Asyr Moonriver, Test #478

Asyr Moonriver was laying in her bed, unable to sleep. Ulyx was already in his birdcage, happily sleeping for the night. She had been offered a room at The Sea’s Embrace by Hal, but she felt bad making him pay for her room. She had never been nearly as wealthy as someone like Hal clearly was, so she was used to sleeping in some of the less-reputable inns and taverns along her journey to Glory’s Coast. However, Hal had said that the entire group needed to sleep in the same place like real adventurers do. Asyr had been trying to secretly count her coins, checking to see if she had enough, when Hal noticed and immediately offered to pay for her.

She hated that feeling that she got when people looked at her with pity. The look ranged from a true pity to a smug pity to even a disgusted pity. Hal had looked at her with true pity. That was the worst type. If they were smug, she could brush it off when she realized that they didn’t care about her, but instead only cared about their own image. If they were disgusted, she would immediately know that they didn’t care about her and she could avoid them in the future. Hal’s look on his face showed that he truly did care about her feelings. The nature of pity, though, meant that Hal knew that Asyr couldn’t pay. Soon, he would start coddling her. She needed to find a second job so she could have some spending money if she was going to stay at this tavern much longer.

Asyr did enjoy adventuring to some degree, but it wasn’t steady pay. Now that she was part of an official adventuring party, the Adventurer’s Guild would be able to offer the group some jobs, but even those jobs weren’t the best. Asyr had been part of a different adventuring party for less than two weeks. That group had disbanded because of a job gone wrong. They had completed the job before the deadline, but because of the wording on the contract, the merchant who had offered the job was able to argue that the contract was broken. All because the party hadn’t gotten back to town until the day it was due. In the end, the merchant was able to not pay out the standard guild rate and simply bought the materials the group had collected for a much lower price. The other members of that party went their separate ways. Some went back to their homes, others went to find steady jobs. Asyr, however, had only been passing through, so she continued along her way to Glory’s Coast.

Remembering the issue of her money and not wanting to sleep just yet, she pulled out her money pouch. In it, she had two standard gold coins, eight standard silver, four standard copper, and one Erdeniin gold coin. It was the equivalent of 284 copper coins and a piece of mostly useless gold scrap. Her room this night cost one standard gold. She could, if she was paying, afford two nights in this tavern. There were other taverns which she could afford, but this one had heating in the rooms, so that was nice. She looked at the useless Erdeniin gold coin, turning it over between her fingers. She heard a noise of rowdy patrons down on the main floor of the tavern, causing her to jump slightly, dropping the gold. She quickly scrambled to catch it before it could roll away, causing her to bump her head on the frame of her bed as she reached under it to finally grab the coin.

She put the coin back into the pouch as she slowly rubbed her forehead and her hand began to glow slightly. It wasn’t very necessary to heal this bump because it was so minor, but it had become habitual for her to heal all of her injuries, no matter how small. She could heal anything from cuts to gashes, small bumps to even fractured bones. She started to think about every time she had healed herself for the most minor injuries, but quickly shook her head back and forth to try and clear her mind. Remembering everything wasn’t important right now.

She went to lay back down. Her boots and belt had been taken off already, set beside her book of notes and her small dagger, but she preferred to keep the rest of her gear on. It was also a habit. She started to think about the reason why she did it, but started smacking her forehead to stop. She needed to just sleep so she could stop thinking. She only knew one form of stronger healing magic. “Exepnos.” As she spoke that word, as she had done many times before, she immediately fell asleep.

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Asyr had grown accustomed to seeing this dream. She had seen these events play out many times before. She was well aware what would happen over the course of this dream, but there was one thing different in this version of the dream: a strange white faceless mask with bandages gently floating in the corner of her vision.

“It is a new day, so it is now time for Test- Test number… Miss Moonriver, do you remember what test number this is?”

Asyr spoke up as an old elven man entered the room where she was currently chained up in a cage, wearing a ragged tunic. “This is Test 478, Archmage.” Her voice didn’t match the battered appearance that she currently wore. She put all of her energy into maintaining the disguise of being unbothered by her torture that she was undergoing, but the toll was apparent in her eyes. She hadn’t slept a full and restful sleep in the entire time she had been kidnapped by the archmage who currently held her captive.

