I Decide Your Purpose

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He had picked the perfect woman for his son, or so he had concluded after escaping the physical realm. Mephirium spirit was anchored to the Netherworld where he now stood as guardian of the great gates, keeping out whatever monsters attempted to force their way back into that of the material. At times, however, he found respite. In that respite, he could commune with those that populated the physical world, and [member="Lysandra"] was the target of his attentions on this evening.

The spirit of Mephirium was naught but his armor cast in a ghostly shade of blue, but it was recognizable nonetheless. It maintained the presence of his physical self; the power that he had held upon this plane yet remained. Though in a universe not of his birth, Mephirium retained his hold on this place. Things had moved according ot his design. The Dominion now grew as a great power in the galaxy. [member="Veiere Arenais"] had embraced his role as Archlord and mentor to his young son. The senate had been established as planned, and a rebirth of the Jedi movement was now hosted in the bosom of the Dominion's heartlands.

All was moving as perfectly as he had arranged previously, save for one piece. The girl he had absconded with to Ession was not yet aware of her purpose. He had been forced into the great battle before he could influence her in any subtle way; this had to be done bluntly. Though beyond the physical, Mephirium still had the natural charisma that was so characteristic of his family. He was confident he could place the thought in Lysandra's mind before the next battle erupted on his end.

The garden was cast in the amber light of an Ession evening. Traffic passed overhead in long skylanes, and hordes of denizens moved to and fro on the streets far below. The garden, however, remained empty save for its usual resident.

Great flowers of obscene color shielded the maiden of the garden. Trees lingered above them all, pillars of the garden's sanctity amidst the cityscape that Ession had become. It was an oasis of green, and as such it served as the natural home of the white haired girl.


"Lysandra," Mephirium's voice was like that of a fallen deity, "It's been some time." The form of Mephirium coalesced in the center of the garden. "We must speak. It is time you knew your purpose."

 

[Lysandra]

Splintered ribbons of jade and turquoise threaded through the evergreen canopy, illuminating the spellbound underbelly of Ession's great garden. In its solitude sprouted a symphony of unseen creatures, those too small and too brilliant to claim their voice beneath speckled sunlight. Clicks, caws and the whistling caress of wind pulsed through the tapestry of leaves like the heartbeat of slumbering titan. Each noise was a mere fragment of a greater voice, one that never halted its gentle hymn. It hummed of life and death and all things green, a sound for anyone that dared to listen. Every exhale was tempered with a tide of relief, each flower, vine and willow swaying with the flow of the land that bled with pure soil.

Where the sky chittered in a chorus of metal drones and howling vehicles, the great garden simply crooned.

It was a microcosm amidst the towering city of silver and glass, a place untouched by the bitter fangs of technology and her children. Most would accept the garden for what it was, a primitive paradise, yet none would venture forth into its moss laden bosom. It was too wild, too unkempt and too primal for the validation those outside its perimeters. It was sacred in the way that a sarcophagus was, eerie and beautiful and afforded nothing but caution and superstition...and yet, it still had its maiden.

The one person to dive into its embrace and never look back.

Lysandra, the pale imp brought from a place too far from her memory and too close to her heart, was the sole citizen of the great garden. She was a refugee, spirited across the stars and planted in the soil like a seed ready to be watered. Unfortunately, such nourishment never happened. The longer she waited the hazier her purpose was. Time became a stranger amidst the whistling willows and the sprawling hive of flowers, the wintry haired girl losing herself in the place that became her own. She was its sole proprietor, for reasons she still didn't entirely know.

Figments and fragments of voices and faces long past kept her company, kept her mind from stumbling too deep into a labyrinth of hysteria. She would consult with the lady stuck in the flowers and the old man buried beneath the trees, sing songs to the children dancing beneath the river and tell riddles to the furry, fidgety creatures she'd find in the garden's books and burrows.

Her new home possessed all she needed, berries and honey to eat, fresh water in the crystalline pools for drinking and bathing and just enough shade to keep her safe from any prying eyes. Whose eyes, she did not know...

"You'll be safe here..." a familiar voice echoed in the recesses of her memory, a voice belonging to the one that brought her here.

What was his name again?

If only she knew.

Sprawled atop a blanket of spindly grass with her bare toes dipped in one of the gurgling ponds, the barely clothed half echanj was the very vision of unhinged contentment. With her ivory hair messily braided through with leaves and petals and speckles of dirt marring her otherwise smooth features, the dainty creature had taken the role of the garden's sole guardian with gusto.

"What does a silver goose eat on the loose?" She cooed to herself, blue eyes darting from one branch above her to the next. With peachy lips pursing and pouting alongside the tide of thoughts dancing in her mind, the dainty oddity had little time to respond to the sudden apparition joining her in the centre of the garden.

"Lysandra.."

It was a voice unheard of and yet one that prodded the kaleidoscope of her mind.

Blinking, the girl paused her rambling and curled her toes, licks of water dancing down her soles. Furrowing her brow, the flowery haired vagrant propped herself up on her elbows before gazing up at the glowing figment standing above her.

"Hello." She murmured rather sweetly, bright wide eyes gazing up at the specter. Her voice was bereft of fear or concern, laced instead by curiosity and an whispery joy that she did not comprehend.

"Has a ghost come to commune?" The girl mused quietly, clicking her tongue before folding her knees against her chest and offering the oddly familiar figure an amused little grin. "Purpose is a strange thing for a shadow to talk about, I think...unless the shadow was torn off it's owner. Do you not have an owner Mister shadow?" The impish beauty noted inquisitively, addressing the voices in her mind and the vaguely handsome fellow standing before her.

[member="Darth Mephirium"]

 

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The shattered mind of a forlorn soul was something of great interest to the specter. A number of factors had played into his fascination with the slip of a child that could barely be called a woman. She was broken, though not in the way of most. Where they possessed a darkness in their hearts, Lysandra was naught but bubbly words and a pure soul. There little by way of ill will in her youthful heart, though Mephirium had come to suspect such as being a falsehood; her innocence serving as a thin veneer that shrouded something far more malevolent.

But that was neither here nor there.

The figment that was Mephirium regarded the girl with something akin to amusement. Amusement, and perhaps a touch of pity. She would have met death in her garden given enough time. Much like the plants she had surrounded herself with, young Lysandra needed to be cultivated. Her broken mind could yet be restored; the purity of her heart could be spread to others. One day, Mephirium had foresaw, little Lysandra would rise high above her meager existence. She had the blood of a queen in her veins, whether she knew it or not.

Some had suspected Mephirium wanted her for himself, but no one could ever replace Cyrene. Mephirium had always retained his core ethics, and taking a child to his bed did not align with his personal sense of right. No, Lysandra's potential was one yet unrealized, and one Mephirium himself had hoped to bring forth with his own training.

