ShadowSong [Book 3]

Chapter 21 - Versions of Reality

The light was so thick that Banshee could not see her nose in front of her face.

It went on far, far longer than she'd anticipated.

She'd stepped through, reasoning that nothing could have been worse than the darkness, but the light just kept going on and on. Her hesitant, careful steps turned quicker as she began to worry that she'd only traded one darkness for another, more blinding kind. Her mind began to flash back to the basement, when the Serpent's minions had flooded the room with light and ambushed her, shot at her, attacked her, drugged her.

The numbers started in her head.

O...one, two. She forced herself to breathe and shut her eyes tight. She couldn't bring herself to draw Joy. Th--th--three. She stopped, pressing her hands to where her tattoo lay under her garments. I can do this. I can do this. Another step. Four.

At ten steps, just as whatever scrap of hope had made her walk into this light was about to fade, her footsteps... changed.

She didn't quite know how to describe it. It felt like her feet had turned from stone to air, that they were lighter, more free, and the rest of her soon followed. She felt her garments dissolve for lighter clothes, her visor vanish for glasses, the weight of her hair lessen. With her eyes still closed, she saw none of it, but she knew it was happening the same way she'd have recognised herself in the mirror, or the melody of a song.

She felt the moment as she stepped out of the light not as Banshee, but as Olivia.

It took her a long moment to open her eyes. Terror gripped her breath at the idea of facing another existence where she didn't exist, where she couldn't be sure of anything except the unending floor beneath her feet. She knew, if she opened her eyes and nothing was there, that the last few threads of whatever was holding her together might snap, but what choice did she have? If she kept her eyes closed forever, it was no different to the darkness. It'd be the same as stopping and letting it win.

It still took her another minute to find the strength to hold her hands up in front of her face and peek out from under her eyelids.

She could see her hands.

Her eyes went wider. Her hands began to shake from an agonising relief as she realised that she could see. Not just her hands, either, but her body, her legs, her surroundings.

The void of light was gone, daylight in its place. There was open air around her. She couldn't see the sky--there was some kind of strange barrier of light above her that blocked it--but aside from that, there were no walls. She was real. She could stretch her arms and watch her fingers and see her clothes and touch her face, and her feet on the gro--

Olivia froze as she realised exactly what she was seeing below her.

She nearly broke at the sight. Instead, she dragged her gaze upwards and forced herself to find something to focus on and ground herself, but there was nothing--nothing but herself, and that was going to have to be enough.

She squeezed her fingers, running them over each other before pressing them close to her chest and releasing one, giant breath that'd been sitting there so long it hurt. She checked her hair, her glasses, her shirt--all Olivia, minus the snow feather bracelet that Cryo had given her. Here--wherever 'here' was--Cryo's gift had been replaced by a single strip of white cloth, crudely shaped to look like a feather.

Olivia pressed it close to her tattoo, then her lips, desperate for any sign that her partner was alive.

"Please, Cryo." Her words, whispered against the cloth though they were, carried like an injured song from her mouth. "Please don't leave me here. Please."