Chapter 16 - Mind

Tamsin was tossed into a velvet of darkness. Sometimes she was flying. Sometimes she was floating. She'd be walking for a few minutes, before she started to roll, crawl or limp.

Slowly, the darkness dissipated. Flashes of images started to occur - a face here, a scene there, a short conversation afar, or loud noises ringing everywhere.

Tamsin clenched her teeth to stop herself from throwing up. She braced herself, anxiously waiting for the first wave of attack.

Yes, the first wave of attack. That had been one of those horror stories she had heard others would mention when entering a zoned out Einheri's mind.

According to those who had such experience, sometimes the first wave of attack was simply the defense mechanism of that Einheri's mind while it was on auto-piloting mode. Some had encountered monsters. Some had met with traps. Some got tossed into labyrinths with no exits.

Then, there were those who ran into the second type of attack: the negative emotions buried deep inside the mind. Great trauma, fear, terror, grief...which would tear a Valkyrie's mind apart faster than any monsters could.

There were also times that, despite establishing the link, the Einheri's mind would simply deny access. The link would break after one had barely taken a look inside the Einheri's mind .

Tamsin prepared for all these things. She was ready to face the worst.

However, as her vision and hearing stabilized, she was still beyond shocked.

She found herself in a place that she had never thought she'd seen.

Not in Bo's mind, anyway.

It was a place that she had dreamed about many times before.

It was a place in the memories of her own.

She was in the middle of an open field of blooming angelica and rue. Surrounding the field were tall mountains crested with ice and snow.

Above her, the azure sky was adorned with small clusters of white, fluffy clouds. Beneath her, the land gradually descended into deep ravines with singing streams.

Far away from her, there was a lake. It was clear as a drop of tear.

Everything was exactly how she had remembered. Even the bittersweetness brought by the gentle breeze was.

Knut, who stood on her shoulder vigilantly, softened his stance and cooed in excitement, like he remembered the place as well and was happy to see it.

The hell? Tamsin frowned as she pulled her weapon out. Why am I seeing all this?

After staring at the lake for a while, she bent over and picked a sprig of angelica flower. That bitter scent somehow made her heart throb in pain.

The same pain she had felt a million times before, but couldn't remember when or where or why.

This was definitely her memory. She just didn't understand why she'd see it in Bo's mind.

After wondering if this was a trick that Bo's mind was playing on her, she shook her head and instructed Knut to scout the place. The bird soared into the sky and cacawed, telling Tamsin that he had found something to the north.

She hiked after him, and discovered a wooden longhouse.

As she stood in front of it, a strong rush of déjà vu hit her.

She knew this longhouse. She had stood in front of it like this many times before. She knew it like it was her home.

She swallowed hard and clenched her hands a few times, before she invited herself in.

She was not at all surprised to find a flock of ravens nesting on the beams above the entrance. Knut immediately approached them and started to introduce himself.

Tamsin stepped into the fire ash scattered on the floor and slowly walked down the middle of two rows of wooden benches, used both as seatings and beds.

In the center of the longhouse, there was a firepit with dying embers, on which a pot of stew simmered. The smell of the stew was way too bland for her taste, but somehow it made her mouth water.

As she passed the firepit, she noticed that someone was sitting on the bench in the far corner of the longhouse.

That person was sitting right under a vent that was supposed to let the smoke out. The sunlight came directly through the vent and made it difficult to see their face.

Strangely, Tamsin knew that it was a girl.

She knew her all her life.

With her breath held and her footsteps lightened, she approached her anxiously.

The girl, unaware of Tamsin's presence, was busy braiding together several threads of yarns with the color of cream, red and blue.

The sunlight suddenly brightened, and Tamsin had to avert her eyes. When she turned back again, the girl was working on something else.

She had a small, shiny plate in her hand. Every time she fumbled with it, the reflection hurt Tamsin's eyes.

With her eyes squinted and her right hand in front of them, Tamsin took a few more steps. This time, she was able to see that the girl was working on the piece of shiny metal with a sharp tool.

The whole time, the girl did not look at her once. It was as if she didn't exist at all.

The light was way too bright. Tamsin had to close her eyes for a while. When she opened them again, it seemed to be dusk already.

The girl, still working on the piece of metal, hummed a song.

It was a song about soft pillows, dreams, silk and fur. Tamsin did not know what language she was singing, but at the same time, she was able to understand every single word of it.

She started to sing along. As she did that, tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

A sob of whimper left her unexpectedly, and the girl suddenly raised to look at her.

