Against the night sky, a common raven swept through the the air, wings outstretched, eyes alert...
Familiar (Magical Girl Genre, Serial Short Stories)
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Against the night sky, a common raven swept through the the air, wings outstretched, eyes alert, riding thermals at top speed.
Below, the Eternal City was burning.
The grand walls had been deemed impossible to defend, and had been scaled and even breached in places. The streets had fallen soon after, and there the fires had started, though it was impossible to tell if it was a weapon of the attackers or a spiteful act of the defenders. Now, the palace itself was breached, and the end was near.
Even flying high above the city, too high to make out people on the ground, the palace still loomed down on the little bird, the massive pennants of its tower fluttering impossibly in the breeze. It's marble exterior was unmarked by time or damage, and it's lights were dark.
The raven sped over the palace's outer walls, out over a battle raging. A solid block of ten thousand rebels held, fire pikes leveled, as a line of the High Queen's demons charged heedlessly. The constructs smashed against the weapons, bending and breaking the iron as though it were straw, but by sheer weight of numbers the spearpoints caught and slowed them, allowing the magical fire at their ends to do its work. A few demons evaded the spearwall and came down inside the ranks of the soldiers; with so little magic available to them that they could not even maintain a proper shield, the results were inevitable.
Still, the battle was short lived. The rebels let out a tired cry of victory as the line of demons crumbled, the last of them turning to ash amidst a forest of blades. Not long after, the raven reached the ground, metamorphosing at the last second into the shape of a man, clad in black armour and carrying a short spear.
The man stood out amongst the rebel forces as an adult might among children. Though neither particularly tall nor solidly built, he radiated a sense of power and grace with his every motion. His unblemished armour shone like glass, and a cape billowed behind him with smooth, slow motions. Where he moved, ragged rebel soldiers were quick to give way. The man made his way quickly to a ground of his fellows, clad similarly at the front of the block.
"You took your time." One of them, a tall blond man, muttered, balancing a knife on his finger by the point. "You missed all the fun."
"The south quarter is on fire. Our troops there are in retreat." The newcomer reported wearily. "I needed to organize the evacuation."
The blond man scoffed. "Because of a little fire? A child could walk in flames like that without harm."
"A child with their magic, Zabul, have you already forgotten why we're here?" Another of the armoured figured, a tall, lithe woman with a shaved head, snapped. She turned to the newcomer and extended a hand. "You didn't miss everything, Karas. We still need to get over the inner wall." She gestured at the offending structure with a gauntleted arm. "This was going to be difficult enough with troops at full power, but some of these people have been so drained they're having trouble breathing at this altitude, nevermind fighting and climbing."
The inner wall was the last line of defense against intruders before the throne room, a hundred feet of mirror-smooth marble with no means up or down, save a wooden elevator that rested atop it, controlled manually and entirely from above. Even a Marshal would find scaling the surface challenging, due to the enchantments that prevented damage and made it as slippery as ice.
"We're bringing up ladders and grappling hooks, but if there are any defenders at all it will be a slaughter. A single demon could sweep the wall clear." The woman, Rura, reported with a sigh. "I never thought when I was designing this place I'd need to be storming it at some point."
Karas frowned. "Rura, there doesn't seem to be anyone standing by to defend." He said, pointing to the top of the wall. As if to illustrated his point, a hail of lead and arrows from the attackers below struck the top of the wall, to no response.
"They're probably pretty strapped for energy to put demons together at this point, they might be saving the bulk of their force for the throne room." The blond man said, spinning the knife idly. "Probably just a token force up there. Nothing a Marshal couldn't handle, if they could, say, fly up there."
Without a word, Karas took off in a run, and in a second he was replaced again by the raven, which sailed up the wall effortlessly before reverting back to human shape atop it. He was greeted there by empty battlements and an open door leading deeper into the palace.
Nervously, Karas drew his spear, the weapon whistling in the air as he moved it in slow arcs around him. He fired off a blast of sparks from his hand to indicate the all-clear before moving through the door, spearpoint first.
Not twenty feet down the hall, shrouded by the darkness, stood Marshal Noroi.
Even in this dim-lit hall he was a resplendent figure, head and shoulders taller than Karas, broad-shouldered and trim. He wore no armour and carried no weapons, dressed only in the simple, all-white uniform of the Marshals, with a single black rose adorning the breast pocket. He had been a prince, once, before the High Queen had rendered all such titles meaningless, and he still carried himself as such, as if he were going to inherit the world someday.
He was still, Karas noted with annoyance, extraordinarily handsome.
"My dear Marshal Karas, I've been expecting you." He said, extending his hands in welcome. "Of course they would send the raven first. Wise of them."
"Marshal Noroi. What, do we not even merit your armour? Have you grown that arrogant, or have you finally become embarrassed of it?" Karas spat.
Noroi shrugged dismissively, and his armour flashed into place. A bronze breastplate of sculpted musculature and a helm topped in a comb of horsehair appeared, though no weapon came to his hand.
"Is this more to your tastes?" He said with a smirk.
Karas thrust the spear at Noroi's heart, but he brushed it aside with a gloved hand as one would an insect. The spear lodged a foot deep in the wall and stuck fast, so Karas stepped back, pulling another into existence and holding it defensively. Noroi had barely moved.
"Must we? Such displays ill befit men of our stature." He said, turning away dismissively.. "Come, walk with me. We have much to discuss, and little time."
Karas could hear the grappling lines clattering against the battlements behind him. "That's certainly true, Marshal. You have to know you've lost."
Noroi smiled calmly. "To lose a battle, you have to choose to fight it in the first place." The armour and helm dissolved back into nothingness as he walked.
Karas followed the Marshal cautiously, out into the water gardens. The balcony overlooked the city, with a sheer drop of several hundred feet below. Karas knew the entire balcony could be pulled up and seal into the wall in a siege; the fact it was still open was worrying, though he unable to express the source of his discomfort. Below, the fires spread ever wider in the city, though they were too far removed to hear the sounds of battle. The only sound was the water, flowing off the edge of balcony in twin falls.
They had been here before, in happier times.
Noroi paused, gazing up at the thin crescent of the moon. "You know the High Queen is merciful, Karas. You are not too far gone. With my endorsement, you could resume your place in the Court without issue." He said, calmly. "We could put this all behind us."
Karas didn't know if he should laugh or cry. "Your demons are destroyed, your guards have fled, there is nothing but fleeting time now between you and defeat. The Queen has lost her mind, and soon she will lose her throne. They will kill you, Noroi, and given what you have supported, I don't know if I should stop them."
Noroi sighed sorrowfully. "The way you speak of our Queen… I worry for you. You would have died a farmer's son of one too many winters, were it not for her grace. You and I are bound to her by more than an oath." As he spoke, he pulled the collar of his jacket aside, exposing the still-glowing scar across his heart. "Do you not remember what she did for us, both of us?"
"Do you not realize what she's doing now? Draining the life from our people, Noroi!" Karas cried. He could feel hot tears at the corners of his eyes. "She has brought death back into this world!"
Noroi looked away. "It is for the greater good." He said.
"What good is greater than our people? What project needed their very lives? I hope it was not all wasted on the demons we faced."
Noroi stepped close to Karas, covering a dozen feet in a moment. His hands snapped to Karas', knocking the spear from his hand in a single motion.
"No. Karas, the High Queen has decided that our time in this world is at it's end. She has begun a spell that will take her and her servants into the Realm of Dreams, where we can rule in dignity, beyond the reach of the rebellion."
As if to confirm his words, the sky began to take on a sickly hue, and Karas could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as arcane energy spiked. Noroi learned in close, until he was almost whispering in his ear.
"I wanted to offer you one last chance, before the spell is complete."
Karas would be lying if he said he didn't consider it, in that moment. But after an eternity, he shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry. I won't come with you."
"So be it."
The ground under them started rumbling, and Karas saw the sky above them glow with power. He was about to cry out, a warning or a protest, when Noroi kissed him. "I'm sorry as well, Karas. You don't have a choice." He tapped Karas' chest with a gloved hand. "We are bound to her by more than an oath."
With that, Noroi let him go, stepping back. Karas could already see him fading, could feel the grip of magic in his heart. The sky split open, rain bursting from the clouds as the portal formed, and Karas was pulled off his feet into the water, as if by an invisible tether around his chest. He tried to form a handhold on the ground, punching his fingers inches into the marble, but the force was stronger than he and he could feel the world fading around him. He had nothing to grip to now, and the city seemed miles away now, as though he were high in the air. As if he were flying.
In desperation, he transformed, bursting into the body of the raven. The tension released immediately, and Karas took off, launching himself off the side of the balcony. He pushed himself through the air as fast as he could, riding the thermals of the burning city, and he never looked back.
---
79 BC
Rome
The raven pecked cautiously at a mosaic, pausing every few moments to check his surroundings. If the guards or the owners of the manor saw him, they would chase him off, but the slaves didn't care either way. After a few more cautious pecks, the tile in question fell away, a little sliver of red missing from Horatius' shield. There, just on the other side, a pearl, glowing softly in it's little perch, surrounded by a pattern of gold leaf. The raven took the pearl in it's beak before taking off, just seconds ahead of the angry matriarch of the house swinging a bronze plate at him.
He circled above Rome a few minutes, taking in the sight with his customary despair. Like all cities, it was a pale mockery of the metropolises he could remember, an ugly and haphazard imitation filled with misery and disease. This one was worse than most; the columns were too familiar.
He had made a nest in a prime spot, right in front of one of the local government buildings in a small nook in the wall. The other birds had learned to stay away in fairly short order, though he was now something of a celebrity figure among the local crows. The little perch gave him a perfect place to store his collection, as well as spy on the comings and goings in Roman politics.
He put the pearl next to the rest of his collection, a motley collection of gems, gold engravings and crystals. He wasn't sure what, exactly, he was doing, other than petty sabotage, but it kept him busy. He had a mad plan that, perhaps, if he assembled enough detritus together, he could build a weapon of some kind that would free the world.
A group of Roman Legionnaires marched past, lead by a centurion in a very familiar helmet. The ego on some people.
---
485 AD
Wales
He really wasn't sure how to go about this. It had taken him a couple of hundred years, with some false starts, to gather what he needed, and a hundred years more to actually put it together into a device that would, hopefully, do what he needed it to do. Then decades of stalking potential candidates until he found one he felt he could trust.
He was headstrong, trained in fighting, and young. Hopefully young enough that he could be guided to use the power he was about to be given in a constructive way. Plus he had a kind heart, relatively speaking, and treated everyone he met with respect, which was a rarity on any part of the planet, never mind this savage little island.
Now he just had to get his attention.
"Psth! Hey, kid, over here!"
Truly, a credit to the tactical brilliance of the Marshals.
To his surprise, the kid actually started wandering over. Okay, so maybe he wasn't the brain trust, but beggars can't be choosers.
"Yeah, that's right, behind this tree…"
"Who's there!" The kid yelled, knife out and in prime stabbing position. Okay, maybe not as dumb as he thought.
"Up here, kid. Yeah, the big black bird. Hi."
To his credit, he did pretty good for seeing his first talking animal. "Are you a demon?!?" He stuttered, pointing his knife with a shaking hand.
