Aetheral Space

The world bubbled into being.

Dragan opened his eyes, and the bubbling world shuddered into focus. He was in a bedroom. He knew this place -- it had been familiar to him for so many years. It was his bedroom, his childhood bedroom, where he'd slept for so many nights.

Had it all been just a dream? Meeting Skipper's crew, fighting across the galaxy, Elysian Fields? Maybe he'd just imagined it all. Would that be happy, or sad?

He went to get up out of bed, but the chief's sister pulled him back into place. She was still weaving flowers into his hair.

“Don't fuss, child,” she muttered, dextrous hands adjusting the petals to catch the light. “You're the one who asked for this, after all.”

Dragan scowled to herself. What an irritating memory. This was from back home, wasn't it? Back on that irritating backwater planet. There was nothing this could be but a memory, an unwelcome flashback. She'd already long since destroyed the place. This woman weaving her pathetic flowers was long since dead.

The forest, too. It spread out before her, still and unsuspecting. Paradise smirked to herself. It didn't understand that the one who would one day control it was already so close by. He would… she would…

…Huh?

Whose memories were these? Was she Dragan Hadrien, or was he Paradise Charon? This wasn't right. This didn't make sense.

What were they doing here?

Their thoughts flashed back to the Arena of the Absolute. They'd just been fighting, hadn't he? What had happened to her? Dragan Hadrien had stabbed her with that strange implement… no, he had stabbed Paradise Charon with the Panacea… and then…

…Ah.

“I understand,” said Charon. “I didn't know you had an ability like this. You're trying to invade my mind, aren't you? Destroy me psychologically, as you can't defeat me physically.”

Dragan replied out of the same mouth. “I'm surprised you figured it out so quickly.”

Everything was splitting in two -- the voices, the body, even the scenery. Like a cell undergoing mitosis, the entire world split in half and distanced itself from itself. Dragan, standing in a bedroom that no longer existed, glared at Charon, standing in a forest that no longer existed.

Paradise cracked her neck. Here, in the realm of the psyche, she looked just as she had on Elysian Fields. Not a single scratch marred her features, and she ran a hand over her face appreciatively.

“That's more like it,” she grinned. “So this is your ability, then? By stabbing me with that spear thing, you can attack my mind. Well, either way, it's still one on one. You're as dead here as you were out there.”

Dragan shook his head. “You've got two things wrong there.”

“What?” Paradise frowned.

“This isn't my ability…” Dragan smirked. “...and this fight isn't one on one.”

“Do I come out now, dead boy?”

The voice was loud enough to shake the psychospace they had created -- and as Paradise looked up in shock, she saw the unbelievable source. A colossal humanoid figure, looking like a young girl with orange hair -- but the size of the Shesha -- was looking down at her, grinning with a missing front tooth. This entire place… she was holding this entire place in her hands, cupping it like water.

Paradise looked the titan up and down. “What is this?” she demanded.

“The Panacea network,” Dragan replied, stepping forward, into the abyss -- and floating over it as if he were standing on thin air. “Or, at least, a representative of it that you and I can comprehend. She's the one who's bridging our consciousnesses right now. I'm connected to her, she is connected to your Forest of Sin, and the Forest is connected to you. See how it works?”

“Oh? That's pretty interesting.”

Dragan rolled his eyes. Speaking of the Forest of Sin…

It appeared in much the same way as Pan, clawing through the gap between the two memory-scenes as it writhed into sight. Unlike Pan, its form was much more fluid, a huge pillar of shifting screaming faces, kudzu vines quickly wrapping around and constricting it. It grinned with more teeth than Dragan could count.

The Forest of Sin laughed.

“So it's two on two, right? Right? Now you've really caught our eye, Dragan Hadrien!”

“Caught your eye?” Dragan raised an eyebrow. “I'm pretty sure we've never met before.”

“Oh, fascination doesn't require familiarity… think of us as a distant admirer.”

“Don't fraternise with the enemy,” Paradise snapped. Her gaze, full of contempt, swung back to face Dragan. “If this is a space of consciousness, then you've chosen the wrong battlefield, boy. The Forest of Sin has consciousness to spare. Crush him.”

The Forest lunged forward to acquiesce, swinging its indistinct body around to smash Dragan out of existence -- but that was not permitted here. Pan reached out with a hand the size of a starship, seizing the Forest of Sin by the throat and holding it in place.

Wait… the throat?

Indeed, as Pan throttled the Forest of Sin, it seemed to be taking on more and more of a humanoid shape -- as if it were being forced to assume a form that would allow it to be strangled. The mind really was a dangerous thing.

