Silence fell in the tavern the minute she stepped in, a crackling in the air following her. She smiled at the patrons, glad of the affect she had on them, and walked steadily up to the owner as he was pouring drinks.
" 'Evening, ma'am," he mumbled, and she nodded.
"You know my name, you can use it."
"…'Evening, Beth."
"Get me something strong, you know what I like," she answered, and he bustled away to do her bidding, leaving Beth to look around the tavern with a look of mild distaste.
Nobody bothered to annoy her, though. Everybody knew her. Beth. Elizabeth. The Enforcer. She can stop a riot in its tracks with a wave of her hand, or start one just as easily. Nobody questioned her powers – some said it was magic, some said it was just charisma. She knew better though.
She knew that she wasn't really mortal anyways.
-0-
The door creaked open and Beth turned to look at the new arrival, raising her eyebrows at a hooded figure who was limping over to her, leaning against the bar and pushing the hood off of her face as she did.
"Something…strong. Please," she whispered through gritted teeth, and Beth found herself leaning forward to look at her.
"Are you alright, ma'am?"
She turned to look at her, and they froze, staring at each other as they saw the similarity, the obvious identity in their faces, the very obvious scared look in her eyes…
"What-"
"My name is Elizabeth, what's yours?"
"I…uh…Sarah."
"What happened to your leg, Sarah?"
Sarah shrugged, putting a hand on her thigh and pressing down lightly. "I was attacked by a wild direwolf on the way into town."
Beth looked down at her leg and narrowed her eyes, giving a small sniff.
"I know someone who can help you, Sarah."
-0-
Alison liked to sit near the fountain and just wait. Wait for people to come up to her and ask her for her help. One touch of her fingers and she removed any pain, any ailment. One touch and she could save your life. Or end it. Everybody knew that. She could kill anyone she wanted to, if she so desired, and she could place pain on anybody who had done her wrong. People often wondered if she could be asked to place curses, if she was a witch, but nobody dared to ask lest they wake up a dismembered head.
She was paddling her feet in the fountain gently when Beth approached her, helping a woman towards her. The woman was hooded, but Alison could see that there was something odd about her even without the face…
"Alison, can you?"
"Of course," Alison smiled, cupping her hand with water and smiling at the strange woman. "Come here, sit," she instructed, and without losing a beat the woman did, and Alison had poured the water over her leg and ran her fingers lightly over it. The blood evaporated into a green mist, the wound stitched up beneath her fingers, and soon there was not at race of the bite of any wild animal.
"Better?"
"Yeah, thanks," the woman replied in an odd accent – the Northern countries, maybe? – and got up, digging her hands into her pockets.
"Oh, no, I don't charge," Alison smiled kindly, shrugging half-heartedly. "I just like to help people."
"Are there any other medics like you? Can heal with a touch?" the woman asked, and Alison shook her head.
"No, just me in this town."
She lowered her hood, and Alison gasped.
"Then you're the one I've been looking for."
-0-
"So…Sarah," Alison said, the name sounding new and almost-welcome on her lips, as if she might have heard it before, as if she knew this stranger was coming to her. "You have some sort of powers too?"
"Where I was from they called me a Witch. I can't cast spells or anything I can just manipulate chances. Make things work out my way, yeah?"
"I…Yeah, I understand," Alison answered as she led the strange new woman into her – their – home. They stepped into a courtyard where a fountain lay in the centre, a smaller one than the one where they had found Alison in the town square. Four doors led from the courtyard into separate parts of the house, and above them the winter sun languidly set its rays upon them.
"So, Sarah, where did you hear about me?"
Sarah didn't answer immediately, she was too busy staring at the fountain, running a hand through her hair before she spoke.
"My sister. Helena. She could hear the Gods speak to her, a Medium they called her. She…" she paused and swallowed before continuing. "She died recently, and her powers were somehow transferred to me. The Gods told me to come here and look for Alison and Beth, and another name I can't remember. And that once we find the one with the foreign name, then we can know more."
"You speak to the Gods?"
"Yeah," she answered Beth, sighing. "It's a bit crowded in my head right now. They're not very helpful…"
A puff of black, foul smelling smoke erupted from one of the rooms, and a woman walked out, coughing and waving her arms about as she tried to dispel the smoke.
"Stupid, fucking, ignorant Spell Spirits not being any fucking help and how am I supposed to clean that mess up?! That was the worst spell ever, it didn't even work!"
