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Jun 5

Moments of Eternity (ao3: x)

An introspective into the lives of the remaining disciples: the four survivors, and the victor. Spoilers for the whole of TDLC Season 2.

1: CASSANDRA: THE FIRST DISCIPLE (6.7k words)

As Cassandra scattered into the world, her spirit dispersing into the air, everything opened up to her at once. She saw Lapis holding the remnants of her, crying. She saw Dmitriy bent beneath the weight of the two people he was carrying. And Calla, lying there, asleep and bleeding.

She found she understood fate’s design at last. ***

Whatever star Cassandra had been born under, it surely had not been a lucky one.

Her name marked her from the beginning. It meant “shining upon man,” a blessing her mother intended her to keep. But it was also the name of the Trojan princess given the gift of prophecies by Apollo and cursed so that no one would believe her.

Visions would come to Cassandra even before she could speak. However, unlike her namesake, she was free of the curse of never being believed. Her challenge was weaving through the unclear sights pushed upon her to understand what beheld them all.

Opening her eyes, so to speak, rather than finding her voice.

Though her visions were less fully formed images, and more half-sensations brushing against her like smoke slipping through parted fingers. A taste of metal before any wound. The echo of laughter without the face it belonged to. Sometimes, if she was fortunate, the pieces aligned easily. Other times, nothing fit at all.

As time passed, her position in the world became increasingly clear. She could speak of her visions as freely as she wanted, though she did not have the power to change the future. The laws of the world would not allow it. The disasters she foresaw and the windfalls she predicted—all she was permitted, was a glimpse into the stream of fate.

As it turned out, that was enough for her to make a living as a fortune-teller. Not of the grand sort, Cassandra was far too shy for grandeur, but it wasn’t difficult to find people willing to pay to listen.

She would sit near the market square or beneath shaded awnings, sleeves smelling faintly of incense from home, quietly listening as strangers placed their worries into her lap. Most questions, she learned, were terribly ordinary. Would my child be healthy? Will the harvest survive? Does he love me? Will I be safe?

Things that were incomparably miniscule compared to the grand designs of fate.

For her answers, she would receive quite a bounty: loaves of bread still warm from ovens, flowers tied together with rough twine, little carved trinkets her sibling would love pressed into her hands. Coins too, sometimes, though Cassandra was always faintly embarrassed taking them.

Perhaps because she was a mere mouthpiece of fate.

What am I to do with this power? The thought would come to her in the early hours of the night. Perhaps she would have found an answer if Cassandra had dwelled on the question further. And therein lay the regret. Perhaps if she had dwelled further on it, she would have known her place.

Perhaps then, she would not have gone to meet Deitasterra.

The moment she first laid eyes on her— she had wanted nothing more than to stay by her side. Even if she wasn’t towering over them, her presence alone was enough to press them into the ground. Even as she was simply passing through a garden, features gently pressed together. She was unmistakable.

Deitasterra would slightly turn, to gaze upon her. And then a vision would come upon Cassandra.

And then she would approach her.

“Please take me in as your disciple.” Cassandra should’ve felt scared, and she certainly did feel cowed, but under Deitasterra’s gaze she could not help feeling emboldened. “I have the power to see the future, there’s no doubt I’ll be of great use to you!”

And she could not feel anything but awe as Deitasterra reached her hand out to her. The being born of stars and prayers touched her hand, and even without the tingling of the forming blessing-mark on her neck she felt power filling into her like water into a cup.

For her wish was to have the power to act on her ability, and Deitasterra had granted her the dark power to change the course of fate.

“Master.” Then there was wonder, and reverence, as Deitasterra answered her call.

What had she seen when she first looked upon Deitasterra? A glorious vision. Glimpses of freshly gathered flowers, hands folded in prayer. By Deitasterra’s side were joyous faces, people dressed in white, black and gold. How reminiscent they were of Deitasterra’s own clothes. She heard someone call, “Master!” And she herself, there, with them.

