312. Nightmare, 9

(Rose)

The dust it blew away as it landed slowly falls back.

Its silhouette appears already too close for us to have any chance left to escape it.

I'm gritting my teeth. It will be a fight to the death then...

Its large hand stretched ahead suddenly pulled from a distance its sword, making it fly away from the ground and back into the hand

As we stood there trembling, we saw that it sheathed its sword back however. We're still dead scared though.

This giant revealed herself in one heavy step showing she's even taller and heavier than we could see.

It's a very mean looking woman, old, with awfully severe traits. Her fallen hood reveals she has horns growing on the right side of her skull and head.

She's a colossus looking threatening by every metric. Her look, her demeanour, her smell, her dreadful gaze.

She smells like death.

Had she not sheathed her sword, Bleue still holding the rifle would have shot her. And I would have jumped at her my sword in hand but with shear panic in mind.

Her voice is deep and coarse, manly. Her gaze on me is making me shiver.

D - Dat... Trully is you, Rose... And Blue? I would never have thought...

We're struck agape. What?

R - You... You know us?

She nods. But we don't recognise her in any way or form...

And thus, we met the goddess of decay.

~

She was intrigued, looking at us with curiosity, not hatred. We were still feeling very intimidated.

D - I won't hurt you. I want just understand what you are. Come, let's talk...

Her voice is making me shiver in an unpleasant way. She speaks English, roughly. She has a foreign accent I can't place. She's not from the commonwealth is all I can say...

She sits there on the ground to follow her invitation. She's still almost as tall as us standing. We remain very cautious. What is she? I can't manage to focus my other sight on her, but I can tell she's not exactly human and not exactly monster.

R - What... Who... are you?

D - You know who I am.

Nothing of her, in appearance nor other aspects reminds me of anything I've encountered in the past. Except the concept of doom perhaps.

Her eyes look into my soul and it hurts my head. I step back.

D - I don't believe you two could have forgotten my name. Or you wouldn't be the Blue & Rose I think you are. How... How did you get here life? And why? Why now from all time?

My heart hurts, now beating fast enough to break my ribs.

Something begins to understand what she's saying, whatever she is.

I nervously make a step closer, to try to talk despite the knots in my throat.

Bleue is holding my sweaty hand back. I still manage to make the next step closer in this awful encounter.

R - Y... Whoever you are. It probably was another Rose that you've met.

The truth we don't yet understand is worse than that. She seems to understand before we do.

D - I better understand. I was very intrigued, sensing your presence. What would two walkyries of mine past be doing out there and now? So far away from where I left you... Such a long time ago...

Valkyries of hers? What is she saying?

B - We were valkyries?

D - This is such an old memory now... I treated you as such yes, even though I wasn't planning anymore to proceed with my Ragnarök anymore, at the time I preserved you as such. That was her wish.

My mind is increasingly confused, but scared mostly. Scared about what this unveils.

Bleue follows another theory.

B - Are you Hel, Hela?

D - Ah ah... No. You don't remember? You used to say my name a lot during your life. You used to give it, to others, demons.

It can't be.

It's not possible.

This would go beyond the reality of this time!

R - You're... Daiûa... It's not possible... You said Blue & Rose but... You didn't meet just a Rose... You met the real Blue and Rose.

D - Yes. This why I surprised seeing you now. I watched over both of you dead. Hundreds years ago now...

~

My legs couldn't quite hold me anymore, and I sat.

My mind is hurt by a sharp sadness I can't easily explain.

The being, the thing just in front of me, is telling us that she knew the original us. Centuries ago.

At a time when magic did not exist.

B - How old are you?

D - I don't know. Old.

How old was the original document of transmigration I carried again?

It dated from a time when Christianity was settled around the white sea, when monks were writing and keeping records of the folkloric tales of that part of the Russian empire, but before the time of writing of the Kalevala.

Sometime at the later in the 19th century, and very likely much farther back into the middle-ages... No way...

R - There wasn't magic in the air back then... Was it? How?

D - I brought the Eitr into the world back then. Before that recent flood.

B - Eitr? The ichor... This energy that now runs wild, it was you?

