Chapter Text
there is a mirror that floats in the center of clorinde’s house.
well. to call it her house is a little bit of a stretch, seeing as it is a terrifyingly immense maze and also does not belong to her, but it is the shelter she has claimed for herself for the past weeks and so the name stays.
after twenty-four years of diligently working as a hunter in fontaine, only to be swept away by a rather alarmingly blue wave and dragged into this world where everything is wrong, clorinde privately thinks she deserves a break.
it is only by pure chance that she managed to find this maze - or rather was brought here - built of white stone and purple vines, a welcome relief from the relentless magics of this twisted universe. here, she can finally give herself a moment to breathe, water and light and food somehow in abundance. it would be almost peaceful.
almost, if it weren’t for the horrors lurking outside of the safety of the maze, and the mirror spirit that lurks within the glass in the center of it.
“are you alright?”
clorinde blinks her eyes open, a headache pounding at the base of her skull, to see two ash-haired shapes leaning over her. she slams a fist up instinctively, but the soreness battering every inch of her body and the dizziness that has yet to abate allows the figures to step back easily, gazing at her all the while.
“who,” she groans, sitting up, “the fuck are you.”
she’s supposed to be politer than this, but getting thrown into an alternate dimension and fleeing to safety while being chased by creepy ghosts is enough to break past her normally cool exterior.
“i’m lyney,” the male one says, smiling at her brightly, “and this is my sister, lynette!”
she blinks away the rest of the grogginess, taking another look at them, and then freezes.
the female shape – called lynette, apparently – has the ears and tail of a cat, as well as sharp, glowing eyes. she’s still enough that clorinde could have mistaken her for a statue, the edges of her form blurring into turquoise wind.
the other one, lyney, is equally as uncanny despite not having obvious cat characteristics. his eyes as well are alarming, and the way that the folds of his clothes and body blend into each other like some half-shadow spirit is just as terrifying as the literal flames crowning his hat.
clorinde knows instantly that she’s outmatched. perhaps if she had a better understanding of what, exactly, these siblings are, or if she was not so tired, but she is still reeling from the tsunami that had dragged her here and then fleeing to shelter from the maelstrom of rain and monsters.
“who are you?” lynette asks, and her voice is as solemn and calm as her face. “outsiders are rarely allowed here.”
clorinde stiffens, reflexively going for the sword that she lost in the waters, and lyney immediately steps forward, shape solidifying until he looks less like a specter and more like a person. albeit a person that has a head full of fire and red marks painted down his skin. “she didn’t mean anything by it. she just means that it’s been a long time since anyone has managed to make it to this world.”
“this world?” clorinde repeats, arching a brow and trying not to give away how panicked she is. “and what is this world?”
“oh,” he says, contemplation settling upon his face like a mask. “that’s a little hard to describe. i suppose the best you could call it is a mirror to your own.”
“then can i go back?” she asks dryly. “if i made it here, i should be able to return.”
this time, it’s lynette who steps forward, although she remains half-vanished in the wind. “no. this world is ruled by two, and it is the actions of one of them that caused the tsunami to leak over into your world.”
“we don’t have the same power to send you back,” lyney clarifies, sending her an apologetic look. it is just perfectly regretful enough to concern her. how much of what he is saying could be truly believed?
“then would one of these two leaders of yours do it?”
the siblings stiffen, exchanging a look between them before turning back to her and shaking their heads in unison. “perhaps,” lynette says, brow furrowing. it’s the most emotion she has showed yet. “but i would not risk it, if i were you. they can be quite… unpredictable.”
yes, of course. of course some twisted mirror dimension would not be ruled by logical people that she could appeal to. she really doesn’t know why she had hoped for anything different.
“we really shouldn’t stay,” lyney adds, glancing at his sister once more. “but you should be safe here. if you truly want to return, the center will probably be your best chance.”
clorinde blinks, for the first time registering where she’d woken. it’s definitely not where she passed out while she was fleeing those strange water creatures. it’s beautiful, almost.
there are arches of white marble, supported by violet and blue plants creeping up them and golden roofs, a turquoise stream stretching through the center of the pathway like an ethereal villa. she turns around, attempting to look for the entrance or exit, but is met by more walls, branching out like the world’s most elegant maze.
it is a maze, she realizes, and whips back around to the siblings. “did you bring me here?”
lyney nods, sensing her mounting fear. “this maze is one of the few places that will keep you completely protected from the other spirits. it is impossible to enter this maze for harmful purposes. we brought you here for your own safety.”
she doesn’t trust him – cannot trust him – but there’s something in the confident tone of his voice that has her relaxing ever so slightly. “and what do you expect me to do? live out the rest of my days here?”
“i mean, you can,” lynette says, the barest hint of amusement coloring her tone. “the water and the plants are both safe to eat.”
“i cannot survive solely off of some vines,” clorinde says, and then wonders why she’s humoring this line of thinking at all. she must return to fontaine.
“you can with these plants,” lyney responds, and then shrugs. “but this isn’t just a maze. it used to be the palace of one of our leaders. there must be clothing, food, whatever you need, somewhere in here. nothing expires in this world.”
“probably closer to the center, though,” lynette points out, and her brother nods in agreement. “you only need to follow the stream.”
“and your leader will not exact revenge?”
“no,” lyney says, and gives her a knowing smile. “we wouldn’t have brought you here if we thought you would be in danger.”
