Red October

******

Colours slowly returned to me. Hues of grey and brown and green filled my vision, gradually taking shape until I could make out where I was.

Rocks. I looked around. It seemed like I was stuck in the bottom of a cavern. People were talking somewhere nearby, but I still couldn't think straight. My mind was blurry from shock.

Then I realised that I was still in Erstürnach's Fountain.

A shriek pierced the air.

I blinked my eyes, instantly snapping to focus. I wheeling around. There was a group of people right behind me. Four of them, I counted. They didn't pay me any heed when I tentatively said, "Hello?"

Instead, their attentions were concentrated upon the man in the middle of the circle they were forming. He was kneeling on the ground, raving and crying. Though his clear blue eyes were open, they were blank. He looked like he was in a trance. I suppressed a shudder at the sight.

"Leon!" cried a tall, tangled-hair woman. She fell to her knees and grabbed the man by the shoulders, shaking him hard. Another man wrenched them apart.

Anton. As I took in his curly brown hair and deep blue eyes, a jolt shot up my spine. He was truly a perfect mirror image of me, if I were a man; I was a perfect image of my father.

Anton is—or was my father. The thought still didn't ring right in my head.

"Control yourself, Helene! Stay alert—his cries may have given our presence away," he warned.

It was only then I realised that I was peering into Anton's past again. I was still in Erstürnach, and I was standing in its dead Fountain, but my companions were not in sight. These four were. The four Anya had mentioned who had been tasked with tracking down the Pied Piper.

Maria was there too, her face eerily similar to Elise's. She nodded grimly at her husband and kept a vigilant watch on her surroundings, Medium in hand.

A violin.

My eyes went wide.

It couldn't be...but it could. This was too much of a coincidence. Yet—

Elise was my mother?

I gritted my teeth and forced myself to observe the scene. It would do me no good to get distracted here.

Helene had backed away at Anton's orders, leaving a considerable space for Leon—the memory sifter—to do whatever he needed to do.

His fingers were buried in the dirt, and his jaw was clenched hard. A sheen of sweat coated his body, making his clothes cling onto skin. He was muttering incoherently under his breath, and his brows were drawn together tightly.

An alien scream rang out from a distance.

Anton spat out a filthy curse. "Gryphon!" he snarled. "We need to get out of here!"

"What about Leon? If we break the connection now—"

Anton cut Helene off with another curse. He turned to Maria—Elise. Whoever she was. "Maria, can you strengthen our wards?"

"I most certainly can," she replied readily. "I don't know how long I'll last against the gryphon though. My magic has been severely affected by the area."

"So has mine. But do it."

With a nod, Maria propped the violin on her shoulder and drew the bow across the strings. A vigorous, powerful melody rang out. However, even as I felt the magic from where I stood, I knew that something was wrong. Maria's magic felt like a river flowing seawards, but a barricade was built in the middle to slow down the flow.

She threw in more power into her music, to no avail. The wards hummed with her aid, but not as strong as she'd like them to be.

Meanwhile, Anton and Helene had placed their hands on Leon's shivering forehead. With my Core, I detected that a small, steady stream of magic was flowing from them and into Leon. They were feeding him with energy, in hopes that he may quickly finish his task.

Leon suddenly gasped and keeled over, retching onto the ground.

Anton immediately whipped out a flask from his belt. He held it out to Leon, who took it with grateful fingers. The memory sifter gulped down as much water as he could.

"Well?" demanded Anton.

Leon took a moment to wipe spittle away from his lips. "I've got the memories."

Everyone's shoulders sagged with relief at the news. Even Maria's, who was still playing her violin. "Let's go then," said Helene.

"Not so fast," said Anton, holding a hand up. There was a rock grasped in between his fingers. "We'll still need to follow procedure."

"Anton, there's a gryphon in the castle, we're stranded in this saints-forsaken city, and our magic is being weakened by the dead Fountain," snapped Maria. She had put down her violin and bow, but still watched the sky warily. "I think standard procedure does not apply at this moment!"

