IN WHICH HISTORY IS MADE.

I could feel my brain trying to pop out of its socket. I could feel my elbows trying to part ways. I could feel my thoughts turning to slurry under the weight of the spellcasting. Through the tears, my vision was splitting into doubles and triples, into laughing figments and demonic ghosts that yelled straight through the back of my head.

"Zeph-" I choked out "Zephyr."

Zephyr drifted down and leant me some strength, for a moment. I was holding the ends of two snapping, sparking ribbons, half-real, half-magic, the strands of a half-cast spell I was trying desperately to keep intact. Zephyr bore the load, for a moment. Zephyr, who I spoke with, relied on, and trusted. Zephyr, who pulsed with arcane potential. Zephyr, who watched me take in two shuddering breaths, before putting the full weight of both spell-strands back. I couldn't tell if it was better after a brief reprieve, or worse in comparison. It didn't matter. It hurt.

It wasn't fair. Zephyr was made out of magic, designed for it, even. I was made out of meat. And the meat was breaking. Around me, the fourteen apprentices that Zephyr had collected out of the survivors were crying out, gripping tight in three rough groups, each around single strand that gleamed violently in their shared grip.

Despite the strangeness of yesterday, despite the awe-inspiring visit from the Original that had sent Zephyr soaring away on a twirling pillar of despair and confusion, the campsite had returned mostly to normal. Our wizard had returned, a slightly brighter shade of blue, and had gotten stuck into their work: creating a comprehensive set of arcane wards around the clearing, to replicate in miniature the wards that had for years encircled the Western Citadel. The wards that every single archmage in the Tower of Understood Disasters had worked together to build. Accomplishing this in the middle of the forest, with only myself and a few handfuls of woefully untrained children to lean on, was proving to be what Zephyr called "an intriguing conundrum".

Zephyr had been prowling through the survivors for glimmers of arcane potential ever since Keller had brought up the idea. Whenever they detected the telltale signs of magical talent amongst one of the children, it was a full production. "You have been chosen, for great and terrible purpose!" was the standard line, alongside a flurry of pseudo-angelic limbs and flashing lights. Zephyr made them cry half the time, and made their mothers mad every time. John had been forced to step in after some kind of incident. At any rate, the wards were important. Winter was coming, and with the citadel a smoking ruin, and HIS tower a gleaming pile of rubble, and the river a toxic mess, and all these people moving around, it was a sheer miracle that nothing awful had been stirred up.

Yet.

So, here I was, clutching the two spell-strands with all my might. My arm muscles were spasming and cramping, even though the physical act was doing nothing to relieve the true weight bearing down on my mind and soul. Zephyr was pulling the strands out of the sky one by one, tiny artificial leylines to weave into a connecting anchor. Back in the Western Citadel, the throne of the Protector had been the physical site of the warding structures, out here in the wilds we were preparing to enchant the stout oak tree that had been made into a warm shelter. But Zephyr couldn't start casting the actual spells until all the strands had been woven into a solid structure, otherwise the whole thing would collapse on itself and probably blow up the whole tree. And Zephyr could only conjure one strand at a time...

We were nothing but pots to hold paint for the master artisan. One of the young apprentices had stopped wailing, and started shaking instead, eyes rolled back up in their head, and they let go of the strand. Zephyr dove down, crackling with half-caged lightning. The other three "apprentices", just children, they were only children, were buckling under the weight of the strand. Zephyr snatched it from between them, it was already whipping backwards and forwards, barely controlled, They swept the stumbling, staggering kids away from the circle, towards the non-magical adults, and focused all their energies on bringing it back into proper form... hopefully it would be enough.

Zephyr held six of the strands off to a side, and had to abandon the half-formed seventh as the chaotic, unstable strand thrashed about. You couldn't blame the children, they'd barely had a day of training before we had thrust this burden upon them. It was just, a shame. The abandoned strand zapped a noxious line up into the sky, nothing remained of all that work but a foul stench of rotten paper and a gout of transparent flame. The unstable strand had already been finished and imbued with far more energy before it had been handed to the children for safekeeping. If Zephyr let it go now, right in the middle of camp, there was no telling what it would do. It could hit another of the strands on the way out, and then that one would start to go...

Deep breath in. Deep breath- in. In. Shallow breath in. Shallow breath out. I had given up trying to remember my training. Long ago. Hours ago? Minutes ago. I couldn't take any more of this. I mashed the two strands I was holding into my left hand, and reached out my right towards Zephyr. "G-" I ground out between gritted teeth, and they placed the unstable strand between my fingers.

It was.

Bad.

Three strands, one half-broken. It was just, really bad. No redeeming features. My knees were locked, teeth chattering, having to think as hard as I could. My name is Susan. My name is Susan. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. I have made it through five seconds of this. And I'll do it again. Because the alternative is losing my mind, and dying. Or dying, and then losing my mind.

