- Location
- my house
Also this is just a really evocative line
The Corsican Ogre: A Napoleonic Wizardry Quest
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's not uncommon for people who live through tumultuous historical times to write about a decline, collapse, or decadence of their society, to which they attribute very specific causes, and even though they feel the truth of what they write keenly, when we as students of history look at the broader picture of their era we find that they saw only part of the picture, misidentified the root causes of their downfall, or indeed that there was never decline or decadence in the first place, but rather transformation.
Ambrose Chevalier attributes the Revolution to a weakening of the magical power of the aristocracy. Vivienne attributes it to the people's yearning for freedom. A modern, materialist historian might disregard both these are irrelevant smokescreens, and explain it purely as a matter of economic pressures and class interests.
As for Ambrose's experiments... The procedure per which he drew out his own blood, then 'refined it' (essentially increasing the quantity of Blood within the blood) before injecting it into his daughter, is one of the long-established techniques the French nobility developed to strengthen the Blood over generations. It's fairly certain that it has an effect, although to what extent it works on a single generation leap is debatable. Everything else Ambrose projects onto Vivienne, the whole layer of phrenology 'race science' logic, I feel no issue saying is explicitly and entirely bullshit.
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- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh, yeah, his phrenology bullshit and all the shit about needing the "soil of a string race" or whatever is obvious nonsense. I just couldn't tell if Vivienne was unusually powerful in spite of Ambrose acting based on absolute bullshit, or if she was just average and her dad was deluding himself because he had a head full of bullshit.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The picture that's painted of Ambrose Chevalier is genuinely like- really fascinating. Especially how the image of him is contextualized and recontextualized as Vivienne grows up, develops her own perspective and her own body of like- opinions and experiences to filter things through. The narration in this update, camera that's turned on Ambrose, how we see him and what he does to and for Vivienne, has a real sense of....empathy without approval? Empathy but also judgement. Ambrose Chevalier is fully and pointedly and truly a person. He is genial, he is charming, he makes jokes, he dotes on his daughter. He seems to imagine himself as a student of politics, of history. He's consumed with entirely sympathetic frustrations about finding himself caught in the ebb of the times. Of not being able to change all that he thinks is wrong with the world, of feeling impotent in the face of mass opinion and popular revolt and a kind of seemingly all-consuming violence burning away the world he knows. He wants to seem strong even though he's nursing his own private grief and fears.
And it's something I found really striking imo, because he does love Vivienne. Imperfectly and with flaws, projecting his own expectations and hopes onto her, but he does love her. He's proud of her. What she's achieved, what she's become, even if he's also painting in his own accomplishments as part of it.
But all of this is simultaneously true and impossible to separate from Who He Is and What He Does. He's a Caribbean planation-owner, running his own little corner of hell-on-Earth and eminently comfortable with all the truly despicable and fucked-up-stuff that entails. With the façade he's constructed around the reality that he knows is there. This parallel world where he is the firm but magnanimous, tolerant but practical, emperor of everything he surveys. Where he is the sun on this little planet, the axis around which everything moves, and keeps everything in its proper place and order on these shores even if not, perhaps, in France. And the systematic and ceaseless bloodletting in his name, for his sake, by people he owns is simply...how things are Supposed to be. He's very neatly rationalized it all and absolved himself of it in the same stroke, there's nothing to really worry about.
He thinks of himself as the underdog! And this update does a really great job of making you understand completely why he does so, why this man who sees himself as a hold out on the edge of everything he knows, clutching his few precious hopes, looks in the mirror and sees a like- a castaway who's making the best of a grim situation. And how, in-so-doing, warps and distorts and shapes and sculpts the world and people around him.
It's a very human portrait of human cruelty, human weakness, human evil. And I think the update is so much the stronger for that, and such a good reintroduction to the character of Viv. Why she genuinely believed -believes even, somewhere deep down- that she can change the world. That she was part of something novel and new, that was going to make everything better for everyone. Why she really did trust in Napoleon.
That streak of fractured idealism and ambition and self-possession that she got from both her mother and her father.
These two final scenes are really just so compelling. The image of the man consumed by Blood, the ambiguous not-a-redemption-but-a-kinda-realization? When it's at the end, when it's too late to make a difference but maybe not too late to matter. And I really love how this update like- committed itself to capturing the nuances in a terminally fucked up family relationship. And how it represented both the moments of kindness and gentleness but made them inextricably linked to the callousness, the feverish intensity, the warped dynamic of it all.
And how that all ties into Dumas, into what Viv consciously and unconsciously sees in him is really like- it's exciting. And worrying and nerve-wracking. It's easy to see the ways the man very uneasily does and does not fit into that constructed role, that perception. How badly he wants to change the world, how limited and constrained he finds himself, how he's -in some Real Notable ways- the father she wishes she had, who impossibly knows what it's like to come from a family where some people where literally fuckin' owned by the others, to known that loss of control and agency and ability. The rampant bigotry. The two overly-aggressive-surprise-duels are really striking in this overall context. Both of them being tests that went too far, both of them being vessels for the mentor's frustrations and feelings of inadequacy.
I'm just really excited to see this back honestly.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think this last chapter really underlines how one of the great themes of the Blood is awful love.
- Location
- United States
Not to mention the twisted viscerality of Ambrose's usage of the Blood. Where Vivienne seemed to rely heavily on the manipulation of Radiance, Ambrose's magic manifests as pure, unfiltered blood, to the point where the rest of his body is just a container to manage the power of his circulatory system. His veins have a life of their own, his blood tears itself from his body to reshape the world, and it's so indicative of how much of his life he's given to the study and purification of the Blood. He has tossed himself into the pyre of the Blood's awful love, and has been repaid with nearly losing his humanity. It's a brilliant dichotomy, and a fantastic example of the horrors the Blood can produce made all the more effective by Ambrose's incredibly nuanced character. This was an absolute masterpiece of an update in every way, and I'm so glad to see this quest return!
You've written these characters with such nuance of which there is no clear black and white, right and wrong; morally gray. Ironic. I'm not able to articulate at all. The conflict is good and emotionally meaningful. I love this so much. History hits harder when you see it right in front of you. The innumerable mistakes of our forefathers, and their fortitude in those trying times. I don't know what half of what I've written means, but I do know how much I love your storytelling.
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
@TenfoldShields said above what I would have to say, but more eloquently, so instead I'll just echo him and say that this has been a compelling, excellent read, and I love the tone and characterization and mood of it. It's a rare treat to find a work which takes genuinely awful people, takes the time to show the ways how they are still humans with genuine, recognizable interiority, and doesn't slip into casting that as justification.
This has been a great binge to discover as I poke my nose back into SV questing more thoroughly, and I look forward to whatever comes next.
This has been a great binge to discover as I poke my nose back into SV questing more thoroughly, and I look forward to whatever comes next.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I gotta say I'm really happy this chapter had the reception it did, because it was touching on a lot of very delicate topics that I was afraid not to handle well. It's kind of what happens every time I take a look at Vivienne's backstory in Haiti, really; a lot of The Corsican Ogre is about taking historical realities and magnifying them through the lens of magic, where magic serves to make literal certain abstract trends of symbolism of the time, and it's difficult to that while preserving the reality behind these literalized metaphors. The story loses its effect if, for instance, the Necromancer turning the corpses of the enslaved into zombies isn't directly rooted in, and reflecting on, the basic reality of the slavery on top of which it's layered. This one in particular, where I had to show why Vivienne and even her mother might love Ambrose even as they know and feel the reality of the awful thing he does, while directly suffering from these awful things; I tried to make Ambrose 'complex' without that complexity providing excuses or justifications for the thing he does and that was a tough needle to thread, and I'm happy people think it worked (and I want to give @TenfoldShields credit for helping me enhance that in the edits).
Part of this whole theme thing is rooted in a reaction to, of all things, Netflix's La Révolution, a show which is Not Good but which tries the same thing of taking an abstract theme - 'the Ancien Regime aristocracy are metaphorical vampires sucking the blood of the peasantry' - and makes it literal - 'the aristocracy is literally using blood magic to turn themselves into zombievampires' - and it didn't... work? And I have never been able to really adequately explain to anyone who hadn't watched the show why I think it didn't work, and this story is kind of me working through the answer I guess.
Part of this whole theme thing is rooted in a reaction to, of all things, Netflix's La Révolution, a show which is Not Good but which tries the same thing of taking an abstract theme - 'the Ancien Regime aristocracy are metaphorical vampires sucking the blood of the peasantry' - and makes it literal - 'the aristocracy is literally using blood magic to turn themselves into zombievampires' - and it didn't... work? And I have never been able to really adequately explain to anyone who hadn't watched the show why I think it didn't work, and this story is kind of me working through the answer I guess.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
Speaking of which Vivienne's arc after the great prison break is doing all the Count of Montecristo Napoleonic batman stuff of getting revenge on the chevalier, the judge, and Delogis, and also resisting Napoleon's imperial regime in a larger sense, and just all of it is pretty rooted in events in the metropole of France.
