Tag Archives: Melaxyna

16 – 51

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                           Next Chapter >

Tendrils of shadow rose beneath her, twining together into a great twisted trunk and entangling her legs, and lifted Natchua straight up. She rose to a solid twenty feet in height, balanced perfectly in the tentacles’ grasp, until she judged that a sufficient altitude to do what she needed. Off to the south, beyond the range of human senses, she could see the necro-drake thrashing about and erratically charging in different directions as its new targets teased and tormented it from all sides. The green blotches of elven groves were barely visible to her in other directions—close enough the woodkin shaman would undoubtedly be aware of the large-scale infernomancy that was about to be performed on this spot. Hopefully they’d do as woodkin usually did: duck their heads and wait it out rather than taking action. The last thing she needed was nosy shamans disrupting her casting, to say nothing of what would happen if they appealed to the Confederacy and brought more of those damned Highguard.

Projecting steady streams of fire from her palms, Natchua quickly sketched out two huge spell circles, establishing only the basic boundaries to delineate their overall purpose, then paused to survey her work before getting down to refining the specific—rather elaborate—details this was going to need. For a moment, she considered a third, then thought better of it. Two should be plenty.

Next was supplies. In quick surges of shadow, she summoned from Leduc Manor the extra materials necessary for this that she hadn’t carried on her person: a selection of power crystals, enchanting dusts of three distinct grades, and finally, two bemused succubi.

“What the f— ” Melaxyna broke off and clapped a hand over her eyes. “Well, at least she’s not dead, I was more than half convinced…”

“What kind of bassackward nowhere is this supposed to be?” Kheshiri complained, peering about at the vacant prairie. “You never take me anywhere nice.”

Both demons fell silent as they caught sight of the sprawling circles burned into the ground to either side of their arrival point, the nearby stalks of tallgrass still smoking. In eerie unison, their expressions changed to a matching look of tremulous uncertainty as they recognized what she was about to do and basic pragmatism rebelled at the implications, while their Vanislaad attraction to carnage reveled in them.

“Have you finally lost your last vestiges of sense?” Melaxyna demanded. Kheshiri just began squealing and giggling. After that first moment of uncertainty, they seemed to have taken off in opposite directions, almost as if they’d planned it.

“Enough!” Natchua barked from atop her shadow-tendril perch. “I do not have time to argue; either you trust me or you don’t. I need those circles charged. You both understand the proper lines to augment with enchanting dust and the runic nexi where power crystals will need to be placed. Each of you pick a circle and get to work. Double-check with me if you have any questions, but otherwise no dawdling! We have one chance to save Veilgrad.”

Kheshiri instantly snapped her wings out, snatching up a bag of enchanting dust and swooping off to begin tracing glittering purple lines around the perimeter of one of the circles. Melaxyna hesitated for two full seconds, just long enough Natchua feared the succubus was about to rebel at this. But then she just shook her head, gathered up an armful of power crystals and launched herself at the other circle, muttering under her breath. Even Kheshiri wouldn’t have been able to make out any words at that distance, but Natchua of course heard her clearly.

“Hell with it, either I trust the little freak or everything’s twice-fucked anyway. She hasn’t ended the world yet.”

Natchua forbore comment outwardly, though she spared a moment to hope that remark didn’t prove prophetic. Then she resumed firing jets of flame into the ground, carefully avoiding both swooping succubi and searing the finer details of her summoning circles into place. The Wreath would hold the line for a while, but the clock was ticking.

Despite his dire commentary on their situation, Rogrind seemed in little hurry to remedy it. Of course, as he subsequently pointed out when she complained, they were a short walk from one of the province’s main highways, and with an iota of luck, could there flag down a lift to Tiraas. In the absolute worst case scenario, they’d have to walk to Madouris, which was closer; in nicer weather that would have been merely tiring and time-consuming. At present, it would be a very unpleasant slog through the thick snow, though Rogrind insisted he had enough of his resistance potions to tide them both over. Which did nothing to make the prospect appealing to Rasha, who was already not enjoying standing here in the snow while he fussed over the ruins of his carriage.

She understood his purpose, of course, for all that it was no concern of hers and thus annoying. A custom carriage outfitted by Svennish intelligence contained all sorts of goodies his agency wouldn’t want falling into the hands of anyone who might come to investigate this wreck. Already Rogrind had pried loose multiple concealed devices and made enough of them disappear to reveal he had potent bag-of-holding enchantments on multiple pockets. Including, she noticed with amusement, the vehicle registry plates. Undoubtedly those wouldn’t lead directly to the Svenheim embassy, but Imperial Intelligence would take one look at what had happened to this carriage and begin tracking everything as far as its substantial resources would allow.

“Oh, that’s real subtle,” she scoffed as Rogrind very carefully uncorked a vial from his apparently substantial alchemy kit and poured its contents over a console which had been hidden beneath the driver’s seat. Most of its dials were shattered anyway, but the thing itself must have been distinctive. At least before the metal had begun to dissolve under the potent acid with which he was now dousing it. “I’m more nobody’s gonna have any questions about that.”

“Obviously,” the dwarf replied without looking up, continuing to be unperturbed by her disapproval, “the best technique is to avoid notice entirely. When that fails, it can suffice to ensure that there remains nothing to notice. Alas, this is somewhat more labor-intensive, and less likely to succeed. In the business one must not expect the fates to align in one’s favor.”

“Can’t see, don’t see, won’t see,” she agreed. The dwarf sighed softly but said nothing, and Rasha gleefully filed that away. He didn’t like being reminded that the Thieves’ Guild’s work was very similar to his own. There was more amusement to be leveraged from that, surely. “While we’re standing around making small talk anyway, what are you still doing in Tiraas at all? I’d’ve figured you’d be reassigned as hell after your cover got blown last year.”

“An agent whose identity is not known has many uses,” he explained, still outwardly calm. “An agent whose identity is known in his country of operation has other, specific ones. In particular when one operates opposite skilled players like Quentin Vex, it is vastly useful to have obvious targets for him to follow around. There are no wins or losses in the great game, Rasha, merely changes upon the board. Hm.”

“Something wrong?” He’d stopped pouring, as a faint light had begun to flicker on one of the surviving pieces of the instrument panel he was destroying. Rogrind hesitated before continuing his work, quickly drizzling acid over that, too, and snuffing it out.

“No more wrong than we should expect, I think. Apparently we are being tracked by means of fae magic.”

“Hm,” she echoed, frowning. There were tradeoffs in fae versus arcane divination; fae tracking was all but impossible to deflect or evade, but so inherently imprecise that it was often not more useful than more vulnerable but specific arcane scrying. “Friend or foe?”

“Sadly, we would need an actual practitioner to determine that. The simple ability to detect fae attention via a passive enchantment is state of the art. By your leave, I believe we should adopt a cautious posture, in any case.”

“Leave granted.”

He took great care to re-cork the bottle which had contained acid and wipe it off on the surviving upholstery before stowing it away. Rasha would’ve just discarded the bottle on the grounds that any idiot would be able to discern what had happened here and one more piece of glass wouldn’t tell them anything, but then again, thieves and spies weren’t so similar that they had exactly the same training. Only when that was done did he produce a device made to look like a pocketwatch—a standard deception, Glory had over a dozen enchanted devices set in watch casings—and flipped it open.

Whatever it was, the information it contained instantly changed the dwarf’s mood.

“Hide,” he hissed, already turning and bolting. Rasha’s only instincts were trained enough to set her into motion before she bothered to ask questions. For a dwarf, Rogrind was amazingly agile, but she was still faster, and so managed to beat him to the shelter of one of the angled sheets of rock Schwartz had summoned out of the ground last year. Funny how things worked out; for all she knew, this was the second time she’d taken shelter behind this particular bulwark.

“What is it?” Rasha breathed once they were concealed. Rogrind still had his device out; she snuck a peek over his shoulder but couldn’t make heads or tails of the multiple tiny dials set into its face.

“We’re about to have company,” he whispered. “An arcane translocation signal just activated in this vicinity.”

“Scrying?”

“No such luck, this is for teleportation.”

“Shit,” she whispered. It might not be bad; Rasha’s friends would definitely be looking for her by now. Off the top of her head, though, she didn’t know of anyone in her inner circle who could teleport. Then again, Trissiny knew all sorts of wacky people, and Glory knew everyone. She looked at the very clear tracks the two of them had made through the snow right to their hiding spot and grimaced, noting Rogrind doing the same.

He pulled out another vial, drank half, and handed the rest to her. Rasha downed it without asking, and he immediately tugged her arm, beckoning her to follow. They set off to another position behind a large hunk of fallen masonry—this time leaving behind no traces in the snow. That was some good alchemy; thanks to Glory’s tutelage, Rasha had some idea what potions like that cost. It stood to reason an intelligence agent would have resources, but she hadn’t realized Svenheim made such heavy use of potions. That information was worth taking back to the Guild.

Even as they moved, a shrill whine like a very out-of-season mosquito began to resonate at the very edge of her hearing, growing steadily louder. No sooner had the pair ducked behind their new concealment than sparks of blue light began to flicker in the air over by the carriage’s wreck. It was but another second before a bright flash blazed across the ruins, and then over a dozen people materialized.

Rasha did not curse again, though she wanted to. These were not friendlies.

By far the majority were soldiers in crisp uniforms, with battlestaves at the ready; they instantly spread out, forming a perimeter around their landing zone and several detaching themselves from the formation to cover the wrecked carriage and the body of Sister Lanora. Rasha didn’t recognize those uniforms. They were white, vaguely resembling Silver Legion formal dress, but their insignia was a golden ankh over the breast. She’d thought the Holy Legionnaires only wore that ridiculously pompous armor, but one of the other parties present revealed the troops could not be anyone else.

Glory had insisted all her apprentices attend occasional services at the Universal Church, simply for the sake of being exposed to polite society. It was not the first time she had seen him, thus, but his presence here threw everything Rasha thought she understood into disarray. Archpope Justinian never left the safety of his power base in the Cathedral. And why would he? There, he was all but invulnerable, even against the countless factions and powerful individuals he had spent the last few years industriously antagonizing. Yet, there he was, his powerful build and patrician features unmistakable, behind a golden shield which had flashed into place around him the instant he’d arrived.

Rasha snuck a glance at Rogrind, who was staring at the new arrivals with the closed expression of an observant man determined to take in all possible data and reveal none in turn.

“Ugh!” shouted one of the other people with the Archpope, a stoop-shouldered individual bundled up as if against an Athan’Khar winter rather than a clear day in the Tira Valley. “These conditions are totally unacceptable!”

“Unfortunately, Rector, this is what we have to work with,” Justinian replied, his mellifluous voice utterly calm. “I apologize, but I must rely on your skill to overcome the inconvenience. This is the last place Lanora’s spirit existed upon the mortal plane, and distance from it makes the task more difficult. Seconds and inches are precious. Nassir, is that…?”

“Think so, your Holiness,” reported one of the soldiers, straightening from where he’d been kneeling at the very edge of the bloodstained patch of snow. The man’s face was hard, but Justinian’s grumpy companion took one look at the remains of Sister Lanora and was noisily sick into the nearest snowdrift. “No other bodies nearby, and she’s wearing Purist gear. Unfortunately her face is…gone.”

The Archpope, perhaps fittingly, was made of sterner stuff. His expression was deeply grave as he joined the soldier and gazed down at the body, but he did not flinch or avert his eyes. “What terrible damage. I don’t believe I have ever seen the like. It’s almost as if…”

“It looks like something triggered small explosions inside her body,” Nassir said, scowling deeply. “In the head, and look, there in the side. That wound would’ve been inflicted first. The head wound would be instantly lethal, so there’s no point in attacking again after that.”

“Have you seen such injuries before, Nassir?”

“Not in person, your Holiness. I’ve been briefed on the like, though, in the Army. Not sure anything I’ve heard of would’ve done it here, though. Some fairies are known to do nasty things like this, but nothing that lives this close to the capital. And of course, if you see unusually ugly wounds, infernomancy is always a suspicion…”

“There has been nothing of the kind done upon this spot in many years,” Justinian stated, raising his head to slowly direct his frown across the scenery. “At this range, I would sense it even under the Black Wreath’s concealment.”

The soldier nodded. “That leaves arcane attack spells. They exist. Very illegal, though. The Wizards’ Guild and the Salyrites both prohibit such craft.”

A moment of contemplative silence fell.

And then, a hand came to rest on Rasha’s shoulder, causing her to jump.

“Go on, say it,” breathed a new voice next to her. “Ask him.”

She just barely managed to stay silent, turning to gawk at the man who had appeared from nowhere between her and Rogrind: the waiter from the cafe who had warned her and Zafi of the Purist ambush. He was even still in his askew tuxedo, the cravat untied and hanging unevenly down his chest. Now, he was watching the scene unfolding before them with the wide-eyed eagerness of a child at a play.

Then she noticed that Rogrind had slumped, unconscious, to the ground, face-down in the snow.

“What of a Thieves’ Guild hedge mage?” Justinian asked, and the waiter began cackling aloud in sheer glee. Rasha frantically tried to shush him without adding to the noise herself.

“They…would be very hesitant to do such a thing, your Holiness,” the soldier named Nassir answered, his voice slowed with thought. Amazingly, neither he nor any of the others appeared to notice the gleeful hooting coming from Rasha’s hiding place. “The legal authorities would investigate any such thing, and possibly get Imperial Intelligence involved. Plus, if the Guild were feeling particularly cruel, they’d do something that would kill far more painfully and slowly. As deaths go, it doesn’t get much more merciful than the sudden loss of the entire brain. It’s not in their nature to risk official attention for something that gains them so little. Still,” he added pensively, “if I had to list mages who might know spellcraft like this, a back-alley Guild caster would top the list, even if they were hesitant to use it in practice. For example, this could be a vicious repurposing of a lock-breaking spell.”

“Oh, relax,” Rasha’s new companion chuckled, patting her on the head as the conversation over Lanora’s corpse continued. “They can’t hear or see us, I took care of that. Also your dwarf buddy here. Don’t worry about him, he’ll be fine; he’s just taking a nap. We’re about to see some shit that he really doesn’t need to, is all. You’ll have to convey my apologies when he wakes up.”

There were just too many questions; she settled on one almost at random. “Who the hell are you?!”

The man turned to meet her gaze, still wearing a cocky half-grin. And for just an instant, he let the veil slip, just by a fraction.

Weight and sheer power hammered at her consciousness as Rasha locked eyes with an intelligence as far beyond her own as the sun was beyond a candle. It was just for the barest fraction of a second, but it was enough to cause her to sit down hard in the snow.

Before them, Justinian raised his head suddenly like a hound catching a scent, and once more turned in a slow circle, studying his surroundings with a frown.

“Easy, there, Rasha,” Eserion said kindly, helping her back up. “I know you’ve had a pisser of a day already, but stay with me; you really need to see this next bit. Moments like this are rare, and you’ll almost never get forewarning of them, much less a front-row seat. We’re about to watch the world change right out from under us.”

One of the worst things about Natchua was that she was sometimes extremely right.

The Black Wreath didn’t fight; at most they laid ambushes. They contained, and that only after preparing the ground ahead of them to the best of their ability, luring their prey exactly where they wanted it before striking. Whether putting down loose demons, rogue warlocks, or their own traitors, it was simply not their way to engage in a frontal assault. Maybe, occasionally, the appearance of one after setting up the scene with the most exacting care, but actually fighting? Hurling themselves into the fray with spell and weapon and their own lifeblood on the line? It simply wasn’t done. It was not Elilial’s way.

Be foxes, not spiders.

The damnable thing was that their usual approach absolutely would not have worked here. The necro-drake was very much like a demon in how predictably it reacted, but there was a lot they could do about demons. Against this thing, their spells were simply not able to make a lasting impact. The mission wasn’t even to destroy or contain it, but only to keep it busy. There was nothing for it but to fight.

Embras Mogul wasn’t particularly surprised at how satisfying it was to simply let loose with all his destructive skill at an enemy, nor how the other survivors of his cult were clearly finding the same liberating vigor in it. After all they’d been through, it was only natural. He was rather surprised to find out that they were, in fact, pretty good at it.

They knew each other intuitively, with the intimacy of long cooperation and bonds forged in suffering. The Wreath moved in small groups, noting and reacting to one another so intuitively it felt like pure instinct. One trio would vanish as the necro-drake dived at them, and others would pummel it from multiple directions with shadowbolts, forcing the increasingly frustrated monster to whirl about and struggle to pick a target while under attack from all sides, only to be thwarted again when its chosen victims vanished into their own conjured darkness when it even tried to get close.

The poor thing was actually rather dumb. It never improved its strategy, just got progressively sloppier as going on and on without making any progress made it ever more angry.

It wasn’t as if they were making progress, either, but the difference was they were having fun. For once, the shoe was on the other foot: after a string of debacles and defeats, they were the cats tormenting the mouse and not the other way around. Embras kept an eye on the others every moment he could spare his attention from the necro-drake, watching for injury or signs of fatigue, but rather than growing tired, he saw his compatriots having more fun than he’d seen them have in years. Some, like Hiroshi, seemed to have fallen into a trancelike state of flow, concentrating in apparent serenity on their spells and tactics, while others were smiling, grinning with savage vindication as they did what no responsible warlocks ever allowed themselves to do: poured unrestrained destruction at their target.

It was, as Vanessa had said, cathartic. And he was a little afraid of what it might mean for the future, perhaps more than he was of the inept monstrosity trying to slaughter them all. It was going to be…a letdown, going back to their usual ways after this burst of sheer release. If they even could. Was there still a place for the Wreath as it was in the world? And if not, how big a mistake was it to tie their fates to Natchua of all bloody people?

Despite his misgivings, Mogul was having such a grand time shadow-jumping about and hammering the chaos best with infernal carnage that his immediate reaction to the sudden end of the exercise was a surge of pure disappointment. In the next moment, as he beheld the nature of that end, his emotional response felt more…complex.

The sound that echoed suddenly across the prairie brought stillness, as warlocks and necro-drake alike all stopped what they were doing and turned to stare. It was a terrible noise rarely heard on the mortal plane, and always a herald of catastrophe: a low sibilance that was like a hiss, if a hiss was a roar, a sound that was at once subtly slender and deafening.

The necro-drake’s bony face was unable to convey expression, but somehow, its body language as it turned to confront this new threat showed shock, even a hint of fear. It crouched, letting its wings fall to the sides, and lowered its head.

Embras Mogul, meanwhile, suddenly sat down in the tallgrass, laughing his head off.

Vanessa appeared next to him in a swell of shadow. “You know, I think we may have miscalculated, allying ourselves with that girl.”

“She doesn’t do anything halfway, does she?” Rupi added, coming to join them on foot. “Bloody hell, Embras. It’s like a…an infernal Tellwyrn.”

He just laughed. It was all too much.

They were adolescents; she’d made the summoning circles smaller on purpose, simply because full-sized adults would be too large to effectively grapple with the necro-drake the way she needed them to. All they had to do was pin the bastard down so she could step in and deliver the coup de grace. Behind their beaked heads, between their triple rows of crimson eyes and the flared directional fins, they wore collars of glowing crimson light, containing the runes which imbued them with the pact of summoning, restricting their behavior to that commanded by the warlock who had called them to this plane. Such bindings had never been placed on demons of this species before. They floated above her, eel-like bodies larger than a Rail caravan undulating sinuously as they awaited their mistress’s command.

It was with grim satisfaction that Natchua beheld the suddenly cowering necro-drake. Standing on the prairie beneath two captive nurdrakhaan, she pointed one finger at the monstrosity.

“Boys? Sic ‘im.”

< Previous Chapter                                                                                            Next Chapter >

16 – 21

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                              Next Chapter >

The spectacle they’d made in the sanctuary sufficiently distracted everyone that Trissiny and her entourage were able to make a relatively discreet withdrawal, leaving behind an agitated temple filled with exited visitors, distraught Purists, and Legionnaires rapidly moving to ensure the crowd remained under control. The paladin glanced back once just before stepping through a rear door of the sanctuary, and locked eyes just for a moment with Sister Magden, who had knelt to wrap her arms around the weeping Lanora’s shoulders.

Then they were moving through the relatively quieter halls beyond, the whole group sorting into rough columns of two abreast and making for the deeper temple where there would be fewer people.

By mutual contrivance, Rasha and Zafi ended up near the back of the troop, between Sister Azalea’s two priestess friends in the front and the other three Eserites trailing along behind them.

“Well, that…was altogether a hell of a thing,” Zafi finally said softly after they had walked for a minute to only the sound of their combined feet and the muted conversation between Trissiny and Azalea up in the front. “Mission successful and all. I’m glad those turkeys got dealt with. Dang, though. I did not get up this morning expecting to be in a room with Avei.”

Rasha opened her mouth and hesitated, fumbling for a suitable response to that. She had to pause and clear her throat for time, only belatedly murmuring, “That particular experience was a first for all of us, I think. But you get used to it, hanging around with a paladin. Expect the unexpectable, or be trampled by it.”

“I dunno whether to write this off as over my pay grade, or try to see if I can’t finagle a more permanent position around the General,” Zafi admitted. “I dunno, I think I’d make a pretty good lackey. I guess I’ll just have to hang around you a while longer and see if I don’t get the hang of it,” she added, giving Rasha a playful little sidelong smile. “After all, if I can’t pick up some secondhand poise from my lady of mystery, I guess that’d make me completely hopeless.”

There came a gagging sound from behind them, followed by the muffled thump of someone’s fist impacting someone’s midsection. Neither of them turned around.

“I think I can spare you some poise,” Rasha mused. She trailed off, frowning, then drew in a breath. “Look, Zafi, this coy back-and-forth is fun, but would it spoil the illusion if we talk frankly for a little bit? Between you and me, I’m a little wrung out after the day I’ve had.”

“Oh, thank the gods,” Zafi said, exhaling in relief. “Yeah, I honestly don’t know how much longer I could’ve kept it up. Not that I was trying to misrepresent myself, I just… Well, I gotta flirt at maximum strength before you realize how out of my league you are, is all.”

Rasha glanced at her, unable to repress a smile, and found the soldier staring forward with her cheeks flushed. The unexpected boost to her own ego brought back some of her well-trained smoothness, despite the fatigue of the day.

“Straight talk, then. When are you off duty tomorrow?”

Zafi didn’t quite stumble, but her stride hitched as if she’d had to remind herself how to take a step in the middle of one. “Uh, I, ah… Early shift. I’m free at three.”

“Perfect. There’s a Glassian cafe called La Chez just a few blocks from here. I will see you there at four.”

“I, um.” Zafi swallowed heavily. “Rasha, that place is a little out of…”

“My treat,” Rasha assured her. “And I’m not throwing money around; the owner is a friend of my sponsor. She got him his business license when he immigrated here. After that, we’ll see if we want to start traumatizing each other with the sorts of places soldiers and thieves actually like to hang out.” She glanced over at the Legionnaire again, and subconsciously bit her lower lip. “I’ve got a feeling you’re worth the effort.”

Zafi’s answering grin was clearly out of her control. “I…will not disappoint.”

“You haven’t yet.” Rasha winked at her, then subtly shortened her stride, fading backward such that Darius meandered up to take her place as smoothly as if they’d practiced the maneuver. Which, of course, they had.

Zafi was still grinning like a fool, but coughed and made an effort to marshal herself before glancing over at him. “Right. So, this is the part where you explain how much you’ll break my legs if I mistreat your friend?”

“Whoah.” He held up both hands as the two priestesses in front of them shifted their heads to look backward while walking. “As the resident dude-type person, I’m gonna delegate this conversation. Ladies, if you would?”

Another deft Eserite maneuver ensued in which he fell back and Layla and Tallie smoothly sidled up to flank Zafi on both sides, despite the fact they’d turned into a narrower hallway which made this a little cramped.

“First of all,” said Tallie in a pleasant tone, “we never issue a threat in front of witnesses. That’s proof of premeditation, which greatly raises your chance of being convicted if prosecuted and automatically increases your sentence.”

“Second,” Layla continued from her other side, “we don’t issue redundant threats. You are clearly aware of the perils of offending Eserites; making a production of it would just make us look petty and foolish.”

“And most important,” Tallie finished, “Eserites handle their own problems. If you ever hurt Rasha, you will answer to Rasha.”

“We’ll just be sitting on the sidelines, laughing and throwing coins,” Layla added smugly.

Incongruously, Zafi grinned again. “Y’know what? You girls are all right. Actually you remind me a little bit of my sergeant.”

“I do believe I approve of this one,” Layla declared.

At the head of the double column, Sister Azalea broke a lull in the softer conversation between herself and Trissiny to say, quietly, “Thank you for everything you did today.”

“Just my duty,” the paladin replied. “And there are already parts I wish I’d handled better…”

“Obviously, I’m grateful for the help you rendered to the Sisterhood, Trissiny, I don’t mean to minimize that. But I meant personally. It may be routine for you to commune with our goddess, but a simple priestess like myself can expect to spend her life without ever being in her actual presence. It was… Thank you.”

“Ah.” Trissiny smiled faintly at that. “Well, then, you’re welcome.”

The priestess gave her a pensive look. “You are dissatisfied with the outcome?”

“We still need to find the source of the Purists’ funding and equipment, as well as who organized them,” Trissiny said with a dour expression. “Based on your intelligence it seems Sister Lanora is the only one who has that information, and now… I rather doubt she will be inclined to be helpful, and since she is no longer part of the Sisterhood, we no longer have the legal prerogative to detain her. I might be willing to risk it anyway, but something tells me there would be immediate and voluble legal challenges if we tried, accompanied by press coverage of the Sisterhood’s ham-fisted abuses of power. All conveniently untraceable, of course.”

“Hmm.” Azalea narrowed her own eyes in thought. “Undoubtedly the goddess acted as she did for good reason. I must trust this will lead us to the course of action she desires.”

Trissiny indulged in a soft sight. “The consciousness of gods is…not entirely like our own, Sister. As Professor Tellwyrn once put it, Avei the deity can be influenced to do things which Avei the mortal strategist of the Elder War would have known not to. Calling upon her so dramatically, in public, may have been what led to this outcome. Well, anyway, recrimination is useless even when not focused on inscrutable deities; we have the next moves to consider. Sister Azalea…” She hesitated, studying the priestess sidelong for a moment. “Are you still interested in the office of Bishop?”

