NOVEL NEXT The crowds flock to the amphitheater, now filling the seats in curiosity. Towards the front, the gathered faithful of the Lupine Party chant and jeer, shouting their slogans and waving their signs as if this were a rally and not a festival. A familiar woman in a modest white dress and a drooping cloche steps up to the microphone.
And she begins.
"My dear friends", Serrone says, voice full of sickly-sweet authority, a sentimentality that belies her true intent, "To start, I would like to address the rumors surrounding my family. Indeed, yesterday morning, our home was broken into by a gang of thieves - intent on murdering us, or worse. They even took the lives of two of our brave guard in their rampage. While we have not yet identified these vandals, we are working tirelessly with the Sable Guard and the Marble City Police Department to find these killers."
A few in the crowd clap at that. Evidently, Nathaniel Latchet's part of that whole ordeal hasn't yet hit the public. Or she feels confident enough to ignore any kidnapping allegations, if they do exist.
"Allow me to tell you a story. When I was a little girl, the priests of the Effigial Church of the Dozen-Minus-One revealed something extraordinary to me - I was Blessed. Chosen by the Gods to enact their will. That their infinite wisdom and multitudes shone within me."
Her words start to grip the audience, holding them in place, an almost gravitational pull. Many who had only been casually listening start to lean forward, attentions bewitched by her religious ramblings.
Alabastra looks around, head on a swivel. "Fuck, where are they?", she mutters under her breath, scanning for her partners. She digs her hands through her coat pockets, rocking on the balls of her feet to try to catch any sight. Then she draws herself back down, and pats me on the shoulder once with the back of her hand. "Think it's just us, Os."
I bristle. Great. Already I can feel The Timekeeper pulling on the threads of pain wrapped around my mind to twist my thoughts towards annoyance at that. Now that I know it's deliberate, it almost seems a petty act. And even that thought only rewards me with a worse pain.
"C'mon", she says, and begins weaving her way around the crowd, making a long arc toward the back of the stage.
"And that light was proof of one thing - that the Gods still favored our nation of Anily. That they had seen the trials we endured, and were moved by our unbreakable human spirits, even in the face of the wars and plagues that ravaged our country."
Rung around the outside of the stage, several redshirted Partisans stand shoulder-to-shoulder, a menacing gang of perhaps a dozen or so. Though they can only block passage so far around the side of the stage, the fact that they do so at all is a concerning sign.
The energy in the crowd shifts, from cautiously curious, to actively celebrating, hooting and hollering. Though not all let themselves be swept in the fervor: more than a few get up and start to leave, uninterested in whatever this rally entails.
Less than I'd hope.
"We stood defiant against the storms of spell-sickness sweeping through our streets, against undeath and curses turning brother against brother, against abandonment by our elven so-called allies in their high-floating cities, against hags and liches and dragons, plotting to corrupt our nation, and against the Caskian machine-weapons of war! Because instead, the men of our nation fought back against this evil, and claimed that ancient aegis in magic to save our nation. Our dead and living alike carved for themselves a place in the annals of history, standing with the glorious heroes of old, like Ogden the Brave, or Ser Mikael Swan, or Emperor Bassarus himself!"
The woman's voice, further now, still echoes out over the park. Between this and the actions at her manor, it's clear she's the powerhouse between herself and her husband, though whether she's a true believer is impossible to say.
We continue to maneuver around the line of Partisans. I can still feel their eyes on us. Why use Partisans for defense instead of cops or Sables? Any answer I could think of only brings more concerns.
"They defended Anily, and proved themselves the true and deserving heirs of the great Marble Republic, worthy to carry the torch of the greatest empire the world has known! And they proved themselves the heirs to this city, so rich with history, the living soul of our dreams of a great Anily! 'The central hub from which the spokes of empire stretches its mighty claws! A goliath of metal, indestructible!'"
She quotes the account of the city's founding from The Tributines. Even from here, it's clear the audience enjoyed that one.
We duck around a line of tents, fairgoers that were uninterested in the distant speech still milling about their days, blissful to the political rally unfolding a mere half-block away. Weaving through the tents to break eye contact with security, we move toward the emptier end of Medi Park, absent any festival attractions. Back here, there is only event organizing equipment, crates flung open, and a few stagehands milling about the space, on breaks or moving heavy boxes around.
