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Prisoner 101, get away from your captors. Xelloss preferred prisoner 420, feigning obedience while undermining someone's devious plan from the inside, ultimately ending in their timely demise. Alas, this was 101 exactly because he and Zelas had made it so simple.
In between escaping from the Valgaav-Shabranigdu blob and there and now, Zelas had chewed him out with every breath on why their fusion shield had failed.
He'd love to answer, but he had no idea. Everything was in place, it wasn't stolen magic, they agreed on the goal. Sudden burst of Filia's martyr mode? Didn't match the emotions he got from her; if anything those belonged to a betrayed person.
To make matters worse, they weren't getting any closer to finding out. Xelloss had sparse teleportation energy and had to carry along Zelas on the flow. That required a lot of economy. He could probably keep up on his own, but that'd leave him to deal with a talisman endowed Luna Inverse all on his own.
So he wasn't sure how good it was when it became clear Luna wasn't around anymore.
Zelas noticed first that her movements were too repetitive. They hadn't tried attacking them to buy themselves time.
Five jumps across random holy areas of the north, they were certain Filia meant for them to stay close on her trail, but never close enough to see across the astral plane whether Luna was really there. She left a holy radiance that implied she did ... but only implied, and physical eyes can be fooled.
And it just happened to be so that miss Luna and miss Filia both knew vision spells. It wouldn't be the first time they rediscovered old magic on a whim.
This time Filia brought them to a sacred lake near the border of Zephyria. She shot off through air the moment she arrived, but didn't teleport yet.
Zelas and Xelloss stayed back, waiting it out this time. Eventually Filia started looking around, and slowed down a little. The probably-not-Luna on her back didn't respond.
"Either miss Luna can teleport or she can fly, else she has no hope of losing me if I were to return to Rygoon," Zelas snarled. "I have to go back and retrieve my talisman."
"What do we do now?" Xelloss asked. "Can miss Claire do anything with it, or will miss Luna take it elsewhere?"
"Later! We will separate. You retrieve that dragon. Find out why the fusion shield failed and do what you can to restore it."
"As you command, lord Beastmaster. However, is our ability to fuse magic truly that vital? Can we not use others?"
"It is your ability to fuse the magic of Siephied and Shabranigdu. There are other candidates, but we cannot bring them to this world. Claire with a talisman and the aid of the Apostle of Chaos might be able to. Now stop stalling me, I have to find Luna."
He didn't need to guess. Luke and Milina. With Luna's power at her disposal, Claire could teleport all over the world. Lina had no stakes in with the wolfpack, she might just help out.
Zelas stopped projecting and beelined south; he couldn't tell whether to Sailoon or her island. Ah well, he had orders.
Tough orders that he had no idea how to carry out. He'd been made to kill dragons, not to get along with them. He never really had partners, no, he took pride in being the mysterious, distant priest. Capricious Lord of Nightmares, of course he had to end up in a situation where vital magic depended on getting along with a dragon.
Without having to carry around Zelas, he could pin point his arrival with much more precision. When he flashed into view right before Filia's mid flight, she reeled back and veered to the left. He just shifted to her side the old fashioned astral way.
"Hello again, miss Filia. Quite a nice trick!" he said. With a flick of his staff, he poked the illusion apart.
She teleported a few meters away and kept flying. Around her, the flow geared up for another big jump. He shifted after her across the astral plane, grabbed her tail and pulled her into warped space.
When he dropped her out on ground level, she tried teleporting away again, but he held on.
"Miss Filia, it's not like it matters whether you run," he said. Really, all this fear was a little excessive.
"Then let me go!"
"To hide somewhere? It's not safer out there than on Wolfpack Island, or do you think I'll harm you again?"
She jerked at her tail once and refused to face him.
"Miss Filia? I can't let you go, it's orders. My lord needs fusion magic, and I have to figure out a way to get that. At the least, doesn't to assure you I won't cause more harm?"
"Just ... I know you don't mean physical harm, but you'll hurt me in different ways," she whispered, like she didn't even speak to him. "You just need me alive, whatever that may entail. What are you going to try to make me cooperate? Mind games? They worked for Valgaav, though I don't think you'd be good at it."
How much of that spite and loathing was directed at him, and how much enforced by Valgaav's actions? Maybe it blurred.
"It's not really my style, miss Filia. But my lord might just do it. Wouldn't it be better if we work out something between us?"
"Here's me, wanting you to leave. There's you, talking about what malice your lord would engage in. That makes it easier for me to figure us out as the enemies we are."
"Oh come now. We've always been enemies, just not mortal ones. Not even worst ones. I dare say, you're my best enemy," he said, smiling and with a finger.
That was supposed to break the mood, but it inspired a sharp resentment in her. She tore her tail out of his grip, but since she didn't make a move to teleport, he let it be.
"Yes, I am. I must be entertaining to the cult of fun. I'm fun and useful, that's the highest commodity in your temple, isn't it?" she sneered. "By heaven and hell, Xelloss, don't you get it? You were part of our family! It made no sense, but you were there and you did keep us safe. Sometimes I even liked our games ... sometimes I believed you were closer to life than any other astral creature."
"How hopelessly corny and delusional. You knew all all along who I am."
She narrowed her eyes, he couldn't tell whether in anger, to fight back tears, or from cringing.
"What I know ... no, I didn't know you. If I'd known even a little of your power and your nature, I wouldn't have been fooled back in the temple of the ancient dragons. You never needed to fight the Elder, it was all a trick. It's so easy for you to fool people just by holding back things, just like you do now. I can't even tell for how far you are involved in the mess now. I was wrong about Val, I was wrong about miss Luna, I was wrong about the holy order, I was wrong you, I was wrong about Valgaav. I can't do that anymore. I can't play anymore, Xelloss."
"Ehm ... "
Xelloss wasn't exactly at a loss for words. Oh no, he had plenty of biting things to say, but they'd probably be wrong. Whatever he said, she would just think he left away something.
It was a bizarre age that he found himself in, taking Amelia's advice.
"I'm sorry."
Filia snorted. "For what exactly? Why? Are you sorry that you lost useful magic? Or for yourself that you nearly died as a result? Tell me, did you need this scar for some grand plot too?"
She held up one of her claws, showing the odd angle at which her thumb was stuck. Her tail swung behind her, not as flexible as it had once been. He hadn't really taken into account how she'd heal without magic to heal with.
"I guess I got a little carried away," he said, shrugging and with an embarrassed smile. "But the ensuing thrill I got meant nobody asked me inconvenient questions!"
