Star Wars: Treasures of the Force – Ch 4

One agreeable thing about being taken captive by Sali, she at least put you up in a nicely gilded cage. Ayli wasn’t sure if she was willing to tolerate being in even so luxurious a form captivity for much longer, but Nix seemed to be working an angle and Sali definitely had other plans than turning them in for the bounty so Ayli was willing to let things play out a little longer.

“How was breakfast my dears?” Sali said, strolling into their suite like she owned the place.

Which of course she did, and Ayli had no illusions that the entire place wasn’t bugged with more micro-recorders than she’d find if she searched for a year, but still the illusion of privacy would have been nice. She and Nix had slept in separate rooms in an unspoken agreement to keep Sali from deciding she could use one of them as leverage against the other, and though they’d only spent a grand total of three nights together so far, Ayli found herself missing her fake-wife’s warmth. 

“Chef Marsbel remembered my favorites!” Nix said. “Give him my thanks if you would.”

“You’re quite a valuable asset,” Sali said. “It wouldn’t do to have you die of hunger on us before the Klex Cartel pays out for you.”

“Come on Sali, we both know you’re not doing this for a measly ten thousand credits,” Ayli said, looking up from the datapad where the recent Galactic news was scrolling along. There was a Xenoarchaeology Conference on Coruscant that looked interesting. Too interesting in fact. There were two tracks on ‘Lost Religious Movements from the Late Republic Era” during it. That didn’t mean someone else was looking for Ravas Durla’s temple, but those were the sort of lectures which might plant ideas in the wrong heads. Those being any other head than her own.

“Of course not,” Sali said. “You’re worth at least a million credits, easily.”

“We’re going to be scapegoats, aren’t we?” Nix said, seemingly seizing the idea out of thin air.

“Well, at least one of you will be,” Sali said. “I do still have openings on my staff for someone bright and talented.” 

To her credit, sort of, Sali didn’t seem to be particularly concerned which of her guests she scooped up and which she fed to the space wolves. Ayli knew she would be the easier one to place as the scapegoat if Sali had issues with the Klex cartel and if it came to it, she’d insist that Nix do the sensible thing and take whatever offer Sali put on the table.

“Who are you setting us up against?” Ayli asked.

“I have options,” Sali said, as though she didn’t have her entire plan worked out already.

“You’re going to have us kill Ulno Klex,” Nix said, again as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Not you, Ayli was quite clear on that,” Sali said. “All the messy work will be handled by trained professionals. They’ll simply be disguised as you.”

“Why?” Ayli asked, trying to picture a more convoluted and risky means of going about a simple assassination and coming up with a dozen options off the top of her head.

“She gets to destabilize the Klexs and it’ll run the bounty on us up by a factor of ten, so she can get paid for it too,” Nix said, with a far away look in her eyes.

“By a hundred, like I said, you’re easily worth a million credits,” Sali said.

“Won’t they know you took us in?” Ayli asked.

“Of course not. Why do you think I had you picked up before you left the dock?” Sali said. “Also, I was in a meeting with Bolobla Ool at the time too so, clearly, I could not have been there either.”

“How did you get Bolobla in on this?” Nix asked. “I thought he hated you.”

“He does. Ever since I took the surface cities from him. Or at least that’s the public image he keeps up. In truth he was happy to get rid of them, especially since I’ve doubled his revenue and taken all the paperwork off his flippers. The Klex on the other hand killed his cousin right before their last spawning season, so he’s not terribly fond of them at the moment, especially Ulno.”

“Did you have all this planned before we got her?” Aylia asked.

“Not at all. I expected I’d never seen either of you again. It is a big galaxy after all,” Sali said.

“I’m sorry we didn’t part on better terms,” Nix said.

Ayli did not echo the sentiment. Her previous dealings with Sali hadn’t ended badly but Ayli had always felt like she was dancing on the knife edge of betrayal.

Or that might have been her paranoia from growing up as a Rebellion brat showing.

Current kidnapping aside, she liked Sali too. She just knew better than to trust her. Or date her? What had Nix been thinking?

Apart from the obvious of course.

There was no accounting for taste, even if a quick glance towards Sali suggested that Nix’s taste was, in fact, excellent.

“Why did you two break up?” Ayli asked, the question tumbling out before it occurred to her it was probably an unpleasant topic for both of them.

“She blew up one of my cargo ships and vanished before I could ask her why,” Sali said.

“I didn’t think you’d want to talk much after that,” Nix said.

“At the time, no, I suppose I didn’t,” Sali said.

“Wait, why did you blow up a ship?” Ayli asked.

“It was hauling weapons to the Sundalli, for their offensive on Gartock IV,” Nix said, as though whatever local conflict the Sundalli and Gartocks had been embroiled in had been newsworthy enough that Ayli might have heard of it.

“The Sundalli launched an attack on the Gartockans after the Gartockans won a battle against an Imperial Remnant fleet and lost three quarters of their own in the process,” Nix said on seeing Ayli’s confusion.

“The Sundalli saw an opening and took it, even managed to capture the Gartock capital city,” Sali said. “But they wanted more weapons to expand their front and take the whole world.”

“And that didn’t work out for them, did it.” Nix said, somewhere between knowing the answer and having a solid guess at it.

“Not for them or for anyone who was ‘providing aid or comfort’ to them,” Sali said.

“What happened?” Ayli said.

“Turns out the Gartock Fleetyards are exceptional at repairing damaged ships,” Sali said. “They had their whole fleet back in action in a week. The Sundalli, or the ones who remain, are now enjoying a pre-space flight existence and the people who supplied them with weapons or ships are now mostly clouds of free floating ions.”

“I know that wouldn’t have been you. You could have taken them if it came to a fight,” Nix said. “But the cost wouldn’t have been worth it.”

“You could have told me all that before blowing up my ship,” Sali said.

“Could I have?” Nix asked, not flinching from Sali’s gaze.

They each refused to budge for a moment, until Sali looked away and sighed first.

“I suppose not,” Sali said.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think I could have explained myself well enough to convince you even if you’d been willing to listen,” Nix said. “Sometimes things just make sense without me being able to explain why.”

“You sound like my grandmother,” Sali said. “Mystical old bat was always trying to teach me to meditate and things like that.”

“I thought that was every Mirialan?” Ayli said, though she couldn’t call the handful of Mirialans she knew a necessarily decent sample size for the species. “Don’t you have a whole meditation garden setup somewhere in here?”

“I’ve got three of them,” Sali said. “You should visit them, I hear they’re quite lovely.”

“I thought you liked the gardens?” Nix said.

“I do. It’s very peaceful there. I could spend sun up to sun down in any one of them, with or without company,” Sali said. “And if I did that I’d lose half the cities that are floating on the surface before the first sun set.”

Nix walked over to her and took Sali’s left hand in both of hers.

“You need an exit strategy,” she said. “You can’t keep living like this.”

“Maybe not,” Sali said, pulling her hand away from Nix’s, though slowly, “But I can, and will, certainly die if I give people too many openings, or lose too much of what I have built up here.”

It was Nix’s turn to sigh.

“Yeah. I suppose you’re right.” Nix’s wistfulness said how much she wished she was wrong, and hinted towards the well of fondness she still carried for an ex- she was clearly not compatible with.

“Speaking of those duties, its time for me to go put a stranglehold on some suppliers. You let them update one trade agreement and suddenly the whole planetary food network is on the docket.”

“Before you do,” Nix said. “Have you thought about the Goldrunner?”

Sali paused, confusion playing over her face.

“You’re ship? No, why?”

“You should bring it here, so I can fix it,” Nix said.

Sali snorted a brief laugh out.

“And, why, exactly, would I do that?” she asked. “I believe I already turned down the chance to back another one of this one’s wild expeditions to nowhere.” She gestured towards Ayli who shrugged. She’d had to try to make a pitch even if it was doomed to fail.

“Oh, not for us. For you,” Nix said.

“For me? Do tell me how this will benefit me, please.”

“You’ll get a lot of use out of it!” Nix said, oddly cheerful at the notion. “First of all, if you’re planning to have someone impersonate us, they’ll do a much more convincing job of it if they’re flying our ship.”

Ayli found it amusing that Nix was calling the Goldrunner ‘their ship’. It didn’t feel wrong, only a bit surprising. 

Which was a sign that Ayli had probably lost her mind due to captivity or something since it wasn’t like they were actually married. Only Canto-Blight-married, which was about as binding a pinkie-promise.

“I think we’ve got whatever claim on each other that we chose to have.” Nix had said, and the words were still echoing in Ayli’s ears as a question she either didn’t have the answer to or was “too smart” to accept that she already knew what she wanted her answer to be.

“Also,” Nix said. “If you’re going to turn us in for a million credit bounty, why not cash in on a Wayfarer class freighter too? It’s probably at about a third of its full value at the moment with the deflector array and the engines in the state they’re in. And that’s assuming the rest of the systems weren’t put in backwards too. Given me some time with it in your repair dock and you know it’ll be worth its full value or more.”

From anyone else that would sound like either the worst lie in the world, or the depths of madness speaking. Ayli’s experience with Nix so far however suggested she was being ernest about wanting to repair the Goldrunner, and the kind of improvements she could make to it.

Something about her offer though suggested she was working some other angle too, which was something Sali was usually frighteningly good at picking up on.

“You know what? Sure. Let’s do that,” Sali said. “We’ll call it my gift to you.”

Ayli froze her face to not give away her surprise. It wasn’t that Sali agreeing to fix the Goldrunner was unreasonable, but since when was Sali reasonable about things like that?

Since Nix apparently.

Sali pulled a datapad from her pocket and keyed in what Ayli assumed were the orders to retrieve the Goldrunner from its hidden dock and, as she later discovered, an open purchase request for anything Nix needed to repair it. 

With a smile she then left Ayli and Nix alone in the room once more.

“That went well, I think,” Nix said, looking completely unsurprised by the turn of events. “It’ll take me about a week to get the Goldrunner in proper shape. No, wait, five days. I gotta be able to do a better job than those hacks on Gartock. Think you’ll be ready to leave by then?”

Star Wars: Treasures of the Force – Ch 3

It wasn’t the first time Nix had felt the muzzle of an E-11 Blastek pressed against her back. It wasn’t a common occurrence for her either but after the first dozen or so times it had become less unnerving and more irritating. The rent-a-goon with delusions of adequacy who was on the Calerpris Dock Security payroll wasn’t going to shoot her. He more fearful than aggressive. Also, he still had the safety on given the lack of a subtle rumble where the barrel made contact with her spine. 

“So, how bad did you say your breakup with Sali was again?” Ayli asked, her hands behind her head the same as Nix’s were.

Unlike Nix however, Ayli had a pair of clever little hold out blaster at the top of her jacket. Fortunately, Ayli wasn’t in a murderous mood, at least not as far as Nix could tell, so no one was likely to have their vital fluids staining the dock’s floor in the Calerpris arrivals area any time soon.

“I mean breakups are never good, but it wasn’t ‘hold me at gun point’ bad.” Nix said. “I’m sure she’s forgotten about the money I lost her by now.”

“As though I’d ever forget about you,” Saliandris A’Prezzo, the Tyrant Queen of the Dashfin Run, Breaker of the Siege of Bokrund, and Scourge of the 5th Begani Legion said as a pair of blast doors whooshed open to admit her to the docking bay. “Or even a single credit I’m owed.”

Saliandris’ entrance didn’t drop everyone to their knees, but the the guards around Nix lost their attention for anyone but their boss. As though they drilled it a thousand times, each made sure that their weapons were pointing as far from her direction as possible. Nix understood the reaction. Sali had an imposing presence even beyond her two meter height and muscular build. Mirialans didn’t tend to grow that tall, but that was far from the only measure by which Sali was exceptional for her species. 

“It worked out for you in the end though, didn’t it?” Nix asked, unsure exactly how their last disagreement had benefited Saliandris but certain that it had. Which was good since it hadn’t worked out terribly well for Nix.

“Surprisingly enough, it did,” Sali said. “And see, you didn’t get shot at all when you came back here.”

“We appreciate that,” Ayli said. “But why did we even get stopped? I’ve got a real transponder in the Goldrunner and everything for a change!”

“Oh, my dear Ayli, haven’t I told you that playing by the rules brings nothing but trouble?” Sali said, gesturing for the dock guards to find somewhere else to be. Her personal retinue was made up of only two droids for a change. Two droids with the firepower of a small army unless Nix missed her guess. Given their generally human stature and proportions most of the weapons would be built inside their black metal chassis but for good measure they were both carrying the kind of blaster rifles one usually targeted hostile starships with. Always easier to be intimidating when everyone around you knew at least one thing to definitely be afraid of.

“They’re your rules though!” Ayli said, relaxing as the guards departed, though not so much that she tried to close the gap between herself and Sali.

That was the ‘nice’ thing about droid body guards – there was really no telling what might set them off and they had no body language to read to help provide a clue in that regards. Best to let the planetary regent (for all intents and purposes) lead the dance, unless one felt like dancing with the fishes in Calerpris’ planet-wide oceans.

“They are, and I should thank you for respecting them, but I think I prefer the money from your bounties,” Sali said.

“There’s no bounty on me?” Nix said. She wasn’t sure of that but the only one who might have put a bounty on her head was her previous captain and he was stranded on a planet in the Galarus system where no ship docks were available to fix his exploded hyper drive or the sublight engines the hyper drive had slagged when it blew up.

