Eden’s mind was a complete jumble. Skylar believed the year was 1999. Worse still, she thought it was currently September, which was three months before she initially arrived in London that year. That must have been around the date her mind was messed with.

She supposed that she couldn’t complain though. Even though her sister had lost roughly three years of her life, it was far better than her being resorted to a bumbling idiot. If that had happened she’d probably have begun plotting a way to kill her father.

The question now was: how was she going to break it to her younger sister that she’d lost three years of her life? That she’d missed so many things because someone had placed an Enchantment on her to keep her from being conscious?

Felicity gently sat on the bed next to Skylar and held the woman’s hand.

“Skylar, I know this is going to be difficult to understand, so we’re going to explain this to you gently.”

“Explain what? Felicity, what’s going on,” Skylar asked, her voice quickly becoming shaky and frantic.

Felicity looked to her and nodded in affirmation that she was ready to help. Eden slowly took a deep breath.

“You currently appear to have amnesia. In reality, it’s December 9th, 2002. That means you don’t remember the last three years.”

At first Skylar seemed shocked, but her expression quickly faded to disbelief as she began to laugh in response.

“You’re joking. Eden, what’s really going on?”

Eden remained quiet to drive home the point. There was no rush to catch the girl up to speed. If she was in her younger sister’s shoes, she likely would have needed an hour to process what was currently happening.

Plus, sometimes, words weren’t enough to convey the true severity of situations. Hopefully her younger sister would reach the realization of that this was no laughing matter.

In front of her, Skylar remained in disbelief for a while longer.

“This is a joke, right?”

Eden slowly shook her head from side to side in response.

“I’m afraid not. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now, but I want you to know you’re safe.”

“Three years? Eden, what the hell? How can you act so relaxed? I just lost three years of my life?”

She didn’t have an honest response for Skylar. While she focused on becoming a powerful sorceress that her sisters could rely on when they came to London, she also appeared to have abandoned them. As a person, if it hadn’t been for Seiko, she wouldn’t have grown at all. Now it was being shown to her clear as day just how far she had to go.

Skylar was so close, but yet also felt so far. The woman felt incredibly guilty for not making a more substantial effort to get in contact with her sisters after she’d arrived in this forsaken country.

“It’s not her fault,” Felicity intervened.

Staring up at her often demure sister, Eden found herself speechless.

“This isn’t Eden’s fault. Our parents intentionally kept her out of contact with us, so she had no idea what was going on at home. Sure she could have visited, but where would she get the large amount of crystals to travel along the ISTC system? And traveling by boat is out of the question,” her younger sister continued on.

Now Felicity was trying to make excuses for her. Eden felt like she was going to be sick to her stomach. The very reality which she hoped would not present itself before her was now doing so. It was the dark reflection in the mirror everyone feared.

"Felicity she's not wrong."

"What?"

“When I wasn’t able to get into contact with you, I knew something was wrong but I had an inkling it was because of father given how we stopped getting along because of the way he was treating Luna. Yet I continued to focus on bettering myself because I thought I could help boost all of you when you came here to London.”

“If you cared so much then why didn’t you help me when I came here,” Skylar asked bitterly.

“You wouldn’t let me get close. You were a Tower and I was a NoM in that you always kept your guard up. I was so worried about losing you that I ended up causing that very thing to happen.”

Eden recalled those miserable nights she spent with the altered Skylar. They would argue and bicker with each other with no end in sight until Skylar stormed off to her dorm room. She felt incredibly guilty. The reason why she’d come to dislike her younger sister was because of her failure to get the girl to warm up to her. It was also the reason why her younger sister had come to hate her. She’d only realized that too little too late these past few days.

“Why didn’t you continue to pursue me. Why did you give up on me?”

“Because I couldn’t. You were always guarded and a glamour hid any spells affecting you. After I broke your heart, I didn’t try to come to you again because I was afraid I’d only end up hurting you and myself further. And so I came to dislike you because being with you would only result in us hurting each other. I know that was wrong but what was I supposed to do?”

Painful memories flooded into her mind. Whereas now she was currently remorseful of her past actions, at the time she’d been angry, terrible and bitter. Had she not let it end with that argument things might be vastly different than they were now.

Though if Skylar was like this, then what was the situation like for their mother? Was she in a similar situation as her children? Or was it something far worse?

If that were the case there would be a glaring inconsistency. What happened to Skylar seemed like it was done by an amateur. Surely her mother wouldn’t be charmed so easily.

