John — Roleplayer Guild

”Who is Delirium to us that we follow her!? She’s our queen! OUR QUEEN! THIS IS NOWHERE, NOT YOUR WORLD!”

Leila winced on that notion.

She stepped aside, to allow Inadi’s twirling spear to tap to a stop against his fingers, the tip pointing straight at the nobodies through where Leila had just stepped away from. Several other humans rushed over to try to relax the atmosphere, yet it wasn’t long until the whole room erupted into a whirlpool of questions, accusations, objections, and eventually deteriorating into threats and personal insults.

Leila wouldn’t be called an expert on human emotion, yet she isn't exactly unfamiliar with scenes like this. Memories of her distant past surfaced in her mind - of the time when she stll lived with her parents and the rest of the family.

And she was thinking that the minds of the inhabitants of such an exotic realm would be wildly different from those back at home. She expected to learn from them. Yet now she found herself reacting just as the way she would deal with such things at home: to stand aside, and watch. Ironic, how things here end up not being actually all that different after all.

How utterly disappointing.

”...This just proved that it was never worth the trouble.” Songbird's hiss was one of the distinct things that were possible to hear clearly.

...That’s that, then.

Rather disheartened, Leila stared blankly into the wall on the other side of the crowded room as the arguments raged on. The battered, decayed wooden planks; the rusted hinges to which the door was connected, creaking, accompanying the howling of the wind. The traces of black mist that seeped through the cracks -

- wait, wha - ?

The split-second in which she realized what was happening - the wisps, the Living List, the Witch's heart - was a revelation in despair as she had no time to voice anything, before the front wall detonated into an explosion of shards and fragments - and the bloody corpse of of a unicorn, its coats now devoid of the iridiscent twinkle, turning pale under the streaks of dark red that ran down its sides.

Leila coughed, struggling to pull herself back up, grabbing onto a shelf nailed onto the wall she just crashed into. The shelf itself detached, the items on it cascading onto the ground beside her as she staggered into a stance against the wall.

Unicorn...

She forced herself to step forward, towards the fallen creature. Can't miss the chance to take a closer look at -

"NO! LEILA!" Riley.

"Get out of the way you French loaf!"

French - what? How rude -

Crash.

She tried in vain to stand back up again, only to have to accept that she didn't have the strength to do so this time. Crouching on the ground, she turned her head to the direction the blast that propelled her to smash onto the ground, to see - only blurrily - the dreaded skeletal figure in black, swinging her arm and driving a blade into a mass of stained greyish white.

No voice came out of her throat in Leila's attempt to scream out the Nobody's name.

Ushering what strength that's left at her disposal she launched herself in that direction, only to fall through the intangible mass of black that the witch dissipated into, and to collapse onto herself once again onto the wooden floor - sharpnel of wood flying out as the planks creaked painfully under the impact.

The heart, the heart! - Leila was on her feet now, yet still too out of breath to utter any words.

Inside the cabin - of what's left of the cabin - projectiles shot around everywhere, tearing down anything in their way. Mists shot around here and there, and attempting to follow them as they gathered and dissipated at various locations would turn everything into an indistinct blur, only with the figure of the witch temporarily materializing at unpredictable locations, followed by yells and cries and screams of pain.

"Uhhh..."

Eyebrows locked, Leila turned around in a panic, trying to track down what was happening, to no avail. Her left hand reached instinctively over her shoulder, only to remember that the quiver was empty - the arrows Hakuren provided with his magic have long melted away. This space was too small for arrows to be effective anyway. And at that moment she noticed wisps gathering at the edge of her sight -

"Knock down the back wall!" Ace.

Having brought up her arms in time to shield her face and upper body, Leila was a bit surprised by the fact that she managed to withstand the impact from the shockwave that was produced by the explosion, and remained standing, even if it was just barely - about time, though, to think - the third time in succession that things exploded in her face just now. She lowered her hands to see that the cabin had been reduced to piles of debris, the damage of the collapse apparently alleviated by some kind of force field, presumably magic cast by some of their group. She also noticed that she lost her bow.

She flung the strap over her head, and the empty quiver fell to the ground. No good carrying that anymore. peeling away at the remains of the cabin that piled in her way as she got out into the open area, she grabbed hold of a long piece of wood, pulling it out. It was hot to the touch - the other end that was then buried in a burning heap of mess still glared with flickers of remaining flames.

The area had turned into an all-out battlefield, with the others still fighting - the witch persisted in appearing and disappearing at unpredictable positions, making it difficult to land any blows and just as hard to fend off the witch's attacks.

