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Try waking up to a face full of bright white lights. You’ll never want to wake up again. Between the fucking glowing ceiling and the dull ache permeating from her abdomen, consciousness wasn’t worth it.
“Syna?”
They don’t respond. It’s a mix of lethargy as they slowly reintroduce their senses to their surroundings and the feeling of being awake, and wariness - of the uncertainty of safety as they wake to circumstances different from those they were left with as their mind left the waking world to retreat into the void. Of two voices, dancing around in their cunning like hunters playing with their prey, hovering and haunting , an impertinent reminder that they were played for a fool, like a bird snatched out of the sky just as it shot beyond the clouds.
It was reassuring that the speaker didn’t embody anything of the sort as the Lunaris covered her eyes with an arm, starting to dissect the voice. It came from somewhere to her left, not quiet but not particularly loud. There were no rough edges to the voice, notably masculine and definitely an adult. In that way they didn’t sound unkind, though it carried a strained edge, maybe desperately hopeful, and definitely tired.
Prologued by a set of footsteps, the voice increased in volume until it was right next to her.
“Hey, you.”
“... Hi, Helios.”
His greeting carries a sense of tempered felicity, while Syna’s is a little delayed. Though she was aware that the volume of her normal cadence was relatively low, her voice was barely above a whisper now, the rasp especially prominent in its bolstered lack of use.
The aforementioned man, Helios, mumbles something before his footsteps start up again, pausing once, and then resuming to fade away into the distance. When Syna lifts her arm away from her eyes, the lights in the room are much dimmer than before. She elects to stay lying down on the hospital bed, knowing the severity of her injury and not much else.
Based on the layout, she had a theory for the room she was in - one of the ones more towards the back of Helios’s infirmary in the Conflaryth base. They hadn’t moved back to Lyra just yet (if that was even the plan at all).
Helios’s footsteps reappear a few moments later, and he sets a glass of water down on the counter next to the bed, before moving to prop up the bed slightly, letting Syna see more of the room without her needing to move much. The glass of water is handed to them and they take it with a nod of acknowledgement, downing it slowly, and finally turning to look at Helios.
Not much had changed about Helios. He still wore the long black coat, but switched out his black turtleneck for a pale yellow shirt. His hair was a bit longer than before, ending somewhere mid-back, and he had switched back to wearing it in a braid again, as opposed to the low ponytail Syna recalled him preferring as the conflict against MisDiscord drew to a close.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Doesn’t really hurt. Bit tired. What’s the date?”
“Uh- late November. It’s been four months now? There’s a lot to go over, and I don’t want to stress you out more than you already stress yourself out, so I can update you on some things today, but the rest we’ll talk about later.”
“... Alright. Fair enough.”
It took roughly an hour to get Syna mostly up to speed. Blackstone was planning to relocate back to Lyra eventually, and they had finally begun cleanup work to reconstruct the old headquarters on the otherwise uninhabited second island of Astra. MisDiscord had been aware of the location, yes, but that wouldn’t be much of an issue anymore considering all of their important executives had been either assassinated or captured thanks to Praedicium’s Empress.
Minty was back. She was back from Praedicium, and they had severed most of the bonds tying her to MisDiscord’s hive mind. Helios had said, frowning and formulating the sentence slowly as to maintain dominion over the outcome of every word much like Syna herself would’ve, that Blackstone’s strategist had ‘more than a few memory issues’.
The Lunaris knew this already, or at least suspected as much. Small lapses in memory during the last year’s worth of endeavors. The files she had swiped and scrutinized to MisDiscord and back. The shorter hair. Losing the flower crown. Hostility.
Maybe it was foolish to hold out hope, being ever the pessimist she’d always been.
Helios stepped away to wrap up his work, taking with him a possibility that he might return later with some items at Syna’s request. That meant she’d be alone for a while at least, so she closed her eyes and let the heavy veil of weariness take its reigns, settling into the quiet hum of various types of machinery and distant footsteps.
Up until a specific set of quick footfalls increased progressively in volume and someone burst through the door in energetic fervor.
“Syna!”
Not feeling a particular pull towards verbalizing a response, they opt to greet the voice (female and deeper-toned - definitely Haizea) with a short wave as they slowly reopen their eyes. The voice, now physically confirmed to be Haizea, walked over to the bedside, her shadow casted over Syna from where she stood between the lunaris and the doorway housing a brighter light source from the halls. She’s holding a notebook and a pen in one hand, while brushing strands of curly brown hair out of her face with the other.