Inside Eden, her heart felt like it was going to rip itself apart. Her small hope that someday they’d all be happy and together again in the future was gone.

At the source of all of this was her sleezy father. She was certain that bastard cost Skylar three years of her life and was now manipulating their mother for whatever reason. There was no good reason to do so, but he was the kind of person to push the envelope as far as he could before letting up. Such a terrible man shouldn’t have been allowed to walk free in the first place after all he’d done in the past.

“Eden are you alright? You trailed off and you look like you’re in deep thought,” Felicity asked out of concern.

“Sorry,” she said as she shook her head. “I was just thinking about our parents.”

Felicity remained silent for a moment before turning to face Skylar.

“Skylar, do you remember what we told Eden to do at the ISTC station when she left?”

Next to Felcity, Skylar puckered her lips inward as she appeared to search for the answer. Then she tilted her head to the side, a habit the elder sister hadn’t seen in years.

“Yeah we told her to become a Magister by the time I came to Cambridge, didn’t we?”

“Yes. Do you recall what our sister was like before she left?”

“I do,” Skylar replied affirmatively.

Felicity didn’t respond, and instead stared at her sister who seemed bewildered. She had every right to be as well, because Eden couldn’t tell what their younger sister was trying to do.

Slowly, a frown stretched across Skylar’s face.

“…oh.”

“It’s alright. I thought the same thing. When you came here and you weren’t acting like yourself, Eden must have been incredibly hurt. Is that so wrong?”

Another dark mirror that she didn’t want to stare into was the one Felicity was currently bringing up. In actuality the past few days she’d been on a high like no other now that she had Felicity back in her life. She’d even lied to herself a little by telling herself that she always knew her sisters wouldn’t abandon her.

The reality was that once Skylar re-entered her life the way she did, she felt like they had come to dislike her. Deep down, that made her bitter, and those feelings came to the surface when Felicity arrived in London with her parents.

Naturally, she’d wanted nothing to do with her younger sister to avoid being presented with that reality, and had even been prepared to act distant with her until she realized exactly what was going on when those crows, and eventually watchers, started poking about.

“I-“

“Don’t deny it Eden. You were afraid of being hurt again like how Skylar hurt you. Kono told me about it when I was playing Go with Camilla.”

How much had her girlfriend told her younger sister about her?

Eden sighed. That didn’t matter now, as Felicity now knew that she’d had doubts about her. It didn’t seem to phase her though, given how understanding she appeared to be. Though she didn’t know why that was the case, she was grateful her little sister seemed to understand.

“I may have… stretched the truth the past few days. I felt like I was doing it for your sake, and because I wanted to tell myself that I didn’t have doubts. That you were still going to be the sister I knew and loved from back in Sydney,” Eden admitted.

“You’ve never been good with talking about how you feel when it comes to these things, Eden. Isn’t that right Skylar,” Felicity said, gently rubbing their other sister on the back.

Skylar nodded in response. Currently she was biting her lip, the same anxious habit that she recalled her younger sister Iris did.

“It is,” the girl said before sighing. “I’ll at least hear you out. Tell me then, why can’t I seem to remember anything that’s happened these past three years?”

Skylar couldn’t believe the day she was currently having. First she woke up in an unfamiliar room and thought she was about to become the real-life protagonist of a horror story. Then Felicity and, surprisingly enough, Eden entered the room to calm her down, only to tell her that three years had passed.

Three whole years were suddenly gone in the blink of an eye, and she couldn’t remember the faintest bit of them. What was even stranger was that she could recall knowledge she knew she hadn’t learned yet according her memories. Apparently she’d learned it while she wasn’t in her proper state of mind. At least that seemed to make sense. Though not knowing when and where she learned it was worrying.

Perhaps that most disappointing part of it all was Eden’s story. Not only did she end up hurting her older sister, she was also only good enough to attend Lucy Cavendish. Of all the colleges at Cambridge, that was the only one that would take her. Why did that have to be? She’d badly wanted to get into Queen’s College. What’s worse was that she was already halfway through her second year. She’d missed out on so many firsts.

Right now, Felicity was explaining what happened after she’d arrived. Her poor sister had to put up with their parents, which struck a nerve with her. Why were they being so unreasonable with their own daughter? It honestly didn’t make any sense.

“And that’s how we got here,” Felicity finished.

The explanation took far longer than she expected, and she could feel her head spinning just by thinking about what happened in the three-year gap of her currently blank memory. It was so convoluted that it had to be true because if that wasn’t the case then her sisters would have tripped themselves up by now.

