Olivia raised her scythe, gleaming with the golden Blade of Dawn.
And she brought it down. She severed the seals of her mind.
Memories came flooding to her, all at once. It was a flood, a rush, a wild torrent that was too fast, too loud, too much at once. She was sure she was screaming, but she couldn’t hear her voice. She knew this same flood was overwhelming Sonya and Fae — she felt them, faintly, as part of her, connected to her.
I’m sorry.
She couldn’t say it. Everything in her mind was too much, the Orphan of the Dawn was gone in this rush of history.
Please… please!
“ ‘Please’ what?”
Olivia looked up.
She stood in a white void. And before her stood…
Herself.
Olivia Scarlett Quinn.
But something about her was different.
The other Olivia nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “I haven’t left for the Enchanted Dominion yet. I haven’t been taken by Wasuryu and turned into the Sealed Vessel yet.”
I don’t…
“It’s all right,” the other Olivia said. “I’m going to help you. One step at a time.”
But I —
“I know.” The other Olivia didn’t smile — smiles never came easily to Olivia. But there was the hint of it in her voice, in her demeanor. “Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to take over you. You and I… we’ve been separate. Now it’s time for us to be one again.”
You —
The other Olivia nodded. “That’s right. I placed the seals. I didn’t do it alone. It was…” She lowered her gaze, then shook her head. “I’m not sure. I think, perhaps, the Orphan of the Dawn reached out to us. Gave us some of her power, what she could. It all happened so quickly, just a desperate reflex. But it worked.” She looked back up, staring at Olivia. “I’m sorry. Even though I’m here to guide you, it still won’t be easy. But… it’s like you’ve seen with Fae. There’s still hope. So don’t give up. And don’t run away.”
The other Olivia held out her hand. Olivia reached for it, and was surprised to see two other hands reaching with hers.
Sonya. Fae.
They were right here with her.
“You’ll never walk alone.”
Olivia grasped the other Olivia’s hand, and was brought back into the wild flood of memories that had been sealed for so long.
But instead of rushing through her, the flood was stilled. As if it had been flash-frozen, all around her she saw eddies of memory, high waves cresting with her past, whirlpools surging with the truth.
All was stopped. Waiting.
“Let’s… start at the beginning.”
Olivia followed her past self into a wall of water.
The past came rushing back to her.
Renault. The secret city of mages, hidden away at the South Pole, disguised by both magic and the elements. That glorious white city had been her home all her life. She’d never left it. Never seen the rest of the world outside of photographs, illustrations, and, in the last few years before she left her beloved city, in flickering black-and-white films.
She’d been born here, in the snow and ice, in the constant hum of magic and magitechnology. And she…
She saw her parents.
She saw her mother and father through the eyes of a child. Smiling at her, holding her, singing to her. Singing, singing so much, for they did so love music.
Music and magic. Olivia’s two great loves. She was raised in love, surrounded by parents, schoolmates, and friends who loved her so dearly.
So then why — ?
“Patiently,” the other Olivia said. “One step at a time.”
Olivia hadn’t been much for betraying emotion in her voice, even before she’d become the Sealed Vessel. So it was hard to glean much behind the words spoken to her.
But she could feel a faint sense of pain.
Childhood was marvelous to behold, to see and hear. That was how it started, here in this strange memory-ocean — sights, sounds, smells. The physical senses.
It was only as Olivia spent more time walking through it that she began to feel it. Not with her skin…
With her heart.
Love. Love she couldn’t imagine, love that made no sense to her, the kind of love that only comes from parents for their child.
Tears stung her eyes, and she couldn’t hold them back. They streamed down her cheeks.
How did I forget this?
How could I possibly forget this feeling?
Overwhelmed, she knelt in the time-stopped waters. The other Olivia stood a few paces ahead of her, watching, waiting.
Patient.
Olivia didn’t know how long she knelt there, crying. She felt like the tears would never stop, and she couldn’t grasp them, couldn’t make them make sense in her mind.
Love. Why was it so wonderful, yet so painful?
And how could she have possibly forgotten?
