Chương 1922: 152
Chapter 152Notes:
Hey so I got a really fuckin weird comment the other day that I had to delete cuz it was super gross and I'm just gonna ask y'all to like... not comment super sexual stuff on this fic? I'm not writing smut, nor am I writing the kind of smut that one particular person wanted me to make.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There is a story of a lost little girl who found herself in a magical land of whimsy and adventure. It is one of the oldest of the modern fairy tales- a story that was brought into public consciousness and remained there for decades until the world itself had told the story again and again and again in multiple different imaginings, in every possible genre.
That story is not true.
The story of Alyx is the story of many- the story of the girl, the story of her brother. The story of a lost team of four. The story of a mother. The story of a cat. The story of a tree. The story of a raccoon, a king, a forest, a pack of mice.
It is the story of a war.
It is the story of love and loss.
The story is of a young girl and her brother who have fallen into a time before time, a land before land. They have fallen into the Ever After, a place of utter whimsy and chaos such that the very seasons themselves follow the whims of those who have enough emotion to make the world feel for them.
The story of the girl who fell through the world began with Alyx and Lewis- twins who escaped the stirrings of one war only to cause another. It started as such- the boy and the girl traveled through the Acres of the Ever After, sneaking through the jungle and thinking that all was as they knew. Different, perhaps, but something that they could have encountered before. Tropical locales, sandy beaches, large rocks. Perhaps they would have been right if they had stayed on the edge of that endless sea.
But they did not.
The girl and the boy continued further inland, and there they found the Hunter Mice. Not knowing the tribe's customs or how wary the mice were of outsiders, the two children attempted to get help from the mice only to become entangled by the grasping vines that the Hunter Mice used to ensnare their prey.
The girl became angered, but the boy remained calm and explained that they came in peace and just wanted to find their way out of the Ever After- that they meant no harm.
The Hunter Mice allowed the children to go, but only once an equal trade had been given- food to replace what had been lost. Alyx refused- petulant and moody, she did not want to help the ones who had threatened them. Lewis played along, and although the Hunter Mice remained wary of the outsiders, they were allowed to go in peace.
Peace they found, was not to last long, for the Jabberwalker came upon them next- fierce and wild and brutal in its never ending quest to find those without purpose and end them should they be unable to be fixed. The brother of dark never did finish his first creation, and the roaming thing continued to cause problems endlessly for eternity, even when it had been trapped for just as long in the outskirts of the Ever After- destined to never come close to the settled acres unless something drew its attention.
The attack was fierce, and both children barely made it out alive- running was the better course of action, and although Alyx was skilled with her chosen dagger, Lewis was not. She slashed the beast across its mask-like face, causing it to flee for easier targets while they ran and ran and ran.
They trampled everything they could in order to find safety, until they became tired and eventually found themselves sleeping on the ground as night fell.
In the morning, though, Alyx's dagger had vanished! And when they chased after the one who stole it to retrieve it, they found the Jinxy Peddler- an old raccoon who picked up anything anyone wasn't using and bartered it back.
The book said that the Peddler took Alyx's happiest and saddest memories. The book lied. The Peddler took Alyx's happiest memories only, but took Lewis' saddest memories as well- a split burden, one where Lewis became happier and Alyx became angrier. It was an event that shaped the rest of their journey for the entire time that they remained in the Ever After.
Alyx lead on, eventually, once the Peddler had moved on from their current Acre. They tromped around, the girl becoming angrier and angrier at the nonsensical nature and labyrinthine rules that filled the Ever After's various societies and tribes.
And then, to win passage to the next Acre, they faced the Red King.
The Red King was an enemy unlike any that Alyx had faced before- after all, Lewis would have said that they weren't there to make enemies, but to peacefully make their way home without any other issue. But still, she saw the inhabitants of the Ever After as enemies blocking their way home- obstacles that had to be removed by force if necessary. She only saw the end goal, only saw the comforts of home, only wanted the comforting familiarity of a world she thought she missed.
The battle, then, was long. A board game of interesting rules and many outcomes, a game superficially similar to chess, but just different enough that when Alyx won, the Red King cried that she had cheated and that she should be hanged for the crime of sullying the rules of his game. And then, though, the girl and the boy had run- fled the King's court and made it to the next acre safe and sound.
