“… who are you?”

“…”

Arwen apparently stood before the kneeling figure of her future self, taken from ten years into the future by the mysterious voice within the Dark Orb.

And what she saw before her was… grave.

Having asked her question, present Arwen was surprised to see her older self flinch, curling up even tighter within herself. Although the Arwen Blayney of the future had grown out of her teenage youthfulness and had blossomed into a true beauty, the mewling woman before her was an utter juxtaposition to the Princess. She wore plain clothes, a simple black tunic and trousers wrapped tightly in a violet wool jacket, as if dressed for the winter. Gone was the uniform or her beloved dresses, her near-arrogant features and her regal quality. Instead, the cowering woman exuded a meek quality, like a mouse caught in the open by a predator.

Present Arwen stared down at her future in shock. “Are you… me?”

“Please…” future Arwen finally met her past self’s eyes and pleaded. “Please don’t… just… don’t.”

The woman’s raven black hair was bedraggled and messily long, covering the entire right side of her face, where her tender hands were pressed against her skin in a strange gesture. It made it so Arwen could only see her future self’s left half of her face. So, she just stared into future Arwen’s sole visible eye, still a striking blue but somehow… muted. Sadder. The woman was clearly upset, so much so that she was at the point of tears. “What happened to you?”

“Don’t!” future Arwen pressed her hands even tighter against her face and let out a pathetic protest. “Don’t look at me!”

“Y-you’re Arwen… right?” Present Arwen couldn’t believe her eyes. This had to be some sort of cruel joke- part of the illusion from the Dark Orb. But at the same time, the Holy Sage’s warning of the artifice’s precognitive abilities rang in her head. Maybe it was her real future self… but could that be possible? It couldn’t be… surely… “You’re… me… but I don’t know who you are!”

Future Arwen cast a furtive glance at her younger self. “Who… I… I am… I- I… I don’t… know.”

“Are you telling me this is who I become…?” Arwen mumbled to herself. Her eyes grew vacant as the shock froze her nerves, numbing her emotions and washing her in a cold grasp. “I end up like… this?”

Her voice echoed mutely into the surrounding silence, until the kneeling woman before her answered with a question of her own. “What am I… supposed to do?”

It was then that Arwen realised her future self was crying. But, as saddening as the sight was, she couldn’t muster up anything to say, her voice was caught in her throat and her emotions were running wild. She didn’t know what to think, what to say, what to do. A question just throbbed in her head, repeatedly like a terrible migraine, burning the words into the back of her eyes. Is this who I become?

Future Arwen started talking again, completely unprovoked. “I… I can’t. I- I-”

A voice broke through the scene and cut of her future self’s words. It echoed deeply into the globed environment in an almost grainy tone, as if trying to break through some sort of veil. It was distant and somewhat faded, but unmistakably belonging to a young male.

It was calling her name, Arwen realised, but she couldn’t recognise the voice.

Apparently, however, her future self did. “Thomas!” she screamed out, looking upwards in desperation. “Thomas?!”

But even after several moments, the voice did not answer, and so the older Arwen simply buried her face into her legs and continued to cry. Present Arwen simply watched as her apparent future sobbed into her own trousers, her slender shoulders heaving in time with her wracking breaths. “Thomas, please help me… I… I thought I couldn’t ever be… hurt again… I…”

Arwen just watched in stunned silence. She had grown cold to the world. She might as well have been a statue. Future Arwen continued talking to herself in barely legible words, like a lost child who couldn’t find her own mother. “I can’t bear… I just… I’m so…”

“Please…” Arwen whispered, covering her mouth with her hands She had never felt so stunned in her entire life. Not even when attacked by Elain, nor by the horrors with the Helvetians. “Please stop.”

“I tried my best…” the upset woman continued after a wracking sob. “To be normal… to be… right. But I… it just…”

The same male voice managed to pierce through the darkness once more, only slightly louder and clearer. It now lacked that odd quality to it, and though Present Arwen still had no idea who it was, it yet still called her name. “Arwen!” the man behind the mysterious voice was yelling. “Arwen!”

“Thomas,” future Arwen’s fingers tensed over her face. “Please… save me…”

The stars suddenly flickered, and an unfamiliar female voice now gasped in surprise. “What is…? I’ve never seen it do this before! What is happening?!”

Arwen was ripped from her globed cage in a whirl of darkness, ridding her of the sight of her future, still kneeling and pleaded for help from a man she did not know of… yet.

