The child that had signalled us away from that monster, the all too familiar one, hid behind a tree root, watching us silently.
"Its you! Kid belos!" Luz said
I looked the child over, it had a mask that resembled the emperor's. Perhaps that is what the emperor looked like as a child, but even so, what was it doing here? There could only be one inner self.
Luz walked closer to the kid, and kneeled down to his level "Thank you for helping us before. You don't seem nearly as scary as your inner self."
A roar sounded through the forest mindscape where we were trapped, Luz glanced up while Hunter and the kid covered their ears. The kid ran up to Luz and hid behind her, holding onto her arm. Luz looked to us.
"If strong emotions can take form, maybe he's the emperor's....." Luz thought for a moment "I don't know, sense of guilt?"
"What?" I said, almost laughing "Belos has never done anything worthy of feeling guilt! Its obviously his, uh, sense of innocence"
"His pure intentions!" Hunter put in.
Luz looked at the kid for a moment "Well whichever it is, I think he can help us stay safe" Then looked back to the kid and smiled "And maybe you can show us who Belos really is." The kid nodded lightly
I raised an eyebrow "What was that?"
The roar sounded again
"No time! Lets go, go, go!" Luz said, the kid grabbed her wrist and started to run off.
Hunter and I followed, both of us not wanting to associate with someone who wanted the downfall of the emperor, but also not wanting to be devoured by some mindscape creature.
The kid jumped into one of the portraits. "Wait, you're just going to invade his memories? Thats sacrilege!" I said, as the thing screeched again
Luz grabbed one of my arms, and one of Hunter's "Its a way to survive!"
She dragged us into the portrait with her. We travelled through it, landing with a thump on the ground. We stood up and dashed after the kid, who was running through the town that we seemed to be in. I'd never seen it before, it felt strange. The child disappeared when it reached a small crowd surrounding some sort of stage.
Hunter, Luz, and I walked to the front of the crowd. I heard people speaking around me.
"He says he can talk to the titan" someone said
They were answered by someone saying, "The titan's dead, how's that possible?"
A man walked onto the stage, he looked like Belos himself, but younger, and his mask looked different, it seemed to be carved from some sort of bark, like the child.
"Fellow citizens!" he began, he sounded like Belos "We are born into chaos. Our lives anger the titan! My own family had been hurt by the darkness of wild magic."
He held a staff in his hand, which glowed in red before casting a brief smoke around him. He now held the staff, spinning it around in the colors of the nine covens.
"I've been shown the healing light" he continued "It shines in nine hues!"
Gasps rang through the crowd, as if they couldn't believe what they were hearing and seeing. I nudged Luz.
"See?" I said "He's always been helping people"
An explosion erupted in front of us before Luz could say anything.
"The wild witches!" Belos cried out "They have found me! Run!"
We ran back to where the portrait where we'd entered the memory. We were about to go through but noticed someone talking. I turned to see Belos talking to what seemed like, a previous golden guard?
"You incompetant fool!" Belos scolded "You nearly took my head off with that blast!"
The old golden guard looked at the ground "I'm sorry, Lord Belos" he said, he sounded oddly like Hunter.
Belos turned "I'm off to the next town" he started to walk away"
"What about the rest of these?" The old golden guard said as he took a tarp off of....cases of explosives?
"Put on a bigger show." Belos said
My heart skipped a beat. What did he mean? Why had they done that?
The old golden guard lit a match and put it to the fuse of the explosives, then followed Belos away. The kid returned, and picked up some sort of bag full of stuff. We walked through the portrait, and back into the forest of memories.
"Belos was lying!" Luz immediately said "Wild witches weren't attacking him! How could you two help someone like that?"
Hunter couldn't come up with an answer.
"That was probably a special technique to get people to listen to his message." I said
"It's....It's for the greater good" Hunter added, though it sounded like even he didn't believe what he was saying
Luz narrowed her eyes before jumping away from the portrait, which green slime had began the stream from.
"He found us!" Luz said as she started to run away
The kid jumped into another memory, and we followed. We walked up a snowy hill, our footprints leaving marks in the clean white sheet. The child laughed, it almost creeped me out. He grabbed a rope off of someones shoulder in the crowd we had walked into.
"Whats the kid doing?" Hunter asked, almost reading my thoughts
"Shh" Luz said, then turned to Belos, who stood at the front of the crowd
Belos motioned to a burning city. "Look at what wild magic has done to your city!" he said "Now imagine what it's doing to you. A city can rise from the ashes, but a soul...." Belos shook his head solemnly
Murmurs ran through the crowd, of confused and worried people.
Belos motioned with his staff "I can make your magic pure again, as the titan intended!"
The old golden guard walked up beside Belos, holding a glove with a glowing finger. A branding glove. People stuck out their wrists and the old golden guard touched each wrist with the glove, branding them each with a different coven sigil.