But likewise the Haitian Revolution is concurrent with all that is going on with the French betrayal of Toussaint and violation of parley, General Leclerc and Pauline Bonaparte having a whole like Macbethian spiral into destruction as the their new conquest unconquers itself, the Polish Legion going rogue and joining the slaves, Dessalines implementing the systemic destruction of the French white Haitians and then declaring himself Emperor of Haiti, etc..., etc...
Is Vivienne's story going to intersect with her home in the New World once more with like a a big heist thing busting Toussaint out of Fort de Joux? Is it mainly going to be focused on the here and now of Vivi's quest? Or is this all just a big ball of spoilers?
But likewise the Haitian Revolution is concurrent with all that is going on with the French betrayal of Toussaint and violation of parley, General Leclerc and Pauline Bonaparte having a whole like Macbethian spiral into destruction as the their new conquest unconquers itself, the Polish Legion going rogue and joining the slaves, Dessalines implementing the systemic destruction of the French white Haitians and then declaring himself Emperor of Haiti, etc..., etc...
Is Vivienne's story going to intersect with her home in the New World once more with like a a big heist thing busting Toussaint out of Fort de Joux? Is it mainly going to be focused on the here and now of Vivi's quest? Or is this all just a big ball of spoilers?
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The one thing I can tell you, and this will probably make people sad, is that I have some Big Projects I've been putting aside while working on TCO, and I intend to conclude the Chateau d'If Arc (which is like, a full novel in length) and then put the story on hiatus while I work on some other stuff, but leaving it in a satisfying place with some real closure that I can then go back to follow up on when the time is right.
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
I've never watched the Netflix show of which you speak, but for The Corsican Ogre, I think a part of it is that it doesn't just use the heavy handed cancerous blood metaphor as the only thing its saying. It's also very much engaging in the far more down-to-earth mundanity of the situation, in a way that work with or without the symbolism. The magic, symbolism, and flair of the setting draws you in, and adds a certain mystique to it all, but even if you stripped away all artistic embellishment, that essential and very human tragedy beneath is still intact and very much recognizable.
Chapter 16. Six at Sea
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
They've both seen better days.
The Englishman wears his uniform as best as he can, almost obsessive in the care he takes of the red coat, stripped of its insignias of rank but still allowed to be worn plain by the uncaring Wardens. It sits awkwardly on his shoulder, cut for a time when he had the jovial belly of an academic of some means. He's growing thinner by the year, and it's not making him look any healthier, quite the opposite. He pulls the coat tighter, hiding in its fold and it the dark spectacles concealing his circled eyes. His skin is damp and tinged with gray - to the unfamiliar eye it makes him look even sicklier; only those who know him understand that it is a sign he is Touched and his power remains. He is tired and hungry, but his soul is strong.
The Cajun man seems healthier, but it's a trick of physique. He's so tall, lanky but with obvious lean muscles and such a casual air, that he seems in the fullness of his strength. His red hair is perhaps a little faded, the fuzz covering his chest and arms a little closer to a dirty blond, but that could just be the sun. He's hunched over as he walks, yes, but so are many tall men by habit. It's only the Englishman who sees how he stops in his walks more often. How his attention sometimes drifts off during conversation, focused inwards, on some rising need. How sometimes he starts breathing harshly, his eyes unfocused, his lips parting on long white teeth.
So Burnham soothes him by speaking.
"I hope I get to show it to you one day," he says in English, continuing from a conversation that's been going on in broken fits since they woke up to work the docks early before dawn. He's doing his best to carry the unwieldy wooden box across the pier, a man of meager strength before deprivation started wearing down his body.
"You sure you don't want me to take that for you?" says the tall ginger, a similar box slung across his shoulders. He makes it look so easy, but he should be easily able to carry two of them, and today he's decided to limit himself.
"I intend to earn my double ration, thank you very much," Burnham says, putting enough defiance in his voice to allow the comforting presence that he's only refusing out of stubborn pride. He hears in the voice of his companion an uncharacteristic frailty, like a thin crack in a glass cup, and he does not intend to put further burden on Pierre's shoulders.
"Suit yourself," Pierre says. "So what about these shires?"
"Well, where to start - so much has been written about their bucolic beauty and dangerous allure.. I am party to certain pacts, you know, which ensure that I may tread there unmolested?" There has been so few opportunities to talk to any of the Other Folk here, so many years deprived of their gracious company and dangerous games. "I could take you where few men have gone before…"
"That sounds nice," Pierre says, "I miss a good spot of nature. What I wouldn't give to just… One night hunting deer… God, that would."
Then he falters; gasps; Burnham moves instinctively to support him but the damned box gets in the way and he himself trips over as Pierre stumbles, the box on his shoulder slamming to the ground, spilling its contents, ordinary naval supplies.
"Darling, are you alright?" Burnham asks, finally wrapping a hand around his lover's shoulder.
This is what he feared. Even as he insisted on giving Pierre a portion of his own rations. Even as the Chevalier girl shared with them her bounty of stolen jerky. That was enough to keep going, for a while, but not forever.
"It's fine," Pierre says, touching his hand to Burnham's, "I'll be alright."
And even as he says it Burnham knows it's a lie. The wounded wolf has shown weakness.
A shadow falls on top of them.
The Head Warden is there, a shadow in the dawn. Stretched thin by sunrise, washed out by sun's glare. He's not standing with his arms akimbo, chest puffed up like an animal in a threat display. He's just standing there, like a candle's flickering flame, staring. It's only the handful of Wardens fanned out behind him, worn and faded like old haunts, that make him seem anchored in reality. His one good eye sweeps the pier; all the other working inmates have cleared as much distance as they could. There's just Pierre, Burnham, and the spilled crate.
"Damaging the goods, hm?" the Head Warden says coldly, then in a matter-of-fact tone: "We'll take that out of your rations."
"You can't be serious," Burnham says, "he's obviously sick! He needs help, not further punishment!"
There's a silence; Pierre says nothing, glaring up at the Warden without making a motion to stand up. Waiting.
"He's not sick," the Head Warden says. "Are you, dog?"
He says the word casually; but a flash of anger passes over Pierre's face, quickly and forcefully repressed, but not soon enough to spark a glimmer of interest in the man's eye.
"I'm not," Pierre says, and when Burnham opens his mouth to says something he raises a hand to silence him; there is sweat dotting his creased brow, lips curled, a red light in his eye. "I'm hungry. Because you have been cutting my rations."
"Don't flatter yourself, dog," the man spits, and Pierre's shoulders twitch. "I've been cutting everyone's rations, mine included. It's Winter and the Empire's at war. There's not enough to go around, and you're still getting double rations compared to everyone else."
"You know," Pierre says standing up, his hand laid on Burnham's chest and slowly but firmly pushing his lover behind him, out of the sight and attention of the Head Warden, "that it's not enough. That I need more. I give you good work for it. I labor tirelessly. I never complain."
He's easily got a full foot of height on the Head Warden, and even malnourished clearly outweighs him. But the Warden doesn't show fear or concern. He doesn't even seem to resent having to tilt his head, looking up into these heated red eyes.
"And you're getting double rations because you put in the work," he says flatly. "Slack off, and you're back to the same regimen as everyone else."
Pierre's eyes widen, irises filling up the sclerae; his lips part back, as if slit by a knife, to reveal far more teeth than his mouth should hold. Puffs of steam exhale with his breath.
"I can't live on the same regimen as everyone else," he hisses.
"Don't," Burnham whispers, grabbing Pierre's arm pleadingly. "It won't help. I don't want to see you hurt."
But Pierre isn't listening, and neither is the Warden.
"Hah, so there it is," the Head Warden says, "the beast reveals itself."
And Burnham expects him to be gloating, grinning in contempt, but instead his expression is the darkest Burnham's ever seen it; the man lays a finger on the scars crossing his cheek.
"All these years, wondering why you were so placid, why anger could never raise anything out of you. I should have known to try hunger instead." He pauses then, thoughtful, before adding with false sweetness: "You were a scout, weren't you? Garous're good at that."
"What do you care?" Pierre hisses.
"Did you know there was a time when our generals, in their great genius, thought they could make shock troops out of your kind? Heavy cavalry that wouldn 't need a horse, plowing into terrified infantry and tearing them to shreds. Had to gather hundreds of garous for that. Biggest number ever put in one place."
"So?" Pierre said, the word not an invitation to continue or a genuine request for more information, merely a challenge to tell him why he should care.
But Burnham, who knew exactly what story the Head Warden was telling, who had heard it told with laughter (or, for those who had reason to care more about the reality of the build-up than the moral of the punchline, terror) by British soldiers, felt his stomach turn to a knot.
