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Darkness.
Cold, stagnant darkness.
A darkness that has been a comfort and a burden for thirty-odd years.
But she’s become accustomed to it.
Right?
She wants to believe so, but within this dark space, reliving various elements of her trauma, lost in the expanse of cold nothing, to whatever level of acceptance or struggle that she feels, she’s not even sure anymore. Her mind — how silly of her to believe she has one of her own — swears that she can hear voices, but perhaps it’s just more of the voices in her head. The voices that kept calling for her death, for her to be burned, the voices that she occasionally used to accompany her castings of the Message cantrip that she had been taught.
Suddenly her vision clarifies. It’s almost like taking a breath, if breath was a thing that she dealt with.
“If you think it will do any good. I've been… speaking with her myself for some time. We've gotten along just fine. Laudna, darling.”
Delilah. She hears Delilah, like always. Of course it’s her, who else would it be? It’s just her, forever her, in this purgatory of death and decay.
The gods are surely laughing at her, mocking her, making her remember this poorly constructed facsimile of a city she hated being born in.
She hears the creaking of wood and branches pull apart ever so faintly within this cage of branches in the boughs of this tree… this very familiar tree that won’t let her leave, even beyond death.
And as she glances beyond the cage-like branches of the tree as they open, she sees Delilah’s spectral form.
She also sees six familiar shades.
No. They’re just more wisps of smoke and shadow designed to torment what’s already been long dead. There’s no point in the misery, she’s ready to just… go. But she also knows that there is no going from anywhere.
She couldn’t leave in life.
She can’t leave in death.
“Don’t forget. You’re here forever.”
That’s what she keeps repeating to herself. It’s never been any different. So why should this be—
“Laudna?”
That voice. That flickering spark in the gloom that had been a cherished companion for the better part of two years. That soul that had found comfort in even her own twisted thoughts that to her sounded strangely like music.
If there was a word to define their bond, it’s “contradictory”.
The warm-blooded horse-loving girl that kept being more reserved and distant to outsiders, and the cold-to-the-touch living dead girl that tried to make the best of her unlife, even to the point of extreme exaggeration.
Somehow, she’s here. With her. In this realm.
Why? Why is she here? She’s not supposed to be, she’s supposed to be far gone from here, in Yios, seeking answers to the Ruidus situation. She’s supposed to be in the land of the living.
Why?
Even just through thought, she weakly responds, unable to physically speak.
“Imogen?”
The violet-haired sorcerer gasps in her head. Gods, she missed that voice. How long had she gone without hearing it? How long had she been here?
And how long has Imogen been searching for her?
Imogen doesn’t answer those questions. She instead braces herself to try to give comfort to a soul that by all rights should no longer exist. “We're going to get you. We're going to get you home, okay?”
She wants to believe her so very badly. She really does. But what even is “home” to a dead woman who’s had many homes only for each and every one to be put to the torch or, barring that, just abandoned and left to rot?
“I forgot how much I hate it here.”
She can’t even summon the strength to wear her usual mask that is “Laudna”. At least, the “Laudna” that her companions knew her as.
In truth, she hates that name. Hates it about as much as she hates her former home.
But what could she do? Delilah gave it to her. And she couldn’t really get rid of that name. It just stuck to her, just like her murderer being stuck in her head, in her body, in her soul.
If not for the repeated revisitation of her trauma, she would have honestly forgotten who she once was.
“Can you get out? Can you get out of the tree?”
What a foolish question. She’s never been able to get out. The tree won’t let her, simple as that. Even if she had the strength, even if she had an actual body here… the tree won’t let her. Delilah won’t let her, not unless they come back together.
“If you go, I go”. That’s the summation of their entire “deal”. She hates Delilah so much, yet has no way to escape her. She’s taken everything from her: her name, her body, her freedom, her life… and now, her afterlife.
She cannot get out of this tree, let alone this deal.
But perhaps…
“I think that depends on you, darling.”
It’s the most honest she’s been in so long. Not once does she hide any of her weariness or her fear.
For the first time in three decades, she’s speaking as the girl she used to be.
Or perhaps the girl that she still is.
“I need you to fight her.”
Fight her? How?
“I need you to fight her.”
“Imogen.” She forces herself to speak in Imogen’s head. She just doesn’t understand. “I haven't been able to fight her for thirty-odd years.”
There’s no point in fighting Delilah. She’ll just kill them all. Imogen’s a clever woman. She can simply talk to her, should talk to her. There’s no point in wasting one’s life needlessly.
“We're here now. We'll help.”
Wait… “We?”
She strains to see. The familiar forms from earlier. They’re real. She can see them all.
She can see the familiar golden frame of Fresh Cut Grass.
She can see the small but stalwart form of Orym.
She can see the equally small but unmistakable build of Chetney Pock O’Pea.
