Dineer stared at Allen, who'd moved from his position on the bed and now had both hands braced against the walls nearest to the northern window. A furious expression sat on his face, and both his fists were tightly clenched.
"What is it?" the Strategos inquired.
"You mean to tell me," the Knight hissed, "that my sister was taken from us, tortured and made insane because of what had happened between my father and Emperor Dornkirk?"
"As far as we were able to tell - yes."
The Knight snarled at Dineer, still facing the window, "Was your Emperor so petty as to gamble the lives of children for revenge?"
The Zaibachian sighed in response. "I don't know. To be honest, the Emperor became less and less compassionate and human as the years passed. It was his charisma, his hope, and his desire for rebirth that influenced my once struggling ancestors to reform into the advanced culture that Zaibach is today. But the means of prolonging his life included both arcane and technological means, and as you have seen," he waved a hand towards the prone figure on the bed, "such a mix often produces rather questionable results. Towards the end, the Emperor ran on a single-track mind, and was rather bitter when things did not go precisely to plan."
"Pathetic," Allen spat.
While Dineer spoke, Van replaced Allen's seat on the bed. He looked down at his enemy's face, remembering the quick, defensive motion that had created the crevice leading up from the pale boy's right jaw. If it hadn't been for Hitomi that Guymelef bay would have been splattered with his blood.
But… Well, things such as those were of the past, weren't they? The deadly tradeoff between them, was that not done with? A country for a scar... the lives of countless Asturians and Friedians for fifteen young boys... innumerable one on one skirmishes on allied soil left unfinished, death and destruction left in their wake... It seemed so lopsided; the sacrifices made on his part outweighing the ones made on Dilandau's. The old hatred surged within him.
And yet...
He remembered the pale, blue-eyed beauty from the ceremonial parade, her silvery blonde hair tousled by the slight winds, fragile and frightened, so much not the red-eyed terror whose Guymelef had left a path of blood wherever it had gone. Then, later, the fire and determination on her face, inadvertently sparked, and the feel of her less than feminine muscles beneath his hand... All of it so horribly attractive. His hand reached forward, trembling with a mixture of revulsion and yearning, stopping abruptly when Gaddes abruptly cleared his throat. He withdrew his hand quickly, casting the Crusade commander a scathing look.
"What did they do to her exactly?" Van asked, breaking the momentary silence.
"Suddenly sympathetic," Zhi spat vindictively. Van's sword was halfway out of its sheath when Dineer interrupted.
"Zhi," he said softly, "maybe you should wait in the hallway."
She whirled suddenly on her superior, her voice surging in volume and startling everyone in the room. "Don't tell him! He doesn't care what they've been through. He doesn't deserve to know what I--"
"Zhi," he repeated, more forcefully.
The tall Freidian looked down at him as if preparing to contest his suggestion. He peered over steepled hands at her, his own formidable will admirably matching the fury behind hers. She relented first, pulling her gaze away to stare at the floor. "Very well," she said finally, "I will wait outdoors for the Princesses." The girl threw a fiery glance at the boy King before pulling on the ornate door handle. She turned once more to the Strategos.
"Will you tell them?"
He smiled warmly at her. "Not if you don't want me to, my dear."
She softened at his expression. "Tell them everything then," she replied. The door creaked shut behind her.
"What was all that about?"
Dineer turned his eyes towards the grizzled Crusade Commander. "Celena was not the only child to suffer under the Fate Experimentation Project."
Gaddes gasped, and Van started at the proclamation. "You mean --"
"Yes. Zhi was once a victim of those same tortures."
"And," came Allen's cold reply, still facing the slitted window, "as the King has asked, what were they?"
The elder man closed his eyes and released a painful sigh. "It was discovered even before Folken and myself had arrived that Fate was not an element that would always push and prod itself on its own. It required help, a good deal of it, if it was to be altered. The Atlantean's natural ability to manipulate Fate for themselves was something of a miracle of evolution. Their desire to alter all fate as they knew it, well, that was just a mistake. The technology, however, that they utilized to do it was so complicated that we assume the creative process took decades, perhaps centuries to undertake.
