Thirty-Seven || Broken Dolls
Small explosions followed them a short way up the walkway– a warning shot, Rue assumed, as it seemed specifically intended to land behind him. He stole a glance over his shoulder to see the walkway crumbling behind them, Atenacius standing at the edge of the platform, just out of reach of its rapidly deteriorating edge.
Rue had a hope – vague and imperfect and not terribly strong – that the collapsing platform might be enough to keep Atenacius from following them. He and Maya had put enough distance between themselves and the Aeon that the walkway was fragmenting behind them even as Atenacius reached its edge.
It was, of course, a stupid idea.
Atenacius leapt off the platform and into the air, robes and hair billowing up around him, and hovered there for a few seconds, starlit eyes tracing a burning path as he watched Rue and Maya continue up along the pathway, and then looked even further ahead of them. Suddenly he shot forward, tearing through the air, and Maya skidded to a stop just as Atenacius slammed into the walkway directly ahead of them.
"You keep poor company, Princess," he hissed.
"Maya, down!"
Maya flattened herself against the stone path, and Rue charged, leapt over her, and swung the Arc Edge down in a hard diagonal, twisting it so the flat of the blade connected with Atenacius' arm. The blow sent the Aeon staggering, and before he could recover Rue struck at him again, pushing him off the walkway.
It took Atenacius all of half a second to recover and bring himself level with the path again. It was hardly more than a stumble.
"You couldn't have thought that would accomplish something," Atenacius said.
He held out his hand, gripped at nothing, and then drew out a length of light. Stars followed the movement, snapping together and locking like the lengths of a chain. Atenacius wheeled the whip over his head and brought it down.
Rue lifted the Arc Edge, flat of the blade pointed upward, and caught the shining blow against it. The impact radiated down his arms and through his body, but the worst of it – that burning light – dissipated on contact, the stars fizzling and dying when they impacted the blade.
Atenacius wheeled back, his face contorted in fury.
"Why aren't you fighting me!" he roared. "You think so little of me I'm not worth wasting your magic on!"
"Stop, please!" Rue shouted back. "I don't want to fight you!"
"The time for pacifism is long gone, Valen. Now, finally, I can end this!"
"I'm not–"
Suddenly he was knocked to the ground, a burning scythe of energy slicing the air where his torso had been. Rue twisted and saw Maya splayed out on top of him, her breathing quick and shallow, her eyes wide.
"Sorry," she said breathlessly. "I thought that looked– unpleasant."
He looked up, looked back to her, nodded. "Yeah, I imagine so."
Maya rolled to the side and shoved herself back to her feet. Rue was only a second behind her, leaping up again. Atenacius was drawing his arm back, his teeth visibly gritted, several leaves of paper erupting between his fingers.
"Atenacius!" Maya yelled. "As heir apparent of the Kingdom of East Heaven and current master of the Book of Cosmos, I command you t–"
Rue gripped her arm and yanked her to the side just as Atenacius whirled, the slips of paper in his hand screaming through the air. The edge of one just clipped her arm; it sliced through the fabric of her coat and trailed behind it a thin spurt of scarlet.
"Don't think he's going to listen to you," Rue said quickly.
Maya's response was a low grunt. She slapped her other hand over the thin wound, concentrated, and willed the cut to knit itself together. In front of them, Atenacius was reaching back, pulling free another scattering of stars.
"I'd hoped for some kind of contest," he said. "This feels terribly underwhelming."
"What's he saying?" Maya hissed.
"That's he's going to kill us," Rue said. "That's the gist of everything he is saying."
He pulled her forward and shoved her in front of him. Maya got the idea instantly and began to run again. Rue, however, did not follow immediately. He faced Atenacius, his stance non-threatening but rigid, his teeth pressed tight together.
"Listen to me," Rue started. "We–"
"I listened to you more than enough," Atenacius snapped. "I am through listening to you. It is long past time for you to die."
He hurled the stars. Rue threw himself to the side.
Atenacius had anticipated that.
The explosions erupted below and around him, peppering his lower body with bursts of heat and flame. He cried out involuntarily and staggered, tried to find his footing, fell. He hurt – not as much as he had expected, strangely, but certainly enough that it would take him more than a few seconds to recover.
Atenacius slipped back onto the pathway and stood over him. He opened his hand and ignited the air just above it, forming a blazing white fireball. Rue managed, with no small amount of effort, to flip himself onto his back, trying to face Atenacius. He had to squint to do so; the ball of flame was like a tiny sun in the Aeon's hand.
