Chương 63: Dark Corners of the Mind

The Storm roiled, demanding to know why she subjected herself to such torment. I deserve it, Thana asserted as her body barely listened to her commands. The world around her blurred as she moved to stand, something she did for reasons that were alien to her but felt important. The adolescent that had guided her here, Sun… Something, gently pressed hands on her shoulders to keep her seated. That also felt right. She liked being seated.

Distant pleas from mortals afar assailed her as battles raged across this planet, most unaware they even did so. Should they have called upon her by name they would be clearer and the passion would dance upon her domain with fiery vigor. She pushed the supplications aside, though the act of doing so made the world around her swim again. She wanted it to stop, for the dizzying haze to stop pressing against her with such force, but using her powers to purge it would mean lessening what she had wrought upon herself.

She shouldn't do that. A woman passed away peacefully in her bed, her life one of honor. Thana's nose wrinkled as her mother's "gift" slapped her in the face even through the haze of powerful drink. The only thing she had left of her valkir heritage after she'd burned her damn wings. Once again she wondered if any other valkir would find her worthy when she finally left this world behind. ¹ Perhaps they couldn't do that for her now? She hadn't felt the soul of her father when he'd died.

She'd always assumed that had been for obvious reasons, but perhaps gods simply did not move on like mortals did. Perhaps she had damned herself one more fucking time… That felt like the right answer… She blinked and Sun Ray was now joined by several other colorful people. One of them was so shiny in the midday sun. It hurt her eyes. She held up a hand to block the light.

"Shtop…" she muttered as the gleaming woman came closer.

"Stormdaughter?" the woman dressed in mirrors asked, her voice clearly uneasy. Of course… Thana had made her upset. It's what she was good at. All the little pleasant tingles that had been prickling through her were gone now and she could see the truth of what was going on. She'd gotten drunk in the morning cause she woke up sad and she'd made everyone worried. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!

"Sorry…" she coughed. Her throat was dry as a desert even with her mouth all full of phlegm. She needed more to drink. To wash it all away.

"It's okay," the woman wrongly reassured her.

"We're here. You're going to be okay." No she wasn't. She'd hurt them and then feel bad. They needed to go away.

"Dear," the shiny woman turned away, "we've got it from here. Thank you again."

"But-" the young Sun Sight protested. Then she sighed, "I… Let me know how it goes okay?"

"Of course," Bright Lady said.

"It'll be nice to talk later, right?"

"Y-yeah," the small youth looked over at someone in a similar costume to her. He was a large brick of a man almost three times her size. He awkwardly extended a hand towards her only for it to fall, words dying on his lips. Thana recognized the look in the girl's eyes as she turned away. She was his daughter and a rift had formed between them. Hope she doesn't kill him, the dark thought crossed her mind when the young woman took flight and left.

"Okay then," the reflective woman – that was her name, Re... Flecto! Reflectar? Reflecta! – turned once more to face her, "why don't we move somewhere else? Get you out of the sun?" Thana flicked a hand and clouds sputtered around in the air, shading the rooftop. The heroes surrounding her shifted uneasily as she chuckled, "'m good."

"I… see," Reflecta muttered.

"Are you sure we can't go somewhere a little more private?"

"I was headin' t' Misery's Call," Thana told them. Ooh, she could get shots with them! That could be a good apology. They didn't seem into it though. The Storm writhed at the thought of more drink and she hiccuped a bit of lightning, trying to get it to shut up. No peace in her head at all!

"Okay, then," Reflecta looked to the others before moving closer to her, "no way around this. We talked to ArachNed and-""Ned!" she cheered, stretching both arms in the air as she recognized the name.

"He'sh so… serious! Everyone sh's he's so funny but he doesn't tell many jokes! Oh… why did the storm giant need to sit down?" The group glanced at one another.

"Caus'h he was lightning headed!" she laughed, hoping they'd cheer up. They were so serious too… She needed to lighten the mood. She was the only one who should be feeling bad right now.

"Amusing," a woman with most of her face exposed huffed and stepped beside her mirrorclad friend.

"Look, Stormdaughter, we-""My móðir called me that…" Thana pointed out, her head swimming as she moved it to focus on the newcomer.

