I'm surprised this isn't a late update, and you should be too. Seeing as I've been playing non-stop Dragon Age: Inquisition for weeks now -and i already want to kiss Cassandra's face off -tho to be fair, i've been in love with her since DA2 so I expected as much, BUT I DIDN'T EXPECT HER TO BE THIS COLOSSAL PRECIOUS BABY DORKFACE. (brb i'm off to thedas to marry cassandra and start a life and family with her)

Ahem... well, right. Chapter time. Also, if any of my readers are playing Inquisition, message me. I literally can't stop talking about it. So if you want to talk, I'm totally available.

Anyway, I posted this right before bed, and it may have typos and stuff. Bear with me.

"What am I... doing here?" he asks himself, looking around the blank white canvas he's laying in -its only subject. His pale skin and striking white hair make him blend in with the scenery like a ghost.

Am I in the Inbetween again? he asks himself, looking around cautiously, trying to find any inconsistency in the pure white.

This isn't the first time he has been here and, if he were to count the many times, he'd only depress himself. What will they make him do this time? What trials will he have to overcome?

"Ryou Bakura," a voice says, echoing against invisible walls and against the inside of his skull.

He looks up and he finds her -the one who always greets him in the Inbetween, a confirmation of his unvoiced fears -Mystical Elf. She stands before him as she always does, silent, solemn and unmoving like a statue, a monument to ground him in this realm.

She gives him a concerned look from behind her sender, interlaced fingers, her long golden veil of hair swaying idly against her shoulders and back. "What brings you here, young warrior?" she asks, her celestial voice making ripples against the endless abyss around him.

"I... " He wants to shake his head and say that he doesn't know, but he does, and all too well. With a sigh, the words are out of his mouth. "It's...him." And he's talking about the spirit that has taken residence in his mind. "The Spirit of the Ring." He hisses it like a curse.

"Zorc, the Dark One," she says with a slight nod.

Yes... that's his name. He doesn't hear it often for all that spirit likes to talk about himself, but he recalls it being mentioned at least once, but not by the Spirit himself, but by someone hiding in a deep, valley of his mind, cast away like a pariah; this more human presence has been missing for some time now, leaving more room for the spread of Zorc's darkness. He has been branching his disease and corruption of the mind like poison ivy crawling on the walls and Ryou wonders how much longer before he no longer has a mind of his own.

"You'll lose your mind more quickly by lingering in this realm," the elf warns him.

He smiles bitterly at her. "You say that like I have a choice."

Big bROtHER BiG broTHER! WA TCH T H IS!

He winces and shakes his head. This voice follows him every time he is sent to the Inbetween, dancing around his head to the tune of an eerie silent song.

"She haunts you even now."

He doesn't need her to state the obvious; he knows whose voice lures him here and wraps him in a silk cocoon of bittersweet memories and immortal regrets.

"It is the hand in your heart that holds on too tightly that allows Zorc to gain more power... that allowsAmane to reach out to you." The boy shuts his eyes tightly at the sound of her name, trying not to think about her voice and her smile as she skips straight into -"You are so close to the realm of the dead and the part of your soul that still aches can sense it and it longs to be with her once more."

"But that voice..." he says in a strained voice.

"It does not belong to her."

"Then who..."

"Do you remember what I told you when we first met?" She tilts her head to the side slightly.

He wracks his mind for the answer to that question, but in the Inbetween, everything is so vague, so dreamlike, that even as he spends almost whole days in that realm, his mind cannot grasp the reality of it, and when he awakens, he holds hardly any mention of being there. He remembers Serenity, though, and he remembers Amane.

"Your purpose lies elsewhere, Ryou. You, Serenity, and five other humans from your realm are what we in the Inbetween callanchors."

He can swear that this guide of his makes less sense each time he meets her. "An anchor forwhat?"

She frowns and looks above him into the whiteness. "Not what, but whom." And as Ryou realizes what she means, she speaks again. "Turn around and look behind you, Warrior."

As he turns around, he feels his limbs morphing, his body becoming one that is no longer his own. His eyes become sharper and light becomes painful to look at as it pours into his new nocturnal eyes. And then it begins to dim and he can finally see the scenery reborn from the blank space that once existed around him.

It doesn't hurt as much as the first time, and it might be because his body is growing accustomed to the unsolicited bone shifting and the recession of skin, revealing a mechanical skeleton beneath it. He flexes his arms and arches his neck, looking around the landscape.

