fragment: Crimson colchis 2

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Memory Log 5

Memory Extract XXXX-05: Rotten Love

The following synthesized Memory Extraction and Journal log was provided to the department of Folkloristics and Mythology by SCP-XXXX on May 9th, 2024, following the end of [TEMPORAL ERROR DETECTED].

Foreword: I knew, only Hecate knows how, but I knew. He had taken a mistress. I had seen them in the palace, bouncing together. A charming smile on his face, a giggle on her lips. She was young, maybe less than half my age. She was a pleasant thing on the eyes, with hair of chestnut, and brown eyes that turned amber when the sun hit them just right. In another world, maybe I would have chosen her myself.

But the only time I had ever asked after taking a lover for myself, his reply had been mercilessly cold.

“You are mine, and mine alone.”

It would be a lie to say I didn’t care. I hadn’t yet broken what he’d done to me, hadn’t even realized it was there. Yet I understood all the same, he was a prince of a foreign land where such things were normal. Such things were normal in my home as well, I’d been told. Not that I really knew.

So, in theory I did not mind.

But it was the way he was happy all the time in her presence. It was a lie; I knew the burn behind his eyes all too well. Yet he positioned himself in every conceivable place he knew I would regularly pass through or linger. A constant pain tugging at my heart strings. She was the king’s daughter, maybe half my age. That little thing hanging off his arm always looked at me with disgust.

I could hear her whisper quietly in his ear.

“Why are you married to such an evil, ugly thing.”

In her eyes, I was a foreigner, an eccentric, evil witch who didn’t deserve the great hero of the Argo for myself.

He would always say,

“She is powerful, vicious, and I love her.”

The stories he wove when I wasn’t there to her.

Now I know he minimized our roles in raising him up to meet a great fate. I just wonder how much he played it up after.

But there was something else. He had a scheme and for the life of me I could not figure out what.

It was on the same night the boys had come to speak with me about my home. The same night I learned they knew every rumor, every lie, every truth about my nature. That’s when he came to see me.

Not my husband, but the King. He stepped into the house; the same one he had given us. I heard him long before his lips called out my name.

“[TEMPORAL DATA ERROR] would you please come here?”

I came down from my workshop up on the third floor, wiping my hands upon a cloth to clear the stain of crimson crushed berries. I offered him a half-meant smile; he was a kindly wise old man who had largely always done right by me. A better ruler than most, and one who respected my advice. In the 20 years since our arrival, I had attended to his wife to help her have three girls. A curse of his line apparently. In this land, women could not rule. But I wasn’t terribly happy to see him. Even still, I put on the deference I had learned to show to human rulers, and the sweetness that humans responded so well to.

I bowed before him as a sign of respect. He had gotten used to it, everyone else kneeled. But I still kneel for no man.

“If you are searching for my Husband, majesty, I do not know where he is. Probably off drunk in some garden.”

It was said as if it was acceptable behavior from a rapscallion.

“I am not looking for your husband, lady [TEMPORAL DATA ERROR].”

“Oh? If you’re looking for my children, they have already left to spend a night at a friend’s home.”

“I do not search for your children either.”

“Then is it a brew you require? Ah, your wife’s aches are up again?”

“It is not that either, lady.”

I looked up now to meet his eye. He met my gaze for but a moment, before averting his eyes. There was something there, something full of hesitation.

“Then, if it may please you, your majesty, please speak it.”

He sighed, a great heavy thing.

“Your husband is set to marry my Daughter.”

Silence.

One of my ears twitched, the muscles flicking. The polite smile dripped off my face, replaced by smudged wrinkles across my forehead. I stood there, stunned in disbelief.

“I am sorry, majesty, but maybe I misheard. Or, if this is a jest, it is a poor and unfunny one.”

He hesitated again, his eyes looking anywhere but my face as I stood up.

“It is not a jest, lady. He will marry my daughter and become the heir to the city and the house.”

There came the sound of shattering glass rippling through the back of my mind. The whole world began to tilt on its side. I suddenly could not think straight. My chest constricted, something tightly wrapping around my heart. There was a very distant sound rolling through my skull, of someone screaming.

It was me, inside my own brain.