"Now everyone does… Little nickname… Cause I ate a storm! And that storm-" She choked and gasped. The other heroes rushed towards her, as tears began to stream down her face, "I- I-""Hey! Hey!" the woman with the exposed face was holding her shoulder, trying to shake her out of it, "Look at me!" She was hyperventilating, the past playing over and over again in her head. The apartment stairs. White splotches. The apartment door. White splotches.

The door opens- A pressure built against her head, blackening the vision as something attempted to drill its way inside her. She was aware of hands on her. She attempted to shove them away from her, lashing out in pain and fear. Her arms were yanked to the side by something powerful. A hand on one side. And… a pull with no anchor on another? Her fight to free herself distracted her from the building force on her head. She was blind and the world attacked her.

Her teeth burned as she heard a voice screaming that wasn't her own. Then a pop.

"You seriously have wards in your teeth?" Thana spun in a great dark expanse to face the voice. It was the woman from… outside?

"You're in my head," she – Wavelength – explained.

"Yours is a little rough right now. I really wasn't sure I could bring a goddess here but I figured a panic attack on a rooftop was probably worse." The spectral form of the woman smoldered as she floated slightly above… where a ground should be. Her glowing body flickered as flashes of her thoughts flowing across a costume that lacked most of the details that her true form had. It was hard to describe the sensation of seeing thoughts projected on a humanoid form. Not just pictures but…

ideas that Thana felt flow into her just by observing. A ring floated behind the psychic, pulsating to an unheard beat. She could feel the mental power flowing off it, transferring the firing of neurons into actual Akashic force. The mantle of godhood had made her all too familiar with the feeling of where humanity ended and the greater sum of knowledge began. ² Thana glanced down at herself or at least the projection her mind conjured in this sea of psychic energy.

She was greeted by the cracked shape of her terrestrial body, scores rent across her body to expose hollowness beneath like a damaged porcelain doll. Thankfully absent was the storm clouds or the hateful traces of the war god's burden which she'd expected to find either within or hovering about her mental form. Though their omission from within the confines of her psionic form was not truly their completely absence.

Lines of refulgent light trailed from the center of her off towards the distance, swallowed up by the darkness around them some distance away. Some of these tethers crackled with nature's fury. Others simply promised blood when one's stare lingered for too long.

"I'm sorry," the goddess muttered, thankful the mortal hadn't tried to draw too much more of her into this fragile mental sphere. She traced the trails of sparking light back towards what must be her own being, feeling the weight of those shackles she'd cursed herself with and fully aware they'd never leave her free. Still, it was almost pleasant to be this far from their source.

"You're nowhere close to the worst person I've had to scoop up and put in baby jail," Wavelength shrugged, before proceeding to take a seat on seemingly empty air. Her words lingered in the air for a few moments as Thana struggled to comprehend them. Finally she whirled around, shock and outrage plain on her face after such… such discourtesy!

"Oh, do you want the kids' gloves?" Wavelength's nose wrinkled as she sneered.

"I thought you were day-drinking for attention and wanted people to be mean to you. Got a lot of self-flagellation thrown in my face when I did a surface scan so I thought you'd enjoy someone helping you out with your pity party." Thana's mouth flapped open and shut in this mental sphere, aghast at the psychic's words. When a playful grin broke the psychic's rather convincing facade of cruelty, Thana almost blushed.

"I… You're trying to help, I assume," she reasoned.

"It's what psychics are for: Unpaid therapy appointments," Wavelength shrugged, then visibly winced as she patted down a portion of her shoulder that still seemed to be alight from the goddess's protection spells.

"Damn, you are one closed off bitch."

"... Sorry?" was all Thana could reply to that. Wavelength waved her away, "Anyways, you want a few moments to adjust or are you just going to start spiraling?" Thana felt her eyelid twitch at the barb, beginning to tire of the mortal's attempts to rile her up, "Please cease your insults. I… understand their purpose is to shock but I am in an ill mood for them." Abruptly, the woman before her changed.

Her posture lost its arrogance and her face melted into the picture of motherly concern, "Sorry for pushing you that far. I figured you might need a redirection but I definitely overdid it." Thana nodded, "I… yes, I think I needed that, but…"

"Went a little too hard," Wavelength nodded as she leaned forward, drifting towards Thana. The woman came uncomfortably close. Well, in actuality, she still stayed a decent space away from the goddess, but something about this mental projection felt too intimate to her. Even a distance that seemed ten and a half again strides apart seemed as close as the embrace of lovers in the realm of thought. For this reason Thana drew up her hands to dissuade the psychic from approaching further.

