Endymion's final notes.
Warning; This chapter gets dark near the end
[ACMItM: And only the miracle remained]
Ladylee opened her eyes.
She was alive of course, it wasn't like she would die. Even if it would be a miracle, hers was not to be granted.
It ate at her. She had failed to die again. Once again, a plan had failed. What did that make it now? Over one hundred attempts? Two hundred? Probably much more.
She had lived normally at first after being cursed. She had lived for a few happy years. She had realised she wasn't aging after a year or two but thought nothing of it at first. She had yet to go through puberty at that time and she learned she probably never would.
No, it was when she was twenty that people started getting worried.
"She hasn't aged in nearly a decade." "She's creepy." "Maybe she's a witch, she could have sold her soul for enternal youth."
I mean really? They could have thought I was some saint. That would have probably made her happy.
She had fled town not long after that and she began to travel. She reached Paris and settled down there at first. She had begged for food, water and money and had been chased off more than once.
There, in the mud and grime, she passed a good few years. She was thirty before she was driven out.
At some point in the first hundred years she joined an order of mages. She couldn't do magic however. Something about her immortality made magic impossible.
She did learn though. In some ways you could say she was a lot like Index. She became a host to knowledge. Her memory wasn't perfect though and so the grimoires burned her mind whenever she forgot parts of them so she would be unable to forget.
Many would die from that, from having grimoires destroy parts of their brain. She didn't though, she couldn't die.
She started to want to though.
She left the order sometime in the next hundred years and joined a different one. This time it was one in the middle east that she learned some things she could actually use even in her state. She learned to make golems that could do her bidding.
Another hundred years and another order. She moved in this way until the 18th century.
It had been too long by this time. By this time her death was what she wanted more than anything else.
She spent a lot of time searching for something, anything, that could kill her. She burned through the normal ones quickly before moving on to the stranger ones.
Her body, her mind, her soul. Killing just one would be enough but none would die. Death magic couldn't end any of them.
But around this time she figured it out. The planet was keeping her alive. It was the leylines, they were the source of her endless life. So to die she would need to do it somewhere beyond the earth's pull.
On fateful date in the 20th century she had watched mankind's first trip to the moon. That was it. She knew that all she had to do was die in space.
As it turned out no. That wasn't enough. Orbit portal had been founded by now so she took a trip into space and let a bomb go off.
She drifted in space for hours before falling back to earth. No, that alone wasn't enough. If the earth could save her, it would.
Well then, all she had to do was not give it that chance.
She would destroy the earth and die!
"Ladylee? Are you awake?"
She finally saw. The room around her was cast in orange light.
[ACMI: Strain]
She tilted her head from where she was tied to a hospital bed. There was a large tube in the center of the room and in it a man floated upside down.
"Aleister Crowley." Her voice came out soft, she hadn't had a drink of water in a while.
"It is quite good to see you." His voice came out clearly be she scoffed at his lie.
"What do you want, do you want to boast about the saint you created?"
"Saint?" Aleister asked "Ah, you mean Joule don't you. I'm afraid to say I wasn't her creator. I'm fairly sure she isn't a saint either."
"What do you mean?" Ladylee asked "Of course she is. She resonated with Arisa."
"Arisa, hmm? No, I don't think resonated is the right word. She echoed it. She saw a saint's power and replicated it."
Ladylees face went white "What?"
"If I had to explain her, I'd compare her to Imagine breaker. She's something that sits outside, her friend is too."
Ladylee was silent as Aleister continued "Of course, that wasn't your failing. No, I'm afraid your plan wouldn't have ever worked. There was no outcome where you succeeded."
"What?"
The man in the tube chuckled "You lost control of the sitatuion when you allowed all of them to board the station, of course they would have found a way on regardless. I was prepared to lend them a spare space plane for that purpose."
"You were my enemy then?"
Aleister smiled in a most disturbing way "You could say that."
"What are you going to do with me then?"
Instead of answering her question then, Aleister instead mentioned "You are library in the same way as the list of prohibited books. I wonder if I might borrow a copy or two."
Ladylee didn't really know how to respond to that so she stayed silent as the man continued.
"Of course, while grimoires do demand that they be copied properly, you could fight through the pain and give me false copies. So I'm going to need to take that option away from you."
"What option?" Ladylee's mouth had gone dry.
"The option of lying. No actually, the option of telling me anything other than the truth."
"How?" She was scared. The immortal was scared.
Aleister's voice was still calm and clear as he spoke "We'll open up your head and take your brain out before cutting it into slices to be studied. We have quite advanced techology here at Academy city, I have no doubt we can extract the books before too long."
Ladylee couldn't say anything to that. The idea was just too much.
"Of course, you won't die. Your brain will regrow. And then I'll take it out again to continue studying it."
There was nothing she could say to this.
"At some point I'll be done and I'll let you go. I don't know how long it will take though. I wonder what sort of person will you be when I'm done? Will you still be you? Will you have lost your mind? Will your mind have been broken so often that you'll revert to being a child, in mind to match your body?"
Ladylee shook. She couldn't actually believe this.
"Oh, I think there will be some interesting tests I can do with you. I am also curious on how your immortality affects your body, that's another thing I'll need to keep an eye on. I just hope I can get them all done before I'm finished."
Only then, did Ladylee scream.
End of chapter and Arc.
...Wow, that got really dark. In canon I think Ladylee was kept to study immortality. That is understandable but then the idea of what Ladylee did during her hundred years struck me. Then I got to Aleister and the second part hit me.
Ladylee wanted to destroy the world and I want to make Aleister look worse than her.
Either way, I'll be doing a chapter of the side story next week and then we'll get on to the next arc.