What Had to Be

This world was born from the dream of the Goddess. Rather, this reality itself is her dream. The people of Kozodia, the light it holds, are all reflections of her mind.

So why did she dream of a world like this?

Where the detestable like that man can become king, while he and his cronies bask and prosper in an artificial light. Where the compassionate like Rorie are considered the undesirable ones, the Mieitais to be met with extreme prejudice, and the good unable to rise above those in power and suffer over an irrational—or convenient—fear of the dark.

Was it something out of her control? A test? Or... was this the world she wanted, because a life where the good suffer and evil prosper is more "interesting" to her?

The ideal world that Rorie shared with us, where everyone gets along, where we're kind and loving to each other, and nobody fights... Is that something that she finds 'boring'?

Is a world where everybody is happy meaningless to her if we don't struggle for it first?

The ones behind Rorie's death, the Purging of innocents, did they do everything that they did because they desired it? Or were they following the script the Goddess laid out in her mind? To be the obstacle to the happy ending. To create conflict.

And was the reason why she's not with us anymore just to create a justification to go after the ones responsible? To manufacture a story of revenge that ends with them gone and us in control?

If that is the logic that this world follows, the whims of how her mind operates... Then what's stopping her from doing it all over again?

What stops another Kojingi from appearing and undoing everything we've done?

But I will not follow her wishes.

We are shadows, born from the darkness and outside her dream. She didn't create us; that means we aren't bound by her rules. We have true conscience.

We can choose our appearances, we can choose who we call family, we can choose what to fight for. And we can make our own choices.

Kozodia Rorie's dream died because the Goddess's didn't allow it to live. But right now, at the world's end, we're the only two who can truly fight for her legacy. Whether it's to enrich the only world she has ever known... or to tear everything down and force the Goddess to dream of something better. Or if it comes down to it...

Take her throne.

---

"You've gone mad."

"Only from what I can't unknow."

There were hardly any more words that could be exchanged. Only the inevitable clash that Nora anticipated from the very beginning with dread.

Shirei's arm elongated into an imperceptible crackling abyss, stretching across the field as she thrust it straight between the pillars. Nora narrowly stepped out of the way, feeling the displaced wind zoom past her before collecting herself to fly in to close the distance.

She mirrored her in turn, meeting in the center of the field, each reaching back and clashing with darkened fists. The deadlock lasted for a heartbeat before Nora was sent flying back, taking out one of the pillars with her on the way to the dirt.

"Why aren't you using her whip?" Shirei stood from where they clashed, no worse for wear, observing the starlight chain still fastened to her waist.

Debris left Nora's lips as she picked herself off the ground, wiping her face. "You said it yourself, didn't you? You didn't want us to fight in front of her. I'm not using her to stop you. This is between you and me."

Nora contemplated bringing out her own whip that she brought here, but shook her head as she morphed her own arm into the same shadowy tendrils as Shirei's, if less abyssal. The very same that only came out when Rorie taught them how to control their movements with her own example, now being used for the only thing they knew how before she entered their lives.

She grappled one of the intact pillars diagonally, pulling herself in and swinging around the structure until colliding boot first to the chest with a resounding smash.

The impact was enough to send Shirei sliding backwards, but not topple her over. She had a look that only regarded it as much as being pushed on a slippery surface.

"You can't win without it." 

She shook her head as she slowly marched over to her, whipping her tendril overhead to crash down the field. Almost with a deliberate slowness that gave Nora enough time to react, sliding around the strike and threw her shoulder into her next counterattack. 

But even her swing, with all her might behind it, only succeeded in slapping Shirei's face in place, still not sending her flying. The most she achieved was a small mark on her skin.

Still, Nora kept swinging and weaving in between Shirei's attacks. Blow after blow she landed with both arms, each with strength that surpassed the levels she needed against Rete or other Mieitiais. Yet Shirei hardly budged, shrugging off every hit with minimal issue, never falling off her feet even once.

Without context, she looked like she was partaking in a lazy waltz, not desperately fighting like Nora was.

"How are you—" Was the only disbelief Nora could utter before her next attacked denied by a swash of Shirei's cloak; her neck seized and lifted up in the air.

"You need to stop messing around." She grimly remarked, her human fingers wrapped firmly enough to prevent escape, but stopping short of choking her. Not that there were airways to crush.

"We weren't... This far apart...!" She could barely muster, gripping her restraining arm tightly in vain.

"Back then." She slowly walked them over to the circular platform as her heels crunched the dirt. "But you spent the last several years holed up at home, unable to cope with this life after we lost her. Meanwhile, I continued, witnessing the roots of what caused that day for myself. It's only natural that my darkness outclasses yours."