R - This thing that destroyed civilisation and changed the world...

D - Yes.

Here sits the one whom destroyed the old world...

I can't believe it. I can't believe any of it.

R - Why...

D - Ah, no. My Ragnarök and the recent one are not the same. I didn't cause that one. Though, I like it. As for mine, my plan was foiled around your time. It was a very different time.

B - We... prevented you from destroying the world in our past life?

Daiûa bursts in laughter. That imaginative idea of Bleue sure amuses her.

D - Ah... It's been long time since I had a good laugh like that. Nothing heroic like that from you Blue, I'm sorry. At the old time, it's the witch of sunlight that changed my mind. The one that was along with you.

A witch of light, along with us?

Bleue connects the dots to make a good hypothesis faster than me.

B - You mean Isha? Young blond girl?

D - Different name, but yes. She wished me to take care of you after you die. I did.

R - What did you do...

D - I buried you two, in your house's backyard, beneath the roses. And I kept your souls in my abandoned Walhalla.

B - You're the one who buried us?

D - Yes. In... 1981 I think.

~

My mind continues to collapse.

R - How... Could you live that long?

D - My name Rose. What it means to you.

R - Daiûa... You're not a daiûa, you're the original Daiûa.

It's her name we gave to things trying to be as gods. It always has been.

We gave her name to other things in memory of her.

And she's still alive because she's like them?

Because once upon a time, she opened a door to the other world...

This shatters my knowledge of the past.

A part of my beliefs, of my identity, it collapses further into the unreal darkness she reveals.

B - Daiûa had fallen into a hole. Daiûa had fallen into a well. And there she fought, days and nights, in order to live again...

She's saying this tale was true. That she brought magic at a time when it didn't exist, and that she lived on, for centuries before even meeting us. And for centuries after, to reach this day alive...

She's responsible for bringing daiûas into this world.

She caused everything to change...

R - You caused this world to be... You made... us.

Goodness... I'm beginning to cry, at this reality I hate now.

I don't want to believe it's true. Her existence and responsibility write a story I hate.

Daiûa doesn't smile, as I fall in cold tears.

D - I did neither. I'm no god. I wanted to kill God, not to change the world or you. If anything, all I wanted to do was to erase all remaining presence of god... But I'm just a traveller in the end.

She sounds like Licht. I can't follow her anymore. Hearing her talking about god is too much for me. I don't want to hear that she means it literally!

My mind crumbles for good and I can't participate in their chatter anymore.

I hear her and Bleue continuing to talk, but I can't follow nor react anymore.

Everything she is and reveals to me is too horrendous to accept or believe in. I just can't...

Bleue tells her our story, of what we really are and are from.

They talk a while longer about our previous life, who we all were.

Who the things we call daiûas were.

I should be curious, but I can't follow them. She scares and shocks me too much.

R - Don't tell me... God exists...

D - There are no gods Rose. Only power to use as you wish. I used mine. You used yours. Others try to bring balance to the world in their own way. That's all there is. There's no gods to fear above us.

B - And there are people like us and you vowing to bring them down should they attempt to rise?

R - What you implied about the past... I can't believe it.

D - Then don't. You'd be right calling me a daiûa after all. Maybe I was trying to trick you, since that is the meaning you made of my name.

She grins at the logical paradox as she stands up. She's going to leave.

She didn't lie when she said she didn't want to hurt us, and that she was just curious about what we were.

D - There are no gods from the past to fear Rose. Enjoy your life. It was fun meeting you two.

The thing leaves like that, almost promising that our travelling paths will never meet again. She disappears soon from our sight, and soon from our lives.

Daiûa was a thing that left a mark in our family history.

And maybe far beyond as well. Maybe reality began to change far, far earlier than anyone now could have believed.

In a way leading to the end of times, and the rising of all the daiûa spores...

Thank goodness, it seems that today, whether that was truth or lies doesn't matter in the slightest. Because I hate the thought that it could be true, and that our original selves twirled around that ominous fate...

Her presence and what she said will linger inside of me like a nightmarish hypothesis I will try to forget.

This night will pass. All will vanish at last.

Soon, a clear morning sky will rise.

~