On my twentieth birthday, I celebrated by washing my castle and kingdom in blood.
I had suffered; therefore I also had the world suffer with me.
That was also when the names Eva Thornhild and Eva Redwave vanished.
In their place was the title, Tyrant.
I have tried to kill myself, many times over.
Strangulation, poisoning, burning, illness, cold, blood loss, drowning, blades, broken skulls—
I have always survived due to the most unlikely or ridiculous of miracles.
Each time, I’ve felt a feeling of deja vu, or of some strange intuition; a sense of knowing that it wasn’t yet my time to die.
So I simply give up, and decide to indulge my foulness until my time comes.
Rebel forces had appeared in my kingdom.
The time has come.
I embrace their arrival with the greatest of joys.
I have captured the Rebel Leader.
She’s…
Beautiful, I suppose.
So beautiful I want to destroy her, for the world always keeps the most beautiful things away from me. If I don’t have her, I don’t want anyone else to.
She asks if I love her.
She asks what my goals are.
She asks what my thoughts are.
She asks what my past is.
She asks if I’m insane.
I reply, and answer her truthfully.
No.
Death.
Don’t think.
Grief.
Yes.
She cried when I told her my answers.
I was surprised.
She had never cried, nor screamed, when she was tortured; but now she cried and screamed in pain and sadness when I told her of my stories.
I rather like her emotional eyes and tears; they remind me of something familiar, but I can’t quite tell.
I decided to tell her more.
She cries a lot, I learn.
Hmmm.
She escaped from me.
I feel rather sad.
It was nice to talk to her.
She came back.
She brought…
Friends.
There’s a man, a man called a Duke, the Duke of the North.
They are so happy to cut off my head.
I’m also very happy.
My little rebel is crying.
Why are you crying?
…I think I answered your first question wrong back then.
Hello!! I’m Eva Thornhild.
I’m ten!
I’m a very bad girl, because I ran away from my bad daddy.
I don’t think he’s my daddy, because I can see a bit of the future! I met a better daddy, so I’m going to find that daddy!
I'm going to be happy with a big family!
A family without glass bottles!
I found my family! They’re so kind!! So wonderful!
They’re so perfect…
Something is wrong.
Coat Hanger died.
But, but, I’m only fifteen…?
I think it shouldn’t have come this soon, right?
I remember more now.
But I still can’t stop everyone from leaving.
I try to kill the proxy again, but Muffin still dies.
I met her again.
This time I answered her questions again, but correctly.
Yes, I love you.
Yes, my goal is death.
Yes, I don’t think.
Yes, my past is grief.
Yes, I’m insane.
I told her that I went insane thirty years ago.
She said that I was only in my mid-twenties.
I said I was in my late forties.
She cried.
…Why does she cry so much?
I died again.
She cried again.
I realised that I don’t like her crying.
This time, I remembered much more than before.
I also realised that the woman who tried to give me a sandwich when I was—a child?—was actually the rebel leader.
I wonder how she became the beautiful lady in my dungeon cell.
As it turns out, there are many things I don’t know.
Why did my father, someone who told me to discard the world if I so wished, also protect the world when he was the King?
I asked him.
He said, “Because Eva was out there, and I didn’t want her to suffer.”
He looked at me sadly, “But clearly, I didn’t protect you enough.”
I nodded my head.
He really didn’t.
I was breaking.
As I break, my cracks become more and more visible.
I can see it.
Eventually, Bones stops coming to see me in the loops. He finds me scary.
Even the Hounds don’t dare look for me.
The servants never stop loving me, as does my father and Muffin. Instead, they grow progressively more and more stressed, more panicked, more worried, as they try to stop the sand-sculpture me from disappearing in the blowing red winds.
I became so fed up that I killed Coat Hanger—that way, she wouldn’t stress and worry about me, because only I was left to worry over her.
The servants didn’t scold me.
My father hugged me.
I haven’t seen him to work lately.
Muffin is going bald prematurely.
I tell everyone not to worry.
Because I’ll see them in the next cycle.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
Nearly everyone remembers now.
Well, everyone of importance.