She can see the rugged, geode-skinned form of Ashton Greymoore.
She can see the tall, fiery fey form of Fearne Calloway.
And right there amidst them, she can see Imogen. The girl that she had been so protective of, wanting nothing but the best for her.
The best that she can never have, as it’s far too late.
She tries to respond to them.
And suddenly the connection between her and Imogen fades as the branches close.
No… No!
She hears Delilah tutting to Bells Hells, that familiar disciplinary tone of her accompanying it. “That's unsporting.”
Of course she could hear everything spoken in her head.
She persists in her head.
How could it be any different now, even with her spirit there down below?
And just as the connection is cut entirely, she hears one last utterance from Imogen.
“Delilah Briarwood, we're going to sunder you.”
No… Imogen, no! Just RUN!
The darkness takes hold once more. It is all that remains.
For some time, at least, as she feels herself being pulled further into the tree.
And it’s here that she can now hear discordant, rampant thoughts and words from outside.
They didn’t leave, they’re still here.
Why are they still here? It’s futile to even try—
“Laudna, Matilda, buddy, come on! You got to come walk in the sun with us!”
That voice. Orym.
Did he just… call her that?
That name that she had never told anyone else ever since that day on the Sun Tree.
The name she used to have. How does he know it?
The thought comes to her even as she considers it.
She’s been reliving her trauma.
It would be so like Delilah to put on a show for her companions, to show them how worthless she is. From the day she was born to the day she had dirt thrown in her face by a boy she thought had liked her. And even the day that she had lost everything, cursing herself in eternally damned hindsight.
She’s worthless, she always will be.
And yet, they’re fighting for her. To bring her home. Just as she had made a doll of a nice woman and a bird, thinking foolishly in her childish mind that they could even do that.
And the bird was that of a raven, too.
Did Delilah show them that memory as well?
Though, come to think of it, in her more recent revisitations, she could swear that she could hear Imogen’s voice. But was it really her? Or just Delilah playing tricks on her again?
She doesn’t even know or care anymore. Bells Hells are going to die to her murderer.
They’re going to join her here on the tree.
What a foolhardy endeavor. As foolish as she will always—
A loud crack of lightning impacts from everyone and nowhere.
Imogen?
She can hear, can feel the tree itself being sundered, like how one would think a tree in the living world would be sundered by a stray lightning bolt.
It was how Imogen had retrieved the gnarled branch as a component for her Witch Bolt.
It’s how Orym had found that blue chromatic rose.
And now… she feels something. Something… strange.
She feels… lighter, but only somewhat.
She hears what sounds like snapping. Like ropes or thread snapping.
And each time she does, something within her form receives a sudden jolt.
She’s experienced something like this before, when she tried learning how to be a puppeteer for Páte. She couldn’t quite get the sinew-like strings to attach quite right at first, and they would often snap before fading into the ether.
Is this what she is feeling now? The strings holding her being snapped off?
Is she… finally going to be free?
She hears Delilah screaming. In her mind, outside the tree, all around her as her vision goes from the deepest black to the brightest white.
And right there, as her vision clarifies, is Delilah… or what seems to be her. She looks a lot different now. A lot more undead and hideous.
She can see there being a single, purple ethereal strand connecting them between their chests.
She looks up at the ghostly Delilah, maintaining eye contact.
“Laudna…” She’s still speaking to her, still slithering its way into her consciousness. “ They are fools. They don’t understand. They are so intent on ending me that they are resigned to sacrifice you as well. Isn’t it sad?”
The Delilah-ghost sighs. “Ah well… At least we will be together in oblivion. Come now, Laudna. It’s time for us to go.”
She doesn’t move from where she is. She instead looks down at the thread connecting them, and then back to her.
“Laudna… no. If you go, I go, remember? There is no other way to exist. Listen to me, Laudna.”
“Enough is enough.”
Her voice is… still weak, but somehow slowly filling up with a resolve she thought she had lost long ago.
A resolve that gives her enough conscious thought to take her shadowy spectral hand and grasp the thread at its base on her chest.
“Stop calling me that, ‘D’.”
The Delilah-ghost is looking as if her composure is crumbling faster than the bones that somehow frame her being.
“Don’t do this, Laudna. Stop!”
She doesn’t look away. This woman had taken everything from her.
And yet, if this is how things will end, she can at least take back one thing.
“My name… is Matilda.”
She yanks the cord from her chest.
Her vision goes white.
Her consciousness is fading again.
And as it does, as her thoughts leave her once more, she whispers.
“Imogen… Everyone… Thank you…”
Matilda closes her eyes, unsure as to where she will go now. Will she wake up in the land of the living, or will she finally Rest In Peace?
Either way, it’s far better than what has been the last 33 years of her existence.
Matilda sighs.
She lets go.