"What do you mean, home? Who are you, anyway?" Helaine returned. The strange woman glided across the distance between them and reached out with a long pale arm as if to touch Helaine's face. Helaine swiped at the woman, only to find her hands passed right through her gauzy sleeve and the arm beneath. She sliced her hand through the other woman a few more times, as if to make sure she hadn't made a mistake the first time.
"You're another apparition, aren't you? Her hands go right through you." Score accused.
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Or is it that my arm goes through her hands, and you are the apparitions?" She waited while Score and Helaine exchanged confused looks. "Don't worry, I know the answer. You are real, and I am not." Her voice was lachrymose and she punctuated her statement with a sigh.
"Er... I'm sorry?" Score attempted. "But why did you want to speak to us?"
"I suppose you don't know the story. Your story. Our story, really, but mostly yours. You might as well sit down and be comfortable. It's a rather long tale."
"Exactly where would you have us sit?" Helaine asked patiently. The woman frowned.
"Don't you have any imagination? Just sit!" She demonstrated by bending her knees and a ratty green armchair appeared. Score shrugged and pretended he was sitting on the blue couch from their castle on Dondar. It materialized beneath him, and Helaine was content to sit next to him.
"My name is Bryndis the Wanderer. You are some reincarnation of the Triad, that much I know."
"Some incarnation? We're the incarnation. Well, plus Pixel." Helaine corrected Bryndis, a trace of arrogance coming through.
"You think this is the first time the Triad have hid themselves in the far reaches of the Diadem?" She examined their faces. "You do. I see. I have more to explain then I previously thought." She sighed again, and Score fidgeted. "Perhaps you have names? I don't suppose you still go by Traxis and Eremin?"
"No. Never. We aren't them." Helaine's words were laced with disgust. "My name is Renald. This is Score. Not Eremin and Traxis. Not in a million years"
"Pity. The old names were so beautiful, in the Tongue. But I suppose they seem tainted to you. Never mind that. Renald and Score most likely aren't your real names anyway." Neither Helaine nor Score chose to reply, and Bryndis seemed to accept their silence as an affirmative.
"Instead of alluding to all this stuff we don't know, why don't you just tell us the story and get it over with?" Score burst out finally. Bryndis initially looked surprised, then smiled warmly.
"Of course. I will try to be clear, but please, stop if you have questions."
"Wait!" Helaine half-rose out of her seat.
"Yes?"
"What about Pixel? He should be here for this. He'll probably understand it better than Score and I too."
"That can be arranged. Do you have an agate, or would you like to borrow one?"
"We're set, thanks." Score replied as Helaine fished through her pocket. She retrieved the gem and called Pixel forth in her mind.
*Pixel?*
*Hi Helaine. Crow and I were just planting some-*
Helaine cut him off. *Listen, we think you should be with us to hear something.*
*But what about Crow?*
A new voice cut in. *It is possible, if you wish, to be here merely in mind and not in physical presence*
Score glared at Bryndis. "How could you hear her thoughts?"
"No telepathy is ever entirely secret." She smiled gently a little. "Especially not to projections like me."
*What do I do?* Pixel interrupted.
*Relax. I'll guide you* Bryndis closed her eyes and a moment later a rather ghostly version of Pixel 'popped' onto the couch between Score and Helaine.
Pixel looked at his semi-transparent limbs and grinned. "So this is what it's like to be Oracle." He sobered. "Actually, this is an interesting technique. When my eyes are open, I can see the azaleas we're planting, but when I shut them, I see the three of you. Quite handy."
"Pixel, this is Bryndis. But she's not real, by self-admission." Score gestured to the woman, not really sure if he trusted her.
"And I am about to recount a history. Are you settled?" The three nodded. "Then away we go."
"Your tale begins with my youth. I was born almost three thousand years ago in the six hundred and third year of the Great Peace on the planet Jewel. My parents were farmers, and we had a steading far to the north of the City. I was named Amaruit, and a horse's kick when I was four nearly killed me, and crippled my brain. When I was eleven, I began showing signs of the gift, and a wizard decided to repair my head. My parents sent me to the Academy the next month and I didn't see them for the another fourteen years."
"Academy?" inquired Pixel.
"Yes. As you are probably aware, magical inclinations begin to show themselves around the age of ten or so. It was custom during the Great Peace for all those so gifted to be trained at the Academy, under careful instruction. We were the guardians of the peace."
