Part 11-4
"Karina? Damn that woman! She's the sexiest piece of filly to ever top my kill count of demon lords! And dark gods, to boot! And the way she looks in a man's clothing; it's like she's a woman, but with all the normal flaws stripped away! And I mean stripped! Rrrawrr! If she hadn't taken up with that de la Vallière nancy boy, I'd've have pounded her until one of us had a broken pelvis, and got to making the greatest heroes Halkeginia has ever seen! Why can't you be more like her, wifey?"
– Blitzhart von Zerbst
The sounds of destruction afflicted the blighted city of Amstelredamme. These particular noises were not the product of the vast evil purple swirly column inflicted by a dark goddess, but were instead the product of the much smaller invasion of Louise de la Vallière. And more pertinently, they were the product of minions moving from one place to another looting everything they could find along the way.
Louise wasn't paying them much attention. She was instead focussed on keeping her balance in the snow-choked streets. She had plundered a fur coat from Montespan's wardrobe, which apart from being lovely and warm also fit her perfectly. With the snug garment belted around her, she jogged up to the university gates. And then had to pause to rest.
"At least… at least that's the advantage of… of not… not wearing my armour," she wheezed, gasping for breath. "Probably… probably be… be dead from… from… stuff. Running. Stuff." Sprints through snow-covered streets were not her preferred method of dark conquest. She had minions for that. She was meant to be standing at the back ordering them around and throwing dark magic at her foes, for Brimir's sake.
The epicentre of the cataclysm was just ahead of her. The pillar of light sprouted from the theology department of the university, breaking through the roof. Scattered tiles and bits of wall littered the snow-covered lawns.
Leaning on her staff, Louise wiped her mouth and then coughed, lungs hurting from the cold air. "Right," she said, taking several deep breaths. "Minions!"
"Yes, overlady?" Maggat said, hefting his club.
"Knock the dang door down."
"Yes, overlady!"
The minions hit the door like a wave of foul-smelling goblinoids. It burst open, flying off the hinges and Louise stomped through. She took in the white-robed figures standing around a glowing purple circle. Ember-like sparks fell from the hole in the ceiling, to be absorbed by the dark magic of the ritual. The forms of the cultists were twisted and hunch-backed and barely human. Overhead, something monstrous and fleshy hung from the ceiling, with pale flesh and grey hair and a pair of half-formed black-feathered wings.
"Oi, what are you doing—" began one of the figures. A duck-like bill sprouted from his twisted face, and his left arm was spider-like.
"Are you servants of Baelogji?" Louise demanded.
"Of course! Our dark lady has—"
"And is she trying to make an artificial angel? Is that what that is?"
"It is our great—"
"And are you a vital part of that plan?"
"Can you stop interrupting me?" the cultist demanded.
"Answer the darn question!"
"Well, of course we—"
"Minions! Kill them all!"
The nightime sky of the Abyss was a sullen grey-orange. The blood-red wolf-moon shone down through the smog onto a battle, baring its teeth.
With a ferocious roar, the one-eyed giant picked up the mound of flesh and tentacles and pounded it into the ground repeatedly. Advancing with their oversized weapons in hand, a mass of purple-helmeted soldiers pushed forwards, thrusting their broad lances into the most vulnerable spots of their foes. The minions were with them, and several had already acquired purple helmets from their nominal allies.
Three ladies looked down upon the bloody battle on the blasted plains of the Abyss, observing as the combined forces of the Overlady and the Viscounty of the Descending Spheres swept against the twisted organic forces of Baelogji. Some might have said it was not a suitable sight for a young woman, but honestly such moral authorities would probably make an exception for a vampire, a necromancer and a demon princess.
"See," Jessica said, watching the orgy of violence with smug satisfaction, "I told you that borrowing those soldiers from Dad would be more than enough to claim the portal."
"Does he know?" Henrietta asked nervously.
"I'll tell him later," Jessica said with a shrug. "I bet they're having fun. They get bored just guarding Dad's clubs. It does them good to have a chance to flex those sexy bods."
A towering pillar of manliness clattered up. His skin-tight silver armour hugged every contour of his well-sculpted body, while his helm was a glorious imperial purple. "Lady J'eszika!" he snapped, posing to show off his quads and his taut buttocks. Cattleya looked up at him with a faint expression of disgust.
"What is it, Major Rekshun?" Jessica asked.
"We have secured the portal! We took them hard and fast in a full frontal assault, slamming our bodies into their defences again and again until we penetrated their lines! They're – mmm – totally unable to resist our mighty weapons! They've turned their arses and fled! And the minions are… well, I don't want to say what they're getting up to with the fallen, but their hands are oh so busy!"
A war-cry of "Loot the shineys!" drifted across the battlefield.
"Very good, major," Jessica said. "Press home the assault! Leave none of them standing! Strike them down from behind. If they kneel before you… well, you may take them as booty if you wish."
"Mmm! That's just the kind of wickedly pleasurable order I like," the major said with delight, saluting her with a curled fist and a casual groin-thrust. "You'll be a wonderful prince… um, princess of the incubi once you get out of the fashion business." Jessica's face hardened at that slightly, but he missed it. "Come on, men! Forwards! Forwards! Give them everything you've got until you're spent!" he roared.
"Well," Henrietta said, fanning herself faintly. "They're… um. Enthusiastic."
Jessica nodded wryly. "Yeah, that's one way of putting it. They're just so into it, and they pester me about taking over Dad's conquests and overthrowing my aunt and all that kind of stuff. But it's not going to happen." She ran her hands through her hair, and then felt her upper lip. "See, not even a hint of moustache. Battles just don't do it for me. Well, that and the fact that I wouldn't have a chance against my aunt. Not in a thousand years. You'd have to be some kind of hero to take her. Someone like Blitzhart von Zerbst, for example."
"Well, I dare say we've had more than enough scantily clad men for several years," Cattleya said, dropping down from the high rock she had been crouching on.
"I haven't," Jessica said, as they advanced down the slope. She made her way to the forwards command centre, shouting orders at the minions. "Prepare for portal insertion – but not yet! I need to modify it so it won't stop minions going through!"
"Whee!"
"Today are a good day to die!"
"Coward! It are bad to die for the overlady! And it are night! Today are a bad night to die!"
