Backdated to October 31, 2017


She'd been avoiding the place. More so than usual. Not since she'd seen the faces shifting in the inky darkness of the archway across the stone-lined courtyard.

The mirror fiasco. Facing others she still didn't want to admit were too much of a coincidence to ignore. It'd brought it all back into the forefront of her mind. Picturing that strange place, that distant world with the violent weather and ruins still standing against the impossible power around it.

It didn't want her. It'd pushed her away. Saw her, withheld her, and deemed her unworthy of its domain.

Whatever, whomever, the faces within the gateway waited for... it wasn't her. She might have held the mantle of Morgan, might have held the title of the Senshi of Gateways, but that meant precious little against the world that deemed her unworthy of such a thing. Holding it did not make her instantly the master of that realm. In the few moments that she stood there, unable to stand against the force of the winds, she'd realized that.

And ******** did it scare her.

Weeks had passed, and Kailey had done whatever she could to avoid even glancing at the icon on her phone as a senshi that would bring her back to that ******** place. The place that neither wanted her, nor did she even want to consider. But that was the problem with not wanting to think about something: it popped into your head whether you wanted it or not, and once it was there, it stuck like a burr.

It was the feeling in the air. There wasn't anything else that she could describe it as. A whisper on the wind, voices she could almost hear beneath the laughter and screams of children of all ages and walks of life going about for Trick or Treating. Costumes of ghouls and goblins and witches and monsters of all kinds. Somewhere, beneath the sounds of the city, were those voices. They echoed in her head, words she couldn't determine but the sounds.... urging?

They ushered her hand to the phone, to the simple icon that would bring her back to that place. But there was no mistaking it for a kind, friendly urging. She could feel that, a tightness in her breast that warned her to be cautious as she allowed herself to be lead back.

She had no friends in a place like this.

It was the thought--the voice?--that rang solid in her mind as she again stood on the wide sea stack. Yet... she wasn't being forced over by the winds. They still blew fiercely, but she could withstand their battering. They tugged and pulled at her uniform, refused to let her keep her hood up and tangled her long hair like naughty fingers.

"What of them? The others?"

She looked quickly to the right, turning slightly as her brow furrowed. Surely she'd just heard... a voice? It took her a moment before she began to realize she stood within the bounds of the courtyard she had stumbled into last time.

The world looked no different, though the sun was perhaps set a bit lower, and now that the winds weren't trying to topple her. The bog flora thrived, less jostled as before, almost calm in comparison to how she'd last seen it. Yet it felt like an entirely different place.

"I liked them! Will they be coming again soon? We can host a feast!"

"The houses would need to be frugal in their spending and planning, resources would need to be checked and a reconfirmation of supplies would be required first... but it could be possible to host such an event."

She hissed as her head began to throb, rubbing her thumb at her temple. First the voice at her right... now her left..? Again she could see no one. Yet, something before her drew her attention, and Morgan focused on the gateway that before had denied her. Something had moved, something besides the brambles and bog flora that grew around the carved and wind blasted stones. The sounds of feet crunching dully against the squishy, almost bouncy ground. Not her own. Yet she was moving forward. Towards it, along the open arms of the fallen pillars laid out amidst the broken dark walls. Something watched her.

Voices whispered along the winds, waiting. Something stood within the gateway. Judging. Curious.

It did not know her. She was not what it wanted.

And yet.

Pain lanced through her hand and she yelped, her knees buckling beneath her.

"M'lady!"

"O-oops..."

Crystal fragments protruded from her palm. She stared down, breath sharp and shaky as the larger pieces fell away to the cobbled pathway there before the gateway. "I told you to cease your prattling," she hissed, hearing the footsteps along the pathway coming to a sudden halt at her words. Even the winds themselves seemed to go silent, withdrawing away from her seething anger. Slow breaths, and her worn fingertips wrapped around the broken shards. Bit by bit, they were withdrawn from her flesh. One by one, they were left to drop to the ground, a clink and a chime as blood droplets splattered across the black stone.

She did not have enough crystals to waste. The binding had been nearly complete. It would still function... yet not as she had wanted. The largest chunk, stained with her blood where its fragments had slashed and impaled her skin, had clattered to the ground, rolling awkwardly off to the side of the path. Already she could see the dark soil beginning to take it back. Take her unwillingly given blood into itself once more.

"Enough. I will retire for now. Have the paperwork for the next orders brought to me after I dine."

"It will be done, m'lady."

"Y-yes, m'lady. Of course, m'lady."

Slowly, with creaking bones and stretched ligaments and tendons, she arose. Her hand would be tended to. More fragments were cast to the side, were the water soaked earth would take them into itself. The gateway behind her... it called to her. It knew what she wanted. Understood what she sought when she tried to bind the crystal to it anew. She need but ask, and it would give her all.

Yet she was not the one it sought.

She took a ragged breath, staring with blurry eyes at her uninjured palm. She knelt there, on the ground covered in peat moss and bog flora. Everything seemed still. Withdrawn. Waiting. Watching. Curious what she would next do. She was not the one they sought. She was not who was meant to return to this place.

Yet she had.

Slowly, she lifted her gaze, moving towards a clump of peat moss that grew near the side of the archway. A hesitant hand reached out, bare fingers digging into the soft, cold earth. How long had the earth overtaken this place? Deeper down she felt herself press, deeper into the cold darkness of the waiting earth. This world had waited for so, so long.

Her fingers snagged on something, and she winced, feeling her digits being sliced open. The soil took the unwillingly given blood, and the crystal emerged with her withdrawn hand. Given for what was taken. An exchange.

There must always be an exchange. Such was the means to create the keys that opened any and all doors.

The grey-purple crystal looked unremarkable, though beautiful. It was, once, carved into a sphere, though had since fragmented--shattered--the bottom portion into a jagged mess. Dark patches along those sharp edges made her brow furrow, and again she looked to her spotless palm. It... she'd seen it. She'd seen the fragments of this crystal buried into her flesh when it broke.

She didn't consider how the pathway was no longer covered in dirt and water and peat moss. As she stood, and drew away from the watching gateway, the fractured crystal in hand, she felt for a moment as if others followed her. Fell into step behind her. She didn't consider how the very air had felt different as she gazed at her broken flesh.

Even after she returned to Destiny City and set the crystal down in her room, unwillingly to look again at the dark spots on the broken crystal, she didn't consider the drastic changes.

Especially how the hands that had pried out the crystal shards and shook under the pain of the impaling fragments were worn and gnarled.



1,414 WC