Mer was alone in the darkness again. She wasn't too surprised that Vincent had been wrong about them 'holding onto each other'. It was like him to throw them face first into hell, but with his message to Neil on the line, less likely that he'd done so on purpose. Regardless of motive, she had to move forward or fall back into the void, and she took her first steps into the shadows.
The darkness wrapped her ankles and whispered at her feet, the words undiscernible but heavy with emotion as they grazed her skin. Wisps grasped at her legs and scratched down them with an infusion of such strong feeling that she had to stop after just a few steps. Rage, sadness, fear, condescension, relish–all spun around her in a cyclone of agony and glee of suffering. It made her sick, and she stopped to curl up on her knees.
"Do you think she's tainted?"
"It's cruel to let it live just to grow into a monster."
"Have you seen the father rampaging in the complexes?"
"Oh my goodness, yes. They say he likes to torture children."
"Maybe he'll do everyone a favor and kill her himself."
Mer covered her ears but it didn't shake away the gossip, the spite and fear. This wasn't real now, but it had been. People didn't change so easily and Mer knew the mages feared and despised her for being like her father, a creature of darkness. Rush loved her no matter what and crushed all of her worry, and he was here somewhere with her. Finding him gave her energy to stand and try to push on.
At least it did at first.
When she stood and moved, she came face to face with someone. Blond hair flitted through the darkness as long as the woman's knees, and blue eyes met Mer's, empty and void of life. It was as if it had been drained from her, and dark circles sank the woman's eyes into ghastly pits.
But she looked too much like Luna.
"Meredith," the woman said, her voice hoarse as if she'd been crying. "You are going to be such a pitiful creature." Hands reached for her, and Mer couldn't move as they sank in and came back out with a bundle in their hands. It was her, as a baby, in the arms of a ghost conjured by the void.
Her mother.
"I can feel the darkness, just like your father." Ruby Aurion touched the space just below the child's neck.
Mer leaned in with insatiable curiosity for how she looked in her mother's arms, the entire time ready for the illusion of herself to have empty sockets with the way this was playing out. They didn't. Nothing looked back but the innocent cinnamon eyes of an infant too young to understand the tears dripping from Ruby's eyes onto the child's blanket. Mer was so close that when Ruby turned to her, she could see every dark speck of blue in a pair of eye that would be vibrant if she laughed.
"You will suffer and be hated." Ruby's words were so soft as she tread a cold hand up her cheek that Mer's stiff shoulders fell. Ice crawled Mer's cheek as the specter examined her with the same emptiness as she regarded the child in her hands. "No one will ever love you." The hand fell away, and Ruby returned her gaze to the bundle in her arms. "I wanted to take you with me, so you could be with me and your father. You must have been so lonely..."
"I... I wasn't," Mer wasn't sure why she responded to what might be an illusion, but something about this was wrong. If this was he mother, Mer had to convince her that she didn't have to sit around and suffer over a life that wasn't hers.
"You were without parents. You were lonely." There was no question in those hard Aurion eyes, and Meredith clenched her fists. Ruby mirrored Luna's strength so much that Mer's heart lifted in dedication to save her aunt, but it also ached because she'd never known her mother.
"I was lonely at times, but I didn't only suffer Luna and Torin took care of me, and I stayed away from magic long enough that I was oblivious to my parents' real fate. I grew up in caring arms that taught me how to be strong and gentle, hardworking and also relaxed enough to enjoy the stars. Even with everything that's happened in my life, I never would have wanted to 'go with you'."
The ghost of her mother was silent as she looked at her, and Mer swallowed her thickening throat as the woman released the infant in her hand to the void. It floated away and sank into the darkness to leave her alone with the woman standing between her and her body in the living world.
"I know," Ruby said, sighing gently. "No matter how I cried that day and tried to work myself up to tightening my hands around your throat, all you did was coo at me and giggle. You were so happy, and I had no idea why. Your father had just been holding you that morning and it was the first time I'd seen him in months. Maybe you liked him."
With each detail that Ruby Aurion shared or rambled to the open air, Mer's sinking feeling that this was her mother solidified. The specter wasn't violently ripping at her throat or dragging her back to the void by force, but it was doing just what Vincent said the corridor would. It was using anything to keep her there, even giving her the chance to meet the mother she'd longed to know since she knew what the word meant.
But she couldn't stay there.
"I'm sorry I couldn't love you," Ruby said, tears glistening in her eyes, and Mer had to close hers and shake her head to keep from drowning in the woman.
"It's fine," Mer said to her feet. "D-Damien loves me enough for two people, so it's all right if the world was too heavy for you. I know it was hard for you, my father's madness and my fate, but I am loved. Damien loves me, Luna loves me, and..." Rush. Rush loved her most of all.
"Damien?" Ruby said, leaning her head back as if reminiscing. "When I perished, he'd finally fallen into the depths of a hell where he barely recognized me anymore. You speak of Darc Aurion as if he lives, and you call him by a name that only I knew."
"Damien is alive, but not in the way you remember him. It is the only way I've ever known him, so I can't say if he's much different, but Damien is a vampire now."
"That's a lie!" Ruby hissed, and Mer took a step back as her blue eyes flared. "Damien wouldn't betray us, give in and become a monster. Darc Aurion would die before joining our enemies."
