Duplicity: Part Eleven

      hree images materialized before Lisha: a faerie with a burning heart beating beneath her chest, a Skeith with glowing bones beneath his layers of fat, and a Lupe with bloody, hollow eyes. She identified each as Ambition, Greed, and Revenge, respectively.

      Lisha knew the correct thing to say was Sorry, I have no time to deal with you. I have other things to do, but she couldn’t bring herself to transmit the words. The Three certainly had an attractive quality about them, she had to admit.

      Oh, thanks, I definitely wanted the input of three evil demons, she said, somewhat annoyed.

      Evil, is that what you think? replied Ambition. We only gave Jeran what he wanted; nothing more, nothing less.

      Lisha’s curiosity overrode her good sense to disengage with the Three. What are you even talking about? Jeran would never make any sort of deal with you, not in his right mind.

      Never is a strong, absolute word. I was never a fan of it, myself, said Revenge. He wanted to be rid of whatever held him back to be a good, strong sovereign. For his countrymen, for his friends, for his honor, for you . . . I would say it was quite effective, would you not?

      For what it was worth, Jeran had become increasingly more adept at dealing with political quarrels and issues, at least, that was what Lisha had heard from court gossip. She didn’t quite follow politics. Except that’s not all you took away.

      Greed shrugged. You’ve seen how miserable your brother was, how he had been for a long time. You must truly despise Jeran if you want to reverse all we have done for him.

      The last soul fragment’s droning buzzed in Lisha’s ears. As much as she’d hated to admit it, they had a bit of a point. A dumb, warped point, but it still had truth to it. That “improvement” isn’t real, just an illusion made by letting himself be withered away. Removing a problem is not the same as dealing with it.

      How much does that really matter? Happiness is just a state of mind; it is the same regardless of where it comes from.

      If happiness is just a state of mind, meaningless from one moment to the next, it is worthless, and there is no use pursuing it, replied Lisha. She wanted Jeran to be happier, truly, but not in this way, not when it would cause him to delude himself and hurt others. Especially if it goes against what’s right—which my brother has always tried to defend—

      A rumbling cut her off. Her essence vibrated, blinking out of sight and reappearing again in rapid succession. The thread that held Lisha here suddenly ripped apart and peeled. Something was wrong with the conduit.

      Without paying heed to what the Three were about to say next, she hurried away, making sure all the soul fragments were still with her.

      Good luck, Lisha, Ambition’s musical voice echoed from however far she was. We lose nothing here. If left on his own, your brother would have succeeded in fulfilling his part of the contract.

      Lissandre’s—or Chantelle’s, as that was her true name—earliest memories were those of her mother, a sickly green Moehog named Morguss. Morguss would spend every night telling her about the wonders of magic, all the things it could do, the way it permeated every aspect of life. Her daughter would drift away to sleep while listening to old tales laden with sorcerers and faeries, each meant to teach a different lesson about the arcane.

      Sometimes, Morguss would take Chantelle’s hands into her own and teach her a spell or two. She would smile as the small Darigan Aisha stared at her own manifestation of magical energy with childish awe and kiss her goodnight. For a time, Chantelle truly thought her mother was the greatest Neopian alive, and she did not notice the fact that all other Darigans kept their distance from them.

      Well, most other Darigans made sure to keep their distance. Some cast almost pitying glances at her, others managed to spit out a greeting and a nervous smile, and yet others were brave enough to taunt Chantelle when they saw her alone. She had a few friends in the midst of it all, children that ignored the warnings of their parents to stay away from “that hag’s daughter.”

      Her closest one was a squire who practically spent his life in the training grounds nearby, obsessively honing any and all techniques in his arsenal to perfection. He was quite wary of Chantelle at first. He liked his Eyrie form, and wasn’t too excited to spend any time with a child who could quickly turn him into a blechy.

      However, that Eyrie eventually grew quite fond of the child. He increasingly found himself talking to her like less of a nuisance getting in the way of his training and more of a little sister. He even humored her little pretend stories which often had him playing the role of the evil villain to be defeated by the great Warrior-Princess-Wizard-Spy Chantelle.

      The great waves of nostalgia that came with these memories brought some comfort to Lissandre. This comfort almost offset the knowledge that she was only remembering these things so vividly because someone else was probing through them. And she didn’t have much power left in her to do anything about it.

