Neither the splendor of blue and gold and the richest colors, nor wearing the same breastplate with her emblem vividly painted upon it can reproduce what sheer gravitas and depravity do. Adris’ perception of the world is unfettered by any obstacle, leaving this throne room itself, empty of the mist of a frozen time like it was in the Chapel, betraying instead an orderliness of the one who wills it that opposes the memory.
(Your face hasn’t changed, only your disappointment within growing! But…?)
“Irreconcilable, then?” A flat question, totally unfitting of her.
It makes Adris’ skin crawl, that he knows her so well that a completely unnecessary shake of this fake’s head fails to send any of that cascading sheen of her hair out of place the way it should.
“Then, you’re ready to become component piec—”
“WRONG!”
His feverish yell flinches this fake again, a completely unfitting scenario where the field mouse spooks the forest tiger.
(Alchemaster, Origin of Greed, Eclīpsis, all these GRAND WAYS OF CALLING HER, the genuine nightmare is so much simpler than this! She does not shake her head dismissively, she shakes you.)
“With but a smile, her cloak would lift with her arm…” Finding some measure of strength, Adris wills his to mimic the movement as polite demonstration. “… and gather a golden ray that offers no mercy! The merest dissatisfaction at an answer would be torture, and the instant that DOUBT crosses the target’s mind, the judgment is obliteration.”
So his captor’s mouth shuts, all bluster stolen from an ill-fitting actor. A superior actor councils another one. All of this stage shines with the luster to steal a heart, and pulses with the might to wipe Adris from the floor with an intent to do so; but, the absence of that gesture and capricious cruelty is the surest testament to why it is no longer possible to stick to the script.
“Don’t feel offended! You should be happy, fake!”
Her moment is stolen, and so this girl frowns at his support. Not in the way that a child would when thwarted, having their candy stolen, for that expression belongs to Aurumia.
Instead, it’s in the way that a female turns to glare sidelong, finding fault in the one that saw through her little lie.
“… Happy for what, evil spawn?”
Finally Adris is to his knees properly, struggling to rise against the hidden threads wrapping completely over his limbs and making him heavy.
“Your presentation is compelling, it’s almost exactly as I recall. You wear her well, it’s just, nobody else…?” A gesture to her noble figure and the peerless reproduction of her self, then to the Blue-Golds which even carry the same sinisterly sweet scent earns only a disapproving squint.
“Nobody but that peerless mistake of creation can be her except for Aurumia. Hahaha!” It’s with a goading chuckle that Adris finishes, his addled mind shedding the temptations external to him so quickly. Fear is the driving force, a capture in a moment placing all he cares for at risk.
But fear like this is a sin for him, because it will destroy the multitude of possible resolutions to that fear he might miss if horrified.
(No fear. No inhibition. No failure.)
This “wall” won’t break unless he strikes it down. For the sake of all he will obtain, and covet with only his touches…
(A False God will not kneel, beg, or permit any plot but his own!)
Questions dance in the eyes of this Alchemaster, though, when she’s caught out.
A need to approach him? She almost steps forward.
But Adris is stuck, too, for he can’t sink past the illusion no matter how fake. It’s a powerful sensory assault that carries the overwhelming spiritual oppression of the real thing, explicit proof where Adris usually has implicit nonsense for his schemes.
(Find out who they are, what they want!)
Adris rises to face another Castillo trap, one that exceeds all others. He lifts his clawed hands to outstretch, as if to capture the fake instead of what he has his true sight set on. If she can be menaced, coddled, or deceived…?
(Give away nothing, seize advantages, concentrate on the disadvantages I can force on them, then WIN AND ESC—!)
“Gold is gold, silver is silver! Kahaha!” An overly loud cackle has a man’s prideful humor, his tone forceful and short.
The faultless throne room wavers, a distortion in the space to the right of the throne stirring up and chopping at the full scene. “Silver don’t polish into gold, Nan! All it does is piss everyone off by making gold look bad when compared to it.”
A fake Alchemaster’s face warps for a moment, true derision cutting with her gaze toward this once empty space whose contrary currents of thundering power challenge hers.
(That is real emotion?)
The shape in the light that flickers is a tall man’s, leaning toward Adris with a goading style.
“Right, though, if you smear shit on perfection…?” Golden pinpoints glint, and a face swims in the swirling colors of the distortion. In the center of this hanging vortex of chaos a fist is raised toward Adris and announcing furious harm. “You’re gonna piss off those who don’t want the good memory turning brown, yeah, PUNK!?”
(Who the fuck are you!? The throne room is splitting!)
A raucous anger shreds solidity into silver scales that shoot up from fissures in the illusion’s design!
All the other colors depend on these flying metallic shards that steal away the vivid colors by faltering. The intrusion cannot be intentional, for the one that has captured Adris turns almost as if to claim another with her outstretched hand.
The fake Alchemaster’s presence swells, though her body is motionless except to flutter her dress. A shaking thrum of intensity vibrates out from her.
(That’s… the same spiritual pressure the real thing had!)
Then, she drops her attempt to squeeze this man. “Calm yourself.”
The throne room of Aurumia flakes away into floating silver. This peerless copy of the dainty evil alchemist still cannot spare an expression other than disdain as her imagined self scatters into these pieces to reveal the truth beneath.
“… We’ve… proved it’s met Teacher. That was, after all, the purpose of the illusion, Low.”
“Success means you can disrespect her, huh!?”
From top down, the silver leaf flutters free.
Celtic-braided hair hangs with bangs and front low over her breasts, the braids forming the foundation for a silver filigreed headband to rise above it. Behind, her colorless hair is wrapped into a neat bun. Only the front braids allow for artistic play that stern pink eyes, banded by silver, disallow otherwise to define her strict demeanor.
“Teacher will forgive an intentionally incorrect impersonation… once.”
Stern to a degree that borders on an abiding refutation of any intent other than her own playing out around her, she betrays no innocuous motions that people are replete with. Those useful cues give Adris his tells of personality and intentions, but not even a stroking of her glossy hair is bothered with.
An albino is what this magical monster is, the rest of the grown woman fluttering into view where the youthful Alchemaster vanishes.
Half here as a physical woman, Adris’ cold feeling of danger spikes when the woman’s “existence” appears crammed into her, a tenebrous pressure flitting into his mind’s eye that can see aura in spaces.
Her “aura” breathes like a bellows constantly being pumped.
(Alive… are you alive?)
A maid’s uniform of exquisite detail and precision shapes to her slender shell, its pencil thin dress a slip over her long, stockinged legs. Black frills are reserved only for the tie-offs of her same-color thick apron at shoulders and waist, for this woman’s strict posture reminds Adris of an old hag who had been a surrogate grandmother for the thieves of Zon’Til.
(That ice block in a desert also could wear unsexy things with confidence and leave you gasping with her strikes! She demanded and extracted precisely what you owed her! Which… is why I stayed away…!)
Silver is her stately, yet subtle arrogance, and in contrast to the Alchemaster she wears it as a thin armored sheet much alike a mail shirt over her uniform. But for every movement she makes this solid, rigid metal expertly alters itself to evenly match it.
A moving work of dismissive art, her hallmark is a long silver sash hanging over her chest bearing the Alchemaster’s symbol backed on a golden circle instead of a silver one. The inner glyphs and filigree are silver instead of the perfect metal of greed, a concept that grabs at Adris’ tactical senses when trying to read her.
For silver is sought by Alchemists according to Neesiette, but is also only the last stop on the way to gold.
(Who chose your design? You… or…?)
This light reflecting silver that stays rigid then wiggles when he tries to read it with his aura senses, prompting a “shiver” from the sash…!
(It’s the Alchemaster’s same artificial living tool!?)
The sash billows to life, climbing snake-like out over this woman’s arm to “peer” at Adris. Alive and suitably agitated, it whips at him so hard that the air cracks. “You, too.” This chiding sends it fleeing back to snuggle at this noble maid’s neck and slide over her back, messing up the puffy white lace collar and prompting a frown at her own wear’s catlike enthusiasm. It covets her, flowing over her frigid appearance as if it must always touch more.
(No… is she alive?)
Adris reaches out through the storm of silver to try and unveil this chilling answer. The woman’s entire figure now revealed as the room dematerializes, if such a valued maid as this has a “teacher”, then Adris hazards a dark guess:
Both are only half “fixed” to their forms, for the entirety of their surroundings contain the authoritative turmoil that a single body cannot. Not undead, simply not housing entirely a grander spirit, when this fake’s consternation only passively rakes over Adris’ spiritual senses, it sends his blood curdling.
