She moved with a slow, deliberate emptiness, gathering the small pile of belongings she had already prepared for her banishment. An empty burlap sack lay discarded near the pile. Bazren, ever impatient, snatched it from the floor.
Bazren: "What's this for? Don't have enough storage already?"
Mola extended a hand, the gesture limp, waiting for Bazren to return it. Her voice, when she spoke, was a monotone whisper.
Mola: "I do. I wasn't planning on taking anything else... But now that my master is... no longer here, it seems a waste to leave all this knowledge behind."
Bazren stared at her for a moment before tossing the bag back. It landed at Mola's feet with a soft thud.
Xayn: "And you're still missing a spellbook, correct?"
Mola nodded, her gaze vacant.
Mola: "Indeed. With what's left in the study, I should have enough material to re-write a good chunk of what I had in my previous one."
Xayn: "Is that so? Well then, I hope you can teach me some of it...!"
Bazren's eyebrow arched in surprise. Mola, however, simply shook her head.
Mola: "I'm not a good teacher. Don't have much patience."
Her apathy was a wall, thick and impenetrable.
Bazren: "Why're you so interested, Xayn? Never took you for the type to dabble in magic..."
Xayn: "That's *why* I'm interested. Dabbling in magic will most likely be handy for our mission... Don't you think so? If we have a sorceress by our side, we might as well make the most of the opportunity."
Bazren grunted, her gaze drifting.
Bazren: "Hmph... If you say so."
Mola: "What's this mission about, anyway? Could you tell me already...? We're all here, now."
Strangely, her curiosity reared its head with the same flat disinterest. Bazren looked at Xayn, a silent question passing between them.
Xayn: "I suppose. Shall we take this upstairs, as you gather your scrolls?"
Mola: "My... the suspense is *killing* me."
For the first time since she'd awoken, a sliver of her old, cutting sarcasm pierced the veil of her despair.
They made their way back to the ruined summit. Wind whistled through the shattered walls, stirring dust and loose parchment. Mola moved mechanically, beginning to sift through the tomes and documents she deemed important, stuffing them into the burlap sack.
Xayn: "As we have already mentioned, we seek the depths of the Eluvian Ocean. More precisely, we believe that concealed within lies the secret to reversing the curse of Mortmundus's inhabitants -- a way for them to leave eternal limbo and rejoin the circle of life."
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Mola paused, a half-charred scroll in her hand. She squinted, the gears of her mind visibly churning through the fog of her grief.
Mola: "The Eluvian Ocean...? I've never heard of anything hidden there. What kind of secret do you mean? Is it some sort of artifact...?"
A faint, sharp smile touched Bazren's new lips.
Bazren: "Oh yes. It contains the most powerful type of artifact..."
Xayn nodded, his expression grim.
Xayn: "... Knowledge. Of magics long since gone."
Mola's response was immediate, dismissive.
Mola: "Magics with the power to reverse a curse? Nonsense."
Bazren's teeth ground together, a sharp, grating sound.
Bazren: "Well, aren't you quick to dismiss our purpose here! You may know plenty of dark magic, but that does not make you an expert in all other types."
Mola rolled her eyes, her back to them as she continued to gather more documents.
Xayn: "Our mission is to unearth that knowledge, and use it to return the cursed ones to life."
Mola stopped again, her shoulders slumping.
Mola: "Hm. I don't get it."
The words were quiet, but they landed like stones. Bazren's body tensed, radiating a furious energy.
Xayn: "What do you mean?"
Mola: "I mean what I said -- that I don't get it. It makes no sense that you'd need all that. If you two made it back, what's stopping everybody else from crossing over as well? The hard part was finding a way to do it. You already did that. Right?"
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the mournful wind. Xayn and Bazren stood motionless, the confident certainty of their quest suddenly seeming fragile.
Mola: "... Well?"
Xayn's gaze dropped to the floor. His new voice, when he finally spoke, was heavy with the weight of his confession.
Xayn: "The way we found was not without its shortcomings. In the process of opening a portal to the world of the living... the entirety of Mortmundus was destroyed. The world of the dead is no more."
Mola's eyes widened. She turned slowly, the scrolls in her hand forgotten. The sheer, cataclysmic scale of his statement seemed to finally pierce her apathy.
Xayn: "We are the only two undead from Mortmundus left."
For a long moment, she did not respond, simply staring, her mouth slightly agape.
Bazren: "Which is all the more reason we cannot fail. If we do not succeed, there's no hope for those that were left behind."
The silence stretched, taut and brittle.
Xayn: "Is it clear now, Mola?"
Mola: "... No. Right now, you two just seem like a couple of deluded fools."
Bazren: "Oy, watch it!"
Mola: "Aren't you hearing yourselves? Mortmundus is no more. If the world of the dead has ceased to exist, where are all the cursed souls that were sent there...? There's no way they survived."
Bazren: "Where else would they be? The Void, of course. Floating endlessly in the dark, in eternal solitude."
Mola let out a sound. It began as a sniff, a choked inhalation, and then it blossomed into a sharp, brittle laugh that echoed in the ruin.
Mola: "Riiight. Waiting patiently for you to rescue them with the 'underwater secrets' you'll uncover...!"
Xayn: "What is so delusional about this to you...?"
Mola: "It's obvious! The fact that you two have no idea how the Void operates."
Bazren: "Oh, and I suppose you do --"
Mola looked at Bazren, a chill running down her newly-restored spine. Bazren's retort died in her throat.
Mola: "Well? I do. And my knowledge grows deeper each day, especially now that it's been one catastrophe after another. The Void is not a waiting room. It's not some dark, empty space where souls go to drift. The Void is a stomach. It digests. It is pure, absolute destruction. Obliteration. It is not an inn where lost souls go to rest...!"
Xayn and Bazren fell silent, the weight of her words pressing down on them.
Mola's expression shifted, the manic edge to her grief twisting into something cruel.
Mola: "I hate to be the bearer of bad news... Well actually, no. You have no idea how much I'm enjoying this!"
Her voice turned sharp, almost gleeful, a desperate lashing out from a soul in agony.
Mola: "But all your friends are gone. *Poof*! They are never coming back, and no amount of powerful, hidden, forbidden, whatever magic can change that. Might as well make peace with it and make the most out of your new fake, stolen lives here."
Bazren's new hand smacked into her other palm with a sharp crack.
Bazren: "Well, why don't you let *us* worry about that...? Leave it to you to always ruin the party. D'ya have all you need already or not?!"
Her patience had been utterly incinerated.
Mola: "Alright, alright... Just about. We'll be on our way soon enough."
After gathering the last of her materials, Mola slung the heavy sack over her shoulder. The trio made their way down the stairs in a thick, suffocating silence, leaving the ghost of the Master and the ruin of her knowledge to the wind as they stepped out of the tower's entrance.