Chapter 6 stuff:
Theatre of Darkest Hours
You walk into a nondescript movie theatre. At the back is a projector. Beside the projector is a VHS tape, labelled “The Darkest Hours Of The Ultimate Hunters”.
Out of Character Disclaimer: While this room absolutely contains lore-relevant information, there are some elements of this lore that are dark. I wil do my best to provide content warnings before each segment of the film, and spoiler the potentially triggering parts. Thank you for taking part in this game and making it to this point- I appreciate you for sticking with it despite all the errors.
Film: When placed into the projector, plays the following film over the course of about 1 hour:
(Immediately:)
The Darkest Hours Of The Ultimate Hunters
By Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos
(After 2 minutes:)
Part I: The Aristocrat -
Content Warnings: Death, Blood.
On the screen, a lavish dinner inside an ornate dining hall plays out in front of you. A smartly-dressed man laughs and quaffs his beer. The rest of the dinner table laughs uproariously. A timid-looking boy, looking to be only 4 or 5 years old, walks in through one of the doors, and tugs the man’s sleeve.
“Daddy! Can we go play now?” says the young boy, pouting in his tiny, cute waistcoat. The man looks down at his son, almost surprised to see him there.
“Not now, son. The grownups are doing business.” he says, above the low hubbub of well-to-do Englishmen eating exotic foods in copious amounts. “Let’s have the Duchess play with you, hmm?”
An austerely dressed woman next to him, upon hearing this, stands up, and says: “Come now, Geoffrey.” And as the boy, dejected, turns to leave, he is suddenly deafened by a gunshot from across the room.
You see a well-dressed man with a desperate-looking face holding the smoking gun, as on the other side of the room blood sprays from the Duke of the Atlantic Wastes’ face. Screams fill the hall as the assasin is tackled to the floor by the nobility. And then, falling from the chair, the Duke’s body, life rapidly streaming out of it in ribbons of red, flops down on top of his son.
Geoffrey cries out in pain as his body feels flattened by the weight of the body on top of him. He screams and struggles as he desperately attempts to untangle himself from it, to remove his broken arm from the mess of millitary honours it is crushed under and scratched by. He doesn’t even notice that the titanic weight he is struggling against is his father…
And he struggles against it to no avail. The film continues for a minute, the hope slowly fading from the young boy’s eyes, until it eventually ends, fading to black, leaving you in horror at the events you have just seen.
(5 minutes later)
Part II: The Conductor
Content Warnings: Sensory Overload, Secondhand Embarassment, Ableism
Text appears on the screen. It reads “FOR YOUR EMPATHY, WE HAVE TEMPORARILY ENHANCED YOUR HEARING TO THE LEVELS OF THE ULTIMATE CONDUCTOR’S. THANK YOU.”, before fading away. As it does, you start to hear the intricacies of the breathing of every other person in the room, little chitters from beyond the wall as the ambiet noises you never really noticed come to the forefront.
Beautiful music plays out as the screen comes to life. A young girl, only about 7, delicately but quickly moves a conductor’s baton as the orchestra streams out an astonishing symphony. The Royal Albert Hall’s audience are mesmerised by each and every tone in the exquisitely conducted performance, and with this enhanced hearing, you can hear every little beautiful, neat, perfect interplay between each and every part of the composition. It is as near to a perfect piece of classical music as you can conceptualise.
The performance finishes. The hall is silent for just a moment, and then at once, rises into a standing ovation, thunderous applause screaming out… but what you hear is not success, what you hear is monstrous, you hear every little off-beat slap, every little incoherent “WOOOOOOOOOO” screeching across your eardrums, the little stomps as particularly enthusiastic members of the hellish ovation stomp their feet. And a final noise begins to join, quieter than any of the other noises drowning out all your thoughts, leaving you an incoherent mess able to do nothing but hear and suffer. A little girl crying.
