Goodnight and goodbye

They returned to the mirror world and the first thing they smelled upon entering Emily's cell, was urine and excrement. It was totally disgusting.

By now Emily was comfortable with dying. She was staring blankly. The aberrational behavior of her captors had an inexplicable outpouring of visceral hatred towards her. She had been left in the room with blinding lighting followed by screaming and hitting to the point that she was unable to sleep. She became delirious and exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia. It had only been 5 days in the mirror realm.

Cyd and Nox had injected her with various psychotropics to generate hallucinations. The psychoactive drugs had wreaked havoc on her mind, as they were purified mixtures of salvia divinorum, mescaline, muscimol, and LCD from Crystal Clouds. They would not kill her, they would only ruin her perception of her reality, making her dependent for life on antipsychotics, anxiolytics and antidepressants.

Emily became her trial-and-error toy in all known ways. Nox would practice the effects of her poisons, Cyd would play with her soul over and over to get the most out of it, and Zion would study the anatomical structure for future experiments.

Zion had created the golem from a mouse and Cyd gave the soul of the animal to the golem. The rodent's body would be the container for Emily's soul. The three of them engaged in vivisection without anesthesia to continue their experiments and research, extracting organs, dissecting the brain, performing surgeries and playing with sutures while insulting her and hitting the table to generate more terror.

The laughter and screaming were eerie and in Emily's vision, the masked beings were worse than Sophia herself.

The torture continued for another week between hangings, premeditated injuries, suffocation with bags or drowning in buckets of water, threats, telephones, mock executions, barbecue in the sun, humiliation, Russian roulette, vivisection every other day, freezing and the so horrendous confinement that was sometimes in the dark with absolute silence and at other times so blinding and deafening that it deprived her of sleep.

By the end of the exam week, they had all passed which meant they had to return Emily, who had barely been out of Orsys for two days with the excuse of visiting her family in the nearly thawed city.

Days after the incident, which prevented her from falling asleep and her tranquility was fading, or so it seemed. Emily couldn't managed to sleep at night. She vaguely remembered the masks of her assailants but could find no relationship to her lack of sleep and the monstrosities that disturb her in her mind. She felt the fear that had overwhelmed her when she finally understood that her death was imminent.

The darkness, the light, the blood, the screaming, the harassment and the constant torture appear and disappear like when a switch is flipped. Meraki had taken the trouble to program her night terrors the moment she closed her eyes and then forgot everything when she opened them, while the feeling of horror and persecution would persist throughout the day.

In her dreams, she had made the decision: she was prepared to exchange pain for her life. But the most disturbing thing at the time was the uncertainty. She was being beaten up and being the subject of a macabre game, but she didn't know what she had done. According to her, she was innocent, but her assailants had already sentenced her: she was condemned to death.

When she woke up, she did it between sobs and pleas that disappeared the next moment. She had to take medication and her nightstand and desk were littered with bottles and pills to treat her supposed illness. She could hardly stay focused or follow orders properly anymore. When she turned a corner or was in a dark hallway, she heard the laughter of children making fun of her and this gave her anxiety mixed with fear.

It all exploded when Sophia was having tea with Lucas and when the prince started laughing, Emily visualized a black mask on the prince's face. She couldn't bear such a scene, she screamed and threw the tea on Lucas. Those present were incredulous by the actions of Emily, who was huddled in a corner while she murmured to stop laughing at her.

Sophia did not tolerate Emily's performance and sent her to the dungeons. As she was dragged away, Emily smiled at Sophia and dedicated the same song to her that Ashley listened to before she died: The Song of the Caged Bird. Sophia knew that song and her anger flooded her as Emily indicated that her days were already numbered. She had her tortured and executed the next day.