That ticked her off so much, she almost felt like normal.
"There's your problem. You can get carried away and then you just shrug like oops, no big deal."
"Why is that a problem? You go oops, no big deal on Valgaav all the time. I've been there both times, when you sympathized with Valgaav despite the death he dished out right then. I think you're having a double standard."
"Not anymore. I only have one standard now and you don't meet it. If you did, you would have answered my question."
She teleported away again. It was a small jump, so he shifted after her at ease.
Too bad that he didn't see the big jump coming, as it came so close on its tail. Quite the risk she took there.
Filia shot across the continent, he just barely caught her flow.
The connection was so weak he had to push his last reserve of holy magic to complete it. When he arrived, she was nowhere around; he had fallen astray in the sky.
Still, she had to be near, for this was a familiar sight. He had traveled these mountains to the sacred valley of the ancient dragons. Retracing his path, he found the valley quickly enough.
In a cold evening sun lay a ring of mountains lay around vast green fields. Central to the valley lay a few lakes, connection with rivers that circled despite gravity. Clusters of distorted marine-green trees stood everywhere : near the lake, the forest, and cover the ruins of cathedrals.
Three years ago, Lina Inverse had come here with the third host of Shabranigdu. It had been Zelas's plan: she wanted to see whether Lina was truly favored by the Lord of Nightmares.
The ruse involved testing whether Pokota's artificial light weapons could be used to replicate the chaos spell that destroyed Dark Star. Zelas had known all along that would fail. In the end, Lina would be forced to cast the Giga Slave, though she had her own precautions in place. The hell trees, which had kept the soul of the host here so that Shabranigdu could not escape to hell, trapped in an incomplete awakening.
The flames on the trees were gone now, but back then they had flared with Megiddo's power. Even now, the trees was impossible to see through on any plane. It wouldn't be easy to find Filia here, he couldn't move in any straight lines.
He began combing the forest, occasionally projecting as a wolf. He caught her scent a few times, but she never stayed in the same place.
Sometimes he saw her glow in the distance. She didn't appear to leave but she had no rest; had she realized he was around? No, not likely. She didn't seem frantic anymore, rather, she explored. Some spots she revisited, especially the hillside where once a cathedral had stood.
Maybe she sought for traces of Valgaav's activity. Back then, they had taken along little Val to activate the magic of the ancient dragons. Anchored in these mountains was a latent shield, which they had used to contain Shabranigdu in case of emergency. If that magic had been influenced by Valgaav he could imagine her curiosity, but not her point in investigating here and now. Maybe something had happened after he lost sight of her and Luna.
He didn't know that. Whatever went on in her head was a secret to him. He couldn't even tell what exactly she needed an apology for.
This lack of understanding was a harsh truth for an astral being. He could understand what other people did, learn from observation, but never truly grasp why someone thought or felt the way they did. Imagining to be another person was denial of the self. Everything he predicted was an educated guess, fueled by a thousand years of observation. People like Lina and Filia, who did not fit the mold, could easily blindside him.
He supposed he could threaten the people she loved, get her to talk that way. If anything, she was convinced now he'd go through with it. If that failed, he could take her to his lord and have her pry out knowledge and cooperation.
Ugh, no. That went contrary to the way he did things. Respect was to be paid to those that deserved it, and debts to those that aided him.
He wanted to actually fix this. Never mind how frustrating, disrespectful and obnoxiously uncivil she was ... he liked those things on her. She clustered together so many of the world's little concepts into an absurd reality. She had to be that way, not the solemn suffering mess Valgaav and her golden kin left her as. He just had to figure out how she ticked.
Organic life had the benefit of imagining themselves as others. To astral beings, this perspective itself was lethal, but then again, he had survived other lethal things. Teleportation couldn't be in the arsenal of anyone else, he could resist Leyunso's curse, he could channel Shabranigdu without dissolving.
Okay, so all three of those hurt in one way or another. A lot. Still, he survived them.
It was worth a shot, and the time — Filia didn't appear to be leaving soon.
Xelloss sought out an isolated spot up the mountain, not quite a cave but a cavity. Here had could look across the valley without being seen, just in case Filia went for a big jump; those created a wider glow than small jumps. Also, she wouldn't come across him here. Probably.
He sat down crosslegged and got out some tea to think.
Where to start getting into someone's head? He had no instincts or neurological patterns for that. Didn't help what that Filia was quite the mess of pride and self-loathing, religious zeal and blasphemous intention, deep grief and trivial joy, deep fried with dogmatic mindset and exaltation (whatever that was, scholars never agreed). All of those things were connected with strings he couldn't see, subtle influence and memories summoned not from relevance, but emotional imprinting.
Well, he didn't need to understand all that. Just enough to figure out how to get her to talk and listen.
Maybe parallels would work, starting with himself.
Filia was raised to serve idols and gods, he knew that much. Something like that existed for Xelloss too, albeit the Lord of Nightmares had no laws she instilled on others and required no faith. Between these, a concept of meaning and purpose was shared. Xelloss had chaos to thrive on and live by, Filia had ... gods? Elders? Religion?
No, probably not. She prayed to gods, but lived with people. She also wanted things, like a higher purpose, vases, a stable economy, for people to stop discriminating against beast folk, and a slew of other things. Her family was in the middle of that. A lot of that revolves around Val because of guilt, but at the bottom it was all of them. Life, safety, the ability to protect them. He'd known that, but hadn't really seen a link to purpose before. Ah, good, he was getting somewhere. It might even fit with how he had an absolute, firm place as servant and priest of Zelas Metaliom.
Now take away all purpose.
What if he lived in a world without a lord to serve and chaos to live by? Well, that wasn't going to happen, yes but what if it was all an illusion and he'd wake up to find himself hooked to a lotus machine?
Nothing. He'd have his surface interests, but it'd be like so much of him was gone. It made no sense, but sense and reality aside, what if ...
He wasn't really imagining it, this was reasoning. Hmm.
Irritated, he tapped his fingers on the teacup and stared down at the liquid. He should be able to really imagine, right? Organic creatures did it all the time, they even did it unintentionally, processing things through dreams. While on Wolfpack Island, Luna and Filia had had a dreamhopping fest, for as far as he could tell from the presence of life law circles.
Idly, he scorched a replica of Filia's law law circle into the rocks before him. He wanted to understand, he had a framework to understand in.
Now take away all purpose.
The circle reflected in the teacup, despite not being above it. Odd.
Turning the cup a little, the ripples changed and Filia looked back.
"What do you and Zelas want?"