"They did incredible in their first two battles," the Head Warden said with a cold, mirthless grin. "Tore Prussians and Brits in bits and scattered them across the battlefield. Enemy routed like headless chicken, perfect opportunity to push hard after them. By then they were balls-deep into enemy territory, and the supply line was stretched thin. And after a week's march, well… The French realized just how much their beasts were eating. And how little was left."
The Warden's smile grows wider and, if anything, even more joyless.
"And now there's a few thousand French soldiers with meat on their bones, and a few hundreds of starving garous, stranded together in the middle of a devastated countryside."
He raises his hand to the four scars running the length of his face.
"You know how that story ends, don't you?"
"I've never eaten a human being," Pierre snarls.
"Course you haven't," the Head Warden says. "You're not a wild beast, after all. You've been tamed."
"Stop," Pierre snarls, old battered shoes straining as his toes bulged, "talking. Like I am. An animal."
It hurts Burnham, to be at the back of this - not even caught between, but a bystander trying to reach in. Trying to find a way to calm Pierre down, to convince him that it's pointless, that he'll only get hurt and Burnham doesn't want to see him hurt, all without validating the Warden's barbs, without making it sound like Pierre needs 'taming,' needs to be kept in check.
The weathered guard's eyes glistens with malice, and Burnham realizes with dread that he followed the exact same train of thought.
"Why not? Why do you think I let you run around with your English boy as two dedicated inverts, in the eyes of all? Because I'm that broad-minded? No. I just know a dog needs someone to keep him on a leash."
"Enough," Pierre speaks, and there's little human in that voice; jaws push through the skin of his cheeks, tearing them apart, and each word's breath has to pass through rows of teeth. To his horror Burnham hears his elbow pop and sees the arm he's holding stretch in length, "I am not an animal. I work. For every ration. I deserve to eat. I am. A. Man."
"Well ain't you a special boy then," the Head Warden says, and the false smile is gone, the mocking edge has eroded, there's nothing left to his face and his voice but the bitterness of the sea that surrounds them all. "Have you looked around lately?, he asks, waving his arm around the pier, towards the wall. "Do you think anyone's a 'man' here? There's no humanity in Chateau d'If. There's no 'fair.' There's no 'deserve.' None of us will be rewarded for how well we lick the hand that beats us. Not you. Not your bedmate. Not that washed-up Black general, no matter what he might think awaits him. Not even little ol' me."
"I don't," Pierre says, and the skin of his cheeks begins to part, to small to hold the rows and rows of fangs, "Lick."
And Burnham knows by now that words are useless, all he can do is hold on to Pierre's arm as hard as he can even as he slips his free hand under his coat and begins to prace the pattern of a spell, hasty and improvised, anything that can help in the coming moment, when the Warden says, staring into these slathering teeth and snapping limbs, speaking without gloating or sneering, just cold, bitter challenge:
"You've been licking my boot since the day you landed here."
"Pierre, no!" the Englishman screams, not because he expects that to do anything but, stupidly, because his spell isn't ready yet and he somehow expected Pierre to read his mind and wait a second longer. Now he's only holding onto shredded skin. Pierre moves, claws piercing out of his arms, two-thirds human still, a hideous mound of flesh bubbling to the surface. His claws are enough. They sweep the air like a scythe, going for the throat.
The warden grins widely, eyes shining with defiant glee, not even moving to counter, his lips parting for a last burst of laughter.
The Chateau reaches down and says,
Not this one.
The pier erupts like the jaws of a starving beast. The water-beaten sides snap like kindling, the ground underneath Pierre's feet caving in a foot deep, and from the broken stone emerge white curved pillars, sweeping up from the ground and closing in on Pierre within a single frozen heartbeat. Chalky white teeth pierce into his flanks, his thighs, his arms, and he lurches in their grasp, gasping, bleeding. Burnham looks on in horror as his lover's body is pinned between the teeth. For a moment he has a nightmare vision of stony fangs tearing into Pierre like a beast into its prey… But no. They don't move. They hold him, the way a hunting dog catches the bird in its fangs and then holds on to it, never succumbing to hunger, to deliver it unto its master.
The Warden stares, eyes wide at the sight, face struck dumb with surprise. It lasts only a second, then his expressions crumples in base disappointment.
Chains meant for ships that have shunned the fors for years now lash out from the flow, tying Pierre by his ankles, and the stony teeth crumbles. He falls, gasping, to the ground, and the Head Warden motions with his hand; the other wardens fall upon the half-transformed wolf, stunned, confused and shackled, to lay down a savage beating of their wooden sticks. Perhaps Pierre could resist, could tear through them and breaks his chains, if the Chateau hadn't spent years teaching him it's better to roll with the punches and wait for it to be over, and above all if he wasn't so, so hungry. He falls, silent, under the blows.
"Fine," the Head Warden says with a shrug, and turns his face from the scene, walking away without waiting for its end. He knows what is expected of him.
"Toss him in the deep."
The Englishman freezes; his hand opened on the tracing of a mystical pattern, ignored by all, ready to strike from behind falls close; understanding and calculation run through his mind as he understands the enormity of what the man just said.
And he sees himself, the young Burnham, bright and joyful with a spring in his step, dash forward heedless of outcome to make a grand gesture to help the man he loves. And he sees the thing in the deep, squamous and flat-eyed, telling him:
You know what you must do.
Slowly, painfully, horribly Burnham forces himself to relax, to grow still and silent, watching as the shadowless men beat up the man he loves and put chains on his limbs. He turns a knife against his own heart and forces himself to follow the advice Pierre couldn't as they drag him away, towards the depths of the Chateau.
Don't. Wait.
You will need the others.
Chapter 16. Six at Sea
December 6th, 1805
The first ray of sunlight hits the base of the Chateau and you wake up instantly. Your eyes open and your consciousness transitions from sleep to perfect wakefulness in the same second. You inhale sharply and your arteries open up; microparticles of copper, the energizing metal, course through your body igniting every nerve. There is brief pain, the sharp shock of static, then you swing your legs out of the bed and are up and stretching, rolling your joints, flexing every muscle until within a minute you are a perfect well-oiled machine, every muscle thicker and firmer than it was a couple months before.
You face the wall and throw the first punch. Your knuckles hit the rock and it doesn't even hurt anymore. You move into a succession of blows, punches, elbow-strikes, palm-heel strikes, parries, jabs, the wall rumbling with the rolling impacts. Skin and bone clash against plaster and stone, and slowly the wall is losing. Dents and divots where you've hit it a hundred times, cracks beginning to show at the corners, while you barely bruise from this anymore.
You pull back with a grin, satisfied, and crouch to check your stash. The hiding spot wouldn't pass a thorough inspection - you dislodged a stone from the wall and replaced it with a wooden box of the same size painted and plastered to look like part of the wall - but you've not had one of those in a year. Everything is in place: the box contains the bottles and vials full of all your alchemical concoctions made from water, alcohol, strange molds and metal particulates. You pick up each one to check it's not spoiling, take one swallow of the iron brew to keep yourself sharp, then put the stash back.
Then you take your bucket of water and wash yourself,ready for the day ahead.
You emerge into the courtyard and pause to take in the sky. It's so blue. So pure. So rich. There is not a cloud in it, and when you look to the horizon, the rising sun roils with promise. Its light ripples in waves across the sea, painting the deep blue with golden flakes, burning trails of dawn in the current. It rises slowly, languidly, like a great eye opening to behold a world newly offered to it.
Dumas is there, leaning against the wall, his eyes somber.
"You can feel it too, can't you?" he asks.
You raise your arm, feel the wind against your skin. It blows from the Northeast, from the depths of Europe, and yet it is warm and dry.
"Pretty hot for a December," you note.
"I don't think it's the Chateau either," he says grimly. "I think there's a change in the air, and I don't like it."
"We'll need to make our move soon", you say nervously. "We have no idea how things on the mainland have evolved, but the more we wait…"
"I know," he says, "and we will. Soon. Your training is nearly complete."
You wonder if it's true - or for that matter, what 'complete' even means. Certainly you will not in mere months cross the gap of experience between you and Dumas. So what, then, will make you ready in his eyes? How will you know?
"I won't disappoint you," you say.
"That was never in doubt," he says, and then, "hold up."
You look ahead, and see Yuna, her eyes shining with cold fury, her lip twisted in a bitter curl.
"We've got a serious problem," she says, looking between the two of you. You and Dumas exchange a look, then nod, and follow Yuna across the courtyard.
Burnham is sitting in one of the corners of the courtyard still spared the direct glare of sunlight at this early hour, slumped in its shadows, his voice hoarse with sobs. Ming-Wei is sitting next to him, holding his hands in hers and speaking reassuringly.