“I will of course serve Avei in whatever capacity I might,” she said diplomatically. “Surely that is less likely now, rather than more? We have probably just further affronted the Archpope, even if we cannot prove it.”

“I’ve spoken with High Commander Rouvad about this. We plan for the Sisterhood to appoint a Bishop unilaterally, who will be responsible for directing our interfaith relations, without going through the Universal Church.”

“I…see,” Azalea said. “That is a bold move. And now that I think on it, exactly what is needed.”

Trissiny nodded. “My next destination was going to be Viridill, to retrieve Nandi Shahai for that role. But you are here, Sister, and clearly more than capable… The position isn’t mine to appoint, of course, but I think my recommendation carries some weight with Rouvad.”

“I’d be honored to take on the task if the Commander wishes,” Azalea said seriously, “but if Shahai is another prospect, I’d encourage you to ask her first. She has served Avei for five centuries in a surprising variety of roles, and has exactly the web of long-standing connections this task requires. Thank you for thinking of me, however,” she added with a smile. “As these events have demonstrated, I think I am still valuable to the Sisterhood where I am.”

“Very much so,” Trissiny agreed, smiling.

“Then there remains finding and proving a link between the Purists and the Archpope, if possible. I dare to hold out hope that Lanora will still cooperate, but it is true that she now has ample motivation to obstruct us…”

“Well, we’re not entirely out of tricks just yet,” the paladin murmured, eyes straight ahead and narrowed in thought. “Actually… First thing tomorrow, I’m going to call in a favor.”

The door stood slightly ajar, emitting a slice of the clean glow of a fairy lamp, so he pushed it wider and poked his head in.

This wing was in the Manor’s most refurbished section, a hallway lined with bedrooms directly above the kitchen and dining room where the house’s residents spent most of their time. Thus, the room was clean and repaired, with new glass in the windows and modern fairy lighting, but starkly empty, lacking drapes, carpets, or even wallpaper. That had given Natchua plenty of room to lay out her various props.

She had hung maps of Veilgrad and Lower Stalwar Province on one wall and marked them heavily with both ink and pushpins. On the floor were no less than four now-inert spell circles, and another sprawling map of the city held down by a selection of chess pieces, silverware, and coins.

Natchua stood in the center of the room, slowly turning her head back and forth to study the various maps and tapping her lips with one fingertip, a characteristic tic of Professor Tellwyrn’s which she had begun unconsciously using in recent months.

Jonathan cleared his throat. “Planning an invasion?”

“Everybody talks about how dangerous and mysterious Veilgrad is,” she said without looking up. “I never really paused to consider what that actually means for people. It’s one thing to note that a steady trickle of people just vanish around here, every year. Sometimes entirely… Sometimes turning up later, in pieces. That’s continued happening as usual while we’ve been living here. While I was gallivanting around the city, getting my face in the papers and doing nothing about any of it. Every one of those statistics was a person, who left grieving people behind.”

He stepped the rest of the way in and pushed the door almost closed behind him, not quite to the point of latching it. “None of that was your responsibility, Natch.”

“Not specifically, no,” she murmured. “Aren’t we all at least somewhat responsible for doing what we can, for who we can, where we are? That seems like one of the basic necessities of being a decent person. Considering who and what I am, I really need to think about stuff like that.”

Stepping carefully to avoid disrupting any of her workings, Jonathan approached her and gently wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind. She immediately leaned back against him. “What brought all this on?”

“Work,” she said sighing softly. “I’m not just up here flagellating myself, Jon. For tomorrow’s planned project I needed a list of targets around the city. And holy shit, there are a lot. Mostly fairies, which I can’t do a whole lot about. I did find a good handful of demonic activity, which is what I was looking for. Oh, also, I’ve accidentally solved Veilgrad’s central mystery.”

“Well, that’ll be a relief to a lot of people,” he observed.

“I think I’d actually better keep it to myself,” Natchua said, closing her eyes and resting her head against his collarbone. “There’s not really anything to be done about it and knowing will just scare everybody. Turns out there’s an abandoned drow city very close to here. Well, abandoned except for the divinely-created undead monstrosities it’s full of now. Themynrite magic was used in their creation, and the resonance between that and the native fairies is what keeps giving rise to necromantic events, despite the fact that none of them are related.”

“Well… Surely if you know where that is, the Empire can go in and clear it out?”

“Bad idea,” she insisted. “If a Themynrite city is abandoned, it’s because it was breached by Scyllithenes. That would be why it’s full of zombie monsters now. You should never open a path for them. And if the Scyllithenes haven’t managed to break through them in thousands of years of trying, those zombie monsters are not to be fucked with. Might be too big a mouthful even for the Imperial Army. Better to leave it alone, and start being more vigilant about undead events in the area.”

“Hence, all this.”

She nodded, opening her eyes to look up at him. “And this is just what I was able to find. It’s a start, anyway. Xyraadi is much better at divination than me; infernomancy doesn’t lend itself to the art.”

“I notice you’ve got your djinn bottle out,” he said in a neutral tone, nodding at the artifact still sitting in the center of one of the inert spell circles.

“Yeah… I don’t call on Qadira lightly, but at least I got what I needed.”

“You found the Wreath?”

“No, they’re not nearly so easy to track. They’re not what I was looking for, anyway. Kheshiri and I will still be chasing them down tomorrow. Given the established pattern, they’ll probably find us once we’re alone. And now I have what I need to be ready for them.” With another quiet sigh, Natchua reached up to grasp his hands and squeeze them momentarily, then pulled herself out of his embrace. “Fortuitously, both succubi are in another room down at the end of this hall. I’ll go brief her real quick.”

“Good idea,” he said with a smile. “And I’m sure it has nothing to do with wanting to break up whatever those two are doing in a room together.”

“Vanislaads are generally not social with each other,” Natchua agreed, leading the way back out into the hall. “Mel and Shiri are pretty focused and they both have plenty to do; I’m not hugely worried about a feud brewing, but still. Doesn’t pay to take risks with their kind.”

“I’m right with you on that.”

She reached one door, grasped the latch and pushed it open. Then both of them froze, staring into the room.

Melaxyna was on all fours on the floor—actually, upon a closer look, she had all four of her limbs bent double and then bound with leather straps, calf to thigh and forearm to bicep, forcing her to balance painfully on her knees and elbows. Her head was mostly obscured, between the gag, the blindfold, and the pair of felt bunny ears leftover from the last spring festival. Both her wings were splayed out to the sides and actually nailed to the floor.

Behind her stood Kheshiri dressed in a formal ballgown with the addition of a broad leather collar from which dangled a cowbell, busy feeding the other succubus’s tail into an old-fashioned laundry mangle they’d somehow dragged up to this room.

Both their heads turned to the door.

“Do you knock?” Kheshiri demanded acerbically.

Natchua and Jonathan jerked back out, yanking the door shut, and simultaneously pressed their backs against the wall to either side of it.

“On the other hand,” Natchua decided, “I could just brief her in the morning.”

He cleared his throat. “Um, I note that it was the significantly more evil succubus in the advantageous position over the more trustworthy one. Should you actually…?”

“In fact, no, it wasn’t; that was Shiri in the…restraints. They’d swapped appearances.”

Jonathan covered his eyes with a hand. “Okay. Somehow, that’s the kinkiest part, and I can’t even articulate why.”

“Well, hell, this is good,” Natchua said, pushing herself off the wall and taking him by the arm. “If you keep two Vanislaads together, they’ll either go at each other like strange cats, or… Go at each other like bunnies. And two Vanislaads getting busy usually means the kind of play that would kill most people. So, it beats the hell out of the alternative. Now let’s go turn in. Suddenly I find I would like to make love slowly in the missionary position with the lights off.”

It was past dark when Trissiny returned to Madouri Manor, though not by much. She found the rest of her class still up and gathered in the front sitting room of their suite, with one exception.

“Trissiny!” Teal exclaimed upon her entry. “There you are, we were starting to worry. Is everything okay?”

“It’s been…a day,” Trissiny said wryly, striding forward and flopping into an unoccupied armchair. Teal and Shaeine were perched together on the loveseat, Gabriel and Toby lounging in smaller chairs, and Fross as usual floating overhead. F’thaan lay curled in front of the fire, though he looked up at her arrival and his tail thumped against the floor. “Are you two okay? You got everything squared away all right?”

“Once F’thaan was rescued, our afternoon was much more tedious than harrowing,” Shaeine assured her. “The authorities were not pleased by Vadrieny making a display of herself in broad daylight in the middle of the city, but we had ample legal representation.”

“Also, it helps that we were in the right,” Teal added. “Vadrieny’s actions were fully covered by the statutes governing defense of self and property. Except for some, ah, incidental damage to the pavement. The magistrate was persuaded to levy a fine and the bill for repairs, rather than anything more serious.”

“As it ever was,” Ruda drawled, gesticulating with her bottle of rum. “What’d get a factory worker jailed gets a factory heiress fined, in an amount that won’t even dent her allowance.”

“It does seem like people with money live under an effectively different set of laws,” Fross chimed.

“C’mon, doll, you know I love you,” Ruda added in response to Teal’s scowl. “But you exist in a context. There’s nothing gained by denying your advantages in life.”

“I’d like to see a factory worker make a Vadrieny-style crater in the street,” Gabriel remarked.

“I apologize that we were not able to drive you back here as planned,” Shaeine said to Trissiny.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Trissiny said quickly, “it ended up being Avenist business that kept me occupied most of the day. I wouldn’t have been able to take you up on it anyhow. I’m just glad to see you and F’thaan are back safe. Did June turn in already?”

“Actually, she’s spending the night up at Ravana’s hunting lodge,” said Toby. “With her sister, and the rest of Brother Ingvar’s group.”

“Yeah, you missed the big news of the day,” Gabriel added. “Ravana has effectively hired the whole sect to serve as the new foresters and game wardens for the province.”

“Really,” Trissiny said, leaning forward. “That’s…a peculiar move. Wouldn’t that get her in trouble with the Huntsmen?”

“Oh, but that wasn’t the big news,” he replied with relish. “There was a whole public announcement today while you were off in the capital. House Madouri has formally recognized Ingvar’s splinter group as the official and legitimate faith of Shaath.”

“Which means,” Toby added, “that legally they are, in Tiraan Province.”

“What?” Trissiny exclaimed. “She can’t just… Wait, why would she do that? It makes her an outright enemy of the orthodox Huntsmen! Not to mention probably the Universal Church. There’s a reason the Houses stay out of religious politics. The risk/reward calculation is never in the favor of people trying to meddle.”

“Well, like I was just saying before you came in,” Gabriel replied, “there’s a good chance of this getting her in good with the other cults. Pretty much nobody actually likes the Huntsmen.”

“And like I was just telling him, it doesn’t work that way,” Ruda retorted. “People who’ve got power and privilege want to protect those things above any other concern. The accepted thing is that nobles don’t meddle in cult business. If this becomes a precedent, the cults will be losing influence to the Houses. All the religious leaders are going to come down on her, or try to.”

“Ravana isn’t reckless enough to do something like that without considering the angles,” Trissiny mused. “What is she up to?”

“Uh, pardon me, but isn’t she kind of explicitly exactly that?” Fross objected. “I’m not denying that Ravana’s sly, but just from the stories I’ve heard it seems like her whole problem is a tendency to go on the attack without accounting for the broader context.”

“Oh, I think she’s considered the angles, all right,” Ruda drawled. “Question is how carefully she’s considered ‘em.”

“Well, that’s as good a segue as any,” Trissiny said with a sigh. “Gabe, Toby, I think we need to take a page out of Ravana’s book.”

“Well, sure,” Gabriel said lightly. “But where are we going to get a mag cannon and a team of assassins at this hour?”

“I see that verbal diarrhea still hasn’t cleared up,” Toby said. “You need to eat more fiber, Gabe. Triss, which book did you mean, specifically?”

“The part where she’s making this a working vacation. I have spent my day preemptively shutting down an attempt by Justinian to induce a schism within the Sisterhood of Avei, and encountering growing evidence that he’s trying to do the same thing within the Thieves’ Guild. That,” she added, turning to Shaeine and Teal, “is probably why they sent a couple of hapless goons to try to abduct F’thaan.”

“I wondered,” Teal murmured. “They never had a realistic chance of getting him. It does seem like the Guild was deliberately setting itself up for failure.”

“In response,” Trissiny continued, “the Sisterhood is dropping its attempts to get Justinian to confirm a new Bishop. Tomorrow, if the arrangements can be made fast enough, Commander Rouvad is going to appoint one without his approval, and have her take over our interfaith operations, as Bishop Darling is currently doing for the Guild.”

“Risky,” Ruda said, her expression intent. “You’ll either end up freezing the Universal Church out of the only thing it actually does, or being frozen out by the Church. It all depends on how many other cults you can get to sign on with you.”

“Exactly,” Trissiny agreed, nodding and turning back to the boys. “The Guild hasn’t been having much luck, but they’re nearly as unpopular as the Huntsmen. Joined by the Sisterhood, things will change. And if all three Trinity cults take a stand…”

“You realize we don’t actually have the authority to do that,” Toby said seriously. “I’m not refusing you, Trissiny. In fact, I wholeheartedly agree and I’ll back you on this. I saw what a danger Justinian is as close up as you did. I just want to warn you, whatever relationship you have with Commander Rouvad, it’s likely more productive than any attempt I could make to get the Dawn Council to… To do anything.”

“Same goes, sort of,” Gabriel agreed. “I like the idea, Triss. But Lady Gwenfaer is the scariest person I’ve ever met, largely because I suspect she’s the smartest and I don’t actually have any idea what she thinks or wants. I walk in there asking her to go to war with the Archpope, and the only certainty is she’ll find some way to profit from it.”

“I think I see an inherent risk in this,” Fross added. “So, Justinian’s closest backers are the Huntsmen, right? And thanks to Ingvar, they’re split and effectively neutralized, right? So now, a few months after that happened, the two cults that have most openly defied him are having internal divisions he’s fostered.”

“Yeah, that’s about the time frame it’d take to set up something like that,” Ruda agreed.

“I see where you’re going, Fross, and the same had occurred to me,” said Trissiny.

Gabriel chuckled. “Well, hell, I almost hope he does try to instigate a schism inside the Vidians. Let Justinian get a taste for dealing with real schemers.”

“Once again, Arquin, not how it fucking works,” Ruda said with clear exasperation. “A group that’s already prone to politicking and infighting is more vulnerable, not less. There may be elements in it that are too good for Justinian to fuck with, but there are also a million other cracks he can wedge his fingers into. Only takes one little grip for him to start pulling the whole thing apart.”

Gabriel sighed, his smile fading. “I see your point. Man… Bishop Darling suggested I pick a faction and commit to them, but… Val’s been trying to coach me on the intricacies of Vidian politics, but it’s like the web a spider would make after you dunked it in coffee. I still don’t even know where to start finding a group of allies who can stand up to him and hold the rest of the cult together if he attacks it.”

“Actually,” Toby said pensively, studying him, “I think you know exactly where to start, Gabe. You just won’t like it.”

< Previous Chapter                                                                                               Next Chapter >

16 – 17

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                      Next Chapter >

“Well…this changes matters.”

Darling nodded, staring ahead across the street with a slight frown. Though they were clearly the subject of attention, standing in front of a police barracks with Trissiny in her silver armor, they enjoyed the slight privacy of distance; passersby in Tiraas were generally adept at minding their own business, and few people anywhere would be eager to approach a paladin with that look on her face.

“I gotta check with Tricks, obviously,” Darling said abruptly after a loaded pause.

“Okay,” she agreed, but slowly. “And…if he…?”

“Everything we do next depends on what he has to say,” said the Bishop, finally turning to face her. “If Rake was on the up and up, I doubt Tricks will deny it. If he does… Well, that’ll have implications that we then have to deal with. In the likelier outcome, I’ve got enough pull to demand to know what he’s thinking with this. Tricks doesn’t do things without good reasons, Thorn, and we better know what the hell they are before charging ahead.”

Trissiny nodded. “Sounds like sense to me. I guess…this means we split up, for now.”

He emitted the tiniest huff of almost-laughter. “Yeah, ‘fraid so. You don’t have much say with Tricks and he’s not likely to appreciate being questioned with you in attendance. And your business at the Temple had better not wait any longer.”

“Gotta wonder if this isn’t exactly the play,” Darius commented from where he was leaning indolently against the station’s wall in a manner that would have him immediately picked up by the first passing soldier had he not been with Trissiny.

“Surely you don’t suggest Tricks works for…you know who,” Layla objected.

“I bet lots of people who don’t work for you know who end up doing his dirty work, regardless,” said Tallie. “Without knowing it, or even against their will.”

“Let’s not get too deep into speculation,” Darling warned. “Big mistake, to form theories when you don’t have the facts yet. Then, when the facts come, your brain’ll tend to try to fit them into your theories rather than the other way round. You may not be wrong, though,” he added, nodding at Darius. “Eyes and ears open, kids. We can’t be paralyzed by indecision, but don’t forget there’s some real shit afoot.”

“Shit afoot, nice turn of phrase,” said Tallie, grinning. “Sure does look like we’ve stepped right in it.”

“I know Sweet’s off on Guild business, and I’m not the boss of you,” said Trissiny, turning around to address the apprentices, “but I would appreciate it if you all stuck with me for now.”

“You want us at the Temple of Avei?” Darius demanded, raising his eyebrows. “Wow. I thought you were just humoring us.”

“No, Darius,” she snapped impatiently, “you were just pretending to think that because it gives you another excuse to act huffy. If what you want is to be left behind, keep that up, because I haven’t got time to hold the hand of a big boy who shouldn’t damn well need it.”

“Tooooold yoooooouuu,” Layla sang sweetly.

“The issue,” Trissiny continued more evenly, “is that Rasha’s presence is going to be necessary for the plan, and I may have to spend some time squirreled away with the High Commander or elsewhere that I can’t bring her along. After what happened last time, I’ll feel better with someone else on hand to watch her back.”

“I can take look after myself, you know,” Rasha pointed out. “I managed last time.”

“Yes, and you can do it better with friends behind you,” Tallie replied, patting her shoulder. “Thorn’s right; this isn’t a dig at you, it’s basic sense.”

“Not that I encourage you kids to pick a fight in the Temple,” said Darling, “but it is true that bullies like these Purists are much less likely to try to ambush someone moving in a group. Any predator will try to isolate prey before striking. All right, let’s burn mileage before we burn any more daylight. I’ll swing back by Glory’s this evening and hope to catch you so we can compare notes.”

“Right, same goes,” Trissiny replied. “If either of us can’t make it, Glory can make sure everyone’s up to date.”

“Now, remember, Sweet,” Layla said sternly, “as with most nights, Glory is having company this evening. Scruffy characters like you had better come in the servants’ entrance.”

“Just for that,” he said, winking, “I’m gonna take the sewer access, wipe my boots on the carpet, and tell her you told me to do it. Don’t try to sass the master, princess. All right, kids, work fast and stay safe. Catch up with you as soon as I can.”

They separated, heading in opposite directions up the sidewalk toward their respective next confrontations.

Kheshiri was still laughing after half an hour, though at least her initial hysterics had subsided to intermittent giggle fits that allowed the rest of them to converse. A look into her aura had informed Natchua that, while the initial outburst of hilarity was purely genuine, by this point she was just being deliberately annoying. That, Natchua was inclined to indulge. Enabling the Vanislaads to make pests of themselves helped take the edge off, reducing the risk of them doing something truly disruptive.

“It’s the weirdest damn thing,” Jonathan commented, gazing abstractly into his cup of tea. “After all the weird shit we’ve stumbled into and through since this summer, seems odd that this would be the thing that gives me pause. But…here we are.”

“This really bothers you more than all the…well, everything?” Natchua looked pointedly at Kheshiri, currently rolling about on the floor in front of the fire like a cackling dog, and the much more laid-back Melaxyna, who stood behind Sherwin’s chair, massaging his shoulders and cradling his head against her chest.

“The thing about demons,” Jonathan mused, “is that they just are what they are. They don’t get a choice, and can’t reasonably be any better. And even despite that, some of them choose to be better, and succeed.” Staring into space now instead of his tea, he reached to one side without looking, and Hesthri took his proffered hand. “As incredibly hard as it is for ‘em, they do. Nobles, now… Nobles are pretty much the opposite, in every respect.”

“Your point is well-taken, but that’s a little more grim than the reality,” said Melaxyna. “Nobles, like most mortals, are as good or bad as their upbringing and the choices they make. At their worst, they are no more monstrous than any mentally defective violent criminal, just more destructive due to their power. But the good ones are potentially enormous forces for good in the world, by the same token.”

“Honestly, Jonathan, I am inclined to see it the way you do,” Natchua said softly, stepping over to crouch by his chair. He finally focused on her at that, smiling, and she leaned her head against his knee with a sigh. Jonathan had more than a little Avenist in him and had initially been uneasy about the symbolism of having a woman he cared for sit by his feet, but Natchua found comfort in the position and had eventually brought him around. Even if she was still obviously the one with the power here, it was a relief to feel protected for a little while. “From everything I’ve read, Narisian nobility may not be any worse than the Imperial kind, relative to the two societies… But that just means they’re twice as vicious and underhanded on average, Tar’naris being the festering pit it is. Every instinct I have bridles at the idea.”

“I don’t want you to make a decision like this on my account,” he said quickly, setting his tea down on the table to stroke her hair, and then letting his hand rest lightly on the back of her neck, the way she liked.

“You are going to be a big part of any decision I make,” she replied. “Not the only part, but you matter a lot to me. I want to know how you feel before I do anything important.”

“I feel…wary,” he admitted. “Having had a few minutes now to think about how I feel, I’m starting to realize that much of my unease is due to the fact that I think you’d actually be a better noble than most. And as selfish as it sounds, it’s a little alarming because I have no idea how I would fit into that.”

“Well, look at it this way!” Sherwin said brightly. “You two could get married, and then you’d both be nobles. And hey, then Gabriel technically would be, too. I bet a paladin could get a lot of political use out of that.”

Everyone turned to stare at him except Kheshiri, who set off on another round of cackling, actually slapping one hand against the floor. Sherwin’s smile faded under their scrutiny and he shrank slightly in his chair, pushing his head back into Melaxyna’s chest as if to hide in her cleavage.

“Sherwin, honey,” the succubus murmured, squeezing his shoulders, “it’s a bit inconsiderate to put that kind of pressure on someone else’s relationship. Especially in public.”

“Oh, uh,” he stammered, “I didn’t… That is, I’m sorry if…”

“This is one of those things that you’ll only make worse by trying to fix, Sherwin,” Natchua said, not unkindly. “Hesthri, you’ve been quiet.”

The hethelax stepped closer, folding herself down to sit cross-legged practically on top of Jonathan’s feet, close enough to Natchua to reach out and place a hand on her knee. “That’s because I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say.”

“And when has that ever stopped you?” Natchua retorted.

“When the matter is serious,” Hesthri said, gazing at her without reciprocating her levity, “and your feelings are on the line. I think it’s good for you to be regularly knocked off your high horse, Natch, but I never want to be the cause of real upset, not over something important.”

“I care what you think, too,” Natchua said, reaching out to clasp the clawed hand Jonathan wasn’t currently holding. “If it’s something important enough to worry you, I definitely need to hear it. I can take a rebuke, Hes.”

“Then I think you should do it,” she said frankly.

Natchua blinked once, then closed her eyes and turned her face slightly so that it was half-buried in Jonathan’s thigh. “Why do any of you think I would be good at this? I mean, specifically, why? I am not fishing for compliments or validation, here, I just don’t get it. I am just so very Natchua. It’s inconceivable to me that I would be good in this position. Am I really the only one?”

“I suspect,” said Hesthri, squeezing her fingers, “because all of us here are as suspicious of aristocracy as you are, for one reason or another, and that makes the very fact that you’d be such an unconventional choice comforting. But it’s not like I’d suggest any old fool off the street should be thrust into that position, even if I loved that fool as I do you. I think that Malivette hit the nail on the head, lovely. You would be good for Veilgrad, and Veilgrad would be good for you. Both those things have already been the case; this is really just formalizing it.”

“It’s because you’re such an apex asshole, mistress,” Kheshiri interjected suddenly. She had rolled herself around and was now stretched out on her belly facing them, chin propped up on her hands and grinning in continued glee. “You make your decisions based on pure principle, and your principles amount to protecting people from abuse if you can, and avenging them if you can’t. Your preferred strategy for doing this is always something so irrationally conceived and convolutedly executed that nobody ever manages to stop you. That, mistress, is precisely the profile of a reformer who comes along to burn all the bullshit out of a crooked system. ‘Natchua the Noble’ is one of those ideas no sensible person would think of on their own, but once it’s presented, damn if it doesn’t make an eerie kind of sense! It’s a classic Natchua idea, in other words.”

“That…is…actually quite well said,” Jonathan said slowly, studying Kheshiri, who winked up at him. “Puts my thoughts into words much better than I would have.” Hesthri nodded.

“That’s what succubi do,” Sherwin chuckled. “Well. Among other things.” Melaxyna bent forward to kiss the top of his head.

Natchua regarded Kheshiri sidelong, taking in her delighted expression and the magical signature which revealed the actual mental state it hid. She was in this habit for the obvious reason of trying to head off resistance and defiance from the succubus, but more and more lately, Kheshiri had regarded her with ever-increasing warmth and attachment. Something about that was even brighter and fiercer, now. Natchua couldn’t quite put a label to the demon’s feelings toward her, but they were intensely positive. Somehow, that was more unsettling than if the Vanislaad had meant her harm.

“Well,” she said aloud, “I have more thinking on it to do. Vette and Ravana want to move fast, for the sake of political shock value, but I am at the very least going to sleep on it. I’m interested in hearing more from all of you, too, if you have thoughts. For now, that’s not the only crisis brewing. Shiri, I have work for you.”

“Ooh!” Kheshiri executed a deft gymnastic maneuver by which she flowed from a lounging position to sitting upright without ever fully straightening up, the furor of delight behind her eyes only increasing at the attention. “I’m all yours, my mistress!”

Natchua winced at the phrasing, on purpose. Letting the succubus needle her and get reactions helped scratch that itch. “I’ve got the Black Wreath sniffing around me, and so far I can’t tell what the hell they actually want. They said revenge, but their actions don’t make sense in that context. You’re the Wreath expert, here. The way I heard it, you actually took them over a century ago.”