"Heh, no. Funny story though…"
"What manner of creature are you?"
Good question. "I… am a wizard. I have transformed myself into the shape of a raven to stay hidden."
"A wizard? You wield magic?"
The raven swept its wings open and glared imperiously down at the youth. "I wield magic as a master wields a sword! No creature on earth can rival my power!"
"What do you want of me, wizard?" The youth crawled to his feet, still holding out his knife.
"I wish to bestow upon you great power, boy. For a wizard is many things, but he is not a warrior. I need a brave fighter to battle evil on my behest."
"Evil? Like the Saxons?" The boy said, his face lighting up.
"Uh… No. Think bigger." The raven said.
There was an awkward silence.
"Okay, yes, like the Saxons." The raven said, and the boy let out a little cheer.
"Okay, so, are you going to cast a spell on me? To make me strong?" The boy said, stashing his knife in his belt.
"No, I'm not going to cast a spell on you. I'm going to teach you a spell to cast on yourself. Here, you'll need this." The raven disappeared up the branches of the tree a moment, and came back with a lump of gold and gems, crudely assembled with twine and a little bit of magical welding. "Catch!"
He pushed the lump off the branch, and the boy caught it nimbly, examining it in his open hand. "What manner of trinket is this? It's kind of a disaster."
"Hey, look, it's a prototype, alright? All you have to do is hold it above your head and speak the activation phrase, and the magic will take effect. Before you ask what the activation phrase is, I don't know. Just say the first thing that comes to mind when you think of yourself as a hero."
The boy nodded, thinking hard for a minute. Then it seemed like something dawned on him, all at once. He stuck his hand in the air, the crude bundle held high, and yelled out at the clear blue sky.
"For love and reason, the great contradiction! Transform!"
There was a clap like thunder and a heavy wind that knocked the raven from it's perch, and smoke filled the air. When it cleared, the boy was gone, and in his place a warrior clad in silver maille, a bright red surcoat striped with a white, carrying a sword with a golden hilt and draped in a white cape. Sunlight reflected off the chain like a mirror, casting beams over every surface. The armour fitted to his form like a finely tailored suit, the rings of the chainmail so fine they flexed like silk.
"Wow." The boy said.
"Wow." The raven echoed. "Love and reason, huh?"
The boy nodded. "It just seemed right. Musta been, I mean…" He cast his hands out. "It worked! I can't wait to tell my father!"
Panic struck the raven immediately. "No, no, absolutely not. Your father cannot know about this. Not that he's a bad guy…" Okay, that's a sugarcoat, "... but wizards cannot get involved in the affairs of politics. He would try to get me to help him invade his neighbour, and I'd be forced to turn him into a newt."
"But-"
"Sorry kid, my wings are tied on this one. Wizard rules. Say, that reminds me, you got a name?? I can't keep calling you kid."
"Llwch Llenlleawg!" The boy declared, sticking out a hand.
"Really? Wow, okay, can you… write that down? Gah, nevermind. You're going to need a fake name to fight under, so they can't track back to your dad's fort."
"Who's they?" The boy asked. "The Saxons?"
"Yes, the Saxons. You still need a title I can pronounce."
"Sir Lancelot." The boy said without hesitation.
"Wow, you just had that ready to go, huh."
He stuck out a gauntleted hand, and the raven took the perch.
"What about you, wizard? What can I call you?"
The raven paused a moment. "Mer-lin. Yeah. Merlin the wizard. Let's go with that."
---
1243 AD
France
The raven buzzed through the open window, setting down at the foot of the bed in utter silence. The occupants of the bed were quite unconscious, sleeping off a truly unreasonable amount of alcohol, which made his job quite a bit easier. He slipped in close to the bed, spotting his target hanging from a crook in the woodwork.
A small silver pendant of a sword, hanging on a gold chain. Hardly his flashiest work, but knights these days didn't seem to care much for the intricate designs and gem encrusted look. They all wanted their gear to look tough and intimidating for some reason. More and more, they were bullies, not heroes.
Like this one. Some "Radiant Knight" he turned out to be. The moment he got his power he turn it on his lord and took his castle for himself. He had done his best to run damage control, to at least get him to destroy the demons that held the local king in their sway or perhaps dispose of some of the cursed artifacts in the local church, but the young lords these days had no interest in questing. Hadn't ever since the First Crusade.
As he took the pennant in his beak, he pondered the nature of chivalry. When he had left Arthur and his Knights to set up the next generation, he thought they had a good thing going, barring a few cases of Sir Lancelot putting love before reason. A round table where all sat as equals, teach the lords of the land to be respectful and confront evil wherever they saw it, demons bad, it was pretty straightforward stuff!
He had been glad to learn he wasn't the only one, either. There was a half-dozen other familiars running around Europe, working off his model, but most of them had long decided to lay low a few centuries. He had ran into Rura a few decades back, now stuck in cat form and on the run from the far-off lands of Nippon. She had a similar story to tell about their samurai, and she said she was heading over to the far continents on the other side of the world where, hopefully, things were less screwed up. The raven had almost joined her, but he had put a lot of work into this.
Power corrupts, but one wouldn't think power would corrupt so quickly or so readily. It was getting increasingly obvious with every year that he was being deliberately opposed in some way. Used to be that when you empowered a knight, they'd want to go off to rescue princesses and slay demons. Now, they just talked about power and using it to amass more power. They all spoke of it in the same terms, for the "greater good". It was beginning to remind him rather uncomfortably of someone he knew.
He was almost out the window when his former charge stirred.
"...Merlin… what are you doing?" He muttered, still half-asleep. "That's… that's mine."
"No. This castle is yours, now. Good luck with it." And with that, he took to wing.
The pennant had a sour taste to it, like something was wrong with it. Like it had been poisoned. The raven dropped it in the first stream he could find, and it dissolved there into a long, oily streak that snaked down the river.
He had one talisman left. It was old, and out of fashion now. It was a little necklace with a stylized heart in silver, inlaid with pearls, and he hadn't the heart to show it to anyone in almost two centuries. He was thinking about burying it and fleeing the continent when he saw her.
A peasant girl, coming to the stream with a bucket for water. She stared at him with open curiosity, opening her mouth as if to speak. He noticed the marks on her wrist and the barely healed cut on her face, which spoke poorly of her home life. He had only rarely empowered girls, and not within a couple centuries at least. He needed independent warriors, and every culture he had come across so far did their damndest to ensure that women had nothing to do with either of those concepts. Despite that, the raven was struck by a sudden desire to give her the locket.
Then the desire passed, and the raven took to wing. She was just a human, after all.
---
1823
England
He had taken to nesting out of the cities now; the coal smoke was starting to get to him. Not that he could get sick from it, the dregs of his magic saw to that, but it was uncomfortable and smelled foul. So he spent his days now nesting in countryside manors, in the comfortably hard-to-reach corners and crenulations where the servants couldn't reach him, and he had settled into something resembling retirement.
One of the good things about the countryside was that it was about as far removed from the High Court as you could get, and still be around human beings. Not that he particularly cared for them, but humans made getting human food a lot easier; you just waited until they weren't looking. He was deceptively strong for a bird his size; he had once made off with an entire wine bottle when a butler had been careless at the cellar, which had made for an enjoyable few months as he savoured the drink.
The family whose house he was currently nesting on was as dull and uninteresting as you could find. An old-money couple in a pleasant, if distant marriage, with three children; a teenaged daughter and two young boys. Neither of the parents did anything of importance except inherit a sizable portion of money, so there was no risk of them getting the attention of the High Court. Their lands were beautiful and the climate was nice, and he had found a little crook near the chimney he could sleep in during the winter. He could easily spend a quiet decade here.
So of course it had barely been a year before his magical senses were alerted to something wrong. It coincided with sicknesses in the family and servants, including a bout of fever that had left the daughter bedridden for weeks, capable of little more than sending and reading letters. Then had come the squabbling and fighting, and the malignant magical presence intensified.
Not one to have his retirement ruined, the raven had begun carefully eliminating possibilities, roosting over different parts of the house to compare levels of magical activity and tracking the inhabitants carefully. At first he had suspected a demonic infiltrator among the staff, but his investigation had turned up nothing but upstanding folks, save for a groundskeeper who occasionally sampled the cellar and a maid who slipped letters of her own into the bundles received by the daughter every morning. With that possibility removed, he had started looking for magical devices.
Eventually, he'd determined by process of elimination that it was, in all likelihood, the glass ruby lodged in the headboard of the daughter's bed. Probably some manner of low-level collector, put there by some infiltrator in a furniture factory. It would be a simple matter of getting into the room and prying it loose.
Unfortunately, the windows to the daughter's room were never open unless the daughter was present, so for several weeks he could do little but circle impotently and watch minor disasters start piling up in the house. Finally, he lucked out; an improperly latched window on a chilly October night. He approached with caution, nudging the window open with a wing and peering inside.
The daughter was fast asleep, writing implements still strewn about the bed. The servants had evidently snuck in to place a bed heater under a corner before retreating, which was good, as if the chill snuck it while he was working, it hopefully wouldn't wake her up.
He flitted silently to the top of the four-poster bed and leapt down on the top of the headboard, claws making light clicks against the wood. Leaning over, he took a exploratory peck at the gem. It was in there tight, probably glued with one of those fancy new chemical substances. Perhaps if he wet a cloth and placed it against it, it would weaken the bonds enough to…
His next thoughts were interrupted rather suddenly by the clang of a bed warmer as it collided with his head, sending him in a lazy spiral off the headboard and into a nearby lamp. The impact seemed to shock his assailant as much as it did him, as she immediately dropped the object with a clatter to the carpet and let out a little "meep!" sound.
"Oh god I didn't mean… I mean… shoo! Shoo!" She cried, waving a hand ineffectually.
"If you didn't mean to, why did you swing the blasted thing!" The raven snapped before he could stop himself.
That seemed to stun the girl into silence, and the raven convinced himself that perhaps if he just left right now and flew to some other manor, this whole thing would just blow over. But no sooner had he got himself upright did the questions begin.
"You can talk. You're a talking raven." The girl started. The raven gave a long, exaggerated sigh.
"Yes, I'm a talking raven. No, I'm not a demon, nor was I sent by the devil, and I'm not some kind of fae either. I'm just a raven who talks and would like to be left alone."
The girl took a few seconds to process this. "Why are you in my room?"
"You're taking this better than most, really." The raven said, jumping up onto the bedside table and spreading both wings to check for damage. "I mean, it's actually pretty remarkable. Most people are still in the screaming phase."
"Why are you in my room?" The girl repeated.
The raven jumped up and tapped the gemstone. "Do me a favour and pry this thing out, and you'll never need to know."
The girl looked at him quizzically. "Now why would I do that, Mister Raven?" She appears to have decided that if she's going to talk to a raven, she ought to be polite about it. "I should think that, as you are trespassing, you really ought to explain yourself before you go making demands of others."
The raven gave a noncommittal nod, which looked quite amusing coming as it did from a bird. "That's fair. Alright, that gem is an evil magical talisman, and it's making your family and servants sick. I was trying to rid you of it."
