(Author’s Note: All speech is translated from the Japanese)
((Mature Content Warning: The following post is rated Mature [NC-17] for Sexual Content, Language, Fantasy Violence, and Loki.))
The memory of pain reached her before full consciousness took hold. Devastating heartbreak… a sweet, handsome face she hadn’t seen in three years; the Mother’s rage, a wild black fury that had no end, sated only in the punishment meted out with brutal, merciless passion.
By whatever miracle, her body was whole, hale, and unbroken. What resided beneath mere flesh and blood, however, was another matter entirely.
Distant, vacant eyes of faded jade turned slowly over the room as she gained her feet. Pausing for a moment, she sought wistfully for the sense of strength and power that would have provided a fleeting sense of comfort, its absence indicative only that she had exchanged one prison for another.
Her sight fell, finally, to the room’s small table. A thin bit of parchment sat beside another object, but whatever story the scrawled calligraphy bore was beyond her feeble understanding, so she turned her attentions to the other occupant of the tabletop.
It sat, inconspicuous save for the simple fact that it existed where it had entirely no right to, within a space that was, presumably, hers, and yet it was like nothing she had ever seen before. The perfect sphere of the object was marred with a myriad of ridges and planes, each of which hid a legend emblazoned in various colors upon the raven surface that lay beneath the outer acrylic.
Pale jade eyes danced over the rest of the dark room quickly, unaffected by the near total blackness of the space. Nothing gave any indication of where the alien thing had originated, nor how it had arrived in the second prison to which she had been sentenced since her departure from her home. She completed her approach to the table with caution, studying the little foreign almost-sphere with the empty, neutral expression always held by her faded emerald eyes reflected upon her breathtaking features, the constant smile she had always kept for the presence of others, vanished.
Perhaps it was something of Avery’s, left for her with whatever secrets the parchment held as some sort of signal she did not comprehend. Many of those he seemed to consider his fellows during the presence of the bazaar had carried and wielded similar objects, though the ones she had seen had borne significantly fewer planes. To the best of her understanding, they were used for some sort of complex game. Was that what he desired…? The manner in which her designated companions spoke was like no dialect she had ever been taught, and had too often left her baffled with its idiosyncrasies.
Drawing up to the edge of the table, she found that the symbols at the apex of the die were a flattened circle followed by another twisted upon itself, the imprint upon the black surface beneath the clear outer shell highlighted with a silver paint that seemed to shimmer softly beneath her gaze. She stood, perfectly still and silent, waiting for something, or anything to happen, well into the witch’s hours, until the first whispers of sunlight brushed the metal and glass of the Luxor’s façade. When at last it seemed there were no further excuses that could be made for her hesitance, she extended one hand across the table towards the zocchihedron, her index finger falling upon the dominant figure, the middle grazing the side of the plastic shell.
In that moment, the entire world froze, and she was no longer alone.
He sat opposite her as naturally as if he had always been there, draped across a plush hotel chair as if it were a throne. From the luxurious gentle waves of his night-dark, beyond his shoulders-length hair; the soft, handsome cast of his Japanese features, including his delicately sculpted, impish goatee; the perfectly tailored cut of his black on black, double-breasted suit; and the sheer presence of him, that filled the room with laughter and crackled upon the air with a waiting potential for misadventure, he was everything- and, perhaps more– than she remembered. Transfixed, jade orbs could no more depart his smoothly smiling face than she could lift her hand from the thing that had sprung this particular trap.
Uncle… Lord… Genya. She shuddered mentally as she heard the words aloud, though her lips had not moved any more than the rest of her was able. For the second time since the sun last rose, more than a decade of carefully cultivated and crafted barriers, both mental and emotional, never truly given a chance of recovery, shattered in a heartbeat. Hurt and fear warred in faded jade orbs, and her thoughts pounded on the air. Not again.
“Not again?” The man she had known for as far as her memory stretched as Genya Arikado uncoiled from his seat with the speed of a striking cobra, taking a position behind and slightly to her left side. One arm curled about her waist as the other caressed slowly down her extended arm, over her silken garment, until his pristinely manicured fingers rested atop her own, holding the frozen woman as if they were dancers sharing an intimate moment. “If I didn’t know better, sweet little Pebble, I’d say you weren’t pleased to see me. Now, that would be upsetting. You wouldn’t want to upset your Uncle Genya, would you, my darling? Not after everything we’ve been through, together.”
