Elegy for a Star Ch. 051-060

Chapter 51 - Echoes

The sight of the tormented, emaciated man suspended above gave Krahe chills. "This is so fucked," she muttered, watching the man's skin smoking from the magical, draining electrocution he'd just suffered, only to power some Wyrden's spell in the city. Still, he would live, until his soul was completely exhausted. Anger welled within Krahe.

"Ma'am," Krahe turned to see Amblecrown, a colorful minstrel under her command, "We're ready on our end."

Krahe smiled and nodded, "Good work. Will I see you inside?"

"Not my forte, ma'am," Amblecrown chuckled, "I'm but a humble musician."

Rolling her eyes, Krahe waved him away and chuckled, "Oh, fuck off." Amblecrown gave a sideways grin, waved and wandered off. No doubt to go con someone. Or fuck them. Or both.

Krahe's scarlet cloak billowed behind her as she ascended the stairs two at a time, bypassing the guards. Ever since the Empress' madness set in, the normal city guard had been replaced by the Wyrden Necrotic--Floating skeletal bodies, dressed in tattered robes, possessed by undeath and given magic. The old city guard had enough corruption in it already. She supposed they were only made to look the part now.

There were a few more magical vessels suspended in the cages above. One of them--a pretty young girl--was most certainly rendered soulless by now, waiting to be changed out like lantern oil.

A gust of wind threw Krahe's hood back, blowing her hair--dark as midnight--out behind her. One of the Necros turned and stared at her as she passed, moving on only after Krahe pulled her hood back up.

At the top of the stairs was the bridge to the Leyline Fortress, the foci of magical power in the region, the single point to receive most constellations' blessings on each of Thyr's passes. Magic was most powerful here, Krahe knew, which only made this coup more difficult than it already was. The Empress needed to be taken by surprise or she would turn Krahe into one of her little arcane batteries suspended all over the city. "I'd rather die," Krahe thought, "Than power her sorcery."

Krahe pulled the black, silk mask over her mouth and nose. She was planning to be wicked tonight.

As she crossed the bridge to the Leyline, a few of the Empress' Palace Guards--flesh and blood, this time--shifted to block her path. She'd be questioned, caught and killed, but a few deft sweeps of a fingertip beneath her cloak caused a tingle of sorcery to wash over Krahe's body. The Spinnerets. The Devil. The Red Poppy. She'd be invisible to the Necros for a few seconds, and that's all that she needed.

"Born from blood..." Krahe whispered.

Her gloves hissed back, "...To blood we return."

A pair of kukris appeared in Krahe's hands and in a furious rush--which the guards wouldn't have kept up with if they could even see her--she was upon one of the guards, repeatedly stabbing him in the stomach, through a gap in his armor plating. With a spin she sliced the throat of the next so deeply that her blade hit cervical bone.

A guard held out a hand, his gauntlet, but Krahe was already in the air, landing her knees upon his shoulders and jamming a sharp edge deep into the back of his neck and using it as leverage while she twisted her hips and turned his head in a sharper direction than it should ever go.

Seeing their comrade's head spin on a swivel and unable to see their opponent, the rest of the guards dropped their weapons and fled in fear. Surely one of them knew that Krahe's invisibility wouldn't last long, but even if they could see her, could they stop her? Shimmering into view once more, she continued her way to the gate. Dropping her kukris--which vanished before hitting the ground--she ran to the gate and took a leap up its side. A few hurried steps up the wall and she had to grab onto the nearest crack she could get her fingers into.

Krahe scrambled up the wall, nearing the first window of the Leyline Fortress.

"Tess..." A voice spoke behind her. Krahe held onto the wall with one hand and summoned a kukri into the other, twisting at the waist to attack whatever was behind her.

There was nothing. Only distant airships and the massive sprawl of Verdona. "Focus," she told herself.

A few more spinneret rituals and blood sprays later, Krahe made her way to the hallway outside the prison cells. Waiting by a pile of corpses was Missi. The blonde assassin was garbed in black from head to toe, except for a lock of hair that fell from beneath her hood. It was difficult to make out her emotions, especially with her mouth covered by a mask. Her blue eyes narrowed, "Here. She won't talk to me." Missi tossed a key into Krahe's hands.

"Good work. Get in place by the throne room," Krahe spoke softly, opening the door to the prisons, "Quickly. I don't think she's going to delay."

Once inside, Krahe looked around to see the state of the place. She'd heard stories, but never had to spend time here herself. Her chest hurt to think of the people she'd lost along the way, who must have spent nights here before their execution. If they even survived to be placed in jail, that is. She could feel the anti-sorcery field wash over her as she stepped through the entryway.