(“A created life” to house something eviler and more eternal…! That’s what the Alchemaster and this lesser thing are?)
There is also a contrary nature to this Alchemaster’s singular student.
No caprice is allowed. Not even a pleat out of place, the whole presentation certain.
She is made as a repudiation of the world-ending original that boggles Adris’ mind as to how they can be so distinct if copies, for their personalities are diametrically opposed.
(She’s… either a purpose-made one or a superior-tier Replica surpassing Lycia! And she’s mighty… she’s caged me!)
Adris’ surroundings deteriorate too to reveal himself levitated between three walls and two floors of burnished silver tiles. This stainless prison fixes him into view like an open bug box for those seeing through the sixth missing wall. An unseen pulsating field separates his prison over a black cross created by strange inked words.
(“Life unwanted and never-made”? “Seal”, “origin”, “nameless, many-named Beyond”!? These are like Still’s made-up emotional witch language!)
And they restrain as surely as hers might when given the form of a cross, for Adris can only “stand” upon his floating platform by sheer willpower’s exertion.
This student that has snared Adris just the same as her teacher did notices his inspection of the trap, sparing words for him.
“A fever dream, easy to pin. One that whimpers when denied and fades away.” Firmly, without care but cutting deeply; yet, that she doesn’t bother to even smile or show glee worthy of the prize that is capturing someone as slippery as Adris stands as unforgivable.
(Not even sparing a yawn!?)
She only probes with her quiet interest, watching ever so intently as if he is a bird staked to the ground, then merely blinks.
(I’m just a small bug to you!?)
The Alchemaster would demean him casually with insinuations, but this bitch queen that should be digging deeper into how to destroy him doesn’t jump at the option.
Adris is a being that requires exquisite understanding to defeat.
He is not so easily vanquished.
“Naaaaaaaah, not only!” A foot slams onto the toscano table beside the once-mercury throne, now only a silvered chair of dark wood, and clatters a teapot and cup.
(You’re fucking right “not only!”)
This man is wreathed in his own “aura”, an unquenchable flaring of his self-worth that is like molten gold swirling and wreathed by smoldering black.
A golden falling star, trailing the night sky behind it.
This aura obscures all but his shaded glasses and the foot upon the table that has a worker’s sandal wrapped to tie up his leg.
(A peasant’s shoe?)
Resting beside only a simple silver-clad high-back chair when the fluttering debris clears up, this table with a tea set on it is the only furniture surrounding them in the deep gloom of this prison. Its tea set is what the maid glares at with something approaching concern.
“Yet he is bound, as I predicted he would be?”
“For now, Nan! Now is now, later is later!” So the man flippantly gestures with his hand curling and waving, prompting another pursing of the ladys’ lips. “No-one that meets the Mistress and talks this much shit escapes just because he faded away! She’d have, what’s the word you like? ‘Disassembled’ the bastard.”
(I didn’t fade and I’m all whole, assholes! I gave it… my all with her!)
The churning in his guts about it even now after days is proof.
Not only of impact, but how it still gnaws at him.
(Just like what just happened!)
Those he’d given REAL life to!
They took up thrones to lord it up before Adris, who could only barely keep his dignity.
Had… something else stolen from him, when by the Alchemaster it’d been something like “innocence” tainted, if he can claim it, the twins took what he cannot even decide it is, yet!
Another plot, another disappointment where only others succeeded.
Adris gets rolled into a mat and thrown off the island’s edge.
(My name means “Star of Ruin”, but I keep falling on myself more than others, or worse, almost kneeling in shame!?)
Even the thought that he slipped away from Aurumia, after his torments at her hands before, then, and after?
(I…!?)
The mere implication that he’s insignificant is so deeply wrong that he wants to leap from this floating silver jail to deliver a “rebuttal”.
(I! AM! ADRIS FEHL DAIN!)
“… Fade?” Adris yanks in a build up against his unseen chains, dragging them to their limits as he wills himself nearer to these two.
And then he throws all of his concentration into the moment of snapping at them! The silver paneled jail creaks musically and wonderfully.
The maid’s eyes are wide, studying Adris with so much more care now.
(I’m not… NOT AFRAID OF ANYTHING LESS THAN HER, AND EVEN THEN…!)
“It was your ‘Teacher’ that faded when she discovered her love for me… little Maidwright.”
When named, a spike in the maddening gleam of her outfit stabs at Adris’ eyes.
(I captured Hoime, and Hoime spilled your name to Lycia. All you have to do is think “who, most of all, would come after me at this juncture!?”)
Adris can’t help but smile, twisting it suitably when he does to imply his own peculiar omniscience.
This earns no movement or recognition except to speak a reply.
“Felicitations for your capture.” Dry, punctual, totally unimpressed. She finally recalls that she’s supposed to pinch the side of her pencil dress and lift it, doing so with a slight nod before dropping it.
(… Oh… I completely empathize with you, Hoime. “Goddess of perverse order”, that’s this bitch.)
The Wondrous Works madwoman had named her enemy and figured her out. Lycia might not get it, but Hoime is her best ally against their mutual enemies.
For only someone who naturally hates a maid like this as easily as breathing justifies their own existence.
“Wrong! Her name is ‘Nannyright’!”
“[Maidwright]. Anything else would be a slur born of contemptible manners and a delusional sub-intellect.”
“Ain’t that what I just said, you proving it by saying that? Right!?”
Another spark of conflict, a telling sign of their relationship that Adris latches onto when the man shifts his question to Adris. Something of it compels the woman to also regard Adris with certain intimate facts about herself.
“A wright constructs. And maids are my product, one that requires absolute quality. The day that your dear bloodstained ghoul was brought into the fold was just another… order I received.”
(You… helped make Lycia…?)
Yet, because this woman doesn’t gloat about it, Adris can’t feel the fire burning about that ready to consume her.
Why she even bothers to tell him, except to gloat, cannot be explained.
From her position, it should be to assault him, but… instead it’s only a mere recollection of—?
“Gold don’t ever fade, you know?” The man’s foot slides off the table to stomp to the ground. Its impact is a crisp swirl of golden leaf that uncurls his own aura and shakes the brightening room with its burst! “And it don’t get its servants thieved. The Mistress don’t stain, either, by trash like ‘falling for you’.”
The man’s hand comes back to his trench coat to slide into a pocket, joining his other.
Well over six feet in height, a complete hoodlum clothed in a Castillo uniform of such immense, but plundered, wealth he wears is frayed comfort with ignorance of any servility implied.
For the gilded threads are plucked off both on and under his trench coat. The favorite color of the Alchemaster is gone, with only the blue sky painting him and the black of a lowly footpad. The two-colored tie that all her menials choose is instead a thick cloth of white hanging over his neck to his chest, two thick cylindrical weights of melted scrap mixture tied to the ends.
“The Mistress’ love is the purest of all…!”
(Not… another fool that’s fallen for her!?)
This fool’s hand comes out and to his face, his arm pulling back the hood of his coat slightly.
A youthful, but vain and mildly unshaven, face sports shaded gold glasses that he pushes back up onto his nose with a finger. The frames go back to disappear into his slicked-back hair.
“SHE EXISTS TO BE LOVED BY ALL, FOR HER TRUEST LOVE IS TO [EXIST SO WE CAN PROPERLY WORSHIP HER]!” This absolute animal grins only to himself alone at his thought.
(You’re not Castile! YOU’RE EVEN MORE INSANE!)
The fervor of idolization to the point of worship hedges out any sexual or romantic fascination.
Such a fiend has given away his own humanity to worship the Origin of Greed, lacking Orloss’ psychotic mannerisms and wholly confident in his correctness.
And to answer his purity of purpose, HER HAND PEEKS FROM BEHIND HIS BACK, TO TAKE A HOLD OF ONE OF THE MANY HANDLES SEWN INTO HIS TRENCHCOAT ON HIS ARMS, SIDES, AND FRONT—!
Black as night, a phantom of an evil substance that radiates the gold this man absorbs gleefully into himself, this girl’s curls are the correctly naughty ones that aren’t combed straight.
Blue-banded-by-gold is the color of her irises and her smile, so capricious that Adris wants to vomit at the thought of the taste of her lips, completely captures her true essence.
(THIS ONE IS THE ONE I SAW IN THE BLACK PLACE AFTER TAKING THE KOBOLDS’ OATH!)
“Gate Guardian…!”
