The Guard Captain Angelo and his Second entered the Royal Dining Room through a side entrance on the far side from the Royal Storehouse, while the traitorous Sergeant was exchanging fire with Cerasa around the bulk of Skarff. At his challenge, the Lindorm turned and leaped onto the banquet table. Angelo vaulted up in turn, right over the King's chair. A fan of 3 blades sprang from the end of the Guardsman's staff, just in time to deflect an incoming disc.
Angelo rushed across the table, straight over dishes, serving trays, and glasses without once stepping on food or tableware. His footwork made his path unpredictable enough that he covered half the distance before the Lindorm threw his second disc overhand. The Guardsman ducked and simultaneously launched the middle blade of the fan. The projectile struck the foe between his carapace and lamellated breastplate. A replacement blade sprang into place as the Destroying Angel lunged in, slashing first with the fan and then with a spike on the other end of his staff. On the third stroke, it was done. The Lindorm fell, smashing the chair behind him.
"This one had a measure of honor," Angelo said. "It would have been useless to try to make him talk. I gave him the death he wanted long ago. What of Cremini?"
"We have him, Captain," his Second said. The traitor lay at the feet of Cerasa, who still held a dented serving tray. Behind them, the badly battered Steward Boletus sat up with a groan, then cried out with grief at the sight of Lady Persica.
"Cover her," Angelo said. The fallen Maiden's dress was withering. Already, the hem of her skirt was black with rot. Her face had aged to that of a Matron. The Captain advanced to the Storehouse Gate. The Bombadger released one bomb and dived through the hole in the wall. The bomb froze in place, surrounded by a luminous blue sphere.
"I have placed it in a stasis field," Skarff said. "I have that much discretion. Clearly, the outcome of this engagement has been decided."
"My Captain," the Second said after a glance under a hastily laid sheet, "I believe this one was with Fruit."
"Well, so am I," Diantha called out. She crouched behind a set of shelves, reloading the barrels of her pistol with a ramrod. "It just might be your Lord's heir!"
"Come out, Lady," Angelo said through gritted teeth. "Whether or not you speak truth, I would have you alive."
"Then come and get me!" Diantha snarled. She raised the pistol as she lunged into the open… and then a mighty shock knocked her and the Guards flat.
King Ajax slumped across Meliboia, so weak that his very lungs seemed to collapse in on themselves. The Mask launched itself. Mel turned her head in time to see Persephone sheer it in two with a slash of a sickle. She stooped to pick up the other as she advanced. Her walk became a strut as the outer layers of her dress sloughed off, revealing a coat of leather scales.
"Oh, m'Lord," she said, "please do not think less of me. Do not worry, I am not with the others." She tucked one sickle into a belt that remained at her waist as she stooped over Ajax. One three-fingered hand was enough to lift him by his collar and roll him onto his side. By then, her nose and upper lip had merged into the upper part of a beak. "I can take you where they cannot hurt you. We will have go, far, far away. But first I must Bind you against Temptation, so that in your desire, you do not take advantage of my weakness. You will find the desire is very strong, once you are under my Scent. We will Pollinate, and I will bear your Fruit, and you will know that you have loved only me." A deep blue forked tongue tasted him, licking up a tear from his cheek. She set down the other sickle to shackle him with a single chain that ran from his hands to his feet.
"I knew you had to choose Lady Meliboia," Persephone said. She threw him over her shoulder as she rose. Her leather mantle became wings that folded behind her. Of what they had covered, only a flared pubis and the swell of an unadorned breastbone remained. She managed to pick up the dropped sickle with a set of claws on her left wing. The Stone Lindorm took a step from its base, but halted when she shifted to put the King's body between her and the Guardian. "Only wealth like hers could pay the Kingdom's debts. But I knew you would choose me for what mattered, ever since that night. You must know, how wonderful it was. No other man has pleased me as you have. None."
Her voice softened, though her accent remained thick. "Now you know, too, why Pruna led you astray for so long. I am part Lindorm, like her. You have always been drawn to us, as we are drawn to you, because you were meant to be with me." She approached the alcove. The Guardian Orb immediately snapped at her, but retreated at a slash of the sickle that scratched its near-impenetrable metal. "You thought you yearned for her, but she was only a prefiguring, a sketch of a masterpiece to come. What you saw in her was as a shadow on the wall of a cell. What I will give you will be as if you were prisoner set free, to walk in the sun of my love."
"For cryin' out loud," Mel groaned. "Is this an ethnic thing?" Mel had risen to her knees. She gripped the banister to haul herself up. She powered up her shoulder pods. Only the one on the left responded. She pointed her wrist launcher. "I get it. You threw down with somebody out of your league, you got put down, and you went just a little bit bonkers. Now, set him down. It wouldn't be a good look to use your beloved Lord as a human shield."
Persephone set Ajax down just short of the alcove, with as close to a smile as she could still manage. "Of course, I would not risk bringing my Lord to harm," she said. She turned. Mel saw then that she had the Star Gem around her neck. "I was biding my time. I knew all about them. I knew when the time came, I would prove my love. And I found out a few things about you, you seedless hybrid. Even now, you need me, but he doesn't need you."
