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Susie couldn’t sleep.
Not that that was anything particularly out of the ordinary, given that the bed her room had come equipped with was barely more than a frayed and stained mattress which always gave her neck cramps in the morning; but still.
Who could sleep after that?
Memories of the fight against the Titan flashed through her mind as she stared at the bare ceiling. The stark silhouettes of the Darkspawn and the light she saw striking against them, dancing to and fro in heavy battle. She’d been fearing for her life the whole while, yet somehow, never let go of that bit of hope– that one unyielding and indignant nugget of hope– that they’d all make it through to the other side in one piece.
And they did, only to be met with an omen of a terrible fate.
Denying the reality of the words she saw afterwards with her own two eyes felt half-assed, but after the fight they had endured, Susie felt the need to give them all something. Anything. Because at this point, as she tried to find some rest with Kris beside her on the floor, it was all that kept that glowing, bullshit-sounding prophecy out of her mind.
Once they’d both stumbled inside her room, soaked from the rain, Kris unceremoniously collapsed onto the carpet and fell asleep almost immediately, much to Susie’s envy; at least someone was having a peaceful night so far. What she wasn’t looking forward to was the inevitable pest check she’d have to give them in the morning: Her apartment had something of a bug problem that her guardian hadn’t bothered to address in any meaningful amount of time. It really pissed her off.
In the meanwhile… All she could do was stare at the ceiling and listen to the patter of rain against her window. She’d actually formed the habit of leaving it open just the smallest bit when it did, as to keep some small part of the sharper sounds usually muffled by the glass. That, and to let in a bit of the cool, wet air since her AC unit hadn’t worked for months.
If she closed her eyes, she could just about, just about clear her mind and gain some semblance of peace for one of a scarce few times that night; of course, it was not meant to last.
tok
The first tick against the window almost went unnoticed, lost in the stream of sounds that Susie had been trying so hard to immerse herself in to drown out her thoughts. In the end, she chose to ignore it anyway.
Tok
A little louder this time, but still not enough to serve as active encouragement to get up from her bed, or even to turn her head. Today had already robbed her of the patience and energy for the smaller things.
TOK
Susie jumped at the last one, almost a full-on loud clatter of metal against glass. Somehow, Kris didn’t stir even the slightest at the noise, remaining motionless as a statue while face-down on her dirty carpet. She grumbled quietly to herself at realizing that she’d need to remind them to take a shower later. Turning her head towards the window to see what was making the racket, nothing jumped out at her from the angle at which her bed allowed her to see. Unfortunately, that meant she had to slowly extract herself from the Susie-shaped depression left in the mattress to shimmy over to the side and shuffle over to the window, practically blinded because of the mess of semi-damp hair over her eyes.
When she could finally feel the cold radiating off the glass in front of her, she parted her hair with a hand to see the source of her disturbance before freezing still.
Floating just about a foot away from the exterior of her window was a rusty metal birdcage, a baseball-sized glowing red heart holding it up from the inside by resting the arching roof of the cage upon itself. For a total of maybe five seconds, Susie was fully convinced she was hallucinating the scene through the glass before realizing that she’d seen that very same glowing heart not even four hours ago, in the body of the titan.
It was Kris’ soul. Here, by itself, floating outside, holding up a heavy metal birdcage.
Susie’s first instinct was to wake Kris up as soon as possible to get their soul back in them before something bad happened, mostly because she had no idea how it was even possible for this to happen in the first place and assumed people just died if they didn’t have their souls. But, she hesitated just inches from basically punching Kris in the shoulder. It registered to her that she’d seen that specific birdcage before: It was the very same one that was perched in the wagon in Kris’ room when they’d been walking around their house the previous morning.
Slowly, she turned back around and stared at the caged soul floating silently just outside in the rain. Just like she thought, there were no openings in the cage big enough for it to slip through if it wished. If that birdcage was from Kris’ house, and the soul was trapped inside… Did it… carry it, by floating all the way here?
Susie stopped a breath as she realized the next step; for it to have carried it to her apartment, it would have needed to start in Kris’ house to begin with. Kris had to have stowed it away in the cage themselves. Why would they do that? Wasn’t that little red heart… Well, them?!
Her hands almost instinctually curled into fists at the realization that yet another action was being taken right under her nose at her expense, from Kris, of all people. Goddamnit. She controlled her breathing as she looked from the window to the human passed out on the floor and back. Whatever. She was just going to put the soul back in Kris, and then she’d force them to cough up the truth of why they were doing this.