Tenjouno Chigatana could do little but stare at the blank expanse of the opposite wall, her thoughts careening wildly until she found one stubborn rock to cling to amidst the maelstrom of emotion the man who currently held her in a lover’s embrace wrought within her. I know who you are.
His laughter was rich and warm, exactly as she remembered it, but there was a hint of something beneath it that she could not quite convince herself wasn’t mocking. “You know who I am?” The difference between them in height left his lips at the level of her shoulder, and as he spoke, they drifted lightly against her neck, his breath hot in her ear. “Of course you know who I am, sweetheart.”
Without allowing his body to ever fully break contact with hers, he slid around to face her, perching himself on the back of a chair as regally as he had sat properly in its brother a few moments before. His warm, openly friendly smile and the soft, almost paternal affection in his eyes was betrayed by something else, hidden and simmering, simply awaiting acknowledgment. “My face is the earliest memory you still bear. I gave you a ‘birthday,’ because no one else there cared enough to celebrate your presence. When the priestesses left you in the highest boughs of the shrine’s tallest tree at your Mother’s order, I helped you down.” One hand had settled upon the wrist of the hand held by the die, the other now reaching to dance playfully across her pale, spotted cheeks. “We counted your freckles together, you and I. And after you’d become upset, and they locked you away in the White Room, I stayed with you, read to you, sang to you, until you were soothed and calm and could rest peacefully again.” A faint, teasing twist tugged at the corners of his lips, his voice lowering to a sensuous purr in the wake of the brief pause. “I showed you the meaning of love… in all of its… sundry incarnations.” His hand shifted, his fingers curling beneath her chin, his thumb faintly stroking her cheek. “So yes, little stone butterfly, you know who I am, and who I have always been. Does a different name, a handful of titles you didn’t know about, change all that? All we’ve shared?”
Left bare in the absence of the fortifications that had left her amidst the world but never entirely a part of it, emotions unchained flared behind vividly verdant irises, cascading in a rumbling avalanche of conflicting sentiments across the walls of the empty room. Anger burned brightly and tore free from her mind, railing against the man sitting unperturbed before her. You used me! Betrayal warred with hurt as the tide of her feeling shifted, pounding relentlessly from her still form. I needed you…! Soft, plaintive syllables echoed from her mind, the pained and tortured cries of a lost child. You abandoned me… The landslide coalesced and solidified, forming an impassable wall in the wilds of her eyes, stubborn and unyielding. You are my enemy.
The god often referred to as The Liesmith threw his head back and laughed, and there was little even faintly pleasant in the sound. Sliding forward off of the back of his perch, his hands fell to the thick silk belt at her waist, still chuckling softly as he withdrew her tessen and a sundry number of other tools of her trades from the pocket she kept within it, discarding them casually to the table behind him. When he was finished, he reached for the leather band that crossed from her shoulder to her hip, ignoring the blaze of indignation that erupted in her eyes as he lifted it over her head and dropped the fabled sword, still asleep in its sheath, carelessly to the floor. “Sweetheart,” his voice was a low, gentle murmur, hands returning to her obi, this time working with ease to free her of the now-unburdened fabric. “You are wearing far too much clothing for my pleasure.”
Horror crept in slowly to replace the rage and weaken the steadfast resolve she had provided him, a sound of desperation something like a whimper whispering free of her thoughts. Stop…! Stop, please…!
The vaguest shake of his head was the only acknowledgement he provided that he had heard her as first the obi fell to the carpet, gently easing both uchikake and kimono open and sliding them off of her shoulders, held partially in place by her still-extended arm. He made a faint, disgusted sound as all he revealed was the nearly painted-on skintight black catsuit hidden beneath her silken garb. “Infuriating little pebble.” Wickedness danced in his dark eyes and upon his lips as he ran two fingers from her throat to her navel, the ebon covering dissolving beneath his touch into nothing, leaving her chest bare to his gaze at last. Reaching up to work at the knot at the back of her neck that held in place a loop of night-dark cloth, his body made light contact with hers. “I suppose there is truth to the theories that the more closely guarded a thing is, the greater the prize.”
Tossing the long swath of material aside with the rest of her treasured possessions, his hands lifted to her hair, delicately plucking the myriad of instruments she used to keep her intricate chigane in place, smirking when he took note that the long lacquered sticks were honed to fine points. “Now,” his kind smile returned as her long red tresses fell free down her back, teasing his fingers through the soft ginger waves, before trailing languidly lower down the bare skin of her upper back. “Now I will answer your… accusations… my darling child.”
