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She had no loyalty to her old master. He’d killed the smiling little girl she could’ve been. She had even less loyalty to the woman who had taken his place. She should know better, what they were. She was one of them once. Now she thought she could, what, fix them? No. Use them for better, perhaps. There was no fixing them. They’d been broken and mended until the mosaic of their selves barely resembled a person anymore. They were tools. Weapons. Some liked it. She neither reveled in it nor mourned the girl that had been. She’d killed that girl with her own hands, for all her master had guided her there. It had still been her hand that held the knife carving her heart out of her chest.
No one to blame but herself.
She followed the Martinet because he, at least, understood what they were. He showed no compassion, nor pity. He used them as they were meant to be used. They were above the laws. They committed the crimes that needed to be done for the good of the Empire. The cost didn’t matter, it was the end, always the end, that truly mattered. So, as the Martinet used them, they used him to continue the work that was needed.
Such it was, when he handed them the crick and told them it had been one of those who had ended their maker, many jumped at the chance to teach it the pain they had once known. The thing was quiet now -- had been the entire time. They hadn’t bothered with the more crude techniques; they’d been warned it wouldn’t be receptive to anything less than the best. That it was a mirror of them. So they’d pulled her in, focused more on magic than many of her compatriots.
The crick didn’t even open its eyes as she entered. It knew what was coming. It was exhausted -- each casting taking longer to break. Still it said nothing, gave nothing. They’d stopped asking questions a while ago. She knew how far she could push someone, and it was proving to be surprisingly stalwart. Silent save its screams. She took no joy from her work, unlike many she knew. It simply was. She reached into herself and poured her magics into the air, speaking a single word. It echoed with meaning more ancient than the gods. The crick twitched on its table and the screams began anew. She turned the hourglass on the desk and sat, uncapping the pot of ink as she went. She couldn’t hear the sound of her pen scratching across parchment under the hoarse wailing. She carefully dated her entry and turned her eyes back to the crick. The Martinet wanted to know how far they could push the limits of the spell. At least it was something she could do to pass the time. Something useful to do while she subconsciously catalogued every twitch and thrash. It had lasted three hours before breaking out of the spell the last time she’d cast it. It had gone another day without sleep, her peers having their fun while she rested.
She admitted to herself in the quiet of her mind: she enjoyed the chase of discovery. It resonated in the dead ashes where her heart had once been. The little girl that she’d risen from had looked forward to this part. Magic had been something to be reveled in. She had thought, in her idyllic youth, that she would make ground breaking discoveries, that she would be known far and wide for her contributions. She would die a ghost, she knew that now. At least she could do something, though. As the crick began to thrash and she jotted down her observations, she felt nothing stirring under the apathy. It would be more interesting once she turned the glass the third time. How would it change from the last time?
On the fifth turn, something exciting truly did happen, though it was not what she expected. The crick was still screaming, a pitiful sound from its tortured throat, so she didn’t hear the telltale sound of battle from the hall. The passionate slaughter of her kith. Then the door slammed open hard enough it nearly wrenched off its hinges. She stood from the desk raising her hands to cast.
They slammed into her with the same force that had caved the rest. Half moved for the crick on the table, the other half closed on her. It was over in the time it took to weave a single spell -- one that was wrenched straight out of her hands before she could even finish the incantation. She had no time to wonder, there was no fading. She vanished from the world as though she were a candle simply blown out. A little part of her was disappointed. She had almost thought she would feel something at the time of her death. Instead the apathy turned into an empty calm and then she knew no more. Typical.