Chapter 43 - A Meeting Of Minds

Lukas stopped on the sidewalk in the flow of a gaudy sign that blinked VILLAGE and stared through the open doorway of the ubiquitous corner bar one could find in any self-respecting neighborhood in the Midwest. This one just happened to be his local watering hole. It was closest to home and one he had more than a few interesting memories of.

He passed through the glow of the blue neon sign in the front window and stepped into the doorway.

“This is an interesting place.”

Lukas turned around and saw Frost, not Tanya but Frost, complete with her cadaverous white hair and pale skin, with light purple lips and hawk-like eyes that  glowed like chips of ice. She sat on one of the stools next to the bar. There was no bartender, and only empty glass jugs adorned the table top.

“Reminds me of some of the taverns in Baramunz,” muttered Tanya, who stood next to a pillar, her golden curls falling all over her neck and face. She had her back against the wall, resting against a bent knee. “Though… It’s a lot cozier.”

There weren’t enough words in the English language, or this world’s languages for that matter, that could emphasize the surrealness he was feeling right now. Yes, he had always treated Tanya and Frost as two different existences that coinhabited the same body, except that he was in love with the former, and utterly wary of the latter. At the same time, the former needed his aid to survive, while he needed the latter’s help to bring Inanna back. A conundrum as difficult as any.

Seeing them standing together, like that, in a place from his own memories was… uncanny.

“It’s from my own world,” he said. “It’s a local pub, just a few blocks from my apartment. I used to come here often. Sometimes with friends, others, with clients during my internship, erm, education. Very kissy kissy, shaky shaky business shit. Goes with the territory. Though it was mostly me sucking down beer like a drain from a distillery, unless Emma went crazy.”

“Emma?” Tanya inquired.

Lukas mentally stumbled. “She’s, was, uh, a friend.”

“A friend?”

“...sort of?”

“I see,” said Tanya in a small voice. “I should have realized that you might have someone waiting back at home.”

Lukas felt like the biggest heel in town. “Not like that. We were co-workers that were seeing each other. Nothing too deep. And besides, my home is gone now. Destroyed.”

Tanya pursed her lips but said nothing. Seriously, she was too sweet. Too easily flustered. He wouldn’t want to take those traits away from her. Yes she was crazy strong, and had scared the shit out of him on multiple occasions, but at times like these, she reminded him of a frisky kitten tangled in a strand of yarn.

“Come,” he said, not so subtly trying to change the topic. “Let me introduce you to the wonders of my world.”

He took a bottle of bourbon from the bar, which had appeared like it was always there, and poured three mugs full of it, and handed two to both women. Or, two versions of the same woman.

That sounded weird, even to him.

“This is… really nice,” said Tanya after a moment, before she looked at the beverage suspiciously.  “How am I…” she paused, and looked at Frost with deep mistrust, “how are we tasting this? It isn’t real.”

“Technically, you’re just living my memory of drinking it for the first time. If you know how, mindscapes can be used in all sorts of fascinating ways.”

“This is from a memory,” muttered Tanya, looking around. “A real memory. Father always warned me from recreating mindscapes from memory. Always imagine new places. He said I could use minor details, but never entire areas.”

Frost looked like she had just tasted a bad egg at the mention of her ‘father’. For a moment Lukas thought it’d spark out something heated between the two personalities, but instead she chugged down more of the whiskey.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because a talented psion can use that against you. He said that once you crafted a mindscape, your mind goes on adding more and more details by itself, sometimes without you even knowing it. A psion can use it to lock you inside your mindscape and you’ll never know it. It will become your reality.”

His curiosity at her words faded, replaced by a grim nostalgia. “Well, that makes it even better for me to use my memories. It’s not like I can return to this place again.”

Tanya winced. “I’m sorry I didn’t want to…”

He dismissed her concerns. “No big deal. I’m actually grateful that I’m able to do this. Inanna made me practice with it a lot. Take this bourbon for example. You wouldn’t find this brand in this pub. She taught me how to combine different aspects of my memories and weave them together into a single concrete unit.”

He smiled wistfully, remembering those days. Seeing Inanna sit on his chair, drinking latte from his mug had been a surreal experience. There was even one time when she had dressed up like a college professor with a striped shirt and skirt, her hair tied up in a neat bun, teaching him about the nature of reality in a mindscape that resembled his university classroom.

Good times.