-cut-

Cai Huws found himself within the poop deck of the crewless vessel, drooling unceremoniously on himself as a small scream of surprise yelped from behind him. Instantly alert, his training kicked in, and he whirled around, sword drawn, to face whatever danger was accosting the Princess.

Only it wasn’t Arwen who had screamed.

The Holy Sage, Sovereignty, held a knife to the throat of the black-haired lady whose corpse had attacked Gwyn before meeting his future self. The once empty ship was now filled with young men, all dressed in rags and sporting a stunned expression on their faces. “Drop your weapons!” Sovereignty yelled to the raggedy pirates.

“Fuck me!” Shielding exclaimed in the meanwhile, her voice wavering in a pitch unheard of by Cai before. “What was that?!”

The woman in Sovereignty’s grasp snarled something in a language Cai had never heard before, and the men immediately dropped their curved swords. Cai watched them clank onto the ground. He had never seen such a weapon before in his life, and they looked strange to him. The Holy Sage readjusted his knife on the woman’s throat, while Shielding quickly recovered and moved to aid him. “Now, slowly drop the orb.”

“I don’t want to,” the woman replied in heavily accented Deinian. “It doesn’t want to be separate from me.”

“Do as he says,” Shielding spoke soothingly to the frightened but defiant girl. “Drop it, and you’ll feel so much better afterwards.”

The girl’s wide brown eyes darted between the invaders. “Are you… going to kill us?”

“We’re not going to hurt anyone,” Gwyn raised his hand placatingly, “right, Arwen?”

The Princess was staring vacantly at the black-haired woman and didn’t reply, so Gwyn reaffirmed his promise himself. “We won’t hurt you.”

The olive-skinned woman squeezed her eyes shut, and with what looked like a great deal of difficulty, dropped the Dark Orb onto the floor.

“Now,” Sovereignty relaxed the knife on her throat, but not by much. “If I let go of you, will you resist in any way?”

The woman slowly shook her head.

“I need you to say it,” Shielding held the woman’s gaze as she slowly retrieved the artifice on the floor. “Will you?”

“No.”

Sovereignty let go of her and sheathed his knife, replacing his right hand with the hilt of his Holy Lance. “Right. We’re going to go somewhere private, and have a talk, separated from your crew. All right?”

The woman didn’t try to flee, or fight in anyway. She simply nodded.

And so, the aftermath of the pirate’s attack was quickly diffused. The crew members of the pirate ship, which they called Espoir, were temporarily confined in the lower deck of the ship while the tall, wispy woman was led onto the Ysbrydfarer for questioning. Cai had absolutely expected resistance from them all, but the foreigners were either too scared or too pacifistic to create issue.

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Owen and Gwyn immediately moved to follow, but Cai lingered after spotting Arwen’s stillness. “Are you okay?”

Arwen’s hand flew from her face as she met his gaze. “Uh, yes, I’m… fine.”

“What did you see?” Cai frowned at the Princess. “Was it bad?”

“What’s the point in asking?” the Princess snapped and glowered, but her eyes immediately widened in surprise and she visibly softened her expression. “Go,” her tone was a lot gentler, “you’re wasting time.”

Cai took a step to comply, but hesitated. “You are not coming with?”

Arwen smiled appreciatively in one of those rare instances that Cai had felt she truly appreciated him. “No, thank you. I will catch up.”

Cai further paused, but then decided to just let her be. He wondered what she had seen in the Dark Orb’s illusion, if she had seen anything at all. Cai’s own hallucination had been fucking weird to him, almost as if living a fantasy turned sour, but Cai supposed not all that awaited people in the distance was necessarily ambiguous like his was.

Inside the captain’s quarters of the Ysbrydfarer, the Dark Orb’s wielder sat in silence, seemingly accepting her fate. Cai stood grimly while Shielding examined the Dark Orb in her hand. He was a little anxious that she would accidentally activate it, but Shielding appeared to know what she was doing, and staring too long at it gave him a headache, so he only kept a wary eye on her.

“Who are you?” Sovereignty started his questioning. Gwyn and Owen shot Cai a confused look, possibly wondering where Arwen was, but Cai just shrugged in return.

“My name is Annette,” the regal and uptight looking woman replied. Her voice was rough, coarse, but was more due to her accent and her fear rather than a throat injury or natural tone.

“And, tell me, who are you?” Sovereignty seemed to repeat his question.

“I…”

“Don’t withhold anything,” Shielding warned, her gaze never leaving the orb in her hand as she twisted it around in her palm. “It will only make things worse.”

Annette’s brown-eyed gaze shifted between the two Sages. “I’m the second… uh… I’m sorry, I don’t know the word… the second… scion. Second scion of Lontaine royal family.”

