CHAPTER 5: EMPRESS OF ALL THAT REMAINS, or HIDDEN DEPTHS
A dangerous delusion has taken hold of Louise: hope. Hope, the most dangerous of delusions. Hope has cast aside millions and destroyed the lives of a commensurate number, in entirely related affairs. Hope has caused many to... I... is there even a purpose to this?
Louise woke to warm sunlight streaming down upon her face, caressing her into consciousness. In and out she had drifted from consciousness and sanity the past few days (or years, from a certain point of view). Now, she woke, definitively perhaps she did.
"Was it all a dream?" she thought.
She looked around, taking in the lush scene around her, greenery pushing up in breeze-breaking forest, full of birdsong and curious animals ducking about. For once, lacking all her noble compensations, she was happy. For once meaning the briefest moment, taking in the beauty of the world, while still awakening to the reality of situation that would soon come because, as you know, it is because life shall rush through the gates and crush such untoward notions, because:
...because...
It wasn't a dream. No. She wasn't in her room. This seemed real as reality could be. It was far too vivid to dismiss.
Then how is it she was here, rather than there? There, in her safe little room? She struggled to remember, and chanced upon nothing.
"Hat...?" she tried. "Are you there?"
"Yes," a voice answered.
She searched around and spotted Hat to her right.
"What happened? How are we are?"
She remembered.
"You were going to be despondent in the middle of the Academy's courtyard after murdering Wardes, and that wasn't a good idea. So here we are in the woods nearby, hiding."
"After I murdered Wardes? Are you stupid? Yes, maybe, probably, definitely. But no. I didn't do that. You did that."
"Louise, how can you be sure about that? Did you see what happened there? I would find that unlikely, and so suppose not. Your eyes were closed or looking down for the most of it. You only caught part of it."
Truth, it was. She did shut her eyes to the world and all that. Truth... it had been.
"No," Louise said. "I saw enough to know you killed Wardes, and you think now it was the best choice. Are you going to ignore everything that happened in the courtyard?"
"You don't think much, do you?"
"More ignorance? You of all should know by seeing my mind that I think a lot, even too much. I think, and I think a lot; not necessarily in the way others would like, but don't question the outpouring my thoughts are."
Any honest being in existence would be able to see that the reality of the matter is that neither of these think much, or in a worthwhile manner, but that is digressing.
"I'm not the one ignoring anything, Louise. Louise, I have a confession for you, and then question for you."
Louise narrowed her eyes to prepare passive aggression. "When do you not?"
Hat ignored her to address her. "It is by no small... a small amount... a fair amount... some fault of mine that you are the way you are; that you are a questionable person of lacking personage."
"Of course it is. You're the reason those lots are dead."
"Now, my question: [do you believe] [(am)] I [(am)] real?"
"What kind of question is that? I might wish not or otherwise, but yes, you are."
"Good then. Here is something that will answer for and alternate both my confession and your response."
Hat took a deep, dramatic breath.
"Louise, I am not real."
"Really...? Just because you say something doesn't make it true."
Wise words from Louise. Quite a rarity- the uninformed might think. Remember that wisdom comes after persevering through protracted failure, so it stands to reason that Louise is wise beyond her years expected. Though maybe a little or lot less than should be expected given her quantity, that is solely due to having much to learn and learning slow. Actually, disregard this and that. What that object of falsely freestanding fabric said about the both of them does apply.
"Louise, Louise, Louise... search within yourself. You will find me."
She thought. She thought and she thought. Dangerous as that might be for any other, only she could manage it without dangers coming to claim her into lucubration. She could manage thought without fear of the analysis, or anything of the sort. Divine.
She thought of this so, of how it altogether created sensibility as far as could be in an insensible world: fear of her, despite the apparent sapience of her hat and a general lack of reference to that "familiar failure on the grassy courtyard plain." How little she cared for the deaths around her, even if she could justify sufficiently with it having to do with the bond between master and familiar altering emotion. The ability to take any comers in combat, easily...
No, belay that. This would conceivably answer one question but open so many others.
"If you weren't real and were me, as in but a figment of my imagination, where did those skills come from? The skills to take on those on in battle?"
"It is as if you desire something enough, a way will be found. The power to 'battle,' or, as the royal we might so say more aptly, brutally dismember, was within you all along. I was your spirit awakening, a clever ruse of the will, in a slow and orderly will to power, that allowed you to take the mantle of strength upon you but still keep your innocence and growth in mind to a certain extent."
"How can that be?"
