99. Of ends, luck and a little bit of spiders

Cassandra Pendragon

I was somewhere in between. I could still see the circular chamber as an afterimage of sorts while I struggled with the sensations my own body was providing me with. Every muscle and tendon connected to my wings was burning as if it had been dunked in acid and I could feel torrents of blood gush down my back, a warm stream of sticky liquid that formed a dark puddle beneath my feet. I couldn’t remain upright, spasms raced up my legs and along my back and I collapsed face first into my own blood.

My wings felt like they were about to be pulled out of their sockets, a much stronger force than I had ever experienced had taken hold of them and was constantly trying to rip me a part. My ingenious manoeuvre had worked, I was in my own time stream and still anchored in the alternate version. Unfortunately that also meant that right now my wings were the only thing connecting two separate streams. In a way I was a stick thrust between two wheels. If the wheels were turning in the same direction there wouldn’t be much of a problem, but if they weren’t, they would either grind to a halt or the stick would break.

The simple act of raising my head and blinking through my bloodshot eyes nearly broke me but with a defiant groan I managed. The world around me, my reality as well as the ghostly version I saw behind it, were frozen. Nothing moved and nothing changed, everything was stuck in an instant of time and the power that usually drove existence forward was now trying to rip my wings apart so time could flow freely again. While I was undoubtedly dying, my core poisoning me with more energy than I could even imagine to keep me alive through the ordeal, a small part of my mind marvelled at the implications of what was happening to me. Time wasn’t linear, different streams could flow in different direction, even be averse to each other, but yet the corresponding moments across different streams were still somehow connected, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to find my way back.

Metaphysical breakthroughs aside, I could already feel the pain diminish as my body was shutting down. Darkness gnawed at the edges of my vision and I knew that I had a few seconds at best before I’d pass out and was ground to dust between the wheels of time. From one moment to the next my thoughts were thrown into disarray, I couldn’t quite remember what I had wanted to do, with my overstimulated brain on the verge of blanking out. Strange memories rose from the depths or where they further images from another time stream? I couldn’t say. Colours and sparks swam through my field of vision, the boundaries between my timeline and the other one further disintegrating as I distantly felt my wings shred through more and more of the separating membrane.

My gaze was drawn to Ahri, who was just as frozen as the others by my side. A surge of emotions bubbled up inside of me but it was instantly drowned beneath the crushing weight that tore at my wings, until nothing remained. I couldn’t even summon the faintest memory of who she was or what she meant to me, I was lost beneath the suffocating, inevitable grip of time like the last traces on a beach before the tide washed them away, for ever. All that remained was the transcendent chain of promises around my heart that kept it beating.

I wouldn’t die here, I had promise her that I wouldn’t leave her again, hadn’t I? A trickle of clarity struggled against the impeding darkness and I managed to form one coherent thought. All I had to do was touch the two versions of Reia and all of this would be over in a heart beat. For better or for worse, I’d try to finish what I had started. Please, forgive me, I thought and pushed voluntarily even more energy into my wings.

My back burst into flames, literally, silvery tongues of writhing energy danced around the base of my wings and I thought I even felt them along my tails, hungrily devouring every patch of skin they came in contact with. My nerves couldn’t cope anymore, the only sensation that reached me was a faint tickling all over my body while my blood boiled and my muscles burst. For the briefest moment I was in control again, similar to the way the flame of a candle grew just before it went out, I had gained a small window to act, before I’d be gone. At least I wasn’t planning anything complicated.

Against the resistance of two realities I moved my wings further, and finally touched my Reia with the very last bit of strength I could muster. Something happened, but I was much too delirious to understand it, my consciousness fading as soon as I had taken that last hurdle. Darkness claimed me immediately after and my last thought before the end was a happy one. None of the temporal warps had touched any of my friends, I had kept them safe and with the key, they had a fighting chance, whether they wanted to run or stay…

Ahri Arete

No! Blood, why was there so much blood? What had she done? I remembered… a surge of energy had shaken the cavern and Cassy had protected us behind her wings. Then… I couldn’t say, it had felt like a hiccup in the world and the next second Reia and Mordred were thrashing on the ground and Cassy, she just collapsed, a puddle of blood forming beneath her prone form. She laid in front of me like a discarded doll, motionless, her raven hair spread around her head. Red trails covered her face where blood had leaked from her eyes and nose, a ghastly contrast to the pallor of her skin. My gaze travelled down her body and I thought my heart skipped a beat when I saw the still smoking remains of her tails, curled up against her side. No, she couldn’t, she wasn’t…

