"This is your last chance to tell me the truth." Owain growled, his body tensing like a cat ready to pounce. Reverie sighed and threw her arms out to the side.
"Or what?! What are you going to do if I'm the one trapping you here? It looks as though you've been helpless against them so far!" Reverie shouted, stomping a foot and taking a step forward. Maybe he would really attack her, but it still felt good to yell.
"Piss, you shrieking cow!" He shouted back, and ran both hands through his hair. They glared at each other.
"Cow?! Shrieking cow?! Do you, I can't believe! You have no idea what it's cost me to get here to save you! I'll grant you, it was wrong to come into your soul like this and I'msorry for that. But it was an accident! I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying! I should never have come here! You and your father, and Marcel too! Why should any of you be my burden?!"
"Soul? What?" Owain stopped glaring and yelling, and tried to interrupt Reverie, but she was too deep in her anger. Her hands were trembling and she was biting the insides of her cheeks to keep from crying. She continued to glare at him, but did go from outright shouting to a terse bark.
"What do you mean, what?"
"What do you mean you're inside my soul? Is that how you're controlling me?" He asked. Most of her energy rushed out of her as she studied his face. His brows were drawn together and his head titled ever so slightly to the side. He looked like a big, confused, dog.
"No, I'm not controlling you. But we are inside your soul, what else could this place be?" She asked, waving one hand in a grand gesture. Owain looked around and crossed his arms again.
"This place? It's a prison. You abducted, and brought me here." He stated with so much condescension Reverie laughed. She laughed harder than she had, maybe in her life. Tears streaked down her face and she crouched down to hug her knees as she laughed. Owain's arms dropped to his sides and his mouth pulled into a frustrated line. She laughed harder at his expression.
"A prison! Ha! Have you even tried to use your magic to get out of here? If you had, you'd know, wherever this place is, it's not the physical world you're used to. Someone, or something maybe, very powerful has trapped you in your own soul. Marcel is probably in the same situation."
"My magic? I don't have magic that I can use. And what do you mean Marcel? He's here too?" Owain crouched down in front of her, his questions were less accusatory and more curious now. Reverie sniffled, inwardly grimacing at the snot and tears all over her face. Hopefully he wouldn't remember her hysterical outburst when he woke. If he woke, she thought. He might be too stupid to save.
"Yes, you have a lot of magic? And I already told you. You and Marcel have been tangled together, and you're instinctively pulling away from each other. But it's killing you both in the process. You really don't know this?" Owain shook his head.
"I can't use magic, not the way others do. And no, I really don't have any idea what's going on. I remember Marcel having an episode, trying to help him, and then waking up here. How can you touch the walls, if you're not the one who made them?" He asked.
"Wait, first, what do you mean? When you say Marcel was having an episode?" She asked him, rather than answering his question. She couldn't help the curiosity about her brother, despite herself.
"My father didn't tell you? He has episodes, because he's always putting out so much magic. Faren says he's an 'emitter'. I don't really get it, but the daemons are drawn to him because of it. Sometimes they get inside his head, I was trying to help him push them out when this happened." Owain explained, sitting fully on the floor now. He crossed his legs and put his elbows on his knees. His eyes on her face felt much less hostile now.
"Daemons...he puts out enough magic to draw daemons to him from across the wall? Gods around me." She whispered to herself.
"Mm. He's been like that since he was a baby. He's a good man, a fighter. Cries all the time, but so does my father." Owain shrugged. Reverie felt as if she'd been stabbed in the gut. The daemon were wicked, cruel, beings. If Marcel had been fighting them his entire life, Reverie bit her lip and shook her head. She could feel ashamed of her self pity later. Abruptly, she stood and began looking all around. Owain watched her from the floor.
"Listen, we don't know each other, I realize that. But for now I need you to cooperate with me. I think, if I can guide your magic, I might be able to separate you two."
"I already told you, I can't use my magic."
"I don't need you to. I think I can use it for you, or at least...move it? It's hard to explain." She floundered in her explanation, her ears turning red at his smug expression.
"So the lady-who-knows-all doesn't know about her own magic, ha! Don't pull a face over it, come on just...do what you have to do." He teased her, and then waited patiently.
"You're quick to change your opinions." Reverie muttered as she began relaxing her hold on her magic again. Owain's eyes bulged as she started to evaporate into wisps of power.
"Hey, hey, what the fuck is happening to you? Hey!" He blustered, and frantically waved his hands as if he could scoop her back together. She laughed again, this time from genuine amusement.
"I'm using my magic. I'm going to try and make the same thing happen to you, and then I'll carry us out of here."
"Wait. I'm going to be...like that?" He asked, flinching away from her every time she attempted to cocoon him in her magic. She would have rolled her eyes if she still had them.
"Yes. It will feel funny, but it's ok. This isn't your real body, it's just an illusion. I need you to trust me just this once." She coaxed him, using the placating tone she sometimes took with clients. Owain frowned but stopped flinching.
"Hey, kid, I'll work with you. But stop talking like that."
"Like what?"
"Piss, you know what like. It's bad enough when women do it, worse when it's a little girl." He spat, as she wrapped around him. She wanted to retort, but figured it could wait. She wanted to get started and then, hopefully, they could bicker about it once they'd all awakened.
When Reverie awakens to her magic, she is hurtled towards a journey fate is determined for her to take. As she leaves behind her life as an orphan in a brothel, to learn painful truths about her family, Reverie can only trust in what she's been taught all her life; "If you want to survive, you must be useful and make use of others." Reverie soon finds herself allied with a group she wouldn't have chosen for herself. Can she survive the gauntlet of trials before her, and learn to take the hands being offered to her? Or will her own doubts be enough to hold her back, and pave way for a calamity several hundred years in the making?
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