“I see. Well, Miss Moonriver, today, I have what I believe is a real breakthrough in my research. Today, I found myself a sponsor for my research! I finally have an actual source of high-quality demon blood.”

“That is truly good news, Archmage.”

The man who she was speaking to was clearly pressed by the way Asyr referred to him simply by his title. His face scrunched slightly at the word ‘Archmage’, but he tried to keep his demeanor hidden. He wore a long black robe with red trim and kept his long white hair held back with a black metal ring. His hair was long enough to touch the floor as it trailed down behind him. Asyr knew the man’s name, but she simply refused to call him by it as the most minor form of resistance.

“I see. Colavito, could you come in here so I can explain some of my process before we take your sample?”

A massive bull-horned demon with four arms, deep crimson skin, jet black eyes, and muscles that could tear the Archmage in half walked into the laboratory. He took a cursory glance around the room before folding one set of arms and holding the other set together behind his back. When he spoke, his voice was powerful: deep and commanding, yet still held an air of menace that no humanoid soldier could manage.

“I am here because you showed promise. I do not have time to waste on the menials. You will finish this quickly before I am discovered by the forces of the Aeni Sulnid. This research already invites their gaze upon you.”

In contrast, the Archmage’s voice was snivelling, but not shrill. It was always moving from thing to thing, never holding on an idea, always poking at the ears, trying to find some hidden secret.

“Well, of course, you have important things to do. I will be quick. First, as I am sure was explained to you by the messenger demon, I have been trying to find a way to take demon blood and make it overtake a celestial host.”

Asyr was well aware of the research, having been the subject who was being experimented upon by the Archmage. He had spent days upon days injecting her with blood from various demons he had summoned. He had tried injecting her with the blood of lesser imps, greater imps, lesser demons, greater demons, and even a demon soldier, but somehow, her blood had always won over the blood of the demons. She had never known her father, but she had learned from the Archmage that he was apparently a highly-ranked angel in the service of the Emerald Heart, Amidra, the goddess of life and healing. She had known her father was a celestial being due to her naturally golden skin and ability to heal people with magic. She also had a small symbol of her heritage in the center of her forehead. That heritage was apparently powerful enough to prevent whatever the Archmage was researching from being accomplished.

“I am quite aware of this already, worm. Get on with this explanation or move on. We don’t have time for your self-aggrandizing nonsense.”

The Archmage scurried over towards Asyr’s cage, pulling out a key, saying, “Yes, fine. There is only one thing I do need to explain. This girl here has quite a powerful heritage, being the daughter of an archangel. Her father is the commander of the armies of the Emerald Heart. Therefore, we need equally powerful demon’s blood to overpower hers.”

Colavito used his back set of arms to scratch his chin with one hand as the other examined various notes on the tables in the room. “I quite understand that. However, we don’t have time for experimentation. I am too great of a target. My being here is already a breach of the treaty between the upper and lower planes. I estimate that we have time for only one test. What has been the greatest obstacle in your way, aside from the quality of blood?”

The Archmage unlocked the cage, grabbed Asyr to make her stand, and began dragging her to the experimentation table. Asyr didn’t struggle too much because it would only result in more pain. She had learned that fairly early on. He began strapping her down to the table as he began to explain, “Well, as I had planned to say, the two variables I haven’t confirmed are blood quality and blood quantity. I do know that no matter the blood quantity, if it isn’t high enough quality, it will be burned out by her blood. I also know that the blood of a demon soldier wasn’t immediately burned out, so it may have been able to cause temporary overtake, but I didn’t have much of that blood, so I couldn’t test that. The last thing I need to say before we begin is the method.”

“Make it quick, worm.” Colavito’s patience had worn to a near-non-existent state.

“I quite understand, but this requires your assistance, Colavito, so I need to explain it. Also, I was under the impression that I would be paid for the process in addition to the girl.”

“Those terms were only upon a successful test. What do you need me to do, worm?”

“Yes. In order to facilitate an easier process with less demon blood needed, we must drain her blood at the same rate that we are injecting your blood into her. It would be made easier with the demonic blood magic that all demon princes are so proud of.”

