-Maya Angelou [2]

The sight before John was so unexpected that he actually didn’t know how to respond to it; he awkwardly swayed on his feet, mouth half-open for words that couldn’t quite form. He wasn’t sure whether to feel threatened, confused, or simply pleased to see that his return was not met with an immediate accosting by hostile Order followers. Seras seemed the same way, falling in behind John and going silent as she stared at the older man.

“If you’re afraid of an unseen poison,” Lord Brighton began, purposefully grasping John’s glass, “then don’t be. This is 1964 Glenlivet Scotch whiskey from the so-called ‘Winchester Collection’; there have only ever been a hundred bottles released, and I wouldn’t dare waste a bottle with such crude methods as poison.

Lord Brighton casually downed the glass he had poured for John, then proceeded to very overtly pour two new glasses again, making a show of proving that he was not performing any sleight of hand tricks or otherwise disturbing the bottle as he poured from it.

“I have to admit, I didn’t picture you as a man who knew his liquors,” John said, slowly beginning to step toward the seat offered to him. Lord Brighton replaced the stopper in the bottle and lifted up his half-filled glass, this time taking a far more measured and controlled pace as he sipped at the brownish fluid.

“Not an inaccurate judgement. I do not often trifle with such matters - a Warden Lord, even an ex-Warden Lord, should always be prepared to defend his castle. In an area of the Abyss as wild and untamed as most of the Americas are, doing otherwise is foolhardy… but when the occasion calls for it, if I must truly risk what could be my last drink, I insist on it being one worth dying for. Have a taste; it’s not my favorite, but I will admit a bit of elitism in enjoying drinking something so rare. There are some merchants in the Abyss skilled at chronomancy who can age a cask of wine or a barrel of whiskey by decades with enough time and mana spent, but it’s rare to find one who puts real thought and effort into the distillation and makes something worthwhile on its own. Spirits are one of the few things that magic doesn’t make any easier to perfect.”

“I don’t feel like you brought me here just to talk about the difficulties of finding a quality drink in the Abyss,” John said quietly, slowly stepping toward the table. “Besides, you know I’m not legal to drink, right?”

“Well, what about her?" Lord Brighton said, nodding toward Seras. He pulled an empty glass from somewhere under the table, placing it gently on the reddish woods of the table and filling it up. Seras eyed it but made no immediate move toward it, remaining silent as she always seemed to around Moira or her father. "Despite her insistence on remaining silent around myself and my daughter, I would not dare forget to offer a guest proper refreshment. Being completely honest, it isn’t for you, though you’re welcome to partake. It is… preferable that I have someone else to take some from me, when discussing the matters at hand.”

That caught John’s attention - he couldn’t hide the concern or shock that lit up his face then. Lord Brighton had expressed quite a bit of disapproval for both his own actions and Moira’s, but neither his creations nor the war itself seemed haunting enough to **** Lord Brighton into drinking to deal with facing reality.

“Ah, and like that, you’re lost,” the older man said, chuckling to himself. “This isn’t about your creations, John Newman. Despite Moira’s… perhaps valid but certainly exaggerated concerns, your harpy is less powerful than your vampire, no matter what innate magics her race may possess, and she’s certainly shown no hostility toward humanity itself. Don’t think I appreciate anyone threatening my daughter, though."

“S-sorry,” John muttered, taking his seat and lowering his eyes, “she’s very loyal, but I’ll try to work on her temper.” Seras sat down beside him, looking properly abashed, perhaps suspecting Lord Brighton somehow knew of her vague threats to the Warden despite her never being around for them.

“I’m having much the same issue,” Lord Brighton sighed, shaking his head and working toward finishing another glass. “For the thing I wished to discuss is Moira herself. I know her disposition must vex you; I’ve watched your relationship with her as of late, and since you revealed your creations to her, it has been perhaps the shakiest since the moment she dragged you into my study.”

“You can say that again,” John groaned, eyeing the glass in front of himself. Curiosity itched at him to taste the apparently quite refined liquid, but John could not justify doing so - especially since he wasn’t entirely convinced this wasn’t a test or to get him to let his guard down. “But if she’s making a big deal out of it, surely there must be a reason? You’ve barely even talked to me since I confessed to Moira - why have you not voiced any concerns?”