How did I let that Dragon take this from me?
There it was. The anguish and pain crystallizing in a way that she understood, in a way that had haunted her even when she was the Sealed Vessel, with the faintest scrap of herself remaining behind the emotionless, obedient shell.
Wasuryu.
She may now be “Free now and forever from the Dragon’s hold,” but she still felt within and without all that he had done to her. All that he had made her do. All that he had stolen from her.
Who am I?
That question only rang in her mind because of the wicked Dragon. She’d lost herself. These first memories, just the happy first years of childhood, weren’t the only reason for these tears. They were a catalyst, a catalyst of understanding just how evil a blow had been dealt to her.
And yet rage was not the first feeling in her heart, or the first thought in her mind.
Sorrow was. Grief, for all that she had lost. Even though she was getting it back now, these were memories. The past.
A past that had defined her, and tiny echoes of a future that would never be.
“Gone too soon.”
Olivia wasn’t startled by those three words. They weren’t hers — they were an echo of a memory from Fae. Fae, who loved wandering through cemeteries, who had visited the Plains of the Fallen twice.
“Gone too soon.” Common words on headstones.
That’s me.
Olivia hadn’t died. But to her parents…
…to her brother…
She had. Nineteen years old. Too young. Too soon. Gone from their lives.
These memories were all she had of them now. And what a weight they carried.
Time didn’t exist in this place, so Olivia couldn’t know how long she knelt, weeping. All she knew was that, eventually, she did stand up again. She did start walking again.
The other Olivia led her.
A childhood of music and magic, of laughter and love, faded away. They were back out in the time-stopped flood, and the other Olivia led the way. This flood, Olivia realized, was raging through, destroying, a façade of Renault in her mind.
Because Renault was everything to her. The only home she’d ever known.
They passed through another wall of water in the gaping, washed-out ruins of a toppled white skyscraper.
Adolescence.
That was what awaited Olivia within.
This was when Olivia started going to the Wall. The line of protection around Renault, that kept the massive, horrific monsters — Stalkers — outside. And it was defended every single day…
…by Guardians.
Twelve year-old Olivia watched them. She idolized them.
The Guardians were amazing. And that awe struck Olivia now, filled her heart with longing, with a need that couldn’t be filled by anything else she was doing with her life. She loved music, and she would never give it up.
But her deepest calling was to be atop the Wall. To fight the Stalkers.
To be a Guardian.
Training took over her life. Her parents facilitated it, encouraged it. And she met others — teachers, former Guardians and current Guardians, who taught her so much.
She was surrounded by even more people. She was constantly learning from others, her ears full of encouragement and lessons.
And yet…
“This is where it started,” the other Olivia said. She had a faraway tone, and she gazed ahead, away from Olivia.
But Olivia felt it, then. A pang in her heart, not one of longing or of desire, but one of…
Emptiness.
She was surrounded by others. She was loved, encouraged, cherished, and supported.
But at twelve years old, she was suddenly feeling so very alone.
Adolescence and her early teenage years were tumultuous. And yet…
I never let them see.
That was Olivia’s instinct from day one. When she hurt, when she was lost, when she was struggling…
She dealt with it on her own. She wouldn’t dare let anyone see.
What young Olivia didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that her instincts, her solitudinal tendencies, only made that black hole of loneliness grow.
And yet…
That was what it was. That was what made things so difficult, what I never understood, what I…
“Still don’t understand.” The other Olivia finished for her.
She wasn’t alone. But she felt so alone. And a part of her wanted to be alone. That part of her grew stronger, even as she grew stronger with magic. She was a prodigy, or so people told her. Guardians wielded weapons, and she chose a scythe, designed and created it herself, and was an immense talent with it. She shocked and amazed everyone.
Love, adoration, encouragement, support. All around me.
So why…?
“I don’t know,” the other Olivia said, bowing her head.
Olivia’s tendencies towards solitude grew and morphed with each year. It didn’t take long for her to be, even when with family or friends or teachers, alone in her own mind. This was where she stopped laughing so much. She didn’t smile easily. Nor did she cry easily.
