Ambient Mage

I asked Aurelia to gate the two of the 5th tier beings into the newly constructed prisons.

Naturally, I made sure they received their just rewards.

As they had chained others, now they would be stripped of their powers, and soon their lives.

After sending the human equivalent of rotting wood, to the prison in the survivor camp, I bent my knees and tried to sit eye level with the girl.

Morgan had cloaked her and was wrapping her in her arms.

"Morgan, do you mind if she takes your spare clothe-"

I held out Morgan's clothes.

She took them from me gently, yet in an abrasive action.

I turned away as the girls helped her get dressed.

"Lucas, she's dressed but now what?"

She looked at me with terror and hope on her face.

It was so distressing.

Her eyes and eyebrows said she expected a saving grace, yet her mouth gaped like a person seeing a monster feasting on their family's corpses.

The disparity between them was extremely off-putting, to the point I began to contemplate the reprocussions of making any choices.

Currently I was presented with two options send her back and risk losing Morgan back to the camp, and it may also send her into shock.

The other was to keep her, which may give way to trauma, and trigger her trauma again.

I was truly in a dillema.

"Aurelia?"

"I would send her back."

"Charlotte?"

"I want to keep her."

"Morgan?"

"Why am I last?"

"Got any helpful suggestions?"

"I want to go."

A small voice squeaked out from the arms of Morgan.

"Alright."

With the decision made by the girl we began to discuss how we would move should Morgan be required to stay and calm her.

"Guys."

We turned as we saw that Annastasia had fallen asleep.

"Alright, then we'll wait for 10 minutes."

"Go ahead and take her to camp."

As I said those words, Annastasia's hands grabbed tightly onto Morgan's arms.

Her eyes shot open as she left the carry of Morgan.

"I'm not leaving."

She yelled, loud enough for it to be understood she was taking no negotiations, but also soft enough not to reverberate in the walls.

She had lost the soft voice, and it was replaced by a colder tone.

Charlotte began to mediate.

"I thought you said that you wanted to go back to the camp?"

"That was her not me."

We stood confounded for a few moments as we had to process what she had told us.

"I'm sorry who are you?"

"Who else?"

This wasn't something I was sure of anymore.

"So if you aren't the same, who is she?"

"She is Annastasia."

"So then you are not?"

"No, I am Annastasia too of course."

I looked once more at the girl.

Black eyes.

Different from Henryk.

She was the abberation, technically.

"Are you sure?"

I questioned.

At this the girls also backed up readying their weapons.

"Yes, I am also Annastasia, but that girl is too weak to make decisions regarding her future."

"So you decided it for her?"

"Of course."

"What separates you from a parasite?"

"I'm not foreign to her body."

"Then a symbiotic relation?"

Charlotte asked.

"No, we are one in the same."

Sure seemed like it.

"So, what, you have two personalities or something?"

Morgan replied sarcastically.

"Well, no, I have 3."

What.

No wait, that could be believeable.

"Can she use magic?"

"Yes, she has much potential, but only ever learns useless magics."

"She is unable to fight."

"Is there a personality unable to use magic?"

"No, I use combat, she uses household, and other useless magic like that."

"The last one uses recursive divination magic."

Wow, powerful stuff.

"Is that how you split?"

"A smart one here."

She pointed at me.

"So you would be the dominant fighting and aggression complex."

"The other is compliance and empathetic complex."

"And the last one is likely devoid of any complex and is fully immersed in the power?"

"Right again."

"So you have black eyes, she has grey, and let me guess the last one has white?"

"Are you a prophet or something?"

"Or something."

I replied giving a nonanswer.

Truth be told I knew of her multi-personality since her ghost is able to be interacted with in the DLC.

Her eyes change depending on what you say.

"So what should we call the three of you to differentiate you from each other?"

"I'll be Annastasia."

"No, you may be the dominant personality, but that in no way makes you the original."

"That's not fair, you'll be talking to me most of the time anyways."

"So, we should kill the other girl's ability to talk with other people?"

"No I never said that, besides they aren't probably interested in talking to others."

"Well, she may have a point Lucas."

"No, she does not."

I refuted that.

"The original misses her brother more than anything else in the world."

"You, how could you poss-"

"Dolly!"

She stiffened.

"You react to the name given to you by your older brother. Don't be foolish and reject it, you probably wish for him too."

She was being pulled through the dirt, but sometimes headstrong people needed an anchor.

"And what if he doesn't recognize me?"

Tears began to well in her dark eyes.

"And what if he doesn't recognize me?"