I screamed, her lifeless eyes, grey and glazed over without the slightest spark of silver seemed to swallow me whole and for a long moment all I could do was scream in denial. I clung to the fading hope that my voice might bring her back, that there would be a glimmer of life in her eyes, a faint movement in her body, but she remained still. As if in trance I reached for her head and brushed a few stray strands of her hair from her face. Carefully I leaned over and kissed her forehead, while the sickly warmth of her blood soaked through my trousers. I caressed her fluffy ears and whispered: “Please, come back to me.” But there was no reply. She couldn’t hear me.

And then, from somewhere deep within, a powerful surge of wrath and self loathing, mixed with a growing portion of rekindled hope flooded through me. I was angry at Cassandra for whatever she had done, I hated myself that I hadn’t been there for her and I knew that this wasn’t the end. I hadn’t seen a handful of immortals die before and no matter the circumstances, if Cassy’s soul and core had left her, I would have seen the change. They were still in her, somewhere, which meant she…

“She isn’t dead,” despite my stupor, Reia’s voice, thrumming with suppressed power and hate brought me back to a reality, seemingly frozen in time.

Viyara was staring at Cassandra wide eyed, disbelieve and horror in equal measure etched across her face. She stood there rigidly, her body petrified mid step, her arms stretched out towards us. Mordred was on the ground, his hands covering his eyes and his expression showed the amount of pain he was in but he remained perfectly still, like a statue. Reia, though, Reia was moving.

She stood erect, boredom, disdain and a grudging respect plain in her expression. Even though I could remember her crying out when the sparks of magic had exploded, she seemed perfectly fine, a little raggedy but unharmed. But I had to admit, the halo of golden energy that shimmered around her left hand and pulsed like the beating of a foreign heart was a little unsettling.

Truth be told, I didn’t much care if she was possessed or enchanted, I only cared for what she had said. “Can you save her?” My voice was hoarse and I had trouble pressing the simple sentence past unshed tears and the boiling emotions that consumed me.

“Straight to the point. No time wasted on who I am and what’s going on. I think I don’t hate you. In that case let me return the favour.” Her inflections was strange, like she was speaking through a poorly adjusted communication crystal, sometimes clear, sometimes fuzzy as if there was an echo to her words. “I already have. Well, as far as I can, the rest is up to you and your merry band of adventurers. For all intent and purposes your lover is dead, her soul and core are just about to flee this realm since her body can’t contain them anymore. Incidentally that also means that she isn’t flooded with transcendent energies at the moment and susceptible to the laws of nature. She’s frozen in time, just like your companions and if you should manage to heal her body before time ticks on, she’ll be fine.” I nearly laughed out loud. Regenerating a couple of wounds when magic worked on her shouldn’t be too difficult. As if she had read my thoughts the … Reia added:

“Turn her around.” With a sinking feeling in my stomach I did and I nearly lost it.

Cassy’s back was a single wound, charred flesh and pieces of bone were all that remained. Smoke was still curling along the more severely burned parts and the sickening smell of cooked meat filled my nostrils. Some of her ribs had been torn form the spine and stuck in her flesh like bony meat hooks, the inside of her lungs peaking through ravaged muscles here and there. The spine itself was cracked and fragmented as if it had been crushed beneath a mountain. Some parts had been been reduced to bone dust, forming lighter patches among the blood red gore. It looked as if somebody had grabbed the V her wings formed on her back and ripped it right out of her. While I was struggling to keep down my last meal, Reia said dispassionately:

“Yeah, a kiss and some sunshine won’t fix that. And just so we are clear, you can’t heal her as you would anybody else. Like I said, she’s practically dead. You can’t stimulated her life force or her cells to regenerate, there’s nothing left to interact with. You have to sculpt her body, like you would a flesh golem, and hope that you’re not going to fuck up any important parts like her spine or lungs. That’s going to be a really advanced piece of magic.”

“Can you do it?”

