Winterhold College - These words are for you alone
Word Count: 4629 (+5)
The Kitchen
This time, the room awaiting Sandalphon, Edward, and their new companions was a chilly, dark, and rather grisly food preparation room in a state of dismal disarray, with rubbish and bloodstains scattered across the floor. The half-carved body of a hog laid sprawled across one of the tables, and more carcasses hang from hooks by the walls, though at least nothing seemed rotten just yet. There was plentiful storage space for cutlery, plates, cookware, and spices in the shelves and cabinets. This room featured four sets of double doors, two across from each other on opposite walls, and two on the second level balcony accessible by a steep flight of metal stairs.
Sandalphon’s keen eye spotted one thing of particular note in the gloomy kitchen: a doorstop, much like the one Ramattra recovered from the toilet-seeking gumdrop people, right next to the door opposite the one she came through. Logic dictated that it had at some point been used to prop open that door, but it had since been removed and the door closed, severing the connection between rooms that someone had attempted to preserve. Sadly she could not venture as a guess as to who had performed either action, but if another Seeker had been in the kitchen, he or she left no sign.
Other features of the room included a pair of dumbwaiters, much too small for either Sandalphon or Edward to cram into (they could feasibly send one of the cats through, but the archangel thought of such a course of action as pointless endangerment) and an innocuous white refrigerator. Even for Sandalphon, who hailed from a medieval world with no such technology, such a mundane device had become commonplace thanks to her years in Midgar. Right now she was neither hungry nor thirsty, still feeling refreshed after her stay in Sinners’ Inn, but if additional food supplied could be recovered that would only benefit the Seekers’ expedition. Without bothering to explain what seemed like a patently obvious rationale to Edward, she walked toward the fridge to open it.
The moment she began to pull, a force from inside flung the fridge door open hard enough to fling Sandalphon to the ground. She cried out in irrepressible pain, her petrified joints agonized by the sudden impact. When she looked up, unbidden tears in her eye, she identified what appeared to be a giant, purple polychaete worm lurking inside the fridge, although the teary mustached face, frizzy black hair, and beret clued her in to this creature’s true identity. “Another Fred,” she remarked through gritted teeth. Not as ghastly as the bitey Fred, but was he hostile, or could that have just been a very painful accident?
Rather than attack, though, the wiggly Fred writhed in distress. “I heard everything. I heard EVERYTHING. He is LYING. A LIAR. Don't believe a WORD. He just wants to be the LAST. Don't trust him. Trust me instead!”
Sandalphon attempted to get up with the help of the Frost Atronach Staff, but it was clumsy and painfully slow going. Nevertheless, she was already focused on the alarming words of this unusual Fred. “Him? Who do you mean?”
“The Fred with the face!” the creature exclaimed, its pose and expression shifting dramatically. “He’s not real! LOOK! I'm the real one. Look at me! Have you seen my ring?” He held up one purple hand with splayed, malformed digits, and upon one sausage-like finger rested a glinting accessory. “That's the real Fred ring. It has a red gem on it. RED! His ring is WRONG. WRONG COLOR! And- And-andan d...” He shrank back, holding his bloated face with several hands. “Look at me!! I'm the real one. That's a whole Fred. What do you think?! You believe Fred, right?”
The archangel’s eye narrowed, her brow furrowing, as she looked over the creature’s polydactyl body.
”We do, unfortunately, only have your word for it that that is the ‘correct’ color,” Edward relied, before adding ”and besides” gesturing to this Fred’s, well, everything.
At Edward’s comment the overgrown bristleworm bristled angrily. “No! This is normal for Fred around here,” he insisted. “We use these to walk. Around. With no legs we fall on the ground like a worm. Yes? You know this. We all know this, you are being a silly boy. Apologize now for the mocking.”
A couple seconds of awkward silence followed. Lucy hissed at the creature. Then he groaned.
“You're not buying it...I'm not the real Fred. Got too many bits. Fraudulent Fred. Sorry for lying. But! BUT! What if you kill other Freds anyway? For me??? I'm not the real Fred, but if the other Freds are gone, I can be the real Fred then! The final Fred...fake it till you make it! It's what Fred always said. I'm a better Fred, new and improved. Will you do it?! Kill the other Freds for me? Please... ”
Edward had been carefully approaching as they all spoke, like he might an injured warbeast, and only now got close enough to help the Sandalphon to her feet. As he did, they had a moment to exchange quiet words. In a low tone, Sandalphon whispered her thoughts to him. “A self-admitted impostor. We have no need for him, nor that dangerous, toothy one for that matter. Yet…” Her pupil became an inverted triangle. “His warning about Frederic -the one we assumed to be the original- may be valuable. We should consider the matter carefully.”