The murk would obscure her face in the vision. Cassandra would not see it. She would not notice the fear. ***

It would feel as if her Master had planted a seed in her. The dark power within the blessing had begun to bloom; Cassandra would be opening her eyes a second time.

Admittedly the bravado that had risen up in her had slightly dispersed. For someone so shy, that moment had probably used up more than half of a lifetime’s supply of courage. Her younger sibling had teased her quite a bit on that. Even now, when people approached in awe of her Master she could not help the urge to hide away.

But it seemed she too had been thrust into the light. It happened a few more times before she resigned herself to meekly accepting her flowers. Just by being in proximity, she herself had been elevated. Even now, when her parents and siblings spoke to her, there was a shadow of deference. And oh, she felt so naked under the light. Ever the hermit, she wanted nothing more than to withdraw.

And yet she could not imagine her Master without it, made of light as she was.

Later, she would think of herself as a moth. Fragile wings drifting on the wind, fluttering to the brilliant sun. But the sun burned up into fire and she was the moth drawn to the flame.

So the molten days passed. Fingers interlocked in prayer, candles lit in welcome, flowers in perfect bloom. By her Master’s side Cassandra persisted. Through sigils she would guide the dark power within her to fruition, and wherever her dark power faltered her Master’s boundless power would swath her, settling in like hands over hers. Although she did not speak human language, it was not that difficult to understand her guidance.

Her teacher in all manners of the word. Her presence, a gentle guiding light.

Then Cassandra would invent new sigils, thoroughly enjoying herself in the midst. She would fill dozens of scrolls with her work, and as she carried them by her Master’s side she found she could not be happier.

It seemed nothing short of a miracle that Cassandra would become known as the Disciple of the Dark Lord. She herself knew there would be others, that she was only the first, but there was no one else privy to that knowledge.

Except, perhaps, her Master. If Cassandra’s dark power was a seed taking root, her Master was a flourishing garden. The Holy Land. By her side, Cassandra understood just how boundless the power of the Dark Lord was. The dark power within the blessing thrumming within her was but a drop in the ocean.

And yet, she persisted. Attracted to the flame, her fragile wings burning to ash.

She was such a fool.

How blind! How foolish! Again and again she would curse herself later. To understand the weight yet not the cost. Spring would eventually yield to winter and the wheel would turn. Their hour of joy would turn to grief, and never again could she find it in herself to look upon the Dark Lord the same way.

For despite being a prophet, she had not seen it coming,

She did not know it was her sibling's fate to return to the earth so soon. She would see their crumpled form and fall too. She would reach for them and touch their cold skin. She would cry, and cry.

Then she would remember her Master. She would bring her sibling to her Master, and beg her to save them.

Though her Master did not speak human language, it seemed she did understand something of the weeping figure before her and the still body in her arms.

Her Master would once again grant her wish.

Under her gaze, the regeneration sigil activated. As breath returned to her sibling and their heart beat once more, Cassandra would respond with joy.

And then— she would not know what forced itself upon her, if it was the disastrous future or ruined present. The world was collapsing in on itself. She would cry out again, even as her sibling’s body cradled in her lap began to stir all she could see was the terrible cost of her wish.

“Stop this, Master!” She would cry. A blind fool, she would scream at herself.

And her Master would once again grant her wish.

The sigil was reversed, and the distortion of fate undone. Her visions finally cleared and Cassandra could finally see. Deitasterra stood before her, looking down upon her. Her face was incomprehensible.

Cassandra did not even comprehend the body in her lap turning stiff and cold again. Not even as its breath crumbled into dust as the world returned to what it was meant to be.

“Oh, Master…”

Her shaking hands wrapped around her face as she wept.

“I really am afraid of you.” ***

After that moment, Cassandra did not move for a long time. The world continued around her as if nothing had ever happened at all. But something had cracked irrevocably within Cassandra. This power— this terrifying power. The dark power of the Dark Lord. Her Master had reached out a hand, answered Cassandra’s wish, given her exactly what she had asked for: a power no human was worthy of.

She looked down upon her own hands. Hands meant to light wax candles, braid hair, hold flowers pressed into them.

