11:30am, The Alghul Villa; the Upper Room Workshop
The Upper Room, an extra room with no set purpose, was as cozy and comfortable as any other place in the villa, and carried with it the same log-cabin aesthetic of rough-hewn wood. In this room she had all her familiar comforts, her desk, her sofa, her various bits and baubles, and yet the space was so utterly claustrophobic, especially now that much of it had been pushed along the walls, that she had to wonder why she would ever choose such a space for her workshop. She supposed to herself that there wasn't an actionable alternative, but then, why would she choose a temporary home without any room for her workshop, which was the pride and core of any mage? Surely she was smarter than that?
Perhaps she only mused like this because she sought to escape her current situation. Like a scolded child she sat in a chair, knees tight together, waiting on the one supposed to be her Servant to finish drawing in chalk underneath her. Next to her in the circle was the mercenary Xander Haq, who had returned to the villa the day before. According to him, his wife had suffered a fatal injury via means unknown, but Caster had successfully "reunited" them, and she was now safe in an undisclosed location. Across, the third and final sitting person, was Archer, who sat hunched over; eyeing Xander with suspicion. Xander's testimony seemed too good to be true, but, at the very least, it was perfectly obvious that Archer believed what he was saying. Having nothing to add, she had ended up tuning the conversation out entirely, and she became aware of her surroundings as if waking from a deep sleep; as if the last hour hadn't happened at all.
Archer turned his sharp eyes towards Caster's scribbling.
"Almost done?"
"Yes, yes."
He made a final, pointed sketch across the floorboards, finishing his hex.
"Now I'm done." He stood up and dusted the chalk from his hands, "Why so hasty, friend? Don't you trust me, yet?"
"Not at all, and not in the least because you've failed to explain why she-" he gestured towards Aisha with a talon-like hand, "Is joining in on this. If the mercenary is to be my Master, then why should she be in the circle? Isn't that the least bit suspicious?"
"Well, yes I suppose it is." He turned and began to fiddle with books and pens behind him, continuing unabated, "See, friend, nothing in life is free, of course. But, we, here, believe in a little something called sharing. You, Xander, Aisha and myself will all be sharing energy amongst ourselves. Consider it a tax if you like. Does that satisfy you?"
"Why would that satisfy me?"
"Because this whole time you've been searching for our ulterior motive, and now you've found it. Don't tell me it's too much for your antisocial pallet?"
He shook his head with a 'harrumph'.
"Just get on with it."
'Lies'
She looked around, searching for the source of the whisper.
Caster turned to her, "Something wrong?"
"Uh-no. Not at all."
'If there are two Masters, then why would Archer be left with a net negative? Shouldn't the rising tide raise all ships?'
She had no answer.
"Good." He clapped his hands together, "Then let's begin."
Caster took his place in a fourth chair, such that each of them made a point of the compass over top the circle. He took a collection of crushed up herbs and minerals from his hand and scattered them over the floor, then began to murmur arcane words in a language she didn't know. The air became colder, wind blew in from nowhere at all, and it wasn't long before indigo lightning began to crackle underneath them. This continued until Caster spoke again.
"Archer. Do you accept this contract?"
There was a pause, and the magic began to recede.
"Yes."
It returned in full. She felt the energy shoot into her, sending her up and erect, and the same to Xander while the two Servants remained wholly stoic. She felt this foreign power rise up within her, and then fall away with the glow of the circle underneath them. When the magic finally did dissipate, she felt weaker than when they had started, as if she had been drained.
Xander examined the band on his wrist, which now, too, was a violet hue rather than its previous crimson.
"I suppose it worked?"
Archer nodded, saying curtly, "Yes. It did."
Caster laughed to himself, "Yes, you nearly had me going for a moment there."
"I was still considering your 'tax'. But, thinking about it, its not a bad deal."
"I take that to mean you still think you can kill me if the need should arise?"
He said nothing, and neither did Xander. For a moment, a grim silence hung in the room.
'It's a red herring.'
The voice again.
'Why would Caster show his cards? It's a bluff.'
She shook her head while hoping the others wouldn't notice, and they apparently didn't.
"Well," her Servant continued, "Now that we are a team, I suppose that means you should feel comfortable giving out what you withheld earlier."
"You mean the information on Saber?"
"Yes."
