For a change, it was the numbering of this that was the pain, rather than the titling.
Anyway, I have been very inspired by R3, hence the speedy update. Even if it is only a little interlude chapter. I still have to plan out the plot details for part 3, but I have already started writing out bits for chapter 3-1 so...it'll be out soon? Hopefully?Also I am cross-posting this story on AO3 now!
So, um, yeah, hope you enjoy!
When Oura returns, Ariadne is glowing in the center of the approaching dark.
She sits cross-legged in the room where they left her to say her goodbyes to the Elite Chess Club, a familiar black mask sitting awkwardly on her face. It does nothing to dull the fear that radiates from her eyes when she looks up at them. Weak blue orbs of light float around her as she asks:
"What are you going to do to me?"
"Well…"
Oura grins, pretends to ponder it. In truth, they found the answer already, while scrutinising the tapestry, securing the final stitches, knotting the last length of thread. Snipping off their connection with those six young people. Seeking out their own thread, and intertwining it with the barely invisible thread that represents Ariadne. Oura had marvelled at the pure, iridescent white of it once they had it in their hands. They had been able to trace back and see how that thread had touched the blue-silver of the six, leading her ever closer to them, but they had not been able to see the beginnings of that thread. They had been able to see that her stitches had not followed the original path set out, but had not been able to determine which divine hands had woven her into the tapestry in the first place.
No, those origins were fully obscured even to one such as Oura, which meant only one thing.
That she had been the one to put those stitches in. In itself, determining one's own fate was not so unusual, even for one who lacked true power as she did. Fate was not as pre-determined as some thought it was, but neither did it so easily yield to any ordinary human being, no matter how much power they had. For it to have done so for a girl such as this, a tiny slip of a thing with no true powers…
Well now, that was interesting. So much more interesting. And until they were able to reach out into the world and find another cluster of fleeting, glittering human lives to draw into the next tapestry, it would be more than enough to keep them occupied. Oura likes it when things are interesting, after all, and so they cannot wait to see what this girl could do in this new fate of hers.
Well, that and the fact that the tapestry is at risk of not existing at all, what with all the other forces at play. Still, with the way time works for human beings, Oura cannot waste any of it, not if they want the chance to play with other lives somewhere done the line.
"Stop making the light."
Ariadne's eyes widen, and she opens her mouth before seeming to think better of it. Reluctantly, she extinguishes the orbs with an outstretched hand. The darkness settles thick and unyielding, and Ariadne gasps. Behind her mask, the emotions in her eyes only grow brighter, but even without this she is clearer than day itself. Oura wonders how it was she remained obscured for so long. It is of little consequence, not when she is here now.
"Your eyes will adjust." They tell her.
"B-but, it's dark."
Oura snorts. Humans, honestly. It is almost hilarious, how deeply they have taken against the dark, how they've made their daily lives glow brighter and brighter until they're blinding, thinking that life is as simple as the light being good and the dark being bad. All the strange, arbitrary lines they've drawn, the fear that keeps them into place. Oura remembers a time when the dark was just the dark, and the light was just the light, but if they had not lived it themselves they would have considered it a dream. The world should have known better than to have let that change.
The Goddess should have known better than to have let that change.
"Come now, you said you wanted to know what will happen to you now? Then stop fearing for a moment and see. You can see me, yes?"
Oura crouches down, all the better to look the girl in the eye. She gazes at him and then nods.
"I can see you."
She sounds so surprised, and Oura shakes their head again. As foolish as the superstitions of humans are, they are also what make them so entertaining, the way they respond to their manipulated fates so riveting. Oura holds out a hand-would not want to seem unfriendly, after all-and gives their best smile. The smile that once beguiled the six students whose thread they'd been in charge of.
"Good, good. Now, if you want to know then you'll have to come."
After a moment of hesitation, she accepts their hand with her own trembling one and allows herself to be pulled out and led out of the shrine. She stumbles, still unused to seeing in the dark, but she doesn't complain as Oura leads her around the shrine and up the ledges of a small peak, across a larger ledge and then to the mountain peak they wanted her to see.
Even in the unyielding dark, these trees glow with the mist that weaves around their branches in lieu of leaves. Some of it is white and soft-edged like snow, some of it is pink and pale orange, like flames snatched from the sun. A breeze has floated up, whipping tendrils of the mist up, up, up into the sky. It is enough to make any being wonder, but few humans have ever ventured far enough to see it.
"We're climbing up there, and then up that uppermost tree. Then, then you will see."
"What will we be seeing?" Ariadne asks.
"Why, the tapestry of course."
Oura lets go of their hand to climb up the peak, and then the tree. They do not check to see if Ariadne follows, but know that she does. Where would she go, after all? Once settled in the branches, Ariadne pushes up the mask so it sits on her head like a hat and gazes into the mists, reaching up and watching them dissipate between her fingers. The wonder steals over her face as she tips her head back, blissful. Oura is content to just keep watching her like this. There was no need to bring her here, not really. The tapestry is something that can be viewed anywhere to those who have the sight. But Oura has always had a fondness for the dramatics. It is why those six caught their eye in the first place.
Oura holds their hand up to the sky, summons the tapestry, letting it flatten out against the sky, pressing it against the darkness before then checking to see if Ariadne can see it. Though they don't need to, really. Of course Ariadne can see it, and she is just as captivated by it as she is by the mists in the trees.
"I…what is this?" she murmurs.
"This is the tapestry. Specifically, the tapestry of Kawaakari's destiny. Look, do you see those stitches there, the blue and silver ones? Those are your precious six, the ones you've rescued-where they end, here? That's where you came in. And that's where you are, now, although if I hadn't been looking I never would have found you."
