UE Rewrite: B5 — 12. Mirrored Hearts
Added 2025-08-15 20:45:49 +0000 UTCPoV:
1. Tiffany (Our Witch Queen!)
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Tiffany knew where this was heading—she’d mapped it all out with every possible scenario. There was no ‘correct’ answer, only where pain would be felt.
The hag lifted her arm to wipe away the drool dribbling off her chin, her shadow stretching impossibly long across the illusory grass as she glided toward her mansion.
Each step seemed to make the ground beneath her feet more real—or perhaps more dead. The beautiful facade flickered occasionally, revealing glimpses of rot and decay before reasserting itself.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Evelyn spun mid-stride, unable to contain her glee, as Tiffany predicted. “Two bodies! Not just a spiritual division but a physical manifestation of duality! My dear, sweet, jealous little witch…you really are determined to make this as exquisitely painful as possible for everyone, aren’t you?”
Sadly, that’s the point, isn’t it? Tiffany’s mental voice carried a bitter edge as she followed, still gripping Edmon’s hand. The hag could hear her, yet only Elinor could butt in, and only if she actively tried. Pain clarifies things. Makes them real.
“Tiffany—” Edmon started aloud, but she squeezed his hand harder in a way he knew was her saying, “shut up; you told me to make my own decision, this is it.”
She knew that wouldn’t be enough, but it did give her space to speak when he started putting up walls. Oh, how well she knew him, his buttons, and every little flaw she could exploit… Things her ‘motherly’ and ‘wifey’ side would often shrink away from.
Her voice became soft, smiling, with the big, pumpkin-eyed stare she directed up at him as she spoke privately through the Nexus.
I’ve thought about this, Edmon. Don’t make me second-guess myself now. Her mental voice wavered slightly. Deliberately. Strategically. One body would mean constant internal war. My good side would be trying to suppress what I’ve become, while I would be trying to corrupt what she was. We’d tear each other apart from the inside out.
Her empress walked slower behind them, observing silently. Tiffany prayed she wouldn’t expose the turmoil rolling through her gut—the manipulation. The maid gulped and remained like a statue behind their mistress, trying not to intrude.
She turned to face him directly as they reached the mansion’s threshold, hand rising to cup his cheek; within his frosty eyes was uncertainty, fear…things he rarely ever showed. His composure cracked at the raw vulnerability in her gaze.
This way, you get us both. The woman you married and the creature she became. We can both love you without destroying each other in the process.
A monster’s voice invaded her tender prompt.
“But, Tiffany, speak honey, but face hell. You’ll destroy each other anyway,” Evelyn interjected, pausing at her door to run one finger along the frozen nalvean’s throat.
Her too-wide grin grew as she half-turned to gaze right into Edmon’s eyes, a chilly wind cutting through the air like a blizzard’s embrace.
“Every touch you give one, every kiss, every whispered endearment, the other will feel—each wife experiences it all, knowing it’s meant for the other. A wife’s purity, her swooning corruption. And, Tiffany… Oh, sweet Tiffany, she’ll feel your darkness seeping through every moment, tainting her joy with the knowledge of what she became… How you feel.”
“That’s enough,” Edmon’s voice carried enough frost to make even the hag’s smile falter momentarily. “If this is what Tiffany needs—what she’s chosen—then we’ll make it work.”
The pressure she gave his hand was more of a reward than acceptance. He was confronting her critic for her—fixing her problem.
She hated the manipulation; it tasted like iron on her tongue.
She needed it.
Because if she allowed herself to feel, in this moment…she’d turn, walk away, and let the whole thing rot.
“Is that right? ‘We’ll make it work,’” Evelyn repeated, fingernail clicking against the nalvean’s frozen scales. Her laughter followed, sharp as breaking glass. “How wonderfully naive. Faith in a witch who connects more with a hag than a human… tantalizing.”
Her lips curled—not in warmth, but like a predator savoring the scent of blood. “You picked well, Tiffany.”