"...the right thing," she says, gently rubbing the back of his hands with what you feel is a little more than just a soothing touch; her voice has an oddly specific, comforting rhythm to it. It seems like interrupting would be rude, and perhaps uncautious; the three of you stand back, watching the scene. "There was nothing you could have done there and then that would have helped."
"I should have," Burnham says, "I should have thrown myself in front of him. I should have fought the guards. I should have… I'm a coward."
"No you're not," the Chinese girl says, a stern edge in her comforting tone. "What you are, is feeling guilty, because you made a choice that didn't feel good. Are you a child?"
"I-" Burnham starts, his cheek reddening with a hint of anger, and he shakes his head. "You're talking nonsense."
"Burh," Ming-Wei says patiently, a nickname you've heard before and which has never sounded so incogruously comical as in this moment, "tell me exactly what would have happened if you had thrown yourself at the guards to defend Pierre."
"They would have beaten me," Burnham says, in the brave tone of someone who wants to make it clear they don't care about that kind of pain.
"And?" Ming-Wei says insistently, still clasping his hands. After a moment, Burnham deflates.
"And they would have probably thrown me into the dungeon for a few days. So I wouldn't have been there to…"
"So when we came out today," Ming-Wei picks up, "we would just think the two of you had been sent to spend some time in the cells, like happens every so often. We wouldn't know how bad things were until you came back, and by then it might be too late. You recognized that, in that moment, and you made the painful choice to do nothing then, so that you could help later."
"It still hurts," Burnham whispers.
"Doing the right thing often does, but feeling guilty about it won't make Pierre any better off. 'For the searching out and contemplation of wisdom there has been formed through all the foregoing such an eye as may discern the narrow way and straight gait; whence the Lord adds, Enter ye in at the straight gate.' Now will you stop?"
Burnham sighs. "You're merciless. Fine. I'll stop."
"Good," Ming-Wei says, and releases his hand, clasping her hands together.
"...I take it something bad's happened to Petit-Pierre," you note dryly as the Englishman turns to you with a miserable look.
"They threw him in the deep," Yuna says looking grim.
"What," you frown, "in the dungeon? But…"
"No," Dumas says, and his tone is haunted, his eyes full of fearful shadows. "The dungeons below the dungeons. The deep; the oubliette."
Oubliette. French oublier, from the Latin oblivare: the place of forgetting.
"You've told me before," you whisper, "no one ever comes back from the deep dungeons."
"The only times I've seen it happen," Dumas answers in the same tone, "there was nothing human left to the thing that had crawled out of that hell."
"I won't live," Burnham says, his tone a strange mix of desperate and firmly resolved, "knowing he's down there, suffering… God knows what."
"You won't have to," Dumas says calmly. "There's only one choice left to us: we have to move up the timetable and add a new priority to our plan. But we can't talk about this here." He pauses, his expression serious, yet confident, looking at each of you in turn and meeting only with nods just as resolved. "Me meet tonight. You know where."
Your training is nearly complete.
And now it won't get the chance to be.
You have to close the distance yourself. You have to rise to the height of Dumas's expectations without the last of his lessons.
And you will. For Pierre. For Dumas. And for all of you.
You trickle into the practice room that night, one by one.
You're first, followed by Dumas, steps through the night-time fortress easy to retread by now. Yuna arrives not long after; she met up with Ming-Wei and Burnham in a safe spot, then used her power over space to contest the Chateau's twisting geometries and guide them here.
The practice room has changed over the past weeks. It's wider, taller, and its walls have grown paler. There are sky-windows in the ceiling now, letting the sun peer in during the day. It's making itself more obvious, more legible to the sprawling awareness within these walls.
"Things were already getting risky," you say, "but with the five of us all coming here tonight, we won't be able to use that room anymore. By tomorrow guards will be ransacking it."
"By tomorrow it won't matter," Dumas grunts. "We have to act decisively."
The other three sit down with you, the five of you forming a pentagram in the center of the room; between you is a charcoal diagram of the Chateau's floor-plan.
"So what's the plan?" Burnham asks straight away, with more confidence than you're used to from him.
"The only way we're getting Pierre out of the deep dungeons," Dumas says, "is if we go in to pull him out ourselves."
"I thought no one ever made it out?" Yuna asks, and Dumas nods.
"You're right - but everyone who's ever been sent down there has been sent alone, unarmed, unprepared. There's never been a coordinated group making a deliberate entrance with aims of extracting someone."
"Even so," Yuna says, "the moment we're out, we'll be facing the full force of the Chateau and its guards, ready to put us down. We'll have proven ourselves too much of a threat to ignore. They'll break us apart, execute some of us, put the others into the dungeon, and send Pierre back into the deep."
The way she's holding your gaze as she says this is a challenge. You know exactly how she wants you to answer.
And you're all too happy to oblige. Just to think the words, to harness them in your mind, is enough for the glow to shine through your hand, for lilies to bloom in the shadows of the room.
"We're not just breaking Pierre out of the deep. We're breaking out, all of us, from Chateau d'If. By this time tomorrow, we'll all be free, or we'll all be dead."
The sentence hangs heavy in the air, loud enough to drown out any other thought as your co-conspirator absorb it. They knew it was coming. They knew it was what you and Dumas were planning. They knew, even, that it was the only way to approach Pierre's rescue. Still, they take a moment to digest it.
"I'm in," Ming-Wei says first. You look at her. "What? You were going to ask, right?"
"To be honest," Dumas says wryly, "I just assumed everyone was in by default."
"You weren't wrong," Yuna says.
Burnham doesn't even bother assenting: he's leaning down, peering over his shaded spectacles as he scrutinizes the charcoal map. "So what's our plan?" he asks calmly.
"There are three components to this plan," Dumas explains, and as he does he uses the charcoal stick to show movement and key points across the map. "The first part is the simplest and the most straightforward: a coordinated push for the lower levels. I will gather what weapons and tools I can, we will meet up in an agreed-upon place, and we will make a rush for the lower levels.The Wardens never have to keep anyone from getting into the dungeons, so they won't be prepared to stop us in time. We reach the oubliette, and we get in."
"If we're not quick enough," you say, "then we'll have to punch our way through whatever is blocking it, and we're most likely screwed in the second step. So we need to act decisively and without second thought."
"Sounds simple enough enough," Yuna says, "I assume step two is where it gets complicated."
"Once we're inside the deep," Dumas says, nervously brushing his moustache, "we're in largely unknown territory. In the most general sense, we know to expect darkness, sprawling tunnels, and those monsters consigned down there before Pierre. The reality of it will be… different."
"Hell," Ming-Wei whispers.
"...that bad?" Yuna asks, cocking an eyebrow.
The Chinese girl reaches into her outfit, and pulls out a simple wooden rosary, closing her eyes.
"All the blood spilled on these rocks. All the pain. All the death. All the horror. It trickles, you understand? It seeps into the stones. Into the rock below. It pools, down there, at the bottom of the castelo. In its guts, where it digests all it's eaten over a hundred years. It does not abide by the laws of the world we know. Our tragedies. Our sorrows. Our hurts. Seeping down. "
She sighs.
"We all end up there in the end, one way or the other."
There is a long, awkward silence as all of you take this in. You remember the ways the Chateau bends space and matter, even here in its topmost level; how much worse in its greatest depths, crushed by millions of tons of its bloated carcass?
"So," Dumas says finally. "Hell. The less time we spend down there, the better. Vivienne and I will do our best to protect you from whatever comes, but you three must somehow guide us to our friend. You know him better than either of us. I'm counting on you."
Yuna mutters something dark and angry, but doesn't speak up; Burnham just nods.
"I will work with Ming-Wei on some kind of locating magic," he says. "Yuna can make sure we move swiftly through these catacombs."
"And then we're all reunited at the bottom of a dungeon no one's ever managed to escape," Yuna says dryly. "What then?"
"We break out," Dumas says, and there's a glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he says so, "and I mean literally."
Everyone stares at him confused, and he taps the map.
"We cannot come back through the oubliette hatch; the Wardens will be waiting for us there. Instead I've identified three points where the walls and ceilings of the deep dungeon are likely to be at their weakest. We will breach them. This is why it's vital that we don't get bogged down on the first step and don't get worn down by fighting guards or monsters, because this is where we'll need all our strength."
"Even so," you note, "we're unlikely to reach the walls hale and fresh. We'll need Pierre's strength to make this work."
"Assuming this works," Yuna says, "we're still back up top, on the island."
"The solution lies in where each of the three spots I've outlined take us," Dumas explains. "First are the deep storage rooms - we can either come up in the gunpowder storage room, or in the relic storage room, and make use of whatever we find there. Alternatively… We breach the outer walls of the deep. The one's that lead straight into the sea."
"Yuna doesn't know how to swim," Ming-Wei notes casually.
"Hey!"
"What?" Ming-Wei says with a shrug. "You don't."
"Well yeah, I grew up in the city, not in some Chinese port - never mind that, it would be a terrible plan even if we all knew how to swim!"
You're only half-paying attention to them; you're focused on Burnham, who has barely looked at anyone all conversation, and who is scanning the map and Dumas's annotations with extreme intent.
"I can make all of these work," he says.
Yuna gives him a look. "You can?"
"I was British Navy," he says, "as much as the job didn't suit my temperament; and I am a Royal Scholar by formation and an envoy to the fae by trade. Whether it's rigging the gunpowders magazines to blow a hole in the wall, unleashing havoc from these relics we took off that boat returning from Egypt, or reaching out to the Kindly Ones to breach the underwater walls of the deep, I can do it. You just have to get me in the right position. From there, we steal a ship, my friends give us a ride, hell, we swim if need to."
"Well," Dumas says, seeming genuinely impressed (and to be quite honest, so are you), "well well well."
The silence comes back, as all of you sit still, eyes on the map, processing this conversation until Yuna, pushing a lock of black hair out of her face in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture, mutters:
"Madona's tits. We're really doing this."
"Please do not swear with the name of the Virgin," Ming-Wei mutters back distractedly.
"I only wish we'd had more time," Dumas says with a sigh. "Tomorrow is…"
"I did not think it would ever happen," Burnham says, flatly, drawing all eyes. "I thought we would simply daydream and talk about our inevitable escape for years on end, and we'd all die in this prison, as old as we could manage."
It feels as bitter to you to hear these words as it clearly does for Dumas, judging by his flinch; without thinking you reach over to touch his arm comfortingly.
Burnham looks up from the map, staring at you from behind his dark glasses.
"Sorry."
"You might very well have been right," you say softly, reminiscing to a dozen pointless letters sent across the sea, "once. Before… Certain things happened."
"What about the other inmates?" Ming-Wei says, a crease of concern over her eyes.
You blink. "What about them?"
"Many of them are just as unjustly imprisoned as we are," she explains.
"I would like to help them," Dumas says, "but we can't afford to think about them, or to warn them, or to do anything that could endanger our chances to save Pierre and escape. We'll have to be content with providing them an opportunity to make their own move."
"You have to be aware," Yuna says matter-of-factly, "that we risk killing some of them in the chaos that will cover our own escape, even if by accident."
Dumas gives no answer, but it's clear from his expression he's all too aware of that fact.
"So," Yuna says, rubbing her forehead, "tomorrow. Where do we start?"
"We need to reach the oubliette as quickly and with as little trouble as possible," you begin, "so…"
[ ] "We sneak in under the cover of night." Just do to reach the oubliette what you did to gather in this room, each of you breaking out of their own cell then making their way down individually until you can meet up, trusting in stealth and the Chateau's inability to watch all of itself.
[ ] "We start another riot." This time it won't be aimless and directionless, it will serve as the big distraction to draw all the guards to the courtyard and hide a coordinate push to the dungeons. Give the Chateau a hundred things to be more worried about than you.
[ ] "We break out of the higher dungeons." The Wardens will expect you to be causing trouble over the fate of your friend; use that. Make them send you for a time-out in the usual cells, from which the strongest of you can break everyone out and find yourself right next to your target.
The Englishman wears his uniform as best as he can, almost obsessive in the care he takes of the red coat, stripped of its insignias of rank but still allowed to be worn plain by the uncaring Wardens. It sits awkwardly on his shoulder, cut for a time when he had the jovial belly of an academic of some means. He's growing thinner by the year, and it's not making him look any healthier, quite the opposite. He pulls the coat tighter, hiding in its fold and it the dark spectacles concealing his circled eyes. His skin is damp and tinged with gray - to the unfamiliar eye it makes him look even sicklier; only those who know him understand that it is a sign he is Touched and his power remains. He is tired and hungry, but his soul is strong.
The Cajun man seems healthier, but it's a trick of physique. He's so tall, lanky but with obvious lean muscles and such a casual air, that he seems in the fullness of his strength. His red hair is perhaps a little faded, the fuzz covering his chest and arms a little closer to a dirty blond, but that could just be the sun. He's hunched over as he walks, yes, but so are many tall men by habit. It's only the Englishman who sees how he stops in his walks more often. How his attention sometimes drifts off during conversation, focused inwards, on some rising need. How sometimes he starts breathing harshly, his eyes unfocused, his lips parting on long white teeth.
So Burnham soothes him by speaking.
"I hope I get to show it to you one day," he says in English, continuing from a conversation that's been going on in broken fits since they woke up to work the docks early before dawn. He's doing his best to carry the unwieldy wooden box across the pier, a man of meager strength before deprivation started wearing down his body.
"You sure you don't want me to take that for you?" says the tall ginger, a similar box slung across his shoulders. He makes it look so easy, but he should be easily able to carry two of them, and today he's decided to limit himself.
"I intend to earn my double ration, thank you very much," Burnham says, putting enough defiance in his voice to allow the comforting presence that he's only refusing out of stubborn pride. He hears in the voice of his companion an uncharacteristic frailty, like a thin crack in a glass cup, and he does not intend to put further burden on Pierre's shoulders.
"Suit yourself," Pierre says. "So what about these shires?"
"Well, where to start - so much has been written about their bucolic beauty and dangerous allure.. I am party to certain pacts, you know, which ensure that I may tread there unmolested?" There has been so few opportunities to talk to any of the Other Folk here, so many years deprived of their gracious company and dangerous games. "I could take you where few men have gone before…"
"That sounds nice," Pierre says, "I miss a good spot of nature. What I wouldn't give to just… One night hunting deer… God, that would."
Then he falters; gasps; Burnham moves instinctively to support him but the damned box gets in the way and he himself trips over as Pierre stumbles, the box on his shoulder slamming to the ground, spilling its contents, ordinary naval supplies.
"Darling, are you alright?" Burnham asks, finally wrapping a hand around his lover's shoulder.
This is what he feared. Even as he insisted on giving Pierre a portion of his own rations. Even as the Chevalier girl shared with them her bounty of stolen jerky. That was enough to keep going, for a while, but not forever.
"It's fine," Pierre says, touching his hand to Burnham's, "I'll be alright."
And even as he says it Burnham knows it's a lie. The wounded wolf has shown weakness.
A shadow falls on top of them.
The Head Warden is there, a shadow in the dawn. Stretched thin by sunrise, washed out by sun's glare. He's not standing with his arms akimbo, chest puffed up like an animal in a threat display. He's just standing there, like a candle's flickering flame, staring. It's only the handful of Wardens fanned out behind him, worn and faded like old haunts, that make him seem anchored in reality. His one good eye sweeps the pier; all the other working inmates have cleared as much distance as they could. There's just Pierre, Burnham, and the spilled crate.
"Damaging the goods, hm?" the Head Warden says coldly, then in a matter-of-fact tone: "We'll take that out of your rations."
"You can't be serious," Burnham says, "he's obviously sick! He needs help, not further punishment!"
There's a silence; Pierre says nothing, glaring up at the Warden without making a motion to stand up. Waiting.
"He's not sick," the Head Warden says. "Are you, dog?"
He says the word casually; but a flash of anger passes over Pierre's face, quickly and forcefully repressed, but not soon enough to spark a glimmer of interest in the man's eye.
"I'm not," Pierre says, and when Burnham opens his mouth to says something he raises a hand to silence him; there is sweat dotting his creased brow, lips curled, a red light in his eye. "I'm hungry. Because you have been cutting my rations."
"Don't flatter yourself, dog," the man spits, and Pierre's shoulders twitch. "I've been cutting everyone's rations, mine included. It's Winter and the Empire's at war. There's not enough to go around, and you're still getting double rations compared to everyone else."
"You know," Pierre says standing up, his hand laid on Burnham's chest and slowly but firmly pushing his lover behind him, out of the sight and attention of the Head Warden, "that it's not enough. That I need more. I give you good work for it. I labor tirelessly. I never complain."
He's easily got a full foot of height on the Head Warden, and even malnourished clearly outweighs him. But the Warden doesn't show fear or concern. He doesn't even seem to resent having to tilt his head, looking up into these heated red eyes.
"And you're getting double rations because you put in the work," he says flatly. "Slack off, and you're back to the same regimen as everyone else."
Pierre's eyes widen, irises filling up the sclerae; his lips part back, as if slit by a knife, to reveal far more teeth than his mouth should hold. Puffs of steam exhale with his breath.
"I can't live on the same regimen as everyone else," he hisses.
"Don't," Burnham whispers, grabbing Pierre's arm pleadingly. "It won't help. I don't want to see you hurt."
But Pierre isn't listening, and neither is the Warden.
"Hah, so there it is," the Head Warden says, "the beast reveals itself."
And Burnham expects him to be gloating, grinning in contempt, but instead his expression is the darkest Burnham's ever seen it; the man lays a finger on the scars crossing his cheek.
"All these years, wondering why you were so placid, why anger could never raise anything out of you. I should have known to try hunger instead." He pauses then, thoughtful, before adding with false sweetness: "You were a scout, weren't you? Garous're good at that."
"What do you care?" Pierre hisses.
"Did you know there was a time when our generals, in their great genius, thought they could make shock troops out of your kind? Heavy cavalry that wouldn 't need a horse, plowing into terrified infantry and tearing them to shreds. Had to gather hundreds of garous for that. Biggest number ever put in one place."
"So?" Pierre said, the word not an invitation to continue or a genuine request for more information, merely a challenge to tell him why he should care.
But Burnham, who knew exactly what story the Head Warden was telling, who had heard it told with laughter (or, for those who had reason to care more about the reality of the build-up than the moral of the punchline, terror) by British soldiers, felt his stomach turn to a knot.
"They did incredible in their first two battles," the Head Warden said with a cold, mirthless grin. "Tore Prussians and Brits in bits and scattered them across the battlefield. Enemy routed like headless chicken, perfect opportunity to push hard after them. By then they were balls-deep into enemy territory, and the supply line was stretched thin. And after a week's march, well… The French realized just how much their beasts were eating. And how little was left."
The Warden's smile grows wider and, if anything, even more joyless.
"And now there's a few thousand French soldiers with meat on their bones, and a few hundreds of starving garous, stranded together in the middle of a devastated countryside."
He raises his hand to the four scars running the length of his face.
"You know how that story ends, don't you?"
"I've never eaten a human being," Pierre snarls.
"Course you haven't," the Head Warden says. "You're not a wild beast, after all. You've been tamed."
"Stop," Pierre snarls, old battered shoes straining as his toes bulged, "talking. Like I am. An animal."
It hurts Burnham, to be at the back of this - not even caught between, but a bystander trying to reach in. Trying to find a way to calm Pierre down, to convince him that it's pointless, that he'll only get hurt and Burnham doesn't want to see him hurt, all without validating the Warden's barbs, without making it sound like Pierre needs 'taming,' needs to be kept in check.
The weathered guard's eyes glistens with malice, and Burnham realizes with dread that he followed the exact same train of thought.
"Why not? Why do you think I let you run around with your English boy as two dedicated inverts, in the eyes of all? Because I'm that broad-minded? No. I just know a dog needs someone to keep him on a leash."
"Enough," Pierre speaks, and there's little human in that voice; jaws push through the skin of his cheeks, tearing them apart, and each word's breath has to pass through rows of teeth. To his horror Burnham hears his elbow pop and sees the arm he's holding stretch in length, "I am not an animal. I work. For every ration. I deserve to eat. I am. A. Man."
"Well ain't you a special boy then," the Head Warden says, and the false smile is gone, the mocking edge has eroded, there's nothing left to his face and his voice but the bitterness of the sea that surrounds them all. "Have you looked around lately?, he asks, waving his arm around the pier, towards the wall. "Do you think anyone's a 'man' here? There's no humanity in Chateau d'If. There's no 'fair.' There's no 'deserve.' None of us will be rewarded for how well we lick the hand that beats us. Not you. Not your bedmate. Not that washed-up Black general, no matter what he might think awaits him. Not even little ol' me."
"I don't," Pierre says, and the skin of his cheeks begins to part, to small to hold the rows and rows of fangs, "Lick."
And Burnham knows by now that words are useless, all he can do is hold on to Pierre's arm as hard as he can even as he slips his free hand under his coat and begins to prace the pattern of a spell, hasty and improvised, anything that can help in the coming moment, when the Warden says, staring into these slathering teeth and snapping limbs, speaking without gloating or sneering, just cold, bitter challenge:
"You've been licking my boot since the day you landed here."
"Pierre, no!" the Englishman screams, not because he expects that to do anything but, stupidly, because his spell isn't ready yet and he somehow expected Pierre to read his mind and wait a second longer. Now he's only holding onto shredded skin. Pierre moves, claws piercing out of his arms, two-thirds human still, a hideous mound of flesh bubbling to the surface. His claws are enough. They sweep the air like a scythe, going for the throat.
The warden grins widely, eyes shining with defiant glee, not even moving to counter, his lips parting for a last burst of laughter.
The Chateau reaches down and says,
Not this one.
The pier erupts like the jaws of a starving beast. The water-beaten sides snap like kindling, the ground underneath Pierre's feet caving in a foot deep, and from the broken stone emerge white curved pillars, sweeping up from the ground and closing in on Pierre within a single frozen heartbeat. Chalky white teeth pierce into his flanks, his thighs, his arms, and he lurches in their grasp, gasping, bleeding. Burnham looks on in horror as his lover's body is pinned between the teeth. For a moment he has a nightmare vision of stony fangs tearing into Pierre like a beast into its prey… But no. They don't move. They hold him, the way a hunting dog catches the bird in its fangs and then holds on to it, never succumbing to hunger, to deliver it unto its master.
The Warden stares, eyes wide at the sight, face struck dumb with surprise. It lasts only a second, then his expressions crumples in base disappointment.
Chains meant for ships that have shunned the fors for years now lash out from the flow, tying Pierre by his ankles, and the stony teeth crumbles. He falls, gasping, to the ground, and the Head Warden motions with his hand; the other wardens fall upon the half-transformed wolf, stunned, confused and shackled, to lay down a savage beating of their wooden sticks. Perhaps Pierre could resist, could tear through them and breaks his chains, if the Chateau hadn't spent years teaching him it's better to roll with the punches and wait for it to be over, and above all if he wasn't so, so hungry. He falls, silent, under the blows.
"Fine," the Head Warden says with a shrug, and turns his face from the scene, walking away without waiting for its end. He knows what is expected of him.
"Toss him in the deep."
The Englishman freezes; his hand opened on the tracing of a mystical pattern, ignored by all, ready to strike from behind falls close; understanding and calculation run through his mind as he understands the enormity of what the man just said.
And he sees himself, the young Burnham, bright and joyful with a spring in his step, dash forward heedless of outcome to make a grand gesture to help the man he loves. And he sees the thing in the deep, squamous and flat-eyed, telling him:
You know what you must do.
Slowly, painfully, horribly Burnham forces himself to relax, to grow still and silent, watching as the shadowless men beat up the man he loves and put chains on his limbs. He turns a knife against his own heart and forces himself to follow the advice Pierre couldn't as they drag him away, towards the depths of the Chateau.
Don't. Wait.
You will need the others.
Chapter 16. Six at Sea
December 6th, 1805
The first ray of sunlight hits the base of the Chateau and you wake up instantly. Your eyes open and your consciousness transitions from sleep to perfect wakefulness in the same second. You inhale sharply and your arteries open up; microparticles of copper, the energizing metal, course through your body igniting every nerve. There is brief pain, the sharp shock of static, then you swing your legs out of the bed and are up and stretching, rolling your joints, flexing every muscle until within a minute you are a perfect well-oiled machine, every muscle thicker and firmer than it was a couple months before.
You face the wall and throw the first punch. Your knuckles hit the rock and it doesn't even hurt anymore. You move into a succession of blows, punches, elbow-strikes, palm-heel strikes, parries, jabs, the wall rumbling with the rolling impacts. Skin and bone clash against plaster and stone, and slowly the wall is losing. Dents and divots where you've hit it a hundred times, cracks beginning to show at the corners, while you barely bruise from this anymore.
You pull back with a grin, satisfied, and crouch to check your stash. The hiding spot wouldn't pass a thorough inspection - you dislodged a stone from the wall and replaced it with a wooden box of the same size painted and plastered to look like part of the wall - but you've not had one of those in a year. Everything is in place: the box contains the bottles and vials full of all your alchemical concoctions made from water, alcohol, strange molds and metal particulates. You pick up each one to check it's not spoiling, take one swallow of the iron brew to keep yourself sharp, then put the stash back.
Then you take your bucket of water and wash yourself,ready for the day ahead.
***
You emerge into the courtyard and pause to take in the sky. It's so blue. So pure. So rich. There is not a cloud in it, and when you look to the horizon, the rising sun roils with promise. Its light ripples in waves across the sea, painting the deep blue with golden flakes, burning trails of dawn in the current. It rises slowly, languidly, like a great eye opening to behold a world newly offered to it.
Dumas is there, leaning against the wall, his eyes somber.
"You can feel it too, can't you?" he asks.
You raise your arm, feel the wind against your skin. It blows from the Northeast, from the depths of Europe, and yet it is warm and dry.
"Pretty hot for a December," you note.
"I don't think it's the Chateau either," he says grimly. "I think there's a change in the air, and I don't like it."
"We'll need to make our move soon", you say nervously. "We have no idea how things on the mainland have evolved, but the more we wait…"
"I know," he says, "and we will. Soon. Your training is nearly complete."
You wonder if it's true - or for that matter, what 'complete' even means. Certainly you will not in mere months cross the gap of experience between you and Dumas. So what, then, will make you ready in his eyes? How will you know?
"I won't disappoint you," you say.
"That was never in doubt," he says, and then, "hold up."
You look ahead, and see Yuna, her eyes shining with cold fury, her lip twisted in a bitter curl.
"We've got a serious problem," she says, looking between the two of you. You and Dumas exchange a look, then nod, and follow Yuna across the courtyard.
Burnham is sitting in one of the corners of the courtyard still spared the direct glare of sunlight at this early hour, slumped in its shadows, his voice hoarse with sobs. Ming-Wei is sitting next to him, holding his hands in hers and speaking reassuringly.
"...the right thing," she says, gently rubbing the back of his hands with what you feel is a little more than just a soothing touch; her voice has an oddly specific, comforting rhythm to it. It seems like interrupting would be rude, and perhaps uncautious; the three of you stand back, watching the scene. "There was nothing you could have done there and then that would have helped."
"I should have," Burnham says, "I should have thrown myself in front of him. I should have fought the guards. I should have… I'm a coward."
"No you're not," the Chinese girl says, a stern edge in her comforting tone. "What you are, is feeling guilty, because you made a choice that didn't feel good. Are you a child?"
"I-" Burnham starts, his cheek reddening with a hint of anger, and he shakes his head. "You're talking nonsense."
"Burh," Ming-Wei says patiently, a nickname you've heard before and which has never sounded so incogruously comical as in this moment, "tell me exactly what would have happened if you had thrown yourself at the guards to defend Pierre."
"They would have beaten me," Burnham says, in the brave tone of someone who wants to make it clear they don't care about that kind of pain.
"And?" Ming-Wei says insistently, still clasping his hands. After a moment, Burnham deflates.
"And they would have probably thrown me into the dungeon for a few days. So I wouldn't have been there to…"
"So when we came out today," Ming-Wei picks up, "we would just think the two of you had been sent to spend some time in the cells, like happens every so often. We wouldn't know how bad things were until you came back, and by then it might be too late. You recognized that, in that moment, and you made the painful choice to do nothing then, so that you could help later."
"It still hurts," Burnham whispers.
"Doing the right thing often does, but feeling guilty about it won't make Pierre any better off. 'For the searching out and contemplation of wisdom there has been formed through all the foregoing such an eye as may discern the narrow way and straight gait; whence the Lord adds, Enter ye in at the straight gate.' Now will you stop?"
Burnham sighs. "You're merciless. Fine. I'll stop."
"Good," Ming-Wei says, and releases his hand, clasping her hands together.
"...I take it something bad's happened to Petit-Pierre," you note dryly as the Englishman turns to you with a miserable look.
"They threw him in the deep," Yuna says looking grim.
"What," you frown, "in the dungeon? But…"
"No," Dumas says, and his tone is haunted, his eyes full of fearful shadows. "The dungeons below the dungeons. The deep; the oubliette."
Oubliette. French oublier, from the Latin oblivare: the place of forgetting.
"You've told me before," you whisper, "no one ever comes back from the deep dungeons."
"The only times I've seen it happen," Dumas answers in the same tone, "there was nothing human left to the thing that had crawled out of that hell."
"I won't live," Burnham says, his tone a strange mix of desperate and firmly resolved, "knowing he's down there, suffering… God knows what."
"You won't have to," Dumas says calmly. "There's only one choice left to us: we have to move up the timetable and add a new priority to our plan. But we can't talk about this here." He pauses, his expression serious, yet confident, looking at each of you in turn and meeting only with nods just as resolved. "Me meet tonight. You know where."
Your training is nearly complete.
And now it won't get the chance to be.
You have to close the distance yourself. You have to rise to the height of Dumas's expectations without the last of his lessons.
And you will. For Pierre. For Dumas. And for all of you.
***
You trickle into the practice room that night, one by one.
You're first, followed by Dumas, steps through the night-time fortress easy to retread by now. Yuna arrives not long after; she met up with Ming-Wei and Burnham in a safe spot, then used her power over space to contest the Chateau's twisting geometries and guide them here.
The practice room has changed over the past weeks. It's wider, taller, and its walls have grown paler. There are sky-windows in the ceiling now, letting the sun peer in during the day. It's making itself more obvious, more legible to the sprawling awareness within these walls.
"Things were already getting risky," you say, "but with the five of us all coming here tonight, we won't be able to use that room anymore. By tomorrow guards will be ransacking it."
"By tomorrow it won't matter," Dumas grunts. "We have to act decisively."
The other three sit down with you, the five of you forming a pentagram in the center of the room; between you is a charcoal diagram of the Chateau's floor-plan.
"So what's the plan?" Burnham asks straight away, with more confidence than you're used to from him.
"The only way we're getting Pierre out of the deep dungeons," Dumas says, "is if we go in to pull him out ourselves."
"I thought no one ever made it out?" Yuna asks, and Dumas nods.
"You're right - but everyone who's ever been sent down there has been sent alone, unarmed, unprepared. There's never been a coordinated group making a deliberate entrance with aims of extracting someone."
"Even so," Yuna says, "the moment we're out, we'll be facing the full force of the Chateau and its guards, ready to put us down. We'll have proven ourselves too much of a threat to ignore. They'll break us apart, execute some of us, put the others into the dungeon, and send Pierre back into the deep."
The way she's holding your gaze as she says this is a challenge. You know exactly how she wants you to answer.
And you're all too happy to oblige. Just to think the words, to harness them in your mind, is enough for the glow to shine through your hand, for lilies to bloom in the shadows of the room.
"We're not just breaking Pierre out of the deep. We're breaking out, all of us, from Chateau d'If. By this time tomorrow, we'll all be free, or we'll all be dead."
The sentence hangs heavy in the air, loud enough to drown out any other thought as your co-conspirator absorb it. They knew it was coming. They knew it was what you and Dumas were planning. They knew, even, that it was the only way to approach Pierre's rescue. Still, they take a moment to digest it.
"I'm in," Ming-Wei says first. You look at her. "What? You were going to ask, right?"
"To be honest," Dumas says wryly, "I just assumed everyone was in by default."
"You weren't wrong," Yuna says.
Burnham doesn't even bother assenting: he's leaning down, peering over his shaded spectacles as he scrutinizes the charcoal map. "So what's our plan?" he asks calmly.
"There are three components to this plan," Dumas explains, and as he does he uses the charcoal stick to show movement and key points across the map. "The first part is the simplest and the most straightforward: a coordinated push for the lower levels. I will gather what weapons and tools I can, we will meet up in an agreed-upon place, and we will make a rush for the lower levels.The Wardens never have to keep anyone from getting into the dungeons, so they won't be prepared to stop us in time. We reach the oubliette, and we get in."
"If we're not quick enough," you say, "then we'll have to punch our way through whatever is blocking it, and we're most likely screwed in the second step. So we need to act decisively and without second thought."
"Sounds simple enough enough," Yuna says, "I assume step two is where it gets complicated."
"Once we're inside the deep," Dumas says, nervously brushing his moustache, "we're in largely unknown territory. In the most general sense, we know to expect darkness, sprawling tunnels, and those monsters consigned down there before Pierre. The reality of it will be… different."
"Hell," Ming-Wei whispers.
"...that bad?" Yuna asks, cocking an eyebrow.
The Chinese girl reaches into her outfit, and pulls out a simple wooden rosary, closing her eyes.
"All the blood spilled on these rocks. All the pain. All the death. All the horror. It trickles, you understand? It seeps into the stones. Into the rock below. It pools, down there, at the bottom of the castelo. In its guts, where it digests all it's eaten over a hundred years. It does not abide by the laws of the world we know. Our tragedies. Our sorrows. Our hurts. Seeping down. "
She sighs.
"We all end up there in the end, one way or the other."
There is a long, awkward silence as all of you take this in. You remember the ways the Chateau bends space and matter, even here in its topmost level; how much worse in its greatest depths, crushed by millions of tons of its bloated carcass?
"So," Dumas says finally. "Hell. The less time we spend down there, the better. Vivienne and I will do our best to protect you from whatever comes, but you three must somehow guide us to our friend. You know him better than either of us. I'm counting on you."
Yuna mutters something dark and angry, but doesn't speak up; Burnham just nods.
"I will work with Ming-Wei on some kind of locating magic," he says. "Yuna can make sure we move swiftly through these catacombs."
"And then we're all reunited at the bottom of a dungeon no one's ever managed to escape," Yuna says dryly. "What then?"
"We break out," Dumas says, and there's a glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he says so, "and I mean literally."
Everyone stares at him confused, and he taps the map.
"We cannot come back through the oubliette hatch; the Wardens will be waiting for us there. Instead I've identified three points where the walls and ceilings of the deep dungeon are likely to be at their weakest. We will breach them. This is why it's vital that we don't get bogged down on the first step and don't get worn down by fighting guards or monsters, because this is where we'll need all our strength."
"Even so," you note, "we're unlikely to reach the walls hale and fresh. We'll need Pierre's strength to make this work."
"Assuming this works," Yuna says, "we're still back up top, on the island."
"The solution lies in where each of the three spots I've outlined take us," Dumas explains. "First are the deep storage rooms - we can either come up in the gunpowder storage room, or in the relic storage room, and make use of whatever we find there. Alternatively… We breach the outer walls of the deep. The one's that lead straight into the sea."
"Yuna doesn't know how to swim," Ming-Wei notes casually.
"Hey!"
"What?" Ming-Wei says with a shrug. "You don't."
"Well yeah, I grew up in the city, not in some Chinese port - never mind that, it would be a terrible plan even if we all knew how to swim!"
You're only half-paying attention to them; you're focused on Burnham, who has barely looked at anyone all conversation, and who is scanning the map and Dumas's annotations with extreme intent.
"I can make all of these work," he says.
Yuna gives him a look. "You can?"
"I was British Navy," he says, "as much as the job didn't suit my temperament; and I am a Royal Scholar by formation and an envoy to the fae by trade. Whether it's rigging the gunpowders magazines to blow a hole in the wall, unleashing havoc from these relics we took off that boat returning from Egypt, or reaching out to the Kindly Ones to breach the underwater walls of the deep, I can do it. You just have to get me in the right position. From there, we steal a ship, my friends give us a ride, hell, we swim if need to."
"Well," Dumas says, seeming genuinely impressed (and to be quite honest, so are you), "well well well."
The silence comes back, as all of you sit still, eyes on the map, processing this conversation until Yuna, pushing a lock of black hair out of her face in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture, mutters:
"Madona's tits. We're really doing this."
"Please do not swear with the name of the Virgin," Ming-Wei mutters back distractedly.
"I only wish we'd had more time," Dumas says with a sigh. "Tomorrow is…"
"I did not think it would ever happen," Burnham says, flatly, drawing all eyes. "I thought we would simply daydream and talk about our inevitable escape for years on end, and we'd all die in this prison, as old as we could manage."
It feels as bitter to you to hear these words as it clearly does for Dumas, judging by his flinch; without thinking you reach over to touch his arm comfortingly.
Burnham looks up from the map, staring at you from behind his dark glasses.
"Sorry."
"You might very well have been right," you say softly, reminiscing to a dozen pointless letters sent across the sea, "once. Before… Certain things happened."
"What about the other inmates?" Ming-Wei says, a crease of concern over her eyes.
You blink. "What about them?"
"Many of them are just as unjustly imprisoned as we are," she explains.
"I would like to help them," Dumas says, "but we can't afford to think about them, or to warn them, or to do anything that could endanger our chances to save Pierre and escape. We'll have to be content with providing them an opportunity to make their own move."
"You have to be aware," Yuna says matter-of-factly, "that we risk killing some of them in the chaos that will cover our own escape, even if by accident."
Dumas gives no answer, but it's clear from his expression he's all too aware of that fact.
"So," Yuna says, rubbing her forehead, "tomorrow. Where do we start?"
"We need to reach the oubliette as quickly and with as little trouble as possible," you begin, "so…"
[ ] "We sneak in under the cover of night." Just do to reach the oubliette what you did to gather in this room, each of you breaking out of their own cell then making their way down individually until you can meet up, trusting in stealth and the Chateau's inability to watch all of itself.
[ ] "We start another riot." This time it won't be aimless and directionless, it will serve as the big distraction to draw all the guards to the courtyard and hide a coordinate push to the dungeons. Give the Chateau a hundred things to be more worried about than you.
[ ] "We break out of the higher dungeons." The Wardens will expect you to be causing trouble over the fate of your friend; use that. Make them send you for a time-out in the usual cells, from which the strongest of you can break everyone out and find yourself right next to your target.
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- Location
- PA
...
[X] "We start another riot." This time it won't be aimless and directionless, it will serve as the big distraction to draw all the guards to the courtyard and hide a coordinate push to the dungeons. Give the Chateau a hundred things to be more worried about than you.
This thing needs to be broken. Ensure the beast starves even if the escape fails. And if it rises from it's place in the sea to threaten all of France or worse then Humanity can do what it should have done to this horrible monster in the first place.
[X] "We start another riot." This time it won't be aimless and directionless, it will serve as the big distraction to draw all the guards to the courtyard and hide a coordinate push to the dungeons. Give the Chateau a hundred things to be more worried about than you.
This thing needs to be broken. Ensure the beast starves even if the escape fails. And if it rises from it's place in the sea to threaten all of France or worse then Humanity can do what it should have done to this horrible monster in the first place.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] "We sneak in under the cover of night." Just do to reach the oubliette what you did to gather in this room, each of you breaking out of their own cell then making their way down individually until you can meet up, trusting in stealth and the Chateau's inability to watch all of itself.
The riot plan feels too much like sacrificing the other inmates for our own gain, whereas the plan to break out of the higher dungeons seems like a quick way to wear ourselves out and expend needed resources far too early. This, however, seems to be relying on vulnerabilities of the Chateau that we've already ferreted out and learned to exploit.
The riot plan feels too much like sacrificing the other inmates for our own gain, whereas the plan to break out of the higher dungeons seems like a quick way to wear ourselves out and expend needed resources far too early. This, however, seems to be relying on vulnerabilities of the Chateau that we've already ferreted out and learned to exploit.
[X] "We start another riot." This time it won't be aimless and directionless, it will serve as the big distraction to draw all the guards to the courtyard and hide a coordinate push to the dungeons. Give the Chateau a hundred things to be more worried about than you.
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] "We sneak in under the cover of night." Just do to reach the oubliette what you did to gather in this room, each of you breaking out of their own cell then making their way down individually until you can meet up, trusting in stealth and the Chateau's inability to watch all of itself.
[X] "We sneak in under the cover of night." Just do to reach the oubliette what you did to gather in this room, each of you breaking out of their own cell then making their way down individually until you can meet up, trusting in stealth and the Chateau's inability to watch all of itself.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] "We break out of the higher dungeons." The Wardens will expect you to be causing trouble over the fate of your friend; use that. Make them send you for a time-out in the usual cells, from which the strongest of you can break everyone out and find yourself right next to your target.
- Location
- Canada
This is the only one I don't like. If we would like for other prisoners to be able to use our escape as an opportunity to make their own prison break, we can't let them all be exhausted, injured, or held in isolation because we needed a distraction at the start.
A bit of extra risk for us now makes for a more dramatic uprising later.
Breaking out of the dungeons just to go for the deeper dungeons would be fastest, and leave the Chateau the least possible amount of time to react in a meaningful way. Stealth sounds good too, but slower, especially if someone gets held up... and we really don't know what is happening to Pierre down there. Time may be of the essence.
[X] "We break out of the higher dungeons." The Wardens will expect you to be causing trouble over the fate of your friend; use that. Make them send you for a time-out in the usual cells, from which the strongest of you can break everyone out and find yourself right next to your target.
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
[X] "We start another riot." This time it won't be aimless and directionless, it will serve as the big distraction to draw all the guards to the courtyard and hide a coordinate push to the dungeons. Give the Chateau a hundred things to be more worried about than you.
DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
[X] "We start another riot." This time it won't be aimless and directionless, it will serve as the big distraction to draw all the guards to the courtyard and hide a coordinate push to the dungeons. Give the Chateau a hundred things to be more worried about than you.
- Location
- Spain
[X] "We sneak in under the cover of night." Just do to reach the oubliette what you did to gather in this room, each of you breaking out of their own cell then making their way down individually until you can meet up, trusting in stealth and the Chateau's inability to watch all of itself.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Hm. Three bad choices.
The prison riot throws the other inmates to the wolves and counts on the Warden and Chateau not noting our absence from it, which requires them to be foolish. Possible... but I dont like assuming that either.
Sneaking requires that this night not have already blown our cover, which seems unlikely. Vivienne and Dumas are treating it as a given already that the five of us meeting here tonight will tip off the chateau that we've been sneaking around at night.
Breaking out of cells is... likely to actually work as a plan, but burns resources we are going to want down below.
I'll need to think on this one.
The prison riot throws the other inmates to the wolves and counts on the Warden and Chateau not noting our absence from it, which requires them to be foolish. Possible... but I dont like assuming that either.
Sneaking requires that this night not have already blown our cover, which seems unlikely. Vivienne and Dumas are treating it as a given already that the five of us meeting here tonight will tip off the chateau that we've been sneaking around at night.
Breaking out of cells is... likely to actually work as a plan, but burns resources we are going to want down below.
I'll need to think on this one.