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Akumu · 08-25-2012, 08:17 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.

Bezio got the mystery woman to lie down on a chaise lounge, one of many in the fainting room between the Sapphire and Jade wings of the Palace. Feeling secure that she would stay there for the near future, swaddled in her hallucinations and therefore no longer bothering him, he turned to leave. Of course, she chose that moment to partially reconnect with reality, reaching out to grab the lacy cuffs of his sleeve.

“It’s all a solid piece, and we’re just one layer. Like mica, or, or graphite,” she told him desperately as he tried to disentangle her fingers from his cuff without damaging it. “The interaction is weak, but they’re right there, attometers away. She must have so much power, to resolve things at those length scales! Like a cosmic piece of scotch tape, peeling us off...”

The woman in green’s speech had the classic signs, mainly an over-reliance on pronouns, of someone who has forgotten that other people are actually other people and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about. But if there was one skill Bezio had cultivated over the years, it was sussing out important information from people who were smashed out of their minds, and this felt important.

“Who has so much power?”

“Her hair, her hair was like drowning and flying and burning, it skittered around but she was still and all her eyes were on the outside looking in. Looking in at us!”

She sat bolt upright in a panic and was only stopped by a firm hand on her shoulder.

“Honey, look, look, what’s your name?”

“Melissa,” she said, settling back down.

“Melissa, you need to get your head right. You are way too far gone to swim with the sharks. Look here.”

Bezio cupped his hands in front of her, blocking out stray air currents and willing the air to concentrate in some regions and rarify around them. Light scattered off the boundaries of the dense zones, and a crystalline shape of overlapped spheres formed, slowly spinning and throwing off glimmers of light.

“This is what you dosed yourself with. If you change it to this,” and as he said it, one cluster of spheres twisted around to point at a different angle, “you’ll sober right up. Go ahead, it’s a tiny change, shouldn’t take any effort.”

Melissa squinted at the display, then up at him, partially from suspicion and partially because the light was stabbing through her fully-dilated pupils.

“Drugs! Don’t! Work that way!” she exclaimed, jabbing a finger into the air for emphasis.

Bezio was confused at first, since de-intoxicating oneself was just about the first party trick any Talented socialite learned, right after intoxicating oneself in the first place. When the realization hit him, the pang of surprise broke his concentration and the glittering spheres whisped away.

“Sweet mercy, I knew you were uncultured, but you’re not even Talented?”

“I am extremely talented! I am at the top! Of my field!”

Bezio, working through the implications, concluded that he had probably hit a goldmine here. If she was Unpolished, and here, she must be very useful to someone very powerful. Maybe even one of the Princes; Luca in particular was one for finesse, and was known to keep a stable of pet researchers without regard to their Talent. Melissa, meanwhile, was trying to decide whether having her eyes open or closed was better for her nausea.

“What is your field? Atomics? Keravnonics? Automatonics?”

“Automatonics?” Melissa asked, looking suddenly lucid and keenly interested. “You have robots? Can I get one?”

Bezio laughed nervously. “Honey, around here, you don’t get robots, robots get you.”

Melissa muttered to herself and ticked off needed components on her fingers. “If I could just take one apart, it should have everything I need...”

“You really shouldn’t be talking like that, you don’t want to mess with the Tireless Men.”

Bezio glanced around, hoping that nobody had overheard her conspiring to attack an agent of the secret police. Thanks to that, he finally noticed that all the foot traffic outside the fainting room was streaming in one direction, towards the Jade wing that he had been in previously. A pair of feline-masked guests shuffled out of the flow and towards a couch, the man leaning on the woman and racked with coughs. As he was getting situated, Bezio strode over.

“Madam, what news?”

“There’s a fire in Sapphire! My poor husband tried to help put it out but it was growing too quickly, and if that wasn’t enough some fool was in there waving a sword around! If you’ll excuse me, I have to find a doctor for my husband.”

She hurried off, and Bezio turned back towards Melissa to find that she was tottering away towards the exit. “Swords and fire, he wouldn’t pussyfoot around some damn robots, split one right in half and then we can all get out of here,” she exclaimed to no one in particular. Bezio caught up with her, grabbing her by the shoulder.

“You should stay—”

That was as far as he got as she pivoted towards him. He had a brief impression of dead eyes looking dispassionately at him through the eye-holes of the black demon mask and of her arm whirling around to encircle his. His arm bent unnaturally in her grip; he tried to step forward to alleviate the sudden pain in his shoulder, and then he was falling. He hit the floor with a teeth-jangling crash and by the time he was back on his feet, Melissa was out the archway and out of sight, swimming upstream towards Sapphire.

Pick Yer Poison · 09-16-2012, 03:12 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

The moment Klendel felt the foreign mind of the Kings - one far more ancient and powerful than his own - his first instinct was to lash out at it, trying to pry their deepest fears from their minds. The attempt was slapped aside without so much as an acknowledgement, and Klendel immediately knew he was drastically outclassed.

He quickly leapt to protect what was most important to him - the past he thought he'd buried lifetimes ago. He hurriedly crammed it into a mental lockbox and sunk it deep into his psyche, where he was certain the Kings would never be able to reach. As he packed it away, he failed to notice a thin, sinewy line of thought, emanating from a recently unearthed cluster of memories, drag Melissa Harmon's memory into the box along with it.

By this time, the Kings had managed to pry the knowledge of the other contestants out of his head. Klendel struck back viciously, biting and scratching at the invasive tendrils while he struggled to lock up everything else he knew about the battle and those involved. The Kings quickly withdrew their presence from his mind, but he suspected it was only because they'd already gotten all they wanted.

The pressure to defend his thoughts lifted, Klendel began to look over his surroundings. The pitch black room was as bright as day to his eyes, although that didn't make it look the least bit more inviting. He quickly took in the delipidated scenery and the three grotesque figures sitting on their thrones, then turned his head to the side and glared piercingly at Hematite, who seemed more than a little out of sorts.

After a moment, a sort of fuzzy memory of the Kings calling him by name floated to the forefront of his mind. He turned reluctantly back to them and forced a slightly pained wicked grin onto his face. "Yes, I'm Klendel. Can I help you?"

The Kings didn't even bat an eye. "You can."

"And you will."

The response meant something to Klendel. If he were in the habit of it, he'd have been rubbing his temples, but as it was he simply stood there silently until his brain, still reeling from the mental attack, caught up with itself. If they still needed his help, they hadn't gotten everything they wanted. If they knew everything he knew, they could easily summon the others like they had him and simply overpower them. As dangerous as it was to predict abilities he knew nothing about, he decided he could assume that if they could teleport him to them, they had an arsenal of similar, more powerful abilities at their disposal. Therefore, whatever they had gotten out of his head was either incorrect or incomplete to such a degree that they were reluctant to summon anyone else they didn't know they could overpower.

He knew what he said in this conversation would be of utmost important in establishing how these people viewed him. Were he to fold immediately, they would likely figure out he was trying to worm his way into their trust immediately. But if he were to resist initially, they would likely make a show of force to convince him it was in his own best interests. If they felt they'd scared him into helping them, they'd be less suspicious than if he had done it for no apparent reason. And as a bonus, he might be able to see a little of what they were capable of beyond teleporting others and looking grotesque.

"And what if I don't?" he asked, working a little annoyance into his voice.

One of the Kings - it was impossible to tell which one, really, they all sounded roughly the same - replied in a slightly bored voice. "Then we will incinerate you and find someone who will." The King on the left raised one of his hands, glowing figures forming in it. Klendel could tell it was incredibly hot by the air distortion above it, but the King waving the pattern didn't seem bothered by the heat at all.

Klendel bowed deeply, making it look just a little bit hasty and panicked. "A persuasive argument. I am yours to command."

The burning runes vanished and the Kings continued as if he had agreed from the start. "You will tell us all you know of the five others who arrived with you."

"Then you will tell us who sent you."

"And after that you will tell us why."

Klendel stood back up, allowing a rebellious smile to show on his face, a plan already forming. "Oh, I can do better than that."

"I can help you catch them."

SpoilerShow

SleepingOrange · 11-20-2012, 01:54 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

In the half-darkness of his twilit den, Samuel sighed, more out of habit than any particular present annoyance. His fingers flew over the keyboard in a practiced, if awkward, dance; rather than his usual hobbyist drabbles or analyses on the efficiency of an injection tool, his typing was the beginnings of an electronic manhunt. It had been days, and Jake clearly had no intention *of contacting him, wanted nothing to do with all this. He'd been right, anyway; Norm would have been a better choice, even if he'd be harder to find. It was hard to blame Jake for staying out of it; he didn't have the damn book glowering over his shoulder all the time, didn't have to keep acknowledging that the horrible events they'd set in motion hadn't been stopped. Sam had done his best to put it out of his mind while he waited hopefully to hear that he'd have an ally in Jake after all, but when a few new sentences wrote themselves every day -- never while he was watching, though, they always showed up between closing the book and opening it -- it was hard to keep calm. Especially when those sentences seemed to be building to another destructive head.

And so it had to be Norm. It shouldn't be too hard; he hadn't gone into hiding the way Alexis had, he'd just drifted off. Hell, if he was still as insistent as he had been that they couldn't just stop, he'd have made himself easy to find, right?

He hadn't, particularly, but it turned out not to matter. Most of the results were scattered and about several different people; there was one who was a doctor, one who was in high school, one who ran a restaurant, none of whom were important. Things looked like they were going to drag on and on until he found exactly the right combination of keywords -- assuming Norm hadn't become unlisted or gone off the grid entirely -- until the search engine helpfully popped up with News Results for Norman O'Malley, when everything became abundantly, chillingly clear.

Local Man Killed in Rare Shooting

Suspect Detained in Gun Crime Investigation

Sam bit his lip as he clicked the links, feeling ashamed even as he hoped it was the restaurateur or the doctor who had met their fate at the end of a gun. No amount of hope could change the reality, though, and the picture of the victim – thankfully one taken from before the shooting – confirmed his worst fears. Another one of his friends had died. Another one of the only people who could help him atone for his sins and stop the catastrophe that continued even now was gone. Even thinking Macy’s name still made him sick after all these years, to say nothing of remembering her face or her scream as the building had been destroyed. And now it was continuing. And now people were dying again.

But, surely… It had to be a coincidence, right? Norm was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or had gotten mixed up in something dangerous but mundane. It’s not as though Sam had seen any signs of realities overlapping, any indication other than the book that the battle had any influence here. It had to be a coincidence.

That Nalzaki had been the last one to die and now their creator had been murdered.