The moment their eyes met, a strong, invisible force charged at Tamsin. It tossed her up and launched her away.

She looked down and saw her own hand pressing against her left abdomen. Blood gushed out through her fingers.

A sharp pain came. Strangely, the pain did not come from her wound.

It came from inside her chest. It was as if her heart was torn into pieces.

She stumbled and fell, crashing into the icy cold water.

She sank deeper and deeper.


Bo, having no idea that Tamsin had come into her mind to rescue, was busy running for her dear life.

At one point, she was trapped inside the elementary school she had attended briefly when bouncing from one foster home to another. Every door and every window of the building had turned against her. They wouldn't let her leave.

She eventually escaped through an air vent, after bludgeoning down the vent cover with a fire ax.

She had barely let out a sigh of relief, when she was surrounded by a group of people.

They were a group of adults with the faces of her childhood bullies.

This can not be real. It just can't. Bo told herself repeatedly.

However, the pain was very real when one of them hit her with a baseball bat.

Bo hit him back with the fire ax. She was surprised that, when the ax hit her attacker, he deflated in loud, circus clown laughter.

The other attackers closed in on her. Bo knocked down a few of them, but when she saw that the defeated ones started to inflate back to normal form again, she decided to run.

She had barely taken a few steps when the sky suddenly darkened.

She stepped into the downpour.

She was in the woods, looking for her dog Dash.

She had searched every corner. She had checked every tree hole and mud pit, but Dash was nowhere to be found.

Instead of giving up, she stubbornly went to check the hydrangea plant, where she had found Dash initially.

She took a deep breath and lifted the largest leaf.

Dash wasn't there, but there was a hatch door.

Bo grabbed the lever, turned and then pulled. She slid into the dark tunnel underneath.

The tunnel was long and sticky. It reeked of the warm, moist smell of fresh flesh.

Covering her nose and her mouth, Bo pushed her way forward, until she arrived at a large, empty chamber with a mysterious creature in the middle.

Please don't be Mother again! Bo prayed as she approached the squirmy creature.

It wasn't Mother, but it was just as horrendous. It looked like a pile of living organisms that was squished and squashed together.

The pile contracted and made a loud, wet vomiting sound. It spat something out.

At first, that thing just squirmed and writhed like the big pile, but it quickly shapeshifted into a woman.

The woman sat there in a fetal position for a while, before she raised her head and opened her eyes.

Bo gasped as a sudden pain seized her heart. When she had a clear look at that woman's face, the hair on the back of her neck stood.

That woman, her face...it was her own face! She looked exactly like her!

Somehow that finding, even though knowing that none of this was real, terrified her, because deep down, she knew that…this was not a vision or a twisted version of a piece of memory. This was not a dream either.

The woman in front of her who had her face. This entire encounter was something else.

Bo stepped back, but the woman reached for her. Her arm slashed at her like a snake, and instead of a hand, it had a small, ugly head on its end with a mouthful of sharp teeth.

The arm slid right past her face and went for the back of her head. It mounted its head, sinking its teeth into her flesh.

Bo grabbed it and struggled, but her vision started to get dark.

When she was about to pass out, the arm suddenly broke off.

Bo coughed loudly and collapsed. Through her spotted vision, she saw a small dark shadow bravely fighting the evil woman.

She had definitely met that shadow before. It had bitten something dangerous off to save her, just like it bit this woman's arm off….

Bo fought the woman alongside the shadow, until the woman had reduced into a squirmy pile of flesh.

Then, she turned around and fled. She squeezed her way through the dark, sticky tunnel. The tunnel contracted, pushing her out forcefully, dumping her into a colorful, crowded place.


As Tamsin sank deeper into the icy cold water, she started to lose her consciousness slowly.

She was about to give in, but the image of an unresponsive Bo suddenly came to her.

Her eyes shot wide open as she struggled to swim up. She must save Bo. She had to. They were bonded, forever.

She had to find her before it was too late. She had to.

She swam as fast as she could, but she was too deep in the water and was too weak.

The bitter cold consumed her, slowing her down, pulling her further away from the surface. She was never going to make it….

Until, something pulled hard on her right leg.

It was dragging her up fiercely, and she used all the strength she had left to keep with it.

Finally, she was able to pop her head out of the water. She scrambled to keep herself afloat while inhaling as sharply as possible.

The crisp air rushed into her inflamed lungs, soothing her pain.

She had never thought that being alive would feel this great.

Then, she noticed a bobbing head beside her.