”That could have all been part of the ruse… yet you are right, the part about the ring in particular was rather specific. Plus there is no reason that the original Frederic had to be human. He could well be exploiting our assumptions on what a person is ‘supposed’ to look like” Edward agreed, a little annoyed that he had not considered that potential bias before.
Since it seemed like Edward and Sandalphon had the situation in hand, Byleth and Primm turned to climb the stairs and scope out the upstairs rooms. Primm would hold evidently hold each door open, while Byleth explored the rooms, Sword of the Creator in hand.
Rather than run the risk of giving any more reason for suspicion to ‘Fred with the face’ by doing more whispering in front of Wriggly Fred (that he might overhear) Edward straightened up and declared ”As I have said before, and as you might well have heard, we don’t endorse a murderous solution to this problem. If you can agree to be peaceful, we can at the very least offer you a way out of this maze.”
“Peaceful!?” Fred’s form shifted as he looked outraged, his coloration turning more red. “There’s no such thing as peace with so many Freds in my head! I can’t even hear myself think.” He tugged on his own cheeks, stretching his head sideways in a rather unnerving manner. When he let it go, the stretched skin flopped down, then slowly squelched back into place. “No, no, NO! Can’t live this like this, no way, no how! The voices. It’s very bad. If you don’t get kill them, they’re gonna kill ME! Only a matter of time.“
He clapped his hands together pleadingly, which resulted in an entire round of applause. “Look, listen! If you trust me and kill the other Freds dead, I’ll give you a SPECIAL prize! The most wonderful and one-of-a-kind treasure in the whole wide world!”
”Which would be?” Edward asked carefully, mostly to keep the wiggly Fread talking so Sandalphon could back away at her own pace. She backpedaled carefully, trying not to get the painted thing’s attention.
The wiggly Fred averted his gaze as he held his hands up dramatically, as if Edward were prying into a deeply personal matter. “That’s a secret! A SECRET surprise! The best kind there is. It’s very good. You can trust Fred! Only this Fred, though. The good and true Fred, that’s me!”
Not the best sales pitch, in Edward’s opinion. Oh it’d certainly work on some, and he supposed he was a little curious, but with lives on the line it was an absurd proposition.
”I see.” He replied, as he stepped in front of Sandalphon and gave one last press on the topic of alternate solutions to their problems ”Are you sure you won’t consider peace? There’s a whole school of mental magic from what I understand, which may be able to do something about that link without resorting to this whole business of trying to throw proxies at each other”
The painted creature stared at him quizzically, his eyes different sizes. “What? There’s no such thing as magic, silly boy!” He seemed to deflate, his face assuming an expression so woefully pitiful that it almost wrapped back around to being comedic. “If you don’t want to dead the Freds…fine.” Fred began to withdraw back into the fridge. “Goodbye………”
”Of all the-” Edward began to say with annoyance, only to sigh and let it go.
”Well at least they seem very disinclined to take matters into their own hands” he noted, before turning his eyes to the rest of the room and suggesting ”I suppose we should checking if any of the other food stores are more… accessible”
Without comment, since her body was still aching from her fall, Sandalphon moved to do her part. Even though the kitchen was dark, she could see relatively well with one eye, but she could not find any portable food. Only the hog carcasses, each of which easily weighed twice as much as she did, seemed readily available. Other ingredients had either already been looted by previous visitors, or never existed to begin with.
Before approaching another door in order to move on, however, Sandalphon turned to Edward with her thoughts. “I know that the painted Freds are not necessarily a threat, and they do seem capable of their own cogent, independent thoughts. Regardless of whether the Frederic in the Archmage Quarters is truly the original, the fact remains that the curse that befell the original has left his life in a state of disassociated torment. If that happened to one of our own, I don’t imagine we would hesitate to remove the ‘offshoots’.” She pursed her lips. “While I know we are not obligated to interfere with every situation that confronts us, it feels wrong to take no action, and yet I know not which option is morally correct. Is each Fred a person, deserving of life? Or are they merely figments designed to torture the real Frederic?”
