Weaving - The Antisequence - 3

You recall your training coming to an abrupt end, like a meal confiscated before the final bites. Unsatisfying. Dairo sets you to work like a chisel to stone— hard and violent labor. Slay a noble heir. Exterminate a budding cult. Burn a laboratory of research. You find the tasks dissatisfyingly similar to your previous role. Save for the fact that you’re now treated like a weapon rather than ammunition. 

It’s like watching a twisted performance. A dark comedy in which the main character is based on your life, but played by a demon. Rather than fill the role yourself, you sit idly amongst the grimacing audience. An assembly of the voices in your head. The academic who could have been, the jaded warrior, the petty criminal, the son who couldn’t save either of his parents and the long-dead child within. A terrible audience of lost souls. None of them seem to enjoy the macabre display.

For years you kill, destroy, and dismantle at The University’s command. A perfect solider. Scars paint your skin, and your once curious eyes sink into deep, gloomy wells. It is far from a peaceful life, but there is calm within your resignation. A white-noise-like serenity.

You settle into this rock bottom with permanency. Like a fossil folded into sediment. But a subtle stirring flickers to life amongst the nothingness. As blight blooms in still water, your ever-asking mind twitches to life, latching on to a question. Why? Why, does an influential, powerful, and legitimate organization like The University have so many fringe concerns? Legitimate, yet minor foes. Quarries with individuals, essentially nobodies, tampering with dangerous magic in the forgotten corners of society. On paper, they seek to create order or enact justice from the ruling class. The bodies in your wake tell a different story.

You do not seek with intention, but answers stick to your question like flies in honey. A whisper here, an inference there. It paints a picture of something sinister. Mortals playing god. The University somehow knows things they shouldn’t, or are possibly tampering with forces better left untouched.

“The Design didn’t account for this.” Words uttered under Dairo’s breath after the two of you had nearly been killed by an otherwise inconsequential mage. They didn’t seem noteworthy when he spoke them, but as time went on you began to hear the term more and more. The Design. Precisely what The Design eludes you, but only those with great authority seemed to know of its existence. Hinting at its significance. Most speak of it with pragmatism, but others seem to revere it like religious doctrine.

You fixate on this hole in your understanding. These people who stole your life, who trained you in espionage and deception would grow to regret it. On missions you question prior to killing, scan research notes before burning, and ask leading questions. All signs point to a war over a singular concept. Fate. How this war is waged is not known to you, but it is clear you’ve been its soldier this entire time. 

Answers only breed more questions, widening the hole within. You wonder at the magnitude of this Design and grow paranoid of your famously discerning colleagues. Fortunately, no one seems to notice your inquisition. No one, but Tserlbane.