OH my distractions.
Here's another doozy I've been chewing on too long. Well, here we go again!
Marle wrinkled her nose. "Pitiful magic?"
Much to her displeasure, it seem that Magus' only reply was to move faster. The dark lord was making larger strides than what his regular routine allotted, putting an unusual amount of distance between himself and the bleary princess- and this was really saying something for him. Despite the lack of wind, his navy cape flickered along in his wake, tossing gently with each firmly planted step. She watched him walk for a moment, trying to decide if perhaps she could still be asleep somehow, until she realized that he was not going to stop.
Be he real or a dream, she needed to catch up.
"S... you need my help?" the princess called uncertainly, finally following the path he had made in the dew tipped grass. "Magus?"
She received no answer.
Magus had turned long before her feet had touched down on the ground. He was already up the path leading into town when he took a sharp and sudden turn, veered into someone's backyard and all but disappeared into the shadows. Seeing this, Marle hesitantly picked her pace up, taking faster but still careful steps through the backyards and gardens which he trampled through without thought.
"H-Hey!" she blurted as she stumbled over a shrubbery and scraped a knee. With an aggravated growl she tucked a stray hair back into place and pushed herself up off the ground, now fully convinced that she was, indeed, awake. "Honestly Magus, do you have to drag me through-" she looked up, but Magus was nowhere in sight. "Magus?"
Only the darkness met her.
Much more alert to the night now, Marle moved with her eyes and ears heavily tuned to the suspicion of her surroundings. She was close enough to the town to keep her fears of the dark woods somewhat calmed, but also near enough to the shade of the forest them keep them very much sated. Marle had never been a fan of walking alone- especially more so at night, and especially through unfamiliar territory. Walking though people's yards was both rude and unnerving- there was no way of telling what could jump out at her- dogs, wild animals, wizards… Banishing the potential of her overactive imagination, she pressed forwards again.
"Magus…?" she called hopefully, as though her words could make him re-appear. He was nowhere in sight, and his footprints had conveniently disappeared. Her brow drooped. "Where did you-"
As if on queue, something darted along the bushes with a sharp rustle, sending the princess jumping out of her skin.
"M-Magus?" Not wanting to stick around and find out what it was, she bolted off into the direction she hoped he had gone without wasting another second. "Magus!"
She was jogging through gardens and hoping fences, moving much faster than she remembered moving for quite some time, looking over her shoulder whenever she could manage. Just as she was both losing her stamina and dashing blindly through someone's well-kept shrubbery, she ran into something quite solid and hit the floor once again.
"Oof!" groaned she, winded as her back hit the ground. "Owww…" She groaned again, letting her head flop back in some sort of consolation. Above her, a canopy of stars shone through the gradual cloud cover and she noted that it seemed as though it would try to rain. She rubbed her head and mumbled angrily, "What a… stupid place for a lawn decoration…"
Having recovered her breath and the healthy fear of the night once again, she looked up to the statue she had run into and was quickly satisfied. Marle may have been the resident expert at running into things, but even she felt she could hardly be blamed for this. The stupid thing was practically invisible in the middle of the dense foliage. In fact, the statue was so well covered that you could hardly see it… breathing?
"Magus?"
Like an aggravated cat, the wizard looked back at her with little more than a blank stare. He tore a tangled branch from his tangled hair and turned back as though nothing had happened.
Marle picked herself up. "What... are you doing in here?"
Magus made no reply.
"Okay," she sighed impatiently. "Right. Well thanks for disappearing back there."
To say that the wizard was unusually silent would seem unnecessary upon normal circumstances- she could not believe that he had not bit back at her. Yet considering that this was the closest Marle had ever seen Magus come to for requesting help, it was, in fact, far from normal circumstances, and this made his silence all the more curious.
"So what's going on? Is something wrong?"
Again, she was met with silence.
"Magus?"
It was not only his silence which was curious to the princess, for she found further absences in his characteristics as she studied him. For one, the menacing scowl eternally etched into his features was absent, replaced by an almost void stare and a heaviness in his steps which resulted in… well, heavy footsteps, as it seemed he had decided to walk instead of levitate for once. This was perhaps the most unusual to her; even with the rare occasion that his feet were on the ground, Magus never made a sound.
For a minute she listened to him walking, and he almost seemed like a normal person out for a midnight stroll- though a rather quick one at that. Normal at least, if you could ignore the cape, the scythe, the flowing, blue hair… And Marle quickly decided that thought had been a waste of time. That, and trying to pry an answer from him on anything.
As much as she wanted to smack him over the head, or at least wring him for an answer, she walked on in silence. There was something unusual about the unusual wizard tonight, and between this and her own conviction to treat the wizard with kinder regard (which she had all but forgotten till now), she knew there would be nothing good to come from her hackling him.
But of course, Marle was not one to keep silent long.
"So…" the princess let out a long sigh, and there was a momentary uncertainty of what to say or do. Despite being renewed in her promise of kindness, she actually felt a little disarmed in how to speak to the wizard without hot retorts and taunts. She crossed her arms over the chest, glad that she was behind him. "Hm… beautiful night for a walk, huh?"
Silence.
The princess knit her brow, clamping her hands tightly before her. She listened to the shuffling of their feet. "I didn't know you liked walking at night."
Silence.
"That probably shouldn't surprise me. You seem like the walking type. Especially with the cape and all."
More silence.
"And the night part…" she drummed her fingers along her lips thoughtfully.
"You know," she was at his side suddenly, and quite deeply contemplating, it seemed. "Capes are just meant for walking- at least, in their style. But they're also good for warmth, of course. But the people who wear them… well, you and Frog- yes, you both particularly like walking. I mean, we all spend a lot of time walking, but you do it even on your off time- which is usually when everyone else is sleeping."
Silence.
"Capes have always seemed to be worn by people who walk a lot. Or maybe its just that you're both from the past. Yes, I suppose so. No one wears capes in this time period- not even the guards." Marle turned to him abruptly. "Hey, don't you ever get tired?"
"…"
"… I'll take that as a no." She looked up at the stars again. "Do you come out here for walks because you like the dark? It kinda seems like your natural… er, element."
His eyes flickered to her with reignited annoyance.
"That is an element, right? Darkness?"
Silence.
"You know, a little sunlight would be great for you. Take away some of that unhealthy pasty tone you've got."
Unable to ignore her any longer, Magus finally broke. "Do you really feel the need for this?"
"For what?" she asked with a confused blink.