At that moment, the soul started moving side to side, making Susie draw in another gasp that was only barely stifled in its noise by her biting on her lip. Ow. Her scowl quickly transitioned to a furrowed brow as she observed the strange heart, moving back up to the window to get a closer look and not daring to let it get out of her sight. Once close enough, she slowly opened it and reached for the cage, only for the soul to move just out of her reach. Oh, so that’s how this was going to go.
Carefully, Susie angled her legs so as to not fall out the window for when she next grabbed at the cage, watching incredulously as it started to descend to the ground at a measuredly slow rate. That only made her more confused. Was it trying to get caught…? If it was, then getting on the ground definitely felt like the best way to do it.
As quietly as she could muster around the gangly person sleeping soundly on the grimy carpet, Susie slipped her boots back on and donned her jacket, still damp from the rain, before quietly slipping out through her bedroom door. Navigating carefully through each hallway of the apartment and descending the stairs, she finally came to the metal door out of the complex, opening it just quick enough in a single practiced motion to avoid the horrid squeaking that came from the aged hinges. And so, now out of the building, Susie came face to face with the soul once again, watching as it descended to the sidewalk with as light of a landing as it could muster with the heavy cage around it. Once it appeared to be satisfied, it started bumping into a panel on the side; the door, of course.
Voice low, Susie squatted next to the cage: “Um… do you want me to… let you out…?” The Soul moved up and down in place, a movement that she was almost certain was an attempt at a nod. “Wait, you can hear me?” Another nod.
Susie stared intensely at the red heart as she considered the dissonance between the person she had escorted back to her apartment earlier that night and the odd visitor before her. Had… had she taken the real Kris to her apartment earlier, or had something stolen their body?
“Hey. Are you, um… Kris?” A shake side to side: No.
Wait, what? “Aren’t you, like… their soul? How are you not them?”
The soul paused for a second before floating in a tight circle, as if to say the relatively obvious sentiment of ‘I can’t exactly answer anything other than yes or no questions right now.’
“Oh, right. I guess you can’t exactly talk…” Susie stood up and looked intently at the soul before realizing that she was standing in the middle of a public street, glancing around in a panic. Thankfully, despite her lack of situational awareness, nobody else was actively witnessing her talking to a disembodied heart. Thank god.
The soft clinking from the cage drew her attention to the soul sitting in front of the door once again. “Oh, right, the door.” She kneeled down to the cage door before stopping herself at the sudden realization of how utterly preposterous the series of events up to now concerning this little red heart had been. “Hold the phone. I have no idea what you are. All I know for sure is that you’re probably Kris’ soul, and that you…” Wait. “Wait. Wait. Why the hell did you come to my place? How do you even know where I live? You and Kris would have gotten separated before I took them over for the first time.”
The soul floated silently in place, facing up at her from its lowly position within the cage. Droplets of rain ran down its glassy surface silently, refracting its encompassing red glow like a myriad of tiny lenses embedded into its side. Naturally, it had nothing to say.
“Right.” Susie clasped her hands and rested them on her head, looking on at the conundrum laid before her within metal bars. Closing her eyes, she thought about the best course of action forward; if Kris had somehow taken it out and caged it, they certainly wouldn’t be happy to see it out and about. Who else did she know that would have knowledge about weird, uncanny subjects like this? Almost immediately, she grimaced as her recent memories answered her question without deliberation.
Ralsei. Ralsei would know.
She did not want to see him right now, to be quite frank, but she also was faced with questions that she had no hopes of answering on her own. Damnit.
“Okay, you know what? I’ll let you out, on the condition that I get to take you with me to a friend– it won’t be Kris. Sounds good?” The soul sat still for a moment before giving a nod. Welp. No sleep for her.
Quietly, making sure no one was around to see her, Susie undid the latch of the cage carefully, opening it just enough to reach her other hand in and grip the soul firmly. She took care to avoid squeezing, since she had no idea how fragile these things were and had no intentions to find out today. Thankfully, despite the fact that it had definitely been strong enough to push up the weight of the cage on its own, it chose to remain inert while in her hand; that made this a whole lot easier.
Once she had retracted the hand holding the soul, she picked up the cage with her other and quietly moved it under a shrub at the tree line, hoping Kris wouldn’t be able to see it from the window. If they weren’t telling her shit, then she wouldn’t tell them shit. More accurately, she wouldn’t let them find out. With that, she made for the school straight through the thick trees to the south of her apartment, doing her best to minimize the amount of time somebody could possibly see her toting around a glowing heart. She imagined that the sight would be too much effort for her to bother making an excuse for.
