It was sat on an elaborate brass and gold pedestal inside a huge glass safe surmounted with a ticksteel lock. I recognised ever-glass with ease (the slight purple sheen gives it away) as strong as steel but still see-through perfect for something you can't risk being damaged but can't bear to hide away. I could hear it ticking steadily where it sat; like the purring of a content mechanical cat.

I rushed over to the safe without even sparing a thought to the idea of traps, defences or hidden guardians. Luckily for me the Baron was singularly unintelligent or possibly simply so arrogant that he truly didn't believe anyone would dare to steal from him. Either way it was only when I reached the safe that I came face to face with my first real challenge of that evening; the elaborate ticksteel lock. As I peered into the keyhole I thought it looked incredibly hard to pick... although to be honest at that time I had no idea how to pick locks apart from a few vague memories of heist scenes in thriller novels that implied hair clips and lots of surreptitious arm movement. All I knew was that I could see lots of little wheels and barrels and stuff in it and I knew I would never be able to pick it nor did I stand any chance of smashing the glass not even if I dragged down one of the Barons ridiculous parade weapons. For a long moment the egg just sat there ticking quietly and mocking me as I thought deeply. But luckily for you dear reader and for the continuation of our tale I had something the dear Baron never thought a thief would possess.

I reached into my sleeve and took out a seed; yes a real seed that I had taken from our mansions gardens that very morning. I pressed the little lump of life into the safes keyhole working it in as far as I could with my short nails, then when it was just out of my reach I stepped back and... looked around. I know it was silly I mean if anybody had been in there they’d have tried to stop me by now but you can never be too sure when or where the Order might pop up. I didn't want to do this but I had come too far and risked too much to give up now.

I threw back my shoulders, took a deep calming breath and waved a hand. For a moment my palm flared with bright white light visible through my lace glove as I felt warmth flow through my whole body

The lock quivered and then exploded, from inside it exploded a tangle of leaves and roots as the fern seed grew and grew. The bows and branches shattered the glass and brass like wet paper as they spread outwards, chunks of the former lock spiralled away through the air as the ever-glass panes buckled then shattered and fell from their frames. But for all the destruction it barely made a sound, in fact the only sound in the room was the susurration of living leaves and the muffled thud of glass fragments falling onto thick carpet even though the egg had stopped ticking.

I smiled then reached into the ruined safe and took up the egg gently in both hands feeling the smooth cold weight of it.

Being born a mage in Prasus might mean being a heretic under a constant death warrant but it certainly gives one a few neat tricks.

Yes you just read that right I'm a mage, a person born at random cursed by the Aether with the taint of magic... or so the Church of the Divine Mechanisms says. Once long ago people like me were accepted in Prasus I mean by the Abyss we even had our own guilds! But now thanks to the AAL[15] and the Arch-Doge we are hunted down and killed the second we show our faces.

So that's me a person that, because of a simple quirk of birth, must be hounded down, beaten, hung, drawn, quartered, burned and then buried under an insultingly engraved tombstone if anyone ever figures out who or more precisely what I am. As if being part of the political game wasn’t stressful enough already!

Just to forestall further questions no I don't know why I was born a mage nobody does. Some people are and some people aren’t it’s just a thing and if you’re wondering what type of mage I am; my trapping (the common parlance for the type of magic a mage can use naturally) is life. I can control and generate it at will although I get a bit tired from force growing large stuff like trees... also sometimes when I use my magic I start glowing but I really do not know how or why I do that and I can't turn it off or on it just kinda happens.

So there I was a mage who had just used magic to break into a nobleman's safe in one of the most heavily policed parts of the entire city, a city which kills my kind on sight. All because I decided that I needed to stick my nose in where it didn't belong and do the right thing.

That thought occurring to me was probably what started my paranoia, this had all been too easy, the Baron couldn’t have just thought “Oh I'm so important nobody will try to steal from me” there had to be something else, a trap, a trick, something!

In retrospect I should have realised that the click was nothing more than my silver edged cuff knocking against the egg-stand. I should have realised that it didn't mean anything, that it was nothing to fear, but I didn't. All I knew was that as I lifted the egg from its tiny pedestal I had heard a tiny metallic click. Panic gripped my heart in an instant and I looked around terrified, expecting guards, traps, war golems and Inquisitors to all pop up out of the woodwork and start screaming “Mage!”