“You’re included in the ‘and the crew of’ section beautiful,” Sali said.

“Wait, who put a bounty on us? We just got here,” Ayli said, she started pacing in a small circle and chewing her bottom lip. Nix fought back a smile at how adorable it looked, not wanting to test Saliandris’s patience, or reveal yet that there was something between Ayli and herself.

“It’s on the Holonet, couldn’t believe it myself when I saw it. Did you really kill one of the Klex Cartel?” Sali looked as amused as she sounded, which Nix did not take to be a good sign. Sali’s idea of amusements have been one of the, as it turned out, many things, they’d disagreed about during their sadly brief time together as…as whatever they’d been to each other.

“No! Of we didn’t. Wait, which one?” Ayli asked, not making them sound as completely guilty as she might have.

“Show her,” Sali said to the droid to her left.

The droid opened it’s palm and projected the holographic image of a bounty notice. Nix was too fixated on the holoprojector, which she recognized as a rather clever rework of a Sendyne Systems Burst Laser Array, to read the Bounty notice at first. That the hologram emitter could have been refocused in under a tenth of a second to emit a laser change capable of melting an inch of durasteel should have frightened her, but curiosity left her itching to take it apart and see how they’d managed to get the holographic refractors to play nicely with the Blaster Array. Usually one would fry the other, but Calerpris had some excellent techs.

Also, Sali wasn’t going to have them shot. That wasn’t why any of them were here. 

“Ten thousand? That’s it?” Ayli took a step forward, and the droids did react, but only to take a half step in front of Sali. 

“A bit insulting I know, but it’s your first bounty,” Sali said. “You need to give these things time. Work on them every chance you get. Maybe kill Ulno Klex next time?”

“We didn’t even kill Barto though!” Ayli said. “I mean really, for ten thousand credits? Who would think I would work that cheap?”

“Would Darsus have a bigger price tag?” Nix asked, again curiosity override her better judgment.

“Not for this one, seeing as how it was Darsus Klex who posted it,” Sali said. “I mean some people arrange for posthumous bounties, never really saw the point myself, but I don’t think Darsus has that much foresight.”

A private cab arrived at the dock and parked beside the Goldrunner. From the armor plating, and the wonderful purr of its repulsorlift engine, Nix knew it belonged to Sali, and better Sali had kept it in good repair since Nix had last been able to work on it.

At Sali’s gesture, they all climbed into the cabs spacious interior. Nix opted not to take her usual seat beside Sali. It had the best view out the right side of the cab but she wasn’t sure if she’d be welcome there and sitting beside Ayli sent a better message anyways.

“When did Darsus post the bounty?” Ayli asked as the cab lifted off and joined the traffic stream over the capital city. Nix knew the route it was taking and found herself wishing they’d been able to tow the Goldrunner along with them. Sali’s repair bays were top notch, as was pretty much everything else in her fortress compound.

“Went out on the Holonet about a day ago. Why’s that?” Sali asked.

“That means we didn’t kill him either,” Ayli said, a note of frustration in her voice.

“Sorry,” Nix said. She knew Ayli wasn’t angry at her, but anger in general felt like loose plasma currents arcing around her.

“Not your fault,” Ayli said. “I put off the refit on the Goldrunner’s weapon systems at the last dock. We could have earned the bounty proper if I had.”

“Well if you’re not opposed to that kind of work, maybe you can be a bit more valuable than the bounty on you suggests,” Sali said.

“We could…” Nix started to say before Ayli cut her off.

“No.” She shook her head and put her hand out as though to protect Nix. “Even if I felt like stirring up that kind of trouble, that’s not the work we do.”

“We could do something else though,” Nix said.

Sali gave her a long look up and down, though they both knew Nix wasn’t offering herself as part of any deal.

“I bet you haven’t had the Silver Star tuned up since I left,” Nix said, reasonably sure she’d win that bet, but knowing that it wouldn’t be enough of an offer for Sali to jump on.

“Haven’t had a chance for a proper sightseeing tour since then,” Sali said, as though deflecting an accusation.

“We might be able to give you the chance for one,” Ayli said. “It’s what we came here for in the first place after all.”

“You flew out here to give me a vacation? I don’t think you know what would happen if I took a vacation. This whole place would tear itself apart inside a week,” Sali said.

“A working vacation then,” Ayli said. “You travel for business right?”

“Less and less these days,” Sali said. “Easier to project the right image when you make them come to you.”

“The last thing you have a problem with is image,” Nix said which drew a wicked smile from Sali. Ayli gave her a suspicious look but followed it with a small shrug. It was too hard a compliment to deny.

“You’d be surprised,” Sali said, looking out towards the recollection of some troublesome memory Nix could only imagine. “You do have me intrigued though. What would this ‘working vacation’ entail?”

“Finding buyers for priceless treasures and taking a five percent cut of the profits, while getting to mingle with the sort of people who buy treasures where price is of no consequence,” Ayli said.

“Seems to me if you’ve got priceless treasures on hand, you could just hand those over and pay off your bounty without any fuss,” Sali said.

“That’s the other thing we came here for,” Nix said.

Sali sighed and then chuckled.

“Of course. You don’t have any treasures at the moment but you’ve got a great lead on them and with just a small investment, you’re sure to be rolling in a pile of credits as deep as the Sargras Sea. Does that about cover it?”

“No. We don’t need an investment,” Ayli said. “I’ve got that covered. Well, except for some ship repairs. We could use those, if you’ve got some spare parts you’re not doing anything with?”

“So, free ship parts? Probably a free dock rental? Free repair bay access too? Maybe a hyperdrive recharge? Permits and inspections waved? Food and water stores replenished? Oh and let me guess, expedition gear for whatever backwater hellhole you think has a bunch of culturally relevant hunks of carved rock?”

“Yeah. All of that, and some information too,” Ayli said.

“For five percent?” Sali said.

“Of the profit, yes,” Ayli said.

Sali started chuckling and it turned into honest laughter a moment later.

“Oh Ayli’whensha, I have missed you.”

“Your aim was pretty close last time though,” Ayli said.

“You know I was shooting at the Scurthan pirate scum behind you,” Sali said.

“I still say that was a lucky shot,” Ayli said.

“Luck never enters into it,” Sali said. “I always hit my mark.”

“So does that mean you’re in?” Nix asked.

Sali laughed again.

“I wouldn’t want to be within a thousand parsecs of a deal like that.” She gestured to the two droids who raised their arms, deploying one of the dozen of built-in weapon systems they had. Nix thought that the laser targeting dots which appeared on Ayli and her own chests were a nice touch. Not too flashy, but still able to convey a definite message.

“No, I think I’ll be taking you in and seeing if we can’t get that bounty raised a little higher.”

Star Wars: Treasures of the Force – Ch 2

The jump to lightspeed felt wrong. Ayli was not an astounding pilot but she knew how the Goldrunner felt when it launched itself into hyperspace and this time the moment of transition had felt noticeably different. Almost worrisomely so some might say.

“Uh, Nix, what did you do?” The image of plowing through the gravity shadow of a stellar mass at ten thousand times the speed of light had never really bothered Ayli. It seemed like a painless end and an unlikely one. Almost as unlikely as meeting a beautiful mechanic who was coincidentally in need of a new home and ship to work on.

“It worked!” Nix’s delight was not muffled by the ship’s comm at all.

“What worked Nix? I’m seeing…I don’t know what I’m seeing on these readings.”

“We’re not being pursued anymore,” Nix said.

“I get that,” Ayli said, searching for any readout on the Goldrunner’s control panel that would give her a sense of which button she needed to press to avoid becoming a gravity pancake. “Not quite what I’m worried about now though.”

“Worried?” Nix asked. “Oh! Yeah, don’t be. We’ll be…”

Space lurched again and the stars which had been swirling outside returned to being their normal, sedate little points-of-light selves.

“Fine!’ Nix said. “See. No problem at all. Well, aside from us needing some new deflector shields.”

Ayli massaged her temples and forehead. 

She’d married a maniac.

Not a surprise really. Anyone who’d marry her would have to be a maniac. This one though? 

Nix bounced onto the bridge with her dimply smile and bright cheerful eyes and for a moment Ayli lost her train of thought.

“Don’t worry about the deflector arrays,” Nix said. “Or do. I mean, it’s never good to be at less than a fully working compliment of those, but if we can find a dock – any dock – I can redo the connections on the remaining ones and we’ll be at least twice as protected as we were a few minutes ago.”

“Nix, slow down just a moment please. What happened, what did you do?”

“Oh, right,” Nix deflated a bit and folded in on herself as she sat down at the engineer’s station. Ayli glance over a the co-pilot’s seat, indicating with a glance that Nix was free to join her there, but Nix was already looking away.

“I saw that the larboard deflector array had been damaged – it wasn’t installed right – but it still had power so I turned it into a bomb.”

Ayli wasn’t sure why Nix seemed to expect her to be mad about that. 

“You did all that in a minute? That’s wonderful. Please tell me it blew Darsus’s whole squadron to space dust!” 

“Probably not,” Nix said without lifting her gaze from the deck. “They were still pretty far off so it would have missed one or two of them. The good news is that they’ll think we blew up, so they should give up looking for you.” Nix finally glanced up, searching for Ayli’s gaze and approval.

“One or two? Talk about the perfect honeymoon present! Oh you are the best wife ever!” Ayli said cackling internally at the idea of Darsus having met such a well deserved end. “Is that what messed up the jump to lightspeed?”

“Not exactly?” Nix said. “There’s a lot of weird math involved, but the basic idea is I used the field the hyperdrive produces to shred the deflectors and shoot them out at something like 99.999% the speed of light. Sorta. Lightspeed physics is weird. The jump to lightspeed felt off because the I’d routed around the primary safety constraints on the drive to allow that to happen and so that we could jump without a finished route calculation.”

Ayli could feel the anxiety lurking in Nix. A wrong word here wouldn’t break Nix, she was too ready for that, too braced for it. It would damage something though. Some connection they’d managed to form in the short time they’d been together.

That gave Ayli a moment’s pause. She didn’t know quite what she’d found with Nix, but she was already starting to value it. Their whole arrangement was doomed to fail of course. No one jumped into a partnership, much less a marriage, with as little knowledge of each other as she and Nix had. Doomed things could still be worthwhile though, and there was a persistent and annoying voice in the back of Ayli’s head that kept asking “what if?” as though her subconscious had made some decisions which it hadn’t bothered to share with the rest of her yet.

“For the record,” she said, not sure if what she was about to say was wise, but it at least felt right, “I don’t make a habit of second guessing experts who are working under tight deadlines. You’re the Ship’s Mechanic, and if you needed to disable a safety system, I’m going to assume you knew what you were doing. I’ve met a whole lot of you engineer types and you don’t tend to turn stuff like that off for kicks and fun.”

Nix melted in her seat, the warmth of her delight returning to her eyes.

“Yeah, the one who disregard safety systems you don’t tend to meet for fairly obvious reasons,” Nix said. “In this case, I knew it was okay to take the primary safety lock offline because  the Goldrunner’s got secondary and tertiary systems. With the primary down we were able to jump to light speed to avoid the blast, but the secondary put the brakes on almost instantly and then killed the jump entirely when it parsed to the end of the computed path and saw it wasn’t finished.”

Ayli blinked. She’d had it drilled into her so deeply that you had to have a properly computed hyperspace route or you’d absolutely die that it had never occurred to her there might be workarounds or cheats you could pull.

“Is that something all ship engineer’s know?” she asked, wondering if she’d have to throttle a few of the ones she’d worked with over the years for not proposing it when they’d been in tight spots.

“Um, no, I kind of invented it? Or not really invented, I mean I’m sure there’s a lot of other people who’ve thought of it too. It’s just when you listen to the drives, there’s these specific changes they go through as the safety systems cycle through their checks and if you’ve read up on the drive specs it’s easy to see how the timing works out between the primary and the secondary,” Nix said. “Also I don’t think many people do it because, well, it does leave you a bit lost.”

“Lost?” Ayli turned to her console and saw then, yes indeed, the navigation and positioning system was having a minor panic attack over dropping out of hyperspace at a ‘random point in the galaxy’ according to the read out.

That, in turn, gave her a moment of mild panic, but she forced herself to breathe and turn back to Nix, who she somehow knew would have this eventuality covered.

“I can fix that,” Nix said. “The systems get confused by the jump, but it was so short we’re barely out of the system. If we’d been on proper hyperspace route, we’d be much farther out but a blind jump like that one is almost guaranteed to be a slow one.”

“Almost?” Ayli asked out of pure curiosity rather than concern.

“People do find new hyperspace routes from time to time and blind jumps are usually what’s responsible,” Nix said. “Those can do really incredible things to the output of the drives. It seemed like that was a risk worth taking under the circumstances though.”

“Absolutely no argument on that here,” Ayli said. “Will we be okay for another jump without the deflector array or will we need to limp back to Canto at sublight?”

A mischievous smile flitted across Nix’s lips before she spoke.

“It would be tempting to say we should stick to sub-light. I mean I can think of all kinds of things to do with a month or so alone with you, but, as your Ship’s Mechanic, I believe in being honest with my captain, so I must confess that we’re fine for another jump.”

Ayli found that she was oddly disappointed to miss out on the month of sub-light travel. Of course given the rations she had on board, it probably wouldn’t have been as enjoyable a month as she was imagining but still…

“Also, I believe there was talk of ‘treasure that wouldn’t wait’ just laying out there for us to pick up?” Nix said.