“How arrogant,” she whispered hoarsely.

She would hide. Fold herself into some corner, withdraw forever underneath her Master’s shadow. She would stray away from the fortune-teller path, too terrified to even speak of these mundane fates. Time passed and yet no time would come to pass. Now fearful of even a whiff of fresh flowers, she would burn incense to cover the scent. There was no awe left in her, only fear. An unbridgeable chasm had opened up between them.

Perhaps it had always been there. She had just been too blind to see it.

Now, with charred wings, Cassandra tried her best to shy away from the fire.

The molten days dripped into one another, thick and slow. Trapped in golden amber, immortalised in her foolishness.

Perhaps that would have been, if not for the acceptance of the second disciple. There was relief then. They would wear the same white, black and gold. Even if it was a selfish desire, it was true of her; she was no longer alone. The other disciples, just as she had foreseen what now felt like a lifetime ago, would be there to share her burden.

But that was not how things came to be.

The others—the second disciple, the third, fourth—looked upon their Master with love and light, not understanding Cassandra’s discomposure in her presence. She was the only one cursed with understanding. ***

Yet there was still relief.

When they coaxed her out of her corner, she would find herself sighing at Leonard’s jabs and laughing at Cayde’s amused retorts. It was at Cecil’s coaxing that she picked up fortune-telling again. She was still scared, but they had handcrafted a tarot set for her, and she couldn’t find it in herself to reject them.

She would still find joy in picking apart sigils till they turned extreme and bizarre. (Of course, she did not again dare approach her Master with her work.) Now she would leave them for the other disciples to find, quietly amused at their reaction, whenever it came.

Even if that made them call her a troublemaker. She still shied away from any disciple outside of the first few she already knew. Though the subjects would call her a more polite term: eccentric.

She would take on a new name. Her new namesake was a sorceress from Greek mythology, feared for her ability to provoke metamorphosis. She never quite managed to stop dabbling in sigil-work, inclusive of the aforementioned nor did she ever overcome the aversion she could not help but feel around people.

And yet, there was still a life to be had. ***

The day would come when the twelfth and thirteen disciples were accepted together. It was not anything new; Dmitriy, Hugo and Zephyros too had been accepted together as children.

As part of the ceremony, all disciples had to return to witness the rite.

Circe was, admittedly, slightly unwilling.

She had taken, in recent decades, to wandering the continent recording history before it could fade away. That was a long story in itself. Maybe it was when one of her constructs nearly frightened the wits out of Raileen, maybe it was Cayde’s gentle but exasperated coaxing, maybe it was becoming too noisy as the number of disciples multiplied, but one way or another her habit of building structures started.

Hidden places were her preference: valleys, caverns, and other secret areas. Initially, the habit was practical. A way to contain her sigil-work away from unsuspecting bystanders after Leonard convinced her that leaving inexplicable magical constructions in populated areas constituted a form of social irresponsibility.

Though he definitely meant it as a joke, he had a point.

Also, she liked the quiet.

As she wandered the continent, that habit followed her. She found she really liked building these structures. It was a simple type of joy, like an easing of thought or a settling of the mind. It was fun; she couldn’t deny it.

The more she travelled, the more the purpose expanded without her quite noticing. Eventually she began leaving records inside them.

And then suddenly she was known for recording history.

All things considered, it wasn’t a bad thing to be known for. Maybe if she had started the habit all those centuries ago, she would now have something to recall the faces of her birth family by.

Now she had just found a perfect site for a monument: tucked behind a waterfall, founded on solid ground. Moreover, it was unpopulated, despite that, so she could do her work undisturbed. It was a shame to leave it behind even temporarily. As she sealed up her work within the scaffolded structure, she told herself she would return quickly.

Still, as she returned for the two new disciples, something sat uneasily at the back of her mind. An indistinct pressure.

That should have been her first warning that a vision was to come.

She kept to herself behind a pillar, watching the others reunite with one another. The two new disciples stood slightly apart, partially framed by pale light filtering through high arches, and Circe’s gaze caught on them.

