[NoR] - [29] – [IK|RK] – Lest you Become

Intense pressure threatens to consume you for what seems like an eternity. Sounds you couldn’t hope to replicate pound in your ears. You will not open your eyes, not wanting to see yourself again. You focus on the statue from your dreams, the only solid image you can recall in this situation. You feel another tugging within yourself, and the pressure abruptly stops. You recognize the feel of stone on your skin. You open your eyes at the newfound quiet.

The hallway is gone, now a shrine built around the statue before you. The features strike you immediately, and you rush to make sure it is real. Running your hands over the polished rock, you look around, overjoyed to be alive. A large Manor sits behind you, across the bridge floating over the pool of nothingness. An absolute void sits beneath the jet black surface, reminding you of a perfectly smooth glass. Torches bob gently at predetermined intervals along the bridge, offering all of the illumination in the courtyard aside from the violet flame at your feet. The building is half as tall in the middle, suggesting a terrace between the two wings. The building is the same width as the pool, the two taking up a full half of the platform they rested upon. The other half of the terrain is frozen over, an intermittent azure glow breathing underneath the ice. Beyond the actual platform is nothing, literally. A spherical wall of mist surrounds the whole establishment, encasing it within the orb of stability. A brief glimpse beyond the mists flashes random images from possible paths before your eyes.

You walk past the purple fire, descending the steps and stopping to examine one of the torches. Their casing is engraved with an intricate ivy pattern, the basins holding some ever burning substance. Peering over the edge, you see your reflection in the black, haggard and worn. An impulse draws you to it, bringing you to your knees as you kneel over the pool. A rumbling from below startles you, urging your retreat from the bridge to the solid ground between the inky depths and the Manor itself. You collapse onto the frost, panting heavily.

Where am I…?

You look to the building looming over you, feeling an attraction to the architecture. The large marble door has a steel torus embedded in its center. Frost around invisible seams reveals their presence. You shakily get to your feet and walk over to it, inspecting the construction. You can find no marks of craftsmanship. No wear. It’s as if this place were somehow preserved for all time. A deep, reverberating ‘crack’ of the space behind you causes you to jump again. You whirl around to face the noise.

You see yourself, or more accurately, the other you. His face is hidden behind a mask of curiosity while he speaks in a disjointed stream of thought.

“Very interesting…I certainly was not expecting you to do that. Will I still be able to absorb you, I wonder?”

The admission of his end goal is a relief and a burden. Not having to assume is a wonderful thing, but the nature of his plans still leaves much to be desired. You back against the door, scraping parts of the frost off the entryway. You yell your questions at him.

“Who are you?! Who am I?!”

His response is cryptic and unhelpful.

“I am you, and you are me.”

You feel frustration threatening to overwhelm you, still unresolved from earlier.

“No, I am me and you are you!”

“That is the next bit.”

You slam your hand against the door in irritation, knocking loose more of the snow. Part of it falls onto your hand, lingering for a moment. A spreading of the chill draws your attention, and you see a layer of rime engulfing your hand and moving up your arm. While the other you watches on in fascination, you scream. Words fail to materialize, instead a debased howl leaving your lips while you scramble to try and scrape the ice off of you. The efforts are in vain, only causing it to accelerate its conquest of your body. The crystalline shell swallows your legs, trapping you upright against the door. Unable to look away, you watch in terror as your doppelgänger approaches, stopping just out of arm’s reach to observe with greater scrutiny.

Your voice is silenced as the flow contains your neck, pouring down your throat and encasing you whole. Your vision is fragmented, fractured like a kaleidoscope by the crystalline structure of your cocoon. Your body begins to liquefy, and you feel every piece of you losing solidity. Your perspective shifts to just behind your current visual seat, while you begin to perceive additional senses, faintly growing brighter through your silent agony. The other you, apparently satisfied with his observations, comes right up to your shell, placing his hand over your chest. You can barely make out what he says through the muffling effect of the cold.

“I’ve let you progress far enough. You will not be quickly forgotten, Inquisitor.”

You feel his fingertips on the ice. You try, in vain, to cry out as he presses them into it, piercing through to your unstable form. Your sense of self starts to unravel, the rimy body retracting into your assailant. You stubbornly hold on to your individuality, weeping internally as you begin to lose a sense of identity and reason. Your tears dry as you stop knowing why they are there. You close your eyes, or your vision fails. Which is immaterial. The former wonder of life is no more. Your last coherent thought is of Myra, waiting in futility for your date. As reason shatters, your mind comes to an end.

-=-

Razel fell to his knees where the Inquisitor had been moments earlier, the flow of mental stimulation grafting the double’s memories within his own. Taking a moment to himself to regain control of his emotional state, he suppressed the duplicate’s whims, sloughing them aside to be reabsorbed at a later time. The full story of the Inquisitor’s quest to become whole exemplified his failure in this decision. The hurried nature of the ritual inevitably caused the double to devolve to rampancy faster than he had anticipated. Not to mention the lack of self-control it displayed with the Justicar. His head throbbed at the recall.

