(no subject)
Darkness.
That is the first thing he knows, here. A black corridor stretching infinetly long in either direction, the staircase by which he descended long gone.
He walks.
He walks.
He walks.
The hallway twists and turns, it widens and collapses but it never ends. He tries to remember how he escaped the first time and he cannot. There is only the cold, and the dark, and the path.
The blackness takes on shapes as he walks, and as he walks he begins to turn inward. With no senses save the feeling of his feet on the earth he has no choice but to seek the self.
He remembers.
It is a bright summer day outside, the air thick and sluggish with mist, soaked with sunlight, heavy with heat. Inside, it is cool and dark, blue-black wallpaper and velvet curtains, plush chairs and pewter accents.
His collar itches.
"It is your move, brother," she says.
He manages to tear his gaze away from the window, from the sun-drenched day and back to the dark drawing room, to the chess set before him.
"You're in check, Aaron."
He bites his lip. It's not checkmate. There has to be some way out, some move he can make, something...
He makes a move. She responds quickly.
"Check again."
He's already looking back out of the window.
"Aaron! Pay attention."
"You're not mother."
"I'm trying to teach you something."
"You're the same age as me, Eyes."
"Don't call me that."
"Would you prefer Ills?"
"Ilsa!" says another voice.
She looks up, turning around towards the entry way.
"Yes, mama!"
"Have you and your brother done your studies?"
"Of course, mama!"
When she turns back around, her face immediately darkens.
"Aaron."
"What?" he asks, innocently.
"Where's my queen?"
He shrugs. "I made my move."
"With what piece?"
He points. "That knight."
She stands up, her eyes narrowing as she leans over the board.
"You. Moved. The. Pieces," she hisses.
"So what if I did?" he asks, "I won."
"You cheated!"
He's standing now too, queen in hand. "So what if I cheated? I won."
She steals a furitive glance over her shoulder, and pauses, her head tilted, listening. After a moment of this, she slaps him. His head jerks to the side and he tries not to wince.
"There are rules, little brother -"
"I'm your twin -"
"Rules to the game that must be followed and you have broken them."
He turns back to her, his own expression mirroring hers.
"It's just a stupid game."
She grabs his collar and pulls him close, her eyes cold.
"Just a game. You never take this seriously, you never care; this game is the game of princes, of emperors; a game of strategy that mirrors life and you -"
"It's a stupid game!" he shouts, shoving her away.
"Mama!" she cries. "Aaron shoved me!"
Their mother bustles in, all elegant bangles and sweeping long skirts. "Aaron! What have I told you about hitting your sister!"
He straightens his velvet coat, looking at the plush carpet, and does not respond.
He wakes up.
He's curled up in a corner that he can't see. He isn't shivering, but his spit has frozen to the wall. If his breath is coming out in clouds, he cannot see it.
Slowly he pushes himself to his feet. His joints crack and pop stiffly as he does, and he stumbles backwards, falling back to the floor.
He tries again, rolling over, putting his hands under his chest, pushing with a groan, there we go, feet underneath him, one in front of the other, and at last he is once again walking.
Nothing changes.
There is a turn here. A crawl there. Sometimes up. Sometimes down. But all in all nothing changes. Not even the motion of the air.
"Nothing changes."
He leans back in his chair to look out of the window. There's a yellow bird perched on the branch, and he can see the overgrown yard of Carfax House, the wrought iron gate and the brick path leading to the rest of the university.
The book of literature and politics lays open in his lap, and he says it again.
"Nothing changes."
He sighs, taking his feet off the desk as his chair simultaneously rocks foreward and lands with a thump; in one motion he puts his pen to paper and...
Sits.
Sighing, he slams the book shut and runs a hand through his hair, when at once there is a knock at the door. The pen tumbles out of his fingers and his body out of the chair with a clatter.
"AARON DE BERTILAK!"
"Ilsa?" he asks, struggling back to his feet. "What in Shadows are you doing in my room?"
"What is this," she snaps as she flicks a folded paper onto his chest. He claps his hands to it to keep it from falling to the floor, then fumbles it open.
"Thievery, Aaron! Our family is one of the wealthiest in Veradine, and yet you steal from the campus art gallery?!"
He stares at the paper, his eyes wide.
"And then you have the gall to put it back, what's gotten into you? And don't think I haven't heard about your trips to Dockside and Riverside. What is it, then? Dust? Shadowchaff?" she starts pulling out his drawers, looking in bags and boxes, searching for the drugs she knows must be there.
Still, he stares at the paper.
"Moonlight and Shadow, Aaron, what are you staring at?"
"How did they know?" he asks, looking up.
"How did theyknow?!" she says. "That's all you have to say for yourself?"
He's looking at the paper again, scratching the side of his head as he murmurs to himself. "This isn't - they don't have recorders near that building, I checked the schematics myself, and it was so small, and besides what was the harm? I put it right back, no one should have noticed, I don't -"
"What is this to you, a game?"
His smile is a fleeting mirage. "No. It's an art."
He's walking faster, now. Every step he takes is down, down, down, and he's gotten to the point where he hopskips and tumbles due to the steepness of his descent. It doesn't matter where he turns; it's always down.
Eventually, he finds himself boxed in on all sides, a tiny space where he can do nothing but curl in on himself and wait.
They sit in four simple chairs on the other side of a simple table, an island of cold light in the gloom.
"Well, if you were going for ominous you've more than succeeded," he muses aloud.
They look at him.
He scratches the back of his head, looks down, and falls silent.
"Mr. Aaron de Bertilak, son of Claire and Michael de Bertilak, aged twenty and three months, you are hereby accused of theft, plagiarism, and truancy..."
Not important. He remembers that it was long and pointless and while they'd found all manner of stolen goods in his room they found no drugs and then at the end he'd stood up and simply said goodbye.
He'd known when he wasn't wanted.
He stands back up. The hallway widens, and he walks.
Fragments.
Starving in rain-soaked streets.
His sister denying that they were ever related.
Watching her graduation and acceptance into law school anyway.
Stealing. Fingers itching to steal absolutely absurd things. Signs in broad daylight. The façade of the grand museum. Making it a game. Taking commissions from students (he did miss school) to steal back course papers. To steal from an ex lover. To move a statue into a teacher's office. They were puzzles to be solved. Enough to live on but he couldn't stop and then -
"You've a talent, De Bertilak," says the tall man. Aaron shrugs.
"It's more a compulsion, really... I'm more than happy to return the money, I simply don't want -"
"Return it?" the man laughs. "No, no, you deserve it. Honestly I don't need the money and the skills to slip past that sort of security..."
"What are you saying?"
"That I want to be your patron, my dear boy. Steal from my rivals; steal from ruins, steal what I pay you and when I pay you."
He shifts nervously. "It's a compulsion, sir..."
The man slaps him on the back.
"Then put that compulsion to good use..."
When he stumbles out into the sunlight he's nearly blinded. The hot air chokes him and the sensory overload is almost too much.
Veradine.
He nearly cries with relief. He's passed the first Gate.
He walks.
There is his house, well-appointed, covered in vines. He opens the brass doorknob and walks into the low ceilined room, the kitchen in the back, this a greeting room, and there's her easel - not his sister, the other her - and there's her paintings, and upstairs is their room and now his heart is burning why this?