“Fine then, worm. We must get on with it now. I can feel something beginning to breach the Divine Barrier.” Colavito said this as he looked off into the distance. The place where Asyr was being held was high up off the ground, so the Archmage felt comfortable having windows in the room where she was held. Asyr didn’t know where exactly she was being held, but she did know that it was some kind of tall spire-like tower.

The Archmage grabbed a familiar knife. Asyr was well-aware of what was about to happen, but it didn’t make the pain fully vanish. The Archmage took the knife and looked to Colavito for a brief moment as the two prepared for the test to begin.

“Test number 478, begin.” As the Archmage spoke those words, Asyr took a sharp breath in, trying to prepare for what she knew would follow.

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The time between those words and the actual start of the experiment felt like eons. The first sensation Asyr felt was the cold steel of the knife, barely touching the inside of her left elbow. The knife, if not for the cold sensation, would have been imperceptible. The sharpness of the blade made it so that the actual cut was unnoticed until Asyr felt blood rushing down her left arm. The blood was warm. She had been told one time before that most people’s blood was warm, but most people’s blood was warm like a night in summer was warm, or like a room that someone just walked out of was warm. Asyr’s blood felt like the warmth of a home-cooked meal or the warmth of a parent’s embrace. Asyr, however, had not felt either of those sensations in some time, so those feelings that she knew her blood’s warmth felt like, felt as foreign as the warmth of the blood of a stranger coursing down the inside of her wrist.

The second cut came shortly after, leading Asyr to feel that foreign warmth running down her right arm, as well. She had grown accustomed to this. It was some time around the one hundredth test that the Archmage discovered the idea of blood replacement. It had been over a year since the first time Asyr had felt this sensation. She was also keenly aware of what came next, but this time would turn out to be different.

Colavito spoke a single word: “Sanguis.”

Asyr suddenly felt all of her blood stop flowing. She felt a sudden chill throughout her body, starting from the two open cuts on her arms, flowing down to her hands and up to her shoulders, then to the center of her body and her heart. From there, the chill expanded to her feet and up to her head.

The Archmage could see what Colavito had done and spoke up nervously, mentioning, “I do need you to ensure that she stays alive, Your Eminence. If her blood stops flowing suddenly, she only has twenty seconds, at most.”

Colavito released the flow of Asyr’s blood, causing the warmth to surge back into her body. He turned to the Archmage and grabbed the knife with his back right hand. His front arms had not come uncrossed since entering the laboratory. The demon prince examined the knife and had a curious look on his face. “This knife has become blessed through the repeated bathing in the blood of celestials. This is quite the discovery. I shall note this for dealing with any greater demons who wish to attempt to usurp my power.” He then took the knife, which upon touching his deep crimson skin began to glow with a holy light, and plunged it into the wrist of his front right arm. He held the arm out above Asyr’s body and allowed his jet black blood to drip down onto Asyr’s stomach. The blood was ice cold.

As the blood soaked through the thin tunic, it touched Asyr’s skin and began to very slightly smoke as Asyr’s heritage tried to burn out the demonic blood. Colavito then removed the knife from his wrist, causing more black blood to pour out of the now-open wound. The blood poured onto Asyr, completely soaking the tunic and began pouring down her sides and off the table. Colavito sneered and took the knife once more, saying, “Not enough,” and completely cutting off his right front hand, letting it plop with a sickening splash and squelch onto Asyr’s stomach. Asyr had grown accustomed to seeing various demonic body parts being cut off and used as a source of blood, so she was mostly unfazed by this sight. The thing that actually made her stomach turn was the smell.

Her own blood smelled like regular humanoid blood, but with a slight scent of the wind in an open meadow. She had grown accustomed to this scent. Colavito’s blood smelled of iron, sulfur, and charcoal. When it touched Asyr’s flesh, it began to slightly burn, so the scents only grew stronger and were intermingled with the scent of smoke.

As the severed hand laid on her stomach, Colavito spoke the same word he had spoken earlier, “Sanguis,” and Asyr’s blood stopped once again. Her head was already light from the blood loss and her hands and feet were already cold, but when her blood stopped moving this time, she could feel her breath catch as her lungs suddenly couldn’t fill with air. The next sensation she felt, however, was one that she would be haunted by for the rest of her life.