"I…so you are fate, then?"
"It would be more accurate to say that I am only a part of fate. It is a many-threaded concept, fate is, but you will come to understand that soon enough. After all, you will become like me-an Overseer."
"Me? An Overseer? But I'm just…I'm non-magical."
"But you're not human anymore."
"I…what?"
"Didn't you realise it?"
"…"
Oura cackles and then explains:
"The Elite Chess Club have graduated from my machinations, my axium, and just as they have graduated, so you too have graduated from your old life. And all of that is from the choices you made, but shouldn't have been able to make. You may not have any magic in you, but you clearly have an ability to shape fate in ways far beyond any ordinary person's. As such, you have the capacity to be an Overseer, to observe and thread fates. And, with the right lives, you may have an axium of your own. So when you swore yourself to me, when you gave your life to those six, I stripped your mortality from you, your human bodily weaknesses. Not your emotions because that'd just be boring otherwise, but yes. Now you will begin your new life, gradually becoming an Overseer. Like me."
Under the glow of the tree mists, Ariadne has gradually been getting paler and paler, seeming to shrink into herself but with this last sentence she startles, momentarily losing her balance but then managing to grab ahold of a branch above her before she looks at Oura.
"The black and gold people." She breathes. "But why?"
"Why not?"
Ariadne gapes at him, and then shakes her head.
"You hurt them."
"No, they hurt themselves. All the choices they made while stuck in my loops, they made them themselves. Yes, I tangled them up, but the specific stitches that their thread made, those were from their own choices."
"Would they have made those choices if you hadn't…tangled them, though?"
Oura just laughs, mostly because they do not particularly want to answer the question. Ariadne grits her teeth, and then stares up at the tapestry, her eyes tracking the different lines and circles, the different threads. Oura watches her track the threads with her eyes, reaching out but hesitating to touch them. They watch her follow her own thread further and further back, her expression becoming ever more wistful as she does so.
"How do you not see it?" she murmurs. "The brightness of them?"
Oura is momentarily wrong-footed.
"Of who?"
"Of my friends!" Ariadne raises her voice. "The ones I left behind, my…."
She reaches her hand out again, but pauses before she touches. Her gaze is so intent that Oura suspects that already, she is seeing more than what is plain. For a moment, she closes her eyes and lets out a breath before she lets her hand fall back to her side, and she looks back at Oura. Her eyes fill with tears that do not fall, and it causes an unexpected hollowness in their chest.
Because they remember. They remember those two short weeks before the first game started. The thrill that coursed through them when Cain's gaze turned from searching to approving. Maria, Judas and Abel showing them around the school. Delilah laughing merrily and Eve trying to flummox them with every game she knew. They were happy, then.
They were happy.
I wonder, are you remembering things like that too, little Ariadne?
It is not a question that Oura cares to ask-far too uncomfortable, far too boring. They want to move this along.
"You don't have to worry about them, you know. They're making their way down safely, they've probably found your Howl by now. Before you know it they'll be back in school and why, Abel will probably soon find himself fully human again! Won't that be exciting! Shame I won't see it~"
"That was you as well?"
"Uh, yes, I did just say that."
"Oh. But what about being remembered?"
"That wasn't me. Do you not listen, little girl?" Oura tutted. "That part was not me, that's all out of my hands and it's not my problem. But they're fine, they can go out and live happily ever after and all that boring crap, I'm sure."
"I don't know about that….but even if that's not a problem, surely they will remember what happened to them, though."
"Yes, that is the entire point of an axium, don't you know?"
Oura is expecting her to ask what an axium is, for they have seen the question on her face, but they find themselves wrong-footed once again when she does not. Instead, she shakes her head, her stare searing.
"And you say that you were not the one to hurt them."
Again, that remembrance. We were happy. Laughing at Abel accidentally biting Cain's hand, at Delilah and Judas squabbling over a teddy bear. Sampling different coffees and teas with Maria and Eve. Walking down the corridor with all six of them, feeling powerful, and not just because of the secret upper hand that they'd always had. In thinking of these things, Oura cannot find a response to give Ariadne. They feel that there would be no response that would suffice.
Eventually, she seems to tire of waiting and turns away. The tears in her eyes finally break free, rolling down her face silently as she gazes at the tapestry. Oura realises that though she does not regret her choice, she still wishes she could have had the best of both worlds. It is mildly interesting to see this silent struggle play out in her expressions and gestures as she sits there absorbing the tapestry.
But as Oura watches, they see all the many different hands tugging and stitching and weaving, knotting and looping and snipping. They see so many people changing the courses of their threads through their own actions, changing others through those actions. They see the balance still tipping to one side, dangerously so, and while Oura likes a little danger to spice things up, they do not want there to be no tapestry at all. They do not want to lose the chance to ever play a game again.
They do not want to lose the ability to watch over those six.
The time for explanations-well, being Overseers, it will come soon enough. But if the balance is to be aligned once again, Ariadne will need to learn how to wield the strings and let fate yield to her will. To do that, she will need to see, and what better way to show her how to see than to first show her how to watch over those she really loves?
So Oura murmurs the incantations under their breath, casts the spell and throws it over the tapestry. They watch as the light bounces off of the threads, casting new shadows. Watch as Ariadne sits up in the tree, wiping her tears and blinking as understanding dawns. Watches as she unsteadily stands on the branch, using one hand to keep her balance as the other reaches out once again, more confidently this time.
And when she touches a thread for the first time, Oura smiles.