[31] Act 6 Act 6 Act 6 (Part 2)
By the time the nuns arrived, Castle Whitecrosse was aflame. Smoke poured from the windows on the left side; the sight reminded many of that terrible night at the monastery, and some shrank back until Mademerry exhorted them: "Take heart! We possess protection from beyond this world. Nothing here can hurt us."
She rode Demny sidesaddle as they followed the streak of forest through the main gates of the city and up the slope toward the castle. Queen Mallory, mother of Mayfair, would be inside. When Mademerry was gestating within Astrophicus, Princess Mayfair spoke to her. This occurred over the span of about a week, at least according to Mayfair, whose voice was a pleasant echo in the void; Mademerry herself lacked concept of time. Much of what Mayfair said was utilitarian in nature: This is where you are, who you are, why you matter, what you must accomplish, when you must accomplish it. Yet not all was of that ilk. There were times when Mayfair would speak about nothing relevant to Mademerry at all. She spoke of Earth, and what she was doing on Earth, and a man named Styles, and a speech she was preparing to give, and how she was nervous for it, and how she worried nobody would listen to her or worse that they would listen to her but at a distance, only as shadowy faces in her periphery who never drew any closer no matter how vigorously she implored them. She spoke of Viviendre de Califerne, who hated her and who she hated in turn, and yet how even through this hate she felt a closeness, a connection that served as friendship in lieu of anything else. She spoke of Prime Astrologer DeWint, her tutor who taught her nothing, and various people she knew from the castle, and how she wanted—needed—to make everything correct for them, so that they would in turn love her. And she spoke of her family.
Her family. A father, the Duke of Meretryce's older brother, who died before she was old enough to know him. A brother, whom she killed and for whose death she might never be forgiven. And her mother, Queen Mallory. She spoke much of Queen Mallory.
It was not possible, in the plant's egg, for Mademerry to speak back, and even her thoughts were disordered. She could not respond coherently when Mayfair wondered if she should even be doing what she was doing—either on Earth or in Whitecrosse. Doubts, anxieties, regrets.
Mademerry possessed no doubts, anxieties, or regrets.
Mademerry knew only one thing: she wanted to be Mayfair's friend. Needed to be her friend. She loved Mayfair. Would do anything for Mayfair. Mayfair. Mayfair.
Her instructions were clear.
"Before we go to the vault we must make a brief detour," she said.
"To where," said Demny.
"We must acquire an elf."
"From what the guards were screaming there's elves everywhere," said Cinquefoil, the ferret. "So that'll be easy."
"A particular elf. We need her for the vault, and then to take to Princess Mayfair when the time comes."
Following Mayfair's instructions, Mademerry steered the nuns to a side gate of the castle, which promised to circumnavigate the fighting as well as the growing fire—although their elf would be surrounded by many of her brethren, and combat would be necessary. There were six of them entering through the unattended gate that led into a servants' barracks: Mademerry, Demny, Cinquefoil, Charm the bird, Tricia the hornet, and Obedience the frog. At the monastery were Theovora and the two who refused to come. Lastly there was Pythette, the hare, who received a special mission. She and the corpse of Charisma went to the Door to acquire a "machine" there. It was good Charisma's body was not with them, for it distracted the other girls. However, without Charisma, Charm lagged behind idly, sobbing and doing little else. She would be worthless in a fight. That meant Mademerry had four girls at her disposal to accomplish what Mayfair—her beloved Mayfair—demanded. Mademerry supposed she served as a fifth. Fighting was not beyond her. No, certainly not.
Still, it was a small number of able bodies and now that they were proceeding through the servants' barracks into one of the ancillary hallways half-set into the ground so that only small windows near the ceiling allowed any light they heard the clamor of many feet stomping overhead. A hundred or more. Mayfair said their meager force would be enough to cut through them. Mademerry believed in Mayfair and so it was true.
They went up a small spiral staircase set into the wall and saw the elves clogging the corridor.
The elves were emerging from a seemingly unspectacular door, then proceeded two abreast in a queue toward a bend in the corridor, oblivious of the smoke pouring from the direction they headed. Their actions were automated, synchronized, and lifelessly elegant.
"Tricia and Obedience, clear a path for Cinquefoil. That door is where we'll find our elf. She's the filthiest one of them—that's how you'll know her."
The nuns nodded tersely, then began.
The elves faced away from the nuns and so were unprepared when Tricia and Obedience struck. Tricia, with rapid-pulsing wings, shot like a dart into the line. Though her corruption had been relatively sparse before, upon eating the egg-fruit her lower body transformed; thin and spindly insect legs no longer supported bipedal posture, though her wings thrummed fast enough to keep her afloat in a manner that replicated it. Her stomach and hips had become the elongated abdomen fitted with a needlepoint stinger so familiar and so pesky to those who absentmindedly slapped at the strange buzzing thing that alighted on their skin. Being the size of a human, she possessed a stinger like a rapier, and with a flash it drove into the unprotected back of the first elf, who cried out before staggering; swiftly Tricia retracted her blade and stabbed another. Only then did the elves realize they were under attack.
They turned sluggishly toward Tricia but before the first could stab its spear, Obedience lashed out her tongue and dragged the elf to her, enfolding them in an embrace that smeared them with the toxins she secreted through her slimy skin. Before eating the egg-fruit, Obedience had been rudimentary, a bland type with little unique about her, although a friend to all those in the monastery. Her skin had been green; now it was vivid red and blue, and she warned her sisters that they must never touch her, even by accident. Sure enough, the elf she enfolded with her webbed palms fell back convulsing and spilling saliva from its mouth, before toppling to the floor dead.
Tricia's deft fencing strikes beat back the elves who had already left the room where their target waited. She flipped upside-down and stuck fast to the ceiling just in time for Obedience to bound through the empty space and dive headfirst into the crowd of elves, unconcerned by their spears as she spread herself wide to touch as many of them as possible.
That meant it was Cinquefoil's turn. If Tricia was a graceful swordfighter with her stinger, and Obedience a sluggish but untouchable juggernaut, Cinquefoil was a whirlwind. Her body was only lithe fur and claws and fang and she shot into the room with every sharp element aflash. Her aim was particularly toward throats which if she could slash she might slurp the spilling lifeblood for a moment's boost of energy before pouncing on the next hapless victim. Unfortunately she was also sloppy and ill-disposed toward evasive maneuvers. Before she made it two feet through the door the elves got their spears into her. One impaled her in the side, another caught in her ribcage, and a third went up into the soft unprotected center of her jaw.
