AGNÈS OBLIGE
Agnès Oblige's life could be summed up in a word — duty.
If you asked Agnès, Vestal of Wind, she would never admit to being irritable after a sleepless night of prayers. Nor would she concede that her cell's hard mattress made her long for lusher comforts. She would never grant that the grasping touch of the acolytes made her want to cringe.
She tucked these reservations away and kept them in a secret corner of her mind.
But her mind should have been pure. So when disaster struck the temple, Agnès blamed herself.
She should have given herself wholly to her vestal duties. She should have prayed more fervently, been plagued by fewer distractions. Most of all, she should have appreciated the acolytes the way they deserved. Agnès had never known any of them. Not as people.
It wasn't until those nameless people had shielded Agnès with their own bodies, and died for it, that Agnès truly knew what it meant to be devoted. Then she understood how deeply she'd failed.
She would never forget crawling out of the pile of them. Never would her memory of the Crystal, blackened and smoking, fade. The howling of the monsters, creeping through the ruined wards, echoed in her ears.
And so did the bitter words of the King of Ancheim — "Fix it."
Three acolytes survived the blast and managed to take Agnès forty miles north, through the desert, to the city of Ancheim. Two of them perished on the trek. Sylla had wounds that poisoned her blood, killing her slowly. Myrtle fell to monsters.
Agnès hated how weak she'd been. She hadn't known how to defend herself from the creatures that ambushed them, or how to harvest water from the air with the simplest of spells. Her only strength had been bearing her pain in silence. She had not complained, not when her lips cracked and bled from dryness, nor when shivers wracked her body at night. When her feet grew bloody and her guts cramped, she kept the misery of it to her own self.
She'd earned Pia's respect from it.
Pia was not a true acolyte, but had been a stowaway in the temple when the Crystal fell. Days before the disaster, she'd fled her free-fisted husband and found sanctuary with her aunt, who'd been an acolyte for over twenty years.
Pia may have been a false acolyte, but she was exactly what Agnès needed to survive.
When they'd reached Ancheim, crowds had parted as they made their way to the King's palace. Seeking an audience with him was Agnès' idea. Pia had rolled her eyes and called Agnès a fool.
The king's angry rebukes lashed her bleeding heart. It was Agnès' fault that the Crystal fell. The acolytes died protecting her. She was to blame for the wilted sails, the rotting sea, the petrified windmills. It was all. Her. Fault.
"Fix it," the King ordered.
But Agnes didn't know how.
So Pia made a plan.
Before Agnès could fix anything, Pia said, she needed to know how to stay alive. In all her eighteen years, Agnès had never held a blade, not even a kitchen knife. Pia gave Agnès her first weapon— a stubby little sword. For three days and nights, Pia taught Agnes how to fight.
Agnès was amazed at the blisters on her palms. "I thought they only grew on feet!"
Pia laughed at her expense. "How can you be so bright one moment and such a simpleton the next? Agnès. You can get blisters anywhere you've got skin. I'm surprised you've got none on your knees, all the scrapin' on them floors for the Crystals."
When Agnes could vanquish a desert worm on her own, Pia set her loose. "I've taught you all I can, your Holiness. It's time you found the Wind."
And that's what Agnès set out to do.
EDEA LEE
Doing a backflip while holding a sword wasn't an easy or safe thing to do, but Edea Lee loved the flair of it. She loved hearing the gasps of the court dandies who watched her sparring. Those painted peacocks, who never lifted both feet off the ground if they could help it, were so easy to impress. But what Edea really wanted was to see her combatant unnerved, and flips did that. So much of a fight was a mind game. The bruises and bumps from learning the acrobatics were well worth the payoff.
Her estimable tutor, Nobutsuna Kamiizumi, fought in a less flashy style, and was much too experienced to be thrown off by Edea's showmanship. However, this match between them today was a ceremony. Edea could never hope to win, but she would put on a damn fine show before her ass was kicked.
Sure enough, Kamiizumi disarmed her within seconds. To her relief, Edea managed several exchanges with him before he'd sliced her sword in half.
Hmph. It seemed even estimable tutors, who had earned their asterisks at eighteen, weren't above a little showmanship.
But then, when Kamiizumi presented her with his own katana — Ise-no-Kami — and inducted her into the Sky Knights… it was a moment Edea would treasure forever. Not even the snide comments from her father's creepy arcanist could dampen her joy.
"Perhaps, Braev, your daughter will earn her asterisk as a Performer, like Praline," Victoria Stein had sneered.
But Edea was above such insults. She was. Victoria's insinuations couldn't touch her today.
For as long as Edea could remember, she'd been surrounded by people of influence. Experts in their fields. People with asterisks.
No one truly understood the mechanics of an asterisk. That was magic for you — notoriously hard to pin down. But when you got one, your strongest talent became powerful and unearthly. An aterisk grew inside you , like a plant, as you achieved mastery in your field of interest. And. like a plant, asterisks could be harvested…
Her own father was a Templar, and he'd earned his asterisk before Edea had been born. Her estimable tutor was a Swordmaster. A boy Edea once knew had traveled the world, going to strange and insidious places to become a Dark Knight. Edea even knew a girl who was a Seamstress. That girl held a needle. Edea wielded a katana, defied gravity like a bird, was practically a woman, and had no asterisk in sight.
