It started with her being in that Throne room.
She had been listening to Solana speak of that throne being her heritage. That she was a yuki-onna. Descendant of Empress Meynte. She had gone against Lukas’s requests, willing to sit on the Throne, her thoughts about him growing murkier with every passing second. She remembered slowly sauntering her way to the throne mirror, looking at Frost herself. Only this time, the reflection that looked back at her from inside wasn’t hers. Granted, it looked like her reflection, but the eyes were sharper and craftier and far more intense. And that smile. So much more charming and likable than her own smile, and yet something about it made her want to recoil from the sight of her own face. She remembered stepping back, only to freeze as thoughts that were not her own slithered effortlessly through her mind.
‘Be calm. You are not afraid. Just curious. You trust me.’
Immediately, her face relaxed and she waited to see what the face in the mirror would do. In the corridors and afterways of her mind, those foreign thoughts sought out memories of Lukas Aguilar and the other Asukans she had known all over her life, and whenever it found one, feelings of paranoia and dislike blossomed around them like a black rose. Mirror-Tanya had studied her counterpart and then shaken her head as if disappointed.
And then words came out of her mouth. Words that she hadn’t thought of.
“I don’t know why I’m fighting. I know what’s at stake. I know what I want. I have already gotten what I want, and all I have to do is embrace it. So why am I delaying?”
“How could wanting this possibly be wrong?”
‘You feel betrayed. You feel jealous. You feel like everyone has used you. You are alone, unloved and have been treated unfairly. I can get you justice.’
Yes. Tanya thought. I can get myself justice.
‘All you’ve to do is embrace it.”
All I’ve to do is embrace it.
And wasn’t it true? Lukas was just another person with an agenda, his aid a mere distraction, chains entwining around her, taking advantage of her trust. He’d keep doing that until he was ready and then, that goddess would turn her into a mindless slave. A weapon.
No way. Not again. Never again.
But what if… what if she was wrong? She shut her eyes and looked away. What if Lukas was correct? What if —
‘Look. At. Me.’
Instantly and uncontrollably, her eyes popped open. She gasped in terror. Her reflection was no longer smiling, but was instead, a mask of hatred with eyes the color of light.
“No,” Tanya thought. “The color of ice.”
Mirror-Tanya smiled again, but there wasn’t even a pretense of warmth, just sheer malice
‘You have it, but it’s weak. Enchained away. It touches your soul, but only just. This mystery is beyond me but it surpasses all my expectations.’
“What— what do you mean?”
Mirror-Tanya’s face hardened.
‘It doesn’t matter. I have my own ways of doing things. Forget about all this. This is all a bad dream. All you need to do is go to sleep.’
“No…” Tanya whispered. “No, no I won’t. You— you are wrong. All of this is wrong. All of this…”
‘This doesn’t need to be that difficult.’
“N—no!” she said shakily. “G-go away!”
‘Please don’t make this difficult for us both. You’ve already been through so much. So little yet so jaded, constrained by your own people yet achieved so much. I’m actually fond of you, little child. It’s not my desire to… break you irrevocably, unless it’s absolutely necessary. Or, I suppose, unless you try to thwart me. I think I might take that one personally. Just let me in, and or I will make your nightmares come true.’
But Tanya wasn’t listening. “I don’t— I don’t fear you. You’re just in my mind. You’re just Frost.”
‘Oh I’m more than Frost, child. Far, far more than that. And if you will believe me, far less worse. Sleep and let me awaken inside you. It’s an infinitely better option compared to what shall follow otherwise. Sleep, get out of this poisonous destiny while you still can.’
“I don’t believe you,” said Tanya defiantly. She raised her hands, but found her fractals missing. But that wasn’t it at all. Her hands looked shorter, way shorter, like they had somehow regressed back. She looked down at her feet. She felt shorter. Her body felt weaker.
And weaker.
‘Defiant. I like it. But believe me when I say this is mercy.’