"The Generals of the past wanted human soldiers, perfect ones, ones that were instinctively capable, loyal, and who loved the smell of death. To do so the Madoushi proposed using the ancient technology to isolate a single person's Fate and change their Destiny to our making. They discovered that animals would take to the treatments, but these were not enough; loyal as they were, animals did not respond well to commands on the battlefield. However, the experiments that were performed on willing human subjects failed every single time. As the years went on, the Generals forgot, since the success rate was low and the possibility that they'd be granted their request was dim. Eventually the men that held the posts had no idea that the Project still existed.
"I digress," apologized Dineer, "but someone discovered that the more delinquent a child became under their care, the more successful the experiment, and back then 'success' mean that the child survived at least a few hours before his physical form shattered under the pressure. A human psyche is fragile, delicate, but after a certain age there are barriers instinctively built up to combat outside intrusions. The younger the child, the easier to bend their minds away from their original state and into one of our own making. Good ones they made bad. Bad ones they made good. The difficulty was, though, to imbue the psychological aspects into their subconscious without entirely destroying their original personality.
"Your sister, as well as Zhi, was absolutely perfect. They were both delicate when they were acquired, yet at the same time they'd developed an inner spark, something - " he rubbed his chin in thought " - I suppose you could call the stirrings of rebellion. Both were being raised in societies that are predominately patriarchic. The younger princess would sympathize."
"They would have been tomboys," Gaddes remarked, looking amused.
The Strategos returned the delighted expression. "Something along those lines." His face fell almost immediately becoming once again grim. "The Sorcerer's jobs, then, were to exploit this spark, fan it so that it would become a blaze, a bonfire, with science and Fate as its fuel. In order to do this they needed to chip away the personality that was building, while at the same time maintaining its core."
"I don't understand," came Van's puzzled query.
"Hm. I forget sometimes that I speak to people who have no scientific background whatsoever, no offense," he apologized. "In order to create a new creature out of an old one, you still need parts of the old creature, yes?" He lifted his goblet. "Sometimes this is filled with water, sometimes with wine. The Madoushi wanted to empty the glass's current contents and fill it with something of their own that would rest well on their palate. Alas, sometimes what they put in could not be held and the cup cracked and fell to pieces. They ended up with what Folken and I discovered in their hidden vaults as their physical selves took on the same aspects as their broken, psychological selves."
"Their minds went, so their bodies followed," Van murmured.
"Precisely." Dineer almost beamed. "Is it a family trait to be so perceptive?"
The young King bristled.
Dineer lifted an eyebrow. "I suppose the temperament is as well. As it is," he continued, brushing away the boy's continued glare, "such a thing does not happen in normal circumstances, but with Fate particles many things are possible.
"As to what I had been saying before - as long as the original persona remained then the body did as well. What they did, then, was to stir within the child another personality, one that was stronger, older, more capable of being the superior soldier they'd been looking for. At the same time the original one had to be retreated and pushed back, but still remain in existence. As long as they could do so they were free to push and prod their physical aspects as much as they wanted to mold perfection.
"To do this..." He hesitated. "Well, they did a lot of things."
There was a moment of silence. Even Allen turned a bit at the sudden break in the long flow of conversation. Dineer stared at the goblet in his hand, twirling it back and forth between his fingers. He swallowed hard before continuing, and even then he found difficulty finding his words. "I... didn't want... well, Zhi... the Princesses should not hear of these things." He drew a shuddering sigh and the tears welled in his eyes. "Sometimes they isolated them, put them in cages, didn't let them see another person for days, weeks at a time. They... they frightened them, executed a man in front of them, placed rats and roaches inside their cells to torture them, threatened them... even hurt them, abused them, had soldiers beat them within inches of their lives... told them things, terrible things about their families, that they'd abandoned them to our hands willingly, had asked them to do these things... allowed horrible men and women to... curb their sexual appetites with them..."