And the vision struck.

The temple fractured into overlapping states of being. Cassandra lurched back, gasping at the sight forced upon her, pressed into her like an imprint burned into wet clay. Then the vision finally broke, snapping back into the present with a sharp, disorienting violence

But she could not unsee it, the golden blood splattered across the floor. ***

It was not possible. It could not be possible.

Deitasterra did not exist in the same fragile order as her subjects, or even as the disciples who orbited her presence. The world bent toward her, not away.

So what did it mean, then, to see her fallen? Bleeding gold richly across the marble of their home? What did it mean if her Master’s fate was to shatter? Her Master, born of stars, and yet her fate of ruin was woven in the stars.

What was she to do?

The shadow of her mistake crept up on her, drowning her in darkness. The cold body in her lap, the shattering of reality, her Master’s incomprehensibility.

Cassandra was a prophet. She was not a god. She could only bear witness. Trapped in her own terror, paralyzed into indecision, she could do nothing at all.

Master, she prayed. Surely you see what is to come? If anyone could remould the shape of what Circe had seen, it would be Deitasterra. If there is any way to alter this stream of fate without collapsing the world—please stop this, Master.

But this time, her Master would not grant her wish. ***

Circe was not there at the moment of betrayal. She witnessed the aftermath.

Their Master’s body lay unconscious on the sanctuary floor. Calla was by her side, kneeling. Whatever words she was whispering, Circe could not hear, but it had to be a prayer. Even the only person able to understand their Master could do nothing but pray and wait. Circe could never understand how Calla, more familiar with their Master’s true capabilities than anyone else, was able to gaze upon her without so much as a trace of fear.

Though Calla was not crying now, grief wore itself plainly on her face, and so was her rage. Gold pooled around them like a halted tide. Even without seeing it, Circe understood Arverna’s strike had been clean.

After ten years, her vision had come true.

Deitasterra could not die. But she would not wake. That in-between state became the axis upon which the world split; that young child Arverna, grown out of her faith, declared war on their people. “We must not be deceived by this inhuman being.” She would not say this to them, exiled from Hermika as she was, but her words reached them regardless. “It is an evil that must be purged from these lands.”

There was horror and shock, then outrage, then sorrow. Her name was struck from their records.

There would be regret later on. For as Arverna claimed her title as the Holy Saint that brought salvation to the world—her past as Deitasterra’s disciple, erased from living memory, would only benefit her.

In those early days, there had still been the expectation that all would return to the norm. They would visit their sleeping Master, leaving her offerings, still believing that soon she would awake. They could not yet envision defeat. What did Circe think of, in those days? What did she see when she tried to look into the future?

Dmitriy would later say the period of time before the war was like an everlasting dream. So long was the dream, that they did not realise they had to wake up from it eventually. Till it all became a nightmare.

Maybe even then, Cassandra could have known they would lose. Maybe she did know.

What had she seen when she looked into the future? Rather, it was what she heard. A chilling scream that seemed to grind under her skin and pull her heart to shreds.

Later, she would recognise the sound.

As their Master stirred from their ruins, at long last awoken from that unnatural slumber, she would witness what they had become in her absence. That terrible sound would echo from her, and soon their screams would join it.

Her blessing darkened into a curse.

As though the Dark Lord had gazed upon what remained of them—the burning temples, the battles fought, the blood spilled in resistance and opposition alike—and found something unforgivable in all of it.

Something unsalvagable. Something damnable.

How long had Cassandra feared the Dark Lord?

That fear had followed her into prophecy. Into sleepless nights bent over trembling tarot spreads, fingers cold around cards she sometimes wished would lie to her.

This, Circe would think, is it.

There was a sense of horrible recognition. Something dangerously close to vindication, but even thinking that made her stomach turn. Not relief, never relief.

The curse would be their breaking point. The despair and destruction that had haunted her visions for so long had finally, fully, come to fruition. Even when the continent began to turn against them, even with the knowledge that it was one of their own leading the fight to their doorstep, their resolve had held.

