How long could someone fall, before they were not falling at all?

It felt like time was simultaneously rushing by just as much as it did that time was crawling like an insect upon the ground.

On either side of what she could see from the corner of her eyes seemed to be a cloudy mixture of pallid smoke and nearly distinct forms whose eyes she could feel staring at her. Some were human shaped, others much stranger.

She could not move as she fell, so she was unable to tell if there was ground beneath her somewhere.

But she was fine with this.

She was fine with perpetually falling into an endless abyss.

She did not know why she was fine with this however. In fact she felt like something was missing and that she should be quite concerned. But she could not work up any desire to be concerned.

The misty walls moved in the corners of her eyes, bowing slowly and stretching outwards to push away the indistinct figures into the distance. Below was a cracking and snapping noise like a thousand wooden sticks being broken at once. The almost musical sound of clattering followed it. These sounds combined to become louder and louder with each passing moment and she could see white walls topped with slightly sloped tiles begin to rise around her.

Like a chest snapping shut she was suddenly surrounded in darkness.

But the feeling of falling was no longer there. She had come to a stop. Gradually her eyes adjusted to the darkness around her and she realized she was looking up at a ceiling. There was faint light pouring in from a window where a gentle tepid breeze rolled in to scatter ash past her field of view. A flash of red entered the corner of her eyes. Pale long fingers reached downwards to brush her hair slowly from her face.

Idony realized that she could move now and managed to turn her head to see what looked like a red swathed ghost and immediately felt the chill of fear run through her. But before she could clamber away from it, the long pale hands emerged from under the rich red fabric to grab her hand and gently hold her still. Another hand reached upwards and pulled the obscuring red veil away, revealing a coldly beautiful face the color of snow with lips as red as the fiery fabric she wore. The eyes were dark enough to be black, chips of dark river stone. Her hair had a familiar slightly messy quality to it, like no matter what would be done it would refuse to be perfectly neatly ordered.

"Don't be scared," the woman's voice was quiet and flat like even speaking was an effort. It too was familiar.

"I'm not," Idony lied.

The woman's hand slowly let go of her and she sat down beside her. Idony was laying on some sort of seat in a small room which held dark painted wooden chests, ink paintings of frosty forests and strange deserts, small tables for gold-lined vases of flowers and round bronze mirrors, boxes of funny looking white powders and red creams. A little pig-like ceramic pot was sitting on a table close to her. Light wisps of smoke left its little molded nostrils. A terrible sadness took her heart as she looked at the pig and her face hurt but she could not describe why.

The woman sat down next to her, looking out to the window. "This is the best I can do."

Idony remained silent, unsure of what she meant.

The woman looked down at her with a slightly pained expression, "do you know who I am?"

Idony studied the woman's face. Its natural expression seemed to be one of absolute apathy even with the pain in her eyes. It was very pretty though. Some part of Idony wanted to reach out to poke her cheek to see if it was skin or stone. She shook her mind, flipped around her thoughts, and reached deep into her fragmented and incoherent memories. Something had happened, that she was sure of. But what? Who was this woman and why did she feel familiar? Another apathetic face finally revealed itself in the fog of her brain, a man's face. "...Are you Liu Xie's sister?"

The woman gave her a very strained smile right before sighing heavily and holding her face wearily in her hands, "no. Good guess though, your mother did the same thing."

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

At the mention of her mother, Idony sat up straighter and looked around, half-expecting her to suddenly appear in the room. "She's here?"

"No, this was years ago," the woman said. "It would have been very politically uncomfortable for everyone if the daughter of an ambassador was seen with an unknown local man," she mumbled. "So this form was made so we could spend more time together."

Idony, in a remarkable display of her mental abilities, put the woman's words together and felt the light form in her mind. "Liu Xie!"

The woman laughed, "yes! In a way, just like Baichan is also Liu Xie. I am him. But I am also myself, and yet my self is also him, who is also Baichan, who is also him." She leaned down so her face was a little closer to Idony's, there was a faint smell of medicine and something more pleasant on her. "I'm like a piece of him, a little sliver of himself he put in this useless junk before he gave it to Bo. He cast me as 'Hope' and tossed me in, since 'Hope' is not something Baichan can understand to be missing. If it's confusing, you can call me Xie-jie. Your mother thought that up and she was so proud of herself... it was really cute." She reached out to Idony and slowly pulled her onto her lap, letting the girl sit there as she gazed out to nothing in particular. "Of course, if I had known that you would be in here too I would have probably put more of myself inside."