A few look our way, askance at the intruders in their midst. "Just walk with confidence", says Alabastra, "They won't say shit if we look like we belong."
I do what I can to follow Alabastra's advice, keeping my head in the air, eyes forward.
"And of course, I could not forget the women of our nation. The mothers and wives. For we are the very heart of Anily. Our love and our unswerving duty to our homes and families is the human spirit itself, made manifest. Your silent strength is the foundation of our peace and future."
Alabastra grumbles as we go. "Ugh, Gods, 'women's coalition' my ass. And Mikael Swan had a male lover, you fuckin' hypocrite...", she ramble-snarks under her breath, working herself into a rage at the socialite's words.
"Focus", I say. She only huffs in response.
Now behind security, we approach the amphitheater from the back.
"Yet...", Lyla's tone drops from sweet to biting with just that one word. "We cannot let ourselves grow complacent. For despite the victories we won, I am sorry to say that the wars never truly ended. The sickness was never cured. Indeed, we are more sick now than we knew. Your families starve, your working men are denied their dignities and preyed upon by unionists, your governments are captured by fools grown fat and lazy. I see with my own eyes each and every day, the decadence that they waste away within. Too many have forgotten the light of our Luminary Gods, cast aside the lessons of the Effigy, and adopted sickening, radical ideologies."
My blood starts to run cold at the increasingly blatant rhetoric. What's caused the Lupine party to turn so flagrant? And why is the crowd cheering? I shake my head. It hardly matters. We reach a back door, closed off, as more stagehands watch our movements.
One in particular moves to stop us, standing in front of the door. "H-hey! You can't be back here!"
Without a second thought, Alabastra produces a 5-dollar note. "This little wolf disagrees."
The stagehand takes the bribe, looking over the legal tender with a regal canine printed on the front, and says, "Right you are!" He steps away, looking any direction but ours.
"They are not prepared - for that storm is returning. And it is heralded by monsters in the dead of night, infiltrating our city. The massacre at the Carlivain Hotel was no accident. My family's attack was no accident. The cruel and degenerate sow the streets, corrupting our most vulnerable with their curses. Anarchy. Sexual perversion. Lycanthropy. And most disgusting of all - vampirism. They spread their sickness, and it has pooled into the heart of our city. The plague tears itself anew into this world, and those whose call it reaches will annihilate us."
When she says vampirism my breath hitches. Until this started, I was perfectly content to leave well enough alone. I've always understood myself to be a monster, but I've no intention of spreading it. I doubt I even could. Isn't it enough I've sequestered myself? Especially now, kept from my own hungers at the cost of my vanishingly thin personhood; if they knew such sacrifices, would it even change their minds?
I have to believe they aren't so irrational.
Still, she speaks like she knows something more. 'The sickness pools into the heart of our city'? That almost sounds like it could be taken literally.
Alabastra's fists clench. She sticks out a furious hand toward the back of the bandshell. "Can you believe this shit?! Why are the organizers just lettin' her spew fucking garbage?"
I cross my arms. "It hardly matters." In truth, it would be a waste of time to complain.
"She's literally telling us why she's doin' this shit - read between the lines, Os! She's behind all of it! Given 'em the poison then sellin' the cure!" Her hands shoot to her sides in anger. "Someone's gotta shut her up."
Of course, always trying to be the damn hero. "That is still wildly speculative and conspiratorial, Alabastra. She could be telling the truth - at least, about this 'sickness'. Even if her spin is distasteful." Though, the implications of that, should it be true, are terrifying in their own right. The detective may yet have been right.
Her eyes roll. "These Lupines never tell the truth! She's behind all of this - she has to be."
I doubt I'm going to move her from that position. "Even so, we came here to discover what she's doing, and evidently the answer to that is 'propaganda'. We didn't come here to start a protest."
She stares a moment longer, then gets down on a knee to unlock the door. "Who said anything about a protest...", she mumbles, picks in hand, and opens the back entrance in a deft motion. Inside is a concrete-floored backstage, with dividing walls and band equipment set up in a small open area past a short, curving hallway. More stagehands mill about, as well as the band members that had been performing before this little speech.