"Pointless prattle," he hissed.
Marle crossed her arms slowly, shivering in the slightest. "It's not pointless," she stated. "It's called friendly conversation."
"If by friendly conversation you mean one-sided monologue, then yes."
The princess smiled. "But you're talking now, so that makes it conversation!" The wizard turned to her with an unimpressed eye before looking away with his signature scowl. Marle frowned at its return. "Do you have to have such a bad attitude all the time?"
Silence.
"I'm serious! You're like… like a… a…" she cupped her chin, searching for some sort of comparison which would do him justice. "Like a-"
"Spare me the simile," he interjected indifferently. "You wear the little patience I have thin, princess."
"Oh!" she finally huffed, "well excuse me, but wouldn't you be a little wary if I woke you up in the middle of the night and dragged you off into the middle of nowhere with only some vague explanation?"
"No."
"Exa-" Marle's jaw remained loosely held open and her brow dipped at him, which he missed of course. He didn't so much as spare her a glance, and that simply would not do. "What's that supposed to mean, huh?" she asked, stepping in front of him suddenly and leaving him with no choice but to stop as he narrowly missed plowing right over her.
This of course, displeased Magus. She could see this with the heavy step he took backwards, and then in the rich, crimson glare he fixed her with. His eyes were bloodshot. "The only thing you could make me wary of is your own foolishness, princess."
He pressed past her deep brewing frown without another glance, missing the immense, inner struggle Marle was inducing by simply keep her mouth shut. Part of her dearly considered freezing his tongue to the roof of his mouth at that moment, but…
Sensing that she was no longer behind him, he turned ever so slightly and stood as a silent tower blocking the moonlight, his arms loose and eyes locked on something off in the distance. Marle finally released both the fist and the breath she had been clenching and followed after him, this time keeping her silence. Marching her shivering form through random yards, gardens and trails back up the cobblestone, Magus found his way to the bloody ground where the woman was kneeling, breathing low and shallow breaths. He stopped Marle just around the corner of the house before she could bowl over him again.
"What?" Marle blinked as though she had come out of a daze. Perhaps silence did strange things to her, or perhaps she had begun to fall back asleep. Her cheeks showed the slightest shade of pink in the moonlight.
"She needs help," was the warning both plain and ambiguous.
"What?" Marle quipped again. Though he received a wary, confused look as he stepped aside to let her pass, pass she did, moving around the house with both curiosity and trepidation etched into her motions.
It was here she was sobered.
Before she had taken the whole scene in, Marle's hands shot to stifle her gasp. Instinctively, her hands were glowing a gentle blue and she was kneeling beside the fallen woman lying face down on the ground in her own blood.
Blood.
Marle's face very quickly paled.
Everything became hazy to her at that point. She could vaguely remember seeing her hand hovering over the woman in some stupid attempt at… what? What should she do?! Her mind flashed back through everything she had been taught about healing over the years, but she could not think clearly; everything became jumbled together and scrambled.
"Wha… what…?" she started, fighting for control over her mind and vision and loosing.
Somehow, she managed to shut her eyes and take a few deep breaths to think with some sort of rationality about what to do first, though it was a stretch; in such moments, rationality was not her natural response. Despite being gifted with an extraordinary endowment like healing, she had never been able to handle blood well. It had almost been ironic that it was she who had taken the role of healer in the team- or at least she thought so. Crono really was more suited for it, for she had never seen him lose his cool over anything, not even when Ayla's arm had been broken in their fight against Azala, or that other time when-
Crono's face flashed into her memory, and she suddenly remembered how he had taught her to check for a pulse in emergencies. Index and middle finger- not thumb- tucked beneath the jawbone, wait for few seconds…. She opened her eyes and urged a shaking hand forwards.
How she wished Crono were here now.
A pulse there was, though it was faint. Gaining some courage over the situation, she rolled the woman onto her back and placed her cool, healing hands across her stomach. She was unconscious, but the woman's face still held a pained, fearful look. It was caked with blood. Marle swallowed hard.
Meanwhile, Magus was standing closely behind and watching her every move with some sort of vague interest. It didn't take him long to judge that the princess was not being as effective as he had expected. The gentle azure glow around her hands was inconsistent at best, making the glisten of the dark blood staining her palms all the more noticeable through the dim light.
Her hands were still shaking.
"What… what happened to her?" the usually confident princess finally choked.
The wizard looked down at her through the corner of his eye. "She was attacked by a Mystic."
"W-What!" Her head shot to him with such shocked skepticism that it would have easily snapped off had it not been fastened to her neck. "A Mystic? But that's not-" The woman groaned and turned ever so slightly, drawing both of their attention back to her.
"She's missing her hand," came Magus' unsympathetic hint. Marle pursed her lips, fighting the panic rising in her chest as she looked from the woman's bloody face to her arm to her wrist, unable to process what was missing until she saw the severed limb lying in the grass.
Her breath hitched in her throat, and suddenly she was transfixed on the hand.
Truthfully, Marle had never been in such a situation. While she had seen more than her fair share of gore- more than she had imagined in her blissful ignorance- this was different.
This was personal. She had sworn to protect the world when she vowed to save it from Lavos and other such evils, but on top of that, this woman was one of her own people- a Guardian whom she was bound to protect long before she had known of Lavos. The life of this woman had not suddenly fallen into her hands as it would seem, but rather Marle felt that it had been in her hands all along. Many lives rested in her hands- in all of their hands. Yet that duty to protect remained for her regardless of what threat the world faced, regardless of what state she found herself in, regardless of whether or not she felt brave.
She was a monarch.
But amid the panic in that moment, Marle did not feel like a monarch. She felt small and greatly and deeply under qualified. The usual confidence she held was gone, and the carefree faith all but evaporated. As steadily as the blood in the grass was seeping into the fabric around her knees, there was a slow and terrified defeat seeping into her mind.
She fought the hard lump in her throat as she took her hands from the woman's stomach. The blue glow disappeared. "I… I… don't know what to do, Magus. We need to take her to… to someone, or-"
"You're a healer. You know what to do."
"No," she stammered. "I don't!"
Magus stood over her, though she could not see how he looked through the shadow darkening his face. She tried to think of what to do, but found her limbs aptly dumb and her lips just as hopeless. In her inability to formulate any other sort of words, there was a moment of general uncertainty and tension that only further allowed her mind to race
"I… can't do this," she finally choked, all courage draining from her.
