The Games We Play

Chapter 86: Mind Games

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryugii. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Mind Games

I fell slowly in the darkness, as though sinking through water. For a moment, there was nothing but myself, alone in a void and illuminated only by my own light, but at last my fall reached its end and I landed softly upon some obscured surface. As I touched down, light rippled outwards from my feet, burning away the nearby darkness.

Looking down, I saw myself standing beneath my own feet. It was like I was standing on top of a mirror, but my features weren't reverse. In fact, I looked.human again, as if the me below hadn't discarded his form and had never been touched by Conquest. Then I lifted my hands and saw the white of Grimm bone armor. At some point, too fast for even me to notice, the Tiger had faded and been replaced by the White Rider.

I let my hands fall back to my sides and looked around. Though I seemed alone within a void, the sky above the human me was bright blue and shone with light. I took a step forward and he mirrored me below, small ripples of cleansing light blowing outwards as our feet connected. More of the world below me was revealed, small bits of clouds and sky. As more light poured up beneath my feet, I saw figures in the shadows, outlines vaguely illuminated by my approach. I could barely see them, as though I'd walked into a darkened room and my eyes had only just begun to adaptand it was that which made it clear to me that my Clairvoyance was not working. My Elementals, my preternatural awareness, none of it functioned in this place. I'd been plunged into a world where I was all but blind and what little light I could gather did nothing but hint at the shapes of terrors in the dark. As far as I could tell, I could have been surrounded by enemies just waiting for me to move, to draw their attention by revealing more light.

The thought made me chuckle, but the sound didn't seem to carry through the air in this place. It was as silent as it was dark. But

"I'm not going to be stopped by the dark, Conquest," I said, putting my will into the words to make them resound through the silence. I continued forward, fearless despite what may be lingering in the shadows, and each step drew more light even though it illuminated nothing. "Did you think just because I have so many senses, I'd be paralyzed without them? If all you have left to throw at me are childish fears, then just give up. I know there are things in the dark, monsters lying in wait, but I'm a Hunter, like my father and his father before him, so I face them so others don't have to. It's literally what I do for a living."

I lifted my hands invitingly, the other me smiling brightly, but there was no response but a distant rustle in the dark.

"But," I continued when there was no response. "If this is how you want to play this, very well. But you should know that darkness is nothing but the absence of light."

Tapping my foot slightly in time with the words, I drew upon my will and upon the power of the Dust that still burnt within me. Though the form of the Tiger was gone, the power stayed with me in a way that was hard to describebut I let some of it pour out of me and flow across the ground. It expanded, not like ripples, but like a wave that crashed over everything. Where each step had illuminated perhaps a meter, the wave did not stop but flowed out and out until all was revealed.

An army stood around me. From the smallest of Nevermore to the towering mountain of Ziz, the creatures of Grimm had me surrounded and their number was such that I could not see the end of them. In every direction, they went on to the horizon, millionsbillionsof them. What seemed like all the Grimm on Remnant stood poised to attack me now, a force that could and had swallowed civilizations.

I didn't even bother feigning interest as I kept walking. As if waiting for that signal, the first of the Grimm attacked, a Beowolf leaping forth from the endless horde. Fangs sank into my throat and then I felt feathers stab into my flesh, the black darts falling in greater number than rain in a storm. Something massive stuck me in the back, the stinger of a Deathstalker impaling me through the middle and lifting me into the air. Other creatures seized my limbs, biting and tearing as they overwhelmed me.

For a moment I watched, looking down at the White Rider beneath my feet. Then I continued along my way, ignoring what was happening beneath me completely. The world around memy father's mind or perhaps his soulwasn't what I'd expected; but then, what did I expect from my father's soul? It wasn't really the type of question I'd ever actually thought about before, because, well, why would I?