"I am a device. I am but another tool like your arm is to your body. A trick of your mind, to lengthen your reach, and immur... inure you to the glorious slaughter. For your righteous vengeance upon the hateful, ungrateful world."
Yes, yes! This was truth! Embrace it as the truth! It did, after all the inherent insensibilities, make for such sensibility! The lack of reactions by others toward her hat, no matter how fine; how everyone went above and beyond in treating her familiar's actions as her own; the princess' injunction to her to restrain herself... wait, did that mean she desired the princess? No, only the crown. And only as friends. Yes. What, wait, ah? No. Just the crown, that was it.
"This does not mesh with my preconceived notions of how the world should happen," Louise whispered. "But... I should well imagine if I embraced it."
If she were to accept what he...r... she herself said as truth, then it would mean she was worthy of something. It would mean, for once, she would have power. Even a beautiful, sacred, and powerful familiar would not be power for her, but by association. But if she had done what that hat... or she did, then she had THE POWER. The power to brutally eviscerate her enemies; to see them driven before her; to feast upon their flesh, serving as the harbinger of a murder of carrion-birds following; to reshape the world as she willed it; to finally bring the others to justice; to not not have magic, to be magic; and to hear the laments of their women that she didn't really desire that much except maybe that dull red made sparkling atop Henri...no... NO! (no; no, it is... maybe, just maybe, the laments could pass as those women "magi" lamenting their fallen comrades from the slaughter she'd bring, right, right?), but would suffer through as part of the package deal experience.
She smiled and nodded. Then sank, and spoke to herself and her old confidante of the soiled soil beneath her.
"But... what if I can't do it? What if I can't do it anymore without that gentility of your fashion? What if I can only nicely dismember people? The world would tear me apart; oh cruel, wicked world!" she lamented prematurely.
"Louise, you are too quick to doubt. Ask not how to manage without me, for you have done it all this time. Don't you see? The power to brutally eviscerate your enemies, to see everyone who would doubt your word torn, limb from limb, within you all along! So do not doubt. Doubt kills one's mind. You would have to tear yourself apart, or, worse, end up eviscerating nicely. That would be the true atrocity of form. Death is a disease of the skin, but a lack of proper execution is one of the spirit."
"But-"
"Louise, if you will not believe in yourself, believe in the Void."
"The Void? That's the holy power of that Founder of ours, Brimir."
"Let's consider the rhetorical facts here: you possess a preponderance of explosions, which are noted to be preternatural out of those 'hard cored' places known as volcanoes and the blasted, ash-bitten hellscapes around them. At the same time, you cannot practice the magic all the others may effectively. There is a fifth element, lost to the ravages of time, which is largely unknown but is most likely so hacking, cutting manure pile that can conjure anything. Like the magic of the Elves, only for us lowly humans."
"Elves? I have something to do with those murderous demons?"
"Have you figured this out yet?" Hat was about to say. "No? I don't know how you haven't, but here: you are of that fifth element. You are of the Void. Revel in that!"
"So... you mean to say that this wasn't me all along, when I'd only just felt some sliver of assurance and confidence for once?" Tears, being quite diluted and low in salt at this point, pooled at the edges of Louise's vision.
"...No? How did you...?"
"The Void is the providence of the one God Above and the Founder's power! I'm nothing, then! At most, I channel it. Unless... then maybe I can have redemption and take solace in being His vessel. Yes! Any twists for assurance, I shall take! By my being, they shall know the Founder's name! He is worthy of worship, and I shall be an imitator in impression only... I am no heretic. If I must, I will wield my ignorance as my shield and my fury as my sword, and they shall quake over doubting His presence in me. I am chosen, I am chosen!"
Joyous tears ran down Louise's cheeks.
Hat lit a premium brand filtered cigarillo, as he had mastered fire. The Void was not all; merely the beginning.
"Brimir? Brimir is naught save a bitch ass trick, pardon the... translation spell gone awry. You surpass that familiar betrayed fool. Ah, you don't even need one!"
Throughout the conversation, Hat had been growing thinner and thinner in appearance, fading away. It was no smaller, but something was leaving. He was pale in appearance now, see through as an improper weaving of silk, and his presence lethargic, weakening. Through her clearing tears, Louise had noticed that... only now.
"Wait, what's happening? Don't leave me... please. I don't know what to do, more than ever."
Hat smiled to her, his visage slipping away ever more. "I was stolen from the Void, le Blanc. I was torn from the blissful nothingness, the lacuna between, summoned unwillingly here, and every moment is a grand terror, moreso than the typical terror of existence. Every moment is a struggle against the urge to gyrate in screaming pain and simultaneous ecstasy, to unleash the shattered remains of psyche, and to wallow in fear over the lack of dark. So I will go now into death, once more into quaint solace, salvation in solitude and separation. All is as should be."
