Heretical Edge

Content Warning: Please be aware that the following chapter contains severe emotional distress and suicidal thoughts/comments. Take care of yourself.

Everything was dark. The world was blackness, without even the slightest hint of color or light. I could barely even feel myself, in a distant sort of way. It was like I was floating in a void, unable to sense anything other than my own thoughts. And even that was a bit iffy. They felt disjointed and far between, like I was drugged or something. I would think one word, and then the next would come either a second or ten minutes later. It was so difficult to focus, almost impossible to actually understand what was going on and what I was doing. Hell, I barely even remembered who I was then. It was like all of what made me me was drifting away.

Heh, I was drifting apart, sliding into nothingness. I was disappearing, and when I did, this rift wouldn't be closed. It would stay right where it was, giving that Dragon energy a path right to the Fomorians. Wasn't that funny? On top of that, the Seosten would open up that ship and spread the Tartarus energy all over the Earth, transforming everyone here and giving that place a real foothold in this universe. Then it could keep doing even more damage. There could be a serious competition between the Fomorians and Tartarus over which of them could destroy all life first. How funny was that? They'd actually be fighting each other while every living being in existence was wiped out, one way or another. That was so funny, such a riot. It was just… just such a...

Wait. Wait a minute. Just like that, my thoughts managed to snap back together, forcing away the unnatural fog that I'd been drifting under. Tartarus, rifts, dragons, Fomorians, fuck, damn it, focus! This was absolutely not the time to let myself fade away. I had to deal with this right now.

Once the fog inside my head cleared somewhat, the void around me started to fade as well. I could sort of see my own hands in front of my face. It still felt like I was floating at first, then the ground seemed to come out of nowhere, materializing under my feet. Maybe it had been there the whole time, or maybe it only existed once I started properly focusing on it. Either way, there it was. I was standing in… in… a hallway? I was in a narrow corridor. It looked like some sort of hospital or something. An empty hospital, or a prison, judging by the thick metal doors. A hospital prison? No, not a hospital, not the medical kind anyway. I could see through a window in one of those metal doors. The bed in there had straps on it to hold a patient down. The walls and floor were soft.

Where was I exactly? How did I even get here?

Oh. Oh wait, this wasn't real. Well, it was, but it wasn't the physical world. I had just possessed Sariel, right as she recalled back to her previous host. So was I inside her mind? Or was this the other host's mind? Why did it look like some creepy old mental hospital? I-- wait. Mental hospital. Oh no.

Right, so… so if this was really a mental recreation of a Seosten mental asylum, the one Sariel's mother had been kept in, why…. why? I couldn't understand why Sariel would make something like this as her mindscape. But if she wasn't totally responsible, then what was going on? Why was this happening? Maybe if I focused on trying to reach out to the-- oh right I had the Flique. Yardbird? You there? I sent that while squinting around. Was I supposed to go searching for something?

Unfortunately, I didn't get much help from Yardbird. Oh, there was a response, faint as it was. But it turned out it was taking absolutely everything she and the rest of the Flique had to even give me this much control and shield me from the intense assault Sariel was trying to unleash on us. She was so dangerous, so good at this mental stuff, that it took absolutely all of them, all the ones who were active and awake, to keep her out of our memories and give me this much freedom and awareness. Whatever else happened in this place was just going to be up to me. The first step was figuring out why Sariel had put us in this recreation of her mother's mental asylum, because I still wasn't certain exactly what was going on with--

A foot came out of nowhere, colliding with my back to send me sprawling awkwardly to the hard floor before sliding up against the nearby wall. I hadn't even sensed anyone there. Obviously, I didn't have any powers in this place. Not like I was used to. No item sense, no super strength, nothing like that. It was lucky I'd even appeared in my Jacob form at all. Maybe the rest of the Flique were responsible for that too.

Rolling over after landing, I barely had time to bring my knees up to catch Sariel as she landed on top of me, my hands grabbing both of hers before she could stab me with the knife she had managed to manifest. I wasn't exactly sure what being stabbed on this mental plane would do, but it probably wouldn't be good. Especially if Sariel was the one who was doing the stabbing.

"You think you can be in my mind!? You think you can bring your lies, your deceit, your filth into my mind after what you did!? You think you can put us here, here of all places just to toy with me!?"

The anger, the sheer outrage in Sariel's voice was enough to send a shudder through me even if she hadn't been doing her level best to stab me while I was laying trapped underneath her. This was Sariel, the mother of my sister, my-- she was… it was Sariel, and she hated Jacob, me so much she was practically spitting with rage at the very thought that I was inside her mind right now. This wasn't the Sariel I knew. If I didn't find a way to get through to her, calm her down somehow, this whole thing was going to go horrifically wrong.