Within the very first cell was a woman, skin as pale as snow with a touch of purple. Her platinum-blonde hair was silver, long and braided, frayed and falling loose at the ends now after her time here. Her eyes were milky pools that hid her stare. Regal, Courtish tattoos adorned her cheeks, and her long ears denoted her as one of the Fey of the Winter Court.

Krahe looked her over and asked, "Can you fight?"

"Get me out of here. I am going to slaughter that worm."

Krahe took that for an answer, turning the key in the cell door and freeing her, "Chamberlain, we need to do this rationally. If the Empress..."

"Fuck off, Krahe," Chamberlain Harmia spat.

Krahe had never known Harmia for politeness or gratitude. She was often under scrutiny for being too crass for court.

"She's being controlled by that short-dicked, bald, fuckfaced little cunt of a worm, Vuzun," Harmia sneered, "I'm going to skullfuck him right in his beady little eyes."

As they began to exit the prison, Krahe sighed, and Harmia added, "I have a spell for that, you know? It's pretty fucked up."

"I believe you, Chamberlain," Krahe replied.

Once they were out, the Chamberlain immediately began signing constellations as though she'd been practicing every day in her cell. Krahe couldn't have imagined her doing anything else but signing the spells she was going to use to butcher Vuzun.

"Take me too, Chamber-..." Krahe started, only to see Harmia vanish from sight. A teleportation to the throne room was outside of Krahe's wheelhouse, so she had to book it through the palace to try to get there before the Chamberlain was killed or--even worse--controlled.

She arrived to the throne room doors, only to see Missi, Rosie and Isaac waiting for her. Each of them had been speckled with blood. This is what Krahe trained them to do, and she trained them well.

Missi turned to her and with a straight face she said to Krahe, "Is she alive, Gwen?"

"What?" Krahe asked.

"I said 'Are you ready, Krahe?'"

"Oh," Krahe said, nodding, "Of course."

Isaac made a quick gesture of signs in front of him, and the lock on the door to the throne room clicked. Missi and Rosie pulled the doors open and Krahe went through.

A half dozen corpses of guards were scattered about. Some of them were nothing more than piles of armor, vacant of anything living inside of them, others were black and red, covered in char and ash.

Harmia had been busy. Busy and efficient.

While the Chancellor battled the old and withered--but a powerful Wyrden in his own right--Vuzun, the Empress decided to greet Krahe and her company. She appeared in an instant in front of Isaac. She was no older than sixteen. Short, black hair and dressed in a gown, covered in jewelry from head to toe. Krahe knew that just two years ago, she would have hated appearing so imperious.

With a pacifying expression on her face, the Empress reached out, pressing a hand to Isaac's stomach. He didn't even have a moment to scream before he was nothing but dust. Krahe hadn't even seen her signing.

"Isaac!" Rosie shouted. Krahe lunged at the Empress, a kukri flashing into her hand just before the strike. Krahe's vision blurred and she found herself elsewhere, jamming a kukri into the Chancellor's back.

"Fuck! Would you fucking mind?!" Harmia snapped at her, a blade still sticking out of her back. She didn't bleed, surely the effect of some protective spell she'd already cast upon herself.

The Empress would kill them at this rate. They needed Harmia free to fight with them. Krahe whipped her arm, sending a blade flying. It caught the distracted Vuzun in the gut, and with his spell failing, Harmia was able to gain the upper hand. In a flash, Vuzun shrunk down and was morphed into a simple worm. A hand outstretched, Harmia pulled the worm through the air and into her grasp.

"Fuck you, worm," she hissed, squeezing her hand and popping the thing through her fingers.

Krahe spun around, watching Missi and the Empress battle it out. The Empress obviously had the upper hand, but the fact that Missi wasn't dead yet boded well. She couldn't say the same about Rosie, whose upper half was inside a wall as though she slipped through it like air. Her lower half hung out of the wall, motionless.

Harmia put her hands together in the shape of a triangle, eyes glowing red. From the center of the triangle, a red light burst through the air, striking the Empress in the back. Missi, one arm bent in the wrong direction and covered in blood, stumbled backward.

"Tess!"

Krahe spun around, but saw no one.

"Who the fuck is there?!" She screamed. Krahe noticed a spider dangling from a web in front of her.

It spoke softly, "The first time is always the worst."

Chapter 52 - Accomplice

A patrol of the Corps' common guard moved down the hallway. Mairaela peered around the corner, watching them depart before she waved to Gwendolyn and Joyona and sneaking ahead. Slipping behind the patrol and into the adjacent hallway. A door was labeled "Echoshaping" stood in the way. Mairaela tested it, but it was locked, so she slipped a hand into her pocket for the key that Scirocca gave her.