Sam kept reading. The first article didn’t mention much of anything about the suspect, merely that one had been detained. Kept talking about crime statistics and how to protect YOUR family and a bunch of sensationalist bullshit, but didn’t say anything useful. The second one was briefer, more succinct, and named the suspect as “an unidentified young woman who seemed confused and terrified when police arrested her”; she’d apparently destroyed her own apartment and may have been in the process of killing herself when she’d been found. Arrested and put on suicide watch pending a mental health assessment.

Knowing even as he thought it that it was the stupidest thing he’d ever thought, Sam murmured “Jennie.”; they’d arrested Jennie, who was dead and killing people and writing a book. He’d been to her funeral and it couldn’t be her, it was a coincidence and he was being crazy. The book had her handwriting in it and his and everyone else’s, so was it really so hard to believe that even more bizarre things were happening? The battles were no strangers to resurrection. But… This was all real.

Forget finding the rest of them. He had to find her. Had to find out.

---

“… But the most dangerous one calls herself Cascala,” Klendel was concluding. Misinformation and half-truths and manipulation were all fine and good to a point – especially if he planned to pull the rug out from under the Kings as soon as he had them where he wanted them – but Cascala of all the contestants he’d seen seemed to have the most capacity to ruin his plans if left unchecked. Assuming she wasn’t still in whatever trance had made her so strange in the last round, at least; even then, though… Better to be certain. And what better way than to have someone else do all the work for him?

---

“The most dangerous one…” There was a short pause. “Calls himself Sir Cedric.” Of the three she’d was certain had survived, it was probably accurate. If the hydra had lived, she was probably wasting a huge opportunity, but Harmon and the boy were gnats, one of whom had simply gotten lucky; if the hydra had died, than Cedric was almost certainly more of a threat than Phere or the shadow. Targeting him was the safest bet, and there was no sense dwelling on what-ifs.

“He’s an enormous, muscular man. Heavily armored, carries a sword. Seems to favor Heat, but his magic is clumsy and amateur. Bearded, overconfident, blond. May be very dangerous at close range, but I believe he will be an easy kill if you keep your distance. He is not likely to have the Sight to detect a curse or missile, nor the skill to neutralize it.”

Several of the Tea Clubbers gave her blank looks. “That’s all well and good,” one of them eventually muttered. “But what’s his signature like?”

“I suspect,” Cascala sniffed disapprovingly, “He is probably illiterate.”

The speaker narrowed his eyes and mouthed the last few of her words incomprehendingly. “Illi– No! His thaumatological signature! Tell me about his etheric warping.” He gave a look communicating his increasing doubt to the baron.

“Do I look like an impotent diviner?” She sneered, hastily quashing the internal rejoinder that if she had been then most of her problems would have been solved by now.

“The ways of outsiders never cease to surprise me,” smiled the baron. “It will be harder to find him without a signature to trace, but I can contact our other cells, and we can hijack some of the–“

“I don’t care how you do it. Just find and eliminate him, or if that proves too difficult for the whole cult of you, herd him to me so I can do it myself.”

“How… Pragmatic. Businesslike, even. Alright, you have a deal. When we’ve taken care of your little interloper, you’ll–“

“Save it. When the warlord is dead, we can discuss what exactly you need me to do for your little anarchy party. The longer we wait, the more likely he is to become entrenched or difficult to find. After we’ve killed him, I’ll have all the time in your world to play regicide or revolution or whatever it is you want.”

You couldn’t have convinced her of it without a mirror, but Cascala’s smirk wasn’t nearly so well hidden as she believed it to be.

“Mmm. I suppose you have a point. We’ll get started looking, and Alonzo will take you to–“

Without warning, a woman in the corner who hadn’t said a word since Cascala had arrived slammed her eyes open.

“I’ve lost surveillance outside.”

---

“She’s a powerful mage. Focuses on weather and ice magic, and seems pretty creative with it.”

“A Talent we can deal with.”

“Regardless of her grade.”

“Does she have any skills that make her dangerous without her magic?”

Not that I’ve seen, but… Still, it was better to sound confident. “No. I don’t think she’s ever needed anything else. I mean it, I can’t overstate how powerful she is with the stuff.” That music thing she did in the opera house must have been her magic in that world. There’s no other reasonable explanation. Don’t overthink things.

“Very well.”

“Then she shall be dealt with like the rest of them.”

“Swiftly.”

---

For the first time since she met him, the baron’s face wasn’t suffused with a smile, knowing, forced, or otherwise.

“Severed or dampened?” He barked.

“Dampened.”

“Dammit! This shouldn’t be happening, but the Men are here and they mean business.”

One of the Clubbers shrank against the wall. “You said you were going to throw them off the trail!”

“I should have. I did! And even if I didn’t, as far as they should know we’re only notable for our incendiaries experts. They shouldn’t have spared dampeners unless someone’s been feeding them information.”

“What do we–“

Herrastel shook himself, knowing he didn’t have time to dwell on the whys. “Everyone, draw in as much ambient as you can. Even tool users, the rest of us can use whatever you can hold.”

Cascala felt for her staff in its artfully-concealed sling on her back. It had a fair amount of mana stored, but she was no artificer. It just gathered it on its own, and she didn’t really have the expertise to condense raw magic. It’d have to do; she could probably leech off one of her new disposable friends if it came down to it.

“Angela, get out of here before the ways close; try to make it to Emerald, you know who to talk to there. Alonzo, stay close to the outsider. I don’t know what the dampeners will do to her, and I need you ready to get her out of here if things go wrong. Grigori–“

Cascala never found out what Grigori was supposed to do; the baron’s next words were downed out by the sound of the wall she’d come in through shaking itself apart. As the barrier fell, raining stone and statues and cloth that seemed to disintegrate before they hit the ground, Cascala felt a wave of numbness wash over her. It was a bit like being back on the beach at Santa Nada, but instead of a total absence of magic, it was simply actively pushed away from her. She could feel it, distant but totally unreachable; she could also feel the reassuring bubble of it at her back, and vaguely sense it in the silvery veils several of the Clubbers had drawn around themselves. She drew her staff and stepped forward; nothing else seemed to be happening to her, “outsider” or not.

Outside – or what would have been outside if the room hadn’t been forcibly joined with the corridor – there was a group of lanky, domino-masked humanoids forming a semicircle in front of a smaller cluster of grey-robed men. Despite the masked figures’ weapons and obvious power, Cascala felt her attention drawn to the grey people; they were gagged and blindfolded and their legs shackled, only their arms free to move and their ears free to perceive. She knew instinctively that they were the ones holding back the familiar tides of magic. They had to be killed.

Before she could make any kind of start on their extermination, though, the masked man in front lowered the large, two-handed contraption it was holding and the ones flanking it stepped forward; they brandished a pair of pistollike implements and sighted at two of the closest Clubbers: the swan-woman tried to raise a shimmering barrier of light, but the robed men gestured in tandem and her shield crumbled instants before a darkly-crackling steel dart struck her in the gut, leaving her limp and twitching; Herrastel was somewhat luckier, his eyes dilating as the weapon fired and his hand moving inhumanly fast to pluck the dart out of the air and toss it aside, but everyone could hear the sound of twanging cartilage and snapping bone as he did. Judging from the limp way his arm hung after the interception, his fingers hadn’t been the only victims of whatever had let him snatch the bolt.

Behind them, Cascala was already preparing a spell; she intended to simply transmute all the vapor in the corridor into essential acid, reasoning that it should be effective against however organic or unliving the things she faced were. Even as she began shaping the mana, she felt unseeing eyes focus on her; hands raised and bade her magic suppress itself, and she felt it twist and pervert in her grasp. The spell eventually bent too far back on itself and snapped, striking her with the energy she’d tried to put into it before dissipating. She stumbled backwards, trying to catch her breath, feeling as though her lungs were filling with blood. No-one had ever managed to counter her before. Never. Was this how it always felt? How had they managed to suppress a Grand Magus?

Around her, the fight continued unabated, but she was only aware of it in the vaguest sense. The masked men were doing something, the anarchists were doing something, people were falling, there might have been explosions. There might not. Cascala’s eyes rolled back in her head and she struggled to stay standing. After an amount of time she could never hope to measure, she heard a voice call out nearby, sounding as though it was coming through fathoms of murky water.

“Alonzo, get her out of here! Everyone else, scatter! There are too many, we can’t handle this!”

She felt a hand grab her wrist and heard a clicking noise. She didn’t feel much else but a pulling sensation for several seconds until she was suffused with cold; when that cleared, she felt an inrush of the glut of mana this world held, and with it an inrush of lucidity. Her eyes opened, and she found herself being half-lead, half-dragged through another sumptuous hallway. The man she supposed was Alonzo was pulling her forward, so fast she struggled to keep up even fully conscious. They sprinted towards a corner, but as Cascala prepared to bank right he just kept going straight, gripping what looked like an ornate pocket watch in his other hand. She tried to pull away but he held her tight and leaped, yanking her into the air with him and pressing a button on the device.

She braced to collide with the wall, but was shocked to find herself merely phasing through the with a brief chilly sensation. Alonzo released the button after they were clear but before they landed, then kept running without missing a stride. Cascala on the other hand hadn’t been ready to land, hadn’t even been ready for the jump in the first place, and tangled her feet in the ridiculously extravagant gown she’d been put in. She crashed to the ground, pain blossoming in her ankle in what she prayed was just a short-lived sprain, and Alonzo collapsed with her.

He made as though to push himself back up, but crumpled, panting. “That’s probably far enough anyway. For the moment.”

Cascala struggled into a sitting position, the dress surprisingly compliant with the effort. A number of questions swam through her still-reeling mind, but one fought its way to the fore, demanding an answer before anything else.

“How did you do that? Get us out of there with those… damper. Things.”

The unsaid half of the question hung in the air. “How did you do that when I couldn’t?”

The man waved his trinket and groaned, propping himself against a wall. “Oh, this isn’t magic.”

She narrowed her eyes dangerously. “We moved through solid stone like a ghost. Of course it’s magic. Explain yourself.”

Alonzo took a drag on a colorful rollup he produced from a sleeve, exhaling with relief as the world went comfortingly fractal. “Nah, it’s just a tunneler. Exploits some fun quirks of physics and probability, but it doesn’t let you do anything impossible. I mean, it uses a little magic to find where in infinity the improbable bit is and bring it where you need it, but… That’s not much of a spell, and it’s got its own battery for that. Too fast to cancel and doesn’t use ambient power.”

Almost nothing about that was a satisfying answer to Cascala, but the part she mentally filed away was “It’s a baroque sort of wand. You can’t counter a wand, it’s automatic.”

Instead, she said “Now what?

A shrug. “Same as before, yeah? Nothing’s really changed. I’ve got to get you where you’re going, and the plan should move forward like you discussed. We’ll get you your information or your head on a platter either way.”