"Why?" Atenacius asked.
This was a chance to ask for clarification; why what, why anything, why was he – Atenacius – doing this, what did he possibly think that Rue wanted to accomplish–
Rue used it to yank himself around, torquing his upper body hard and bringing the Arc Edge around in a high swing. The blade strike Atenacius' waist and sliced clean through him, leaving a trail of blazing blue against the indigo robes.
Atenacius' eyes widened slightly, although his mouth curved in a frown. He seemed not so much surprised as annoyed.
The two halves of his ephemeral form separated, and then Atenacius himself disappeared in a burst of pale smoke. The ball of flame he had been holding fell to the floor. Rue braced himself.
The explosion sent him flying, crashing head over heels up the slope of the pathway until he hit the edge, rolled once last time, and suddenly found himself supported by a great deal of nothing. For a moment he floated freely in space, temporarily blinded by the light, his body slowly recognizing the heat that suddenly suffused his skin, and in that moment he couldn't tell precisely where he was, only that he likely did not want to be. Then the sensation of falling caught up with him.
And, almost as quickly, a sudden, painful jerk in his shoulder, and the sensation of no longer falling.
He looked up, blinking to try and clear the light out of his eyes, and the figure formed above him– a splotch of white, a brush of strawberry blond. She coalesced; Princess Maya, suspended almost halfway over the edge of the platform, holding fast onto his arm.
She reached down with her other arm, grasped him, and closed her eyes, concentrating. He felt the air around him condense briefly, then start to move, providing a powerful upward current to help support his weight. He tried to pull himself up using his caught hand, but his arm didn't seem to want to respond the way he expected it to; he could feel something in his shoulder moving improperly. His heart beat a little faster.
He tried to think, managed to do so, and whipped his other arm back, gripping the Arc Edge as tightly as he could. Then, with a single forward motion, he swung the blade up, over his head, and struck the walkway. The blade lodged itself between scattered stone, and held fast. He pulled himself a little bit further up using the Arc Edge to balance his weight, taking some of the strain off of Maya, and she reached down and helped haul him back onto the platform.
Maya yanked him up the rest of the way, and Rue sprawled out on the platform, the cool of the stone and concrete pressed against his burning skin. He remained that way for several seconds, trying to let the pathway siphon off as much excess heat as it could, trying to ignore the pain bubbling up in his shoulder.
Maya shifted away from him, past him, and he heard her grunt with effort. He turned his head to watch and saw her yanking the Arc Edge free of its hold. She let it fall to the walkway as soon as it was safe to do so, then turned her attention back to Rue.
"What did he do?" she asked.
"You didn't see?" Rue growled.
"I– yes, I did." She frowned. "That was a stupid question. Can you stand?"
"Not easily."
She gave him a quick visual check, then leaned over to his shoulder and gently pressed her hand against it. He gritted his teeth and winced.
"You've got a bad sprain," she said. "Sorry."
"Sorry?" He would rather have a wrenched shoulder than see what would happen if he fell off the path, and was quite ready to say so when Maya suddenly gripped his shoulder as tight a she could, pressing her fingers into the muscle. Rue cried out and dug his other hand against the floor, trying to force down the pain, but after another moment soothing warmth ran down his shoulder, and Maya removed her hand.
"You should be... functional, at least," she said. "Try getting up."
He did. He shifted both arms underneath himself and pushed, rising back to his feet. His arm protested faintly, but no moreso than the rest of his body. He knelt down, grabbed the Arc Edge, and turned to Maya.
"That's... functional," he said. "Thank you." He looked around quickly. "Where's-?"
The ground behind them suddenly contorted. They both whirled at once, staringly mutely as the end of the platform rippled, twitched, sagged, bent–
Exploded.
A shower of rock and concrete sprayed upward into the cosmos, and from beneath it erupted Atenacius, a whorl of paper and stardust, spinning light and blots of ink. He caught one of these ink blots and whipped his hand out, expanding it into an inky net. Maya stepped forward, dragging some of the strew rubble back down and on top of the net, collapsing it into the ground in a mass of oozing pitch.
"He's not going to be happy with you now," Rue said.
"Because he seems to have been thrilled with me so far," Maya said. She stepped backward, then turned fully and shot off, heading up the pathway. This time, Rue hesitated only long enough to give her a few feet head start; he turned and bolted right after her.