”Unless we can definitively prove that they are some sort of non-thinking facsimiles, then they are people” Edward replied, quite definitely, while inspecting a spice rack. ”I have seen, heard and read of far too many instances of personhood being denied based on far lesser differences than those the Frederic have between them. Besides” he glanced back at Sandalphon with a sad smile as he pointed out that ”Arn’t we, too, figments in the end? Toy soldiers made in the image of those Galeem devoured?”
Sandalphon did not smile at him, and she offered neither acceptance nor retort. As demonstrated by her encounter earlier with the many-fanged Fred, her own impulse had been to leave them alone. Whatever the circumstances or difficulties of their existence, it was like their business to figure out, just as hers was her own.
With Edward’s help, she pushed open the kitchen’s far door, leaving the two upstairs doors for later if need be.
Palace of Earthly Spirits
Before Edward and Sandalphon extended a long, tall, stately corridor, featuring classic columns, golden chandeliers, and a half-dozen antechambers on each side. In the checkered floor, patches of glowing tiles shone, reminiscent of stained glass windows. The moment the two entered, they could hear an unmistakable sound emanating from the side-rooms both near and far: the varied meowing of many cats.
Lucy and Sir Packet Lossalot lit up instantly, meowing loudly as they scampered straight into the hallway. A moment later, a pale girl approached from one of the rooms, her slippers silent on the smooth marble tile. She wore a pastel blue sweater over a flowery white dressed, and though her features were stern she now wore a gentle smile as she knelt to receive the two cats. They rubbed up against her, bunting affectionately, and Sandalphon couldn’t help feel somewhat happier herself at the sight.
“You’re bigger than normal, Lucy,” the girl remarked allowed. “...Oh, so that’s what happened. Silly girl. As a mage yourself, you should know better…” She scratched the smaller, sandy-colored cat behind his long ears. “How lucky you were, to get so close to monsters like those and live to tell the tale.”
Sandalphon stepped forward, but before she could say anything the girl looked up, her gaze almost piercing. “Yes, I am Satori Komeji. Nice of Diosdado to send you my way. And nice of you to bring me my lost friends.” Instantly, alarm bells went off in Sandalphon’s head, and Satori’s expression tightened. “Smart cookie,” she replied. “Most people take a little longer to catch on. My lips are sealed, though.” Her eyes narrowed. “Hm. I’m sorry. Good luck, though. Rooting for you.”
It was a moment before the archangel choked anything out. “...Thank you.”
Edward raised an eyebrow, but did not pry at what the preternaturally perceptive girl had figured out regarding (presumably) Sandalphon’s condition, quite sure she would tell him if or when the time came. Instead he simply said they were ”Glad to be of service” while wondering if this girl had the ability to answer the question as to if the painted Freds were real conscious people that Sandalphon had previously posed.
“That one’s more of a philosophical thing. Don’t like them, though. The green one killed Morana. Though she did revive herself.” Satori crossed her arms. “Polite of you not to ask about a reward, but I don’t mind. I have many cat collars that can give your cats or other pets a class.” She produced and popped open a small case, revealing eight colorful collars of a variety of shapes. She then gave Sandalphon an amused glance. “I don’t know if they’d work on Ms Fortune or Therion, but you could give it a try.”
Well, that proved that hypothesis, Edward supposed. He also supposed that it might be for the best to avoid the memory of the cursed painting the Frederiks had made/come from.
As for the collars, the grateful general was naturally very interested in these trinkets. He accepted the case, and as he raised the tag with the swirl to inspect it, this raised a thought in turn. It made Satori’s brow crease, but she said nothing, at least until it occurred to her to extend an offer that she’d made previously.
“My cats can always use more practice,” she began. “If you specialize in command as well, we could arrange a four-on-four mock battle. I might have a couple rare collars lying around with which I could compensate you.”
As she spoke, footsteps from behind drew Sandalphon’s attention. She turned to see Primm and Byleth approaching, but the gait of the latter and the haunted look about her told the archangel that something wasn’t right. Satori fell silent, a disturbed look on her face, as Primm slid to a breathless stop. “Something’s wrong,” the cleric told them, close to panicking. “We explored both rooms. One was a bar for ghosts, nothing much there, and the other was an observatory of some kind. While I held the door open, Byleth took a peek through the telescope, and-”
“I can’t close my eyes,” the instructor said, trying to keep calm despite her voice quavering. Indeed, her eyes were big and round, slightly more so that should be possible, and increasingly bloodshot. Some sort of change was coming over her skin, as if she were being slowly baked, and when she pulled her hand away from her head, strands of turquoise hair came with it. “I don’t…feel…”
“My healing didn’t work,” Primm cried. “Is there anything you can do?”