We just need to hold out until Master awakes, and then we are saved.

And now, there was the question.

What were we holding out for all this time?

They had their answer.

Their body lay in her lap. Blood splattered over white, black and gold. There was a soft laugh of pain, maybe despair, as their life faded from their limbs.

“You were right to fear her.”

One by one, the disciples began to die. The stone walls of their fortress crumbled as their faith did.

They would lose the war.

Circe wept. Dmitriy was there, and so was Hugo. Calla was— Dmitriy had begged her, but she would not leave their temple, would not dispel Deitasterra's dying spell, would not detach herself from the chains imposed upon her.

Not even as she was told how Arverna had shattered Deitasterra’s heart.

Dmitriy had pleaded again and again, but she would be obstinate. And they would leave her behind.

Hermika was burning. The Dark Lord had fallen. Arverna had won.

The forces of the Holy Saint were soon to be upon them.

She looked upon the last of them, exhausted and broken down as they were, and made a decision. Her hands moved quickly; sigils flared into existence, the bizarrest she could think of, fraying at the edges but she forced them to hold. Her breath came uneven, vision blurred at the edges, but her focus did not break as she drew up their last defenses.

The Dark Lord’s end had been dictated by fate. The predicted destruction and death had been realised. But they were so incomparably small, fate had not spoken of them.

So incomparably small, she thought, surely we could be allowed to live.

And she would be right. ***

Circe bought them the worthless commodity of time.

And so, they ran. Ran far away from the ruins of Hermika, from the temple Calla was sealed in, and even further. They burned their disciple clothes. They kept running. The war had ended, but the slaughter had not.

The dead did not return. The temple did not rise from its ruins. No amount of passing seasons could undo the victory or restore what had been lost.

Time would pass despite all the time that had passed.

Glory stretched onward, horizon after horizon. Cassandra would see crowds gathered beneath open skies; hands raised in celebration, bells ringing somewhere overhead, as banners swayed in the wind. Arverna stood at the center of it all. Her image folded seamlessly into the golden future as though it had always belonged there.

Everything was golden in the future she looked into.

She reached inwards and found nothing but a deep-rooted hollowness. She tried again, reaching within herself, searching for the fear once pulsing inside her like a second heart.

She found it.

Arverna would not pursue them. The thought arrived without relief.

Perhaps she would have, if the disciples still had the will to resist. If anything of the order they once were had survived intact.

The disciples scattered into what was left of the world.

If it had been Calla, she would have rather burned down Arverna’s new kingdom than hide away like frightened mice. But they were not Calla. “Master will return,” she had told Dmitriy. That one day the stars would fall from the sky and their Master would be restored. She, final disciple of their Master, would wait for that day.

“The Dark Lord will return in a thousand years,” Arverna would say. When the stars fell from the sky, she would return. The evil that had nearly consumed the world would rise once more to finish what it had begun. They would hear of this later, from the mouths of strangers who recited the words with the confidence reserved for foundational truths.

For all the tension between them, for all the blood spilled and loss endured, both women had settled around the same certainty.

Circe did not take comfort in that certainty.

Nor could she find comfort in the last thing Dmitriy and Hugo told her before she left: the news of Arverna’s death. That had long been inevitable. Even with the dark power she’d stolen from Deitasterra—the dark power now called divine power—her human body ultimately still could not withstand the damage from the shattered heart.

Her voice was devoid of any personal quality. “You will miss the very moment to obtain what you so desperately desire,” she said to that child. “And find yourself waiting for ages.”

That prophecy had been ages ago. Like all the others, it had come true. Cassandra was still that useless fortune-teller, a mere mouthpiece of the fate they were all subject to.

Perhaps she should just end herself. But she could not work up even the courage to do that.

What a coward she was. ***

It would be decades, perhaps centuries, later that she found the place tucked behind the waterfall. Or rather, found it again.

Time had not been harsh to it. The ground was still solid, still sheltered by the constant rush of water that kept the place hidden. There was moss along the edges; roots pressing carefully into old cracks. To think that after everything, this place had barely changed.