"Very well," His head hung shockingly low for the proud man he was, "What needs to be said is that I have an ability called 'Solar Mantle' which ought to make me intangible, but Saber cut through it like nothing with a Mana Burst."
Caster raised an eyebrow, "Okay? You said earlier that you thought his Mana carried the 'water' element. For a man as, pardon the pun, 'fiery' as yourself, should it come as any surprise that they would overpower your defense? Seems rather 'elementary' to me." He added with a sly grin.
If his skin weren't darker than shadow, perhaps an irritated vein would've been visible.
"This isn't the time for jokes, Caster. There are two things you need to remember," he held up two talons, "Firstly, 'water' was a trace element, not a primary one. Frankly, I can't figure out what the primary quality is- even with my enhanced senses. Secondly, I am not 'fiery', I am radiant. I am the sun, and what sun have you known to be extinguished by a splash of water?"
"Fair enough, but I wasn't there, so do you have any theories that would square the circle?"
"I do." His sharp eyes became distant, "I looked into his eyes, and... I couldn't do anything. It was vast.... Pure... I hate that word, but I can't think of a better one. His blade... I think... that it was made of 'Truth'."
"Ha!" Caster visibly struggled to hold back his laughter, "What drivel! What is 'Truth', sir? There's no such thing! I think I'd rather say your 'sun' was a campfire all along."
The voice.
'How can one who denies the existence of truth also speak it?'
She hissed under her voice, "Shut up."
- But the two Servants, with their supernatural senses, heard what she said even if they hadn't been listening.
"Aisha?" Caster raised his eyebrow, "Is something the matter?"
She gave something between a sigh and a grunt, "I'm fine. Please continue."
"Aisha, darling," He swooped over her with all the silent grace of an owl, "Perhaps the sudden drain of energy has been too much for you, why don't you excuse yourself for a moment and grab some tea downstairs?"
"Uh-yes. That sounds like a good idea."
"Wonderful."
She rose from her seat and sailed thoughtlessly towards the door.
Archer picked up the conversation where it had left off, "In any case, you shouldn't be so flippant. You are a Caster, after all. Trickery, illusions and mind games are your specialty, but I get the sense that whoever he is- he sees through all of it."
Caster stroked his goatee with a grim expression. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times-
"Aisha. Weren't you getting tea?"
"Oh-right. I'll be back."
She left and closed the door behind her, descending to the kitchenette. The kettle she used was enchanted with a basic spell which kept the liquid inside warm. Of course, modern technology could do the same, but this was an antique passed through her family for generations. As she absent-mindedly grabbed a cup, it occurred to her that Caster had brewed this tea.
Why should that be suspicious? What reason did she have to doubt Caster?
She felt she finally understood what people meant when they talked about so-called intrusive thoughts. This consistent knocking on her consciousness was not unlike an intruder, though, in fairness, she never knew an intruder who would knock for so long without entering. And speaking of knocking-
Her attention was brought to the basement door- the one that Caster had used for his workshop. Why hadn't she been down there before? Didn't she have every right to? There was something inside her which pushed her away, but that same knocking told her to cross the threshold.
Without even meaning to, without realizing, she was already standing in front of the door.
She couldn't help herself any longer. She pushed open the door and stared down the cold, dark stairs which seemed to open with all the welcome of an old and dusty coffin. With a final hesitation, she stepped inside.
As the stairs creaked under her, the cold, still air began to bristle her skin. It tasted like damp wood and cobblestone, earthy and grim, untouched by the warm sunlight only feet behind her. The staircase descended to a flat platform, then turned back to reposition under the house. As she made this turn, the stale air began to change. Though equally dead and still, there was another quality to it, the smell of fresh soil, and it occurred to her, standing still as she was, that the wooden stairs were not the source of the creaking that became clearer as she approached the basement. Reaching the end of that dark tunnel, she found herself, not in the basement as she remembered it, but within the dark bowels of a birch forest.
Crooked trees grew from dark soil painted with indigo grass. They were barren and skeletal, empty of flowers, leaves or fruit, and reached upward to scrape against a black sky which seemed both incredibly claustrophobic, as if it were always closing in, and yet infinitely beyond the wood's clutches: always in reach, and yet seeming to pull away the moment you tried to grasp it's distance.