“Ah, good times,” Kheshiri said reminiscently. “I miss Onkawa. But yes, mistress, I recognize the pattern you’ve described. It’s a standard ploy: they are keeping you both in the dark and under pressure. The goals are variable—could be just trying to see what you do when stressed and confused, or they might be trying to weaken you in preparation for the real play.”

“I see,” Natchua murmured. “It does make more sense in that light. So as long as they retain the ability to move about mysteriously…they retain the upper hand. Even trying to figure out their movements slips me deeper into the trap. Hm. How would you suggest defeating a plan like that?”

“Now, just a moment,” Jonathan interrupted. “Not to doubt your expertise, Kheshiri—or reproach you for asking advice, Natch, that’s a very good habit to be in. But remember what we were just discussing about you and your plans? The Wreath are legendary schemers; facing them on their own terms seems like a bad idea. Better to retaliate with something they wouldn’t and can’t expect. If there was ever a time for a Natchua plan, this is it.”

“Yes, it is,” Hesthri agreed softly, but with a mischievous fervor in her expression.

“I do have insights, if you wish them, mistress,” Kheshiri added, “but I like the direction of Jonathan’s thoughts here. I would be delighted to see how you’d screw with Mogul and his crew.”

“How I would…” Natchua trailed off, frowning into space and barely feeling Hesthri’s gentle squeezing of her hand, or Jonathan subtly massaging the back of her neck in his grip. “So the game is to create confusion and pressure, then? You know what, I kind of love it. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

She snapped her eyes back into focus, finding Kheshiri grinning at her with a level of glee that verged on the psychotic. For once, Natchua found the expression, rather than alarming as usual, exactly what she wanted to see.

“First thing tomorrow, Shiri, you and I are going to have a prowl around Veilgrad with our respective knowledge of Wreath tactics and Elilinist magic. I don’t need to know what they’re planning, just where they’ve been and might be again. And then… If Embras Mogul thinks he’s pissed at me now, he’s about to learn how much worse things can always get.”

“All these…are not skilled enchanters?” Magister Danoris asked, visibly aghast. He did not go so far as it lean over the catwalk’s railing, but clutched it as if it were holding him up as he gazed down at the factory floor below.

“Well, yes and no,” Geoffrey Falconer answered in the same energetic tone with which he’d been playing tour guide since their arrival. Though in many ways he lived up to the stereotype of the absent-minded intellectual, Falconer was as intrigued as any expert in arcane magic would be at meeting high elves, and always pleased to show guests the workings of his factory. “Naturally we do employ quite a few enchanters by specialty, but the whole point of the assembly line is to make production as efficient as possible. We’ve set it up as best as possible to minimize the need for magical expertise; fully seventy percent of the positions along the line are manual. Some of those do require an application of magic, but using the standard inks and dusts—which we of course manufacture in house, from our own mana turbines. That increases the available hiring pool. We pride ourselves on paying well here at FI, but unskilled labor is still much cheaper than employing enchanters.”

“And these…laborers…will produce self-motivated vehicles?”

“Twenty an hour,” Falconer said proudly.

“How sophisticated are your horseless carriages?” Danoris demanded.

“It depends; we have a range of products. The higher-end models have more features, obviously, but they also require more specialized attention from enchanters and other artisans. This assembly line happens to be producing our most basic model, the FI-320. Full seating for four passengers, weatherproof wheel charms, maximum speed of forty miles per hour, and fully rechargeable power crystals—”

“I wish to inspect one of these vehicles.”

“Of course,” Falconer said, his good cheer seemingly undiminished by Danoris’s abrupt tone, though his fellow Magister shot him a reproachful look which he did not see. This was not even the first such grimace Ravana had observed, simply by hanging back and studying her guests as intently as they did the factory facilities.

Magisters Danoris and Talvrin had accompanied her on the tour while Veilwin systematically drained a bottle of wine in the lobby, along with two of their Highguard escort, leaving the other two soldiers and Magister Eveldion to oversee proceedings back at the Manor. So far, Ravana hadn’t teased out any differences in rank; Danoris and Talvrin had the same title, and while Danoris generally took the lead, that might just reflect the differences in their personalities as there had been no giving or taking of orders between them. Talvrin let him talk, but did not show much in the way of deference, preferring to walk somewhat apart and study their surroundings on her own time.

“What is a mana turbine?” she now asked.

“Ah, those are actually the very foundation of Falconer Industries,” Geoffrey said animatedly. “Also called mana wells, they are essentially just electrical generators situated on a ley line nexus, which produce steady quantities of the raw dust which can then be refined into various grades of enchanting powders, and further mixed with alchemicals to make enchanting inks that can be used to inscribe enchantments on spell parchment. We both use these in house on our own products, and sell the raw materials directly through outlet shops. FI started when the Enchanter’s Bane shifted ley lines enough that a major nexus formed on real estate my family owned; our activities here tugged them further so that there are now two smaller nexi nearby, which we also control. There are turbines on each. In fact, the nearest is just at the other end of this factory! Would you like to see it firsthand?”

“Yes, we would!” Magister Danoris snapped. Again, Magister Talvrin cast an irritated glance his way. This time, she caught Ravana’s eye. The Duchess gave her a bland smile.

“Right this way!” Geoffrey said, leading the way along the catwalk.

Their course took them to the end of it, down a metal staircase to the factory floor, and through a door at its end. The hallway beyond extended past the building itself, well-lit by both fairy lamps and broad windows which revealed the domed structure to which it led, some fifty yards distant.

Ravana let herself fall to the rear, studying her guests as they strode along, and only deduced halfway down the hall that the Magisters were engaged in conversation the whole time. They spoke in the minutest exhalations that only an elf could hear, but the argument irritated Danoris enough that he turned his head to scowl at Talvrin, enabling her to see his lips move.

She made a mental note to learn to read lips. Somehow it had never come up, but in the moment, Ravana could only castigate herself for overlooking such a clearly useful skill.

The door into the mana turbine was both locked and guarded, though of course the factory’s owner was not impeded by these things in the slightest. He led them through, and into the huge round chamber beyond.

They emerged onto another catwalk surrounding the circular pit dug fully ten yards into the ground, where the machinery of the mana well itself whirred ceaselessly, its mechanical arm spinning and filling the very air with static.

“This chamber is bristling with both conventional lightning rods and the best grounding charms available!” Geoffrey practically shouted over the noise as he led the way around the perimeter of the room toward the glass-walled control booth. “There is basically no chance of electric shock, though with the turbine running at this capacity there’s obviously a lot of static! This way, please, the booth is charmed against both the noise and the electricity.”

The elves were visibly grateful to be shut inside the calm and quiet of the control booth, even the two soldiers. Two enchanters in hard hats and coveralls embroidered with the FI logo gawked at their guests; their employer and even Ravana they knew by sight, but the high elves were well worth staring at even among dignitaries. They seemed both reluctant and relieved when Mr. Falconer himself asked for privacy in the booth, taking his seat before the runic control panel as they slipped back out.

“Is it always so…extreme?” Danoris demanded once the six of them were again alone, fingering one of his long ears.

“Actually, no!” Geoffrey said brightly. “This turbine is the smallest and oldest still in service, and borderline obsolete. We’ve perfected a method of producing much higher-grade mana powder which will enable the creation of far more sophisticated and powerful enchantments. Well, actually, we already have the capacity to make those enchantments, but dedicating a new turbine to mass-producing that quality of dust will finally make them economical and thus more widely available. But it’ll require completely dismantling the turbine and building a new one, which will of course seriously cut down our production while it’s being done. So! We’ve installed heavy-duty safeguards in here to ensure there won’t be any kind of magical event when the machinery breaks, and are running it round the clock at four hundred percent capacity to build up a backlog of dusts. Once it gives out, we’ll replace it with the upgrade.”

Both Magisters looked distinctly alarmed at that.

“Ah, but I don’t mean to sound boastful,” Geoffrey added with a wry grin. “Obviously, none of the magic we’re doing here is anywhere near on a par with what you’re used to back home.”

“Obviously not,” Danoris said dismissively, even as he frowned in clear worry through the noiseproof enchanted windows at the overworked turbine. This time, Talvrin didn’t bother to express disapproval at his rudeness. She was also frowning at the same sight, though more pensively.

Ravana looked rapidly between them and chanced a glance at the Highguard who had each positioned themselves to cover one of the booth’s doors; both were likewise studying the mana well. This, she decided, was the moment to strike.

“Naturally,” the Duchess stated in a light and airy tone, “our magical capability itself is not the source of the Magister’s worry.” Danoris whirled to glare at her, but she just carried on speaking with a blithe smile. “Rather, it is the fact that he came here expecting to see fur-wearing primitives in stone castles, with scarcely one individual in ten thousand an arcane user. And before the Enchanter Wars, that might have been the case. Tell me, how much has Qestraceel changed in the last hundred years? The last thousand?”

All the elves were staring at her now, Danoris in open anger, Talvrin with eyes narrowed intently. Geoffrey Falconer also watched her with a knowing little smile. Ravana quite liked Geoffrey, in large part because he liked her. Not that she craved his approval in and of itself; he had been present when she’d finally gotten rid of her father. While Teal had been deeply unnerved by that event, Geoffrey took grim satisfaction in the unmaking of the Duke who had caused him so many headaches over the years. Ravana respected pragmatism, and his appreciation of revenge.

“Young woman,” Danoris began.

“It must be quite a thing,” she said sweetly, “to be winning a race by default, and only realize you have competition when you feel its breath upon your neck.”

Danoris did not like that at all, and it showed all over his face. Talvrin remained thoughtfully focused upon Ravana, though for the moment, neither spoke.

“It seems to me,” she mused aloud, stepping forward to look out over the mana well herself, “that we have a great deal more to offer one another beyond today’s specific business. Clearly, your unparalleled mastery of the arcane makes your people a font of wisdom from which mine would be both honored and delighted to learn. And even if we can reciprocate little along the same lines, it is obviously advantageous for you to have a weather eye upon the state of human advancement.”

“That,” said Danoris, recovering some of his hauteur, “is hardly worth the—”

“You are by far the most inept politicians I have ever seen,” Ravana informed him, causing the Magister to stammer in incoherent offense. “You control your emotions no better than children. Every thought you have is displayed far in advance of expressing it. Were we truly at cross purposes, your transparent predictability would render the briefest conversation a strategic victory for me. How fortunate that I am not ill-disposed toward you!”

“Most fortunate indeed,” Magister Talvrin said quietly.

“If this is the way even the ranking dignitaries of the Qestrali comport themselves,” Ravana continued, staring aimlessly out the window, “it goes without saying that the Narisians have taken you for a ride in every negotiation between your peoples thus far. I am, as you have cause to be aware, on unfriendly terms with certain factions in Tar’naris; I’ve had cause to grow adept at handling them. I should be delighted to assist my new friends from Qestraceel in getting the better of any further dealings with the drow. And while I am a loyal and devoted subject of the Silver Throne, I would not consider it to be against the Empire’s interests to assist such valued comrades in mitigating the utter spanking your delegates are undoubtedly receiving in Tiraas even as we speak.”

Danoris physically swelled up, which was downright comical given his thin build and the way his ostentatious hovering shoulder armor shifted with the motion. Less amusing was the way his fingers twitched hungrily; for a moment, Ravana thought he might cast some spell at her out of sheer outrage. The much more composed Talvrin turned her head to stare at him.

After a few seconds, however, the Magister composed himself with a visible effort. It took him another heartbeat to put on a small and insincere smile, but he managed, for the first time, to direct a shallow bow toward Ravana.

“Perhaps,” the elf said with obviously strained courtesy, “there is potential for…useful intercourse between us after all…my lady Duchess. Once this day’s work is settled to everyone’s mutual satisfaction, I should be…willing…to discuss further…business. With you.”

Ravana regarded him sidelong, thankful she’d taken the risk of annoying Natchua earlier in the day to press her for details of her encounter with the Highguard squad she had disabled. There were political differences between them, and in fact, they apparently had formal means of addressing these in the field. It was time to take the second risk.

She turned to face Magister Talvrin directly and inclined her head. “It would be my pleasure, not to mention and unmatched honor, to develop a direct relationship between House Madouri and the Magistry of Qestraceel. For such a privilege, I should naturally do my utmost to be as accommodating and useful a friend as I am able. On one condition, of course.”

“Oh?” Danoris grated, further aggravated at being given the cold shoulder.

Ravana pointed at him with one hand, keeping her gaze fully on Talvrin. “This individual is never to be in my presence again. I am certain that so ancient and graceful a civilization as yours must have countless members who are able to conduct themselves appropriately in the presence of a Duchess. I therefore see no reason I should be subjected to the company of those who do not.”

“Now, see here!” Danoris barked.

“Such a trifling request is more than reasonable, Lady Madouri,” Magister Talvrin assured her with a broad smile. “I can only apologize for any offense my colleague has caused you thus far. I shall be glad to ensure that you see only the better face of our society henceforth.”

“Talvrin!” he exploded.

Geoffrey had turned his back to all of them by that point and was pretending to be absorbed in the dials and levers of the booth’s runic control panel.

“I mean no offense,” Ravana said pleasantly, “but I am honestly curious how such an obviously sophisticated civilization ends up with such boorish individuals in positions of power.”

Danoris had gone scarlet in the face; it was the first time she had seen an elf do that.

“Qestraceel all but runs itself,” Talvrin explained. “Manual labor is done by autonomous constructs—what you call golems. More physical functions than otherwise are performed by fully automated enchantments. The city’s functions need maintenance more than they need actual oversight. Even much of the necessary decision-making is handled by intricate and permanent data processing spells running sophisticated algorithms. In addition, our culture prizes above most other concerns its ancient and direct lineage; our society began immediately following the Elder War and more than a few Qestrali elves remember that time. Thus, political power tends to accrue those who have seniority and magical aptitude, rather than…people skills.”

“Magister Talvrin!” Danoris shouted shrilly. “The Magistry will hear of your divulging of our secrets to outsiders!”

“And then,” she shot back, whirling on him with a fierce scowl, “they will hear about how you made a spectacle of every weakness we possess before Imperial nobility, and the measures I was forced to take to keep said nobility positively disposed toward us and disinclined to hostility! You have rendered your presence diplomatically offensive, Magister Danoris. It would be appropriate for you to absent yourself from further engagements, or at the very least, remain silent.”

“Witnessed,” both Highguard stated, in unison and with audible satisfaction. Falconer’s shoulders quivered and he hunched further forward over the console.

Danoris looked as if he might vibrate through the floor.

“After all,” Talvrin continued, turning back to Ravana with a gracious nod, “the Duchess impresses me as a pragmatic woman who would rather benefit from our friendship than initiate needless friction.”

“Oh, very much so,” Ravana agreed brightly. “Revenge, as the Eserites say, is a sucker’s game. I look forward eagerly to a bright future. As friends.”

Eventually, she actually would have to teach them some of the sly circumspection a politician absolutely needed to survive on the surface; it wouldn’t be long after that before they adapted their own. But for a while, at least, there was much more candy to be taken from these babies.

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                       Next Chapter >

16 – 10

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter >

Though the scheduling of this entire affair had been necessarily impromptu, it was Lord Vex’s responsibility to stay on top of events, and thus he was there to greet the Empress when she and her escort returned. They materialized in the secure room of the Palace’s harem wing set aside for teleport arrivals, Eleanora accompanied by two of the Imperial Guard and the two Azure Corps battlemages who had provided her transport—an almost cursory escort for a sitting Empress, but then, the entire business had been meant to be discreet.

Obviously, Vex did not react to her appearance. Eleanora wore her usual severe gown and had her hair pulled back into its customary tight bun. The gown, though, was unbuttoned to below her collarbone, and she had a woven crown of lilies perched lopsidedly atop her head. At her hip, hanging from a broad leather shoulderstrap decorated with Tidestrider beadwork, was a heavy satchel, itself dangling streamers of colorful beads and shells that clattered with her movements.

“Good morning and welcome home, your Majesty,” Vex said in his normal, distant voice once the battlemages had saluted their Empress and departed in flashes of blue glitter. “I hope your mission was fruitful.”

Eleanora gave him a momentary look, her own expression as closed and guarded as always, to the point that it clashed with her touches of holiday frippery.

“Tellwyrn was amenable to sharing, with some persuasion,” she said briskly, stepping forward off the teleport pad and striding toward the chamber’s door. Vex fell in alongside her and the two Imperial Guards silently brought up their rear. “She is not, as it turns out, a high elf.”

“I see. Well, it was still a worthwhile prospect to investigate. I am sorry you did not meet with more success.”

She flicked a sidelong glance at him, that extremely subtle look he knew so well which few would even have caught. That look meant she’d done something clever, and Vex had to consciously refuse to sigh.

“Tellwyrn has been in Qestraceel,” the Empress said, opening her satchel and carefully extracting a large, heavy volume bound in scuffed leather, its yellow pages unevenly trimmed. The thing looked positively ancient. She handed it very carefully to him. “She was so deeply offended by her treatment there that her first act upon departing was to assemble the most thorough record of her observations she could while the memory was fresh, and set it aside against a future occasion when unveiling the secrets of the Qestrali to an interested third party might, in her words, ‘inflict some damn humility’ upon them.”

Vex tucked the volume protectively against his side. “The most peculiar thing about knowing Professor Tellwyrn is how often one is forced to appreciate what a mulish, irritating bully she is.”

“Tell me about it,” Eleanora replied with an open sigh. “I have given that book a cursory examination; it’s quite legible, though the language is somewhat archaic, having been written some three hundred years ago.”

“Ah. Well, even if it is not up to date intelligence, historical data is still extremely valuable, given our complete lack of it.”

“It is definitely dated, but may be more pertinent than you imagine,” the Empress replied. “In addition to the written record, Tellwyrn was willing to speak at some length about the high elves. It’s not all that hard to get her to start complaining, actually. By her description, the most pronounced characteristic of Qestrali culture is their presumed exceptionalism. They believe themselves to have constructed a perfect society and appear as prideful and resistant to change as any elves, if not more so. It seems their society has not diverged significantly since its founding not long after the Elder War.”

“Did she have any insight into why they would suddenly join the world now?”

“I asked, of course. Obviously we cannot know without direct data, but in Tellwyrn’s opinion, such an abrupt action indicates an equally abrupt political shift within Qestraceel itself—which, she emphasized, would only occur if several very important people died within a short period. We may wish to investigate whether some disaster has occurred in the region, perhaps a volcanic action that damaged their city. The book contains its exact latitude and longitude.”

“Ah. How do they hide their island, did she mention?”

“It’s not on an island,” Eleanora said with a wry smile. “We were correct as to its general location, but were looking at the wrong altitude. Qestraceel is located at the bottom of a huge marine trench deep below the Stormsea. Tellwyrn also mentioned that the entire purpose of their vaunted navy is to spread misinformation concerning their location, numbers, and capabilities. I’m afraid all your observations of high elven caravels may have to be thrown out.”

“Even a misdirection can be revealing, once you know it is one,” he disagreed. “Omnu’s breath, what else is in this thing?”

“Population estimates, including troop and caster numbers—probably the least accurate information, after three centuries. Descriptions of their social structure, economy, government, and religion, the basic composition and preferred strategies of their military, which in Tellwyrn’s opinion are unlikely to have been significantly updated. A cursory but still useful overview of their interactions with the outside world and how they maintain secrecy. Diet and food sources, numerous descriptions of various uses of both active spells and passive enchantments, some of which we might ourselves be sophisticated enough now to reverse-enchant from the descriptions alone. There’s a whole section on etiquette which should be a tremendous help to our diplomats. Also,” she added with another little grin, “a very detailed account of the Qestrali criminal justice system in action, and an extremely vivid depiction of one of their prisons.”

“Bless that cantankerous old bitch,” Vex said fervently. “Did she say why she’s sat on this so long?”

“The high elves do make an active effort at secrecy. Revealing this information is necessarily going to provoke a severe reaction from them; Tellwyrn judged that the Empire at its present strength needn’t fear direct reprisal, and given recent events, has an actual need for this information. We should not forget that simply possessing data on the Qestrali is going to be seen by them as antagonistic.”

“Duly noted, though it remains to be seen exactly how much we shall have to care what they think.”

They came to a stop outside the door to Eleanora’s chambers.

“Does your Majesty wish to rest and freshen up,” the spymaster inquired, “or proceed with your day as usual?”

“I feel fresher than I have in years,” Eleanora said, almost wistfully, then shook her head. “Which, of course, is exactly what can’t be shown in public. Do have my steward cancel my usual morning appointments, if you would, Quentin. This must take priority, but I should have time to straighten up a bit while everyone is gathered. Please relay all this to Sharidan and have him get Panissar and the ministers here for a consultation. I want that book copied and put in the hands of analysts in Intelligence and the Foreign Ministry; in the meantime, I will brief everyone on what I’ve learned personally, which should be enough to get them a head start.”

“Consider it done, your Majesty,” he said, bowing over the heavy book. “Good to have you back.”

Eleanora nodded once, then turned and entered her bedroom, while the guards took up positions flanking the door and Vex strode off down the hall to see her will done.

Natchua was ambushed by demons the moment she stepped out of her room, which wasn’t all that unusual.

“There you are! Were you planning to sleep all day?”

“Some of us have been at work under your orders since before sunrise, you know.”

“Both of you stuff it,” she said irritably, pushing between the two succubi and forcing them to follow her on the way down to the first floor. “I was up past midnight being interrogated by Imperials, and just for your edification, I own a clock and know how to read it. It’s barely past breakfast time. Report in, and hold the whining.”

“Ooh, I love it when she’s commanding,” Kheshiri cooed, then shrieked playfully at Melaxyna’s slap to her rump.

Natchua sighed loudly and rubbed at her eyes with both fists.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got nothing,” Melaxyna said. “I’ve been up and down the city for two hours starting at dawn, lurking in all the markets. I didn’t encounter any unusual magic of any kind, or even a rumor of any. All the gossip is the elves this, the elves that. Even as big a deal as this Confederacy is, had there been even a whisper of a chaos event near Veilgrad, I guarantee that would be on everybody’s lips. But no, not a hint.”

“Afraid I have nothing better, mistress,” Kheshiri added as they rounded the corner and descended the wide stairs to the nearly-restored entrance hall. “Malivette is still taking your warning seriously, and according to Jade, so is Imperial Command. Everyone’s more concerned about the Wreath sniffing around for unknown reasons than they are about whatever spooked them into fleeing the catacombs, though.”

“Well, they’re not wrong,” Natchua grunted, coming to a stop at the base of the stairs and gazing absently around. The restoration was going well, especially now that she’d found some local laborers willing to work in a house full of demons under the direct supervision of three hobgoblins; oddly enough, Veilgrad locals seemed to find a strange comfort in knowing that nominally friendly evil lurked in the old manor again. For all that Natchua was herself becoming a fixture in the local community, Veilgrad’s regional culture was still mystifying at times.

The walls and roof were up; it was chilly and drafty in the hall, with boards still taking the place of the glass that had yet to be installed in its tall windows. There were no carpets, drapes, or other decorative touches yet, the floor and wood paneling hadn’t been properly varnished, and the place was strewn with tools, sawhorses, stacks of wood and other construction debris. The new wrought iron chandelier sat in one corner beside a pile of yet-unassembled enchanting equipment awaiting expert installation for its light-sensitive fairy lamps.

“It’s still too early in whatever the Wreath is doing to have a plan yet,” Natchua said after a contemplative pause. “I want your eyes and brains on whatever they come up with, though, Shiri.”

“You always know what I like to hear, mistress,” Kheshiri purred, grinning wickedly and slowly swaying in her hips in time with the waving of her tail. “Ahh, running rings around the Wreath, it’ll be just like old times.”

“And both of you be careful,” Natchua added more severely, setting off around the steps toward one of the newly reopened hallways. “You’re both made of magic. A proper chaos event could fuck you up beyond my ability to repair.”

“Are you sure that’s what it was?” Melaxyna asked. “Not trying to be difficult, Natchua, it just seems…”

“I know exactly how it seems,” she grumbled. “And as I told the Imps, I’m not a hundred percent certain of anything. I’m not personally very familiar with chaos interactions. But it scared off the Wreath, it came out of the same deep tunnels where that chaos cult was operating, and it just felt like that creepy place Kuriwa showed me. None of that’s more than suggestive. When it comes to chaos, though, it doesn’t pay to get sloppy. Worst case scenario, it’s nothing. Then you can say you told me so, and we’re not all hopelessly fucked, so… Everybody wins.”

Like the hall leading to it, the dining room had been almost fully restored. It still lacked furnishings, aside from a few surviving chairs and the enormous carved table which had endured its years of neglect with little ill effect that some polish hadn’t healed. The fairy lamps were awaiting installation, so old-fashioned oil lamps perched in their sconces, currently unlit. The fireplace was kindled, adding heat and warm light to the cool gray that beamed in through the open windows, their new glass in wrought iron housings revealing a gentle fall of snow to add to the covering already on the grounds outside.

“There she is,” Hesthri said fondly, sidling up to Natchua to kiss her cheek. “I made scrambled eggs with those spicy peppers you like, they’re under the cover on the table there. Should be fresh, but I can whip up some more.”

“Thanks, Hes. Don’t you worry about me,” Natchua replied, giving her a one-armed hug before turning to the table. “I grew up eating beetles and mushrooms, anything that’s not actually moldy still feels decadent.”

“Damn it, wench, let me pamper you a little,” the demon scolded, earning a mischievous grin in response.

Natchua’s path toward breakfast was interrupted when she came abreast of Jonathan, who was sitting sideways in one of the few chairs, his own empty plate pushed away and a cup of tea at his elbow while he read a newspaper.

“WHAT THE HELL?” she bellowed, ripping it out of his grasp.

Jonathan had quick enough reflexes to let go rather than let the paper be torn, and sat there with his empty hands still in position to hold it up, blinking through the space where it had been at Natchua, who was glaring at the front page.

“You know, girl, sometimes I wonder if you were raised in some kind of cave.”

“Why am I on the front page?!” she demanded of the room at large, slapping the offending document with the back of her hand. “What the fuck is wrong with these people?! The elves bust out the most astonishing political development in all of history, and somehow ‘Natchua fends off annoying reporter’ deserves a fucking headline? Who do I have to sacrifice to what to get some goddamn peace? Because I’ll do it, see if I don’t!”

