Rue was a goddess torn in two, and somewhere in this asylum was her other half.
Pain.
It was all Xia could feel inside and out.
As she lie on her downy duvet underneath the ornate ceiling of her glass prison, Xia silently begged for the relentless torture to end.
The Lord of Nightmares sat beside her and stroked her moonlit hair as his chaos dug deep into her psyche. Xia could neither move nor scream as he plowed through her memories and pulled the worst to the surface.
She relieved her sisters’ deaths over and over again, the pain shredding through her empty soul like shrapnel. It was like she was back in those rooms at their bedside as their last bits of chaos filtered through the air.
Their empty stares haunted her dreams and twisted into her worst nightmares. Phobetor took great pleasure in animating their corpses as she sobbed on the floor beside them.
“You!”They screamed and pointed their stiffening fingers in her face.“You did this to us!”
“Please,” she begged. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was too scared to die!”
“You were a coward,” her oldest sister, Geia, would sneer.
“We protected you from him and you were content to hide as we withered,” Molpe, her middle sister, yelled.
“We were stronger together and you failed us,” they hissed in unison.
“I don’t know how to be brave,” Xia whispered.
Phobetor was content to let her wallow in the misery of losing her only family. A betrayal she could never undo. She hid in the darkest corners of Anthemossa and listened to them scream as they were used by the highest bidders and sucked dry by Phobetor.
Her sister, Molpe, was the most dangerous. Each of the three Sirens had a unique song with distinctive effects. Molpe’s song could call anyone and, rather than drugging them, she could manipulate their minds.
Molpe was successful against the Lord of Nightmares all of one time before he pushed her to her knees and broke her.
She was the first to die.
Phobetor spiked her to a wall on Level Desecration for all to use and see, and that’s where he left her.
Xia was the one to find her.
She would never forget being shoved into that room and being forced to look at her disfigured sister on display. She had fallen to her knees and vomited, her stare unblinking as she screamed her pain into the universe.
Molpe had been tough on Xia, but Xia always thought she was better for it. When they were younger, if she stumbled and scraped her knee, Molpe would punch her on the shoulder and tell her to get up.
“Don’t let anyone see you cry,” she would say with a firm set to her brow. “If you show them weakness, they will break you. You’re either a fighter or you’re dead.”
It took Xia a long time to understand that expression of love, but Molpe sat so deeply rooted in Xia’s heart that a core piece of it broke the day her sister’s flame was extinguished.
Her fault.
Molpe’s death was on Xia’s shoulders.
Geia was given as a gift to Phobetor’s brother, Morpheus.
Xia had only ever seen Morpheus twice– one time to pick her sister up and the other to drop her corpse at the doorstep when he was finished with her.
Geia’s song was specific to the untouched. It sang to virgins from miles away, their minds entranced by the innate seduction of her voice. It was different from Xia’s though. Xia’s song was alluring because it was a drug to the mind. It could call forth carnal desires and allow the listener to revel in intoxication.
Geia’s song was a promise.
Whatever they longed for, be it happiness, marriage, sex, or frivolity, Geia’s voice promised it to them.