Turning behind her, she found the stairs and the wooden threshold embedded in cobblestone walls. She allowed her eyes to follow the wall, looking for a corner, but she couldn't tell how far it went. A fog, a haze, surrounded the whole space, and so though she felt she might've seen a corner in the distance, she could never be certain. For a moment, she considered walking along the wall so that she would lose her bearings, but her curiosity refused such sensibility, and she took a shaking step further into the foggy woods.
All through that morning she had felt disquieted, always tempted to look over her shoulder, and always afraid that someone- she didn't know who- was coming for her. Now, whatever windchimes had been disturbed in the back of her mind had transformed into blaring bells. She kept her head on a swivel as she pressed on, but could never be sure if this feeling was the excitement of a new discovery, or the dread of an ill omen. The strange, indigo grass crunched like glass under her feet, and the soft soil bent under her light weight. Her heart jumped at the sudden creak of a tree to her left-
But she saw nothing there. She caught her breath and went deeper into the woods.
Time passed by at an uncomfortably slow pace. It could've been seconds, maybe minutes or even a whole hour. Either way, it was far too long to go without running into the opposite wall. She began to think that it was smarter for her to turn back. There was no telling how far it went, and among the haunting shadows of the skeletal trees, the crawling roots and bare rocks in the fog were as disorienting as they were frightening. A part of her began to scheme; once she found her way back, she could return and mark the trees with a knife so she wouldn't lose her way, or else follow the wall and begin to study the dimensions, make measurements-
She shook her head, ashamed of herself. Her mage's mind had gone too far this time. She was wandering through a hellish liminal nightmare dimension in her basement, almost surely created by her Servant, and her first instinct was to study it? Had she lost all her humanity? Was her heart truly that hardened? The danger here was mortal, and yet somehow counting the bricks in the wall was supposed to be a useful way to spend her time? Besides that, she reasoned, Caster didn't want her down here. Whatever he was hiding, this was her only attempt to discover it. She saw no way that he would allow her to trespass again, and she had no faith in her ability to sidestep his power.
'50 more paces,' she bargained with the sensible side of herself, 'Then, if I find nothing, I'll-'
A thud off to her right sent her straight up. She made a sharp turn, peering into the fog, but saw nothing. This time, however, her curiosity was fully awake, and there would be no rest until it was satisfied. She approached the source of the noise. For a moment, she thought she might have been imagining things, but as she went to step on and over a rock, she found it gave way under her, and jumped back as if it had hurt her. When she recovered from her shock, she leaned down and examined the figure.
It was a man. She had stepped on his back and could make out the vague outline left by the mud on her shoes, but only barely, because some level of dirt and grime seemed to cover nearly every inch of his naked body. She naturally assumed the worst, but, as she turned him over, she realized that "the worst" wasn't what she thought it was.
He was alive.
He didn't look at her. He gazed off into nothingness with empty eyes and a vapid smile, chuckling low, very low, under his breath. Her arms began to shake and she dropped him back into the moist ground. As he fell back noiselessly, two things caught her attention. First, there was a sapling, only about the size of her pinky finger, growing from out of his spine, seemingly grafted onto the skin. Second, as his arm slumped over her foot, she saw there, on the back of his hand, a single violet triangle. A tattoo-
A Command Seal.
She couldn't stop the squeal that left her as she began to fall backwards, tripping over something else and falling onto the ground. When she turned over, she found another face looking at her. Staring past her with the same vapid smile- looking out from a nest of roots.
She kicked up onto her feet and began to run back to the best approximation of where she came. Pieces began to click into place in her mind, and none of them pleasant. She began to feel that the trees were shaking at her, glaring at her with feral bloodthirst, and each time she closed her eyes it seemed that a hoard of people were chasing her with knives and teeth and bloody fingernails. She felt at her face, wiping away the sweat, and caught a glimpse of her own Command Seals which made her scream and throw her arm as if her hand could fly from her body- and how she wished that it could. Tears and sweat stung her eyes, hope and despair both fled from her mind and only primal fear remained.
She felt like a fly in someone else's web, and the worst part was that she knew exactly who it belonged to.
Catching something moving ahead of her, she stopped with so much abruptness that she nearly fell. Her pounding heart and lack of breath caught up with her, and she felt paralyzed with fatigue. The shadow moved like a tiger through the grass and when it came close enough, she could see two, sharp golden eyes piercing the fog with an eerie glow.
"Aisha? What are you doing down here?"
