Cambrian
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The Soul Engine Ch. 9 (Original Fantasy)
🕑 Added 2023-09-07 22:00:02 +0000 UTCA/N: Avina has some concerns about this arrangement. Is that jealousy Mikael detects? Or something more? Hmm...
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After a moment of letting his words hang in the air, a hesitant smile spreads across Thayla’s face and the Dame reaches out, taking his hand in her own and letting Mikael pull her to her feet.
“I… I accept, Sir Hero. It would be my honor to serve you until my dying breath.”
Mikael shakes his head at that.
“I’m not exactly asking you to die for me here. I just need your help… even if that means not going to your Order with news of my existence. Can I trust you to work with Avina and I without just spilling the beans?”
“… Yes, Sir Hero. I swear to you, I shall hold my tongue where you are concerned. My debt to you is too great for me to deny you this simple request.”
Mikael isn’t entirely sure if that’s the whole reason Thayla Dawnguard is so willing to swear her service to him, truth be told. Sure, she’s probably feeling very guilty over killing him. Especially when it turned out he was an innocent man who she was tricked into murdering by the very criminal who tore him out of his world and brought him to this one.
However, he also gets the impression that part of the reason Thayla is so eager to serve him is his status as a Summoned Hero as well. The way she’d talked about them while she was answering his questions… she might as well have had stars in her eyes the entire time. Still, this was good enough for Mikael, at least at the moment.
Handing Thayla back her sword, he nods as she sheathes it at her waist and then looks at him expectantly. Which is when a scoff from Avina’s corner turns both of their attention back to the raven-haired Soul Mechanic.
“Having a knight sworn to your service is all well and good, Mikael… but do be careful. She’ll still turn on you at the drop of a hat if she decides to.”
Mikael furrows his brow, wondering where Avina’s suddenly bitter tone comes from. Previous experience regarding betrayal, probably? Just by looking at their surroundings, it was obvious that the pale young woman hadn’t had the best go of it. Of course, Thayla focuses more on Avina’s words than her tone, scowling suddenly and dropping her hand to the pommel of her recently sheathed sword as she takes a threatening step in Avina’s direction.
“Excuse me? I am a Knight of the Rose! I have taken Oaths! We… we do not turn on our lieges at ‘the drop of a hat’ as you put it!”
Unimpressed, Avina just sniffs delicately, arms crossed over her chest still.
“It’s precisely because of those Oaths that I don’t think you can be trusted. Things aren’t all black and white like you knightly types like to pretend. Sometimes you have to cross a line in order to get things done and sometimes you have to muddy your boots to get to your ultimate destination.”
Before Thayla can respond, Avina flicks out a hand, gesturing up and down the other woman’s body.
“For instance, what would you do if Mikael ordered you to strip naked, right here and right now? Would you obey him immediately, as a sworn knight should? Or would you turn on him for such an undignified order.”
Mikael blinks. Where did THAT come from? Thayla doesn’t seem to know either, because just as quickly as the white-haired knight had taken a step towards Avina, she’s now taking a step back, sputtering and stammering. Her eyes dart towards Mikael, giving him a glimpse of her reddened face, before she quickly averts her gaze entirely.
“W-Well I-I… I c-can’t…”
“Never mind that!”
Avina’s voice sounds both surprised and worried by Thayla’s response. The young goth woman cuts her hand through the air in an almost frantic motion.
“Forget that first idea. Rather… children! What if Mikael ordered you to strike down a street urchin because they found out about us and were planning on telling Zadicus, hm? What would you do then, Dame Dawnguard?”
Tilting her head to the side, Thayla calms down quite rapidly as she considers Avina’s words. In the end, she shakes her head in response.
“I would refuse, naturally. I could not bring myself to harm a child. I would rather Mikael take my life instead.”
But Avina isn’t willing to let things lie there.
“And what if he made it clear that he would take your life and the child’s life, huh? What then? After all, even if you’re dead, the street urchin could still report on us. Would you really let him end your life if you knew he would go on to murder a kid moments later?”
Thayla’s mouth opens and closes and she fidgets for a moment before finally shaking her head again.
“N-No… I could not let that happen. But your hypothetical is nonsense! Why could we not just pay off the child? Why do they have to die? I have plenty of gold, more gold than a street urchin would have ever seen in their lives!”
“More gold than the Lord of the City could provide?”
Alright, this had gone on long enough. Mikael claps his hands together, causing both women to turn their attention his way as he smiles wanly.
“It’s a good thing I have no intention of killing any street urchins nor ordering their deaths then, I suppose. I can safely say that my plans do not involve any child murder. In fact, I would prefer to keep the murder to a minimum if at all possible… current corpses at my feet notwithstanding.”