“So, how’s sleeping beauty doing?”
“Fine enough, and what of Prince Charming?”
“Better than sleeping beauty, she thinks. Brought your shit, by the way.” Haizea taps the notebook with the pen before setting both down on the table next to the medical bed. “Just wanted to come say hi, but I’ll leave you to your antics, since you still look halfway on your way to the grave.”
“Mhm. Thanks. Ever the uplifter with your compliments, huh?” Syna tries to keep her speech articulate, but it slurs into a mumble as she shuts her eyes again.
The taller woman’s voice laughs at that. “‘Course. It’s what I do best.” Shifting fabric and footsteps signify that she’s leaving, until they pause closer to the doorway.
“Good to see you’re still alive n’ kicking, Sy.”
“Good to see you haven’t kicked the bucket while I’ve been out. Surprising, even.”
“C’mon, you know Helios wouldn't let that happen.”
“You’d still find a way.”
“... Yeah.”
There was something wrong with her left arm.
A throbbing pain from the forearm, numbness, and added weight as it lay unmoving and almost dead from where it was attached to her shoulder.
She used the bandages over her left eye as an excuse not to look at the black crystal shard with veins of crimson dodging in and out of its otherwise empty void.
Corrokinesis. Lodged right into her arm. They had thrown every purification spell they could at it and at Syna herself, and it meant she was in control of herself at the moment, but she could still feel the shard’s dominion over her, like watchful eyes and greedy hands in the recesses of her mind.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
At least it wasn't bleeding anymore.
She's sitting on the side of a medical bed now, in the main room of the infirmary, and there's no one but her and Helios there. She flinches slightly as the medic walks over and gently lifts the arm up to inspect it again, and directs her gaze downwards as if her wrinkled cargo pants were the most intriguing thing in the world.
"Is there any way to remove it?" She inquires, almost hesitantly, after a few moments. The slight shaking in her voice doesn't escape Helios, if the pausing of his movements is anything to go by.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She shuts her eyes, blocking out the burning, sterile lights.
Syna could feel the ‘blood of corruption’ flowing through her veins, an unwelcome source of mana in a space that should’ve otherwise been in her control, and hers alone.
It was like an oil spill contaminating a river, flowing through every stream and delta, leaving not a single area with clean water.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She clings on to the constant whirring of machinery in the background, hoping to find it grounding where it’s instead just numbing, paving new openings for the unwelcome eyes in her mind to crawl in through.
It was like having a security camera placed in every corner of her mind. The person controlling them wasn’t present but the cameras stayed on, waiting for them to return to force control over her, forcing her out.
“Not at the moment– not safely. I’m having Allium look into it, sorry.”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Helios drops their arm. They take their right hand and squeeze the forearm just below the elbow, nails digging into the skin but not drawing blood.
It was like a puppeteer’s mocking laugh, too far in the shadows for Syna to see but still lingering close enough for her to hear. It laughed because it could exert so much control from so far away. It laughed because the puppet could only be moved with its strings.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
A chill bites at their arms, cryogenic frost coating them and stopping any shaking (they hoped it hadn’t been much).
It felt like drowning, the air in her lungs replaced by something else every second she simply existed.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe i-
They could feel the corrokinetic ink’s presence more with every breath.
“Get it off me.”
“... What?”
“The shard. Get it off me . Rip it out. Cut my arm off. Whatever it takes. Doesn’t matter if it hurts.”
“Syna, what- hey, calm down.” Warm hands connect with their right shoulder and arm as they stumble up off the medical bed and towards the counter their sword lay on. “Cut that out. We’ll find a solution, I promise you. I just need you to trust me.”
It’s easy to throw the medic off of them with a cryogenic spell.
“Trust? I’ve done more than enough trusting for a lifetime.”
The sword is unsheathed messily, the polished metal glinting in the light, and the magic tracks roaring to life, glowing their signature pale blue.
“Syna. Stop it. Please. ” There’s a splash of water, and footsteps clamoring towards them.
Glowing icy eyes blooming with carmine land on their left forearm.
It really did feel like drowning. Sluggish movements and a hazy mind.
They raise the blade up above their head, and in one smooth arc they-
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Sleep would never come easy to Syna, would it? That’s why Somneria was the nation of the night, and not of dreamers– ‘Somnum’ meaning ‘sleep’, but somnerian instead meaning ‘insomniac’. Or maybe just ‘nocturnal’, but it was both in her case.