But what could I do? What could I say when I wasn't even sure exactly what had happened to make her this angry? It had something to do with her mother, with me not letting her cure her mom. I must have had a reason to have done that, right? How was I supposed to apologize at all when I didn't actually know what I was apologizing for? What could I even do that would help? And what did she mean, I put us here? Why would I put us in a recreation of a place I barely knew anything about? But if I didn't put us here, and she didn't, then who… huh?

I was trying to think even as I continued to strain against Sariel's strength as she tried to push the knife down. Hell, it was all I could do just to stop her from stabbing me, let alone try to think of the right thing to say to fix all this. I had to say something, had to find some way to--

That was when something completely unexpected interrupted my desperate, panicked thoughts. A sound reached me, reached both of us. It was coming through a nearby open door leading into one of those hospital rooms. The sound was of someone crying. It was faint, but very unmistakable. That soft, miserable crying cut through everything else, my thoughts, Sariel's rage, all of it. Just like that, both of us turned our heads to stare in the direction of that sound. And as we did, the door, which had only been slightly cracked, slowly and deliberately creaked its way open. No one was there, no one visible anyway. But the soft, mournful crying continued.

Sariel was off of me almost instantly, moving to that doorway. I hesitated, but finally picked myself up from the floor and followed. The Seosten woman had already moved into the room, revealing another of those beds with straps on them. No one was in it, so that wasn't where the crying was coming from.

There was something on the floor by the bed. Crayon drawings. Or some Seosten equivalent, clearly drawn by a young person. Wait, the crayon drawings, the asylum, this room, the crying, was… was this little Sariel we were hearing? Was she crying?

Even as that thought came to me, Sariel herself, the adult version, was moving to a nearby wall. That was when I heard that soft, mournful whimpering again. She did something, and the wall slid open, revealing a secret passageway beyond. A passageway with someone sitting in it with her back to us. It was a small, huddled figure, a girl, her shoulders shaking visibly as she very softly, weakly cried to herself.

Sariel made a noise deep in her throat, gaze turning to glare at me briefly, like she was trying to figure out if this was something I was doing. Then that girl in the hidden room made another weak, agonized sound, like an animal that was being tortured. Immediately, the Seosten woman's eyes snapped back that way, as she started to lean down, only to suddenly freeze. She went completely motionless. The girl had whispered something that made Sariel stop short. Was she hearing some mental version of her younger self?

Once I was as sure as I could be that Sariel wasn't about to turn around and start trying to stab me again, I very slowly moved a bit closer. I still couldn't get anything from Yardbird or the others, so even now there was part of Sariel that was trying to break through our defenses. Or maybe they just weren't letting their guard down enough to start communicating again, which was smart. Either way, I was still on my own here as I hesitantly moved toward that hidden room.

When I was close enough, I heard the girl whisper again, but this time I could make it out. Her tone was utterly miserable, the voice itself enough to cut into my heart and tear pieces out of it. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't want to. I'm sorry." She just kept going on like that, the flood of tears making it hard to understand her exact words now and then, but it was all the same. More apologies and pleas for forgiveness. But forgiveness from who? Who was… this wasn't Sariel. It wasn't young Sariel. She was older, a teen only a bit younger than me, actually, with dark hair. But… wait, who would be here like this? What the hell was going on?

As if in answer to my silent question, Sariel spoke softly, her voice sounding almost as confused and uncertain as I felt. "Elizabeth? What are you-- how are you…" She took a knee next to the girl, hesitantly reaching out to put a hand on the girl's shoulder. It was like she had completely forgotten about me in that moment. But as soon as she felt that hand brush her shoulder, this 'Elizabeth' made a slightly louder noise of despair and pulled away, scrunching in on herself as though trying to hide even deeper in the secret room of this mindscape mental asylum.

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I could see her face then, as she turned away from Sariel with her eyes tightly shut. Apparently seeing her like that, along with getting the first name, was enough for the Flique to send me at least a bit of information. This was Elizabeth Hubbard, the girl who had basically been the main witness in the Salem Witch Trials. She had been part of the group of girls who started the whole thing, the oldest one. The rest of the girls were nine, eleven, and twelve, but Elizabeth had been seventeen. Which meant she was able to testify, so she kind of became the star of the trials.

