In the beginning, the World was without form and void. There was neither light or darkness, neither beginning nor end.
There was only the absolute nothingness of the void. No time. No space. Only it, suspended in the abyss.
Alone, deep in the boundless dream, the timelike infinity stretching everywhere and nowhere, it - exists.
And for strange aeons it exists.
Then, came a 'sound'.
The sound became a 'voice', and it echoed and rippled across in the formless void -
...and time and space came to be.
The 'voices' ran and ran and ran - until the meaningless gibberish came into focus, and became 'words'.
"Hey, wake up, you've been asleep for too long!"
It - tries to form the same 'words' back at the 'voices', trying to register these... thoughts? Emotions? The words came to her.
What - who -
"We're not doing this again. Your brain is doing just fine, not like the last time."
Brain? What-
Pure honkai energy, shaped by will, into a formless blade, suffusing all spaces and none - pierced her.
It didn't hurt nearly as much as who did it.
"Go through your memories and remember who you are. We have work to do."
Memories -
Memories of who I am-
And she realised that was what they were, the shades she could sense surrounding her in this formless void - feathers and crystal flowers - memories.
Her - memories.
She opened herself to her memories -
You are curled up, sobbing in the burning night as the city is reduced to ashes along with your hopes and dreams.
You are an armoured warrior, in a metropolis turned into a pyre, towering walls of fire roar all around you and the sky itself is burnt raw and red, like blood. She smiles and waves... and turns all around her to ashes.
You burnt yourself to ashes, trying to tear the chains of binding apart - and fall into oblivion.
You lie on the cold operating table, eyes wide open as the serpent cuts you apart. You endure it - because if you don't, then somebody else will have to. And they can no longer afford to pay the price. Please, let me save one more.
You are trapped in a cube, along with a little girl, crying in the void. You wanted to help her. You feel like you have to. You could not.
You stand against Her, and there was no longer any hope of deliverance. One by one your friends fall. You could do nothing. Useless.
You fly with every ounce of strength at your disposal - in time to see the God Beast fall. And everybody you had left with it. Too late. Always too late. Useless. Useless. Useless.
You watch as your companion fall into eternal slumber on the auspicious springfest, and swallow your loneliness. She deserves the rest.
You feel your heart tear itself apart as the seven you took in and raise tore into your body. Cutting off your hands and feet, smashing your organs, slash off all your tendons. Every one of those wounds is agonising. None of them compare to the most painful thought of all - why?
You debase yourself before the blond man. You can no longer do your duty, so you must let him do it for you. In exchange... he owns you, body and soul. He smiles. "Old friend, I have a small favour to ask."
Your take in a little girl, and she grows up to be a fine young woman in the blink of an eye. You learnt from your mistake and you raise her right this time.
Too right, as she dies to save your worthless life. Useless. Useless. USELESS!
...and drowned herself all over again.
~o~
Across the Sea of Fate, infinity coalesced into one. Infinite possibilities into a single state.
She had work to do.
She had a purpose.
Fragments of her memory join and separate and merge and break and combine, slowly forming patterns.
A face. A voice. A thought. A chain.
Somebody. Somebody dear to her.
Pain lanced through her.
She had to save her. She has to save █ █ -
Fleeting glances flash at the edge of her vision - snatches of voices unheard - glances caught, chain around a heart -
She had to go back to █ █.
There is no time.
There is nothing but time.
█ █ needs me.
As she felt herself knitting back together - she found invisible threads attaching themselves to her being. A few at first, and then - more. And more. And more. Each string a gossamer thread, insubstantial and inconsequential, and yet they were innumerable, and ensnared and enmeshed and caught her in an invisible net. She struggled to tear herself free. For each thread she snapped and strained, ten more took its place. The threads strangled and suffocated her and marked and branded and the very idea filled her with horror and revulsion.
No. No. This cannot be how it ends. Not like this.
She felt herself drawn to something in the distance. She pulled and strained with all that she was and she fell and fell and -
"Hello! Are you all right?"