It's always the same whenever he comes here. The scent of rot reaches his nostrils, a moist perfume that he can almost taste at the back of his throat. The ground is littered with gravestones and the gravestones are covered in moss. No flowers are laid for the dead here, and if there were, they would be black and rotten. He can scarcely see anything around him, but he's been here enough times to know every tree and mound of dirt in this miserable place. A mausoleum stands feebly in the distance, challenging the painful monotony.

He had made a beeline for that mausoleum the first time he found himself in this realm, thinking that it was where he needed to go, why he had been brought there. He had found nothing save for a few graves with names he didn't know and didn't care for, as well as enough cobwebs to last him a lifetime, and after doing off in the only place where the ground wasn't moist and slimy, he regained consciousness in the waking world.

It was his second time when he met Serenity. The Elf had told him to try and find Nox, and he had wandered aimlessly enough to know that this Nox wasn't anywhere in the cemetery. Perhaps if he knew what Nox was supposed to be, he wouldn't have had a hard time trying to find it.

He had then decided that trekking enough in one direction would eventually lead him somewhere and, to his honest surprise, it did -straight into a light so bright it made his eyes hurt, and at the center of that light were two beings that looked to be made entirely of photons, gleaming in the sun like stars and creating galaxies of color every time they collided. If Nox is dark and dark is the absence of light, then Ryou knew he was in the wrong place.

It was then that a different figure had appeared, Peten the Dark Clown. He didn't need introductions; he simply pushed Ryou in the right direction. "You must protect the white warrior at all costs -Lumen." And that was when he saw her from behind the cracked mask. Her face looked absolutely numb as her body flailed about, destroying everything around it. A small waif-like girl flitted about around her, trying to avoid the attacks while aiming a long, ornate bow at the attacker.

It's this same face that looks up at him now, her eyes now open, looking black under the veil of night. Her face is a mask of concern and she clings to his arm like a small child afraid of separation.

This is Lumen, isn't it? So where is he meant to go? Where is Nox?

"Zorc?"

Zorc?

Ryou arches an eyebrow at the girl and shifts uncomfortably at her closeness. Did she usually do that to complete strangers?

Wake up, you fool! What is going on? Lorna!

That other voice… it's him isn't it?

Oh, well, now this makes sense. The girl is travelling with the Spirit, which is why she has appeared at Ryou's side here; at least, that's what he reasons from her presence and the barely audible voice at the back of his mind calling out to her.

Taking advantage of his bewildered silence, she asks, "How did we get back here? I thought we left the graveyard. What's going on?"

"I'm... I'm just as confused as you are," he mumbles, finding it increasingly odd that Zorc would allow such a small and dependent girl to tag along with him without her being of some kind of value to him. However, the mere fact that she is currently standing beside Ryou in the Inbetween and the fact that she was the elusive White Warrior that he had fought with Serenity earlier that day makes him think that there may be more to her than her mousy appearance.

He wonders if she even recognizes him from that fight or whether she would recognize Serenity if she were to see her. She seems so different from the fearsome creature she was before, stripped as she is of her sterling silver armor and wearing a ragged white button up with tan slacks.

"Well, at least your zombie things are gone now." Zombies? What on earth is he doing in my body? "Let's just get out here as soon as possible."

A soft rustle and the sound of something digging in -or rather digging out of the ground indicates that perhaps the poor girl has spoken too soon on the matter.

"Fuck..." the girl whines, her hands clutching his arm more tightly now.

"We need to run," Ryou orders her, staring down at her intensely while trying to free his arm, only to have her struggle to hold on.

The fog begins to thicken around them like a white soup, swirling and dancing in the air and almost in unison, they both shiver. All around them, uninvited guests begin to make their presence known, shuffling madly in their direction like flies around a mound of garbage. The girl -

God dammit. Lorna, wake up.

Lorna tensed, her eyes flitting up at Ryou's brown ones in desperation. "What are you doing?" she all but shrieks. "I can'twalk!"

"What do you mean 'you can't walk'?" he exclaims, his voice rising an octave, his panic increasing tenfold at the idea of dragging a girl who can't walk through a horde of hungry walking corpses. "We can't outrun them if I have to carry you," he groans.

"Well, you can't just leave me here!" she cries, her nails digging painfully into his skin now. "Don't be an asshole, Zorc!"

His eyes widen at her words. She still believes she's talking to Zorc, and it pains Ryou to think that throughout this entire conversation, this girl had thought everything Ryou said was entirely in character for Zorc. "Of course I'm not going to leave you behind!" he argues, glaring down at her. "And I'm not Zorc either," he adds dourly.