Soon enough, she made it to the back of the school, slinking along the wall to get over to the front door, or at least the closest thing someone of her height and build could do. Generally, Susie considered it really funny that the school’s lock broke just a few days before all this started happening; she couldn’t imagine having had to go without castle town earlier today. Either way, she was inside, and the supply closet lay at the end of the hall with nothing to stop her.
And yet…
There was a squeal of rubber on linoleum as Susie came to an abrupt stop in front of the double doors, becoming intensely conscious of the warm sensation the soul had imparted on her hand since the moment she gripped it. Staring at it for a second, she brought it up to release it at eye level; as expected, it remained still where she’d left it.
“You wanted me to do this, didn’t you? Whatever you are. You say you’re not Kris, but you clearly wanted me to bring you here, meaning you know things that only Kris would know, so you… you are still their soul.” She grimaced at the heart as it mimicked a nod.
Susie wasn’t really sure if she wanted to bring it into Castle Town with that in mind, but if she’d been forced to know the worst things about her own future, then she was going to go the full mile and uncover as much as she could. Even the more uncomfortable questions that this soul brought to mind.
“Listen up, and listen good. I might be playing along with whatever this is that you’re plotting, but it’s because it serves me. We are going to go directly to my friend in there, and he, or you, will tell me what’s going on. Capiche?” Another nod. She didn’t know how to feel about its outright amicability, since as far as she knew, it was a part of her friend that had a mind of its own, and furthermore, its own motives. If she thought about it too hard with the limited information she had on hand, her head only ached more. With little else in the way of meaningful action to undertake, she grabbed the soul again, threw the doors open, and descended upon Castle Town once more, at a far sooner time than she had planned to after today's events.
As expected, main street was awfully quiet at this time of night, save for a few TV World shadowguys who hadn’t quite caught up on the memo of gaining a normal circadian rhythm, instead opting to hang out at the cafe. The clique that had formed nearly spilled out of the building, a jazzy tune beating through the structure and out the walls, yet not a single one of the fairly few darkners on the street seemed to care: The more interesting thing by far was the fated hero stomping towards the castle with a bright red heart-shaped object in her right hand.
The weird looks that Susie received unnerved her some, but the stare she was even less thrilled to receive would be the one she got from Ralsei upon showing up to the castle. The events at the church hadn’t slipped her mind even a little, and she really wasn’t thrilled to face him again so soon. Unfortunately for her, the developing situation didn’t exactly put the reins in her hands.
Silence was mostly the only thing which graced the castle courtyard, the bustle of the usual crowd absent in the dead of night– although it wasn’t as if the sky really looked any different at any time of day. More so, it just seemed that the darkners had some inherent knowledge of the sleep cycles of lightners. Either way, Susie was thankful that no one really felt like holding her up in the meantime.
The castle, by contrast, was unexpectedly bustling. In the absence of other detractors, Queen had wrangled up all the late-night partiers from Tenna’s crew into a party all her own, somehow managing to spill over from her room, into the hallway, into the foyer. Of course, she herself had been the one leading the slow annexation of public space into her domain, making use of the cauldron in the center of the room as a basketball hoop while onlookers cheered with fervor at her completely impractical techniques.
“Oh Hello Susie Cool Seeing You At This Time Of Day”
Her shrill robotic voice boomed in the small room, even more so than the fuss of the onlookers. Susie’s ears just about rang in her skull, but her attention remained laser-focused on the whereabouts of the lonely prince. “Uh, yeah. Nice to see you too. Look, do you know where Ralsei is? I gotta show him something important.”
Queen halted her balling in mid-air, coming to a clean landing directly in front of her.
“Goat Boy Passed By My Room A Few Hours Ago
Had Some Sick Looking Makeup On But Didn’t Seem Much For Talking
He’s Probably Spending Time Being Alone And Sad In His Room”
Susie winced at the whole of Queen’s description, but she held her tongue from giving an immediate reaction: Queen was probably just being exceedingly straightforward. “Uh, sure. Yeah. His room, right?”
“That’s What I Said”
With a heavy sigh and a quick glance at the heart in her hand, she looked off towards the east staircase and reaffirmed her conviction. “Thanks for the directions, then.” Just short of her taking off towards Ralsei, Queen poked her in the shoulder and sent her twirling right back to face her. “What?”
“Be Careful With That Heart Shaped Object BTW
I’ve Heard Some Weirdos Are Really Obsessed With Getting Them”
Her brow furrowed. What would a darkner do with a soul…?
