“What an entertaining show,” Queen-Consort Amoena said, standing atop the broken rubble of what was once a moon-shaped stage. “Though, perhaps a bit overly dramatic? As much as I appreciate theatrics, it does seem like the two of you would be better served by talking your family issues out in private.”

Her hands were clasped together now, and a broad, pointed smile dominated her dark features. There were no traces of the earlier injuries on her dusky skin, and strange geometric designs coated her in hypnotic patterns. Sláine hadn’t been able to process much about her appearance earlier due to the darkness and the rapid pace of the fight, but she could see now that her white hair was bound up into braided bun and held with jeweled pins that looked to be made of… bone, she thought, or perhaps ivory.

Or, maybe that was just her appearance in this memory? She was still a weird, hypocritical spider-person chimera, though. Like, really now, what grounds did she have to say that after ambushing them in a cave and trying to throw them into a hole?

…That woman really needed to learn some restraint.

Sláine pushed herself up using her halberd as support, and though she felt the ache of her muscles, she stared down the woman she fully intended to make her prey. “You’ve lost,” she said, neither amused by Amoena’s over-the-top bullshit nor intimidated by it. “So buzz the fuck off unless you want me to chop you to pieces.”

“…Have I? Really? While I’m a bit disappointed at her wavering loyalties, Maximus managed to do what I asked her to. Or, maybe you want Agriope to tell you herself?”

Janus jumped down first, leaping off the balcony and extending his artificial leg to catch himself before clambering over the slew of bodies strewn over the ground. His attention kept snapping over to Amoena, as if he was afraid she’d suddenly do something or — more likely, given the expression on his face — unable to keep himself from glowering at her. But she didn’t move or respond to him in any way, just stood there as Sláine glared at her from her pile.

Maximus followed after him, her movements slower and much more intentional. She didn’t nearly trip multiple times like her brother did, and just like Sláine, she didn’t take her eyes off Amoena for a single second.

“…Okay. I’m listening,” Sláine said, and Amoena beckoned to someone beyond her vision. It was then that Red herself climbed out of the hole.

She looked… tired.

That’s the only way Sláine could interpret that posture, that slump-shouldered defeat and the way her mask didn’t even tilt up to face the group across the stadium. As soon as she took her place at Amoena’s side, the woman put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and Sláine instinctively bristled at the gesture. Let go of her, you creep, she wanted to shout, but for now, she kept her mouth shut.

She wasn’t wearing that bizarre dress anymore, Sláine noted, but her original clothes instead, and the realization made her frown even more.

There was a long moment of silence as everyone stared at each other, as if waiting for someone else to make the first move. The tension was still thick, so thick that Sláine wanted to hack it apart with anything she could get a hold of, and internally she stewed on her own annoyance. Was it really too much to ask for, for a five-minute sit-down? Was it really too much to ask for, wanting something to go even slightly her way?

Janus was the first to speak. “Red… what did she do to you?”

“She didn’t do anything,” Red replied, her voice entirely flat. “After you started fighting them, Maximus, I began remembering everything, and she came to… speak to me personally.”

“And?” Sláine prompted.

“…If I agree to go with her willingly, she’ll let all of you go.”

Sláine E. Catháin thought it’d be something like that, and repressed her scream of frustration. It was the kind of foolish, self-sacrificial nonsense she expected from people who hadn’t yet learned their value or, alternatively, had forgotten it somewhere along the way.

After all, it was exactly what she’d do if she was in her position, and Sláine knew that this was probably her own just desserts.

This was also surely what Amoena had been hoping for, had her weird ‘memory modification’ plan not worked. Bully the woman enough, put her through enough misery, trauma, and shame, let her see people suffering for her sake and then dangle that carrot in front of her: just do what I ask, darling, and everything can be solved quite easily! It seemed Red had escaped from all this willingly, all that time ago, so kidnapping her would be ultimately pointless. She’d just escape again, somehow, eventually. If Amoena wanted her cooperation with whatever dumb bullshit she was planning, she needed to break Red’s will for it.