She pushed open the mansion doors with theatrical flair. “But then, that’s what makes this so utterly delicious. Shall we?” the hag whispered, her gesture an elegance too precise to be human—chameleon grace imitating humanity, but never quite matching its warmth.
The interior was everything Tiffany had hoped and expected:
Surfaces that looked solid rippled when touched, walls seemed to inhale and exhale in slow rhythm, and the furniture…the furniture appeared to have been grown rather than built, still showing bark and occasionally budding leaves that withered instantly.
In the center of the entrance hall, a ritual circle had already been prepared. The patterns were wrong—not just evil or dark, but fundamentally incorrect, as if they violated the basic rules of geometry and standard ritualistic methods.
Her gaze locked on it, and the thought struck with the weight of iron: This is what I need to learn for Elinor…for my daughter.
A lump swelled in her throat; she resisted the old reflex to grip her forearm, forcing her eyes toward her empress. No matter how hard I try, without this ritual, I’ll never truly see her with the devotion I demand of myself. It isn’t about being my maker, my center—it’s about me being hers. Unless I claim that…I can only ever be a minion. Never a mother.
She tried to keep a neutral expression as they moved inside, Elinor not showing a hint of discomfort as her emerald eyes scanned the environment.
“I have a hectic schedule, Evelyn. Wars to plan, people to lead, empires to organize. I’d typically indulge in your little emotional plays. But can we get the theatrical performances and catty asides out of the way early?”
The hag shivered with pleasure. “There is much that can be enjoyed within the folds of preparation and action. Let us not kill all the fun, Empress. Allow me to say to your Witch Queen that the decision was inspired. Horrifying and beautiful and so perfectly her.”
Her slitted eyes slid from Tiffany to the frozen woman beside the door. The faint rattle of unseen bones stirred the air, like wind chimes swaying in a breath that shouldn’t exist.
“Now, we can begin. Liriel, dear,” she purred to the frozen nalvean. “The components, if you please. The black candles from the third shelf, the soul-silver from my private collection, and…yes, the preserved hearts. The ones that still remember how to beat.”
The salamander woman’s body jerked into motion like a marionette with tangled strings, shuffling into the shadows of the mansion. Through the doorway she disappeared into, Tiffany caught glimpses of creatures within the jungle, hanging from hooks.
“Empress,” Paloma’s public mental voice was barely a whisper within the Nexus, trembling with fear. “What…is our relationship with this, eh, woman?”
“A thing of the swamp, not a woman, Paloma, and one indebted to me for my help in saving her from oblivion in Kaspir,” their empress replied. “Pay her no mind. She is soul-bound to keep her claws out of anyone under my protection, within the empire, or who might cause a mess for me.”
“Oh, so she’s on our side?”
Not precisely, sweetie, Tiffany interjected within their internal conversation. She’s a caged monster, serving at our empress’ discretion. But you should never become complacent when dealing with a hag. Stay behind the empress. Don’t look directly at anything that hurts your eyes.
“Okay…”
Liriel returned, her paralyzed form somehow carrying items that radiated wrongness—candles that burned with flames darker than darkness, a vial of liquid silver that moved against gravity, and a jar containing what looked disturbingly like still-beating hearts, each one a different size and species.
“Right, you wish for this to be swift?” Evelyn breathed, gesturing to the circle’s center. "Stand here, my dear. This will hurt. Not physically—you’re already dead, after all. But spiritually? Oh, Tiffany, you’re about to experience agony that transcends mere pain. Not her, your blissful side. No, you are going to feel your very essence torn in half and reformed…connected.”
“Lucky me. Pain is a pastime pleasure for me, after all.”
“Spectacular.”
Tiffany released Edmon’s hand slowly as if letting go might mean never touching him again—for the first time, it truly felt like her body was moving like a zombie.
“Tiff?”