She shook her head, clearing her thoughts; it wasn’t important for the time being. “Right. I’ll be careful.” At that, she took off through the crowd to reach the person she’d been seeking in the first place, ducking and weaving past merriment and destruction alike, most of which Susie was glad Ralsei wasn’t out and about to witness.
Finally, finally, she reached the door to his room, though she hesitated; the door was slightly ajar, a soft, cold breeze blowing through. It wasn’t usually the state of things that she’d come to expect from the fluffy pushover, but even so, she had no better leads and even less patience.
Thankfully, the door remained totally silent as she opened it, revealing the bare interior once more. There were also no immediate signs of Ralsei’s presence as she came inside… Or so she thought, until seeing a familiar prince curled up in the corner to her right, sleeping soundly with his sole possession wrapped up tightly in his scarf.
God. He still hadn’t cleaned her blood off his face.
Carefully, and with a tenderness which she had rarely, if ever, shown to another living being before, she came down to one knee in front of Ralsei and shook his shoulder gently. “Hey, dude, wake up. You need to see this thing.”
With insistence, Ralsei stirred in his slumber before opening his eyes again and immediately making contact with Susie’s own. A stare of shock held for but a moment, and then it was gone, the prince jumping up at attention in her presence. “S- Susie! I hadn’t… I…”
He immediately shut up as Susie brought a finger to his muzzle in a shushing motion. “Dude. It’s okay. I told you. You don’t have to be weird like that. I’d… like it a lot if you didn’t, actually.”
With a gulp, apparently becoming acutely aware of the now-crusty red smear on the side of his face, he built up the courage to look Susie back in the eye. “I… Okay. I’ll try.”
“Good. And we gotta clean you up, too, but I gotta show you something first.”
“Ah?”
Sighing while releasing no tension, Susie moved the hand holding the soul cleanly into view from behind her back. “This thing showed up outside my window, in the light world, and I, um, think it claimed to be Kris’ soul…? I dunno, though. I brought them back to my place, and they looked just fine.” Looking back up from the odd heart, she nearly flinched at the utter look of horror plastered on his face, thrusting her other hand out to catch the plushie that fell out of his hands as his arms went limp. Carefully, she set it down in the corner as he continued to stare.
“S- Susie?” The heavy breathing under his voice betrayed a panic which she’d really only seen from him a few hours prior, staring down the Titan… And that put her very on-edge. “That… How do you have it…?”
“You know what this is? Dude…” Her lips pursed as she fought the urge to show her immediately-returned frustration in the moment, then breathed deeply. “Look. I told you, it was outside my window. It was in the birdcage that Kris usually keeps in their room, and it was trying to specifically get my attention. I let it out, and I tried to ask it questions, but it can’t talk. What is this thing?! Is it Kris? Is it not?”
For a moment, Ralsei visibly deliberated on his answer, and Susie was just about to shake him vigorously before he sighed in defeat. “I promised you I wouldn’t hide any more secrets. We both know how that went. So… I’ll be blunt. That’s the Angel.”
She blinked. “The… Angel. The one in the prophecy. The one that you said we’re gonna banish when everything’s said and done. That one. And this has been inside of Kris the whole time?”
He nodded sadly. “It’s…” The expression that came next was nearly unrecognizable under how much his face scrunched up, but he pushed onwards all the same. “It’s been with us the whole time. And it’s been… It’s been controlling Kris.”
A moment of silence passed between the two as Susie absorbed the information at a painfully slow rate in a desperate gambit not to lose her cool in the face of the revelation. “You… You mean…” And now, her breathing matched the rate that Ralsei had exhibited not fifteen seconds prior.
Faced with the slowly unraveling situation, Ralsei stepped forward delicately, unsubtly reaching for the soul. “Susie, I know it’s strange, bu–”
“NO!” She flinched back from the prince, distrust and apprehension in her eyes while still holding the soul with an increasingly tightened grip. “I… You… This thing has been Kris the whole time, but it’s not really Kris?? Have they been possessed this whole…” Her eyes went wide with horror as she further realized the implications, raising it up to eye level to look at it intensely. “Have… I been friends with a body-snatcher the whole time…?”
In the resulting shock of such an epiphany, her grip had loosened enough to the point that she found herself caught off-guard at the very moment in which, in a singular, violent motion, the soul wrenched itself out of her grip with a single impulse.
Both heroes scattered back at the escape, though Susie made another futile motion to grab it, lunging up into the air towards it and summarily crashing directly into the wall, leaving her dazed… and wide-open.
Before she could climb back onto her feet, and as the prince looked on in shock and fear, the soul dove directly towards her before disappearing into her back.