Now inside the auditorium, Lyla's words bounce off every wall in a haunting echo. "It is, of course, the vampires you should be most concerned about." I freeze in place for a moment, listening to the speech. "Ever-hungry. Ever-plotting. Wanting nothing more than to frighten us into submission, like cattle. Perhaps you have seen the effects of this plot on your neighbors - they drive the hand."
At least in this moment, I can almost be glad for the watch's stasis: I'm not sure I want to think on that bit of rhetoric.
A few stagehands turn to march towards us, likely intent on ushering us out the door.
My blood pressure spikes, until I notice a brief shimmer over their forms. From the shorter one on the left, a familiar voice says, "Allie! Oh, thank Gods you got here!"
"Faylie?!", Alabastra says, relieved and shocked in equal measure.
The stagehand on the right stumbles over her words, "It's, uh, um..." Tegan, of course.
"It's a long story!", Faylie finishes her thought. The two are both disguised under Faylie's magic, wearing nondescript overalls over simple white shirts, unremarkable faces under identical pulled-bun hairstyles. In fact, the more I look the more obvious it is that the literal only difference between the two is size; a trick to save on her willpower, I'd imagine. She continues, "We, umm, might've done something... kinda crazy?"
Tegan says, "It's a lot. Come on." The two turn and lead us down the hall.
"But like any illness, the afflicted are not hopeless. Some may yet be cured, before they are driven to madness. The powers granted to me by the Gods, and even to you, by your sheer spirits and will, allow us to expunge these evils. Correct their sickness."
I think back to what the detective said. He mentioned Thassalia had been cured, but of what, exactly?
"Os!", Alabastra whisper-shouts. I only barely acknowledge it, having to take a moment to remind myself why I'm here. Right. I follow behind.
The disguised duo lead us to a door down the hall. Faylie turns and says, "Okay... don't freak out!"
"Not a great start, Bug...?"
"I would like to introduce to you a young woman by the name of Thassalia Demetrix. Thassalia was an actress, fallen prey to the perversion running rampant through the arts. She was made a lycanthrope, cursed with shark-like features under a full moon. But now..." There's a pause from the stage. "Where... where is Thassalia?!"
The faun opens the door.
Beyond the threshold is a small supply closet, overstocked with stage equipment that threatens to topple over. Several sheet-music stands swing down in a sequential order like pressed piano keys, held up at the last moment by Tegan. Pushing the equipment back into the closet, she quickly ushers us all inside.
The cramped space is lit by a single dismal lightbulb, and is made all the more claustrophobic by the elephant in the room.
Alabastra clicks her tongue. "I see."
A chair has been pulled into the closet, pressed against the back wall. And tied to that chair, tape over her mouth, Thassalia Demetrix stares bloody murder at us all.
* * *
I turn and start to bang my forehead against the door in frustration. Idiots. Morons. Thickheaded lobotomites . Why.
"Aw, c'mon, Os, it's not that bad."
Clowns. Clowns and jesters and fools. Minstrels could not craft a finer folly. Perhaps I should look for the nearest train. "Do you criminals know any other trick besides kidnapping?"
Faylie says, "This, like, barely counts as kidnapping."
Still pressed against the door, my neck twists like an owl's to stare at the faun. Thassalia, too is staring at her much the same. At least we agree on one thing.
Tegan adds, "We, uh. We panicked. But this is just, like, temporary." Outside the door, guards already start to shout for Thassalia. "Uh. Maybe even more temporary than we thought..."
Alabastra turns to the captive actress. Thassalia is dressed modestly, absent any makeup or frills one might expect of a star of the stage. She'd be more at home in a nunnery at the moment; certainly a far cry from the flapper she'd initially seemed to be. And her gaze hardens as it passes over Alabastra.
The rogue says, "Then let's get this movin'. Ms. Demetrix! I'm gettin' the sense I'm not any closer to that autograph." Unsurprisingly, there is no response from the woman who cannot currently speak. Alabastra's arms cross, and she turns to Faylie. "Take anything off her?"
"Just this", says Faylie, as she produces from off a shelf a leather-bound tome, with the emblazoned symbol of an eleven-spoked wheel on the front. Tegan flinches, ever-so-slightly.