Tanya was confused by what Mirror-Tanya was saying. Suddenly to her surprise, her body and arms felt incredibly stiff. She wasn’t paralyzed, but she was definitely unable to move. Suddenly she was back in that white room, her hands tied to those accursed manacles. The red door before her creaked open, the knob turning as her cheeks grew white.
No! No! NonononoNOTHISCAN’TBEHAPPENINGTHISCAN’TBE—”
But it was. Omnyoji entered through the door, sigils of the Great Goddess all over their robes as they grabbed her, they tore her dress apart, they injected those vines into her body — her chest, her belly, her arms, the hollow of her neck, her back, her—
“THIS ISN’T HAPPENING!” Tanya screamed out.
‘Oh but it is. You chose this.’
“YOU DAMN BIT—” Her expletive was suddenly cut off into a crude gurgle as her grandfather grabbed her mouth, held her lips open and inserted a vine into her mouth. She wanted to spit it out but it didn’t. Instead she gagged and vomited as the vine climbed down deeper into her oral cavity and crawled back up through her nasal passages to exit through her nostrils.
‘Let me end this.’
Mirror-Tanya’s voice was full of compassion.
‘It pains me to see you suffer like this. Just. Say. Yes.’
By now, Tanya was almost past the point of coherent thought. She had always been afraid of what happened with her post her incarceration, and it had given her nightmares for years. Talking to Lukas had opened old wounds but this… this was horror beyond compare. The part of Tanya Shimizu that was made of defiance and courage fought against the tide, but it was nothing compared to the crushing wave of pure terror that hit her every time as the Omnyoji began to do their twisted experiments on her, with the vines slowly climbing up her legs. Finally, between the impossible terror and wracking terrified sobs, Tanya gave in.
“Yes! I’ll do it. I’ll sleep. Just make it stop! Please! I beg you. Just make it stop!”
Mirror-Tanya smiled.
…
…
…
It seemed like an eternity that Tanya had spent trapped in her own memories and nightmares. She remembered being in the throne room, and then in front of the mirror with Mirror-Tanya. She remembered the absolute naked horror of those vines slithering all over her body, violating her body in ways that made her want to tear her own skin out. She remembered, to her shame, how she had broken down and surrendered to the Mirror-Tanya, but it had all been for nothing. When she came out of her stupor, she was wrapped in pitch-black darkness and lying paralyzed in somewhere. Horizontally or vertically, it was difficult to tell.
At this point, she had lost all sense of hope in herself. She had done the one thing she had never done before. She had given up. Despite all her sufferings, despite losing her father, despite being on the run for years, first from her family and their hired abductors, and then from the Army, Tanya had never once surrendered. Even against the Ifrit King, she had embraced the possibility of death but she had never surrendered herself.
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Not until now.
At first, she blubbered incoherently, but after some unknowable time, her cries became more focussed. Specifically, she screamed out one name, the one person that had always been for her. Right from the beginning. Someone that hadn’t been the most truthful, or the most compassionate, but he had always been on her side. Never demanding, never judging, just a companion that she knew was a kindred spirit.
Lukas will save me.
It was a belief, one that was deeply entrenched in a faith far greater than what she had for her own life. She was born cursed. She never saw her mother. Her father died to save her. Her own family hunted her, and now those that she thought she could call her own had betrayed her. Compared to that, Lukas had always been the last man standing. No matter how pear-shaped things turned out to be, he was always the one surviving in the end.
Lukas will save me.
Like a mantra, she kept repeating that.
Lukas will save me.
Lukas will save me.
Lukas will save me.
Then she heard it.
Heard him.
“I’d not defy you for her,” he said. “I’d defy you for her ability to choose for herself. And if you, or your Queen, tries to stop that, then you’ll have to deal with something worse than freaking Amaterasu.”
“And what is that?” she heard Solana ask.
“Me.”
