“Any other ideas that might get me out of this dilemma?”
“Hmm… No, I’m sorry, my mistress. I believe the only way to confirm or refute your theories is if you die.”
“…damn it.”
Inside her mind palace, Tristessa was biting her knuckles like a carrion beast seeking to satiate its ravenous hunger with fresh meat.
Deep in thought, with more doubts than certainties, she closely examined the blackboard covered with photos she had taken from the album dedicated to her [Divinity of Death and Resurrection], one of the many scattered across the long table in the Room of Knowledge.
There were photos of the vargs at the Sea of Tress massacring her.
Of her visit to the In-Between and its Infinite Corridor, protected by the two eldritch guardians and lovers.
Of herself naked and covered in blood atop the mangled and dismembered corpse of a she-varg.
From the mark that had appeared on her chest and grew larger each time she died and returned, trapped in a time loop.
From the moment that mark reached its final form and, as a result, caused the Dullahan to come into existence.
From the defeat of such mythical foe, indicating the moment the [Baptism in Ruins] vanished.
All the events were connected. All the explanations she needed about her Divinity were on the table—or rather, on the whiteboard. Hidden, waiting to be discovered.
“At least we agree there are two essential questions to answer, right, Lenore?” she asked her assistant as she wrote in one of the blank spaces on the whiteboard with a black marker. “Lenore?”
“Yes, I’m sorry, my lady!” the woman with short black hair apologized, dressed in a lab coat, her eyes melted and charred in her beautiful face. That representation of Tristessa’s subconscious was finishing writing on a small blackboard held by a tripod. He turned to give Tristessa the attention she craved and bowed in penitence. “Two (questions/uncertainties/problems), yes, of course we agree. I am you.”
“Yeah, that’s something impossible to forget… As I was saying, there are two questions.” Tristessa looked back at the large congregation of photographs and text in front of her and hesitated, her lips feeling dry and afraid to let such terrifying thoughts escape her lips. “If I die, will I return to the beginning of the loop? Or, if I die, will I be reborn as happened with my first Death?”
Both options filled the girl with a profound sense of doom.
The idea of ??dying again was dreadful, but worse was the thought of the possibility of going back in time and space to that moment when she stood before the trophy case in the House of Royal Hunters.
Losing everything she had achieved… That thought alone had been enough to drive her to the brink of madness when she had barely managed to unite Auron and Severus into a fragile alliance…and lose them both.
Considering the possibility of losing their new alliance with the addition of Astoria, their victories, progress, and even setbacks like Vergil's departure filled Tristessa's heart with such despair that she saw no way to continue without going insane.
The other option was, in essence, the same as the first. With the difference that it added a new layer of uncertainty to the infinite terror her Divinity could produce: blood, entrails, and an unholy rebirth that did not guarantee the continuation of that favorable timeline.
“As I already told you, my dear mistress… To find the answer, you must (die/perish/succumb).”
The sweet and seductive way Lenore answered made the young woman with black hair, now tied back in a ponytail, tremble on the spot.
“What did you write on that blackboard?” she asked, radically changing the subject to avoid discussing the ultimate fate she had already suffered seven times.
“Oh! There are some initial impressions of your recent (memories/recollections/remembrances).” Lenore stepped aside so Tristessa could approach and read. “You know, about…”
“Blackwater Park. The prison. My mother… A certain Natalie…” Tristessa whispered, reading each entry her assistant had made in elegant calligraphy with white ink. She saw the photographs that captured frozen moments of that memory, of her exchange with Selene.
Her mother, imprisoned for murder; a crime committed to be safe from an organization unknown to Tristessa, represented on that black surface only by Lenore’s red handwriting:
“The Order of Nether’Varus.”
Saying it aloud made Tristessa feel enveloped by a suffocating aura of repulsion. Disgust that reached the back of her throat, threatening to make her vomit.
That Order was a bad omen; there was no doubt about it. And if that organization could instill extreme caution in a woman as vain as Selene Irandell—even driving her to murder—then Tristessa should be aware that she had just recalled the name of a shadow of unknown proportions and hunger.
“I have absolutely nothing. Not on this Order, not on Blackwater Park, not on…”
Gloop.
That was a tiny, almost insignificant sound, but it managed to silence Tristessa: she had taken a single step back and stepped into water.
“What the hell…?”
No, it wasn’t water. Looking down, Tristessa saw blood spreading. Slowly but surely, enveloping her foot and with no intention of stopping.
“Oh, oh, my mistress! What is this?!” Lenore shrieked, scandalized, her eerie black eyes wide and burning the sides of her sockets. Blood was reaching the tips of her long leather boots, and half the waxed floor of the Room of Knowledge was already stained dark red. “How horrible! (Awful/terrifying/disturbing)!”
“Calm down, I-I…!” Tristessa stammered, unable to form any thoughts in the face of such an anomaly, something she never would have expected in her mind palace. The place was supposed to be her haven. The safest place in the world, not the antechamber of a nightmare. “Let’s go to the main hall. Don’t leave my side.”