"So adorably cheerful!" Cattleya said, dabbing at her dry eyes with a handkerchief. She shifted to face Henrietta. "Well, I'll be seeing you later. I'm off to join them. I wonder if it'll hurt, going through the glowy portal."
"But that'll kill you!" Henrietta blurted out.
"Oh, undoubtedly," Cattleya agreed.
There was an awkward silence. "Well, uh, that's a bad thing," Henrietta hinted.
"It'll certainly be uncomfortable, but I dare say I'll manage," Cattleya said. "It's not like I can't come back from the grave." She smiled, baring her fangs. "I'm already dead, remember? I'll just jump through, and then Louise can sacrifice a minion or something to bring me back."
"Stop! Stop! No, no, that's a really poorly thought out idea," Jessica interrupted, dashing back to them. Apparently she hadn't left hearing range.
"I'll be fine with some blood," Cattleya assured her.
"No, you won't! You've been dead for… at least a decade, yeah?" Jessica said, her words falling over themselves as she tried to explain. "Even if your body comes through the portal in one piece, it'll decay to the state it should be in! And you'll be scattered all over the city! You're not a minion!"
Cattleya blanched, what little blood she had draining from her face. "Oh," she said softly.
"Yes, oh! It'd be pure luck whether we could put you back together again!" Jessica paused for breath. "Really, really don't jump into the portal, Catt! It might not technically make it impossible to bring you back, but it might be the closest thing the Abyss can manage to permanently killing you for real!"
"Oh," Cattleya said. She pouted, baring her fangs. "Why don't people tell me these things?"
"I have a plan," Henrietta announced. "Let me just get something! I need to borrow something from one of your soldiers!"
"Because most people aren't stupid enough to jump into a glowing swirly portal like that," Jessica countered. "Because they're not minions."
Cattleya slumped down. "Fine," she said reluctantly. She forced herself to smile. "I suppose it's for the best. Who knows what could have happened if—"
"No need to worry! I have a solution!" Henrietta exclaimed as she dashed back, carrying an axe she had borrowed from a demon. She hefted it in a worryingly professional manner.
"Um. What are you doing with that, precisely?" Cattleya asked, eyes wide.
"Isn't it obvious?" Henrietta asked in mild surprise, a slightly manic gleam in her eyes. "If I kill you now, you'll be dead rather than undead. And then we can bind it up with cloth so the body parts stay together in transit and I can reanimate your body as a lurching dead walker. Then even if you land some distance from the minions, the animate corpse can feed on life until you're brought back from death!" She bounced the axe up and down in her hands. "Now bend over and expose your neck! I promise, I should be able to do this in one or two cuts! I've only cut up dead animals before, but I've got a pretty solid grasp of the theory! And of this axe!"
"This is a bad plan!" Cattleya protested, backing away. She raised her hands to protect her pale neck. "Please!"
"It is pretty bad," Jessica said, nodding approvingly. "Wicked idea, Henri. Come on, Catt, it'll probably barely hurt much at all really. I'll get the minions started while Henri handles the axework. Oh, hey, I think I can see a coffin shop across the street, too!"
"Uh… no, no, I think I've changed my mind! There's really no need to cut me into lots of itty bitty pieces! Really!"
The white robes of the deceased cultists were stained with multi-coloured blood. Louise looked down at them with contempt. Some of them had been stripped by minions who wanted something new to wear, and the full extent of the monstrous changes that Baelogji had inflicted on her followers was made evident.
She looked up, getting a chance to fully take in the monstrous form that hung overhead silhouetted against the portal. "Pale skin and grey hair," she said. Butterflies churned in her stomach. "And it looks like a baby. A premature baby the size of a house." She examined it more closely. "And that looks remarkably like a minion hive that the… um, umbilical cord is linked to. Darn it. People need to stop stealing minion hives! They're meant to be mine!"
"Yo, Lou!" Jessica's voice crackled in her ear. "Sending the first minion through… now!"
The minion came out of the portal in a vaguely minion shaped configuration. It then hit the stone floor at high velocity whereupon it switched to a rather more jam-like consistency.
"Yuk," said Louise, wrinkling her nose. At least she had been well out of splash range. "Jessica, it worked, but the minion splashed."
"So? That's what they do." Jessica's sheer apathy to minion death dripped out of every syllable.
"Well, it's sort of messy." Louise shook her head. "Never mind. Blues, start reviving them."
"Yep, overlady!" Scyl said cheerfully, skipping over to the smear on the ground and waving his blue-glowing hands over it as it started to reform. "Here we go! How is you feeling? How was the dead place?"
The brown screamed.
"Doesn't sound fun-fun," Scyl observed, with the happy demeanour of a minion who hadn't just been tossed through a hell-portal, died, and then been dragged out of death.
"But is he all right?" Louise asked.
Scyl shrugged, a gesture that managed to be rather more eloquent than the usual minion grasp of the language of Tristain. "He probably are gonna stop screaming when he runs out of breath," he said. "Oh, wait, no, he got bored with it. Yeah, he are gonna be mostly fine once he loots himself some new stuff."
Louise took a careful step back. "Okay, Jessica, throw the rest through," she sent.
"Right on!" Sounds of struggling filtered in from the background. "Everything's wicked here," Jessica continued more loudly. "No problems at all."
"Stop running!" Henrietta's voice was faint. "Just kneel down and it'll be easy for everyone!"
"Yeah, we're just mopping up the last of Baelogi's flesh creatures."
Mopping up sounded messy, Louise decided. That probably meant they'd oozed over the floor. "Well, hurry up and send the rest of the minions through. I'm going to break the portal link very soon."
"Sure thing!" A barrage of minions splatting themselves against the stone tiles began, and was shortly followed by minions screaming as they were brought back.
"Scyl," Louise asked, momentarily distracted. "What… what is the, uh, dead place? I mean, I thought it was the Abyss, but that would mean that if a minion died in the Abyss, they'd go to the Abyss when they're already there so…"
Wrapping his tattered cloak around him, Scyl shook his head. "Oh no, overlady," he said happily. "It no are the Abyss. Gnarl say that the first ever overlord once have minions go to the Abyss, but he sued the hornies for theft of his property 'cause the overlord are owning us all the time and he no are letting hornies have us." Scyl knelt over a new splashed mark, the blue glow of his magic causing the red jam to start reforming into a red minion. "The dead place are all misty and foggy and it are very boring. It are a punishment for dying, I is thinking. I has died a few times. It are real dull until someone bring you back."
