Chapter 196 - 196 The Nightmare Ends… For Now
Chapter 196 – 196 The Nightmare Ends… For Now
If Kat thought the light was bright before now it completely coated the room. The blood red shifting back to a pristine white as the firey figure started to disappear. It was slowly being dissolved from the legs up and flowing into the ice one.
Around halfway through the process two things happened. The first was the nightmare screeching as it vanished with a pop, the second was the ice figure sitting up and looking at the fire one.
The ice figure, Shizuru, started to cry and tried to hug the firey figure, but they just went through its, Haruka's old form. Shizuru clawed at Haruka's vanishing form before falling over completely, and dispersing what remained.
The energy in the room kept rushing towards Shizuru, and she started to flash, going from red to blue, keeping her ice like appearance but rapidly changing colours. A scream ripped forth from the lonely twin's mouth, but Kat didn't feel it powerfully, nor did the room shake.
Eventually, the colour in the Shizuru stand in started to settle. Instead of the clear blue, it was now a slight purple. It still looked icey, and it was a very light purple indeed almost still blue, but it was definitively changed.
As the light faded the figure collapsed, with a second tail sprouting from the figures back, but it was unnoticed as Shizuru, now Shizuka, wailed and beat at the ground. Kat could see Enuko trying to walk forward to comfort the girl, but she collapsed after just one step. Falling to the ground, tails splayed out behind her.
That was when the Queen rushed in. She scooped up Shizuka and looked her over, before pulling the small form into a tight embrace. Chiharu still had some wits about her though. Carrying her crying daughter, she lightly jogged over to the collapsed form of her own mother.
Chiharu bent down and got a firm grip on Shizuka with one hand and used the other to check over the still form of Enuko. A few sigils appeared above Enuko, as Chiharu frowned, letting a soft light flow into Enuko.
Enuko stirred slightly, her tails curling to the side before stilling once again. This seemed to be enough for Chiharu, as she quickly summoned a few other sigils and grew a platform of ice below Enuko, before walking back out of the room, platform trailing behind her.
Kat let out a deep breath she hadn't known she was holding and walked back over to Minor who was holding it rather well. She had tears streaking down her face, and she was shivering slightly once again, but she looked alright, all things considered.
"Hey, are you ok" asked Kat
Minor nodded. Words were slightly beyond her for now but, no longer crying. The scene started to fade to black. *Well… is this actually good?*
Kat started to look around as the scene stayed black. "Hey Minor? Is this meant to happen?"
Minor gave Kat a pained look "I'm… ah… not quite sure… I think so… like, this should be around the time Enuko placed that spell on Major. I think… that she doesn't really remember most of it so we get to sit in the void instead"
Kat frowned "I thought we were supposed to only see important things on our way to Major"
Minor winced again "Well ah… that isn't untrue, but like… this is important to her. Even if she can't remember it's important"
"She can remember less about the days following her healing than she can about being an actual baby?" asked Kat
Minor shook her head "It… it isn't quite like that. These are impressions as much as they are memories, and ah… perhaps this section is best represented by the void. I can tell you that things are progressing, I can feel it, but… it's a little strange.
"It's why the scene froze instead of disappearing after the attack, Major must have felt trapped, or frozen in time, instead of just asleep, and um… like, the bed for example. She knows what that looks like because we've seen it afterwards
"So like… even though she doesn't know know, that it was the same in that memory, her mind extrapolates sort of. You can't think of these things like the real world" said Minor
Kat rubbed her chin with her tail "Ok, well, seeing as you seem to know. Did I do well with that nightmare?" asked Kat
Minor nodded "I think so. I'm not sure it will always be so easy but just preventing it from ruining the scene seemed to work. Once we got past the point of no return, that is, ah, the spell triggering it vanished. I'm not sure if it was in the memory the whole time, and barely managed to gain a form towards the end
"Or if it could have just arrived. I'm not sure what matters more. That the memory was long or that we are a bit closer to the source of everything" said Minor, with a slight frown towards the end.
"Ok, well, I seem to be able to fight them well enough. It didn't seem particularly damaged but if I can just stall, I should be fine right?" asked Kat
Minor frowned rather spectacularly "I… I hope I'm not insulting you with this, but I doubt it" said Minor "See… I know that memories past this point, despite not being quite so friendly to my own manipulations, get more extensive
"Like, we've seen, more or less, just individual snippets. I know that going forward we will start to see much larger things. Like… perhaps a few training sessions? Voices for sure, and a bit more besides"
Kat tilted her head "Didn't you say you've done this before the whole nightmare issue"
Minor winced but nodded "Yes… but, well, what memories are considered important can change. Especially considering the state Major is in at the moment I don't want to tell you we'll see this, that, and those, memoires when I'm wrong. Plus, they aren't perfect exactly.
"I've watched a few memories I'm almost certain are copies I have in my own area but are completely different. I ah… I'm not quite sure who is more correct but that isn't important. We will need to do what we can with whatever shows up next"
*Well… that does make this a lot harder. I was able to 'fix' that memory because Minor told me the story before and there was certainly no masked man interfering with the ritual. Minor was also able to point that one out…*
*But going forward? If things get more subtle the difficulty could increase drastically* "Hey Minor, how confident are you in identifying Nightmares when they show up?" asked Kat
Minor bunched her mouth to the side as she thought. A few expressions passed over her face before settling back into her slight worry which was rapidly becoming default. "Um… I think, I can at least be certain when one is around. I'm not sure I can be certain what is a Nightmare though…
"About the only thing I can be certain is that it will never be Shizuka, herself. The reason we see them as just ice, is because it's standing in place of her. The Nightmares shouldn't be able to change that, so if there is only two things around and one of them is Major, we can easily figure it out" said Minor
"Well, you seemed pretty confident in the previous memory, was that just a fluke" asked Kat
Minor winced "Well… see, I could tell when it was manifesting, and it was the only thing it could possibly be. Say if… say it had been smarter and tried to look like an Enuko clone and was writing bad runes down
"I'm not sure I could have told you which one was causing the problems… and that would be really really bad" said Minor
Kat frowned but nodded. *I can think of a few ways I might have been able to figure it out but that would have been much harder. Plus I'm not sure how much interference constitutes throwing us of course. Like, say one of the Enuko clones was destroyed.*
*If I pretended to be it and just wrote down random gibberish would it work? Major shouldn't know the spell, and it's just a memory… but would knocking out the clone itself be enough to break things.*
*And once broken can things get back on track?* Kat glanced at Minor. *I'm not sure I want to worry her with these questions. Worst comes to worst I can buy her some time to back out and we can start again. I'm not sure we have time for that exactly, but if it has to be done.*
*I'll make that call.* Kat patted Minor on her head and let her go. Noticing that she'd turned her aura back towards Minor somewhere during the conversation.. Sighing internally at her lack of control Kat waited for the next scene to appear.