"Blacken… Blight…"

Ash's eyes stared solemnly into her hands that rested atop her lap. I sat in the empty space she made where her feet were once stretched out. The slow blinking and the silence… they both nearly guilted me into apologizing for giving such a rude awakening.

Catching her up to speed on things was a process done with a heavy heart. Wasn't at all particularly fond of having to be the one to bore all the bad news to her… especially immediately right after a long sleeping session.

Nevertheless, someone had to do it and who else better to relay the situation to her than me?

Ash's contemplation lasted as brief as my explanation did. She raised her head, no fear, no hesitation, it was just plain resolve that glimmered in her emerald eyes.

Just as you would have expected from a knight of her caliber, resolve was her sword, and determination was her shield.

"Master," She began, her tone firm, words spoken in absolutes. "I regret deeply that I couldn't be at your side in a moment of great need. This dishonor, I would come to rue it for as long as I still hold breath… As a Servant, I've failed my Master twice now."

Failure. I was all too familiar with that feeling, that expression on her face. It hurt to see herself afflicted with the throes of self-loathing even more than it did myself.

Cause I knew between the both of us… only one of us was undeserving of it.

Ash continued to speak. "Being ensnared in the Blight's beguiling haze… in slumber, I heard... voices, many of which I thought I'd never hear again. It was nice to hear them again. They spoke words of comfort to me."

"What did they say?" I asked.

"Stay," Ash said, her voice going soft. "They said stay. That it will not hurt here. That you will not feel pain here. You're safe here."

It was just a dream. I wanted to assure her that that was merely all it had been. A long sleep meant a long dream. I almost said it, but I didn't. Because how could I be so sure that it really was?

I let her continue.

"It was as the voices said. It did not hurt, it did not ache. With them, I felt at peace, I felt a happiness... and I… I wanted to stay. I didn't want to leave. I hated that I didn't. I was utterly convinced that nothing else mattered so long as I was with them, their voices… their words. Friends, family… Lenora was with me again, and I intended never to leave her again."

The way she spoke about it, how it sounded, more real than any vivid dream. You could tell… I could tell... the yearning in her voice made it all crystal clear. She longed for it, truly she did.

But she was here now, awake, aware, so something must have happened after. Irene's influence, maybe. That long, long night of thorough concentration. That must have been it.

I spoke again. "What changed your mind?"

At this point, I was still expecting a simple straightforward 'I woke up' to end her tale. Then she relinquished her answer, she stared straight at me, and then I wasn't so sure anymore.

"You did, Master."

It was my turn to receive an awakening of my own. I blinked, cocked my head, and without even thinking, already spoke. "What?"

"It was you," Ash affirmed. "Before I realized it, I saw that your presence had joined the others as if you had always been there all along. But unlike them, unlike their voices, you did not speak a single word to me. You refused to budge, keeping as still as a statue. You were just there, standing… your hand out towards me."

I felt myself impulsively shifting closer, leaning closer, hanging onto her every word.

"What happened after?"

"They said never to take your hand. They said you were there to take me away from them. That if I went, I could never come back. I'd lose everything. My happiness, my peace… I'd lose Lenora again. I didn't want that. So I stayed, I refused to acknowledge you… for so long, I ignored your presence. But you were still there… still with your hand outstretched."

Ash made a show, lifting her hand towards me, speaking as she did. "Like this."

I didn't know what came over me, but before I could question it, my hand was already reaching, my fingers already intertwining with hers. I gripped her hand.

Ash gripped back.

"It was like that too," She said, a faint smile on her face. "I still fail to understand why I did… even after every discouragement, even knowing the repercussions, I still found myself walking, reaching for you, and when I finally held your hand… it felt just like this. That's when I woke, that's when I saw you standing before me again."

Ash's smile slowly began to fade. "I am yet to forgive myself for the ineptitude I've displayed while under you. My promise was to always keep you out of harm's reach and I've still yet to uphold that pledge I made to you. There is a time to lament these thoughts, a time to admonishment myself for my failures… but I realize now is not that time."

There it was again - her sword and shield.

"If what you say is true, if the Blight has indeed blackened, then we are of little time. For now, all these doubts and grievances, I shall cast aside. I stand with you through it all, once more, I shall give my all… and I swear to you, with absolute certainty… I will not fail you a third time."

It was amusing. She mirrored me in so many ways. The self-deprecation, the sense of never trying hard enough, the way she cast all that aside, the resolutions she was making… I've been down that same road not even a full 24 hours ago, and here she was speeding along that highway at a record pace.

Was like deja vu in Elf-form.

I nodded at her words, smiled at her bolstered resolve, and said to her something I should have told her a long time ago. "You never had, Ash."

She simply smiled at that, didn't refuse it, didn't refute it, hadn't yet to pry her hand away from mine. I didn't want to let go either… but then I had a stray thought worming its way from my head and onto my lips.

"Wait, so if I appeared to you in the trance, and if that's what snapped you awake," I began, feeling my gaze start to drift to the sidelines. "Then Ria… who would it be for her?"

"It certainly wouldn't be you, that's for sure."

That wasn't Ash that spoke. That voice… I recognized that inflection, the sharpness, sternness… I spun my eyes the other way around towards the direction of the stairs.

There I found Amanda and Irene standing shoulder to shoulder beside one another. Three guesses - who do you think the culprit could be? Certainly couldn't be the one hyped-up verging on a caffeine overdose.

I'm willing to wager my bets to the cross-armed detective that loomed over the couch with eyes so heavy and somber. Guess, she wasn't much of a morning person too.

Seeing her mere inches away got me keeping my hands to myself again, scooting over a marginal distance to the other end of the sofa. Of course, surreptitious as I tried to be, my actions failed to go unnoticed from her ever-piercing gaze.

"You're awake," I said, and immediately wanted to bite my tongue at such a stupid statement.

Irene seemed to share the same sentiment. "Nice of you to notice."

There were a couple of glaring things 'bout her reemergence that I was starting to take notice of. The most prominent of which, being the drastic change in her demeanor. She got that suffocating air about her again, that no-nonsense feel, accentuated further by the downward slant in her brows… making it look like she was always crossed at something or someone.

Her white blouse was buttoned up nice and proper, no longer feeling the need to expose more than she really should. Hair kept up nicely in a tight bun as opposed to the loose ponytail that flailed about all throughout the night.

Uptight in tone, rigid in posture… it almost as if the wild and loose Irene from last night had all but been a dream, a vivid lascivious hallucination that had gone with the midnight storm.

One thing. There was only one thing that kept it from being just a simple figment of the imagination. For as intimidating, for as strict as they looked, Irene's eyes refused to meet contact with my own for any longer than a second. Those hazel browns kept veering away left, right, and pretty much anywhere but center to mine.

Heck… if she wasn't gonna mention anything, I wouldn't either.

"So, about Ria," I said. "What's happening to her?"

Irene anchored on to that topic, latching her gaze permanently to the figure still in slumber. "The same that happened with your Elf. It's the Enstar's call. She's having the same voices inside her head telling her to stay, I'm sure."

"What then? The voices aren't letting her leave?"

She continued to stare, continued to explain. "What I did was last night was not break the trance - I only offered a lifeline out of it instead. How that lifeline manifest is up to their own imagination but it essentially gives them a way out if they choose to accept it."

It wasn't a solid enough anchor apparently, Irene's eyes drew away even from her too, exhaling a heavy breath. "So what's happening to her is pretty clear. Ria herself is refusing to wake up."