It was to her surprise to find Magus suddenly kneeling in the grass beside her. "The hand," he pointed to the appendage in the grass, "must be fused back on to the wrist. You need to meld the bone and muscle back together."
Her head jerked towards him. "What?"
Magus simply watched her squirm. He was not partial to repeating himself.
"N-No." Marle's face had gone extremely pale, and the moonlight did nothing to help that as she looked to him desperately. "I- I don't know how to do that!"
"I've watched you heal your party's broken bones."
"Yeahbut-"
Suddenly he was reaching for the dead hand.
"Wait!" Her stomach flopped and she thought she might be sick. "Magus, what-"
"Calm down," came his firm voice. It wasn't particularly soothing or comforting, but when she met his steely, dark eyes, she took a deep breath. There was no arguing in such a crucial moment, and even she unwillingly acknowledged that.
With not the slightest show of any emotion or remorse, Magus grabbed the severed hand from the grass and held it to where it had been disengaged. Marle watched this with wide, frightened eyes, fighting the sensation that it was all a dream. Her mind was becoming hazy again, and her limbs even more so. Both of her balled fists seemed nailed to ground. She blinked between the wizard and the woman with shallow breaths.
Magus' brow dipped.
Finally realizing that she had to move in order for something to happen, the princess willed her hands free of their invisible chains and stretched them towards the woman; slowly, shakily inching closer so slowly that it seemed they weren't truly moving. Rather unsuccessfully did she attempt to keep her eyes from the dark, bloodied flesh severed from bone, bone torn from limb and limb from life. She could not look away, but the more she looked, the less she could do.
Magus cut the silence with the firm slap of reality's cruel hand. "You need to move, princess."
She jumped a little, and her eyes- grateful to look away from the woman's wrist- bounced about with her. "I, uh… I…."
"Stop wasting time; it's only flesh and blood."
She wished dearly to give some opposition on the matter, but desperation blurred her senses. She felt sick. She tried to make herself grab onto the woman's wrist, but she wasn't convincing anyone. She couldn't even look at it- never mind touch it. Her eyes had closed, unable to look at the pain on the woman's face or comprehend the ugly gore before her. "N-No," she stammered though the swarm of thoughts suffocating her. "It's not… It's not…"
Seeing the princess with her eyes closed and looking the other way, her hand hovering uselessly over the woman's wrist, the wizard shook his head. Placing the severed hand in line to the wrist, he took hold of Marle's hand and closed her startled fingers firmly around the limb.
His palm met the back of her hands like gas to a fire, and they flickered alive with that deep blue, healing glow. Like a sub-conscious thought, the curative power surged from her skin into the woman's in a burst of life and strength. For a moment, Marle stared in awe, almost relieved.
But then the crackling crunch of bone and muscle grafting together filled the air, and her body lurched, desperate to be away from such horror- horror torturing not only her ears but her sense of touch as well. Tearing and rippling muscles were knitting together at her fingertips, threads of cartilage and sinew dancing beneath her palm, joint after joint snapping into place. The sickening sounds, the pops and crackles of bone melding and skin tearing and stretching, sewing itself together- it was all she could hear, and she could but grind her teeth to keep the nausea at bay. Every single one of her reflexes staggered, desperate to run or scream or both, but she could not fight against the force of the wizard. All she could do was squeeze her eyes shut, and even that was in vain.
Finally, after a long, nauseating decrescendo of pops and snaps, the crackling sounds slowed and the shimmering light faded to a dull glow. The princess slumped like a tree blown too hard by the wind, panting drained, terrified breaths. Trails of magic danced about them in small sweeps, dissipating into the night as the wind swept them away. Without realizing she had done it, Marle withdrew her hand.
Everything went silent.
For a minute, she could only stare at the ground and keep herself from vomiting. But as she forced herself to look, she saw that the woman's wrist was, to her stunned shock, fused back into its proper place with only a thin, uneven and ugly scar to show where the limbs had come together again. She looked to the ridges of the crimson blemish in disbelief, but sure enough, her wrist was perfectly merged together. It nearly looked as though it had never been severed in the first place- if you could ignore the reddish-silver scar, that is.
As though she were waking from a dream, Marle blinked, taking deeper breaths to process what had just happened and eventually, some form of a smile spread across her lips.
"She's… okay," she choked, her body lurching and coping with the use of her own voice. "Magus, she's gonna be okay."
And then, as though she had truly come out of a heavy sleep, something dawned on her. With the afterglow of her magic fading, her eye shifted from the woman to where her fingers were firmly clasped around a gloved hand.
Marle blinked a great, heavy blink.
For a long moment she only stared, seemingly unable to comprehend what such a thing meant. When her cheeks went red with realization, she threw open her hand and stumbled backwards, awkwardly attempting to distance herself from Magus. But backwards was not a feasible direction to scamper it seemed, nor was she successfully distancing herself, for she had backed into something solid and unmoving. Though when she felt a breath on her neck and warmth at her back, she realized that it was not a matter of something, but someone.
She had backed right into Magus.
In her panic, she had backed right up into the man as though he were a cloud she could simply push herself through, and now sat deflated on his left thigh. She could feel his leather breastplate stuck to the sweat along her bare, upper back with the deep breaths she was taking.
With a new kind of fear, she cranked her neck ever so slightly and met a dark eye watching her in the bright moon light. Something flickered in her chest. She felt a strange and nervous sensation run through her.
"I…" she finally managed, looking away sharply, not daring to look back again. Something like an edgy laugh spilled from her lips as she slowly peeled away from him to the grass. "Uh. S-Sorry. About that."
There was an uncomfortable bout of silence where Marle twirled her thumbs and Magus' eyes remained fashioned on her, silent, stable, and unreadable
"I don't handle thing like that so well." She paused, then scrambled to clarify. "The blood."
"You're a healer," was his unimpressed reply.
"Yeah." Marle shook her head, looking back at the woman as a justified diversion. She placed a hand on her flushed cheek, enjoying the space she put between herself and the wizard. "Don't remind me." She cleared her throat. "Now what?"
The mage shrugged. "We've done what we came here for."
"Are you kidding?" her head snapped back to him with much more enthusiasm that she had thought possible at that moment. "Of course! We can't just leave her here. Where's her house?"
He looked at her blankly and repeated the words as though they were a foreign language to him. "Her house."
"We have to take her somewhere!" The princess got to her feet with nothing but determination and took the woman by the arms in attempts to drag her about. "C'mon, you grab her legs and let's get her to the hospital."