He didn't stop, and he didn't dare look behind him. Blasts of light erupted to either side, and he had to rely less on his vision and more on his sense of magic to keep from being struck by them again. Atenacius was trying to predict his moves, hurling the bursts of light and explosives a little bit ahead of him; Rue, in turn, was trying to feel the energy path of Atenacius' attacks, skipping to one side or the other or ducking down as he needed to.
At the least, Atenacius did not seem to be intentionally aiming far enough ahead to hit Maya– although Rue doubted he was much concerned about her safety.
Rue expected he would need to turn around soon, try and confront Atenacius again, but as he built himself up for the inevitable he realized that the attacks flaring around him were coming less often, and didn't have quite the same power behind him. He had half a mind to stop and see what was going on and dismissed the notion almost immediately; it could be a ploy.
But as they continued their manic run, he realized that he no longer even had to try; the magic bursts were falling away behind them, their power rapidly waning, until there fell over them a moment of peace, where the air no longer burned and hummed with magic.
He was growing tired again, and the pain in his shoulder coming back, and he was starting to slow down anyway. He did so and used it as an opportunity to turn around, still making his ascent slowly, walking backwards, his gaze cast down toward Atenacius.
"Come back!" Atenacius howled. He swept his hand across the sky and gathered another handful of starlight, hurling it into the abyss. The stars missed the receding edge of the platform by several inches and fell into the darkness, exploding into a small shower of light a short way down. "Coward!"
Behind him, Rue heard Maya. "What's he saying?"
"This may come as a surprise," Rue said, "but he still wants to kill us."
"Sadly, I seem to be growing accustomed to that."
Her own pace had almost stopped, and a few seconds later Rue found himself side-by-side with Maya again. He stopped walking when he saw she was standing there, turned to face Atenacius, her brow furrowed.
"He's so adamant about our demise," Maya said, "so why doesn't he follow us?"
Rue frowned. "I... can't answer that."
They both looked ahead.
Their run had carried them a fair distance higher up; just a few feet overhead was the edge of the next platform. Rue nodded to Maya and started up the rest of the path, his path deliberate and leisurely. The corkscrew ascent brought them in a broad sweep around the platform, and somehow they remained unharmed as they went. Both Rue and Maya paused periodically to look down toward Atenacius, but he never ascended any higher or deigned to hurl his magic in their direction again.
Before they were quite level with the platform, Maya caught Rue's sleeve and pulled it to grab his attention. When he turned, she was pointing down. "Look," she said. "Do you see that?"
"See what?"
"The platform. The one Atenacius is on."
Rue looked down. Yes, he did; of course he did. It was a massive rectangle, far larger than the platform Maya had been on, or the one just overhead, or even the room Rue had started out in. But now that he was looking down at it, he recognized a little better what she meant. There was a pattern on it, a baroque design of lines and runes and woven glyphs, spiraling out from the central point. He recognized, now that he was looking down it, where the strength texture and the hills and bumps had come from; the patterns on the platform were slightly raised, the whole of it too large to see from the platform itself but crystal clear now that they could look down on it.
"What is that?" he asked. The design seemed familiar to him, somehow, but he couldn't quite place it.
"It's the Book," Maya said. "The platform is the Book."
"You're close."
Both of them snapped their attention upward, and Maya let out a little shriek of surprise. Doll Master was on the platform overhead, kneeling down and leaning to look over the side. Even from such a close proximity, his dark garb let him melt into the night sky; were it not for his stark white hair, he might have been almost invisible.
"Where did you come from?" Rue asked quietly.
But Doll Master ignored the question. "What you're seeing is a replica of the Book," he said. "Atenacius' aesthetic, little more. If you observe any of these other platforms carefully you'll find they bear script from the pages of the Book itself." He spread his hand, indicating the cosmos. "I imagine there are hundreds more of these scattered out here."
Rue started up the path again, forcing the walkway to continue building. Maya followed a few steps behind.
"Of course, Atenacius is located in the heart of all this... nonsense," Doll Master continued. He was straightening back up, turning his head to keep an eye on the other two as they rose up to his level. "That's where the greatest representation of the Book happens to be. It's also, I imagine, where the Book itself happens to be. Although needless to say I don't have much of a view from up here."
Rue drew level to the platform. There was an odd gap between the pathway and where Doll Master was standing, but not more than he could comfortably jump. He cleared the gap and turned, holding out his hand to give Maya some support. She hesitated, although not because of the jump; her gaze was narrow, and focused to a burning point on Doll Master.
