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Chapter 12 - Windows

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Kiarae woke from her involuntary nap as a rough hand grabbed her shoulder and shook it none too gently. 

She knew who held her without looking and felt no inclination to acknowledge his occupation of the space. She kept her eyes closed, feigning sleep in the hopes he'd leave her alone. 

It wasn't hard to do. By the Celestial, she was tired. The man had never let her rest for more than half an hour since his fourth interrogation, using other means to keep her awake while he rested. 

The demons Kiarae could deal with. Even Ebony's insistent voice she was able to drown out, but when she saw the husks of the beings, tainted and human alike, left over from the Master's attempts to create new shadow Sentinels... Oh, when they'd stumbled into her prison, their minds melted with uncontrolled magic flickering without command, she'd taken pity on them and put them out of their misery with the little energy she managed to hide from the Naclictite leeching it. 

Kiarae let her muscles slacken. The soul... such a fragile thing. Even those strong enough to contain the magic within themselves would be first shattered for such an unnatural thing to occur within them. 

"I know you're awake," said the Master's voice. Always the Master. Never anything else. "I can see your aura flickering around you. When you were in stasis, it barely moved all those months. I checked on you every single day." 

She ignored the sweetened words that once might have swayed her. Soon enough, one he finds will be strong enough to rebuild the pieces. Eventually, he will drag some poor soul into the corrupted shadow and anchor it there to the ether. 

Pressure formed at her eyelids. "Open your eyes before I do it for you." 

Reluctantly, Kiarae raised her lids. She didn't meet his eyes, keeping them focused on the skin of his wrist on her arm. To her somewhat surprise, there was no magic there, none of the tendrils he favoured using. 

"What is it you require, Master?" 

Always the Master. Never the name. 

He sighed. "Other than your co-operation?" 

His tone was mellow. Tired, like he hadn't slept any more than she. If that hadn't captured her curiousity, the Master then turned to sit beside her, his back pressed against the wall. 

Just like we used to.

From the corner of her eye, Kiarae saw him swivel to look at her. 

"Nothing, Kia. Absolutely nothing else. I thought you might just want to talk."

Kiarae's guard went up. "And how many lackeys did you bring with you for this 'talk'?" 

"Just me, Kiki." His head fell back against the wall. "I just... wanted to talk. Like we used to, before all of this happened and our souls were abducted by the deities."

"Abducted?" she asked. "Is that how you see it? Our magic was a gift--"

He snorted. "It was a curse that broke us apart. Broke this world apart."

"The corruption did that," said Kiarae. "Not the Sentinels."

"Didn't we?" he wondered. "This world might have been dark without them, but it'd be whole. Even you, little miss prodigy, have to admit--if we hadn't had magic, we wouldn't be here right now. We'd be under the dirt or galavanting around Lerelia as demons."

"What do you want?" asked Kiarae. The conversation was unnerving her. Having him storm in here, demand answers and inflict pain when she refused to yield to it was one thing. This casual conversation, speaking to her like he was... "What are you playing at, Master?" 

"What," he said, almost managing to sound offended. "You come out of stasis after years of nothing, and I can't even have one conversation with you? Have we fallen that far?" 

Kiarae balled her fingers against her leg. "You did not care about conversing with me when I woke. It was the Sentinel that held your attention then, and it still is. I refuse to believe your morals have switched so suddenly with the shadow cycle nearing in a few hours." 

"Really?" He pushed off the wall, staring her down before making a disgusted noise when she remained silent. "Speaking like your old Master won't do anything, Kia. Do you think that it'll, what, connect you back to that old life? Bring back that time we wasted while those idiots forced us apart?" 

"Anything is better than what you are now," said Kiarae. "I do not recognise you anymore." 

The Master stood up. Violet flecks fell off his hand. 

"This situation isn't my fault. Damn the deities, Kia, I don't want to hurt you, but I have no choice when you're so damned stubborn all the time!" 

Kiarae kept her eyes averted. "You really could have fooled me," she said softly. "The smile as you pressed that shadow-flame to my skin, setting my nerves alight with illusionary agony. Most people, I imagine, would understand that smile as you enjoy watching my pain, but no. Not you. Very clever, I must say."

She knew it really did cause him an internal struggle. She read it from his hesitance and the way he'd always ask her, attempt to give her a chance to join him rather than fight him despite knowing they'd end up right back at refusal. 

But it does not change the fact that he does it.

The Master laughed; a harsh, forced sound from somewhere at the back of his throat. 

"Oh yes, because, if you were in my position, you'd be so different." The flecks solidified, taking on the long, narrow shape of the tendrils. "What you see here," he said, sweeping a hand over his body. "Is, at least in part, entirely your fault. I'm like this because of you, Kia."

Kiarae steeled herself. "You cannot blame me for your decisions. You fell to the corruption, not me. You had a choice, and you gave up."

He gave her an incredulous look. "You think I had a choice after Kumos caught me in the Citadel while we were on that nature Sentinel's hare brained mission?"

Kiarae met his eyes, the irises that had once been the same colour as her own before they darkened. "Yes, Anton, you did." The name slipped from her mouth before she could catch it. "You betrayed us all, betrayed Lerelia, and I will never forget that."

The black tendrils snapped out and slammed Kiarae's head against the freezing Naclictite wall as it pinned her there. 

"Not one of you," he growled, refusing to look at her. "Not one of you has the right to go on that self righteous spiel. Especially not you."

Kiarae recognised that fury, and her heart sank along with any trace of him she'd seen through the cracks. 