That her father played with Felicity as if she were a toy really got underneath her skin. Her mother doing nothing, only served to anger her further. It felt like she should have expected it, but at the same time she felt as though she should have honestly expected it from them.

“How is he still walking about freely,” Skylar stammered.

“That’s what I would like to know. I suspect that he’s trying to do something that involves Luna, but I have little evidence, if any, to help back that theory,” Eden said, having returned from Messaging Seiko.

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it, our adopted sister is an elf. She could be a political chess piece that father may be using to get back into the good graces of his faction. I don’t fully know what he intends for her, but I have I have an inkling of what he may try to do. I don’t want to be right, but if I am then hopefully I’ve bought us some time to come up with a plan. I’d explain more but I’m sure this is a lot to wrap your head around.”

Indeed it was quite the situation to wrap her head around, and she honestly didn’t understand it fully. That their father had their minds altered with was something she wouldn’t forgive. She almost couldn’t believe it. The loss of three years of her memory was pretty damning though, as well as how her parents started acting different once Eden left home.

At the same time, there was something that was bothering her about the whole situation that she couldn’t quite recall. It was as if she knew something important, but her mind was telling her she didn’t want to remember it. The nagging feeling was eating away at her like a parasite. Try as hard as she might, she couldn’t recall anything.

It would likely be best to let it go for now.

“Speaking of which, what did Kono say? Is she going to leave early?”

“Unfortunately not. She wants to perform a checkup on you when she gets home. A fundamental one at least. It’s not like you can freely waltz about with those damn crows watching us. She does, however, want me to see if you’re able to walk around on your own.”

That was another thing she found herself concerned about. If things had occurred exactly as Eden had described they had, then was there more damage to her mind than just memory loss?

“Are you sure it’s just my body that’s been affected? What if there’s still something wrong with my mind?”

“Do you feel like yourself?”

“I do.”

“Then you have your answer. Though Seiko has mentioned that there is an avenue we can pursue to ensure the Enchantment’s fully gone though that will have to wait until we’re in Kyoto.”

Kyoto? That was halfway across the world. Could Eden afford such a trip?

“You do understand how expensive it would be to go to Kyoto right? It’d take us years to save up enough to visit Japan, and even then, where would we go? From what I’ve heard, the demi-humans aren’t exactly friendly.”

Next to her, Eden frowned as if she took personal offense from her comment.

“That’s where Seiko is from, actually. I can personally assure that the demi-humans there are friendly and welcoming. They may hide the secrets of their magic but they’re just as curious about us as we are about them. Someday soon I’ll even be searching for a home there.”

While she’d known Eden’s girlfriend was Japanese by her name, she hadn’t assumed that she was from Kyoto. In part, that was thanks to all the rumors she could recall swirling about. There was another matter which at the moment concerned her even more.

“So you’ll be leaving the Mageocracy for Kyoto then?”

“I will,” Eden said as she gently reached an arm around her sister and snaked it underneath the opposite arm. “Let’s walk and talk about it, if that’s alright. It’ll give your mind a chance to breathe on the other matters we’re facing.”

Nodding, Skylar allowed her sister to gently ease her over to the side of the bed and let her feet rest down on top of the carpet for a brief moment before slowly shifting her weight onto them.

Her legs felt like jelly below her. They were shaky and felt like they couldn’t support themselves on their own.

“Easy, we can-“

“No.”

Skylar wasn’t one to so easily give up when the going got rough. Instead, she’d dig in her heels and trudge onward, no matter how difficult things appeared to be.

Slowly, she willed her right leg to hold itself in place, the left following soon after. Gently ushering Eden away from her, she attempted to take her first steps. As she shifted her weight onto one leg, she found herself crumbling down like a neglected bridge that had been put back into use after decades.

Next to her, both Felicity and Eden grabbed and steadied her. Her face felt hot from the shame currently welling deep within. How could she let this happen to her? She was an Enchantress-Transmuter of all things. If anything, she should be able to cleave her way through any glamor that presented itself before her. Yet here she was, three years having suddenly been torn from her in the blink of an eye.

She couldn’t blame Eden either, because Eden and Felicity’s stories made sense to her for some reason. The nagging of her mind for the details she’d lost when the enchantments were broken was beginning to overwhelm her.

“First I lose three years, then I can’t seem to hold myself together and now it feels like I’m forgetting something important,” she growled. “If father really is responsible for this, then I’m going to rip him apart the first chance I get.”

“Woah easy there. Getting mad is only going to make this worse. Deep breaths Skylar, deep breaths,” Eden said as she attempted to soothe her broiling anger.