He is in the museum for once not to steal for Lord Darling, but simply to look. Painting after painting - impressionists, mostly, it's what's in vogue - and then his eye is caught by copper hair tied back practically but tastefully, white clothes smudged by charcoal and conte crayon and she is drawing a statue quietly.
"Hello," he says. "I'm Aaron."
"I'm busy," she says.
"A pleasure, busy."
"Not funny."
"Yes it is."
"Go away."
But he kept running into her and Darling commissioned her and he courted her and she shoved him into a canal and he came back anyway, and then she wouldn't leave him alone and then he didn't want to have anything to do with her but she kept at it and eventually they met in the middle.
He doesn't want to think about this. It's not that it ended badly. It's just that it ended. It was what it was.
He can see her there, still painting.
"Why do you still hang around here," he'd asked teasingly one day. "You know what I do for a living."
"And I know what I do," she'd responded, putting sunlight on trees, "and when it's over I'll go, but for now I'm going to let this be what it is."
He still loved her.
He walks back outside onto the road, and walks.
And walks.
And walks.
Of all people to kick in the door it had to be his own sister. A clatter of polished leather boots followed as soldiers with guns charged in, lining the walls, their guns leveled at Lord Darling.
Ilsa spoke with a clear voice, reading off a ledger.
"Lord Darling, you are hereby charged with forty counts of embezzlement, fifty of fraud; of stealing secrets from rivals, of grand theft, of hiring - STOP HIM!"
Him referring to himself, who had just jumped out of a window.
Kicking off the adjacent building, he ricocheted back to the first, grabbed hold of a drain pipe and began to scuttle straight up. In the meantime, the soldiers were intently examining the alley below.
Reaching the roof, he sprinted across just as soldiers began to pour out of the trap door. He winced as he heard the snap of gunshots. He leaped across the gap between two buildings and kept going, slipping behind a clump of chimmeneys before slipping down a garbage chute into an alley, then dropping into the sewers.
When he reached home, he threw open the door, took Jenna by the arm and kissed her.
"Wh... Aaron, you smell like sewage, what in Shadows -"
"No time. They're coming, get your things..."
She opened her mouth, shut it, nodded.
"What?"
She punched him in the arm - not hard, but enough to sting. "Where are you running to?"
He grabbed a bag he had packed for just such an occasion and a long black cloak. "Indra."
She stared at him. "... Aaron, that's like smacking a hornet's nest and then jumping on it gleefully whilst nude."
"It's the last place they'll look."
"... point."
So he walked to the highway, and she found she missed him, and that was that.
As it is, labyrinths and dreams have a funny way about things. He remembers it took him near a month to get to Indra; and here it takes him a few moments.
The city is empty. The huge cathedral-citadels lay silent. The canal boats lay still. The air is still cold and the sky still grey but the harsh calls of seabirds do not break the air.
He had hidden in shacks and hovels and he had connected with the underground for even in the stronghold of the Imperium - perhaps especially in the stronghold of the Imperium - there was always work for a thief.
"The game's different here."
He looks up, startled. Somehow, there's someone there in the shadows, perched and peering at him.
"How?" he asks.
The smiler jumps down, a fellow hunchbacked from long days scuttling through tunnels and sewers. His grin is crooked.
"You're good, de Bertilak," how he knows the man's name uncertain, "but not good enough. D'ye know how Michael stole the opera house?"
Aaron quickly steps away from the little man, a little nervous hop-skip.
"I don't care about being the best; I just want to make a living," he says, his voice guarded.
"Lies, all lies. You're a showoff, de Bertilak, and everyone knows it. Chireee, indeed, the Imperium on your tail, you're the stuff of myth. But not myth enough." His teeth are broken and yellow, his grin a slash in his face.
"... how did Michael steal the opera house," says Aaron hesitantly.
The slash cuts wider. "The Labyrinth, cutter. The Labyrinth."
Memory and reality are one as he turns the wrong corner, tripping into a black and twisting hallway. The Labyrinth of his home had flickering, sodium-yellow lights in some places, mad rainbow paint in others, halls that twisted and expanded or opened into places that didn't exist.
The first few forays had been marvelous. Dangerous. Slipping into the court of the Imperium itself, snatching a painting off a wall and framing a hated enemy for the theft; swiping jewels from the treasury, little things in comparison and nothing like stealing an entire opera house brick by brick but still, the way the twisting halls let him walk wherever he pleased...
At first, he had screamed.
It was common to find other travelers in the Labyrinth. He'd been surprised to find how many people walked this path he'd never known existed. So he screamed and yelled, hoping that someone would find him.
Then he'd tried climbing. He could see the soulless sodium-yellow light far above, but the walls were too far apart and he could not quite reach the lip of the hole.
So he yelled again until he was hoarse and then he drew his knees to his chest and since he was alone, allowed himself the luxury of tears.
There was no hallway. He was in a four by four box, dimly lit, and he came to know its edges intimately. His rope and knife couldn't catch on anything - once, he even made the ledge, only for the blade to come clattering back down, nearly striking him in the face.
He almost wished it had.
Eventually, he had stopped pacing. Eventually, he stopped moving. He lay on the floor, curled into a ball, almost trying to squeeze into himself.
The hand on his shoulder was a shock.
He scrambled into the corner, knife drawn, his instinct fear. The figure held up his hands, defensive.
"If you don't want my help, I'll just leave," said the stranger, and then he started to walk through the wall.
"No, wait!" said Aaron, sheathing his knife. "... please."
Mercifully, the stranger stopped.
"Just get me out of here," said Aaron. "I can pay you, just please, don't leave me to die."
"There's worse things than that," said the man (who Aaron later could not remember a damn thing about, save that his dress was the strangely outdated and outlandish garb of the East. "Come on."
They walked through a twisting hall graffitied with glowing paint; down a concrete stair with a flickering white light; through a vast open space lit by a flickering oil drum fire, pale figures in threadbare robes gathered around; through a checkerboard room built at impossible angles and finally up an ivory stair in a black void that later he swore was breathing.
They emerged outside an old cabin on a rock in a lake, the boards weather stained to a uniform grey, and Aaron sobbed with relief, sinking to his knees.
"Never going in again," he said. The stranger only shrugged, and Aaron professed his gratitude, to which the stranger also shrugged.
The thief could not, however, help filching a watch from the stranger's belt as the other man opened the cabin door and stepped sideways into the shadows.
He smiles as he recalls the note on his desk, after a long boat ride back to Frostburg (a northern town of Aren), saying that stealing from benefactors was generally considered impolite.
He comes at last to a razor's edge above a great abyss; but here he is not afraid.
"Lies," she hissed, as the guard behind her lowered their guns. "You are afraid."
She had him there. It was hard not to be terrified a mile above the ground while standing on a foot wide girder under an airship flying between the loops of the great sky-metropolis of Ring. If the fall didn't kill him, the arcing electricity which kept the great rings in the air and spinning would.
He had also lied when he'd said he would never go back to the Labyrinth. He had, and did, and he had learned things he had no desire to know but could not forget.
"Come quietly, and we may give you a lighter sentence."
"I know you too well for that, sister."
He took a deep breath, swallowing his fear, and let himself fall.