“I have few of those, at least regarding your creatures. Demons, elementals, the occasional altered human, whether willingly or otherwise… there are supernatural creatures in this world, few and far between as they may be. None have yet challenged humanity for its dominance over this world. As bloodthirsty as humanity might be at times, and as cruel as our worst elements are, perhaps that would not be the worst that could happen after all…”

Lord Brighton’s eyes grew dark for a few moments as he dwelled upon a thought John could not read in him. He sipped heavily from his glass until it was empty and then did not speak again until he was in the process of removing the stopper from the bottle once more.

"Bah, my pessimism is not your concern. The reason I have not spoken to you is because I have no concerns, but it is not my place to interfere in her judgement. She is my daughter, and I may guide her, but she is my Warden now too and I cannot dare question or confront her decisions when they are final. If she does not seek my advice, I cannot give it too forcefully without overstepping my bounds. I fear she no longer asks for my advice because she already knows what I will say - and she does not wish to hear it. It's nothing short of a work of Gaia that I was able to convince her to allow me to speak to you when you returned - I had to play upon her insecurities and lack of faith in her own strength, John Newman. I expect you to respect what kind of cruelty that takes from a father."

"I do, but… you can't question your Warden? What if she ordered you to do something completely insane, like imprison all of Springfield, or kill a bunch of babies? Following a strong leader is one thing, but unquestioning obedience can't possibly end well when someone unfit takes the reins, or when someone loses their ability to lead."

Lord Brighton's glass was half-emptied again already, and he did not meet John's eyes for a long while as he idly swirled the whiskey around for his entertainment. When he did eventually manage to tear his eyes away, a bittersweet smile crossed his lips.

"I feel the same, now… but that realization came far too late. A broken traitor is not the man one needs to break centuries of tradition."

"Traitor?"

"To many ideals… and some men," Lord Brighton mysteriously elaborated, finishing the rest of his glass in a single, long swig. "Would you like to know why my daughter is so against the idea of your creatures? Why she takes such precautions and offense at the mere idea of otherworldly creatures, and to some extent why she is so wary around yourself and the Gorbachev?"

"Yes, please," John said, willing to ignore the sudden shift of topics if it meant that he would be able to learn a bit more about why Moira was the way that she was.

"I don't know how much Moira has explained to you about the Golden Rose, but it's hereditary, in some manner of speaking," Lord Brighton began, hands twitching slightly as he opened the bottle once more. "The first Wardens were all women of great character and immense heart. When their thirst for battle waned and their desires to live a normal life eventually rose up, their husbands took their place and the mantles of the Roses. When they had children - daughters, always daughters - the children were eventually gifted with the Roses themselves, and they took up the fight that their parents had left them.

"This continued for generations, since times of myth and legend, and eventually resulted in the formation of the Order of the Golden Rose as it is known today. There have always been three Wardens, and there will always be three Wardens, so long as Gaia looks down upon us and blesses us with her gifts. As you can infer from this, I was once a Warden - and so, too, was Moira's mother."

John's shock must have been evident, but Lord Brighton did not comment on it as John attempted to sputter out a response.

"Moira's mother was… a Warden? But… she's gone, isn't she? How could anyone kill a Warden? Moira's only eighteen, but she's so strong."

"Yes, she is…" There came, again, a moment of separation between Lord Brighton and John Newman. The older ex-Warden's vision was focused on something not there, lost between the grains and lines in the wooden table they sat at. "…and her mother was stronger yet. One of the greatest, a woman truly like no other, yet she is no longer with us. A gaping wound lies within all she touched where no other has yet proved worthy of falling into place. None of us - not the Order, not Moira, and certainly not myself - have been able to replace her, and to this day we all feel the sorrow of her loss."

"But if this is related to why Moira hates me… is she afraid of me? Does she think I'll…" John let his thought trail off, realizing that it sounded too ridiculous to voice. Despite his self-assurance that the idea was absurd, Lord Brighton only nodded gravely.

"I'm aware that Moira did not discuss much of the Abyss with you before you revealed your talents and caused her to distance herself and delay further training… did she ever tell you about Infernals?"

"Uh… sounds familiar, but not to the Abyss. Something to do with demons, I'm guessing?"

The gray-haired man nodded, leaning forward on the table, his eyes now locked with John's. "Demons are formed by rare circumstances, mostly revolving around magic tainted by negative emotions. Slaying a necromancer in the middle of a conjuring, or a blood mage while he makes a sacrifice… or, heaven forbid, being a mage who is sacrificed, are all possible ways a demon can be created. They're not technically human, despite their origins - they're merely magical anomalies created by magic conjured but given no purpose, sentient by fluctuations in the fabric of reality that are difficult - if not entirely impossible - to reliably reproduce."

