Rena stood on the precipice, her heart and mind at war. In her hands lay a choice. She could walk forward through the doors to Lenora's central clinic with all the credits she had saved, or turn away and use them to prepare for the inevitable.
"It's not real." She muttered to herself, looking up at the fragmented building, isolated and cut off from the rest of history. "I've been here before."
Her pink hair flowed through the air, thrashed about by a wind that she could not feel. It was as if years had passed since she entered the mindscape, its power far beyond anything her peers had experienced before. Somehow Rena knew that was the case.
"Ivy." She smiled, looking down at her scarred palms. "And to think I blamed you."
Her new prison, boundless in its power, was not made by the heiress. Her guilt was responsible. Her dread had taken form.
"I didn't do it." Rena shook her head, thinking back to her time within the flotilla. "I kept him! He was mine! You took him from me!"
Her thoughts turned to Yrix. She was the one responsible for her current predicament. And yet, still, she knew the Arch-Flayer did not create the mindscape.
A torrent of garbled voices crept up behind her, their tongues wreathed in a language she could not comprehend. But Rena didn't need arcane knowledge to ascertain their meaning. The truth was right in front of her.
"You-." She spun around, her voice quivering with fright.
Rena didn't know what she would see when she mustered enough bravery to face the creature that stood behind her. And upon receiving its dreadful image, she felt the air leave her lungs. One might expect the girl to meet her end at that time, but instead, the seemingly omnipotent subjugator stood eerily still and observed her in silence.
Harrow.
"I-...I kept him." Rena tried to explain to the creature. "My child."
The creature's faceless head tilted, the markings carved into its skull flickering with an alien light. It was beyond Rena's pitiful existence in more ways than one. And yet, its slender figure reached out to her with a gentle hand, forming a single gesture as it took one step forward.
A pointed finger.
The elegant creature's entire body was coated in what seemed to be living armor, black and burnt as it writhed around its frail body. It was no doubt feminine in nature, with sharp heels for feet and a thin waist. But it was emaciated in nature, almost seeming weak in appearance despite its height.
That didn't make it any less powerful.
As one hand pointed at Rena accusingly, the other held tightly to a blackened staff with the visage of a humanoid vetus wrapped around its shaft. Rena knew what that effigy meant. But still, she tried to deny the truth.
"I can get back to him. Help me." Rena pleaded. "He's alive! My child is alive!"
Still, the creature spoke no words. It was precisely the thing Yrix had suspected to lie dormant within her students. A member of the Harrow.
Clenching its staff with two hands, the creature carved a series of words into the ground for Rena to understand. Afterward, it grunted in its foreign language and gestured for her to read with an impatient wave. Rena's eyes widened, and she gasped.
You
Made
Me
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
"So, is it like entering the Matrix?" Lila grinned nervously as she lay on the bed that Yrix had arranged. "I was never conscious for this part, you know."
Yrix nodded. "I suppose you could say that. The dreamscape will be as real as the world you see around you. It'll be like falling down to another planet."
The Earthling shrugged. "Can't say I've done that either."
"Well, I'm sure your impending career as a pilot will fix that."
"How will you pull us out?" Ivy mused impatiently, picking the bed next to Lila. "When Rena is saved, I mean."
"I have my methods." Yrix chimed. "But be warned, I can only do so much to help you in there."
"You mean...you have limitations." Sonera squinted suspiciously.
"Tearing you out halfheartedly could kill you. Interfering with the mindscape could kill you." Yrix clarified. "But yes, the entity you will face is no child's play for me to deal with. But I trust my students are up to the challenge."
Sonera glared as a response. She hated it when Yrix complimented her.
"Really, I mean it." Yrix looked at her students pridefully with the exception of Lunae. "You are all my greatest creation. Your shortcomings, large or small, are all merely stepping stones on the path to true strength."
The Arch-Flayer raised her hands, enraptured by a sense of duty as a purple energy began to shield the girls in a dome of light. She shut her singular eye and began concentrating; even for Yrix, the task at hand required effort. But like her student's she was fated to push further and further into the abyss.
"This enemy we will face-." Ivy stammered, trying to fit in one last question.
"You must discover it for yourself. Do not underestimate it. But hold strong. Steal yourselves." Yrix replied sincerely.
"What is it?" Lunae muttered.
"It is inevitable. Be thankful this one is just a visage."
