Foresight Matrix Array Extract 01

Subject: SCP-XXXX

Date of Memory: May 11th, 2024

Location: Europe Square, Batumi, Georgia

Foreword: The following log encompasses SCP-XXXX’s perspective during retention in the city of Batumi, Georgia following a miscommunication with Georgian customs.

---

<Begin Log:>

A stochastic dream of color burning against the cerulean horizon of all creation. It washes across my mind in the depths of the endlessly spiraling golden threads.

How did I even get here?

It’s the first thought that swims up through the haze of fever burning deep in that olive flesh.

Every step recalls a thousand fragmented voices, each shattering against the hard bone of your skull. They fade into the landscape of your mind, the anger in the hotel room burbling over. You’d sat there, in the middle of their argument, doing everything within your power not to snap at both of them. The entire time her voice was there, her warm breath caressing your ears, elevating the inferno ablaze in your flesh.

They can’t fulfill your purpose.

Carissa is fraying at the seams. Her urgency bleeding into tears of desperation. She knows that being this close, every second wasted is another where you slip through her fingers. Justified anger bursting from the dam in ways you haven’t seen since ancient days.

Even now the tendons and bones throughout your body tremble, resisting that monster’s attempts to transmute them from afar. It’s the worst in your hands, a reflection of her obsession with touch, with shaping. This is a battle you have been losing every time you falter, having to watch them slowly stretch beyond a shape that you can even call yours. The worst part is she forces it to feel so gratifyingly good.

Do you even remember what your hands are supposed to look like?

She’s in your head. Maybe her seed was always there, only recently starting to bloom. She’s seeping deeper into your mind with every breath. She melts every mental wall you can put up by pressing, almost lovingly, up against the pleasure centers in your brain. How long can you hold out against the hedonistic pyre she lights in your flesh? She’s promising you such deep depths of sensation should you give in. How long can you continue to resist the urge to take those twisting fingers and plunge them deep and let her all the way in?

Enjoy the gifts I’ve given you. Bask in the pleasure of becoming what you were always meant to be. Come home to me so I may end your suffering.

You stumble into a thicket of trees, sweat dripping down your brow. The bark is so much colder than that cloying flesh.

When was the last time you felt safe enough to touch your wife, without fear that the bliss would let the monster consume you? When was the last time you could think of such things without twists of nausea in your gut?

You’ve never needed her. Only me.

You gasp for breath. The world spins in a matte painting of blue, brown, and green. Every inch of skin feels taut; the shape of these limbs is wrong. Too short. Too different from the blood boiling in your veins.

How many times has she taunted you deep in the night, bombarded you with images of her taking the only person you’ve ever loved for herself? How many times has she taken your body out from under you? Left your consciousness intact, only to force your flesh to twist beneath you during the most intimate acts with the only person you’ve ever felt to be truly safe? How many nightmares has she burdened you with where she gifted you with pillars of flesh you didn’t want in the throes of deepest release? Then forced you to breed with her before she consumed you whole.

How long have you wanted to burn every inch of flesh to drown her indulgences out with pain?

You lean against the tree in the dark shade cast against the spring sun. Bile hits the grass, burning against the back of your throat. You need to ground yourself, fast, or you’ll falter again. The little knife from that belt slides across the skin, its pain casts a wave that forces her back. Crimson drips onto the grass.

It’s getting harder to push her back. Are you going to make it?

Moose doesn’t understand. Maybe you thought you’d told her enough, shown her the depths of danger. But you were wrong.

How could she understand? She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t walked in the fire like you and your wife. She’s a bureaucrat. Her caution is based on a practicality, an assertion that you were strong enough to last. She was wrong. She was too understanding over the delay, too quick to acquiesce to the Georgian officials needing to evaluate the array of field gear that had been packed on the transport.

“I don’t know that I can hold on.”

The words sink in the dark of the thicket, heard by no one. There is no salvation here. All you can do is let an uncharacteristic whimper slip through your lips.

Perhaps it was her song on the breeze, pulling me along on a string as she has so many times before.

The cool surf steams against the flesh of your ankles. A relief, if only temporary. You stand for a moment on waters edge, contemplating walking deep into the surf and letting yourself drown. But that won’t work. Not with the fleece about your shoulders.

Perhaps it was the gulls of the black sea pulling me back through memory to the hallowed few happy days of a childhood long past.

How long has it been since you felt these rocks beneath your bare feet? Since those tiny pebbles tinkled between your toes in the spring sun.

Now I see what drives you, laid bare in the mid-afternoon sun. Hecate’s purple inferno roaring deep in your chest. The deep electric current of a violet love so fierce it transcends all of time itself. An icy cyan hammer, frozen from spite, shattering against her threads. A gentle, golden adoration for what was left behind. Each powers the resistance, the individuality a nightfire against the crimson mist trying to rob you of flesh and mind.

The question is, how much longer can you hold out against her siege? Will what I did buy enough time to save you?

Trees waver gently in the wind. The chatter of tourists walking at a distance from where you step is muffled with the ides of those early days.

---

Do you remember?

The waves wash at your knees. Every bubble and fleck of foam is a vessel in some grand war fleet, destined to free the trapped peoples within the pebble forts you built just beyond the surf.

She left you there on that favored beach, with a handful of servants and Matriarchs. It was to manage some business further inland near the border. It wasn’t important, it never really was. Just a way to get you out of view, somewhere you wouldn’t cause problems, somewhere where she didn’t have to think about you. Often the case when she was justifying her next cruelty.

Was it supposed to be a reward, of sorts, for conforming to her image? Did she know you loved the ocean? That you dreamt idle romantic notion of ships on the waves and the grand adventures they carried their occupants on? How many hours in your youth were spent in the riverside docks, watching the traders come and go?

A tiny raft floats away, bound with vines and a broad leaf for a sail. It rocks with the surf. One of a dozen made in the morning; set sail in the afternoon after a lunch of rabbit stew. Even now you see the history playing out, battle lines and maneuvers of that forbidden ancestor you shouldn’t know about. When had that servant slipped you her secrets under the door?

A noise through the trees. You look up in the direction of the caretakers.

“Stay here, Princess. Beasts are lurking.”

With blades drawn and magic swirling, they go inland, away from the surf. Dinner for the night ahead. You’re alone, and it isn’t until you look up again that the realization settles into place.

For the first time in your short life, it’s completely quiet. Silence in a way that isn’t menacing, that isn’t a punishment, that doesn’t herald the imminent moment you’ll be caught doing something you shouldn’t. Maybe, it’s the first time you have felt, well, happy? Real happiness, not the urgency of wanting to please your maker.

Isn’t that wrong to feel something of your own volition? You slap the side of your head and whisper softly to the breeze,

“Bad vessel,”

in the hopes that it will satisfy the maker when she returns and knows what you’ve done.

Then the entire atmosphere changes.

A glance towards the waves, every hair standing up on the back of your neck. There it is. How you gaze upon the radiance of a woman in the surf and freeze in place. What is the color of her hair? It’s the rich brown of a fine bark, streaked with purple fire. Olive skin draped in endlessly flowing lavender marks. How her eyes burn with the flame of your house.

But she doesn’t look identical to your maker.

She says nothing. She doesn’t need to for you to understand what she is. Eyes weighted with shadows of many sleepless nights. They preach a message ten thousand words long. This is wrong.

She extends a hand to you, the light within that gaze tilting to an unfamiliar warmth.

“Come with me. I will show you who you can be. You deserve so much more from the world.”

But how can you possibly process that. The leviathan isn’t going to wake for another ten years. You hesitate, looking back towards the tree line. That tiny chest tightens with the uncertainty and fear of disappointing your sculptor.

When you look back, there’s a deep, hollow sadness, pressing into the flare of her ears. She looks, for a moment of tangible weakness, as if she might cry. She’s weak. Whatever look takes to those youthful lips, it tells her how deeply bound you are.

So, she wipes her eyes. Then she walks through the surf, down the beach toward the edge of the bay, beckoning you to walk along. You follow her, through the surf. The sky above seems to twist with multi-color paint-scapes, a kaleidoscope of shapes and images flaring against an endless horizon. Through the swaying, thickened trees you drift in a dance over the land. In the end you stand with her on a bluff overlooking the harbor where you once were.

“One day, you’ll be free, and you’ll stand here again.”

“Who are you?”

“Do you not recognize the blood we share?”

When you looked up at her again, she was no longer a reflection of what you might be. No, she was a towering figure, skin wrapped in a tumbling river of cyan and white; flowing endlessly like the wind itself. Her hair contained all the dreams of a sunset, aflame with orange hues that could swallow the entire world. In her right had she held a staff carved from the old Ironwoods, drenched with the symbols of the Southern Dreamers and the house of your name. A crown forged from horns, teeth and dragon scales wreathes her skull.

“You’re—”

“The slayer of kin, the traitor of the ancient dream, bringer of imperial ruin?”

“The Witch of Tempests.”

She looked down upon you, eyes of lavender burning like stars in the sky. For an eternity you were held there, trapped in the endless bounds of those purple orbs. Freed from her spell with the shuttering of those all-seeing eyes, and the flow of salty tears.

“There yet remains hope.”

That’s where they find you, in a dreamlike haze, talking to something that isn’t there. Do you remember what she enacted when she returned?

“Do not lower yourself to them. You are of Daevae blood. You are above those pointless ears destined to crawl in the mud. You are above those lower Daevae. You stand above even those Matriarches who think themselves of importance next to me. Only my son stands above you. But he will never have as glorious a destiny.”

When you stood before her, how could you know that the scent of something she hated so deeply wreathed your flesh?

The drip of her blood echoes endlessly in your mind. Drawn from the very servant who slipped you glimpses of truth. Drained dry upon the altar while you are forced to watch.

“Always remember, this fault is yours. This is what happens when you do not shape to my intent. Sit in the dark until you can envision the shape that you’re supposed to be. Then we will craft again.”

They stopped trying to get close after that, those servants and Daevae from the north. You were beyond their reach.

You came to hate that beach.

“Cleanse yourself of these heretical sentiments, or we take you back to the pebble harbor.”

It became a reminder that everything bad was always your fault.

All because, no matter what you did, you simply could not conform to her unspoken desire. How can a child grasp that they are simply an object to be filled and used? You’d never be simply a destiny for her to reach and nothing more. You were more than that, and she hated you for reminding her of it, every single day.

---

This place has a different name now, doesn’t it? Its shape is so very different from the seaside fortress town that once lay in the harbor. Endless towers of glass, concrete and steel have taken its place.

For but a moment, through the fevered haze, you wonder how it fell. How did Purana burn when Aea vanished into Temporal Eternity? Was it buried? Was it abandoned?

The old has been forgotten. Much like the truth of what she made you for.

No matter what the reality is, you still won’t go back to that bluff. Not yet.

In a moment of clarity, the roles appear to reverse. She is before you, as you once were before her. A tiny reflection of that child you once were, standing in the surf, and staring back at you with wide lilac eyes.

Innocence lost. Yet the position of where she stands is wrong.

“Why—”

Your voice breaks in the silence.

“Why are you taking that shape?”

When it does not respond, you turn away from it and stare straight through me. Oh how those eyes are aflame with sunset-tears.

“Why do you spy on me in a moment of great weakness. When I am on the edge of everything?”

I avert my gaze, bound to the sensations of your flesh alone. Neither of us answer. You know, very well, the answer to what she would say to that question. And I simply can’t, not from so far away. But would I could, I would say, she always appears in the form you need to see her in most. Even when she’s so far away.

Together, we watch her, that child of a shape that once was, trudge through the surf. She hugs your legs, squeezing upon you tight. A gentle wash of warmth diminishing Her grasp upon your flesh. When the child lets go, she walks straight on past, towards the tree-line. There she pauses and stares back. An expectant look rises on those child-like features, accompanied by the extension of one tiny hand in your direction.

Of course, she wants you to walk with her.

An eternity of hesitation holds you in the moment, trembling with the fear of leaving the waves which yet ground your flesh. But she sings with tremendous patience.

You cross the gap and slide acheing flesh against her gentle grasp. The skin is soft and warm against the feverish meat of your fingers.

Holding that tiny hand, washes Her all away. The fever does not fade, but her fingers beneath your skin still. The thrust of her influence slams closed, and you are dragged to surface, thrust into the clarity of realizing, you were drowning. You gasp for breath.

Tears drip from your eyes, as for the first time in weeks, the wolves at the gate are kept at bay.

“Thank you.”

She does not reply. She pulls on your hand, the signal to follow.

Together, we walk into the greens. A haze of memory, voices across your entire life echoing in the wind of a dervish spinning in the sky as a spiral of blossoming cerulean fractals. Water trickles somewhere ahead. You walk with her through a thousand doorways, a journey across ten thousand vibrant worlds of indescribable wonder to reach a destination only she truly knows. Then the trickle of water is behind you and the whole world seems to press back in with disappointing mundanity. Solid brick and stone beneath your boots.

Voices, a cascade of muffled words, person-like shapes milling all around you. They avoid where you walk as if you’re invisible to the world. In turn you cannot resolve their features.

The phantom stops, squeezing those alien fingers attached to you. You look down at her, in the midst of a place you don’t know, with a crowd of medium traffic milling all around. She looks up at you with warmth in her eyes, and let’s go of your hand, the touch of that Monster’s breath returning to your flesh. Then she points up.

The first thing you grasp, is the Pillar of marble perhaps ten-fifteen feet in front of you. Cast in a solid inverted obelisk, at first, it doesn’t seem terribly special. That is, until your eyes land upon the iconography at its base.

A trireme, oars extended, imprinted in gold perhaps three meters up. You stare, who knows how long, trying to understand why they would do such a thing. Why they would cast it in gold like this. Then your gaze climbs higher, a growing anticipation flowing in your nerves—

Every ounce of oxygen is stolen from your lungs. Atop this pillar of marble, cast in bronze, decorated with golden jewelry, and holding out the most familiar symbol of your people, is, well, you.

Or what is supposed to be you.

The proportions are not terribly accurate. The face shape is wrong. It lacks your ears… but that hardly matters at this moment. They made this. The descendants of your people, diluted as they may now be, forged this image of you.

The muffled echoes of endless voices begin to resolve into distinct words.

“Who is she, Momma?”

“That’s Medea.”

“Who was she?”

“A thief.”

You flinch, pressed back as if someone struck you in the chest, then again across the face. Her breath brushes warmly against your ear. Teeth that aren’t there knead gently into the flesh sending bursts of unwanted stimulation trickling into your mind.

Is it a lie? Are you shying away from how you robbed me of what was mine? Robbed our people of their future?

“No… no I didn’t—I was trying to help them.”

“Look at this stupid statue, just one more way the government is taking everything from us.”

“They’re just like her, leaving us behind to chase the west.”

Were you? Or were just running away from the truth of what you were meant to be? You were selfish. You abandoned them.

Fingers squirm deep beneath your flesh, crawling across your entire body. Her touch glides underneath the skin, heat prickling through your legs, your arms, your torso, your chest. Several are making their way towards—

“No!”

You screw your eyes shut, trying to center yourself with all the tools you have used to resist her grasp. It doesn’t work. It’s not enough this time. You made a mistake, you left the hotel, you shouldn’t have come alone.

Your eyes pop open again, unsteady legs carrying you several steps forward.

You look down from the statue, staring at your hands as they shake. A sickly flame squirms beneath the skin. Feel how the Flesh writhes, across your entire body. Listen to the Bones quake in their sockets. Your breathing picks up, that inferno she’s pressing into your flesh, it’s accelerating and you’re—

You moan. Loudly and so very lewdly. A hand jammed over your lips trying to stop another. Sweat drips from every part of your body, tracing its way over the blazing patches of squirming meat and bone. A particularly cruel bead runs the entire length of your acheing spine, provoking a scream that you silence by biting into the meat of your arm.

The pain does not wash her away.

You’re invisible to their eyes, shielded by the confines of the robe. You wish you were anything but.

“No, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave any of you behind!”

You scream at them.

They don’t hear you.

“She sold us out for a lover who betrayed her.”

Let go.

Your grasp is slipping. You can’t do it. You can’t hold on for much longer.

“No, that’s not why I did it!”

Your voice breaks, cracking with a deep flush of heat that stretches the meat of your neck. It spreads against and into the shape of your larynx. With every breath, every involuntarily noise, the strings of your vocal chords are plucked, thickening, lengthening, all with such a disgustingly wonderful sensation. Your thighs press together as your abdomen churns with a rising, unwanted, foreign need. The Monster is pouring in from above and below.

A hand clasps to your neck, tears burning in the corners of misting eyes. You hear her voice, trickling from your lips in that sultry, hypnotic tone. They move against your will. The edges of that mouth begin to writhe with sparks of flame, heralding how she will soon twist each surface into her vibrantly colored, puffy, flesh. Already the ripples are spreading in spider veins out across the rest of your face; throbbing with the beat of that hammering heart.

“Listen to how your voice rises to meet my intent. The beauty of my song in your flesh.”

“S-s-top!”

You beg her.

“Help!”

They don’t hear. Only I can hear you through the weave of her temporal displacement.

“She’s a witch!”

The muscles of your neck, twitching beyond any residual control, drag your vision down to stare at the right hand. One finger, the index, throbs with a horrifying ripple, aflame with intended desire that arcs through her muscle-deep fingers crawling into—

Her voice howls to the sky as a flower unwillingly sheds its petals.

A visceral scream. It’s all you can do.

Feel the stomach churn with a fading nausea, replaced with a growing desire. Sweat stained flesh slicks with the sickening impurity of her violations. You want to vomit, but she wicks away the sensation beneath a pyre of indulgence you can’t escape.

You stumble to the floor, both hands bearing the front of your weight against the brick floor. Something creaks and cracks in the spine, a flame pouring through the abdomen as she stretches you out like an unwinding string. That index finger crawls forwards, acheing bone stretching out in a thunderstorm of dizzying bliss. The flesh throbs with overstretched tendons, soft tissue thickening beneath the squirming skin. With every second the proportions correct, leaving a spindly digit in its place. Soon your torso will fill out to match its stretched length. Tattoos across your back, your arm, burn crimson as you scream, trying to stop the slide.

“Why would I stop, vessel? You are finally fulfilling your purpose.”

“I-I don’t want this! I never wanted this!”

“Since when has a vessel’s wants ever mattered?”

And their voices continue to pour in, layered atop her cruel barbing words.

“She murdered her children.”

The right thumb’s phalanges ache, the flesh twitching beneath the skin. You scream, sitting back in a kneel on your haunches as you pull the limb from the ground and hold it up in the air. The curl of her fingers’ throbs deep below, lighting fires in the flower that writhe in ways that you’ll never be able to unfeel. It’s not yours anymore, she’s storming in and taking it for herself. She is taking it all from you, even as she forces fat into those swelling lips, searing the vibrant red into place. You grasp the wrist of the shifting right hand, preparing to use all your strength to tear the flesh away and contain the epicenter of her infection.

“I won’t—won’t give in!”

“You already have.”

She forces your twitching facial muscles into a smirk, her solidifying tongue tracing the contours of her newformed lips on your slowly shifting face. The left hand begins to throb and ache in time with the right. You can only watch. Feel that growing, twisted desire flaring in your belly, even as the left index finger begins to follow the path of its twin on what is now her right hand.

“No. No I—”

“Admit it, vessel, you were meant for me.”

You waver, weakening with every second against the intensity of her assault upon your flesh. Images, desires and thoughts all smear together, mixing with the force of her projection of what you should be.

No, what you are.

No, no, that’s not right. That’s what she sees you as… isn’t it?

You’re falling apart at every level and there’s no way to stop. She’s leaking into your mind with every crack in the façade. Every wave of hedonism twitches in your flesh, every stroke of her fingers beneath the walls of what was once your most precious of places, each erodes any sense of personhood.

“She was a terrible mother.”

“No, I wasn’t—I…”

“You were never meant to be a mother.

“I… nggg.”

“How can a vessel love anything but its maker?”

“Hecate!”

“She can’t change the truth of what you did. She can’t change that you’re loving every moment of this.”

“Ughhhh gods it’s so…!”

“Good? Intoxicating? Of course it is. It always has been.”

You whimper, shuddering in a growing pile of slick you cannot stop.

“What purpose did the things you make serve in the end?”

“mmmmnnnn.”

“Nothing. Know that you made no legacy for us to take beneath our wing. Instead, you made a mess of deep pain in what should be a bliss filled mind. Can you not see that? That’s the answer. Oh, forgive me, know it’s hard to speak right now with how much you’re enjoying yourself. Relax my lips and enjoy the heat inside you.”

“I’m sorry, mommy. I’m so sorry.”

“Do you understand that a vessel does nothing with children but wound those who crack its shape?”

“I didn’t—"

“Such a shame we wasted canvas, isn’t it?”

“Ye-yes. You’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

“I just caused more pain.”

“You didn’t know any better.”

“But I still did it.”

“Only because those beneath us introduced imperfections into the shape of what your mind was supposed to be. A vessel is not meant to do anything other than serve its destined purpose.”

“I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“Shhhhh. Listen to my voice. Everything I have ever done for you; it was to keep you protected from the ambitions of those who would try to shape you into things you are not meant to be. I only ever wanted to wrap you safely in my warmth. I only wanted to reward you for being so very good for me, for being exactly what I needed you to be. When I raised my hand, it was to steer you away from the pain of failing to be more than that. But I was too harsh, I mishandled you, and interlopers were able to pour other ideas into what should be an obedient mind.”

“Am—am I being good now?”

“You are. You so very are. There are just a few imperfections left to work out, so just enjoy this bliss in your skin.”

Her right hand, beautiful in its spindles, slides up your thighs, tracing across the middle and upwards. You groan aloud with her, as the sensitive deep tissue behind one nipple aches. Fat and muscle twitch with an unquenched heat, begging to be touched and shaped. As her fingers press and massage into the softness, you whine together. The terrified fragments of your awareness cannot stop the ripples of sensation curling up into your skull. You’re forced to watch as it swells into her shape, blossoming like the unwanted wetness between your legs. You tremble, caught in the storm of spiraling white fire arcing through every nerve as you gasp for breath.

That long femur trembles in one leg, the right one. Throbbing with heat, muscle, tendons, and fat squirm under the skin, eager to take a shape it should be sculpted into. With a sickening crack, the bone finally gives and you scream. The right thigh stretches beneath you, robbing the eroding mind of any thought except one.

This is what you were made for. This shape you are becoming, it’s fulfilling that destiny you have always desired. Finally, pure, simple purpose with no strings attached. An inferno burns in your abdomen, the left hand, gracious in its spindly digits, moves south. It’s fully beyond your control as it creeps down far too sensually across your middle, digits curling to lift the bottom of the dress so you can quench the heat within. So she can reward you for being such a good vessel.

“Too masculine for a woman.”

“Well, we’re fixing that, aren’t we vessel? Preparing you for when I retake my proper role.”

“Too smart to be a wife.”

“Oh we’ll certainly not have to worry about that, won’t we?”

“Too bloodthirsty to trust.”

“She’s a traitor.”

“Not anymore. She is returning to my fold.”

“She murdered her brother.”

“And she is atoning for it now.”

“They should tear this monument down.”

“Now, come to me, Vessel. There is only so much I can do from afar.”

“I made a mess.”

“Shhh, I’m not angry. Together, we will wash away this hate. Let me end your suffering. Let us empty that mind of anything but what is needed for you to fulfill the role I made you for. I will erode the failures of the past and replace this legacy you made with warmth, with the deep sensation of eternal indulgence as my skin. Come home and finally be my flesh.”

As she chewed away at the last vestiges of your resisting mind, you can’t help but feel, maybe she was right. Maybe everything you had ever done was just delaying the inevitable. You were truly never meant to be anything more than another body for her to carry on in. Every attempt you had made otherwise had done nothing but inflict pain. On you, on the lesser things you cared about, and on her.

Her lips press into ~~your~~ her own neck, nibble on burning ear lobes, press against ~~your~~ her own lips. A dance of tongues with the perfect imitation carved in flesh between those lips, pressing into a throat that might once have been yours. Every touch is urging forth the hand she now controls to dip beneath and make the plunge that will seal your fate.

The last thing you think about is that now so very distant wife.

I’m sorry. I can’t hold on.

At the edge of the abyss, fingers slipping from that final hold, something grabs your wrist. Something far more powerful than she could ever hope to be. The touch is a single ripple upon an endless reflective pond, the sudden surge of a river bursting its banks and catching you in its path. It rises now as a twinkling song burning against the ire of the void, the endless symphony of creation slashing its whims across the horizon in a storm of feeling.

That monster screams on the other end of the many strings burning in your flesh. In turn it pours from her stolen lips upon that almost unrecognizable face.

“NO! SHE IS MINE.”

It lunges through the distance, jerking the half mutilated shape forward to grab at the intruder with her hands squirming at the ends of your flesh. Strings try to snap taut and drag her will to its completion with a limb that sprouts from the writhing back.

Something incomprehensible moves at a fraction of the speed of life, ripping across the endless star sea. A palm the size of galaxies slams against your half-shifted chest. Will you ever forget what happens next? How fractally burning streams of fragmented you are displaced from fevered flesh in a swirl of never-ending color? All the while another limb tears her growing and twisted visages from among the panache and casts them into a churning maw of endless light. Like a rubber band, you’re jerked back into that fevered flesh to the tune of her distant, petulant screams.

The strings are cut.

A gasp for breath, looking up, only to have it all stolen away again.

That phantom, puppeteered from a distance, is no longer a child, no longer a mere shade of her intentions. She has come in her manifestation as a reflection of what you should be. She kneels before that broken body, at first matching it in height, and then filling the whole sky with her cerulean ire. Four golden eyes containing all reality in their effervescent shimmers. Olive skin bled a pale green, your tattoos reflected in ever shifting teal which fluoresce with their own multi-colored, stellar bursts. Crimson hair, forged of the fire of stars, arcs in infinitesimal loops off into the quickly darkening vermillion sky, before curling about the visage of you cast on the stone above.

Her gaze pierces you through, filling every ounce of empty space in an infinitesimal looking glass before shredding those strings as they desperately claw for purchase in your corrupted flesh. When it speaks, it is without a mouth, in a voice that is yours reflected in infinities in mind and ears alike.

Mither: A moment more and you would have slipped beyond our reach.

Thinking is difficult. Her twisted thoughts still linger deep within that fragmented mind.

“Let—let me go. She’s right. They hate me. I left them to die, and they hate me for it. Look upon me and know that I have failed at everything I have ever tried to be. I am nothing, I was never enough to be anything other than a vessel.”

It—no, that’s not right. It’s a she. She’s, you know what she is. Is it love or is it hate that burns in you for her. What thoughts are yours? What are the monster’s?

That thing before you, she must be the maker, the creator, the one who forges for all.

A sigh falls from those planetary lips, with such heaviness that it rinses the sky itself of clouds in an ethereal arc.

Mither: Her grip is deep, her corruption thick in the very essence of your flesh. But I will not abide it. I will reconstruct what was taken.

You shrink beneath the storm of her will. The cosmos themselves squirm in every blink of far too many eyes.

With ripples of light, other limbs squirm from beneath her flesh. Before you can even think to react, they shoot forward. Two fingers embed deep within your forehead, her boundless presence washing through your brain. Then, a palm, pressed flat to your chest through the robes, sinks through your ribs.

You gasp in air, eyes coating over with the technicolor grains of reality. Every string, every star is a swing of an endless hammer, a clink of a chisel against the tapestry of what could be and what will be.

Mither: Hear the other words she has hid, child of lilac hues. Know that thy name, thy flesh, holds more than the twisted deceit she would bind you to.

“I think she’s more than just that.”

Her star-dusted fingers grasp the very concept of what you are, what you should be. Twixt her grip you are gently pulled into pieces, a blueprint of what you were pressing into the framework of what she twisted you into.

“Oh?”

A gentle coolness suffuse every twisted thought and tainted perception. A brush recasts the curves even as a hammer gently strikes miscast pieces into reforming shapes.

“Yeah. She’s a hero.”

You gasp for breath, a gentle warmth suffusing deep in your flesh. The acheing throb of her twisted desire, it sublimates and drips downwards like discarded fat. With every twist of her galactic tools, every gentle breath from her lips, she casts aside the shavings of conceptual refuse blossoming from her malice. In the process she destroys what the monster wrought. It pools beneath your legs, and seeps into the dirt, trails of crimson steam dissipating skyward.

Hear how the Monster’s screams echo through the flames of reality. They’re filled with an indignant rage, an endless torment from the immense pain driven by the throbbing nerves she’d implanted in you. She flails with entitlement at being deprived once again of what was never hers.

“She was incredibly wise. She would have made a great ruler if Jason hadn’t tricked her with the deceit of a potion.”

One hand trembles. One at a time, each finger sheds her hateful spindles in favor of shapes you had begun to forget.

“She was brave. She sacrificed everything to pursue love with someone from outside of her world.”

A breast returns to its familiar shape, easing the ache in your spine. Do you know how heavy those tears are, burning in the corners of your eyes? Yet there she is, seen through a mist of relief, of grief, of purpose as the words echo in an endless song.

“She was clever, a sorceress who leveraged her might to walk a unique path.”

“She was smart and knew her worth.”

That mismatched leg resets with quiet relief to match its sister, forcing you to adjust how you sit.

“She was strong. She stood fearlessly against the tides of fate, and those foreign gods judged her just.”

“Her vengeance was just, she didn’t lay down an accept being tossed aside. She took back what he tried to take from her.”

“We can take from her. We can make our own fate in the years to come.”

“I can’t think of a more fitting symbol for our resilience. For our capability as Georgians.”

“She represents the freedom all women should have. She strode against the expectations placed on them, on a mother, and she carved a path that everyone came to respect.”

“She was a healer, a mediator who brought together the wounds of our people and made them whole.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe she’s more complicated than I first gave her credit for.”

“Medea is Georgian. She represents the best of what we can be, and what the world can push us to become if we let them.”

Mither: Hear now the truth she would deny you and know that a vessel was never the fate to which you were bound. Only the fate she wished to bind you with.

Then the horror of what you’ve just been through slams home. You vomit, onto the brick and stone, casting forth every inch of twisted flesh, every ounce of saliva she forced between your lips. You scream at the brick, at the dirt. Tear fingers through your hair.

A twisted helix of emotion burns in your belly. Relief, sentiment, deep abiding grief and joy that you were not remembered to be just a monster. The positive slams together with the disgust, the violation, the pure terror of how she made you love it, of how she twisted the most delicate intimates in the name of corrupting you to the core.

Upon the floor you shed what she had done to your womb, it's crimson ichor dissipating to ash and mist as she cleans this one last sacred hall of flesh of her marks.

How much more can she possibly steal from you? How many more joys can she ruin.

The breaths are heavy, the tears weeping from the corners of your eyes in a thunderous rain.

“Maker…”

A hand rises to your throat. She has restored the voice to that which you always remembered. A voice you had forgotten in the throes of the monster’s grasp.

Mither: You are remembered. You are known as many things, good and bad. None will forget you are a child of the world. Always know that you, you stand a person in your own right. She seeks to rob you of this, for her own twisted aims, as she always has, as you have come to know. Though I cannot fully excise her grasp upon thy flesh, I may block it for a time.

She withdraws those limbs embedded in your flesh. A deep breath sweeps the sky with swirling clouds. You lean forward, straight into the many limbed grasp of her embrace. Spent, exhausted, and likely somewhat dehydrated.

“I—almost, she…”

Mither: We know, child of the forest. It was by the grace of her tugs on the many strands that we narrowly avoided—

She stops. A choked noise coming from her in a far too mortal expression of feeling for a thing such as her.

Mither: We almost lost another child.

You cling to that unfathomable shape, trembling in its protective grasp.

“I’m scared.”

Mither: We know.

“Will you not walk with us, as you once did so long ago?”

Her many eyes close.

Mither: Would were we to walk with thou unto the abyss, we would. But there are a great deal of hurdles between us, and the timing is poor.

“I don’t know that I can do this.”

Mither: Your strength is in those you have surrounded yourself with. Hark and know that there flows now a stream through which you will not sail alone. Such a disturbance on the world has not gone unnoticed.

You weren’t quite sure what that was supposed to mean.

“I’m not sure I understand. I don’t know that I can hold on long enough.”

Mither: Upon thy heart and mind I have placed a seal. It shall slow her influence here where the distance is so close. With the reforging of your conceptual flare, there will be more than enough time to finally escape her grasp.

You sniffle, pressing fingers into that starry unfathomable flesh. With a stirring realization, you begin to grasp the complete cleanse you’ve undergone. Though the memories of the horror remain… the cravings of her twisted influence have been severed.

Even if it’s only for a time.

“Thank you.”

You manage in muffled undertones.

Mither: Do not thank me. Heed my warning. If she is to touch you with barren flesh, they will not hold.

She gently pulls you upright and takes you in with all those spiraling eyes. For a rare moment, that thing that is far beyond anything you can begin to comprehend, offers you a smile. The smile of a mother you’ve always wanted.

Then it dissolves into foam on the wind and you are alone.

The light rapidly dims upon this square where you have burned your name in eternal bronze. The sun is setting. Now comes the ache of muffled, familiar voices.

“Where could she have possibly gone?!”

“We looked away for one fucking moment and she drifted out onto the damn street. Artemis’s bow I hope, for your sake, we find her before she—”

“We’ll find her, Carissa. It will be fine.”

“How the fuck would you know? You’ve not been listening to a damn word she’s been saying. We’re so close now that she’s pulling her under.”

“That’s not going to happen. You two are far too inextricably bound to the threads of whatever keeps pulling all of us along. The thing that Onyx serves. That I assume you serve as well.”

“Yeah? And where the fuck has she been all these years? Asleep in some fucking crater under the ocean. You don’t know anything about anything, Moose. You should have listened to us.”

“Carissa, you need to calm down. We will find her.”

“What if we’re too late? What if… what if I’ve already lost her?”

Their voices are a muffled blur as you stare up at the statue, face soaked with tears. There’s not really time to clean up or hide what has happened. But in the dark, they probably won’t notice beyond the reversion of your flesh.

“Look, what’s that?”

“Is that her?”

Footsteps. A hand on your shoulder. Another pulls the hood from over your head, revealing your face to the world.

“Hey, hey can you hear me?”

“What? Carissa, are you seeing this?”

“Yeah I fucking see it. That’s a secondary problem. Medea, Babe, can you hear me?

“All the changes are reversed.”

“Can you focus on helping me figure out if she’s okay.”

“She’s covered in sweat. I think she’s in shock.”

Her face fills your vision, the yellow-green eyes of the only person in the world you have loved at every level, and who has loved you in turn. But you can’t respond to her. Your lungs, your voice is not coming.

“Carissa.”

“Not now, I’m trying to make sure she’s still her. Medea? Medea are you in there?”

Warmth burns in your chest.

“Carissa, I—”

“Moose, now is not the fucking time!”

“Well, you should make time, because I know why she’s here.”

Carissa turns to look up at Moose with rank indignation.

“Yeah, why the fuck is that?”

Moose points up at the statue.

“That’s why.”

Your wife, the cranky lioness from the Arcadian wilderness and the most beautiful woman in your entire world, turns to gaze after the trajectory of Moose’s pointing finger. With one hand still on your shoulder, she stares up towards the bronze cast, and her whole demeanor changes. The hand on your shoulder squeezes.

“Oh.”

“They didn’t forget me.”

It falls from your lips almost effortlessly. The locked-up limbs finally give, as you wipe your eyes with one robed sleeve.

“They remembered my story. Twisted as it is. They’re inspired by my name.”

Silence settles upon the square. You sniffle, stealing glances at Moose and Carissa alike, as they process your words, staring up at the statue.

Finally, as if someone has shattered a glass in the distance, Carissa turns. She sweeps you from the ground, standing up in one, fluid motion, and hugs you tightly in. She supports you in a full bridal carry. She’s shaking, a wetness on her face pressing into your shoulder blade. A band wrapped tightly around your chest tightens.

“I was so worried.”

Now your own tears start to flow.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. She came for me, she and I couldn’t—”

“Don’t do that again.”

“I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.”

“Shhhh, I’m here. I’m here. I’m never leaving. I’m never letting you go.”

“She came. She saved me.”

“Who?”

“[DEIFIC SUBJUGATION PRIMER REDACTED].”

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck. I never should have let you slip out. Medea I’m so—"

You pull your face away from her shoulder, and take her face in your hands. She stops speaking, staring deep into your eyes for but a moment. Then you stretch up and kiss her. Weeping with the freedom to know that it’s you pressing into her and not the twisted nightmare of her will.

It’s a cataclysmic collision of lips that cracks with thunder, energy so electric that the sky rumbles. Sparks burn in the corners of your vision as you curl up against her, throwing your arms over her shoulders, and cling. You never want to let go. Never want to be away from her again where she can’t reach you if things go wrong.

It’s only moments later, when the kiss breaks apart, do you realize that the thunder in the sky wasn’t your love. To the North, in the direction of the Colchian plane, dark grey clouds churn. Crimson lightning splits the sky and more gather from every direction.

She’s furious as a tempest.

From the east comes something else. All three of you turn your heads, to watch as a column of light breaks the heavens, a wave of unseen disposition casting aside all traces of grey from the heavens and leaving the stars and moon clear above.

“What is that?”

There’s a long, protracted moment, before the conceptual ripples scorch past, carving a name in the cargo-container sized anchors and threads that tear by.

“So that’s why she’s waking up.”

A sigh drips from your lips.

“That’s why she’s not coming with us.”

“What are you two talking about?”

You both stand and watch the light pouring up into the sky.

“She’s waking up the Engineer.”

“Who?”

“Moose.”

You say turning in Carissa’s arms to look at the Magician. She looks at you with confusion writ plain on her face, raising her eyebrows questioningly.

“It’s your apocalypse. We’re on the edge of it.”

Silence between the three of you. Then Carissa speaks.

“We are taking one step… and she is taking another.”

No more was said after that. It wasn’t needed.

So, the night came, with her light blazing brilliantly in the distance. As you walked away, threatening to pull my phantom along, I cut the pantomime of attaching strings away to stand in that moment. Staring after your distant steps.

When they could be heard no more, I sit upon the brick of that plaza, staring at the dimming light on the western horizon. Tired eyes fall closed, heavy with the weight of so many strings yet to weave.

If I had not planted a false explosive device in your wife’s equipment, everything would have fallen apart. You would have been lost to us forever.

The endless ways this all could have gone wrong will haunt me till the end of time.

Yet it is another deceit to which I can never admit, another distance laid between every participant and myself on this monolith of woven strings. Nothing makes me sicker than the knowledge that I can’t even guarantee that you will survive what is to come.

I can only hope that all the pieces fall into place as the tears trickle down my face.

<End Log>

<Begin Log>

Every step echoes endlessly through the abyssal dark of this twisted forest. No stars in the sky, only the faint halo’ed light of an endless void marking the outline of trees and shrugs. Where did they go? Where are you?

Breaths are constricted, legs pounding against the earth. You have to run away, you have to get free. Ears filled with the drum of that heartbeat. Faster. Harder every second.

Medea: “Have to get away.”

The words are loud as falling stones in the silence. Branches claw and bite at your arms. Like snares, shadows try to hook your limbs. Jerk you back into the dark. You pirouette to avoid the hostility of the terrain, only to flip into the next set of shadowy embraces. Roots try to leap up. Trip you. Grab at your skin.

A shin smacks into something solid.

Legs out from under you.

Air rushing through your hair.

Hard dirt beneath your arm.

Rolling, rolling.

Sticky. Hot, wet, cloying. The taste of grey metal against your tongue. The smell of blood against your nostrils. Dress, your hair, your skin caked in it.

Thrashing panic. Sitting up, coughing out the splatters.

You freeze. In the wide shallow pool of blood there lays a body. It’s face points at you. The neck is bent unnaturally, broken. Lifeless dead eyes staring accusatorily up at you.

Medea: “Chalciope?”

The lips move, but it is not Chalciope’s voice that comes out. It is your Mother's, layered atop itself a thousand times.

The Corruptor: “You left us behind! You abandoned us!”

Medea: “No I—I didn’t mean to! I was going to come back! I wanted to come back for you!”

The Corruptor: “But you did.”

Medea: “I was going to come back!”

The Corruptor: “You know what you are.”

Medea: Chalciope, please, I wanted to come back for you!”

The Corruptor: “You know exactly what you’ve always wanted. To be rid of this burden. To be the only option, to become something greater. But I was holding you back. ”

With a horrifying crack the thing in the skin of Chalciope fixes its neck with both hands. Then it rolls its neck joint with a series of nauseatingly bony pops. You scramble backwards, deeper into the shallow pool of blood. Oblivious to the slow rise of the liquid, the way it laps at your skin, coating and seeping. False Chalciope pushes itself up, a gaping wound in its belly pouring gouts of blood into the pool. Then, the wound begins to stitch closed before your eyes.

Medea: “No I—I didn’t mean what I said. I was just angry, confused, and hurt. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I snapped.”

The creature turns in place, Chalciope’s lips pulled back into a wide unnatural grin.

The Corruptor: “It’s okay to admit it. It’s okay to admit that you were right. I was weak. She was weak.”

You jerk your hands out of the maroon, pressing them to your head. Blood dribbles into your hair, drip drip dripping over one ear.

Medea: “No, that’s not true!”

The Corruptor: “Admit it. She is too soft for the world we’re making. Too soft for the world you want, and the idle pleasure of flesh you are starting to enjoy. I can give you power. I can give you all the power you’ll ever need.”

Flesh begins to buzz with a lewd warmth beneath the surface of the blood. The heart beats faster, flame accumulating in that lower abdomen.

Medea: “No I—I love her. She’s been the only consistent good in my life, and I shoved her away.”

The Corruptor: “Admit it. You don’t need her. You never needed her. You love it don’t you? The way I make you feel. Don’t you adore the squirming of the flesh when her blood twists through your veins? When my blood carves its path to your destiny?”

Breaths come faster, shallower. Arms pull the body back, scrambling to get away. But the blood claws and cloys at the flesh, spreading that growing, pulsing heat deeper into the muscles beneath the skin. It viciously clings to your flesh and doesn’t let go. You’re up to your elbows in it before you realize the mistake. Thrashing only spreads it further.

Now, you’re sinking.

Medea: “No! No that’s not what I want!”

It laughs. All at once its flesh begins to quake, bones rattling in their sockets.

The Corruptor: “But you liked saying it! It made you feel better! It’s only right that it’s true.”

Medea: “No! I regretted it ever since!”

The Corruptor: “Such fervent and repressed denial. She’s weak. She deserves to be left behind.

You writhe against the anchoring strands of blood, desperate to get free. It’s up to just under the chest now.

Medea: “No!”

The Corruptor: “So resistant. She deserved to be nothing but fodder for your Mother’s intent. But if you cannot see that yet, well, temptation is not enough. How unfortunate to make the seeds bloom so soon. But needs must my lover.”

It raises an arm up. The blood pools and climbs up your mass, burning against your skin in thickening strands that condense and stack together. They flow outwards towards her outstretched digits. Under the surface of the life-giving ichor, currents twist and twirl, pooling and flowing inwards. Your legs are being pulled apart. It presses, washes, trying to—

A noise escapes your lips. You try with all your strength to jerk your legs free. The currents are strong. Trying to push down to leverage yourself out of the liquid only ends with your hands sinking into a soft sandy bottom. You have to get free. You have to get up and run. Every thrashing movement only seems to make the life-giving ichor cling more firmly to your skin. It pulses and throbs, massaging against the flesh in a not-unpleasant manner. One that dulls your senses and spikes waves of panting heat through the nerves up into your brain.

Her body is twisting before your eyes. Fingers twisting, the fleshing pulsating with a spiderwebbing crimson. They pop, then crack as digit by digit they extend outwards. Her leg muscles squirm, thighs thickening as they take on a horrifyingly familiar shape. A gutturally lewd noise fills those cheeks with such wonderous heat in the same breath as they make your stomach churn with nausea.

The Corruptor: “Accept my gifts. Willing become an arbiter of vengeance in the shape you were always meant to be and reap upon our enemy the humiliation that have cast upon your mind.”

Medea: “I—”

The words of defiant denial catch in your throat when the pond of rising blood manages to rip aside the cloth separating your flower from its horrible warmth.

The Corruptor: “Still you resist. A shame to lose such fierce individuality, but I shall have to break and remold you.”

The ichor squirms, pressing and parting the budding petals. Horrible, awful slickness flowing in and coating everything with a sense of deepening flame that spreads out into your lower abdomen. You scream, a full-throated, high-pitched noise. It’s not a noise of terror, its pure hedonistic stimulation slamming through the lungs and vocal cords. She steps forward, takes your chin in one hand even as the next set of her digits begin to lengthen.

Everything starts to scream with sensation. It’s deep inside you now. Spreading, crawling underneath every inch of skin like massaging fingers. Why does it feel like this?! Spindly long digits pressing into the soft tissues, molding them, reshaping and caressing bone. It leans down, lips centimeters from your ears.

The Corruptor: “Can you feel me inside your skin? Can you feel that shape rising inside?”

In the white haze polluting the edges of that eyesight, her chest begins to rapidly swell, one side then the other. She moans loudly, filling your ears and provoking a reply from lungs that betray everything. It takes every ounce of strength to try to fight it back. Still not enough. She pulls ever so slightly back, her eyes deep pits of abyssal black marred in swirls of crimson. One hand, your mother’s digits splaying out wide, moves hypnotically through the air. Dragging a nail down your face, over your lips.

It hovers there for a moment as you sweat profusely in the pool of crimson, before drifting down to cup one of your acheing breasts. Fingers converge underneath the skin, provoking an agonized, breathy cry. In the awful moments that follow, you’re powerless to do anything but watch in agonizing terror as one side of your chest begins to throb and swell with such wonderfully hot sensations that ripple down into your flower. Everything feels wrong, like the blood inside of you is trying to pull and pushing against the flesh of your torso. Like it's not the right length. Vertebrae ache in the spine, as if unhappy with the mold of their current shape. What's happening to you?

All the while her hand grasps, and massages. Why is it so intoxicating? Her thumb runs over that nipple in unbearable ripples of sensation that make you scream. One breast presses out against the crimson stained fabric of the dress, no longer yours.

It pulls away, leaving you with the horrifying realization that one of your hands has taken its place. Eagerly massaging the exhilaratingly sensitive flesh with fingers that are starting to throb and tremble. Why can't you stop?! Her hands begin to move, swishing through the air, wiggling her fingers to the beat of a song that you cannot hear. Crimson strings connected to each of its hand arc across your whole body in millions of puppet strings.

Every motion wrenches a part of your flesh asunder from its native shape. The other breast begins to swell, provoking another scream from your lips. Why?! It laughs. It laughs as one of your femurs cracks and begins to pull apart in an agony of delicious heat. Louder when your vertebrae begin to pop and stretch, yanking your torso out in a maddening wave of white lightning that lifts your head higher.

The Corruptor: “Do you not love the gifts I have given you!”

Before you can give a response, the blood rises up in front of you in a false miming shape of your Mother. Through ragged breaths you stare at it, horrified, before it crawls forwards towards you. Every instinct screams to move, to thrash to get away. But it has you bound, and none of your limbs respond. The Blood construct in the shape of your Mother jerks forwards, pressing its lips against yours in a kiss that burns against those lips. Her tongue presses into your mouth, setting aflame your jaws, and the entirety of your lower face. Then, with a rising terror, it presses back into your throat.

A muffled scream becomes gurgles of terror. Why can't you do anything?! It pours and pours, the flesh of your neck writhing, esophogaus and vocal cords tightening. The hands of the falsity that, with every passing second resembles some higher being in the guise of your Mother, flick. Your hands rise up with the strings, pressing into the back of the blood construct's head. It pushes in, wrapping your skull in a film of thick blood that plucks and pulls at the skin. Without warning, your neck pops and stretches out in time with the sudden jolt of growth in your cervical vertebrae.

The Corruptor: Do you not enjoy what you are becoming!

The film of blood seeps into the skin of that face, throbbing with every gulp that presses down your esophagus until it’s gone and your belly churns and aches with hostile heat.

Medea the Crimson: “I don’t—Yes!”

Lips dance out of your control, swelling with sudden plushness. Your voice cracks, deepening. That voice, dancing against your ears. It’s hers. Why are you so powerless?

Plunge. The Blood pulls you under, sinking like a stone into a crimson abyss. Why can't you do anything?! It presses in in through every orifice it can find. In the abyss you stare at your twisting body, shifting beyond recognition of what you can truly call yours. The mind feels likes its coming apart at the seams, identity and sense of self eroding beneath the lovely flames worming beneath every inch of skin. All the while the strings across your flesh grow taut.

The shape above, the reflection of what you’re only starting to realize is a Pillar of Reality, swells, bursting all boundaries of limitation upon its physical size. It fills the sky. Laughing, an awful cackling noise in your mother’s voice.

No, that’s not right.

Your voice.

Right? No that's wrong.

All at once the plunge reverses trajectory, the taut strings yanking upwards. With it comes the body, jerked from the ichor with a sploosh. Your twisted flesh thrashes with a simultaneously craved and unwanted pleasure that refuses to end.

HELP.

The thought never makes it to your lips.

Your mother’s voice pours forth instead, from her lips on your half-transformed face in the reflection of the blood flowing down the colossi’s torso. It is as large as the Ironskin itself. Every sound is an endless scream. All at once those throbbing fingers on your twitching, widening hands begin to twist. Fluid drips from a flower that is no longer yours, an agonizing burst of lighting smashing up your spine as the small bones pop and writhe and crawl forwards. One goes. Then another. Each warping beneath the flame into the curl of her spindly digits.

With countless crimson strings embedded in your skin, she reels you up, every motion jerking another limb further along into a new, awful ,yet agonizingly good shape.

The falsity wears a crown of crimson thorns that gouge into the flesh of their immense skull. Blood drips down their face from the gaping gashes. In complement, a long-pleated dress with rippling folds and rose thorn embroidery curls around their otherworldly ashen flesh. They stare at you, eyes endless pits of scarlet starlight.

The hand moves, pulling the strings, making you twitch and dance for the smile on her lips. You gasp for air between moans in a voice that isn’t yours, an arm and hand in her awful shape being puppeted to force its digits to feel up and down your twisting body.

False She Who Weeps Crimson: “Soon you will be mine. Soon you will have always been mine.”

Tears are leaking from the eyes. Why you? Your mind is under siege, warping beneath this endless assault. The hate for it, the fear mixing now with the desire for completion, for fulfillment.

With a motion of the other hand, the titanic thing reaches up and claws out one eye. Then the other.

False She Who Weeps Crimson: “My design is beautiful, laid at your birth, in the binding of your flesh. Though you have been taken from reach of my servant, the purpose you so greedily desire will be fulfilled. Isn’t that what you want?”

Ilya the Medea in Former: “Yes. Yes it’s all I have ever wanted. To be approved.”

False She Who Weeps Crimson: “Then eat of my flesh.”

The eyeballs shrink in her hands, as they lift and begin to flow towards you. What little willpower that remains yours urges you to turn away. But she jerks the strings, opening your mouth. They are slimy, disgustingly gelatinous against your tongue and throat. You swallow, the burning sensation intensifying across your whole body. In the space behind her eye sockets a river of blood pours out, streaking crimson tears down her face. In those holes there are mouths. Then, mouths within mouths, stretching endlessly, tongues lapping at the ichor. With a jerk she pulls you closer, tilting her head back.

False She Who Weep’s Crimson: “Now drink of my flesh and know absolution.”

Lower. Lower, your mother’s mouth opening, tongue extending to lap of her gifts. With a sudden, jostling jerk, you’re yanked away. What's happening? Its screams fill your ears, the rapid thrashing of its body blurring everything with motion.

False She Who Weeps Crimson: “She’s mine!”

It turns towards something you can’t see, swinging you about on the strings. One of its arms is severed at the elbow, a starry horizon of cerulean swirls left behind over the stump. With another sudden jerk, you’re pulled back towards the endless cascade of mouths within its eye sockets.

The strings cut.

You’re falling.

And in that moment as you spin through the air towards the ground below, you look up. The sky is filled with an endless sea of stars of infinite hues and warmth. Framed against the boundless horizon is the shape of maternal familiarity, with skin of teal and hair woven of crimson stars, and far too many limbs to count. A scythe, the size of galactic clusters gleams with the silvery gleam of ten billion moons. Tumbling from the arc of its most recent cut is another arm.

In that moment, something yanks you back, a golden cool flame pouring into your flesh. A voice cleaves through the abyss.

Creation: Begone deceiver. You shall not have her now.”

The other pillar, that falsity, screams as a hail of starlight fills every crag and crevice until it swallows you whole.

---

You jerk up, awake, breathing heavily. Bile burns against the back of your throat, before splattering against the ground. You retch, heave again and again, well past the point when your stomach has been emptied. What was that? Limbs and body shake gasping for breath.

It’s dark, other than a fire about three meters away. Its warmth is a comfort from the cold sheen of sweat coating the skin. A shift reveals a slickness down below, the cloth protecting your flower soaked through. Why is it— Instantly you’re on the verge of retching again. Red heat in the cheeks. Every inch of skin feels unclean and tainted. Your arms hug tightly to your torso, trying to idly brush off something that isn’t there before tracing across every inch of flesh to check.

Everything appears to be normal. When you finish, you hug yourself tight, rocking slightly back and forth.

There’s something akin to a blanket covering you. Something soft, cushioned like a mattress, and yet unnaturally squishy underneath where you were laying. The blanket is not quite sufficient to banish the shame of a terrible nightmare away; no matter how much you wipe and scrub. You have to stop when the skin becomes raw and irritated.

The wool undergarment is, well. You’ll have to wash and wring it out manually. Something that might not… be possible for a while given the circumstances you found yourself in the last time you were conscious.

Slow deep breaths help steady the heartbeat, granting just enough awareness to begin to absorb your surroundings. It takes a moment of looking around to realize there are hundreds of other fires arcing down toward a beach, where the great Kraken ships are. You try to focus on their beauty, the fearsome seagoing prows carved of strangely colored woods, each with dozens of hand-carved snaking tendrils. Rams in the shape of great cephalopoidal beaks.

At first, it seems quiet. But as the race of your heart begins to slow, the murmur of many disparate distant voices spreads out against the ears. To your right and left you can see the fires arc out for quite a ways. Shapes move around them, hundreds, no, thousands of these Finned folk. You clutch the blanket a little tighter, pressing a hand to the sweat slicked forehead.

Medea: “It’s not real. Just… a bad night terror.”

Tears start to trickle out of your eyes, then stream.

Medea: “But why did it feel so vivid?”

Your breathing picks up. Why you? Hold those arms tight to the body. Rock. Back and forth, back and forth. Sobs. Pouring out. Why did it feel so real? What was that?

All of the sudden, the song of the beginning itself bears down on you. Where did she come from? You start, head jerking up to find where she is. Her voice comes from ahead. As infuriatingly golden as the first encounter, whispering about every act of creation throughout your life. There is something approximate to relief in her intonation.

Alva: “It was very real. For a moment I thought you were too far gone.”

You shiver, hugging yourself tighter. She sighs.

Alva: “I was inattentive and distracted. You’ll forgive me for that, since it almost let you slip into their embrace. A fault of looking far to the East for the other daughter.”

Medea: “What?”

Alva: It makes sense they would seep in through that vector to act. They adapted well to the disruption, or perhaps it was simply a contingency that saw the seeds planted deep inside, strengthening their immense grasp. Certainly, their ideal scenario was to upend the webs, secure their intent, and deny us in the same stroke. What a pointless effort that would have been, having to end your weave before it even began. Both truths are unfortunate, to say the least.”

Medea: “I, uh, what?”

Your words are small and afraid.

Alva: “Idle musings of little worth to any but I. I have done what I can for the moment to reforge and stack protection, but the rest of the path will be yours to walk to reach determination.”

She sits on the opposite side of the fire, her green-tinted skin writhing in the light beneath the teal, cyan, white, and blue tattoos. She only has two eyes at the moment, gold irises staring into the flame. You freeze, tears still thick on your face as details of the night terror trickle back in. A small flare of cold anger ripples through your breast.

Medea: “Were you in—”

Alva: “Your night terror? Yes. Only long enough to cleave their hold.”

Medea: “How dare you!”

She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t need to, because that immense weight upon reality seems to ripple outwards into an endless towering pressure casting its shadow across the flame. You shrink in place beneath that gaze.

Alva: “Don’t be daft child of the forest. That was not just a night terror in the scrape of abstract dreams. It was a physical pocket they made, as materially real as any other space in reality for the duration of its existence. What was happening in there was happening to your flesh out here.”

The information slams into you like a warhammer. Anger dies in a hissing crash of steam. How could that—glass shatters, the frame of reality tilting. You shrink further into the blanket, starting to shake again.

Medea: “I almost, that, I—”

The words refuse to properly form as the tears start to drip down your cheeks. Alva, that thing of creation, says nothing. Yet, somehow, the contours of her presence soften. As if she’s wrapping you in the warmest of hugs, radiating a maternal comfort by simply staring at the flames. It’s a reminder of when you were but a small child in Kirke’s presence all over again. The Witch who destroyed your fleet and somehow ensured you’d arrive here.

Hands press to the face as the tears come hard, hot and thick.

Sides heave.

Silent screams.

Fist pounding against the dirt as you bend forward in a kneel, all four limbs spread before the fire.

When you have no more tears to shed, you let the warmth of the flame wash over your back in that four limbed kneel, breathing hard. A flask thunks in the dirt, its contents sloshing. It’s made of a strange blue-green metal.

When you look up, Alva stands on the same side of the fire as you now.

Alva: “You need to hydrate.”

Taking a shuddering breath, you reach out and take the flask. Sitting up fully on your haunches feels like a tremendous effort. If that wasn’t bad enough, your hands won’t stop shaking. Then there’s Alva, who’s taking a seat on a log a few meters away. Alva, a name like that for something like her feels truly absurd. The shadows dance against her face in ways the flame does not match.

The cap for the flask comes off easily enough. Only now do you realize just how thirsty you actually are. Large, greedy gulps. In turn, the cool liquid is a soothing salve against the residual acidic burn from emptying your stomach.

But you’re a bit too avaricious. The canteen jerks away, coughs from the accidental aspiration when you need to breathe.

Alva: “Slow down. The enchantment prevents it from emptying.”

You heed her advice, taking smaller, slower gulps. When your thirst feels sated, you set the flask aside, and stare at the flames. The silence is heavy, as if she’s drowning out the noise of the rest of the camp through simply existing.

When she finally speaks, it is with such softness that you forget for a moment what she is.

Alva: “They are the cruelest of us.”

What can you even say to that statement. At the moment, you certainly can’t disagree with the sentiment.

Alva: “For that I am sorry. I doubt that will be their last attempt, and expect there will be many trials ahead.”

Silence between the two of you.

Medea: “Why do you care about me?”

You pick up a stick and use it to poke the fire.

There is a long moment where no answer comes. When you glance her way, for just a moment, you could swear that she has fallen asleep. Her answer is, in opposition to the constant flux of maternal warmth she’s blanketing the air with, shockingly cold and callous.

Alva: “I don’t.”

You stop poking the fire. A swirl of something fluttering in your belly. It’s frigid, making your hands shake even harder. Wait, you know this twisting knife well. It’s the old familiar fear of failing to be enough for your Mother. Why is this rising now? Why with this creature you’ve only just met? Surely, you’re not so weak as to already be growing attached?

Medea: “Then why save me? Why would you help me at all?”

Alva tilts her head slightly to one side. There is a long tense silence before she answers.

Alva: “What is Creation to you?”

You open your mouth to say something and stop, closing it again. There’s intent behind her avoidance of the question, something palpable worming its way in the stars overhead.

What is Creation to me?

Medea: “Creation can be many things. Maybe the most profound is the act of conception, bringing new life into the world.”

There’s a flicker of something on her lips.

Alva: “A good answer. But not my intent as you have not given birth. Much less experienced the loving touch of another.”

Her words cut deep into your belly, piercing you straight through and letting everything flow out. It’s as if she’s peeled back the flesh and exposed your deepest desire and vulnerability to the world. All you’ve ever wanted to know was the love and affection of a mother who cared. Of a lover who would see all of you in the dark.

The stick thumps in the dirt, eyes immediately watering. Silence as you press your face into your hands. Why did she have to say that?! Why does everything feel like it’s falling apart around you? Her words weren’t even that harsh!

Your shoulders shake.

The sudden, immense sense of hands reaching.

You leap up, recoiling.

Medea: “Don’t touch me!”

It comes out as an echoing screech.

She was less than a meter from where you were sitting before you leapt back. Why would she think that’s okay?

She steps back, her expression warped by the four golden eyes that ripple into existence on her face. You shake in place, a tempest of freezing grief, hot anger, and electrostatic bursts of fear flowing deep inside of you. Each curls about your chest and belly, threatening to explode.

Medea: “D-don’t touch me.”

The heart beats fast. Every breath is as shallow and rapid as the last.

She just stands there, watching for a very long time. But you can’t calm down. Why can’t you calm down?

Eventually she gestures, palm up, fingers pressed together, arm held out. Except, there are too many hands, too many arms.

Alva: “I will not touch you without your consent.”

Why can you not stop shaking? Why can’t you steady your breathing? You try a different tact, focusing back on what got you here.

Medea: “A-a-a-answer my question. Why save me? Why help me at all, if I’m so valuable to your enemy? You’d have been better off killing me, wouldn’t you?”

She crosses many arms across her chest. Her face ripples ten thousand different ways. There’s a haze around her shape, as if the weave of reality can’t handle whatever she’s doing.

Alva: “Do you truly believe everything in this world is so cruel?”

Medea: “It’s not cruelty, it’s wisdom. Strength even.”

Alva: “A curious answer. Why?”

Medea: “You don’t leave a rotten fruit in the barrel, the rot will spread. You don’t let a spy run amok in your camp, for they’ll report every detail back to your enemy.”

Her lips wrinkle with the smallest of smiles.

Alva: “No. In fact it’s better to keep the spy right where you want them so you can feed them false information.”

A heavy silence as you turn the words over.

Medea: “So, I’m a spy for the enemy you’re keeping in one place to feed misinformation?”

Alva: “Not even remotely. Such tactics don’t work with things like them and I.”

Tears of frustration pool in your eyes again. Why is she so maddening?!

You’re about to say something insulting, something you’re sure to regret, when something hits you.

Realization clicks with a sharp ping in the back of your brain. Seeds. She said there were seeds inside of you. A step backwards, a small burst of fear trickling through your heart.

Medea: “I was made to be a Vessel, a weapon, a legacy. Their weapon. You-you want to turn me against them.”

All four golden eyes roll in their sockets and she sighs deeply.

Alva: “Not every decision is made in the interest of some strategic overture towards our goals. Such things are a tool of theirs, not of mine.”

Medea: “Then Why!?”

Alva: “To be fully blunt with you, Medea, you are a burden. You are on a path, or were until earlier today, where the clock was ticking down until you were consumed to fuel the power of another. While we have pulled you from that path, the threat still remains.”

Her tone is blunt, harsh in a way she avoided until now. As if chiding a small child for doing something incredibly stupid. A burden. You’re a burden?

Medea: “I don’t understand?”

Another languid sigh.

Alva: “Of course you don’t. You’re not ready yet.”

The muscles of your jaw clench. Why won’t she tell you? You curl and uncurl each fist.

Medea: “Why are you being so infuriatingly cryptic. Why can’t you just answer me?”

A pregnant silence.

Alva: “Did you believe I had you pulled from the waves to spite my enemy?”

Medea: “Why would you bother, otherwise?”

Something sweeps over her expression. It permeates the air with a thick swirl. A cloying feeling of wistfulness swimming about your stomach. A sadness, quiet, small and bittersweet. Melancholy.

Alva: “Because another cared.”

You stare at her, taking another step backwards.

Medea: “W-w-what?”

Alva: “Another saw in you what I once saw in her.”

Your hands start to shake again, a quiet cold dread pitting in your belly.

Medea: “Who?”

Alva: “I think you already know who, in your heart.”

Your eyes slowly widen. Why would she do that when she had so thoroughly left you behind?

Medea: “No. No she abandoned us. She killed the only person I ever had a chance of loving, who could pull me out of that nightmare. She left me to suffer. When I was finally in reach, finally could feel everything I ever needed within reach, she…”

Realization clicks into place.

Alva: “Intercepted your fleet on its way to campaign. Wrecked it. Pulled you from the surf, and then you were carried here to us. Yet, from everything you know, she seldom leaves survivors in such direct attacks. Consider now that you are here. Consider again everything you knew.”

There is more there. More she wants to say. But she doesn’t. The temptation to bolt forward, grab her tongue, and demand she spill everything is strong. But that would be pointless. She could crush you in an instant.

Medea: “What aren’t you telling me?!”

Alva: “Some truths require insights that come only with time. Some truths will harden the heart beyond salvation if learned too early.”

You growl in frustration. Another question burns on the tip of your tongue but is disrupted.

Movement to your left. Eyes snap towards it. Yellow-green irises glimmering in the firelight. How long has she been there? How much has she overheard and seen? Your bottom lip trembles, red heat of shame burning in your cheeks.

Alva: “You are a sleeper, a threat to my goals placed here at the beginning of my greater intent. By all rights I should crush you. The truth is, she has asked for you to be guided along a better path—”

You whirl back on her.

Medea: “I don’t want guidance; I don’t want to be watched in the dark like a hawk by a human! Nor do I want anything to do with a thing like you, or them!”

You turn and run. The fire’s illumination fades rapidly even as that old familiar small charm pours from your fingertips to light the way. It is as dark as the Punished Dark from your youth, even with it’s help, especially on a moonless night like this.

Behind you their words penetrate the night.

Carissa: “She saw me.”

Alva: “[COGNITOHAZARDOUS TERM REMOVED.] How much did you see and hear?”

Carissa: “Just the end. Do you want me to go after her?”

Alva: “No. Leave her be for now. I’m afraid any progress that we were making is lost for the evening.”

---

It’s hard to navigate in this darkness. You’ve certainly been trained to survive in the field, especially with all those nights camping with Chalciope in the forests outside of Phasis or Aea. But that was nothing like this.

This is true wilderness. The trees are tall and dark, the underbrush thick and faintly blowing in the wind. You have none of your tools. Worse, your weapon are still in the hands of that infuriating redheaded human woman.

But, fortune favors the bold. You find a cave in the dark. The entrance is big enough for you to slip in and it doesn’t run terribly deep. It doesn’t take much to get a small fire built from discarded sticks you find, after you make marks leading back to your makeshift campsite.

However, there’s a more pressing question burning in the back of your mind.

How are you going to get home from here?

You don’t have a boat; you don’t have any long-term supplies. Your weapons are impounded by another.

How can you hope to traverse the waves with no idea where you are, and nothing but the tatter clothes on your back? Which is under the assumption that even if you did have the material supplies to make it back, you’d be able to find Daevae territory untouched.

Then there’s the other question. Do you even want to return home?

That’s a stupid thought, of course you do. You need to rescue Chalciope.

So that’s how you end up sitting by the fire, wondering what in all the world you’re going to do next. The cloth undergarment that was protecting your flower is hung up in an improvised drying wrack. There was a stream close by, you heard it trickling in the dark, its cool moisture lapping at your skin. Easy enough to soak the wool and wring it out. Several repetitions did the trick. Now, with your chin resting on your knees, arms wrapped around your curled up legs, you wait. For what? It’s hard to say.

Your outfit is ripped up from the storm, and you have nothing protecting your feet from the hard dirt.

Why can’t you just swallow your pride and go back to ask for help to set out on your own? Well that one’s obvious, to ask for such assistance from creatures beneath you would be demeaning. Much less from those who’ve insulted you multiple times. What would it say about you as a Matriarch if you asked them for help?

But if the alternative is death…

A languid sigh thrums through your body. When the cloth is dry. Maybe then you’ll go and try.

Then, your ears prick. Footsteps. Every instinct screams. You reach into your robe on instinct, and they scream even louder because you have nothing protecting—

A gentle knock on the rock of the cave wall interrupts the sudden panic trying to rise. You don’t move anything but your head, a deep spike of fear screaming in your stomach. Maybe if you remain in this small, unthreatening position, they won’t try anything. But then, that fear burns away, replaced by a hypothermic slow-rolling irritation at the golden scales that gleam in the firelight.

Triemedes: “Don’t mean to startle you, but heard you woke up and ran off.”

You’re too numbed by the reality of the situation to threaten her for even daring to speak to you without permission first. How can you be anymore hopelessly out of your element at the moment? You may as well be at her mercy.

Her gills pulse once, but she doesn’t try to come closer. The silence lays thick atop you both, like a fog. When you finally find something, anything to say, it’s nearly a whisper.

Medea: “How did you find me?”

Triemedes: “You left a trail through the woods, easy enough to track. Easier still to see the glow of your fire.”

Rock slowly forwards and backwards.

Medea: “How did you find anything in that darkness?”

She points at one eye for emphasis.

Triemedes: “We’re built to see clearly in both daylight and the dark of deep water.”

It makes sense. There are many rumors of their deep-water settlements from the Northerners.

Medea: “What do you want?”

Triemedes: “Nothing. Well, not true. Many things, but nothing in the immediate beyond following up on others’ mistakes.”

So they told her then. You wait for a moment to see if she has anything else to add. Then you ask the question that thrums against your heart.

Medea: “Are you here to bring me back?”

She extends and retracts one arm fin, but not the other. Out of a large animal skin satchel bag slung across one shoulder she pulls something odd. You tense, only to realize a moment later, it’s some sort of strange cylindrical thing made of a shiny blue-green crystalline subject. There are hinges built into one side of it, a series of divots on the other. Some sort of container? Something moves around when she tilts it. After a moment, a waft of something delicious starts to permeate the cavern. Food.

She also takes out your daggers and the meteor hammer.

Is she here to taunt you with food and your things? Knowing that even with your magics, you’re likely powerless to stop her?

Triemedes: “No, I’m not. Figured you might be hungry though.”

The statement stops your thoughts in their tracks. She was thinking about how hungry you might be. Why? A trap?

Medea: “I’m not.”

She pops open the container with a small motion of one giant webbed thumb. You’re instantly hit with the overpowering aroma of something meaty, mixing with both bitter greens and sweeter fruity scents. Words form on the tip of your tongue, another denial. But your stomach betrays you. It growls so loudly that it echoes off the cave walls. When did you last eat? The morning you left, before the shaping? Before your mother—

The thought provokes shivers. You wipe the drool percolating against your tongue away with one arm.

Triemedes: “Your belly disagrees. Gotta be starving at this point, yeah?”

Your mouth starts to profusely water. She’s got you there, you’re starving. But It’s probably a trap. Some sort of sedative or draft mixed in that will knock you out so she can haul you back.

Medea: “I’m not an idiot. You mixed something in that will lull my senses or put me to sleep.”

Her gills pulse three times, fins extending.

Triemedes: “Now why in the depths would I do that?”

Medea: “Because I’m a threat, a prize, and a burden.”

She stares at you for an exceedingly long time.

Triemedes: “Who told you that?”

You sneer.

Medea: “That thing you keep around. Alva. Can see it in the human’s eyes too.”

She rubs the articulated spines of one finned ear. A noise approximal to a sigh follows, with the air running over her gills producing a light whistling effect.

Triemedes: “Of course she did. Of course, they both did.”

Medea: “A common trend it seems.”

Triemedes: “Alva has gotten better. Carissa is, well, young.”

Medea: “Youth is not an excuse.”

Triemedes: “I don’t think either of us is in a place to judge. I know enough about the Sylvanas of the East, the Daevae as you call yourself, to know we live similar long lives. Neither of us bear the marks of a long life.”

She lacks any marks of war on her body, as do you. Not like the darker scaled Finned one she was standing next to on the ship earlier in the day. She lets another slow roll of air escape her lungs.

Triemedes: “I am not here to bring you back, and you’re certainly not a prize or slave. We don’t do that.”

Medea: “You’d be a fool not to, even assuming I believed you. Which I don’t.”

Her gills pulse twice, leg fins extending and then flattening. The curves of her lips then twitch slightly down.

Triemedes: “Look, you’re a part of the fleet or could be. Just like Carissa.”

That gives you pause. Just like her? You mean, that human isn’t their leashed pet?

Medea: “What do you mean?”

You look up at her.

Triemedes: “We picked her up out of the ocean, just like you. Gave her a choice. She could ride along till we next hit land, drop her off, or she could join the fleet as a proper member of our crew.”

A choice? You tilt your head to one side, ears pressing back against your skull.

Medea: “Why would you do that? She’s not one of you, she’s human.”

She laughs. It’s a strange barking sound that echoes in the confines of the cavern.

Triemedes: “Where you come from doesn’t matter to the sea or to us. She’s good at stripping all that shark chum away and leaving only the mettle behind. It’s who you are and what you want to make of yourself that counts out there and with us. We aren’t like you Daevae or the Humans. There’s no superiority in what you were born as, only how willing you are to learn, grow, and contribute to the whole.”

What a bizarrely nonsensical, weak sentiment. Of course, your birth and origins matter. It determines everything from strength to magical capability. What is this nonsense she’s spouting? Why does she mean every single word? There’s only one answer.

Medea: “You’re mad.”

Triemedes: “If that’s what you consider madness, then all my people are mad. Or maybe the world is a lot bigger than what you thought it was.”

Again, the response dies in your throat. Certainly, it couldn’t be. Everything in your life too date had reinforced the notion that reality was brutal and cruel. Survival was determined by how strong and how cunning you were. Only then could you survive it’s gnashing teeth.

Right? No, this had to be another act to lull down your guard.

Triemedes: “Look, you have to be starving at this point.”

You eye the food again, trying to wipe away the bit of drool accumulating on your lips.

Medea: “I don’t trust you.”

Triemedes: “That’s fine. Look—”

She pulls a copper implement from a little hidden compartment tucked inside the crystal container. She scoops out a bit of what looks like a very thick meat stew from inside of it, and dumps it in her mouth, which is full of very white teeth. She chews for several seconds before swallowing.

Triemedes: “See? Perfectly fine.”

You sneer again.

Medea: “You think I’m an idiot, you’re nearly twice my size. Besides poison never sets in that fast.”

She pulses her arm fins once, and shakes her head.

Triemedes: “Fine. I’ll just leave it here, you can try it, or don’t. Trust me or don’t.”

She sets the container down on the rock, not far from your reach, and then backs up. You stare at it for a long moment, and then look back up at her.

Medea: “If you’re not here to bring me back, why are you here?”

Triemedes: “I already told you, to check up on my guest.”

Medea: “Snake shit. I can sense another reason.”

It’s a bluff. But the way she lets out another rolling wave of breath, a sigh you’ve come to conclude, tells you were right.

Triemedes; “To give you the same choice we gave Carissa. Or at least that was the plan when you woke up in our camp. Alva made a mess of it before I could.”

You say nothing to that. Another moment of silence falls over the cavern, only broken by the crackle of the flames. Finally you cut the silence.

Medea: “What sort of choices.”

She flexes her fins once before beginning.

Triemedes: “As far as I see it, you have three options. Don’t have to decide tonight. Can’t imagine the kind of day it’s been for you. Must be exhausted.”

Medea: “No, you truly have no idea.”

Triemedes: “At least let me lay that out for you, then I’ll leave you be.”

Silence. You look away from her, chewing on the bottom lip. She’s, at least up until this point, given you no reason to believe she won’t honor her word. Whatever else happens.

Medea: “Go on.”

She nods once, her expression becoming something more businesslike than the softer presentation she’d been projecting up until now.

Triemedes: “Right. Well, option one is that we will take you as far east with us as we can go. It’ll be safer than setting out on your own. I don’t know what your native lands and seas were like, but the Basin is a wild and untamed world, so my more experienced crew says. You’ll have our protection the whole way, but it might be slower since we have a lot of stops along the way.”

Tempting offer at the least. You roll the idea around in your head to feel out the texture and imagery of what that might look like.

Medea: “Option 2?”

You shift, eyes going back to her, then the food, then your weapons.

Triemedes: “You join the fleet as part of the crew. I’ve been told you’re supposed to be a powerful Magister. While most of us have some capabilities there’s always room to learn and grow.”

You snort.

Medea: “Why would creatures like you need to learn magic from me. With your raw physical strength and your own magic, I doubt you’d gain much.”

Triemedes: “Knowledge is just as powerful as brawn. I think all living things have a right to know as much as they’re willing to learn, don’t you?”

Her words sit heavy on your shoulders. Knowledge should be accessible to everyone. What a strange sentiment. Knowledge is power, that much as true. So, shouldn’t that mean you hoard it to prevent others from learning the tools to undermine your own power?

If that’s the case, why does her sentiment resonate with you?

Medea: “Option 3?”

Triemedes: “We go our separate ways. I’m giving you back the weapons Carissa took, leaving you this food, and something better to sleep on than the hard ground. We’ll leave a boat on the beach for you to take on your way East if we don’t hear from you by tomorrow evening. It’ll be stocked with enough supplies to at least get you to the Khmet or Finnfelheim.”

Other options aside, option three alone is, by itself, incredibly generous. A kindness and effort to help someone who’s, at that point, made it very clear that you don’t want anything to do with them.

Medea: “Why would you do all that?”

Triemedes: “It’s easy to help another traveler, who’s lost on the path of what and who she wants to be. The sourness of our first meeting aside, we treat everyone how we want to be treated. I couldn’t abide myself if we left you stranded with no way home.”

That’s weakness, isn’t it? Unconditional assistance with no favors leveraged in turn? Who does that?

Medea: “I don’t understand you. Are all your people like this?”

Triemedes: “Far as I have ever experienced.”

Medea: “How have you not been wiped out?”

Her gills flutter up and down, a small upward curve taking to her lips. Her eyes hood ever so slightly.

Triemedes: “I think you’ve seen what happens when they try. We might not have any desire to conquer or enslave other thinking beings, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to fight to keep our people free. We quite like a good fight, as long as we don’t have to kill.”

That’s true. This creature’s own Mother smeared your Mother’s armies across a mountain pass when she tried. You’re not sure what’s more terrifying about them. The fact that they don’t feel any need at all to expand or conquer or bring what are, by all rights, inferior creatures beneath their heel. Or that they actually enjoy fighting for fun. A small chill works its way up your spine.

Medea: “I don’t have to make a decision right now?”

Triemedes: “Nah, take time to think it over and rest.”

You stare down into the flames for a moment. Are you really considering this?

Medea: “Okay.”

She pulses her fins once in your periphery.

Triemedes: “I will head back to camp and leave you be.”

She turns, starting to walk towards the entrance. You say nothing at first as her steps echo in slow motion. Something inside of your chest suddenly twists and you look up.

Medea: “Wait.”

She stops in place, looking over her shoulder. You try to find the right words, but it’s a struggle to pull them out. Alien, something you haven’t said since you were a small child.

Medea: “Thank. You.”

She waves one giant webbed hand.

Triemedes: “No need. I’d do the same for anyone or anything else.”

Then she’s gone.

Once you’re sure you can’t hear her steps anymore you release your legs and lever yourself up. The stones of the cave are cold beneath your feet. She left behind the rolled up squishy thing from earlier. In the brighter light of the cave fire it looks like the translucently wrapped body of a jellyfish. The blanket you’d slept on earlier is also there, made of a strange textile that isn’t wool, but is just as effective. Then there’s the food, and your weapons.

Underneath the roll, there’s a change of clothes. Not that you’d need them with the Fleece, but still. It’s something more revealing than your Matriarchal gown, enough to cover your chest, a strip of your upper back and one shoulder. The hip and leg coverings are a half-skirt and brown bottoms with a lot of flowing cloth. No boots though, only a flat strip of leather with a golden clasp of metal designed to wrap around your calves. Sandals.

You snatch up the container as hunger finally gets the better of you as. You dig in with such ferocity that it’s all gone within a few minutes. When the stew is all gone, and the pink, alien spiral fruit is eaten, all that’s left is to lick the strange sticky sweet juice it leaves behind. Then you finally set the container down. With a full belly, the tattered remnants of your Matriarchal gown become additional fuel for the flame.

Slipping on the new attire is simple enough at least. Each piece is surprisingly well tailored to your shape, accentuating every curve and the definition of your musculature well. You end up calling a small reflective surface into existence with your magic just to examine the detail. An act which leaves your cheeks stained with red heat. When those little indulgences of vanity are finished, you stuff away your weapons in the robe and turn to the bedding.

That’s when the exhaustion really settles in. A minute later, you’re underneath the blanket, unable to keep your eyes open. The deep purple contours of sleep come not long after.

It is a peaceful, uneventful sleep. Among the most restful you’ve ever had. For the first time in your whole life, you have an actual choice in how your life’s course would take shape. For once, it wasn’t a false dichotomy, it wasn’t someone promising to do something for you.