Ilsa's eyes widened, and she ran to the edge of the platform just in time to see her twin right himself in the air, spread his arms... and glide.
It was a long few seconds before she stammered out, "Well, follow him!"
The captain shook his head. "He's in the city and we have no landing permit."
She cursed again, and Aaron escaped.
And now, the first door.
Opening it had not been his doing. He had found it in the Labyrinth once when it was closed, as he'd found the other Doors, and he'd known that it was not something to be trifled with. Even his thieving fingers did not itch at the prospect of what was behind it. It was tall, and imposing, made of overlapping pieces of black iron pitted and rusting at the edges.
Now it reminded him faintly of the Red Pyramid.
One day it was closed. The next it was open and they'd never found the one responsible.
But here, it would be his doing.
He touches the handle, and the handle stretches, changes, grows spines and through his palm. He does not scream. The door shifts and clanks and opens and liquid darkness streams from it.
He enters.
He ran.
The things followed him.
Screeching, shifting, changing, taking on a thousand nightmare forms, first bestial and then familiar - chessmen with his sister's face, imperial officers, dead friends and faceless horrors. Nightmares made flesh.
He left the Labyrinth and still they followed.
He ran through the streets of Veradine, becoming lost as it had been years and everything had changed, fleeing down back alleys and through abandoned buildings in the Riverside quarter, trying to get them away from people and sick at heart that these things had gotten out. He ran to the river in an abandoned quarter and found a boat, only to find that they could swim. His limbs ached. These things were even more persistant than the damn Imperium.
Paddling as fast as he could he plunged into the Mists, not caring where he was going. He slipped between mangrove trees and under arches of climbing vines for what seemed like hours until he came to stone steps. He didn't care that he had no idea where he was. He had to run.
They were still behind him.
He ran up the broken steps to a huge open space, the ruined remains of a forum, a broken fountain in the center. His feet pounded across the paving stones as the nightmares behind him dug them up. He slammed into the great green glass door to the ruined stone cathedral at the other side of the plaza and did not even think.
He opened the door, slammed it behind him and then considered the folly of hiding behind a glass door.
Silence.
He listened to the sound of his aching breaths.
Nothing.
He sank to the stone floor and wondered what the hell he was going to do now.
Eventually, he decided to explore.
The cathedral was large, the roof half-caved in, the floor completely flooded. Marsh grasses and purple flowers grew in the cracks between stones; mosses dripped from the broken stone rafters. A yellow bird called and flew through the empty windows.
He stepped gingerly across the mossy floor, his shoes sticking in the sodden earth as he tried to avoid the pond in the center of the floor. Reaching the stairs on the other side, he climbed up, trying to find a space that was at least not covered in standing water. A dry spot, it seemed, was just too much to ask. Setting his pack down, he opened it and pulled out dried beef, a canteen of pure water, an apple, and a tin of crackers. Sitting cross-legged, he only a very little and drank even less. Somehow, he felt those things were still out there. Waiting. Opening the Labyrinth from here would doubtless be even worse.
He could be here for a very, very long time.
Standing up, he closed the backpack, once again looking about for some kind of stair or at least a ledge, some way to get up high so he could see outside.
Then he saw the box.
It sat innocuously atop the ruined remains of an altar, bright and untouched despite the state of the rest of the building.
Normally, Aaron preferred difficult steals. It was the only way he'd kept himself under control - forcibly convincing himself that things were only worth his time if they were unreachable. It was this that had made him the best thief in the Imperium and this that kept him from taking everything that wasn't nailed down.
But that box...
"And wasn't it difficult?" he mused aloud, crossing the broken and faded mosaic before the altar. "After all, I had to brave the Mists, and I got chased here by things and I would never have found this place otherwise."
He stood before the altar, looking at the glass box. Had someone put this here? It was so clean, so perfect, so new; even in comparison to the oddly intact stained glass door. The glass was opaque, stained various hues of green in stylized vine and leaf motifs, with white lilies on the lid.
He slid his hands along the sides and found that it was bolted to the altar. Not a problem, but first, he began to open the lid.
((FIX THIS LATER; IT WILL BE ALL HOL-Y))
And
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Succumbs
He awakened, memory and present bound and blended, the situation the same in the past and present, slowly, his limbs stiff, his mind in a haze, uncertain of where he was, when he was. All around, everything is green and bright, so bright; he blinks against it. Somehow, it felt familiar, like something he saw in a dream.
He tries to turn his head, and found the motion difficult, like something was holding it in place.
He tried to sit up, before realizing that he is suspended in the air, though where and by what he still could not say.
He began to struggle, and felt something pulling at his skin; not painfully, just pulling. It occurred to him then that his clothes were gone.
He tried to speak and found that he could not. At last, he managed to turn his head far enough to see.
He was bound and suspended by vines, great thick vines in the center of a woody space, the walls all around a tangled cluster of trunks. A golden light suffused the whole place, and above was a roof of leaves.
Struggling still, he tried to examine his bonds, or break them, and at once he became aware that there was something in his mouth.
Vines. More vines, not simply in his mouth but his nose, his ears, somehow having slipped down his throat and he was not breathing and the vines tying him down were not simply tied but under his skin and inside him and he tried to scream and could not and then there was a voice in his head -
STRUGGLE NOT.
What?! What have you done to me what are you what am I oh shadows oh moonlight oh great sun and spirits please please let me go
THE BLACK GATE IS OPEN
That's VERY nice, I'm well aware let me go please just what
YOU ARE HERE. YOU HAVE CHOSEN. YOU WILL BE THE HERALD OF THE GREEN.
What?! Says who, I'm not a hero I'm a thief just let me go
SAYTH THE MORGAN. AND HERO OR NOT YOU ARE CHOSEN. ACCEPT THE SPIRIT OF THE GREEN
What in shadows is a Morgan I don't want anything to do with OW OW OW
ACCEPT
If I do will you let me go?!
ACCEPT
He does not struggle. He knows this, and now the vines are not an intrusion but a caress. He focuses inward and draws them in, draws in the green and makes it his own.
He breathes.
Three more doors. How much longer must this be?
He woke up on the cold, damp floor of the ruin, the first rays of dawn peeking through the empty windows. Every muscle ached.
"Was that a dream?"
The box was gone.
"Faster," he mumurs, walking to the door of the church. "I know this story. This isn't what you're trying to teach me. Get to her. It's about her, isn't it? Not Jenna. Ilsa."
Fragments.
He stumbles into Jenna's house and she catches him and nurses him back to health.
The Imperium declares martial law for the black things are devouring people whole and dragging them into shadows.
He speaks of his dream. Jenna mentions how his hair has a slightly green tinge and he shrugs it off.
One of the Nightmares attacks a neighbor. It flees at his approach, but too late.
Another incident. A huge one. It comes for him and he raises a hand and green vines shoot out of the ground and through the creature's heart and he still does not know what has happened to him. At night, he coughs up leaves.
Jenna tells him to save the world. He says he is only one man, a thief, he's not a hero and he doesn't know what happened and she slaps him and drags him to the library and he loves her for it, and she finds a story of four Doors to a dreaming, a dreaming that turns back nightmares made if the fifth seal is broken and he says it's superstitious rubbish and she tells him of the temple in the Mists and he shuts up, and then she says the second door is in the East, and he sighs and says they can't and she tells him that they have to.