He thought she left away the question whether they'd hurt her. How ridiculous — of course they would.
Now it echoed across the mountain, and he really listened ... she asked what wanted. Not how they would get what they wanted. Not the consequences. Not her fate.
Xelloss never had much trouble getting into what people wanted, and often once he knew the method, he knew the purpose. Fibrizo hadn't even needed much guessing : all devils want to end the world.
Lina Inverse tapped him on the shoulder, squatted at his side. Ha! Helpless pawn of Fibrizo, yet chosen by the Lord of Nightmares. Lina had broken that day, and came back on no strength of her own, yet she had pulled Filia back to her senses.
"You're making her lay down and die," Lina said.
Now take away all purpose.
He had hated serving Fibrizo, but was willing to see out whatever Her purpose for the world was. She had to—
Now take away all purpose.
"What if you had to destroy the Lord of Nightmares?" Lina asked.
He laughed. "That's absurd, miss Lina."
Absurd. Nothing like this wouldn't happen happen — could not happen — tag, you're it.
Wait a second.
"How are you here?"
Lina grinned. "No purpose, no useful purpose at least. I just wanted to save Gourry. But we have to live in this world, so let's not die in vain."
"You're not making any sense, miss Lina," Xelloss said, and he poured the tea out into the sky.
The earth turned upside down and Lina fell into the stars right before the tea the tea turned it into dark blue water. The sea fell together with the mountains, forming gray rock and canals below a statue.
A crude resemblance of Ragradia, deep in the mountains of Kataart where Xelloss and Filia had forged fusion vessels. Now, all the vessels lay in pieces around them.
"Xelloss, doesn't it bother you to be pushed around by a stronger being?" Filia asked. The voice came from his own mouth.
And then he turned, and saw himself through her eyes.
It was him, he knew, and the reflection of Filia was in his eyes, but the one he saw was Fibrizo.
The water became the sea, and he stood on the shore of Wolfpack Island as Fibrizo, demanding to see Zelas. He chattered on Seigram defecting to Gaav, and oh my, what did that say about Zelas?
He demanded the beast priest as a servant. The implication was such that she had to prove she meant to support the world's end, for her servants were displayed suspicious behavior! Seigram, a pure devil, joining the infamous traitor Gaav! Oh the shame.
So Zelas told him to obey the Hellmaster.
He had no idea what Fibrizo was after, back then. He had to figure it out on his own and be careful, because if Fibrizo knew the truth he'd kill him and Zelas. Yet if he succeeded, the world would end.
Filia had no idea what the Wolf Pack was after, right now. They had refused to tell her, because ... why? Luna wasn't allowed to know something?
Fibrizo hadn't trusted Xelloss with the truth.
Zelas hadn't trusted Luna and Filia with the truth.
You're my thing. My tool. Don't be too diverse a person, we'll discard you if you aren't what we need.
Devils had no choice, should be this one thing, never be a person. Dragons, or at least Filia, turned out to be a person. A person who uses the fire dragon king, but she asks.
When he looked at his reflection in teacup again, a blend of Fibrizo's cunning and Shabranigdu's relentless power looked back.
None of this should fit into a teacup, none of this was him, but he couldn't stop being Fibrizo Shabranigdu.
Now take away all purpose.
He wanted to get out, he needed purpose. He had a place in the Wolfpack and in the fate of the world; what the Lord of Nightmares decreed and what lord Beastmaster commanded, he had to be loyal to.
Beyond that, he wanted to live.
A tiny Filia walked up the mountain, and because he was Shabranigdu, because he was Fibrizo, he had to kill her. Dragons meant to save the world.
But he was also Xelloss, and Filia was part of the pack.
How low he'd fallen, Shabranigdu thought of Xelloss, and Fibrizo already planned to use this weakness.
I want purpose.
"You're a traitor!" the emulation of his enemies howled, and here he found the divide between. He could not betray those he had never been loyal to.
He cast them out, but it left him alone in a dark hollow, mountains gone, and only a light remaining as a ring on the far away horizon. Black above, dim dark gold below.
Filia's astral form still approached. She was real.
So was Xelloss.
He wasn't Filia or Fibrizo. Filia didn't actually consider him Fibrizo, and if they had been the same, the end would be different. All this was just a rational choice he had made, he needed an answer to a question. He didn't need to be someone else. Xelloss existed, here, now. Just him. The world existed around him, the astral plane — Her Mind — and the physical plane — whatever that might be — he had to be.
He felt the world again. Just pinpoints, here and there. The rocks on the mountain, the wind all over ...
"I'm here," he whispered, but the sound came out as a wordless screech. He'd sounded like this in his first moments of existence, before he understood air vibration.
Terror set in, had he died and remade himself?
... no, perhaps not. He remembered (probably) and the difficulty with speech wasn't lack of knowledge or fresh form.
Rather, his entire astral body had been thinned and scattered out. Rather than a human projection, he displayed a distorted mess that covered a few hundred meters of the mountain. Several formations resembled Fibrizo's dark light, and a malformed replica of Ragradia's statue stood near the spot where he'd sat down before. Torn ribbon lay here and there. Most of everything further away was black cones on their point covering fields, or chaotic clusters of needles. Here and there burned blue fire.
The contents of his subspace lay scattered all over the slopes Scattered popcorn, candy, teacups, money and other trivial mortals items were the only reminder that Xelloss was more than just an eldritch thing.
Don't think yourself to death, lord Beastmaster had said a few days after his creation. It had been a jest on her behalf, and the first time he made her grin.
Well then. Fantasy. Definitely an interesting experience. He wasn't sure he quite had empathy down, but it had been insightful. And more suicidal than he'd grasped. This was going to be very hard to break to lord Beastmaster, who wasn't keen on him doing impulsive things.
His astral form seemed to be whole, but rather smeared out. It was difficult to move as one, yet somehow he could see further across the astral plane than normal.
He'd been right, the real Filia approached. In her dragon form, she circled close to the edge of his field of cones.
He still didn't yet know what to say, but a memory of the fusion vessel mission lay fresh in his mind.
"Xelloss, doesn't it bother you to be pushed around by a stronger being?"
So that ... oh. Oops.
Filia had already tried relating to him and getting him to relate to her. It had flown right over his head.
For Xelloss it was a casual fact he outpowered most creatures in the world. The sky was blue on unclouded days, healthy grass was generally green, wheat could be used as food, he could kill hundreds of people with only a pointed finger and sugar was sweet. If Shabranigdu was released he might be in problems, but demon kings tended to be dense as a brick, so he could handle that with the right tools. Even Fibrizo he had pushed a little to his demise. It kinda needed Lina Inverse to be around, though.
