Chapter Text
The first time he entered Lord Drevis' private counselling room, he had nearly strangled the man to death with his bare hands.
They were smarter this time around, Piping his mind calm and placid before they instructed him to step in, where he had the displeasure of witnessing his assigned counsellor repeatedly arrange the books on his desk, shuffle and knock stacks of loose paper against the old wood, thrice-checked and dusted his carpet, then had the audacity to insist on making tea for the both of them before initiating their session.
Rich oolong sat untouched in its porcelain cup. The liquid would be cold if it touched his lips now. Not that he wanted it, anyway.
So instead he continued to sit very still on the cushioned chair, his legs crossed, minimising the silhouette of his kirtle, a fitting they had handpicked to humiliate him for his demotion back to mortality, but indeed he kept it, never bothering to return it when it was as functional as any other article of clothing in his new, barren wardrobe, and beneath the fabric he wriggled his left heel against the floorboards, reaching his hand down to smooth the folds. A coat would fare much better, warmer, if they ever decided to deem him a human being.
The Hamelyn Piper fixed his eyes on Drevis. He did not so much as move or sway or budge an inch, assuming the perfect, stagnant figure of a person froze in time, albeit a touch too eager for their session to end to have fully recognised him as a statue.
Drevis tucked a strand of hair behind his ear gracefully, taking a deep, grounding breath as he adjusted his grip on the white quill, slanting it so that it was primed to write and record his words whenever it was that the wicked man decided to also start speaking in his turn. To this he felt nothing but a hint of amusement. To this he felt nothing but the urge to shift his legs, though he did not; his eternally wrong, thin, and tall form that struggled to contain him in the bed of inns and couches, always awkwardly hanging and draping and covering over something else. A groove, perhaps, or the edge of the mattress. Same things. If magic had not padded his mind cloudy, he certainly would have tossed the boiling tea at the old Lord and watch with immense satisfaction as his skin peeled from his bones - just as his own.
Since that would not come to pass, however, he was more than content to sit and observe how time flowed wasted with every hopeful flicker across the council member's face, the near imperceivable curl of his mouth which disdain had nothing to do with his cold oolong and everything to do with his quiet patient, and the way, oh the way the Lord's gaze briefly hardened every time they locked eyes was such a tell to him.
A primitive, ridiculous spectacle.
Then the Hamelyn Piper smiled at last, sensing the opening before the pieces even moved.
"I recall you used to be very talkative," Drevis began. His voice was delicate, yet never broken from the firm authority that he represented. He habitually sipped his tea, which once ochre colour had dulled to a pallid yellow at the very bottom of the cup. "Have you run out of things to gloat, at last?"
He weighed the words and their options in his mind. What else could be said? He considered. He could talk down the heavens until the last star burned out if it meant he could spit the hatred coagulating in his heart, into the size of a fist.
“I have nothing to say to you.” If Drevis was as intuitive as he appeared to be, then he should parse the meaning of his words no problem. For every sentence must be filled with meaning to bridge one world to its next.
The other man blinked.
”I’m aware that you would much rather speak to Ural, but I’m afraid he’s indisposed indefinitely.”
”You mean that he’s dead.” He snorted. It did not take him long at all to put two and two together when he saw no traces of the Sorcerer Engineer at the day of their battle, and his suspicions were confirmed when the Piper’s Council viewed Corrigan as an outsider instead. That angry, waiting woman who wanted no part of his trial’s complications, wishing only for his death to be dealt with as soon as possible. A Piper with more potential as a Sorcerer...It seemed to him that Ural Casimir had more secrets than he was initially led to believe.
Well played.
Drevis looked at him over the rim of his cup, “So you do know. His blood is on your hands.”
“It is…regrettable that things had to turn out this way.” His admission crumbled like rotten cake in his mouth. Either that or it was bile, hunger from only being fed scraps throughout his new days.
“You say that, but you have no plans on making good of your contrition, do you?” The Lord poured more tea into his cup, “There isn’t a day that goes by where I do not mourn the loss of my friends in the Eight. Your dedication to vengeance has brought you far, but it will come to an end now.”
As if there could be a simple end, a cut-off to his bitterness. Anger stirred in the back of his mind, pushing past the diffusing blockade, but trying to lift it sapped even the energy from his limbs. He growled. His fingers twisted slowly in the grotesque mimicry of claws, a beast told to perch atop the chair and put on the spot by a dozen ring masters.
He wondered if he would ever stop feeling the same as a lion in a cage — he thought he had escaped it a long time ago.
"Your change of strategy to provoke me has not gone unnoticed," the Hamelyn Piper's smile widened, "But I must admit that you are a man full of surprises. First you had taken my army off guard during the battle, and now you sit before me with the gall to rile me up, and then some. If I didn't known any better, I would say that hanging around Rundel Stone has helped you grow a backbone!"
"And you would know of courage? The one who left his brother to die in his place?"
His smile bloated into a grin. "Your lot seems to enjoy reminding me of that worthless twin of mine. Was he truly of no use? A pity! Shall I then remind you as well, Lord Drevis, that it was you who were responsible for handling his prosecution? That it was you who locked him in the very bottomless pits, swallowed the key, and enjoyed your decade-long rest? Did you really think you washed your hands of me, just like that?" He laughed.