"We can stand here all day arguing, or you could come help me."

Maria turned around to glare at him, before resigning with a huff and marching over to his side. Helene switched positions with her, keeping watch instead. To my bewilderment, she fisted a hand in her golden-brown hair and tugged on a whole clump of it. The strands came away easily; she held them out like a weapon. I suppose it was, in a way.

Elise and Anton, meanwhile, helped to pull Leon up onto his feet. They then placed their hands on his head like before, only this time, Anton pressed the stone into his temple too. They all closed their eyes, deep in concentration.

I closed mine as well and called out to my Core. It responded, telling me that Elise was somehow looking through specific memories of Leon's and opening them to Anton's mind. Magic pulsed between the three of them, and although there was no doubt that their energies were low, they did this as if they had done it a thousand times before, barely hesitating or stopping to breathe.

Then hot white magic sizzled in the atmosphere. My eyelids flew open, and I saw that the trio had disentangled themselves from one another. Anton still had the stone in his hand. He dropped it onto the base of the Fountain.

"Now we go," he said, and the rest of them reacted immediately, raising wards around them as they sprinted away. The ominous shriek of a gryphon echoed in the ruins.

Everything turned white again.

******

This time, when I regained my senses, I found myself standing at the edge of a glowing pool.

I frowned, studying the pool closely. No, this wasn't water. It was a Fountain. After the experience of seeing a dead Fountain, seeing a running one sent shock rippling throughout my limbs.

I swivelled my head about. I stood in a courtyard, various trees swaying gently in the wind. The air carried a scent that hinted of spring and magic and life. The place looked vaguely familiar. Then I understood why.

This was Erstürnach.

Or at least, Erstürnach at a time when it had been mighty and glorious.

The city truly was glorious. If I thought the ruins were magnificent, the original structures brought admiring tears to my eyes. Parapets and towers encircled the castle, vaulting towards the sky, as though they were a thousand little fingers reaching towards the heavens, their faces as smooth as mirrors. Curving around the Fountain, inctricately-carved pillars supported the main structure of the caste. But where these pillars were mere remnants in the present, they were breathtakingly brilliant here, fully coloured with vibrant shades.

And the Fountain. It was so powerful—ridiculously so. More powerful than the one back in Heidelberg, possibly more powerful than the one in Starkfurt. My Core purred in approval, and I felt reinvigorated from being this close to so much magic.

I didn't question why or how I ended up here, only savouring the moment, a brief respite from the day's worries.

Then I noticed that two figures standing towards my right. One of them was a woman, her brown hair perfectly plaited and coiled around her shapely head. She was dressed in red and gold silks, had a highly aristocratic nose, and carried herself with the assured air of a noblewoman.

The other was a man. He had dirty blond hair which reached his thin shoulders, and his clear blue eyes were troubled. There was something vaguely familiar about him. I reached deep into the trenches of my mind, but nothing came to surface.

"I don't understand, Mother," he said. His tone was plaintive, pleading. It didn't match the face it belonged to, which had bold lines and radiated confidence.

"Your father is worried about you," replied the woman. "You are one of his sons, after all."

"So does this mean that I don't have a say in what I want to do anymore?"

His mother frowned. "Don't speak like that, Hans."

"I'm sorry, Mother. It's just...I truly don't understand. Freya is a lady of an honourable family—why can't I wed her?"

His mother sighed and patted his hand. "Your father fears that her family wishes to use her connection to you to usurp our position and money," she said bluntly.

The man's cheeks heated up. "Freya's family isn't like that! I know them!"

"How much do you truly know of them, my dear child?" The woman's voice was soft, but hard.

Hans threw up his hands in despair. "You all are against me! Every single one of you!"

He stormed off.

"Hans!" his mother called after him. "Hans, wait!"

Then everything blurred together, and for the third time, all I could see was white.

******

It was the Fountain again. I rubbed my eyes furiously and took in my surroundings. Light nausea churned in the base of my stomach. Too many visions in one go could take a toll, it seemed.