Your eyes turn to the stage, as you see the conductor, previously so supremely confident and focused, on her knees with her fingers in her ears, crying and screaming “STOP! STOP! STOP!”. She looks up, seeing the crowd relentless and numb to her suffering, and tries to run off the stage, only to be stopped in your tracks by the other members of the orchestra, taking their bows. She tries to push past one of them, and is met with a harsh whisper of “don’t spoil this for us.”
Left with nothing left to do, the girl screams at the top of her voice “EVERY NIGHT! WHY WON’T YOU STOP AND JUST LET ME PLAY MY MUSIC!”. The hall goes silent, sparing you from the thunderous hell your ears have been trapped in for the past… how long has it been? Instead, you hear nothing but a low chuckle scattered across the audience, and a few whispers on the lines of “What a pity…” and “It’s a shame she was born with autism…”, as the scene turns to black.
Your ears return to normal, but… You can’t hear sound in the same way ever again,
(5 minutes later)
Part III: The Toxicologist
Content Warnings: Parental Abandonment, Sickness
The next scene of the horrific anthology opens in a windswept, frozen field. A car drives by, and a door opens. A man screams something in icelanidc, which is helpfully translated as “This is what happened to Boden’s rabbit!” by subtitles, as you see a young girl in a minature labcoat shoved out of the open door. The car rapidly drives off, spraying frosted bits of mud over the girl.
She shivers as she stands up, her labcoat laughably thin for the snowstorm that is brewing above her. She shouts “FATHER!” in Icelandic. No response. “MOTHER! BO, PLEASE!” Silence. She breaks down crying, the cold lapping up through her legs as she kneels on the floor and screams to the sky. Time passes. Eventually, she stands up, as her eyes fill with a desperate determination not to die of hypothermia for her experiments.
She pulls out a strange device from her coat, and with some kind of fiendish inspiration, gathers together various half-dead plants she finds in the relentless winter, shivering more and more as the cold threatens to snake into her and kill her from the inside out. Eventually, she finds herself clutching a viscous, green concotion made of various plant juices no normal girl would dare to drink, and swallows it down.
In an instant, she throws up blood, and groans loudly. But… she feels warmer. And hunched over, clutching her chest, she begins to limp towards the lights in the far distance. Muttering in icelandic, she says “I have to leave this… this country…”. The movie fades to black.
(5 minutes later)
Part IV: The Witch
Content Warnings: Homophobia, Religious Child Abuse.
You see a little girl struggling against two men holding her arms behind her back, fixing her in place in a claustrophobic stone cell. An old nun in far more ornate wear than the men holds a small, sharp needle, with a tiny little crucifix on the blunt end.
“Matilda… Do you know why you’re here?” says the nun. The little girl shakes her head. “You musn’t lie. And for that lie, I will use you to redeem another child. Sisters, call him in.”
A nervous-looking boy you’ve never seen before walks in, shephereded by two nuns behind him, a look of fear on his face. “Sit down, Timothy. Do you know why you’re here?” says the older nun.
“…Sister Mary caught me kissing another boy.” The boy says, looking down at his feet. A mirthless smile blooms on the older nun’s face.
“And what did she tell you, Timothy?”
“…Boys aren’t meant to kiss boys.” says the boy, patent dishonesty in his eyes, painted across his face.
“You see, hellspawn? Sometimes the impure know how to admit it… Boy, you have sinned. And for that, you will be punished.” With a start, the woman stabs the boy in the hand with the needle. The young girl desperately screams as she tries to escape the arms of the men holding her, but to no avail. And the girl watches and struggles as the older woman, her needle dripping with blood, walks towards her with the same purpose. And with the same fury, she stabs Matilda as well, in the same place. The woman breaks down in tears as the men release her, leaving her across from the simmilarly distraught boy.
