“So ‘Juliet’ just appeared in your garden out of nowhere, talked with you for a few hours, taught you how to fix your food tasting like dirt, and disappeared when we arrived…”
Velania vividly nodded at Sofia’s recap.
“What did she look like?” Cinthia asked.
“I… Uuuuu… I’m not too good at physical descriptions… She’s… She’s like a sword!”
“Like a sword?” Sofia repeated.
“Yes! Like… Cold and sharp and dangerous… But flexible and versatile and reassuring to have around! I don’t know, maybe it’s a bit weird to describe someone like that but it’s the best I can do…”
“No, no, that is a pretty good description,” Sofia comforted her, “actually… let me…”
Sofia stood up from the couch in Velania’s living room, taking a few steps away and grabbing a bone sculpture out of the painted halls. “Does that look like her?” she asked, turning the work-in progress statue of the warped moon’s ‘silent queen’ toward Velania.
“Hmmmmmmmmm… It does– But not really?”
“Not really?”
“I think… The feeling is the same, but it doesn’t look like her. Did you make this? You’re so talented!”
“Quite the compliment coming from you, I am flattered, thank you.”
“Wh- What? I’m nothing special so there’s no reason…” Velania replied, staring at the ground.
There are more details in a hand’s width of the moldings on your ceiling than on this entire statue I made… But I would rather not see you faint again already…
Keeping her thoughts to herself, Sofia rolled her eyes, and returned to the couch.
“Well, either way, I hope I can meet Juliet next time. I would love to stay and chat more, but why do you say about sending me on my way for the library’s test first while you bake those cookies?”
“I can do that! I– Uh… I had a feeling you were coming soon so everything is ready. It’s a very very simple test compared to the first one!”
“Really? I’ll try to get back before the cookies get cold, then. Where do I go? Can Cinthia come and watch?”
Velania shook her head, her flowing hair revealing more of the burned half of her face, “No but we can watch you from here. The entrance is right there,” she finished, pointing at a stone staircase going down that had just appeared in the middle of one of the room’s walls.
“Alright, then,” Sofia said, standing up as she transformed. She softly placed Bookie on the coffee table. “I will be right back.”
Cinthia gave Sofia a thumbs up, “Good luck!”
“G- good luck!” Velania followed, awkwardly copying the gesture with a shaky hand.
With a last silent nod Sofia disappeared into the staircase, Sorrow’s shroud billowing behind her as if animated by a wind that wasn’t there.
The descent was relatively short. Sofia counted about four hundred steps, so she was not too far underground when the stairs stopped, leading to a closed wooden door shrouded in complete darkness.
Even though Sofia could still see, she adjusted the luminosity of her horns to make things a bit more comfortable on the eyes, and opened the door.
The next room was exactly what her mana senses had told her in advance: an empty square room, with another door on the other side.
But I can’t see into the next room…
Sofia took a few steps into the empty room, closing the door behind her.
Oh?
Feeling ‘bones’ approaching, she stopped. The other door opened, and a second figure entered the room.
Recognizing the blue-skinned zombie, Sofia gave him a light bow, “Vakariazrehafin greets the guardian of Sorrows.”
She snuck a quick glance above Romuald’s head as he bowed back, it showed the exact same number as Velania’s, 449.
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“Greetings, daughter of Sorrow. A test of your mind awaits beyond, are you prepared?”
“As prepared as I ever am for anything.”
“Then you may proceed,” Romuald answered, stepping out of the way.
“No special rules this time?”
The zombie’s dry lips slightly curled up at the question, yet he remained silent.
“Alright, thank you.”
Sofia walked past the statue-like zombie, pulled open the door he had just entered from, and taking a couple of steps in, found herself faced with a pitch black darkness that seemed to invade her vision. She turned around, but could still see nothing, and only heard the door slowly close in front of her.
What now… The darkness here is really strange.