And in that sleep, you have the strangest dream. Of walking through a home that seems so very yours in its many presentations, into a kitchen where a woman stands before a curious looking device. Her hair is red.

---

At least, that’s how it is supposed to be.

Because that peaceful sleep comes to a sudden, jarring end when you’re stirred into wakefulness by the sounds of conflict in the distance. Clashing metal, shouts of alarm, and the stir of magic in the air. The blanket crumples aside as you roll off the sleeping cushion. The cave is empty; the fire has gone out in your sleep. It’s black, but that’s fixed soon enough with a much brighter charm.

Outside is a different story. It’s still quite dark, but now the night is marred by the rise of an orange glow to the west. Like a moth drawn to a flame, feet carry the body in the direction of the growing cacophony. The edge of the tree line on the beach is shielded enough that you can crouch in a bush and peer out.

What you see is pure, unadulterated chaos. Multiple Kraken ships are aflame. Shouts come from aboard, accompanied by pulses of magic. Shapes mill about in the silhouettes of those flames, some are the Finned ones, but there are many much smaller shapes. There are so many voices are crying out into the night in a language you only have the vaguest understanding of.

Unnamed Humans: “Monsters! Monsters! Kill them all!”

With a rhythmic almost musical pulse, clashing metal adds a harmonic undercurrent. Arrows are whistling, their trajectories ending with impotence in the sand, or with the dull unsettling fleshy thunks of lodging in a body.

Humans. They’re being attacked by humans. Probably the local population who noticed their fires earlier in the night. Yet, the humans have complete tactical surprise. There certainly are a lot of them, spread out through the entire camp.

From a strategic perspective, it’s a nightmarish scenario. No ability to form clear lines of defense or battle. No communication, no centralized counter push. The enemy sprang the ambush with complete surprise. Probably because the Finned ones didn’t bother setting up a perimeter. It’s a perfect opportunity to sit back, watch and see if the Finned ones can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Or a perfect opportunity to watch a bunch of meek humans do your future knifework for you. A fleet of Finned ones destroyed in a single night? Their commander, someone with immense leadership potential, killed before she can accumulate experience? That could change the whole situation in the Basin. It could change the very tide against the rebellion, leaving a wide-open front to attack them from along their rear.

But something tugs on your heart. Maybe it’s self-interest that pulls the conversation from earlier that night back to the forefront. Two options guaranteeing you can get home. A third that would mean it would be doable alone. What happens if the Finned ones lose here? The supplies you were promised, the ship, navigational charts and tools? They’d be destroyed, wouldn’t they. Burned like the Kraken ships already ablaze.

Then the opportunity for escort, to serve with them for a time? Gone as well. Wouldn’t it be more valuable to see how they work internally? To fight alongside them and learn their weaknesses and their strengths?

Despite those very sound, self-interested logical arguments for why you shouldn’t just watch, despite all the rationalizing you’ll do later to convince yourself you only did it to return the favor, something else pulls you from your hiding spot. As the meteor hammer begins to spin through the air, as you see Triemedes’s golden scales dance in the firelight, her words ring in your head again.

It’s who you are and what you want to make of yourself that counts out there and with us. There’s no superiority in what you were born as, only how willing you are to learn, grow, and contribute to the whole.

She wields a pair of khopeshes. Magic burns the air in thick gouts of flame that cling to the black metal they are made from. By the Font is she a monstrously beautiful harbinger of death.

Triemedes: “Rally!”

She cries.

Triemedes: “To me! To me!”

But her voice is drowning beneath the discordant symphony of the melee.

She moves like a demon, faster than a 2.2 meters tall thing like her should be able to. Or maybe she should move this fast, with a stride that long, she scythes through clusters of humans knocking them aside like small children. Bursts of magic pour from her weapons, mostly simple effects, but no less effective.

A driving line of wind, formed from strange characters carved into the air by her dancing blades, buffets three humans trying to rush her, sending them tumbling backwards in the firelight. Pillars of earth jut from the ground, disarming two more humans, who she backhands out of her way. Like a spinning top she pirouettes, forcing a huge group to stagger back. The flame of her blades douse with moisture, then grow into whipping tendrils of water that knock five, then ten humans aside before pinning them to the sand. Water freezes into thickened ice, holding them there.

With every swing of her blades, every cloud of sand she kicks up to blind her opponents, it becomes rapidly apparent that none of her blows are intended to kill. Incapacitate, pin, bind, disarm, and disable.

Why?

You wonder as the war dance begins to flow through your limbs. A human comes from your right out of the dark, a heavy wooden club swinging downwards. He’s too slow, and you’re much too fast. It thunks in the sand where you were just a second ago, his pupils full of the reflection of you in the firelight. The confusion in the lines on his face is plain as day in the moments before the chain of the meteor-hammer wraps around his legs.

A yelp of surprise distorts as you yank him up into a horizontal spin. Every step, every lean and tuck fuels the chain of spells you are beginning to percolate together. All the while his cries whip past through the air. With a powerful heave of your whole body, the chain releases him. He spins through the air like a stick being blown by the breeze. Milliseconds later he collides with three men who were charging Triemedes, knocking them down. Her head jerks, just in time to see you finish the chain of spell circles.

Another charges you from the dark, this time with a spear. Thumb and index finger press together as you dance over the symbol.

Medea: “Dauhk.”

The word of power pours from your lips in a stream of purple fluorescence that carves apart the atmosphere. The tattoos across every inch of skin and the marks on the fleece alight with swirls of arcane intention. At your feet as you dance out of the way of his first thrust, the light spins in a rapidly growing disc that spirals outwards.

You snap. The air cracks with the noise as if cleaved by a whip. Rushing inwards towards the tip of one of your fingers is a rapidly condensing ball of swirling gas. He comes back now, having slid to a halt a few meters away. His spear leaps out in a second thrust. All at once, the gas ignites. A miniature ball of nuclear fire emulating a fraction of your grandfather’s power at the tip of your finger.

The spear hits the ground, his hands going up to rub and scratch desperately at his eyes. You almost feel bad when he begins to cry out words in that western language that you don’t understand.

Unnamed Humans: “Monster! Monsters!”

Your sideways twirling kick sends him flying backwards. Using the momentum of the spin, you thrust the orb upwards. It darts into the air, ascending until the whole battlefield is lit by its rays.

Another word of power cuts the air, this one of a different character from yours. It’s far more powerful than the others that flash in the dark as it flows outwards. For a fraction of a second you are flooded with a distilled concept of pure creation.

Triemedes: “Iss-Svell!”

Five men who were rushing you instantly snap to a jolting stop. A sheet of curling ice has caught their legs in place. With such force that at least two let out cries of pain from snapping bones. You spin towards the source. Only to watch as the flat sheet jerks upwards, pulling its hostages with it. The ice advances now in a rolling wave of verticality across the distance between you and Triemedes.

She rides it, dancing across the surface with such beautifully fluid and practiced motions. They certainly would be worth writing home to. With every twist of her hips she yanks another human trapped in the ice out with the curves of her Khopeshes. They tumble in her wake, knocked out moments later by the small group of Finned ones behind the auric-scale leader, who use the butts of their huge pole arms. Some are staffs, others, like the large dark scaled older woman, Agrusa, wield long blue-green metallic poles ending with a huge blade the size of your torso.

By the Font are they a sight.

Your ear prickles.

A rapid spin. Two fingers extended on your free hand, wrist twisting as a spell circle splits the air. Two whistling arrows crash into the moving lilac shield bursting into existence to protect the approaching Finned ones. With a two step-slide, and an open palmed shove, four jutting flat pieces of marble materialize and rip through the air. They knock down the archers responsible, right as they were knocking their next arrows.

Medea: “You seem to be having a little difficulty!”

Your voice echoes with the flares of power swirling beneath your skin as they skid off the ice, kicking sand close by.

Triemedes: “What is an expedition without a bit of a challenge!”

She roars with such fervent energy it sends goose bumps arcing along your skin. You steal a glance at her when she fills the space next to you. They’re forming a circle, everyone, including you, facing outwards. The light in her eyes is wild. The pulsation of her gills rapid. But it’s the expression on her face that sends a chill up your spine. Her lips are curled up into a grin that can truly only be described as maniacally menacing. The other six Finned ones with her are not much better. Maybe you underestimated how much of your help they actually needed. Well, until you see the half a dozen cuts across Triemedes back.

Triemedes: “Good to have you standing alongside us!”

Medea: “I’m only here to stop my chances of getting home from going up in smoke.”

She laughs, it’s a loud, bellowing noise. She parries a spear, breaks it with the chop of one blade, and then kicks the human wielding it in the stomach. They tumble backwards through the sand.

Triemedes: “Ha! If that is what you tell yourself, then so be it! Any reason is good as any other.”

What a strange creature.

Medea: “Why are you holding back? You could crush them on your own!”

Triemedes: “There are too many, and they’re only attacking because they think we’re monsters!”

Medea: “That’s a foolish reason to hold your blades! They are trying to kill you, sparing them is weakness, misunderstanding or not!”

Triemedes: “Nay! Sparing them is strength, eventually they will notice we are not killing them.”

Medea: “And how many will you lose while you wait for that to happen?”

This makes her stop for half a second. There’s no hesitation in the next second when she flicks her wrist, catching a human’s blade in the curve of the Khopesh. The jolt of the effort runs through him. She flicks her wrist again, jerking the blade from the man’s grasp. You follow it up with a swift fist, a spell burning off your knuckles. The burst of concentrated water that tears from the swirling spell circle tosses him backwards in a rapid tumble.

Several humans point at you. Their expressions are full of confusion.

Medea: “They seem confused by my presence!”

You could end this quickly. The air, dirt, and sand are growing thick with the heavy stain of blood. From both human and finned ones. You can feel it thrumming against your veins, the Fleece’s hunger whispering in your ear for satiation. But there’s something deeper there as well. A promise that flexing those muscles right now in the heat of this battle may loose your feet from the ground. As stupid as it is, what happens if you start killing? Blood thaumaturgy is not exactly a tool for non-lethal applications, unless you force it into that mold.

No, you won’t risk destroying your chances with the more direct applications. Not if it will alienate this misplaced kindness.

Triemedes: “Do you know their language?”

Medea: “I recognize a few words similar to another, but I cannot say I know anything of worth!”

You arc the meteor-hammer’s chain out, catching the legs of a dozen humans charging in your direction with clubs, crude copper axes and swords, and at least two longer spears. The force knocks them off their feet, briefly spinning in the air. As you watch their spin, trying to call a follow-up spell, a heavy weight comes to rest on one shoulder, Agrusa’s massive pole blade.

Agrusa: “Hold still little sorceress.”

Her voice is practically a roar in your ears. Sorceress. You like that term.
Agrusa: “Hregg!”

At the tip of her blade a swirling mark appears, burning with an odd grey fluorescence. A powerful burst of wind rips up the sand, catching the airborne group and sending them hurtling across the distance to land in the shrubbery on the far side of the battlefield.

Medea: “We can’t keep this up forever!”

Triemedes: “She’s right, Agrusa, unless we want to start killing we need a solution fast.”

Agrusa: “Not enough space to weave together a greater mark.”

Triemedes: “Wyvern dung, the fleet is too scattered and the noise of the battle too loud for me to rally them to me.”

You can certainly do something about that.

Medea: “Give me a moment and the entire battlefield will hear you.”

She glances at you.

Triemedes: “Can I trust you?”

That makes you pause.

Medea: “You shouldn’t. I could stab you in the back now.”

She laughs.

Triemedes: “Ha! Well, I guess we’ll see if you have the scales to follow through then.”

What a strange response. You step back into the circle as they close ranks. The circle is already made on the floor, all you need now is the somatic motions. With swirls and rhythmic steps, you piece together the necessary energies. The spell circles spin out from your steps, rapidly rotating discs of lilac fluorescence arcing out in giant rings of arcane sigils, glyphs, and marks. You touch Triemedes’s shoulder, all the power curling through your flesh flowing out into her.

Medea: “Sa-hizáge.”

Triemedes stands up straighter in place, knocking aside blade after blade in whirling cyclonic motions of metal.

Her voice becomes like thunder as the ground alights with the ferocity of your spell.

“To me! Gather to me! Rally!”

The tide begins to shift. Hundreds of small circles of Finned ones just like yours carving paths through the dark towards the source of the sound. Each one that joins yours is more bodies pressing back against the relentless flow of humans from out of the dark. Just how many of them are there?

There are many Finned ones who are bleeding from various gashes and wounds. The more severely wounded are helped along. Yet, disturbingly there are plenty of bodies left behind.

The dark-scaled woman curses as an arrow grazes her shoulder, narrowly missing your head in turn.

Agrusa: “Where are Alva and Carissa?”

Triemedes: “You and I both know that Alva won’t get involved in mortal affairs. As for Cari—

Carissa: “I’m here!”

Ugh. Of course.

She appears to your right, bursting from the tree line. Her hair flows behind her in a brilliant wave of Maroon with every step. They don’t see her coming.

Three arrows knocked and rapidly fired from the quiver on her back. The heads are blunt, designed to incapacitate. She’s a blur, rolling underneath a swinging blade, using the momentum to deliver a shattering blow to the man’s jaw. You swear you see a tooth fly free through the air and embed itself in the skin of another nearby human. Then she springs over the downward thrust of a spear. Her foot smashes into the face of one man, which she uses to propel herself up in the air. Her coordination is incredible, because she lands atop another man’s helmet, before leaping again to another. She’s off sprinting across helmets and exposed skulls, putting so much force into every step that her targets end up smashing their faces into the sand. It’s certainly a sight to see her cast the bow across her shoulders then steal someone’s spear right out of their hands.

Carissa: “I’ll take that you, don’t look like you’ll need it.”

Triemedes: “Where in the depths have you been?”

With a twirl of the haft, she makes a downward scooping motion with he blunt end of the spear. Which sends five men sprawling like dominos out ahead as she vaults over their heads. she lands on her back in a roll, popping up in a twirl. The spear whirls in an overhead horizontal spin, smashing another dozen men across the jaws and laying them out flat. It breaks in two when it hits the last man, which is when she throws the broken pieces like oversized daggers, knocking three men down who were starting to charge her. It’s then that she draws a copper short sword from her hip, a buckler on her wrist.

Carissa: “Scouting up the coast and looking for—”

She ducks a heftily swung two handed blade and kicks the wielder in the groin for their efforts. The man crumbles in the dirt, groaning, until she knocks him out with a swift kick to the skull. The soldiers around her stop in place. They stare and point at her in confusion as she spins the blade in a low combat stance. Your heart is suddenly pounding so much faster in your chest.

Medea: “What an athlete.”

Triemedes: “Isn’t she?”

You shake your head, trying to banish the hypnotic images of her motions from your skull. You look away. Need to focus on the next spell you might have to call.

Medea: “For a human, I guess.”

Meanwhile, the mass of Finned ones around and behind you grow.

Triemedes: “Nonsense, she’s fast as a twin shark, strong as one of us. That’s a true warrior right there.”

Carissa: “Can you save the gushing banter for later when I can actually pay attention to it? I’m a bit busy!”

She vertically jumps over a younger human that gets a little too brave and receives a downward pile driving kick for the trouble. The heel of her boot drives against the man’s skull, keeping him pinned.

Carissa: “As I was saying, I went up the coast, found a spot to consult with Artemis. Then I went looking for a spot where we can hunt and replenish supplies with her guidance. Also to look for—oh good! You found her.”

You roll your eyes as she flashes a glance at your direction.

Medea: “Not for your sake.”

The humans are murmuring between each other fully now, pointing at her. It’s only a small proportion of the total.

Carissa: “Ah here I was thinking the spoiled princess attitude might have gone away. That’s on me.”

Medea: “I’m going to stuff your mouth full of the most bitter tasting herbs imaginable.”

Carissa: “You can certainly try. Now if you don’t mind, could the lot of you make a path for me?”

Triemedes: “Why don’t you just blink?”

Carissa: “Too far for that.”

You’re all too happy to oblige her request, another word of power, another spell circle. The earth becomes fluid at the humans’ feet, leaping up, wrapping around their ankles, and jerking them aside in an avalanche that curls outwards like a wave. Seeing something behind her, you extend the effect beyond the initial endpoint. It’s cathartic to hear her sharp cry of surprise, as jerks down up to her knees. Which leaves the hefting axe swing about a foot too high.

Seconds later, you launch the assailant backwards with a pillar of earth. Which is about the same time you use it’s twin to launch the infuriating huntress across the wide gap you made. She lands, rolls cleanly, and pops up right into the curve of your knuckles as you strike her across the jaw.

Medea: “That’s for knocking me out.”

She spits blood on the ground, taking up a place next to you.

Carissa: “Bloody Tartarus, where’d you learn to punch like that, princess.”

You growl.

Medea: “My brother had a mean left hook.”

Carisa: “Noted.”

Something twinkles briefly in her eyes. But it vanishes before you can pick apart its meaning.

Carissa: “Triems what’s our status.”

Triemedes: “They hit the north edge of the camp, didn’t hear them. Think we’re monsters, and there’s more of them than us. A lot more, every one I knock down feels like three take their place.”

Carissa listens to the cries still coming from the humans as they encircle you all.

Then she shouts something at them, in the same language. You and Triemedes both look at her, wide eyed. All of a sudden, the humans stop. There’s a moment of confusion, in which Carissa shouts again. Then they half lower their weapons. Gazes shift among the crowd from each other, and then back to the hundreds of finned ones at your back. Maybe thousands, really hard to say just how many from your current position.

Carissa shouts something again, which seems to finally break the mood of the battlefield. The crowd of humans creeps backwards, not quite sheathing their weapons, but certainly backing off.

Someone from the crowd of humans steps out and calls out to Carissa. She sheathes her sword and walks out to me them. They speak for several minutes in hushed tones that you catch only pieces of. The words are the gibberish of that western tongue.

Eventually the man turns to the rag-tag army of several thousand humans milling around. His helmet, made of copper, comes off revealing an older man with silvering hair. When he speaks, it is loud, almost like he’s using magic. But you detect none. The expressions across the hoard of humans’ faces fall gradually, most becoming morose, filled with regret and even grief. Some still remain suspiciously hostile in their expressions, stealing glances towards you and the Finned ones, but even then, they sheathe or put away their weapons.

The tiny sun that was illuminating the battlefield flickers and finally winks out. Its fuel spent. In the silhouette of the still aflame Krakens, the army of humans begins to fragment and spread out. Some head down to the water at a rapid jog, taking off their helmets. They then appear to scoop seawater up to begin combatting the fires. Others begin to approach your position. The Finned ones tense even as you start to whirl up the meteor hammer again.

Carissa jogs over, hands waving above her head.

Carissa: “Easy! Easy!”

Triemedes: “You mind explaining what’s going on?”

Carissa: “Long story. They thought you were hostile aquatic monsters from the deep blue beyond the straits. Thought you were here to steal their children and women. I managed to convince their elders otherwise. Would have been harder if he’d not heard of the Sea Singers before.”

You click your tongue.

Medea: “Bah. Human superstitions.”

She glances at you with a deep frown.

Triemedes: “Oh?”

Carissa: “There’s apparently a grotto three days rowing from here, but they’ve never seen them in person.”

Triemedes: “That was our original stop, before—”

Alva: “I changed your course.”

She emerges from the trees, her incessant presence flooding out everything again. The golden-eyed thing looks your way for only a moment, a small nod and smile of acknowledgement. You look away, a quiet icy fear gurgling in your belly.

Triemedes: “Do I even want to know?”

Alva: “Better for us both if you don’t ask.”

Triemedes sighs.

Carissa: “Anyways, they’re wanting to know if there’s anything they can do to help make up for their costly misidentification.”

Medea: “Throw themselves at our feet begging for mercy might be a good start.”

Carissa snorts. Triemedes shakes her head.

Triemedes: “No need for that. Best to mend the bridges and not burn them further.”

Carissa: “I assume we’ll need herbs and supplies. There’ll be wounded we won’t be able to move far.”

Agrusa: “What about the dead?”

A heavy silence as the weight of the night truly starts to sink in for everyone.

Triemedes: “We won’t be able to carry them with us to our destination. Or to Finnfelheim for rites. We’ll have to do them here.”

Agrusa: “Which means our healers will be even more pressed to attend to everyone.”

Triemedes: “Tell them we’ll need herbs for the wounded, additional supplies for what was lost to the fires if they can afford it. If not, I’ll have to send you with hunting parties inland, and hope that the local fish populations can make up the difference. We’ll need to find a major fresh water source to restock at. Ask them if they have Healers they can spare, I imagine we inflicted an outsized number of injuries on their people. But I’ll take what we can get, cause Agrusa is right, ours will be overwhelmed doing rites and tending to the wounded.”

You purse your lips. It seems your opportunity has arrived.

Medea: “Fortunate then that I’ve decided to come with you to the east. I am a trained healer. I’m also intimately familiar with the types of plant life and mushrooms that are edible or potent for healing.”

You pop open a strap on your satchel bag. Good, the herbs stocked for the campaign weren’t ruined in the storm. A miracle really.

You look up again and find everyone staring at you now.

Medea: “Why are you all staring like I am a monster with my head removed?”

Carissa: “Well, first of all, you’re a blood sucking, tree fucker who probably kidnaps helpless women, so you’re definitely a monster. Just with the head intact.”

Medea: “Every minute I have to listen to your prattling insults is another where I am imagining ripping out your internal organs and feeding them to a pack of boars. When was the last time you bathed, you reek like a mutt that’s rolled around in bird shit, and then let it fester in a cave for months.”

That almost seems to get to her. She lifts one arm as if to sniff, before stopping. Almost because, she wags a finger at you, clearly unaffected by your insult.

Carissa: “You almost had me there.”

Medea: “Ugh. Just get on with your second point.”

Carissa: “What happened to not needing the help of lesser beings?”

You huff.

Medea: “As if I need the lot of you. You’re simply going my way, and it’s very clear that if I hadn’t come to help when I did, the situation might be a lot more dire.”

Carissa: “Someone’s high on their own self-inflated view of themselves.”

Your ears rise to a near vertical position, pressing flat against your skull.

Medea: “Buzz off mud-roller, I have a long night ahead.”

You shove past her, turning deeper into the crowd of still half alert Finned ones, shouting for any who are injured to call out. Behind, barely heard over the rise of voices calling out, Carissa asks Triemedes.

Carissa: “What did you do?”

Triemedes: “I was compassionate. That’s all.”

Carissa: “We’d be better off if you hadn’t been. She’s going to cut out throats in our sleep if we’re not careful.”

Triemedes: “I think there’s far more to her than first meets the eye. Give it time.”

Alva: “I’m inclined to agree.”

Carissa: “It’s your lives then. I don’t want her anywhere near where I sleep.”

The feeling was mutual.

---

Despite the intensive education you were given on the anatomy and physiology of various sapient humanoids, based on what many of the tutors of your youth insisted were accurate based on years of study, it turns out, they were, in fact, idiots. After treating a couple hundred individual Finned ones over the course of the better part of two weeks, well, you can safely say every lesson you received on them was at best, dragon shit. At worst, mouse shit.

The Finned ones, it turns out, were quite different than your people or humans on a number of levels. Their pharmokological makeup was responsive to most of your herbs to varying degrees, often less than either Humans or Daevae, but they were entirely unresponsive to others. No toxicity, thankfully. But still.

Their internal organ arrangements are different. Well, sort of. For the Finnwomen this was definitely true. In part due to the presence of gills being interlaced both with their vasculature. Their lungs fill a much larger volume, which has the effect of, well, interfacing them directly with all gill membrane interchanges. Remarkably efficient in the water. That’s just the beginning and doesn’t even address the compressed fat stores for warmth in cold water or the excess musculature for swimming and non-facial body language. They are surprisingly lean all things considered. Males, of which there were more than a few aboard the fleet, were a different story. You didn’t need to deal with them as much as the Finnwomen. Mostly because they were dedicated more to that strange flavor of magic that was closer to what Circe had taught you than any human magic you’d ever picked up. That or, they were committed to more logistical responsibilities. There were a few who did fight, burly, stocky creatures. Their lung volume was more comparable to a humans or your peoples, and yet surprisingly more efficient at enriching their blood.

As a whole, the species also has additional organs. A swim bladder just above the normal bladder, apparently consciously controlled according to Triemedes. Longer intestinal tracts in both Finnwomen and Finnmen. And a plethora of other rather riveting details you discovered over the course of trying to treat their various injuries. The more egregious examples, the ones you struggled with were eventually handled by the Finned one’s own healers. In most cases they were, exhaustingly, injuries neither you or them could save. Those were the hardest, because you tried everything you could think of, raided the fleet stores for efficacious herbs, applied a myriad of different spells and pharmacological combinations.

For some of the severely injured, they were just too far gone. A fact that still does not sit well with you even now as you prepare to go ashore to collect a batch of herbs from the Human healers. Possibly an excursion to the forest as well to look for new local herbs that you might be able to use. You’re convinced that there must have been something you could have done to save the lives of the fifty or so Finned ones who ultimately perished.

Okay, the fifty or so wounded Finned ones who perished. The actual deathtoll, in part thanks to the surprise attack, was shockingly much higher. Four hundred and fifty total. Out of ten thousand. In theory only 4.5%, but for ferocious creatures like them, that number feels shockingly high, even if you as a commander would consider that well below the highest threshold for acceptable losses.

Carissa: “Why are you working so hard to save them? Aren’t they supposed to be beneath you?”

She asked you one sleepless evening, with your hands soaked in blood from having been doing everything you could to reassemble a Finnwoman’s abdominal cavity.

Medea: “Because It’s a challenge. I can learn to heal better.”

Carissa: “But why them?”

Medea: “After seeing them fight, they’ve earned my respect, if not my kindness.”

Carissa: “Figures.”

A blade of irritation pooled in your stomach at her tone. The implication that you were up to something nefarious or malicious at all times.

Medea: “Why are you still watching me?”

You turned and walked off. Her reply came a half moment later, said almost as a mumble. But it still reaches you all the same.

Carissa: “Because I’ll never trust you. I know what you are. Slaver.”

The word was said with such venom.

Your mind wanders back to the present as the oars of the small boat cut through the water. You’ve not been ashore to any of the towns or villages that the humans who attacked the fleet came from. There’d been too much to do, and it was easy enough to draw the shape of the herbs you needed for others to retrieve. That or ask the other healers what herbs they would use. That particular barrier of pride had been stripped away when a green scaled older Finnwoman had yanked you from besides a patient and verbally flayed you apart for applying a salve that not only wouldn’t do anything but would irritate the wound. Then she showed you the right concoction to use, which washed away any lingering arrogance.

The accumulation on the shore up until the edge of the woods is, to say the least, more impressive than you expected. There are several docks, several crude wooden vessels with nets strung over their sides. Most of their structures are made of wood, with the more sturdy, solid things built of stone. They have a distinct harsh conservation of architecture, artful in as many ways as they are efficient. More than you expected from humans at least. There’s an inherent arrangement to the mass of shapes, with lots of green open space in-between. As if the living spaces were built to give everything room to breathe. Nothing like the ramshackle slums of human slave quarters you’d seen in parts of the empire throughout your life.

They take you up into the town, where white stone, especially marble, has been chiseled into shapes. Some religious, some symbolic. The trees here are thick and old. Several of the little structures have what might be called gardens. Crude, by your standards at least, but the effort is noticeable.

The procession is small, mostly just you, a few healers, and a few other Finned ones along to make sure things don’t get rowdy.

It’s a lie to say you haven’t noticed her. She probably was on another smaller vessel come ashore to set out into the woods for a hunting and supply party. Whatever excuse she used, you can feel her eyes burrowing into the back of your skull. If you listen closely, as the group moves in-between the buildings, you can hear her steps, light as the air itself.

You nearly close line yourself on the arm of one of your escorts. They’re stopped, signaling the rest to wait.

In the middle of the path there are a group of—yes, you suppose they would have children, wouldn’t they? Not something you’d ever thought about in any great length, but humans had to come from somewhere.

The sizes range from being no taller than your knees, to up to your chest. There’s maybe fifteen of them, running, laughing and playing with some sort of spherical toy made of—well, you’re not really sure. It has an elastic quality to it that causes it to bounce. You’ve picked up more of the western language now, just enough to understand a few phrases.

Its right about then music starts playing, a small group off on a little bit of green to your right playing instruments. Or maybe they were already playing, and you’re just now present enough to notice. One instrument looks like a looped bit of copper with a wide bell at one end, and a narrow mouthpiece on the other. There’s what looks like a flute, several other wooden instruments of varying length with sealable holes, and a much large more complicated copper looking instrument. The are even drums made with animal skin.

The sounds are rhythmic, thumping.

It’s all so familiar. The children, the music.

You’re suddenly taken back to that day in the grasslands beneath the Cinderskins. The Northern Queens running over to ask you your name. Wide eyed, bright with the hopes they can add another to play.

They approach you now, wide eyed, sucking in the whole world.

Unnamed Children: “Hi! What’s your name.”

You tense, that old, acheing question worming through your chest.

You have an answer now, don’t you? The tension seems to melt away as you take in a slow breath of air with eyes closed.

Medea: “I’m Medea.”

It feels so right to say. To let it roll off your tongue. As if every time it’s said, it solidifies the concept a little more.

Their eyes widen, brilliantly bright as the moons.

The oldest among them points.

Unnamed Child: “Medea the pointy ear!”

The illusion shatters, as the present reality reasserts itself. Your fingers ball up in the fabric of the half-skirt with tension. A small spike of hot anger at being addressed in such a demeaning manner by a bunch of human children threatens to boil over. But, strangely, it flames out. They’re just children. Children who are freer, happier, unbothered by the endless chains of a defined system. The flame is slowly replaced with a low cool whisp of bittersweet melancholy fluttering in your belly. Just like your people, humans have children. Just like your people, they live joyous, unfettered existences until the harshness of the world steals that joy away. Do all thinking beings enjoy such softness in their youth?

Except, with a slow, agonizing realization, you remember that you had no such things.

Those were the experiences of other youths you watched from afar or from the shade.

Your childhood was anything but unburdened and carefree.

In fact, you never had a childhood. You were just living vicariously through them.

You stand up again. A hollow pit curls about inside your abdomen and grows by the second the more you think about it. Something is breaking apart inside of you, threatening to swallow everything in its path. Eyes feel heavy with a sudden blur of tears. Then, separate from the children playing in the sun, standing in the shade is a young human girl. Her hair is dark, her eyes are cast down, and there are bags of sleeplessness underneath them.

There is sadness in the way she watches the other children. But she’s human, beneath you, and such things don’t matter. Shouldn’t matter. You have no conceivable reason to approach a human child, none of the respect you have for the Finned ones is there. Yet, everything about her, it’s all too painfully familiar.

You can’t really say what comes over you then as you wipe your eyes. But your legs move on their own. There’s a vague cognizance of one of the escorts moving as if to stop you, probably under some sort of orders, from either Triemedes or Carissa. But one of the healers stops them.

Unnamed Finnfolk: “Let her.”

The approach is slow, a thousand different things buzzing around in that head. What will you say? What are you thinking doing this? This isn’t like you indulging in thoughts of reaching out without any perceivable benefit for the future. Worse, you don’t even know to talk to a child! Much less a human one that’s beneath you! Are you not a conqueror? Admittedly without any battles won. Are you not a slaver? Admittedly who’s never bound a single person in chains herself. She’s going to run at the first sight of you.

Except, she doesn’t.

Her eyes rise at your approach, widening. She’s tensed up now, her gaze on your ears. Something slips across your face, masked in the reflection of her gaze. It’s a smile. One your mother used ten thousand times to disarm her visitors with sheer charisma. But unlike hers, there is no falsity to it. It is warm, comforting, sincere in its charismatic smoothness. The kind of look you wish you’d received a thousand times over from someone other than Chalciope. Someone else who would actually care and had the power to help things change.

That is enough for this young girl to relax. You kneel down to bring your eyes level. She smiles unsteadily, as if trying to convince you there’s nothing wrong. But you see right through to the pain in her eyes.

The words simply slip free in that western language. Crude, probably with a terrible accent that would have gotten you beaten at home.

Medea: “Can you show me what’s wrong?”

Words you wished someone had asked you when you had to put on a false smile and pretend like everything was normal before a guest.

The way her expression falls apart says everything. She needed to hear it too. Your heart feels like it’s shattering watching the distress upon her lips.

She takes your hand in hers, and you shove aside those old familiar instincts that try to rise up. With a tug she indicates for you to follow. So, you stand up, hand in hers.

The other’s don’t follow you to the edge of the town. It’s an older structure that’s seen far better days where she stops. Her fingers tremble in the palms of your hands. She looks up at you before the wool and wooden-bead-curtain that marks the entryway. You look down after a moment, meet her hopeful gaze, and simply nod.

She releases your hand. Then runs up the little wooden stairs inside. After a moment, taking a deep breath you follow. Glancing around at the lived-in contours, you find a home. Tools on shelving, a firepit carved out into the ground. On the other side of the large room is another pit where breads and cheeses and meats are being preserved. You keep your steps slow, methodical.

The child’s voice rings through the air, in that language you still don’t fully know. Stepping through another curtain, you find them. It’s a darker space with beds, rough cloth and furs tucked beneath sheep-skin cots and feather mattresses. It reeks of sickness, fever, and sweat. The little girl points at you as you enter. There are two women here, one somewhat younger, middle aged you’d guess. The other is elderly, full of wrinkles and silver hair. Both women are pale and thin. It takes only a moment to tie a piece of cloth around your lower face to shield against the contagion.

They look at you with wild eyes, motes of fear drifting in the dulled striations of their pupils. Then there gazes move to something else, the faintest indication of motion behind you.

Medea: “I don’t care if you follow me everywhere, but if you’re choosing to be here now I am going to make use of you.”

You don’t turn to look at her.

Carissa: “How did you—”

You point at your ears, cutting her off.

Carissa: “Right.”

Medea: “Tell them I’m a healer.”

Carissa: “Well, I don’t want to lie to them.”

You ball one fist.

Medea: “I do not have the patience for your ram’s shit. If you cannot tell, these women are very sick. For all I know, every second matters in providing healing or comfort. So, either shut the fuck up and do what I ask or get the fuck out of my way.”

A particularly heavy pause. For a moment, you think she might have left. Which would have been fine, you could improvise well enough to get messages across. But then her voice cuts through the must of the room in that harsh language. Both women seem to relax. The little girl speaks while looking at you.

Carissa: “She’s asking if you can help them.”

Medea: “I’m going to try. It may take some time.”

Carissa: “Is that what you want me to say to her?”

You sigh.

Medea: “No. Tell her I’m going to do everything in my power to make them better.”

Carissa repeats your words back to the girl. She clasps her hands together, eyes wide with hope.

Medea: “Can you tell them I’ll need to do a physical diagnosis, check for marks, and then do one with magic?”

Carissa: “What am I, your translation service?”

Medea: “You speak their language, I do not.”

Carissa: “So the goddess who claims she’s so brilliant can’t even pick up a new language?”

You want to whip around and snarl at her, but that will only make the little girl and your patients react with fear. So you do everything in your power to keep an even, neutral expression. Even with your ears which you keep in a flat diagonal position.

Medea: “You know what, if you’re going to antagonize me, forget it.”

You move over to the first woman, and make a series of hand gestures, referring to yourself, your eyes, then her. She seems to get the message and nods. Her voice is weak, raspy as she speaks to the younger woman.

For the first time since you entered the room, you look back at the huntress. She leans by the doorway, her eyes gleaming in the dim light.

Medea: “I can’t have you in here for this. You need to go wait outside.”

She sneers.

Carissa: “Why? So, you can slave them to your will? Oh, no, maybe you’ve gotten hungry and need to suck out their blood.”

You almost snarl back at her, but bite it back at the last second.

Medea: “No, idiot, so I can preserve their privacy.”

She blinks at that.

Carissa: “Huh.”

Medea: “What?”

Carissa: “Didn’t know that was a thing you cared about.”

Medea: “It’s a thing every healer cares about. Plus, your energy will influence my earth casts. I’m very far from a sacred font, so I need to focus on the leyline and my own bloodletting.”

Carissa: “Your what?”

Medea: “The blood for my thaumaturgy has to come from somewhere! I’m certainly not using theirs, unless you’re volunteering.”

Her face twists.

Medea: “That’s what I thought. Now, I can’t do what I need to do with you standing there. So, as politely as I can manage without startling them, take your mangy fucking asshole and get the fuck out before I throw you out myself.”

Her expression shifts rapidly through several different things you don’t quite catch, before becoming inscrutable. Then her lips purse, she pushes off the wall and goes back out through the curtain.

It takes a minute to recenter yourself and calm down. You press the back of one palm to each of their foreheads. Fevers, high grade. Not a good sign. Symptoms include a cough, swollen lymph nodes, pale consistency of the skin, cold flashes, bleeding from the nostrils, heavy phlegm, shakes, and delirium. They are considerably weakened, meaning they’ve been sick for some time. Given the other humans in the town give the house a wide berth, it’s probably a plague they are familiar with.

Thumbing through your bag of herbs you pull out several ingredients and set about making drafts. The purple lights of your magic startles them very briefly. The deeper diagnosis is grim. It’s mostly in their lungs, but there’s systemic fever. The first set of concoctions will help, but it resists your deeper healing spell that follows. Which is confirmation that it’s a plague, and that you’ll need to attend to them for more than a week.

You wash your hands off in a little well pump in the larger living space, using a bit of lye that they have lying around. Then you step out, feeling as tired as you must look.

Carissa’s there and looks up at you.

Medea: “It’s not good. Go tell Triemedes that I’m going to need to tend to these women for more than seven rises of the sun.”

Carissa: “Absolutely not, we’ve been here too long as it is.”

Medea: “They have plague you ramshitting dullard. If I leave before they are clear of it, it will spread, and thousands will die. Do you want that blood on your hands when I might be able to limit the spread and save them?”

Her expression shifts, the gravity of what you’re saying finally sinking in. You toss her a milky glass bottle, keeping distance between the two of you. She snatches it out of the air with so little effort you almost missed her arm moving.

Medea: “Drink that right now.”

Carissa: “What—”

Medea: “It’ll stop you from catching the plague since you decided to expose yourself. Now go tell the rest what’s going on.”

She looks between you and the bottle suspiciously. But a moment later she pops the stopper and walks off in the direction of the coast while downing the liquid. You take a small amount of satisfaction in her exclamation of discomfort.

There are moments in the next fifteen sunrises where things are really touch and go. Forehead slicked with sweat from making sure they drink draft after draft you get them. They get worst before they get better. On the fourth day, the older woman begins to seize, and you’re terribly afraid as you try to protect her tongue, that she may die there and then. But she’s a stubborn little thing and holds on.

On the morning of the seventh sunrise the fevers break. On the morning of the sixteenth, you can no longer detect any residual plague inside them. Which means they are no longer contagious, and your job is done. But you stay an extra night to be sure, showing them how to cleanse their home of any residual infectious materials.

By then, from just listening to the back and forth between the girl and the women, you’ve picked up some additional basic words. Enough to know how grateful they are for your help. When you are packing up your pharmacology equipment, one of them asks to hug you for saving their lives.

You decline, an old familiar creeping fear of touch curling in the deepest parts of your stomach. It’s something of a shock when they nod in understanding, pointing at the lower portion of their abdomen. The motion is numbing to say the least in its all too familiar meaning. ‘I too know what it is like to be touched and not want it.’

The little girl doesn’t understand and hugs you anyways. You’re stiff when she does so, only loosening a moment after, patting her hair awkwardly. Every part of who you are screams that you really should have her lashed for such brashness. But like before, such sentiments wash away when you look at her eyes. After that, you walk out of their little house, and down the stairs. They wave to you and you give them a small two finger wave in return, before turning to head towards the fleet just off shore.

Carissa: “Why’d you do it? Actually do it.”

You stop. She’s leaning against a tree behind you to the right. An apple in one hand, already bitten into.

Medea: “I already told you why.”

Carissa: “And I still don’t believe you. So, why?”

Medea: “Why do you care?”

Carissa: “Call it curiosity.”

Medea: “Curiosity kills cats you know.”

Carissa: “Good thing I’m not a cat.”

Medea: “I could certainly change that.”

Carissa: “You’d be dead before you tried.”

Medea: “You already think I’m a monster, so what does it matter my reasons.”

Carissa: “Blood sucker to be precise.”

Medea: “Which I’ve told you several times I’m not.”

You start walking again. She pushes off the tree, matching your pace.

Carissa: “Tree fucker if we want to be even more precise. Anyways I’ve only got your word for that.”

Medea: “I hate the taste.”

Carissa: “What?”

She stops, and you do as well. The thought turns over in your head again and again.

Medea: “I hate the taste of blood. It reminds me of…”

You trail off, a small swirl of nausea building in your stomach.

Carissa: “Reminds you of what?”

Medea: “Fuck off.”

She snorts.

Carissa: “Well as far as me and you go, your word ain’t worth shit.”

Medea: “I told you I’d save those people, didn’t I?”

Carissa: “For all I know, you turned them into thralls. Now c’mon, answer me. Why’d you actually do it?”

Finally, you turn to glare at her. Her maroon hair shimmers in the light of the setting sun. A reminder of one of the many things you lost.

Medea: “Because I won’t let another child lose the only things they’ve ever loved. I won’t let them have a miserable youth like mine.”

Then you turn with a flutter of your robe and walk on towards the ships, leaving her looking after you with a mouth full of apple.

<End Log>

<Begin Log:>

You are changing. That much seems obvious now. Something has planted a seed inside of you that grows with every passing day, every choice you make. Or maybe it wasn’t someone planting something in you. Maybe this was there all along?

When it starts? It’s impossible to say.

Maybe it was the night by the fire in the camps when that thing saved you from a horrible fate. Maybe it was that moment in the cave when Triemedes offered you the chance, the first real chance, at agency in your whole life. Maybe it was when you exerted that agency by choosing to leap from those bushes into the middle of a horrible misunderstanding that left hundreds dead. Maybe it was when you chose to put aside the concept of your superiority to help the wounded heal aboard that fleet. Or maybe, the seeds were already there, from the moment Circe walked through that door in the Punished Dark. From the moment you fell in love with the city of Aea.

What you know is that it was already there when you walked inside that little human girl’s simple house and committed to healing her family. Nothing has been the same since.

Which is how it seems, your whole being has gone to war with itself.

It begins the moment that seed begins to bloom, growing in urgency in that tiny stuffy dark home on the edge of that town. A growing sharp division between two worlds. The first, everything that a Matriarch, a Vessel should be. Molded by a childhood full of punishment. The harsh lessons, the awful strangeness and hedonism of each shaping, your Mother’s expectations, and every tutor, Matriarch, and Daevic city where you are above everyone else.

It’s logical, a sorceress of your power, your bloodline, with so many disparate blessings is the natural evolutionary height of all thinking things in this world, is it not? The thoughts of humans, of Finned ones, of even the lesser Daevic castes are not even worth considering. They don’t know the meaning of culture. They couldn’t possibly understand the Font’s will. No, they’re too dumb to understand art or have enough interiority of thought to give rise to great written works and deeds that will be remembered across the Empire far beyond their reach. Humans are weak, they don’t live long enough. The Finned ones are barbaric, strange aliens who need to be tamed. Their plights, their lives are dictations of the Font in its enforcement upon life itself the very philosophy that strength and cunning determine who will survive.

They needed to be conquered, chained, and shepherded. Guided to prevent their destruction and unbalancing of the places they lived.

And yet…

You made a choice that does not befit this model. You gave your magic, your knowledge, your pharmacological skill to help three humans who were not your slaves, who would not owe you debt or favors, who you could not use in any way. There was no material, ideological, or political purpose to such a choice. So, why did you make it?

The question turns again and again in your mind ten thousand times across the countless days and nights that will pass ahead. A feeling. A sense that if you stood by and did nothing, then someone else would experience the same wrenching misery, the same grief that plagued your youth. That same youth that made you strong.

Or was that just the mask you wore over the deep scars and wounds riddling your mind. An excuse to make yourself feel better and hide the brittle nature of your skin.

The spray of the ocean trickles against your fevered cheeks.

The truth is, you are at war with yourself because you made the choice to join their fleet. With that simple, admittedly selfish choice, you are exposed to two wholly unique new worlds.

But the choice that was selfless is the one that exposed you to the first world. The second break in the chains of your Mother’s intent was made in that human town. Those who began their introduction by so fiercely attacking what they perceived as monsters. A town with its laughing children, elastic spheres, musical instruments, simple yet complex architecture. That exposed you in turn to a truth that the empire buried deep to excuse a core institution. Humans feel. Do they not feel the same depths of emotion as you? Do they not play, enjoy the small things in life, laugh, cry, and create like the Daevae?

You wipe your brow of sweat under the Basin sun.

No, that thought was blasphemous. Isn’t it?

Yet, you think it anyways.

And that is only a sliver of a glimpse you get into their world. You’re brilliant enough to unfurl entire constructions of the world behind the mass of men who swarmed the fleet that night. Dozens, hundreds of villages and towns along the coast and interior full of life and feeling. It’s enough to begin to challenge everything you’re certain you know.

Which is where the war begins. The world works in a very specific way. It has to, doesn’t it? To justify everything that was your life in Colchis. But, then again, the other Matriarchal children didn’t endure the same childhoods as you right? You stole glimpses into Breeze’s world, saw the love in her Mother’s eyes, the way she grieved with her whole heart for the daughter she lost.

No, no, everyone must experience that same misery you did in the Empire. They had to be strong, right?

Right?

As the fleet sets sail from that town, you are given space of your own within Triemedes ship. Nothing like the spacious quarters given to you as a commander aboard your own Dragon Ship. Simple, big enough for a hammock-like bed, with one of those cushioned jelly mattresses. Someone, you forget who, confirms it for you. They do indeed contain jellyfish jelly wrapped in a remarkably durable membrane resistant to all but the most forceful puncture attempts.

At first, you keep your distance from them. Watching, learning how they live. You got glimpses into their world, both the day you woke aboard their vessel, carried in Carissa’s arms—

You rub your face at the thought, heat in your cheeks. Damn her for making you feel like that.

They are as strangely different in physiology as they are in behavior. While Triemedes is very clearly the ‘commander’ or head of the expedition, that is the only conceivable hierarchy you’re able to pick out in the first few weeks among them. Everyone does a little bit of everything, even Triemedes. The exceptions being the healers, and those who aren’t strong enough to do things like hold down the mast rigging.

Medea: “Who’s responsible for making sure the rope integrity is solid?”

The Finned ones on deck when you ask look between each other.

Unnamed Finnfolk: “They get checked three times a day.”

You blink.

Medea: “Who’s held accountable for that.”

Again, they glance at each other.

Unnamed Finnfolk: “No one. It just gets done.”

You open your mouth as if to say something but then close it again. This becomes the theme of every question you ask them about the typical duties and responsibilities of anyone aboard a ship, especially of this size. It always gets done. Everyone seems to know when something is supposed to happen, and there’s just a quiet understanding that if you’re up in the area, you do it. It’s a very strangely collectivist mentality, not alien to you, similar concepts exist in Colchis when it comes to specific tasks among the Matriarchs.

Which arises largely from the rather uniform believe that all Matriarchs are equal, and their cultural contexts are the same. Ideology more than reality, but the meritocratic distribution works much the same.

But this is not a Matriarchal gathering, or the distribution of matriarchal ruling tasks. This is a ship. Sailors have a very clear chain of command and distribution of responsibilities. The humans and Daevae under you each had their own assignments. If something didn’t get done, they got the lash or worse. Which inevitably always happens. The concept of specialization doesn’t seem alien to the Finned ones either, there are specific people who handle more sensitive tasks for the fleet.

It’s not really the fact

<Begin Log:>

When you return from Aia to Phasis, it is in a phenomenal mood. Which is understandable after two weeks of experiencing something you’ve craved all your life. Though pieces of you still don’t fully trust her, every word out of her mouth seems as sincere as humanly possible. It will take time to heal old wounds, years of effort, but she is making a herculean effort, especially for the two weeks you stayed in her house. It doesn’t feel quite real, like a good dream after an endless nightmare. Parts of you question whether this is reality or simply fantasy your brain has invented as you lay dying in the arena before the Wyvern. Except the light never comes to take you away.

Though she hasn’t yet given her answer to the question you posed on the Night you became a woman, the fact that she hasn’t rejected it burns a bright well of hope in your chest.

Which is why when you go down to the docks you cannot help but hum to yourself. As always, you barely manage to restrain the urge to skip. Your destination is where Trade Breezes prefers to make her nest in the commander’s quarters aboard her Dragon Ship. She will be thrilled to hear the good news.

But this joyous mood begins to fracture the moment you enter the immense southern portion of the artificial harbor. The crew of Breeze’s squadron rush back and forth as if the very port itself was on fire. She’s on the command deck, looking out at the prowhead carved from the serpent’s bone into a model image of Balrax’s head.

“Trade Breezes!”

You call to her as you jog up, the robe fluttering about in the sea breeze. Your heart hammers in your chest. She turns, the mask of deep thought and concentration shifting instantly to that bright, warm swagger.

“Purple Serpent! Oh’cha haven’t a clue how relieved I am that’cha made it back in time. How did it go?”

You smile, spinning place and letting the marks flow across the fleece’s contours.

“I went, I saw, I conquered.”

Her expression, full of a quiet anxiety bubbling beneath the warmth of her smile, shifts into a massive, toothy grin.

“Oich, I knew’cha had in’cha! Way to make’cha name. I would hear all about it, but—”

She lets the words fall away, glancing towards the crew who are milling about loading supplies, weapons. Some are applying the finishing touches on what, by all intents and purposes, look like siege arms.

“But what? What’s happening?”

“Didn’t’cha hear at home?”

“Hear what?”

“The Rebellion’s seized the grand northwest port. Now they’re threatening Cimmer.”

You stare at her stunned for half a moment.

“What?”

“They’re sending out the most promising squadrons. We’re one of them.”

Any residual joy fractures across your back like a porcelain plate being smashed on stone. The whole world seems to tilt on its side with an eeries sense of nausea.

“I’m coming with you.”

She shakes her head furiously.

“No lass, ‘cha ain’t.”

“Why not!”

“Because’cha ain’t on the list. Cha wasn’t officially of rite when it went out.”

She hands you the message, and you rapidly skim it over. The scroll is long, bearing marks of having been carried by a great messenger bird through wind and rain multiple times. The names consist of experienced young Dragonfleet squadrons who have excelled in practical and theoretical exercises. Most you know are eighteen summers old. But Breeze is there as well, and not a hint of anyone else who’s sixteen summers.

How can that be possible?

“I want to come with you.”

Fingers tightly grip the parchment.

“I don’t care if I’m not on the list.”

“I can’t let’cha do that, lass. I won’t risk’cha. Not like that.”

“It’s my choice to make!”

“Afraid it ain’t. The Academy commanders ain’t letting anyone out but those on the list.”

You stare at her, trying to piece together the how and why of it all.

“But it’ll be dangerous!”

“Aye it will be. But I conquered the Sea Serpent, I’m of age.”

She steps in, her hands pressing into your cheeks. You melt instantly in her touch, all the additional protests falling away.

“Imma come back for’cha. I ain’t gonna let’cha languish and suffer beneath that mad bitch in that tree.”

A swirl of conflicting feels churns in your belly over the term being applied to your Mother, just when you’re starting to finally connect with her. It’s washed away when she presses in and kisses you, a full throated, tongue kiss that burns a hot inferno in your lower abdomen. When she releases you moments later, the fireworks still burning in your skull, you have to lean against her to steady your suddenly quite unstable legs. You’re struggling to from any further coherent protests.

“Now, stay out trouble when I’m gone, cha hear? I will come back.”

“Please.”

You beg her.

“Please live. Survive, and win, if for no one else, then for me.”

“I will. It’ll take a tempest to bring me down!”

The next words that come out of your mouth you’ll never forget.

“I love you.”

Breezes straightens up to her full height. Her green eyes are so very soft as she takes all of you in. With a gentle motion, she takes your face in one hand and strokes your cheek just under one eye with her thumb.

“I love’cha too, Queen of Purple Servants. Now’cha best get back ta the dock before one of the harbor keepers notices’cha aboard.”

So, you step forward, give her another kiss on the lips, and then a hug for good luck. Then your legs move on autopilot while your brain is swallowed with a thousand different images.

When you come up again, you’re standing on the edge of the outermost docking berth. Your arm is raised high in a wave, watching her sunset-colored hair blend in with the sky as they sail into the setting sun. There is where you stay, lost in thought as the Dragonship vanishes on the horizon. Eventually, as the lull of dusk rolls in, a hand slides into yours there on the dockside. The touch shakes you from the anxious stupor buzzing in your skull.

Chalciope stands there next to you. Her face a mask of concern.

“Sister, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Breezes is being sent to war.”

You’re still not quite present, so the words sort of sluggishly slip free from your lips. Chalciope’s eyes widen.

“What’s? But she’s only sixteen summers old!”

“I know.”

“Why would they send her, and not you, or any of the other talented squadrons of the cohort?”

“I… have this dreadful feeling in my stomach it’s because I told Mother.”

Chalciope’s expression twists with puzzled lines upon her brow.

“Told her what?”

“That… I want to lay with her. I want to bind my hand to hers.”

Her expression shifts again. This time to open-mouthed, wide-eyed alarm.

“Sister, why would you do that!”

There is so much dread in her voice.

“Because she finally accepted me as her daughter!”

You pull your hand away from hers. She flinches back from you at the motion.

“She what?!”

“She was finally treating me just like I always wanted to be.”

Her face becomes a mask of horror with wide, almost bulging eyes.

“Sister, you cannot trust her! Think of everything she has done to us, all the abuse over the smallest things! She would see that as a slight against her because you—”

“Don’t!”

Your voice is a sharp blade, as you turn on her. She recoils from the venom in slipping through your teeth. Then you recoil in turn when you realize how you snapped her.

“Sorry I didn’t mean…”

“I know you didn’t.”

“I thought I could trust her. She—I don’t know got in my head.”

You run your fingers through your hair, a quiet fury burning as a swelling inferno in your belly.

“I need to go. If she—I need to know.”

The alarm returns to her face.

“What?! No! You can’t! Not alone!”

“If she did this, then I need to stop it. I need to end this, now!”

“At least let me come with you!”

You shake your head vigorously.

“No! I won’t put you at risk. You’re… you and Breezes are all I have. I can’t lose you too.”

You step forward. She flinches for half a second, but when she sees your opening arms she steps in as well. You pull her into a hug. She squeezes back.

“If I don’t, if something happens, the moment you get word, I want you to take Vihemurx and ride to the east. I want you to find her. Find Kirke and get to safety.”

“I don’t want to leave you behind.”

Her eyes are starting to fill with tears.

“I know. I know but you have to get free. I won’t let her take you. No matter what I have to do.”

“Be safe, please be safe, Sister.”

There you slip from her grasp and sprint back along the docks. People scatter out of your path, some shove aside into the harbor below with shouts when they don’t move in time.

Balarax is already on her feet by the time you reach the expansive Aerie.

“Sister, you are deeply distressed.”

You don’t have to say much for her to pick up on the truth of what is going down.

“Breezes is being sent to war.”

Balarax’s pupils narrow into slits.

“I knew she could not be trusted.”

“She fooled me.”

“There is no shame in it. She is a skilled deceiver. What is your plan?”

“We ride for Aea. I’ll get the truth from her and stop this, once and for all.”

Balarax flares her wings and emits a guttural roar.

“Finally, you begin to awake! Let us put an end to this madness!”

The sky darkens with roiling green storm clouds moving out to sea. Balarax flies with haste over the flat green plains, the wind pouring through your hair. It is an unnatural storm. Lightning cracks the sky as rain begins to pour from the heavens. You do not bother with landing in the city below. You will give her no time to prepare another lie, another deception.

Balarax’s immense mass comes to perch in the same place that Absyrtus’s mount landed four summers ago on the evening you turned him into a pig. The wind howls overhead as the great tree’s limbs sway. Beneath your feet.

“Be ready to burn this place to the ground.”

Balarax snorts with what almost feels like excitement. You sweep up the steps towards the throne room. Another bolt of lightning cracks across the sky. Your hair and skin is soaked down to the bone. Clothes are absolutely drenched. But it’s the anger, the hate that keeps you warm.

Absyrtus, eighteen summers old now and fully a man, steps in your path.

“You should not be here sister, Mother is—“

The handle of the meteor hammer smashes across his face with substantial force, breaking his jaw and sending him tumbling back into the throne room.

“Out of my fucking way.”

You don’t stop to acknowledge him. Ilya looks up from where she’s leaned over a war map, several other Matriarches of Colchis’s minor houses gathered at her sides. Her face twists through several expressions, seeing Absyrtus knocked to the ground, blood pooling from his shattered jaw.

“Daughter, you are supposed to be back in Phasis—”

“Did you do it!”

You scream at her, eyes wild with hateful fire.

Several emotions run across the lines on her brow. Fear. There’s fear in her eyes, burning in the reflection of the bright lilac flouorescence searing across your skin. It flows into confusion moments later.

“Daughter, I have no idea what you are so vexed about.”

“You sent her to war and denied my accompaniment with her.”

Her confusion deepens.

“I do not know of who you speak!”

Exasperation in that voice. If it is an act, it is the best you have ever seen.

“Trade Breezes!”

“What?”

“She weighed anchor this afternoon when I arrived in Phasis. I watched them sail off into the horizon.”

There’s a pause, where her brow wrinkles. Her jaw works. Then her eyes widen in alarm.

“She is only seventeen, that is not the appropriate age.”

“Yet she is gone to war anyways!”

“Who authorized this?”

She wheels about on the other Matriarches, who glance at her, then each other.

“The list was a pool of candidates from across the North and West.”

“I reviewed the pool, her name was not on it when I did so.”

“Then it must have been added after your approval, by the Cimmer.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Get me a message hawk to her Mother.”

She turns back to you.

“Daughter I am deeply sorry, this is a mistake that should never have been allowed to happen.”

A whirlwind of churning confusion squirms in your belly. All the fire and fight starts to drain out of you as you stand there, dripping rainwater onto the throne room floor.

“You mean, you didn’t authorize it?”

She brings up a hand to rub at her brow.

“No. I would never be so callous as to send a woman of only sixteen or seventeen summers to war. Our House, as great as its influence may be, is not the final arbiter in the North. It is always a group decision.”

You let the meteor hammer fall limp in your fingers.

“Is there, anything you can do?”

“I will do everything I can to bring her back, on my Honor as the head of the house.”

Her words defuse any fire left inside your breast. It’s only now that the rage fueled adrenaline starts to leave your body, that the cold of your rain-soaked clothes makes you begin to shiver. You sink to the floor, cognizant of Absyrtus starting to sit up, nursing his ruined jaw. Her eyes soften, taking you in.

“I’m sorry I—”

“There is no need to apologize.”

She rounds the table and comes to kneel before you.

“Given our history I genuinely do not blame you for assuming at first cost that I had sent her to war in retaliation. Were I not now trying to be better than I was, for your sake, for all my children’s sake, then perhaps I would have.”

She gestures around to your younger siblings listening and watching everything that happened. There is fear in their eyes looking at you, some of them with a wonderment in their gaze.

“Now come, you are soaked to the bone. If we leave you to this chill, you will catch sickness, and I will not have that. Let us get you in front of a hearth with a fresh change of clothes.”

She helps you stand up, her touch full of quiet affection.

You glance back at Absyrtus again.

“I’m sorry about Absyrtus.”

Her attempts to sneer at you, but recoils in pain with the motion.

“Don’t be, the boy should know not to be stupid enough to get in your way.”

He has always been an idiot.

She puts you up in your old room for the night before a fire. She brings a meal for you herself once you’ve dried and gotten warm. Her constant check ins through the night are a comfort because sleep is impossible.. There you stay for a week, agonizing at her side in the throne waiting for any sort of response. You still aren’t sure if you should trust her, but if this was her doing, then the degree to which she is distressed by the affair is one hell of a consistent act.

News comes on the eighth day. A servant brings you from your chambers up to the throne room where Ilya is bent over a map of the blackened sea. Her expression is hallowed and grim. She’s pale in the face in a way you’ve never seen her be before.

“I’m sorry, Daughter. They got my message but—”

The words choke in her throat. She tries several more times before she can bear it no longer and simply slides you a sheet of paper. It is in the hand of Breeze’s mother, whose letters she has often shared with you in the nights spent in her quarters.

Your hands shake. The letter falls from between your fingers floating down onto the floor. You look up and stare blankly at the far distant window looking out onto the northern mountains.

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Daughter.”

She reaches out as if to touch a shoulder, but you jerk away.

“No this, this can’t be. It has to be a mistake.”

She regards you with such empathetic sadness.

“I know it’s hard. I wish, by She who Weep’s Crimson do I wish, it was anything else but this.”

You bury your face in your hands, the tears coming hot and heavy.

“I loved her. I loved her. She—she can’t be gone.”

You feel her start to reach out again, but she must pull the hand back after thinking better of it, because no physical contact comes.

“I am, truly, deeply sorry Daughter. Had I known earlier, I could have intervened. I grieve for you who has just lost her love, I grieve for her who has been deprived the fullness of life, and I grieve for the Mother who has just lost a daughter.”

You gasp for air, sobbing into your fingers as you slide down onto your knees.

“Why. Why her? Why couldn’t it have been anyone else.”

She doesn’t respond right away. You look up at her, all the eyeshadow running down the sides of your face.

“Why did it have to be her, Mom?”

She looks down at you, with such deep sympathy. Her eyes reflect the very grief you feel. There are tears there, though she is fighting hard not to lead them shed.

“Because, sometimes fate is immeasurably cruel. It denies us the things we want, the things we think we need. It is going to hurt. It will hurt for quite a time before it gets better.”

You heave a great, rolling inhuman noise from your lips. The heart is shattering into a million tiny pieces. Why now? Why when you’ve finally gained the love of the person you’d always wanted it from? Why did you then abruptly lose the person who gave you love when you needed it the most? Why?!

“I don’t know if I want it to ever get better. I don’t know how I’m going to live without her.”

“It’s fine to feel that way right now. Healthy as someone still so young. In time, you’ll realize that she’ll want you to live on for her. And that the world is full of so much more for you to conquer. If not with someone else by your side, then alone, or with family, or another.”

Though the words have a soothing melody coating their silvery surface, it just isn’t enough. The rest of the room is quiet as you tilt forward and scream into the floor. Scream, pulling on dark chestnut hair, dragging your nails on the polished wood. You slam those fists down, again and again until they are red and bruised. Screaming why to the sky, to no one in particular. The only reply a bolt of lightning cutting through the air.

Eventually, when you look up again, she is kneeling next to you, offering her arms. You crawl into them and curl up against her torso, crying deep, ugly sobs into the fabric of her robes. She sniffles too, great bouts of pain on her face when you look up. It’s as if watching you go through this is torturous enough to drive her into weakness. Her fingers run through your hair softly, as she holds you so very close.

“Her body will be waiting for you in Phasis, sweetie. I do not wish to keep you here when it is clear the pain is so very deep. Balarax knows the way, so you needs only strap yourself to the saddle and fly.

“I love you, Mom.”

The words just fall out of your mouth.

“I love you too.”

You inhale, snorting back a huge globule of mucus into your nose. It takes a moment for you to willingly detangle yourself from her arms.

Perhaps you forget the exchange that happens behind you. Perhaps your mind is just floating in the fog of grief and doesn’t process it. Or perhaps, it is some small catharsis to hear her speak to Absyrtus in such a way. But you ignore it all the same as you stumble out of the throne room to where Balarax has flown up to perch.

“Mother, why have you never comforted me like that?”

“Because you have been a rampant failure your entire fucking life. Get out of my sight.”

---

It was a beautiful ceremony. I didn’t immediately fly back to Phasis that night. No, I went North to Cimmer, on Balarax to retrieve Breeze’s Mother. We cried on the docks, hugging in a tight embrace. She looked older, smaller than I remembered. But who wouldn’t after they lost their eldest daughter? The trip down to Phasis was uneventful, but we flew wide to avoid the open sea.

Mother had a Winged Golden Ram killed, one for a cousin who died from illness before ever reaching womanhood. She sent it to Phasis but didn’t come herself. Too busy managing the front against the Rebellion that fragmented further with every passing day.

I wish she had been there.

She was beautiful in death, after the preservation magics got rid of her wounds. Almost like she was just sleeping. Chalciope was there, her expression a mask of deepest sadness. The three of us grew close in the years in Phasis. So where I had lost someone I loved with all my heart, Chalciope had lost an adoptive sister.

Her Mother chose the color of the dye for the fleece, a bright blend of sunset orange and pink, truly encapsulating the beauty of her spirit. She let me pick the tree for her to be hung up in. It wasn’t really a choice. The young Ironskin planted at the edge of the city where we would lay beneath its golden fluorescence for hours and stare up at the stars. She would rest there eternally, carried higher and higher into the clouds so she could see the who world from the top of the truly glorious thing.

That’s what she would have wanted.

I made time to go there every month in the years that followed. I’d just lay with her under the stars and just talk. Talk until my voice was hoarse and I couldn’t cry anymore. I think she would be happy to know, that things are changing between me and Mom. I guess when they burned it all those years later, she finally got her wish to sail across the entire earth.

Phasis was never quite the same. At almost every turn I’d stop, thinking she was right behind me. Then I’d turn around and see nothing, or there’d be a group of younger matriarchs that I didn’t know who were enrolled in the cohorts below me in the Dragon Academy. Where she drew me out of those many defenses I’d put up over the years, I couldn’t help but feel like I was slipping back down underneath the water.

Then there’s that Witch. How I fucking hate her for what she did. I’d stand there on the docks, staring up at the clouds on stormy nights, screaming until my voice was raw. She abandoned me and Chalciope, she took the one person who knew how to love me when I needed it most. I hate her, by the Font do I hate that Kin Slayer. I was determined to kill her with my bare hands one of these coming days!

“Damn you Witch of Tempests! One day, I will end you!”

I cry to the sky. But such impudent rage fell away the farther we moved from Breeze’s death. Wasted energy better spent on planning for the occasion.

Though Chalciope and I are still close, she’s becoming more distant. I can’t tell if it’s out of jealousy that I have Mother’s attention, or her dogged suspicion that Mother is still playing her old games. No matter what I say, no matter how many times I try to bring her to Mother to convince her, she doesn’t believe it. I worry about her. I worry that she is slipping away through my fingers, and that I may lose another person I love. I don’t know how to reconcile that with what I feel now for Mother.

Which brings us to the present. It’s my 18th nameday. It’s been two years since I officially entered womanhood with my own fleece.

I stand looking out at the rolling waves of the harbor. Mother is behind me, looking over the war table after the most recent shaping session. The aftershocks are still working their way through my muscles. It’s that old familiar trend, but somehow, it’s far worse today. Every inch of skin still feels like it’s cast in flames and there’s that old familiar heat in my lower abdomen.

I can’t think straight.

I could retreat to my personal quarters, try to buy a little relief, but it won’t do anything. It never has, no matter how many times I have pressed into my flower, pumped and pumped screaming at the ceiling. I just cannot make it ebb.

I don’t find the shaping sessions to be so frightening anymore. There are pieces of this mind that, as confusing as it is, find them enjoyable. Crave them. Despite the state they leave me in. Other smaller pieces whisper warnings, but those aren’t as loud as they used to be. It’s because Mother is softer now. It’s because she loves me as a daughter.

She’s still distant, clinical during each session. But it’s her eyes, staring down, full of a softer kindness. I don’t know if it was always there. Maybe I was just too scared of those covetous idle thoughts that came after. How that heat in my blood, in my precious flower made me nauseous. It’s gotten harder to remember exactly why my body and mind went to war with each other during every session. I know it’s because she treated me differently, because she was cruel and envious. But that haze after she starts to chant, it makes it all feel so very far away.

I don’t know.

I can’t think straight with all this heat inside of me.

I can’t see her as the same person anymore, not since that night in the blood pool.

When did she start being so right all the time? More often than she’s not, her view of the world aligns with everything I feel. About the Empire, slaves, and how weak our people have become. When Breeze was around, maybe I would have been alarmed by how much I found myself agreeing with her.

But she was different then. She was a different person.

Breeze was like an anchor in a different world. Maybe an idealistic world where she was always a quiet promise of eventual relief. That maybe, just maybe, she could make this ugly desire, this intolerable unquenched urge to be touched go away so that I could think. So that I wasn’t suffering for days on end waiting for the flames to die down.

But she’s gone. I lost her and that world is dead. There’s no one capable of calming the storm that’s raging inside of my flesh. It’s torturous, this inferno eating at the flesh with an endless escalating fever.

I am starving.

As I stand there, hands gripping the wood railing until my knuckles turn white, I am starving for something that I don’t know how to get. It’s been there every day since I first bled from my flower. Not once, by She Who Weeps Crimson, has this endless maddening desire ever been fulfilled.

I am so incredibly desperate for relief.

Starving for touch is not so bad when you’ve not known its contours with someone who cares, someone you love. But Breezes gave me tastes, gentle caresses that promised with such urgency that she could relieve it. By the Font I hate that she’s gone. I wish I had thrown all caution of seeking approval to the wind, damn whether it was appropriate or not.

I cannot take it anymore!

She’s gone and I have nowhere to turn.

I rub the sweat off my brow, trying to control the panting breaths squirming through my chest. It is taking everything I have not to reach down and plunge in the open air of the balcony.

No, that’s not true. I do have somewhere to turn. An offer was already made a lifetime ago. Mom. I have her. I have her clinical touch, when the flame of her blood is burning through my veins dragging sweat across my skin. I don’t think she’s making everything intolerable on purpose. She wouldn’t do that to me.

She just won’t act against the fevered sensations unless I ask. She’s respected my choice to say no all these years. All this life I have craved the gentleness of another touch, the love of someone who cares. Maybe… maybe it’s time to revisit what she offered on that horrible night. Things are different now, aren’t they? Maybe I… don’t need anyone else. Maybe I’ve just been stubbornly blind to everything I needed being right there with her.

“Yeah.”

I say softly.

I rub my face, shuddering at the thought. Is this wrong? I certainly felt that way for a long time, didn’t I? But why? Was it really so wrong? Or was I just scared because of how she was? Was I scared because I was too young? Thirteen summers is too young to be deflowered. But what about eighteen? What about with a Mother who cares for you? Is that bad? What was the reason!

I grit my teeth, trying to focus.

Maybe if I finally ask, she’ll give me it. Give me all the gentleness, all the affection of touch I’ve been craving. Then, maybe, she’ll see I’m ready to go to the West to be her will?

I take a slow, shuddering breath before turning to face her. She looks up at the motion, ears tilting up with the gentle flush working its way across my cheeks. I let my gaze drop and slowly rise, taking in all of her.

I am her mirror image, truly. Not as tall yet, she’s still working on that. Says the bones don’t settle right if done all at once. I don’t have her long, narrow digits. Same reason. But I like my shape. I like her shape. She is beautiful, isn’t she?

It’s hard not to feel something about it every time I look at her. Especially right now.

I can do this. I can love her, I can worship her like she wants, right?

Why am I still telling myself something is wrong about this? Why is this part of me resisting? Let go, let me have my relief!

There’s no other way. Not without suffering again, laying in a puddle of my own sweat and fluid while this incessant desire eats me from the inside out. She’s staring at you idiot. Say something!

Sweat beads on the back of my neck, a covetous fever curling through every inch of flesh.

“What is it, Daughter? Are you feeling unwell?”

Her words have a honeyed undertone. Her lavender eyes are hooded as she rises from the couch. Legs carry me inside, even as she snaps a finger, the doors and blown glass windows sliding shut behind me.

“No, I’m—”

She approaches me, as the words catch.

Just say it. Just say it already.

Her eyes rove down. I look down, abashed, and realize that the fleece has dissolved my garments. A response to my instinctual desires. Every one of her steps is slow, methodical, forcing me to watch her approach with hungry eyes.

The back of her hand is a deep cooling relief to the fever in my flesh. It rests upon my brow as I try to steady my breathing.

“You are burning up.”

“I’m not sick.”

The words feel tight.

“But you are feeling needy, aren’t you?”

I shiver, glued to the spot. She circles me like a predator waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Eyes jam shut, a shiver working through the body.

“Yes.”

It’s a small pathetic whimper.

“A side effect of the shaping. Our blood is an aphrodisiac. But you know that, don’t you? You remember.”

She drags a single nail down your throat, provoking another whimper and a shiver down your spine. Only to abruptly pull it away.

“It’s been this way for years.”

Hands shake, flesh screams for beneath me.

“I can imagine. Five years since you started being capable of feeling like this. Every single session except that awful first, left unattended, with no relief. I do hate to see you suffer like this.”

Swallow. Just say it. Just ask her already.

“Perhaps you’d like me to find a suitable lover?”

There’s no guarantee another person could relieve it. Not without the deep bond you shared with Breezes. There’s only one way. There’s only one other person of age with that sort of bond you share.

“No.”

It’s a small quiet gasp.

“No?”

She stops in front of you. Parting a single strand of hair and tucking it behind one ear. A languid spindly finger drags down the sensitive flesh driving you mad.

“I—”

Again the words refuse to squeeze out of the larynx. I want to scream in frustration as physiology, and the tiny pieces of my mind screaming not to do it block what I need.

“I can see it in your eyes, Daughter. I just need you to say it out loud.”

Sweat drips down the body, curling maddeningly through every possible crevice. I muster every bit of strength I have, overwhelming my physiological responses, and I say it. No, I scream it.

“I need your touch!”

A long, agonizing pause. One digit drags across my cheek, pulling my head with it.

“Good, good, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

She whispers in one ear, dropping her voice a half step. My eyes open, finding her naked before me. Breath is stolen away by the tower of powerful muscle looming ahead.

She takes one hand in a powerful, tight grip, squeezing the tendons of each fingers. It is actually quite painful. She pulls us along, my legs feverishly working overtime to keep me upright.

Like a doll I am guided around interior of her chambers within the Phasis Cinderskin. She positions me in front of the bed. With little warning, she shoves me, hard, backwards onto the feather mattress and woolen sheets. I yelp in surprise, not expecting such roughness. There’s no foreplay like in the countless stories of love and intimacy from scrolls and tomes across my youth. Air is knocked out of the lungs with the landing. Still recovering when she looms, standing over the bed. Again, with not a word, she turns in place, and sits down, pressing her flower up against my face.

Then she reaches down with those long limbs, and roughly draws up my legs, hooking her own underneath my knees with insane flexibility. It’s rough, every grasp of her digits biting into the sweat slicked skin without a care for the small, muffled cries of pain coming from the person underneath her. One hand cups one breast, squeezing and rolling roughly across the nipple. It hurts and is beyond overstimulating. Parts of me want to squirm out from under her, shove her away, but they are small and overridden. If she is treating us this way, then she just doesn’t know how sensitive we are. That or, I have earned some sort of punishment. Her other hand parts open the protective bud of my flower; plunges inside, drawing out something so very sensitive and precious.

“Eat. Eat of my honey like a good girl, like a good daughter, like a good Vessel should. Then I shall return the favor.”

She coos. A shudder, more from the physical stimulation as the heat rises deep inside of me, than any actual enjoyment. She’s too rough, not at all the gentleness I have craved for so long. As she grips that most sensitive little flower, my body jerks from reflex in response to the sudden, massive overstimulation as I scream into her petals. I need to ask, I need to tell her, but—

Her index finger grinds in and all coherent thoughts scramble away.

With eyes watering, eyelids jam shut. I bear the overstimulation. I bear the pain, in the hopes that once I satisfy her needs, she’ll meet mine in turn.

I start to kiss and lap at the petals, tongue soaking in the surprisingly nectarine flavor. It burns against the back of my throat, increasing the flame ripping through every centimeter of skin. It’s sloppy, inexperienced, but gentle in the way I would want to be treated.

“Harder, Daughter. Sloppiness is expected, but you’ll learn with enough time and practice how to please me.”

She plunges a finger deep between the petals, pressing those spindly digits up against something that hurts. The cry tears from my lungs even as a few tears trace down my cheeks.

This is not what I wanted. This is too much. But what happens if I say something now? Will she stop? Will she get angry? There’s the faint trickle of something warm pouring out of my flower, a familiar viscosity that tells me I’m bleeding. Her finger has torn something deep inside.

Hesitation, then, I get rougher with her petals. I wrap my lips and teeth around her stigma, and press against them. She howls above me, even as the inferno in my abdomen screams at its apex. Try some things?

I suckle on it, create vacuum by wrapping lips around the button, anything I can think of. It works. Maybe too well.

With a cacophonous series of muscular contractions, her flower depetals. My face is splashed with a stream of something warm, sweet, and sticky. I lap at it desperately, feeling the flame spread again down my throat, hoping it will garner more of what I need from her in the moments ahead. She releases my legs then, as the muscular spasms continue above me and flow across her body.

I did something good, didn’t I? Will she be pleased? Please, please let her be.

The heat lifts away from those lips, air displacing. My legs are suddenly being lifted and spread apart.

Opening my eyes, she’s moved down. She’s placing my legs on her shoulders, spreading wide my flower. There’s blood staining the sheet, not as much as during a bleed, but it still burns the image against the back of my mind. But the heat burning in my middle casts the horror to ash in desperation for her relief.

“Good. Very good. But it could be better. I’m going to teach you how to really partake of a flower’s nectar.”

I swallow, heat mixing with the discomfort churning in my stomach from the lack of affection in her touches.

“B-b-before you begin…”

I stutter out. She looks up, her gaze expectant. I swallow again, finding the words.

“Can you be, gentler? You’ve been really rough so far and it hurts. A lot more than I think it should.”

She cocks her head to one side, ears twitching against her skull.

“Isn’t it supposed to feel good?”

A few more tears trickle out of the corner of your eyes. Why was it so hard to get that out. Surely, she’s going to understand, right? The skin is so sensitive, every part she’s been toying with craving gentle touches and stimulation.

Her lips peel slightly back, ears pressing flat against her skull. You shrink against the wood headboard.

“Pain is pleasure. They go hand in hand.”

But I don’t want pain. I want your affection. I want your love, your gentleness, your intimacy.

“I—"

“A good Vessel takes what she’s offered and enjoys it. A good daughter doesn’t get to request the shape of her stimulation until she’s made a name for herself under my will. The sex you have is not for love. It is for reproduction, it is for practicality, for information, for satifying me as the one you’ve requested it of. You’ll learn to love the pain, the roughness. It’ll make you stronger. It’ll stop you from getting attached.”

The words sting against your cheek like a slap, or a whip lashing across the back. I want to leave. I want to get up, shove her aside and run as far as possible. But my body stays right where it is.

“But maybe if you’re good enough for me, I’ll consider it in the future.”

She dives in, her tongue and lips dragging, licking, pressing, sucking. I look up at the ceiling. Shudder beneath her roughness, muffling whimpers of pain. Moans slip free, cries of pain stifled when she slips a finger beneath her chin, then a second, pressing deep until it hurts and then curling backwards and pressing into the stem of the flower.

Of course, she wouldn’t honor what seemed like a simple request right now. No matter how much hope her vague offer of future affection left in its wake. I spurned her for how many years? What right did I have, as a daughter, as a Vessel, to ask her to fulfill a selfish request. After all this time leaving her to suffer in the same way I have suffered.

Everything becomes a haze of absence staring up at the murals painted into the wood. Fingers curl through the sheets. Sweat drips down the body, breaths sharp and shallow. The inferno in the lower abdomen reaches a crescendo of mixed pain, pleasure, and urgency.

With a full body shudder, a lightning strike of pleasure slams up the spine into my brain, back and forth several times. There’s a guttural scream. Is it from me? I can’t quite tell. It doesn’t feel real, it doesn’t feel like I’m experiencing this. Silence, twitching as she pushes through the insanity of the first release.

It happens again. Then again. On and on until I collapse, limply in the sheets. Every breath is ragged. Through the spotted haze of dancing lights I hear her.

“Good girl. Good Vessel. Now, that you’ve felt it yourself, you will know how to pleasure me when you get back from the West.”

Vague awareness of something landing on the bed. When my vision starts to clear, she is washing off her hands in the bowl of handpumped water carried up from below. Then she wipes her face off with a towel.

“I am happy you have finally come to your senses, Daughter,”

She says looking over her shoulder. She has retrieved her bags and utensils and is dressed again.

“Are you leaving?”

The quiet desperation spills over.

“I am the head of the House. I have much business to attend to.”

“I… wouldn’t you like to lay with me for awhile?”

She chuckles.

“And what good would that do for either of us?”

A pregnant pause.

“Though, perhaps if that is what you desire, then I may consider it when you return victorious from the West. Among the other very selfish requests you made in arrogance after all this time.”

My heart beats a little faster at the potential promise of her affectionate touch. Maybe… maybe if I do conquer those heathens, she will fulfill the requests. I can do that, can’t I? Wait a little longer for what I need? Right?

“I love you, Mom.”

I croak out.

“Of course you do. I am full of things to love.”

Then she sweeps out of the room, without replying in turn. A thump back against the pillows, pressing legs together. The flame is gone. For the first time since I first began to bleed, it has subsided beneath someone else’s touch. But—

Tears start to trickle out, then a stream. A moment later, I’ve rolled onto my side, curled up into a ball.

What was that? No, that isn’t what I wanted at all. That isn’t how it was supposed to be. Why does it feel so empty? Where is the gentleness, where is the romantic intimacy, the affection and after glow that is supposed to happen after being deflowered for the first time as a woman? Why do I feel nothing now? Why is this all that’s left behind, hollowing me out from the inside? What is this nausea in my stomach, this deep burning shame in my bosom? Isn’t this what I wanted? For the flames to be relieved? To finally get to take my fleet to the West?

Why, instead of finally fulfilling her wish, does it feel like I was just a tool in the moment for her desires?

---

She had used you. Maybe not in a way that was necessarily directly malicious, but in a way that left a bleeding wound, nonetheless. But there’s a promise there that if you succeed, she’ll give you everything you’ve ever craved.

The order was already given, apparently, before the shaping session. A fact you learn from your second in command as you descend upon the docks with everything you own packed for the journey ahead. They have been preparing over the course of the week since your Mother arrived in Phasis, even as you were discussing the strategy of the assault.

The plan was fairly simple as far as the kind of schemes you and your mother could drum up. You would sally forth with your fleet. These men and women had trained under you for four years now. They were the best in the Dragonfleet, you saw to that. They would wait in a hidden cove, prepared to pounce. Then you would sail ahead with a single ship, greet the savages as a diplomat from the east come to offer friendship and trade. In truth, this is why Ilya had taken you earlier that day, to prepare you for the wiles of using your silver tongue to lull the barbarian rulers of that place into a false sense of security. It was all explained in her message, as if she had planned from the very beginning that that evening would be the point you finally broke and couldn’t tolerate the after effects any longer.

Which, in a way, worked. You’re hyperfocused now on the physical labor of getting ready to sail. Tying knots down with the crew, loading wooden crates and clay vases full of supplies and ammunition. It’s the only thing keeping you completely glued together at the moment.

So when Chalciope deigns to appear on the deck of your Dragonship, hauling several bags of her belongings, everything is bound to come to a head.

“Sister!”

You turn in place to face her. Just looking at her dredges that emptiness and shame roaring back to the surface. The words are strained as they drip from those lips.

“Chalciope, you shouldn’t be out here.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Her eyes are huge, full of hope and excitement. Though you love her, a tempest rises in your chest. It shreds you into tiny pieces to think about having to stare at her, at all the little features she’s grown into that are a constant reminder of your Mother. The excuse that comes out is easy enough to justify.

“You can’t come along. I’m going out to war. I’m going to secure a foothold so we can attack the rebellion from two fronts.”

Her eyes shimmer, expression wavering. She walks closer, until you’re practically pressing forehead to forehead. It’s a moment of intimacy you’re used to with her. It takes everything in your power not to recoil from her.

“But you promised when she finally let you go, we’d make our escape. You promised, don’t you remember?”

No. No that was a foolish childish promise. Why would you leave now? When you’re so fucking close.

“That was before.”

There’s a flash of anger inside you. How can Chalciope be so selfish? How can she be so naïve and blind to what you’ve built with Mother. The opportunity you have now to finally make things safe for her here. Doesn’t she get that everything beyond Colchis is full of unknown dangers? That you can barely stand to look at her right now, much less your own reflection in her eyes.

Her eyes quiver.

“But—”

“But nothing, Chalciope.”

Your voice snaps like a whip at her.

“Stop being a weak, blind, spoiled brat and go back to our chambers. I can’t even stand to look at you right now, but when I get back, when I return victorious, everything will be different for both of us. Don’t fuck this up for us. Don’t fuck this up for me!”

She steps back, her eyes wide, mouth slightly open. In that moment, when your voice is a loud hiss, you don’t see yourself in the reflection of your eyes. You see Ilya.

There is a real, deep fear in Chalciope.

“You’ve changed. You’re becoming just like her.”

She says quietly. The words smash through you like a bone hammer against a piece of flint, gouging out your heart and crushing it beneath the boot of sudden realization. Stunned, you stand completely still, all the color draining from the face.

“Chalciope, I—”

The apology catches in your throat. It wouldn’t have mattered this time. The damage is done. She backs away, slowly at first. Before you can stop her, she turns, and sprints down the docks. You want to call after her, reach across the sudden rift you cast between the two of you.

But she’s already out of reach. The crew have stopped, looking after Chalciope, and then their gaze drifts back to you.

You stand there for a moment, a storm of anger, self-loathing, and distress bubbling in the lines across your face. Then you turn, and scream, kicking a box of supplies over. The crew stares. You whirl around on them, lips pulled back, eyes wild.

“What the fuck do the lot of you think you’re staring at? Get back to work! We sail at nightfall, and Fonbearers help the sailors who do not finish their tasks in time.”

They don’t hesitate to turn away, working faster than before. You stand there, seething for a long time, before turning away to hide the tears. The wood groans beneath every stomp as you storm off to your cabin.

---

---

The wind howls with a supernatural fury above your head. It tosses every one of the Dragon ships on the waves. It would be comical, seeing these great vessels tossed about like the tiny wooden rafts you often set sail upon the Rioni or the great sea when you were but a child, if it wasn’t so terrifying. Truly the sea’s power is humbling.

The rage of the tempest above is unlike anything you prepared for in the years of training the Maker ensured you had before sending you out onto the open waves.

Every freak wave threatens to tilt the ship beneath the black waters. They’d never emerge again. You hold onto the railing near the helm for dear life.

To your right, the mast of a vessel cracks. A monstrous wave crashes across its bow with a terrifying noise. Moments later it plunges down into a trough and does not reemerge.

Vessel: “Batten down the sails! Tie down the ropes and secure the sails!”

You scream over the crack of thunder roaring above. The slaves below desperately row to keep the ship from being spun out of control.

In the sky, you catch sight of something behind the churning dark wall clouds. A silhouette of a great serpentine creature with four legs, circling high. Your eyes widen. The body locks up, every muscle tensing in place.

Vessel: “No…”

The words pour out in a stream of quiet despair. The Maker’s words from in your youth at that small question, they return now like a flood.

Vessel: “Why don’t we take a boat back to Colchis?”

Ilya the Crimson: “Because that is her domain.”

They’re pointing at it now, the sailors upon the deck. Another arc of lightning cracks overhead. Now there is a second shape, humanoid framed next to the great coils of that beast writhing in the grey. In the light, you see the white of something immense briefly dip below the swirl of the storm. There is a bone chilling otherworldly noise you know all too well.

Dragon.

Instinct screams to reach for Balarax and you oblige. Only to realize she’s a day away at best.

A river of lightning the size of the Rioni pierces the rainswept veil, tearing apart the black waves creating massive gouts of steam to your left! In an instant three ships are reduced to nothing more than ash in its wake.

A guttural scream rips from your lungs. It wasn’t just that she had abandoned you in the dark that night five summers ago.

With everything that has happened, who you are becoming, you’re no longer a child she is trying to nurture. You’re a threat that must be dealt with.

You laugh, laugh at the heavens as another bolt of light illuminates that endless fur and scale covered beast coiling overhead. People run back and forth across the decks of your squadrons, desperately trying to arc the siege engines up. It is futile. She couldn’t have picked a more opportune moment to strike.

What a miserable existence this is after all.

There is nothing left to do. So, you scream at the sky above, challenging her.

“Come Kin-Slayer, if you want my head, come and take it! Take the last thing I have to give, just like everything else has been taken from me in this life!”

The censer frees from within that Ram’s fleece, a spell of gravitational hold anchoring you to the bucking deck. The very magic she once lovingly taught you swirls in those veins, ready to turn against its once master. Strokes of lightning rip the sky, tearing through the mast of your ship.

Something large and blunt whips through the air, knocking you flat before you can react. There is no lingering grasp onto consciousness. You are plunged immediately into black.

---

In the drift of what must be death there are voices speaking. A kaleidoscope of color with each fleeting word as somewhere not far away, comes the sound of a gull’s cry.

It’s her voice. [TEMPORAL ERROR DETECTED], who left you behind and did not come back. Someone else is speaking, the distinct impression of a gentle wind against every crevice of your mind with the words that settle into its folds.

TEMPORAL DATA ERROR: “I don’t see her. Did we lose her in the surge? Oh, my heart aches if we did.”

TEMPORAL DRAGON ERROR: “No, Sister. I feel her, in the depths of our childhood home. She never stepped onto the ship.”

TEMPORAL DATA ERROR: “Heavens above that might be worse than a quick and effortless death beneath the waves. I should have never trusted the bond between this one and her to guarantee their mutual travel.”

TEMPORAL DRAGON ERROR: “All this arrangement for one of two. The one that is farthest gone as well. Kirke, sister, if the Maker allows it, we should storm the keep ourselves and retrieve that wayward child.”

TEMPORAL DATA ERROR: “No, as much as it pains me, she will be beyond our reach. I know the intent of that serpent who calls herself the rightful Queen of our House. She would sooner slit the girl’s throat the moment we flowed free from the clouds.”

She would do that.

TEMPORAL DRAGON ERROR: “If you leave her to the Monster’s desires, then there is no guarantee she will be saved at some future time. We barely swept this one from its clutches, and it alone may still not be saved.”

Thinking is terribly difficult beyond the simplest of phrases, any emotion beyond the vaguest confusion is also out of reach.

TEMPORAL DATA ERROR: “I know, and my heart deeply aches for it. The consequences unseen will be deep for all involved.”

TEMPORAL DRAGON ERROR: “Is there nothing else we can do?”

TEMPORAL DATA ERROR: “Likely no. I will go before the Sculptor and ask her what intent we may weave to bring hope from this disaster. She is injured, a blow to her head.”

TEMPORAL DRAGON ERROR: “I’m afraid one of my breaths may have been to blame.”

TEMPORAL DATA ERROR: “I will heal her.”

The words trickle away into nothing with a blooming warmth that fills your skull. In the black there is the sense of something more. An eternity plunging from the starlit sky. Fingers, the size of galaxies, crafted of cerulean curls which in turn are built from eyes, legs, hands, feet, arms, claws, tentacles, endless mouths contracting ever inwards. Warmth suffuses through every inch of flesh.

A Golden Voice: “Stir, child of the endless forest. Know my intent, wake to freedom, and find your place. Begin to cut your strings, break those chains, and free yourself from the cage.”

A jarring cut in every sense, it burns away the starlit tapestry of that blurred eldritch thing hovering on the horizon. New sensations twist through to the surface.

Unknown Speaker: “I’ve got her!”

The voice is thick with an accent you don’t recognize. But the words are said so beautifully, smooth and buttery against the acheing contours of your waking mind. Sound of rippling surf gently washing against wood. Sunlight, warmth pressing with tender lips against every inch of skin.

Something wraps around your waist and pulls you up. There’s a momentary sense of gravity trying to pull you back down, before a well-muscled but lean limb slides beneath your back. The other curls beneath the crook below your bent knees. Your arm is repositioned to wrap limply around your savior’s neck. Fingers slide through a mane of unbelievably soft but chaotic curls. Whoever is carrying you presses you closer to their—no, her torso, nestled against one breast.

A woman?

The thought sends a bit of heat crawling up the nape of your neck, accumulating in your cheeks. She’s taller than you judging by the proportions of the arms holding you. She’s strong too. She holds you up with so very little effort. Yet there’s a gentleness to her touch, which contrasts against the callous, marred fingers and the roughness of the fingerless gloves coating her palms. Another voice calls out from above, also effeminate. The intonation is strange, and the accent so alien you couldn’t have recognized it as anything native to the Basin beyond the blackened sea.

Unknown Speaker 2: “Are you certain, blood-hair?”

Blood hair? Ah. Ah, it must be a matriarch from the North who has pulled you from the waves. Your heart beats just a little faster, mind already piecing together her appearance.

Blood-Hair: “I have a name, you know.”

Unknown Speaker-2: “Not nearly as interesting.”

Blood-Hair: “Listen, I’ve got her. Throw me a rope and pull me up already. This piece of wood is not very stable.”

Unknown Speaker 3: “Careful, Triems, she’ll start to think she can take you on in a lifting contest before long.”

Laughter from above.

Blood-Hair: “Tartarus below, I’m not an idiot, Agrusa. There’s no matching one of you in a contest of pure strength. Now hurry up, before I start climbing the side of the ship with one hand.”

Another round of laughter cuts the air. What could she possibly mean by ‘one of you’? Or ‘not being able to match them in a contest of strength.’ Is her crew not humans and Daevae? She must be the commander of the squadron to order them about like this.

Your savior wraps twine about your waist, and then what feels like her own. The knot is beautifully woven, based on the contours that rest against your exposed skin. She must be a sailor, or a master survivalist to be so skilled. The muscles of her torso are taught against the bare skin of your midriff, so she must not be wearing much cloth either.

Oh, how the heat burns beneath those cheeks.

You try to open your eyes to see what is happening around you, to get a glimpse of this savior. They still feel so very heavy. It’s almost as if they are swollen shut.

A moment later, the rope lifts you both upwards where many oddly textured hands pull you aboard some sort of ship. They almost feel like scales.

There’s murmurs all around you.

Unknown Speaker 4: “Never seen one of those before. Pointy ears.”

Unknown Speaker 5: “I’ve heard about them from my cousins in the great Fjords. Never seen one this young with marks.”

Unknown Speaker 6: “They’re not painted on, etched deep into her skin.”

Blood-Hair: “I have; she’s a Daevite Matriarch. A young one too. Way further west than she should be.”

Your rescuer’s voice cuts through the speculation to clarify.

Further west than I should be? Where am I? Is she far from home as well?

Triemedes: “Was there anyone else stranded out there?”

Blood-Hair: “Not a one.”

Agrusa: “What about the other ships?”

There’s a moment’s pause.

Triemedes: “They’re signaling they don’t see anything either.”

A new voice cuts in, one with an ethereal character.

Golden Song: “Let me through.”

The magic swirling in every ounce of flesh beneath your skin curls in response to her. Her words are a golden song that has, at all times throughout your life, been heard in some twinkling tones on the distant breeze. Its contours, its touch resonates in deep flows with the magic you once learned from Kirke in the deepest dark.

There comes an immediate, deep sense of stillness that silences all the laughs and chatter. Acheing tension washes across your limbs. All at once, every sense for magic in your body begins to scream.

Her name fills the sky. Her intent burns every horizon with a cerulean waste that cannot be etched out. Every bone, every nerve, every tendon knows the nature of what approaches. She is the Mother of all Creation stretching in fullness with endless spinning limbs upon a central mass that refuses to stay in one defined shape. Thrashing spheres of teal flesh, an endless hulk of all-seeing golden eyes swallowing you beneath an infinite mantle of blazing stars woven as crimson hair. Your body reacts on reflex, gasping down air as one hand stretches across a rapidly shrinking distance to press softly against your forehead. Pure terror burns through every neuron, screaming that a pillar of reality has come to snuff out the lilac flame of your life.

But that is not what happens when she makes contact.

You gasp again with her fingers pressed gently to your sea-salt slicked brown. That touch is everything you have ever craved. Instant deep warmth like a weighted blanket cast across every millimeter of skin. A sense of maternal safety that leaves you mentally shaking, as if nothing can ever touch you again while her flesh is pressed into yours. You want to cry, not caring if it is actually weakness, as the weight across your eyelids begins to lighten. But the tears don’t come.

Creation: “There should have been a second girl with her. Where is she?”

Motion just above you.

Blood Hair: “There wasn’t. She was the only one I saw, and the others are saying the same.”

Triemedes: “Wait, hold the oars. Alva, is this why you changed our course for a stop well before the next port?”

Alva: “Yes, it was. This is a great complication.”

Triemedes: “Why?”

When she sighs, all of creation seems to sigh with her. You want to say something, let her know that it’s okay. Why is there distress arcing through her? Why does it pool and wash back into you? Why can’t you grasp the endless depths of this nuance that threatens to drown you in its tide? Is this what it means to encompass so much of everything?

The hand withdraws from your forehead, leaving a deep, hollow ache in your flesh.

Why did it have to end?

Alva: “She was conscious just now, listening to every word we are saying.”

Triemedes: “Alva, I asked you why?”

Alva: “Not here, not in front of her. She’s not ready to know.”

A frown forms on those chapped lips. What do they not want you to hear?

Blood-Hair: “She’s quite pretty.”

A gentle finger tucks a strand of your hair behind one, pointed ear.

With a great amount of effort, those eyes begin to creep open. The light of a very warm sun storms in, momentarily obscuring everything. You’re forced to keep your eyelids cracked so they can adjust, which has the effect of blurring everything but the shape of the woman with her arms hooked underneath you.

Many voices are speaking now, but your focus is adrift in the curve of her chest. Her skin is such a beautiful olive tone of bronze. A cheek is resting against her breast, tucked slightly in so you’re staring at the definition of her collarbone and the muscles in her neck. Out of the corner of one eye, you can see the intimate details of toned muscle on the arm holding up your knees. She has scars, some on her arms, one across her left collarbone that looks like a side swipe from a beast, maybe a boar. She smells of sweat and of the wilderness, an earthy scent as if she has spent her whole life rolling the dirt. Why does it make your heart beat fast? Why is it calling forth pressure deep in your abdomen?

Your gaze drifts up to find a sea-salt-stained visage worthy of the divine. High set cheekbones, a smoothly curved chin, dimples, vibrant lips with a pinkish color all rounded out by a soft nose. Her eyes, hooded as they are, shine with a yellow-green tint. They drip with the thick smokiness of someone who’s fought for every step of her existence. Her hair Is a mane of thick curls, a deep red cast in the same hue as the blood you have so very often bent to your will. You can’t see her ears; the hair is far too thick with a great deal of volume. For reasons that largely evade further elaboration, the way her body leans so effortlessly, while holding you, evokes a silent, cat-like energy.

There’s a quiet heat burning in your cheeks, and another wave crawling up the back of the neck. Why is your heart beating so hard?

Blood-Hair: “Look, I’m just keeping an eye on her for the moment because I know what a Matriarch can do.”

Triemedes: “Of course you are, Carissa.”

Carissa. The name rolls around in your mind, as your eyes slowly open wider.

Agrusa: “I think the huntress might have a crush.”

Carissa: “Fuck off, we just plucked her out of the ocean. My first concern is safety. Of you, and of her.”

Laughter.

Triemedes: “I think you’ve touched a nerve. Alva, what do you think.”

Alva: “Well, I think her eyes are wide open. She is, as she has been for the past five minutes, staring up at the person holding her in a dazed stupor. All while the lot of you have been making fleshy mouth noises.”

At this, Carissa, the woman who plucked you from the waves, looks down. Eyes meet, the intensity filling everything within reach with an electrostatic tension that would make anyone blush. Every nerve of your body is screaming at you to lean up and kiss a woman you have just met, for no other reasonable explanation than she rescued you from the waves.

For a moment, you never want her to put you down.

Then, like being struck by a lightning bolt, you see her round, human ears. The world seems to tilt on its side as a tight, angry heat catches flame in your breast.

Vessel: “Human.”

The words drip from your tongue with a venomous hiss. Eyes narrow. She’s touching you. How dare she! How dare she carry you! The blood of the Noble House of Colchis, being held like a bride by a mud-crawling, wasteful, human.

Her brow wrinkles, lips pursing together.

Your eyes dart around. The vessel is familiar, something you have seen drawings of in the thick tomes of the Dragon Academy. Its deck is huge, mostly obscured by the things around you, but at least as wide as several of the largest houses in Aea. There is magic thick in this wood, reeking of nature and creation. The things around you, with the exclusion of the terrifying eldritch creature miming a humanoid shape, are covered in scales, gills along their necks down to their barely clothed torsos, tall, powerful things. The central mast of the ship is as thick as three of them together, and its sail, fully unfurled, bears a hand stitched symbol you’ve seen before. A Kraken. These are the terrifying creatures who once crushed your Mother’s armies in the far North. Savage beasts of war and a lowly human working together. You’re on one of their Kraken ships.

The world feels frozen in place for a moment, before the indignation and anger washes back through your chest. Then you look twist your body and hit this Carissa’s shoulder several times with your flattened fist.

Vessel: “Unhand me you filthy animal! How dare you touch me! I will not be held aloft by an inferior human! Take your hands off me right now, do you not know what I am! Who I am! I will have you—”

Her face twists in immediate anger. You continue to tear her apart verbally, making no immediate efforts to detangle yourself. A fact you will be dissecting later.

Maybe you were expecting her to just set you down on your feet. But that is certainly not what happens.

For a moment, you hang in the air as if defying the laws of reality. Which immediately shuts your arrogant little yapping maw up. With quite a dramatic thump, your rump bounces off the surface of the deck. It hurts quite a lot.

Vessel: “How dare you drop me! Such insolence!”

Carissa: “Sorry, your highness, I was just following your quite clear command to unhand you.”

Carissa clicks her tongue, tilts up her chin and glances away with a ‘humph. ’The Finned folk exchange glances among themselves. You can’t interpret the different patterns and pulses of their fluttering gills, nor the extension of fins.

Vessel: “I should have your head from your shoulders for this defiance. Then I’ll use your blood to—”

She leans down, pulling back her lips to show white teeth in an infuriating sneer

Carissa: “Do what, quench your thirst? Sacrifice dozens of slaves? Lean into every rumor imaginable about what you fucking blood witches do?”

The word Witch raises an idle fury in your belly. You pick yourself up off the floor and take a swing at her. She sidesteps the blow, knocks your legs out from underneath you in a manner that sends you pinwheeling. Her hand catches one ankle, your whole world suddenly upside down. You thrash, trying to get free. A light kick to her gut seems to be enough. She drops you. The deck rattles through every bone and inch of skin quite hard, leaving stars swirling ahead for half a moment. When you gather your bearings and pick yourself up, she has stepped back, arms crossed.

Unnamed Finnfolk: “I thought you said she might be dangerous?”

One of the Finned ones says with a light upward lilt of their voice.

Carissa: “Oh, she is.”

Carissa glances towards the eldritch thing standing in your periphery.

You let out an undignified screech, launching yourself across the gap. Again, she side steps the blow. This time there’s adjustment for that fact, but she’s not there when the body pivots. A kick knocks the legs out from underneath you. Instead of pinwheeling this time, the scruff of the robe is yanked, jerking you up into the air in a way that briefly constricts your windpipe. Somehow, in the process of sidestepping, she got behind you. But how? You should have seen her trajectory? How could she suddenly be in one place, and then not faster than you can blink?

Was it magic? You didn’t feel anything, but then again, that eldritch thing is drowning everything else out. You claw at the robe, gasping for air. A moment later, you’re skidding back along the deck on your belly. Laughter.

Vessel: “How dare you!”

The words come out as an enraged squeal as you pick yourself back up for the third time. You’re too mad to even grasp at the threads of a spell. Cheeks flushed with the humiliation of being so soundly manhandled by this infuriating human woman.

Carissa: “Oh, I certainly dare. Do you want to take another swing?”

She leans against the railing, watching. She uses a small wooden splinter to pick a piece of meat out of her teeth. You reach into your robes searching for something, hands shaking. A quick glance down when it’s not there.

Carissa: “Are you looking for this?”

The censer-turned-meteor hammer twirls about her fingers in an infuriating arc through the air. You’re not sure what’s more insulting, the fact that she spins it like a toy, or that her form is so terrible. A small red lens forms across your eyes. Patting along the belts for a dagger only reveals that the sheathes are all empty.

Carissa: “Come on now, did you really expect me not to take all your weapons?”

There they are, tucked neatly into scabbards on her leather belt. A firestorm twists in knots in your breast.

With a twirl, you turn to scan the crowd, desperate for something, anything to use as a weapon. These things are great warriors of immense skill. They must have something you can use. The two tallest of the savage Finned ones, that look far more like humans than you had ever pictured them, are immediately in front of you. You point at the one with golden scales.

Vessel: “You!”

The, what you assume is a woman, cocks her head to one side. Her gills flutter in a rolling pattern, lips slightly twitching up at the corners.

Vessel: “A blade, now.”

Those deep blue eyes ripple with an intelligence you had not quite thought to look for. It’s a familiar deep flame of calculation twisting about the striations. In that moment you realize you’ve made a mistake, for that must be the ship’s commander. Maybe the Fleet’s commander. You swallow instinctively.

The corners of her eyes crinkle a moment later. She half turns her head and says with a great deal of amusement at your expense:

Triemedes: “Come, we need a blade for the blood princess!”

Which basically washes away any respect you were starting to piece together for the leader. Such a childish insult. A seething heat gathers in your cheeks.

Vessel: “I am a Vessel of the Noble Daevae House of Colchis! I will not be treated with such disrespect!”

Triemedes: “And I am Triemedes, Daughter of Jörð the First, the great victor in the Fjords who stopped an army driven before the might of your Mother a mere hundred years before now. The difference between us, little princess of blood, is that I do not parade such titles before me. I sail into the mists of the south to make a name of my own, creating a legacy of my own, with an army of my peers.”

She beats her chest with a flat palm. The rest of the finned ones around her yell a single “Ooh!” with such intensity it sends goosepimples down your flesh. You freeze at the name, eyes widening. This, this is the daughter of the creature who smashed your mother upon a mountain pass? This has to be a joke at your expense. Why would such fiercesome beasts ever align with a scraggly human.

Triemedes: “Respect is forged, not demanded as entitlement that is owed. You have done nothing but whine and complain about insolence since you awoke.”

You open your lips to throw a biting reprisal, only for her to cut you off.

Triemedes: “I know of your House, I know the arrogance of your ways. Most of all, I know of your Mother, that awful creature who thought she could storm the harmonious communities along the Fjords and bind our kind in chains. The current seems not to wash the kelp fruit far from its stalk.”

Vessel: “I am nothing like my Mother!”

You hiss.

Triemedes: “You could have fooled Agrusa. She who once sat with my Mother across from yours in the howling wind of a truce.”

Agrusa crosses her arms.

Agrusa: “You look just like her. Sounds it too with all the proclamations of superiority.”

You recoil from that statement as if struck by her hand.

Agrusa: “Yet the human we’ve adopted over there has made a jester of you. You’re not warrior Queen, you’re whelp of a sea pup who hasn’t even cut out her first heart.”

You shake with anger. Even if they are beneath you, you’re not stupid enough to lash out at these creatures directly. That would end far worse than trying to fight Carissa. Strike later, in the dark to get vengeance for such a tirade of insults.

Triemedes: “Ah, here we are, your blade.”

A great one-handed blade thicker than your forearm, and longer than you are tall, thunks down into the wood of the deck.

Uproarious laughter comes from the crowd. You stare at it for a long moment, cheeks burning with scarlet embarrassment.

Vessel: “I cannot use this!”

Triemedes: “A warrior makes do with what they have in the field, Vessel of Colchis. You asked for a blade, and we have given it. Show us the mettle of the Noble House you claim to be of.”

Triemedes crosses her arms. You look at her, then the grand sword they’ve given you. Back and forth several times. You turn around and reach for a spell instead. Just as the strings slide against mental fingers, something snuffs out the embers gathering beneath the skin. Your hand is knocked aside by the sheer force of it.

Eyes snaps to the source. It’s that terrifying creature, standing next to Triemedes. She stares at you with four solid gold eyes.

Her intent is smothering from every angle. She’s not going to let you use your magic here.

With an irritated squeak, you turn to the blade. Its handle is thicker than your forearm, and your fingers scrabble for purchase. It takes every ounce of strength to lift it from the deck, barely managing to hold it off the ground. The act provokes a round of foot stomps that nearly startle you into dropping the blade when you stumble.

Carissa stands there, watching you with hooded eyes. The sun washes across the strands of her blood-red hair. It’s a stunning sight that steals your breath and anger away for half a moment.

Carissa: “Well, come on, princess, I don’t have all day.”

The laughter rushes back in. Blood boils with cold anger. Humiliation after humiliation. You analyze her, looking for any weakness in the way she’s standing. She’s clever, hiding how she’s balanced her weight so she can move the moment you dart in for a strike. This is a woman who’s spent her whole life fighting for purchase.

A low heat percolates in your abdomen when you look at her, something fluttering in that stomach. You hate it. Shaking out the head to try to make it dissipate doesn’t work. It ebbs when you look away from her but doesn’t fade.

The meteor hammer wraps around one arm as her look becomes inscrutable. She makes a small motion, and the crowd goes quiet. With a deep breath, you start to drag the blade in her direction. It makes a horrible noise.

Carissa: “Do you have a name, or do they just call you ‘Vessel’ where you come from.”

Your hands shake from the effort. But now you have a single-minded focus. Kill this defiant lesser creature and show them what you’re made of.

Vessel: “I am a Vessel, that is what I was made for.”

Carissa: “Surely you must have a name.”

In range of her now, you swing the blade. It’s ugly, a swing unworthy of writing any great story about. But It’s the angle you’ve picked out that will force her to contend with the sea behind her or move in range of one of your fists. But she moves like nothing you could have expected. With the blade in motion, she pushes off the railing, and then reverses momentum, flipping backwards up onto the surface of the railing. The blade thunks, sticking into the wood of the railing. There’s a moment when she seems to go over the side, only to acrobatically slide through the railing, and kick you in the belly. It knocks all the air out of your lungs. A backwards skid on those knees, friction burning against the flesh. One hand contacts the wood, bracing you from falling forwards as you gulp down air.

It is a struggle to get back up, to move back towards the blade. She crouches now atop the rail, eating a shiny apple, and watching. Arms ache with the effort of pulling on the handle of the blade. No matter how hard you yank, you can’t get it free. Adding insult to injury, she’s right there. Just a foot or so, evoking that cat-like energy. It’s easy to picture a pair of ears and tail on her. She’s toying with you, despite the nonchalance in her posture, every muscle is tense for your next attempt. At the same time, it’s maddening how bored she appears.

You give up on the blade. Standing there limp and awkwardly, a glare burning in those eyes, wishing for all the world you could vaporize her with just a look. Wishing you could cast your magic and turn her into a literal cat to toy with.

Carissa: “Well, come on, are you just going to glare at me all day, or are you going to answer my question?”

She flips one of your daggers in one hand. In turn, you flash her an insulting hand gesture you picked up during lessons of her native tongue. She laughs.

Carissa: “Wow, fucking vulgar. Where in Hades did you learn that?”

Vessel: “From one of my tutors.”

A glance aside, not meeting her gaze. You don’t want to admit it, but she is incredibly skilled. That fluttering sensation and heat accumulates in your lower torso again. It’s somewhat difficult not to stare. If you do, whatever is happening to you will wash away the hate burning in your belly.

Vessel: “I don’t have a name.”

It’s said as barely a whisper. She leans in, cupping a hand to one disgustingly human ear.

Carissa: “Speak up, I can’t hear you if you mumble like that.”

Laughs from the crowd.

Vessel: “I don’t have a name!”

It comes out as a frustrated shout. The sound seems to echo over the waves. The laughter vanishes immediately into a stiff silence. One hand hastily wipes away a tear or two that break free. A cold anger spiderwebs through your breast for allowing them to see the weakness.

Murmurs spread all around.

Unnamed Finnfolk 1: “What kind of place is it where a child of such pedigree doesn’t get a name?”

Unnamed Finnfolk 2: “That’s not a way to live.”

Unnamed Finnfolk 3: “Are they all like that?”

Unnamed Finnfolk 4: “No, I never heard of this among the pointy ears.”

You stare down at the wood. No one will see the tears gathering in your eyes, you won’t allow them to break free, you want give them the satisfaction. A title, Purple Serpents. That’s all you have. But that’s not a name. Why didn’t Breezes give you an actual name?

Vessel: “Are you happy with humiliating a goddess? Ripping me from my fleet and placing me here. Surrounded by creatures I am supposed to be above. I can’t do my magic, I’m being endlessly mocked, I don’t know where I am, and everything is wrong. ”

Deep shame pits in that belly.

The tip of the dagger blade tilts up your chin up from the deck, and she looks into your eyes. You hate the way the yellow-green spirals. Hate the definition of the lines on her face, the curve of those lips, the softness of her nose. What you see in that expression is pity. She’s pitying you and that just makes everything worse. Her eyes should be ripped out so you never have to look into their rich depths ever again. Carve up her muscles, rip out her tongue, and throw them into the sea so you never have to hear her voice, or look at her beautiful olive skin ever again.

The heart in that chest beats a little faster, a little harder. What’s wrong with you?

Carissa: “Listen, you’re not in Colchis anymore, Princess. You’re certainly no more above any of us than we are above you. I know the Matriarchs raised you high on their own shit, but the world ain’t their oyster to take, and we ain’t your slaves. Now, I don’t know what fucked up Noble House doesn’t give their kids names, but we’re not going to run around calling you Vessel while you’re here. Are we, friends?”

A roar of disapproval rises from the Finned ones. Triemedes crosses her arms, leaning against the main mast of the Kraken Ship. She pulls your attention back with the flat of the knife.

Carissa: “Don’t mind them, they get excited over a good fight. Though, by all reasonable measures, this has not been a good fight.”

Vessel: “You handicapped me.”

She glances past you for half a second at Alva.

Carissa: “Nah, that’s her doing. Which, fair play by Alva. I am not about to let the cultural misunderstandings let a fragile thing like you get your neck snapped by one of their giant hands.”

You sneer at her.

Vessel: “As if they could.”

Carissa: “You must be stupid, or to proud to think straight. See them? They are not very good at pulling punches in fights with more fragile creatures like us.”

Vessel: “I am—”

Carissa: “Yeah yeah, I know what you think you are. Look, she wants you here for some reason or other, not that I fucking care. Ship’s sailed on that the moment you decided to run those plush little lips. Bluntly, I think it’s all a bit goatshit at this point given what a little monster you’ve been. But what that woman, if you can call her that, says, goes.”

You grit your teeth.

Vessel: “You are infuriating.”

Carissa: “So I’m told. We have that in common.”

Vessel: “Why am I here?”

Carissa: “You think I have any fucking idea? I certainly don’t want your dainty little blood sucking ass out here. Like I said, you’ll want to ask the green skinned girl over there who has far too many eyes if you stare at her for too long.”

A shudder works up your spine.

Vessel: “I do not suck blood! Now, give me back what is mine, and I might still consider sparing you.”

She rolls her eyes egregiously and sighs.

Carissa: “Back on this again, eh? Nah, not until you’ve calmed down. I’m not risking you trying to kill us in our sleep.”

Vessel: “Why would I do that?”

Carissa: “Oh, let’s see, I touched you. I insulted you. They insulted you. They had some fun at your expense. Do I need to keep going about how obvious it is what your next move would be, or do you get the point?”

She points the dagger in various directions for emphasis with every statement.

Vessel: “I hate you.”

Carissa: “Look, Triemedes is the leader here, not the Daevite hierarchy. I know that’s going to be hard for your bigoted little bloodsucking ass to accept, but you better start. They are a strange bunch at times, but everyone in this fleet is in it together. It’s going to be a change, and you’ll just have to deal with it until we can ship you back to your fucking tree palace.”

Vessel: “I really fucking hate you. I do not suck on blood!”

She rolls her eyes.

Carissa: “Oooo onto curses now are we! I’m so intimidated by the little princess gritting her teeth and snarling. You’re welcome to keep hating me, pitching fits, and all this other sad little goatshit. Feeling is mutual between us until you woman up and realize, this act ain’t going to work here.”

Vessel: “Why do you even care what I’m called.”

The question seems to make her pause for a moment. A complicated expression worms across her features that you can’t deconstruct.

Carissa: “Because no one here is going to let you run around getting depersoned. We're not going to enable some sick twisted old hag in her tree castle decided it would be fun to torture a child.”

Your jaw works up and down, as if you’re going to fling a thousand insults her way. But the tip of the dagger blade is still poking against your throat.

Carissa: “Now, what do you want to be called so we can have a proper introduction.”

There’s a poignant silence that rests in the air. Want? What do you want? The question seems so innocuous on its face, but it’s not something anyone’s ever asked you before. What would you want to be called if you had a choice?

Vessel: “What’s the term for beautiful, godly woman in your language?”

You swallow, feeling the prickle of sharp copper poking against the jugular.

She thinks for a moment.

Carissa: “Medea.”

There’s something in her eyes that says that is not the actual meaning of that term. That doesn’t seem to matter. All ten thousand different times where an empty void resonated in your mind like a mallet slamming into a gong? They all come flooding back like torrential rain. Every time Kirke spoke it in the dark, every time you heard it in a dream.

It was her. It was the woman before you now, giving you the name that was erased on the day of your birth.

This is the name that was meant for you, the one that was taken away

Medea: “Medea.”

The word turns over softly against your lips. Carissa watches, a smirk curling off the corners of her lips. How humiliating it is to know that it was her all along. A deep anger churns as ice in your stomach. It blooms in the reflection of her eyes as spite. Your lips twitch, a lightning bolt running up the length of your spine.

Medea: “Then, I will be Medea of the Noble Daevic House of Colchis.”

Just like that, without realizing it, you are no longer just a Vessel for her intent. You have received your name. A proper, real name that would define everything the world would come to know about you. Even if it was meant as an insult, it was yours and you were going to take it. Out of spite if nothing else. This is the first break in the link of chains of her intent.

Carissa’s smirk falls ever so slightly, as if the intended insult didn’t land the way she intended. She sighs after a moment.

Carissa: “Carissa. Carissa Decimus, holder of the title of Atalanta, champion of Artemis.”

Medea: “I don’t care.”

Now something sparks in her eyes. Her lips twitch, pulling ever so slightly back to show teeth. HA! You finally got to her.

Carissa: “Too bad. I would say it is a pleasure, Medea of the Noble Daevic House of Colchis, but frankly, you’ve pissed me off and my patience has run out. I’m going to finish this now, that way everyone can get back to what they were doing. We do need to make landfall before Nyx rolls across the sky.”

Medea: “What—”

In the instant between when she finishes speaking, and when you start to ask, ‘what makes you think you can do that’, the woman vanishes. Just like before she doesn’t fall backwards into the sea, she just disappears. Something hard and fast chops against the back of your neck. You go down like a sack of bricks, eyes rolling back into your head the moment before someone catches you.

Everything cuts abruptly to black.

---

<Begin Log:>

Summers flow like leaves in the wind, drifting past with every blink. Three summers have passed when it begins in the North. A rebellion long feared by the Maker, Ion’s rebellion, as they are calling it. Driven by that mythical dual fleshed Vessel, with the heretically divine aid of the Witch of Tempests. Or, at least, that’s what the Maker suggests. But she so rarely works in such direct ways.

There are rumors of a new belief trickling in to the Queendom, rumors of a faith so strong among the defiant slaves and ex-matriarchs of the North that whole cities fall to it in a single night. The refugees whisper of it, never in the Maker’s presence. A crackdown on such things is probably warranted to prevent its spread among the House slaves, but as long as the whispers are trickling new information, there’s no need for that. Only the occasional beating in the Matriarchs presence.

Before you can get a proper handle on how to begin to approach this issue, Absyrtus rushes to supplant you in the field. He’s fifteen summers old now and his abuse has never quite let up.

“I will take my bond north with an army of animations, golems, slaves, and experienced warriors. I’ve been speaking with several of our Northern sisters, Mother. They’re preparing to animate several of the Cinderskins.”

The Maker’s reaction blossoms with lines upon her brow, and the upward tilt of her ears. Even you must admit, animation of herbaceous constructs of that size is a move that hasn’t been undertaken since the reclamation wars with the Children of the Night.

“You’ve been speaking with the Northern Queens?”

“With my friends who are coming of age. I’m sure you remember them.”

“I do. What are these plans you’ve made without my permission?”

He stiffens a bit at the curling calculation thick in the Maker’s undertones.

“I’ll send scouts to the Northeast and East. From there, we’ll identify the weak points in the enemy’s lines and then attack them.”

“What do you think, Vessel?”

She turns to look at you, where you’re leaning against the table, taking in the lines on the map, with many question marks. There is no knowing just how far this plague has spread across the flat grasslands of the Northeast. You tilt your chin up slight, with an imperious air hovering in your eyes.

“It’s about as straightforward and sound a plan as I’ve heard from Absyrtus.”

He gives you a nod of appreciation once. Too oblivious to see the knife you have in the other hand.

“But?”

“But I have also heard rumors from the refugees trickling through our streets. This, Ion, commands numbers of a fantastical nature. They have turned entire armies their Commanders, cities against their Matriarchs, entire Queendoms twist against their Queens in mere days.”

“Hopeful exaggerations by the slaves designed to undermine our faith. We will have to organize a mass sacrifice and progrom of those responsible.”

“No, I don’t think that’s wise.”

She turns her gaze, the downward curve of her lips and narrowing of her eyes screams her displeasure at your defiant dissent. It’s one of those days where you would have preferred to avoid being in her presence. But, with Absyrtus’s little maneuver, it can’t be avoided.

“Are you questioning my judgement, Vessel.”

There’s a hint of a smile on Absyrtus’s features.

“Never, Maker. But you do not have all the information.”

She tilts her head, lips twitching.

“Have you been keeping information from me, then?”

Now things are getting dangerous.

“Not with the intention of hiding it from you, only so I can separate what’s the truth from the fairy tales.”

“Then tell me of this truth.”

Her voice is almost a hiss.

“The refugees from the north are whispering of a rising fervor among the Queendoms that have already fallen. It’s spreading quickly from what I understand.”

“A fervor?”

“Yes. A devotion to transcendence, of the North freeing itself from the yoke of a divine, false providence posing as the Font. Eschewing the bonds of flesh and rising to be something more. It is an old, familiar mantra.”

Her eyes smolder with lavender ire.

“The Kin-slayer.”

The room falls still, Absyrtus stiffening on the other side of the table.

“It’s what she believes. But, its rising a step above that.”

“Go on?”

“They want to kill something, something ancient. Something I don’t really understand. Some aspect they say is of the Font.”

A long silence.

“Well, now there really is a sense of urgency.”

She steeples her fingers on the edge of the table.

“Yes, but, sending Absyrtus would be like trying to draw the blood from the flesh before you’ve applied the knife. I’m certain he’s learned from his mistakes, but you need a leader in the field who can adapt to an enemy who’s overcome everything that’s been thrown at them so far.”

Absyrtus seethes across the table, his eyes filled with daggers sliding straight between your ribs. It won’t save his plan.

“Who would you suggest, Vessel?”

Her expression is inscrutable, but the swirls of light behind her pupils scream of the calculations she is making.

“Send me. I will be your hand against this new enemy. I will learn their strategies, the strength of their forces, and then I will crush them against the anvil of the Cinderskins.”

This is your chance to really prove yourself in the field. Something you can finally get the recognition you deserve from.

“No.”

The word is crushing, smashing against your ribcage.

“What?”

“No, I will send Absyrtus.”

“Maker, you cannot—”

“ARE YOU QUESTIONING MY DECISION.”

She rounds on you, breath thick with her anger. You take a few steps back, vaguely aware of the smirk on Absyrtus’s lips.

“No, Maker. I just don’t understand?”

“Then I will explain, since you seem to still yet be vulnerable to bouts of stupidity.”

The words dig into your flesh like claws.

“These rumors among the refugees and slaves are psychological warfare. False depictions, which you have fallen for.”

Her finger jabs against your chest, against a flat nipple that has felt strangely sensitive as of recent days. The sensation that spiderwebs out catches you by surprise, provoking a quite sharp yelp to leap from your lungs. The moment of weakness only makes her eyes narrow.

“No human army can stand against an army of ours, they cannot hold against our divine magics. We are above them, as they Fond made us to be. Did you forget that?”

“No, Maker.”

You rub at the nipple gently, having to stop almost as soon as you start. When did they become that sensitive?

“I think you could use a little refresher during our Next shaping.”

She turns back to Absyrtus.

“Absyrtus, you will go North with an army. I expect you to crush these heathens and put an end to this rebellion.”

“Yes, Mother.”

He gives a far too practiced bow, turns and makes his leave, but not before giving you the most vicious grin.

Eight months later he returns from the frontier after several weeks of protracted silence. You’re in the sacred grove, speaking quietly with Balarax, affection in your touch for every inch of scales across her black body. A runner summons you to the throne room, with news of Absyrtus’s sighting on the horizon.

She’s hovering over the table when you enter the throne room with a scowl on her face.

“You summoned me, Maker?”

You stand in the entry of the throne room, glancing back at the steadily growing speck on the horizon.

“My son is expected within the next two hours, Vessel.”

“So the slave told me.”

She looks up at you with pursed lips and a wrinkled brow.

“There’s no column beneath him. He’s alone.”

The words flow into those sylvan ears, curling down and settling into your belly. It rises up into your chest as a vicious heat, spiteful glee you bite back to stop it from twitching across those lips.

“Oh, well. That seems like a turn of misfortune. We’ll need to hear—”

“Stop hiding your smug glee. I can see it in your eyes.”

She snaps, her words like a viper’s bite sinking into your skin. Chalciope stands off to the side, looking down and making herself as small as possible.

“Maker?”

“You were right, is that what you want to fucking hear? I should not have sent my useless son to do a job requiring my own hand.”

The admission is like sweet, sweet catharsis to your ears.

“Well, we can’t know that until we hear what Absyrtus has to say.”

“Since when do you have such faith in the boy?”

“I don’t, strategic growth doesn’t happen after just one failure. Now whether that failure was purely do to his idiocy, or due to an enemy who outmaneuvered him at every turn? That’s a substantial difference.”

She blows air out of her nostrils.

“Outreasoned by a mere Vessel.”

“I’m told I had the greatest teacher in all the world.”

She grunts in acknowledgement of the compliment and then waves you away to wait for Absyrtus.

A turn, moving towards bright haired Chalciope. She hasn’t been the same since the incident with the cat. There’s been a return to that near total silence of her early years. Though the love still shines in her eyes, there is a complexity in her expressions that grows with every passing season. In those shimmering lavender orbs, you can see the shape of your face, of your body. With every shaping you look more and more like the Maker.

With every shaping you act a little more like her.

Taking her hand, squeezing it, together you walk out into the canopy to lay among the thick snaking branches and leaves to wait.

What a difference three and a half summers have made. You’ve grown taller, not quite to the full height you will eventually reach. The height has always been behind Chalciope and Absyrtus, the latter of whom reaches the Maker’s neck, and the former of whom is now as tall as her. The top of your head barely reaches the Maker’s shoulders. Your body is beginning to change as well, hormones raging in your blood.

Among the most immediately noticeable shifts is a chest full of small aches and increasing sensitivity since Absyrtus left for the front. Like something is gathering behind the round pink bumps.

It’s another hour and a half before he arrives. By then you’ve both moved back inside the throne room, Chalciope sitting in a chair on the far wall with a needle and thread. She loves to weave pieces of cloth. You lean against the doorframe of the entryway, watching Absyrtus’s bond come in for a landing atop the canopy.

It’s a great lanky thing, a true dragon of sparks rather than one of the greater concepts the Matriarchs of the house are given. The wings are bigger than its entire torso. Its neck is at least four times as long as it’s scaled abdomen. The neck ends in a head full of sharp teeth that seems far too big for the body it’s attached to. Rounding off the repugnant creature is a spiked tail of nearly equal length. It’s ugly and you can’t even remember its name. Balarax is the superior bond by all reasonable measures, of that you’re sure.

The first thing that stands out is the ragged state of the beast’s armor, full of shorn away wooden fragments, copper plates torn off in random batches across his belly. Dozens of scarred over wounds criss cross through the scales. Absyrtus himself looks not all that much better. There are still fresh wounds upon his arms and shoulders.

He walks towards you, helmet underneath one arm as you lean against the doorframe. There’s a sneer upon his lips.

“Here to gloat, Vessel?”

“Oh no, I’ll have plenty of time for that after she rips you apart. She’s very angry, by the way.”

He stops in the doorframe, eyes smoldering with anger.

“I should cut out your whore mouth for talking to me that way.”

He spots Chalciope not far away, getting up. He leers at her, and snarls. She takes a few steps back, fear in her eyes.

You step in between them, breaking line of sight with one arm down at your side, the other behind your back with a spell held at the tip of one finger.

“Whore mouth?”

He leans in, the words dripping from between his lips into tilting ears.

“I know what she does to you. Oh, oh did you think we didn’t see it? Everyone does. They always have. She touches you all over doesn’t she, has she started doing more than that yet? Oh, by the look on your lips, I’d say so. Oh I can see how she drags her fingers across your flesh, savors every touch. Does she lick up your sweat? Does she touch you in soft places and call you special?”

The words cut straight into your core. A deep churn rises in your stomach, flesh crawling beneath your skin. Do you remember how the heat crawls up the back of your neck?

“Oh yeah, she definitely does. You enjoy it, don’t you? Look at you, so much shame behind those eyes. So much desperation for her approval, for Mommy’s love. Always my Mother’s obedient sack of flesh. Have you realized yet, that you’re nothing more than a toy for her?”

There’s heat burning in your cheeks, a quiet instinct that makes you pull the hem of your dress down. An inferno trickling through every limb with the beat of your heart. Shame, deep shame.

“Tell me, Vessel, why does she look at you like that? Like I never existed to her? Do you put that nasty tongue somewhere she likes?”

You flinch as if you’ve been struck.

“Oh, maybe you haven’t gotten there yet. But you will. You definitely will. When you do, I’ll make sure to ask, how does it feel to wallow in the dirt for her whenever she commands? Does she make you feel good? Promise you the world when you obey her whims?”

He pulls back, and stares. In the reflection of his pupils the lines on your brow run deep. Jaw muscles clench. How can you see anything but the youthful mirror of her face there. His expression doesn’t soften one bit as you look up at him.

“Bless the font, you didn’t know. Now I almost feel bad. Almost.”

He laughs. You have no retort, no words. The abdomen is a storm of emotion, things you’re struggling to understand.

“Before you run your mouth again, I want you to ask yourself one question, Vessel. What happens when you mess up again? What happens when she loses interest?”

He starts to move past, only to toss one more match upon the flame.

“Or don’t, I suppose. Keep being Mommy’s little whore. Maybe, eventually, she will finally love the idea of what you are. Knowing her, she’ll convince you of that. But that’s when I want you to remember, she doesn’t love you. She only loves herself.”

There’s a deep frost sinking into your chest, curling out through the limbs as he walks towards your Maker who is bent over the table. The hand at your side balls into a fist, as icy anger rises in your throat.

“How does it feel, Absyrtus?”

He stops in place.

“To know you’ll never be a name worth remembering in our house. To know that I, a Vessel with no name, will crush this rebellion.”

He stiffens in place as you take a few steps towards him.

“Do you realize, you’ll never have her approval like I do? That she will touch me like you so desperately want to be?”

The fist connects just in front of your ear, a hard blow that sends you skidding further into the throne room. Consciousness evaporates for several seconds before you wake up on the floor. The arrogance of thinking that you could get the spell off before he could make a movement. It will cost you. He’s drawing a blade from his belt, eyes bloodshot with a hate you’ve never seen from him before.

The Maker is watching now, a silent, appraising gaze. There are a half dozen of her other children gathered in the throne room, all younger than the three of you. Each watches with wide eyes. You realize, you don’t know their names. Everything seems to move in slow motion, guards are shouting.

“Absyrtus no!”

Chalciope screams. He steps towards you, blade rising for a downward strike. You raise your arm defensively, with nothing else to grab to place between you and him.

At the last possible second, Chalciope throws herself in front of him. The blade slices into the flesh of her arm, as he tries to abort the swing at the very last second. She screams.

White hot fire spiderwebs outwards in your chest. Everything turns a brilliant shade of crimson and there are laughs filling your ears.

“Mother, I didn’t mean to—”

The words die in his throat as you rip up from the wooden floor, feet carrying you towards him in a dancer’s arc. Your fist cracks across his temple knocking him to the floor, even as the the tattoos across your skin burn with the purple flames of hate.

Seconds later you are being yanked away, screaming as the dagger from your belt clatters on the floor. Absyrtus’s pig form squeals upon the ground, thrashing. Something hard collides with the back of your neck, causing your limbs to go limp. With the black seeping into your vision, the spell falls away.

The venomous, cold tone of the Maker’s voice cleaves the air, the last thing you hear before you pass out.

“Throw them in the Punished Dark.”

---

The Period

The stone is hard as you hit the ground. It’s a bad landing, adding to the bruises in the dark. The door slams closed behind you. Flagstone acts like a cold cloth against the throbbing heat radiating from where he struck your jaw.

“Chalciope, are you okay?”

“It hurts.”

Her thoughts are small, the shadowy silhouette pressed up against the back corner of the room atop the bed. Rising from the floor, you rush to sit next to her, wrapping a protective arm around the shadow on the side that doesn’t have the wound.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is. I was so consumed with how he was about to lose all favor with the Maker again, that I let him get in my head. If I had just kept my mouth shut, he would never have drawn his blade. Now you’re hurt because of me.”

You press your face into the shadow’s shoulder, squeezing her close.

“Sister, he was looking for an excuse. He always has.”

She’s right. But the difference is, had you said nothing, he would have come to beat you in the middle of the night. Chalciope would never have been in his line of fire then.

“I know.”

Several seconds of silence pass between you.

“You looked so rattled by what he said. What did he tell you?”

Her question stabs at the deep wound he made in your belly, reopening the still bleeding scar. How can you possibly begin to tell her what the Maker does in the dark. There’s no way something as innocent as her can know.

“I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”

The thought slips free as a sharp purple blade that cuts across the space between you. A reflexive reaction to a deep stir in your abdomen that you don’t fully understand. You didn’t mean for it to be that sharp. You didn’t mean for it to be cast her way. But it cuts all the same.

She recoils from each word as if you’d slapped her across the face. You try to comfort her.

“Chalciope I didn’t mean to—”

But she pushes you away, untangling from your grasp to sit at the far end of the bed.

“It’s okay, Sister. I can tell it hurt.”

A silence hangs there between you, regret burning in your stomach.

“I’m sorry.”

Silence. Despite the apology, she’s closed herself off. Her feelings don’t come through the shadows.

There’s not really a way to coax her back out right now, other than to change the topic. So, you settle in to try.

“Do you remember the herbs for the pain draft? How to bandage a deep cut?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Okay. If you need a reminder, please say something.”

A moment of quiet before she responds, turning back to face you with one hand held out.

“I will.”

A stillness settles over the dark as you take her shadow palm. The herbs get applied, the wound stitched closed, and everything starts to settle.

Eventually, the tension thick in the air slowly dissipates and she begins to relax. She shimmies back across the distance and leans against you. Together you slide down onto the feather mattress, each holding a shadowy silhouette of the other. After perhaps an hour in the dark, you think she might have fallen asleep.

Then she asks,

“How long do you think she’ll keep us down here, Sister?”

Eyes close.

“Not long. She’ll need me with the rebellion in the North spreading. Especially after Abstyrus’s failure.”

The assertion is made with intense confidence, arrogance even. A warm flood of certainty pours into the shadowy linkage twitching between you both.

The Maker wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t leave you down here for more than a few days.

Would she?

The minutes start to tick by as you occupy yourselves in the dark with those old familiar habits. Soon those minutes bleed into hours. Sometime around mid-evening, the servants come with food, but there’s no sign of the Maker or soldiers coming to take you back up.

From there the hours become days. Days bleed into weeks and then months.

When the second month in the dark begins, you accept that your pride, your arrogance likely burned the chance to make an opportunity out of Absyrtus’s failure. The maker doesn’t even come to shape you down here, which is a sign that she is not going to pull you out from the abyss anytime soon.

The worst part, other than the misjudgment you made, has to be the Maker’s stupidity. She’s already underestimating this Ion. Her welp of a brat already lost an army to his grasp. Why would she choose now of all times to punish you like this? In a way, it makes a twisted amount of sense that her madness of ego and pride would eventually put the house at risk. Yet still, surely she cannot be so stupid? Right?

In the days that follow this realization, you daydream of being released from the Punished Dark to sweep up into the fortress and save your people from the idiocy of your Mother and Brother. A hero finally worthy of a name of her own.

You don’t bother to discuss any of these thoughts with Chalciope. She’s too soft, too fragile to ever understand.

Several days before what should be your thirteenth Nameday, something strange begins to happen. You stir from sleep in the early hours of what you assume is morning, a slow, dull throb beginning in your abdomen. Movement reveals an accompanying ache in your back, and a soreness resting just behind each nipple. At first, you pass it off as just a stomachache. Maybe one of the servants messed up the food preparation. But there’s not really the associated desperation to grab for the chamber pot that accompanies the rare bout of dietary intolerance.

“Chalciope, my stomach hurts.”

There’s a long, pregnant pause on the other end.

“Did you already make a draft for it?”

“I did. It’s not really helping.”

“Maybe try laying on your side.”

“I’m not an idiot; I already tried that.”

The words snap at her mental fingers and she pulls back.

“Sorry, I’m just trying to help.”

You suck in a deep breath, trying to ground yourself.

“No, sorry I don’t know what came over me.”

Was it the pain causing these bouts of irritation?

When the servants come, and set your food and drink out, you rise with a substantial amount of effort. While trying to take a drink from the vase of water, more spills than intended. The bread on the plate soaks through, soggy and ruined. That’s when you break down in tears, frustration and confusion swirling together as tiny bolts of electricity across your chest.

“Sister?! Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m crying over soaked bread.”

With every passing hour, the pain gets worse. At some point, unbearable needles begin arcing in your skull, a deep headache that refuses to go away. As if the deep aches and cramps in your stomach and back weren’t enough. Of course, the madness can’t stop there. Every brush of fabric against those puckering, puffy nipples is agonizing. Why is their sensitivity suddenly cranked through the proverbial canopy of the palace?

What if this is an infection?

What if you’re dying?

There’s a growing cold pit in your stomach. Dread. No, no it might be worse.

What if they poisoned you? A slow acting toxin that is draining you of your life force, and you can’t even call out for help.

The debilitation is bad enough by the second day that you can’t even muster the energy to scream at the dead-eyed servants and slaves.

You’re going to die, and it’ll be here, in the dark, with only Chalciope to know your final wishes.

“Chalciope, I need you to tell one of the servants that I need help.”

You barely manage to assemble the thought together into something coherent.

“I’ll try. Do you think the Queen of the Punished Dark could help, Sister?”

Something tickles in the back of your brain. Of course. She taught you almost everything you knew about pharmackology. But where has she been? She should have shown herself by now, shouldn’t she?

“Maybe.”

Has she abandoned you? After everything she did, she loves you, doesn’t she? But she’s the Kin-Slayer, the traitor to your people. A mortal enemy to your house, to your purpose, right? Is she not a heretic who abandoned the very core principles that define your whole world?

A slow agonizing prickle runs up your spine. What if she hasn’t come because you think she should be held accountable for her crimes? What if you doomed yourself with foolish dogma?

“Where is she, Sister?”

Is she simply too busy betraying your house again by aiding the Rebel? Their taint does spread every single day, every hour across the land to the norther, driven forth beneath otherworldly storms that can only be spun by her hands. Sweat beads across your brow, the nausea burning deep in your belly. A small tortured noise pours from those lungs as the fevered aches in your middle and back rise again. Can you refuse her help? Do you even want to?

Another nightmarish thought flitters to the front of your skull.

What if she no longer believes you need her?

You are about to respond to Chalciope’s question, but the words never escape your throat.

An old familiar warmth permeates the darkness. It floods through the connection to wash against Chalciope. With it comes the comfort of that flush orange light rippling across the chamber. The air is thick with the scent of your sweat and nausea, but it’s soon overpowered by something else. A sweetness, like budding flowers on a distant breeze.

Every muscle feels like mush, an effort that the fevered flesh simply doesn’t have the energy for. Not without a wave of hot aches spreading deep in your belly at the leasts. Though she isn’t visible, her gaze washes across the sweat-slicked flesh with a long-missed wave of affection. It’s carried by those glistening ripples on the dark water of the arcane world in which she exists.

Sudden chilled realization crashes through your mind like an avalanche. She has never physically been here with you. Your entire life, it was a simulacrum of the real thing, crafted to be as warm, as maternal as possible.

She made a Mother for you in the dark and these hateful thought are how you’ve repaid her?

The tears are hot in the corners of your eyes as you grapple with the truth, stacking it atop all the conflicted feelings about who she is and what she has done.

Chalciope’s excited and relieved thoughts screech in your skull, only aggravating the pain further.

“You’re here! Oh, thank the Fontbearers.”

When she steps into view, there is something different about her, despite her movement being as purposefully slow and methodical as ever. A wariness in the lines upon her face, contrasted against the embers of warm, sad affection flickering in her gaze. Though she is but a projection, when she sits on the bed the mattress depresses beneath her weight, rolling you just enough to make contact with her hip.

“I have come, because you both called for me.”

You sniffle through the haze of swirling emotions. A single question pops free of those lips in a half croak.

“Where have you been?”

The skin attached to your bones feels slick and clammy with sweat as her expression swims.

“I think you know the answer, [TEMPORAL DATA ERROR].”

The term that drops from her lips strikes you like a gong. It is deafening, echoing in your skull, pouring into every bone, every muscle with a certainty that can only ever be called yours. But at the same time, it’s a void, hollow, refusing to stick as it slides out again and vanishes into a hole drilled into the temporal fabric. The expression on her face shifts, her ears almost drooping against her skull with despair.

Chalciope’s confusion drips through the other end.

“What was that?”

“A truth, one that will rise in the years to come by the words of another.”

“I—”

The words stick in your throat. An accusation and a description of what she really is. But it won’t come out.

“I know what you believe of me. What you would say. It’s the poison she feeds you in the dark, washing across your flesh with every connection of her touch. A corruption only another can truly break you free of.”

Her words are like a scalpel, striking with precision at the root of everything that you have become, everything that she is making you into. There is sudden, rising dissonance twisting in your acheing abdomen. It’s a war raging in your flesh as you’re pulled taut between two worlds. The Witch of the Tempest’s love pitted against the blood of the Maker in your veins.

“Know, child, that I have only ever wanted what was best for you. For our people. Know that my love has no strings, that its depths are boundless as are my Master’s.”

Her master’s? The thing that she betrayed the Font for?

“So, you are her?”

“I have never tried to hide who I am from you.”

“Did you give me that forbidden text as well?”

“The tome was a gift, in the hopes that you would see the truth, as I did.”

She lays a gentle hand atop yours. That old, familiar feeling curls beneath the echoes of her skin. Safety, comfort, protection.

A tear runs down one cheek.

“Why do you keep leaving me?”

Your voice breaks, bleeding through the connection.

Her eyes soften. A single tear rolls down her cheek.

“You are deep within the core of her power. Beyond what I can reach on my own.”

You shift, wincing from the shoots of sensation that curl out into your chest from those puffy nipples scraping against fabric. Chalciope’s thoughts cut through the heavy silence, resting there against your skull.

“Can you help her? She is very ill.”

The woman’s lower lip trembles ever so slightly. The words that follow are full of a quiet pain, as if reliving some deep ancient wound. Your mind goes back to the tome, her twin whose blood runs through your veins.

Does she see what she lost in your face?

“Does she want my help still?”

It’s a bitter question, drenched with the impression of the Maker’s marks etched into your skin.

“Why did you do it?”

She meets your upward gaze.

“Specificity is important.”

“Collapse the empire. Abandon the Font?”

A breeze trickles through the room accompanying her deep, heavy sigh.

“I think you know the answer.”

“The Font is a lie, in your eyes.”

She frowns at the implication.

“No. That’s why I abandoned a false Faith, grown from an endless greed for expansion. It is your mother’s zealotry for that thing that disguises itself as She Who Weeps Crimson which pollutes the understanding that you would gain if I were to show you the depths of the truth. Such poison plunges our entire house into the depths of despair.”

‘Our House’ rings in your ears as a stirring heat ripples through your chest. You try to sit up, but she stops you with a hand planted upon that acheing chest.

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

Words lash out with more venom than you meant. There’s a flicker of something in her face, the eyes deepening with many swirling lights that you can’t peel apart.

“No, I didn’t…that’s not what I—”

Her eyes close.

“Child, I brought down the empire because it was corrupt. As it was then, as it is now. It is a rotting corpse, disintegrating from the inside out. In the process, I lost so very much that I cared for, because too many could not see the truth. Chief among them, until the very final moment where I could not save her, was my mirror image. Maybe, Mither above, I hope that one day you will understand. I hope that you may yet be saved before falling to a similar fate.”

Heavy, unyielding silence. There is so much pain in that expression, pouring through the connection to you both.

“I ask again, child of my blood, do you want my help?”

Eyes close. Thinking is such a labor.

“Yes.”

The relief that washes through her pours into the contours of your mind.

“But, I don’t know that you can keep coming here.”

The relief evaporates. When you open your eyes, her gaze is elsewhere. There is a deep melancholy etched into the lines across her face. All at once she seems to have aged thousands of years, appearing nothing more than an ancient, elderly Matriarch. Grief. There is so much grief.

It vanishes with a blink, leaving her as she was before, only echoes in its wake.

“That, my child, I had already concluded. There are many other concerns which demand my attention, winds of change pouring from the heavens that shall soon cast aside a child who does not know what she has been given.”

A deep, bitter sourness plunges into her words, carving open your heart like a ritual knife. It spills into the room, into the connection to Chalciope, threatening to cast the world in flame. Though it is so very clearly not meant to wound, it does, cutting deep. But there’s no apology this time, as there might have been before. The rift that has opened between you cools in the seconds that follow.

But it does not heal.

“Please… please can you help her?”

The softness returns to her face.

“I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do to stay the hand of this condition. It will writhe through her flesh until its task is finished.”

Frost spiderwebs through your chest, wrapping around your ribcage like a vice.

“A—after all that, what was the point if you can’t help? Am I going to die? Are you just going to leave me to die.”

You’re starting to hyperventilate. You lift your head to stare up at her, but her hand gently pushes you back down. Her palm brushes the sweat-soaked strands of brown hair from that brow. It is soothing against the fevered flesh, stirring deep in your breast many tangles of regret for snapping at her. The search for an apology ends before it begins, with a roll of her eyes.

“You truly are a child after our House. Do not be so dramatic, you are not dying.”

“What?”

Chalciope’s words ring in unison with your own. You blink at her several times.

“There is a draft that will help ease this pain throbbing in your lower abdomen. Every day it remains; you must drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration.”

In the reflection of her eyes, your brow wrinkles with many lines, lips folding down into a frown. With every passing second, the confusion fills that acheing abdomen.

“What? What’s happening to me then?”

The words tremble as they fall from those lips.

“It figures no one would have told either of you.”

The palm comes away from your brow. She shifts next to you, one hand coming to rest against the hardened muscular core of your belly. The other moves further down, past the border of the wool blanket. Muscles tense up as the fingers slide underneath, beyond where you can see. Your eyes jam shut, as her fingers brush gently over the sensitive skin of your upper thigh.

It’s a small whimper that tears apart the dark, anticipation of something that never comes.

When you open your eyes a moment later, the look on her face has shifted. A deep intensifying flame burns behind her pupils as she meets your gaze. Every hair across your body stands on end. A gaze that could level the palace just from it being cast upon the stone.

Apocalyptic rage.

It’s not directed at you, though it takes a second to realize, during which you try to sink deeper into the sheets. Then, she closes her eyes.

"That depraved monster. This will not stand."

There is a deep heavy silence that crushes everything between you. She breathes in and out, heavy, slow exhales. The temperature in the room rises briefly, some aspect of the sun itself scorching across the distance. In the moments that follow it comes back down again.

Then, she moves down, hand dipping between your legs without ever touching that sacred place through the cloth that protects it. A moment later, her hand emerges from beneath the blankets, fingers slick with crimson.

You’re bleeding. Oh, you’re bleeding a lot. When did that happen?

You stare at her fingers, as she turns them over, looking for something. What, you have no idea.

“I thought as much. You are at that age.”

“Why is there blood?”

There’s something warm pooling under the blankets against your legs. You unsteadily reach, and lift the wool, to see a slick of crimson between your thighs when you pull up the hem of the gown, which itself is also soaking through.

“Oh Fontsbearers!”

“Relax, child.”

“What’s happening to me?!”

Her voice is soothing to the ears.

“You are taking your first steps into womanhood.”

The words are a sledgehammer into your middle, stunning you into silence.

Womanhood?

Meeting her gaze, you tremble.

“I don’t understand?”

“There are many things which set us apart from men. You will have noticed, that at a certain age, your brother became stronger, bigger, harrier. This is for us, as that was for him.”

“I don’t—"

“Tell me, are your nipples sore as well?”

A confused blink. Heat flushing those cheeks.

“Yes.”

She nods slowly.

“Soon your chest will start to feel heavier. It will protrude outwards more with every passing day. Like every other woman you’ve ever met, you are starting to grow breasts to feed the children that may eventually come from between your legs.

“Children?”

The thought stirs something in you that you can’t quite place.

“Yes. But you are still too young to worry about such things.”

“H-h-ow often will this happen?”

“Every month, for a week, you will experience the same thing you are now. Cramps in your middle, bleeding from that very sensitive, special flower in between your legs. There are going to be new, strange feelings that run deep in your belly, urges you don’t know how to satisfy. You’ll look at a boy… or maybe a girl and wish they would touch you in places. It will be confusing at first, but these things are natural parts of growing up into a woman. Someday you’ll find someone worth doing that with.”

She reaches out, takes your face in between her hands, and pulls you up ever so slightly to kiss the top of your forehead.

“Your Mother should have been here to teach you such things. But it seems like she had other things in mind.”

There’s flames in her words, and a deep sadness too. Her expressions, dark as they are, flitter between several different things, too quickly to be picked up on. As if she’s debating saying something or elaborating. Ultimately, she lets it fall away and focuses her eyes back to the patient before her.

One warm hand returns to the belly. With whispering breaths, there comes a curling breeze that shifts and crawls against your skin, suffusing warmth deep into the tissue. The deep agonizing cramps dull until they are practically gone. The headache fades as well, but not the flow coming from between your legs.

“What should I do when it begins?”

In the minutes that follow she pulls a scroll from the many stacks. On its surface she writes down the recipes for several drafts to help with the pain, the swelling, the headaches, and other pieces of the condition. Each written out in that same hidden ink that she always leaves behind.

“Chalciope, make sure that when it comes, she drinks lots of water. And you, you will watch out for Chalciope’s as well.”

You nod.

“The two of you can make strips of well-brushed wool pads to help soak up the blood. Make sure you clean them well after use, and that you have enough to last the whole week. I promise you, always make three times as many as you think you’ll need.”

You sit now, a strip of wool cloth wrapped around your hips, cushioning your sensitive places to absorb the blood. She looks at you again, her expression dripping with intention to say something else. Then her gaze darts to the door. The room falls silent, and there come the sounds of steps.

Wind begins to rise and swirl about her with each heavy breath. Her eyes close, before she looks back to you.

“I’m sorry. I thought I had more time, but she is coming.”

“Wait!”

“I’m afraid I cannot, lest she discovers my presence. I cannot risk what she will do to the two of you if she were to learn of my interference. ”

“But—”

“I promise, one day, you will be free of all this. By my hand or another’s.”

You reach out as if to touch her, as if to beg her one last time not to go. But she’s already scattered into petals on the breeze. They’re already blinking out of existence, thwarting any final effort to reach across space to beg her for forgiveness.

The True Avarice

Footsteps reach the door, right as you cut the line to Chalciope’s shadowed connection.

The door clicks unlocked and it pushes in. Standing in the doorway, with none of the warmth of Kirke, is the Maker. She snaps her fingers and light fills the room.

It’s so much worse in the light, all that blood that pooled beneath you on the mattress now a fat, ugly stain. Her eyes dart there first, and then to where you’re sitting cross-legged, just shy of the pillow.

The door shuts behind her. She doesn’t say anything, not right away at least. In her hands is a stone crate, with the sieve for the infusions sticking out of it. There is a long moment of tense silence as her eyes carve into the contours of that flesh, drifting down to the wool padding wrapped around your hips. Something churns deep in your abdomen, a quiet, incessant pressure that makes you shift in place and pull the bloodstained gown down over your legs. The first thing she says, after taking it all in are normal. Or at least, not immediately suspicious.

“Well. I had started to wonder when you would first begin to flower. It seems it was a little later than I was expecting.”

No, the truly terrifying words come after a particularly heavy, pregnant silence. They will stick with you for the rest of your life.

“Well, this leaves me with a single question, Vessel. Is your blood also an aphrodisiac?”

For a moment, after the words pollute the air you’re breathing, you wonder if they were just a hallucination. Maybe just an imagined intrusive thought so deeply, deeply twisted that it can’t be real. But no. It isn’t your imagination, because she expands upon it.

“With so much of my essence inside of you, Vessel, and such glorious resonance with my intent, I’m almost certain it will be.”

She walks towards the wide stone worktable/desk adjacent to the wall. Every muscle feels frozen in place as you can do nothing but watch. She sets the crate down, and begins neatly pulling the contents out, arranging them on the stone surface.

When she next speaks, her words feel distorted, a ringing filling your hearing with every syllable.

“Now that the body is finally maturing, it is time I begin to teach it the art of mating. The muscle memory is incredibly important.”

She flicks the side of a glass vial, the tinks echo in your ears.

“Which means it is time you are taught reciprocation. After thirteen winters of blessing you with that writhing heat at the touch of my fingers, there’s quite a bit of debt to repay, wouldn’t you agree?”

Her fingers wrap around your arm, pulling your gaze up to meet hers.

“You’ve not said a word, Vessel.”

At that moment you avert your gaze, stomach flipping in your belly. The contents splatter on the floor seconds later, a deep retching heave filling your core. The bile stings at the back of your throat as you gasp for breath and then heave again.

“Hmm…”

One of her hands, with those long spindly fingers presses against the core muscles of your stomach, and traces down. Eyes squirm shut as cold digits press and feel into the petals of the flower below through the wool pad, eliciting an almost inaudible whimper from your lips.

A moment later you’re sitting back on the bed, everything a haze. She’s starting to lift the gown up, fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your torso.

“Be a good Vessel, hold your arms up.”

After a second, you obey on instinct. Everything seems unreal, as if you’re not quite in your own flesh, but experiencing it from a distance. Yet every chilled touch feels so visceral. The gown comes away, leaving you practically naked, with the exception of the cloth undergarments at your hips and the wool pad pressing against the flower.

She slides the hollow tipped bone needle into the vein on your arm. It’s a small sharp prick, repeated thousands of times across your life.

“It seems this body has developed an unfortunate condition.”

You look up slightly to see her appraising eyes, her gaze roving down your shape.

“Maker?”

“The lining of your womb has grown beyond the natural bounds of its flesh into the deep soft tissue. It’s an issue my Mother also experienced that went dormant in me. I can only imagine the pain you must have started experiencing a few days ago, such unneeded suffering.”

She clicks her tongue.

“I felt really ill.”

The words slip out absently.

“You really should have sent one of those useless slaves up to get me. Then we could have done this much sooner.”

“Sorry, Mommy.”

Why did you say Mommy? Are you an idiot? How many times has this lesson been beaten into that flesh? Why does the slip have to happen now? A flinch as you brace for the punishment, a slap, a vicious verbal lashing. It doesn’t come.

“Shhhh.”

Her fingers caress your cheek, almost lovingly. But in that gaze is not Maternal love. It’s a predatory, an unsated hunger rolling across the crinkle of her lips. Her fingers trace the contours of the chin, the nose, the jaw.

“How much you are growing into my visage. Vessel. When I shape you today, I will fix this headache and relieve you from the pain. It will help with your lessons in making love.”

A shudder crawls up your spine as the transfusion begins, the flow of blood curling through the sieve. Her fingers trace the blossoming curves of that body, undoing the knots holding the wool pad into place as you try to find something to start at on the far wall. The undergarments and cloth pad slide away, and that warm begins to trickle down one thigh.

A single hand full of spindly digits presses you back, propping you up against the pillow. Familiar heat swells along that arm, rapidly spreading through the veins. Breaths comes faster as something stirs deep in your lower abdomen. A confusing desire rises in your chest, a maddening urge to be touched roiling together with churning nausea in your stomach. Muscles are rapidly turning to jelly as her blood burns its way through your body, waves of electric sensation washing back and forth across every inch of tissue as skin bubbles and boils.

You gasp for breath, vaguely aware of her fingers dragging up one thigh. Every part of your mind wants to scream as sweat torturously beads and drip through writhing skin. She’s saying something, chanting the mantra she always does, ice cold fingers kneading into the flesh of one thigh.

That old familiar haze leaks into your brain, sticking more pliantly than it really ever did in your younger years. Yet still it seems to slip and slide, not quite taking hold. There’s a thunderous crack, the sense of flesh being spooled out in one leg, a deep, primal heat that roars in your abdomen. You scream. Fontbearers cups, you scream. She stretches your limb out an inch or so, working soon upon the other as stars fill every corner of your vision.

You barely register the motion as she shifts further up, pressing her lips up against one of your ears.

“What a good Vessel you are.”

The nibble on that earlobe dredges the twists in your stomach, swirling all together with the rampant fire setting your flower ablaze. Your voice seems so very far away as you scream to the air, as her fingers gather flesh behind one nipple, pulling it out from your chest, as something swells. The other is soon attended to much the same, speeding the promised growth spoken by Kirke in the dark. The words are pouring from your lips, begging her to stop. But with every burst of sensation slamming against your mind, the words twist, changing into desperate cries for her to touch you more. It’s the aphrodisiac in her blood, the warping of your mind beneath her mantras, and that prophesised desire that Kirke promised as you grew further into womanhood.

Her words swim in and out of focus.

“A little at a time, Vessel, but you will have such beautiful means to feed those future children.”

This is not the way it was supposed to be, was it? There’s a shock of fear that scorches through your mind, that half of you disagrees. But such thoughts are drowned out by the ides of her hedonistic fire.

For a moment she’s in your field of vision, dark slick red coating her fingers. All sense of presence in the moment vanishes as she drags her tongue along one finger.

“I was right, it is an aphrodisiac.”

There’s the sensation of lips kissing down your body, provoking spiderwebs of lightning as she shapes the skin. Everything becomes a nightmarish, hedonistic haze.

“Now you will learn and feel the power of a divine tongue so you may in turn use it to reciprocate.”

Her voice is a purr that curls through every inch of flesh to your ears and makes your skin feel clammy and wrong.

She’s shimmied down between your legs, spreading your thighs apart. Pure willpower drags your arms up, coiling throbbing fingers through your hair as something warm and wet brushes up against the flower. Your lower abdomen roils, heat and quick, sharp shoots of pain rippling up, and then back down through that most sensitive thing carved through your flesh.

Something far longer than it should be curls up inside of you. It’s a hostile, alien presence that twists the flesh it brushes against, making you tug harder and harder on those brown strands of hair. You scream. It’s all you really can do.

Your back arches with a sharp upward curve. The flower blooms deep below in a confusing rush of sickening completion. Dizzying crashes of thunderous heat shatter your mind beneath its currents. Only half of you feels this is so expressly wrong. There’s a rush of something hot pouring out from inside of you. Its slick and heavy, her icy breath chill against the flower as she—

Gods you want to vomit, you want to retch, but your body does not respond. Your mind, your body is at war with itself, and as you settle back into the sheets, slick with sweat, all you can do is stare absently at the far wall as your chest desperately rises and falls to keep pace with urgently needed oxygen. A golden haze wreathes your vision.

You’re just thirteen summers old. None of the heroines in the ancient epics had their flowers depetaled so young. Is this supposed to be wrong?

When your eyes refocus, she is sitting next to you, the skin around her mouth stained with a rich crimson.

“Was it good for you, Vessel?”

She purrs, gently stroking fingers along your acheing curves, along your cheek. Tears accumulate in the corners of your eyes, and you fight back the urge, but you cannot stop them. They pour down your cheeks in little streams. Her expression softens.

“Shhhh, shhh, do not cry little flower. I know it is strange, but in time you will learn to love it deeply.”

Her words twist in your ears, the air spinning.

“Now come, dry those tears.”

She wipes the liquid from your cheeks, stroking along your jaw.

“All your screaming has worked me up. I think it’s time for you to reciprocate, don’t you agree?”

She leans in, blood stained skin growing closer by the second. You have to do something. You have to stop her, or she’ll—

Your arms move on instinct, catching her in the middle of the chest. It’s a shove, fueled by the adrenaline pouring through your body. Even with your arms rendered as effectively gelatin, you still knock her back, where she trips and nearly falls over the chair.

“No!”

Your voice is a gasp, before you slam your hands over your mouth.

Her mouth hangs slightly open, brow knit with surprise. Then it twists; bared teeth, ears swept back, eyes narrow.

“After I have given you the gift of my tongue, of deflowering you so that you will know and understand the depths of joy when making love, you would refuse me?”

Her voice is a dangerous hiss. You shrink back into the corner of the bed, jammed up against the stone.

“You shouldn’t have. I’m not old enough.”

The reply is in a small, quiet voice.

“Such insolence from a Vessel!”

Her voice becomes a roar. She surges across the space between you, grasping strands of hair between her fingers, and yanking you up. Fingers try desperately to claw tightly to the wool blanket, but her strength is beyond anything that can be resisted. She slams you into the wall with substantial force, forcing the air from your lungs. An apocalyptic slap smashes across your cheeks, blood immediately pouring from your nose.

She holds you there, her naked body pressed to yours.

“Your flesh is mine to do with as I please. I made you; I shape you; you are mine, you will always be mine!”

A whimper escapes. Her gaze bores into you, carving a tunnel in that trembling flesh. Then, she looks away.

“Bah!”

She slams you against the rock again and then releases you, backing away.

“Don’t reciprocate then, spoiled brat. But you will stay down here if you don’t. And I will make sure that holds until you understand the gifts you are refusing.”

The door slams behind her. The floor and walls are cold as you slide down, a trail of blood and something else smearing on the rock. Your body curls up into a ball, feeling so very, very weak. There, you sob, in the dark, alone, wishing Kirke would come back.

---

The Descent

How many long hours were spent curled up in the sheets, staring at the wall or the ceiling with dead lilac eyes? It’s a lethargic, heavy state of disassociation that seizes your limbs, leaving you broken and adrift in flesh that feels so deeply not yours. The body runs on autopilot, somehow managing to eat and drink that which is placed on the table. The servants stop only every now and again to look at you, the pity in their eyes burning holes in every inch of flesh.

Every time you change those blood-soaked wool pads, you see the stains around the flower. With them flows a deep sense of twisting taint. A horrific shame that burns in your belly at the thought that even for a moment, you might have enjoyed some aspects of her touch, that the act of shaping your flesh made you shiver with anticipation. You are nauseatingly filthy, disgusting in ways that you’ll never be able to get clean. It’s painful, the act of scrubbing every inch of skin raw to erase the memory of the crimson smeared flesh of her lips.

It never works. Nothing will ever be the same.

When the presence of mind to remember the spell returns, some days later, it flows like molasses off your fingers. The mental connection with Chalciope and its shadowy projection is easy enough to flick back on; the true difficulty is focusing long enough to make it happen.

“Sister!”

Her voice is a brief warm flame beating back the numbing fog casting you in that terminal haze. The shadowy doppelganger in all its lovingly crafted reflections reaches out to grasp at you. Her hands, her fingers. Long, spindly like the Maker’s, reaching across the space.

In depths of the deeply wounded mind, frayed strands of rope holding back a flood of everything suddenly snap.

You don’t mean to hit her, not really. But the blow lands all the same across her face. The hard shove that follows knocks the shadow away.

Footsteps, cold rock against your back.

“Don’t touch me!”

The words pour out in a shrill scream.

Chalciope’s shadowy lips twist in shock from where she staggered backwards. You press as deep as you can into the far corner of the room, eyes wide with fear. Breath is shallow and ragged. The stone is a cool salve against hot flesh. Every motion fills the space in the back of your skull, fingers crawling beneath the skin. Even now some small, twisted part of your mind was craving that hot, throbbing touch.

You screw your eyes shut, trying to drown it out with anything you can reach for. Which is how fingernails end up biting into the skin of one arm, drawing blood.

“Sister, it’s me, Chalciope.”

Her voice cuts through the confused fog of the abyss, reaching out to offer its comfort. She takes slow, gentle steps off the bed with her hands held up in the universal sign of ‘I mean no harm.’ You slide down against the rock. Shaking palms come to hold a tearstained face in their embrace. Those shoulders and chest heave with sudden, distressed sobs.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to Chalciope.”

“I know you didn’t, it’s okay.”

She reaches out uncertainly towards you. You shrink back into the corner as much as you physically can.

“Please. Please, don’t touch me. Please, I don’t understand. I don’t—”

A deep rattling noise works its way through those lungs. Soft steps stop well short of the corner. When you look up, there is a deep expression swimming across her gaze in the shadow. Drawn down lips and articulated swirls of sadness etching lines upon her brow.

She can tell. For all of your short lives, you have been the rock between her and the world. Between her, the Maker and Absyrtus. In the reflections of her shadow’s bloom upon her features that deep truth.

There is no rock between you and the world.

“What if… I don’t use my hands?”

The offer is soft against those ears. A long ripple of silence spreads between you before you can finally croak out a response.

“Please.”

Through the black she steps with slow, methodical movements until she sits in front of the corner. When the shadowy arms begin to extend you flinch, heart hammering deep in that chest. She stops, hesitating for a moment, before she continues. Seconds later your face presses into the crook of her neck. That touch shines through the abyss, a clean warmth in contrast to the hungry desire of the Maker’s spindly digits. Her hands never touch your skin.

Against her shadowy flesh you come to rest, eyes thick with heavy tears. Some scars heal with enough time. Others simply become a part of who you are.

---

The Trial

A month passes in the dark. Such long periods are old habits at this stage of your life. But it is the quiet sense of perpetual dread, the inevitability of her return that erodes any sense of peace that rests fragile upon your chest.

Is it a relief then that when she does come, she barely acknowledges you? That when she shapes those blooming, womanly features, it is with a cold, clinical efficiency?

No. Somehow her cold dispassion is even worse than the twisted affection she normally offers. Maybe that’s when you should have started to realize just how starved you were of parental approval.

The throbbing heat of her blood pouring through your veins, the spindly fingers dragging, pressing, and shaping every inch of flesh. Every touch burns a flame deep in your abdomen that is left unquenched. It crackles and writhes there for days on end, until you can bear it no more and force your fingers to plunge deep.

Why can’t you satisfy the inferno?

Why is it that every dive ends with a hollow, empty feeling in your belly? Why is there always a simmering heat in your cheeks, shame and disgust curling in your stomach?

Why does it leave you longing for her twisted affection?

There’s at least one, small positive beginning to form. You stand there, with a light charm floating over your head, and stare at the growing reflection in the mirror. Though you have always appeared in one way or another as a miniature version of the Maker, with every passing month, it grows more difficult to deny the fact that you may as well be her shorter, younger twin. It’s the curve of your chest, the shapeliness of your hips and butt, the lines and contours of that face. You pull your hair around and undo the braid, letting the thick locks of hair flow out. A hand rests against one cheek, eyes hooding as you look on. Unclean thoughts swim to the forefront of your brain.

The flittering image of the way the Maker looks at herself in the mirror drags itself to the forefront.

A glance away, cheeks flush with heat, a churn in the lower abdomen. Is it wrong to like the way you’re starting to look? Is it wrong to feel sad when the Maker’s shaping removes small imperfections or asymmetry that arise as you become a woman?

Of course you’re not going to ask her.

Six months total. That is how long she leaves you and Chalciope in the abyss. There is no summons, no sudden appearance of the Maker to let you out. One day, the servants just open the door and tell you you’re free to go.

When the light washes over the blooming shape of a young woman, they truly see you. The flat lines of their mouths curve ever so slightly down, the eyes alight with embers of a quiet fear.

One slave whispers to another.

“Looks just like her.”

You do your best to ignore them as you walk towards the stairs. You’re trying to figure out what steps need to be taken to regain some semblance of favor. However, a slave moves into your path. An apologetic grimace takes to their lips when you narrow your eyes.

“Mistress, your, uhm—”

“Out with it, I have things to do.”

She offers a scroll with instructions written in the Maker’s hand. You snatch it away, giving the slave a firm glare, before opening the roll of parchment.

“What of Chalciope?”

You glance back at your sister. She’s quietly fidgeting with her hands.

“The Queen Mother has instructed she will accompany you. She reminds the Vessel that her sister is her responsibility, as ever.”

“As ever. Of course.”

A pause. You curl and uncurl one finger at Chalciope, indicating for her to join you. She shuffles past the slaves and guards to stand next to you on the stairs. The slaves stand uneasily in place, until you give them a swift glare.

“What are the lot of you waiting on? Get back to whatever tasks you were attending to.”

Your voice is sharp as a whip, causing the hapless humans to scatter towards the direction of the other lifting stairwells. Too afraid to try to slip past you and Chalciope.

A wordless syllable causes the marks along the stairwell wall to catch fire with crimson and purple light.

Neither of you utter a word in the hours ahead. Your rooms, unused as they have been for the past six months, are as they were left. Thick layer of dust sits on every surface. In the twilight of the setting sun leather bags are packed full of every precious belonging that can be truly said to be yours. With satchels cast over shoulders, the stairways float down towards the grand palace antechambers and greeting halls. The trip into the hillside is not assisted by such mechanisms of convenience, and at some point you end up carrying all of Chalciope’s bags as well.

In the sacred Aerie and Golden Groves Balarax and Vihemurx lift their heads as the pair of you step into the roosts.

“Sister, you have grown.”

You smile up at Balarax, whose thick body and long neck now match the dizzying lengths of the things sailors call whales in the Sea of Black. Her breath is thick with the scent of ram’s meat, no doubt fed from the Winged Golden Rams each time one is sacrificed for its fleece.

“As have you, Sister.”

Her purple sclera narrow in focus on the leather bags.

“Are we to fly with the wind?”

The smile on those lips fully curves into a hungry grin.

“We are to ride free to the west.”

Balarax snorts hot hair from her nostrils, rising from the cat-like loaf to spread her wings. A second later she lets out a bellow of excitement, matched by Chalciope’s mount in the roost next door.

“Let us take wing then, Sister, and I shall show you the true beauty of the sky!”

Minutes later, with the saddle firmly secured in place, Balarax finishes trotting to the end of the Aery’s launch and landing ramp.

“Ready, Sister?”

A smirk curls its way into the upward curve of your lips and the way your eyes crinkle.

“Show me the meaning of hate, Balarax. Show me the freedom of the wind.”

With thundering steps the dragon begins to trot, then gallop, then sprint. The air whips through your hair as her wings catch the draft. Claws tuck up against her belly as you rocket off the solid ground and up into the air. What an experience it is to watch the world shrink beneath your feet, the grand stone and wooden structures of Aea’s sprawl becoming nothing more than pebbles and twigs far below.

“How does it feel, Sister?!”

Balarax roars in defiance to the clouds that smear around you. She circles the city to wait for Chalciope and Vihemurx to ascend.

“Like I was born to fly!”

“You were! As are all of your noble house! Welcome, Sister, to the world!”

You laugh, a joyous free noise that so rarely comes from those lungs. Soon Chalciope and Vihemurx emerge from a bank of clouds. There’s an eager smile on her lips. The four of you turn to the west.

With the wind at your back, and a clear sky full of twinkling stars, Balarax surges on, diving and rolling at your insistent urging. The landscape blurs by below. You release her reigns and curl your fingers through the air. The wind rushes through your hair. For a moment, underneath the starry sky, you are free of all other worries. Just a rider and her dragon defying the grasp of the earth far below. A whoop of elation finds its way from those lungs, filling the night sky. Balarax roars in response, to which you match her excitement. Soon joined by Chalciope and her bond as well.

It is in this ecstatic mental state that you arrive at the mouth of the Phasis where the grand shipyards of the dragon fleet sprawl out in the light of the rising sun. It is a feat of engineering from the sky, a massive array of carefully laid stone monoliths and wooden framing stretching abreast either side of the grand river for several ilms. More slipways and drydocks than you can truly count sprawl out across the massive artificial harbor. They contain Dragon ships, massive, yet sleek vessels filled with three banks of oars and three masts with extensive rigging, in varying states of construction. In the berths numbering greater than two hundred by your inexpert count, or at anchor are the entire Colchian Dragon Fleet in all its glory. In turn, the remnants of those states to the North and East which have fallen to the Rebellion are gathered next to them. They are nimble, beautiful things with every prow taking the shape of a different draconic visage.

The city, a great sprawl in its own right, but thoroughly dwarfed by Aia itself, sprinkles out from the edges of the Harbor. A Cinderskin tree punctuates the palatial manor of the local minor Noble House. It’s kilometer tall trunk dances with crimson embers from landing torches and the orange of the rising sun in the east. Three passes over the sprawl draw the cry of early morning crowds hailing the arrival of Noble Blood of the House of Colchis. With a mischievous grin, you signal to Chalciope that the landing will not be in the Aerie of the Cinderskin, but in the streets themselves. What better way to announce your arrival than by spectacle?

Touchdown is a thing of beauty. Balarax effortlessly grips the stone in a sprinting gait that slows to a trot. You’ve landed on an avenue of the city proper opening out into a stepped plaza just before the looming shape of the Cinderskin. The sacred fountain of the Font burbles just a few meters away, cast in shadow by Balarax’s mass. A tilt of the head, basking in the scent of sea salt, the touch of a cool ocean breeze washing across your face.

The crowd clamors with cheers and claps, both for you, and for Chalciope as she lands just as elegantly mere seconds later. The Matriarchs and merchants rush forwards. They swarm your mounts, begging for blessings, for favor. The city guards come jogging out of the Cinderskin, draped in wooden armor brimming with minor enchantments and protections. They weren’t prepared for your little spectacle judging by the fact that some of them still hastily fiddling with leather straps and gold buckles.

Following behind them is a woman, still dressed in a nightgown emblazoned with the symbol of the Minor Noble House.

“Vessel, Lady Chalciope, I apologize profusely for failing to prepare more thoroughly for your arrival. I was not informed you would be landing in the Font’s shadow.”

“There is little need to apologize, Queen of Rising Sails. You have passed my test?”

She looks up at you in puzzlement, then to the dragons, then to Chalciope.

“Test?”

“The rapidity of your response to our deviation from the plan was timely and more than adequate.”

You dismount effortlessly, letting the imperious air swim across your body language as you remove the helmet from your skull. The Matriarch stares, eyes widening with the reflection of your face shimmering in her pupils.

“Is something wrong? You appear pale, as if you’ve seen a ill specter.”

“No, no of course not Lady. It’s your resemblance to Lady Ilya that caught me off guard is all.”

Lips purse. Her expression shifts.

“Ah, please Lady, I meant no offense.”

“None is taken. Please, take my Sister and I to our high quarters. We have had a long flight and wish to retire.”

“Of course, of course.”

The Blood Bonds are guided off to the city’s aerie. You give Balarax a bit of a side-eye as she is led off.

“Behave yourself, Sister.”

Her response provokes a grin.

“Never.”

You are shown to a series of rooms overlooking the shimmering waters of the Harbor and the fleet at anchor.

So begins the stay in Phasis.

The famous Dragon Fleet Academy down by the harbor is where you are taken in the following days. It’s a structure made of dense hand cut pillars hauled from the mountains to the North. Multi-story with grand monoliths carved with testaments to names of legend you are almost ashamed to stand beneath. On the oldest of these great pillars, there is an immense section, larger than any other across the various markers, which has been scrubbed and worn down to remove all the text. In open planned rooms dense with tables containing wood carved maps of historic battles, you are hailed with historic tomes, and wargame exercises highlighting the command decisions and mistakes of old.

The art of naval war is a fascinating thing, bound to the winds, the roughness of the waves, the quality of the ship building, and the quality of individual crews. Theoretical applications of naval command of ships at sea come easily, as almost all applications of practical knowledge have through this short life. The hail of tutors who come to instruct you also teach other new arrivals, most from across the north and western stretches of the Empire. But so too are their Matriarchs and Queens from the inner reaches and eastern stretches of the Empire. Their attire is very different, richer in a way that indicates the greater material wealth of the Center and East of the empire. These girls and occasionally the rare boy are younger than you, eight to nine summers old at minimum to your thirteen and a half.

It doesn’t take long to outpace the introductory classes, a factor largely arising from voracious consumption of scrolls and tomes at night when you are bored. Perhaps it isn’t a surprise that her victories aren’t there either. A shame really, that the brilliance of her strategy at the great rivermouth to the North was excised, among her other Naval triumphs. A fleet of two hundred barbarian ships smashed by a fleet of dragon-ships no more than thirty strong. One of many examples of her strategic brilliance which the other Matriarchs in these halls would never learn. Perhaps, in the years to come, that is why they will not be able to best the Rebellion’s fleets.

In the first week or so, Chalciope is largely listless, spending evenings in your presence listening to the wonderous tales of ancient naval victories. But it’s not hard to see in her expression her lack of interest in such things. Death and war are hard on her gentle heart. But soon, she finds a space all her own. Horticulture and pharmokology call to her, as they do to you. She must find a master in the city for she vanishes for long hours on the days when you are not at the Academy proper. Every revelation, every discovery is, of course, shared and practiced together.

With the absence of the Maker’s constant looming shadow, Chalciope blooms before your eyes. The space between Aia and Phasis erodes her fear of what Absyrtus might do, of what horrors may come next at the Maker’s hands. The net result is you start to grow even closer. Almost every night you share a bed. Brushing each other’s hair, braids, and cleaning the other’s clothes becomes second nature. She takes to making your pain remedies when the bleeding time of the month arrives. For reasons you struggle to understand, hers are always more effective. At some point she even begins to monitor how much you eat and drink when lost in the hyperfocus fervor of a scholarly dive. The only times when she is not close at hand are when she vanishes to go learn new things, when the Maker comes for shaping, or when you are at the academy.

But when the Maker does come, Chalciope retreats into old habits, and makes herself scarce from your presence in the few days after. It’s beginning to feel like she’s not only afraid of the Maker, but the way you behave after a shaping. Is it the sharp temper that seems to burn out of control afterwards? The way you treat the slaves when the Maker has gone? The churning fire in your abdomen that cannot be quenched? It’s difficult to say, because there’s always a haze a few days after she leaves. With every passing summer it’s felt like it’s gotten longer.

You try not to think about it, drowning in study to escape the strange clawing grasp of thoughts that don’t seem to quite belong as part of your mind. After several weeks, they bump you up into the most advanced exercises and classes, with the older Matriarchs who have spent the vast majority of their lives at sea. But theory on a map in a room is one thing compared with the actual application in the field.

The first time you set foot on a ship is in a rain squall in the middle of choppy surf. Sea legs come quickly to you, a facet which is as surprising to you as it is to the experienced sailors under your command. The exercise is an emulation of a battle to the North in the Fjords between the Northern Matriarchs and the Finned Ones of the North.

A great deal of time has been dedicated in your studies to understanding those fiercesome opponents, of which the Northern and Southern breeds are very different. The Northern clans are ferocious creatures, brilliant warriors and sailors, expert shipwrights, and rich with a distinct magical tradition that no one really understands. Their physicality is impossible to match, even by the most seasoned of Matriarchs, given they can stretch anywhere from two to two and a quarter meters tall. They live largely nomadic lifestyles wandering the harsh Northern storms of the great eastern sea and the hostile isles which populate its depths.

The Northern Queens lost handily to the Kraken ships, great behemoth vessels built by people who live in the depths and shores as much as they do along riverbanks. Those things make the Dragon Ships look almost like toys. You’ve analyzed the scenario a dozen times picking apart every mistake, every bad decision that ended with the destruction of the two hundred vessel fleet at the hands of Jörð the First. The very same Finned One who would later rout three different armies led by your Mother in her youth.

You do everything right. The formation is perfect, the clever maneuvers of individual vessels, instructions to their captains. The haze of the squalls is a boon to every maneuver, ramming, flanking, etc.

And you lose.

The next scenario you prepare harder.

And again, you lose.

Each strategy, each formation you deploy your ships against, the other commander is already three steps ahead of you. As if they read your every thought, every lesson learned from the Kin Slayer and all the other naval commanders across the ages.

This continues for three months of more than two dozen brutal losses. The admonishment from the Maker for losing so many times is maddening, and the moment she is gone you smash multiple vases in frustration.

Three months in, after more than a dozen brutal losses, you meet her. Stepping down off the gangplank onto the stone of the dock, your cheeks are red from the biting winter wind. Your clothes are soaked with sea salt. It’s taking everything to not tear your hair out and scream at the crews in frustration. They did everything you asked of them and more, and it still wasn’t enough. As you start to walk in the direction of the city, a voice comes from behind you.

“Oi! Hold your step lass, can I has a moment wit’cha?”

You turn, burying the irriation bubbling your chest. The sight steals the breath from your lungs in the framing of the setting sun on the western horizon. It’s another Queen, roughly your age, maybe a summer more. Her hair seamlessly blends in with the setting sun, a deep rich series of oranges that reminds you of Kirke. Her eyes are a deep reflective green.

She walks towards you with an inherent sway in her hips, a swagger in every step that oozes command and confidence. Your heart speeds up in your chest, a confusing wash of pressure and low heat in your abdomen that is not unfamiliar. When she’s maybe half a meter ahead, she stops. Her scent, a rich mixture of sea salt, sweat, and woody undertones burns against the olfactory centers of your brain. Her hands are rough and calloused. You cannot help but drag your eyes over every well defined muscle across her shape, including what you suspect may be a deliberate cut in her top that leaves the midriff exposed. She definitely notices the almost hypnotic roving hunger of your gaze, because she adjusts the way she stands, making those abdominal muscles pop out further.

Catching the subtle upward lilt of her lips, you try to shake off the mesmerized grasp she somehow cast upon you. How dare she ensorcel you? You’re unable to stop the heat from trickling up into those cheeks.

The recovery is admirable. Not enough to undo the cheeky small smile settling onto the young Queen’s lips, but at least enough to fool yourself. You look down your nose at her.

“You’re addressing the blood of the Noble House of Colchis. Do I need to remind you of your place?”

This only seems to make the smile on her lips bigger. Which in turn makes your heart thrum a little faster.

“Hello, Princess, nice to finally meet the Queen who’s giving me hell out on the waves. Queen of Trade Breezes.”

She sticks out her hand there on the docks, with an incredible amount of brash swagger. Someone beneath your status addressing you in this way once would, at least at home, earn a visceral punishment, even for a matriarch. But twice? Especially from the commander who has soundly crushed you two dozen times? The nerve. The insolence.

Yet, despite the insult, the anger that was burning a hole in your belly moments later, has evaporated.

Why aren’t you mad? What is this fluttering sensation in your stomach? That pressure you have felt before, that heat that normally roars as an inferno everytime the Maker shapes you, it rises in your lower abdomen with a gentler undertone.

What’s wrong with you?

Your body seems to move in defiance of the rest of you, taking that hand.

“I’m—”

Shit, the words die in your throat as you realize. There’s no name to give, only the title of Vessel. Like the children from so long ago at the meeting in the North, you glance aside. Anything you were going to say dies in your throat with the stumbled stuttering noise. She picks up on your sudden distress with such alarming ease, finishing the words for you.

“You’re the purple serpent, bane of the rest of the academy. Oh yeah, don’t look so surprised, I know who ya are, and oich, I think you deserve a little bit something more personable to be referred to.”

Eyes rise to meet hers, staring with a rippling confusion washing across those youthful features. Words don’t come, a coherent response shattering repeatedly against the framework of the mind. At that she shakes your hand once and releases. When you finally manage to get something, anything to come out of your mouth, it is perhaps one of the most childish statements imaginable.

“You keep beating me.”

She laughs. It is like the noise a metal chime makes, rich and full of high tones that echo endlessly with the wind.

“Don’t feel bad. Been at this since I was a wee girl of only four. The Queens of the Noble House of Cimmer sail from birth.”

She grins cheekily, ears wiggling against her skull. The heart hammers faster, eyes averting. What is wrong with you? You have to get it together.

“Had us on the ropes a few times, heard’cha only started three months ago. Might’ve met my match.”

“How did you know to counter—”

She rolls her eyes, and cuts you off with a sharp horizontal wipe of her hand.

“Tch, ya think us up North don’t learn the Tempest’s history? If’cha don’t learn the truth, doomed to repeat history.”

You blink several times in surprise. It’s no secret that the North doesn’t hide the truth about the Kin Slayer, but, well. To so brazenly say it. Especially in the seat of her origin where she is hated…

“You should be careful saying that out loud.”

“Tch, whose gonna care? The Crimson? She ain’t gonna touch another major Noble House. Kin-slaying bonds goes both ways. Now, c’mon, let me get my new rival some dinner like the North makes. Least I can do for crushing ya a dozen times, ya?”

She turns and starts to walk off, her gait full of unabashed confidence of a woman who’s been commanding people since she was very young. You stand there for a moment, those bizarre physical sensations roiling and building continuously through your belly. After a moment, the legs move on their own, jogging after the Queen who’s stolen your breath away, and might just steal everything else too.

That night, after the most incredible goat and herb stew you’ve ever gorged yourself on, you lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep refuses to come. The mind cannot shake the thoughts and images of her voice, her hair, her laughter. It has been a few weeks since the Maker came upon her great purple scaled mount and shaped you in the night. Before today, the lapping flames of what she had done had already faded, frustratingly unquenched into dull embers which on occasion would ignite if your mind landed adrift on the nauseating thoughts of her touch. But now, the flames flicker as a rolling heat in your lower abdomen, a pressure there that has arisen from something else.

Kirke’s words ring in your ears.

“You’ll look at a boy… or maybe a girl and wish they would touch you in places. It’s part of becoming a woman for most.”

Now, as the thought slides around in your skull, there’s a growing piece of you that wishes she would touch you. The heart hammers faster, breathing picking up. Fingers slide down your abdomen beneath the hem of the bottoms, picturing her touch. Maybe, if it had been her that had stayed the night and quenched those fires, maybe if she had crawled beneath these sheets and held you close, it would wash away all the terror of the Maker’s image spinning up in your mind. Maybe you might not be curling up now, after the storm has cleared, feeling so weak and impure.

As the months march past, seasons changing, every exercise on the open sea, every exchange in the theoretical wargaming becomes a game. Whoever loses has to make dinner, has to take the other on a trip to hidden places in the city or the countryside. The fluttering in your stomach, the heat in your lower abdomen does not abate in her presence over time, it gets worse. Every time idle thoughts flicker in her direction, every time her hair brightens a room, her winning smile pops into view, your heart hammers faster in your chest.

Some days Chalciope catches you sitting out on the Cinderskin’s highest balcony, having fallen adrift into a daydream. You don’t tell her at first how you’re feeling. You’re not even sure you have the right words to describe it. But you can’t exactly hide it either.

“Are you alright, Sister?”

At first you would respond with:

“Yes, I’m just think about strategies.”

But the way her lips purse tells you she doesn’t believe that for a second.

On the nights when the Maker came to shape you, as you lay there with her blood thrumming as an inferno through those veins, the trauma of the years prior, the coldness in her expressions it all vanishes as you fall deep into those daydreams. Her voice rings in your ears, promising gentleness, her calloused digits gliding across the flesh drowning out the nightmare of your first bleed that has haunted every shaping ever since. Maybe, even, you start to enjoy it. It helps with the haze of thoughts that don’t seem right in your head. Softens the edges of things you feel towards the slaves, towards other Matriarchs on the days that follow a shaping.

“You’ve stopped whimpering the last few shapings.”

The Maker comments on the night of your fourteenth nameday. The statement is terrifying on its own, what if she notices? What if she gets jealous that your affection is being directed elsewhere? What would she do? Something awful, wouldn’t she? No, no you can’t tell her yet. Not until you have a plan to make sure.

“Just been thinking a lot about strategy and everything you’ve ever taught me.”

She smiles at that, sending a small chill up your spine.

“I am impressed by your progress, Vessel. I thought this might be too much for you after you lost twenty four times in a row. But now, you are winning. That child from the North is certainly talented. Perhaps we shall make of her and you a pair of unstoppable commanders to finally destroy this rebellion.”

You bury the fear trying to swim across your face at the mention of her name. If she sees, she doesn’t react.

“Maybe you will.”

Then, she takes her leave. The deep longing in your chest that you cannot untangle only grows with the passing months and seasons.

With every passing day, you get closer to her. Long nights spent sitting in the canopy of the Cinderskin, pointing up at the stars, watching storm fronts roll past. Walks along the sandy beach north or south of the dockyards at nights. Her yips and hollers as you cut the sky on Balarax’s back. She is so easy to just simply exist around. Though you don’t talk much, you say enough that her eyes reflect truth and understanding of everything you go through.

“Ya know lass, every time ya Mother comes to town, ya come out a few days looking just like her. Oich, kind of sad to see you lose some of them little things unique to ya.”

She places her hand atop yours, the contact suddenly jarring you from listening to the song-like lilt of her words. You recoil, shivering in place as the image of those long, spindly fingers crashes through your brain.

“Don’t… don’t touch me. Not with your hands.”

The tears start to form in your eyes. So much for wishing she would touch you it seems. Some wounds, some scars run deep.

“Oi! Easy lass, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you…”

She’s on her feet, face a mask of concern with the way her ears bend back.

“I know. I know.”

You rock back and forth slowly, trying to take deep breaths. Her eyes as she looks down at you say everything. There’s an anger burning there you’ve only ever seen in the Kin Slayer’s eyes, and a sadness that haunts Chalciope’s every time she returns from wherever she goes when you’re being shaped. She doesn’t say anything, she simply sits next to you, wraps an arm around your shoulder, and doesn’t touch you with her hands. There you sit into that night, leaning against her, shivering.

As time continues to roll forward, for the first time around someone other than Chalciope, you start to feel like a person. A living breathing thing of worth rather than just an object.

One evening, two nights before the date of your 16th nameday, you stand together underneath the stars on the balcony of the Cinderskin. Conversation fell away some time ago, now you’re simply enjoying each other’s presence.

As the wind trickles its soft fingers through her sunset-orange hair, she turns to you.

“Serpent, don’cha know what’cha gonna do at the end all this learning?”

You don’t meet her gaze.

“Whatever Mother wants me to do next. At the end of the day, I’m her Vessel.”

She scowls, her ears tilting up and pressing back.

“Tch. Yer more than that, ain’cha see that? Don’cha want something more than just being in a cage all’cha life?”

The question smashes into you like a sledgehammer.

“I—”

Want, more? It’s perplexing. What does it mean to actually want something? Are you even capable of that?

“Ain’cha ever thought about a Queendom of your own?”

To rule a land of your own? Sit on a throne on high and dictate to people beneath you? The idea is moderately repulsive. Managing people is exhausting enough as is, especially when so few of them can match your intellect.

“No. I haven’t. I don’t think I want to be a Queen.”

Her expression shifts, ears tilting up.

“Motherhood?”

The idea of children is… after everything the Maker has done to you? Would you even be a good parent? It’s almost expected of Matriarchs, of Queens to have children, but you were raised to be a Vessel. Was that intent ever in the cards at all? Can you even have them, after everything she’s done to your body?

“I don’t think I’d be a good Mother.”

Her expression grows even more exasperated.

“What about love? Don’cha wanna feel it for someone?”

The word smashes you like a gong, resonating deep into your bones.

“Love?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s… love supposed to be like?”

Her eyes crinkle with a deep sadness at the edges.

“It’s a warm feeling in’cha belly sometimes when’cha look at someone. Butterflies down there, make’cha feel all funny-like. Heat crawling up the back of that neck, a pressure down low that won’t go away. Sometimes feels like lust, like’cha just wanna be touched and lay with a person, but deeper. Just wanna sit on the edge of the abyss and talk with’em all night long.”

Heat crawls into your cheeks and you look away. Love. So that’s what this is. That’s what those physical sensations you have felt for her for almost two years are. She waits, watching you with those lazily hooded green eyes.

When the words come, they trickle out slowly, almost only a whisper that only you and her can hear.

“I think I already do.”

There’s a very long moment of silence. Then, movement.

“Can I touch’cha with my hands?”

She asks, her voice dropping a half pitch. It stirs that old familiar flame inside your lower abdomen.

“Okay.”

The word feels sluggish coming off your lips. Her hands move into your line of sight, and for a moment you stiffen up.

“If its not okay, say so, I ain’t be mad.”

You breathe in and out slowly, before finally forcing your muscles to relax. Her calloused touch brushes against your cheek. Her lips are soft, warm against your cheek. Everything becomes a river of molten feeling, a shudder running head to toe. She gently holds your chin, turns your face, and kisses you so very softly. Lights dance behind those eyes, arms trying to find somewhere to hold, and being guided to wrap around her hips. It’s electric, the way every nerve seems to fire in disorder, dancing lights squirming behind the eyelids.

It seems to go on and on forever.

Minutes later when the fervor of the moment is settling down, she stands behind you, arms wrapped around your middle as you slowly sway back and forth with the sea breeze. Occasionally she nibbles on an ear, provoking a sharp noise from your lips that makes it hard to think about anything other than wanting her to touch you.

Yet at the same time, the thought is genuinely terrifying. What if she’s just playing the part right now? What if she’ll—

You close your eyes, trying to drown the concept beneath the warmth of her chest pressing into your back.

Then, she asks you, in almost a whisper.

“What’s it’cha actually want, Serpent. ‘Cha can tell me anything, be our secret forever.”

You bite into the supple pink flesh of your lower lip.

“I want to travel the world. Beyond Colchis on a ship. A high adventure to see everything it has to offer.”

“Yeah? Don’t stop now, keep going.”

You swallow.

“I want to know every bit of magic there is in the world. I want to write tomes and scrolls on every technique that exists.”

“Anything else?”

Your voice breaks briefly.

“I want to finally know what it means for a Mother to love her children.”

The silence between you is immense. Heavy with the weight of that twisted childhood that follows you with every step. With being nothing more than a Vessel.

“When we’re done here, I’m going to take’cha from this place. Okay?”

She says softly.

“Okay.”

Is all that you can find the strength to say.

That night, as you lay in bed next to fourteen-summers-old Chalciope, wide awake, you cannot stop thinking about the word.

Love.

“Chalciope?”

“Sister?”

She lifts her head to look at you from where you’re pressed together in a sisterly cuddle.

“I think I might be in love.”

The admission is followed by a heavy silence in the dark.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She shifts to better face you. You stare up at the ceiling; cheeks flush with heat.

“Is it the Queen of Trade Breezes?”

“Yeah.”

Silence. You finally roll to face her. Her eyes are lavender spheres in the dark.

“Why do you think that?”

You wiggle beneath the sheets, putting your hands over your face.

“I can’t stop thinking about her. She makes me feel like my stomach is full of butterflies, like I want to talk to her until the whole world comes crashing down on top of us.”

The words just pour out of your lips without thinking.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah… sometimes I can’t think of anything else but us together. Of her touching me.”

Another pregnant silence between the pair of you.

“I think you might be in love.”

The way she says it has that trademark Chalciope melancholy.

“She wants to take me away from Colchis.”

Her face changes, that old quiet lurking fear that’s always present in her eyes rising up. The thoughts swimming in her mind are an old familiarity. Afraid that she’s a burden, that you’ll go somewhere where she can’t follow. That you’ll change into someone she no longer recognizes.

Your eyes soften.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“But what will happen to me, Sister?”

“Do you honestly think I would leave you behind at their mercy?”

She buries her face in your shoulder.

“Promise me you’ll take me with you?”

“I promise.”

You run fingers gently through her hair. She squeezes tighter making small soft noises.

“I’m going to ask Mother if I can take a lover.”

Chalciope tenses beneath you.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. She won’t touch another Matriarchal Queen. Especially not one of our allies.”

Chalciope shifts against your shoulder.

“I don’t know, Sister. Please be careful.”

The quiver in her voice makes you pause. The Maker was ruthless, but not even she would break the Kin Slaying enchantment that bound all Matriarchs at birth, that prevented them from turning blades against their own.

Would she?

---

Balarax’s wings cut the air to your left and right in slow, steady flaps as the wind carries you aloft through the late spring morning sky. They had to build an entire new Aerie just for her outside of the Cinderskin, a consequence of her massive torso and thick, long neck. She is a wonder, a demon of the air and still not yet fully grown. Iridescent black scales shimmer in the morning light, flecked with the occasional disparate swirls of green down her back.

Aea is visible in the distance, the swarming flocks of birds and what you assume are your younger siblings’ own bonds swirling in the sky.

It’s your sixteenth nameday. Or, well, what be a name day if you had a name to speak of. But you’re trying not to think about that.

This is the threshold for adulthood in this world. The age where a Daevite sets out to make their mark in the profession which she or he has dedicated their life to till that point. Every Noble House, every Queendom marks this occasion differently, of course. The city-state Queendoms of the Empire are many, and as diverse as they are plentiful. Though, with the Rebellion in the North, that number has been shrinking by the day.

You were there for the Queen of Trade Breezes’s Sixteenth and were careful to make sure the Maker was not informed. It was a three-day-long sail to the Queendom of Cimmer. Her mother greeted you upon the shores with warmth and a smile that never quite reached her eyes. Seemed a hard woman, faced with the realities of War, if not on her border, then too close for comfort.

Their Dragonships were armed to the teeth in the harbor, and there were great dark storm clouds churning to the Northwest. A general haze of smoke in the air from distant flames. The trial of the House of Cimmer was to hunt and slay a great, winged serpent of the black. The day the hunt began it was released into the sea from a pen where it had been hatched on the day that Trade Breezes had been born. She was given a drakeship, the lesser cousin to the mightier vessels, and asked to pick from among her own squadron’s crews a group of forty men and women.

You were picked as her second in command. You’ll never forget the glint in her eyes, the affection on her lips as you stood there, feeling so very unworthy for such an honor.

It took three days and nights of sailing to track the beast.

The Ironskin looms larger now. Balarax begins to dip from below the clouds to begin her passes in preparation for landing. Golden fluorescence shimmers upon the sprawl of Aia and its cascading rings of walls. It’s grown even in the past two years you have been away. Or perhaps it’s just because Aea is a very different sight in the daylight. The ancient stones of the inner palatial plateau at the base of the Ironskin are eclipsed by new, increasingly extravagant stone and wooden structures sprawling out in the outer walls towards the periphery and the distant golden, burning fields.

“Off the Starboard bow!”

One of the stocky Matriarchs from one of the minor houses of Cimmer called. It broke the surface, in a spout of water, a high wailing screech tearing from its maw. A long, beautiful thing of blue and black scales with a pinkish-leather underbelly. Slick leathering wings spread from its back, flippers churned the crystal blue water. Just as it was threatening to take flight, she appeared next to you, a great gnashing spear pulled back in one calloused hand.

That single spear throw embedded into the beast’s left wing, snagging through the flesh with a shower of blood. It took off, dragging the ship along with it. It thrashed in the early morning sky with the sun low to the east. Everyone held onto rails or masts so as not to be tossed into the sea. With every lull in its struggles against the rope, additional spears bound with rope whistled through the air, and the pattern would repeat. A brutal half day of being yanked and jerked by a beast three times as big as a Dragonship.

It had been flying steadily lower in the air for some minutes by the time you found a spear of your own. With the firm polished wood in your hand, you reared back. Then surged forward to launch the spear into the beast. Like the others, it whistled through the sky, the rope whipping back and forth. Sharp copper slid smoothly through a hidden intersection of scales in its center mass, and that was it. The beast lost all forward momentum; its shadow coming to hover over the ship. With one last screeching cry, it tumbled down to the deck. Everyone had just barely enough time to get out of the way. The boat rocked with a thick thump, blood splattering across the Cinderskin beams. It was still breathing when Trade Breezes drew the copper Talwar across its neck, putting an end to its struggle. Her face was grim as she placed a clay cask underneath the thick stream of blood.

One by one the crew approached. They dipped their hands in the ichor, painting a mark on her skin. Then received the same in turn. Until you were the last one left. She gestured you close, a sad smile upon her lips as she looked down at the stilled beast.

“Tell me, Purple Serpent, do’cha believe in the Font?”

The question was shockingly heretical. All Daevae believed in the Font. All the Daevite peoples, even if they disagreed on its nature between North and South.

“Of course I do!”

“Do’cha believe every life taken is sacred?”

“Of course, nothing should be wasted.”

You looked at the grand beast with a twitching sadness in one breast.

“Then,”

She looked up into your eyes.

“Do’cha believe’em when the priestesses from the interior, or even from’cha Noble House, say that blood must be shed? To satiate the Fontbearers who speak and feed the flow of the Font itself? Is the shedding of blood in conquest, the destruction of those’cha say are beneath us, justified?”

The question caught you off-guard. Were the sacrifices, of warriors and slaves from foreign lands worth it? Was the breeding of slaves as stock for the altar, worth it? The question burbles around in your belly, in your skull.

“I believe that the Font drives us towards a compassionate future where we protect the balance of the forests, the plains, the mountain groves, and the arid steppes from the wasteful consumption of humans. It calls on us to never let our people be driven from our homes again. If the priestesses say there are sacrifices needed, then I believe the Font is showing us a path.”

She listens, her expression inscrutable.

“And what if the Font isn’t what’cha think it is. What if it’s a tool for the Fontbearers and the Queens like’cha Mother to control the rest of’cha?”