Another flicker passed the Lord's face, darker and somehow even more determined. "You were certainly counting on it."
It was interesting, if not very annoying.
The counsellor tapped his notes and wrote down something he could not read from his current angle.
He let him be. All this dressing-up of words and bureaucracy and talking and talking and talking that got them nowhere was beneficial for none save for those in power. Here he was, so polite and well-behaved in his conduct, stripped to the bones of his own Gift, his very essence, the days of Piping long gone behind him, still suffering from burns so grievous and scarring that the healers had to experimentally graft on the flesh just so he could live without vultures or flies preying upon his half-walking corpse, and even then he could not speak for months, with the first word he spoke upon recovering voice being a curse that Quarastus accidentally taught him in his youth, and still he had to be subjected to interrogations day in and day out. If not from the presiding Virtus then the Judge, and if not from the Judge then the dozens of others ranked in Council waiting so sweetly to sink their fangs into him to finish the farce.
Lord Drevis leaned back in his seat.
Against the late sun filtering through the windows, the larger man seemed to melt into the dark hazel of the room, the gold reflected from the polished floor to its giant, damask carpets, and to the shine of the cups and its small mirrors of tea, the elegant frames squared around his noble accolades and a thing made of silver. He was unfamiliar with what it could be, distracted by the counsellor's ongoing easiness.
As easy as he practiced to be, he assumed, amidst the other signs of caution and professionally masked dislike. The Piper's Council has always worn their hearts on their sleeves, and one of them even became frigid from grief. He had to restrain the cackle that spiked his throat.
It was good at the very least to know that his reputation still held up. That even his own kind could gaze upon him with nothing less than vitriol and suspicion for his existence. Was it deserved? He never thought so, but it mattered to him not what people considered him to be. All that did matter was getting them to believe. He had nothing to offer them now, yet they rejoiced anyway. The world continued to turn. The days had come and gone so quickly, this morning he arrived, escorted as always by two pairs of Battle Pipers as his guards.
"As far as I'm aware, the Virtus has already briefed you on the goal of this programme," Drevis spoke up. The statement meant very little to him, regardless of the thin expectation that he should know the purpose of their exchange. People were saying things disconnected from their own reality all the time. He would not feed into this common culture of saying things for the sake of fishing responses. It was the same kind of sickness that got into his mother and brother's head, and he was convinced that was why they laid six feet under in coffins now. He was alive because he always knew better.
"It is a programme meant to rehabilitate me, yes? Rundel Stone just had to phrase it awkwardly by claiming it was to provide correction on my current path. Tell me," the Hamelyn Piper leaned forward, resting his head above the lacing of both hands, "What makes you think I would cooperate to achieve the outcome you and the rest of your Council desires? Or, better yet..."
He made a show of thinking, then smiled, baring his teeth viciously, "What sort of delusional beliefs have you been feeding yourself to think that whatever it is you're doing will prove effective?"
The counsellor's ponderous silence hung heavy in the air. He toyed with the memory of what the old Virtus called him: an irredeemable, immoral deviant that should be eradicated posthaste, or something of that sort, along with other strings of cold and harsh-sounding words that he had committed to memory for his own vengeance's sake. All bark and no bite just like then, he mused to himself. If Rundel had wanted his head, he would have held it up for the whole world to witness by now, and since he did not, it only meant that the fool had actually bit into his colleague's alluring plans to redeem him. Oh yes, Drevis' schemes had been largely met with negative pushback from others of course, so it was a puzzle to him that this managed to vote through at all.
As usual, though, he understood what had really happened despite the criticism. Rather than claiming he was delivered a second chance to start things over, redemption was reframed as a prolonged form of punishment for him, that the piling maggots awaiting him deep in the dungeons were too good even for a disgrace of such magnitude - the original devil, the one who reached out and shattered people's trust in their governance. This time, the Council promised to right their decade-old wrongs. This time, instead of abandoning a shadow of himself in the iron depths, they would drag him screaming into the sun and burn his dignity until all that remained of a threat was a man, and like any man, he was fallible, rotten, vulnerable, and easily killed.
Pipers were prideful creatures. They would not be cheated of his retribution the second time. If he were bothered he would take his own life before they continued to torture him, yet he found an utter lack of satisfaction to any of those choices.
"I turn the question back on you." Drevis stared at him solemnly, "What do you believe it is that I am attempting to accomplish?"
"To fix me, of course! You wish to convert me into an upright, benevolent figure that abides by your rules and laws. However you are looking to justify it is irrelevant. You can admit upfront that you want to try and instil 'good values' in me. I assumed as much when one of the ethos you subscribe to claims to do no harm. Am I wrong?" He laughed.
The council member's gaze searched him. He did not know what the man found as he said, "Then I am sorry to inform you that despite what rumours others have been spreading, I have always said that interpersonal mediation is not meant to fix anyone. What would 'fixing' someone even entail? Instead we propose...alternative solutions to those in need of help relating to their personal affairs and struggles. Interpersonal mediation is a branch of study as legitimate as Piping and Sorcery, so the ethos which you recited refers to my responsibility to safeguard your well-being."