The jet-black blood began flowing into the cuts on her elbows. She could feel the ice-cold sensation enter her arms. As the blood began to flow throughout her, she felt two competing sensations: the cold of the demon’s blood and the burning pain of her own blood trying to destroy the invading blood. For the first time that day, Asyr finally broke. The scream she let out was a cry of pain, mixed with chokes and gags from the demon’s blood exiting her body in any way it could. She fought against the manacle restraints on the experimentation table, but couldn’t move, no matter how hard she fought. As the demon’s blood burned within her, Colavito willed every drop of his blood out of the severed hand, causing it to shrivel up into a husk of bones and leathery crimson flesh. He then willed every drop of blood that Asyr choked out of her back into her arms. As the blood coursed through her veins, the burning slowly died down, being replaced with the icy sensation of the blood’s flow as it ran through her body.

The Archmage spoke up, saying, “Now, all we must do is begin drawing out her natural blood until the overtaking begins.”

Colavito could not control Asyr’s blood with the same degree of skillfulness as his own, especially now that it was mixed with the demonic blood, so the process was much slower. This also meant that Asyr could feel every change that her body was undergoing as her blood was taken from her.

The first change was a cold sensation at the corners of her eyes. She could feel tears of blood dripping down the sides of her face. She was unaware of it at the time, but her normally sky-blue eyes were changing. The pupil became a blood red, while the sclera turned the same shade of black as the new blood that she was currently crying. The Archmage could see the changes beginning to happen, but a sudden burst of holy light caused the wall of the tower to explode behind him and Colavito in a cloud of dust and light.

“Deal with our uninvited guest, worm! I will-” Colavito started to yell before he suddenly vanished, leaving only the severed hand and a burst of golden light where he had been standing just a moment before.

“I know my standing in this scenario. I shall take my leave now.” The Archmage began to speak the words to some spell as arcane sigils floated around him in blue light. The spell was almost finished when a golden hand grabbed the Archmage’s shoulder. The blue light shattered into small crystals which vanished into the air. A tall, golden man appeared out from the cloud of dust, carrying a golden tower shield emblazoned with a symbol that Asyr had seen before in her reflection.

The tall, golden man picked up the Archmage by the shoulder, speaking a single word in a deep voice with an undeniable kindness behind it: “Cease.”

A golden sword of light appeared above the Archmage, slowly descending. The Archmage, for the first time in the four hundred and seventy-eight days that Asyr had been subjected to his experiments, finally felt true fear. The sword descended on the Archmage, but a small ring on his hand shattered, causing the sword to vanish. The golden man clicked his tongue and threw the Archmage at the empty cage where Asyr had lived for more than a year. The Archmage hit his head hard on the iron bars and began to bleed from the back of his skull.

“Aether Illibraut, you have been judged by The Emerald Heart. You have been charged by all the forces of the upper planes. Your crimes are conspiring with the forces of the lower planes, torture, and-”

The golden man’s words were interrupted by a sudden scream of pain. He turned around to see what was happening to Asyr. In that moment, the Archmage pulled out a scroll from his robe and opened it, causing it and him to vanish in a flash of blue light.

Meanwhile, Asyr was still undergoing the transformation that Colavito and the Archmage, Aether Illibraut, had started. The next change that was happening was a sharp, piercing pain at the sides of her skull. She would later describe the pain to be something like the same pain she felt when she was a child and she had a new tooth growing in, except it was all happening at one moment.

From the sides of her head, two bony protrusions were growing quickly. As they grew, they first pierced the skin of her head. Blood was flowing down her skull, matting her hair. Next, they began to curl out, becoming black, ram-like horns.

The golden man rushed over to Asyr and spoke a deep and powerful word: “Restore.”

Asyr could feel the pain subside as she passed out from the relief.