Blood streamed down her white fur. Her blood, their blood. For a moment she stood still in stunned silence, still enough for a fourth spear to enter her gut; then a grin sharpened her face. She reached out, seized the shafts of two of the spears and shattered them; this was enough for her wild strength to fling the other elves away from her, before she clawed at the shafts embedded in her flesh and wrenched them out trailing viscous gore onto the ground.
This was the archbishop's final boon, the exchange of his vitality for their own. Had Mademerry not said to the sisters? Eat, and you will never fear pain or death again. Thus Mayfair told Mademerry, and Mademerry told them. They lost many to reach this point, but they would lose no more.
If the elves were at all concerned by the unstoppable force treading before them, they did not show it. They showed nothing on their faces, only harmonious conformity. Cinquefoil snickered and shredded them to pieces.
"Now, Demny," said Mademerry, "we must destroy the mirror."
Demny nodded. She galloped into the room while the dwindling number of elves were eviscerated by Cinquefoil. The mirror was where the elves were coming from, manifesting one after another in single file. Demny swept her spear straight through the middle with frightful strength, enough to split it through the side, end the magical spell that turned it into a portal desisted. What remained of the mirror cascaded upon the floor; bright shards.
The few remaining elves in the room were gashed to pieces by Cinquefoil's whirling claws, while Tricia and Obedience held their own outside. Now—for the one they sought.
Mademerry, still seated upon Demny's back, scoured the room and soon saw their particular elf huddled in the corner, wrapping her head in her arms to keep from seeing the carnage. Cinquefoil, possessed of a bloodthirsty glint in her black-banded eyes, shot toward her, but Demny swung her spear like a club and nailed the ferret hard enough in the stomach to knock the wind out of her.
"Hold, Cinquefoil." Mademerry slipped off Demny and knelt before the frightened elf. "Hello. My name is Mademerry. I do not intend to hurt you. You've something important to do for us."
In the sudden absence of violent sounds the elf girl looked up. Her eyes glistened with tears but she was, like all elves, beautiful. Her name was Temporary. Mayfair said she made the name herself, because like Mademerry she created Temporary for a specific purpose. "But I put some more thought into your name," Mayfair had said in Mademerry's dreams.
"You're killing my friends," Temporary sobbed.
"We'll be your friends now," said Mademerry.
She nodded to Demny, who seized Temporary with one arm and lifted her easily despite Temporary's spasming protests.
"Now to the vault," said Mademerry.
—
The vault.
After delving into the bowels of Castle Whitecrosse, into a subterranean blackness broken only by the few flickering candles they carried, they finally reached its monumental doors. Two torches, perpetually aflame at either side, ensured the engraving of a cruel and suffering Christ would always be seen by any who came this far.
It was a door that seemed to demand ceremony; Mallory gave it none. Trudging impatiently in all her armor and armaments she slapped her hand onto the seam between the two doors. "Open," she spat out like a slur, and at her bidding the giant doors slowly responded. Stone scraped against stone and dust streamed off the artistic grooves while slowly, too slow, foot-tappingly slow, the doors swung inward. Mallory set to pacing, circling with her gaze levied at her feet and her hand sliding up and down the hilt of the sword sheathed at her hip. "Come on. Come on now. Hurry dammit."
Finally an aperture opened wide enough for Mallory to muscle through even with all her armor. Those she brought with her—seven knights, eight maidservants, the Fool, and Shannon Waringcrane—bustled behind.
"What is this place," Shannon muttered. Mostly to herself. She was second in line behind Mallory. Her hands would not stop trembling and she kept thinking about that elf ambassador, that utter imbecile. Mordac and Tintzel wanted her executed and Shannon interceded on her behalf, thinking she was simply stupid. Look where that got you. She fought down the impulse to say, like a child, "I want to go home." She hadn't been a child for a long time and now was the worst place to start. Surprise had stupefied her most of the journey into these depths but now she was waking up. This vault was where they kept the magic relics. Something in here, she hoped—she never stopped hoping—could open the Door and bring her and Jay home. At least Jay wasn't here. If she had to worry about saving him as well as herself—
"Before John Coke came," said a dry and dour voice behind her, "Whitecrosse was not a Christian country. Nor was it called Whitecrosse."
It was, Shannon realized, a response to her question. She thought she'd spoken it two minutes before but glanced behind her and they had still only just barely stepped through the vault's doors. Her head was a whirr. Focus difficult. Although she'd slept with Mallory the night before she felt the way she did when she hadn't slept with anyone for a long time. Psychosomatic. Focus. Straighten your gaze and focus.
She blinked. Became aware of her surroundings: the vault. Like the torches beside the doors, there were torches here too, still burning bright even though nobody had ever come inside to light them. Because of them, the dimensions of the vault were clearer than any of the interminable underground corridors they navigated to reach it. It was, like so many spaces in this castle, a broad space, with a high cavernous roof (the roof unilluminated but at least twenty feet tall, perhaps thirty or more). Also a deep space, stretching on and on.
Alcoves were carved into the walls in repetitive patterns. In each alcove was a pedestal, and on each pedestal was an object: the relics. Between the alcoves, engaged against the wall, were gigantic statues of men, which at first seemed to be Biblical figures, but upon second glance had their faces obliterated into plain masks of bare marble. Queen Mallory, unconcerned with any of the relics near the front of the vault—staffs, spheres with murky objects set inside—continued doggedly onward.
"The people worshipped not Christ but a wicked Pope, who was only a man but claimed he possessed the power of a god. And nobody dared stand against him, though in their hearts they knew he was no deity."
Shannon, attempting to discern by looks alone what each relic did and which might be the best to use to defend herself, turned toward the voice that droned behind her. To her surprise, after finally paying the slightest attention to the speaker, she found it was the Fool. The bells at the ends of his coxcomb and codpiece twinkled, but otherwise he was disastrously altered from the obnoxious pun-spewing clown of before. Maybe the light, but every inch of his forlorn face cast a dark shadow. The bulbous protrusion of his comically large nose cut a black shard straight through his chin and cheek and the effect was that he looked like a horror movie monster half-glimpsed from behind the couch in a movie Mother fell asleep watching. And his voice matched. The reedy high falsetto was now a bass drumbeat.
"What?" Shannon said.
"The Pope built this shrine as a testament to his own image. Frightful places, so to strike fear into the hearts of those he made watch his mystery cults and unsightly catholic rituals. Those statues? They all used to wear his face. And there, on that altar you see before you?" He pointed to a stone table set in the center of the vault chamber, which Mallory vaulted over and Shannon walked around. "There he used to perform human sacrifices. The blood spilled from the throat would pool into a chalice from which his followers were forced to drink."