“Hah! One and only, it seems.”
The man lifts his shades to reveal gold-glowing eyes, a sign of total possession by what Adris has seen of the evidence of Zennia’s mysticism.
By description and remembrance, Adris knows the name of this wild thug who suffers no postural pains from bearing the fullest weight of the Alchemaster’s ghost’s toxic presence. She clings to him, climbing over his back to hang from his shoulder in the most innocent way and serving as his source of power.
Truly fascinated in the same way Adris suffered, she mutely stares at him before tapping at her breastplate over where her heart would be.
Adris’ own heart skips a beat when the key buried inside it jiggles.
(Real thing… Real thing!)
There’s zero acting, that “naturalness” Adris praises on display here when she notes where the brass key lies.
The Maidwright’s expression has finally shifted to reveal a bit of humanity when witnessing this phantom’s actions, for she turns to regard Adris with horror glinting in her gaze.
Then, the dainty Alchemaster possessing this hoodlum pulls back to start whispering in that man’s ear.
(I need… to get away from this phantom! FROM HIM! NOW!)
But the Gate Guardian is oblivious to the dangers should they meet, only nodding his head at some thought as the scenery surrounding him warps with the golden force radiating from his trenchcoat.
“You’re done with your proof for me, yeah, Nan?” The man slaps his hands together, rough leather gloves with missing fingers muffling it. “Knows her name, but drags it through the mud by doing so! Like I said, Nan, he’s real, so we deal with the ‘real problem’ with real solutions.”
“‘Real’ is a subjective quality. All the more reason to disco—”
“Discover what? I know where he is?”
With a snap of his fingers, the man’s shoulder pet splashes to hang in the air a neon-green fluid flooding out from the deepest darkness of her sleeve! She rears it back…
(SH-SHIT, THAT’S THE DISSOLVING LIQUID!)
Adris’ instinctive dodge to escape in the same manner as before is only a tremor of the silver panels! But, the man turns sharply to show his back instead of unleashing it.
[NO MISTRESS; NO LIFE]
In florid and hideous script, this phrase is the only source of gold besides his shades and the seal he proudly wears, shown when the phantom leaps from his back by merely one hand clinging to him.
The Alchemaster’s ghost slices a burning wave of the alchemical poison at the distant darkness to reveal it’s far closer than it appears. A barred barrier and a gash in a stairway dissolve into distinct bars of gleaming silver that clatter when the neon-green blade swoops back to suck into the phantom’s sleeve.
The smoking ruin of this gash is where the man makes for to descend.
“Give me five minutes.” A grunting annoyance, teeth grinding with displeasure at the disrespect to his god.
“When I teach ‘em the Mistress’ love, I’ll take a lunch break, yeah?” So he says while throwing his hand over his head to wave.
(No… he will completely destroy all of them.)
Whatever this “Maidwright” can do is inconsequential to this one.
Even if Adris escapes from… wherever this wide stairwell is revealed, a private space he was summoned to between two levels that carries the whistle of wind, he cannot offer victory.
(The black cross was meaningless to Aurumia. She froze it with a thought! He… he will…!?)
“NNNNaaaan!? We ain’t this close.”
A silver sash binds to the Guardian’s arm and turns as rigid as steel. Its new length was stolen from nowhere, a magical reach and altering of its form to more resemble liquid.
The golden penumbra surrounding the Guardian denatures to the same dross color of his weights!
“Close?
We are not even in the same tier.”
The stern maid is gone, replaced by a tigress whose silver-banded eyes capture too the man trying to leave. It’s her will that is tangible law!
To answer her shaking presence escaping her shell to fill the room and bow out the metallic walls by its pressure, agony flows onto this man’s arm to coat with a stinging, bubbling silver poison.
(My heart is jumping!)
Watching the man’s trenchcoat sleeve burn with the silver poison reminds Adris of a similar sight where a special blue witch stabs with her own.
The man’s veins pop out when the poison reaches his skin. This Gate Guardian with the power of gold given to him by the Alchemaster herself hunches forward in pain, his breathing rougher than his voice. Even the phantom riding him loses some of its solidity, a wrinkling of its nose and flash of annoyance in its eyes at the attack that fades it.
“I am the [Silver Before the Origin], only a mere willing hand of the Almighty One.
You are the [Lowliest Dross], fit only to be a guard at an already impenetrable front door.”
So she says with the matter-of-fact attitude, though her hand lets tension go to then angrily whip forward and grab to yank this Guardian further from his exit.
“Yet, a mere 20% of Teacher’s potential is still far beyond 5%. Remember your value.”
“Hah…”
The man hops back on one foot when dragged again. He lifts his captured arm as if to protest or strike, but then just waves it dismissively.
A sign of obedience stops the pressure filling the room, returning the warping scene to its status quo. The sash withdraws to court its owner again by flowing to her hips.
The Alchemaster’s phantom brushes off her cloak at the Maidwright, while this Dross adjusts his misaligned shades.
“You act when I give you an order.”
“Then give one, huh!? Don’t leave me reading the stars for your thoughts, woman.”
(…
… this motherfucker is only 5% as strong as Aurumia?)
A dying fragment of the Origin of Greed, locked away for Cethran-only-knows how long, had totally shut down Adris at the moment of his acquisition of the black cross and permanently cursed him.
For this Gate Guardian to be only fit to annoy those that challenge the front door is the last possible thing that Adris can take right now.
It screams of a disparity about his starting point and future objective that defies imagination.
A tearing pain inside keeps growing, Adris’ jaws hurting with how he clenches his teeth.
“Others have already lost to this one, dirtying a reputation that wasn’t theirs to sully. It would be insufficient to have a possible repeat of that low servant Hoime by sending you.” The Maidwright’s logic gives Adris a leap of confidence for a moment.
“She can testify to the future you two face in opposing me.”
A bit of fear is what he hopes he tasted, a naked threat that can unlock his escape…!
“One rabbit out of millions in Teacher’s zoo, a statistical anomaly.”
Yet her sidelong stare cuts him down with just the appropriate logic, for even that victory is declared worthless. “Her independent choice as a weakling to engage you showed her lacking judgment, not our incapability.”
“Ahhh, yeah, the Works are just the preparation team for reviving the things that matter? I just… wasn’t really impressed when meeting the ‘Mother’? So, you are more than a few people? What does it matter when they’re all weaklings?” And the Guardian’s rambling disappointment seals Adris’ fate, for even a being Lycia reveres is considered impotent by a “5%’er”.
“I will… send my own team… Low, since I have proved what I told you. You may return to duty after witnessing the Mistress’ justice as a lesson.”
“Your lessons suck, Nan. This was an extra merit to go get him, something to get the Mistress to notice!”
“You will never be worthy of notice, Low, do you not comprehend this by now?”
Then the Maidwright takes back her seat, leaving this man who accepts the name as Low to chuckle at the situation with his arms lifted into a shrug.
“They will also be destroyed! Those fools you intend to send…”
“Really? The capabilities of your chosen aids are quite well known after through another’s viewpoint seeing them struggle.” The Maidwright’s brow lifts as the teapot on her table lifts itself to pour her a cup of steaming tea. Letting it hang on her fingers, she holds it up to smell the aroma.
“Wouldn’t you have to be capable of escaping from your summons in order to bring this doom only you could deliver?” Then she sips the tea, her unblinking sight devoid of interest evermore.
(Oh, she cannot be intimidated. Yeah, Aurumia is her master, of course not…)
Adris’ involvement is immaterial.
This Maidwright only called for him to confirm certain details, namely that “he was worthy of a directed extermination.” Such a type of enemy like she is, one only committing after proper intelligence is gathered and a victory plan assured, is the worst threat imaginable other than acting through improvisation.
(She’s… an investigative type…)
And only to shut up a boisterous subordinate. That’s the most painful part of being held levitated in her prison, that he wasn’t even worth trapping because he was considered dangerous.
(Why am I always so powerless in comparison to the Alchemaster?)
An ascension step that can twist reality with sufficient circumstances should be considered quite potent, but Adris finds the expectations he had dashed.
Any muscle he develops will be ripped off.
Any minion he gathers will be enslaved.
Any power he cultivates will be stolen.
On Xin, that was true before Serras.
After Serras ripped herself free due to justifiable reasons, it now seems to be the inevitable return to form.
(I had those four girls… but they… can’t protect what is weak from what is stronger than them, especially if I am attacked directly.)
Then the tearing in his gut has a name, a reason it’s growing.
