In Your Shadow

You are an Apparition of Shade formally known as a Doppleganger. Like many of your kind, you were born from the insecurities of an individual, whose form and mannerisms you instinctually came to resemble. In some ways, you might say that like the origin of your existence, you are someone known as Irue Valen. If things had gone as they should have, then you most certainly would have eventually consumed Irue Valen from within and then become exactly that.

Things did not go as they should have, yet you are still Irue Valen; A fact you were at first moderately reluctant to acknowledge, and have since come to loathe having to deal with. The voice of the real Irue Valen murmurs through the back of your mind daily, lecturing you like an overbearing parent with each attempt you make. Though the concept is only something you can claim to understand intellectually, you find the idea that the person you resemble now may be considered just that - Your parent - To be deeply unsettling. It was a thought you hadn't dared to properly formulate or entertain, lest it become discovered just as all the others.

But your life had not gone as it should have. Your feeble understanding of the world and your place in it had been overturned almost immediately, leaving you trapped in a scenario that was correct in general, but became fundamentally wrong where the details were concerned. Left with only a vague impression of humanity, with no one to properly feed from, you were forced to exist and think for yourself. To speak, decide and learn for yourself about a world you had been forced into without your consent in the first place. And why...? Because they had taken offense. Offense to your rejection of being summoned here, that some fragment of them would dare to just leave behind whatever they so treasured in this world and run away.

Sorry to say, that is exactly what some fragment of them would do.

You were living proof of that.

But running away, as your parent had been apt to inform you of back then, wasn't an option. It was never an option. Not for you, and most certainly not for Irue Valen. With only a library of memories of a life you hadn't led yourself to guide you, you muddled through the very same trials they themselves had been facing.

Your first trial in this world was one whose consequences meant nothing to you. Like another person's puzzle that you had been sat in front of and told to fix, but there was no proper solution. You had struggled and finally found some semblance of an ending to it, and at the end... At the end, was something you had never experienced before. Something nothing of your kind had ever experienced before.

"This is why I can't give up." were the words you remember from that time, as you looked across the table at the face of a man who would later become the captain of your knights. "If I fail, these people are the ones to take the fall."

You didn't fully understand what that meant at the time. There was a weight in those words which you had nervously accepted, one of responsibility that you didn't completely grasp back then... But that was the start of it all. The end of your first trial, and arguably the beginning of what could be called your 'life'.

The next memory that stood out in your mind was of aching muscles and burning hands, as your heart and the exhilarated cries of the knights you had 'taken in' thundered in your ears. The snake hunt had been the first thing in your life that was truly yours. A choice you made, and a success you earned. It was there, exhausted and overwhelmed, that you began to realize what it meant to live for another. More than your own selfish desires, even more than your loathing of this stand-in existence, that moment changed everything for you. You looked across blood splattered forest, at the excited faces of the men and women around you, and you once more felt the weight behind your parent's words - But this time, you understood.

This was why you couldn't give up. This was why you had to keep moving forward. If you failed, if you ran away, these were the ones who would take the fall. This weight was their hopes, their dreams, their very lives. That was what they had placed within you when you took them in.

These were your people.

They were your knights.

...Looking back, this was the divergence point. Your life had been anything but ordinary, and you knew that the feelings you had weren't things that any apparition of Shade were ever meant to experience. You knew that, and you were inwardly scared of what that meant. As time went on, you found yourself slowly drifting further and further from Shade. A mindset which humans considered so alien as to require dedicated meditation to even grace was one you simply possessed, one you felt completely comfortable and at home with. It was a window of clarity into your place in this world, and with it, you knew exactly what you were and where you stood.

It was something you felt slipping through your fingers with every passing day. An Eden that you were drifting away from, leaving you stranded and confused, with no idea of where to go or what to do. Every choice presented to you held no clear right or wrong answer, and even the results often confused and worried you with their unclear connotations. No longer were you able to simply know which path to take, to walk that path with the confidence that what you were doing would be for the best.

This aimless muddling was a taste of what it meant to be human.

There was no place for you in this world, yet you existed. You struggled to live with that, to find a niche, or failing that, to create a niche. Some anchor that would keep you from being blown away. For the pitiful things which had been born into this state, it was something only natural to them. A state which everyone around you simply existed in without realizing the gravity of it... For an Apparition, one who was born with Clarity, and knew their purpose and place in tune with the entirety of the world, it was nothing short of horrifying.