It was Ayli’s turn to smile.

“See and this is how I know we’re compatible,” she said.

“You know I don’t think I remember you mentioning what the treasure actually was though?” Nix said.

“Eternal life!” Ayli said. “Or Eternal Youth, the myths do a terrible job of differentiating between the two.”

“Oh, so this is a mythic treasure then?” Nix said. “Do we sell it for mythic money?”

“The Eternal Life part? Yeah. It’s worth all the imaginary money in the world. The temple that was build as a  shrine to the Eternal Spring though? That’s got the kind of real treasure that we can use to buy a few billion more deflector arrays with.”

“This sounds more like a robbery than a treasure hunting expedition? Or, wait, let me guess, the temple’s a myth too?”

“Was a myth. Is still considered a myth. Is not, however, a myth.”

“And you know this how exactly?”

“In addition to being a dashing treasure hunter, I am also a renowned historian,” Ayli said, stretching the truth just slightly.

“I can see how the careers would intersect,” Nix said. “Don’t most historians just write books though?”

“The boring ones do,” Ayli said. “But the boring one’s don’t have this!” 

She pulled the coin she’d been carrying with her for the last three months and held it out to show Nix.

Who leaned away from it warily.

“It’s made from a metal alloy similar to Phrik,” Ayli said, deciding not to comment on Nix’s odd reaction. “No one makes coins out of Phrik. It’s ridiculously hard to work with and make and has a lot of better uses. No one would waste it on coins. No one except Ravas Durla, the not-quite-so-mythical founder of the Temple of Eternal Life or Youth or whatever the right translation should be.”

“What was her story? Was she evil?” Nix asked, still leaning away from coin.

“She ran a Temple that supposedly raked in all sorts of treasures, and hoarded them. That’s not typically what good people do, but history shows us not to judge the people of the past too quickly. Ravas Durla lived in a very different time and since we still know almost nothing about it, or her, I’m not about to pass judgment.”

“That sounds fair,” Nix agreed, relaxing a bit. “How does a coin help us find her temple though?”

“It doesn’t. Not alone. It does give us a point of data though and that’s more than anyone’s had on Ravas Durla’s temple since people started looking for it about a hundred years ago.”

“What happened a hundred years ago?” Nix still wasn’t moving closer to the coin, so Ayli put it back in the case she’d been carrying it in, which seemed to relax Nix even more.

“A weird religious sect popped up. They called themselves ‘The Children of the Storm’, and their leader claimed to be receiving ‘Visions from the Bringer of Eternal Life Ravas Durla’. The Jedi Order apparently sent some people to investigate the group, but by the time they got to there, the whole cult had vanished.”

“And people are still talking about them?”

“The mystery of where they went helps with that, but what’s kept them more relevant is that their leader published a recounting of his visions and there were some actual historical findings discovered from it. Not the Temple of course, but two lost planets turning up as habitable when they were missing from the galactic charts tends to hold people’s imaginations for a while.”

“And neither one had the Temple on it?”

“Nope. The temple was on the third planet mentioned in the ‘Visions’, but that one turned out to be an empty system. No planets. No asteroids. No space stations.”

“So guy who wrote about it lied about where it was?”

“Probably. Either that or someone found a way to hide an entire planet.”

“Which means the questions is, how are we going to find it?”

“Easy,” Ayli said. “One piece at a time.”

“Seems like we’d need a lot of pieces to make up a whole planet.”

“True, but you need surprisingly few to triangulate one’s location.”

“And I take it you know where you can find these additional bits of information?”

“Not me precisely, but I do know a gal,” Ayli said. “She said she’s got a line on another coin from a different dig site.”

“So we get the next coin, or more importantly, we find where it’s from and work out which systems the two places might shared jump routes with to narrow down our search?”

“That and I can do some research about the dig sites that were discovered to look for clues towards other sites that might have more relics to work with.”

“Your friend wouldn’t happen to have a nice shipyard she could loan us a berth in would she?” Nix asked.

“Oh yeah. She sort of a major player on Calerpris. Knows pretty much everyone and has her fingers in about a million different data systems.”

“Calerpris?” Nix asked, trepidation creeping into her voice. “You wouldn’t be talking about Saliandris A’Prezzo would you? The Tyrant Queen of the Dashfin Run? Breaker of the Seige of Bokrund? Scourge of the 5th Begani Legion?”

“Oh! You know Sali too!”

“She’s my ex.”

Star Wars: Treasures of the Force – Ch 1

Nix woke to find herself in bed with a charmingly soft and warm companion nestled in her arms and a wedding ring on her finger.

That’s new. The thought bubbled up much like the sparkling Santo nectar had the night before. Or was it the night before that? She spent a long moment trying to recreate the events of the previous evening but her thoughts were sluggish and too eager to circle back to the dream she’d been enjoying. Why, they asked, worry about things like yesterday when today was starting off so nicely?

Feeling the woman in her arms stir brought Nix fully awake, but left her wondering which part of her dream had been memories after all. With how reality was turning out, her aching heart was hoping the answer would be “it had all been real”.

“Oh, good, I didn’t just imagine you,” the woman said, stretching lazily as she turned under Nix’s arm. In place of Nix’s long hair, the Twi’lek woman had a pair of long, graceful head tails, and where Nix’s skin was a light brown, the woman’s was the pale blue of an early morning sunrise on Nix’s homeworld.

“Did we get married?” Nix asked, perplexed by the matching rings they both seemed to be wearing.

“Uh? I think so?” the woman said. “Was it my idea? Or yours?”

“I don’t know,” Nix said. “Mine maybe? You’re Ayli?” 

Fragments of memory supported that guess as did the name etched around the band of ring Nix wore.

“Ayli’wensha, but Ayli’s fine. And you’re Nix Lamplighter, and you’re a mechanic, right?”

Nix chuckled. “I guess we got to know each other first at least.”

Ayli smiled in return, a playful grin that sent tiny wrinkles to the corners of her eyes. “Fairly well I’d say.”

More memories returned, drawn out by that smile. Adorable lips. Adoring lips. The better parts of Nix’s dream may not have been a dream at all she decided.

“Getting married might have been my idea,” Ayli said. “I’ve been looking for a mechanic for a while. I think at some point the idea of marrying one seemed more reasonable than trying to hire somebody. I’d say that was the Santo nectar talking but I’m pretty sure I’m sober now and for a change I do not regret my drunken choices.”

Ayli ran a hand along Nix’s back leaving goosebumps in the wake of her touch. Regret was the furthest thing from Nix’s mind as well, though there was a voice in the back of her head pleading for a moment’s rationality.

A random one night fling was one thing, but she could not seriously be thinking it would turn into any more than that? Was she? 

She was.

Nix couldn’t find words to explain it. Not even to herself. Looking at the woman beside her though she felt herself standing at a turning point in her life. The path she’d been following had led her down roads which had grown darker with every step she’d taken. It had all felt right, been right even, at the time, but gazing into eyes as dark and deep as the night sky, Nix saw new possibilities opening before her. And new challenges. And new heartaches. 

But it would be worth it. The pool of calm which filled her as she reflected on a future with Ayil left her sure of it.

Which had to be Santo induced madness. Wedding rings aside, they knew nothing about each other. Or remembered nothing about each other.

But wasn’t finding out where the fun was? 

“No regrets here either,” she said, drinking in Ayil’s warmth and touch for a delicious moment before an unfortunate thought occurred to her. “Are weddings on Canto Bight recognized on any other planet though?”

“Not exactly,” Ayli said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “I think that’s why I kidnapped you.”

“Oh. Nice. Where are we?” Nix asked. She knew they weren’t in her hotel room, mostly because she couldn’t afford a hotel room or even a small box on the street at the moment.

“This is one of the cabins on my ship,” Ayli said. “Or a room that looks just like it I suppose. I may have told the ship to head out of the system after we stumbled onboard.”

Nix’s head cleared more as her senses reached out and the familiar thrum of an Incom 3M9 sublight engine greeted her. They were making good speed for a sublight run, except for an engine glitch which ran along Nix’s nerves like a rusty nail.

“Your vari-coupling is shorting to your overcharge capacitor,” she said.

“Oh, uh, wow, you can tell that how?” Ayli asked.

“Each engine has its own harmonics. I grew up with them so its not hard to feel when one’s out of alignment,” Nix said. “Still a decent job of kidnapping though.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t say that was my best idea ever,” Ayli said. “Fortunately the ship didn’t engage the hyperdrive, so I can have you back on Canto as soon as you like.”

“Hey if I’m going to be kidnapped by my wife, I expect her to do a proper job of it,” Nix said. “I seem to recall a promise of treasure and fortune in there somewhere? And a visit to the Crystal Gardens of Nep’Tham?”

Ayli’s expression shifted from embarrassment to intrigue as she put on her discarded clothes.

“I do recall talking about the Crystal Gardens,” she said. “They’re fantastic if you catch them in the right season. It is really not fair me of to try to hold you into coming along on my treasure hunt though.”

“Taking me back to Canto Bight would not be doing me any favors,” Nix said. 

“Aren’t you a ship’s mechanic though?” Ayli asked. “If we turn around now, I can probably get you back before your ship leaves.”

“Oh, it’s long gone,” Nix said. “I am more of an ex-ship’s mechanic to be honest.”

“Really?” Ayli asked, a note of wonder creeping into her voice.

“I think that’s why I let you kidnap me,” Nix said. “In fact, if I remember right, I think the kidnapping was my idea wasn’t it?”

“Huh, yeah, I think it was,” Ayli said. “So, does that mean you really want to come along for this? I can’t exactly pay you until we find what we’re looking for.”

“I see why marrying a mechanic was easier than hiring one,” Nix said.

“That doesn’t count anywhere except on Canto Bight,” Ayli said, her gazing dropping to the floor. “And not even really there. I honestly don’t have any claim on you.”

“I think we’ve got whatever claim on each other that we chose to have,” Nix said, giving her heart leave to speak. “And I think what that means is something we can work out from here. If you want to give it a try. For now though, let me keep this,” she spun her ring with her thumb, “as a promise that we’ll see where this goes? Oh, and that you’ll feed me and give me a place to sleep.”

“Room and board? That’s it? You’re selling yourself short,” Ayli said. “I’m not going to be a fool and pass that offer up though. Ship, log Nix Lamplighter on as an official crew member and the ship’s mechanic.”

“Affirmative,” the ship’s deep voice responded.

“You have a droid?” Nix asked.

“Not exactly?” Ayli said. “The Goldrunner’s astrogation system was all shot up when I got it. Some friends of mine bashed together a working replacement but they went a little overboard on it.” 

“What did they do?” Nix had been accused of ‘going overboard’ on repairs once or twice and felt her curiosity starting to tingle.

“From what I could make out? Apparently took bits from what remained of an astromech droid, mashed those together with the core of a planetary landing coordination system, and welded the mess into more or less all of the Goldrunner’s systems with spit and prayers.”

“Ooo! That sounds clever!” Nix said, her mind racing as she considered the possibilities of how fully a medium freighter could be automated. “Can I see how it’s all wired together?”

“Sure, I’ll give you a full tour of the place,” Ayli said a moment before the entire cabin shuddered violently.

“That wasn’t the engine,” Nix said, jumping up from the bed too.

“No, no it was not,” Ayli said.

“Hostile vessels detected,” the ship said. “Beginning evasive maneuvers.”

“Who’s attacking us?” Nix asked. “Can we outrun them?”

“They were not supposed to find me this quick!” Ayli said.

“They who?” Nix scrambled around the bedroom and began to collect her own clothes, stumbling as another blast rocked the ship.

Well, no worries about the vari-coupler, she thought, picturing the extent of damage from the change in the engine’s whine.

“The, uh, bad news is that you may have married someone who’s wanted by the Klex Cartel,” Ayli said. 

“Wanted for what?” Nix asked, her eyes narrowing as she buckled her belt on.

“The Goldrunner has something of a history to it,” Ayli said. “Short version; they wanted it for smuggling, and I wanted it for treasure hunting. They were slow and I was not.”

The ship rocked again and Nix felt the Incom’s output drop by eighteen percent. They were not going to escape without a jump to light speed.

“They don’t seem too interested in getting it back in one piece,” Nix said, following Ayli out of the cabin and into the hallway that ran the length of the ship.

“That would be Darsus Klex,” Ayli said. “He is a big fan of the idea that if he can’t have it, it doesn’t get to exist.”

“So no chance of talking him down then I take it?” Nix asked a moment before another blast hit the ship sending her crashing into a bulkhead.

The good news was that the ships rear deflector had shielded them from the worst of the attack. The bad news was that there’d been spill over that had cooked the Goldrunner’s anterior drive stabilizer. Nix stretched out her senses for a  split second to be sure. Ah. It was the backup anterior drive stabilizer. Not the primary.  She smiled. The Goldrunner had backup stabilizers! Well, ‘had’ in the past tense. Still, that was a good sign. Someone cared about her. The ship that was. Nix always liked to see that.

“Won’t hurt trying to talk to him,” Ayli said. “Might buy us time to plot a jump out of here.”

“I’ll go make sure we’ve got engines left to make the jump with,” Nix said and started heading towards the engine room.

“How do you know…” Ayli didn’t get to finish the question before Nix jumped down the hatch which obviously led to the engines. 

The Goldrunner was a Wayfarer class medium freighter. Mediums were fun ships and people threw them together in all sorts of configurations, but ultimately the engines had to go where the engines had to go. It was just what made sense.