“HURK–!” Susie stumbled back from her hunched over position, breath heavy and stilted. At the same time, an odd sensation blossomed in her core, something completely alien that she was simply unsure on how to react to. “I… What the hell just happened…?! R- Ralsei, did you see where that thing went?!”
When she looked back at the prince, all that met her was a glare of pure horror, one that she was unfortunately quite used to from a time she’d rather not recall. For the moment, she brushed it off, heaving one more heavy breath before standing up straight and facing him right on. “Dude. What the fuck is happening.”
“I think I could probably offer a better explanation than he could right now.”
In the span of a fraction of a fraction of a second, Susie spun around with her axe ready to strike, coming face to face (at a small distance) with a completely grey humanoid. As in, it was entirely monochrome, lacking any sort of coloration on its features save for the vaguest impressions of blushes under its steely grey skin. All that she could see of it was at the hands and face, as the rest was covered up by their familiar sweater, pants, and loafers. By far the most disturbing part of the whole getup, however, was the utter lack of a proper face, not a single impression or feature to speak of upon it. If one were to squint their eyes at it, its silhouette would have vaguely resembled Kris.
“What the hell are you? Where did you come from?” Susie’s shiny new justice axe held stock-still in the stale air of Ralsei’s room, the slightest gleam of unknown origin shining off its edge as she held it towards the strange figure.
“S- Susie? Who are you talking to…?” Ralsei came up to her side, evidently trying to search the area where the figure leaned against the wall of his room, but made no purchase. “There’s… there should be no one there.”
She blinked at his commentary. “Can’t you see that thing?” She prodded her axe further at the figure, once again head-on. Surely the prince with tons of secrets would have had a nose for things that were out of place like this.
It spoke once more. “He can’t see my projection, Susie. I’m barely more than that heart outside of the minds of you guys.” Susie hated the fact that its voice sounded so much like Kris’, though theirs distinctly lacked the feeling that it echoed within them– something else that disturbed her.
“What is that supposed to mean?? Like, you’re supposed to be the soul I was carrying around? Why didn’t you just do this earlier?”
In the wake of that response, Ralsei’s eyebrows shot up in recognition and stepped back. “You’re talking to the Angel…? How… How is this possible? Kris said–”
“What do you mean, Kris said? I thought you said that this thing was controlling them the whole time.” For a moment, she paused as she finally connected the dots between the current scene and the statement she’d made shortly before, slowly lowering her axe and turning to face the figure again. “Wait… Wouldn’t that mean that you’re the one that I’ve been–”
“Yes and no.” Unceremoniously cutting her off, they got up from their leaning position and walked forward slowly, their hands clasped at the front. “Kris… was very much still there with you, but I was dictating their actions in broad strokes. Stuff like where to go and do, or major decisionmaking, I did that stuff. All the smaller things, however… that was them. Emotional reactions, the window doodles, the quips they made today… all were either entirely them, or something they wanted to do that I actively enabled them to. They are your friend, Susie. Just… it’s complicated.” They relaxed as though they were about to let her continue before they recoiled at the sight of Ralsei in front of them, evidently noticing the state of his face like she had moments earlier. “Before we go any further… Please tell Ralsei to go wash up. It’s heartbreaking seeing him like this.”
Still eyeing the figure suspiciously, Susie finally stowed her axe and half-turned to Ralsei. “Hey… The, um, Angel? That’s what they are, right? They kinda said what I told you earlier, about, er, cleaning your face. I kinda agree.” Glancing at the prince, her eyes showed the concern lined underneath the apprehension that had been dominating up to now.
Slowly, Ralsei reached up to his face with his paw and felt the rough surface of the dried blood stuck to his fur. “Ah, right. I suppose I should, um, make myself presentable.”
An unexpected groan of frustration emitted from the Angel once more. “No, I just…! He shouldn’t have to–! ARGH!” Their body language, of course, matched up with the tone of voice as they covered their ‘face’ with their hands and paced in a circle haphazardly; not much of a face was needed to read the mood. “I don’t need him to be presentable. I just don’t want him to look like… that.”
Looking back at Ralsei, she noticed that his body language had immediately tensed after her head had whipped back towards the Angel’s projection, almost as if he had stood to attention. “Hey, Rals? You don’t owe anything, alright? I think they, and me, too, just want you to be okay. I’ll admit. I don’t get what the deal with them is, but they seem to have the right idea. Please. Go clean up, alright? I’ll handle the rest of this.”
With a slow and somewhat pained nod, Ralsei retreated to some unseen washroom beyond. Right.