"Cosima, language!" Alison growled, and the woman with matted hair looked up at the three of them in the courtyard, spluttering as she walked away from the cloud of black ooze following her around.
"I didn't realize we have company."
"We found her in the tavern. This is Sarah. Sarah, this is Cosima."
"Hi," Cosima answered, and Sarah thought she heard the distinct lull in her voice of the South-Eastern countries, where people were lazy and lay on the beaches all day. "Cosima, Necromancer."
Sarah raised her eyebrow as she nodded. "Sarah, Witch."
"What can you do?"
"I can alter situations to fit what I need to happen. What about you?"
"I bring people back from the dead," she grinned, popping her hip as she crossed her arms and grinned at Sarah, giving a non-committal shrug. "It's a gift."
-0-
As Alison made them all tea from leaves from the garden, Beth, Sarah and Cosima sat beneath the shade of a citrus tree. Sarah was staring intently at Cosima as she explained exactly what it was she did and the conditions of her abilities, Beth listening in.
"I perform spells, it's really cool actually, just a few trinkets here and there, get a few materials, ask for help from the Spell Spirits and see if things go well."
"You write all your own spells?"
"Sometimes, sometimes I go through stuff for the perfect one. So far, nothing. It's kinda hard to get a proper spell for awakening the deceased, let alone the recently deceased."
"Are you trying to bring someone back?" Sarah asked, curiosity lighting up her eyes as she accepted Alison's cup of tea from her and sipping at it while Cosima worried her bottom lip between her teeth, looking for the right words to say.
"My…uh, my partner. She perished in an accident, drowning. She wasn't from these parts, she was from behind the mountains." Cosima sighed and looked down at her hands. "I loved…love her. I need to try everything I can to bring her back."
Sarah felt like asking for a favour, hoping that maybe she would be able to do the impossible, that maybe the constant yelling in her head could finally seize, but instead she found herself turning to Beth. Asking Cosima that question felt like opening a fresh wound. She wouldn't do that to someone.
"What about you? What do you do?"
"I can stop fights. Wave of a hand and I can make anybody stop fighting with anyone else, just release the compulsion from them. I can start fights too. They call me The Enforcer."
"So, let me get this right. We've got a Reliever, and that's Alison; a Necromancer, Cosima; an Enforcer, Beth; and a Witch, me. There was a Medium and now that's me too. And we all look the same…"
Everyone turned to look at her, waiting for her revelation to continue in its tracks, and Sarah simply posed a question they had all been thinking for months, ever since the three of them first met when Cosima had travelled up with Delphine to visit the Temple of Knowledge a few miles outside of town.
"Where did we come from?"
-0-
Nobody knew the answer to that question.
Sarah found herself living in a strange home with three people who somehow, by fate, looked exactly like her. By some greater stroke of luck, they had managed to find each other. She loved living with them, honestly. Alison was a brilliant cook and mothered everyone, Beth made sure that nobody bothered them, and Cosima spent hours looked away in a dark room with the occasional flash of lights.
Sarah would walk by her room and sometimes hear her chanting, occasionally swearing as she got something wrong. If it was the latter, it wasn't long before she had burst through the door, wiping at sweat and occasionally tears. Sarah knew not to ask questions, some wounds were hard enough to heal on their own…
She did venture once into Cosima's room and found a large drawing of a beautiful woman who she can only assume was the partner Cosima had mentioned before. Cosima was sitting on a stool before it, brushing a small piece of lead across it and murmuring something as purple mist evaporated from her clothes and hung in the air around her. Sarah had felt a sense of elation in her, but it soon crashed when the purple turned to green, to black, and disappeared.
"Gone wrong?"
"Again," Cosima sobbed, throwing the lead across the room and hiding her face from Sarah, shoulders shaking.
Sarah thought that maybe asking her to bring her sister back might not be the best option…
-0-
"You said we need to find the foreigner with the strange name?" Alison asked as she handed Sarah a plate of stew, and she shrugged, digging in and speaking around a full mouth.
"Yeah, that's what the Gods whispered into my ear…"
"I thought they more like…yelled."
"They do, I'm just being sarcastic," Sarah rolled her eyes, looking up at Alison and shrugging again. "I dunno anybody in this town, and I certainly don't know what the Gods mean…"
"Maybe Cosima can do a searching Spell?" Alison suggested, but the woman she turned her question to just shook her head.