“How will–“

“Someone’ll contact us when they’ve got something to say. It’ll just be a little harder now that we’re being followed. For now, we just need to keep moving. Tireless Men aren’t too easy to keep ahead of.”

Without another word, he grabbed her wrist and the tunneler, and the pair of them fell through the floor.

---

Elsewhere, after a fair bit of scurrying of his own, Baron Herrastel gazed dispassionately down at the flayed and pinned flesh of his arm.

“Only three dead. Not bad for a Tireless raid of that size. Could have been a lot worse.”

The needle-fingered woman delicately rearranging his sinews and bones gave a facial sigh. “Could have gone much better. We usually have something to gain from an encounter with those things.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I rather think we did! Don’t you? The way I see it, we’ve learned something big. The Tea Club is barely a blip on anyone’s radar, as closely as we’ve held our cards. But today we were attacked by one of the biggest and best-armed Tireless raids I’ve seen. That means either we’ve got someone telling secrets to people in high places, or – and this one’s my favorite theory – something about that outsider woman has the Kings or the Stones very scared. Scared to devote a lot of resources to tracking her, even during the coronation party. Scared enough to want to detain her, too. Did you see? They didn’t break out the lethals until she was gone.”

“Maybe so.”

“I’m willing to bet on it. A lot more than three lives, too.”

There was a busy silence as the woman continue to refit his arm. Eventually, she broke it.

“You suppose she really thinks we believe her?”

He shrugged with one arm. “I doubt it matters one way or another. I’ve got Alonzo putting her somewhere she’ll end up doing what we want anyway.” The silence returned for a few beats, then: “But, yes, I think she does.”

“She seems very trusting for a wildly destructive outsider.”

“Doesn’t she, though?”

“What about the man she’s looking for?”

“Eh, it might be helpful information to have if we ever need to twist her arm down the line. I made my recommendation to Felliri to send a couple of spare physiognomists off looking for him, keep him out of her way if they find her. It’s his decision now.”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t hmm at me like that. As long as she thinks we’ve got what she wants, it’ll be easy to make her disrupt things. Not too canny, that one. Almost too easy to lead.”

“Well, John, you may be right. I’ve just been through a few too many coronations to really believe this changes enough. But… Maybe you’re right. Maybe.”

Akumu · 03-14-2013, 01:54 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.

In a public hallway of the Resplendent Palace, Melissa Harmon pushed her way through a throng of masked guests trying to head in the opposite direction. She tried to keep in mind that they were not, in fact, melting together into a river of flesh that threatened to drown her. She had been drugged. Had drugged herself. Whatever. Still, that knowledge made the experience no less horrifying, and it was starting to eat away at her belief in objectivity. What if perception was reality, after all?

Of course, if that was the case, she’d just will herself to stop being drugged and get on with things. Wait, shit. That’s exactly what the birdman had told her to do. She screwed up her eyes and put all her concentration into a little mantra. Isomers, isomers, isomers. I’m sober, I’m sober, I’m sober. When she opened her eyes back up, the bad news was that everything was still melting. The good news was that reality continued to behave as if it were real. Harmon considered this as a net gain and soldiered on.

As the crowd began to thin, their place was taken up with a thickening smoke. Harmon stepped out past the last stragglers onto the mezzanine above the Sapphire ballroom and took in the scene on the floor below. It seemed like everything was on fire. The diaphanous hanging streamers and wood paneling, yes, but also the marble floors and columns. Paper-cut-out men fell like autumn leaves from the ceiling, trying to smother the flames, but only succeeded in giving them more fuel. Amidst the inferno, a man yelled and swung his sword, lashing new lines of fire to life across the ballroom.

It wasn’t Cedric.

- - -

Ivan Norst was having the opposite problem: he couldn’t get away from Cedric. Well, he probably could, if it came down to it. But there were so many people here and the knight was the only known quantity. Still, he thought, twirling his quill nervously, this was simply mortifying.

“Tell me, man, what do you think of the beard?” Cedric boisterously asked the ball-goer he had an arm wrapped around. “It’s indispensable out on the arctic wastes of Norland, hunting icegarks, but it doesn’t seem to be the style here, does it?”

“Not this season, no,” the man said, nervously eyeing Sigrar, “but it’s very fine, yes, very oh my god what’s that?”

Cedric turned to look and felt an emptiness in his very friendly grip. His confidant was suddenly ten yards away and sidling quickly into the crowd.

“Rude,” Cedric muttered, frowning.

Ivan wished he could have the same cavalier attitude. He guessed it came with being ludicrously strong. They were all dying off one by one, as promised, but it was hard to imagine anything killing Cedric. If he played the page, he could perhaps stay protected, but what if it came down to just the two of them?

He glanced at the champagne flutes. A few quick scratches with his quill could convince the champaign to be poison instead. Would even that kill the knight? Anyway, it would be best to postpone such considerations until the more psychotic of them were out of the picture. It would be best of all to get out of the whole sick game, but for that he needed more information. Unfortunately, the best source of information was probably the most psychotic of all.

Ivan was musing this over when the hood came down over his head.

“Crap! Cedric! Help!”

Cold hands grabbed him and lifted him from the floor, but before his feet lost contact with the marble he could feel the crowd backing away. No one was coming towards him, and he didn’t sense the heavy footfalls of the knight at all.

Cedric was gone.

- - -

In the forgotten room at the center of the Resplendent Palace, a corpulent form sagged back into its throne. Its flesh drooped and tore, rivulets of cloudy fluid rolling across pallid skin.

“It is done,” the King said between ragged, wheezing breaths. “I must rest.”

The King closed its eyes and its breathing began to stabilize, its wounds to knit back together.

“Hematite,” another King spoke, drawing the man’s attention from the appalling sight of his lord’s weakness, “What is the status of the other Outsiders?”

“Harmon and Norst have been taken by the Tireless Men, sires. They await your dispensation. Phere has been ejected from the Palace; we are watching for her porting signature should she attempt re-entry. And Cascala...”

“Yes, Hematite?”

“What of the ’most dangerous’ one, Hematite?”

“She has evaded capture. A team is in pursuit.”

“Unacceptable.”

“We expect success when we delegate, Hematite.”

“You know what it means to fail us, Hematite.”

“We will speak with those you have brought to us. Use this time to capture Cascala, or to prepare the Malachite for a promotion.”

“Yes, sires.”

The last King rousted, his eyes fluttering back open.

“The Coronation must proceed.”

Hematite bowed deeply and backed out of the throne room, cold sweat dripping off his brow. As the rough wooden door shut in front of him, he straightened and spun to face the waiting Tireless Men.

“You two, the Kings seek an audience with Harmon. Bring her inside. You two stay with Norst, their majesties will request him presently. The rest of you, join the search for Cascala.”

As the Men started into motion, Hematite sprinted back towards the war room.

- - -

They began to move again.

It was dark inside the hood. Dark and quiet. Apart from the iron grips on her arms, she was cut off from the world. She tried to focus on those grips. The sensory deprivation was not helping the hallucinations one iota.

The hood had come down shortly after she had failed to find Cedric amongst the flames, and the grips came right after. She had struggled to get away at first, but her captors were impossibly strong, and solid. Maybe they were the robots she had been looking for, but phase two was no use if it came before phase one. So for now, she bided her time and followed along where she was pulled, waiting for her chance.

She felt the air on her skin go colder, clammier.

The hood came off and the smell hit her like a punch to the stomach. She fell against the restraining grips of her captors, trying to double over, retching.

“Child, you insult us.”

“We will speak with you.”

“Look upon us.”

Rasping voices came from nearby. Harmon focused on breathing through her mouth and took in her surroundings. Her captors, if they were robots, were android. Black robes, gloves, and masks obscured them. The floor was stone, rough and filmed over. Threadbare tapestries. And against the far wall, in the dimness, bloated mockeries of humans, seated in high-backed wooden chairs too small to properly contain them. She could almost see the smell radiating off of them in greasy waves. It smelled of death. From them came the rasping voices again.

“We have many questions.”

“Release her. We would have her speak freely.”

“Come closer, child.”

Harmon steeled herself, and as her arms were released, she turned and drove the heel of her palm up into the eye of the masked android beside her. She heard the sharp crack of breaking glass and its head rocked back, but it barely staggered. As its partner reached out to snare her again, she spun around the half-blinded one and darted for the door.

Bands of force wrapped around her and she was stopped dead in her tracks. The air itself seemed to solidify into a straitjacket holding her in place, and she was turned and dragged back before the triumvirate.

“Melissa Harmon, we are the Spinel Kings.”

“This is our realm, and we will not be denied.”

“What you will not give, we will take.”

She was pulled closer.

Who has sent you here?

Their mouths did not move, but the Kings’ voice rang clearly in her head. Was it one of them? All of them? She couldn’t be sure. Harmon felt a pressure behind her eyes as the Kings’ influence pushed its way into her mind. Memories flitted past her awareness as they were flipped through like the pages of a book, the reader looking out for the highlighted passages to zero in on. The memories slowed and settled and she was sitting on her father’s lap, watching as he manipulated the holo-display, twists of his fingers rotating the cloud of data around his prototype, modifying and drawing connections. The lights were so pretty. She burbled happily and clapped together her pudgy hands. Her father looked down at her, smiling, and opened his mouth—

Here is becoming and we are us who will become.

The Kings’ presence withdrew and Harmon dropped back into the now, gagging anew at the putrescence of the throne room. The Kings muttered amongst themselves and then turned back to the transfixed scientist, delving once again into her mind.

What is your purpose?

She sat at her own workbench, just turning off the hot air gun and watching through a loupe as the solder solidified around the last chip’s pins. All the connections looked good. She took this fourth revision of the card and slotted it into place in the exploded tangle of the harmonometer. With a flip of a switch, the cyclotron hummed to life, increasing in pitch as the beam came up to speed. The attached ammeter dial swung up to full current and stabilized. Harmon turned her attention to the radioactive sample between the arms of the probe. No arcing this time. On the oscilloscope, an integrated signal began to grow. Everything was working, and she was actually seeing the counterfactual decays!

“Hell yes!” she leapt up from her stool, pumping a fist in the air, “Dr. Ambrose! Emma! Get in here, you need to see—”

The words died on her lips as she saw the room around her. Instead of the walls of the laboratory, corruscating colors filled space out to the limits of her sight. They twisted and pulsed and sound filled everything, coming from everywhere.

We are what is, we found what is not but soon it shall be.

Her workbench and apparatus blew apart into shards of color, joining the mass that surrounded her. It swaddled her, constricting her even as the pressure behind her eyes redoubled.

What is your weakness? How can you be stopped?

She sat with her back against the headboard, sheets over her legs and sweat drying on her bare skin. She studied the crack running along the ceiling in a moment that stretched on for a hair too long, and sighed.