But looking at it, I could do little more than nod to myself, because though I hadn't anticipated it, it made sense when I saw it. I walked away from what appeared to be Beacon, with some of the buildings little more than vague blurs and other as clear as if I'd been standing in front of the real thing. It looked different, granted, like Beacon might have before it renovated once or twice, but I assumed this was what it had been like in my father's day. To either sides of it were houses, some right next to one another and some separated by leagues and leagues of fields, giving the entire thing a rather patchwork appearance that just seemed to fit. To the left, I recognized my grandfather's house from before he passed away, and on the other

I recognized some of the places from photos and could place others from stories or through basic logic. There, an apartment that my dad had probably lived in for a while. There, a smaller house, maybe his firstback when he thought he was going to be a father of one instead of eight. There was a larger house down the way and then one nearly twice the size before, far in the distance, I saw home. The fields that separated the buildings were all different but something always stood out about them. There were battlefields, graveyards, places under attack, a wedding ceremonyI didn't pry, for I knew what they were.

My father's memories. The things and places that had mattered to him most; what he'd lived through and left behind.

I walked past the fields, eyes on the skies above until I got home, humming quietly to myself to help ignore the sounds around me. When I reached the front door, though, it was so utterly familiar I had to pause for a moment. Had it really been only a day since I'd been home? It felt like a lot longer, even ignoring the time manipulation.

But if I'd find my father anywhere, it'd be here.

The front hall was full of pictures as ever, but they weren't the ones that had been there in real life. Instead I saw pictures of people and placesthings he tied to home, perhaps. I saw ones of Bianca near the front, from ones of a baby with the beginnings of blonde curls to images of a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. It had been awhile since I'd seen my eldest sister, but they looked older than I remembered. Maybe dad had seen her more recently or perhaps they weren't real imagines. Perhaps these were hopes and dreams as much as memories; the pictures here and the whole of this place.

A part of me wondered what I'd see at the end of this particular way, when I got to my own pictures, but then I shut my eyes and smiled to myself. A picture might have been worth a thousand words, but something's are better heard than seen.

I didn't need to open my eyes to move through the house it was so familiar, so only when I'd reached the living room did I even bother to. When I did, I stopped at the doorway and looked inside.

My father sat in his chair by the TV, looking back at me. He'd been nailed there, stabbed through his arms, legs, and chest with perhaps a hundred spikes of white bone and left bleeding horribly. It stained the ruined cloth of his shirt and pants badly enough that I couldn't make out the color or lettering of the former and if he'd been more than a mental or spiritual image, he'd have been thoroughly dead.

But he wasn't. He was alive.

"Hey, Dad," I said. "Sorry to barge in so rudely, but there wasn't a lot of time."

"Oh, it's okay, Jaune," He said after a moment, blood spilling from broken lips. Even so, he was smiling. "I'll get over it, I suppose."

I returned the smile and went to his side, kneeling to grasp one of the spikes in his legs. Beneath me, through the reflective floor, I saw the White Rider standing tall in what looked like a throne room carved out of black stone. The walls were so dark, in fact, that they seemed almost like tears in spaceand after a moment, I realized that perhaps that was exactly what they were. The Grimm didn't have souls, after all, so what would their presence look like in someone else's if not an absence? Like darkness and light.

I didn't have the experience needed to say for sure, but perhaps that was even why this had been so easy. Though at first I'd been lost in darkness, the moment my father's soul had touched mine, a bit of that darkness had gone away. Conquest had tried to hide things from me, deceive me, but my father subverted him at every turn, knowingly or not. The mirror beneath me showed the truth of my father's souls, without the armies of the Grimm or a never-ending darkness.

Beneath everything my father had still been here, like I'd known all along.

And beneath me now, sitting in a pedestal at center of the throne room above the White Rider wasthe White Rider, looking down at my reflected form. Not just him, but the transformed figures of Keppel, Carmine, Tenne, my father, and countless other figures, all somehow inhabiting the same space and existing both separately and as one.

Conquest, serving as my father's reflection, sat waitingand he could wait a little longer, because I was still too busy for his shit. I refocused on the task at hand, drawing spikes carefully from my father's mutilated body.

"So," My father asked, breathing carefully. "You have a plan?"