"Hospital?" Magus scowled another foreign word.
But Marle wouldn't have it. She attempted to pull the woman in any direction, gaining little more than a step in the process. Taking a second to catch her breath, she leaned into her knees and looked around. "This is probably her house here," she started between heaves, pointing off to the closest building. "Let's take her in there."
The wizard crossed his arms. "Our presence here is no longer necessary." But seeing that Marle only persisted in her pitiful efforts, he shook his head and turned on his heels without another word.
"Magus!" the princess hissed after him, still trying to move the woman. "We can't just leave her out here! Someone has to watch her! And what if there are other people in the house who-!"
A soft groan came from the woman, who Marle proceeded to drop out of surprise. The woman let out another groan, louder this time, and reached for the bump on her head.
Her fingers flexed and bent, touching the spot in light confusion.
Knowing better than to be seen, Magus was back at the scene in an instant and grabbed Marle- wreathing protests and all- before slipped out of sight around the side of the house. "Watch," he ordered to silence her profuse, aggressive displeasure.
Slowly, the woman forced her eyes open and sat up, blinking groggily. Then seeing the blood around her, she gasped and grabbed at her body in shock. "W-What happened to me?" she whispered, fearfully looking about for some sort of explanation to the evil and confusion about her. But as horror set in, it seemed that she did not want an explanation, for she stumbled to her feet and gave one last panicked glance about her before slumping into the house.
The bolt slide shut. Everything fell quiet.
Magus turned to her, his silent victory snuffed Marle's continuous squirming.
"We should go knock on the door," she argued, worming from his close grasp pinning her against the house. "See if she's okay, or if we can take her to the hospital, or…"
It seemed they both realized that the same moment that the wizard was still holding her in place. He blinked, and his hands released her.
"We're leaving," he ordered simply, turning sharply on his heels.
"She needs to know what happened!"
"No, she doesn't."
She groaned stubbornly. "Magus-" But Magus was already walking away. She let out an agitated growl and stepped after him. "Hey, I'm serious!"
"No."
Marle growled. "Would you just listen to me for a second?"
To her surprise, Magus actually did- or at least that's how she interpreted his sudden stop in movement.
"We can't just leave her alone after something so traumatic! What if she's got other injuries? Or what if-"
"Princess." Magus turned back to her. "Look at yourself."
The princess opened her mouth to protest until she saw Magus studying her with that stupid look; empty, black and… "What?" she shot at him, hardly taking the time to look down at herself.
But she needed only a quick glimpse for her jaw to drop. Her hands, her arms, her knees, her clothing- nearly the entire front of her body- was stained crimson, though it looked more black in the darkness. Marle blinked and blinked. She stared down at herself dubiously. A wary hand- her own, she realized- brushed over the dark stains on her knees, feeling for evidence which formed as a dark red smear across her fingertips.
Her breath hitched.
Reaching for the wall with shaking hands, Marle blinked her eyes shut and swallowed hard. One shocked hand came to her lips as the overwhelmed princess choked on a sudden sob. "I…" She could feel the adrenaline giving way to nausea when her knees buckled beneath her and she crumpled against the wall.
Unfazed, Magus moved the deflating princess towards the fountain in the center of the town, where he deposited her before looking with a small frown at his own stained glove. "Wash yourself off," he said simply, turning around with that trademark scowl.
The saying goes that hindsight is always the best kind of sight; what one sees in haze in the moment will be crystal tomorrow. Tomorrow, Marle would realize that it made no sense whatsoever to bath in the town's public fountain. Tomorrow, Marle would realize that the town would be in a horrified uproar to find the fountain covered in blood. Tomorrow, Marle would realize that she had saved a life. But none of those thoughts really occurred to her at the moment; in fact, not much of anything was occurring to her at the moment, for now she had a tunnel vision of sorts which was fixed on the flowing, glorious water pouring from its stone spout. She realized later seeing that water had been the only way she had found the motivation to move her feet, for all she could think of was getting the blood off of her skin, her clothing, her nails...
Still shaking, she leaned over the stone slabs and dipped a hand into cold water spilling down. She shivered violently at its touch.
"F…freezing," she stammered through her numb lips, taking the shocked hand back to herself.
Magus might have been the mighty Mystic overlord, cruel and calloused as they come, but he himself had never had a cold bath. Small comforts were one of the only things he had to make life pleasant.
Without a second thought, the wizard reached over the stone blocks of the fountain and stuck a glowing, searing hand into the water. He swirled his hand about the water, which bubbled and boiled at his touch. "There," he said after a minute, stepping well away from the cascade of hot water. He looked over the steaming fountain before he turned disappeared around the side of another house.
Hardly knowing how she got there, Marle found herself in the beautiful, beautiful warmth of the water. She completely submerged herself, jolting as the warmth took over her body. When her hands were cleaned of the awful crimson, she found the strength to begin scrubbing with renewed vigor, her arms first and knees second.
But despite all the warmth of the bath, it did not stop the cold and salty tears from pouring down her cheeks.
-v-
"Hey!" came the impatient and low voice from somewhere in the dark. "Psst!"
Rather absently, the wizard looked up from the large barrel of water which he stood by to see if he could identify the source of the voice. He was not sure how long he had been standing in the dark lost in his thoughts, and nothing but the darkness met him as he looked about. Beginning to think he had imagined it, he almost returned to the barrel when the sharp whisper returned.
"Over here," the voice hissed with more than enough assertion.
Looking closer, he caught the strange sight of a head poking around the corner of a house. "What-?"
"Shh!" insisted none other than the princess in a hoarse whisper, motioning for him to come closer. "Could you keep your voice down? You might wake someone up!"
At first, his expression was so neutrally indifferent that she thought he would simply ignore her. He just stood there staring until, to her surprise, he shook the cold water from his hands and followed her beckoning.
Marle remained peering around corner awkwardly, though there was nothing awkward about her topic of choice. That regal determination was a clear reflection in the fire in her eyes. "You said that a Mystic attacked her."
"I did," Magus agreed with little more than a breath.
"And why is that?!" she demanded in a whisper so loud she may as well have been talking.
"I believe you know why just as well as I do." His brow lifted ever so lightly at Marle's strange position. She was hiding something.
Marle's eyes narrowed into thin, suspicious slits; he was hiding something. "Really? There's nothing you can tell me about this that I should know about?"
"You specifically?" he taunted dryly, though he did not meet her glare.
