“What do you choose?” I asked.
“I, however, am not like the other magi. I believe in the perfect balance, being the perfect conduit.”
I liked hearing him say that. I believe Shadan did too. There was something pleasing and reassuring about it, about his aspiration for perfection, for greatness, and I couldn’t argue, he seemed as perfect physically as he did mentally – even though he was as close to a broken man as you could get.
“Now, you two, remember what I said, she is an illusionist. Don’t fall for her tricks; don’t believe anything you see. It will all be a lie.”
We both nodded and Slayne, black-chested and still armed with Shadan’s sword, walked towards the double door and kicked the left one open with a front kick that tore it from its hinges. Instantly, he pulsed something out from the tip of the sword, but the room – as far as Shadan and I could see – was empty.
But Slayne seemed to be looking deeper, as though his magic granted him a third eye. I saw him motionless, ever so delicately caressing every surface with his gaze, trying to uproot the source of this illusionist.
Slowly, darkness descended all around us – well, around me – and as it did I became edgy, worried. The door behind me was no longer visible and when I looked back to see Shadan and Slayne, I saw them swallowed by the darkness along with the rest of the light, until there was only the tiniest light enough for me to see myself, my hands as I held them in front of my face.
***
Quick, furtive looks from Vison captured my attention and I wondered what was going on. I saw him look at me and then look at the floor.
I tried to steal his attention back to find out what was going on for him, but it was like he couldn’t see me, and then I watched as he held his hands in front of his face.
He can’t see anything, I thought, and then I saw Slayne turn to me, briefly look at Vison and then back to me, before signalling silence with a finger to his lips.
Slayne was hauntingly silent when he returned to looking out over the truly stark area.
It was unbearable, waiting like this, feeling so powerless in the presence of at least one person I knew was so much stronger than me. I thought I began hearing things, a creak, a scrape, a rap, a soft drone that seemed to warm the atmosphere. Was it just an illusion though? an illusion for my ears…?
Peering back over to Vison I saw him still motionless, caught in whatever blindness, but it seemed to make very little difference me having the light, I was as blind as Vison – and maybe that was the aim of this illusionist.
I took solace, though, in being able to see Slayne, but quicker than a flash of lightning he was gone. So was Vison.
Beyond where Slayne had been I saw the emergence of a woman, wearing a cloak of a similar fashion to the magus Slayne had killed earlier. She glided over the ground like she was floating, and her eyes bore into my soul as she floated nearer to me.
Every fibre of my being told me to do something, told me I had to do something, but I had been reminding myself over and over of what Slayne had said, about not believing her lies. My job had inbuilt in me that primal nature to act, to act first, and I had been very successful so far, so to disregard all that in the face of magic – yes, magic! – was absurd.
Hold firm, Shadan. This is just an illusion.
That powerless feeling I had before took greater precedence over me and I felt little more than a pawn in a much bigger sequence of events that rotated around me.
She came ever nearer, but I became ever more resolved to standing still and not rising to the fear – even despite my racing heart. I didn’t know how, maybe it was because I knew innately that there was nowhere to run, but I turned my fear into the willpower I needed not to move. I told myself that this wasn’t real, but was it really that simple? Was it as simple as just refuting what my eyes categorically told me they were seeing?
Her ghostly visage, white eyes, deep black lips, blue veins that looked like cracks in her pallid and wan complexion, could only have been a few feet away from me when she faded and faded more, into an outline which rippled through me.
I felt chilled to my core and, being very careful not to stab myself with my own dagger, I crossed my hands about my midriff to try and pull the warmth back.
Slayne then returned, looking at me like I’d behaved very strangely. I wondered if he’d been there the entire time, watching me.
Still silent, still motionless, Slayne kept my sword at the ready.
However, I saw something stirring in front of me, the outline of that haunting woman again. She was appearing behind Slayne, facing Slayne, while he was still facing the other way.
“Behind you!” I shouted, though I was too late, and the figure was erupting weave after weave of magic into Slayne, sending him not only to the floor but out of sight too. I watched it all unfold, powerless, powerless, powerless to do anything about it.
However, this apparition I saw in front of me didn’t vanish like she had before. Instead, she glided over to where Slayne’s body had momentarily been. I hadn’t noticed, but the room had become progressively dark and now it was blooming into full luminescence again. With the new light, I noticed the ghostly woman rejoin a collection of figures, all of which, upon closer inspection, were the same person.
***
They’re all the same person, I inwardly remarked, as the light returned and I looked ahead to see a group of several ghostly women.
I turned to Shadan, my shoulders raised into a shrug.
“You two, you have a choice: return without any more argument, or die.”
We again looked at each other and, without a word, let alone any argument, we turned our backs to walk out.
It was a slow rotation to face the door, a resigned twist from both of us. To think that our forever would be spent inside this place was a daunting prospect, but dying now was accepting defeat, and I determined that while I had breath in my body I could achieve anything. And when I returned to look at Shadan, I remembered thinking about when we kicked the door down together to find Slayne.