By now Sofia considered herself somewhat of a magical darkness expert, from the curse-darkness of the underground Avian ruins to this palace’s elemental darkness to the obscurity of the Sunless sanctuary, she had seen it all. Yet this time it felt different, it was more akin to a complete loss of vision like whenever she lost her head, despite knowing her eyes should still be functioning perfectly well.
Her mana senses did not make much more sense either, as even the door had disappeared after being closed, and now all she could feel was a seemingly endless flat space on which she stood, with no ceiling or any obvious boundaries.
Forming a small bolt in her palm worked, but her vision stayed completely blank; similarly when she tried looking into her storage to grab the magical candle she had gotten from the previous test in the library, she could not even look in there.
I can still access my storage but I can’t see inside?
Messing with my sense of vision rather than actual darkness, then?
Well, I’ve lost my head several times so this doesn’t feel all that new.
The question now…
What am I supposed to do?
For a moment, Sofia contemplated summoning a few skeletons to be her eyes, or at least to scout this empty void for her, but it felt like going against the spirit of the test to use ‘external’ help.
Hmm… Actually… That could be the answer.
On a hunch, Sofia ripped her tail off, summoning the Hollow grief.
As I thought.
In the complete darkness of her strange blindness, the undead summoned from her tail appeared like a shining beacon.
The [Mirror of grief] passive it has is a powerful mind-invading spell…
Sofia observed the tail morphing and expanding, fully expecting to see Clarice’s face once again, but to her surprise, she was instead faced with herself. A younger, weaker, more human version of herself.
I look… About sixteen? This is my tunic from the orphanage… It even has the patchwork spot where I tore it sneaking out the first time. Is my younger self a precious person I have lost?
Maybe someone else might think that. I regret nothing… Almost nothing.
The hollow grief stood still, looking up at Sofia who was slightly taller with unblinking blue eyes.
“Can you see where I need to go?” Sofia asked.
“Can you ever?” the hollow grief asked back.
Sofia was a bit stunned, it was the first time the hollow grief she summoned ever talked, and it was in her own voice, which she had always found deeply disturbing to hear someone else use, no matter the situation. Nevertheless, she answered seriously.
“Yes. It’s rarely clear, but I almost always have a direction. If not, I will find one.”
“Then do you really need me?” the younger Sofia asked next, with her face, her expressions, her body language that betrayed unease and anguish.
“I do. You are a part of me. We can find the direction together.”
“We can?”
Sofia nodded, “Of course.”
“Then why… WHY DO YOU ALWAYS LEAVE ME BEHIND?!” The hollow grief screamed, rotting and collapsing into a puddle of foul flesh in front of Sofia’s eyes.
It had all been so fast and sudden that by the time Sofia realized she wasn’t being attacked, the hollow grief was already a bloody mush that slowly faded out of Sofia’s vision. She was left in complete darkness again with mixed feelings, when the ground under her feet disappeared. She yelped and tried to open her wings, finding them gone from her back, before she could properly stabilize herself, she snapped her eyes open.
A gentle breeze flowed through open windows, the morning sun gently shining, fluttering curtains casting waving shadows on her bedsheets.
A short and blurry figure ran to her beside.
“Big sis Sofia! Big sis Sofia! You need to wake up! You’ll get scolded again!”
Sofia froze. The figure might have been blurry but the voice wasn’t.
It overlapped with a bloody image in her mind.
A headless body that she recognized and had tried to forget.
She reached out with a trembling hand, petting the soft curls of the young girl’s brown hair.
“Big sis you’re so pale… Are you sick?!”
“N– No– I…”
The small figure grabbed Sofia’s hand and placed it back on the bed, “Don’t move!” She ordered with her cutesy voice before running off. “Clarice! Mariella! Help! Help! Big sis is all sick! She’s all white and trembly!!!”
Sofia fell back on her bed’s old cushion, her eyes wide open, staring at a much too familiar ceiling, as if too scared to blink.
Tears flowed silently.