She does a slow double take and gently loosens her bear-trap-like grip around his forearm, causing some relief to course through him -as much relief as one could have when facing a horde of bloodthirsty creatures.

With a sigh, he scoops the girl into his arms. "You could stand to lose some weight," he notes, surveying the area for an easy escape route.

Lorna lets out a strangled gasp. "Why you -! Are you sure you're not Zorc?"

Ryou frowns but doesn't say anything in response; instead, he carries the both of them forward, crossing the massive expanse of dead grass and weeds, past the fungus covered tombstones, towards the only place they could go if they wanted a chance at survival -the mausoleum -hoping that whatever was buried there wouldn't come to life as well.

She grips his neck tightly as stares back at the undead following them, feeling desperate and small as she watches something rise up out of the ground where they had only just been standing. "This is… unreal," she whispers against his ear, speaking mostly to herself.

Panic grips at Ryou's heart as humanoid figures pool out from behind the mausoleum, coming towards his jogging figure.

Well, there goes that plan…

He begins to slow himself down to a pace he could think at, his eyes looking around once more. A soft ticklish sensation distracts him for a split second as he feels Lorna bury her head in his neck, trying not to look at the danger they were in, almost like not looking would make it all go away. Her short black hair brushes lightly against his face and collar, and he tries not to let it bother him too much as he searches.

"Can't be easy," he hears a husky voice remark from behind him, followed by a chuckle, "carrying a 120 pound girl around like that while you're running for your life."

When Ryou tries to twist his head around slightly to see who spoke, he almost stumbles -it's someone he never expects to see.

"Marik?" he gasps, and for less than a moment, the zombies are the last thing on his mind. This was a boy who was threatening him and his friends -one that he had seen his darker half plotting with earlier. As far as Ryou is concerned, this guy is bad news. "What are you doing in here?"

"Trying to save you," he replies smoothly. He's standing in the middle of the grass, unperturbed by the creatures all around him, and perhaps with good reason; it seems like they aren't even trying to attack him at all, as they shamble past him as though he were one of their own. It makes the white-haired boy feel even more uneasy than he already is. He's quite the sight, standing there in a t-shirt and dark jeans, looking all too ordinary for the scenery.

"Are you?" he asks in a doubtful voice.

The blonde smirks, noting the way the other boy is looking around anxiously. "They won't attack you, you know. They can't even see you."

"B-But they were chasing me!" Ryou could have sworn they were. Are Marik's words true?

"Were they really?" that smug voice replies.

The way he casually stood before them with a hand on his hip as though the Inbetween was the most normal place to be gave Ryou an indication that he was up to no good, and he found himself tightening his grip on the girl in his arms.

"Lorna," he calls out to the girl now. "You don't have to hide. I won't bite."

Lorna's head curiously unburies itself from the crook of Ryou's neck and her eyes are fixed on the newcomer suspiciously -it seems Ryou's mistrustful feelings aren't exactly unfounded. "What's he doing here?" she hisses, meaning only for Ryou to hear, but making her words very clear to the Egyptian.

"So, Marik, what are you really here for?" he asks, narrowing his brown eyes.

"Right," the other boy starts, "First things first, I'm not Marik. At least, not the one she knows…" He glances quickly at Lorna before continuing. "Common misconception, actually. The name's Malik."

"Same difference," Lorna mumbles, causing Ryou to let out a quiet snort.

"-and I'm really here to help you, believe it or not."

Ryou eyes Malik with disdain and shoots another question at him. "So how exactly would you help us?"

"I can help her walk again, for starters," he offers.

These words momentarily take Lorna's attention away from the walking dead shuffling aimlessly around them. "You can?"

"Of course," he smiles. "You just have to trust me."

"Wh-What do you mean?" she asks, her hands unconsciously clenching over Ryou's armored shoulder.

"Relax, it's not hard, but you'll have to do it yourself."

"How? I can't -"

"Walk?" he continues for her. "In the realm of the living maybe, but here, your legs are blister free. In fact, why don't you have Ryou put you down and try 'em out yourself? See if I'm lying."

"O-Okay," she says as she begins to untangle herself from Ryou's arms, but he refuses to let her go, after all, he'd protected her from the zombies, and he wasn't about to throw her to the sharks now. She trusts this Malik way too easily and he gets the feeling that she may not be the sharpest tool in the shed.