There, they met the Curious Cat- a creature of boundless curiosity as the name implied, one untethered by the bounds of common sense or logic or even the laws of physics themselves. The Cat was a being of whimsy and riddles that asked and asked and asked and wanted to know anything and everything that Alyx and Lewis could tell him. His thirst for knowledge was insatiable, his mind always working to find the answer to the next question. He guided them, then, through challenges large and small, working their way through the bazaar, the forests, the punderstorm. He guided them in circuitous lines around the Ever After, claiming that every challenge made them stronger and made them better suited to going home. That they needed to reach the great Tree at the center of the realm, but that they could not go to the Tree until they were ready to. Until they needed to. Until they figured out who they were and what they were.
And so they continued on. Eventually, they came across a small village of small paper beings- beings that only wished to make the world around them a more beautiful place, but were constantly stymied by their fragile bodies and the weakness of paper. There, they came across another person- a being known as the Rusted Knight . He was tall, handsome, a little world weary and worn down, but his heart was strong and pure and he pledged his blade to their cause- broken as it was, it was still the blade of a hero.
Later on came the Tarnished Lady - the wild rider who crossed the Ever After in search of those she had lost, fighting the Jabberwalker wherever it may cross paths with the peaceful beings of the Ever After. She was taller than the Rusted Knight, beautiful and stately and elegant with her spear and shield. She pledged herself and her steed, a jackalope named Juniper, to the quest of bringing Alyx and Lewis home, and they continued on.
From there- the Lotus Rogue and the Wild Valkyrie came soon after. The Lotus Rogue was mysterious man who had been lost in a dense jungle of endless green, flitting between the trees and the bamboo and guiding those who found themselves within to safety, but remaining ever trapped within- he had said, once, that attempting to leave only trapped him further, until the point where he found someone- some thing worth leaving for. A cause that needed him beyond the bounds of the forest.
The Wild Valkyrie, though, seemed almost like a villain at first- breaking her way through the walls of a village and looking around frantically, raising her hammer and fighting off any attempt to defend the small town of Afterans until she came across the party of seven. She was a drifter, it was explained, who had recently started searching for the ones she cared for most. It seemed, then, that she found them in the form of the Rusted Knight, the Tarnished Lady, and the Lotus Rogue. The hero, the warrior, the guide, the berserker.
They crossed many trials and tribulations along the way- gaping chasms, roaring rivers, Afterans who had lost their purpose and needed something to help them along before their stench of apathy and listlessness attracted the Jabberwalker. Alyx, then, began to doubt herself. Lewis, then, wondered if he wanted to go home at all.
Had she been causing more harm than good? Were the beings around her truly like her- did they truly think and feel like her ? Were they more than just things meant to block their way home?
What more was there for him to explore? How far did the Ever After go? Could he learn more about everyone within his lifetime when everyone was so unique?
Those questions plagued the two children, and while their adult companions managed to stave those questions off…
The Cat only seemed to make things worse. He poked and prodded and needled and spoke in riddle after riddle, trying to wear them down until one day he was driven away from the group entirely when Alyx broke down and ran sobbing into an Acre full of brambles and thorns.
There, they had a just barely missed encounter with the Ephemeral Wolf- a thing that was there yet not there, here yet not here, a dreaming thing that searched endlessly for a way to escape its bonds and return to whence it came.
It took a long time for Alyx to come to terms with herself, but as they continued on, there they found the White Huntress- a woman who seemed lost, confused, and yet had wandered around an empty land of shards and rock for some time before emerging in front of them as she split open a tree and climbed out from within.
And then-
Before they knew it, they found themselves there.
The Great Tree at the center of the Ever After.
The story went that Alyx found herself, made her way back to the world of Remnant changed and unsatisfied, but remaining there all the same with a cat by her side for the rest of her days.
The truth was that Alyx remained. Out of a party of eight, only seven humans entered the doorway back to Remnant. Alyx… found herself regretting the words and the things she had said. The cruel, callous gestures and actions she took believing everything to be a particularly annoying game or a bad dream.
She stayed to fix things.
Lewis found himself in Remnant, alone, and wondered for the rest of his days where the rest of his companions had gone- had they ever been real in the first place? Had he dreamed the whole thing?
He wondered, for the rest of his days.
And the six that had gone missing…
They found themselves when they were needed.
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