The Void Realm was a harrowing, hellish, disturbing network of tubelike tunnels, twisting among themselves like some massive, nightmarish intestinal tract, interrupted by pockets of space occupied by the servants of Noire itself. The walls, floors, and ceilings of this ghastly network were forged of the very fabric of the void itself. Press yourself too hard up against a weak point, and you could fall through the very dimension itself into a vastly different section of the realm. Because the tunnels constantly shifted and writhed, it may be impossible for you to ever find your way back. You may very well find yourself lost forever in the ever-evolving labyrinth of darkness itself.

Darkos hated it. It was scary at first, being astrally chained to Hari as the void spawn towed him through the horrifying, twisting, almost pulsing tunnels, but the spook factor wore off after a couple of hours. Really, it was kinda just boring. But Darkos was having quite a bit of fun reminding Hari of that.

“Okay, I spy something… black.”

“Darkos, you really aren’t funny.” Hari’s voice was a bit strained, and Darkos let out a small laugh.

“This one’s different, I promise.”

“The tunnels.”

“It’s actually your hair. But that was too easy, let’s do another. I spy something… black.”

“I’m not playing your foolish games. You won’t win this one.”

Darkos crossed his arms, not letting the small smile leave his face. “I will win if you don’t play.”

Hari just sniffed at this and continued down the long, boring hallway. He drifted along, hovering several inches above the spectral ground, his long coat almost touching the filmy floor. It didn’t, of course, because both Hari and Darkos were essentially apparitions, and Hari could control what part of them touched what whenever he wanted.

The way Hari explained it, there really weren’t any senses in the void real. Or at least, there weren’t the standard five. Sight, sound, smell, all of that didn’t really exist in the void realm. They’d spent the first hour or so drifting in a very disorienting manner that Darkos would never try to describe until the day he died. Then Hari had gotten rather petulant and started complaining about how the void was so dreary. It reminded Darkos a bit of Geela, but way whinier. Darkos had just about had enough after maybe ten minutes of this and had asked if there was any way to manifest corporeally.

Hari got really excited at that and said that he thought there just might be. So now they were apparitions. Hari looked cool, floating about, even cooler than he had on the boat. Meanwhile, Darkos had to trundle after him, wearing a tunic that looked like a pillow covering with holes cut at the top and sides for his neck and arms. Walking wasn’t particularly tiring to do, but it wasn’t nice in the slightest and he was cold. The cobwebby fabric of reality stuck to his feet as he walked. Yes, feet. Hari didn’t even give him shoes. And there would be no running for Darkos, cause while he did semi-corporeally exist, he was still mostly astrally chained to Hari’s soul. A visual chain was not needed.

“So how far’s Noire?” Darkos asked.

Hari made a noise at the back of this throat. “Please stop calling it Noire. You wouldn’t like it if I called you Dark or something stupid like that.”

Darkos bristled at this internally, though he tried not to show it. “My parents call me Dark.”

Hari glanced back at Darkos, a wicked eyebrow cocked. “So they knew you were tainted? They tried to send you up to Noirela? Why didn’t it work?”

“They didn’t.” But Darkos wasn’t saying more. He was keeping mum on the specifics of his childhood, partly because it annoyed Hari and partly because Hari had been super insistent on knowing why Darkos hadn’t been corrupted. If Hari wanted to know, there was no way it’d be good for him to find out.

“What do I have to do to get you to confess to me!” Hari stopped dead in his tracks stomping a foot, something Darkos hadn’t at all expected. The two collided, meaning their bodies bounced into each other. Hari was propelled a few feet away, drifting lazily as if he were maybe a balloon. Darkos fell onto his rear end quite a bit harder and almost sank through the ground. Had it not been for Hari clutching his dirty rag tunic, he’d have fallen through into god knows where.

“I can fall through that?” Darkos asked, shaking a bit as Hari helped him to his feet. “Thought I was chained to you.”

“You are. Means you can’t stray far but I suppose if you really messed things up, you could fall through a wall and get eternally lost in the void.” Hari wrinkled his nose and swatted at a spiderweb-like piece of void matter, drifting by, dislodged by their tumbles. “I don’t recommend it. Did that once and will never again.”

This last statement had a funny effect on Darkos’s brain. It was as if suddenly he were Hari. As if suddenly he could picture being an incorporeal form flitting through the void realm, barely even a half-formed thought. Then, as soon as it came, the memory—or whatever it had been—vanished, leaving Darkos a little perturbed.

“You’ve been here before?” Darkos asked. It seemed like a stupid question. It probably was one, given Hari’s void ancestry and all, but he asked it all the same and braced himself for the scathing answer.