Mikael grimaces a little bit as he has to tack on that last bit. Glancing down at Tak and his two friends… he still can’t bring himself to feel guilty over their deaths. It really was him or them and Mikael had chosen himself. However, he was now powerful enough that he didn’t necessarily NEED to kill the next men who stood in his way. He had the strength to show mercy, or so he hoped.
Thayla looks pleased by his words, and more than a little relieved. Avina on the other hand is peering at him curiously, a sudden interest in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Or maybe it was there before, actually. It was just muted by everything else until now.
“It gladdens my heart to hear that, Sir Hero. I knew you would be of a righteous-!”
“Yeah, yeah. Enough of the flowery language. I’m curious, Mikael. And as your Soul Mechanic, you should really tell me so I know how to prepare. What exactly DO you plan on doing next? What are your goals? What are your motivations?”
Mikael blinks at the intensity with which Avina is watching him as she asks those questions. It takes him a second to realize she’s entered ‘mad scientist’ mode again. She’s collecting information on him even now. It makes sense, given that he’s her first successful ‘experiment’. He can’t even really bring himself to be that mad at her. He was glad to be alive and it wasn’t like she’d been in a position to ASK before trying to bring him back.
What… what did he want, really? Of course, just trying to contemplate the answer to that question causes the foreign entities in Mikael’s head to start clamoring. Wealth. Power. Women. They all have their ideas of what ‘true happiness’ looks like. Some want to be rich. As rich as possible. Some want to be powerful, whether that means going out and consuming as many souls as he can stuff into his Soul Engine, or even going and conquering the city or some other land. Power. A lot of the memories in his head speak of battle after battle, all for the sake of power.
And then there are those who want women. Mikael figures they’re only so loud right now because of the two beautiful ladies standing right in front of him. Not to mention Avina’s provocative comments about ordering Thayla to strip naked. Voices whisper about how easy it would be to pin them down and ravish them. About how they’d probably even like it… how they’d beg for more, once he got started.
Mikael pushes back on those voices the loudest. He refused to see Avina or Thayla as some… pieces of meat. They were people, not just collections of holes to slake his lust upon. A slight grimace spreads across his face, but thankfully he doesn’t have a bodily reaction to the idea.
Of course, there are a handful of voices who are even more sinister than that. They don’t want wealth, power, or women. They just want blood. The other things are only applicable in how they might result in more blood. Mikael has plenty of killers floating around in his head right now… but only a few truly sick monsters, thank fuck.
Still, none of them speak for him. None of them represent what HE actually wants. What does Mikael desire more than anything? In the end, he comes to the conclusion that he wants two things above all else. Lifting his head, he looks from Thayla to Avina.
“I know what I want. First, I want my memories back from that bastard Zadicus. If he took memories from others and stuffed them into my head, then it stands to reason that he should still have the rest of my memories as well, right? Hopefully he hasn’t used them yet. I’ll pry them out of his cold dead hands, if I have to.”
Thayla nods along, her face set into a resolved expression.
“As is your right, Sir Hero. You deserve to be made whole again just as much as Zadicus deserves to be made to pay for his crimes.”
Avina also looks sympathetic, though as she bites her lower lip, looking off to the side in thought, Mikael gets the impression she doesn’t think it’ll be as easy as he hopes and she’s just trying to spare his feelings by not saying it out loud. Instead, after a moment she gives him a simple nod before gesturing with her hand.
“You said ‘First’. What else?”
Mikael grimaces and looks down at the device embedded in his chest. The Soul Engine might be the only thing keeping him alive, but its very existence made his second goal seem almost impossible. Even still…
“I want to go home. I had a life back on Earth, on my old world. I had friends and family, even if I don’t remember half of them. Even if many of their faces are murky, and the faces I do remember don’t have names attached… I still want to get back to them. And if I can get my memories back from Zadicus fucking Quinn, then I’ll be all set to return home as well. I can… I can feed off of small animals or something. So yeah. I want to go home. How do Summoned Heroes go home?”
Avina and Thayla share a glance at that. Which… he barely knows either of them at this point, and they barely know each other as well. And yet, already Mikael can safely say that them finding common ground on anything is probably a bad sign. Finally, wringing her hands together, Avina turns back to him.
“Mikael… I don’t know if that will be possible. Even if it is, I can’t say for certain whether your world even has a weave of life in the same way Vaclatora does. Going back to your world in your current condition might just kill you.”
He’s not sure if he believes her. She might very well be telling the truth. She certainly sounds concerned. But then, that concern also might come from a place of selfishness. She might just not want her first successful experiment to go anywhere. As much as Avina had tried to warn him off of trusting Thayla, her reasoning also applied to her too, didn’t it? He knew even less about Avina than he did the Dame at this point, save for that she’d brought him back to life.