So that was why Sláine could absolutely not accept it, not even a little bit. She couldn’t suffer the creature before her to live, because the kind of being that claimed its victory by slowly, relentlessly whittling someone down, breaking them apart piece by piece until they were no longer anything that could be called an ‘opponent’…

Sláine couldn’t respect it at all.

“Red, you know you don’t want that.”

“…How do you know that, Sláine? After all this, you’ve only known me for a single day. Please leave. You aren’t responsible for me, and it honestly isn’t your business.” Red wrapped her arms around herself, looking away. “I mean. You heard the sorts of things they said about me back in Arpege, right? I was about to be kicked out of the guild, anyway. Aren’t you curious what that was all about? …Don’t you want to know how much I’ve fucked up my life to this point?”

“Not really. It doesn’t seem relevant.”

“I’m not someone worth hedging your bets on!” Red snapped. “I’m not reliable, or respectable, or even nice. You’ve… seen the things I’ve done, and deep down, I’m — I’m basically the same thing she is.”

Sláine snorted, then tilted her head to the side. “I don’t really think it’s fair to judge you just for being stuffed full of spiders, or whatever your deal actually is. You seem like a perfectly lovely person otherwise.”

Well, aside from the lackadaisical attitude and the offensive comments, but honestly, Sláine could be convinced to give that a pass.

Red retreated into herself, hunching over further in response to Sláine’s fierce gaze. “You don’t… have to do this! It isn’t your problem! I was already planning on leaving Arpege anyway, after the guild finally gave me the boot, so just go, leave! Find someone else to chase after!”

“Hm,” Sláine grunted, leaning on her halberd. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

“I’m dangerous! Don’t you get it? In far more ways than you can even understand — I am a threat to the people around me!”

“Don’t care.”

Red seemed to struggle with this. “…Why are you even here?” She said, finally deflating. “Don’t you just want to find something to fight? What, this isn’t some, ‘I can’t leave any opponent alive’ business, is it?”

“If you are desperate for a fight, I’m happy to give you one,” Amoena interjected, cheerful. “And, when you lose, I’ll deposit you outside of my little section of this dungeon for your colleagues to pick up. Ah — are you stalling for time, waiting for them to come find you? I’ve got them a bit… tied up at the moment.”

She laughed. If that was a pun, Sláine was going to throw hands for no other reason than to make her physically feel every ounce of her disgust.

Calming herself, Sláine took a deep breath in. Let it out. “Red, don’t be an idiot, there’s nothing guaranteeing that she’ll keep her word.”

A pause from the other woman. “No, no. She’s… always kept her promises.”

“Breaking my word isn’t really my style,” Amoena said. “Lose your credibility, and you lose far too many opportunities of value.”

It was then that Janus, who’d been growing more and more upset with each passing minute, finally spoke up. “What about everything we’ve worked so hard for, Red? You can’t — just give it all up! You can’t just stop fighting!”

It was then that Red’s mask turned towards him, and her voice wasn’t just tired now. It was outright cold. “I’m not obligated to be some hero just because you died for me. It’s not my duty to keep fighting. I never asked for this, Janus. Being some ‘chosen one’, like you seem to think I am, like dad thought I was, like — he thought I was. All of your expectations have…”

Red’s hand tightened on her arm. “Just gotten me hurt. I’m exhausted. So please, just leave me alone.”

Maximus had composed herself by this point, wiping away her earlier upset and hiding it beneath a frozen mask. Sláine got the impression that she wasn’t a person prone to smiling much, and her passion from earlier had been a byproduct of the unusual situation. Unlike her emotional, hot-headed brother, she was staring forward with a frosty look to her.

“Maximus,” Sláine called, quietly enough that only she could hear. “You’re in control of this place, right? Not her?”