      “Morguss’s daughter, the court dancer.” Jeran’s voice. “What good fortune.”

      That identity made the matter Lissandre’s soon-to-be untimely demise so much easier to explain away. Who could possibly care for the court dancer, the Neopian who has allowed Kass to deal a huge, devastating blow to Meridell that could have won him the war? Certainly not any self-respecting Meridellian or Brightvalian, with the exception of whoever she truly worked for.

      He went further chronologically in her memory. In the span of a few seconds, he witnessed years of Chantelle’s life pass by. He saw her discover the three mysterious specters hovering over her mother. He saw the multiple points Morguss had “accidentally” lost her daughter’s food rations, kept her working on a potion or spell for days at a time. He saw the many small resentments she’d built up against Morguss, sometimes culminating in heavy shouting matches that ended with Chantelle running away for days at a time.

      Her makeshift older “brother” would tell her how bad of an idea it was to constantly provoke Morguss’s ire. In these memories, he often wore the uniform of a colonel, and later, it morphed into the uniform of a general, which made him that much more recognizable to Jeran as the usurper Kass.

      Chantelle didn’t pay his advice any heed at first, but eventually, as her magical prowess grew, she was able to live with Morguss in a thin, fragile peace. It worked well until the beginning of the Meridell-Darigan war, when she found out her mother had given Kass a “lucky charm” before the attack on Meridell.

      And then . . . and then . . .

      Jeran was met with a strong mental barrier when he tried to look at the events leading up to the second war. It wrapped around these memories in a corona of darkness and guilt, which, strictly speaking, should not have been able to stop Jeran from accessing them.

      When he tried to knock that barrier down, it lashed out harshly back at him with a repeating string of thought: Sorry. Failure. I failed. My fault. I’m sorry. Sorry. I didn’t want it to happen. Bad person. I’m a bad person.

      Jeran grimaced. He didn’t want to deal with things like this. Not anymore.

      Besides, he could guess how this little story was going to end. As much as he would have liked to think Chantelle was apologizing for getting caught out as the court dancer—it would have been easy to do so—he somehow knew that it simply was not the truth of the matter.

      For the most infinitesimally small moment, Jeran felt a bit sad, though he did not fully grasp why. He hesitantly bypassed the cluster of memories and went further into the future, where he found exactly what he was looking for.

      “Lissandre” did not simply collaborate with Lord Darigan; she worked directly for him as a royal sorceress. That meant Jeran had to take care of any diplomatic issues that would arise from her death, perhaps even try to cast doubt on her loyalty to Darigan.

      Lissandre’s body started to morph back into its original state, her magic no longer able to sustain her shapeshifted form. Her silky black hair transformed into messy tangerine curls. Her fur slowly changed color to a dark violet. The whites of her eyes dissolved into the uniform blood-red common amongst Darigans.

      Before she fell into unconsciousness, Lissandre stared at her reflection in Jeran’s sword. She barely saw the magical conduit twist and turn into visibility. Underneath, the image of a small yellow Aisha began to build itself in the physical world.

      Lisha’s arrival didn’t pass Jeran’s notice. He still had her to deal with, and if he thought quickly enough, he could get her on his side, for now. He constructed a worried look on his face, turned around, and made a slow, tired run for her.

      “Lisha!” he yelled. “Lisha! I can’t believe you’re all right!”

      His sister took but a few moments to get reacquainted with her physical body. Her eyes narrowed as she straightened up and said, “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

      “You just risked your life to go into . . . into another world,” Jeran breathed. Lisha walked past him almost as though he didn’t exist. “And Lissandre, she’s really not who you think she is. Please, listen to me.”

      Lisha went over to the spot where she had last left the scholar. She sought out the bright gold-and-green robes Lissandre wore and prepared a sealing spell to close the magical conduit and destroy its connection to her.

      She paused when she got close enough to look at her face. The Aisha in the robes wasn’t Lissandre. She wasn’t that Brightvalian caricature whose arrogance Lisha had come to tolerate. This Neopian was the dancer who she had bested with a simple revealing spell so many years ago.

      “Impossible,” she said.

      “I didn’t think so, either,” commented Jeran. “But while we were fighting her, I think something went wrong with the spell she was casting.”

      “‘We?’”

