bolderfell | Prismatica Inbox

Yes. I'd use it.

A demon who used it once felt similarly.

It's a little-known bit of apocrypha in the long tale of the Forlorn Hope. A demon risked life and limb to spirit away the treasure from the vault where it was kept, not to conquer the world or to imbue itself with infinite power, but because a wish on the Forlorn Hope might preserve the life of a human woman.

It's rare for a demon to develop that sort of sentiment. Most demons that sympathize with humans are seen as traitors to their own kind. But I always thought it a little admirable of that one, to set out to do something so selfless.

Of course, it's not called the Forlorn Hope without reason. There are conditions attached to the granting of one's heart's desire. And in this case, the price of the Forlorn Hope is the user's life.

Poetic, isn't it? It grants its user's greatest desire, and they will never live to see it come to fruition. They die with forlorn hope.

The only poetry I'm familiar with comes out of the drunks in bad taverns. Never could figure out why 'poetic' usually means 'sad.'

Knowing that, I'd still use it.

Yes, well. The story intrigued me, so on a lark, I stole the Forlorn Hope.

Clumsy me, as I was carrying it back to my hoard, I dropped it and shattered it on a stone. How fleetingly the evil was defeated by a little blunt force trauma; a pitiful end to an otherwise compelling tale, don't you think?

Too bad. Here I thought I'd be treated to a love story. How your parents met or something. Well, all's well that ends well, or ends in a hundred broken shards on the ground, anyway.

You really want to hear that badly if I knew the lock was undone?

[Hmmm. Hmm hmm hmm.]

You didn't ask for a love story. You asked for a story, with no guarantees of whether or not it was true.

[Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.]

And I wanted to test you.

With the question about the mirror, you mean?

Is that really how you think the story ended? I took the mirror and dropped it?

Setting aside everything else, have you ever known me to be clumsy?

Of course not. Thought you believed me more clever than that.

But I do know you didn't promise me a true story, and if you wanted to end it there, I'd have let it. Fair's fair. But if you don't want to end it there and you're just being 'bratty' because I wouldn't tell you that one little thing...

It's not that. I wanted —

...

It wasn't just being difficult for the sake of being difficult.

Is it a difficult story to tell?

Yes.

I wanted to see if you'd see through me, when I obfuscate. And if you would be daring enough to say as much to my face.

I didn't know the bangle was unlocked because I never tried to take it off. Not once. It wouldn't have mattered if it was. I'm not so green a thief I can't pick a cuff if I put my mind to it. The Fool's Bangle isn't magic like your Forlorn Hope.

You didn't ask whether I could just get it off myself. Or if I couldn't just walk away and let them deal with their own problem, find a way to continue my career despite the difficulty. What Heathcote did for me, refusing Cordelia's request, made it so I didn't have to ask those questions of myself -- not unless I was already asking. Not unless I tried to remove the band. Maybe he knew I wasn't ready for my own answer.

All that is to say, I don't know what obfuscate means, but if you do it, I'll believe it's for a reason. I'm not entitled to your life story, Kurama. I'll be content with whatever you're willing, and ready, to tell me, even if it's a mask for something else. That's why I don't push.

I had wondered about that, truthfully, but I assumed that a device crafted to shame a thief couldn't possibly be so easily removed by a thief's signature tricks. What would the use be, if anyone could slip out of it so easily?

Give me a second chance, and I'll tell the story again. A do-over. A mulligan.

It is a love story, actually. In more ways than one.

I also don't know what a mulligan is.

You're clever enough to work it out from context.

Most of the story I already told you was true. The part I left out is that the demon in question was me.

...If we're being truthful, I wondered about that, too. Then you said the thing about admiring them and it threw me off. In hindsight, I suppose it shouldn't have.

So. A human woman?

I did think my endeavor quite admirable, at the time. In a...self-sacrificing, making myself a martyr sort of way.

A human woman. My mother. She was dying, and I had no means of preventing the progression of her illness — save through the powers of the Forlorn Hope.

So you stole it. Who from?

Ah. The place I stole it from...is not heaven, exactly, but it's close. Imagine something like the gatekeeper to it — the institution whose duty it is to determine where a soul goes after death.

The sentencing judge in the ultimate trial of life, I suppose. I stole it from them.

Sounds like one hell of a story on its own right there, but maybe not the one you want to tell today. Maybe I'll ask another time.

For your mother, you got the mirror from those who guard the gates of life and death. What happened then?

Quite simply, I was prepared to use it. I knew what it would do, what it would ask. My life for the woman's. She would live, and I would not.

It really was my heart's desire, you know. I think it would've known, if I'd been anything less than wholly devoted to my cause.

It's strange. I've never...wanted someone else to live, so much. Not before her.

I wasn't going to ask, but...how did this woman come to be your mother?

Naturally enough, I suppose; I stole her son.

...Forgive me, that's an overly dramatic way of putting it. It's not technically false, but there are some significant bits of the tale left out.

You must understand, in the realm of the demons, I was not simply a fox and a thief. I was the fox. I was the thief. The Spirit Fox, the Legendary Bandit. And my notoriety stretched well beyond that plane of existence — even so far as the spirit world, the gatekeepers of heaven that I was describing to you before.

Eventually, they did as they would any creature they found a menace: they hunted me. A whole band of them, each immensely powerful in their own right — and I was strong, I was good, but even the strong and the capable can still be overrun by sheer force of numbers.

So I ran. I was badly wounded, but alive, and I knew that if they caught me in such a state, I would perish. In a last, desperate effort to survive, I gathered my soul and left my wounded body, leaping across the realms into the mortal plane, where I fused my soul with that of an unborn child.

I was careless with my words earlier, when I said I stole his life. I did not. What transpired was a merger, between the soul of that boy and the soul of the bandit fox.

Remind me I should always go first when we trade stories like this. You're a damn difficult act to follow.

[There's a lot to unpack here, and Therion picks pieces up here and there, one by one--picks them up and then replaces many without comment, without taking them from their setting.]

What was it like, do you remember? To be both. To be a newborn and a fox with a human mother, growing up the way human children do.

It's not something I remember. I doubt most of us do.

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