“Y-yes!”
Lenore took that order as an invitation to cling tightly to Tristessa's arm, letting her inhale the scent of burnt skin and flesh from her face, along with the strong metallic odor that would permeate every corner as the pool of blood flowed.
“What the fuck is going on?” she asked herself, even though her voice was loud and clear inside her own mind.
Outside the Room of Knowledge, Tristessa and Lenore found the same brilliant red scene: a layer of blood that had already covered the entire floor, and each step the two women took generated small ripples that spread out until they collided with the walls, the Negative Altar, the legs of the metal tables, and the plastic curtains that led to the other areas of the palace.
Walking slowly, her astonished gaze unwavering, Tristessa saw the metal door welded to the wall as the source of all the blood: the liquid was seeping through the gaps under such pressure that it shot out in small but many jets. It was as if there were a wall of blood behind that door, trying to tear it down and flood the entire palace.
“T-The door…! Dullahan!”
Tristessa called out to the dark knightess standing a safe distance from the barrier whose integrity hung by a thread. Her right hand gripped the hilt of her sheathed sword; her gaze of darkness completely focused on the door and what might be beyond it.
“This place is my mind, and I can't even understand...” Tristessa tried to walk past the Dullahan to go straight to the door, but she bumped into the knightess' rigid, metallic arm. “Ugh! What's wrong with you?!”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“...”
A loud hissing sound came from inside the helmet, so loud it drowned out the sloshing of blood. A warning sound; the palace's natural defenses on alert, ready to face the unknown.
BANG!
A violent strike on the other side of the door. So loud and echoing with a metallic sound that it made both Tristessa and Lenore recoil, while the Dullahan drew her black sword and assumed a fighting stance.
“What the fuck is going on?!” repeated the lady of the palace that seemed to be under siege. As if a battering ram were about to break the door down. “This is my mind, damn it… Stop. Stop it.”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Blow after blow, each one more violent than the last, denting the welded joint between the door and the frame, which was attached to the wall subjected to so much adverse force that it was rapidly cracking.
“Stop it!”
With each blow, more blood flowed outside. More splashes, more pressure, more blood. More and more, making Tristessa's heart run so fast that she didn't notice Lenore covering her ears and sobbing with no self-control at all.
“STOP IT!”
“BANG!”
Tristessa's scream coincided with the most violent blow of all, which finally broke what remained of the joint with the threshold. The nearly destroyed door fell, splattering blood in all directions and staining the legs of the three women present with infinitesimal drops.
Tristessa held her breath. Lenore had closed her eyes. And the Dullahan was ready to attack. But…
“…?”
…inside the room, there was no wall of blood, no river of blood, no battering ram, no nightmare beast. There was nothing that could have caused such violence against a solid metal door that lay dented like armor crushed by a war-hammer.
That fact was more terrifying than all the previous options.
“Dullahan…” Tristessa called to her divine phantom as she went forward, fearless. “Hey, I’m talking to you!”
Her black cloak trailed all the blood that had finally stopped flowing from within the unlocked room, covering every corner of the palace. She stepped over the fallen door and entered the unfamiliar territory, without lowering her weapon, sinking into absolute darkness.
“Dullahan…?”
A long, unsettling minute passed until the dark knightess emerged from the room. Tristessa breathed a sigh of relief as she watched her sheath her sword, though her deep concern did not dissipate. Even less so when she stepped aside to let her pass into that dark maw of the abyss.
“You must be kidding me… Are you serious?” The Dullahan remained unmoved by that incredulous question. All she offered Tristessa was a firm, upright posture, without uttering a word. “Great. Will you go with me, Lenore…?”
“No, I’m not ready yet… That place, if I go in…” the assistant whispered as fast as she could, still sobbing and having moved as far away as possible from the entrance to the unlocked room. Terrified to the core. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to withstand it.”
Tristessa felt pity for that part of her subconscious and nodded, then stared into the darkness. Understanding that after the Dullahan—the ultimate embodiment of her fears—she was the next in line to face it, and no one else.
It wasn’t easy, taking steps through blood and past the door, trying to ignore every instinct that told her to turn around and leave the palace; to return to reality, where her allies awaited her to begin a new day in Entrana.
This is madness…
But there was a more powerful force driving her beyond the terror in such a unique moment: the search for truth and the unearthing of mysteries from the past she couldn't remember.
“I shouldn't be doing this,” she thought, contradicting herself as she stepped into the darkness. This paradox led her into the room, squinting to try and adjust to the gloom. It didn't work. The darkness was so dense she couldn't see the palm of her hand, even with the light from the main room trying to penetrate that shadowy area. “It can't be, there must be something… If this is a room like on Earth, then…”
She groped blindly, and her fingers found a switch that, when pressed, turned two fluorescent tubes on. A cold, sickly light flooded the room, banishing the darkness and revealing its secrets.
“…!”