“Heal him. Now.” Crying, Matilda crawls across the floor, and touches the boy’s wound, too afraid to disobey. “This is your purpose. You will heal the wounds we are forced to inflict in order to discipline the wicked. So you are aware of what you are sparing others from, you will experience every punishment you heal. That is your punishment for going against the natural order, Witch, and you shall not be spared until we have drained every last bit of that diabolic power from your body. Only then can you be redeemed. Do you understand me?” The girl is silent.
“I said… do. you. understand. me?” The timid girl nods… “Say it aloud, hellspawn!” The woman screams, smacking the little girl hard across the face, sending her down onto the floor, reduced to nothing but a wreck of fear and pain.
“I… understand.” the girl says, choking back the tears out of mortal terror.
The woman leans in to the girl with a disgustingly warm smile suddenly plastered on her self-righteous face. “Good. From now on, after prayer, you will say the following, and you will believe it: “I am hellspawn. I am worthless without the Church. I cause suffering through my ability to heal. A thousand versions of me suffering is nothing compared to everyone else being redeemed. My existence defies God.” Say it.”. You see Matilda’s trembling face as she begins to open her mouth, as the video ends.
(5 minutes later)
Part V: The Gamer
Content Warnings: League of Legends, Solitary Confinement
You see a young person holding a controller in a bedroom decorated with various cat-related paraphernalia, across from a large, high-quality TV screen with gameplay from League of Legends regrettably plastered across it. The player looks more masculine in their appearanace, but is recognisably Alyx Blake.
Then, in an instant, all light in the room fades, plunging the screen into near pitch black. The young enby shouts “MUM! WHY DID YOU CUT THE POWER! I WAS HAVING A GOOD JUNGLE GAME!”. Silence. Standing up, navigating through the darkness, they make their way to the door to open it and turn back on the power. Tugging at the door in the darkness, just barely visible on the screen, they try and fail. It’s jammed.
“…Mum? …Other Mum, I guess?” they say, backing into the center of the room. And suddenly, the screen changes to a timelapse, showing them pace around in pitch blackness for hour after hour, unable to game, and unable to eat… or do anything. Occasional bangs on the door ring out, but it holds strong, leaving the gamer’s isolation entirely complete. The footage slows down eventually, until you see the power come back on.
Two women walk into the room, to see their child, crying, their body twitching, half-starved after a day of being stuck in the darkness… They hug them, but the shaking doesn’t stop. “I… I couldn’t stand to stay still…” cried Alyx, held gently in their mothers’ arms. “I… don’t think I ever really can again.” They stand up… and jittering, they dance. Not in a default manner, but they dance. A wretched, half-starved dance, that ends in them fainting to the floor from exhaustion.
The video ends.
(5 minutes later)
Part VI: The Detective
Content Warnings: Drug abuse
The screen comes up on an entrance hallway in a house, lit by candles. A distraught looking older woman stands across from a 12-year old boy, older than the children you’ve seen so far, but still far too young to be featured in this theatre of horror.
“What do you MEAN you don’t know who killed my son?” says the woman, coldly.
“I… I said what I said. I don’t… know who killed your son.” said the boy, adjusting his little deerstalker hat. The woman looks up, and sees him with the hat.
“Some Ultimate Detective you are!” she suddenly screams. “I… can’t believe it. I… I gave up my chance for justice to some BOY playing detective and now… nobody wil ever take me seriously again… you bastard! YOU BASTARD!”
The boy backs away, as the woman’s screams grow more and more incoherent, and bursts into tears as he runs into a room with an imposing door, and locks it behind him. Hyperventilating, the boy tries to block out the cries of the woman banging on the door, and looks around in an office. Suddenly, he pauses crying for just a moment.
“This is… my father’s office. I’ve never been in here be-” he says, suddenly stopping halfway through, as his crying redoubles. Through the tears, he starts to inspect the room, curiosity not dampened even by the self-loathing painted across his brow. He sits in the chair behind the imposing mahogany desk, and opens one of the drawers.