A copy of The Tributines. She must be quite the religious sort, keeping the good book of the pantheon on her person. And she'd shown this before, at the theater, right before she channeled that spell.
Taking it from Faylie and weighing the scripture in her hand, Alabastra says, "Now, not to be a blasphemer, but... I've read better." The rogue drops the book harshly onto the floor. The actress breathes sharply out of her nose. Then Alabastra reaches into her pack, and pulls free the crystal she'd purloined from the theatre. "Gonna make a wild guess - this yours?"
The panic in Thassalia's eye is all the answer Alabastra needs. She starts to issue muffled screams from behind the tape. In the highly overcrowded space of the closet, her alarm spreads quickly like the plague to the rest of us. I take a moment to listen out to the hall for any approaching footsteps.
"Hey, no!" Alabastra holds out her hands in a please stop motion. Then in a desperate bid, she raises the crystal above her. "I will vandalize the daylights outta this thing!"
Thassalia stops thrashing about. Clearly this little trinket means something to her.
Alabastra nods. "Alright. Then howsabout we have a conversation. Like regular adults." I cannot tell if that was joking or hypocrisy. Still holding the crystal above her head in implicit threat of destruction, she reaches forward and peels the tape off Thassalia's face.
The actress sneers at the pain, before looking up in anger. She doesn't immediately scream for the guard, at least. "You... you monster-loving freaks!"
"Guilty as charged...?", Alabastra says with a shrug. Not taking this seriously, again. It'll be her downfall.
"You're... you're the ones behind all of this, aren't you?!", says Thassalia. Wait, what?
For once, Alabastra seems as confused as I am. "That was... my line?" Her head tilts. "Gee, you'd think an actress would know not to step on toes like that."
Despite Alabastra's incredulity, Thassalia may very well be telling the truth; not that I believe Alabastra herself was some secret mastermind, but just that she believes that. It would seem a terribly large amount of effort to fake that at this juncture.
Thassalia decries, "You stalked me at the theater, took my locking gem, and now you've kidnapped me! Mrs. Serrone was right - you really were out to get her. And now you're here for me!" She's getting agitated again.
"Barely counts!", Faylie chirps from the side.
Alabastra crosses her arms, struck with a thought. "Wait, how'd you even get here so fast from the wheel ride?" Ah, right. Time had hardly moved for everyone else. I almost concede that that's an excellent point, before the headache starts again. Gods, it won't even let me give her credit...
The actress sits a little taller in her chair, nose held high. "What, you monster-lovers still don't understand magic? We knew people were following me, so we hired a disguise double." The fact that two of our number are, in fact, disguised seems to pass over her. Or she just hasn't noticed.
"Huh. Smart." The rogue leans against one wall, and though her back is to me, I can tell she's grinning. "Woulda been smarter if you hadn't told me that. You're new at this, aren'tcha?"
Dejected, Thassalia shrinks back down. "Mrs. Serrone said the ones doing this would be sneaky wordsmiths. Hmm."
Tegan says, "We're the ones trying to stop this!" She huffs, set off by something deeper-seated than just the words the actress has spoken. The tension in this tiny space is stretching beyond limit. "What is that cure they talked about, anyways?"
Thassalia's eyes quickly dart to the crystal, before she retorts, "Oh, wouldn't you like to know? So you can corrupt me again?" She leans forward, as much as she can in the chair she's tied to. "It won't work. My spirit is pure."
Alabastra leans back. "Real annoyin' that I can't tell if that's bullshit. Guess I'm just gonna have to make an educated guess." She bends down, sharpening her posture like a needle point. "They messed your head up good, huh?"
"Mrs. Serrone saved me. Fixed me. Showed me that through the Gods and the human spirit, all things are possible." She really does sound like a true believer. Not exactly the master manipulators Alabastra made her and Lyla out to be.
"That's bullshit!", Tegan says, clearly getting flustered. "Total, total bullshit. There was nothing to fix!"
With a tender hand to the other's neck, Alabastra tries to bring her lover down from the boiling point. "Hon..."
Thassalia squirms in her chair. "W-what?! You're... you're tribades, too?! You just wanna- wanna indoctrinate me into your homosexual monster cult!" Rather sheltered, for a stage actress.
