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Akané, Who Was Definitely Not Chosen, Totally Here By Accident, And Hadn’t Even Heard Of A Prophecy. Honest.
Akané was a mistake, a complete mistake.
She was never supposed to be here. She was the wrong girl. They’d wanted her twin sister, who was, unfortunately, deceased. And she’d played along because she was scared. But not of all of them, she hastened to add; just—and here she named two companions, both of whom were almost certainly the ones whom she knew had died in her attack on the Chosen One. Speaking of…
“…and I knew it wouldn’t work, of course. Ridiculous plan, insane plan. I just knew that none of the rumors about you were real, that you’re so much kinder and nicer than they say, and that you’d set me free from those horrible, horrible people—and the others, who were just deluded, and surely they deserve your mercy as well, O Dark Lord. They’re such kind souls…they’re so talented! They’ll be glad to work for you, I’m sure, if you but spare their lives, as you have spared mine!”
(They were all dead, but Akané had no way to know that; she’d been knocked unconscious several instants before her remaining friends—sorry, ‘captors’—had done what the Companions always do: rush straight at the Chosen One, murder in their eyes. Or, at least, murder very briefly in their eyes; after that, the eye sockets were primarily full of arrows. Her archers were very skilled, the range was very close, and eyes are good targets for anyone not wearing facial armor, which is most people. Even if all the arrows missed badly, and bounced off the hard, bony parts of the skull, five or six shafts to the face would slow down just about anyone.)
Akané went on. And on. She didn’t seem to mind that she was addressing what looked like thin air, which was nice; oh, only an idiot would assume that The Dark Lord left a Chosen One unmonitored, but the world is a bountiful feast of morons, and it was always refreshing to find someone a little quicker on the uptake. The girl’s story was about as good as you could get if you had nothing but guesses about your target audience and couldn’t actually see reactions. The rather ambitiously-woven set of semi-plausible lies went something like this: for assorted reasons, Akané had never wanted to be here, had secretly been against the whole mission, had no idea what was going on, or, possibly (it was inferred), was really hoping this would happen so that she could meet the great Dark Lord in the flesh. It was laid on thick; but if you’re unsure where to aim, the ego’s one of the safest bets, particularly when dealing with an infamous (“misunderstood”, as Akané put it) Tyrant.
The upshot of the completely, totally sincere plea was that The Dark Lord ought to release Akané, and any of her companions who were alive. They had all seen the error of their ways, and The Dark Lord’s mercy was sure to be an inspiration, one which would temper the people’s fear of her well-known (and “completely, utterly justified, totally necessary”) general ruthless murderyness. It hurt Akané to think that she had ever, ever considered taking a single action which might have harmed such a compassionate and misunderstood human being; it hurt Akané to the point of tears; in fact, she seemed to be weeping uncontrollably.
Alice wondered how the girl had gotten involved in all of this. The improvisation alone was stellar, and in addition to genuine talent, Akané clearly had training. Not martial training, certainly; out of all the awkward sword-wavers Alice had seen in the past five years, Akané was among the worst—The Dark Lord had been sincerely concerned that the child might do herself a fatal injury before Alice had time to disarm her. But the young woman had definitely been apprenticed to some dramaturge, and that was unusual. White Wizards prefer to recruit those who won’t be missed overmuch, whereas theatrical groups tend to like giving up gifted actors in about the same way mother bears are happy to hear that, while they were away, you’ve stopped by and taught their cubs to smoke, drink, play with matches, and lose at poker. Someone who had the skill to understand that you could draw on trauma, even very immediate trauma, and channel it into a performance which used adjacent emotions to create something which must have felt real even to the actress, even as she was lying—that would have been exceptional even in a human with considerably more life experience.
So her fellow actors had sold her out, somehow. Strange. Why?
The Dark Lord made an educated guess: if she was any judge of personality (and, given that it’s a valuable survival skill for a misanthrope, she was a pretty good judge, at that)—this young woman likely had an ego big enough to choke a Moat Monster. And she was getting towards an age where she’d be for leading roles.
Someone, probably several someones, really didn’t like her, and really wanted her gone. That vanity might well have been both a catalyst and a weakness; she might have gotten on the wrong side of the wrong person once too often. And it was entirely possible that they’d convinced her to join up. The Dark Lord could picture it: “Akané, we have something very important to tell you. You’ve always known you were special, not like all the others, haven’t you? Well, this White Wizard here is going to tell you just how right you were….”
The fact that some people were beginning to realize that being Chosen was akin to a very-slightly-delayed death sentence was heartening. The idea that someone might use it to get rid of potential rivals was…unnerving. Alice wasn’t a guillotine, conveniently available in the public square should one wish to be rid of an unwanted neighbor; she was the sovereign of a large and busy Empire.
Akané was trouble. The Dark Lord’s first impulse was to kill her; those were also her second, third, fourth, and fifth impulses.
But Alice—for all that inordinate amount of her life was spent fending off idiotic attacks or engaging in diplomacy, intrigue, and the other basic necessities of state—was a Magician, first and foremost. And she knew the value of hazardous materials. If you want an enemy dead, you don’t choose a weak poison out of fear that you’ll pick up the wrong glass. You chose an absolutely fatal brew, and you don’t pick up the wrong glass; and if you do, you deserve every bit of venom you receive. Likewise, you don’t summon the weakest demons, the ones just possibly capable, You summon beings of puissance literally unimaginable by human minds, and you do so with the recognition that if you screw this up—
(and for once, the Sagas, if anything, underestimate how many Sorcerers really, truly, royally screw this up)—
then you deserve what they’ll do to your body and soul.
If you mis-speak while uttering a Word of Power, you’ll likely be strangled by your own tongue, and that is appropriate.
The leading cause of fatality among Dark Lords is Death By Magical Mystery Tour. Do not ask; do not, we recommend, even think the question, “Tour of what, exactly?”
Akané was crying now. The tears were entirely unfeigned; they were justified by the roles she was playing, but they were also likely inevitable; she’d been through too much shock. There’d come a point where the weeping ball of former Chosen One stopped being The Girl Chosen By Mistake and started being whoever was under the various personae she’d been throwing around at her unseen audience. Alice didn’t envy her that moment.
The once-Chosen Akané was flawed and extremely unsafe to have around. Looking into those big, weeping eyes, Alice could see, clearer than the full Moon on a cloudless night, the extreme likelihood that not killing this girl (and there were so many ways to kill a person in one of those cells; that was a matter of course), not ending her life, not ending the Akané-threat increased the likelihood of Alice’s death quite significantly.
On the other hand…at the moment, The Dark Lord was in a cage of her own, a World-sized cage, and she wasn’t quite sure where the bars were or what they were made of, much less how to get out. And right now, the chances of Alice’s escape looked very bleak indeed. Akané was a serious risk; but putting that much potential into play would definitely change the game. And by the damn Gods, she was tired as Hell of the way the game was now.
There’s no gain without the potential for loss. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling snake oil. And probably from low-quality snakes, at that.
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