He breathed out steadily and continued, "I am not looking to convert you into some form of a model citizen, given that it is a lovely, thoughtful ideal that is nice for all of us to think about than carry out in execution. I understand it is simply not pragmatic, and it defies the necessary complexity of the service. You are here because of your own actions, indeed, and you will be provided...guidance of your behaviours to an extent, but I do not foresee my guidance realigning your moral backbone because of it. And, naturally, I predict you would be resistant to change."
Guidance of behaviours. What a joke. As though this was his first day at school and already the tutors caught him on his undesirable acts.
"I see. So you simply intend on wasting my time." The Hamelyn Piper sneered, "You know, usually the intention of such dubious tactics is to undermine my personhood by casting doubt on what I could have done better, or how I could improve as a person to abstain from using others as a steeping stone for my ambition. Thus I raise you this, Lord Drevis: why not?"
"Is that what drove you to commit the massacre of Hamelyn's children?" The counsellor's voice turned cold, his posture suddenly upright in interest. On guard. "A push from your own curiosity?"
He shook his head.
"I will tell you as I told the boy. I received a prophetic dream that told me that I would rule the world if only I got rid of a single child from the town of Hamelyn. At the time, I had no clue which child it could be, and so it was much easier for me to dispose them all in one strike. The truth is that the nature of prophecies is demanding as they are elusive." He sighed, leaning to the side of his arm.
He added, "But I know my own dreams. I couldn't have been wrong."
"A dream,” Lord Drevis echoed.
His incredulity was palpable, even if his face was schooled in restraint to only show a grim frown of concern. He noted that the older man's hands were trembling, squeezing the quill between his fingers like he was trying to pop the live bird it once belonged to. Against his best efforts, the man's increasing distress, and in tandem, his loathing, were reflected like shards from a broken mirror in his otherwise gentle eyes. They cut into him, and he responded with a casual turn of his head.
The old Piper helped himself to another frantic sip of his tea, rummaging the notes he arranged on top of his lap. A few noisy flips later he stopped. The shakiness of his hands calmed.
"Your dream did come true, didn't it? Your downfall was registered in the form of a boy who saved us all," Lord Drevis smiled, a strange look of pride filled the light in his eyes, "His name is Patch. Patch Brightwater."
"The lost child of Hamelyn,” he pronounced with distaste. He had never heard of the Brightwater lad before this, but his name was inescapable these days. He learned of that horrible wreck of a child who rattled nonstop about his apparent foolishness, of his mysterious background as a boy who had little, foggy memories of a distant past. He was standing right in front of him all along. The threat. The danger. The pair of hands that would tighten their fate and ensure his fall from divinity. Yet when the boy did so he did not cheer and dance over his crumpled form with triumph, instead suffering a violently fatal cluster of injuries that should have killed them both.
Patch Brightwater.
He really was just a boy. Terrified yet sharp-witted when he had been confronted, bolstered by some unseen strength when he realised what his true motivator was.
"He lost his Gift as well, hadn't he?" The Hamelyn Piper hummed, "It seems that fate us brought us together in the end. It's just a shame our reunion was so..." He searched the words, "Unexpected. I was at the very cusp of my victory."
Drevis wrote something else in his notes. He looked up briefly, and his face was oddly unreadable. "And had Patch not intervened, you would have won."
He nodded, "It should have been mine."
They sat in silence for a while.
Save for the irritating, repetitive scratch of the quill against paper, the room continued to bake in that come familiar silence. The Hamelyn Piper tugged the loose ends of his clothes. He made a strange noise that was a cross between a hum and a growl. Maybe he really was hungry, there was no reason for his odd behaviour otherwise. And his sitting-still must be a consequence of instinctively conserving his energy, there was nothing that could be off about it. He remembered he ate only half a corn bread last night.
How was he supposed to control his body language when he lived in such dire conditions? Performers needed to eat too, and so he was thinking of his next meal.
"Why do you want to rule the world so desperately?" The voice confined him to the tiny space of his seat.
They should really invent a type of chair appropriate for these longer sessions.
Lord Drevis is a powerful man, and he had come to begrudgingly respect the presence he commanded in court, the same presence that was elevated to mightier heights whenever he appeared with his spouse, Rundel Stone, but unlike the latter, he was consistently firm than he was ruthless, the steady anchor to the Virtus' neurotic and often exaggerated judgement, and although he reported no particular ill will towards the high-born Lord aside from placing his name on the same kill-list as the other Eight, Drevis was also infuriatingly naive.
What would a Tiviscan-bred Lord know about his suffering? They were as different as wolves and domesticated dogs.
One enjoyed a warm fireplace and a garden prepared to socialise with others of its ilk, the kinds that strut around with fancy ribbons stuck to the fur of their puffed-out chests. And he was the other, threading tiredly over the cycles of earth and snow, putting one foot in front of the other in search of his own tomorrow, all alone. The weariness towards their differences occurs to him only in the moment, and he forgets who he was being or playing. He became distinctly aware of his humiliating smallness, no longer a beast but a child, accosted by his mother to isolate himself up on the tallest chair in their house, that he would learn to shut his mouth and bask in his misery while his brother played outdoors.
