Chapter Text
FL 1193: Leon City. High Court Audience Chamber.
If my soul is to be bared here, Shadow thought with no small degree of chagrin, I shall at the least be comfortably seated.
It was a well-appointed little room, designed with privacy in mind; a little more than half the size of the bedroom he had occupied at Rose Manor since February, its walls were lined with bookshelves as much to deaden sound as to provide reference materials for any discussions that took place within. Faintly audible from his lavishly upholstered seat was the rushing of water; the room took advantage of the courthouse's riverside position, by having a tiny artificial tributary diverted to pour past this room and add its sound to everything else with which a prospective eavesdropper would have to contend. Only he and his two interlocutors were present; Baroness Rose had gently asked if he would require her presence, and explained that only his request would stop her from respecting his privacy and remaining absent from this interview. He had gratefully affirmed that he would survive it, and thanked her for her forbearance.
Thus isolated, Shadow found himself in the unpleasant position of having nothing more between himself and the most disagreeable conversation he had ever had, without being shackled. Still, there was no navigating around this task. It must be dug through, like a high ridge in the path of a new trade route. Resigning himself to its inevitability, he spat on his metaphorical hands and hefted the pickaxe with which he would begin.
“I believe I am prepared,” he stated, raising his eyes to meet those of the two figures seated across from him. Her Highness – soon to be Her Imperial Highness, when she reached her majority and began to rule – had composed herself in one chair, and on her right sat her human regent. Sir Abraham Tower was a mightily framed man indeed, and had a lifetime's military experience; this would at least leave him familiar with harrowing reports of one sort or another.
“As are we,” the Princess replied, sharing a brief glance with the human. “Much of what might be tangential to this conversation will also be required for the wider court, Mr Erin. However, to reiterate the meat of your statement – with which we are in full agreement – the whereabouts of House Erin's Chaos Emerald is something only the Crown may bid you disclose. We shall not ask for details not directly related to that question, but we will require that you answer it as fully as you can.”
Shadow had been considering a glossing-over of some of his tale, considerate to the sensibilities of a young lady of high breeding. The expression and bearing of the Princess immediately informed him that this would be both unwise and unnecessary. This was a young woman fully prepared to face every trial and difficulty involved in the running of her nation; he knew the determination in those eyes. He flattered himself that he had seen it in mirrors, long ago. He could do no less than respect it, and her, by providing the full tale.
“I understand, Your Highness,” was all he said, in hopes that his tone might relay the rest. “I shall begin where I left off, yesterday. I was laid low, left alive, and taken from the hall in which I had stood and failed to defend my people. I know this only because I awoke elsewhere.” The memory squeezed at his mind; of the cold agony of arms left too long upraised, of finding himself stripped of all clothing and left cold and unprotected, with his wrists shackled above his head. Of weeping like a child, alone in the dark and utterly broken.
“I recall that it was dark, and that I remained sore from my defeat. My utter failure. It weighed upon my thoughts to the extent that it took me quite some time to consider where I might be,” he continued, nearly tonelessly. “It took rather less, after that, for my captor to appear and introduce himself. I was in the hands of a masked and quite theatrically cloaked jackal, naming himself Infinite to me. The first time I saw him, he took the opportunity to gloat at my plight, and began indulging what would turn out to be a quite fearsome habit of grandiose rambling. Indeed, I thought him merely mad, at first. He sought many things, knowledge chief among them; he claimed to pursue an understanding of gifts, and of how and why Chaos' benison came to some, and not to others. He later gave me reason to think, from hints he let slip through his ravings, that he had succeeded in creating a gift in at least one young individual.”
Commander Tower had straightened up at those words, and Shadow nodded a little. He could hardly blame the man. Such blasphemous endeavours could, if truly successful, spell an untenable – or catastrophic – situation for any organised defence force. “You react much as I did, my lord regent, at the time I heard it. Yet he was careful, at least, never to hint at the identity of the attackers who had delivered me to him. Instead, he focused largely on my usefulness as a healthy male specimen, upon which he would labour with the tests of another project. He sought immortality, and had made some strides toward it; he had developed a number of elixirs which would cause the body to heal from wounds or injuries at a greatly accelerated rate, and took pleasure in telling me I would need them as he was forcing them down my throat. He spoke the truth.” Shadow took a rather slower breath than he might strictly have required, and closed his eyes against the memory. “The moment he was certain his potions had taken effect, he approached me with a knife and began to hurt me. Just to measure my new healing, he told me...or, well. I was rather too noisy at first, for him to make himself heard. Once he'd gagged me, he was free to indulge himself once more in the sound of his own voice. I did heal from those wounds, within a day, and he was well pleased with it.”