      It took a few moments before Lisha could clearly see an unconscious Danner lying on the ground nearby. Scorch marks stained the ground around him, but otherwise, he seemed to be in acceptable order. He was still visibly breathing, at the very least; the story for Lissandre was noticeably different in that respect.

      “Yes,” said Jeran. “Danner warned me. I didn’t know why I didn’t listen.”

      Lisha sent a quick magical pulse in Lissandre’s general direction. It went straight through her body without distortion, which indicated she had very little magical energy left in her.

      “Drained, completely drained,” whispered Lisha, pressing her hand on Lissandre’s chest. She could barely feel her heart beating. “I need to help her.”

      “Help her? She was trying to do something terrible to you, tried to trick you into going into their realm. Part of a contract, she said.”

      “It’s still a life,” said Lisha.

      Jeran placed a hand too firmly on Lisha’s shoulder. “I think . . . I think you need to take a look at Danner first. He’s badly hurt.”

      Danner moved slightly in the grass. He needed a lot less help than Lissandre did, and Jeran doubtlessly knew that; he wasn’t an idiot, and he was not one to miss the fact that she was near death.

      No, if he was trying to keep her from helping Lissandre, it was fully intentional. He wanted her to die, and more importantly, he wanted Lisha to be complicit in her death. She wasn’t going to give him the benefit of the doubt here, either. He was still under the influence of the Three.

      “Danner’s fine,” she said. “Let go of me.”

      He didn’t. “It’s not worth the energy to save her. Remember who she is.”

      “I don’t care who she is.” Lisha was not going to let neither her hatred of the court dancer nor her trust and love of Jeran stop her from doing the moral thing. “If you don’t get back right now, I will force you to. Understand?”

      “Perfectly.” She heard a sword unsheathe.

      Lisha drew a quick rune in the air with her wand and swung it directly into Jeran’s stomach. A blast of frost pushed him back and wrapped around him, rendering him motionless like the many statues littering the area.

      She rushed to Lissandre and folded the passage between her magical reserves and the conduit to stop the rush of magic away from her. She took some of her own energy and tied it around the fold until the conduit was entirely constricted, then she promptly ripped it apart.

      Lissandre convulsed until she lay motionless again. Her magic was no longer leaving her, but that didn’t mean she was safe. Her energy wasn’t going to regenerate if Jeran’s ring still held it, and he wasn’t going to give it up. In fact, he wanted Lissandre gone.

      Lisha stood, swerving her head so she could check on Jeran. The ice spell was not quite enough to contain him. His ring swirled with energy and cracks burst through his frozen binds. A deep grimace embedded firmly into his face.

      He was not happy. And this is bad, Lisha thought.Is he going to—? No, he can’t. He can’t.

      She’d always seen Jeran’s physical prowess second-hand, and never once did it cross her mind she would be on the receiving end. His skill as a knight, once a source of pride, filled her with dread. She could not possibly do anything against him in a fight, not when her magic would prove useless against the power of the Three.

      “Get out of my way,” he said. When she didn’t move, he added, “Do what I say, Lisha. I’m your older brother.”

      Lisha bit her lip extended her body over Lissandre’s. “No.”

      Jeran’s anger deepened. “She’s a criminal. Do you remember how many lives were lost to that war? How badly it damaged Meridell, how it almost took away our only family and friends? It’s only justice.”

      “Punishing wrong is justice; punishing someone because they did wrong to you is just petty revenge,” replied Lisha. “You taught me that. Remember?”

      “I was very foolish then.”

      She was running out of options, she knew that. There was little she could say or do to make him change his mind about this, no appeal or reason to dissuade him. And if she stood in his way any longer, well, Lisha really did not want to dwell on that possibility.

      Lisha’s gaze locked around everything it could, trying to find something to slow him down, buy more time. It eventually stopped to fixate on Danner. He was rising from the ground, fingers slowly wrapping around the hilt of his sword. He looked back at her for a scant few moments with pleading eyes, seeming about as helpless as she was. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t a variable she could count on right now.

      Danner. What would he do or say to Jeran right now? No, not Jeran—just a fragment of Jeran, a fragment that mostly cared about itself and little else. She had to speak its language. She had to pull a Danner and provoke him into listening to her.

      When in Altador, do as the Altadorians do. Even if that meant shoving your head into a Buzzer hive.