Nix knew that lot of people would disagree with her on that. Starship design was supposed to be some amazing esoteric art, but when you got down to the nuts and bolt and flux relays there was a poetry to every ship if you knew how to listen for it. Poetry whose form and structure would tell you where everything was (or should be) and what was inevitable wrong with the ship (all ships needed work done on them, some just needed it more urgently than others).

“Hey Klex, what’s the big idea shooting up my ship,” Ayli said, her voice coming from the ship’s comms which Goldrunner had patched into the broadcast of the ship-to-ship link.

There was an immediate crackle of static as Darsus Klex responded to the channel.

“That’s my ship Wensha! You stole it and now you’ll learn why no one steals from the Klex Cartel.”

“Nobody owned the ship when I took it Darsus,” Ayli said. “It’s not stealing if you salvage it.”

Another blast shook the Goldrunner, but Nix had the deflectors concentrated on the quadrant Klex’s ships were coming from. They weren’t going to hold forever but she only needed to buy them enough time for the hyperjump calculation to complete.

“My brother owned that ship! It belongs to me!” Darsus’s anger seemed to be matched by the firepower his ships were directing at the Goldrunner. 

Which suited Nix just fine. Deflector shields were great against people who mindlessly blasted forward without any tactics or strategy.

“You were the one who killed him!” Ayli said. “It’s not my fault you shot first and tried to pillage afterward.”

“I’m going to destroy you,” Darsus said.

“You won’t get a ship out of it if you do,” Ayli said. “Might as well just leave us alone. It’s just one ship after all, and you can always steal it back later right?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Darsus said, “You talk a walk out the airlock and leave the ship to me, and I won’t do anything too terrible with your corpse when we drag it in.”

Another series of blasts punctuated his words and the primary larboard deflector array smoked out.

That wasn’t good. 

The deflector arrays should have been far more resilient than that. 

Someone hadn’t installed them right.

Quite apart from the danger the shoddy work placed her in, Nix felt a surge of anger at the disrespect the poor workmanship demonstrated. 

“I’m sorry beautiful,” she said, whispering to the Goldrunner. “We’ll give you a full refit as soon as we can get to a proper dock.”

Of course, arriving at any dock would require surviving another minute and that was looking like a dicey proposition as the loss of the larboard deflector array had forced the jump calculation to reset.

“How are we going down there?” Ayli asked, the quality of the audio indicating that she’d cut the ship-to-ship link.

“Not great,” Nix said. “If we lose any more systems, the jump calculation’s going to pend and they’ll take us apart.”

“I’m sorry. This is a terrible honeymoon isn’t it?”

“To be fair, I can’t say I’ve ever had a better one!” Nix said. “Do you mind if I do something terrible that only has a tiny chance of saving us?” 

It was a silly questions. Ship captains never allowed their engineers do terrible things to the ship. You couldn’t trust engineers after all. Especially not one who admitted they were intending to do something dangerous.

“Better a tiny chance than no chance. Go for it!” Ayil called back without hesitation.

Nix’s heart skipped a couple of beats, but her hands were happy to keep working regardless.

“Get ready to hit the jump to lightspeed on my mark.” Nix had always wanted to try what she was about to attempt. Part of her said it should work. It had to work. That she didn’t know of anyone who’d ever managed it was probably more a sign of how limited her experience was than evidence that it wasn’t a viable tactic.

“We don’t have a route calculated yet,” Ayil noted as a point of curiosity rather than refusal.

“We will!” Nix called back and turned to focus on her newly beloved ship systems.

The astrogation system was a nightmare. She knew far better than to touch it before she’d done a thorough review of any component and dataline in it. The calculation module on the other hand was as stock as they came. That was the first lucky break she needed.

The next lucky break came in the form of the smoked larboard deflector array. It had blown ever fuse and slagged half its wiring because it was installed backwards, but apart from that it was in great shape. Plenty of charge still kept in it.

The last lucky break came in the firing pattern from the Klex ships.

They were directly behind the Goldrunner and gaining quickly thanks to the reductions in the Goldrunner’s sunlight drive. That was a problem which was getting swiftly worse as the ever shortening distance made the Klex’s weapons more accurate and damage and the additional damage in turn dropped the Goldrunner’s speed further and further.

Which was exactly what Nix needed.

With a few quick slices with a plasma cutting torch, she knocked the primary and secondary larboard deflector arrays loose from their couplings. Apart from a few cables that left them unmoored and free to move around the engine room. 

The Goldrunner didn’t have bomb doors, but it did have exterior maintenance panels that allowed access to the engine room from outside the ship, and those could be made to serve a surprisingly similar function to a bomb door, all one needed was a bomb to drop out of them. 

A hasty bypass on the controls to those exterior maintenance panels let Nix tie them into the control for the hatch she’d entered the room through. Which she promptly returned to.

And with that, her trap, such as it was, was set.

All she needed to trigger it was…

Another series of blasts slammed into the remaining deflector shields at the Goldrunner’s rear and Nix slammed down control to cast wide the maintenance panels.

“Why did we just lose pressurization in the engine room?” Ayli asked.

“All part of the plan!” Nix said and listened for the sound of a disconnected deflector arrays snapping free from their cables the outside of the Goldrunner.

The decompression of the maintenance doors opening had blown them out just as she’d hoped and the moment their cable’s snapped, she called out.

“Punch it!” she shouted and felt space instantly lurch around her as a much stronger explosion than any previous blast rattled everything in the ship.

The new jump calculation hadn’t been completed but they were going to be just fine.

Clockwork Souls – Chapter 100

“You can spend a whole life searching for something you already have.”

– Kati Riverbond, the Last Empress of the Empire of the Three Peaks

They found me at home.

I mean, where else was I going to run to? The top of the tallest peak in the world had seemed tempting until I remembered that those mountains had been forged by other gods and magics that were foreign even to the Transcendent Realms of the Empire. I could try to hide there but the Stoneling peoples would probably take offense at that, and the last thing I needed was more enemies.

Well, no, the ‘Last Thing’ I needed was an Imperial Crown on my head. I’d broken the Empire. Putting me in charge of it was literally the worst possible idea in the world since I was beyond certain that I would break it again. 

Mysella, the former and somewhat less than Eternal Empress, had every right to refuse to take up her role as the Empire’s guiding light. She’d spent a dozen or so generations longer than anyone had any right to expect shouldering a load that even a Transcendent being like the Clockwork Cosmos couldn’t manage on their own. The truth was though that she was the only one even vaguely qualified for the job.

Three hundred years of experience, even if she wasn’t directly ruling during that time was far more than the paltry decade of sheltered life lessons that had available to draw on. That’s not me being humble either. I lie to myself a lot but for something like this, cold and brutal honesty was the only chance I had to save myself.

Save myself from what?

Mysella had frozen herself into eternal, unchanging ice, and that had been her best solution for the problems the Empire threw at her. I’d seen the afterlife and from what I could gather, it was stranger and father beyond mortal understanding than words could convey. If there was a Hell though, it would have to involve being trapped in the life Mysella had been subjected to.

So I’d run.

What other choice did I have?

“There were less dramatic ways to say ‘no’ you know,” Grammy said.

Of course she was the one who found me. It was her home too after all.

I wondered how she’d gotten back so quickly. We didn’t live anywhere near Middlerun where the Academy was and I hadn’t been flying slowly while I was dragon-shaped.

“Are any of us allowed to complain about someone else’s theatrics?” Doxle asked.

They were both outside my room, and from the scent which were leaking in, so were the rest of my housemates. Doxle’s proper husband (I guessed?) was with them, as was Enika, oddly enough. Mysella, however, was absent.

I couldn’t tell if that was a good sign or a disastrous one.

“I’m not going back,” I said without opening the door.

“It is the Empress’s prerogative where she rules over her Empire from,” Doxle said. “A bedroom isn’t even the oddest choice that’s been made.”

“I am NOT the Empress!” I probably shouldn’t have screamed. I mean, we’d won, and I had the people outside my room to thank for that.

And screaming seemed just so childish, which I hated being in front of Idrina.

Oddly, I heard an answering scream. It was short, and more a matter of surprise and protest but it still made me smile.

Someone had stabbed Doxle.

Enika.

It had to be her. 

Since no one else was complaining, and Doxle seemed to accept that as his just deserts, it had to be someone he’d accepted the he had it coming from.

“Yes, well, there is the point you are in fact correct,” Doxle said. “You are no longer the Empress. Chief Advisor Mysella formally accepted your abdication a moment before the new Council arrived.”

“New Council?” I asked, opening the door to find the assembled hoard I’d expected waiting for me.

Doxle had teleported them. It took me a second but it wasn’t that hard to figure out when I noticed the scent of his magic on each of them.

“Ula and Xandir gathered them together,” Ilyan said. “They’re the leaders of the different groups they were working with.”

“The ones were armed with the new Clockwork gear,” Yarrin said.

“I thought there was something like two hundred groups we were working with?” I asked, unclear on how anyone had managed to herd two hundred Imperial Citizens anywhere without putting a sword to the back of each and every one of their throats.

“Two hundred and three,” Mellina said. “Thirty seven chose to form their own Council.”

“Yeah, because someone asked them to,” Narla said, her gaze affixing the blame or credit for that squarely onto Mellina.

“They represent what is a mostly autonomous region already,” Mellina said. “Mysella agreed that things will be much smoother if they’re given self-governance at the outset. We’ll probably wind up with four or five other breakaways, which should pare things down to a manageable amount of complexity for the ones that remain. We will need to wrest control of the fortress on Flame Sanctuary Island from the current governor though. He’s a despot of the first order, which will definitely lead us to war if he has time to assemble his own standing army.”

I blinked.

“You saw all this coming,” I said.

“Of course not,” Mellina said. “You know precognition doesn’t work like that. What I saw was the possibility of this. All the rest was the result of some very hard work, the hardest bits of which, admittedly, you performed, but this present was never a future which was bound to come to pass.”

“She’s saying we earned this,” Narla said, translating for Ilyan’s sake I guessed?

“This and more,” Doxle said.

“But they will be able to decide what that means for them,” Enika said.

“Just as we get to decide what it means for us,” Naht, Doxle’s long lost beloved, said.

“What I decide is that this house isn’t enough to entertain this many guests,” Grammy said. “There’s a nice Inne in town. Go there, freshen up, and contact anyone you need to. My granddaughter and I will be along for the feast before they bring the first course out.”

“Feast?” I asked.

“You gave everyone new magic,” Grammy said. “They’re all drunk on wonder and hope for the future so what did you think they would do but throw a party?”

“Why?”

“Because you gave them a whole new world to make for themselves,” Idrina said.

———

At Grammy’s “suggestion”, folks exited our house and made for the Inne where a feast was apparently already being setup (yet another thing we Mellina to thank for), leaving two of us alone.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked, noting the complete absence of the household staff.

“At the feast,” Grammy said. “And all looking forward to seeing you again. I thought we’d need to wait to Winterfest at the earliest.”

“Do they know?” I asked.

“That you’re back?”

“That I’m not who they thought I was.”

“And who might that be?” Grammy asked, looking faintly amused.

“I don’t know,” I said. Even with the reassurances she’d already given me, I still felt like any moment the rug was going to be ripped out from under me.

“Do you want to be my granddaughter?” Grammy asked, like it was just that simple.

“Yes! Of course!” I said, terrified at the notion that any other answer would lose me the one bit of identity I’d clung to years.

“Then you are. Anyone who says otherwise is gonna get the back of my hand and if I’m in a good mood it won’t have a blade in it.”

How do you answer that?

I usually default to silence, but in this case I was locked into wordlessness rather than choosing it. 

And Grammy was okay with that.

She sat with me for what felt like an hour but was probably closer to a minute and a half while I pulled myself together. 

“How long did you know?” I asked, wondering if I’d ever had her fooled.

“A few years now,” she said. “I didn’t see it at first. You’re very good and I was very willing to not see what I didn’t want to.”

“I didn’t want you to have to know she was gone,” I said. In hindsight it seemed like such a clumsy, ill-thought out reason, but it was all I had.

“That helped,” Grammy said. “It kind of crept up on me gradually, and by the time I had to admit it to myself, it felt like something I’d known for a long time.”

“Were you mad at me?” I asked, sounding like the tiny child I’d been all those years ago.

“I was afraid you’d leave if I knew,” she said. “I thought this was just a kindness you were gracing me with and that if I admitted anything you’d vanish like the morning dew.”

“I wouldn’t, I couldn’t!” I said, horrified at the notion. I’d read of children who longed to run away from home, often for what seemed like very good reasons, but I’d never felt like that. Home was always with Grammy. It was always where I ran to when the world was too overwhelming.

“I know,” Grammy said. “It took me a long time to figure that out, and, well, by the time I did, it was…what we had was comfortable.”

“Could we have that again?” I asked.

“Why would we want it?” Grammy asked. “Things change. I think we need to as well. For the better. You’re my granddaughter. That will stay true for the rest of our lives, but what that means? It can grow. I don’t need to pretend your Trina. I don’t want to. I want to know you for who you are, and maybe together we can remember Trina for who she was.”

Epilogue

The feast turned out to not be limited to our little town. With new magics coursing through the Empire, teleportation magics became vastly more common, literally overnight, so while we started our tiny nearby Inne by the next morning we’d wandered through a few dozens different cities turning the entire rest of the celebration into something of a mad blur.

Doxle, Naht, and Enika were the first group I stumbled on. They were, predictably, discussion marriage.

