#AN: The events of this chapter have been planned for... for a long time. Since just before I published the end of the first arc, I think. It's taken far, far longer than I expected to get here, but I'm glad I have. And with this, I've finally, officially, I should think, breached the 50,000 word boundary. As always, thanks to my prereaders, worldbuilding helpers, and those of you who have stuck with me for the last two and a half years. Here's to... well, hopefully, I can get this finished before another 2.5 years passes...
Chapter 23: Autoapocryphy
Soft, was her thought, and warm.
The thought lingered as she tried to convey her desperation and terror with a...
With a...
Numbly, Louise pulled back, desperately trying to regain her bearings.
Why did I... what...
They were still for a time, clutching each other like lifelines, quaking from something more acute than the cold. Louise tried to figure out where everything had gone so wrong.
Tabitha had told her to run, but there was no way she could do that.
Foremost: A noble faces danger with steel in her heart. Running was never an option.
She had watched in awe as her beautiful and divine familiar leapt into battle, a blue blur with no rival; no equal. She was so transfixed, she almost didn't notice Wales ducking behind the altar he had been praying at. Scarcely had he made it to cover when there was a tornado and that dumb sword yelling, and Tabitha suddenly appearing behind the masked interloper with a thunderous whip crack.
They had stopped.
She remembered thinking it was over but then he laughed and revealed his identity to be someone she knew - thought she had known - well. In her anger, she had stepped into the chapel doorway.
Foolish! How could I be so foolish!? she berated herself.
But she had needed to know.
Know what?
Whatever it was, she had more questions than answers now. Were his kind words in the past a ruse? Were the venomous barbs he had thrown her way how he had always thought?
She felt...
"Louise, we need to go."
She blinked, focusing on Tabitha's stern countenance right in front of her face. She nodded mechanically, taking the hand that was offered.
Wales was dead, murdered by the traitor Wardes. The letter they had sought to retrieve was lost as well.
In the hands of the enemy. And now their army is assaulting this place. Was this their plan?
She could grudgingly respect the strategic value of removing an enemy leader at the start of battle.
"We failed."
As they reached the clearing where Sylphid was waiting, Louise stopped, her hand dropping limply from Tabitha's.
"No, not 'we'," she corrected. "I failed. You did everything you could and then some, Tabitha, but I was..." Louise trailed off, unable to bring herself to say the word.
As much as Tabitha wanted to console her, this wasn't the place. Pulling urgently at Louise's elbow, trying to get them mounted and airborne, she didn't see the threat in time. Before either of them registered what had happened, a hulk of blue and white moved, Sylphid flicking a wing out to provide the girls with a leathery shelter just in time to protect them from harm.
She screeched in agony as the volley of burning arrows hit home, tearing numerous nasty holes in the thin membrane and scales of the wing joints. Tabitha left Louise to stand helplessly in shock as she rushed to her Familiar's side to cast a quick spell to douse the remaining flames and ease some of the pain. It wasn't a miracle, though, and their escape route was now grounded.
Whipping her head up to scan the battle line, Tabitha's face contorted in dire fury.
"Stay. Soothe. I have work to do." Louise flinched outwardly and, she could feel, inwardly too, at the chilling address. She looked like she might protest, but it was cut off when Tabitha summoned a gust to bat another hail of arrows out of the air. And then she was gone.
You're not the only one with a failure today, Louise. Is this a parting gift from that man? Revenge for his mount? Looking at the state of the conflict as she closed the distance, she cursed.
They've pressed much faster than I expected. The outer wall has already been overrun! She was tired and sore and for once just wanted to go home.
"Come, Derflinger. Let us protect what's left."
Numbly, Louise nodded as Tabitha took the field of battle. Real battle, with fire and death and consequence. Consequence... She fell to the ground, a string-cut puppet, paralysed with fear as much for Tabitha as herself. Nudge. Through the fog of war that had descended on the fields just inside the town wall, she vaguely noted the occasional flash of blue. Nudge. Tabitha was still okay. Still fighting. For how long? They would make her a priority target as she dispatched men by the squad. Nudge. And once Tabitha fell... what was left?
Maybe, Louise mused, maybe death will be-
Again, that insistent nudge at her shoulder curtailing the morbid though. Looking to her left, there was blue. She blinked and leaned back, taking in the huge reptilian face.
"... Sylphid? Are you...?" The giant head shifted with an inquisitive chirp and drew her attention to the awful wound on its wing. Louise hissed in sympathy at how that sort of thing felt. And to think, this dragon was trying to comfort her instead!
Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable. Foremost! A noble meets adversity with steel in her heart! She scanned the makeshift camp outside the walls of the main keep, forcibly putting their situation out of her mind. Putting Tabitha and her likely fate out of her mind.
Two weeks can change everything.
Spotting the medical tent, she muttered small encouragements as she led the pained dragon around behind it to help keep them out of sight.
I only hope dragon first aid is like human first aid...
"Stay here, all right?" she ventured, hoping it would understand. "I'm going to get bandages." She took a deep breath, drawing her wand, she slinked around the front, suddenly painfully aware that many buildings had been leveled to give line of sight and she was exposed. She could practically trace the path Tabitha was carving through their formations. She paused, catching sight of her friend for just a moment before the image shimmered and dissolved into shards of ice and a fountain of blood that she dearly hoped was not her familiar's.
"I'm scared."
No! Move, you fool! She slapped her cheeks and refocused on her task, ducking into the tent and trying to stay inconspicuous.