It was a brown puppy with pointy ears, a dark muzzle and a pair of warm brown eyes. Somehow, those brown eyes reminded her of Bo.

She stared at the dog, and the dog stared back at her curiously while keeping a reasonable distance.

Tamsin had never seen this dog in her entire life, but somehow, she felt like she knew him.

She had met him before, maybe it had been a long time ago, at a time she couldn't even remember.

She knew his name, too. It was right on the tip of her tongue.

"Fenrir," she eventually let that mutter escape her.

The puppy responded by swimming closer to her and touching her face with his cold nose briefly. Instead of letting Tamsin pet him, he turned around and swam to shore.

Tamsin followed him. She got herself out of the water and examined herself briefly. She wasn't injured at all. She was just freezing cold.

She took a short rest and regrouped with Knut. The puppy waited for her patiently, and as soon as she was ready, he led the way into the woods.


With a bloodied nose, a torn shirt and a bruised arm, Bo stumbled into a bright street with ice cream shops, bakeries, clothing stores and upscale restaurants.

I know this place! Bo admitted to herself in shock as she scanned the surroundings. When she laid her eyes on the movie theater at the end of the street, she frowned slightly at its billboard showing that The Lost World: Jurassic Park was on along with a few other films that had come out in the 1990s.

Bo wandered along the street, as she tried to remember when she had been here.

She remembered watching a movie in that movie theater, where she had gotten the largest bucket of popcorn but ended up spilling it all over the floor. Had she been four, or five?

She remembered that ice cream shop. She had never been able to decide which flavor she wanted, for they had so many amazing flavors. Her ice cream order had always ended with an eeny, meeny, miny, moe, and it had always made her mother laugh.

As the vague image of her mother entered her mind, Bo flinched and looked around.

This time, she noticed something, something that immediately gave her chills down her spine.

The kid who stood beside her tossing a coin into the fountain did not have a face.

The girl in a blue dress eating a cone of bubblegum ice cream did not have a face.

Bo glanced at her own reflection in the water in panic, and was relieved that she did have a face and she still looked like herself.

As she observed the crowd in cold sweat, she discovered that all the grown ups seemed to look absolutely normal.

The minors, though, had no eyes, noses or mouths. Their faces were just smooth blobs which looked like modern mannequin heads.

Bo took a deep breath as she stepped away from the middle of the street and into a quieter corner.

A young couple passed by her with their toddler. They were discussing where they should go to eat in excitement. When their kid fell and started to cry, they consoled her.

It was both interesting and terrifying to Bo that someone without a face could cry and laugh.

As she was wondering where she should go next, someone bumped into her.

It was a teenager with a sporty outfit. He, too, was faceless.

Bo couldn't help but let out a sharp gasp because that featureless face was only a few inches away.

Her gasp somehow alerted the entire underage crowd, while the adults were unaware of her presence.

When every single faceless child turned to her, Bo swallowed hard and ran.

She sprinted down the street, passing each and every single one of those faceless children before entering a major street.

The street was empty, and somehow her body just entered this auto navigation mode, like it knew where she was heading to.

She eventually arrived at a subdivision, with a playground beside its entrance. The playground was full of kids, none of which had a face.

Bo held her breath and hid herself from them, as she entered the subdivision.

Standing beside the stop sign at the first intersection, she looked down along the street. It wasn't the first time today that she found her surroundings awfully familiar, and she had a strong feeling that it would certainly not be the last.

Slowly, she walked down the street. Slowly, she started to remember things.

She knew the sidewalk and the streets. She remembered every curve, every turn and every crack.

She knew the houses. She remembered those who lived in them. She remembered the inside of them. She remembered their front lawns, their trees and their backyards.

As she passed by a brick mailbox overshadowed by a lush yellow rose bush, she stopped, for she remembered this particular mailbox. When she learned to ride her bike, she fell right on top of the rose bush and hit her knee into the mailbox. She had ached for days.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, before she turned to her left.

There, down the street, she saw her childhood home: a small cottage style single family home with cream white sidings, a dark gray roof and a big hydrangea plant in the corner.

Her heart pounded. She was both eager and hesitant. She sensed danger and unknown, but at the same time, she was certain that she'd get some answers.

She gathered all her courage and approached the house.


Having wandered in the woods for hours, Tamsin started to think that maybe this was a maze with no real exits.

As she took another turn, a crooked maple tree entered her vision. The tree apparently had survived a lighting strike while its left half was completely charred and dead.

This was the third time that Tamsin had seen this tree.

Letting out a frustrated groan, she stopped to take a break. Just as she put one of her hands on the tree to support herself, the tree, along with the ground beneath her vanished.

