6th Interlude: Happy Memories

"Do I? Jasmine, you already know that I do. And you can trust me."

"Can a black mage learn it too?"

Reassured by Mihai's and Konrad's responses, she then looks at Steve and says, "It'll take a lot more work in your case, but I'll make sure you do."

A smile momentarily graces her face until all of a sudden, the whole landscape shifts once more and the adventurers now find themselves in a dark basement crammed with wooden crates and barrels. When Steve takes a closer look at the stone walls, he recognizes this basement as one of the supply rooms of the academy, which he rarely visited except for when he needed to hide from Zelk or the professors.

The sole source of light in here is a lantern that sits on a barrel near the entrance to the room. And on a crate next to it sits Jasmine, the adult version of her. Her teenage self is gone now, and the adventurers now possess their adult bodies as well.

"Hello," Jasmine says. "It's almost time to wake up."

Breeze looks at her and gasps.

"She looks so much like me!" she exclaims.

Jasmine averts her gaze for an instant, but then attempts to smile at the fairy. It's clear that she doesn't know how to act in her presence.

Steve cocks his head a little at Jasmine's discomfort and says to Breeze, "Yes, you do. I'm sure you've always wanted to talk to her. Why don't you go do so before we are out of time?"

"Can I?!"

Breeze seems particularly excited by the idea, but the moment her gaze lands on Jasmine again, she goes quiet and looks unsure on what to say. Jasmine appears to be in the same boat, so she turns her attention to the adventurers instead.

"While the two of us talk, I have something to show the rest of you." She stands up from her crate, picks up the lantern at her side, then walks towards the wall in the back. Once she reaches an empty section of the wall, she turns to Steve and tells him, "Make sure to remember the sequence."

She presses several slabs of stone that activate a hidden mechanism, which then causes part of the wall to slide open, revealing a stairway that leads into darkness.

"Oooh. That's fancy," Breeze says.

"Wait, wait, wait. Somewhere in the Citadel I haven't been?" Steve's jaw hangs slack in surprise. He truly can't believe it. He hasn't been this excited about the old fortress since Zelk graduated. He commits every key in the sequence to memory, even go so far as to compose a mnemonic device to easily recall it later. He names it "The MKHSLGYOSGN Song."

He activates his light ring and looks back at the others before leading the way down.

Konrad's demeanor has shifted now. He's no longer the "fellow juvenile student" that he played while he was in the dream, and he continues to watch Jasmine as she tries to figure out how to proceed. When Steve turns his ring on, he nods and says, "Alright, gentlemen. Let's go down."

"Let's sit," Jasmine says to Breeze. "I'm sure you have plenty of questions for me..."

"Um, yeah, I do!" the fairy says, her voice getting harder to hear as the adventurers move further down the stairs. "Like, what's your favorite meal? I really like spicy food. And sweets too!"

Darkness and cold air envelop the party members as they walk down the mysterious stairs, and the deeper they go, the more humid it becomes. Until finally, they reach a dark room at the end of which they find a lab, similar to another they've seen before and illuminated by magical lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

Professor Tristan Goodman stands above an operating table on which lies a teenage woman of about seventeen years old, shackled to the table with iron chains. Unlike the other woman they've seen in Odwaz, this one is clothed and not gagged, and yet, even though she's visibly screaming for help, the adventurers can't hear a word of what she's saying. It's Stacy.

On the other side of the table, opposite Goodman, stands the teenage version of Jasmine. She looks similar to the one they've met less than an hour ago, but her hair is wilder and her complexion paler. She speaks to Professor Goodman, a serious expression on her face, but her voice is inaudible as well. They seem unable to notice the adventurers.

"This is the reason I created this spell."

The voice comes behind the adventurers. The older version of Jasmine is standing there, her arms crossed and her eyes fixed on her younger self. She's frowning.

The scene in front of the party members suddenly stop, as if put on pause. Jasmine continues to stare at it for several seconds before she answers. "She's down that corridor," she says, pointing at a huge hole in a nearby wall. "Her and the others."

Jasmine then looks down at her feet, biting her own lip. Until finally, with great difficulty, she adds, "Can-can you make sure they're found? P-please?"

Steve takes the revelation hard. The shock that Goodman would do something like this in their home makes him hate the man even more than he already did. He isn't too happy with Jasmine either right now and his question comes off more accusatory than he intended.

"How many are there?"

Jasmine is unable to look at Steve in the eyes.

"Five. Counting her."

"And their names?"

She holds herself tightly, her gaze still fixed to the floor.

"Stacy. Robert. And... I-I can't remember the rest." She falls silent for a moment. "Robert is the only boy. We... we chose those whose disappearance could easily be explained by them eloping with someone else."

Steve can't look at her. Hell, he doesn't want to. So he just says nothing.

Konrad stares for a while at the screaming girl frozen in a squirm on the operating slab. Finally, he says, "I see." He turns to Jasmine. "Did you get Scans? Can I get Scans?"

"It's a memory. You won't get anything here." Jasmine looks at the corridor once more. "We improvised woven coffins to... to hold their bodies."

"This is how the research for the runes you found in Odwaz started," Jasmine answers. "...And Edward financed it."

"You'd have to ask him. Goodman is the one who talked to him, not me. I only connected the dots about Edward's identity after you met him."

"I think it's easy to understand. He wanted an overwhelming victory, and for that he needed fodder, so he enabled a monster like Goodman, who in turn, enabled his assistant. Why did you go along with it, Jasmine?"

Jasmine ponders the question for a long time, struggling to come up with an answer. "...Because I was angry. Ambitious. Alone." She closes her eyes. "Please, just don't tell Breeze. Ever. She... she has my memories. I don't want to imagine what would happen to her if she ever managed to look at them."