“Edmon,” she returned with a false smile, being extra careful not to show any of her typical tells, “save that name for the me who truly connects to it. Don’t diminish it for her.”
“…If that’s what you choose.”
Tiffany caught her empress’ very slight tilt of mouth.
She walked toward her altar to place her heart—her sacrifice—onto the table.
For Edmon.
For her husband.
For Elinor and Butter.
Her daughters.
It won’t be the same… and I will be torn to pieces, but being true to myself, to my family… is worth the pain.
The iron taste crept back onto her tongue as she stepped into the circle’s center, each movement measured—like a condemned soul walking to the block.
“Mom…”
Don’t make me a 3rd degree burn patient, sweetheart. Tiffany shook her head, twisting around to smile. Despite the fear, I’ve got a twisted fascination, you know, I cannot hide. I am my own experiment—learning more about your Seed, souls, and…myself than I ever could alone. I only ask one thing, Empress…
“Name it.”
…Love me. All of me.
“I won’t fail you.”
Edmon moved to follow, but the hag’s hand shot out, impossibly fast.
“Not so fast, Death Knight, as much as I would love to allow you your agency to spoil everything… I have my own soul to consider. Do not disrupt the delicate balance I have crafted. Love is a binding force, and we’re trying to divide here… We wouldn’t want to put all three of you in one body—trapped in an electrifying, sensual helix that burns with unbridled passion for all eternity… It sounds delightful, but eternal pleasure is its own hell. Careful.”
Her husband, Paloma, and even Liriel gulped at that as the hag slid her finger to their daughter, an invisible force pushing Edmon at a constant rate.
“Stand with your daughter. Watch. Witness. But do not interfere, no matter what you see or hear or feel through that precious Nexus of yours… As ugly as it is, it can always get more beautiful. Oh, how beautiful horrific outcomes are… Don’t tempt me with candy.”
The ritual began with the candles. Evelyn’s magic caused them to float, placed at seven points around the circle, each one igniting with a sound like a dying whisper. The black flames cast shadows that moved independently, reaching toward Tiffany like hungry fingers.
“We gather to divide the indivisible,” Evelyn began, but this wasn’t chanting—she was having a conversation with reality itself, negotiating terms. “To create two from one, yet maintain the unity of essence. A paradox given form, a contradiction made flesh through sacrifice and punishment.”
Evelyn poured the soul-silver into a secondary circle, the liquid metal drifting in patterns suspended in the air, ignoring the pull of gravity. Light bent around each fold, creating an illusion of depth that made Tiffany’s eyes ache if she looked too long. The floor didn’t look like it was dropping away—it felt like it was.
“The universe abhors such things, you know,” the hag murmured as if in casual conversation. “Two bodies, one soul—it’s an insult to the natural order. It defies the soul’s core foundation to consolidate into the great I AM—independence…agency.”
The words scraped across Tiffany’s thoughts.
The preserved hearts beat—one beneath her feet, two others set in perfect symmetry.
No blood, just that steady, alien rhythm.
The thump pressed into her soles, worming its way up her calves, winding through bone and sinew until it slid higher, probing past hips and ribs, into spaces she’d never allow another soul to touch.
Outside…
Inside…
Every private place she thought belonged to her alone… To Edmon alone.
Yet when she wanted to curl in, she caught his eyes—his smoky blue eyes—telling her, “Hide your emotion, but I see them. There’s a fire burning in you. No need to tell me how you feel… I’m with you. Always.”
Visceral fire crept in with ice, ropes pulling every cell apart, but all that held her was that gaze, locking her heart in place even as it was being torn apart.
Her heart sang back: Patience. This will make sense. Oh, I need you like water, my love… I need to say less. See me. Save me now. I’m bleeding out… Heal me. Hold me now… but I know this isn’t me. I will hold this barb for us. So, my love, my love…see me. All of me.
Do you feel the same?