No matter what he did to her, she was never afraid of him. She was afraid that one day, she wouldn't be able to catch a glimpse of him between those cracks the corruption's grip still had on him. To lose him to that darkness that consumed his anger and hatred and frustration, knowing that somewhere along the line, she could have stopped it, would hurt a thousand times more than any blow or magic he could deliver. 

Kiarae struggled to contain her emotion, that urge to stand up and hit him as his voice consumed the empty air. 

"If he'd come after Tyra and you, you'd have fared no different. There is no resisting Kumos' influence, Kiarae. There is no fighting back. He forced that magic inside my soul and I couldn't do a damned thing to stop it, couldn't do a thing as he killed Alleria beside me after stealing her own magic!" 

The tendrils snaked up Kiarae's arms, winding over her skin, covering her chest, her shoulders, her throat as the ends reached for her chin. 

"Had he come after you, we'd be on different ends of this conversation, but no. He needed the water Sentinel first--needed a nice base for his project, he said. Held the other elements nicely, he said. But once that was done, since I wasn't dead from the effort, he decided why waste me?"

The Master paced, oblivious to the tendrils that licked the edges of Kiarae's lips, trying to worm their way inside. 

"And I fought him. Three days, Kia. Those three days you and Tyra hid in the forests, protecting yourselves, I fought him. Help would have been appreciated, but it doesn't matter now, does it? He won because you left me to his devices, and somehow that's my fault?" 

Kiarae couldn't stop the fluid pooling in her eyes, couldn't stop it as it fell down her cheeks and over the tendrils when Anton grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. 

She didn't recognise his face. The shadows had taken it, the corruption underlining the features she'd known so well. In the silence-locked moment, she forced herself to acknowledge that, though pieces of Anton still existed within this corrupted husk, it was no longer him. 

Anton's soul had died with Alleria and the deities only knew where her bones lay. Tyra fell not long after and with them, the last remnants of the Sentinel order--whatever Anton was now, whatever she herself had become over the years, it wasn't enough to stake the order's existence on. 

Those remnants had fallen, Kiarae knew. But in the swirling dust, there was still hope. There was a pillar rising, and this time... this time it was different. Skye could resist the corruption. If they could unlock her secret, she could rebirth a new order of Sentinels, and Kiarae's resistance would not be in vain. She would not die in some Naclictite box while the corruption claimed Lerelia. 

The Master tilted his head. 

"Skye?" 

The word drained all feeling from Kiarae's face as his mouth moulded the word a second time. 

"Who is Skye, Kiarae?" 

Ski'dorei, she was stupid. She didn't deserve to be a Sentinel after this.

His eyes--his corruption cursed eyes. 

He'd been looking into her head the entire time and she'd failed to realise, too caught up in her feelings to even consider what he'd been doing. She knew he didn't make idle chatter, but it hadn't been enough for her to figure it out. He'd figured out he couldn't break her physically and directed the conversation, brought up Tyra. 

Clever son of a tainted's b--

A superior grin broke out on his face.

He was still listening.

Kiarae threw up mental walls around her mind, reinforcing the entire thing twice over and casting him out. She banished Skye's name from her head, erasing the syllables from every corner of herself and threw her eyes to the ground.

 "The eyes really are the windows to the soul, aren't they, Kiki?" He stepped back, releasing her from the tendrils. The emotional vulnerability disappeared. 

Another illusion.

"Care to explain who Skye is, Kiarae?" 

Kiarae slammed her fist into the ground. "You are nothing to me. Nothing."

"And I thought you'd be happy to have company," he said. "So ungrateful."

His cold exterior was back in place. No matter what he said, what he did, Kiarae refused to budge. She remained silent, staring at the floor, unfocusing her eyes if he forced her to look at him. With the hours until the shadow cycle began ticking by, it was only when a white flash of light entered the room that their stalemate broke. 

Ebony's voice sang out. "Maaaaaster, how's it going in here, hmmm?" 

The Master turned his attention from Kiarae. She used the chance to regain her ground to the corner and strengthen her mental defenses. 

"I thought I told you to watch the Silverborn," said the Master. "If you miss it--"

Ebony waved a frivolous hand. "Oh, please. All they're doing is walking through the woods strolling towards their inevitable demise. It's much more interesting over here!" 

The Master bristled. "I want their souls in that Opal, Ebony. The only three missing should be the ones the Hunter brings back alive. None of your usual screwing around--mess this up and you'll be the one replacing the souls."

"You and your threats," muttered Ebony. "Fine, drama queen! I'll go back and babysit your demons!" 

Another white flash, and she was gone. 

Kiarae's mind worked overtime, analysing, planning, plotting. It was then a reckless idea came to her, something the Master would never expect her to do. 

She told the truth. 

Kiarae slumped in defeat. "You should follow her, Master. Go and retrieve Skye from the Silverborn. Then you have your elf and Sentinel all in one." She curled up. It wasn't hard to act like she was giving up. "You win."

She felt his eyes on her, trying to decide what to make of her declaration. Kiarae hugged her knees tighter, until finally, the Master snorted. 

"Clever, but no," he said. "The elf has the potential, but she's no Sentinel. Yet, anyway. I've had the pleasure of talking to the elf already and marked her for her defiance. In all honesty, I'd be surprised if she didn't turn on the Silverborn when the Hunter attacks them."

He said it so off-handedly Kiarae almost missed the implication.

Skye is marked.

"But either way," continued the Master. "The elf will be at the Citadel soon enough, and I have a feeling she might be the one to survive the injection of magic and become my new lieutenant. But what can't wait is learning all about this Sentinel named Skye you seem to think has a chance in the Nether of surviving." 

Kiarae barely heard him over the words spiralling inside her head, the world crashing down around her. 

Skye is marked. 

The questions continued. 

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