“you are being very kind,” clorinde frowns. no one does anything without a purpose – one of the rules she’d been forced to learn growing up in fontaine. she is a hunter, someone responsible to find and punish criminals, and she’d been subsequently forced to face the worst cruelties of humanity.
“spend enough time here and you’ll find out that there isn’t much else to do,” he answers, only to get elbowed by his sister. “okay, okay, it’s not that boring, but someone else saved us too, very long ago.”
“we’re paying it forward,” lynette says, her voice barely a whisper. “we cannot return you to your world, but we can try to make your life a little easier.”
it’s not like she has a choice, does she? in this situation, it remains that these siblings have all of the power over her. they could just leave without informing her of anything. they could have left her outside, collapsed after sprinting as quickly as she could from the clawed shadows reaching for her.
“thank you,” she replies finally and tries not to let it sound as cold as she feels.
lyney beams at her once more, and he begins to dissolve into shadows and flames. lynette has already vanished into the wind. trying to understand the physics of it makes her head hurt, and clorinde suspects that it is another one of those things that humans are simply not meant to see.
lyney has almost disappeared when she realizes suddenly that they’d barely told her the minimum of what this world consists of. they’d warned her of other spirits – but what are these other spirits? what are they?
“wait!” she calls out, and lyney pauses to turn back to her. it’s very alarming to see a mostly human-looking face twisted in the edges into smoke and embers but she ignores it and continues. “you barely told me about this world. will you return?”
he is silent for a moment, and then responds. “it is dangerous for lynette and i to remain here for very long, but we know someone who can speak with you. i will bring him soon.”
it is the most she can get, and clorinde understands this. it doesn’t matter, anyway, for lyney is already gone.
there is nothing around her except for foreign white marble and the rippling of a glowing stream, and clorinde has never been one for much socializing and people but she is suddenly aware of the maze stretching out around her, acres of twisting stone, and her.
get to the center, the siblings had suggested, and she knows she should not remain here forever. she needs water, food, a fucking weapon – and lyney had said that it is all closest to the center.
it could be a trap. it could, but if they wanted to kill her or capture her it would have been quite easy to do while she was still asleep, passed out from the exhaustion of running for hours without stopping.
clorinde sighs, adjusts her clothes, and begins walking.
she finds a sword. it’s not the same one she used in fontaine, but it’s beautiful nonetheless: a thin, silver blade, with grey-violet and golden swirls twisting around the handle, and it carves through the air cleaner than any other she has ever wielded.
it fits into the sheath at her side perfectly, clicking into place as if it was always meant to be there, and despite its unfamiliarity, the weight of a weapon serves only to reassure her.
clorinde only hopes that she will not be hunted down by an enraged spirit, furious to have their weapon stolen from them.
the maze is far, far larger than she would have ever expected, and clorinde finds herself having to stop to rest long before she has reached anything that could possibly be the center. the night sky above her, visible in the breaks between golden roofs, is unlike any she has ever seen in fontaine: millions of stars, waterfalls fading in and out of pure air, and silver clouds glowing with the light of the three moons.
she was never given the opportunity to do this before, she thinks. in fontaine, her job has always taken priority: she’d worked for hours as a hunter, apprehending those attempting to escape the law, and the exhaustion that seeped into her as a result had never allowed her to leave and simply enjoy life.
how could she, when she was the reason that so many lives were ruined? she will never forget the angered faces of the arrested, the red, tear-stained eyes of their families, hatred and fear all directed towards her.
when she was younger, more naive, she had tried to deny it. had said desperately that it wasn’t her fault and that she was only doing her job, only for them to lash back out at her, vitriol laced through their words.
by now, twenty-six and already exhausted with this world, she has long given up on attempting to justify her work.
there is a sense of freedom, here, that she has never known before. she knows she ought to return, knows that an arcane mirror-dimension has no place for a mere human. and yet, the longer she remains, the more tempting it becomes to simply stay.
clorinde would have thought she could have stayed with another one, months ago, with bright eyes and curled hair, who smiled at her like she was something worth keeping. there had been a door kept open for her and a bed kept clean that she could collapse in each evening, and she’d seen a future, past the meaningless violence, in that apartment.
navia had been the greatest gift that fontaine could’ve possibly offered her. even if the girl had not quite liked her work, she had loved her. at least clorinde hopes that navia had loved her, senseless as it is to think of now.
they had been together for barely two years. the other hunters had discouraged her from it, and she knows that navia’s friends had been wary of her. it seems that they were all right after all.
of course it couldn’t have lasted, foolish as it had been to dream of.
a hunter, and the daughter of the leader of one of fontaine’s most powerful underground organizations? nevermind whether or not navia herself had ever committed any crimes – for clorinde to be the one to arrest callas had been the greatest betrayal she could have ever committed in navia’s eyes.
and clorinde does understand, in the end, because there is perhaps no one who despises the hunters as much as her. in another world, she could’ve ended up in navia’s place just as easily. the ease in which she'd ignored navia's disappearance, left it up to the other, less-competent hunters, scared her some nights.
the only thing that had tied her down to the law had been duty, and when that duty had shifted to navia–
navia had never forgiven her. clorinde had never asked her to. she only hopes that it had not only been hatred remaining between them.
she could not have released callas from his execution, but she could try to save his daughter from a lifetime in prison for the simple crime of being related to him, and so she did. navia had asked her if she was happy with the result, before the girl had disappeared from clorinde’s life, and to this day she does not have an answer.