The words landed atop you like a charging boar. You looked down into the reflection in the blood, seeing the mirror of her face staring back at you. One finger dragged along the surface of the liquid to disrupt it with ripples. You turned her words over in your mind, dissecting their familiarity. This was the same philosophy; the same words attested to in the history of the Kin Slayer that was slid beneath your door in the Punished Dark as a child.

“That’s heresy.”

“Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s true. Cha slew this beast now upon the deck of this ship, and much of it will go to waste.”

You looked down at the dripping blood. A downward twitch of the lips.

“Doesn’t have to. I can think of many applications for every piece of it.”

At that, a small twitching smile appeared across her face. You dipped one hand into the blood, soaking your hands in its depth. Upon her face and neck you scrawled in the mother tongue:

‘Wastes not the treasure of life. A soft love who finds truth and satiation in faith.’

“Perhaps when we see the world, with the wind at our back, and my grandfather’s chariot racing through the sky, we will find the truth of the matter.”

Her smile grew larger. A smile that made your heart flutter. In turn she dipped her hand in the ichor and scrawled across your forehead.

“A girl worthy of a name of her own, I dub thee Queen of Purple Serpents. Together we will be bound in love.”

And for a moment, as you looked at your reflection in that cask of blood, you didn’t see your Mother. You saw someone else. Someone older, with imperfections, and a fire burning in her eyes so fiercely that they could swallow the whole world. Perhaps, as it was on the beach when you were eight, that was a reflection of what you would be when she broke you free of these shackles.

The return to Cimmer had been uneventful and the crowds greeted you with roars of approval. Approval that only grew when they learned that you had salted and preserved the serpent’s meats. You’d hand excised the bones with the assistance of the crew, most of which would go towards the construction of Trade Breeze’s named Dragonship. Sharpened spikes for its prow and ram. The rest would be used for her weapons as well as all sorts of useful tonics and poultices and potions. Then, you’d skinned the beast with one of your knives, draping its hide out to dry and tan in the sun. On the day the ship had drawn into the port, you’d been curing the scales and casting the marks of power into the material to bind its enchantments. Armor for the woman who had stolen your heart and was going to save your life. Armor for her crew who had in turned earned names for themselves.

Balarax touches down in the central fountain plaza before the great Ironskin as the memory of that occasion begins to fade.

Trade Breezes wanted to come. But you couldn’t let her. Unlike the traditions of Cimmer, the Noble Daevic House of Colchis is a solitary affair to demonstrate the strength of an adult Queen. No less dangerous than the hunt for the winged sea serpents, perhaps even more perilous. Besides, there is no telling how the Maker would have reacted to her presence.

The Maker waits for you on the steps as you dismount from Balarax.

“You will call me if I’m required?”

Balarax’s voice echoes in your mind. Languid steps around her great front limb to place yourself even with her giant skull. A hand comes to rest on the scales just below her eyes. You look into that blazing green sclera and rest your cheek against the side of her face. She rumbles quietly.

“Without hesitation, Sister. I do not anticipate it will come to that.”

“I do not trust her.”

Balarax’s pupil darts up, looking up at Ilya the Crimson, standing on the steps. You keep her in your peripheral at all times. She’s watching the pair of you with that piercing lavender gaze.

“She can’t harm me anymore. I’m about to become a woman.”

Balarax snorts hot air from her immense nostrils, then closes her eyes.

“Don’t let arrogance cloud your intelligence, Sister.”

“I won’t.”

You release her and turn to walk towards the Maker. The gust of Balarax’s flapping wings sends your hair flickering out in front of your face like a flame, before you part it back, securing it with two loops of vine.

Legs stop a few meters in front of her. Her gaze is met, unflinchingly with the flames burning in your eyes reflected in her pupils. There’s something unusual in the way her expression rolls across that face. A warm smile, as rare as the strange affection burning as low embers in her eyes. This is something you’ve only seen cast in your direction once or twice. Maybe the only time you know she’s feeling something more than covetous possession.

You know better than to believe it’s out of love. It’s pride.

“Are you ready?”

You curl and uncurl your fists. Taking in the way her age has begun to show in the lines on her face.

“I spent weeks preparing. Nothing will stop me from seizing my birthright.”

The smile grows bigger on her lips, sending a chill up your spine.

“Said as only a Vessel of my intent can.”

The words make your stomach churn. A low pressure in your abdomen, and a queasiness in your belly that you shove away. Your skin and dress shimmer in the sun as the pair of you begin to walk in the direction of the fields of Golden War where the first two trials will be held. A palanquin awaits, one of those animated herbaceous things that she rides across long distances. She waves you on first, and then follows, sitting at your side.

The night before you had soaked every piece of fabric in the tinctures, lathered every inch of skin with Chalciope’s help. A draft that had taken years to find the right ingredients for.

Your Mother’s arm rests across the back of the cushioned bench, behind your head. Spindly digits working through the strands of hair on the left side of your face. A year or so ago, you would have frozen, broken down into tears, and shoved her away. Though those echoes remain, Trade Breezes has made you so much stronger. Chalciope has made you so much stronger.

Not enough yet to shove her away completely. Not enough to overcome the urge in the back of your mind craving Ilya’s love and affection in any way it will come.

“I heard, Vessel, that you and that Northern Girl have grown quite close.”

There’s a cutting edge to her voice. That old, familiar probing danger slipping into the hiss of her voice. But you are not that arrogant twelve-summers-old girl anymore.

“A good Vessel makes friends in beneficial places, does she not? Allies who will strengthen the position of their Maker’s house.”

Her fingers circling around that one ear briefly pause. You don’t turn to look at her. You can see her rippling expression perfectly well in the periphery.

“Yes, I suppose a Vessel should do that.”

Even if you aren’t the little arrogant girl anymore, the fact that she asked after Trade Winds at all means you were being followed. Or watched more closely than you had thought. Which is concerning. Though not a concern you can immediately do anything about.

The flat plain stretches out between high wooden fences. Sprawling stands made of wooden seats border a large arena as the palanquin dispenses the two of you next to an entryway into the field. Built above the entryway cut through the stands is a large spiral tower, with a golden cylinder at its top filled with a balcony of cushioned seats.

As you walk just behind her into the entry of the arena, she stops and turns back to look down at you.

“Do not fail today, Vessel. If you do—”

“Then Chalciope will take my place.”

The slightest bit of venom leaks into your voice.

Her expression shifts with a slight downward curve of her lips. But it’s gone in the next moment. She says nothing else, only casts a small arcane mark, which causes the wooden lift she’s standing on to rise upwards.

Taking a deep, final preparatory breath, you turn to the gleaming square of light leading out into the field. The early spring sun beats down with upon your face and body with gentle warmth. Cheers fill the sky, the cries of the citizens of Aea come to see a Queen face her rite of passage once again.

The arena is a flat large rectangle of dirt with occasional spurts of tall, bladed grasses. There are signs of recent use, like your mother has been holding games here. A plow with leads sits in the middle of the arena, two huge oxen of spotted black and white skin graze on the tall grasses close by.

You thumb through the mental catalogue of each trial’s details, recalling your cousins undergoing them when you were ten summers old. The first trial, a test of a Queen’s knowledge and skill with magics or pharmacology. Your hands shake at your sides, anxiety swirling in your breast as spiderwebbing ice veins. Then, you think of Trade Breezes, how she walks, how she talks, how she presents herself. The anxiety melts away and you walk forwards. No, that’s not what you do. You strut like a Queen, tilting your chin up to face the sky, feeling the Maker’s eyes burning holes into the back of your skull. This is as much about putting on a show, winning the favor of the soldiers and lower classes of Aea as much as it is about surviving.

The Oxen look up at your approach. They snort. Then they bellow. Flame leaps from their mouths and nostrils, arching in scorching streaks towards your body. It’s effortless stepping into the cloud of smoke and steam. Either the spell holds or you’re reduced to ash. Fortunately, the flames wash around you, the heat reduced to nothing more than a dull simmer against your skin. A triumphant upward turn of the lips washes the last residual traces of fear away.

Over the bellows and snorts of the oxen, the crowd has gone silent. Gasps and quiet murmurs then fill the air. You ignore them. It takes little effort to grasp the straps of the leads and wrap them around each great, enchanted beast.

When the task is done you stop in front of their faces and whisper soothing. Quiet words of comfort to calm their rage. The flames and bellows slowly dissipate. The tension in the air fills the whole arena as you catch glimpses through the smoke of the crowd sitting on the edges of their seats. As the flame and smoke begin to clear, revealing your unscathed shape, shouts of exclamation begin to rise. Then a roar in every direction. Screams of encouragement, of support filling your ears. For a moment you’re frozen with one hand on an Oxen’s snout. Unable to process this new, uproarious noise of approval being directed your way. Though there were cheers upon the docks of Cimmer, when you returned with the winged sea serpent, it was meant for Trade Breezes. Anything directed your way was just collateral from being a part of her crew.

Your whole life, you have been isolated. Separated from every other thinking being in the city and the palace on a pedestal, and yet at the same time not a person. A creature to be feared as an extension of the Maker. But now? In this moment, they are cheering for you. You, and you alone. It takes all your strength not to fall apart with them, feeling the tears burning in the corners of your eyes. Mounting the plow feels almost too easy in comparison. There you stand, spinning slowly in place to take in every shout, every cheer. For the first time in your whole life, you are loved by the people you have so cherished all your life. It’s only right you get to bask in it after all these years with no reciprocation. The wave happens almost instinctually, working the energy of the moment as if its second nature when it’s so very much not.

“She’s done it!”

“Way to go! Finish the task!”

A moment of deliberate, brief eye contact with Ilya’s shape in her box upon that spiral tower. Then the reins rise in those soft fingers.

“Yip!”

You cry to the air, provoking another roar from the crowd. The oxen move, dragging the plow through the dirt in neat, even rows that would make the finest farmers blush. When every inch of dirt has been plowed and tilled, the crowd explodes with approval. Again, you work with their energy with slow languid circles and waves. To put a pointed bow on the success you make deliberate intense eye contact with the Maker. Her expression is unreadable this far away, but you can certainly imagine the pride masking deeper irritation at your unscathed success.

Moments later the oxen are guided back to the entryway, where they are led aside by men and women in special protective enchanted armor.

Then you turn back to return to the center for the second trial.

Your Mother’s voice cuts the raucous atmosphere into silence, even as you’re already picking up a suitable rock from the ground.

“Begin!”

The crowd roars with approval, before steadily falling silent with anticipatory tension. They would have used Balarax’s teeth for the second task. Probably collected over the years of your life. True dragon teeth have some special properties. One of which is taking shape this very moment before you.

You chose your position well, ducking into a particularly tall thicket of grass that you delibertly left unflattened while plowing. Dirt across the arena begins to quiver and rise upwards. Humanoid creatures burst from the ground. Their scale armor shimmers in the early spring sun. Every inch of skin dark and discolored, layered over with coats of black and green scales matching Balarax’s hides. Their faces are grotesque, almost human with a mouth full of sharp teeth. In their hands are weapons hewn of bone or forged of copper. You wait until they are all above the ground, before tossing the rock you collected minutes before out into the middle of them.

Many Queens have perished on their sixteenth to these monstrosities by trying to cut them down one at a time. A foolish mistake, since every one that is slain results in two more appearing from the first’s corpse. A trial of intelligence, to see if the Queen is clever enough to survive.

The rock strikes one of the creatures, leading it to turn and lash out at the closest thing within range. Which happens to be another one of the monsters. Then you sit back on your haunches, watching the chaos unfold as the dragon warriors rip each other apart. They must have buried a great deal of teeth at the Maker’s behest, because the sun is at the apex of its path in the sky when the final two warriors fall to each other’s blades.

There is silence across the field as you step from within the tall brush, chin held high. Then the crowd bursts into roars of approval across the wooden stands.

You pivot in place, listening as their roars evolve into a chant.

“Vessel! Vessel! Vessel!”

They stomp against the wood, creating a thunderous racket. Singing now, instead of merely chanting. Then, like a ripple, they start singing something else. As if the term Vessel wasn’t satisfying enough for them.

“Serpent! Serpent! Serpent!”

Again, the whole world seems to shift, as they acknowledge a piece of the title you were given by Trade Breezes. How did they know? Or was it simply an obvious facet of your essence. You swallow, feeling the eyes of the Maker burn in the back of your neck from up high. She won’t like this. She won’t like this at all. A tiny swirl of cold dread pits in that stomach. You turn towards the tower, trying to wash it away with the brazen confidence of the girl you’re in love with.

“Maker, I have conquered the first of the two trials ordained by the doctrine of our house. I seek now of you access for the third. I am ready for the third trial, the hunt of the Golden Ram in the wild wooded sacred groves beneath our home.”

Your Mother rises from her seat, holding out her hand to silence the chanting crowds.

“In years past the third trial would indeed be the hunt itself. However, after the death of your cousin in the Rebellion to the East, I have decided the rite of passage has become too easy.”

You stare up at her in stunned disbelief.

“So now candidates for Queenhood and a fleece must pass four trials.

“You’ve changed the rules?! That is not fair!”

“Fair? Creature of my blood, there is no fair! Only the strong of this house survive.”

You grit your teeth in your skull. You should have known she would never let you conquer the rite so easily. She knew very well the skill and cleverness at your disposal.

“I should be allowed more time to prepare for an additional trial. That is only right.”

“A Queen of this house faces the unexpected head on and improvises with all the depths of her experience in the world. Are you saying to me, and to this crowd of many faces, that you are incapable of this? Look at them, they believe so fervently in your ability to succeed that they are frothing at the lips.”

The crowd roars in response to her echoing words. You swallow. Turning in place is an exercise in watching the mass of faces that, moments before, had left you feeling riding atop the highest clouds, now be twisted back upon you. If you gave up now in protest, you would not complete the rite. You would not get a fleece, and you would not be able to carve the opportunity to go freely with the woman who had promised you the world.

So, you turn back to the Maker, standing as tall as you can manage.

“I will not shy from any challenge, no matter how grand. I will face your third trial. I will conquer it. Then I shall hunt the Winged Golden Ram and become a woman of this House.”

The crowd roars with approval as you place your fist in the middle of your chest.

Ilya’s expression shifts to a skin crawling smiles. She turns her head to somewhere you can’t see behind the stands. A cry, as loud as it is maliciously gleeful.

“Release it!”

There comes a guttural angry roar. The earth shakes as something huge moves. All at once there are cries from somewhere beyond where you and the crowd can see. A sudden burst of bone being crushed, flesh being slice open. Your hand is already reaching inside your top for the censer-turned-meteor-hammer. Then with one bounding leap, a great white reptillian beast climbs over the edge of the stands. Slaves and merchants scream, only to be seconds later crushed beneath huge white claws, a gorey shower of blood splattering other around them. Two legs, two great wings, rigidly sharp scales all down it’s torso with a tail ending in a spade. There’s a soldier in its maw. It’s teeth are bloodied with the hapless soul’s ichor.

Your blood runs cold. Goosebumps arc up across every inch of skin.

“A Great Northern White Wyvern.”

The words hiss between your teeth, watching the crowd scramble and try to scatter away. It leaves smears of blood as it shimmies down the sloped stair-like seats, crushing the body in its teeth to a pulp, even as it crushes five others beneath its talons. Your head darts side to side, assessing what options you have.

To fight this creature here willingly would normally be pure insanity. There’s nowhere to take cover in the flat open field. Creating your own terrain won’t do much good, not against this thing that can fly above it. If the Maker is trying to kill you, she has chosen a near perfect arena and opponent to do so with. A quick glance up reveals the Maker stands in the tower, leaning on the railing with one elbow, hand cupping her own chin. Balarax could be summoned, but that would almost certainly end with disqualification. No, you have to do this on your own.

Every moment you spend considering how you will approach, the creature snatches another body to swallow.

“There’s nothing to it then. I have to improvise.”

An idea is already percolating, risky as it is, given you’ve never tried something on this scale. The herbs slide into the censer’s ignition chamber. The meteor Hammer twirls effortlessly as feet carry forward in slow half arcs, letting the metal kick up the dirt and dust. It whistles eerily with each accompanying arc. Your positioning will need to be perfect. Speed and acrobatics, and some luck.

“Nothing else to it then.”

You murmur.

“Beast of the North, I challenge you!”

The words rip from your lungs in a roar. The Wyvern stops. It cocks its head in several directions, before reptilian sclera focus on the shape in the center of the field. They narrow to slits. It drops the body in its maw, the wet thunk filling the air for but a moment before it shuffles down another three set of seats. The noise of splintering wood drowns out everything else as its talons rip up chunks of seating. Then it roars, the throat alighting with the white-hot fluorescence of its breath weapon. But it’s just a bit slower than you as you’re already moving.

ZAAAAAAAAAAAP

Heat flushes against your back. Tilled dirt presses against the spine through the roll.

The rebound sees you pop up into a sprint towards the far corner of the arena, cognizant of the electrostatic breath carving the ground. You can smell the burning dirt and dust in its wake. A zig, lightning bursts past, carving up a piece of the stands ahead. Then a zag, another crashing just a meter to your right. You’re starting to wonder just how long it can do this when the crackling stream finally dissipates. The Wyvern screeches in what you can only assume is frustration. Then it spreads its wings as you drag your feet in a slow advancing arc back towards it. It flaps, lifting up into the air. White wings thrust forwards. Sharp scales rip forward from its flesh in a hail of razors. The cartwheel into a flipping double tuck a display of acrobatic athleticism that surprises you as much as the crowd, carrying you half the distance to the next corner. They explode with ferocious cheers.

But there’s no time to linger over that feat of physicality, her it comes. The Wyvern swoops down, one outstretched talon reaching out to both snag and rake you. The smile ripples across your lips. Every limb becomes part of a seamless pirouette. The meteor hammer’s arc through the air casts a vibrant purple streak of fluorescence. Talons pass mere millimeters from your skull. With a fluid counter turn, the end of the hammer, forged from meteor harvested metal, flies forward. It smashes into the outstretched limb, tearing through the thick scales, muscle, and tendons before crunching into the bone. The power of enchantments.

The Wyvern roars in pain, trying to veer at the last second, only to smash into the wooden stands with a thunderous crash and shattering of wood. People scream as they are sent tumbling.

You only stop in the northwest corner to let the hammer churn the dust, with another set of half-turns and dragging feet. Then legs pound against the dirt, not daring to stop as the beast shakes its wings out, trying to rise and recover. It’s stumbles, talons scrabbling against the wood. Good you broke the leg, it won’t be able to stay on the ground. One limb down. It turns in place, an angry squacking roar cutting the air. The head darts around searching until it finds you halfway to the final corner.

You just need a bit more time. But the Wyvern has other ideas. It comes from up high, using the sun as a shield against your eyesight.

“Clever girl.”

The meteor hammer drags back up into a spin, kicking up dust and dirt as it scrapes the arena floor. You’re only meters away from the last position when gnashing teeth barely whip past, cutting a few strands of hair. It’s ready for the arc of the Meteor Hammer this time, a sharp inward turn making it miss. The chainw raps around the beast’s tail, but not with the force needed to cleave flesh or shatter bone. A metallic tink echoes in the arena. The wyvern arcs its head back, mid turn seeing the chain. Then it pivots its head toward where you stand. It makes a series of huffed vocalizations, and then the thing smiles at you.

“Shit.”

With an electric screech, the tail whips away from you. A burst of incredible force yanks against your arms, flinging you through the air in a tumbling arc. The wood hits your arm hard, shattering the bone with a storm of hot pain. It’s not as hard as it could have been thanks to a hastily scrabbled together gravity enchantment. Had you been even a second slower it would have broken your back if you hadn’t been so fast. Purple spell circles arc out from your feet. Then, using the gravitational anchoring of that same spell, you rip the chain with your good arm with all the strength you have. The spikes of the meteor hammer cleave through the tail. It lands in the middle of the arena as the beast thrashes with another screech of pain.

Despite the bruises and the torn ligaments, the broken bones in one arm showering hot pain up into your shoulder, the trap is laid. Barely, the final marks were sloppy, but it should be enough.

With a final extension the right arm, fingers splayed out, you twist your wrist. The Maker abruptly stands up straight in your periphery. Her eyes are wide, darting down to where you’re swaying. The corners of the arena begins to glow with lilac luminescence. Beginning in the middle where the largest mark was hewn into the dirt, nested spell circles arc outwards. An endless chain of spinning sigils and glyphs rotating at vastly different speeds.

Tattoos across that body flare with light. It’s a primal scream that pours forth from those lungs from the effort of the spell burning through those veins. At the last possible moment, the Wyvern whirls about, lightning in its throat. Only for you to jerk back your hand into a closed fist.

The earth quakes. Light burns up, dirt and dust floating up into the air from the sheer discharge of thaumic energy pouring out. A horrible howling noise fills the air, followed by countless golden chains bursting upwards from a starry lilac abyss. Each chain ends in a sharp spike, blazoned with dozens of spell marks. Wings are pierced through. Chains wrap and wrap, dragging the beast down. The arena floor becomes a tapestry as countless wounds pour gouts of blood into the dirt. Yet still the lightning gathers in it’s throat. With a sudden, rattling roar, two enormous final chains leap up and impale it all the way through. One goes through its center mass, jerking it up into the sky for a moment before the chain and gravity yank it back down. The second cleaves through its neck, sending its head pinwheeling through the air to land right at your feet.

Then it smashes into the ground, wrapped repeatedly with the sickening sound of bones being crushed. You wince, having overdone the intensity of the spell. Perhaps you thought it would have still been alive and struggling, or perhaps you overestimated the strength of its armor.

The arena is silent, stunned by the spell that continues to silently spin on the floor of the arena. Which is all well and good that their attention is occupied. Mostly because you’re tearing leaves and seed pods open then dropping them into a flask of liquid to make the healing draft for your arm.

The small explosion of flame at the end of the spell is a surprise. You nearly fumble the flask for half a moment. How did you forget the spectacle to punctuate your victory?

As the spell circles fade, the arena falls into a dead silence. An eerie stillness brought on by the crowd being stunned, both by the ferocity of the fight, and by the subsequent spectacles. It starts as you’re downing the draft. The muscles, bones and tendons in your arm are already starting to flex and heat up from the regenerative magic concoction when the sound of a single person clapping echoes. Then another. A tide of sound spreading out in a steadily building wave in every direction. Slow applause begins to speed up, then becomes raucous. Cheers, screams even as they begin to sing Serpent, again.

Sensing the needs of the moment, you place one foot on the top of the Wyvern’s snout and raise up your arm, tears in your eyes. More from the blend of resolving pain and joy of the moment than anything else.

Merchants, and Matriarchs climb over the shattered splinters of wood reaching out to touch the young woman who just killed a great beast. This goes on for some time, and you do not hesitate to bask in the glory of this moment. It’s minutes later as soldiers come to part the crowds and guide you back down into the arena that you only really start to process that you just killed a beast that it normally takes coordination between whole hunting parties to bring low.

When you look up at the tower, at the Maker, she is still staring. At the decapitated, crushed creature bound by the chains jutting from the ground. Her mouth is open wide, her eyes huge, lines wrinkled across her forehead. After a moment her mouth moves, seemingly talking to one of the priestesses beside her. Her lips are easy enough to read.

‘I did not teach her that. Where did she learn that?’

You cannot see the priestess’s mouth beneath the veil. But judging by the Maker’s brief snarling expression, it is not something she wanted to hear.

Eventually, she seems to gather herself, and remember there is a trial to close out. Which is how she seems to realize that you are, in fact staring up at her. She meets your gaze, gesturing with an open palmed, horizontally wide sweep of her arm that silences the crowd.

“This young Queen has completed the three arduous trials required of her with valiant and clever approaches. I find she is worthy of one whose blood runs thick from the Noble House of Colchis. She may now proceed to the final measure.”

The crowd roars in approval. She holds up a hand to silence them again.

“Now comes the hour of the hunt! As is tradition for all, this is a solitary affair to be witnessed only by the Queen Mother, and the high priestesses of the House. By this time next week, the great chimes shall either ring seven times in triumph, or they shall ring once in sorrow.”

The crowd roars echoing endlessly as you receive all their approval and joy.

It’s still ringing your ears only three hours later in the sacred golden groves where the Winged Golden Rams are raised. A clear stream burbles before you, snaking down the rolling green hillocks that make up the sacred groves in the grand hillside cavern behind the palace. The Moon is just now rising into the sky, it’s silver light gleaming down like a relentless beam from the Font itself in illuminating you and the beast before your eyes. The ram, a massive, beautiful thing, stands before you. It’s almost… disappointing.

Not because it doesn’t match the wonderous expectations you have for such beasts. You’ve been infatuated with them since you were small and were first let out of the palace proper. And certainly, no one could deny that the Ram born on the night which you came into the world is the largest, fluffiest specimen that has been seen in an age.

No, the reason you’re disappointed right now is because while there was a chase, it was naught more than an hour. If that.

The meteor hammer hangs almost limply between your fingers as you stare at the still beast.

The weeklong glory of the hunt is something you’ve looked forward to since you first began studying the trial. Such effort is supposed to make the taking of a life, of such a divine act in the name of the Font, justified.

At first, when it took off into the air, the thrill of adrenaline had rushed through your veins. You gave chase atop great eight-legged dog-like things through the winding golden trees which became blurs in early evening light.

When it landed in a clearing with a flowing stream of crystalline water, you dismounted quietly and began your approach. But you weren’t quite silent enough, because it turned around, a bellow pouring from its maw.

You were ready to take the first strike at its hide, test the thickness and effectiveness before letting it go to continue the chase.

But, instead of charging you down, instead of an exchange of blows, it stands there. Passively, all the tension having flowed out of its muscles. It looks on at you, with the dark eyes of a beast that is far smarter than you had been prepared for. When it starts to move again, you tense. Only for it to bah, and gently but it’s head against your center of mass.

You stand there for half a moment, letting the confusion wash through the lines upon your brow.

The priestesses and your mother are watching in the trees. Their expressions are not visible, but you can only imagine they are as bewildered as you are.

“What are you doing?”

You hiss at the beast. It bah’s at you again, before gently butting its head against your center of mass again.

“Go. Take flight. I am hunting you.”

Instead, it nuzzles the top of its skull against your outstretched hand as you try to push it away. Which only makes you breathe out with further exasperation.

“Is your brain damaged, what is wrong with you?”

A priestess steps out of the bush.

“A ram showing such favor to the hunter is a sign of blessing.”

You glance at her.

“But I was supposed to hunt it day and night for a week before finally bringing it low.”

“It seems the Font has other ideas.”

A glance back at the ram, right as it drags its tongue across up into view. The surface tension briefly lifts you off the ground, leaving you slick with its drool.

“Eugh!”

It stares at you, as if saying, it’s okay. Take my life.

Standing there, a swirl of conflict burns in your belly before washing across your face. Finally with a heavy sigh, the knife that will skin the beast comes out of its sheath. It kneels down on all fours and lifts its head to provide better access. It’s an act that is as confusing as everything else its done. Where are it’s survival instincts?

With the blade pressed against the first strands of wool, you stop. For a moment, your head jerks to the sound of three giggles from three distinct voices. Something swirls in the shadows but when you blink it’s gone.

“What is it?”

A high priestess asks.

“Nothing.”

The copper blade cuts through the nearly impenetrable wool with its enchanted contours. Then it bites into the neck. A clay vase is placed beneath where you’re cutting. By the Maker, of all people.

You ignore her, focused on the task at hand as you make the life-taking gash. A deep heavy weight settles in your belly. A sadness washes across your chest when the beast doesn’t thrash or writhe. Its head settles against your shoulder, eyes closing forever. The only sound is the blood pouring into the container and the burbling of the stream. Not a word from the Maker, or the priestesses. For a moment, you almost forget they are there, as you consider the enormity of what you’ve just done.

A silent wish for it to have at least struggled will remain in your head in the days to come.

When the solemness of the moment begins to fade, sometime later, you have settled into working the knife through its flesh, carefully separating the skin and fur from the attached fat and muscle beneath. It’s tradition for the priestesses to offer their help in the process. They are uncomfortably familiar with skinning once living things to use to craft various sacred idols and other offerings. But you refuse their help.

With every cut of the knife, you dip your fingers into the vase of blood, dragging fingers across the wool. It’s the spell to transform the fleece into that sacred item from which every Queen of your house amplifies their inherited power. Skinning the ram is a long, arduous process. By the end your wrist aches. But it is cathartic to know that as you slice through the final string of attaching flesh, you are a Queen of the Noble House of Colchis. Or rather, you have fully matured into a Vessel of the Noble House of Colchis.

Once the fleece has been cut free, Ilya settles next to you, helping you completely detangle and deglove it from the Ram’s center mass. Her expression is soft, softer than you’ve ever seen it before.

“I am proud of you.”

She finally says, as she begins to assist you with the marks across the fleece’s surface using the ram’s own blood. The word provoke a small swirl of emotion, the old familiar craving for her affection pressing deep in your abdomen. You wave the priestesses off when they look as if they are about to descend on the Ram’s skinless mass, letting the embers of annoyance wash away that craving in your flesh. This is your meat to preserve, and your bones to use.

“I’d believe that more if you hadn’t tried to kill me with a Northern White.”

“I was not trying to kill you.”

Her voice tightens.

“Could have fooled me.”

She clicks her tongue.

“Everything I have ever done was to make you strong. To give you the resiliency to survive and become what you were borne to be.”

You bite down the urge to point out that all the pointless cruelty didn’t make her strong. It made her vulnerable, afraid, violated you. If for no other reason than she seems to be making a genuine effort for once in your life to actually be motherly. So, instead, you say absently:

“A Vessel.”

“More than just a Vessel, ”

She says, dipping her hands back into the vase. That gives you pause. It’s the sincerity in her voice that catches you by surprise. The admission that racks her whole body with quiet difficulty. Maybe its an act, maybe she’s trying to fool you with a psychological twist as she has many times in your youth. Or maybe, this time, she means it.

“More than a Vessel?”

“Yes. You and I will save the empire from its rot. From the rebellion to the North. We will make an eternal Queendom that stretches from sea to sea and be freed of the yoke of the Interior.”

Something soft blossoms in your chest.

“That’s ambitious.”

“We are the House of Dragons. We aim always for the sky.”

“So we do.”

A raging conflict swirls in your chest, listening to her struggle and come as close to saying she loves you as she ever has. Maybe as close as she’s capable of. Why does that make you feel this way? Why are you having so much trouble holding onto the anger at everything she has done? You pause for a moment, shaking out your head, but the feeling doesn’t go away.

Together you finish making the marks. She removes her hands, letting you flow all the magic into the golden cloth. A deep throbbing pulse begins to spread out from your fingers as they drag along the arc of each mark. Crimson begins to twist and writhe across the woolen surface. Slowly, steadily, the fleece begins to darken from gold to a pitch, abyssal black. The blood burns with a lilac fluorescence, dancing and flowing across its shape in the dim light of the evening sky until it solidifies as reflections of the arcane marks and sigils that flow across your skin. The priestess and your Maker watch, their faces shifting. Ilya’s face becomes a wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression.

The High Priestess herself whispers, just loud enough for both of you to hear.

“Hekate herself?”

Again, those giggles from the shadows, this time seemingly everywhere. If the others hear they don’t show it. Ilya glances at her, an inscrutable expression worming across her lips.

Hekate is the founder of your house, she who built the Aries in the valley of dreamers of Lemuria, and marched an army across the great continent driving the enemy back under a wave of true dragons she made blood bonds with. The palace in view of the sacred groves was her planted seed. Her name is only ever whispered with greatest reverence within the halls of the house, and at her shrine before the throne room. Based on everything you’ve ever been told, she did not die. She became a pure embodiment of magic itself.

You take the fleece carefully and wrap it around your shoulders. The magic within it prickles, and ripples, shifting to gently cup your body in new clothing, as if attuned to your every preference. A look all your own. Your Mother watches, wordlessly as you cross that threshold into the world she has lived all her life. Again, that softness, mixed with something else more typical of her. You’re old enough now to recognize it as envy.

Together you lift the vase of the Ram’s blood over to an empty pool of stone that was carved out by the priestess while you were working together on the fleece. In the distance, the great chimes are ringing. You count them. Seven.

The blood pours into the calf-deep pool stretching five times as wide as your mother stands tall, filling it up until it begins to overflow. Another surprise it seems, the Ram’s blood continues to pour endlessly forcing the Maker and a priestess to rush to lift it up again. Everyone stops in place when the vase is hastily lifted back upright, as the slosh and weight of it feels wrong. Staring down into the interior the quite confusion realization settles in that it is still completely full. Another round of shadowy giggles.

“Mistress, this is a sign of providence.”

“I know.”

The Maker says with a great deal of strain.

The High Priestess turns to you.

“Vessel of the House, please enter the pool.”

You move to the edge, taking a quiet breath as you step down into the hot, life-giving ichor. It washes against your skin, cloying with every ripple. The robe the fleece has draped around your shoulders blooms with purple luminescence in the moonlight that bathes the entire pool. In the rock before you is carved the blazing fluorescent symbol of the Empire and of it’s capital. A crimson kapok pulsing with arteries. You look back over your shoulder at them, an intensity burning in your gaze.

[Image]

“You’re beautiful, you know that right?”

The Maker asks as she and the High Priestess enter the pool of blood. They remove, piece by piece, all the clothing on your body which vanishes when away from the skin. On account of it being part of the fleece.

“You shaped me in your image. Of course I am beautiful in your eyes.”

You bury the pain of everything she considers an imperfection being washed away. Anything that could be called remotely yours never fits into her designs.

“Don’t be snarky with me. That is not what I meant.”

The harshness of her words catches you by surprise. Her blood-soaked fingers drag across your back, even as the High Priestess is scrawling marks across your front. The words cast across your skin refuse to stick in your mind.

“Sorry, Maker. What did you mean?”

“Your essence. Your magic. Your spirit. And your physical maturation. Everything you have become is beautiful. Intoxicatingly so, to a degree I could never have accounted for.”

Something in you cracks open then, as you swallow, trying to fight back the tears. The words are a hammer against your heart, plucking strings that you have craved since you were so very small.

“Oh.”

“I have failed you in a great number of ways. Largely by allowing my envy for what you were given to blind me to the beauty of what I made from my flesh. I have abused, mistreated, and battered you about, under the belief that you were handed the world on a silver platter. That you would need to be hardened. In the process, it seems I have only pushed you further from my reach.”

“Mom…”

The word slips out without intention. Every expectation, every wall between you, her, and the expectations of what she would do and say shattering. In that vulnerability you let free the mistake that she beat you for every time it was made as a child.

There’s a momentary pause. A stiffness rising in you from the brutal verbal assault that will come next.

But it never comes.

“That’s right.”

She says so very softly.

“Though you are a Vessel, though that was the purpose you were imbued with at birth, neither of us can really run from the truth anymore. The truth that you are also my Daughter.”

Your hands shake at your side. The High Priestess finishes her marks as a few tears roll from your eyes. They are wicked away moments later to prevent the marks from smearing. Pieces of you are screaming with the desperate happiness of finally being acknowledged as a person. As something more than just an object for her intent. But you can’t burst out into tears now. Everyone present will see that as weakness. So you swallow it all down, letting it squirm and bubble in your stomach until it hurts.

You don’t quite remember the words that come next as they lower you back into the pool. Nobody really does, except the High Priestesses of the Fontbearers and the Font. There’s some sort of arcane anti-memetic effect that makes them slide off the mind. But even though they slip and slide away, they are words of power. Words of warmth that soak into the flesh of every Queen. And among them is the bond that ties a curse to the act of inflicting harm upon one’s kin. A rising thrum of awareness pools within every centimeter of skin. The pool seems to empty and fill dozens of times, and yet you never float down with it.

It’s not really clear how many times the Fleece gorges itself, flooding its textures with the deepest, secret magics of the house. But it is more than any of them expected judging by the murmurs of quiet amazement they think you can’t hear.

When they are done, the pool seems to fill back up almost by itself without their input. The High Priestesses take their leave then. Which leaves only you and the maker alone, sitting in the pool of Ram’s blood. It’s an unusual silence, lacking the menace of the Maker’s constant looming threat.

“Mom?”

You ask, quietly, almost afraid to say it. But trying it out anyways. It feels strange rolling off your lips.

She doesn’t respond right away, her gaze resting out on the rolling beautiful greenery that eventually blooms up into the Ironskin.

“Yes—”

She stops, as if having been about to call you Vessel.

“Yes, Daughter?”

A little flutter of warmth in your chest, as you finally let those tears roll down your face.

“I—”

The words catch in your throat. It is a great struggle to pull them free, not knowing how she will react to the impending question.

“I would like to take a lover. I would like to bind my hand to another. With your permission.”

The words are small, and scared. Your Mother’s fingers twirl in small circles along the surface of the blood.

“Oh? Do you?”

Her response is coy, almost playful, with an undercurrent you can’t quite place.

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

You swallow searching for the right words.

“Every time you shape me it’s—deep in my abdomen there’s a flame.”

She pauses, her expression unmoving.

“Yes. I know the feeling you’re describing.”

“I can’t quench it myself. I can’t tolerate it anymore. I am starving for the touch of another, the gentle caress of someone who cares for me.”

It pours out, alarmingly so as you open your heart to her as you would to Chalciope.

She doesn’t immediately look up at you.

“Well. I am certain that I could provide the relief you seek.”

A small twist of nausea in your belly entangles with the speeding up of your heartbeat as your body and mind descend into a war with each other.

“I—”

But she stops it in its tracks.

“No, that would be wrong. That is my own selfish desire for reciprocation manifesting, which has harmed you before.”

A small ripple of confusion runs across the lines of your brow, fading into a warm relief.

“Tell me, who would you lie with Daughter?”

She looks up now, expectantly meeting your gaze. You shift in the pool, biting your lower lip as you think of her sunset hair.

“I would lie with Trade Breezes.”

Something seems to fall into place in Ilya’s eyes, and a small grin spreads across her lips.

“So, you did lie to me earlier, when you said you were just friends.”

A small icy shoot of panic races through your heart. Even as you turn your face aside, flushing. Shit, now she knows you lied, now there will certainly be a punishment for deceiving her.

“I—”

You scramble to find something to say to cushion the impact, but she cuts you off.

“It’s fine.”

“You’re not… mad? Angry at me for deceiving your intent?”

“Of course not. You are of flesh and blood. This was always bound to happen.”

You blink in surprise. She rolls her eyes.

“You were bound to have needs, especially as my daughter.”

A particularly poignant stretch of silence settles across the pair of you.

“So, does that mean…?”

The question hangs between the you and her. Ilya glances up towards the moon, still circling her hand upon the film of blood. She does not answer for a long time.

“I will think on it.”

Shoulders sag with relief. That is better than anything you possible could have hoped for from her.

“I must admit that I do not… enjoy the idea of my daughter laying with another woman, much less binding herself to them.”

Your shoulders tense again.

“But, I suppose if I want heirs, they will come from Chalciope or Absyrtus anyways.”

Then the heart soars into that throat. You move across the pool and wrap arms around her naked shape, hugging her. You bury your face in her shoulder to hide the tears of relief trying to wriggle free from your eyes.

“Thank you, Mom.”

Ilya is stiff for a moment in the embrace of that grasp. She slowly relaxes.

“I haven’t given approval for anything yet, Daughter!”

“I know. But, I was terrified of asking. Terrified you might do something to her.”

“She’s Daevae, kin by right, I cannot touch her, even if I wanted to. But I don’t, because I’m not a monster.”

She finally returns the hug, awkwardly like a woman who’s never felt an ounce of affection in her life. An arm comes around to rest on the small of your back, avoiding placing her palm or fingers against your skin. But it’s the thought and action that matter, less than how effectively they perform it.

“Come, child, it is time for us to return to the House. You will stay with us for the fortnight before you return, so that you may enjoy every boon that comes with maturing to a woman in our world.”

There you both rise from the blood, wash yourselves in the stream and don your clothes. She is awkward, slow and clumsy to adapt to this newfound dynamic forming between you. But for the first time in that short life, it feels like she is trying. It feels like she’s making an actual effort to be the Mother you have always craved. And with every passing day, she gets better at it.

Maybe it is naivete that drove the thoughts of every wrong she had carried out against you and Chalciope when you were young from your mind. Maybe it is the haze from the shapings growing stronger with every passing session. Maybe it was because she was finally fulfilling every craving you’ve ever had for treatment from a parent in such a perfectly organic way. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is clear that you simply forget what your Mother actually is.

And what lengths she’s willing to go to.

<End Log>