Sovereignty appeared to care little, but the Cyfoethian retainers all stiffened, Cai included. Shit. This wasn’t good. A Lontaine royal stealing from the citizens of Cyfoeth? And using an artifice to do so? This could only go badly.

Annette must have noticed their reactions, for she appealed directly to Owen with a panicked expression on her face. Why him? Cai would never know, but it seemed the archer maybe appeared the most unfazed of all the Cyfoethians by the news. “I wasn’t acting in responsibility of the country! I swear!”

“So, you were stealing for yourself?” Sovereignty asked in a sarcastic tone. Cai understood his scepticism, personally, for a Lontaine royal seemed like she would want for little. Though, to be fair, Cai had little idea of where the country even was, let alone how they operated.

“No…” Annette sighed. “Please, will you let explain?”

Sovereignty scowled, but motioned for her to continue.

“My country is in a… how do you say it? A… horrid civil warring,” Annette seemed to shrink in horror as she recounted the tale of her country. “We have been fighting ourselves for years. Those who want the royal family to rule, and them who want us gone. My older brother was fighting in the war, but they captured him and… and gave him great pain to the death. I thought… that I would be next in lining for throne, but my father never wants a woman in charge during the time of warring, so my younger brother became next instead.”

“And this makes you sail to Cyfoeth with a dangerous artifice in your hands?” Sovereignty asked bluntly, showing no sympathy for her plight.

Annette nodded and gestured to the Dark Orb. “The marqueur noir came up on our shores one day, and my father took it into the royal money room. But I saw the… uh, the… potential in the mysterious object. I saw the power! With it in hands, we could end the war! But my Dad…” she spat the word in disgust. “He only wanted it sealed, and said no that anyone use it. Even when Ames died in that horrible way, my father refused to use it.”

“Why didn’t you use it to stop the war?” Cai asked.

Annette scowled and averted her eyes. “I would have been jailed up the second I made to, and I didn’t have any involvement wielding it… so instead I one day ran and stole the marqueur noir. I didn’t get to see the face of my Dad, but I bet he was angry…”

“Why were you stealing supplies from Cyfoeth for yourself? Some goods were even originally from Lontaine. Why try and ruin the trading relation?” Shielding finished her inspection of the Dark Orb and met the foreign girl’s gaze. “Makes no sense.”

“I hate Dad…” Annette grimaced at her own admission. “He just can’t… see. We have farmers on our half, so we get flourishing of grain to feed our people, but all he does is send it to Cyfoeth and make more coffee plants! We need the money for our soldiers, for our weapons, he says, but we also need to be feeding! Our own people, our own supporters, starve in the streets while we sending all of the supplies we need to save them further! I couldn’t bare it.”

“You were willing to starve one village to save another?” surprisingly, Owen was the one who seemed to take the most offense to this. “Don’t you see the hypocrisy?”

Annette’s voice deepened. “Line to the throne or not, I have a admission to my people, my country. If one foreign village starves so that my people are feeding, then it’s a good sacrifice to me. Dad could make peace with rebels, he could cut supplies from trading with Cyfoeth to swap food to his people, but no. All in! All or nothing! That’s what Dad is doing. Except he has the way to end the war, but never used it! And now! Now there’s so little food in the country that I have to steal Cyfoeth’s own, to be giving it back…”

“Why wait around, then?” Sovereignty asked her. “Why not just go back and use it already? You were clearly quite proficient in its use.”

“I-…” for the first time, Annette’s composure broke. She rubbed her thumbs together by her clasped hands. “I was desiring to… but the marker, the marqueur noir, it would be… whispering. I would have real dreams of death, and the more I used it to steal of the boats, the more I felt an, uh, an desire rising… an desire to do… bad things. I became scared, scared that if I tried to use it on a big perspective in my country, that I’d turn myself into a killing person. So, I stayed and hoped I could keep giving supplies into Lontaine. At least I was doing some good, even if Dad will be losing against the rebels.”

“Alright,” Sovereignty disengaged his questioning. “I have satisfied my curiosity. I believe we are done, unless anyone else has any questions?”

“Please!” Annette almost stood out of her seat, before realising that would be a terrible idea and restraining herself. “If you have to be killing any person, kill me. My friends are not guilty. They were the only people who let me for what I was, even because I was a disgraced Princess disowned by my own family. They were just following my wants.”

“I care not for your fates,” Sovereignty shrugged. “I have what I want, and that is all I require from you. Whether you are spared and slain is up to the Cyfoethians.”