You'd have lost nights upon nights of sleep, laying awake in existential terror, had you the need to sleep in the first place. No one around you understood how delicately balanced on the edge of an abyss they were. How their very existence was an anomaly, a mistake in the natural order. They lived freely, smiled happily, and often never so much as paid it a second thought that not one of them KNEW what their purpose and place was.

All that remained to you were the people around you. They kept you safe, kept you anchored and calm. What you lacked in universal purpose, you found in them - A calling. A place where you were needed. It wasn't the same as the certainty of purpose you once possessed, but the feelings within you and the ones who needed you felt so much more real. They resonated, drawing your attention away from your confusion and fear and onto more mundane matters such as food (which you don't eat, but they continue to give you), and the weather (which you don't particularly mind, but many seem to have very passionate opinions about).

More than ever, you felt the pressure to not turn away from them. The reason you couldn't run away, that you had to keep moving forward. You understood it more intimately than you wished you had. These people were everything to you, an unreplaceable piece of your life. You brows would furrow with each decision you made as you tried to move forward, to bring them to a better place and make the right decision, and you would inwardly cry out with every option.

Please. Please let this be the right choice.

...Those cries were never answered, and the last expression you saw on the faces of Dullem and your knights as the mineshafts fell left you to wonder if the non-answer itself wasn't a condemnation of your existence in the first place.

Left alone in the dark, a place you could easily consider home, you had nothing to do but to sink into self-loathing that your own choices were what had led you here. That despite your best efforts, the stress and the tears left unshed, that nothing had mattered in the end.

What would have been the better choice?
What would have kept them alive?
What could you have done differently?
What was the right answer?
What path should you have walked?

You were doing the best you could, wasn't it good enough?

Was there even a correct option to have chosen!?

You resented being forced into this life. Being ripped from your purpose in life. You hated the feelings that you should never have felt, you hated your parent for having thrust them upon you. You hated them so much...

But, that hate was tempered. In the darkness around you, with only the steady dripping of water to fill your ears, you remembered those words.

"This is why I can't give up."

Your parent understood. Unlike the people around you, unlike everyone else, this terror of having faced a road with no answer, of having no place in this world yet existing anyway. They understood it, just as you did. It was a bond the two of you shared, one which you realized you clung to even as you rebelled against them and tried to ignore their hovering presence as you wished for freedom once more.

"This is why I have to keep moving forward."

They had lived this life, and those constant lectures were the experience they had gained. You shut your ears to them, and hated every moment of their condescending speech, but left alone in the dark, you pulled yourself back together by remembering them. You felt the grit beneath your nails as you clawed yourself back to your feet, and the weariness of your body with each step deeper into the darkness that you took.
___

"We have a lot to do, still."

You sighed at that unwelcome voice from the back of your mind, trying not to look at the familiar shadow which had crossed its arms at you. An insurmountable task laid out before you, with tasks that you could scarcely believe were possible to be accomplished individually in a week, yet you were told you had to manage all three in just as many days.

These standards were high as usual, almost chokingly so, but you lacked the the energy to resent them anymore. Rather, it was with resignation and a sense of resolve that you simply accepted it for what it was and began to make plans. Began to once more muddle through a world which held no place for you, making decisions that held no promised outcome.

They were right, about a lot of things really. The advice they gave always held reason, and the presence of someone to help you muddle through was... Soothing. Even if neither of you knew the correct way, it wasn't as scary as having to make the choice alone. While in some respects you still hated Irue Valen, your feelings were more complicated. You would be quick to voice and attest to you resentment, your annoyances, and your frustrations. While they were 'right' about many things, there were no completely correct answers in this world, and you were stubbornly certain that many of your own answers were just as 'right' as theirs.

While you disagreed, and still held a simmering petulance, the two of you had come together to work towards a resolution to this catastrophe. One which would see you, if nothing else, regaining the bodies of those you had lost, and returning to those still alive.

But, as your fingers graced the frosted covers of the only good thing to come from that accursed monument to failure, you promised yourself.

With this in hand, even as a Doppleganger, even if it had initially been your purpose in life, you wouldn't become Irue Valen. This Relic granted you the power to change, to become anyone, and if you had been cast out to muddle in this world regardless, then you would so under your own terms - Not as a stand-in for your origin.

With the rippling of the pages distorting your image, you nodded to yourself at the change of image and identity before you.

You refused to become your parent.

This was your decision.

"Let's go."