“That’ll be Imperial Intelligence at work,” Jonathan said, picking up his teacup and taking a sip.

She rounded on him, brandishing the paper. “What? Why?”

“You,” he explained, smiling, “a beloved local oddball and hero, and also a foreigner who has no attachment to the Empire to speak of, reacted to the elves’ big surprise by urging people to stay the course and trust the government. The Throne couldn’t have asked for a better endorsement if they’d arranged it themselves. The Empire may not control any papers outright, thanks to the Veskers’ influence, but they definitely have means to lean on them. You’d better believe strings were pulled to get that to the front page.”

“Aaugh!” Natchua rolled up the paper and smacked herself repeatedly in the forehead with it. “I only said that because I thought it was the thing least likely to stir up trouble! And now look what—oof.”

Tiring of her carrying on, Jonathan had set down his tea, and now reached forward, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her into his lap.

“What’s done is done,” he stated, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin atop her head. “It was a good idea, Natch, I think you made the right call. Sometimes you just get cornered and any step you take is gonna kick over some bucket of crabs. That’s life.”

Kheshiri deftly plucked the paper out of the drow’s grasp and unrolled it, Melaxyna leaning over her shoulder as they both perused the front page.

“Whoah boy,” Kheshiri said, her eyebrows climbing. “This is a bigger deal than your putative chaos flicker, mistress.”

“The hell you say,” Natchua snapped.

“It’s possible nothing’ll come of it,” Melaxyna added, “but it’s also possible she’s right. If Intelligence is content with this, great. But if they start approach you for more active cooperation…”

“They’ll be disappointed, is what!”

“No!” both succubi shouted, looking up at her in alarm.

“They’re right, love,” Jonathan said gently, squeezing her. “You gotta consider the way spooks and operatives think. If you’re not with them, you’re against them. ‘Neutrality’ is not an idea they respect.”

Natchua bared her teeth in a wild grimace and seized his arms, hissing and physically swelling up as she drew breath for another outburst.

Hesthri glided smoothly across the gap between them and pushed herself into their embrace, slipping an arm around Jonathan’s shoulders and the other behind Natchua’s head to insistently press the drow’s face into her cleavage.

Natchua made muffled noises of protest, squirming and flailing the one arm she could slip free, at least for a few moments. Very quickly, the struggle went out of her and she slumped forward, going limp and letting out a half-stifled groan.

Hesthri stroked the green stripe in Natchua’s white hair, smirking over her head at the two amused succubi. “It works on Jonathan, too.”

“’strue,” he agreed, slipping one arm free of Natchua to wrap around Hesthri’s waist and pat her hip.

“And on Sherwin,” Melaxyna said sardonically, “and on everyone. I hope you don’t think you invented that, Hes. Feeling better, Natch?”

“Uh bff, fankth.”

“Good.” Hesthri bent her neck to kiss the top of her head before withdrawing. “Then eat your eggs, pretty. The world will still be full of enemies after breakfast; I’ll not have you kicking ass on an empty stomach.”

An hour later, she left the Manor in a much better mood, at least partly due to a full stomach.

Though she could easily have used magic to protect herself from the cold, Natchua much preferred to wear the nice winter coat and boots Jonathan had bought for her. The coat she especially enjoyed, a deep blue knee-length garment lined with speckled fox fur; it was amazingly comfortable and she was so fond of the look she willingly forgave him for saying her old black leather duster made her look like a pretentious wannabe cowboy poet.

Externally, Leduc Manor was still a shambles, but at this point it was the shambles of construction rather than decay. The outer fence and gate had been fully repaired and fresh gravel coated the driveway, though of course no landscaping had yet been done and everything not stomped flat by the ongoing work was a maze of brambles and dead weeds. Carts and carriages were parked on its grounds, along with stacks of masonry waiting to be installed, all of it now buried under a layer of fresh snow. Construction had slowed considerably during the winter; as far as their hired workmen were concerned, it was stopped, but the three hobgoblins kept gamely on, unbothered by temperature and taking great satisfaction in their progress. There was no way they’d have the whole manor shipshape by spring, but Natchua rather expected the hired hands to be shocked at the state of the place when they returned.

The old Leducs must have leaned hard into their sinister reputation, to judge by their fondness for overwrought gothic architecture and decorative ironwork, to say nothing of the gargoyles, all of which were deliberately shaped to look like actual demon species. Still, the place must have been beautiful, in its way, when it was kept up. The layer of cleansing snow made it oddly appealing even now, and likely would have then.

A lot about the area was beautiful; one couldn’t help but enjoy the vista the Manor had over the city of Veilgrad below and the Great Plains beyond. The forested mountains soaring upward on all sides were an equally breathtaking sight. Even after a few months here, Natchua had not become inured to the spectacle, and so always left the house on foot when she was going into town.

She especially loved the snow, aware that at least part of it was the novelty. Even with an academic awareness of how deadly winters had been to humans until very recently in history, the sight of it was just…pure. Natchua couldn’t put words to the sense of serenity that came when heavy flakes were floating down from the clouds, but she took every opportunity to savor it. Even in Last Rock, winter had just been the months when it didn’t rain. Veilgrad’s unfriendly climate felt like a welcome part of the setting, something almost designed to appeal to creatures such as herself.

Obviously, shadow-jumping was a more efficient way to get anywhere, and she had been around and over Veilgrad enough by now that she could jump almost directly to any point she might need in the city. There was certainly no question of walking down the winding mountain road from Leduc Manor to the gates of Veilgrad, and then back up the other winding mountain road to Dufresne Manor. How long she walked before getting tired of it and jumping the rest of the way varied by trip, but she always made a point of setting out on her own two legs to begin with.

Evidently she’d done this enough for the habit to have been widely observed; they clearly knew to intercept her just below the first switchback past the gates.

Darkness coalesced in a ring out of the drifting snowflakes around her, and Natchua instantly gathered an arsenal of spells, having nearly limitless destruction ready at her fingertips by the time their gray robes were fully visible.

“Are you kidding me?” she demanded of the white-suited man who again led the dozen warlocks. “Again? What are you expecting to go differently this time?”

“Scuze me, miss, not to be rude,” Mogul said almost diffidently, holding up one finger. “If you’ll bear with me, please, I’ll be with you in just a second. All right, boys and girls, light ‘em up.”

They, too, had had spells ready, and at his word, a torrent of shadowbolts flashed at her from every direction.

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                 Next Chapter >

15 – 75

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter >

Everyone immediately adopted a combative stance—which in Sherwin’s case, meant fleeing around the corner of the building. The rest of them readied spells, weapons, and shields, both succubi vanishing from sight.

“Oh, please.”

The goddess’s voice was derision itself; she made a single, languid flicking motion with one forefinger. Natchua and Xyraadi’s conjured infernal spells were instantly snuffed out, Jonathan and Hesthri’s arcane weapons and shield charms simply vanished from existence, and Melaxyna and Kheshiri both popped right back into view, looking stunned as if they’d each just been punched between the eyes.

“My armistice is with the Pantheon, governing my relations to them and their followers,” Elilial lectured. “It is worth keeping in mind that you assholes don’t work for any god or cult. I can do whatever I like with you, and no one will be able to call me oathbreaker.”

Natchua drew power for a catastrophic burst of pure destruction which surely would have caved in half the house, had Elilial not effortlessly neutralized it before it could form properly.

“By the same token,” she went on, “I should think it clear by now that you’d all be well and truly suffering if I’d come here for revenge. When I said I wanted a word with you, Natchua, that wasn’t a coy euphemism. It is time—past time—for you and I to have a polite conversation. In private.”

“You’re not taking her anywhere,” Jonathan grated, stepping in front of her.

“You’re sweet, Arquin,” Elilial said condescendingly. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring her right back.”

Before he or Natchua could say anything else, their whole surroundings changed.

Natchua spun in a circle, conjuring a nascent shadowbolt, but just held it for the moment; this time, the goddess didn’t interfere. She was now alone with Elilial, which was of course her most immediate concern.

“What have you done with—”

“Absolutely nothing,” the horned goddess said with a vague little smile of amusement. “They’re standing right where they were, freaking out about you. It’s we who’ve moved. Welcome to the grand entrance hall of Leduc Manor!”

It was definitely the entryway of a wealthy house in an Imperial style; Natchua had only ever seen it with the ceiling, floor, and most of the walls collapsed, but with the resemblance pointed out she could see the familiar shapes of its boundaries, windows, and the grand staircase sweeping up to a second-floor landing. This place was fabulously rich, draped with heavy velvet curtains, exquisite paintings, ornately embroidered carpets strategically placed upon the polished hardwood floor and marble busts of various members of the House. Being used to Leduc Manor in its current state, it was easy to forget that House Leduc had once had a great deal of money. Actually, still did; it was just that Sherwin didn’t care enough about anything to maintain his home.

“As it was, of course,” Elilial mused, her hooves clopping on the floorboards as she paced slowly across the hall, inspecting the furnishings. “Don’t worry, we have not traveled in time. The last thing I need after this day’s work is Vemnesthis climbing up my ass. He just might be the worst of the lot, but at least he’s never interfered with me personally, and that’s how I prefer it. No, this is…a little space all our own, where we won’t be interrupted.”

From which there would be no escape, she did not have to add. Natchua slowly straightened from her battle-ready crouch and let the shadowbolt fizzle.

“Well, fine then, here we are. Spit it out.”

Elilial was studying a painting of a supercilious-looking human of Stalweiss stock, her back to her guest. “I’m not sure how much Arachne understands about the nature of gods, but I know there are important things she’s not told you. You know, when we killed off the Elder Bastards, we weren’t even trying to become gods? Well, most of us, anyway; I have my suspicions about Vidius. The thing was done by changing the rules of godhood itself. Adding new limits and boundaries which the Elders were already well outside, and rendering them suddenly unable to exist. I told you and the rest of those anachronisms about the importance of aspects today.”

She finally turned around, favoring Natchua with a bland little smile. Natchua just stared icily back.

“It is also true, and this is the part they’ve really worked to keep quiet, that gods are influenced by the consciousness of anyone who draws on them for power. A single worshiper channeling divine magic won’t make any impression on a deity during their lifetime, but a whole society? That’s another matter. We tend to…drift. Change, evolve, subject to the beliefs of those who believe in us.”

Natchua frowned slightly in thought, beginning to be interested in spite of herself.

“Of course,” Elilial continued, “there’s an important counter to this effect which is necessary for us to retain some hold on who we are: paladins. Individuals imbued with a potent spark of a god’s essence have a much more significant impact on us. By choosing paladins with care, we avoid the subtle influence of the masses.”

“Most gods don’t even have paladins,” Natchua objected. “Themynra doesn’t. Vidius only just started… Salyrene hasn’t in a century.”

“Avei, Omnu, and Salyrene call their mortal anchors ‘paladins’ and send them out to be front-and-center in world events, yes. I promise you, though, every god who still exists and hasn’t gone utterly mad or been twisted beyond recognition has done so by having someone in whom they’ve entrusted a fraction of their identity. The ones who keep the details secret are probably smarter. Smarter than I was, anyway.” She turned back toward the side of the chamber, now staring sightlessly at the window. “Mine… Mine were my daughters.”

Natchua drew a deep breath slowly, connecting those dots.

“So perhaps you better understand the state I was in,” Elilial said after a pause. “My anchors slain, except for one whose memories were wiped away, attached to a blundering quasi-pacifist and developing a severe resentment toward me. My core believers, first whittled down to a fraction of their former strength during a years-long process that put them under constant tension and terror, and then finally cast into a place where I could feel no connection to them at all. You have never known me as…myself. Just a shamefully fumbling thing, deprived of most of what made me who I am, not yet aware how defeated I already was, awkwardly careening toward an inevitable catastrophe.

“Very little of what I have done in the last few years can even be counted as cunning, honestly. That whole scheme with you and Chase… Well, I suppose it wasn’t a terrible idea, strategically speaking, but it’s not at all how I have preferred to operate all these years. Reckless, unnecessarily cruel. And right at the end, there, marching demons into Ninkabi under cover of the invasion. I could’ve ended that in Hell, you know, it would have been much simpler to turn my forces on the invaders gathering around those hellgates before they opened. But no, in my desperation, I used such a last-minute brute-force measure that even my own high priest argued with me. Poor Embras… A better servant than I have deserved, of late. Arachne tried to warn me, a couple of years ago in Sarasio, but I was already too far gone to listen. I’m afraid I got a lot worse before I got better.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I see it all now,” Natchua sneered. “None of this has been your fault! You were just crazy from magical bullshit. I’m sure if you go explain it all politely to the Pantheon they’ll understand.”

“Mmmmmm,” Elilial hummed, pursing her lips. “It’s tricky, you know? A god is a vast intelligence, but also a limited one, and one of the few things we cannot clearly see is just how much agency we have. How much of what I do is truly mine? For my part, at least, I prefer to err on the side of taking responsibility.”

“How noble and self-effacing you are.”

“Oh, my reasons are cynical.” She shifted slightly to give Natchua a wry smile sidelong. “When agency and control is at a premium, you have to seize whatever you can. Blaming others for your mistakes can make you feel better, but it keeps you in the role of a victim. It’s better by far to assume responsibility, even for things that aren’t strictly your fault. A failure is an opportunity to improve yourself, if you own it.”

“Thanks for the advice. We done here?”

“I’m offering you explanations, not excuses. I just thought you deserved to understand why some of the things that I’ve done to you happened. It isn’t meant to justify anything.” She turned to face Natchua fully, and to the drow’s surprise, bowed. “With all that said, here’s the truth: I really fucked you over, and you didn’t deserve it. What I did to you was an entirely hypocritical abrogation of my own principles, and I’m ashamed to have used you and your buddy to cause such wanton destruction, especially while I’m always spouting off about the evils of the Pantheon. It probably helps nothing, but here it is: I’m sorry, Natchua.”

“I don’t need an apology from you,” Natchua spat. “As far as I’m concerned, I got mine when I demolished your cult and made you publicly bend your neck to Vesk. That was more satisfying than anything you could possibly say.”

The goddess regarded her in silence, her face expressionless.

Natchua folded her arms. “So you can go ahead and smite me now. Like I told you in Ninkabi, nothing you do to me is gonna un-kick your ass.”

“I have absolutely no intention of harming you, Natchua,” Elilial said mildly. “Ever. I brought you here to explain a few things, including that. Have you ever given any thought to the nature of cunning?”

Natchua threw up her hands, turned, and flounced over to a low velvet-upholstered settee with gilded accents, then flopped herself down onto it and stared mulishly at the goddess.

“People generally have the wrong idea about cunning, and I won’t lie: I’ve gotten great mileage out of that fact.” Elilial began to pace slowly up and down in front of the stairs, the sound of her hooves on the floor alternating as she walked off and on the strip of carpet running toward the door. “Talk about cunning and most people envision some mastermind pulling strings from the shadows, always staying ten steps ahead of everyone else and controlling every factor. That’s a complete fantasy, of course. Absolute control is a laughably preposterous idea. If a plan has more than three steps, they cease to be steps and become items on a wish list. Even if you reduce those notions to a believable level of possibility, that’s describing strategy, not cunning. That’s not what keeps the fox ahead of the hunters.

“Cunning is the quality of not only thinking more deviously than one’s rivals, but doing so quickly, while always in motion ahead of them. It is strategy and duplicitousness coupled with reaction time, the ability to execute a plan by reflex without having to actually form it first. A person is cunning when their instinctive response to a threat outmaneuvers everyone else’s carefully-laid schemes.”

She paused in the middle of the carpet, then turned and came back a few steps to lean against the endcap of the banister, regarding Natchua with a knowing little smile.

“I would say that right now, in the world, there are two people who most exemplify the concept of cunning, apart from myself, and I regret to acknowledge that neither is even in my cult. Archpope Justinian is the perfect exemplar of the more cautious brand. That man has meticulously arranged an entire continent as a game board to suit his ends, positioning himself to defeat every opponent who arises before they realize they’re playing.”

“Sounds like that deep-thinking strategy you were just saying doesn’t count as cunning,” Natchua replied, affecting a bored tone.

“On the contrary, that is exactly why Justinian has outfoxed all the countless people attempting to do the same thing,” the goddess said with a wink. “While they labor to set everything up just so, he patiently and quietly watches the whole, constantly reacting to every development as it happens and gently nudging things where he wants them to go. Not overreaching, careful not to betray his hand, but always watching, always acting. While they scheme and try to plan too many steps ahead, he remains eternally in motion. Some of them are players, many only pieces; he has established himself as the board itself.”

“Why don’cha marry the guy if you love him so much?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” Elilial replied, shrugging airily. “So often one finds oneself at cross-purposes with fascinating people and thus sadly deprived of the opportunity to befriend them. Plus, there is also the nagging little detail that he murdered my daughters.”

For the space of three words, she made her full presence felt, a psychic pressure of darkness and hellfire that conveyed unfathomable depths of rage without putting it on full display. Natchua warily sat upright, gathering her focus to form another spell if necessary.

Immediately, though, the moment passed, and Elilial straightened up and resumed her languid pacing.

“Then there’s the other kind,” the goddess went on, “the cunning of the fox. The aggressive kind that runs and pounces and eternally confounds both its pursuers and prey. I confess a personal fondness for that manifestation of my aspect; it’s a lot more reminiscent of how I used to be, back in the day when we were fighting the Elders. The fun kind of cunning that mostly looks like insanity or stupidity until you happen to notice in hindsight that this one particular maniacal idiot always seems to come out on top somehow. Every daffy thing they do inexplicably creates exploitable opportunities for themselves, and unmanageable chaos for everyone else.”

She paused in strolling away, glancing back over her shoulder with a smirk.

“I would say the person who most exemplifies that quality is you, Natchua.”

For one beat of silence, Natchua gaped at her.

Then she burst out laughing so hard she slumped over on the settee. Elilial turned around fully, watching patiently while Natchua rolled about, clutching her ribs, and finally tumbled off onto the floor.

“Yes, yes, everyone’s been telling you how reckless and capricious you are,” the goddess said with wry fondness, watching her. “It’s not even that they’re wrong, but let’s be real: here you are, having outmaneuvered the very goddess of cunning herself. You’re not the first to have pulled that off in eight thousand years, or even in the last five, but it places you in very rarefied company.”

“You are so full of it,” Natchua wheezed.

“I’ve quite enjoyed backtracking to check up on your progress,” Elilial said, grinning now. “Part of me regrets that I neglected to be watching you at the time, but it all worked out; obviously if I’d known what you were up to I’d have put a stop to it, and then we would both be thoroughly screwed. But you just keep doing these absurd things and then, somehow, winning! Recruiting Hesthri and Jonathan Arquin was a move nobody with an ounce of classical strategic sense would have made, and look how well that paid off. Releasing Melaxyna, likewise; everybody knows not to mess about with succubi, and you should know it better than most. But you trusted your instincts, and here you are. You brought Kheshiri to heel, Natchua. My own Wreath failed to do that; the last time she reared up on this plane I had to deal with her myself after she caused my cult nearly as much damage as you just did. And how did you subdue the most infamously wily succubus in existence?”

Natchua snorted and sat upright, leaning back against the settee. “That? I beat the shit out of her. You call that cunning?”

“You beat the shit out of her,” Elilial repeated, enunciating slowly, “which is something nobody would think to try on a succubus. Everyone knows it doesn’t work at best, and is counterproductive at worst. But you found a way to make such an overblown, dramatic production of whooping her ass that she as close to fell head-over-heels in love with you as that creature is capable of feeling about anyone. True, we’ve yet to see how long you can maintain your grip on her leash, but that promises to be just as much of a hoot.”

The mirth had slid from Natchua’s face now, replaced by an increasingly uncertain frown. It was Elilial’s turn to fold her arms, again grinning down at her and slouching against the banister.

“Duchess Malivette Dufresne is as good a schemer as they come, and she had a deft web woven around you before you even saw her fingers moving. And it all fell apart in one moment because it just never occurred to her that a stateless practitioner of forbidden magic on the run would even consider making herself a public figure. One little speech, and you pulled her fangs harder than anybody has since her University days.

“You’re the real deal, Natchua. Your issue is not that you’re stupid; I wouldn’t even go so far as to say that you’re not crazy. What you are is crazy like a fox. You’ve spent the last month proving it at the expense of people who are by any objective measure a lot smarter than you. That is what I like to see.”

Slowly, Natchua dragged herself upright, a knot forming in the pit of her stomach. “Now, hold on a second. When you said you needed a… A paladin, or anchor, to stabilize your personality…”

Elilial’s grin widened.

“You seem a lot more stable now than you did in the…”

The goddess raised one eyebrow.

Natchua brandished an accusing finger at her.

“No. Fuck you! Don’t even fucking think about it, you sick old sack of lies!”

“Well, it seems I owe you another apology,” Elilial said with a sigh that failed to sound repentant. “I came here to notify you, not ask your permission. I had my little moment of clarity back there in the cathedral when I realized exactly how thoroughly I’d just been thwarted by a pesky drow I had dismissed as an overreaching idiot doomed to destroy herself. I finally realized exactly what had happened to me, and what I needed to do to repair myself. So I did it, right then and there.”

“No! Absolutely not!”

“Well, the least I can say is, it’s working,” the goddess said, her expression finally sobering. “At the time, it didn’t even occur to me that you might deserve to know. But you’ve made me remember what it’s like to live under the heel of oppressive deities, to need to fight back. I would probably have been better off leaving you in ignorance, strategically speaking. It’s just that… A point comes when no amount of strategy substitutes for ethics.”

“You can just fucking undo it right now, then!” Natchua raged.

Slowly, Elilial shook her horned head. “I’m sorry, but no. I was unraveling, Natchua. I was most of the way into my transformation into an unheeding monster, and worse, an idiot. I can’t go back to that. This time I will admit it up front: I am doing this to you without your consent, because I need to. And whatever I have to do to make it up, I will. But I don’t have a choice.”

“I fucking hate you.”

“Fair,” the goddess acknowledged. “Look at it this way: I am handing you the literal key to my fate. You can definitely find a way to use this in your revenge against me. If you decide that’s what you still want to do.”

“So what, you think I’m going to lead your new Black Wreath? Fuck you, I’m not helping you.”

Elilial tilted her head to one side, considering. “I think…I would rather you didn’t. If that’s what you decide you want, I guess we can revisit it, but you’re really not the type I look for in a cultist, my dear. Anyway, no; I don’t need anything else from you, Natchua. Your life is your own, now. Live it in the way that seems best for you. That is all I need you to do, and I’ll accept whatever repercussions that has for me. You could do a lot of good in the world, or a lot of harm. Or if you just wanna help Sherwin rebuild his mansion and settle in with your little harem, you can do that, too. The world is your oyster. And speaking of that, I guess I’d better send you back to the gang before they panic too hard and do something unfortunate.”

“Don’t you dare—”

“If you ever find yourself in need of help, Natchua, call on me. I certainly owe you.”

“Wait!”

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t wait. As before, there was no discernible effect of transition; she was just suddenly back where she had been, in the dark outside the ruins of Leduc Manor, surrounded by her agitated loved ones and Kheshiri. This time, with no demon goddess in sight.

“Natchua!” Hesthri bawled, immediately throwing her arms around the elf’s neck and clinging to her. Jonathan was a split second behind, wrapping them both up in a hug, and despite her own agitation Natchua deliberately sank herself into their grasp. She desperately needed it right at that moment. Somewhere off to the side, Xyraadi was babbling excitedly in Glassian.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Kheshiri exclaimed after a span of seconds that was not nearly enough. “What happened? Mistress, what did she do to you? Are we going after the old bitch for Round 2?”

“Veth’na alaue,” Natchua mumbled into Hesthri’s cheek, finally raising her head to stare at the sky between the nearby pines. “Shit. Fuck a fucking… Okay, okay, don’t panic. I can use this. It’s like she said, there has to be a way I can use this against…”

“Natch, are you okay?” Jonathan asked insistently.

She was still staring at nothing, muttering to herself. “I know, I know it’s not what any of you signed on for, it’s basically the worst case… Okay, this is not a crisis. I know there has to be something…”

“Hey.” He finally released her, pulling back enough to raise her chin with one hand and bring her eyes to his. “Natchua, whatever happened, we’re here. We’ve got your back, and we will get through this. Together.”

“Yes,” Hesthri agreed, still hugging her close and pausing just long enough to press a kiss against her cheek. “Just tell us what she did, and we will deal with it.”

“Talk to us, mon amie,” Xyraadi agreed. “We are still in this fight! What did she do to you?”

Slowly, Natchua dragged her gaze around the group, making eye contact with each of them in the darkness.

“Apparently,” she said at last, “I’m the new Hand of Elilial.”

The wind whistled through the pines; in the near distance, an owl hooted disconsolately. At least there were no wolves howling.

Then Kheshiri began to laugh. In seconds she was screeching in absolute hysteria, folding herself to the ground to pound weakly at the driveway with one fist.

Melaxyna grabbed at her own face with clawed fingers, dragging them slowly down to her chin in a gesture of exasperated despair.

“Natchua, no!”

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                            Next Chapter >

15 – 74

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                         Next Chapter >

Many of his companions were deeply uncertain about the prospect of Ingvar going off into the woods alone with the Bishop of the Huntsmen, he could see it plainly on their faces. They trusted him enough not to protest overtly, though, when he gave last-minute instructions for them to finish setting up camp and hold steady until his return. For his part, Ingvar was not concerned about his safety. He trusted Andros, and it was more than just an emotional attachment. Even if the day came when the two of them were declared enemies—which was, he was forced to admit, a possibility—Andros Varanus would never do something so dishonorable as try to ambush him in the dark under cover of friendship.

Besides, they really couldn’t stroll far enough that Rainwood wouldn’t hear everything happening, and he more than suspected that at least one or two of the highly capable wilderness trackers accompanying him were going to shadow their footsteps in the darkness. If the same thought occurred to Andros, he made no outward sign.

“Huntsmen and Shadow Hunters,” Andros said suddenly after they had walked in silence till the flickering of nascent campfires was no longer visible through the trees. The darkness was nearly absolute but this was a settled and well-traveled land, a proverbial stone’s throw from a major city; in this forest, it was comfortable to walk in the dark simply by taking slow, small steps to avoid landing in rabbit holes or tripping on roots. At least for experienced woodsmen such as they. “Men and women alike. A dryad, an elf of the line of the Crow. A couple of others to whom I could put no easy label. It is… Quite an assemblage. A thing straight out of the Age of Adventures. And all these people follow you, Ingvar?”