what does she have to show for herself, after? a long list of completed assignments and a renewed silence. for all she had claimed to love navia, for all of her growing resentment, she had not changed, still following orders like a good little soldier.
it is navia the criminal who is running free now, and clorinde the hunter that is still bound to fontaine.
funny, isn’t it?
there is no duty here, though, in this dimension. there is no one expecting anything of her. there are no betrayals or derision. is it so wrong for that to tempt her so?
she wakes as the sun rises upon the maze, rays stretching out almost calmly through the vines draped overhead. sighing, she rises from the spot in the corner where she’d fallen asleep, and stumbles over to the stream to splash water upon her face.
it’s a good wake-up call, and after a drink, she sets off once more. clorinde has not forgotten that lyney had told her the center of the maze is the best option she has for trying to return to fontaine. even if this serves as quite the terrible maze – honestly, the stream is meant to lead her directly to the middle – it’s complex enough, and large enough, that she knows she must try to move quickly.
and yet she barely gets through a half-hour of walking before a familiar swirl of shadows and flames appear before her and a strange body is aggressively pushed through the portal, thumping onto the floor with a groan. lyney’s magic disappears moments after.
“...are you alright?”
the body groans again before rising up to face her, offering a hand to shake. it’s only then that clorinde realizes why she had thought him so strange. the man before her does not appear to be as ethereal or terrifying as the siblings. he seems almost human.
“yeah, lyney’s just like that,” he says. “my name is wriothesley.”
she opens her mouth to respond in kind, but he shakes his head immediately. “do not tell me your name. it is dangerous to do so here.”
right, of course. she is fontainian – of course she knows the legends of the fae that every young child is told. she’s only grateful she had forgotten to introduce herself to lyney and lynette previously. she’s not quite sure why wriothesley does not follow those same rules, but perhaps spirits do not need to.
“then you may call me marechaussee,” clorinde says in return, the title bitter on her tongue.
wriothesley accepts it with a nod, and she takes the moment to scrutinize him. he’s tall, with dark, wavy hair and a few scars visible on the skin peeking out of his clothes. he wears a rather elaborate outfit. it reminds her almost of the clothes that lyney and lynette had worn.
he is oddly familiar, actually. not in the sense that clorinde had known him – she’s sure she would know if there had been a man who disappeared into another dimension – but in the sense that she has heard about someone with the same appearance.
who knows, anyway – this is a mirror dimension. there’s probably a lot of circumstances like that.
“lyney mentioned that you just arrived here?”
she blinks back into the conversation and nods, beginning to walk. “yes. a day or so ago. it is a little hard to tell.”
“it is,” he agrees, falling into step beside her easily. “time works strangely here.”
she has gotten far too used to this world in barely a day, she thinks, and then sighs. better to be adjusted than to die because someone or something caught her by surprise.
“so, you know lyney?” wriothesley asks.
clorinde pauses. “he and his sister dragged me here when i fell through originally, and then disappeared.”
“oh,” he says, “that’s why he told me he met a human i needed to explain things to.”
the phrasing of it discomfits her, but she refuses to allow it to show. “yes, about that. why can’t he or his sister do it? they were very eager to leave.”
wriothesley ducks underneath a hanging leaf and then continues. “this place is warded against spirits meaning harm. the power of it is so strong that even non-malicious spirits will be evicted,” he explains, and then shrugs. “it is a little more… violent, per se, than simply leaving.”
“and you are immune to this?”
“well,” he says, looking away, “i’m not quite a spirit.”
it is only her years of training that prevent clorinde from tripping over herself at those words. she had assumed that she is the only human in this dimension – but that’s not what lynette said, was it? she had only mentioned that it is rare for humans to enter, not unprecedented.
“you are from fontaine?” she cannot help the shock from leaking through her voice.
he nods, still not facing her. he’s embarrassed, she recognizes, and the thought of it is odd. he had appeared collected, almost cold, once one got past his rather unusual entrance courtesy of lyney, but now she realizes he simply must not speak with people often.
they’re similar in that way, then.
“alright,” clorinde says finally. it’s not like it’s the weirdest thing to happen to her in the past twenty-four hours. “so, tell me about this dimension.”
relief bleeds through his shoulders, barely visible if she hadn’t been watching him carefully, and he nods once more. “it is led by two spirits, the sovereign and the archon. they go by neuvillette and focalors respectively.”
“those are very fontainian names,” she points out.
“lyney calls this a mirror world, and he’s not wrong,” wriothesley answers. “it is like… a very distorted version of fontaine.”
as she suspected. “so, it is one of these spirits that created the tsunami that brought me here?”
“likely neuvillette,” he confirms. “focalors has not been very active in several centuries.”
centuries. she had not quite internalized the fact that the beings in this world are not human, despite the eerie appearance of the siblings.
he takes her silence as confusion and continues. “this world had been at risk of destruction for millennia, and she trapped the rising waters along with herself somewhere else. i’m not quite sure where.”
clorinde very intentionally does not ask how the fuck one traps rising water, whatever that means, because there are some things that she just does not need to understand. gods.
“alright,” she repeats, because what else is there to say? with a sigh, she looks over to wriothesley. “i have more questions for you, though.”