Her mother told her to have patience, but Edea didn't know how much longer she could wait. She needed to know that her course was true. It was imperative that her life mean something. Edea couldn't — wouldn't — live her life for nothing.
As her father gave Edea her first command — as a lieutenant of the Sky Nights — Edea hoped that her asterisk was close at hand. Her first step was hunting down Agnès Oblige.
She boarded the airship Eschalot with her father's soldiers, and set her course.
RINGABEL
Ringabel was addicted to copulation.
He loved the wet slide of it, the frantic rhythm of hips, the smacking of skin on skin. But most of all, he loved the game of words and looks leading up to it.
Lots of men loathed that bit, the careful approach, the teasing suggestions, the awkward exchanges. Those men feared communication. They feared connection. But for Ringabel, the sharp sting of an angry slap was just as satisfying as a messy climax.
There was probably something wrong with him. Aside from the obvious things.
When he'd first woken up, with all of his memories gone, his first urge had been to fuck. He'd been laying in a field just outside the gates of Caldisla. He had the clothes on his back, a dagger and buckler, thousands of pugets, and a diary. He'd stumbled into the city, found a whore, and pounded into her from behind in an alley.
"Tha-at's go-od, Ri-ik!" the prostitute had wailed, her voice warbling in time with Rigabel's thrusts. "Tha-at's your na-ame, ri-ight?"
"Doesn't—ring—a— bell," he'd grunted.
Hence, his name.
After the whore, he'd found an inn and had a meal. Then he'd retired to his private room, locked the door and read the diary. It was full of such nonsense, Ringabel didn't know what to think. But he knew that he'd written it. It was inscribed in Ringabel's handwriting exactly — a weird mix of spiky marks and foppish loops. And the way his heart began to race whenever the girl, Edea, was mentioned… well, Ringabel knew he was just the type of man to be hopelessly in love with a girl like that.
As the weeks passed, between the whores and the private room at the inn, Ringabel's thousands of pugets were soon near exhausted. He started sleeping in the common room at a more affordable inn and seduced girls instead of paying them.
He had no plan, no purpose.
He did nothing but eat, sleep, screw, and wrack his empty brain.
TIZ ARRIOR
It was a beautiful day, sunny and mild, but Tiz Arrior couldn't enjoy himself. He wore a smile, though, for his little brother, Til. If Tiz had been alone with the flock, he wouldn't have bothered — the sheep couldn't tell a chipper shepherd from a morose one.
But Til was sensitive. A frown from his big brother would crush him.
So even though Tiz wanted nothing more but to heave sighs and pick fights with rocks on the ground, he feigned happiness as he and Til tended their flock on the hills beyond Norende.
The problem was a creature named Nannette — the most horrible girl Tiz had ever known. For the past year, she'd been in a relationship with Tiz's best friend, Cep.
Cep was the mayor's son, set to inherit a sturdy pile of pugets when his ailing father passed away. He had status, money, broad shoulders, and a cleft chin. Tiz didn't blame Nannette for being attracted to Cep for mercenary reasons. It was a hard world, and money made life softer. But what Tiz couldn't stand was the way Nannette played with people.
It made him uncomfortable, seeing Nanette flirt with other men when Cep's back was turned. It made him want to weep, hearing Nanette mock Cep behind his back.
Cep wasn't blind, deaf, or dumb. He knew Nannette had problems. He would unload his frustrations to Tiz after he and Nannette had their routine fights… Nannette made a small child cry today. Nannette is after my family's money. I think Nannette will rejoice when my father dies…
Despite all this, Cep had bought a ring just months ago. Tiz's heart had dropped like an stone when he'd seen the shiny thing — real silver, with an oval moonstone. Tiz had wished he could talk Cep out of his madness, but he wasn't good with words. Cep had needed clever and careful handling, and since everything Tiz said stumbled out of his mouth, even when he practiced to the sheep, some kind of intervention had been needed.
Then Lilta had arrived in Norende.
She hadn't come with a family, despite being young. She was Tiz and Cep's age, but she'd arrived in Norende on the back of a trading wagon — just herself and a carpet bag in tow.
Lilta was lovely, even with the scar that disfigured her face — a slash from right forehead to left jaw. And with her exotic Ancheimese coloring, she made good coin reading fortunes in the town center.
On Cep's stag night, all the lads had stumbled out of the tavern and recognized Lilta across the square, parked at her little table draped in gauzy shawls. None of them had ever spoken with Lilta, only about her. That night though, mead had given them courage.
Slapping down a handful of pugets, Potter had bellowed, "Read this one's cards, milady, if you please!" He'd grasped Cep's shoulders and pushed him down into the rickety chair opposite Lilta.
Lilta had shuffled her cards. She had large hands, big as a man's, but they were oddly delicate and attached to slim wrists. Her bangles flashed as she'd fanned the deck in broad arcs across the table, her gaze not fixed on her sleight of hand, but on Cep's blushing face.
When the cards had been well shuffled, Cep had drawn three cards.