Her parents worried. Olivia hadn’t seen it at that age, but she saw it now, clear as day. And she wept for them. For all the ways in which she had failed them, in which they had always been reaching out and she’d ignored or failed to see.
Grief. Once again, that was what was brought to the forefront of mind and heart at these memories. Who Olivia was. Who she’d been. Where she’d come from.
She was a girl who’d had everything. Loving parents. Wealthy parents who loved her and didn’t flaunt that wealth. She’d never wanted for anything materially. She was talented, and immediately took with ease and grace to music and magic.
She’d had everything. But she’d never been able to see that. And yet…
I did see it. I saw, and yet I still…
It’s like…
“I couldn’t escape,” the other Olivia said.
Olivia nodded.
That black hole. The cold, empty space in my heart, the loneliness without sorrow. It… it didn’t matter what others did or said. It didn’t matter how much love was in my life. It didn’t matter —
She cut off as she suddenly heard a cry. The first cry.
Of her little brother.
Her heart exploded. With love, with joy, with sorrow, with amazement, with fear. Someone new was entering her life, entering her home, entering her parents’ hearts. He was amazing and beautiful and terrifying and pathetic. Olivia had always gravitated towards those older than her, to their wisdom and experience. This was her first experience not just with someone younger than her, but with the youngest possible — a baby.
Why did he cry so much? Why was he so needy? Why couldn’t he just help himself? Why did he demand so much of her parents and of her? How dare he demand her precious time from —
But he also laughed. And he giggled in the cutest possible way. And whenever Olivia played her viola, he was the most rapt, attentive audience in the world.
He loved her. From day one. This little, tiny thing that looked like a human but couldn’t walk or talk like one, he somehow told her exactly how he felt.
So Olivia couldn’t be angry at him. Or, at least, she couldn’t stay angry at him. The way he followed her everywhere — why was she his grand obsession when he depended on their parents the most? — was somehow… not annoying? She wanted to be alone, and yet when he was with her, all gurgling and cooing and rolling around like an awkward, furless panda, she didn’t shoo him away.
Somehow, with his unknowing, tiny baby brain, he knew what she was about. He was always there — when he could be, for Olivia spent a great deal of time outdoors and at places that weren’t exactly baby-friendly, training away and learning the art of combatting the vicious Stalkers — and yet he wasn’t a bother. Well, sometimes he was. But he was so good at stopping the bothering just when Olivia was about to snap.
He started walking. Started talking. He didn’t walk very fast, and it took him a very long time to learn to even try to run — he was a frail boy, weak and scrawny and nothing at all like Olivia — but talking came easy. He was smart, and that made sense to Olivia.
Olivia was stunned by how much of her life was taken up by her little brother. From the moment he was born, he was suddenly everywhere, a part of every single day. He went from his awkward furless panda days to actually being a child, someone that Olivia could talk to, play with, and play for.
Lots of things change, and lots of things did change, as her little brother grew up. But one thing was always the same, and never failed to make Olivia’s heart sing.
Her little brother adored her music.
That was the one and only memory she’d regained back at Renault, when they’d been looking for the Echoes of Truth. The memory she’d regained had been from when she was older than she was in this flood of memory, when she was already a Guardian, but it was the same anyway. Her, playing her viola. And her brother, watching with wide, happy eyes. He was so happy. How could any human being hold that much happiness all by themselves? Olivia played for many audiences in the short life she had in Renault, she saw many rapt crowds and stole the attention of thousands with her performances.
But there was no audience like her little brother. He could sit so still and respectful with the best of them during official recitals and concerts. But at home, when Olivia played just for him, he danced and clapped, laughed and grinned, and he never, ever got tired of it.
Who in the world was this child, and how could Olivia possibly deserve him?
That question hit Olivia’s heart like an arrow, and she had no answer for it. That question had played such a prominent role in her adolescence and young adulthood. She loved her little brother.
But she also ached because of him. Because of a love she couldn’t make sense of, a love that she felt she never was able to return in equal amounts, and yet he never asked anything of her, never acted at all as if she wasn’t giving him just as much love as he gave her.
