Completed The Dark Room

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso Diemut slowly came to cognizance and gained awareness of his surroundings. Standing affixed was he to an X-shaped rack, his wrists bound above his head and his arms tingling with numbness. His ankles were bound to the bottom of the rack as well. His mind was clouded still with a kind of intoxication that left him feeling enfeebled, and he sensed only a loose, slippery grasp on his magic. Sweat coated much of his body. He was completely naked.

All around him was darkness, save for one small end table upon which sat a lone lantern, conjuring a small sphere of soft light by which he could see himself.

And the person who stood before him.

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Soleil Verdane had been waiting for Caeso to wake. She was eager to begin, but patience was one of her most deadly attributes. Her mastery of it had indeed led to this moment now, the culmination of a well-orchestrated, well-executed plan. It had gone better than she anticipated. Better than her first attempt.

Her hands were behind her back. Concealing something. The surprise she had in store for him; that which would bring her satisfaction.

"Hello Caeso," she said, smiling the same smile that was her consistent wont. But she no longer had that airy, cheerful tone which so often accompanied it. Now it was something much more like quiet triumph, the surety of knowing that all was within her hands, the sublime pleasure of victory assured.

"You? Had bad night at Dance. And from here?"

She blinked slowly and luxuriously. Fissures of flesh opened in her cheeks and fluttered and then sealed.

"Only worse."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"Where is she?" Caeso growled sharply.

Soleil clucked her tongue. "This? Between you. And me."

"And what is it that you think you are going to do?" Even through the heavy haze of the drug's influence (that much he could tell, that the unnatural grogginess and sweats came from some foul substance), Caeso managed the wherewithal to speak lucidly and with no shortage of ire. "Do you somehow imagine that there is recourse from this? From what you've done?"

"No one knows," Soleil said, sounding highly pleased. "Me? Supposed to be here. Mission. Easy lies. And you? All alone."

"So you believe. Everyone will—"

Caeso grimaced, sucking in a hissing breath through his teeth. He had tried to use his magic, to Enhance his muscles and break free from his bonds, but in his attempt it was as if firm control over his magic had slipped from his hands and fell upon him like a heavy stone, smacking right through his ribcage and into the core of his chest.

"Problem?" Soleil asked with a snide and mock concern.

"You..." Caeso raised his hanging head, scowling harshly and thinking nothing of the brutish fantasy of wrapping his hands around her neck, "...wretch."

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Soleil exalted in the moment. She wanted to have more time with him like this. She wanted actually to take him, but there was no time for that. A shame. But this opportunity was best, and this was how it had to be.

"You? Like old way?"

Soleil thought she was very good at detecting and discerning emotion in others (even if she had no true conception of most of it via firsthand experience herself), good at identifying the little facial patterns that accompanied each. And she thought quite keenly that she saw a flash of doubt in Caeso's expression, interrupting his anger.

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Her question caught him off guard. It shouldn't have, but it did. All within the span of a second did all of his more recent misgivings strike him. Quinctus's death was something that still troubled him deeply, as deeply as it did on the day it happened if he thought about it for more than a brief moment. Then, despite all his actions and words to the contrary, apprehension about Graduation, the pinnacle of the old way, especially if it went for his class as it did for the class prior. Would he...could he bring himself to kill whomever he was matched up against? Lumen? Zinnia? Leander or Zaire? Silas or Kristen or Ysobel? Even Mieri, as off-putting as she was? Even Fennec, as much of a kindred supporter of the old ways as he? Or even Houri or Maseno, members of the House which was rival to his own?

If he were asked this question two years ago, maybe even a year ago, he would not have hesitated in his answer. But now?

To Soleil, though, he expressed none of this. "What business of it is yours?"

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Soleil just laughed, rolling her head back as the lilting notes came from her throat, and then when it was done she trilled her tongue and said, "Poor mask. Old way good. You say so. Many times. Many occasions. Talk too much, even." Her smile returned and she asked, "You? Think become Archon?"

"Anirius himself will have blessed you if you live to see it."

"Fiery!" Soleil said as if making commentary about a fight which did not concern her at all. "Graduation good. You say so. To Kristen. Big argument."

"Call me out when the day comes, and I shall do the same for you, and we will see who between us is the true Dreadlord."

"You? Strong. Strength good."

Soleil lifted a hand from behind her back, keeping her other and the item she hid still there. She tapped her temple with a finger.

