The rain was still coming down, soaking my hair and face but my body was pleasantly warm and dry still. The enchantments I'd put on the coat were holding strong and the sensation was soothing, grounding me back to reality. It was still dark and my head felt a little heavy. The entire mental confrontation with Brain had taken place within the span of a single heartbeat.
The Archer is still there.
My shield had faltered for a second, but I reinforced it with a sharp push of magic, turning back towards the last place I remembered him being and took up my blasting rod.
"You have one chance to surrender. Or you will be next."
In his eyes, it probably looked like I had killed Brain with his redirected arrows before the Takeover ritual could finish. It could work as an intimidation factor and I was going to roll with it. I could see the archer, tucked into the doorway of the clocktower to try and minimize the impact of the wind on his aim.
I saw the bow come up again. I strengthened my shield, and shifted my blasting rod into the same hand, lifting my other hand skyward.
"The building was on fire. And it wasn't my fault." I was rarely ever more grateful that Story Magic allowed some key phrases to be used ironically. The air was charged with power and the circumstances were too perfect to pass up.
"Holy sh-! Hold your fire, Pagemaster! Hold!"
"Fulminatas."
Lightning crashed from above onto me, over me. The air around me instantly grew scorching hot, rain evaporating into mist, but the totem and my own magic prevented that same energy from frying me into a crisp. By my side, my spellbook flew open to the appropriate energy storage pages to effectively catch all the natural energy of the lightning bolt. Then I took my blasting rod back in hand, feeling so supercharged and energized that like if I breathed, lightning would come flying out of my lips like Laxsu's Lightning Dragon Roar.
I focused my intent. This was the man who had slaughtered a harmless old woman, aided and abetted Brain's scheme.
The building would look better as rubble. It would be a better burial than he deserves.
"Dammit, I surrender!" An impressive, high quality longbow was tossed into the space between us. And I saw two empty hands extend out of the shadow of the doorway.
All the fury I felt was cut off at the knees by Morgana holding up my morality.
He has surrendered. Keep your guard up, but we are not a senseless killer.
I could see very easily when the archer stepped out into the open, hands raised. I couldn't see his face from within his cowl and he seemed to have a sort of half mask covering the upper part of his face too. Probably some magical tool that acted as his scope for the longer range shots. His shoulders were tense as he stepped forward, out away from his shelter and cautiously knelt on the waterlogged ground.
Morgana tugged on my book and brought it to hover open at my elbow, ready to receive whatever was placed in it. I let out a long breath, and dropped the blasting rod into it.
"Reshelve."
The blasting rod was whisked away to its proper place, and I tapped the pages to draw out a set of magic restraining handcuffs. I deactivated my shield and instead summoned a fistful of kinetic energy from my anklets. The mist from the controlled lightning strike around me was forcibly pushed back by the invisible, but swiftly moving energy I had rested at my fingertips, ready to let fly.
"Make one wrong move and you forfeit your surrender." I told him, raising my voice to be heard over the rain. He nodded, placing his hands on his head.
"I understand."
I circled around to approach him from his back, cuffing one wrist after the other and heating him to his feet. Which was not easy. He was solidly built under the protective rain gear and a few inches taller than I was.
That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing was that Morgana got...nothing from his history. Sure, I could track his movements since he arrived on the beach earlier but everything else was blurry and obscured by the Silence.
"You're one of Rilt's accomplices."
"In a sense." A faint accent coated his words. Hard to pin down. I glanced at his hands, noted the olive skin tone and turned him towards me to pluck off the scope. (Which is what it was, Morgana confirmed it.) Maroon hair hung into yellow, raptor like eyes with a hawkish nose.
"And you're Desier." I noted the distinctive features as hailing from the desert country of Desierto. The eyes and the red hair was a very distinctive trait of theirs that I had seen in their ambassador to Iceberg on my last visit. They were historically very welcoming of mages among them, and renowned for being loyal to their kin. So this man being beholden to someone like Rilt meant he had to have done something especially nasty or fallen into a world shattering pit of misfortune to end up in his employ.
A sardonic smile crossed his lips. A bitter expression.
"Am I now? That's nice to know."
"You don't know?" The regional features of the different countries were blended as borders were far from closed, but the distinctive looks of certain ethnicities were fairly common knowledge.
Morgana sighed and quietly prodded my assumptions in gentle correction.
They were common knowledge. For me in particular since I spent a solid chunk of the last seven years outside of Fiore. But international travel was far from common, thus not nearly as many people would have the experience that I did.
"Pagemaster, I will say this right now: I will tell you whatever you want to know about my boss. If your memory mages can find it, it's yours. I just want my name back."
His tone was bitter, his face lined with the burden of being uncertain about your own identity and dependent on someone you knew was not trustworthy but you had no choice but to rely on. There were few times when I had heard something more honest and sincere than this admission. And in spite of myself, I felt my heart softening and my resolve hardening.
He still killed Dora. I can't let him off easy.
Morgana gave me a pointed look, then gestured at the memories of visiting Eric in prison.
...not gonna acknowledge that right now.
"I'll see what can be done."
"I know you will." He turned back towards the blazing radiance of Regulus Flare.
What does he mean by that?
He was there when Brain had his final falling out with Macbeth. He knows when you help someone, they stand a much better chance of breaking away from unwanted influence.
"Because the lack of name is going to trip me up, I'm going to call you Archer."
"I can live with that." And his shoulders straightened slightly, Morgana noted he was wholeheartedly willing to accept that name on the sole basis that it did not come from Rilt.
Archer walked easily before me as we moved back towards Loke, I picked up and sealed his bow in my book for later examination. The light from my partner blinked out and I had to adjust for a second. Then Loke came out of the gloom, straightening his jacket and shaking wet hair out of his face.
"You alright?" He asked, hazel eyes looking over my prisoner sharply.
"Yeah."
"And Brain?"