“They follow Shaath,” he replied quietly.

Andros kept his eyes ahead in the darkness; his face, barely glimpsed by occasional beams of moonlight through the leaves, revealed nothing. “And yet, you have not brought them back to any lodge of the Huntsmen, to answer to the Grandmaster.”

Ingvar inhaled silently before answering. “Because those two things would be mutually exclusive.”

He knew even saying it that way was throwing down the gauntlet, but they were both Huntsmen; dissembling did not become them.

Yet, despite his expectations, Andos did not react as if challenged. “What makes you think so?”

“The word of Shaath himself,” Ingvar answered. “We bought him a few moments of clarity today. There were…unintended side effects.”

“I should say so,” Andros rumbled. “The world reels from your side effects, Brother.”

“The howling should be silent now, but…”

“What’s done is done. Do you know there are still riots in Shaathvar?”

“It does not surprise me,” Ingvar said softly. “There will be more, Brother. By Shaath’s will.”

The Bishop half-turned his head to look sidelong at him through the dark.

“The howling will be silent, but not the dreams. By our god’s own power, all who pray to him or invoke his name will know the truth of the wolf pack whenever they sleep.”

Andros’s burly shoulders shifted in a heavy sigh. “You should have let the old wolf sleep, Brother. It would have been kinder.”

“Kinder?” Ingvar came to a stop, turning to face him directly. Andros did likewise, his deep-set eyes glinting in the dark. “He was chained. The very god of the wild, chained like a goat for slaughter! He suffered every moment of it, and all because of us. Of all of us, his loyal Huntsmen! Brother, we have been lied to.”

“Do you remember what I said to you, years ago in Tiraas?” Andros asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “It was the first time I took you with me to the Vidian temple. You were frustrated by all their circuitous doublespeak, as any reasonable man would be. But you understood all their underhanded implications, and were savvy enough to hold your own tongue until we were out of their earshot. I said that showed you had a knack for politics, and you took offense.”

Ingvar recalled that day well. From another man he might have called this apparent change of subject a deflection, but such was not in Andros’s nature. He did not speak unless his words were going somewhere to the point.

“You said,” he replied slowly, “that it was a sacrifice. A thing that must be done, on behalf of those who would never thank or respect those of us who saw to the Huntsmen’s political affairs. That it was only for those who could pursue what was right, in defiance of every other desire, for no better reason than because it was right. Because it was necessary, even if at times it seemed…”

He trailed to a halt in the middle of reconstructing that long-ago speech, as another layer of meaning clicked into place given the context of this conversation.

“You knew,” he breathed. “You already know. Who else? The Grandmaster?”

“What have you learned?” Andros asked.

“I believe I asked you first, Brother,” Ingvar retorted, holding onto his own poise by a thread. All this time…

“I know a number of things that you did not, when you set out on your quest,” said Andros. “Looking at you now, knowing even just hints of what you have been up to over the last year, I suspect you’ve learned many things that are unknown to me still. I am only curious how much, if anything, I still need to explain.”

“Did you know that gods can be imprisoned by belief?” Ingvar snapped. “Not just Shaath, all of them wear the chains of their own cults. But they have means of countering this effect; what is unique about Shaath is that these were turned deliberately against him. Did you know that Angthinor the Wise was a liar?”

“Ah.” Andros nodded once. “That I knew, yes. Do you know why Angthinor did what he did?”

That brought Ingvar up short, for it was the one crucial piece of the puzzle he had never been able to learn, and the one that troubled him the most. Angthinor had been a true Huntsman, in fact the very last. He had walked with Shaath, known him not only as a distant figure of reverence, but as a brother. How could he have betrayed him so?

Andros interpreted his silence as the invitation it was.

“Unique among the Huntsmen of his day, Angthinor had a broader field of vision than a simple hunter,” the Bishop said, turning and beginning to walk very slowly back the way they had come, in the general direction of the hill and the camp. Ingvar kept pace alongside, listening. “He was a healer and a scholar as well as a warden of the wild, not unlike the Shadow Hunters of today. You’ve learned much of their ways, I expect. He understood a great deal about what was happening in the world beyond his beloved forests. And most importantly, he was a man such as all Shaathist politicians have had to be ever since: one who recognized right, and necessity, and did not shirk from duties he found painful.”

“Duties,” Ingvar repeated incredulously.

“The struggle between right and wrong is easy,” Andros said evenly. “Only the most craven and pathetic fail to make that choice. A man is tested when he must choose between right and right, when the only option before him is what manner of evil must be accepted. Angthinor made his choice. I have made mine; you have made your own. Only the gods can say if we chose rightly… And, given what you say, perhaps not even them.”

“What greater evil was Angthinor avoiding by doing this?”

“As with the worst evils, one whose victims were blameless. Shaath had no part or responsibility in the travails that wracked the world in those days. Angthinor acted to correct a great imbalance kicked up by Avei, Sorash, and Arachne Tellwyrn.”

In spite of himself, Ingvar froze in surprise. Tellwyrn? He’d found her rather personable and willing to be helpful, if a bit brusque. One could well forget, meeting the woman in person, that she was a contentious figure who stood astride a wide swath of history.

“There were two gods of war in the days before Angthinor’s time,” Andros continued, drifting a bit to the south. He was either heading for the road or taking a roundabout path back to the camp. “Avei was goddess of strategy, Sorash of conquest and violence. They had other philosophical differences, of course: one the protector and champion of women, and one of men. Combined with their other aspects, they set between them the relationship between men and women that has lingered to this day. The one, seeking dominance through craft and cunning, the other through force and sheer strength of will and character. It was certainly not ideal, as it still isn’t…but it was a balance. And then Tellwyrn came along and killed Sorash.”

Andros heaved a heavy sigh, powerful enough to make his beard flutter.

“This is not well-remembered by historians. The Huntsmen have worked carefully to erase it over the centuries, leaning on the Universal Church to lean on the Nemitites, hounding the Shadow Hunters to relinquish certain accounts in their libraries. It doesn’t surprise me that you have not yet heard this account, Brother. Knowledge is not so easily wiped away; you would have found it eventually, but not within a year of looking. The remaining accounts are well buried.”

“Accounts of what?”

“Of what happens to a world when the goddess of womankind is abruptly without a rival,” Andros said bitterly. “Despite their protestations, the Avenists are not champions of gender equality. The Izarites and Vidians both embrace that principle, and you know the contempt the Sisterhood has toward them for it. You know better than most the hypocrisy of Avei’s followers. How hard they work to ease the transitions of twinsouled women, while they cast people like you out into the wild to fend for themselves.”

“I have added knowledge to my training as a Huntsman, Brother, not over-written it. I hardly need a lecture on what is wrong within the Sisterhood of Avei.”

“Then perhaps you can imagine what goes wrong with a world in which there is no check upon Avei’s excesses,” Andros rumbled. “Within a century, it was a world ruled by queens. In more nations than otherwise, a man without a wife had little to no place in society, and one with a wife needed her to make any decision governing his own household. The inciting event for Angthinor himself was being told by the circle of wise women who looked after his own village that herb lore, healing, and the chronicling of the seasons was their work, unsuited for a man. That he, a chosen champion of the wild god himself, should mind his place.”

He fell silent, teeth glinting in the moonlight as he bared them, the two of them emerging from the treeline into a clearing. Off to their right, Ingvar could see the hill with the two campfires atop, casting irregular shadows as people moved about them.

“It sounds,” he said, heading in that direction, “much like what we tell women within our faith, now.”

“And so,” Andros said, weariness weighing heavily on his voice, “there is balance again. Angthinor restored what was lost, at the expense of the god he loved most. Because objectively, his was the weakest and least significant god of the Pantheon, save only Naphthene. Because Shaath had never played a role in guiding the shape of civilizations, and thus, he could still be made to. It has not been a perfect solution, Brother. It was a choice that still deserves to be mourned. But it was made, and for good reason. And those of us who know this secret have upheld it, by the same logic. Even though we grieve the same injustice you do. We accept the chains upon our god, for those chains ensure the freedom of all mankind.”

“Do you not see, Brother?” Ingvar asked, his voice rough with emotion. “Regardless of his intentions, it was not the right choice. An injustice is not corrected by an opposite injustice!”

“And whose is the purview of justice?” Andros asked pointedly. “Even the Avenists will not let one person be both judge and prosecutor. To whom can you appeal for justice when the source of justice itself is the source of your oppression? All that could be done was to push back against her.”

“Perhaps that was true, then,” Ingvar breathed. “But today, Brother, the world has changed.”

“Indeed, you might well have made all this thoroughly moot.”

“I don’t mean that. Hours ago I stood with a host of warriors from all across this Empire and beyond while Elilial formally surrendered to the Pantheon. And, as a last parting shot, revealed to all of us exactly how to kill a god.”

Andros stopped walking, turning to face him, his bushy eyebrows rising in a mute question.

“A god can be destroyed when they are severed from their aspect,” Ingvar said, meeting his stare intently. “Do you understand what this means, Andros? Angthinor did not thwart Avei; he squandered the only chance to punish her tyranny for good. If her aspects are called into conflict with one another, she can finally be hurt. If she devotes herself to injustice and will not recant, even Avei can be made to pay the price.”

Andros was silent, his eyes now narrowed in thought. Ingvar watched him consider it quietly for long moments, until finally the Bishop turned and mutely resumed walking, this time heading straight for the camp.

“Veisroi intends to call a Wild Hunt against you,” he said abruptly after a dozen steps. “I convinced him to hold off until I could try to persuade you. I gather, Brother, that you have no intention of turning away from the path you’ve chosen.”

“I am not Angthinor,” Ingvar stated, “and this is not Angthinor’s world. My choice is simply between right and wrong. I stand with Shaath and with the truth. I will not be swayed by threats.”

“If you were,” Andros said, nodding, “that would be the first thing in all of this that would make me think less of you, Brother.”

They passed through the last of the trees ringing the hill and began climbing its bare sides back to the campsite, curious faces already gathering to watch them come.

“You must know—even the Grandmaster must—that getting rid of me would not make this end,” Ingvar said as they ascended the last few yards. “The dreams will not stop. The truth can no longer be suppressed, Brother. Veisroi can try to scapegoat us if he wants, but it will only add to his problems.”

“Perhaps,” Andros mused, coming to a halt at the edge of the firelight. “But remember, Ingvar, that Veisroi is both hunter and politician. He too clever to destroy you outright. So long as he has you to point at and call enemy, he believes he can maintain his grip on the Huntsmen.”

“And on you?” Ingvar asked quietly.

There was silence, as Andros met his gaze for several seconds, then turned his head to look around at Ingvar’s assembled followers. Finally, he turned back to Ingvar directly and inclined his head, once.

“I wish you good fortune, Ingvar. Whatever else must come between us in the future, you have nothing but my highest respect. To me, you shall always be a Brother. And truly, I hope that you succeed.”

“But,” Ingvar said softly, “you will not join us?”

Slowly, Andros shook his head. “The world you seek to make is a better one, a world I would very much like to live in. But even with all you have gathered to your cause, I do not believe you can succeed. You are not the first, and will not be the last. There are many things I have seen in the hidden archives which convince me your cause is doomed. I will mourn you, Ingvar, when you fall, as I would any brother of mine. But I must remain behind to ensure the world does not fall with you.”

Ingvar let out a soft sigh. “The world has already changed, Brother. Truth can no longer be fought as it has been in the past. Veisroi does not understand this, and that is why he will fail.”

“Warn your friends, the Shadow Hunters,” Andros advised. “If the Grandmaster cannot rally enough support against you to suit him, they make a very convenient target.”

“They are called the Rangers,” said Ingvar, “and it is time for the Huntsmen to address them as such. I know it is convenient for the Grandmaster to have a mocking epithet to throw at them, and so that is the first of his weapons I shall take away. From now on, we are the Shadow Hunters, and it’s a name he and his followers will come to fear.”

Andros nodded once, then held out his hand. One last time, Ingvar clasped it in his own.

“My fortune smile on your hunts, Brother,” Andros said.

“Walk in peace with the wild, Brother,” Ingvar replied.

Then Andros released him, and with no more ado, turned and strode back down the hill, heading for the road.

“So…we’re the Shadow Hunters now?” Taka asked skeptically once the Bishop had disappeared into the trees. “I’ve gotta say, it sounds a little… What’s the word? Contrived? Melodramatic?”

“Pompous,” November suggested.

“I’d just have gone with ‘silly,’” Tholi grunted.

“I was hoping we’d be the Wardens,” Dimbi added. “That’s got a ring to it!”

“Oh, I kinda like that one,” Aspen agreed.

“Well, the Rangers have carried both names for centuries and it doesn’t seem to have done them any harm,” Ingvar said with a thin smile, still watching the point where Andros had disappeared into the darkness. “Labels can be weapons, as I just said. Just because we’re confiscating one of Veisroi’s doesn’t mean we have to take it to heart.”

“Don’t listen to the naysayers, Ingvar, I thought you handled that very well.”

There was a general yelling and scattering as everyone whirled to face the person in the middle of their camp who had definitely not been there a moment ago. Even the wolves fled, whining and circling around behind their two-legged companions.

The reaction of spirit wolves was the only indication of anything fundamentally wrong, aside from the fact that they all recognized her. Unlike her previous performance in Ninkabi, she had no towering presence or metaphysical weight, no aura pressing down on their consciousness. She was just a lone woman, albeit one with dusky crimson skin, horns, and hooves.

Tholi nocked an arrow and drew it back, taking aim straight at her heart.

“I’m curious, Tholi,” Elilial said in a pleasant tone, “and this is a serious question, no fooling. Suppose you shot me with an arrow. What do you think would happen next?”

Tholi’s expression took on a sickly cast as he found himself in the classic dilemma of either losing face by backing down or starting a fight he had no prayer of winning. Generally, Ingvar preferred to let young men get themselves out of that crevice and learn the hard way not to get back in it, but this was no time to take risks.

“Don’t waste your arrows, Tholi,” he said, stepping in front of the young man and directing his gaze at the queen of demons. “What do you want?”

“Why, the same thing I always want,” she said lightly. “To use you in my schemes. Pay attention, everybody, I’m going to teach you a trick.”

“No, thank you,” Ingvar said firmly. “We want nothing to do with infernal craft.”

“Oh, good heavens, no,” Elilial replied, grimacing. “Can you even imagine? The last thing this poor beleaguered world needs is more unprepared fools playing around in Scyllith’s toolbox. No, if you lot take to dabbling in infernomancy—and seriously, don’t—you won’t learn about it from me. On the contrary, I think you’ll find this rather wholesome. Why don’t you come over here, little friend?”

This last was not directed to him, but off to the side. Ingvar followed her gaze to behold a bobbing ball of cyan light drifting closer at her urging.

“Me?” the pixie chimed uncertainly.

“No need to be shy,” Elilial said, beckoning him and smiling. “I wanna show you something. Are you up for a little game?”

“Ooh! I like games!” All his hesitation abruptly gone, the pixie shot forward, swirling eagerly around her.

“That’s the spirit!” she said cheerfully. “Now, I’m pretty sure this is a game you’ve already played, but personally, I never get bored with it. Everybody stand back, we’re gonna have another round of Destroy the Demon!”

She held out one hand, palm up, and clenched it into a fist, and just like that, a sulfur-reeking rift opened on the ground for a split second, just long enough to discharge a snarling khankredahg demon.

Again, everyone except Ingvar and Aspen retreated, most shouting in alarm, but Elilial just pointed at the snapping brute even as it whirled on her. “Go get ‘im!”

“Yay!” the pixie cried happily and zipped forward, stunning the khankredahg with a miniature arc of lightning.

In the next moment, he was swirling eagerly around the demon, siphoning away magic and making the increasingly frantic creature shrivel right before their eyes.

“Surprising little creatures, pixies,” Elilial said to Ingvar and the others while watching this macabre spectacle. “Some of the most vicious predators in existence. They mostly eat each other, but… I don’t know what that screwloose firecracker Jacaranda did differently this time, but the pixies she made today aren’t culling one another like her previous batches did. In fact, though I haven’t yet looked closely enough to ascertain how, I’m pretty sure there are more of them than there were this afternoon. Even so, an awful lot of those out there already have a taste for demon, and their instincts compel them to go straight for the kill.”

“What exactly are you suggesting to us?” Ingvar asked, beginning to suspect he already knew.

“They didn’t get every demon,” Elilial said, sourly twisting her mouth. “Mostly just mine. The ones that fled Ninkabi were the others, the invaders I was trying to mop up. Hundreds made it out and are spreading in all directions. Most won’t last long; the Empire and the Pantheon cults are actively hunting them, and there are also lots of wild pixies hereabouts. But quite a few are good at keeping themselves hidden. Something has to be done about that.

“My Black Wreath have always served the purpose of cleaning up stray demons and warlocks on the mortal plane, but as of today, the Black Wreath functionally does not exist. Someone has to pick up the slack. So the question is, Ingvar: is your struggle with the Huntsmen going to be a purely political one, and purely for the sake of putting yourself in power instead of Veisroi? Because I certainly won’t judge you if so; it goes without saying I have no respect for that guy. But on the other hand, if you want your little reform movement to stand for something more…” She gestured languidly. “There’s work to be done. There are demons to slay, there are perfect shiny attack dogs fluttering around all over just waiting to be tamed and put to work, and now you know how easy that is. If you wanna get a head start on making a name for yourself, you know what to do.”

“I don’t trust you,” he said flatly.

“Well, obviously,” she replied, grinning. “I wouldn’t be bothering with you if you were an idiot. All I can promise you here is that I’m not asking you for anything and you won’t be hearing from me again. If you want to take up the charge against the demons, that’ll suit my purposes splendidly. If not, I’ll find somebody else. Think it over, Shadow Hunters. Hm.” She screwed her face up pensively. “You know, now that you pointed it out, that name does seem a little overwrought. Ah, well, that’s your business, not mine. I have another urgent appointment tonight, so I won’t keep you any longer. Good hunting!”

She snapped her fingers and vanished in an entirely unnecessary shower of crimson sparks.

“It’s a trap,” Tholi said immediately.

“How?” Taka demanded.

“Aw, is she gone?” the pixie chimed, drifting over toward them. Behind him was nothing but a patch of charcoal where the demon had apparently been drained of every spark of its life essence. “Shoot, now how’ll I know if I won?”

“It sure looks to me like you did,” Ingvar said with a smile. “What’s your name, little friend?”

“Name?” The pixie zipped about in a tight circle as if momentarily agitated. “I dunno, I’ve never thought about it. I don’t think pixies have names.”

“I know one who does,” Ingvar said gravely. “Everyone deserves a name.”

“You think so? Well, that sounds pretty neat! What should my name be?”

“Names are serious business,” said Ingvar. “We should talk for a bit, and think about it. Your name is important and we don’t want to rush it. Would you like to stay here with us tonight?”

“Well sure!” the little fairy chimed. “I like you people! And your wolves are fluffy and shiny, my two favorite things!”

“Um,” Rainwood cleared his throat. “That appears to be a lightning pixie. Just saying…”

“Yes, please refrain from zapping anybody,” Ingvar requested.

“Well, sure, I wouldn’t do that. It seems to hurt people. You guys are my friends!”

“Yay,” Aspen deadpanned.

“Let’s get some rest while we can,” Ingvar said, turning to the others. “I will take the first watch, along with our new friend here. We’ll try to talk quietly. Everyone sleep fast and hard, for dawn comes early. And with it, we hunt.”

The eldritch shadows departed and it wasn’t a whole lot brighter in their absence, except behind and far below them where the lights of Veilgrad extended out into the prairie from the foot of the mountains.

“Zut alors,” Xyraadi groaned, gazing up the path at the dim shape of Leduc Manor. “Look how much more uphill there is! Natchua, we really must rebuild the ward network so we can shadow-jump directly in.”

“It’s on the to-do list,” Natchua assured her, patting Hesthri’s back. The hethelax leaned against her for a moment, but said nothing. She had been quiet since her and Jonathan’s conversation with Gabriel, and Natchua was torn between wanting to know exactly what had happened and not wanting to rip open any more scars tonight. “Well, standing here groaning isn’t getting us to bed any faster.”

She set off up the path, and everyone followed. Neither succubus took flight, though they could have made it to the house in seconds; Natchua suspected they just weren’t emotionally capable of passing up any crowd that might be a source of juicy gossip.

“Natchua,” Xyraadi said suddenly, her voice more serious, “now that we are… Well, now that it’s over, I am thinking very seriously of taking Lieutenant Locke up on her offer. I do not know how to not be fighting. And it would be good to work with the Sisterhood again. That Trissiny Avelea impresses me greatly; she is already a much wiser paladin than Trouchelle ever was.”

“I think that sounds like a good use for your abilities,” Natchua said with a smile. “You certainly don’t need my permission to do anything, you know. I appreciate you letting me know, though.”

“Of course, I would not abandon a friend and ally without a word.”

“I think that was a shot at you, Mel,” Kheshiri said sweetly.

“Cheap, tiresome, low-hanging fruit,” Melaxyna replied in a bored tone. “Bring your A-game or don’t talk to me at all.”

Xyraadi glanced back at the succubi momentarily. “I mention it also because I thought you might consider the offer yourself, Natchua. You, and any of us here.”

“I…” Natchua hesitated, looking at Jonathan. “I never thought about…”

“The idea has its good and bad points,” he mused. “It would be something to do. I have to say, I’m startled to find this whole campaign of ours over. I thought for sure that’d only happen over everybody’s dead body.”

“Hence why I mention it,” Xyraadi agreed. “A sudden lack of purpose is bad for the spirit, take it from one who knows. I am not saying you have to do what I do, but it is a possibility to consider.”

“Hard pass,” said Kheshiri. “I’ve done all the work under priests I care to, and the last Avenist I met was gibbering batshit insane.”

“You’ll do as you’re told,” Natchua said automatically. “And I…will consider it. But just to reiterate: not one of you—except Kheshiri, whose ass I own—is beholden to me. I brought you all out here to do something, and… Well, to my surprise as much as anyone’s, it’s done now.”

“I will go where you go, pretty one,” Hesthri said, slipping and arm around her waist.

“Same goes,” Jonathan chuckled and pressed against the hethelax’s other side. He was sufficiently larger than them that he managed to drape his own arm around both her shoulders and Natchua’s.

“Yes, there’s also that,” Melaxyna said lightly. “It’s been good to put on my dusty old Izarite hat after all these centuries. I have a lot of work still to do, making a functioning person out of Sherwin. And I confess, I might not have encouraged the three of you to have a go at it if I’d known you weren’t all going to die within a few days.”

“Excuse me?!” Natchua exclaimed.

“You took relationship advice from the succubus?” Jonathan added incredulously.

Hesthri gently poked a chitin-armored elbow into his ribs. “You weren’t complaining when she had her mouth—”

“Public!” he interrupted, jostling her.

“From the good succubus,” Natchua clarified.

“Do you mean good as in morally, or as in superior?” Kheshiri demanded. “Because you’re wrong either way, but I do like things to be clear.”

“Oh, not to worry,” Melaxyna chirped, waving her tail happily. “You three are a surprisingly stable unit, for a tripod. A bit more guidance and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to make this work as long as you like with no further help. Trust me, I’m a professional.”

“And yet,” Xyraadi murmured, “not even the weirdest group of friends I have ever had.”

They topped the last rise in the path and slowed to a stop, finding Lord Sherwin himself sitting on the front steps of the manor amid all the construction materials despite the late hour.

“Sherwin?” Natchua asked as he jumped to his feet. “What are you still doing up?”

“Natch, everybody,” he said urgently. “The hobs are already hiding—you’d better get out of here before she—”

The manor’s doors burst open, and framed within them, backlit but a halo of seething orange flame, stood Elilial.

“There you are, you little beast,” she said, pointing one clawed finger at Natchua. “I want a word with you.”

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                          Next Chapter >

15 – 70

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                         Next Chapter >

The silence hung, a teetering weight that threatened to crush them all when it finally toppled. But only for a moment.

“Child,” Elilial finally said, her voice at once quiet and projecting with an unearthly power that fairly rattled skeletons, “there is a lot going on here that you don’t understand.”

Vadrieny half-turned and lifted one wing to glance over her shoulder at the two elves behind her. “Natchua and Kuriwa did something to piss you off. I’m guessing deliberately.” She turned back, fixing the goddess with her stare and baring her fangs. “I’m also guessing in retaliation for things you did to them. So now you plan to retaliate right back, yet again. I gather you’re not aware that Natchua is Shaeine’s cousin?”

Elilial had opened her mouth to interrupt, but hesitated at that, a flicker of unguarded emotion crossing her face for a bare instant before it closed down again. “In the very broad strokes, sure. It’s the details of—”

“The details are where you drag the truth to be executed by a thousand tiny cuts without saying anything that can be called out as a lie.”

Again, the goddess looked momentarily startled. “What did you say to me?”

“They tell me I was always something of a thug,” Vadrieny growled, flexing her claws. “I get the impression you’re not used to me understanding things, or calling out your bullshit. But I’ve been at a school the last few years, mother—a good one, run by someone who can physically push me around and has zero patience for bullshit in any form except her own. Two years and change, mother, that’s what it took to make a thinker of Vadrieny the brute. And that just makes me wonder why you apparently never tried.”

“Think we should give them some privacy?” Natchua murmured to Kuriwa. The elder gave her a sidelong glance, then returned her attention to the unfolding drama, saying nothing.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Elilial stated, her body language shifting subtly to convey a silent threat, though her tone remained starkly even. “You have never been easy to handle, child, but I did better than anyone else could have. And I will not have the entirety of our relationship casually dismissed by someone who doesn’t even remember it.”

“And whose fault is that?” Vadrieny snarled, snapping her wings once.

Elilial took one step forward, her hoof impacting the marble floor with a sound that echoed through the cathedral. “I am pursuing answers to that right now, child. Whoever interfered with—”

“Oh, someone else is always to blame, aren’t they?” the archdemon spat in disgust. “No responsibility for the one who put us all in that position in the first place.”

“How dare you?” the goddess thundered, taking another step. This one hit the ground hard enough to send cracks radiating out through the marble. “I am the very reason you—”

“YOU ARE THE REASON I DON’T HAVE SISTERS!” Vadrieny screamed back.