"I mean, not you specifically, no...", says the rogue. Not helping.
She starts to look around, panicked again. A beat hangs in the air, full of cold sweat and anticipation. "HELP! I'M IN HERE!", she yells for the guard.
This is collapsing. Outside the door, I hear shouting and footfalls approaching the supply room. Tegan brushes past me and holds herself against the door, as the knob starts to turn and knocks bang against the woodwork.
Alabastra swings her head back and forth. "Fuck. Fine then. Let's play dirty." And she rears back, and slams the crystal into the ground.
The blue prism shatters in a cloud of dust, powdered to smithereens by the impact. The light inside of it bursts forth in a small burning sun, before our captive's sternum lights up briefly the same, before dimming again.
"NO!", Thassalia screams.
The banging on the door gets louder, and several heavy thumps of body weight are thrown into the wood. Tegan pushes back with all her might, failing to dig her feet into the slippery ground beneath her, almost running in-place.
The actress heaves in place, fury and emotion bewitching her eyeline as she stares at the spot on the ground the locking gem was smashed apart. "You have... no idea... what you've done."
"Gimme a little credit - I've got a couple", says the rogue.
Staring up at us, Thassalia's eyes go pitch black. Empty sclerae voids, conveying absolute frenzy. She snarls, and rows of razor-sharp teeth gnash back at us. She turning.
Alabastra sees it too. She backs up into the rest of us, as the actress's form starts to stretch out with a bone-chilling tearing sound. "It's- it's still day...", the blonde says, voice far away from her.
Tegan shakes her head, still struggling against the door. "I don't think it's the urges. I think she just really wants to kill us."
"YOU'RE ALL GOING TO FUCKING DIE!", Thassalia screams, her voice turning ragged and bassy. The chair beneath her starts to snap apart.
The rogue nods, wide-eyed. "Ah. Shit." She looks to me. "Os, do something!"
I stare. "You had better not be serious."
"You have the watch! Do something!" She glances frantically between the transforming girl in the chair and the buckling door.
The headache creeps up once more. She doesn't understand... I can't care... "Even if I wanted to help, I have no Gods damned idea what I could possibly do to assist." Does she seriously expect me to wave the trinket in front of her face like some hypnotist and stop this? Even without the emotional stasis, that would still be the most imbecilic thing I've ever heard
The ropes snap apart as Thassalia flexes, her skin turning rubbery and clammy, colored whites and blues, gills sprouting along her neck, and her face elongates nose-first.
Alabastra shouts, "Fuck! We're leaving!"
"Through the wall of guards?", Tegan cries.
"YES, Dusty!"
Tegan groans, and throws the door open. Several black-armored Sable guard spill into the space, and the disguised knight throws her weight back toward them as they topple, carving a path out with her own desperate body like a wrecking ball. The sound of clanging metal armor on metal armor clatters through the amphitheater.
The rest of us turn and run. Thassalia starts to rise to her feet, near-fully transformed into her wereshark form. It's an awkward scramble over the toppled over equipment, but Alabastra sails past her fallen-over girlfriend, jumping over the collapsed guardsmen. Faylie practically skips behind her. But as I try to leave, I feel Thassalia's grip on my leg trip me over at the threshold. My arm bends at a spraining wrong-angle when I hit the floor.
Alabastra turns and thwacks the transformed Thassalia up the side of the actress's shark-nosed face with her bow, loosing her grip on me. Without a hitch in her momentum, the rogue bends down and drags me to my feet. I sprint from the supply closet, a clumsy and awkward scramble over the still-fallen guards.
We start to make for the back entrance, until a line of Partisans from around the side of the building start to file inside.
"Not that way!", shouts Alabastra, and motions us toward the only other way out of here: the stage.
Tegan in the lead, we run the opposite direction. Behind us, the guards and Partisans alike start to shout. At Thassalia. "Lycanthrope!", one says, "Destroy it!"
Well I won't begrudge a friendly-fire incident.
Down the curve of the hallway of the auditorium's interior, a door is left open, sunlight streaming into the metal building. The sounds of the murmuring, confused crowd beyond envelopes us like a plunge into water. One-by-one, we run onto the stage, and I pull the door closed behind us. From this angle, the audience looks like a terrible amalgam monster, a sea of hungry eyes, so much worse in broad daylight than the crowd at the theater.