His voice was smooth like honey, and black like coffee, the combination of which began to calm her nerves. She began to think that this was a misunderstanding, and that she need only explain everything. Surely he would understand?
'RUN!'
What was once a whisper became a scream in her mind, reawakening her fear and terror, snapping whatever feeble words of support had risen within her. She turned on her heels and fled deeper into the woods, closing her mind to how the shapes in the fog were becoming more and more like people.
His voice came from all around her, as if echoing across the vast and unseen walls of the boundary, "Why are you running Aisha? Where are you going? Don't you trust me?"
Each word crawled its way across her weary mind, and each second she had to pull her hair violently as if to shake them off and keep them from making their nests there.
"Why won't you talk to me? Aisha?"
"LEAVE ME ALONE!"
It was a deep scream. A scream which came from such a deep part of her that she couldn't recognize it. She closed her eyes and grabbed her head, trying desperately to clutch onto whatever she could call 'herself'- and slammed headfirst into a stone wall.
With a scream and a shudder she fell away from it, one hand pressed against her bleeding forehead and the other against the wall- itself a source of both comfort and anxiety. She found the end, but where could she go now? Where did it even come from? Why hadn't she seen it before? She turned to run in another direction-
A hand flew out of the fog and grabbed her by the throat- pinning her against the basement wall.
"I asked you a question Aisha? Why are you running? What are you looking for? Have I done something to upset you? Why won't you talk to me?"
His smile was that of a friend, and his words felt genuine to their core. Only his eyes, his gleaming eyes like a creature in the night, kept her grounded as she fought off his suggestions and clung to her fear and self-preservation, struggling helplessly against his iron grip.
"Tsk-tsk-tsk. You're choosing to be angry, you know. Choosing to be afraid. You aren't actually angry with me. You're not actually afraid. Why are you clinging to your pain? Just let go, Aisha."
She refused to. She kept her eyes fixed on his so that nothing could distract her from the evil there. She felt, somehow knew, that if she opened her mouth she would end up giving in. She couldn't reason with him. If they had an argument she would lose. She would lose everything. She knew he was wrong but couldn't explain why, and so she kept her mouth shut, opening only to breathe and to lick at the tears, sweat and blood that tickled her lips.
"Don't you see this is the problem, Aisha? You want power so badly. You want control so much. And yet, you can't have it- not really. You play power games when you can win, and run away when you can't because you know the truth as well as I do: that we live in a vast and uncaring universe that we could never hope to so much as challenge, much less beat. You pretend like you don't know, but you do. Haven't you ever thought you'd be happier letting go? Joining the flow rather than standing against it? A river rock will erode into scattered sand in time, but a raindrop will flow to sea with ease and someday touch the sky. Doesn't that sound better? Doesn't that sound easier?"
She clenched her whole body and prepared herself.
"Oh? So you remember, do you? You remember the last time you tried to be brave; the last time you tried to stand up to me. You remember when you died- when I killed you. It's a painful thought isn't it? Wouldn't you rather forget? Does it not occur to you that everyone here but you is in agreement? You're the only one here who hasn't yet fully realized the bliss of ignorance. If you want to forget, all you have to do is listen to me. Ready?"
He leaned into the side of her face; she could feel his beard tickle her ear as he whispered to her sweetly, like a lover in the throws of midnight passion.
"Forget.
"Forget
"Forget."
Each word came like a drop of water which refreshed her, and she began to think that forgetting wouldn't be so bad. As she began to think that, she found that she was, in fact, forgetting. She felt vacancies appear across her mental landscape, knowing nothing except that there was once something there. She stopped struggling.
"There we are. Good girl. Don't worry about a thing. You'll never want to go back."
'You'll never be able to.'
Like a shock to the system her whole body went tense, and she instinctively pushed Caster away from her, but a second later his hand lashed out again-
-snap-
She couldn't breathe. She couldn't move. Her body slumped against the wall and her vision began to fade. He kneeled down to look into her crooked eyes.
"At some point it becomes a false choice, you know? To be a rock or a raindrop doesn't really matter. Not when the river is stronger than you are. All reach the sea eventually, some in peace and others in pieces. That's the real choice. Still, I don't want to take away from the tragedy of the situation-"
He reached out and massaged her forehead with his thumb and forefinger, golden eyes glowing with real sadness.
"-I hate breaking my toys."
She was thrust into darkness once more, and Aisha Alghul died a second time.
....