Renfaire Fantasy 2: Darkest Night pt 2 (Patreon)

Silver haze hung in Christine’s head like smoke and refused to clear. The scales upon which her internal values balanced were askew but felt like they were teetering back and forth between both directions, which made her feel like she was genuinely going insane. The contrast between rage at everyone else and despair at herself and what she had done was a difference so extreme that trying to maintain coherent thought was giving her a dizzying headache. As she crouched miserably in the dirt of the excavation, it was easy however to determine what was wrong with her.

For all of the past months, maybe the past several YEARS, I’ve just—psychologically weighed everything in my favor, Christine determined, feeling sick. I do KNOW right from wrong, I do have those moral scales, I just somehow started putting a thumb on one side so that they always, always tilted in my favor. Not, not just a fucking thumb. In the end, I put all of the weight of my being on it.

She had fucked up.

She had really, ROYALLY fucked up.

What was scariest was how easy it was to do. Once she sank further and further into that delusion, there just weren’t any doubts or real self-awareness. Everything was viewed through the lens of her being in the right; always. Always. The whole world, everyone else was wrong, it was always someone else’s—anyone else’s—fault. Whether or not that even made any sense. Without any compunction she had tampered with her own moral compass until it was completely broken, and then after that she had done completely reprehensible things to other people while not feeling even a single iota of guilt or remorse.

I can’t fix this, anyways, Christine drew her fingernails down her face. It’s over for me. I can’t make up for what I’ve done or make it right. It’s crazy that they even discovered MAGIC BULLSHIT that restored my sanity like this. Or at least mostly.

Whatever he had done to her had cleaned her clock—a violent silver surge of something she didn’t know how to describe invaded into her and loosened up that internal scale of personal values. Values which had been so completely lopsided that everyone else had seemed like the psychopath. It was as if Brian had used silvery droplets of pure mercury to grease oil on a stuck lever, to fix some defunct needle in a gauge that had always pointed to I’m always right no matter what the actual circumstances were.

Worse yet, Christine didn’t quite feel as though she was completely fixed. Her values were still not quite right, the scales weren’t calibrated, and every time the pendulum swung back towards her ego of psychotic narcissism, there was that irresistible pull there in that direction, which wanted to throw everything out of balance once again and simply insist that she was always in the right. Always.

The silver feeling… it’s not CLEAR like it was before, Christine realized, her thoughts fighting through the fog and confusion. On the blood magic, everything was in this laser-focused clarity. Now, it’s like… it’s like…

Her ‘magic’ awareness right now was instead like trying to peer through an extremely dusty mirror. Christine could feel the reflection there again, but it was cloudy, it was still choked with a faded dullness that rendered all of the fine details into murky abstracts. At the forefront of all of that strange synesthesia somewhere between imagination and gut instinct, Christine knew that the hunger was gone. The blood hunger, the innate hole deep within the core of her being that would always, always need filled when she was on the other magic path was gone.

I’m not… SATISFIED either, though, Christine brought shaky fingers to touch her stomach through the filthy sweatshirt. It’s just, that NEED isn’t there. Not like it was before.

The phantom ache for blood had been something she had associated with the terrible mental clarity and ability to self reflect, so not feeling it now worried her. Because, what if it meant that something wasn’t working right? Whatever magic thing they had tried to do didn’t take? What if the scales tipped her towards Chloe again? Brian kissing her was supposed to instead put her on the ‘charm’ path the other girls were on, but she didn’t feel infatuated or lovestruck or even remotely turned on.

She felt sick, she felt a growing horror and disbelief welling up within her that made her want to vomit. Christine felt like she’d been watching a baby bird hopping at her feet and chirping and then stomped it to death, not realizing what she had done or why until after the fact, when the terrible deed was already done. There was no way to accept what she had done to the others, how she had treated everyone. As a vengeful psychopath she hadn’t experienced any of these awful feelings, and Christine was terrified that being unable to live with her deeds would force her back into being the kind of girl who was indifferent to all of that. Wasn’t it easier just being Chloe?

Another spatter of dirt and leaves showered down upon her as Emily continued to idly kick stuff from the edge of the grave in her direction. That didn’t bother her—Christine didn’t think she could blame Emily if the girl slapped her or beat her or clawed her face. She deserved all of that and worse. Or, maybe Christine would fight back? After all, all of this that happened was their fault in the first place, wasn’t it?

Wait, or was it?