One. Two.

Three. Four.

Five.

"You could give up." HE said.

"Shut up. You aren't real." But my lips were bloodless with pressure, so it came out in gurgles.

"You could though. It's an option." The voice came from right behind my head. The hissed harmonics like nothing I'd ever heard, like nothing I'd ever forget. How was it fair, that I could remember HIS voice, but not my own mother's? But maybe I could hear her voice. If I concentrated. If I could spare enough of my own mind. Could I- could I hear her? Calling my name.

"Susan."

Yes. Yes!

"Susan. Are you listening?"

Yes...? No.

"Susan. You are doing very well with the unstable strand. It's almost time. Nearly- there. But. One more strand, Susan. Just one more. You need to hold one more strand."

It wasn't my mother's voice. It was Zephyr.

"Can you do it Susan?"

No. But I had to anyway.

"Do not try and nod. It is going into your left hand in three-"

I don't remember anything after that.

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My dreams were full of my mother. And HIM. And someone else.

But none of that really matters.

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I awoke only minutes later, in a rictus of pain, eyes squinted shut against the light. My head was lying on something firm, but comfortable. Turns out, it was Alaxoria's lap. She was staring down at me with as much concern as I was staring up at her. "Susan. Are you dead?"

"No but I- fuck. Fucking. I wish I was. Did it work?"

A blue haze drifted over Ala's head. "No. The instability of the damaged strand spread to the other three you were holding. When they began to ignite, we had to abandon the proceedings in order to rescue you."

I closed my eyes. It didn't make the situation any better.

"Zephyr. You do not need to say things this way." said Alaxoria. The reproachful tones thrummed through her whole body. "Susan give you help with wards, yes? If not for her, not possible at all."

"No. It may be that we lack the necessary equipment and personnel to accomplish this task. This state of affairs is not yet confirmed."

"Ala it's... it's fine." I struggled up into a half-sit, half-slump. The world seemed much colder and more painful, all of a sudden. "It's fine. I'm alright."

The top of the oak tree had been sheered off, and I could see charcoaled branches and smouldering leaves that had sprinkled across the campsite.

"The recovery process was, improvised." Zephyr observed.

Nobody seemed injured, the apprentices Zephyr had recruited were huddled with tattered blankets wrapped around hunched shoulders. Hedda came peeling out from the gathering and flung herself down next to me, wrapping both arms around me. "Susan! Oh Susan, you're alright, I saw you doing the spell and you- well, you flew halfway into the tree!"

I gingerly patted her on the back, my whole body felt exactly like it had been throw at a tree, and then at the ground. It was lucky I hadn't broken anything. I picked myself up off the ground and helped Hedda stand as well.

John came striding into the gathering, he had been patrolling the forest while Zephyr was solely focused on creating the wards. He had one hand held over the side of his face, the other on the hilt of his sword. "What happened? I heard it from all the way at the border, is anyone hurt?"

"No. The warding failed." reported Zephyr, coalescing into a mortal-ish form. John pursed his lips and pulled his hand away from his face to inspect his palm for a moment. I only caught a flash of his left eye - black, and oozing, before Zephyr zipped between the two of us. When they drifted back, John was blinking quickly, eyes clear and exactly as I remembered them. "Well. That is. That is unfortunate. There's no other way to put it Zephyr, we are all still relying on you for protection, whether through the wards or your direct intercession."

Zephyr nodded, "Of course." If a rival spellcaster of sufficient power approached, standard battle doctrine would pit Zephyr against the foe. The rest of us would take on the opposing entourage, trying to get at the spellcaster while protecting Zephyr from interference. Lone roving wizards rarely survived as long as those with protectors. In theory, I could be the one to take Zephyr's position...

John's clear eyes roved across the huddled groups of apprentices, marked out by their wild stares and sticking-up hair and charcoal-smudged fingers. Compassion washed across his features, but it was clear: they were lacking where it counted. "Zephyr, would you be able to try again? Maybe if you had Susan helping you, you'd be able to manage it."

Zephyr said ";".

Alaxoria tried to say something.

I just saw red.

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Hedda let go, Alaxoria tried to stop me, but I just dodged under her swinging arm and ran. I ran, and I ran, and I tripped, and I ran, face burning up, with anger or shame I couldn't tell. Survivors fell back to get out of my way, I would've pushed my way through, but they scuttled away in the face of Lady Susan's wrath. I ran. The sheer. The sheer fucking gall of John, to talk about me that way, the way he always did, the way he always put me up against Zephyr, as if I was just as good as Zephyr, as if I could stand on equal footing with the blue, glowing, gaseous monster.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

As if.