“Not mad after all, then,” observed Sir Abraham, and Shadow opened his eyes to meet the man's gaze with a slow, serious shake of his head.
“My lord, he was entirely mad...just not mistaken. No sane mind could conceive of the plan he detailed to me, a day at a time, cutting at me and measuring my healing, before attempting different treatments to elicit different results. He hoped to make it possible for me to heal nearly too quickly to kill, so that he could take the final step himself and render his body immune to death itself. Once he had what he needed, he would ensure I suffered carnage too great for even that rate of recovery, and leave me in a shallow grave somewhere.
“This went on for a number of...years, I do believe,” Shadow continued, forcing himself to step back from such rumination and take a broader view once more. “Some of the injuries were too severe to heal within one day, and so he varied what he did, and where, and how often. My prison was, I concluded, entirely underground; there was no light when he was not present. I lost track of time, and soon enough gave up counting what I guessed were days. It was some time after that point, that Infinite approached me with my family's Chaos Emerald in his hand,” he intoned, and all the royal bearing in the world could not stop the Princess' ears from pinning back against her head at the realisation of what would come next.
“The first cut was deeper than anything he had done before,” Shadow explained, touching a fingertip to a spot that – had Infinite been only mad enough to try, rather than to succeed – would bear a truly horrific scar, directly beneath his sternum. “He had restrained me quite handily, and so I had no recourse or way to struggle when I felt his hand cup my heart and lift it out of the way. He had encased the Emerald in...some clear material. I have no idea what it is, or what its purpose might be, beyond ensuring the edges of the gem shan't tear at me with the motions of my body. But the tests went on after that, and he only grew agitated when he realised I was beginning to sicken.”
Shadow took another deep breath. Commander Tower took pity upon him, and poured from a pitcher of cool water to place a full glass before him; he took it up in a hand that moved too slowly to conceal his attempt to stop shaking. “My thanks, my lord,” he noted, with a polite incline of his head and a swift-as-he-dared mouthful of water. It tasted as sweet as any other mercy he had ever received, and he swallowed it gratefully.
“Whatever power a Chaos Emerald contains, it was acting as a slow poison when placed within me. At that point, perhaps sensing that he risked losing his experimental subject, Infinite began to try more outlandish combinations of treatments. More potions, curses, carving sigils into my flesh with knives of bone or of bog-iron, or of obsidian such as we hear the Echidnas used to use. I continued to fade, and might have succumbed had he not arrived one day with an odd piece of black stone. He claimed it had fallen from the sky, like a dying star, and come to him through some nefarious channel or another – but he acted with haste, to cut into my chest once more and place the stone within me alongside the Chaos Emerald.
“I have no sure knowledge of what happened next. I knew a terrible pain in my limbs, an ache and a burn, and then in my tail. I felt every bone from my jaw to my fingers and toes begin to change...I remember wonder in the one eye I could see, beneath his mask. I remember seeing his fear, when I felt the shackles give way. I remember my hand striking at his chest, feeling his ribs give way beneath me...and then I remember nothing but cold. So far as I can tell, I underwent the transformation that appears to have replaced my gift, and tore myself free of my restraints. My first instinct was to ensure his death, and then to escape. I believe I pulled down a wall, or something similar; I recall screaming, and not only mine or his. A girl's voice, perhaps, or a child's. I am certain I killed no one else on my way out, but all other details are lost to me. My next clear memory is of a bedroom in Rose Manor.” He took another mouthful of water, to break the flow of words into their appalled silence. “And so, Your Highness, my lord regent, that is where House Erin's Chaos Emerald is hidden. How he laid his hands upon it, I know not, nor how close he came to his final goal.” He met their eyes, and his own glowed with soft but unmistakable crimson rage. “Nor do I know who handed me over to him. But the day I find out, I shall begin along the path that ends with them sharing his fate.”
