"That's a very pretty story you have there," the tyrant smirked at him. "But I don't believe it."
Magnus swung that massive sword of his at his throat and Velderoth didn't even have the time to scream before the blade sliced cleanly through his neck, effectively decapitating him.
His eyes shot open and he nearly bolted upright from his sacrificial alter thing, trying to scream and take in as many breaths of air as he could at the same time. He only began to calm down when he choked and bit on his tongue. He didn't break the skin, but the actual pain served as a good reminder for a reality check.
Just for the sake of reassuring himself, he patted down the area around his throat, checking with the sense of touch in the dim room. The only condensation he felt was sweat, and his heartbeats began to slow down as he reconnected with reality. He wasn't dead. He hadn't gone and gotten his throat slashed or crushed by that nightmarish blade of Magnus's. This wasn't the castle at Heliseum, it was some sort of an in-between dimension crudely set up for some quick magic that was supposed to prepare him.
There was no blood. No metallic rust-salt smell permeating the air. There was only the scent of sweet herbs and a burning candle, sharp and soft perfume intermingling in the small, cold space they were in.
Edea, her face blank, handed him a cup of water. Velderoth swore he heard a massive choir group made up entirely of Angelic Buster sing at the sight of that cup and its contents. Grateful, he took it and downed it quickly, letting the liquid pour over and wash down his parched throat. The water was lukewarm and had a bitter aftertaste, but it made him feel much better.
The tactician took the empty cup back and returned to her original position next to the spymaster, who didn't even bother with a poker face like his counterpart did.
"Dat waz terrible," the fat Nova growled at him. "You waz in dat dream fer only nine minutes. How far didya even get, anyways? Didya even see dat ugly bastard's face? Huh? Didya?"
Rubbing his neck to reassure himself that he wasn't going to bleed to death one last time, Velderoth lay back down in the sweat-soaked bed that was more of a solid chunk of marble than anything. "Again," he muttered, too tired to add any politer requests.
The mage creating the spell jerked her head in surprise. "You shouldn't! If you push yourself any further you may end up damaging your psych permanently. Time-compressing magic combined with death in the fantasy world is extremely risky for your mental health, dear, and you're already at the danger stage."
She was really the only outwardly nice person in this room, and Velderoth felt slightly guilty at having to dismiss her warning so casually or stupidly. "I'm sorry," he croaked. "But I need to do this."
He really did. This was the fifth time he was attempting this, and he had only just reached Magnus.
The mage looked like she wanted to protest, but the spymaster struck first. "Damn right he needs ta do dat," he interrupted her before she could speak. "Da boy's barely got any skills as a spy. He'll get himself caught, tortured an' killed in moments if we don't do somethin' ta prepare him."
"He just needs some practice," Edea said quietly from her corner.
"But this is too dangerous!" the sweet faced woman protested, and Velderoth could almost pretend that she was his own mother, worrying about something trivial for him.
"He can do this," Edea insisted. "I know he can."
Velderoth frowned in curiosity at the strange belief the tactician had in him, but he waved it away. She seemed young, too, and she was probably trying to reassure herself as well as him. He had more important things to worry about.
Biting her lip, the mage took a deep breath. "Are you ready?"
"Yes, he's ready, get on wit' it already!"
Velderoth really didn't like the spymaster. He was glad that all he had with him was a crash course accelerated even further than most crash courses teaching him how to hide his true intent. If he had ever been forced to spend even more time to learn about the 'art' of infiltration under that bastard, he would have killed either himself or the spymaster already.
The mage waved her hand, the purple candle next to his head flickered and the next thing he knew, he was running through the forest in between Pantheon and Heliseum. He had only a chest plate on, the sword in his hand was bloody and there were wounds all over his body, ranging from light scratches to deeper gashes not yet near a dangerous level.
Ahead of him, there was a wave of Specters. Beyond that wave, the vast castle of Heliseum stood, towering as a symbol of despair, of tragedy, of something precious the Nova had lost not too long ago.
It also symbolized his reason for running down this crazy path at the top of his speed. His motive.
Velderoth let out a yell and ran head-on into the army of Specters. If they were surprised at his reckless stupidity, it didn't show on their emotionless faces.
"Here, drink this."
After his fifth time being strapped down in a torture chamber and tenth time being killed in the time-compressed fantasy world created by the mage, Edea handed him some sort of steaming liquid instead of the usual water. It looked . . . colourful.
"What is it?"
The spymaster sniffed the air, a pointless motion from his position across the abandoned stone chamber. "Didya cook dat, Miz Edea? Cuz yer not supposed ta poison da agent."
