CHAPTER XXXVIII

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"Still no response?" Demetri said, gearing up with Dionysus and Orion.

"None," Ariadne said. "I did get a brief signal from Ivory's scroll, but that went dead a while back. Lilly's scroll hasn't responded at all."

"You have the general area of where they might have emerged, right?" Orion said.

"I do, but it's roughly ten square miles."

"That's a big friggin' haystack we have to dig through," Dionysus said.

"We're moving out with the retrieval teams," Orion said. "Ariadne, you keep us updated."

"Are you sure you're okay to do this, Demetri?" Ariadne asked him.

"Yes," he nodded. "The shape I'm in would be life-threatening in the Labyrinth, but this isn't the Labyrinth."

Lilly slowly opened her eyes as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Something felt strange. She was halfway between floating and swimming. She intermittently saw images of her mother and life while she was still at Beacon Academy before finally settling in her immediate reality. She wasn't floating at all. She was suspended from the ceiling by chains binding her wrists.

"She's awake, boss."

"Yeah, I see that."

"So, what do we do with them?"

"I called the big man and he doesn't really sound all that interested."

"They're both Schnees, right? Why don't we ransom them or something? I'm sure that old man Jacques would pony up a pretty good amount of Lien for his two princesses."

"You fuckin' moron. Have you been livin' under a damn rock?"

"Huh?"

"Atlas is itching for a reason to invade Vacuo, you dumbass. Do you wanna be that excuse?"

"Man, fuck this shit, then. If we can't make any money off these girls, why don't we just do whatever we want with them?"

"You guys are sick. I ain't having shit to do with this."

"Huh? I thought you were a lesbian."

"What the fuck does that have to do with being a sick fuck? You're a fuckin' moron. I'm gonna work on making my aura stronger."

"Does situps and pushups really work for that?"

Meanwhile, Lilly could feel her blood pounding in her head. She gritted her teeth as one of the men began fondling Ivory, who fought back, though it was impossible with her hands tied above her head. Some of the other men were laughing, while the only two women of the group were in the middle of a pushup race.

Her vision became more and more red with each scrap of clothing the men tore from her cousin and with each slap to the face for resisting. Until now, she had fought off the enmity and resentment that continued to build with each Labyrinth run, but not anymore. Not today. Lilly Schnee was about to cross a line that she could never turn back from. This would not be a repeat of the day she summoned the Rune of Atonement into this world. That Primal Rune was a representation of the concept of Justice.

There would be no justice today. In Lilly's heart, there was only pure, unbridled hate, hate that would be unleashed in a single instant.

Ivory squeezed her eyes shut as her world became completely red. Something warm splattered her in the face and arms and legs. The squishing and crunching was followed immediately by total silence.

She dared to open her eyes, gasping and recoiling upon the grisly sight. The entire room's color had changed into a deep crimson, but it wasn't paint she was seeing. Something fell from the ceiling, landing on the ground in front of her with a wet thud.

Is...is that a hand? she wondered in horror.

More bits of flesh rained down from the ceiling periodically, flesh so mangled that she had no idea what anything was, except for one. An eyeball. She took a deep breath to try and calm herself, but she could do nothing about the shaking in her legs. She looked over at Lilly, who was unconscious. She knew that it wasn't herself who had done this. It had to be one of her cousin's personalities.

"Lilly?" she managed, her voice as shaky as the rest of her body. "Lilly, can you hear me?"

Her elder cousin didn't answer. She turned up to the chains binding her wrists. She focused her mind on them, deploying glyphs on the chains. She willed her glyphs to harden, splitting the chains and setting herself free. She stepped carefully around the room, but there were no dry places to stand. She swallowed hard as she searched for a key to her shackles and then abandoned the idea upon realizing that there was no way she would be able to find a piece of metal that tiny amid all this gore.

Lilly groaned.

"Hey!" Ivory said, darting to her cousin. "Are you okay?"

"I...Ivory?"

"I'm gonna get you out of—"

Her eyes opened wide. "Holy fuck."

"Oh. You're not Lilly."

"D-Did you do this?"

Ivory looked back at the veritable slaughterhouse. "I...assumed you did it."

Lilith bit her lower lip and the younger cousin turned back to her. "Yeah. It was me."

The younger Schnee didn't believe her. Lilith was usually a good liar, but for some reason, there was enough uncertainty in her voice that Ivory could not be sure.

"Why are you...defending her?" Ivory asked.

"I'm not defending anybody," Lilith said, more sure of her words this time. "How did you break free?"

"Glyphs."

"Oh. Duh." She looked up, projecting a black-violet rune on the chains, which caused them to rapidly rust over and then rot away, falling apart into powder. "Did you find a key?"

"No."

Lilith looked at all the meat and bone strewn about. "Yeah, I'd imagine you'd have a hard time finding one. Here."

Ivory watched as the same black-violet rune dissolved away her manacles. She rubbed her wrists before staring at all the violence once more. She looked at Lilith out of the corner of her eye.

"Hey."

"Huh?" Ivory said.

"If anybody asks about this mess, it was me who did it, okay?"