Cai turned to Gwyn and the two shared a wordless look. They needed Arwen to decide what to do with the pirates, especially since this was now of great concern to diplomatic relations. “Owen, stay with the girl. We’ll find the Princess.”

Up on the main deck of the Ysbrydfarer, both Cai and Gwyn quickly spotted Arwen on the Espoir hunched over the rounded-up prisoners watched over by Dai’s crew.

“They… they are accurate,” one of the Lontaine prisoners was stuttering to her when the two knights drew close. “I do not think they are being wrong.”

“Arwen.”

The Princess snapped towards Cai’s voice. “Yes?”

Cai didn’t quite like the feral look in her eyes, but decided to stick to his business. “We need you to decide what to do with them.”

“You’re bothering me with this?” Arwen shot them an offended look as she strode towards the port side of the Espoir, forcing the two to follow her until they were by her side. The Princess leaned over the railing, gazing into the depths below. “Why don’t you do it all yourself? It’s not like I’d make any decent decision, anyways.”

“We either kill them, imprison them, or set them free,” Gwyn stated to her, ignoring her self-deprecation. “They’re from Lontaine, so the former two options might be… difficult, but the latter robs the people of Glannau of their justice. Did you father give any guidance?”

“I don’t care what you do,” Arwen replied distractedly, too focused on the waves to engage in the conversation. “Just do what you like. The less I’m involved the better. I’ll just fuck it all up.”

“Arwen,” Cai repeated her name until she finally met his eyes. “What happened?”

“I…” she waved him off angrily. “I don’t want to talk about it. Just leave me alone. I need some time to think.”

“You’ve not been sleeping well lately,” Gwyn tried to intervene with logic. “The artifice preyed on my mind, tried to show me a future that I don’t believe will ever happen. Whatever it showed you, wasn’t real.”

Arwen seemed to crumple against the railing as she sighed. “I… I hope so.”

It became obvious the Princess wanted to be left alone, so Cai and Gwyn both left her to it and boarded back onto the Ysbrydfarer where Dai immediately set upon them with questions. “What are we going to do with the girl? With the crew?”

“Well…” Cai scratched the back of his head.

“We’ll set the crew free, let them keep the Espoir,” Gwyn declared. “But on the condition that they return to Lontaine immediately, and never set sail in Cyfoeth ever again. The woman will be kept prisoner until we report back to the King.”

“Gwyn,” Cai mumbled to him. “Are we sure we have the authority to make these kinds of decisions?”

“Arwen’s not doing anything about it,” Gwyn retorted. “Someone has to decide what to do while she recovers from whatever’s happening to her.”

“I’ll inform my crew immediately and prepare the Espoir to sail for Lontaine,” Dai frowned as a thought occurred to him. “Do you need someone to watch the girl?”

“Owen’s on it, and I think the Sages are, too,” Cai answered, then asked a question that had been in the back of his mind for a while now. “Are your brother and niece okay?”

“Yeah,” Dai smiled. “Linette’s babbling on about being in her first magical battle, and Cain wasn’t injured at all. They’re both absolutely alright.”

When they ran into the two Sages on their way to the lower deck, Cai stopped them to ask what had happened when they fell under the orb’s grasp. “I ran up immediately after everyone went into a stupor,” Sovereignty explained how he ran up onto the Ysbrydfarer’s main deck, then boarded the Espoir to capture the Lontaine woman. “The crew didn’t even try to stop me. They were either too stunned that someone wasn’t in a trance, or too unwilling to fight me off. They only really reacted when it was too late, and I had grabbed hold of the wielder.”

“You should have waited for the concussive effect to take place, like we said in the plan.” Shielding chastised her companion.

“I made a judgement call,” Sovereignty appeared indifferent. “I was told everyone would suddenly collapse, so when they instead all stopped and stood there, drooling, I figured something was happening.”

Shielding clearly thought otherwise over his ‘judgement call’, but let it slide. “We need to talk about what I saw.”

Sovereignty’s posture straightened, if such a thing was even possible. “You say you saw yourself going mad on The Island?”

“I did,” Shielding seemed troubled. “I cannot tell if that was precognition, or approximation, however.”

“Well will deal with it,” Sovereignty’s confidence barely wavered. “A task for us in private, when we return.”

“What will you do about the Dark Orb?” Gwyn appeared as lost as Cai was when they were speaking, and so he simply asked the question on his mind.

“Take it back to The Island with us,” Shielding explained. “The Church will likely transport it to the citadel, where it will be sealed away. No longer will it ever be abused.”