Chapter Text
This was the moment Elizabeth was expecting but dreading… She stares up at the impossibly huge gates. The gates were just as she remembered when she first came here. Cold, steel-like, with an ominous blue-esque glow. Much like her own blue flame.
It was the gates to where those who kept the world at peace were living(?) presiding(?) Or however Godly beings such as them work. Whatever it was, they were there, waiting.
Elizabeth opened the gates, which at first seemed impossible but just like before it opened easily. Sliding across the floor, a creak more than deserving the supposed weight of the door could be heard despite the fact that the weight seemed non-existent. Just as odd as she remembered, she used to frequent this gate, even this hall, as she began to walk through it.
Metallic floors that clink like tiles against her heels, she looks up at the huge arching columns that seem to stretch out endlessly into the sky, the end unreachable. The hall was lit by flames on every column that made her own flame look pathetic with their brilliance.
Then, another door, this time it opens on its own. The door is carved with meticulous stories, Elizabeth assumes, she could never quite see them whenever she passed through… she was always more interested in the void behind it.
As Elizabeth steps through it is as though she is taken from the ground and is gently floated upwards into the void, an unsettling feeling washing over her entire form. The feeling is both nostalgic and unknown at the same time, indescribably new yet inexplicably the same. Her memories of this place always fractured the moment she left the doors. The Scarlet Queen could only cling to the descriptions of it.
She is then met with four imposing… figures… there was not much shape to them, or if there were Elizabeth could not comprehend them. But their thoughts were as clear as the day as it rang through her head.
‘There has been no progress in your pursuit of the five criminals. Why the hesitation, The Scarlet Queen?’
Elizabeth gulps as she steels herself. “Me and my girls have only just recently joined Hololive in hopes of trapping them… however they seem skeptical of our every move, we… can not capture them, not yet.”
‘Lies’
Despite the cold tone the pitch of it was loud in Liz’s brain, rattling her from ear to ear and making her scream in pain. Their voices sound wrong, like a screech but only the piercing bits yet they also sounded… soothing?
‘Hesitation lies not within the criminals but within you.’
The booming voice spoke true. The hesitance in the Bloodflame’s heart stemmed from a bleeding heart, extended to the world with no shame and asking for nothing to return. Her heart is forever warm, seeing the pain of others and wanting nothing more than to be rid of the said pain. The pain she saw in the eyes of those prisoners…
The air around Elizabeth swirls around making the flame in her chest flicker, she quickly cups it gently around her hands. Terrified that it would be snuffed out with a snap of a finger.
Elizabeth takes a shaky breath. “I… I apologize, I know I failed you—“
‘Yet still you defy us,’
The voices invade Elizabeth’s senses rendering them useless, her hands clutching at her ears despite the voices being directly funneled into her very thoughts. There was no escaping them, no respite, there never was.
‘You let them Escape.’
The voices broke into 4 different pitches, changing and shifting into each one of her girls…
The nightmare.
“No! I- I didn’t mean to!” Elizabeth shouted desperately, stepping on nothing and trying to get closer to the figures yet they were unreachable. Changing their forms to the silhouette of her girls… Four figures become three.
‘You loosened Shoiri’s chains, you fell for her deceit’
Their hissing voices imitated her friends to a degree that she couldn’t do with her own voice. Yet there was something off… the voices were cold… screaming, yet soft. Nothing like her girls, yet perfect replicas all the same.
—
Elizabeth has taken over watching over the Archiver, one of the more dangerous people they were to keep locked away both for the safety of others and themselves. Liz could only wonder what forbidden knowledge does to a person… the very thought made her shudder.
But why all the restraints? Surely this one girl wasn’t this dangerous… Elizabeth wonders, looking at the chains that kept the Archiver locked at all times. Has she ever seen her move? Or… well… blink?
Shiori had this distant look to her, as if she wasn’t fully there, lost in her own mind. Piercing yellow eyes staring into the wall, her smile just a tad bit creepy. Was she dangerous?
That thought kept replaying in the Scarlet Queen’s Mind. It replayed in her mind as she continuously replenished the magic being pumped through the chains, Shiori’s blank stare seeming to writhe with what she could only assume was pain. Perhaps not doing that last part wouldn’t make much of a difference… just for one night, right?
Surely the Archiver deserved a night of respite after everything. Elizabeth was convinced that she couldn’t leave the prison by her lonesome and it wasn’t like she could have communicated with the other prisoners… Elizabeth kept an almost constant watch even if it wasn’t directly in the prison but at HQ. So surely, a single night of no pain is worth giving… Yeah, of course it was.
—
Elizabeth gasps as an unseen force wraps around her neck, her hands grasping at nothing but air. It couldn’t end like this, Liz didn’t even tell the rest of Justice where she was truly going. And in this void? Who knows how much time has passed, surely they’re worried by now. Searching for her. She can’t die. The Scarlet Queen must prevail!
‘It seems that we have to re-educate you, because despite your faults… making you a martyr will only strengthen their foolish rebellion.’
Elizabeth was still gasping for air, neck straining and becoming red around the pressure that she could not truly feel. No no no, Re-education? The Scarlet Queen has lost too many to not know what that truly entailed, surely not, right?
But the grip tightens at her neck to a degree in which Liz swears her neck should be bent. Instead, her eyes slowly roll to the back of her skull as she falls unconscious, her body a float as if suspended in time.