"How do you know so much?" he snaps at the other boy. "Lorna, do you know him?"

"W-Well, not really..."

"How would he know about your injury then?" Ryou himself hadn't known about it and his waking body is currently with Lorna.

She stares at Ryou's face, and he can pinpoint the exact moment that Lorna realizes what is wrong with this situation. Her eyes widen and she bites her bottom lip in worry.

Malik, who had been silent while they spoke, chuckles, "Well, you got me there, I guess." His smile turns dark, like that of a demon and he steps backwards, away from them. "If you don't want my help, then I'll simply take my leave. And I genuinely wish you luck, Lorna." With a swift turn of his heel, he begins to strut away.

Ryou stares after him, his eyes straining to see him in the distance amid the smog and darkness. His reverie is only broken by an abrupt shake of his shoulder; he had almost completely forgotten about the girl in his arms.

Once she gets his attention, she bites her lip sheepishly and turns her gaze to the ground. "Can you put me down now?"

As she speaks, he realizes that she has been blushing furiously and, feeling all too conscious of the warmth of her body all of a sudden, he feels his own cheeks heat up as well.

"A-Are you sure about this? What if Malik was lying?"

She shrugs her shoulders against his chest. "Only one way to find out."

At that, he nods and begins to lower her slowly while slipping his arm out from under her legs. With a soft rustle, she plants her feet on the ground, still clutching his shoulders for support. In one quick motion, she relinquishes her grasp and stands up on her own.

"Well, that was easier than I thought it would be." She remarks, fidgeting and wobbling as she tested out her legs. "Now it should be easier to find a way out of here..."

Big brother! Big brother! Watch this!

The voice sneaks up on him; it waltzes into his ear and brings back memories of that day. He can't let it distract him now.

"Hey, did you hear that?"

Ryou realizes that his recollection had prevented him from hearing anything else and he chastises himself for not being vigilant enough. "No, what is it?"

"It was like a little girl or something."

"Wait." He startles. "You mean you can hear that, too?"

"So you did hear it?" she inquires uncertainly, cocking her head to the right. "Y'know, I wouldn't normally suggest something so silly, but I think we should follow it."

He wants to agree and dismiss the idea; he wants to tell her he marched up and down this graveyard searching for Amane to no avail, but this time, it feels different, like he really can find her this time, and he senses the flame of his determination reignite itself.

"Um.. are they staring at us?" she whimpers, breaking him out of his trance and alerting him to the alarming silence that surrounding them instead of the scratching of diseased, decomposed feet and stumps dragging against the dirt.

One deceased man's empty eye sockets meet his own eyes in an almost challenging glare, almost threatening him. The man's fingers twitch slightly and his posture changes so that he leans forward, every protrusion of his spine appearing through cracked skin.

"I thought they weren't after us." His voice is hushed and hesitant, as though too high of a volume would bring a start to the onslaught.

Big brother, where are you?

"We should probably run and ask questions later." Lorna grabs his wrist and begins to tug him in a direction that looks relatively safe, and Ryou doesn't need much coaxing from her to bolt after her as fast as his legs could take him.

Judging by the beat of hundreds of strong legs against the ground, their fears of being pursued were completely justified, and the louder the beats come, the faster they will their own legs to move more rapidly, straining their muscles and letting adrenaline carry their bodies farther.

It hurts... Help me, Ryou...

"Hey, isn't that your name?" he hears her yell over the sound of the wind howling against his ears, her words coming from somewhere to his right. He is a bit surprised that she even knows his name, but he figures it must have something to do with Zorc.

"Yeah," he replies, deciding to be truthful and direct; he doesn't have the energy to avoid both the zombies and her questions. "It's my sister's voice."

"You have a sister?" She struggles to get the question out between the breathless gasps and grunts.

Ryou gasps for breath before answering. "Had," he corrects her."I had a sister."

It takes her a moment to process his statement, but once the painful meaning dawns on her, she lets out a soft "Oh" that she herself can scarcely hear. "I'm sorry," she calls out to him and he can't help but crack a smile in spite of himself.

Out of the fog, a large black building begins to emerge, and without a word spoken between the two, it becomes their destination. They have already far outrun the monsters, but the lingering fog and the distant sound of the dirt being disturbed tells them it's not over yet. However, the prospect of slowing down is very inviting.

"Do you think she's in there?" Lorna asks, slowing down as she approaches the iron gates, her hands running against the rusting metal fence. "This place is kinda creepy." She shivers and shifts her weight, unsure of whether or not to pass through the gates.