But Marle was in no mood to taunt or be taunted. Her anger fixed him firmly, yet she found was at a loss for the words to form the questions which were too numerous to ask- a million of which were flying about all at once in her mind. "We don't have time to stand around arguing- who knows where that Mystic has gotten to! What if it gets to someone else?"
The wizard shrugged. "I don't think that's of concern."
Marle looked genuinely confused for a second. "Then… why did you bring me to heal her if… she could have died!"
"That's not what I meant," interjected the mage with a listless flick of his wrist. "And she shouldn't have been walking around at night."
The princess was so dubiously shocked that she could have fallen over, and then so righteously outraged that she might have actually come out from around the house at him. "What are you talking about?!" she fumed. "Guardia is a perfectly safe kingdom! People shouldn't be afraid of going for at night walk because a monster might jump them- Mystics none the less! Not at night, not during the day…" Her firm frown fixed him again. "And why in the world would they do something like this? We haven't had any real conflict with the Mystics in four hundred years."
"Yes, some would blame me for that," he answered with little interest. "I suppose you could thank me."
The princess shook her head. "I'm serious, Magus! Why did that Mystic attack her?"
The majority of the wizard's focus had returned to his gloves, which he was in the process of scouring for stains. Luckily for him the material was dark enough to hide any of those annoying, crimson blemishes; stains had always be an intolerable annoyance to him.
"Well?"
There was no gleam in his eye as he studied his gloves, no thought on his face, and it unnerved Marle, for she understood what he was looking for. Slowly, Magus' eyes trailed back up to her. They were darkened by the shadow of the house under which he stood. "It was scoping the town out."
At first, Marle was caught off guard by his openness, but she quickly honed in on it. "For what? An attack?"
"Perhaps."
"Why?"
He blinked back at her. "Does that question need to ask be asked?"
"Yes," Marle insisted, tapping her fingers along the wall which she had been holding to support her awkward angle. She shook her head. "Because the right answer to that doesn't make sense- Medina doesn't have an army big enough to properly threaten Guardia."
"The Medina of this time period doesn't have a big enough army," the wizard corrected lowly. Finally content that his gloves were well cleaned, he turned and began walking towards the small clearing in town overlooking the ocean.
"Wha… what?" stuttered the princess, thunderstruck. Reluctantly, she crept out from around the wall and followed at a distance, tucking the soaking strands of her hair back into place. "What do you mean by that?"
"The mystic who attacked the woman was using an old blade," continued Magus as he walked up the slight mount.
Marle frowned. "So?"
"Much older than its wielder. Rusty."
Her brow furrowed. "Okay, it had an old blade, probably passed down or something. I don't get what you're saying!"
"Not passed down." The wizard turned, but to his surprise found that Marle was not behind him. He caught her darting behind a stack of barrels with some semblance of inconspicuous hurry; she looked as though she were searching for something. He quirked a brow at her but continued on. "That Diablos knew who I was, as if it had personally seen me before."
Marle, who was a mix between generally unimpressed and suspicious, shook her head and continued up the path again, though in the shadows this time. "Magus, they all know who you are. You were their most famous prince- heck, even I remember reading about you."
Magus stopped for a second and blinked.
Marle stopped walking too, remaining well behind him.
The wizard was still for a long moment, some unfathomable, unspoken question dancing on the tip of his tongue. He rocked his jaw softly, but when he opened his mouth and she heard the soft inhale of his breath against his teeth… he said nothing.
Marle's thumbs twirled patiently. Her curiosity greatly wished that he would speak, but when his feet and his voice picked up again, she only found herself disappointed. "Having 'betrayed' them by abandonment," he began, "I can guarantee that I have been intentionally erased from Mystic history. Any mention of my name would have been forbidden, stories of my conquests erased or altered, monuments destroyed..." He trailed off for a thoughtful moment.
The princess frowned. "What are you saying, then?"
But before the wizard could reply, a small noise derailed his thought- or rather, Marle's attention to his thought. "What was that?" she asked, spinning on her heels. She looked around the area before gasping, "the Mystic! That must have been what ran through the brushes earlier!"
Magus turned just as the princess' back vanished around the small house at the foot of the slope. While surprised at how quickly he moved, an aggravated sigh escaped him and he sent one last, irritated look out over the slow ripples of the ocean. Before Marle had gained a measurable distance on him, he was at her back, following silently like a tall, dark shadow.
"It's going this way," she whispered over her shoulder. She pointed towards the path out of town, and Magus shook his head.
"Princess-"
"Shh!" she interjected harshly. "I saw its tail slink around the side of this building. It must be heading out of town."
It was in her wake that Magus was distracted into noticing there was something different about Marle besides her dodgy behavior. Absent from its usual high ponytail atop her head, the princess' hair hung loosely down her back, covering her typically bare skin and stopping just below her shoulder blades. Her mousy blonde hair looked darker than usual, even considering the cover of the night and the shadows playing their effects into her appearance.
She was also dripping wet.
Magus found it strange that he had missed this until now considering his eye for detail. Yet he realized that he may not have even recognized her had it not been for her… distinguished fashion sense; the puffy pants and fitted top was trademark to her and her alone. Having observed the strange fashion of the people from this era- 'modern', Marle had called it- he couldn't help but wonder where in the world the sheltered princess had adopted her style from.
It was still strange to him to see a woman wearing pants- never mind whatever it was that Ayla ran around in
"You-" he started again.
"Shh!"
Magus was not used to being shushed, and he did not particularly take to it. He nearly hissed when he spoke again."I would not-"
"We can't let it hear us," whispered Marle as she swat him.
But hear them it did, for at that very second something large bolted through the trees, running on all fours off into the woods.
"Hey!" the princess yelled, beginning a mad dash after it. "Come back here!"
"It's not…" He stopped short, realizing that she had already gained enough distance that she would not hear him. This seemed to dissolve the last of whatever small measure of patience Magus maintained. His glare turned into a sneer as he watched her run off. "Enough of this."
Seconds later, Marle found herself stumbling over her own momentum and coming to an abrupt halt before the wizard, who had seemingly appeared out of thin air in front of her. Yet she was not quite fast enough, and came to a full stop only when she had used him as a brace. She looked up to him and was met with six feet of pallid vigor and venom glaring back at her in such a way that for a moment, Marle's mind froze and she couldn't remember what had just happened or why she hadn't realized how tall Magus actually was.