"Come on," Rue said.
"You'll forgive my trepidation," Maya growled. She rubbed the back of her head. "I am a little... wary... of our next confrontation."
"Understandable," Rue said. "But we don't have much leeway here."
"Whyever not?"
"Because," Doll Master said, "I am the only one here who has any inkling of what is presently happening. Correct?"
"Exactly," Rue said.
Maya's frown deepened, but she took Rue's hand and used him as balance, leaping across the gap and onto the platform. Doll Master nodded to them, then turned away, looking back down the platform, toward Atenacius.
"You are aware of the theory about Atenacius," Doll Master said. "That he wove his soul into the very fabric of the Book."
"As I recall," Maya said stiffly, "you were the one who told me about it."
"And you can plainly see it was not a mere theory."
"I'd reasoned as much."
"Apparently he did more than simply weave his soul," Doll Master said. "This whole mess is an out-of-control failsafe in the event of the Book's attempted destruction. The only way to stop the spell is to destroy the Book."
For a few seconds, there was silence. Then, slowly, Rue spoke up.
"It's already destroyed," he said. "That's what set this off, right?"
"An attempt," Doll Master repeated. "And you did a fine job of it, no doubt, but it was still an incomplete job. You cleaved the Book in two, correct?"
Rue hesitated, then nodded. "I– I think so," he said. He considered his next words. "When I woke up here, I... I think I found half of it."
"Do you have it with you?" Doll Master inquired.
Rue shook his head. "I don't know where it went," he said. "It got sucked out into the abyss, along with... well, everything else."
"I imagine it was the dead half," Doll Master said. "It's inconsequential."
"What, precisely, is going on?" Maya pressed.
"Atenacius' soul was bound inextricably to the Book," Doll Master said. "So long as the Book exists, Atenacius will, as well. By my guess – and I have little reason to believe I am wrong – the other half of the Book is somewhere down there, and Atenacius' soul is tethered to it."
"That's why he didn't follow us," Rue said. "He can't leave the Book. Not far, at least."
"Precisely." He turned to regard the two of them again. "The only means of leaving this place is to completely destroy the remains of the Book. This spell is woven into the fabric of its pages and is therefore woven into his soul. If we destroy the Book, we can kill Atenacius, and the spell will necessarily end."
"Kill him," Maya repeated.
"Such as it is," Doll Master added, shrugging. "He's already dead, strictly speaking, we simply need to finish the job."
Maya's lips pressed into a thin, severe line. "I don't like this," she said curtly.
"And you just have no idea how thrilled I am to be here, myself," Doll Master said. "This whole day is going precisely as I had anticipated."
She glared at him.
"The alternative," Doll Master added, a little too brightly, "is to wait him out up here and hope he'll stop his little tantrum and end the spell without any further complication. Given that he's been holding this grudge for something in the neighborhood of a thousand years, I'm sure he'll calm down within the next century or so. Although I don't imagine you can wait him out quite that long, Your Highness."
His gaze shifted to Rue.
"I was hoping we would run across each other again," Doll Master said. "I have a bit of an idea, and I think, between the three of–"
"Hold on," Rue said.
Doll Master stopped. His attention turned fully to Rue.
"He can't reach us up here, right?" Rue asked. "Or else I guess he would've followed us. Given how... angry he is, I can't imagine him just giving up the chase like that."
"Correct."
Rue nodded, and flipped the Arc Edge around, sliding it onto his shoulders.
"So we have time," Rue said.
Doll Master straightened up. "Time?" he asked, but it wasn't really a question; everything about the inquiry sounded like he was only dragging out the conversation. He knew exactly what Rue was saying, and Doll Master was going to force him to say it.
"You are the only one here with an inkling of what's going on," Rue said.
Doll Master nodded and clasped his hands behind his back.
"You know– you know who I am," Rue said. "What I am."
"Yes. I do."
"Then tell me," Rue said. "Why do I know the spell at the altar? How did I destroy the Relic? Why was I asleep in that tomb? Why were you looking for me? Who are you to me?" He drew in a shuddering breath, steeled himself, and when he spoke it was in the fluid phonemes of Aeonic. "Why does he call me Valen?"
Doll Master responded in kind. "Because he's confused," he began. "Although it's hard to blame him for that. He's not entirely wrong."
Rue felt cold. Doll Master gave him a little half-smile, although the expression did not quite reach his eyes.
"I believe there is a conversation that you and I should have had quite some time ago," Doll Master said.
