Arabella: Manifestation
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering, nor do I intend to offend through any material expressed herein; I am merely mimicking self-referential Un-set humour.
Summary:
Choose Believe or Doubt: The text clipped to every X-Cost File.
The House ate the two suns. Any light within Duskmourn – any hope gleaned from a shred of illumination – could be chocked up to glimmers or Valgavoth's illusions. This was of vital importance to Cori: Light and dark framed her antagonistic relationship with Arabella, the cursed doll she abandoned and prayed would stop pursuing her.
Every night, Cori threw the unsettling doll away. And every morning, it was back on the shelf, its eyes following her every move.
The ragged playmate was like a friend you couldn't get rid of. Cori had come across Arabella in one of the House's rooms (the dollmaker's shop), and she'd been trying to get rid of Arabella since. But unlike Rian, the headstrong bestie she pushed into the razorkin so they'd torture her instead and was therefore able to dispose of, Arabella was hellbent on being Cori's friend till the end.
Funny. The evil toy was white/red. Not black/red.
Some might label Cori an egotist. Sure, she was popular, but they'd have to be alive to besmirch her name, and those losers were all dead or wishing they were (to the best of Cori's knowledge).
Arabella's silent stare out of her cracked face from under her hat with the red feather in it made Cori's blood rush.
"KILL IT! BURN IT WITH FIRE!"
The detectives and the other survivor travelling with them were rather taken aback by Cori's extreme action, coming up behind her while she was in the process of immolating the child's plaything.
These three weren't wearing wallpaper. They were newly lured to the House. Or Valgavoth supplied them clean clothes. Or they were from an adjacent plane that happened to overlap with Duskmourn's 80s aesthetic, containing straight-up acrobatic cheerleaders and hockey sticks.
"Who are you?"
"Agents Molder and Skully, R.A.M.I."
"R.A.M.I.?"
"The Ravnican Agency of Magicological Investigations. Where's the fire, ma'am?"
"Megacity folk, eh? The fire is here! I set this bloody doll on fire!"
"You set a doll on fire? What has it ever done to you?" The anonymous soldier gave Cori a "Gurl, what?" look.
"What are you on? Moth dust? The doll's the spawn of a demon! And I'm not finished, BTW! I still need to get in a whack for each nail on my baseball bat!" Cori proceeded to whale on Arabella with the batterpost.
"Terminology!"
"You know, it's customary to introduce yourself before you start criticizing a person's word choice!"
"Shauntal, Boros legionnaire. You?"
"Steve Harringt – I'm kidding. It's Cori."
"Is there a specific reason why you're burning the doll, Cori?" Agent Skully asked.
"Umm…Because it's evil?"
"The doll is evil." Skully nodded skeptically.
"Now hold on a second, Skully. Let the young lady speak."
Molder wanted to believe, but Skully had her doubts. Having partnered with him on X-Cost Files including the Leechman, the animated slum district, and an escaped sharktocrab on the roof of a building in the Tenth during a cyclonic rift, she'd yet to work a case that truly upset her belief system. Especially a case to corroborate Molder's theory of aliens secretly controlling the guilds of Ravnica from behind the scenes, in anticipation of a full-scale planar invasion.
Nicol Bolas didn't qualify in her opinion.
The Phyrexians were close and even fit the bill with their usage of black oil, but their abduction techniques didn't match Molder's claims of unidentified hoverships scooping experimental subjects up and not returning them.
Guess she'd just have to hold out for the Fomori, a.k.a. the race of giants resurfacing in the current storyline, or the Ota, a.k.a. the greys of Magic depicted on Lumithread Field in Future Sight, which players seemed to be forgetting when Fear of Abduction was previewed.
"You're a part of the House now. Everything in the House is designed to scare the Nine Hells out of you!"
"The Nine Hells? That's Phyrexia. So you're aware of the Multiverse?" Molder questioned Cori.
Shauntal waved it off. "Who isn't? Their tree shoved its branches into worlds from Ravnica to Belenon!"
"It didn't here," Cori disputed. "Couldn't get inside the House. But every few years, a door opened up and somebody new came through. It's been happening more frequently lately. The safe areas aren't reliably safe anymore!"
"I can't imagine the plane was always like this. What's the deal? Piss off the wrong overlord?"
"Wouldn't have a clue. I haven't been here since the beginning. Alls I got is the CliffsNotes from the archives in the Floodpits."
"CliffsNotes?"
"Yeah. They're notes I climbed a cliff to acquire! Humans sucked at magic. They turned to the supernatural to advance their technology. We scavenge for everything. Food, tools, whatever."
"That's your weapon? Why don't you pick up a sunforger or something?" Shauntal swung hers. "A lava hammer is sturdier than a piece of wood!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, am I being too modern and tacky for you? Is my baseball bat breaking your immersion while the House is out to get us? What part of I'm a human on a plane where people struggled to learn magic and had to power their toasters with ghosts don't you understand? If that's your position, I can't wait to hear how you feel about the unsettling twins in the Cult of Valgavoth who stand in a yellow hallway and tell you 'Come play with us'! As if I haven't heard that one every hour for the past month!"
So toxic, you'd think the Phyrexians were back again!
"I'd say that's IP infringement, and refer you to an Orzhov advokist." Shauntal chewed her lip. "Unless Secret Lair: Stephen King is in the pipeline, with a reskinned Command Tower as the Dark Tower."
"This is the worst assignment we've ever had," Skully lamented. "Let's find an Omenpath out and report to the Agency."
"Worse than the time we were attacked by the undercity plague?"
JUMP SCARE.
Arabella came at Cori with a non-magical knife.
Shauntal's heart leapt, while the phenomenon investigators remained composed.
"What in the unholy –?"
Sweet. Valgavoth was eating good tonight.
"No, this is much more irritating. I've seen enough, Molder. Let's go."
