A Green Sun Illuminates the Void
Chapter 12: Louise Eclipsed
{0}
The court of King Jacomus I of Albion was sadly diminished from whatever glories it may have once held. Louise, clad in a hastily borrowed dress the Prince Wales had found for her, could see that. Whatever may have been done to clean the velvet and polish the woodwork in this grand hall had been incomplete, and there were still drag marks on the stone. The refined eye of the noble girl took all of this in, and drew its conclusions; this was a house down upon its luck. It reminded her of a few of the estates she had visited with her mother who had lost all their sons to various conflicts. The memories which had stayed with her were of men with lilacs tucked into their pockets and women with purple mourning veils.
And yet there was joviality here. The men laughed, and flirted with the younger women; the musicians played jaunty militaristic music rather than funereal dirges. The tables were laden with food – indeed, they were overstuffed – and the drink was already flowing. The Viscount Wardes was sat at one of the higher tables, and he looked to be fairing rather better.
"See," Cearl, the Prince Wales, said beside her, noticing where she was looking. "I have heard of Wardes of the Lightning, but I had not met him before, and I did not think he would be so stubborn – and, I think unwilling to show weakness – as that. Though, perchance, it may be something to do with his youth and the speed at which he attained the rank of square mage. That is always said to be very much a product of the will, and perhaps such men –and women – will always be rather hard to handle."
Louise nodded her head. Yes, that would fit with what she knew, and with her mother. She distinctly got the sensation that Marisalon was not saying anything, but ignored the unspoken insolence of the neomah.
"Ah, your highness," said an elderly man in a blue mantle, an amber-coloured monocle resting in his eye. "You are back.
"Who is this?" Louise asked the prince, in Romalian.
The white-haired man squinted at Louise through rheumy eyes. "I am the Earl of Dornsaet, the Lord Chamberlain of this royal household," he said, in the same formal old Brimiric – very similar to modern Romalian – that seemed to be used here. "My prince, have you... mmhm... have you resolved the troublesome issue of the intruders in the castle?"
"Your grace," Louise responded in the same language, curtseying. Her Romalian was accented, but she was passable in it; it was the shared language of the clergy and the highest of nobility, and so it behoved her to be able to speak it for formal circ*mstances such as this. "Much it shames me to admit it, through some..." she paused, searching for the word, before settling for, "lack of understanding, I and my fiancé, Viscount Wardes of Vajours, are the intruders. We are..." she paused. Founder damn it, she knew the word for ambassador, it was one of the important ones, so why couldn't she remember it? "We are friends from Tristain, intended to be here for the assistance of you, but our ship and us were attacked by the bad soldiers twice already, so there are only two of us here when there should have been more and a ship."
"Dear lady," Marisalon muttered, "from what I understood of your chain of thought, you are perhaps not as conversant in that language as you think you are."
Louise's eyes widened, and she had to resist the urge to smirk. So Marisalon couldn't understand Romalian? Interesting. Very, very interesting. A way to think without having her perverted head-familiar listen in. That had possibilities, and rather a lot of them...
"I can understand that; you thought that in your native language," the neomah said acerbically.
"Such misfortune, such shame!" the Earl exclaimed in complete ignorance of what was happening in the head of the girl. "More men would have been a grace of Lord and Founder alike, and another ship would have been a blessing beyond compare." He turned to Wales. "Your highness, your father welcomes you back, and your sister will be glad to see you."
"Thank you, Chamberlain," Cearl said, a hint of melancholy drifting onto his expression as he followed the old man. "As you were." There were cheers at the prince's appearance, cheers of celebration in the name of Albion, and he casually waved them off, a smile on his face which Louise could not help but feel was rather rigid.
"Yes, your highness," the old man replied, as the two of them made their way further into the hall.
{0}
From the high table, beside the royals, Louise watched the last ball of Albion. The last of the sunlight streamed through the windows, painted red by the smoke in the air, and the music played on. Viscount Wardes was to her left, the Prince Wales to her right, and she suspected that there might have been the slightest hint of a snub to her fiancé that the prince would choose to sit beside her rather than him.
"My fair lady, do not underestimate your own charms," Marisalon said with a wicked smirk implicit in her voice. "Not least, you have done a great service for both him and your princess, yes, conveying these letters."
That was true, the girl had to admit. Wardes was talking to her, but she was not truly paying attention. Instead, her eyes were flicking from dancer to dancer, green-glowing embers in her eyes flickering as she truly paid attention to each one. For all the Prince Wales' talk of their number of mages – and indeed they were many – they were not strong. Almost none in here were above line-class, and there were plenty of what could only be inexprimé, devoid of magic yet dressed as nobles. The Albionese bloodlines were said to be weak, diluted, and now she had her proof. By her reckoning, all their capable mages must have been on the walls already, and that she knew enough to be concerned by. A dot mage might kill a man, and a line a cluster of men, but it took triangle mages to kill formations and square to wipe out a company. She had heard some of what Viscount Wardes had achieved in those border clashes in the south with Germanian bandit lords, but not only was he exhausted already, he was not Albionese. For him to act here in such a way would be an act of war on behalf of Tristain, for as the knight-captain of the Griffin Knights he was an agent of state policy.
Louise blinked. She never normally thought that clearly about that sort of thing. And that did not sound much like how she normally thought. She shivered then, in her borrowed silk dress, checking her hands and glancing around the room for any alien intrusion into what she could see. There appeared to be nothing. She sipped at her soup, a mildly spiced dish with honeyed apple, and tried not to think about how many people in this room would be dead in a few days hence.
The next time she looked up, the Prince Wales was staring at her. And at her forehead. "Your highness?" she asked, subtly tilting her spoon so she could see her own reflection in it. It appeared to be devoid of burning crossed swords. Good.
"My lady de La Vallière, there is something that I believe I will ask of you," he said softly, "a favour, if you will. Do not worry; it should not put you at any risk."
"Your highness?" she asked.
"You see on the far side of my father?" he asked, as a new movement began from the musicians. "My sister, Sophia."
There was a little girl, even younger than herself though tall for her age, sitting at the high table at the left hand of the King who sat slumped in a high-backed chair. Age radiated off him, the years having scarred uncounted wrinkles into his skin – such that he looked even older than Old Osmond, the headmaster, who was well into his second century – and his robes and crown looked too big and too heavy for him. By contrast, the young girl was like a blossoming flower compared to the gnarled oak beside her. Her fine, straight hair was white-blonde, and her eyes were the same surprisingly dark blue as Cearl's.
"Yes, we have the same mother, a Gallian princess," the Prince Wales said, in response to her comparing glance. "She died giving birth to Sophia; we do not take after her, apart from the eyes. My father apparently looked rather a lot like me when he was younger, although even I find that hard to believe. It is somewhat hard to believe he was ever young." His voice dropped. "Some of the... ill-consequential decisions he has made might be said to be due to the fact that he was born in 504, and he has outlived four Prince Wales'. And what I would ask you to do is to ensure that she gets safely to Tristain. The royal blood runs just as strongly in her as it does in me, and she will fight to stay and die here, I am certain of it."
Louise blinked heavily. Already, the tragic joviality and the underlying air of melancholy to every action here were beginning to wear at her soul, for all that she had only been in this room for mere minutes. But to hear that a child that young would try not to be rescued, would be willing to die here in the name of honour that she was truly too young to understand? "Why?" she whispered.
"She is a princess of Albion, and knows her duty." The Prince Wales squared his jaw. "I, however, believe my own duty will be enough to pay off any debt of our family to Lord and Founder," he said softly, eyes drifting over towards a dancing couple where, Louise noted, the woman had a scandalously low-cut dress.
"I see," she replied, biting her lip.
"Your highness," Viscount Wardes said, leaning across Louise to talk to the man on the other side of her, "I have talked with others here, and I would be correct in saying that the ship will depart for Tristain, from your ingenious hidden tunnels, tomorrow morning?"
The Prince Wales nodded. "Closer to midday than dawn, yes; the movements of Albion are such that we would be exposed at dawn. Nevertheless, yes, it should be before midday. I will be there to see you off."
Wardes nodded, the nod of one soldier to another. "I understand. Die bravely. And," he turned to Louise, "it would be better not to fill up on starters, my little Louise. Hence, before the main course is served, might you honour me with a dance, so that the two of us may work up an appetite?" He winked at her and the Prince Wales. "I hear the chicken glazed with honey is a speciality of Albion, and they can do wonderful things with sugared rices."
Sliding her chair backwards, Louise smiled, the feeling within her genuinely happy as opposed to the brave face she had been putting around in the midst of all this jovial melancholy. "My dear viscount," she replied, formally, in High Tristainian, "I would be delighted to do so."
{0}
Feet whirled across the floor as violoncellos marked out the steps of the gavotte. It was dark outside, night having fallen, and the light of the blue moon streamed down through the windowpanes, casting the stained glass in a strange light tainted by the red of the campfires outside the castle walls. Inside, the magelights were bright, and the ancient banners of Albion resplendent fluttered in false breezes.
And all eyes were on one couple.
No. That was not true.
All eyes were on the pink-haired girl who, in her borrowed silk dress, captivated anyone who looked at her. No other pairs danced, because that might risk obscuring one's own sight of the spectacle, and that could not – would not – be permitted by one's heart. There was something alien about the way she moved, but the mind did not seem to care, and the spirit was twisted by the sight of it. How could the eye be forced to track the casual movement of a hand in that way? How could each step of a foot force one's own feet to jog? Why was the thought of interrupting, of breaking the flow so utterly abhorrent? It was not that she danced with unprecedented grace, though that was true; her steps were the very essence of perfection, better than a mortal man could do, and her partner was rendered clumsy and graceless in the eyes of all onlookers by her elegance. No, mere perfection was not enough to describe the hypnotic sinuous motions that composed this gavotte. Here, on the eve before battle, was beauty without malice, grace beyond compare, and it cried out for all to love her.
It was an effort of will akin to a master's spell to resist it. So close to war, to conflict, who had the will to do that?
Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière danced, and in her dance in the last ball of Albion she ensnared all who looked upon her.
Weeping, the instrumentalists came to the end of their piece, broken-hearted that they could not play on, that they would end this. And as the bows lifted from the violoncellos, there was silence.
"My dearest, most beloved, finest lady, that was exquisite," Marisalon crowed within her mind. "Dances are the highest form of beauty, the most profound grace, and you, as chosen of the King of Creation himself, are worth of him! Oh, that I could join you in this!"
"Louise, my dear Louise," Wardes said, his void almost a croak, in the odd quiet. "Let me fetch you a drink."
She smiled sunily, as she stared around at the oddly vacant-eyed faces all around her, flushed by his admiration and the praise of the neomah within her head. "My lord, that is hardly necessary. It was only one dance," she said, with a casual shrug. "I am not tired at all."