I could not breathe. In this land, you could not be bound in matrimony to two women. It would require, he would have to—

The king took several steps back, as the shadows in the room began to crawl with bubbling fervor. The marks upon my skin, hidden to ease the worries of the denizens of our home, trickled to the surface. They burned with heat, purple twitching and flowing across the surface. Her laugh burned in my ears.

‘You will never fit in a place with them.’

I pressed my arms to my chest, wrapping my fingers around the shoulders.

“He will leave me? He will try to have me killed?”

His expression softened.

“To free the way for the marriage, he has asked me for mercy in the stay of your hand.”

My eyes slid back to him, boring holes in his very being. He took another step back, his concern writ plain upon those wrinkled features, especially in the way his beard crinkled.

“Lady, you have never been anything but gracious and good to us. My Queen would never have survived our girls if you had not intervened.”

Something spoke now in my place. No, it was still me, but a me I was struggling to fully grasp. The voice was a harsh lash. Filled with a venom I had not spoken in an age.

“She most certainly wouldn’t have.”

He paused, considering his next words carefully. Even after everything I had done for this cowering little skink, he still saw the reflection of my people to the east in a barbarous visage. I breathed in and out, deflating to try and soothe his worries. But I could not diminish that rage burning hard in my chest. It didn’t quite belong to me.

“With such great gifts showered upon me, I refused to put you to the blade as he so initially wished. Instead, I will send you into exile tonight.”

Everything seemed to freeze as time itself answered the call of my distress. Purple fluorescence squirmed in lines across exposed skin. My heart hammered in my chest.

He actually wanted to kill me?

I think it was then, that the spell began to crumble. The first pieces falling from the iron hand holding me beneath his will for 20 fucking years. I saw her for the first time then, the woman trapped underneath its grip.

She was right, this couldn’t stand. My gaze slid back to him again.

“What of my children?”

“He will keep them here. They will enjoy lives as second princes to whatever heir Glauce gives him. They will live well and full.”

How dare he. He who had left me with both squealing infants for months of sleepless nights. He who had abdicated every responsibility to drink and whore himself to every young woman in town. He who had never loved them. She was screaming now, that he never cared. I struggled to listen.

Another crack. More pieces crash to the marble floor.

“Where will I go?”

“He intends to send you home. As I understand it, he sent a message by raven this morning.”

The lights on my skin flared with an unholy fire. The grasp fragments, pieces raining to the floor with tiny tinks, consumed in an inferno of purple ire.

She is full of wrath, and I am trying so hard to let her in.

He steals my children. He burns our love for some child half his age. After everything I went through for him, after ripping open my heart with every stillborn child. My breathing picks up as the spell tries to reassert its hold.

But those aren’t my words. Those aren’t my thoughts. I love him still. He gave me everything. He fought to get me free from that place. He was there when she couldn’t handle me and left on her own.

I breathe hard, falling to my knees. One hand pressed against my pounding skull. Two dissonant strands of thought tugging on me in waves of jagged glass.

I loathe him. He took something from me in that precious moment and its still beyond my reach. Wake up, me. WAKE UP. We’re bound. I’m bound. I’M BOUND.

Some foreign arcane effect is crushing my heart as it tries to burst free. What did he do? Was it a potion? A curse? When did this start? I couldn’t think. I could barely breath. I needed time. Time he has not given me.

The whole world spins.

I kneel before this tiny wrinkled King, knowing that he is nothing to the heirs of the great houses to the east. But I do it anyways, because my rage would not be enough in this delicate moment to stay the bays of so many beasts that are eager to drink my blood.

“For the love of my children, please, your Majesty. A day. One day delay so I may hold them, so I may give them a loving goodbye. What will the children think of their mother if she simply vanishes? What good will that do them to never know that I loved them in giving them the life they finally deserved? This is all I ask.”

The tears burn on my cheeks, not tears of grief for losing them. Tears of rage, tears of fury as I try to reconcile my mind at war with itself. I have been used. I have been slaved to his will. These children were never mine to hold forever. They were tools for his twisting of the knife. It will not stand.

The fear upon his lips fades. Surprise takes its place, before flowing into a deep sadness.

“Lady, I have never wished to see you so wracked with despair. I will give you another day to take care of your affairs.”

“Oh, thank you your majesty. Thank you.”

I let the false relief, the false gratitude flow into my words.

He takes his leave then.

I begin to pick myself up, a deep flame of rage and grief burning against my reddened cheeks. Then, my husband walks in. Always at the time when I am at my lowest. He revels in this suffering. I stared at him, his ugly, beautiful face full of false solace. It hid a twisting smile of glee.

Half my body wanted to tear forward and rip open his throat. In one smooth motion I would draw every ounce of blood from his veins and feed it to my fleece. The other half tried to bring me down to kneel before him, beg for his love, beg him not to do this.

“How could you do this to me?”

“Oh, my wife. I could not pass up the opportunity to marry her. Can’t you see, she is a princess of my homelands, a wife with her best and most fertile years ahead of her.”

“Am I not Queen enough for you?”

“No. No, you’re a barbarian, a savage witch who dabbles in blood and magic. They call you a wicked creature of the east. A part of me always knew this day would come, as much as I loved you. Maybe some small part of me still loves you. Maybe someday, I’ll come back to that golden city and bring you back here. Our families will be one then. Would that soothe your acheing heart, to know that I feel horrible leaving you alone, completely bound to my spell.”

I seethed with such rage. There it was, the admission out in the open. He still believed my mind would fully omit the truth.

“Hera will scorn you.”

“Hera is dead. You saw to that on the fields of Aries, or do you not remember.”

The words are a blow, playing on the addled mind distorted by 20 years of enchantment. I recover fast.

“You do not know what you do to me. You do not know the Tartarian suffering you are sending me back to.”

Then, he finally drops all the pretense and façade. Just to see me squirm.

“Nor do I particularly care. I admired you from right there, right in your gaze, but you never had eyes for me, did you? You only loved that beastly woman of no noble heritage.”

Spikes of pain in my temples.

“I loved you. I loved you deeply with all my heart.”

“Oh, come now, we both know that’s the spell that Aphrodite put on your heart. Maybe I underestimated you, maybe you simply can’t break it. Maybe what I have to say will kill you.”

He holds wide his arms.

“That’s probably cleaner isn’t it, you dieing of heartbreak would resolve every problem. Listen, serpent of the east, I knew I’d never really have you. Even under the spell, where the enchantment twists every thought and word, all you could talk about the first time we slept together was ‘[TEMPORAL DATA ERROR]’ this and [TEMPORAL DATA ERROR] that. To think your attachment to Her was more powerful than Aphrodites desire, it’s really ridiculous.”

I wanted to scream. His fucking gods had meddled in my heart and mind.

“I gave you everything. I rescued you from the Monster’s wrath. I stole a fleece out from under their gaze, killed my bond mate in your goat fucking name. I bled my womb half a dozen times to give you heirs you never loved. They are the only good things I have ever brought into this world and you rip them now from my fingers. We made your name, her and I together. And this is the end you give me? Doom me to my Maker’s hands.”

For the first time since that night on the boat, his eyes softened. There was, perhaps, a tinge of sympathy.

“Ah. I am not a heartless monster. If you wish it of me, I will give you money for your trip into exile. Divert yourself from that place, or don’t. I’m ready to give it to you with a lavish hand.”

A giant piece of enchanted glass shatters and tumbles to the marble floor.

“FUCK YOUR MONEY.”

The only thing that held me back was the guards just outside the door. I could hear their heavy armor, and there would be no time to weave a spell to bring him low before that.

“Go on, play the bridegroom to a lesser whore. Perhaps now you’ll have a match you’ll one day have cause to lament.”

I picked up a potted plant, one of my precious children, and threw it at him with such force it shattered against his skull. Arcs of hardened clay spiraled through the air, dirt caking his face, the fleece, sprinkling across the floor. The plant was dead, killed the moment of impact, and some small part of me regretted it. He was knocked flat on his ass, arms flailing the whole way down. Wasn’t down there long; the fleece saw to that. There was a rapidly healing cut upon his brow, as he ungraciously windmilled his arms to find balance as he leapt back up.

Did he know that his fleece only still worked because I had fed it all that blood over the years?

“You snake-scaled witch! You did break the spell!”

“Get out of my fucking house while it is still mine to hold. I will not hesitate now to cleave open that slithering throat, shove your larynx up your gullet, then rip it and your tongue from twixt your lips!”

Such a vile threat turned him pale. There was the fear, the recognition of what he had just unleashed in his hubris. He turned and fled with best haste, and the guards followed him twixt clomps of metal. I breathed a storm upon the air, before crashing up the stairs in retreat to my workshop. A haze of rage and grief burned across the sightline. A great groan from the wood as a lump of womanly flesh collapsed into it. Two decades of pain, of being slaved to his will, all burning to the surface in a flood of tears. The moment I sat down, alone, I completely shattered.

I wept. Oh, how I wept until the sun went down. Thank the gods my children weren’t there to see me break. I don’t think I could have borne it.

That’s when she came to me.

There was a sudden shift in the breeze. A quiet whisper of murmuring stardust brushing against my ears.

“Child of the House of Gold.”

The sound was fragmented, distorted and broken. I looked up slowly, turning in the chair. I was in no shape to fight an intruder. If he’d come back with a knife, to plunge it in my neck himself—

A shattered visage, a fluttering ghost of torn strings hovered in the air in the center of my workshop. She was beautiful, wreathed in purple stars. Mist drenched the floor with its arcane smoke. The three aspects were shattered, only one remained, the hag, the other two threads in the wind just barely visible as reflections of light with eyes or mouths left behind. I stared, wide eyed at the flickering presentation of this specter, unable to truly grasp what I was seeing. I knew her name instantly. The founder of my noble house, immortalized in myth and tale as the Witch of Magic, noble Queen of the first frontier.

“Hecate.”

I croaked with such reverence.

“No, I am but a frayed thread of that once great meaning.”

I fell to the floor on my knees, prostrating myself before her. I was unworthy to stand or even sit before such a great ancestor. She who ran the Children of the Night from our ancient home. She deserved to stand before someone far grander than I could ever be.

“Child, there rests upon you a great spell of binding. Your heart and mind at war with each other.”

“Oh grandmother of many grandmothers, he has made a slave of me.”

“As did the stain that is the Monster in my halls.”

“I failed to break her strings and free our people.”

“And it is best you did, for there were other things in wait.”

I didn’t understand why she would say that. I wasn’t in the right mind to ask.

“I dishonor you with the blood in my veins, with my presence before you.”

“The only dishonor is that you are bound to an arrogant prince who does not love you.”

“He has cast me off.”

“And that cannot stand.”

Silence as she flutters there, the fragmentation in her being flowing in a breeze.

“She has called your name. Have you not heard her?”

“Who?”

“The one who altered your path. You know her many faces, her endless tides. Will you not answer her?”

“I don’t know how. Not with my soul at war. I cannot free myself from his yoke, I cannot right this slight against me. I am broken.”

“You are not broken. I would not have chosen you if you were.”

I looked up, wide-eyed.

“Chosen?”

“Yes. Child of the Noble Blood, on this night I have wreathed you successor to the noble title of Hecate. For I am faded and will soon no longer be. Made of such foolishness we were to fight the Pillars upon the Trojan Planes, Zeus’s folly foisted upon all of us. There is little yet that remains.”

“My lady, I am not worthy!”

“Silence.”

My lips felt like lead, sealed shut for the moment.

“There is no such thing as worthiness. Only potential, and in this you are not alone, as the last silver sister is finding within your reach.”

“What?”

“Do you wish to reclaim what was taken from you? Do you wish to make him pay for binding a greater being?”

I nodded, sniffling. I didn’t believe I was a greater being. Such notions were eroded from me by years of travel with the folk of fins. If any deserved that mantle, it was certainly them.

“Then hark I shall ascend my power in your blood.”

I sat up, about to ask what she could possibly have meant.

I remember a breeze, a wind, pouring in. My lungs, my nostrils, filling, then my belly as her essence burned against my flesh. I screamed, yet nothing would come out. The lights squirmed across my skin, coating me in a purple glow that she fed again and again. It was the strangest feeling I’ve ever had, barely remembered like a fever dream. Every inch of flesh was swelling, tearing and pressing into everything else. I was floating, rising through the sky like a fattened flesh sack that’s ready to burst at any second. All the stars wove out before me, an infinite spiraling series of threads connecting every concept together. Some close, some far.

There was a sound, it was metallic, filling the sky with hues of multicolor bliss like splatters of severed arteries spraying across the ground.