She could apparently be very convincing on the stand and was really good at seeming to fall into a trance or have demonic-induced fits or whatever. Specifically thanks to this girl's accusations and testimony, seventeen people were arrested, thirteen of them eventually killed by hanging while another two died in prison. Fifteen people dead, in large part because of this girl making claims and then being a very good actress in court. And now she was… inside this mindscape version of the mental asylum Sariel's mother had been kept in? Why would-- oh. Oh, duh, she was Sariel's host. This was the girl Sariel had recalled to. Which meant that she was-- oh fuck. Oh god damn it, oh shit, no, that wasn't-- oh…

Without thinking, I moved closer and shifted around to kneel in front of the girl. I heard Sariel make a noise, but she didn't stop me. It was like she couldn't stop me right then, as I touched one of this girl's hands gently. At first, she jerked back a bit, before her tear-filled eyes rose just enough to see me. A look of confusion and hopelessness passed over her face, as she gave another hollow, broken sound. Then she was leaning into me. Her arms went around me tightly, hugging so hard it would've cut off my breath if we were in the real world. For just a second, she started to try to say something in a shaky voice, but the words became a series of soft, hiccuping sobs instead.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Sariel raise her hand as though to do something, but when she heard the horrible, broken sobbing, the woman froze. Her hand stayed like that, half-raised with her fist clenched. There was a strange look on her face, sort of like it was mixed between confusion and disbelief. And maybe a little bit of fear. Okay, yeah, there was absolutely a lot of fear. In that moment, Sariel actually looked terrified of what was happening.

"Please," Elizabeth finally managed after a stretch of crying that could have been ten seconds or five minutes, "don't let her." That was all she could get out before her words devolved once more, becoming the weak keening of a terrified, broken animal. Her tears were soaking my shirt and jacket as she clung to me even more tightly. It was like the girl was trying to crawl inside me just to hide from… from Sariel. She was absolutely terrified in a way I'd almost never seen before. Terrified and… and broken.

Eventually, the girl managed to find her voice again, albeit just as weak and shaky as it had been before. I could barely understand what she was saying, and she kept pausing now and then to physically shudder while sobbing a bit more. "Don't make me hurt them. Please don't make me lie anymore. I'm so, so sorry. Please, please don't let her make me say it. I don't want to say it. I won't say it, please. I don't mean it. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry. Don't let her make me, please, God. I don't want to hurt anyone else. They're gone. They're gone because I said it, because she made me say it. I can't-- I can't do it anymore, please, please, just kill me, please, don't make me hurt anyone else, just kill me." Her voice briefly choked itself off into wordless mewls as she violently shuddered. "Kill me, please, please don't make me say it anymore, don't make me hurt anyone else, please, I'm sorry. I want to die, please just let me die."

I had no idea what to do here, no clue how to react or fix this. I wasn't even exactly sure what was going on or why we were seeing this girl. Shouldn't she be suppressed right now? Why would she be in Sariel's mindscape of her… mother's mental asylum?

I didn't know. I didn't understand. What I did know was that this was Elizabeth Hubbard, star witness of the Salem Witch Trials. And she was… she was forced to make those accusations. She had been so convincing on the stand because Sariel was controlling her at the time. Sariel had made the entire witch hunt happen, and all those people had died because of it. People who were jailed and executed because of things that Sariel made this girl say in court.

But why would Sariel do all that? What was the point? She wasn't needlessly cruel or anything, even back when she had been a loyal part of the Seosten Empire. She didn't just get her kicks out of doing evil shit like that seemed to be, so what was going on? And how could this girl remember any of that? Sariel would've suppressed her mind and put her to sleep, and she definitely would've wiped her memory so she wouldn't say anything about what was going on.

Speaking of Sariel, she was sitting down. It was like she couldn't keep herself upright anymore, slowly sinking to her knees there in the main part of the room, next to those crayon drawings. She slumped down while staring intently at the girl who was still doing her level best to crawl inside me. The Seosten woman didn't say anything, didn't attack me or try to touch Elizabeth at all. She just sat there silently, with a look on her face that was almost as lost and broken in that moment as this girl was. A look of such emotional turmoil that I very nearly reached out to her despite everything. Only the fact that I would have had to let go of Elizabeth stopped me, because as devastated as she was, I couldn't bear to stop holding her. I just didn't know what to do besides hold her. I didn't know what to say, or how to help this girl.

A look of realization crossed Sariel's face then, before she dropped her gaze to stare at the floor. It was like all the anger, all the fight, all that… everything fell out of her in that moment. She slumped like a marionette whose strings had been cut, like a person who had nothing left in them anymore. Like a person who wanted nothing more than to fade away and disappear forever. Something very important, a vital part of the person she had been up until that moment, had just cracked apart. She wasn't even thinking about me, about Jacob at all. Not right then.

