Norhill 716, eve of summer.
Donovan Ellswick, heir, nursed a headache. Not enough to postpone a critical day, but it set his teeth grating. The architect of this place emulated Norhill with his Hall of Nobility, all marble and open space, perfect to catch the morning light and reflect it into Donovan's skull.
Emissaries and sons of the other vassal houses, ignorant to the day's import, chattered while waiting on Her Majesty. She rarely deigned to visit with the little people who owned her country, but today she would come. Courtly spies rushed the news of her coming this last hour, sending a buzz of excitement, but Donovan already knew.
An Ellswick always knew first.
He tuned out the hub-bub of her arrival, the endless litany of automatic groveling. His father wasted everything when the King died, only to fail in his attempt for the throne against a Queen of steel. Now, twenty years later? An aged woman, eyes of flint and rod-straight spine, but hair grayed and fingers red with bouts of arthritis. A hag and had-been, drained fighting the Hall and the Wizards. Who the hell did she think she was? Elsia was Norhill's garden, and the grounds keeper was dead. If they were to overpower Lydia's churning economy, they must control the fertile lands! Let Lydia beg for scraps of bread after a few years of famine! Let –
-Hag. With or without you, it is time for war.-
He thanked the assembly and offered those well-worn platitudes to Athos. Yawn. The familiar lulled the Hall into complacency so that his next words stunned all the more.
The room sat up now!
Vassal of his little dung heap, most immediate to the crisis, and co-conspirator, Veres added his voice.
Her Majesty cut Veres silent with a sharp wave.
Donovan could not allow the Queen to establish her signature iron calm. Though risky, he committed to a most important lie.
Now Etho chipped into the panic.
A flicker in those steel pupils, and Her Majesty recognized Donovan's touch. They never spoke directly over the next hours, but they knew the true fight as each moved a piece.
She remained steadfast, a rock and oasis.
He whipped the Hall into such a panic of rumors and bigotry that a sailor could not find his own rudder.
She acceded the need for justice and security, while he fanned blood lust.
She was intellectual and poised. He offered crimson satisfaction.
She cared about each life in her vast land. He did not, and thus he won.
Elsia marched to war. Even a monarch could not turn such a tide of fear and hate. The hag got to choose: would battle be against the beastmen, or would she embrace civil war?
Donovan retired with such a migraine, each heartbeat a bloom of pain. He drummed his left fingers across his stagecoach window sill, a habit inherited from his father, and smiled.
-I didn't even need a Wizard for those fools. No. He can net me such a better fish.-
All down Cove's boulevards the criers rang the news. War! War! Let the harvest fall to your son, the estate to your wife. All men must give their blood for the motherland. War!
-The rivers will run red with savage blood.-
He slipped his father's amulet from underneath his shirt, the ball of metal cold against his palm despite hours against his breast, and rolled it across his fingers as the plots ran through his mind. It never occurred to him – indeed, no longer could occur to him – that the amulet had passed through the hands of Academy Wizards on its way to him, and that his mind was no longer his own.
**********
The Crown Princess believed the soft weepings belonged to a chastised maid. Instead, she found her mother collapsed to the stones, face ravaged.
Batting away Aurora's hands, the Queen hiccuped. Such a regal face, sculpted and firm, wrought with pain. The perfect hair that Aurora brushed as a child pure white at the roots.
Evangeline, Her Majesty's half-lynx handmaiden, hovered in the wings of the hallway. Eyes of molten gold, both ears mutilated half-triangles. Leader of the beastman underground, sanctioned by the Queen herself.
Aurora swallowed against a dry throat. -If the crown can crush such a flame, such steel as Mother, how can I ever survive?- But she said, “No, mother.”
Evangeline flinched.