Filia meanwhile had no say in anything. Her only power lay in unique magic, while everyone else made her choices for her. Now Filia wanted to do something, but it wasn't her call, and there was no Lina Inverse to change things.
If he wanted Filia to talk after all this, he had to hand over something first.
That and be more presentable than a field of madly spinning cones. He pulled himself together and managed to reduce his surface to only a few hundred meters. With density, his senses sharpened. At his core, he formed a half circle of many upside down cones and needles, shallow still. He felt more like glassy darkness than solid curse. Setting fire at his core, he became something like a magical echo chamber, a trick Zelas had taught him. She herself had a skill to lower her density, making herself harder to detect, so she needed a method to stabilize. It might just work for him.
"What's wrong with you?"
That was the first worthwhile sound his senses delivered.
Filia stood at the edge of his chaotic projection, wings wide and energy alight. She'd teleport away at first sign of trouble.
He tried talking, but only got out more inhuman sounds.
Filia backed off, but didn't leave yet. He caught wisps of concern in her emotions.
"This better not be a trick," she muttered.
Cautious, she poked her snout against one of the outer cones. It wobbled a little, then returned to upright position.
He hoped to see a little of the old Filia, who might have tried bowling over the swarm, but no.
"Is this what happens when you teleport across a distance too long?" she asked.
He wanted to shake his head, but in lacked a head this impulse resulted in the cones tipping over to Filia. She took another few steps back.
In lieu of his regular voice, he forced out sound by manipulating the air in the half-circle. He just barely got out a "Stay."
Now she looked at the fire, but he couldn't look back.
"I'll tell you a secret."
It echoed five times over, mixed because of inexperience with this way of speech. To his preferred imago of the mysterious priest, it was a disgrace. Yet that only mattered to him, because on Filia had an effect.
Suspicious but also a little hopeful, she asked, "What good will this secret do me?"
"It'll help you see where you stand in the grand game."
"And if I don't reach the right conclusion at the end of it?"
"I am under orders to find out why our fusion failed and to restore whatever it is that made it fail. I cannot disobey, but I can try to carry it out with respect to you. That's what I myself want to do."
"I'm listening."
He braced himself, yet it also pleased him to talk. He was curious what she would say at the end of it.
"The true name of the Lord of Nightmares is Lucifer."
All of his projection flickered with the mention of Her Name, but he kept together. If anything, it helped him anchor in the here and now.
"When I went to retrieve Gorun Nova for mister Gourry, I came to the edge of the Sea of Chaos. There I met the Lord of Nightmares and asked her why she created us to desire absolute destruction for the world, yet spared the world when she had a chance to reabsorb it.
She gave me no answer, only pointed out that Siephied was created with equal power. She told me that if I wanted change, I myself could have it. Fibrizo wanted destruction for the entire world and only received it himself. Miss Lina wanted to save Gourry and this She provided, which happened to mean the world saved along the way. Mister Gourry wanted miss Lina back, and she was returned. I wanted change for the devils so I could live in this world without always minding them and so she removed only my instinct.
The interesting thing about that, miss Filia, was that it just meant I don't itch anymore. I have some benefits in that my identity is less breakable, so I can use tools and even holy magic without a fatal ego blow. However, it made absolutely no difference about who I am as a person, because I'd been ignoring that drive anyway.
I was given Gorun Nova back by the Lord of Nightmares without specific orders, and I returned it to its owner. You know the rest of that history.
The Lord of Nightmares is capricious, the devils are wrong to believe they are Her definite will. Between god, devil and mortal, we are the ever growing diversity of Her dream. The primordial Igdu and Phied only pretended at being persons, for in the first place they are force of ancient thought. Instincts of the matter that this world was made of. As time passes, the world changes, and through interaction with the world, so can the astral beings.
The Wolfpack believes that Her desire to return to the days of yore are true, but minds are more than just desire. She has a personality as much as we do. If the gods and devils are in balance, that means Her desire to let the worlds exist is just as strong as Her desire to destroy it was ... at the time the worlds were created, and no more.
Devils as created by Shabranigdu were not meant to love existence, but concepts in and of themselves do not really exist even if they are a blue print for things to be. Thoughts are insubstantial, patterns and rhythms to a theory. The mind transcends the tangible world and its complexities, for in all Her destructive void the Lord of Nightmares remembers and desires and dreams. There will never be a world without concepts and feelings because She will never be undone.
We change to be like Her, or She changes, we do not know and are forbidden to ask, but I am certain She now favors existence. Knowing this, being what I am, I serve the Lord of Nightmares at Her most capricious. If this world set me up to change as I have, then I am a manifestation of Her desires too."
She stayed silent for a while, and he got no wiser from what she felt.
"You don't have the itch to destroy the world, but only Zelas and now I know this. You're capable of genuinely liking things to an extent devils should not; Lyos mentioned having remotely eaten some things you weren't supposed to feel in Kataart."
Wait, what?
"When did he mention that?" he said, and his prickliness showed by the outer rings of cones digging into the earth.
"When you were paying attention to something else. Anyway, Dolphin doesn't know you are defective."
"I am not defective! Didn't you listen to anything I've just said?" he snapped. Or rather, he tried to snap. In this distorted form, the effect came out by wild clattering.
Filia flinched and teleported away, reappearing a hundred meters away from his edge.
Oi, this would be tricky. He needed his focus back and get his human form out.
He stayed put. After Filia calmed her breathing down, she walked back.
"I don't see how that is relevant," he said, softer now. Really, he had just revealed great things about the nature of reality and the order of the world. He'd hoped that'd get a response like, Oh now I see what you're after and why, this doesn't sound like you're gonna instill any oppressive regimes that keep people from changing.
Instead, Filia got caught up on such trivialities? At risk of it being the wrong thing again, he added, "This is a matter of fate, surely you did not lose your penchant for dramatic prophecy?"
That got a sneer out of her. "Prophecies are only constructs by those with enough power to conceal the mechanism. Can you see the mechanism of Her Will?"
"I can see some of it by my own eyes, and some by my lord's tales. Do you want to hear?"
She nodded.
"My most recent evidence for the will of the Lord of Nightmares is Siephied themself. Or rather, herself. The moment Siephied split power and descended into the Sea of Chaos, the Sea spat hir right back, confining hir to the soul of a human. Now she calls herself Leyunso, and is believed to be a Sage like miss Liliane.