His eyes darted all across the private room. Had it always been so tiny? - The walls rotated, and with them the slanting of the counsellor's multiple rack of accolades, the insistent squashing and pulling and beating down of the space around him, stuck inside the jaws of a lesser creature trying to chew him into chunks of grey meat. All because Drevis asked him a question with an answer that already came in the set.
The quiet dot of quill against paper composed him.
He looked up.
"For power," replied the Hamelyn Piper with a cold smile, "For decades I planned, and planned I did! Every single, excruciating step of the way to bring me to where I needed to be was foreseen ahead of time by myself to ensure that I would rule. The world needs a firm hand to guide it, don't you agree? To you I may be evil, but to myself I merely am. Some drastic measures have always been necessary to rule the world. I expect you of all people to understand this. After all, you bear the honourable title of a Lord. What exactly do you lord over, if not others?"
"Yet you know I am also not the only Lord in the Piper's Council. Lord Cobb and Liege Winkless too, are present. Our powers are not shafted to a single individual, even if it is true that we each represent a different portion of authority in the eyes of the public. I believe that you would have liked to keep all that power to yourself, and then what would you have done with it? Every decision will come from and through you alone, which runs opposite to the philosophy of our Council," Drevis scratched his writing, halting to glance at him.
He hissed.
"Your Council is weak! As king, all decisions will run through me because my judgement will be swift and absolute. The Piper's Council has done nothing but go on wild goose chases to find and annihilate those they claim to be Dark Pipers, ignorant of anything else! In the last year, I had caught a story from the Eastern Seas about an apprentice held captive by its local pirate king. They said that no one stepped forward to save the poor boy, for everyone else were too busy running in circles trying to find me. That is the true nature of your precious Council, Lord Drevis. Power rests indifferently by your own hand!”
The other man stared at him, stunned into silence by the mention of that particular incident. Flustered by the flawed truth. He could not stop his laughter now. "Ultimately, someone in existence must alway come up on the top - it is the ordinal law of things. I have failed, but that does not stop anyone else from following my footsteps. You seek to capture and contain evil, but you fail to see how it resides in you and all others. You will achieve nothing by having me present myself before you."
"The difference is that you don't seem to recognise the harm your reign would bring. When Apprentice Whitlock was taken from us, I was deeply remorseful of our negligence when I discovered what had transpired. I made the others vow they would never allow it to happen again! Do you even acknowledge the grief your actions have caused?" Lord Drevis laid his quill down, folding his hands to mirror him.
His tone had changed again: far quieter now, a terminal stage of mellowness and intolerance inbound.
His mind whirred.
Harm?
Grief?
Those were concepts he understood.
Those were concepts that he used against people.
Those were concepts which consequences had no personal bearing on him.
Grief he had none for the deaths he had been involved in were rightfully deserved, grief he had none for most of his family nor the recent passing of his treacherous master. A yearning for a different time, a different outcome, maybe, but that had nothing to appeal to his sense of grief. He needed the grief of parents to set into motion his plans, so undoubtedly he would have to acknowledge it. Grief was a very reliable tool, and harm was the same. Hurting and harming were second nature to him, be it on the receiving end or inflicting it.
At some point he had almost forgotten what harm could be until he nearly collapsed from rage at that incident in the valley.
"No. It matters not to me whoever got harmed in the process. They would deserve it. Such sacrifices are a necessary evil, and it would have been my responsibility to enforce the laws I put in place," he frowned, "Under vastly different circumstances, the world would have plummeted into an unrecoverable state had my master not been removed from the picture. I had to kill him. I will not shy from what I must."
"I was not specifically referring to Lord Pewter's death, though I do agree that there could have been no telling what sort of havoc he could have brought upon us in his ambitious quest." Somehow, Lord Drevis' voice softened even further, "I was more so touching on the fact that you have hurt and killed countless people. You seem to believe that you're allowed to do as you please without consequence, you have been taught to think that everything is centred on you and only you."
He narrowed his eyes. "Why would anything else matter?"
Another lengthy scribble of words on the notes. "That would be the purpose of the programme," the Council member broached lightly, "I mentioned that you are not here to receive any fixing, because you are instead here to gain insight on your actions."
The words sat on him like the blade of a guillotine.
This is madness, he realised.
"Insight?" He gritted his teeth, sorely wishing and wishing so that they had not sent him in with his mind blocked by stars, "You seem to take me as a fool, Lord Drevis. I know the meaning behind my own actions!"
Lord Drevis shook his head. "The meaning you derive from your own actions are shallow and selfish. They may be self-serving and planned to further your ambitions, but that is where they start and end! You view others, people, as stepping stones between actions not because you do not understand that they cause harm. You do it because your beliefs are congruent with the notion of hurting others. After all, there's no reason to reconsider otherwise when it doesn't affect you, does it?"
"Gratification itself is a form of reason," the Hamelyn Piper insisted. He looked down at his hands, which were now posed on his lap, "As I have said, there is no reason to feeling remorse over something so utterly beneath me."
Drevis sighed quietly. "Why must you insist that others are inferior?"
"Because they are, and they have given me no reason to think otherwise!"
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"And that is precisely what I mean. For every 'why not' you answer to questions, insight will help broaden that dead-end and, hopefully in due time, clarify your understanding on why you choose the same patterns of behaviour when we come to the crossroads. Help me to help you. Do you require any more elaboration on this?"