"School for magicians, got it." Pixel nodded. "Continue."
"I need not regale you with tales of my school days. All that is worth mentioning is that it was at the Academy I met Nantor, Traxis, and Eremin."
"But you said this was thousands of years ago... the Triad lived until just recently!" Pixel interrupted again.
"The Triad you refer to are mere shadows of the originals. Nantor, Traxis, and Eremin were my closest friends at the Academy. We were inseparable. My friends were vibrant and loving and wonderful..." Bryndis trailed off as though she could see her schoolmates just behind the couch. After a moment she snapped herself out of her reverie and continued. "They had their flaws, of course. But that is what makes us human. In our final year at the Academy, however, we were expelled."
"Expelled? For what?" Score asked. Bryndis sighed again. She really needed to knock it off.
"One of the things that made the Great Peace so...peaceful... was the High Council. They kept order by having strict regulations on magic and magic-users. Most of the regulations were designed to keep magic locked away. And the four of us, we disagreed with it. We thought magic should be available for everyone. So, we were expelled."
"Sounds pretty...harsh."
"If they knew what we could do, they would have killed us. We were four, strong together, with an intense dislike of the High Council. We fled Jewel and created a new planet for ourselves. It was our self-imposed exile, our home, our laboratory."
"This place?" Helaine asked. Bryndis nodded.
"Yes. These rooms, including the Hall of the Ancients, are a planet unto themselves. We lived here for three years, planning our secret revolution. We were going to unleash the magic locked away in Jewel. We wanted to bring equality to the universe, to allow everyone access to what the High Council hid from us." She paused, then smiled to herself. "We succeeded, too. I won't bore you with the details, but we succeeded. We turned the universe on its head, unleashed Chaos. It was beautiful. We thought it perfect and evenly balanced. The High Council, of course, was furious. They did their best to gather it all up, but there was only so much they could do. The planets settled themselves in the Diadem, arranging in order of how much magic they retained."
"That makes sense. The more magic a planet has, the more it is attracted to the large quantity on Jewel." Pixel nodded slowly.
"Correct. After the cosmic dust settled, we were rather disappointed. We'd hoped to create a utopia, but instead, villainous creatures of all sorts were getting hold of the magic and using it to further their own evil ends. Chaos turned out to be a terrible idea, but of course, we were too young to understand. Many things are wasted on youth. Sadly, intelligence is not one of them. The Great Peace fell apart, and the Council set out to find us to put the universe back in order. We scattered, and spent four years on the run, skipping from planet to planet, only in contact telepathically. Eventually, of course, the Council captured us."
"What do you mean, 'of course'?" Score interjected.
"They were, as a collective body, stronger than each of us alone. And you can't run forever. When I realized we were doomed to return to their hands, I went home. I kissed my mother and father goodbye. The High Council..." she trailed off again, frowning. "They protected the innocent, but they punished the guilty. There are tortures you can't begin to imagine that they could inflict. Yet...they stayed their hand.
"Once we were all rounded up, they brought us back here, to our exile planet, and asked us to restore order. We refused, the children that we were, and they brought out... this... sword." Bryndis paused, and reached out into the air in front of her. A long, black blade, wickedly serrated, gently slid into being from her memory. "The sword had a name. I'd never known a sword to have a name before, but this one did. It was..." her throat seized and she took several deep breaths before continuing, in a lower tone. "The name of the sword was Geismorte." Bryndis shuddered. "And then they took it, and they...they..." she shook uncontrollably, and buried her face in her hands. Score, Helaine, and Pixel exchanged worried glances before the woman finally finished.
"They cut off our souls."
"They what?" exclaimed Helaine and Pixel nearly simultaneously.
"They just brought the sword down on us and they cut off our souls the devil bastards they just cut them off and suddenly we were two pieces we were fragments they cut off our souls and it hurt like the end of the world and they-" Bryndis dissolved into tears; not wracking sobs, but quiet and inescapable wetness, as though she'd cried these tears before, and they'd proven useless.
After several highly awkward moments, Bryndis seemed to regain her composure. "I apologize. It was over two thousand years ago, but very... traumatic." She fished around in the air for something, found a handkerchief, and dabbed at her eyes.
"Are those real?" Pixel asked, indicating her tears. Bryndis nodded.