"Dead."
Loke took a breath...then nodded, his unconditional acceptance brushing over my skin like a warm breeze.
"Alright."
"What happened to the Champion spirit?"
Loke huffed in answer, holding up a sodden, tawny pelt. The animal skin that the Champion had been wearing. Now that it was closer, I could see what it was. I had never seen one before and it was soaking wet, but the mane was pretty distinctive.
"Is that a lion skin?"
"Not exactly."
The leader of the Zodiac shook it, head tilted consideringly as he looked at his trophy, mouth twisted in a way I couldn't quite identify. Was he happy? Upset? Furious? Amused? There were too many mixed emotions. There was a certain satisfaction to him, his smirk just barely quirking the corners of his mouth.
Morgana chimed in then.
The first Champion is rumored to have been the one who killed Leo's previous, animalistic aspect to allow the current one to come into being.
My stomach lurched at the sudden connection as things suddenly made more sense.
"Loke, is that your-?"
He slung it over his shoulder, eyes glinting steel sharp and grin showing a hint of fang as his satisfaction grew.
"Yup."
"...Ok, I gotta ask." Archer asked, squinting through the rain. "Why is that impressive?"
"Celestial Spirits don't die as it were. We get reborn when our aspect suffers enough damage to need a reformation. The Champion's claim to fame is that their eldest member killed the previous Leo before the Celestials were organized into our current structure."
Archer made a small shrug, asking for further clarification and was obliged.
"If we had met many thousands of years ago, I'd have been an actual lion. I was trapped and killed by the Champion's first incarnation, Harrison, or Herk, something like that." He waved a dismissive hand. "He did what was normal for the time, skinned his kill and took the hide as a trophy. Even after the Celestial Spirit King revived me as I currently am, they kept this old thing as a family trophy."
If I was in a more lighthearted frame of mind, I'd have made a joke about how nonchalant he was being about this whole thing. He was holding his own skin for pity's sake! Archer spoke slowly, like he wasn't quite sure what he was hearing.
"...Pietro went to fight you...while literally wearing your own tanned hide."
That explains why Loke's light magic was having trouble actually landing the way it was supposed to.
Loke didn't seem too bothered by this.
"Yup."
We all stood in silence for a moment before Archer spoke again, grimacing.
"Ok, that's messed up."
The Lion of the Zodiac gave me a Look. The kind that spoke volumes.
I am not adopting him. Gana, remind me that I am not adopting him.
You do intend to help him in exchange for his witness, and history shows that you get attached.
I decided to focus on addressing other matters.
"We need to check on Ohdran."
A compliant prisoner was a novel thing to work with. I didn't have to spend extra effort to drag Archer around with me. Loke knelt to check on the former hostage where I had left him once he was no longer in immediate danger.
"He's got a pulse, but he doesn't seem to be responsive."
I laid a hand on his head and flinched. Where I would normally see a story, I found only a gaping void. There was nothing but the hollow feeling of wrongness, like seeing a man with no face. I could also vaguely see Dora tending to a largely catatonic young man as he sat and stared past her.
Well, he has been subject to the Silence for nearly his whole life. That's...gonna affect him pretty severely.
I had an idea of what I could do. But we had a corpse to dispose of, a Curse user to catch and a prisoner to handle. Though the last didn't seem to be that much of an issue, I refused to be lax about securing Archer. Trust could come later, right now I was going to operate that he knew how to slip cuffs and was waiting for a chance.
You know that isn't true.
Gana, I am hanging on by a thread right now. I love you, I trust you, but I need something concrete. Process, procedure and healthy paranoia are all concrete.
The echoes of Morgana's family life while she was still Dorathea criss-crossed this ground. The place where she and her siblings had come into the world. Not buried so deeply under the Silence that they were unnoticeable. Their lives had not been important enough for Rilt to erase specifically, and my connection to them was enough to still tell what was here
So one of my problems could be handled easily.
My spellbook flew under my hand, the pages flapping in their protective bubble of rain repellant runes until I reached the correct section. I pulled out two sections and turned towards Archer.
"Will you consent to being put into a comatose state until your arrest can be processed."
Golden eyes flicked down to the pages I held then back up to me.
"As long as I do not leave your possession, I accept."
That wording makes me uncomfortable.
But he likely was used to being objectified, directed like a tool.
"I will rouse you for processing once Rune Knights are available to take you into custody."
I carefully laid a loose page onto his chest, activating the runes stored energy with a light touch of magic power. His eyes closed and his head drooped, dead asleep on his feet. I had plenty of thoughts about Archer, gut feelings and instinctive reactions and a low simmer of resentment. But also pity.
The Silence had made him what G2.0 was meant to be. Morgana was redacting many parts of my memories from before I had assumed the position of the dominant personality. But even the vague shapes made it so I couldn't cut Archer off as a lost cause. I identified with him. With what I might have been.
"Collecting another career criminal, Fae?"
"Shut up and go collect Brain's body, please." I grumbled, shoving the other loose page at him. I was too riled up about the man and literally supercharged with the remnants of a lightning bolt to work the dispassionate runes that were based on the Naruto ANBU unit. It was not a stretch to think that they might need a means to transport a body as proof of death. But it also meant I or Morgana had to be calm enough to use them. And I couldn't compartmentalize that well right now.
"Should I be worried that you had a spell prepared to transport a dead body?"
"It was left over from an archaeological excavation I helped with a few years ago."
I knelt by Ohdren's side, inspecting him more closely for any injuries and snagging a bit of blood for a tracking spell. An uncle to nephew relationship was not that close blood wise, but since they were each other's only living relative, it balanced out the faint connection.
I dropped the blood onto my pentacle after muttering another Dresden-style tracking spell. The red gem absorbed it and started to pull my wrist back towards the shore.
Can you simulate us following that and get a location from it?
Let's find out.