She didn't answer.

"You hear me?"

"I did."

"Good. Let's get the hell outta here."

Ivory stuck to the story she had worked out with Lilith, that upon exiting the Labyrinth, both Lilly and Lilith were knocked out as a result of their violent whiplash when Lilith was dragged straight back to Lilly. Ivory then had to take care of her elder cousin while she recuperated. To explain all the blood and gore covering the girls, they added that they were accosted by a group of thugs and that Lilith, upon awakening, reacted purely by reflex to defend herself and Ivory, inadvertently unleashing a wave of force that eviscerated all of their captors.

"That explains the mess in that room one of our teams ran into," Orion said.

Ivory and Lilith shared a quick glance.

"The room became a blender," Demetri mumbled. "That's how they described it."

Dionysus gagged.

"I'm not surprised you reacted that way, Lilith," Ariadne began, "but I do have to wonder, since between you and Lilly, you tend to be the calmer one in the midst of a crisis."

"Huh?" Lilith scoffed. "Did you just refer to me as 'calm'?"

"Well, yes. In battle, your movements are much less erratic than Lilly's tend to be. I see it in every Labyrinth run you do."

"If you say so."

"Do you not agree?"

"Meh. I guess I am pretty cool and collected in a fight, huh?"

"Look, sis, you've inflated her ego," Dionysus said.

"That's not the only reason," Ariadne continued. "My equipment detected a massive EP burst, which coincides with what you've told us, but the issue is that the waveform is...well, it only partially matches yours or Lilly's."

"Soul waveforms aren't perfect," Lilith said. "Like DNA, they're subject to change over time."

"Right, but like DNA, those changes are miniscule and happen over years, not days."

"And Wraiths aren't supposed to act as separate personas like this."

"Okay, I get your point."

"Anyway, why the hell does this feel like an interrogation?"

"Because we found you in the very heart of territory controlled by a suspected criminal organization," Orion said.

"What?" Ivory said.

"We were lucky you only had a run-in with a small detachment of their people. Had you encountered some of their closer associates, we'd probably have our hands full right now with an outright war between Jupiter Enterprises and the Semenza Crime Family."

Lilith could feel anger boiling up from within her, but it wasn't her own. It was Lilly's.

Calm down, dude.

Lilly wasn't listening.

You need to fucking relax. Right now.

Ivory and Demetri exchanged glances.

"There's something you two know, isn't there?" Orion asked them.

"We've run into that man multiple times in the Labyrinth," Ivory said.

"What?"

She and Demetri recapped their encounters with that crime boss, from the projection in their failed Labyrinth mission days ago, to his Corrupted Shade counterpart in the most recent Labyrinth run.

"A Shade," Ariadne said. "From what I've discussed with Lilith, Shades only become Wraith-like if the real-world person has innate magic, like a mage. At least, those are the rules in your home world."

"Hey, man, your guess is as good as mine," Lilith said. "There's so much shit fucked up with the World of Shadow right now. Like the fact that we can just cross over willy nilly the way we do. Back in Ecumene, there are only two ways to cross over. One is a Nexus, but if you don't know what you're doing, you could get stuck in a cosmic void or transformed into a flesh blob. The other way to cross over is by using the Rune of Night or its subordinate runes."

"Rune of Night?" Demetri said. "Is that a Primal Rune?"

"Yup. The Primal Rune that governs the night and also gateways between worlds. It's what opens a hole between the physical world and the World of Shadow to let monsters out."

"Something like that exists in your world?" Ariadne said.

"C'mon. The Rune of Atonement is a real thing, too."

"How many Primal Runes are there?"

Lilith shrugged. "I'm not sure. I do know there was this one pretty nasty one, the Rune of Ravening. It was summoned into the world a long time ago with a blood sacrifice. Its only effect is to inflict bloodlust on anyone or anything within its sphere of influence."

"Who bears it now?" Demetri asked.

"No one. There's no body large enough to contain it."

"As in..."

"Yup. It attaches to the land itself."

"Your world sounds terrifying," Orion said.

"Eh. The World of Shadow is still worse. But it's home, sweet home, so meh."

"I'm afraid I must excuse myself," Ivory said, standing up. "I'd like to wash off all of this blood and then have some sleep."

"We do apologize for keeping you," Ariadne said.

"Don't worry about it," Lilith said, standing and stretching. "We know you gotta collect and analyze all the data you can so you can figure out how to keep us alive in that other world."

"Well, yes."

"We'll be joining you at the dorm soon," Demetri said.

"What are you up to?" Lilith said.

"I don't wish to leave Ariadne on her own."

Lilith smirked at him. "You've already forgotten about your snow princess, have you?"

Ivory sneezed.

"You just made her Schneeze," Ariadne quipped.

The rest of the room turned to her.

"What? Did I say something weird?"

"Not at all," Lilith said with a grin, fixing her glasses for her. "Gimme a high five."

"What for?" Ariadne said as she gave her a high five.

"For being awesome."

