How wrong I was about this fact. But you see, this is what happens with familiarity. Once, my colleagues laughed in my face for suggesting the Horde came from beyond Etheria. Back before you were conceived, the thought that Etheria was one in trillions of planets was ridiculous, and it still goes unchallenged in many traditional perspectives of academia.
!
Nell sat at a table that evening in Erelandia, sipping on chilled cinnamon tea and watching the room for the contact Shadow Weaver was due to meet with. His task was simple, according to Micah: get a handbook about iridulium's properties, and bring it back.
Micah, however, expected Nell to steal the thing. Fair enough, Nell thought. They probably hid secrets about iridulium from the royalty. Nell wasn't sure whether that was even legal, but Angella and Micah wanted his help. So he would do what he could.
"Mister?" a voice asked. Nell's attention snapped up from his drink to a small felinetta, clad in a tuxedo and a black headband. A huge white rose lay nestled on the headpiece, and an easy smile rested on her face as she sat next to him.
Nell frowned; he'd seen her before. "You're Shadow Weaver's felinetta." His voice wavered by a small degree. "Did she send you here?"
A pause. "Naw," Carmen said. "Did'ja think we just work all day?"
Nell met her electric blue eyes, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "I assumed you would take over her duties, since Micah cracked her ribs. She was hurt poorly, from what I heard."
"You're a doctor, yeah?"
"How did you know?"
Carmen shrugged. "My lady spies on everyone," she said simply, as if it was a normal thing. "She knows you by name. Nell, yeah?"
Nell's stomach grew cold; he didn't answer the question. "I am a doctor for the Rebellion," he said with a shrug. "But I don't consider Shadow Weaver's ailment to be my business."
"But don't it bother you, at least a little, that she's hurtin'?"
"I care more about the Delvalian lives lost in battle," Nell replied.
Carmen shrugged. "Weird folk you are." She took a huge swig of beer, and Nell scooted away, running his fingers along his scarred forearms. He never liked beer, and he couldn't stand the scent of alcohol, not again...
Nell sighed. "You're the one drinking beer at a fancy party. Where'd you even get that? All they're serving at the bar is wine."
Carmen shrugged. "Does it matter?"
"I'd say it matters if you're stealing and working for an authoritarian colonizer," Nell muttered.
"And you're not?"
A chuckle burst through Nell's throat. "Micah? He's my friend, and he's a bloody better man than Hordak. You're the ones who attack us, not the other way around."
"Really?" Carmen asked from her glass. "My lady's right secretive with me, but I ain't gonna pretend her life was peachy under your Rebellion either."
"Micah couldn't have been responsible for that. He was only seventeen when he came."
Carmen chuckled. "Nell, I ain't smart enough to debate 'bout all this. I'm just here for the ride." Her eyes passed to his scars. "What're those from?"
A cold chill raced through Nell, and his cheeks burned as he covered his arms. "As if I'd tell you."
"I ain't judgin'," Carmen said, rolling up her sleeve and showing him her forearm. Six careful, precise scars were slashed into her skin. "You a Kryteyan? I ain't never seen your species in our ranks, but then, some heretical sects're right free with their membership."
"I'm not religious," Nell murmured. "And if your faith encourages you to harm yourself, that's awful."
Carmen frowned, pulling her sleeve up again and resting her chin in a hand. "You think you can tell God he's evil?"
"I don't really know what I'd tell God," Nell said honestly – he couldn't bring himself to hate her. "Maybe that he isn't as loving as he says."
She tilted her head. "Lovin'? I ain't gonna say God's lovin', Sir Nell. But he can love and hate whoever he wants, yeah?"
"If you say so."
"Then I don't see why havin' a priest mar me for servitude's wrong."
"I don't know why I'm talking to you," Nell replied, looking around the room for the boss. "I have an actual job to do."
"But I wanna talk to you," Carmen said. "I don't got friends back home, besides my lady."
"Shadow Weaver has friends?" Nell chuckled.
Carmen swigged more of her beer. "Well, yeah. She's a person too, y'know."
"Surprising."
"Is it?"
Nell paused, surprised at her quick responses. He was used to thinking of Kryteya as a cult – that was what he'd been told in Mystacor. The felinettas couldn't think for themselves, especially since they'd been indoctrinated with the belief that they were sinful beyond redemption. But Carmen was...smart. Odd, maybe, but smart.
"I don't know," he decided to reply. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have duties to attend to. Good day, Lady Carmen."
She replied with a simple tilt of the head as he walked away.
!
