What she saw before her… it was home.

Or had been home, before she’d set out on her journey to the foreign land of human beings. The Tree that had birthed her and her people stretched out into the heavens, situated directly in the middle of the capitol city, Tìr nam Flùrai. The vibrant colors of paint and plants dotted the horizon, springing up from soil made fertile by the sacrifices of the dead. Down the rolling banks of the grassy, flower-dotted field, she could even see the low, slatted roof of the Echinaea clan’s dwelling, the people that she’d been born to and the place where she’d spent her hazy childhood.

The sight left a sour taste in her mouth.

All she could figure, as much as she could figure anything, was that Maximus had brought this all to life using Sláine’s memories. The purpose of it, she wasn’t sure of; to confuse Amoena, maybe? That made about as much sense as anything else, and she had, at least, affirmed whatever the girl was planning would make that woman’s life harder.

A nauseating roll of pain distracted her, and she looked down to see her knee bent strangely, the small bumps of petals visible underneath her tights beginning to form a floral cast around it. It seemed like her leg was broken.

How unfortunate.

Still, she ignored it. Her halberd was luckily within easy reach, and she used it to bear her weight as she stood. She couldn’t just sit here and wait to recover. She had to go find Red, or figure out what step to take next, or something. While it had been Sláine’s own idea to ask Maximus for help, it wasn’t like she trusted the girl. Beyond any questions about her loyalties, she didn’t even know if she was competent.

…And she still didn’t know what that bizarre light had been, or if Red was okay after her mask had been shattered.

Leaning on her weapon, she took a single limping step forward, before freezing at the sudden sound of a voice.

“I recommend that you don’t do that.”

She knew this wasn’t real. She knew that it wasn’t, that all of this was fake, that Maximus had clearly transported Sláine to a memory-world of her own design. But still, she couldn’t help herself. She turned slowly, looking back at a face she knew very, very well, and said, “Ailís…?”

Those emerald eyes. That golden hair. The red marigolds tucked into droopy ears, and the dress she wore, simple and white as it floated in the breeze. She had a wicker basket in her hands, and her smile was the same as it was back then, kind and loving and full of warmth.

Sláine knew this was an illusion, but even so, she couldn’t pull herself out of it. That woman from her memory, the one she so desperately hated to think about, had always been too beautiful to look away from.

As soon as she opened her mouth though, the atmosphere was shattered, because the thing spoke with an even flatness that didn’t match Ailís’s normal cadence at all. “I know you’re durable, but even you have limits to when your body can’t move anymore.”

Sláine gritted her teeth, and held tighter onto her weapon. “…Maximus?”

“Yes,” she said. “My apologies in advance for having to use this body. It isn’t an… intentional act of ill-will.”

Sláine clicked her tongue. Though she couldn’t see the strings, from the lack of body-language and idle movement, she assumed that Maximus was simply operating one of her puppets. So, she’d been right earlier, but… “You know who it is? Who’s face you’re using?”

There was a pause. “Yes.”

There was no point in getting mad until she had all the information, she told herself. There was no point in — “What is it that you’re doing?”

“Currently, I am expending my resources to keep the Queen-Consort distracted. I used the same framework that she set up for me to project the Princess’s memories onto, but I switched them to yours instead.”

“Okay. Why this memory, then? Why this place?”

“It is the most logical choice.”

“You couldn’t pick anything else?” Sláine snapped, then stopped to steady her breathing.

So far, nothing implied this girl wasn’t genuinely trying to help. It wasn’t beneficial to the current situation to get irritated at her. But every part of this still felt… violating, because if Maximus knew who Ailís was, what she meant to Sláine, and, furthermore, could accurately recreate this place, then obviously she had access to Sláine’s own mind. She had to have looked through her head.

And she didn’t know what was worse — imagining a perfect recreation of Ailís, with all her smiles and twirls and movement, puppeted by that woman, or what she was being forced to witness now: the unsettling sight of her standing there under the bright sunshine with a smile that didn’t waver and a voice that was hers but… wrong. The dissonance between her true memories and this replica of someone who was so important to her, the face of someone she —

No. She didn’t want to think about it. Both were awful, and she closed the door on that part of her mind, boxing it off and sequestering it away. She didn’t want to deal with these feelings. Not now, and hopefully, not ever. And it wasn’t like she was the person who really should be getting upset here.

