The woman had arrived at the Palace of Flowers in the late hours of the morning. Those hours were quiet in the Palace and the other girls were all resting. Ashaya had been wary of the woman at first, she was a priestess she said, an acolyte who had sworn an oath of blindness for her god, Heraim, the Eyeless. That explained the blindfold she claimed but Ashaya had demanded more, anyone hiding their eyes like that could be a sorceress, it was just good business to check these things.

So the woman had opened up her blindfold and revealed the two holes in her head where her eyes had been dug out. She took her oath seriously, she said, the blindfold was for others not for her. Ashaya had felt sick looking into those eyes but she had swallowed her unease and accepted the woman into the Palace of Flowers. There were many men who’d pay extra for a virgin priestess after all.

Things had gone well for a while. She was beautiful, the woman, and attracted all manner of clients. Although she was too confident Ashaya thought and that drove some of them away. There was nothing wrong with confidence of course, many of the girls at the Palace used that as one of their draws, but it wasn’t expected in a sheltered acolyte. Nevertheless she did well there for what little time she was there.

She was a mysterious woman, barely ever at the Palace when she wasn’t working. She’d disappear into the streets which Ashaya warned against, those could be dangerous streets. But the woman never seemed to come to any harm which was uncanny. A beautiful woman blindfolded, just seemed to invite trouble.

Ashaya had had her followed once to see where she went. She wore a hood to hide her blindfold and seemed to have no trouble finding her way. She went into the forest and then disappeared, returning that afternoon to get back to work. She refused to say where she’d gone, she refused to say much of anything really.

She also never took any drugs. Most all the women took something to keep from growing pregnant, many took a lot of other drugs as well. She took none and Ashaya worried she actually wanted a child. Pregnant women did not earn nearly as much money.

She would sometimes seem to move differently, as though she were hiding something. Something that could be a pregnancy. But she never grew to the size that would indicate that and it was always only for a few days. Ashaya worried about it for a little while but there were many other things to worry about and eventually it no longer bothered her.

At least until the woman disappeared and her name vanished entirely from Ashaya’s mind.

At the feet of the Inkdrop Queen Vered lay dying. He didn’t really know what was going on but he could see her pointing her dripping black sword at the blurry figure on the roof. He coughed and felt phlegm and blood fill his throat.

“It takes a magic weapon to kill a sorcerer but I have one!” The Queen was saying. “Surely you wouldn’t risk your life to-”

Vered knew he was going to die, he could feel the life slipping from his body and the consciousness slipping from his mind. But somewhere in all the fuzziness he was annoyed that this woman was ignoring him. Him! The most dangerous and fashionable tailor in the Realm. And he still had his string.

He clutched at it on the ground with shaking clumsy fingers and managed to pinch it between them. He drew it through his hands and in a motion he’d practised a thousand times he flicked it over the sword that pointed past him.

The Queen looked down at him and he smiled at her with bloody lips. “You have a magic weapon,” he lied. Then he pulled tight the String of Vethimeres and it cut clean through the inkdrop sword, shattering it into three pieces.

Ink rained down on him and he coughed and choked. His mind slipped away and he died in the courtyard, the last thing he saw was the Queen’s shocked face.

The battering ram crashed through the grand doors into the Oaken Court and its inhabitants charged. Men and women from all across the Hallowed Realm, conscripted from a hundred different places, serving a hundred different lords, wearing a hundred different colours. They all charged at the invaders in the name of King Ramon Elkring.

Those holding the battering ram died first, unable to defend themselves at all, they were simply killed and trampled by the charge. Behind them the others struggled to form up, they hadn’t been expecting the door to open just yet. They fell as well in a crush of bodies and the battle spilled out into the courtyard.

Behind them Magda and Gushkabel watched the charge. The two old witches, standing in the keep beneath the huge tree.

“Time was I would be out there fighting,” Gushkabel reminisced. “Time was when I could fight even a sorcerer.”

Magda watched the battle with her big watery eyes. “Well you don’t have to boast about it you know.”

Gushkabel looked at her. “Well I’m sorry I wasn’t locked away in a cottage studying the omens and signs my whole life. Fat lot of good that’s done you.”

Magda’s mouth dropped open. “I... I... You...” she stammered. “You can’t just... Just because you did nothing and then were given one of the most powerful artifacts in the world... You don’t... It... it...” she trailed off and looked into the sky.

Gushkabel snorted. “You’d never have had the stomach for battle, you can’t even-”

Magda slapped her and pointed at an uninteresting point in space.

“You-” Gushkabel began but Magda interrupted her.

