Vignette: Contact
“FUCK!”
The single syllable was accompanied by a sharp crack as his fist met the marble tabletop. The slab gave way like plaster, dumping the table’s contents.
Vergil shook his tingling hand, scowling. For weeks, he had been attempting to gain more information about where she might have gone. The results had been frustratingly thin, even with the black mirror. The object now lay on the floor, amid the ruins of the table - unbroken, of course. A mere fall could not harm such a powerful artifact. Still, he should not have let his vexations get the better of him.
The divination rituals and the black mirror could only be used so often, limiting his attempts, and there was clearly some powerful anti-scrying magic in play. Even when he did manage to create a magical connection, all he got were brief glimpses, out of context.
He saw her standing on a dais in a cavernous chamber, surrounded by dragons of gold and silver, bronze and copper. He saw her walking on a bustling street, 'Sasagani’ at her side. There was a black cat draped around his shoulders, and he made no effort to conceal his inhuman appearance. Vergil saw the three of them, rather bizarrely, riding on a flying carpet of some sort. He saw them amid a swarm of wyrmlings with shining blue scales.
The obvious deduction was that they must be on the draconic homeworld. Likely they had gone in search of the half-dragon’s heritage, or even looking to recruit allies. That would also explain the unfamiliar clothing, and her long hair - they were efforts to blend in.
If anyone could recruit dragons from another world to their cause, he mused, it would be her. Dragons and drow, psychics and magicians - his spies had reported that even a Paladin of the Raven Queen had been spotted coming and going from their HQ.
He had underestimated her ability to garner allies, to expand The Order’s reach. It galled him more than he liked to admit.
Other visions brought to him by the black mirror needed no context, and he wished none. Jezebel smiled as the half-dragon braided her long hair, the omnipresent black cat curled up in her lap. She leaned comfortably against him as they sat on a blanket amid sunlit grass, the tome they studied floating in the air before them. They laughed together in a dimly-lit tavern, the expression transforming the man’s face.
There was no doubt in his mind now that they were lovers. He had not been certain, in their guises as ‘Makoto’ and ‘Carmen’... only that her scent betrayed a tension between them that was all too familiar to him. But now he didn’t need that particular cue; their body language said it all.
How well-matched they seemed, how aesthetically harmonious, how different from himself. But he was certain that it wasn’t his and Jezebel’s differences which had prevented them from acting upon the tension that had once marked their own relationship.
No, it was their similarities which had done that.
Vergil rose from his chair, collecting the items that had fallen prey to his fit of anger. He had given too much of his time to this; whatever they were up to, he would deal with it when they returned.
He did, after all, have a kingdom to rule.