Maximus turned and gave her a long, introspective look, as if she was for the first time truly seeing her. Perhaps that was true. She had seemed awfully focused on Janus before. “…Sort of. The Queen-Consort is providing me the framework that I am superimposing… other things on.”

It was extremely hard to get a read on this girl, on what sort of things she valued and what her motives were. But Sláine couldn’t imagine that she liked seeing her brother so upset, and after all that, wouldn’t be happy simply taking his heart and using it to create whatever fucked-up dollhouse she’d been planning on earlier.

“If you take us out of here, what will happen?”

“Anything based in ‘this world’ will cease to exist in the form I’ve created for it. For example,” she nodded to Janus, who had his back to them and was struggling with how he could possibly reply before shouting something across the arena. It was general pleading with her to reconsider, telling her to keep trying and all that. Sláine didn’t really pay attention to the specifics. She knew it wouldn’t be effective, not right now.

“…And what would happen, since they’re currently… separate?”

“They’d remain separate. Taking doesn’t require consent, but giving does. A heart cannot simply be hammered into someone. It must be accepted.”

So no matter what Red was saying now, at one point, she’d willingly taken that heart, with all the hopes and burdens that came with it.

Sláine didn’t know what the ‘right choice’ here was. She didn’t know all of the backstory and context playing into this situation, didn’t understand the emotional politics here and couldn’t fathom the true meaning of everything that was being said. Having a heart? Not having a heart? How could someone even live without a heart? — All that symbolism and weird, magical nonsense was lost on her. She didn’t care about Red’s father, neither who he was nor what he’d done, and if he’d tried to somehow make some mystical super-powered daughter that could save the world… honestly, it just seemed a bit weird to her. It was so far above her pay-grade and, honestly, Sláine had long ago learned that she hadn’t been born to make a mark upon the world. No matter how hard she fought, she would never weave a greater tapestry in it, and she had not been created with any kind of great destiny for her to see through.

…Because the Tree she’d been born from, it had always rejected her completely. There was nothing in her that it wanted, so when it came to claim all of her comrades, when it was time for them to pass on and commit their legends to its memory… Sláine was always, always left behind.

But there was one thing that was clear to her: this, right now, is not what would make Red happy, and setting aside all the ‘chosen one’ destiny bullshit and whatever world-saving duty came with it, Sláine was left with a singular, concrete truth.

She fucking wanted to stab Amoena in the face really, really badly.

“If I give you a distraction, is there anything you can do here?” Sláine murmured to Maximus. The woman paused, the purple of her eyes glinting as she considered this.

“I can try. You won’t like it, though.”

“Will it screw Amoena over?”

“Yes,” Maximus said, staring off into the distance. Sláine nodded.

“Don’t care, then. I’m in.”

Sláine looked back at the field then, and the conversation happening there.

“You wanted me to make my own choice about who to side with,” Red said, “And maybe… I’ve chosen. It’s just, not the thing you wanted me to choose.”

Despite that, Janus didn’t look like he’d accepted it at all. To be fair to him, it did sound like a load of nonsense to her, and Red was right — Sláine had only known her for a day, so if even she could tell, then…

It was really quite obvious.

“Even if — if you want to find somewhere you can settle down, live peacefully away from all this until the end, I know you don’t want it to be with her! You can’t be dragged back down here, Red, for your own sake if nothing else!”

Sláine looked to Amoena. She seemed content to watch this all play out for now, like she had no concerns about time or a deadline. Sláine wasn’t sure what she’d done to their rescuers, but she seemed quite confident, not only in Red’s commitment to her current choice of action, but also her ability to simply wait it out. Really, it looked like she was just… enjoying herself, a sickening smile on her face like she was simply feasting on the turmoil she’d caused.

…She reminded Sláine of one of those old hags who would gossip about everyone around their clan’s fire, judging the world around them using their age and so-called ‘wisdom’.

“Has that ever really been an option for me? Really Janus? You know that I’m — ”

Sláine flung herself forward.