And just like that, a bright smile tore through the dead darkness of despair. It was an expression more open than Tanya had ever made, an emotion far, far deeper than anything she had ever felt. It was something that began to shimmer and spread beneath the darkness surrounding her soul, like cracks across the top of a frozen pond just before the ice shattered. A simple, honest, beautiful thing that shone like the moon above the desert, gleaming against the darkness.
Despite herself, Tanya laughed. She wanted to hug him. She didn’t know what he was doing or about to do. What mattered was that he was there when she needed him the most, and he was fighting for her. Could she have hoped for a more reliable partner?
However, even the newfound appreciation and blossoming hope didn’t prepare her for what happened next.
The world of darkness around her faded away, and she watched, a passenger in her own body, watching through her own eyes, as someone else controlled her form. The highest form of violation there was — to be trapped within her own body, as the intruder used it against someone she cared for.
‘I gave you a way out. You chose to defy. Now pay for this defiance.’
Tanya braved it. Whatever this being — Meynte, her brain supplied, Empress Meynte, her great ancestor; whatever she wanted to throw at her, Tanya would bear it all. Lukas was fighting for her. He was facing Solana and an Empress for her. She would not give up on him.
Not now. Not ever.
“You will not win,” she heard Solana speak.
“I might not win,” said Lukas. The smile on his face looked absolutely feral. One only needed to look at the bodies he left behind at the borderland to know what it meant. “But I’ll make sure that all of you bleed for it.”
Despite her situation, Tanya smiled.
…
…
…
What followed was an epic battle that belonged to legends and folklore. Tanya had watched as Lukas faced the might of the Glacier Queen Meynte herself, and held her power at bay. She had seen Blob transform, first into a humongous worm followed by those four-armed bylestyrs, proving her theories that the words ‘sense’ did not belong to the Outsider’s dictionary. She watched as Solana, easily an upper-class Level-3 if not a Level-4, constantly destroyed the metallic bylestyr, only for it to re-emerge again and again. She watched as Maude, to her incredible surprise, stood against Solana’s trickery and paralyzed her with a few well-placed jabs on the skinwalker’s body.
And that was just the beginning.
She watched as Meynte transformed from an apathetic Queen that looked down upon Lukas like a bremetan looking down at an ant, to someone that gained respect for him. There in the pitch darkness of her mindscape, she could trace the growing mix of anger, respect and utter hatred for him. She watched as Meynte unveiled the truth of what Everfrost truly was, and what it meant. At one point, she had all but accepted that this was her end. Choosing one life over the world? No hero could do that. She was certain no villain could do that either. Only someone that cared for nothing except himself, or a true psychopath that wanted to watch the world burn would make that choice.
Again, she found she had judged Lukas wrong.
“Someone once cursed me to never give up on my selfishness,” he had said. “That I should stay true to my beliefs no matter how many I trample upon. Even if it means I must be the invader, the monster, the conqueror… it doesn’t matter. I’m no longer allowed to pretend otherwise.”
Really, why was she surprised again? Since when did she start thinking that he would not go to extreme lengths for the things he wanted?
Just because the things were very few and usually involved the happiness of others, didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to spill blood for them. Lukas… he was always a tyrant, even back when they had met for the first time. And just like every tyrant in history, the price to stand in the way of his desires was to be crushed.
One only needed to see the charred bodies of Hreidmar and the bylestyrs in the borderland to have proof of this.
So what if they forced his hand? Lukas Aguilar made the conscious choice of taking their lives to bring about the outcome he preferred, out of those available to him at that time.
For someone that was so good at killing, Lukas had the air of a pacifist. Tanya knew that for all his ability to get under others’ skin and egging them on, Lukas was the last person to choose violence as an acceptable solution. But that didn’t mean that he’d rather give up pursuing his own desires over it. Being willing to spill his own blood to try to save someone else, was the act of a hero, but even that didn’t detract one bit from his selfishness. The only thing that ever held him back were his own morals and his physical limits, and even those he kept pushing further with unrelenting efforts.
Why would he react any differently now? Even if it meant standing against a freaking Emperor?