She focused. A - girl? A young girl with long, lustrous pink hair, who looked entirely too young to be all alone at night, in the middle of the wilderness -
No. The girl was wrong. The girl was not what she appeared to be. Instinctively, she shrank away, trying to fade and hide, to-
"You don't have to be afraid, I won't hurt you..." The girl actually sounded a little crestfallen. And then she brightened, "My name is Elysia! What's yours?"
Name? I - I had a name.
The idea of a name filled her with melancholy. It was a precious thing, a little thing that belonged to her - to them. She remembered that her name left her - but it came home.
What was her name? X- S-
"Huh? Xsss? Sidhe - you are an ELF! I knew it! I'll call you..." The girl, Elysia, squinted at her and brightened, "Miss Purple Elf?"
A bit of a mouthful, isn't it?
"I don't speak elvish, or whatever it is elves speak. And I can't just call you 'you', could I? It's inconvenient not to have a name." Elysia struck a pose, "I know! I didn't have one before."
...I don't have time for this. I-
She tried to leave and find - █ █ - but as soon as she took a step away from Elysia, she could feel the suffocating chains tightening around her.
...on the other hand, it's awfully late, and you shouldn't be out alone like this. I'll stay with you.
Elysia jumped with joy, and made to hug her, which she nimbly sidestepped. Elysia nearly stumbled but recovered herself, and sent her a reproachful look, "could you at least tell me your name, Miss Purple Elf?"
Much as the wretched girl felt off and wrong... at least she was keeping the cloying quagmire of threads and chain at bay.
And a part of her also felt something for the girl, something warm, almost familiar, with Elysia. It was as if she knew her - could Elysia be - █ █ -
No, she's not. She could not hide her own disappointment.
"You're looking for somebody?"
...yeah.
"Well, I am a great traveler! I am looking for paradise!"
You'll find it soon enough if you're not careful.
"Huh?"
Nevermind. Carry on.
"And... I was thinking... if you're looking for somebody... we could travel together until you found her?"
...how did you know it was a 'her'?
"Huh? You showed me. I think it's a her? She had long, beautiful hair and the kindest eyes... I suppose it could be a boy?"
...you don't even know where she is.
"Do you?"
...no.
"Then it's settled! Let's go, S!"
...S?
"Well, you won't tell me your name." Elysia puffed out her cheeks, registering annoyance, "and you're right, I can't just call you Miss Purple Elf... and I can't pronounce your true name either... but I know it starts with an S, so... S!"
...it'll do.
S looked at Elysia. She was not what she appeared, but S could not sense any malice or duplicity in her.
Given that she had no idea where to start looking for █ █... Maybe it won't be so bad to stay with Elysia for a little while.
After all, the great Madam S was not about to let a toddler wander around with nothing but a cloak and a smile. The world is not a place that's kind to children.
The great Madam S was coming to seriously regret her decision.
Point for - Elysia appeared to offer sanctuary from the entangling strings that threatened to brand and ensnare her whenever she strayed too far.
Note to self, test the limits and nature of the strings. The idea that the Great Madam S is inconvenienced by invisible threads is too sad for words.
Point against - EVERYTHING ELSE.
The girl appeared to have no self-preservation instincts whatsoever, and expected kindness from strangers. She usually got it, but that was not the point here!
She was kind and helpful and saw the best in everything.
In the middle of a war. In the war against Honkai.
Oh yes. Honkai. S is pretty sure what she sought - who she sought, had something to do with it. And even if it did not, opposing Honkai came to her naturally. Well, in the opinion of Madam S, nobody of spirit could do less.
Not that Madam S cared what happened to the girl, but she did give her word... and she was handy to have around against the threads. The damned threads.
...which brought us to the next major objection. Elysia appeared to have the power to sense her thoughts. This felt wrong on a fundamental level, somehow. She only got to be alone with her own thoughts when the girl was asleep.
It also made it very hard to make mean comments without getting a reproachful look... or worse, teary, puppy-dog eyes.
Not that Madam S cared, of course, but she did give her word.
The girl was certainly not what she appeared, which is a far-too-chipper-for-words girl with shampoo commercial hair in a scruffy traveling cloak. S could feel it in the very core of her being. The girl was...
...was what?
Like me.
The thought disturbed Madam S, somehow.