"But cleverness better."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"And so you have troubled yourself greatly merely to gloat at me. Indeed, how clever," Caeso scoffed, then growled, "Get it over with. There is nothing you with your inept hands can do to me that has not already been done, and far worse, by our Proctors."

Soleil was unphased by his demand. "Me? Observant. Watch. Listen. Proctors torture body. Pain they do? Goes away, in time. Can be forgotten." She smiled, as blissful as ever. "I know what hurts you. Inflict pain...you never forget."

"Time, then, will be the judge of that."

Caeso thought she was bluffing, merely talking the talk of some grand mastermind in order to sate her own grandiose ego. He did not strut around the Academy with loose lips, spilling his innermost thoughts to any and all who might ask; and even to those very few whom he actually had sincere conversations with, Lumen and Zinnia specifically, they were not of Soleil's ilk and certainly, by Caeso's reckoning, would not have told her anything that was spoken in confidence. But Caeso could not yet know that Soleil nevertheless did have help in figuring all this out, that her desire expressed to Mr. Green had inadvertently been right on target, and was indeed confirmed by a close source.

He did not think anything Soleil could do would surpass the cruel efforts of the Proctors of the old way. He truly did not...until from behind her back Soleil produced a large pair of hedge shears, and her eyes flicked down to his groin, to his exposed manhood.

She looked back up. Met his gaze. Then held the hedge shears up and inspected them in a languid manner. "Heavy," she said of the shears. "But worth to hold. Worth for surprise. To see your face."

"Soleil..."

"Me? Hate the rain. Hate water."

"Soleil, listen to me."

"You knew that."

"Don't do this."

"You hurt me. Many times. Now I hurt you."

Caeso felt the cold steel, the flat of the blades, press against the bottom of the belly and the top of his thighs.

"Anything else."

"Not anything else. This."

"SOLEIL!" The tremble of panic had brought him to shout, but he reined his desperation back in...barely. His voice was taut, walking a tight rope between bargaining and outright pleading. "Maim me in whatever manner you wish, for as long as you so desire—I shall even keep it secret, keep this all in confidence, help fashion some excuse for my injuries to completely exculpate you. I swear it, I swear it. But not this. Not this. I..." And then the words just came spilling out, "...I want a family. I want to find a good woman and marry her, provide for her, protect her, bless her with sons and daughters. I want to continue my line. I want to hold my own children in my arms."

Soleil's smile did not waver as she said, "You never will."

Caeso bit fiercely into his bottom lip as the shears began cutting into flesh, slicing through where his manhood met his groin. Warm, wet blood flowed freely down his thighs as a crackling pain wracked his body entire and threatened even to arrest his heart and make him faint. His eyes pinched shut, his teeth tearing into his lip, he struggled mightily not to scream, to at least deny Soleil the satisfaction of hearing it.

But he did. He did scream.

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso hung from his wrists on the X-rack, his legs having completely given out. His body shuddered and spasmed.

His body was in torment, and his mind was in turmoil. All of a sudden, with one cruel cut of a pair of hedge shears, his entire future came crashing down around him. For as much as he professed that Dreadlords, that Initiates, were weapons, and nothing but weapons, that their true and only purpose was in service to the state, just as it always had been, deep beneath this stalwart conviction for the traditional lay a firm opposition to it. Caeso, in fact, wanted to be more than just a weapon. He wanted all of those things which he had helplessly confessed to Soleil: a wife, a family, children, a legacy beyond war. But now? How could he have any of that? Was he...was he even a man anymore?

Soleil set the hedge shears on the end table with the lantern. Stood there, off to the side, smiling and watching.

"Don't you recognize where you are?" came a familiar voice from the darkness. A terribly familiar voice.

And into that soft sphere of light stepped Sabian Diemut, Caeso's father. Utter shock left Caeso dumbstruck. His mouth hung open, and it was all he could do to simply stare in stark disbelief as his father stood in the lantern's light. He couldn't think, he couldn't speak, and even if both of these capacities were available to him then his own body, arrested by pains in all senses of the word, wouldn't allow for it anyway.

Sabian produced a candle and opened the lantern and touched the candle to the lantern's flame. Another man also emerged from the darkness—indeed, this was the driver of Alice's carriage—and also touched a candle to the lantern's flame. Together Sabian and the carriage driver went about the room, lighting other candles and lanterns and gradually bringing light to the whole area, banishing the dark of night and revealing everything.