It had the character of a ghost story to match his ghostly face and Shannon shuddered. Only because she was already on edge, though.
"The Pope was John Coke's first adversary, before Devereux or the Californian horde or the dragons to the west. In this very chamber he wielded his first relic against the Pope's clergymen, who knew wicked arts. Right there, where you're passing now, he clashed against the Pope, and eventually drove his blade into the blackguard's mouth and down his throat, slaying him once and for all. The virgin who was supposed to be sacrificed at that time, whose life John Coke saved, was the Lady Tivania. From the two of them flows the entire royal lineage of Whitecrosse, ending now with our current queen."
Mallory Tivania Coke. They neared the end of the vault chamber. It was difficult to see the doors where they came in.
"To erase the Pope's vile deeds from memory, John Coke used the Pope's very own relic—the Mustard Seed—to bury his shrines and temples under a hill. That's the hill Whitecrosse was built upon."
On the wall that rose up before them, marking the vault's end, were set three alcoves. The last five alcoves on either side of them had been empty—Shannon kept an eye out even as the Fool told his story—but two of these three were not.
"This is where the fate of Whitecrosse has always been decided," the Fool said. "Here we shall see if John Coke's blood remains strong enough to save us. And here, set into this wall, are the relics John Coke himself used: the Shield of Faith, the Armor of God, and the Sword of Christ."
Out of the seriousness of the situation Shannon felt herself snap back to earth. Those were dreadfully banal names. Wasn't Armor of God a Jackie Chan movie? Shannon remembered it playing on TV once. Right. Long, long time ago. Mother had been watching it, of course Mother would never remember that she'd ever seen it, but Shannon possessed a significantly stronger memory. Armor of God. That was after her father killed himself. Shannon didn't remember Mother watching many movies before then.
What a ridiculous film. Jackie Chan gallivanting across the world on an Indiana Jones-style adventure, fighting Amazonian women in high heels. Now here was Shannon's own Amazonian woman, beckoning her knights over with rapid hand gestures to help her out of her current suit of armor and into the Armor of God. In the movie the Armor of God was a dynamite jacket Jackie Chan wore to defend himself from evil monks. Here it was a comely, silvery suit of plate metal perfectly fitted to Mallory's body despite her not being its original user. She picked up the blade, which had a golden hilt with a ruby set into it, and which gleamed with bright but pale light in the dark. The Shield of Faith was missing. Maybe that was the shield Jay carried around with him.
Armor of God. This whole thing might be a movie. Farcical, strained. Except now Shannon was inside the action although Mother remained on the other side of the screen, nodding off on the sofa. Even if her own daughter was the star of the film Mother would never remember watching it. Isn't that right Mother?
No, right now Shannon wasn't the star. Mallory was. She transformed from a beautiful woman to something fundamentally above the level of human within the godly glowing armor. Shannon knew Mallory was capable at combat. But that sense of condescension crept back. Everything here was beneath her. How could she trust Mallory so fully? Wendell had been capable too. Yet like Mallory certain strange predilections afflicted him; like Mallory something glinted in his eyes that were at other times so dull and dead. She remembered him, wheeling away from the jeep with that ridiculous rifle in hand—and then he was gone. Shannon couldn't trust Mallory to not do the same.
Shannon was, as they kept telling her, the heroine. The star. She only needed agency.
"Where's a relic I can use," she asked the Fool.
"Hm?"
"There are other relics, yes? I need one. Come on."
Mallory was busy inspecting herself in a tall and dusty mirror set between two of the alcoves, so Shannon dragged the Fool back the way they came, to the relics they'd already passed, and asked him to tell her what they did.
"There's the Gourd of Jonah," the Fool said, with a tour guide's tonelessness. "No matter how often you quaff from it, still it pours clean and delicious water. Of much use to John Coke on his quest through the desert waste of California. Over there's the Javelin of Goliath, once wielded by a mighty giant John Coke slew." The spear he indicated, which barely fit within its alcove, looked too heavy for even Mallory to wield. "That one's the Lyre of David, from which issues beautiful music no matter how inarticulate the player, and that's the Holy Grail, the final trophy John Coke won before his retirement."
"Does it grant immortality?" Shannon asked, eyeing the golden chalice (but Christ was a carpenter, and his cup would be of wood—that was also from a distant movie).
"Only of the spirit," the Fool said mournfully. "Or so they say."
Figured. Even fantasy can only go so far. "What's this?" She pointed to a simple trumpet, a horn with one narrow end to blow on and a wider end from which sound came out magnified. "Does this just play beautiful music too?"
"The Trumpet of Jericho. It can raise and cast down walls."
"What kind of walls?"
The Fool shrugged.
Hm. Compared to the other relics they'd passed, it seemed moderately useful. Shannon envisioned building a gigantic wall to seal them off from their attackers, although that'd be a waste of time down here, where there was no other exit. Maybe by "tearing down" walls she could create another exit. No, that was a bad idea too, tearing down walls underground was a great way to bury yourself alive. Whatever. It could possibly be useful, so she plucked it from its pedestal and wiped the dust off its brass surface.
"Is there any relic that gives you, I don't know," Shannon tried to think up a creative power, "super strength or something?"
"Yes. The Armor of God grants its bearer great strength, speed, endurance—"
"Any others? Look. Let's do this the less stupid way. Tell me which relics would be good for a fight. Can you do that?"
"As you request. Over here is—Oh."
The Fool stopped. The constant jingle-jangle of his bells quieted and frigid silence layered upon the vault at once. Shannon's hands reflexively went to her arms, and her breath in the torchlight was a white puff. The vault had been like ice the entire time, but only now did Shannon realize, and in this void of sense she became aware once more of the goosebumps crawling along her skin. Ahead, in the far distance, where the doors of the vault were, a pink glow emanated. It was not the pale light of the torches. It looked like candy.
She'd have to make do with the trumpet. Snapping her fingers at the Fool, she backpedaled toward Mallory, keeping an eye on the candy aura that grew steadily stronger each second.
Still walking backward, she was startled when a firm hand fell on her shoulder. Turning and seeing Mallory was less reassuring than it might have been otherwise.
"Finally," Mallory said. "This place is as good a battlefield as any. Take up your weapons, men."