Yrix snapped her fingers, causing each girl to enter a deep slumber, their bodies suddenly lifeless and cold.
"Good luck." Yrix finished.
- - - - - - - - -
Rena's legs quaked, her body unable to sustain the pace at which she fled from her guilt. The Harrow stood in the far distance behind her, holding its staff aloft. A sickly pink light shot out from its tip, as the memories around it solidified back into something real. The ship was remaking itself.
And before long, the Lenora and all who lived in it during that horrid time were back right where Rena had left them. She didn't know how long she had been trapped down there, nor how many memories she would have to re-live. But no matter how hard she tried, all roads led back to that creature standing before the dreadful building.
"Why can't he be here?" Rena sobbed as she fell to her knees, her skin scraping against the cold metal. "I...I kept him."
Suddenly, the world around her began to rumble uncontrollably. The sound of thunder boomed overhead, and she soon realized the mindscape had changed. Something was entering.
"What?" Rena gasped, looking up at the dim ceiling. "Who-."
- - - - - - - - -
"Oh goodness fucking gracious!" Lila screamed, her arms flailing about widely.
She was careening downwards towards a starlit horizon, the air around her billowing against her face. It didn't make any sense, but Lila could barely spot a series of floating island-like structures beneath her, each resembling a part of Rena's life. It was no doubt a much larger mindscape than Ivy's, where a white fog obscured the details further than her mansion's outer walls.
"Welp!" Lila began to spiral uncontrollably, unable to spot anything around her besides the islands that she tumbled towards. "It was a good run."
Thinking of her time with Lunae and her comparatively tiny mindscape, Lila began to reconsider her situation. Surely, Yrix wouldn't just throw her students in without a way of breaking their fall. There had to be a way to manipulate the dream and bend it to her will.
"Lunae would know how." Lila's mind raced. "Shit."
Expelling a bit of her Psionic Ambiance, the Earthling managed to stabilize herself, catching a much clearer glimpse of the landscape below. As far as she could tell, there appeared to be a segment of a spaceship beneath her, its roof largely cut away and fragmented by the mindscape. If only, she wondered, there was a way to locate a body of water in there.
"Water is like a brick wall at this velocity, silly." A familiar voice called out to Lila from the distance, no doubt belonging to an alien girl who read her mind. "Don't try that. Just close your eyes and concentrate."
"What?" Lila yelled out loud. "Are you sure you're not Ivy trying to kill me?"
"Trust me," Lunae whispered before her voice faded out. "Let the memories flow through you. Imagine the space. Materialize it."
Lila shut her eyes and groaned loudly, doing her best to perform whatever vague technique Lunae had recommended. But much to her surprise, it all seemed to work, as the stale and smelly air of the ship seemed to envelop her. Before long, Lila was surrounded by a more complete framework of the Lenora.
"Wait." Lila paused. "Am I-."
Suddenly, the girl slammed into an invisible barrier, her body crashing through it before sliding down a ramp that had just finished materializing before her very eyes. She then sailed across the brown metal floor at an absurd speed, hurtling face-first through a series of corridors. Yet despite the violent landing, the Earthling felt no pain, even as she tumbled headfirst into a set of barstools.
"Wah!" Lila's legs flew upward before smashing into a wall. "What the heck!"
She crumpled down into a heap, unable to ascertain her own bodily feelings for a brief moment. But after a moment of cringe, Lila picked herself up with relative ease. Lunae's tip was solid after all.
"Ayo watch your jet-." Lila joked to herself as she opened one eye. "Another happy landing."
As far as she could tell, she was within an empty bar, its walls lined with antique picture frames and expensive bottles. It was actually quite the classy establishment, and brought the Earthling a sense of familiar calm. She was so ecstatic, in fact, that she barely even noticed how badly she wrecked the front door and the arrangement of tables with her landing.
"Hello?" Lila called out, leaning against the front bar rail. "Anyone here?"
Realizing she was indeed all alone, Lila stumbled her way behind the bar, navigating its cramped space to try and find something to answer a rather burning question.
"If it's all real." Lila pondered, grabbing herself a glass mug before pulling down on the side-tap. "Then beer should be..."
Lila's face lit up with amazement as she brought the mug to her face. It tasted just as bad as she remembered.
"Holy moly!" Lila beamed. "I should...be responsible with this."
She was not responsible.