She can die, but she passes through Megiddo with her identity intact and thus lives forever. The Bringer of Light condemned her so that no claim she made would be believed, lest it was something the hearer already believed.
Everything of what I've told you about our belief, for a long time it was only speculation in the mind of my lord. In the five thousand years she has on me, I do not know when her first rebellious thought was, but I know this : she met miss Leyunso and they spoke. Together, they sealed the first awakened piece of Shabranigdu.
Siephied pushed my lord over the edge she already balanced on. Lord Beastmaster cannot even realize the significance of this, because she cannot know who miss Leyunso really is. I can, I am immune to the curse.
That Siephied had been returned confirms what my lord hoped to learn from miss Lina : whether the Lord of Nightmares has a bias in favor of existence. We may have become creatures who want to exist, but we will not defy our Mother. We won't need to, so it turns out.
It wasn't merely a whim when the Lord of Nightmares spared the world when miss Lina did not control the Giga Slave. She Herself planned this all along. She will allow us to exist and we'll change the world for that sake.
Valgaav and Volphied are the true rebels, because they seek to undo all the sum of this world's change and progress. They want to replace it with their own view, thereby supplanting the will of the Lord of Nightmares. In that much, he is both of our enemy, and don't either of us seek to preserve the world as it is?
I can't promise a world without suffering, should the Wolfpack come out dominant, but I don't think lord Beastmaster is interesting in being a tyrant. That would only stifle the world, because tyranny is enforced order."
"You speak of heresy to chaos, then what you live by is faith," Filia whispered. "It's going to hurt when it breaks."
And still not the response he'd hoped for. Wasn't Filia looking for some sort of higher purpose? Maybe he'd been wrong about that ...
Filia felt sorrow now, like nothing he'd said held any meaning to her. It frustrated him to no end, because how could anyone hear that existence had a meaning and just regret?
"Your supreme god lives and you ignore it?"
"Gods are only clusters of power with a base instinct, you said so yourself. Hardly even people. I've met miss Leyunso. She is more than that, but also just a human. Faith is something that the gods feed on, that the only value it has in this world. At least for us organic creatures. How did you come to be someone who can have faith at all? Were you made like that?"
That was a secret he hadn't even known he kept, because he hadn't thought about it before.
"To an extent, I think. We astral beings multiply through budding, which involves cutting off a piece of power while imagining another person to be that, and planting those ideas. However, most of this is a barren mind that fills in over time. The results can be quite fascinating, like the blind spots. One can have a reasonably cunning devil like Scherrer who nevertheless fails to notice her own name is a copy of her lord's. Dynast doesn't really understand intelligence.
I'm not sure what lord Beastmaster tried to instill on me, but she appears satisfied for the most part. Though she is a little disappointing at me not being very inconspicuous."
"Not very? You're not even scraping by, you're a miserable failure."
Oh, thank Chaos, she was finally insulting him.
"I suppose that's true. It's certainly where I started filling my blank. Rich people start to raise eyebrows when the traveling priest they're sheltering in hopes of certain blessing keep forgetting to eat for five days straight. I went from there, encouraged by my lord. She herself developed a taste for food too. From there I moved to other things, like respect for attitude. Then deviation. Unpredictability. Uniqueness. Assertion. Striving. If any devil asks me, I say I appreciate things because it helps convince people to be at ease with me, lacking acting skills. They believe it, because to some extent all of them appreciate something.
The more we had to become individuals, the more we changed from the original dream. Many devils consider it growing further from Her, but they cannot stop it. All of us come to like concepts in our efforts to define a steady identity. Hylaker enjoyed gambling, and Rixfalt desired a combat challenge to the point she'd disobey her lord. Seigram valued his personal vengeance over the complete destruction that Fibrizo offered. These are just names you would have heard from Lina, but I could cite many more.
Lord Beastmaster and I simply went further, and in my case the Lord of Nightmares herself approved. I hope one day, lord Beastmaster will experience the same favor. I think she may have tried to meet her, three years ago in this valley."
To him, this was elaboration to the question of what he wanted, and waited for her to fill in her side of things, but no.
"I bet you bleed from the face because your obnoxious attitude inspires people to bash in your skull so often that it kept ruining your human pretense."
Turned out Filia didn't need to physically hit anything to make him bowl over. The nearest row of cones wobbled flat down.
Chaos, this dragon. She got all dramatic and angst ridden on the turf of guilt and crime, but tell her an existential truth not in her dogma and she just shrugs it off?
It took effort to remind himself what he knew of her; broken faith and little to live for. That matched her feelings, she teetered on the edge of emotional fatigue. How much was left of her old self?
"I've told you what we want, why and how. What about you?"
"You're very late with starting to care about that," she said.
"My apologies for that."
Filia took on her human form. Hunched forward as a dragon, the wound hadn't stood out. Now he saw the blood stains down her dress, he wondered what else he had missed. Either that cross had been something more physical, or Filia had become something more astral; one shouldn't bleed from pure astral attacks.
Cautious and riddled with the kind of fear provided by memory, she approached. He kept still.
She lightly tapped her fingers on the edge of the cone nearest to her. Only the edge; he did not feel her fingers on the top surface.
... there was no top surface; he was hollow.
Filia held out a small sphere of light above it.
"You can do magic like this, right? Prove we have the same goal," she said. "If we do, we will be able to blend our magic."
"Fusion magic as a lie detector? Interesting."
"An intention detector. My goal is to save the world, the people in it, and to leave life in a state better than it is now. No reformations, no coercion, no changes of mind or body forced on anyone. We will destroy Shabranigdu and the gods if it needs to be, and then you'll let people be free."
It'd be easy to comply with that just from his own angle, but he couldn't leave out things anymore. That much he understood.
"Well, lord Beastmaster hasn't yet told me all the details yet. I'm not sure whether I can be true to the last."
She made a sound between a huff and fearful frustration, the latter because of what she said next, "Fine. In that case, I'll ask Zelas myself. I'll hear all of it, and only then I will see whether I will trust you."
"That sounds good enough for my orders," he said.
· · · · · · ·
Filia could teleport them near to the shore of the continent, though Xelloss thought it cost her a lot of power. She couldn't go to Wolfpack Island without Claire helping with directions, or rather, she did not want to risk Claire stopping them. Xelloss warped space a bit to bring them the rest of the way.
They arrived to chaos (the modern definition of the word). Scorch marks littered the beach and beyond the outer ring of hills, the forest burned. Occassionally, a chunk of land was throw up.
Arinkiau met him in mid-air, right as he slowed down.
"Beast priest, where have you been so long?"