"Manifestations of negative emotions? That doesn't sound that far off from the legends. Most are about human souls being twisted, or about physical embodiments of evil, as far as I know."

"Indeed. The curse of mortals to forget is not perfect and often seems fickle. Remnants sometimes remain - perhaps horrors too terrifying to ever truly be rid of. Many of these remain as legends and myths, the tales told to children before bed to keep them well-behaved."

"Interesting… so what about Infernals?"

"As with most forms of magic, demons can be controlled… to a point. As sapient beings, they have a great deal more influence over their own existence and use than, say, the mana you utilize in one of your spells, particularly when they are in a physical form. However, they are not immune to being summoned, banished, forcibly manifested, diminished, disseminated, or dealt with in myriad ways, no matter how difficult those rituals may prove or how powerful the mage must be to do so. The most dangerous method of utilizing a demon is to conjure one, and the most foolish… is to do so within one's own body."

"They… they summon a demon inside of themselves?" John asked, eyes wide.

The glass in Lord Brighton's hand cracked abruptly, a long line forming on the side. The thick glass mostly held together, but the red-headed older man swore all the same as he realized how powerfully he had been gripping it. Mumbling under his breath, Lord Brighton tapped the glass twice, and the lost shards quickly replaced themselves, forming together and sealing the opaque crack once more, leaving no sign that it had ever been damaged at all.

"Yes, they do. It is a tactic utilized only a handful of times in history, and never - to our knowledge, at least - has it been done without losing one's soul. Demons are magic, chaos incarnate at its core. The Abyss is the essence of uncontrollable randomness, which is what makes your creations and their stability so unique and so frightening. Demons can be manipulated, both physically and spiritually, but they can never be fully controlled. Every mage that has ever conjured a demon into their own body has lost their life, their mind, or both. They become shells of humans. Most enter a vegetative state, with no mind left to control their own body. Others are driven into killing frenzies or simply go mad, forgetting their goals - even the reason why they conjured the demon in the first place."

"That sounds horrifying," John gasped. "What happened to make Moira hate them so?"

"There was a man, many years ago. He was a dangerous man, one skilled with pyromancy and intimately familiar with all the subtle and unique ways one could cause pain and suffering without being in danger of letting one's prisoner die. He was hired by a faction the Order was engaged in a lengthy skirmish with - a now-defunct organization known as the 'Royal Inheritors'. A vain name for a foolish group of people, but they called enough to their name that they were difficult to exterminate. This man was hired for the sole purpose of torturing our captured Order Knights, attempting to glean information about our structure and plans."

"Did he… did he **** someone important to Moira?"

The question fell in a pause, brought about by the awkwardness John felt as Lord Brighton eyed his newest glass and downed it in a single swig. The man showed no signs of intoxication save for his glassy eyes, but it was difficult to tell how much of that was from the ****. More than anything, an aura of sadness was creeping over the man, like nothing John had ever seen.

"You could say that," Lord Brighton whispered, his voice rising only as he began to pour another glass. The bottle was fancy, and John knew nothing about tolerances or **** content, but the bottle was half empty, and considering that the only glasses poured besides his own were John's untouched cup and the glass Seras had just begun nervously sipping at, he doubted that was a healthy amount.

"Truthfully, we had little interest in the man at first. Our Knights were already being tortured, and we were already determined to rescue them - the only difference in his hire was what degree to which we had to prepare for the ****. We ended up capturing him at one of the Inheritors' strongholds after rescuing a half-dozen of our scarred and traumatized Knights. If it were up to me, I would have slaughtered him on the spot; the Inheritors had already declared war despite their inferior numbers and lasted as long as they had only through burning bridges and utilizing the most ruthless tactics we'd seen in some years. Anyone willing to join them - especially one so casually torturing my own men - was someone I did not intend to let live. But Moira's mother…"

Lord Brighton smiled, perhaps the deepest one John had ever seen the man make. His eyes glanced somewhere over John's shoulder, and the frantic pace at which he had been inebriating himself slowed only briefly.

"She was something else. The Blessing of the Golden Rose grants physical strength and mental fortitude, but nothing like the unbridled resilience and optimism of that woman. She believed in the goodness of man, the purity at the core of every person's soul. During our interrogation and debriefing of the captured enemies from that raid, including the young man, she was told that he was an Abyssal orphan. He claimed his parents were sacrificed in a ritual to empower a blade with the ability to carve flesh without touching armor, to sever limbs through any magical shield."