"I'll pass. Not when, as it stands, it's more baffling to me that you continue to blather on about something so irrelevant to looking after my well-being," he growled, the phrase help-me-to-help-you looping in his mind, "That is, if you wish to keep in line your dated oath of doing no harm. I’m curious that your teachings involve a dozen stances on pardoning my actions in favour of reinterpreting them as a product of my upbringing. Very curious!"
"This is not a pardon." Drevis stated firmly, dipping his quill in the nearby ink well.
The fat droplet of liquid splotched the paper, like night emerging across the sheet, and his eyes were steady, cool as steel, "All have a right to understanding themselves, even if they have done unspeakable things." He paused, furrowing his brows. Unmistakable pain welled up in his expression, "Especially if they have committed unspeakable acts."
How very…unexpected.
And unlikely.
"Where would understanding land us?" He asked.
"Clarity," repeated Lord Drevis, "Clarity will help with your sense of awareness and influence the way you interact with the world. Others. People, I would hope, just as how Custodians continue to uphold the important mission of resolving conflicts amicably with the dragon territories. This isn't all that different from it."
He blinked. He could hardly believe the surreality of their current exchange, "So you deem yourself on a peacekeeping mission to resolve my conflicts. Truly, how noble of you."
First they said they would spare him, then they would cure him of his wickedness, and now they would attempt to exorcise his existing emptiness through all sorts of categorising. A little bit of this and that. He was a monster, he was a forsaken child, he was manipulated, he was manipulating, he was hurt, he was hurting, he terrorised, and now he was a living conflict to be resolved. It seemed like no one in the Piper's Council were in their right state of minds - either that or they remained indecisive on what he was, and thus he concluded that another hidden objective of the council member's mission must be to figure him out. Pick his brain a little. The very notion of it filled him with disgust.
Worthless! He too, wanted to know what they would find.
Reason or correlation must be preceded with action. Cause and effect; but why must he think of such useless things?
What exactly was there to consider beyond his ambitions? Did everyone else not do the same? He was only penalised for his extremity! Surely that was why. He tightened his grip on the fabric of his dress, seething at the cold confusion seeping into his thoughts.
What was this particular, unspoken bit of thing that they expected from him?
“I am a member of the Piper’s Council, at the end of the day.” Drevis smiled thinly. Weariness had weathered the sag and wrinkles around his eyes, yet softened the rest of his features. A slow, loose-hanging smile that took little effort, strung with all the exasperation of a seasoned figure.
It was phrased with all the warmth of a joke. Yes, the man must think, I am the cream of the crop, I am the icing on the cake. I am the one who will fix you upright.
You will learn to be Good.
He shared none of his amusement. Instead, an uncomfortable sensation pricked the back of his neck. What was he even talking about? The questions accumulated like poison in his head. Unconsciously, he raised a hand and massaged the sore spot on his skin, willing his face blank.
The Hamelyn Piper spoke, "How uncharacteristic of you and your Council, Lord Drevis. What has resulted in this change of heart, I wonder? I dare say not even Ural Casimir would have approved of this progress."
Drevis huffed, and he caught a gust of laughter in the expression. "Then you know very little of the unpredictable soul he was in life."
He curled his lip in distaste. Ural, the one who fashioned the Iron Mask, would probably not have bat an eye to his prosecution ending in lethal execution. The Sorcerer Engineer was enigmatic, true, very true, but he did not put it past the man to agree with Corrigan's speech on cutting his life short when the opportunity presented itself. He had no voice or power to override whatever horrible decisions they may arrive to test on him. He had about the same rights as a rat struggling on the streets, if the Virtus had not reminded him that a thousand times by now.
Not accounting for the lost souls trapped in the dungeons. Grace - his left foot!
"I would be careful with that school of thought if I were you."
"Why is that?"
"You assume I do not take charge of my actions. I do. Why else would I do do anything at all?"
Drevis placed his quill down and stared at him. His eyes flicked to the paper, then towards him once more.
"That is your claim, but you have not been able to inform me a deeper reason to your methods of justifying them. You can barely acknowledge the harm associated with what you have done. Taking charge does not always guarantee adherence to responsibilities. You were responsible for causing grief, yet you removed yourself from the act of guilt. It's still half-finished, incomplete. Fortunately for you, that is not the goal."
"It's insight." He grumbled.
"Insight simply refers to the gaining of perspectives. I can even argue that it's another way to reason, and I suppose you can think of it as a window between your..." He searched the word.
"World," the Hamelyn Piper supplemented.
"Yes. A window between your world...and my own," Drevis finished with a thoughtful glint in his eyes.
He was surprised. I had believed this would be a one-sided interrogation, he wanted to say, but the wrongness of the words, in all their perceived idiocy, the involved absence of vagueness and exposure of his vulnerability, gave him pause.
Was this a trick?
He decided to say nothing.
"All in all," Lord Drevis lightly cleared his throat, "It is essential to the correction of behaviours. Correction, in your case, would involve reframing your beliefs so that they are transferable to actions that won't always end in harming others. I hope you do not partially view it as a force of hand in getting you to play the role of a good person. The commitment to 'goodness' is more than just acceptable behaviours."