She scowled at the spymaster, her cold face nearly burning with icy scorn. "I did not!" she snapped indignantly. "It's just a hot drink laced with some potions for smoother recovery."
Velderoth wasn't sure whether one was supposed to mix various potions together, but the hot drink did look good, a welcome change from the lukewarm, bitter water. He took small sips of the surprisingly sweet and fruity liquid, rather reluctant to go back to dying over and over again. He wasn't actually feeling the full effects of the fighting, running, hurting or dying like he did in the dreams once he was out of the fake world, but he felt it while the magic took place and the ghosts of those aches still seemed to linger, making his bones run cold like they'd been dipped in ice water at uneven intervals of time when he was awake.
And speaking of time . . . . "What time is it in the real world?"
The spymaster walked into the portal that led back to Grandis for a few moments before returning. "Nearly dawn. Dat gives us five more sessions, if yer average is anythin' ta go by, bozo."
Gritting his teeth and preparing himself, he laid back down.
"At least let him rest -" the mage began protesting.
"Bloody hell, woman!" the spymaster roared and she flinched. "Dis boy ain't got time fer rest now, has he?!"
"I suppose we could prepare him a bit more and send him to Magnus a few days later," Edea mused aloud, taking his cup once he was done his drink. "We could say that he's been simmering and moping around for a while before thinking that he should join the stronger side."
The spymaster immediately waved her suggestion down in a dismissive manner. "Magnus won't like or trust thinkers too much. He's not gonna trust some smartass who's calculatin' every single detail, he's gonna want a fire-guy with brash decisions, just like himself. Dis kid needs a fiery, spontaneousy decision ta make dat story stick like a slimy booger ta da wall."
Velderoth looked at the mage. "Can we start?" he pleaded, wanting to go back to trying to please the pretend Magnus if it meant not having to watch the possible consequences of Edea's irritation. That glare looked dangerous to be around.
In preparation for his real task, this world was created to be as realistic as possible. There wasn't a script of some sort where every event went exactly in order. The whole thing was spontaneous, the reactions from the people inside different at every time and a new variable was exchanged with an old from the scenes somewhere, somehow.
He was, essentially, living through lives with similar situations over and over again, with similar ends coming over and over again. When he was killed or the torture began, the fake world collapsed.
This time around, he somehow responded to everything exactly right and didn't get tortured or his neck hacked off, which made him feel readier. He almost cheered in relief when Magnus agreed to take him in as his assistant of some sort in return for giving him power and only managed to curb his joy by biting the insides of his cheeks. When that didn't work his tongue was mangled so he wouldn't break his record.
This time, Magnus was on the verge of instructing him how to do his paperwork inside his newly designated office when the world dissolved around him, not in a blackout with bursts of pain like bloody stars in the night sky, but rather in a gentle fade of the images until his vision was all gray and dark shapes sharpening into the details of the real world.
The real world was in a hurry. The mage glanced at him briefly to check his state and extinguished the candle before packing up all of her equipment while the spymaster confirmed that no evidence of their presence was left over.
"Drink this," Edea closed his fingers around a rather fancy-looking glass bottle containing something that resembled white potion. His stomach felt like it was sloshing around and he was a bit sick of fluid now, but he followed her orders and swallowed every last drop of the bitter liquid. "It's time to go."
He rolled off the bed, old habits of jumping to his feet right after waking up kicking in. It turned out to be a bad idea when his right leg buckled at the knee, making him crumple and fall flat on his face. His face burned furiously with embarrassment, feeling even hotter against the cold dusty floor while the spymaster roared in snorting laughter. Edea helped him up, and he was partly glad that the sight of his idiocy hadn't been stupid enough to break her stoic seriousness.
Still chortling obnoxiously, the spymaster handed the mage a black, tarry liquid that looked like poison. Velderoth himself would have never drunken it, especially since the person offering it wasn't exactly someone he would trust with his drinks, but the mage drank it all without a word of resistance or an expression of distaste. Then she fainted into the beefy arms of the spymaster.
"Is she alright?" he croaked, worried that it actually was poison.
"It's a potion to wipe her memory of all this," Edea told him, beginning to shuffle forward with him still clutching onto her for support. "She'll be fine when she wakes up."
The spymaster threw the mage over his shoulders like she was a sack of food. "Bet ya wish ya could have some o' dat, doncha?" he grunted.
The memories of an army of Specters closing in on him, falling to his death from a cliff or Magnus ordering his torture with a harsh laugh of amusement was still rather vivid in his head. A memory wipe sounded rather good after that.
But Velderoth didn't say anything. Instead, he jerked his chin towards the swirling portal, silently ordering the jerk to get across already.
