Extreme Measures

Alyssane woke up to rough hands closing around her arm.

It was the darkest hour of the night, and before she could understand what was happening, someone dragged her out of bed. Panic surged through her veins as Alyssane struggled against the man she could not see.

The room was too dark and all she felt was the chilling touch of metal gloves digging into her skin.

'A knight?'

His arms clasped around her throat, crushing the air as she desperately tried to break free. But all her efforts were in vain, he was too strong and she was too weakened.

"Wh-what do you want?!" Alyssane gasped out, her nails scrapped against his armored hand as her vision danced on the edge of bleary darkness.

He said nothing.

Her thoughts were growing dizzy, but she could not help but wonder why a knight would need to kill her in the darkness of the night. 

'What are you trying to hide?'

Soon, all the faltering strength in her waned under him. Alyssane barely felt the touch of cold winds when he let go, but as she drowned in the darkest depths of her consciousness, she heard his faint voice.

"Forgive me."

The words echoed into oblivion, sending a shiver down her spine.

Alyssane found her once again inside the endless void of her mind. It was always there, waiting for her to leave the waking world, to shroud her in the suffocating emptiness.

'What did he want?' she wondered.

The thought echoed too loudly in the silence.

But she could not stop thinking―there was a restless wave of fear and fury churning inside her. Where did things go so wrong? What was her grave sin? 

'Nothing makes sense. It never does.'

'All I want is some peace…'

The darkness around her shifted, and all her thoughts grew quiet. The void was not supposed to change, nothing good ever came out of it.

"Alyssane?" A familiar voice called out her name, soft and soothing.

But it sent Alyssane's heartbeats racing against her chest. She could hardly think, it felt as if everything that remained of her in the void had grown numb at the sound.

Reluctantly, she took a few steps towards nowhere.

The emptiness beneath her feet became black ice, every step she took loudly resonated through the darkness.

"It has been a while."

She stopped walking and turned towards the sound.

A woman was sitting on a lone chair. Her gaze was distant, lowered to the crimson scarf she was knitting. Half the flesh from her body was missing, half of her was covered in sunflower petals.

"Mother…"

Alyssane's voice broke as she hurried towards her but her feet froze halfway as she noticed her broken ribs sheltering a black heart that refused to beat.

She clenched her fists, trying hard to keep a hold over herself, "What are you doing?"

The woman dreamily smiled, her gaze still lowered, "Your sister feels cold these days."

Alyssane quietly watched as her mother's eyes clouded with confusion and she paused. But a moment later, she continued knitting like nothing had happened, as if her other daughter had truly been alive.

'What sort of joke is this?' Alyssane bitterly wondered.

"You must remember, Alyssane…" Her mother whispered with a trace of grief in her voice, "...you must… or else they will never leave…"

The void vanished.

Alyssane's eyes fluttered open to another darkness. Her throat burned with each breath, and her vision swam as she tried to get up.

"What... What was that?" 

Her mother's gaze, her voice, the unbearing cold of the void—all stormed her mind, and once again she could hardly make sense out of the rare glimpses that filled her usually empty dreams.

'What did you mean, mother?'

'There was never anything worth remembering.'

Alyssane pushed those confusing thoughts away and tried to look around her surroundings. She was unable to see clearly when her head throbbed with a persistent ache and her vision was unsteady.

But it seemed like she was back in the tunnels.

There was a scent of smoke mingled with its dusty ancient air. A dreadful heaviness settled inside her, as Alyssane followed the source of the smoke with unsteady steps.

The air soon grew dense from the smoke and the heat around the tunnels intensified as Alyssane reached the stairs that would have led her back to her chamber.

Now, it seemed nothing was left of it.

Smoke billowed out through the gaps around the trapdoor, filling the tunnel with an acrid stench that made her eyes water and her throat burn.

The chamber was set aflame.

"Gods…" Alyssane whispered under her breath in disbelief, rubbing her forehead with trembling fingers as she tried to ease the dizzying ache.

'Why would anyone go to such extreme lengths?'

'Is this really your doing, Johanna?'

It was never too hard to kill a person, but forcing them to slowly die while being trapped in a tunnel―while being only a wall away from life and death―was a different sort of madness.

'Am I that despicable in your eyes?'

With shaky steps, Alyssane walked aimlessly into the tunnels―her mind barely clung to the edges of her consciousness.

'If I knew you would be so hell-bent on wanting me dead, I would have taken my life to save us all the trouble.'

In the darkness of the tunnel, Alyssane's mind was stained in a darker anguish. Every memory, every promise, every moment she had ever spent with Johanna came back crashing down onto her like shards of glass cutting deep into her heart. 

'You were never supposed to be like this.'

Who hasn't been cruel to Alyssane in Pearl Manor? Who hasn't been uncaring before that? She learned to grow numb to everything and everyone. But Johanna had been her first and only friend.

The voices beyond the wall seeped into the tunnel the deeper Alyssane went. As she ventured away from the smoke, her mind started to feel clearer but there was barely any strength left in her body.

'There might be a way out…' She faintly recalled feeling the wind caress her skin when she had first opened the door.

Perhaps, the other entrances to the tunnel were more discreet as compared to the trapdoor. They might be hidden.

'But it all looks the same…'

Everything she has done, and endured was all in vain. There was no point in holding onto futile hopes any longer, and all she wished for was to go as far away as possible.

The voices started to feel like ominous chants too loud, and the darkness started closing in around her.

Alyssane could not stop.

It was hard enough to hear oneself in the tunnel. But even inside herself, she could no longer feel anything―no heartbeats, no pain, no nothing.

But something brought her to a stop.

Her fingers trembled against the wall as she barely heard the faint sounds amidst the noise. The sound faded within moments, her vision was in a hazy blur, and yet she could not move.

'Who are you?'

She waited, but she could not hear the voice again. With each passing moment, her mind sank deeper into oblivion, more distant, more quiet.

And then, her fingers went slack against the wall as the darkness fully devoured the remnants of her consciousness. Her thoughts lingered on that voice.

But in the end, she only wished she did not have to wake up again.