“Adam,” she started, gingerly, turning to look into his expectant eyes, “it’s just not a good time. When I start in this new position, the tenure clock starts too. I need to be able to focus on that.”

Adam frowned, and when he opened his mouth Melissa saw that he was a shell, filled with the colors that tried to squeeze her to nothing.

We are forever, we end when time is not and when time is we are.

“I know what I said. That was true, and this is true. I can’t be another drip from the pipeline, Adam, I just can’t. This is too important to let anything slow me down.”

Over her words came the Kings’, pushing out through her as the color pushed through Adam.

You mistake your importance. We are as well, but we are not you. You are bounded, and those bounds can be pushed back.

You are not. “You” is not. We are. You will be.

Melissa rocked back as if slapped, tears springing to her eyes.

“Of course not, I’ve never... we’re partners and, but I need... God dammit, I love you, and I want to be with you, isn’t that enough?”

She turned, curling her legs under herself and grabbed Adam’s hand where it lay on the bed. She looked imploringly into his eyes, and he stared back, his eyes wet as well but his mouth set in a razor-thin line. After a long moment, he averted his eyes.

“I should go,” Melissa whispered, and slid off the bed to collect her clothes.

“Mel, wait.”

She turned, trying to keep her face a mask. Adam held bunches of the sheets in a white-knuckled grip, looking down. She knew what he was going to say next. She didn’t want to hear it, but this was how it had happened. He looked up, started to speak, and burst apart into streamers of color that shot towards her.

In the throne room of the Spinel Kings, Melissa Harmon convulsed in the air, as did the King who held her there. Its face was a rictus of pain and concentration, its arms straining against the chains that held it in its seat of power, the manacles digging into the doughy flesh of its wrists. Its neighbour leaned over, detaching from the wooden back of its throne with a wet sound and an intensifying of the stench of decay. It chopped its hand through the air between Harmon and the afflicted King, and both collapsed and were still.

“Do we have a problem?” the third King asked.

“No,” said the second, after a moment, “he has not been infected.”

“The Cog did not tell us of this. It has betrayed us.”

“Perhaps it only did not know. What we found of the host agreed with its report.”

“Incomplete information is as dangerous as no information, regardless.”

“We know enough now to contain the host. After the Coronation, she should be examined more fully.”

“Agreed. Tireless Men, take her to the cells and put up the full complement of psychic wards.”

“And have the boy brought in next.”

- - -

Harmon awoke, head throbbing, on a wooden bench in a windowless stone room. She began to rub at her eyes with the heels of her palms, before wincing and pulling her hands away. There was a spectacular bruise forming where she had hit the android, not that it had even done her any good. What the hell had happened in there? What the hell was inside of her head? Her train of thought was derailed when she heard a muffled voice from the wall. Somebody was singing on the other side.

“O, I’ve got no end of sorrows, my tears they could near drown a whale, but I could put all that behind me, if you’d buy me a tankard of ale, oooooh, hi-diddy ho-diddy hi-ho-hi-he—”

“Cedric?!”

The singing cut off in response. She couldn’t believe her luck. It had been the longest, shittiest route to get here but things were all falling into place.

“Princess Harmony?” came a returning shout.

Well, you couldn’t ask for everything.

“Yes! We need to get out of here, are you in a cell too?”

“I am in the hospitality of the local lords, aye. Just trying to be sociable and then I was in gaol. I suppose I’ll have to serve my time honorably for whatever offense I caused.”

“Cedric, I’ve been badly mistreated, and I am in very unladylike conditions at the moment.”

There was a long pause.

“Well, I’d say a lady’s honor comes before obedience to someone else’s lords any day! Stand back from the wall!”

Pick Yer Poison · 07-11-2013, 12:37 AM

Klendel stalked the halls darkly, if such a thing were possible for a being made of shadows. He had no illusions of freedom; the unreadable Tireless Men (he had already determined that, whatever they were, they weren't really capable of thinking, and were therefore below his interest) guarded everything that so much as resembled an exit. Out of curiosity, Klendel had approached them once, and before he knew it they had formed a wall of coat over the whole doorway. Not the most menacing thing he'd ever seen, but certainly not the most friendly. He glowered at the pair guarding a nearby doorway as he passed, not really expecting a response.

What he needed, and fast, was information. Although his hasty deal had regained some semblence of control, he knew it was only temporary; a plan relying on the actions of unknowns was only one step above no plan at all. Were he the wishing type, he would've tried asking one of the Cog gods for time, and lots of it (not that he could even remember their names, much less what they governed). His normal timescale worked on the order of decades, giving him plenty of leeway to worm his way into the system, set the kingdom on a slow decline, subtly groom any future heirs to be fundamentally incapable of ruling - anything he needed to do in order to fix the broken structure.

He didn't like working with a time constraint, yet here he was, forced into one. Even worse, he didn't even know how long he had - just that the grains of sand in the hourglass were trickling out. Was it karma? He'd lost track of how many people had cursed him with their dying breaths. Maybe someone had finally made up their mind on whether the ends justified the means. That sounded right; he was pretty sure that, whatever the reason, whoever was to blame was in charge of something.

He caught a mind full of confusion and anxiety on the peripherals of his mental radar, and he spun around. A pure white Cog, too white to simply be reflecting light, was pushing herself blindly forward, leaning against the wall for support. With each pained step the clear white grew dingier. He was too far away to hear what she was saying, but it didn't matter. "Leo, help," she whispered, eyes wandering sightlessly. "It hurts. It hurts and I can't see. Leo, where are you?" He cried out a single word, her name, and sprinted towards her as fast as he could. His legs felt like they were weighted down; he couldn't move fast enough. He opened his mouth to yell her name again -

But it wasn't her. It was someone else, someone he didn't know. Klendel's lunge turned into a stumble as he tried to right himself. It was a short, gaunt man, sandy hair receding towards a large bald spot, dressed in a tuxedo, walking briskly around the corner, muttering to himself and glancing from side to side. The sound of Klendel's yell split his attention and he fell over backwards as both legs tried to go forward at the same time.

"What in the blazes are you yelling about?" he grumbled, rolling forward and then standing up a motion that might've looked smooth if someone else had done it. "I'm late, get out of my way!" Klendel stared back at him wordlessly, struggling to decide if he would rather be glad he didn't have to live through that memory again or if he wanted to put his head in his hands because he couldn't. His head felt like it was full of sand, slowly trickling out. The short man patted his jacket down, probably more for effect than utility, as the wrinkles seemed to be smoothing themselves out anyway. He glared up at Klendel. "I said, get out of my way! I'm late!" He waved his hand in front of Klendel's face. "Hello? Are we home?"

Klendel looked back down at him, taking him in as if realizing he was there for real. "Shut up," he muttered, trying to place himself back in the memory for just a few more moments, long enough to reach her and be her pillar of support, to feel perversely happy that it was his turn to return the favor and let her lean on him. The man - he was probably in charge of something, Klendel decided - puffed himself up at the indignant remark, and launched himself into a tirade that did very little to show how late he was. "Shut up," Klendel muttered again, this time a little louder, but it was like a bicycle trying to argue right of way with a bulldozer. The lecture split his attention and the vivid feelings he was trying to recall became significantly less so. He scrabbled and clutched at the grains of sand slipping out of his head, but they fell through his fingers and returned to the unfeeling void that was his memory.

But a few missed their destination, and fell on a scale somewhere, where a pile had been building for centuries. Slowly, it began to sway, then tipped over, slamming into place in a new position. Klendel felt an unrecognizable feeling well up in his - no, not unrecognizable. He'd felt it once before, and never since. Rage. It blossomed inside of him, filling the hollow places in his psyche that had replaced it when it vanished, consuming him and redirecting him.

"SHUT UP!" he yelled, and rammed a mental spike into the man's head, hard enough to make him physically recoil as if struck. Mental barriers sprouted up in his path, some powerful, many-layered protections made out of fond childhood memories and late nights spent with friends, and some malformed, hastily constructed from workplace fantasies and fleeting pleasures, but they might as well have not been there. In fact, they did more harm than good - every time he broke through one of the fortifications, he absorbed a few snippets of the memories making it up, and as the man's defenses began to run out, the snippets became more and more informative. By the time he'd reached his destination - the man's fears - Klendel had learned much more than he'd bargained on.

He withdrew to find the man - Opal, that had been in one of the snippets - on his knees, propping his torso up with his arms as he trembled and dry-heaved towards the tiling. Klendel planted his foot on Opal's back and pushed downwards, forcing him to lie down on his stomach. He looked up at the Tireless Men, wondering if they would intervene, but they simply stood still, passive as always. Nobody was going through the door. No action was to be taken.

Satisfied, Klendel turned his attention downwards. "Now, Opal, I've found a really fun game to play with friends. I call it Questions. Normally, the two participants will alternate asking and answering questions, but this time I'm going to mix things up." He put some more weight on Opal's back. "I'm going to ask you a series of questions. Then I'm going to let you go. You'll run. I'll chase you. For every question you answer truthfully, I'll wait an extra thirty seconds before I start chasing you. And if I'm really happy with your answers, I might not even tell the Kings you're a double agent." Opal's shoulders sagged. Klendel started asking his questions.

---

"Are you sure you don't want me to carry you?" Cedric asked, having to raise his voice slightly as he crashed the heads of two Tireless Men together, utterly destroying their complex and expensive circuitry. "Usually that's what the princesses want me to do."

Harmon stooped to sift through the broken remains of one of the other machines Cedric had already destroyed. "My legs haven't given out yet. Besides, you should focus on killing the androids." She pulled some components out of the wreckage, inspected them carefully, and then either stuffed them in her bag or dropped them in a second pile according to a ruleset only she understood.

"Hey!" Harmon looked up at Cedric's call to see that he had gutted the handpieces of one of the Tireless Men and fitted them over his own hands like a particular gaudy and ill-fitting pair of gauntlets. "These could come in..." He looked at her pointedly. "...handy." He started laughing far too loudly, trying to pretend he wasn't watching Harmon carefully to gauge her reaction. Harmon tried to force some girlish giggling and got a little squeak out before her throat realized what she was trying to do and stopped cooperating. Cedric's one-sided guffaws quickly turned into a loud throat clearing.

"Well!" he started again. "We should probably get moving!" He dropped the gauntlets on the ground and hurried ahead, looking for something to break. Harmon trotted after him, picking the discarded gauntlets up with the vague idea of searching them, but then dropped them immediately with a clunk that Cedric probably heard. She knew she was going to have to let him down eventually - he couldn't have possibly thought she'd have found that pun funny - but she knew that having him think there was at least a possibility of interest meant he'd protect her, and although she hated the idea of relying on him for safety, she was pragmatic enough to quash her misgivings in the interest of her own survival.