“Okay. So. From the top.” Calculatedly, Susie turned around to face the Angel’s grey visage. “Explain this to me. All of this. What have I been missing, why did you seek me out, and why am I the only one who can see you?”
The Angel cracked their nonexistent knuckles before sighing loudly. “Right. I’ll start from the beginning, I guess. Though, before I do start, I just gotta say, I’m really glad I managed to talk to you alone without things turning into a mess– it was looking to be a bit of a tossup there. Chaotic, if you know what I mean.”
She squinted. “...sorta? Why… did you want to talk to me?”
“Because you’re the one person in the fun gang who I knew would be chill.”
That was not an answer she particularly enjoyed, drawing a scowl onto her face. “Chill, how? Why not Ralsei? Actually, haven’t you been controlling Kris? Shouldn’t you have spoken to them first?”
The Angel fidgeted. “They don’t wanna. I can’t control that, ironically enough. Never got the chance to communicate outside of broad gestures and decisions. This projection of my old vessel that you can see right now? This is the first time I’ve done this! I didn't even really know that it would work this way, but I figured that because Kris was using me for their own ends, they were stopping whatever I could’ve done in the first place. Namely, well, this!” They gestured to themselves animatedly, though Susie didn’t see anything particularly outstanding about the presentation. “Hey, I spent a lot of time making this vessel look right! It's not my fault that someone threw it out.”
A blink. “Did you just read my thoughts?”
After a whole lot of exaggerated movements, the Angel balked. “Ah heh, yes, but–”
“I’ll ask again, because I think you’re not exactly taking this as seriously as you should be.” Her hair had fallen back over her eyes as she grimaced, only the barest glint of her teeth enough to send a very clear sign of impatience. Being patronized was not something she took well. “What are you. Why can you hear my thoughts? And, most importantly, don’t go on useless rants when I want clear, straightforward answers.” Despite the fact that she wasn’t sure if the ‘vessel’ was really there at all, she still made a show of pulling out the axe again, keeping it by her side.
“That, uh, third one wasn’t really a–” The Angel cut off their own sentence as they evidently saw her knuckles whiten as she squeezed the handle. “Okay, okay! Jeez. Wasn’t expecting you to be so… angry. I really should have seen it coming, though. You have been through a lot of bull– Right, right! Sorry! I’ll stay on topic. I’m the Angel. From the prophecy. I’m also the little soul you let out of Kris’ birdcage out there in the Light world. And, the reason that I can read your thoughts… is the same reason that only you can see me.” The gears in her head turned as they said that, still getting a little upset that they weren’t being straightforward again.
Then it clicked.
And she realized why she suddenly had been feeling a now recognizably literal sensation of heartburn since the moment she heard the angel speak to them. Slowly, her axe slipped from her grip, making a deafening crunch as it embedded itself in the floorboards.
“W- What the fuck. What the FUCK! GET OUT!” In the span of a moment, she’d thrown off her vest and clawed at the sweater underneath, though truthfully, she had no idea how the hell she’d accomplish removing this newfound parasite.
“HEY! That’s not nice! And calm down, please! This was the only way for me to talk to you and explain stuff!” The Angel made a concerted effort to approach, reaching a hand for her shoulder, though Susie slapped it away like a cornered animal in her panic. Of course, then she realized that she could touch something that wasn’t supposed to be there.
A nervous chuckle escaped from the featureless visage. “Uh… please don’t get any ideas.” Of course, that meant she had to.
With newfound indignance, Susie stood back up, approaching the now-retreating Angel with squinted eyes and as much menace as she could muster: She was practically trying to demand respect. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you supposed to control me, or something? Like how you controlled my friend?”
“Th- That was involuntary!”
Her grimace deepened. “Well, I know for sure that whatever’s going on here isn’t. What the hell are you trying to do?” Right as they backed up into a wall, Susie noticed that their face, in fact, wasn’t completely featureless; a slit among the jawline, almost imperceptibly small, spit out the smallest bit of bright light from behind it. It was a cover.
“What… are… you… hiding?”
The Angel stammered, putting their hands up to cover it. “S- Susie, please don’t look! It’s not safe for you to look at what I really am! I didn’t get the time to explain what was going on! Please, just calm down, I promise I’ll explain everything!”
Right then, Susie felt a low urge to step back away from the Angel, though she powered through it near-instantly. “Think I just felt you trying to control me too. Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna do that.”
“W- Wait! No–!”
And so, Susie proceeded to make what was probably the single most egregious mistake of her life up to that moment, ripping the Angel’s hands away from their face and reaching into the slit, yanking it open. In the next instant, it enveloped her whole.
She saw EVERYTHING.