She asked louder.

Her voice unbroken, she didn't even sniffle as the tears began to flow down her face.

"And what then?"

"Impossible."

i denied such a possibiity.

"Your necklace, Annastasia."

She grabbed it.

"Here, take it if you want it so bad."

She screamed again.

I opened the locket in the center.

"No, not that."

I turned it around to show her.

"Who is that Annastasia?"

"Brother, Brother Henryk."

"Grail knights are not people of materal possesions."

"And yet the of what little he carries with him, a locket is one of them."

"He has never forgotten you."

"Why was it that the church sponsored you to this school?"

"I don't know."

"Because of the funds he provides, his one selfishness is to send every girl that looks like his sister to a better life, so he may find her eventually."

Aurelia looked shocked.

"Lucas, you-how did you even find this out?"

I couldn't explain right now, I needed her to stop trying to combat me, and console herself.

Technically she was a burden to the entire team and mission, but the entire storyline was too dark to ignore.

So I was going to save her from this eternal trauma even if meant saying some drastic things.

"Give me half a year, wait half a year and you will see him."

"Really?"

"Yes, he is currently in the principality's northern border fighting with a paladin order to stave off the beasts."

"Your elder brother is already a grown man, in his early 30's."

"He is no child. I will send word, and he will arrive when his duty is done."

"So, wait once more."

She had calmed down, no more tears.

"Okay."

With that her eyes turned a milky white.

"You are much like me, except my senior."

"I give thanks to my elder."

"If you wouldn't mind I would like to deign you as one of my elder brothers as well."

"Would that not take away from your divining and practice of worship?"

"I never cease in either."

"I mean have you asked the others?"

"They have given their implied consent."

"Are you sure about this?"

I looked to Aurelia and Charlotte for a little help.

Aura shrugged her shoulders, I guess unsure of what this meant for Annastasia and me.

Charlotte looked a little concerned, but wasn't agreeing or disagreeing.

"Then I assume everyone has made peace with this?"

"I gue-"

"What should we call the three of you?"

"You may the weakest of us, Dolly. She appreciates the name."

"You may also call her Anna."

"The darkest of us, you may call Annastasia, or simply Astasia."

"You may call me sister, or sister Annastasia."

"As for you big brother Lucas, you may call me little sister, or little one."

"Please call for me at your leisure, I will always respond at your call."

The last two sentences seemed to be aimed only to me.

With that her eyes dulled into the reticent grey eyes.

"Anna?"

Morgan called out.

"Morgan just take her back to the camp, her dominant personality should handle the rest of this."

***

After Morgan taking Annastasia into the camp, we all had to sit down.

It was an exhausting emotional battle for us all.

"Lucas, I want to know how you knew so much of her and her brother's life."

I held a picture of Henryk and Annastasia, the same as the one in her locket.

"Then is he, dead?"

I shook my head.

"He only asked me to help with his other quest in his life as he found me to be an exemplary knight, to find the girl who recognized the photo, or shared the locket."

"As far as what he had done, divining it wasn't difficult given that he had actually handed me one of his personal items."

"So what he doesn't even carry the picture anymore?"

"I'm not sure if he was loathe to remember her, since it only brought him sadness, or if he truly thought I could find her, but regardless he handed it to me."

"I believe that he gave it to you, but exemplary knight? What made him actually give it to you?"

Aura understood me far too well, to even find errors in my story.

"The truth was, we all come from the same church orphanage."

"You never told me you were in a church orphanage."

"Because technically, I lived with my mother, and because they were alive, I was unable to receive from the church."

The memories arrived to me the day I entered this world, and they really didn't ever seem to go away.

Most days they were gone from my mind.

However ever so often, maybe only a few times in a year now, they got really bad, enough to where I doubted my true reality.

I am not Aaron, or Lucas, I am a player of 'Total Brake'.

But everytime I had the memories flash to me, of the time I spent with my parents starving, wishing I could live in the church, and remembered my life so far, it became harder to deny my reality.

Who I was, was a player.

Was.

Now this game is my reality, and I am Lucas.

There was no running from reality, as now there were no games to play.

I could only live my life, and hope for the best ending.

"Anyways, are we all rested now? Let's hunt the rest of these imbeciles, I have a feeling someone is leading them all on."

Of the 11 here, 9 were left.

2 girls, 7 boys.

With so many people here, my suspicions that something deeper was at play here deepened.

Unfortunately help wouldn't arrive until the end of the next day.

"Let's catch the rest of these idiots."