"Don't be foolish. There's no such thing as magic." The girl said with confidence.
"Hullo, talking raven here."
"Oh, quite." She conceded. "So you just get rid of this gemstone, and everything goes back to being proper?"
Again with the anatomically impossible frown. "Well, for you, yes, that ought to be the end of it."
The young woman sat down on her bed, collecting her papers. "For me? Are there other gems out there, in other houses?"
"There are a great many. Probably one in every household, I suspect. Not always gemstones, but similar things." The raven explained. "That's not to mention the creatures that put them there."
"That's terrible. Somebody ought to do something." She said, collecting her papers. "They should launch an investigation. I'll write my uncle about it, he's got the ear of Lord Wellington, you know." Finding herself short some papers, she took up a lamp from the bedside table and lit it, examining around the corners of the bed.
"It's best not to worry about it, dear." The raven replied, before gripping one of the papers and pulling it loose. "My, you sure get quite a lot of letters for a young lady."
The girl snatched the letter from his talon. "That won't do, Mister Raven. One does not look through a women's correspondences. It's not proper."
"Don't worry, I can't read. Eyes can't focus on the letters." The raven replied, grabbing another letter. "It's all just a blur. Raven eyes are better at seeing things from far away."
"Perhaps you should get a small pair of glasses. Go talk to a dollmaker." The girl joked, taking the next letter more graciously. "Thank you."
"Who do you write all these letters to?" The raven asked curiously, fetching an envelope.He noted her hesitation before adding, "There's no danger in indulging me. What am I going to do, go tell somebody?"
"I supposed that's true. I write to the other members of the Young Lady's Letters Club, and we discuss important issues facing women in the 19th century." She said, reciting the information as though she had memorized the pitch. "Issues like voting, marriage, working conditions, and education. We also discuss the works of the three Marys; Wollstonecraft, Hays and Scott." She listed each off on her fingers, one by one. "We also write to men of influence and to periodicals to advance our cause."
"That's a lot of writing." The raven said, fishing a loose piece of stationary out from under the corner of the carpet. "Have you made much progress?"
"We got a letter back from the office of the Prime Minister!" She said excitedly. "We wrote to him to say that women deserve a chance in politics, and we all signed it."
"Oh, what did it say?"
She gave an off-kilter little frown. "That young ladies of our standing shouldn't be thinking about such weighty affairs. Also, the letter smelled like whiskey."
"Huh." The raven intoned.
"I mean, yes, perhaps we were expecting a little much writing to the Prime Minister, but we just want a chance to prove ourselves. Just a chance. Maybe we'll try and we'll fail and that will be that… but I mean, nobody even knows! I just feel that perhaps ladyhood as a whole hasn't been given a fair shot at the whole thing, you know?"
The raven stopped dead. He remembered the peasant girl at the riverbank, and what he had thought that day.
"Miss…?"
"Watts. Emily Watts." She replied, and gave a little curtsy.
"Miss Watts..." the raven said, every word chosen with the utmost care, "...if somebody could hand you a means to prove yourself, to be free of expectation and restriction, what would you do?"
"I should think I would take up that means, grasp it with both hands, and never let it go." She declared.
"Miss Watts, please excuse me for a moment. I have something I have just realized is a gift for you." The raven disappeared out of the window, and a few minutes later came back with a small object clenched in his talons.
It was a small locket, gold, with a silver heart inlaid with pearls, hanging from a fine chain. He laid it in her open hand delicately.
"Miss Watts, take this, lift to into the air and say whatever comes to your mind when you think about your letters. And I recommend you step outside to do so."
The girl nodded, pushing the window open and stepping out onto the small balcony. Looking up at the tiny sliver of moon, she raised the locket to the air.
"For the justice that is wanting in this world!"
---
2015
San Francisco
In a sublet basement under a bookstore, a group of five young women sit around an old television. None of them are really watching; they're fiddling with their phones or chatting quietly. Tomorrow, they're going to break into a bank, destroy a demon disguised as an accountant, and try to bait a Marshal of the Black Rose Order out before he can cause any more harm to their home city. But tonight, they're just teenagers.
One of them, recounting a story of a past mission to a newer girl, makings an exaggerated kicking motion that ends up knocking over a shelf. An irritated squawk sends the offender scrambling to pick up the books and the scattered pile of letters that have yellowed with age.
"Sorry Edgar!" She calls out.
The raven sat content atop a table with a book and a thimble of wine. It turned the page with a practiced flick of a talon, studying each word with care.
On it's beak was perched a tiny pair of reading glasses.
---
This started as a prologue for my Magical Girl game 5 Across the Heart, which is about the intersection of pretty dresses and revolutionary politics, and it quickly got out of hand. It touches on all the major points of the backstory; the fall of the magical empire, magical knights, the twisting of chivalry, and the beginnings of the Magical Girls.
I might write more with Ms. Watts and Mister Raven at some point. I think they've gotta run into Edgar Alan Poe.
Below, the Eternal City was burning.
The grand walls had been deemed impossible to defend, and had been scaled and even breached in places. The streets had fallen soon after, and there the fires had started, though it was impossible to tell if it was a weapon of the attackers or a spiteful act of the defenders. Now, the palace itself was breached, and the end was near.
Even flying high above the city, too high to make out people on the ground, the palace still loomed down on the little bird, the massive pennants of its tower fluttering impossibly in the breeze. It's marble exterior was unmarked by time or damage, and it's lights were dark.
The raven sped over the palace's outer walls, out over a battle raging. A solid block of ten thousand rebels held, fire pikes leveled, as a line of the High Queen's demons charged heedlessly. The constructs smashed against the weapons, bending and breaking the iron as though it were straw, but by sheer weight of numbers the spearpoints caught and slowed them, allowing the magical fire at their ends to do its work. A few demons evaded the spearwall and came down inside the ranks of the soldiers; with so little magic available to them that they could not even maintain a proper shield, the results were inevitable.
Still, the battle was short lived. The rebels let out a tired cry of victory as the line of demons crumbled, the last of them turning to ash amidst a forest of blades. Not long after, the raven reached the ground, metamorphosing at the last second into the shape of a man, clad in black armour and carrying a short spear.
The man stood out amongst the rebel forces as an adult might among children. Though neither particularly tall nor solidly built, he radiated a sense of power and grace with his every motion. His unblemished armour shone like glass, and a cape billowed behind him with smooth, slow motions. Where he moved, ragged rebel soldiers were quick to give way. The man made his way quickly to a ground of his fellows, clad similarly at the front of the block.
"You took your time." One of them, a tall blond man, muttered, balancing a knife on his finger by the point. "You missed all the fun."
"The south quarter is on fire. Our troops there are in retreat." The newcomer reported wearily. "I needed to organize the evacuation."
The blond man scoffed. "Because of a little fire? A child could walk in flames like that without harm."
"A child with their magic, Zabul, have you already forgotten why we're here?" Another of the armoured figured, a tall, lithe woman with a shaved head, snapped. She turned to the newcomer and extended a hand. "You didn't miss everything, Karas. We still need to get over the inner wall." She gestured at the offending structure with a gauntleted arm. "This was going to be difficult enough with troops at full power, but some of these people have been so drained they're having trouble breathing at this altitude, nevermind fighting and climbing."
The inner wall was the last line of defense against intruders before the throne room, a hundred feet of mirror-smooth marble with no means up or down, save a wooden elevator that rested atop it, controlled manually and entirely from above. Even a Marshal would find scaling the surface challenging, due to the enchantments that prevented damage and made it as slippery as ice.
"We're bringing up ladders and grappling hooks, but if there are any defenders at all it will be a slaughter. A single demon could sweep the wall clear." The woman, Rura, reported with a sigh. "I never thought when I was designing this place I'd need to be storming it at some point."
Karas frowned. "Rura, there doesn't seem to be anyone standing by to defend." He said, pointing to the top of the wall. As if to illustrated his point, a hail of lead and arrows from the attackers below struck the top of the wall, to no response.
"They're probably pretty strapped for energy to put demons together at this point, they might be saving the bulk of their force for the throne room." The blond man said, spinning the knife idly. "Probably just a token force up there. Nothing a Marshal couldn't handle, if they could, say, fly up there."
Without a word, Karas took off in a run, and in a second he was replaced again by the raven, which sailed up the wall effortlessly before reverting back to human shape atop it. He was greeted there by empty battlements and an open door leading deeper into the palace.
Nervously, Karas drew his spear, the weapon whistling in the air as he moved it in slow arcs around him. He fired off a blast of sparks from his hand to indicate the all-clear before moving through the door, spearpoint first.
Not twenty feet down the hall, shrouded by the darkness, stood Marshal Noroi.
Even in this dim-lit hall he was a resplendent figure, head and shoulders taller than Karas, broad-shouldered and trim. He wore no armour and carried no weapons, dressed only in the simple, all-white uniform of the Marshals, with a single black rose adorning the breast pocket. He had been a prince, once, before the High Queen had rendered all such titles meaningless, and he still carried himself as such, as if he were going to inherit the world someday.
He was still, Karas noted with annoyance, extraordinarily handsome.
"My dear Marshal Karas, I've been expecting you." He said, extending his hands in welcome. "Of course they would send the raven first. Wise of them."
"Marshal Noroi. What, do we not even merit your armour? Have you grown that arrogant, or have you finally become embarrassed of it?" Karas spat.
Noroi shrugged dismissively, and his armour flashed into place. A bronze breastplate of sculpted musculature and a helm topped in a comb of horsehair appeared, though no weapon came to his hand.
"Is this more to your tastes?" He said with a smirk.
Karas thrust the spear at Noroi's heart, but he brushed it aside with a gloved hand as one would an insect. The spear lodged a foot deep in the wall and stuck fast, so Karas stepped back, pulling another into existence and holding it defensively. Noroi had barely moved.
"Must we? Such displays ill befit men of our stature." He said, turning away dismissively.. "Come, walk with me. We have much to discuss, and little time."
Karas could hear the grappling lines clattering against the battlements behind him. "That's certainly true, Marshal. You have to know you've lost."
Noroi smiled calmly. "To lose a battle, you have to choose to fight it in the first place." The armour and helm dissolved back into nothingness as he walked.
Karas followed the Marshal cautiously, out into the water gardens. The balcony overlooked the city, with a sheer drop of several hundred feet below. Karas knew the entire balcony could be pulled up and seal into the wall in a siege; the fact it was still open was worrying, though he unable to express the source of his discomfort. Below, the fires spread ever wider in the city, though they were too far removed to hear the sounds of battle. The only sound was the water, flowing off the edge of balcony in twin falls.
They had been here before, in happier times.
Noroi paused, gazing up at the thin crescent of the moon. "You know the High Queen is merciful, Karas. You are not too far gone. With my endorsement, you could resume your place in the Court without issue." He said, calmly. "We could put this all behind us."
Karas didn't know if he should laugh or cry. "Your demons are destroyed, your guards have fled, there is nothing but fleeting time now between you and defeat. The Queen has lost her mind, and soon she will lose her throne. They will kill you, Noroi, and given what you have supported, I don't know if I should stop them."