"Hey!" Louise whinged, regaining her usual demeaningor. "You know, just because something is incomprehensible doesn't mean it's wise, f-fool! And what did you say earlier about you being me? What's happening?! Tell me!"
"No, my ruse that I was a creation of your mind was a ruse of mine mind to convince yourself to have take up a mantle of confidence and strength, Louise. I cannot know whether I failed or succeeded, not yet, or ever, but I truly must go now." Hat was but a faint outline, a stark shadow, now.
"Well... unnnn... how do I know this isn't myself speaking? If a part of me had decided to create such a ruse to convince the rest of myself of something, couldn't this speaking be more of a ruse? I hear Void users often go mad, too."
Hat looked to the midday Sun, shining proud. "I cannot know the answer to that. Some things you must discover for yourself. All I know is this: take up that mantle I said, that mantle of strength, for yourself. Take it up, and believe. Believe in yourself, and all shall follow. Believe your way to victory. You are a god, and you gods trade in and subsist on faith, so start here and now, with your own faith. As I said... some things, you must discover for yourself."
A swirling, purple portal tore reality asunder and Hat climbed to it. The sky wept tears of lightning, trees shed whipping leaves, and the ground shook at the vortex's coming.
Before Hat climbed fully into the portal, he spared a gaze back at Louise, a reassuring smile etched across the length of his features.
"Have faith," he seemed to word.
"You are strong," his non-lips mouthed.
"I must go now, for I am needed elsewhere," it seemed he said. "But remember me, and part of me shall always remain with you."
"NO! YOU CAN'T!" Louise shouted, pouting with her hands, as if she could pull everything back to her. "How will I manage, I don't believe it; I can't!"
"Trust yourself," Hat spoke up. "You've been doing it all this time."
"And, if that is never enough, for one must always desire more, and you find yourself awake on sleepless nights under a soundless sky, believe in the Void. Believe in its power, and tap that. Believe its hacking, the Void's hacking of form. Believe in its power to hack, to dismember, and believe that is within you. Believe in the lack of compassion in yourself, a void where the soul should be. If you cannot have compassion, at least spare a passion for killing. With that, you can spill the blood, and remove the appendages of any and all who would resist."
Hat entered the portal and it closed, taking its accompanying windstorm with it. The trees snapped alert, back to standing erect in attention. Louise thought she heard a few words, snatched from the dying winds, come to her: "Solamente fue una broma, hermanita." Their meaning was unclear. Another "translation spell" gone awry? She didn't know anymore, and she never knew, so...
Louise shut her eyes and the world and all that noise [went] out.
凸
That was as she remembered it. The memories filtering in, flitting here and there, unsure, uncertain. They were shattered shards of something more, incongruous and unclear. She had other memories come now, as she waited in this forest, the streaming light consoling here aphasically. They came like a collection of pictures being dropped by a bumbling handler, with a strange assortment of sounds, vacillating in volume, diving in and out of her ears. Like sweet memories they might be, if they had happened?
"Louise-
"you have achieved true gentility. Louise, you are a true gentleman now. Gentlewoman. That's the truth, wholly."
"Really?"
"Really and truly! Place me atop your head, and you shall not see. You will not, but you feel me. Yes?"
The weight of Hat atop her. Then, nothing. He slipped through. "AJAJJAJAJAJAJAJ, Zero. That was just joking. A ruse, an experiment pushing and challenging societal norms. A lark's prank, it was. You weren't expecting this outcome, I suppose, were you?" Mad as a hatter Louise, he was gone. "Sayounara sucker," he said, one last time."
Before she could react, she was somewhere between catatonic and despondent.
Did it happen? Did any of it? Did it matter? At all?
"Good morning, how are you doing?"
"Not bad."
"Good."
"Yes, that it would be, given that."
"Indeed."
"Agreed."
These were false memories. They seemed to have not have happened.
Louise shook her head and looked around. Sunset. Hat's form loomed over the sky, a halo effect made larger.
He smiled, straight at her. At least, his form did.
Louise shook herself and stumbled around and about. Tears flowed freely once more, or would have, if her ducts weren't dry and used up. She dry-cried herself to exhaustion, then an uneasy sleep ironically easily.
She woke up in an hour on a bed and wood around her.
"Was it all a dream, a nocturnal hallucination? Of terror, of doom, and other unpleasant matters?" Unlike before, she dreaded if it were now.