She was lucky Maximus thought to pull all the bodies out of the way, like parting a sea in a direct line to Amoena. As it stood, she had a clear path towards the woman, and she charged towards her, the point of her halberd directed towards her torso.

“[ Battle Fury ],” Sláine said to herself, and it was like a sudden burst of adrenaline wiped away the exhaustion from her aching limbs.

It wouldn’t last for long, she knew. Or — rather, this was only a temporary stop-gap measure, because even if she couldn’t feel it, she knew her [ AP ] — that number representing her stamina, how much longer she could go on — was ticking down at a steady rate. As annoying as it’d been to have to suffer the presence of Amoena, having a bit of a break had helped her catch some of her breath, but it hadn’t been enough; this frenzied fugue certainly wouldn’t last long.

But, hopefully, it’d be enough for this.

Amoena’s expression changed from greedy amusement to one of patronizing condescension, and just before Sláine reached her, she neatly stepped to the side. Red, clearly taken off guard by this (though she should have expected it, Sláine thought, it was in her very nature), and stood frozen as Sláine pivoted, expecting the movement and chopping at Amoena’s legs. As soon as Sláine damaged her, she knew more spiders would burst forth, and breaking out of the bonds they’d weave around her would take a lot of energy.

So, if possible, she wanted to avoid actually striking her, without making it obvious that was what she was doing.

Her goal here was not to beat her, after all. It was merely to distract her.

“Oh, you’re so endearingly feisty,” Amoena said, legs rearing up to avoid Sláine’s attack. Something glowed in her hands, spheres of pitch-black darkness defined more by their lack of light than any actual illusion of depth. She wasn’t sure what getting hit by those would do to her, but Sláine couldn’t imagine it would be good.

Something caught her from behind then, pulling her away from the spheres as Amoena flung them, and she turned, seeing a startled Red clutched onto her arm. That’s cute, Sláine thought, genuinely charmed by the woman’s attempts to ‘save her’. And that’s what she was certain it was; there’s no way Red would truly want to stop her from brutalizing the monster that’d kept her captive for years, at least in Sláine’s perception of it. She must think that there was some danger of Sláine being killed in this place.

…She still hadn’t figured it out, had she?

It made Sláine a little sad that, even now, Red hadn’t realized the truth about her, but she supposed it couldn’t be helped. She’d been preoccupied with her own nonsense, and Sláine had hardly been forthright about the topic.

Sláine shook her off, telling her to stay back — or she thought that’s what she said, because she felt her mouth move and her throat vibrate, but as soon as the words passed her lips they were gone from her memory and she was charging forward again. As much as she hadn’t wanted to be defined by this singular aspect of her character, fighting was, really and truly, the thing that she found ‘fun’.

Maybe this feeling was what made people dance. Maybe it’s what made them sing in time with the music that flowed through the world.

Maybe this was what made Sláine ‘live’.

…Huh, actually, that was pretty funny. Idly, as Sláine pulled her arms to the side and slashed, she wondered who here was truly ‘alive’, and what being ‘alive’ really meant to them all.

It was all a bit curious, wasn’t it? She hadn’t understood most of what Maximus and Janus had been saying to each other, but to Sláine, the gist of it seemed to be that they were ‘artificial beings’ created by someone with the intent to use them to alter the world itself. Would that make them a bit like Aria in concept, then? Like the Tree, like the Fears, like all of the Systems that supported their own pieces of a world that had lost all of its natural definitions?

And Red — she could only assume that, if the woman could survive without a heart, then there was some ‘unusual process’ keeping her alive that separated her from other naturally born living beings. Sláine wasn’t sure if she technically counted as a ‘Boss’ like Amoena did, who had so completely embraced that which she worshiped that she didn’t need any of the traces of ‘life’ to exist. Like what Janus had been saying…

Dying changed a person. Something could not exist ‘living’ in the same way as it did while ‘dead’. Even if a dead thing still moved, and talked, and ate and laughed and breathed, it could not be the same entity it had been while it was alive. Even if it had the same name and the same memories…

Something was changed about it, irreparably. It could never return to what it once was.

