//------------------------------// // 21: Defiance // Story: Diary of the Dead // by AppleTank //------------------------------// Agatha sat in the dining room, huddled underneath layers of blankets, and seethed. Her week had started off so well. Every morning, before she went for breakfast, she entered her routine meditations, peering hours into the future for any possible threats. Normally, this was a peaceful hour spent peering through the flickering shadows of possibility. This time, all she saw was a distant flash of orange light a day away, before a brain-splitting strobe light pulsed through the threads of time. She was knocked breathless for minutes, joints protesting at her shaking muscle’s treatment. Shocked, then angered, she pushed through again, forcing herself to bathe in the twisting currents for a few moments longer before she lost her grip again, returning to reality with a bloody nose and red tears. She still couldn’t see the branches of fate, but she saw something else that both chilled and excited her. Surrounding the painful distractions were thousands of indistinct paths that all led to an impossibly vast dome of permanent shadow. But a single path, in the same direction as that magic flash, was still illuminated, something the distracting magics desperately tried to keep hidden. The magic flash illuminated a single shadow of her, waiting by the dinner table for her ticking fate. Agatha knew she was dying. Her first life she managed over a century, aided by predicting which lifestyle choices kept her cells alive. Then she took her first dose of the Regeneration. Once, she kept up her cello hobby, but she was soon frustrated by stiffening joints. Barely half a century had passed before her feathers started to fall out. And now, her entire body was collapsing, after barely reaching half of her previous life time. Now at the end of this second life, a new complication. The shadows cast by the prophecy blinding light continued to frustrate her, but also illuminated what paths she had left to her to great distances. Almost all of them were dead ends. The end of her own future. Except for one. Agatha clutched the blankets tighter, her lungs burning with every breath. She had called in all primary combat members of the Club to watch the grounds. Wally Falcowolf and Barnabee perched in trees and right underneath the surface, respectively, watching the forest around them. Gladas and the Antibodies walked the halls of Plan P. She even strapped on her bags carrying her slingshot and ammunition, just in case. Her wings clenched around the bags, reassuring her of its weight. She couldn’t watch for threats herself anymore, after all. Something was important enough for Harmony to take a direct action against her magical talent. In the meantime, she ordered Cycle to collect the charged mana crystals and set them up in the spell circle to power her Regeneration. He was let go back to the library for his own business. Agatha's heart thudded painfully. She could easily imagine swaths of heart cells dying as her literal deadline approached. Normally, she would have already thrown in the towel and gotten this over with so she could get one more decade or two of life. Ironically, the attempt at blinding her had told her how close she was at making a fatal choice, how close she was to the one choice that would actually let her life go further than she could have ever dreamed.  Before this, she had briefly considered giving up and asking Gladas to install a Phylactery into her. But then her greatest asset would be lost to her permanently. Something she couldn’t afford to lose when Destiny itself strived to end her. So she waited, head throbbing as she routinely tried to figure out what Harmony was trying so hard to hide from her. Her heart jerked. She pushed her magic once more; the orange light flashed behind her eyes. Agatha’s eyes shot open, bloody tears trailing down her cheeks from her magic forced to its limit. “You worthless sapling, you were stalling!” She leapt out of her seat and ran towards the prepared spell room. She barely made it a few steps before her vision blurred, the floor swaying beneath her feet.  Her glowing eyes shot a glance down at her chest. Her heart spasmed once, twice, thrice ... Shit, my heart! Right before her strength gave out, she fell, face first. She angled her forearm, and let her body weight force her talon through the bottom of her ribcage. Instinct barely threaded her claws between major blood vessels, nudged her lungs to the side, and grasped her heart as it beat its last. She slid against the wall, blood smearing behind her. She pointed her bleary eyes forwards once more, manually pumping her own heart in defiance. She clawed forwards another few steps, another few meters, before the muscles in her arms started burning. Rage could only substitute for glucose and oxygen for so long, and there was nothing she could do about her plummeting blood pressure. She stared in desperation at the door only steps away. No! I won’t make it like this! She looked around herself in a panic, and caught sight of her weapon pouch. She slit the strap, and the bottom of the bag, extracting a single glass projectile as she let the pouch fall to the floor. With the last dregs of her strength, she primed it, and collapsed on top of it. “Shrrk ...” she wheezed through clenched teeth, as her breath and foam left her lungs. Her vision tunneled, and blacked out as her brain starved. Blood pooled underneath her, soaking her fur. ........ Her explosive charge went off, throwing her half broken form through the door. The room was barely larger than a closet, a small closed off area to keep Agatha’s materials protected and prepared at all times. It was just big enough to have a cabinet to store charged mana-crystals, and floor space for the spell circle. Cleanliness was a must to prevent excess matter from stealing the precious drops needed to pull Youth from the jaws of Death. Agatha’s near-corpse rolled to a stop in the center of the circle, her lower torso nearly torn off from her impromptu self surgery and explosive jump. One of her wings folded at an awkward angle, the bone snapping from the rough impact. Blood splattered the crystals, and activated. All six mana crystals ignited, forcing magic into the catalyst dictated by the spell circle, surrounding the cooling body in its center. Tendrils of magic grasped every loose particulate, drawing their broken components together. Splinters tore free of Agatha’s flesh, forming a half door that flopped to the side. Blood flowed backwards, diving back into her blood vessels. Torn muscles reached out for each other, skin sealed. Finally, the magic stabbed deep into every cell, partially reconstructing her damaged genetic code. Agatha’s eyelids fluttered. “... Did I make it?” she asked, wearily waiting as her wing snapped back into place, her amputated talon pushing out of her stomach and back into her arm. “Wait, is that it?” Then the floor beneath her exploded, coating her in blue mana-flame. Cycle and Evens poked their heads out from behind the slightly scorched lab table, shattered crystals smoking around them. “Well, that didn’t work,” Evens commented, rubbing his sore horn.  Cycle scratched his chin. “A different circulation pattern, perhaps?” Any further observations were cut off as a blue flame elemental dropped down from the hole in the ceiling. Cycle squawked as he was kicked across the room. The elemental grabbed Evens by the neck and slammed him against the wall. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME-- ACK!” Evens squeaked when Agatha dropped him and flipped away. He squeaked a second time when a spread of scalpels made an outline around him. He threw his hooves into the air. “This is my first week, Cycle! You’ll give me a heart attack!” He paused. He patted his chest, punched it a few times. “I did get a heart attack.” Gladas blurred past, her wing snatching the scalpels out of the wall, three flaming shadows by her paws.  Agatha skidded across the lab floor, claws digging smoking trails. Her brain was filled with piercing pain, flashing lights. It hurt so much. Evens was the cause. She roared in fury. How dare he. How dare he! She started a new charge-- No!  Blades seconds in the future intersected her path, forcing her to abort. She screeched to a halt, silver flashing by her chest with millimeters to spare. Distraction past, she advanced once more -- DANGER made her snap her head to the side, dodging a triple bladed swipe. Each step was now in reverse, a web of future dismemberment blocking her way. Her focus skipped, and locked onto the new threat. A Dove with burning golden eyes looming over her, claws swinging, sent her tripping over her own feet and onto her back. The Dove raised a talon with a pair of scalpels between her claws. A flick, four. She tossed both hands up, surrounding them with dozens of steel handles sticking out of the ground. Agatha barely twitched towards a scalpel before her DANGER sense shrieked, pulling back in time to miss a thrown blade.  Agatha turned, only to find the Dove lunging for her, blade in talon. Agatha rolled, only to be forced into a desperate stumble as scalpels slammed in grip first in her path. She barely managed to get to her feet just in time to leap in another direction, squeezing in between a pattern of blades and a shrieking mass of shadow swooping in from above. She snapped her head back, sliding underneath another cluster of scalpels.  She bounced off a wall, somersaulting over the Dove’s low thrust.  She backpedaled desperately, each step jerking in random directions as the Dove ran at her, tossing scalpels at her feet and scalpels in each wing jabbing for her neck. Black storm clouds darted around her feet, teeth wet, claws sharp. A swipe at her arm. A stumble to the left. DANGER A spike trap to her left. A half roll to the right DANGER Her cheek being split. A twirl too late. DANGER Blades surround her. Nowhere to go.  DANGER Her jugular torn to pieces. DANGER Leap Left -- DANGER Right -- DEATH Her senses screamed in terror. FREEZE! Her breaths came out in ragged breaths, her lungs locked, her skin scalding. As her vision came back into focus, she was forced to stare cross-eyed at Stuart-5 perched on her beak, his prosthetic tail hovering over her right eyeball. She was backed up against the lab wall, contorted into a painfully awkward one legged stance to fit between the forest of hilt-first scalpels around her. A scalpel was gently touching her neck, held in the reverse grip of Gladas, placidly watching her reaction. Wildcat-6 hovered over her, smoke billowing from her jaws. Hellcat-18 was frozen below her, jaw opened against her leg. “... I’m back,” she gasped out into the awkward silence.  