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Opening my eyes, I saw water. It splashed up onto my face, causing me to spit and curse in return. Damnit, Sela! Every time I come back without feeling like I am falling, I end up waking up to some annoying shit. Looking up, I realized that my body had floated onto one of the sidewalls of the canal. Using every bit of strength that I had, I crawled up the short wall of the canal and laid down onto the cobblestone road. My clothes were soaked, it was cold as hell, and I felt like shit. Thankfully, my body had already healed, but a headache began to form along with my built-up fatigue. As I lay there, I couldn’t help but wonder if we had truly won. I couldn’t possibly know the answer from where I was, though. That is, until I saw Iscariot’s old decrepit body jogging toward me, his mage cloak flapping in the cold night air. Stopping a meter or so before me, he fell to his knees where he began coughing and wheezing from a lack of breath.
“I need to get in better shape,” Iscariot said to himself between long deep breaths. Looking at the state I was in, he nodded with a satisfied look. Whether he was glad I wasn’t dead or whether he was just satisfied that I could walk back without help was a mystery to me.
Refusing to get up from where I lay, the headache I had made the idea of standing sickening for the moment. All I could do was roll ever so slightly to look at Iscariot. “Did we win?” I asked with a tired groan.
“Well, you seem fine; and yes, we won,” Iscariot replied as if it were obvious. The sass emanating from this old, out-of-shape man annoyed me to no end, but arguing with him would only make my headache worse.
“Don’t be so sassy with me. I am in a lot of pain,” I snapped harshly. Then I remembered the state that Scott was left in when I passed out.. “Speaking of which, how is Scott?”
“He is in a lot of pain too, but Elysif should be taking care of him now,” Iscariot replied, either forgiving my attitude or ignoring it.
Sitting up with a tired grunt, I gave Iscariot a look as though he should be empathetic to anyone whom Elysif heals. That said, Scott would probably have died otherwise. “Good, then I better get over there.”
Iscariot helped me up and the two of us walked back toward Scott and Elysif. My clothes dripped considerably as we did. It was annoying, as the damp clothes stuck to my skin, causing me to slowly chaff in areas that no one wants to chaff in. As we arrived, Iscariot and I found that they were in a very strange set of circumstances, where Scott was writhing on the ground in obvious pain while Elysif stood above him as if she were taking notes on the effects. I was starting to think that Elysif was even more sadistic than I'd thought. She would be the type of person who would poke a dead body with a stick for fun.
“Is he okay?” I asked cautiously as we approached. Elysif turned towards me with a gratefully happy expression.
“He’s fine, the medicine is just taking a bit longer to work through his system, is all. He'll be in pain for the next few minutes, but it will heal up his organ damage. The broken bones are a separate issue,” Elysif replied, looking back at Scott who was currently hissing through his teeth in the fetal position.
“Oh, I see… Where is the masked man?” I asked, realizing that I had yet to see a corpse.
“Over there,” she answered as she pointed at the bridge. A trail of blood seeped down the edge of the bridge and into the canal but I couldn’t see a body. He may be dead but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Wandering onto the bridge, I couldn’t believe it. Before me were the decapitated remains of the masked man.
All I could do was stand above his corpse before finally lifting the mask from his head. I just wanted to see what he looked like underneath the mask. Just who was it that wanted to use me so badly and tortured me for weeks? I found that it was the face of an old man. He had tears staining his cheeks and his wrinkled skin was cold and rubbery, as if he had been dead for a while. All the hair on his face was white and looked as if it hadn’t been trimmed in months.
On the backside of the mask, though, I noticed something. A set of runes or sigils, perhaps? Nothing else, though. “Hey, Iscariot. What do these runes mean?” I asked, throwing him the mask. With a poor excuse of an attempt, he barely caught it, studied it for a moment, and his eyes grew wide.
“This marking is nicknamed the puppet master. It allows one to control a body, living or dead, from anywhere. There is also a transference rune in here, which allows someone with the same rune to trade places with the person who has this rune,” Iscariot answered whilst shaking the mask as if it were an eviction notice. In a disgruntled manner, he sat down against the wall of a building.
“Which means someone else was controlling the person we were fighting this whole time… or possibly switched with the old guy before getting killed,” Elysif added with a disappointing realization.
Upon her saying this, Scott sat up slowly but without pain. Without any hesitation or self-control, he drank some of the contents of his flask before speaking. “Great, so we aren’t done.” His tone and expression made him seem far better than he did a second ago. Though, with that kind of pain, anything would have been an improvement.
“Oh good, the medicine has finally finished working,” I said, ignoring his statement out of the hope that if I didn’t acknowledge it, it wouldn’t come to pass. Scott gave me an annoyed look.