The Crown Princess sucked down her shock and concentrated on cradling her mother. Roles reversed, her breast in turmoil to see her invincible mother weep. Her belly burned, too, a much deeper fire, but that was a burden for her alone. Every muscle in Aurora's body froze. In the shadows, Evangeline whispered magic words to hide them from the ever-prying magical eyes. Somewhere, Melrissa combed for more mundane assassins. The Crown Princess held only vague, child-like memories of her father – big arms, a rough beard that rubbed her cheek, features that suggested an overpowering presence that she always found merely secure. The man who promised to carry Elsia through the darkest days after Norhill's fall and emerge unscathed....dead by the Eons... Those same bastards promised to claim her mother for wanting a better future? Aurora vowed. Her Majesty nodded slowly, accepting the vow. Shushing her, the Queen nodded. Aurora whispered. -And hell and high water to the Wizard who thinks to deny me!- ********** Norhill 716, fore summer Empty bar, the stools bare and candles low. Fire banked, and the cook grousing about wasted food. Glisinda cradled tea between her hands, watching out the open door for the summer breeze. Stragglers to the front marched down the lane, many of them escorted by army men. Lydia loved its courts and its fees, and half the men in sight managed a down payment on a draft waiver. Unable to furnish the remainder, all they bought was a few weeks' reprieve. Nobody in this part of town could afford a Blade replacement. Even Roho got a few paltry offers. The Carpenters' shop felt empty, wide open space where mahogany sculpture and furniture once sat. Still, Roho's father never complained. The last straggler turned the corner, and a distant crier called the next watch. More than a year in the city eased its claustrophobia. Easy now to tune out the call of daffodils blooming in the compost heaps. Most days, she only remembered her twined horns as an annoyance while dressing. No more running naked through the night; she kept a low profile, far away from rogue Wizard book sellers. Old Mac the fake cripple hobbled past. A month back, he would have shambled in to massage his supposedly-gimp leg from a day of artful limping. Then the draft officers, savage in Lydian blue, started their random sweeps through the ghettos. Now he played cripple nonstop, a chameleon caught in his own lie. She offered him some stale bread. He accepted and said, As he wobbled on his way, a draft officer stopped him. The beggar mumbled. The officer, suspicious, cracked his cane against Mac's twisted knee. Mac yowled and fell, and the satisfied officer moved on. For a flash, the Dryad considered what it would feel like to skulk and stalk, flesh rippling with the alley shadows, and repay the officer's cruelty in kind from above. Then she shook her head, stowed her tea, and headed for Roho's house up the slope. -I'm not that girl anymore. This is home now. I need to accept that.- She missed Talia terribly. She still dreamed of great trees, glowing stones, and sleeping Maidens. ********** Stuffy attic. Naked atop her sheets, Glisinda snapped awake. Dust in her nostrils. Sweaty air. A cart passing outside. The creak of the attic hatch rising. She twisted around, not for a knife, but rather her sheets. Roho caught a glimpse of thigh before she tucked firmly into modesty. His voice hopeful for more than pancakes. Roho waited. She shifted an arm free of her blanket and accepted the plate. No more. Shy like a teenager with flowers, Roho smiled again and retreated. The Dryad groaned to herself. His terrible, plodding crush drove her near mad. She found him a dear friend, steadfast and earnest, but nothing more. No cravings to be with him, and she could not force them to come. She crashed back onto her pallet and thumbed to her bookmark. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Grandmaster Kenja postulated magical conductors, a mesh so fine-woven it could draw mana from the organisms in the air. In particular, it could also siphon from what Kenja called crests – bursts of energy emitted at life's crucial junctures. Birth, sex, death. Much of Sebastian's work dealt with attempting such a network, but even the best alloys saw pitiable efficiency. A Wizard could draw more mana from the warm remnants of his own semen than from a Net. A third mage, the Yandran Headmaster Tedras, theorized that a single crest of sufficient power could provide a catalyst to transform the low conductivity Nets of Sebastian's experiments into a single, condensed superconductor. Once a single Net arrived at that level of productivity, it could be used to forge more, soon breeding a phenomenal source of energy. Only a few tens of thousands of people needed to participate in a single orgy or battle, and the Wizards could harness the resultant Net energy to permanently surpass their fleshly limitations... Glisinda recognized the concept, though it filled her with gall. A wide, tuned source of mana funneled into a small population – they wanted to replicate what the Forest gave to Dryads. -But what do these Wizards know of tending? Of loyalty to the land in a bond of sharing?- -Unmitigated strain kills the bacteria, and systemic decay kicks in. Everything dies,-Thanata pointed out. -cannot take and take if flowers are to bloom after the winter.- Cold pancakes grew soggy by her feet. The sullen girl never thought that in her short time among humans, she comprehended more of mana than Sebastian in all his years. Unlike humans, Dryads did not consider intelligence the mark of a superior being, and besides...what good could an Exile possibly be? Waking at sunset, she dressed to wench an empty bar. Not long after, a mote of candle light appeared on top of her books, blinking like a fog lamp. ********** Crimson Acolyte Joshua watched the Wizard murderer go down fast and hard, hands wrapped in his sleeves to hide his tell-tale wrapping. His men ambushed her at closing right outside the bar she worked in. Complete surprise. She still killed two men, ferocious with an animal savagery that set Joshua's groin on fire. She bit and clawed like a feral child, writhed like a snake, stole a man's dagger to punch through his eye, kicked a man over and crushed his windpipe with her heel. The very embodiment of Death, clothes torn so coquettishly and hands bloody as the inevitable defeat loomed. One touch, one caress from her would leave him a husk like Sebastian... But his blood and loins begged for it anyways. The mana in his veins hissed wonderful ideas. He would grow his phallus big as a horse and fuck her until she bled. Copy himself to take her in more ways than one at a time. Morality did not concern it; mana wanted out. It knew how to answer dreams to achieve that goal. Then the murderer collapsed from a staff to her knee cap, and the battle ended. The Crimson and his men departed, few without injury, dragging Glisinda's face against the road. His mana sang temptations the entire way. Another heard the same song. The mana in Jeremiah the Rogue trembled with the force of his rage. He clasped his fingers around the tip of his dagger until the blood ran freely, a tiny outlet for the mana, and the pain cleared his head. Then he departed the scene to report the most dire news to the distant Crown Princess Aurora. ********** Someone must have skinned the right half of her face like a hare, for even the sterile air burned. Her shoulders ached, overextended to keep toes on the iron floor despite hanging by manacles to a bar above. Glisinda dove into the meditations that could pass long days on the Border Guard, slowing metabolism and pain, but soon enough she would need water, food, and rest. Soon enough she'd rot away, starting with her strained shoulder blades. Alone in a bleak little box of metal. No sound, not a footfall nor a whisper of grass. Maddening quiet, smothering like death. She screamed sometimes, just to make sure she still existed. Cried others, wasting precious water. Hunger crept in. If only she could lower her shoulders, an instant's relief, or poultice her face before the grit embedded in the flesh there inflamed. -At least the Wizard bastards won't rape me. They're too afraid to end up like Sebastian.