“Your pet won't be able to harm me,” Dragan said with certainty. “That's why Pan is here. Think of her as… a referee.”

“Referee usually doesn't strangle, dead boy!”

Pan's voice was full of cheer, and Dragan smiled to hear it.

“Well…” he said. “There's all kinds of sports.”

Paradise's blood ran hot. They were mocking her. Mocking her ability, her prowess, her strength. It wasn't just impertinent, it was unthinkable, unforgiveable. This Hadrien bastard and this Pan bitch… she'd crush both of them under her heel.

Don't bother taking back those words, she went to say.

However, she did not say that. She had every intention of doing so, and even tried to say it, but the circumstances made it all but impossible. It was very hard to speak when your mouth was full of spiders, after all.

Paradise's eyes widened as the spiders crawled over them too. She wasn't standing anymore -- she was sinking, into this abyss, into the spiders, all the space around her suddenly occupied by the skittering insects. She tried to scream, but that was difficult too with arachnids on the tongue.

As the former Contender sunk deeper and deeper into the bug-bog, Dragan stood on the edge of the pit, his eyes full of piteous contempt.

“This is a world of will and memory,” he explained calmly. “I put myself through quite a few unpleasant experiences so I could get ammunition for this fight. How do you like the spiders? I didn't enjoy them too much.”

In all honesty, the spiders hadn’t been that bad when Dragan experienced them. He’d remained in a pitch-black coffin full of the things for about half-an-hour. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, but it certainly hadn’t been a matter of the world being made of spiders.

That was how this world of the mind worked. The memories conjured up could be exaggerated, they could be twisted, but they couldn’t be invented wholesale. Everything that happened here, in some shape or form, happened.

It seemed his enemy had realised that too. After all, Dragan’s location had changed as well.

He was standing in the middle of his Forest of Sin, on Elysian Fields, clawing at his throat as he was overwhelmed by an unseen attack. High above, the Supreme Heir was using her new ability to assault him. He could feel it -- inside his veins, his organs, his bones, like something was crawling through them with sharpened limbs.

Still, he did not scream. Here, in the space behind his eyes, he refused to scream. Instead, he remembered -- and he made that memory his claw.

She was being murdered.

With the context removed, that was all Paradise Charon could understand of this. With each move she made, she was impaled -- a jet-black stake appearing in her body and spilling her blood. She opened her mouth to scream and her jaw was skewered next, the tip of the stake protruding from her cheek. Elbows and ankles, stomach and spine -- each and every vital point was pinned down by the assault.

Red Light. Green Light. Red Light. Green Light.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she was being beaten. An indistinct blur, only vaguely humanoid, lunging in and sending her flying whenever she found a chance to breathe. She was being flung across the barren surface of the planet, like a pinball, touching the ground for barely a second at a time.

Even through the fear and pain, however, her anger still held dominion. This bastard was playing with her. He thought he was better than her.

Never better than her. Never better than her.

The sword was clumsy in Dragan's hands, and it took all he had just to keep hold of it.

There was no escape -- the dust man was everywhere. Whatever angle Dragan tried to flee from, tried to flee the training hall from, the dust man was already there. His features distorted and ravaged by poison, he would swing his own grey sword and send Dragan flying.

“Clumsy,” it hissed.

Smack.

“Clumsy!”

Smack.

“CLUMSY!”

Smack.

“CLUMSY!”

Dragan landed roughly on the floor, his sword finally slipping from his grasp and sliding out of reach. The dust man towered over him, pointing his own blade, the tip so close that it was tickling against Dragan's throat. White-hot eyes of fire blazed deep within the dust man's ravaged face as he snarled:

“Clumsy… clumsy… clumsy… clumsy…”

Glaring intensely, Dragan wiped the blood from his lip. This wasn't good. Without his sword, he had no way of countering this bastard's --

Oh, wait. Yes he did.

Gemini Shotgun.

The memory of Shotgun was so much more vivid to him than that of Railgun, and the light it gave off was just as brilliant. It blasted through the dust man, obliterating his left arm and sending grey mist surging through the room. The dust man leapt backwards, hissing like a cornered cat, his grip on his own sword tightening.

“Sorry,” Dragan said, rising to his feet. “But these memories of yours are… a little lukewarm. So he's calling me clumsy. Who cares?”

As if Dragan's words had personally offended the memory construct, its expression warped further in rage. It threw its own sword down to the ground and roared:

“ABSOLUTIAN!”

White roots crawled out of his wound -- but before Dragan could see what happened next, the memory was dispelled. Paradise Charon strolled through the man, scattering him fully into dust, a cruel smirk lingering on her lips. She held one of the Stakes of Judgement in her hand, crushing it as Dragan watched.