"Yes," Rue said. The statement was little more than an exhalation. "I think there is."
"At this juncture," Maya added acidly, "I believe you owe me an explanation as well."
Doll Master laughed, genuinely amused. "Such presumption, Princess! I'm afraid that I owe you nothing." His smile spread, and now it did reach his eyes. "But, at this juncture, there is no more reason to obfuscate my intentions. Not when we're this close."
"We," Rue repeated. "I assume you don't mean your... friends."
"No," Doll Master said. "This is between you and I, now."
Doll Master seemed to be waiting for him to respond, but Rue remained silent. After a few seconds, Doll Master closed his eyes. "You remember nothing, then?" he asked.
"The first thing I remember was waking up in a box inside a tomb."
"How long ago?"
"Five years."
"And nothing before that? Absolutely nothing?"
"No."
Slowly, Doll Master looked up. "I must admit," he said, "that this explains quite a bit to me, as well."
"You knew me before then."
"In a manner of speaking," Doll Master said. "Tell me, Rue, do you know why the Prima Doll was built?"
The change of subject was so abrupt Rue couldn't formulate a response immediately, and when he did he recognized the absurdity of the question. "To break the seal on the lake altar," he said.
"Let me rephrase. Do you know why, specifically, Elroy had to create the Prima Doll? Why he went through all the trouble of creating an animate construct instead of fashioning a more conventional seal-key?"
"Prima said... he said the seal on the ruins required a very specific sort of magic– autonomous action on his part. The sorcerer wouldn't be able to unlock the seal through something, it had to be Prima himself expressing his will."
"Because the seal requires a rather complex bit of magic that– never mind the details. The point is that it required magic input directly from a soul bound to an autonomous, magical construct. A homunculus built specifically to work with and simultaneously counteract the magic on the seal itself."
Rue blinked, frowned, considered. Then:
"No," he said– simply, flatly, absolutely.
"I admit," Doll Master continued, ignoring Rue's statement, "that Elroy's imitation is impressive– binding a soul to a clockwork husk and building the magic around that. Souls don't like being put in places they aren't supposed to be, you know." He had turned around now, his gaze turned somewhat downward. "Valen had his own work-around, of course– far more elegant. Exceptional work."
"No," Rue repeated, his voice raised just a little louder.
"Given the disadvantages Elroy was working with, he made quite the admirable attempt, wouldn't you agree? Not remotely comparable to the original, but, well, we can't all be Valen Artema, can we?"
Rue stiffened.
Doll Master turned to face them again.
"Valen was brilliant," Doll Master said. "He was one of the masterminds behind the concept of the Relic, you know– binding an object to a universal force in order to directly feed off of its power. He had several experiments to that end, but it was all in pursuit of creating the ultimate Relic– something tied to the core of the world itself. A device that, when activated, would be able to re-write the fabric of reality."
"I remember that, in the old books," Maya said. "Or mention of the theory, at least. Also that it was impossible."
"Only if you lack the ingenuity and talent to pursue it," Doll Master said. "Because Valen certainly found a way."
"How?"
Doll Master frowned and pressed his palm against his forehead, his eyes hooded. "I don't know the logistics," he said. "But the result is clear. He captured the mist of time and life, the dew of heaven and earth, and condensed it to flawless crystal, into which he wove the threads of fate. The ultimate Relic, a microcosm of the universe. He called it the Druscháin."
Maya blinked. "The–"
"The Dewprism," Rue said.
Maya shot him a glance. Rue still stood by her, arms folded tight, shoulders stiff, looking pointedly at the ground.
"I know that word," he said slowly. "I know that word."
Doll Master nodded, and his response came back quietly. "Of course you do."
"I–"
"Hold," Maya said, a little more sharply than she had intended. "If he made something with such power–"
"He couldn't use it," Doll Master said curtly. "The Relic is capable of transfiguring the core of the universe. It's little surprise a human – even an Aeon, even Valen – wouldn't be able to command it."
Maya afforded herself a smirk. "Not terribly brilliant after all, was he?"
"All the more for it," Doll Master said. "He found a way."
"Yet didn't use it," Maya said.
"It required some... external assistance."
Doll Master stepped toward them. Maya pulled back, her movements quick and defensive, but Rue didn't bother to follow her. He looked up as Doll Master approached and stopped only a few paces in front of him.