Noroi sighed sorrowfully. "The way you speak of our Queen… I worry for you. You would have died a farmer's son of one too many winters, were it not for her grace. You and I are bound to her by more than an oath." As he spoke, he pulled the collar of his jacket aside, exposing the still-glowing scar across his heart. "Do you not remember what she did for us, both of us?"
"Do you not realize what she's doing now? Draining the life from our people, Noroi!" Karas cried. He could feel hot tears at the corners of his eyes. "She has brought death back into this world!"
Noroi looked away. "It is for the greater good." He said.
"What good is greater than our people? What project needed their very lives? I hope it was not all wasted on the demons we faced."
Noroi stepped close to Karas, covering a dozen feet in a moment. His hands snapped to Karas', knocking the spear from his hand in a single motion.
"No. Karas, the High Queen has decided that our time in this world is at it's end. She has begun a spell that will take her and her servants into the Realm of Dreams, where we can rule in dignity, beyond the reach of the rebellion."
As if to confirm his words, the sky began to take on a sickly hue, and Karas could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as arcane energy spiked. Noroi learned in close, until he was almost whispering in his ear.
"I wanted to offer you one last chance, before the spell is complete."
Karas would be lying if he said he didn't consider it, in that moment. But after an eternity, he shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry. I won't come with you."
"So be it."
The ground under them started rumbling, and Karas saw the sky above them glow with power. He was about to cry out, a warning or a protest, when Noroi kissed him. "I'm sorry as well, Karas. You don't have a choice." He tapped Karas' chest with a gloved hand. "We are bound to her by more than an oath."
With that, Noroi let him go, stepping back. Karas could already see him fading, could feel the grip of magic in his heart. The sky split open, rain bursting from the clouds as the portal formed, and Karas was pulled off his feet into the water, as if by an invisible tether around his chest. He tried to form a handhold on the ground, punching his fingers inches into the marble, but the force was stronger than he and he could feel the world fading around him. He had nothing to grip to now, and the city seemed miles away now, as though he were high in the air. As if he were flying.
In desperation, he transformed, bursting into the body of the raven. The tension released immediately, and Karas took off, launching himself off the side of the balcony. He pushed himself through the air as fast as he could, riding the thermals of the burning city, and he never looked back.
---
79 BC
Rome
The raven pecked cautiously at a mosaic, pausing every few moments to check his surroundings. If the guards or the owners of the manor saw him, they would chase him off, but the slaves didn't care either way. After a few more cautious pecks, the tile in question fell away, a little sliver of red missing from Horatius' shield. There, just on the other side, a pearl, glowing softly in it's little perch, surrounded by a pattern of gold leaf. The raven took the pearl in it's beak before taking off, just seconds ahead of the angry matriarch of the house swinging a bronze plate at him.
He circled above Rome a few minutes, taking in the sight with his customary despair. Like all cities, it was a pale mockery of the metropolises he could remember, an ugly and haphazard imitation filled with misery and disease. This one was worse than most; the columns were too familiar.
He had made a nest in a prime spot, right in front of one of the local government buildings in a small nook in the wall. The other birds had learned to stay away in fairly short order, though he was now something of a celebrity figure among the local crows. The little perch gave him a perfect place to store his collection, as well as spy on the comings and goings in Roman politics.
He put the pearl next to the rest of his collection, a motley collection of gems, gold engravings and crystals. He wasn't sure what, exactly, he was doing, other than petty sabotage, but it kept him busy. He had a mad plan that, perhaps, if he assembled enough detritus together, he could build a weapon of some kind that would free the world.
A group of Roman Legionnaires marched past, lead by a centurion in a very familiar helmet. The ego on some people.
---
485 AD
Wales
He really wasn't sure how to go about this. It had taken him a couple of hundred years, with some false starts, to gather what he needed, and a hundred years more to actually put it together into a device that would, hopefully, do what he needed it to do. Then decades of stalking potential candidates until he found one he felt he could trust.
He was headstrong, trained in fighting, and young. Hopefully young enough that he could be guided to use the power he was about to be given in a constructive way. Plus he had a kind heart, relatively speaking, and treated everyone he met with respect, which was a rarity on any part of the planet, never mind this savage little island.
Now he just had to get his attention.
"Psth! Hey, kid, over here!"
Truly, a credit to the tactical brilliance of the Marshals.
To his surprise, the kid actually started wandering over. Okay, so maybe he wasn't the brain trust, but beggars can't be choosers.
"Yeah, that's right, behind this tree…"
"Who's there!" The kid yelled, knife out and in prime stabbing position. Okay, maybe not as dumb as he thought.
"Up here, kid. Yeah, the big black bird. Hi."
To his credit, he did pretty good for seeing his first talking animal. "Are you a demon?!?" He stuttered, pointing his knife with a shaking hand.
"Heh, no. Funny story though…"
"What manner of creature are you?"
Good question. "I… am a wizard. I have transformed myself into the shape of a raven to stay hidden."
"A wizard? You wield magic?"
The raven swept its wings open and glared imperiously down at the youth. "I wield magic as a master wields a sword! No creature on earth can rival my power!"
"What do you want of me, wizard?" The youth crawled to his feet, still holding out his knife.
"I wish to bestow upon you great power, boy. For a wizard is many things, but he is not a warrior. I need a brave fighter to battle evil on my behest."
"Evil? Like the Saxons?" The boy said, his face lighting up.
"Uh… No. Think bigger." The raven said.
There was an awkward silence.
"Okay, yes, like the Saxons." The raven said, and the boy let out a little cheer.
"Okay, so, are you going to cast a spell on me? To make me strong?" The boy said, stashing his knife in his belt.
"No, I'm not going to cast a spell on you. I'm going to teach you a spell to cast on yourself. Here, you'll need this." The raven disappeared up the branches of the tree a moment, and came back with a lump of gold and gems, crudely assembled with twine and a little bit of magical welding. "Catch!"
He pushed the lump off the branch, and the boy caught it nimbly, examining it in his open hand. "What manner of trinket is this? It's kind of a disaster."
"Hey, look, it's a prototype, alright? All you have to do is hold it above your head and speak the activation phrase, and the magic will take effect. Before you ask what the activation phrase is, I don't know. Just say the first thing that comes to mind when you think of yourself as a hero."
The boy nodded, thinking hard for a minute. Then it seemed like something dawned on him, all at once. He stuck his hand in the air, the crude bundle held high, and yelled out at the clear blue sky.
"For love and reason, the great contradiction! Transform!"
There was a clap like thunder and a heavy wind that knocked the raven from it's perch, and smoke filled the air. When it cleared, the boy was gone, and in his place a warrior clad in silver maille, a bright red surcoat striped with a white, carrying a sword with a golden hilt and draped in a white cape. Sunlight reflected off the chain like a mirror, casting beams over every surface. The armour fitted to his form like a finely tailored suit, the rings of the chainmail so fine they flexed like silk.
"Wow." The boy said.
"Wow." The raven echoed. "Love and reason, huh?"
The boy nodded. "It just seemed right. Musta been, I mean…" He cast his hands out. "It worked! I can't wait to tell my father!"
Panic struck the raven immediately. "No, no, absolutely not. Your father cannot know about this. Not that he's a bad guy…" Okay, that's a sugarcoat, "... but wizards cannot get involved in the affairs of politics. He would try to get me to help him invade his neighbour, and I'd be forced to turn him into a newt."
"But-"
"Sorry kid, my wings are tied on this one. Wizard rules. Say, that reminds me, you got a name?? I can't keep calling you kid."
"Llwch Llenlleawg!" The boy declared, sticking out a hand.
"Really? Wow, okay, can you… write that down? Gah, nevermind. You're going to need a fake name to fight under, so they can't track back to your dad's fort."
"Who's they?" The boy asked. "The Saxons?"
"Yes, the Saxons. You still need a title I can pronounce."
"Sir Lancelot." The boy said without hesitation.
"Wow, you just had that ready to go, huh."
He stuck out a gauntleted hand, and the raven took the perch.
"What about you, wizard? What can I call you?"
The raven paused a moment. "Mer-lin. Yeah. Merlin the wizard. Let's go with that."
---
1243 AD
France
The raven buzzed through the open window, setting down at the foot of the bed in utter silence. The occupants of the bed were quite unconscious, sleeping off a truly unreasonable amount of alcohol, which made his job quite a bit easier. He slipped in close to the bed, spotting his target hanging from a crook in the woodwork.
A small silver pendant of a sword, hanging on a gold chain. Hardly his flashiest work, but knights these days didn't seem to care much for the intricate designs and gem encrusted look. They all wanted their gear to look tough and intimidating for some reason. More and more, they were bullies, not heroes.
Like this one. Some "Radiant Knight" he turned out to be. The moment he got his power he turn it on his lord and took his castle for himself. He had done his best to run damage control, to at least get him to destroy the demons that held the local king in their sway or perhaps dispose of some of the cursed artifacts in the local church, but the young lords these days had no interest in questing. Hadn't ever since the First Crusade.
As he took the pennant in his beak, he pondered the nature of chivalry. When he had left Arthur and his Knights to set up the next generation, he thought they had a good thing going, barring a few cases of Sir Lancelot putting love before reason. A round table where all sat as equals, teach the lords of the land to be respectful and confront evil wherever they saw it, demons bad, it was pretty straightforward stuff!
He had been glad to learn he wasn't the only one, either. There was a half-dozen other familiars running around Europe, working off his model, but most of them had long decided to lay low a few centuries. He had ran into Rura a few decades back, now stuck in cat form and on the run from the far-off lands of Nippon. She had a similar story to tell about their samurai, and she said she was heading over to the far continents on the other side of the world where, hopefully, things were less screwed up. The raven had almost joined her, but he had put a lot of work into this.
Power corrupts, but one wouldn't think power would corrupt so quickly or so readily. It was getting increasingly obvious with every year that he was being deliberately opposed in some way. Used to be that when you empowered a knight, they'd want to go off to rescue princesses and slay demons. Now, they just talked about power and using it to amass more power. They all spoke of it in the same terms, for the "greater good". It was beginning to remind him rather uncomfortably of someone he knew.
He was almost out the window when his former charge stirred.
"...Merlin… what are you doing?" He muttered, still half-asleep. "That's… that's mine."
"No. This castle is yours, now. Good luck with it." And with that, he took to wing.
The pennant had a sour taste to it, like something was wrong with it. Like it had been poisoned. The raven dropped it in the first stream he could find, and it dissolved there into a long, oily streak that snaked down the river.
He had one talisman left. It was old, and out of fashion now. It was a little necklace with a stylized heart in silver, inlaid with pearls, and he hadn't the heart to show it to anyone in almost two centuries. He was thinking about burying it and fleeing the continent when he saw her.
A peasant girl, coming to the stream with a bucket for water. She stared at him with open curiosity, opening her mouth as if to speak. He noticed the marks on her wrist and the barely healed cut on her face, which spoke poorly of her home life. He had only rarely empowered girls, and not within a couple centuries at least. He needed independent warriors, and every culture he had come across so far did their damndest to ensure that women had nothing to do with either of those concepts. Despite that, the raven was struck by a sudden desire to give her the locket.