"You're… you're saying you're so evil you don't even go to the Abyss because the overlord who made the minions sued hell? And won?"
"Yep!"
"Is there anyone else in… the place you go?"
"Oh yeah, lots and lots of stuff! Spooky humies and spooky orcs and spooky elfies and there are skeletons and stuff what are having black robes and having choppy things like farmers and elfies what suck and stuff like that. They is all running away from us and leaving us all bored."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Urgh, she didn't care about this. This was Scyl, who could have an extended conversation with a wall. Louise stuck her fingers in her ears, and sat down to meditate. Not to clear her mind, but instead to think about all the reasons she hated Baelogji and the Madame de Montespan and the Council and Wardes and the idea of Montespan doing l-l-lewd things with Wardes and… and… and the way the minions kept on screaming and everything else that annoyed her.
Jessica had told her to break her sugar. Well, she hadn't used that word, but Jessica was frightfully coarse sometimes. Most of the time, really. That was another thing that annoyed her, yes!
She was going to need a lot of spite and other useful negative emotions to channel the evil magic to break this portal. It was a good thing that there were so many things that got on her nerves. Really, if the world wasn't such a stupid place, she'd find it a lot harder to use her spells.
Exhaling, Louise listened to the whispering of her left glove, and started to chant. Black magic began to gather in her hand and at the top of her staff, dark lightning arcing itself around her. The light in her eyes shone out through her closed eyelids, painting them a bloody red. Wicked power draped her like a mantle.
This was going to be a big one.
Nervously, Jacqueline van Rien poked her head out of the window. "She's definitely still out there," she reported back, scurrying away from the sight of the dark goddess who stalked around the perimeter like a wolf around a house of little piggies. "And I just saw something that looked sort of like a bear, only it was all black and white. I think… um, she's turning people into monsters."
"That would fit with the way she does things," Magdalene said weakly, lying on blankets in a circle of candles. The children the cultists had brought here had decided that she was much less scary now that she was unable to raise her voice, and so had decorated her with tinsel. They had also decorated the treacherous tied up Maria, although they'd been using a lot more holly for that. "She wanted to do that to us, before I bargained her down." Magdalene's expression was pained, and one hand cradled her abdomen.
"Well, I think that's a jolly good thing. I don't want tentacles. They're frightfully low-class," said Jacqueline firmly. "We are a respectable cult who gather to summon demons and worship the better class of dark god – not some ill-bred peasants who worship fish and octopuses or whatever the cults of that ilk do. I do say that Baelogji was in retrospect a little low-class for us, because she's just being frightfully nouveau ri—"
But whatever she had been saying was interrupted by a sudden thunderclap which shattered every glass window in the building and blew out all the candles.
"What was that?" Magdalene croaked, gasping in pain as she convulsively curled up into a ball.
"Is it her?" one of the women asked, visible shaking.
Jacqueline dashed back to the window. "No!" she said, eyes wide. "The pillar of light – it's gone!"
"Do… do you have my glasses?" Mag asked. "I need them to see what's going on with the portal! Darn this injury!"
Jacqueline leaned down, offering them. "They're a bit cracked," she said nervously, "but I found them."
Magdalene winced. "Bother," she muttered, lifting her head slightly and accepting them. She moaned, curling up again.
"Wait, pardon me?" said one of her cultists. "I always assumed you wore those glasses so the light would catch them in that really dramatic way you always manage. I wish I could do it."
Magdalene managed a narrow-eyed glare, largely because her eyes were half-closed anyway. "No, you idiot. I need them to see. It's a hereditary thing."
"Mag's as blind as a mole without them," Jacqueline said brightly.
"Be quiet, Jacqui," Magdalene tried to command in a tone that failed at being commanding due to bloodloss and pain. She swallowed. "Now, pick me up. I need to get—"
"Uh no. Oh no." Jacqueline crossed her arms, and gave her the determined glare of a sparrow staring down a large and angry hawk. "You are going nowhere. You were stabbed, have lost a lot of blood and you are also heavily pregnant. And… uh oh."
"Uh oh? I don't like the sound of 'uh oh'."
"Mag, you're moaning and curling up like you have abdominal pains," she said in a tone of dawning horror.
"Of course I do. I was just stabbed. By Maria who I am very unhappy with," Magdalene said tartly.
"Um. No," Jacqueline said. "You were stabbed in your upper back. And, uh. Well, do you have a cramping, burning feeling in your abdomen?"
"Yes, but…" Magdalene paused. "I'm going into labour as well?"
Jacqueline twisted her index fingers together. "Uh… maybe? It might be just false labour, but, uh, maybe your body is thinking it might die so it's trying to get the baby out. So they have a chance of surviving."
"Oh." Magdalene considered this. "Bugger."
Louise lowered her hands, breathing deeply. She felt far less tired than usual. It was like something had been helping her. Something that had just the right kind of energy for her.
But then again, Baelogji had been drawing a lot of abyssal power through the portal. So – Louise smiled maliciously – she had probably stolen her enemy's power and used it to thwart her. That felt good. It was a warm tingly feeling, unless that was the stolen evil magic.
"How do you think Baelogji got her hands on a minion hive?" she wondered out loud.
"Oh, they is mega useful," Maxy said, adjusting a monocle he retrieved from a pocket. "It are made to make minions. So it are made with the secrets of life and death. She are prob'bly working hard to find one if she are tryin' to make a fake angel."
"But why can't I find one that works properly? It's so unfair," she complained, and then waved a hand. "No. Forget about it. I'll just take hers. Maggat! Make sure the minions are up in the rafters, and ready to cut the chains!"
"Yep, they is done! I has also put the new greens what came from the portal up there so they is able to jump down if needed! They are really liking the jumping."
"Good, good," Louise said. "The plan is nearly ready. Nearly all the chess pieces are on the board." She laughed out of sheer glee that things were working for once.
"Ah, that are proper overlady talk and a super wicked cackle," Maxy said cheerfully. "But what are the plan?"
"Oh, it's very simple," Louise said in a tone of de la Vallière-ish self-satisfaction. "Do you remember how I talked to Magdalene about how she fell out with the Madame de Montespan? That Affair of the Poisons that they keep on eluding to?"
"No," said Maggat.
"Yeah, I don't remember that," Maxy confirmed.
"Why don't you tell us stuff, Overlady?" Char whined. "The only fence against the abuse of power are a well-smarty pop-you-lay-shun."
"… well, I did talk to her. And I don't tell you things because you're mere minions who don't know their proper place!" She blinked, trying to get her train of thought back on course. "Well… yes, uh. Ah! Yes, well, that was one of Magdalene's first cults that she organised along with Montespan. She said they were a lot more naïve back then. It was all about husbands. After all, you saw who makes up that cult."
"No," said Maggat.
"You never introduce us to all those pretty ladies, what with me bein' a famed para-moor and all that," Maxy agreed, adjusting the sit of his hat.
"Shut up. Well, they're all upper class women with arranged marriages. So they were looking for demonic aid in brewing potions that would help them control people. They carried out dark rituals, sacrificed animals to the Abyss, and so on. They managed to contact a dark spirit, but he apparently had other intentions and was planning to entrap all of them as a harem. It was all secretly a love potion." Louise shuddered. "Disgusting."
"So what are this having to do with Marzipan?" Scyl asked.
"I'm getting to that. Magdalene and Francoise-Athenais had been heroes, after all, even if they were now summoning demons, so when the recipe asked them to include some of the demon's hair, they… uh, cut off his head to make sure they had enough. Which meant that when Francoise-Athenais started distilling the final brew… well, they'd cut the demon's head off and things exploded. Montespan just wound up poisoning herself. Some messy things happened.
Louise shook her head. "Magdalene said she was never quite right in the head after that. She'd wanted to make Wardes love her like she loved him so he'd break off his planned engagement to me. Instead, she went mad. In a quiet, understated way that she could cover up; but still, mad. Magdalene used to have feelings for Wardes, but she got over them. Francoise-Athenais couldn't. It was like something was sick in her. She'd probably have tried to kill me once my parents organised the wedding with Jean-Jacques."
"Still not seeing what the linkie are," Scyl said. "This are Baloney, not Marizpan."
"Baelogji. And no." Louise cracked her knuckles. "It's Baelogji in the body of Francoise-Athenais. She's using her mind to think – and Magdalene says she's clearly drawing on her soul for knowledge, too. Which means the poison is leaking into her. I might be only human, but the dark goddess is being driven mad. That gives me a chance."
"But how is you sure?" Maggat asked reasonably.
"Look up at the giant demonic monster-baby," Louise said. "It has grey hair and pale skin. I wonder if she even realises that she's been compelled to make a child with Jean-Jacques de Wardes. She's a dark angel-goddess thing so she did it with evil magic to further her plans, but she couldn't resist the compulsion." She crackled her knuckles. "She loves him. She even kept the wedding dress when she'd replaced nearly everything else in her private hidden study. It's something she values tremendously.
Louise smirked, looking over at Fettid in her wedding dress. "And here comes the bride. Stand over there, Fettid. Right under the thing hanging from the ceiling."
Black wings fluttered in the night as the newly ascended dark goddess Baelogji circled Amstelredamme, trying to work out what the bloody hell was going on. Why had the portal shut off? She needed it! She needed to draw on the power of the Abyss to fuel her own digestion of Athe, and her perfect construct required it. She was using her ba… her beautiful creature to stabilise the portal, yes, but it was also feeding off the forces of evil.
Drawing on dark magics, she invoked the servant who had been in charge of the Abyss-side of the portal. "Bile Khem!" she demanded. "What is going on?" There was no response. She searched the aetherial plane for his presence, and found nothing.
"Oh," she realised, "he's dead." A heartbeat. "Oh. He's dead. Why is he dead?!"
Someone was plotting against her. Someone had to be! She pulled out her necklace from under her dress, glaring at the crystal which glowed a sickly green-grey. "Was this you?" she demanded of Athe's trapped soul. "What plan is this?"
She blasted the crystal with agony, but the trapped presence of her former lord seemed to genuinely know nothing. Unless he had hidden the knowledge even from himself, of course. Maybe he had! Maybe he was the sort! Or maybe the way she was doubting herself was some trick he was playing on her, because he was the Doubter after all!
Baelogji took a deep breath, and dove into the mind of Françoise-Athenais. She could help! She had to! Because Baelogji was a brand new dark goddess, bless it all, and that meant that things like this shouldn't be happening to her.
The soul of the Madam de Montespan pulsed hate into her mind, as it always did. Baelogji burned through that. The human soul might have been strangely resilient for being trapped in the back of her own body for two seasons, but she could just force her way through. And what she found within was certainty that this was a plan by that wretched little overlady. The one with the potent magic which had been able to break Montespan's strongest wards.
"Yes," hissed Baelogji. "Her." It all made sense. Who else could break a connection between the Abyss and the land of mortals with such force? And she chose to attack when the forces of Evil were busy with the Cabal Awards! Such… such duplicitousness! She was a little bit jealous.
She would have been more jealous if she had been less absolutely livid.
Tucking her wings in, she fell from the heavens to smash into the ground in front of the theology building. The earth itself rejected her tainted presence, cracking and splintering. All the snow around her flash-boiled. Rather than use the door, she blew apart the wall with a casual wave of her hand.
Within the room, she could see the shattered remains of her ritual circle. Her foolish cultists were all dead, and some of them were naked as well. There was a great deal of blood around the place. Her perfect darling creation was still and not moving. She could feel only a barest trace of life from it.
And then she saw the… the goblin in the centre of the room. The goblin wearing her dress. Her dress! Her dress! Baelogji screamed at the top of her voice, the keen of a fallen angel. The windows in this place were already broken, but her voice ground the shattered glass into dust. "Mine!" she shrieked.
"Nuh uh," the green-skinned thing insisted. "I looted it! I are a pretty lady, you know!" It twirled, the once-white dress already turning a foetid green-grey just from being worn. There was mould growing on the bridal veil. "Perhaps I are gonna marry Maxy. He are a famed para-moor. That are worth all the poetry!"