"I am more than a projection. But I'm getting there. Our story is nearly over. After... after we were separated, there were eight... eight memories of life. There were four souls, and four... oh I don't know. Compilations of muscle, bones, magic, brains, and everything else. The souls... fled. We were nothing except humanity, and the other...us... they thought it might be a good idea to kill the souls. So we fled."
"We?" Pixel asked.
"Yes. I am Bryndis the Wanderer, the projection of the soul of Amaruit. We all fled to the rim worlds, far away from our...remains. Because then they began to fight among themselves. I was not there, I do not wish to know their reasons, but I do know the outcome. The one who called herself Amaruit, the one who was once part of me, was murdered by the other three. However, being soulless, she possessed the ability to be reborn, in a strangers womb."
"Boy does that sound familiar." Score muttered.
"Eventually, the other three, now calling themselves the Triad, had learned of this trick. They slaughtered the High Council and declared themselves rulers of the Diadem. Death was absolutely no problem to them. They sent their essences back out into the Diadem, bumbled their way back to Jewel, and took hold of their former memories."
"Yeah, they tried to do that to us too. But why did we fight becoming the Triad? What made us different from the presumably hundreds that had gone before us?" Pixel was frowning, his brain puzzling out the nuances of the information. Helaine was sure he would have something clever to say in another five minutes. He was wonderful like that.
Bryndis smiled. "Because the souls of Eremin, Traxis, and Nantor found their way into your unborn bodies, nestled themselves in tight, and regained control. Don't you see? You're whole again. You're real." Her smile grew wider. "You have truly defeated the Triad, because you have souls."
Pixel nodded. "So we do. We certainly are much nicer than the Triad we met. I don't know how much I like the idea of being some old person resurrected, but I still feel like me."
"Of course you do. You're reborn. But I..." she looked down at her hands with disgust and resignation. "Amaruit is alive. You have to help me defeat her."
"Why?" Helaine asked
"Because she is just like the Triad: nasty, vicious, and cruel." Pixel explained. "And, if I understood your story correctly, there is another task you would like us to complete."
A nod. "If I can catch Amaruit on the ethereal plains, then we can destroy the Diadem together."
"Whoa...whoa... maybe Pixel can help me out here. Why do we want to destroy the Diadem?" Score rubbed his forehead. Way too much thinking.
"Because, it's the Diadem that enables tyrants and dictators. I'm guessing... correct me if I'm wrong, Bryndis, that the original system the Council had worked out was one where only wizards who had gone through the Academy could tap into the reserves of magic. Only people who could be trusted were allowed access to power. That was how they created the Great Peace."
"Correct again. Sadly, they failed to explain human nature to us. We thought everyone deserved magic. Oh, the misguided, youthful fools that we were." She shook her head solemnly.
"So, you want us to rearrange the universe. That's a pretty tall order." Score said, leaning back into the couch, his neck rather stiff. He really hated long stories with confusing names and complicated plots.
"Not as of yet. I took advantage of the annual wizard's council to bring you here, to see if you truly were real, and to tell you the story. But now, we have to wait for Amaruit. She's lurking somewhere out in the Diadem, biding her time. She will strike soon, I am sure. But until we know where she is, there is nothing I can ask you to do...except wait."
"Oh. So the point of that whole long story was that you're going to need a hand sometime in the near future? Geeze." Score stretched out his legs. He was really cramping up now.
"It is quite useless trying to irritate me, Score. I'm a soul. You can't irritate souls." She smiled wryly. "I suppose you'll be wanting to get back to the annual council..."
Helaine groaned. "So...boring...."
"...but I shall keep in touch with you all."
"I, for one, would be very interested in learning more about the structures under which the magic was contained." Pixel rambled on about some theories he had, while Score and Helaine stiffly made their way towards the door back to the Hall of the Ancients.
"It's a lot to think about, huh?" Score asked, once they were seated again.
"I'd rather not. Do you realize what this woman is asking us to do? She wants us to kill her other half so she can catch up with it somehow, which WE apparently already managed, then we have to wait however long it takes for her to grow up, and THEN we have to muck around with the Diadem. How does she know we'll do all this for her?"
"You know the answer as well as I do." Score looked out into the center circle. A portly man was droning on about the importance of castle upkeep.
"We have souls. Yeah." Helaine sighed, and rolled her neck to try to work some life into her muscles. "I can't believe Oracle thinks this is interesting," she muttered.
Score laughed. "Do you want to go home?" He asked.