A tin lies inside. The boy whiffs at it, seemingly notincg some strange smell on it, then gently reads the note attatched to the tin:
To Alfred
My regards for your succesful attendance in the “AYE” chamber yesterday. It is appreciated.
GB
Curious, the boy opens the tin. It sticks for a moment, as if it’s never been opened before. A dark-brown gum fills most of the tin.
“Opium.” he says, instantly, recognising it from his years of study. He pauses. Why… does his father have opium? And you watch with horror, as he says “I’m a failure… this is what failures do…”, lifitng the tin up… And as the opium approaches his mouth, the video ends.
(5 minutes later)
Part VII: The Magician
Content Warnings: Existential Terror
As soon as the video begins, a voice rings out. “Initiate Arden, do you consent to the Trial?” it says, stonily. A 14-year old boy stands in a strange chamber, surrounded by circles and circles of hooded men.
“Yes. I hereby swear to accept the Trial to enter the Circle, no matter what it means, for the sake of true magic.” he says, confidently.
“Good. You will now perform a magic trick. If we figure out how you did it, you die. If we don’t, you live. You have 15 minutes.”
“You…you can’t be serious!”
“We are deadly serious. If you fail, we cannot have an embittered failure expose our secrets.”
“But if I die then… nobody will ever know my family existed. We’ll be gone. Forever.”
“You will perform.”
Swallowing, the boy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of Monarchs Playing Cards, high-quality playing cards made specifically for magicians, and desperately tries to think of how to fool the greatest conjurors in the world. He sits cross-legged in the circle as time ticks by, until, five minutes before the deadline, sweat pouring from every pore in his body, he calls out:
“I am ready to perform! Would… w-would one of you… please… pick a…” he says, suddenly faltering as with a flourish he spreads out the cards in an elaborate snake between his two hands. He freezes. The cards drop to the floor, and he scrabbles to pick them up for just a few seconds, before looking up at the ceiling, and saying…
“I… give up. P-p-lease just kill me now. Get it over with.”. With those words, the hooded figures slowly begin to swarm around him, collapsed on the floor in the mess of a broken trick. You hear little swooshes as if knives were being unsheathed from inside the robes of the Circle’s members.
Fifty knives slip out of the robes at the speed of sound, and the initiate, holding back his tears and trembling with all his might, closes his eyes… accepting his inevitable death in that one horrific instant, ready to be consigned to oblivion.
To find himself pinnned to the floor by knives through his clothes, otherwise unharmed, surrounded by a circle of laughing men. The video ends.
(5 minutes)
Part VIII: The Nanotechnologist
Content Warnings: Mild Body Horror, Parental Abandonment
The screen comes on once more to see a 13-year old girl… but an incomplete one. Partially withered even at a young age, it’s almost painful to look at the already half-dead body of Alex Bracknell. They stand up, and gleefully bound down the stairs to the dining room, ready for their birthday… to find nothing.
They search the house, waiting for the surprise party to come and save them. She finds nothing, and just this slight exertion has already made her tired… she flops down by the door, determing that her parents have gone on a business trip, and waits for them to return. Hours pass, and nothing happens. Standing up, she risks going into their room, and sees a note left on the bed.
We can’t take it any more. Just die, please. - Mr. and Mrs. Bracknell.
Staring it down, Alex looks at the note, tears welling in her eyes, before angrily tearing it to shreds. Then, an eerie calm passes over her once more, as she travels down the stairs, and sits by the door once more… the truth conveniently forgotten. The video ends.
(10 minute intermission, during which players can talk about the lore implications of the horrendous things they keep learning about.)
Part IX: The Necromancer
Content Warnings: Body Horror
The video begins on a desolate wasteland. Inside a ditch, a girl is frantically digging with her hands, every part of her flecked with dirt, until suddenly, she finds a little bit of wood from a coffin. Bracing herself, she opens the coffin using all her might, revealing a half-rotted, green corpse. Upon seeing it, she screams, and throws up immediately, only making the sight more grisly.