“If you’d studied the signs maybe you’d see it.”

“See what?”

“The sorceress. And it seems she’s here to help us.”

Gushkabel felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. She didn’t have a great relationship with the local helpful sorceress.

The Inkdrop Queen looked down at her shattered blade and the dying tailor beneath it. That was one of the most magical weapons in the world, she didn’t even know it could be broken.

She looked up at the roof of the armoury where the sorceress was looking down at her from the great beast that had flown her there. She didn’t look angry, just sad, but that didn’t stop her from calling the elements down upon them.

Wind howled and screamed and frigid hail poured out of the sky that was still full of smoke and mist. What men were left staggered to the ground and the Queen’s horse bolted. She stumbled back as well and barely saw the sorceress’s great monster take flight through all the hail. But she did see it, and she saw it come straight for her. She fell backward and rolled to the side as those huge claws scraped the rock of the courtyard. Hail stung her face and the wind drove her into the ground but she looked up anyway. The monster was about to lunge for her again.

She swung the ruins of her sword at it feebly, it was a desperate attempt that she knew would achieve nothing. How could it? She barely even had a sword anymore. But the sword was still wrapped in Vered’s magical string, a tiny thin strand that was barely noticeable anymore in all the rain and hail. And the beast was standing on the other end of it.

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The string pulled taught and snapped right up through the bottom of the creature’s jaw and then up further. The monster died as it leaped and when it crashed into her its jaws didn’t close around her. Instead she was just sprayed with blood and crushed between it and a pile of crates behind her. The sorceress lost her grip and tumbled over the crates.

The Queen shoved her way to her feet and ran, the hail was dying down now and she quickly joined with the other fleeing soldiers. She abandoned the ruins of her sword and the string and focussed on running. There was a huge battle ahead of her at the doors of the keep and she disappeared into that. Covered in blood no one would recognise her.

The sorceress leapt to her feet and brought back her hailstorm, blasting it down toward the soldiers. But all the soldiers had left, running to join the battle at the keep. She growled in annoyance, she’d never find that woman now. She looked down at her monster, killed so quickly. It wouldn’t have lived very long anyway but she’d have liked it if it had made more of a difference in this battle. She always had more though.

Atop the armoury roof the woman in motley clambered down toward her. That was strange, usually people ran away from an angry sorceress in the middle of a storm she’d summoned.

“What do you want?” she asked, walking toward the battle letting the woman struggle to keep up.

“Well I’d like to thank you of course.” The woman said, gathering up the string. “Without you I’d be as dead as poor Vered. Maybe even deader!”

The sorceress rolled her eyes and spun to face the woman. “You should run. I can’t protect you and I’m going to-”

Ten arrows all flew out of the storm and five of them hit the sorceress, their combined force driving her into the ground. The woman in motley screeched in a high pitched voice and jumped out of the way.

The sorceress growled and stood up to face the shield wall that was forming up ahead of her and the archers behind them. She ignored the arrows sticking into her and walked painfully forward. More arrows came, and some spears, but in the swirling winds it was hard for them to aim and they barely slowed her down anyway. She stopped around twenty paces from the shield wall and felt the storm swirl around her. It was just about big enough.

The Inkdrop Queen leapt onto a horse someone had found her and drove it forward as fast as it would go. She didn’t care about the monster’s blood that coated her, she didn’t care about the fear and adrenaline still pumping through her body and making it hard to think. She only cared about getting back to her tent and getting her second sword. You needed a magic weapon to kill a sorcerer, she’d heard that, everyone had heard that. She hoped that you didn’t need anything else.

“Charge to the left!” Magda and Gushkabel shouted at the army in front of them. “The left!”

It was difficult to hear them over the clamour and crash of battle but the king heard. He’d been staying mostly near the back anyway since he wasn’t especially useful dead. “CHARGE LEFT!!” he bellowed, giving himself a headache. But the soldiers heard his voice and charged left, away from the sorceress, driving the enemy forces toward her.

Magda panted and rubbed her old throat. Yelling that hard was difficult.

“Are you sure there’s a sorceress?” Gushkabel asked skeptically, for her yelling was hardly more strenuous than talking.

“Yes,” Magda panted, slightly annoyed.

“Well you’d have to be seeing her through several feet of stone and a huge battle. That just seems a bit-”

“That’s not how the omens work. Besides, can you not hear the storm?”

Gushkabel raised her eyebrow. “We’re in a fortified stone building and there’s a huge battle outside of course I can’t hear-”

A terrible boom of thunder rolled through the keep. Magda smiled.