"We're going to get you out of here, of course," I snorted.

"Of course," He chuckled slightly. "I was just wondering about the specifics. Do you actually know what you're doing?"

"Nope," I admitted. "This is my first time soul diving; finally tried something that got results, got this. Sort of figuring out the rest as I go, but heyI'm doing okay so far, right?"

"You are," He acknowledged. "Or I assume you are. Can't say I have any idea what's going on, either. What have you got so far?"

"I'm still working on my idea," I said. "Conquest is drawing energy from somewhere. I can't get to him directly in his cell form, but he infected your body in order to get at your Aura. There's a connection there and it can apparently get from Conquest to your body and then to your Aura, so I figure it should be possible to turn it around somehow. Think you could manage it if I free you?"

My father shook his head.

"That might be possible, but I have no idea where to even begin with something like that. I heard you talking about it before, butwell, you might as well have been speaking another language. I tried to resist when he infected me, but I didn't feel anything like what you were talking about and then I couldn't do anything."

I frowned at that, looking down again.

"Conquest kept you trapped inside," I muttered. "But you could still watch everything?"

"I could see and hear just fine," He nodded. "Just couldn'tyou know. Stop myself."

He looked away as if personally ashamed of that fact. I patted his knee awkwardly before rising and planting a foot on the armrest to help pull out the spears in his chest. The wounds didn't fade even when the spikes were gone, which struck me as rather worrying, but he didn't complain.

As for his words, I'd known all that before, butdid it mean anything? Did he have to let my father see? If, as I'd already confirmed, eyes were the windows to the soul, did that have something to do with this. And if so

I shook my head in irritation. I didn't know enough about the mechanics of this whole soul hopping thing to say anything yet and god that was annoying.

Fine, I thought.

"Plan B, then," I nodded. "We bond by beating the shit out of Conquest until candy comes out and we see what happens from there."

"That's not really a plan," He mused before tilting his head to the side, tone lowering dangerously. "But I do like the sound of it."

"I thought you'd appreciate that part," I smiled, moving onto his arms quickly. "It's a place to start, at least. You ready?"

"For this?" My dad looked down at his mutilated body and then at the looking glass floor. "I'm more than ready."

"Then let's give it a shot," I grabbed his hand and followed his gaze.

I looked down at my feet and saw myself through two pairs of eyes, staring at both sides of the mirror. Then I was on the other side, hand around the wrist of my father's Grimm form and as one we looked up at Conquest, darkness above us and light beneath.

"You said you'd like to see me try and take my father back," I said, staring at him with eight eyes. "Well, Conquest. What do you see now?"

"Two of the most annoying fucking humans I've ever met in my entire life," He replied, a thousand voices overlaying his own as he rose. "It seems you still have a lot to learn, boy."

Without another word, the world changed. Darkness flooded over us along with a wave of such utter silence that it seemed a creature in and of itself. I'd heard of rooms that scientists had made so utterly quiet that people forced to remain in them started to break downif so, I imagined that was what this place was like. For a moment, there seemed to be nothing but me, alone in the dark and deprived of any sensation.

"This again, huh?" I said, closing my eyes as the words refused to carry beyond my lips. I wondered for a moment if he thought this would work on mebut no, he couldn't think he could get past the Gamer's Mind, could he? Even beyond that, would he really try the same trick twice?

No, I thought. But then, this was the first time for my father, wasn't it? And it was his soul that was bound and captive, gripped tightly in Conquest's darkness. He could be touched, frightened, hurt, and shaken, and in a battle like thisI honestly had no idea what that really amounted to, actually. I didn't even know if this would accomplish anything, much less be enough to free my fatherI was messing with things I had no real grasp of and with which I'd had no time to practice. For all I knew, this would just kill him faster. I

Doubts, I thought as I shook them off. Whether a subtle attack by Conquest or a natural result of being lost in the dark, it didn't matter; I had no use for such things now. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that surety itself had power here. So I made certain that I was certain and spoke again.