By having Morgana mentally follow the tracking spell while I worked here, I could have a fixed location to jump to via the Nevernever effect of the totem rather than needing to run it down myself.
I left her to that task as Loke returned with a folded sheet of paper than contained what was left of Brain.
"Was he cleaning house?" He handed me the paper containing Brain's pincushioned body, the arrows that Archer had directed at me still in him.
"He was aiming at me and I redirected the shots. I think after that he had to improvise some adjustments to a preset ritual. He couldn't have done what he tried without being nearly dead, but Brain also values himself too much to make me think he asked to get shot."
Loki's eyes narrowed slightly.
"What exactly did he try?"
I would blame the adrenaline still pumping in my system for the nonchalance with which I answered.
"He attempted Human Takeover on me."
Loke's eyes turned to cat-like slits and an apoplectic look of rage came over him.
"He what?!"
"He failed and his admission ticket for the attempt was bought through the sacrificial ritual he had set up there. Sorry for not being clear about that. But at least one of us needed a clear head to store him."
I fortified my body with a touch of magic, and picked up Ohdran with Loke coming in on the other side to help me lift him.
"Let's get out of the rain and call the Rune Knights."
-vVv-
I sent out a Patronus to Lahir, informing him that I had uncovered a massive incident and had caught and killed an escaped prisoner in confronting him, and that he needed to call in every available memory mage and forensic accountant we had to try and get ahead of things. Rilt's criminal career had spanned over a decade, growing unchecked by traditional means by the nature of his gifts. He would have spent a lot of effort covering up the big crimes and not as much on organizing his spending. And he would have stacked everything to rely almost solely on him, as I doubted he trusted anyone, or shared power willingly. There was going to be a massive vacuum. This would be felt in multiple countries, not just ours.
"Faerun, it is 3am."
"Believe me, I am aware."
He gave a low groan of someone who was not ready to have to be awake for this conversation or the next ones he would need to have,
"Akane is the closest town. I'll tell them to muster out to your location and be ready for anything. First Watch will be there in 15 minutes."
"Thank you, Captain."
And with that, I hung up on him and next placed a call to Simon, holding my scrying orb in hand. He looked much like Lahir, like I had woken him up in the night. He didn't comment on the hour, and didn't despair of my successfully finding trouble while I was supposed to be at a party. Again.
"Where are you and are you safe?"
For some reason, this stopped everything I had to say to him. He didn't ask what had happened, didn't ask for an explanation. I swallowed, feeling surprisingly vulnerable under his gaze which didn't look annoyed or drained. He looked worried.
Cancer's make up didn't smudge or run even with the running, the fighting and the rain. My hair was a soaked mess, and I still was a little supercharged with the lightning. Even with Celestial Magic holding my appearance together so I didn't look as tired as I felt, I didn't look well. And that was before I got into what I had called him about.
"I'm home."
I admitted. Brows lowered over dark eyes and he glanced at my surroundings, noting it definitely was not home.
"I am going to need something more than that, Fae."
"I found the village where I was born, Simon. Or what's left of it. Before the R-system suppliers burned it to the ground, this was where I would have grown up."
The words just weren't stopping. Burning my chest even as I spoke. My eyes felt hot and itchy but no tears would fall. Things were still unfinished. Tears were an expression of emotion but they were also for healing. And I was still hurting too bad to think about healing right now.
"Are you safe?"
"Loke's with me and the immediate danger has passed."
And Simon looked me over for another second, then said very quietly and definitively.
"I assume you're not there on a whim, so I won't pry further. For now. What brought you down there?"
I could see Simon rising from his bed and setting up a recording lacrima to capture what I was about to say to let him formulate the official Guild Response for when the storm broke the next morning.
I told him everything that had happened, Morgana helping condense everything and pare it down to the immediately critical information.
I had been alerted to a kidnapping while in the Celestial Realm.
I had pursued the kidnapper and safely retrieved all his hostages.
While interrogating the kidnapper, evidence suggested there was a mastermind orchestrating the evening's attempt.
And pursuing that mastermind had unearthed a 15 year old mass murder, a family annihilation and a criminal network spanning multiple countries.
The mastermind, to whatever end, had been able to release Brain from his incarceration without raising red flags for literally anyone.
We had fought and Brain was now dead.
I was in process to catch the mastermind and had secured two potential witnesses who had been under the mastermind's power.
Simon listened to everything, stepping out of view to get dressed since it seemed like he wouldn't be getting any further rest tonight.
"Do you have the means to track this man?"
"I do."
"Is Loke still with you?"
"Yes."
Then the 4th Guild Master of Fairy Tail's eyes gleamed with a ferocity. The depth of protective emotion and faith he had held for us under his care. Simon was readying for battle.
"Find this man, Fae. Neutralize him however you see fit, just keep him alive. I'll contact our coalition."
That was an order. But there was a lot of leeway in the order to. And this was from a man who had darkness magic. And had just been told he was speaking to someone who had killed a man not ten minutes earlier.
Brain was his captor too. Simon managed to conceal his own abilities from Brain, otherwise he would have been drafted for the Oracion Seis.
No, Simon would not mourn that Brain was dead. He wouldn't have any sympathy for the man that let him out of prison either. Like Kagura, the list of his loved ones was finite. And he was merciless in defending us, or in turning us loose to defend ourselves.
"I understand."
"Give me an update in two hours."
Exchanging a few words with Loke was all that was needed to catch him up to speed on our mission. We dropped Ohdran off in his room, and a Thought Projection from a Rune Knight Medic came in to watch over him. But I doubted that Ohdran would wake up on his own.
In carrying him to his house, I had felt more hollow, echoing holes in him than anyone should have. His uncle's actions had made it so Ohdran had grown up with a very patchwork soul. I had to scour for some memories in him, something that he wouldn't have deemed important and so he would still have. Some place where Rilt didn't go as often, but Ohdran did to be safe. I ended up settling him on a cot in the barn where I saw he had years worth of memories from spending time with his horses.