"Valen realized that the only thing that could command the Dewprism was, in essence, the Dewprism itself. Of course, the Dewprism isn't sentient, but by fragmenting a piece of it and weaving those shards into sentient creatures – specifically-fabricated animate constructs – it is theoretically possible to impart in them to ability to command the Dewprism. And, in part, wield its magic. Sufficient magic," he added, putting particular emphasis on the word, "to damage – to destroy – a lesser Relic."
Rue stared at him. Doll Master simply stood by, waiting for some kind of acknowledgment. Slowly – dreadfully slowly – he managed to form words again.
"That's what this– this crystal is," he said. "A piece of Valen's Relic. A..." English was starting to fail him; he had to search for the word. "A conduit for its power."
"And," Doll Master added, "the source of the magic that grants you life."
Rue closed his eyes, buried deep in thought. Then, slowly, he turned his attention back to Doll Master, holding eye contact. Doll Master's expression was difficult to read beneath the mask, but his eyes – hazel-brown, flecked with gold – were honest and open with anticipation.
"Stop," Rue said.
Rapid blink. Confusion.
"I'm sorry?" he said.
"Stop it," Rue repeated. "I don't know where you're getting this but I don't much appreciate it. Even if– even if this made sense–"
"Doesn't it?"
"Of course not."
"And why not?"
"Because it– it just–" Rue ground his teeth in frustration at himself. Of course it didn't make any sense, that was practically a given, but he was having a terrible time articulating why not. It just... didn't. He might not have known what he was, but surely not a– a homunculus. A construct. A–
"You possess power that, even without channeling it properly, has nearly destroyed one of East Heaven's greatest artefacts. You are fluent in written and spoken Aeonic, a language that died nearly seven centuries ago. You broke the first seal on Valen's altar–"
"I did what?"
"The altar is awake and awaiting the next phase of its unsealing. Surely you noticed that."
He must have meant the illuminated inscriptions. "That– that was Prima," Rue said. "That happened when he went to look at the dais, I didn't– I didn't do anything."
"You wouldn't need to," Doll Master said simply. "It reacted to your presence. It's been waiting for you– or somebody else. Somebody who can break the seal." He shrugged. "I'm sure it would have eventually activated for the Prima Doll, long enough for him to bypass the first seal, but it was activated and is staying active because of you. And, I imagine, it's been calling to you since you arrived here. Before you arrived here."
Rue saw something out of his peripheral vision and tilted his head to see better. It was Maya, shifting uneasily behind him, her gaze flicking quickly back and forth between the two of them, her eyes widening slightly. Rue heard her take a quick, sharp breath, anticipated her speaking, but she remained otherwise silent. He looked back to Doll Master.
"What are you on about?"
"Why are you in Carona?" Doll Master asked.
That was an odd question, and Rue was caught somewhat by surprise by it. "I was looking for a Relic."
Doll Master considered. "Not Valen's Relic."
"A Relic," Rue repeated.
"So what brought you here, specifically?"
"I was... helping somebody. A Relic researcher, he helped me back on the mainland. Then he..." Rue frowned to himself. "Then he said he needed to go home– here, I mean. I just followed him."
"Did he indicate there was a Relic here?"
"No, it just..." Rue felt abruptly off-balance. "Seemed like the right thing to do, at the time, in case he... he found any clues in the papers we had..."
"And putting yourself out in the middle of the ocean seemed like a logical follow-through." When Rue failed to respond, Doll Master pressed. "You lived on the fringe of East Heaven Kingdom. As soon as you were untethered by other responsibility, you headed west. Why wouldn't you go into East Heaven and search for information there, in a kingdom of mages and Relics?"
A legitimate question. He remembered that the thought had occurred to him, actually, but he had dismissed the idea because...
...because...
"I don't know," he said quietly.
"And when you arrived," Doll Master continued, "I imagine there was at least some manner of– familiarity. A memory, or something close to it."
"Old Carona," Rue said. "Yes, I– how did you–"
"Dreams, too. Broken ones. Rotting memories."
Rue was trembling now.
"How do you know that?" he breathed.
He felt more than saw Maya take a tentative step toward him. "Rue," she said quietly, her voice thin and strained. He ignored her.
Doll Master seemed not to have heard the question– although Rue had spoken it so quietly that was entirely possible. He turned away and took a few paces toward the far edge of the platform. "And of course," Doll Master said, "you haven't aged."
Rue said nothing.
"You look almost precisely the same as when we encountered each other three years ago. The same as when you awoke five years ago. The very same, naturally, as when I first found your stasis altar almost seventy years ago."