The slender glass fell from his shaking fingers to shatter suddenly on the floor.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he murmured, the tears flowing freely. "God knows I didn't know this was going on until we'd opened those books, seen the cold, precise shorthand about what those children were being subjected to. And I tell you now," he said, his voice rising in fury, "even as some of these men continue to live, not one among them feels sorrow for what they've done."
Silence, pregnant with anger, sorrow, and revulsion filled the chamber.
Three hands clenched on finely crafted swords, reflexively, though despairingly,
knowing that the foe that had been revealed before them had already done
its damage. Though their blades might find solace in blood, their hearts
knew that not even the slaughter of every black-cloaked magician that walked
upon Gaea could undo the damage that lay prone in that bed.
He saw her once, nearly two years after the discovery in the library.
He'd managed to avoid contact with Dineer by requesting a leave of absence from the project. The Strategos refused at first, faulting him for his laziness, his inability to produce satisfactory results, and his ridiculous personal misgivings he'd developed about his assistant. Folken made it clear that they'd worked nearly every day, that the Emperor himself had delivered praise regarding their accomplishments, and that there was nothing wrong whatsoever with his assistant. He also calmly explained that the team of Sorcerers that had been assigned to create his Destiny-Prognostication Device had ran into several, noticeable snags and that Emperor Dornkirk was growing visibly rankled over the delay. A few months, no more, he said, would be sufficient.
Kyr, as head of the Device's team, and whose archaic methods were obviously the causes of the project's degradation, developed an interesting tic under one eye and granted his request. He could go ahead and finish the damnable thing. Alone.
Temporarily, he and the twins were assigned to another section of the massive Zaibach fortress where the Emperor's personal assistants and the higher ranked Madoushi (such as Kyr) were stationed. Though it wasn't much farther from where their original quarters were, it was closer to the Emperor's Fate Chambers, where a good deal of his own experiments took place. Should he require assistance, no matter the hour, it was readily available.
The floors meant to house these people were meant to intimidate, to impress, and apparently to disorient. Long, stark hallways lined with high metal walls and stone floors, all in dark grays, were composed of nothing but sliding doors broken intermittently by gas-lit lamps. At each of the hallway was either another door to another hallway, or the entrance to one of the steam and pulley elevator rigs that transported them from floor to floor. Some of them were different in that windows (which offered spectacular views of the industrialized city) instead of doors, took up one of the walls. Since the place was bereft of signs or maps, and since its main residents were often at work rather than wandering about the corridors, an unwelcome visitor could find himself lost for hours. Once he screwed up his courage to open one of the mysterious doors, said visitor would probably find himself in the arms of Zaibach's most elite Royal Guardsmen.
Distracted by thoughts of Celena, the Device, and Dineer Folken found himself doing just that quite a few times even after having resided there for so many months. He'd caught the soldiers at cards, meals, and, once, in a compromising position with one of the palace maids. With Naria or Eriya's help he found his way around easily enough; their heightened olfactory senses were well enough to accurately pinpoint whether or not the smells behind this door included sweat and steel or whether or not it included acrid chemicals. However, they also had their own training to account for, primarily in Guymelef operation, and Folken had to learn to fend for himself.
He'd taken a wrong turn too many, cursed himself for being distracted by his thoughts. He knew it'd been a good hour since he'd set out from the main lab, where a fatal flaw in one of Kyr's "alterations" had overclocked the Destiny levels and rendered the Device non-functional after just twenty-five seconds. As promised he worked alone, and though he'd managed to fix the problem he lamented the loss of an intelligent companion. Thoughts of Dineer brought up thoughts of their night in the library, which in turn brought up thoughts of Celena...
Mounting frustration fed his strength as he slammed open the nearest door. If he was lucky, he'd end up finding some soldiers. He'd discovered that they were far more willing to help him find his way than his jealous peers. Instead, he found himself at the start of a long, dark passage. He peered around to be sure he wasn't being watched; no guards and it was late enough that his fellow Sorcerers were finding their ways either to meals or at least to their personal quarters.