"We don't have many options," Ryou reminds her, his eyes travelling over to the undead still pursuing them. "I'm more worried that we won't be able to get inside. It looks pretty fortified."

Lorna nods slightly and follows her companion through the gate, shutting it behind her, as though that would stop their enemies from coming after them. Ryou grabs her wrist to hurry her along before anything caught up to them. She jerks forward, startled at being tugged forward so abruptly, letting out a breathy gasp.

"Let's check that door," she suggests, pointing towards the large front door of the manor, a sturdy black mass of wood. It looks surprisingly well-kept for a building so abandoned; one would expect the wood to be splintered and punctured after some time in this foggy and moist graveyard.

Without hesitation, he jogs up the rickety porch steps up to the door and reaches for the handle, rattling it impatiently. "Locked," he confirms the suspicions that both of them have. "Should we look for a backdoor?"

Big brothe Ur tS ME. its HURTING M E.

"It's louder here." Lorna puts her fingers to her temples, the beginnings of a headache squeezing and punching her blood vessels. "We're probably in the right place. The backdoor is worth a shot."

The two of them make a mad dash for the back of the mansion, the feeling of time running out nagging at them both, like the incessant sound of ticking in the dead of night.

Less than five minutes later, the backdoor turns out to be a dead end as well, and the duo stand helplessly before it, still trying to catch their breaths from their running earlier.

They can almost sense the undead upon them, their festering mouths filled with maggots and twisting, twitching in animalistic hunger. In their mind's eye, the horde is massive, blanketing the acres of cemetery they had just traversed, and neither of them want to think of the repercussions of finding themselves in the middle of it; the image is nightmare inducing.

"What now?" Lorna asks, her eyes moving fast but not seeing a thing, like a broken camera. Her mind is so preoccupied with imagining her own mangled corpse hobbling with the rest that it would risk overheating if it tried to process anything else.

Thinking quickly, Ryou points at something behind him. "That greenhouse!" he hisses, pulling her hand and running in the direction of a small building made entirely of glass and so thickly covered in vines that it blends in quite well with the weeds and willows of the overgrown garden. However, that's not what catches the boy's attention.

He can see something in the glass, something shining brightly through whatever cracks are still visible behind the vines, in a violet so bright it almost looks pink. It expands then contracts like a pulse, and as the two approach it, the voice sounds again.

BIG BROTHER -

"I'm coming, Amane!" he all but yells, abandoning Lorna and running ahead of her.

"W-Wait!" the girl cries out, trying to keep up with him, her sneakers slipping on the damp grass.

Ryou's hands grip the handle of the greenhouse door on instinct; he turns it without thinking and doesn't even have time to feel surprised that it actually opens. There is a dull scratching noise as he walks into the room and it's as if all the noise in his head was muted and replaced with static.

"Amane?" he calls out.

In front of him, a purple flame hovers in midair, tempting him. He doesn't know what to make of it, but his heart tells him that it absolutely has something to do with his sister's voice.

The flame expands and his sister's voice screams out at him again.

Pl E A SE HEL P

His breath catches in his throat as his legs carry him forward towards the flame.

iM HURTING

He reaches forward, his eyes never once leaving the blinding light of the flame.

"Ryou…" Lorna stands at the doorway, unsure of what to do. "What are you doing? I don't think that's safe," she says, but her words are lost to him.

The light calls to him, and soon it sucks him in.

'Amane, where are you?'

Lorna watches on as the light pulses and expands, her heart racing for fear that Ryou would get hurt, leaving her alone, and she scolds herself for such selfish thoughts. Everything happens in slow motion now. Ryou's whole body shudders as the light engulfs him, almost blinding her, and then it's over, and Ryou is on the ground in this old battered toolshed of this old battered mansion.

The swarm is getting closer, banging on doors, rapping on windows.

"Let me give you a hint… Lumen."

At first there is white, always white. Then black is all she sees.

Sooooooooooooooo, Malik eh?

Anyway, if you haven't guessed, this is what happened when Lorna passed out. This is what she doesn't remember.

Also, guessing Lorna's love interest is still on. You can guess up until I actually confirm his/her identity.

Hint: Her love interest is Cassandra Pentaghast. Everything is Cassandra Pentaghast? Identity of the mysterious voice? You bet ur sweet ass that the voice is Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast, Fourteenth cousin to the King of Nevarra nine times removed, Hero of Orlais, Right Hand of the Divine.

No, but seriously, keep guessing ;3