"Nevertheless," Wardes said, and left it at that, as he almost bodily dragged his fiancé away from the dance floor. The motion seemed to break the spell, and the others stirred, though there was a vacancy of expression, a tear in many eyes, which spoke of the marks which that dance had burned into them. Passing Louise a glass of red wine, Wardes took one for himself, and downed half of it in a single, desperate gulp, like that of a drowning fish.
Louise glared at him in half-resentment, her lips twisting into a pout. She took a sip of her own wine, noting that the Albionese seemed to be serving fortified wine, and swirled it around. Wardes was staring at her with narrowed eyes, which were slightly wild.
"Where did you learn to dance like that?" he asked, leaning over her.
The girl sniffed. "Mother ensured we were all taught, like proper ladies should," she retorted, a little part of her amazed at how she was acting around Viscount Wardes. Perhaps it was just easier to be coldly arrogant at him, easier certainly than having to face the mixed emotions about what they had done together. Because as long as she could be chill and treat him like another one of the boys in her class at the Academy, she wouldn't...
He bowed before her. "Louise, in all my years, and in the courts and castles I have visited, I have never seen anything like that. It was wonderful, and you..." he licked his lips, "you were more beautiful than anything I have ever seen before." His shoulders slumped. "Spare a man's heart, though, when he is still tired from magic-use."
... be blushing bright read and stammering. "Th-thank you," she managed, resisting the urge to clamp her hands to cheeks she knew would be flaming red. "You were... um... also good."
"My little Louise," he said, earnestly, "not compared to you. Not compared to that. I am only a soldier, after all."
"You're not!" she blurted out, realising she had been a little loud, and flinching. "You're not just a soldier."
"Well, perhaps." He blinked heavily, and took another, rather more moderate sip of his wine. "But, my Louise, I have been meaning to talk to you. On this trip, but particularly, since those treacherous Albionese destroyed our ship. It is fortunate that we managed to end up in this place, and that there is a way out, but even then, there is risk."
The girl blinked. "I'm not sure what you mean," she said, huddling both hands around her wine.
"What I mean by that," the viscount said, tucking a loose strand of grey hair behind his ear before reaching into a pocket, "is that there is a chance that the ship we shall take tomorrow might also be attacked, and captured or worse, shot down immediately. And though I will naturally try my best to protect you, I am tired. You might well get away when I fall." He paused. "And considering the events of that... of that night when the strange armoured men attacked us... well."
Louise blushed bright red. "Um..." she began, not quite sure where he was going with this line of approach.
From his pocket, he removed a small box. "We are already engaged, you and I, and thus in the eyes of God I have your parents' permission. The royals of Albion, just like home, are the children of Brimir, and so can carry out a marriage as any priest could. And should issue result from... those events, marriage would ensure legitimacy even I die. I sinned through my own weakness then; I must make things right. And after that dance... my little Louise, please, I beg of you," he said, opening the box to reveal a ring, "will you marry me?"
The pink-haired girl blinked. She opened her mouth. She closed her mouth.
"Yes," she said.
{0}
The night sky through the window was gem-studded, the velvet black studded with constellations and lesser stars. It was beautiful, for in Albion above the clouds everything was clearer. Below the sky, though, were the fires of war. The campfires and occasional patches of magelight of the Republican army covered the ruins of New Castle and surrounded the town outside the walls. Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière turned her head from the window, and sighed.
"She says to hold still," Princess Sophia noted, in response to the babble of words from the commoner who was adjusting the wedding dress and mantle. The younger girl was sitting on the dressing table so her eyes were slightly above Louise's own, swinging her legs, as she spoke to Louise in High Tristainian and translated what the commoner maid said. "It's an awfully pretty dress," she said, solemnly, smoothing down her own clothing, which was a pale blue that contrasted to her darker eyes. "And you're a very good dancer."
"Thank you, your highness. And yes, it is," Louise said, gasping slightly as the commoner adjusted the sit of the stomacher, the stiff paper of the Prince Wales' letters tucked into her chemise jabbing into her. The princess spoke sharply to the maid for a few moments, and the clothing was loosened, allowing the pink-haired girl to breathe more easily.
"Big sister Elizabeth wore it when she got married," the little girl said, twirling one finger in her blonde hair. "She wasn't very happy because she didn't want to have to marry a Germanian because, number one, that meant that she couldn't become queen here, and number two, he was all old. Even older than she was. Like... ancient."
"Even older than Viscount Wardes?" Louise asked, smiling despite her worry.
"Oh, yes! Really, really ancient! He has grey hair... and not the kind of grey hair that the viscount has! The kind of grey hair which used to be a different colour! That makes him ancient. Almost as old as Daddy, only his hair is white and that makes him older than grey."
"Mmm." Louise paused for a moment. Well, it wouldn't hurt to say this here, would it? "I have a friend who has to marry a Germanian, too," she said. "She doesn't really want to, either."
The little girl nodded sadly. "When I'm older, I'm going to marry who I want to," she said. "Only... there aren't enough princes around. I mean, I can't marry my brother and you don't have any princes in Tristain and Gallia only has a princess and Romalia has a pope. So if you want to marry a prince, you have to either marry a Germanian, or some silly prince of some teeny tiny Otmani place or a prince of the Commonwealth... and they aren't real princes! There was a boy I used to play with who was a Duke and dukes are acceptable but then Gewiesse fell and I haven't heard from him since and my big brother said he didn't know what had happened to him but I think he was lying."
"It is a big problem," Louise said, sounding distracted as she stared out the window again at the distant lights around the city.
"It's going to be so glorious!" the little girl chirped up. "Father and my brother are going to beat those traitors and we can move back to Londinium. They're going to be punished! In the name of Albion!"
Louise paused, the breath catching in her throat not only because of the little girl's words, but also because the laces were tightened again. "Of course, your highness," she said.
"Nuh uh!" With an exceptionally serious face, Princess Sophia wagged her finger at her. "That's the not-answering voice, which adults use when they're lying to you by saying things that they think you'll accept! Well, you're not a real adult, so you can't use it on me!"
The pink-haired girl reddened. "I'm s-sixteen," she retorted, "I'm getting married, and that makes me an adult!"
There was a moment of perplexity on the little girl's face. "Really?" She blinked. "Well, that doesn't matter! You don't think we'll win!" She bit down on her lip. "I... I don't think anyone thinks we'll win, but we have to," she whispered, softly. "My father wants to send me away to big sister Elizabeth and my brother told me to go while he wins the battle so I don't have to see the fighting, but I'm not stupid. I know people don't think we're going to win. They're wrong!" The little girl's alabaster skin was starting to get rather more pink and blotchy around her eyes, which were welling with tears. "Aren't they?" There was a babble of Albionese from the commoner. "She says to stretch your arms out so she can do the sleeves up," the girl added. "But... aren't they?"
Louise took a deep breath. She really wanted to play with her dress, stare at her hands, do anything apart from look at that teary, earnest face, but the commoner lacing up her sleeves made it rather hard to do so. "Your highness," she began slowly, "there are a lot of enemies, and though the loyal subjects here will probably win – and the Lord favours the children of Brimir – there might be a lot of damage to the place, and there is also the risk that the traitors... who are, after all, traitors, might cheat in some way and not play fair. I talked to your brother, and he said that I should make sure you were safe on the ship, and protect you in Tristain. I can introduce you to Princess Henrietta. She's one of my oldest friends, as well as my ruler."
Princess Sophia sniffled. "'Kay," she said, softly, slipping off the table to try to hug Louise. Before she could get there, she was warned off by a musketline barrage of Albionese from the maid, who dropped her work to give the girl a handkerchief before she could get her face on the wedding dress. "I... I think I'd like that." She forced herself to smile, a thin, watery thing, turning to pick up the bridal veil and mantle, both adorned with everfresh flowers. "After all, princesses should be friends and help each other, yes?" she said, as she stood on tiptoe to help pin the veil into Louise's hair.
{0}
The chapel was nearly empty, for almost all of the Albionese nobles were still at the party. There were more children here than adults. Princess Sophia had, in a show of initiative, rounded up other noble children, and an impromptu number of flower girls distributed bouquets purloined from various places over the castle.
Wardes and Louise stood up in front of Cearl, who was standing below the image of the Founder Brimir, wearing his official uniform. Wardes, who himself was wearing his usual clothes under a groom's mantle likewise borrowed, bowed his head in respect to the Prince Wales.
"Well then, let us begin the ceremony. I will do this in High Tristainian, for you two." The blond man clapped his hands once. "Lord in heaven, hallowed be your name, and smile with your favour." Raising his wand, he waved it around his head, three revolutions drawing out the room. "We thank you for the wind; north, south, east and west, and for the changing of the world, and call upon it to bless these two as they set aside their families and become one flesh, one soul in your eyes. We thank you for the fire, for illumination and for passion, and call upon it to bless these two such that their marriage is joyous and burns bright. We thank you for the earth, for steadfastness and honesty, and call upon it to bless these two so they may endure all hardships. We thank you for the waters, for secrets and mysteries, for mingling and unity, and call upon them such that this marriage is blessed with new life. And in all things, Lord God who sent the Founder Brimir forth that we might be saved from the evils of the elves and given freedom, we thank you for the void, which is all things and by which all things may be possible. Lord, Founder, we thank you."
"Thank the Founder. Thank the Lord," Louise said, mind working on reflex, her voice a chorus with the other ones in the room. The ivory-white veil was like mist in front of her face, and she tried to suppress the guilt that told her she should not be wearing it, that she was not entitled to such a mark of purity.
"Bridegroom, Viscount Jean-Jacques Francis de Wardes. Do you take this woman as your wife, and swear to respect and love her in the name of the Founder Brimir? Through the changing of the seasons, and until the end of days, do you swear to be by her side, under sun and the two moons alike? And in sadness and joy, blessings and misfortune, shall you be one with her and her with you, such that in the eyes of the heavens you are together?"
Wardes nodded solemnly. "I swear to do so," he said, bringing his right hand to his heart in a salute.
The Prince Wales looked at Louise and smiled encouragingly.
"Bride, the third daughter of the Duke de La Vallière, Louise Françoise le Blanc de La Vallière. Do you take this man as your husband, and swear to respect and love him in the name of the Founder Brimir? Through the changing of the seasons, and until the end of days, do you swear to be by his side, under sun and the two moons alike? And in sadness and joy, blessings and misfortune, shall you be one with him and him with you, such that together you will bring new life into this world?"
A pause. A terrible, extended pause, as Louise felt the future echo out in front of her. Should she? Would she? Was she truly doing this for the right reasons? Yes, her and Wardes had... but did they need to get married? From her talk with Monmon oh so few days ago, there were certainly ways around it. There was the hypocrisy revealed to her of society that condemned such things in public but practiced such things in private. Did she really love him, or was she just snarled in the web of what other people wanted of her?
"My princess," Marisalon, speaking unexpectedly, said, "my fair princess, there is only one thing I can say. And that is do as you wish, for you are the one who matters here. Is this what you wish to do?"
"Yes. I do," said Louise, stomach a-flutter with butterflies as she stared up into his clear grey eyes.