Unfortunately, the trivial matters of having himself severed from the physical realm had made that a bit difficult.

No matter.

"I am both the shadow and its caster Lysandra. I am not part of death, but death is part of me." The figure intoned. "I see you have grown accustomed to the garden I erected for you. This pleases me, but you can remain here no longer. You are needed elsewhere." Ghostly fingers were held outstretched toward @Lysandra. The pressure of a thousand minds extended from those fingertips to crash against Lysandra's own. Yet, even as they did so, the motion was a directed one. A link was to be established; a temporary one that would hopefully remind the snow-haired girl of his identity. The taste of his power and the hordes of demons he had slain was one few could ever forget.

"I am Mephirium, and I brought you to this new garden. I intended to meet with you in person, but things have become complicated." The specter's arms folded over its chest. "It is time for you to leave this place -- it is time for you to realize your potential. The force thunders through your veins; you are gifted. The capacity to shape worlds is at your fingertips, but it must be cultivated."

The figure's colorless eyes would meet her own. "And I have a mission of grave importance for you."

"My child lives within the very palace your garden sits upon. He is young, but he carries the same prospect that you do. As he grows, he will be able to repair your shattered mind. You must become his eternal companion. With Cedric, you will become whole, but you need one another to reach that point."

 

[Lysandra]

In her delirium, Lysandra was an arbiter of chaos coiled within a maelstrom of colour, sound and song. Fantastical were her machinations, filled with every riddle and rhyme her mind could conjure, as if the girl's very tongue were an alchemist's tool for the bizarre. Still, in her odd little world the girl was safe. Curiosity outweighed her cruelty and the girl who claimed no sovereignty over anything but her own flesh was content with the flourishing garden that was now her home. Here she could be free, away from the noise and the fuss of all those who clung to their rules and their rulers.

Unfazed by much, especially the sudden appearance of the eloquent apparition, the girl simply took the strange visitor's appearance in stride. He was a figure draped in morning dew and cool spring air, with a voice that came from more places than just his mouth. He spoke to her like he knew her, alas...many of the figures that sprout in Lysandra's mind do very much the same thing. But this felt a little different, slightly more tangible.

His voice possessed colour, a moody purple that evaporated in her peripherals like smoke from burnt nightshade.

"Strange shadow, I was put here for a reason." The girl rebutted with a confident nod, eyelashes fluttering innocently. "For what reason or purpose I don't actually remember, perhaps I was never told and I am meant to wait for a surprise. Yes, a surprise. Like a birthday or a funeral!" The girl rambled, plucking away blades of grass that tickled the bony edges of her ribs. Showering the air around her with the vanquished slivers of green, the wide eyed waif glanced upwards to see the phantom's fingers stretched towards her, as if it were handing her a gift.

A gift unseen it was, as a cavalcade of garbled voices and splintered memories began to flood her mind in a flashing torrent of forsaken words and distant visions.

Bare ankles, a cocked grin, spindly fingers and a severed shin

Streaks of gold and flashes of blue, a dying woman drenched in dew

Flowers blooming, flowers dying, flowers blooming, flowers dying, flowers -

"Cyril." Lysandra whispered, her voice barely escaping the confines of her lips.

Cautiously, the girl gazed down at her hands. Powdered in soil and flecks of orange nectar, the teenager's porcelain skin possessed a jarring clarity to it. Her mind felt still, uncomfortably still. Like a thunderous applause silenced at the peak of its crescendo, the kaleidoscope in Lysandra's mind seemed to be held at bay, as if many hands were keeping the shattered illusion in place just long enough for the familiar ghost's words to make sense.

"You did say you would come back." The waif murmured, toes curling beneath her form as she clarified the world around her. Had the garden stopped breathing? She could not tell. "Mr. Cyril, parlour tricks and sneaky shticks don't suit you. Your insides are missing and you look awfully pale." The girl noted with a clinical purse of her lips, eyes darting towards the lake full of pale children and at the tree with the sad old man hiding in its trunks. She could not hear their voices either.

Still, she heard the voice that mattered. The one that prodded at something inside her, something that attempted to make sense of everything spoken.

"Silly Cyril, still telling me what to do." The girl sighed, blowing a strand of silver hair from her forehead before standing upwards and tip toeing towards the specter. He still overshadowed her, still gazed down upon her like some sort of bemused relative. "You should know that I am quite comfortable here, you have spoiled me too much already and I have made many friends."Lysandra noted, motioning with an arm towards the crowd of nothing she deemed to be her supposed friends. In her newfound clarity, some part of the girl knew she was trying to convince herself as well.

Shaking her head, the dainty waif jabbed a toe into the phantom's shin, her little digit passing right through like mist. How odd. "Mr. Cyril, you make talk of fulfillment and the Force but you know that such things are of little importance to me. I am happy, is not what you wanted? After all this time you want me to take care of your child, I'd of thought you would have an army for such a thing...a prince seems a little proper for me." She paused, gnawing on her lower lip. "Curious request though, I didn't even know you had a son." The slightly more clear headed teenager mused, wriggling a finger around the glowing silhouette of her old friend.

[member="Darth Mephirium"]

 

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Some might have called Mephirium's treatment of the girl cruel. Others would have branded it as unfair; called the specter a hypocrite for all the virtues of freedom that he spoke of for his followers. Cyril would have called them all fools with no mind for the bigger picture. This short glimpse into the mind of a sane Lysandra was enough to prove that point to the ethereal lord. Lysandra was panicking, though she did not truly understand what panicking was he suspected.

The voices of the damned were silenced all at once. With them scurried away the phantasms that haunted the broken highways of the girl's mind. There was nothing, save for Mephirium and the child that he had chosen for his eldest son. Such a choice was not entirely made for Cedric's benefit - it accomplished more for Lysandra in the long run. They were broken children, their minds sundered in ways others would not comprehend. In a way, the two had been crafted with one another in mind, and together such brokenness could be used to reforge them both into what the galaxy needed to be. What they needed to become for one another. In that regard, Mephirium looked upon Lysandra almost akin to the way a father might look at his daughter - he was far more involved than the girl's true progenitor anyway. Unlike that spineless man, Cyril had not given up on the child of the garden.

"I am no longer physical. My body and my spirit are trapped in the beyond, and I cannot leave until my task here has been accomplished. That could take centuries, so this form will have to do for you." Mephirium explained, though he knew she would have difficulty understanding. Lysandra had expressed difficulty with conceptualizing solid concepts, though the abstract ones she understood rather easily. "Your friends are the dirt Lysandra. You live within the prison of your own mind. There is a part of you that sees this all to be a falsehood, of that I know."

Grim purpose rumbled within Mephirium's words. "My son is yet a boy, as you are but a girl. His mind is much like yours, though in a different aspect. You have taken to the garden and the illusions your mind forges for you. You have embraced childhood. Cedric is nine years younger than you, but he has embraced the grim reality of war. His childhood was torn away by duty and great purpose. He is an adult in a child's body."

Ghostly digits stretched forth to press against Lysandra's forehead. For but a moment, they became corporeal, the touch felt as if Mephirium was physically present. "I don't want you to take care of him. If anything, Cedric will take care of you." Mephirium continued, "No, I need you to stand by his side. Show him your happiness, and he will show you the world. One day, he will be a man, and you a woman. When that time comes, you both shall know love."

The specter's touch faded. "This is for the both of you. You may be happy here, but that is a temporary thing. Eventually, you will see through the illusion you have crafted for yourself. Your shattered mind will collapse beneath that pressure, and true insanity will follow. Your sense of self will be lost. You will cease to be. You will nothingness eternally. This is the fate I wish to prevent for both you and Cedric, Lysandra."

[member="Lysandra"]

 

[Lysandra]

Uncanny.

In her lucidity, Lysandra never thought there would be a moment shared with her gravelly voiced seeker in such a state. Even in death, shrouded in nothingness, the man she once knew maintained his firm gaze and the gentle subtleties. Cyril represented the world she'd abandoned, he was the arbiter of order and discipline. He everything the airy vagrant cared little for and yet she was still drawn to his strange accent and his funny way with words. The girl tumbled in a vibrant pinwheel of her own making and she knew that the man known as Cyril was one of the few to steer it without hurting himself.

Yet, Lysandra still found herself internally gaping at the indigo words that tumbled off of his misted lips. It made sense, or as much sense as she could comprehend. Wrinkling her nose, the girl dutifully listened, eyes trained on everything but the phantom visage that stared down at her. He was familiar enough with the girl to know that her attention was a fickle beast, untrained and untamed by structured courtesy and manners.

"A prison?" She murmured to herself, furrowing her brow before shaking her head of thought. Nonsense, her mind was a paradise.

Blue eyes, enclosed in fluttering lashes, traced the edge of a porcelain finger, the slender digit kneading the fog of death that stood before her. He was there and nowhere, a man stuck between time and space, closer than a shadow but further than the horizon. Gone was the smell of old perfume and smoke, a mere mirage he was. Cyril commanded and coaxed as he did when he possessed his physical shell and yet, something was missing.

Now there was a sense of urgency, a nagging suspicion that gnawed in the back of the waif's mind.

Love?

Insanity?

Cedric?

Each made less sense than the last, concepts and conundrums that the alabaster skinned creature threw into the court of her eerily quiet mind for an answer. Nothing called back, nothing but the echoes of her own confusion. What was he trying to say? What was she trying to understand? Why was the garden so quiet all of a sudden?

"You are a ghost, Mr. Cyril. You aren't supposed to be here." The girl whispered, her honeyed voice breaking the lengthy silence that followed the specter's explanation. With toes curled into the grassy carpet and thumbs digging into her supple palms, Lysandra finally stared back at the man who once was. "This is my canvas to paint, I...I don't understand why or how or who or what or where!" She exclaimed, frenziedly gripping her head and shaking it for the sound and colour to come back. A frustrated mewl broke past gritted teeth, a noise she knew had a purpose.

Was it anger? Lysandra didn't know.

"You think me a flower to give away? Have you foreseen this nothingness you speak of, did you pluck me from my home to torment me further? Stray spirit you are cruel and you should know better." The child with dirt on her hands and petals in her hair scolded, one brave finger jabbing into the direction of the phantom's nose. "I...I am no princess, a princess eats her sweets and gives children treats." She huffed, increasingly irked by her predicament.

Clenching her jaw, Lysandra rapped her knuckles against her forehead waiting for the symphony to start, waiting for the kaleidoscope to return. Nothing happened. Each passing second was filled with the futile knocks of a lost girl and her lonely mind, squeals of panic breaking her typically feathery voice. There was nothing and no one, a taunting abyss that sucked out the marrow from her brain and left her wandering its desolate halls like a terrified child. There was nothing but silence.

Silence.

"People die, Mr. Cyril. You died, my mother died, my sis-" Lysandra caught herself, eyes flashing open as she gazed up at the ghost with eyes gleaming with a truth only she knew. "Your son won't be safe with me." She uttered, no louder than the beat of a butterfly's wings.

[member="Darth Mephirium"]

 

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"I am beyond death."

There was the clarity he had long sought. For but a moment, Lysandra became the woman he knew her to be within the depths of her heart. Hurt and broken; beneath the veneer of color and pleasure was a bloodstained canvas built from the bones of her past. Upon it, the faces of her late family cast in ink the color of vitae.

The fantastical promises of her mind were a lovely thing indeed, but they were falsehood. Few things of such purity were not. Though he lacked the ability to tear open her mind and see her very thoughts, Mephirium was certain as to what she was thinking. The slip of blonde hair and girlish charm was being confronted with the cold brutality of reality. There were no voices to sing her songs; no friendly old men to tell her stories. The children she had seen in the pond were dead lilypads, and the flower friends she had come to be so very close to where predatory plants with only enough sentience to kill.

All of Lysandra's specter's were swept aside, for the singular one that mattered.

Mephirium.

"I think you a flower best left preserved than left to rot under a polluted sun," Mephirium countered. "What you perceive as torment I know as reality. The galaxy is a cold, uncaring place. You are the oddity within it, and that is why I have always sought to save you. Your destiny is greater than that of yourself."

Silence followed. Deafening, cold, absolute silence. The figure of Mephirium shook his ghostly head, and when he spoke, it sounded pained. "I was not killed girl. Only forced out. The force called me to this place, and I cannot return lest I damn you and the rest of my people. Not now," a hand was waved. "You cannot shield yourself from death forever. It is a natural part of life. Cedric will not be safe with you, that much is true. Nothing will keep him safe."

Cyril Grayson turned to the city beneath them: a monument to all his achievements in life. "You will never be safe either. It is why you need one another. You will always have these phantasms in your mind, but they will lessen with time. You must learn to cope with reality; Cedric can help you accomplish that."

A twist of his will strengthened the ties between Lysandra and sanity. She would not be free to return to her illusions until he had willed it.

[member="Lysandra"]

 

[Lysandra]

A deafening claustrophobia cloistered the porcelain crown of the flowery maiden, sundering her brain with a cold embrace unlike anything she'd experienced before. Where once Lysandra's mind played host to an uproarious orgy of sing song voices and nameless colours was now a gilded void teetering over the precipice of nothingness. It was strange, not in the manner an upside down willow was but more akin to waking up with barbed nettle under her nails and a noose around her neck.

The waif felt herself shudder.

Responsibility was an ideal never afforded to her, for good reason of course, not that she cared to hold it anyway. The very notion of being saddled with such a thing sent cramps up the lengths of her arms and down her torso before settling in the little pit of her stomach. She felt empty and she felt sick, a dizzying experience for a creature bound to the heartbeat of her floral kingdom. Inhaling deeply, the dainty teenager crumpled into a ball of frustration and pained protest, her grass stained skin quivering with this unwanted affliction.

It was Cyril's fault, that much she knew.

"I don't even like boys." She groaned into the earth, fingers tearing into her silver locks as the leaves and petals slowly began to flake off like dead skin. She'd been here before, cut out of time and space and crumpled at the feet of those that taunted her. Her mother, her elder sister, Xasuri's wardens and now the man that spirited her away. Was it dramatic? She had no reference to compare to consider such a thing. All Lysandra knew was that the phantom's proposal made her sick to the stomach.

"You should've just left me in my garden, Mr. Cyril." The waif whispered without elan, not even bothering to look up at Mephirium's mirage. "Your reality is ugly and noisy." Lysandra proclaimed with a grit of her teeth, her feathery tone bordering on matter-of-fact clarity.

There was a brief silence, tendrils of grass tickling the underside of the girl's body as she wracked the halls of her mind for something to grasp on to. Each corridor held patronage to memories buried underneath dull stones and the cloying scent of blood, visions she'd abandoned in the recesses of the winding and empty labyrinth.

"Was this your plan for me all along?" Lysandra uttered, a stroke of betrayal painting her words.

[member="Darth Mephirium"]

 

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"It is your reality too." Mephirium's voice sounded as if it might be fading, like a yell coming from the opposite end of a tunnel. Easily heard, yet partly lost in translation. "I could not leave you in the garden. Someone far worse than I would have came to take you instead. You will not see it for sometime, but removing you from that place has saved you." The voice evened out once more, though anyone with a whit of knowledge over the force would know that Mephirium was having trouble maintaining his presence here.

The illusion had been shattered, and while it would likely reform, Lysandra would be able to see the cracks. Whether she ignored them or not was her decision, Mephirium was not one to steal away an individual's free will, but thse fragmentation in her supposedly endless dream was permanent. What would follow this meeting would be the exact same realm that Lysandra had crafted for herself before. The only difference was that the girl would know of its falsehood. It would fester in the back of her mind; forbidden knowledge that promised a world beyond the one she had crafted for herself. With that knowledge would come sanity and attonement, or a final breaking of the mind.

"This is your reality too," Mephirium's voice echoed all around her - a forlorn god that ruled her mind as his own domain. "You have a choice now Lysandra." The figure of Mephirium faded, but the presence was ever-clear. The voice never ceased its droning message. "You must confront your past. You must confront your decisions. If you do not, then the illusion of the garden will be your prison for all eternity. You may know peace within it, but in your heart, you know it is a lie."

The final words came as a promising whisper that teased up the back of the neck like hot breath. "I planned to save you Lysandra, but you must make the final choice," a brief silence. "The garden will always be a part of you, but it is not all of you. Cedric lives within the upper corridors of the tower. Find him there, or remain here," it faded ever-further, "Your fate is your own. I leave you now - embrace the lie, and conquer the truth."

Reality shattered. The thousands of spirits Mephirium had bent to his will retracted, their influence lost upon the girl. If she willed it, the vision would return as vivid as ever.

But there would always be cracks.

[member="Lysandra"]

 

[Lysandra]

Embrace the lie, and conquer the truth.

Lysandra wanted to scream, scream until she could taste warm blood on her tongue and feel nothing but fire scorching her throat. At least then would her mouth be free of the bitterness the ghost brought upon her. The cruel iron grip of reality clenched Lysandra's mind, its barbed talons digging into the supple dominion the waif once claimed as her own. What was once madness was now hysteria, the endless kaleidoscope had been trampled and its brilliant colours smothered.

No matter how hard she smacked her temples or how deep her nails dug into her scalp, Lysandra could not wrench herself away from the phantom's haunting words. She wanted to beg, to plead and cry for him to bring her back, bring her back to the garden. Quivering fingers clawed out for the specter's robes, dashing through the empty air like a small child reaching for the forbidden fruit.

"Please don't..." The waif whispered, forcing her eyes open to see the man she once knew.

But it was too late.

Shadows melted into the aether, like smoke in a hurricane. Wisps of white and blue threaded past porcelain digits, escaping the starveling's touch. Cyril, cruel and handsome, returned to his kingdom in the sky, far from the futile grip of the broken maiden.

She was alone once more.

In that silence, the waif crumpled, abandoned atop the dirt and the moss of her great garden paradise. She felt a hollowness burrow itself into her gut, as if larvae had been planted in her and were eating every bit of weight she possessed.

"Little Lysandra this is your mantra...little Lysandra this is your mantra..." The girl fervently chirped, her feathery voice rising and falling with the thundering crescendo of her heartbeat.

Bare feet tumbled over ticklish tresses of grass as skinny porcelain arms clamored after the wavering fragments of shimmering sounds that danced in her peripherals. Frail whimpers, fraught and fragile, croaked past berry stained lips, her childish chant etching into the void of the garden. Her mind was maelstrom, a churning cavalcade of beauty and terror and everything in between as she scrambled after the fizzling vibrancy that began to drench her conscious. Voices called out from the splintered kaleidoscope, beckoning like garbled screams in the middle of a storm. She could taste the honey in the air, hear the distant call of figures unseen and feel the garden dance upon her alabaster skin.

"Little Lysandra this is your mantra!" Louder and louder did her girlish voice chime, her voice finding the strength where her mind whirled on its own.

There was a need for confirmation, validation from those that embraced her mind and joined in her adventures. The friends bathed in sunlight and stardust, glimmering figments that made the garden their home.

"Oh sweet children, please call out for me! Darling Ginger, handsome Hendrick, sweet Cecilia!" Lysandra beckoned into the warm air, her eyes trained on the watery crypt where her young friends awaited.

Gazing upon the face of the water, her shimmering pool of delight, Lysandra felt herself quake. A quake that left her frozen, petrified by the ugly truth that stared back up at her.

There was nothing.

Nothing but her reflection and a few dead lily pads.

[member="Cedric Grayson"]

 

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Dissonance was all that he understood.

The forces of order labored beneath the weight of chaos. The bones of their legs creaked and cracked; flesh parted in tiny canyons that dribbled with the vitae of those that dared to stand. Raw throats screamed for some semblance of release, yet all they found was the promise of agony. Blades licked at the skin, and knuckles cracked against skulls. One by one, they all fell: a myriad bloody heaps garbed in the trappings of various worlds. In their place stood the chaos: figures dark as the void and clad in robes of shimmering moonlight.

Those unfortunate enough to have survived the collapse found steel-toed boots stamped to their throats. Tears fell from bloodshot eyes, and bony fingers clawed at the legs of those that had risen above them. Words of mercy were whispered to the conquerors, only to be silenced by the sickening crunch of bone and cartillage that served as their execution.

Cedric watched from afar, gray eyes narrowed with disinterest. He had seen this vision played out many times before. At first, it had served as a horrible nightmare that struck the night of his mother's death; a terror that had followed the boy from his every waking moment until it could him him in its clutches come night. Now, Cedric knew it as he might come to know a close friend, though an unwelcomed one at that. He observed the horrors that followed the slaughter: the pillaging of cities, the rape the women, the summary execution of every man and the conscription of every boy.

Yes, he knew this story quite well. The young lord willed it away with a gesture of his pale fingertips, and reality came to replace the lie. All once, Cedric awoke, bolting up from his bed as he so often did. His chest rose and fell as if he had just run the galaxy's longest marathon, and a thin sheen of sweat clung to his chest like a midnight lover. Shaking hands rose up to run through his mop of short hair, and a few moments of steady breathing brought a stop to the trembling.

The dream only came when great change was about. Was the Dominion at war once more and he'd slept through the declaration?

"Damn it all," Cedric muttered as he eased himself onto the side of the bed, his head in his hands. His lips parted to mutter some other curse when something flickered in the corner of his understanding. It was a warning, one beyond that of the animal danger sense all humans possessed.

A creature had found its way into his lair, and it was alone.

Slowly, Cedric rose to his feet. He didn't bother throwing on any form of shirt - his hand went for the pistol beneath his pillow instead. Alert and awake now, the youth peered out into the darkness of his apartment.

"Announce yourself. It'll be better than if I find you."

[member="Lysandra"]

 

[Lysandra]

-Two weeks after the incident -

[SIZE=10.5pt]Shadows danced in the recesses of the ovular cocoon, the lilting ribbons of moonlight waltzing through the gaps in the cold pressed walls and past the tapestries that hung high and mighty from the buttressed ceiling. Rich crimson and gold gilded the interior of the strange room, the scent of foreign incense and stone permeating the air like a cool smog. Nothing stirred as silence embraced the enclosure like a jealous lover, squeezing out the minute murmurings that would have disturbed the lone figure in the center of the room. Shallow were his breaths, a slumbering silhouette coiled in the dew of midnight sweat and the finest silk credits could buy.[/SIZE]

He was handsome, the firm ridge of his brow furled into a knotted bow as mirages unseen cascaded through his mind, lips pursing and closing as if the shadow of a conversation played upon his tongue. Thick veins cascaded down the length of his arms like rivulets, etching a pulsating map on to the lean canvas of the prophesied prince's body. Even in his slumber, the stern faced royal possessed some semblance of boyish beauty, a nubile charm that would have sent the girls scurrying. Alas, such an alarming appearance could not sway the porcelain waif that hovered by the side of his bed.

There Lysandra stood, clothed in little more than a tattered silver robe and a thick black scarf snatched from one of the wandering palace guards. The scent of roses and nectar haunted her starveling figure, the stray remnants of begotten flowers and leaves marring her otherwise alabaster appearance. She'd wandered into a place separate from her own. Illuminated by the glow of the moon, the dainty creature was a wide eyed phantom, balanced on the tips of her bare toes as she leaned over the anomaly that had been haunting her dreams ever since incident in the garden.

It was as if the cacophony of her mind had slowed down, the kaleidoscope of colour and sound barely shielding her from the singular voice that echoed in the far reaches of her brain. It was constant, like the rabid chittering of an insect's final crescendo.

Cedric...Cedric...Cedric...Cedric

The voice clung to her like a demon, compelling and corrupting the maiden's mind like oil upon spring water. She hated it, cursed it, lusted after it and grieved for it. Sweet promises and bitter screams were proselytized into the belly of the garden, the maiden's manic hysteria scarring its once lush bosom into a more monstrous deformity. In her plight, Lysandra abandoned sleep and refused the shallow mirages of the friends she once knew. they were fragments of smoke and shattered glass, remnants of the world Cyril stole from her.

So she deemed it best to take it back.

In a moment of clarity, unlike anything the girl had ever known, she stalked after the phantom's voice and ascended the silver tower where the nucleus of her paranoia lay. In the dead of that night, the white waif haunted the corridors of the gleaming spiral, tracing the voices of the ones that protected the man known as Cedric. He lay at the top like a fabled princess, beholden to the face of the moon and the murmuring chorus of his people down below. At once he lay alone, enraptured by the comfort of sleep in a bed far too big for him. But now, with the stars as their only witness, the sleeping prince was joined by porcelain spirit that haunted his great garden.

Show him your happiness, and he will show you the world.

The words echoed in the recesses of Lysandra's mind as she stared down at her tormentor's seed. He looked a lot like Cedric, a sight that left the teenager wrinkling her nose.

In the embrace of silence, the girl closed her eyes and leaned downwards, the shell of her ear pressed against the young man's chest.

Ba-bump-Ba-bump-Ba-bump...

Warmth trickled into the skin of her face, the murmuring tremor of his heartbeat dancing alongside her own. He was real, made of flesh and bone and everything in between, real enough for the girl to recapture the simmering disgust that flickered on the edge of her mind. It was an emotion she rarely experienced but one that scorched the feathers of her imagination and sent her reeling back into the reality of what Cyril thrust her into.

And reel back was what the girl did.

As the boy's finger twitch in the periphery of her vision, the girl whipped backwards, catching her tongue from permitting a squeak with a sharp clamp of her teeth. Tearing herself away from the lip of his bed, Lysandra plunged back into the shadows of the expansive room, the trail of tangled silver hair billowing after her.

Clutching the first things her dainty fingers could find, the troubled teenager quickly unfurled and cocooned herself in the silky embrace of the prince's curtains. Pressed against cold stone walls and the detailed drapes, the waif quietly and furiously beat her forehead with the edge of her knuckles. This was not supposed to happen, a royal never stirred whilst asleep unless they were kissed...or so the girl recalled from the fairy tales her mother read to her.

There was a shuffling of movement and the croak of a voice still caught in the trappings of sleep, a voice as lovely and deep as a pool of honey. It was painted in the deepest blue her mind had ever conjured for a sound, a blue that danced like smoke and defied the brilliance of the sea and sky together. It was a curious find, made all the worst by the fact that she was not meant to hear it that night.

"Announce yourself. It'll be better than if I find you."

The girl felt herself quiver, the salty taste of blood kissing her tongue as her teeth dug deeper into her lower lip. He knew. He knew? The girl felt her mind alight itself with the burn of a thousand questions, all beseeching her at the same time to run, to scream, to cry, to laugh, to hide, to fight or to pray.

Clenching her jaw, the girl knocked her head for several silent seconds afterwards. She felt dizzy, like her brain was being put in hyper drive and spun around several million times in all directions.

"If...if you find me then you don't get a prize. Close your eyes and let me hide again...please." Lysandra blurted out from the darkness, her feathery voice muffled by the linen burrito she'd wrapped herself in. Even though the girl was never one to take back her words she knew that her skull warranted several more smacks after such a silly display.

This was not what she'd planned...even if she'd planned nothing.

[member="Cedric Grayson"]

 

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The mind that was not his own span like a broken wheel. It was shattered in places it should not have been; fault lines had broken out along its corners like a ruinous map of chaos itself. There was no peace to be found within its recesses, only the horror of a thousand broken hearts screaming out in tandem for release. A billion tiny phantoms haunted the edges of its consciousness like hungering predators awaiting a moment of weakness. When it finally showed, they would sink their teeth into the fragile consciousness of this other and tear it to ribbons like so much meat. It was only a matter of time before that mind began to limp, and insanity would most certainly follow.

Yet, within it all, he felt beauty. A tortured spirit of youth clawed at the edges of its self-made prison. It was a being of purity, like the creatures of old tales worshiped by Ession's native people's. The word used had been fairy, though there was something different about this presence. It was both caged and free - it tore its fingers to bloody shreds along the walls even though the door leading outside was left unlocked and ajar. Curious, Cedric perused the mind ever further, only to find himself enveloped in a sea of nauseating color. The voices of a dozen small girls sung song of rhythmic joy that peeled away the walls of his mind. Their chorus was one preserved in the purity; laced in the beauty of innocence.

All at once, Cedric recoiled.

His thoughts returned to that of the physical, to the cold air that sent up goosebumps along his pale skin and the smell of the air freshener he'd put in this morning. The room was dark, though the light of the city managed to break through despite the thin raven curtains that draped the windows. It was a pale blue thing that cast Cedric in the shades of his people - the blue of the Jedi Order, the grays of Ession. Eyes like storm clouds peered throughout the room for any sign of the intruder. He dared not reach out within the ethereal once again for fear of another horrifying reprisal. Part of him knew that such had not been intentional, that the mind he had touched was simply a damaged thing in itself, but it was one that he feared going near again.

Calloused fingers drew about the trigger of his sidearm. Whomever had found their way into his quarters posed him no danger, of that he knew now, but the pistol was still a reassuring presence. There was nothing quite like cold steel in the hand to steady the mind.

"If...if you find me then you don't get a prize. Close your eyes and let me hide again...please."

Confusion flitted across Cedric's features. The voice was like a song, soft and high in pitch. It was a fragile thing that demanded preservation; the sound of purity that could only come from an innocent soul. it rung in his ears, the words bringing him humor despite himself. The pistol was lowered onto one of the coffee tables.

Had one of them men sent him a whore? Another attempt to usher to the youth into manhood by his loyal protectors? Cedric snorted. He had no intention of indulging in such endeavors - attraction was a rare thing for the king to be, and it only ever came in the form of love. He appreciated the curvature of a woman just as any man might, but his upbringing had taught him caution. Ladies of the night often had ulterior motives that were rarely wholesome, and Cedric was anything but a victim.

"Eyes are closed." He promised, his eyes drifting shut just as he'd said. He'd play this little game for now, if only to see the owner of the mind that had almost broken his own. It was the first to be touched by such chaos that he had ever come across.

"Did one of my men send you? I'm not very keen on being awoken at two in the morning." He asked, silence following as he awaited a response from the mysterious stranger.

[member="Lysandra"]

 

[Lysandra]

Sandwiched between the dark stone walls and the ticklish caresses of the prince's curtains, Lysandra stood on the peaks of her toes with her tongue firmly planted between the ivory wedges of her teeth. Her words were now wisps dancing in the perfumed air of the room, blossoming in the space of the young lord. It was her burden to bear, such recklessness, and part of the teenager knew it was a silly thing to eagerly announce her presence.

The scent of mildew permeated her senses, sticking to her nose like algae. It was almost as if her very presence in the young lord's chambers were suffocating her more than Cyril's words suffocated her fractured mind. Cedric was real, he was a physical entity stalking her shadow and heeding the sugary whisper that hung heavy in the air. She could still feel the warmth of his chest lcika t her cheek like embers. Wrapped in silence, the girl dug her nails into the palms of her hands, blue eyes darting back and forth as she attempted to capture some semblance of strategy. Lysandra knew she didn't want to be here. But some part of her, a nagging chime in the back of her mind, told her should be here. For what exactly she did not know.

Part of her did not want to know.

Sucking in a plume of perfumed air, the wide eyed waif peeked out from the cocoon of silk with her gaze firmly set on the silhouette of the young lord. Lysandra felt herself stiffen, his presence sending a jolt of caution to ease into her bones. Cedric's features were marred by the darkness in his chambers, with only the stray caress of moonlight and distant neon framing a shoulder blade and clenched jaw. He was taller than she thought, built more like a man than a boy. Alas, such a thing fizzled in her vision when the stray starveling tore her gaze away from him.

Shadow and smoke, he'd be nothing more once she'd disappeared. He'd vanish into the membrane of her memory like the haunting visage of his father.

"You were not meant to awaken." The girl admitted quietly, dainty fingers clutching the thick material of the stolen scarf as she slowly tip toed from out of her hiding place. She was a slip of white bathed in the darkness, slinking through the shadows of Cedric's chamber. "Sleep, pretty prince. Return to your kingdom of dreams and let me return to mine, the one who sent me is nothing more than a stray spirit." Lysandra cooed, inching past a dresser and the table laden with the royal's weapon in complete silence. The door to her escape was just a few more feet away. Although something compelled her to look, to brandish the maelstrom of her curiosity upon the prince she was promised but did not want. Glancing upwards she found herself caught in the faded portrait of the young man she'd been led to, the shirtless creature with his boyish musk and his messy hair.

He kept his promise, his eyes really were closed. How odd.

"Don't try and catch me, Cedric son of Cyril." The waif sung quietly, a faded melody dissipating into the air as her body lurched forward into the welcoming escape of the young lord's bedroom door.

[member="Cedric Grayson"]

 

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But sleep he would not.

Gray eyes parted slowly as she pulled herself away from the curtains. In the light of the moon, this late night intruder looked more akin to an angel than anything of mortal ken. Hair like the stars fell to her shoulders in dainty locks, caressing thin shoulders and a shapely collarbone. Eyes bright with an innocence Cedric had trouble understanding peered out at him, he garments glittering in the faint luminescence of an Essonian night. Skin paler than his own matched the perfection of her features, and her words were honeyed like those of fair maidens from old knight's tales.

For the first time in his short life, Cedric found himself enraptured. Lips parted, but words were not found, Fingers combed desperately through his mop of messy black hair, though he would find express difficulty in making himself look presentable in any fashion. He stood there, confusion flitting across his features as she made her way toward the portal that led to the outside world. All at once, this angelic figure had come into Cedric's life, only to leave it forevermore.

Perhaps it was a dream?

Perhaps not.

Acting without thinking, the youth approached this intruder. He moved slowly, so as not to frighten her away. Something in the back of his mind told him that any quick movements would send her away in a flight. Was this the creature whose mind he'd touched?

The two of them had cleared the doorway, leaving them both upon an a long balcony that stretched ten other rooms long, but was only wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Lysandra would likely find herself trapped in front of the railing, and over that railing was eighteen stories of air until she would meet the ground.

Cedric paused at the door, his brow furrowed.

"You can't just do that," he said, struggling to find the right words. "Come in and then leave like this. It's confusing."

Silence.

"Whom are you?"

[member="Lysandra"]

 

[Lysandra]

The splash of neon light instantly enveloped Lysandra as she pushed past the cold doors leading out of the prince's chamber, the slight buzz of the midnight lamps humming away as their golden glow flared slightly brighter with the girl's movement. Bare feet slapped against the durasteel panels, a trail of ivory hair and ebony cotton trailing after her ghostly silhouette like tongues of fire. No one had been alerted to her presence, whatever droll security Cyril placed for his son failing miserably as the brazen little waif fled the confines of Cedric's quarters.

Lysandra could feel the flutter of her heart swell up in the prison of her ribs, the tremulous rhythm of adrenaline coursing underneath her alabaster skin and fueling every step she took further from the young man's room. She denied herself a moment to look back, another second to watch the trails of royal blue plume in the crevices of her vision. His voice was not reason enough for her to stay nor was his calm in the face of her disruption. He was just a mirror of his father, the one that lingered in the recesses of her mind.

Cyril haunted the waif's fractured labyrinth, the phantom whispers ushering in threads of doubt that tore at her gut with every step she took from the prince's room.

She did not want him.

"Little Lysandra this is your mantra...little Lysandra this is your mantra..." The girl recited quietly, hearing the tentative footfalls of the one she'd awoken behind her. Blue eyes skipped and scanned over her surroundings, the hollow spine of the great spire a gaping hole held aloft by spindly railings. Doors and windows stood stoic and still along its cold stone flesh, apertures into places away from the young prince whose voice was burned into the impish teenager's corneas.

He called out to her once more, denying the dainty creature the freedom a simple hop, step and jump could offer. Lysandra's mind was a scrambled storm of echoed words and voices unheard, little choirs singing of her fears and fortunes at the hand of the phantom that led her to this very moment.

"Yes I can." The girl refuted, not turning around as she peered into the throbbing neon lanterns in the darkness below. "You're not my prince." The quivering waif uttered with an sharp exhale, bony fingers clutching the cool metal of the railings as her toes wriggled over the edge.

Getting up here wasn't hard, this shouldn't be anything remotely challenging.

But she stood frozen, with her back to the phantom's heir.

"Nobody; a stranger, a foreigner, a monster, a maiden-not your maiden!." The girl rambled quickly, clenching her eyes shut as she let her tongue speak the words of the chorus in her mind. It was an incoherent string of words that plunged forth from lips wrought between a wild grimace and a lilting smirk, a statement tossed forth from a girl whose mind teetered on the precipice of reality and a murmuring hysteria.

[member="Cedric Grayson"]

 

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The pressure of a thousand minds weighed upon Cedric's psyche. It was the presence of the phantoms that plagued the girl's own thoughts made manifest. They struck out at the youth, seeking to shatter his mind in such a way that he might suffer in the very way that she did. His visage contorted in momentary pain, the experience of a thousand agonies born within the confines of his mind. Under normal circumstances, the sudden stress upon his brain would have brought about a seizure and likely a very painful death. Fortunately for the Archlord to be, he had erected his own defenses against such an assault, having touched the silver haired maiden's mind once before.

He had prepared.

The pain was an immediate, albeit temporary thing. It passed just as quickly as it had come, drifting over his mind like water over a sheet of steel. None of it lingered - the entirety of the assault had been redirected to gods knew where.

Righting himself, Cedric pressed all his weight against the doorframe and stood up straighter. His vision had become a foggy mess filled with faux people and mirages as the assault had commenced. Those images were beginning to fade now, though he had trouble registering anything other than the young woman that clung to the railing. Below was a most certain and rather messy demise - a death not suitable for any good soul. It certainly wouldn't do for her.

"No, I'm not." The ebon-haired lad muttered in agreement, a hand held to his temple as he pushed the throbbing pain in his forehead aside. "I'm not your prince. I don't even know who you are." He continued, his voice losing its cool demeanor. It had begun to shake, though not from fear or any such emotion. The sudden assault upon his mind had simply left him uneasy; gathering his thoughts coherently was proving difficult.

"But I'm not a monster either." Hands outstretched toward open air. Despite his better judgement, Cedric reached out within the ethereal. A practitioner of battle meditation and one that knew the intricacies of the mind, the youth pressed a calmness upon the girl's mind at great cost to his own. He offered her a clarity in the storm; a guiding hand upon the shoulder that would guide the lost.

All the while, he slumped against the door frame, his eyes glassy and unfocused.

[member="Lysandra"]

 

[Lysandra]

Lysandra knew not the pain the young prince experienced the moment he breached the fractured kaleidoscope of her mind, his presence but another drop of rain in the swirling maelstrom that churned within the recesses of her conscious. Why, the girl did not even comprehend the notion of another venturing too far into her brain, it was nonsensical. They didn't know the names of all of her friends! Her mother's associates tried once upon a time but they never came back after their hapless sessions and after several months of shallow digging into the teenager's fantastical world it was deigned too risky of a venture to uncover the nucleus of the waif's shattered mind. She was to be left prancing through the rainbow labyrinth of her own making.

Such a thing was what she wanted, what she craved as she stared wide eyed into the gaping darkness of the towering spire. The waif wasn't afraid of the murmuring void, it was a warm entity that gripped her within colourful worlds of her own making and held the unfamiliar noises away.

Come to me...

Flee this place...

I'll take you to the garden...

It cooed, honeyed whispers tickling the membrane of the girl's ears as her toes wriggled over the cool nothingness. Cyril would not find her in the sea of ink and shadow, nor would his son. Sighing, the girl's cerulean orbs flickered over the maw of darkness and over to the descending platforms leading down into the streets below, several meters behind the half cloaked figure of the young man who she'd woken up. She'd made the wrong turn leaving the room, the realization forcing a bewildered grimace to etch its way onto her rosy lips.

"Silly." She muttered quietly, a porcelain nose wrinkling in disapproval.

In her contemplation, Lysandra glanced at the young royal, wild eyes darting over his tussled locks, furrowed brow, clenched jaw and down the bumps of his bare abdomen. How long had it been since she'd seen a man like this? The thought alone summoning a flock of distant memories to come flitting into the forefront of her mind. The last time was more than three years ago, the proprietor of male nudity being a stray vagrant that had drunkenly wandered into Eden. What had happened to the man she could not recall, perhaps he simply lost himself in the bosom of her once beloved sanctuary.

Blinking, the teenager shook her head as she clutched the stolen scarf between her dainty fingers, pensive curiosity painting her alabaster visage. She could feel something tickle the edges of the labyrinth, like fresh soil was being laid out for the nourishment of new friends to join in her mad escapades. It was an odd sensation, but not unfamiliar.

Not unfamiliar at all.

"The labyrinth doesn't take kindly to visitors." Lysandra murmured in a matter-of-fact tone, mimicking the stern voice of her long dead mother as she slowly turned to face the sickly looking prince. Curling her toes, the girl cocked her head before eliciting a stray giggle. It wasn't a malicious sound nor was it purposeful, it was merely there to fill up the silence. "Knowing my name will make words a reality. A prophecy is being broken tonight, pretty prince." The girl whispered, her feathery voice melancholic and noticeably more lucid. With the most quietest of steps, the impish creature moved a little closer to the boy pressed against his door frame, her fingers threading through the dark material of her stolen scarf.

"A woman with a prettier face would have killed you by now." She noted quietly, her sweet inflections masking the observation in her girlish charm. "You shouldn't have left your gun inside, your security is already a little...vague and Mr. Cyril is too hollow to plant a second prince into another lady." The half Echani mused, nodding with her head at the winding ascent she'd made up into the prince's private chambers. Stray leaves and petals strewn in her wake, nothing overly subtle to anyone with half a brain guarding the tower.

"You do not want me here, nor do you need me." Lysandra noted quietly, finally gazing into the eyes of the boy thrust upon her by the ugly hand of fate and fortune. "I...I don't even remember why I came here.." She sighed, lifting the scarf over her head and twirling its tasseled ends across her slender shoulders and gazing into the night sky that peeked through a window on the opposite end of the corridor.

Staying longer would make things worse.

[member="Cedric Grayson"]

 

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The screams that reverberated throughout his skull faded all at once. He registered the sound of the girl's flowery voice, though her words were a difficult thing to discern. Part of his mind tore them apart, dissecting the meaning of every consonant and syllable as it spilled from her lips. The other part - the part Cedric controlled directly - was lost within the miasma of a reeling mind. A step was taken toward him, and he found that he reacted in turn.

Shoulder muscles tensed, lips pressed into a thin line. Breath came slow and heavy as he returned to the physical plane, the connection of minds having faded in its entirety. Evidently, his attempts at stilling the angle-woman's chaotic consciousness had been somewhat successful. If nothing else, she wasn't trying to flee. He'd worried that she would hurl herself from atop the building in her delirium, but it seemed that much would not be the case.

Instead, the lady of the garden turned her attentions back to the man she'd been promised to.

"Are you referring to your mind, or a physical labyrinth?" Cedric asked without thinking. His mind was an analytical one, and the moon-haired woman was speaking in riddles. He understood hard facts and flat language; not flowery words and obscure metaphors.

His fingers curled about the angle of his chin as she continued to speak. Gray eyes narrowed as they regained focus; Cedric's visage of boyish confusion was replaced with the cool clarity of a young man that was used to being in control of the situation. "If this prophecy you speak of is already broken, then there's no harm in sharing names, no?" He asked, a raven shaded brow quirking as he asked the question. He was dreadfully aware of her closeness, and it occurred to Cedric that he had never been so near to a woman in such a private setting as this. The thought sent his mind racing with images better left unsaid, the curse of youth as many knew it. He slammed down on such ideas, dashing them away in favor of clarity.

"My security has been lax, that much is evident," gray oculars shifted to the stony floor as a gust of cool wind brushed over his shoulders. The youth visibly shivered as it touched his bare skin. "You knew my father? No one calls him by his first name."

A moment of silence followed.

"I...never said I didn't want you here, and I don't know if I need you." He mumbled, evidently rather confused by the whole situation. Still, something at the back of his mind told him to keep the lady from leaving just yet. Whether it was that attraction of youth or something more relevant was anyone's guess, least of all Cedric's. "What do you remember?"

[member="Lysandra"]

 

[Lysandra]

With deliberate calm and a look of slight confusion, Lysandra gently pressed the tip of her index finger against Cedric's temple, the surge of warmth from his skin purging the icy cold that riddled her porcelain digit. "This is the labyrinth." She noted quietly, the finger remaining a second longer as if she were anointing the bewildered royal with some wild essence. It was an odd question to ask and the impish teenager found herself momentarily taken aback by the prince's unfounded ignorance.

Perhaps, he, like his father, operated in a vastly different way to the scraggly waif.

Wrinkling her nose, Lysandra contemplated Cedric's brash attempts at extracting more information out of her. He was a curious creature. Perhaps it had been so long since the last time she'd interacted with someone her age that his boyish interrogation seemed so exceptionally foreign. His words threaded through her peripherals in plumes of zaffre smoke, dancing with every lilting vowel and groggy word. What she'd known of the young prince before her daring ascent into his abode was nothing more than a scarce portrait. He was but a sum of his father's words and her own paranoia, a faceless beast of a child forced upon her like some plague.

Alas, in the glimmering glow of moonlight he just looked like a normal teenager, a confused and sleep soaked teenager.

"Your father probably knew more of me than I did of him." The girl admitted, a shrug of her shoulders confirming her words. Her eyes had returned to her plump and pink toes, the cool bite of midnight air snaking its way up her bony ankles. She didn't want to tell him her name, an anomaly that sputtered in the forefront of her mind. There was a cloying clarity that brought upon such self awareness, a sickly voice that begged her to slip back into the arms of the garden and forsake the phantom that beckoned her here.

Lysandra knew she owed the prince nothing, for he was just a blip in the great cascade of colour and sound she so fervently worshiped.

"Ophelia, that can be my name." The girl chirped, nodding to herself and glancing upwards at the young man with a brilliant toothy grin. A little lie would not hurt the pride of a prince, especially one so regal in his shorts and bed hair. The sight alone would've been enough for any hormonal teenager to gawk at, alas, Lysandra cared little for his lack of modesty and afforded his figure little more than a pensive simper.

Before she could swivel and slink back into the freedom of anonymity, Lysandra was beckoned once more by the increasingly bewildered prince. He was like a fly, zipping closer and closer to the pot of honey. The mere notion of swatting away his eager queries did not pass the girl's mind, however, for she was swept up in her own confusion once his words dove into the empty air.

What could she remember?

A hollow heart, bleeding grass, screaming trees and a broken mast

"A ghost visited me and now I'm visiting you. How curious..." She murmured, staring blankly into the distance.

[member="Cedric Grayson"]