There was shouting behind me, but I swiped my eyes of - not tears, just dust, obviously - and put on a burst of speed, crashing through the undergrowth and setting birds to flapping. My lungs burned and my legs pumped and my arms clawed away at snapping branches and neck-height vines. My boots thudded through punky wood and deep into the loamy soil, I rebounded off one trunk and half-tripped, half-turned, kept running, just running blindly away. Away. Away from the knight of the Western Citadel, the Cutting Right Arm of Her Radiance the Dawnbringer, and all the rest of them. I ran until I tripped, properly this time, and skidded in the dirt. I wasn't crying. I wasn't sobbing. I was just breathing too hard. There was dirt in my eyes.

Shut up.

The little voice in my head was persistent though, and eventually, I had to listen. And what I heard, sent a trickle of ice water down my shame-burnt back:

"You're being watched. You're being watched, and you have been for a long, long time."

I looked up, and met its eyes.

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The creature had picked this moment to approach, when I was beaten, bruised, in the dirt, and muddy with my own tears. It came into the little clearing, crawling on all fours, scrap of cloth held between snaggled teeth. White cloth, clean but for a smear of drool. White? Really?

The creature had the tight, greyish skin and nobbled ribcage that clearly marked it out as one of HIS creations. 'Creations' were just mortals that had been altered for specific purposes, sometimes from people, sometimes from wild beasts. HE had grown his creation armies from rootstock of dragon-slaves, moulding them into a plethora of forms to accomplish HIS strategies and fight against the mortal knights. Dragons had perfected the art of modifying mortals long before the first histories were written, mostly by accident. Each dragon-slave had an overwhelming instinct, welded to its very soul: obey the strongest. OBEY. The STRONGEST. Every dragon, a titanic being of incredible magical and physical strength, was accompanied by a swarm of fanatically loyal creations. When one dragon killed another, as was common in the youth of the world, the fanatically loyal slaves would smoothly shift their loyalty to the conquerer, obeying with just as much zeal.

And so, when HE was assassinated, and the assassin was pulverised, and the pulveriser was strangled, and the stranglers fell to infighting... things fell apart.

And now, one of the creations sat before me, carefully plucking the white flag out of its mouth and giving it a little wave, before crouching down, body low against the dirt. It had two sets of two eyes at the front of its tiny face, blinking in diagonal synchrony.

It had a small mouth, and when it opened I could see it had enough teeth to comfortably fill something twice as wide. The tongue was tiny and forked, licking along bloodless lips. From that tiny, tangled mouth came a voice of phlegm and tongue-stuck teeth. "M-may-gh come with? Higgch-ppt. Stay here-g? No fight. No hg-steal. No toc. Meaning, no talk. Jus stay."

I propped myself up on one elbow, and the creature scuttled directly backwards five paces. "Peace, peace" I waved my other hand towards it, and it slowly, came forwards. Its tiny white flag had gotten dirt smeared on it, and it held it up forlornly. "Peace? Yes? hgg."

I'll not lie, listening to the creature talk wasn't exactly pleasant, but it was clearly alone, intelligent, and had specifically sought me out. Creations weren't dumb, not exactly, just single-minded to the point of madness.

"Yes. Peace. I'll parley with you. What's your name?"

The creation rattled all sixteen of its claws in the dirt, a sudden staccato beat. "... N-. No name. Not yet. Sooning, have name. Plan, talk to people. Get- gggggh. Get name."

"Alright. That's fine. My name is Susan."

"Yes. Susan. Watchhh you. See you. Very good."

I wasn't going to break the truce with this thing, but that did make my knuckles whiten for a moment.

"Watch Susan. Peace. Yes? Come with. Stay with. Help. Help mortal. Talk. Talk lots, talk with people, talk with us. Us help. Gggh-lup. Cold is soon. Bad. All help. Tower dead. No food by self. All help."

The creature was panting at this point, drool speckled the dirt. It clearly found talking a great effort, having to carefully arrange all those teeth with so little room to manoeuvre. I nodded. "It's the same for us. We all need to help, to survive the Winter. Is that what you want?" It tried to say something, and then just nodded frantically instead.

There was a thump, and a crackle of branches coming down. The creature twisted almost back on itself, then back to me. Two eyes were squinted, two were wide in near-panic. "Not me. Not me!" it hissed. "Peace. Me peace. Not all. Just me. Susan is hgggg. Good." and with that it darted towards the edge of the clearing and vanished into the thicket. All that was left was a muddy white handkerchief.