So, were those siblings — those Shattered Ones — alive? Sláine thought so. They could ‘die’, so they must be ‘alive’, and dying was a thing that could separate them from each other.

Was Amoena alive? It sounded, from the way Janus had described becoming a Priestess, and from how different she looked from the others — like Latrodecus and Lycosidae — that she had once been something like them, but had willingly undergone a transformation that further aligned herself with the Fear she wished power from. She had become a perfect, lovely, horrifying embodiment of what it represented. Maybe that transformation could be called ‘dying’, and once, she had been alive, but now existed as a living thing no longer.

But what did that even mean, in a world where the dead could talk? What did it mean for ‘life’ if, to the average person, being ‘dead’ was indistinguishable from being ‘alive’, aside from some monstrous qualities that represented a transition between the two? Would it be more accurate to say Amoena was a thing that had died and come back from the dead, different now for the experience?

And using that logic, what could a thing that could not die be called?

It really was funny, that these classifications — which, in some ways, felt so arbitrary to Sláine — had defined the entirety of her life and what she could be, and to forget about it all, she immersed herself in the movement of cutting, of stabbing, of swiping, of dodging. Was Red yelling something at her? Hm, this felt familiar, and she thought that was Red’s voice.

Ah!

Sláine felt something strike her directly in the gut, blowing her backwards and slamming her against one of the columns holding up the balcony. She stayed there for a moment, feeling the blood hum in her veins, before hauling herself to her feet.

When she stood up, something felt… wrong in her leg. When she stumbled forward, it didn’t want to support her weight properly, and she felt it buckle underneath her. Hm. How frustrating.

She saw Amoena slowly approaching her as she looked up, hearing the steady clap, clap, clap of her hands ringing out in time with her heartbeat. Really and truly, it annoyed her. It didn’t matter how vile her leg felt or that it didn’t want to move properly under her command — she just wanted to cleave down on that woman and split her properly in two.

Like a moon hatching of her own, Sláine thought, letting the spiders burst free from her chest.

…But then suddenly, Red was there in front of her, arms spread out wide to block her path.

Sláine desperately tried to terminate the motion, to stop her axe from carving down on the woman, but it was too late. She thought she heard Red say something, but she didn’t really hear it, couldn’t process it over the blood thundering in her ears, and then the blade struck true, splitting directly downward on Red’s forehead.

Both Sláine and Red stumbled backwards.

She couldn’t smell the acrid tang of blood, nor had she felt the crack of bone beneath her weapon. But she could see Red’s gloved hands pressed to her face, fingers fanned over the white curve of the mask and half covering the painted smile, and carved between them was…

An enormous crack splitting down its center.

There were no thoughts in Sláine’s head, no feelings, because there was no room to process them in the ferocity of the bright, blazing light that suddenly consumed her vision. Sláine threw an arm over her eyes, trying to protect them, because even closing them did nothing to block the solar flare searing sun-spots across her eyes. She thought she heard something roar, something like wind singing through a chasm or a thousand struck crystals harmonizing in a single song.

She thought she heard someone scream her name.

And then, beyond that, was the quiet.

When Sláine came to, it was on a grassy hill on a warm day in spring.

The flowers never smelled quite as sweet as they did in the days following the vernal equinox. Sláine had heard that, in the time before the Shattering, the north had been a cold, perpetually chilly place, but in the days following the New Root and the covenant it made to bring them all into being, the land had been gifted gentle springs to follow its harsh winters. It was something she’d used to love.

Now, it filled her with dread.

Slowly, Sláine sat up, recognizing the sound of twittering birds and the aroma of spring onions crushed beneath her hands. The wind carried with it an affectionate warmth and, before her, she could see the Tree, trunk spiraling upwards and boughs blocking out the heavens.

Maximus was right, Sláine thought. She did hate this.

>> Look for Red