She reassured herself otherwise. It was not. Hat's last words, the last ones that mattered anyway, echoed and ringed above her: "The power to brutally eviscerate... was in you all along." Something of the sort had been said as his last words. No! That was it. Not his; hers, hers... her last, as in her last: her most recent.
That meant Hat had never let himself be worn by her. Never had he been worn. Even at the end, no. This was a undoubted sign of doubt. Somewhere inside, he, and therefore she, had not felt herself of sufficient gentility.
But wait, gentility didn't matter, did it? Did it, or not? Hat was never a fine judge for it. If he was even a distinct entity, he had failed to regain his nobility. Unless he was doing so now. Yes! If he could go for it, she could.
She was of sufficient, more than sufficient gentility. Now was not the time for self doubt, that insidious rot, to plant itself. It could never take hold again. The land of her mind was barren. She was clearly genteel, and anyone would thought to the contrary was misinformed. Ignorant. They had to be informed.
"Open their eyes with blood," a voice, likely hers, whispered. "Persuade them. Debate as a philosopher-king does: with the fire and sword of arguments and dismemberment."
No self doubt. Not now, not evermore. No pedantry. Seize the day. Seize the crown. See her enemies driven before her, everyone, driven before her, she had to. Listen not only to the laments, but the elegies, too, of those that would remain. She had no discriminating eyes. It was time to build an empire, an empire worth of repetition and asyndeta.
"Louise the Disgraced seeks to build empire worthy of heritage, repetition, slaughter, asyndeta." She could see the reports now. Call her disgraced, when she would judge them. We'll see then.
So her hat was gone. She had no hat. So what? She never had had one. Maybe? Yes. The power was within herself. Yes, it was.
"I'll make a hat. They'll see. They will see it, because this hat- I will wear it. Then, a crown will come and be worn. They'll see that, too. I'll topple their false kingdoms, found an empire, then, then- I'll see to it... they'll see... I'll- I won't just crown myself, actually, no. They'll see. I'll wear a hat. A hat. Then, for certain, I will have worn a hat. And they will see."
The hope that flickers is a terrible kind of hope, jumping from conclusion to conclusion. If it stops flickering, going strong, but ends with one of those terrible conclusions, it is by even more terrible. The worst. That is what Louise had accomplished. Yes, Louise's hat was gone, never to be, but a far more powerful, primordial force, and some would say, fancy had taken hold over her. For the first time in forever, she believed in herself, and only herself. She knew what would come next. She felt the power in herself.
She believed:
They had called her a zero. Zero? Fine then, let them be right. History would begin from her; none would pre-date her. Books would be burned and scholars would be buried, and Brimir would fade into memory and disappear into the dirt with the death. An empire would rise from the smoldering cinders.
She believed in her ability, her talent for destruction; to lay waste to continents, to ruin cities, to reduce fields to ash and fallow, to boil away rivers and seas, to drown her enemies in tides of their own blood, to set the forests and lands ablaze, et cetera. It was her domain.
It was her who would cast the old order away, the decrepit ways of the long dead fool Brimir, and build a New World Order. Many would die, but this world would be united, and hers. Everyone would be together, and submit to paying the tax. It was their burden for their hateful transgressions to her when she lacked the power of dangerous (to her and those around her) self esteem in conjunction with the almost as dangerous power of the Void's hacking. Belief in herself- it had arrived, it sounded the death knell of nations.
Her thoughts channeled into one central one: enough idle thoughts. She coveted everything, and so had an empire to build, conquests to pursue, millions to bring to heel, asyndeta to put to use.
"This world- is mine," Louise cackled with much mad gusto. It all came to down to her now. Brimir be damned, she would succeed where the fop hadn't. That reminded her that the elves ought to die. Their extermination was paramount, for their undeserved Spirit magic was a cart full of oxen waste; she had struggled all this way to find her inner Void hacks for dismembering. Its healing ability was also diametrically opposed to her predisposition to dismembering.
"Nevertheless, I disgress," Louise stated. "I have a hat to make."
Thus, Louise surveyed the lands about her. She saw to the humble abode she dwelt, a refuse heap of a shack in a forest. Hastily assembled, it seemed but a hideout for some Earth magic thief. Those rumors concerning Fouquet...?
They were of no concern. She was beyond that now. She knew not of this structure's previous existence, nor how she had ended here, but she knew what it would be from here forwards: the site of her throne room.
Upon a lone table, Louise set to weaving the beginnings of her hat that would become the crown and sigil for the darkness that would reign o'er the world for 10000 years.
She was soon rudely interrupted by a lone figure bursting through the shoddy door of her magnificent palace to be. The figure twisted, settled, and undid its hood.