In and out. Breathing won’t kill you and you know it.
Her arm was fine. She knew that already, but it was the first thing she checked upon her eyes flying open and being met with the drop ceiling of the infirmary room again. That injury had happened over a year ago, and the only remnants of it were her unenhanced fine motor skills taking another blow, and a jagged, discolored scar that had faded into an anchor gray display of cracks blooming from the points of perforation.
It didn’t hurt anymore, just became more sensitive to mana, drawing it in whenever the opportunity arose. Syna would find a way to spin that into an advantage in combat with due time, and if anything, the stab wound in her abdomen should be the main point of concern, the slight ache still ever-present. Hopefully it wouldn’t be an issue during active work in the future.
Syna’s thoughts are pulled away by a soft knocking on the door – closed now, the room becoming dimmer still without the light from the hallway, and she’d been too out of it to notice. The knocking was light enough that she didn’t flinch, quick and nervous, ending quickly almost as if the knocker didn’t want to cause a disturbance.
That meant either Minty or Corrin. Everyone else would carry themselves with at least more confidence if they didn’t just barge in without warning.
She just hums in acknowledgement, hoping the person outside hears it and takes it as a sign to enter.
They do, and the whirring of the mechanical door accompanied by the sound of heels hitting the white tiled flooring lets her know that it’s Minty who just walked through the door before she looks up and is greeted by short pink hair and nervous amber eyes flitting around the room.
Amber eyes that, much like their own, glow slightly in the poorly lit room. Accompanied by the back lighting of the hallway, warm tones reminiscent of the sun twisted into crosshair lasers locked in on Syna’s head.
If Syna flinched when the elumenix stepped closer, neither person commented on it.
She looked away and forced her right hand to stay still, fighting the urge to comb through her hair, which currently fell messily to her mid-back, not tied up like she typically preferred it to be.
“So, um… hi. Syna.”
She should probably make an effort to talk.
“Hi. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m doing alright! What about you?”
“Fine.” Same response she gave Haizea. It was more of a bad habit than an actual response now, but wasn’t necessarily untrue. “Has… has being back in Blackstone given you any trouble?”
The woman shook her head, which Syna caught in her peripheral vision. “Not really. It’s been better than I expected, actually.”
Syna nods. She’d never been particularly good at small talk, so this was the furthest she could take the conversation. The silence hung heavily in the air, and every second it was drawn out added to a suffocating level of awkward in the room that she wasn’t sure how to lift.
Eventually, Minty’s voice cut through the stillness, less like a knife through butter and more like blunt scissors on thick fabric.
“Sorry.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was referring to, as Syna watched the elumenix fidget with her hands and look away, suddenly uncovering a newfound interest in her nails. They averted their eyes as well (not that they’d worked up the courage to look her in the eyes in the first place), and found them tracing over the dark scar on their left arm again.
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t, but she didn't have it in her to blame her, not that she should’ve since it was a matter out of both of them’s control. Still, it was difficult to look her in the eyes when she knew she would see eerie gold in the stead of the mint green her right eye should’ve been. She would give anything to look up without wanting to trace a path to the exit gate, slip away, get out . Mint green or not.
Minty shifted uncomfortably, breathing a little quicker and a little unevenly. She… almost gets it, but only to a degree and there’d never be a way for her to truly get it , everything that happened in the last year, and chooses not to comment.
“I- I’m gonna head out for now.” a short pause. “Do you want me to get you anything?”
The question came as a bit of a surprise to Syna. She would’ve left without turning back and certainly without saying so much as a word – probably had before, anyways. Definitely had before, if the discolored scar on her left arm was anything to go by.
She probably didn’t want to come back, and Syna already got all the items she needed from Haizea.
She plays it casually with a quiet hum, running through the short list of belongings she brought to the new Blackstone base. “My guitar. But maybe I’ll meet you in my workshop instead. I don’t want this room to turn into home.” That much was true.
Syna’s comment is rewarded with a small huff of laughter, before quick footsteps made their way away from her and she finally summoned the courage to look up.
Tired but bright eyes – one cyan blue and one eerie gold – seemed to brighten further at this. “I’ll bring your guitar next time, don’t push yourself too hard.” It would’ve been a fair statement if it were anyone else. She nods anyway.
“Speak for yourself.”
The mechanical door slides shut.