After sighing again in frustration, Skylar looked her sister in the eyes.

“Is this going to be permanent?”

“Likely not. Seiko’s already said you appear to be rapidly recovering. We got lucky that whatever Enchantment was placed on you was poorly placed, as if it was meant to be instantly unraveled. Unfortunately it wreaked complete havoc on your body.”

So she was recovering then? At least there was some good news in all of this.

“How long will it take?”

“Hard to say. If you can’t walk, then it’s possible your astral body has been damaged by whatever spells were placed on you. We won’t know for sure until we can get you into a cog chamber, but that might prove difficult,” Eden admitted. “Knowing you, probably a month or two before you’re fully back on your feet.”

A couple of months was a long time to wait. It was better than never though. With the damage that had been done by the spell in a matter of minutes, it could have been much worse. Better to be alive than dead, that was for sure. Still, the lingering effects of the magic on her body weren’t anything she was happy to be going through to begin with.

“Can you help me back onto the bed,” she asked.

Gently, Eden and Felicity eased her down onto the bed so that she was sitting upright. Out of curiousity, once her sisters had let go of her she gently tried push herself up with her arms alone, and found that while her legs were weak, her arms felt like strong wooden beams, ready to be put to woirk. Just her luck, her arms work fine and but her legs don’t. It was almost laughable, as if there were a lopsided curse in effect.

She needed time to process all of this. Her mind was a complete jumble, and though Eden had earned some of her trust, there was still a huge distance between them. If anything, she needed to talk to someone other than her eldest sister.

“I think I’m going to need a little bit. Is it alright if we had this talk of yours later?”

“Of course,” Eden replied, rubbing her back in a loving matter. “I know its difficult to come to terms with your situation. I’ll be downstairs if you need me, just… yell really loud.”

“Actually, if it’s alright with you, I’d like Felicity to stay with me. I want to talk to her about… things.”

Though that was a lie, Felicity had left many details of what happened in Sydney out as well. She hadn’t been in London long either, so she would likely think the same as herself. Her sister was the ear that she needed.

“I don’t mind staying with you,” Felicity replied warmly.

“Of course. Let me know if you need anything,” Eden said before getting up and making her way to the door. When she reached, it, she briefly turned to look at her once again. “Sorry again. About all of this.”

With that, Eden left her and Felicity alone, closing the door behind her. Once she heard the woman’s footsteps on the stairs, she turned to face Felicity and pulled her into a tight hug.

“She hasn’t done anything to you has she?”

“No, nothing of the sort,” Felicity replied. “She and her girlfriend saved my life and they’ve been nothing but kind to me since. They’ve offered me shelter from our parents when they had no obligation to do so.”

“Are you sure we can trust Eden?”

Right now, Skylar felt as though she had her back against a wall. If she was really in London and everything else checked out when she could finally move around on her own then she would have to rely on her sisters. Not that she minded because she knew she could trust Felicity. It was only Eden who she felt anxious about. That and she had never met Eden’s girlfriend Seiko, so she while she was grateful that the woman had apparently saved her life, she was still anxious about what she would expect of her.

In front of her, Felicity took her hands and gently rubbed them.

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now Skylar. If a large part of my memory was suddenly ripped from me, I know I’d be suspicious of everything that breathes and moves. But Eden truly is in a weird situation where I don’t think even she fully understands her feelings. So yes, I do trust her.”

“I’m still, anxious about the whole situation. Can you tell me more of what you know? Everything that happened after I left.”

“I’ll do my best but, there’s something that you need to know before we start.”

“What’s that?”

“I have gaps in my memory too. Father messed with my mind as well, unfortunately. I haven’t told Eden or Seiko yet because I don’t want to worry them further. Eden honestly looked like she was going to be sick while you were unconscious.”

Felicity sheepishly smiled at her after she finished explaining. That dispelled any lingering doubts she may have had that the girl before her wasn’t her sister.

“Just one more question before we start,” Skylar said.

“Ask away.”

“Are our younger sisters alright? Do we know if the same thing happened to them”

“They are and I don’t think so, though you should know they’re probably a little mad at you. When you weren’t yourself, you were really cold and rude to us when you called via LRC. I’m sure once we’re all able to talk to each other without needing to use an LRC device we’ll all be able to move on together as sisters.”

That her little sisters were safe was enough for her. There would be a time to apologize to them soon, but for now, there was the more important matter of getting her head back in full working order. She needed to be able to think straight.

“Alright. Start with around the September before I left.”