A boyish curiousity moved his feet forward. Most of the doors opened right into a room, whether it be a laboratory or someone's personal quarters. It was possible that he'd found somewhere important, somewhere that he very well shouldn't be. Well, let them find him and let them punish him. The worst luck would find him executed. Bad luck would find him jailed. Better luck would find him thrown out of the Emperor's good graces and then possibly out of the fortress. The latter, at least, would allow him to explore a life outside this scientific dungeon.
The tunnel was long, curved, and moved upwards making for long minutes of exhaustive walking. The fear of discovery did nothing to alleviate the work. It ended, finally, at a steep staircase that led straight up to a dusty hatch. Bright, warm light filtered in from all sides. He kneeled on one step to examine the door. It had a simple lock, and by the dust under his knee it hadn't been opened in a while. He used the same two needles that had opened the door under the library to pick the lock, praying that whatever lay beyond was far more pleasant.
It was and it wasn't.
The door opened easily, swinging upwards and thumping softly onto the ground. He climbed the last few steps cautiously, his jaw dropping in astonishment. Around him lay a wonderfully maintained garden - green grasses, brilliantly colored flowers, a few scattered trees - surrounded by gleaming, curved steel walls. The light above was abnormally bright and he shielded his eyes against it. A quick glance upwards revealed abnormally large lamps which seemed to feed off of lines of thick wires. He took in a deep breath and smiled. It reminded him of home... of backyard romps with his brother... of the abundant nature of Fanelia's surrounding lands... But in Zaibach, where rich soil was achingly rare, this place was priceless. Had he stumbled, then, into the Emperor's private grounds?
The shuffling of disturbed grass alerted him to another's presence. He quickly closed the gate and ran for the cover of a nearby tree whose trunk was large and whose proximity to the wall was close enough to hide him from view. He cautiously peered around.
Celena was standing there.
Not the bright eyed, merry child; a young woman, whose potential to become achingly beautiful was already visible in her brilliant blue eyes, her elegantly formed face, and her delicately expanding curves. Her soft, slightly curled hair was still cut short to her chin. She wore a similar simple blue dress, though cut for her more mature figure, as well as thigh-length stockings. A short cloak floated in the artificial breeze. The sight of her lifted several years worth of worry from his shoulder.
A small smile lifted the corners of her lips. Serenity itself.
But her eyes...
Her eyes were empty, soulless, dead.
She stood still, yet the slight wind moved her arms languidly back and forth. A cold chill swept through his veins as he remembered the dead young girl whose arms moved like so enclosed in her chemical bath...
One pale hand lifted. An exotically colored butterfly lit upon an extended finger.
She looked at it, entranced, intoxicated. Its wings moved lazily up and down. He was almost relieved. Perhaps it wasn't so bad as it seemed. Impulsively he began to move, intent on announcing his presence.
Its wings, each nearly as large as her own hand, began beat faster, obviously about to take flight.
She snatched it with her free hand and crushed it, quickly and deftly. Broken black legs waved haplessly from between her fingers before giving in to death. Pieces of its gloriously painted wings floated to the ground. Yellow and green liquid, the remains of the thing's viscerals, dripped down the back of her pale hand. She brought the corpse up to her face and looked curiously at it for a moment.
Then she feasted upon it, using both hands to stuff the remains of the delicate creature into her gaping maw. Her empty eyes gleamed, backlit by a desperate, mad lust.
Nauseous, appalled, he remembered rats. Mother Rat that had destroyed her babies to make a gruesome mural. Mad Rat that had dashed its head on its cage before dying...
He stepped out from behind the tree. He would take her, now, away from all of this, somewhere safe, somewhere where he could heal her, save her, reverse the process that was eating her mind. If he did not act now, when would the next chance come?
"Celena," he whispered, slowly approaching her, afraid she'd flee.
She looked up at him, glittery traces of the butterfly around her lips. Slight recognition dawned, though the promising light was still eclipsed by that dimming hunger. She reached for him as he reached for her, a smile blossoming once again, the emptiness swiftly returning to her too blue eyes...
"Celena."
Jajuka was pulling at her arm, gently directing him in her direction. Her body obeyed, stepping lightly along with him, though her gaze still remained fixed upon him. The beastman ignored him completely.