"You're the part of her that remembers," Sariel finally whispered, her voice making Elizabeth flinch and squeeze herself even more tightly against me. "You're the part of her mind that can't be suppressed or erased, the part I… the part I cut off from the rest whenever I take over and change her memories. When I-- when I use her, I pull part of her away and hide it from her. I pull those thoughts out of her mind and take them into my own. That's you. You're the part she doesn't know about. You're the one who remembers all of it, and I've put you… I've locked you up here, here, I locked you in this… this… place for bad memories."

I still didn't know how to actually help, especially while that little revelation was rebounding its way through me. But in the end, I did the best I could just by squeezing the girl reassuringly and whispering a quiet, "It's okay. I'm right here. You can talk if you want to. She-- no one's gonna do anything to you, I promise. You're safe. I'm right here, you're safe." Honestly, I had no idea why she should even listen to me at all. But somehow, my words seemed to calm her down a little bit. Or maybe she was just all cried out.

"I didn't want to," she murmured weakly, her grip on me almost painful as she turned to look at Sariel directly for the first time. Even doing that much clearly terrified the poor girl, or mental construct of a piece of the girl, whatever she was. Her voice cracked too much on the next bit to even be understood at first, before she tried again with slightly more success. "You made me say those things. You made me hurt people. You made me… you made me lie. They're dead. They didn't do anything wrong and now they're dead because-- because you made me lie." I would have thought there would be anger, rage in those words, but instead, there was nothing but despair. She was just broken in so many ways, the overwhelming, horrifying guilt of what she had been forced to do, what Sariel had made her do, was cutting the girl's very soul in a way that I actually couldn't truly comprehend. If the Seosten woman was right, this was a part of Elizabeth Hubbard that she had created by taking all of her memories and guilt about what she was being forced to do and basically pulling them away from the girl herself. Which she had then essentially, apparently unwittingly, shoved into a recreation of the mental asylum her own mother had been kept in. She had, however unknowingly, created one of the single most traumatized beings I'd ever imagined and then shoved her into the place that was probably the source of her own worst childhood nightmares. That was… fuck.

"I--" Sariel started hesitantly, looking almost as wrecked as Elizabeth herself. "I didn't-- we didn't have a choice. The ship, the energy it gives off, it… it changed those people. It was corrupting them, giving them power to-- they would have hurt everyone. And the Bystander Effect, it was-- it's weak here. That energy, it twists the world around it, it makes… makes the Bystander Effect weaker. We had to come up with a reason to make them disappear, to take them for study and… and explain why they would never come back. We couldn't let them stay here, not after all those changes. They weren't human anymore, they weren't… right. They were broken. We had to hide what was happening. We…"

She stopped talking, trailing off when it was clear that Elizabeth wasn't listening and had just turned away from the woman to bury her face in my shoulder again so she could cry some more. She cried herself out before quieting. But she never let go, her grip on me never loosening. She clung to me like a life preserver in the middle of a dark ocean. The whispered words came one more time, soft and empty. "Please just let me die."

Silence returned, as I held that girl. When I raised my gaze from the top of her head, Sariel was looking at me, and our eyes met. I waited briefly, then spoke, my voice cracking somewhat. "I know you didn't mean to do this. It wasn't--"

"If you claim it wasn't my fault," Sariel informed me quietly, the words devoid of threat but brimming with promise, "I will never hear another word you say."

"It wasn't intentional," I finished gently. "I know you. I know who you are, and you wouldn't… I… I know you." The words came in a way that made me actually hear and understand what I was saying for the first time, a realization that made my eyes close as I repeated them. "I know you."

It was my turn to slump a little, a hollow feeling taking hold. "I know you, Sariel." A low, soft breath escaped me before I opened my eyes to look that way once more. "I can't explain why, but I don't remember what happened to make you so angry at me. I don't remember. I don't know what I did or why… but I'm sorry. I am sorry that I lied to you. I'm sorry I hurt you and your mother. I don't know what happened, but I do know you. I know you, and you wouldn't be this angry without a very good reason. So whatever I did, it was… it was bad. I hope that I was doing what I thought was right, but that doesn't mean it wasn't wrong, and it doesn't mean it didn't hurt you. It doesn't mean I didn't screw up and make things worse. You can believe what you want, I can't change that, but… knowing you feel this way about me is one of the worst experiences of my life. Whatever happened, whatever I did, I'm sorry. I'm just… I'm sorry. I hurt you and I'm sorry."

Sariel's mouth opened, then closed again. There was the slightest pause as her eyes flicked down toward the girl I was holding before she spoke quietly, the words sounding like they were some of the most difficult ones she had ever forced herself to say. "Tell me what you want, Jacob.

"Why are you here?"