Another Tireless Man dropped from the ceiling ahead and Cedric leaped on it vigorously, clearly glad to have something physical to pin his annoyance on. He gripped an arm and, with a violent pull, separated it from the torso, tossing it behind him. Harmon watched him happily dismember the android, but her mind was on more important matters. What was going on in his head, she wondered? Even if he protected her to the end, one of them would still have to die, if how things had worked so far was any indication. She watched as Cedric slammed his hand into the android's chest, making a sizeable dent and sending it reeling, and then realized his angle: she was just a challenge. He was likely used to his women waiting patiently for him to kill the dragon and then taking them to bed. She almost nodded to herself - it made perfect sense. More importantly, it meant she knew how to act to keep his protection without actually compromising her principles. At least, she had an idea. Putting it in action would be a little more difficult.

"Hey!" Oh no, not again. Cedric held up the severed head of a Tireless Man. "I think we're headed in the right direction!"

---

"Whose coronation is this?" Klendel sat on Opal's back, staring at the Tireless Men carefully in case they changed their minds about ignoring the interrogation. He'd spent his first few questions figuring out where he was in the palace and learning who the important players were. The fear factor was wearing off and Opal was bound to start trying to get away with lies sooner or later, so he'd prioritized things he needed to know right away first. Now he was starting to hit the gray areas where he just needed more details instead of the whole story. It wouldn't be long before Opal made an escape attempt, either, and Klendel was worried the Tireless Men might let Opal through the door but not him.

Opal, for his part, did little more than struggle weakly under Klendel. "The Kings'. The new one's mostly, but also the old ones'." Klendel reached down and twisted his ear. "Guh - the new King will be coronated and then later absorbed by the old Kings. They'll add his consciousness to theirs and renew their life energy. The monarchy will continue unchanged." Another twist of the ear. "That's all I know!"

The facts seemed to fit, Klendel decided. The Kings certainly looked like they'd seen better days, and an artificially extended lifespan could explain how they were so powerful. If that was the case, they needed to be stopped tonight, while they were at their weakest. While they were distracted by the transfer of power would likely be the best time to make his move. Maybe, if he timed it right, both the Kings, new and old, could be displaced with a single move. He hated that he had no idea how any of this worked, but as much as he wanted to be on top, now was not the time for a beginner's course in magic. "When and where will the absorption be happening?"

"Tonight, in the King's throne room, just after the coronation. Which is in a few hours!" Klendel's fingers on Opal's ear prompted the hasty addition of the second portion. "I don't know exactly how long we have left, but if you'd let me sketch a time symbol I could tell you." Klendel was almost disappointed at how obvious the escape attempt was. Taking advantage of what you knew and the foe didn't was common sense, but this was just sad. It was clear that Opal had never been in a situation like this before. On the other hand, Klendel knew he wasn't likely to get much more out of Opal at this point - the threat had passed, and he was now focused on finding avenues of escape. Restraining Opal here forever wasn't an option, even if he were physically capable of doing so; it was only a matter of time before one or both of their absences were noted, or someone happened down the corridor and found them. Killing him was also impractical, and might even set off the Tireless Men. Besides, Klendel reasoned, if Opal decided he wouldn't be able to escape on his own, he might resort to setting off some sort of alarm or risk calling in backup and trust his word would hold up better than Klendel's - which it almost certainly would. Now was the best time to let the attempt go through, before it became something Klendel couldn't handle.

Klendel ran through the plan in his head. Opal would sketch his "time symbol," which would then push Klendel off, burst into bright light, spin them both around, or do something similar to separate the two. He would then either run back the way he'd came, in the way he'd been going, or through the Tireless Men. Retracing his steps was the least likely - he wouldn't want anyone questioning why he fled away from probable help and support. Forging ahead would put him on course for whatever he was late for, and if it was close enough and Klendel gave chase, might allow Opal to blame his lateness on the shadow. On the other hand, the Tireless Men might let him pass but would certainly block Klendel, and they were a lot closer than wherever Opal had been heading to. Close enough, Klendel noted, that if Opal threw him off and ran, he'd be able to make it between them before Klendel could get to him. That was the route he was going to take, Klendel decided.

He nodded his assent, and Opal spent a couple of moments sketching a symbol. It flew up and slammed into Klendel, propelling him into the wall across from the Tireless Men, his gear connecting with a loud CLANG. He loosened his shadowflesh, and the symbol flew through him and impacted the wall, sending cracks racing out across it. Those few moments were more than enough for Opal to scramble to the safety of the androids. Klendel didn't bother giving chase - he'd already tried and failed to get through the door, after all - and simply straightened himself out, liquid shadow flowing in and filling the hole he'd made in his shoulder to let the symbol pass through him. He suddenly had a lot to consider.

Akumu · 08-08-2013, 12:28 AM

For a split second, the handle of the iron door glowed red, then white, then splattered into droplets as a fist punched through. The remains of the handle skittered across the stone floor, between the shelves crowded with boxes of seemingly random items. The door, lock and latch destroyed, slowly swung open.

“After you, Princess Harmony,” Cedric said, standing aside to make way. Harmon curtsied before entering the room and starting to rifle through the boxes.

“You’ve seen my device, Sir Cedric. Parts of it were confiscated from me,and I need to get them back. Let me know if you find them. Is there anything they’ve taken from you?”

“Sigrar,” Cedric answered, and then at Harmon’s blank look, “My sword.”

“Are swords usually named where you come from?”

“When they have distinguished themselves in battle,” Cedric paused in his search, staring into the distance for a moment before continuing and speaking again, “It was my father’s before me. It has served us both well.”

“We’ll make sure to find it then.”

They rummaged in silence for a minute. Most of the items in the room were either simple weapons, daggers mostly, or devices so baroque their purpose was completely obscure. Harmon tried not to accidentally activate any of them. If the people around here could solidify the air, read minds and control chemical reactions with their thoughts alone, the idea of what they would need technology for was terrifying.

In among the clutter, Harmon spotted a thin red scabbard with inlaid gold. The sword’s handguard, sticking out the end, was arranged to look like a rising flame. It wasn’t what she recalled the knight’s sword looking like, but then again, she’d been wearing jeans and flannel when this whole thing started.

“Cedric, I think I found Sigrar!”

“Good! I think I found your... thing.”

“Put it on the desk up front, would you?”

Harmon made her way through the rows and found Cedric setting down a mess of metal, glass and wires. Excellent. She was one step closer to getting out. Of this dungeon, this palace, this whole damned situation. She handed the sword off to Cedric.

The knight pulled the blade part way from its scabbard, giving it an appraising look before nodding with satisfaction and expertly sliding the whole assembly into a waiting belt loop. He grinned at Harmon.

“There, a full man again! I’ll stove a man’s head in with my fists alone, but there’s no substitute for a sharp blade.”

The scientist had already started spreading out her damaged equipment and the android parts, looking for how they could interface with each other. She suppressed a grimace and looked up.

“I wouldn’t know. Where I’m from, in our society, there’s not a need for violence. I’m not used to it.” Harmon tried to strike a balance between making Cedric feel appreciated and not debasing herself.

“How would you gain power, then? Bring glory to your name?”

“Words and ideas, convincing others that you can create solutions.”

“Sounds dull as a sack of rocks. Valthen must despair when he turns his eye on your world.”

“Whoever Valthen is, I don’t think he ever does.”

Cedric snorted, “And why would he, by the sound of it. Don’t worry, I have enough of his favor for the both of us.”

Harmon smiled without feeling. The chances of cultural exchange here were small, to say the least. “Could you keep a lookout for more of those machine men? I’m surprised we’ve been left alone for this long.” With that, she turned her attention back to her impromptu workbench.

- - -

Ivan had two rules. They had served him very well in the time since he escaped from CARET. Rule one was don’t get caught. By CARET, by the local cops, by the boss of the day when your hand’s in the till. Getting caught meant being held in one place, and keeping on the move was the only way to stay alive. Rule two was, when you do get caught, cooperate. Know when you’ve lost, and keep the jailer happy long enough for him to turn his back.

So, where Klendel had tried to twist the truth as a matter of habit, and Harmon had tried to escape as a matter of pride, Ivan simply stood in front of the Kings, fiddled with the buttons on his waistcoat, and told them what they wanted to know.

“Thank you, Master Norst.”

“It is so welcome to have a straight answer for once.”

“A breath of fresh air.”

Ivan choked back a laugh at that last expression, because he wasn’t sure if it was meant as a joke and also because laughing meant breathing, an action he was trying hard to minimize.

“Your Majesties, you’ve asked which of the six of us is most dangerous to you. I think that’s the wrong question. It is the battle itself that is dangerous. And the battle is the Spectator. You should focus on what it is and how to stop it.”

“We are intrigued by this being.”

“There are many things that we will be investigating, in the future.”

“The next hours are about keeping order.”

Ivan cast his eyes downward in deference, with a small frown. If he could turn these people’s powers against the Spectator, or whatever was keeping the battle running, there was some small chance that it could be stopped before Cascala ripped his blood out through his skin. If that wasn’t going to happen, at least they could keep him safe for the rest of the round.

“Yes, your Majesties. I’ll advise you as best I can.”

“We do not have the time to oversee you directly.”

“You will advise the Stones.”

“We are sending you to them now.”

The throne room seemed to grow around him, getting dimmer as he shrank down to a point, inverted through himself and expanded back to normal in a room of glowing images lining the walls. Those images immediately went red as a klaxon started sounding. The three occupants of the room spun away from their stations, raising their hands in a gesture that evoked both a shield and a pointed gun. Only the voices of the Kings cutting out of the air kept Ivan in one piece after the first half-second of his appearance.

“Norst is a willing informant, use him as you see fit.”

One of the men waved his hand and the klaxons cut off, and the screens returned to their original images.

“Opal, see what he knows about Cascala. Malachite, stay on the main hall. Don’t let these Outsiders distract us from the usual suspects.” He turned back and re-enmeshed his fingers in the glowing strands of data.

The shorter of the trio jumped up and clapped a hand on Ivan’s shoulder. He was still disoriented from the porting and stumbled along at Opal’s prodding.

“Come on, Norst, let’s see what you can do for us.”

- - -

“And here.”

Cedric put the tip of Sigrar against the two wires and hit them with a brief pulse of heat, fusing them together. Harmon flipped a switch and the mish-mash of technology whined to life.

“Alright! Now let’s see...”

She swung the probe back and forth, watching the needle on the cobbled together gauge. She nodded in satisfaction.

“It seems to be working. And... there seems to be a dimensional cross-over in that direction,” Harmon said, pointing the probe towards a point on the ceiling. “We can get out of this place, and we can keep running until we lose the Spectator, and then we can see about getting home.”

“Home sounds good, but running doesn’t. There’s no glory in it.”