He wants to slap his cheeks rather than feel like crying. Because he’s the source of the threat.
They have an immense mansion, wealth beyond calculation, and a suitable stage to draw him to. Pageantry sufficient to please even the Emperor of Xin when the displays start.
All he has is a mask and a cross.
(FUCK IT! THEY GOT ME BECAUSE — I — WAS TOO WEAK TO RESIST THEM!)
Just before entering the Castillo, he’d laid blame on the girls for their excesses in the manse and failure to achieve victory by their own efforts!
It’s far too much after naming it.
[Insufficiency].
His own, no one else’s.
After genuine things, tasting the impossible power of the dark when given form and motivated by his cross, and finally realizing how little he mattered in resolving that story…!?
(No… you will all be fooled!)
The one thing that can never be stolen is a plot!
No matter how insane or bogus, the moment the lie takes root…!?
(If intimidation won’t work, and she cannot be bargained with because she is my sworn enemy…!?)
“Escape…?”
Though Adris cannot sense its presence or see it, realizing in his blind rage and despair that he cannot even see his own arms or legs, the conman knows that his personal icon is never too far away.
Even distance is a worthless consideration after it appeared in his hands to bash in the brains of a living nightmare!
“… nobody here is planning to escape.”
Adris wills all that was thrust into it to circulate.
Fehr’s insides ejected an entire night sky out the closing front door, sucked eagerly into his cross and held onto!
(BUT NOT ENOUGH! NEVER ENOUGH! ALL THERE IS IS…!
RISK! CALCULATION…!)
A vestige is needed.
But Fehr gave him no “achievement”, for only the first Minion of the Black Cross mattered to Cethran’s insane “Grand Game”.
Of them, Adris has one left.
(REWARD! [Authentic Fiction] made something from a hint of what could be, but that was what — I — originally did!)
And so he ponders in the span of the time between learning of his forthcoming end and it actually arriving.
Lycia had told him not to use them.
But, no matter his own icy thoughts on what “achievements” truly are and his minimal fealty to his new sister, a depraved piece of logic trumps those.
(I can’t be tempted to use any vestiges if I don’t have any left, I’m brilliant!)
That inhibiting factor is rendered meaningless, so the [distraction] is obvious.
An achievement related to Cethran and the Grand Game itself, the truth of a lie or a truth, will produce an explosive display. Because Adris cannot guess at what it is: “aura” or darkness that underpins this grand game.
Adris will project it outward with his [sell].
(TOO BRILLIANT! THIS BITCH DIDN’T BRING ME HERE TO PROVE IF I WAS “REAL”, BUT TO PROVE IF I WAS A THREAT?
What is the true threat to the Alchemaster?)
That is what Adris will now discover, at least through her higher-tier minion known as the Maidwright.
Because Adris is so used to these situations, the details jump out. Every faction he’s encountered, all their complex motivations, every stupid nuance that others care for enough to swear their lives to seeing petty plans to fruition…?
“Factions, three against three! But, this contest no longer has a mere audience for your games.”
The Maidwright halts her teacup before her lips, no change except this.
A relationship being stated draws those who are not permitted to talk about “the real subject” to it.
Tiles which trap Adris are designed for the overt [False God] that was mistakenly called as one of those nightmares he’s had to deal with so often lately.
(She used the line I did! She has tasted the truth of what’s beyond the other side of those fragile walls. She’s tainted, otherwise she couldn’t reach me.)
Artistic strips of reflective silver hung up in long rows and hatches on distant stone walls oppress any gloom, but behind those walls the muffled scratching is just barely audible when he thinks of those horrors that hate him.
Because this Maidwright made a mistake, Adris will make her lose, too.
(I’ll do anything to protect what I have gained, even relying on…!
You guys never accept anything less than wanting to change things, so… SCREAM TO BE HEARD!)
By bringing in Adris, a being that is even now circulating his aura to inject a catastrophic poison, she willingly accepted the same anchor into the Castillo that collapsed a part of it into nothing already!
“By my authority, I claim the achievement of piercing the first layer of the truth of everything.”
Racing aura, now a black blood, begins to burn, even though nothing happens.
“… Good for you.”
Neither of the enemies lording over him bat an eye. His summoner only rings a bell.
“Who gets to avenge the Mistress’ dignity, eh?” Low’s question relates to Adris’ executioners, but the Maidwright tsks at this interruption when setting the bell down. Retrieving her cup of tea…
“Why tell you their names? Will you ascend Servants’ Circle again, screaming them out to demand a meeting…?”
She sips.
Then jolts into the back of her seat, a red liquid seeping from her lips that she licks back up.
“… Blood…?”
“You ain’t got that, Nan.”
But her lips are stained red, and then her teapot starts to seep from its top.
Silver that has never been stained on the walls… also seeps underneath with a deep reddish charm.
(That’s… a sign… that they’re nearby! Or… something?)
An impossible occurrence.
Vigor claims blood, demanding it evaporate to revert to wholeness. But here, it’s a source of hesitation.
This bitch’s expression is one of pure disbelief, after all, that her sanctum has been stained.
(You’re afraid. I can taste it. If she’s capable of fear, then she’s capable of doubting herself! And I’m gonna give you PLENTY OF RANDOM THINGS TO BE FEARFUL OF IN THE FUTURE!)
When she locks gaze with Adris, his laughter is already a shrill cry!
“You think it will only be a war to end this age, again, DO YOU!?”
Adris’ whole self flexes wildly, gesticulating with the sanity of a fever-burnt cult savior!
A shrieking metallic sound to his left nearly breaks his act, but Adris can’t pay attention to such unnecessary things.
After all, [Adris fehl Dain has to pretend to be a TRUE False God to his most exotic audience yet]!
“This age will end… without a new one to follow.”
He remembers the moment the Chapel began to crumble.
When the walls fell into the lake of tar that collected.
There was no escape, because the end arrived from every exit to the satisfaction of a priestess that understood precisely what she had managed to unleash.
(I sort of grasp why you were enjoying yourself, Cethran? Well, time for you all to experience the same thing I did.
… FROM THE DEPTHS OF DESIRE, WITH ME AS THE FUCKING CURTAIN, THROUGH ME!
COOOOOOME ON OUT, YOU GUYS!)
Adris does the unthinkable for any aura user. With his circulation running rampant, in defiance of the first rule of aura cultivation that was beaten into him by Fatso when Adris almost lost control, he chooses to simply…
“We — are — COMING!”
… let go.
Entirely.
No Clear Mind.
No conceptualization of a truth as he visualizes it.
Just the emptiness of objectives other than to make them believe.
(Believe in them… like I do. Even if this won’t work…!)
Adris has no real hope that he can recreate that sense of hopelessness they inflicted on him in another.
He hopes that their rising agitation is that cue. A minor manifestation is all he has to play off of. The rest will be his cultivated prowess as a man of the self-made stage.
(But if it’s just enough to get your attention, it’ll work out?)
Then, the first dagger of coldness stabs into his heart, that brutal worry that “he’s made another mistake”; but, it can’t tear him from the monologue he feels unleashing…!
(Yet another mess to clean up.)
“By my authority, I claim the achievement of piercing the first layer of the truth of everything.” An onyx mask fixed in its point of summoning announces something quite… strange. As a mess, all particulars of it speak of the many complications it creates and the havoc it wreaks upon her intricate plans.
(A truly deplorable existence. No purpose except to tear at one. How does it know exactly where to strike to hit every vulnerable point?)
Every spoken word from it is sly, its echoing voice distorted by its malicious spirit.
Neither male nor female, it is a perfectly conceptualized blot on the self-worth of whoever suffers listening to it.
Called forth as a last resort to silence the provocations of another, the Maidwright regrets the need to stab her finger upon another existential thorn to find the perch to pull the first one out.
(I cannot fathom the purpose of these words by context. It must be considered a threat, but… why?)
Provided this entity remains bound, disposing of its mortal shell will be effortless by the current standards of the purely comedic calamities that are falling upon the Castillo at a daily regular basis. Only the undead witch bears closer interest, for its intrusions have escalated in regularity according to the Heart’s notice.
Its designs are older, as is its origin.
(Because this worthless Low is interested, I should downplay all the extra points, too, despite curiosity.)
“… Good for you.” A suitable pruning of this outburst, one that brings a sneer to Low’s face. While sipping tea, the Maidwright is free to rest from the stress of constantly having to mind her manners.
Only one moment in an endless series of indignities.