The woman immediately halted, granting the Stormdaughter the space she required.

"Ned told us about what happened," Wavelength repeated the words her team had said in the waking world.

"What you think happened." Her heart froze again and the mental form of her neck tensed so strongly she would have feared choking the life from herself should she be aware of it. Even outside her own head, memories began to flow towards her. The space around her began to form into the apartment. Her body began to- Stolen novel; please report. Everything stopped as Wavelength held up a hand and a pressure held her in place.

"Something's wrong…" the woman muttered a vast understatement. The heroine moved closer. Thana wanted to recoil and push away, press against whatever bonds were holding her, but to do so might ravage the mind of the mortal before her and-"These spots…" Wavelength observed.

"Memory degradation shouldn't look like this." Thana blinked and followed the direction of her finger towards one of the white voids in the memories around her. The spots that always appeared when she forced herself to think back to the events of that night. It was like a damaged film reel – holes in the projection of her memories. No doubt a trauma response.

"Damn, Ned, you're onto something," she heard the woman mutter before surging forward once more. Before Thana could react, the woman's arms were wrapped around her. The scene around her melted into fields of grass on a sunny day. The scent of wild flowers filled her nostrils.

"It's okay," Wavelength told her, and Thana struggled to tell if this was her own memory or the psychic's. It didn't matter. It was intoxicatingly peaceful and its serenity drew her in even as a piece of her raged against the indulgence. She lingered there for so long it felt as though eternity itself was passing by. Then Wavelength unwrapped herself and the scene faded away.

"I'll be here," she promised the goddess. A frown flickered on Thana's face for but a moment, having indulged in the hope that this would not see her return to that memory. That perhaps that moment of peace was all the psychic meant to gift her. Of course she was not to be so lucky.

"I don't…" she began to protest. Wavelength met her eyes, "I can't send you back yet. What's waiting for you back there…" The woman's gaze followed the chains of lightning which flowed out of her mindscape. Into the roiling black.

"We need to be able to help you," she shook her head.

"That idiot pressed too hard. I can tell just by sticking my fingers in your head. But he was on the right track. Shouldn't have left you alone after that." Thana grimace, "I… may have thrown him onto the patio of Amberheart before flying away." Wavelength snorted, "Do that once more for me later, okay?" That got her to laugh as well, especially watching the scenes of the arachnid hero infuriating the heroine play out across her translucent form.

She was dimly aware at just how much of Wavelength's soul she was baring during this whole exchange. A frightfully brave approach. One that encouraged her to attempt to match it.

"It… is hard," Thana spoke, feeling the scene around her beginning to shift.

"It hurts… so much…" Wavelength's hand gripped hers. The faces of her team flowed across her and Thana felt them outside this dreamworld. Those that had come to aid her. They didn't know her, not really, and yet they had sought her out in this city to save her from herself. The scene around her didn't become the apartment, but instead was a small bar she'd been in almost a century ago. A handsome man sat atop a stool nearby, smiling at her, reassuring her that there was good in this world.

"I've seen people who rush towards fires to help who they can without a second thought," the man's dark curly hair bounced as he turned to look at her. His green eyes sparkled, "The very same ones who got into brawls or served as soldiers in war. People capable of cruelty but also the greatest acts a person can ever accomplish. Sometimes, all it took was seeing one other person do the right thing first. That's what we need. A group of people to do the right thing first."

She smiled, looking back at Wavelength who was clearly star-struck at seeing the man of legends himself in such a small little pub, dressed in a cheap cotton shirt and old farmer's pants held up by a set of suspenders. A far cry from that absurd white outfit and red cape. Still, this was always how she pictured Wilhelm." Wilhelm?" Wavelength repeated and Thana inwardly cursed.

"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that and then wipe that memory as soon as possible." The slight tinge of worry faded from her mind when she saw the heroine look back at her, her expression mimicking the seated man across from her, "We're here for you." Thana's fist tightened into a ball but she took a deep breath and nodded.