Only then he finds in a catalogue an advertisement for the great fair in Glas, in Shirrin; and that where the faire is they've an import from the east ("By which they mean stolen", he scoffs) a gold and red door to the sun.
So they go to Shirrin and she opens the door and he knows not what happened to her in there but when she came out she danced with flame and he realized that as the green he could never touch her again.
"And this is what you do to save the world," he murmurs, standing before the door. "A world I did not care to save, and I still love you despite it all."
He opens the door.
They were thrown to the floor before Ilsa, now Inquisitor, in the black hallways of the high court.
"I had always said you would come to a bad end, Aaron, but I did not think you would go so far as to release such a plague on your own people!"
"I did not!" he protested.
"Then explain! Explain your sorcery -"
"An accident -"
"Explain why a hundred witnesses say that the first sighting was you leading these beasts out of the so-called Labyrinth -"
"It exists, and I was being hunted -"
"Explain why they don't seem to harm you! Explain, Aaron!"
And then Jenna spoke.
"Perhaps, Inquisitor, you should put your hate for your brother aside, and consider that perhaps the reason for the Nightmares avoiding us is that they are afraid of us."
"I am to believe this from someone attempting to assassinate the Imperator?!"
Jenna's voice remained calm. "From someone attempting to warn the Imperator. To explain where this power hails from."
The metal binding her arms melted, dripping to the floor with a hiss. She looked at Ilsa with bright golden eyes, and seemed to dare the gathered soldiers to try to fire on her.
"Inquisitor, please. We can show you this power. There remain two doors - Air and Water. And I know that despite his protests, your brother loves his country equally."
She closed her eyes, sinking to one knee.
"Please."
It was the only time that he could remember getting along with his sister. They found someone to be Water and the four fought the darkness, and then they parted ways again, he eventually joining a movement to overthrow the Imperium and his sister never accepting the new order. Jenna left for the East and left him only with one burning, painful kiss.
He opens the last door and finds himself in whiteness.
He breathes. This should be the end. Or near it.
"This is impossible. Ridiculous," said Ilsa.
"Well, it's happening..."
"Why are we young again? Where is this? What's this about Waking and I want nothing to do with this!"
Three of them. Aaron, Jenna, Ilsa. Somehow on the shores of the city of glass.
((possibly, meet Jin here! Rest is general summary))
He stands there now, the bright and ordered city, great white spires reaching to a strange blue sky (blue? The sky was gold where they were from; a blue sky was a strange novelty to them all) his sister proving so strong, and then Jenna was Athear and he was Ameras and his sister was Isis.
"Jenna..."
"Use my truename."
He sighed. "Please, listen..."
"No. You say that you're taking a stand, and all you're doing is starting a fight! She's goading you into this -"
"She must see! It's the logical solution -"
"- and you're so caught up in your hate for her that you aren't hearing the arguments of the more reasonable senators. War is not going to be the answer."
"They force us into it!"
She took his hand, then, and as always he marveled at the touch, of here, as he was, being able to feel her again at last, to not be burned by her heat.
"Ameras," she said. "I believe in your cause, as do many; and if the council forces us to war I will fight with you. But please... negotiate first."
He holds her close, then, burying his face in her hair, marveling at how warm she was.
"I will, bright flame, I will..."
He screams. And he mourns. There was not even a body. Deva leave nothting when they are gone.
"Is that it, then?" he cries, falling to his knees in what is now the broken remains of the council chamber, below a sky no longer blue but a perpetual sunset. "I accept the blame! I was wrong, I was too hasty, I -"
He scrambles backwards, eyes widening.
"No, it can't be you. You can't be here, stay... away?"
Isis does not turn to look at him, but instead walks between the seats, lost in her own thoughts, a ghost of a smile on her face. She crosses the empty space between them and sits.
There is a chessboard between them, and one, empty chair.
Slowly, he lowers himself into it, observing the board. His pieces are dark green; hers, rose quartz. She moves first.
"It is all far too chaotic," she murmurs, beginning with a simple move - a single pawn.
He frowns, and starts much more boldly, moving out his knight. Foolish, but he hates this game.
"Much like the nations under the Imperium," she says, moving again. He retaliates, acting, as always, on instinct.
"Everyone squabbling like fools for a different goal, everyone with their own visions. They debate and squabble and nothing is accomplished!"
He stares at the board.
"You're cheating," he said, eyes wide. His queen had turned dark blue; his king the color of the sky, one of his Rooks a dark red... indeed, all of his pieces had changed colors. And they had multiplied - so many more pawns, knights, bishops, rooks than was allowed. Hers, too, had changed - the king to luminescent white; a bishop, knight, and rook to gold. But the rest of her pieces stayed rose; only one of his remained that same green, a single Knight.
He went to move again - so many pieces, how could he lose? But found, suddenly, his pieces moving of their own accord. One of his knights, in dark maroon, took his own queen, put the king in check before the king actually retaliated, taking the knight only to have a little blue pawn somehow bring that knight back. He tried to focus on moving against her, only to find that each piece she took was not removed from the board, instead turning to rose and turning against him.
"This is your order?!" he shouted. "What about your precious rules? What is this?!"
"Precisely my point. Why do we have Wakened at all? They only cause trouble, squabbling among themselves, among us... why not unify the whole under one authority. One bright light to unite us all... all one would need is to take the Light unto themselves..."
His own pieces continued to squabble while hers continued to encroach. Her Queen had turned white, too, matching the king and moving among his forces like an avenging angel, now outright cutting pieces down.
Just like before, only so much worse.
"But they will never listen. I must force it upon them. Perhaps... if I seal the Wakened? Keep it from happening. Put them all to sleep. And then with no new blood they will be forced to consider my way..."
He looks up sharply.
"What?" He shakes his head. "That's not possible. You alone?"
"No. Better yet... goad my dear brother into starting a war. Weed out the masses until only those who will see my wisdom are left," she said. She fingered the golden piece. "Solaris will help. Ymir as well, no doubt... they too see the need for logic. Reason. Order. And they will not like the idea of actually calling Wakened...
She sighed, taking yet another piece - a brilliant red and gold rook.
"I will need power. Yes... I will draw on the Light. That will be enough. A wide web seal, a broadcast to keep them sleeping. They will not wake without help. But if there IS a call, they will... bait. Bait for my dear brother."
She smiled. "And he will walk right into it..."
He stared at her.
It wasn't...
"You killed her," he hissed. She ignored him. His pieces stilled, suddenly unified against her. "You killed her, even if indirectly, and you used me to do it. And not just her, all of them!"
Rage. Rage boiled in his breast and surged through his veins.
"I am innocent. And do not lie, dear sister. You do this not for order... but for power."
"Order and power," she said, calmly. "I will rule this universe as a god. One true god, loving and terrible, indivisible; not many squabbling false fools. One voice for the Light, one herald for Its will and not a thousand dissenting individuals."
He took a deep breath. The board had changed. Her queen was cornered, her king in check, the gold pieces captured and taken as his own. The green knight and red rook stood in corners, in position. It was no longer chess. He could move as he pleased. Swiftly, he moved knight and rook into the back corners.
There was green light. The knight and rook he knew now could move like queens. The board was his.
"Checkmate."