Elilial froze, her whole face a mask of shock and rage. The two locked eyes, glaring with an infernal intensity that seemed to hum physically in the air.

“You’re unraveling right in front of us, Lily-chan,” a new voice said far more calmly.

Everyone present looked up at the black shape which floated serenely in through the window Vadrieny had just smashed. She circled down to the floor like a falling leaf, scythe dangling almost casually from one hand.

“Go away, little vulture,” Elilial snapped. “This is family business, and none of yours.”

“The business of death always follows your footsteps, Lily-chan,” Yngrid said lightly as she lit on the ground.

“Desist calling me that,” the goddess exclaimed. “Which one are you, even? I’m fairly certain your master won’t be pleased to find you on this plane.”

“You know why she’s the goddess of cunning?” Yngrid inquired, turning to face the other three and directing a cold shoulder to the deity. “With the ascension, their aspects formed out of whatever concept was foremost in their personal identities. This one started out as a petty thief. She used to break into Naiya’s laboratories, looking for drugs.”

“…drugs,” Kuriwa repeated in a complex tone that hovered between amusement and disbelief.

“Mother caught her, of course,” Ygrid said with a grin. “Every time. And then made her play shogi until she won a game, and let her go. It wasn’t until later when she recommended Lily-chan to Avei’s little resistance group that we realized Naiya had been training her to circumvent Infinite Order security systems.”

“Enough!” Elilial exclaimed, bending forward to reach for Yngrid. “Be silent or be silenced, you little pest!”

In the next moment she had jerked back with an audible gasp, clutching the hand which the valkyrie had just raked with her scythe. The gash it left wasn’t like the marks of Vadrieny’s claws; it blazed with golden light and didn’t close up nearly as quickly.

“Impetuous, violent, aggressive,” Yngrid lectured, wagging the scythe at the goddess. “You are not acting like yourself at all. The Lily I remember would never have confused me with a twenty-year-old boy playing with a hand-me-down weapon. My sisters have reaped scarier things than you. Or did you forget why Rauzon cast us out in the first place?”

“Are you following any of this?” Natchua muttered to Kuriwa.

“It would be easier if you’d hush,” the shaman hissed back.

“This kind of ambush is well beyond Natchua’s extremely limited intellect,” the goddess sneered, still cradling her hand. The cut was healing, gradually but visibly, though it continued to blaze with loose divine magic. “My own daughter, Kuriwa? Even Scyllith would be impressed by the sadistic streak you’ve developed.”

“Imagine,” Kuriwa replied evenly, “to have offended the vast swath of people you have and still assume I am behind every measure of retribution levered against you. Flattery will not spare you my further vengeance, you hateful old thing.”

“She didn’t bring us,” Vadrieny agreed.

“I brought them,” a new voice added, its owner popping into existence alongside the others with no further fanfare.

“What next?” Elilial exclaimed. “Who do you…”

She trailed off into silence, staring quizzically down at the new arrival, who was covered from crown to toes in a suit of gnarled, glossy black armor that looked like demon chitin; it clung close enough to display a very feminine figure, also adding segmented links to protect her tail and cover its tip in an oversized stinger, though it left her spiny wings bare.

Then it faded, seeming to melt back into her milky skin to reveal her true features, and the grim stare she leveled up at the goddess.

Natchua gasped. “Mel?! You were supposed to go somewhere safe!”

“I couldn’t, though,” Melaxyna said, giving her an apologetic little smile before resuming her flat glare at Elilial. “I’ve remembered some things, in the course of trying to dissuade you from this idiot, lunatic crusade of yours. Making yourself the enemy of a deity is every bit as bad an idea as I kept trying to persuade you, Natchua. And it forced me to recall the days when I, as nothing but a feeble mortal woman and then a disembodied spirit, spat in the faces of Izara, Avei, and Vidius in that order, for no better reason than that they were fucking wrong. And I had to ask: when did I become such a pitiful coward?”

“Is that so much worse than a pitiful ingrate?” Elilial retorted. “Everything you have, everything you are, is thanks to me! You should be dead, but because of my generosity, you survive to pursue your revenge. I even granted you freedom to do so in your own manner, when it would have been so very easy to keep you and all of your brethren on a tight leash. Most of my advisors and generals continually urge me to do just that, and yet…”

“And yet,” said Vadrieny, “your generosity always takes the form of using someone else as a disposable tool in your own schemes.”

“You were supposed to be better!” Melaxyna shouted before the goddess could respond. “All your talk about standing up to the gods and their injustice, and what are you? For millennia you’ve cut a swath of destruction across the mortal plane, slaughtering who knows how many innocents in the name of your glorious revenge. You’ve not even tried to alleviate the suffering of all the demons—that is, the people who are native to your own home, because they’re ever so much more useful in their current state! The Pantheon are murdering, hypocritical tyrants, but you are not different. If you can’t clear even that bar, you and your whole rebellion are just pointless. And you’ve never even really tried.”

“I will tolerate a lot from my last daughter,” Elilial breathed, her soft voice at odds with the oppressive darkness which coalesced in the dome above her. Smoky night descended on the cathedral’s open space, leaving her towering form a stark shadow limned by the faintest haze of hellfire and her luminous eyes blazing high above. “But not from a recalcitrant creature of my own creation with delusions of significance. I hope you enjoyed your little outburst, Melaxyna. It was your last.”

“Then fucking do it!” Melaxyna spat, flaring her wings aggressively. “That’s the other thing I learned from Natchua: you don’t need to be a god to wound a god, you just need to hit unexpectedly at the right moment, and be willing to face the consequences. It seems like you would’ve known that, when you were fighting the Elder Gods! Well, you may have forgotten, but I haven’t. Do your worst. I am done bending my neck to gods that just betray me.”

“Before you do your worst,” Vadrieny said evenly, moving to plant herself between Elilial and Melaxyna, “I will warn you once: you don’t touch anyone here, unless you want to find out exactly how much damage I can do to you. Maybe I can’t finish you off, but I swear I will never stop until I either find a way or you do it to me.”

The darkness receded somewhat, and the shape of Elilial’s burning eyes shifted, hinting at consternation. “Vadrieny… No matter what you do to me, I will never harm you. You have to believe that.”

Vadrieny snorted, and then faded, flames and claws receding to nothing.

Teal Falconer adjusted the lapels of her suit and the Talisman of Absolution pinned there. “Yeah, she doesn’t wanna talk to you anymore. But let me just add a point of argument: Vadrieny was wrong about one thing. We do have sisters. Heral and Nahil don’t replace anyone who’s lost, but they have the advantage of a mother who requires them to do their familial duty without spending their lives like pennies at a carnival.”

She arched one eyebrow superciliously as a collective indrawing of breath sounded from the others present. Natchua let out a low whistle.

Elilial’s expression reverted straight to fury, and the oppressive darkness gathered in intensity once more. “Teal,” she hissed. “Of all those from whom I would expect a little gratitude.”

“Thank you for the puppy,” Teal said solemnly. “I love him. And especially, thank you for bringing my Shaeine back to me. With that established, you are being a colossal prick right now, and playing the guilt card when I’ve literally just caught you about to murder one of my friends and another of my friends’ annoying grandmother is a really cheap move.”

With ponderous speed, the giant shape of the goddess bent forward through the looming darkness, bringing her face down closer to peer at Teal through narrowed eyes as if seeing her for the first time.

“You,” Elilial said slowly, “are sassing me.”

“Would you rather go back to the clawing?” Teal asked wryly. “Because that’s not off the table.”

“You,” Elilial repeated. “Sweet little Teal, the perennially passive, who makes a full-time career of taking Vesk’s name in vain. All these years you’ve idolized bards while never living up to the trope, and now this… This is the moment you pick to start acting like one?!”

Teal tucked her thumbs into her pockets, shifting to a cocky, lopsided stance, and grinned. “Well what, I ask you, is more bardic than being a pain in the villain’s ass at the most inconvenient possible moment?”

Elilial straightened back up far more quickly. “I have just about had enough of you mortals and your nonsense. I won’t see any harm done to my daughters, but—”

“Don’t even finish that threat,” Yngrid said scornfully. “There’s nothing you can do to me, and Vadrieny and I can hurt you enough to put a stop to whatever else you might try. You’ve lost this one, Lil.”

“Honestly,” Natchua added, “flying into such a rage over people rightly pointing out what an asshole you are. Your options here are to back the fuck off or embarrass yourself with more sheer pettiness.”

“Begone, creature,” Kuriwa said with withering disdain. “You are beaten. Take it with some grace, for once.”

“Well, if I am so beaten,” Elilial hissed from within her cloud of pitch darkness, glaring fiery rage down at them, “I will just have to deliver a last lesson to several of you on why I am not to be trifled with by presumptuous ticks.”

A single ray of light pierced the darkness, a scintillating beam that shimmered with every hue of the rainbow within a fierce glow of pure white, and impacted the goddess square in the face. It erupted in a cloud of sparkling glitter which banished her unnatural darkness as neatly as if someone had flipped the switch on a fairy lamp.

Elilial staggered backward, actually coughing and waving sparkling clouds away from her face, causing the million tiny motes of light to swirl around her. She was now covered from her horns to her waist in a glimmering coating of pixie dust.

“REALLY?” the goddess roared in sheer exasperation.

“Hey, is this her?” inquired a new voice, belonging to the creature which had just zipped in through the broken window and now hovered in midair right in front of Elilial. Garbed in a resplendent gown of pastel hues, she might have passed for an elf, if not for her exceptionally long ears, purple hair, and the buzzing dragonfly wings which held her aloft. “Sure looks like her. Are we fighting her, or what?”

“Oh, I also rounded up some more help,” Melaxyna said innocently.

“Uh, actually,” Natchua answered, “I think we’re mostly just telling her off at this point.”

“Oh, well, okay then,” the fairy said agreeably, then buzzed closer to Elilial’s face, leveling an accusing finger at her. “Hey, you, are those your demons out there? What’s the big idea with that? Have you seen the mess they made? This is a city, you jackass! People live here!”

Elilial blinked once, then snorted loudly, causing a puff of glitter to shoot out from her face. She snapped her fingers and abruptly the mess coating her vanished. “What the hell are you supposed to be?”

“My friends call me Jackie,” the fairy said haughtily, “but to you, I’m the fuckin’ Pixie Queen. I don’t know what you’re eeeeyaaaaugh what is that?!”

She suddenly buzzed away from Elilial, circling higher in the dome and pointing a finger at Yngrid.

“It’s okay!” Melaxyna called. “She’s on our side!”

“Actually, Jacaranda,” Yngrid added, “I’m your older sister.”

“The nuts you are!”

“It’s a long story,” the valkyrie said soothingly. “I’ll explain it when we have more time.”

“ENOUGH!” Elilial shouted. “What is with you people!? I am the goddamn goddess of hellfire, and I can’t even finish a sentence in here!”

“No, you’re the goddess of cunning,” Yngrid said more soberly, “and like I said, you are doing a very poor job of that right now. You don’t act at all like yourself, Lily.”

“What part of this perfidy is out of character?” Kuriwa sneered.

“All of it,” the valkyrie replied. “The shouting, the magical theatrics. She was always so composed, always pointedly pleasant even to her foes. Playful, and fond as a bard of wisecracks. Not to downplay the very real enmity here, but… She is not well. Not at all.”

“Want me to zap her again?” Jacaranda offered.

“Better to take the opportunity to finish her off,” Natchua added.

“You think it’s so easy to kill a god, you arrogant speck?” Elilial spat.

“It’s not,” said Yngrid. “Destroying a god means severing them from whatever empowers their aspect. Exactly how to do that depends on the aspect; speaking as the resident expert on death, even I wouldn’t know where to begin killing cunning.”

“But if, as you say, she is trapped in a pattern of behavior that is anything but cunning,” Kuriwa said softly, “perhaps this is an opportunity.”

“Oh, just try it, Kuriwa,” the goddess hissed. “I would love nothing more.”

“Does seem odd she’s letting us talk at her instead of attacking or retreating,” Melaxyna murmured. “You’re right. Something is wrong here.”

“I’m not the only one standing here talking,” Elilial retorted, spreading her arms wide. “Well? Since my dear offspring is so adamant that I not destroy you, the ball is in your court. Care to try your luck, any of you? Or am I not the only one who needs to cease posturing and walk away?”

The cathedral’s doors burst open, and the first thing that came through was the towering shape of a woman in silver armor astride a barrel-chested horse.

“Oh, yes,” Melaxyna said pleasantly. “When I said I gathered more help, I wasn’t talking about the fairy.”

Trissiny rode her steed straight toward the confrontation at the center of the open space. Ninkabi’s cathedral was laid out in a circular, open plan unlike the long rows of benches common in Tiraan churches; there was ample room for the crowd of people who followed her in to spread out, quickly positioning themselves to cover almost half the chamber. They had all come: students, enforcers, hunters, wolves, elves, miscellaneous adventurers, and now a sizable contingent of Imperial soldiers, local police, the members of three strike teams, and even a smattering of hastily-armed citizens of Ninkabi.

“If I heard that offer right,” Trissiny called, her voice ringing through the chamber as she stood at the head of her army, “I will take you up on it.”

“Of course you would,” Elilial replied with heavy condescension.

“Even gods cannot flit between the planes willy-nilly,” said Yngrid. “Hell is sealed; she requires a gate to escape there. I don’t know what keeps her in this corporal form, aside from possible simple stubbornness, but as long as she holds it…”

“One does not simply slay a goddess,” said Khadizroth the Green, stepping up alongside Trissiny. “But with a sufficient force, one can perhaps…”

“Beat the living hell out of her?” the paladin finished with a grim smile.

He quirked one corner of his lips in agreement. “At least until she has had enough.”

Elilial clenched her fingers into fists, setting her face in a snarl of barely-contained rage. Again, the darkness gathered, like a storm cloud forming in the cathedral’s dome, this time accompanied by an unsettling sound like claws across the fabric of reality just outside the range of hearing, a noise that was more sensation than noise. Within the blackness, her glaring eyes blazed with increasing intensity until they were too bright to face directly.

Khadizroth shifted aside as Gabriel and Toby moved up alongside Trissiny, both mounted; Roiyary stood as placid as a daisy against the sheer weight of evil pressing down on them, while Whisper pranced and pawed, eager to charge. Golden light rose from all three paladins, expanding until it pressed the darkness back.

Behind them, weapons and spells were readied, wolves bared teeth, and over a hundred mortals positioned themselves to have the clearest line of fire at the dark goddess. Not one person moved to retreat.

Then, unexpected, it all began to fade.

The darkness receded, the fiery light of Elilial’s gaze dimmed, and even her clenched posture slowly relaxed while it became more visible out of the disappearing shadows. Trissiny narrowed her eyes in suspicion, not relaxing in turn, but the goddess just continued to draw down her display of menace until there was nothing left of it.

Just the towering form of the Queen of Demons, staring down at her would-be attackers with a slight frown of contemplation, her horned head tilted quizzically to one side.

Then, just as suddenly, she smiled, and shifted her arms.

A stir of preparation rippled through those assembled as shields ignited and weapons were raised further, but still Elilial did not attack.

In fact, moving with deliberate slowness, she raised both her hands into the air alongside her head.

“All right,” said Elilial. “I surrender.”

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                          Next Chapter >

15 – 59

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                   Next Chapter >

“Schneider says the spirits are still severely agitated,” said Captain Antevid.

“My witch reports the same,” Major Luger said more stiffly, shifting her focus to the two serene-faced Elders. “Considering that, as well as all the developments we’ve seen here, you’ll excuse me if I’m not ready to consider this entire matter settled.”

“For each matter settled this day,” Shiraki replied solemnly, “seven more shall arise in the days to come. Thy wariness serves thee well, soldier-priestess. But there are matters, and then there are matters.”

“What he means,” Sheyann interjected as the Major’s eyebrows lowered precipitously, “is that it’s likely to be a long time before there is an overall settling. The fae spirits through which power and information are channeled are living, feeling things. But not, in all circumstances, thinking things. Given the stress to which they’ve been subjected, they will be agitated for some time to come. The situation is less like ripples from a stone dropped in water than… A large flock of birds whose nesting tree had been struck by lightning.”

“Evocative,” Antevid said approvingly.

Sheyann glanced at him before returning her attention to Luger. “With all due respect to your respective witches, whose competence I have no reason to doubt, Shiraki and I have practiced our craft longer than the traditions in which you trained have existed. We can assure you that the source of this disruption has been pacified. In time, the spirits will reach a new equilibrium.”

“Didn’t sound a hundred percent pacified to me,” Luger grunted. “Now we have no less than the assurance of a god that he means to keep doing this specific thing.”

“A more specific thing, in fact,” Sheyann clarified. “He means to subject devoted Shaathists to visions of wolf pack behavior, like the Ranger ritual to do the same. Every night in their dreams. While I’m sure there will be vast repercussions from that, it is an entirely different class of event from insistent howling from everywhere in the world every night, accompanied by agonizing spiritual urges in everyone connected to the fae. This is now explicitly a Shaathist problem; everyone else may breathe easily again.”

Luger pursed her lips, glancing to the side. The group of elves and Imperials had remained under the shade of the trees, with the exception of Rainwood, who had joined the group of Ingvar’s new pack. In addition to the recently-transformed group of people he had brought with him, there were the remaining spirit wolves, who showed remarkable equanimity in the presence of so many humanoids. The Shaathists and Rangers were sitting around Ingvar on the grass, their numbers now mixing together instead of remaining separated by faction as they had been before, while he spoke and answered questions in a quiet voice which forced them to listen closely.

“It is, of course, your privilege to proceed in whatever manner you think best,” Sheyann added in a tone of gentle reproof, “but I cannot imagine what reason you think I might have to deceive you, Major.”

“Don’t henpeck, Sheyann,” said Tellwyrn. “Not that I don’t have my issues with stuffy military types, but not blithely accepting the dictates of foreign nationals on a mission’s status is just a case of being good at her job.”

“Appreciate the validation, Professor,” Luger said sardonically.

“For my part,” Tellwyrn continued, “I do accept your recommendation. Gods know I have plenty of personal observation that you’re both the best out there at what you do. If what’s been injuring my students and staff is done, I need to get back to them.”

“Yes, of course,” Sheyann agreed, nodding deeply to her. “By the same token, we should return to our grove. Even with the source pacified, these events placed great stress upon our shaman, especially the young learners. Our guidance will be needed.”

Tellwyrn smiled lopsidedly, raising an eyebrow. “Well, then! Can I offer you a lift home?”

“The offer is, as always, appreciated, Arachne,” Sheyann said with wry fondness. “But as this is no longer an actual crisis, I believe we can do without having our molecules dismantled again. With our own blessings we can be home by tomorrow. I judge that, now, to be sufficient haste.”

“Don’t be absurd, you don’t disconnect the molecules,” Tellwyrn said seriously. “That’d never work, you’d rematerialize as so much mud. The entire package is converted to data and moved via fundamental entanglement.”

“Thank you,” Sheyann said, affecting deep and solemn gravity, “for correcting me.”

Tellwyrn grinned, glanced one last time over at Ingvar and his various wolves, and just like that was gone, leaving behind only a faint puff of air filling the space she had been.

“Well, there she goes,” Antevid said lightly. “Before you also vanish, Elders, the Empire appreciates all your help. I’ll make sure ImCom knows the elves from Sarasio are good neighbors when the need arises.”

She inclined her head politely to him before turning to Shiraki, who was facing the clearing now. “Well, then, shall we?”

He answered softly in elvish, still watching Ingvar’s impromptu teaching session. “The restorative work should be minor; mostly, everyone will just need rest. Would you forgive me if I left it for you to handle, Sheyann?”

Sheyann turned fully to face him, replying in the same language. “You are right, and I would. What are you thinking, Shiraki?”

“I think,” he said, slowly and pensively, “I would like to stay, for a while, with this Ingvar and his…pack.”

“We are in the midst of a great general upheaval,” she reminded him. “As much as we butt heads, times of transition are when traditions and the conservative voices who speak for them are most important. This is an awkward moment for you to go tauhanwe.”

He gave her a sidelong smile. “A wise shaman bends with the wind; a fool demands that it part around him. I have made my case against involving ourselves with the world and others with our business, but that time has passed. And in truth, events have shown me that I was misguided.” Shiraki returned his focus to the group in the glade; Ingvar had beckoned one of the luminous spirit wolves to his side, and now had an arm around the creature’s neck in a light embrace, continuing to talk to his followers both established and new. “It is fatal to ignore what is happening in the wider world. And this, Sheyann, is happening. Someone should be watching where it goes. Not to mention that these puppies could perhaps benefit from the perspective of an Elder. Or do you really want Brother Ingvar to forge a new Shaathism with Rainwood as his only source of shamanic wisdom?”

That brought a soft laugh from her.

“I don’t suppose you speak elvish?” Lugar asked Antevid.

“It’s on my to-do list,” he said.

“Spirits gather,” Shiraki said abruptly in Tanglish. “Attend, something is—”

Ingvar had stepped away from the wolf next to him, and a pale glow coalesced upon him of light drawn seemingly from nowhere; it resembled the visible effect of shadow-jumping, but with moonlight instead of darkness. Like a shadow-jump, it dissipated immediately, leaving behind the great form of a white spirit wolf bearing an arrow mark on his face where the hunter had stood.

“What?” Antevid exclaimed, though softly. The rest of his team stepped forward to stare. “We just fixed that!”

Shiraki glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. “We?”

There was a similar reaction from the onlookers closer to the action, with many of the assembled humans scrambling backward. The other spirit wolves were unperturbed, however, and the rest of those who had previously been transformed all straightened up in unison, frowning as if suddenly considering a surprising new thought. Rainwood had bounded to his feet, and was now peering rapidly between Ingvar and the others in confusion.

The white wolf himself raised his head, turning to face the west with his ears alert. While the humans muttered among themselves, the wolves watched him closely.

Shiraki lightly touched Sheyann’s upper arm once, then walked forward into the glade at a serene pace.

Before he reached the group, the light coalesced again and left Ingvar once more restored to human form. He stood upright, still facing west with his eyes narrowed in concentration, but after a second jerked backward in surprise, blinking. The Huntsman turned to look at Aspen.

“Did I just…?”

“Yeah,” the dryad replied. “What I wanna know is how you did that?”

“Yeah, me too,” Rainwood added.

“Do you think we can all…?” November trailed off, turning to Rainwood, who shrugged.

“Sure am glad we’ve got this shaman here to share his understanding of the currents of magic,” Taka said solemnly.

“A transformation which cometh without will or warning is one triggered by outside effect,” said Shiraki as he paced into the group. Everyone turned to regard him, the gathered Rangers and Huntsmen shuffling aside to clear a path for the elf to Ingvar, who had fixed his full attention on him immediately. “The magic, it is clear, lies within thee, only the reaction was to another source. It may be that thou canst gain conscious control, but then, it may not. Thy circumstance is mingled of the powers of gods and fae, young hunter. Thou shalt learn more as must we all: through time and experience.”

“That’s very helpful, Elder, thank you,” Rainwood drawled.

Shiraki paused, turned to him, and spoke calmly in elvish. “I am neither Kuriwa nor the Elders of your home grove who tried to douse your spirit, young man. If you cannot direct your petulance elsewhere, please keep it leashed while we are trying to sort out matters of life and death.”

He returned his gaze to the now-bemused Ingvar, switching back to his archaic Tanglish. “Recall thy mind in the moments before it came over thee, Brother Ingvar. I saw no craft at work in this place, felt only the spirits around thee responding to a call from within.”

“You think if we can identify what caused it, we can learn whether it can be controlled?” Ingvar nodded slowly, his expression pensive.

“Perhaps,” said Shiraki. “Tis the first step, regardless. Though the Huntsmen are no ascetic creed, thou art trained at least somewhat in the arts of the mind. Still thy thoughts, feel thy breath, and seek back within to that moment, ere the memory fades.”

Ingvar nodded again and his expression turned inward, though he did not close his eyes. Everyone around grew still as well, watching him closely; Rainwood followed suit after a last, lingering scowl at Shiraki. The Elder, for his part, kept his gaze fixed on the contemplative Huntsman, though he did not fail to take note of the demeanor of this group of mixed Huntsmen and Rangers, the way they hung on his every word and now even on his silence, waiting for him to unravel another mystery for him. Though Shiraki had not spent overmuch time among humans in a handful of centuries, he had seen no shortage of heralds, prophets, teachers and charismatic troublemakers during his long life. They were a significant part of why he had not encouraged human visitors to his home grove.

What followed this, if it did not fizzle out abruptly, would affect the course of the world for great good or ill. Another reason it needed a guiding hand. If his people could no longer afford to ignore human progress, perhaps they should take part in shaping it.

“There was…a scent,” Ingvar said slowly, his eyebrows drawing together in concentration. “Except…not a scent. I feel,” he added, focusing on Shiraki’s face, “like the sensation was partly an effect of my mind trying to parse something for which it did not have terms or context.”

Shiraki nodded. “Thus is ever the way of those who reach beyond their ken; when not done in recklessness, tis a valued tool by which the shaman man perceive more of the world. Didst thy mind sense an ineffable touch whilst in the form of the wolf, tis likely ‘twould reach thee as a smell.”

“Then…you think it was a remembered scent, Elder?” he asked. “Something that would bring back the form of the wolf?”

“Scent is a powerful key to memory,” Shiraki agreed, nodding, “and memory a powerful key to an altered state, if it be one thou hast attained ere now. Mind, also, that thy powers are now granted at the behest of they god. If more gifts art thou granted, ’twill be for use in his service. Canst thou give a name to this smell?”

“Evil,” said Aspen before Ingvar could answer. “I remember it. While we were first in the wolf dream, that was the part where it started to go wrong.”

“I remember, too,” said Rainwood, frowning. “That was the tipping point. I was guiding their vision, but something reared up and sent them into a fury.”

“Well, that’s a little reassuring, I guess,” Tholi noted. “Here I was thinking you’d just done the ritual wrong.” Rainwood turned a scowl on him, but Dimbi barked a laugh.

“Peace,” Ingvar said, his voice firmly cutting off the burgeoning byplay. “I thank you, Elder, for your insight. This all makes perfect sense. While we must contend with the corruption existing within the cult of Shaath, that is simply a thing to be dealt with, not the reason we are called together. These events, this quest, cannot all have been for the sake of making politicians of us. Servants of the wild god are called to protect his realm. And something threatens it. As if…”

He raised his head again, narrowing his eyes in concentration, and the light gathered again. This time, Ingvar’s transformation into the white wolf brought murmurs from his audience, but no further panic.