Without a word, Sandalphon cast Angelic Wings with her new staff, surrounding herself with holy script and rotating screens. When her incantation went off, however, nothing had happened to Byleth. She lowered her staff, swallowing. “No result.”
“She saw something in the sky,” Satori piped up. “Something…agh!” She gripped her head so suddenly that Sandalphon, standing right next to her, flinched away in a jolt of panic. “It’s- knowing it- seeing- infectious- guuuugh! My mouth…”
Sandalphon backed away, horrified, as the skin of the girl’s face began to stretch and her mouth grew, rapidly sprouting rows of fangs that grew to the size of daggers, then swords. The weight of the mutations forced her to the floor as additional flaps and fangs spread, with no sign of them stopping. At her increasingly inhuman cries, cats began to emerge from the nearby rooms, including a dull green hunter, a whitish cleric, a purple psychic, and a yellow thief, backed by other cats of similar colors. They all seemed alarmed, and a few of the less experienced cats panicked, running for their lives.
Edward hated being right, and yet also cursed himself for not recognising the threat would still be here. He guessed that Byleth’d seen the same thing that Frederik had unwittingly painted, and that, as he feared, reading the memory of that thing was just as bad.
”Everyone back away now! They’re still in there, but if they lash out and hit you by mistake you will go berzerk” Edward ordered, taking command of the situation as he grabbed Sandalphon and hauled her back as carefully as the urgency of the situation would allow. He could only hope that the less specific warning about their Galeeming nature would get past the false god’s censor, and that the pair would only be as scrambled mentally the Frederics were.
As the transformation finally began to slow down, Sandalphon equipped her hexagun, and took aim, trying to calm her shaking hands. Before the Seekers languished a Bite Elemental, a hideous, giant, warped face with countless fangs and only the vaguest trace of human features.
With a guttural snarl, it stretched like an octopus lunging at a crab and snapped up three cats. One got impaled instantly, and another got masticated a moment later, with only the third -a burly, masked crimson butcher- able to fight back at all against the gums gripping him. Dack the thief hurled a nail at the flesh to free Gein from the monster’s grasp. A fanged flap swept his way, and at the last second a beefy mama cat swapped positions with him to tank the hit for him, even if it did injure her badly.
As some cats fought and others fled, the purple one kneaded her fuzzy head with her paws. A small, young voice echoed in the Seekers’ heads. “Where’s mama?” Alice mewed mentally. “I don’t hear her anymore.”
“We’re all in danger,” Byleth declared. “We have to act.” Despite her own much slower affliction (and questionable culpability for this tragedy) she brandished her sword, calm enough to deal with the more immediate threat. A wave of holy light spread out as Primm cast a healing miracle, restoring the injured cats. Lucy began to concentrate in order to cast and Franklin the cyan tinker quickly slapped together some catbots while Alice reluctantly lifted the Bite Elemental into the air with her psychic powers. Fenrir the hunter tossed a bear trap beneath it, and the next moment the monster slammed down, bruised and immobilized. Sandalphon swallowed, steadied her aim, and opened fire, while Byleth unleashed the Sword of the Creator as a segmented whip to slash the Bite Elemental again and again.
Edward cursed as everything went to hell. At least he’d gotten Sandalphon out of reach of those tendrils, but with all the galeeming lashing out at each other, it would take a miracle for him to get an opening to end this without Satori’s death.
He summoned up his Featherstaff striker to cast Honed Healing on the front row of cats, sneaking it in there just before Primm’s miracle washed over them, boosting the healing they received. Then, still using one arm to support Sandalphon, he pulled Odden’s Pinky from its holster and unloaded the entire 18 round mag of incendry ammo into the bite elemental.
Over the singing of spellfire he commanded ”SomnaDrix! Charge it!” and in so doing prompting the serpentine bodied beast to weave between the fighter and then slam the freezing cold antlers of its Reindrix head into the now burning elemental, producing a temperature shock from the interacting elements.
Countless teeth gnashed with terrifying strength, each horrific chomp powerful enough to cleave flesh and shatter bone, but while stuck in bear traps or frozen in place the Bite Elemental could not reach any more targets. There were simply too many cats. Lucy unleashed streams of flame or bolts of lightning, Morana and Dack hurled leeches and nails, Magnus and Gein struck when able, while Marshmallow and Maisie kept the other cats healed. Other cats joined in with their own myriad skills, and with the Seekers and their new allies involved, the Bite Elemental was taking constant damage as debuffs piled up and up and up.
