Erastria – Baroness Elmidia
The Baroness sat in the grand library of the Barony capital. The room was a full three stories high, with thick, dark, polished wood bookshelves, all meticulously kept by the small handpicked staff of librarians. She sat in a massive, gaudy armchair next to the window, the chair looking like it could have been a throne at one point before it was smothered in cushions to make it more comfortable which rather spoiled the image. This library was the centre of her little kingdom, after all, knowledge was power and power was her drug of choice.
A stern middle-aged woman, she still had the looks that had attracted the previous Baron to marry her, though age had added a few fine lines to her face and a few pounds to her waist. Long blonde hair fell in gentle curls around a face that could be considered angelic. Beautiful grey-blue eyes were framed by thick lashes and a perfectly pink rosebud of a mouth completed the image of beauty, marred only by a long thin scar stretching from just above her left eye and bisecting her lip that rather ruined the innocent image. It was a shame, really, there were so many uses a beautiful face could have, after all.
She had taken on control of the Aster Barony when the Baron, her late, and rather short-lived, husband had an accident on the night of their wedding. It was an arranged marriage that she had protested against vehemently, although that hadn't stopped her parents from literally trussing her up and delivering her to the Duke.
An obstinate young woman of eighteen years, her parents had grown tired of her mulish tendencies and had told her that a man would curb her unladylike habits and straighten out her life. Of course, this had more to do with the old duke seeing a pretty young thing that he had felt the need to have and putting pressure on a Noble family that was already suffering from crushing debt.
Now approaching middle age, she had yet to re-marry, her efforts having gone into securing her position. In the first few years of her rule she had faced many attempts at taking control of her new found power, but none of the overt nor covert methods that had been tried had managed to wrest away the power she had managed to acquire. She had never been one to lust after power in her younger years, though after seeing her father being slowly manoeuvred into a place where he pretty much sold his daughter to someone who held greater power over him had gnawed at something inside her, urging her to take control rather than be the one to be controlled.
The first few years had been an onslaught of information and people trying to control her from within. But a few random accidents had managed to get them all in line.
Three years into her new role and she had managed to annoy some of her neighbours enough that they had started a campaign against her. It was in that time that she become known as the Bloody Baroness when her rather pitiful army, comparatively speaking, had managed to wipe out a force more than three times its size. She had then gone on to wipe the offending Barons family out to the last woman. After all, being a woman herself it wasn't wrong to challenge another woman, was it? The children she had collared and put to work in the mines with the goblins, waiting until they had come of age before putting them to the sword as well.
She wasn’t a complete monster, after all. Killing children was considered to be bad taste.
The cities and towns she captured had every tenth man whipped in the nearest public square and every hundredth swinging from the walls.
The next ten years saw two revolts being brutally put down and a fearsome reputation built.
These days her Barony practically ran by itself. Her ministers knew their jobs and she had beaten into them the consequences of what would happen should they come to her for anything other than what was absolutely necessary. Of course, the occasional beating had to be served just to keep up appearances but now there was very little for her to do apart from lounge around and make sure no one thought she had gotten too soft.
And now, she was bored.
Bored enough that she had started looking for ways that she could get her hands on some more power. She flicked through a book that she had acquired recently from a rather suspicious source. The book had appeared mysteriously on her desk the night before, and she had no idea how someone had manged to get in to place it there through all the security measures she had in place. A quick search found nothing else amiss, and a light whipping of all the guards on duty made sure that they would all be extra vigilant for the next few months.
The book was a guide to summoning and controlling a demon, all the steps surprisingly easy to follow. In fact, she was reasonably certain that she could easily carry out the summoning tonight if she wanted to.
There was just one problem.
Someone was trying to manipulate her, and that was one thing that she just could not tolerate. It wouldn’t be too hard for someone to find out that she craved power, after all, in the past decade she had taken her Barony from the smallest in the area to assimilating the five surrounding baronies in a record breaking time. She was now the strongest force on the continent apart from the Crown that she had sworn fealty to, though they were surely looking at her with distrust. Her spies had found an increasing number of spies in all the most important areas of her Barony.
She had, of course let them in, wisely giving them just enough power to be able to feed carefully controlled information back to their masters, but not enough that they were essential to the running of her Barony. Of course, such things were moot at the moment as she was in no position to challenge the Crown with the resources she currently controlled. The Crown controlled the best trained army on the continent, having control of the mithril mines as well as the best [Strategist] being the Crown Prince was just the icing on the proverbial cake.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
No, having such grand aspirations were still out of her reach, perhaps completely out of her reach. Unless…she looked at the book in her hands. Now, this could definitely give her an advantage, summoning one of the better demon assassins could easily give her the edge she needed, especially if she could play the situation just right, pretending to figure out that demons were involved and pinning the blame on her most vocal rivals…or one of her less vocal rivals would be better, yes, smaller chance of any suspicion coming her way.
But someone was definitely playing her, or at least trying…
And she was not one to be played with, oh no.