"Uh…" The realization that her hands were glued to him as unwanted guest, and that it would be borderline madness for them to extend their stay any longer snapped her attention back to reality. She stole her hands back to her pink cheeks with a nervous chuckle and took a step back. It was here that the fire in his features slowly melted away into something resembling surprise, for his eyes widened ever so slightly as his gaze searched the princess.
At the same moment, Marle's minor embarrassment evaporated with the realization of something- or perhaps the remembrance of something. Her eyes widened, and she suddenly backed away as though she were naked, her hands desperately trying to cover herself.
But it was too late.
Almost as clear as daylight, Magus could make out the whole of Marle's beautiful, turquoise outfit… completely covered with large, dark stains. They began as an angry pool at her chest and spread all the way to her knees like a thick, ugly scar; solid at bottom and spotty all the way up and down. It was seeped deep into the cloth as an ugly shade of darkness that not even the moonlight could forgive.
Blood, he knew. It was the blood she had been kneeling in. The hot water had set it and now it was permanently in the fabric. Regretting his thoughtless action in heating up the water, Magus could only look away.
In all the years of horrific sights he had seen, this was perhaps one of the worse.
And he didn't know why.
"I…I…" Marle stammered, mortified and petrified all at once. Shame settled over her quickly, and she turned so that he could not see the stains. There was no one else to see her, and in that she comforted herself a little. They had long since left town and the night gave her some sort of cover- at least, she liked to believe so. But off in the distance the high, white-washed castle walls loomed as a conscience both giant and soundless. Its princess felt it bare down at her like a million pairs of disapproving eyes, and all she wished to be was away from it.
Fighting the lump in her throat, the princess swallowed hard and took a deep and slow breath. "Excuse me," she managed before pushing past his statue like form.
"Don't bother," Magus spoke quickly, as though there were something bitter in his mouth.
"What…?" she asked, having forgotten what she had been doing not only a minute before. The soft patter of her feet slowly came to a stop a few feet away.
"That's not the Mystic you're chasing."
Her head craned back at him ever so slightly, and she sniffled. "How do you know that?"
The wizard was silent for a minute, then finally relented, "because I've already taken care of it."
The princess' weary eyes sunk shut and she took a deep breath, brushing the last tear from her eyes. She could feel the exhaustion hit her. "You couldn't have told me that earlier?" Marle's hand came to her head to steady her thoughts, but she found it gave no consolation. "Well whatever. I guess that's good news… here I was thinking that there was some random Mystic running loose through the night."
"Well, you're wrong," he began.
"Yes, I…" The princess stopped, unsure of the tone in his voice. "What do you mean…? That Mystic…"
"Mystics," he corrected.
She did not turn, nor did she move. "What?" she enunciated so thoroughly that it was teeming on annoying to him.
"There's more than one Mystic."
The princess took a slow breath. "You mean to tell me that there are Mystics all over the place… here? Now?!"
"Yes." The wizard crossed his arms, though he still did not turn to her. ""The Mystics are an army that moves together. One will not travel alone."
"Magus!" Her fists clenched as she spun at him, all former shame of her appearance tossed to the wind. "You… you! We're all in danger! Everyone is in danger! Oh my gosh-!" Suddenly the princess was frantic, her hands on her head in the split second before she darted off in a different direction- west, towards the Guardia woods.
"What are you doing?" he hissed after her. "Have you lost all sense?"
"If the Mystics are invading then I need to tell my father!" she panted over her sprint. "W-What if they've already invaded the castle!? They could be to the Guardia Forest by now! Oh my gosh!"
"Princess," he clipped, his voice carrying along the wind as a faint sound in her ear. "There will be no invasion tonight."
"Right," she scoffed, "and I bet that-"
"I turned them back," he finished.
The wizard's voice rang out in the stunned silence for a long second, stopping the princes in her tracks. She turned ever so slowly to face him, guards and defense raised like the hair on her neck. "What did you say?" Magus only crossed his arms, a thick scowl spreading over his features. "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"Would you prefer that I enunciate?"he growled in the distance between them.
"Yes, actually," she snapped unexpectedly, whipping her hair from her eyes as she marched back to him. "I would love for you to explain how you're still commanding the Mystics!"
"This is what you believe?" he scoffed, readying himself for any sort of pathetic onslaught of ice. "I couldn't but believe you were so inclined to obsessed suspicion like that pathetic tad-pole knight."
"Oh yeah?" She scoffed back. "Well everything has just been pointing back to you lately."
He began circling her in a relaxed and studious stride, though he still seemed to avoid looking at her clothing. "Yes, especially my alliance with this pathetic Earthbound team of yours."
Marle glared. "That doesn't make you innocent!"
"Doesn't it?" he asked listlessly, propping a palm under his elbow. "Enlighten me."
Her glare grew in ferocity at him, but inside she was torn between theories and distrust. "Frog says that you disappear every night."
Magus' crooked semblance of a smile shone in the moonlight. "Does he?"
"And all this weird stuff that's happening… like the forest just disappearing out of the blue- there has to be someone powerful who is…" she cut out suddenly, as if she were uncertain of something. Magus watched her patiently. "I know how power works," she began again in a different tone- a tone much more confident. She stepped up to him and looked at him as though she could see straight into his heart. "You're a King- no, a dictator. The Mystics will respect and fear you."
"And why, oh princess, would I want the Mystic army under my command?"
She watched him with a cold glare, but in truth she didn't want to think about this anymore. Part of her didn't want to believe that Magus could be truly so horrible as to threaten her own kingdom. He had helped her save the woman's life, after all, and he was joining them for now... but she still did not trust him enough to completely dub him innocent.
"You want to destroy Lavos," she began again, sure she had it right this time. "You've been obsessed since we met you."
The wizard gave some sort of a sardonic huff of a breath before tipping his head down to her level. "A hundred armies of Mystics would be as flies to Lavos, swat away without a second thought. Not even their most powerful magic stood a chance, and neither did yours." She bit her lip, but he was not finished. "Even if I did utilize that pitiful legion and somehow increase their capability, it would only be accomplishing what you wish for yourself."
"So you do still have power over them!" she deduced with a finger pointed at his chest.
"Oh please," he hissed. "What could possibly convene me to waste my time on them?"