“i’ll do my best,” he responds, a half-smile curling up his lips. “i cannot say how many i can actually answer, however.”
smug bastard, but fine.
unfortunately, when one gets past the seemingly aloof exterior, wriothesley is actually quite easy to get along with. clorinde deeply regrets that she finds herself genuinely liking him.
it only makes it harder when lyney pops back out of wherever he was to take wriothesley back, because apparently that is simply something he can do. when she’d asked, the spirit had explained that he could lock onto clorinde’s location because he’d spoken with her previously, but could not magically transport her to the center or back to fontaine because there is nothing for him to anchor to.
it still seems to her like mere excuses, but she says nothing. there is nothing she can do about it, still sapped of most of her strength, and she does not know enough about him to confidently say any more, no matter how uncomfortable it makes her to know that he has the ability to find her wherever she may be.
the silence follows her as she keeps going. she’d found rooms in the maze already, conveniently holding things like food that isn’t purple plants and properly dry clothing, but she knows that she cannot simply stay in a tiny chamber for the rest of her life.
she has to make it to the center.
(what could she do if she doesn’t? there is nothing for her in fontaine and there is nothing for her here.)
even wriothesley’s random appearances, dropping in from wherever he spends his time, do little to spare her from the boredom slowly creeping over her. even in fontaine, as much as she hated it, working as a hunter gave her a purpose. a goal.
being faced with the same white marble and golden roofs day after day is slowly driving her insane. clorinde has never been more grateful in her life to see the turquoise stream open up into a beautifully shimmering pool, surrounded by white marble columns and an open sky. although, to call it a pool may be a little bit of a stretch, seeing as it must only reach around a foot in depth.
this must be the center of the maze! it matches the legends wriothesley had told her about, and she can see more paths stretching out from the other sides of the rectangle of water before her.
it feels as if her ribs have untied themselves from around her, tension releasing from her body from places she did not know existed. a half-laugh chokes itself out of her throat and if she had not been trained so diligently she thinks she would have perhaps fallen to the ground from sheer relief.
finally – finally! – progress.
as she steps closer to the center, her eye catches upon something nearly glowing in the middle of the pool, and she blinks away the glare of light to realize there is an impressively large mirror floating above the water. it is strange, but it does match the many mirrors that had begun to appear on the walls the closer she got to the center.
clorinde pries off her shoes, dropping them by the edge of the pool and rolling up her pants, and steps in to take a closer look. the water laps at her feet almost affectionately, pushing at her legs and eagerly beckoning her closer to the center.
it would be alarming, but she has by now gotten used to the strangeness of this maze.
the turquoise waves lead her to the mirror, and she peers into it only to see her reflection. she appears a little disheveled, certainly, for she’d been traveling for days now and bathing in the streams could only do so much, but otherwise she sees no reason for it to be so important.
it really is just a mirror: beautiful glass and twisting silver and gold as a frame, lapis lazuli gems embedded into the metals, but otherwise not particularly magical.
she takes another step closer, wanting to take a better look at the jewels, when she hears a laugh.
her head snaps up, breaking away from the frame to look around, but there is nothing around her. the voice does not seem like wriothesley, nor does it hold any similarity to lyney or lynette’s, and the sound of it echoes out once more in the chamber.
her eyes pass over the mirror, and then she freezes.
reflected in the glass is a woman, her hands trailing over clorinde’s shoulders, as if watching – guarding? stealing? – her from above. when she whips around, hands immediately going for her sword, there is no one behind her and only a ghost of feeling on her skin.
“i’m here,” the woman says brightly, amusement evident in her voice, and clorinde turns back to the mirror to see her facing her properly.
the hunter’s form has completely disappeared, leaving only the spirit, who gazes upon her in clear mirth. she drifts around in the mirror as if flying, or, taking into consideration the waters around them, perhaps swimming. her hair floats around her as well, long, beautiful white locks twisting around the way her blue-white dress winds around her body.
and clorinde thinks that she has never seen eyes as stunning as the spirit’s. they are like twin jewels, shining teardrops, and so utterly entrancing that she has to force herself to look away.
gods, she had thought she had been prepared for the center of the maze, had kept her hand on her sword the entire time in careful diligence. but she had not expected a woman so ethereal she could be compared to a god.
“hello,” the spirit chirps, a smile curving her lips. “and who might you be?”
“marechaussee,” she responds, forcing herself back to attention and only barely remembering not to give her true name.
“i see,” she says, a knowing glint in her eyes that clorinde absolutely does not like. “it has been quite some time since a fontainian hunter arrived in my lands! what a shame i was unable to receive our visitor properly.”
“who are you, then?” she challenges, raising a brow.
the smile never leaves the spirit’s face as she offers a quick bow, elegance in each movement of her limbs. “you may call me lady furina.”
clearly a pseudonym, but clorinde suspects that this furina knows far too much in order to offer up information about herself willingly. she doesn’t know exactly what it is, but the mirror spirit seems dangerous, somehow.
“well! now that introductions are out of the way, you simply must tell me how you arrived here!” furina declares, spinning over until her face is much closer than it was seconds ago. it is only the glass between them that prevents clorinde from flinching. “hardly anybody ever visits me, you see.”
“are you trapped in that mirror?” clorinde blurts out, and then freezes.
luckily, furina only laughs, throwing her head back in delight and offering her a wink. “this one, and all the others in this maze.”
well, at least it serves to answer why there had been so many mirrors hung up in the rooms and walls that clorinde had passed. although – would that not mean that furina could have been watching her as she made her way through, this entire time?
it is a disturbing idea, and clorinde chooses to abandon that line of thinking. she has known furina for only several minutes, but she can already tell that the spirit would not answer properly, anyway.
“why are you here, then, marechaussee?” furina says, raising a brow as she twists over, stretching herself out upon nothing.
“i wish to return to fontaine,” clorinde finds herself answering. it is not as if telling her will do much – she is trapped in this world already.
“aw,” a pout adorns the spirit’s lips almost theatrically, although it certainly makes her look cute, “you don’t like my dimension? you wound me.”
ah. what is she supposed to say to that? she doesn’t wish to offend the spirit that inhabits the maze that she currently is being forced to live in.
luckily, nothing, because furina rolls back over, footsteps touching down upon the reflection of the pool’s water which appears out of nowhere in the mirror. clorinde isn’t even going to try to comprehend how that works. “and how are you going to do that?”
“would you be able to help me, lady furina?” she asks in response, because after all, “another spirit said that the center of the maze would be my best chance in doing so, and i am beginning to believe that he meant you.”
“ooh,” furina says, hand lifting to cover her mouth in mock surprise. “a request! don’t you know, marechaussee, that nothing comes for free in this world?”
nothing comes for free anywhere, she wants to answer instinctively. she’d been given the gift of a beautiful relationship with perhaps one of the kindest women she’d ever met, and she’d paid for it dearly. is that not simply how life works?
“what is your price?” what does she have to lose, anyway? she has been left in this world with nothing except the clothes on her back.
somehow, furina’s grin widens further, and clorinde begins to worry. “your service, marechaussee hunter.”
“...pardon?”
“you heard me,” she drawls, leaning backwards onto an invisible chair and inspecting her nails, which clorinde only now realizes are far too sharp to be anything but blue-tipped claws. furina flicks her eyes up, the seriousness in them in clear contrast to her ever-present smirk. “now that you are here, some annoying spirits will likely try to breach this maze. defend my mirrors, and i’ll work on finding a way to return you to fontaine.”
that… isn’t that bad, really. she may be a little bit out of her depth in her understanding of this dimension, but fighting is something she knows intimately. if she simply must keep furina’s mirrors from shattering in return for a way back, she will clearly do so.
“you must understand, however, that this will likely take time,” furina adds casually, eyes trained on her.
“i’ll do it,” clorinde says immediately, steeling herself and meeting the spirit’s eyes. “i accept your deal.”
“good,” furina purrs, and she shivers, face suddenly hot. “i would suggest finding yourself a nearby room to sleep in. your service begins now .”
“marechaussee,” wriothesley says in greeting, familiar smirk curling his lips, and she only barely prevents herself from pointing her sword directly at his face. honestly, he should know not to sneak up on people already.
“wriothesley,” clorinde says in response, sighing and forcing herself to untense. “you did not inform me that a spirit lives within this maze.”
“oh,” he says, and if she hadn’t spoken with him so many times by now she would have not been able to recognize the genuine confusion on his face. “i was not aware.”
clorinde steps past him, gesturing for him to follow, and walks past the hallways now so well-known to her in the direction of the pool. she sits down at the edge, slipping her shoes off and dipping her toes into the water, and looks up to watch him join her. “that mirror,” she continues, gesturing towards it, “contains a powerful spirit. she is apparently capable of returning me to fontaine.”
wriothesley frowns, although the solemnity of it is a little negated by the fact that his legs are currently soaking in a pool with the pants rolled up. “there are very few in this world that can do so.”
“really?” she says, raising a brow. “i find that unlikely. you are here, after all, and i do believe that lyney knows far too much.”
he flinches, which means her words are not entirely wrong, and shakes his head. “i arrived here similarly to you, and many spirits can cross over. the problem is that they cannot bring another person with them.”
seeing her doubtful look, he elaborates. “the twins are not actually corporeal, although they can take on more humanoid appearances. lyney reaches fontaine by traveling through either the shadows or the flames. seeing as humans cannot exactly change shape the same way, it’s not an option.”
clorinde will admit that she is not eager to try to disintegrate herself back to fontaine. it explains the way that the siblings had always seemed half-dissolved into their elements, at least. she’d originally thought it had simply been an incredible attunement to their powers, but they are simply formless by nature.
“i do think that is something you could have told me, though,” she points out, and wriothesley nods.
“my apologies.”
they sit like that for a while longer, in a silence that has long become amicable, and clorinde marvels at the situation. she would have never expected to be relaxing at the edge of a magic pool with the only other human in an alternate dimension. it is quite a change from her previous dreary days as a hunter.
“how long have you been here?” she asks abruptly before realizing how personal such a question is, and she whips around to him. “i’m sorry.”
wriothesley straightens and shakes his head. “no, that’s a reasonable question. i believe around fifteen years.”
she chokes.
“i was a teenager when i fell through,” he says. “it’s hard to keep track of the time, but it’s been over a decade since.”
she turns to look at him, brow furrowing, and scans him thoroughly. the scars peeking through his clothing seem even more visible now than when they’d met, and she wonders for the first time if they had come about from his life in this dimension.
“and you never tried to return to fontaine?”
he shrugs. “i only fell through because i was escaping hunters.”
what. he must notice the look on her face, although she isn’t quite sure what emotions she’s feeling right now, and he winces subtly. “my mother and father adopted many children and sent them off to other families when they became adults, and i discovered that they were actually selling them,” he says, and his voice is too neutral for it to be anything but intentional. “i killed them in response.”
clorinde doesn’t say anything for a moment. she will admit that the ideals of fontainian justice have been deeply ingrained into her since she was a child, but she does not wish to chase away perhaps her only friend. and if what he speaks of is true, it is a horrifying thing to live through, and she cannot find it in herself to blame him for it.
wait.
it is true, because she knows that story. “you’re the cerberus kid?”
“oh,” he says, blinking at her, “yes.”
“wriothesley,” she says urgently, looking him in the eyes, “that was decades ago. it took me a moment to recognize it because your story has become so warped over the years. you’re a cautionary tale. gods.”
“oh,” he repeats, and then shrugs casually. “well, i already knew that time works differently here.”
she, however, had not known so intimately the difference of this dimension, not truly. it is easy to forget, after all, when her only company is a human and a couple of spirits who do not like to speak to her of this world.
how long has it been in fontaine, now?
“you should be careful,” wriothesley adds. “if you spend too much time here, you will not be able to return.”
she stiffens, and turns to him with narrowed eyes. “i will not change my mind. i have a duty to fontaine.”
he shakes his head, pulling his legs out of the water and beginning to dry them off. when the water has mostly gone, he gestures towards them, as well as rolling up his sleeves, and it’s then that clorinde finally sees it, inhaling sharply.
there are cobwebs of ice, like fracturing snow, stretching over his skin. even his fingers, which she has not gotten the chance to look at so closely, have the ends tipped in what are not quite claws, but are not just normal nails, either.
“i have spent too much time in this dimension,” he says quietly. “i am not a spirit yet, but i am no longer fully human.”
“how long,” she says slowly, voice far too fragile, “how long until this started?”
wriothesley is silent for a moment too long, and the barest amounts of fear begin creeping up her spine. “several months.”
there’s an underlying layer of something in his words, one that she cannot quite parse. she could have, another time, but the weight of what he is telling her is pressing upon her too heavily for her to make out anything beyond it.
she has already been here for weeks.
furina had told clorinde that it could take time before she found a way – she had originally thought it meaningless politeness. only now does she realize that it was a warning. a test, almost.
she can hear wriothesley say something more, but the words do not reach through the pounding of her heart. somewhere, she distantly recognizes that he has stood up, leaving a hand on her shoulder for a moment, before leaving once more. she cannot be sure, though. it is all blurry.
the water keeps splashing around her, loud, and she would snap at it to calm down if she could make anything out past the way her hands are shaking uncontrollably.
this is unacceptable of her. she is a hunter. she was trained from childhood to be the ideal soldier, and yet now she cannot even stand up because of mere words?
gods. she’s going to die here, isn’t she? perhaps not this very moment, but at some point. clorinde knows she does not have the capability to assimilate into this world as smoothly as wriothesley appears to have. she is going to die here, in this maze, before ever being able to lay eyes upon fontaine once more.
what was it that she had asked him all of those weeks ago? you are from fontaine?
and he had responded yes, had told her that he was not quite a spirit, and she had taken that to mean he is human. how foolish of her. he had never said so.
her eyes cannot focus, and she can feel her pulse in her throat. this is ridiculous of her, she thinks once more, hand slipping down to catch herself from tipping over.
she needs to get up. to at least get to the room she has taken as her own. she’s perfectly capable of standing, she knows, but she cannot bring herself to do so. the world is still swimming before her eyes. her hands are still trembling.
when did she lie down, exactly? she cannot remember.
she is so tired of this world, now. she hasn’t let herself process exactly what has happened to her, but she finds herself looking at the turquoise waters beside her in dull shock. there is nothing waiting for her in fontaine, but at least she understands it there.
she really is exhausted, clorinde muses, and her eyes slide shut before she can stop it.
“finally awake, are you?” a voice titters loudly at the edges of her consciousness, and clorinde groans, pushing herself up.
pushing herself off of – water? she looks down, shock waking her up rather well, and realizes she is laying down upon the pool’s water, somehow solidified.
or, she thinks, looking up to meet furina’s eyes in her mirror, changed by the spirit. “lady furina.”
“about time,” she sniffs, not moving from her position reclined upon air. “honestly, when i brought you here, i didn’t expect you to sleep for so long!”
the recollection of the past day slams into her with great force, and she snaps up reflexively. wriothesley, his information – and then she had fallen asleep, or perhaps fainted is the better word.
furina steps down, stepping forward through the darkness of the mirror’s space and tilting her head in clear curiosity. “i must ask, what on earth has gotten you so worked up? i had thought you a lot more dignified, marechaussee.”
it stings, a lot more than she would’ve expected, and she cannot quite keep the glare off of her face. “were you aware i would lose my humanity if i stayed here too long?”
furina’s eyes widen, but like all of her expressions, it is too perfectly shaped for clorinde to believe in its genuinity. “oh my, it must have slipped my mind.”
if her sword was in reach, she would have had her hand clenched around it minutes ago already. “be honest with me, lady furina. i do not see you making any effort to aid me, and to have kept something so serious from me is a betrayal. are you really doing what you promised me?”
furina’s eyes narrow, flashing silver–black-blue, and clorinde only barely keeps herself from flinching. she does recognize that she’d just threatened both an incredibly powerful spirit and also her only ticket back to fontaine. she can only hope that furina will forgive her for it, even if she has yet to forgive the spirit.
it doesn’t excuse her unreliability, but she is painfully aware that she holds very little power here.
“marechaussee,” furina says, voice low and yet more dangerous than any of her higher-pitched exclamations, “i ought to remind you that you never asked for information.” she steps closer, and clorinde barely catches a glimpse of fangs in the snarl that pulls her lips back for half of a second. “do not imply that i do not hold up my end of the deal ever again.”
before clorinde can even reply, the heavy aura that had leaked around the pool snaps back into the mirror, and furina steps back, tucking her arms behind her back and offering her a vivid grin. “besides, he is rather unique! who knows how this world will affect you? perhaps slower, or perhaps quicker,” she adds brightly.
“you’d enjoy the latter, wouldn’t you?” clorinde accuses, something dark curling in her chest. “do you think this is funny?”
bright peals of laughter are her only response before furina shakes her head and vanishes back into the darkness of the mirror. even then, she knows – although she doesn’t know how – that it is still not a real answer to any of her questions.
clorinde finally stands, anger bleeding into her every movement. she is sick of this – sick of other people controlling her life. it has always been this way, from her birth, and she had believed she had long since accepted it.
it seems like this dimension has its way of bringing out the worst in her. the thought is bitter.
navia had spoken of it to her, once. she’d said it quietly, almost afraid, with none of the resentment in clorinde’s mind now.
it had been the beginning of the end, hadn’t it?
“it hurts me,” navia had said, voice barely a whisper, “that you will never belong to yourself.”
“what do you mean?” she had tilted her head. “i’m yours, and i’m happy that way.”
“no,” navia had responded, shaking her head, and clorinde had stiffened at the sadness in her voice. “you’re not!”
she had frowned, rising from her place on the couch to join her girlfriend. she had not known quite how to comfort her – and now she never will – but it had pained her to see the usually cheerful girl being so downcast. “navia,” she had said slowly. “please talk to me.”
“look at this,” the blonde had cried out, and clorinde’s heart had seized as she had turned only to reveal tears that welled in her eyes. “i haven’t seen you all week! even now, you sit only on the couch to do paperwork. and when you are not, you refuse to do anything for yourself!”
she had opened her mouth to respond, but navia had cut her off. “when does this end, clorinde? when do you finally think about something other than your godforsaken duty? is that all i am to you?”
“no,” clorinde had said frantically, unable to stop the rising panic in her chest. “no, navia, you are everything to me. i would be no one without you. you are my life.”
navia had made a terrible sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob, that still haunts her to this day. one hand futilely wiping at her eyes, her eyeshadow that clorinde had watched her so painstakingly apply that very morning, had smeared, leaving her face bleeding blue.
“that’s exactly what i’m talking about, clorinde,” navia had said, voice wobbling. “i can’t be that. not when you’re still a hunter and i’m still my father’s daughter, and we both know that neither of those are ever going to change. you have to have a life outside of this.”
her girlfriend’s voice has always been melodic. beautiful, like chiming bells and violins. and yet, at that moment, clorinde could not have heard it as anything more than the death knell.
each morning, clorinde rises early with the dawn and prepares herself for the day. with furina’s guidance, she has managed to find the proper objects needed for day to day life – she even has a cooking pan now. it has a faint blue sheen to it that leads her to suspect the spirit’s involvement, but she’s long given up on trying to extricate herself from whatever magic fuckery is going on.
once she is properly washed and ready, she wanders around the maze for a while, doing her best to familiarize herself with it. often, furina will accompany her, floating calmly between the mirrors hung up on the walls. she’s loud, and almost bratty, if an immortal spirit could be called that, but the eagerness in which she displays to talk to clorinde makes her feel a twinge of pity.
how long had she been sealed in that mirror without anyone to talk to? presumably, something so inhumane would not experience the same terrible insanity that humans do when faced with total isolation, but it still must’ve been terrible.
besides, furina is technically helping her. clorinde can spare some words to keep her company, even if she still has yet to see any conclusive evidence.
her days are repetitive. uneventful. the malicious spirits that furina had warned her about on the first day have yet to appear, if they ever will, but she has to do something, so patrolling and training herself is all she does.
wriothesley has yet to reappear. she feels a little apologetic for blanking out on him like that, as it was obvious he had no idea what to do, but the frustration at having such important knowledge withheld from her still simmers low in her gut.
she does not dislike him, she knows, but rather the fact that everyone in this fucking world – and fontaine, as well, in all honesty – thinks they know better than her.
clorinde understands it. she’s never given anyone reason to think differently: the marechaussee hunter’s most loyal member! fontaine’s guard dog, when they want to be polite, and fontaine’s bitch when they don’t.
you’re just following orders like a good little dog, she remembers, the harshness of chiori’s words at odds with the resignation that she’d said it with.
even now, months later, she can still hear her response as clear as day. i’m not – i didn’t want this, chiori!
navia and chiori had both been right, in the end, and – her thoughts are going down the same path again.
she sighs, shaking her head as if it could physically knock her out of her misery. over a year since navia had disappeared from her life, and yet she is still incapable of not pining over her memory like some lovesick teenager.
chiori had stuck around, but had made sure clorinde was aware of what an absolute piece of shit she was. it hadn’t been in a cruel way, of course, because the seamstress may be brutal but never intentionally heartless, but it had still been painful. enough so that she’d tried to shove all of it to the back of her head.
she knows that chiori had only tried to help, to drag her out of her self-induced spiral, but her own workload and peril coupled with clorinde’s refusal of any aid had not made it easy for her.
she hopes that chiori is doing alright. she hopes that navia is doing alright, too.