He drew his hands forward, sliding over her shoulders to rest on opposing sides of her throat, his thumbs falling to press lightly against her trachea. “You were a project, little stone. An… amusement… to pass the years. You loved me… because you were supposed to. For myself… I never expected the child you were, or the woman you became. The arrangements that were made… were sealed before we ever met. If you feel you have been used, who deserves a better portion of the responsibility…? Who shared time with you, at every opportunity… your Uncle Genya, or your ‘Mother’…?” Sincerity radiated from his dark eyes, infusing his smile, his immaculately sculpted brows drawing close as if he himself were pained by the sorrow of faded memories. “Tradition dictates the rules, you know this. I had no choice but to honor the contract, after. Even gods can be held to law and promise, little one.” Leaning in close, he tilted her head lower so that she could feel the heat of his breath and the slight brush of his lips as he spoke. “Their enemy…? Perhaps. But I am not your enemy, dearest.” He clasped her tighter, pressing his lips fully upon hers in a slow, sweet kiss. When he broke away, his voice was a low, rough rumble. “I have been, and always will be, your best friend, little stone.”
The pads of his thumbs stroked tenderly across the pale flesh of the young woman’s throat, adjusting the position of her head at his leisure as his wicked lips, and occasionally his tongue, played across her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw, and down the svelte curvature of her throat. “I can give you anything, everything, beloved. All you ever desired. Freedom. Power. Comfort. You can be so much more than what she allows you. You could have a life of your own, make decisions for yourself. Start with this one, sweetheart. Stretch your wings and soar. I know you can. I’ll give you all you need.” His voice was a low, seductive purr that pulsed on the air and throbbed like a living thing, demanding and masculine, refusing to be denied. “Walk away from that desiccated thing you call Mother, and be mine. Entirely and completely. That’s all I ask. I’ll lay the world at your feet, Pebble. All I ask for in return is… all of you.”
A flurry of overwhelmed and conflicted emotion provided her response, but as one image stood out strongly amidst the rest of the meager resistance she managed to muster, the mercurial god’s demeanor shifted in a fraction of a heartbeat.
“What was that?” Twisting his grip upon her, fingers that had only a moment before been setting her skin aflame with the gentleness of his caresses, closed viciously about her throat and began to slowly crush her ability to breathe. The handsome beauty of his Japanese features contorted and approached ugliness in his fury, the silken tones of his voice becoming a snarl that promised only violence. Upon that vow, he delivered, lifting her from the floor and driving her with shattering force into the wall behind her, maintaining his hold upon her neck as he did so. Finally freed from the zocchihedron’s clutches, she was now captured by a far more terrifying power. Her pale, freckled features remained smooth and untouchable, limbs hanging yet limp and lifeless, unable to provide even a slight indication that she was struggling to breathe.
“Tell me what you’re hiding, my broken blade. You may have no secrets from me.” Nostrils flared bullishly, his fearsome gaze bored into hers, watching with a frigid lack of concern while snow white skin slowly took on a distinctly cerulean edge.
Please don’t. Uncle… Lord… Genya… There was nothing grown, nor stubborn, nor strong left in her faltering thoughts, the fierce light that had briefly lived within her emerald orbs fading by inches along with the vibrant color that had arrived in them. That’s… mine…
“Yours?” His sharp laugh erupted in the still air, and he closed the space between them, his mouth claiming and encompassing hers, breathing life back into her even as the force with which his kiss hit her slammed her head back roughly against the wall. When he broke away, lips parting languidly from hers, one hand remained upon her throat, his grip slackening enough to no longer threaten her continued existence, though the feverish obsession in his night-dark eyes remained undiminished. “All you have, all you are, is mine. You are mine. And I will take whatever pleases me. Perhaps you require a reminder of that.”
Dexterous fingers crept upwards from her cheeks, the fear and an almost resigned trepidation that still dwelt in her almost colorless eyes given no heed. He petted her fiercely red hair tenderly for a moment, before his hand jerked violently away from her, extending his arm to his side to its full length. When his hand pulled away from her skull, it exploded outwards in a riotous tangle of flickering colors and glimmering images that stretched between her head and his fingertips. Even in the near pitch darkness of the Japanese scion’s suite, the glow of most of the substance was faint, faded as if being viewed from a great distance, or through a very thick pane of glass.