Mostly.

Because by then, there was life. A small community had settled there. Small enough that they didn’t disturb the quiet, but near enough that smoke sometimes curled through the trees and soft voices occasionally carried through the mist. They had chosen the place for the same reasons she once had, she supposed.

She briefly considered what it would mean to tear the structure down.

Stone returned to stone. Sigils broken back into nothing. It would be simple, in theory. The community would continue their quiet lives. There would be nothing left of the life before. Ruins to ruins.

And yet Circe did not move.

She could see it already—what would remain if she destroyed it. The instinct to wonder what had been there. Before her, the monument stood half-finished in its final form, and within, still threaded with her sigils and filled with her statues.

And perhaps that made the decision easier.

Within a chamber inside the structure, she made her final addition. Press. Wait. Yield. The inscriptions settled into the panels she constructed. It felt so strange to continue her habit in such a capacity.

When they were complete, she sealed the panels behind stone. The wall closed over them as if nothing had ever been placed within it.

Then she set her hand on the stone and worked through it. The outer form first: the crouched body,hands over face, body still folded in eternal strain. There would be nine swords protruding from its back.

The Ten of Swords, without its tenth blade. For nine was incomplete.

It was, in a way, one of her old puzzles.

Her sigils settled into the stone, and she created the mechanism that would unlock to reveal what she had left behind. A hidden place within a hidden place within a hidden place. Was it wishful thinking, to think that there would ever be someone who would unlock this mechanism to read the words within?

This is the record free of falsehood, of the first disciple Cassandra.

Maybe those words would never be read by anyone but herself.

The swords were identical copies of Arverna’s sword; the one she had used to shatter Deitasterra’s heart. And only when it was driven into the seam of the statue’s chest would the sealed panels yield their meaning.

She withdrew her hand slowly. That was the rule she had built into it, before she allowed herself to admit why.

Perhaps everything here was a worthless effort. This would be her final monument.

But all she could think, as she gazed upon her creation, was the sound Deitasterra had made when she awoke.

You must have wanted to return to the sky, Master.

Is that why you continued on the path of fate?

Or perhaps— did you want to die that badly?

Is this the fate you chose for yourself? ***

Somewhere through the centuries of wandering, a certain sensation came upon her. She was sitting beneath a tree at the time. The sky was in that brief, suspended moment between day and night; gold had already begun to fail at the horizon, but night had not yet claimed the upper air. She had been thinking absent, fragmented thoughts.

And then, for the briefest instant, she felt— it vanished as quickly as it came.

And in that instant, she knew. Somewhere beyond her reach, the Dark Lord had awakened.

The knowledge followed her like a second shadow. ***

The first star fell.

The second star fell.

The third star fell. ***

Calla found her in a town so small it barely deserved the name.

Circe was sitting outside an inn that might have been a tavern in better weather and a storage shed in worse, carefully adjusting a stack of notes that no one else in the world would have been interested in reading. A cup of tea sat untouched beside her. It had gone cold at some point.

That was when Calla appeared. She stopped in front of her table, hands loosely clasped behind her back, tilting her head slightly as she looked down at Circe’s scattered notes.

“I see you haven’t stopped experimenting,” Calla said.

Circe stiffened immediately. “That isn’t—” she began, then stopped, because Calla had already picked up one of the pages. Circe made a small, panicked sound and reached for it.

Calla let her take it. “You really haven’t changed.”

“...You didn’t even read it.”

Calla tilted her head. “I did.”

“You— when?”

“When you were trying to block me from it. You forget I can read upside down.”

"...Calla." The name came out as little more than air.

Calla smiled. “Hello, Cassandra.”

“Well… hello,” she said quietly. “Have you been helping Master?” It was a moot point. They both knew she was. Calla’s expression shifted into something more precise. Something that made her look, for a moment, more like the Second Dark Lord.

“Yes,” she said.

Cassandra nodded once, too quickly. “I see.” She did not know what else she was supposed to say to that. There were entire centuries between the question and its answer.

