Part 2
~One Moon Later~
"What is your name?" A question of persuasion and promise, carried down the little tunnel. Brimming with musical notes that echoed in her head.
The enticing masculine song had Korin smiling. Somewhere in the illusions she'd found that gift. Cheek muscles engaged and tightened, pulled up showing teeth in a clenching display of pleasant feelings– or sometimes not. Inside of the illusions smiles could be found in familiarity and awe. The incredible beauty of nature, empathy, kindness, love, and the warmth it all brought to the soul. But they also came to her in moments of uncertainty, vexation, anger, and unease. Mania driven curling of lips in the face of a desperate situation. The psychological snapping of sanity making way for giddy maliciousness. The man with his poisoned arrows was correct; they had learned so much from one another. Korin had learned how to smile and she was now a feral grinning dog, bearing her teeth at everything.
The last bits of his beautiful sing-song voice faded down the little tunnel and Korin let out a whispering laugh. "What was that?"
"A spell." Came in sincerity and Korin could hear a smile on his lips.
Chains rattling, she readjusted on her side, the cool white stone of her cell hard and uncomfortable. After a moment she settled in the best position she could, arms still cuffed behind her, curled in a loose 'c' as her head lay next to the small opening. It'd taken a while before she had discovered the tunnel, blended so perfectly in the untainted white of the room. It was just large enough to peek inside. A thin alley no more than a couple hands wide that curved away from the circular shape of the cell. She imagined it was where the dirt and grime and blood and water drained through when they sanitized. She didn't know for sure, just assumed; they had her sedated anytime someone had to enter the tower.
"And what does it do?"
"Well I suppose you'll just have to tell me your name to find out." The voice answered enticingly. When a moment went by without reply he followed with, "What do you have to lose? Why not take a little gamble, pull the lever and let the wheel of fate spin."
Korin huffed at the devilish little merchant the voice suddenly became. Attempting to sell her a spell for the price of her name. But his last words spiked her interests, that accursed wheel turning in her head. A blockprint card held between the slender fingers of a blond that constantly crossed her mind.The smile slipped from her face and she stilled once more into her monotonous nature.
"Fate, huh?" The theme kept circling back to her. A hushed sigh of annoyance, electric heat, swirled in the hollow space in the walls of her being. Behind her back her fingers worried into one another.
"The way I look at it-" She could hear faint rustling and a soft groan, then he continued in their hushed tones, "Right now you and I are just laying down; the cosmos and fate stomping all over us. Any mome-" a light whimper cut through his word, "Any moment now those priests are gonna walk through that door for the hundredth time. And they'll keep walking in and out, continuing their experiments until the both of us are dead or worse."
After Korin had discovered the little tunnel she began opting to slump next to its small breezy opening. Quick to find she could hear the distant echoing screams from within the prison. Late at night when the horror had ceased and quiet reined, the pained pants of a man swept into her ears in little wheezes and whimpers. And then a few nights ago a calling came from his direction, "Hello? Can you hear me?" It was sung in a quiet melody. The first voice Korin heard; other than her own and the illusionists. She closed her eyes and ignored its melodious and unnatural tone, its calls trailing into silence after a while. The illusionist came and went and the second night the voice called out again. Korin, too fatigued to answer, fell into her voided slumber. On the third night she finally answered. Curious and bored. Her own greeting flatly trailing through the tunnel. And in return she had received a magical question, sung sweetly and full of false innocence.
The stranger continued with his pitch, little puffs of breath between every word. Korin had heard his screams too. She knew if she laid her eyes on him she would find a beaten and bloodied individual. "I have one last resort, one spell to cast into the stars and hope for a better outcome for you and I. All it takes is your name."
How tempting his offer was. Korin herself had also come to the conclusion that she would probably die here… if not worse like the man said. It was only a matter of time. She had heard the illusionist speaking of moving on to phase two in his chaotic ramblings and oversharing. Whatever that meant couldn't have been good, considering how down right torturous phase one had been.