“Not like this, as you might have expected. I’m mostly sealed away, unfortunate circumstances, yada yada yada, but if you break into my tomb and through the curses, I’m sure I can patch her up just fine.” I gently lowered Cassy’s body back down. The chance to hold her in my arms again had taken hold of me like a spark igniting kindling and cleared away the turmoil inside of me. Nothing mattered but making sure that it would actually happen, no matter the cost. I calmed, my heart beat slowed and I became aware again of the minor injuries Mordred hadn’t managed to fully heal. At the same time I was starting to ask myself a few questions, something I should have probably done a little earlier, like what the hell was going on?

“Oh, you found your brain again. Interesting, this nose is tolerable. Did you realise that you smell like peaches when you panic? Never mind, I’m getting distract, a couple of conjunctures just broke.” At least it didn’t appear like I had stumbled onto the mastermind behind all of this, unless she, for some reason I thought she was female even though I highly doubted she’d turn out to be a woman, had already forgotten all about it again. “Where was I? Right, allow me to introduce myself, Shassa, devourer of souls, calamity of a bygone age, collector of life and some other fancy titles I’ve forgotten. I’m a gods damned spider, I’m evil, I like killing things and I eat souls to become stronger. Also, I don’t give a shit about you and your kind, yes I know what you are, and I don’t intend to hurt you, yet. Nor your lover if that makes you feel any better. Now to the fun part, I’ve been sealed by the very same bastard you’re dealing with, I’ve been toyed with and experimented on and the only thing that has kept me sane,” somehow I doubted that, “over the aeons is the image of me ripping his delicious soul from his screaming body.” Reia salivated a little and a faint blush rose to her cheeks.

“I want revenge, bloody, raw revenge. I don’t care about the rest, not anymore. So, basically, get me out of here and I’ll be your best buddy in the foreseeable future. And trust me, you’ll need my help. I know a little about what has happened in the past, after all. It’s not like you have much of a choice anyways, you’d do everything for that girl, I can smell it and I’m your best shot at getting her back.” I wasn’t so sure, Mephisto could possibly help if I managed to get enough energy into the emblem but for that I’d have to get to a massive source and that meant delving deeper into this… prison anyways.

“You’re right. Fine. If you can save her, I don’t care about the rest. If I am to help you I need to know what’s going on. Where are we?” Reia eyed me with an unnerving expression, like a spider staring at a particularly tasty morsel.

“So much fire and determination. Ah, how I wish I could taste an immortal, only once. But that might come later. Your standing near the entrance of my tomb, a place where Amon sealed me after the war against the gods. Over the aeons my power slowly trickled through the very foundations of this island and years later an ambitious and talented sorcerer made it his home. I became the source for many of his greatest breakthroughs and I witnessed him raise an empire on the back of my suffering. His arts progressed to astounding heights and cumulated in the creation of the mana heart, a feat that drained me to a husk of what I once was. With a seed he harnessed my power and refined it, to forge an artefact that allowed him to peer behind the veil of fate and ultimately became his downfall. He and his creations perished in a single night, the lord of mirrors’ wrath consumed them, their fate and names erased from existence.” I flinched. How long had Amazeroth been meddling with this world? And how much of this did Amon know?

“I met him, Amazeroth, he came to me, ready to erase every trace of the sorcerer’s work. I thought the end had come but when he looked at me he smiled and said: “we’ll meet again,” before he restored most of my strength and left, without another word or care for my pleas.” She paused and tilted her as if she was listening to a distant voice before she continued.

“Amon’s meddling with a fraction of what the mana heart once was, but it was enough to awaken the seed, which still slumbered here. It pumped its power into channels which had been destroyed long ago and the rebounding force is what causes the temporal disruptions. Right now, everything on this island is in flux, time can be rewritten or collapse. You have to reach the depths of the catacombs and find the seed. Bring it to me and I can use its power to break my chains and drain it in the process. Without a source of chaos the time stream will heal itself instantly.” She paused again, deep in thought.

“This place has been built to contain me, to keep me prisoner for all eternity and now some parts of it are even touching alternate versions, I can’t possibly tell you what you’re going to find once you’re inside. I don’t know how, but the girl I’m talking though right know has been branded with my mark. I can use her to guide you, but you’re going to have to trust me, or at least do as I say.”