"This is your room," Sabian said as he lit the last candle. "Look there, there is the mirror that I purchased for you the year before you discovered your magic; all the better to help you look the part of a proper nobleman. And there, see, that stuffed dragon which you and Quinctus loved to pretend slaying together. And over there, don't you remember, your own bed, still neatly made just the way I taught you; a man might have servants to aid him, but he must never allow such luxury to make him lapse in his own ability to do things for himself."

There was no mistaking it. Caeso was inside his old childhood room inside the Diemut Estate in Vel Anir city, and his own father was in league with Soleil Verdane.

Caeso's lips trembled horribly. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't understand it. His future had crumbled to nothing, and now so had his present. Nothing made any sense anymore, and he was adrift in an endless sea of agonizing shock and stupefaction. He thought he might have been able to utter the words "Father...why?" but he couldn't be sure. He didn't know if it was in his imagination or if those words were real.

Regardless of it, Sabian came back up to him. He set the candle down on the end table with the lantern, and then he bent over to pick up Caeso's severed penis. He shoved it into Caeso's face, right beneath his nose.

"THIS IS WHAT I THINK OF YOU! THIS IS WHAT YOU MEAN TO ME!" Sabian withdrew the bloodied organ and tossed it dismissively off to the side. "A useless appendage, fit only to be cut from the body of House Diemut as a whole. A disgrace, through and through."

Sabian scoffed harshly.

"You are no son of mine, Caeso Domitian Diemut."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso was paling from blood loss. His vision crackled and broke apart into black stars at the periphery. Only through astounding fortitude, or perhaps some unholy curse bidding him last longer, was he able to focus on his father Sabian. Barely, he managed to say, "I've done...all that you asked."

Despite Caeso's speech being slurred by shock, Sabian understood him. "Have you? Have you truly?" Sabian paced around before him, recounting in calmer tones now, "Since before you were born, Caeso, I knew what was coming. There are many who doubt the words of soothsayers, of oracles, but not I. Not I. I have seen the power of prophecy at work in my own life, before I met your mother and when I was serving in the Guard, but that is neither here nor there so far as you are concerned. I returned again to the deserts of Amol-Kalit, before the Empire had yet been founded, and consulted again a soothsayer. And she gave unto me a prophecy. Foretold what was to come, what is to come, in this very room..." Sabian huffed and smiled and added, "...now that I can see clearly how it has all come together."

Caeso understood none of it, and his face, molded with pure tortured bemusement, said as much.

"What have I always instructed of you?" Sabian asked, coming to a stop in his pacing and leaning in like an eager interrogator. "Hmm? What have I always included in each of my correspondences to you? 'Secure your strength.' And haven't you repeated this very sentiment to your fellow Initiates? Oh don't you look at me like that, Proctor Malaneaux kept diligent watch over you...until his recent demise, that is. Secure your strength, I've said. I've said it, and you've said it with your own mouth...so why haven't you taken that to heart, Caeso?"

"I don't...understand—"

Sabian spun around in irate frustration and pressed a hand to his head and muttered in mocking echo, "You don't understand." He faced Caeso again and once more leaned in, his fingers curled into half-fists to emphasize his coming point, and he said, "When the moment FINALLY came...you hesitated. You faltered. You... weren't... deserving... of victory." Sabian scoffed. "You were content to let a cliff claim your glory."

Horrid confusion still wracked Caeso...until a specific word settled in on him. Cliff. A cliff. That cliff. His breath failed him, and his eyes widened in realization.

When Sabian saw this, he bid forward the carriage driver, who had until then been standing patiently off to the side. The carriage driver began to remove his heavy disguise: tossing off his wig, tearing off fake facial hair, peeling loose artificial skin molded by a particular fleshmancer, extinguishing the College Magic trick that colored his eyes differently.

"But I survived that fall," said Quinctus Diemut. Caeso's brother, thought dead, now clearly standing before him.

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Soleil watched this all transpire with nothing less than pure schadenfreude. She had used every tool at her disposal to make this happen, to see Caeso Diemut suffer in the most exquisite way possible, his body and his mind ravaged. It was him, after all, who beat her in every spar they ever had. It was him, after all, who looked down upon her more than anyone else for all their years at the Academy (though he did make her realize the power in concealing her ego, her cleverness, in playing into a perception of weakness). It was him, after all, who not only turned down her offer of sex when they had both come of age, but who then intentionally splashed water on her to make her go away, and then kept doing it from then on out.