"What's the significance of this place?"
The medic asked, businesslike and professional.
"The house is cocooned in years worth of curse residue. Ohdran has been subject to that curse for so long he would be especially sensitive to it. If he is going to wake up, it won't be in the house, but here, where he feels the most at home."
"Understood, Pagemaster."
A few more Thought Projections were sent in to stand watch until the Rune Knights could arrive. In ideal weather, a small airship would be the transport of choice. But with the still stormy sky overhead, it was going to be delayed. Thought Projections couldn't interact with physical objects. Just watch and speak. It would have to be enough for now.
-vVv-
Once things were underway to stake out the ReQuim Estate and begin a more in depth investigation, it was time to continue on the trail. And find the actual perpetrator that would tie this evening together. Loke clasped my hand and we jumped from Earthland, to the Celestial Realm, and back to Earthland, only now we were outside a fancy hotel in Juniper.
Is he here?
Yes.
Rilt.
Reedy Rilt.
I had no image, but I had a blood connection and a pendant tugging me forward. It swung wildly, showing a crisscross of trails and tracks. I needed something to narrow down my frame of reference.
Unchallenged arrogance breeds carelessness and habit.
"Excuse me, I have a few questions." I lifted my hand to flash my guild mark and the tired looking man seemed to wake up a little bit. His eyes darted over me in my soaked long dark coat, and Loke who had evaporated the water on him to look relatively fresh again.
"Yes ma'am?"
"Is there a room that never seems to be booked but always looks like it's been used? It would be one of the nicer ones. Whenever you try to upsell it to a guest, it slips your mind?"
He hummed, flipping through the guest registry.
"Nothing's coming to mind, but all our good rooms are up on the 5th floor. They come with a privacy guarantee and meal order by written request."
That was vague enough that it couldn't give me a direct line of connection. And Rilt could have someone keeping a lookout to warn him and let him get away. I needed something more. Asking the man at the desk to note of anyone leaving the building or coming and going at strange hours would not get much either.
The horses. He has the horses with him!
"Is there a stable adjoining the hotel for personal vehicles and horses?"
"Yes ma'am. It's just around back. Two night watchman are posted there from dusk to dawn."
Because people did so love their horses and they could be incredibly valuable, especially if they were pedigree.
"Thank you."
I left out the door, moving briskly over to the stables, my tracking spell was jerking around still, but it was pulling my pentacle towards the stable doors in fitful jerks and starts. The rain was confusing the tracking spell, washing out the trail.
So I paused, standing between the stable and the hotel. And I cut off the tracking spell and lifted the pentacle instead, focusing with all my might on what I knew about Rilt.
The flashes of him as a young man, coupled with the coachman who had boldly walked in through the front door. Put his hands on everything, and gotten away clean. Broken out Brain and who knows how many others out of prison over the years, erasing them and starting their terrorizing all over again. But he was not going to get away with it tonight. And that made a bubble of fierce, hot joy bloom in my chest.
"Expecto Patronum." The silver light streamed out of the totem I held.
The owl flapped its silent wings, peering at me with bright, burning amber eyes. I reached into my memory and consciously spoke with a different speech pattern. Different intonation that I had had spoken within my very soul
"You know who I am. We need to talk."
And with my patronus having had its message, and off it flew, vanishing into invisibility to reach its intended recipient.
"You have a plan?"
I explained Loke quietly, withdrawing slightly and looping an arm around him to fly us both up to the roof.
"Rilt never had someone come so close as he has tonight. It's why he came personally to take care of Hector. My being able to respond so quickly forced him to deviate from his original plan. He has not been able to cover things up as thoroughly.".
"But he's never had a real loss before. So he'll be ready for Brain to contact him, telling him all clear and he can come pick up his nephew."
Loke gave a grin.
"And you just sent him a message that says loud and clear that you know who he is."
I gave a small, razor thin smile, settling down and listening closely.
"There are two options. Either, he'll be aware of what Brain intended with me. Thus, my contacting him will be exactly what he expects. The other option-"
A window down below cracked as something was hurled against it. I grabbed Loke and started to glide down to the window to peek inside.
There was the elderly coachman who had taken us to Lord Thain's estate several hours prior. Pacing in the large suite, face pale as a sheet. I finished my sentence with a smile I knew was a little too much like Mira at her most devilish.
"He'll panic."
-vVv-
The plan afterwards was simple.
Rilt was already on edge after my Patronus rattled his cage, so to speak. So I dropped Loke off so bar the main door of his suite, and I hovered outside, watching for when he made for the balcony or the fire escape.
Loke was protected from the Silence simply by having pre-resolved to deck whoever came to the door. Rilt was non-confrontational by nature, so he would try to run rather than stand his ground. Which meant he would try and get out of the room as quickly as possible and head for a bolt hole somewhere. I heard Loke start to scuffle with someone inside the hallway, just as the balcony door opened. I was hovering just over the window, and grinned.
"Laqueus."
A cord of glowing orange energy wrapped around both Rilt's ankles, making him look down in alarm.
Then I rapidly flew upwards, making him bash his head against the balcony's floor and rendering him unconscious.
And that, anticlimactic though it was, was that. That was all it took to catch the Silence.
-vVv-
I was waiting for Rilt when he woke up, seated across an interrogation table from him with his hands and ankles bound in my personally designed restraints. The ones that were meant to nullify Curses.
The memories Morgana had been able to recover of Rilt as a young man showed him as slight with dark hair and gray eyes. But that image was also at least 15 years old. He was firmly middle aged now, with a short trimmed beard that was still largely dark as well. He had minimal wrinkles and spots. The only noticeable blemish was a shadow of bruising on the side of his head where he had been knocked out earlier.
Well why wouldn't he? Man's probably not had a stressful day in his life thanks to his talent and curse.