Finding the things she needed in the haphazard stockpile of goods was taking far more time than she had expected. She had never thought she'd miss the strictly regimented medicine chest from a childhood spent injuring herself and learning to tend her own wounds from her sister.
I miss Cattleya...
Then the explosions started.
Louise was, among nobility of her age, uniquely qualified when it came to recognising explosions. Even without poking her head out, the resounding roar of cannon fire and the answering shout of a cannonball exploding somewhere behind her - against the walls of the keep, most likely - were something she felt strangely comfortable with. Ironically, unwanted detonations were somehow nostalgic when she found herself caught up in the madness of a nation in the throes of suicide.
"Ah, finally! A pox on whoever organised this!"
She dragged the large satchel of linens, bandages, and ointments through the flap; she didn't want to make a second trip if she could help it. She scanned the field and saw there were now ten cannons barking their fury in her general direction. She redoubled her effort to get out of view. Tabitha had more than adequately showed her the terror of the infernal devices and she didn't fancy her chances if one should decide she was worth hunting.
Naturally, that was when her luck ran out.
It wasn't terribly near, lodging itself in the rubble of a wattle and daub building across the road, but it was still a powder-stuffed iron shell far too close for comfort.
Already tense as a coiled spring, Louise hit the dirt, covering her ears and neck just as the primitive bomb detonated.
She was a moment too late.
Louise was in the dirt. She couldn't remember exactly which dirt, but it happened from time to time. She must have been practicing magic. From the feeling, it was not terrible this time. Probably only a few mail of distance and... yes, only one eardrum ruptured. Good. It was surprisingly hard to talk well when they were both popped. Her head throbbed. She opened her eyes and saw a bundle of white.
Aaaaah, curses, that stuff was important!
Her giant pile of medical supplies had taken several large chunks of shrapnel in the line of duty. So gallant. She felt like...
Like it was important.
Why again?
It wasn't important. What was important was...
Was...
Tabitha!
Yes, Tabitha. And flying. Flying with Tabitha... was important? Obviously.
Her head throbbed. Something was wrong. There were cuts all over her, some even opened in her clothing. Not as bad as the time with the roses, though, but painful still.
She shifted her head, pushing past the ache and dizziness to figure out which garden...
Her eyes managed to focus again and it all came rushing back.
The medical satchel. The linens. Sylphid.
Albion.
Wardes.
"Wardes..." she snarled.
The name filled her with loathing. Yes, this was his doing.
"WARDES!"
Everything terrible in the world was his fault and she was overflowing with rage. She pushed herself to sitting and found the Founders Prayer Book close to her hand, splayed open to yet another blank page.
"You. You're in league with him, aren't you? In league with WARDES!" She grabbed it roughly, intent on tearing it to shreds, but the shine of the Royal Signet Ring had her reeling back in pain, like a metal spike was being driven into her head. She grit her teeth. It couldn't struggle forever. "Defy me, will you!? I'll burn you to ashes and burn those again you... you..." She trailed off, fascinated at what was happening.
There, in a lazy looping script, words were appearing in the book. Words in a language she knew she had never seen but could nevertheless read, she realised with a start.
Lo, there comes a Child of the Spaces Between! The Void is the stuff between the motes and within. It suffuses all of existence. For you, my Heir, one with the audacity to take hold of this power, to master it and make it their own, this is my personal work. This is the Grimoire of Brimir. I bid you welcome.
The Prayer Book... Grimoire? Heresy? Not a prayer book but a book of spells. But that was the only text. She flipped back and forward. Blank. All blank. A book of spells with only an introduction in the middle.
"That's it? Why now, when I need to... I need to... Tabitha! Tabitha is fighting! If you're a spell book, give me a spell, dammit! I have to help her destroy Wardes!"
Somehow, that seemed to work, the previous message fading as a new one took its place. A spell.
A spell of Void.
When she spoke the aria aloud, it came in a cacophonous chorus of tongues she would later realise she didn't recognise.
"Across the great vastness, a single point..."
Her body moved on its own as she rose to her feet. She had never felt so right! There was no doubt that this time, this spell would be a success. This was how magic was supposed to feel!
"Three wheels, five sacraments, truth, temperance, seventeen pillars, the sign of the conqueror..."
Intoxicated by the energies coursing through her body, she reveled in the glow that spread from the energies she worked, undulating through colours that she couldn't even comprehend.
"Fangs of the north, horns of the south, awaken to my call!"
Arms spread wide, she was floating slightly off of the ground, a living conduit for the power of the Gods!
"Let collapse unto the unending dark..."
At this point, with the last shred of control, she desperately reached out through that intangible link she had with Tabitha and pulled, willing her to retreat. The reassuring feeling of her knight already returning to her side was a major relief because there was no going back from this.
"SUNDER!"
The final utterance was a word of Power. The sky seemed to bend, cyclones of unnatural screaming fury touching down on the field of battle to draw a ragged line through the enemy ranks. Just when it looked like the sky was retreating and the spell was at an end, the pregnant expectations of the universe were finally granted reprieve as the sky's line burst. In an instant, there appeared a great rent in the earth, tossing bodies like rag dolls and dragging many more into the abyss.
Exhausted, head pounding, she tried to smile. It was magic! Real magic! But as the promontory of the fortress town began to float free of the main continent she couldn't help sinking into mute terror.
That was her magic.
And it was cataclysmic.
End Arc 2: What Heavals Must Up