"If you're open to sharing, my good sir," I say in a way that lilts more seductively than I intended.
He nods some more, a contemplation, his eyes staring off somewhere distant. The anticipation in his breath sparks electric in my mind, I, staring him down with eyes low, feeling the power of unspoken words in waiting. He, looks at me surely, tasting something cruel and derelict on his tongue. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
My curiosity is a fire yearning to breathe. I'd say anything to hear him tell me the truth. "We're just spinning yarn, here, something to occupy the time," I say.
He hesitates for a long moment, looking out the window while he is my singular focus. "Fine. But hear me out. Before you decide to kill me. My story will obviously come as a shock to your sensibilities."
I nod curtly.
"I… was formerly a member of the Empire, a part of the noble families on Elix. Born Geddon Elix, an aspiring knight with a prodigious military career before him. Unlike the soldier of the Empire, I was born to a mother, Drayna Orodruin. She was a beautiful woman. Most beautiful woman I've ever seen," he sits up with a hand on a knee, animated, "She had integrity. Something I'd never seen in my father, who I can't say ever truly cared about the Empire's mission." He shakes his head, I'm watching without breathing, my eyes piercing him, spite rising, "Insane bastard," he says with a pitched snarl, throwing an arm behind his seat, the empty bottle of whiskey goes rolling down the aisle, my hands clutch at my dress. He scratches his temple, "I was raised like that. And I got to see all the things the Empire was doing. I had access to its most sacred of vaults. To the dark secrets at the depth of the Empire's core, to have access to their arcane science that suffuses machine with the infinite energy of an Archon's body. As you know, Archons power the Empire's machinery—magical mitosis, resonance, a source of perpetual motion. When an Archon is killed, its energy reduces down to a crystalline form. A hundred-thousand Archons, broken down into crystallized matter, scattered across the universe, never to be returned to their original form. You want to know what it's like to see an Archon being drained of life?… I know the image well…. My father… proposed an experiment, that, if it were to be successful, would make me more powerful than any machine the Empire had aspired to create. Unlike sorcerers who use artifacts powered by Archonite, if the experiment was successful, I would embody the infinite power of the Archon for myself, my body. I could be fused with the power of multiple Archons. I could become the most powerful being in the universe. At least the most powerful being with any serious volition of its own…. I was young and eager for power, so I accepted, following my father's ambition." Geddon shakes, with anger? With fury. A wicked smile. "I was restrained, and the torture I experienced was unlike anything I thought imaginable. I never knew pain, until then, lost in my madness, sunken into a depression so horrible," his voice, louder, trembles, "so despairing, that I thought certainly, all hope was lost. Forever—whatever it was, in that moment. Goodness. Hope. Glory. Valor. I was afraid I'd lost my mother, and that she would never come back. I— I saw the true meaning of death. To know the pain of loss—loss to time. Loss to mortality. Loss of being! It was as if nothing ever mattered—but it all mattered so much to me, then, trapped in the darkness within, an abyss from which I'd thought the mind would never escape…. I don't know what it was that I was seeing. The dead soul of the Archon that was absorbed?… I was stirred from deep within this melancholy reverie, this infinite egress, by the sound of my father crying. He thought that I had died, but more than that, he wept for his failure, thinking that his experiment had failed. That was the last thing I remember before the explosion. The next thing I knew, I was levitating, far above Gildaga castle, parts of it blown into ruins, where I had been lying in father's laboratory for who knows how long, asleep, or dead." He shakes his head. My breathing returns all of the sudden in heavy waves. I can't take my eyes away. Outside the walls of titanic Demurgian valleys begin to rise, desolate, ashen and pelted with spar. I can see it in my periphery, see it in my mind without looking.
I don't know if I'm shocked or appalled. If I hate him or love him. I don't know if I can trust him or if this moment can ever be okay. Just as hatred begins to tinge my mind, Geddon settles himself enough to look straight towards me and I'm coaxed into a relaxing convulsion, orgasm begins like a wellspring hydrating my insides from my loins up to my breasts and finally into my head, my mind turning over in ecstasy, a feeling of total belonging. Once my pleasure has turned inward, I drop my gaze having wet myself, with a compulsion to grab my breast, a soft expulsion on my breath. I turn my head one way, then the other to avert myself and find the whiskey bottle laying dormant in the aisle by my seat. I pick it up, lifting it beside me to where Geddon's feet were first placed. I'm perturbed to think of Caspitella, listening, wherever she might be, and a smile of indignation rises across my face, my eyes glowered. But I feel her presence not. From behind I hear the beginning of a Yethic dirge, in three voices starting simultaneously, low and unassuming. "Pardon, miss," comes a husky voice, "But I was wondering if you'd like another bottle of spirits?" I turn to see a gaunt older man in gentlemen's attire. "I've brought plenty on my trip, and I'm willing to part to keep the spirits sowing." He's holding a bottle of bourbon rouge towards me. I'm shocked into awareness.