Impossible angles, detail to the smallest bits, colors which she’d never seen, lines so smooth they nearly seemed to be infinite upon themselves. Data, information, function, form, light, dark, joy, fear, sadness– All of it, all at once, assaulted every sense. Something within the noise, the pattern of a being, looked on in horror as she experienced it all with zero filter. Her mind started to fray at the edges as she became dimly aware that she had screeched in a mix of pain and defiance since the moment she stepped into what laid above.
And then. Quiet. Not silence, but quiet. At some point, her mind had calmed down, though she couldn’t remember when she’d stopped screaming. The only thing that still registered to her senses were her heavy breaths. Staying in place, hunched over, she stooped down to the ground, falling onto her knees. She felt like she’d just run a hundred miles in the span of seconds.
The next thing that she registered was an unexpected, strong hug.
“Oh, thank god, it worked! It WORKED! You’re okay, I was so worried that–”
With what little Susie had left of her strength, she pushed away from whoever had embraced her, falling onto her back against the hardwood ungracefully. Though it knocked the wind out of her, she managed to get up to at least her elbows, eyes still shut from the residual pain. And what was more… everything felt… different. Not bad nor unrecognizable, just… different.
The person who’d hugged her waited for a few seconds before approaching a little further. “You may want to take a second to breathe after opening your eyes again, just going to warn you now.” What? What was that supposed to mean?
But she did oblige.
The very first recognition was that she was seeing a WHOLE lot more, in a way she intrinsically understood to be more, but not in a way she could consciously quantify it. She was still in Ralsei’s room, of course, but… the grain of the wood, the threads in the fabric of the shade, they were filled with details the likes of which she’d only just seen behind the curtain. Things that she knew to be there, but that she hadn’t really paid attention to.
“The reason you couldn’t pay attention was because the details weren’t there to see a minute ago. Well, a minute from your perspective.”
The voice of the Angel turned her attention back towards them, their featureless face sealed back up, and similarly detailed in the odd manner which struck her before. Another glance around her environment, and herself, confirmed much of the same. Everything was the same, yet completely different. She groaned in semi-exhaustion before grabbing her temples, a headache coming on slowly but surely.
“What… What happened…?”
“What didn’t happen?” The angel chuckled to themselves. “You know? I’ll just tell you, straight up! It’s been months! You looked at me when you weren’t supposed to, and I had to spend three months fixing you up from the stunt! You’re welcome!”
Her brow furrowed. “Three… months? But that felt like–”
“Roughly ten seconds, yes. And don’t worry, Ralsei’s still getting himself cleaned up downstairs. I meant three months of my time. You got the fast version.” The Angel leant against a wall again, arms crossed in something close to smugness, but not completely.
Susie shook her head as she got up, grabbing her vest from the floor and throwing it around her once more. “What do you mean, you ‘fixed’ me? All I did was look at that flashlight you had in your face.” Discomfort came on when the Angel laughed haughtily at the assertion.
“Oh, Susie, you were messed up. You don’t look something in a higher plane of existence in the eye and walk away completely unscathed– Though if anyone here were to do it, you were the most likely candidate. Nobody else here fights as hard as I’ve seen you do it. It’s… inspirational, honestly.”
Her expression contorted into one of confusion. “Uh… thanks. I guess.” A bit more contemplation was all she could afford, yet the fact that the night had been mostly just thinking instead of doing bothered her to no end. “You… can’t be serious about the ‘higher plane’ thing, right?”
“What else would you call what you saw? With the time dilation, too? And I promise I’ll explain, if you’ll let me.”
They had a point. Susie couldn’t exactly call to mind what it is she saw, other than the fact that she could swear that familiar elements of it seemed to be all around her now. “Okay, fine, I guess that makes sense for the ‘Angel’. But how did it take you three months to do– whatever it is you did to me?”
“Oh, boy, where to start. Well, something I was going to tell you before this all happened was that I, myself, am not really part of your world. I can interact with it, manipulate it, even pause and turn back time in certain scenarios, but I’m not in it. I’m stuck out here. Which sucks, but that’s a whole other can of worms I don’t feel like getting into, so, think of me as a benevolent force from above trying to make sure that you all walk away from this alive and happy. If I’m being honest, I bungled a few things from the get-go here, but we’re tech–”
Susie’s outstretched palm shut the Angel up right on the spot, so she was at least glad that they bothered to listen. “Alright. You’re an eldritch god or something. Got it. Did I go insane or something? And… the part about ‘walking away alive’. You know what’s going to happen?”