In the moment that the mental debris began to erupt outward from its proper home, despite her vividly painted lips remaining still and closed, she screamed. The sound filled the space around them, filled the entire world, the room and everything in it beginning to shake violently in the throes of her unmitigated agony.
For a brief instant, he took his eyes off of the miasma of light and chaos, frowning sternly towards her. “Volume, dear.” As if a switch had been flipped, the chilling, pained sound became nearly completely quashed, echoing in whispers off of the walls while the room still trembled and shuddered. The disapproving look marring his handsome features deepened slightly, and that, too, settled to a gentle rumbling. “That’s a good girl. Much better.”
Returning to his study of the shimmering pathway that stretched between the red-headed young woman and his hand, he released his hold upon her throat. Where she should have plummeted to the floor, she instead remained suspended in place, unable to move, nor react beyond the diminished capacity he had allowed her. “Hm,” he murmured to himself as his hand dove into the stream of her consciousness, the howl of misery that doing so elicited reduced to little more than a whimper scraping the walls of the suite. Forcing his way through the wild mass of blurred thought and memory, he chased the bright patterns and distinct images, an infuriated growl departing his lips as they seemed to willfully elude him, burying themselves amidst the river of their distorted compatriots.
Finally snatching his prey out from the fray, he clutched an orb tightly in his fist, drawing it towards himself, away from the rest to the extent that the fragile slivers that anchored it to the rest were nearly stretched to the point that they might begin to unravel. Caressing it with his fingers, he cajoled the memory to play out for his sight.
A stark red handprint stood out upon a pale, freckled cheek, the pristine perfection of once-immaculate makeup smudged and marred with the tracks of tears. Somehow easily expressing dominance over the far taller, gangly teenager, the priestess who ruled the shrine, and therefore, the girl, hissed insidiously to her ward. As if her slumped, defeated posture was not indicative enough of her emotional state, the longer the elder woman’s rant continued, the more quickly the flame-haired girl devolved into body-wracking, heart-broken sobs.
Still silence descended upon the dark space for several heartbeats, the continuing play of endlessly shifting shadow and color lending his stunning, handsome features an eerie, frightening cast. “Interesting.” Long, agile fingers curled tightly about the memory for a moment, threatening to crush it entirely, before he released it to rejoin its brethren, intact if slightly bruised. “That one, I will address properly, at my leisure. At length. Slowly.” The last word was uttered past gritted teeth, a promise made by a god, to himself, and bode nothing at all pleasant towards the subject of his ire.
His focused, fixated, but infinitely lighter demeanor returned a heartbeat later, smiling smoothly towards his captive audience, reaching to run and index finger tenderly along the line of her jaw. “A… not insignificant find… but not the treasure I know you are hiding, little stone. Stop fighting. It will only get worse. I can make the pain go away, sweetheart. I promise. All you have to do is give… me… what… I… want.”
Raven black eyes bored into her own, fiercely passionate and demanding, in stark dichotomy to her pain-shrouded gaze. The life and light flickering within them had become so thoroughly drained that her eyes were nearly as pale as her skin. “Fine,” he grumbled with no small hint of petulance filling his voice. “If that’s how you want to be, that’s how we’ll be.”
Whipping his hand away from her face, he plunged it without further preamble back amongst the contents of her mind. Fingers curled into claws tore through the shifting mist with no regard for the scope of damage done in his pursuit, nor the amplification of- despite his previous instructions- the level of noise and trembling that filled the room. Driven with single-minded fervor, he violently perused her every thought, betraying minimal surprise when he found she held almost nothing in the manner of personal desire or hope. “Perhaps, too well.” He chased down those rabbit holes in his hunt, a smugly satisfied sound escaping his lips as he battered the last of the protective walls away and seized the thing he sought.
It outshone everything else in the suite when he drew it away from tatters he left in his wake, clear, brilliant crystalline light easily filling the space. Finally in his possession, he held his prize with an arrogant sort of reverence, grinning in his triumph as he enforced his will once more upon a fragment of her mind.
In the wake of his own appearance amongst his fellows and their progeny, a war for information had erupted, centered upon a struggle between father and son. The perfect automaton, she had looked to her creator for instruction. Everything else fell into shadow and oppressive darkness as the goddess’ words thundered and echoed and sunk into her consciousness. ‘Your life is meaningless.’