Her seven knights formed up behind her. The Fool, glum-faced, joined the maidservants who kept to the back—many of them gripping onto one another in their own overwhelming terror—and Shannon wasn't exactly sure where she should stand. She looked down at the Trumpet of Jericho and then took her place slightly behind the knights.
"Let's see, a speech. A speech on the eve of battle, that's the thing to do." Mallory nodded to herself. "Ah, what else is there to say even? Men, you and me, we were born into a world that didn't need us. A safe and solved and happy world, where everything that would ever be done had already been done. God had set his machinery aright via the instrument of John Coke and everything turned exactly the way he wanted it. I found the world was like this when I was thirteen and from then on I've lived as a corpse. One animated, walking about, but a corpse nonetheless. Only in the dream of a world yet unsolved could I revive within myself a brief moment of vitality. Men, today that fantasy becomes reality. Today we are John Coke. And for this one moment, brief though it may be, all our deathful life was worth it. If we survive, the memory of this day will sustain us unto our old age; surrounded we shall be by songs, poems, hymns, and paeans to our doughty deeds, ways to expand this moment till it spans centuries.—There. That ought to suffice, I'm no great orator."
She glanced back sheepishly, radiant in her beauty despite the sheepishness. For a moment Shannon finally saw her fully in the Armor of God and her trembling transformed into an entirely different character. Mallory: Here she stood, a warrior queen, boyish with her blonde hair and full set of armor, standing taller even than many of the knights (though not all), and her blue eyes dazzling in their intensity. Those eyes noticed Shannon standing more-or-less with the knights and her smile became a smirk.
"Ah, you. The lapdog wants to prove she's a courser. Worry not, my cherry. Survive this and I'll fuck your brains out until dawn."
Did she really have to say that out loud for everyone to hear? Utterly incorrigible. But Mallory was already turning back toward the pink aura. Well. The comment certainly erased whatever was left of Shannon's apprehensions.
The clomp of boots in a synchronized march reached them, resounding through the vast walls, before the Effervescent Elf-Queen floated into view with her arms splayed wide for no conceivable reason. In an ordered mass behind her walked her soldiers, the elves, identical faces in identical red uniforms given the gloss of hard candy by the pink aura that emanated from their leader. On her palms were eyeballs; her actual eyes remained closed, and a steady hum percolated from her general direction. Shannon couldn't tell if it came from her throat or some other source. Maybe a hum that dripped out the pores of her skin. Why not. They never needed to explain it in the movies.
She stopped fifty feet from where Mallory stood and all her elves stopped too with a single, unified stomp of their feet. There were twelve evenly-spaced rows of them and it was impossible to tell how far they stretched back because eventually perspective collapsed them on each other. Possibly they spanned the entire vault. Fewer than three hundred and Shannon would be shocked. Likely much more.
The eyes on the Elf-Queen's palms squinted and her mouth contorted into an angelic frown. A frown like a parent to a disobedient child—as if Shannon knew what that looked like.
"Hm. You seem exactly like Tivania," the Elf-Queen said to Mallory. "So you're that mindless whore's spawn. That he would return to her after he had me—"
Mallory launched forward and swung her sword.
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It happened in an eyeblink, literally, so that Shannon missed all but the tail end. In the space of that blink Mallory somehow cleared half the distance between her and the Elf-Queen and though her sword was still nowhere near its target an arc of pure and bright light cut through the air. In that brief moment the Elf-Queen dispensed two tears or bubbles or something from her hand-eyes and the bubbles absorbed the impact of the light, or at least spared the Elf-Queen herself from the impact. The foremost elves on either side of her were also struck and fell to the floor in halves. The bubbles split open, dispensing a splatter of blood and chopped body parts. Shannon staggered back, gripping a hand to her mouth. The uniformed elves who were bisected weren't the issue, but the things that came out of the bubbles had the gruesome likeness of aborted fetuses.
"SLAUGHTER HER FRIENDS FOR ME, CHILDREN," the Elf-Queen screamed. "TIVANIA IS MINE."
It began.
The elves charged forward, wielding spears and swords, and Mallory's knights rushed to meet them. Mallory zipped at the same frightful, inhuman speed but before she could bring her blade up into the Elf-Queen's body a whirling spiral of pink bubbles emerged from out of each palm, which popped to dispense a deluge of writhing bodies in Mallory's way. The knights met the elf army and metal clashed against metal and Shannon stepped back blank on what to do until a maidservant behind her screamed and with a flailing finger drew her attention to a volley of arrows soaring in an arc from far behind the elf front lines.
Shannon lacked any time to think an image other than WALL. She pressed the Trumpet of Jericho to her lips and blew, ignoring the flood of dislodged dust that swept back onto her throat on the initial intake until the long, doleful, and yet somehow triumphant note blasted out of the horn and a wall burst inexplicably out of the ground to catch the arrows before they landed.
Hacking, fighting the impulse to hack and only causing tears to stream from her eyes, Shannon finally expelled the dust and considered her handiwork. The wall spanned most of the vault's breadth and rose almost to the ceiling. It was comprised entirely of red brick, which Shannon immediately thought was suspicious, because that was the image of a wall that had been in her mind when she blew the horn, and it seemed odd for such a schoolhouse-style wall to be what this magical fantasy artifact summoned by default.
That didn't matter. First she should seal the Fool and the maidservants behind a wall where they would be safe until the fighting was over, and then she could figure things out herself while she assisted Mallory. The speed at which the wall came up was reassuring to its combat applications and maybe Shannon should actually just seal herself behind the wall too and let Mallory with her superhuman abilities handle it and really if she tried to get involved she would probably just get in the way and also get herself killed yes? You let professionals handle things in their areas of expertise and you don't tell doctors or policemen how to do their job. Yeah and if Mallory dies because you didn't block a thousand arrows raining down on her then what good will it be sealed in a perfectly safe tomb waiting for death by starvation?
Her red brick wall was still standing to defend her so the least she could do was seal the maidservants and then decide what to do for herself. She blew the trumpet again, this time—as an empiric test—imagining a wall made of solid steel, and sure enough a solid steel wall shot up exactly as she planned it in her head. It made not the slightest whit of sense for it to work that way but—
The instant the steel wall rose, the brick wall defending her shattered into dust that dispersed before it even reached the ground. That left her facing a sea of red uniforms and red blood spurting and it took all of two seconds for an elf knocked back by a blow of a knight's shield to notice her and come rushing with a spear.