“I never actually signed those annulment papers you know,” Doxle said. “So technically, all you need to do to annul the annulment is burn yours up.”

“And why would I do that now that the love of your life is back?” Enika asked.

“Naht always wanted a big family,” Doxle said. “Why do you think I’ve been collecting spouses for the last three hundred years?”

That Doxle was going to wind up getting stabbed again seemed to be a certainty, but I suspected it wouldn’t bother him. He was shining with delight and for the first time, I knew I could smell his real emotions radiating off him, because there was nothing but joy there.

———-

I remember speaking with Narla, Yarrin, and Ilyan for a while after that, mostly because they dragged me into the group hug which seemed to have become their natural and permanent state.

“The Great Houses are gone,” I said. “We actually did it!”

“They’re not in charge anymore – or at least they won’t be once the new Council gets things sorted out, but I don’t think they’re going to just vanish,” Ilyan said.

“The Empress, sorry, the Empress before you,” Narla said. “Transferred their Imperial Accounts to a Common Holding, so all the treasure they’ve amassed belongs to the Empire as a whole now. The Houses may not vanish but they’re not going to have much of a powerbase. They’ve got nothing to hold over people’s head anymore.”

It was not going to be that simple. Power comes in many more forms than wealth and military might. That said, wealth and military might are fairly persuasive tools when the negotiations over what the Empire’s future would look like.

Not that the worst of the Great Houses were likely to be a part of those negotiations. For a variety of reasons. Some of which weren’t even lethal.

“I know one House that won’t vanish,” Yarrin said. “Assuming you’ll still have us.”

“I…I wasn’t sure you’d want to be tied down to something like a House,” I said. “Not after all you’ve been through.”

“It’s not being tied down, it’s been tied to,” Narla said. 

“We can do great things together. We proved that,” Ilyan said. 

“So, yes, we want to stay with you, and House Riverbond,” Yarrin said. “If you’ll have have us?”

“All of us,” Narla said. “We’ve decided that we come as a package.”

I managed to extricate myself from their embrace before they got any mushier, but I was happy for them. They’d found something I’d never thought I would.

Though maybe I had more to hope for myself there too?

—-

Before I could investigate that however, I ran across Mellina.

She was embroiled in the sort of discussion Heads of State had and her audience was, indeed, the other new Heads of State who’d been selected by their various groups and concerns to represent them on the Imperial stage.

I tried to avoid disturbing her, but the moment she caught sight of me, she excused herself and dragged me to a back corner.

“Did you get to talk with your Grandmother?” she asked me, right away, without preamble.

“I did, but is that important?” I was comparing it to the sweeping changes which were washing over everyone’s lives.

“Of course it is!” she said. “I want my friend to be happy.”

“Oh! I thought it might be some ‘destiny’ kind of thing.”

“Your destiny is, and always has been, your own. I…you’re just important to me. I don’t have a lot of friends, and you’ve been a really good one.”

“You’ve been a better one than I have,” I said. “I almost destroyed the world with you on it.”

“I don’t think so,” Mellina said. “I don’t think you could have done any of what you did if you didn’t love this world with all that you are. I’m just happy I’m a part of that.”

“You are, and you always will be.”

“Good. Now go have the other conversation you need to have tonight.”

—-

I knew exactly who Mellina was referring to, but I had the hardest time finding Idrina during the celebration. 

I didn’t think she was hiding from me.

Not at first anyways.

After a few hours though, I began to wonder.

By the time the sun sank below the horizon, I’d started asking everyone I could find if they’d seen her as the idea that she’d been some figment of my imagination chilled my heart despite how utterly irrational it was.

In the end, I did find her and it was of course in the last place I expected her to be.

My bedroom.

“I’d like to talk with you if that’s okay?” she said, standing up from the desk she’d been reading at as I opened the door.

“I..yeah..I was hoping we could,” I said, looking for where we could sit down together that was somewhere other than the bed. “I didn’t know you’d come back here. I…” I didn’t want to explain what I’d been through, or the worry that had gripped me for no good reason. What I wanted was to listen to her.

“I’m sorry,”  she said. “I don’t do well with crowds. And I didn’t want to try talking to you with the others around.”

“Oh,” I said, renewed and still irrational terror squeezing the air out of my lungs.

“I’m sorry,” Idrina said.

“For?” I asked. We were talking but we weren’t communicating. I drew in the scent of Idrina and the fear drained away. She was here, she was real, and we had a chance to be…well, whatever she wanted us to be.

“For kissing you without asking,” she said. “I…we haven’t talked much yet about, anything. I…losing you, it wasn’t something I wanted to do. I still don’t. But I’m not good at this. Still, I shouldn’t have done that. It sent a message that I don’t know you wanted to send.”

“You saved the world with that kiss,” I told her. “I’m not kidding. After I, uh, exploded, what was left of me spoke with the Transcendent Realms. I did okay with the two I knew but the only reason I was able to survive when a third one showed up was because I held onto that kiss long enough for help to arrive. We came within about five seconds of all the Realms crashing down and obliterating everything.”

“Oh,” she said.

“For the record, the message you sent there was one I’ve been wanting to shout from the rooftops from the first time we kissed.”

“Me too,” she said. “But I don’t understand any of this. I’m not…”

She struggled to find the right words and I let her search for them for a few moments before stepping in close enough to take her hands in my own.

“I’m not a lot of things,” I said. “What I do know though is what I am, and that is in love with you. If you’re not, or not yet, that’s okay. I…”

She kissed me again.

She kissed me and I kissed her and the world melted around us into a haze of warmth and comfort.

“I am,” she said when we finally pulled apart. “I’m in love with you too. I didn’t think I could. I didn’t think anyone could love me. I didn’t think I was good enough yet.”

I kissed her again.

“Take me for who I am and you always will be more than good enough for me,” I said.

And then we did the most intimate thing two people can do; we sat together for the rest of the night and talked about who we were, and who wanted to be. We talked about the things that hurt us the worst, and the things we were most proud of. We talked about silly, stupid, little things, and the deep hungry passions that drove us. We gave as much of ourselves to each other than we could, and built enough of our future together that we could share even more the next day and more the day after and so on and so on, through all of our days to come.

~Finis~

Clockwork Souls – Chapter 99

“You can spend so long believing that you will never get what you truly want that when it’s finally handed to you it can be almost impossible to believe you are worthy of it.”

– Xindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame, in the first prayers he spoke in over three hundred years.

I was in trouble. Worse, I was in trouble with the most powerful magic wielder in the world. The good news was that while I’d been worried before about whether the High Council would be able to kill me, I wasn’t worried about that at all with the Empress Eternal. There’s no sense worrying about something that’s absolutely certain you see.

“It was so nice of the Speakers to give us the privacy of the High Council hall,” the Empress said.

That she said it while gazing directly at the half dozen Speakers who remained in the hall sent a message which even the understandably overwhelmed Great House Speakers were able to interpret correctly. In something like two to two and a half seconds, all of the people with official positions had vacated the Council’s chambers, leaving only my housemates and a few others to watch as the Empress inflicted her punishment on me.

Why would she punish me you might ask?

I had literally bet the existence of the world on what was little more than a hunch and the power of positive thinking – and I am not especially talented at either.

Oh, and I’d done that without letting her or any other person who was in a position to stop me know. So their only warning that the world was about to fall completely to pieces had come as magic which had been immobile for centuries suddenly began to shift and drop onto the material realm.

Lastly, even though the world had survived, it was irrevocably altered and I’d put power into the hands of people who were definitely going to misuse it. Not everyone, or even most people (I hoped), but when you give something to ‘everyone’, well, everyone includes people who aren’t going to use it for things you don’t approve of.

People have called the Empress Eternal ‘heartless’ for sacrificing those who were closest to her to the spell of Eternal Ice. They were drastically wrong about that but given that she hadn’t experienced acute heart failure the moment she perceived what I’d done could be taken as evidence that her detractors claims were literally true.

“Empress, can we speak on Kati’s behalf?” Ilyan asked.

“Yeah. If there’s blame to go around, we were all working on this,” Narla said.

“No,” I said, meeting the Empress’s curious gaze. “I’m not protecting them here, but they didn’t have anything to do with what you’re really angry about here.”

“Am I angry?” the Empress asked. I couldn’t tell anything from her scent, but despite the glee in her eyes it was impossible to imagine she wasn’t furious with me.

“You would have every right to be,” I said.

“We did help her though,” Yarrin said. “So we do share a measure of whatever blame is due to her.”

“No! They didn’t know!” I said. “They still don’t know what I did. Not really.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Idrina said, stepping up beside me. My heart dropped into my feet at the gesture. It was so brave, and so loving, and so terribly terribly stupid. Idrina, of all people, did not need to get splashed with the blame for my actions. “The others weren’t privy to her plans. I was. I could have stopped her last night. I chose not to.”

“No! She didn’t know,” I lied, knowing the Empress would see right through me (she could probably do that literally as well). “Not really. Not the worst that could happen.”

“But you did?” the Empress asked and I felt like a fly which had landed on a web which the spider was continuing to spin. Whatever I answered would be another strand binding ,e ever tighter to the doom that awaited me.

“I spoke with two of the Transcendent Realms,” I said. “They were pretty clear on what they wanted, and it wasn’t exactly hard to see where that could go wrong.”

I switched back to honesty because if I was going to be hung by a damning set of words, they should at least be my own.

“And you chose to go ahead with it anyways? Why?” the Empress asked.

It was the best question she could have asked, and the hardest one to answer, mostly because there were so many reasons for doing what I’d done and being sure which had really motivated me was something I’d refused to let myself consider up until now.

“Because I hate the Empire,” I said, starting with what was absolutely the worst reason of all. “Not the people – or not all of them anyways – and not you. I hate what its become. You sacrificed yourself and endured centuries under the weight of the Worlds Beyond for something that should be so much better than what the Great Houses have made this place to be.”

Ilyan and Narla both had pained looks on their faces. Like I was making the biggest possible mess of things and that I should just shut up before the Empress got really creative with how I was going to suffer for my hubris.

“I could say I did it for my sister. To claim vengeance for what the Great Houses did to her,” I said, plowing on clumsily towards the truth rather than falling silent and accepting my fate. “She wouldn’t want that though. In fact, she’s a large part of why we’re all still here. She didn’t want to see people destroyed, she wanted to see them lifted up.”

Trina hadn’t been entirely happy with what I’d done but she hadn’t been terribly surprised either, which was how she’d happened to have an entire army of ghosts available when they were desperately needed. 

In the worst case, where I managed to get my corporal form obliterated, I at least could look forward to spending more time with her, though she’d promised to come visit once we had the immediate catastrophe dealt with even if I happened to be alive still.

“There were a lot of other reasons too,” I continued before the Empress grew tired and passed her final judgment on me. “The Transcendent Realms collapsing had to happen someday, and I knew I could offer a unique solution to the problem with my connection to two diametrically opposed realms.  And three hundred years is just too much to ask of you, or Doxle, or anyone. You all deserve a break and someone should have been working to help you a long time ago. Not to mention the fact that the Great Houses could have figured out what I did at any time and talked the realms into merging for only their benefit, giving them absolute power with no oversight whatsoever.”

“And were any of those reasons the truth of why you did what you did?” the Empress asked.

“Yes,” I said but my earnestness faded, “and no. I thought of all those things, but if I dig down deep, I think I risked the world for one reason above all others. I risked it for myself.”

Which was the worst reason to risk a world full of people, but I’d never claimed to be a good person. No saints here. I was just me.

“And what did you get out of it?” the Empress asked.

“I guess that remains to be seen,” I said. “I think what I hoped for was a home. Was somewhere that I belonged to be, rather than a world that I felt like I snuck into and whose nature was anathema to my own.”

“So you would have us all live in a world of your design then?” the Empress asked and I really hated that I couldn’t understand her at all via scent.

“No! No, that would be so much worse,” I said. “I wanted it to be a world designed by everyone and not just the few people in charge of the most powerful groups in the world.”

“Do you think that’s what you’ve gained?” the Empress asked.

“I don’t think anything is settled there. I don’t think it can be until you decide what my punishment is going to be.”

“Not just hers. What all of our punishment is going to be,” Mellina said, with a disturbingly unconcerned look on her face.

“Why, I thought that would be obvious,” the Empress said and gestured to my hand.

I was puzzled at first. Did she plan to chop them off? I’d just grow new ones if so, but maybe that hadn’t occurred to her?

Then I noticed what I was holding.

The Imperial Crown.

“Oh! Oh no! I’m sorry!” I said and tried to hand it back before it came alive and bit me or something.

The Empress, evil meanie that she is, chuckled at me.

“Are you under the misapprehension that I want that vile thing back?” she asked, all sweetness and light.

I stopped.

Not paused.

Not wondered.

I stopped.

And I wasn’t the only one.

Everyone in the room froze as the Empress’s words sank in.

Everyone except Mellina who gently guided my arm back to my side, Imperial crown still clutched in my hand.

“Don’t…don’t you need it back?” I asked, dumbfounded by where the Empress’s refusal might lead.

“I’ve worn that for the last three hundred years,” she said. “In what circle of Hell would I need to be entombed to be sentenced to bear it for even a day longer?”

“But…the Empire needs you?” I had no idea if any part of that was true.

And the Empress laughed again.

It wasn’t a little laugh.

Or a subtle one.

It shook her, from belly to brow.