“Don’t worry,” Harmon said as she secured the device its satchel of torn leather strips and slung it on her back, “I’m sure she won’t let us go without a fight.”

Ixcaliber · 07-07-2014, 08:56 PM

Mrs Lazuli, the Head Housekeeper of the Resplendent Palace was an imposing woman; tall and thin with her face hidden behind a blank black mask. She spoke with a carefully flat intonation, the kind that invited those with a guilty conscience to dig their own graves. Her dress was by far the most pragmatic article of clothing Phere had seen since arriving at this party; plain, black and not in a cool fashionable way. Behind her a maid, Phere was informed that it was the maid who'd interrupted her conversation with Klendel though what with the masks and the matching uniform she wasn't able to really tell one from another, stood awkwardly, looking for all the world like she didn't want to be there.

"You do not deny that you rebuffed the affections of an amorous guest?" Mrs Lazuli asked, and honestly Phere was kind of getting fed up of this impromptu interrogation. The only reason she was just about putting up with it was that this was the woman who had the power to have her ejected from the building. She was doubtful she'd be able to bluff her way back in a second time and she wasn't prepared to spend another round sitting out on the sidelines.

"Yes ma'am." Phere answered meekly. It physically hurt to do so.

There was a long moment of silence and a feeling of intense scrutiny from Mrs Lazuli. "Well..." she said eventually. "It is your first day... and we can't afford to lose any members of staff this close to the coronation. I guess you get a second chance, just don't make me regret it." And that was all she had to say on the topic. She sashayed out of the room, off to oversee other crises presumably, leaving Phere and the maid behind.

"Sorry about that." The maid said nervously. "Only the thing is," she glanced up and down the corridor to check whether they were being watched (it was a futile gesture) and then continued in not-quite-a-whisper "they've got eyes everywhere. They would have found out about it eventually and then we would have both got in trouble." She kind of trailed off and started fidgeting with her hair.

"Did I just get in trouble?" Phere asked bewilderedly.

"I really am sorry." The maid said, then she seemed to register the confusion in Phere's voice. "Well, I, are you being serious?"

"Always."

The maid glanced back and forth along the empty corridor again, though maybe it was more a nervous habit than an attempt to spot eavesdroppers. "You've seen the valets, and the Tireless Men right?" Phere confirmed that she had, and that it was kind of difficult to miss them. "Well don't you think that if they just wanted someone to clean the rooms, change the sheets etcetera then they couldn't just create one of those mechanical men to do it?" she paused. "Prob'ly end up saving some money as well if they did that."

Phere wasn't getting it. "Could you stop dancing around the point and actually get to the point?"

The maid sighed. "We do clean the rooms, change the sheets an' all that, but really the main reason we're here is entertainment." She paused. "For the male guests." Another pause. "And some of the ladies, if they're into that sort of thing."

"Oh," said Phere hollowly. "I've become a prostitute. And I thought this round couldn't get worse than the last one."

SpoilerShow

Ixcaliber · 10-30-2023, 10:25 PM

Conveyer Publishing was a regular publishing house. They primarily published shorter fiction, of quite a wide range of genre but with a clear preference for sci-fi and horror (if you examined their output over any significant length of time), from smaller authors located right here in the city. They hadn’t heard of any Stolen Tome. They hadn’t heard of anybody by the name of Doctor Otto Matic, and if she didn’t leave right this instant they were going to call the police.

Phere left. It didn’t do any good to press further. She knew this from experience. She’d been coming here maybe once a week for what felt like years now. It was a tactical dead end. They couldn’t give her the information she wanted because they didn’t have the information she wanted. Maybe the information she wanted wasn’t even real. That’s what her therapist said.

No other options were immediately forthcoming so it was back to walking through the backstreets surrounding Conveyer. This was where the Tome had fell. It had to be around here somewhere. All of a sudden it occurred to her to just use her fucking hollow already. With a thought she was directing her vision to the Stolen Tome and there it was lodged between a small stone wall and a chain link fence in a car park just a street or two away. All this time she couldn’t believe she’d never thought to do something so simple.

It was the work of minutes to reclaim the Tome now she knew where it was, and then minutes more to find a little cafe out of the way, order a cup of hot chocolate and open it up. It was remarkably undamaged for something that had spent more than a year outdoors. A little grimy on the covers but she wiped it clean with a napkin, and there were a couple of fallen leaves that had found their way inside, but overall everything was in tact.

She went back up to the counter to ask if she could get a pen, she hadn’t thought to bring one out with her. The clerk gave her a leaky biro. It was fine. It didn’t matter, she only needed to make one small adjustment. She opened it up to the title page and amongst the list of names there she crossed one out and -

Jake Scalavera awoke in bed.

“Fuck.” He said.

He was always dreaming as Phere nowadays. Recontextualizing his own struggles with this incorrect reality through her. All the stuff about Conveyer was real enough, they had called the police on him once but he’d left before they’d arrived. Most times that he visited he just stood outside and stared at the building. It was like the world’s largest loosest tooth and he couldn’t stop prodding at it.

He’d long since abandoned any realistic expectation of just finding the Tome lost but conveniently preserved in some hidden nook or cranny in the surrounding streets, but that didn’t mean that he’d stopped looking for it.

It was the middle of the night but after tossing and turning for a couple of hours he was forced to accept that he wasn’t getting back to sleep. Reluctantly he got out of bed and made his way to the kitchen, ignoring both the flashing light of the answering machine and the package casually thrown on the dining table. He put on a kettle of water, threw a teabag and two teaspoons of sugar into a cup and waited.

Samuel had left messages on his answering machine, but after the first one Jake hadn’t been able to bring himself to listen to them. Samuel didn’t understand. Nobody else really understood. Samuel seemed to think that what they’d done was immoral in some way. That it was somehow their fault for Jennie and Macy and… But it wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t the Tome that was wrong, it was the world that was wrong. It was Jake that was wrong.

But if he was anxious about the messages his friend had left, it was nothing compared to how he felt about the package. He forced himself to look at it, lying there, untouched for days. He reached a hand towards it, and then the kettle finished boiling and he stopped and poured the cup of tea he so clearly needed.

As he was leaving the kitchen, the phone rang and he stopped short. Samuel again? Probably not. It had been days since he’d last called. He let the phone ring until the machine picked it up.

“Jake?” It was Jack. “It’s Jack… Jake if you’re there could you pick up? Jake? It’s… It’s Jennie… it’s… well… I don’t think I can tell you this via message. Call me back please as soon as you can.” The message clicked off but Jake hadn’t moved.

Enough. He walked back to his dining table and put down his cup of tea. He picked up the package, felt the weight of it in his hands. He found the tear strip and he pulled it open, depositing the slim self-published volume on the table.

The Violent Dispute

It was stupid. He knew it was. His therapist told him that it wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t real, all the effort he had put in to replicate his work and it wasn’t going to accomplish anything. He was going to be disappointed. He was sick of it. He was sick of living half in denial. It was exhausting. She was exhausted.

She grabbed a pen and flipped open to the title page

The Violent Dispute
By ████ Scalavera

She crossed it out and again and again until the name wasn’t legible any more and then underneath she wrote her name.

Beatrix

And she breathed a sigh of relief. Of course it did nothing. It was just a self-published half-remembered recreation of the events of the first round. Due to her own memory it mostly fixated around Phere and in essence turned her into the main character. It wasn’t the Tome. The Tome wasn’t really real.

But it made her feel better. It made her feel like herself for once, and that was nice if nothing else.

Then the phone rang and she flinched at the thought of hearing that name again. She grabbed the cup of tea, left the Violent Dispute where it lay, and hurried towards the bedroom before the machine could kick in.

“Beatrix???” Jack’s voice called out to the empty room. “Beatrix what the fuck did you just do?”

—

Phere was hiding in a closet. It contained shelves upon shelves of neatly folded linens in seemingly every shade of green, from lime to jade to the shades of green that were almost completely black. And it also contained Phere, slumped against the wall and attempting to rethink her entire strategy.

Do whatever it takes to stay in this palace and stay close to the action. That had been pretty much her motto since she arrived here. But it turns out maids don’t really get to be close to the action. They’re kind of too busy running around refilling drinks, cleaning up spills, fornicating with guests…

It was absolutely out of the question. Even if she was somehow who did that she definitely wasn’t someone who could do that with just any random partygoer. Going back out there in a maid’s outfit was impossible. Even if she wasn’t stopped and propositioned and forced to wheedle out of it and probably receive some sort of reprimand and then get banished from the palace entirely, again. Even if none of that happened and the worst of it was that people were just seeing her and knowing what her uniform really meant. Unacceptable. It made her stomach turn just a little to think she’d been out there parading around in it for as long as she had.

So if all of that was off the board what was on the board. Make a new dress from these linens. It would look a little shabby in comparison to everyone else but it wouldn’t be the worst. She would need a new mask though, one that didn’t immediately indicate her position as a maid. It seemed unlikely that one had been misplaced in here.

Perhaps she could use the unstated role of her current position to lure someone into seclusion and then take their mask and outfit. She wasn’t sure she could successfully pull of seductive if she was actually trying though.

What about the mask she’d been brought here in. She’d threw it off in the purple room. What were the odds that it was still there, knocked off to one side from general foot traffic? Could she get there and find it and then find a spot to change without being approached?

Maybe Klendel or Ivan could acquire a new outfit for her. At a thought she cast her gaze to find her subordinates. Ivan was clinging onto Sir Cedric. Klendel was indistinct, out of focus. He was still in the palace, she was sure of that, but something was blocking her vision of him. If she pressed harder she thought she’d be able to break through but not without whatever was shielding him knowing about it. Well, that was worrying.

“Meredith?”

Phere snapped back to the here and now, and right now there was a maid standing in the doorway with an expression of concern on her face. Without any prompting she closed the door and hurried to Phere’s side, sliding herself down the wall to bring herself level with the Empress.

“First day jitters?” she asked.

“Sort of.” Phere said.

“The first one is the worst.” The maid said. “If you wanted I could help you out. Get you a little drink to help lower your inhibitions. Or… I could get you started, prime the pump so to speak.”

Involuntarily Phere scrunched her face up. “Ew, no thank you.”

The maid stiffened and got back up to her feet. “Well, there’s no need to be rude about it. I could have reported you to Mrs. Lazuli for loitering on the job, except for how us girls are supposed to stick together.” Something inside Phere screamed at her, she clenched her fists and averted her gaze and as she heard the maid walking back to the door to leave, she stopped her.

“I, um, I’m sorry.” she said, voice barely above a murmur. “I, um, I didn’t mean it like that.” The maid stopped in her tracks and turned and looked down at Phere.

“How did you mean it then?” she asked, still audibly sore.