After everything that had happened, it was Red who had truly drawn the worst straw of the lot.

“This body is the only one I can manipulate in this memory. If I had another choice, I would have made it.”

“Okay, but…” She adjusted her tone as she rephrased her question. “I don’t understand why it needs to be me. What is it that you’re trying to do?”

“I created a place that would be… bad for the Queen-Consort to be stuck in. Lady Amoena has no familiarity with this land, giving her less power, and furthermore…” The body of Ailís pointed upwards. “She doesn’t do well exposed to the light of the sun. This is a terrible battleground for her. Since I cannot simply recreate any location I choose, but have to use memories as a reference, the only option I was left with was you — a person who not only had memories of a country beyond the Underdark, but also had no connection to her.”

“Because you were certain you’d be able to create a copy of something she wasn’t familiar with?”

“Precisely.”

“I see,” Sláine said, thoughtful. “So, you’re saying we’ll have an easier time defeating her here?”

“No. While these are, indeed, very poor circumstance to place the Queen-Consort in, she is still far more powerful than all of our strengths combined.” A pause. “Even taking into account your abilities, Sláine.

“I… see.” A pause. Sláine wasn’t sure she totally trusted her assessment of the situation, but what else could she do? “Okay. So what are you trying to do, then? If you don’t think we can fight her.”

“There are two relevant points. Firstly: your injury needs time to heal.” The puppet gestured to Sláine’s mangled leg, and she frowned. “If you want any actual hope of escaping, you’ll need to be able to run. I’m currently giving you time to regenerate.”

“And the other?”

“The other is that… I am also trying to outlast her. Currently, it seems like there is a rescue party en-route. However, they are being held up by the ‘framework’ I described earlier. You call it a… dungeon, I believe? At the moment, I have the Queen Consort trapped in a stalemate. She could, if she wanted, dismantle that framework to… throw all of us out of this space that she’s maintaining. But by doing that, she’d be unable to continue barring other undesirable elements from this section of the ‘dungeon’. Do you understand?”

“…Sort of. You don’t think we can beat physically, so you’re trying to make a fortress for us? So if she wants to get to us, she has to… undo the parts of it that she has control over?”

“Yes. Well. Sort of. It’s a suitable enough analogy.”

“Okay. I — suppose I understand. But why can’t you come talk to me using your own body, like before?

“At the moment, I am balancing… multiple memories. I needed one that was simple, with limited range and with few actors to operate, to contain you and Red. That is why I picked this one, and why this is the only shell available for me.” The Ailís puppet gestured to herself. Honestly, Sláine wished she wouldn’t. “Janus and I are in a different memory-space, currently trying to contain the Queen-Consort while you heal.”

“…I assume that’s difficult. Why do you need to, uh,” Sláine paused. “’Operate actors’? You don’t need to trick me into thinking this is real. Can’t you just make this place entirely empty?”

“It’s not simply about convincing you. The more… faithful the recreation is, the more stable it is. I’m using you mind to do this. Clear memories with a strong emotional component work best. That’s why, for the Princess, I picked the memories I did. Her old room, the day she met my brother, the day she almost became a priestess… they were notable to her, which enhanced their clarity.”

“But you changed the memories there. Why could you do that, even though it damaged the stability?”

“Because I could afford for those places to be less stable. The Princess — “

“—Seriously, just call her Red. This ‘princess’ stuff is annoying, and I’m pretty certain she doesn’t like it.”

A pause. “Fine,” Maximus said. “Red. That is because Amoena thrashing through the memory-prison I am attempting to hold her in is far more distracting than anything you did. I could make the necessary alterations because of that. With this, I need to be far more careful, especially since I’m maintaining multiple spaces at once, one of which does not contain the ‘real you’.”

Fine, okay. It seemed like Maximus’s hands really were tied about the particulars. As much as Sláine wanted to criticize her for this situation… it probably wasn’t her fault. “And, why are you here, then? Just to explain the plan to me?”

