Work Text:
Reticent slid downwards, back pressed against the door. She'd meant to stay standing, but the effort of emotion led to her legs slowly collapsing under her and the slight tiefling sinking to the ground. Her eyes remained locked forward, just staring into an empty room - a desk with books she had taken to keep and never read, a chest emptied of anything of value weeks ago when the Star Savior had been attacked, and a bed across from hers abandoned afterwards.
On Reticent’s bed however, a folded shimmering cloth sat. It looked more like fluid than fabric; like a pool of oil, slick and prismatic on her un-slept in sheets, it was a gift she'd just accepted- and a gift that she could never imagine receiving. Reticent's eyes drifted towards it, examined the strange amorphous nature of it despite how carefully she had folded it. It took effort to tear her mind away from thoughts of the past. Slowly, her musings began to slide into the future.
She thought of the journey they were all about to take together. She thought of the ancient dragon they were about to challenge with intent to kill. She thought of the dangers and possibilities that came with slaying another Lock - another being so powerful here a force bound their very essence to protecting a gate between Reticent's world and the world of her blood. It would be the fourth Lock her little misfit group would face. A quiet snort of sarcastic laughter escaped her at that count - technically, it could be considered the fifth, if one counted the first being revived and ever so swiftly returned to death.
Reticent pushed up from the floor, drifting closer to the cloak that rested on her bed. Ien had been adamant she should take it. Her instinct had been to turn the fighter away, but even she was not cold enough that a legacy of his last name and the arcane magic that flowed within could be denied so easily. She'd been shatter-shocked when he pushed it towards her, and even more so when he read her like a fucking book.
I know you like to put up a face like you don't care, Ien had said, offering a clumsily piled cloak made of something smoother than silk towards her. She'd taken it then, just as she picked it up now and spread it to look over the whole length. But you are the most powerful spellcaster I know. When it really matters, I can see you do.
Reti slung the cloak over her shoulders, finding that rather than a clasp the strange shimmering fabric relied on a hood and sleeves to stay in place over its wearer. She scoffed at the thought of being "the most powerful." She could name without trying a handful of others that could best her in matters of the arcane, divine, or both. Part of her resented Ien for saying something so foolish now; now as she slid her arms into the weightless sleeves of this powerful cloak that shimmered like long-ago reflected starlight. Part of her swelled with a strange kind of pride she hated even more.
I'd been... wanting to find a way to cure you. Ever since back around that fire. That's where it started. And when Penelope told me what she did I thought there was a hope at something like that, Ien had said. The words had punched Reticent in the gut. What she was, how she existed - this blood-craving curse, the sense of being a vessel for something darker than her - was not curable. It had never been. Penelope had been a Lock. Penelope hadn't promised a cure to Reticent's need for sanguine to survive. Penelope had offered a cure for a result of it instead.
The fabric resting about her was like a breath of chill tundra air, far north in Reticent’s birthplace. It barely existed in weight, but brought awareness to everything that it rested on as Reticent's skin bristled with the energy that flowed inches away. Beneath it, her blood thrummed with something else. She knew it, just from the feeling that had haunted her for months.
Reticent's blood pulsed with the power of a Lock. One stolen away because of her feral drive to survive, to devour the blood of a previous owner, and that Lock was now contained entirely within her.
Reticent fell back onto the bed, not bothering to pull the covers aside - just like always - and sank into a mattress much too plush after days out in the wilds, on a ship, on the road. Being a Lock, being part of this whole divine system preventing access to a deity’s realm meant an ultimatum. An ultimatum that Penelope, in all her corrupted madness, had promised a way out of. Reticent squeezed her eyes shut in the darkness, remembering the conversation - how eagerly she’d asked Ien’s sister once free of the influence on her mind for what magical answer she’d had. Every word stung.
I can’t help you. Penelope was lying, Ien had said. Reticent had just been near-frozen there, folding the stupid cloak she now wore in silence as he spoke. Knowing that… I hope this can help you. Maybe, maybe you can help yourself with it. Maybe we find another way out.
Reticent felt like she was sinking. The bed was too soft, the cloak too weightless around her shoulders, on her arms. She fought to keep her eyes shut, to will blessed sleep to take over and banish the thoughts. She fought so hard she found herself clawing at nothing - at air that touched her like cold wind, at fabric so shimmering and so soft she could find no purchase no matter how much she drove her sharp nails into it.
Reticent’s eyes snapped open.