I have a fun game.
It’s where I march up to a random stranger and decapitate them on the streets.
It’s funny how everyone walks around the corpse, ignoring it.
Instead, they complain about how much dogs stink.
It’s like everyone of unimportance is but a shell, manipulated to fulfil the world’s bidding, except that the actors’ costumes are starting to snap.
As the fabrics rip, the masks crumble, the props collapse, only the puppets dancing to the strings continue to sing.
Dancing their play on a burning stage.
Until only the flames and ashes are left.
But even the ashes continue to dance.
Ava bolts up from her bed.
Rolling off the bed in a tumble, body trembling, she began to dry heave, pain splitting through her head and piercing her skull like an awl was shoved into her brain.
Utter, absolute agony.
World swimming, the floor changing colours, Ava could barely remember where she was or who she was.
Was she Ava, or Eva?
Two sets of memories clashed in her mind, tearing her apart from within.
Suddenly, a thought popped up in her mind, unbidden, sliding through her teeth and into the air.
“—Was there really a need to distinguish between the two?”
The blue panel floated over next to her.
Ava suddenly felt that she could see her own profile; she could see her crouching on the floor, a pained, shaking bundle of thin silks and pale skin, through a thin sheet of shattered glass.
Those lips of hers, the lips behind the shattered screen, said, “Especially when we both share thoughts?”
Ava’s pain suddenly receded, like a tidal wave pulling back into the ocean. “If two people exchange their memories—”
“—and link their thoughts, then are they—”
“—One mind and two bodies—”
“—Or two bodies that share minds?” The her in the panel smiled, palm pressed against glass. “Afterall, both bodies are mine… Just that an extra set of memories got squeezed in.”
“...What makes us the same? Why weren’t we like this before?”
They thought out loud together.
“It must be the system.”
“The Rayna from the New System or the Rayna from this world—”
“—They fused, and are one and the same.”
“We fused, and are one and the same.”
The two bodies suddenly paused. “If we are one and the same, then… What is our name?”
Both bodies tilted their heads.
It was quickly decided.
Ava was the name that Rayna was familiar with, so they should go with that.
But, what about the other body?
But then…
Why was there a need for a distinction?
It was too confusing, and too hard to understand, so all they needed to do was to kill the surplus body.
The one in the panel, who was useless.
The girl in the panel—the girl who shared a mental link and memories with the girl outside—lifted her hand, plucking a shard of glass from the bedsheets. With a wide, grinning smile, she thrust it into her chest, blood splattering over the room.
The blood was like pixels; it was first splatters, then small, impossibly tiny cubes that disintegrated into 0s and 1s.
Like an unstoppable corruption, her wounds bled and bled, her very being fraying; her skin crumbled, her hair turned to ashes, her organs and bones unwinding into data.
A mind that held two bodies found it too burdensome to support two bodies, so it decisively cut one off.
A part of Ava laughed. “Look!” She cried, “Look! Now, I can live on forever as another being! What a wonderful formless existence!”
The other part of Ava was dazed. She confusedly asked, “Aren’t these just memories? Why are they so strong? Why are they so… complete? A new personality? A new persona? A bird with two heads?”
The mad, crazy, psycho part laughed harder. “Throw an infant to live with dogs; it will feast like a dog, piss like a dog, growl like a dog. Throw an infant to live with the apes; it will eat like an ape, piss like an ape, roar like an ape. Environment nurtures inherent nature; why can’t one inherent nature have two personas?”
Ava staggered to her feet. “I can’t have two personas. She wouldn’t love it, she only loves me, she won’t love all of me…”
“Hmm!” The crazy part laughed, “Two Raynas, one sleeping; two Avas, one sane and one maddened; two Raynas to love, two Avas to love! What is there to hate? This is true joy, the perfection of existence!”
Yes, that made a lot of sense.
Tottering to the door, Ava staggered her way out, bare feet dragging drunkenly across the tiles.
A twisted smile stretched across her face, as morbid and as unnatural as a centipede made of human limbs.
Why not kill the butler today?
How dare he take Muffin’s place.