At a crucial moment, though, Immobile and Freeze wore off. The monster surged forward toward the Seekers, crushing several cats as its maws stretched to cover the whole hallway. Little Alice, sitting in front of the Seekers, put her paws to her head and concentrated, her third eye screwed shut. ”Hnnnng!” Mere milliseconds from impact, she opened her eye wide. ”AWAY!” A wave of psychic force shunted the monsters backward just before the many jaws slammed shut on nothing, sending spittle flying across the Seekers’ faces. For a brief moment, it was off balance and open.
Edward’s hand, hovering over the handle of his magelock pistol, paused, and then, cursing his foolishness, left the weapon where it was. Instead he pulled it up swiftly and pounded it to his chest, Balahara scale armor clanging against itself, before he drew it forth and hurled the formed friend-heart forwards towards the twisted Satori while calling a plea for her to ”Return to your sanity!” while hoping for that miracle.
As soon as he began to take action, Sandalphon realized what was about to happen, and what could happen after that. She rounded on Byleth, her hexagun in hand, much to the ailing instructor’s confusion. “Your memory is a cognitohazard for her,” she said aloud. Whatever she’d seen, a restored Satori could not be allowed to see it again. But a friend heart did not erase memories, so even if the archangel used one herself, Byleth would remain a cognitohazard. “Go! Get out of here!” Even as Byleth turned to flee, however, Sandalphon’s eye widened. That memory wasn’t just Byleth’s anymore.
In a flash of light, the Bite Elemental disappeared, replaced by Satori Komeji. For an instant, everything was quiet, with every Seeker and cat looking on in concern or confusion. Then Satori let out a woeful cry, and began to transform again. “No,” Sandalphon breathed, despairing. She flung out her hand, throwing a Frost Lock that froze Satori solid. Then she hesitated, even though the Freeze would last only a few seconds. There was no other way.
Edward was in agreement, much as he hated it. The hand that had thrown the heart reached back down, drew the magelock pistol, raised it up and then pulled the trigger, sending the nanite infused slug sailing directly towards the center of the frozen Satori‘s forehead. Sandalphon followed up, and by the time the Freeze wore off, the Dissociation was strong enough to put an end to the brief but tragic story.
Slowly, Sandalphon let out her breath. She could hear Primm gasping in terror, and the cats who hadn’t fled through the kitchen yet were all stunned. Alice sniffed, mewing sadly. ”Mama…”
The archangel tried to bury the awful feelings in her heart. It might be too late for the poor girl, but there were still plenty of souls that she and Edward could still save. “Little one,” she said softly, addressing Alice. “We can get all of you out of here. Your mama is gone, but you need to keep living. Can you tell the others to follow us, back through the maze to the exit?”
Alice wiped tears from her three eyes with her paw, then nodded. ”Okay…” At her meows, the other cats began to move bit by bit, headed the way the Seekers came. ”Everyone. Follow me.”
“What about Byleth?” Primm interjected. “She looked bad. There isn’t much time.”
Sandalphon glanced at Edward, then turned to go, joining Alice at the head of the cat swarm. “There must be something in this place that could help. The couriers…perhaps they know something.”
Within a minute, the two reached the Dice Room, joined by an ever-increasing stream of cats that spread out around the chamber. Byleth was there, but Primm had been right about her condition. She had lost a lot of hair, her eyes were a bloodshot yellow, and her skin looked burnt, almost to a purple-black color. Her mouth had almost completely receded, and her fingers were slowly turning into claws. Thops, Tipp, and Pill had already crowded around her in concern, and when Edward approached, the brothers turned to face him.
“It sounding like miss-miss see thing like Higher Being. Bad-bad, very bad business!” Tipp declared.
“We hears tell of ways to cure godly meddlings though,” Pill added. “Cloth of creep-creep in dark church, and shiny needle in room of prayers.”
“Then we have our next mission,” Sandalphon gasped. Even a short run was exhausting and painful enough to leave her debilitated. Primm, Alice, Dack, and Thops got ready to move.
So too was Edward, as well as his Somnadrix, sporting as it was a new, crude, collar made from woven plant stems from the greenhouse, from which dangled the bronze, shield icon bearing, class tag of the Tank.
He’d ensure that Satori's last gift was put to good use.
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