenly making her presence known to the other three girls.
Aholya and Michelle ripped their attention away from the sorceress and towards Rynita. Michelle had forgotten for a moment in her anger at the dark-haired girl that Rynita was the reason they had come into this fortress. Although she felt something somehow even more important than friendship would be saved this day.
"I'm curious," Rynita continued. "As to what could drive a person so irreversibly insane so as she would destroy the entire dimension that her home world lies on."
Ilisya smirked. "Let me tell you a story, Destiny's chosen. It begins in an age before all this, before Hyrule, before you and your souls, before everything. Before everything there was nothing. An abstract nothing of darkness and negative space. Chaos."
"The Nothing that was everything, before Light existed, was the only 'being' before the Goddesses. Yet it wasn't so much of a 'being' as a presence, yes...without physical limitations a presence is everything that it wants to be. The Goddesses were a part of it too, as Chaos was everything. They developed their own awareness. They set apart aspects of the mix of everything. With that came the beginning of what mortals know to be their everything. Power, Wisdom, and Courage. But there is the legend that nobody knows.
"The world was changing. If one were to go inside the collective mind that was everything, one would realize that most of everything didn't want it to change. But your Goddesses did not think much of what everything else thought, because They were really the first ones to be able to do anything about what They thought. It might seem confusing for minds such as your own, who have been nurtured on stories of the so called forces of "good" and "evil," but according to the rest of the Universe, your Goddesses were the "evil" ones. They wanted to bring the rest of creation into their own way of thinking, and yet they were only a small part of the whole.
"Thus, the rest of the Nothing managed to gather itself into an almost united being to stop your Goddesses. And so began what few remember or never even knew about to be able to forget. The War between Light and Darkness. Your Goddesses on one side, and Chaos on the other. With absolutely nothing around but the pure black abyss that had existed before Time began, They fought for control of the Universe. It was pure force against pure force, and would have destroyed everything if there had been anything at all to destroy.
"I suppose that it is because Destiny was on the side of your Goddesses that They were victorious. Destiny...a strange force even for one like myself to think of. You see, the Nothing was the abyss from which everything came, and yet this small yet extremely powerful force seemed to have just come into existence. She decided that Light was what was to survive in the Universe.
"Good seemed to have triumphed over evil. But my point, you see, is....that there is no true good or evil. Light or darkness. You cannot have a shadow without the Light, and yet the Light came from the Darkness first. The Goddesses, even in their arrogant sense of self, knew this, and when they created Hyrule, they used all the concepts that had been hidden in the Nothing before Time in their little world. The Sacred Realm was created, as was the Triforce, and the Goddesses stepped back to monitor their creations. The Triforce basically controlled all, keeping balance in the world. Of course this is the part that everyone knows, but there is one detail that the tale usually leaves out.
"The Goddesses didn't trust Chaos to be a force on it's own. Most who know of it believe the reason for this is that, in the Goddesses perfect little world, the weakened state of Chaos created something that everything knows deep down is inevitable. Death.
"And so They thought to give it a limitation to keep it from interfering or causing their creations any more "problems". The Triforce could keep it from doing most of what It was able, but They thought that this wasn't enough. They decided that they would banish Chaos to the far reaches of the Universe, and all around the darkness of space. It was a force like it had existed before Time, It was everywhere. Even in the hearts and minds of the creations of the Goddesses. That is probably the reason it has been able to survive so long. That and then the fact that...
"And then..."
At this point, Michelle snapped out of the daze this myth had brought her into, and released that Ilisya seemed to be loosing her calm.
"Part of it...The Chaos....was banished to...to a physical...vessel...." Ilisya's voice became suddenly full of emotion even she didn't think it possible to have, an eerie change from the smooth calm with which she had spoken before. She put her hand up to her temple as a familiar pain began to grow there, like it had done whenever she was too near the creations of the Goddesses. She heard the Voice then. The One that told her what her mission was from the start, even when she told herself that what drove her had been Ganon and her own desire for revenge. It became more insistent that she finish this now, and Ilisya was sure she was losing whatever was left of the mind she had been cursed with. It wouldn't stop her, though, from this last task. She would remain in control until she had completed her purpose, or so she hoped. Then the past would become present and her paradox would be complete.
At the moment after Ilisya had finished her last sentence, Michelle had seen a glimpse of something in her dark, currently wild eyes which sent a shiver down her spine. It was everything, reaching beyond what she could imagine and twisting everything she already knew. The Universe in a vast, unhidden sea of lights and the all encompassing Darkness. Chaos.
But Ilisya wasn't finished.
"The vessel. The Daughter of the original Nothing ...myself."
Rynita, Michelle and Aholya suddenly seemed to come back to themselves fully at this point. Rynita shook her head, as if to get rid of the information she had just gained. Aholya felt a desperate urge to step back from the girl and run, yet her character wouldn't allow it.
But Michelle remained calm, and watched Ilisya as a single tear made its way down the dark-haired girl's cheek.
"Much that once was then...is now lost. Lost to many creatures, and to most of the Universe. Yet I remain, so it is still here in its own way." Ilisya seemed to regain some of her composure, and she regained a little of her old expression. But the Voice was silencing her own thoughts, and trying to release itself.
Nobody but Ilisya seemed to be able to speak at this point.
"But now...Now I can bring it back from it's passive presence. It has always been here, you know."
Ilisya knew at this moment that she was lost. She was not herself any longer.