For a long time, her desire was this: that one day, when the opportunity came, she would kill Caeso and make it good.

This was that day.

And Quinctus was her final tool.

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Tears of all descriptions spilled from Caeso's eyes as he beheld his brother in the flesh. Primarily: joy that he was by some miracle still alive, shock and sorrow that he was here, now, the final part to an adversarial trinity worse than anything even his darkest nightmares could conjure.

"Not you too," Caeso breathed, his eyes locked to Quinctus's own. "Not you too..."

He knew when Soleil attacked him in the carriage that he had felt something familiar in his magic being used against him. What Caeso didn't know was what Quinctus had kept secret, as Initiates often did with certain details of their magic: that he could imbue stones, amulets, metal ornaments, with the properties of his magic, that of disruption, which was used on Caeso, and of absorption and mimicry, which was used on Joel Schmidt. Alice had been cleanly removed as a witness by the latter, and Caeso subdued by the former: this part of the plan that Soleil and Quinctus had come up with together.

Sabian continued then, resuming his pacing back-and-forth behind Quinctus. "I thought it was you, Caeso. I thought that you had fulfilled the prophecy, and so I fully embraced you then...could you not tell from my letters? Pah. Imagine, now, my shock when it came to pass that Quinctus found me years later. He told me everything, Caeso. How Proctor Malaneaux set you both up to fight. How your battle went. But where you faltered, Quinctus endured. He clung to life, nursed himself back to health, found contacts in exile, that Archon Gilram's lot, and planned. He never gave up. Do you not see, Caeso? Your battle...isn't finished. It has been going on for almost five years now."

"And all this while," Quinctus said, "you have only gotten weaker, and I have only gotten stronger."

Sabian huffed in bitter amusement. "Weak. Just like Vel Anir itself now, what with this paltry Rebellion allowing the rabble to scavenge for whatever undeserved power they so desire. And what's worse? Even mighty House Virak has fallen, led now as it is by that pitiful Elise Virak with her barren womb. The time has come for House Diemut to seek its fortunes elsewhere, in a place where nobility still maintains its proper, lustrous standing: the Empire. To that end, I have quietly moved as many assets as I can to Annuakat, liquidated the rest, and will leave those fool cousins of ours who do not follow me with nothing. All this has been done...yet there is still one last thing to do upon Anirian soil."

Quinctus smirked with victory at long last his to grasp. "We must settle the portent."

"Quinctus..." Caeso said, shivering with cold and his skin now of a more horrid pale.

"What was it that I told you?" Quinctus said, stepping forward, coming close and now directly face-to-face with Caeso. "What was...the last...thing...I said to you...before you threw me off of that cliff?"

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso and Quinctus, all in the room hushed and still save for them, their whispered words and tiny motions.

"Quinctus...you are my brother."

"I know."

"We are family."

"Yes, we are."

"Things...are not as they were before." A wretched gasp. "You can return to the Academy...we can return to the Academy...we can graduate...together."

"I do not think that's possible, brother."

"It is!" Caeso begged, what fading strength he had he poured into those words and even then they barely reached above those whispers. "You don't know, brother, because you have not seen it...but I have! The very Initiates you knew, that we knew...you would scarcely recognize many of them. It is possible. Change, is possible. The future can be so much more than the past..."

A shivering breath, and then, of all people, he quoted Zael Castomir. "It starts with us, Quinctus. It starts with us..."

Quinctus said nothing for a time. And then, "Do you believe that?"

His answer, now made sincere after his unexpected confession and heart-to-heart with Everleigh Ebersol, spoken as on all corners of his awareness mortality, weakness, closed in, "Yes. I do. I truly do."

Another pause. "Even after all of this? All that I have done to you?"

"Yes...because you are my brother...and I love you."

Quinctus studied him. Studied him for a long moment. And then he closed the distance, reached out, accepted his brother Caeso, bound as he was to the X-rack, into an embrace. Quinctus spoke his response into Caeso's ear.

"...A pity that I do not feel the same."