"When you– seventy–?" Rue shook his head and pressed his fingers to his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. "No, wait, that doesn't..."
"You're one, too," Maya said softly.
Rue turned to face her, almost spoke, and found himself stricken mute. She met his gaze.
"I thought– looking at you both, together, here, it's obvious– you're brothers. Hair, eyes, build, voice... if Doll Master didn't have twenty years on you, you might pass for twins."
Doll Master laughed. "I always said you were the smart one, Princess."
"It's true, then. You – both of you – are... dolls. Valen's dolls."
"To use the rather crude modern vernacular, yes."
Maya nodded– a short, curt gesture, acknowledgment without emotion. "I... I see," she said, shooting another quick look between them. "Valen's... aesthetics?"
"Valen's genetics," Doll Master corrected mildly. "It was his means of bypassing the problem of binding a soul to a construct. Attempts to do so inevitably start with the construct and then attempt to add humanity. Valen started with a human baseline and made modifications from there. Dicey magic, generally looked on as... amoral, if we're being kind. He skirted the issue by producing subjects in secret." His head tilted down, his eyes scanned the platform. "That is the crux of our dear friend's confusion. Valen publicized the general nature of the Dewprism, but kept the rest of his projects secret to the grave. I don't believe any of the other Aeons ever found out."
Maya grimaced. "He... used his own children?" she asked slowly.
Doll Master chuckled. "Valen never had children. He cloned himself."
"He–"
"He developed those as a basis for construction. He wove into the functional ones a piece of the Dewprism– a lifestone, if you will. The result was... perhaps obvious, at this point. Bio-magical constructs, almost flawlessly human, animated through the power of the Dewprism."
Rue snapped his teeth together and tried to ignore the taste of bile in the back of his throat.
"No," he said again. The word sounded pathetic on his tongue. "If– if that's the case, then what was... what has any of this been about?" He looked up slowly. It took unnatural effort to keep his eyes on Doll Master.
"In the grand scheme of things?" Doll Master asked. He looked at Rue curiously. "Do you truly remember none of this? Why we were drawn back to Carona? The reason for our existence?"
Rue could only shake his head.
"Valen's resurrection," Doll Master said.
Maya almost leaped. "That's absurd," she snapped. "Necromancy is a–"
"Sin against nature, the dead must be laid to rest, aren't you aware of what happened to such-and-such, yes, please, carry on," Doll Master said, waving his hand dismissively. "But if mere necromancy were the goal, he wouldn't have needed such elaborate measures, would he? The reason it never works, after all–"
"Is lack of a soul," Rue said suddenly.
They both turned to look at him.
Rue forced himself to stand up straight, forced himself to looked between the two of them, forced himself to ignore as much of what he had heard as he could. Forced himself not to recognize how familiar Doll Master actually was; forced himself not see his own mannerisms, his own movements, reflected in the older man. Forced himself to clamp down. Forced himself to stop trembling. Forced himself to speak.
"That's the problem, right?" he said, trying to keep his voice even, his concentration on the conversation at hand. "When you try to bring somebody back, they're an animate body without a human soul to guide them. The soul... moves on, I guess, shortly after death. If you can't bring that back, then you've already lost the person."
"Precisely," Doll Master said. "Providing a body to return to would be equally tricky, of course, but nothing the Dewprism can't compensate for."
Maya's expression darkened. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news," she said, "but I believe Valen has been dead for some time."
"A thousand years. Yes. You may be surprised to learn that I am fully aware of this."
"But if the soul disappears–"
"There are ways of keeping it around. Esoteric, unconventional, arcane, dangerous." He stamped the platform and pointed down. "Observe our current dilemma. I would like to add that, while I believe Atenacius was the one to come up with this concept, he was not the first to put it into practice." When neither Rue nor Maya spoke, Doll Master finished. "Valen tied his soul to the Dewprism. Releasing the final seal on the Relic will release him, as well."
"And that's your plan," Maya said.
"Not my plan," Doll Master said. "But that is certainly part of the plan, yes. It is what I– we– were intended for." He looked pointedly at Rue. Rue returned his gaze.
"So... all of this," Rue said, "all of this granted... you said you... you found me seventy years ago." A nod. "And you clearly understand exactly what you have to do. So why haven't you?"
Doll Master reached up to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. "An excellent and utterly necessary question," he said, "the answer to which lies in an unfortunate and irrefutable fact." He pulled his hand away from his face, taking the mask off with the movement.