Ivory sat in the shower, letting the warm water soak her silver hair. Most of the blood had washed away by now, but she couldn't get rid of the metallic stench. The odor may very well have been her imagination, but the bone fragments in her clothing were certainly not imaginary. Nor was the tooth she had found in her pocket.

She shivered as she recalled the incident. Two of the men in that group were threatening to violate her, tearing off sections of her clothing and striking her repeatedly when the room was instantaneously filled with a red mist. It was impossible to know which persona had been responsible, but she had her suspicions that it was Lilly who had rendered that whole gang into shredded meat. Lilith's own atypical behavior lent credence to the possibility.

But how? Could Lilly really have it in her to do something so gruesome? Even as despicable as that group of thugs was, her reaction still seemed too over-the-top, even for Lilith's standards.

There was a knock on her stall.

"Yo, you've been in there for an hour," Lilith's voice echoed in the bathroom.

Has it really been that long? she wondered.

Ivory stood up, quickly shampooing her hair a second time and letting it wash away. Even at the highest setting, the water was barely lukewarm by now. She turned the shower off, sniffing her hair again. She could still smell blood. She pulled down her towel from the door, wrapping it around her body before stepping out. Lilith was brushing her hair in front of the big wall mirror.

"Can't get the smell of blood off?" Lilith said, making Ivory gasp.

"Are you a mind-reader?" she said.

"No. I'm just dealing with the same thing."

"Oh. I'm a bit surprised that it even bothers you."

"It doesn't."

Ivory headed to the mirror as well, staring at herself for a moment before grabbing a second towel to wrap her hair in.

"So," she began.

Lilith glanced over at her as she continued brushing her hair.

"Was that really you who did that? Or was it Lilly?"

The elder of the two didn't answer.

"Okay. I'll shut up about it."

"I don't know," Lilith finally replied. "I've been thinking about it all day, too. I've even asked Lilly about it and she's not sure either."

"Not sure?"

"According to her, she was watching you get beat up and stuff and those two dudes were being creeps and then her head started to spin and then she blacked out. And I have to admit I do have a faint memory of exactly that."

"Is that why she hasn't surfaced all day?"

"Partly. She's still in here digging through our memories to try and sort out what actually happened today. I'll tell you one thing I'm sure of, though." She looked Ivory in the eye. "I don't think I've ever felt so much hate coming from her."

Hate? Lilly could be anything else, even irate, but hateful? That was the opposite of Lilly. If anything, that was more something Lilith was perfectly capable of.

"I know, it doesn't make any sense, right? But think about it. She's the opposite of me. I handled all the shit we were ever dealt. She's pushed it all onto me our whole life. But she's stopped doing that. From the moment she became aware of my nature, that moment when she and I embraced in the Labyrinth and we started sharing this body, that stopped. I'm perfectly accustomed to dealing with my anger and all that, but not her."

"You're saying that what I was going through might have sent her over the edge?"

Lilith nodded. "It's the one weakness about people who are so damned idealistically driven. Once the illusion has been shattered, they respond in totally uncharacteristic ways. In her case, this had been slowly building up. From the first Labyrinth she ever set foot in, with that Mizuki girl, up to our latest one, she had been slowly exposed to the evils humankind has to offer. All her life, she was blind to its existence, or denied it, or both. Now that she's been touched by malevolence itself, she has no idea how to react to it other than with righteous indignation."

"You're thinking it was really her, then," Ivory said.

Lilith didn't answer. Ivory wondered what it was that compelled Lilith to be so defensive of her other self. After all, a person and their Wraith were supposed to be locked in perpetual conflict, so what was it?

"It's almost like you're defending a sister," Ivory mumbled.

"Huh?" Lilith said, displaying a level of shock that Ivory herself found shocking.

"W-Why are you so flustered?"

"We are not sisters!"

"U-Uh, okay, okay, I-I get it."

"Jeez!"

There was no one at their dorm room when they returned.

"Uh-oh, it looks like your childhood friend's slipping away from you," Lilith said as she continued to dry her hair in front of the mirror.

Ivory sighed. "Would you give it a rest?"

"Oh, right, I forgot. You're torn between Leon and Demetri."

She flinched in terribly visible fashion.

"Careful. Don't wanna trip into your bed!"

She growled, glaring at Lilith in the mirror. Her irritation gave way to a strange sense of serenity. It wasn't very long ago that the antagonism between them was life-threatening, particularly to Ivory, but it was all now bygones. Not for her, though. She had yet to forgive herself.

She walked up to Lilith, hearing none of her mumbling as she wrapped her arms around her cousin from behind.

"W-What the hell?" Lilith said, dropping her hair towel in the process.

"Lilly, I know you can hear me," Ivory began. "I love you. Both of you. I don't care how soiled you think your hands might be, I will always love you. You're my family."

Lilith looked at her cousin in the mirror. Ivory was leaning her head against her shoulder. She could feel the tears wetting her nightshirt.

You hear that? she said to her other self. Even if it really was you who made that mess—which those assholes totally deserved—it's okay.

But it wasn't okay. Lilly was not okay. Even after all that, her heart was still on fire. And she wanted the rest of the world to burn as well.