"Oh, to all Hells," Mel said. She fired a grenade straight at Persephone's enlarged sternum. The impact sent the transformed Maiden staggering back. Then the grenade released its load of gas, slightly lighter than air, straight into her face. She shrieked and swore, yet did not fall as she should have from kinetic force alone. Mel triggered the shoulder pod to fire, but the poorly calibrated weapon only shattered the cabinet with a short burst. She was past being surprised when a hurled sickle sheered the pod right off. She did narrowly duck as the blade whirled back to Persephone's hand. She switched out her grenade magazines as the Lindormess circled, only to have the forearm pod sliced off in turn. She deflected with her shield and the blades that sprang from it, buying enough time to draw her sword as she fell back before a methodical rain of slashing strokes. "Seriously, what the-?" That was when she was hit by a blast of flame so overwhelming that it drove her back to the alcove.
As the smoke cleared, Mel raised her cracked and scorched visor. She beheld Persephone finally reeling and gagging. "Gawwd, that was your fault," she said. She shifted back to Maiden form as if it had all been a trick of the light. "I have allergies, and that gas… Do you have any idea what it's really like to breathe fire? It's the same muscles… you use to upchuck… Half the time, it doesn't even ignite, then all you get is gas and juices…"
She did vomit then. What came out sent up steam as it dissolved the surface of the marble floor. "It doesn't matter," she said, wiping her mouth. "I've won. I thought I'd have to use this, but I didn't even activate it." She cast aside the Star Gem. "He's mine, and if you try get in my way again, I'll just cut your scrawny legs off." She walked up to the cabinet and smashed away the glass with the sickle.
"This wasn't a duel," Mel said. "You didn't issue a challenge. Ajax certainly didn't agree to accept the outcome. That doesn't work, anyway. Trust me, I've had men fight over me before. I never wanted either of them, before or after. All it ever proved was that they both thought of me as a trophy they could win. Did you think it would be any different if you beat me? Would you choose King Ajax if you had just watched him beat his brother to mulch over you?"
"Of course," Persephone said, almost in the voice she used at court. "Lindorms are always attracted to strength. There it is." She took the Door Phial from the middle shelf. She gave an incantation clearly longer than the one attached to the phial, then cast it down in the center of the pattern she had drawn on the floor. It formed a tall, narrow green door with a very strange yellow symbol on it. When she turned the knob, the door swung open as if it was upright rather than in the floor. A cool draft came wafting out. Mel leaned over to see what she could. A thin yellow light shown on the other side, as if from a source just out of sight. What it illuminated was a claustrophobic spiral staircase, going down.
"No," Mel said. She leaned over Ajax to reach into the cabinet. "Do what you want, but you aren't taking him."
"You don't have a say in this," Persephone said. "I thought we established that."
"Well, here's the thing," Mel said. She turned and raised the Wishing Mirror. "I don't know what happens if one of us breaks this thing. But I do know nobody wants to find out."
"You're bluffing," Persephone said. "By the way, if that door stays open too long, it might get... unstable." Mel stepped to one side. Persephone reached for Ajax. He raised his head and looked up at her.
"Wait," he said. "You have done this in anger and grief. There are no witnesses but myself and my Queen. I know now that I did you wrong. End this and I will give you my pardon."
Persephone looked into his eyes. "Truly?" she said, her eager Maiden's voice returning. "You still love me? You would forgive me?" Her accent began to thicken. "Would I still be your Favorite as I was before?"
"Yes," he said, "you can stay as my Senior Attendant."
"But what of the rest?" she said. She hiccupped a jet of flame. "Will you continue to please me? Will you Pollinate me when it is time, so that I can bear your heirs? Oh, I can do it. I know, I had a close call once before…"
"My Lady," the King said, "I was going to tell you… I do not intend to sire an heir. Not in the way that would require Lady Meliboia to share the Royal Bed with another."
Mel shook her head. "Alex," she said, "you should have told me…"
"I have," Ajax said.
"Well, isn't that cute," Persephone hissed. "She's nothing. You would see that if you knew what I knew. You'll forget about her. There's ways to do it. In fact, I did it once before…" She touched another item hanging from her neck, her Ajax doll. The King flinched and bowed his head in submission as she hoisted him like a sack.
"I tried," the King said. Then he tossed the Box Of Boom.
The Box bounced twice. For a moment, it appeared that it had not been thrown with enough force to activate. Then it struck the case of magic wands, and the top compressed. The shockwave shattered the glass. Mel shrieked and turned, trying to shield the Mirror. Her Lorica split. She heard a scream from Persephone. She looked in time to see the Maiden flushed with fury as she toppled. She gripped the doorframe, already reoriented as if trying to stay upright rather than stop a fall. She finally screamed: "Do you not see, my King, she is-!" Mel kicked the door then. There was a loud slam as it shut. When she looked down, there was only unbroken floor.
She set the Mirror against the cabinet beside Ajax. The pieces of the Lorica clattered to the floor around her. "You are my Queen," Ajax said.
"I'm glad that's settled," she said. She took out a small cutting laser and burned off the shackles from his hands. She finished by severing the chain between his ankles.
"I am sorry, my Lady, I cannot rise to thank you," he said.
"Then we'll just have to improvise," Mel said. Ajax smiled and rested his hand on the glass of the Mirror. He managed to raise his head as the gray became shifting silver, in time to see a shimmering hand grip his wrist. Before Meliboia could move, he was hauled into the silver surface, leaving only subsiding ripples behind.