Then the desire passed, and the raven took to wing. She was just a human, after all.
---
1823
England
He had taken to nesting out of the cities now; the coal smoke was starting to get to him. Not that he could get sick from it, the dregs of his magic saw to that, but it was uncomfortable and smelled foul. So he spent his days now nesting in countryside manors, in the comfortably hard-to-reach corners and crenulations where the servants couldn't reach him, and he had settled into something resembling retirement.
One of the good things about the countryside was that it was about as far removed from the High Court as you could get, and still be around human beings. Not that he particularly cared for them, but humans made getting human food a lot easier; you just waited until they weren't looking. He was deceptively strong for a bird his size; he had once made off with an entire wine bottle when a butler had been careless at the cellar, which had made for an enjoyable few months as he savoured the drink.
The family whose house he was currently nesting on was as dull and uninteresting as you could find. An old-money couple in a pleasant, if distant marriage, with three children; a teenaged daughter and two young boys. Neither of the parents did anything of importance except inherit a sizable portion of money, so there was no risk of them getting the attention of the High Court. Their lands were beautiful and the climate was nice, and he had found a little crook near the chimney he could sleep in during the winter. He could easily spend a quiet decade here.
So of course it had barely been a year before his magical senses were alerted to something wrong. It coincided with sicknesses in the family and servants, including a bout of fever that had left the daughter bedridden for weeks, capable of little more than sending and reading letters. Then had come the squabbling and fighting, and the malignant magical presence intensified.
Not one to have his retirement ruined, the raven had begun carefully eliminating possibilities, roosting over different parts of the house to compare levels of magical activity and tracking the inhabitants carefully. At first he had suspected a demonic infiltrator among the staff, but his investigation had turned up nothing but upstanding folks, save for a groundskeeper who occasionally sampled the cellar and a maid who slipped letters of her own into the bundles received by the daughter every morning. With that possibility removed, he had started looking for magical devices.
Eventually, he'd determined by process of elimination that it was, in all likelihood, the glass ruby lodged in the headboard of the daughter's bed. Probably some manner of low-level collector, put there by some infiltrator in a furniture factory. It would be a simple matter of getting into the room and prying it loose.
Unfortunately, the windows to the daughter's room were never open unless the daughter was present, so for several weeks he could do little but circle impotently and watch minor disasters start piling up in the house. Finally, he lucked out; an improperly latched window on a chilly October night. He approached with caution, nudging the window open with a wing and peering inside.
The daughter was fast asleep, writing implements still strewn about the bed. The servants had evidently snuck in to place a bed heater under a corner before retreating, which was good, as if the chill snuck it while he was working, it hopefully wouldn't wake her up.
He flitted silently to the top of the four-poster bed and leapt down on the top of the headboard, claws making light clicks against the wood. Leaning over, he took a exploratory peck at the gem. It was in there tight, probably glued with one of those fancy new chemical substances. Perhaps if he wet a cloth and placed it against it, it would weaken the bonds enough to…
His next thoughts were interrupted rather suddenly by the clang of a bed warmer as it collided with his head, sending him in a lazy spiral off the headboard and into a nearby lamp. The impact seemed to shock his assailant as much as it did him, as she immediately dropped the object with a clatter to the carpet and let out a little "meep!" sound.
"Oh god I didn't mean… I mean… shoo! Shoo!" She cried, waving a hand ineffectually.
"If you didn't mean to, why did you swing the blasted thing!" The raven snapped before he could stop himself.
That seemed to stun the girl into silence, and the raven convinced himself that perhaps if he just left right now and flew to some other manor, this whole thing would just blow over. But no sooner had he got himself upright did the questions begin.
"You can talk. You're a talking raven." The girl started. The raven gave a long, exaggerated sigh.
"Yes, I'm a talking raven. No, I'm not a demon, nor was I sent by the devil, and I'm not some kind of fae either. I'm just a raven who talks and would like to be left alone."
The girl took a few seconds to process this. "Why are you in my room?"
"You're taking this better than most, really." The raven said, jumping up onto the bedside table and spreading both wings to check for damage. "I mean, it's actually pretty remarkable. Most people are still in the screaming phase."
"Why are you in my room?" The girl repeated.
The raven jumped up and tapped the gemstone. "Do me a favour and pry this thing out, and you'll never need to know."
The girl looked at him quizzically. "Now why would I do that, Mister Raven?" She appears to have decided that if she's going to talk to a raven, she ought to be polite about it. "I should think that, as you are trespassing, you really ought to explain yourself before you go making demands of others."
The raven gave a noncommittal nod, which looked quite amusing coming as it did from a bird. "That's fair. Alright, that gem is an evil magical talisman, and it's making your family and servants sick. I was trying to rid you of it."
"Don't be foolish. There's no such thing as magic." The girl said with confidence.
"Hullo, talking raven here."
"Oh, quite." She conceded. "So you just get rid of this gemstone, and everything goes back to being proper?"
Again with the anatomically impossible frown. "Well, for you, yes, that ought to be the end of it."
The young woman sat down on her bed, collecting her papers. "For me? Are there other gems out there, in other houses?"
"There are a great many. Probably one in every household, I suspect. Not always gemstones, but similar things." The raven explained. "That's not to mention the creatures that put them there."
"That's terrible. Somebody ought to do something." She said, collecting her papers. "They should launch an investigation. I'll write my uncle about it, he's got the ear of Lord Wellington, you know." Finding herself short some papers, she took up a lamp from the bedside table and lit it, examining around the corners of the bed.
"It's best not to worry about it, dear." The raven replied, before gripping one of the papers and pulling it loose. "My, you sure get quite a lot of letters for a young lady."
The girl snatched the letter from his talon. "That won't do, Mister Raven. One does not look through a women's correspondences. It's not proper."
"Don't worry, I can't read. Eyes can't focus on the letters." The raven replied, grabbing another letter. "It's all just a blur. Raven eyes are better at seeing things from far away."
"Perhaps you should get a small pair of glasses. Go talk to a dollmaker." The girl joked, taking the next letter more graciously. "Thank you."
"Who do you write all these letters to?" The raven asked curiously, fetching an envelope.He noted her hesitation before adding, "There's no danger in indulging me. What am I going to do, go tell somebody?"
"I supposed that's true. I write to the other members of the Young Lady's Letters Club, and we discuss important issues facing women in the 19th century." She said, reciting the information as though she had memorized the pitch. "Issues like voting, marriage, working conditions, and education. We also discuss the works of the three Marys; Wollstonecraft, Hays and Scott." She listed each off on her fingers, one by one. "We also write to men of influence and to periodicals to advance our cause."
"That's a lot of writing." The raven said, fishing a loose piece of stationary out from under the corner of the carpet. "Have you made much progress?"
"We got a letter back from the office of the Prime Minister!" She said excitedly. "We wrote to him to say that women deserve a chance in politics, and we all signed it."
"Oh, what did it say?"
She gave an off-kilter little frown. "That young ladies of our standing shouldn't be thinking about such weighty affairs. Also, the letter smelled like whiskey."
"Huh." The raven intoned.
"I mean, yes, perhaps we were expecting a little much writing to the Prime Minister, but we just want a chance to prove ourselves. Just a chance. Maybe we'll try and we'll fail and that will be that… but I mean, nobody even knows! I just feel that perhaps ladyhood as a whole hasn't been given a fair shot at the whole thing, you know?"
The raven stopped dead. He remembered the peasant girl at the riverbank, and what he had thought that day.
"Miss…?"
"Watts. Emily Watts." She replied, and gave a little curtsy.
"Miss Watts..." the raven said, every word chosen with the utmost care, "...if somebody could hand you a means to prove yourself, to be free of expectation and restriction, what would you do?"
"I should think I would take up that means, grasp it with both hands, and never let it go." She declared.
"Miss Watts, please excuse me for a moment. I have something I have just realized is a gift for you." The raven disappeared out of the window, and a few minutes later came back with a small object clenched in his talons.
It was a small locket, gold, with a silver heart inlaid with pearls, hanging from a fine chain. He laid it in her open hand delicately.
"Miss Watts, take this, lift to into the air and say whatever comes to your mind when you think about your letters. And I recommend you step outside to do so."
The girl nodded, pushing the window open and stepping out onto the small balcony. Looking up at the tiny sliver of moon, she raised the locket to the air.
"For the justice that is wanting in this world!"
---
2015
San Francisco
In a sublet basement under a bookstore, a group of five young women sit around an old television. None of them are really watching; they're fiddling with their phones or chatting quietly. Tomorrow, they're going to break into a bank, destroy a demon disguised as an accountant, and try to bait a Marshal of the Black Rose Order out before he can cause any more harm to their home city. But tonight, they're just teenagers.
One of them, recounting a story of a past mission to a newer girl, makings an exaggerated kicking motion that ends up knocking over a shelf. An irritated squawk sends the offender scrambling to pick up the books and the scattered pile of letters that have yellowed with age.
"Sorry Edgar!" She calls out.
The raven sat content atop a table with a book and a thimble of wine. It turned the page with a practiced flick of a talon, studying each word with care.
On it's beak was perched a tiny pair of reading glasses.
---
This started as a prologue for my Magical Girl game 5 Across the Heart, which is about the intersection of pretty dresses and revolutionary politics, and it quickly got out of hand. It touches on all the major points of the backstory; the fall of the magical empire, magical knights, the twisting of chivalry, and the beginnings of the Magical Girls.
I might write more with Ms. Watts and Mister Raven at some point. I think they've gotta run into Edgar Alan Poe.
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- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
I'm not sure if I want to write more modern day stuff or more adventures of Ms. Watts and Mister Raven first. Or something else entirely... Any preferences from the crowd?
Grey Rook
Genuine Nerd
- Location
- The Quantum Foam
I rather liked this story, and would personnally prefer the adventures of Ms. Watts and Mister Raven, if you don't mind.
Hmm, interesting world.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Oops. I write in a Google Doc so the text copypasted in black... this should have fixed it.
Lol sorry @open_sketchbook I know I said that I'd comment here, then it totally slipped my mind, so this is a bit late!
Totally stoked for Edgar and Ms. Watts! (Though I suspect the ending of that story may be a bittersweet one...)
Also, the snippets here raise all sorts of fascinating questions! What did the massive army of magically skilled rebels do when the Court retreated to the Dream Realm? Were they all killed? Did their access to magic somehow get cut off? Or did they try to form a magic-using society, and have it be slowly undermined and eventually destroyed by the Court? The latter seems kind of interesting to me.
Also, how precisely did Camelot fail? Obviously infighting would be a major reason, and we all know about Lancelot and Guinevere and the trouble that caused, but was there another factor? For example, it occurs to me that Mordred may have been the equivalent of a modern day Royal Magical girl...
Totally stoked for Edgar and Ms. Watts! (Though I suspect the ending of that story may be a bittersweet one...)
Also, the snippets here raise all sorts of fascinating questions! What did the massive army of magically skilled rebels do when the Court retreated to the Dream Realm? Were they all killed? Did their access to magic somehow get cut off? Or did they try to form a magic-using society, and have it be slowly undermined and eventually destroyed by the Court? The latter seems kind of interesting to me.
