Between the inhospitable Fairwoods and the even more inhospitable Wastes lies the city-state of Flax. Its name comes from the fact that once upon a time, all its wealth came solely from the needle and fabric works that it was famous for. However, these days, it’s mostly known for its eclectic and odd population.
See, Flax lies in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between here and there, and the thing about places like that is that people who aren’t wanted tend to be drawn to them like moths to light.
The leadership of Flax lies in the hands of a council, which holds control over the nightmare that is Flax’s bureaucracy. But the bureaucracy itself holds not even a drop of control over Flax’s population, who rule themselves through leaders of their small factions. The council is nothing more than a formality, a representation of this mass of independent factions in a trenchcoat. This is where our story begins, with the leader of one particular faction and an emerald amulet.
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The great stone walls that protect Flax are under the control of a faction called the Youngbloods, a small band a few hundred strong made up solely of children. Most lie between the ages of 10 and 17; the older ones train and man the heavy iron cannons built to rain fire upon the intruders, while the younger perch on the wood bridges linking the walls to the higher areas of the city and drop spitballs and other nasty things upon passersby below. They would be indistinguishable from the bands of orphans roving the streets - themselves forming their own little culture called the Ragamuffins - if it weren’t for one thing: Youngbloods can’t age.
You see, sometime before this, a plague swept through a distant kingdom. Only children survived it seemingly unscathed, but it didn’t take long for people to realize that they weren’t getting any older. This, in the aftermath of a plague so horrendous in its effects that it could only be a curse from the gods, led to the Youngbloods being driven from their homeland by their parents, eventually causing them to settle in Flax. Or, at least, that’s what people suspect; like much of Flax’s history, it was so long ago that no one can quite remember exactly what happened, not even the Youngbloods themselves, and after that much time it becomes difficult to tell which parts of the story are true and which are embellishments meant to fill the ever-widening holes in the tapestry of history.
No one’s entirely sure how the Youngbloods came to be in charge of defending the city either, not even the Youngbloods themselves. As far as most residents knew and were concerned, they’d been defending the walls since they got there. It was one of the greatest conundrums in Flax alongside that of the chicken and the egg and why Miss Lucy Wolfenson married her neighbor’s talking pet cat.
Regardless, this band of merry misfit children had a leader, one whose command had been around just as long as their defense of the wall. Her name was Artemisia, and she lived in a rickety old tower on the eastern side of the city. The tower itself was as old as Flax and had lost just as much of its history to time; it’d been a bell tower for a church from some long-dead religion, built when Flax was first established and growing taller with every age. The bell had been stolen and melted for scrap a long time ago, and since the then-abandoned church lay at the edge of the city’s limits, its still-standing tower was reinforced and converted into a watchtower. But that was centuries ago, and the reinforcements were beginning to fade. The walls were heavy with ivy and moss hanging over them like an old cloak, and cracks were beginning to spread like an infection through its foundation. There were plans to reinforce it again, but they never went through due to the council’s constant bickering and lack of priorities and resources. So the tower, feeble as it was, was left to its own devices until its maintenance eventually passed to the Youngbloods.
This is where we return to Artemisia, whose story begins on a hazy afternoon in the midst of summer.
The two closest districts to Artemisia’s Tower (for she’d lived in it for centuries by now, and thus it was her Tower, not a tower she happened to live in) were the Iron District and the Floral District, two districts that couldn’t have been more different. Both came from the same land - a republic far to the south filled with bitter smog and even more bitter people - but while the inhabitants of the Floral District had been ejected for their attempts to burn down the cruel, inhumane factories clogging it, the inhabitants of the Iron District were kicked out for being cruel even by the standards of the land they’d left behind. The two districts hated each other and were constantly trying to find some way to one-up the other, although their attempts only really served to irritate the other districts. Thus, on this day the air was rank with the stench of smoke and oil and heavy with the smell of flowers and perfume as the two districts competed to seemingly cause as many people’s allergies as they could to act up.
Is it any wonder, then, that we find Artemisia curled up in her tower, surrounded by tissues and damp handkerchiefs reeking of pollen and pollution?
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Up until that point, she’d been having an unpleasant day regardless. A portion of the outer wall had collapsed and the Stonebreakers were back ordered until winter due to an ongoing conflict between the Dreamspinners and the Windwalkers. Said ‘conflict’ largely consisted of the two factions commissioning the Stonebreakers to build a wall between their districts and then ignoring each other, a situation roughly akin to your little sister breaking your toy and you pretending she doesn’t exist for an entire week afterward. Artemisia gave it a little over that for the two factions to either make up or get bored and forget the conflict ever happened, but until then they were determined to build a wall to keep each other out.