The subsequent silence only heightened my paranoia. I knew they were on their way charging along distant corridors with swords drawn. Some bells had rung, some alarms had screamed in some distant barracks and warriors without number were surging towards me. I knew that had to be true.

I slipped the egg into one of the under pockets of my skirt (an addition that I had sewed myself, I know it’s not traditional for women to sew but I’ve never been one to stick too tightly to convention). Despite the large size of the artefact it didn't even leave a bulge in the many folds, creases and frills of the dress (frilly was in that season... or so my sister said at least, again I don't tend to pay much attention to the trends). After adjusting myself sufficiently to move freely I flew to a wall and lifted down one of the swords. I now know of course that this was a really stupid idea as the weapon I was so desperately scrabbling for was a decorative sword, unbalanced with a blunt edge and forged from gold rather than steel. In a fight it would be about as much use as a sharpened stick... probably less actually at least you might draw blood with the stick. At the time however I didn't know or care about all that, I just wanted a weapon.

I had taken fencing lessons in my youth of course, although not with much vigour and whilst fervently hoping I would never have to use them but now I was certain that an entire army of guards were pouring towards me howling for blood.

I needed a sword.

I swept the trophy weapon through the air once or twice. I vaguely felt you needed to do that when you picked up a new sword. The move is traditionally to test the weight and balance of a newly wielded weapon but I was just slashing the air. Ignoring how heavy the stupid prop sword was in my hands I dashed out onto the landing letting it clang loudly against the door frame as I exited.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And that was when I heard the footsteps. With the benefit of hindsight some servant must have heard my clattering and banging and was going to see what was going on. I could have hidden or browbeat him with my title or just rather more literally browbeaten him with the stupid blunt sword.

But I was certain that the entire city was charging up the tower after my blood so I turned and sprinted out onto the balcony. Leaping mid-step I landed on the balustrade, looking out over Prasus I took a deep breath as I readied myself for what came next. I was a pampered daughter of nobility after all, not an athlete.

Turning on the spot and hearing the footsteps growing closer and closer I bent my legs, pushed as much magic into my muscles as I could and leapt upwards. I landed on the very lip of the rooftop, my feet scrambled madly for purchase for a moment and my arms wind milling wildly then one of my silly dancing shoes finally found a grip and I sprawled face first onto the rooftop.

I stumbled back onto my hands and knees and scrabbled around in the moss and muck for the sword which had flown out of my grasp when I was trying to balance myself on the roof edge. Seizing the ridiculous velvet grip again I clambered to my feet and staggered away across the building. The three sisters were all full moons tonight and their soft white light washed across the entire city and made it seem to gleam. I was transfixed as I stared out at my hometown, at Prasus.

First the eye saw the sea; and there was so much of it to see, all the way to the horizon unbroken by an island or continent just an endless vista of sky blue so flat and calm that sometimes you could mistake it for the sky.

Then you saw the city below me, it was truly vast stretching for dozens of miles in every direction like some titanic stone octopus. The analogy seemed even more apt thanks to its tentacles, four huge curved spikes that protruded from the city at each cardinal direction and which were another dozen miles in length with both sides covered in docked ships like a sow's suckling piglets.

Sweeping in from these great dock spurs was the city proper, countless millions of buildings of every type imaginable. Huge manufactories jostled for space with noble mansions whilst cramped slums rubbed arms with watchhouses and dilapidated taverns. Dotted here and there were the forbidding grey bulks of Orders cloister-barracks’ and the vast steaming tower temples belonging to the Church of the Divine Mechanisms, never one without the other of course. Even closer were the houses of the lesser nobility, the tiny faux palaces and small pseudo-mansions huddled behind tall spiked walls which sheltered them from the commoners that dared to share an elevation with them.

Finally all around me were the foothills of the true nobility, their vast mansions and sprawling palaces built atop the remnants of the gleaming marble islands that had once long ago spawned the city. They grew up and up around me, each noble to a hill, each house to a mountain, growing and huddling like a crowd of mushrooms all around the centre of the city. Turning on my heel I looked back towards the centre now. There it towered behind me, a seemingly endless edifice of marble and steel and silver, the heart of the city, the palace of Prasus, the Spire. The Arch-Doges personal fortress palace, once it was the world’s most isolated mountain now it was fortified with steel and copper and great machines to become a redoubt that could weather the end of the world.