That's the one, Carmen thought as Sir Nell left. Shads hadn't fully recovered from her broken ribs, or she herself would have come on this assassination. Carmen's task was killing the businessman – stopping him from divulging his secrets to the Rebellion.
After their conversation, she was relieved that her orders weren't directed at Nell.
I gotta act quickly. She'd had hidden sheathed knives in her bra before she came. Shads had been worried that they would pat Carmen's chest for weapons, but it seemed Meyans were more trusting of foreigners than the Horde.
Carmen scanned the area, walking nonchalantly up the stairs to get a good view of Nell's curly mop. She didn't have magic, but as a felinetta, her muscles were built differently than that of Nell's species. The force of her jump would be enough to land down and slit the man's throat.
Thankfully, it wasn't the shy Del she was after, but the man Nell was talking to. Carmen had killed before, but each time, it made her sicker. People were great. It shouldn't be her place to take a life.
But Shads had ordered it of her, and she obeyed her mistress, so Carmen pulled a knife from her bra. In a flash, she leaped forward off the railing, performing a graceful flip before leaping out and slamming her fist into the businessman's face.
They fell to the ground, and he grabbed her shoulders, clumsily trying to roll her over. The knife slipped, slicing his chin. People were screaming now, rushing to stop her from her task.
Carmen unsheathed the other knife as he pressed her to the ground, positioned on top of her. Her vision spun. It's not real. It's not real.
Jibril was not here. He was not on top of her, he was not whispering mockery in her ear, and he was not making her neck bleed with angry kisses...
Do it! Carmen's eyes filled with tears. And with a scream, she plunged her knives into the man's stomach. He coughed red onto her pink polo as he collapsed. Metallic scents stung Carmen's nostrils as she struggled to get up, her head faint and cold. As vice-like hands wrenched her off the floor, and she wiped sweat off her face with a bloodied hand, she caught Nell's gaze.
Horror rested in his eyes.
!
One such power, I will write to you of. The Spell of Obtainment is perhaps the most famous example – most uses of dark magic are so elusive and so carefully hidden or destroyed that they are not worth mentioning. But because darkness runs indirectly within your family, I feel an obligation to discuss this wicked incantation with you.
!
The Erelandia police arrived shortly afterward. Nell felt like he was going to throw up on the tablecloth. Not from the blood – the grim reality of death was normal for him at this point – but from the shock.
Carmen was tiny – barely five feet tall. But there was a dead body, slumped on the floor and bleeding. Nell checked the pulse; the man was dead. The police cuffed Carmen's arms and legs, then muzzled her face so she couldn't use her sharp teeth as a weapon. The chief, a large Shrumish man with a bushy mustache, crossed the room.
He crouched beside Nell. "Good doctor...will he live?"
"He's already gone," Nell said softly. He'd barely gotten a word in before the murder happened. Did Carmen care? Did she know that this man had a family? A home?
But something twisted inside Nell – he wouldn't have had the courage to defend the victim. Nell hid behind the Vernish peace codes as an excuse for his spinelessness. His inability to fight, his frozen, stiff body as the other man was stabbed in the gut.
He exhaled. "I'll do an examination – we'll need to contact his family."
The chief of police grunted. "Report back to me in the next fifteen minutes with the information. We're putting the felinetta in one of our mobile cells until she can be transferred to Dryl."
Nell looked over at Carmen, whose eyes betrayed fear. She was just following orders. He forced himself not to direct his hatred toward her, but at Shadow Weaver. Why had the Horde senselessly murdered this man, especially since they were in a contract with him? It didn't add up to Nell...
Pull yourself together! He began searching the man's pockets, trying to find a wallet or an information card or something. His hand touched something hard, and he pulled it out. A holo-pad – one of the newer, smaller ones that only the richest merchants and royalty could afford.
It likely had the information Nell needed. So he slipped the device into his pocket and kept searching. Shortly after, he found a card. Miles, son of Arlon of Bright Moon. He nodded, bringing the card over to the chief of police. "I found it."
"Thank you," the Shrumish man said, nodding. "Son, I think you'd best leave now. We'll handle it from here. She's not like that Shadow-Weaver you kids keep battling – she's powerless now."
"Of...course." Nell hadn't been planning to stay anyway; he felt as though his entire body would shatter if someone even touched him. Biting his lip, he clenched his fists and left the party, stomach sour.
!
Micah didn't receive a response from Nell till the next morning. The older man opened a communication channel, and even then, he still looked shaken as he told Micah the news. Miles, son of Arlon of Bright Moon – the founder of Kocian Miners – was killed by a five-foot-tall felinetta who was under Shadow Weaver's thumb.