“Shall we walk?”

It was just a pretext. Cassandra followed half a step behind.

The true request came soon enough. “We need your help.”

The words immediately soured Cassandra’s stomach. Her grip tightened around her notes. “I— I’m still scared of Master.”

Something passed behind Calla’s eyes, then slowly settled. “That’s fine,” she said. ”You won’t need to face her.”

Cassandra blinked. It was the same cadence she used during the war.

“...What do you need me to do?”

Calla smiled again. “I think you’ll quite like this part.”

Unfortunately, she was right. Cassandra had always had a soft spot for anthropomised sigils. Working with the pyro-horse sigil again was, indeed, enjoyable. ***

But that was not all she was to do.

The day eventually arrived when she had to start making her way to Area. Calla’s plan had thus far worked and Master had claimed the third star.

The time to destroy the Guardian Tree—Arverna—had come. Her role there was minor, but she was still part of the plan.

She talked with Calla and Dmitriy. They invited her to go to Area with them, by ship, but being trapped in a finite space for so long with other people was a terrifying prospect for her. She would travel alone. Calla had not tried to convince her. Dmitriy had looked like he wanted to, then thought better of it halfway through the impulse.

The plan, more than anything, still frightened her.

The fact that she could not read Calla’s future any more— her fate and Arverna’s were intertwined. Even Arverna’s fate had begun to blur at the edges. Whatever awaited them in Area would be something absolute and irreversible.

Maybe that was why she did not have full faith in the plan.

Maybe that was why, when Arverna returned—she could feel nothing but the instinct to run and hide. The thought of Calla and Dmitriy gave her pause, but surely they would not expect anything more of her. They were powerful in their own right. Nothing compared to Arverna, but neither was she. If she could find herself somewhere that was secluded, she might be able to escape the fall-out.

How pathetically cowardly. Even now, stuck between Master and Arverna, she could do nothing but run.

And then she heard something from someone. Cassandra stopped moving entirely. Her gaze fell upon the husks before her, shrouded in black and the stench of rot, and within them there was undeniably Hugo’s dark power.

But there was also something else. Traces of spirit. In the bodies of their old friends— Leonard, Cayde, and—

She had already known of this. Calla and Dmitriy had made it abundantly clear that Hugo had betrayed them. But now, without even thinking, she pointed at the husks.

“You shall not go any further. I command you.”

For a moment, it worked. The husks stuttered mid-motion as the sigils pressed down on them, fire burning through them as Hugo’s dark power inside them surged in response.

Stop, Circe thought, as if Hugo could hear her. Her power flared up, reaching for them, but quickly they dissolved into black dust and disappeared. Hugo had taken them back.

I cannot bring you to eternal rest just yet. Old friends, forgive me.

It was then that Circe made a choice.

“I’m going with you. I must go to where Arverna and Calla are.”

It might not be too late. ***

By the time she reached, Calla was collapsed on the ground. Arverna reached for her, but never quite made it there; her arm slowly fell to the ground, blood pooling from the wound as the cards settled back into Circe’s hand.

“It’s been a long time, False Saint.”

Arverna looked at her without a trace of emotion on her face. “Cassandra.”

Around them, the branches were already beginning to move. She had to make her move before Arverna attacked. Cassandra mustered up all the power she could manage. “I, the Dark Lord’s first disciple, have seen your future.” She leaned forward, just enough to force eye contact. “My prophecy will become your reality. What you take today shall lead to your own destruction!”

For a fraction of a second, Arverna paused. That moment of hesitation was all she needed. The world folded around them, compressing into a single seam—then they were gone.

She brought them as far as she could, but even then it wasn’t a great distance. She gently put Calla down; then, she saw the gaping hole in her chest.

Oh… I was too late…

Then she froze. No, despite her missing heart, there was undeniably still breath in Calla.

…How is this possible? ***

Cassandra’s hands were still raised over Calla’s body, trying to heal her, when it hit her.