“Well… you like it right?” Phere said, a vulnerability in her voice that she loathed even as she spoke it out loud. “People tend to like it. They say it’s an enjoyable thing. They seek it out. I’ve seen them do it. I’ve… never done it. I’ve never wanted to do it.”

The maid looked at her for a moment and then returned to her first position, slumped down beside Phere.

“I’m sorry.” Phere said quickly, almost tripping over her words. “I shouldn’t have told you any of that. Forget all of that. It was all lies, I was trying to gain your sympathy but in fact I’m normal. I’d like to have… sex… just not in these circumstances. Just not here or now.” Phere’s voice was getting more and more strained with every word. She couldn’t believe she’d said those things, thought those things. Volunteered a weakness to a stranger. It was pathetic. She was supposed to be better than this. She was supposed to be in perfect control at all times.

The maid shushed her soothingly, even though she’d stopped speaking already. She reached across and took Phere’s hand. “It’s okay. It’s uncommon but its not unheard of and you’re not abnormal for being like that.”

“Oh fuck.” Phere could feel tears springing unbidden from her eye. This shouldn’t have been happening. This couldn’t be happening. She needed to keep things together. She was the formidable Empress Phere, not some pathetic broken girl. “No. I need to go. I need to leave and go somewhere else.” The maid interlocked her fingers with Phere’s hand and simply told her:

“You’re safe.”

—-

The valets, or moppets as they were colloquially known, required little (but not no) maintenance after their initial vivification and as such the Mistress of the Cloth Agate was always on hand to make any necessary adjustments.

She was considered to be a minor Talent and despite her impressive title she received little respect from front of house. Backstage she was perhaps more revered than the Head Housekeeper herself.

Right now Mistress Agate had been called to the Stones’ Parlor. A dim and functional room lit primarily by the quietly cycling spells, and located uncomfortably close to the awful rotting tapestries that gazed down upon the bloated bodies of the Spinel Kings. Hematite and Malachite were busy with whatever task they had been assigned, Opal on the other hand, the only one who ever deigned to speak to her (and clearly only from obligation) was approaching her.

“Their majesties want five uninvited guests located. The Tireless Men no doubt have it well in hand, but in the case that your moppets might serve some function here is the data on the individuals in question.” He handed over a sheet with basic physical descriptions of the five intruders, as Klendel had presented that information to the Kings, printed on it. “If found hand them over to the nearest Tireless Men or bring them to us and we’ll take them from there.”

“If-” she started to ask but was cut off.

“You are dismissed Miss Agate.”

And so she left, her irritation sending ripples through the beautiful golden fabrics lining the walls of the surrounding corridors. She walked until she was far away enough from the chamber of the Kings that she couldn’t feel their rot eating at the wall hangings like it was a tumor inside her own body, and then finally she stopped and read through the sheet she had been given. Then, with those descriptions fresh in mind, she let herself sink into the cloth.

The wall hanging in the emerald wing ballroom whispered that the ones identified as Sir Cedric and Ivan Norst were there mingling with the guests. The fabric of a fainting couch in a small room between Jade and Sapphire confided that Dr Harmon was at this moment resting upon it. The voice that informed her that Cascala was being sheltered in one of the private rooms in Pearl was muted, almost inaudible amongst the endless fabrics of the Resplendent Palace but once she had tuned into that voice she lingered a moment to hear more about the group that had taken up residence within that room.

Finally the voice of a simple black suit piped up that its wearer (a butler named Silas, serving at the Resplendent Palace for four years, currently tending to the needs of a guest in a private suite in the Ruby wing) had seen the Empress Phere and brought her to Mrs Lazuli to offer her a position as a maid. It was the work of a moment to find the voice of her uniform which told her that ‘Meredith’ was in a small linen closet in Emerald, crying in a pretty undignified manner, accompanied by a more senior maid.

With her search complete Mistress Agate returned her consciousness to the physical world, in time to see a pair of maids walking past.

“Mistress Agate.” The maids gave a reverent curtsey as they passed.

“Good evening Cecilia, Lavinia,” their uniforms had whispered their names to her, “are either of you girls presently occupied?” They shook their heads. “In that case could you aid your newest sister Meredith in the Emerald linen closet. Isobel is also there lending the girl some compassion.”

“Yes, Mistress Agate.” The maids replied, picking up their pace as they hurried off on their way.

Mistress Agate was considered a minor Talent simply because her field of specialization was so narrow and perceived as so domestic. For that reason despite her incredible textilourgical skill she’d been viewed as nothing more than staff. In the beginning of her tenure she had taken out this frustration on those below her in the hierarchy of the house, and she’d been feared for it. But over time her resentment had grown towards those in power and she’d grown gradually more compassionate for all those who served backstage. It was difficult not to see them as people when their clothing constantly whispered their lives to her.

Once she would have eagerly surrendered the locations of the uninvited guests in hopes of some social advancement, but that time was long past. Opal and the rest of the Stones, too good to even speak to her, would not find ‘Meredith’, even if they should learn she had re-entered the palace.

—-

Finally Phere had calmed down again and recomposed herself, at least to an extent. She was clamping down hard on the urge to apologize for her breakdown.

“I’m sorry about that.” she said, her resilience cracking almost immediately, “Putting all that on you and I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Isobel.” Isobel said. “Izzy to my friends.” With her free hand she removed her mask, revealing her face beneath, pale skinned and freckled.

Phere had already taken her own mask off, when she’d been doing the thing she trying not to acknowledge. After all an Empress never lost her composure like that.

“Thank you Isobel.” Phere said. “I should be okay from now.” But Isobel wasn’t going anywhere.

“Mhm.” Isobel said softly. “I just wanted to say that, well, while I’m not asexual like -” she saw Phere tense at the word and pivoted, “some people are, I’m well… I’m not a nympho either. It’s just a job. It’s not what I would want to be doing if I had the full freedom to choose every aspect of my life… but it keeps food on the table and it pays the medical bills for my family.”

Phere was quiet for a moment. “If this isn’t what you want, surely there’s a job you’d be more suited for.”

“Well… I used to dream about being an engineer. Making little gadgets, putting things together. The things they can do these days.” Isobel said. “But its a difficult area to break into especially if you have a family to support. I don’t enjoy this exactly, but it pays better than anything else. What choice do I have?”

“You revolt of course.” Phere said maybe a little too quickly.

“I what?” Isobel repeated back dumbfounded by the abruptness of the comment.

“Maybe revolt is the wrong word, but you shouldn’t have to put up with conditions like that.” Phere said.

“No. Don’t be silly. I don’t have it worse off than any of the other girls, and honestly it’s not all that bad really.” The tone Isobel’s voice was dismissive and she averted her gaze as though she was suddenly fascinated by a shelf of linen in the far corner. “There’s no way I could stand up to Mrs. Lazuli. Not a chance.”

“Not by yourself.” Phere agreed. “But if this is more than just you, if the rest of the staff are feeling like this as well, then shouldn’t you stick together as you said? Demand better for each other?”

“We can’t!” Isobel shook her head in disbelief. “We’re lucky to have these jobs. We’re instantly replaceable. If we all stand together the absolute most we achieve is to give everyone a pretty shitty night before we’re all replaced in the morning.”

The door opened and a group of three maids hurried in, closing the door quickly behind them.

“Mistress Agate sent us to aid the new girl.” The first one said. After a quick glance from Isobel to Meredith, she pulled off her mask to match. She had tan skin, gaunt features, faint scarring from some condition Phere wasn’t familiar with. As she took off her mask, one of her companions followed suit.

“Aid me?” Phere asked. “Aid me how?”

“She didn’t say.” The second one replied. Her skin had a slight grey twinge to it, her features severe but her icy blue eyes radiated compassion.

Isobel side-eyed Phere. “Not like that.” she said making a gesture as if to wave the thought away. “Meredith this is Cecilia,” the first maid, “Levinia,” the second maid, “and is that you Lucretia?” The third maid, the only one still wearing her mask, just nodded. “Lucretia is shy.” She added by way of explanation.

“Not like what?” Cecilia asked.

“I was just observing that if you all strongly dislike the… work forced upon you by this position, then the way to change that is to band together.” Phere said.

“And I was just saying that if we try we’re all fired and probably blacklisted.” Isobel said. “If it gets out that I even talked about this I’m fired and that can’t happen. My sister relies on me.”

“I’m sorry Izzy, but she’s got a point.” Cecilia said. Isobel looked at her like she’d been stabbed in the back. “This palace is nauseating. In my first five minutes on my first day I’d seen more money, more value in just trash and decorations than in my entire life living just an hour’s walk away. I felt sick. We live in squalor Izzy. You and Nat living in that tiny box of a house and every day you come out to this? To whore yourself out to pay for a sickness they caused but won’t treat.”

“Cecy stop it!” Isobel pulled back, as if stung, a tear streaking down her face. “I need to go I can’t be here in this room any more.” She slipped her mask back on and hurried past the new arrivals.

“Izzy!” Cecilia slipped her own mask back on and hurried after her.

“It’s not impossible.” Levinia said simply, ignoring the scene that Cecilia and Isobel had made. “If you got every single maid and butler, and the kitchen staff too, all of them to stand firm together. Maybe they could replace us all eventually but not for a while, and not without ruining the most important night of the year.”

“If the pair of you go out and start dropping some hints, working out who is up to standing together, who needs some convincing, we could actually do this.” Phere said. Levinia nodded thoughtfully.

“Why are you provoking this?” Lucretia finally spoke up, her gaze seemingly fixed upon Phere.

“I…” Phere hesitated. Why was she doing this? She wasn’t sure this counted as destroying the local power structure and reforming it with her at the head, not unless she pivoted hard. Maybe it was spite against this world and its nobles and unfortunate circumstance all leading to her becoming an unwitting prostitute? But spite for its own sake was seldom useful.

It wasn’t really a stepping stone in her goal to take control of the battle, or the Network, or a step along the process of going from worm to god.

“I think maybe I’m doing this because it’s not very often that someone is nice to me.” she said. “Not without wanting something. And Isobel… Izzy was.”

—

There was a real frisson in the air, Mistress Agate observed. Amongst the guests it was the build up towards the coronation. It was only a matter of hours before the ceremony would begin. Amongst the staff however there were whispers of standing together and sometimes even unionization.

Nobody had approached Mistress Agate to tell her directly but they didn’t really have to. If you whispered a secret in this palace you shared it not only with the recipient but with her as well sooner or later. Those who worked in the back knew this, those who celebrated in the front, perhaps but probably not.

When she first heard these whispers it was between a pair of butlers, and she’d had to listen to the cloth, trace it back from one person to the next at least a couple of steps. Until finally she was listening to the linens of the emerald wing linen closet repeating Meredith’s lapse of composure and the tactless conversation that followed.