But with a sudden determination in her eyes, she murmurs… “Daddy…”, and suddenly thrusts her hand into the corpse’s mouth, tearing out the tongue. Blood splatters all over her, and the determination in the eyes turn to those eys becoming dead… blank, empty, devoid. From a backpack, the young girl pulls out a cube, and she places the bloodied tongue on top of it. It melds into the cube, and the cube slowly expands out, and out…
An inverted man appears. Concave skin, nothing to speak of inside, a distorted mockery of a man. But from the scant tufts of hair adorning the hollow tube masquerading as a face, the girl sees her father. She smiles. “Only… a hundred more to go…” she says, as if making herself out to be determined will make up for the fact that she just defiled a stranger’s grave.
She looks to the sky. “Daddy… I…” She coughs. “Today, I did something that’ll make people unhappy. I don’t… like that. But.” She falls to the floor. “You weren’t supposed to go. They… they were.” She swallows. “…nature seems dead, and wicked dreams… the ends…”.
The video ends.
(5 minutes)
Part X: The Archer
Content Warnings: Violence
The young man in the video seems much older than the people in the other videos have been, seeming to be around 15. As you watch, you see him arrive at an archery range, wave at some of the other archers, then change out of a school uniform into something more athletic.
As he walks out to the archery field, you see him notice one of the other archers, trapped in the hallway with an older adult, who looks to be at least in his thirties. “Now, Lena, I don’t see why this is such a big deal,” he says. “You love this sport, don’t you? That’s why you’re on the team?”
The other archer ducks her head. “Well, that’s true, but the reason I picked up the coaching gig was to pay for my mother’s medical bills … if you’re ste-- taking half my paycheck, I can’t really do that.”
As the young man walks past the pair of them, trying not to look, he hears the sound of someone’s hand connecting against another person’s body, and a girl’s voice crying out in pain. The young man winces, before muttering, “with how many people that man is hurting … maybe it would be better if he just died.” He pauses for a moment, then mutters: “and then he’ll never hurt anyone ever again… Tempting. Job at hand.”
The archer begins to take aim at the targets, hitting the bullseye with preternatural accuracy. Then, as he begins to nock his final arrow, you hear several whistles ring out in a fast burst. (A caption on the screen helpfully informs you that five or more whistles means that someone is on the range, and you should immediately stop firing.)
And indeed, the archer begins to lower his bow to the ground. Then, you see him glance up at the range. The camera shifts to match his field of vision, as he catches sight of the older man from before, standing in the middle of the range.
The young man lifts his bow back up, takes aim, and looses an arrow.
As the arrow pierces the older man’s chest, the screen cuts to black.
(5 minutes)
Part XI: The Snowboarder
Content Warnings: Underage drinking, Sporting accidents.
“Come on, Joey. It’ll make you go faster, trust me!” says the seven-year old girl in winter sports clothing holding up a bottle of cider, leaning against an exquisitely crafted snowboard.
“I… are you sure about this, Ali?” says the nervous-looiking boy, taking the bottle in his hand, and sipping it a little. He swallows it down, then says “Bleh. It… really doesn’t taste that good?”
“Oh, whatever. Let’s go!” says the girl, tucking the bottle into a packpack, and suddenly jumping on her snowboard onto a nearby incline.
“Hey! Wait after me!” says the boy, getting on his own snowboard, rapidly accelerating down the slope until the two are dead even. An unoffiical race begun, with both elegantly weaving their way down the incline… until suddenly, the boy crashes into a tree, screams out in pain, and falls to the ground, dead. Hearing the screams, Alicia rapidly stops their snowboard.
The film cuts to black as she cries over her best friend’s corpse. Then, suddenly, a piece of paper is slammed onto the black screen:
SUSPENDED FOR LIFE
Reason for Suspension: Distributing alcohol with reckless disregard for the consequences.
Notes: You may be the best, but you aren’t above consequences. Never come back.