Gladas tilted her head. “No, this wheeze this isn’t me trying to gasp trick you into letting me run.” She coughed a few more times. “I know you want to, but please don’t slit my throat.” After a moment, Gladas sighed, rubbing her eyes as she stepped back.  “Thanks,” Agatha managed. “My leg was starting to hurt.” She slowly moved to place all four limbs back against the ground. Stuart-5 stared at her distrustfully for a few more seconds before pulling his tail back, joining the rest of the AntiBodies in a loose circle around them. “How did you figure out a way to counter my Sight?” "Well, the first thing I realized was that if it was planned in any form, you'd catch it in your routine meditations." Gladas moved to pick up the scalpels littering the floor. "Therefore, it must be spontaneous. You’ve said it yourself that concentrated fields of dark magic plays hell on your precision tracking. Then, assuming I got the drop on you, I must keep an erratic, chaotic tempo to prevent you from getting a stable footing to ever counter-attack, while still leaving obvious gaps in my strikes to give you a predictable escape. I do not directly finish you off, because frankly you look like someone who will happily resort to a double suicide out of spite. Instead, giving you the hope of escape will allow me to direct you as I please until I can set up a situation where even a desperate attack would prove instantly fatal.” Gladas turned away to move up the stairs, prodding the dazed Cycle to collect Evens, and recall Wally and Barnabee to reconvene in the kitchen. “Evens, wait for me upstairs, I’ll get your heart back working. I’ll teach you how to do it yourself tomorrow.” Agatha blinked as she followed behind her. “... Wow, you’ve thought about this a lot.” Gladas shrugged, standing up. “Only for a few decades,” she said. “If dark magic ever ceased to be a problem, you’d have long taken up a Phylactery, so I wasn’t too worried.” Agatha quirked her beak. “I probably should’ve expected that.” The entire Honeycomb Club stared at the new “Agatha.” She still vaguely had owl-like features, except tendrils of magical blue flames trailed the edges of her wings, eyes, tail, and plumage. She was also rather twitchy. “So, recap for the one’s outside?” Gladas prompted. “Right. Yes.” Agatha palmed her eye. “This is the present now. Got it. Anyways, as you all know, I held back on Regenerating because my sight was actively targeted. I believed there was something ... my enemies wanted to hide from me. I managed to figure out that there was a moment in time that increased the likelihood of my Regeneration increased my life expectancy, but prevented me from figuring out what that process was until I was literally seconds away. “Turns out it was stalling; I almost didn’t make it if I didn’t decide to shove an arm up my own rib cage and pump my heart.” “So, what’s new now? How'd you get the whole, blue flame thing?” Cycle asked. "As you know, the main issue with the Regeneration spell was that it was unable to reach full rewind, especially if you didn't want to disable the safeties on memory retention. Resulted in side effects akin to mild radiation damage. Over everything. Unfortunately, the Enlightened quickly gave up pursuit of this research, we have little data on the effects of foreign material previously implanted.  “The second time I went through this spell made the problems exponentially worse. I kept at it because Phylacteries tended to cloud my Sight. ” She chuckled deliriously. “The third time, I appear to have absorbed some of Even’s magic to shore up the genetic damage. That’s probably fixable.” Even blinked. “Neat! I helped.” He turned to hi-hoof Cycle next to him. “Pretty good for just a week.” “Indeed,” Agatha continued. “I think I can get much use of this knowledge. However, the personality scrambling is going to take a bit to get used to. This body won’t last, but it has given me an avenue of research: figuring out an elegant way to  integrate fresh code. After all, there is probably a cell in your gametes that have continually divided across generations with the simple addition of genetics from your parents. “Right now, I need to work on making it easier to manage the mana, and figure out how to properly rewrite the spell circle to fit this new addition properly.” She hissed, sinking into her seat and clutching her head. “Getting real difficult trying to tell what’s present and future right now.” “Ok, that’s enough.” Gladas pulled Agatha off her seat and slid her onto her back, balancing the woozy griffon between her wings. “We’re getting that mana problem of yours figured out.” “Yeah, yeah.” Agatha let her limbs flop about. As Gladas started moving, Agatha glanced over at her reflection in the ice box. “You know ... considering how differently I look?” “Hrm?” Gladas grunted vaguely.  “I might be able to dodge the bounties on my head.” She grinned. “A new face needs a new name. How about ... Trestine?”