The Angel’s attitude of smug power simmered down significantly, leaving an air of unease that put Susie right back on edge. “Yeah. The Roaring’s coming, Susie. I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. Many, many times. Each time, I try to change what I do, try to change what happens, try to save more people, but it’s not enough. It never was, cause I was confined by the method which I used to interact with your world. So, I stopped following its rules. I modified the device connecting me to you, to reach out at a time when I should have been far away in both time and space, during the best moment I could think of; after you fought your first titan.”
“...First titan?”
“First titan. Don’t worry, the others are gonna be cakewalks by comparison. Anyway, yeah. I returned to now by messing with the connection, and that might have knocked something loose deep inside whatever freaky spacetime-quantum-physics thing was made to facilitate it, because that slit that you saw? It was never supposed to exist. I accidentally allowed you down here to look back up at me, and of course, you know what happened; turns out none of y’all are supposed to do that. Which brings me to your earlier question about insanity! You didn’t go insane– Instead, you became more like me, by getting sucked into the connection… upwards. If the Light World is a layer above the Dark Worlds, then I was half a dozen or so layers above the Light World– and by looking at me, you went up two to three yourself.”
Giving a cursory glance over herself then over the room once more, Susie walked over to and picked up the plush she’d put down after Ralsei froze in shock, desperately trying not to think of the implications of the question she was about to pose: “So, all of this– it’s like fiction to you. And… you fixed me… how?”
“I used to think it was fiction.” Finally getting up from against the wall, the angel walked over to Susie, arms swinging in a motion that betrayed a vain attempt to relieve social pressure. “But, after what happened to you, it became pretty clear to me that this stuff was real in a way I just hadn’t considered. Don’t worry about it.” The resulting sigh of relief from an oncoming existential crisis being averted felt hugely satisfying. “As for fixing… Well, after you pulled that stunt, I couldn’t exactly put you back as you were. You became too much for what was, so… I managed to get a hold of the person who was responsible for the connection existing in the first place. Worked with him to bring up the rest of the world with you. If I didn’t have help, this would’ve been something closer to years of work.”
“I guess that explains why everything looks so freaky.” Freaky wasn’t exactly the right word, but Susie was having just a bit of trouble wrapping her mind around the concepts that were being presented so matter-of-factly to her. “Will… anyone else notice? I’m not sure I wanna deal with a ton of people suddenly freaking out about this when we go back to the Light World.”
“Don’t worry, as far as anyone else, lightner and darkner alike can tell, this is what reality always was and what it always will be. Nobody’s going to be freaking out.”
The scene was abruptly interrupted by the loud patter of paws against stone down the hallway outside, a particular prince of the dark evidently out of breath on his way over. “Susie! Are you okay?! Everything just… warped!”
“...Except for him. Ralsei’s kinda weird like that.”
Ralsei, panting for air, swung in through the open door, just as visually affected as the rest of Susie’s world, and he somehow now looked even fluffier than Susie had ever felt him to be. “Is the Angel still with you? Do they know what that was?!” The fur on the side of his face was now thankfully clean, if still a bit damp from scrubbing. Both Susie and the Angel sighed in some mixture of sympathy and concern for him, something she found comforting in the moment.
“Dude, it’s all good! We’re all okay.” It was finally the prince’s turn to sigh, this time in massive relief as the tension released from his shoulders, leaving him to slump against the doorframe. “Sorry for the panic, Ralsei. This, uh, kinda happened cause of me.”
Ralsei froze the moment he’d registered her words. “You what.”
The chuckle that followed was deep and hearty, the likes of which she really hadn’t had for a good long while since earlier during their time in the first sanctuary. “Eh, it’s not important. Look, it’s chill and you’re here now, so… maybe one of you could start answering the mountain of questions I have about all this, huh?”
Both the Angel and Ralsei looked at her sheepishly before their grey head perked up with an idea. “Hey, can you take Ralsei’s hand and grab a seat? I think I can pull something off with some effort.” She shrugged at the idea, clearly an acknowledgement of their request, before taking Ralsei’s hand and marching off downstairs to her and Kris’ shared room. As the two entered, Susie made note of the Angel’s projection having already taken a seat at Kris’ chair at the ‘tea party table’. Judging by the muffled gasp Ralsei made under his breath, he was also seeing them now– Probably a result of whatever the Angel was doing that needed them to hold hands.
Each taking a seat at the table for the second time that day, Susie kicked her boots up on the table as she settled in for another few hours of lack of sleep, and grinned as she saw Ralsei similarly settle into his own chair at the table. Across from them, the Angel sighed loudly.
“Right. Well, it began on Thursday.”