"Welcome to your new covens!" Belos said
Suddenly, the people's sigils began to glow, and cracks came from them. Some cried out in pain. The cracks spread all throughout each person, until they collapsed, one by one. The old golden guard rested a hand on one, then looked to Belos.
"They're....still alive" he said
"Then we still have some work to do. Gather the palismen." Belos said, walking away from the collapsed crowd. The old golden guard took the palismen and handed them to Belos, who cracked one off of it's staff and took it in his hand, walking away. The old golden guard paused to look at the collapsed witches for a moment, then followed.
The collapsed witch made a soft whimpering noise, as Luz, Hunter, and I looked down at them in horror.
We left the memory, following the laughing child.
"You can't deny it now! Belos is trying to hurt people!" Luz said, still trying to convince us. I was so confused, and scared, I wanted to hug Hunter, to have him tell me that everything would be okay, but I couldn't.
"He was just perfecting sigil magic!" I finally said
"Beside's maybe he's remembering things wrong!" Hunter added
"Who knows how mindscapes work!" I said, looking to the laughing child again.
"I thought you did!" Luz said
"Well, maybe I'm in idiot!" I burst out, then turned to the kid. "YOU. Get back here!"
I chased after the kid, Hunter at my side. I heard the roaring again, and turned around to see the creature looming over us, screeching. I stumbled backwards, almost falling. We all cried out and starting running again. We ran down a hill, following the child. We stood in front of a tree with a moon on it. Luz had already climbed most of the way in.
Hunter and I stood in place, staring at the creature. Luz reached out a hand.
"Hunter. Y/N." Luz said, she sounded almost genuinely worried for us
We climbed into the memory. The creature stuck it's snout through the portrait for a moment, then left. Unintentionally, we all, in unison, let out a sigh of relief. The kid ran up and put something in the bag it was carrying.
We were in the throne room, where the portal was kept.
Luz's eyes widened "He's got the portal! Did you two know about this?"
"Of course." I said "We helped rebuild it."
"I can hear you..." I heard Belos' voice. For a moment I was terrified, but then remembered that he must just be talking to someone in the memory.
He turned, and I heard someone laughing. "You caught mee" The voice sounded almost like a child.
A shadow travelled along the ground, shaped like a person who....wasn't there?
"To you who stray so far from home." the shadow spoke, morphing into different shapes on the wall "To me who's trapped beneath these bones, we'll play forever, me and you, when you paint the land in nine bright hues!"
"What can I do for you, collector?" Belos asked the shadow thing
"I'm boreddd" the shadow thing, the 'collector' whined "Is the draining spell ready yet? I wanna play and see everything go all--"
He cast his shadow over a statue, and made it look like it was cracking, like we'd seen in the memory. I flinched.
"You'll have your fun on the day of unity" Belos said
"Betrayed, beguiled, alone, deceived!" the collected said, he seemed to have a pattern of speaking in some sort of poetry "We'll have our revenge on....ugh 'unity' is so hard to rhymeeee"
Luz looked to Hunter and I, we both shrugged.
An almost phantom of Hunter ran between us, we was covered in abomination goo, this must have happened on the day of the events at eclipse lake. The collector disappeared.
"I know you sent someone else on a mission to eclipse lake, but Y/N and I went" He began, holding the portal key "But if we hadn't, we wouldn't have found this!"
Belos snatched it and held it in his hands
"Some of the titan blood did spill, but Y/N will be here soon and-" Hunter was cut off by the emperor lashing on of those green blades at Hunter's face, leaving a scratch where the new scar I had noticed was. I saw the present-day Hunter flinch beside me.
"Leave. Now." Belos said
The Hunter from the memory left the room, and the collecter re-appeared. I didn't hear what they were saying for a moment. How dare he hurt Hunter. I was one thing, we weren't related, I was at his mercy, but Hunter?"
My brain tuned back in at the words from Belos, "I say to Hunter and Y/N, 'the titan has big plans for you' and they do what they're told. Especially good on Hunter's part, don't want him turning out like the previous attempts."
What did he mean 'previous attempts'? Why had he lied about the titan?
"I'm starting to think you make those things just to destroy them" The collector said "You have fun with it. Admit it!"
"Of course I don't, Collector. It hurts every time he chooses to betray me" Belos answered
I turned to Hunter, who looked so confused, and shocked, and scared.
"I-" I tried to say something, but everyone had began to leave the memory, so I followed.
"Sounds like he's trying to wipe out all life in the demon realm. And the sigils help him to that" Luz said
Hunter and I stared at the ground, dazed and confused. Everything we'd known, everything we'd grown up thinking. It was all a lie.
"Hunter, Y/N, um, listen. You two don't need to return to the castle." I tuned out what Luz was saying to go stand beside Hunter.
I was about to say something, to try and comfort him from what he'd just heard, but then I saw something. My eyes widened and it made me feel sick. It was a hallway full of portraits of horrific death. Tangled in the branches were cracked and broken masks of the previous golden guards.