I scrambled to my feet as the thumping came closer, the bushes thrashed back and forth, and a tremendous head poked through the lowest branches. It was bulbous, hairless, and filled with one gigantic bloodshot eye. The eye widened in utter shock as it saw me, and the huge creature let out a startled hooting. Then, the eye slowly narrowed, trawling the undergrowth for any sign of... something. The creature shoved the rest of the way into the clearing, it was smeared with greenish sap, and was dragging a stone club as tall as I was, a crudely made weapon that was bloodstained on both sides. The creature was massive and slow, but it didn't lumber, it just had a lot of muscle to move. Eventually, it dropped the club, and took a step towards me, long, clawed fingers flexing, single massive eye twitching. I could see my reflection in that wide, inky black pupil. I didn't know exactly what this thing wanted, and I didn't want to find out.

I casually reached behind my head and plucked out a single strand of hair from just above my neck. The creature took a step closer, not blinking, staring me up and down. The single hair buzzed between my thumb and forefinger as I spoke four long, convoluted, throat scratching words, until it straightened out into a minuscule silver needle.

The massive bloodshot eye widened as the spell took ahold, and I gave it a sunny smile. It had been a bad day. Whatever this thing was, it was about to have a worse one.

The ensorcelled strand of hair left my fingers with an audible thundercrack and one of my fingernails, shooting upwards before making a vicious turn and darting towards the target. There was a ffst-splat-BANG as the singular hair burrowed right through its eyeball and skull, and unleashed the entire magical charge in a fraction of a moment. Splinters of bone and pale red blood splattered out in every direction, fanning up across the canopy and sprinkling the dirt. I got a little bit of it in my mouth, but none in my eyes, mercifully.

As I spat, the headless corpse tottered forwards a few steps, as if processing the sudden lack of a head. It wobbled backwards and forwards... and backwards... and forwards... and forwards... and into a run? A run! A lumbering sprint towards me with dripping red arms spread wide to catch, great clawed fingers scraping the dirt and twitching like hooked worms. I barrelled forwards to try and duck under its legs. I managed the "under", but not quite the "duck", taking a massive knee to the shoulder as it barrelled past, charging forwards until it collided with a tree with a thump that rained leaves across the clearing. I could barely breath, I had to get up, I had to kill this thing before it could get those talons into my flesh and tear me to pieces. It flailed blindly, I gasped, it turned around, I stood, and it leapt. It was faster than I was, but headless and clumsy. If I kept my cool, I could handle it.

"Like you could handle that spell-strand?" HE said from right behind me.

Not at all, I reached into my second-backmost pocket, then three pocket-levels down into that, and closed my hands on the emerald egg. Better. With my left hand in a back pocket and my right outstretched, I must've looked like a fool trying to bid a charging bull to stop. That was alright though, better to look a fool than to try the same trick on me twice. My right hand glowed bright green, and popped off completely, to land on the loam between us. I hadn't had any practice with this particular weapon, but right now, I didn't need to. The bloodless stump of my right arm shone an even brighter green, and an iridescent spike twice the length of my forearm slid smoothly out... into the chest of the headless beast. We collided as it reached full speed, something crunched in my elbow, it smashed me to the ground, but my blade was sunk deep in its guts. I could feel the pulsation of frantic organs as I waggled the blade around in there. If I was vastly stronger, I'd be able to force the weapon upwards until I sliced the creature in twain, but I wasn't Alaxoria. Instead, I dispelled the effect, shifted my arm, and conjured the blade again at a slightly different angle. Shhnk. And again. Shhnnk. Fluids poured all over my face and trickled past my ears, the beast wriggled and flopped about atop me. Shnk.

Eventually, it stopped moving.

It was awkward, crawling one-handed out from under the half-butchered body, and it was even more awkward to realise I had an audience: a dozen crouching creatures, no two with the same number of eyes and limbs as any other. They carried hammers and daggers and sharpened stakes, and a hunger in their mismatched eyes. A warband, just like the one we had met leaving HIS tower. The one-eyed ogre I'd just killed must've been the strongest, and the leader. Therefore, I was the now strongest creature, and they'd follow - but as they closed in around me, I took stock: I was small, and covered in blood, and only had one hand. It didn't matter that the blood wasn't mine, I didn't look strong. Maybe I'd just gotten lucky. Maybe I was exhausted from my fight with the ogre. Whichever creature killed me would definitely be the strongest.

I smeared the blood away from my mouth with the back of my forearm, and summoned the blade once more. "Come on then. Come on! The day's just started!"

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When Alaxoria and a posse of soldiers found me, I was sitting on a crablike corpse, staring into the middle distance. I almost drew the emerald weapom on her, and she gave me a big hug. Tears cleared tracks through the blood-mud covering my face, mine, and also hers. She helped me find my right hand, twitching under a thin layer of soil, and kept it tucked into her jacket until Zephyr could spell it back on.

All in all, I really wasn't in the mood for lunch.