All around her, prismatic darkness flowed with blacks, purples, reds and blues. She felt weightless - no ground beneath her feet, no ceiling above. Every direction was the same, no sense of depth anywhere. The only reason she knew her eyes were not closed any longer was looking down and seeing her hands, seeing the sleeves of the cloak that seemed to flow up away from them and melt into the gem-like darkness all around.
Somehow, calm suffused her. She didn’t feel the need to speak - this abstract nothingness swaddled and silenced her. Something in it called out, and something inside Reticent responded. There were no words exchanged, nothing was spoken aloud, yet an exchange of sorts was had. A question, and a response, shared in a single instant.
What is this?
Dark-truth-life-love-death-magic-above-all.
Reticent’s brow furrowed. She extended a hand and pulled at the core of dark power within her, curling her will around the energy that suffused her everything. Like every time she had ever cast a spell before, she simply extended herself into that power and dragged the ability to change from it. In this strange half-conscious space, she felt an answering thrum from the endless abyss all around her. Waves of vibrant red cascaded from her fist, and something began to take shape in front of her.
It was a strange, lumpy thing at first - strange in that it had form, even if uncoordinated and shifting. Nothing besides her own hands seemed to be visible to her until this long stretch of darkness took a vaguely humanoid form and grew sharper and sharper by the second. Reticent watched in curiosity - the darkness telling her no-fear-no-danger in less time than a thought could form. She watched the woman taking shape in front of her.
She was tall. Thin, but not sickly - angles and sharp edges, bones showing under a garb that Reticent barely recognized and long flowing hair made of the same stuff that this whole space was built of melting away down her back. Her eyes were two brilliant specks of red, no pupils and tilted upwards as her hands clasped in front of her chest. Details began to form. A forehead with two carefully shorn horns. Long, billowing clothes that seemed a brighter black than every other black.
Perhaps-this-perhaps-her, the darkness surrounding Reticent offered, breathing a heart flanked by a halo amulet around the neck of the parody of the tiefling that could have never been. Strength-light-life-conviction-magic-again.
Reticent’s will exploded outward, scattering the false version of herself to nothingness in an instant. Anger flooded her - if she could lash out, if she had any purchase by which to inhabit violence, she would have. She felt the shining velvet around her react not with apology or fear but with curiosity of its own - seeking answers from her, seeking something that Reticent could never have spoken but somehow was communicated instantly.
You mock me.
Question-answer-possibility-depth-potential-never-lost.
Reticent turned her hands over with concerted effort to cause motion. She watched the lines on her palm, watched the flowing depth around her slide around her wrists and cause the rest of her to be nothing in this space that wanted to offer everything. Her magic coursed inside her, warm and red like the blood in her veins and tinged with a sickly purple Lock she carried accidentally.
Study-breathe-examine-answers-limits.
Another figure rose. Again, Reticent extended herself towards it, surging with an anger she didn’t quite understand. For less than a second, the oil-slick simulacrum of herself scouring thousands of lost tomes, absorbing knowledge long since lost existed. Again, before even her eyes could perceive it, there was nothing. Reticent’s anger grew so great she felt tears flowing from the corners of her eyes - and the abyss around her knew instantly that the tears were for something else entirely.
Loss-death-ending-escape.
I cannot.
Offered. Denied. There was no reaction, no sensation of a hand being withdrawn. Simply an acknowledgement from the void all around Reticent, and an instantaneous feeling of moving on. Reticent dug her magic in, like nails into the dirt to claw her way backwards. She did not want to move on. She wanted to wallow in despair, in realization that she had tinged herself with an inevitable death.
Somehow, the pearlescent nothingness all around her listened. It felt her fear, her hatred, and her shallow breath all at once. It did not coddle or cradle, just watched impassive; an omnipotent observer of everything that Reticent was and could be through herself and through her magic alone. Reticent inherently knew that she was curled into a ball and that she was sobbing, but no sound left her cotton-dry throat.
Ending.
Another repeated concept. No word, no idea, just the idea of finality. Reticent didn’t know how long she’d been in the same position, but slowly she unfurled. No figure of her in another life, in another form rose to greet her, just her own bloodied hands weeping dark blood mixed with brilliant purple energy.
Offering.
As had happened before, Reticent curled around her magic - a magic of silence and violence alike. As she had done so many times in the past, she forced it into a shape that it hated. She could feel it striking against the inside of her veins, breaking through her skin, but instead of protecting herself, Reticent let it flow.
If I end, I am the offering.