Baelogji did not appreciate this statement, to put it mildly. Rather than engage in witty banter, she screamed again, advancing slowly on the thief with murder in her eyes. Darkness dripped from her wings, and a burning spiky purple halo floated above her head. "You will suffer," she grated, twitching. Her eyes were utterly insane. In one hand, a butcher's knife made of raw magic appeared. "For this. Affront. Like no being. Has ever. Suffered. Be—"
"Now!" Louise shouted, from her hiding place behind a pillar.
Up high in the rafters of the profaned Theology department, gibbering minions hacked at the chains. One snapped, with the sound of tearing metal that cracked like a whip. Then another gave way. The vast weight of the suspended monstrosity tore itself out of the walls, collapsing in a deceptively fast-moving parabolic arc. The petite figure of the possessed Madame de Montespan was directly in its path.
The giant angelic foetus crushed Baelogji with a wet and rather final splat.
Shuddering, Louise sank down to her knees. The ground was freezing cold, but it somehow didn't matter. All the excitement of the day was asking for its fee, and she couldn't quite find the strength to stand. It felt like all the exhaustion of her previous spell was hitting her all at once. Snow drifted in through the broken roof to settle on her head and shoulders.
"Th-that…" Louise croaked. She swallowed, wet her lips, and tried again. "That is not something you see every day. A giant angel-baby crushing someone. That has to count as a holy weapon. Or, um, an unholy weapon. I think I could go quite a long time without ever seeing it again."
"Yeah, we only seen that… like, two times before," Maggat said, shaking his head.
"Maybe three times," Maxy corrected. "I dunno. Does it count if part of the big thing is a giant angel-y baby, but it's also stitched to other thingies?"
"Oh yeah, I is remembering that!" Maggat said brightly as other minions started pulling on the rope they'd tied to Fettid, trying to pull her corpse out from the pile of meat. "We had meat for weeks afterwards!" He licked his lips. "And I is thinking that this are going to be the same!"
"Anyone got any apple sauce?" Maxy asked, retrieving a fine set of silver cutlery and a filthy napkin from a pocket.
"That are a decadent boor-shwah-zee dish."
"Shut it, Char," Maggat said, squaring his skull-festooned shoulders as he added his strength to the Fettid-retrieving rope pull. "I is not hearing a word against apple sauce. It are like a Silver Pentagram dinner for us. It are gonna go so bad with this giant angelic baby when we is eating—"
"… Maggat," said Louise, trying not to gag. "Stop talking this instant. And it's called the Silver Pentacle."
The mound of fallen flesh twisted. With a wet sound it started shifting and twitching.
"Oh hey," Scyl said cheerfully. "The giant angel baby are moving."
"Yeah, it are gonna be much easier to get Fettid out," Maggat agreed.
"Wait, what?" asked Louise, blinking as the minion babble sunk into her head. "That's not supposed to happen! Kill it! Kill it dead!"
This order was greeted with its typical glee by the minions, who really appreciated the management techniques of their lady when she was in a bad mood. A living wave of weapons, stolen clothing and ill-tempered goblins swarmed the body, beating on it with whatever came to hand. Of course, naturally this meant that they were standing in the way when the reds behind them opened up with a barrage of fireballs, which led to the inevitable friendly fire.
"Char, you idiot!" Maggat shouted back. "Get your stupid gobbos under control! We is trying to cut its head off."
"You get out the way!" Char shouted back. "It are an enemy of the Redvolution!" He adjusted his filthy red beret, and gestured the reds forwards, hefting his musket. "Come on, cominions!"
In a burst of gore, something tore out from underneath the corpse.
"Fettid, are that you?" Scyl asked.
It was not Fettid.
With a sickening snap of bones the head of the Madame de Montespan twisted back into place. Mewling with pain, she held out one shattered hand, bones poking out through the skin. Louise could see the fingerbones slithering back into the skin, before the skin knotted itself back together. She tried to speak, but her shattered jaw hung uselessly. Dark light boiled below the skin, and her teeth realigned themselves with a series of grotesque, fleshy pops.
Char levelled his musket, runes on his hand glowing bright green. The weapon roared. The Madame de Montespan dropped to one knee, a big red wet patch in the right side of her chest showing where the ball had hit home.
"See," Char said confidently, summoning up a fireball in his hand as he advanced on the gasping woman. "Minons united can never be def—"
A backhand sent him flying back into a nearby wall, where he went splat.
Baelogji rose, and took a deep, shuddery breath. She coughed violently, hacking something up, and spat out a flattened lead shot. "That really, really, really hurt," she said quietly. "More than anything." Her voice wasn't angry. It was so far beyond anger that it had found cool tranquil waters beyond anger – and these waters were the only thing that stopped her from screaming from the pain.
Louise lurched, and just about managed to stagger upright. "Why won't you die?" she shrieked. Her arms protested at her attempts to level her staff at the blood-covered woman.
"I am a dark goddess possessing this shell of meat and filth," Baelogji said in the same soft tone. "I will not die. I cannot die." She tilted her head, smiling too widely from a mouth that hadn't healed quite right. "Which is something we will shortly have in common. I will give you everlasting life. Every least part of your body shall grow and divide forever; immortal and undying."
"You're not the first demon lord to threaten me with eternal torture," Louise said, stomach filled with butterflies. Oh God, she realised, what if it wasn't a metaphor and Baelogji had actually done that? She seemed like the sort. Being torn apart by butterflies would be such an embarrassing death. She'd never be able to look anyone in the eye again.
"They might have threatened it. I am going to do it. You bitch," Baelogji said, the calm cracking for just a moment. "Human bodies are pathetic bags of meat full of pain receptors. Do you know what that means?" A blink of an eye and she was in Louise's face, her still-broken hand wrapped around her throat. "Do you know what that means?"
Louise kicked her in the shin with her metal boot, and Baelogji collapsed with a faint scream.
"Yes, and you know what?" Louise snapped. "Pain hurts! Get used to it!" She ground her boot in, taking a surprising amount of relish in the pained cries of the dark goddess. She could get used to this.
Unfortunately no such chance was provided. A blast of dark energy sent her flying backwards across the room, through a broken window and into a snow drift.
Louise opened her eyes, staring up at the black sky. Her ears were ringing. Her back felt like one giant bruise. And there was a minion about to give her the kiss of life.