And with all this time on our hands, I was sure I could finally get to the root of what was bothering her, because it was bothering me too.
Our bodies slouched, we were about to leave, when a piercing groan halted us and beckoned for us to turn around.
***
Slayne! I mentally shouted. I had never been more relieved to see anyone before. It hadn’t even registered that he was mid-way through lancing her with my sword. I was just so pleased that he was alive, because it brought with it the chance of freedom; it extinguished the doom of imprisonment.
Just like before, with the cloaked man, Slayne injected whatever hex he needed into her and her body vanished.
I didn’t know how many of these magi were left, but I deciphered that there couldn’t be many more left because, once she had perished, another massive slab of reality seemed to collapse from this place. Even as I looked at the walls, I thought I could see woodland, and my heart did a little dance at the prospect, but I tried to calm myself, because it wasn’t over yet.
And then the tension came flooding back, as if it hadn’t actually ever gone…
***
“What happened to you?” I asked Slayne while he traversed the barely existent room.
“I pretended and, by the look on both your faces, it must have been fairly convincing.”
“But why pretend?” Shadan asked.
“Because I had to work out which was the real her.”
“By being killed?”
“By pretending to be killed,” Slayne corrected. “And it worked. Now, if you’ve finished questioning my methods, we have one more to go.”
“Only one?” I said, with a trace of excitement that I really wish hadn’t spilled out.
“Well, two… But one more until we’re free, because no single magus could hold up the complexity of a place like this alone.”
“And you think we can do this?” I continued to ask.
/>
Slayne towered above me and asked, “Have I given you any reason to doubt me so far?” And I took that as my cue to be quiet and let him carry on, which he did, by stepping past me.
There really was barely anything left of this place now. Not even the walls were fully opaque anymore, and it was like we were walking in the wings of a great stage, sneaking in the secret halls where the workings of the machine were kept hidden.
I noticed the courtyard where I had entered, now a mere shape depicted in some fragmental form in the distance, and my feet, if it weren’t for the darkened glass-like structure of this unreality, would have been walking on a forest bed.
And now, finally, I had to find out what she was keeping secret, so I said, “Don’t make me beg,” hoping the snippet of humour might eek out her sadness.
“You don’t give up, do you?
It was low of me, but I didn’t say anything, because while I kept my tongue on hold, and with her having spoken, it might encourage her to talk on.
She had an impatient look about her. No, I corrected myself; it was more a look of desperation.
“Why are you so interested?” she asked.
But still I kept my voice in my mouth and my words in mind.
“Very well,” she said, and quite suddenly she asserted an unsettling degree of strength. “I am an assassin, and I have been for as long as I can remember. From the moment I could hold a spoon I was trained to hold a weapon. From the moment I could talk I was trained to listen. You see, my parents were both members of the Scouts’ Guild.”
“Which we both know is a fancy name for Assassins.”
“I had very little choice in the outcome of what I would do, and at seven I was adopted into its ranks. I killed my first person at seven and nothing has really changed for me.”
“…Except?”
She scowled at me, but I was forthright in my question and I didn’t back down. I knew there was more. And then her scowl softened and there returned the sadness again.
“Except until a couple of weeks ago. The assignment was no more risky than others I’d had in the past. The people who had commissioned it wanted it more as a statement than just a plain ‘kill’. I don’t understand the politics behind it. The details are trivial and pointless, the reasons, as always, merely selfish ones, a conflict of interests. I was tasked with the elimination of a baron, and the task came with a set of criteria. It needed to be execution. It needed to state that any dealings with him would not be tolerated. And it needed to leave behind no witnesses.”
I was engaged, and when I heard her mention those details I had a feeling I’d heard about this.
“I acquired information that he was holding a banquet for some very select people and that his family would be away while he discussed business. There would be several guests there and it was perfect, in every respect.
“I planned it meticulously, every step. They would all be sat in the banquet hall while I’d break in via the basement and sneak up through the servants’ quarters. On the night before I had already found my way in and planted the crossbows behind the suits of armour that were on display around the balcony that overlooked the dining table beneath.”
“I remember hearing about that,” I said. “Lord Leopold and guests all slaughtered.”
She was silent and I worried I’d silenced her for good.
“So, what went wrong?” I asked, trying to entice her to finish.
Finally she said, “The guests arrived as expected and I kept to the shadows, working my way up to the balcony and keeping an eye on everything. I made sure to wait until all victuals and beverages had been consumed and they were all tired and inebriated. In their delirious state they barely took any notice of the first of them dying from a bolt to the back. He leaned forward onto the table like a man who’d had too much.
“And while they were all laughing, I had already moved to the next preloaded crossbow, which I unloaded into the back of the next guest. When he died, suspicion was aroused, but by that point, in their feeble states, it was too late to do anything. I made sure to be quick and efficient. However, I didn’t want to conceal who my target was, so I left him for last.