"Good evening Mr Zacchus."
He recoiled slightly as if I were a poisonous snake he was trying not to spook.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Celeste Faerun, also known as Pagemaster." His shoulders relaxed, I felt the false story rise up, ready to pounce on weakness. "I recall being accosted in my hotel room. Do I have you to thank for my rescue?"
For a man who was sitting in a cell in chains, he had nothing but audacity.
He is presenting the Silence a viable story option to try and push you into letting him go. Our word would be a potent witness to his innocence.
I remained unwavering.
"I've had a very busy evening. And I am in need of your assistance to tie matters up quickly. So I will need to lay out matters as I understand them. These events have been in development for some time."
"I'm all ears." He said smoothly, shifting slightly in his chair.
"This begins with the Requiem family. I understand you are related to them by marriage."
His face flushed rapidly, but he stayed quiet. At this point, he needed information. Needed to know what he needed to erase.
"After your brief association with the Whispers, you were expelled from the world of academia. The Requiem's gave you a place to stay, as a tutor to their children."
"I fail to see how this relates to me."
Orange runes spread out over the table, flaring suddenly in transparent orange flames that covered him. He yelped and I tapped the runic outlay, dousing the heatless flames.
"That was a bald faced lie, Mr Zacchus. Kindly do not interrupt me again unless you intend to tell the truth."
Zone of Truth was only supposed to react with a flare of light. But I had played with the reaction somewhat by adding 'liar liar pants on fire' and it had a very poignant reaction.
He didn't interrupt me again and I was able to lay out everything that I knew.
"I know a story about a boy from a small town who managed to break out of it and get educated. He was extremely smart and had, with some effort, unlocked a hint of Memory Magic. Just enough to perform basic cantrips with. To make learning easier. To recall information perfectly. It meant he excelled as a student."
I kept my words calm and level. A recitation of facts.
"His ambitions were great and he doubtless had a tremendous future ahead of him. He spent years learning everything that he possibly could. Even things that a more...restrictive personality would have balked at. Unfortunately, he had to leave Crocus University after too many instances of questionable conduct that could not be erased. Trespassing, evidence of transactions with the crowd of mages, who would come to be known as the Whispers. These days, they are known as the Dark Guild whose actions resulted in the outlaw of Charm magic in X780."
Rilt's face lost all of its color as something that had doubtless not been voiced in years was spoken.
"Frustrated, disgraced and with his flawless reputation tainted, he returned to his home. And found that his sister had married into a noble family. Out of a singular generosity that few people have and the world doesn't see nearly enough, his brother-in-law gave him a place in his household as a tutor. He even provided him housing in the nearby village."
"Stop it... no one knows this anymore. No one can..."
I kept speaking, rolling my lacrima pen in my hand almost absently.
"But to someone who was pursuing a doctorate in political science, with social aspirations to match: scraping by tutoring elementary aged children, his nephews and the staff's children, was appalling. A criminal waste of his potential and talent. So he didn't feel any gratitude to his brother in law and sister for giving him a place to stay. Only resentment."
His hand worked, eyes focused on me intently as he seemed to be reaching for something in his mind that was no longer there.
"That feeling stayed buried for years. He swallowed his rage and taught at the local school house. And try though he might, he could never gain more. The dark cloud of his past mistakes were still following him. While his family connections let him provide for himself, he could not get the clout he wanted due to his past association with the Whispers."
I set my pen down in front of me, orange runes pulsing slowly on the table, and surrounding us both.
"Then a plague swept through the land, wiping out half of the Requim family. And that resentment this man, that you, had been nursing, when worked on by a stray burst of a powerful curse, the kind that creates demons, spawned the Silence. Its emergence suddenly let you erase every bad thing people have ever seen you do. Let you dictate what people think of you." I cocked my head, looking at the man then more searchingly. Deep and penetrating.
"But that wasn't all that it did for you. It was not just a means to accomplish what you felt was denied you. It made you special. I doubt you ever even knew what you were using was in fact a curse. You just knew that you were never caught."
Rilt's lips worked, trying to work up words that wouldn't get him set on fire again. In spite of the flames not burning him, they looked plenty real.
Did he know that it was a curse?
He concluded that it was. But he decided that it was a blessing.
He eventually managed to form some words.
"You sound as though you've got a good story formulated. Your talent for fiction is truly unparalleled."
Still grasping at straws. Still trying to gaslight me into his narrative and not understanding why it was not working.
"I'm not finished." I said coolly, making him freeze anew. Hibiki had, in the scant hours and a half since I had last spoken to him, sent over a considerable list of the cases I had asked for. Morgana had filtered the list down to what I wanted for this conversation.
I produced an Archive screen with a wave of my hand over my spell book. It was a manifest of seafood purchases from fishermen near the coast of Bosco.
Rilt stared at them. Uncomprehending.
"I suppose this would not matter to you. So you missed it when you did the next major act that is going to get you locked up like a rat in the dark for the rest of your life."
Morgana fed the information to me so I could keep watching him without needing to read.
"The village you came from had a bit of tourism, given its nearness to Akane. There were some nicer bed and breakfast type establishments for those who wanted to have the duality of a good vacation. Party during the day with Akane but retreat to a quiet place at night. But it was also one of the most popular fishing grounds for sea urchins."
He was looking bemused but uncomfortable. He could sense the noose was closing in, but couldn't connect as to why this mattered. Which made me furious.
I swept the Archive screen to the side with a gesture making him focus on me.
"This place was your hometown. However much you hated it, or wanted to leave it, you cannot tell me that you have forgotten."
That seemed to crack him. He grimaced in disgust.
"I could never forget the smell of the docks. Or the stink of the fishermen as they hauled in their catch and were paid a pittance while the wealthy pretended they were charmed by them."
It was a step towards a confession. Though it wasn't what I was here for.