The chessboard was gone.
That is the first thing he knows, here. A black corridor stretching infinetly long in either direction, the staircase by which he descended long gone.
He walks.
He walks.
He walks.
The hallway twists and turns, it widens and collapses but it never ends. He tries to remember how he escaped the first time and he cannot. There is only the cold, and the dark, and the path.
The blackness takes on shapes as he walks, and as he walks he begins to turn inward. With no senses save the feeling of his feet on the earth he has no choice but to seek the self.
He remembers.
It is a bright summer day outside, the air thick and sluggish with mist, soaked with sunlight, heavy with heat. Inside, it is cool and dark, blue-black wallpaper and velvet curtains, plush chairs and pewter accents.
His collar itches.
"It is your move, brother," she says.
He manages to tear his gaze away from the window, from the sun-drenched day and back to the dark drawing room, to the chess set before him.
"You're in check, Aaron."
He bites his lip. It's not checkmate. There has to be some way out, some move he can make, something...
He makes a move. She responds quickly.
"Check again."
He's already looking back out of the window.
"Aaron! Pay attention."
"You're not mother."
"I'm trying to teach you something."
"You're the same age as me, Eyes."
"Don't call me that."
"Would you prefer Ills?"
"Ilsa!" says another voice.
She looks up, turning around towards the entry way.
"Yes, mama!"
"Have you and your brother done your studies?"
"Of course, mama!"
When she turns back around, her face immediately darkens.
"Aaron."
"What?" he asks, innocently.
"Where's my queen?"
He shrugs. "I made my move."
"With what piece?"
He points. "That knight."
She stands up, her eyes narrowing as she leans over the board.
"You. Moved. The. Pieces," she hisses.
"So what if I did?" he asks, "I won."
"You cheated!"
He's standing now too, queen in hand. "So what if I cheated? I won."
She steals a furitive glance over her shoulder, and pauses, her head tilted, listening. After a moment of this, she slaps him. His head jerks to the side and he tries not to wince.
"There are rules, little brother -"
"I'm your twin -"
"Rules to the game that must be followed and you have broken them."
He turns back to her, his own expression mirroring hers.
"It's just a stupid game."
She grabs his collar and pulls him close, her eyes cold.
"Just a game. You never take this seriously, you never care; this game is the game of princes, of emperors; a game of strategy that mirrors life and you -"
"It's a stupid game!" he shouts, shoving her away.
"Mama!" she cries. "Aaron shoved me!"
Their mother bustles in, all elegant bangles and sweeping long skirts. "Aaron! What have I told you about hitting your sister!"
He straightens his velvet coat, looking at the plush carpet, and does not respond.
He wakes up.
He's curled up in a corner that he can't see. He isn't shivering, but his spit has frozen to the wall. If his breath is coming out in clouds, he cannot see it.
Slowly he pushes himself to his feet. His joints crack and pop stiffly as he does, and he stumbles backwards, falling back to the floor.
He tries again, rolling over, putting his hands under his chest, pushing with a groan, there we go, feet underneath him, one in front of the other, and at last he is once again walking.
Nothing changes.
There is a turn here. A crawl there. Sometimes up. Sometimes down. But all in all nothing changes. Not even the motion of the air.
"Nothing changes."
He leans back in his chair to look out of the window. There's a yellow bird perched on the branch, and he can see the overgrown yard of Carfax House, the wrought iron gate and the brick path leading to the rest of the university.
The book of literature and politics lays open in his lap, and he says it again.
"Nothing changes."
He sighs, taking his feet off the desk as his chair simultaneously rocks foreward and lands with a thump; in one motion he puts his pen to paper and...
Sits.
Sighing, he slams the book shut and runs a hand through his hair, when at once there is a knock at the door. The pen tumbles out of his fingers and his body out of the chair with a clatter.
"AARON DE BERTILAK!"
"Ilsa?" he asks, struggling back to his feet. "What in Shadows are you doing in my room?"
"What is this," she snaps as she flicks a folded paper onto his chest. He claps his hands to it to keep it from falling to the floor, then fumbles it open.
"Thievery, Aaron! Our family is one of the wealthiest in Veradine, and yet you steal from the campus art gallery?!"
He stares at the paper, his eyes wide.
"And then you have the gall to put it back, what's gotten into you? And don't think I haven't heard about your trips to Dockside and Riverside. What is it, then? Dust? Shadowchaff?" she starts pulling out his drawers, looking in bags and boxes, searching for the drugs she knows must be there.
Still, he stares at the paper.
"Moonlight and Shadow, Aaron, what are you staring at?"
"How did they know?" he asks, looking up.
"How did theyknow?!" she says. "That's all you have to say for yourself?"
He's looking at the paper again, scratching the side of his head as he murmurs to himself. "This isn't - they don't have recorders near that building, I checked the schematics myself, and it was so small, and besides what was the harm? I put it right back, no one should have noticed, I don't -"
"What is this to you, a game?"
His smile is a fleeting mirage. "No. It's an art."
He's walking faster, now. Every step he takes is down, down, down, and he's gotten to the point where he hopskips and tumbles due to the steepness of his descent. It doesn't matter where he turns; it's always down.
Eventually, he finds himself boxed in on all sides, a tiny space where he can do nothing but curl in on himself and wait.
They sit in four simple chairs on the other side of a simple table, an island of cold light in the gloom.
"Well, if you were going for ominous you've more than succeeded," he muses aloud.
They look at him.
He scratches the back of his head, looks down, and falls silent.
"Mr. Aaron de Bertilak, son of Claire and Michael de Bertilak, aged twenty and three months, you are hereby accused of theft, plagiarism, and truancy..."
Not important. He remembers that it was long and pointless and while they'd found all manner of stolen goods in his room they found no drugs and then at the end he'd stood up and simply said goodbye.
He'd known when he wasn't wanted.
He stands back up. The hallway widens, and he walks.
Fragments.
Starving in rain-soaked streets.
His sister denying that they were ever related.
Watching her graduation and acceptance into law school anyway.
Stealing. Fingers itching to steal absolutely absurd things. Signs in broad daylight. The façade of the grand museum. Making it a game. Taking commissions from students (he did miss school) to steal back course papers. To steal from an ex lover. To move a statue into a teacher's office. They were puzzles to be solved. Enough to live on but he couldn't stop and then -
"You've a talent, De Bertilak," says the tall man. Aaron shrugs.
"It's more a compulsion, really... I'm more than happy to return the money, I simply don't want -"
"Return it?" the man laughs. "No, no, you deserve it. Honestly I don't need the money and the skills to slip past that sort of security..."
"What are you saying?"
"That I want to be your patron, my dear boy. Steal from my rivals; steal from ruins, steal what I pay you and when I pay you."
He shifts nervously. "It's a compulsion, sir..."
The man slaps him on the back.
"Then put that compulsion to good use..."
When he stumbles out into the sunlight he's nearly blinded. The hot air chokes him and the sensory overload is almost too much.
Veradine.
He nearly cries with relief. He's passed the first Gate.
He walks.
There is his house, well-appointed, covered in vines. He opens the brass doorknob and walks into the low ceilined room, the kitchen in the back, this a greeting room, and there's her easel - not his sister, the other her - and there's her paintings, and upstairs is their room and now his heart is burning why this?