“For the first time that evening I made my presence known, and I stood up from behind the banister, leaped over it and landed. I had already calculated the drop the day before and I needed the quick method, because letting him out of my sight was a risk I was not inclined to take. Of course, he tried to run anyway, but I threw my dagger into his back and he tumbled like a sack of potatoes. I was quick to finish him, because I take no pleasure in my job, and then I pulled him back into the banquet hall. The hardest bit of the night was lifting his fat body onto the table, ready for the constabulary and officials to find.”
She was about to stop; more to the point, I was about to speak, but there was more she wasn’t telling me, so I remained wordless.
“No, I didn’t feel bad in killing any of them. They might have wealth and power but they bleed the same as anyone, and their decisions, all of them, have been only for themselves at the expense of all others. No, I don’t feel sad about that. Neither did I feel justified. I did my job, a job that had been forced upon me as a young girl.
“I returned to the balcony above, made sure to leave the crossbows, because I wanted to leave the impression that more than one person had done it. Following a final check, I was about to leave when I saw movement in a distant corridor. At that moment, I knew I couldn’t just up and leave, not when I was told there was to be no witnesses left alive, so I crept to where I saw the movement. It was some distance from the banquet hall; it was a big house with lots of rooms.
She paused for a moment and I waited patiently.
“It turned out his family had not gone away. His daughter had fallen ill and, whether he had decided it or not, they had remained with him. But they were witnesses…”
“You … killed them?” I asked – had to ask.
“I—” she began.
But Slayne stopped her from answering, saying, “We’re here.”
***
I wasn’t displeased that Slayne had stopped me. It was difficult dredging it up, and telling it like that was harder than I had imagined; it was getting to me, even now.
I could tell Vison was irritated, but at that moment, being able to break away from it was relieving to say the least. Of course, Vison would want to know the rest, his tenacity seemed unswerving. I had no doubt he would get the truth out of me, and it didn’t matter if he knew.
“This may be the most dangerous of all the magi, so let’s hope he is at least partly distracted, keeping this planar dimension still intact.”
“Why are they even bothering now?” Vison asked, a pinch of irritation limning his words.
“Sustaining something like this, something that’s already been created, is much easier than having to build it from nothing. If they let this place fall now, they wouldn’t have enough power to build another one and, as they have no intention of losing, they’re not going to give it up just yet.”
“And what makes this magus so dangerous?”
“Because this one is an enchanter, and he will control your minds to his will. I would ask you to try and resist, but you won’t have a choice. Follow.”
So we followed, though there was nothing grand. Every surface was but a flat, undetailed shell that barely obfuscated what was on the other side.
***
Unlike Shadan and Vison, I felt this enchanter’s presence long before arriving, longer even than that; I’d felt his presence since resigning myself to this fate. He was waiting for us and, in his wait, he had lumbered as much concentration as he could onto his fellow magus, so he could focus on the problem at hand.
That problem: us.
He was in sight from the moment we entered, cloaked in his icy-white robes. There, I saw him ready his hands in front of him, smelting the bare magic into a weapon against us. I was ready for it though. Enchanter he may be, a master of men
tal manipulation, he was also as deadly with ballistic magic as any other brute force magus.
The missile came at me and I doused it with my own magic.
And then it came, what I was expecting, his voice in my head, maddening me with hysteria and creating sounds I knew didn’t exist but that sounded as real as any I’d heard before.
From my left resonated a sound; from my right I saw the twist of movement. Both these things caused me to turn, even though I knew it was a trick.
At this point, I feared for my non-magical friends – allies, for I didn’t know if we had attained the standard of friendship. And they were looking at me, but I suddenly saw them both, simultaneously, take a combative stance to me. In the same moment, they also both developed a glazed look.
I couldn’t blame them. His magic was strong and they were not prepared for it. And even if they had been prepared they wouldn’t be able to halt his command. A flicker came across me – the idea that I could just kill them both – but that seemed somewhat pointless, as not only had this thing been born from them, but they were also the reason I was fighting to escape, for their freedom. Not to mention, I’d still be manacled to that wall had it not been for them.
Shadan lunged at me first and I countered her attack with her sword, which seemed somewhat ironic.
This wasn’t going to work at all. I couldn’t kill either of them and they weren’t going to stop, so I needed to stem the control at the root. Blocking Shadan’s next attack with more vigour, I drove a kick into her side that knocked her away.
And while Shadan had started her offensive on me, Vison had circumvented.
With a moment to spare I spun round to the enchanter who was looking in deep focus. All I had to do was distract him with a single bit of magic to knock his concentration. And that was exactly what I began to do, pulling in the magical energy that floated all around me, focusing it through my weapon as a true blade magus would.
I was just about to release it when Vison dashed in and knocked the blade in my hand, destroying all the work I’d put into crafting it.