The outcries began again, though, when there ensued another flash and where November had been sitting there was suddenly a golden spirit wolf with wing marks on her shoulders. The other members of the pack, those who had been normal gray wolves before the transformation and not changed back, stood and paced forward to join her and Ingvar; all of them were staring away to the southwest.

Ingvar growled once, and took a single step in that direction.

Swiftly but smoothly, Shiraki glided forward to block his path. “Patience, young wolf,” the Elder remonstrated. Ingvar straightened up, his ears perking forward in attention. “If evil rises, it must be answered, and shall be. Yet thou must not yield thy mind to instinct. Only with time will mastery come, but thou must gain a basic understanding of this gift before thou canst use it in the hunt. Rainwood and I shall lend our craft to thy aid. Attend, now.”

Some yards distant, under the trees, Major Luger turned to her fellow team leader while Shiraki continued calmly instructing the mingled wolves and humans. “Did you notice he was pointed in the same direction they were going when they got here?”

“Mm hm,” Antevid murmured, nodding. “Right at Ninkabi. Maehe’s from there.” Lieutenant Agasti pressed her lips into a thin line but offered no comment.

Luger nodded once in return. “I’m going to report all of this to field command while there’s a lull. I’d like you to stay on this group, Captain. This all looks calmer, but…not settled.”

“Do you actually think they can smell evil from halfway across the province?”

“These things are brand new, Antevid; we have no frame of reference for what they can do. All we know is they were set this way by a god of the Pantheon. And on that subject, ‘evil’ in the context of paladins and such usually refers to either demons or undead.”

“Ah, I think I follow you, Major. If they are going after a real target, not only is it important to verify their capabilities, but it’ll be a good idea to have some troops present in event of…evil.”

“I was more thinking I’ll feel better about this pack of madness charging into an Imperial city if they have a military escort.”

“That, too,” he said sagely.

“Thank you again, Elder, for your help,” Luger said politely to Sheyann. “Fall in, and take us out.”

Shadows coalesced around them, and they were gone.

While Antevid gathered his own team together, Sheyann continued to watch and listen as Shiraki walked Shaath’s new pack through the basics of a blessing that might unlock whatever potential their god had granted them.

“Natchua, un moment, s’il vous plait?”

“Sure,” Natchua said agreeably, then her eyebrows drew together. “Oh. Did you mean in private?”

Xyraadi hesitated, glancing rapidly around at the others. Though Sherwin and Melaxyna were absent, most of the household was in the manor’s broken great hall, where Jonathan and the hobgoblins were installing new floorboards. Natchua was perched on what remained of the stairs, watching, while Hesthri sat above and behind, gently kneading her shoulders with the fortified gloves covering her claws. Even Kheshiri was there, perched atop a ruined column with her wings spread to ruffle in the breeze, watching everyone as superciliously as a cat.

“No, I don’t think it will be a problem,” Xyraadi finally answered. “I am sorry to distract you, that’s all.”

Natchua smiled and leaned back against Hesthri, who in response shifted forward, pausing her massage to drape one arm around the drow’s neck and shoulders from behind. “No worries. What’s on your mind?”

“I would like to make a quick jump back to Ninkabi,” Xyraadi said seriously. “There’s something important I want to discuss with Mortimer.”

“I see,” Natchua murmured. “Well. Thank you for letting me know, but you don’t require my permission, Xyraadi. Just be careful. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what’ll happen if somebody spots a khelminash wandering about.”

“I hardly plan to wander,” she retorted with a wry smile. “Actually, I wished to inform you before going because I think this may be important. One of my wards near Second Chances was triggered, and I sent a pulse through it to see what happened. Natchua, I clearly detected the dimensional warping caused by a one-sided casting of an incipient hellgate in four places near the club.”

Natchua straightened up, as did Hesthri. Jonathan turned from the horogki to watch them, frowning and letting the hammer dangle from his hand.

“How certain are you?” Natchua asked.

“I am very confident of my spellwork, but this result is so…so very strange, I will not assume anything until I have looked more closely. You know as well as I that our infernal methods of divination are deeply imperfect. But Natchua, it is worse than that. To verify, I pulsed every ward of mine still intact around the neighborhood. I found no less than twelve such sites in Ninkabi, just in the relatively small area I was watching over. If these are hellgates, and if they are in the same concentration everywhere, there is nearly one per city block. Just waiting for someone on the other side to activate them.”

Natchua stood, gently caressing Hesthri’s arm while removing it. “Kheshiri, get down here.”

The succubus immediately launched herself into space, swooping down to land gracefully on the floor nearby. Jonathan also wandered over, and even the horogki paused in their work, watching the conversation unfold.

“Your team in Ninkabi was pursuing some kind of necromantic cult, right?” Natchua asked.

“Every word of that carries an implied ‘allegedly,’ but yes,” Kheshiri replied with a little smirk. “I know nothing of any hellgates, but the Tide did use shadow-jumping when we encountered them in Tiraas. They also summoned a few highly sophisticated undead constructs, and most of them were hopped up out of their gourds on some kind of alchemy. It seemed like mostly a horde of disposables under the command of a few people with magical skill.”

“Some of which, at least, was infernal,” said Natchua.

The succubus shrugged. “Shadow-jumping and dimensional mechanics are wildly different fields of study. Although…”

“Yes?” Natchua prompted impatiently when she trailed off.

“Well, this is conjecture, but both are only infernal-adjacent.”

“She is correct about that,” Xyraadi agreed. “Shadow-jumping uses only minor infernal craft in conjunction with shadow magic, and a dimensional portal of any kind is made through universal principles that are far easier to make with arcane than infernal methods.”

Natchua narrowed her eyes. “So…a mystery cult whose magical approach consists of dabbling in multiple fields could well be capable of both.”

“Conjecture,” Kheshiri repeated, “but yes, sure. Honestly, not to question Xyraadi’s skill, which I’m sure is impressive, I highly doubt whatever she detected were actually hellgates.”

“Ah, oui?” Xyraadi folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. “You have some deeper insight than I, after all?”

“Down, girl,” Kheshiri said, raising her hands in surrender even as she grinned. “My specialty is people, not magic, and the Tide are Justinian’s.”

“You’re sure of that?” Jonathan demanded.

“Well, the evidence is circumstantial, but pretty overwhelming. There is no record or trace of these assholes anywhere, which means they were trained in total isolation. Doing that with a drugged-up, highly equipped, well-disciplined secret cult capable of the kinds of maneuvers they’ve pulled would require a lot of resources. In the Empire, basically the only bodies capable of pulling that off are the Church, or the Empire itself, and last time I actually saw these guys, they were trying to assassinate the Emperor. So yeah, that’s Justinian. He’s not gonna open a bunch of hellgates in a major city.”

“If something like that happened,” Melaxyna said, emerging from the shadowed doorway to the hall, “not only would the Silver Throne lose an enormous amount of credibility for its failure to prevent it, but the cults and the Church would gain a great deal of position as they would definitely be called on to counter a demon invasion. Historically, Archpopes are a mixed bag, and I’m pretty recently free of Arachne’s charming little oubliette. Is this Justinian ruthless enough to do such a thing?”

A chilled silence fell.

“He’s… Well, yeah,” Kheshiri finally answered, speaking slowly as if contemplating while she talked. “Justinian is admirably unencumbered by scruples. But it’s not his style. Trust me, I’ve been working for this guy for the last two years, and he’s all about control. Every detail just so, with himself pulling every string from out of sight. A bunch of hellgates is the opposite of a controlled situation.”

“So you see,” said Xyraadi, turning back to Natchua, “I must go to Ninkabi. To do my own investigation, to ask Mortimer if he knows anything of this, and warn him if he does not.”

“Yes, quite right,” Natchua said briskly. “I’d like to come along, if you don’t mind.”

“Bien sûr.”

“Actually,” Natchua added, “and I can already feel myself regretting this… Kheshiri, you know the situation on the ground. You come, too.”

The succubus grinned, and the explosion of delight in her aura was convincing. Not so much that Natchua didn’t feel the need to add a warning.

“My patience for antics from you is zero,” she stated, leveling a finger at Kheshiri’s face. “One wrong move…”

“Mistress, it’s me,” she purred. “I don’t make wrong moves. I guarantee you will be nothing but pleased with my performance in action.”

Again, the currents of emotion Natchua could read in the spells that made up her body and aura seemed to agree; there was eagerness, fondness, and a thin spike of ambition. It altogether felt more like happiness at the prospect of climbing in Natchua’s estimation than anticipation of some trickery. That did not mean she could relax her guard around the demon, though.

She glanced sidelong at Melaxyna, who she could likewise read, though not so clearly. She hadn’t spent nearly as much time examining those currents of magic, and besides, her pact with Mel was less formal and less coercive, which seemed to have an effect. At the moment, Melaxyna’s aura appeared wary, as it always did around the other succubus, though her expression was calm.

“All right. Xyraadi, if you would handle the jump, please? You are more familiar with the city than I.”

“Not by much—it is not as if I went sight-seeing. But I shall be glad to.” Xyraadi smiled and raised both hands in one of the grand but unnecessary gestures she liked to make when spellcasting. “Brace yourselves, ladies.”

“Be careful,” Jonathan said quickly as they clustered together.

“We’ll look after everything here,” Hesthri added.

Natchua gave them both a warm smile, then shadows swelled and they were gone.

It was hidden away in a culvert, where the constant damp had done the arrangement of bones and already-rotting meat no favors. The whole construction looked on the verge of collapse, or would have had there been anyone to see it. This supremely out of the way location served its purpose, however; the altar had not been found by anyone since being placed there. This close to the waterline, with Ninkabi itself rearing up from the top of the canyon high above, no one would even come here except city maintenance crews, and not only were none scheduled, their activities had been significantly scaled back due to a serial killer being loose in the city.

As such, there was also no one to see the faint trembling in the prominent rib bones poking upward from the construct, or the subtle flexing of nothing in the air above it, as though something were making an indentation upon reality itself.

The altar shivered.

A pale blue glow gathered in reflections upon the inside of the culvert, accompanied by the rapidly approaching sound of slapping feet upon the walkway outside. She skidded around the corner, the arcane bolt already formed around her hand; one abrupt gesture hurled it forward.

The bolt was overkill for this particular task; the altar was reduced to fragments and droplets by the impact, and a jagged hole blasted through the culvert itself.

She almost doubled over, panting, and then sank to the damp ground, letting her ax handle clatter on the stone as she leaned back against the wall to catch her breath. Running had not done her already disheveled appearance any favors; the homeless girl’s hair was plastered down with sweat.

Soon enough, in fact before she fully recovered her breath, she straightened, picked up the shaft of wood, and made a swirling gesture with her free hand. A wisp of green light sparked to life above it, bobbing in space for a moment before zipping off around the corner.

The girl sighed, but immediately set off after the wisp as it led the way to the next one.

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                    Next Chapter >

15 – 51

Uncategorized, , , , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter >

Having been expecting it, Natchua ignored the outbursts from the crowd which resulted from her abrupt arrival. She also was careful not to react overtly to the soldiers at the edges of the platform who spun to level weapons at her, though she did of course mentally prepare a proper defense against lightning bolts. It was such universal knowledge that infernal magic had no defensive application that the several she knew, advanced though they were, she was able to have prepared without need to mask the effect. Nearby priests or other warlocks might have been able to tell she was doing something, but not what. Besides, such spells were fiendishly complex even without the extra effort of concealing them; just that much concentration distracted her momentarily, long enough for Grusser to step away from the podium and take her by the arm.

“Natchua, what are you doing?” he demanded in a low tone, angling his face away from the voice projection charm on the podium.

“Preventing this from becoming a bigger mess than it already is,” she replied, equally quiet. “At least, hopefully.”

“I do not need—”

“Mr. Grusser, you’re one more minute of waffling from a riot and you know it.”

“And you are trained in public speaking?”

Not thoroughly, but yes. She didn’t bother getting into that, though. “We don’t have time for this. Seconds are precious and this is about to explode. Let me help.”

He pressed his lips together into a disapproving line, clearly unhappy with her attempted appropriation of his job and about to put up an argument. Natchua chanced a sidelong glance at the crowd, not that it was needed as her ears already told her the shock of her appearance was wearing off and rapidly turning into more anger. She simply did not have time to reason Grusser down the way he’d futilely been trying to do with an incipient mob.

Unfortunately, while Natchua had countless ways of removing obstreperous people from her path, employing any of them here would magnify her problems exponentially, starting with kicking off the very riot she was trying to prevent.

For just a moment, she thought this particular action might have been a little too hasty.

“If you don’t know me,” a new voice boomed across the square, “I’m Agatha Svanwen, founder and president of Svanwen Unlimited. My company came here from Stavulheim to oversee the renovation of the catacombs, and train local laborers in our specialty of underground masonry. At a guess, I’d say there are a fair handful of folk in this crowd who have a job because of me, and when I’m gone, will have a skilled trade they can put to work anywhere in the Empire.”

Grusser turned back toward the podium and Natchua subtly leaned around him to see.

The thing had not been designed with dwarves in mind; Svanwen had had to climb precariously onto the fortunately sturdy structure, bracing her feet on a conveniently placed shelf near its base and gripping both its sides for balance. It left her head just barely above the top, with the protruding projection charm closer to her eye level than her mouth. Still, she seemed to make do, with not a hint of strain from holding herself up entering her voice.

“A lot of you likely heard about the recent problem we had with drow; let me just assure everyone that she wasn’t part of it. This is Natchua, a friend of Duchess Dufresne’s from Last Rock. And in fact, she’s the one who chased off the Narisians so my company could get back to work. So if anyone here is drawing a paycheck with my name printed on it, you can thank her that you’re still getting yours.”

Natchua could actually see the moment Lars Grusser decided to swim with the current instead of against it. While the crowd murmured at that pronouncement, he turned to face them, raised his hands, and clapped them together repeatedly. The response was hesitant at first and never spread far, but there were apparently a good few Svanwen employees in the square. Applause and a few cheers rang out. It wasn’t much, but it helped to shift the mood, at least a little.

“And more immediately,” the dwarf continued, turning her head slightly to give Natchua a sidelong look, “when there’s weirdness afoot, Natchua is someone I think we should listen to.”

With that, she hopped down and stepped to the side in clear invitation. Natchua hesitated only to glance at Grusser; his eyes expressed a silent warning, but then he took a step backward, clearing her path to the podium.

Almost immediately, she found herself gripping its sides nearly as hard as Svanwen had. This was a lot of expectant faces. For a moment, Natchua found herself envying the relative bluntness of human senses; to Grusser and Svanwen this crowd would have been largely a blur past a certain distance. She could clearly discern every puzzled and irate frown clear to the other side of the square, and it was an entirely new kind of pressure.

The murmuring rose again, and she realized she had been standing there in silence for several seconds. She realized, then, that she didn’t actually have any specific thing to say.

But she had to say something. Well, hell, winging it hadn’t actually gotten her killed yet.

“Well, you heard them,” Natchua stated. Fortunately the charm picked up her voice and carried it across the square, but in it she heard its faltering quality. From the diaphram, as she’d learned in that one class on oratory. She tightened her midsection and when she continued, her voice was a lot firmer than she felt. “I’m afraid I haven’t much to add. What I know, you now know: the howling of wolves, dreams and portents coming to those sensitive to the fae. It’s happening all over the Empire, possibly all over the world. No one knows why, or what it means.”

The murmuring swelled again, taking on an angry note. She could pick out every individual muttered complaint. This, so far, was not going much better than Grusser’s attempt.

A frown settled over Natchua’s features and she heard her magically enhanced voice say, in a biting tone, “I must say, I find myself disappointed.”

Quiet fell. Not absolute quiet, but those who still muttered now did so mostly in confusion. Natchua pressed on, still not sure herself exactly where she was going with this but feeling she had slipped into a groove somehow.

“I’m hearing a lot of anger here,” she stated. “And to that I say: good. Whatever is going on, getting mad about it is better than buckling to fear. You had better make damn sure your anger is direction to the right place, though, and that’s at who or whatever is attacking everyone’s dreams. And since we don’t yet know who that is, you need to control yourselves.”

She had to push on over a surge of more irate voices, but did not falter; between her projecting and the vocal charm, there was little chance of anyone drowning out her voice. “Where I come from, in an event like this the Queen and matriarchs would loudly demand blind trust from everyone and send guards out to clobber anyone who wasn’t fast enough to offer it. That would be the practice in most countries in this world; I guarantee it is what’s happening right now in some parts of this Empire. Not, however, in Veilgrad. Here, you have a mayor who has led this city well, and is willing to stand before you and take the greatest risk there is in politics: admitting he does not know something.” She half-turned to shoot Grusser a long look. “A lot of politicians would have told Lars Grusser it was not wise to do this. I, however, will tell you why he did.”

Natchua turned her head back forward, and swept her stare around the assembled crowd. Somewhat to her surprise, they were even quieter now, most faces intent upon her. Apparently those public speaking techniques actually did work. It might have been wise to verify that outside a classroom and before inserting herself into this situation, but oh well.

“Because this is Veilgrad, and you have earned that respect.”

Another surge of murmuring rose, this one softer—and for the first time since she had arrived to watch the proceedings here, approving.

“If there is one place in the world where people can handle this kind of thing, it is here,” she declared, to louder noises of approbation. Repetition, her professor had said, building to a climax; Natchua rapidly cast about for examples prior to the big one on everyone’s mind. “This is the Empire’s acknowledged capital of spooky nonsense; you all live with fear and mystery, and despite that constant pressure, Veilgrad still stands. This is the place where the civilizations of Stalwar, Calderaas and Tiraas clashed for centuries, and finally found a union. That is the kind of history that destroys cities, but Veilgrad still stands!” This time, she got a smattering of cheers. “This is the city where people listen to the howls of werewolves in the mountains at every full moon, and the next day get up and go back about their business. Where not a month goes by without some new word of a disappearance or monster or unexplained event in the forests just outside, and yet here you all are still! Despite the best efforts of every specter and spook on this half of the continent, Veilgrad stands!” More cheering; her own voice was rising in pitch and volume, and it was not fully a facade anymore. Once she got going, this was gratifying. “No matter what lurks in the forests, or in the catacombs, Veilgrad stands! And when it all came to a head, when this city was tested like no other before—when the dead rose, when demons filled the skies, when monsters breached the walls and chaos itself intruded on this reality, you were pushed to the very breaking point. The forces of darkness threw everything at you, more than enough to break the spines of a lesser breed of people. They hit Veilgrad with every foul trick they had, certain it would finish you off for good. And yet?!”

“VEILGRAD STANDS!” a thousand voices roared back at her, hundreds of fists brandished in the air.

For just an instant Natchua was almost overcome by the sheer power of it all; it was heady, like a drug, like nothing else she had ever experienced. That passed immediately, though, because she was, after all, a warlock. And looking out at the mighty surge of energy animating this beast made of hundreds upon hundreds of souls, she recognized how very much like demonology this was. She held the leash of a monster that she did not control. She had only persuaded it, for now, not to turn on her. One wrong move, and it still might.

“In the days to come,” she said, loudly and firmly but with deliberately less emotion, “we’ll all know more. The Tiraan Empire is devoting every resource it has to this crisis,” or so she presumed, anyway, “and has the finest mages in existence.” Debatable, between Syralon and the high elves, but this was no time for careful attention to facts. “They will find answers. That’s what governments and leaders are for: to take care of issues that everyone else can’t while still going on about their lives. And that’s exactly the duty that falls to the rest of us now. Each and every one of you is the leading expert in one thing: going about your business. Now, while leaders, soldiers, and mages deal with whatever power is at work in the world, the call goes out for each of us to perform that ordinary task while under the most extraordinary pressure. Because life must continue, or all our struggles are meaningless. All of our lives have the worth we give them, and that’s never more clear than when danger looms over us. Around the Empire, all around the world, people are summoning the necessary courage to keep their heads down and carry on, while not knowing what’s happening. But not here. In Veilgrad, you’ve faced worse than this, and come out the stronger for it. No matter who else falls, Veilgrad stands!”

“VEILGRAD STANDS!” they shouted back. Still enthused, but less exuberant now, just as planned. Following Rafe’s instruction, she had taken hold of their emotions and was now carefully, a bit at a time, leading them back toward calm.

“Each of you must know someone who has been affected, even if you have not. If you don’t, you’ll be able to find someone. For now, this is what we all have to do: take care of each other. Everyone has a role to play in keeping the city running, and as you have time and energy left, watch for chances to help your fellow citizens. Reach out to other people in case they need a helping hand, and never be too proud to ask for one yourself. The temples and churches will be able to direct you to where you can do the most good. Because right now, this is the crisis, and that is the task: find where you can help.”

Natchua paused, looking again across the crowd. They were quieter, calmer. Her job here was almost done; with every necessary point made, it was time to wrap this up. And not a moment too soon, as she was beginning to feel a weak tingling sensation in her limbs, as if from exhaustion. Or more likely, adrenaline fading away.

“None of us knows what will happen in the future, but no one ever knows that. And we don’t need to. What we know is how to keep living. And here, in this city, we’ll keep living no matter what throws itself at us. I don’t need to tell you why.” She held her hands out in a silent invitation.

“VEILGRAD STANDS!” hundreds chorused.

“Veilgrad stands,” Natchua agreed. “Because every one of you stands, and no one stands alone. So long as you remember that, it always will.”

Nerves and fatigue had suddenly started to wear on her after the unaccustomed effort of putting on such a face for so many people; she just didn’t have much left to give. Fortunately no more was needed, as this crowd knew a stopping point when they heard one. Natchua probably couldn’t have kept going over the cheers that now broke out, anyway, and so didn’t try to.

She considered, for a bare moment, trying to surreptitiously mend fences with Grusser, but thought better of it. She needed a strategic retreat, and her performance her called for a dramatic exit.

Shadows gathered, and a moment later she was back in the tower.

Natchua blew out a breath in one gust, her cheeks puffing with the effort, and Jonathan laughed at her even as he wrapped her in his arms. She melted gratefully into his sturdy chest, closing her eyes and just letting him hold her up.

This was nice. Last night had been an experience she was still trying to parse, but this? This was really just incredibly nice. Natchua hadn’t realized how much she’d craved such simple comforts. She still was not at all sure she deserved them.

“You just never cease to surprise,” Jonathan chuckled, resting his chin on her head and stroking her hair. “I had no idea you were good at public speaking. Honestly, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d be into.”

“Had a semester of it,” she mumbled. “Oratory is an elective at Last Rock, taught by Professor Rafe.”

“Rafe,” he murmured. “Wait, isn’t that the one who…”

“Yep, that’s him.”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Unless the rest of that sentence was ‘is known for his good taste and restraint,’ the answer is always Rafe.”

He laughed again, and subtly twisted his body back and forth, rocking her. Natchua permitted herself a sigh, snuggling closer. Gods, this was just so nice… It just needed Hesthri to be perfect.

Outside, the chants of “Veilgrad stands!” had sprung up again. No doubt Grusser, politician that he was, had seized the chance to step in front of that and put his face on it. Well, she was inclined to let him, so long as the man didn’t get himself pelted with produce like he’d been about to.

“Well, I can’t say you didn’t pull it off,” Jonathan stated after a pause. “I’ll admit I was worried, when you vanished. No offense.”

“None taken, Jonathan, I’ve met me. It was a hasty thing to do, but I wouldn’t have tried it if I hadn’t had at least a little coaching in the art. Grusser was doing everything all wrong, trying to reason calmly with a crowd like that. Rafe said something in class that’s always stuck with me: if you ask a crowd of people to be brave, or calm, or intelligent, or anything with an ounce of virtue, they’ll probably lynch you. But if you convince them they already are those things, they’ll love you for it, and then if you give them an opportunity to prove it, they probably will.”

“Cynical,” he murmured.

Natchua nodded wearily, rubbing her cheek against his shirt. “Well, you know me. Cynical reasoning is more likely to appeal to me than idealism. Based on how that went down, it seems he was right.”

“Do you really believe that?” Jonathan asked softly, stilling his rocking of her. “That people can’t be reasoned with?”

“They absolutely can’t. A person can be reasoned with. I have to believe that, whether or not it’s true, or the sheer despair would drive me bonkers.” He chuckled, and she couldn’t help smiling in response. “People, though? The way Professor Rafe explained it… People are social animals. Get them in groups and they’ll always look to each other to see what they should be doing instead of thinking it over themselves. So you have to treat a crowd like an excitable child, because a crowd always ends up reflecting the outbursts of the most emotional person in it. It doesn’t mean people are stupid, or unreasonable, it’s just a reflection of how they think. How we all think. We can’t really help what we are.”

“Hm. I have to say, that makes a troubling amount of sense,” he mused. “Explains a lot of stuff I’ve seen, too.”

Natchua stiffened suddenly, pulling back to look around the small tower room. “Wait. Where the hell is Kheshiri?”

“She went back to Malivette,” he assured her, “muttering something about damage control. I’m none too sure about letting that creature run around loose, but I was even less sure of my ability to contain her.”

“No, that’s…yeah, you made the right call, there. I can always count on you to do that, Jonathan.”

He gazed seriously down at her, gently brushing a lock of white hair back out of her face with one big, callused hand. “On the subject of things that’ll have to be dealt with, Natch… You just shadow-jumped, twice, in public. In the most public kind of public you could possibly have arranged. Unregistered warlocks in the Tiraan Empire tend to attract attention from the government.”

“The government’s pretty busy right now,” she pointed out with a little smile.

He gave her a look.

“It’s okay, Jonathan,” she reassured him. “I think. I’d planned to make a point of how I was working for Malivette, but as it happened, Ms. Svanwen went and did it for me, bless her. Nobles can get away with a lot, including having pet warlocks in their employ. Believe me, I read up on that; it’s part of why I decided to attach myself to Sherwin. If anybody comes ’round asking questions I can point to the backing of both local Houses.”

“Malivette isn’t likely to appreciate that,” he pointed out.

Natchua smiled darkly. “Malivette should maybe have thought more carefully before she decided to try fitting a leash on me.”

He sighed. “So you ended up vying with her for political power, after all. Exactly like Kheshiri wanted you too.”