"Terribly much so."
"Okay then, we're out of here." Together, they created a Portal to Dondar with surprising ease, and emerged into their own sunlit courtyard. Helaine turned to Score with a look he recognized as being one of bossy impatience.
"Promise me something" she begged.
"Anything." He replied, rather hastily.
"Promise me we never go back."
"Absolutely. As I recall, you dragged me there. So really, it's your fault." Score grinned wickedly. Helaine stepped away from him and glared.
"You should have stopped me!"
"You put me through all that boredom, just because-"
On the other side of the courtyard wall, Pixel heard them bickering, and veritably beamed. Despite a most peculiar revelation and a history that spanned thousands of years, things actually seemed back to normal.
*****
Another Painfully Long Author's Note (sorry)
No, I am not ashamed of waiting until now to post, and I will not make excuses.
This chapter sort of...brings it all together. I know it took a couple thousand words to get here, but I guess I was fishing around inside the characters to get used to them. Bryndis/Amaruit is sort of like the snowball to get things going (Ever read Hamlet? Think the ghost). If I were smarter, I would have started this in media res, as they say, and not bothered with some of the earlier junk. Oh well.
As for some criticism brought forth by Luna of chapter 19, I suppose I should defend myself. It has been my personal observation that with Helaine, it's all about power. She's used to being the subordinate sex, and (as much as she protests in the third book), the things that make her the happiest involve her asserting her dominance over other people, over nature, over challenges, etc.
I do not see Helaine as being unreasonably OOC in 19. Sitting in the front tier of the council, a show of power, boosts her mood somewhat. Also, you will notice that what Score (and you, Luna) interpret as forwardness, could simply be Helaine being...Helaine. Score is a horny teenage boy, we can expect overreaction from him. Now, if it was Helaine narrating her own "forwardness" I do not think it would come off quite the same.
And, lastly, as for the thumbs-up, I'll admit it, I goofed. But is it so difficult to think that after four or five years together, Helaine (and Pixel as well) hasn't picked up some of Score's gestures?
Anyway, it was appreciated, I'll be careful, and I hope you enjoy chapter 20. It might be the last one for a short span, just because I feel like it.
Oh, and as a plug, Luna updated and Tseecka Akeunah wrote a new story. I'm so happy I could burst. Read their stuff and bugger off and write your own. You know you want to...
Aroo!
"You're another apparition, aren't you? Her hands go right through you." Score accused.
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Or is it that my arm goes through her hands, and you are the apparitions?" She waited while Score and Helaine exchanged confused looks. "Don't worry, I know the answer. You are real, and I am not." Her voice was lachrymose and she punctuated her statement with a sigh.
"Er... I'm sorry?" Score attempted. "But why did you want to speak to us?"
"I suppose you don't know the story. Your story. Our story, really, but mostly yours. You might as well sit down and be comfortable. It's a rather long tale."
"Exactly where would you have us sit?" Helaine asked patiently. The woman frowned.
"Don't you have any imagination? Just sit!" She demonstrated by bending her knees and a ratty green armchair appeared. Score shrugged and pretended he was sitting on the blue couch from their castle on Dondar. It materialized beneath him, and Helaine was content to sit next to him.
"My name is Bryndis the Wanderer. You are some reincarnation of the Triad, that much I know."
"Some incarnation? We're the incarnation. Well, plus Pixel." Helaine corrected Bryndis, a trace of arrogance coming through.
"You think this is the first time the Triad have hid themselves in the far reaches of the Diadem?" She examined their faces. "You do. I see. I have more to explain then I previously thought." She sighed again, and Score fidgeted. "Perhaps you have names? I don't suppose you still go by Traxis and Eremin?"
"No. Never. We aren't them." Helaine's words were laced with disgust. "My name is Renald. This is Score. Not Eremin and Traxis. Not in a million years"
"Pity. The old names were so beautiful, in the Tongue. But I suppose they seem tainted to you. Never mind that. Renald and Score most likely aren't your real names anyway." Neither Helaine nor Score chose to reply, and Bryndis seemed to accept their silence as an affirmative.
"Instead of alluding to all this stuff we don't know, why don't you just tell us the story and get it over with?" Score burst out finally. Bryndis initially looked surprised, then smiled warmly.
"Of course. I will try to be clear, but please, stop if you have questions."
"Wait!" Helaine half-rose out of her seat.