There was nothing but a white void under her.

With a loud gasp of shock and fear, Tamsin swung her arms out in reflex, desperately wanting to hold to something.

There was nothing for her to grab on. Everything around her had already disappeared.

"Maybe you shouldn't be trying so hard to kill me, Bo!" Tamsin yelled during her free fall.

The fear of hitting something hard after the long fall seized her. The anxiety of not knowing when she was going to hit it was far worse.

She fell further and further down, until light appeared below her. Before she could even take a look at it, she crashed into something.

The impact nearly knocked her out.

Her fall did not stop. It just slowed down.

Cold, fresh water rushed into her mouth and her nose, stinging her throat.

While scrambling to stop herself from sinking deeper into the water, she saw the bright sky through the water. Vaguely, she heard laughter and cheers.

She swam up despite the fact that her lungs were about to explode. Soon, she was able to push her head above the surface of the water.

She was surprised that she was inside a small pond. Over the pond there stood a bridge which connected the walkways of an outdoor mall.

The mall was filled with people who seemed to be happy and carefree.

Tamsin gasped rapidly, taking in the smell of late Spring, freshly spun cotton candy, warm chocolate chip cookies and pizza.

She got herself out of the water and approached the happy crowd. As she laid her eyes on the nearest person, she froze.

It was a young child who had no face.

It didn't take her long to discover that none of the minors had a face.

"What kind of fucked up childhood trauma is this?!" She murmured as she looked for Bo, but the brunette was not here.

Tamsin decided to leave. As she exited the front parking lot, she was immediately taken back into the dark woods again.

"Damn!" She cursed when she saw that half dead maple tree again.

She tried touching it, but this time, nothing happened.

"Great…can this shit be any worse?!"

With that, there came the pouring rain and it dumped water right into her face.

Tamsin rolled her eyes as she spat the water out of her mouth. She looked for a way out, but instead, she returned to the maple tree again.

"Oh come on!" She yelled as she kicked the tree hard.

The rain became heavier. Water rushed into her eyes, her nose and her mouth. She squinted her eyes shut and wiped her face with her hand in futile.

Then, vaguely, she heard a young child crying.

She looked for the child, but could not find anyone.

She ordered Knut to go high above and take a look. The bird took off reluctantly.

He returned soon, telling Tamsin that he had not seen anyone else in the woods.

Tamsin sighed and pushed forward. Every step she took, it was right into a muddy puddle. If it wasn't a muddy puddle, it was long, entangled brambles. They coiled around her ankles, digging their thorns into her flesh.

Then there were the trees. They whipped their branches at her face whenever she was near them.

Every rock in her way tried to trip her. Every leaf nearby wanted to cut her. Even the smallest mushroom would try to suffocate her by turning into a puff of spores right in front of her face.

Then there was the heavy rain. It was rapidly taking her energy away, just like how fast it was consuming every positive thought inside her.

She slowed down. Her mind started to get foggy. Her eyelids became very heavy, and so were her feet.

Eventually, she collapsed, smashing her face right into the wet, muddy ground.

She finally let her eyelids fall. She needed a long rest anyway. She was exhausted. It would be nice to just sleep in this pouring rain….

Maybe...the darkness wouldn't be so bad if she could just let everything go...

Maybe it wouldn't be that bad….

She lost consciousness briefly, but was awakened by the sharp pain coming from her left arm.

With half of her face buried in muddy water, she pried her eyes open.

There, she saw Fenrir biting down on her left arm. The puppy had his paws digging into the ground as he pulled on her repeatedly.

Tamsin let out a long gasp. She coughed out all the muddy water inside her mouth as she struggled to pull her short sword out.

Jabbing it into the ground, she used it to pull herself up on her knees.

That simple movement almost consumed her. She panted hard while gripping the sword hilt with both of her shaky hands.

Fenrir came under her chest and pushed her up. With his help, she finally stood up.

The dog barked at her once, before he ran into the bush of brambles. Tamsin gritted her teeth and pushed her way through.

Her vision suddenly brightened. She found herself inside a subdivision with cottage houses, carefully maintained lawns and mature trees.

The downpour had reduced to a drizzle, and it no longer would affect her.

Tamsin followed Fenrir, and let out a small gasp of surprise when she saw a cream white house standing at the end of the street they were on.

In the corner of its yard, there was a huge hydrangea plant. There must be over twenty large mop heads of vibrant blue flowers on that plant. They stood there vigilantly like sentinels.