"There were 1265 people in that village who were regular inhabitants. There could be as many as 3000 during the busiest tourist season."
"It was a miracle even a quarter of that rabble could even spell their name. And less than half of that number could even conceive of a world outside their borders."
Rilt's voice was tight, his brow creased with lines of anger as a topic he had buried for years resurfaced to catch him off guard.
"I suppose that made what you did to them easier." I matched his intensity, leaning forward slightly. "Because all of those fishing sales vanished. And no one ever seemed to question where they went. Akane ended up building their own section of resorts further east to fill in the gaps and soon no one could recall having ever gone elsewhere."
"No one wanted to remember that place."
The flames of my Zone of Truth spell surged in response to his words, and he flinched back.
"Untrue. But even if it were, it does not excuse you for selling over a thousand people into slavery on behalf of the Oracion Seis."
Rilt had sold his hometown out to the dark guilds that were collecting slaves for the R-system. He sold me to Brain. Dorathea never had her chance at life, suffering so much that living as a non-entity, forgetting everything about herself, was preferable to holding on. It was this man's fault. He had put a collar on my neck with a price tag dangling from it. Even if I hadn't qualified for Project Garden, I would have grown up not knowing what freedom was because she would have been at the Tower of Heaven for my entire life.
Until Fairy Tail came in and unmade it. Leaving me hollowed out at the thought there could have been a life I lived where they never found me. Where I would have been treated well by them, but ultimately a stranger.
"This is all conjecture. You have nothing!" Rilt hissed, seeming to age visibly before my eyes as his confidence started to shake. "Two witnesses. You need two witnesses to even accuse someone of something of this magnitude!"
I gave him my best Mirajane smile.
"Oh good, you do know how very, very much trouble you are in. You wouldn't be given the death sentence, this is too big for that. You'd probably rot in a box until you begged to tell people what you've done."
The man lunged forward, crashing against the table from his chair and was abruptly halted by chains materializing around his legs and chest. His brow furrowed as he reached for his weapon. The Curse that had granted him so much over the last 15 years. And felt whatever was there slide out of his grasp. Useless, and non-existant.
"Accuse me Pagemaster, or release me. And rest assured you will be speaking with my representative either way."
"So terrifying." I mocked him. "Unfortunately for you, there are at least four people who can speak to the events of the last 24 hours. Two of them are witnesses that a man who claimed collusion with you is supposed to be in maximum security prison for his acts as the Guild Master of the Oracion Seis. Which puts your lawyer firmly out of his comfort zone and at a severe disadvantage if he wants to argue that you are not guilty of this. But most importantly, are the witnesses that can attest to the rest of your crimes, even starting all the way back with your hometown."
"There is no one!" He snapped. "No one alive remembers that pathetic pile of driftwood and rotten seascum-Stop that!"
I smiled as the flames roared around him, sending a faint smell of burned linen into the air. He wasn't actually in danger of being burned, but I had been feeling especially petty when I wrote this spell.
"You're not a Rune Knight, you have no right to interrogate me like this!"
"I do, actually. And you are wrong when you say no one remembers Wave Crest."
The casual name drop made his hands ball into tight fists. His eyes were round and stunned as the name he himself had tried to eradicate from existence was spoken aloud against after 15 years of being buried in an Archive Record from the early days of Blue Pegasus. Hibiki had an old order buried back in his records that he had taken over when he became Bob's right hand man. The name had been a small thing to find. But the damning evidence that there had once been a village there was telling when connected with the rest of the evidence and the testimony.
I leaned in, hands steeped in front of me.
"The sky is normally orange."
The flames flared around me in response to my blatant fib, showing that I was under the effects of the spell too. He noticed that and connected that immediately, lifting to meet my eyes with fear in his gaze.
The flames had not responded to me even once this whole conversation. So I had been truthful throughout. But I wanted to finish this man. Cut out the whole rotten tree, root and stem so it would never grow ambition again.
"There was a little girl whose family named Dorathea that was among those you allowed to be taken captive. Brain's compatriots had her for 5 years. And what they did to her, how they raised her, destroyed any chance she had of living as a person. Not until she was rescued by a Fairy Tail wizard when she was 7 years old did she ever have a life worth living."
Rilt didn't react outwardly, but I could feel his last fragile hope crumbling with every word I spoke.
"And she's grown up now to become, among other things, a rather talented Curse Breaker."
"Don't!" He lurched back, actively cowering now, he couldn't wrap his arms around himself defensively. "Don't touch it, don't take it away, please!"
It was somewhat pathetic, I thought, that this was the thing that made him break. That made him beg. The thought of losing his Curse hit him harder than being exposed for slavery, for fraud, for anything that he had done with it.
So I felt especially satisfied with what I had to tell him.
"I've been saying plenty of uncomfortable things that would have made it trigger automatically with how accustomed you've gotten to rewriting the narrative to suit your purposes. But you mean that you haven't noticed that it has not been responding to you in the slightest?"
He was trembling slightly in his chair.
"You didn't..."
"Oh I did. I broke your curse before you ever even woke up. You're not special anymore, Reedy Rilt. Now you're just a criminal. I will take great pleasure in making sure that your name is forgotten."
I rose and was out of the room before he finished processing that. So I was nowhere in reach for when things finally processed for him and the temper emerged.
Rilt threw a tantrum like a spoiled toddler. He tried to uproot the table and chair, throw them around, throw himself around. But all he ended up doing was thrashing against the bindings and not succeed in going anywhere. Mest tapped the recording runes with a sigh, the silencing runes were already engaged, preventing us from hearing his screaming as a man watched everything he had built in his life burn before his eyes.
"Did you get what you need from him?"
"No." I admitted, looking at Rilt dispassionately. "For me to get an idea of what Ohdran is like, he would have needed to have a chance to develop something that Rilt interacted with. A lot of the time, it was like Ohdran was an empty shell, a doll that Rilt puppeted around to use the name and business. He doesn't have anything for me to recover."