Whispering, Gwendolyn asked, "Let's see if we can trust her."

Mairaela fit key to lock and gave it a slow turn, eventually hearing a sharp click. "Looks like it," Mairaela responded. Before she could open the door, Joyona rounded both of them and opened it up on her own. Mairaela and Gwendolyn followed the Evigkin through a rocky tunnel until they entered an equally rocky room ahead of it. There were bottles and books lying around, but most noticeable was a red ledger open upon the desk.

Joyona approached it first, then stepped aside. Mairaela saw the page had bloody marks upon it, smudged into the writing. The words were a scrawled, illegible mess, but there were a few words that Mairaela could make out.

It was Gwendolyn that put a voice to them, though. "It says 'demon.'" Mairaela bit her lip, and Gwendolyn took the ledger before slipping it into her belt. "Let's go," the knight said.

"Gwen," Mairaela said, reaching out for the knight's arm, "Gwen, what are you going to do?"

"She knows, Mairaela," Gwen tugged her arm away and trudged into the tunnel ahead. Joyona and Mairaela followed in after her.

Eventually they came to some narrow passages and though Mairaela and Gwen were able to slip through, Joyona had to bow out. "I'll watch behind us," she said, "Good luck."

By the time the passageway opened up into a larger room, Gwendolyn was already hurrying ahead, running down a staircase toward a hexagonal platform. Mairaela looked ahead and saw a woman in white standing over a raised slab. Tess was on that slab, unmoving. Mairaela's heart ached at the sight of her.

"What are you doing here?" The woman in white asked, pulling her hood back to unveil a writhing mass of yellow snakes atop her head.

There was a flash of steel in Gwendolyn's hand and the knight bull rushed the woman, jamming a knife into her flank. Mairaela gasped, hurrying down the stairs as quickly as possible. "Gwendolyn!" Mairaela shouted. She spotted Tess upon the slab, eyes, ears and nose bleeding in thin rivulets that ran down her face.

The woman screamed, the snakes on her head lashing out and biting Gwendolyn upon the face and neck. The knife was twisted and wrenched free, splattering red upon the woman's robes. When Mairaela got to the bottom, Gwendolyn was bleeding from a half-dozen punctures in her brow, cheeks and chin, but the woman--Mairaela assumed she must be Madame Pava--was bleeding all over her robes.

"What are you... what are you doing?" The snake-haired woman gasped, "Why-..?"

Gwendolyn stood over her, knife dripping red, "What did you do to her? Tell me and I'll get you a healer."

"Gwen..." Mairaela reached out to touch the knight's shoulder, but Gwendolyn pulled away.

"I was... unshackling her gift," Pava replied, coughing up blood.

Gwendolyn gripped the blade tightly. Her hand was shaking. "Not good enough," Gwen responded, "What did you do?"

"Nothing," Pava spat, "Get me a... a healer, you lunatic.."

Grabbing her by the collar, Gwendolyn raised the knife, pointed it at her, and shouted at her, "Tell me what you did!"

Pava looked past Gwendolyn and toward Mairaela, "Get her off of me, I haven't done anything!"

"She's been gone for seven weeks!" Gwendolyn screamed. Mairaela could see tears welling in the knight's eyes, "What did you do!?"

"Gwendolyn, stop!" Mairaela shouted, "You've already gone too far!"

"Look what she did to Tess!" Gwendolyn snapped. Mairaela looked back at Tess. She could only barely see the rise and fall of her chest, but it was extremely subtle. Mairaela backed down.

Gwen brought the knife to Pava's neck and let the point dig into her semi-scaly flesh. Pava gave a shrill cry, writhing frantically to get away from Gwendolyn's blade. "Tell me, or your stupid, fucking lie is going to be the last thing you ever manage to hiss out," Gwendolyn jerked Pava's head to the side to keep her neck exposed. One of the snakes on her head lashed out to bite Gwen on the wrist, but the Dame sliced it clean off with her blade.

Pava's teeth were chattering, before she finally shouted, "I ran tests! I pushed her further than I needed to, but it was for her own good! She doesn't know who she is; She doesn't know who she carries in her mind!"

"And you do?" Gwen asked, calming somewhat. The knife pulled away from Pava's throat.

"I-.." Pava stammered, "I, I-.. yes, I just.. I need to run some more tests!"

Mairaela spoke softly, "We should just take her and-..."

She heard the squelch of a blade running through flesh and turned to Gwendolyn to see she'd rammed the knife across Pava's throat. Mairaela's eyes were wide as she muttered, "Gwen, what did you do?"

