pencil shavings

nineteen: the unwinding

Steely light blinded Agamemnon as he awoke, Hercules' arm flung over his shoulder.

"Arrogant giant of a man," Agamemnon grumbled with what could be called a rueful smile. 

When the mage stepped into the morning, the knight with her short hair sat outside, spooning porridge into a splintering cup,.

"We should look for markings first thing," she said by way of greeting, not turning from her vigil of the forest. The sunlight lightened her hair, dancing on the mountains beyond like champagne. The lake took on a glassy shimmer through the lacing of oak branches. If he didn't look fully, Agamemnon could imagine that hell had never brushed by the valley at all.

"Of course," Agamemnon sighed, spooning his breakfast from the pot.

They both disappeared into the vivid silence of the moment, seated  together on a narrow outcropping. It was comfortable, until a the feral growl erupted from the cave. They flinched. It continued with a noisy yawn as a great, lumbering figure stumbled into the sun, stretching like a lion.

"Porridge in the bowl," Agamemnon muttered.

Hercules shook his golden locks at them and squinted bleary eyes. "I suppose I didn't expect fanfare and trumpets, but a greeting is the general standard of people these days."

When they didn't respond, he collapsed with a sigh between them and immersed himself in three helpings of porridge instead. The ate in a thick silence.

Once the sun had risen above the mountain peaks, Agamemnon led the trek into the forest, but the whisperings of leaves and the beckonings of branches called them each into different places, until, like fractured glass, their party dispersed between the brambles.

The mage watched his slippers cross onto uneven rocks, a couple thorns tearing at his cloak, but he felt as though there was something bigger the earth was trying to show him. Something through the hollowed trees, under the leaf-lined floor, beyond the crystalline horizon. 

And for all his analysis of the forest, the dark shadow that tapped his shoulder caught him by complete surprise.

"...Agamemnon..."

He stiffened as a whispering curse leaked foreboding all over his hair. Like rain, the coos splashed through his head, his veins, his heart, into a current of fear that roiled more and more in each shallow breath. And beyond, in the place where the elusive ink of the unknown had burrowed deep within his heart, he saw it. A man, tall and broad, with the perfection of an immortal's figure and the brilliance of an angel's power. The being glowed like a river flush with moonlight, its eyes and hair immaculate, and it moved through his memories with the arrogance of a bastard. Agamemnon fought the urge to flinch as it disappeared inside him and snuffed out the source of his more powerful magic.

"...You have no place here, Magician..." the immortal hissed.

"More of a place than you," Agamemnon sneered back.

His chest seized-up as the thing inside him growled, making the mage gasp. "...Perhaps this will remind you of our 'places...'" It ground those perfect immortal teeth, pulling Agamemnon into its own empty heart with a simple touch of spindly fingers.

Agamemnon stood in his sister's cabin. She sat with her head tucked in the arm of her friend - that boy from the West - as they laughed.

The mage felt, rather than saw, the demon walk in the door.

And he thought would go hoarse from crying out, and he could have been sobbing, for all he knew, and his voice kept breaking in splintering pleas, but his screams fell dead in the depth of thundering silence all the same. That creature cackled inside his skull as it slithered up behind his sister, grinning. Her hair glowed ever so softly, like a flower petal, her eyes lost in that fairytale of a life, just as they were every time Agamemnon tried to connect with her. But in that moment his heart wrenched at the thought of losing her.

"...So you do care about her..."

It wasn't a question. The voice was hard and resonant, the monster pinning him with its soulless gaze. The image froze, grey smoke staining the room, his sister's eyes glazing over as the demon cocked its head.

"Please." Agamemnon gritted out. The immortal in his mind laughed - an ugly, ugly sound.

"...You are powerless - remember that... Know that you are not in control... that you never had an oar in the great rapids of your existence, that you never will. That you will always be but a pebble in a flood, a leaf in a hurricane. Perhaps upon this realization, you will learn not to get in the way of those who are the raging winds..."

The visions disappeared in a blink of those unholy eyes. Yet every inch of cold foreboding in Agamemnon's chest remained.

He just loved encounters with narcissistic, celestial assholes.

That's when he felt the stickiness on his thumb. When he saw the blood dripping from his uncut fingertips, and even the driest of humor drained from his face. There was no doubt now what was happening, or the power that surrounded him, or his own pathetic magic by comparison, because the demon had planted a final, horrifying image in the mage's mind before he left. Because that blood on his very-real fingers - that was his sister's. The earth shook as the mage let out a roar.

Far on the other side of the canyon, Kaileen felt the tremor in the ground with sickening dread. She flew toward its source - the mage, yes, it had to be the mage - but froze dead in her tracks when she saw it. It. The silver figure, leaning against a tree, watching her with a feral grin. Kaileen swallowed hard and fought against her screaming instincts to hold her ground.

It cackled, like a thousand dying crows.

"Oh, you will pay for not choosing me," it spat, prowling toward her. "You" - it shook a spindly finger at her, the curse tingling in shivers down her spine - "You. Will. Pay."

She felt the seams of her consciousness splitting, ever so slightly, and the wind howled with her uncontrolled fear.

Somewhere between the mage and the short-haired knight, Sir Hercules crouched inside the mouth of a cave, silhouetted against the sun. Something in his chest lurched at the way the earth shuddered and the wind screamed. It was something he had never felt before, really, something so primal inside him.

It crossed his mind that the others were in danger - that he should go help. Of course, there would be more glory if he cracked the case alone, but some shred of human decency brought him to his feet.

The rocks groaned.

His chestnut eyes flicked up to catch the first drip of water from the ceiling of the cave, before there was a monsterous crash and boom from above.

The whole roof broke free in a torrent of rock and silt and so, so much water - water pushing him toward the back of the cave as he thrashed, the waves pulling his body in every direction, his fingers groping at any jagged piece of wall, the walls crumbling while he fought for air amid the swirling dark. He sailed into the back of the cave, and somehow never once lost unconsciousness; it was a miracle or a curse.

Because as he gasped and coughed, swiping it from his eyes, he saw the inhuman shade of black that thickened the water. His very heartbeat stuttered as the fear exploded like fireworks inside him.

But as he fought back a scream, every last dark drop disappeared, just as fast and unannounced as its entrance.

The knight cried out once, though of course no one heard. He stood trapped below the rocks, dripping from his golden hair, utterly alone with his shallow breaths

The burly knight sank to his knees.