But Korin had already begged for death. Wished it upon herself and its conclusive nature did not sow seeds of fear inside her. "You will not trick me with fear or desperation." Korin had lived her life a fool. She'd always been a prisoner, now she just had the cell to match. The look complete, a whole aesthetic, a monster finally put in a proper cage and, finally, only then, did the awareness of her dawdling moronacy grace itself upon her. Fate taunting her with its inevitability as it now spewed from the mouth of a stranger. 'Take me into your hands and act if you dare', it threatened.
"Tell me what the spell does." Korin demanded. "What will you do with my name?"
.
A moment passed and then another and just when Korin thought the man may have fallen asleep or died he answered,
"I will sing it and you will be mine."
His faint words carried a rush of heat and intimacy. Mine. The word rattled through her with a shiver. "Yours?"
"Yes. Subject to my will and my command."
Korin snorted in disbelief and scrutinized, "And trade one captor for another? I think I would rather just die and get it over with."
"You're not dying though, are you?"
Her gaze hardened as she stared at white stone.
"I smell your strange blood when they bleed you. I smell how much. I've seen its running tides pull in and out of the tunnels. People, humans, don't survive that kind of draining. Mortal blood does not return to its body."
Korin licked dry and crack lipped with a sticky tongue. "What would you even command I do? I don't know how your cell looks, but I don't have any windows or doors. I'm covered in shackles and chains and nobody comes in here when I'm conscious. You'd have better luck commanding a rat to bring you cheese. At least it could fit through the tunnels." She deadpanned.
"I hear it."
"It?" Korin froze, blood cold. Fate cruelly tightening its grip on her throat.
"In the apex of your screams I can hear the song of your incredible power." His voice came out breathy, filled with something Korin could not see. "The shackles and the chains you wear are suppressing it. It's been just strong enough to keep you alive. If we can free it, I believe it is more than capable of escaping this place."
After a moment, "How will I break them?" The shackles, with their strange glowing glyphs, weighed heavily at her wrists and on her ankles. Seeming to drag her down and steal her energy. She had already pulled and tugged and knotted the chains in hope that they would break. All to no avail.
"I created them. Well not these exactly. These seem to be a poorly copied version of mine. But they are still derived from my magic, even if its form has changed." The man's voice carried an angry growl, a little louder as it echoed down the passage. A wheezey little breath at the extra expenditure of energy and his voice smoothed out again, "I can command you in using my magic to unlock them."
"You can't unlock them yourself?"
It was his turn to bleakly scoff. "Even if I could, they have cut me apart and stuffed me with metals and clay. I have preserved what little energy I have left to ask of you my life and our freedom. I am not of this realm; only a being of the material plane can access the modified magic and bypass the effects of the shackles."
"So I give you my name and after we escape this place? What then?"
"You ask so many questions and waste what precious time we have. The spell is incomplete and its effects will wear off soon." He managed to complain between his pants.
"You attempt to evade the question. Now we are both wasting time." Korin did not yield.
She could hear a weak smile in his voice. "I told you this would be a gamble. Fate is always a gamble."
"I thought fate was a certainty."
"No, my dear." He said with a frail laugh. "Fate is an endless plane of currents leading into the horizons of countless futures..."
There it was again, circling back around so soon. Fate. But this time it was rephrased and redefined.
"So will you tell me your name?" A slight deviation in the wording but the spell still danced down the little tunnel again much weaker, eventually finding the remnants of the first spell and reverberating back with more force.
"You have such a smooth tongue stranger." She conceded with a shake of her head and a small bark of laughter. But the clouds and feelings of damnation parted and she rose from her inactivity. One of those damned 'ticks' of the great cosmos; the tacking click of the turning of the wheel rang out in the canals of her mind.
"My name is Korin."
A long drawn out minute and a moaning gasp was followed by soft laughter melting and oozing through the tunnel. It hit her face in a green warmth that immediately seeped into the skin. As if she had absorbed the waves of his laughter, wet crushed leaves and chloroform baking on a summer night, and now they rang inside of her in thrilled excitement. Another bout of melodious giggles and this time she heard his voice clear as day inside her head, "Oh my sweet Korin," her name came off of his tongue full and lustrous and she felt the effects of the spell lighting up in her skull; synapses in her brain firing as her heart began to race, "you have no idea how smooth my tongue can be."