"Yes?"
"What about Pixel? He should be here for this. He'll probably understand it better than Score and I too."
"That can be arranged. Do you have an agate, or would you like to borrow one?"
"We're set, thanks." Score replied as Helaine fished through her pocket. She retrieved the gem and called Pixel forth in her mind.
*Pixel?*
*Hi Helaine. Crow and I were just planting some-*
Helaine cut him off. *Listen, we think you should be with us to hear something.*
*But what about Crow?*
A new voice cut in. *It is possible, if you wish, to be here merely in mind and not in physical presence*
Score glared at Bryndis. "How could you hear her thoughts?"
"No telepathy is ever entirely secret." She smiled gently a little. "Especially not to projections like me."
*What do I do?* Pixel interrupted.
*Relax. I'll guide you* Bryndis closed her eyes and a moment later a rather ghostly version of Pixel 'popped' onto the couch between Score and Helaine.
Pixel looked at his semi-transparent limbs and grinned. "So this is what it's like to be Oracle." He sobered. "Actually, this is an interesting technique. When my eyes are open, I can see the azaleas we're planting, but when I shut them, I see the three of you. Quite handy."
"Pixel, this is Bryndis. But she's not real, by self-admission." Score gestured to the woman, not really sure if he trusted her.
"And I am about to recount a history. Are you settled?" The three nodded. "Then away we go."
"Your tale begins with my youth. I was born almost three thousand years ago in the six hundred and third year of the Great Peace on the planet Jewel. My parents were farmers, and we had a steading far to the north of the City. I was named Amaruit, and a horse's kick when I was four nearly killed me, and crippled my brain. When I was eleven, I began showing signs of the gift, and a wizard decided to repair my head. My parents sent me to the Academy the next month and I didn't see them for the another fourteen years."
"Academy?" inquired Pixel.
"Yes. As you are probably aware, magical inclinations begin to show themselves around the age of ten or so. It was custom during the Great Peace for all those so gifted to be trained at the Academy, under careful instruction. We were the guardians of the peace."
"School for magicians, got it." Pixel nodded. "Continue."
"I need not regale you with tales of my school days. All that is worth mentioning is that it was at the Academy I met Nantor, Traxis, and Eremin."
"But you said this was thousands of years ago... the Triad lived until just recently!" Pixel interrupted again.
"The Triad you refer to are mere shadows of the originals. Nantor, Traxis, and Eremin were my closest friends at the Academy. We were inseparable. My friends were vibrant and loving and wonderful..." Bryndis trailed off as though she could see her schoolmates just behind the couch. After a moment she snapped herself out of her reverie and continued. "They had their flaws, of course. But that is what makes us human. In our final year at the Academy, however, we were expelled."
"Expelled? For what?" Score asked. Bryndis sighed again. She really needed to knock it off.
"One of the things that made the Great Peace so...peaceful... was the High Council. They kept order by having strict regulations on magic and magic-users. Most of the regulations were designed to keep magic locked away. And the four of us, we disagreed with it. We thought magic should be available for everyone. So, we were expelled."
"Sounds pretty...harsh."
"If they knew what we could do, they would have killed us. We were four, strong together, with an intense dislike of the High Council. We fled Jewel and created a new planet for ourselves. It was our self-imposed exile, our home, our laboratory."
"This place?" Helaine asked. Bryndis nodded.
"Yes. These rooms, including the Hall of the Ancients, are a planet unto themselves. We lived here for three years, planning our secret revolution. We were going to unleash the magic locked away in Jewel. We wanted to bring equality to the universe, to allow everyone access to what the High Council hid from us." She paused, then smiled to herself. "We succeeded, too. I won't bore you with the details, but we succeeded. We turned the universe on its head, unleashed Chaos. It was beautiful. We thought it perfect and evenly balanced. The High Council, of course, was furious. They did their best to gather it all up, but there was only so much they could do. The planets settled themselves in the Diadem, arranging in order of how much magic they retained."
"That makes sense. The more magic a planet has, the more it is attracted to the large quantity on Jewel." Pixel nodded slowly.
"Correct. After the cosmic dust settled, we were rather disappointed. We'd hoped to create a utopia, but instead, villainous creatures of all sorts were getting hold of the magic and using it to further their own evil ends. Chaos turned out to be a terrible idea, but of course, we were too young to understand. Many things are wasted on youth. Sadly, intelligence is not one of them. The Great Peace fell apart, and the Council set out to find us to put the universe back in order. We scattered, and spent four years on the run, skipping from planet to planet, only in contact telepathically. Eventually, of course, the Council captured us."