"She was 'told'? He 'claimed'?" John asked, curious as to Lord Brighton's obvious word choice. The man smiled bitterly, a deep scowl consuming his visage.

"Later, I would learn how misled we were. How the boy had burned his parents alive while practicing his abilities, how he'd grown up a wealthy urchin of society, paying his room and board atop a mound of corpses. If he were a mere mortal, he'd have been a sociopath, perhaps a serial killer at worst. In the Abyss he became a mercenary, and his body count did not stop growing until we finally captured him. But that came later. At the time, my blessed wife… she believed him worth saving, and so she tried until the very end."

"The… end?"

"She had a plan for him. Most of his **** techniques, his combat spells, even his mundane methods of rapid transportation utilizing Phloom Networks were based on fire. My beloved cut him a deal - if he would embrace a magical seal designed to inhibit Pyromancy, she would release him from our custody and provide a modest home for him, that he might start over without the burdens of his past. He thanked her but asked for some time to consider his choices."

John's heart started to race before he was fully aware of what he was feeling. His adrenaline surged and a shadow fell across the room - there was nothing that John could see, nothing for him to observe, but a shadow like **** itself fell across the room, and John could hardly conceal the fear that overwhelmed him in waves of **** survival instinct. Lord Brighton didn't seem to notice, too consumed in some long-abandoned memory. The glass in his hand shattered again, but his gauntleted fist made no notice of it as he continued to squeeze long past the point of cracking, until nothing remained in the metallic grip of his armor except slowly-fracturing shards of glass.

"He was lying, as he always was. As he did until the end. He had been playing us for mercy, hoping that we might spare him the execution we had given to so many others among the Inheritors. When it became clear that the only way we could trust him to leave our custody was to surrender his most powerful magics - that which gave him his infamy and the thrill only pain and suffering could grant such a twisted being - he grew ****. We have many ways of restricting magic and had infinitely more when we resided in the British Isles, but most were focused around the individual. Sealing away all forms of magic is nearly impossible, and we did not expect the kind of **** we faced then. At night, perhaps as part of an ill-formed escape plan, the young lad freed himself from his cell and found his way into one containing another of the Inheritors. With a blood sacrifice and the **** of that former soldier, that devil of a man conjured a demon… and embraced it fully."

Lord Brighton's glass had been reduced to dust long before he finished his sentence, but he showed no notice, and his knuckles did not relent. His eyes shifted to John, accusing and yet sorrowful, angry yet regretful, unrelenting in their deep and tumultuous emotions.

"Whatever demon he conjured was beyond the ability of our men to hold. He slaughtered a dozen of our Knights watching over the prison and tore through our compound without regard for life or limb. By all accounts, he should have bled out a half-dozen times from the wounds inflicted, but as literally a man possessed, he continued on until he reached the inner workings of the Brighton Manor as it was in those days. I… he must have known, must have had some way of gathering information about the war. I was decimating the leadership of the Inheritors that very night, rending their armies apart under the fury of the full might of the British Order. If she had still been the Warden, or if I had been there, if I had any way of standing between them…"

Lord Brighton's face remained as grave as ever, but his eyes were pools of forgotten sorrows welling to the surface. Without so much as a sniffle or a thoughtless blink, the bluish-gray of his irises became obscured in despair as a long trail was forged from eye to chin, his gaze never wavering from John's face now.

"He trapped Moira's mother in our bedroom, our most sacred of homes. Killed nearly two-dozen of our finest Knights on his way, and when he got there, he detonated himself. Whatever frenzy he'd been driven into, whatever madness consumed him, it was a suicidal and reckless fury. The explosion of the demon's energies and his own mana combining destroyed almost a fifth of our Manor, killed another five Knights rushing to rescue my wife, and… and…"

A shuddering sigh escaped the man then, and for a moment John saw the history in his face. Lord Brighton had few signs of aging - his wrinkles, skin tone, and hairline all pointed to a relatively youthful man, perhaps far younger than the parent of a woman well into her young adulthood should have appeared. But there were two things that aged Lord Brighton more than anything - the scars upon his face, scattered as they were, and the weight behind his eyes. A weight that had never been more apparent to John than in that moment.

"And how, exactly, do you explain that to your daughter? That her mother died believing in a purity and wholeness that was never there, that her light - the very thing that drove my young Moira to become a better woman that she might one day become a better Warden - was gone forever because of some inhuman beast merging with an abnormal stain on this world?"

John wasn't sure which was the man and which was the demon, but Lord Brighton paid no mind. He reached for the bottle of whiskey and then recoiled from it as if burned by the mere idea of it, scowl deepening as his fiery gaze focused again on John.

