Chapter 22: Sentence Delivered
Aladdin cautiously looked around the basement of the lighthouse, as if he'd expected something to jump out at any moment. "Looks like we're here, but I'm not sure what we're supposed to be seeing that's so important," he said.
They'd travelled a good distance underground from the place where Saztou perished. Climbing up to reach the trap door that led to the lighthouse basement had been a relief from the chill of the ocean's water they'd been forced to walk or swim through to get there. Aladdin wasn't sure how much time they'd been underground, but he knew their window of time was steadily approaching its end. He helped Jasmine up from the trap door into the room, with Genie and Abu following cautiously behind them.
The snake looked back to Aladdin, its eyes narrowing. "Do not be deceived. This lighthouse is the center of many scuffles where the Deathseeker was involved. Meeting here and knowing the area's history are imperative to preventing such events from happening again."
"You still haven't told us who you are," Aladdin said. "I have a hard time following anything or anyone so secretive about something as simple as a name."
The snake lingered close to Aladdin, flicking its tongue just inches away from his face. Aladdin drew back on instinct, ready to draw the sword on his back if he needed to. But the snake didn't approach further. "I could say the same of you - as none of you have properly introduced yourselves. But I know your names. The woman - presumably your beloved - is Jasmine. Your magic friend - who blasted me - is Genie. Your monkey is Abu. And you - the one whose blood and very being intrigues the Deathseeker - are Aladdin."
Aladdin didn't say anything, but the snake continued to look Aladdin up and down in assessment. "I would warn you that it's never good to speak your names so casually in the presence of a stranger, especially one who possesses magic. Those with ill intent can use your identity - simple as a name - as a means to harm you."
Aladdin narrowed his eyes. "I take it that's your warning to us about your motivations?"
The snake shook its head. "You needn't worry about that from me. Taking investment in your names would indicate a level of care that I do not possess."
Genie raised a brow, flinching slightly. "Ooh, that's cold, really cold." He transformed into a snowman for emphasis on his point, a snow cloud appearing above his head. In the meantime, Abu had a mug of hot cocoa appear in his hands and a scarf around his neck, leaving the monkey very confused.
"So if you don't care about us, then why lead us here?" Aladdin asked.
"You have questions, do you not? The nightmares, the history of the Deathseeker, the death of the sorcerer, what occurred to the region of Gloloria for it to reduce to such a small, isolated town? All of your questions can be answered, and I shall answer them. But information isn't exchanged for free. As to who I am, that can also be revealed here, if you wish. But like your other questions, they are transactional. Given what I've just told you, how am I to know that you won't use my name and identity to harm me? If such is your intention, I will eventually kill you." The snake bared its fangs then.
Aladdin didn't retreat from where he stood, but he could feel his heart pounding harder in his chest at the blatant threat.
"Aladdin." Jasmine's tone was firm, even as Aladdin looked over his shoulder to meet her gaze. He knew what she was thinking. Be careful. He nodded slowly to her, before turning his attention back to the snake.
"What do you want to know?"
The snake visibly calmed, though its eyes still flashed in the flickering flames illuminating the basement. "Recall the first nightmare the Deathseeker showed to you."
Aladdin paused a moment, thinking back. "I was underwater. It wrapped its limbs around me, trying to drag me down. That was the first time it told me its name."
The snake nodded. "The order of those visions are important. It was establishing itself to you as its current form - the sea demon that lurks the deep. Complete with spines, multiple limbs with teeth, and potential to crush anyone who crossed its path."
"That wasn't the only thing. It almost killed me in that same way later on. If it hadn't been for Genie, I'd...well, not really important here." Aladdin ran his fingers through his damp hair.
"You are correct about one point - it's not important how you nearly died in such a way." Jasmine looked ready to step forward to scold the snake, but Abu moved in front of her quickly, waving his paws in protest. Aladdin opened his mouth to speak, but the snake cut him off abruptly with a hiss. "Let me finish, human. When I mentioned that point, I truly mean the 'how'. The nightmares are not rooted in any prophecy or future, but rather gauging what the Deathseeker can use to control you."
Jasmine spoke then, a little less angry at the snake, but still upset at the reveal. "So you're saying that the Deathseeker was trying to control Aladdin by showing different ways of hurting him? Then it acted on those visions?"
The snake grinned then, leaving Aladdin, Jasmine, Genie, and Abu with awkward expressions of disgust. "She catches on more quickly than you do."
Genie grumbled under his breath. "Guess there's more than one reason why they call it the Deathseeker."
"So if I tell you about each nightmare, you'll answer questions relating to the Deathseeker?" Aladdin asked. "Is that the deal?"
"I stand corrected; you catch on quicker than expected," the snake hissed.