And she was certain. Within her, within her heart, all her previous uncertainty and doubt crystallised into iron hard resolution. She loved him, she really did, and she could have chosen to run away from him, to flee. She could have chosen to be a little girl, but she was not a little girl. She loved him, he loved her. This was not only the progression of a betrothal set up when she was six, this was how things were meant to be. From this day on, she would protect him just he protected her, love him as he loved her, and never, ever, ever betray him. To do otherwise would be the same thing as death.
"You may now kiss the bride," she heard the Prince Wales say, from seemingly a long way away. She took this opportunity for the excuse it was, as Wardes, her husband, lifted her veil.
Eyes welling up with inner seas of happiness, cheeks blushing bright red, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him full on the lips.
{0}
There had been applause and hearty congratulations from those who had remained at the party. There had been toasts for Viscount Wardes from already-tipsy men, and women had flocked in to congratulate the still-blushing bride. King Jacomus had been helped to his feet, and he had personally blessed both of them. There had been salutes and cheering and celebrations of the virtue of the Viscount and his new Viscountess. And throughout it, as it got later and later into the night, Louise had been getting more and more frustrated.
But now they had left, for quarters hastily assigned to them. Now they were all alone, just her and her new husband, all ready to do... things. Blushing bright red as she was carried in his arms, she thought of her experiences already with him, and compared them to the wide open waters of sexuality and possibility that Marisalon suggested for her. Oh yes, yes, yes, it was going to be...
"My sweet Louise, my bride," Wardes said, gently laying her down upon the bed, "I fear I must leave you now."
Her eyes widened, her jaw went slack, as if she had just been slapped. "Wh-wh-why?"she stammered, her previous flush going to leave her as pale as a ghost. "Is there... am I not beautiful... why do you not..." She trailed off, jaw working.
Bending down, he kissed her on the hand. "It is not your fault at all," he said. "But I am still tired from all the magic I have used and I did not sleep well on the boat either, for I had to maintain the favourable winds." He tensed his jaw slightly. "I have talked with the apothecary, and he has prepared a weak sleeping potion for me, to ensure I have uninterrupted rest, but can be woken should the Albionese engage in any form of early attack."
Louise said nothing, but her hands balled into fists.
"I had hoped there would be more special things on our wedding night," Wardes said, regretfully, "but the current situation renders such luxuries impossible. So I will leave you to have proper rest, too, as you mentioned that you have been sleeping poorly, and offer only the promissory note that when we get to a place where such things are possible, my dearest wife, we can have our nights of romance to your heart's desire." He blinked. "You do of course understand the severity of the situation, do you not?"
"... I do," Louise said, pouting.
"It is not through any lack of beauty on your part," the man grinned sheepishly, "as we have already shown I find you most attractive. But, my sweet Louise, please, do understand that I will be expected to help the ship tomorrow, and I will be no good to anyone if I cannot even conjure up the least breeze."
"Y-you seemed to be okay," Louise stammered. "Couldn't... we at least once? And then you," she blushed red, "c-could go sleep elsewhere. Please?" she begged.
The Viscount looked tempted for a moment, but shook his head. "No," he said regretfully, "I cannot. It is already past midnight, and we will be setting off early. I recommend that you get as much rest as possible, too, for I may well need you should the Albionese manage to board us." He leant over her, to kiss her chastely on the cheek. "A promise for later, my wife," he said, bowing, before he left.
The soft noise of the door closing seemed like the slamming of that jail cell below in the dungeons in Louise's head. And then there was silence, his footsteps barely heard as he padded away down the hallway. The pink-haired girl waited until she could hear nothing of him, and then waited another minute in the dimly lit suite for good measure.
A pillow erupted in green fire, torn asunder by pale hands, the feathers burning like dying embers to fall as white ash on the floor. A kick demolished a chair, which combusted with a fairly heard scream. Still clad in her wedding dress, the girl let out a bellow of sheer rage.
"How dare he! How dare he? Men! Men! They'll sleep with... with that cow Von Zerbst and Monmon was right to cut all ties to Guiche for being... for b-being an unfaithful little ill-bred fungus, but will m-m-my husband sleep with me on our wedding night? No, he won't!" She screamed again, and went looking for something else to destroy.
To say that the new Viscountess Wardes was displeased would be to gravely understate her personal feelings.
After the third chair, however, Louise had settled down into a sort of bitter put-upon mentality, not helped by the nagging sensation that she perhaps should not have destroyed the furniture of the royal house of Albion. Marisalon, too, sounded rather disappointed in her mental commentary, for all the neomah tried to hide it. And her suggestions that maybe they could continue to work on the basic verbs of the strange language she spoke, 'Old Realm', were neither given nor accepted with good grace.
The sound of someone trying to as silently as possible open the door came as a welcome relief to the two of them. Still clad in her wedding dress, which had turned out to be impossible to remove on her own, Louise sprung to her feet only to throw herself back onto the double bed in an attempt at lounging. She would have pulled the neckline of her dress down, but the underlayers of the royal wedding dress of Albion were almost skin-tight, a translucent diaphanous veil flush against her skin that rose up to her jawline in its embrace and left no room to expose flesh. And as she had already found, the upper layers were laced or hooked to it, and as a result, the girl couldn't remove it herself.
"My husband," Louise said, in what she really hoped was a seductive voice, "so good of you to come back. Now... oh."
That exclamation was at the pale-skinned blonde little girl whose dark-blue eyes widened as she realised that there was someone in this room.
"Sorry," Princess Sophia blurted out in the old Brimiric dialect the royalty and nobles seemed to use here, her head retreating back under the blankets she wore like a cloak. "I didn't mean to..."
Louise sighed. Oh well. "It's fine," she said back, in Romalian, before switching to High Tristainian. "Your highness, what are you doing here?" She paused. "And how did you get the lock open?" she asked, prompting the little girl to blush red and stutter.
Closer observation, however, revealed that the princess's eyes were already reddened, and her exquisitely formed nose was running. And the longing expression she had... Louise felt a surge of empathy within her. Yes, the Albionese princess wasn't having to fight off allegations of inexprimé, and she wasn't a failure, a Zero, faced by tutor after tutor giving up in disgust. But from their previous conversation, she was a girl stuck in a world which she couldn't affect, which she couldn't live up to the expectations of, and which wouldn't let her do what she should do. Louise knew how that felt. She knew just how that felt. Princess Sophia Stewart just looked so pathetic and miserable that her heart went out to her.
And at the very least, she could help unlace elements of the corsetry so Louise could lie down more comfortably.
{0}
The magelights in the underground cavern were bright compared to the ones in the castle above. Bare stone was everywhere, smoothed down by the earth mages who had accentuated this natural cave-fissure until it was a hidden dock. The darkness of the channel which led down to the underside of the flying continent was broken by the magelights that marked the walls, and the voices of the men working down here produced strange echoes from the depths. There was a pronounced funk in the air, the scent of dragon pens with an undertone of the unmistakable lightning-like smell of wind dragons, and their presence was only confirmed by the wineglass-cry of one of the scaled beasts, drowning out all the conversation from the humans in the area.
"Quieten the beasts!" the Prince Wales ordered, hands clasped behind his back as he paced back and forwards at the quayside. "Keep them under control!" It was late, and he had too many things to do this night before he could rest even without the three dragons they had left causing problems. "How goes the loading, Mancaster?"
"I would reckon three-quarters complete," said the other man, dusting off his hands. "We have already taken the windstones on board, so we may cast off when needed, and the supplies are being loaded along with what treasure is left to us. The monarchy may be exiled, but it will not be extinguished."
Gripping the handrail until his knuckles turned white, Prince Cearl stared at the ship's hull with no expression at all. "Yes," he said, flatly. "And..."
"Your highness," a man's voice came from behind them, speaking in High Tristianian-accented Court Albionese. "I have been looking for you. I wished to talk with you before I slept."
The Prince Wales' eyebrows fluted upwards in surprise. "I did not expect to see you here, Viscount Wardes," he said, "least of all on your wedding night when you had gone to those lengths to get me to marry you to that sweet girl." He did not like this man, Cearl had already decided. Some of it was likely professional; as the knight-captain of one of the three Tristainian hands of the state, he was a killer, and someone loyal to the Crown rather than Princess Henrietta, unlike the new Viscountess Wardes. But there was just something about him that displeased the blond man, a certain smug arrogance that the Prince Wales could not help feel was judging the efforts he had made in service of his kingdom, and finding them wanting.
Wardes flapped a hand in his direction. "There are more important things than my personal indulgence," he said, "and the marriage had its own reasons."
Prince Cearl sighed. "Would it be at all related to the fact that you appear to have lost your chaperones back in La Rochelle?" he asked, a somewhat arch note entering his voice. "And so you chose to do the decent thing?"
There was a slight, almost imperceptible blush on the Tristainian man's face. "I am concerned about the chance that this vessel could be intercepted on its way to Tristain," he said, ignoring the prince's comments. "There exists a cordon of rebel ships around this place, I know this for a fact. I will be on the ship, yes, and I will try my best to protect it, but I am still exhausted. How many other mages will there be on board, and how do you plan to evade the Desbattionarianist vessels?" He sagged, slightly. "I hope, for both your and my own sake, you have answers, because if you have any plans around my presence, I will not be able to provide one tenth of the aid I might be able to normally. And might we make this quick? I am headed to the infirmary to sleep."
"You're falling asleep on your feet," the Prince Wales said, bluntly, "... but you may be right." Subtly, carefully, he adjusted his grip on his wand. "Let us go up to my room... Mancaster, you will be able to handle things down here?"
"Aye, your highness," said the Albionese noble. He accepted the notes passed to him by his prince, already looking over the golems loading the ship.
"Then let us go on," the blond man said, gesturing towards the stairs back up to main body of the castle. As the Tristainian man turned, the prince whispered the words to a spell which would direct magic, focussing the cantrip on the back of the other man. He was, naturally enough for a knight-captain, heavily magical, almost everything he carried warded or enchanted in some way. The Prince Wales smiled faintly as he felt the characteristic feeling of strength in the other man's clothes, which produced cloth which could turn aside a sword blow. But the man himself? He was weak, hollow, almost drowned out magically by the things he carried. The prince let out a slow breath; he was fairly sure that he would be as limp as overboiled cabbage if he was trying to move around with his will so depleted.
It was another blow to his plans. Prince Cearl had hoped that Viscount Wardes had been faking it, that he had been saving something back to help protect the outbound vessel, in an attempt to avoid getting Tristain's representative drawn into a casus belli. He could respect that. But the man was drained, exhausted, a shell of what he should have been capable of.
Someone would have to protect the ship in its escape. And as it stood, the prince could only pray that the noblewomen on board would be enough should the ship be caught. The favour of God would be needed for fair winds and safe passage, and the Prince Wales had seen enough that he could doubt that the Lord was listening.
{0}
"Well, look on the bright side, my fair lady," Marisalon said, in a tone of voice which indicated that she did not really see any bright side. "At least you have someone snuggled up to you in bed on your wedding night."