"We need him as a witness. As you are the arresting wizard, it weakens the case to have you stand as a witness as well. Especially if Archer, while willing, cannot corroborate the deaths of the ReQuim family."
I gave him a flat look.
"You cannot mean that his legal team could bail him out of this. He never relied on them to do that before. They are the most comfortably unchallenged lawyers in several countries." Mest lifted his hands in mock surrender.
"No, you've got enough to make sure Rilt never sees the light of day for a couple hundred years. But unless Ohdran can testify under the Zone of Truth that he was not an accomplice, he'll go down with his uncle for everything."
My gut lurched at the thought, but Morgana whispered, reading the laws Mest had been reviewing, that he was right.
"He was just a little boy when his uncle killed his family."
"And on paper, he backed every decision Rilt has ever made. At first by proxy, which is probably an alias for Rilt that he burned once Ohdran was of age."
I sighed, massaging my temple.
"You're the expert, how much do you think he will remember?"
The Fairy Tail Memory mage hemmed and hawed for a moment, thinking deeply. I could feel Morgana pursuing through the scraps of information she could read from him about the topic. Books and research that Fiore kept as discreet as possible.
"Given how young he was when Rilt started this whole thing? Probably not too much. He might even revert to a child's mindset entirely."
And Mest was also thinking through with some concern of the further ramifications of that.
A mind that was not exercised went stagnant. A child's mind had an incredible elasticity, the traits that allowed it to absorb knowledge like a sponge and grow rapidly. Ohdran was at the moment in his mid twenties. Most of if not all of his growth was behind him. If he started with a child's memory in an adult body, he would almost certainly never reach functional capacity. But he would still be locked up for the rest of his life and need care for the entire duration of it for something he was not guilty of active participation with.
Rilt's last hurrah.
And an entirely unacceptable one in my eyes.
-vVv-
I had Loke jump me back to the ReQuim estate. Then I asked for a bit of privacy and space from both him and the Rune Knight who had been watching him.
Because what I was about to undertake was a new kind of challenge. And not wholly illegal, but it was certainly toeing some ethical lines. And treading dangerously close to the Law of Death.
Because Ohdran was technically still alive, I could theoretically reach into his mind and rework it into a functional state. He was a blank slate, there would be few if any edges to cause discord or mental discomfort.
But it was still reaching into what made a person a person. Effectively handling his soul.
We have a story that touches on that, don't we?
Yes.
Forging came from a world with precise, careful magic. It was tapping the story of a thing, and suggesting that it took another turn than what reality dictated. Suggesting to a drab dreary window that a famous stained glass artisan had stayed in the room. And that he had been inspired to create a window for the room that was more beautiful and suiting for the place that housed him. And the soul of the window yearned for that beauty and accepted the false story, becoming a beautiful piece of stained glass rather than a cracked, shaky pane.
Additionally, there was another aspect of the Harry Dresden totem that aligned with that as well. The concept of Soulfire. An angelic answer to the destruction of Hellfire, Soulfire was the purest force of creation in the Dresden Universe. It was a thing of sacrifice. You had to siphon off a portion of your own soul's energy to create what you were doing. But the impact of putting everything you had into a spell paid off in the long run. And the soul regenerated itself over time just as part of its natural life cycle.
Risky. No precedent to follow. Questionable as hell. And I might end up making him a vegetable rather than actually helping him.
Morgana pressed gently on my mind, making me look at Ohdran. Really look at him.
He couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 years old when his uncle slaughtered his family and stole the memory from him. And as he lay there sleeping now, the other times I had seen him in passing seemed cheap in comparison. Here, serene in sleep was the only time he was truly himself.
It's do nothing and let a little boy be punished alongside his family's murderer. Or try and risk having a law be written regarding Story Mages.
Or risk creating a demon.
Yes, thank you for the reminder.
I had not thought about Silver Fullbuster frequently. But I did think of him persistently as I poured over the stories I had available. Many of those where sentient undead existed also had the means to raise the dead. So returning him to a truly dead state and then raising him again was... theoretically possible for me. But Earthland didn't follow that line of thinking. So the only way to set Silver free...was to kill the necromancer enslaving him. So I had built up a hoard of totems and accompanying stories that might let me do that. Once I found him.
But if I screwed this up and made this innocent man a demon...
Fae...Silver's Devil Slayer magic, while powerful and dangerous, did not automatically unmake you.
My other half reminded me.
Soulfire will come from that same place. It will not automatically cross the line into demonic territory. You are not trying to hide what happened to Ohdran. You are not trying to convince him he is something he is not. You just want to find the pieces of him, and put them together into someone who can speak the truth and live his own life.
He might not thank me for giving him his mind back after everything he has gone through.
Ohdran may not have been expressly tortured, but he would remember being puppeteered. Remember being empty. And I doubted I would be able to do something like this without impressing the sensation of how abhorrent I found the notion of being controlled against my will.
But it will be done by his capacity. With his free will.
I lifted my spellbook and let it hover beside me. There was no magic circle I could rely on to make this work. The only ones that did exist were the kind that Brain would have wanted me to use to rewrite Jellal's mind when he had me in his power. To convince Jellal that he actually was the bad guy who had built the Tower of Heaven.
But thinking of that made me feel somewhat better. I had done something like this before. I had reminded Jellal that what had happened to him was done under another's power. And that it was not his fault. None of it. The opposite of what Brain had wanted.
I laid my hands over my chest and concentrated. Every wizard could convert their lifeforce into magic when pushed to their utmost limit. But this was me reaching past the limit without being fully down down and desperate and grabbing at the stuff that made me a living being. Scooping up a handful of my innermost essence and biding it turn into energy. The totem guided this, but I had to be careful that this didn't cross into Death Curse territory. Which, similarly to a Third Origin fueled spell, would tap all the magical power a wizard had the potential to access over the course of their life and spend it all at once
I didn't want that.