"So what question do I need to answer in order to know who you are?" Aladdin asked through clenched teeth. "I don't understand the secrecy. I'd also prefer to figure that out before I tell you anything else."
The snake narrowed its eyes. "Very well. Tell me your answer to the Deathseeker's proposal."
"That's it? That's all you want to know?" Aladdin eyed him suspiciously. It was in the same moment he realized that though the answer had come easily to him, it may not have for anyone else who had come before him and had faced the Deathseeker's proposal. Guilt flooded through him at being so quick to dismiss the snake's question.
"It will save us some time," the snake hissed. "Choose your answer wisely, Aladdin."
"My answer's easier than the range of choices I was given. I will not let it kill me or my friends, I will not let it sacrifice any of the villagers just to satisfy its blood lust, and I will never, ever be its Vessel. Willingly or unwillingly."
The snake looked startled by Aladdin's firm words. "You're...not taking any of its options?"
"No. They weren't fair to begin with," Aladdin said. "His so-called options were forced rules. The plan to fight the Deathseeker was always the best - and only - option. Especially when it's the only option that ensures the citizens of Gloloria can finally have peace."
At that, the snake began to laugh. First a low bubbling in his throat that sounded like snickers, then emerged into a full blown hearty laugh that made the body of the serpent shiver.
Jasmine and Aladdin shared a look of confusion, while Genie and Abu stared in horror at the sight of a laughing snake with its fangs on display for all to see.
When the snake regained his composure, he shook his head. "I do not know if you are brave or foolish, but it seems that I've found the one - finally - in which I can give an an answer. Very well, you have earned it. I am the last remaining will and form of the sorcerer once called Saztou."
The snake let the words hang in the air as Aladdin, Jasmine, and Abu stood in shock.
Genie was the only one who seemed to realize the full depth of what this meant. "You were trapped down here all this time, serving as gatekeeper of a series of secrets left by your human counterpart, and Al's the only one that fully passed your test?"
The snake shook his head. "Not quite. I would have been willing to accept Aladdin's answer as a potential sacrifice, but it would have meant the cycle would begin again if he'd chosen that route. The Deathseeker's reign would have only temporarily paused until it needed to feed again. Had Aladdin chosen the route of becoming a Vessel, I would have killed him, also continuing the cycle. Those willing to work with the Deathseeker are no allies of mine, nor are they entitled to the information I have for them."
"Not sure how you became judge and jury here," Aladdin said coldly, but his voice softened in consideration. "Can't say I blame you for being bitter over what was done to you by the Deathseeker, though. Sorry that ever happened to you."
The snake - Saztou - scoffed. "I don't need your pity. What I want is to finally be able to rest, my duty fulfilled and the Deathseeker destroyed for good. It seems our paths are in alignment to an extent, so I will tell you what you wish to know. The transactional nature of our conversations still stand, however."
"Al, hate to cut in, but I think we're getting close on our time down here," Genie said with a wince. "Rug Man and Iago are probably wondering where we are right now. Most likely on the verge of panicking."
"I know, Genie," Aladdin said. He then began to explain the depth of each of the nightmares that the Deathseeker showed him. Most of them he'd told to Jasmine, Genie, and Abu, but not to the finer points of detail that he told Saztou, including the deathwalking dream Aladdin had of Saztou's death.
The snake seemed content. "Your honesty is quite striking, I must say, even when recounting my demise. Very well. You've given me enough information to tell you the history of the Deathseeker's reign, Gloloria's near demise, as well as the one secret which the Deathseeker killed me for - its true weakness."
Aladdin's eyes widened. "You know its weakness?"
"Once you hear the tale and connection, it will be obvious. How you choose to use that information is beyond my control," Saztou said. He proceeded to tell the group as much as he was permitted to tell.
The Deathseeker's reign is one that spans many generations within Gloloria, long before I ever set foot in the town during my days as a sorcerer. I was not the only sorcerer that lived there,, nor was I the one that bore witness to the Deathseeker first plunging to the Earth from the skies. What you have heard and seen has mostly been true. The Deathseeker was once a sky god among the other gods who punished the wicked for sport. It was once a being that had a handsomeness revered among the gods. In its human form, it was tall, muscular, confident, intelligent, and charming.
The Deathseeker - in secret - roamed the surface of these lands in the form of a human to learn what made humans wicked to each other. It had a fascination with the sight of spilled blood, breaking the strongest of spirits, and watching two enemies fight to the death, among other conflicts that would result in death. The only justification the Deathseeker had in its god form for replicating these harmful things was through punishing those consumed by their own vices to a point beyond redemption. What it was taught by the other gods was that those that were deemed "good" had no reason to be punished in such a tortuous manner. That such was unjust, unkind, unsettling. Undeserved.