Xelloss unwhirled his mass and revealed Filia, who sat atop a cluster of cones.
"I had a mission to carry out and I succeeded," he said. "What happened while I was gone? It's been very long since I've seen her this angry."
"The god pieces are gone," Arinkiau blurted out.
And Filia wasn't surprised or worried at all.
"Did you know, miss Filia?" he asked.
"Miss Orun is an excellent flow dancer, and the rocks on the beach weren't particularly polluted by devil magic to begin with," she said. "You better not start complaining that I kept this a secret. Hiding someone's escape plan from their captors is a very different thing than manipulating innocent people," she said. Her voice riddled with enough spite to hide that she was still afraid.
By now he outright hated that.
"Well—"
"What?"
"I wouldn't call miss Luna innocent. Anyway, miss Arinkiau, please go ahead and tell lord Beastmaster that I have returned with miss Filia, but that I am a little unstable and would appreciate it if she would not be violent around us."
Especially not since Filia apparently couldn't be near him without remembering the wrong things.
He waited with Filia at a distance from the island. Eventually, Filia asked, "Do you like serving her?"
"Naturally, she is worth serving."
"What if she made you to think like that?"
That was an angle he did not want to explore. It would be pointless. He had plenty of other evidence he was handling existence the right way. This was just Filia's paranoia talking, and really, that made sense. Val turned out to be fake, among other things.
"This really isn't on topic, miss Filia. We're about to talk to lord Beastmaster, who seems to be in a very bad mood. It'd be good if you would not call her any names, especially not slimy hairball, and stay close to me in case she feels like shooting a wall down."
"Alright," she said.
Arinkiau returned after about a quarter of an hour.
"So sorry it took a while, it was hard getting close without being burned I had to find a few who knew how to project themselves as letters for a far off signal. She expects you in the nearest mansion, beast priest."
Now on this side of the island, it turned out the damage wasn't too bad. Zelas kept her venting restricted to a single slope. The mansion had been more or less spared from the inferno, despite its proximity.
Xelloss swarmed into the throne room, which Zelas used whenever she invited mortals for some scheme or another. There was a ring of chairs before a throne, and no table for people to put anything on. The place had been subtly designed to unsettle its visitors, providing little shelter. Not the best meeting place, but he suspected Zelas would arrive here.
He was correct.
When Zelas projected in, she towered in full angelic wolf form up to the ceiling. She took one quick look at Filia, then demanded of Xelloss, "Why are you in pieces?"
"I seem to have wandered onto an unusual layer of the astral plane. Please don't worry, I'm finding my way off already. I used to be spread over kilometers."
"Indeed. Is this related to why your fusion failed?"
"In a way, but—"
Filia hopped off her seat. "I'll tell you. Our goals did not coincide : you want to use me, I want to be free. I can't trust you like this," Filia said, her voice relatively even. She feared Zelas less outright than Xelloss; so her response was likely not rooted in mentally warning herself, but instinctive imprinting.
Zelas cast him that quiet furious look he knew only had one meaning : you messed up something again, didn't you? He wasn't sure what, though.
Maybe she'd take a more drastic approach, so he quickly said, "Miss Filia and I did manage to reach an agreement."
"And what would this agreement be?" Zelas snarled.
"I want to know everything you planned, the why, how, when and where. He needs to know as well," Filia said, looking Zelas right in the eye. "If you're worried gods will get in my mind, then you need a grip of how soul windows work. Miss Luna and I can cut off and claim whatever energy a god sends at us, so in the off chance Rangort learns the wrong thing — assuming the wrong thing exists — we can more than handle it."
"Everything else about my plan already lies in shambles and you want me to let a loose canon like you in on the plot?"
"Miss Luna already is on her way to mess up your plot. She wants to stop mister Lyos from sacrificing himself, and frankly, unless you can give me a full picture of everything, I agree with her. If you can convince me otherwise, I can use my clairvoyance to reach her. Or do you have an idea where she is?"
Zelas narrowed her eyes, mighty irritated, but she kept herself in check. Taking on her travel form, she shrunk to the throne. Well, shrunk ... even in this form, her air dominated.
Filia had enough defiance in her to take the chair opposite of her and cross her arms.
"What has Xelloss told you so far?" Zelas asked.
"That you believe the Lord of Nightmares wishes for the world to exist and that your plan is in favor of this. I want to know how that fits onto what Valgaav claimed about the sacrifice of the gods and miss Luna."
"The gods will be sacrificed in the context of returning them to the Phied form, as they wish, but would never trust miss Lina with. The Aqualord is the exception to this, as she understands miss Lina is the Apostle of Chaos.
Miss Claire would take in the power of the other gods, but we do not need the part of Siephied held by Luna Inverse. The purpose of having a singular whole god is the ability to perceive all around the world and track down every last astral being. Only those linked to the flow can do this. In addition, it clears out three stubborn, useless gods who would only get in the way otherwise. Furthermore, a unified god would be able to contain the pieces of Shabranigdu should anything go wrong.
So yes, we built a machine that summons them and yes, a misfire caused a rift in their flow now. However, understand we did not control the machine when the misfire happened. The power of the Knight of Siephied is trivial, as we are after omniscience and a lack of enemies. Miss Lina and I agree very much that a mind such as Luna Inverse should be kept away from any god that miss Lina creates. That we needed her for the angelsblood talisman is already an issue enough.
Miss Lina went to the other universes to create new talismans out of the other deities, and in her words, to explore and gather riches. By the time we had her back, my intent was to have the Aqualord sustainable on her power and Har Megiddo well protected against devils. Hence the powered up Sailoon army, whom can be expected to be loyal to miss Lina thanks to miss Amelia.
Once miss Lina had returned, she would take the souls of the gods through fusion magic. From that, she would bind all devils in the world to souls we were to create. Mortal souls. Preferably some that can feed on more than negativity. I suppose we could kill them all, but that would remove a great deal of power from the world, which does not seem wise : there are others who may invade our world. We must keep both holy and curse magic in existence.
There were three rivaling opinions on the outcome; I wish to own the power of Shabranigdu, the Aqualord once wished for everything to return to slumber and seal the power of Shabranigdu, and miss Lina ... I do not know her exact goal. She did not like either of those ideas. We would go as far as the reformation of the world, after that we would see who came out on top."
Xelloss twitched despite himself. He had expected something that involved defeating Shabranigdu and the gods, not something so drastic as remaking the entire structure of the astral species. This was less of a battle and more of a forced reformation ... not natural change per say. Was this acceptable in the rhythm of chaos.