He is in the museum for once not to steal for Lord Darling, but simply to look. Painting after painting - impressionists, mostly, it's what's in vogue - and then his eye is caught by copper hair tied back practically but tastefully, white clothes smudged by charcoal and conte crayon and she is drawing a statue quietly.
"Hello," he says. "I'm Aaron."
"I'm busy," she says.
"A pleasure, busy."
"Not funny."
"Yes it is."
"Go away."
But he kept running into her and Darling commissioned her and he courted her and she shoved him into a canal and he came back anyway, and then she wouldn't leave him alone and then he didn't want to have anything to do with her but she kept at it and eventually they met in the middle.
He doesn't want to think about this. It's not that it ended badly. It's just that it ended. It was what it was.
He can see her there, still painting.
"Why do you still hang around here," he'd asked teasingly one day. "You know what I do for a living."
"And I know what I do," she'd responded, putting sunlight on trees, "and when it's over I'll go, but for now I'm going to let this be what it is."
He still loved her.
He walks back outside onto the road, and walks.
And walks.
And walks.
Of all people to kick in the door it had to be his own sister. A clatter of polished leather boots followed as soldiers with guns charged in, lining the walls, their guns leveled at Lord Darling.
Ilsa spoke with a clear voice, reading off a ledger.
"Lord Darling, you are hereby charged with forty counts of embezzlement, fifty of fraud; of stealing secrets from rivals, of grand theft, of hiring - STOP HIM!"
Him referring to himself, who had just jumped out of a window.
Kicking off the adjacent building, he ricocheted back to the first, grabbed hold of a drain pipe and began to scuttle straight up. In the meantime, the soldiers were intently examining the alley below.
Reaching the roof, he sprinted across just as soldiers began to pour out of the trap door. He winced as he heard the snap of gunshots. He leaped across the gap between two buildings and kept going, slipping behind a clump of chimmeneys before slipping down a garbage chute into an alley, then dropping into the sewers.
When he reached home, he threw open the door, took Jenna by the arm and kissed her.
"Wh... Aaron, you smell like sewage, what in Shadows -"
"No time. They're coming, get your things..."
She opened her mouth, shut it, nodded.
"What?"
She punched him in the arm - not hard, but enough to sting. "Where are you running to?"
He grabbed a bag he had packed for just such an occasion and a long black cloak. "Indra."
She stared at him. "... Aaron, that's like smacking a hornet's nest and then jumping on it gleefully whilst nude."
"It's the last place they'll look."
"... point."
So he walked to the highway, and she found she missed him, and that was that.
As it is, labyrinths and dreams have a funny way about things. He remembers it took him near a month to get to Indra; and here it takes him a few moments.
The city is empty. The huge cathedral-citadels lay silent. The canal boats lay still. The air is still cold and the sky still grey but the harsh calls of seabirds do not break the air.
He had hidden in shacks and hovels and he had connected with the underground for even in the stronghold of the Imperium - perhaps especially in the stronghold of the Imperium - there was always work for a thief.
"The game's different here."
He looks up, startled. Somehow, there's someone there in the shadows, perched and peering at him.
"How?" he asks.
The smiler jumps down, a fellow hunchbacked from long days scuttling through tunnels and sewers. His grin is crooked.
"You're good, de Bertilak," how he knows the man's name uncertain, "but not good enough. D'ye know how Michael stole the opera house?"
Aaron quickly steps away from the little man, a little nervous hop-skip.
"I don't care about being the best; I just want to make a living," he says, his voice guarded.
"Lies, all lies. You're a showoff, de Bertilak, and everyone knows it. Chireee, indeed, the Imperium on your tail, you're the stuff of myth. But not myth enough." His teeth are broken and yellow, his grin a slash in his face.
"... how did Michael steal the opera house," says Aaron hesitantly.
The slash cuts wider. "The Labyrinth, cutter. The Labyrinth."
Memory and reality are one as he turns the wrong corner, tripping into a black and twisting hallway. The Labyrinth of his home had flickering, sodium-yellow lights in some places, mad rainbow paint in others, halls that twisted and expanded or opened into places that didn't exist.
The first few forays had been marvelous. Dangerous. Slipping into the court of the Imperium itself, snatching a painting off a wall and framing a hated enemy for the theft; swiping jewels from the treasury, little things in comparison and nothing like stealing an entire opera house brick by brick but still, the way the twisting halls let him walk wherever he pleased...
At first, he had screamed.
It was common to find other travelers in the Labyrinth. He'd been surprised to find how many people walked this path he'd never known existed. So he screamed and yelled, hoping that someone would find him.
Then he'd tried climbing. He could see the soulless sodium-yellow light far above, but the walls were too far apart and he could not quite reach the lip of the hole.
So he yelled again until he was hoarse and then he drew his knees to his chest and since he was alone, allowed himself the luxury of tears.
There was no hallway. He was in a four by four box, dimly lit, and he came to know its edges intimately. His rope and knife couldn't catch on anything - once, he even made the ledge, only for the blade to come clattering back down, nearly striking him in the face.
He almost wished it had.
Eventually, he had stopped pacing. Eventually, he stopped moving. He lay on the floor, curled into a ball, almost trying to squeeze into himself.
The hand on his shoulder was a shock.
He scrambled into the corner, knife drawn, his instinct fear. The figure held up his hands, defensive.
"If you don't want my help, I'll just leave," said the stranger, and then he started to walk through the wall.
"No, wait!" said Aaron, sheathing his knife. "... please."
Mercifully, the stranger stopped.
"Just get me out of here," said Aaron. "I can pay you, just please, don't leave me to die."
"There's worse things than that," said the man (who Aaron later could not remember a damn thing about, save that his dress was the strangely outdated and outlandish garb of the East. "Come on."
They walked through a twisting hall graffitied with glowing paint; down a concrete stair with a flickering white light; through a vast open space lit by a flickering oil drum fire, pale figures in threadbare robes gathered around; through a checkerboard room built at impossible angles and finally up an ivory stair in a black void that later he swore was breathing.
They emerged outside an old cabin on a rock in a lake, the boards weather stained to a uniform grey, and Aaron sobbed with relief, sinking to his knees.
"Never going in again," he said. The stranger only shrugged, and Aaron professed his gratitude, to which the stranger also shrugged.
The thief could not, however, help filching a watch from the stranger's belt as the other man opened the cabin door and stepped sideways into the shadows.
He smiles as he recalls the note on his desk, after a long boat ride back to Frostburg (a northern town of Aren), saying that stealing from benefactors was generally considered impolite.
He comes at last to a razor's edge above a great abyss; but here he is not afraid.
"Lies," she hissed, as the guard behind her lowered their guns. "You are afraid."
She had him there. It was hard not to be terrified a mile above the ground while standing on a foot wide girder under an airship flying between the loops of the great sky-metropolis of Ring. If the fall didn't kill him, the arcing electricity which kept the great rings in the air and spinning would.
He had also lied when he'd said he would never go back to the Labyrinth. He had, and did, and he had learned things he had no desire to know but could not forget.
"Come quietly, and we may give you a lighter sentence."
"I know you too well for that, sister."
He took a deep breath, swallowing his fear, and let himself fall.