And standing right in the center, next to the microphone, Lyla Serrone turns with a confused tilt to her head. Shocked and off-handed, and likely forgetting she's still being broadcast, she says, "What in the Heavens is this? Where is Thassalia?!"
The rest of us stand arrested on the stage, absolutely caught in the strangeness of the moment, utterly halted. And then Alabastra shrugs, stepping forward in the, perhaps foolish, gamble that Lyla won't murder us in cold blood before a crowd. She points with her thumb at the stage exit. "Found her?"
With a crash, the door behind us slams open to the shark lycanthrope, and all Hells break loose.
The audience screams, and many start to run a stampede from the auditorium stage. Behind Thassalia, the guard pile up, already harrying her with sword blows. She turns and slashes in a wide arc, knocking the nearest back into the building, but another stabs her in the side of her fish-like hide.
Wasting no further time, we run. Alabastra slides off the stage, landing without issue despite the drop. Tegan and Faylie manage the same, but when I reach the edge, the three feet to the floor feels like an assured path to breaking my neck.
Alabastra turns, and her eyes go wide. No warning given, she grabs my arm and pulls me off the stage. I topple over onto her as she falls backwards, wondering what the Hells she was thinking, until I hear an eruption of light magic behind me, and feel the smoldering air buffet my back.
For a split-second I'm lying flat overtop the rogue, as she stares up at me. If this were any other situation, I imagine she'd have some infuriating little comment. But she says all she needs to with that gaze.
I roll off of her and look up at where I'd been. Burn marks on the stage carve a trail back to Lyla Serrone. Her eyes glow with that radiance it had before, and her hand is wreathed in light. And she begins to stalk forward. We scramble to stand up.
And then the woman's head tilts, and her face drops with pure, unadulterated shock. "Wait a minute... Gods! It- it can't be! But it is... It's you!", she says, completely sincere in her disbelief.
Though it would make sense that the woman recognized her, somehow, as the thief from yesterday morning, Alabastra doesn't respond. Because the question wasn't directed at her.
"Wh-what?", I ask, flabbergasted. The speechmaker is staring right at me.
"But you're... out in daylight...? Well, this changes everything! You're going to answer some questions, darling." And then a pair of angelic wings sprouts from her back, and she darts straight for us.
Before I have time to react, the spiraling-rocket form of the sorceress collides with me, and her arms scoop under my own. She pulls me off my feet. And into the sky. The ground fast-vanishes from under me, shooting down in a dizzying torrent of vertigo. The wind buffets my ears, and I nearly pass out from the sudden rush of fear and motion, yelping impotently all the while as my feet kick out.
On angelic wingbeats, she flies us both toward the park's clock tower over a panicked and awestruck crowd.
* * *
With a hard landing, Lyla throws me to a brick floor, and I stumble onto my knees, palms scraping against brickwork.
We're in the tower's belfry, three open arches out to the sky per side, and a bronze bell the size of an oven hanging just above us. Though the tower isn't terribly large, it still rises several stories higher than the top of the amphitheater we just ran from. The tiny room has one exit: a staircase leading down into the rest of the tower.
From this vantage point, the whole festival can be seen. And chaos has woven its way into the fairgrounds. Families rush for the exit, and in the tumult a few of the booths and tents have been overturned. It's hard to say for certain from up here, but it even looks as if a handful of fights have broken out. Over what I couldn't say.
Lyla readjusts her gloves. "It truly is you. I'd know those awful, haunted eyes anywhere."
I readjust my glasses back over my eyes, feeling strangely self-conscious being needled in that way. "You... recognize me?" Not from my alchemy, I would assume.
Serrone tilts her head. "You mean to say you don't recognize me? Hmm. Perhaps there's more to this than I thought." She starts to ramble to herself, "And you're rather cogent, too. Not nearly so feral. I-I was dreading the day you, or your ilk, would show your face, but this is far different than I imagined."
She's talking like she knows me, and she truly does know more about these urges. Damn it, I wish it didn't hurt to grow curious. Through the pain I just barely get out, "I don't understand... have we met?" Perhaps my alter-ego, somehow?