Louise did not dignify that with a response. Princess Sophia, after admitting that she had picked the lock to the door with magic – and what was a royal princess doing knowing how to do that? – had, at a simple question of 'Are you feeling all right?' run over to the pink-haired girl. Even now, she had her arms locked around Louise, sobbing wetly into her none-too-impressive bosom.
"There, there," she said, somewhat ineffectually. How exactly was she meant to comfort her? Louise's practical experience at aiding others when they were upset was negligible; indeed, it was usually her who was the one who got comforted. She briefly contemplated imperiously ordering the little girl to cease her piteous crying, and discarded the idea as not likely to work, and rude to someone who outranked her. What would big sister Cattleya do?
Hugs. Big, expansive, all-consuming, smothering hugs. And admittedly Louise was underequipped compared to her older sister in the specific tools used in Cattleyan hugs, but it couldn't hurt. Wrapping her arms around the princess, she rocked her from side to side awkwardly. What now?
"Do y-you want to talk about it?" she started, reading the words off the invisible script inside her head.
"That's it, wise lady," Marisalon said. "Of course! You are doing well, to work on getting the soon-to-be-Queen-in-Exile of Albion friendly with you! And I thought you didn't care; no, of course, you are wise and kind and most devious and..."
'Marisalon. Shut up.' Louise paused, and considered the next step. "It'll be okay?" she ventured.
"No, it won't," came the muffled voice from her chest. "It's... it's not going to... t-to be okay! D-D-Daddy is g-going to die, and... and Cearl is g-g-going to die and... and..." she trailed off again into sobbing, any words lost in the burble of unhappiness. Louise just held onto her, and let her cry her heart out, sobbing into the front of her wedding dress. The little girl smelt of citrus fruits, the new Viscountess Wardes noted as she lay there, feeling a bit guilty about the fact that some of the things she was thinking about was how her arms were starting to go numb with all the hugging, that the tears were unpleasantly damp, and the little girl's face was digging into her.
Louise pursed her lips. As soon as she got home, she was going to apologise to Cattleya for doing this to her when she was younger.
Nevertheless, she held the princess until her crying softened, and stopped. The little girl still clung to her, but she rolled away, enough that Louise could shift. At least the enchanted fabric of the royal wedding dress dried miraculously fast, the water simply vanishing.
"I'm..." there was a sort of snort-hiccup from Princess Sophia, "... I'm so, so, so sorry," she said, softly. "I... pl-please don't tell Daddy about this. H-h-he doesn't like it when I cry and... and the m-maids tell him so I went to this room because it's normally empty only you were here and... and... and pr-princesses aren't meant to cry..." she trailed off. Her alabaster skin was botchy, and her blonde hair a mess; she did not look regal.
"There, there," Louise said, on the grounds that it had so far, if not worked, at least not made things any worse.
"... b-b-but this is my place and the maids don't know I taught myself to open the door and close it behind me and..." she sniffed, "this used to be Mama's bed, they say. I come through here because it's m-m-meant to smell like the flowers she liked." There was a long pause. "I w-wish she hadn't died," the little girl said in a quiet voice. "Then D-Daddy wouldn't be so disappointed in m-me."
Something went hard and cold inside Louise. A princess not being meant to cry was one thing. Crying in public was a sign of extreme grief; to do otherwise was weakness, and something her mother had made quite clear to her. But to be disappointed in one's child because – as the Prince Wales had mentioned – her mother had died in childbirth? That was something else entirely. Princess Sophia was a mage, and she seemed obedient and from what Louise could remember of Princess Henrietta at the same age, not too different from other princesses. Parents weren't meant to be disappointed in you if you could cast properly, if you tried your best!
"You shouldn't be upset about that!" she said, forcefully, pulling herself up to a sitting position. "It's not your fault!"
The little girl looked up at her with watery eyes. "My brother says that," she said, softly, shuffling closer to the pink-haired girl, "but... but I don't think he means it. He was older than I am now when she d-died, and... and that means he knew her before she died. It... it happened j-just as I was born. I... I wouldn't want anyone taking her away. I... I'd hate me."
"It's not your fault," Louise repeated, shaking her head, and trying her best to look serious. "Sometimes, people just die in childbirth, even with water mages around. It's one of the scary things about being a woman." She lay back down. "It's one of the things the Lord blessed us with, though, because we can make real life, while men can't, so that makes us better."
Princess Sophia hugged her tighter, and whispered, "You just got married. Please don't die having a baby."
Louise turned bright red, and began to splutter. "I... um... well," she began, and swallowed hard. "That is... I... it... um..." she tried again, stammering away into nothingness.
"Oh, do not be concerned, my beautiful princess of the green sun," Marisalon cheerfully interrupted. "Your body is so wonderful, so blessed by the favours of the King of Kings himself that you will not do so! And even if you did, I am sure that my presence within you would be enough to ward such mishaps off. I have made countless children, and over the years I have given birth to fourteen, and it is only things like humans that die in pregnancy."
That was reassuring, Louise had to admit. It wasn't ever likely, not if a midwife was there, let alone a water mage healer, but with what had happened with Viscount Wardes and the fact that she was now married, she had to think about children as something which occupied her immediate future. That was scary. Very scary. And yet... a child in her arms, with pale pink hair, their eyes perhaps grey, a child that was hers, who wouldn't be a failure and who... yes, that might be nice.
Right now, there was a child on one of her arms, the princess's breathing suggesting that she had fallen asleep. Louise tried to shift her arm, but the way the little girl's breath caught and she gripped tighter thwarted her. She stared up at the ceiling. She wasn't mentally tired, but it had to be past midnight and her body felt like it needed rest.
Maybe if she just closed her eyes for a bit, she could get the benefits of sleep without dreaming. She just had to keep thinking about things, so she wouldn't fall asleep...
{0}
Pen scratching against parchment, the Prince Wales worked in the temporary room he had set up, down by the docks. Some of the ideas and warnings about ways which the Desbattionarianists might attack that Viscount Wardes had given were things that he had not thought of, and he was busy taking such things into account. That man was as skilled as he had heard; even a shell of himself, drained of magic, his brain was almost as deadly.
The crystal-glass cry of the wind-dragons sounded again. Prince Cearl ignored it, pulling himself to his feet onto aching legs. Wincing, he made his way to the side, and poured himself a half-glass of wine, diluting it down with water. He tapped his fingers against the wall, and thought.
Lord Fairfax was commanding the rebel forces here, that sly wolf of a man. An excellent general who had seen combat down against Gallian garrisons on Albionese islands down in the Great North Sea. A man who was good at the large plans, and deeply religious... which made his treason against the rightful Brimiric crown even more intolerable.
There was something he missing, the Prince Wales knew. He had overlooked something, and it was driving him to distraction. He'd spent the last hour going over everything, again and again and again. Something didn't quite fit. Even with all the notes here, all the details he knew of the force composition of the rebels from intercepted messages, there was something he was missing.
What was it?
{0}
The childish figure of Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière poked her head out of the bushes, and watched as the servants headed onwards. They were looking for her, but she didn't want to be found. She couldn't face her mother, couldn't face the fact that she had no skill at magic, while her older sisters were so skilled for their ages. Even Cattleya, with her illness, could do more than her. And the servants knew it too; even the help knew that she was useless, knew that the title of inexprimé was being thrown in her direction, and only the de la Vallière name, and the few, uncontrolled, irregular explosions that she could produce was keeping her safe from that.
It was a terrible thing for a six-year old girl to know.
She wished she didn't know, that she didn't have to know.
But the life of a noble had many things that a commoner needed not concern themselves with. Their own duties were to follow the orders of their superiors in blood, to pay their taxes, and to pray to Lord and Founder, nothing more. They did not have to concern themselves with blood purity, with heritage and the potential for ignominy that came with it. Such things were beyond their ken. They could marry for love, not for necessity.
At this moment, Louise would have sacrificed all of this to not have to have overheard the argument between her parents, her father alarmed, her mother scarily intense, on the subject of their youngest daughter.
But now she was in the Secret Garden. Her special place, close enough to the estate to be accessible on six-year old legs, yet far enough away, and isolated enough, that no-one would find her easily. And it was wrong, wrong, wrong. Verdigris consumed the trees, blue-green plaque flaking away to reveal the gleaming metal underneath. Knee-high flowers made of indigo ice bloomed everywhere, filling the air with a peculiarly acrid scent that grated at the nose, and the lake was stained with rainbow colours. A bird thrashed in agony in the shallows, before something monstrous shifted under the depths and the pained creature was gone in a splash of not-water which consumed and corroded the land. There was a central island, with a single house made of the same white stone as the broken ruins around it, which stood upon a basalt protuberance which looked rib-like. Louise had a horrifying feeling that it was the white marble that was the intrusion onto the world.
Only the small boat, with the blanket she kept there for when she wanted to hide, seemed untouched by the horrors that were consuming her world, corrupting her safe place. The girl dove into the vessel, and snuggled under the sheets, only to find her head on the lap of a lavender-skinned woman.
"Oh, my lady," Marisalon said, rubbing her thighs together, "how wonderfully enthusiastic."
Louise flinched away, rocking the boat enough that it almost capsized, and incidentally noting she seemed to be back to her normal teenage self. "What are you doing... h-h-here! In my dream! L-like this! Wearing that!" she screamed at her familiar, pointing one shaking finger at the neomah.
Marisalon shrugged, leaning back to dip her hands in the water. "Wearing what?"
"That's my w-w-wedding dress! Only... only... only you t-tore it so you're showing off your legs and... and you... you perverted thing! You shouldn't be doing that!"
It was at about this point that Louise realised that she was naked. With a hysterical shriek, she recoiled away, falling backwards out of the boat, into the polluted lake, and up out of the lake back into the boat.
Her response to this impossibility was to scream again.
"My fair lady," Marisalon said in a consolatory tone, "this is a dream."
"This is a n-n-nightmare!" the girl screamed, trying to cover herself as well as clap her hands to her bright red cheeks, and failing for lack of limbs. "Get out!"
The neomah shrugged. "Nightmare and dreams are the same thing," she said laconically. "And I like what you've done with the place. It makes it feel more comfortable."
Louise's eyes went wide, and she stared around the tainted landscape. She went to scream again, and paused. "This isn't my dr-dream," she stammered, arms hugged around herself and shivering in the too-hot sunlight. "I've never been here! This... this shouldn't be like this! It shouldn't!" Tears began to seep from her eyes, crying at least as much from anger as unhappiness. "Why... why can't I ever get a good night's sleep?"
"There, there," Marisalon said, wrapping her arms around her naked master, pulling her into an embrace. "Please, don't cry, fair mistress. This is only natural. Please, I will try to cheer you up howsoever you wish."
"Don't think about that" Louise muttered, still crying into her familiar's bosom.