      “You’re still very foolish now, by my count,” said Lisha. “Just the powerless little pup you’ve always been.”

      Jeran blinked. A thick, azure aura blinked around him. “Powerless?”

      “You heard me.” Lisha steeled herself, wiped any emotion off her face. She wasn’t used to trying to tear Jeran down, but that was exactly what she had to do: “You’ve always been guided by blind, deaf, dumb luck, undeserving of all the power and stature you have. The only reason you think otherwise is because of the Three—the very entities that, might I remind you, have all the power they need over you. You’re just subservient to them.”

      Jeran brought his blade to Lisha. His face was in a confused cacophony of emotion. “Stop talking.”

      Lisha smiled thinly. She couldn’t stop now. “What’s the matter, Jeran? Why are you so upset?”

      The point of his sword grazed right beneath Lisha’s ribs. “I told you to stop talking, Lisha, stop talking, or I swear I’ll—”

      “No,” the moment the word escaped her mouth, the sword pressed deeper into her skin. She expected a sharp pain above her stomach, and when that pain did not come, the world began to blur, like she was in shock. Was she in shock?

      “I know why you did it,” she breathed.

      Jeran withdrew his sword a little, Lisha could see that. Nothing was on it. She dedicated a few moments to check if all her body parts still functioned; they were unscathed.

      “I don’t understand.”

      “I know why you made that deal, with the Three,” said Lisha. “You did it because you wanted to be better. You wanted to protect the kingdom and people you love so much.”

      Jeran scoffed. “You think I care?”

      “I think you do,” replied Lisha, slowly straightening away from Lissandre. “Maybe there are more important things to you right now, but you still care. Look around you, look at Danner . . . look at what you're about to do to me. You didn't get what you wanted, regardless. Don't you feel at least a betrayed?”

      He glanced over to Danner. Jeran’s grip over his sword loosened, and he remained silent long enough for Lisha to think of her next proposal, one that appealed perfectly to his selfishness.

      “I can restore your soul fragments. You'll no longer be held back, shackled. Surely this is agreeable to you?”

      “It doesn’t matter,” Jeran replied. “I am shackled either way, whether it be by myself, or by them.”

      Shackled, as a beast who needed to be contained. Something hurt when Lisha had thought about it in those terms. She ignored it and took a small breath in attempt to clear her voice of any and all tension. This statement decided her fate. “So you're caged either way--but is it not better to hold the key to that cage yourself rather than a fickle warden?”

      Jeran’s eyes narrowed. Like it or not, his dear sister did have a point. As troublesome and irritating his entire self would be, it wouldn’t actively try to hurt him, wouldn’t pull any tricks. The Three, however . . . they were not at all charitable masters to answer to.

      He ignored the lingering agitation in his stomach, something that looked like fear. His whole self would certainly not be kind to him, now that its worst fears were fully realized, but . . . but having power over himself was worth it. “Fine. I allow it.”

      Lisha nodded. That was all the permission she needed.

      She released a blast of magical energy that forced the soul fragments she possessed out into the physical world, where they floated in the air as brilliant light diffracts through water. Lisha funneled her magic to guide them toward Jeran.

      A crisp, cold aura soon surrounded them in the color of the night sky. Its thickness was made apparent to even Jeran, who did not normally perceive auras well. His soul fragments barely touched him as they circled him.

      When they converged on him, he felt an odd numbness as his thoughts jammed and stopped entirely, like he was frozen in time. Then Lisha seemed to walk backwards, his soul fragments retreating with her. Before he knew it, he was standing over Lissandre and siphoning her energy into his ring, smiling slightly with the rush of magical power. He was holding Danner’s head as he altered his mind, making him see what he wanted him to. He was threatening Lisha with . . . Lisha . . .

      Is that me?

      These moments passed away in a sudden flash of white. Jeran now stood on his knees, clutching his temples as his thoughts raced through his mind again. Like an old machine, it clicked and heated as it struggled to keep up with modern demands.

      His ring had fallen to the ground, broken neatly in half. With the hollowness of the three’s power leaving him, he realized he’d almost felt a little heavier.

      “Jeran? Jeran, are you all right?”

      Jeran could not say no. He organized his racing thoughts in order of priority, pointed at Lissandre, and said, “Put some sort of illusory spell on her. I’ll get her to the ward.” To Be Continued…