He tapped his head, "Agree to disagree! Goodness has its place in society, yet it dulls in comparison to compliance. What you deem to be acceptable behaviours are simply another result of conformity, formulated by fear. Whatever driven by emotion is easily exploitable precisely because it is so reliant on people's perception. I take that these goals are to be achieved through our conversations?"
Torture would have been more effective. He already underwent it, of course, but it changed very little.
"Indeed."
His first instinct was to vehemently deny this futile, frustrating endeavour, to be cross with the continuous humiliation that they subjected him to. They wished to pick him apart in their scrutiny like a lost child waiting for a meeting with the healers. Except they had no intention of healing any part of him, completely apathetic to the pitiful sight of his new scars and scorch marks, far more interested in getting him to bend to their cause. Their conviction was deeply embalmed in the notion that there was something inherently wrong about him. So they would cut him open and take out the malignant stones he willingly swallowed, stitch him back quick-smart, and then tell him that he was all-right-now because he told them a few words.
Talking? Talking will get us nowhere - the words nearly left his mouth, but that would be a half-truth at best when Drevis had so slyly gotten him to converse from the start, and all he did desire was to talk, even if they couldn’t see or understand anything.
The Piper's Council did not hesitate to cast their burning, unforgiving gazes and wield their powers as freely given to keep him in line. If Quarastus was alive he would tell the Dark Sorcerer that he never doubted his lessons on how pompous and insufferable each and every member on their Council truly were. If Ural Casimir was alive he would have enjoyed talking and gloating until his throat clammed up from thirst. But his master was gone, Ural was dead, and he had nothing to his name anymore aside from his legends.
And now they wanted him to supposedly learn insight from interacting with Drevis alone. Laughing was not going to save him from this bleak reality he found himself trapped in, six feet below not a gravestone but an uncharted layer of hell.
"Then you have a lot on your plate, Lord Drevis. Be careful as to not choke on your aspirations," he stood from his seat, "If there is nothing else, I am tired, and I would like to leave now."
Drevis nodded, glancing back at the windows. Outside, the birds of evening had began their hymns, and all the oolong tea in their pot had already been drank.
Only the Hamelyn Piper's cup remained wholly untouched, the heaviness of its pleasing colour settling like a sediment at the base of the liquid.
"Very well. Our time together may conclude here. Still, I hope you give my words some thought. I do not want to push you to do anything, but ultimately, this…is for your own sake," the other man implored, and he felt his staring all the way out the door.
The twist of his mouth, in all sorts of unfitting expressions trying to place the right way to demonstrate his deep hatred, settled into a hideous grimace.
He will comply with no such thing.
Their next session together commenced after a few days.
And another, days after that.
He remembered only something about feelings.
And another.
Feelings and admissions gone in the next. Temporary sentiment, temporary submission to legacy withheld, open and closing of mouths in faithless, fluttering trade, watching Lord Drevis write away his entire life story in silly little notes. As if that would save either of them.
Another.
And there was another.
His sessions had concluded so quickly compared to their first meeting. There was a lot of talking and waiting about insight, but he learned nothing new. Nothing useful that he hadn't knew by the age of sixteen. He looked inwards for strength, and it was his old master whom answered his desperate, fervent calls. Even now, he thought, you are the only one who is here for me. Still here, aren't you?
Not truly dead, are you?
His master taught him to say nothing to the counsellor. And for the past few sessions, he followed that advice through with all the sensibility of the criminal they said he was. He betrayed no more than a distant smile and gaze, watching Lord Drevis struggle to glean anything else out of him. When he closed his eyes and treated the flowing accusations and pricks like a swaying melody, he dreamed of all sorts of amazing things. A world where he would be free from this, a time to come for him to regain his wings and cast the rest of them into a bottomless pit.
Good.
They would never stop now, Quarastus' voice slithered up, right next to his ear, the one that had been almost completely chewed off, they have you exactly where they want you to be, in their clutches, dancing for them like a puppet. They will drain every bit of magic until you're dead. Should have learned to stay quiet. Should have been better, be Good.
You're a dead man, boy.
You poor, stupid creature.
And he did not even know if he directed that at his dead master or himself.
His usual guards tugged and shoved him all the way back to his cell, and he felt one press his boots down on his back before giving him a hard kick - he let out a violent cry as he stumbled, catching himself just barely with his hands pushed against the walls.
The metal door behind him banged shut.
"...Believe we used to be scared of this guy?"
"All those years spent in the dark seem like such a farce now. I can't believe he turned out to be such a wreck."
"More power to the Council for that."
"Yes, yes, I believe so as well." Hasty, retreating conversations discussing his person left him well alone.
He wondered who they would send to watch him today. Old intuition brewing in him whispered of an unpleasant figure that he would enjoy seeing the face of once again. Soon, but not yet. He clicked his tongue and a cold smile spread across his face. Lord Drevis was likely the one responsible for sending his dogmatic enforcer after him anyway, so for what reason would he have to mope and sigh? His tearfulness dried into a well of bitterness.
Unknowingly, they were doing to him what he did to his own twin. The process being slow did not change the outcome he predicted, and he had rarely been wrong about such things.
He sighed longingly.
The Hamelyn Piper stared at the lurid sun through the metal slit of his prison.