“Who gets to avenge the Mistress’ dignity, eh?” The braying ass cannot pass up on licking the foot of an entity that treats him with obvious and overt dismissal of even being worthy of existing in the same world as it.
That he still tries to sneak into her throne room by any means necessary marks him as the lowest not only of those with common sense, but also of males with sexual urges.
(Not even a single second to myself?)
And so her tongue moves of its own accord, a regular thing lately, to click with disgust.
Even if the Maidwright no longer behaves like others after so many centuries of tortuous cleaning up of the hundreds of thousands of little messes Teacher leaves for her, this must be considered a predictable change in the character of a lady after dealing with so, so much?
Yet, somehow, this brute who prattles on about “THE GLORIOUS MISTRESS!” always unearths the worst ossified human emotions…!?
“Why tell you their names? Will you ascend Servants’ Circle again, screaming them out to demand a meeting…?”
Who is irrelevant.
That it is not him is relevant.
To the trash he goes, eventually.
(One wrong implication, a moment of lacking specificity, and this idiot Low will “unleash” himself upon the gardens, again. It’s so tiring keeping him under thumb. From destroying important things.)
An ass will never graduate to being a stallion so long as the Maidwright exists.
That is a promise, one never to be shared but always a guiding principle.
(And this one will be sent back to wherever Teacher called it from. That is my second promise.)
The floating mask with a strange symbol inscribed into it is a growing issue.
(Too many involvements in the affairs of the Castillo for one unknown entity.
Too many successes, and failures, that all seem to cancel out to the consternation of those crossing paths.
Too many pawns of varying importances, all swimming in the whirlpool that this one seems to be willing to drown in.
Teacher… what are you doing, supporting this outsider?)
A [Maidwright] is a prestigious position… so she tells them all.
But… “Nannyright” seems more and more unacceptable because the instances of “needs cleaning” are accruing more and more!
(I am a silver alchemist… Heart should be dealing with… all of this.)
Because she has no others to entrust the question with, the Maidwright searches for the answer to this insipid question of “why am I devoting my time to the cleansing of an imp-like existence that would normally have been exterminated by some other lesser authority.”
Because she cannot discover an answer even from the source of this problem, as it continues to simply refrain from any meaningful discussion despite the Maidwright’s nudges directed at it and not even Heart can identify HOW IT APPEARED IN THE CASTILLO IN THE FIRST PLACE, she is left without a window into the dark room where her Teacher constructs horrific plots that will no doubt end in painful—!
(Iron?)
An ancient taste is more painful when it spills onto her tongue, awakening senses in a puppet’s body that aren’t usually so severe.
“… Blood…?”
“You ain’t got that, Nan.” Even a single word cannot escape this ass’ ignorant commentary.
(This form is created from blood, therefore it is by definition…!
No, irrelevant! Why is my ceylon tea now blood? This is an impossible transfiguration.)
A golden alchemist could achieve this, of course, and even a silver one can perform acts that would be termed “in violation of natural law”. But to spontaneously occur is impossible.
(Hnnnn!?)
That Low notices the rising tension at the same time vexes. They both have their attention drawn to the floating mask, which now wobbles violently.
She wishes to strike the ass’ face when its ugly mug becomes a clear grin of longing, war racing through the retard’s blood, but she can’t overcome the paralysis of this laughter ringing within her mind.
“Ahahaha… AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
A low-misted gloom of night has always clung to it since apparating within her enclosure, but now that nostalgic color stretches out from the mask.
Like the amoeba that Teacher first introduced the Maidwright to using focused glass lenses in an age past, this organism without true physicality searches for sustenance. Its umbral body strikes into the boundary field keeping it. Silver sheen carrying the Maidwright’s pure will has held since before, but the growing intensity of the push brings a…
(I… have a mild spiking feeling in my mind?)
“This age will end… without a new one to follow.” Solemn. Specific. These qualities, the Maidwright appreciates. “Ominous”, however, leaves her feeling a shifting of her seat, despite it not physically moving.
As if she is being pulled toward the mask.
Any prophet that makes claims about entire “ages” of Zennia is either greedy, which is the Maidwright’s domain; insane, which is the hallmark of the Starborn Lords; or…?
(The calculations for this encounter are not sufficient.)
One of the many burnished silver tiles serving to isolate the creature’s fixed space from the Castillo draws a marring across its surface. A bright reflection dims because of blood climbing it.
The walls, too, that sport the ensorcelled silver panels hung as armaments shake without tectonic transference. Teacher’s mansion is its own world, one that cannot alter without her favor.
At least until… now.
Something rends through the Maidwright’s claim of this aerial docking station! Dimensional anchors buzz warning signals unheard to the ears, only detected as magical noises warring against a growing distortion ahead.
The Maidwright’s will presses against this tumult, but another pinprick against her psyche soon stabs again…!
“We — are — COMING!”
Behind the mask,
A tear blacker than the sky when the Starborn Lords threw down all the stars widens.
(That… is not the Castillo proper!)
The first intrusion is a ragged cloak that threads through. A spray of black noise spouts behind it, whipping the unworn mantle before filling it. From the top a wimple pops out, its wearer unrecognizable as anything human. Only a chattering, screeching black silhouette.
(How have more things arrived uncalled for?)
Staring at it produces another stab, then one with each horrifying question that comes to mind.
How has it linked to a nightmare unsummoned?
Which brethren is this?
… What does IT plot?
When the questions become legion, the Maidwright’s headache has a name.
(An Allip. The first sworn of madness, consumed by the search for the truth of all! Teacher reduced so many to this state.)
One of a million and one horrors that the Black Moon took with it when it was sealed in the Second Age, never allowed to stalk the earth for victims because they were running short in supply.
It floats behind the mask that grows more black tendrils, the pressing organs struggling against the Maidwright’s shaking will. Leaning in to whisper to the mask the Allip does, each unheard question bolstering these projections, driving them wilder!
Their individual sources of horror radiating soul-bending power blend in a mixing of cream and coffee, until Allip and mask fill the same space and project a united subversion. The Allip sits upon the head of the unseen god wearing the mask, its long legs of static chaos dripping onto the tiles below.
The wearer of this mask no longer floats only here, but its invisible magnificence has its origin within the tear.
(Corruption is spreading? The mask is a focusing lens, not the actual vessel!)
Mansion, seat, body, and cup of bloody tea. A contest erupts without forewarning, where the first to lose is the teacup.
“Nan, you’re getting hot.”
The teacup explodes and immediately vaporizes its red contents right after the ass chooses the wrong time to send a crossed signal about a woman!
The shaking hum of the Maidwright’s expanding will leaves silver fumes rising from the uncomfortable vessel she’s worn for far too long. Fumes becomes a full-fledged aura clinging to her when the tear widens! Silver of a purity insufficient to contain the full brunt of her will starts to melt from the walls, furniture, and serving instruments.
Then, it boils.
“Hey, Nan, having trouble?”
(SHUT UP.)
No trouble is permitted.
Such a fiend is quite simple to defeat.
All that is required is to smother it with a superior concept, as all creatures born of darkness die when opposed by a mind of sufficient…!?
A Silver alchemist can accomplish this…!
No tiles will continue to stain, because…!
“How will you war with us?” It may be the last chance to ask the questions that she’s missed because of interruptions. Her teapot crashes to the ground after pulling from the table. “For what reason do you act?”
(If I comprehend you, you can be destroyed.)
Everything in her isolation room tilts toward the growing rend in space. Where blackness beyond teems with life unwitnessed, without form, excepting when their horrible limbs and pseudopods grasp ahold of the tear to rip it wider.
A sealed space within a box of sufficient size to hold an elephant is now grown uncomfortably filled. Everything around shakes violently. The tiles that were furnished for this task have tarnished from the center of their square formations to edges.
What’s worse, this thing’s power has manifested as physical black tumors upon their once-pure surfaces!
“There is no single way my ruin spreads. We are every cause, action, and outcome!” A nebulous boast. Fully a lie, should one not think further, for no entity can be the source of all troubles.
(No, I forget that Teacher exists.)
Self-refutation is another spiking pain in her mind, the Maidwright’s trembling hand lifting toward the sealed up entity. When she struggles to speak, a rejection on her lips…
Suddenly the pressure of her will reverses, for the tear unleashes a veritable river of the sludge of the uncreated to start filling the space.
The neverborn scream and cry!
Shapeless until now, a thousand contradictions war with each other in the swirling soup of this mask’s calling.
“Rebellious child, wHo GaVe AwAy YoUr SoUrCe Of ImMoRtAlItY!?”