"Nope, not a Mage. Just a Necromancer. Just Death for me."
"Right. Maybe Beth can do some digging around? Speaking of which, where is Beth?"
"Here, here, sorry I'm late!" Beth appeared, walking through the front door and towards them, sitting next to them under the tree they always ate their lunch under. "I think I may have actually found someone. Her name's Siobhan and…" she paused to catch her breath, grinning crazily as she looked around the odd circle of faces so much like hers.
"And?"
"And she's a High Priestess. Order of the Goddess Shae."
-0-
Siobhan greeted them in the temple as if she had been waiting for them all her life. She rose off her seat, spreading her arms lovingly and smiling at them. "Hello, Sisters."
"Uh, we're not relat-" Beth began, but Siobhan waved away the sentence.
"You may not be Sisters, but you do have a strong bond, much like a family."
She had a strong accent, very Northern, even further than Sarah. Sarah recognized her accent from up in the Mountains…
"Siobhan? The High Priestess?"
"Yes," she nodded, and the four of them bowed their heads respectfully, the custom in that part of the land, clasping their hands together in a sign of respect. Siobhan repeated the gesture, and when they finally looked back up at her, she kneeled down on both her knees and bowed her head.
"Welcome back, Goddess Shae."
-0-
They sat in a circle on purple pillow in the back of the temple, legs crossed and the air filled with the musky scent of some sort of plant Siobhan had taken to burning when they stepped into that part of the temple.
"Long ago, the Goddess Shae ruled amongst her kind with love and sympathy for humans. So much so, that one day she even stood up for the inevitable destruction of part of her precious race. Shae could relieve the humans of pain, she guided them through death, she kept their peace, and she made sure everything went as planned. Shae was a mighty goddess, but the other gods were jealous. They placed a curse on her, and her entire entity split into five.
"The Goddess became mortal, her soul taking the form of a human. But because her soul had been split into five, she formed five different mortals, all who looked the same. Initially.
"Obviously, her powers and connection to Heaven remained. A Goddess' soul will always remain intact, even if it splits."
"How does that work?" Sarah asked, leaning forward to look at Siobhan properly through the smoke.
"The souls retained their magical properties. Which explains why each of you can do what you can do."
"And you can help us…what? Merge together? Form one being?" Cosima wondered, fiddling with her hands as she waited for an answer.
"I can help you remember. I can help you tap into your soul and use your powers properly. Fully."
The four looked over at each other, and Alison was the first to speak, hesitantly asking, "But…what if we like our life like this?"
"How about I give you a few hours to think it through?"
-0-
The minute all four of them were tied to each other by the hands using red rope, Siobhan started her chanting. It was low and ominous, barely audible, and the air was filling with the echo of foreign words that none of them could understand. She was moving around them, touching each of them on the hair, forehead, nose, chest, and finally stomach, before moving back and closing her arms together, ending her prayer.
A sudden flash of light and they were one. They were glorious. They were powerful and they could do anything. But they had enemies. And their enemies were pushing them down, were splitting them apart.
They had been one. They were now many.
They were still powerful.
They opened their eyes to a room bright with potential, to a soul filled with power, and to a new understanding of their past.
-0-
"So, we have…better powers," Beth marveled as they sat in their courtyard, the cool night air wafting around them. They felt no need to sleep, it was as if their bodies could never grow tired now, as if the ritual had somehow electrocuted them into a new life of everlasting alert and awake.
"This works, this really does," Sarah grinned as she ran her hands through the water in the fountain, cupping it and letting it fall through her fingers. "We could rule the world if we wanted to."
"One step at a time, Sarah."
"Yeah," she agreed with Alison, laughing to herself. "Sorry, I just. This is amazing."
"It is."
Silence fell for a few minutes amongst them as they realized all they could do, all the time they had ahead of them, and suddenly Cosima rose up and walked towards her room.
"Cos? Where are you going?"
She turned around slowly, smiling softly. "We have better powers now. I'm going to bring Delphine back."
Sarah rushed up to her, grabbing her arm and her attention, stopping her from stepping into her dark room. "Wait, before you do, can I ask…?"
"You don't have to, Sarah," she said without looking at her, shrugging Sarah's arm off of her and walking towards her room again. "I'll bring Helena back too."