Exaudi me et miserere
Word Count: 1567
A certain anticlimax followed Scholomance's brush with the Negaverse. So much of his life simply reverted to its normal processes after the Negaverse withdrew its hooks from him, including the questionable state of benign neglect in the relationship between himself and other Order members. Many of them simply faded into the ether after his liberation from the Negaverse, either never to be seen again or waiting for yet another call to where they're needed. Maybe, he considered hopefully, the Order side was simply a collection of extremely introverted loners where repeated interpersonal connection left them feeling anxious and needy. The thought seldom helped matters.
The convoluted problem led him to another difficult prospect: resolve proved a tricky mistress. He felt firm on his convictions in the days before his proclamations, but as he stood in front of an incredibly wan audience size to speak out, he wondered if he really wanted to ally with those who treated defense of others as a job. Joining the Knights and White Moon held other stipulations, too, like the implication that he would protect humanity and civilization as he knew it. Scholomance cared little for this aspect, too; he remembered well when humanity moved on with indifference while Schörl and Cinnabar maimed him irreparably. The kids who tried to treat him like a zombie costume were the ones he would be trying to protect. That included the men at bars who beat their wives, the people who tried to quash LGBT rights, the unsavories who constantly tried to sell him stolen merchandise. Scholomance was uncertain whether he wanted to play protector for the lot of them.
Maybe he just wanted to strike back against the Negaverse for failing him wholesale. He didn't want to face the responsibility for operating entirely on his own; he could spread such authority among others and take for himself the parts that involved destroying the Negaverse. But the rest of Order already asserted its displeasure in allying with a maimed knight.
Months passed since he returned Blaine's starseed to the cauldron through Hvergelmir, and he found himself very nearly wishing for the old knight's advice. If he left for his wonder, no one would greet him but the gates themselves. Emptiness crawled over the place like an unforgiving pall. He would know its foreboding, oppressive atmosphere; its choking, opaque fog; its eternal, disembodied gaze; and he would know it all alone. And what point was there in sating his urges to return to a dead place such as that? Nothing remained for him there. He earned his last rank as a full knight of the wonder. No amount of broken technology still remaining on the wonder could possibly repair or replace the parts of himself that he lost.
Finally he relented on that dull Sunday afternoon, and spoke the pledge to his wonder once he found a viably secluded rooftop from which to ascend. The world around him transitioned seamlessly - most notably with the bustling noise of weekend rush hour giving way to absolute silence upon his arrival. His ears strained under the pressure to hear anything more than his own breath. And, perhaps strangely, his mind waited for the crushing, paralyzing fear that never arrived. He waited for the chokehold grip of his wonder to squeeze from him the last dregs of bravery built up in his absence. Instead, he found nothing more than silence wafting off the placid lake.
The wonder offered him a clear day, where the thickened fogs lightened and burned under the distant sun. In the distance, the red maple trees stood their silent vigil over deep bogs. He noticed, then, that life returned to the stony trees - that no longer did their bark look neolithic. Instead, flourishing buds erupted from their long, gracile limbs and soaked the coming sun vigorously. A change, certainly; Scholomance never once witnessed any plant life on the planet, and to find it now wrought a rise within him that the scathing knight needed to swallow down. He found no want within himself to seek pleasure in a place like this - for any reason.
He turned then, and started toward the great tower crowning the center of Scholomance. No longer did it bear down on him with vehement derision and Scholomance forced himself from looking at it. In a way, he felt disappointed - he no longer held in his purview a reliable source of negative judgment. He wondered, then - without it, would he backslide into the shitty person he was before his knighthood?
As if there's anything stopping me from that. As if these useless ruins could claim any responsibility in how I've changed.
As if I could assume that the changes in who I am were for the better.
Porcelain ground against itself as he locked his jaw. Scholomance withdrew the functioning cast of the lock's mold from his pocket and pressed the makeshift ring into the Observatory door's recessed surface. As hoped, it took the shape of the casted ring as acceptable, and luminous smoke flooded the pipes that threaded the door. Purple this time, he noted to himself. I wonder why. But he found no further reason to think about it once he stepped inside.
Beyond the threshold, Scholomance froze in his tracks. His heart seized in his chest and his mouth ran dry, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth uselessly. His joints locked up in an effort to remain upright, and the knight felt dizzy in his lurid whorl of emotions. His inner turmoils never crossed his lips, however, and Scholomance swallowed down all the ocean of incredulity that churned within him. A woman faced him - an impossible woman, he knew - and executed a curt bow in receiving his appearance.
"Good evening, Sir Knight." The knight nearly strained himself in deducing the origin of her voice. He never found it. "Did you receive word? The student body has been restless. They've been waiting for an hour now."
Scholomance only stared at her. She looked real - utterly real. He felt as though he could reach out and touch her stiff, billowing dress or the pale skin that crept out of the boned material. He could grab her shoulders tucked away within great, raucous sleeves, and shake her for her insolence in remaining on such a wonder. Instead he continued to stare at her, his eyes marching dutifully between wide green eyes and shining, russet hair that wound tightly into an updo. Yet she never acknowledged his blatant staring.
"Of course," she bowed again, and this time remained bent. One slender arm rose in grandiose gesture toward the center of the Observatory. "They've been waiting for you."
Who? His mind reeled with incredulity, and he wondered at all reasons for such a strange happenstance: had he died? Was his wonder overtaken by a new ancestor knight now? Was his wonder haunted by a power unrelated to his knighthood? Did he finally lose his s**t? The lattermost suspicion somehow seemed most likely. With a great numbness, legs trembling under his weight, he stepped forward through the short hall. In his periphery, he noted impeccable marble work and warm, flickering light from faintly dancing globes. The whole of such a short hallway looked utterly transformed with the great tapestries bearing the Scholomance eye that draped from ceiling to floor. Paintings flanked either side of each tapestry with representations of the great wonder in its various states of being.
And at the end of the hall, breathtaking in its grandiosity, stood the fully-restored rotunda. The great columns stretched high over the marble, punctuated by their many intricately-carved arches. Many ancient gargoyles stared down at him from their own outcroppings, as if waiting for an answer. And as his eyes followed the long, columnar scallops downward, he once again reached the warm-firelit glow as it flickered off a thousand focused faces. His breath left them immediately; he knew they each looked to him, as if for answer. Around them stood dozens of richly polished maple tables and chairs, smatterings of bone-hewn utensils, books beyond count, and rich overcoats cast over the tops of their seats. But they each stood, often with hands clasped before them, as they looked to him.
Scholomance stared around the room, wholly stunned. The wonder knew a rich, decadent beauty with a shocking attendance rate. Even the marble underfoot reflected his visage perfectly in its polished surface. The once-broken lighting posts cast a sumptuous ambience through the hall that came not from the cold, pale light he knew previously. Here, he stood in an utterly different world.
And in a blink, it vanished. Staring back at him now was the dead husk of the room, absent the robes and furs and waiting eyes. Scholomance reminded himself to breathe again, and out came familiar, shuddering breaths. He was about to cry, he knew, but he couldn't stop smiling. Tears flowed with each rapidfire blink as he looked back at the scene, mentally retracing its former glory.
So that was Scholomance, he reminded himself in actualizing it, a thousand years ago. s**t. He had no further words.