“Empress,” Evelyn said, her yellow eyes gleaming, “the Death Orbs, if you please. Ten should suffice—a significant sacrifice for a significant work.”
From the corner of her eye, Tiffany watched as her daughter extended her hand without a second’s hesitation, emerald flames flowing down her arm.
The hag’s beckoning finger drew them out in spheres of energy. They slid into orbit around her, each one thrumming.
“Good… Now,” Evelyn’s mouth widened into something inhuman, “we begin the true work.”
Her palms pressed to the boards. Mud seeped up between the cracks—thick, heavy, and faintly reeking of stagnant water. It slid over Tiffany’s feet, curling cold fingers around her ankles, climbing her calves in slow, deliberate swallows.
Colder than death, she sent through the Nexus, teeth clenched. So much more frigid than death. A small, humorless laugh followed. How…pleasant.
“Tiffany…”
Hold fast, Edmon. Don’t look away. I may not be the prettiest…but am I the prettiest to you?
“You know that place in both our hearts is her birth,” he answered.
Of course… I write the melody, and you write the words to me.
“But you’re my wife, Tiffany—all of you. You will always be special to me. You may not be the prettiest…but you three—pause, almost a correction—no. You four…are the prettiest to me.”
Stop. You’re making this black heart cry.
She broke his gaze, not from weakness but to anchor herself, her eyes settling on her beautiful, gothic, independent daughter. Ooh, but your father is right, Elinor… You will always be the prettiest…to me.
The chill crept to her ribs before halting, her lungs tightening under its grip. Evelyn’s voice shifted—deeper, older—sliding into a language that scraped against the edges of understanding. The sound didn’t just fill the air; it coiled inside her, seeking a way in.
The pain came all at once. It didn’t stab or slice. It consumed. Something inside her was being torn apart thread by thread, and every fiber screamed against the separation. Her body locked in place, orange witchfire bursting from her in chaotic spirals.
Mud seeped through the floorboards, rising to encase her.
Movement flickered in her peripheral vision—Edmon surging forward—and then the tension in the air snapped as something unseen stopped him cold. Chains, she guessed—their daughter’s chains.
Trust me, she sent through the Nexus, though forcing the word out felt like swallowing glass. I can survive this…
“I know! I know you can. I’m here. Tiffany, I’m here.”
The mud clinging to her began to bubble and pull away, peeling in thick, sucking sheets from her skin. Pain sang through every fiber, as if each shred of essence had to be ripped loose before the muck would let go. The slop didn’t fall to the ground—it gathered, shaping itself into limbs, a torso, a face.
The pull on her soul changed, deepened. Patterns pressed against her awareness—familiar ones.
Elinor’s.
My daughter’s Feat… [Artificial Body]—she’s copying the framework.
A strained laugh twisted in her throat, brittle and sharp. Clever thing… I can’t steal your techniques if you’re building them from my daughter’s.
The shape solidified around her awareness, her own outline being pulled from her like clay peeled from a mold. The sensation was obscene—her contours replicated in the mud, then hollowed, waiting to be filled.
“Interesting,” Evelyn murmured, dragging a bone along her teeth while her gaze traced the ritual lines. “Your daughter’s feat wants to create undead, but Butter’s connection wants to create life… How unexpectedly poetic. One will have life… the other death.”
Her teeth loomed closer, impossibly large in Tiffany’s vision. “And the thrilling part, my dear… is that you will be the one to decide.”
The Death Orbs imploded all at once—half flipping to life force, siphoning from the hag herself, a cost Evelyn accepted with relish. The shockwave hit Tiffany in the core, a silent rending that drove her soul in two.
Her hands—her essence—reached instinctively, grasping for the obvious: death.
You will be her life… I will be her bringer of death.
The second form hardened, the mud sloughing away like rotted skin.
Her vision tipped—blinking, she realized she was the one hovering, looking down at herself.
Her sacrifice had been made.
Inside, emptiness swayed, like a pendulum over a void.