"I have been trying to make contact here for several nights, and most inconveniently..." and here the lavender-skinned woman's voice dropped, "... most inconveniently, many of your other dreams have been far less stable than this." With an almost sinuous motion of shrugs, the neomah began to shed her dress, passing the dry white fabric over to Louise. "And so you don't spend your time concerned about your state of dress, you can have mine. I would rather you spend less time screaming. We need to talk, and I do believe you need some comforting."
Louise turned even redder, if that was possible, and looked for a moment as if she was about to argue, but her sense of personal shame won out over the sense of shame from being around a lavender-skinned, bald woman wearing about three handkerchiefs' worth of material, and she wrapped the dress around herself, like a towel or a sarong. It would be too hard to put it on properly, and it helped, even if she was still drenched.
"I could be a man if it would please you," Marisalon said casually, puffing her generous chest out with a wicked smile.
The girl's eyes widened in rage, before her entire expression shifted, taking on a look of righteous cunning. "You have a physical body here, head-familiar," she said, with a malicious grin. "That means I can punish you for improper suggestions. So don't push your luck."
"Punish me? Oh, yes please, my most beautiful mistress, I need to be..." the neomah paused, blinked, and then slapped herself hard around the face. "Argh!" She did it again. "Have to focus!" A third slap. "Even if it's been far, far too long since... well, I have to take advantage of this stable dream, and... oh, drat."
Her eyes flicked over to the sixteen-year old Wardes approaching the boat. His eyes burned with golden light, and his footsteps ignited the world. The look on his face could only be described as raw malevolence, sheer murderous intent as he gazed upon the two of them. And he was not alone, for half-seen figures, things of flame and wind and water and earth marched with him. Grabbing an oar, Marisalon immediately cast off from the shoreline, onto the brightly coloured not-water, and began to paddle as hard as she could, straining.
The nightmare-Wardes with the golden eyes did not stop, even at the edge. He marched straight into the water, and screamed until it covered his mouth. The transient things of elemental energy screamed too, save the watery ones which vanished into the depths without a sound. Louise covered her ears, weeping openly now, while Marisalon swore to herself in an alien language, and rowed as if pursued by terrors beyond belief.
{0}
Albion was low now, having sunk above the thick banks of cloud that half-filled the night sky, and so it the roof of the world was a mere hundred metres above. The two moons were in the sky, waxing though not yet full, and their light through the gaps in the clouds cast two shadows upon everything that moved in the darkness.
Men were moving. Men armoured in black-painted steel, with soot-blacked faces, their gear muffled in wool. Silent wisps of air under control of wind mages whispered their way through the skies, carrying words between the army and the fleet blockading the port. The ships opened their dragonnests on the side away from New Castle, allowing the beasts within fresh air for the first time in days.
Lord Fairfax stepped out of the planning tent pitched in one of the squares of the conquered New Castle City, glancing around. The fires were still lit by empty tents, and braziers were being maintained by runners keeping the illusion of just another light going. In the chill night air, he took deep breaths in an attempt to calm the pre-battle nerves. With a shake of his head, he dried his forehead on his sleeve, and turned to return to the tent.
As a result, he yelped when someone tapped him on the shoulder, whirling as he drew his wandblade. The motion was stopped by a grip which felt like steel, locking his arm rigid. He strained against it, and the grip proved to be as immovable as a granite statue. It belonged to a pale-faced woman, as tall as a man, dressed all in black. Cold and dead purple eyes, shaped in a way he had seen in no other man or woman met his, and he forced himself to relax.
"Lady Sheffield," he said, once he no longer felt like he was going to collapse from his heart giving out. "Founder, woman, don't sneak up on people like that!"
"I ask of pardon, my lord." It was a flat, oddly accented phrase, which the man felt was completely lacking in genuine apology. If another person had dared to treat him like that... but she wasn't 'another person'. She was directly from the Lord Protector's office, an agent of the Desbattion, and so he could not call her out.
He shook his head, glancing away from those eyes. "S'all right," he muttered. "I just didn't see you. The sentries were told to let you through."
She stared at him. She did not blink, even as the wind picked up, wafting smoke into their eyes.
"What is it, Lady Sheffield?" he asked, hoping to get her to go away again.
"The two companies of the grenadier guards are where they are meant to be, as you ordered. Here are the sketches you asked of me such that I should obtain them." In one gloved hand, she extended a roll of parchments. "They are accurate."
... Founder, what was her accent? Neither Albionese nor Tristainian nor Gallian or Germanian nor any other country he knew of, there was a dreadful antiquity about it, which had him thinking of sermons in ancient churches.
She tilted her head at him, a motion like some kind of child's doll. "That is all, Lord Fairfax. I go to monitor elements of the capture."
"Yes, yes," the commander said with a sigh of relief, as he turned to go back into the sweltering heat of the tent. Somehow, it seemed a lot more pleasant in there than any amount of talking to that woman, and her damn foreign ways.
No footsteps marked her passing, though already she was gone.
{0}
Green-burning fires danced upon the landscape, which would have looked like the countryside around the Academy were it not for the fact that everything from the hills to the trees was made of silver sand. Motes of crystalline light drifted through the air, and small patches of indigo ice blossomed like strange flowers on the sand-trees.
"My fair princess," Marisalon said, slumped upon the ground, the boat capsized and embedded in the dunes, "you thought of something else."
Louise groaned, and went to pull herself upwards. Viridian fire flared around her hand as soon as she touched the sand, and the girl recoiled in shock. The fire did not burn her, however, even though it melted the silver sand into shining glass, and unwillingly, she let out a giggle. Her bare feet left glassy footprints wherever she stepped, and the cool fire that ignited with every step was soothing rather than burning.
Marisalon, for her part, kept her distance.
"What now?" Louise asked, exhaling. Her breath roared out of her like the desert wind, sending dust scattering into the air, but somehow she did not feel surprised by this. She was rather more concerned right now with keeping the dress wrapped around her like a towel held up properly, because she did not trust the knot she had tied in the sleeves.
The neomah tapped her brass nails together, making a clicking noise. "My lady..." she began hesitantly, "forgive me if I seem nervous around you. Right now, in these dreams... your might is revealed, though I know not why, and..."
Louise was not listening. She was not listening because above her, the sky was haemorrhaging colour, the blue falling as indigo snow onto the sand, to leave it black and starless. Holding out her hand, she let the snow gather on it, ignoring the hissing steam that wafted around it when it melted. She felt no pain, even if there was brass underneath her flesh; brass pitted and corroded in verdigris flakes by the acrid snow. She should be scared by this, she knew intellectually. She was not. It was natural. It was right. Bending down, she scooped up a gritty ball of sand and discoloured snow, packing it tight.
"... I don't really know what is going on here, although the face of the King is borne upon you and it is..."
The neomah's ramblings were interrupted as Louise threw the sand-and-snowball at her, the ball clipping her along the side of her face. "Oh, shut up," Louise said, a note of self-satisfaction in her voice, before she pumped her fist, glee writ all across her expression. "Yes! That felt wonderful!"
The lavender-skinned woman leapt back onto her feet, a look of anger flitting across her features before it was suppressed. "Thank you, my lady," Marisalon said through gritted brazen teeth.
"You're welcome," Louise said, sweetly. She was not looking at the neomah, but instead gazing at her hand, and at the living brass under her skin. "Marisalon, why is my hand like that?"
"Still Covered In Weak Flesh Like That?" said her own voice. "I Do Not Know. We Must Thicken Our Skin Against The World More, So It Cannot Hurt Us."
Whirling, Louise stared at where the neomah had stood. In the place of the scantily clad woman-like thing, there were... hers. Several hers. Several hers who were not her.
Upon the silver stand they stood, never close enough to one another to touch. The world twisted, and suddenly they were surrounding her. She could still see them all, even though, by all rights, she should not have been able to. And as she gazed upon them, she realised that she could see the world through them. They were unreal, incomplete, and the metaphor of unfinished buildings sprung to mind unprompted, skeletal edifices lacking most of their structure. Six scaffold-hers stood, waiting, unmoving. And it was their inhumanity, their not-herness, and the nightmare cast of their features which was the only reason she did not protest more.
"Who are you! What are you doing, and where is my familiar!" she snapped at them.
"I Am You," said the foremost one, the one directly in front of her. Naked, her skin rune-covered burning brass, she nevertheless seemed the most complete of the not-hers. The burning viridian-and-brazen light surrounded her, enveloped her, and her imperious eyes were like a sight into an inner sun. And despite that inhumanity, there was something about her features such that Louise could not help but think of her mother. "I Am You. You Will Be Me."
"I Am You," said the not-her whose skin sublimated into the desert sands at the edges, and whose pink hair was tied in two blue bows. Ten tablets of engraved blue glass fanned out behind her, like strange wings, and locusts buzzed in opalescent flight above her head as a gleaming halo. In her white flowing dress, she looked regal, majestic, beautiful, but her face was sunk with a terrible cynicism, and tears dripped from her face, falling down to splash upon the ground where they scuttled away as scorpions. "I Am You, And I Am Becoming."
Compared to those two, the others were mere sketches in the air, and their voices were reedy whispers. Nevertheless, they spoke. "I Am You," said the not-her armoured in indigo ice that was painted in bright, fluorescent colours. A lush gravidity hung over her form, maternal curves evident, but there was something in the impossible depths of the skin-thick ice that covered her surface. Things moved below the surface of her skin, and bulged and kicked in her womb. "I Am You. I Am You In The Full Beauty Of Womanhood."
"And I Am You Too," said the not-her of light and crystals, her voices countless yet perfectly in harmony. Around her, the sands formed themselves into concentric circles which broke and began bud lesser circles, a fractal recursion of order. "I Am The Echo Of The World You Will Make."
The fifth not-her did not speak, her blood-red dress wrapped in winds the same colour such that one could not tell where one began, and the other ended. Eternally moving, she was a flickering wind-ghost within a greater storm. She did not speak, and yet she was heard. I Am You, she did not say, in a silence which ate sound. When You Are Me, We Won't Be Hurt Anymore.
The last was behind her. The last was closer than the others, for it was her own shadow, slung away under this green sun. Louise could feel the warmth of her own shadow-flesh against the back of her neck, too close for comfort. "i have always been you, little shadow," she said to herself, "writhing in your own pit of hatred."
"I am not you!" Louise shouted back. "None of you!"
"Not Yet," came the chorus of four voices, and one silence.
"liar," said her shadow.
And the green sun washed to gold, and she descended. And she was not only not her, she was not a not-her. She was Other and she was mighty, and choirs sung out her name. In her terrible light the not-Louises ignited, screaming, and their words were paeans of pain. "You are not me," she said in words which were like a hammer of will. "You desecrate me." In shining gold came her glory, and it was exalted to the heavens, from the lowest slums to the highest towers. Long was her life and mighty was her domain. And in her righteousness none dared oppose her, for in the name of the Highest of Holies, she had come from the depths of ancient aeons to cleanse the wicked and profane, the defeated and cast-down. All hail her triumph! All hail Qu-
{0}
It is at such times, these liminal moments of borderlines and transitions, when the brevity of human life becomes most evident.