There were tears in her eyes. I hoped they were tears of joy, though madness was seeming a lot more likely.

“You thought I was going to be angry with you?” she asked. “For doing what I’d most hoped to be able to do since before I even put that horrible thing on my head? If there wasn’t a woman I’d spent the last fifteen generations pining for waiting back in my former palace, I would marry you on the spot you beautiful, wonderful, delicious creature you. You have freed me, you freed her, you freed Doxle and all of our closest friends.”

She spun in a circle and motes of light showered the room.

“But you’ve done so much more than that. The Empire, my Empire is free now. My people are as unfrozen from the shackles of the centuries as surely as I am. You’ve given them the chance to forge their own world. For better or worse. It’s all on them now. I would never have had the courage to do that.”

“A lie if I ever heard one,” Doxle said, reappearing in a flash along with a group of people who looked suspiciously like the ones I’d seen frozen into ice statues in the Empress’s chamber. “You were attempting to do that exact thing before you were so rudely interrupted.”

“Perhaps, but she succeeded where I failed,” Mysella, the former Empress?, said.

“We could always adopt her,” a woman who grabbed Mysella’s hand and refused to let go said.

“Uh, uh, nope. She’s mine and you can’t have her,” Grammy said, sliding between us defensively.

“I suppose that’s not really our choice at this point,” Mysella said. “After all, one does not give orders to the Empress.”

I looked around, for who she was referring to, my denial impulses going into overdrive in a futile attempt to save me from a fate worse than death. Sadly those impulses were not up to the job.

“Oh. Oh no. No, no, no, no, no, NO!” I said.

I wasn’t sure if I still had my magic. Given what I’d been through, there was a very serious possibility that I’d burned out my ability to manipulate the power within me forever. In that instant though, I simply did not have time for that.

Faster than even Doxle could follow, I burst from the top of the Council Hall in the form of a Clockwork Dragon and made for the open sky.

Clockwork Souls – Chapter 98

“The fun thing about picking up the pieces is that what appears to be wreck and ruin is so often the seeds of a far more fascinating project.”

– Zindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame standing amidst the ruins of the Imperial Academy following the Descent of Magic.

The Empire fell. 

Just as I’d planned.

Or hoped. ‘Plan’ was far more generous than my ramshackle ideas deserved given how little I knew and how much I’d been taking on pure faith and dreams.

In the end though, the Empire crumbled.

Which wasn’t surprising. There really wasn’t any way it could continue on as it was. Not with the changes we’d wrought on it. In our defense, and largely thanks to the Empress’s Last Guardians and their allies, the fall was a slow one though.

Empress Mysella took control of the chaos that erupted the moment I…there’s no nice wording for ‘exploded’ I suppose. I mean, I didn’t cover the room in a shower of gore or anything. From their perspective I put the Imperial Crown on and light blasted from my eyes, mouth, fingers and toes. 

Then I glowed somewhat brighter than the sun.

And then I exploded.

The blast wave was purely aetheric and only covered about an twentieth of the Empire. It was the result of my tapping into both my home realm and the Clockwork Cosmos. 

All of the subsequent explosions came from other people. From those who formed the bridge for the other realms to settle into an orbit of the material world. 

And there were a lot of them. We blanketed the Empire a dozen times over and more. Explosions of light and magic scouring the sky clear of every cloud and outshining the sun itself.

Even with all the thousands of souls who pitched in though, we wouldn’t have had enough understood how the magic they were connected to could co-exist with the world around them. How together the two, or three, or a dozen, could become something far greater than the sum of their parts.

We were lucky there too. As it turned out, we didn’t needed to fix all of the realms on our own. Just enough of them that the more distant planes could learn from the constellation of worlds that built up and overlapped and interleaved themselves with our own.

Crashing into each other and then crumbling to Oblivion wasn’t any more thrilling a prospect for the Transcendent Realms than it was for us I guess. 

I know. A reasonable reaction. I was shocked too.

The evolution of the realms beyond was a process that took from the moment we started it, out to the far end of eternity, but to those we’d left behind, it was over in the space of a few harrowing minutes.

A harrowing minute which somehow we emerged from apparently intact? 

I had no words to explain that.

It was simply put a miracle. No other possible explanation was available.

A miracle forged by those who loved us enough that even death hadn’t parted them from our hearts. 

Trina was my guide and shield, but she was not the only one who stood by my side in that liminal space between all worlds.

I had no name for the others – because we had never used names – not with how continually we changed and flowed. I didn’t need a name for them though. I knew my cousins. I knew my siblings. I knew my parents. I knew everyone who’d been pulled through the rift with me that fateful day. Everyone who’d died in a foreign and terrifying world while I alone had survived.

They hadn’t left me either and no matter how much I’d changed, we would always be family.

That reunion had been joyful, but even in a timeless realm, all things must eventually pass, and my life in the material world wasn’t yet done.

Returning to that life was an interesting experience.

I didn’t shapeshift a new body for myself. I didn’t need to (which was good or none of the other people who channeled the planes would have been able to manage it). Instead I precipitated back into the world, like rain falling from some ethereal plane to fill up the body that I hadn’t really lost in the first place.

It was good that the experience was a brief one because while it wasn’t painful it was as deeply disconcerting as dying and being born in the same instant could be. 

The spear tip at my throat, on the other hand? That was somehow strangely comforting.

“You can break my heart again, as often as you need,” I said, gently pushing the spear down till it pointed towards the center of my chest, “but I’ll still keep loving you.”

It sounded better in my head than when I said it, but it had the impact I was looking for so I can’t say I regret a word of it.

The spear clattered to the floor before dissipating in a puff of light. 

“It’s you,” a disbelieving Idrina said.

“Never doubted it for a moment,” Doxle said, wiping a finger across one eye.

Grammy didn’t say a word, she just shuffled over to me and wrapped me in a nice warm hug.

“What’s happening?” the Speaker for House Greendell asked.

“Magic is descending,” I said.

“Tell them what that means,” the Empress said, her voice drunk with delight.

“Magic is coming to the world.” I wasn’t being terribly helpful, but I wasn’t feeling particularly generous with information where the Great Houses were concerned.

Then I saw the Empress’s point.

I could gloat!

“We already have magic,” House Astrologia said.

“You’ve borrowed sips of magic up till now,” I said. “Tiny motes of power which you’ve lorded over those you’ve believed beneath you. You’ve ripped holes in the world to steal even more, all the while thinking yourselves ‘Great’. But that was fine. The commoners could never throw off their yoke! And the creatures from the worlds beyond could never reach you! You were safe and secure and untouchable.” I took a moment to smirk. “You’re about to discover how that has changed.”

A page burst through the doors, which I was pretty certain was the Empress’s handiwork given the perfect timing of the moment.

“My Lords!” he called out struggling to catch his breath. “The city! It’s… it’s gone!”

It wasn’t actually gone.

It had simply changed.

We were one of the first points of the convergence and so the townspeople were the first to feel the touch of the other worlds washing over them.

Everyone in the room had technically experience the same thing, but the Clockwork Cosmos and my home realm were giving me a measure of breathing room to recover in, so the area immediately around me – in other words, the High Council’s hall – stood as an oasis in the sea of change.

The Speakers surged out of the chamber to witness what had occurred, which drew them each past the Empress.

It was such a subtle thing to watch her work.

One by one they passed her by, and with hands deft enough to weave a net that bound a million realms, hands I point out which were no longer burdened by the weight of those worlds, she gently brushed them as they passed and lifted away their citizenship.

A minor, trivial little thing.

Hardly worth of notice.

Except for the part where, in our new world, it was citizenship in the Empire, or more specifically a connection to the land, which opened one up to the realms which were bound to the material world. Which they now lacked.

None of them felt her touch and none of them grasped the implications of their loss.

And none of them would until the first of them tried to cast a spell.

And learned that they, alone in the Empire, held no more magic.

I wasn’t gloating though.

I had plenty of time for that later.

I had a more important message to convey.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” I asked Doxle.

“I do indeed,” he said. “I could sense when the pact bond faded. You are now as free of me, as we are of them.” He nodded towards the departing Speakers who would never trouble us again, for a variety of reasons.

That, however, was not what I was referring to.

And not something I’d been paying any attention to.

But once he mentioned it, it would have been easy enough to feel if the bond was gone.

Except it wasn’t.

Or rather, there was still a bond there.

Just not a Pact Bond.

I gave it a tug.

Playing around with new and unknown magic effects wasn’t terribly wise? I mean I’d done far more foolish things already, so why not?

“Did…did you just call me?” Doxle asked.

“Oh. Is that what that does?” I asked, evil ideas already forming in my mind.

“Whatever all this is,” Enika said waving her hands at the two of us, “you know that’s not what she was referring to.”

Doxle looked at her, completely baffled for a change.

“Is he always this obtuse?” Enika asked the Empress.

“You were the one who married him,” the Empress said.

“That was annulled,” Enika said. “It never happened.”

“Not to interrupt on this most momentous of days, but what, pray tell, are you referring to?” Doxle asked.

“She’s free,” Enika said, pointing to the Empress. “Which means the rest of them are too. So, don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“Oh. Why, yes.” and he vanished. Instantly. Faster than any invocation could have been cast.

“Predictable,” Enika sighed and added, “Shouldn’t you be there too?”

“I have an Empire to hold together, for a little bit longer,” the Empress said. “Also, I’m talking with her as we speak.”

Because if there was one thing the Empress of the most magically empowered land in the world could do, it was multi-task.

That turned out to be rather crucial as tidal wave of chaos that I’d unleashed crashed over every city, town, village, and hamlet on the continent.

With the Transcendent Realms evolving into a natural coexistence with the material world, every citizen of the Empire gained access to magic beyond the wildest dreams of the most powerful casters of the Great Houses.

That was not an entirely good thing.

Some people did not handle their new abilities well.

Some people used their new abilities to object to how those who’d been in power had treated them. Those objections were rather crimson colored and tended to splash around a much larger area than they needed to.

Some tried to found new kingdoms within the Empire.

Some believed it was the end of the world and talked the gullible and easily swayed around them into believing it too.

Some were just miserable people and giving them more power simply made them more miserable.

Some were too scared of losing what they had, and so refused to accept that the world could change. Those unhappy souls fought with a deadly small mindedness to prevent the world they knew from becoming something strange and unrecognizable.

For as horrible as all that was though, it was far from the only way things went.

Yes, there was chaos everywhere, but a staggering number of people just dealt with it. 

In the face of the whole world falling apart, the vast majority people simply started putting it back together.

In families, in small groups, even alone when they needed to, people learned to navigate a world where all the rules had changed, and together they started to build something brand new.

I, of course, did not quite escape the consequence of my actions.

I hadn’t thought I would. I had a lot of optimism, but even I wasn’t delusional enough to think I’d get away from the reckoning that was coming.

I had hoped I’d at least make it out of the High Council chamber but, alas, that was not to be.

“We need to speak,” Empress Mysella said, and I knew that conversation wasn’t going to be pleasant small talk.

Clockwork Soul – Chapter 97

“From the earth we were formed. While we walk upon its surface we imagine divisions between us which all fall away when we return to the earth’s embrace. Let us learn from those who have fallen here today, and work together to create a future where those who follow need not await the peace of the next life to know the prosperity equality can bring.”

– Words etched into the cornerstone of the Imperial Palace and attributed to a speech given at the founding of the Empire (apocryphal)

I held the Empire in the palm of my hands and its weight was unbelievable. 

That should have been a metaphorical statement but as I placed the Imperial crown on my head, it become staggeringly literal.

The Empress’s crown was magical but that didn’t matter. All of the enchantments which preserved its luster and all of the precoded effects built into it were little more than window dressing compared to the real value it held. Sure, I could have teleported anywhere in the Empire in the blink of an eye while wearing the crown, and cast a perfected Geas on any citizen, but I had no interest in claiming a sovereign’s right.

I wanted power.

Specifically, I wanted an access point to the power which held the Transcendent Realms in stasis. The Empress’s spell was a monumental thing, far too complex for me to even imagine taking apart. Fortunately, that wasn’t my job. As the realms changed and shifted, they were going to take care of demolishing it all on their own. What I had to do was make sure that they didn’t demolished the material world as well.

That was a lot to ask of anyone but I did have a couple of special cards to play.

The moment the crown touched my head and the bridge to the spell binding the Empire and the Transcendent Realms formed I was blasted across the cosmos.

That didn’t come as a surprise though.

I knew what I was plugging myself into, and I knew that it was impossibly far beyond my limits. I also knew someone whose limits it wasn’t beyond. Or two someones to be specific.

I couldn’t see the High Council chamber anymore – largely because I’d more or less exploded and so was a little short on anything resembling a body part – but that had the benefit of allowing me to focus on calling out for help.

The Clockwork Cosmos answered but not before my oldest ally appeared.

Without the constraints of a body, I felt the swirling force of the Dwellers in the Depths enwrap me without crushing me to goo. Together we swam and changed and though I was so small as to be an unnoticeable mote before them, still I felt them harmonizing with me.

In the ever shifting dream that we both shared and were I felt something new though, something I’d only barely dared to hope for.

They’d changed.

Not just the eternally transformation of shape and substance, but a far deeper evolution of their core essence.

And with them, the realm I hailed from, the origin of my being, was becoming something new.

We – where the realm ended and I began was a question without a realistic answer by that point – had been incapable of ever building on ourselves. We could be anything, changed endlessly, never the same from one moment to the next, and so we had always been perfectly free.