[FROM THE NORTH, MAGIC WIELDED BY THE ONCE VIRGIN, NOW FILLED WITH ONLY RAGE TOWARD THE PLACE THAT DEPRIVED THEM. THEY COME FOR WHAT PROMISES THEM ETERNITY.]
(He is behind the Vrainians and their holy mission? It’s to steal the Heart!? How bold.)
Silver panels crack all around this chaotic black ball. A sphere is the only form that the Maidwright can compress the intrusion into. Even when…
(Aid me, you coward.)
… the Heart itself begins to rapidly pump and the mansion’s callous will floods into the Maidwright, even after all of the capricious cruelty of gold hardening the cracks in the dimensions that are spreading, the response is for the tear to only widen and destabilize further.
“Ignorant child, wHo BeTrAyS yOu EvEn NoW!?”
[FROM THE EAST, I DRIVE THOSE WHO “HE ABOVE THE PINNACLE” CONSPIRED WITH, UNITED IN SECRET UNDER THE INVADER ABOVE TO CONQUER HUMANITY. FROM THE SOUTH, AWAKENS THE TRUE ANSWER TOWARD YOUR RULE, COURTESY OF THE BIRTHER OF MONSTROSITIES THAT SEEKS TO DWELL IN VANITY ALONE.]
(… So, Peak, that exile, did choose the Starborn Lords that once aided him over the Mistress? And the Mother does intend to resurrect the Second Age as she remembers it, with her rules replacing our own…?)
Another stab into her thoughts aches, but they also don’t slow in coming.
The voice of this masked devil without a body is thick as molasses, yet light as air. It exalts its own secrets, the Allip chattering them as well in the form of questions instead of the answer.
“Nan… you got this?” An ass shakes, too, the hands he had sunk into his trenchcoat out and clenching. The horrible revenant that clings to his back basks in the first wave of reeking air that bursts from containment.
It… her terrifying face that haunts the Maidwright’s thoughts, leaving the maid thankful that she may never sleep again, that face is grinning!
Always as lazy as a cat, the perfect capture of Teacher’s unending malice is awake and fascinated.
(Prepare for separation.)
The answer to this order is a jolt of pressure, followed by the reeking wind pulling backward. Beyond the containment cube that strains to hold her prisoner, the Maidwright is unusually pleased to take in the sunlight of a new day. The sky-bridge that has never in recent memory been opened is one of the only places that the Heart can stomach to accept another access to.
(After thousands of years, that morning should be novel…?)
The pressure finally pulls the Maidwright from her seat, that solidity lifting launching the chair at the tear along with the heavy table beside it. Her clothing flaps wildly, her sash finally launching to the floor to capture it and anchor.
(Despicable! You are demeaning me, pet!)
“Deceived child, wHaT iS tHe LiMiT oF yOuR hUnTeRs!?”
[FROM THE SLAYERS THAT YOUR EVIL GOD GATHERED TO CHALLENGE HER FOR DEFILING THIS LAND’S SOUL, TO THE ALLIES UNDER A BANNER AND SWORN TO HERETICAL TRUTHS THAT RESISTED DEATH ONLY TO EARN YOUR BETRAYAL, EVERY LAST ENEMY THAT CURSES YOUR NAME PLEADS TO MINE FOR THE POWER TO STRIKE YOU DOWN.]
Through the poison of anti-existence, a pulsating icon looms beyond the tear.
A cross blacker than the contradictions that he’s birthed into containment pulses the miasma crashing into the Maidwrigth’s psyche, and it is the source of the gonging bells ringing out that announce his intent.
Silver no longer shines near this foe.
All has decayed with the ruin he promised, turning to dust that is pulled into huge swirling plumes.
“IMMORTAL CHILD, dO yOu HaVe AnY rEaSoN tO lIvE!?”
[I AM — THE END OF THE AGES. THE OVERTURNING OF THE GAME. NO MORE PLAYERS, NO MORE VICTORIES, ONLY — ETERNAL LOSS.
A STAR OF RUIN THAT ANNOUNCES THAT THE MIGHTY MUST END AND SINS MUST BE ACCOUNTED.]
“Whose sins, nightmare!?”
A curious point, the one that comes to mind in the Maidwright’s thoughts.
There’s only one deserving of so much attention, after all, the sort of pompous importance that sees eldritch abominations tearing up the floors and walls to cast them either beyond and into the sunlight, or to chew at what lands within its ichorous sphere.
“dO yOu ReAlLy HaVe To AsK!?!? HEEEHEEEHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” The Allip shrieks, spinning without limbs and laughing its head off.
[… Aurumia… marking me with your kiss was a terrible idea!]
The Maidwright’s attention peaks with how this one’s tone changes, from a drone of condemnation without feeling to become utterly acidic.
(Oh, a kiss? The rarest torment of hers I could imagine. Yes…? Yeeeeesss…! I understand entirely how you feel, what… makes you feel like that from her kiss…!)
[Now is the era of being afraid of the night once more!]
Little time remains to constrain it before it bursts free, but the Maidwright is enraptured.
The moment they shared a similar emotion, she finds it hard to let go. No stranger to impossible foes and cries of outrageous promises, the Maidwright decides to grade what his one’s is after comprehending who this oath is being made to.
[Shadows are not JUST mere tricks of light and perspective! The unrestrained secrets of the heart and soul, pressed down by your mundane gold! These are what I will drown the world with!
I am an envoy of Zennia’s doom, for WE are no longer figments or stories, but the truth that you will realize after we peel away the greedy dreams that you have built up to mock us!]
But it’s not sufficient only for him to bring doom. It’s necessary to make certain of who deserves it.
(NAME HER. You appeared in OUR Castillo without our welcome, so… ARE YOU HER AGENT SINCE YOU HAVE HER KEY, OR ARE YOU…?)
“Who earned your ire, False God from beyond our world? Who called you, not them?” It isn’t mannerly to sound goading, but the Maidwright allows herself a private smile of conspiracy when so openly leading this fiend on.
And the effect is a miracle like lead to gold.
The alchemy of enticement earns the utter deformation of this mask into rage. Its curious pictographical emblem burns with darklight that blinds even the shrieking Allip beside it.
An unsubtle rage earns the fear of the neverborn that swirl around it, all dying to break free both to devour the outside and escape their own summoner!
[Aurumia…!
Every last seed you hope I’ll plant by mistake…! Every horror you hope I’ll be snuffed by, I’ve got… INFINITE choices of those who hate you to arm with knives and swords against your gilded toys! Only my weapons have worth!]
(Very interesting? You value “others” as your means?)
Something slips out about the entity that explains its fierce ire towards those who threaten its chosen…!
[Every one of your enemies is me behind them!
Every one of your secrets will be ruined!
Until you taste the hubris of wishing to own everything, but only getting STABBED IN THE HEART UNTIL YOU FEEL MY PAIN…!]
Finally the corruption gathers on the outside of the silver panels, droplets of nonexistence trying to fall sideways onto the mansion’s true walls!
[ALL WHO PROTECT HER WILL SHARE HER FATE! IF YOU DO NOT AID ME, YOU SHARE HER FATE WHEN WE DEVOUR HER!]
(That is all I needed to know.)
The Maidwright’s eyes shine with the deepest reservoirs of her own existence being tapped. An expanding corruption meets a superior will and succumbs to it. It crushes unwillingly, for the invisible hand is one it hates, too.
“For warning me of your forthcoming apocalypse: thank you.”
An expertly made cage is structurally sound enough to fall into and ride the launcher that carries it out into daylight. At exceptional speeds it flies off the end of slick steel rails, taking launcher and all.
“Goodbye.”
[DIE, DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE
DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, AURUMIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!]
(Ahhhh… its rage is so warm. I haven’t felt this alive since…?)
It screeches violence as it is ejected from the Castillo.
Gathering silver light leeches from what remains of the untarnished metallic surfaces of the Maidwright’s once prestigious tea spot, the immense hangar giving up rays that collect to her living sash. Into her hands it gifts itself to then roll up tightly.
“An unending splendor, drinking in the light of Origin and resting upon a throne of gold…” The incantation is a rare one, preserved for those tainted by Greed whom she is judging.
(It was unfortunate for you that you were given a key.)
Her target is still caught in an ungainly mess of black panels dissolving outside.
A black ball of hatred that has a defect of brass within it.
“… a greedy heart such as mine accepts not the limitations of silver.”
A sash becomes a sword of light to cleave anything filled with Golden Luster.