Then there was the matter of one of the cannons being stolen by the Bandits, who lived just outside the city walls and, true to their name, stole from those who passed by Flax. The Bandits normally didn’t bother Flax itself (in fact they were regarded, if reluctantly, as one of its factions) and had even gone as far as to leave an IOU and a promise to return it, but one cannon missing was one cannon too many, especially since they didn’t bother to ask.
As such, Artemisia didn’t think that her day could get much worse, but as you may be distinctly aware, anytime someone says something like that, they end up being proven completely wrong. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that the moment she thought that, there was a sharp knock on the door.
“Come in,” she called, blowing her nose into a slightly damp rag.
Two people entered. The first was another Youngblood by the name of Concordia, a tall girl with the limbs of a man twice her age and a gilded ax to boot. The plague that created the Youngbloods left her mute even centuries afterward, although that was not too much of a problem since those centuries had been well-spent learning the city’s most common sign language.
The second person, however, was someone entirely unexpected.
Artemisia’s eyes narrowed. “You.”
Bonnie Mantle, the leader of the Bandits, stood there in all her tattered, dusty glory. She was not the most imposing of figures - her bandolier, which was made for someone twice her size and hung off of her like a robe, was more intimidating than she was - but there was a glimmer in her eyes that could make even the smuggest man in the Iron District shiver.
Bonnie gave her a nervous grin. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
Artemisia stood. Her armor - which she hadn’t bothered to remove - jingled slightly from the action. Her expression was downright murderous.
“You stole my cannon without my permission-”
“I left an IOU-!”
“-and you just waltz in here expecting me to be happy to see you!”
“-and I have the cannon!” Bonnie yelped. By this point she was huddled against the wall, cowering in Artemisia’s shadow.
Concordia placed a hand on Artemisia’s shoulder.
Calm down, she said. She speaks the truth.
Artemisia let out a breath.
“I apologize,” she said, backing away from Bonnie. “I’ve had a rough day.”
“Clearly,” Bonnie muttered. “Anyways, your cannon’s back where we got it - well, roughly where we got it - and the IOU still stands.” She was silent for a moment, drumming her fingers on the pistol at her waist before her eyes brightened with remembrance. “Oh, and I brought you loot!”
She rummaged through her bandolier, then through the numerous pockets scattered indiscriminately across her coat, shirt, pants, and the interior lining of her boots, finally pulling out a hefty cotton bag that split open the second it was removed from the safety of Bonnie’s coat lining.
“…oops,” the Bandit Queen said, staring in mild horror and amusement at the shimmering mess lying at her feet. “Let me just…”
She dropped to her knees and began scooping it all back up. Artemisia held up a hand.
“I’ll deal with this mess,” she sighed. Then, remembering what had been said about the cannon, “and the cannon. Just…never do that again.”
Bonnie gave her a gap-toothed grin. “Of course!” She said, both of them fully aware that she had no intention of following through on that promise. She gave Artemisia a clumsy curtsey - a gesture of respect to almost anyone else, but unspeakably rude to a Bandit - and scurried off.
Should I see her out? Concordia asked.
There was a distant crash and a muted apology. The tower gave a horrid creak.
“No, it’ll be fine,” Artemisia said. “Send someone to find the cannon; I’ll deal with the gold.”
Concordia nodded, leaving Artemisia to her business. Artemisia sat down cross-legged next to the gold pile to sort it out.
She didn’t have much of an intention of keeping the gold. The Youngbloods had sizable coffers with their wealth, and Artemisia was dwelling on whether she should hand it back to Bonnie or see if the Moon-Masked Man in Lunaria still needed money when she stumbled upon a most curious object.
Sitting underneath a velvet purse stitched with moonstones and a gilded hand mirror was an amulet. It was shaped like a heart and made from an emerald the size of Artemisia’s eye. The ring through which the chain ran was the hilt of a sword made from delicate gold filigree, the blade of which dove downwards into a crack in the emerald’s surface. From this crack, blood made from rubies carefully embedded in red gold trickled downwards.
Was it morbid? A little. Was it beautiful? Yes. But there was something about it that left a cold spot in the back of her skull and an empty hole where her own heart should be. She knew this amulet, although trying to figure out how was like trying to see through heavy fog in storm season. She had a faint memory of seeing it hanging from a chain around a neck garlanded in green fabric and jewels, the crowning piece of many that jingled like bells as their wearer danced. But that was all she could remember.
Artemisia slipped the amulet into her pocket, her odd nostalgia for something she could not truly recall staying her hand from returning it to the pile. She supposed a visit to Bonnie was in order soon. Just not today.