"I know you are not familiar with the Abyss. I know much of this may not make sense to you… but I had to explain to a mere toddler, someone too young to fully understand even the concept of **** itself, that her mother was gone forever. Taken from her by a creature not of this world and a man who did not belong in it. She grew up knowing that the strongest woman in her life, and the purest being either of us had ever met, was taken from her by something that did not belong here. That magic - dangerous, uncontrollable magic - had forever torn a life away from her she was not even old enough to fully enjoy."

John had no words left to speak. There was no question he could form in that moment that would make it clearer what he was being told, though there were many he still wanted to ask. There was no defense he could make that would justify his actions - because at the end of the day, John finally realized, it wasn't his actions that were on trial. That was why nothing he had done had made Moira trust him, not since he confessed the existence of his creations to her.

"You understand now, don't you?"

Lord Brighton's voice was almost a mockery, but it did not seem to be of John. At long last the older man lifted his hand up, shaking free loose pieces of glass and looking with scorn upon the shattered remnants of his expensive finery.

"That is why Moira has been so suspicious of you, why she trusts nothing you do. The Order has a handful of mages who have innate gifts and some who can do great and terrible things if they are given the free rein to do so. But at the end of the day, you are being confronted by what I could never truly make amends for. You are facing a woman whose first real memory of this world was having one of the purest loves one can have, the love only a child can have for their mother, wrenched away from her by an unnatural abomination. By not bending the knee to her, by treating your creations as if they were people… you are saying that their lives are worth more to you than hers."

"More than her mother’s," John wheezed, voice barely audible.

"You'll find, in time, she holds some disdain for any mage with an innate talent for almost that reason. Learned magic she can gain knowledge of, can counter, can control. Things like the Gorbachevs and your Gamer abilities? Those are often beyond what we can even measure, much less fully comprehend. The Abyss is a great and terrible place, one in which we are often confronted by things we must learn to live with, if not fully understand. Moira has never afforded herself that luxury. What she cannot understand, she must control. What she cannot control…"

"She will destroy."

John said the words simply despite the dire implications. Lord Brighton nodded gravely, grasping for the bottle on the table. For the first time since John's arrival, the weary man stood from his chair, striding toward the door. His steps faltered, but only for an instant - a sway, a single step out of place, was all the prideful man allowed himself as he marched toward the door.

"I have reminded her - not for the first time - of your role in saving her life and of the guilt you so obviously felt at taking a life. I believe for the time she will not do anything except watch you more closely. But I will warn you, John Newman, that, if she believes you to be a true threat, there is an emotionally scarred young woman lurking within my beautiful daughter's mind that may drive her to horrifying lengths to protect those she cares about. You are walking a path none of us know the end to… and more than anything else, more than the Cabal or even the Albidian Society, that terrifies Moira. Tread lightly and know yourself as well as you now know her."

With that Lord Brighton strode from the room, his metallic boots clanking for several steps further before John eventually lost the sound of them over the beating of his heart. It wasn't until the noise had entirely subsided that Seras leaned over, gazing into his eyes and speaking the first real words she had dared since Lord Brighton began his conversation with her.

"Master, I don't… I haven't been around for much, but… what do you wanna do about all this?"

"You know, you could have jumped in at any point, but the first thing you speak up about is asking me what to do? I don't know," John sighed, shaking his head at Seras' inconvenient choice of times to speak up. "What the hell can I do? All this time I've been thinking Moira's just paranoid, but… what the actual fuck can I do about her mother dying years ago? That's the kind of trauma that…"

John let a low shout of frustration escape him, clutching his head in his hands and slamming his palms into his forehead for a brief moment.

"Maybe there's nothing to be done. I'm looking for easy answers, but if her own father can't shake her free of this mistrust that has gripped her, what chance do I have? I'm just some dumbass mage she met a little over a week ago who is basically everything she hates. Maybe there is no easy answer…"

Against his better judgement, John gave into his curiosity. Grabbing the surviving glass John downed it all in a single motion, relishing the burn and pain of it all. It gave him something to feel, something he could focus on and fight instead of the paralyzed fight-or-flight response still running through him at the thought of what Moira must have surely felt every time she gazed upon him or Seras.

"Maybe some things just break people. Maybe they don't get to come back from it, no matter how much they deserve to. But I'm going to help her, either way, because that's the right thing to do. Moira can hate us all she wants… I'm still going to do what's right."