"How do you plan to defeat me, Nora... when you're fighting for a world you couldn't even bear to live in!" She roared as she threw her back, flying through almost all of the remaining pillars, unearthing a large cloud of dirt when she finally crashed as if she fell from the sky. Back to their original positions.

Nora found herself unable to get up, her body suddenly feeling too heavy. Another weight was holding her down.

"We both know that's not all you got." Shirei droned over her passively. "Tell me, why are you here? What are you defending when this world has done so many wrongs?"

"I... I..."

"You have to show me. I know what you hold inside isn't just darkness."

Shirei almost spoke encouragingly, with a nostalgic sense of warmth, which finally gave Nora the strength to pick herself up again as she wobbled forward.

"Because... Rorie loved this world. Not a world you could make by restarting everything, not a world without the Goddess of the Dream, but this one we're in, right now."

Her hand instinctively hovered over the starlight chains on her waist, the white glow she tried to suppress earlier shining brighter than ever as it flowed through her once more.

"Even with all of its imperfections... Even with all of its ugliness... She still loved this life, and the good people who are still here! That's the way she loved, not as a perfected state of caring, but as an active endeavor to accept everything as they are, including us!"

The ashen fields suddenly were illuminated. The dreary skies faded away to an audience of stars surrounding the space that became their arena. Rorie's whip was now firmly in Nora's hands, slicing through the dark haze as it was unfurled at last.

Though perhaps, as the whip now radiated bright blue instead of just white, it was no longer just "Rorie's whip". Though she wasn't sure if she'd call this new conviction her own.

"Well said." Shirei smiled softly before unclasping her cloak and tossing it to the side, as both her arms became darker than ever, almost crimson in glow.

"Come on."

"Okay." Nora nodded as she brandished her whip, a vow suddenly filling her mind.

That deep, indescribable something from the darkness that formed her suddenly became clear for the first time.

"Let's go!"

Shirei blitzed towards her at breakneck speed, her shadowy tendrils ripping up the fields as she flew at her. But Nora was now able to respond in kind. 

The second deadlock lasted several hundred heartbeats, neither side backing down. But bright blue cracks that formed over Shirei's body forced her to pull back.

Nora quickly chased after her, closing the gap with the intensity of a shooting star. She ducked back as Shirei crossed her arms in front, ricocheting off the ground in between the gap and landing a clean strike to her chin as she met the dirt for the first time.

"So, this is the full power of her whip!" Shirei rasped as she quickly got back on her feet, but she was not shrugging anything off. Her body was cracked all over with bright blue light, her chin almost on the verge of collapsing. "But I'm not giving up!"

She declared as she leaped high into the air, lifting one arm above her as she enveloped herself in a crimson aura, setting herself ablaze with the deepest abyss that hid her wounds.

"Prepare yourself, Nora!" She dived straight down with one arm back, ripping the sky asunder as she hurtled straight down towards Nora, the meteor to her star.

Nora took a deep breath and concentrated, creating bright blue rings of light as she spun her whip around with such intensity that the field beneath her feet could barely hold itself together.

And then they collided. Nora's whip flew straight up with trails of light in its wake, and Shirei's shadowy tendril hammered down with the force of her vertical descent.

The air crackled as collages of red and blue shockwaves decimated the space from their collision. Everything around them was cracking as each was held back only by the force of the other.

It took Nora everything in her being, both dark and light, to not be crushed by Shirei's full might. But she heard tearing that didn't come from her.

"Shirei, your wounds!" She could barely speak through their clash. But she kept going.

"If you don't yield now, you'll—!" But she didn't yield.

"STOP, SHIREI!"

Until she finally gave way, and the whip pierced through her body.

---

"Shirei..." Nora tearfully cradled her broken sister in her arms, the space around them destroyed. "Did this really need to happen, Shirei?" She couldn't help but ask again.

"This... was always meant to be." She spoke weakly. "Like how you finally understood your darkness within you, I understood mine a long time ago.

"I was... somebody who was always going to try and destroy the world; that's what I'm made of. And someone would eventually stop me. I thought that person would be Rorie... But this is okay too."

A tear fell from her eye that could still produce them. "I knew I was going against what she wanted, to not hurt anybody. But I just couldn't forgive this world. I couldn't stop."

She gently stroked Nora's face with what remained of her hand, as she began to crumble away.

"But you... You're still following her dream... You're keeping her alive... She would be so proud of you."

"...She'd still be proud of you, too."

Shirei closed her watery eyes, weakly wavering. "...Go do as you please, Nora. Don't let the Goddess... take this away from you, okay? I'll make sure... She won't, too."

"I... love..." 

The last of Shirei faded away before she could complete her words, her particles joining the rest of the now broken field.

"...I love you too, Shirei." She said to nobody, her tears openly falling as she made her way to the circular platform, looked up at the tear in the sky...

And made her choice.