“Hey, fuck you,” Scott said to me before taking another swig from his flask.
“Hey, I got my ass kicked too,” I said as if that were something to be proud of. The only thing it did though was make Elysif snicker at me. She knew I had been beaten to hell but I could heal myself so she found my comment rather humourous despite it not being funny.
“Yeah, but all your wounds are healed, while I have several broken bones that will have to heal naturally,” Scott replied angrily.
“Sucks to be you,” I replied with a monotone voice that sent Scott over the edge. However, he couldn't do anything about it, because he was at least two meters from me with various bone injuries.
“Don’t talk to your superior like that,” Scott yelled before taking another swig of his flask with a more dramatic flair.
“He is right, though,” Elysif said, agreeing with me. Iscariot shook his head. Mainly, he did so due to the fact that he didn’t see the fight itself, and saw that I was basically unhurt.
Scott gave Elysif a shocked and betrayed look. “Not you too, Elysif?” Though his expression quickly shifted to that of someone having an epiphany. “Actually, you have always been an ass, so never mind,” Scott said, finishing his train of thought before letting out a defeated sigh.
After we finished our little conversation, Iscariot held the mask up. “So what do you have to say? I know you can speak through this mask still,” Iscariot asked the mask itself with a satisfyingly smug voice. We had no idea what he was talking about but we all looked at the mask he held in anticipation.
“... I guess you are much smarter than I first thought. However, had Sir Micheal not appeared, all but the time lord would be dead and I would have forced him to take me back in time already.” The mask said in a detestable voice that reminded me of an old 1960s radio voice-over.
“So are you going to come after us or are you just going to send more puppets?” I asked in a threatening voice despite being terrified of knowing the answer.
“I am not sure yet, but I can assure you that your lives will not be easy from here on out,” the mask stated with an equally threatening tone. Unlike my own, his voice had no sign of fear or regret embedded within.
“As if it were easy before,” Scott replied with a haughty expression.
“Well, if you know of hell, then you are about to meet the devil. You should expect something soon,” the voice said before a large crack split down the center of the mask. Continuing like a tree branch, the crack spread out over the entirety of the mask, which came crumbling out of Iscariot’s hand in a thousand tiny pieces.
We were all silent. None of us had any idea what our next step was gonna be. We were just waiting again, waiting for anything to happen. The feeling of anticipation ached, and it seemed like everyone else felt the same. We were useless in the fight and we had to rely on someone that was considered an enemy of the Table to clean up our mess. How exactly were we going to get out of another attack alive? I sure as hell didn’t know.
“We should probably just go home for now,” Elysif finally said to break the silence. All of us just nodded in agreement.
Seeing all of our reactions, Scott looked back and forth between each of us as if searching for something. “Now, will one of you help me up? I may be hurting with broken bones, but both my legs are fine… somehow.”
“Sure,” I said, helping him to his feet. Once he was standing, Scott held his left arm at a ninety-degree angle with his right hand and the four of us began heading back home.
“Wait, what about the body? We can’t just leave it there” Iscariot asked. He had a good point, so we stopped and pondered our options.
“Chuck it in the canal. Nature will do its thing,” Scott replied without a care in the world.
“Seems a little disrespectful,” Elysif noted. I wasn’t for being disrespectful of the dead but this corpse was different. It could be buried in shit for all I cared, so I charged over to the body to throw it in the canal myself.
“Says the girl who dissects people all the time,” Scott replied jokingly, not realizing that I had wandered off.
Elysif, also unaware that I was currently assessing how best to lift the body without drenching my already wet clothes in blood, gave Scott an angry look. “It is a medical examination, and it is for science!” It was obvious that that comment got on her nerves, but Scott wore a smug grin that he was trying to hide from her by sipping on his flask.
“And isn’t the circle of life part of Science?” Scott asked, trying to push her a bit more. This time, instead of getting mad, she pondered his remark. Iscariot also pondered this, but was distracted by me throwing the man's head like a basketball free-throw into the canal. Scott and Elysif, on the other hand, were still blissfully unaware of my current actions, so I began to lift up the body.
“I can’t really argue that,” she finally replied to Scott’s remark, accepting his logic.
“Good, now chuck it in the canal… and let’s go home. I’m tired and I still need my broken bones looked at,” Scott said with a spoiled groan, before he and Elysif turned just in time to see me awkwardly heave the headless body into the river. I have to say that it is much harder to pick up a body when it is dead. It was like if you were to pick someone up, but instead of them helping you by taking some of the weight, they just go full dead fish and give you all the weight.
Turning back around, Scott gave Elysif and Iscariot a satisfied look. “Well, now that that is taken care of, let’s go home.”
ns 15.158.61.20da2