(5 minutes)
Part XII: The Astrologer
Content Warnings: Cosmic Horror.
The video turns on. Instead of the traumatic events you expect, you see a boy sitting in a place surrounded by stars and tentacles, babbling incoherently. It’s incomprehensible. Inscrutiable. The babbling continues, eventually coalescing into a single chant: “WHAT IS FALSE, YOU MAKE TRUE”, over and over and over again.
You catch one brief glimpse at the being that is speaking these words. It is everything, and it is nothing. And the moment after, the place where you caught a glimpse of it in your memory is sealed, as if what you saw never happened, the images unwinding themselves, diffusing through your mind…
Then, suddenly, the apparitions dissapear, and the boy is just sitting emptily on the floor before a telescope. He stands up, murmering “what is false… i make true…”, before climbing into bed. As he drifts off to sleep, you see him clench his fists, and whisper “I’m being torn apart by this … but I can’t stop. I don’t know what will happen to everyone else if I stop… even if this destroys me, if it saves everyone else, it’s worth it…”
The video ends.
(5 minutes)
Part XIII: The Historian
Content warnings: Violence, kidnapping.
The scene opens in a dark room. The camera tilts back and forth, in a gentle rocking motion. You hear footsteps, and the door swings open. As it opens, you see light shine on the room, and you see a girl, handcuffed in the corner, leaning against the wall.
“Your dinner, Josephine,” says someone just offscreen, placing a bowl of gruel next to her.
The door closes again, and you hear the footsteps receding.
The girl shifts position slightly. “Julius Caesar…” she mutters. “I just have to follow his example… then I’ll be okay…”
The camera fades to black for a moment, then returns to the same location. Some time has clearly passed, judging by the condition of Josephine’s body. Again, the door opens, and someone walks in; this time, the other person can be seen on the screen, although they are wearing a hood and a mask.
“How much is my ransom?” asks the girl.
“Twenty thousand,” says the stranger.
“I’m worth more than that!” says the girl. “Ask for fifty thousand.” She clears her throat. “Now, I demand that you listen to my poem–”
The stranger walks over to the girl and slaps her. “What are you, some sort of empress?” the stranger says mockingly. “You’d best learn your place. You know what happens if your family doesn’t pay up.”
(5 minutes)
Part XIV: The Highwaywoman
Content warnings: Violence, death
The film begins with a young woman balancing on the edge of a moving train, holding a rapier and wearing a revolver on her belt. The bottom of her face is covered in a mask, but you recognize her hair and eyes as belonging to Stephanie Brown. As you watch, she makes her way along the top of the train, until she reaches the engine car, before swinging herself next to the door and busting through it.
As she walks through the door, the film shifts to a different scene, this time in greyscale. A caption on the screen says, “Three Days Earlier…”
“What do you need from me?” the young woman asks a hooded figure. The camera pans around the screen to show an abandoned warehouse.
“I need you to disrupt the 490 to Glasgow,” he says. “Government petroleum shipment. Would be very bad if they managed to arrive to their destination.”
The young woman hesitates for a moment, glancing at the door.
“Should be completely routine,” the figure says. “Won’t be anyone aboard accept the conductor.”
The camera flashes back to the train, returning to full cover. The young woman strides over to where the conductor is sitting and points her rapier directly at his chest.
The conductor’s eyes widen and he holds up his hands. “I surrender!” he says. “Please stand down, there are civ–”
You hear the sound of a gunshot, and the conductor falls over backwards, a scarlet wound sprouting in his forehead. The camera pans back to the woman, who is holding her revolver. The woman shoves the conductor’s corpse out of the way, fiddles with some of the the conductor’s controls, then jumps out of the train, rolling safely to the ground.
The train shudders, before the first car bursts into flame. The cars behind it crash into it, and the entire train careens off the rails.
From the inside of the train comes the sound of screams. The woman looks confused for a moment, before running up closer to the train track. There, she sees charred bodies, their faces contorted, and no sign of petroleum.