The spymaster did, going through the portal with one last sneer towards Velderoth, who frowned back, too tired to do anything else. Supported by the tactician, he managed to stagger out the portal leading out of the strange dimension and back into the familiar, welcome area of Pantheon.
"Do you know what the name of the spymaster is?" Edea asked as she helped him take a seat on a rock under a tree nearby.
Velderoth shook his head. She probably knew the answer already – after agreeing to be her undercover agent, she had been the one to introduce him to the two strangers she referred to as 'the mage' and 'the spymaster'.
"Danovah."
He was sure he had misheard her. "The Nova?"
"Da-noh-vah," she pronounced it slowly before spelling it out. "It's a trick he used to use with his students back when the Royal Family was still in Heliseum. When his agents were asked about how they felt about the Nova under the influence of a truth spell, they all said -"
"That they hated 'Danovah'," Velderoth finished, realizing the craftiness of the fat, ugly bastard. Maybe he was a martyr of a sort, pinning hate on him for the sake of a possible interrogation.
She nodded, playing absent-mindedly with a bracelet around her wrist. "The blessings placed on you will prevent any influence of a truth spell from taking place on you," she said. "They won't be able to protect you from feeling the pains of torture, but they've been created with the powers of the three remaining relics, so unless you break or Darmoor himself comes and interrogates you it should hold."
He remembered the fancy light show the mage had pulled on him before going into the fantasy world, as well as the securing feeling the spell had given him. That had really been the only bright part of the nightmarish night he had suffered, pun sort of intended. "I'm kind of hoping it doesn't go that way."
"As we all are."
We. To him that word meant Kyle and Tear, his only real family in this world. A family that was supposed to protect each other no matter what.
If he wasn't there, who'd protect his family? He could easily imagine Magnus, sneering down upon him as he tortured his friends. "Can I ask for a favour?"
Edea looked up from her bracelet. "What is it?"
Not for the first time did he wish that Kyle and Tear could know about his motive for this. "Will you make sure that Tear will be safe?"
The tactician didn't even blink. "Your friend? The one born without any magic or a tail?"
"Yeah. Kyle – Kaiser's going to be busy with his duties, and I don't want her being kidnapped by Magnus to be used as some sort of bait. That's going to break Kaiser."
Edea raised her eyebrow. "I was under the impression that the new Kaiser had embraced his duties wholeheartedly."
"Then it'll break me," he replied simply, not bothering to argue for the new Kaiser's humanity and bond to his friends. He knew which arguments he could win quickly and which ones he'd have to work hard on. "If Magnus tries to make me kidnap her I won't be able to, and if I'm not the one ordered to I'll just help her escape when she's brought to Heliseum. My cover will be blown either way and you'll lose your agent."
The tactician seemed to be considering something. "Very well," she said at last. "I'll make sure that your friend Tear is kept under surveillance and protection at all times."
"Thank you."
The dawn's mist was almost completely gone now. His heart felt like it had been dipped in molten stone. It was time.
At least he'd been able to make sure that Tear would be safe.
"I'll be returning to the Heliseum Front now, before they begin to realize that I'm gone," Edea said quietly, slipping him a few more of the potions that were identical to the one he had drunk after the final session. He didn't feel like chugging any more liquid down at the moment, but he was grateful for them. Already from the potion earlier on, strength was returning into his muscles and his sight was getting clearer. These would help him later on.
She began to walk away, leaving him sitting on the rock, but paused. "Thank you," she said, not turning around to face him.
"I'm not doing it for thanks," he called after her to remind the tactician, feeling like a dark hero from tales told around fires, stories that brought hope into his heart as a young boy. A hero who avoided the light and took on all the hate, all the judgements of those he helped. One particular tale had given him the idea of creating the Heliseum Force with his friends back when no price was too great to pay for Heliseum.
Right. Now the force would have to be disbanded. Brute strength would lead nowhere but despair and death.
"I know," was all she said before she continued walking away.
Filler chapter 1k+ than it should have been.
Please keep in mind – I get almost all my information from KMS. If the dialogue sounds off, well, you know why.
The spymaster and the mage – the Nova had a Royal Family. Okay, since they had their own castle, a council and three guardians, that means they had other things, right? A tactician, a bunch of nobles, elders and extra servants/attendants at the least. So yes, they're OCs.
The dimension thing Velderoth went to train in – Just Edea and the spymaster being cautious and making sure V's somewhat prepared. Since there are supposed to be time-twisted places everywhere around Grandis, they've been sealed for protection. But what if some were only slightly twisted, enough to slow time around but not enough to make a bridge to the Maple World? (total headcanon.)