The latter sight did what traditionally needed bed rest and medical attention, sending Louise scrambling to her feet in a sudden jolt of energy. She rose so quickly she shed the torn remnants of her stolen fur coat. "I'mallrighti'mallrighti'mallright," she blurted out. "Ow."
"Wow, I are so good at the kiss o'life that I no even need to kiss," Scyl said, wrapping his cloak around him dramatically. "Overlady! We is fighting the Baloney, but—"
Purple lightning crackled out and blew Scyl apart, splattering Louise in minion blood.
"You don't get to escape me," Baelogji said, floating through a sizable hole in the wall of the theology department. "But you can try. Run. Run. Run as fast as you can. And I'll still catch you."
"Ignition!"
Her wings went up like a torch, wreathed in pink flames, and she dropped to the ground. Louise kept her left hand levelled, even as she backed away through the knee-high snow drifts.
"Greens, flank her!" Louise shouted. "Reds, just keep on throwing fire at her! And browns, on me! And someone bring Scyl back!"
A rather depleted minion horde surged into motion, wading through the deep snow. From on high, salvos of flame popped and crackled as they splashed against the dark goddess' wards. Louise couldn't see her green minions, but she could smell them. More importantly, she now had plenty of brown meat shields between her and Baelogji just in case she started throwing any more lightning around.
Shuddering, shaking, the possessed woman pulled herself to her feet. Her wings were charred stumps. "That's it," she hissed. "I have had enough. You. Your repulsive minions. This city. I am going to destroy everything." She drew out a crystal around her neck. "I have so much more power that I can use! Oh yes! Yes! You're going to all die! And I'll laugh! Laugh!"
"But then Jean-Jacques will never love you," Louise retorted. Her words sunk home like a knife.
Baelogji froze up, eyes wild. "That's it. Everything dies," she breathed. "I don't love a mortal! I don't. I don't! No, you shut up! It's my body now! Not yours! Not yours!"
"If you're in there, Francoise-Athenais," Louise said, gritting her teeth through the pain of her back, "you have to fight back! It's your body! The only way you'll ever get it back is if you take it back! You used to be a hero! Did you ever wonder when you became the villain?"
The dark goddess howled, her left arm twitching. It seemed to be fighting her control.
It was working! For a plan she hadn't actually planned out, things were going well. She just had to cause enough pain and trauma to Baelogji that the Madame de Montespan could take over! Then she'd only be up against… the Madame de Montespan who was also a dark goddess and already hated her.
… wait. Maybe this plan wasn't so good.
Darn it all! She was in this whole mess because her plan to put Athe against Baelogji had succeeded to well. It better not be happening again.
But her path was set. She had no other choice.
And then she heard the applause. Someone was clapping in a very, very sarcastic manner.
"Oh my," said an all-too familiar voice. "Look at that. An overlady telling a cultist that she knows there's still good in her."
"You!" Baelogji – or maybe Montespan – hissed. Her voice was choral now, as if two people were speaking at once.
"Me," Eleanore de la Vallière said smugly from the shadows of the ruins of the theology department. Her glasses caught the light, when the rest of her face was in shadow. "You wouldn't believe what I found, Baelogji. Can you believe it? There I was, having broken out of jail, and then I stumbled on a binding circle in the theology department.
Louise's stomach sank. Oh. Oh sugar. With all her strength, she threw herself backwards – rather further backwards than she meant, in fact, because she had forgotten the canal behind her. Arms flailing, she slipped and landed heavily on the ice.
"It doesn't matter! I'll eat your soul and—" began Baelogji. "No. Oh no. What did you do?"
Gasping, Louise silently thanked that she wasn't in her armour. If she was, she'd have gone straight through into the midwinter water. Mark one advantage for being petite and slight of build! As it was, the ice was creaking alarmingly and her back was contriving to hurt even more. Her bruises now apparently had bruises.
But better that than what she just knew was about to happen. Louise was very familiar with her eldest sister, and she knew that tone of voice.
"What did I do?" Eleanore repeated, stepping out from the shadows. She was dressed in the uniform of a prison guard, which strongly implied that somewhere there was an unconscious man tucked into a closest somewhere. She twirled a piece of white chalk around her fingers, even as the interior of the building started to glow a bright blue-white. "I corrected your binding circle. You'd made it too specific. It was only drawing power from Athe." Next to her, her little monkey familiar gestured, with both middle fingers raised.
"No no no no no!" Baelogji moaned. She staggered, something moving under her stolen flesh. "You don't know what you've done!"
"That's funny," Eleanore said. "I thought I knew exactly what I'd done. I modified your binding so you'll be dragged screaming out of Marzipan and trapped in the same gem you bound Athe into."
"That was rhetorical!"
"Temper, temper," Eleanore said mildly. "Honestly, I'm somewhat curious whether Marzipan will be trapped in there with you. I'll be taking notes. And no doubt she'll be… ah, rather furious with you for using her body to sleep with Jean-Jacques. If she makes you suffer enough, I might even release her in a decade or so." She scowled. "But you and your dark patron? Never."
"We can… we can make a deal. You don't need to do this! I can give you power! I can… I can…"
"You can do nothing," Eleanore said firmly. "And you will do nothing ever again. Save, perhaps, amuse me. I'll be sure to gloat at you. I might not have Mother's record for defeating dark gods, but you're one to add to the list. Or perhaps two. I think I'll count Athe too."
Blue light crawled under the skin of the Madame de Montespan. She twitched and convulsed. "Damn you!" screamed one of Baelogji's two voices. But only one of them. Because the other one whispered "Thank you."
And with a roaring hiss something dark and shadowy came tearing out of the mouth of Francoise-Athenais, pouring into the gem she held. Blue light wrapped the woman, before slowly fading. Montespan stood there for a moment, her mouth open, before she sagged and collapsed. Her vacant eyes stared up at the sky.
"Oh," Eleanore said with a tone of mild interest. She stepped over and nudged Francoise-Athenais' empty-eyed body. She was breathing, but it was the slow, deep breaths of someone in the deepest of sleep. "Looks like her soul did get trapped in there after all. How curious. Silly, silly Marzipan. How far she'd fallen, that the spell caught her too. I'd cry for her, but I'm still rather irate about being locked in a cell for nearly six months."