This changed when the Deathseeker took its cruelty on the wrong human. It's true that the Deathseeker inadvertently harmed the wrong person it was supposed to punish - the mother of a man who had done so much deemed "wicked" that his punishment was long past due. Yet what you didn't hear is that the Deathseeker could have spared her. She didn't die after it struck her with its signature lightning magic. She only died after it realized how much the man's spirit was broken at her being harmed. It didn't stop harming her until she was dead. Then it destroyed the wicked man as well.
The gods learned of this and were furious. They took away the Deathseeker's wings, which allowed it to fly alongside them. They took away its power of thunder, in part, which was exclusive to those who dwelled the skies. They burned its body to the point where it was no longer handsome - but as black and as hideous as its own lust for death. The limbs were an extra touch of revulsion, meant to symbolize the Deathseeker's endless reach to destroy and "rip apart" its prey.
What the gods could not do was destroy this former god on their own. It was against their code and tradition. So they cast it to the sea, hoping it would wither away after stripping away its mortality. But that was not what happened.
Once the gods cast it out of their domain, they couldn't pursue the Deathseeker to be sure it had perished. Gods and mortals are limited in their interactions, after all. Thus is the sad fate of Gloloria as the Deathseeker, full of bitterness and rage at the injustice it felt it suffered, set its eyes on torturing the very beings it was fascinated by. It still retained some of its power, but none of its former glory. To humans, the Deathseeker is still a god because of its size, power, and manipulation.
It chased away travelers and natives of these lands alike with its endless sacrifices and brutality. My intent - when I came to Gloloria - was to live out the rest of my days by the sea. I wanted to take care of this very lighthouse, unaware of the history I'd walked into. Unaware of what had befallen the last sorcerer who lived here, I was curious as to why so few resided in the area. I only realized the tale of the Deathseeker from those who survived it and told me to stay away. Those that told me its poison was incurable.
But I became fond of this place. I tended to the lighthouse, used my lifelong expertise in healing magic and herbs to teach the citizens to grow their own treatments. I'd built hope in those who resided with me that the Deathseeker's evil was something that could be overcome. And one day, we planned to mount an attack with the intention of defeating it. The lighthouse basement we're in now was the setting for many a meeting regarding those plans.
It was not a fair fight. The Deathseeker held the power of creating Vessels - a creation that I only had scant knowledge of before I perished. I was able to create a medicine to help push against the effects of said Vessels, but there's only so much medicine infused with magic can do, especially against a former god. It was only then that I was able to learn of its weakness as well. Lightning conducts in water, so it would make sense that a sea demon would be weak against it. I also realized, through the Vessels it controlled, that it could only use lightning magic on land. So it would be a matter of tricking the Deathseeker into using its own magic against itself. I don't know how, but the Deathseeker knew what I planned to do. That I saw its weakness and a way it could be defeated for good.
On the night of a high tide, when I was making preparations to help the citizens of Gloloria here, I was ambushed by Vessels loyal to the Deathseeker. First I'd been shocked to the point where I fell unconscious. Then they locked me in shackles beneath the ground, though I begged for them to spare me. The Deathseeker had poisoned their minds with promises of glory and revenge, so as long as they remained faithful to it.
The Deathseeker destroyed the lighthouse, though I had taken such care in restoring it after it had been abandoned from the people who left this area. I was left to drown slowly, in tortuous silence with no way out, particularly since the ones who confined me used shackles that limited my magic abilities.
The Deathseeker took great care to laugh and watch me as I perished. I vowed that there would come a time where it would be destroyed. It gave me the same options as you, Aladdin - to be a Vessel and serve it, to be a sacrifice that spared those of the village, or to die in defiance of it. Thinking I had no other choice, I took the latter. But with my remaining breaths and power, I created a trinket that would hold my last will and knowledge to pass along to one that was worthy of carrying that information. I would give them the same options the Deathseeker gave me. I hoped that one of those options would satisfy the Deathseeker to the point it would one day rest. In that, I was wrong.
You, Aladdin, are the only one who saw through the facade of the choices, and thus, you have my story and what you need to defeat it. But this knowledge doesn't mean that you or those loyal to you won't die by its hand. This is only the equivalent of a sword. It is up to you to choose how to wield it.
Aladdin, Jasmine, Genie, and Abu stood in silence for a long moment after Saztou finished his story.
"Sorry, sorry," Abu said, breaking the tension in the room.
"I'm with monkey boy here, that's a rough story, Saztou." Genie said, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked up, expecting Aladdin to speak something - anything - to respond, but was surprised that the prince was completely silent, looking nowhere but at the snake in front of him. Jasmine wasn't sure what to make of Aladdin's reaction, until the prince started speaking and the gravity of his words set in.