And the nightmare splits in the moment of this streak of destruction carving through it.
“[Origin Killer.]”
The tear implodes with the weight of a thousand silver swirling streaks balling inward.
An infinite number of contradictions are banished by daylight and the second-most-sought metal, a brutal sonic boom striking so hard that it folds into nothing without a single shred of scrap darkness left behind.
A blade that the Castillo’s walls themselves stretched to avoid finishes its arc as only a sash blowing in the wind. The gentle carving into halves of a cumulus cloud hanging in the vast, distant sky is the only defect of her precise efforts.
(I am so very tired of things going wrong or nearly cataclysmic.)
Large bay doors retract inwards to slam shut with sufficient force to rock the room.
Everything has melted, ground to dust, or been ejected from it, but it is a room still belonging to the Maidwright and the Castillo.
“Okay, I’m gonna go smash him.”
“I will tear your legs off again. I just sent it off.”
That she must immediately suffer this walking migraine’s enthusiasm is too much after such an expenditure of willpower. Incompetent, stupid Low crowds her, pumping his fist.
“Said she kissed ‘em, that’s a lie deserving of no mercy.”
“It made many, many claims.”
“He’s going after the Mistress herself.”
“It and many others on that list.”
“Do they all swear their lives against her!?”
“A surprising number do.”
But logic fails when spoken to a flagstone, so this igneous material starts its lopsided roll toward the stairs.
“Nope, gonna deal with all threatening bugs.”
“Presumptuous, to declare it a threat where none exists.”
Low throws himself back to face the one who should be instructing him, but ever has her lessons ignored.
“Ain’t a threat! Threatening! Anyone going around… chewing at the Mistress’ plans, even if just like a termite, gets squashed!” Blind, ignorant anger leaves this whelp growling. Only at these times does he approach something like the proper gravitas of a Castillo servant despite how he declares what “is or is not” permitted as if he has authority.
(I see I will need to use the ultimate magic words again.)
“We both are nothing compared to her, Nan, so we gotta stand up for her!” His fist clenches and his whole body shakes. A vicious, childlike grin an open window into this fool’s shallow puddle of consciousness. How he begs for notice like a toddler.
(I hate you so much.)
“Good, then start by crushing yourself, Low. Immediately, for failing your Mistress.”
“… When, where, how?”
Up the ruined stairway this one was stalking toward floats a new chair and table of the same superb quality. They pass by the frozen Low to allow the Maidwright to sit and face the just ruined sky hangar.
“That existence is one entrusted by the Mistress with an item of grand potential. This is by design, yes, for the Mistress can never make a mistake.”
“So far, you ain’t saying anything stupid.”
“And it seeks only to unite all against the Mistress, for she has inflicted an emotion upon it at that meeting. Can you name its driving motive?”
“… That…?” With something approaching a cogent thought, the hoodlum crosses his arms and nods his head. “Yeah, he’s so angry I can taste it. Makes me shiver, needing to meet it head on! Ain’t no different from mine, except mine’s ‘for’ my Mistress, not against?”
“Both of you are merely pieces in her grand plan, yet you want to ruin it. Destroy yourself, immediately.”
“What plan!?”
Steps also come up the stairway, a maid covered in full silver mail and a sheer plate helm with full facial covering coming to deliver a new tea set. Its steaming spout smells of ceylon tea.
“The plan. [Teacher’s Grand Plot]. In it… that thing has been recruited to gather her enemies for a final annihilation. This I have proved quite succinctly through my summoning and interrogation of it. This plot you wish to abort was set in motion by the very Mistress you serve, many of its aspects unveiled by my superior intellect.”
The Maidwright sips at her tea, passively appreciating how her ill-fated student collapses into a shocked stupor.
“The Alchemaster is a supreme being. All below her are tools, at best willing ones, to construct a perfect miraculous world that obeys her transcendental will. Except for you, Low, you are a constant walking mistake that will unravel her grand plan by assaulting a key component at the wrong time. Die, immediately, kill yourself in apology.”
“I… I… failed…?”
He stumbles forward, one hand upon her chair for balance. His face is a strong mask of masculine stoicism.
“Ugh… but… if I die… I can’t serve her anymore…”
“You already do not serve her by opposing her. Cease existing.”
The crying mess he devolves into is more hideous for the fact that he maintains his dead set features, allowing no weakness to show.
“… Hey… that’s… my lesson, right? Why you were saying to leave him alone? Is that it, Nan?” This collapsing ape regains his bragging smile, albeit with tears still shining on his cheek. “So… if I learned my lesson then I ain’t failed! That’s what the Mistress told me, hahahaha!”
(A cosmos-scale mistake, that particular term of your contract with her.)
“Your lesson for today was to ‘recognize the Mistress’ hand in even the most chaotic of matters’. She wishes for you to internalize her true glory by denying your ego in matters far greater than you. That you should never second guess her intentions. Do so again and you shall die.”
“Right! No failures, just a misunderstanding. Let’s obey the Mistress’ plan to the letter, Nan.” Another sip, a long moment to let the stooge take in her revelation while he flexes his muscles with short stretches to calm himself, grants the Maidwright another pleasant respite.
(I love that you’re so easy to fool. It is the single thing I love about you. Please, let me always have this sole mote of beauty to love in the burning trash heap that is you, Low.)
Any time he is despondent is a tickling sensation on her spine.
That dirty face of his is only fitting to be looked upon when she is enticed to run her hands over his cheeks to feel how they burn with shame, to savor the wetness of his tears that are wasted upon a Teacher that will never love anything but herself.
This one’s outrageous capabilities and his impossible origination, both shrouded in mystery, are worth forgetting if the Maidwright can reduce him to a pliable wreck with the right phrase.
(It’s nice that you keep quiet when thinking seriously. One might mistake you for an ancient philosopher. If the shades were ignored.)
The hooligan stuffs his hands back into his pockets and sighs. “Nan… I got a lot to learn, still.” It would be a victory, this, but Teacher’s unholy gift to this buffoon pats the idiot’s head and frowns reproachfully at the Maidwright.
(One day, you will be purged in much the same manner as that evil nightmare just was, if only so that I never have to see your face.)
“Though you never seem to improve any faster despite so many mistakes to learn from.”
“It’s fine, I know you won’t tell the Mistress I needed a second take, since you love me, Nan!”
(I would love to show you just how much.)
“It’s a… struggle to find ways to show I’ve improved, you know without enough enemies around. It’s a hard job, lacking opportunities! I ain’t complaining, though, don’t misunderstand my thinking!”
(Only your intellect is twisted, and that is a de facto complaint.)
“Do not worry, Low. There are… others that disappoint the Mistress much more than you do.” A single touch upon his hand, rubbing over his knuckles with her soft fingers before pulling them away to swiftly flick off his ick of a loser, is the human comfort she gifts to him. “You are still above the minimum success quota. It is not too late to avoid being ground up into elemental resources.”
“Haaah, that’s a relief! Great lesson, I’ll be back at the gate keeping the Chosen from tinkering with the lock! Later, Nan!” The absolute garbage dross roughly slaps her shoulders, spilling tea upon a priceless apron.
(I DIDN’T DISMISS YOU.)
But fools obey only their folly, and the man is to the stairway before he clicks his tongue and yells something worse.
“Yo, the reason he saw through your illusion was your mistake though, Nan!”
“… That was intentional.”
“Maybe some of it? But, also, you flaunted too much! The Mistress don’t have a hint of that kinda act, she’s too perfect for, che, sex appeal! But you, Nan, you’re always dripping with that feminine heat! Can’t go a minute without trying to fool some guy to fall for you like you did with this mask guy, aren’t you actin’ kinda easy?”
“I will castrate you again, Low.”
“Later, Nan, I’m on duty now.”
(I will castrate him as many times as is necessary to deplete his Recompense, so long as it prevents him from ever calling ME…!?)
Another spill of her tea breaks the Maidwright from her trance. The shaking room settles once the knuckle-dragging ape slides down the stairway.
(Peace is an illusion, too, but I accept being fooled.)
And so the Maidwright awaits the next intrusion, which does not even bother announcing itself. Her eyes shift to her left to take in the shuffling form of an ungainly stork wearing a blue-and-gold tie and a chef’s toque.
Its sole eye is bright. The attention it spares for the Maidwright comes from all directions at once. Despite being the lowest creature on the hierarchy to others, it does not bow to the Maidwright.
“… This is all your fault.”