It was that beautiful yet painful truth that reached into the black hole portion of Olivia’s heart and widened it, just a little. She craved solitude even more.
Olivia left the memories of her adolescence and early teenage years, back out into the time-stopped memory-ocean. The other Olivia led her silently, and they passed through the base of a massive wave, dozens of stories high.
Inside was the final phase of Olivia’s life in Renault. Her late teenage years, from sixteen to nineteen and her departure from Renault.
And it all started with her early induction into the Guardians.
Eighteen was the normal minimum age. Battling against the Stalkers wasn’t a game, wasn’t some high-level college or academy with high standards but the ability to bounce back from failing grades, no.
Failure on the Wall meant death. Children didn’t belong up here.
But sixteen year-old Olivia was the furthest thing from a child as she could be. Her magnetic attraction to adults, to the wise and experienced and skilled, had helped Olivia grow up fast. Brilliant, talented, and brave, she stepped onto the Wall for the first time and immediately made her mark.
“Nothing like her in a hundred years.” “She’s an entire squad all by herself.” “We’re going to need a new category system, because there are ‘The Best’… and then above them, there’s Olivia.”
“What in the world did we do to deserve this girl?”
That last question, though Olivia only ever heard it from a distance, when people didn’t think she could hear, stung the most.
She knew those kinds of feelings. To have them directed towards her?
What kind of world is this? I’m not that special. I’m not that amazing. I’m just doing my job. I’m just helping. I’m…
Within a year, Olivia had gone from awe and amazement of Guardians, from longing, needing to be one of them with a burning passion…
To just doing her job.
Seventeen years old. Olivia was on the Wall every single night, even though she didn’t have to be. Even though every single other Guardian took a few nights off now and then.
She has such cold eyes.
Olivia was startled to think that of herself, but there it was. She couldn’t see that younger Olivia, standing on the Wall, alabaster scythe in hand, hood raised but not pulled so low it covered her eyes, in any other way.
Those eyes were cold. And cold, frigid focus was a perfectly effective core for a Guardian. Olivia hadn’t been the only one like that.
But she was only seventeen. Something was amiss.
It was a strange year for Olivia. Her brother came down with sickness after sickness. In and out of the hospital, Olivia saw him so rarely.
And yet…
Why does he still smile so much?
Doesn’t it hurt? Doesn’t it break his heart to be so helpless?
Why won’t he just cry already? He cried so much as a baby, why won’t he cry now when he actually has a reason to?
Olivia stopped visiting him in the hospital. She couldn’t stand his smiles. How dare the doctors not fix him properly, not fix him up so he didn’t have to come back a week later with “unforeseen complications”?
Seventeen year-old Olivia was angry. But it was a cold anger, all the fire of it sucked away by the black hole part of her heart. It was an anger that was perfectly directed and targeted at the massive, horrifying Stalkers that assailed Renault’s Wall every night.
Olivia slew more Stalkers that year than any other Guardian managed in ten.
Eighteen years old. Olivia barely sees her parents — she’s on the Wall, or she’s wandering Renault. She walks a lot, goes home rarely. Her only real reprieves from Guardian work come with recitals, and when she goes home to sleep.
And, occasionally…
She plays those “private recitals” for her little brother.
The entire year, he’s out of the hospital. He’s not the healthiest kid, but he’s not sick, just frail. But even as he keeps up the smiles, the laughter, and those adoring eyes never lose their luster…
Olivia is on pins and needles. Olivia is braced for impact, every second of the day.
When is he going to be sucked back into the hospital again?
Because she can’t believe that he’s really okay. After a year of constant in-and-out, to finally get him home is impossible. There’s no way this is real.
The year passes slowly. The snows are fiercer that year than they have been since before Olivia was born.
She loves the snow. Especially when it’s fierce, blizzards and vicious winds whipping up a wild tempest of white that tears at clothing and bites at skin and rattles even the sturdiest of windows, a storm that penetrates even Renault’s renowned magical barriers.
Those are the nights when Olivia most loves to go for walks in her city.
