Ping!
Congratulations! Your variation of The Moribund Seal has reached 167% charge. A new tab has been added to your interface.
“Huh. It only went up by seventy. …maybe I shouldn’t have stabbed him so much. But is it really considered ‘stabbing’ when you go that slow? ‘Deep-deep tissue acupuncture’ couldn’t have been that damaging to his soul. It’s not like I was brutal.” Her diamond eye noted traces of residual spectral energy putrifying. It seeped from him like a teabag exuding an aura of muddy water. The stones below him absorbed the energy as if it were water through sand.
When the new power settled into her seal, she noticed something distinctly pristine about his energy. Her instinctual comprehension sparked a look of disgust. “Caught you right before you ascended, huh? Just how many of aurors have you killed to earn ascension? …I’ve done a good deed, haven’t I? You were a tumor and I was the knife.”
He, of course, did not answer. Timbrelle’s tsk fell on impassive ears. She pulled a pair of knives from the man’s impressive torso collection, noting with mild amusement just how much easier it was to take them out.
Careful not to track blood behind her, Timbrelle tip-toed through the rivulets of crimson racing toward a central drain. She snatched the muzzle, tossed the now ghostly pale body a salute and slipped out of the chamber. After locking it behind her, she set out.
Power pulsed confidently in the seal over her spine. The quiet strength it had percolated was a buoy to her body and mind. Not entirely dissimilar to the companionship she felt for the tourmaline that sat against her chest. Its aura was warped and tainted but when it sat that close to her heart, she could almost feel it speak to her.
Timbrelle patted the gem softly and whispered, “I know. I know. We’re headed home now. It’s almost over.”
The seal sent wave after wave of power through her body to fuel her muscles—a heartbeat of spectral energy. It allowed her to climb up the spiral staircase two steps at a time.
At the top of the steps, Timbrelle checked her shoulder into the doorframe. Ever since she attuned Nerrus’s Right Eye, the diamond had been stuck on Soul Sight. Verbally ordering it to toggle did nothing. Asking, begging, hitting, flicking and even rhythmically blinking did nothing. She could see only spectral energy through it but at a notably greater distance than that morning’s Soul Sight. She’d watched a fuzzy outline of Plimt approach her chamber through the stone wall. That kind of obstruction had been an issue before attunement, but the aid of the diamond must have increased the range.
Timbrelle jogged through the halls, ducking in and out of alcoves, doorways and closets to avoid the occasional worker. Her search paid off in a stairwell that appeared to span several stories—a good start. The working plan was to go up one level and slip out a window into the gardens and run off into the forest. She could survive a forest, that was child’s play after her time in the Dorark. The plan changed when she reached the ground floor just as a guard turned a corner into the hallway. They both locked up when spotting the other, buffering.
“The hell…?” She heard him mutter.
Timbrelle was the first to act by turning on her heel and sprinting up the next set of stairs. The guard promptly scrambled to give chase. She repeated the process on the second floor with two more guards. By the third floor, the situation had quickly spiraled from bad to worse, leaving her with a posse on her tail in mere seconds.
Timbrelle snorted to herself.
Fine. Good. She was about to die anyway. What would an audience change? Escape had been rather aspirational. The faint despair of the pink tourmaline over her heart sparked a pang of regret. The promise she made to return it to the temple would now go unfulfilled.
Behind the first and second doors she could see the souls of people sitting at desks. A third showed only the haze of pink she’d come to associate with plants. Timbrelle slipped inside to find a large atrium whose walls were covered in lush, beautiful vines. The glass wall and ceiling allowed the light from the moon to illuminate the room. Though furnished with sofas, armchairs and tea tables, Timbrelle couldn’t help but feel like she was back in the Dorark. Moonlight glinted off waxy leaves in every direction. The scent of moist soil in their pots filled her lungs and equipped her with courage. Death in the Dorark was only to be expected—fate, even. The fact that she’d managed to subvert fate this long was a miracle.
Timbrelle planted her feet in the center of the room and faced the entrance. It was time to stop running. After months of hiding and living in constant fear, she was finally cornered.
The questions that once plagued her were no longer important. Answers had found her during Plimt’s ministrations. “She” was nothing more than a slurry of soul scraps that had been funneled into a body. As he loosened her stones, so too did he loosen the binding that kept her very sentience intact. The distinction between one chunk of soul and the next became clearer. Memories of Earth and people she needed to reunite with were now foreign; She no longer owned her past. Her loved ones never loved her. How could the families of Frankenstein’s materials ever be expected to love his monster? How could anyone? Didn’t those people deserve her death? Didn’t she owe the people she loved at least that much?
Guards burst into the room, visibly startled to find her awaiting them, sodden in blood with curved flaying knives in hand. Tears poured from her eyes in direct conflict with the giggle that came leaking out at unexpected intervals. Timbrelle snuffed and snorted in a poor attempt to retain her composure. It was just too. Damn. Funny.
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Finally, the laughter ruptured inside her like a rancid organ sweeping its infection throughout her body. The impressive foliage surrounding them muffled the shrill cackle until all at once, it came to a halt. The deadpan reticence of her face belied the severity of her situation. It betrayed no fear, no anger, no hope—there was simply none left to be had.
“My name is Timbrelle.” Her voice came out low and steady. Her eyes followed the guard who had been edging closer since forcing the door in. “I will not die before you know my name.”
“It makes little difference.” The guard replied, appraising her rigid stance. The woman, menacing as she might seem at first glance, was nothing but an angry kitten with the fortitude of a ragdoll.
Timbrelle smiled faintly to herself. “I agree. …that’s the thing with you Kitons. When has it ever mattered what I want?”