- Then an entire wall of her cube rumbled open on an external hinge. Mummy-wrapped Crimsons watched as a beastman slave boy sloshed her in frigid water. He washed away her wastes and picked bits of dirt from her face, flinching at her breath. “I thought there were no slaves in Lydia,” Glisinda spat at the Crimsons. The slave left soup on the floor, and the Crimsons maneuvered the wall back, sealing her once more. The bar above her head retracted, letting her slide free still in manacles, and she collapsed. She crawled to the soup and lapped it like a dog, shoulders aflame. Limbush, a potent opiate, on her tongue. Darkness. Woke in opium fog, a slow reveal of the curtains. Chained in a resonance chamber, a glass bubble where mana could rage to hurricane strengths in isolation. Four channels connected to the sphere's dome. Two led to clay jars full of heavy water: dampeners, the system's anchors. Another set led to two men in their own resonance chamber, harnessed in a conduction coil. A jolt of mana sent along the coil would fry them, releasing their bodies' mana into the chamber. What didn't bleed off would cascade through the channels... Right into Glisinda. Light stones hung from the walls, the room a wide circle bare except for the glass works. Even through glass, the whole edifice stank of thick, old death. Headmaster Tedras, leader of the Yandran Academy, accounted for a reek all his own. Half death, half cancer, overlapped with the burning tickle of too much bottled mana. He wore elaborate silver robes, more suitable for a priest than a Wizard, and a hammered, expressionless mask of gold. How tawdry. “Glory the Mors, you stand convicted of murder,” intoned the Headmaster. Little purple quivers of mana pulsated in excitement. “Drop your guise so that We may witness your true face.” -My guise?- Her skin was gray already, flickering as it tried to calculate the refractions on glass and blend into the dominate iron. -No. My horns, maybe?- Hidden, even now. Had her body become that accustomed to smothering their proud presence? When she left her skin that human pink over Lydian winters, did it wound Thanata? “Fine.” She unraveled the camouflage, letting her onyx horns gleam. Her chains held her wrists to her thighs, too tight to let her shift and crash into the glass, and fed directly into the floor. “Such a shame, a perversion. Sebastian failed to remember the lessons of the past, and thus our own creations led to his demise.” He raised his mask enough that she could see his smile. “Be glad. Your death fuels the Net which will solve all our problems.” “Oh? What's it sitting at? Half a percent, if you're lucky?” Glisinda laughed. “You can kill for mana, but it leaks right through your rotten, murdering fingers.” The Wizard considered his words, and the nymph wondered who or how many listened to their conversation from unseen vantages. “You know of this thing? Tell me, how much did you understand of Sebastian's stolen texts?” “Can you honestly believe that Dryads and beastmen are your own creations?” Glisinda mocked in return. “Truth must be earned,” Tedras replied with a shrug. “Speaking of which... Tell me, death bringer, do you wish to live? I will let you live for the secret of the Mors. How can such things exist? How do rot-eaters have children at all?” Behind the mask, his purple-veined eyes glimmered full of salacious curiosity. “I can hardly imagine carrion carrying a child to term, your bellies full of death...so how do you steal and transform the young of others? Perhaps the nymphs have the children by the litter, and the Mors steal half?” She snarled. “Nonsense and bullshit! We never-” “Very well,” he interrupted. “If you take that tone, I can safely disregard anything more you say. Engage the coil!” Lightning arced through the prisoners' chains, consuming them in a storm. Fueled on their dying breath, a portion of the storm forced itself into the channels. Though most of the power exhausted bashing against the thick glass, more than enough remained to turn the girl into nymph charcoal. Part of her chuckled. By her calculations, the Wizards lost mana in the transfer through the system. They'd be lucky to break even on her death. As the storm poured towards her, the Dryad's last ditch efforts did nothing to save her. The chains did not budge, her screams moved no invisible rescue effort, and the storm rushed in. Violet lightning flooded the resonance chamber and lit Glisinda inside and out. It blasted down her like a lightning rod, straight into her heart. Doors she never recognized flew off their hinges, and for a moment she returned to her Forest home. Mana skittered across her skin and arced to the lovingly carved furniture, the pallet disheveled as she had left it. Her home burst into flame as the mana sought to leech the energy from her breast. Somewhere in the weave of her dual soul, she found a balance between life and death where the mana roared overhead. Wizards' closed circle broken, a vortex welcomed the mana, and for a split second she thought to see Someone