"But by creating the paradox...First by bringing a presence from the future into the past, and then the Triforce....Well. The Triforce has been the problem all the while, hasn't it? But now that I nearly have it...it's so close that I can feel it. If I obtain all the parts of the Triforce...I can destroy them."
Ilisya, the girl herself slowly fading inside the body of Chaos, silently pleaded, what she wasn't quite sure, but she wanted on a deep level to be able to let something still exist and to be able to see what revenge she had worked for since the beginning of Time. She hoped that her work of planning, giving up her soul as the cost of working with the Creature, Ganon, and then breaking that bond to be able to obtain the Triforce, had not all been in vain for her. She knew one way or another, though, that Hyrule for certain would be destroyed. Be it by Ganon or Chaos, whoever could obtain the key to the Goddesses creation, the Triforce, first, her hope was lost.
"Why would you want to do that? Destroy the Triforce? All that would do is...create a paradox for the whole Universe." Katrina said from the doorway. She seemed to be trying to stay strong, because she didn't want Ilisya to think that they would give with their world without a fight. She supported Chrystie by the arm, who had insisted that even though she might not be able to do anything physically, she could still be of some help. Michelle suddenly remembered that she had hoped they would not come, because she was worried about what kind of a state Ilisya would be in. But now that she had heard what Ilisya had to say, she wasn't sure she should be worried for them.
"Why?" Ilisya asked, with an amount of what seemed like honest surprise. "I'm going to destroy it so I can return the Universe to what it was before the forces were separated ...Chaos can return in all It's glory and all corners of the physical realms can disintegrate. Chaos is the true Universe. Chaos...will...destroy everything." By this time, Ilisya looked like a mix of her old self and the psychotic and emotional sorceress who had emerged when she told of the Universe before the Goddesses.
The soul of the girl Ilisya tried to show through in the confused state that was her body, but the Voice had managed to keep her down. It allowed her to watch, though.
"Why not just kill us now?" Rynita asked defiantly, not at all seeming like she wanted to give up.
Ilisya glanced at her, then at each of them in turn. Rynita, the girl who was supposedly the one who could stop her, didn't look like she would be able to do much of anything. But she didn't want to give her the chance.
"Every living thing will end up "dead" anyway, existing in its own nonphysical way, I suppose. I see no need to get rid of your immediately, even if you are the Daughters of the Goddesses. Once I bring everything back to the way it was, I will decide."
"If you do," Aholya added.
"You think you can stop me? That's fine. I don't need you dead to finish my objective, yet I don't need you alive, either. I can get my revenge both ways."
"So that's what it comes down to?" Rynita seemed somehow to have gained the strength she lost from being in the realm, at least partly, and stood up slowly. "Revenge. Interesting."
The dark haired being who was truly no longer Ilisya narrowed her eyes. The girls had been thrown off when she had told them the Truth of the history of everything, but everyone was recovering quickly. She had her plan for getting her revenge, but she didn't know what the girls planned on doing to stop her. If they had anything planned at all.
No matter how much Chaos liked to think that It was the most powerful force in the Universe, the Triforce and its intricate web of control over the Universe still could bring It back to its passive state. In Ilisya, it had had a will of Its own, no matter how the mind of the girl had evolved. And then the Voice, the pure darkness of Ilisya, threw aside all desire even for her revenge which she had worked towards for millennia, and only left room for a need for destruction. A need for the Universe to be reverted to the way it was rightfully. Since Chaos was not true force on its own, It needed these to do anything at all.
She knew of only one way for them to stop her. It was to bring the Triforce back to the Heart of the Universe. That had been Destiny's plan for the girls, she was almost sure. It would, with the help of the Goddesses, reverse her paradox. This would make it impossible for her to gain the Triforce, because it would be returned to those who carried it before her spell was cast on Hyrule. Chaos had been able to take the Triforce with the help of Ilisya in the first place because of the power left in It. Yet now, the power was weakening.
There were only two possible outcomes to this. The first was that she got the last piece of the Triforce, the Triforce of Power, from Ganon and the Universe was irreversibly destroyed. The second was that the girls managed to get it and keep it, and then take the other two to from her and get them all to the Heart of the Universe. It seemed to her highly unlikely that the girls could do all this. But she knew that stranger things had happened, and wasn't going to risk it.
The only problem was that she couldn't get the Triforce for herself.
"I'll make a deal with you, though, Dyvonia," the dark haired girl said, startling Michelle by using her 'real' name.
"I don't see anything that you could say that I would listen to," Michelle answered.
The girl smirked.
"Don't then, but you will do me this favor whether you mean to or not."
*You will give the Triforce of Power to me...* said a voice in Michelle's mind, the same one she remembered hearing earlier. It now seemed very obvious that it was coming from Ilisya.
*You will obtain it because I know you are stronger than Ganon. But you will give it to me because I am stronger than you.*
How can you be sure? Michelle asked, thinking it to herself.
She heard a sound that resembled cackling echoing in her mind, and when it ceased, she heard the Voice say this last thing.
*Because when we fight for it in this realm of Chaos, there will be nowhere for you to go. The last time, when Time was created, you went to Earth. It saved you then. But this time, there will be nowhere for you to run.*
* * *
**Oh, yeah, I'm having fun. ^-^ Are you confuzzled? I hope not, because I'm not really. Then again, I know what's going to happen at the end. There's not much more left to go, so check back soon, I will hopefully post another chapter!