He offered a tender smile that didn’t meet his eyes—those remained fixed on the knives at her sides. The guard sheathed his sword at his hip and held both hands up like he was approaching a wounded dog.
Timbrelle slumped her shoulders in defeat, becoming a truly miserable sight to behold. When he lunged forward to take advantage of her moment of weakness, she dove toward him as well. Expecting her to jump backward, the man was wholly unprepared for her advance. Her foot came down hard atop the man’s boot. A bare foot was not enough to hurt the man, but it drew his attention away from the knives for a split second.
This time, the blades didn’t get stuck in the bone like they had with Plimt. Timbrelle bore up with the knife through the fleshy underside of the man’s jaw and directly through the roof of his mouth, snapping his teeth together. She howled her wrath at him before she yanked it back out, bathing herself in yet more blood. Those remaining looked equal parts incensed and horrified at her little stunt.
The dead man’s brain sent haphazard signals to his body. While his fingers danced an odd sort of jig, his blue eyes slowly unfocused. The guy’s weight balanced upright on his knees until he collapsed to the floor at her side.
There was no way they’d let her live long enough to harvest her gems—not now. This was the closest she would come to dying on her own terms. There would be no more tricks… no more distractions to delay the inevitable. With her lethality confirmed, they would no longer treat her like a little girl running with scissors. They would be forced to put her down.
What did one think about when they were dying? She had precious few seconds left to decide. If the tourmaline was any indication, her final thoughts and emotions would be seared into her gems. What had her soul’s “predecessors” thought about before they were torn asunder?
Even as she wondered, she knew.
Family. They thought of their families. There was no trace of their deaths in the smattering of memories she’d broken into, but Timbrelle harbored no doubt. These people she both was and wasn’t, passed along comparatively few memories that didn’t feature family, pets and friends.
But… the questions remained. Who was she to long for? Who would mourn her?
The guards leapt at her in slow motion. Timbrelle’s mind catalogued any and all input in explicit detail as the last of her spectral energy fled into the Moribund seal. The faint stuttering of her heart faded into stillness.
“…Adna.” She realized with a sob.
The nearest man was nearly on her when she noticed the glint of his sword. It pierced her stomach just above the navel. The point slipped past muscle and into her torso, traveling faster than the pain.
The man’s furious momentum punched her backward when the sword met something solid within her. She went skidding to the floor.
Timbrelle’s vision surged with brilliant orange light, not unlike the flash she’d been blinded by upon departing Yost. It was followed by a swell of nausea.
Was that one of her gems? If she truly had as many as Plimt had detected, it made sense that the guy hit something. From the way it rammed into her spine, she had to assume its size positively massive.
The grimy, battered girl blinked back splotches of darkness. A small timer labeled “Moribund Seal” had appeared in her periphery.
Eighteen… seventeen… sixteen…
The glass ceiling overhead hosted a sky of once unfamiliar stars. Adna hadn’t known much about religion, but she had one thousand and one stories about Kiton history. They’d all come with a corresponding constellation that Adna knew by heart. After she discovered this feature of her amnesiac friend, she took extra care in deciding their clearings for the night. Long conversations laying beside Adna in the Dorark, teaching her to climb Hookthorn trees for their berries, racing exultant toward the first sign of freedom from the Dorark together—that’s what she’d think of. That’s what she would try to impress upon her gems so that when Adna found pieces of her embedded into jewelry and magic items, she’d know that Timbrelle died well.
“Captain Carz, I think this is the Crystalurgist they brought home today. Someone get the mage. We may be able to save her.”
Timbrelle’s catharsis vanished in an instant.
Of course. Why did she think Kitos would suddenly bend to her will? It didn’t matter that not twenty seconds ago it had been after her head. Now that she wanted to die, she could not have her rest.
A word started as a growl but rose to a skull-piercing scream that rattled the windows. It ripped at her throat, tearing free of the pitiful body. “No!”
Ping!
You have activated your Hidden Ability.
*Your Hidden Ability has nearly reached maturity. After doing so, it will become your Fate Ability.
Cracks slithered up the glass in a chorus of fractures as visible light bled from the plants surrounding them. Its intensity grew as more and more leaves shriveled and rained to the floor.
“Frozeck!” The man they’d called Carz shouted at a blond guard who fell to the floor clutching at her chest. Spectral energy curled off her skin in whisps that reached out for Timbrelle. All around them, trails of energy smeared slowly through the air toward her.
His wide eyes surveyed the room, eventually landing on her. Carz lifted his sword, poised to drive it through her heart. Streaks of light bore closer, illuminating the face of her killer.
She had seconds—moments to reorder her thoughts. She couldn’t leave her stones impressed with despair and fury. What had she wanted to think about? Timbrelle flipped through her memories with Adna, a pathetic attempt that ended when Carz buried the tip of his blade in the floor beneath her chest.
As if from a great distance, she heard the atrium shatter. A cloaked figure descended through the hail of glass.
Interface notifications clouded her blurring vision. Only the timer remained in focus.
Six… five…
Timbrelle’s chest convulsed around the sword. How very fitting that she should die like a butterfly on a corkboard… nothing more than a curiosity.
A familiar silhouette of light orange knelt at her side. She could faintly discern the person speaking. Timbrelle fumbled around until she grasped a hand.
“I knew you would come. I just… didn’t think I’d be alive for it.” She breathed to Adna.
The woman’s reply was too distant and muddled to make out.
“I’m sorry… I can’t hear you… I’m sorry.”
Timbrelle repeated those words until the timer, at long last, ran out.