Marle shook her head. "I don't believe that for a second; power is power! What kind of king would give up their own throne when they have the power to take it back?" she continued. "If you still have the power to send back an army of Mystics, then-"
"Let me explain something to you." His voice was suddenly very short, very low and very dark, like smoke dancing along her skin. She shivered involuntarily at his closeness. "Those pathetic Mystics are fickle to a halt. They swear loyalty to their blood-lined king only until someone of more power and persuasion exploits them, and then they throw themselves down at their feet. Their dismal allegiance bends like shafts of wheat in the wind, and I harvested this weakness as their sovereign while I had control over their next king- Ozzie." He spat the name. "But this so called power is not so illustrious that it captures my desire. I would not rule a pack of brainless misfits for a day longer than necessary."
"Necessary?" asked Marle hesitantly. She didn't like the way he talked about ruling- even if it were over Mystics.
The wizard laughed lightly, and Marle's decided she didn't like it either. It was a sound that made her feel as though she were suddenly wobbling on the edge of a cliff. "These fools were stepping stones to get to where I needed; pawns. I told them what they wanted to hear- death to the Mystics' enemies under Lavos' reign." He let out something like a scoff. "They would never know my only intent was to destroy the god they worshiped. While they were busy extracting their revenge and waiting for what they believed to be their day of redemption, I exhausted their sacred resources for my own personal study. Their expansive research in the dark arts gave me almost everything I needed to know, and it sustained me more than any simple nourishment could. Until it opened the path that I needed to take, I took the pathetic rule as 'king' of the Mystics."
"But," she began, "they still had power. What's to stop you from ever utilizing that again?"
Still guarded, Marle blinked at him. He had stepped closer to her again, and she could feel the heat of his antagonism.
"Do you know what happens to traitors in the Mystic world? To tyrants accused of treachery?" He asked this slowly, drawing the words out, and she shook her head just as slowly. His jaw rocked ever so slightly, and he almost smiled down at her. "Then we shall keep it that way."
Marle wished to say something, but found her mouth empty.
"So, princess," he barred his teeth in something resembling a smile, "when I said I had turned the Mystics away, you can trust it was not as their king, but as the ghost of a traitor which they seek to destroy."
Although Marle's heavy breathing had slowed, she still looked unsettled. "So… you don't want to be the king of the Mystics?"
"Nothing gets past you, does it?" he scoffed, stepping away from her suddenly.
Marle's brow furrowed. She shivered in the absence of the warmth. "If you're not working with the Mystics, then how did you turn them back?"
"Fear," was the simply answer. Now his back remained to her.
Marle watched him for moment, torn between suspicion and optimistic hope. There was a firm silence between them both, and Marle had almost been sure that it would last forever when Magus finally spoke again.
"They came here looking for me," the wizard relented, and the princess took a sharp breath. "For all of us. That Diablos was a scout sent to find out where we were and point the rest of the army in the woods our way."
"What!" she gasped. "Army in the woods? But Medina doesn't-"
"Your Medina doesn't have an army," he interrupted. "But mine does. Ozzie sent them somehow." The wizard cupped his chin thoughtfully as he looked off into the distance. "Though I can't imagine how in the world he's managed something like this."
"Ozzie?" the princess blinked, trying to piece it all together. "That doesn't make any sense. How in the world could he…" Her face paled as she brought a hand to her mouth. "Oh no."
The wizard shook his head. "He's found a time gate."
If possible, the shock on the princess' face only kept growing as she panned out all the implication of this discovery. "But how? How did he…" She turned to him with the cold suspicion of not but a minute ago instantly rekindled.
Magus almost chortled. "Do you take me for a fool to give Ozzie that kind of power?"
"How else could he have found a time gate?" the princess shot. Her hands were readied at her sides, though for what she could not guess. "There are only a few people who have any access to the gates, Magus."
"You truly do sound like that blathering Frog the way you go on." There was only the slightest twitch at his lips- perhaps some sort of amusement in the matter that she could not see. "But one can only be blamed so many times before a threat is empty, and I've heard more than enough from the both of you to know how hollow your words are."
"Hollow?" she repeated hotly, jabbing another finger at him.
Magus merely slapped her hand away. "You are the last person I have reason to fear."
"Well, that could change as soon as…" her eyes caught something off in the distance, and she stopped. "Oh no. No no no." Without another word, she bolted down the path towards a house with open doors overlooking a steep drop off. Magus growled to himself. Although quite spent with Marle's spontaneous burst of running here or there, he followed; he knew where she was going.
The front door of the Ashtear's house was, as per usual, open and swinging in the cool, night breeze. It made the house look abandoned, and the sound of the wooden door tapping against the wooden siding was an unnerving consistency in her ears as she ran. Marle prayed that it was simply the owner's forgetful tendencies and not something worse. Driven by fear, she broke into a sprint until she was panting at the porch. With trepidation flooding her mind, she slipped into the large, dark house with stealthy silence, praying that Lucca's father and mother were safe asleep inside.
"Hello?" she whispered softly. The room was almost pitch black. "Taban? Lara?" She fumbled around with her hands out, praying she wouldn't have to fight any Mystics off in the dark. The curtains had been drawn, making it unusually dark and difficult to navigate, all the meanwhile setting her fears further on edge. She could sense that Magus had followed, but she didn't bother looking behind her.
Instead, she listened with nervous intent to the silence of the house as she walked about, training her ear to catch even the slightest noise. But there was nothing. The only noise she heard was the sound of her footsteps along the creaky floorboards. As her eyes adjusted, she saw what she made out to be piles of books on the floor, and the rest of the room gradually materialized through the darkness. The still cluttered kitchen slowly became visible, to the giant machine in the middle of the living room, to the kitchen table full of what looked to be books and tools.
She spotted the dark form of Lara's wheelchair and frowned.
From somewhere behind her, she head Magus scoff. "This was a waste of time. There's nothing here that-"
Thwaaap-sffft!
Marle spun on her heels so quickly that she nearly missed the bright flash of magic light the room. Her eyes burned with the flare of light. "Magus?" she hissed, rubbing at them. "What are you doing?"
He only growled, lowering his hand slowly.
Straining her eyes on the wizard, she caught sight of a strange and solid block before the wizard's out stretched hands, one she was sure had not been there before. Despite the dark, she ran over to the giant mound and placed a hand on it, only to find it freezing cold. "Magus…" Pressing her face into it, she made out two startled eyes blinking back at her.
"Taban!" Her fists pounded on the thick ice. "Get him out of here!"
He gave her a sour look, but waved his hand and the block began to dissolve with a violent hissing sound. It melted so quickly that she barely had time to catch Taban's shocked form as it fell from its cold imprisonment. She was rather impressed with herself for managing to hold him up.