The clank of metal boots upon stairs, metal-clad arms scraping against walls, the heavy breathing of men. They stepped over bodies already minutes dead, a single blow to the base of the skull the killing wound.
One moment, a girl; the next a wife.
Slow-matches were lit, alchemically-soaked wicks burning a dull, barely-there red in the night. All that awaited was the order.
One moment, silence; the next noise.
"Joshua?" the guard standing on the last ship of the Royalist fleet began, raising his lantern. "Is that y..." and the lightning flashed out with an actinic thunderclap.
One moment alive; the next, dead.
All these moments are like sparks in the night, guttering flickers cast out by embers that burn so bright for but a second before they die, unmourned. For in the divine fire of creation there are countless embers and none could remember nor regret the passing of each cinder. Every man's an actor in uncounted tales, but neither men nor elves nor spirits nor gods care to remember the sum total of that which once was, but is no more.
The night dawned early as the guns of the Republicans roared as one.
{0}
Louise woke screaming.
Frantically, she scrabbled, gasping for air, trying to get the thing that was pinning her down off her chest. The light above her burned at her eyes, blinding her, and there was terrible thunder in the distance. Nature itself hated her, had cast her out, and...
... and she gasped for breath. Sitting upright, she panted, great shuddering breaths shaking her frame. She was... she was lying on a bed in a strange room, the lights still on, and she was in... yes, she was still in her wedding dress. The stiff papers of the Prince Wales' letter was jabbing into her side, and... and Princess Sophia was stirring beside her, groaning from the sudden waking. There was a prominent gash oozing blood on the little girl's face, a red line from where, Louise realised, she must have accidentally cut her with her nails as she thrashed around.
The thunder was still sounding.
"The Black Boar!" the neomah in her head shrieked in panic. "He comes and we must... wait, no, that's not right. My lady, your dreams are most disturbing at times. And it can't be stone rain, either. My lady, what is that noise?"
"That's..." Louise began, tilting her head.
"C-cannons," Princess Sophia squeaked, shivering. "L-l-lots of them. I hate them. I hate them, I hate them!" One hand went to her cheek, came back red, and she squeaked, and began to dig in her pockets to find a handkerchief. "And I'm bleeding? Why am I bleeding?"
Ignoring her, Louise pulled herself to her feet, and strode over to the curtains, her dress flowing around her. Throwing them wide, she gazed out into the still-night from her balcony in the central citadel.
The sky was alight. The clouds were perhaps a hundred metres above the surface of Albion, and so the fires of war painted them a bloody red. Dragonfire bloomed in the night as did the bursts of elemental energy from mages on the walls. And everywhere there was the thunder-boom of cannon fire, and occasional cracks of musketry.
"Oh no," Louise said, softly.
"Yes," Marisalon agreed, with the same edge of worry in her voice. "My lady, my fair lady, we... we are in trouble. Aha! Yes, if we look at things then it all makes sense! Yes, my lady, we should have realised that from the start!"
"Realised what?" Louise hissed out loud.
The neomah coughed. "Why, that those orders that that dashingly handsome prince captured were fake. That he could translate them should have been enough of a clue; any sensible lord should have been changing the codes used to encrypt them frequently enough that, even if one was not using magical concealment for one's real messages, such a stroke of fortune would not strike." Marisalon paused. "I have done such things myself, and so, my lady, I apologise for not noticing this, but it does appear that they successfully lured that handsome prince back to this castle. It is most hilarious, the anguish on the face of a rival when they find that the place they fled to was filled with barrels of algarel, and this is much like it, although less beautifully direct. And if they knew enough to do that..."
"The ship. They know about it," Louise said.
"They do?" said Princess Sophia, from behind her.
Louise blinked; she had forgotten about the blonde temporarily. Whirling on her toe, she turned away from the window, grabbing her staff-glaive. "Yes, they will," she said, sudden, unexpected certainty in her voice. "Can they get ships up there? If they can, they will be doing that. If they can't, the exit will be blockaded. And they have the castle surrounded, don't they? That means they're trapped, and they're probably... probably waiting for us to run to the ships."
The little girl nodded, eyes already damp again. From the sleeves of her mussed gown, she retrieved her wand in a shaking hand. "I'm only a dot class," she said in a tiny voice.
"What?" Louise blinked. "No, what we're going to do is find Viscou... my husband. And also your brother." Her knuckles whitened. "They'll know what to do, and if they don't, they're both powerful mages, and they're soldiers." Louise glanced back out the window, in time to see one of the cannon points on the outer wall shatter, blown apart by shells. "And we need to get away from the windows," she said, grabbing the little girl's wrist with her left hand. "Come on!"
{0}
Before the wall stood a woman in a black frock coat, her skin corpse-pale, her eyes hollow. She was flanked by things that, if one was not observant, would have appeared to be members of the Grenadier Guard of the Holy Republic of Albion. They were not, and the faint purple glow just at the edge of vision from, within their eyesockets was enough to put lie to that deception.
Mechanically, she made a V-symbol with her right hand, palm facing the towering final wall of New Castle. She placed her left hand, fingers splayed, behind it. Words fell from her mouth like rain, her phrases in the first language ever spoke solidifying as they left her throat to splash against the ground. The armoured figures around her did not speak, did not move, did not flinch, even as the earth began to shake.
She spoke the final word, and violet light blazed upon her forehead.
A house-sized section of wall ascended, rising up and separating. The stones that made it up were torn from one another, the layers of protective magics falling apart in bursts of light, and in the night those white flares burned like torches. They hung in the moment for a second, a moment of frozen time, such that all could see the final wall of New Castle was broken.
And then the stones exploded inward, scything through the buildings within the castle walls and cutting down men like wheat, only to detonate in killing fields of shrapnel.
The black-coated woman turned on her heel and walked away, flanked by her guards. Behind her, the republican soldiers swarmed forward through the new gap in the wall.
{0}
Dust hung in the air like sandstorms, choking and cloying. She could barely see the walls on either side of her, and she clung tighter to the hand of the other with her. Though she was not affected by this cursed haze, all around her, others were coughing and splitting; there were traces of blood in some people's coughing. It was all the fault of the silver sand creeping in from infinite wastes. The South was lost, and the toppleless towers of Rhamneash were now immersed in molten glass under depths of sand. Their casualties were extreme, and she did not look forwards to telling those in Rathess that the Dragon King dead would not be coming back, that they had been calcified into things of blue glass which had been enslaved by the Lawgiver and sent marching against their legions.
"Come on!" she called out, projecting her voice so it boomed through the clouds. "Keep moving!"
What had that been? They had had no idea that such a thing could happen? The power, the capacity... the enemy was cunning and powerful, yes, but that had just come from nowhere.
"I don't understand!" said Princess Sophia, gripping tightly onto her hand, voice muffled by the hand over her mouth as she tried not to inhale the dust everywhere. "I can't speak that language!"
"'Svoid!" Louise swore loudly, as she stared around the dust-filled corridors, and the bit of wall ahead of her which had just... ceased to exist. The little girl next to her blushed at the profanity, before another coughing fit hit her. Louise paid her no head. She did not need her own mind playing up on her right now, alien memories forcing themselves onto her, and she certainly did not need to be thinking of the idea that the nightmare woman had fought things like her.
"What woman?" Marisalon asked intently.
Louise's eye twitched. "Shut up!" she yelled. "Not you," she added to Princess Sophia. "C-"
Whatever she was about to say was completely lost in the sudden slump of rock from the ceiling above, solid stone parting like water. Down came fireballs, which sat in the air for a second before exploding in bright light and a noise which was more pain than it was sound. Marisalon's shouted warning was enough for Louise to get a hand up in front of her eyes, and so she managed to avoid being blinded for the second time in as many days.
Down came... giants, moving like they were underwater. That was the only way Louise could describe them, from what she could see through the dust and smoke. Hulking metal behemoths in excess of two metres tall, that looked like a giant bulked out suit of black-painted plate armour leapt up from the depths. "Golems!" she shouted, pointing at them, unleashing a torrent of silver sand howling from her finger which cut through the smoke and screeched into their metal armour. Holding tight onto the princess, she ducked into a vacant room, and realised too late that it was a dead end. With her free hand, she pushed the little girl out of sight, and took on a guarding position, polearm held so she blocked the entrance entirely.
They moved wrong. They were too... floaty when they jumped, like they were children playing underwater rather than hulking armoured figures carrying oversized weapons. Of the ones she could see, two had what looked like grotesquely oversized maces which they used in one hand, while another had some strangely shaped cannon carried over the shoulder which it levelled at her. On reflex, she blinked, with one of the new muscles in her head, and molten glass splattered out of her back, sand cascading back in to fill the hole in her and her dress as if it had never existed. A new thundercrack and the scent of storms filled the room – it looked like a hastily departed bedroom. That was a lightning cannon! She didn't know how those things worked, but she wasn't prepared to give them a second shot, and slammed the door shut, muscles straining as she dragged the heavy iron-cased trunk in front of it.
Something was bellowed in Albionese, some kind of order, and Louise looked around the small bedroom, looking for anything she could use. The bitter irony that this was the second time she had been attacked at night by armoured giants struck her, and she let out a barked laugh. 'What did you see?' she asked the neomah in her head.
"Five... no, six of the armoured figures. Two carry those strange cannons, four with maces. The one who fired at you is doing something with it, and has retreated back. There are three smaller figures with them, wearing black masks and breastplates and carrying wandswords... I assume those are the fire mages," Marisalon reported clinically.
Right. Her thoughts were a whirl, but she had to seize control of them. They were outnumbered in here. She had to find the Prince Wales and Viscount Wardes, and they were triangle and square rank wind mages respectively, but there were at least three mages out there, and those golem armoured things.
Something slammed into the old timbers of the door, and they splintered and cracked; one of the maces carried by those giants, no doubt. Louise gripped the Staff of Destruction tighter, and waited. Boom, boom, boom, the blows went against the old wood, echoing the thunder of guns outside, and the girl's eyes narrowed, as she counted the time between impacts in her head.
The shining metal of the haft of her wand-glaive held in both hands, she lunged through the door just as the next blow came, the crystal cutting through the fractured wood like paper, and there was a satisfying scream from the other side. Louise yanked her blade back, and waited, blade set in a guarding position. See them try that again!
Too late, she remembered that they had used earth mages to breach the roof, and this meant that the door was not a checkpoint; not when it would cost them men – yes, the golem had screamed! It was alive? She was bought back to reality as a panicked yell from Princess Sophia was all that told her of the wall sliding aside. Wand in hand, the little girl sent a quick fireball through the gap, and although it was none-too-potent, the scream from the other side was enough to say that it had connected. The noises of pain were enough to say that it was not immediately lethal.
Stepping to the side, Louise brought her staff-glaive around in a cut to the man who tried to step through the hole in the wall, posture wide and low. Unexpectedly, the helmeted man stepped in, throwing his wand-sword into a desperate parry that took the staff-glaive on its haft. The deflected polearm sliced into the wall, and the girl grunted as she tried to get back into position, stepping back.