=======>>>>=======
Amy Rose was beginning to understand how her mother maintained such magnificent physical shape.
While Amy and her father were more emphatic about their appreciation of a well-crafted plateful, Baroness Amara Rose was hardly hesitant to lay into the calories herself. Her husband's occasional diets were absent from her own life, largely because of her martial training and continuous drilling of sword forms with the ancestral steel. The majority of her energies, however, were spent in the thousand and one daily tasks of ensuring Blumenheim's needs as a community were properly seen to.
In the three days since Amy had been placed at the head of the figurative table, she had found herself assailed by a series of what she would normally have called other people's problems. She was rapidly learning the humility of proper leadership, and while the lesson chafed, she did pride herself on having risen to the challenge and accepted that when she held the reins, all problems were at least tangentially hers.
The sick cows in Jeremiah Slopes' fields, Stablemaster Cuthbert Aurum had informed her, were well in hand; a pair of gentle lads from Rose Manor's stables had been dispatched to ensure that round-the-clock care and watchful eyes were present, while allowing Mr Slopes and his wife to tend to the rest of their lands. The trio of youths scrumping apples, on the other hand, had been an eye-opening experience; for the first time, Amy found herself in the position of punishing mischief, rather than perpetrating it.
The issue here, she'd mused to herself, was that it was technically a felonious act – and their constable was still abed, laid low at the eleventh hour by the weight of a falling bear. Having put forth the heroic effort necessary to refrain from remarking The bears aren't even ripe until autumn when commiserating with the injured lawman, Amy rather felt she had done her part for the cause of good manners; the course of wisdom was to prevail upon him for advice in the matter of teenaged tearaways conducting low-level orchard raids.
When she had knocked at Constable Lightfoot's door, she had found it unlocked, and a burly, deceptively fluffy-coated canine fellow just inside the door with what looked like an equally burly cudgel resting at his elbow. She knew him as Terence Hardbrook, brother of the maids Grace and Mercy, and the eldest son of the family who owned and ran Blumenheim's inn. He stood up as she entered, and touched his forelock. “Morning, Miss Rose,” he greeted her, with mixed deference and cheer, and then registered her glance at the weapon he'd automatically taken up. “Beg your pardon about the club, we're just making sure Constable Lightfoot's nice and safe, y'see. Miss Temme says best to leave the door easy to open, while he's laid up, but he did have time to say there's still a risk about his safety, from someone or other. So if his door's to be open, we're making sure it's watched.”
Amy smiled broadly, nodding her approval. “It's a sound plan, Terence. How is he faring? Is he decent to speak with?” The sheepdog glanced at a door along the hall of the cottage, and wobbled a hand in a so-so gesture.
“Best let me check, Miss, won't be a minute. Any blighter comes in that door looking for trouble, I'd be obliged if you teach him his manners,” Terence added with a grin, and Amy took up the heavy oaken club where he'd rested it against the side of the chair.
“Emphatically, Mr Hardbrook,” she assured him playfully, settling it across her shoulder as if it weighed no more than a riding crop. The man disappeared into the room at the end of the little hall, and reappeared perhaps half a minute later looking rather more dubious.
“Well, Miss, he's awake and he's dressed, right enough, but the medicine Miss Temme gives him for the pain leaves him a bit delirious. I couldn't promise you'd get three sensible answers from him.”
“One is all I need, Terence. Thank you very much. I'll be out of the way shortly,” she added, handing him the weapon and stepping into the bedroom. Inside, the room smelled strongly of herbal medicine, and in the bed – dressed as promised, but beneath a thin sheet for the cosy surroundings – sat Constable Lightfoot. His pupils were the size of coins.
“Constable?” Amy asked softly, approaching carefully as the rabbit stared down at what appeared to be a half-written letter in his lap. “Pssst! Jonathan!” she added on her second try, and his ears perked up while he looked blearily around.
“Who's that?” he asked, as if his eyes presented him with conflicting accounts of what stood before them.
“It's me,” she offered, taking the chair by the bed. From the towel draped over the back of it, this was likely where Miss Temme sat when acting in her capacity as his nurse.