“I know, Jon, I know. The fact is…she wasn’t wrong. That may well be the best way to keep from ending up as Vette’s lackey. At least, I couldn’t think of a better one. And hey, it also worked to prevent that crowd from turning into a riot.”

“Grusser does seem to be doing a better job of leading them now,” Jonathan agreed, glancing to the iron-barred windows. The chanting was trailing off, but the ambient sounds of the crowd weren’t angry anymore, and that was still an improvement over how it had started. “I just worry. Succubi… I’m still not sanguine about Melaxyna, and Kheshiri makes my skin crawl.”

“Good,” she said frankly. “Embrace that, it’s your intuition being extremely right. We can’t cease to think, though. Just because Kheshiri suggests something doesn’t automatically make it wrong; that’s it’s own trap, and a quick way for us to drive ourselves nuts, besides.”

He pulled her back in for another hug, and she willingly let him, resting her head on his shoulder and letting her eyes close once more.

“What’s our next move, then?” Jonathan asked.

“This fae business is way outside my wheelhouse,” Natchua muttered. “Still. It would be utterly daft to just ignore it and hope it goes away. First I’ll see if Xyraadi has any ideas; the khelminash know secrets even I don’t. Failing that, I have other avenues of investigation. I don’t like turning to Qadira; djinn are as tricky as Vanislaads. Just checking on how willing she is to talk can provide hints as to how serious the matter is, though. At some point soon, I’d also like to jump back to Ninkabi to talk to Mr. Agasti. Even if he has no hard data—which is possible, he’s pretty connected in that city—he’s a smart fellow.”

“Mmkay,” he said. “And…generally?”

“This is a nice excuse to deal with something that probably doesn’t concern us directly,” Natchua admitted. “Good chance to…settle in. Let the hobs work on the house, let Mel work on Sherwin. Let us…”

His breath was warm on her ear; she trembled in spite of herself when he bent to lightly kiss its pointed tip. “Yes?”

Natchua grinned into his shoulder, wrapping both arms around him to squeeze as hard as she was able. “Let’s go home. We really shouldn’t leave Hes out of the loop.”

The narrow slats between the blinds which covered the windows of the town hall’s uppermost room served much the same function as the decorative ironwork in the tower’s windows. Someone standing there could see everything in the square below while being functionally invisible to anyone looking up at the house.

Nonetheless, Malivette stood well back from the blinds, and the sunlight peeking through them. That small amount of sunlight wouldn’t have been any worse than a discomfort for her, but it would be a discomfort with no purpose. She didn’t need to see out to know what was happening. Every word of Natchua’s speech had been perfectly audible to her, as was the crowd, still chanting their new slogan.

Kheshiri slithered up behind her, wrapping first her arms and then her wings around the vampire’s gaunt form and resting her warm chin on Malivette’s bony shoulder.

“You see what I mean, though,” the succubus cooed in her ear. “Right, m’lady? She has…such potential.”

Malivette stood rigid as a gargoyle, not about to indulge the demon’s flirtatious insinuations. Her crimson eyes narrowed to slits as she gazed pensively at the window.

“Hmmmm.”

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                            Next Chapter >

15 – 40

Uncategorized, , ,

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                          Next Chapter >

Natchua indulged in a slower approach on the way home to Leduc Manor, shadow-jumping only enough to avoid people or a trip that would have taken much of the day. She did enjoy a little time spent walking in the mountains, and approaching the half-ruined mansion from its switchbacking access road gave her a few minutes both to savor the view, and to think.

Melaxyna was out in front in a simple human guise, her own customary features with a less eerie coloration and her wings and tail hidden, whittling a chunk of wood with a rusty-looking knife.

“That took a good few hours,” she observed as soon as Natchua came into view. “I was on the verge of getting worried.”

She kept walking up the path. The succubus had called out once Natchua was within the range of elven hearing; she opted to approach closer rather than try to have a discussion while shouting back and forth. It was a small thing, and she didn’t regard Melaxyna as hostile, but it did not escape her notice that this placed Mel in control of the conversation’s dynamic. Holding her peace until she arrived at a position of her choosing was another small thing that served a similar purpose. She would probably never come to enjoy thinking in terms like this, but it was an unfortunately important habit to acquire, and Natchua was starting from behind.

“I had a really peculiar moment today,” Natchua said as soon as she was close enough to do so without raising her voice. “Kind of an epiphany. There was this one point during the…generally pretty difficult discussions I had to have, where suddenly these two incredibly clever, powerful women I was trying to wheedle just visibly dismissed me as a concern and focused on verbally fencing with each other instead. Like I obviously wasn’t smart enough, or important enough, to be a player in that game. And what made it so strange was that I was pleased by it. That’s usually…enraging.”

“Reputation is a powerful thing,” Melaxyna said sagely. “No matter what it’s a reputation for, there’s always some way to leverage it. And being thought of as less smart than you are is always crazy useful, I’ve gotten great mileage out of that one over the years. So, how’re our girls getting along?”

“They’ll keep each other busy for a while, that much I’m confident in. I’m going to have to separate them again before too long,” Natchua continued with a contemplative frown. “If Kheshiri actually messes up Malivette’s situation it’ll mean major problems for me, and likely everyone in the province. And if Vette decisively wins that… Well, actually, that would solve the Kheshiri problem neatly, but then I’m right back to needing to do something about her, and it might be better to still have Kheshiri around to help with that. Well, anyway, hopefully this’ll buy me a few days without either of ’em underfoot, and a chance to see what they both do under pressure.” She paused, then drew in a breath to steady herself. “How’s it looking on the home front? Awful quiet in there…”

“Most of the others are over in the north wing,” Melaxyna said, turning to nod in the direction of the half-ruined arm of the house. “The hobs have pretty well reached the end of what they can do in the front hall, here, without a lot of materiel and supplies, so they’re surveying the damage in the next section. They seem to be getting along well with Xyraadi, now. She’s surprisingly down to earth when she’s trying to make an impression; I was expecting more snobbery, what with all the gratuitous Glassian, but nope! Sweet girl, really. Probably due to her history with adventurers. The chapbooks lie, Natchua. Adventurers were usually filthy hobos who went off to kill things in dungeons because they couldn’t hack it in actual society. Classy, they were not.”

“Right,” Natchua said impatient. “And…?”

Melaxyna gave her a knowing little smile, which she repressed the urge to slap. It was in the nature of a succubus to needle, and she was beginning to think this one in particular was deliberately training her in self-control.

“Jonathan seems steadier with something to do with his hands. We took a stroll down to the nearest lumber camp. They don’t actually cut the trees around here, I think their roots are what keeps the mountainside from sliding down on Veilgrad, but there’s a lot of logging in the province and there are a couple of sawmills pretty close by. We got some price estimates on what the girls will need, and picked up a few bits and bobs. He’s currently up in my little improvised kitchenette, fixing it to be a tad less improvised. I do appreciate a man who’s handy around the house,” she added, putting on one of those little succubus smiles that was a hair’s breadth in every direction from becoming a smirk. “What with one thing and another, I never had the chance for a cozy domestic life.”

“A cozy domestic life would drive you gibbering insane,” Natchua said flatly. She knew too well how right Mel was, though. Jonathan liked working with his hands; having a project would do a lot to settle his mind. “Right, well then… I guess I’d better go deal with this while I have a reprieve from Kheshiri sticking her nose into it.”

She swept up the stairs to the ruined doorway, or tried to. Melaxyna reached out to stop her with a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re a flawed person, Natchua, and this is going to hurt,” the demon said softly. “Don’t be afraid of either. You will be okay. Getting there may be a bitch, but you’ll be okay.”

Natchua could only stare at her for a moment, finding no ready reply to that. She reached up to squeeze Melaxyna’s hand, then gently removed it and continued through the doorway.

With the space defined by the broken remains of its outer walls, the once-grand front hall of Manor Leduc was effectively a courtyard, now, with a gaping hole in its floor leading to a basement. There was certainly little in the way of privacy separating it from the front steps, ensuring that her conversation outside had been audible to the shattered room’s sole occupant. Natchua had, of course, known she was there, having reached out to locate her unique infernal signature along the faint lines of magic that connected them, and being aware of her presence, it was easy to hear her breathing.

Hesthri was perched at the edge of the room, near the doorway opening onto the corridor to Sherwin’s kitchen apartment, squatting on her heels in the way hethlaxi often did. The way the armor plating covered their joints made it more comfortable to adopt a slouch, but they were quite capable of standing up fully straight, as Hesthri now demonstrated on Natchua’s arrival. She rose smoothly to her full height, putting her head up, shoulders back, and chest out. The posture served to accentuate her figure, and by this point Natchua was certain she did that quite deliberately. Hesthri watched her approach for a moment before stepping forward to meet her, holding out her hands in a position that sought Natchua’s own.

She, however, kept them at her sides, maintaining her own straight-backed posture and drawing the cloak of Narisian reserve back over herself. Hesthri stood right in the middle of the narrow lip of navigable space between the wall and the hole; an elf was more than agile enough to slip past her, but Natchua didn’t intend to evade this discussion.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, coming to a stop and projecting calm. “I take it Xyraadi and the horogki are getting on well enough that—hey, what are…”

Natchua having failed to reach out to take Hesthri’s hands, the hethelax instead raised them to gently cup the drow’s cheeks. Natchua started to pull away from her, but didn’t try very hard or very fast, and failed to escape before Hesthri stepped closer, raised her own face, and kissed her.

She stopped trying to move. It was barely two more seconds before she stopped pretending to be stiff. The breath leaked from her, mingling with Hesthri’s own, and her eyes drifted shut.

Hard and soft, just like Hesthri’s rapidly switching behavior. Her strategic plates of natural armor were as smooth and cool as iron, as if to emphasize what an otherworldly creature this was in Natchua’s arms. Elsewhere, though, she simply felt like a woman, at least in shape. She was so very warm; it was like embracing the coziness of a hearth. Her skin, where not armored, had an unusual but pleasing texture not unlike a snake’s scales. And her lips were just…

Natchua was the one to pull back, slightly, eventually, though by that point she had lost her grasp of how much time had passed. Her forehead rested against the unyielding armor of Hesthri’s, their breath still mingling. The hethelax’s blunt claws still cradled her face in a tender grasp, but Natchua found that she had at some point pulled the demon close and wrapped both arms around her.

Melaxyna, she now understood, had been entirely right. Her weakness wasn’t about a desire for sex, at least except as a means to an end. It was just the closeness, the warmth, the addictive feeling of another person touching her with tenderness, so sharply sweet it was nearly painful, like the first taste of candy on an unprepared tongue. She was just so unaccustomed to being loved that even the pretense melted her like butter in the sun. This was something she absolutely needed to fix, somehow. Kheshiri would make easy pickings of such a vulnerability, and after Melaxyna’s warnings Natchua well understood that even seeing her coming wouldn’t be enough to stop it.

“I don’t know you that well,” she said aloud, her voice rough, but soft. Hesthri’s eyes opened, regarding her own from inches away. “I don’t…truly know what it is you want.”

The demon’s smile was warm, and sad. “I want what’s best for you, Natchua. And I’m hardly surprised you’re wary, given how much I tend to disagree with you about what that is. Luckily for you, our pact requires my loyalty rather than obedience. I can’t decide if you’re the cleverest fool I’ve ever known, or the other way round.”

Natchua had to smile back at that, if somewhat bitterly. “What’s best for me, is it? Even at the expense of what’s best for you? Or Jonathan?” She hesitated, then pressed. “Or Gabriel?”

“I can’t say how I would handle it if you brought those loyalties into conflict,” Hesthri murmured, sliding her hands slowly down Natchua’s neck to her shoulders and making her entire spine tingle as if she were standing too close to an arcane spell matrix. “It hasn’t come up, Natch. If you and Jonathan will just stop being difficult about it, there’s no reason at all this cannot work out equally well for everyone.”

“Difficult,” she huffed, finally pulling back. “No reason to put yourself out, if it’s—”

“Of course there is. I love you.”

It hurt to hear. It was so unexpectedly blissful that it actually hurt. Gods, she was in so much trouble.

Natchua drew in another steadying breath, only belatedly noting that her reserve was long since in tatters. “Hesthri… It’s been days. We don’t actually know each other.”

“Intimacy takes time, and work.” Hesthri agreed. “But falling in love is easier than falling down the stairs. Faster, harder to do on purpose, and usually makes even less sense. Haven’t you studied any martial arts, Natchua? You lean into a fall. You get hurt by trying to fight it. Dear heart, I wouldn’t compel you even if it was within my power. If you truly want to struggle against this every step of the way instead of trying to see if we can make something good of it… Well, do you?”

Natchua backed up fully, out of her grip, and roughly dry-scrubbed her face with both hands. “I can’t decide whether we should have this out between the two of us first, or just go get Jonathan and see how much of a spectacle we can make of ourselves all at once.”

“Second one,” Hesthri said immediately. “This is a mess for everybody involved, and the three of us need to resolve it. It’s not fair to come at him as a united front. Jonathan deserves to be treated as an equal in this.”

“Your relentless logic is beginning to annoy me,” Natchua grumbled. Hesthri smiled at her with simple affection, and leaned forward to press a light kiss to the corner of her mouth. Natchua, despite her better judgment, let her.

“Come on, then. Let’s not put it off any further.”

Sherwin must have been off with Xyraadi and the hobgoblins; at least, there was no sign of him in his apartment, for which Natchua was grateful. She needed the entire walk through that space and up the stairs to the landing in which Melaxyna had cobbled together her little kitchen to settle her own mind. Despite what Hesthri claimed to intend, she had her own thoughts on how this situation needed to be settled. The sound of hammering grew louder as they climbed, each blow tightening the knot in her stomach, but at least the approach gave her the opportunity to pull back ahead of Hesthri and compose her features again.

Jonathan was kneeling with his back to them, pounding what looked like the last nail into a counter he had assembled along one wall of unfinished planks. The whole thing looked rough, but less so than Melaxyna’s arrangement of boxes and mismatched old furniture.

Their footfalls weren’t particularly heavy and it wasn’t as if he had elven ears, but regardless, he stilled as soon as the two of them emerged from the stairwell.

“Jonathan,” Hesthri said quietly.

Finally, he turned around, straightening upright and laying the hammer down alongside a handful of spare nails atop the surface he had just assembled. He was, Natchua found herself suddenly reminded, really tall, and much broader across the chest and shoulders than any elf. And, with his previous anger under control, dignified in a way that contained an emotional intensity, which she had always seen as more worthy of respect than the cold aloofness she had been taught in Tar’naris.

“So,” he said after a pause, looking back and forth between the two of them. “I guess we’re doing this, then.”

Steeling herself and clinging to every shred of her reserve, Natchua stepped forward before Hesthri could say anything.

“It’s time for you to go, Jonathan.”

His eyebrows shot upward. “Go? Excuse me, but—”

“Yes, yes, I know, you figured you were good and blackmailed into this, and at the time I was flustered enough to let you get away with it. But you aren’t really going to set the Empire and the Church and whoever else after Hesthri, are you? No matter how mad you are at me. And now that would drag Xyraadi into this, not to mention the three hobgoblins, who you know don’t deserve that trouble. So that’s enough of this, Jonathan. You’re going—”

A sharp blow to the back of her head made her stagger. Natchua caught her balance, whirling to glare at Hesthri, who was scowling right back and lowering her hand.

“I can’t decide which of you is more ridiculous,” the hethelax snapped. “Honestly. All of this could be so easy!”

“I can’t see any damn way it possibly could,” Jonathan exclaimed. “She’s right about one thing, this entire business is built on lies, blackmail, and infernomancy. Nothing about it is easy in any respect!”

“Because you make it hard! The both of you!”

“I am trying to make it easy!” Natchua shouted. “I don’t know how you’ve got this worked around in your head, but he has no business here and he’s just going to get killed.”

“I thought we all were,” Jonathan retorted. “Wasn’t that the entire plan, Natchua?”

“It doesn’t need to include you!” she yelled back. “Goddammit, haven’t I done enough to you? Would you just let me protect you?! Can’t I do one good thing?”

“Oh, Natchua,” Hesthri sighed. Jonathan was staring at her in something akin to shock, blinking rapidly.

He rallied, though, squaring his shoulders. “You should know I’m not afraid of death or pain, especially not when the end goal is to help my son. Because you weren’t totally wrong, Natch, despite being so amazingly wrong-headed about every detail in between here and your ultimate conclusion. You are in a unique position to mess up whatever Elilial is planning and that will be a way to protect Gabriel. Considering the kinds of powers he has to contend with now, it’s about all I can do. So, no, I’m not leaving. We are doing this stupid bullshit scheme of yours. Especially since, somehow, you’re actually making it work.”

“You do know if I decide to just send you somewhere, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

“I think you’d be surprised what I can do,” he retorted, stepping toward her. “Do you think I got tangled up with a hethelax demon and protected her on this plane long enough to have Gabriel without being pretty damn resourceful? Has she told you the full story yet?”

“Oh, vrasksha sknithal!” Hesthri shouted, throwing both her hands in the air. “Enough! Get in the room, both of you. Come on!”

She grabbed each of them by an arm and harried the pair across the hall to the nearest accessible doorway, which luckily was to Natchua’s bedroom. Jonathan and Natchua exchanged a look past Hesthri even as she was dragging them, mutually deciding to submit to this with good grace rather than engaging in a pointless scuffle with her. Anyway, she was right; there were a number of ways the rest of this discussion could go, and they were all better done in privacy.

Hesthri didn’t give either of them a chance to start in again, however, whirling on them the instant she had shut the door behind.

“All right, we could hold an entire lecture series on everything Natchua has done wrong here, but by all the gods, Jonathan, she’s twenty.”

“Twenty-one—” Hesthri reached out and clamped a clawed hand over her mouth, by which Natchua was so astonished that she allowed it to happen.

“But you,” the hethelax continued, pointing accusingly at him, “are being purely thoughtless and selfish about this, and it’s beneath you. I expect better.”

“Selfish!” Jonathan’s voice, uncharacteristically, climbed an octave and a half, along with his eyebrows. Natchua finally pulled Hesthri’s hand off her face as he turned his incredulous stare on her. “Did you put her up to this?”

“Don’t look at me, I have no idea what she’s talking about,” Natchua protested. “Come on, Hes, he’s the only one of us who makes any sense. That’s why I want him away from all this!”

“Natchua, shut up a minute,” Hesthri said with a sigh. “And Jonathan, stop making all of this about yourself, because none of it is. Despite how Natchua mistreated you in the process, the truth is you were caught up in the edge of something that was never meant to involve you, by a combination of chance, her terrible ideas and your own damn stubbornness. Yes, she used and lied to you, but ever since she’s been trying to protect you. And she did all of this to protect Gabriel in the first place!”

“Thank you!” Natchua explained.

“You shut your mouth,” Hesthri shot back. “I know you’re trying your best, but you seduced and deceived the man so you could recruit his own former lover into your suicidal crusade. Never mind facing off with Elilial at the end of all this, between that and your general pattern of decisions it’s astonishing you’re not dead yet! Can the pair of you honestly not see how badly you need each other? Jonathan, you were moldering away in Mathenon while Gabriel is out risking his life for the Pantheon, and I know that was eating away at you. It’s not like you to accept your own helplessness that way. Say what you will, Natchua’s nonsense has gotten you back moving, working, and helping, and you love it. And you!” She tried to swat Natchua’s head again, but this time the drow saw it coming and ducked away. That did nothing to stop Hesthri’s tirade. “Why is every idea you have just convoluted and outlandish enough to be completely unworkable? Are you honestly under the impression you can outmaneuver the goddess of cunning with the power of sheer daffy nonsense? That will work right up until she actually notices you. Natchua, Jonathan Arquin is the best thing that’s ever happened to you and the way you keep trying to get rid of him is the dumbest thing you’ve done yet. That is really saying something.”

They both stared at her in shock.

Hesthri sighed heavily. “You need her energy. You badly need his steadiness. She inspires and pushes you; it’s her influence that’s returning you to the vital, driven man I knew and fell in love with. He has so much to teach you about life, and love, and his influence is so exactly what you need to even you out. This man is exactly the one who can help you grow into the enormous potential I see in you. You’re a charming enough kid, Natch, but it’s the woman you are trying to become…” Her voice hitched, but she steadied it and continued. “…that I fell in love with. You need each other. It’s time to forgive, let go, and take the risk. Yes, we’re all going to get hurt. But if we’re together, we’ll get over it. That’s what people do.”

Another few seconds of silence passed between them before Jonathan cleared his throat roughly. “And…are you suggesting… How exactly do you fit into this, Hes?”

“In all the spaces between you,” Hesthri said, smiling now. “I’ve been a servant my whole life, Johnny. I am comfortable letting others take the lead. It’s… What I’ve never had is someone I respected, someone I loved, to dedicate myself to. Somehow, the three of us are a ridiculous, perfect couple. That is, if you two clowns will stop fighting it.”

He shook his head. “I don’t…that’s just too weird, even for—”

“Selfish,” she interrupted, but more gently this time. “We represent three different cultures here, Jonathan, and yours is the only one where it’s not completely normal to have multiple partners.”

“I don’t have a culture,” Natchua muttered. “Narisian anything is a vicious nightmare.”

“Even better, then,” Hesthri replied, taking her by the arm and pulling her forward. “This will just continue to be a wreck if we keep trying to be where we’re from. Can’t we just be who we are, instead? Everyone in this room is stupidly in love with everyone else. I’m not trying to claim this will be magical, or easy, or not prone to dramatic episodes like this. But it can work. And even if it doesn’t, it’s worth trying. Life is short, and often bitter, my darlings. You have to embrace whatever warmth and sweetness you can find. Even if it fails, take a chance on love. Even in Hell we know that.”

“It’s not that…” Jonathan swallowed painfully. “That wasn’t easy to get over, Hesthri. The way she—”

“Stop,” Hesthri ordered. “Say it to her, not to me.”

His expression turned wry for a moment, but he complied, shifting his eyes to Natchua’s. “It hurt me, Natch. It wasn’t just…being conned by some smooth operator. I know we didn’t talk about where any of this was going, in Mathenon, and I was content to just let things develop as they would, but…but she’s right. I loved you.” He hesitated, breathed in and out once, and corrected himself. “I love you. And you betrayed me.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was ragged, but she had to say it anyway. “I know that…that’s not enough, nothing is. It’s all I can say, Jonathan. I knew it was going to hurt you, and I hated myself for it, but I did it anyway. I thought…it was important enough. I didn’t have a better idea. I’m just sorry.” She had to stop talking, mostly because the lump in her throat was too painful, but partly because trying to babble out her feelings wasn’t getting her anywhere.

Tears, she noticed belatedly, were running down her face. This was a bad day for Narisian reserve.

“Look at her, Jonathan,” Hesthri all but whispered, stepping next to Natchua and wrapping one arm around her waist, leading her gently but inexorably toward him. “Isn’t that just Natchua in a nutshell? It was stupid and hurtful, but she didn’t have a better idea. She did what she could think of, because it was important, and it doesn’t really matter to her whether she gets hurt. Look at your girl. Your brave, selfless, reckless, beautiful, dumb, clever girl. What the hell is she going to do without you?”

“He doesn’t owe me anything,” Natchua mumbled, looking away.

“That’s for damn sure,” Jonathan sighed.

“Exactly. You’re better off hating me.”

“Oh…hell.” He sighed heavily. “Never once did I hate you. I was… Goddammit, Natch, it’s hard even to stay angry at you, no matter how much you deserve it. At times I downright resent how hard you try to do better. I’m just…I’m not even mad, anymore. It just still hurts.”

His callused fingers took her chin, gently moving her face back toward him. She let him, finding he had stepped close enough to embrace.

“You are not getting rid of me, Natchua. So all that leaves is…how are you planning to make it up to me?”

She opened her mouth, producing exactly as much useful commentary as a fish.

“You’re so focused on everything you do wrong all the time,” Hesthri said softly, gently stroking her back, “I don’t think you’ve ever even noticed how you bring people alive around you, Natchua. Everyone in this house is a better person because you lit a fire under them. People are loyal to you, even after knowing you for just a few days. It’s not because you have any particular idea what you’re doing, and you know it. It’s because your stubborn effort to be better, to accomplish something with the limited and horrible tools you’ve got, inspires people. You showed me the importance of my own potential. And Natchua, you’ve brought my love, the father of my child, back to life. He needs you, too.”

“This…is crazy,” she whispered. “I’m just going to fuck it all up again.”

Jonathan’s hand was still on her chin, and now shifted to caress her cheek. “Yeah…I’m pretty sure you will. You’re kind of a dumbass. Natchua…the hell with it. Hesthri is right, anything breakable is still fixable. I have no idea how this is going to work out, I really don’t. But doesn’t it beat the alternative?”

“I…I don’t…” She could barely breathe out the words; there were no more thoughts forming behind them. Just his face looming right above her, gazing down at her with that gentle expression she had fully expected never to hear again. Everything inside her was cracking under the weight of it.

Hesthri shifted to position herself between them, wrapping an arm around each to push them closer. One clawed hand took each of them by the back of the neck, pushing them the last few inches together.

If not for the both of them holding her up, Natchua probably would have collapsed when he finally kissed her. She slumped against his broad chest, barely held in place by one of his arms and one of Hesthri’s binding her to him. It felt as if she were molten, a warm jelly of sunshine wanting to dissolve into their embrace.

Hesthri nuzzled her cheek when they came up for air. Then the demon lifted her chin as the embrace around them shifted, to be the three holding each other in a circle more than Hesthri pulling them together. Jonathan’s lips met Hesthri’s, and Natchua watched from close enough to taste their shared breath. She looked for jealousy inside herself, and found nothing. She was too close, too much a part of this.

Jonathan pulled them both against his frame, his big hands caressing up and down both their backs, gazing down at them avidly as Natchua and Hesthri kissed deeply in his arms.

Hesthri was the first to hook a claw in Natchua’s robe, insistently tugging the garment aside and slipping in, blunt claws tracing over the soft shape of her. Hands caressed bodies, touching light brown skin and slate gray skin and chitin plates over snakelike scales, catching in the edges of fabric and pulling clumsily.

They shuffled backward, Jonathan’s knees coming to the edge of the bed, and Natchua wasn’t sure which of them giggled as they staggered down onto it.

It was awkward, and uncomfortable, and at moments embarrassing, and somehow, it all worked.

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter >