Spring 43 (noon)
Though lunch approached, The Mayor’s Dive was deserted. A note pressed to the window: Doing mayor stuff today.
Praying for an answer, Belle knocked anyways.
“We’re closed!” the mayor called.
“Oh, thank the heavens!” she whispered. She knocked again. “This cannot wait!”
He appeared at the window. “Belle?”
She locked eyes with him through the glass door. “I dreamed the Wyrm.”
Bless the man; he simply grimaced and let her in.
“Where’s your posse?”
“Squaring off against some gangsters around the bend.”
“Yeah, Tommy’s getting fresh.” He ushered her inside and locked the door again.
“He ordered your diner attacked?” she asked, nodding towards his tarped window.
“That was just the bored kids showing off. Leave them on a stoop all day; they find new ways to entertain.”
He moved papers from the tables to make her a spot and hurried to brew some coffee.
“Where is your assistant?”
“Taking care of his mother right now. She can’t get around very well on her own.”
Sensing Belle, Nix glid down from the apartment above. The phoenix landed before Belle and chirped for pets.
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll get food too!” Oliver rolled his eyes at his bird.
Returning with the goods, he sat the Wavespeaker down in the corner booth.
“I do not mean to impose. Did you start the kitchen just for me?” she mumbled.
“Nah, Jimmy was here earlier. He’s the sort that needs routine. It helps calm him to cook even if business is in the dumps. We’re cooking for the food pantry lately.”
Belle smiled down at the table. “Y-you are kind.”
Louise was kind too.
Oliver flushed faintly. Though a mayor and mage, he still blushed as cute as a schoolboy!
Nix chirped smugly.
Belle giggled.
“Right! What about this dream?”
“Of the Wyrm,” she repeated. Squirming, Belle admitted, “Now, in the light of day, it seems rather silly to…”
To run all this way to tell you.
He shook his head. “Belle, you and I are the same. Touched by greater powers; maybe a bit touched in the head. What you dreamed, you dreamed true, didn’t you?”
She squirmed. “Prophecy is the realm of…”
Grand mages and Jungle seers
You know
Important people
“The realm of whoever has the ears to listen,” Oliver countered. “What did you see?”
So Belle confessed all.
“Twelve by twelve, the stones fell. Black as night, Blade as bright, ringing with his foul laughter. His eyes blazed above Sevensborough, and he reached with another man’s hand for the marionette’s strings to our pauper’s dance.”
Oliver just listened, so she continued.
“The fragments beyond I did not understand. A pyramid coated in blood; a flash of light that set free the paper man; a shadowed plain, dead to the very grains of sands…”
“Easy,” he counseled. “Some problems are too big for any one person.”
“Even Lady Mishkan?”
“Yes, even her. Though she probably wouldn’t agree,” Oliver shrugged. “I can’t leap to Waves for breakfast, and I’ve never wanted to touch that damned Blade – much less wield it! I’m here, there’s a draft in my diner, and you’ve dreamed of trouble for Sevensborough. Let’s focus on what we can reach.”
“I think you are very wise,” she admitted, fingers plucking at her dress under the table.
“Nix is the brains here.” He rubbed his jaw, wincing at the stubble growing in. “Marionettes and puppets. Outside influence into the borough? There’s plenty of that right now. I don’t know how much word gets around to you, but both Tommy and Lee are getting bored of their positions. Still, it’s a pretty far leap from aldersman to Wyrm summoner…”
Not far enough, the Wavespeaker despaired.
“Well, guess there’s nothing for it. I’ll have to pay a round of spies.”
Belle blinked. She received regular missives, courtesy of the spymaster, and sent her own reports in return. How strange to think she had access to knowledge beyond Oliver!
Marching to the counter, he revealed a small safe underneath a floor tile. “Too damned expensive by half…”
“Then do not pay!” Belle squeaked, flushing red. “It-it was a mere dream! Just…just dancing with myself!”
He held fast. “This is Sevensborough – home to half the witches still in this country! We’ve a few of us here with the ear for the power of dreams.”
Squirming, the Wavespeaker turned her attention to the cheese chips. Quiet as a mouse, she murmured into the cheese, “Th-thank you…”
He waved her away. “What else is money good for, really? Might as well spend it!”
While he fiddled with his safe, she dared a second delicate topic. “How is Valkyrie?”
“Doing everything except responding to your letters, apparently,” the mayor growled. “I tried to set her head straight a bit ago, and she’s been pouting ever since. Well, two more days and she can go back with you.”
Though I would sore like to send her back with a bruised bottom and soap in her mouth
Sensing that echo, Belle giggled again.
As much as she loved her daughter…she often felt the same!
“Finish your drink and we’ll get this process started.”
They joined forces with Belle’s escort and set across the borough to business. Oliver led the group to unsavory corners of the borough, flashed cash to equally unsavory sorts, and soon learned that Tommy was gone into Mel to meet a ‘special client’.
“I have bent over backwards to offer him an exit,” Oliver muttered into his stubble. “But to that boy, every step back is a sign of weakness.”
Every tolerance has its limit, boy
Belle resisted an urge to seize his hand. It would be inappropriate for her to distract the mayor from his work!
As they left the latest nasty little building somewhere deep in south Sevensborough, the Wavespeaker noticed something odd: a footprint edged in blood. Small, about the size of an older child, and with the uneven imprint of a limp.
Thinking of some lost waif, her heart leaped into her throat. She turned to Oliver to bring the matter to his attention. Surely–
“Ah, Mayor Oshton. Wavespeaker,” interrupted a laconic voice that sent shivers up her spine.
Turning, she spotted the Mishkan butler, a mail sack on his hip.
She shivered again, cold as Winter.
“It is fortunate we should cross paths here,” the butler stated.
“Mm,” Oliver replied warily. “Did you have something to deliver?”
“Indeed. I have Witnessed a string of Penitent visitors to the Lee estate this morning.”
The mayor scowled. “Hells. What is he doing?”
“Gathering materials for a ritual,” the butler answered – his tone smooth as ice. Gliding them around any objections or interjections. “He has closed his door on all his other servants. Even sent his own son away for the day.”
“Damned Penitents,” Oliver grumbled. “Now that’s one meeting of the minds we don’t need!”
Belle squirmed. “The Penitents want Valkyrie…”
“Over my dead body,” he assured her. “Time to pay Lee a house call.”
The Wavespeaker grimaced. “Just us?!”
“Sure thing. You, me, and the mean half of your posse.”
“We prefer the term ‘stalwart’,” interjected the largest man from behind them. The man could have crushed Oliver’s head with his biceps like a nutcracker.
“Whatever makes you happy,” agreed the mayor, turning north in a hurry.
She and her escort followed.
The Witness watched them go, covering the bloody footprint with his heel.
“You know, I’ve got some peanut oil in the shop,” Oliver noted. “If you meatheads ever need to glisten up…”
Her posse laughed.
“For the sake of your burgers, I’ll ignore that!” one shot back.
“Hey, you still haven’t paid for the last one!”
“Send the invoice to the Stormmother!”
Despite the squalor of south Sevensborough, they all laughed.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Even Belle.
Glancing shyly at Oliver, the Wavespeaker marveled.
Louise had been silent and strong – a rock in any storm. He had born every insult with a quiet pride. One day, just maybe, Valkyrie’s temper would mature into that kind of strength. Certainly, such conviction did not arise from Belle’s side of the family!
Here was a strength different and equally beautiful. A man who knew to summon laughter in the face of despair.
Who smiled and joked even though his shoulders whispered of unimaginable pressure and one hand quietly worked at a knot in his back.
She understood now why the Tempest held such confidence with Oliver, and she envied their closeness.
“Right,” Oliver said, glancing skyward to his phoenix high above. “Let’s go interrupt Lee before he does something stupid.”
***
Laid in a two-fold circle and linked by rune, twenty-four black stones pulsed with heat all their own. The air above simmered and left an acrid aftertaste like the foul candles of a Lumian séance on Lee’s tongue.
“Reminds me of Lace and her grand promises,” Lee groused privately.
All those promises and yet she’d flung herself on the Keepership at the first opportunity. There were days when Lee wondered if the last Keeper of Ruhum would be remembered as a jungle heretic…
The stones pulsed.
She served her purpose
Is that not the burden of noblesse oblige?
That the grand must spend the lesser as coin?
I’m sure you bear the weight well
Lee smirked.
“The groundwork is laid!” announced the Penitent ringleader. “How we have labored for this day! Here we bring about the greatest confluence of the Purifier in all the world!”
“But you still need the right man to make the call,” the aldersman supplied.
“And search we have for that man!” the Penitent exclaimed. “From the lowest child to the highest Lords, seeking a man whose breast burns with the same fire as our own!”
“Yearning for Fire’s touch!” chanted the priests.