It was apparently immediately that the severity of his features had always been a trick of the mask itself, its contours and colors affording a much more imposing contrast. Once the mask was removed, Doll Master's face softened, and he seemed at once several years younger; the resemblance to himself that Rue had been trying to ignore was wholly and undeniably apparent.
Except for one significant flaw.
A shard of crystal was embedded in his forehead, at a glance significantly and terribly similar to Rue's, but a moment of observation – even from several feet away, as they were – made it clear that something was amiss. The crystal itself had a strange gray tinge, its sheen dull, and the way light refracted against it was... unusual. In spite of himself – in spite of everything – Rue took a few steps forward, nearly reached out, caught himself quickly and came to a stop.
"It's... cracked," he said.
"Broken," Doll Master responded. "The lifestone is broken. I am broken."
"How?"
Doll Master shook his head and shied away, partially turning his back to them. "I don't know, exactly," he said. "This was the... situation... when I awoke a hundred years ago. Early, I must add." He clasped his hands tight behind his back, fidgeting with the cloth mask. "I don't know exactly how early, but I knew something had gone wrong the instant my stasis ended. Although I wasn't sure of how wrong until I... I came here."
"To Valen's altar," Rue said.
"The altar didn't respond to me," Doll Master continued. "The seal... I can see its magic, but it won't let me grasp it. Whatever happened to my lifestone didn't do enough damage to kill me, but it severed my connection to the altar– to the Dewprism. I tried– it doesn't matter what I tried. Needless to say, I failed. I realized I wouldn't be able to do anything with the seal, not on my own, so I went searching for somebody who could. Valen was very good about hiding us, of course. It was decades before I found you. I tried to awaken you, but–"
Doll Master stopped himself suddenly, and an odd, crooked grin crossed his face.
"I... a-hah... I tried to awaken you. It..." He pressed his palm against his forehead and closed his eyes. "It didn't work."
Rue watched him warily. The tone of Doll Master's voice was not entirely soothing. But Doll Master shook his head, and when he returned he was back to his normal timber, his normal delivery.
"I realized that if I attempted to do the same with anybody else, it would result in failure, as well. So I waited. I traveled the world a few times to see if any others had awakened naturally. I waited here in Carona for a time, in case anybody else came. Needless to say... there was nothing. So I decided to do the only other thing I could think of– wait for you to wake up."
"You never found anybody else?" Rue asked.
"Not a one. But I knew where you were, and I resolved to wait. I took a post in East Heaven Kingdom and made trips out to check on you, every few years, to see if you'd awakened on your own. And the last one..."
He trailed off.
"And the last one," Rue repeated. "I was awake. You came looking for me."
"I didn't know what had happened," Doll Master said. "I found your stasis altar empty. The town told me you had been living there – near there – for years. I couldn't understand why you hadn't started making passage to Carona." He looked back, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "Although it's abundantly clear to me now. You're broken, too."
Rue was quiet for a moment, waiting for his thoughts to settle. "I..." He coughed, clearing his throat. "I guess so."
Doll Master looked away again. "I am sorry for what happened that day." He paused. "I tried to find you again afterwards, when I was able to. You'd already moved on."
"I didn't move on," Rue said.
"Left, then. They told me you were headed west, out of the Kingdom. I assumed you were coming here, although when you didn't arrive for so long... I didn't know what to think." He straightened up slightly. "I suppose I was correct, in a rather... roundabout fashion. But..." He looked over to Rue. "You are not here because of Valen. Clearly."
"No," Rue said. "I'm here because of Claire."
"Because of– how do you mean?" Apparently he suddenly realized the answer to his own question; he started suddenly, briefly stunned, but quickly regained his composure. "You intend to bring her back." Another pause. "You have her soul."
"That's right."
"Then..." Doll Master's eyes flicked away from him, his gaze angled to the ground but unfocused. His brow furrowed briefly, thoughts plainly spinning through his head, until they finally settled and he looked up. "Then... come with me."
"What?"
"Come with me," Doll Master repeated. "We're both here. Now that I have an understanding of the situation– now that both of us do– the next course of action is obvious. Together, we can open the seal. You can use the Dewprism to bring your friend back. And we can fulfill our duty."
Yes. It was obvious.
But Rue hesitated.
"I think," he began, "that... that maybe we should prioritize leaving, first."
Doll Master nodded. "Of course."
From where she stood behind Rue, Maya piped up. "You said you had a plan?"
"I did," Doll Master replied. "And I still do."