But I wasn’t alone. There was something else there too. It filled the entire southern horizon, crowding out all the other strings. It curled about a spiraling tower burned into the fabric of everything in a woven arc of coral-turned-metal that clawed at the sky itself. An endless rippling fractal of contorting cerulean flesh. Infinite undulations of limbs, claws, eyes, mouths, teeth and hair. It bloomed like countless flowers before me into some otherworldly, incomprehensible shape. And in the middle, there were four golden eyes boring down at me through the ethereal mass between us.

It, I believe it said something in a voice I already well and truly knew. But I didn’t really hear it.

Because the moment the words would have reached me, all my senses stopped working. Everything went to black.

Then, I died in the most ignoble way. I popped like a balloon.

---

<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.

Go to the port to the West. There you will be taught to sail and to command a fleet. I shall come to shape you every Month. On the day of your 16th making, you will return to Aia, and we shall select for you a fleece. On the 18th, if you have proven yourself worthy, you will sail to the West to serve as my hand and mouth in opening a new front against the scum to our North.

“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>

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Video Audio Log VAL-XXXX-01

Date: May 6th, 2024

Location: Eurtec Proper and the Silicon Nornir Foresight Matrix Array (NFMA) Complex

Foreword: At approximately 1700 hours, Eurtec time, CCTV cameras recorded a hooded figure believed to be SCP-XXXX entering the city via a Way. The following recording transcript covers the entirety of its transit through the city, infiltration into the Silicon Nornir Complex, and subsequent interaction with SCP-001: ”Onyx.”¹

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<Begin Log:>

A hooded figure is seen exiting from a wall where a solid doorway made of purple light has appeared. The figure scans the alleyway for several seconds before beginning to walk in the general direction of the Silicon Nornir Complex at the center of the city.

They spend the next hour utilizing alleyways and city structures to avoid patrolling Eurtec security forces. During this period, it is observed using thaumaturgy to obscure itself in darkness or with invisibility when no obvious cover is available to shield itself from observation.

The figure arrives at the road security checkpoints for the Silicon Nornir roughly two hours after entering the city. It spends nearly half an hour circling the complex, using local flora for cover. At 2000 hours, the figure begins emitting a thick faintly lavender fog, which flows unnaturally into one of the security checkpoints. Agents within the checkpoint do not seem to notice the fog and begin dropping to the floor. They will be discovered, unconscious, nearly a half hour later by a returning patrol.

The hooded figure passes through the security checkpoint, taking the badge of the highest ranked guard, and proceeds into the Silicon Nornir’s complex. It spends the next fifteen minutes avoiding Silicon Nornir security in the halls of the complex. Eventually, it runs into a Speaker of the Cult. The speaker is abruptly incapacitated with very little motion from the hooded figure. She will later attest that she was ‘hypnotized by purple lights dancing in her eyes’ before losing consciousness. SCP-XXXX relieves the speaker of its badge, before arriving at the Central Focal chamber of the NFMA, where it uses the credentials to enter the chamber.

The Central Focal chamber is large and appears organically shaped to resemble a magma chamber. Lava tube-like structures are arranged along the ceiling and face down into the center of the chamber. Several of these tubes contain large bundles of wires and fibers which vanish into the floor. The walls, floor, and ceiling are carved with irregularly shaped light panels which glow in varying shades of neon, predominantly reds, blues, and yellows. The figure stands near the closed and sealed bulkhead doors, staring at the center of the chamber. It has its head tilted down, looking at the floor.

Onyx: So, you are here.

SCP-XXXX: As a woman of such power, I’d expect you know exactly why I am here.

Onyx stands in a sunken area of the floor in the shape of a circle. Stairs are accessible from the south. The sides of the sunken dais consist of digital consoles glowing with neon fluorescence. Grooves for the placement of hands are embedded into the consoles. A large wooden staff is slotted into the center of the sunken dais, decorated with a lyre at its top made of gold and encrusted gems.

Onyx: Flattery is an interesting approach.

SCP-XXXX: I prefer to treat crucial allies the compliments they deserve. Is it strange, to know that one of the very people who played such a large role in freeing you from the GOC, now stands on your doorstep?

Onyx: Your assertion in your role is, as always, slightly and amusingly overstated. Yet, It would be accurate to say that I owe you much. A debt that will not be properly satiated today.

SCP-XXXX: Why’s that?