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When she came to, she was wrapped in a pure white sheet. Her hands and legs had been removed from their shackles. She looked down at the insides of her arms, seeing the blood and cuts had been healed and cleaned. She looked around the room for the golden man, only seeing that same strange white mask floating in the corner of her vision. She tried to look at it, only to find that it wasn’t truly there. She believed it was just a figment of her imagination, but then heard a voice in her head simply say, “So this is what my idiot student spent his time doing. What a waste. However, you are an interesting creation. I told the rest of your friends not to enter my burial chambers again. You, however, are quite interesting. If you were to go alone, I would allow you passage to my coffin. I await your visit…” As the mask vanished from the corner of her vision, the golden man opened the door to the room she was in. The golden man was carrying two books, a small birdcage, and his shield was gone.

“Who- Who are you?” Asyr spoke, but her voice was hoarse.

In contrast, the golden man’s voice was deep, kind, and resonant like a bell. “I am an archangel. My name is Itheros. I wish you would have remembered me, but I am not surprised, given the amount of time it has been since I left you and your mother alone.”

Asyr was hit by those words like a giant’s fist. Memories came flowing back to her. Memories of a mother she hadn’t seen in over a year. Memories of a simple house with a small garden of vegetables in the front. Memories of a poor, but happy house where she had lived with her mother for almost seventeen years. Memories of a time when she was young, barely five. Memories of a trip to the nearby town. Memories of the festival that day. Memories of her mother holding her left hand. Memories of a father holding her right hand. Memories of his kind smile. Memories of his big, golden hand. Memories of the end of the festival. Memories of being carried in his strong arms. Memories of being put down in her bed to sleep. Memories of being woken up by an argument. Memories of slowly creeping out of the bedroom to see her parents arguing. Memories of her mother crying and yelling at her father. Memories of him sitting at the table, head in his hands. Memories of her father looking up to see her. Memories of her mother running over to her and holding her. Memories of the last words her mother said to him: “You made your choice! Go back then! You can’t choose both!” Memories of a golden light. Memories of her mother’s tears.

Asyr went to grab her head in the shock of remembering a father she had forgotten for so long, only to grab the horns which now grew from her head. She yelped in shock as her father went to hold her. His advance was stopped by Asyr scrambling off the table.

“Don’t touch me!”

“It’s me, Asyr. I’m your father. I had to go, but I realized I made the wrong choice. I want to make up for the many years I wasn’t there. Will you let me?”

“That- That’s not it… I- I-”

The man who she remembered was her father began to approach again, setting the books and birdcage down, only to have Asyr back away again.

“Please don’t touch me.” Her voice was smaller this time. She was less panicked than before, but that was replaced by silent horror in her face.

“I did what I could to stop the overtaking. You are still you. I couldn’t remove all of the demon’s blood, but there is nothing to worry about. You will be fine.”

“I’m not fine!” she shouted, tears in her eyes, but she was so drained that she could only continue, “I’m not fine. I’m not fine. I’m not fine…”

She kept repeating those words as her father approached her slowly. He kneeled down beside her and simply held her as she cried. Everytime she said, “I’m not fine,” he responded with, “I’m here for you,” or “It’s going to be okay,” or “I’m never going to leave you again.”

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Asyr woke in a cold sweat with tears in her eyes. She had experienced that day in her dreams many times in the five years since it happened. It never got easier. She sat on the side of her bed, knees to her chest, trying to calm down from the experience. She eventually stood up and walked over to the familiar birdcage where Ulyx was still sleeping. She decided to let him sleep a bit longer. She grabbed her notebook and remembered the day she first saw that notebook. It had been one of the books that her father had carried with him from the tower when he rescued her.

As she remembered that, she remembered the strange part of her dream. She remembered that white mask and the words it spoke. The Archmage was the student of that white mask. The white mask belonged to the creature who slumbered at the bottom of The Tomb of The Sands of Time. Lastly, she remembered what the mask had said to her, specifically. “If you were to go alone, I would allow you passage to my coffin. I await your visit…”

She didn’t know what to make of the situation, but if the mask could tell her where the Archmage went, she would do anything. She had spent over a year in the Archmage’s tower. She was tortured. She was broken by him. She would do anything to find him and finally stop him. She wouldn’t allow anyone else to go through what she had gone through. But she had spent five years looking for any information on where he could be. She had gone out and become an adventurer. She had come to Glory’s Coast to find anyone who had heard of him. All of the things she had done had ended without any luck. If her only path was to listen to the white mask, she would do it.