Also, how precisely did Camelot fail? Obviously infighting would be a major reason, and we all know about Lancelot and Guinevere and the trouble that caused, but was there another factor? For example, it occurs to me that Mordred may have been the equivalent of a modern day Royal Magical girl...
Thozmp
Gets my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
Need to change one of the bolded to fit the other.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Oops. Fixed.
Does it show I shuffled that part around a bit a few times?
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
The blast of magic reverberated through the floorboards and echoed across the night sky like thunder, a brilliant blue storm of light refracting around the room. The raven covered it's eyes with a wing; he didn't remember the transformations being so bright.
But then the light faded, the final sparks settling down, and where Miss Emily Watts had stood seconds before there was now an entirely different figure. She wore a powder-blue dress with subtle white pattern, hemmed in silver tones. Along the waist the material was drawing into the pattern of roses, and a long pair of elegant white gloves reached past her elbows, matching the simple curve of the bardot collar. The locket hung from her neck, with a pair of matching earrings, and her hair was styled elaborately, with a white rose worked in above her ear. A pair of simple, elegant white shoes sank slowly to the floor, and the entire ensemble glittered slightly in the candlelight.
In her hands was a bow of a blue material similar to ivory, engraved with a delicate pattern. The string shone like satin ribbon and it sang like a harp as her fingers brushed against it. Two long lengths of white ribbon fluttered from the grip.
A smile lit the girl's face, and she walked to the mirror and gave a twirl.
"But for a pair of glass slippers, I could be Cinderella." She said breathlessly. "I hope the spell doesn't run out at midnight."
The raven hopped onto the headboard. "No, but you shouldn't linger too long in that form at a time. You won't feel a need to eat or sleep, but you'll still need to, and it will catch up with you when you change back." He explained. "When you desire to revert, just grasp your locket and still your breathing. That ought to bring you back."
The girl looked out the window, running her fingers along the engravings on her bow. "So, what do I do now? Am I bound by some pact to you?"
"Nothing of the sort." The raven gave a shrug of it's wings. "It's up to you. I stopped being a leader a very long time ago, though I would be honoured to be your advisor."
"That seems acceptable." She said. "I think the first thing I shall do is leave this room and take in the night air. I feel restless. Would you care to join me?"
The raven nodded and was most of the way to the window when he remembered. "The gem! We almost forgot!"
The girl nodded and glide over to her bed. The gem came loose under her fingers, and she threw it out the window, watching it sail off. Then she set her bow, reaching back to draw an arrow seemingly from nowhere, and a blue bolt streaked out across the sky, shattering the false ruby in mid-air.
The girl beamed and held out a hand for the raven to perch on. "Come now, Mr. Raven. I imagine you have quite a lot to explain to me."
--
The Watts family grounds were not small, but they quickly found themselves beyond the properties, once the young woman had discovered how feely she could move. She ran across the grass barely touching the blades, jumping deftly and landing on the branches of trees, balancing effortlessly on wire cattle fences as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She could change direction and orientation at a will, and momentum only seemed to apply where it was convenient. She spent the better part of an hour dancing across the countryside, letting her powers guide her along as the raven explained to her the state of the world.
"The form you are in now is the way all humans ought to be.." The raven explained, as the young lady strode atop the points of an iron fence. "It's the natural state of human beings, and it is only through great effort that it is suppressed. The locket you are wearing disconnects you from the system that drains your natural magic."
"Why don't you simply give everyone a locket like my own?" She said, peering curiously at the way her feet seemed to grip to the narrow surface.
"We must craft each one, and I need resources that are in limited supply. Magical pieces we steal from the High Court's systems that we reforge to subvert it." The raven explained, perched on a nearby branch. "Without help, it can take me decades to get everything I need."
"Should we have saved the ruby from my bed?"
"No, collector pieces like that are less useful. It's the transmission and monitoring pieces that are most useful to me. They work much like the basic principles of electric circuits… which I don't think have been reinvented yet."
The girl lit up at the mention of electricity. "I've heard of that! There was a man in Surrey who was showing off a wheel that generated a current… blast, I can't remember how it worked, but they ran a current through a young boy and anyone who touched his hand would feel a tingling in their chest."
The raven sighed. "I'm glad our descendents make such constructive use of their time. Anyway, complicating matters is that not everyone is ready to have this power. They are complicit either in the rule of the High Court as it is, or in a similar structure with the same imbalances, just with them in a better position."
"I'm afraid I don't follow."
"Would you desire to be the Prime Minister, if women other than yourself could not be?" The raven asked. The girl leaped down from the fence and descended slowly, as though her dress had caught the wind, before sitting on a rock to ponder the question.
"...No, I don't think I would. Nothing would have truly changed, save the name on a desk." She concluded. The raven gave a good imitation of a smile.
"That is a relief to hear, I must say. I have not always gotten that answer; that's why I stopped given these badges to Knights. Once they ruled the land, they became a part of the structure and were invested in it's preservation. After a while, even when I gave the badges to peasant boys, they merely used the power to insinuate themselves into that structure instead of trying to change it."
The girl made a face at that. "Shameful."
"Quite. Though you can't blame them entirely, there was some scheming done to see that they would think that way. Fortunately, it seems that both we and the High Court overlooked something rather important."
"You keep saying 'we'." The girl observed. "Are there other talking ravens flying about, giving gifts to young ladies?"
"I don't know about ravens, per say. I think there was one other who shared my form, spent most of his time in Scandinavia. But the other rebellious Marshals I told you about, most of them are still around in the form of various animals; cats and dogs and the like. I've met with a few again over the years, though it has been several centuries since I have last heard of one active. I imagine most are laying low now, like I was." The raven explained.
They stayed quiet for a few minutes after that, wandering aimlessly along the side of a dirt road. The girl ran her fingers along her bowstring habitually, and it produced a calming tone that guided them along.
"I've given it some thought." The girl finally said. "And I've decided I shan't stand for any of this. Demons and Marshals and strange crystals in people's homes… I might not be a knight, Mr. Raven, but I don't imagine I have this bow for show, and I am rather inclined at this moment to find something foul to use it on."
The raven nodded. "I let my vigil over the workings of the Court slip in the past few… well, centuries, but there are a few places we can start. There's a town I flew over recently which has an ostentatious little brick clock tower in it..."
"That's Bredeford. It's just a few miles up the road from here, I think." Emily said. "A young man from there was a hero in the war... I think he saved the life of Marquess of Anglesey at Waterloo, and the man had the tower commissioned and dedicated to him." She made a face at that. "Probably the only nice thing I've ever heard of the man."
"It might not have been an act of altruism. There's something rotten in that tower, bad enough I could feel it from the air. It is almost certainly the work of a Marshal looking to pad out his tithe with a village that nobody will miss. If you want to make a difference, Miss Watts, that is where I would start."
"Well, we haven't a moment to lose, have we?" Emily said, smiling. "Let's go do something heroic."
---
Bredeford was little more than a small square with a medieval church and perhaps two dozen clustered buildings aside a river at the intersection of two dirt roads. It had a bakery, a mail office, a coaching inn and a pub, and not much besides, which made the little clock tower that stood in the middle of the village look completely out of place. Knowing what she did now, its sinister purpose seemed so completely transparent she wondered momentarily how they figured they could get away with it, before realizing that nobody else had any reason to find these things suspect.
The village was quiet, the inhabitants quite asleep, and Emily made quick progress to the center of the town. The clock tower had a little door on it to access it's workings, which was secured with a padlock that she snapped open with an arrow before ducking inside. Inside was a short ladder to the inside of the clock faces so the workings could be maintained, as well as a charging handle to wind the clock.
The raven ducked into the door, and Emily let the door close. "What are we looking for?" She asked, staring fascinated at the whirring cogwheels. "It all looks quite arcane to me."
The raven leapt up to the platform and peered around curiously. "The elements of magic are always quite beautiful, precious metals and materials that human beings value. Human fascination with them is what makes them potent. A-ha!" He exclaimed, pecking at something unseen atop the structure. Emily took to the ladder, feeling very conscious of her puffy dress around the clanking machinery.
The raven had found a cogwheel sprouting off from one other part of the machine, leading to no other parts. To the layperson, it simply seemed like another piece of the clockwork, but once it was pointed out it was clear it did nothing for the mechanism. The wheel had a silvered coating, and a groove along it's shape betrayed a compartment inside. Miss Watts placed the tip of an arrow against the groove and twisted, and the covering popped off.
Inside was a beautiful spiral of twisting coloured glass, glowing internally, the turning of the wheel refracting light in a dazzling pattern of riotous colours. It was the most beautiful thing Emily had ever seen.
"What do I do with it?" She asked, staring fascinated as the light shimmered off the surface of her dress.
"Smash it." The raven instructed, and after a momentary hesitation she did, striking it with her palm. It slide loose from it's mounting and clattered to the floorboards, still spinning like a top, and smoke started sputtering forth from its broken surface.
The raven started pulling pieces from it, gold wires and little gems, and each time his beak descended the little device gave a little shriek and puffed more smoke. "Here, hold onto these. I can use them later." The raven said, dumping a number of pieces onto the ground before going back to disassembling the dying machine. Emily grabbed a handful of the detritus, and was met with a sudden realization.
"Mister Raven? This costume is quite beautiful, but it lacks pockets and such. Is there some way I can magic up a purse of some kind?" She asked. "I don't know what kind of lady you think I am, but I'd rather not go stuffing these down my collar."
The raven didn't even look up from his work. "Just slip them into a fold in the fabric or something. You'll be able to retrieve them in the same way you conjure arrows."
Emily frowned. "You know, now that I actually think about it, I'm not quite sure how I-"
The crunch of footsteps outside the tower and the orange glow of a lantern silenced her, and she peered out one of the clear glass frames in the tower face, hastily stuffing the gems under a stray bolt of ribbon.
Outside was the hunched shape of a night watchman, cloaked and with truncheon in hand.
"Alright then, out you come, whoever you are." The watchman called, tapping at the bricks. "I heard you talking and I know you're there, so out with you. Better not be them Matthews boys again, I told you to stay out for a reason." His bearded face looked more concerned than stern, and after a moment Emily decided she could probably turn herself over, explain herself as simply curious, and slip off into the night after being put up in the coaching inn. She put her bow down gingerly and motioned to her companion.
At that moment, the raven pulled something important from the spinning wheel, and it finally died with a final gout of smoke, the light inside it fading away. In the same instant, the watchman reacted as though he had been struck in the chest, his expression flickering to shock, and then anger. The lantern clattered to the ground, oils spilling out and touching off immediately, and his eyes took on the colour of the flames.
"Oh dear." Emily muttered. "Mister Raven, I believe we have a problem."
The watchman strode toward the door, his features shifting as though something was boiling under his skin. Emily reacted as quickly as she could, sweeping up the remaining pieces, grabbing the raven in her hand, and leaping through the clock face, shattering through the glass and iron framework with ease.
She never quite made it to the ground as something caught her ankle, yanking her back in mid-air. She released the raven and twisted, her bow in hand with a thought, and saw an iron shackle binding her leg, joined by a length of chain to the arm of the watchman, leering out the window. The man's face had grown impossibly gaunt and skeletal, and Emily could see the pattern of his ribcage glowing under his jacket. He smiled cruelly, and flames licked out from between his broken teeth.
