Sleeping Beauty
...
Weh! Weh!
Du hast sie zerstört,
Die schöne Welt,
Mit mächtiger Faust;
Sie stürzt, sie zerfällt!
Ein Halbgott hat sie zerschlagen!
Wir tragen
Die Trümmern ins Nichts hinüber,
Und klagen
Über die verlorne Schöne.
...
Precia Testarossa viciously rubbed her tear-streaked face against her sleeve. The garment was already so sodden that there was little effect other than smearing the traces of makeup all over her face.
Alicia... was gone.
She had had no idea what her beloved daughter had been doing those nights. It had started a few months ago, where she'd sneak out, for some purpose. And she'd had been able to evade the tracking spell that Precia had put on her, which had been impressive enough, and a sign of the girl's magical development. But she'd been so busy, working so hard, on the project, and she could let a ten year old have some responsibility. It wasn't like she was five or six any more.
And then had come the accident, and... Precia had seen Alicia there, by the front lines, with a Barrier Jacket and Device that she'd never seen before. And then, when she had tried to approach her...
... something had happened.
Precia wasn't sure what had happened. The glowing thing in Alicia's hand, which had looked like a Device, had shattered, and something had come out, and an odd barrier had formed, and Alicia had slumped down, like a puppet with her strings cut.
And there was the Thing. The mage couldn't describe it in more than general terms, vaguely feminine, a building-sized princess of metal and barbed wire in a castle which had looked like her and Alicia's home.
Precia glared at the cage of purple light she had constructed, despite her blurred vision. The Thing was mutilated, bound by her magic, but still alive. And Alicia wasn't breathing, contained within the stasis tank.
She slammed both hands into the desk.
Precia Testarossa would have her daughter back. No matter what.
...
The archives were in agreement, Precia thought. She had managed to get to the Infinite Library, and there were hits. Just a few, and she had needed to cover up what she was doing, but there were patterns. A Belkan-era report on externalised Linker Cores. Casualty figures from various incidents against magically powerful anomalies on Unadministered Worlds. Hints and rumours and whispers, oh my.
She needed more. She needed more information on linker cores, and life, and death.
She needed her daughter back.
Precia Testarossa steeled herself, and sent the message to Jail Scagletti.
...
Grey-faced and shaking, the purple-haired woman clutched at the doorframe to the lab complex, hacking up blood over the walls as she coughed uncontrollably. With trembling, doe-like legs, she managed to pull herself along a few more steps, before she sunk down, clutching her stomach. A lock of hair, now shot through with white, fell in front of her face.
Ali... the Thing was getting stronger. Even as she kept her daughter's body in suspended animation, keeping the rot away, It was growing. And she... she could still keep It under control, beat It down, but It was getting stronger and stronger, and... well, if she hadn't been such an exceptionally powerful mage, Precia was doubtful that she could keep on doing this.
She needed a more permanent solution. The Thing wasn't remembering who It was, even through, in Its... odd... barrier, there were elements that told her, made her sure that Alicia was in there. But she needed her daughter back. And the Thing... It destroyed her toys. It... It... had killed one of Alicia's friends that Precia had kidnapped, to expose to it secretly, with the hope that someone might help it remember.
Maybe her daughter was lost. Maybe she should just... give up.
No! But... that wasn't her daughter! She still had her body! She still had her mind intact, because she had managed to get Alicia into storage within minutes! The Thing was just her linker core... like a cancer. She might keep the monster tamed, but she needed a new avenue. And if she could bring Alicia's body back, then the loss of her magic would be nothing to how everything would be better!
...
Failure, and the burst of bright purple, her magic, flickered. That tiny fragment of the Thing that she had recovered, trying to see how the magical cancer-like entity had come from a proper linker core and whether it would spread to Alicia if she bought her back, grew. Black lightning lashed out, swirling and growing, the night-black pustules eating her magic, growing and solidifying.
Out of the tear, the hole, clambered... a doll. Like the Thing, a doll, a princess of rusted metal and barbed wire, sparking with the purple light of her magic.
"Mama," it croaked at her, razor fingers clicking and clacking with malevolent assonance.
Precia blew it to shreds with a wave of purple lightning that melted test equipment and bleached the walls, heart and soul into the magic, and collapsed, coughing up blood again. Down in the bowels of the Garden of Time, the Thing howled, a terrifying shriek that cut through the ancient technology and the containment as if it was not there.
Precia shivered, as she lay in a foetal position, trembling. Her arms were wrapped around her knees, but the cold feeling was still there, and she could hear Alicia screaming for her.
Once again, she pulled herself to her feet, and staggered off. She could not stop. She would not stop.
Ever.
...
The yellow pulse of the Device-like object before her filled Precia's world like the rising sun as she stared it, chin propped on her hands. It was almost like an egg, and that seemed appropriate, because within it was contained new hope. Above her daughter's body lying ceremonially on the medical bier before her, it hung. Alicia's features were washed in its golden light. Only the thin network of lines of purple was keeping it from bringing her back.
She... she had done it. Heaven only knew how she had managed it, because she had pushed beyond the level of science the TSAB would permit long ago, but she had done it. A complete synthetic linker core, set up so it would be slaved to Alicia's body, and animate her empty mind, brining her back to life without a break in consciousness. The last thought on her mind would still be there when she was brought back to life.
The woman looked at herself in the mirrored glass, with a bitter, hacking laugh. She had dyed her hair, and put make-up on for her daughter, so that she looked the same, but the burden of the years was still upon her. And the Thing was still down there, still hungry, still insane, still reminding her that this was only a stop gap.
That didn't matter, Precia thought, carefully trying not to smear her make-up as she dabbed at her eyes. This would be Alicia. The linker core may have been made from condensed magic within a Device-like structure, based off her own research on Lost Logia as wide ranging as the Pnakotic Batteries, the Book of Darkness, the Viridian City of Animation, and the Quorate Familiars of Unadministered World #109, but it was still, still functional. She merely needed to remove it from the protective warding she now bound it in, and it would give Alicia back her life.
And, yes, it was not perfect. Much as it pained Precia to admit it, she could not give her daughter a perfect fix. But her own magic would be enough to stem the degradation of the Linker Core, fix it, and for that time, while she worked on the next improvement, she would have her daughter back! After these decades, decades too long, she could have her little girl back. And everything would be right with the world again, and the two of them could be safe, and they'd never argue or fight and she wouldn't have to work anymore. It was going to be all right.
Damn it. She didn't want Alicia to wake up and see her crying. She'd been through enough all ready. But... for once, she was allowing herself a little selfishness. She just wanted to see her daughter again.
Slowly, Precia Testarossa lowered the egg of new life onto her daughter's chest, and turned the warding off.
...
The world hung in a timeless moment, unbreathing. All save the Thing in the Garden of Time, which stirred to life, howled, and surged forwards, slamming itself into the magical wards it was sealed in, before it fell quiescent once more.
...
The blonde girl's red eyes flickered open, and her lips moved for the first time in over two decades. "My wish is... I... I wish that my mother was the best scientist ever," she breathed out, through long inactive lungs.
And then she gasped.
...
Mächtiger
Der Erdensöhne,
Prächtiger
Baue sie wieder,
In deinem Busen baue sie auf!
Neuen Lebenslauf
Beginne,
Mit hellem Sinne,
Und neue Lieder
Tönen darauf
...