Christine silently wretched as another wave of revulsion roiled through her with an unpleasant aftertaste of silver oxide. She mostly thought that she deserved any punishment that the others would decide, but then also still a venomous broken part of her raged at them and insisted they were in the wrong, that all of this was their fault.

Everything that happened was because of THEM.

“Em-Emily?” Christine croaked out.

“Fucking what.”

“I’m not fixed,” Christine explained with urgency. “I, I still feel—I’m still crazy. I’m, it’s not all right. It’s not all right like it’s supposed to be, like it was when I was on the other magic. I feel insane, I feel—I’m not completely fixed.”

“Are you fucking complaining that we didn’t—” Emily’s furious voice called down.

“No! No, I mean—” Christine stammered. “I mean, I wanted you to know. You have to know. Know my uh, my mental state, my, as uh, as best as I can assess myself. I am not fixed. S-so, so I want you all to be as, as careful as you can because I’m not in the right mind still yet. Okay? That’s what I wanted to say.”

“Okay,” Emily grunted back. “Right, got it. Fucking figures. You’ve just got a few shitty silver streaks, you’re not all the way.”

“Okay,” Chloe sniffled. “Okay. Just—yeah, just so long as you know. So long as someone knows. Be careful with me.”

“I don’t want you to be with Brian,” Emily muttered. “I just, I don’t want you to be with Brian. Hate hate hate even just the idea of it. You don’t deserve him. I wish they had just fucking listened to me.”

“I know,” Christine said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Emily snarled. “No, you don’t know, you don’t have any fucking idea. I already had to watch as he suffered through being in a relationship with you, I fucking saw what you did to him. How y-you, you ate away at him, how my Brian started to lose that special spark. Yeah, he was hurt from what his shitty fucking parents did to him, but—he was so, so Brian before, he had hopes and dreams and bright fucking prospects, he had so much to look forward to! We had so much fucking fun back then, even though we weren’t really together!

“Every day was this total blast, every day felt like it was the best fucking day of our lives! Watching all of that… dim after he was with you, watching that brightness start to leave his eyes, having to see depression and tiredness and silence start to settle in in its place—Chloe I FUCKING HATE that you did that to him. And, no, I’ll never fucking forgive you.”

“Yeah,” Christine let out a small sob.

Her insides felt like they were wrenching themselves into knots, because she agreed. Except, Emily’s words also didn’t make much sense. Why was Christine somehow responsible for all of Brian’s stupid problems? She didn’t have an ounce of sympathy for that pathetic man-child of a—no, again sympathy ebbed through in chemical silver and she shuddered with disgust for herself, feeling bile rise up in her throat. See-sawing back and forth between derangement and despair made her want to scratch and claw the poisonous silver out from her veins, made her want to rip her hair out.

I need more fucking silver, or I need rid of all of it, Chloe rocked back and forth to relieve the manic tension. Not this IN BETWEEN. Or, I need to just die. Die, die, die, die.

“He’s back, now,” Emily continued. “My Brian. He’s got his Brian spark back, but, you know what? It took Stephie and Kelly and weird-ass real life actual magic to bring it back to him, to wake him up, to bring him back up from whatever you fucking wrought upon him, a-and I don’t think you understand how, how fucking lucky we were. That all of this crazy bullshit happened to play out this way.”

Christine’s fingers traveled up into her hair and gathered mussed and tangled locks into her fists as she cried. She needed something to clutch onto, because while she was raging against the shadowy shape of herself in the mirror, there was also still that eerie patch of psychopathic calm. That Chloe part of her, which was probably just waiting for its next chance to fuck everyone and everything over, biding its time. It was maddening being only partway fixed, and moment to moment she wished they would instead just put her out of her misery.

Silver fog woke her up to being able to isolate and recognize that side of herself, and looking at it, actually seeing it terrified her. Because it was addictive, because having power of others, having zero qualms about freely manipulating everyone around her, taking every advantage, turning every situation towards her favor, and living a life that spared absolutely no thoughts to the consequences of what she was doing or who happened to get hurt along the way—it was EASY.

It was simple and straightforward, natural, to only ever care about herself, and damn everyone else. Wasn’t it? Some insidious part of her knew that it was mentally the path of least resistance for her, that she could either relax and slip back into it, or spend every waking moment doubting her every reflexive action and holding them suspect. If there was ever going to—

“How is she?” Brian’s voice sounded from above.