“Yes, my poor, dear, simple brother. I have. I’m a void spawn.” Hari tossed his hair over his shoulder and continued the walk down the hall. “I was incarnated here. I spent millennia gathering powers from the inky corners of the nether, absorbing energy from the darkness itself. I spent many a century drifting, a vague semblance of consciousness.” He tipped his head at Darkos, perhaps reading a bit of confusion on his face. “You don’t remember, do you?”

No, Darkos didn’t, not really. Very little about this place stirred any kind of familiarity, but there were the tiniest glimpses of memory. That statement Hari had made earlier, the one that had triggered Darkos’s sense of deja vu, that had been the first hint that he might, after all, remember this place.

Didn’t quite fit with stupid Adora’s claim that he wasn’t a void spawn, did it? Darkos would have to fill her in on this new piece of evidence once he got back.

“No, I don't remember.” No point in telling Hari about the faint memory. Darkos would remain exclusive with that information too.

“Ha. Of course not. Only an awakened void spawn would.” Hari seemed pleased with this answer. “Of course, that still begs the question. What do I have to do to get you to tell me, Darkos?”

Darkos pondered this for a moment. “You could free me? Not bring me to Noire?”

Hari winced, either at the abbreviated name or at the suggestion. “Hardly. You know I would never. Never!”

To this, Darkos just shrugged. “Shame.”

“Well, there has to be something else.” Hari’s voice was almost a sputter. Not quite, but it was close. “Something. I mean what do you even have to gain by withholding the information?”

Darkos grinned. “Annoying you?”

Now Hari did sputter. “That’s simply outrageous. I won’t have it. This is my crowning moment of glory, and you’re being a brat. You really are the youngest, aren’t you? The others always used to mock me for that. Being the baby of the group. Now I’ll show them!”

“Aren’t they dead?” Darkos glanced around at the mind-numbingly boring walls, as if expecting a ghoulishly dead version of Sinistrina to pop out.

Hari eyed the walls too, before a smirk slowly spread across his face. “I’ll answer you if you answer my question. How’s that for a deal? I can see you’re a curious man, and I know everything about this place. At the end of the day, neither of our questions impacts our situations. I still have you at the end of a leash and you still walk to your doom. What’s a little answer-for-answer?”

The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. Hari wasn’t actually going to get anything from Darkos, what with Darkos not actually having the answer to his question, but maybe Darkos could pick up something useful from the void. Maybe he could find a way to escape or something heroic. Surprise Geela with his own daring bid for freedom. Impress her.

“Alright,” Darkos said. “You go first.”

“Not fair. You’ll just not answer.” Hari fired back so quickly, Darkos had a nagging suspicion that he’d planned to say that.

“No, I won’t,” Darkos said. “I’m more honorable than you are. You definitely wouldn’t answer your question if I went first. So you have to.”

“Preposterous.”

Darkos threw up his hands. “I dunno, Hari, this was your genius idea. If you really don’t have a way to make sure we both follow through, then the game is over. Pretty fast. Once again.” He crossed his arms. “Seems like you’ve gotten pretty good at being the bratty baby brother after all.”

“I don’t like you, Darkos.” Hari’s lip had curled into a sneer. “I don’t like this new sibling dynamic. We had a great dynamic, the five of us, and we all spent a lot of time theorizing what our sixth sibling was going to be like. Well, let me tell you, none of us pictured a chiselled, lawful good, order-aligned pretty boy.”

Now that was entirely uncalled for. It’s not that Darkos refuted or resented too many of the claims, but ‘pretty boy’ was pretty rich coming from someone who’d created corporeal forms just so that he could appreciate his own looks a bit better. But before Darkos had the chance to say as much, Hari spoke again.

“Now, unrelated to anything you’ve said, I’ve come up with a solution to this ‘who goes first’ spat.” He waved a hand, and Darkos felt almost like his tongue had gotten a bit heavier in his mouth. “Feel that?”

“Mhm.”

“Thought you might. That is a verity chain.” Hari’s lips twisted into a menacing smile. “Because our forms are apparitions, and by extension our mouths and words and ears and all of that, I tied what noise you’re allowed to produce to what you intrinsically know. So when it’s active, you can’t say anything that isn’t true as far as you know it. Or you can’t produce the sounds you’d need to say it.”

This seemed unfair. “So only I have to say the truth? Not fair. I’m unmaking the deal.”

“No no no, it goes two ways.” Hari wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You can’t feel that?”

Darkos reached out, starting with his tongue and tracing the chain back to Hari’s. Okay, yes, they were linked. It wasn’t a link he wanted to think much about but they were, unfortunately, very connected.

“All right,” Darkos said, a bit mollified if uncomfortable. “So you still go first. As a show of goodwill, since you made the chain.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” But Hari was fighting a lost battle against his unmanageable need to talk about himself. “Fine. I’ll go. You wanted to know if my siblings were truly dead?”

Darkos nodded, prepping mentlaly to take some notes here.

Hari sighed. “Alright, the short answer is no.”