The chain began retracting, pulling her back to the window, and in desperation she drew back and arrow and fired. The silver tip passed through the chain and it snapped clear, the length connecting to her leg springing open and dissolving into rust. She landed poorly, but barely noticed the impact, rolling to her feet and notching another arrow, but as she turned to the clockface the watchman was already gone.
"Oh god," Emily gasped, her mouth suddenly very dry and her eyes watering. The hands holding her bow and arrow were shaking madly, and she couldn't make them stop.
She heard the sounds of chains scrapping somewhere to her left, and she threw herself away just as they cut a line across the ground, digging up a deep furrow and cracking a corner off the clock tower. The watchman had somehow made his way to the chimney of the bakery, swinging the chain fused to his arm in broad arcs across the square. She staggered away as best she could and loosed an arrow that went wide, sailing off into the night sky as the chain came back around and struck her, hard.
She was treated to the interesting sensation of skipping off the ground like a pebble off water before coming to a stop against the corner of a building, cracking the wood with the impact. It took her brain a moment to register that, miraculously, she wasn't dead, though she could taste something coppery in her mouth. She pushed herself to her feet to see the watchman land back in the square, fire catching on his cloak as he advanced, and she set her bow again.
She managed to put three arrows into the creature's chest, each accompanied by a gout of flame, before the creature was upon her. It must have only taken a second to the reckoning of an observer. The chains lashed out again, cutting through the building and knocking the bow from her hands, and then a wave of fire sprang forth from the creature's mouth. Emily jumped, carried straight up at least a dozen feet and out of the reach of the fire, and as she got her bearings she found another bow in her hands, arrow notched and ready. As she began to fall, she pulled it back and released, and was rewarded with a meaty thunk as the arrow punched clean through the creature's eye. A second later, she came down hard with both her feet atop it's face, smashing into it like a meteor and embedding it's head at least a foot into the ground. Not stopping, she stamped down with her heel as hard as she could.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Something gave way under her shoes with a snap, and the beast went limp.
Breathing heavily, she stepped off the remains of the creature and turned to examine her handiwork. A small fire was rapidly spreading onto the clocktower, and a larger one was currently engulfing the post office, already collapsing from damage. The corpse of her opponent was already decaying into smoke and ash in it's own funeral pyre as the heat inside it ate away it's remains.
The raven suddenly returned to her shoulder, landing ungracefully with a ruffle of feathers. "Good work, Miss." He said, staring at the dissolving body. "Lesser demons frequently take the form of law and order, but I never thought we'd encounter one tonight. You handled yourself admirably."
"Mister Raven?" Emily said, voice shaking.
"Yes, Miss?"
"I'd like to go home now."
But then the light faded, the final sparks settling down, and where Miss Emily Watts had stood seconds before there was now an entirely different figure. She wore a powder-blue dress with subtle white pattern, hemmed in silver tones. Along the waist the material was drawing into the pattern of roses, and a long pair of elegant white gloves reached past her elbows, matching the simple curve of the bardot collar. The locket hung from her neck, with a pair of matching earrings, and her hair was styled elaborately, with a white rose worked in above her ear. A pair of simple, elegant white shoes sank slowly to the floor, and the entire ensemble glittered slightly in the candlelight.
In her hands was a bow of a blue material similar to ivory, engraved with a delicate pattern. The string shone like satin ribbon and it sang like a harp as her fingers brushed against it. Two long lengths of white ribbon fluttered from the grip.
A smile lit the girl's face, and she walked to the mirror and gave a twirl.
"But for a pair of glass slippers, I could be Cinderella." She said breathlessly. "I hope the spell doesn't run out at midnight."
The raven hopped onto the headboard. "No, but you shouldn't linger too long in that form at a time. You won't feel a need to eat or sleep, but you'll still need to, and it will catch up with you when you change back." He explained. "When you desire to revert, just grasp your locket and still your breathing. That ought to bring you back."
The girl looked out the window, running her fingers along the engravings on her bow. "So, what do I do now? Am I bound by some pact to you?"
"Nothing of the sort." The raven gave a shrug of it's wings. "It's up to you. I stopped being a leader a very long time ago, though I would be honoured to be your advisor."
"That seems acceptable." She said. "I think the first thing I shall do is leave this room and take in the night air. I feel restless. Would you care to join me?"
The raven nodded and was most of the way to the window when he remembered. "The gem! We almost forgot!"
The girl nodded and glide over to her bed. The gem came loose under her fingers, and she threw it out the window, watching it sail off. Then she set her bow, reaching back to draw an arrow seemingly from nowhere, and a blue bolt streaked out across the sky, shattering the false ruby in mid-air.
The girl beamed and held out a hand for the raven to perch on. "Come now, Mr. Raven. I imagine you have quite a lot to explain to me."
--
The Watts family grounds were not small, but they quickly found themselves beyond the properties, once the young woman had discovered how feely she could move. She ran across the grass barely touching the blades, jumping deftly and landing on the branches of trees, balancing effortlessly on wire cattle fences as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She could change direction and orientation at a will, and momentum only seemed to apply where it was convenient. She spent the better part of an hour dancing across the countryside, letting her powers guide her along as the raven explained to her the state of the world.
"The form you are in now is the way all humans ought to be.." The raven explained, as the young lady strode atop the points of an iron fence. "It's the natural state of human beings, and it is only through great effort that it is suppressed. The locket you are wearing disconnects you from the system that drains your natural magic."
"Why don't you simply give everyone a locket like my own?" She said, peering curiously at the way her feet seemed to grip to the narrow surface.
"We must craft each one, and I need resources that are in limited supply. Magical pieces we steal from the High Court's systems that we reforge to subvert it." The raven explained, perched on a nearby branch. "Without help, it can take me decades to get everything I need."
"Should we have saved the ruby from my bed?"
"No, collector pieces like that are less useful. It's the transmission and monitoring pieces that are most useful to me. They work much like the basic principles of electric circuits… which I don't think have been reinvented yet."
The girl lit up at the mention of electricity. "I've heard of that! There was a man in Surrey who was showing off a wheel that generated a current… blast, I can't remember how it worked, but they ran a current through a young boy and anyone who touched his hand would feel a tingling in their chest."
The raven sighed. "I'm glad our descendents make such constructive use of their time. Anyway, complicating matters is that not everyone is ready to have this power. They are complicit either in the rule of the High Court as it is, or in a similar structure with the same imbalances, just with them in a better position."
"I'm afraid I don't follow."
"Would you desire to be the Prime Minister, if women other than yourself could not be?" The raven asked. The girl leaped down from the fence and descended slowly, as though her dress had caught the wind, before sitting on a rock to ponder the question.
"...No, I don't think I would. Nothing would have truly changed, save the name on a desk." She concluded. The raven gave a good imitation of a smile.
"That is a relief to hear, I must say. I have not always gotten that answer; that's why I stopped given these badges to Knights. Once they ruled the land, they became a part of the structure and were invested in it's preservation. After a while, even when I gave the badges to peasant boys, they merely used the power to insinuate themselves into that structure instead of trying to change it."
The girl made a face at that. "Shameful."
"Quite. Though you can't blame them entirely, there was some scheming done to see that they would think that way. Fortunately, it seems that both we and the High Court overlooked something rather important."
"You keep saying 'we'." The girl observed. "Are there other talking ravens flying about, giving gifts to young ladies?"
"I don't know about ravens, per say. I think there was one other who shared my form, spent most of his time in Scandinavia. But the other rebellious Marshals I told you about, most of them are still around in the form of various animals; cats and dogs and the like. I've met with a few again over the years, though it has been several centuries since I have last heard of one active. I imagine most are laying low now, like I was." The raven explained.
They stayed quiet for a few minutes after that, wandering aimlessly along the side of a dirt road. The girl ran her fingers along her bowstring habitually, and it produced a calming tone that guided them along.
"I've given it some thought." The girl finally said. "And I've decided I shan't stand for any of this. Demons and Marshals and strange crystals in people's homes… I might not be a knight, Mr. Raven, but I don't imagine I have this bow for show, and I am rather inclined at this moment to find something foul to use it on."
The raven nodded. "I let my vigil over the workings of the Court slip in the past few… well, centuries, but there are a few places we can start. There's a town I flew over recently which has an ostentatious little brick clock tower in it..."
"That's Bredeford. It's just a few miles up the road from here, I think." Emily said. "A young man from there was a hero in the war... I think he saved the life of Marquess of Anglesey at Waterloo, and the man had the tower commissioned and dedicated to him." She made a face at that. "Probably the only nice thing I've ever heard of the man."
"It might not have been an act of altruism. There's something rotten in that tower, bad enough I could feel it from the air. It is almost certainly the work of a Marshal looking to pad out his tithe with a village that nobody will miss. If you want to make a difference, Miss Watts, that is where I would start."
"Well, we haven't a moment to lose, have we?" Emily said, smiling. "Let's go do something heroic."
---
Bredeford was little more than a small square with a medieval church and perhaps two dozen clustered buildings aside a river at the intersection of two dirt roads. It had a bakery, a mail office, a coaching inn and a pub, and not much besides, which made the little clock tower that stood in the middle of the village look completely out of place. Knowing what she did now, its sinister purpose seemed so completely transparent she wondered momentarily how they figured they could get away with it, before realizing that nobody else had any reason to find these things suspect.
The village was quiet, the inhabitants quite asleep, and Emily made quick progress to the center of the town. The clock tower had a little door on it to access it's workings, which was secured with a padlock that she snapped open with an arrow before ducking inside. Inside was a short ladder to the inside of the clock faces so the workings could be maintained, as well as a charging handle to wind the clock.
The raven ducked into the door, and Emily let the door close. "What are we looking for?" She asked, staring fascinated at the whirring cogwheels. "It all looks quite arcane to me."
The raven leapt up to the platform and peered around curiously. "The elements of magic are always quite beautiful, precious metals and materials that human beings value. Human fascination with them is what makes them potent. A-ha!" He exclaimed, pecking at something unseen atop the structure. Emily took to the ladder, feeling very conscious of her puffy dress around the clanking machinery.
The raven had found a cogwheel sprouting off from one other part of the machine, leading to no other parts. To the layperson, it simply seemed like another piece of the clockwork, but once it was pointed out it was clear it did nothing for the mechanism. The wheel had a silvered coating, and a groove along it's shape betrayed a compartment inside. Miss Watts placed the tip of an arrow against the groove and twisted, and the covering popped off.
Inside was a beautiful spiral of twisting coloured glass, glowing internally, the turning of the wheel refracting light in a dazzling pattern of riotous colours. It was the most beautiful thing Emily had ever seen.
"What do I do with it?" She asked, staring fascinated as the light shimmered off the surface of her dress.
"Smash it." The raven instructed, and after a momentary hesitation she did, striking it with her palm. It slide loose from it's mounting and clattered to the floorboards, still spinning like a top, and smoke started sputtering forth from its broken surface.
The raven started pulling pieces from it, gold wires and little gems, and each time his beak descended the little device gave a little shriek and puffed more smoke. "Here, hold onto these. I can use them later." The raven said, dumping a number of pieces onto the ground before going back to disassembling the dying machine. Emily grabbed a handful of the detritus, and was met with a sudden realization.
"Mister Raven? This costume is quite beautiful, but it lacks pockets and such. Is there some way I can magic up a purse of some kind?" She asked. "I don't know what kind of lady you think I am, but I'd rather not go stuffing these down my collar."
The raven didn't even look up from his work. "Just slip them into a fold in the fabric or something. You'll be able to retrieve them in the same way you conjure arrows."
Emily frowned. "You know, now that I actually think about it, I'm not quite sure how I-"
The crunch of footsteps outside the tower and the orange glow of a lantern silenced her, and she peered out one of the clear glass frames in the tower face, hastily stuffing the gems under a stray bolt of ribbon.
Outside was the hunched shape of a night watchman, cloaked and with truncheon in hand.
"Alright then, out you come, whoever you are." The watchman called, tapping at the bricks. "I heard you talking and I know you're there, so out with you. Better not be them Matthews boys again, I told you to stay out for a reason." His bearded face looked more concerned than stern, and after a moment Emily decided she could probably turn herself over, explain herself as simply curious, and slip off into the night after being put up in the coaching inn. She put her bow down gingerly and motioned to her companion.
At that moment, the raven pulled something important from the spinning wheel, and it finally died with a final gout of smoke, the light inside it fading away. In the same instant, the watchman reacted as though he had been struck in the chest, his expression flickering to shock, and then anger. The lantern clattered to the ground, oils spilling out and touching off immediately, and his eyes took on the colour of the flames.
"Oh dear." Emily muttered. "Mister Raven, I believe we have a problem."
The watchman strode toward the door, his features shifting as though something was boiling under his skin. Emily reacted as quickly as she could, sweeping up the remaining pieces, grabbing the raven in her hand, and leaping through the clock face, shattering through the glass and iron framework with ease.
She never quite made it to the ground as something caught her ankle, yanking her back in mid-air. She released the raven and twisted, her bow in hand with a thought, and saw an iron shackle binding her leg, joined by a length of chain to the arm of the watchman, leering out the window. The man's face had grown impossibly gaunt and skeletal, and Emily could see the pattern of his ribcage glowing under his jacket. He smiled cruelly, and flames licked out from between his broken teeth.
The chain began retracting, pulling her back to the window, and in desperation she drew back and arrow and fired. The silver tip passed through the chain and it snapped clear, the length connecting to her leg springing open and dissolving into rust. She landed poorly, but barely noticed the impact, rolling to her feet and notching another arrow, but as she turned to the clockface the watchman was already gone.
"Oh god," Emily gasped, her mouth suddenly very dry and her eyes watering. The hands holding her bow and arrow were shaking madly, and she couldn't make them stop.
She heard the sounds of chains scrapping somewhere to her left, and she threw herself away just as they cut a line across the ground, digging up a deep furrow and cracking a corner off the clock tower. The watchman had somehow made his way to the chimney of the bakery, swinging the chain fused to his arm in broad arcs across the square. She staggered away as best she could and loosed an arrow that went wide, sailing off into the night sky as the chain came back around and struck her, hard.
She was treated to the interesting sensation of skipping off the ground like a pebble off water before coming to a stop against the corner of a building, cracking the wood with the impact. It took her brain a moment to register that, miraculously, she wasn't dead, though she could taste something coppery in her mouth. She pushed herself to her feet to see the watchman land back in the square, fire catching on his cloak as he advanced, and she set her bow again.
She managed to put three arrows into the creature's chest, each accompanied by a gout of flame, before the creature was upon her. It must have only taken a second to the reckoning of an observer. The chains lashed out again, cutting through the building and knocking the bow from her hands, and then a wave of fire sprang forth from the creature's mouth. Emily jumped, carried straight up at least a dozen feet and out of the reach of the fire, and as she got her bearings she found another bow in her hands, arrow notched and ready. As she began to fall, she pulled it back and released, and was rewarded with a meaty thunk as the arrow punched clean through the creature's eye. A second later, she came down hard with both her feet atop it's face, smashing into it like a meteor and embedding it's head at least a foot into the ground. Not stopping, she stamped down with her heel as hard as she could.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Something gave way under her shoes with a snap, and the beast went limp.
Breathing heavily, she stepped off the remains of the creature and turned to examine her handiwork. A small fire was rapidly spreading onto the clocktower, and a larger one was currently engulfing the post office, already collapsing from damage. The corpse of her opponent was already decaying into smoke and ash in it's own funeral pyre as the heat inside it ate away it's remains.
The raven suddenly returned to her shoulder, landing ungracefully with a ruffle of feathers. "Good work, Miss." He said, staring at the dissolving body. "Lesser demons frequently take the form of law and order, but I never thought we'd encounter one tonight. You handled yourself admirably."
"Mister Raven?" Emily said, voice shaking.
"Yes, Miss?"
"I'd like to go home now."
Another wonderful instalment!
Perty!
"The only magic strong enough to counteract this effect is known as the Charm of the Red Bull."
Magical girling is suspiciously similar to trucking! I wonder if Emma is getting urges to paint naked women covered in snakes onto a big rig. Something to discuss with her pen pals!
Genre savvy!
#killallmen
S-Sempai noticed me!
"It's pretty good but it only gets two bars of signal on the metro."
MY AMULET IS MADE OF COCAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNEEEE
FUCK DA POLICE
D'aaaawwwwww
Perty!
"The only magic strong enough to counteract this effect is known as the Charm of the Red Bull."
Magical girling is suspiciously similar to trucking! I wonder if Emma is getting urges to paint naked women covered in snakes onto a big rig. Something to discuss with her pen pals!
Genre savvy!
#killallmen
S-Sempai noticed me!
"It's pretty good but it only gets two bars of signal on the metro."
MY AMULET IS MADE OF COCAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNEEEE
FUCK DA POLICE
D'aaaawwwwww
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Not sure what to do next; more with Miss Watts, check on the Knights of Camelot, or maybe jump ahead a bit?
There's so many places I can go with this, it's rather overwhelming.
There's so many places I can go with this, it's rather overwhelming.
Ardion Prosili
An (im)Perfect Cell
Which is exactly why he should space them out with other snippets, to keep interest up in all his stories ^_^
That being said, I am honestly not sure what more there is to say about the knights. Got the beginning, got the 'end'. What else is there?
Knights of Camelot, I'd say.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Yet despite the High Court's best efforts, the eventual result is... our world. Which, while apparently still broken, also has things like... AI research, space travel, SENS...
Is it wrong of me that I'd like to read a story where they're blindsided by what non-magical humanity is becoming?
Is it wrong of me that I'd like to read a story where they're blindsided by what non-magical humanity is becoming?
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
One of the conceits of the setting is that magic is still better than our coolest stuff. AI research? Making sentient creatures is an entire branch of magic. Space travel? The High Queen teleported to the moon once, and found it boring. Medicine? We used to be immortal. Military technology? Magical person with a bow vs an Apache Helicopter will end poorly for the gunship. Super Nintendo... well, you got me there.
More than that, though, all that stuff is irrelevant. Our level of technology and the cleverness of our engineering is of no consequence because our cage is political and social, manifesting as systems that influence and control the way we think, not technological systems that can be overpowered with a bigger stick. If there were ever technology or infrastructure powerful enough to bring down the High Court, the people building it would be by necessity invested the High Court itself.
As for leveraging the scientific method on Magic itself... how do you think the High Queen got to be the High Queen?
Part 3 of Miss Watts and Mister Raven is being written, btw.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
And one of the conceits of stories dealing with AI is that the AI is not necessarily controllable by those who built it, or safe. You can make it safe, but I'm not sure you can make it safe while also making it support the High Court—wouldn't be as easy, at least.
Either way, the real question is: Is the High Court in control everywhere, including engineering, or does it prefer to keep its levers on the people who control our world, thus making an upset plausible?
I'm not trying to tell you how to write your story, it's just.. interesting to think about, particularly what might happen if it didn't have authorial fiat on the side of magic. I mean, sure, magic can still be every bit as powerful as it is now, but one thing the High Queen lacks is superintelligence; we'd know if she didn't.
Either way, the real question is: Is the High Court in control everywhere, including engineering, or does it prefer to keep its levers on the people who control our world, thus making an upset plausible?
I'm not trying to tell you how to write your story, it's just.. interesting to think about, particularly what might happen if it didn't have authorial fiat on the side of magic. I mean, sure, magic can still be every bit as powerful as it is now, but one thing the High Queen lacks is superintelligence; we'd know if she didn't.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
The High Court is a (not particularly subtle) metaphor for systems of oppression. So, yes, the High Court does have control everywhere; it doesn't need control over our technology because it has strong influence over the societies and upbringings of the scientists and engineers and politicians who control that technology, and makes itself indistinguishable from the institutions those people serve and work within. New pieces of technology are not a particular threat to them, but things like revolutions, political shifts and civil rights movements do cause them some pause as it rearranges their grip on power structures. It's in their best interest to keep people despondent, cynical, distracted and depressed so that they don't rock the boat because when governments and institutions are removed or destroyed from the bottom-up they lose a lot of control mechanism. They achieve this both through directly manipulating people with magic, and by manipulating economic and political systems to create wars and economic downturns, foster prejudice, and make people lose faith in the possibility of change. When technology does cause them problems, it's technology that accelerate social change in ways they have difficulty controlling. They didn't care when the tank was invented and they leveraged the atomic bomb into a nice long Cold War filled with juicy paranoia and dread to mine, but the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph line was a serious crisis and the internet scares the bejesus out of them.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
See, that all sounds like a "Yes".
One of the themes of internet startups and related technology companies has been to ignore existing rules and power structures. Sure enough, that would eventually change—the rest of society has too much inertia to be easily displaced—but there might not be enough time for such a change, once AI gets involved.
One of the themes of internet startups and related technology companies has been to ignore existing rules and power structures. Sure enough, that would eventually change—the rest of society has too much inertia to be easily displaced—but there might not be enough time for such a change, once AI gets involved.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Making and dealing with sentient creatures of untold power and intelligence is routine for the High Court. They do it on a lark sometimes. And it's not like their enemies don't do similar things; Magical Girls make sentient Constructs all the time, some of which are really, really smart. But you can't just think your way out of the indoctrination of six billion individuals and the absolute corruption of all their political, economic and social structures...See, that all sounds like a "Yes".
One of the themes of internet startups and related technology companies has been to ignore existing rules and power structures. Sure enough, that would eventually change—the rest of society has too much inertia to be easily displaced—but there might not be enough time for such a change, once AI gets involved.
Besides, it's not like the High Court doesn't react to these things. Who do you think controls the NSA in this universe? If human beings invented a really, really smart AI, it would be flipped on in a government or corporate facility and their be a demon in the room ready to evaluate it as a potential threat and magically neuter it if necessary. That is if there wasn't already a demon on the design team injecting magic into the code to ensure it's loyalties...
RoboRenee
Trans of gender
- Location
- FFXIV, probably
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Should probably be freely.