“That was what you needed to keep from me so desperately?” Though the fury in his voice was moderately restrained, he was nevertheless nearly yelling as he glowered at her. “That is what you fought to hide? What you cherish so-” He broke off as it seemed that there was more within the orb he held left to witness.
Aphrodite’s command was barely needed to set her in motion. Exiting the conference room, the all-encompassing night that had embraced the scene, as if in an attempt to hide from or bury the words that still shuddered off of the corners of her mind, still held court as the group congregated in the hallway, several of its members immediately departing.
She floated amidst the shadow, until a young male’s features, warm and supportive, filled her vision, his smile returning a bit of light to the confines of the memory. …And then his hand filled hers, and the world exploded, if briefly, into vivid color, banishing the last of the darkness that had fallen and swallowed everything.
It might have been the height of the sun’s pinnacle within the room as the memory froze, fixated upon one openly concerned and smiling face, one hand tucked into another. Even his breathing seemed to still as he stared at it for a long while, before releasing first the plundered sphere of thought, and then the grip he had held for so long upon her mind itself. Stroking his hand over her fiery mane once more, as if doing so might cauterize the wound, he leaned to press his lips to her forehead in a gentle, fatherly gesture, before they descended once again upon her own in a passionate, demanding kiss.
When he withdrew, the face of the man she had trusted and cared for throughout her youth had been replaced by one she had known for only a short while. Well-loved goggles held back the flop of sandy brown bangs into his face, but the rest of his long, lightened hair framed a face it seemed he might yet be growing into. “Is this… what you want, Pebble?” The god made a spectacle of inspecting himself and openly deriding what he found, from long, gangly limbs to the utility belt at his waist. It was the gentleness in his eyes that was what was truly, and most notably, absent; and what replaced it was the revelation of what she could not quite discern from within the features, and the eyes, that she had found so familiar.
With his stolen gaze upon her, it was hunger that took over.
Long, slender fingers held either side of her face as he kissed her fiercely again, taking his time, enjoying himself. His face nudged and nuzzled hers for a few moments before he spoke again, the boy’s voice matured by the deity wearing his flesh, dark and gently seductive. “The Egyptian will continue to exist only so long as I wish it, my butterfly. It would be terrible if he were to suffer some sort of… accident.” Catching the corner of her lip in his teeth, ravenous brown eyes lifted to hers. “You. Belong. To. Me.”
A faint flicker kindled in the depths of twin diamonds, weak but fervent, and the faltering whispers that echoed off of the walls were riddled with a steely, if desperate, determination. S-stop. S-s-stop that. Don’t. You can’t. You aren’t… you’re n-not-not him. Whether from lingering pain or her reaction to a kiss stolen from within the visage of her erstwhile combat student, the corners of her eyes welled over with tears, carving trails down freckled cheeks that glittered in the room’s low light.
For a brief moment, he simply stared at her, looking moderately stunned, before he leaned back in towards her, kissing her tears away with gentle tenderness. “I taught you better than this, little stone.” He began to punctuate his words with further mingling of his lips upon hers; taking increasing liberty with each he brought to her. “You were never meant to be a helpless Lady of story, awaiting your Lord to rescue you and bring you away from darkness. I raised an Empress, a woman of the greatest potential, who needs no one to save her from anything. Look at you now,” he took several steps backwards, gesturing to her lifeless, limp body, suspended impotently above the floor. Pacing in agitation before her, stolen, youthful features twisted with an angry, repulsed disgust. “Nothing but a marionette with its strings cut. A mindless puppet- Izzie’s pretty pet weapon, made to bow and fetch and kill at her whim. Trained to use your body, as nothing but another tool in your violent arsenal, for her demands, and never your own desires.”
Long limbs wound around her neck and torso, stroking her bare skin with light touches after closing the space between them one more time. He worshipped her with his lips, alternating between tender, wandering kisses, and a warm, throbbing purr in her ears. “Bask in your power, dearest butterfly. Stand at my side, instead of in her shadow. I can give you so much, show you so much more than what you have, kept tight on her leash. All I ask… is all of you.”
When he withdrew from a particularly thorough, ferocious devouring of her mouth with his own, he was once more cast in the beautifully handsome Japanese features that were so indelibly etched upon her memory. “I promise you… that serving me- with me… has far greater perks than you have known from your Revered and Exalted Mother of All.” His gentle chuckle rolled pleasantly off the walls of the suite. “Your life needn’t be meaningless, sweetheart. You will never spread your legs for any other man. Just me, Pebble. Only me. You will finally be properly and truly, entirely and solely, mine. With me, you’ll be the Empress I always wanted you to be. Together we can rule. Everything.”
