The Arcane Trilogy: Sins of the Past - Book 2

Chapter 14: The Choice

The everlasting droplets of rain continued to trickle down the soft cloth linings of her grey hood, trickling streams of water onto the smooth skin of the rocks below. The violet eyes of Jinx maintained a hazy and almost empty stare into streams of toxic rivers of the Fishers that flowed beneath her dangling feet; the trance that she had been stuck in since firing Fishbones at the council chambers.

'She chose her.'

The events of the night before rushed around Jinx's mind like an endless tsunami. Her mind was rattled by an inferno of conflicting thoughts that burned away at her heart and soul at an erratic speed, never lingering on one notion for longer than a few moments.

'She chose her.'

She set the whole situation up to perfectly fit her needs. All of them, together, in one place where no one could escape from her. There was to be intrusions or surprises. She was in complete control. Silco, Vi, Caitlyn and herself. She told herself that it would all end that night. How wrong she was.

'She chose her.'

Her deduction of Silco was wrong in the end. The man that had raised her for so many years truly cared for her. The keys to the kingdom were in his hands that night, but he was ready to cast them into the bottom of the sea, all for her. He had always talked about his 'Dream' when she was growing up. Every rant and hard one lesson that he emphasised onto her was in service of 'The Nation of Zaun' in one way or another. After all, he had been preparing her to serve as another member of his crew for so many years. The fact that he allowed her to listen in on his meetings, and that her mere presence often inspired dread in many of Silco's underlings made that perfectly clear to her.

In spite of all the years he had put into his ultimate goal, he would turn down the perfect opportunity to birth that dream into its final form, all for her.

'She chose her.'

Then there was Vi. Her own flesh and blood. When faced with the opportunity to be with her sister again, she turned it down.

'She chose her.'

The enforcer. A living and breathing reminder of who took their parents from them both. All Vi had to do was kill her, and then Jinx could latch onto the idea that everything would be ok for them both. However, much to Jinx's dismay, Vi couldn't make that choice. She didn't choose any of them, and the only thing that was made clear to Jinx by her sister was that Vi couldn't choose between Jinx and Caitlyn.

'She...didn't make the choice'

The whirlwind that had been ravaging her mind suddenly cleared into a empty blue sky for a few moments as the true nature of the situation dawned on her, sprouting an idea into play.

'I need to make her choose'.

After navigating her way through the winding streams of the Fishers, Jinx found herself impatiently knocked upon a heavy metal door, leaving only a few seconds before delivering another round. This continued for several moments before she noticed a newly fitted metal slider at the resident's eye level shoot open, revealing a furrowed brow and a single piercing brown eye.

"Open up doctor. You've got a patient who needs ya." Chirped up Jinx as she looked up through the eye hole, surprising even herself by the lack of a more subdued tone.

"Mmm." Mused Singed as he slid the slider shut and slowly heaved open the entrance to his lab, allowing Jinx to skip through with a renewed fire of purpose, ushering her into the emerald hue of the darkened and ominous abode that the doctor of Zaun called home.

The walls were lined with a slightly dank spotted array of coral patterns, arching up over the stone floor, that were all illuminated by the soft green hue of the glass pod that stood as the main attraction of the room. Inside of it floated an unmoving creature that almost looked to be suspended in an eternal and peaceful sleep. Occasionally, bubbles would rise towards the point of the oval shaped container towards a central dome shaped cap, one that fed tubes into the creature and funnelled them out into the ceiling. To the right of the platform that stood before the creature's cage was a large workshop desk, fitted with three levels of shelves, all of which contained various books, tomes, potions, skeletal models and other scientific implements. Notes were also attached to the wall surrounding the desk, all containing detailed accountings of various experiments and theoretical concepts that Singed had yet to apply. In the corner of the room sat a bronze tube like contraption, that had a glass tank sandwiched between the metal, hosting a green liquid that appeared to funnel water from the fissures through the lab's thick walls and supplied the large glass container with the fluid that the creature floated in.