"You truly don't remember? I suppose it was over a decade ago, at least, but I never forgot that day. Never forgot what you did."
W-what? She's not making sense. "I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't know who you think I am." My shoulders square as best I can. There's more I want to ask, but The Timekeeper clamps a furious hand around my questions before they can meet my tongue.
"I wonder if the sickness has backfired, somehow? Nevertheless, we have not met since, but I imagined we might again. But not like this." She narrows her eyes, and says with dawning sickness. "Wait. Unless... that was you and your cohort at my manor the other day, wasn't it?"
I'm not sure any lie I could give would throw her off the scent, so I say nothing.
"Strange. I did feel something ineffable that morning, as well. It really is you." Her focus intensifies, and she says like a revelation, "Do you feel that too?"
She's staring at me, and it begets staring back. There's something in her eyes, those fathomless deep blue irises. Some aura about her: she feels familiar. And I think back to her manor. I'd felt this before.
The corner of her mouth tugs, almost amused. "This must be why the Gods put me on this path. They've connected me to you. They planned this meeting. I am to save even the unsavable. Even you." I blink rapidly at that. Through an audacious smirk she continues, "Their divine forgiveness truly knows no bounds. If I am their chosen, then I suppose I must follow in their example. Though, I don't imagine it will be an easy task. Goodness, it may very well be the most difficult thing I've done, saving an unworthy, disgusting vampire such as yourself."
I push down my wounded pride at her little insults and say, "I have no invective against you. Just let me leave."
"Oh, you misunderstand - I only want to help, darling!" She brings a clasped fist to her sternum, in almost genuine concern. "We can cure you. Fix you. Pull you away from this curse. You can still turn back from this awful plot you have hatched."
I... do not follow. "W-what?"
She barrels through once more, "You're confused, aren't you? Perhaps you were never the perpetrator. It is almost as if you're a victim of the curse, same as the others, after all. Or, perhaps you have just been changed somehow." Then she straightens herself out, dusting off the edge of her dress. "We should hurry, darling, before those thieves arrive. Come along." And her hand outstretches.
Then she truly wants me to come with her? I have no idea what I'd choose in a vacuum, but the watch wars against anything so ambitious. My mouth can't even get the words out, I just shake my head.
I need a way off this tower, before this gets any worse. Throwing myself from a height worked once before... and she can't know what I have.
Screw it. I turn and run for the edge.
My body only barely begins to wrap over the railing before a hand grabs my shirt collar from the back. She's far too quick.
Lyla Serrone tsk-tsks. "Where do you think you're going?" And bolstered by golden light, she throws me into the ceiling.
The crook of my back cracks against the side of the brass bell as an all-encompassing CLANG bounces around my skull. I fall back down to the floor, where my neck jolts back with whiplash. My lower lip is busted open on the stonework. Even after weeks of it, the sudden pain still leaves me in a daze.
I pull myself up on my forearms, matching her sight. "S-stop..."
"Do not run from me when I am speaking to-" She pauses, peering down at me.
A small clink below me draws my eyesight low. The Timekeeper has been thrown from under my shirt, and now rests on the ground, chain still around my neck slack from proximity. And already I feel its magic start to unwind the damage.
Lyla Serrone gasps. "My word... the watch! All this time... you had it?!" And Lyla starts to laugh. She guffaws, like it's the funniest thing she's ever heard. "Oh, you little scoundrel!"
I grab the watch and scramble backwards, eyes darting. Then, she and her cohort truly are the ones who wanted it. "I need it!", I seethe, not even necessarily to her. As a reminder.
Lyla chuckles, clearly enjoying this. "You need it...? Wait." She laughs even harder. "Oh, it all makes sense now! That explains everything - why you're so different! It is an ancient artifact capable of controlling the flow of time... and the most you thought to use it for was as a diet suppressor? That is adorable." Wiping a tear from her eye, she sticks out a hand. "Clearly it is meant for better hands than yours, darling. Give it here."
"It's mine."
"Not by rights. Don't worry. We have other means of mitigating your baser instincts." Her face sinks into a scowl. "Do not test my mercy darling - I will be taking it, one way or another." She starts to conjure another spell.
It never arrives.
In a flash of movement, a lithe form springs up from the stairwell, vaults over the railing, and roundhouse kicks the mage across the face. Alabastra lands, out of breath, but in time.
