24: Transmutation
Who am I? Where did I come from? What are these powers of mine? What am I meant to do with them?
Phantasia floated through the white light, lost in her thoughts, her senses frazzled.
Is it really the will of my people to eradicate humans? Will I be forced to follow my destiny no matter what I think? Am I really causing my friends more harm than good?
She felt the serpent on her shoulder – the memento of Dionysus – tingle, and she remembered the kind prince with his distant, seeking eyes and sad smile, and some of the things he’d once told her.
“I do not think it matters who you are, or where you came from, just so long as you are you,”
“I will not give up trying to find an answer, but the last thing I want is to lose you, Princess. You have changed me.”
“Sometimes I think you’re as much a corruptive influence on us as humans are! I wouldn’t be who I am today were it not for you,”
What is he trying to tell me? That, after all this searching, it doesn’t matter who I am? It doesn’t matter whether my powers are for good or evil?
Wotan’s words came back to her.
“The nature of the power isn’t what’s important; it’s how you make use of that power.”
Why is everything so complicated? I don’t know what’s right or wrong, good or evil, light or dark! Everyone tells me something different!
More memories flowed through her head, memories of her fears given form by the leansídhe masquerading as Dionysus…
“What’s the matter? What happened to that rebellious faerie I knew? The one who was determined to prove herself to everyone? Has she finally been defeated? Has she finally given up, knowing that she is a freak of nature? Has she fallen so far as to associate with mundane humans in the hopes of carving out an identity? Is this all that remains of Phantasia Celeste, the girl I called ‘sister’?”
Memories of Faye…
“I find your behaviour illogical and offensive. You eschew conventions and formulate ideals outside reasonable thought. That is why I am intrigued by you. I wish to see where your unique path will lead.”
And, finally, the figure who sent her here in the first place: the armoured stranger at the World Axis…
“Go there, and understand everything.”
How many people have tried to control me? How many people have tried to tell me who I am? And since when did I let myself be controlled, used and manipulated? I never cared before! I always did things my way! I’m…
The light was sucked away, leaving Phantasia floating in the bleak twilight – everything from the church she’d been in, from the throne room above to the flat ground below, had vanished. A perfect sphere had been carved out of the physical world leaving a smooth crater in the earth and open sections of the manor all around. Above her she could see the magic had dissolved a chunk from the base of the clock tower and, soon after the ethereal light had faded, the physical force of gravity took its toll. The tower creaked towards the crater at first, then came crashing down in a rain of stone and steel. Phantasia shot backwards to avoid the skeletal structure as it piled into the crevice, dragging down the surrounding floors of the manor with it, and escaped to the former-courtyard now turned crater’s edge. As the destruction slowed to the occasional cracking of slates and settling or girders she approached the edge of the pit and looked for signs of Yokai or the Patriarch. The Fire faerie had melted her way through the rubble and now stood atop the ruins like a victorious warrior – no doubt, like the rest of her kind, she would take full responsibility for the victory.
The Patriarch, however, was not in such good shape. From her analysis, Phantasia had concluded Wotan’s magic had only affected physical matter, leaving herself and Yokai untouched and the Patriarch struggling to maintain a material anchor because – as she was sure he was aware – losing that advantage left him in a precarious situation with someone like her around!
And somehow he had managed it – but only just.
