Fable - Ask To Purvey

[One Eye]

But the darkness was there to greet him. When those eyes did come open. But in flickers and flutters. Thin lines of sight, for the crust of a strange bile formed around the eyes of that most precious being they brought to this dark and dank place. Hidden from the sun. Wet. With a stench of iron and oil and rot.

Metal clanged, as large gears cranked and turned in the distance. The cold staccato of chains, like a melody of ice come to crack.

The sound of water. As if beneath its crushing depths. Every breath a bubble, contained, a sphere, kept together by pressure as it gurgled toward a surface that was not there. The eerie blue light that seemed to diffuse unevenly in the eye. Blinding. Burning. Yet soft all the same. Cold. It took as much as it gave.

Two forms stood before the light. Dark and twisted. Their backs turned toward the glass tank that gurgled with pale cold amnion fluid.

"My, he did do a number on you, didn't he, One Eye?" a small hunched man with an arm made of silvery metal, much like a spider's leg, strung together with silver string alloys that gleamed like blue silk. The hunched goblin of a man, with lenses upon lenses over his eye as his aracnhic hand twidled and danced, knitting silken strands together. "The Killing Light," he little man laughed. "Yes, yes, now, he will kill for us, won't he?"

The One Eyed Archer, being stitched back together, sat upon the cold stone slab. Strange smile across his strange face. His single red eye shut to the world around him as he breathed shallow breaths.

"We will see what comes..."​

---

Art by Dominik Mayer "The Great Synthesis" for MTG

 

[Solon Raye]

Was there any nightmare greater than a night without stars?
Was there any pain greater than loneliness?
In that space, days and nights may have passed and yet...

He dreamed of her.
​

He could barely make out her visage in the sea of flame. Her eyes and locs were obscured by the fire that made up her skin and aura. Whenever she came to see him, he wasn't alone. She wept with him and told him tales in a language he only understood in the depths of his being. She spoke flame in an attempt to light his own. And when his light didn't return, she would weep and wander off into that black void. She didn't know that he could hear her.

All this time... Did she know that he still longed for her.

It was a touch that woke him to an eerie blue light. A touch and a demand to figtht... And yet even though the light had returned to his spirit, his muscles were still weak. A sword arm that had fallen great liches, vampires, werewolves, brigands, warlords, and things indescribable was all but useless. But the fire still burned. In his eyes...

Frantically, they looked about, fighting to see through the crust that had formed around them.​

​

 

[Three Eyes]

A pale hand touched the glass of the amnion tank, withered and scarred.

"Pull him out," commanded a voice, low but feminine. Chains rattled, until they pulled taught, and slowed to a singular clinking sound. The fluid stirred as the tank descended, into depths of machinery below the floor. The man remained, cold lines of wetness flowing off of his form like a robe. The blue lines formed a froth of foam as they slid back into the tank.

The first choking breaths of air would burn for the Killing Light. They always did.

"Light remains in the man," the same voice said. Standing before the tank was a woman clad in white. She lowered her hand, and it disappeared into folds of cloth. "He cannot become a vessel until he is empty... there is still something keeping him tethered."

There was no smile upon the woman's face. Her features, marred by time and bile, were grim set into her emaciated form. Two colorless eyes looked upon the man. The third was closed, a vertical slit upon the woman's brow.

"But that is why you have brought me here, isn't it? To cut that last thread."

One Eye Solon Raye

 

[One Eye]

"That is what you do best, Hierophant," came the sure and distant tone of One Eye, the Archer.

A pounding from the distance. The soft sobs that came through cold iron. A warmth, most fragile and delicate, like light refracted and traced across the hairs of a moths' wings, bathed in the twin moons' light. Far removed from the bright shine of the day's star, but aglow with the memory of it.

A hiss came from the small man with the spidery metal arm. "That wretched child," his voice tightened to a whine. "Why we don't just, pluck her gifts from her, use them," he nod his head in short jittery bobs. "Yes, pluck her gifts and give them to-"

A strong hand snapped up. Its strong fingers wrapped about the small man's throat. A breath choked in his throat. The Archer, whose single eyes was shut to the world, stared on at nothing as his new fingers flexed their strength.

"You have no say in the fate of the Child," the Archer's words were as cold as the new hand that worked tighter around the small man's neck.

A grunt. Struggle to draw in breath. The man with the spidery arm squirmed as his pale face purpled. "Of- course, Arrthun, of-" The hand squeezed tighter. The small man's singular eye bulged further out of his skull.

The Archer released him.

The small man fell to his knees. His flesh hand braced against the floor, as his strange metalic limb clutched at his reddened neck. He drew in breaths desperately.

The Archer rose from the altar he had rested upon. He flexed his new-found arm. Its long boney fingers gleamed steely blue.