A few seconds more and he looked away, the sudden imagery of prancing town to town under the warm days making him itch for a Pipe. He hadn't played a Pipe in what he felt was ages.
His hands were empty when they were sculpted by experience to elegantly hold and play an instrument. A Pipe. Perhaps an organ - he would like that. He would like something, a key, to dip, something, that would belt out a song for him.
His hands were empty so that he could drag them down his face and cry into them.
"It's too early for this," he said to no one in particular. Listening in was Quarastus with his cold feet padding back and forth, almost imperceptibly, hovering slightly above him at all times as though he were a stool for the dead Sorcerer to stand on while grabbing and checking food in their cabinets gone bad, an occurrence of no small frequency when they lived in the same household, but chose not to respond. It was alright. Very few of those that saw themselves as his parental figure were responsive to the words that came from him. They were at a loss of words, and now, none of them would ever speak again.
Nothing that was real, of course. The weight of their voice could be replicated by any other illusion. And old mother dearest was leaning in close to frown into her gums and shake her head at where his actions had landed him in. That's what disobedience would do toya, she chewed her mouth, I don't trust that Lord Drevis. I hate wealthy men unless they plan on marrying me. Her syllable and cadence were pronounced perfectly to the very croaking, shaky timbre.
Keep quiet, hag, Quarastus told her.
His mother squinted.
Die in a ditch, pig!
She lunged at the Sorcerer with her hands outstretched, swooping up to wrap them around his throat. Quarastus made a choking, whimpering sound as she wrangled him like a slab of meat on the butcher's hook.
He watched with amusement as the two spectres tore at each other for his attention. All a figment of his imagination.
He was the only one they were keeping in this special, terrible spot.
Not that he had done anything else aside from the limited pacing, whistling, rambling to himself extensively on what he had done in a day to remind himself of the time, ate-four-biscuits-today,quite-fine,thank-you, and trying to track where the rats stealing his food were coming from, worthwhile ignoring the way the edges of his mind frayed as he nearly pried his nails out with his teeth from the strange, unending echoes that reverberated throughout the dark tunnel late at night. The noises came and stopped, but he swore he heard secretive chittering in the unseen, laughing at him!
He brought it up to the guards and whichever member of the Piper's Council that was instructed to watch him during their shift rotations, and, naturally, they couldn't spare a single ounce of their precious attention to whatever he said to them. Lady Rumsey shot him a scathing look of utter disgust and drank herself drunk to spite him, Lord Cobb and Liege Winkless ignored his presence altogether, and Rundel Stone would speak over him, interrupting his complaint with a furious, booming command that brooked no further sound or argument, to not warrant a single peep out of his being.
Senses, he thought, before even starting to broach their fundamental grasp of logic, simply flew over their heads.
He seethed.
All past and present languages for 'hate' failed to safely condense the anger he held towards his living conditions.
Either way, he had prepared himself overnight by rehearsing a string of plausible, albeit senseless questions Lord Drevis would ask him, twirling his fingers as he murmured quietly to himself in the dirty, spare cell they reserved for interrogating spies back in the days of Tiviscan's infancy.
It was easier to do so in the past nights that were quiet, save for the aforementioned, untraceable sounds haunting the passageways. He would rather do anything else but sit, wait and wait to rot, but alas he snide requests for books and writing tools went unfulfilled. It didn't really matter to him. Good weather, bad weather - his days were over, and storms were the worst yet. He hated having to stop and stare at the grey bank of clouds. Following them were always wet, crumbling walls closed like the throat of a monster around his inch of space, and when it rained, water would pour straight through the rusted grate above his head, soaking the mattress that was once so thin that snow would have been a more comfortable material to lie down on, into a sponge, a sponge that he would have to painstakingly knead and push the water out of after the downpours ceased.
Callus thickened the heart of his palms, and he was more prone than before to keel over from starvation and his own fatigue, the debt of meals and quality sleep gradually accumulating over the month. He hated it.
He hated this undignified chain of events.
So he tightened his hands into fists, staring at the wall, attempting to project the visage of Lord Drevis like he was observing any other celestial body in the skies. His radiance was infuriating, even as the elder council member's foolishness far exceeded his expectations by a considerable margin.
Let's begin by getting to know each other better. As I understand it, we have only ever referred to you as 'the Piper of Hamelyn' or, 'The Hamelyn Piper.' Do you have any other preferred names or titles?
Either of those titles will work just fine.
Do you have a more...tangible name?
What are you trying to imply by that?
I was curious. I suppose there is nothing illegal about owning a less conventional name. A part of me wouldn't know what to do with the knowledge of learning the name your parents gave you. As for myself, you may address me as you wish, but I sincerely wish you will be respectful about it. Although counselling is my secondary job, it is no less important to my role as a member of the Piper's Council.
...Have you ever tried ice cream before?
I don't appreciate having my time wasted. What is the purpose of such a question?
It's just a small question to break the ice, so to speak.
The markets of Tiviscan sell them from time to time. They come in a stunning variety of flavours. I prefer the ones with crushed almonds, and it's always a delight to see Apprentices sneak down there to get some with their friends.
Do you have any hobbies?
I enjoy brewing tea and birdwatching.
Are you alright?
You don't know when to drop it, do you?
