artorian | ic inbox

[ dextera hopes he has the right hex code, but even if he doesn’t, someone will probably come help him, right? ]

Something is happening

[ The moment Saber leaves her house on [Random Day Before Trees Happen], Mordred springs out from behind the nearest wall and puts her hands on her hips. ]

I've come to give you my report, King Arthur!

[ Her proclamation wouldn't have been out of place back in Camelot... except she's reporting on a book, not the state of the kingdom, and she's still wearing Saber's clothes, not just her face. ]

[ When Saber next sleeps, she will see thousands of moments compressed into shards of memories. The first few are indistinct: a child who babbles to the walls, a child without a home, a family that abandoned her.

The ones that are clear are visions of a small girl, her hair platinum blonde and ratty. She curls up in the corner of a dimly-lit room, a cold stone flooring as her bed. She talks to the air, softly, as though she’s ashamed. She says she speaks to ghosts no one else can see. She's told that that’s why she was abandoned. She meets one in the dark of night: a tiny purple spirit who looks like a plush toy, his head covered by a giant top hat complete with a red bow on the top. He calls himself Bienfu, and says he’ll stay with her. Her first friend.

The next: The same girl underneath the yellow lights of the stage, the center of a circus ring underneath the big top. In the corner, the ringleader strokes his mustache, and announces in a booming voice, ”Come one, come all! See a rare wonder of the world! She can command the wind, move objects with her mind, and see into your heart! Come see Magillanica, the little witch!”

Visitors, onlookers, gawkers. Some curious, some intrigued, but most disgusted, horrified by her powers, by the words she speaks to nothing at all. "That witch freaked me out," a child says. "Let’s come back to the freak show again!"

The troupe’s popularity skyrockets. Their names are known across the country. They’re rich beyond their wildest imaginations. Magillanica’s performance goes on night after night, until the kingdom hears tell of her witchcraft.

The girl, tried for heresy, subjected to brutal punishment. The girl, broken and homeless and empty.

A carriage crash. Flames. The little girl trapped amongst the wreckage, the searing heat scorching her skin, her small body wracked with ashen coughs. The troupe, the ringmaster, the performers dead and strewn at her body under the smoke, and the remains of her entire world coalesced into darkness in the corners of her vision. Bienfu tries to pull her out, but his little arms can’t reach, and he cries for her when she can no longer cry for herself.

The last thing she sees in the shadows is the outline of a person standing at the edge of the crash. A white robe, a giant hat, a long white beard. He might look like an old, wise sage, but to her, he looks like safety.

She closes her eyes. ]

[ So his journeys into the forest had been a failure after all, even if he had succeeded in at least assisting in finding the pages for the rest of the townsfolk. No doubt Saber had also acquired her page by now, and a part of him wonders what she had to sacrifice in the getting of it.

He wonders why he hadn’t done it sooner, on the off chance that she might forget this terrible memory he must now impart to her, as he stands upon her doorstep, once again risking Mordred’s ire by bypassing those wards. He’d yet to realize that Saber had been drifting here and there because of her roommate’s recent marriage, and so he comes upon her doorstep with all the grave tenacity and innocence of purpose of an invading army.

He still can’t help bowing at the sight of her—but there aren’t any witnesses around here anymore, right? ]

My liege.

#030066 | early may

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Endgame...