Darkos let his mouth drop open, as if appalled, and Hari grinned, spurred on by Darkos’s surprise.

“Yes, void spawn are made of sterner stuff than mere mortals. While most mortals flee to their patrons—who will do crow knows what to their eternal souls—we simply return to the void realm, where we are embedded once again into the fabric of night, the embrace of our parent.” He trailed his fingers along the smokey walls of the tunnel. “We are the thing nightmares are made of. Noirela then must gather more power to bring us back out. Of course—” He stopped to let his evil grin turn to a smug smirk. “We’ll both be largely responsible for that, once Noirela resets your brain to act properly. We’ll bring back the others and raise them…” A hesitant frown crossed his face at this. “Or, no. No, we’ll find someone else to do the child-rearing. But once they’re grown, Terha and I will take them under our wings and they’ll be the bratty little siblings!”

Darkos wasn’t expecting this to be Hari’s triumphant finishing line, so he wasn’t expecting to have to suppress a snort of laughter. And naturally, because he wasn’t expecting to need to, he failed to.

“Are you laughing at me?” Hari’s eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what it’s like to be the youngest!”

“How can you possibly say that?” Darkos asked, still laughing a bit. “I am the youngest.”

Hari lifted his chin at this and began pulling Darkos along, a bit faster now. “Yes, I know that. You stole that from me. But nevermind. Soon I will be at the head of the new order of Noirela’s Children. Well, Terha and me, but she wouldn’t mind. We’ve always been good at sharing power. The Iron Queen and the Pirate King. We can make a little island commune and make some peasants raise them until they’re all grown up.” An almost peaceful smile crossed Hari’s lips as he dreamed of a happy little village of nightmare children. “You’re invited too, once we figure out what’s wrong with you.”

Darkos frowned. “How fast do you think—”

“Ah ah! You next.”

Drat. It wasn’t that Darkos was expecting Hari to forget, but he was hoping to get more than just one question out of him.

Especially since Darkos’s answer was going to end the game quickly.

“Short answer is, I don’t know.”

An empty silence hung in the air at this.

“And the long answer?” Hari asked.

“Uh… I do not know?”

“Darkos!” Hari’s voice jumped straight past annoyed or frustrated to angry. As he spoke, the verity chain dropped, signalling the end of their little game. “You cheated! You knew that would be your answer and you tricked me into giving away valuable void secrets.”

Darkos personally didn’t see how Hari’s void commune was a void secret but it did feel good to know that Hari felt outsmarted. Especially given how much he and Terha had outsmarted Geela and Darkos.

“There has to be something.” Hari’s insistence didn’t even really seem directed at Darkos, but rather at the universe itself. “Something. In your past. A ritual your parents performed. A sacred artifact. A patron you worship.”

“Ohhh,” Darkos said, scratching his head. “Maybe it was that necklace of the sun I always wore around my neck that hummed and glowed whenever I was in the dark.”

Hari looked hopeful. “Really?”

Darkos raised an eyebrow in a perfect mimic of Geela’s ‘you idiot’ look. He’d spent a lot of time practicing the expression, and it paid off to see Hari’s face sour.

“Honestly though,” Darkos said. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t even know what details to look for.”

“Then tell me about your life,” Hari said. “All of it. From the start.”

Darkos raised the eyebrow again. “I’m not getting into the actual, you know. The whole… With my parents I mean.” His cheeks burned a bit at his own insinuation. “I’m just not going to explain that. Besides, the circumstance of my birth wasn’t part of the deal. The deal was that I tell you the answer to your question.” But now Darkos’s mind started racing a bit, and he was getting excited. Darkos had no idea what stopped him from being a void fiend, and seriously doubted Hari would be able to find out after just a few childhood anecdotes, but Darkos could stand to learn a ton about the void, about Noire, about all of it.

“I know what the deal was. I made it.” Hari yanked on the invisible astral chain, and Darkos stumbled forward. “You know I can make this trip unpleasant for you, right?”

“Okay,” Darkos said, eyes watering a bit from the tug. “New deal. We swap stories. You tell me something about your childhood, the void, your—our siblings. I’ll tell you something about my life.”

“Hmm.” Hari stroked his chin. “What’s your angle?”

“Curiosity?” Darkos shrugged. “Besides, wouldn’t it be good for me to know? Would save Noire a lot of time teaching me.”

“Okay, fine but on one condition.” Hari held up a finger. “You need to start saying Noirela. Noire sounds so foolish, so juvenile. You’re in its realm, you can’t possibly do any damage.”

Darkos didn’t know if this was right. It might be but it might be a lie. Then again, at this point, giving Noire a bit of power might be worth what he was going to learn. A slightly more powerful Noire wasn’t great, but unless Darkos could get out of this, it wasn’t really going to matter.

“All right,” Darkos said, holding out a hand. “You have yourself a deal.”