This is not to say that those memories were unpleasant…simply that aeons of experience had already taught him to avoid attachment. Giving of yourself to those of mortal ken was only going to end in heartbreak. This was why he had avoided the Justicar for so long, refusing to acknowledge any semblance of feeling he may have for her – a learned survivalist instinct the duplicate had been deprived. Instead, he now had a budding attachment that he could never pursue. The incident had been too overt, too visible. Questions would be asked. Agents sent. Inquiries he didn’t want to deal with. He instead decided to visit her briefly after the fact, assuming he was able. A final visit to tell her the basics of why they can’t go on. A note of sadness plucked at his heartstrings. He counted himself lucky that the relationship had not been able to proceed any further. Razel buried the feelings inside himself, hiding them away so that he could focus.

The grinding of marble on marble urged him to turn around, facing the purple-bound skeleton in the doorway. Woodhouse looked its master up and down, reacting to the prints in the snow.

Clack clack clack?

The planeswalker put his head in his hands.

“I’ll be fine. I appreciate the concern.”

Clatter clack clatter?

“How would you know?”

The skeleton shrugged as best it could.

Clackety clatter.

“Yes, it was a duplicate. It went rampant, and caused an irrevocable mess. I may never again be able to return to the Orzhov. I may not even be able to return to Ravnica for a while.”

Click?

“How am I going to explain the people who saw me chasing myself? I can’t. Even trying to pass it off as a Dimir ruse will inevitably call someone’s attention, even if only the Dimir themselves. My best ally in mending this situation is time. I must stay away and let them forget me before I can try to re-insert myself within their canon.”

The skeleton cocked its head in confusion, but said nothing. It stood by silently as its master stood, stepping past the house guard and into the office within. He trudged over to the hide chair, flopping violently and kicking up a cloud of dust. Were he capable of it, Woodhouse may have blushed. Instead, he offered a quick apology for the state of the Manor.

Clatter Clack Clatter.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Woodhouse. There are over two and a half million square feet in the residential realms alone. It would be improbable to expect you to maintain it all constantly.”

The skeleton showed no sign of recognition, standing tall beside the heap of planeswalker in the chair. Razel let his head lull, the top hat dropping to the floor below. Woodhouse bent to pick it over, creaking as he stood back up and presented it to his master. Razel nonchalantly took it, placing it on his chest as he closed his eyes and thought.

“Woodhouse…am I a terrible individual?”

The skeleton was taken aback by this, which showed through in his delayed response.

Click…clatter clatter?

Razel sighed heavily, draping his arm over the chair.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I think you’re wrong. I don’t think ‘as good as you can be’ is good enough. I do terrible things, yes. But there’s always a reason.”

Clickety-clack.

“Exactly. Like the Festival. It’s never mindless; it always serves a further purpose. So why does everything I do feel like it causes nothing but strife?”

Clatter clatter click.

“Truth. I used to take comfort in acting as an agent of chaos working to spur progress…but as the progress comes up less and less each time, I have to wond-“

Razel stopped, the words seizing in his throat and causing him to spasm violently. A streak of power rippled from his right wrist up his arm, dissipating at the shoulder. Razel’s eyes widened at the magical ‘hiccup’.

“That…was new…”

Woodhouse stepped away slowly, keeping a respectable distance but staying close enough to converse.

Click Click Click.

“Obviously. I don’t know what it was either. I’ll look into it after I deal with Rokh.”

Another flare wracked his body, knocking him out of the chair and onto the floor. Another arc of power burst from his other hand, connecting to his chest and brightening before it disappeared, while the chair had disintegrated where the power touched it. A second pulse came immediately on the heels of the first, the energy radiating in waves. The remainder of the chair fell to pieces as it decayed exponentially, while the floor darkened in response to the wild power. Through gritted teeth, Razel ordered his guard.

“Woodhouse…get me an elixir. Something…stabilizing. Now.”

The skeleton bowed deeply, a small sonic boom heralding his expedient exit. Razel worked his way to his hands and knees, trying to contain the power that churned within. Within moments Woodhouse had returned, bearing a transparent flask of luminous golden liquid. Razel impatiently wrenched it from his servant’s hands with his mind, flopping onto his back and mentally pouring the elixir down his throat. The energies sublimated into his essence, distributing the healing effervescence throughout his body. With the episode temporarily subdued, Razel once more stood to face his house guard, a light sheen of sweat crystallizing in the cold. A brisk shake of his head dislodged most of them, casting small frost droplets in every direction.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Clackety clatter click?

“Please. And once you have finished, locate Ophelia. If anyone will know or be able to find out about whatever the hell that was, it’ll be her.”

Another bow. The old bones took to the door at a much more leisurely pace than before, the situation significantly less urgent. Taking a deep breath, Razel started out of his Manor, resigned to deal with Rokh and the Phyrexians one way or another.