How is this done? Leila's mind raced as she, not having much choice but to remain in constant motion around the field to avoid being a standing target. She looked at what was happening around her, in hope of finding a pattern, or a mechanism through which the witch was able to do all this; only to hopelessly conclude in frustration that nothing she knew could serve as a foundation to a theory that would explain all this. Ideas were conceived and almost invariably instantly thrown away as the next attack the witch landed on the group was somewhere she didn't expect. She almost found the thinking physically painful to do when at one moment, the witch was nowhere to be found on the field -

"- Ach!"

Sputtering, she fell onto one knee as she realized too late that the wicked creature had condensed into form out of her sight right behind her, and her right arm going numb as pain pulsed outwards, originating from the gash on the back of her right shoulder.

She coughed several times. No blood came out from her mouth because this was not an intentionally dramatic Hollywood fight scene. An injury to the shoulder also felt a lot worse than suggested by popular media.

Formulations of plans to flee of fight back lost meaning as, as swiftly it appeared, the cloaked figure lost its form again and disintegrated into pieces of black. Then another impulse of unidentified origin sent her tumbling across the ground yet again.

She gaped for air. More futile struggles to remain standing - it was already a fight to even remain conscious. Couldn’t think straight.

Couldn’t think straight.

That was the sort of thing she feared most.

She turned and saw Lesley and Inadi at the side, fighting, but the second encounter with the witch, with the opponent’s form destroyed and apparently rebuilt into something much more elusive, was ending up less of a fight and more of a massacre. This wasn’t going to hold for long.

And with her sight and mind both blurry at the moment, she couldn’t feel more upset about this - the idea of going out, of dying here like this - she usually restrained her mind from wandering unto thoughts like this, but it seemed that panic attacks are among the least of concerns under these circumstances. The journey ending here - in a place where there was still so much she had to see, to understand; at a time when she hadn’t gotten the chance to get to the explanations of so many things that aren’t making sense yet - it was a truly disheartening, yet unavoidable thought.

She almost regretted stepping onto the train back on that day - that idea flashed through her mind as the characteristic wicked laugher of the witch echoed in the background - distressed shrieks, actually? Leila shook her head hard and what was left of clear memories of the sounds she just heard blurred into a giant mess of indistinct cacophony.

”ENOUGH ALREADY!”

It wasn't the kind of voice anyone would expect from the girl that remained silent throughout most of the trip and spoke only in whispers even when she did.

Leila was yelling.

”ENOUGH OF THIS! STOP IT! YOU'RE BEING CONFUSING!"

Paused a moment - was still panting. Needed the time to breathe. Pain in chest, strained muscles, potential fractured or broken ribs. Her right hand still dangled on the side of her body without strength, blood soaking the sleeve and dripping off the tip of her fingers. Yet she somehow succeeded in persuading herself that she didn’t feel all that, because it was drowned out by something else.

She furrowed her brows in further confusion. What was this? She couldn’t remember the last time she was angry. Or did those cries carry a larger proportion of despair, desperation, a tint of grief, and the displeasing idea that she was being mocked - which would stir together in her now utterly unreliable mind to be identified as anger -

- that thought just made her feel a lot worse.

She squinted her left eye, trying to keep out the blood that reached her lashes from a cut in her forehead - she didn’t even remember where she got that from - while keeping the time her eye was shut as short as possible as she staggered, at the spot, sight following the convergence and dissipation of the elusive wisps. If anyone ever gets the chance to stand at the centre of a tornado and look at the howling winds and sharpnel flung into circular orbits and out in tangent trajectories - this was probably what it felt like, except probably worse.

Leila disliked that feeling to no end.

"Stop throwing at me things that are incomprehensible…ach...” Still painful, she reluctantly reminded herself as she had to stop to cough, yet still outraged - and her hands shivered as she delivered the following words: ”...if you’re noT GOING TO COME OUT HERE AND EXPLAIN IT PROPERLY!”

If this was ending like this, there was one thing she’ll protect. She brought up both hands to grab onto the piece of wood, shoving the fractured, burnt end against the ground and pushing herself back onto both legs. She didn't know whether she was directing it at the creature - the witch that had cause their group all this suffering - or just herself and her own very confused mind; when her cries escalated into a full-out scream, at the top of what’s left of her lungs and over the noise in her head:

“This may be Nowhere, this may be your world, BUT THIS IS MY BRAIN, AND I HAVE NOT GIVEN YOU PERMISSION TO MESS WITH IT!”

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