Confusion and panic waged a war against the pain in her eyes that still saw rivers of emotion flowing freely down her freckled cheeks. Jumbled and disjointed, she brought her thoughts together only with tremendous effort. Serve… or… serve?
Perfectly manicured fingers wove delicately through her long red locks, his smile was gentle and kind, the shadows of the insatiable within his eyes hidden once more within his dark, dominant gaze. “She will never love you, darling. You are only a tool to Izanami. You know that. An expendable weapon, a body to be used for sex and death, until it can no more serve its function. I will give you all you need.” He broke the path of her tears with the pads of his thumbs, shifting his head forth and back so that his nose brushed against hers. “You remember what it would be like, to be mine. Is that so terrible?” For several heartbeats, his words hung heavily upon the air, before the sound of his laughter, quiet but almost openly contemptuous, issued forth. “I’ll make certain the Egyptian is protected, if he means so much to you. As I said, my dear, anything you want will be yours, at my side.”
Anger lent her eyes a touch of jade as they radiated her upset at the veiled threat beneath the offer, but he continued before she could formulate any sort of response. “I do not require an answer tonight, dearest. Soon, but you deserve the proper time to make your decision. I want you with me-” The rapacious, lengthy kiss he provided as the punctuation of this statement served its purpose well enough, “-but I will not have you unwillingly before me, again. Come to me, call to me, little stone, whenever you want me as I do you, and I will take you away and place you all you wish at your feet, in return for yourself, entirely.”
Sliding his palms in a slow, sensuous caress from her face, down her neck and over her shoulders, his hands finally closed around her wrists. Lifting them suddenly, he pinned her limbs roughly against the wall as his lips met hers in a show of equal brutality. “Tonight will be a night of celebration for all, indeed. I have a gift for you, as well, my sweet. Something to help you… keep me… in your thoughts.”
The cry of complete and total agony that rose from her mind rivaled any he had evoked from her as he had plundered the contents of her thoughts. He gripped her wrists with enough force to crush bone, and when he seemed satisfied with the result of whatever end he had been chasing, he kissed her sweetly upon the lips, and then her forehead, one last time, releasing her arms to fall to her sides once more. Inspecting the wrought metal scrollwork that now embraced each limb from wrist halfway to her elbows, he smiled in a sort of satisfied pleasure, watching it glow and burn from within as if newly forged.
Finally seeming inclined to turn and leave her at last, he leaned back to her still body, ignoring the shuddering mental convulsions that careened off of the walls, whispering into her ear as he cupped her cheek in one hand. “One last thing, lovely butterfly. Take your rest, but remember this always…” The tender softness of his voice altered, and there was nothing but the potently divine in the syllables he uttered that followed .
“Stolen from the land’s embrace, saved and sentenced;
Subject to flame’s unyielding tongue, broken and hardened;
Adrift in the vast luminate sea, crushed and engulfed;
Risen to the heights of the heavens, exalted and sated;
Death completes her cycle, the final verdict given;
And as all things, to moss and clay she is returned.”
His gaze remained heavily upon her as he withdrew, and finally, he vanished with a soft ripple of laughter, and she crumpled, no longer suspended by his will, to a silken heap upon the floor.
Writhing, blazing pain encompassed everything she was. She tore at the metal that bound her, refusing it, but the more she struggled, the tighter its grip became upon her. She sought for a blade, for anything to help, willing to accept the loss of limbs if it meant freedom. Contrary to her own beliefs, she had not yet reached the limitations of what suffering could be dealt, and her back wrenched, arching as if she were a daikyu drawn to the greatest extent of its pull, as if the wrought cuffs that held her now objected to the mere notion. Within a few heartbeats, she could take no more, and surrendered entirely to unconsciousness once again.
When she awoke again, it was with the distinct feeling that someone had been hovering over her a moment before, only to vanish with her slumber. Her fingers found cold, unyielding metal as she clutched tightly at herself, huddling silently upon the solid reality of her tatami mat, unable to distance herself fully from the tender, vast voice that had slid into the edges of her dreams, different and distinct from the other who haunted her sleep for his own ends.
I’ll be waiting for you. My daughter.
~T.L.~
All The Worlds, A Stage 