"No, wait!" he cried, taking a few running steps towards them. Swiftly Jajuka was in front of her, his arms held out slightly as if to block him from her view.
"What do you think you're doing?" Folken demanded.
"Protecting you, Master," the canine replied.
"Me? ME?" he roared. "Do you see her? Do you even care for what she's become? Get out of my way!"
"I can't do that."
"I'll make you." And he was prepared to. He didn't need a real weapon when those Zaibach Sorcerers had so courteously fastened one to the skin of his right shoulder.
The two steeled off, eyes connected in a silent battle of wills. Folken recognized the tactic, so often employed by the lupine clan that inhabited the forests around Fanelia. Their spokesman and chieftain, Ruhm, would have applauded the strength behind the gaze that the dogman employed against the former Fanelian prince. Celena, in the meantime, had not moved. Serenity's smile and emptied eyes had returned.
Folken looked away first, defeated by the man's natural, superior skill in the act. Jajuka looked as if he'd taken no pleasure in the victory. "Your friend," he said, once again leading the girl away, "he misses you."
"What?"
"The brown-haired one. He worries."
"He has no right to," Folken snarled.
"He has every right," retorted Jajuka, turning his head slightly to gaze reproachfully at him, "since both of you have had a hand in their success. Your guilt is his guilt."
The young man blanched, having no proper reply to the accusation.
"I truly don't mean to cause you further misery." They'd reached a nearby wall. Jajuka pressed a hand to the panel nearby and a door, its borders blending with the thin partitions between the wall's metal plates, slid open. Folken had not moved from where he'd found Celena standing in the grass. The beastman gently pushed the girl through before turning to face him once again.
"Exit the way you came. No one has used the corridor you discovered for many days. Be sure no one sees you. The Generals have an alcove that looks over this place, but when there is no Council they do not use it. I tell you now that your friend was right in what he said - that we all would have perished if you had tried to deliver her from this all those years ago."
Dull, throbbing despair had overtaken him. Eyes glassy, fists clenched Folken turned away.
"Do not give up hope so easily."
Folken turned. "What do you mean?"
"There are ways of doing things now that were not possible then. There are stirrings among the Senior Sorcerers. The Generals roam these corridors more often than not. Soldiers and intellectuals alike are being plucked from the general populace and being put to the benefit of Guymelefs and Flying Fortresses. Yet, for all of this, security around these labs is lax, for there are only so many men and so many duties that can be done. The Fate Experiment is becoming lower and lower on the list of their priorities. This I know, this I see, invisible worthless dog that I am to them.
"Celena has approached the final stages of Fate Experimentation. The last trials are the worst, and the most permanent. Dineer cares for you, though he does not know the girl. I love her as well. There are very few options and a slim chance."
"What are you implying - " Further shouting became futile. Jajuka was gone.
He made his way through the hatch and down the corridor, peering cautiously back and forth out the door at the end of the long tunnel. By the light from the window at the end of the hallway it was well into the night, which meant that the soldiers had probably lapsed into their games and that the Sorcerers were performing their nightly ablutions. Nothing to hinder him.
Folken, focusing more than usual, found his way to his room quickly, not seeing a soul. Jajuka was right. The security was lazy, speaking of either supreme confidence or lack of manpower. He'd been a floor and two left hallways off which had given him ample time to bump into a night watchman. He stared at the door, and smiled.
Hopefully Dineer's plans would come into fruition soon.
Dineer, after another glass of wine and a considerable delay, resumed speaking.
"I didn't know that Jajuka had told Folken anything at all of our plans. I didn't think that Folken would have even seen it coming. To be honest, I'd hoped that it would come as a surprise, like the grandest apologetic present ever. We had everything worked out - schedules of the guards, disguises, bribes, a halfway point in the mountain pass to place them in until we could transport them somewhere far. I had myself a youthful sense of invulnerability; Jajuka a desperate desire to see his beloved charge safe."
"It didn't work," Van muttered.
"No.It failed more miserably than I ever thought possible."