Where am I?

Nel's eyes slowly slid open as she forced her body into a sitting position from where she had apparently been unconscious on the ground for Apris knew how long.

"What the hell?" she said aloud upon inspecting her surroundings.

She was in a strange room… if it could even be called a room, that is. The walls, floor, and ceiling were composed of pure white light. There was nothing in the room that permitted Nel's mind to determine whether she was indeed inside a room, or possibly an endless void of some sort. Neither option made her particularly fluttery on the inside.

She stood up and started to dust her backside, and stopped suddenly, looking down at herself in horror.

These aren't my clothes, she thought as she looked down at herself, seeing a white gown. It was very elegant looking, something that royalty would wear, or someone going to a ball. The dress's straps hung snuggly about her upper arms, parallel to the top of the gown, which, in Nel's opinion, revealed more than a little too much cleavage. The skirt of the gown poofed out at the hips and fell gracefully to the top of her equally new, and equally white, heeled evening shoes.

The hair on the back of Nel's neck stood suddenly, causing her look up from her examination of the white gown.

She let out a small yelp of surprise when she saw who was now in the white room with her. It was herself!

Nel's eyes where wide in amazement, what was going on!

The second Nel was dressed in the same white dress that Nel had found herself dressed in. The other "Nel" also had hair that went down to the small of her back, but it matched Nel's magenta hue exactly. But there was something about the other Nel set her apart from the original more than anything physical. It was the air of significance and importance that hung about her; there was something more than strange about this other woman.

"Who are you?" Nel asked guardedly.

The other Nel flashed a sorrowful smile at her and closed her eyes, something obviously troubling her.

"I am Nellexis, the eldest princess of this castle," said the mirror image of Nel. "Or… I used to be anyway… until the accident," she added mournfully.

"I think I am missing something here," Nel said perplexedly, eyeing the woman in front of her suspiciously.

"Let me show you," Nellexis said unexpectedly in a serene voice that sounded identical to Nel's own.

Nel spun around as the whiteness of the room suddenly faded into the gray walls of the castle that she had once been in.

The castle walls were now lacking the spider webs and the years of collected dust, making them give off a warm and homey feeling, much unlike the eeriness that they gave off when she had last seen them.

"Come with me," Nellexis kindly instructed, walking in the direction of a wooden door. Nel gasped when she realized that the room was the same one that she had spent the night in; the same room that she had been attacked by the womanly phantom.

Nel hesitantly followed Nellexis into the room and looked at her quizzically when she saw a blonde haired woman sitting at a desk next to the bed that had exploded only not too long ago.

"She cannot see us," Nellexis informed Nel upon noticing the peculiar look on the woman's face.

"Why does Nellexis get everything!" said the blonde woman, making Nel turn her attention back to her. "She is our parent's favorite just because she is the eldest, she has the best living quarters, the best servants, all the gentlemen in the area adore her; she receives the best of everything!"

The blonde girl paused and picked up an object from her desk, "Nellexis is having her Choosing Ceremony tonight in which she will choose her husband… coincidentally enough its on my birthday. They forgot about it! But I'll show her… and everybody for that matter, that I will not be pushed aside and be forgotten. It should be my day, not Nellexis'!"

The woman made her way to the door, concealing the object that she had taken from her desk within her gown, "Once Nellexis is out of the way, I shall become our parent's favorite, and then no one will forget about me."

The door closed behind her, leaving Nel alone in the room with Nellexis. She looked at the woman as silence fell over the room, the princess was looking into Nel's eyes, slightly unnerving the Aquarian.

"Marina, my younger sister, resented me because I was the eldest and received the majority of the attention from our parents and our subjects," Nellexis explained, "She never knew that I hated the attention, and truly felt sorry for her. I tried explaining to my parents how she felt throughout the years… but they never understood."

"What was it that she hid in her dress?" Nel asked, giving into the strangeness of seeing what she assumed to be the past.

"Come with me and you will see for yourself," Nellexis said in a mournful voice.

The walls began to morph again and finally stopped in what looked to be a very busy kitchen. Chefs where rushing about and yelling frenzied orders to one another in attempts to finish whatever it was that they were cooking. Nel turned when she heard the kitchen's doors swing open.

Nel's emerald eyes followed the blonde princess across the room to who appeared to be the head chef. Nellexis lead Nel to where Marina and the chef where quietly talking amongst each other.

"Yes ma'am," Nel heard the chef saying as they approached them.

