Agata and Opal

“Opal!”

When she fell on the hard floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut, Celsian was next to her in an instant, worried out of her mind if her tone of voice was anything to go by.

“Opal, are you hurt? What happened?” The thief grabbed a hold of her hands, gently shaking them to try and get a reaction out of her. “Opal, can you hear me?”

She could, just barely, but Celsian’s words and gestures were getting more muffled and distant by the minute. Unlike that one night in the cathedral, her calls and touches weren’t capable of bringing Opal back, and, for the first time, she didn’t even feel the warmth of her friend’s hands. She wasn’t feeling anything, not the floor under her legs, not the pain of her body. It was as if her senses were all abandoning her, one by one.

She was still vaguely conscious of the room around her, of her worried comrades at the edge of her vision, but everything seemed far, far away.

She was adrift in a sea of memories, and she let them drown her.

*

The first thing she remembered wasn’t even the Golem, the being that had created her, but the broken bodies of the knights that, by accompanying the Saintess in her sacred crusade against evil, had lost first their magic and then their lives. Maybe it was the reason why, instead of assuming another form, she took a humanoid one. After all, clay creatures learnt from what they saw.

She didn’t remember the Golem well; it got defeated, cut into countless little pieces by the enraged Saintess, but the latter – melancholic, deadly, beautiful, kind – quickly became the very core of her memories, the sun around which all the other planets turned around.

The girl’s first instinct was to destroy her too, but she stopped when she understood that the piece of the Golem wouldn't have fought back. The truth was, she had been… spit out, for lack of a better word, too soon, and didn’t know what she was supposed to do.

She was incomplete, a malfunctioning product, but what the girl saw was an opportunity.

Her first instinct was to destroy her, but she chose to bring the little Golem with her instead.

*

One of the first things she learnt about Agata Calchedonius was that she hated the kingdom and the Golem in equal parts. She hated the powers she had never wanted, and she hated the fate she hadn’t managed to change.

“… so you see, Little Golem, if one day you’ll decide to ravage this country…” she told her once, during one of her most melancholic moments. “… it will just be destiny, right?”

*

Clay creatures learnt from what they saw. The little Golem wasn’t an exception, in that regard, and the being that she spent the most time observing – the person she liked the most – was Agata Calchedonius, so it shouldn’t have been a shock to anyone when one day, catching sight of her reflection in a body of water, she noticed that she had taken Agata Calchedonius' outward form. Apart from the fact that she was a head shorter than her, they could’ve been twins.

The little Golem was vaguely intrigued by her new appearance, while Agata Calchedonius simply laughed. She called it “retaliation”.

*

The first words she ever said after many years of trials and errors, of course, were those that composed the Saintess’ name.

“… Agata… Calchedonius” she enunciated, even though it wasn’t without some difficulty. Moreover, she was pretty sure she had mispronounced a few syllables here and there.

The girl, however, turned around with surprise etched on her face, that after an instant turned into a warm smile. “… Agata” she replied, proudly patting her head. “You can just call me Agata.”

*

Another thing she learnt about Agata was that she seemed way lighter when she smiled.

*

That day, Agata was looking at her strangely, her arms crossed over her chest, her head inclined to the side like some kind of bird – the little Golem had seen so many of them during their aimless journey, they were so pretty and cute – and a frown on her face, as though the little Golem was somehow confusing her. The little Golem supposed she couldn’t blame her.

“… Agata?” she asked. Now she knew more words, but that was still her favourite one.

Agata’s expression smoothed out and she smiled at her, shaking her head. “Sorry, sorry. I was just thinking that, now that you look so human, maybe I should find you a real name.”

“A name?” Didn’t she already have one?

“Yes, like mine.”

“I can be Agata… like you?”

Agata laughed a little. Her laugh was nice to hear, it sounded like many crystal bells. “No, sorry but that’s my name only, you’ll have to choose another. What would you like?”

She had no idea, and her silence must’ve been telling.

“Okay, what about…” Agata looked her up and down, and then snapped her fingers. “Aha! Since you have those pretty grey eyes, how about… Opal, for example? It’s nice and traditional.”

The newly named Opal nodded in awe. She would’ve taken everything that Agata wanted to give her, but a name felt special. With that, she seemed actually human.

Agata smiled. “It’s decided, then. Nice to discover you again… Opal.”

*

Agata – and by extension Opal, officially present as her apprentice – was there, when the stained glass in the Cathedral of the Saintess was created. Agata despised it, but did a very good job of hiding her hatred, while Opal was attracted to it. She even managed to get close enough to nearly touch it, for a fleeting moment, before she was driven away.

When they returned to Agata’s self-built home, very far from the Calchedonius family’s house, Agata created an exact copy of that stained glass, infusing her magic into it.

“If they want to make a trap, then I’ll make a getaway” she commented, cold and sure.

*

When Agata was on what they both knew, with heavy certainty, would have become her deathbed, old and wrinkled but not as much as she could’ve been, she looked at Opal with a strange light in her eyes.

“Opal… come here, little one” she called her, sounding vaguely faint. “Take my hand.”

Opal, of course, obeyed. What else could she have done?

“Very good. Now, Opal, listen well. You have to absorb my powers.”

Opal’s eyes widened, and she instinctively tried to get away and take her hand back, but Agata gripped it with surprising strength. “Agata- Why?”

“I won’t let another innocent inherit this cursed power and become the new Saviour” she said, looking her in the eye. “If you have it, nothing of this will happen. You are strong, so you’ll be capable of wielding it.”

Opal hesitated still, but Agata just put the final nail in her coffin.

“Please, Opal, you’re my last hope. Won't you do it?”

They both knew Opal could never refuse her anything, if she asked properly. With a grieving face and the Saintess’ grace, she used her Golem powers to absorb her Untethered Magic, as if it was just another soul stone.