That gleaming spearpoint was aimed for her stomach and in a single, horrible instant Shannon felt like she was in a nightmare, the kind where you're just in your bedroom but you can't move and a shadow man is staring at you from the window and he starts to slowly open the window and you can't move and he crawls inside one limb after another and you can't move and he's getting nearer and nearer and you can't move and you scream and wake up. For Shannon that scream came in the form of a tragically strangled toot of the trumpet that nonetheless launched a narrow steel wall out of the ground under her attacker, a steel wall that grew taller and taller taking the elf with it until it finally reached the vault's high ceiling and snapped the elf's spine against it with a crunch Shannon knew for a fact she heard despite the din of the battle raging around her.
Strangely, killing that elf erased all panic instantly. For not even one moment—and her mind was so clear she could have this curious thought—for not even one moment did her sense of morality balk at the murder she just committed. Not even a twinge. Instead, she realized exactly how correct it was. How correct it was that she stood here now and fought alongside Mallory and her knights, how the very bastion of organized and rational civilization in this world was threatened by this horde of psychotic invaders, how rather than fight merely to save her own life she ought to focus her efforts on salvaging this kingdom from utter desolation.
Creating the wall against her attacker destroyed the one protecting the maidservants and the Fool. Yet Shannon knew she could not waste her relic's singular concurrent usage to defend nine minimal and ancillary components of the whole when its overall mechanism was under threat. Already elves rushed past the voided space and brandished their spears at the women, who fled screaming for the very back of the vault, where there would be nowhere else to run. If they could distract even a small part of the elfin forces for a few seconds they were serving a more valuable use than they could otherwise hope to achieve—Shannon refused to even glance their direction.
She blew the horn (God there was still so much dust, she wished she hadn't written off the Gourd of Jonah as useless earlier) and a wall arose from under her feet. Kneeling carefully and holding onto the top to ensure she didn't lose her balance, she rose into the air and stopped about halfway to the ceiling. Here she had a fuller, tactical view of the battlefield. Ahead, the seven knights formed a locus around which the elves swarmed. No—six knights. One, squat and with a helm sporting horns of a bull, had fallen to a knee with blood streaming down his sides, a lance embedded into his armpit and a broken shaft emerging from his neck. Further ahead, Mallory struck at the onslaught of bubbles that spurted out of the Elf-Queen's palms, bubbles upon bubbles, an almost sheer wall of bubbles rising to the ceiling in spiral patterns that prevented Shannon from seeing the state of the forces arrayed behind her. (It also blocked those forces, particularly the archers, which was the only reason Shannon was able to remain so high for so long.)
Slices of light shot up, down, to the sides, blasting holes in the wall of bubbles that were immediately filled by more bubbles, and more bubbles, and more bubbles. The bubbles that weren't instantly sliced eventually popped and naked, amniotic elves rolled out, kicking and writhing a few moments before clambering to their feet, seizing a weapon from one of their fallen comrades, and hurling themselves into the fray.
Alright. Any war of attrition was a lost cause. They needed to eliminate the Elf-Queen to achieve victory. But the knights, overwhelmed, were dying one by one. The sixth stumbled forward, swinging his broadsword sloppily and still managing to take down an elf on his way into death. The fifth was struck again and again by elves on all sides until their weapons found a path between his armor. The remaining four had their backs to each other as they fought, creating a more defensible formation, but they were besieged on all sides.
Okay. Great. You better understand the battle. But what will you do?
Her walls constructed themselves quickly but only covered one direction. No matter how much she tried to imagine a rounded wall, or two walls at a juncture, only a single straight wall ever emerged. That limited her options and if she allowed herself to get surrounded like the knights she was finished.
What she needed first and foremost was more firepower. This vault was filled with relics and so far it didn't seem like any of the elves got the bright idea to pick them up and start using them, which left an opening for Shannon.
Her view from above, though occluded by the bubbles, allowed her to see some of the vault's walls, into which the reliquaries were set. The first few alcoves contained the relics the Fool described to her, but just barely she caught a glimpse of the next alcove down. She possessed not the faintest clue what was in it. But there was a chance it could change the course of the battle entirely.
Shannon took a fraction of a second to mentally rehearse her next move and then put it into practice. She blew the trumpet again, the wall under her disappeared, and a thin tall wall emerged from the distant alcove shooting toward her.
On its path, the wall plowed through elves and bubbles alike, but nothing stopped its forward momentum. She landed, stumbling, and when the wall stopped inches away from her she reached out and seized the relic it carried with it: A long thin rectangular stick of wood marked by a series of notches equidistant from one another. After a bizarre moment trying to make this alien shape mean something in her mind she realized it was a measuring stick. A ruler, in casual parlance.
Grabbing it, the following facts entered her brain unbidden:
Of the children of man, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Whitecrosse, were nine.
Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Cleveland, were one.
Of the children of the fae, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their mother, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Elf, were seven hundred and sixty-three.
Oh fucking Christ really? Really? Did she seriously grab a relic from the book of fucking NUMBERS? Its power is COUNTING? They did this to her? They seriously did this to her NOW?
"Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Elf" rapidly changed, dropping in swaths as Mallory slashed and rising again as the Elf-Queen spawned more. Those of the tribe of Whitecrosse dwindled to eight and Shannon glanced to see one of the four remaining knights stagger and fall without even a groan. But none of it helped! She knew there were tons of elves and not many humans. She KNEW that.
Tribe of Cleveland. Tribe of Cleveland oh my GOD she hated all of it, every last—No. No, hold yourself together, now is not the time. Like the trumpet maybe this ruler has more uses than meets the eye. Think. You do taxes for a living or did you forget that? Numbers are your specialty, you can use this somehow, think!
She lacked time to think. Several elves broke off from the vortex enveloping the knights, noticed her, and approached with swords and spears. Although she backed herself against the wall of the vault they still approached from multiple directions, the exact worst-case scenario given the trumpet's limitations.
Shit. Shit.
Mallory where were you. Mallory didn't you say you protected what was yours. The numbers of the tribe of Whitecrosse kept dropping. Seven now. Six. Mallory. Mallory help. Help her. Help her—
Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Cleveland, the ruler said to her, were two.
What? Two?
Jay. Jay had come back. Never in her life had Shannon thought she would be so happy to see him. If she bought enough time. Just a little longer—oh what was she thinking Jay was worthless—
Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Flanz-le-Flore, were one.
Flanz-le-Flore. She knew that name. Where did she hear it before. The forest. That's right. The forest. But why—
The unmistakable sound of a gunshot rent the battle straight down the middle.
—
"It's her," the elves told their queen. "It's Flanz-le-Flore."
Damn that slut. So eager to show up to your funeral hm? But Tivania's spawn was proving more troublesome than expected. The Effervescent Elf-Queen well knew the limits of John Coke's enchanted sword and armor, but she had failed to account for the innate physical prowess of the woman herself. So agile and possessed of unladylike brute strength, she was a rather tedious thorn in the thumb.
It would not be good to deal with both Tivania and Flanz-le-Flore at the same time, from two different directions. Hm, hm, hm. How to proceed.
Create a wall, a voice said in the back of her mind.
Hm? The Effervescent Elf-Queen certainly did not think that thought herself. Yet she heard it all the same, clear as any other thought. How curious. How peculiar. She lacked time to consider where that thought came from. Perhaps she was mistaken; seeing the woman who blew the trumpet building and destroying walls of her own may have engendered the thought unexpectedly. Who knew. Regardless of its origin, it was sound advice.
Amid the endless array of her children that wretched whore's offspring forced her to continually sacrifice simply to stay afloat, the Effervescent Elf-Queen produced two very special bubbles that she made sure to send drifting behind her and away from Tivania. These bubbles popped without problem and two more of her beautiful children were born; her other children rushed to aid them, cleaning and clothing them and handing to each a paralyzed fae captive. No explanation was necessary. All the Effervescent Elf-Queen's children possessed an instinct as to their purpose.
The newborn elves devoured their faeries. Wiping the blood from their chins, they positioned themselves in the center of the vault, with their backs to one another so that one faced toward the Effervescent Elf-Queen and one faced toward the direction of Flanz-le-Flore (who was still too far to be seen). Then each activated their animus.
Elves were once fae themselves. Like fae, even like humans, they all possessed a unique animus. Unlike fae, they could not activate this animus at will; they required true fae blood to tap into that ancient wellspring of power. Unlike humans, though, drawing from this wellspring did not corrupt their bodies or their souls. Elves were perfect; they could not be corrupted. They were thus superior to both humans and those wild, untamable, irascible, irredeemable fae creatures who snickered at your misfortune and schemed to deepen it to a yawning black pit of despair.
As the queen of the elves, and as—though she loathed to admit it even to herself—and as a pureblooded faerie who could only produce John Coke's offspring rather than become one herself, she had her own power. That was to control what animus her children possessed. Within reason of course. This world had certain rules, hm-hm-hm. No one save the Master might break those rules.
The animus she gave her newest children broke no rules. A simple animus of localized effect. They might form a barrier that none could penetrate. They did so now, one barrier erecting on one side and one on the other, forming a double wall that could not be disrupted by assaulting its creators from either side, as they were sealed within a small and impenetrable pocket. The barriers were translucent pink, much like the skin of her bubbles, but by no means were they fragile. Let Flanz-le-Flore rail against them all she might, snap her fingers in fury.
Let her. Let her! It would be her turn soon enough, oh yes. Soon enough the Effervescent Elf-Queen would have her revenge. First on Tivania, then on Flanz-le-Flore, and afterward—why not? She'd take the relics and travel on to California to eradicate the seed of that final paramour John Coke took, that exotic heathen princess with the hideous dark skin. No more, nothing more, none of them anymore, and only then would the Effervescent Elf-Queen's jealousy be sated. Only then this aching, horrible pain in her heart might be closed, the wounds that horrible man inflicted on her with his thoughtless and cruel infidelities, that horrible horrible man who for no reason she could explain she loved, no reason logical or passionate, yet she loved him nonetheless, every woman had loved him, as though he possessed a charm or enchantment of his own yet she detected none upon him. As though this world's Master had written it to be, and these dreadful pawns held no recourse but to obey, to love on demand, to fall into throes of passion powerful enough to eradicate entire nations.
Once they were all eradicated, she would be free. Free of these thoughts, free of these pains. Nothing left would remain save her and her children, and finally her unquenchable aching love might expend itself on a truly benevolent, motherly purpose, envelop her children until she was finally exhausted enough to die in peace.
Oh let her simply be a mother, she thought as her dismembered children rained down all around her. In response, more and more tears flowed from her eyes.
—
So close. Oh they were so close. The stench of that woman pervaded thick and it drove Flanz-le-Flore insane. Like a weasel in its frenzied war dance an energy electrified her body and she could stem it solely by seizing tight to Wendell Noh's chest as he casually, carelessly, yet precisely aimed his cannon of a rifle and fired a supercharged bullet that passed through six, seven, eight, nine elfin bodies before stopping. Convenient of them to approach in neat and orderly rows.
Wendell Noh handled the "pump action," replaced a new bullet into the "chamber," and took aim again with nonchalance. If only Flanz-le-Flore could pause the frantic discombobulation of her thoughts to admire the heroic assuredness with which he handled his weapon of choice, his ".700 Nitro Express" as he once explained during an animated and longwinded digression from his typical stoicism that detailed the gun's history, composition, and power. But it was a fever inside her, a burning she could not tamp out. She knew the Effervescent Elf-Queen was near and no longer could she control herself. Her fingers moved automatically, snapping rapid-fire to transform elf after elf into vegetables and their metal weapons into more bullets for Wendell, but this did nothing for her, provided no satisfaction. The devastated corpses of the elves possessed suddenly of gaping holes in their chests as they toppled to the ground sated her bloodlust more readily, but she knew until she saw the Elf-Queen annihilated no solace would reach her.
Four hundred odd years ago, in a much younger world, Flanz-le-Flore was a much younger queen. Youngest, indeed, among the fae, and treated with flippant carelessness by her supposed peers on the council. Ostracized in such a way, she was somewhat more disposed toward the new race of humans constructing their cities out of the bounty of her woodland, allowing them safe passage if they respected her. She observed them too, curious, as it is natural for fae to be curious creatures, and when she was younger she was far more curious than now. But it was idle curiosity, slothful curiosity, curiosity for the sake of a distraction from the endless passage of time that ticked away without meaning or purpose beyond the pursuit of tame passions: theater, fashion, so forth. So it was—until John Coke arrived. John Coke. John Coke. Oh, John Coke. He was the purpose. The entire purpose of the entire world; she knew that, understood it as surely as she understood the Master's hand in these dealings. Were there anything more in this world than idleness and sloth, it was contained within his soul. She understood that and understanding it desired it more than anything. To escape these confines, to find something greater, to strive—was that not the value of life? Or perhaps it was only valuable to one who had no reason to strive; perhaps those trapped within perpetual strife find beauty and meaning and desire within blissful, pleasant negation.
Only a Flanz-le-Flore given four hundred years to ponder these philosophies in retrospect could voice them; the younger Flanz-le-Flore knew only she loved him. Loved him, needed him, craved him. Frightened of her own feelings she at first teased and tricked him when he entered her forest, but shortly she became his ally and assisted him in defeating the Dread Lizard Devereux who so rudely set fire to her wood. In her youth and naivete she thought that would be enough, she was still capricious and wily, she could only tease and not make known her feelings directly. So he left her wood and adventured elsewhere.
Why her, though. Why the Elf-Queen of all her fellow fae royalty. Flanz-le-Flore understood why he might prefer that Tivania woman, they were of the same race after all, but why the Elf-Queen. What did she say or do. Was she simply then the hopeless, desperate lover that Flanz-le-Flore was now? Did she throw herself at John Coke the way Flanz-le-Flore threw herself at Jay Waringcrane? Were it only human paramours she could tell herself it was the natural order. Squirrels with squirrels and wolves with wolves. But the Elf-Queen. The Elf-Queen.
The name alone tinged her vision red. A surge of unmitigated passionate hate and that hate had not as she once thought quenched itself by the elves' disqualification from being fae. She hated so strongly she hated the hatred for what it did to her, how it gripped and moved her ways she would otherwise never move. It was hate like a vice, uncontrollable despite the shame it built inside.
Yet what she hated most was this wall.
A bright pink wall that perfectly sealed off the last segment of the vault. No weaknesses or gaps, simply pure animus employed to its particular purpose. Wendell Noh's bullets despite their ferocious power ricocheted harmlessly. Flanz-le-Flore's snaps did nothing; she would need to transform the wielder of the animus, yet she could not see them behind the wall. Should she transform the real walls of the vault to tunnel around it, this ancient buried chamber would surely collapse.
On the other side of the wall was the object of Flanz-le-Flore's jealous, wrathful obsession, the loathsome creature she desired utterly to destroy—and who desired utterly to destroy her in turn. The Effervescent Elf-Queen.
There had to be a way through. Flanz-le-Flore couldn't simply wait. Not now. Not so close. The need pounded inside her, the feeling that without the destruction of her erstwhile rival she would never know peace again. (But she'd known peace for four hundred years.) (That's addiction for you. Four hundred years sober and one taste is all it takes to tumble back down—like poor Wendell and his tobacco, who craved it though she had denied it from him for weeks.) (If you don't kill her here she'll hunt you down anyway. She has as much reason to hate you for how you led the council against her.) (Then fight her in your own territory. Where you have the advantage.) (No, here she's distracted by the human queen. That's who she's fighting on the other side of this wall, nobody else can open the vault. That's why she sealed herself off, she can't handle you both at once. This is your best chance.)
"Not my idea of an adventure," Wendell Noh muttered as he shot down another column of encroaching elves.
Her arms tightened around his chest, her fingers still snapping. "There shall be a much more fearsome adversary for you to face, my hero. Patience."
Yet she herself could not remain patient. There must be some way through the wall. Perhaps the relics? Almost all of them remained in the accessible part. Though she distrusted such rule-breaking objects, if necessary she might—
"A portal might work, perhaps," said a voice behind her. Clear and well-intoned despite the maddening brawl that encircled them.
Ready to snap her fingers, Flanz-le-Flore looked behind her, though intuition told her it was no elf who spoke. The girl she came face-to-face with was likewise mounted, although not upon a horse but a strange sort of creature, half-deer and half-human, who despite clearly being female wore the magnificent antlers of a buck. Flanz-le-Flore recognized her nonetheless, as the nuns of the monastery had traversed her forest on occasion before. Yes, and beside the deer were her fellows, more of those twisted women corrupted into something neither human nor fully inhuman: a ferret, a hornet, and a frog. Other than the deer they engaged themselves with beating back the elfin horde, striking with claws and fangs, rending flesh in great bloody swaths. But none of those were the one who spoke.
"Why have you come here," Flanz-le-Flore said to the dragon girl, who unlike the others she had never seen before either in this form or any other. "Has the Master sent you too?"
"You wish to pass to the other side of the wall, do you not?" The dragon girl slowly kicked her feet back and forth. "I have a way."
This girl... wait. Could she be—the princess? Princess Mayfair of Whitecrosse? She had the look and the voice. Did the princess corrupt herself into this form? Yet Flanz-le-Flore, Faerie of Transmogrification, knew always when one thing shifted to another. No, this was not the same creature, and if there was anything of the Whitecrosse royal line in her, it was not the girl but the boy, Prince Makepeace.
"I'm falling asleep," Wendell Noh said as he fired a bullet through five more bodies. "I need something greater than this."
Flanz-le-Flore knew the manifestation of this girl and her fellows could be no good either way. The Master's pawns. Yet the maddening scent of the Elf-Queen remained within her nerves, a pulse of blood though her blood was usually so viscous and slow.
"What is it. What's the way. Play no games with me, girl. Tell me the way now."
"I have procured an elf with a particular animus." The dragon spoke calmly, even as her mount lashed out a spear to skewer an elf who ran close. "She's not with me right now, so don't bother attempting to attack. It would not work, anyway—surely you sense my sisters and I are far more powerful than you saw us last?"
Flanz-le-Flore sensed it indeed. She understood a need to be wary. There were five of them total, and in the fighting the other three had fanned out so that they stood now on either side of her. Their movements were spectacularly quick as they eviscerated the elves, and though Flanz-le-Flore might be able to transmogrify some in time, the others surely expected it.
Her eyes shifted shut with a sigh. Damn. Damn that Master. And here they were, in the vault already. Exactly where the Master wanted her. A peaceful grip of horror seized her heart as she realized why her envious, wrathful passions had become so enflamed. Even the Master struggled to fully shatter this world's rules, but they could bend them. The cooled flare of hatred remained all this time; it took only a slight tweak to make it burn bright enough to obliterate all other thoughts. Or was that only a convenient excuse? Had the Master merely set the stage, and let what was always within Flanz-le-Flore flare up in natural, unaided response?
"If this is it," Wendell Noh said with a yawn, "I'd rather go home. They're not even intelligent. NPCs."
Because they were drones without their queen. Helpless sans specific direction, the way that dictatorial bitch liked it. Yet the queen herself—that was a sight. That would bring a smile to her hero's lips. And her own.
Damn! Damn that Master. Damn—but this was more important. If she kept Wendell Noh, if she destroyed the Elf-Queen, then who cared about the Master? Once she "knew" Wendell Noh thoroughly, once she could manipulate and reproduce the element that made him "human," then that Master would hold no sway over her. But damn, damn it was so irritating!
"Fine." She spat the word. "What do you—or rather, what does your Master—want me to do?"
The dragon girl's smiling expression did not change. Maintaining her poise, she said: "Cinquefoil. Gather the relics, will you? They're in the alcoves. You'll find twenty-four of them; the other four are on the far side of the Elf-Queen's wall."
The ferret Cinquefoil nodded and zipped off in a flash of whipping tail. By now the horde of elves, no longer resupplied by their queen, was starting to dwindle, and there was far less urgency in fighting them. For the next minute Flanz-le-Flore and the dragon girl stared one another down, the dragon girl all a-grin, and Flanz-le-Flore aware of a spiteful scowl.
In armfuls or, depending on their size, one-by-one Cinquefoil brought them to the center: the relics of Whitecrosse. Staves, arrows, axes, lyres, knives, coats, razors, and so forth. The relics—which cheated the rules of magic and so doing could only have ever been the work of the Master, though the humans attributed their powers to God. A pile formed.
"That's all of em," Cinquefoil said eventually. "Twenty-four. Fingers, toes, and four more."
"Excellent work. Please hand me that one." The dragon girl pointed to a particular relic and eagerly Cinquefoil obliged.
In one clawed hand the dragon held it; a sphere of crystal, its surface perfect and polished, and the material so clear and shiny that one might easily see through to its center. There lay the sole imperfection of the material: a tiny yellow dot.
"A mustard seed," Flanz-le-Flore said.
"The Mustard Seed," amended the dragon. "Please, take it in your hands. Understand it as you must."
She lobbed it underhand and Flanz-le-Flore caught it. She handled the sphere in her fingers, turning it over with anxious impatience as the past minute of inactivity had only spurred her thoughts into more rambunctious patterns. She snapped her fingers and the crystal, which possessed no extraordinary properties, turned to sand. Out of the mound she plucked the Mustard Seed itself, which she dusted off, held to her nose, sniffed, and then extended her tongue-tip to taste. Pfah! Repugnant flavor. Yet potent with magic. Yes, quite potent. So this was a relic; she'd never touched one before. That sly, cheating Master. But how much could she hate it? It had all been done for John Coke, had it not?
"I know it, now."
"Good." The dragon extended a hand to indicate the pile of the other twenty-three relics. "Please transform all of them into the Mustard Seed."
"...What?"
A coy tilt of the head. "You can transmogrify like to like, correct? Living into living, dead into dead. The relics are all alike. Now that you know their magic, you can turn one into another, no?"
"Why do you want this?"
"Does it matter? If you wait much longer the Elf-Queen will overwhelm Queen Mallory. Who I so much wished to meet, but... I suppose that will not be possible. Alas. For you, though, there is still time. Unless you wish to face the Elf-Queen alone now that you've rushed headlong into the entirety of her army—"
Flanz-le-Flore held out her hand and snapped her fingers.
Snap. The Basin of Pilate became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Ark of the Covenant became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Finger of Thomas became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Javelin of Goliath became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Staff of the Samaritan became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Water of John the Baptist became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Axe of Elisha became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Feather of Noah became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Arrows of Esau became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Ashes of Job became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Light of Joshua became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Razor of Samson became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Lyre of David became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Holy Grail became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Crown of Thorns became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Coat of Joseph became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Binds of Isaac became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Knife of Judith became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Cloak of Elijah became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Key of Peter became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Book of Paul became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Staff of Moses became the Mustard Seed.
Snap. The Gourd of Jonah became the Mustard Seed.
There were now twenty-four Mustard Seeds, each perfectly identical to one another. Each possessing exactly the same power. The deer clopped forward and the dragon held out her scaly claw and Flanz-le-Flore handed her the original Mustard Seed, which was then gathered with the others and dispensed into a small pouch. The dragon patted the pouch and stored it securely on her person.
"Now your side of the bargain," Flanz-le-Flore said, disgusted to even say the word 'bargain,' disgusted with this vice inside her she could not control, this hate and desire that by now made her feel ill. That's the nature of vice though. Something you may know is wrong and say to yourself is wrong and understand in every possible way is wrong and yet you crawl back to it anyway, like a dog to its own vomit.
The dragon nodded and called out, "Charm!" Through the open doors of the vault entered that same sniveling wretch Flanz-le-Flore once had the misfortune of receiving in her court, although this time unaccompanied by her corpse of a sister. Instead she gripped in her talons an elf only slightly distinguishable from all other elves by her general dishevelment. Flanz-le-Flore withheld the urge to immediately snap her into oblivion.
"Please, Lady Temporary," the dragon said, "use your animus to create a portal from here to the other side of the wall."
The elf stammered. "I—I—"
"Let us not waste time through pointless resistance. You are well aware how much we can hurt you if you render it necessary to do so."
"N, no, I don't, I don't want to be hurt. Please don't hurt me... but I can only—I can only make a portal to someplace I've seen before. I've never been on the other side of that wall!"
The dragon shrugged. This seemed no problem at all. "Close your eyes for a moment, Lady Temporary."
A moment's hesitation, then the elf did as asked.
"What do you see?" the dragon asked.
The elf's eyes popped open. "How—how did you—but I've never been there! How did you put that image so lifelike in my mind?"
Another shrug. But Flanz-le-Flore knew how. Such things were trivial for the Master.
"You've now seen the other side of the wall," said the dragon, "and you should still have some power left after the portal you made to the elf kingdom. So please, if you will."
They brought the elf to one of the large pools of blood on the vault floor and the sobbing bird disinterestedly shoved her to her knees. The elf, who was on the verge of sobbing too—quite the lovely sight, and Wendell Noh was correct, it was much more fun when they actually had the capacity for thought—haltingly pressed her hands to the pool and in an instant it became a portal to the other side, where little could be seen but a sea of pink bubbles.
The dragon motioned and the elf was pulled away. She looked up at Flanz-le-Flore and said, "This has been a pleasant encounter. Thank you ever so much for your contributions. Now, farewell."
Immediately the other nuns detached from their combat positions as the deer turned and led them back out the vault doors. For a moment Flanz-le-Flore watched them, feeling foolish, feeling hateful toward herself and this vice, but then Wendell Noh glanced down into the portal and said, "That looks like something" and broke the spell.
"Yes, my hero," Flanz-le-Flore said. And they rode the horse into the portal to face the Effervescent Elf-Queen.