“I could tell,” said Frost, giving him a knowing smile. “You took charge of the mindscape and redesigned the architecture. I was intending a different, more… intimate setting, just for the two of us.” She paused, giving Tanya a snooty, condescending sneer. “She could fit the role of a naughty voyeur, I suppose.”

“Why you bitch…” Tanya hissed, but that didn’t deter Frost at all. If anything, she smirked back victoriously at getting a reaction from her.

Trouble, Lukas mused idly. So much trouble.

“What are we even doing here?” Tanya demanded, looking at Lukas crossly, as if it was somehow his fault. And if he were entirely honest with himself, it kind of was. Partly.

“I told you,” said Frost, taking another sip from the mug. “My dear soulcrafter was trying so hard to make you see the obvious, but you were being oblivious. No surprises there, though,” she lowered her voice. “It’s only the second most-irritating thing about you, next to your holier-than-thou personality.”

“I don’t have a—”

“Oh, piss off,” scoffed Frost. “You are, and you know it. But I sensed that this chance might never come again, so consider this as me playing for keeps. As for this, call it a meeting of minds.”

“Minds? You aren’t a mind. You’re just a copy. An imprint, used by Everfrost as a puppet to fuck with my life like it always has.”

Frost sighed, and looked at Lukas in resignation. “See what I’ve to deal with?”

Tanya bristled.

“I’ve told you before,” Frost said, in a calm, composed tone that was completely out of character for her. “I’m not some dark demoness residing in your soul. I’m simply your primal self. The one most concerned with the important things in life. Survival. Growth,” her eyes gleamed as her gaze flickered towards Lukas. She licked her lips. “Sex.”

“Stay away from him, you bitch,” snapped Tanya. “That’s what you’ve been doing behind my back, haven’t you? Eavesdropping into my conversations, plotting behind my back, taking over me and talking to Lukas? Lying about how you’re not actually evil?”

“Someone had to do something,” argued Frost. “You had the power. You had Ezzeron. The Outsider sealed Everfrost’s corruptive influence away! And despite that, despite everything, you were stupid enough to fall for Meynte’s trap! The Outsider was the only option that could save your sorry ass from being stuck in a forever long nightmare.”

Lukas grimaced. There was being blunt and then there was this.

“I must thank Meynte though. She was a colossal bitch, but she did one good thing. She weakened the seal the Outsider’s goddess planted on Everfrost. It allowed me freedom, at least a little.”

“I wouldn’t consider that a little,” said Lukas.

Frost smirked but not maliciously. “It was necessary, darling. The little shrew had all the time to grab you, but she never had the guts to act on them. And the only time she did, it was out of fear, not desire. No wonder I had to step in.”

“You forced him to bargain with you,” Tanya accused.

“He forced me to bargain with him,” Frost corrected smugly. “I so love a man that can be dominant!”

Tanya hissed like a feral cat, which only made Frost smile harder.

Lukas coughed gently. “Uh, ladies —”

Both Tanya and Frost turned towards him at the same time and in the same voice, said, “Shut up!”

Lukas blinked, but did.

“I’ll say this once,” said Tanya, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Leave Lukas alone. You’ve already fucked up my life in every possible way. I don’t want you to interact with him ever again.”

“Such a tool!” Frost said airily. “Without me, you’d be nowhere, nothing.”

“Without you, I’d be happy.”

“I think you have confused happiness with servitude,” drawled Frost, giving Tanya a condescending leer. “Must I remind you what you were? A silly little doll girl, happy to do everything others asked of her. Your ability with aquamancy could be legendary, and what did you do? Throw it away because Father asked you to.”

Tanya took a step back with the air of a wary animal, not afraid, but cautious. “I was the Shimizu heir,” she said. “It was my responsibility.”

“He was the heir before you were. And his father before him. Why do they get to shove it down upon your shoulders? Why do they get to dictate your destiny?”

“The Clan came first. It does not owe me anything.”

“Conviction,” Frost laughed. “And yet, nothing but empty words.”

“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” Tanya shot back coldly. “I was happy before you — before Everfrost entered my life.”

Frost’s expression of irritated boredom contorted into a snarl, striking for how inhuman it looked on her normally beautiful face. “Everfrost is part of you, you fool!” Frost hissed. “It is your heritage from Tsurara. And what did you do with it? You rejected it, and even in that, you failed. Do you know why? Because that’s what you always do. You will fail. You will disappoint. Because in the end, you are not like Tsurara. You are not me. You may have control of this body, and you may have the heritage, but your heart is as weak as our stupid father.”

The glass mug in Tanya’s hand cracked. “You have no right—”

The smile on Frost’s face could have cut through steel. “Your rage will not undo the truth, girl. In the end, you’re as foolish as he. Blessed with power and a legacy which he could not comprehend. Naive. Feeble-hearted. He blindly followed his father’s commands, fucked our mother and raised you like a dutiful slave. Not because he was a proud father, but because he was a slave himself.”

“Shut. Up!”

“And you…” Frost went on, taking a step forward. “You’re just like him. Weak. You allow others to decide your legacy for you. Like a leaf in a storm, blowing to whatever direction the wind commands. You never had worthwhile desires. How could you, when you didn’t even have the backbone to stand for yourself?”

“That’s a lie!”

“Is it?” Frost challenged. “What did you choose, girl? Was becoming the Shimizu heir your choice? Fulfilling father’s dreams, perhaps? Walking away from your own future to give hope to a falling clan, fighting an impossible challenge just to hold on to a legacy that shouldn’t even be yours? Which one?”

“I… I had no choice there.”

Frost threw her head back and laughed. “Choice? Do you even know how to choose? The Outsider bled and bargained and risked his life to save you, protect your choice. He bargained with me, he fought with Meynte, and he reasoned with the skinwalker, all of it to gain you your precious freedom to choose. And do you know what you did with that freedom?”

She clasped both hands before her chest and gave Lukas her best impression of a love-struck fangirl and began squeaking. “I love you, Lukas! I don’t care where your selfishness takes us. I’ll go with you.”

Lukas blinked.

Frost spun back at Tanya in disdain. “You pledged yourself to follow the Outsider’s directions. You made his path your own. The truth is, girl, you cannot choose. You are afraid of it. All you’ve done all your life is follow orders. It’s what you can do. It’s what is in your blood.”

“You — you’re wrong!”

“Am I? Tell me you’re not like our worthless father! Afraid of his own clan, afraid to stand up even for his own daughter. And even when he did, it wasn’t because it was his duty, but because he was afraid. Afraid of losing everything. Afraid of his failure.”

Tanya gritted her teeth. Her hands were balled into fists, the fractured mug having already vanished into thin air. Lukas could see her nails digging into flesh.

“Oh, I relished it, seeing that fool wasting away on that mountain top. How grateful he was to you for killing him. Getting him a way out rather than face the world! And I gave him that way out. I drank his lifeblood. I took his power for my own, and granted him release.”

“You KILLED him!”

“He was already dying!” Frost snarled back. “I gave the sorry excuse of a man a chance to escape his failures. In my eyes, that is…. Mercy. Not that you’ll understand what I did. After all, you are no true yuki-onna, Tanya Shimizu. You’re the worthless daughter to your worthless father, and you’ll die like that. A failure, because that is who you are.”

“If you say one more word—”

“Then what? You’ll attack me?” Frost taunted. “Don’t make me laugh. You cannot defeat me. I’m you at your strongest. I’m you at your most ruthless. Without me, you are nothing.”

The roar hadn’t even left Tanya’s lips before she lunged at her. Before Lukas knew it, Tanya was already stabbing wind-blades at Frost, only to be caught in her frost-whips. She spun and launched five, six, dozens of blades, all of them aiming for crucial body parts, all of them aimed to butcher her alternate persona in the cruelest of ways.

Frost deflected every single one of them without breaking a sweat.

Tanya’s charge continued without pause, the mindless pursuit of a shark after blood, bringing her wind-blades down at Frost with unspeakable ferocity. Frost raised her whip, and intersected all her blows with a single defense. She locked Tanya in an unbreakable grip before crashing her against a chair.

I had truly forgotten, thought Lukas as Frost pushed Tanya back, how fast she was when she faced Inanna.

“See?” Frost sneered. “Weak!”

“Shut up! Don’t speak a fucking word. You — you don’t get to judge me when you’re responsible for every single thing that went wrong in my life!”

“Really now?” She drawled. Amusement coloured her eyes a thousand times over. “Remember that night? Bound in shackles, unable to use lifeforce? You had no power. You had no kami. Ezzeron rejected you. Those abductors… they wanted to prey on you. I preyed on them instead.”

Tanya flinched.

“I am you. I am the part that you got from Tsurara. A true yuki-onna — ruthless, ambitious, unafraid. A conqueror. A leader. A creature whose ambitions would shake the world. One who’d take what she wants, even if she had to lay the entire world to waste to fulfill her ambitions.”

“A monster!” Tanya spat.

Frost bellowed a large laugh. “So be it. Better a monster than a weakling. A prey.”

“You’re trying to bait me,” said Tanya. “Whatever it is you think you’re doing, I’m not gonna fall for it.”

“Fall? Of course you’re never gonna fall for it. I know you, weakling. I've pushed you, further and further, but you’ve never pushed back. Even our hypocrite of a father had the guts to sacrifice himself to save you, and you? What did you do? You cried and bawled like a puppy, but didn’t even have the strength to unsheath your claws from the bleeding gut of a dying man. No, you knew, you knew he was dying. And yet you were too afraid to give up. Give up that lifeforce you knew you needed to survive. So have a good look at yourself before you point fingers at me, coward.”

“Shut up!”

“Listen to me,” said Frost, her derision now dropped for assertiveness. “Here’s the cold truth. The Outsider is determined to bring his goddess back. And you are determined to take us into battle against our monster of a grandfather, a force that you cannot defeat, especially with your feeble control over Ezzeron’s power. You need my control. You need my reflexes. You need my knowledge to become closer to understand the true nature of the Taboo we wield.”

Tanya glowered at her.

“I am the part of you that you don’t want to admit exists. The hornier, angrier, more bloodthirsty part of you. Your fears, desires and anxieties grip you tighter than a virgin’s cunt. Me? I am your hate, your jealousy, your clarity. We are two halves of the same individual, not separate identities entrenched within a single mind. You might hate me for what I’ve done, but my actions have always been intended for our survival. Back with the abductors, with the clan, with father, and with Ezzeron.”

“And what about the anomaly? You made me a Sinner.”

“Wrong!” said Frost. “If it were up to me, I would have consumed the anomaly core for myself. We wield the End of Potential, Tanya. If not for you fighting back, the Sin could not have touched us. We are its natural predator.”

“And the nightmare?” Lukas asked. It was something that had been bugging him for some time now. “What happened when you were exposed to it?”

A look of absolutely terrifying rage flickered through Frost’s features for a second, but then she seemed affable as ever.

“The nightmare,” she whispered, a painfully broad grin on her face. “It wanted to shatter Ezzeron’s bond with me. With us. Tanya’s control over it was pathetic at best. If I hadn’t taken over, she’d have lost us Ezzeron for good.”

Lukas frowned. He was wrong then. The nightmare could shatter spiritual bonds. If it could affect Tanya’s bond with Ezzeron then chances were it could definitely work against Mujin Shimizu. Getting it to him was a different story though. That and…

Lukas frowned. If it affected Spiritual bonds, would it also affect his own connection to Blob? The bonds between an inanimate accessory and an Omphalos were wildly different from a connection forged between incompatible species through the power of Eternal Light.

“Mujin Shimizu is coming. And I need to face him.”

“We do, yes.” said Frost.

“And we can both agree that Solana’s not to be trusted.”

“She has her own machinations. I’m not sure what the Outsider is playing her with, but sooner or later, she will stab us from behind. It’s what she does,” said Frost. “But, she can and should be used as a resource, under careful control. She can offer us enormous amounts of information.”

Both women eyed each other.

“I will not give up on Lukas,” said Tanya. “He’s mine and will always stay like that.”

Frost threw her head back and laughed. “Good to know you have your priorities straight. But yes, so long as you agree that I am a part of you, and do not resist me, we’ll have no problems. You can have your fun, so long as I get to enjoy mine.”

“If I… accept Everfrost,” said Tanya slowly, “it’ll corrupt me. I might never be able to close that door back again.”

“That door isn’t sealed, Tanya,” said Frost. “It never was, never can be. You are a yuki-onna. You’ve tried shaking off your heritage. You’ve tried to restrain it through Eternal Light. But look what happened? It took your repressed emotions and forged me. Sooner or later, every yuki-onna gives in to temptation. We will become the Avatar of the End. Only if we work together, we’ll have a hand at the wheel.”

“So you say.”

“It is your mind. Your will. Your choice. If you don’t like what you’ve chosen, you can always choose again.”

Tanya stared at her for a minute. Then she looked at Lukas.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want,” he said. “It’s your choice.”

Frost smirked.

“I know,” said Tanya, frowning. “I chose to bow before my father, believing that it was my duty. I hated it, I despised giving up aquamancy, but I did it, because it would make him happy. I chose to run away from my heritage, and I chose to hide under Eternal Light. All of them were bad choices, and I didn’t like where I ended up. But you… you gave me a new chance. A new life. And so, I’ll choose again. I choose… you. And if that means accepting the darker parts of me, so be it.”

She turned to Frost. “Can you do it?” She asked bluntly. “Can you help him resurrect his goddess?”

“Of course,” she answered without the slightest trace of hesitation. “I’ve already helped him once before. That's why he went to the Haze.”

“Another thing I didn’t know about,” Tanya murmured.

“Guess we both know who he really trusts with information.”

Lukas cleared his throat. “I attempted to resurrect Inanna in the Haze. I had all the components. Everything. I even began the forging. Her form, her soul… I recreated it. I added all my memories of her. But… it didn’t work.”

Frost leaned back and furrowed her temples. “What went wrong?”

“The identity…” said Lukas. “It was corrupted. And it rejected the vessel.” He held up the pendant hanging on his neck. “This vessel. It had been her abode for eons, so I thought it would work. But it didn’t. Something just wasn’t enough.”

“Obviously you have some idea what it is.”

“I can make an educated guess, yes,” he admitted. “Inanna sacrificed her divinity to reforge me. Bring me back. That divinity lines my soul, but I… in my stupidity, wasted it. And now there’s just a tiny bit left. I think that’s why it isn’t working. Maybe the Divinity isn’t enough anymore.”

Frost sat down on one of the chairs. “Well if that’s the case, it’s an easily salvageable problem, isn’t it? If you’re lacking in Divinity, you need to bolster it with more Faith.”

“Faith empowers the divine.” agreed Lukas “ But guess what? Inanna’s gone. Nobody remembers her. Nobody. I cannot get Faith if I don’t have anyone worshiping her.”

“That’s not true,” said Tanya, surprising him.

Lukas raised an eyebrow.

Tanya looked at him, hesitant. “I— I’ve heard stories. From Father. He said that during the Great War, Susanoo was gravely injured. Susanoo is the god of the seas, storms and destruction. Father told me that every Asukan clan sacrificed their third child to the sea, as a tribute to the weakened god, demonstrating their absolute faith in him.”

Lukas blinked. She couldn’t possibly have meant what he thought she did. Could she?

“Don’t you see?” asked Tanya. “Inanna was a goddess of war, wasn’t she? What better way to empower than through sacrifice?”

“Of innocents?”

“Of your enemies,” said Frost. “Let them die for their cause, and you use their deaths as a sacrifice for yours.”

Lukas stood there, stunned. Killing the enemy in self-defense was one thing, But a premeditated mass-murder of people like that?

“But…” he faltered.

“What’s wrong?” asked Frost, tilting her head slightly, observing him. “It’s hardly the first time you’ve massacred other races. You practically eliminated all life in that lava ridge before that King showed up. And surely you must have done a lot more in your time at the Haze?”

“I have…. But…” He hesitated. What was he to say? That he had decimated entire settlements without a second thought, like they were paperwork, and yet, he was hesitating at the thought of killing someone that looked human?

It was just like before. He had been trained by the yokai, given shelter and food. And yet, he hadn’t thought twice before trying to escape them. Olfric had all but killed him, and yet, Lukas had given him another chance.

Inanna’s words came to mind.

“...Why is it that appearance alone counts so much in your eyes?”

He had decimated entire armies of monsters in the Haze, just because they had the misfortune of being on his path. They were just food for his experience, and prototypes to add to his ever-growing array. Then did he hesitate so much when it came to killing those that looked and felt human?

“Why the hesitation, Outsider?” asked Frost.

“Just… thinking,” he said. “I mean, the soldiers. They’re just normal people, following orders.”

“I’ve been at the mercy of people following orders,” Tanya shot back. “They will not think twice before killing you. Why must we be different? And where is this even coming from? You had no trouble massacring creatures back in the borderland.”

“You will need an aria,” said Frost. “One that describes your goddess in her most powerful form. And you will butcher the Shimizu army in Her name. The pendant will be the relic that shall harvest that Faith, and when it is done, you will resurrect your goddess.” Her eyes gleamed maliciously. “Can you do it?”

Lukas didn’t reply. All he could do was stare at the pendant in his hand, its iridescent blue shade reflecting in his eyes.