But we’d never been able to become more than we were.

Never been able to become someone.

To choose who we were.

Because everything had been transitory. No moment could ever constrain us, but so to could we never hold onto a moment, or return to what we’d once been with a greater understanding of it or ourselves.

That was true, wasn’t it?

No. 

I, small, infinitesimal spec that I was, had become something more, step-by-step, moment-by-moment as each piled on top of the other into days, and weeks, and years.

The Clockwork Cosmos understood.

The smaller cogs of seconds turning to drive larger cogs of minutes, and hours, and on, moving into the future one click at a time.

We, the Clockwork Cosmos and I, had followed a preset pattern, marching forwards within a strict set of rules. One turn of the smallest cog, and the simplest of days, pushing us the greater of our life to the next step, over and over without deviation as we met the expectation of those who surrounded us.

That was true, wasn’t it?

No.

I, the tiniest of cogs, turned of my own volition and according to my own desires, and though it often hurt, I did not shatter and twist into what those around me would have me be.

Through me, the two realms had found a point of connection and a hint towards what they could become.

And then I’d taught them how to create rifts of their own since I was far too small a current or a cog to allow them to commune on a meaningful scale.

Had the two realms proven to be anathema to each other? Had their contact been one of mutual annihilation? That would have been an absolutely reasonable concern. I couldn’t even swear in the moment I’d come to that mutual obliteration was off the table.

But I had faith.

I knew the two Transcendent Realms could become something more, because I’d touched them both and found myself in both and I knew I could stand before them as proof as what was possible.

In me, I believed, I hoped, I prayed, they could find the path forward which would free themselves and everyone else. I could be the template they needed for what could come next.

I was small and insignificant but the idea of me could be so much bigger.

Or at least that had been my plan.

What I’d failed to account for was that it might work well beyond my wildest dreams.

See, I’d thought with the two realms growing beyond their initial constraints, they’d be able to take over the role of the Eternal Ice spell and reshape themselves (thanks to my home realm) into a stable and adaptable structure (thanks to the Clockwork Cosmos) which could support the other Transcendent Realms, thereby freeing the Empress and those who’d cast the spell with her, thereby upending three centuries of the Great Houses growing unchecked like a cancer across the Empire. 

That the people of the Empire would also gain a local fighting force of next generation Clockwork Warriors powered seemed like enough to ensure that the madness I’d witnessed would at least change into a new form of madness, with the outside possibility that maybe we’d get it right this time.

I know, hopelessly optimistic on that last point, but I had some amazing people around me, so I thought it was at least worth leaving the door open for a miracle like that to occur.

What I’d failed to consider was that my home realm and the Clockwork Cosmos didn’t have any reason to stop with talking to each other once they knew how to open rifts to another realm.

It had been a monumental act of hubris to think I could talk to not one but two Infinities and have an impact on them. When the next realm reached out to me though, I saw the true scale of my foolishness.

The first was a realm of steel and stability, a close neighbor of the Clockwork Cosmos. It touched me through the steel I felt in the most unbending part of my spirit.

How do I become like they are?

No words were spoken to ask the question, and I had no ears to hear it with even if there had been, but I understood it all the same.

The problem was, I had no idea how to answer.

I’d never worn armor as a part of who I was.

I didn’t understand the realm that was pouring itself into me.

I can change and I can grow but as an endless expanse of steel tried to merge with me to discover how it could change to something even greater, I found my essence swelling and tearing and diluting until steel seemed like the only thing that I was, could be, or ever had been.

I fought it.

I struggled to remember who I was.

Who I’d chosen to be.

Who I wanted to become.

An avalanche of steel crashed onto me though, burying all of that.

And beyond the avalanche,out beyond the horizon of my imagination, I saw realm after realm after realm waiting to learn the secret I held.

The secret which was the only thing which would keep them from tearing themselves, each other, and the material world apart into a cloud of fundamental particles.

A secret I wasn’t going to be able to share with them because I wasn’t going to survive the realm of steel.

I’d doomed the world, and all I had left to hang onto was a kiss given to me by a woman who’d broken my heart before I fell in love with her.

“Don’t give up,” she’d said.

“Never.” I repeated, shouldering for the barest of instants the weight of steel that was crushing me out of existence.

It was one moment – absolutely nothing when placed against the eternities which surrounded me.

But it was enough.

“Looks like you could use a hand there?” Kelthas said, clad in a pristine version of the armor I’d watched him die in.

“Wha? Who? How?” I was the soul of eloquence there if I do say so myself.

“Let me take that for you first,” he said and with one hand, lifted the realm of steel off my soul.

Because of course he could.

It was the realm he understood.

And which understood him.

He shared the same connection with the realm his armor came from as I shared with the one where my transformation magics originated.

“Kelthas? How are you here?”

“Did you think I’d left?” he asked. “You know ghosts can stay around – I’ve talked to your sister. Did you think I didn’t have unfinished business after what they did to you?”

“What they did to me!? They killed you!”

“Well, yeah, that’s sort of required to become a ghost I guess,” he said. “I just felt bad that I’d left you all like that.”

“I….you…are you kidding? I killed a guy for what he did to you. Straight up ripped him to pieces! How is that not the wrong that kept you from finding rest?”

“Oh, I saw that. It was awesome!” Kelthas said. “Honestly, I could have gone to my rest right there if I’d wanted to. You avenged me just perfectly.”

“You’re not mad about that? Or disgusted?”

“No, not at all. I…I just wished you hadn’t had to do it,” he said, “because I could see how much it hurt you. I should have been there to protect you all. That was my whole job. It’s what my magic was for.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to argue with a ghost on what the purpose of his life was, but believe me when I say that even in the short time we knew each other, I don’t think any of us would have asked you to give your life for ours. You were our friend, and losing you sucked.”

“Yeah. Losing you all wasn’t great either,” he said. “On the upside though, I met some pretty incredible new friends here, and they helped me see that as long as we had a connection, I hadn’t really lost you at all.”

“And who might those new friends be?” I asked, unable to believe what I suspected to be true.

“Why the most incredible sister in this life or the next,” Trina said. “Oh, no, wait, that’s you.”

I screamed. Not in fear. Joy can do that to a person too.

My big sister was with me in what was still an impossible hour and with her was an army of the dead whose end stretched back into the mists of time.

Those who’d come before us had never really left and now, where I’d fallen hopelessly short, they stood beside us to ward off the end of the world and welcome in a new one.

Clockwork Souls – Chapter 96

“I don’t have a lot of experience in this world, and I’m not especially wise. I’ve spent my whole life watching people and trying to understand why they do what they do. I thought there were deep secrets to their behavior that I would need to learn to mimic in order to blend in with them.

Turns out though, people aren’t that complex.

We think we do what we do for a lot of reasons, but, mostly, what it comes down to choosing to value something and then protecting it.

For the longest time, I thought that what I valued was my own life above all else. It wasn’t until I understood the family I had that I saw there was something I valued a whole lot more.”

– Kati Riverbond, in a note to her housemates which was never sent.

No one reacted all that much to my request for the Empress’s crown. There had been too many other shocks to their system for a simple thing like that to raise many alarms in any one.

Anyone except Doxle.

He turned to me, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and was about to ask the kind of questions he really didn’t want the answers to before the Empress held out a hand to bid him to silence.

“You have a suitable army assembled to have made that request as a threat,” she said, and I saw exactly what everyone else was seeing. 

As coups went, it wasn’t the best one ever planned but it was one that at least half of the Great Houses might have tried. Lure the Empress out of her castle (after overcoming the obvious problem that it was impossible for her to leave it), surround her with as many assassins as you could get your hands on and then start making demands. Perfect plan. Nothing could wrong with it.

Well nothing aside from the sheer havoc Doxle and Enika could wreck. Or the fact that all of the other House Speakers present would immediately side with the Empress. Or, and it was important not to overlook this, the fact that the Empress herself was in command of enough raw magic to reduce the planet we were standing on to an ever expanding cloud of dust.

So, like I said, half the Great House, at a minimum would have tried it.

House Riverbond however was not one of them, and, this was something for which the Empress won my undying love and admiration, the Empress knew it.

“You are trying render us aid though?” She understood that I wanted to help her, and I couldn’t fault her for not understanding how.

“I am,” I said. “To be clear, I do not need your title, your office, or any aspect of your life. All I need is the physical symbol of your position.”

Doxle’s eyes were alight with opposition to the conversation going any further, but the Empress’s gesture held him silent – not physically or magically, he simply respected her and she understood the limits of his reasonability.

“As a symbol, it’s purpose it somewhat diminished should another bear it,” the Empress said. “To what end would you make us of it?”

“You’re planning to recast the freezing spell, aren’t you?” I asked and she smiled.

“The thought had crossed our mind,” she said. “The two realms which have shifted are only a small corner of the Transcendent Realms. Even now the others who bear the Eternal Ice maintain the greater spell. We were very lucky that the shifting realms did not trigger a greater cascade, and we thank you for this brief reprieve from our duty, even though it comes with the certainty that it must end before another hour passes.”

“Realms?” Doxle said. “There was only supposed to be one realm which changed, and it was supposed to be rigid enough that there was no danger of its collapse?”

“Your calculations were off my dear Advisor,” the Empress said. “Though not by much. To your credit, it was only a small part of one other realm, and a naturally changing one at that, which escaped the limits imposed by the Eternal Ice. Likely due to your protege.”

“That’s not possible,” Doxle said, his voice flat. “You know my work. I did not make a mistake. There should only have been one realm which shifted. I would never have risked forcing you to carry two of them at once.”

“And yet…,” she waved her hand and a trail of tiny gears formed in the air stretching and shrinking dynamically as she pushed and spun them.

It was finally Doxle’s turn to look surprised.

And worried.

Or terrified. That might have been what terrified looked like on Doxle.

“You’re both correct,” I said, knowing that what I was going to say next wasn’t going to reduce the chance that Doxle would have an heart attack but they deserved the truth.

Now that it was too late to do anything about it.

“And how might that be?” Doxle said, the frost in his tone indicating that he was genuinely upset with me.

For which I couldn’t blame him.

“Your calculations were not wrong,” I said. “And the Empress is correct that two realms have shifted. What won’t be clear yet is the change to the Clockwork Cosmos is will not remain limited to that realm. Or to mine.”

“Explain,” Doxle said, his hands trembling for the first time in centuries.

“The Clockwork Cosmos was going to destroy itself to accommodate us. It was willing to do that because it absolutely loathed the idea that its nature allowed people like Ironbriar to control what it was,” I said. “It was willing to annihilate it’s core essence and because nothing more than a dead world for the dead. It was careful not to express that because it understood how we would perceive that.”

“And you were able to see past its deception how?” the Empress asked.

“I became it,” I said. “What you see me do is more than a transformation of shape. When I become something, or someone, I change fragments of my essence to match the form I’m taking. I know what the Clockwork Cosmos was thinking because I thought its thoughts while I was within it. Then, once I was back to myself, the me you see here and now, I confirmed what I’d learned by asking  it directly.”

“And how did you manage that?” the Empress asked.

“Your instructors showed me how to tear a rift between the realms,” I said. “It takes a lot of effort, and is remarkably unpleasant, but even one the size of a thread is another allow conversation with something like the Clockwork Cosmos.”

“And what did you tell the Clockwork Cosmos?” Doxle asked.

“That there was another way,” I said, confessing to a crime against the world itself. “I asked if it truly wanted to change, and whether it would accept my help in doing so.”

“Oh, I see,” the Empress said the delight of understanding lighting her eyes. “You gave it access to your magic.”

“Mine wouldn’t have been anywhere near enough,” I said. “Alone, we’re far too limited. To change a cosmos, you need another cosmos. So I introduced it to one.”

“How?” Doxle said, already knowing the answer and desperately not wanted to believe it was true.

“I spoke with the Dwellers Below from my home realm, I asked if they desired to become something more than they ever could be alone, and, when they agreed, I taught them what I knew,”

“Quite clever,” the Empress said. “And yes, you are correct. We are all doomed.”

“You don’t believe that,” Doxle said. “You’re too happy to believe that.”

“There’s still the Eternal Ice,” I said. “It worked before, and I know that’s a comforting thought, but it won’t work again.”

“People didn’t believe it would work the first time either,” the Empress said.

“I know. And I know you’re a good enough caster to tailor it to the changes in the realms, but last time they were crashing downwards all unaware. They were far happier to caught by the Ice than they were with falling to oblivion. This is different. They’re not falling. Not yet. They’re changing, or trying to learn how. If you freeze them again, they’ll work to become something that can melt free, or flow around, or pass through.  They need someone to guide them though. Otherwise they’re going to fall before they can understand what else is possible.”

“We dare not grant you the crown then,” the Empress said. “That is a task which must fall on us. We cannot ask anyone else to bear it.”

“You can,” I said. “You have to. Letting that much magic flow through you will destroy you, even if you can show the realms the path to the future.”

“Then I shall be destroyed. After all this time do you think I would do less for my Empire?”

“Of course not,” I said. “What I’m asking is that you think of what the Empire will need from you tomorrow. The sun is going rise on a new world, whatever happens next. There are people who will want to share that world with you, and an Empire full of people who will look to you for guidance and the stability that you alone can offer.”

I probably wasn’t allowed to take her hands in mine. Touching the Empress was likely a capital offense against the demands of etiquette. I didn’t really care though. Not with what lay ahead of me.