“And when this work has been laid bare, all swept away, we will see a new world…”
All the foulness swept away; the world righted; great men where they belonged once more.
“I am that man,” Lee agreed.
Obviously.
Who else could possibly shoulder such grand purpose?
“Yes!” the Penitent exclaimed. “The stones sing their approval! Come, brothers! Our time is at hand! The Tempest will know the fear of Fire on this day!”
They cleared the ritual circle, knelt at the perimeter, and prayed. Their leader prostrated himself before the largest scale, slid a knife down his forearm, and let the blood dribble onto the stone.
Each droplet sizzled like water on a stove. Tendrils of noxious smoke rose from that black scale first; then its fellows; and soon the entire ring shimmered in a haze of heat and smoke.
“Enter and find purity!” prayed the Penitents.
Despite his bravado, Lee wavered. Many witches had promised many things, and some sane fragment in the back of his mind wondered how one knew the mage from the fool.
“The faithful will not be burned!” encouraged the Penitents.
As he hesitated, the ringleader eyed the circle with envy. Too often the observer, he rose with cunning innocence and hovered by the edge. “Come, let us enter!”
Panic gripped the aldersman, and he hurried to the circle.
The Penitent ringleader and the former noble glared at each other, and each shared the same private thought.
This fool will be the lamb upon my altar
“Step forth and bid the Serpent!” chanted the lesser Penitents from the haze.
Lee and the Penitent both braved the heat and stepped into the circle.
Inside, the heat roared to furnace strength. It nipped at their skin and eyes; parched their lips; and burned their throats with each breath.
As the burning built, the Penitent spread his arms – his robe drooping open to reveal dozens of fanatical scars – and Lee flinched.
Perhaps this circle was best left to madmen after all.
Except…
Except Lee’s legs ignored his command.
And a voice rumbled from the dark, hungry depths beneath.
“Now isn’t this just a pickle?” rumbled the Purifier from everywhere around them.
Assessing, weighing.
“My second most faithful hound; how many years have you labored for me in secret?”
“S-second?!” gasped the Penitent in outrage. “I–”
Fire rose from the very air and consumed him.
“And here we have a former noble, clinging to Lordship in his hovel. Ah, but this noble yearns with clarity, doesn’t he?”
Paralyzed, Lee felt the voice tugging at him. Bidding him answer.
“I would…I will be a Lord again!”
A Lord greater than the Tempest!
“A tawdry dream, but I suppose it will do.”
Flames rose like spears and stabbed deep into Lee’s belly, and the Purifier’s voice echoed inside his own head.
“This is the part where you regret your choices,” purred the Purifier like a lover. “Take a step back, mortal. How many men are born a year? Every last one of them yearning for fame and riches and ease. Wasting youth, then seeking it. Hoarding money, hoarding time. You could set your watch by the litany!”
Lee did not bid his legs to move, yet his body took a step.
Commanded by that voice towards the very center and its finality.
“Money, power, sex, fame, excitement, relief. Ask a man if he would sell his brother for a coin, and he’ll rebuff you. Let the man trick you for two, and he’ll throw his brother in for free.”
Lee’s body took another step.
“Consider the matter rationally. Well, as rationally as that rotting husk of a mind can manage after two cups of coffee. Just what in the ever-burning hell makes you special?”
Why is it that a little bit of pageantry is enough to convince you lot
That out of all the generations you alone shall know what it takes to bend God’s knee?
Lee’s legs forced him into the center, and the fire rooted deeper inside him.
“Well. Here we are. You wanted to bid the Serpent. You wanted control.”
The smoke paused, and Lee regained a foothold in his own body for an instant. Finding his voice, he gasped out, “I was promised–”
“An opportunity. And am I not a Serpent of my word? All my power; all my knowledge; all is open before you!”
An honest contest of wills to see who would emerge the victor!
“See if you can take it.”
Lee marshalled desperate strength and…
The Wyrm flicked the man’s fetid soul away.
“Such a shame,” he hummed, claiming the rest. “Fair is fair, after all.”
The smoke and haze cleared, revealing the black scales melted to lumps of coal and the Penitents trembling in awe. They had only seen the roaring flames rise to the ceiling in an instant, and here stood Lee untouched while their own leader had been reduced to ash!
Raising a hand, Jörmungandr flexed the fingers. “The harvest is meager these days.” He tapped an experimental heel to the stones and listened. “Still, reason to be positive. Not a drum to be heard!”
