OOC [memory 02]
Damnable "quarantine" bubbles. They'd been a constant plague on Wellspring and the reason he'd spent most of his weekend there, even though he'd told Spike he'd help him with swordsmanship he'd had to postpone that. There'd finally been a break in the bubbles long enough now that he could get out of Wellspring, and as a result he almost skipped back to Reed's house, so pleased was he to finally be free.
He was just a few steps away from opening the door before he became aware of a sort of high-pitched whine, or perhaps a buzz, emanating from some unknown point. Paladin's first instinct, to dismiss it as some kind of insect, was quashed by both the knowledge that Edensphere insects would be much larger and the fact that it was December. Just then, the source of the noise zoomed out from around Reed's home--it didn't have a body, just a sort of long, crystalline shaft, and it was heading right at him... Paladin had enough time to think "What, again?" before the crystal slammed into the back of his head and once more he was wrenched away from Edensphere.
This time, when his eyes opened again, he was inside once more--inside a building that might have been the same one he'd been crowned in, the last time he'd had such a memory--but the circumstances were quite different. For one, although the air was still sterile, this time he could not feel a thing--not the body he inhabited, or the stone tiles under his feet, only a spike of dread as he heard--heard! how interesting--a door clang shut behind him and a voice booming from nowhere.
"The Drowned King Cagnazzo, deposed!" A voice that belonged to something, something very far from a man, said in mocking wonderment--and as it spoke, the light in the room flickered under some sort of dark haze; Paladin rather suspected that if he could feel, the temperature the room would have dropped quite a bit. "But the wicked are not wont to fall alone," it continued threateningly, and it was only now that Paladin noticed that here, in the memory he was not alone: as he scanned the room in search of the source of the voice he found others here with him. "In life I was terrible--" There was the small man who had crowned him, the monk who he had seen in the past memory "--in death, steeped in terror greater still!" His heart leapt into his throat when he saw that the two children from the earlier memory were here with him, though he wasn't sure what was going on he knew that they had no place here, "Drink long and deep of it ere you die!" After that, there was only fading laughter, as Paladin from without studied the last man with them, an old, bespectacled, rather rotund gentleman--father? Grandfather? Uncle? It was impossible to tell.
Not that he was concerned with that for long, though, as a great rumbling sound filled the air, and then-- "The walls!" The old man cried and indeed he was right, Paladin couldn't feel the vibrations but he could see the room shaking and the walls closing in on them all. The rising dread became a flood spiked with panic; what good was a sword against a stone wall with a mind of its own? He flew at the door they had entered by, but nothing he did could persuade it to move. "It's barred!" He heard his own voice call out; the small man with the wild beard responded the same about the other door. He could tell he was thinking a thousand miles an hour, but clearly nothing came to him; the monk, great hulk of a man that he was, was attempting to push the walls back, whether as a permanent solution or merely a way to buy time Paladin could not discern. Nevertheless, he found himself joining him, and though he could not feel he had the sinking sensation that this was doing nothing, that there was nothing to be done, there was no way out, and the children--the children--
...The children were carefully positioning themselves in the room, talking between themselves. Puzzlement momentarily interrupted the fear--he heard himself call out what must have been their names: "Palom? Porom?!"
One of them, the boy, turned to him with an out-of-place serene smile--he said something, but it came out as some horrible scratchy sound, followed by "We'll miss you!"
Paladin figured out the sound, the scratched-out word, must have been his real name in time to catch the girl's followup: "It was almost like we'd gained an older brother."
"What's gotten into you two?" asked the elderly man, his own rising voice indicating that he wasn't the only one confused--though he seemed to have missed out on the very foreboding feeling currently rising up inside Paladin.
"We won't let you all die like this!" The girl said to the old man, with a degree of vehemence that almost surprised Paladin, and was soon followed by her brother: "Take care of ____ for us, Tellah!"
Was Tellah the old man's name? Why were the two of them saying that? Paladin wondered as he watched them turn and face the walls--now almost up to their noses--they said one last thing to each other, then braced themselves against each wall with a cry of "Break!" and a flash of white and green light that filled the room, even as the ever-present rumbling of the walls ground to a halt.
"Palom? Porom?" He heard himself asking as the light faded, and he blinked until he could see normally again, wondering why they didn't respond--and then when he could see why they didn't say anything...
Where the two of them had stood were now two statues--small, yes, but statues all the same, of two small children bracing like--like they were pushing on a wall, oh god, exactly like Palom and Porom, oh god, oh god...
There was nothing more he could say, horror overwhelmed him--the old man, though, was not so affected: "They turned themselves to stone?!" He said, shocked as well, then "Hold on now..." For the first time, Paladin matched the image of the old man with the basic archetypal image of a wizard as he saw him move his hand and chant "Esuna!" as golden light surrounded the pair of statues--for a moment, Paladin felt a surge of hope--then, nothing happened. The wizard sounded aghast as he spoke: "They did it of their own will--it won't work...fools!" He cried, in exactly the sort of anger that is always used to mask grief, "If any of us had to die, it ought to have been me." And there went that anger, dying as quickly as it came.
The burly monk stood next to the wizard, and seemed to sag like a doll stuffed with sawdust at that proclamation, sounding as close to tears as Paladin felt---"They were only children..."
The last man, the one with the wild beard, promised to avenge them as the memory began to fade out, and just before it did, Paladin felt anger, an anger that frightened him with its depth, rise up inside him--and heard his own voice promise, "You will answer for this, Golbez."
When he came back to himself, he was flat on his back just outside Reed's door. I should get up, he thought absently, People will worry if they see,, but instead he simply raised one hand to his head, both to try and process what had just happened and to soothe the headache threatening in his temple--then he found the hair on said temple to be but a few inches long--and those weren't even his hands--Paladin stared at them, then stumbled to his feet in an unfamiliar body, making for the mirror in their bathroom as fast as possible.