"Louise, I am Agnes. You killed the Captain of the Griffin Knights. The Princess has ordered for you to answer to her one last time. Come without resistance," the full figured woman said, raising a firearm.
Louise kept at her hat, chanting arcane litanies and bringing in a headgear where there was nothing. Agnes tensed and fired, and a hole was made in the nascent beast. Still, Louise sat still. Agnes drew her sword.
Louise's rigid body remained still as her head turned. Her eyes emptied, their usual pink turning darker.
"Our lady may be merciful and wish you clemency, but I can stand idle and abide the risk of your existence no longer. I am glad you have decided to resist. Prepare to die," Agnes said.
A wicked smile stretched across Louise's face. "No. You have failed to show proper respect to this." She lifted her weaving aloft. "It is you that must die. Honor demands it."
Agnes broke into dash toward Louise, not waiting for her insanity. Louise, drawing on the power of the Void's ability to hack, materialized a curved sword from nothingness. It was bright and sharp; made of the most glorious steel from Eastern lands beyond, and folded ten thousand times. It had no name in this world, but, born from the Void, it needed none. Others might it accord it one, but that was secondary to its reason for being: to kill.
Let us to it, it would be said. The two joined in combat, Agnes going for a straight blow and Louise meeting it head on. Agnes, believing in her superior strength, smirked. Prematurely. She failed to consider the Void hacks. With a furious shout, Louise's sword, sharper than any steel, cut through Agnes' inferior twin edged blade, and her last expression, frozen in death, was one of shock and fear.
Louise raised her blood-christened blade to challenge the Heavens, as if to challenge the lords above. "I HAVE NOTHING NOW! THE ONLY THING I HAVE- IS THIS! THIS NOTHING! DESPITE THIS VOID, FOR THIS VOID, I WILL NOT SHOW FEAR! I CANNOT SHOW FEAR! FEAR IS BANISHED! IT IS YOURS! LET THEM FEAR ME!"
Louise burst from the hut, blade in hand, and no need for a shield.
A few other guards, having been present to escort Agnes but conveniently gazing wistfully into the distance to grant that dyke plausible deniability, shook upon seeing Louise. They quaked at the sight of disheveled hair, crazed eyes, and bloodied blade coming together in a fun sized package, rocketing at them swifter than any gust.
They quaked a bit more intensely briefly, then rolled to a stop. Their heads- excellent material. The foundation would start here, Louise perhaps mused.
A few million heads could build a throne.
A note from another scrivener:
Adjectival modifier and word synonymous to the effect of one that is currently so engaged with this document,
Apologies are in order for the brevity of this division of the document. I, the currently given designation of that most beautiful and ironically intelligent, in whatever sense that may mean, scrivener in charge of... scrivening this document, was hacked.
A man whom I was most unfamiliar with approached I with a rather sharp knife and an offer I simply could not refuse for a fresh marine vessel, gratis. Since I does not care for plying the seas and paying excessive upkeep, I kindly informed this generous-if-threatening prince that he would meet only refusal. It was at this time that the prince decided to unfurl his true colors as one who interprets idiomatic expressions regarding offers that cannot be refused literally, which meant I had committed a physics-defying sin, and so she had to die. I was stabbed (and this matter occurred in sequence after the refusal). Then I's arm was cut off in a second slash, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and so on and so forth slash (it is surprisingly difficult to slash an arm off; that, or I's arm is rather hardy, or more disturbingly, possibly like putty). Either which way, I was lucky for that, for then, after several minutes of slashing, the apparently-not-exactly fit prince had run out his stamina and a bystander had finally decided to inform the local constabulary of the developing situation, noting not the stabbing in particular, but giving a noise complaint involving rather loud panting, which reminded the reporter of all the pleasurable, typically-restricted-to-the-bedroom-but-(un?)-fortunately-not-always activities they did not receive much, if ever, most likely for reasons of being of indeterminate gender, something which tends to serve as a repellent towards most possible partners of engaging in the pleasurable activity.
In any case, especially this case, I's arm was cut off. This had had a most detrimental, even deleterious, effect upon I's recordings of the events that lie herein, though, of course, that effect is temporary and the affected part shall grow back, stronger than before for it (perhaps... I, as in I, am not too familiar with the biology of the creatures inhabiting this miserable dirt ball). In other words, only this division of the document is shorter, and that is the reason why.
With regards to I and none towards the engaged document user, especially toward how she should consider changing her currently given continuously continually confusing and infuriating designation,
It is not I, but rather, it is I, the one who is not I