"What bothers you, Xelloss?" Zelas asked. "Speak freely."
"You'd force a change to the way the world was created, lord Beastmaster? The other devils did not undergo a change, we would be taking their fate in our hands."
"I do not like it, Xelloss, but they are going to kill us. Even if they never find out, they will end the world and we will die," she said, sharp and vicious. "Ideally, we would change food restrictions so any devil can evolve more freely."
"Never mind that," Filia said. "What went wrong with your plan?"
"You know most of it. When a war threatened to break out around Kataart, thus endangering the unstable Claire Bible and its fragile godly soul, we sped up our plan. While you two were in Kataart, I worked on a way to get you in touch with Lezo Greywords. Had Val not snapped, within a month mister Lezo Greywords would have contacted you to teach you how to make a soul jar. This part was hypothetical, but worth the attempt. In retrospect, for the past seven years Volphied hatched a scheme that used us, so there are elements we must question."
Filia glared at Zelas when she said used us.
"So what use did you have of destroying mister Laust?"
"An unfortunate need. He was meant to control the power of Shabranigdu and agreed with miss Lina, or so it seemed. Alas, he was destroyed to cover up the extra ray from the pillar. I would not have liked it if Deep Sea Dolphin were to find the piece of Shabranigdu that I sealed in the south. It knows I am a traitor."
"How convenient, because now miss Lina has to assign the power to you."
"Watch your tongue, dragon. I may be a schemer, but I seek to keep my promises when possible. You are in no position to speculate on how my nature to my word is."
"No, I'm not watching my tongue, I'm watching my fate. You wanted mister Lezo to teach me something? You and Rangort had weeks to teach me and miss Luna to ensure Valwin and Vrabazard could not get into our minds. If you can do magic that transmigrates a soul that powerful without anyone around noticing, you must know what soul magic can do. There's no excuse, you should have tried!"
"The past cannot be undone, we will mind it in the future," Zelas said, her face averted from Filia. She tried not to lash out, again.
"Mind it how? So you'll use in a way we can't mess up?"
"Your problems seem to be where the power lies. Well then, consider this, little dragon : fusion fails if you do not agree with the goal. This disagreement can be as simple as not wanting to be a pawn. Fusion is needed before any new souls are crafted. Should you disagree with what we do, such as sacrificing miss Luna, you only need to not want it and it will not happen."
With that, Zelas stood up. She marched out, rather than phase away; meant to show her disdain. Just as she passed the door, she curled her finger at Xelloss. He was to follow.
They went to another isolated room, where Zelas turned into her aristocrat form and pulled a bottle of wine from the walls. After emptying it and muttering about insolent dragons, she unfolded her wings. Using these she gathered around all of Xelloss's scattered pieces.
Using the dexterity of human hands, she invoked the flow around him. Devils didn't have a worldly flow of their own, but something of an internal balance nonetheless. He had never paid much attention to this, but to his surprise Zelas knew exactly what she was doing. Something about the way she moved was almost mortal.
He wanted to understand her too."
"What exactly did you do, Xelloss? You are like a hollowed out shell, but your power is still here. Did the attack of Valgaav cause this?"
"Maybe it contributed, but not likely. See, I kind of hit a wall with miss Filia, so I tried to imagine how she thought. It seems to have worked, though I'm not sure how."
She paused in surprise. "You imagined being another. Yet you still exist."
"I do, lord Beastmaster."
"You may have wandered into the astral plane where dreams take place. Only that could explain it." She ran a hand through the loose side of her hair, pulling it back. "There is so much I cannot predict. Not even how or what you are, my own creation."
Xelloss's hind mind offered a parallel again : between Zelas and Filia.
"What will ..." She trailed off, and didn't say another word while she finished pulling him back in place.
Now, Xelloss itched to ask whether he had been created differently. In retrospect, a few things Filia had said and incited came together with things Zelas didn't say. He was left with similar questions about either, but one great difference : where Filia demanded the same share, Xelloss was just a servant to Zelas by nature.
When the last piece of power fully reconnected, she withdrew her wings and restored her air to cool indifference.
He pushed his human form back into the world, pleased with the return of the more substantial senses he'd grown accustomed to. Sight, sound, feeling and balance had their full force again, and taste likely too, but this would be a bad time to indulge in food.
"How will we proceed, lord Beastmaster?"
"Now that we know Volphied was behind this, there is no saying what the real purpose of Har Megiddo is. Perhaps it is impossible and I am looking at faulty evidence," Zelas said. "Never the less, I cannot go back. It is open war now that Luna has given Valgaav an excuse to sic an army past my island. It will be so easy for them to pass and notice my court has been reordered, because they will try to recruit me.
We have no idea where Claire is. No doubt she and Rangort will seize control of Har Megiddo. If they can persuade Luna to aid them, they have a quick way to grow a new talisman. If not, it will take longer, but they will. Rangort can get them a sliver of the world wall easily. I can assume that if Sailoon is on Claire's side, they will have changed the meeting plans as well. I will send out scouts to find out what we can. If that fails, we will meet them at the island. In either case, I must prepare an army."
She no longer called it Tel al-Metaliom, Xelloss noted. It made sense, but worried him too.
"You are certain we do not defy the will of the Lord of Nightmares? Do we truly know the Apostle of Chaos is a true concept?"
"Miss Lina will answer us one day."
"What if she does not return?"
"Then it is be our turn to lose our mind," Zelas said with a dry smile. "We better practice."
"I don't think I can manage that," Xelloss said, befuddled. "Honestly, lord Beastmaster, I'm not even sure I can deal with miss Filia when she's broken."
"There are ways to handle traumatized people, for their better or worse, and our better," Zelas said. "I will take over if you cannot, but I would prefer you learn on your own. Though, keep low on methods that harm yourself."
· · · · · · ·
Zelas went on to organize her army, which he could not help with. She was the general on the pack as well as the leader, he had no experience leading.
The mansion's housekeeper brought Filia to a room and delivered some food. Filia ate, but it was too little, and she slept, but it was in short bursts. Every so now and then she woke up, wandered around and returned to uneasy sleep.
Like the throne room, this place was designed to unsettle. Just a little too large and hollow inside, and giving view right onto a hunting ground. The terrace had no railing separating one from the steep drop below, and the bench stood central to the indent, parallel with the walls. It suggested more of an altar room than a relaxing view spot. Zelas had sent them to this particular mansion because she expected guests.