An atmosphere of decay permeated the place. Stained and cracked concrete walls, rife with dirt, dampness, and neglect. Without a single window, denying the entry of any light beyond the artificial; streaks of blood or dried, unknown fluids extended downwards as if the place possessed wounds that seemed destined never to heal.
Near the right wall stood a metal bed, empty yet functional, its thin mattress faded and stained with dried blood.
On the left, a four-tiered bookcase, its glass shattered, every level filled with porcelain dolls trapped in the liminal state of the place: dirty, their clothes stained, desecrated, and staring with black eyes at the corruption that existed around them.
“…”
Silently, Tristessa could not escape the astonishment and profound dread that gnawed at her soul like a hungry, trapped animal with no way out. She saw every disgusting, cancerous, and terrifying detail that her mind could conjure.
Everything was familiar. Very familiar, and it was deeply disturbing. The bed, the dolls, the grime, the blood, both dried and fresh, contaminating every corner and emanating a repugnant and noxious odor…
But there was something among all the elements of that Room of Decay that captured her attention completely the moment she laid eyes on it. On the wall opposite the entrance, a message scrawled in dark red, irregular and desperate:
“TIME IS DEAD,” she whispered, feeling the weight of those words like lead shackles on her feet, forcing her to drag every fiber of her being. “…?”
Below, the dirty, cracked concrete floor had countless dark stains and small pools of blood that had resisted spreading to the rest of the palace.
And in the center stood a gray metal hatch that made no attempt at discretion, given the way it jutted out from the floor. A rectangular outline marked its boundaries, the joints clogged with grime and blood; the thick, exposed hinges, bolted directly to the concrete, their joints stiff with rust. Given the old material that looked like wrought iron and the general decay it already possessed, it wasn’t the firm representation of integrity.
But not even with superhuman strength would Tristessa be able to open that hatch. There were three thick locking mechanisms, evenly spaced, sealing off that square entrance to the floor.
And if that weren't enough, massive chains connected to the locks ran in different directions, crisscrossing each other, until they were fixed to the inside of the cement floor. This further ensured that it was impossible to open that hatch by brute force.
“What kind of locks are these?” she whispered, crouching down to get a closer look, her brow furrowed. None of them had a keyhole; instead, each had a metal cylinder that could be easily turned and a switch at the bottom of the mechanism. “I-I don’t understand…”
Tristessa turned the three cylinders and found nothing but smooth, black surfaces; no numbers, no symbols, nothing. She tried moving the chains, forcing the locks, pressing the switches, searching for some reaction, but there was no result.
“What’s the point of making this hatch with such mechanisms? There’s no way to open it like this, without any reference…”
Tristessa fell silent as soon as she looked up and reread the message on the wall. Those three words and the intrinsic power of her [Divinity of the Dark Room] brought an image to her mind that made comprehension hit her all at once.
“I know…! Oh!” She almost crashed into the Dullahan, who was standing next to her and was offering her two photographs. Exactly the ones she had almost run to the Room of Knowledge to get, as if the idea were about to vanish. “Thank you.”
The photographs in question showed Selene Irandell grinning and pointing at the broken clock in her cell, while the other was of the wristwatch Tristessa had lost in the Sea of ??Trees when the Vargs gave her her first Death.
In both cases, the hands pointed to the time [7:25:45].
“Yes… [7], [25], and [45]. There’s no doubt this is the code to unlock this hatch, but how do I know which cylinder positions correspond to those numbers?” she asked aloud, turning the mechanisms and finding no clue that could guide her in the right direction. “Damn it.”
Nor did anything come to her as she looked around the room again; no other stimulus that might bring forth more information hidden in the abyssal recesses of her mind.
She let out a sigh of defeat as she stopped in front of the Dullahan’s static, arms-crossed figure.
“What about you? Any ideas?”
“…”
“Could you try ripping the hatch out of the floor, hinges, chains, and all?”
“…”
“When you used to hunt me down, you never shut your mouth for a second!”
“…”
Receiving only a guttural exhalation from inside the knightess’ helmet, Tristessa surrendered and went to the metal bed. She sat on the edge, producing a creaking sound of metallic, rusty agony. Rubbing her temples with her thumbs, her gray gaze was fixed on that hatch, a problem that was quickly becoming a new obsession.
What is so important that my mind hides it behind an unsolvable riddle?
That access to secrets that were both so near and so far. It frustrated her, but at the same time, it was thrilling. It made her tremble with the anxiety of being one step closer to the truth.
Or was it fear?
The decayed conditions and the sinister aura that the room possessed did not bode well. The blood, mainly. Whatever the reason for its presence, it was a dark symbol. It wasn't random; every detail was precise, meticulously planned by a deeper, for the moment, unreachable aspect of her subconscious.
Tristessa knew her mind was trying to help her recover her memories; of that there was no doubt. She also knew, seeing the hatch, thick as a blast door and heavily protected, that there were reasons why her memories were so jealously guarded.
As if her mind was protecting her from what lay hidden beneath that surface of iron rust, and blood.
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The Sky That Lied