"She knew," Gwendolyn grumbled, "She knew and she would've told them." Gwendolyn took a deep breath, shoulders rising and falling, "And they would have done horrible things to Tess." She looked over Tess' bloody form and sobbed, "Worse things."

Gwendolyn rushed to Tess and held her by the shoulders, "Tess!"

"Is she alive, Gwen?" Mairaela asked.

"Tess!"

There was a skittering sound in the darkness, the sound of something scratching at the rocks. Whatever it was, it was large. Mairaela thought she could see beady eyes looking at her through the shadows.

"Let's bring her back," Mairaela urged Gwendolyn, "Quickly." Gwendolyn picked Tess up and Mairaela escorted her up the stairs and back into the tunnel, watching as the eyes receded into the dark.

As Gwendolyn carried Tess through the tunnel and into the room that held the ledger, Joyona met them with a frown on her face. "What happened?" She asked.

"Pava's dead," Mairaela responded with a whisper. Joyona just nodded her head. Mairaela sighed, wiped her brow and said, "There's no going back now." She patted Gwendolyn on the shoulder and said, "Stay here. I'm going to go get Scirocca."

Chapter 53 - The Sphinx' Riddle

Scirocca stood in the center of the hexagonal platform, watching Madame Pava's blood soak into the stones. Hands upon her hips, she examined the stone slab that Tess had been laid upon, looking at the blood that'd been splattered over one end. She looked back down at Pava, watching the snakes writhe about on her deceased scalp.

"Did you try to stop her?" Scirocca asked Mairaela, who stood behind her upon the stairs.

Mairaela softly said, "Yes, but..."

"But what?"

"...But I saw what she did to Tess."

"This would be much easier if we had Pava to admit to her wrongdoing," Scirocca sighed.

"But her ledger..."

"...Mentioned Miri," Scirocca added, "I know." When Gwen, Mairaela and Joyona approached Scirocca about Tess' disappearance (under the pretense that her education was being extended for another six weeks) they had to mention a few of Tess' secrets. Not all of them were new to Scirocca. Tess didn't hide things very well and Scirocca was quite perceptive.

"There was something else down here, before," Mairaela murmured.

Scirocca nodded, "That's Szachosh'te, the Echoshaper. She'll leave us be, so long as we pay her the same courtesy."

She let out a sigh, "They're going to invert this room." Scirocca explained, "They'll play back the events. Clear as day, they'll see what the Dame did. They'll see you and I talking like this."

Mairaela groaned, "Then we're fucked! Gods, Scirocca, I'm so sorry we roped you into this." She pushed a hand through her dark hair and shook it out behind her head. Scirocca could sense the thrumming of the Fey's pulse and the sweat upon her brow. She was frightened.

"Will you help me?" Scirocca asked.

Mairaela paused, "With what?"

"I can fix this with your help," Scirocca explained.

"Well, f-fuck, how?!" Mairaela sputtered.

"We need to rewrite what happened. Bend the truth a bit," Scirocca explained, "We can change what they'll see when they invert the room and look back at what happened."

"How can you do that?" Mairaela asked, "Sorcery cannot alter time."

"We aren't altering it," Scirocca explained, "Gwendolyn murdered Pava. That is what happened and that will always be the case. But sorcery can alter how others see it." Scirocca placed her fingers together and drew them apart. A thin, white line of light expanded between them, as though it were a string connecting her fingers together. She twirled one hand around the other until the line of light formed a coil. "Time is a spiral. It's cyclical, but its bands are parallel, not overlapping." Scirocca stretched the line out once more, "Being imperfect as we are, we perceive time in a straight line, even when we scry or invert rooms.

"So, when we perceive time as a straight line, we can do things like this..." With a shift of her hands, Scirocca folded a portion of the line upon itself, connecting two parts that were not adjacent a moment ago, "We can fold the perception of time, hiding events--such as the murder--beneath the fold and connecting two previously separate times together. The missing gap in our perception of time can be covered by stretching what remains of the line."

Mairaela nodded her head. She understood the concept, but the theory behind it all baffled her. "So we hide the murder beneath a fold?" Mairaela asked with a bit of hesitance.

"Well, if we only did that, then anyone but a complete novice would be able to see it had been edited," Scirocca sighed, "Especially if we just leave the body here. It would look as though it simply popped into existence."

"So," Scirocca explained, stepping toward Pava's body and patrolling the platform as a whole, "We'll hide the event beneath the fold, we'll use illusions to display the scenario that we want them to see. I can stretch and squeeze the perception of time to fill in the blanks and we fold over this conversation too. Then we let their inverting do the work for us."