Christine couldn’t help but flinch back at recognizing it, and her shoulders shrunk in against her neck and she tried to press herself down as low as possible. There was nowhere to hide in this grave she was trapped in, and the flashlight of the phone Emily kept pointed down towards her prevented her from finding any shadow to hide in. Terror, shame, and rage squirmed through her guts and sapped all of the energy from her bones—she did not know how to face him right now.

“She said she’s not turned all the way,” Emily answered. “That we should be careful. Are you okay? Brian? Steph, you okay? Thought you guys were gonna sit things out for a bit.”

“Yeah, just—think I’m magically spent. Head’s killing me,” Brian remarked. “I’m okay.”

“He’s not okay. Okay?” Stephanie’s voice sounded from just beside him. “He’s not okay.”

“What are we doing with Chloe?” Emily asked, and shadows swung throughout the grave as the light was turned away to instead illuminate their conversation up above. “Battery on Steph’s phone is down to twenty seven percent. We can’t leave her down there if we’re not killing her—and I am not sleeping tonight if she isn’t tied up or chained up or padlocked to something sturdy.”

“Chloe?” Brian called. “Or—should I call you Christine?”

“Y—” Christine started with a stammer and had to swallow before attempting to speak again. “You can call me whatever you want. I’m, um. It was always Christine Chloe Weschler. My full name. Just wanted to, uh, to try to reinvent myself. After high school. So I kept introducing myself as Chloe. It doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” Brian finally said. “Then, I guess—”

“I can feel her,” Stephanie reported from Brian’s side. “It’s, she’s not a dead spot that pushes back magic like she was back before, right after the convention. And, she’s not a nothing with no magic like she was just earlier tonight, either. There’s like a smudge around her now, but I can feel her. Feel what she’s feeling. A—ooph, a little bit.”

“What is she feeling?” Emily demanded.

“Disgusting,” Stephanie held nothing back. “Wretched. Suicidal. Despair. Angry at herself, and at us. Horrified, she stinks of shame and guilt and she hates herself. It feels disgusting, it’s all awful things, but then they’re also different. Not blending together or uh, or in concert. Her feelings are chunky. I, I, Brian I’m not going to be able to be near her for long, if she’s like this.”

“She did say she wasn’t cooked the whole way through yet,” Emily muttered from above, turning the light back over a recoiling Christine. “See? She’s only got silver streaks. She needs to be done through silver the whole way, if we’re doing this. Are we doing this?”

“Chloe?” Brian called. “Can you climb up out of there yourself? Not exactly going to be able to sleep on this, I don’t think. Steph, if you can sense her, you can watch for uh, for violent emotions or outbursts or—”

“I will,” Stephanie promised.

“—anything like that,” Brian said. “Let’s sit around the fire and see if we can have a productive conversation this time. I… I didn’t want to hit you, Chloe. I wish I could say I’m sorry that I did, but. I don’t know what to tell you. Don’t know what I was supposed to do, what I could have done differently. I know you didn’t want the charm magic forced on you, I didn’t want that either and I don’t like that it came to that. I’m not comfortable with it at all, but fuck. What was I supposed to do? Chloe?”

“I don’t know,” Christine couldn’t help but sound anguished. “I don’t know.”

“Were you really going to go to the Masters and try to snitch us out to them?” Emily pressed.

“Probably,” Christine covered her face with both hands, refusing to start climbing out. “Just—yes, probably. Once she could, once I could figure out a way to do it without risking myself. Anything to hurt you all. To make you pay.”

“Hah,” Emily snorted. “Told ya.”

“Do you still feel that way?” Brian’s voice went cold.

“I—” Christine opened her mouth.

“Not completely,” Stephanie answered for her. “Extremely conflicted. She feels both ways. It’s chunky and gross.”

“So, we feed her the whole fucking jar,” Emily insisted. “I’m so serious. She gets chained back up either way ‘til we’re super sure, but she guzzles cum until Steph can give her a clean mental bill of health. I’m totally not budging on that, Brian.”

“...Cum?” Christine wasn’t sure she heard that right. The ‘jar’ they keep mentioning is full of…?!

“Chloe, come on up out of there,” Brian blew out a long sigh. “Come on.”

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/// Like I mentioned last time, this was as dark as things'll get for a while. Think we all want some healing and moving on fucking past this, but also I didn't want to feel like we were just skimming past or handwaving details because this is obviously an important character turning point.