Her body reacted before thought could catch up, hands flying to her head as her voice broke free in an involuntary release. Her fingers dug into her hair as her knees buckled. She screamed again, and again, as the future forced itself upon her.

The future that had become inevitable.

More and more people would pray to Arverna in desperation.

Arverna would continue to gain power. She would become a god.

No one would be able to stop her as she destroyed the world.

Cassandra’s breath shattered in her chest. ***

The rest happened in a single sequence. One by one, her visions came true. Everything was bringing them closer to that disastrous future. Nothing but destruction awaited them.

As Cassandra gazed into the future, what did she see?

Master crying out as the body of Binari lay lifeless at her feet. Her fracturing ego as arms and legs burst from her swelling body. Arverna’s satisfied smile as she reached for all the dark power in the world.

The sorrow of loss would drive her down that path. The despair of the Dark Lord would herald them into that devastation.

“Master truly has changed a lot.”

But the cry of grief that would soon sound, she had heard it once before.

How strange. I feel like I’ve gone back to the day you bestowed your blessing.

The same bravado that had risen in her the first time she called the Dark Lord her Master was rising up in her again now. That strange, misplaced conviction that even if she understood the cost, even if she could see the end clearly, she could still step into it.

When she begged Deitasterra to save her sibling all those centuries ago, what had Deitasterra felt? The ease of which she granted her wish had terrified Cassandra then, but now, strangely, she could not quite untangle it from the memory of the granted blessing.

The dark power of that blessing was thrumming within her.

At long last, she knew what to do.

“I have taken a glimpse into the course of fate.” The tarot cards came into her hands, and she took in a long breath. “I will now distort it.”

In a long violent motion she tore through them.

“—And lead us down a new trajectory.”

She felt the world fracture, felt fate itself splinter at the seams as the taut line was cut.

But the moment passed. It did not matter. Her gaze settled instead on the shape below. Beneath the cliff, Master was embracing Binari, and Binari was embracing her back. The world would continue beyond today.

Cassandra exhaled slowly, the last remnants of the torn tarot still drifting through the air behind her like ash. The wind moved against her as she descended, catching at the edges of her clothes, pulling faintly at her hair.

As she drew closer, she could see them more clearly; the small, unguarded reality of it. Gently, she reached for Master, and said the words buried inside the depths of her being.

“We can live on with broken bodies and broken hearts. But you were born after being broken. Please, do not let yourself be broken again.”

Master—Lapis—looked back at her, and there was a brief moment of quiet. For all the weight she carried, there was something almost childlike in that look. There was confusion there, faint and unguarded.

Cassandra turned. The tension that had been coiled in her chest finally loosened. The ship was here. They had a way out now.

She did not have much time left.

The consequences for what I have done are dire. There is no possible atonement.

Yet strangely, she found she could not regret it.

“I feared this power,” she said softly. “But now I know the tender solace of wielding it for the sake of the people you love.”

Though Cassandra knew what was coming, she felt only clarity. The fear, the uncertainty, the endless weight had all fallen away. It was as if she were finally seeing her Master for the first time.

“The you that is Deitasterra, and the you that is Lapis. I no longer fear either.”

A small smile found its way onto her face.

“Hello, Master.”

Her lips parted a fraction, then closed again, a breath held and released without sound. Master had recognised her.

“I avoided you out of fear, and I am sorry for that.” Perhaps the apology was late. The one before her was but a fragment of that Holy Land, and Cassandra would never know if that Holy Land would ever be restored.

But at least now, she could say it here. The wind was picking up. She lowered herself to the ground. The wind was picking up, picking away at her. The pain she’d braced herself for did not come as she yielded to the air.

“Thank you, Master.” Was it a faint hope? If her Master were to return in whole, that she would remember this? Cassandra did not know.

Lapis’ eyes widened. Cassandra saw the horror there even as she was loosening from the edges of herself. She lunged for her, the distance between them collapsing—but she grasped nothing.

“Farewell.”

#tdlc #the dark lord's confession #the dark lords confession #fanfiction #fic #tdlc spoilers #reblog

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