"Where are we? In trash?" Idony asked, getting comfortable on her new 'seat'. As far as she could tell, they were in a one roomed house with no doors and strange mist filled with odd things outside.

"The sword," she answered. "It's a terrible thing, and a piece of junk. I never liked using it much. It devours the spirits of others," Xie-jie explained before her voice trailed off. She went quiet for a moment before petting Idony's hair. "It's the only weapon in all the Heavens that can execute a god in the right hands, I guess that's part of what made me unpopular."

Idony quietly listened to Xie-jie, resting her head on her chest and trying to hear if there was a heartbeat. There was none. "So why am I here?"

"It was the safest place," Xie-jie mumbled. "That idiot Prince probably took the easiest option. You were already in a state that made you very susceptible to Baichan that putting you in here was the only option he could be bothered with. The sword was forged with a remnant of... hm, lets just call her my grandmother."

Still not understanding, Idony bit her thumb and looked up at the dark ceiling. "Can I go back?"

"Go back? Out of the sword? Hopefully, if my unfortunate student and the shark manage to get to the place they need to go," the woman explained, running her hand through Idony's messy hair.

"But why can't I go back now?" Idony asked. She knew the 'student' and the 'shark', she felt, but names escaped her.

"Because..." Xie-jie paused for a long moment, "because you... you're not in a good state. You were torn by the sword and Baichan trying to keep you, there isn't much of 'you' left. Can you remember how you got here?"

She shook her head and yet felt there was something Xie-jie was not telling her.

"You are still 'you', but there's so much you'll need to regain... or remake," Xie-jie shook her head sorrowfully, pulling Idony into a warm embrace. It was a comforting one, and Idony began to feel like something inside of her was being pushed back together into one whole.

And yet...

"But I feel ok now," Idony insisted, "can I go now? Or in a little bit?"

"You can't."

"Why?"

Xie-jie's eyes drifted away from Idony.

"Why?"

Xie-jie's face went through a rapid flashing of different emotions, her eyebrows knitting together and she briefly bit her lips with perfect white teeth. Then she spoke, "Idony, you're not alive anymore."

Had she not been told that before, she thought. She had been! She could not remember the name, but there was a boy's face, and then... that other person whose face her mind quickly blotted out in a panic. "It's ok! I can just go back in right?" She asked earnestly.

"Into your... body? No," Xie-jie shook her head. "It's not there anymore."

"Where did it go? Did someone steal it?"

Xie-jie nodded, "in a sense. Baichan turned it into flowers."

Idony frowned. She did not particularly like these responses, "but... that would take a long time!"

Xie-jie nodded again, "it would take a long time with normal flowers. But these flowers are born from Baichan himself. It's part of how he spreads his influence. Things connected heavily to the white flame can be infected by him this way and you... you were full of divine sap from me. Creating seeds in your veins was likely very easy for him, although I think he preferred it if you had just come to him in the first place and he did not need to pull you towards him like how he tried when your body finally failed again."

Idony only barely understood what Xie-jie was speaking about, the memories were foggy but present now. There was the forest, the white haired beautiful person calling to her. The misty marsh with the two others, the monsters... 'again'. The word 'again' was burning in her mind. When her attention turned to Xie-jie she found the woman was looking away in shame. "Xie-jie, what 'again'?"

She did not answer.

"I don't get it," Idony pulled in her wide sleeve, the soft fabric cool in her hand. "I don't get it, what do you mean?"

Still, Xie-jie did not answer.

"Can you tell me? Please? Please? Why 'again'?"

Xie-jie looked over at Idony, red lining her eyes. "Idony, I wasn't able to save you."

The forest.

The forest full of snow, the rotting log.

The cold moon and the stiffness of her body as frost ate into her marrow.

The starving wolves.

Idony saw herself again, small and starving and laying on the ground with a sharp stick still clutched tightly into a hand blackened by frostbite, surrounded by a crescent of blood from butchered wolves.

"You had already died."