The Keepers' Evil

Sixty-Three: Her name was Isidora Morganach

Song- Madeleine: Alexander Biggs

"Her name was Isidora Morganach."

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The world was blurred, and there was nothing that I had to clear the smudge. There was no power, no desire to fight for it. Ominis had asked me to follow the footsteps that I had once placed over the world all those months before, even the ones taken before Sebastian, but the rain had washed away any trace of who I had been before him.

My identity remained mine, unable to be stripped from the mould of my body, but part of that identity still sat with who was lifeless and still, and I wanted no part of a life without my soul intact.

Ominis and Anne moved around me, unsure of what to say or do to uncurl my knees from my chest, unsure of how to approach one another even. Though my eyes stuck firmly closed and my spine was permanently hunched to protect myself from the reality that I sat before, I could feel more than they thought that I could.

The Undercroft had held me as I wept and drowned in the tears and the guilt, it hadn't let me go, not even to attend classes. Ominis had come and gone, occasionally bringing food only to take it away again and whisper to Anne of his concerns. She had not been any better, and her worry had only continued to build up and up and her sudden strength in this world to even have the ability to worry had taken her by surprise.

They watched me trap myself in a bubble of my self-destruction, and they could do nothing to ease the anger nor the guilt.

To keep questions at bay, Ominis had crafted another lie, another too thoroughly planned lie that even took Anne back a few steps for how believable it was, and in turn, how Ominis held this innate ability to lie so easily. I had overheard one of their whispered arguments as my eyes had peered into my knees, and perhaps it was one of the only things that kept me tethered to sanity at all for its humour.

Upon the realisation that Anne and Sebastian were in fact twins of the identical sort in all but appearance, the lie concluded that Sebastian had duties in visiting Anne, that he was unable to commit to school in that moment and would submit his schoolwork via Ominis. Behind the scenes, it was Anne and her beautifully false imitations of Sebastian's handwriting that saw a dramatic increase in the quality of his work.

There had been no excuse for me. I supposed that the school did not care as much for all that I had done for them the year prior.

The lie had seen us through for a week, but I wasn't certain that my body would hold for another.

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The Undercroft could not tell when it was night nor day, it could not remind me when sleep was needed and when the days blurred into the sun. It left me to decide, Sebastian and I, or when I had finally been brave enough to move from the floor to the couch beside him where he lay.

I tucked myself against him, feeling for where his heart still beat for the only grace that I had left for him. If his heart still beat, he had not died, and if he had not died, there was still hope. My fingers pressed against his chest, my face finding his shoulder where it was still warm and where I still fit.

Shuddered breaths were followed by words, the only words that I had spoken in seven days. "I miss you, Seb." I whispered in the hope that somewhere, in whatever far away space he stayed within, that he would hear me and come home, return to his own mind, to his own life, as if I had not taken his ability to do so.