"Have you ever been told you have multiple personalities?"
- Ainz Ooal Gown interrogating Hilma Cygnaeus over the report of stolen aid.
It was like staring into a crooked mirror.
Antilene still felt as the hands of the figure – Her own figure, closed in on her throat. The black leather of Zesshi's gloves chafing cruelly against the pale skin of her neck.
"Ah, finally woken up, have we?"
The palms of the Extra Seat loosened their grip around Antilene's throat, moving up from her neck to caress at the tear-stained cheeks, leather-bound fingers cupping her face before wiping at her widened eyes – Taking extra care with the one she had landed a kick in just earlier.
"Well, that's not really true, is it? If we were awake, you wouldn't be here right now, would you?~"
Zesshi's words send another shiver down Antilene's spine. Her voice was twisted, drowning in gleeful mockery as she spoke. Antilene tried her hardest to avert her eyes, her own face towering over her, but whatever her pupils danced to, they would find only more black.
"Where… What is this place?"
Antilene's own voice felt foreign to her as she spoke, coming out hoarse and mistreated, especially after confronting the embodiment of her past persona of Certain Death.
"Have we forgotten already, Antilene?" The enigmatic re-apparition of her mind asked, surely in jest, the black and white eyes piercing through Antilene's own.
"After all the memories we made here…" Zesshi's face hovered centimeters away from her own, a sadistic grin spreading far from her lips to the shine in her eyes. Antilene held back a whimper as the executioner's thumb pressed on her lips before trailing lower, gloved fingers tracing down her jawline to her jugular, teasing the hairs on the back of her neck.
"Come on, I'll make you remember it in no time at all."
With hands already running down her wrists, Zesshi interlocked their fingers together, hoisting up the defenseless Antilene with surprising ease.
'My wrist bindings… Wasn't I...?'
"No… This is wrong, I'm not supposed to be back here-"
She flinched as she felt her foot stepping over something.
Cough.
Or rather, someone.
"Zesshi-sama… I- I concede…"
Looking down, Antilene met the battered body of Infinite Magic, the Eleventh Seat of the Black Scripture.
The equipment from the Six Gods she was outfitted with barely hugged her figure properly, and even the sentient head-wear that often shadowed her face looked like it was trying to crawl away from Zesshi's onslaught. The girl's face looked the worst for wear, though.
"Remember how fun it was breaking her-in, Antilene?" She flinched as Zesshi's voice tickled the back of her ear. "She kept throwing spell after spell at us, too bad none of them worked. She was a lot more cordial after the beat-down, too~"
Antilene's head throbbed at every word that came out from Zesshi's mouth. Looking around her once more, it was starting to become painfully familiar what this place represented. Dimly-lit hallways leading to a dark room bathed in blue fire, where eight walls closed-in on the Black Scripture's training grounds.
'Training'. The word laid with bitter taste behind her closed lips, turning her head away from both the 11th and Zesshi's perverse gaze.
"Stop it already. It's over, isn't it?" Antilene cried back, covering half her face with a shaking palm, only a white eye left looking at Zesshi Zetsumei.
"We got what we wanted! Decem-" Antilene bit her tongue, never wanting to acknowledge that man's role in bringing her to the world. "...The Elf King is dead, we took him out with our hands, just like we did to his concubines."
'No one will have to suffer like I did…'
"It's all over now, isn't it? We can stop…"
Zesshi stared impassively for a few moments, studying Antilene in her angst before creeping closer once more.
"Do you think the Theocracy would let us stop? If it's still even standing, that is…" The Extra Seat's hips swayed as she took tentative steps to cradle the cowering Antilene. "Imagine that, we don't even know if the Sorcerer King burned it all down already… Though, would you even care?"
"Tch." The girl inhaled sharply through her teeth, feeling Zesshi wrap her hands around her once more. "T-There were good people in the Theocracy. The citizens… Nazaire-"
"And how often were we allowed out to enjoy that? Even before we matured, the Cardinals only wanted one thing from us~"
"S-Stop…" Antilene faltered as Zesshi restrained her from behind, one hand grasping at her wrist while another came over Certain Death's own mouth, fangs biting into and discarding the leather glove – The now bared fingers finding ground in Antilene's pale abdomen.
"What was the excuse we used to placate them back then, hmm?" Zesshi held onto Antilene with a vice-like grip as her breath teased her inner ear, and her hand rubbed up and down her naked stomach. "Ah, I remember now. 'No matter how ugly or twisted they might be. Even being inhuman is no matter. After all, they'd be a man capable of beating me. '"
"How strong would a child born of myself and such a man end up being?"
Antilene could only shut her eyes close and grit her teeth, trying to shut herself off and away from Zesshi's words. From her own words.
"It's not true… I- I only told them that…"
"Because you didn't want the Theocracy to make you into a breeding sow, right?" Zesshi propped her head up Antilene's shoulder, her piercing monochrome eyes staring right through Antilene's walls.
The Half-Elf God-kin opened her eyes, struggling her hardest to get out from Zesshi's grip.
"G-GET OFF OF ME!"
Certain Death, however, only continued hugging Antilene from behind, her arms wrapped around her neck as she gently patted her hair.
"Shh, Antilene." She continued her mockery of affection. "Even if we got rid of all of them, you know we wouldn't be freed yet, right?"
Behind herself, where Antilene couldn't turn her head to see, a panel in the wall could be heard sliding open, footsteps of a gravely boot splashing on the red, wet floor.
"After all… He would never let us go."
"W-Who are you-" Antilene's heartbeat accelerated, her struggling turning more and more desperate, yet she still couldn't free herself.
She never could.
"No matter how much we tried to fight back or run away from him, he always caught up to us, didn't he? Don't pretend the memories didn't resurface, otherwise…"
Zesshi's arms suddenly dropped down, losing their grip on Antilene.
Cough.
Antilene felt the warmth pooling up in her throat, spluttering blood out when she opened her mouth.
Looking down, her hands trembled as she saw the twisted sword penetrating through her and Zesshi's stomach, the Flamberge having stabbed through the two of them.
"He'll come back for us… Again, again and again…" A chill crept down her spine as Zesshi continued speaking, her hands wrapping around Antilene's waist once more and bringing their pierced bodies ever closer.
"If we don't get stronger…" Cold, trembling hands grasped at Antilene's womb, fingers pressing the supple flesh and spreading around the blood from where Rufus' blade had stabbed through it.
Her throat constrained in shock, Antilene could not speak. Not until she turned her head back, meeting Zesshi's gaze in full – Her once pristine visage now twisted and perturbed, her sclera blackened in dilated, bloodshot globes, and a wicked smile dripping blood from their shared wound.
"Inside or outside, we'll never be free."
Antilene's chest heaved as she woke up, finding the familiar bindings around her wrists and feet restraining her to the cold floor of the Frozen Prison once more.
With widened eyes, she hung her head back, looking into the pristine ceiling above as she breathed in and out, forsaking the apparitions that haunted her mind before.
Only when she looked down again, was she met with the phantom lurking at the back of her head – Her reflection in the cold, frozen floor, staring back at her with those same monochrome eyes.
"Zesshi…"
The reflection did not answer her.