Now, as Micah took mirror after mirror to the hotel where his friend was staying, his head spun with questions. Why would they want to assassinate this man to begin with? Miles was knowingly corrupt, but he wouldn't double-cross Shadow Weaver with a sword at his throat, would he?
Sighing, Micah exited the mirror into Nell's room. The Del lay in bed face-down, wearing the same outfit as the night before. His glasses rested on the nightstand, and he didn't look well.
"Nell?" Micah ventured. "Are you alright, buddy?"
"No, I am in fact not fine," Nell said, his voice muffled in the pillow. "Just take your precious holo-pad and go. I did what you wanted."
Micah frowned. "Why are you upset?" he said. "The mission succeeded, didn't it?"
Nell looked up from his pillow, eyes swollen and red. Without his glasses on, he looked even younger than his thirty-four years. He's been crying, Micah realized, a prick of concern in his chest.
"Hey," Micah said as Nell put on his glasses. "Talk to me. What's going on?"
"I...I don't want to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"Because it's foolish. And shameful."
"But I'm worried about you," Micah protested. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Yes, because someone was murdered in front of me," Nell snapped. "By a cultist, no less."
Micah had seen people die brutally in battle, and the sick feeling had long since been replaced by a quiet sorrow. This visceral reaction felt strange to him, though he'd been like Nell only five years before. I'm losing it, he thought momentarily. I'm becoming like her.
"Nell," Micah said, "I'm sorry. I had no way of knowing that Carmen would even be there. Shadow Weaver hasn't been around since our last battle, so I assumed..."
He trailed off as Nell hugged himself, avoiding Micah's eyes. "I'm not blaming you." Nell stood. "This is...my fault. Let's go home."
!
Shadow Weaver heard the news: Carmen had succeeded, but was captured. A week passed before she could act, however. At least Bright Moon took forever to transport their prisoners to Dryl – sometimes up to a month.
She'd taken a mirror to Erelandia; now, she needed to find her servant. The odds were that Carmen was inside the police headquarters, awaiting transport to a more secure prison. That meant Shadow Weaver had time to break her servant out.
Shadow Weaver scouted the police station from a tree. She would need to be careful; though she had been making a steady recovery from her broken ribs, they still ached slightly whenever she breathed. Luckily, sorcerer policemen were trained to use their magic for detainment of the ordinary citizen – not a sorceress trained in battle.
Shadow Weaver turned her back on the station, unmasking and downing a vial of moondust. One couldn't drink too many bottles at once, for they risked stomachaches from the Pull – or worse, poisoning from the solution that lingered inside drinkable moondust. Unfortunately, Shadow Weaver had learned this the hard way.
Yet she needed the extra power. The Spell mended her broken bones even as Shadow Weaver pulled her mask on.
She bolted toward the police station, hurling a shot of dark magic into the glass. The door shattered, the alarms went off, but Shadow Weaver propelled herself forward into the room.
She'd seen Meyan police stations before; the prisoners were always kept in the back of the house. Paying no regard to the shouting guards, she sped ahead, leaping off the walls as if defying gravity itself. Her hair snapped like a dark flag behind her; she felt a laugh escape her throat, a laugh of pleasure. This was where she belonged – on the chase, mocking those who hated her.
Shadow Weaver looked up at the barred window separating the jail cells from the rest of the station. She couldn't shadow-walk unless it was dark enough for her to blend in. Shadow Weaver didn't know why this was; perhaps the darkness acted as a lubricant of sorts.
So she clenched her fist, and the lights went out. The alarms continued to blare; shouting crescendoed around her. Shadow Weaver faded into the darkness, slipping between the bars and exiting on the other side.
Almost immediately, a flashlight shone through the window. Orders to unlock the door echoed down the corridor. Shadow Weaver looked ahead, spotting Carmen in a magic prison on the west wall. Blood stained her clothes. Hopefully, someone else's. Oh, moons... Shadow Weaver's mind snapped to the failed coup as she shadow-walked to her servant. If they had laid a finger on Carmen...
She reached the prison; hacking protection spells took great skill, but Shadow Weaver had taught herself how. The Spell gave her many unnatural abilities, new wisdom she had never known before.
Carmen collapsed in her arms. "I knew you'd come," she said softly.
The door opened; Shadow Weaver clenched her teeth. Picking Carmen up princess-style, she mustered all the magic she'd just drank and teleported them away – far away. Unfortunately, they had no idea where they would end up.