"That's enough," I said. I walked towards that mass with steady, fearless steps, unworried of whatever may lie within it or what Conquest's mind might conjure up. We were in the mind or the soul, which for all I knew were near enough to be the same thing; whatever the case, they were their own places, independent of the physical world. I had to remember that this wasn't a battlefield and that I wasn't a warrior here. I was hope and a light that banished the darkness, as far beyond Conquest's power to stop as the rising of the sun. I was here to help my father and nothing would stop me, especially not something as easily broken as silence, darkness, and doubts.

And between one step and the next, the darkness was goneand so was Conquest, who'd vanished from his throne above us. The scene in the throne room had changed and I heard a low sound from behind me; my father, in all likelihood, seeing what had been revealed. On the floor around us laid the corpses of his and my mother's team, flesh torn by teeth and claws; my teeth and claws, presumably. Their flesh had been shredded, eyes and faces torn away, bones laid bare, blood splattered everywhere.

They didn't, however, look anything like the actual corpses; I'd killed Keppel, Carmine, and Tenne a lot more neatly, for one thing. I supposed Conquest had no real way of knowing that, though, and neither did my father. I could see him through the eyes on my back, on his hands and knees where he must have stumbled in the darknessit probably wasn't a coincidence that the most brutally mutilated corpses was right in front of him. And though it was a lie, it was a convincing lie, from the angles of the blood splatters to the cloaking smell of death. If I hadn't known it was a complete lie, I might have wondered, like my dad was probably doing.

He didn't say a word and that was probably the point; he wouldn't say a word. He'd just wonder and doubt. Here, that might be enough.

So I spared him the trouble.

"They didn't die like this," I said, looking back over my shoulder. My father's crowned head had turned slightly to look at two of the nearest corpses which I recognized as Keppel and Carmine with some difficulty; they really were rather messy. "It was fast, I promise. I knew they weren't responsible for what was happeningand I'm not one to hurt people unnecessarily, either. You taught me better than that."

"Yes," He said. "I know. I wasn't"

"It's okay," I interrupted. "He's trying to make you doubt and worry; you're his target. I'm not sure whether that's because he can't get at me or if the fact that this is your house matters, but he's going to try and shake you."

"Right," My father nodded. "Of course. I justJaune!"

Something stabbed me through the chest, a sword that was pretty easy to recognize, though it was heavily stained in blood. I looked over my shoulder to see my own face and then looked back into my father's eyes.

"Pay no attention to him," I said in the exact same tone. "It's nothing but a trick to get a rise out of you. Just remember, we have souls; he doesn't. He's a leech, a parasite drawing upon your power and trying to make you think he's something more than the powerless worm he is."

"But he can't get to you?" My father asked, having come to his feet and raised his hammer the moment I was stabbed. Only my voice stopped him from doing something, though what it mattered, I couldn't say. Still, at this point I was pretty firmly onboard the 'Conquest doesn't get anything he wants' train, so it seemed like a good idea to keep him calm. That in mind, I took a step forward, pulling myself off the sword and dismissing the copy of my mother entirely. "Because of the Gamer's Mind?"

"Partially," I said. "He tried to stop me from getting to you, but he couldn't. I won't flinch at the images he shows me; I won't draw back or shake or doubt. If nothing else, I can say that my heart won't changeand here that's power. No matter happens, I came here to help you and nothing he does will make me stop trying. Butyou helped too, you know."

"I did?" He asked, sounding surprised. "How?"

"You showed me the way," I tried to smile but I didn't have the mouth for it, so the me beneath my feet smiled for the both of us. "The world beneath us, it showed me the truth and that helped me find you. See?"

I saw him look down at the blue sky beneath our feet, the world spread out below us. I didn't recognize most of the scenes there, but he must have. I saw him look at the other me, especially, and then lift his eyes to mine once more.

"Yeah," He said after a moment of silence. "I guess I am pretty awesome."

