Valhalla (and Mirage) Memes part 3/∞

Once more procrastinating and therefore making up for that with more memes, this time featuring more characters that are not Basim or Hytham!

Rayhan clearly trusted Hytham's abilities in spying but not enough to tell him what to look out for. And with having him spy on Basim he sacrificed his own student, in a way. Like he couldn't know what Basim might have done to him if or when he found out what Hytham's true motives were. It also means Rayhan a bit like an absent father missed most if not all of Hytham's training. I'm sure in the beginning Hytham feels more loyalty and duty to Rayhan, as his mentor, and one of, if not the leader of the Abbasid branch of the Hidden Ones, but clearly Hytham starts feeling loyalty to Basim too. If it would have come down to it, it's not as clear on which side Hytham would have stood on. He betrayed Basim's supposed trust from the get go by agreeing to spy on him but he betrayed Rayhan's trust in having Basim know that he was spying on him but not telling Rayhan, and instead staying by Basim's side. Isn't that just wack? And when Basim is supposedly dead and Hytham is made to return to Alamut briefly, what would that reunion be like? Hytham filled with grief over a man he knew he shouldn't trust fully, and Rayhan who perhaps wouldn't consider Hytham to have done his job, but who certainly didn't fail it, because in the end, Basim's demise posed no threat to the Hidden Ones, and with him out of the way, they won't have to worry any longer.

ALSO. When I've played Mirage, the only interactions with Rayhan have just been like. Strict. Formal. Perhaps because Basim then only interacted with him in Strict Formal Settings but I also have to wonder if Rayhan was the same with Hytham? Was he one of the Hidden Ones who made Hytham feel like a son, or was he as cold and distant in general as he was in Mirage? Perhaps if Rayhan was cold then it could explain why Hytham attached so easily to Basim, who was distant but showed warmth, but if Rayhan was kinder, more fatherly, perhaps that would add to the guilt Hytham could feel about the double roles he plays between Basim and the Hidden Ones. So many possibilities....

Day 5; Myth, Day 22; Leader — Hytham

On a cold day in Alamut, two years after the elimination of the Order in England, Hytham stood before his mentor. Hands clasped behind his back, shoulders tense, voice worried. 

“I cannot be what you ask of me,” he had said. “I could never live up to the leader you are.” 

Rayhan had looked at him wordlessly for a long moment. A gaze that had nearly gotten the younger to cower. Two years since the death of his second mentor and two years of attempting to rebuild something that had been lost for centuries. He had struggled. 

Now Rayhan was asking him to take on that role officially. To become the Grand Master for their Brotherhood in the British Isles. 

“There is no-one for you to live up to, Hytham.” Rayhan’s voice was, as it often was when directed to him, surprisingly soft and understanding. “I am asking you to be what you already are.” 

And so he had. Despite his worries and his fears, he had taken a deep breath and accepted the role which he had been given. He was sent back to the North with red sashes and golden brooches. Despite it all, a leader. 

But his first stop had not been the Hawk’s Nest, no, where Marcella had been observing and gathering files on potential recruits, young souls to fill the halls of the Bureau and continue the work the Roman Hidden Ones had started. His first stop had been the Londinium Bureau, still abandoned. 

He walked the halls of the underground, closed his eyes and inhaled the earthy scent. Water and mud, dust and scrolls. He heard the scuffling of feet, the unfurling of paper, the scratching of quills. Soft voices speaking in murmured Latin. He imagined what it must have been like to be the last Hidden One of these Isles. 

We gladly consume those who would subdue us—but I, Vitus, have failed.

An unmarked well in Cent, with little else but the remains of the man who had come before him. The Magister who laid forgotten. 

It was the fate of the Hidden Ones to be forgotten. Their names, their actions... And if they did not fade away, their legacies were nothing more but myths. Stories made to be told for entertainment around campfires at night, otherworldly and inhuman. When the silent echo of his steps guided him further into the room, the murmur, the rustling of scrolls disappeared into something else. The crackling of a fire in the cold Abbasid night, the Eagle Master’s repeated but melodic story drifting in the air. One of betrayal and tragedy, love and heartbreak. Two souls united and separated once more. The cause of the foundation of their very creed, the legendary figures who ebbed and flowed between the collective memory of their cause. Those that had built something grander than themselves, something that had stood the testament of time. 

He knew, as he gazed upon the ruins of what had once been, as he let his four-fingered hand brush against the stone pillars that had held it up for so long, that this would be his fate. He would build their Creed in the British Isles and like Vitus, he could fail, be the cause of more lives lost to the desperate battle between the light and darkness, be forgotten as another nameless mentor who had failed, another skeleton someplace where he would remain undisturbed for centuries. 

Or he could succeed. He, like Amunet, whose very name sent a shiver up his spine, could build something that would survive. A legacy unspoken. The Hidden Ones could thrive among these rolling hills and its gentle rain, nestled between the churchyards and harbours of the Christian and Norse settlements that would remain here. 

He would be forgotten either way. As was their way. As he now understood why they knew so little of their founders, the myths that were no more but rumours. A smile played on his lips, an anxiety shaped into a deep-dwelling comfort and stillness. The appeal of being laid to rest, to not be blamed for success or failure. He would follow in their footsteps, fulfil his purpose, and be forgotten.