~~~

A Gray Sister woke up in fright. There was an endless void around her, and not only because of the nightfall: a thick mask of soft fabric embroidered with beads covered the mage’s eyes. Despite her blindness, the Sister was able to see many things in the infinity of the abyss open to her inner gaze as well as track arcane lines and streams that constantly broke off and fussed with chaotic movements, entangled or lost forever.

Something happened, she thought. Seems like someone has disrupted the natural course of events again... but I am waiting for you, Murasaki… the time will come.

~~~

“So this feeble brat murdered me?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“And how on earth am I supposed to call a prick who fucking robbed and shot me?”

Niji sighed with grief. “In theory, yes, he did. But—”

“Oh yeah, in theory. Wonderful!”

The mage girl had never seen him so agitated—let alone using her own phrases. Wrapped in a blanket, Dasnor was recovering in Niji’s living room with a mug of strong coffee in his shaking hands. This picture would have looked kind of sweet if not for the previous events.

The Crimson was also shivering from mental aftershock, but she tried her best to hold on. The inner fire disappeared as if it were never present, and her skin came to normal. She believed Rem had escaped with the amulet whose actual power seemed quite evident now, but still one question was bugging her. Niji understood that it wasn’t the best time for an interrogation, but she would die of emotional overflow if she didn’t learn the truth. However, she didn’t jump straight into it.

“This… amulet… the artifact… what does it do?”

“Just some time control stuff,” Dasnor brushed it aside like a simple matter. “Yeah, it’s forbidden, I know, right?”

The Immutable Rules. It was impossible—at least, legally—to manipulate life, mind and time. That meant Dasnor had a Violet artifact which should have been handed to PRISM. What if Rem was actually right with his actions and—

She spoke slowly. “But this thing… it's cursed magic…”

“I never used it. Once I got the idea how dangerous it might turn out and since then… never. Till today.”

“Today? What do you mean?”

“I… I guess I wanted to beat black and whites. Meet Satoru before them and take the artifact you need. I saw a news report about PRISM coming to get him, so I just bought us some time to have a handicap. Guess that’s my last memory of it all.”

Niji’s heart made a leap once again. It was a relief that Dasnor wasn’t there to manipulate her or anything, but... could she still trust him? Did he really use the Violet artifact to get the box so she would get rid of her curse? There was no way she could make sure he hadn’t used it for other reasons. Niji didn’t have the guts to ask this aloud.

“How the hell did this brat figure everything out?” Dasnor continued. “Is he talented enough to sense cursed magic under the enchanted engravings? Piece of shit.”

Lacklusters that could sense magic… a certain phrase on the roof just kept on spinning in her head like crazy. She breathed out and said, “By the way… Rem told me something strange… about you.”

“What else?”

“That you’re not a real mage. Is it true?”

Dasnor clicked his tongue. “Fucking brat, he is.”

“So…?”

“It’s true. I was born Lackluster.”

He kept silent for a while, staring at a spot on the wall, then continued. “I was five when they told me. Me being feeble was a big blow to our family. I was ashamed. I was envious of... those kids who could do magic. And asked my father for help. He tried a lot of things, both legal and not, to boost the bits of energy that were dwelling within me…” He stopped short and then said with even more bitterness, “Nothing worked. Only Frejya found the way.”

“Your amplifier...”

“Yes. And some… other stuff. She did the impossible. My blood is the blood of a Lackluster, I can even see the arcane trails… still, the amount of planted spectrum cells was enough to identify me as an Amber when I was a teen. Nobody from PRISM knows about that—not sure about Aoi though, my mother might have told her. But she’s never busted me. Out of respect for her late sister, probs.”

Niji frowned. The Unit Commander was a relative of Dasnor? Jeez. The Elementalist tried to imagine what his mother could have looked like. She must have been dark-haired, tall and well-built. But her character couldn’t be anything but opposite her noble sibling: Aoi would have never told anybody off about a lack of magical abilities. How could Elveit have been so indignant about her son’s issue that she had agreed to some questionable experiments? The notorious pride of the Ominous? Niji considered Fiber ambivalent enough, but when a mother was involved…

“Do you really think they wouldn’t accept you for who you are?” she asked. “For what it’s worth, being magicless doesn’t change anything. More important is that you—”

“You don’t know the whole story.”

Judging by his tone, the revelation time had ended as fast as it had started.

“What a joke…” he pronounced, cracking a smile. “I hate hypocrisy so much, but my life is nothing but lies. Irony runs deep here.”

They both sat speechless, each in their own thoughts. Now it became clear why the Children were so desperate to get Frejya: she knew a lot about turning people into mages. Did that mean Satoru was aware of Dasnor’s state? Niji remembered the scene she’d witnessed at the hotel. Could it be possible that he had been demanding that very relic to go back in time and change the fate of his beloved Elveit—if Niji got it right, he was one of the love triangle apex. Then Dasnor indeed lied that the artifact had been destroyed. And what about the “atone-for-your-mistake” part? Was Dasnor connected to his mother’s death? Or did he get in Satoru’s way somehow? Misused the amulet? Or what? How come he had this illegal thing in his possession in the first place? She would get no answers from him since he had told her he didn’t remember what had happened at the Grand Hotel… or was he faking his amnesia?

It was all too difficult to process. Her mind started to go blank.

“Thanks for telling me,” Niji said as encouragingly as she could. “I appreciate that. The secret’s safe with me, I promise.”

Dasnor finally faced the mage girl, looking at her with vague concern as if he was tortured by some unspoken yet vital question.

“You know…”

“Yes?”

“I got the gist of what’s happened in the last half an hour, but…”

He went even more gloomy and fell silent. Hundreds of invisible pins felt like they stuck into Niji’s skin. She felt like being filmed in some ridiculous scene where a camera operator was too obsessed with focusing on close-up details to build the atmosphere: the half-empty mugs of coffee, penguins’ sloppy smiles on the print of her pajamas and the indifferent digital clock that showed exactly three in the morning. The sound engineer was less creative: it seemed that the deafening silence was transferred from Niji’s nightmares right into this unbelievable reality.

Dasnor glanced past the Crimson at the door to her bedroom where one could easily spot the crumpled bed sheets and the scattered clothes. A little bewildered, he finally asked, “The hell was I doing here?”