A barked word from the earth mage and the ceiling collapsed on her.
{0}
From his position on the windship, Captain Thompson of the Grenadiers looked down upon the maps of New Castle. He thanked the Founder for the perfect placement of the clouds – for all that he had to keep the windows sealed, or else the papers in this command room would have got wet. "Are we in position for another drop?" he asked the naval officer in the room.
"We're bringing her around," was the response. "We're fairing well; their anti-air is a mess, and the dragoons have their cannonades suppressed."
"Good," the balding man said. He idly fiddled with the straps of his blackened breastplate, and the windfall worn over it, as he thought. "Portsmer, inform headquarters of our status," he told his company's wind mage. "Inform them that I will be joining the men on the ground on the next drop, as we have captured the chapel, and will be using that as a base of operations for my assigned mission."
"Yes, sir."
{0}
"That hurt," said the Viscountess Wardes, her leg whipping around to hook around the earth mage's foot. She pulled, and he went down. Plaster and stone from the ceiling fell off her white-clad, dusty form, and she pulled herself to her feet, levering herself up with the Staff.
She was battered. She was bruised. There was blood dripping down from her forehead, and her dusty hair was getting in the way of her eyes. She should have been concussed from those blows to the head. There was the awareness that she probably was, but the pain didn't matter. Pain didn't matter; in fact, it made her think more clearly. And in the clarity, she crushed his wand hand under her foot, a corona of green light flaring as she turned the appendage into so much cooked meat.
Ignoring the screaming man on the floor she lunged, a second man falling with her glaive in his chest. The breastplates worn by these men were nothing to the Staff of Destruction, and another body hit the floor, greying flesh falling off crystal bones. Fire filled the corridor in front of her, and she leapt back into the room, eyebrows singing in the heat.
"Men! Forwards!" someone shouted in Court Albionese, and her heart soared at that. The rebels used the guttural harshness of Albionese, not the proper Brimiric language. "Drive these curs out!"
"We're in here!" she shouted back in her native High Tristainian. "Princess Sophia is safe!"
It was someone she recognised from the party yesterday. What had his name been? Earl something? The one with the ridiculous moustache. Well, he looked rather less silly now, for all that here was a breastplate over the top of his nightshirt. Dust covered his sweat-drenched face, and the foolish facial hair was singed, but his wandsword was bloodied, and an orb of fire floated above his hand. "Your highness?" he called out, keeping his sword and the orb of fire pointed in Louise's direction. The rebel earth made groaned on the floor; he was silenced with the wand-sword, his blood pooling on the ground.
"Sir Langdale?" the princess asked, poking her head above the bed. She was pale, shaking, and dusty, the cut on her face still oozing blood. "Yes!" She began to babble in Court Albionese, too fast for Louise to keep track of her words.
"How are things?" she asked the knight in Romalian, interrupting the babble. "Do you know where the Prince Wales or Viscount Wardes are?"
"Who, the..." the man paused, as all sound was drowned out by some vast explosion within the castle walls, "... the Tristainian? The King controls the throne room and most of the central keep... by the founder, you should have seen it. He just... shredded those damnable traitors. He's... he's using royal magic, the Founder's own blessing... and for that reason, we're trying to find the Prince Wales. Thank the Lord the Founder's safe, though; we need to get her back to her..." another explosion, "... to her father."
Louise took a deep breath, glad that unlike the others she seemed to not be affected by the dust. "What about the infirmary?" Louise asked, intently.
The knight blinked. "Water mages will..."
"Oh, not for me!" she said, one hand going up to tuck her hair back. The expression on the man's face seemed rather shocked at that announcement, and indeed he was probably right to be, considering Louise's battered state, the bruises and blood made more evident by that action. Louise did not care. Pain forged her into something stronger. "Viscount Wardes, my husband, went there last night. He's a square mage, and if we can..."
"We don't have it; it's one of the buildings close to the chapel," Sir Langdale said, his face dropping. "There's still fighting going on there, but... 'svoid, they just tore apart part of the walls, and there are those damnable grenadiers and men in windcapes dropping down from above. Those whor*sons attacked at night, and their dragoons are picking off anyone who tries to take down the fliers like... well, like flies." There was a slowly dawning expression on his face which suggested that he was having doubts as to why he was reporting to a foreign girl in a wedding dress.
Louise gave him no time to pursue those doubts further. "In that case, take the princess to her father. I'm going to find my husband!" she said, wiping her forehead against her white sleeve and leaving it smeared red. "And your prince while I'm at it!"
Face locked into a snarl, forehead glittering, she marched out, polearm held at the ready.
{0}
King Jacomus turned his face up to the night's sky through the window, expression twisted in despair. "No sign of my son yet?" he asked Sir Langdale. "So be it, then!" he roared at the heavens, all traces of tremulousness gone. "So be it! Lord and Founder, you have forsaken us! Could you not even spare her? Must you ruin your chosen house out of spite? Out of whim? Is this a test of faith, or have you passed your favour to those traitors!"
Silent tears were running down Princess Sophia's face. "Daddy," she said, softly, "you're scaring me."
"I will not go into the night!" the old man screamed at the sky. "There will be no peace! No accession to your whim! You could not spare even my daughter, Lord, and so nothing will be spared! Nothing at all!" He coughed, breaking his speech, and he looked down, shoulders shaking. "Sophia," he said, wearily, "do not cry. You are the last princess of Albion. Such behaviour is unbecoming."
"But..."
"Silence. You will face this with no fear, for God has turned his face from us and we are doomed. So be it!" he roared, suddenly, the little girl jumping back, covering her hands with her ears. "So what you will do is you will lend me your strength. For each spell I cast, you will provide as much strength as you can. Lend me your fire..." the old man was silently weeping, too, the tears rolling down his face into his beard, "and we will see this corrupt, debased world burn, as the fires of Svar burn!"
Throwing back his head, he laughed, as down below the cannons sounded and the magic of the Republican mages lashed out to kiss the walls. "See this, Lord!" he screamed out, striding out onto the balcony overlooking the inner courtyard. "See my offering to you! See what my years of ill-gotten service have left me with!"
He fixed his eyes on a block of musketeers advancing through the breach. Their mage-commander was countering the efforts of one of the loyal fire mages, saving his strength. "Know the Night-Burning Mist, traitors!" he screamed with deranged glee.
King Jacomus I began to chant. So, shaking behind him, did his daughter, and his forty-year old bastard son. The secret words of power, the ancient rites propagating the Lord flowed from his lips, as he wove a tapestry of his own wind and earth, his daughter's fire, and his son's wind and water. As he chanted, the heavens themselves began to twist, an anticyclone forming above the central courtyards in the clouds above. His snow-white hair rose on end, and the dust from that damnable breach in the wall began to dance.
And it rained. The clouds condensed, and fell, leaving the night's sky above clear. The warm droplets of rain splashed down, and the king laughed. Laughed for the burning of the world and the end of all things. Terrified, his daughter fled from the madness of her father, running away from that terrible, choking laughter, heading deep into the castle just to get away from him.
For the rain was not water; no, it was not water. Warm oil rained down from the sky, down onto New Castle.
And all it took was one flame, and in this place, fire was not something there was a shortage of.
{0}
"Sir," a runner yelled, bursting through into the command tent back from the lines. "Sir, sir..."
"What is it!" snapped Lord Fairfax, face read. And then he paused, for the noise of war in the background had changed, and through the tent door, he could see red light. Staggering to his feet, the general of the Desbattionarianist forces sprinted to the cathedral and up the stairs, two at a time. And from the ruined belltower, he stared out in abject horror that the castle he was trying to capture.
It burned. Fire ran like water over the surfaces, licking from building to building, cascading down the walls and running down the hill on which the fortification stood. He could see men screaming and burning, and the detonation of stocks of gunpowder.
"That... maniac," he breathed. "That sick monster." The man beheld the capacities of royal magic, and was afraid.
And thus he was in place to see the miracle.
There was a blinding flash of purple light, and the fire rain stopped, becoming only water. The fires died out, for the oil they had been burning was only water now. New Castle was soot-charred and scorched, but it no longer rained oil.
"A miracle," said Sheffield, the woman from the Desbattion, from directly behind him. There was no reverence in that voice, no awe at the fortunate happening. "Bless the Lord."
"Yes," agreed Lord Fairfax, blinking his eyes to remove the tears. He dropped to his knees, hands clutched together. "Oh Founder, we thank you... get on your knees! Everyone! Pray! Pray for the grace of God!"
Unnoticed, a broken loop of paper fell from the Sheffield-woman's hand, dripping suddenly molten wax.
{0}
The air ignited with a sound that was so loud that it ceased to be noise, and instead became a physical force. The Viscountess Wardes felt her breath drawn out of her, as if a giant was sitting on her chest; the rebel fighters in the corridor were the same, stumbling in the violence. The heat washed over her, and she gasped, but there was something in her with rejoiced in that heat, and so she was able to keep advancing down this suddenly-sweltering stone corridor. And then she was upon them, staff-glaive batting away their bayonets to cleave through men and armour in scarlet gouts.
One cut and a man's head fell like a cabbage onto the ground. Another, and limbs flopped like some strange insect. Verdigris and brazen fire ignited around her as she killed and killed, a white-clad figure dancing through black-armoured men, and wherever she went, black became red, and died in grey forgettability. Fear and panic broke out, and men broke and fled, but still she killed, guided by the calm demonic voice in her head which warned her of her foes approach and noticed the attempt to flank her.
She knew where Viscount Wardes was. She couldn't explain how she did, but she loved him, and that meant that she knew where he was. Her heart was pulling her in the right direction. And if that direction led her through scared spearmen, trying to hold their ranks in the face of the oncoming monster, so be it. Her blade tore though stomach and spine, and she changed, becoming other. Men screamed in terror at that, as the hallway was filled with flaming cities and a great stalking titan, but they screamed more at the killer, the fearless killer.
The Viscountess Wardes was not very human any more. Her eyes were a sight into an inner sun, the blood running down her forehead sizzling and frying when it would have dripped into them, and alien, insectoid carapace covered all save her face. Raising one arm, she took a sword-blow on the carapace and cried out in pain, before she backhanded the man, delicate white gloves bulging with hidden armour. Green fire erupted from his caved-in helmet, and he went flying back. The killing resumed.
Her muscles were aching, her breath coming fast, and she felt hollow inside, but Louise was not yet out of it, and wrapped in green and brass flames, she lunged. The man before her fell, and she stepped back, her next swing cutting through the blade of the next Albionese solider. The man screamed and turned to flee. The girl with the inhuman eyes and the insectoid carapace under her wedding dress cut him down, and threw out a hand, letting flaying sands tear into the man levelling a pistol at her.
He screamed and dropped; she finished him off too, no feeling in the mechanistic killing. A twirl and a riposte bought the blade down upon a foe on the floor, and another crystallised skeleton joined the others.