The knife slipped cleanly into Caeso's chest, piercing his heart, arresting his breath. And as the dark descended to smother his senses, the last thing Caeso Diemut saw was the glow of Soleil Verdane's eyes, burning like a pair of callous suns in a celestial sea of everlasting midnight.

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Soleil smiled.

Smiled as Quinctus pulled back. As Caeso's head hung without life. As Sabian opened wide his arms and declared, "My son...my...true son," and embraced Quinctus. Her longstanding desire, fulfilled at last, washed over her a tide of satisfaction, yes.

But she wasn't finished yet. This, here with Caeso, was merely revenge.

And what she had planned for Vel Anir itself, however, was much more grand.

Kor would know, wouldn't he?

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Patience, that deadly attribute, bid Soleil to simply smile and wait her turn as Sabian and Quinctus went through their small celebration. Sabian had produced a wine bottle, in fact the same two hundred year old vintage Caeso had told Lumen about, and opened it. He had poured himself and Quinctus a glass (and did not even out of politeness offer Soleil a glass, though she cared nothing about this); together they toasted.

Finally, Sabian turned his attention onto Soleil. "And as for you, Soleil Verdane, this concludes our business arrangement as negotiated with the esteemed 'Mr. Green.' Well done."

Quinctus was equally pleased. "Know that you will always have a friend in us. If ever you should find yourself in Annuakat, do not hesitate to seek us out."

Sabian smirked. "In our new Diemut Estate." And then he drank to the ruination of House Diemut here in Vel Anir. Could House Virak prop the remainder of his Diemut relatives, those whom he did not include in his exodus plan, back up? Would they? Pah. It was no longer his problem, now was it?

"Deal done," Soleil said. "But now? New deal. Ready?"

Sabian took on a quizzical, even a slightly suspicious expression. "A new deal? What is this?"

But Quinctus was far more intrigued, having more closely worked with Soleil during the capture of his brother and being more appreciative of the girl's methods (and adherence to the Old Way). He held up his free hand, petitioning for a moment from his father, who granted it with an allowing nod of his head. "Go on," Quinctus said.

Soleil flicked her eyes to Caeso's corpse. "Simple. We use that. Use for great effect. Vel Anir? Weak. Like you said." She didn't exactly care about this point per se, not in the way Sabian did, but using someone's own arguments, siding with them whether in whole or in part (fallaciously or not), was an effective tool of persuasion. "Anirians see this? Change everything. All blame shifted."

"What precisely do you mean?" Sabian asked.

And Soleil told him.

Sabian thus found himself of two minds, and visibly so. He adored the essence of the Initiate's plan, for he was given to more staunch Vel Luin sensibilities himself, but a pragmatic side of him persisted. "We are set to leave tonight for the Empire, to simply let everything be pinned on that Crentor girl. This...this plan, it's an unnecessary risk."

"Or..." Quinctus started deferentially, "...this will provide for us the perfect cover. Allowing Alice Crentor to take the fall is...undefined, at best. The Vigilite, military inquiries, they won't be able to make a direct connection; they'll just know that she was the last person seen with Caeso. Potentially damning, but not solid."

Soleil pointed a casual finger to Quinctus, supporting him because he supported her plan. "Clever."

"Soleil's idea isn't any more solid. There still isn't a direct connection they can draw."

"There doesn't need to be, Father."

Sabian, in that moment, slowly started to realize what his true son was saying. A smile played itself out across his lips, he couldn't help it, and then he drank luxuriously from his glass of wine.

Soleil made a popping sound with her lips. "True Anirians will show. There are many. Republic? Forced to give in."

Quinctus added to it, "And all the precision for blame will be lost in the rage. It won't matter who, exactly, did it. It'll only matter that 'they' did it."

In the end, those Vel Luin sensibilities won out. Though Sabian was leaving Vel Anir for better fortunes elsewhere in the multi-cultural Empire, still he would carry said sensibilities with him. And, facts faced, he would always have something of a soft spot for his homeland—Viraks were just like that. "I suppose I could put on a show and 'grieve' for a day. Quinctus, you have my blessing to help Soleil with what she needs, but then you must make yourself unseen and unheard until it is time for our final departure."

"Yes, Father."

Soleil trilled her tongue, and fissures in her flesh opened and descended down her face like excited little waves and sealed again.

"Tomorrow? One of many."

Quinctus, slightly bemused, entertained her. "One of many what?"

And Soleil's airy smile became a smirk.

"Wars to come."