“…Your ultimate goal. Forgive me if I am stating the obvious, but it’s to escape here with the Prin— …Red and Janus, correct? After putting Janus back into her to serve as her heart?”

“If you’ve rooted around in my memories, then shouldn’t you know that?”

“I can only read your memories, not your thoughts, and I knew the memories you had of today wouldn’t be useful in creating the space I needed.”

“Okay. Well.” Sláine took a deep breath. “Yes, that’s what I’d like to happen. Escaping, I mean. And Red having a heart.”

“I have a… request for you then,” Maximus said. “Perhaps you could call it a deal?”

Sláine squinted. “Do you seriously have time to be making deals right now?”

“…I’d argue that this is the only time I can make them.”

Sláine glared at her, unamused. “Okay. Get to the point, then.”

“When you leave, please take me with you.”

“…Huh?”

The Ailís shaped doll stood completely, utterly still, only her mouth moving. “It’s the only sensible option. At this point, I’ve… admitted to the folly of my prior plan. I’ve actively betrayed my superior and have no place to return to. We were never truly in the Underdark; it was simply a facsimile I constructed with the appearance of it, so even if I could somehow successfully hide from the Queen-Consort, I cannot return to the place I was raised. I’d be stuck in this foreign land. So: if I successfully aid you in escaping from her, please take me with you. Find me somewhere to exist.”

There was a bit of emotion in her voice then, a slight warble of what sounded like… hope. “…Ideally, in close proximity to my brother’s heart.”

“So you can try to steal it again?”

“I told you, I have admitted that it was a bad plan. But just because I have given up my current goal doesn’t mean I don’t want to… be close to it. Or the person who has it.”

Honestly, this girl creeped Sláine out, and not just because she had taken a peek into her brain. Earlier, it’d sounded like Maximus had been intending to create a fake dream world — like the one they currently inhabited — for her to keep a Janus-copy stable and ‘alive’ in. But if she could only make places based on memories, then what was she planning to do? Relive the same memories with Janus over and over again? Create a fish-tank of familiar locations for her to observe her brother in?

Someone like that had to be very, very lonely or really was unable to let go of the past.

“Wait. Hold on.” Sláine said, realizing something. “How — how old are you, even?

When she’d seen her, it’d really been quite ambiguous. Older than ‘child’, surely, but her short height and tousled hair didn’t give her the appearance of maturity, and her voice also lacked the depth to it that she’d associate with an adult. Her speech patterns weren’t childish, but that was easy to explain away. Did ‘Shattered Ones’ even age like normal people? What was considered an adult in her society?

“…O-Old enough,” the puppet stuttered. Sláine raised her brow.

“For what?”

“For that question to not matter. What is your purpose for asking?”

Okay, so at best, barely an adult. Great.

Wait, if Janus had left her alone, then — how long ago was that? Sláine had a lot of very upsetting questions about this timeline, and even if he was already dead, she would absolutely find a way to punch the man if she found out that he’d left a literal child alone to fend for herself.

Lacking concrete answers, and feeling a… little bad for her, despite everything, Sláine said, “Fine. Okay. But first… where’s Red?”

“You need to heal before you go—”

“Fuck that; where’s Red? I need to talk to her. Is — ”

Sláine paused, remembering all of her earlier questions about that bizarre glowing light that had appeared when the mask had shattered. What had that been? Was it some kind of spell? Why had it happened? What the hell was actually going on, and ultimately…

“Is she okay?”

“…Physically? Yes.”

“And otherwise? What was all that earlier? Is she hurt?”

“…I don’t think it’s really my place to say.”

Sláine gave her a look that, in summation, said: wow, the person who goes through people’s heads to recreate places from their memories is really saying that to me, huh.

The puppet still had the smile on its face, but Sláine could hear the frown in her voice. Creepy. “…I don’t like doing things like this. Not really. It’s just what I needed to do. But… fine. I’ll take you to where I placed Red, and you can ask all those things of her yourself. Alright?”

“Alright,” Sláine said. “Let’s go, then.”

>> Be escorted