The Eavesdropper - Part 2
Date Posted: January 23, 2022
This chapter was written in collaboration with Scylla.
Amon’s mind was so clouded by confusion and a heavy weight of despair that at first, he didn’t react to Scylla’s appearance at the doorway. It wasn’t lost upon him the implications that she’d heard everything - part of him was relieved that he wouldn’t need to recount the story to her. He wasn’t even sure he could.
Maybe he would have grappled with just keeping it all to himself. But that option was not on the table anymore.
What would she think of him now? That one who was once a vaulted rival was now merely a copy. A phony. A clone without knowing.
While Amon did not have a state of mind to respond to Scylla’s appearance, Tad did, with a business-only wild-Elezen expression on his face.
His cousin was on the other side of the room before the bard could blink. In one swift motion, he pulled the door in, bringing Scylla and her wayward muffins with it. Capturing her wrists in one of his strong-fingered hands, he shoved the door closed with the heel of a boot that had seen better days.
“Who are you – listening in on our conversation?” Tad’s voice was low as he inspected Scylla’s face for a moment. He gave a light breath at the crimson eyes that met his own green-eyed gaze. “Royalty?”
“Aye… aye… relax, Tad,” Amon waved his hands in the best calming motion he could muster. He just did not have the energy to deal with this misunderstanding. “She’s approved hearing.”
Tad’s lips pursed and he withdrew his hand, giving the Allagan Princess proper room. “I see. My apologies, I just…”
“Brashness runs in the family,” Amon informed Scylla, as if she didn’t already know.
“You just what?” Scylla sharply questioned, giving Tad a slight push back with her palm. “You just came all this way through space and time to tell Amon…”
She stumbled a bit on her words, gritting her molars back and forth as she swallowed before gathering up the strength to continue.
“That he’s a clone...?”
Her words came breathily as she exhaled through her statement.
“Don’t you think I know him after all this time? After all I’ve been through with him from childhood to…well… this?”
She looked back at Amon, and reached for his ear, giving it a tug.
“What you are saying is an impossibility, even with the greatest powers of Allag!” She shook her head, still holding onto his ear, wiggling it back and forth before letting it loose. “It is impossible for a clone to be this accurate or complex!”
Tad gave a grimace as he was shoved back slightly, but his expression was one who knew not to push his boundaries with the Allagan royalty. Something that Amon had never cared to learn.
At the moment, though, the once-Technologist wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was fully focused on Scylla’s words, which sparked more than a small amount of surprise in him. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to do. Maybe…
Scoff at him for his new lowly station – clones, after all, were often not thought of or treated as people.
Or maybe gloat over him that everything he thought he knew about himself – the smart aleck he was – had turned out to be a lie.
But for her to try to logically pull apart the statement and claim its impossibility was not at all what he would have guessed to be her first reaction. If anything, she seemed just as shaken as he was even though this really had little effect on her.
“I don’t know anything about clones and their make,” Tad told her grimly. “And I have done my best to avoid breaking this news to Amon, for I’m fully aware of what this means for him. If I could tell you a different tale, I would, but ‘twouldn’t be the truth.”
“You heard the story, I assume,” Amon added, his voice wavering and watery to his ears. “What do you propose I am, if I’m not a clone? And better yet… if I am indeed this clone, why…”
Why was I created? What was my purpose? Why did my… maker…
It was so strange to think that way. That he was a made thing. Like all the things he’d once made.
He felt his stomach churn as he voiced the rest of his question aloud.
“Why did my… maker… leave me to protect Allag in his stead? A clone with a sense of self-awareness must still be set to a purpose.”