I chuckled and held out my hand. Certainty and confidence may be a type of power here, but there was nothing that said they couldn't come from someone else. I'd gotten this far because of my parents, in a way, so

"Come on," I said, hand waiting. "He can't touch me here, but this is your soulmaybe that means it's your fight to win, too. Just know that I'm here to help you."

He nodded once, eyes dropping to my hand for just a moment. I knew what he was thinking. With Conquest gone from the throne above, he could be anywhereespecially since he'd plunged the room into darkness before he left. He had to be wondering where he could be and the only other person in the room was me. A part of him, if just a small part, had to be wondering if this was a trick, especially with the double of me that had attacked; taking the appearance of a loved one was a pretty common tactic for this type of thing in games, at least. Maybe that was what Conquest was after, trying to plant doubts and turn my father against me, instead.

So I did the only thing I could do.

"Hey," I said, tilting my head to the side. "I've got your back, Jack."

"Goddamn it, Jaune," He said with an annoyed tone, but his human reflection smiled as he took my hand. "How long have you been waiting to say that?"

"A while, maybe," I shrugged a shoulder. "But seriously, let's go. I can't say I know the way for sure, I'll guide you as best I can."

"Nah," Dad snorted. "I know where he is."

Before I could even ask, he lifted his hammer and threw it hard at the empty throne, reducing it to powderand throwing Conquest through the air. Maybe he'd been hiding there all along. Maybe my father's certainty had forced him there.

It didn't matter.

My father took a step and we were abruptly standing above Conquest's prone form. The Grimm twitched once, thousand forms jerking as he tried to rise, but my father put his fingers on his chest and held him down. He held a hand out to me and I passed him Crocea Morsmy sword as it had once been his, real to us both in this place. With a swift motion, he lifted it up and brought it down, impaling Conquest cleanly through the chest.

Whereas I'd brush a wound like that off as nothing, Conquest roared as light glowed from the sword.

"Son of a bitch" He swore before my father brought down his hammer again, smashing it into his face with force enough to shatter the throne room's entire floor.

"That's my momma you're talking about," My father drawled, human reflection winking at me. "Now then, let's get down to brass tacks, hm?"

My father grabbed Conquest's face and pulled him up, ripping him through the hilt of Crocea Morsand suddenly, all three of us were on the other side of the mirror. My father and I were human again and ConquestConquest was an empty space.

He was nothing.

"This is my soul," My father said, the words no less dangerous for how quiet they were. "And it's an asshole free zone. Jaune!"

I stepped past him, sword abruptly in my hands again, but this time it returned because of my will. I felt the light that flowed through my spirit and the blade glowed, brightening until it filled the room with light and then solidifying into a sword of pure light and will. My father caught my hand and together, we drove it into Conquest again, heedless of his screams.

And as the light filled the darkness, as our combined will overcame Conquest despite his age and power and evilI found what I was looking for. We channeled our Aura through Conquestthrough his manifestation her and through his physical formand from there the connection I'd been unable to find seemed clear as day. It stretched far beyond my senses, vanishing into the darkness, but I could feel it.

"Jaune, did you find it!?" My father shouted as a sudden wash of color and sound filled the room.

"Yes!" I snarled back, driving the blade deeper and feeling it come both apart and back together in my mind. I imagined the connection as a string and swept my blade down to cut it loose

And everything went wrong. There was a sudden change as my light touched home, like a vibration up and down the string, but it was more than that. Suddenly, by image of the string as fragile was gone and instead it was something harder than adamant and colder than Keppel's final attack. It was something living and I felt my swordmy light, my will, my very selfrebound off of it.

At that moment, I realized something very obvioussomething I'd known from the very beginning but never truly grasped until now.

If there was a connection, there must have also been a source.

My image of Crocea Mors shattered in my hands, sending my father and I flying back. I hit the wall and then the ground, blows that should have meant nothing, but I was still left reeling by the sudden force against my thoughts. A dark boot landed beside my face and something grabbed me by the scruff of my neck but I couldn't focus on anything, except

"Your soul is still weak, old friend," A voice chuckled in my ear.