Greater. A Presence, as wide as the sky and loving, that turned her gently from the Great Black Door. The silence left behind, once again herself, was clean. “Death sucker, whore of rot!” whispered Tedras in amazement. “As much as any beast, any flower, or the sun itself, We are Life!” Thanata roared, summoning dregs of mana to shatter the heavy water anchors. “You cannot deny death her due!” “We will not let you die, vile though you may be. We will tear your secrets from your innards, one by one. Gas her!” The glass beneath her feet dissolved, answering how the Wizards ever got her into a sphere, and the iron floor beneath shifted to allow air flow. Through the new vents, limbush smoke smoked upwards. -They keep using this crap, and I'm going to have to kick a nasty addiction.- Distant, numbed feel of her body crumpling, and darkness again. ********** While Glisinda lay languid in limbush stupor, Roho fought the Wizard's machinations. Wizard cronies burned down his home, stole his family, and impressed him for the military. He fought and killed. He networked with a strange man by the name of Jeremiah, and together they destroyed the Wizard who planned to use his sisters as so much raw materials to create living monsters of war. He found his father wounded and older brother dead. The ex-Blade found something in himself made of steel, a determination lacking those years ago with Marcellus, and smuggled his family to safety with the rogue Wizards. Then he returned, along with the rogues, to strike at the heart of Lydian corruption. That night, citizens of Lydia thought the Wizards on their high hill played with fireworks as rival magics clashed through the air. Many of their Crimsons and the youngest, most expendable Wizards sold to the war effort, the Academy found itself hard pressed by the ferocity of the rogues. In the end, the rogues struck a blow against the Eons which would last for years to come. Glisinda knew nothing of this. Poisoned by limbush overdose, she slept for three days. “Miranda is gone now, ma'am. Your throne waits.” She felt vines threading across the edge of her vision and retreated. “You won't take me back with lies!” The Forest waited at the edge of the Other's perception. “I'm so lonely here. She has left me.” For one terrible moment, Glisinda thought Talia was dead. Unbelieving, shocked, her chest clinched tight. The universe imploding, all thought made impossible by the overwhelming need to see the Maiden once more. The King's death meant nothing without Talia safe, nestled in her proper bed! “She is not dead,” assured a new voice. A figure appeared in the Other, an outline like stars cut from the night sky. “Rest easy, child.” “Where is she then?!” “She travels to speak with the dragons of the world, conversations long overdue.” “And who are you?” “Athos.” “Can you take me to see her?” “No, child. Strong as your soul shines, the dragons live in places that would kill you.” In the Other, Glisinda's answering growl rattled and echoed across the landscape, fueled by that need in her chest. Taken aback, Athos the glimmering outline cocked her head. “This brilliance in your eyes? You and....oh my!” “I will see her again!” Athos nodded, placating. “Please, Glisinda, be patient. Help your friends, and I will bring her to you. Is that okay?” “Swear it.” “I do. I swear on my star seed. You will see Talia again.” An oath of weight passed between them, witnessed by Yanu's silent vines. Glisinda nodded in satisfaction and let herself slip away from the Other. Released into the land of the waking, Glisinda sat up under her blanket. She lay on a pallet in someone's dirt basement, lit by two feeble candles. A mixture of mana's electric stink and unwashed bodies gagged her. Roho whittled on a figurine by her feet; seeing her awake, he offered a cup of water. Fresh wounds, recently stitched, covered his hands and arms. More scars for his face, signs of burning, that would last the rest of his life. “Roho...what in the Pits happened?” “We assaulted the Lydian Academy and more or less won.” He shrugged. “We?” Footsteps from the doorway, approaching at a relaxed walk. “The rogues and I.” “So....this is a rogue Wizard hide out?” “Yep.” Glisinda scooted away from the door, wishing for a knife. Her hands felt like mittens. “You do know that they're mana-obsessed maniacs, right? Walking Havoc time bombs?” “Well-” The door swung open, and their visitor laughed. “You described