"What do you mean, 'of course'?" Score interjected.
"They were, as a collective body, stronger than each of us alone. And you can't run forever. When I realized we were doomed to return to their hands, I went home. I kissed my mother and father goodbye. The High Council..." she trailed off again, frowning. "They protected the innocent, but they punished the guilty. There are tortures you can't begin to imagine that they could inflict. Yet...they stayed their hand.
"Once we were all rounded up, they brought us back here, to our exile planet, and asked us to restore order. We refused, the children that we were, and they brought out... this... sword." Bryndis paused, and reached out into the air in front of her. A long, black blade, wickedly serrated, gently slid into being from her memory. "The sword had a name. I'd never known a sword to have a name before, but this one did. It was..." her throat seized and she took several deep breaths before continuing, in a lower tone. "The name of the sword was Geismorte." Bryndis shuddered. "And then they took it, and they...they..." she shook uncontrollably, and buried her face in her hands. Score, Helaine, and Pixel exchanged worried glances before the woman finally finished.
"They cut off our souls."
"They what?" exclaimed Helaine and Pixel nearly simultaneously.
"They just brought the sword down on us and they cut off our souls the devil bastards they just cut them off and suddenly we were two pieces we were fragments they cut off our souls and it hurt like the end of the world and they-" Bryndis dissolved into tears; not wracking sobs, but quiet and inescapable wetness, as though she'd cried these tears before, and they'd proven useless.
After several highly awkward moments, Bryndis seemed to regain her composure. "I apologize. It was over two thousand years ago, but very... traumatic." She fished around in the air for something, found a handkerchief, and dabbed at her eyes.
"Are those real?" Pixel asked, indicating her tears. Bryndis nodded.
"I am more than a projection. But I'm getting there. Our story is nearly over. After... after we were separated, there were eight... eight memories of life. There were four souls, and four... oh I don't know. Compilations of muscle, bones, magic, brains, and everything else. The souls... fled. We were nothing except humanity, and the other...us... they thought it might be a good idea to kill the souls. So we fled."
"We?" Pixel asked.
"Yes. I am Bryndis the Wanderer, the projection of the soul of Amaruit. We all fled to the rim worlds, far away from our...remains. Because then they began to fight among themselves. I was not there, I do not wish to know their reasons, but I do know the outcome. The one who called herself Amaruit, the one who was once part of me, was murdered by the other three. However, being soulless, she possessed the ability to be reborn, in a strangers womb."
"Boy does that sound familiar." Score muttered.
"Eventually, the other three, now calling themselves the Triad, had learned of this trick. They slaughtered the High Council and declared themselves rulers of the Diadem. Death was absolutely no problem to them. They sent their essences back out into the Diadem, bumbled their way back to Jewel, and took hold of their former memories."
"Yeah, they tried to do that to us too. But why did we fight becoming the Triad? What made us different from the presumably hundreds that had gone before us?" Pixel was frowning, his brain puzzling out the nuances of the information. Helaine was sure he would have something clever to say in another five minutes. He was wonderful like that.
Bryndis smiled. "Because the souls of Eremin, Traxis, and Nantor found their way into your unborn bodies, nestled themselves in tight, and regained control. Don't you see? You're whole again. You're real." Her smile grew wider. "You have truly defeated the Triad, because you have souls."
Pixel nodded. "So we do. We certainly are much nicer than the Triad we met. I don't know how much I like the idea of being some old person resurrected, but I still feel like me."
"Of course you do. You're reborn. But I..." she looked down at her hands with disgust and resignation. "Amaruit is alive. You have to help me defeat her."
"Why?" Helaine asked
"Because she is just like the Triad: nasty, vicious, and cruel." Pixel explained. "And, if I understood your story correctly, there is another task you would like us to complete."
A nod. "If I can catch Amaruit on the ethereal plains, then we can destroy the Diadem together."
"Whoa...whoa... maybe Pixel can help me out here. Why do we want to destroy the Diadem?" Score rubbed his forehead. Way too much thinking.