"I'm ready." The bar from the end of the War disappeared and the nightmare reformed itself. This time she was ready. Or so she thought.

Thana came to atop an unfamiliar couch, voices buzzing all around her. The Starlight Squad quickly circled around her, gazing down at her. They'd shed their masks now, so she was free to gaze upon their concerned faces.

"You're back in the Tower," Reflecta explained as the speedster of the group appeared at her side, kneeling and offering her a glass of water. She welcomed it even if her head was not pounding as a mortal's might. The Storm, seemingly unopposed, had cleansed her body of the toxins she'd consumed. Her godflesh naturally prevented the ill aftereffects of the drink even if it had been powerless to prevent the drunkenness in the first place. All she was left to mark the occasion with was the shame.

"Thank you," she told them as she rose from the cushions.

"I… needed your aid." No one spoke, but she could sense their agreement with the statement from observing their posture and glances at one another. Her embarrassment in response was no doubt plain to witness, although thankfully they all chose not to comment upon her growing redness. A groan broke the silence, signaling that her companion in the mental realm was also emerging to consciousness.

Her team fixed their attention upon her, the woman laid across a couch opposite Thana's own in this relatively large living area she'd found herself in. No doubt the private quarters of the Starlight Squad. The resident psionic batted away the attempted ministrations of her team, struggling to rise.

"Thana? Thana!" Wavelength called out, her head spinning for a moment before locating the goddess.

"That-! That was-!" She shook her head, pushing blood red locks from her face, dark clouds rumbling in her mind as she processed the vision.

"Not enough," the goddess declared, befuddling those around her. The psychic hero had been a great boon in her journey through the dark memories. It had taken more than one attempt to plunge through the depths of her mind. No doubt such a journey would've been worse should they have attempted it within her own head. As it stood, it remained harrowing. Worst of all was its conclusion. Wavelength eyed her from the opposite end of the room, the shared secret between the two of them alight in her eyes.

It had been impossible to conceal the nature of her mind's corruption in the trips through her mind. Especially when her eyes kept affixing to that horrid cylindrical tank. It had even followed her outside the memories, resting ominously in grass where Wavelength had brought her back to in the times they'd needed a break. A specter that would not leave until the truth came out.

After a dozen attempts to brave the apartment, she'd finally been forced to confess to Wavelength its true nature when the woman had attempted to dismiss it as the murder weapon. Something that only existed in the moment and haunted Thana for what it had done that night, not what it still could. The woman was clearly battling with the repercussions of it.

While she might've been quick to edit out the unfortunate reveal of a certain hero's name, it was clear the psychic was more loathe to omit the existence of such vapor from her mind. It had damaged her, broken her deep in a way she'd kept hidden. Those physical wounds had mended now, and she no longer felt the lingering touch of its bite when she called upon the Storm. However, as the two had discovered, the poisonous gas had left one last cruelty.

One final indignity to inflict upon Thana from the hundred times-cursed Marquis Blood.

"What happened?" Reflecta asked, breaking the silent stare between Thana and her teammate. Wavelength bit her lip, struggling to voice any details. The Stormdaughter was forced to do so.

"My memories of that night… are incomplete," she said with grim solemnity.

The door opened, revealing a figure tied to a chair on the opposite side of the room. Bedsheets, rugs, and blankets wrapped around their upper body like a sick present wrapped in haste, secured in place with cords and rope. The legs and arms were wrapped in tape and secured to the seat, only a few fingers visible beneath the mess. Familiar shoes dug into the ground where a rug once sat. The man's right hand bore a jet black ring, barely visible between the wrappings.

She knew it by sight: a gift she'd given to seal the rite of courtship. Thanks to the runes carved along its inner walls, only one person alive in the world could wear that band. Damned would be the one to attempt otherwise. She'd been counting the days she could move it to Marcus's left hand once the two were wed and had eyed it almost every time she'd laid eyes upon him in the weeks since she'd bestowed it on him. Hope had burned in her heart more than once that it would prove a falsehood.

That she hadn't seen his face carried the brunt of her last embers of misguided faith that this nightmare might prove an elaborate deception. They'd found the ring in the rubble and ash. The script inside was damaged but should've still smoldered at a thief's touch. In these phantom memories, be they conjured by her own thoughts or with the aid of the psionic who accompanied her, she could spy no trace of swirling smoke from the ring as it rested on the bound man.