“Me?” That seemed to genuinely puzzle the policeman for a moment. “...I thought I was me,” he added plaintively, looking up at her with such utter confusion she was forced to stifle a giggle. The man was truly out of his wits, then...but his breathing didn't seem to pain him, and at this moment it seemed an acceptable compromise. Amy had witnessed the stertorous breathing of the barely-conscious mess he'd been reduced to immediately following his injury, and the sober, quietly troubled expressions on the Babylon brothers when they'd returned with him half-supported between them. Agony was to be avoided, and this seemed to do the job.
“You are,” was all she said, to reassure him. “I've got a bit of a legal question I hope you can help with. We've three boys who were caught stealing apples from the orchard, and I'm afraid I have no idea what the punishment is for it.”
“I should ask a policeman, if I were you,” Jonathan advised her solemnly. Amy fought the urge to rest her brow in her palm.
“You are a policeman, Jonathan,” she told him, and he perked up a little.
“Oh, good, as long as someone is,” he remarked happily. “How many apples?”
“I...does it matter?”
“Does what matter?” he asked, in genuine perplexity. Amy let out a sigh.
“Perhaps I should come back tonight,” she suggested, and he blinked slowly – one eye slightly behind the other, which she felt could only mean trouble for any attempt at a useful conversation. There was a knock at the door, and it opened a crack for Terence to put his face through.
“Beg pardon, Miss – Jon, mate, it's me.”
There was a short pause, and then the triumphant light of a conclusion came into Jonathan's eyes. “Aha, you can't fool me,” he told the sheepdog, “I'm already in here.” Another heartbeat's silence accompanied his glance at Amy. “Both of me.”
“It's Terry, Jon,” the other man informed him patiently. “There's a letter arrived for you. Miss, if you'd be kind and leave it at his bedside for when he's lucid?” Amy nearly sprang to her feet, moving to the door to accept the envelope.
“Of course, Terence. You were right, I think it's rather better if I come back later,” she added, placing the missive on the nightstand and returning to the door. “Do we know when we can expect his wits to make an appearance?”
“He's generally quite put together about dinnertime, Miss, the nurse has him timing the doses so he's got the brains to eat regular. If you've a question to ask him, it might be worth writing it down so's he can see it? He'll put that before writing his letter to Miss Babylon.”
Amy's ears perked up immediately. Immediately. This prodded at certain instincts she had honed to a razor edge. “He's writing to her?”
“Quite ardent he is, Miss, or he would be if he could balance his courage and his caution while he wrote it. He's had about a sentence and a half so far, but we live in hope. We're all egging him on to be nice, don't fear,” Terence added with a broad smile. “He's got a sort of notepad out here, if you'd like to write your question, and when he's put an answer down I'll make sure it gets to the manor? Lovely, let's just find a pencil here...”
Amy surrendered to the flow of gentle nonsense, with a resigned smile. This was her home, and even the lunacy was charming. She couldn't let it down, so long as she gave it her whole heart.
=======>>>>=======
“I should preface my next statements,” began Shadow, “with a caveat that when I enter the state in question, my awareness is somewhat reduced.”
The courtroom regarded him with stony silence. Evidently, having gathered for morbid gossip, the onlooking nobles would settle for little else. Still, he had experienced some catharsis with the outpouring of his story that morning, and it permitted him to approach this more public setting with rather more equilibrium.
Still, it ached. He would restrict himself entirely to those matters relevant to the thrust of the inquiry, whether or not other questions were asked of him. Sir Abraham had spoken to him quietly, after the more private interview hours earlier, and expressed his respect for Shadow's...he had used the word resilience. Shadow's response had been a quiet nod, rather than the bark of laughter that had threatened to make itself known. After all that pain, all that time spent wondering whether his soul was surgically removed in that dungeon, or if it was just buried under the layers of agony, and might yet resurface and allow him to offer it to her...resilient was the last word he should use to describe himself. He had never felt so brittle, within himself. Even his physical frailty, earlier this year, had granted him the boon of leaving no time to worry about his psyche.
Now, they demanded that he take it out and show it to them. The regent had been correct in his decision yesterday: this was not to be borne. He would feed no explosion of grief and fury to the gossip mills of Leon's nobility. His dignity had been carved anew, in his new form, after the madman Infinite had shattered it and ground the pieces to dust. He would prize it all the more, now.