"Because, it's the Diadem that enables tyrants and dictators. I'm guessing... correct me if I'm wrong, Bryndis, that the original system the Council had worked out was one where only wizards who had gone through the Academy could tap into the reserves of magic. Only people who could be trusted were allowed access to power. That was how they created the Great Peace."
"Correct again. Sadly, they failed to explain human nature to us. We thought everyone deserved magic. Oh, the misguided, youthful fools that we were." She shook her head solemnly.
"So, you want us to rearrange the universe. That's a pretty tall order." Score said, leaning back into the couch, his neck rather stiff. He really hated long stories with confusing names and complicated plots.
"Not as of yet. I took advantage of the annual wizard's council to bring you here, to see if you truly were real, and to tell you the story. But now, we have to wait for Amaruit. She's lurking somewhere out in the Diadem, biding her time. She will strike soon, I am sure. But until we know where she is, there is nothing I can ask you to do...except wait."
"Oh. So the point of that whole long story was that you're going to need a hand sometime in the near future? Geeze." Score stretched out his legs. He was really cramping up now.
"It is quite useless trying to irritate me, Score. I'm a soul. You can't irritate souls." She smiled wryly. "I suppose you'll be wanting to get back to the annual council..."
Helaine groaned. "So...boring...."
"...but I shall keep in touch with you all."
"I, for one, would be very interested in learning more about the structures under which the magic was contained." Pixel rambled on about some theories he had, while Score and Helaine stiffly made their way towards the door back to the Hall of the Ancients.
"It's a lot to think about, huh?" Score asked, once they were seated again.
"I'd rather not. Do you realize what this woman is asking us to do? She wants us to kill her other half so she can catch up with it somehow, which WE apparently already managed, then we have to wait however long it takes for her to grow up, and THEN we have to muck around with the Diadem. How does she know we'll do all this for her?"
"You know the answer as well as I do." Score looked out into the center circle. A portly man was droning on about the importance of castle upkeep.
"We have souls. Yeah." Helaine sighed, and rolled her neck to try to work some life into her muscles. "I can't believe Oracle thinks this is interesting," she muttered.
Score laughed. "Do you want to go home?" He asked.
"Terribly much so."
"Okay then, we're out of here." Together, they created a Portal to Dondar with surprising ease, and emerged into their own sunlit courtyard. Helaine turned to Score with a look he recognized as being one of bossy impatience.
"Promise me something" she begged.
"Anything." He replied, rather hastily.
"Promise me we never go back."
"Absolutely. As I recall, you dragged me there. So really, it's your fault." Score grinned wickedly. Helaine stepped away from him and glared.
"You should have stopped me!"
"You put me through all that boredom, just because-"
On the other side of the courtyard wall, Pixel heard them bickering, and veritably beamed. Despite a most peculiar revelation and a history that spanned thousands of years, things actually seemed back to normal.
*****
Another Painfully Long Author's Note (sorry)
No, I am not ashamed of waiting until now to post, and I will not make excuses.
This chapter sort of...brings it all together. I know it took a couple thousand words to get here, but I guess I was fishing around inside the characters to get used to them. Bryndis/Amaruit is sort of like the snowball to get things going (Ever read Hamlet? Think the ghost). If I were smarter, I would have started this in media res, as they say, and not bothered with some of the earlier junk. Oh well.
As for some criticism brought forth by Luna of chapter 19, I suppose I should defend myself. It has been my personal observation that with Helaine, it's all about power. She's used to being the subordinate sex, and (as much as she protests in the third book), the things that make her the happiest involve her asserting her dominance over other people, over nature, over challenges, etc.
I do not see Helaine as being unreasonably OOC in 19. Sitting in the front tier of the council, a show of power, boosts her mood somewhat. Also, you will notice that what Score (and you, Luna) interpret as forwardness, could simply be Helaine being...Helaine. Score is a horny teenage boy, we can expect overreaction from him. Now, if it was Helaine narrating her own "forwardness" I do not think it would come off quite the same.
And, lastly, as for the thumbs-up, I'll admit it, I goofed. But is it so difficult to think that after four or five years together, Helaine (and Pixel as well) hasn't picked up some of Score's gestures?
Anyway, it was appreciated, I'll be careful, and I hope you enjoy chapter 20. It might be the last one for a short span, just because I feel like it.
Oh, and as a plug, Luna updated and Tseecka Akeunah wrote a new story. I'm so happy I could burst. Read their stuff and bugger off and write your own. You know you want to...
Aroo!