Propenna’s week was looking to be very successful up until her husband had thrown himself out of the window she mused as she sat in her silver throne, staring down at her daughter and a young mortal girl wielding her husband’s sword.
The girl had the dark hair and the bronzed skin of an Abdullid. Could she be a spy? she wondered, examining the girl before her. An assistant rushed into the room and passed her a stack of papers, which she skimmed through. Propenna shook her head. The girl was a simple Farantine citizen. She had none of the casual athleticism typical of Abdullid agents, and her paperwork checked out. She just happened to have an immigrant for her father, nothing more.
So why did Hektor give her his sword, and how could she have jumped over a building?
“Ms. Thera Majeed” she said, reading the name off her birth certificate. “You claim that my husband, who is your eternal emperor and god I may remind you, fell from the sky and into your cart, destroying it and its cranberry jam cargo completely. He then proceeded to offer his thousand year old sentient magic sword as collateral for the damages before running away?”
“Y-yes your highness.”
Propenna sighed.
“That sounds like him.”
Hamera snorted and Propenna leaned forward. “Hamera, have there been any more sightings of your father?” Hamera gave her an affirmative nod. “He’s been surprisingly difficult to find for a giant glowing god covered in jelly, but his innate magic is glowing like a beacon so it’s a simple matter for my Perception Cabal to track it. He’s on his way to the South Gate now, and I’ve dispatched the Colonel with a unit of my children to intercept. She’s sworn an oath to bring him back, and I’ve yet to see her break one. They should be able to talk some sense into him, or at least stall him long enough for us to get there.”
Propenna nodded in thanks. She was still uncomfortable with how disposable her grandchildren were to her daughter but the Children of Hamera were possibly the most effective magical special forces unit on the continent, and their usefulness made the moral concerns minor.
That sounds like something that Farouk would say, a creeping thought whispered in the back of her mind. She shook her head to clear it. Propenna could not fail their empire or her Hektor, no matter what ridiculous stunt he was pulling at the moment. She couldn’t let nagging thoughts get in the way, and it wasn’t like she could even remember the names and faces of her grandchildren, let alone worry about them.
“Good,” she said. “I trust they won’t try anything stupid?”
“Mother, my children are anything but stupid.”
Having seen their decision making skills first hand many times before Propenna doubted that statement, but she knew arguing that point would get her nowhere. So that was one problem dealt with. Hektor, for all of his virtues, was remarkably passive for a god. If all went according to plan, then he’d be back by noon. That just left a thousand other things she had to deal with today. First of which was finding out exactly who had infiltrated their police forces.
Propenna put the papers aside. “Hamera, have you discovered who bought the officer off, and why someone would have wanted Ms. Thera dead?” Hamera’s scowl deepened. “I sent one of my sons to track him down, but it appears someone got to him first. The constable had been shot minutes after I left for the castle and fed to his bird. Same thing with the man who triggered the alarm after you had ordered the hunt for father to be kept as a discreet affair.”
“Hmm. A botched attempt to hide the bodies?”
“No. It’s far more likely to have been to destroy any evidence of alchemical or magical tampering with the traitors.”
“Shame. I hate it when they’re competent.”
“Wait, WHAT?’ said Thera, the mortal’s fear and trepidation forgotten with her surprise. “You’re saying that there are spies in the police? Why are you so calm about this?” She looked up at Propenna who smirked, enjoying how quickly the mortal was coming to the realization. It wasn’t often she met one this active. Thera’s eyes widened and she nodded thoughtfully. “You’re calm because you planned this. The constabulary are bait. You’ve made them purposefully easy to buy off so all of the corrupt officials, moles, and turncoats are in one place.” Propenna chuckled. She was good for a mortal. “That was the idea at least when we instituted the program sixty years ago.”
“Wh-Why are you letting an ordinary person like me hear this? Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell someone?"
“Unfortunately, everyone who means anything knows about it at this point. The only people who try to interfere with our law enforcement now are idiots or people trying to send a message. I’m afraid in this case it’s probably the latter. And Ms. Thera, I’m sorry to tell you this but you aren’t ordinary anymore, and it is highly unlikely you will ever return to being so. You’re part of whatever this is now, and you jumped over a building. That’s generally not something normal people do, at least in my experience.”
Thera’s brow furrowed. “How did I even do that?” she asked Hamera. “Did I even do that?” The goddesses expression soured even further and frustration leaked through her voice as she said, “Strictly speaking, it shouldn’t have been possible. The three schools of magic available for humans, Perception, Manifestation, and Manipulation don’t allow for what you did. I highly doubt you could have seen hard enough to jump sixty feet in the air so Perception is out. Manipulation deals with transforming one material into another, like what I did with that officer’s gun. That has absolutely nothing to do with flying so it won’t work as an explanation. Manifestation mages can fly, but they do so by riding on the constructs of physical magic they can create. I think you would have noticed if you had summoned a magic disc to lift yourself over the building, so I guess the point is that I have no fucking clue what happened.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Watch your language in the castle Hamera. You know that your father doesn’t like that sort of talk around our subjects. It reflects poorly upon us”
“Father threw himself out of a window in the middle of a council meeting. I think that’s a little worse than my profanity.”
“Fair point. Still, you said three schools and while my knowledge pales in comparison to yours, isn’t there a fourth?”
“Technically yes, there is Fundamental magic. It’s less a school of magic and more a blanket name for the abilities of divine beings such as ourselves however, so I didn’t consider if it bore any significance on the situation. But now that I think on it-” Hamera whipped around to face Thera. “Girl. Do you think wielding the sword gave a measure of my father’s power to you? When you jumped did you hear whispering around you? As if the wind was alive and talking? When you jumped, did it feel as if the wind carried you?”