pretty much every human alive there, Madam Dryad. What makes you hate rogues so much more?” Jeremiah, rogue wizard, a lean and tall man with featured deepened by age – none of the Wizardly sculpted perfection there. “I have seen what results from the ill intent of Havoc in the villages I have passed through. The men, women, and children maimed or damned,” Glisinda hissed. “True. We can do such evil with a word. Still, inform me – what exactly constitutes a rogue wizard?” “A thief of knowledge, an unsupervised practitioner with no safeguards or common sense.” “Good answer, if one considers the laughable remnants of the Sage Guard to be the authority. Don't forget anyone that the Headmaster doesn't like, too.” She acceded the possibility of Wizardly politics with a nod but remained cool. “Where did you get the books that you read?” Jeremiah asked, tone suggesting he already knew. “Sebastian the Eon. His painful, last parting gift.” He smiled. “I appreciate that, by the way. Sebastian murdered friends of mine. Still, they aren't yours, no?” “Not by human law...” she grumbled, begrudging the words. “Ah! So having stolen, read, and applied the learning from stolen Eon tomes, would that not make youa rogue too?” Glisinda's eyes shot wide, and suddenly she felt quite foolish. “I'm sorry.” Throughout this exchange, Roho waited in patience with bread and water. Now he handed both to the nymph. “You saved my life, Roho.” “Don't mention it.” Assurance in his voice, the boy turned man in a few short days. In a smaller voice, she confessed, “I like you as a friend, Roho.” “I kind of figured that much.” A woman knocked on the open door. “Meeting upstairs.” The ex-Blade smiled at Glisinda. “We'll chat later. Jeremiah and I have business to attend to.” They left her alone with the lady, who helped Glisinda into a farmer's rough clothes. The woman's skin tingled, an energy dancing underneath... “You're holding mana,” the Dryad accused. “A lot of it!” “I am.” “How can that even be? Your circle is broken every month.” She smiled. “Names before secrets. I am Esme.” “Glisinda.” “Put your hand to my womb, Glisinda, and listen.” Obeying, the Dryad's jaw dropped in shock. She clearly heard the storm of mana from the woman's sanctum. While the Wizard men let the mana rage through their bodies in swift, ferocious currents, this woman bound it into a crystal of blood and power deep inside herself! “Does the Academy know of this?” “Oh, the Headmasters do, but why share it? Our use of mana differs as much as our storage, and he does not want to deal with such diversity.” “He?” “Ah, you didn't know? There is only one Headmaster. He created three more bodies for himself in order to generate more mana and then banned the practice from anyone else. In the land of Wizards, the only way to stay on top is to hoard secrets which allow for more efficient creation and use of mana than your lackeys.” -That sounds about right,- Glisinda thought. -why he would want to butcher me for a little more advantage.- She envisioned an army of zombie Mors at Tedras' command, ready to kill any uppity Wizards, and shivered. “Was this whole operation, the attack on Lydia, just for me?” “Unfortunately not,” smiled Esme. “We wouldn't have known about you without Roho, and we planned the attack as soon as most the young Eons left for war.” Rain began to fall outside, a distant trickle against the roof echoing down to the basement, and the patient garden roots began to hum as they drank. Compared to the awful, deafening silence of the Academy, the world danced with music. This time, Glisinda would not try to suppress it. Her birth right, the song of life. “What's the meeting upstairs about?” “We're trying to track down a massive Wizard shipment. It left Lydia with a platoon of normal troops, but its vanished off every radar...” “The Net.” “Yes indeed. You're a clever one.” “I can find it,” she said confidently. “Oh? That would be very helpful.” A sense of purpose bubbled up in Glisinda's chest, one part revenge against Wizard pricks and another part spite for fate. Maybe...Maybe an exile didn't have to be worthless, trash, driftwood. Soon she would get to see Talia again, and she wanted to have something to show for her years. “I feel like screwing things up a bit. Want to head upstairs, Esme?” The rogue Eon wrapped her arm around Glisinda to support the Dryad's weak legs, and they hobbled forward to foment a little Havoc in the world.