“Thank you, Opal, my little jewel” she sighed at last, content and satisfied, closing her eyes. “Finally, retaliation.”

She pronounced those words – the words that would’ve become her last – in a whisper, but Opal was too close not to hear them. Afterwards, she felt Agata’s grip weaken suddenly, and her eyes widened in despair.

In the end, Agata died peacefully, with a smile on her face, but Opal’s heart was left warring.

*

The people straight up adored Agata, and Opal understood them, even though Agata disliked the attention.

When Agata died, they mourned for months on end, and Opal mourned with them. They erected cathedrals and created art in her honour, but forgot about her name and her humanity.

Opal, however, couldn't forget.

Opal, at that time the last piece of the Golem, didn’t die, and even after decades she couldn't forget. Sometimes she wanted to, but then she remembered that she was the one being who couldn't disappear, because then someone else would’ve suffered, so she endured.

She endured, and she grieved, and she tried to be happy, but she ultimately failed.

*

After nearly two centuries, it became too much.

She had tried, she swore she’d tried, but she was painfully, wholly alone in that world that never stopped changing and she couldn’t live like that anymore. By that point she’d become too human, she felt too much. Everywhere she turned, there was something that reminded her of Agata; she couldn't even look herself in the mirror without her ghost haunting her through her reflection, the spitting image of her most loved one long gone. She could’ve changed her appearance, of course, but she wasn’t strong enough: the most she’d been able to do was shortening her hair.

Agata was everywhere, except for there, at her side.

Opal’s whole life had been shaped by her, but she was gone.

So one day, when she remembered about the stained glass in Agata’s house, her “getaway”, she went there. She touched it, and the surface rippled like water, answering to what was now her magic. Without thinking twice about it, she tried and walked through the stained glass, arriving somewhere she didn’t recognise – which was strange, since after centuries of travelling Kristallia she went just about everywhere – and that, strangely enough, didn’t have any krystageia flowing through it. Seizing the opportunity, she shrank her body until it was the one of an unassuming newborn, and she forced herself to forget at the same time, giving the body just enough knowledge to behave like a normal human. She felt bad about it, but she reasoned that she wouldn't have died and the members of the Calchedonius family would’ve remembered Agata anyway. No-one needed her in her world, and she’d become way too human already, so why not try that in its entirety?

She wasn’t supposed to ever return to Kristallia, but maybe that too was a part of what Agata called “destiny”.

*

Opal, that time, was brought back to reality neither by Celsian nor by another one of her friends, but by a platoon of knights – how did they know where to find them? – that stormed Agata’s home without warning. Opal flinched, while her gaze refocused all of a sudden on her surroundings.

Surroundings that, for the love of change, were exploding. That had to be one of her worst wake-up calls ever; maybe it didn’t beat the one she’d had that one night when she and Celsian got saved by Ametrine, but it was definitely in her top five.

“Surrender!” shouted the one who sounded like the Knight Commander, his silhouette looming in the light created by the empty frame of the door, while some other soldiers destroyed the windows and entered, successfully blocking all the possible exits. “Do not try and oppose resistance, you are surrounded and without chances of escape.”

Opal was still shaken, but jumped to her feet and looked around, frantically trying to understand if there were any ways they could’ve won. Her comrades were more or less doing the same thing, but their perspectives weren’t looking so good: the knights were too many, and the space was too cramped.

“Celsian Felspat, you are under arrest for high treason against the crown.” The Commander continued, then turned to Ametrine. “You are too, Ametrine Calchedonius, unless the rumours are true: did Felspat blackmail you?”

Ametrine didn’t glance away from him, but she wordlessly made her way towards Celsian, who was standing protectively near Opal, and very deliberately stopped only when she was right next to her. “She did not” she answered, cold and sure, raising her sword. “Everything I did was out of my own free will.”

Opal could hear Celsian smile. “Thank you, buddy.”

The knight’s expression, on the other hand, darkened. “The Calchedonius were right to think that you betrayed them, then. They did well to tell us where to find this place.”

Discovering that was a shock, but Ametrine didn’t so much as twitch. “… I see” she said, in a heavy sort of way.

Afterwards, all hell broke loose. Ametrine and Celsian, without even speaking to one another, launched a synchronised attack on the knights, even though it seemed a bit futile. Rutile was clutching a stack of papers to his chest, looking absolutely terrified, and Opal tried to help in the fight, but in that situation she didn’t do much apart from managing to avoid capture. She was still too out of it, and in that moment if she used her powers she would’ve just destroyed everything.

At some point, however, their situation inevitably worsened and someone- well, many someones managed to immobilise Ametrine and Celsian despite their furious reactions. It was only a question of time before it happened, but it wasn’t any less distressing, and Opal felt on the verge of exploding. She could literally move the very earth they walked on, she could’ve won that battle, she could’ve helped, no, she had to-

“Opal!” shouted Celsian. “Don’t think about us, run!”

Opal’s eyes widened. How could she ask that of her? “No!” she replied, vehemently shaking her head. In that moment, however, the choice was taken away from her. She got distracted, and stumbled while evading an attempt to grab her forearm, falling right against a wall covered by an old curtain: instead of hitting it, however, she pass right through it, since that wasn’t a wall, but the stained glass created by Agata herself.

She extended her hand towards her friends on instinct, and the last things she saw before being completely engulfed by the glass were the distraught faces of her companions, who until the end desperately tried to reach her.

When she got on the other side, bringing the curtain with her, she fell on her shoulder with a loud thump, and heard someone startle. That same someone climbed the stairs for the first floor, and then abruptly stopped in their tracks with a chocked inhale of air while she was getting up.

“… O-Opal?”

That, Opal realised with a mix of wonder and despair, was Toshiko’s voice.