Looking back down I sighed with contentment, this grand vista, this endless expanse... all of this was my home. A trade city without peer where it was said if you can't buy it here you can't buy it anywhere. Together its ancient nobles, advanced technology and vast navy made it one of the greatest, oldest, most powerful and certainly most beautiful cities in the whole world.

Prasus, the city on the sea.

I could really see why the Baron’s ancestors built on this spot.

I turned away from the spectacular view and focused back on the matter at hand. Grasping the silly sword to my chest I scanned the rooftop for threats. Black slate tiles stretched out in every direction dotted with towers, turrets and endless steam pipes all coated in old moss and piles of leaf mould but totally devoid of guards or watch automata. Sprinting low across the moonlit expanse I came to a wide flat area next to a small crumbling minaret, leaning against the tiny tower was a trellis hung with roses in full bloom.

Slipping back into the shadow around the tiny tower I looked around then reached down and pulled the egg from its pocket in my skirts. Holding it up with my back to the moons I studied it in the silvery light. It was cold and heavy made from polished gold of the purest quality and set with thousands of tiny gems every one smoothed flat, the gems formed constellations of colour all across the eggs surface which when I looked up I realised mirrored the stars above Prasus down to the most minute detail. As I watched tiny cogs spun, chattered and ticked all counting down to the next hour and the next song, I idly wondered when it had restarted and what had made it do so.

It was whilst I frowned at the tacky bauble wondering how it could be worth so much misery and if I had bumped it on something in my escape that my eye caught a... change. Not a motion; not really simply a change from one state to another. I slowly lowered the egg and stared.

Next to me in the drooping trellis hung hundreds of roses and as I watched their full red blooms were.... draining away. The crimson of the petals was being overtaken by veins or tendrils of pure blackness which crept and spread along the flowers flesh like a jar of black ink upended into a basin of water. After a mere handful of seconds the roses were as dark as fresh cut ebony. I goggled at them in astonishment, my mouth hanging open behind my mask.

That was when I heard the chuckle... and when my entire life changed forever.

Spinning on the spot I stared wide eyed and horror struck at the person now sharing my rooftop. Their gender was obscured but they were short; head and shoulders shorter than me at the very least and they stood with the silent and still grace of a ballerina at rest but with the straight back and arms of a veteran soldier. But none of that was what I noticed first, what I noticed was their outfit. They wore red; all red a red half cloak and doublet, red pantaloons and boots and they too wore a mask made from pure red porcelain.

Or at least I thought it was porcelain nowadays I'm not so sure; but regardless it looked like blood, like freshly shed blood somehow caught as it flowed from a wound and hammered into a flat and featureless mask. And when I say featureless I mean it their mask is entirely feature obscuring no mouth, no nose and crimson smoked glass covering the eye sockets in fact the only thing that did stand out were the horns, six long red curled porcelain horns that sat upon the figures brow and curved back across their head

The figure bowed to me, flicking their cloak back as they did so. I saw that what I had taken for a shadow around their neck was actually a waterfall of pure black curls that fell from their head, the mask I noted was only a half mask covering the face not the whole head.

I stood and gawped at the figure for a moment then I remembered my manners and bowed as well. The figure raised a hand to their covered mouth to muffle a laugh like they were enjoying a private joke and then with a movement so fast I couldn't see it their blades were bared and in their hands. They were exquisite duelling pieces, even I could tell that, a pair of rapier and parrying dagger each made from a strange alloy that shone brightly like silver along the centre of each sword but seemed to crack and darken towards the edges. Both basket hilted by the same strange steel covered in what looked like metal roses with rubies for petals which grew and flowered all across the basket guards encasing the figures' hands in silver and red.

I raised my blade shakily in a two handed grip pointing it towards the red figures chest, the blunt conversation piece waved backwards and forwards between us as my hands shook. I was sure at the time I was facing some sort of elite guard (obviously wrong as they lacked any sort of uniform and nobles are particular about that) or maybe even an Inquisitor (Also wrong as they didn't have the traditionally jolnek[16] blades).