Xelloss waited on the terrace, half standing guard in case any of the uninformed devils wandered by and decided to pry some food out of. Not that they'd need to do much. Xelloss got an astral stomach full of negative emotions, which poured out of her at all times. Once that had been just food, now he had an inkling of how it was to actually live with some of them. The kind of pressure and fear of standing right below something that might kill you, that he got. The rest not so much, but he'd known a few mortals that killed themselves over this.
Eventually, the terrace door opened and she looked out.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
"Well, this is Wolfpack Island, and I am the priest of said Wolfpack. Incidentally, I live here."
"I meant the terrace."
"Well, part security, and part, well, I don't think we're done talking, are we?"
Just by a little in her face, the light peeked through. "You're right, we're not."
She closed the door behind her, but stayed near the warmer walls.
Xelloss projected and sat down on the bench. They should just go inside, but something about the way she blocked the door denied that without a word. Probably some sort of irrational defensiveness.
He used to have some clothes in subspace, costumes for amusing scenarios, but nothing that fit her (or wasn't torn to shreds due to his earlier collapse). So he just took off his cloak and pulled a piece of raw cloth from his satchel — when he posed as human and went through a rough patch, he sometimes had to leave behind scraps of cloth. Mixing the two, he produced a replica of his cloak. The colors didn't match her though, so he inverted them.
"Let's start here. Don't worry, it's not my projection anymore," he said as he held it out.
She snatched it from his hand and inspected it thoroughly. Only then did she pull it around her shoulders. It fell around her, like her old cloak did.
Not a word, not a look. Was it going to stay like this from now on?
He needed an ice breaker.
"So, miss Filia, since you can see the astral plane now, how do you deal with the lack of clothes?"
No explosive embarrassment, no snapping, nothing. She looked up, almost sad, almost like saying it wasn't ever going to be like before.
"It was awkward until Claire and I developed a mental trick where I see clothes over everyone."
What a bland reply. He chuckled anyway at the information, if not delivery. "That's you, going out of your way to preserve modesty on a plane of existence where it does not and cannot exist."
"That's you, letting me think for seven years I had any modesty to be preserved." A cold tone, barely any irritation.
To his surprise she sat down next to him, but she faced the opposite side.
"I didn't manage to reach miss Luna so far. I may have a better chance when I'm off this damned island. Now, if we're going to work together, there are a few rules I have to give you."
"Maybe you should lay them down instead, they're less likely to drop that way."
"This isn't a joke!"
"Alright," he said, pleased to get a small response.
"One : stay out of my home unless I explicitly invite you, or you need to enter to help with a serious issue. When I tell you to get out, you get out. Don't hover over my life."
"You don't have a home, do you?"
"Take it to mean any place where I live. I mean it, Xelloss. You need to stop stalking me."
"How else am I going to keep in touch with you?"
"I don't want to, but if we must, I have a crystal ball, or you could just knock. Two : stop derailing me when I bring up a problem, like you did just now.
Three : don't set me up anymore, for as far as you can skim you lord's orders. This means anything from slamming doors in my face so my tension erupts, to playing with information so I'll walk into embarrassment or some other trap. No more coercion and manipulation at my expense."
"I'll comply to that, though this is starting to sound awfully boring."
"Good, because I'm not here for your entertainment. Four: my property is not your plaything. Don't break my vases, or set up others to break them. If I let you into my house, behave. I know you can."
He held up his hands. "Boundaries, I get it. I'm a little puzzled at your lack of rules on, say, mutilation."
"You just did it again."
"Did what?"
"Derail. You didn't say, I agree. You changed the topic. That's related to the fifth rule : you need to talk to me before things go wrong. It shouldn't require a crisis for you to even consider that maybe I need to know where we stand."
"Fine. I agree to hold those rules. On my word, and by the respect I owe you for certain things. Now I'd like to know where you stand on the scar topic you have been avoiding. Where are you left standing in regards to the Wolfpack?"
She fidgeted with the edge of the cloak. It took a while before she answered.
"It's not that you hurt me to cover up for it. It's that you never warned me when you could have. Gods, I really believe you'd kill me, like you've done to others.
If you had just told me up front that it might happen and how good you'd be at it, it would have been different now. I'd still be afraid at the right time, but you'd have known what to avoid so I don't end up with scars, and I'd have known I could still trust you. It wouldn't have cost you anything to explain me up front to what extent emotion-eaters can judge you.
And that just came on top of everything else. You've come into my house so often without an invitation, I've started treating it like only nuisance because what else can I do? You hold all the power, I can only adapt. I'm always cautious for the next thing you'll break, the next important meeting you'll ruin, and the bargains I have to make to fix things. I can rage and rant, but it achieves nothing. My anger and humiliation is only the punchline to your jokes.
You eat and you laugh, but I get to live with the aftermath. Ten thousand sand grains make a pile eventually."
"In a way I know that, I just didn't think that'd be a deciding factor in your case. I suppose I was wrong about you again. Where do I start being right?"
Now, Filia formed a small sphere of light between her hands, but didn't hold it out yet.
"Clay is superior to metal because it is the home of earth spirits, thus is ideal to contain magic. Most processed metal is vacated of spirits and hardly ever used as home anyway," she said. "I only said it was a secret to taunt you."
He scratches his head. "Fusion vessels? Now who is changing the topic?"
She gave that sad, slightly mocking smile. "It's not about that. We both have to be honest with each other, though of course I don't have world changing secrets, unlike you."
"Then what's the point?"
"You need to know you can trust me with things," she said. "I will not betray you, even if you did nothing to earn that. That is not my style."
Now she held out the sphere. Oh well, he might as well try. Nothing made sense today anyway.
He let in some of his own magic. The two forms of magic blended, weak as ever, but stable. A little touch of the power of chaos between them.
And she still hadn't said a word about what he'd told her. The fusion almost flickered out.
"Miss Filia, there's one more thing about where you stand ... doesn't it mean anything to you, what She desires?"
"I can't say. I have to be careful believing anything about even those I do know. Blind faith is not for me. However, I do understand it ... what it means that you've told me a secret so important to you. This means you can help me with something very important."
"Really? What are you up to, miss Filia?"
She withdrew her hand and its magic and looked ahead again.
"I'll tell you later. It's not a secret, just a plan in the making. If we can get Ragradia reborn, it'll be worth telling. It'll make everything fall together again. Val will be ... " She felt like she ought to cry, but had run out of tears. "I have to kill my son before he kills us all."
Filia wasn't so much mended as she was rebuilt — similar in the way a mosaic resembled the vases whose shards it was built from, but only in the pieces.
· · · · · · ·