“I can do this for you,” I said. “For everyone.” I could help but cast a glance over at Idrina, and the rest of my housemates, and Grammy. “You didn’t ask for this. You would never have risked everyone like this. It was stupid and irresponsible and…”

“And the only hope that things will truly change,” the Empress said, offering me a sad smile, and the crown from her head.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling the weight of the world bound in a circlet of ornamented iron.

“Are you sure of this?” Grammy asked.

“We can find another way,” Idrina said.

“There’s time,” Doxle said. “All I need is an hour and a chalkboard. No. A half hour.”

“Don’t lie to her,” Enika said. “Tell her the truth. You know what the other way is already.”

“I could take her place,” Doxle said, dejection coloring his words because the admission meant there was no chance I would go for it.

“Hey,” I said. “You deserve to see tomorrow too.”

His face hardened in exactly the manner of someone forcing back tears. But he couldn’t have been crying for me. I think.

“We are leaving the our fate, no, the fate of our entire world in the hands of an inhuman child?” Lightstone said. “Forget what she said. If the Eternal Ice can be renewed, then recast the spell. It is the Empress’s duty to save us, not this lying changeling. I demand…”

I never got to hear what his demands where.

The snap of Enika’s fingers ricocheted off ceiling of the Council Chamber and in its wake, snow fell within the hall.

Lightstone had gotten his wish.

Behind the Head Speaker’s podium a block of Eternal Ice stood. It wasn’t so broad or cosmically all encompassing as the Empress’s version of the spell, but it was every bit as permanent from what I could smell. I wondered if Lightstone would dream, or if he was trapped forever in that moment of outrage and terror.

“I am sure,” I said, to Grammy, to Idrina, to the Empress, and to Doxle. “If we got to this point, I knew this is what I would need to do, and I know it’s worth it.”

Idrina squeezed my hand.

“I’m not saying goodbye. I’m not going to give up on this life. Not easily,” I said.

Idrina, pulled me in close and kissed me without an instant’s hesitation.

“Don’t give up at all,” she said.

“Never!” I agreed, and placed the Imperial Crown on my head.

Clockwork Souls – Chapter 95

“That my people should survive was, simply put, impossible. There was no path which led to their salvation, no hope of victory, no chance that the cataclysm which descended on us could be endured. Annihilation would come. The end of all we knew and everyone we held dear. Nothing else was possible.

For three hundred years, I have shouldered an impossible burden against a hopeless tomorrow.

I froze myself and all around me in a moment of eternity so that we would not, could not, change, knowing even as I expended the whole of my life in the casting that it was a vane effort.

Tomorrow cannot be withheld forever and change will always come.

We do not speak of it, but Doxle once came to me with those words. It was not despair which drove him, but the love we share as partners in the terrible crime of rejecting the world as it is. He gave voice to the futility of what I’d done, the doubts which gnawed at the unyielding ice around my heart.

Better the whole world burn than I and our loved ones suffer eternally, especially since the ice must one day thaw and our efforts to hold our world safe fail at last.

My answer then was the same as it was to the others who approached with the same plea; I will not give up Today no matter how bleak Tomorrow may appear to be.

As greeted the dawn this morning though, I could feel it.

The change of the day.

My Tomorrow had come at last.

I just don’t know yet whether to hope that yours has too.”

– Her Eternal Majesty, Empress Mysella, Dread Tyrant and Undying Foundation of the Realm in a letter left in the hands of the ice statue of her beloved on the final day of the Empire.

The Empress Eternal smelled of both hope and despair. Projections aren’t supposed to smell of anything. Which was fine. Because she wasn’t a projection.

I think more or less everyone in the room understand that something was deeply wrong with her presence among us. From the rising scent of panic, it seemed that an ever-increasing number of them were putting the pieces together and grasping exactly how bad that was.

One silver lining though – the Speaker for House Lightstone had fallen silent and was staring open mouthed at the Empress.

“Who is that?” I heard one of the junior Speakers say. Because of course people had forgotten what the long “dead” Empress looked like.

His answer was a dagger at his throat and a whispered “Do. No. Speak.” from his senior companion, because there were also people who knew exactly what she looked like.

“Time is not our ally, Speakers,” the Empress said. “We would hear this dispute and see it settled before the sun passes it’s zenith.”

“Why?” Lightstone asked, the scent of existential despair rising from him sharp as smoke from a bonfire.

“You would question your Empress when charged instead to answer?” the Empress said, malicious delight bouncing off each syllable.

“You cannot be here,” Lightstone said. “If you are here, we are undone.”

“What are you saying?” Ironbriar asked, the only one among the Great Houses who seemed ignorant of the doom the Empress’s presence presaged.

“More questions?” the Empress said. “May we assume then the High Council has presented its evidence and offered its advice to the Imperial Throne? We are willing to decide the matter of the War between the Houses on the fact as we understand them if so.”

“What? No! No, I have evidence! There are rules and protocols. The matter still has to be voted on by a quorum of Speakers before its settled.”

“Point of order,” Doxle said. “The High Council’s vote determines what information will be presented to the Senior Grand Magistrate. It is usually considered the final verdict, but ultimate judgment and disciplinary power resides in the hands of the Senior Grand Magistrate as they are the ones who speak with the Voice of the Empire.”

“So you can just announce the verdict then?” Ironbriar said, turning to speaker for House Lightstone.

“No. There’s no point,” Lightstone said.

“My apologies but did the Speaker for House Ironbriar just suggest that someone else in this room holds more authority than our Empress?” Enika asked. “That’s technically a treasonous act, is it not?”

“Shut up,” Lightstone said. “We don’t have time for this. We don’t have time for anything. She’s doomed us all.”

“Has she?” Grammy asked. “Maybe if you ask her nicely she’ll go seal herself back up in ice for another three centuries.”

She and the Empress shared a secret smile and I was abruptly left wondering what exactly an “Imperial Terminus” did and for how many years Grammy had acted as the Empress’s agent.

Lightstone shot a look at Grammy that was so filled with hated I was pretty sure he would have killed her on the spot if he had the power.

Narla threw her hand in front of Grammy, catching something invisible in response to Yarrin’s quick poke, because it seemed Lightstone did have the ability to kill with a glance.

Not Narla though.

Her magic crushed whatever ugly invisible thing Lightstone has cast forth into a small glob of purple goo that she whipped onto the floor.

Lightstone could have tried again of course, except for the knife that Mellina was holding to his throat.

I wasn’t sure when she’d disappeared, but she had Lightstone’s full attention as she dragged the tip of her blade a couple of inches towards the center of his neck, leaving a thin blood trail behind as she did.

“It would be advisable to remain calm,” Mellina said. “I assure you, this day will be much worse if you do not.”

“Do you know, we have long imagined what our return to the Council’s chambers might be like? This is proving to be everything we hoped for and more. Now if someone would only call for an assassin or two,” the Empress said.

The timing was too perfect. I snapped my fingers, and from the rafters, one hundred and twenty assassins descended. One hundred and twenty assassins who were lacking Loyalty Brands. One hundred and twenty assassins who were, as of this morning, official members of House Riverbond.

“You called M’Lady?” Genevieve, the oldest and presumably most deadly of the assassins asked as she landed beside me clad in a special sort of armor.

“The Empress requested your services. If you wish to provide them, I will see you compensated properly, as a gift from House Riverbond to the Imperial Throne.”

Even Grammy was struck silent at that.

For moment.

But she was the first one to bust out laughing.

House Ironbriar on the other hand had been struck so silent that I had to wonder if he’d ever regain the ability to speak.

He recognized the armor we’d given to the assassins.

And the weapons.

The Clockwork arms.

Or more precisely, the next generation of Clockwork arms.

We delayed long enough for my friends plan to work!

“It doesn’t matter,” Lightstone said. “Kill me now, or let me die later. None of us will see the next dawn rise.”

“I thought it was House Astrologia who still dabbled in precognition?” Doxle said.

“What is going on? Why are we doomed?” the Speaker for House Kilnfire asked.

“She died for us,” Lightstone said. “And in her death she held the Transcendent Realms in stasis so that we might prosper from them. That she is here, now, means that the Realms are no longer bound. They will crash against each other in a cataclysm of annihilation. Nothing and no one will survive!”

“I don’t understand? Why? Why would she do that?” Kilnfire asked.

“Perhaps three centuries was long enough to endure dealing with you ungrateful lot?” Doxle suggested.

“That would suppose that anything the Speaker of House Lightstone was correct,” the Empress said. “For those we have not formally greeted to our service yet,” she nodded at Kilnfire and a few others, “We did not die, nor did we adopt our previous state so that the Houses could prosper for the Transcendent Realms. That was the result of a betrayal by all of the Houses here. We must confess there is a great temptation to make use of House Riverbond’s gift to extract a measure of vengeance for that, but sadly none present can be held accountable for the actions of their long dead ancestors.”

“They’re guilty of plenty of other insults to you and your Empire, Your Majesty,” Genevieve the Assassin said.

“As we well know,” the Empress said. “And as we shall bear in mind in decreeing the terms to end the current War between the Houses.”

It was nice to hear that she hadn’t forgotten about us, but I was beginning to feel my magic changing and growing stronger. That was not a comforting sign. There was really only one reason for my magic to rise and it suggested that the discussion I’d had in my dreams had been more convincing than I’d dared hope or fear.

That the Empress was present was proof that I’d convinced the dwellers in the Bathypelagic Zone to speak at least a few words with the Clockwork Cosmos. 

Part of me had hoped that those would be the only two realms drawn into my mad plan.

Part of me had embraced the true depths of the madness though and yearned to see things pushed further.

That was part which seemed to be getting its wish.

“Why talk of the War now?” Lightstone asked, slumping in defeat almost enough to impale himself on Mellina’s dagger. “There will be no war. If Riverbond wants peace, let it have whatever peace it desires. Frolic in our ruin, and imagine anything will change what is to come.”

“You acknowledge your defeat then?” the Empress asked.

“What? No!” Ironbriar said. “We can…we still have…”

Lightstone laid a hand on his shoulder.

“We have nothing,” Lightstone said. “You see the armor Riverbond’s troops are clad in. You know they had suborned our control of the Clockwork realm. No force we have in this city could stand against them, so cheers, they have claimed victory, and in so doing have destroyed the whole of this world.”

“A point of clarity,” I said, following Doxle’s lead. “We do not control the Clockwork Cosmos at all. We have merely entered into a freely agreed upon partnership with both it and the ghost of those who were slain by artificially generated Reaving Storms.”

“That is a rather large partnership,” the Empress said, looking what I thought was at least mildly impressed.

“We have almost one hundred thousand armory nodes,” I said.

“And to whom have these arms been deployed?” the Empress asked.

“Um, I think everyone? Or at least everyone that your Last Guardians had contacts with. I think we got all of the cities in the Empire and most of the towns too,” I said, revealing at last how we planned to win the war.

“That’s impossible,” Ironbriar said.

“Messaging spells are cheap. Call home and find out,” I said. “Oh, except for the part where no one is probably there anymore. They’re still alive mind you, but as the families of the Great Houses were among the few we did not distribute Clockwork arms to, I’m afraid you’ll find they’ve been rather painlessly removed from power. Most of them. I imagine there were a few grudges there.”

Ironbriar was huffing in disbelief so quickly I suspected he was about to pass out from hyperventilation but he surprised me.

“So…so we are to lose our position…and you’ve destroyed our world? And we’re supposed to…supposed to go quietly? Accept this asinine outcome? Oh I think I not! I think not indeed!” He had worked himself up into a violent enough fit that he didn’t need a voice spell to project to the room. “She’s killed us you say? That dead thing that’s pretending to be our Empress? That we’ve never needed! Who’s unwanted and always has been! If we are to die then, she can die first!”

Leaping over the half wall the Council sat behind to rush at someone had not worked for the previous Speaker who’d tried it but Ironbriar was made of sterner stuff. His family was renowned as the Warrior-Elites of the Empire. With murder in his eyes and a sword summoned to his hand, he was more than capable of killing….hmm, well, maybe Ilyan?

Before he got close enough for any of the myriad people around the Empress to dispose of him for her though, he was frozen in his tracks mid stride.

In turns, part of him swelled up like a balloon while other parts compressed inwards as though he had sunk to great depths of the ocean. It would have been gruesomely comical if not for the wretched sounds which accompanied it.

“Let me have this!” Enika said, in curt, clipped syllables.

“My apologies,” Doxle said and gave her a small bow.

Ironbriar stopped exploding and imploded altogether.

It looked neither enjoyable, nor survivable, but it did have the advantage of leaving the corpse in the form of a small crimson marble instead of splatter across the length and breadth of the chamber.

“We suppose that will form House Ironbriar’s testimony,” the Empress said. “Would any other Houses like to speak.”

The wisdom of silence graced the Council Chamber and the Empress gave a satisfied nod.

“We declare the war between our Houses resolved. All who stood against House Riverbond will have their treasuries ceased and distributed according to House Riverbond’s directives. Any who would contest this verdict may speak now and may expect an answer from the Imperial Legions…though perhaps we may contract that responsibility out ot House Riverbond’s allies instead.”

“We shall be happy to donate our services Your Majesty”, Genevieve said.

“Excellent. Then with that we are concluded,” the Empress said.

“Pardon me Your Majesty, but not quite yet,” I said, dreading what was to come next.

“You would ask for more?” The Empress seemed puzzled mostly because this was as far as we’d discussed things with her. What was left was all my own insanity.

“Yes,” I said. “I need your crown.”