The lightning struck down into the gathered army disrupting their formation. They staggered away from the strike as the men there died. Then another arc struck them and another boom of thunder echoed through the castle. A man in the front of the shield wall staggered forward and screamed and then more followed. They weren’t going to stand around and wait to die it seemed.

The sorceress ripped a spear from her body and fell into a fighting stance, around her her storm howled and her golden eyes glowed. She wasn’t afraid of them, what could they do?

As they hit her she swung her spear in a great arc knocking some of them down. The spear shattered and a man crashed into her, his sword impaling her and his shield knocking her back. She danced lightly backward and twisted his sword out of his grip then yanked it out, spraying her acidic blood everywhere. The men screamed as it splashed onto them. This was why she used hail and not rain, it was much less effective at washing that off.

The sword wasn’t as long as the spear but it was far sturdier and she slammed it into the soldiers. Beating down on them as they all closed in around her. Their weapons bit into her and she hit back but they had shields, there were so many shields. Her sword bounced off one shield, then another. Weapons cut into her and her blood sprayed harmlessly onto the faceless wall of shields all around her. She’d heard of the phoenix devastating Fort Sundrick and she’d assumed that with her magic she’d be able to do the same. She was wrong.

She called down lightning and killed some of the men but there were more. There were always more. She flailed with an arm and felt a sword cleave right through it. She fell backward into a wall of shields and swords and someone stabbed her leg, forcing it to crumble beneath her.

She crashed to the ground, blood and hail dripping all around her and the wall of shields closed in. They were atop her, holding her down, crushing her, and there were so many of them. She tried to push back, she failed.

Then they began to clear away, she could breathe again, she could think again. She tried to heal but more weapons bit into her, keeping her down, keeping her bleeding.

She looked up at the gap in the shields and saw the woman had returned and she had another of those black blades. The woman grinned down at her.

“You won’t stop me sorceress. I have all I need to kill you.”

The sorceress tried to shake her head but a spear buried itself in her spine and drove her to the ground. She felt the black sword bite into the back of her head, it felt different to all the other weapons. It felt cleaner, like it was emptying her of something. But that could have just been the effect of losing some of her brain tissue.

She lay on the ground in excruciating pain, weapons sticking out from all over her and that numb emptiness stretching across her body. What was left of her forehead pressed into the cold courtyard and she felt herself begin to slowly heal. She was healing, that meant they were leaving her, they thought she was dead. She’d have to show them how wrong they were.

The King’s forces floundered. They’d gotten much further than expected, something else had distracted the enemy and they’d made it almost all the way into the courtyard. But they weren’t going to make it much further. The enemy was pushing back against them with renewed ferocity now and there were so many of them. They fought and they died and the hail tumbled down around them.

Gurren Skreed, the Master of Ships stabbed at an enemy and fell back through the press of bodies. He was sweating and panting hard despite the cold. He for one was glad for the hail, it drove away that hellish heat from the phoenix. Just like fighting in a storm out at sea. Someone stabbed him and he winced as the blade slipped through his armour and into his ribs. Just... like... home...

Three terrible shapes plummeted out of the sky toward where the enemy had been gathered before. Gurren would have had no idea what they were without the lightning strike that suddenly lit the castle. They were like the vampires of Xith except bigger and uglier and more... human.

Panic filled the enemy ranks and the man who’d stabbed him actually turned around to look at what was going on. Gurren stabbed him back and then looked himself. A woman missing so many body parts she could barely be called a woman anymore sat atop one of the bat things as it flapped into the sky. She only had half a face left and in it one golden eye.

More lightning began to fall. The enemy fled and Gurren clutched at his injury. He grinned up at the woman who was looking desperately through the fleeing crowds. It seemed someone had angered this sorceress, Gurren was glad it wasn’t him. He walked back to the keep to look for some ale.

The Inkdrop Queen lay in her tent and slept fitfully. They’d spent the whole day fleeing from the sorceress and her remaining monsters before finally deciding they were far enough away to make camp. The sorceress wouldn’t make the same mistake again, she wouldn’t let herself get drawn into a melee she couldn’t win. She’d just stay in the sky and kill them all with lightning. It would be far too easy for her and far too hard for them.

The Queen walked through the burning forest. The topaz eyes set into the trees all looking at her. And the thing in the topaz looking at her.

“You told me I would succeed. We had a deal!”

The thing doesn’t speak, at least not in the way she does. But she understands it all the same. “Malthrys’s grandchildren are hard to predict. But don’t worry, I will find a way to be rid of her. Then you will have your castle. After all, we had a deal.”