"Damien isn't a monster!" Mer snapped so quickly that she covered her mouth with a hand as the specter narrowed its eyes. Mer's shoulders sank and she calmed herself. Yelling wouldn't get her anywhere, especially if this was her fragile mother's tortured soul. "Damien did it for me. The only way he could survive to see me grow and know me was to accept the change. Their power stabilized his madness and gave him strength enough to support his own dark magic. Without him, I wouldn't even be alive! I owe my life to Damien, and I love my father."
"You love a monster," Ruby said, her gaze darkening. "So that is why he never joined me here. My love left me for the world of darkness and now we may never meet here. Those monsters can't even allow me rest in death, always taking from me."
"They aren't monsters!" Mer said too loudly, and Ruby looked away from her in disgust. "Please, there is peace now and I'm fighting to return to my body so I can save Luna from actual monsters. Some vampires can be kind. I know it's hard to understand, but things have changed. I came with a vampire to rescue Luna."
"You came with him?" Ruby asked, seemingly dismissing all of the other words. "I thought it was hunting you, as many do in this realm after death." Ruby lifted a hand and a baseball sized orb appeared. Emerald eyes flashed from within as Ruby lowered it, just long enough that Mer recognized Rush.
"What did you do to him!" Mer demanded but kept her distance as the ghost of her mother held the orb in her hands. It looked delicate, like she could crush it and end Rush's life at any second. "Please, I love Rush and he cares for me. He'd never hurt me. Give him back..."
Mer's voice fell away as she realized she was powerless to save him. She'd do anything to save him, even stay here in the void if that's what it took. This corridor knew how to twist them, and Mer was trying to figure out how to get them both out.
"You think it cares for you?" Ruby said with a huff of disdain. "Very well then. See how much he loves the Aurions. Go ahead." Ruby held out the orb to Mer, and she hesitated, sensing the trap. "Touch it and you will go to him, Meredith Aurion. If you trust a beast not to lash out at its prey, then go to your monster."
Meredith clenched her hands and took a step into Ruby Aurion. Something was wrong here, but Mer trusted Rush with her life, with their love, and with the trial this corridor had set before them. Mer grazed the orb with her fingers and just as she had fallen with Vincent, the void claimed her. It dragged her from the dark tunnel and threw her into another world of its making.
Of Ruby Aurion's making.
"Don't die! Please hold on *****!" Mer couldn't make it out the muffled name but the sounds came from her lips and her hands were covering to a hole in a man's chest below her.
Blood drenched her fingers and no matter how much she pressed onto the wound, more spilled out. Dark magic had corrupted the mage below her and black blood bubbled up out of his throat before the light left his eyes. Despair overtook her at his death and her helplessness to save him, but they weren't her own emotions. Someone else was in this body with her, another soul, and Mer couldn't figure out what was going on until someone yanked her arm and pulled her to her feet.
"Ruby, he's gone!" Damien's voice, and Mer looked up to her father with a wash of affection.
Damien was so young, his eyes still a bright grey before the dark magic had fully tainted him, but he was tattered. Blood splattered his mage attire and the normal part that fell between his legs from his ornamental coat was ripped at his knees. Moisture dripped from his hair, some from the much around from them, but the rest from a gentle misting of rain that covered the battlegrounds. This was her father in the youth of his years, the ones he'd been a terror to the vampires on the battlegrounds, and he'd called her Ruby.
Mer looked to her blood covered hands and her fingers were too slender, to marred with scars from fighting. Weight from a ponytail of long blond hair pulled her head just so much as she turned to figure out where she was. This was Ruby's memory, and Mer was in her skin. If Rush was also here, then this was a time that her parents had fought the Shades.
Horror shook her as she looked up and found the eyes she'd been searching for, not far enough away from them to be harmless but also not so close to be deadly. Rush stood with his hand around the back of a mage's neck and the boy struggled. Blond hair and light blue eyes gave him away as an Aurion, but he was no older than fifteen at best, certainly not an age to be fighting such monsters as Ruby called them. This had to have been decades ago though, back before mages coddled and protected children in modern society.
Mer knew Rush, and he didn't linger or torture. The snap of the boy's neck was expected but shook her as it had Ruby the day this had all transpired. Worse than that, Ruby's soul corrupted her perception of the man she'd promised her life to. Ahead of them, Rush stood without care for human life, for the child he'd just extinguished like a weak candle flame out in this rain. There was no age for him, only mages and vampires, two sides fighting desperately to eradicate each other.
Nowadays, Rush's eyes were so light and calm that Meredith couldn't find them in the sinking forest green of the man before them. The rippling muscles that lifted Mer in bed and caressed her when she needed someone terrified Ruby Aurion as she stood next to Damien on the other side of the battlefield. Vampires flanked Rush in the trees waiting to strike, as did mages behind her and her father, but no one moved. They all awaited the command, either Remus Shade's or Darc Aurion's.
Rush had told her he'd been a war general, someone who'd killed many of her kind, but she'd never thought she'd have to see him like this. It hurt, seeing how cold he was, how lethal just because of the light magic that flowed through the Aurions' veins. Ruby had known this was what she'd face when she told her to see how much Rush cared for the Aurions. This was what her mother wanted, for her to understand that they were monsters. But it wasn't that way anymore, and she would find a way out of this. They'd fought for too much for her to fall here.
Word Count: 2402