She draws herself up, fists outstretched in a boxing pose. "Hands off my vamp, bitch." Despite the lash of The Timekeeper admonishing me for it, I let myself be thankful for this moment.
Lyla holds the side of her cheek, blood drawn from her nose. Yet, for whatever physical pain Alabastra just caused, the wound to the sorceress's pride seems far worse. "Wretched vermin! Die!" Light unleashes from her in a golden bubble of magic. It collides with us both. Already on the floor, it merely slams my back against the railing, and twists my leg at a wrong angle as it goes.
But the spell strikes the rogue below the center mass. She's thrown off her feet. And Alabastra Camin topples over the edge of the tower.
For a moment I can only stare at the spot she was, unable to put two and two together. The thought starts to creep like a wolf around the camp's edge. But it never has to reach. From over the side, an unmistakable grunt of effort from the half-elf tells a survivor's story.
Serrone looks back to me, and sighs. "This one is persistent. This will only take a moment, darling." She walks to the edge of the tower, looks down at where Alabastra is hanging from, and her hand wreathes in light.
Alabastra's eyes peer over the side, and lock with mine.
And then the world stops.
I'm not sure if it's the watch's doing, or my own horrified perception. For just a single moment, all I can see is the spell on Lyla Serrone's fingertips, ready to kill Alabastra; and those shining emeralds, pleading back at me. My mind moves at uncountable miles a minute. I'm not fast enough to stop her, especially with the leg she's twisted. There's almost nothing I can do to distract her: she wants Alabastra gone.
There's only one thing she'd care about more.
The microsecond I have the thought, The Timekeeper runs its knives through my head. Not just for the thought I'd be tearing myself from it in this desperate ploy; but that it wants me to watch her die. To sit here, helpless, and finally say goodbye. This way, I might see the end of this.
The future unfurls ahead of me. She'd fall to her death. Faylie and Tegan would never forgive me. I'd have nothing left but to join Lyla, see what she has in store for me. Relinquish the last vestiges of myself, and give way to cruel madness. Then she might even let me keep my won prize. We'd bring whatever plans her and her party have in store to fruition, and I'd bury myself away, as I always have. It all fits, so, so perfect. I was never anything but a monster, a warden, a terrible thing that can only ruin the people I love. It's the only path that makes sense.
It makes so much sense. I did all of this for everything to make sense... didn't I?
But I've been here before. The pain, the memories, they backfire. I've stared once before at the most important person in my life leaving at my hand, doing nothing to stop them, to save them, to even try to make it right. This is Lainey Sedgwick on the skyway, all over again.
Moments flash behind my eyes. A gentle smile, a teasing remark, a heartfelt apology, steadfast determination, sacrifice, effort, love. Around and around, history repeating itself. This is where it all comes back again. And it all seems so clear to me, in a horrible twisting moment, a turn in my gut; I never got a thing from watching her go. I can't do it twice. I can't stay like this. If this is what sense is, then I don't want it to make sense anymore.
Not if it means losing her. I can't.
I won't.
Through the pain in my mind, I grab hold of something deeper within. That dark thing, that hunger. And I pull.
My hand grabs the watch, and I pull.
Yes. YES
The screaming burning in my skull is an old friend. I know pain. This is nothing.
LET IT OUT
For just a moment, I let the beast rattle its cage bars.
Her sick heart will skewer on its claws. It will rip her apart! It will feast on the blue-blooded banquet and carve its way to freedom, tear her asunder, entrails dripping off the walls of this tower. A river of crimson. They shall have to paint it red for how deep the stains will incarnadine the brick.
The thoughts break loose the hold on the watch. I feel the burning lock it has on my mind crack open under the sick imaginings. And in one furious motion, I yank the watch chain from my neck, and throw.
In the sunlight, the brass surface glints once, passing from dark to light, sailing in glacial time over the side of the clock tower. My mother's golden chain trails with it, waving bannered goodbyes. And The Timekeeper disappears over the edge.
Lyla turns. "No!", she yells, abandons her spell, and flies down after it on golden wings.
Bloodthirst knocks into me. I fall to the floor, grab my sides, and scream.
It's all I can think to do.