"G-Gotcha," she grunted under his weight.
"M-Marle?" he stammered and shivered.
"Hi T-Taban!" She supported the large, disoriented man with her back and shoulders until he was able to stand on his own, then helped him to one of the kitchen chairs- or at least that's what she hoped it was. The room was still nearly pitch black.
"W-What's goin' on here?" Taban asked seriously as he slumped down. He squinted into the dark, trying to make out Magus' features unsuccessfully . "And who's this?"
"This is Magus," she waved lightly to him. "He's with us..." She stopped to scowl over at him in the faith that he could see in the dark. When he scoffed, she knew she had guessed right. "So, sorry about that whole freezing thing; he just doesn't think before he acts sometimes." Magus shot her an unimpressed look which she did not see. "But never mind that for now. I came here to make sure you were safe!"
"Safe?" Taban echoed dubiously.
"Yes," the princess began in her stately tone. "Have you seen any Mystics around here tonight?"
Although still closely attempting to examine the unimpressed wizard, Taban gave a slight laugh. "Mystics? Oh come on now, you know those things don't exist anymore. They were wiped out in the wars hundreds of years ago."
"No no," Marle corrected. "They're very much alive. They live in Media, way across the ocean."
"Yeah, yeah, and if you find them they grant you three wishes, yada yada yada," he spun a hand listlessly through the air. "Those are all old wives tales that get hyped up at the carnival.; mythology and such You gotta take it with a grain of salt, dear."
"No Taban," the princess insisted. "They're real, and we've fought them more than once. I was sent to their time period when I tested out your machine, remember?"
"Tested it out?" Taban laughed. "More like changed the whole structure of it! That pendant of yours screwed up our machine real good!" Over his shoulder, Magus' scowl disappeared, though of course they did not see this. The older man merely scratched his head and carried on. "So you went four hundred years into the past, huh? I never really asked Lucca about it… I was more interested in making those adjustments-" he chuckled awkwardly. "I-I mean, once I knew you's was all safe, of course! I couldn't-"
"Taban," Marle interjected softly. "A Mystic attacked someone from town tonight, and there could be more out on the loose. But if you haven't seen anything, I think you should be okay... Just maybe keep your door closed?"
"My door?" he repeated before looking across the room and smiling sheepishly. "Er, yeah."
"That's why I came here-" Catching sight of herself in a dark mirror, she sighed. "And I guess to borrow some of Lucca's clothes…"
"Huh?" Taban seemed unconvinced still. "Wait, where's Lucca? Is she okay?"
"They're safe," Magus announced rather dryly from his place by the door. He had seen the sharp turn of realization in Marle's eyes when she had spun around and dreaded another wild burst of panic too much to have kept silent.
"How do you know that?" the princess insisted. Even though she could not well see him, she had turned and tried to find him in the darkness.
"I've ensured it."
"… Magus, that's- ouch!" Marle fumbled around in the dark hobbling on one foot, then tripped over a pile of books and let out a yelp before landing on her face.
Taban had just helped her up when Lara's voice called from upstairs. "Taban, what's going on? Are you okay?"
Taban paused for a minute and turned to Marle. "You're sure that Lucca is okay?"
Marle looked to Magus, who still remained a shrouded figure in the darkness.
"Yes," he answered.
The large man took a slow breath. "All right. Stop back when you can then, you hear? I have something I forgot to give her." With that, Taban moved perfectly through the dark, cantering up the stairs and silence returned to the house.
The second he had disappeared, a small flame appeared in the wizard's palm. It gave just enough illumination to the room for Marle to turn to properly see the mage and everything around him. She was fixed to his gaze for a minute, trying to read him for what he suspected to be the truth. Finally, she turned and moved up the stairs towards Lucca's room. "You're sure about that? I mean, that everyone else is safe?"
He moved soundlessly up the stairs behind her. "Alfador stayed behind."
She stopped mid step. "Are you kidding?"
His brow arched. "Do you think I am?"
"No… and that's the weird part." She began rummaging through the dresser drawers when she got to the top of the stairs, using the faint light of the wizard as her guide. "You know, I really don't understand you, Magus." She pulled out a plain white top and a pair of her darker pants, cringed at both and kept digging. "Or this girl's sense of fashion…" she mumbled under her breath.
Magus shrugged. "There are some things you weren't meant to understand, princess."
She stopped her rummaging for a moment and looked over her shoulder. "People want to be understood. It's part of being human, you know."
"Yes, one of their greatest weaknesses." He flicked a lug nut off the dresser and it rolled across the floor slowly.
Marle frowned at him. "It's not weak; I think it's a strength to be vulnerable, you know?"
"That explains your battle techniques."
"That's not what I mean!" she sighed and returned to her search. "Men. Honestly."
Disinterested, Magus turned to look about the room. He was not surprised to find it completely cluttered with books- stacks upon stacks upon stacks, teetering on the bed, the windowsill, the floor… Stray papers with strange formulas and complicated structures were strewn everywhere, and even in all his years of deciphering ancient literature and Mystic scripture, he could not guess what they might say. One he had picked up was a shoddily drawn diagram of an oval shaped robot with boxing gloves for hands, which he tossed onto the floor without a second glance. He had just picked up another paper and was about to study it when he heard Marle going down the stairs.
"I'm going to change," she stated over her shoulder. "Meet me outside."
After watching her disappear beyond the banister and listening to her fumble around in the dark again, the wizard turned his attention back to the page where a large and bulbous key had been drawn. It read,
Gate Key dia. 2
Based off results of 'Super' Dimensional Warp Telepod v. 3.5, certain materials trigger instability in the fabric of space-time, therefore causing a warp not through only this dimension, but through preceding dimensions.
He looked down further, where another diagram had been drawn of Marle's pendant, and beside it, the gate key he had seen Lucca pull out from time to time.
Fig. 1; first documented case of specific time tear. Telepod responds to unknown material during public demonstration. Re-calibrated, the dimensional pod can be used as a stabilized conductor of energy from unknown material, therefore allowing for time travel. Fig. acts as 'key' to its specific dimension though cause for reaction unknown. Further study required on the chemical and molecular structure of pendant.
Magus flipped the page over, and found a more detailed map of the gate key, which he glanced over with little interest. He flipped it back over and moved a finger over the drawing of the pendant before crumpled the paper his palm.
It disappeared in a dark flume.