For once, there was a moment of respite, and the pink-haired girl paused, leaning on her glaive. Her muscled burned, and blood wept from a gash along her cheek. But in the terrible illumination of the burning light around her, which filled this corridor with cold fire, she could clearly see that that was as nothing compared to the attackers who had tried to storm it. By the door, the twisted, warped skeletons lay stacked like firewood, greying flesh falling off crystalline bones even as she watched. Grains of silver sand littered the floor, painted red where men had been flayed by her hand. The tapestries along one wall were alight, from where she had let that fire from the mage pass though her, and the two greying halves of his body were either side of a deep gouge in the floor. The air was thick with smoke, but it could not disguise the perfume of copper and death.
So many dead. So many dead by her hand.
And the blood was everywhere. It ran down the blade of her staff-glaive to dribble over her fingers, staining those beautiful dainty white gloves. Her dress was splattered crimson, more like a butcher's apron than the royal wedding dress of Albion, and through the veil she looked at the world with a red haze. Even her slippers were drenched. But even as she watched, the enchantments of the dress did their work, and the blood was absorbed by the fabric, leaving no stains. It had been a passing amusem*nt when it had been doing it to lesser stains. To this much blood, it became morbid, leaving her pure white in the midst of crimson carnage.
Louise began to laugh then, high and shrill. To think that but less than a week ago, the worst injury she had ever done to anyone was dislocating Montmorency's arm. Well, that and a few burns from miscast magic. Nothing on this scale. She was now a killer. And she was good at it. Intellectually, she knew she should be scaring herself, but her mind seemed completely incapable of feeling fear right now. There wasn't even the defence of panic. In the brass-and-viridian illumination which enveloped her, there wasn't even the room for that excuse. And there were so many of them here. So many... would she really be able to win against all of this?
That reminded her. Taking a deep breath, she reached into her dress, and pulled out the sealed letters that the Prince Wales had given her.
She paused for a second, staring at the name on the front. "I'm sorry, Henrietta," she whispered to the letter, imagining her friend's face there. "I'm sorry you won't be able to see what he says. I'll try... I'll tell you that I'm sure he was thinking of you."
The paper tore easily, flaring green, and was consumed completely. The ashes fell like snow, with a faintly heard scream right at the edge of the audible. And then she was moving again.
Corridors blurred around her in a gaze of blood and violence. One step, two steps, and an armoured soldier fell, severed at the waist. A third, and two serpentine gales of flaying sand whipped out into the armoured giants who had just broken through the thick wooden door at the end. Louise brought her blade back even before Marisalon could warn her, and the crack of lightning impacted into the wand-glaive, greasy white-blue sparks cascading off to fade upon the floor. The sparks were but another light in the radiance which surrounded her, and an inarticulate roar of anger escaped from her lips.
There were bellowed cries in Albionese from the faceless armoured figures as Louise advanced, and despite the way it was muffled by the armour, she could hear the panic and alarm. The only flesh they could see was the oval of her face; an insectoid carapace had absorbed everything else, and made her dress bulge unnaturally. Her mouth full of chisel-like white teeth was locked in a rictus snarl accentuated by the terrifying light of her anima, but even that faded compared to the sight of her eyes. They were no longer anywhere near human, but instead seemed to be a sight into some inner sun, an upswelling of cosmic power that was barely contained within a paper-thin vessel of flesh. One of the armoured men backed away, dropping the bulky lightning cannon – the size of a normal man's torso – which fell with a shattering noise, and turned to flee.
Slowly, Louise advanced, her glaive held in a ready position. Verdigris and brazen flames dripped like molten wax from her burning soul, to fall upon the tattered carpet and worn floor. Where they fell, it transmuted thread to brass and granite to basalt. The two grenadier guards, though they were armoured giants taller than any normal man in armour more fitted for dragons than men, were clearly afraid, holding back from the horror-eyed monster advancing upon them wreathed in cold flame.
The girl paused, and idly gestured at the head of one of the two with contemptible arrogance, the world around her hand warping to infinity and discharging silver sands. They blasted at the head of one of the two, streaking black-painted steel with silver scars. The response from the two was immediate. Crouching down, they bought their left arms up as if leading with an invisible shield, the injured one lagging behind in his response. And like that, in an odd, duelist-like pose, those monstrous hammer-maces in their other hands, they began to advance, moving away from the doorway while still crying out their warnings.
Wreathed in light, Louise burst into explosive motion. Against the nearer, unscarred one, she darted forwards, swinging her glaive down in a diagonal chop directly against the thick plate-armoured left arm of the grenadier. Her blade deflected off the centimetres of steel, but opened them up like a can as the crystal shrieked its way down the arm, trailing green fire. The armoured giant fell over backwards, shrieking in pain, charred meat and bone obvious through the opened-up armour. Louise went for the chop downwards to finish him off, and even Marisalon's warning wasn't enough to get her out of the way of the bull-rush of the one with the damaged helmet.
It felt like she had been kicked by a horse, and that was a familiar feeling to her, for when she was ten she had broken her arm that way. Those armoured brutes might have moved like bobbing jesters, as if they were underwater, but they still impacted like they were the mass of meat and metal they must have been. The strength to move in that armour, even if it was lightened by the windstones was astonishing. Rolling, tumbling, Louise only came to a stop when she hit the wall, feeling battered and bruised not just from the charge but from the impacts with the shaft of her polearm. She tried to pull herself to her feet, and only managed to bring the tapestry, shifting into into brass, down upon her. The stomp of the figures as they advanced was all too close, but there was no fear. In the light of her soul, there could be no fear for her.
The massive steel mace descended in an overarm sweep, clearly swung as hard as its wielder could. Louise rolled out of the way, shifting the motion to bring her to a crouch, and brought her polearm up in a clean slice. The blow severed the shaft of the mace and sent the metal head flying off into the wall. Flowing into a counter, she slammed the butt of the Staff of Destruction into the giant's breastplate, which folded like paper around the blow as if he had been hit by cannonfire. With a scream of exertion, the girl exploded up in a leap from her crouched position to stab down.
The blade of the Staff of Destruction slid into the already-armoured faceplate like a hot knife into butter, and there was not even time for a scream as the colourless fire consumed and transmuted the now-dead man. Her momentum ripped the weapon out through the top of the helmet, so it blossomed like a macabre flower and she landed behind the still-standing corpse. Foot after foot, she stalked towards the other grenadier guard, as they tried to pull themselves up in their massive armour. A lunge downward was enough to dispose of that foe as they struggled on all fours to pull themselves to their feet, and she continued on her way.
The door to her left, yes, up the stairs – she had to find the Prince Wales and Viscount Wardes. She took the stairs three at a time, her polearm shrieking as it scraped along the stone wall. Yes. All she had to do was find them, and then, given that she could still hear the crack and boom of the Royal magic, they could punch a way down to the ships and...
She stared at the full-wall window at the other end of the corridor, and at the fires which could be seen through it. Silently, she advanced, all the force, all the power gone from her despite her monstrous appearance. Explosions rippled outside and stone crumbled, but she did not blink.
And the citadel had... fallen.
It had fallen. The highest tower was ruins, and rebel soldiers in their black-painted armour were flowing in through the breaches in the wall. Every wall was blackened, and some of the lesser buildings were gutted by the fire which had tasted everything. A fresh gout of flame there, as a rebel triangle-class mage filled the barracks with fire which came blasting through the windows, a ranked mass of golems there. Gunfire crackled, but the booming cannonades of the walls were no more. There may have been fighting still going on, but it had fallen and it was over and Viscount Wardes had been like nothing compared to this brute force that had...
... no. No. No no no no no.
It couldn't have fallen. It wasn't possible. She didn't want it to fall. How could it have fallen? That wasn't possible. Viscount Wardes! He... he couldn't be dead! But the infirmary was burning and no! Impossible! Rebels couldn't win over the rightful royalty. They couldn't win over her fiancé. It wasn't possible. How could it be possible? Things didn't get to break the laws of what was and wasn't meant to be, smash them with their brute force! Not possible. Not. Possible.
Clutching her polearm tightly, using it as more of a walking staff than as a weapon, Louise staggered backwards. One hand went to her suddenly aching head; her mind felt like it was being torn asunder. Which was not possible. It must have been the injury from the ceiling collapsing on her finally taking its toll because it was not possible that laws and rules and the strong royalty over their weaker inferiors could be subverted like that and it was not possible and if it was possible then that meant that nothing mattered so it wasn't possible because things really mattered and things like this couldn't happened because they weren't possible so they couldn't be happening but they were and if they were then they were and they were and what had she done wrong and she had failed and she was a stupid useless zero who wasted the power of this sort of thing because if she hadn't been a stupid useless failure then it wouldn't have been possible for it to fall like this so it must be all her fault and she was stupid and useless and...
"My lady!" Marisalon shrieked in alarm. "What are you doing? No, no, you're not a failure. You're beautiful and wise and strong, and you haven't failed here, no, please!" There was raw emotion in the neomah's voice, but Louise completely ignored it as she stumbled away from the window, through a doorway, the fire around her already guttering and dying. "Listen to me, my lady, please! I beg of you! You're not a failure! Keep on fighting!"
"I am..." Louise whispered, softly, as she dropped down, discarding the Staff of Destruction. After all, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She was useless and didn't deserve something like that, anyway. Tears began to seep from her burning, impossible eyes, which hissed into steam as she crawled away, not truly caring where she was going. She didn't deserve to show her face. There were people out there who were better than her, better than the stupid useless Zero who everyone hated. She was worthless, and she had always been. No matter of gift of power, no cosmic gift granted to her could ever make things better. She couldn't save him. She couldn't save anyone.
Marisalon said more things to her, but she blanked the neomah out. She was the flawed thing here. Flawed and useless and weak and selfish and stupid and sinful... yes, sinful too! It was all her fault. If she hadn't been weak and tempted Viscount Wardes to sin with her deceitful femininity, God would have smiled upon them and he would have been fine so it was all her fault...
The fires died around her. Her chisel-sharp folded back into her jaws, leaving only white, blunt useless ones in their place. The opalescent insectoid carapace fell off, leaving only ash over newly revealed weak squishy pale flesh. The sight into the inner sun guttered and died. And huddled into a ball, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, Viscountess of Vajours sobbed into her knees, tears soaking into her wedding dress.
She was still like that when the rebel soldiers found her hours later, curled up behind some bags in a storeroom. She did not protest or even respond as they approached.
"Well," said the woman in the black frock coat, untouched by the dust in the air. Something gleamed in her dead purple eyes. "This is interesting." She knelt, and casually picked up the Staff of Destruction. The blade erupted in colourless flame for a fraction of a second, before the fire cleared. Kneeling down with her new acquisition propped on her shoulder, she grabbed Louise's chin. The girl made little more than a desultory effort to escape, shuddering away from the cold gaze.
"How very... interesting," said the Myozunitonirun.
{0}
)