Morgan stated it well.

Seeing that Aura and Charlotte had agreed we set off in the halls of the palace.

We checked room after room, freeing as many as 20 'slaves', whom, Aura promptly gathered, and sent back to camp.

After a while of searching we entered a red velvet room with a woman, holding a chain to the collar of five men.

"What the hell?"

Morgan sputtered out.

Charlotte and Aura, looked like they were mesmerized.

I poked at their cheeks.

No response.

My suspicions turned into reality.

I pushed their stoic bodies out of the room and closed the door.

"Lucas, what's going on?"

"My worst fears."

In the prison there lays a monster.

A monster you're supposed to return to later in the game, to trivialize the fight.

The monster, is shackled the entire game, and uses psychic attacks separate from magic since it cannot wield magic.

However, when you come back to the monster late game, you already have items or artifacts, or other things to combat most status ailments and attacks.

Magic, psychic, soul and spirit attacks, amongst other things.

But this monster not only controlled people, it enhanced them.

One of the lords it worships, is the monster lord Mammon.

Also known as Mammon of Greed.

This was the result, and now, in order to weaken the monster, the Ninmurta.

It is a 3 armed, 3 headed beast.

Two on it's shoulders one on it's tail.

And it draws it's power by extracting the power of those under it's influence.

Additionally it can even call them to do it's bidding once it has enough control.

Now, we were on a time limit.

There are cases where people are fully engulfed in the Ninmurta's power.

Occasionally some 9th tier healers can bring them back, and an assortment of artifacts can as well, but at that point, the individual may as well be lost.

The chances of regaining someone's sanity either from the beast is also a 50/50 shot.

They may never return to normal, even falling into depression once the beast dies.

The Ninmurta's in 'Total Brake' are few, hard to get to, and easy to miss, with good reason.

But now I was faced with likely a 3 hour clock, as the girl in the room and the boys as well didn't even seem to be moving.

They were almost dreamlike.

I needed to free the masses outside the palace too.

"Morgan, they haven't recovered yet, we need to call Rose, and Claudia and warn them about the influx of people."

"Lucas, what's going on? What haven't you told me?"

"Look, I'm going to lay it all in front of you okay?"

She did a thing with her face.

"Sorry not like that."

"Anyways, there's a 7th tier beast in the prison, like Damian said underneath the prison."

"It's a Ninmurta, and we need to free everyone, before we even attempt to fight something like that."

"Isn't the beast in magic chains?"

"It's using psychic attacks."

"Lucas, tell me how you found out."

She began to narrow her eyes.

"Look this isn't the time for this."

"No, right now is the time for this."

"If they die here, their fault for being mentally weak, but I can't trust you, when you act like this."

My words were rushed, hers were composed, I guess I sounded nervous, but in her eyes it was because I was hiding more things, not because I was urgent.

"And don't tell me you found it, or Harry did, he didn't know of the Ninmurta either."

And once again I was forced to lie, how could I not?

i trusted these people, but the game, the life I was living, I had no proof of anything.

So I answered as best as I could.

I looked at Aura and Charlotte who had begun to wake up and were mostly awake.

"Morgan." I began.

"I'm not going to tell you I pray every day to a god about divinations or divination magic or fate magic."

"I receive divine transmissions by way of memories."

"Huh?"

"It doesn't make sense, but I receive memories, or feelings, that tell me things I shouldn't know."

Not accurate, but not inaccurate.

"That's hard to believe."

"The transmission told me that these nobles are susceptible to the power of greed, especially due to the incense in that room."

"We weren't nobles, or at least, you weren't and I have relative divine protection against mental harm, for obvious reasons, I need to receive the divine knowledge."

"Charlotte and Aurelia, don't have nearly as much as I do in terms of protection, and against a 7th tier monster, that wasn't even supposed to be here?"

"They never stood a chance."

All three of them listened to me speak with curious eyes.

"So please, stop asking questions, I swear I will never do anything to harm you, no matter, how I look or feel."

"Alright."

Morgan said.

"I'm sorry, but you are so different sometimes that I can't wrap my head around it."

"Morgan, we know it's hard, but sometimes, not knowing is easier, since what he does is to protect us."

Aura hugged me and spoke.

"I know you feel doubted, I'm sorry."

Morgan looked ashamed as Aura spoke on her behalf.

"Please, stop, we are running out of time here, there are still roughly 290 warm bodies here in need of extraction and mind purification."

I steeled my emotions.

And Aura stepped back.

"Now what?"

Charlotte asked.

"The town."