The other figure in the long-gone apartment seated himself upon the small couch on the other side of the room, closer to the door. It obscured him from sight until she'd managed to cross the threshold. The villain wore a dark costume with flares of red underneath body armor she'd recognized from Blood's other minions. The dream had even manifested those at her thought, comparing the man to the rest of his brethren. Notably, gauntlets clad his arms, exposed wires running across them like exposed musculature.

His face was concealed by a helmet that now haunted her nightmares so much it felt more familiar to her than her own brothers' faces. It had clearly been modified from the near faceless visors the rest of Blood's foul coterie wore, the lens suggesting cruel eyes. Gas filters were attached to the front, betraying his intentions for the large red cylinder beside him. His fingers danced along the valve at its top. The circles of white converged, plummeting everything into void.

Thana remembered a pain in her chest at this exact moment, but nothing else. This one crucial moment, the one that could absolve her or damn her lay just beyond these obstructions, but nothing Wavelength could do managed to budge them. They'd tried to allow the memory to play out, only for the room to burst into blue and red light before blinding white overtook them. That whiteness was not an obstruction of the mind at least.

She could feel the blastwave hit and remembered her wards crackling under its weight as the uncaring force of physics asserted itself on the room, crushing everything in its path. The explosion ended the memory abruptly, and Thana refused to let it lead into the first conscious recollections when she woke weeks later. No need for the mortal to see what a god's anguish truly looked like. Wavelength had levied her powers at Thana's behest to try everything she could to mend the memories and let them pierce the veil.

In the end though… they found only failure.

Thana lingered in her thoughts now that they were once more inside her own head, still brooding on what she'd seen when Wavelength spoke up.

"Sorry I worried you all," she addressed her team, more timidly than she'd expected the woman to behave from the brief time she'd known her in the woman's mind space.

"She… needed the help." Thana noticed the relief spread throughout the room. It would seem that the decision to pull her into the psychic's mind was not one discussed beforehand, nor were they kept abreast on how long the journey would take. The goddess felt a soft glow upon her cheeks from Wavelength's proclamation, and wished to deny it, but the psychic was no doubt speaking truth.

Had she been allowed to fall further into her twisted thoughts unaided, it was apt to venture she would have brought chaos upon the city. She made to stand, to apologize when a hand grasped her shoulder. Commander Cosmic stood there, an imitation of one of her oldest mortal friends, giving her a mimicry of the reassuring smile he might wear. Her lip twitched, almost outraged for a moment before the shadow of the man in question passed over her thoughts. This was what he sought to build.

Those who would call themselves heroes, intent on helping others with their great power.

"I saw enough," Wavelength spoke again, once more commanding her attention.

"I can say without a shadow of a doubt that whatever happened, you were not at fault." Her words slammed into the goddess like a speeding train. It was all she could do not to fall back into the cushions as she struggled to find words. An angry part of her, wrapped in barbs, was poised to refute the woman's claims and insist fault lay with her alone. How could it not? She was a god, regardless of how much Blood's toxins had ravaged her that night.

Even should she not have struck first or been the one to alight the explosive payload, she should've been better and done more. Wavelength cut her off however, "Marcus and you were victims. It all happened so quick and in your own home. What I could see, what we watched play out dozens of times… it was over in seconds. And it happened because that villain chose to do that, not you."

Her mouth worked trying to say something, anything, before the psychic extracted herself off the couch with the aid of Orbit and Reflecta. Once upright, she practically threw herself forward rather than walk on shaking legs in order to wrap her arms around the shoulders of the larger woman she'd been helping all this time.

"Maybe it was a misfire," she whispered in Thana's ear.

"Caused by the gas. Maybe he struck first and you reacted on instinct. Maybe thousands of years of habit were to blame. But it happened in the first place because of him, not you. This isn't your fault." She spoke the last words louder as she gazed into the divine woman's eyes. Eyes that became a flood once more. This time however, Thana let herself be comforted by those around her as the other heroes closed ranks and came to her aid in their own various ways.

The day's remaining hours bled away as for the first time in weeks, or perhaps longer should she be honest, Thana felt like a weight was beginning to fade.