She agreed with Isobel. Such talk was dangerous. This ‘Empress Phere’ was in danger of getting her girls not just fired but made a painful example of. Certainly she saw the appeal. It wasn’t as if she didn’t dream of choking the life out of the Stones at least once a day, but this was nothing but a hopeless pipe dream.

As she made her way through the palace she couldn’t help but notice nervous maids and butlers whispering to each other in discreet corners and each time she gave a swipe of her hand; a ruffle of the nearby fabrics, just a reminder that she was listening. Invariably the staff in question would take the hint and hurry back off on their duties. It was only about an hour earlier that she was mentally vowing to protect this woman from whatever schemes the Stones might have in mind for her, but she hadn’t known she was signing off on the revolution, and so she hurried on towards Mrs Lazuli’s room.

A distant sound, but an anticipated one was relayed through the cloth and it made her stop short. She closed her eyes and sank and there was the voice of Opal whimpering with fear in one of private rooms over in the far reaches of Topaz. Now what was Opal, normally lingering so close to the Stones’ Parlour and the Throne Room doing all the way over there? And who was this being in the black dress? An outsider, the dress whispered, and not one that the Stones had deigned to mention to her.

Oh, and Opal with his precious Tireless Men doing nothing to intervene. She allowed a smile to creep onto her physical body. If only someone could give their outfits a sharp tug, surely that would spring them into motion and they could arrest this outsider. What a shame poor Opal hd nobody to help him. But her eavesdropping here was only catharsis for her own grudge against Opal until the shadowy figure said “tell the Kings you’re a double agent”, and then her interest was piqued.

A simple whisper from Opal’s suit told her what she wanted to know and immediately she felt quietly deflated. Sure. Whatever. She held no great affection for the kings. But the thought of Opal wheedling his way into more power irked her.

She let the rest of Klendel’s interrogation play out in the distant background clamour of the cloth, and she continued on her way. She was going to need to speak to Phere herself.

—

Empress Phere walked through the stark empty corridor, a harsh contrast to the main rooms of the palace above. The basement was only intended for use by staff and so it was mostly undecorated. The walls and floor were the dull grey of the plaster or the concrete they were made of. Here and there a picture was hung; amateur artworks of landscapes or small animals or staff members smiling together. Likely created with the express purpose of bringing some life to these empty halls.

By her side walked Levinia, and behind them followed a whole group of maids, a not inconsiderable number of butlers and one member of the kitchen staff who had ventured upstairs for a discreet cigarette break. They were whispering to one another excitedly but the sheer number of them and the clacking of their heels on the concrete ensured their efforts to be quiet were in vain.

Phere was still dressed as a maid, despite her distaste. The solidarity now implicit within the uniform was too great to abandon it at this point. She was going without the mask though, a move which had been echoed by many others in the group.

Phere walked with confidence, pushing open the door into the enormous palace kitchens. It was a hive of activity; chopping and stirring and the heat of the ovens, off in one corner numerous chefs carefully plating meals and adding the delightful little flourishes that the upper class had come to expect. Though with that said, things had already slowed in pace as Head Housekeeper Mrs Lazuli and Head Chef Citrine were embroiled in some kind of argument.

Of course both the argument and the kitchen as a whole came to a swift stop as numerous maids and butlers began to file into the room.

“Levinia, what is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

“We demand fair compensation for our work.” Levinia stated her position with a firm confident voice, and behind her the maids and butlers cheered and whooped and shouted ‘yeah!’ even as they still filed into the room.

“You can’t be serious.” Mrs Lazuli muttered, her gaze running across the entire group until her focus seemed to fix onto Phere. “You, new girl. You’re the disruptive element here, right? Well, you’re fired and I’m going to make sure you’ll never work in this city again.” A glance around. “Can someone who can still see sense fetch a valet to take her away?”

Levinia cut in. “Meredith is one of us. Maybe she’s the reason we stopped being afraid to talk to each other about this, but she hasn’t tricked us. We’re seeing clearly here that united together we have the power to make demands, to change our conditions.”

“If you do this now… oh Kings you’re going to ruin the coronation.” Mrs Lazuli’s voice fell as she realized the consequences of the situation. “Oh no this is a disaster. Girls you have to stop all this talk right now.”

Head Chef Citrine tutted to themself. “Well this certainly is embarrassing Laz. Can’t keep your girls in control on the most important night of the year. It’d never happen under my watch.” and then moments later: “Clarissa!” they exclaimed as the one member of kitchen staff who had joined the unofficial union finally entered the kitchen. “You can’t be doing this to me…”

“I’m not doing anything to you. I’m standing up for myself. I mean we’re standing up for ourselves!” The group cheered. “We’re going on strike!” The group cheered again. “We’re protesting for better pay and working conditions.” Another cheer. “We’re sick of living in poverty while the Talents and Stones and Nobles and Kings live like this.” More cheering, scattered applause. Even some of it coming from the rest of the kitchen staff now.

“I need to sit down.” Mrs Lazuli said faintly. “Why aren’t there any chairs in here? And where is that valet?”

The door slammed open and Mistress Agate marched through, a pair of valet following behind her. As the door opened she was already talking. “Fuck all of you. It’s too late to pretend this never happened now. Guests are beginning to notice. I don’t think it’s long before the Stones are demanding answers and once they hear of this coordinated and willful insubordination…” she faltered for words. “It’s not going to be amicable. They can’t risk the failure of the coronation and I can’t understate the importance of this ceremony. Unless everyone is willing to recant their newfound beliefs and perform your duties voluntarily, they will do whatever it takes to force you.”

“This is exactly what we’re talking about.” Levinia said her enthusiasm only increased by Mistress Agate’s speech.

“No it’s not.” Mistress Agate snapped. “You still think they won’t have any choice but to buckle to your demands. They’ll kill you and puppet your corpses if it’s necessary.”

The gathered crowd hushed. “You’re not serious?” Citrine asked.

“Unfortunately I am.” Mistress Agate replied. “So we all have a decision to make. Back down or fight? It’s as simple as that. The Stones have their Tireless Men guarding the doors, they’ll notice very quickly if their servants start leaving en masse.”

“We should fight.” Phere spoke up in the nervous quiet that followed. “If we ever want any hope of things getting better we need to stand together and fight.”

“Oh, you.” Mistress Agate snarled. Phere felt her maid outfit seem to stiffen in place and squeeze tightly on her body. “Oh, I ought to choke the life out of you for what you’ve done to this place, but maybe you can convince those friends of yours to lend us some assistance.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Phere said, struggling to affect her best display of innocence.

“I’m not in the mood to be messed around ‘Empress’.” Mistress Agate snapped. “Go and have a word with your Sir Cedric and see if you can’t convince him to fight alongside us, and in the meantime the people who actually work in this Palace will have a discussion.”

Phere, momentarily taken aback by Mistress Agate’s knowledge of her, found herself walking very stiffly towards one of the Valets, as her uniform seemed to puppet her. “Hey stop this.” she called out. Amongst the group some of the staff were whispering to each other saying ‘did you know she could do that?’ and saying that they hoped they didn’t get on Mistress Agate’s bad side.

Ahead of Phere one of the two Valets unfolded its tuxedo torso into just a tall rectangle of black cloth and pressed itself up against the wall. For some reason her clothes were piloting her right towards it and then into it and suddenly she was plunging through it and emerging elsewhere. A corridor full of broken automaton parts.

Ahead of her was an iron door, partially melted, hanging open and beyond that Doctor Harmon and Sir Cedric, engaged with something that looked very technical. Behind her was a hanging black fabric, much the same as she’d seen throughout the palace. She placed one hand against it and found it was perfectly, completely solid, no longer a secret gateway between here and the kitchens. After a moment of contemplation she sparked a flame within herself and let it flow out and into the hanging fabric.

—

In the kitchen Mistress Agate gritted her teeth and clenched her fist and-

—

Phere felt her uniform fling her backwards to the ground. Above her, the burning fabric thrashed for a moment before tearing itself from the wall and scrunching itself together into one contained burning mound, no longer in danger of spreading throughout the palace.

“Hark! Who goes there?” Sir Cedric was at the door behind her, Sigrar in hand. Moments later Doctor Harmon was behind him eyeing the fallen Empress suspiciously. “Are you under attack? Some cowardly invisible monster?” His gaze lingered on the incongruous pile of burning black cloth. “A shapegark?”

Phere pushed herself up from the ground and turned to face Harmon and Cedric. “Nothing as simple as that I’m afraid. Some kind of crazy bitch with dominion over cloth.” As she spoke she was untying her apron and discarding it on the floor.

Cedric made a noise of disappointment. “Hardly a challenge fitting of my skills.”

Harmon was tactically silent, wary of the Empress but taking a moment to work out how to best approach the situation. As Phere took a step towards them she flinched backwards slightly. She wasn’t going to let Phere ruin everything as she had in the city, not when she was this close.

“Relax. I’m not interested in whatever you’re up to this time.” Phere said, unbuttoning the top buttons of her dress. “The cloth lady really wanted Sir Cedric to help…” a pause for thought, “a peasant’s revolution against an unjust monarchy? I think that’s a reasonable approximation.” She attempted to pull her maid dress up from the bottom and over her head but it was seemingly resisting her.

“We should be going.” Harmon said. “We have work still to do.” She attempted to step away but stopped when she noticed Cedric wasn’t following her.

“Sorry Princess, but the people need me.” Cedric said regretfully. “When their fight is won I vow I will once again aid you in whatever it is we were doing.”

Phere had finally managed to pull off her maid’s dress and kick it away from herself. “Avert your eyes both of you.” Neither Harmon or Cedric were looking at her at that point, but as she insisted they look away they couldn’t help but reflexively glance towards her. She was still wearing lingerie but not for long. “I want you both to know this is extremely out of character and I wouldn’t be doing this if there wasn’t a psychotic clothomancer with a grudge against me specifically, for some reason.”

Harmon scowled. This was what Phere did. Showing up when things were settled and within her grasp and moving the goalposts, putting another little extra obstacle in there that would never be reasonably surmounted. But it wasn’t as though she could just head off on her own. With the Tireless Men, and whatever other forces the Kings might have at their disposal, after her she needed Cedric’s help right now. Which meant sticking with him long enough to get him out of Phere’s earshot and then offering him some reason he should abandon this latest wild goose chase.

“Fine. I’ll come with you.” Harmon said. “Maybe I can assist the… what was it? Peasants? Maybe I can help.”

“Huzzah!” Cedric cheered. “And Lady Phere. If you would lead the way? When your modesty is restored, of course.”

Phere had managed to tear away the lingerie and slipped past both Harmon and Cedric to the storage room behind them. “Gods I really hope there’s a full suit of armour in here.”