“you look sad,” furina says, floating leisurely past her, parts of her body disappearing where the mirrors separate.
clorinde sighs once more, though this time there is a much stronger tinge of exasperation to it. “hello to you as well, lady furina.”
the spirit drifts closer, a glimmer of interest in those stunning teardrop eyes. “why are you sad?”
none of your business, she wants to snap, but what good will that do her? it is not as if she particularly cares if furina judges her. “thinking about my ex-girlfriend. and my old friend.”
clorinde spares a look at her face, which has not changed at all, and backtracks. “do spirits have the concept of girlfriends? or dating?”
furina hums in contemplation. “rules are a lot looser here. and each spirit is different.”
“as in who you’re attracted to?” clorinde cannot help but ask, and look: it is foolish, she knows, but she really is curious. is it so wrong that she wishes to understand more about the world she has found herself in?
“as in everything. we are not human,” she repeats, “i do not believe we can ever love the way that humans do.”
“but you know how we love,” clorinde points out, and furina nods again.
“i’m sure wriothesley has already explained to you how the stronger spirits can travel between worlds,” she says, and when she grins, her teeth are far too sharp. “before i was sealed, i could have gone to any world i wished to.”
she is not going to unpack the implications of there being multiple worlds. at least this one could be explained away, mostly, as a mirror to fontaine. she doesn’t want to know what the other worlds are like.
it doesn’t slip past her, either, the confirmation of furina’s strength. it is concerning, certainly, that it is such an entity that clorinde has ended up making a deal with, but it is not like it is anything she hadn’t already suspected.
“so,” furina prods, “your ex-girlfriend. tell me about her. is she cute? like you?”
“what,” clorinde sputters, flushing bright red. all thoughts of the spirit’s strength are cast aside in favor of hiding her face as she speeds up.
furina twists between two mirrors, keeping up with her easily, her grin turning downright scandalous. “aw, nobody’s ever told you? you’re stunning, marechausee.”
archons, she needs to shut up, because clorinde is but a mortal woman and she has eyes, okay, furina’s objectively beautiful. she’s an ethereal mirror spirit, and to hear someone like her compliment her like that is not helping. her face feels like it’s on fire. this is so embarrassing of her.
“she was very pretty,” she finally manages to choke out between the hands plastered over her face. “and very kind, and bright. she was always so friendly, and she really was like sunshine. everyone was always happier with her around, and so was i. i… did not take it well when she left.”
furina doesn’t say anything for a moment, and for that clorinde is grateful. it gives her time to collect herself properly. it’s not like she’d even said anything important -
– rain, always rain, blood on her hands and empty bullet casings on the ground and blood and anger and fear and blood everywhere –
– but it had still torn itself through her throat nonetheless, vulnerable in a way she despises.
“she left you?” furina’s voice is uncharacteristically gentle. it still keeps the artificial tinge of all of her words, but clorinde appreciates that she tries, at least.
“it was justified,” she finds herself saying, because it really was. she still doesn’t know why she’s telling furina all of this, anyway. “i arrested her father, and everyone knew he would be executed. i might as well have killed her father myself.”
“okay,” the spirit says slowly. “and why would she leave you, then?”
clorinde stops walking, steps clicking to a halt, and turns to her incredulously. “it was my fault that her father, who she loved, died! and she had to leave the city anyway because they were going to go after her, too.”
“would you have gone after her?”
“no, of course not,” she snaps. “i helped her escape.”
the words sink into the space between them, the weight silencing clorinde immediately, and she realizes what she’d just revealed.
no one knew, in fontaine. perhaps chiori suspected – she’d always been far too intelligent – but she’d never given any sign.
it had been easy to get the files on the mission to arrest navia. it had been even easier to sneak into the blonde’s apartment, and offer them to her silently. she’d taken them, of course, and the next day had disappeared completely.
i hope you will be happy, she’d said quietly, before any sign that she had ever existed vanished from the court.
if anyone ever discovered what she’d done, clorinde knows she would be executed immediately. on the worst nights, she’d scorned fontaine for it. on the worst nights, she’d cursed the rulers that had destroyed their lives so utterly.
what does it say about her, that even on the worst nights, she could not bring herself to regret it?
“well, there’s your answer,” furina says, the carelessness in her voice as infuriating as it is staged.
“what do you mean, my answer,” clorinde forces out, eyes meeting the spirit’s in anger.
“you want to know what kind of person you are, don’t you?” she raises a brow flippantly. “you saved your ex-girlfriend’s life, and you obviously hate fontaine. you’re not as evil as you think you are, although i don’t know why you would ever want to return.”
she gapes at furina, who only blinks at her. “i am rather old. you pick things up after a while. good luck with that, though!”
and then she’s gone, somewhere in the inky darkness of the mirror’s subspace, before even that fades away and all clorinde can see is her own reflection in the glass.
she wants to hate furina for it, but in the wake of such rawness being dragged out of her, she finds she cannot quite bring herself to do so.