Ilsa's eyes widened, and she ran to the edge of the platform just in time to see her twin right himself in the air, spread his arms... and glide.
It was a long few seconds before she stammered out, "Well, follow him!"
The captain shook his head. "He's in the city and we have no landing permit."
She cursed again, and Aaron escaped.
And now, the first door.
Opening it had not been his doing. He had found it in the Labyrinth once when it was closed, as he'd found the other Doors, and he'd known that it was not something to be trifled with. Even his thieving fingers did not itch at the prospect of what was behind it. It was tall, and imposing, made of overlapping pieces of black iron pitted and rusting at the edges.
Now it reminded him faintly of the Red Pyramid.
One day it was closed. The next it was open and they'd never found the one responsible.
But here, it would be his doing.
He touches the handle, and the handle stretches, changes, grows spines and through his palm. He does not scream. The door shifts and clanks and opens and liquid darkness streams from it.
He enters.
He ran.
The things followed him.
Screeching, shifting, changing, taking on a thousand nightmare forms, first bestial and then familiar - chessmen with his sister's face, imperial officers, dead friends and faceless horrors. Nightmares made flesh.
He left the Labyrinth and still they followed.
He ran through the streets of Veradine, becoming lost as it had been years and everything had changed, fleeing down back alleys and through abandoned buildings in the Riverside quarter, trying to get them away from people and sick at heart that these things had gotten out. He ran to the river in an abandoned quarter and found a boat, only to find that they could swim. His limbs ached. These things were even more persistant than the damn Imperium.
Paddling as fast as he could he plunged into the Mists, not caring where he was going. He slipped between mangrove trees and under arches of climbing vines for what seemed like hours until he came to stone steps. He didn't care that he had no idea where he was. He had to run.
They were still behind him.
He ran up the broken steps to a huge open space, the ruined remains of a forum, a broken fountain in the center. His feet pounded across the paving stones as the nightmares behind him dug them up. He slammed into the great green glass door to the ruined stone cathedral at the other side of the plaza and did not even think.
He opened the door, slammed it behind him and then considered the folly of hiding behind a glass door.
Silence.
He listened to the sound of his aching breaths.
Nothing.
He sank to the stone floor and wondered what the hell he was going to do now.
Eventually, he decided to explore.
The cathedral was large, the roof half-caved in, the floor completely flooded. Marsh grasses and purple flowers grew in the cracks between stones; mosses dripped from the broken stone rafters. A yellow bird called and flew through the empty windows.
He stepped gingerly across the mossy floor, his shoes sticking in the sodden earth as he tried to avoid the pond in the center of the floor. Reaching the stairs on the other side, he climbed up, trying to find a space that was at least not covered in standing water. A dry spot, it seemed, was just too much to ask. Setting his pack down, he opened it and pulled out dried beef, a canteen of pure water, an apple, and a tin of crackers. Sitting cross-legged, he only a very little and drank even less. Somehow, he felt those things were still out there. Waiting. Opening the Labyrinth from here would doubtless be even worse.
He could be here for a very, very long time.
Standing up, he closed the backpack, once again looking about for some kind of stair or at least a ledge, some way to get up high so he could see outside.
Then he saw the box.
It sat innocuously atop the ruined remains of an altar, bright and untouched despite the state of the rest of the building.
Normally, Aaron preferred difficult steals. It was the only way he'd kept himself under control - forcibly convincing himself that things were only worth his time if they were unreachable. It was this that had made him the best thief in the Imperium and this that kept him from taking everything that wasn't nailed down.
But that box...
"And wasn't it difficult?" he mused aloud, crossing the broken and faded mosaic before the altar. "After all, I had to brave the Mists, and I got chased here by things and I would never have found this place otherwise."
He stood before the altar, looking at the glass box. Had someone put this here? It was so clean, so perfect, so new; even in comparison to the oddly intact stained glass door. The glass was opaque, stained various hues of green in stylized vine and leaf motifs, with white lilies on the lid.
He slid his hands along the sides and found that it was bolted to the altar. Not a problem, but first, he began to open the lid.
((FIX THIS LATER; IT WILL BE ALL HOL-Y))
And
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Succumbs
He awakened, memory and present bound and blended, the situation the same in the past and present, slowly, his limbs stiff, his mind in a haze, uncertain of where he was, when he was. All around, everything is green and bright, so bright; he blinks against it. Somehow, it felt familiar, like something he saw in a dream.
He tries to turn his head, and found the motion difficult, like something was holding it in place.
He tried to sit up, before realizing that he is suspended in the air, though where and by what he still could not say.
He began to struggle, and felt something pulling at his skin; not painfully, just pulling. It occurred to him then that his clothes were gone.
He tried to speak and found that he could not. At last, he managed to turn his head far enough to see.
He was bound and suspended by vines, great thick vines in the center of a woody space, the walls all around a tangled cluster of trunks. A golden light suffused the whole place, and above was a roof of leaves.
Struggling still, he tried to examine his bonds, or break them, and at once he became aware that there was something in his mouth.
Vines. More vines, not simply in his mouth but his nose, his ears, somehow having slipped down his throat and he was not breathing and the vines tying him down were not simply tied but under his skin and inside him and he tried to scream and could not and then there was a voice in his head -
STRUGGLE NOT.
What?! What have you done to me what are you what am I oh shadows oh moonlight oh great sun and spirits please please let me go
THE BLACK GATE IS OPEN
That's VERY nice, I'm well aware let me go please just what
YOU ARE HERE. YOU HAVE CHOSEN. YOU WILL BE THE HERALD OF THE GREEN.
What?! Says who, I'm not a hero I'm a thief just let me go
SAYTH THE MORGAN. AND HERO OR NOT YOU ARE CHOSEN. ACCEPT THE SPIRIT OF THE GREEN
What in shadows is a Morgan I don't want anything to do with OW OW OW
ACCEPT
If I do will you let me go?!
ACCEPT
He does not struggle. He knows this, and now the vines are not an intrusion but a caress. He focuses inward and draws them in, draws in the green and makes it his own.
He breathes.
Three more doors. How much longer must this be?
He woke up on the cold, damp floor of the ruin, the first rays of dawn peeking through the empty windows. Every muscle ached.
"Was that a dream?"
The box was gone.
"Faster," he mumurs, walking to the door of the church. "I know this story. This isn't what you're trying to teach me. Get to her. It's about her, isn't it? Not Jenna. Ilsa."
Fragments.
He stumbles into Jenna's house and she catches him and nurses him back to health.
The Imperium declares martial law for the black things are devouring people whole and dragging them into shadows.
He speaks of his dream. Jenna mentions how his hair has a slightly green tinge and he shrugs it off.
One of the Nightmares attacks a neighbor. It flees at his approach, but too late.
Another incident. A huge one. It comes for him and he raises a hand and green vines shoot out of the ground and through the creature's heart and he still does not know what has happened to him. At night, he coughs up leaves.
Jenna tells him to save the world. He says he is only one man, a thief, he's not a hero and he doesn't know what happened and she slaps him and drags him to the library and he loves her for it, and she finds a story of four Doors to a dreaming, a dreaming that turns back nightmares made if the fifth seal is broken and he says it's superstitious rubbish and she tells him of the temple in the Mists and he shuts up, and then she says the second door is in the East, and he sighs and says they can't and she tells him that they have to.