“And so your testimony will naturally be limited,” noted Lord Rossington, practically scoffing the words, as if he believed perhaps one of them in three. Shadow chose not to play the game.
“It will,” he agreed. “In that state, I remain fundamentally myself. I make the same choices I otherwise would. In the moment, I am present and lucid. But after it ends, when I...revert...my memory of it fades. I experience it with the same hindsight as one might recall a vivid dream. Some aspects stand out – a coloured tapestry, a sound or voice, a location. But these are islands in fog.”
“And what do you recall, of the night of the attack?” asked the bloodhound named Calceter, almost solicitously. It seemed the man had resolved to make no repeats of his prior poor attitude. Acceptable, and as close to an apology as Shadow was likely to receive.
“My first memory after going to bed is the sense of an intrusion,” he began, matter-of-factly. “I awoke to the sound of climbing-tools against the stone of the balcony outside my bedroom window. I recall my hand upon the throat of a figure in a dark cloak, and his scream as I threw him back off it. My next recollection is...the curve of Baroness Rose's blade. In the hallway outside my bedroom. We hurried, I believe, to the room of Miss Ammeline Rose, her daughter. The Baroness entered first, and directed me to the staff quarters downstairs, to protect the domestic help from any further intrusions. I recall blood, and screaming; I am reliably informed by the staff themselves that four intruders fell to my hands...and to my teeth.”
“And may we see those teeth, Mr Erin?” asked the beetle lady, dark-hued and so far quiescent, to Calceter's right. It felt an unusually pointed request. But then, I do have unusually pointed teeth, Shadow thought.
“Is my current state, my normal state, relevant to the inquiry?” he asked simply. The beetle turned to make her case to the royal bench.
“I seek only to establish the extent of the changes wrought upon Mr Erin's...everyday shape,” she noted diplomatically. There was a pause, and Sir Abraham conceded with a suspicious nod.
“Mr Erin, if you would,” the human conceded, and Shadow felt the eyes of the room upon him as he opened his mouth. It hinged wider than it ought, he knew; a ripple of shock passed through the room as the nail-sharp, conical teeth were exposed. He left it thus for only four or five seconds before pressing his lips together once more, but he knew the damage was done.
“Thus, and so,” noted the beetle. “We can therefore imagine that when Mr Erin was in his altered state, his teeth must be similarly changed, and capable of quite savage work.” Shadow glanced at Lady Amaranthine, whose eyes had narrowed in suspicion. Good; he hadn't imagined it. The shift from second person to third, when speaking of him, meant the lady was no longer addressing him; she spoke to the courtroom, now. To the crowd. She was laying groundwork...though for what, Shadow had little idea.
“My next recollection,” he said aloud, to bring things back onto a safer track, “is of my cousin, Captain Silver Horizon. I am informed he witnessed me pursuing the last of our attackers onto the lawn, and dispatching him there. Shortly afterward, I reverted and lost consciousness. This is all I personally recall of my actions.”
“Unfortunate,” observed Lord Rossington, and here at least the motive was plain. He sought mawkish titillation, and little more.
“More fortunately, sirs, lady,” Lady Amaranthine interjected, rising to her feet, “I was present for much of Mr Erin's transformation, including its ending. I can corroborate his testimony, and fill in those gaps which might be relevant to this inquiry. However, I submit that the change of his shape is itself rather less pertinent than the identity of those who met their end at his hands that night.”
“This tribunal shall decide what is-”
“This court shall decide what is pertinent to the investigation,” interrupted the Princess, her voice like a knife wrapped in silk. There was no denying that Rossington trod upon thin ice, and he wordlessly bowed his head in concession.
“However, the offer for further testimony is accepted,” remarked the beetle woman, and the Baroness' eyes locked back onto hers.
“Yes, Lady Caliche, that is your prerogative,” Commander Tower affirmed, grudgingly. “This will be the final testimony given regarding the attack, by the defenders, until the interrogation of those taken prisoner is completed and their own remarks can be read. The victims of this assault have been victimised enough.” His tone was iron. His meaning was clear.
“Then if it pleases the court, I shall begin.” Baroness Rose stayed on her feet, as Shadow sank into his seat.
Her eyes, gleaming and diamond-hard, never left the beetle.