Which was absurd. Madam S was an insubstantial floating shade (tested that theory)... and Elysia very much was material.
"Whacha thinkin'?" Came Elysia's sleep-muffled voice, and sat up from her bed roll.
DAMMIT!
"You said a bad word..."
I said two bad words - NO. I swore. Adults are allowed to do that.
"You're a child, just like me." Elysia giggled as she pulled her knees to her chest.
...I am so not a child. Would a child be able to do this?
With a moment of concentration, S pulled the dagger from Elysia's pack right next to her bedroll, and made it dance dance with intricate and deadly grace, weaving and bobbing and slashing.
Elysia's eyes widened, "could you teach me that!?"
...I walked right into that one, didn't I?
Elysia grinned, "yep! You sure did! So..." She reached for the dagger, and S made it dance away.
Oh no you don't. I don't know what Celia was thinking letting you carry it with you, anyway.
"Aww, give it back!" Elysia made a grab for it, only for S to sheathe it back. Elysia looked put upon and puffed out her cheeks, "you're mean..."
S bobbed her on the top of her head.
No, THAT was mean. Keeping you from stabbing yourself is me being an adult.
"Hrmf. We'd be going to the Far East. There're martial arts schools there. I'll learn boxing..."
Putting aside the small matter of you having no money... actually, I am okay with boxing. Terribly hard to stab yourself in the eye doing boxing. Even for you, Ellie.
Elysia stuck her tongue out at S, "I'll learn to use the dagger, just you see!"
Yeah, yeah, hope springs eternal, kid.
But something about what Elysia said stirred something in S.
Far East, did you say?
"Yep! The nice man on the boat said the ship is leaving for Canghai City tomorrow, and I can go with! Canghai is the greatest city in Shenzhou, you know! I hear the food there is amazing!"
And just like that... something in S's fragmented mind clicked, puzzle pieces falling into place.
Hua. █ █
Her name is Hua.
~o~
Author's notes:
One of the issues with writing Sentihua stories that hews close to canon is that we are running out of time. The Dreams of Taixuan arc was a great start that fleshed out Fu Hua's character and introduced Senti, and their conflict was resolved, and we saw lots of beautiful character growth... For Kiana. Fu Hua and Senti parted on frosty terms, but it was progress of a sort as they both confronted their and affirmed their bottom lines (Fu Hua acknowledged Senti as her own person, and her humanity, instead of a creature of Honkai; Senti acknowledged Fu Hua's identity; and they both affirmed their opposition to Honkai).
Unfortunately , although the Herrscher of Domination arc would have been a great opportunity to explore the relationship between Senti and Fu Hua the way it was for Seele and her other self... nothing of the kind happened. Senti only briefly showed up and while that conversation was great character writing... it ended on an extremely sour note, and we saw the consequences of that in Chapter 26, and Senti made no further appearance.
With the conclusion of the Elysium Everlasting arc, we know that we are rapidly approaching the endgame, and time is running out. Honkai Impact 3rd's main story has maybe another year and 5 or 6 version to go before the grand finale. And Fu Hua is very likely to meet that the way a sentence meets a fullstop. So there's just not enough time for Senti and Fu Hua to reconcile, let alone develop anything close to a romantic relationship. They're not even on speaking terms, and Fu Hua will soon have too much to worry about to devote any attention to Senti - and if she needed Senti it'd be for her power in the fight against the Herrscher of the End... and that's just not going to end well.
There is no doubt in my mind that Senti, who had the full set of Fu Hua's memories is the only person who can form the sort of deep bond with Fu Hua that can help Fu Hua process the millennia of pain and loneliness, but there's just no time left to deveop that kind of bond. We cannot really build the relationship between Senti and Fu Hua based on shared memories and Senti's projection alone. Senti tried that in chapters 20 to 22 and it was a mess.
So I've tried something - the segments in italics at the beginning of each chapter from this point on is fragments of memories of Senti and will tell the story of how they ended up forming the deep bond that existed as at the beginning of the story.
Please let me know if you think this works.
Anyway, this chapter is best accompanied by the, well, entire soundtrack of Elysium, but mostly the tracks of Paradise of the Past, followed by Elysia and Subtle.