Eleanore whirled and delivered a kick to a place that left Louise wincing. The body on the ground didn't twitch.
"And she's not pretending," Eleanore continued. "That's always important to check. If I were her, I… well, I wouldn't have made the same mistakes she did. But if I had, I'd be pretending to have my soul trapped so the person playing my role would turn their back on me and I could punch them in the kidneys so hard their head exploded."
Stooping down, she plucked up the crystal necklace from the fallen woman's neck, holding it by the chain at arm's length. The gem glistened a wet black-purple. "Disgusting," she said softly. Stooping down, she dunked it into the snow. Gesturing her wand, she transmuted the snow around the stone into lead, before picking it up and tucking it into a belt pouch. "That should hold it until I can find a safer means of containment."
Eleanore exhaled, the smile on her face the satisfaction of a job well done. Then her expression hardened.
"Now. As for the rest." She cracked her knuckles. "Little sister, get your behind up here this instant!"
Louise sank down in shock. Shaking, she edged her head above the precipice of the canal.
"Oh, and take that ridiculous helmet off," Eleanore said, folding her arms and tapping her wand against her shoulder. "It looks awful on you. Almost as bad as your dress, which is both completely unsuitable for the current climate and more generally completely unsuitable. You look like someone's draped the dress over a hat stand which has had two cherries placed at chest height. And deep red is not your colour."
The dark evil overlady of darkness and wickedness opened her mouth.
"Not a word from you, young lady!" Eleanore commanded. "I'm in a good mood, so I'm prepared to be merciful. Take that stupid hat off, come home with me, and maybe I won't tell Mother what you've been doing. Maybe. If you're good for the rest of your life."
– Blitzhart von Zerbst
…
The sounds of destruction afflicted the blighted city of Amstelredamme. These particular noises were not the product of the vast evil purple swirly column inflicted by a dark goddess, but were instead the product of the much smaller invasion of Louise de la Vallière. And more pertinently, they were the product of minions moving from one place to another looting everything they could find along the way.
Louise wasn't paying them much attention. She was instead focussed on keeping her balance in the snow-choked streets. She had plundered a fur coat from Montespan's wardrobe, which apart from being lovely and warm also fit her perfectly. With the snug garment belted around her, she jogged up to the university gates. And then had to pause to rest.
"At least… at least that's the advantage of… of not… not wearing my armour," she wheezed, gasping for breath. "Probably… probably be… be dead from… from… stuff. Running. Stuff." Sprints through snow-covered streets were not her preferred method of dark conquest. She had minions for that. She was meant to be standing at the back ordering them around and throwing dark magic at her foes, for Brimir's sake.
The epicentre of the cataclysm was just ahead of her. The pillar of light sprouted from the theology department of the university, breaking through the roof. Scattered tiles and bits of wall littered the snow-covered lawns.
Leaning on her staff, Louise wiped her mouth and then coughed, lungs hurting from the cold air. "Right," she said, taking several deep breaths. "Minions!"
"Yes, overlady?" Maggat said, hefting his club.
"Knock the dang door down."
"Yes, overlady!"
The minions hit the door like a wave of foul-smelling goblinoids. It burst open, flying off the hinges and Louise stomped through. She took in the white-robed figures standing around a glowing purple circle. Ember-like sparks fell from the hole in the ceiling, to be absorbed by the dark magic of the ritual. The forms of the cultists were twisted and hunch-backed and barely human. Overhead, something monstrous and fleshy hung from the ceiling, with pale flesh and grey hair and a pair of half-formed black-feathered wings.
"Oi, what are you doing—" began one of the figures. A duck-like bill sprouted from his twisted face, and his left arm was spider-like.
"Are you servants of Baelogji?" Louise demanded.
"Of course! Our dark lady has—"
"And is she trying to make an artificial angel? Is that what that is?"
"It is our great—"
"And are you a vital part of that plan?"
"Can you stop interrupting me?" the cultist demanded.
"Answer the darn question!"
"Well, of course we—"
"Minions! Kill them all!"
…
The nightime sky of the Abyss was a sullen grey-orange. The blood-red wolf-moon shone down through the smog onto a battle, baring its teeth.
With a ferocious roar, the one-eyed giant picked up the mound of flesh and tentacles and pounded it into the ground repeatedly. Advancing with their oversized weapons in hand, a mass of purple-helmeted soldiers pushed forwards, thrusting their broad lances into the most vulnerable spots of their foes. The minions were with them, and several had already acquired purple helmets from their nominal allies.
Three ladies looked down upon the bloody battle on the blasted plains of the Abyss, observing as the combined forces of the Overlady and the Viscounty of the Descending Spheres swept against the twisted organic forces of Baelogji. Some might have said it was not a suitable sight for a young woman, but honestly such moral authorities would probably make an exception for a vampire, a necromancer and a demon princess.
"See," Jessica said, watching the orgy of violence with smug satisfaction, "I told you that borrowing those soldiers from Dad would be more than enough to claim the portal."
"Does he know?" Henrietta asked nervously.
"I'll tell him later," Jessica said with a shrug. "I bet they're having fun. They get bored just guarding Dad's clubs. It does them good to have a chance to flex those sexy bods."
A towering pillar of manliness clattered up. His skin-tight silver armour hugged every contour of his well-sculpted body, while his helm was a glorious imperial purple. "Lady J'eszika!" he snapped, posing to show off his quads and his taut buttocks. Cattleya looked up at him with a faint expression of disgust.
"What is it, Major Rekshun?" Jessica asked.
"We have secured the portal! We took them hard and fast in a full frontal assault, slamming our bodies into their defences again and again until we penetrated their lines! They're – mmm – totally unable to resist our mighty weapons! They've turned their arses and fled! And the minions are… well, I don't want to say what they're getting up to with the fallen, but their hands are oh so busy!"
A war-cry of "Loot the shineys!" drifted across the battlefield.
"Very good, major," Jessica said. "Press home the assault! Leave none of them standing! Strike them down from behind. If they kneel before you… well, you may take them as booty if you wish."