"I don't want this to leak out. You hear me?" Marina said in a lethal whisper. "Just the chefs."

"Yes ma'am," the chef said, taking the offered item that the princess had pulled from her gown.

Poison!

Nel turned to Nellexis in alarm to find her still watching the scene with the same calm expression on her face. Not knowing what to do or say, Nel turned back to the scene, her mouth agape. She watched as Marina walked out of the kitchen with a rather diabolical smirk on her face, and then turned to the chef as he ordered his apprentices to quite down and gather around him.

"I want you to make sure that this gets in the eldest princess's food and drink," said the head chef when he had everyone's attention, "Princess Marina wishes it so."

The apprentice chefs looked at each other in alarm, but nodded and kept quite.

Nel felt sick as she watched the chefs divvy the poison up and put it into the food that they had been previously making.

Time seemed to fast forward all of a sudden, the chefs moved at very rapid paces, and were soon carrying the poisoned food out on platters and on carts with wheels.

The Choosing Ceremony must be about to begin.

Time returned back to normal once the last of the chefs left the kitchen; the door still swinging on its hinges.

"The poison wasn't supposed to be put in all of the food," Nellexis' voice broke into Nel's troubled mind, "Just mine; the chefs had erred."

Nel's mouth moved as if she was about to say something, but what was there to say?

"Don't worry about saying anything," the princess said, obviously reading the look on Nel's face. "Come with me."

Nel nodded and their surroundings shifted once more. Nel was now in a hallway outside a great room. Nel could hear people talking within the room about something that sounded like high importance.

A figure appeared at Nel's side, causing her to jump in surprise. It was Marina; she had walked out of a door a few feet down the hall, and was now pressing her ear to the great door, eavesdropping on those within.

"You don't understand," cried a voice that Nel identified as Nellexis, "its Marina's birthday! I can't have the Choosing Ceremony tonight! You never think about how she feels, or what she thinks, or what she wants!"

"It's Marina's birthday?" a masculine voice said quizzically.

"Yes!" Nellexis shouted back, exasperated.

Nel looked at Marina to fins that she had a look of amazement on her face.

"Nellexis actually cares about me?" she muttered aloud as she pressed her ear harder against the door to hear what was being said.

"You always forget that you have a second daughter that needs the same amount of attention that you give me. In fact, I don't need all of the attention that you give me; it's just too much." Nellexis continued from within the large room. "The ceremony has to be postponed to a later date."

"I have to stop the chefs," Marina said suddenly, turning on her heels and running in the direction of the kitchen.

"What about the guests?" asked a feminine voice.

Nel turned her attention back to the door.

"Have them be guests at a surprise party for Marina," Nellexis suggested, sounding less annoyed at the two people in the room with her.

"That's a great idea Nellexis!" cried the feminine voice once more.

The doors suddenly swung open and Nel watched as a different Nellexis led a regally dressed couple down the long corridor.

Nel turned to Nellexis, "What happened next?"

"Chaos," was Nellexis' simple answer.

The corridor morphed once more and they arrived in a room full of people dancing and laughing. Chefs where pouring into the room carrying platter upon platter of food. The dancing people stopped in mid step and began cheering in approval as the chefs placed the food down on the large banquet table.

The crowd began to find their seats at the grand table and began to help themselves to the food in front of them.

Nel's eyes widened as she resisted the urge to slap the food out of the nearest person's hands.

The second Nellexis was sitting at the table looking rather gloomy.

"We couldn't find Marina to tell her that we were celebrating her birthday rather than my Choosing Ceremony," Nellexis told Nel calmly. "My parents worried about the guest's restlessness and decided to begin the party with or without her."

Nel shifted her gaze from the princess to the group of people devouring the poisoned food. She quickly turned back to Nellexis when she heard her emit a strange sound and saw her watching the table. Following her gaze, Nel saw the other Nellexis slowly pick up a goblet and take a deep, long drink of its contents.

"Stop!" came an urgent cry from the opposite side of the room.

Everyone in the room turned to watch the younger princess running into the room waving her arms about in a hysterical fury.

"The food is poisoned! Don't eat anything!" she screamed at the people at the table, seeing them dropping the food that they had been eating, some of them spitting it back onto their plates.

"What are you talking about Marina?" the King, her father, asked in alarm while standing up.

"I-I had the chefs poison the food," Marina quietly confessed.

"You did what!" cried the Queen, standing up as well.

