1.94 [Selene]

Selene

Cultivators had a reputation for fearlessness.

In many ways, it was well-earned. In the course of their journey, a cultivator’s refinement steadily uplifted them body and soul in a way that put most common worries beneath them. An unrefined mortal feared the bite of a knife because they knew their body was a fragile thing and prone to failure. A cultivator in the Civic Realm could hone their body and suffer the damage gracefully, survive long enough to seek a physician or even close the wound themselves if they had the proper control. A Sophic cultivator worth their rank could survive almost any mundane gouge, assuming the knife could pierce their skin at all.

Beyond the mortal realms of cultivation, where men and women transcended the limitations of their feeble humanity – if only in the smallest of parts – mundane wounds were so far beneath their notice that many forgot they had ever been a cause for concern in the first place. Why should a Hero fear a stabbing in a back alley, when their body had already weathered the blows of monsters and virtuous beasts and their own fellow legends without faltering? How could a Tyrant fear the stopping of their heart, when they had already given it up for their coronation?

It was all too easy to forget that even the greatest of them had been fragile flesh and blood at one point or another in their lives. As a man became further refined, it became more and more difficult for him to empathize with the concerns of the crude men languishing at the foot of the divine mountain. As a woman laid the foundations and raised the pillars of her ego within her soul, the subjugations that unrefined women crept through night time streets in fear of seemed as distant to her as the clouds in heaven above.

They simply didn’t understand. The scope was too small.

Of course, the opposite also tended to be true.

“The daughter of the First Son to Burn is afraid of the dark. The daughter of the oracle whose majesty illuminates the furthest corners of whatever room she steps into fears a world without light. The Fates do love their little ironies, don’t they?”

“You promised you wouldn’t laugh.”

“And look. I’m not laughing, am I? Now, if I’d been there to see your father spit blood when he first discovered this little affliction-“

“It isn’t little! And Átta doesn’t know.”

“Ho? He really will choke on his own biles if he finds out you came to me first, you know.”

“You can’t tell him.”

“I can do whatever I want, girl.”

“Don’t tell him! Please!”

“Fine, fine. Your heart will be the one to bear the secret’s weight. Now why did you come to me with this?”

“I didn’t… I didn’t used to be afraid of the dark.”

“Is that so? And when did it start?”

“After your bee stung me. When I started having those dreams.”

“Go on.”

“You said treating it with honey would make it go away-“

“And it did. All that remains of that putrid wound is a scar the size of a stinger’s tip.”

“But the dreams didn’t stop! They only got worse.”

“Worse?”

“They didn’t make sense before, b-but after the honey… they’re scary now.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t want to. I don’t like it.”

“Describe them.”

“No!”

“Why?”

“Because I hate them! They’re scary, and they hurt! I don’t want to talk about them, and I don’t want to think about them – I don’t want to go to sleep and I don’t want to close my eyes! I-I’m even scared to blink! Like I’m just some little girl-”

“You are a little girl.”

“No I’m not! I’m a cultivator. I’m refined. I shouldn’t have to talk about these things. I shouldn’t be afraid of anything at all.”

“Cultivators can’t be afraid? Is that what you think?”

“Átta isn’t afraid of anything.”

“I can assure you that isn’t true. Everyone fears something in the end – even your father.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“An empty cup. Quickly, girl, deliver me from my fear. When you get back, we’ll see about delivering you from yours.”

Fallen into a world of unbroken shadows, Selene couldn’t see the Hero of the Scything Squall. But she could hear him.

It was less helpful than it might have been.

“Get away,” he hissed, and though the sound of it came from her direct right, Selene only grasped empty air when her arm whipped out to grab him.

“Scythas,” she hissed right back, knowing that even if she was facing the opposite way he would hear her. “You aren’t well. Let me help you.”

“Fuck you.”

She had been foolish to toss him down into the coffin’s dark chasm. The impact at the end of their fall hadn’t been enough to meaningfully harm cultivators of their standing, but it had been enough to wake the delirious Hero from the daze her headbutt had put him under. In the bare second that had separated their descent, he’d escaped from her reach and evaded her ever since.

Her heart’s flame couldn’t pierce these shadows. And now the wind was against her, too. She was blind. Worse, she couldn’t trust her ears. Until this was over, her other senses would have to do. Before they could help Solus and Griffon, they needed to escape. Before they could escape, she had to return the Hero to his senses.

She needed honey.

Selene navigated the dark caverns beneath the earth with the only senses she could trust. She cast off her sandals so that her bare feet could grip the cool, slick rocks beneath them and feel their minute shifting as she walked. She inhaled deeply with each breath, through her mouth as well as her nose, tasting and scenting for anything beyond the damp smell of subterranean stone. Her refined senses were all but worthless to her, unfortunately. Her civic sense for pneuma was curiously numb, her sophic sense finding no trace of another’s influence no matter how far she cast it out.

As for her heroic sense. Well.

“Don’t look at me,” the Hero snapped, shielding his cracked and bleeding heart from her with howling gales of wind. Selene tucked her chin and hunched her shoulders, gripping the slick stone with her toes as best she could while the breeze buffeted her from alternating angles. It sought to knock her off her feet. She wouldn’t let it.

“Your heart is not your own, cultivator,” she warned him for the second time since she had known him. She couldn’t hear herself speak, but she knew he would. She grit her teeth and pressed forward. Another blind step. Another deep breath.

“It’s yours now, is that it?” Scythas spat, his voice echoing from all around her. “I refuse. You can’t have it. You can’t have me.”

Selene heard the screams of violated souls on the wind. She heard the whistle of blades cutting through the air, and the grotesque noise of their impact in frail human flesh. She heard the snarls of beasts and the sound of limbs being torn from their sockets. She heard anguish in the repetition of heavy breath and the rhythm of flesh impacting flesh.

She heard the end of all things in the howling of the wind.

Selene didn’t fear the dark. Not anymore.

But she still despised it.

“The dark is a silly thing to fear.”

“Not as silly as an empty cup.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Ah, but you don’t know why I fear an empty cup. I, on the other hand, know exactly why you fear the dark. That’s why I find it silly. And that’s how you overcome your fear.”

“?”

“By understanding it. You say your dreams don’t make any sense, and their contents frighten you – so understand them.”

“How?”

“How should I know?”

“You’re useless!”

“So I’m told. If understanding is impossible for the moment, there are other ways to overcome your fears.”

“Like what?”

“You could learn to live with them. Accept that your heart will race whenever you close your eyes, resign yourself every night to the fact that your dreams will be mad and frightening things. Know that cold sweat will wet your skin whenever you step into a darkened room. Brave it. Live your life regardless.”

“… I don’t like that way.”

“Well, I suppose there is another.”

“… What is it?”