"If what you say is everything you had to share, and you're leaving things in my hands, what's going to happen to you?" Aladdin managed, speaking slowly.
The snake didn't smile, only nodding to the question. "I believe you know. Even if you gave me the answer I wanted to know most dearly in a transactional stance, I would not - will not - tell you what you already know. Don't expect me to repeat it."
"Aladdin," Jasmine placed her hands on Aladdin's shoulders as she spoke. "He's resigned to his fate. His physical body died a long time ago. It only makes sense."
"It isn't fair. The Deathseeker took his life, made him suffer, made me watch him die, and yet, there's nothing I can do to help him now?" Aladdin said.
"Your grief for me, even when I threatened to kill you a while ago, is something I don't understand fully, boy. My sentence was delivered a long time ago." Saztou shook his head, hissing through the snake's teeth. "But there is something you can do. Do what I could not. I don't ask this out of vengeance or malice or even a sense of chivalry. I'm asking you to stop the cycle of death in this kingdom. You sought me out because you cared to know what was done to me. Your empathy is your strength. It is precisely why the Deathseeker is fascinated by you."
Genie transformed himself into the role of a psychiatrist in an overly large armchair, with Abu stretched out on a miniature sofa, as if the monkey were a patient. "I don't know if fascinated is the word I would use for all this. Perhaps that may go into the deeper levels of its psyche, but for a more palpable point of reference..."
"The Deathseeker's obsessed with Aladdin," Jasmine said matter of factly. "At first I believed Saztou thought Aladdin was linked to the Deathseeker through being a Vessel, which we know isn't true. But the Deathseeker was really trying to make Aladdin into one, and kept failing to scare, manipulate, or harm him enough to go that route. And it's willing to loop us in to accomplish that goal."
"What she said," Genie finished.
"And getting rid of us seems like the way the Deathseeker wants to go in order to get back to business as usual - tormenting Gloloria for eternity," Aladdin said. "We're not going to let that happen. I'm not going to let that happen."
"See that you don't," Saztou said, as his body slowly started to fade away in the flickering lights of the torches around the area.
"Saztou! Don't..." Aladdin began, but he realized his words wouldn't affect anything. He decided on a different set of words as he watched the snake fade. "We won't let your memory be lost to time. Not anymore. The Deathseeker won't have that victory."
"Good. Now leave. It would be a shame if you all died here and never fulfilled that promise," Saztou said before his voice faded into an echo, which was quickly replaced by a loud rumbling. Water started to fill the top of the basement, surrounding them in streams before they really had the time to process that Saztou was gone.
"Oh great," Genie said, his brow furrowed. "Looks like we'll have to take the hard way out, kids."
"Where the heck were you guys? Were you really trying to go nightswimming and drown down there?" Iago said as he peered at the completely soaked Aladdin, Jasmine, Genie and Abu. They'd come flying out of the underground passage in a rush, coughing and sputtering water though they'd long escaped the area which would have trapped and drowned them had they stayed moments more. The sky was already dark with the moon shining over the water, as if the high tide were a harmless entity.
When no one answered him, Iago and Carpet shared a look of both confusion - with Carpet shrugging his knobs for extra emphasis.
"Geez, something heavy must've happened down there. I'm kinda glad now that I didn't go. Think about what all that water could've done to my feathers. I'd be a puff ball for the next three days. And you Carpet - you would need some special steam cleaning to keep from your threads being damaged."
Carpet seemed horrified by that possibility, flying around in a frenzy as if he'd been dumped with a bucket of water and had to do what he could to shake himself off.
Jasmine used her hands to squeeze out water from her hair. "Don't taunt him, Iago. We were fine. Genie was there the whole time looking out for us. But," she trailed off, looking at where Aladdin stood a distance away from the group, looking at the moon as it shone above the water.
Genie's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, Al had a pretty tough time down there. Can't say I blame him."
"But did you guys learn anything down there that we didn't already know? How much of a wasted trip was it?" Iago asked.
"Did a lot!" Abu screeched.
"Monkey summed it up the best way I'd put it. We learned everything we needed to know and then some, including how to beat the Deathseeker," Genie said.
Iago's eyes went wide. "And you guys aren't celebrating?! We've got this battle in the bag then!"
"No, we don't. There's a lot that can go wrong, and if we go into this too comfortable, it may be the last breath we take in the mix of everything the Deathseeker has done. And that's exactly what it wants," Aladdin said, turning then to face the group. All of them were surprised at his firm words as he looked at each of them. "It's like Saztou said - we have the sword, but it's up to us to know how to wield it. And a lot of that has to start with me."
"So what do you want to do now, kiddo?" Genie asked.
Aladdin nodded. "We need to head back and turn in for the night. I have an answer I need to give the Deathseeker."