The screen switches to the image of a newspaper. HUNDREDS DEAD IN PASSENGER TRAIN CRASH.
In the last seconds before the screen goes dark, it shifts back to the young woman, speaking once again with the shadowy figure.
“Stephanie…you haven’t managed to complete a run in nearly three months,” says the figure, slamming his fist against the wall. “What’s happened to you?”
“I don’t know!” says the figure. “But ever since the crash, it’s just felt like nothing has gone right.” She swallows. “I’m sorry, father.”
(5 minutes)
Part XV: The Inventor
Content Warnings: Scalding, Secondhand Embarassment
A placard on the screen displays: Three days before the Youth Eco-Friendly Invention Competition.
On the screen, you see a girl, her hair tied back in a ponytail, tightening a bolt on some sort of large machine with several pipes. “I’ll show them,” she says. “I’ll show them that I’m worthy of being an Ultimate!”
A younger girl, about seven years old, walks up to her. “What’s that do?” asks the younger child, pointing.
“It’s a more efficient water purifier,” says the older girl, turning to look at the younger child. “It purifies salt water using a complex temperature-bas–” She pauses, seeing a look of confusion on the younger girl’s face. “It makes salt water not salty anymore. I’ve done the math, and this should be more efficient. – should work better.” As she answers the child’s question, she continues to tighten the bolt.
Suddenly, the bolt she’s tightening snaps, and a pipe bursts open. Scalding water sprays towards the two girls, and both of them recoil, clutching themselves in pain. You hear screaming.
When the girl finally manages to get out of the way of the water, still clutching her burned arms, she begins to cry. They pull out a piece of paper talking about their plans to get into Feybrook, to do anything to get into Feybrook, and just… kept crying, a waterfall of tears cascading down onto the paper, blotting on the words “ultimate” and “inventor” She wipes her eyes. “Maybe they were right,” she whispers. “Maybe I’m not meant to be an Ultimate at all…”
(5 minutes)
Epilogue: The Banker
A surly man stands in an office. He is smoking a cigarette. Behind the office desk is a figure you recognise as Timoleon Silverheart, holding a cane even while sitting in his throne-like chair.
The man speaks, softly, in a french accent: “I know what you did, M. Silverheart. Boden showed me the data.”
“Whatever are you talking about, old chap?” says Timoleon, smirking.
“…Ultimates aren’t that rare! You had… god, you had at least a thousand people who qualified, didn’t you? A thousand people who could help you with your pet project, the Ultimate Mage. So… I started thinking… why did you choose those fifteen?” The man takes the cigarette out, and snubs it on the table,
“You wanted people who’d do anything to escape their lives. That’s what you did, wasn’t it, M. Silverheart, non? You used your insidious little tricks to learn anything you could about them, and you used them as tools. The Duchess, that lousy politician and Nicholas were closing in on you, so you needed people who’d agree if you put the slightest bit of pressure on them.”
The frenchman slams his hands on the table. “I’ve read the files. Sacre bleu, you… I can’t believe it. Asuka’s too cowardly to say it, but the Mastermind, whoever the hell they are, isn’t the fucking villain here. You are.”
Timoleon stands up. “So? What are you going to do about it? Are you just going to kill me? I know what I did doesn’t qualify by your small-minded standards of ethics…”
“Small-minded! You sent fifteen traumatised kids into a situation you knew had a chance of being dangerous just to fulfil your pet project!”
“The ends justify the means!”
“What ends? You haven’t even proven the Ultimate Mage is real!”
“It is! It… it… it must be…”
The frenchman spits, away from Timoleon, but his intention clear. “As expected. Mon Dieu. You fall apart the moment someone calls you on it. No wonder you chose kids too broken to fight back. Goodbye, Monseuir Silverheart.”
The frenchman leaves the room. Timoleon Silverheart sits impassive for a minute, then slams his fist on the desk with all his might.
The End.