Below stood her living body. Capable of birth. Capable of love.
Her hair—somehow darker.
Her expression—softer.
Her face—unshadowed by the corruption Tiffany carried like a second heartbeat.
Her gut twisted, every muscle in her abdomen knotting until she almost doubled over. The sight was like watching someone else wear her wedding dress, smiling as though it had always been theirs.
She felt herself drifting, steps removed from reality.
Welcome back…me.
The witchfire stuttered around her fingers as they were pulled apart and placed side by side—she was in the new body—Tiff was naked.
Alive.
Eyes flickering into activity as if waking up from sleepwalking.
Tiffany’s heart sputtered—candle secrets guttering in the wind—while her bones burned with a fever that licked into her lungs. Every breath scraped like a blade. But she couldn’t look away.
Brown eyes now staring back at her.
Brown.
Her own eyes swallowed her.
Mirrors began to whisper. Shadows began to sing.
The sight pressed against her like her skin was smothering her, every pore closing in.
Time stood still the way it did before death’s embrace.
Recognition spread across the other’s face, followed by horror.
“Edmon?” the other breathed—same voice, stripped of her darkness. Louder now, raw with panic: “Edmon! Oh, God—this… Did I? Who is this? Why is—no, you’re…”
“You…”
“What? What happened to me? Edmon, I remember dying, but then—”
The woman’s head whipped toward Elinor, and the cry that came next split something deep in Tiffany’s chest.
“My Tiff! Tiff!”
Tiffany’s knees locked.
She felt the rush forward—not hers—but the collision of arms, the suffocating embrace that wasn’t hers to give. The soul-link made it worse: her other self’s warmth, her desperate joy, slammed into Tiffany’s heart like a hammer blow.
There she sat.
Alone—like an airplane balanced on the edge of a sky the color of solid gray.
Staring at something she knew she’d never get back.
Inside, she whispered something only she could hear—words that bled out of her soul like a slow leak.
I’m torn to pieces. Broken down.
I float through the air like a waterfall…then sink like a cannonball.
Breath stolen, lungs tight—screaming inside.
Why wasn’t I good, like you?
She saw his face in her eyes when she wasn’t around. Sat in her own misery, wondering if she’d ever be…
Half the woman he…half the woman I wanted me to be.
Trapped. Quicksand thickening around her ribs.
Her frozen lungs, watering eyes, trembling frame locked when her double pulled away from their husband—his warmth leaving her even as those same arms enclosed the other. Tiffany’s own heart bled with the contact she could still feel.
“It’s okay…”
Don’t you know…the worst is yet to come? she whimpered, hesitating before returning the embrace.
“I feel your hands searching.
“My arms are outstretched toward you.
“I’m alive… I’m alive.
“I can feel your tongue dancing behind your lips for him. I can feel you all around me—thickening the air I’m breathing—holding on to what I’m feeling, savoring this heart that’s healing…”
Tiff… I can’t…
“No. This fire runs through my being… Cry.”
Her lips drew inward, trembling, as she heard her inner angel—soft, relentless.
So she cried.
It’s too bright… You’re too bright.
“I see you. Don’t seal your heart. I don’t need you to tell me…”
Pulling away—naked, defiant—her other self showed a strength Tiffany could feel radiating into her. Behind, their husband and daughter moved in. Even Elinor’s gothic composure broke, tears wetting her cheeks.
“What do you want me to do?” Tiffany asked, half-whimper, half-hope.
Tiff’s answer was a pure, unguarded smile, tears in her own eyes as she held out her hands.
“In darkness, you held out your hands.
“Now take mine—I give them to you.
“Now you own me…all I am.”
She hesitated, then pressed their palms together, and the resonance completed their soul—joy blooming too deep for words.
And you own me… all I am.
There’s so much—so many boundaries we need to set.
“Later.”
We’re alive? she asked, feeling as if drugged by her embrace.
“We’re a family.”
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