And somehow…
Her little brother never got sad. He never begged her to stay home and play more for her. When she went out into the storm, while her parents watched on with worry, but a resigned sort of worry, knowing they couldn’t command their daughter now, her brother simply waved, smiled, and said a simple, “Be careful, okay? And have fun!”
This year also sees a great change. Olivia… starts to hear music.
All of the music she has practiced and performed to this point in her life has been from renowned composers, or popular music, or anything someone else has made and she has read and memorized from pages.
But this year, she starts to hear music. Music in her heart. Music that she can’t find anywhere else. And when she plays these mysterious songs, songs she can’t explain, songs she can never replicate afterwards…
She feels things.
Like voices in her heart, like emotions spilling over, like memories that aren’t hers, like visions of impossible lands. It’s so much, so confusing, so unfamiliar.
There is a longing to these mysterious songs. A longing that penetrates Olivia’s heart, makes that black hole portion of her heart just a fraction smaller, and adds something alongside it.
Olivia… wants to go somewhere. For the first time in her life, she wants to leave Renault.
Not for other places on Earth, no. These places she vaguely sees, the feelings she vaguely feels, these memories that aren’t hers, they call her to somewhere more amazing. Somewhere magical.
Somewhere she’s only heard of in whispers.
The Enchanted Dominion.
She doesn’t go. She can’t go. She has the Wall, and she’s finally begun to regain her love of it, love of being a Guardian, love of her city, love of defending it. She is still lonely, still walls herself off from others, still doesn’t let others see who she is and how she feels.
But she loves defending her city.
Nineteen years old.
Olivia continues to change. No longer is she nervous for her brother’s sake. She spends more time at home, playing private recitals for him. She even eats meals at home again with her family, something she hasn’t done in a long time, preferring to eat alone.
She still mans the Wall every single night. No one can dissuade her at this point. Every single Guardian trusts her more than they trust themselves. One of the constant lessons of the Guardians, one that was drummed into Olivia from early on, went thus: “Everyone has their limits. No matter how strong you are, you are not invincible. Learn your limits. Respect your limits. Believe yourself invincible, and you’ll quickly learn the opposite, at the cost of your life.”
But now the lesson goes something different. They’ve added onto it, at the very end.
“…Unless your name is Olivia Scarlett Quinn, that is.”
In the minds of every single Guardian, Olivia is the impossible. She is invincible. She has no limits.
So they trust her. They stand aside and let her fight alone, when every other Guardian is part of a squad, working together to take down Stalkers. Olivia topples alone in a handful of minutes what the best squads of four take half an hour to slay. Olivia never has to visit the Healers, never gets sick, and, despite fighting alone…
She never hesitates — or fails — to rescue a fellow Guardian if she sees one in need.
Dozens of Guardians owe her their lives. She doesn’t acknowledge such debts.
She feels she has more than enough debts of her own.
To her parents who love her so and look at her with such worry, who no longer voice their fears and worries because years of emotional distance have left them defeated.
To her brother who never gives up on her, who’s never defeated by her emotional walls, who smiles and laughs and loves with impossible, endless, innocent adoration.
To crowds who applaud her recitals. To fans who shake her hand and spit out all sorts of messy, awkward, embarrassed compliments, compliments she returns with awkward emotional coldness, because she just doesn’t know how to deal with it.
She doesn’t know how to let them in. Any of them.
And more than that…
The music is getting louder. The songs are piling up.
The call is hammering at her heart. The longing is too great to continue to ignore.
The Enchanted Dominion isn’t a secret in Renault. Olivia only hears of it in whispers because people don’t often talk about it. But if she asks — and she begins to ask, at nineteen years old — the answers come freely.
Renault has three doors that lead to the Enchanted Dominion. One leads to Starlight Spires, that beautiful, immense, impossible city.
One leads to Gold Heart Arcade, a popular tourist attraction unlike anything on Earth.
And the other is a revolving door. Its destination changes as the connections between many Locations change over and over again.
It is that door — the risky door, the door of the unknown — that calls out to Olivia.