Honestly, Ali, did you really think I would neatly stumble into one of your little traps?
What fun would that be?
“A-aldersman Lee, are you…”
“Your hopes and prayers answered? Of course!” The Wyrm in a man’s corpse spun. “Before we settle to the usual business, however, I would know how my dear friends have occupied themselves in my absence. I would Knowing, of course, but I seem to have misplaced them.”
The flagellant gawped at this stranger in Lee’s place.
“Come now. You sent a vessel to be purified. Elevated. And, lo, I have accommodated your request!”
He snapped his fingers, and flickers of fire danced across the melted scales.
The Penitents began to moan in faith – or perhaps terror.
Then again, it was so difficult to tell the difference.
The Wyrm sniffed. “This place stinks of living metal. Someone’s cooking…”
Before he could press the matter, however, the doorbell rang.
***
Even as his thumb left the doorbell, Oliver shivered against a primal urge to flee.
Then Nix dove and alighted on his shoulder, a reassuring presence.
“Your mom and I faced the worst this place had to offer,” he told his elemental beast quietly. “You’re every bit as brave as her.”
She rubbed her cheek against his neck.
Despite the nice weather, the borough smelled even worse than usual. A deeper foulness, redolent and creeping, that settled into the back of his sinuses like memories of Lumian ash.
“Do me a favor,” he told Belle’s posse behind him. “Back up. Other side of the moat.”
They stared at him in puzzlement.
“You too, Belle.”
“W-why?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Just…a sour feeling.”
Grimacing, she nodded to her men, and they all retreated.
Oliver stood alone on Lee’s stupid moat.
The door opened a moment later – not Lee’s usual Livery man here to brush off the riff-raff but the aldersman himself.
“Ah, the Inventor,” Lee rumbled.
Nix hissed.
“Excuse me?” Oliver asked, voice even.
The aldersman flicked a glance at Oliver’s bird, non-plussed. “You’re looking…older.”
“Yes, that is how Time works,” the mayor replied.
“Been keeping busy? Something I can help you with?”
The mayor scowled. “Yeah. First thing, you can tell me where you put Lee.”
Though Oliver scanned for the tale-tell whispering ripple of a sylph, he did not expect to find one.
Somewhere deep down, he already knew. His soul rang with the obvious. It was only his mind that resisted that conclusion – that sought any escape from stark truth.
“He stands before you in the flesh!” this stranger announced in Lee’s voice, sweeping his arms wide.
“Lee hasn’t answered his own door once in his life.”
“Ah, but a change does a body good, don’t you think?”
Nix grew warmer on his shoulder, steaming the air.
Oliver agreed. “You can tell me your real name, or I can burn it out of you.”
“My real name?” Lee smirked, tapping his forehead in exaggerated thought. “Actually, that’s a rather interesting st–”
Nix released a nip of flame, scorching the moat before his feet.
The man never flinched.
“Oh, very well. If you must know, I am the answer to the desperate prayers of the Penitents! They beg for purification, and I answer!”
That grandiose pose; that jagged grin…
The Penitents had poured some shadow of the Wyrm into Lee’s empty head!
“Promise purification and bring death!” Oliver swore.
“Well, yes, but only for those who fail to meet my constantly shifting expectations.”
Oliver drew back and pulled Nix into his arms. The phoenix hissed again, eyes fixated on her foe, and her heat swelled into the mayor’s body.
His scars ached, cracking and bleeding, as his own skin began to steam.
“Really, have they considered just not dying?” Lee tapped his lips. “That is an option, you know.”
For the worthy
“Our lives are no game!” Belle shouted.
Her posse drew back their clothes to reveal guns and knives aplenty.
“You muster indignation like you matter.” The creature in Lee’s body cracked his neck. “No taste for the game at all. Sure you won’t come in for tea? We can fence around the obvious, and I can poison your drink. A grand time for all.”
Oliver and Nix inhaled together, gathering the strike.
To the mayor, the world slowed into the focus of life and death.
Though the creature continued to idly chat, “Ah, the hubris of man. You must think yourself quite the hero to charge at me like that.”
The creature’s smirk darkened, flashing broken teeth between Lee’s lips.
“You really should have called for your Archangel.”
Then the monster in Lee’s skin spit fire like the sun; a bolt of star-searing plasma that traveled at equally celestial speeds.
But Oliver swelled with the grief of Lumia; three children and ash; hands on the wheel to the bitter end; the last chirp of his treasured friend to buy a fraction more Time.
I will not let Phi have died in vain!