"The Moth," Lilta had read. "The Flame. And Disaster."
There'd been nervous laughter amongst the party.
"What does it mean, Lilta?" Cep had said her name carefully. It was a sound that required a lot of tongue and teeth, Tiz had thought that night.
Lilta had taken Cep's hand in her own and traced a line on his palm, with one tan finger. Then she'd looked straight into Cep's eyes.
"It means that you're marrying the wrong girl." Then she'd leaned over and kissed Cep, long and smoky.
The next morning, Cep's wedding had been called off. The ring had been retrieved from the pond where Nannette had thrown it, and now it rested on Lilta's hand.
Cep was in love — for real this time. He was walking taller, speaking more slowly, and with quiet confidence. And Lilta seemed no less devoted to the Mayor's son. They were hardly ever apart.
Nannette was wrathful, but nothing she flung at Cep and Lilta could touch them. Her cruel jeers and salacious lies couldn't dampen Lilta and Cep's happines.
So Nannette had refined her approach. First, she'd taken down Yentley in his parents' barn loft. She emerged from the encounter picking straw, and the shreds of Yentley's innocence, out of her hair.
The lads had convened immediately.
"She's going under, boys, and she's taking us all with her," Potter had said grimly, clutching his glass of mead.
"Keep your pecker buttoned in and you're safe," Tom had snapped. "Nannette has one mode of attack. Unless you keep your good sense in your pants, how could you ever fall for this bitch?"
"There's no need to be spewing foul language, Tom," Tiz had sputtered from behind his own tumbler of punch.
"Tiz." Tom had shook his head in disgust. " You're next, mark my words."
Tiz had wanted to dive over the table then and sock Tom in the mouth, but the saddest thing was that Tom had been right. Nannette had deemed Tiz the next weakest link on the chain.
He didn't even want to remember the details of the awfulness that was Nannette's attempted seduction. It had left him feeling dirty and defiled.
Tiz's mind surfaced with a jolt. With horror, he realized he was raking his nails down his face and that Til was watching him, eyes wide with confusion. Tiz released his face immediately.
"Buddy—" he began, but then Til was speeding down their hill, pell-mell towards Lilta.
Lilta hailed them, arms held wide, the breeze whipping her clothes into a colorful whirl. She caught Til in an embrace.
Tiz made no move to go to them, but waited as Til and Lilta made their way up the footpath.
"I've brought you lunch," said Lilta when she and Til had reached him. "Nothing for you, I'm afraid," she told a curious lamb. "Go find your mother and get your meal from her." The lamb ambled off, like it understood Lilta. It was uncanny.
Not for the first time, Tiz wondered at Lilta's powers. Was she a real fortune-teller? And if so, what other abilities did she have at her disposal? Could she talk to animals? Read minds? Influence people?
"Til, I've come to speak to your brother," Lilta was saying. "It's a matter of great secrecy. Could you please eat your lunch on that bluff across the way? I see there are some nice trees and a sitting rock there. And I'll come and have a nice, long visit once I've had a word with Tiz."
Til pouted a little, but took his lunch and ran off.
Tiz hadn't said anything yet. He was being rude, he knew. But Lilta's visit was so random. She'd never sought him out before.
"I sensed that you wish to speak to me, Tiz," said Lilta. She was gazing at him, blocking the sunshine with one large hand. Her eyes were keen little slits.
Tiz gulped. He was going to spill his guts, he knew it. … But would that be such a bad thing?
"Lilta, the thing is—" and then he was telling her everything. How Nannette had cornered him one night. How he'd felt repulsed at the sight of Nannette's bare body — not aroused, like a normal man.
Lilta just listened. And when Tiz was finished, she squeezed his hand.
"You don't have to worry about Nannette, Tiz," she said.
"What do you mean?" Tiz asked. "Are you going to turn her into a lizard?"
Lilta laughed, but it was strangely sad. "No. I can't do that, even if I wanted to… Take care, Tiz."
Tiz was growing alarmed for some reason he couldn't put his finger on. It was a really bad sign, right, when a fortune teller started acting like this? She was like… like a cat before her kittens came. Shifty.
"Lilta, what—"
"And when you meet the right girl, Tiz, you won't mind seeing her with her clothes off. For you, a good girl."
"I—"
"Now, I need to go make my apologies to Til. I can't stay much longer, you see. I wanted to say goodbye to you, though, in person. And good luck. Cep loves you so."
She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. And then she got up and walked away towards his brother's bluff.
When Til came running back to Tiz after Lilta had gone, his little brother wasn't even winded.
"Lilta said you'd play tag with me, Tiz! Please, let's run!"
Where did his little brother get so much energy? But clearly Lilta had left Til in high spirits. He could fault neither of them for that.
So they ran and played, and even though Tiz's heart wasn't in it, he tried to be happy for Til's sake. And when the earth began to shake, Tiz was smiling widely. The shock froze him, and so he still had a stupid, rictus grin on his face when the ground split open.
And when the Great Chasm formed right before them, swallowing Norende before their eyes, his mouth was wide open, howling, as the lip of the Chasm crumbled, taking Til. Taking him…
Down.
Down.
Down.