And one night, the call hits her like never before. A private recital for her brother. Olivia plays the newest song from her heart. And when it’s over…
“Don’t you think you should go?”
The question comes from her brother, with an innocence and curiosity that astonishes Olivia.
“Go where?” she asks in the memory, in the past, confused by her brother. He can’t possibly mean —
“The Enchanted Dominion.”
He says it so simply, with a smile on his face, that Olivia can’t believe it.
“How do you —”
“It’s in your songs,” her brother says, with a slight giggle that suggests this should be obvious. “You’ve been wanting to go for a long time, right? So go. Stop ignoring the call. It’s only making you more sad.”
“Sad?” Olivia lowers he viola and bow, puts them away, trying to understand her brother. “I’m not sad,” she finally says, not knowing what else to say.
“I know you don’t want anyone to see it,” her brother says, and now Olivia is truly speechless. “But I’ve been seeing it for a long time now. I thought I could help make you happy, but I get it. I’m not what you need. What you need is out there.”
Olivia can’t believe it. Her little brother, seven years old… is he really speaking like this? But he’s always been like her in that one respect — he’s smart, and mature, far beyond his age.
But…
“I still didn’t believe him,” the other Olivia said, kneeling beside Olivia in the memory-ocean. Olivia hadn’t even realized she’d dropped to her knees, overwhelmed by it all. “Even when I went through the door, even when I finally followed the call… I didn’t believe him.”
I’m not sad. What are you talking about?
The other Olivia nodded. “Exactly. That’s what I thought. But I guess… you see it more clearly than I did.”
Olivia did. She understood.
Sadness. That had been the black hole part of her heart. A sadness, a loneliness, that she couldn’t explain, and that no amount of love was working to erase. Nothing made it better. Nothing dimmed that inexplicable sorrow. She didn’t even know why she was sad, so how could she act as if she was? How could she let others in when she didn’t even know why she was the way she was?
Bitterness, anger, jealousy, self-righteousness, fear, anxiety… all of the forces that had ruled her, that had been such a storm within her, had all originated from the same point, the same struggle.
What could one do with a sorrow that they couldn’t explain?
What do I do with this sorrow when I don’t even know why it exists? When nothing ever makes it better? When I can’t even explain it myself?
Because she knew joy. She knew happiness. She knew love. She knew so many good things, and she could express so many good things. Despite the sorrow, she didn’t cry often. Despite the sorrow, she didn’t always feel it, not at the surface. But…
There was always an undercurrent of it. There was always an echo of it, no matter where she went or what she did.
And then had come the music, music in her heart, from her heart, bubbling out of her, calling her to somewhere far beyond the only home she’d ever known.
An answer to her sorrow? An answer to her pain?
She hadn’t allowed herself to believe it could be such a thing. Not until…
Not until he told me to go.
So, before the year was out, at nineteen years old, Olivia Scarlett Quinn had left Renault through the risky door, the door to the unknown.
And she never came back.
One hundred and twenty years. That’s how long ago Olivia had vanished from the Wall, vanished from her parents’ lives, vanished from her brother’s life.
Nineteen years. Nineteen years with all of those things, in that city, with that family. She finally remembered it all, felt the weight of it all upon her with startling clarity.
And at the end of it all, remembering everything…
She felt strangely empty.
It was all too much. Too much to hold onto, too much to deal with at once. She was cried out, her eyes aching for the first time in her life. Her heart had worked itself into numbness, unable to hurt or struggle anymore, likely not for a long while.
“I get it,” the other Olivia said. She sat with Olivia atop a battered ruin, in the shadow of a time-stopped cresting wave. “It’s… going to take time. You can’t take it all at once. But it’s here, now. All of it. You don’t have to search for it anymore. When you’re ready, you can sort through it in your own time. And you’ll never have to do it alone.”
The other Olivia reached out and took Olivia’s hand in hers.
And she was gone.
No… not gone.
She was finally where she belonged.
Olivia Scarlett Quinn was numb, and exhausted, and had so much more to do, so much more to learn, so much that would take so much time.
But she was finally whole again.
She finally knew who she was again.