Oliver and his phoenix caught that bolt like a world serpent by the tail. Together, they heaved.
Agony seared them in passing, Flame beyond any mortal bounds.
Then the bolt arced into the sky, and Oliver still stood on the glassed remnants of a bridge; the moat around them burned dry; breathing air so hot he tasted the components.
His thinning hair smoldered with remnants of plasma, and brand new burns savaged across his shoulders and neck – the price for defiance.
His grip on Nix remained firm, and she leaned against him in turn.
Twin children of Flame.
“Oh, hey.” Lee shaded his eyes, watching his hellfire arc leisurely out to the stars. “Not half bad.”
The mayor’s moment of heroics ended, and Oliver staggered under unbearable exhaustion.
“Have you considered graduating into a real person?”
That…that was more than a Lee-borne monster or echo.
The Wyrm himself.
Jörmungandr gave the duo a light shove, and they toppled back.
“Really. You had the right of it, if only for a moment. Only your flesh holds you back; it demands your limitations.”
Several of the posse shot at Lee.
Belle cried Oliver’s name just as she had once cried for Louise.
Ignoring them, the Wyrm nudged the mayor with a toe. “Do you hear that? Not a single drum. Do you know why? Because I am the Purifier. I am welcome. More welcome than you or anyone in this slum. Connect the dots, Oliver Oshton, Inventor turned to fat in the back alleys.”
The Wyrm smirked.
“The drums do not ring because Ruhum wants this borough gone.”
Not war but janitorial services
And you are going to lay there and watch them die
Clinging to your mortality and your martyrdom
“Or will you rise, Oshton, and put that ancient soul to use?” bid the Wyrm.
Oliver and Nix offered him another lick of flame.
“You don’t even remember what you used to be. Before Foundations, before Eden, before men learned to love their shackles.”
Too exhausted to rise, Oliver sought a different idea. With difficulty, he shoved himself upright. “Well, don’t waste time on my account, Lee. Places to see and people to kill. For you’re the Wyrm, aren’t you?”
Bait for a drama queen, and how the Serpent perked.
He flung his arms wide, basking in the moment, and sang, “Exactly! For I am Jörmungandr, dread Wyrm, blight upon the stars! Cursed, despised, I am–”
Between one tick of Time’s gears and the next, the Hand of God drawn free its sheath; a hole opened in the ground between Oliver’s feet; and the Wyrm vanished into the sky.
The new burns began to sing in pain, and the mayor slumped backwards in exhaustion.
“Give him a taste of that Blade for me, Ali.”
***
Just as Valkyrie reached the southern-most edge of the borough, the earth trembled in awful echo.
Her mind flashed to memories locked deep in her soul – the suffering sensed even by the unborn.
She thought of her father, and she wondered what he would think of her now.
After a moment, the tremor faded. She frowned, but another never came.
Finally, sighing, she resumed her journey.
Hells, my feet hurt.
Several borough creeks joined together at the southern border of the overgrown slum, and she hobbled along a dirt embankment in search of a bridge. No way in hells was she dipping back into Sevensborough to use one of the creek bridges!
“Can’t be that far, right? Farmers have to cross too, right?”
The slum dwindled with every step, and soon she crossed the invisible line out of Sevensborough. She marveled a moment at the transition. Each borough was bound within a magic circle made of the lines on a map. Lines made by noble hands – everyone else just lived and died by the result.
Too scared to turn and too lost to plan, she limped until she finally spotted a narrow bridge!
She also spotted a horse-drawn constable wagon coming right her way.
Swearing, she dropped into the weeds.
Pulled by a sleepy mule, the jingling wagon approached. Two young constabulary yokels swayed with the rocking in tandem. One munched on an apple, and the other pet his constable dog.
“You hear about Berch?”
“What’d he do now?”
“Mouthed off to that mean-faced lady from central.”
“How’d that go for him?”
“Still hasn’t finished scrubbing toilets.”
The yokels laughed.
The wagon drew close enough for her to count the bent nails.
“You better eat before we hit the station.”
“Good point.” The yokel with the dog dug into his satchel.
“What’d you get?”
“Eh, bought a sack from that poncy deliveryman.” Rustling cans, the man swore. “Ah, hells, half its rotted!”
He pitched the rotted meal into the field.
It landed with a wet splotch right beside Valkyrie.
The dog followed, tail wagging.
Landed right in front of Valkyrie.
“G-good doggie?”
The constable dog started to furiously bark.