Only then he finds in a catalogue an advertisement for the great fair in Glas, in Shirrin; and that where the faire is they've an import from the east ("By which they mean stolen", he scoffs) a gold and red door to the sun.
So they go to Shirrin and she opens the door and he knows not what happened to her in there but when she came out she danced with flame and he realized that as the green he could never touch her again.
"And this is what you do to save the world," he murmurs, standing before the door. "A world I did not care to save, and I still love you despite it all."
He opens the door.
They were thrown to the floor before Ilsa, now Inquisitor, in the black hallways of the high court.
"I had always said you would come to a bad end, Aaron, but I did not think you would go so far as to release such a plague on your own people!"
"I did not!" he protested.
"Then explain! Explain your sorcery -"
"An accident -"
"Explain why a hundred witnesses say that the first sighting was you leading these beasts out of the so-called Labyrinth -"
"It exists, and I was being hunted -"
"Explain why they don't seem to harm you! Explain, Aaron!"
And then Jenna spoke.
"Perhaps, Inquisitor, you should put your hate for your brother aside, and consider that perhaps the reason for the Nightmares avoiding us is that they are afraid of us."
"I am to believe this from someone attempting to assassinate the Imperator?!"
Jenna's voice remained calm. "From someone attempting to warn the Imperator. To explain where this power hails from."
The metal binding her arms melted, dripping to the floor with a hiss. She looked at Ilsa with bright golden eyes, and seemed to dare the gathered soldiers to try to fire on her.
"Inquisitor, please. We can show you this power. There remain two doors - Air and Water. And I know that despite his protests, your brother loves his country equally."
She closed her eyes, sinking to one knee.
"Please."
It was the only time that he could remember getting along with his sister. They found someone to be Water and the four fought the darkness, and then they parted ways again, he eventually joining a movement to overthrow the Imperium and his sister never accepting the new order. Jenna left for the East and left him only with one burning, painful kiss.
He opens the last door and finds himself in whiteness.
He breathes. This should be the end. Or near it.
"This is impossible. Ridiculous," said Ilsa.
"Well, it's happening..."
"Why are we young again? Where is this? What's this about Waking and I want nothing to do with this!"
Three of them. Aaron, Jenna, Ilsa. Somehow on the shores of the city of glass.
((possibly, meet Jin here! Rest is general summary))
He stands there now, the bright and ordered city, great white spires reaching to a strange blue sky (blue? The sky was gold where they were from; a blue sky was a strange novelty to them all) his sister proving so strong, and then Jenna was Athear and he was Ameras and his sister was Isis.
"Jenna..."
"Use my truename."
He sighed. "Please, listen..."
"No. You say that you're taking a stand, and all you're doing is starting a fight! She's goading you into this -"
"She must see! It's the logical solution -"
"- and you're so caught up in your hate for her that you aren't hearing the arguments of the more reasonable senators. War is not going to be the answer."
"They force us into it!"
She took his hand, then, and as always he marveled at the touch, of here, as he was, being able to feel her again at last, to not be burned by her heat.
"Ameras," she said. "I believe in your cause, as do many; and if the council forces us to war I will fight with you. But please... negotiate first."
He holds her close, then, burying his face in her hair, marveling at how warm she was.
"I will, bright flame, I will..."
He screams. And he mourns. There was not even a body. Deva leave nothting when they are gone.
"Is that it, then?" he cries, falling to his knees in what is now the broken remains of the council chamber, below a sky no longer blue but a perpetual sunset. "I accept the blame! I was wrong, I was too hasty, I -"
He scrambles backwards, eyes widening.
"No, it can't be you. You can't be here, stay... away?"
Isis does not turn to look at him, but instead walks between the seats, lost in her own thoughts, a ghost of a smile on her face. She crosses the empty space between them and sits.
There is a chessboard between them, and one, empty chair.
Slowly, he lowers himself into it, observing the board. His pieces are dark green; hers, rose quartz. She moves first.
"It is all far too chaotic," she murmurs, beginning with a simple move - a single pawn.
He frowns, and starts much more boldly, moving out his knight. Foolish, but he hates this game.
"Much like the nations under the Imperium," she says, moving again. He retaliates, acting, as always, on instinct.
"Everyone squabbling like fools for a different goal, everyone with their own visions. They debate and squabble and nothing is accomplished!"
He stares at the board.
"You're cheating," he said, eyes wide. His queen had turned dark blue; his king the color of the sky, one of his Rooks a dark red... indeed, all of his pieces had changed colors. And they had multiplied - so many more pawns, knights, bishops, rooks than was allowed. Hers, too, had changed - the king to luminescent white; a bishop, knight, and rook to gold. But the rest of her pieces stayed rose; only one of his remained that same green, a single Knight.
He went to move again - so many pieces, how could he lose? But found, suddenly, his pieces moving of their own accord. One of his knights, in dark maroon, took his own queen, put the king in check before the king actually retaliated, taking the knight only to have a little blue pawn somehow bring that knight back. He tried to focus on moving against her, only to find that each piece she took was not removed from the board, instead turning to rose and turning against him.
"This is your order?!" he shouted. "What about your precious rules? What is this?!"
"Precisely my point. Why do we have Wakened at all? They only cause trouble, squabbling among themselves, among us... why not unify the whole under one authority. One bright light to unite us all... all one would need is to take the Light unto themselves..."
His own pieces continued to squabble while hers continued to encroach. Her Queen had turned white, too, matching the king and moving among his forces like an avenging angel, now outright cutting pieces down.
Just like before, only so much worse.
"But they will never listen. I must force it upon them. Perhaps... if I seal the Wakened? Keep it from happening. Put them all to sleep. And then with no new blood they will be forced to consider my way..."
He looks up sharply.
"What?" He shakes his head. "That's not possible. You alone?"
"No. Better yet... goad my dear brother into starting a war. Weed out the masses until only those who will see my wisdom are left," she said. She fingered the golden piece. "Solaris will help. Ymir as well, no doubt... they too see the need for logic. Reason. Order. And they will not like the idea of actually calling Wakened...
She sighed, taking yet another piece - a brilliant red and gold rook.
"I will need power. Yes... I will draw on the Light. That will be enough. A wide web seal, a broadcast to keep them sleeping. They will not wake without help. But if there IS a call, they will... bait. Bait for my dear brother."
She smiled. "And he will walk right into it..."
He stared at her.
It wasn't...
"You killed her," he hissed. She ignored him. His pieces stilled, suddenly unified against her. "You killed her, even if indirectly, and you used me to do it. And not just her, all of them!"
Rage. Rage boiled in his breast and surged through his veins.
"I am innocent. And do not lie, dear sister. You do this not for order... but for power."
"Order and power," she said, calmly. "I will rule this universe as a god. One true god, loving and terrible, indivisible; not many squabbling false fools. One voice for the Light, one herald for Its will and not a thousand dissenting individuals."
He took a deep breath. The board had changed. Her queen was cornered, her king in check, the gold pieces captured and taken as his own. The green knight and red rook stood in corners, in position. It was no longer chess. He could move as he pleased. Swiftly, he moved knight and rook into the back corners.
There was green light. The knight and rook he knew now could move like queens. The board was his.
"Checkmate."
The chessboard was gone.