"You always forgot about me and favored Nellexis over anything else… I-I wanted to get rid of her so that I would finally be noticed," the blonde princess said through tears. "The poison was only supposed to be for Nellexis, but the head chef just recently revealed to me that they had put it in everything without thinking."

The guests at the table screamed as a man fell out of his chair and onto the floor, showing no sign of life any longer.

Nel watched in horror as some of the other guests began to drop dead as well. Some people began to run to the edge of the room, as if leaving the castle would save them from their inevitable doom. As one of the female guests reached the wall that lead to a balcony she collapsed, causing her body to crash through the window.

A man that had been following close behind the woman leaned over the edge as if to make an attempt to catch her plummeting body. He began to swagger and was grabbed by another man in attempt to straighten him. The first man was swaggering far too much and fell forward through the window as well, pulling the second man with him.

Meanwhile, people at the table where beginning to fall face first into the food that had served as their death, while the King held the unconscious Queen in his arms.

Marina had made her way to Nellexis, who was standing near her chair, watching in alarm as the people in the room continued to fall to the ground, motionless.

"Nelly!" Marina cried, grabbing hold of Nellexis' shoulders and forcing her to look at her. "I'm so sorry Nellexis! Please, can you ever forgive me?"

The other Nellexis stared into her sister's tear-filled eyes and began to open her mouth when all of a sudden she fell limp against Marina, forcing her down onto the ground.

"Nellexis!" Marian cried, shaking her sister, "Nelly, please don't die!" she sobbed in vain, knowing that her sister was already dead.

Nel watched as Marina stood up and looked around herself at the scene of death that she had caused and let out a loud scream.

She then turned to the large banquet table and took up a goblet of poisoned liquid. She downed the whole glass and kneeled down and pulled her older sister into her arms and held her tightly, her sobs turning into a hysteric fit.

Before Nel knew what had happened she was back in the room of pure whiteness. She reached up to rub her eyes of the sight and discovered that her face was wet. She had been crying.

"I had been about to tell her that I forgave her," Nellexis' voice said at her side.

Nel slowly turned to face her, wiping her face of any evidence that she had shed tears, "Where is she now? What happened next?"

"You've already meet her a few times," the princess said.

The white room turned dark and Nel was all alone. She turned around and found herself face to face with the purple banshee that had terrorized her earlier in the night.

Nel let out a cry and closed her eyes tightly as the purple woman lunged at her, emitting a ear-shattering shriek. When she opened them again she was once again in the white room again with Nellexis.

"Marina is the banshee!" Nel demanded.

"Yes," Nel's likeness said sadly. "When the poison finally took her life, she wasn't able to move on to the next life; her anger and sorrow kept her bound to this world, where she has only one task to complete," she said, her voice drifting off.

"To kill you," Nel said, finishing the sentence.

"Yes," Nellexis nodded. "Because we look so much alike, there is no doubt that Marina thinks that you are her sister… me."

Nel was silent for a while, "What should I do then?"

"I suggest that you leave as soon as you can," Nellexis said, sighing heavily. "As long as you are here, your life is in danger; the quicker you can get out, the better."

"We tried to get out once, my companion and I, but there were some… compilations." Nel explained about the shatterproof window and the incident with the door handle.

"Maybe Marina is trying to trap you inside?" Nellexis said, thinking aloud.

"What then?" Nel asked.

Nellexis looked around herself and seemed very troubled all of a sudden.

"What is it?" Nel inquired, a little worried.

"She has found us. You're not safe here any longer!" Nellexis said urgently to the Aquarian.

"Marina?" Nel asked, trying to make head or tails of what was happening.

"Yes," the princess said, "I have to send you back. Take this with you." She said, pushing an amulet into Nel's hand.

"What is it?" Nel questioned while looking down at the pendant.

"It will provide you some protection from Marina," Nellexis said and she closed her eyes and began to mumble something strange sounding.

Nel began to feel peculiar, like her body was becoming aware of surroundings that weren't visible.

"It's the love of a sister," Nellexis said, her voice sounding far away even though she was still in front of Nel. "It may bring the Marina I once knew back to the surface of the monster that she has become. Goodbye, Nel."

"Wait!" Nel shouted as the whiteness faded away and cobwebby grayness engulfed her once again. She let out a yelp as she realized that she was high above the dusty, tiled floor. She fell downward and landed on something surprisingly soft. She looked down at what she had landed on, and, for once in her life, was relieved to see who she saw laying beneath her.

Albel!