Her conclusions were proved correct by the decisive battle that followed.
…
…
…
Even as Tanya felt Mirror-Tanya, or perhaps she could call her Empress Meynte, burn in impotent rage as she slithered out of her mind, out of her body, her essence slowly vanishing as she dove into the throne and through it, into a contraption of infinite blackness, she felt the remaining vestiges of her shattered mindscape collapse all around her. The resulting blackness swallowed her and kept her for a long time. There was nothing but silence where she drifted, nothing but the endless night. She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t warm. She wasn’t anything. No thought, no dreams, no nothing.
It was too good to last.
The pain came first. Despite the fearsome battle, her body had not retained any injuries, physically that is. Her mind was another matter. Being possessed like that and going through all the phantom pain she had felt made her feel like an assortment of complaints and malfunctions. She ached everywhere.
Then her memories came back. She started remembering everything. The throne room, Lukas, her diverging thoughts, the whispers twisting her mind to act against him, her sitting on the throne and all the suffering it heaved upon her, Solana’s betrayal, Maude and finally… Lukas.
Oh, by the Goddess.
Tanya opened her eyes. She was lying in the same bed she had woken up earlier. Someone must have fed her some kind of soup earlier, because she twisted her body and threw up, and a gooey thing had come out. She threw up until her belly ached with all the violence, wild agony running rampant all over her body, mind and soul. She struggled, but she just couldn’t forget everything she had been through.
She sobbed.
She felt someone grab her like she weighed nothing. It was Lukas. He used a towel to rub off the nasty from her lips and made her lie back down on the pillow. Even after all that had happened, after all that she had told him, after all the ways she had spat on his aid, he was sitting there, on her bed, with nothing but genuine concern in his eyes. The flecks of brown looked a little sunken, as though short on sleep. But his hands felt steady, his expression calm and confident.
“Don’t worry,” he promised her. “You’re safe. It’s over.”
Tanya wanted to protest. She wanted to say that she wouldn’t be safe so long as she was there among these wretched monsters. Kin or not, they had tried to sacrifice her as a vessel for their lost Empress. That put them in the same place as her grandfather. Maude had aided Lukas, so she got the benefit of the doubt, but everyone else was just…
“Believe me,” he told her, as if reading her mind. “You’re safe. Nobody here is going to harm you. I won’t let them.”
She met those eyes. She had seen them earlier, gazing at the Empress with cold, impossible defiance. Why? Why did he go to such lengths for her? Why risk his life for her sake?
You and I.
That was the promise he had given her. That it would be the two of them. Together. He’d be her ally. Someone who’d stand by her side regardless of the odds, with nothing but steadfast determination.
And he had just proved the value of his words.
First at the borderland.
And then, against Empress Meynte.
He had kept the Frost at bay. He had helped her get her dues from Zuken. He had saved her ass from the Ifrit King. And he had faced the might of an Empress and a potential Level-4 just to keep his word to her.
And she hadn’t even thanked him for it. Not once.
In her daze, she never noticed when her fingers crawled over his hand and slowly grasped his own. She was too busy staring at those brown orbs, unable to look away, incapable and unwilling to break contact with those eyes peering into hers, as it ignited something she couldn’t even dare to name… something that had long since slumbered under a thick layer of ice.
You and I. Together.
“I —” she croaked. “I —”
“Are finally awake, it seems,” interrupted Maude as she bustled into the room and approached her bed, with absolutely zero consideration for her privacy or the moment that she had so effectively butchered.
“You— you’re alive! But I thought—”
“That your frost would kill me?” Maude asked. “I was a vanir before I was Oni, dearie. You don’t know half of what I can do.”
Given that she had one-shotted Solana into paralysis, Tanya was ready to believe whatever crap came out of her mouth.
“And you better believe that I’m fine, because now I need you to help me help you treat you better. You’ve only just woken up after a long excruciating experience. You wouldn’t want the entire yokai contingent on your ass now just because you were a little late now, would you?”
Tanya blinked.