"Mmm! That's just the kind of wickedly pleasurable order I like," the major said with delight, saluting her with a curled fist and a casual groin-thrust. "You'll be a wonderful prince… um, princess of the incubi once you get out of the fashion business." Jessica's face hardened at that slightly, but he missed it. "Come on, men! Forwards! Forwards! Give them everything you've got until you're spent!" he roared.
"Well," Henrietta said, fanning herself faintly. "They're… um. Enthusiastic."
Jessica nodded wryly. "Yeah, that's one way of putting it. They're just so into it, and they pester me about taking over Dad's conquests and overthrowing my aunt and all that kind of stuff. But it's not going to happen." She ran her hands through her hair, and then felt her upper lip. "See, not even a hint of moustache. Battles just don't do it for me. Well, that and the fact that I wouldn't have a chance against my aunt. Not in a thousand years. You'd have to be some kind of hero to take her. Someone like Blitzhart von Zerbst, for example."
"Well, I dare say we've had more than enough scantily clad men for several years," Cattleya said, dropping down from the high rock she had been crouching on.
"I haven't," Jessica said, as they advanced down the slope. She made her way to the forwards command centre, shouting orders at the minions. "Prepare for portal insertion – but not yet! I need to modify it so it won't stop minions going through!"
"Whee!"
"Today are a good day to die!"
"Coward! It are bad to die for the overlady! And it are night! Today are a bad night to die!"
"So adorably cheerful!" Cattleya said, dabbing at her dry eyes with a handkerchief. She shifted to face Henrietta. "Well, I'll be seeing you later. I'm off to join them. I wonder if it'll hurt, going through the glowy portal."
"But that'll kill you!" Henrietta blurted out.
"Oh, undoubtedly," Cattleya agreed.
There was an awkward silence. "Well, uh, that's a bad thing," Henrietta hinted.
"It'll certainly be uncomfortable, but I dare say I'll manage," Cattleya said. "It's not like I can't come back from the grave." She smiled, baring her fangs. "I'm already dead, remember? I'll just jump through, and then Louise can sacrifice a minion or something to bring me back."
"Stop! Stop! No, no, that's a really poorly thought out idea," Jessica interrupted, dashing back to them. Apparently she hadn't left hearing range.
"I'll be fine with some blood," Cattleya assured her.
"No, you won't! You've been dead for… at least a decade, yeah?" Jessica said, her words falling over themselves as she tried to explain. "Even if your body comes through the portal in one piece, it'll decay to the state it should be in! And you'll be scattered all over the city! You're not a minion!"
Cattleya blanched, what little blood she had draining from her face. "Oh," she said softly.
"Yes, oh! It'd be pure luck whether we could put you back together again!" Jessica paused for breath. "Really, really don't jump into the portal, Catt! It might not technically make it impossible to bring you back, but it might be the closest thing the Abyss can manage to permanently killing you for real!"
"Oh," Cattleya said. She pouted, baring her fangs. "Why don't people tell me these things?"
"I have a plan," Henrietta announced. "Let me just get something! I need to borrow something from one of your soldiers!"
"Because most people aren't stupid enough to jump into a glowing swirly portal like that," Jessica countered. "Because they're not minions."
Cattleya slumped down. "Fine," she said reluctantly. She forced herself to smile. "I suppose it's for the best. Who knows what could have happened if—"
"No need to worry! I have a solution!" Henrietta exclaimed as she dashed back, carrying an axe she had borrowed from a demon. She hefted it in a worryingly professional manner.
"Um. What are you doing with that, precisely?" Cattleya asked, eyes wide.
"Isn't it obvious?" Henrietta asked in mild surprise, a slightly manic gleam in her eyes. "If I kill you now, you'll be dead rather than undead. And then we can bind it up with cloth so the body parts stay together in transit and I can reanimate your body as a lurching dead walker. Then even if you land some distance from the minions, the animate corpse can feed on life until you're brought back from death!" She bounced the axe up and down in her hands. "Now bend over and expose your neck! I promise, I should be able to do this in one or two cuts! I've only cut up dead animals before, but I've got a pretty solid grasp of the theory! And of this axe!"
"This is a bad plan!" Cattleya protested, backing away. She raised her hands to protect her pale neck. "Please!"
"It is pretty bad," Jessica said, nodding approvingly. "Wicked idea, Henri. Come on, Catt, it'll probably barely hurt much at all really. I'll get the minions started while Henri handles the axework. Oh, hey, I think I can see a coffin shop across the street, too!"
"Uh… no, no, I think I've changed my mind! There's really no need to cut me into lots of itty bitty pieces! Really!"
…
The white robes of the deceased cultists were stained with multi-coloured blood. Louise looked down at them with contempt. Some of them had been stripped by minions who wanted something new to wear, and the full extent of the monstrous changes that Baelogji had inflicted on her followers was made evident.
She looked up, getting a chance to fully take in the monstrous form that hung overhead silhouetted against the portal. "Pale skin and grey hair," she said. Butterflies churned in her stomach. "And it looks like a baby. A premature baby the size of a house." She examined it more closely. "And that looks remarkably like a minion hive that the… um, umbilical cord is linked to. Darn it. People need to stop stealing minion hives! They're meant to be mine!"
"Yo, Lou!" Jessica's voice crackled in her ear. "Sending the first minion through… now!"
The minion came out of the portal in a vaguely minion shaped configuration. It then hit the stone floor at high velocity whereupon it switched to a rather more jam-like consistency.
"Yuk," said Louise, wrinkling her nose. At least she had been well out of splash range. "Jessica, it worked, but the minion splashed."
"So? That's what they do." Jessica's sheer apathy to minion death dripped out of every syllable.
"Well, it's sort of messy." Louise shook her head. "Never mind. Blues, start reviving them."
"Yep, overlady!" Scyl said cheerfully, skipping over to the smear on the ground and waving his blue-glowing hands over it as it started to reform. "Here we go! How is you feeling? How was the dead place?"
The brown screamed.
"Doesn't sound fun-fun," Scyl observed, with the happy demeanour of a minion who hadn't just been tossed through a hell-portal, died, and then been dragged out of death.
"But is he all right?" Louise asked.
Scyl shrugged, a gesture that managed to be rather more eloquent than the usual minion grasp of the language of Tristain. "He probably are gonna stop screaming when he runs out of breath," he said. "Oh, wait, no, he got bored with it. