Chapter Text
Returning to the Trailblazer's POV.
When you have the chance to make a choice, make one you know you won't regret.
"Caelus!" March yells as you jump in front of the Doomsday Beast's blast. Your bat falls to the side as something comes out of your stomach and begins to repel the blast, but the Doomsday Beast's claw cuts through the air and stabs March before you can react
You're in Belobog, and Svarog has his hand gripped tightly around Dan Heng's throat, but before you can break the grip Svarog's grip tightens and Dan Heng goes limp
You're in the Divination Matrix and that memory of March having you try on a skirt has been ripped from your mind and everyone can see it and Fu Xuan is giving you a look halfway between confused and disgusted before Kafka grabs the back of your jacket and pulls you off the edge with her
You are surrounded by a yellow glow.
"The receptacle's ready."
"Elio said this decision will bring about lots of changes."
"I don't think it needs to be a decision. There's one clear correct choice."
"You're not making much sense, Wolfie."
"The Stelle receptacle is much more suited towards the task than the other one."
"Did you forget that I must be the one to make this decision?"
"All I'll say is the most optimal strategy is the one that I've given you."
"Hmm."
There's a pause.
"Fine, if you're so confident in your own choice. Just don't blame me if things go wrong down the line."
Another pause.
"There we go. How much does he remember?"
"They'll remember you."
As your vision starts to become clear again, you see a faint image of yourself vanishing from your sight.
Waking up, you have the abrupt realization that your arms are immobilized and you're laying on an odd rock. Wait, no. Not an odd rock. A bench covered with... Fragmentum?
You push yourself away from it, and realize that some of it has stuck to you in a way that makes your chest hurt for some reason and your arms ache and your breathing heavy and FUCK. You got stabbed. Firefly got stabbed! Isn't that supposed to be impossible in the Dreamscape?
The thoughts about the Fragmentum momentarily flee from your mind as your eyes race across the area. Subway station. Memory bubbles. A piece of paper next to you that says "be back soon!" in flowing cursive script.
Your eyes land on a treasure chest on the other side of the room, and with it comes a reminder of what else has been going. You're missing a ton of chests from the Reverie (Dreamscape). You also got stabbed and unlike what the Family said, you somehow aren't awake in the Reverie (Reality), given that you're still in this cute outfit (and not your normal boring one), and your body doesn't feel out of place. What else... Black Swan had been trying to invade your brain earlier and take your memories for her entertainment.
And Firefly. You can't get that image of her face out of your head, her apologizing for dying, you barely not being able to save her. You don't recognize the fact that you have a death grip on your own arm until you let go and realize how sore it is.
Stay calm. Don't feel.
You check down your shirt and notice a slight amount of rock embedded between your breasts, slowly receding into your body as the rest of the Fragmentum on the bench crumbles into nothingness. You can't freak out no matter how much you want to - that would just make it worse. Just breathe.
After a short time of opening a chest, beating the shit out of a trashcan, and pulling an origami bird out of a poster, you start walking, albeit slowly, down the creepy alleyway. It's filled with trash, strange noises, chirps from even more Origami birds, and holy shit that's a massive broken Clockie statue.
"Straight out of a horror game," you mutter, leaning over the railing to stare at it - and then follow the direction of its finger upwards, towards the roof. Environmental storytelling.
You turn around, and press the elevator call button. Then you wait, and wait, and pull another Origami bird out of a balloon across the railing, and then pick up a book from on top of a TV and start flipping through it, and then press the elevator call button again, and start trying to send text messages to March or Silver Wolf (and then having to deal with the vast lack of internet connection down here), and pull open one of your gacha games before remembering it also needs internet, and-
ding!
Thank the Aeons.
"Stelle!" you hear as the doors slide open.
Firefly is there. She looks a bit shocked to see you, but then she runs out of the elevator, grabs you by the arm, and pulls you into it, the doors shutting behind as she presses the highest button on the display. The amount of relief you feel is incredible, the miasma hovering around your mood almost instantly evaporating as you see her, here, alive, alright, smiling.
"It's a bit cramped in here-" you start to say, but she pulls you towards her and plants her lips on yours, kissing you almost frantically as her arm wraps around your back. You're a little startled, to be completely honest - but after a moment you get into the rhythm and can't help but kiss her back, harder, deeper, feeling how her lips are ever so slightly dry and chapped yet still impossibly soft, as you and her end up pressed up against the side wall of the elevator. She keeps going, hooking her arm behind you and pulling you closer to her while her repeated kisses get more ravenous, moving faster than you can respond. She reaches one arm upwards, stroking the back of your hair and tilting your head slightly to the side as she inches up the wall and fuck you wish you weren't so tall but on the other hand you need her more than anything else right now so it's all worth it.
Her other hand moves a little too much across your back and you can't suppress a bit of an embarrasing noise. She pulls away slowly, her eyes open slightly trained intently on you, before they widen. "I'm sorry I wasn't intending for things to get that intense-" she says as you lean against the back wall of the carriage, almost in a daze. Your face is really hot, your cheeks warm, your hand fidgety. It feels like your brain is buzzing and pulsing, but unlike the time's it's done that when your Stellaron has gone haywire, this time it feels good. It feels relieving. It feels...
"Wow," you mutter. "I." You look over to her, hoping that the smile on your face isn't too silly. You absolutely needed that. "Don't be sorry, that was..."
Her face is incredibly red as well. Your brain forces an image of her expression when being stabbed to the front of your memory as she takes another step forwards and leans against your side, her breathing slow but heavy. She moves her hand close to yours, and your fingers slowly intertwine.
She's safe. You're both safe. You don't need to worry about that. You just need to live as you are right now.
"I'm so glad to see you again," she says. "And this time we're not in immediate danger. We probably won't be in any for a while."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not called for in the script until a while from now. It says that 'I'll see' when the next opportunity arrives. Until then, the two of us can enjoy Dreamflux Reef together, if you want."
"Oh!" You connect the dots. "That thing with Something Unto Death was your first death in the script, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Firefly says, looking off to the side. "It was written as a 'first death by the guardian of dreams', which I suppose you could consider that meme as being."
"I didn't screw things over again, did I?"
She pauses. Her hand squeezes yours tightly, and she shuts her eyes and breathes deeply. "You weren't... mentioned in the script. You were able to make any choice you want."
A wave of relief washes over you, and the smile returns to your face. "Well, I don't think I made one that I regret."
"Heh. Kafka's left an impression on you," Firefly murmured. "I hope I can do the same."
"You already have."
The elevator bell dings, and the doors slide open to reveal what you assume to be Dreamflux Reef. "So this is what the real Dreamscape is like," you say, glancing around. The upside-down Grand Theater off in the distance, the run-down buildings, the overall defeated atmosphere of the place - they all point to something that used to be a glorious, bustling town but now was near silent except for the occasional conversation and shout. "It's... different than I expected."
"Not all of Penacony is the sweet dream. This is where those who can't afford the cost of living in the Twelve Hours go if they can't leave."
You take a few steps out, your hand still intertwined with Firefly's, gazing outwards and upwards. You swear, directly above you is the Golden Hour in all its hustle and bustle. You know the street where you got hit by a car and got an achievement for it.
Firefly takes you up a flight of stairs just near the elevator, to a small area with a food card and a stage. "There's a nice view here," she says.
"Is that a singularity?" you say, pointing at the glowing ball of memoria near the horizon that appeared to be sucking in everything around it. "Creepy."
"I personally think it's very peaceful. That's... close to where I found you."
"Huh? Found when?"
"Just now, just after we died. You were trapped in a sea of memoria coming out of that thing. I had to swim through it and grab you out of it before I was able to save you. There was another woman in there as well, who should have been waiting for you."
The singularity almost pulses, the odd view of the buildings twisting into the center only slightly worrying you. "How did you even know where I was?"
"Paths. Intuition. A little bit of luck." She leans close to you again, pressing against your side as you walk towards the black - well, moreso blue - hole. "I don't want to think about what would have happened if I hadn't."
"A Stellaron disaster, probably."
"I'm more scared of the fact that I wouldn't have been able to say goodbye again. If we do have to seperate in the future, I want it to be on our own terms."
"Wait, hold on, you don't actually die when you die in the dreamscape, right? You just wake back up in the Dreampool."
"Not me, and not the other people who get attacked by Death. They enter an endless nightmare that they can't wake up from. I'm lucky I made it out."
"Oh." That's what the weird must have been. "I think I know what you were talking about. I had a bunch of awful dreams before I woke up down there." You shudder. "Whatever was in that memoria was trying to take some of my scariest memories and play them out in a way that was even worse."
Firefly stares out at the black hole. "I wonder if that's where the Stellaron is."
"A Stellaron, here?" you ask.
Firefly turns back towards you. "There isn't going to be a planet we go to that doesn't have a stellaron." She glances at the singularity, and then to the few people hanging around the area. "Trapping the unlucky attacked by Death within endless nightmares in order to sustain the sweet dream... that's the sort of disaster the Stellaron would bring."
"Now you know where it is for when you hunt it."
"We're not supposed to steal this one." She suddenly goes quiet, her mouth slightly open, taking in a deep breath to speak and then exhaling it.
You can't come up with something to saw, so you squeeze her hand back. She doesn't sem like the rest of the Hunters in the first place. She's so nice, and sweet, and sure she has a lot of secrets but anyone in the Hunters does. She doesn't seem like she would ever actually be a Stellaron Hunter.
Heh. Maybe that's how she was so good at her job.
Firefly suddenly jerks away from you, and you stumble and fall forwards. When you pick yourself up, you see her being restrained by four circles of musical staves around her wrists, glowing pink and purple. A woman in dark sunglasses and a coat approaches her.
"I apologize for this, I really hope I'm wrong, but just in case, I want to be completely sure," the woman says, pulling a microphone from her outfit. "Tell me, 'Firefly of the Iris Family'. Did you come from the Everflame Mansion?"
Fate's Ensemble
March 7th: Unlucky Negotiator.
"Black Swan?"
"What is it?"
"What happened with Stelle?"
Aventurine had already left the room. He had revealed a number of different things, each one more unpleasant than the last - first that Black Swan was supposed to be her 'rescuer', that Acheron was an Emanator of an unknown destructive path, and that the villans that had kidnapped Asta recently had all been killed in action, before promising to reveal some "truth" about the Dreamscape that March hadn't seen before.
That strange feeling of being not in her body had faded as soon as she had left the battle with SAM. There was a part of her that was scared - she had realized that the closest feeling she remembered to that was back in those early days before she had transitioned, when she was just moving through life without any memories or knowledge of who she was or wanted to be. But that didn't fit now. She had a life and she was so unbelievably happy to be a girl. She didn't want to go back to constantly dissociating.
She didn't want Stelle to experience that either - except that she had been asking throughout Aventurine's ramblings about where Stelle was, and each time she was met with an evasive answer or a dismissive "We'll talk about that later." She wanted to talk about it now! Something had happened to her closest friend - and hopefully future girlfriend if Stelle could take a hint - and the more time went on with her still in the dark, the more fearful she got.
Black Swan had a slight frown on her face as she spoke. "I'm afraid I don't know. She's vanished."
"You were with her! How did she vanish?"
"There was... a memory zone meme. Something Unto Death. Did Stelle tell you about it before?"
March nodded. "The creepy one that attacked her and her new friend?"
"Yes. It made it to Firefly before we could track her down. Stelle made a heroic effort to save her, and..."
"Oh, no. Stelle..." March looked downwards. Stelle hadn't taken Tinyun's death very well. If this was the same...
"She was incredibly fast, but not enough. She and her girlfriend were stabbed simultaneously. From that point onwards, it's like they never existed in any records of the Dreamscape."
"Stabbed?" March's eyes widened. No, no no no no. That couldn't happen to Stelle, not again! This time she didn't have the gaze of an Aeon to save her. "What about her body in real life?"
"It's still there, still stuck in a dream. There's no way to rouse her, and her sleep looks to be filled with nightmares."
"We can still find her, right? You have to have some sort of Memokeeper ability."
"I can't track what doesn't exist. Stelle and Firefly both fall into that category right now."
Right, Firefly too. Stelle's friend. "Can you tell me anything about Firefly, at least?"
"Firefly was with an unknown person before her trip to the lobby. They seemed to be working together, until the other person betrayed her and left her at the whims of Death. She and Stelle were also very close, given that she kissed Stelle just before her death. The two may have been girlfriends." Black Swan picked a card up from her deck, looked at it for a moment, and then cast it off to the side. "She may have stopped at a bar beforehand. I couldn't tell you anything besides that."
Girlfriends. Girlfriends, girlfriends. Stelle hadn't said anything about that during the meeting. March had missed her chance. No, but that wasn't important right now. What was important was Stelle was missing and she needed to be found and-
"Their deaths - that's what this 'truth' is about. I hope you can trust Aventurine - or rather - trust me and see the truth with your own eyes. This can lead us deeper into the secrets behind Penacony. Once I gather more information from him, I'll make sure you're safely returned to your companions."
March swallowed, nodded, and walked down the hallway towards the open hotel room. Her heart thudded in her chest for each step, until she was just at the threshold.
She turned back. Black Swan was already gone, without a sound.
Aventurine's voice surprised her from inside the room. "Excellent, I knew you would come. Look, Nameless." He beckoned her inside. "The game has already begun."
March took an unsteady step into the room, then another.
"Allow me to make you an offer, one you can't refuse."
Bubbles of memoria were clouding her vision, blocking her view to whatever Aventurine was gesturing to.
"No reason to choose otherwise," he said, pushing the memoria out of the way - and March took a step back, a scream caught in her throat. Robin's lifeless body was laying in a dreampool, a purple blade wound right through her chest.
"And no other choice."
Achievement Unlocked!
If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking
The entire Penacony will go mad...
※ Witness the third murder.
"Brother, I'm back."
Sunday turned around to look at her, the expression on his face remaining unchanged. "Welcome back. How's your preparation for the performance coming?"
"My voice is still..." She trailed off. "The Harmony is testing me."
"Hmm, this is not good... You're the pride of The Family. Don't let those unnecessary emotions affect your perfect pitch."\]
"I... know." She sighed, her dissatisfaction written on her face. "Brother, you seem to be in low spirits. Is it because of the Watchmaker's guest list?"
"Yes, I received the report that... 'Death' had taken some of them. Perhaps someone was behind it." Upon seeing her confusion, Sunday continued. "Ah, I'm sorry. I forgot you just came back. You probably wouldn't know about it. Somehow, a nightmare called 'Death' has descended upon Penacony, striking indiscriminately, bringing spiritual death to all equally..."
"I can't believe this happened," she said. "Was someone killed?"
"Yes. There were two. One was a stowaway, the other..." Sunday's voice wavered. "Was you. Stop with the theatrics, Fool."
Sparkle laughed, taking off her mask. "Not very sharp, are you, chicken-wing boy? There were very clearly three."
"Chicken wing?" Sunday seemed taken aback for just a moment, then his expression returned to neutral. "The Odes of Harmony talks about honesty — 'The words of a fool begins with foolishness and end in treacherous arrogance'. Please leave. Their dreamscape doesn't welcome you."
"Oh, come on, you know I'm right. Your dreamscape is picking fights with more than just a stowaway and your sister. You have the Astral Express breathing down your neck now as well. Are you gonna kick out the Nameless again for having the guts to solve all your problems for you?"
"It's not yet time. When the fated day arrives, I shall mete out justice with unyielding righteousness."
"Wow, you can endure that much? Truly, a heart of ice you've got there. Hey, maybe we could actually get along?"
Sparkle took off her mask, handing it out to Sunday. "How about this? You stand in for your sister at events - surely you don't want the world to hear the Charmony festival's been called off?"
"I-" Sunday sputtered. "I am not-"
Bingo.
"The Family has a plan, and do not dishonor my dear sister with your deceitful tongue again, Fool.", Sunday continued, regaining his composure.
"Alright, alright. Egg on my face," Sparkle said, retracting her mask. "Just putting it out there, if you're ever in a pinch, or need a little makeover..." She wiggled the mask around. "Remember I've got your back."
"There's no need. The malefactor has been exposed under Their radiant gaze and will soon fall by their own machinations. Should the transgressor fail to turn away from this path, Their sword will be honed, Their..."
Sparkle was already walking away. That eggy chicken-wing girl was going to be hard to crack. And no one else was going to be able to entertain her right now. What kind of Elation was this? She couldn't even mess with Stelle - yes, Stelle, she reminded herself, that good-for-nothing Sampo was wrong - and Black Swan was having some bizarre plot thing going around. Her eyes darted around the Golden Hour, looking for someone fun to play a prank on, or somewhere ominous to place one of her dolls - but all the people nearby were just boring NPCs who she didn't care about at all, and the dolls were just
That is, until the flood of pixels burst from the sky and slammed into the ground right in front of the Reverie. Punklordian graffiti started appearing on buildings, lamps, plants, and even a passing car as the infamous wolf of the Stellaron Hunters made her entrance.
What perfect timing.
The Sound And The Fury
Whodunit?
Complete
Trailblaze Mission
Interlude
Stay tuned to find out what happens next in the upcoming installment.
Stay Tuned