The Dandy’s front wing explodes into frenzied whipping, then it stamps its foot.
“Trapping the entity someplace would’ve prevented this, but you just had to be curious. So, you brought it other toys to play with. What happened because of that?”
Again the Dandy gyrates around, swinging its long neck wildly, but by the end of the dance it curls up into itself with its head hanging low.
“Curious, how your ‘job’ only gets done when it suits you. And when it would’ve eventually become the doom of us all, because you tried to hide your mess.”
The Maidwright suffers the next wave of childlike antics, straining not to groan when the evil stork whips its head left-to-right.
“A potion and a miracle-grade regenerator departed Teacher’s private stash before the Chapel vanished. Only she could call for them, and only she could grant what I felt within him. It was definitely Teacher.”
Instead the Maidwright stands up to walk away from it with a pensive expression and hands behind her back, annoyed when the creature hops after her.
“Of course Teacher set this abomination after us specifically! That IS a part of her plan, I never lied to Low.” At this the Dandy waves its front and back wings with a curious fluffed up beat.
(“When do we destroy it?” What a foolish question, especially for you, Heart.)
“How many hidden tumors has it annihilated?”
The Dandy bobs its head once, then whips its wing!
“Chaos spreads thanks to it, but the Castillo is also standing because it won. Against Teacher’s ‘joke’.”
At this, the Dandy droops its beak.
“What it spat out when provoked was… quite enlightening. Is it responsible for all that’s transpired against us? Possibly, also unlikely.” The Maidwright runs her hand up the Dandy’s beak, enjoying the shivering when it then pulls back. “But, it confirms our suspicions of something uniting them, for it also sees these links. And because it is intelligent enough to notice them… we can…?”
(I do not know Teacher’s plan or why she has invoked so many enemies to hunt her so soon in this Age, but I just met an unraveling thread in her tapestry.)
Imps and other horrors are easy to call forth into the Castillo with promises of sating their oppositional needs, but this masked one would not even hint at what may placate it.
Greed was not enough.
(Its hate was real, for certain, and therefore its other desires mix with the same truth.)
“Let’s see if we can subvert them? Do not kick at me, I merely suggest a test. You say the strongest desire among them is set upon something in the World Tree?”
Another nod comes, making it quite easy to decide where first to plan for this group’s future utility in service to the mansion they despise.
“Then… we’ll just have to let the World Tree’s [Demesne] owner know about the arrival of this ‘snake-like holy elf’?”
The chef Dandy’s toque flies off when it rears back, its wing slapping the Maidwright’s leg after.
“I’m sure Teacher’s [Flame of Alchemy] will be quite of interest to this False God.”
A mention of this artifact’s name sends the Dandy hammering its head into her knee, prompting the Maidwright to yank it up by its flailing neck.
“Of course she will lead them right to it.”
And so the Dandy tries to kick the Maidwright, its ire intensifying in how the walls breathe loudly. The Castillo’s annoyance is growing, shaking starting again.
“Yes, they will reach it… but, what will happen?” To the ungainly bird she lists off with three fingers her points. “Like the Chapel that likely housed a fragment of Teacher, and the distant past that festered in a chamber even you knew nothing about, even the Flame that Teacher hid to spite you, do we truly dislike these dangers now being within reach of extermination?”
The Dandy stops struggling, though the room continues to shake.
“He has one of Teacher’s [Keys to Every Door], but I assert that he didn’t request it. I recognize his… personal affront. You felt it, too, how all three of our hearts were weeping over the same tormentor.”
At this the Dandy’s eye rolls about, a single large tear gathering inside its beak.
“Yes, it’s dangerous, but we won’t survive the status quo without a bit more danger! ‘Stay out of my way if you do not aide me’, that was his decree. A threat, but also a suggestion? And so… at his back, without issuing RSVPs, I shall create the grandest gathering for him to call the guests to!”
Into the chair she ordered the Dandy is seated, so that the Maidwright can lift her cup to strut around within the rumbling sky-bridge entrance. Drinking her favorite tea, enjoying one of the few times in recent memory that perhaps…?
“After this party ends and there are no more guests left standing, we can shuffle it out the front entrance and finally clean up all of Teacher’s biggest messes.”
(WHY OPPOSE WHAT SEEKS THE DESTRUCTION OF MY MOST HATED ENEMY, AFTER ALL?)
Completely logical, utterly effectual, the concept of letting Teacher’s “joke” turn on herself is just what is needed to bring a bubbling smile to the Maidwright.
Except that she frowns after the rumbling continues. Heart’s moods are ever-changing, but rarely does the Castillo remain angry enough to keep shaking this hard.
In an ever-escalating manner, especially.
“It’s what?” So when the Maidwright turns back to witness the Dandy whipping its wings at blinding speed upon her seat, she has a lot to take in of the tool she chose to free.
“Our… trophy is loose?”
The Dandy keeps nodding, then lifts its wing and slashes it downward.
“The Starborn Lords’ mobile disaster experiment is loose, and the earth is ‘dying’ around it?”
(What can cause the “earth” to die?)
That’s a question to ponder, for the direction of this struggle is at the location of the evil mask’s physical vessel. A new question is unwelcome, but the answer for the dilemma of the “angel’s escape” is simple.
The Maidwright frowns, then tsks her tongue.
“If… they prove insufficient to defeat it, then coax it to the mansion’s entrance with however many sacrifices are necessary.”
The Dandy hops down, saluting bravely with its wing. This cowardly eye of the Heart twists up like a rag to burst into black feathers and disappear. The mansion continues to shake, but that should soon stop with the destruction of the released Angel.
(I have Hoime in place. Perhaps… Miria can fit herself within this evil being’s proximity? So many choices exist. If I cannot subvert this entity, then by relying upon “people”, it grants me another avenue of attack? People are lovely tools, my fair entity, this I agree, but…?)
Left alone, finally and mercifully, the Maidwright considers re-opening the hangar doors to watch the fireworks. Especially for when the mutated battleform prepares to unleash its anger at a particular fellow who should have reached his post by now.
The Maidwright’s subordinates never quite grasp her Teacher’s lessons so easily.
(Relationships taste novel and sweet when first formed, but what will give you the same rush after thirty days? Three hundred? Three thousand?
Eventually… others are found lacking.)
Already, there is one relationship that the Maidwright can use of proof as it being more burdensome than novel. For this Gate Guardian seeks one far above his station without admitting it even to himself.
(“Greed is Eternal”, whether as an object of desire or as the poison in the heart that covets it, and to want ever more of others is the direst of wants. You will learn what I did, for Teacher taught me well.)
“It’s a shame that defeating this Angel won’t earn you extra merit since it’s merely you performing your job… Low~.”
And so ends Act 2 of Take Up the Cross!
The primary point of it was to see how Adris and the others would evolve past their meeting. There were some successes, but I also feel that I didn’t explore enough into the ero side of things? Neesiette’s arc wasn’t even supposed to happen. It was only a bridging point, something to grant insight into her. Instead, it became something outrageous! Characters accrued, everyone had such deep stories, honestly it felt like I had unleashed a monster!
But in a way, it was probably necessary. Only by going there and dealing with Serras’ choices, as well as his own, could Adris regain some measure of mental stability that he was using the girls to hide from facing. I think him having such a tragic thing prevented him from caring enough to get to know them in any meaningful way. All he had were whirlwind events… and then he discovered that the genuine things that unite people are a lot harder to reach, especially if you’re artificial about it.
Lycia was fun, but I think she showed up too much. I want more of the girls! More party stuff. Let’s have fun in a demonic mansion that constantly tries to rape you, mind, body, and soul! All the girls have temptations, now, so they will be after someone…
I have one person to thank for all of my progress and the story being as good as I feel like it is. His name is zirrboy. He’s the guy that listens to my insane ramblings, offers crucial feedback, and has helped me through a number of IRL things going on. This story would not exist without him and it’s because he has so many good ideas, and moderating questions, that I’ve avoided many trapfalls.
This is also a story driven by the feedback of people who read it. Thank you for still being here for my OG fanfic of nothing. It’s insanely hard to rationalize that I’d make something as weird as this, trying to be ero and plot-driven, so if it works it works, if it doesn’t, I’ll cry.
Next up will be Avenalliah’s arc, so please give her a chance! There will be tons of the other girls, too, as I intend to make the arc mostly about their interactions. Will that work? Girls talking all the time? Oh no, cringe!
I’ll keep this going for as long as I have the health to do it. Thanks for your support.
Ero is power!
Blood and steel!