And don’t get him wrong, resurrecting him DID score some brownie points in Mikael’s book. He liked being alive, full stop. However, he hadn’t asked Avina to resurrect him from the grave or stick a fucking engine in his chest. He didn’t ask for any of this. He would stick with Avina because at this point they were in this together… but he had to be careful how much he trusted her.
“If I die… I die. Is it possible? Do the records talk about Summoned Heroes getting to go home?”
Mikael directs that question to Thayla, causing Avina to go quiet as the female knight hesitates for a moment before nodding.
“Ah… yes, Sir Hero. From what we know at the Citadel, Summoned Heroes can only return to their home worlds once they complete the task that they were summoned for. At that point in time, they are given a onetime choice, whether to stay or go home. Though… it’s a little strange.”
Thayla trails off for a moment, until Mikael rolls his eyes and growls a little bit in impatience.
“What’s strange?”
Jolting out of her thoughts, the Dame looks at him with a frown.
“Well, if Lord Quinn summoned you to fight for him in the arena, you should have already been given the option to return home, Sir Hero. The fact that you haven’t is… odd to say the least. I do not know what other purpose he would have summoned you for either.”
That was odd. And worrying. But then, everything about this whole situation was worrying. If Mikael spent too long thinking about it, he was convinced that he would spiral into a depressive state he would never pull himself back out of. Either that or he would go postal and let the foreign side of his brain take over and just start murdering people, innocent or otherwise. At which point Thayla would be oathbound to slay him.
Mikael closes his eyes for a moment and just breathes. Then, he opens them again and nods to himself.
“Alright then. The path forward seems rather obvious. Both of my current goals center around the Lord of Alether, Zadicus Quinn. So we need to figure out a way to get him. No Order of the Rose. No trips to the Citadel. Just the three of us against a Wizard Lord and his city-wide criminal conspiracy.”
He looks to Avina and Thayla.
“Can I count on you both? Are you with me?”
Thayla immediately straightens up, her head held high.
“Of course. I am at your command, Sir Hero.”
He would probably need to work on getting her to call him by his name at some point. The hero worship was going to get old fast at this rate. But for now, Mikael just looks to Avina until finally she lets out a sigh and tosses her hands in the air.
“I already said we were in this together, didn’t I? Even before SHE showed up. I’m your Soul Mechanic. Of course I’m with you.”
Alright then. It seemed they had a goal. Now they just needed a plan.
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A/N: Mikael has goals! The story has established its stakes!
Next time on The Soul Engine, we get out of this fucking basement finally. And also, sexy times happen. Ah, but who with? Avina? Thayla? BOTH?!
Lol, anyways, as always hope everyone enjoyed and please be sure to let me know what you think! Next week we get into more of the action and what not as Mikael, Avina, and Thayla start working on toppling Zadicus.
Comments
Cambrian
Heh an interesting thought~
Smile Dip
Hmm, I wonder if the reason he was summoned got ripped messily out of his head at the same time as half his life getting ripped out. It would certainly be quite a quest to undertake; "What is my purpose in life?"
Cambrian
In my head its still My-kull like normal Michael would be, but maybe not? TBH I'll leave it up to the individual reader to decide xD
RHar
I've been wondering, how is Mikael's name pronounced? Me-Kale? Me-Kah-Ell? Some other way?
Cambrian
Glad to hear it. And heh, they both have their reasons don't they?
Phraxius
Great chapter, I'm really enjoying the story so far. As for the first sex scene, I get the impression Avina's the likelist candidate - unless Thayla feels the need to make clear to him that she'd most certainly obey an order to get naked.
Cambrian
Heh, an interesting idea~
Touch
I’m scared he summoned the hero to get the “ticket” to travel to earth, like he get his memories or magic power signature or smth, then he could travel to earth using that “he” or our mc finished his task
Cambrian
I'll just say that he doesn't have any intention of giving into the 'voices' in his head too easily. Anti-Hero is probably a good bet though
KOS 1100
sexy time is exciting but I find Killing Spread more exciting for some reason in this story probably because this gives me big berserk vibes. This goes to a question I have in mind. Is Mikael story going to lead to him being an actual hero or maybe an anti-hero or what would get my blood pumping a villain maybe demon king type shit. I don't know, lots of possibilities and I'll be here for all of them. :)
Cambrian
Hmm, that would be a fucked up thing right up Zadicus' alley, wouldn't it? :P
I'm wondering if the Goal Michael was summoned for is something along the lines of "Keep Zadicus alive & in good health for 200 years" just as a backup in the event of a Summoned Hero escaping