“My memories are lukewarm?” she sneered. “I could say the same. All you have to offer are the times you lost… and you lose so very often, don't you?”

Dragan offered his own smirk. “You skipped the ending, huh?”

“Don't worry,” Paradise replied, reaching down and plucking the sword off the ground. “I'll re-enact it right now. I'm starting to get used to the way this place works. Will and memory, hm…?”

Paradise Charon still didn't understand how much of a disadvantage she was at here -- going up against an Archive-trained Cogitant in a battle of mental imagery. Restructuring his own thoughts and memories came naturally to Dragan at this point, whereas it was something Paradise slowly had to become accustomed to. She'd figured out the rules of the game and decided that made her the champion.

“It makes me wonder, then,” Paradise grinned, tapping a finger against her cheek. “How much can I manipulate these memories? I can make them more intense, sure… but can I compound them? Merge them together?”

She raised her hand…

“I believe you said ‘who cares?’, right? Let's see if you can still say that… after this!”

…and snapped her fingers.

It was a lifetime of tiny cuts, fused together until they were a gaping wound on the soul. Every cruel word, every baleful glance, every indignity that had ever been inflicted on Paradise Charon… crushed together and focused and fired like a bullet into a heart. The story of her life, converted into artillery.

Humans could not understand each other's pain. That was a universal rule. Because they existed in separate bodies, isolated by the borders of their own consciousness, they could only comprehend their own agony.

Foreign pain was not something that one could process. The only way to bridge that gap…

…was to taste that same pain yourself.

Bon appetit, Dragan Hadrien.

Dragan blinked.

“What is this?” he said.

Paradise looked down at him, her eyes cold, her own figure growing huge and tall as her perception of herself gained dominance. Like a preacher greeting her flock, she spread her arms wide, a mighty shadow falling over Dragan below. Her hair billowed as if in a gale.

“I already told you,” she declared. “This is humiliation. This is suffering. Every moment of indignity I have suffered, all at once, slicing at you relentlessly.”

She grinned, her teeth gleaming in the light of her own eyes.

“Tell me, little man,” she growled. “How does it feel?”

Again, Dragan blinked. He casually reached up and scratched his head.

“I mean, I’m mildly annoyed, I guess? But I don’t even think that’s the memory doing that. I’m just looking at you.”

Paradise’s grin dropped. “What?”

“But you did give me an idea. Compounding memories, huh? That’s pretty interesting. Mind if I give it a shot?”

“What are you --”

Dragan Hadrien tapped his foot against the ground.

She was dying. She was dying. She was dying.

There was no other explanation for it. Nobody could feel like this and not be dying. Was she dying? Was she dead? Was this hell? Was this what hell was like? No, she didn’t deserve hell. She hadn’t done a single thing wrong. Not once in her life.

But…

Stabbed. Burnt. Crushed. Dismembered. Blinded. Flayed. Broken. Smashed. Shot. Yes, shot -- a bullet was slowly worming into her skull, the memory grotesquely slowed down to drag out each and every impulse. All at once, all at once, it hurt. It hurt!

Was she dying? No, she was alive. Only the living could feel pain. Then when would she die? When could she die? Why couldn’t it hurry? Why was it taking so long? There was too much pain, too much pain, too much pain. The bullet wouldn’t hurry. A slow lobotomy. She was lying on a hill of her own limbs. She couldn’t think. There was a noise. A noise, a noise, a noise. She couldn’t think. Ow. Stop it. Only the living could feel pain. Why wouldn’t she die? Was she dying? Why was she still alive? It hurt. Drowning in the hill. When would she die? Too much pain. She couldn’t think. There was a noise. A slow lobotomy. The bullet wouldn’t hurry. A noise, a noise, a noise. What was that noise?

Ah.

She was screaming.

Death would have come for her, in that moment, her psyche finally shattering when confronted with the agony of a reckless lifetime. She would have toppled over dead in that arena, defeated body and soul, nothing but an empty shell remaining. Just one more second, and she’d have been finished.

But a rescuer had arrived.

Paradise found herself pushed out of the memory, sliding across a hypothetical floor, landing face-down in an undignified heap. Dragan Hadrien did not watch her go. His gaze was fixed behind him, over his shoulder, his eyes wide and uncomprehending.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Bare feet silently made their way across the floor of the memorial Shesha. A pale finger scratched a pale cheek, neighbour to the slightest smile. Dark eyes regarded Dragan and Paradise like amoeba under a microscope.

“Hey there, Miss Charon,” the King of Darkstar said kindly. “Shall I give you a hand?”