Reading and collecting Sorcerers' paraphernalia are part of my interests, to name a few.
You seem to have an interest in Sorcerers in general. Why is that?
Have you ever seen a Sorcerer at work? To be able to command mastery over reality with a whisper of their words alone is northing short of fascinating, and, what's more, they have been responsible for the creation of some of the most significant devices to date! With a wave of their hand and a snap of their stock, items, trinkets, previously useless cluster of rubbish become enchanted with incredible magic that can kill a man from afar without ever needing to see his face. And would it not be natural for me to have a vested interest in sorcery when my master had been a Dark Sorcerer?
It sounds like you admire them deeply. There has always been a dark stigma associated with Sorcerers and their kind...I knew most of them were myths and tall tales made in bad faith, but I've never given it much thought until I met Ural.
But of course.
I'm aware you knew him personally. How was he truly like?
He was a kind man. Very smart, and extremely innovative. You've seen it yourself - the Iron Mask.
It is a shame that I did not have the chance to inspect it more closely. The Brightwater lad had been wearing it. But I was alluded that Ural had other projects?
He did. Not all of them shared its success, but you didn't hear that from me. There was a harrowing incident involving his locus computatrum before...though, I wouldn't give away any of his creations for the world. I believe you know how the rest of his story goes. He was, unsurprisingly, the centre of attention for most of his life, and he learned to avoid the public eye when he grew up.
There is no shortage of people who both admired and loathed Casimir.
He did not remember much of their exchange after that, had forgotten already which session number that conversation even transpired. Tuning out whatever Lord Drevis tried to feed his mind was a necessity in self-preservation, both for his sense of sanity and self. So much for learning about each other. The Council member jabbered in abundance the importance of his childhood misfortune, his loneliness, and latent constructs like 'empathy' and 'compassion', all of which he had scarcely any patience for. There was simply nothing as interesting in the counsellor's life or sessions compared to his late friend, nothing to excite him in their conversations anymore when they moved past them.
They truly did not understand. Pipers were the copper of the earth. Sorcerers like Ural had been diamonds polished by the infinite sea, washed up on the shores and walked as easily he breathed into Tiviscan.
Dinnay-matter, his mother leaned down and mumbled to him. She was right. It didn't matter.
The Sorcerer Engineer remained a fancy forever out of his reach.
He blinked.
The Piper of Hamelyn was aware only then that there was someone staring at him when his attention returned to focus on the dull world he was trapped in.
He blinked again, and he turned slightly.
Sitting outside his cell, on the chair they left there for his watcher, was Virtus Stone. The second they locked eyes, the older man's face scrunched into an expression of abject hatred, instantly going on guard. They said nothing to each other. Rundel glared into his cell from where he sat rigidly upright, his dominant hand resting on his Pipe like he foresaw a need to whip it out if he even so caught an exaggerated twitch of the eye from him. Not that he would be able to defend himself if a SpellSong was suddenly thrown his way.
What's he looking at me for? Tell him to fall off his high horse and smash his face in with a rock! His mother tittered.
Ugh! Quarastus remarked with disgust.
Both of you are equally bothersome, he thought.
Most people would like to think that they had an angel perched on one side of their shoulder, and a devil on their other. In reality, most people were also burdened by past ghosts that tried to interfere with his thoughts and decision-making. There was no distinguishable difference between his master and his mother: they had both betrayed him, and had resorted to their arrogance to undermine his worth, and it just so happened that Quarastus had horrendous cooking skills compared to his birth parent, though if he was ever asked, he would have never told anyone how her cooking tasted like.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit yet again, Virtus?" He mused aloud.
"Silence!"
He smiled.
"What's this? I have said nothing to offend you...yet. Do my words truly frighten you so, Rundel Stone?"
"I consider your continued existence is of itself an offence," said the Custodian darkly, "Now, keep silent before I do it for you, and trust me when I say you wouldn't wish for that to happen."
He hummed, pretending to deeply contemplate on his given warning. Rundel reached for his Pipe.
The Hamelyn Piper's smile simply widened, opening his mouth as though to speak...and then he grinned. Silent. The Custodian assigned to him frowned, his eyes narrowed in scrutiny. In a few jovial steps he walked and spun around, then sat on his useless mattress, staring back at the old guardian, who only seemed to grow angrier and angrier despite not another word leaving his mouth. His rage was palpable even across their physical distance.
Nothing quite eased him into a state of rest like the knowledge that his hold on the Virtus went unchanged.
The man was far too soft-hearted for his own good. Setting aside Stone's wonderful exasperation and anguish when he discovered what had happened to the children of Hamelyn, well, the news traveling that something snapped in the older man was something he relished. His plan had went so smoothly that he was able to bring Virtus Stone - the great Virtus Stone! - to the edge of despair over the loss despite the man not having any personal stakes or relation to the families of the town. He often stayed up late into the night wondering how he responded to the deaths of the others among the Eight.
Did he cry? Did he scream in vain, knowing he would not get anyone back, the day before he froze into a statue forever upholding a beam balance?
He probably did know. And that was all the more reason to hate each other.
But he supposed the expression the Custodian had right now was not bad either, and the man would most likely be gone by the time he awoke.
With a murmur, he lolled his head and closed his eyes.