chimera

These chambers have caused me nothing but trouble.

Today, I saw myself. It wasn’t the same reflection of myself as before, no. It was not the reflection of me that occasionally greeted me. She laughed at me. It was an ominous, unhinged laugh. It reminded me of my own state of mind after the incident. I was almost so broken that all I could do was laugh, and it was only Jack who could wake me from that madness back then. Him to wake me, Sakura to bring me down. But I haven’t yet found Sakura, no not at all.

It made me uncomfortable, that laughing, and it filled me with dread. She disappeared into my makeshift shrine to the mother I lost, and the helm there radiated with a dark energy. To be honest, it took me a while to be able to approach it. Suddenly, I was filled with fear at the prospect. But things were even more wrong than before. The whispers had ceased, utterly.

The father I had found was at my side when I finally touched it.

My vision went dark.

I awoke being deployed to the surface of Lua. It all felt tragically familiar. The empty hallways, that almost felt haunted. No one here, but me… and myself.

She appeared behind a corner, first, peeking out at me. When I approached, the room lit into flames, and I was approached by specters of our lost mother, made of smoke and shadow. They hurt to touch, and I had no choice but to lash out. When the flames died down, so too did the specters, so I followed. Naively, I followed.

Sometimes, she would just disappear. Sometimes, more specters. But it seemed clear that I was being led somewhere.

Somewhere, was that damned hole I had fallen down before. I knew it felt familiar.

When I landed, I was nothing more than a shadow. I leaped from point to point down a terrifying, warped hallway, into a twisted, broken plaza. From a high-up precipice, I heard an uncomfortably familiar voice, one that incited a furor in me.

Ballas.

Much as I was angry, I knew I couldn’t be sighted. Not now, and certainly not when I laid eyes upon him. He was warped from the legs down, being bended physically into Sentient form. He mumbled madness, about being watched, about his perfect death being robbed from him, about his humanity, gone. I felt no sympathy for him, because he robbed me of my humanity long ago. Now, I was nothing more than a shambling shell of anger, depression and broken dreams, because of him.

He spoke of ‘her’.

I stayed out of sight, listening to him speak of mimicry. How we had both been deceived. How could he betray her? That he didn’t betray her, he betrayed a false notion. He saw a lover, where we saw a mother. But to hear him say it, none of it was real. Only the Sentient Natah was real, and she was cold, cruel and deceptive.

Oh, I had known her real name for a while. She herself had had it drawn out of her after the great and terrible Hunhow awoke.

The broken pieces of a sword formed on a pedestal in the center of the plaza as he spoke. When he finally addressed me, implied he had always known I was there, he reformed it into its whole form. He called me forward, and said that I knew what I had to do. Said it was the only way to end this war. He gave me that sword, and the scene faded away.

When I woke again, I woke frothing in debased rage.

The trouble is, now I don’t know where to direct that fury.