It took a few tries to grasp what I wanted. But when I had it, I opened my eyes to see my hands and the Dresden totem shining with a silver-white light.
Now or never.
I leaned over Ohdran, placing one hand over his eyes and the other over his heart. And I started to delve into his story in earnest, finding the horrible, empty echoes. And the soulfire spell caught the wisps of identity within him and made them blossom and grow. The seeds bursting shell into seedlings, then rapidly growing into saplings, then trees.
I saw his joy at being with his horses.
I saw his frustration for his injured leg, and the restrictions it placed on his life.
I saw his affection for Dora, who loved and mothered him as her own.
I saw his petulant childishness when he had a head cold.
I even saw for a brief moment, myself. The times when I had come into contact with him as a client and as an escort for Jude when he was on business.
I saw his whole life through eyes that had been uncomprehending and caring thanks to his uncle's curse. It was so difficult to just start up the process and keep out my own feelings. Let his own assert themselves before mine could get mixed up in him. I wanted Ohdran seated within his own body, not a copy of myself.
Not so thorough, Fae. We don't have the energy for a complete rebuild. Just the bare necessities.
Morgana's cautionary words made me dial back. With his personality largely blank, I focused on the social knowledge and motor skills he would need. How to read a person's expression, process a smile, a frown, tie a shoe, recognize hunger, thirst and the need for rest. Morgana kept careful track of my expenditure and cut me off with a gentle shake.
I collapsed back into the chair by Ohdran's bed, feeling my hands trembling with the exertion. The bone deep tiredness I had been holding at bay after running up down and around for most of the night was now looming over me like a mountain.
I need to know. I need to be sure.
I scoured every corridor of my mind, making sure I was not connected with Ohdran still in anyway. That his mind was his own and I was in no way influencing it. And once I was assured of that, I reached out. But I overestimated my current strength and my hand didn't tap Ohdran so much as flop onto his shoulder.
"Ennervate."
He wouldn't wake up for more than a few minutes. His body needed rest and I didn't have the strength to hold him conscious. But his eyes roved around, bleary and confused. Then he blinked a few times, brow furrowing and smoothing as he found himself able to think for what likely was the first time in his life. He moved his head slightly, looking down at my hand, then following my arm up to my face.
From where we were connected, I saw my own face looking back at him.
I looked gray and sick from what I had done, though it hadn't taken more than a minute to accomplish. I pulled my arm back, double checking yet again sure his mind and my mind were separate.
"Can you tell me your name?" I asked heavily. He blinked slowly, hand reaching out.
"Ohdran." His finger caught the very tips of my hair and he seemed startled, moving them between his fingers.
"...You're not the curtains."
Then he promptly passed out again.
I smiled, leaning back into the hard wooden chair that suddenly felt like a feather bed.
"I think I'd make pretty curtains." The ridiculousness of the moment literally made me chuckle myself to sleep.
-vVv-
Rather than falling into true unconsciousness, I opened my eyes back in the viewing room that I had first properly met Morgana in.
The walls looked a bit thinner now. The fortress had gotten shaved down. Likely from the Soulfire transferring the material and structure pattern to Ohdran. And there were now a few parts that looked decidedly patchwork. The pristine tile floor had been ripped up in some spots to show bare concrete floor in one area and what looked like wooden struts over blank emptiness. Morgana quickly pulled a sheet over the gap and it quickly melded into a plain laminate.
"Damn. I didn't think-"
"Well, Soulfire is a donation of self to a cause. Some damage is to be expected." She sounded alright. Calm, reasonable and rational. Not upset in the slightest that I had essentially trashed her home.
"I promise I'll fix it. Comfort food will help, right?"
"Companionship, friends, rest and happiness will set it to rights again, but that is not why I pulled you here."
My twin gestured at her various viewing ports. A series of screens through which she could see what I saw and recall other information from our archives in a flash.
"I just wanted to tell you what I read off of Ohdran. His sleep drunk ramble was far from telling."
I came up beside her to the side viewing screen. The primary one that was usually my vision and viewpoint was dark. But the smaller one had captured an image of the moment Ohdran and I locked eyes.
Printed there were words that lifted my heart and made the weakened walls of our inner sanctum grow stronger and sturdier.
I remember.
He was watching his fragmented life from an outsider's perspective. And he would still have a lot healing to do. But there was a mind there now that could catch those memories and experiences and turn them into a sense of self.
"So it worked." I felt weak in the knees with relief and I let myself fold to the ground with a sigh. Actually I just collapsed onto the floor entirely. A short moment later, Morgana joined me there, taking my hand in hers with a tiny smile.
"It did. He'll need time to assimilate his new cognitive capacity. But you have constructed enough schemas for him to have a place to start growing as he should have. My projections indicate that with enough support and proper counseling, Ohdran will be able to live an independent, full life."
I rubbed the floor under me, feeling a rough edge in the tile and lifting my hand to see a bit of jagged caulk stuck to my fingers, tacky and old.
"I did not realize the Soulfire would take stuff out of here. Especially not so...violently. That must have been scary. I'm sorry."
Morgana hummed, reaching out and making the caulk vanish with a tap of her finger.
"It is alright. I wanted to help him just as much as you did. And I think this place is due for a remodel anyway."
I smiled, closing my eyes and leaning on her shoulder, taking comfort in the quietness in our own mind.
"Yeah. We're gonna have a lot of big changes coming our way."
"We shall be ready for them."
I would have agreed, but I was already halfway to dreamland.
And there I saw a toddler, standing on a boat. A dusting of light green hair curling around her ears. She was bouncing with excitement, squealing and waving at a distant shore where a throng of people waited for her.
I smiled in that dream, knowing that after 15 years of wandering forgotten: a little girl had finally found her way home.