The void seemed pleased.
Reticent found herself drifting with that realization - the first truly emotional response from the place she found herself within. Something new breathed, living and full of every possibility that her steps could take underneath her magic. It wasn’t obtrusive like the figurines of other versions of her had been, and that felt correct. It felt like it settled into her and helped calm the angry tide of magic surrounding her and pouring from her. The blackness around her swirled, pulling open a vision of memory - a time around a fire that blazed velvet dark against red-tinged faces with purple eyes turned towards her.
How will they know?
Unrequired-thanks-words-deeds-gifts
Reticent bristled again - less in anger or fear, but more in the simplistic way this place burrowed into her mind and laid her innermost feelings bare. Words she’d said to Ien in a kind of confidence that very night flooded from her as a singular feeling; the words poured into endless nothing around her as the realization that somehow a group of people she barely knew at first had managed to worm into a heart she had thought long hardened.
She could feel the tears falling from her eyes again. Reticent wanted to stop them, but couldn’t. It felt so strange to be suspended in this space that seemed impartial for most things and to be overwhelmed herself. All the fears and anxieties she buried deep poured over her with the force of a roiling tide - in and out, like the breaths that rattled between wracking sobs.
It took a long while before Reticent's downpour of fear subsided. She recognized the feeling - the same one she had encountered on a beach maybe a bare week ago. There it had exhausted her. Here, she slowly opened to the depths around her once more and felt its impassive drive to understand her return. In truth, she expected it had never left - that she was being laid bare here both in body and spirit alike. Once more, like when she had first entered here, she presented a question.
What happened to my instincts?
Change-grow-mold-anew-present-still.
Reticent turned herself inwards again, rolling the arcane inside her like a ball of clay. It had calmed since her earlier lashing out, still sending pulses of deep dark red into the nothingness around her but no longer shredding her from the inside out. Survival had been what began all of this - a desperate animal, stalking on the fringe to scavenge what life she could attain. She thought for the longest time that it was all that had mattered - and maybe to a certain extent, it still did. At some point, though…
Before she could stop it, a familiar stone rose from the dark space. She was nowhere near it, but she could feel the sun-warmed heat of it against her back. This Reticent, the one floating in nothingness and watching the events of that day play out again felt nothing but empty pain - her tears were gone, drained from her moments before. The Reticent who had collapsed against the rock had decided that her life was worth most as a moment in time for her escaping allies.
Survival-continuation-legacy-life
Reticent had been ready to die. Had it really been an end of her instinct to push onwards? Had the person who took her place, who sacrificed themselves to save Reticent's life, reignited that need to continue? Unable or unwilling to stop it, Reticent watched an image of her companion collapse against indistinct stone that had risen. A moment later, she soundlessly dismissed the memory with a thought. The figure and scene dissolved to nothingness again. Again, Reticent was alone and not alone all at once.
Deals-compromise-power-emphasis-growth.
Reticent's hands were still. She found her magic again and drifted around it. For the first time in a long time, she was not drawing from it and not forcing it elsewhere. It pulsed and rolled, never silent inside her and never allowing her to stop. Reticent watched it with new eyes, breathing with the motions it made.
It's a two way agreement.
Compromise-deal-allowance-give-take-magic-needs-of-you
The most confusing to interpret flood of ideas from the space around her yet crashed into Reticent's mind, but she was busy watching her magic mold around her. Before, she'd found a new reason to continue on. Now, she was trying to come to terms with maybe not having a way out. Her power fought the thought with everything it was. Reticent stared, impassive like the darkness all around her, watching it struggle.
So we try to carry on until we can't.
Again, the void thrummed with an understanding; a part of Reticent heard and understood as well. This time, Reticent sat bolt upright.
Reticent clutched at her chest, feeling the soft weightlessness of the cloak over it, her breath coming in short bursts. Panting, she glanced towards the window where the moon had long since drifted out of view. Her face felt crusted with dry tears, her cheeks puffy and sore. She looked down at herself, examining her hands and the rest of her now-visible form. It appeared whatever had just transpired had been some kind of dream.
Something of it had followed her, though. Reticent could feel that much. Something altogether new, but familiar in a dark and pulsing way sat entwined with the magical potential she had long since become used to.
Reticent picked herself up, removing the hanging coin from around her neck; she slid the cord it hung on around her fingers and rolled the cold metal between each. With a glance towards the empty bed across from hers, she turned to the window and stared out over the darkened streets of Heathersford for a long, long time.