broken oath
When he first swears fealty to her, she can already see that there is the
potential for danger within him. He is young, brash: star-eyed at the thought that
he might be chosen to be Knight to the Sorceress-Empress of Centra, and eager
for position and power. He is eager for the chance to prove himself, to sate
the petty impossible desire for universal admiration.
She keeps her thoughts to herself, however, as he kneels to her in a sweep of
fine silk and swears his loyalty to her in the confident tones of a young man
whose voice is still edged with the rough boyishness of youth. He may be young
and brash, but he is the finest young warrior that Centra has to offer her.
I annoint you a Knight after Samael to the Lady Sorceress Hyne's Daughter.
The Bonding itself does not feel like a Bonding so much as a simple,
casual trade: sorceress shard to one, fragment of soul to the other. It is
because there is no feeling behind the exchange that it feels dead,
lethargic-- like the lazy inversion of cold and warm air pockets, which slip
indolently into each other's places not because they wish to, but because
higher laws impel them to. She receives the shard of his soul and feels the
sudden rush of his being spread through her like molten gold, and it makes her
feel confident, arrogant: as if she could take on anything life chose to throw
at her.
She watches him receive the anchor of power she extends to him, and immediately
the invisible cable between them draws taut, singing harmonic notes of
excitement wherever his trembling thoughts land: tentative fingertips on cello
strings, coaxing music from silence. She can see the excitement reflected in
his eyes, in his aura, in his stance.
She watches him as he trains zealously to accustom himself to the new power
that has been afforded him as a Knight. She has placed few restrictions on how
much he can draw on her power. His already fine coordination has been honed to
a point beyond the easy grace of a cat, and his quick strength has been
enhanced to supernatural levels. But she knows he has become intoxicated with
the power and the respect it affords him when he begins flaunting it
unnecessarily.
He begins eventually to use mental force to telekinetically manipulate
everything, when it would have been just as simple to move them by mundane
means; it is as if he is indicating that he is above mere physical contact.
Instead of getting up to find something he needs, he will simply conjure it
into being. He unnerves the servants by making a habit of telepathically
speaking to them and issuing orders when they are on the opposite side of the
castle from him, making it clear to them that he can see what they are doing
even if he is not physically present; he irritates his Sorceress herself by
reaching along their bond to sense her emotions and remark on them at the most
inopportune of times.
The irritation she feels at his arrogance reaches a peak when he begins drawing
on her power continuously without discretion and without permission for trivial
matters. Whatever patience she might have had with him evaporates when he
begins using it for such sacriligeous things as lighting his own eyes with the
white-hot glow of sorcerous energy to intimidate others. The blazing white of
an aroused Sorceress's eyes is hailed and revered throughout the world as one
of the hallmarks of the Sorceress's divine descent. For her Knight to be
using-- without her permission, no less-- the power that she shares openly with
him to do such disrespectful things as count himself among the divine is
maddening.
And yet she does nothing. She has no reason to fear that he may take her life,
and despite his arrogance he is a very capable guard.
She watches him closely as his heart begins to turn from her, consumed by his
new power and longing for more. She knows that he is aware of the legend. It
has been said that if a Sorceress is annihilated in an instant while her Knight
is drawing actively on the power within her, the power sometimes lashes outward
from the Sorceress and enters the Knight himself; something like the effect
created when two people pull on a rubber band, and one lets go.
In rare cases, the Knight is both physically and mentally strong, and
compatible with the Sorceress power. In this, the rarest of occurrences, the
Knight will take over the power of the Sorceress who was killed too quickly to
have a conscious choice of who to pass her power to. In almost all other cases,
the Knight is incapable of carrying the power because of genetics: the allele
on the Y chromosome that determines incompatibility with it is switched on. In
that case, the Knight himself is incinerated by the force of the power that
backlashes through him, and the Sorceress power will seek out the closest
person capable of embodying that power.
She knows the legend is true. It has happened only twice before, ever since the
first Sorceress was made. She also knows that the reason it happens so
infrequently is because few things in the world have the power to completely
obliterate a Sorceress in a fraction of the space of a heartbeat.
That last thing is something that he does not know.
She has asked him to accompany her to the annual ball she holds in the castle.
The opening ceremony involves her processing from the great doors of the throne
room straight to her throne itself, and she wants him to be by her side.
She watches him keenly as he prepares for the event, telepathically ordering
the servants about and telekinetically multitasking. A cloak fastens itself
about his neck seemingly of its own volition: a brush flies through the air to
run itself through his hair. It is a ridiculous waste of energy, a tasteless
flaunting of power. It seems that every day now she can feel him straining at
the end of their bond like a dog at the end of its leash, continuously pulling
power from her unresisting reserves.
He has recently been constantly pulling power surreptitiously, little by
little, but he has not been using what he draws from her. She can feel her
power gathering within him, sitting awkwardly in him instead of imbuing him as
naturally as it imbues her. The power is not his; it is foreign to him. Except
for that piece of power she willingly gave to him to make the Bond, it
will never soak into him until it is as much a part of him as his blood; not the
way it does with her.
She knows that he has been storing this power, waiting for a grand event like
this. A grand event where he can unleash all that power upon her, turning her
own magic against herself and striving to realize that legend. If he is successful
and the power darts from her dead body to his living one, he will stand
triumphant before the masses, replete with stolen power and awaiting with open
arms the adulations of the flock. If he is unsuccessful... it will certainly be
a dramatic way for him to die.
She can feel that it will soon be over, as they stand together-- Sorceress and
Knight-- outside the double doors that open to admit them. They will walk in
together through those doors and down the path cleared for them between the
massed people, and one of them will walk out alone this night.
It is when they are halfway there that he pauses in his stride, and half-turns
to face her, an indefinable expression playing over his face. The closest
definition she can find for the look on his face is that it is the look of a
little brother, bursting to tell his sister something but afraid it is
something she will not like.
She can taste his fearful excitement; it is like the ozone of clashed swords
and lightning, and the copper of trickling blood.
He is probably unaware of the fact that she can feel everything that he is
doing with her power, even though it rests within his body. She closes her
eyes-- in fear, he thinks, but in reality to better track the flux of her
magic-- as he unravels that coiled power within him, flipping the release on
all that compressed energy, to let it lash back towards her. Her power comes
leaping home in a single bolting strike.
It is quite possible to kill a Sorceress with her own power. Knights who find
themselves charged with the dispatching of their renegade Sorceress know this
all too well. However, Knights still sworn into the service of a sane Sorceress
are forever incapable of using a Sorceress's power to kill her unless she goes
mad.
In his arrogance, he thought he could circumvent the rule that a Knight who
raises his hand against his Sorceress is swiftly and harshly punished.
She did not bother to open her eyes until she could feel it was over. As soon
as she perceives that the deed is done, she lets her lids flutter open with a
small sigh. Stepping delicately over his body, she processes alone up to her
throne-- silk train sliding carelessly over his face-- and seats herself. Only
then does she favor him with a glance, though she already knows what she will
see.
There is no sign of violent death, though the cause of his demise was the
violent reaction of the shard of Sorceress-power that imbued him. He lies as if
asleep, while the gathered masses stare and whisper among themselves.
She raises a hand, and silence falls like fearful prayers across the room.
"Please remove that from the floor," she says softly, and those
standing closest to her will swear that they heard sad laughter in her voice.
"One can hardly hold a ball with a corpse lying in one's entrance
hall."
After all, it's most impolite of the hostess.