0-0-0
The Baroness strode towards one of the few places in her lands that she had little control over, The Citadel of the Priestesses of Khamiz’arq, the hunters of the Taint. They had one of the biggest fighting forces in the entire world, though they had just enough political sway to suit their purposes. They were fanatics, pure and simple, hunting anything that may have the Taint of chaos on it. She had a reasonably good relationship with them, having helped them weed out some Demon worshipers a few years ago. It was a nice coincidence that it just happened to be the Rulers of the neighbouring Barony. She had helped the Priestesses clean the Taint from the rest of the Barony.
Although the Priestesses had ways of testing for Taint that weren’t so gruesome, the resources needed for the ritual were not available in enough quantities to check the entirety of the Nobles in that Barony. Torture worked surprisingly well with a few well-placed spells and prayers to ferret out the truth.
She was led into the office of the Head Priestess of the local order, through the simple stone corridors of the Citadel. The Citadel was a massive structure that could be easily mistaken for a Fortress, though the Priestesses called them Bastions against the Taint. She was led into a large office where the Head Priestess was waiting. A tall, muscled woman, the Baroness had never seen her face, hidden as it was behind a mask of plain, beaten gold. She had still not worked out how the woman managed to see, as she could sense nothing from the mask or the woman that could indicate a magical method of seeing. The Head Priestess got straight to the point, without waiting for the Baroness to say anything.
“You have found a Book of the Taint. You will be Tested.”
Without another word, she led the Baroness through a small door and into a chamber that was extravagantly lush when compared to the rest of the Citadel.
The carpet was thick enough that the Baroness’s boots sunk into the lush fabric, the deep blue of it complementing the golden circle inscribed on it. There was a plain wooden chair placed in the middle of the room, thick and sturdy with steel rings embedded into the frame, the Baroness wondered if she’d made the right choice going to the Priestesses, after all, just because she was friendly with them didn’t mean she was protected from their fanatic tendencies. Running now would only make things worse for her. Her only choice now was to go along with it and hope that this wasn’t one of those tests that no one could pass.
A trio of Priestesses entered from another door, their wispy golden veils hiding their expressions as they silently led her to the chair and tied her into it.
Being placed in such a position of vulnerability made her extremely discomforted, but she told herself that this was a necessary action in order to punish whomever had dared to control her in such a manner.
The Priestesses left as silently as they had entered, quietly shutting the door behind them after efficiently securing her firmly to the chair with basic
The Head Priestess subtly shifted her posture, suddenly becoming a much larger presence.
She sighed.
“We had hoped that you would take the gift we had left you to expand your little empire. A shame.”
It took her barely a moment to process what the Head Priestess had just said.
“What?! You’re in league with the Demons?” she replied, shocked. This was unprecedented… there was absolutely no way she could have ever have predicted this scenario to have happened out of all the ones she had prepared herself for.
“But, of course, where better to hide than in the dragons den, so to speak” the smug smile could be felt from underneath the featureless mask, as the Priestess leisurely strolled around the struggling Baroness.
“We offered you a chance to come to our side, but you refused! We never thought that you’d be one to run to the Priestesses as soon as you found the Taint, though with the vigour that you helped us put down that Barony the other year, I guess we should have expected it.”
The Baroness stopped her futile struggle against the chains that bound her to the chair, even after activating the illegal strengthening runes tattooed on her chest, the chains barely creaked, listening to the corrupted Priestess instead. She opened her mouth to protest against her assumptions as to why she had turned the book in, but closed it again, realising that whatever she did from now on would irrevocably have the rest of her life spent under the orders of a Demon. And she refused to do so. She would rather die than be controlled by someone else. Especially a Demon whose countless years of experience would inevitably crush any resistance she could try.
“You can still join us if you wish. Though at a lower level than was originally thought of for you.” The priestess looked her over, obviously displeased that she had stopped struggling.
“Never!” she spat, “I refuse to be subjected to the whims of your so called lord and masters”
“Oh, well,” the Priestess replied merrily, “I need another soul to add to my collection anyway”
She stepped out of the circle on the carpet and clapped her hands loudly before the Baroness could reply, the room dimming at the sound.
Slowly, a noise began to build in correspondence to the fear building in the Baroness at the thought that this corrupted Priestess could actually harm her very soul.
The circle woven into the carpet began to throb to the beat of the sound that was now humming through the Baronesses bones. Vibrating through the wooden chair and rattling the chains before rolling languidly through her body in a shivering wave.
As the noise built in tempo, the room started to dim, the torches that were previously illuminating the room slowly burning lower. As the baroness looked closer she noticed that rather than burning lower as if they were going out they were getting dimmer as if something was sucking the light from the flames, causing the appearance of dimming flames.
The door quietly closed behind the Priestess as she fled from the ritual taking place. It was a spell not meant for mortal souls to comprehend as it built higher and higher, faster and faster, louder and louder until the all-consuming rhythm was all the Baroness could think of.
It took all of her remaining willpower to activate the crystal she had inserted into her scalp, a flash of information streaked through the aether and to her most trusted servant. Then the rhythm consumed her being in a fiery beat taking all that she was and all she could be, compressing what made her, her until the beat finished.
The room lay silent and dead after such an event. Empty of all living beings. There was a single blue sphere that had been hidden, suspended by a thin, glowing thread directly over the chair that had once been occupied by a Baroness. It twirled around on the string, in the currents released from the excess magical energy released from the ritual, it pulsed once with a bright, grey blue glow before dimming once more.
And all was silent.