The small man coughed, wheezed, gathered himself back up to his feet. "Shall I-" he coughed more. Settled his breath. "Shall I acquire the needle?" he asked.

Three Eyes Solon Raye

 

[Solon Raye]

"But that is why you have brought me here, isn't it? To cut that last thread."
​

"...You had best acquire tough shears, demon..."

The words he spoke broke through his burning lungs. Discomfort was something that he had grown used to. Wise men who begot their knowledge from wise men taught him a valuable lesson. There was no such thing as greatness without adversity. Pain was something he learned to welcome a long time ago. An old friend who would hold his hand gladly as he stepped into the light and became one with it. His body ached and his lungs cried for more air all the same, though. The body could only take so much, but it was Solon's spirit that kept him defiant in the face of the blackness of his foe's evil.

The one with the weakest spirit among his captors had spoke of wanting to pluck the powers from someone... Who? A Child? The Child? Solon attempted to will himself to his feet. He had no sword, but he had his two hands and his own great will. The Killing Light tried to convince himself that he had been in worse situations. There was always a way out. Some incantation to use or some weapon to grab. There was always a throat or a tongue near enough that he could tear asunder from some villain's body. Though the light was still within him, he knew his body was weak. And it would grow weaker the longer they tried to break his will.

Perhaps more than his own safety, Solon knew that the safety of the child was of paramount importance. If they broke him and used him for their own ends, they might have won countless battles. But to use the Child? The war would be over...

And so Solon Raye slowed his breathing and withdrew into himself. He bit his tongue and allowed his mind to do the speaking.

If he reached out to the Child, could she hear him? Could her third eye see more than the two that were blinded?

 

[Three Eyes]

Needles, shears... The three eyed Hierophant sneered at the artless assumptions being made by the men around her.

"Nothing so barbaric. This isn't one of your lifeless dolls, Simon. Such toys will not work on the Killing Light." Teeth flashed in a scowl, jagged as the scars upon her face. She turned her back to the suspended man, her long robes twisting round her ankles as she did so. Watched passively as the Archer tested his new arm out on that maggot of a tinkerer.

Behind her, the prisoner retreated into himself.

Simon, the little man, scrabbled back to his feet and fled the Archer's path. He went to the array that controlled the amnion tank's machinery. That annoying spider-limb clacked over the crystalline surface and glowing runes.

"Perhaps we've been too rough with the Killing Light," Simon said in a cruel tone that made it seem as if he wished he could be rougher. "He's gone unconscious again."

---

The Child was huddled, alone, in a dark place. Her cries stopped and she raised her head from her knees, looking past the iron bars of her cage. In that third place, that dreamscape of the eye and soul, the Child would see Solon Raye. But standing between them was a cold shadow, a silhouette of snowy white that blanketed everything, doused every fire, and silenced every cry of help.

The Heirophant raised her hand against the light of Solon Raye, and the Child cowered behind her.

You flee from me, Flame, right into my own domain.

Solon Raye One Eye

 

[One Eye]

The Child. Mina, of the Trinemorro. She could see with her eyes unclouded. In that space of dreams. In that space of desires. Of the mind. Of the soul. One eye upon the Mud. One eye upon the Ash. As easy as breathing.

Only now, she could hardly breath. So gripped by fear was her heart.

A visage appeared before her, there in the depths of the slumbering mind. Within the un-light of the Loch. Refracted and diffused. Rays of light's memory. Distorted and changed.

A man stood before her. A man at once familiar to her, and strange. There had been another man too. Strong and brave, like this man who shimmered before her. But that man had brought her here.

Another figure appeared. As pale as a ghost. Robes flowing like banners in the currents.

You flee from me, Flame, right into my own domain.

The Child. Mina. She gasped for breath. Fingers dug into the silt of the mire, took hold of it like a cloak, and turned to billowing curls of muck.

Solon Raye Three Eyes

 

[Solon Raye]

In that void, he could see the light from her third eye still. As brilliant as anything Solon had ever seen when he took a step into that layer of the loch. Certainly, he could reach out to her and at the very least carry her consciousness to somewhere safe. Far away from these creatures that could twist her into something horrid. Or use her for some foul purpose that even outside of his own body, Solon shuddered to imagine.

And then that ghost appeared before him, a pale flame with her robes flowing in a wind he could not feel. He was outmatched here. But he would not recoil he would not give up this child's life out of the fear that gripped him. His greatest teachers always told him that fear was natural. Unavoidable. There would be enemies that would seem insurmountable. But he had to push through...

He had to push through....
I will not cower before you, wraith!

He didn't need to vanquish her. The child needed only watch what he did next so that she might do the same. Behind her third eye was the boon she needed to be as bright as any flame. Bright enough to follow him into ash. And so heat began to rise from him as he prepared himself. His own flame was not pale. It burned like the light of a furnace. A different color than the mindstuff that surrounded them.