“N-no, the sword talked but that’s it.”
“Shit. I thought I was onto something there.”
Hamera began to pace, her expression growing more and more irritable. “Wait. Girl, you said that Synefo talks. It talked to you?”
“Synefo?”
“The sword you simpleton. That’s the swords name. Did it talk to you?”
“Yes. Wait, hold on. It mentioned something about not thinking I could actually hear it, what does that mean?”
“It means that aside from the Emperor, not a single person in the past one thousand one hundred and fifty years of that sword’s existence has been able to hear it speak,” Propenna said as her eyes widened with surprise. “Including the royal family.”
The room fell into silence as Hamera’s expression changed from frustration and annoyance to the glee of a child who has discovered a new toy. “What’s the sword saying right now?” she asked, circling Thera. “Nevermind. I’ll remove the middleman.” She reached out and grabbed the sword’s hilt, but with an explosive crack of electricity Hamera was thrown backwards across the room, her smoking hand filling the air with the charred scent of burning skin and ozone.
Propenna stood in an instant, a thin black rapier materializing in her hand. She could feel divine energy course within her, slowing the world to a honeyed crawl as she crossed the room and held the blade of her rapier to Thera’s throat in the time it took the mortal to blink. Thera stumbled backwards in shock but Propenna’s arm lashed out and caught her by the shoulder. “You dare?” she hissed, black steam leaking through her clenched teeth. “Touch my daughter again and I will end you, no matter whose weapon you wield.”
“It’s alright mother,” laughed Hamera from across the room. “She did nothing, I just got a bit big for my britches.” Propenna relaxed her sword arm and let Thera go, as Hamera pulled herself to her feet. Propenna could see her daughter’s burned hand knit itself back together with a wash of purple light. “I deserved that. Girl-I mean Ms. Thera please apologize to Synefo for me, I shouldn’t have grabbed him without permission.” Thera nodded shakily. “He says apology accepted. He also says-” Thera stopped and looked at the sword in horror. “That? No. I’m not saying it. I’d like to keep on living thank you very much.” Propenna flicked her wrist and the rapier disappeared. “Just spit it out”
“Well, he says that if Hamera was half as smart as she thought she was, she’d have started testing instead of questioning, and that it’s rather obvious. He says that I’m the first human with fundamental magic since... Well, since your father.”
The two goddesses stared at her in shocked silence, each trying to wrap their heads around the implications of that sentence, and to make matters worse a dragon chose that exact moment to enter the room. Lord Frederick Leistung Scarwing the third was an impertinent hatchling of an ambassador who delighted in bypassing her castle’s security and bothering the royal family. Propenna was sure he had been sent abroad because no one at home wanted to deal with him. The little brat was wearing his human form, that of a tall and pale man in his early twenties with bright blonde hair in a garishly decorated black uniform.
He grinned, displaying his razor sharp teeth. “Your highness! Funny seeing you here, how’s the husband? It’s strange getting a window into your personal lives.” Propenna sighed. “Frederick, do you have anything important to say or are you just here to stretch the limits of my hospitality?”
“You wound me Propenna,” he said in his lilting accent. “I don’t want you jumping to conclusions. I’d hate to fall out of grace with the family.”
“Yes yes lizard, you are so very clever.”
“Your words not mine. What was it I came here to say again? Ah yes my big brother is dropping by tomorrow.”
Propenna screamed internally. Just one more burning mess to top off this dumpster fire of a day she thought, forcing herself to remain composed. “Hamera” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Please take Ms. Majeed to the guest room down the hall, and make yourselves comfortable.”
Hamera glared at her, but gave a curt nod and escorted the mortal from the room. Propenna loved her children and she hated patronizing them, but they often left her no choice. They had grown up in a world where nothing could hurt them which bred carelessness. No matter how much they resented her for it, they just couldn’t be trusted with sensitive matters.
Frederick’s smile widened, growing too big to look natural on his almost human face. “He wanted his arrival to be kept hush hush, but you know how I do enjoy the ruining of other’s plans.”
Frederick had many siblings, but only his eldest brother Sigismund mattered. He had been the Chancellor of the Draconic Union for over a hundred years, and in that time had nearly tripled its territorial gains through his brutish military acumen and cunning political maneuvering. Known for being the personal ward of King Aissirath and incinerating entire cities, Sigismund's burning hatred for the Makedons was almost as legendary as his short temper. She knew that he could only be coming to kill her husband and subjugate her people, in that order. That itself wasn’t really worrying, he’d wanted to do that for centuries. The problem was Sigismund wouldn’t have come if he wasn't absolutely sure of his success. She hated him and everything he stood for, but the bastard was smart and infuriatingly cautious.
He could have been a real threat if she hadn’t been given advance warning. Now, she had a head start in the race to see who would outmaneuver each other first, but she was missing her staunchest ally. A creeping anxiety began to fill the hole where Hektorious once stood. She needed to bring him back and she needed it half an hour ago.
“Thank you Frederick” she said, with a genuine smile across her face as she realized what the young ambassador had done for her. She just hoped that he couldn’t sense the nervousness that grew behind it. “That was uncharacteristically helpful.” He bowed, his hair shining in the morning light filtering through her office’s great glass windows. “I live to serve, my lady. Now should I exit using the door? I’d do that normally, but I’ve heard self-defenestration has become all the rage with your family.” Her smile dropped. “Get. Out.”
Frederick scampered out of the room, sniggering to himself in the inhuman draconic tongue.
Propenna turned from the door and paced, She didn’t have time for flippant reptiles. She had an empire to preserve, a Chancellor to murder and a husband to rescue from himself, and nobody, not traitors, not a psychotic dragon, and not even Hektorious himself could stop her.