NOVEL WEB 354. The Fog
A laugh echoed from all around Ike, sliding into his ears unasked-for. He shuddered and wiped his ear on his shoulder, but it didn't stop the voice.
"You come into a girl's home, ruin her wall, and then you lead with that? No manners," the voice hummed, drifting around Ike.
"What are you? Why are you doing this?" Ike watched the fog, sword in hand. If it wanted them dead, it could have attacked them at any point until now. There was no point revealing its location like this, unless it wanted to negotiate. But what did the voice want to negotiate? It was in full control of this situation.
The only thing he could assume was that it wanted to chat with him for some reason. As little as he was interested in talking with some mysterious being that was being more frustrating than anything else, he also couldn't sense her tier level. That either meant she didn't have one, or she was so powerful he was too weak to sense it. He couldn't afford to be careless with this being, whatever she was. He might not be able to handle her, if it came to a fight.
The voice chuckled. "The better question is, what are you?"
Ike's hackles instantly raised. He tightened his grip on the sword, on guard. In his other hand, he summoned the King's scepter, ready to absorb the fog at a moment's notice. "What do you mean by that?"
"You know what I mean. So tell me, child. Are you Brightbriar's son?"
He scowled, instantly disgusted. It might be physically true, but he rejected it with every piece of his heart. "Maybe biologically, but no more than that. I'd rather be counted as the other being's son."
"The other being…?"
"Don't play coy. If you know I'm 'Brightbriar's son,' then you know I'm… a fragment of someone else," Ike finished, taking a moment to figure out how he wanted to word it.
Wisp glanced at him, but said nothing.
"So he does know," the voice murmured to herself. She hummed, then added, "But how much does he know?"
"Not much else. Why? Do you know something?" Ike lowered his sword, curious. Maybe she wasn't a foe, after all.
"Something? No. I know everything, child." A pale hand reached out of the fog and drew it aside, as if drawing aside a curtain. A misty specter of a woman appeared. Pale as bone, gaunt and sickly, she had once been beautiful, but was now too slender to possess beauty. She looked like a corpse, propped upright. Dry white hair, pulled back at the temples, spilled over her shoulders in wisps. Ornate white robes layered upon her body, giving her the only bulk she possessed. Her sunken eyes were clouded with cataracts, as milky white as the cloaked sun overhead. Her fingers crawled at the edges of her sleeves like pale spiders, climbing their way back out of sight.
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For all that, she was misty. There was a softness to her edges, as if she were only half-present. Ike peered at her, squinting a little. That softness, that mingling-ness… it was as if she were made of fog.
No, not 'as if.' She was. This form was nothing more than a condensed clump of fog, given form through some advanced control of the light upon it.
"You aren't here," Ike said at last, not sure whether to be surprised or taken aback.
"I am here. This is merely all that's left of me, after the betrayal." Her pale eyes shifted upward, toward the cloaked sky. They met the sun, and flinched away. "It took everything. None of us escaped unscathed."
"The betrayal?" Ike asked, confused. What betrayal?
"You do not yet remember." She stepped out of the fog, walking across the valley.
Ike hesitated, glancing at Wisp and Mag. Wisp widened her eyes like it was obvious and gestured for him to follow. He nodded and hopped to .Whatever this woman had to say, he was curious to hear it.
"No," Ike said.
"So incomplete. You are a being worthy of pity, to remember so little. And yet…" She sighed. Her voice and form drifted, smearing across the air as she wandered, lost in thought. Abruptly, her body reformed, and she continued. "And yet, more complete than any of them. There may yet be hope. Yes, I think I can be allowed to have hope."
Ike chased after her. She drifted, moving as slowly as a glacier, and yet moved in leaps and bounds, somehow moving at twice his speed without appearing to move at all. "What do you mean, betrayal? Who wasn't unscathed? Was it Brightbriar?"
"No, child. Brightbriar was damaged like the rest of us. Perhaps… the most of all of us." She turned to face him. One of her big, pale, thin hands drifted to her chest, pressing there. "It broke him. Broke… his heart."
Ike suppressed the urge to vomit. Don't tell me…
"Not in that way," she added a moment later, chuckling. "There are many ways a heart can break, child. Love, yes. But family, friendship… these, too, can break a heart. When someone becomes your support, an absolute, a being you rely upon instinctively, whom you depend upon without thought… who must be there, or else you shatter; then, child, they have become someone who can break your heart."
Ike glanced at Wisp. She wasn't quite at that level, but if someone killed her, or even hurt her badly, he wouldn't be able to hold back. He'd be mad with rage, in fact. He didn't love her. She was more like a little sister to him than anything. But nonetheless, he could understand what the fog woman meant when he looked at her.
Wisp noticed his gaze and made a face. "Gross."
He shoved her head away. "Not like that."
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
"We were all broken, but you were the most broken of all. But then… that's to be expected. You were what they wanted the most to shatter." The fog woman came to a halt, so abruptly Ike had to jump to a stop. She turned back. Her sunken eyes gazed at him, and for a moment, he saw her as she had once been: an ephemeral beauty with pearlescent skin, draped in veils, her white hair as soft as fresh-fallen snow upon her shoulders.
He shook his head, and the old her returned, broken and hollowed. Yet, those whitened eyes crinkled in a smile. She reached out, tracing a hand over his jaw.
"You can remember, can't you? Somewhere in there, you still recall me… O' Pillar of the World."