This time, the man was with another woman. A younger one. Her features looked as though they were perfectly sculpted by the hand of skilled artisan, made in the image of saints. Burnished red-gold hair was woven into a braid down her back, and the Fountain water reflected on it, touching it and giving it an unearthly glow. Even though she was frowning slightly, there was no doubt that she was an extremely beautiful woman.

They were both standing to my right, with the man standing in between me and the woman. They stared at the Fountain water, not exchanging a single word for a few minutes. I briefly wondered what these flashes of the past meant, and what they had to do with the Pied Piper.

"He still doesn't trust me?"

The woman—no, girl, for she couldn't be much older than I was, fiddled with her fingers. Her lips were pursed angrily.

"Unfortunately, no," said the man, Hans.

The girl's brows drooped in disappointment. "I have done all that he asks. I have abided by every single one of his wishes. I've done my best to win him over. And for what?" she spat every single word out as though it were venom. Even her companion looked slightly surprised by the vehemence of her tone.

"Freya, I'm sorry." Hans touched the girl's arm hesitatingly. She didn't draw back from his touch, like how any proper lady would react to the advances of a man. "If there's anything I can do..."

Silence hung between them like a dense curtain. I was still trying to piece the connections between the scenes together. All of them took place in the Fountain so far, only in different timelines...So Leon, the memory sifter, must had somehow drawn the specific memories out of the location.

Anton, Maria and Leon had also performed a ritual together. Anton had seemed to condense all the specific memories into the stone he had held, and had left it behind for anyone who would stumble across it. I had touched the stone, and now I was reliving the memories.

But why did it only flare up for me? Had Anton already planned to leave any clues behind for his blood and his blood only, and not for anyone else?

I stood there, thinking hard. The ritual the trio had performed was not like anything I had seen before. They had essentially been combining their magic together. I never even knew that that was possible—until now.

To have done something like that...it would have drained them of a lot of energy. And it would have taken them a lot of skill to weave their magic together. Logically, this meant that Anton would have to limit the people who could access the memories transferred into the stone.

Why though?

Then it hit me: the stone itself contained magic. It was different for normal lodestones: they were used in places that had running Fountains, so their energies could be replenished easily. not so for this special one, left hiding amidst dust and rubble.

This meant its power would be depleted with each time's use. Thus, Anton wanted to make sure that only one specific person got the message.

Me.

Not bad, for a Musician, Josef's voice echoed in my head. I could almost imagine him standing right beside me, smiling, laughing, eye still intact.

The image of how I'd last saw him flashed in my mind. I took in a deep breath, pushing it away. I would survive this. I would hunt down Lord Himmel and bring him to justice and save my friend, no matter the cost.

And to do that, I couldn't afford to lose focus now.

"There is something you can do," Freya's voice was quiet, but it rang out clearly against the background of silence.

"Yes?" Hans almost looked like an eager puppy. He's truly lovesick, I thought.

Freya turned to look at him, defiance blazing brightly in her eyes. "Come with me. We can make a life outside these walls. Together."

Hans took a small step backwards and dropped his hand. "I—I don't—I have responsibilities," he protested lamely.

Freya took a step forwards to match him. "So do I." She took his hand, but dropped it immediately and whipped her head about, as though she feared that someone was spying on them. I giggled a little, since I was bearing witness to everything that was transpiring between them. As usual though, none of the people in the vision paid any heed to me.

"Freya, I—"

"Please don't tell me you're willing to give up on us so easily. Not after everything we've been through."

"Of course not! It's just—" Hans' head looked heavy on his shoulders. "I don't know."

So I was watching a story of star-crossed lovers unfold before me. I cocked my head, considering. What did they have anything to do with the Pied Piper, if Anton had actually found his trail?

Freya's face fell at Hans' words. "We shan't speak of this anymore, then." There was a dangerously hard edge to her tone.

"Freya—"

"No. It's all right. Just...let's speak of something else."

Everything turned white again. By now, I was so used to the transitions that I simply stood still, waiting for the next scene to come by.

******