Onyx: I have only seen you in the last few hours, slinking through my city. Well ahead of the planned date on which this meeting was supposed to occur.

SCP-XXXX: What? Why?

The figure shifts, one hand slipping into its robes.

Onyx: You and all others touched by her hands are difficult to see. A fact which is of great irritation given the current mess that the Witch of the Sun is making of my web. This is putting many moving pieces in peril. Too many emotional outcomes will arise by its revelations.

SCP-XXXX: Wait—

Onyx: I should have anticipated her motions in the shadows. She has always preferred to operate alone, and it causes no end of headaches. Now there are ripples out from this that I will need to account for.

SCP-XXXX: —your voice is familiar.

Onyx: Is it? Well, I would have expected you of all the servants to fully remember it.

SCP-XXXX: Servants—

Onyx turns and removes the staff from the dais. It mounts the stairs and stops at the edge.

Onyx: Open your eyes and look upon me.

The figure looks up and takes a step back. It points at Onyx.

SCP-XXXX: You! You’re—

Onyx: I am the weaver who’s been in the abyssal dark. I am the shaper of fates, master of strings.

The hooded figure balls their fists.

SCP-XXXX: All this time—How long?!

Onyx: Since the 1950’s.

SCP-XXXX: I—

Onyx: Go home to your wife. Forget that we have spoken and purge this sight from your mind.

SCP-XXXX: I cannot walk away from this. I need—

Onyx: I know what you think you need.

SCP-XXXX: It is not a thought; it is an absolution.

Onyx: It is a reckless thought, to see how the threads might have woven had a different path been tread. A desperation burns in your breast; to know the possibilities of what you might weave if you return to face her. No matter the course in this hour, you are not ready. We will not be able to save you if you go.

SCP-XXXX: Can you not see what will happen if I don’t? I can’t run from this! She has her strings deep in me. I am filled with a lifetime of the blood she poured into my veins as a child. She shaped me with her own fucking hands doing—

SCP-XXXX stops, hugging its arms to its body, and shivers in place.

SCP-XXXX: Every passing day I feel more of her influence in my flesh. I am fighting against her will, her thoughts in my head with every second. If I run, I will cease to be. If I hide, she will take me either way. I cannot move beyond her reach. The only way I have a chance is to put an end to this, once and for all. But I need a way to end that doesn’t end with my consumption and the stringing of my mind to the Scarlet Monarch’s will.

Onyx scowls.

Onyx: Damn the Witch of the Sun for this acceleration.

SCP-XXXX: It was starting before she ever intervened.

Onyx: I doubt that. This timing could not be worse and will have many consequences. Right as the confluence of the engineer and her protector is beginning as well. Should we pivot to you, we will need to split our attention across many trickling streams.

SCP-XXXX: Will you not show me? Are you so removed from the soft woman I used to know? Would you damn me to this fate?

The figure lowers its hood. The face of a humanoid woman is revealed. It has vibrant purple eyes, long hair, mediterranean skin, and sylvan ears. Across what skin is visible flows an endless stream of arcane, fluorescent tattoos. Most are purple, but a few are crimson in coloration. There are tears in her eyes. Onyx frowns.

SCP-XXXX: Would you, Cassandra?

Silence. After several seconds, Onyx sighs.

Onyx: Needs suppose I could not allow this to come to pass. So much depends on all the pieces being in play.

Onyx turns to descend the stairs, and pauses at the top.

Onyx: Hark, join me below, child of the winged rams, and do not say I did not warn you. This will be painful for both of us and needs to be spread over several days.

SCP-XXXX: Wait. There’s something else I need to know.

Onyx pauses. It grasps the staff more tightly.

SCP-XXXX: How did Moose—

Onyx: That is Moose’s prerogative to disclose.

SCP-XXXX: Then, tell me, how did they know to come to us? If your sight cannot adequately resolve us, how did they know where to look? You owe me that much.

Onyx sighs.

Onyx: I will tell you. But only when you return on the 9th.

<End Log>

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Footnotes

1. SCP-001: “Onyx” is an extremely potent, prescient, humanoid anomaly placed under Foundation oversight. It drives the function of the Silicon Nornir Foresight Matrix array, allowing the Foundation to identify emergent anomalies, containment breaches, and at times, GoI activity.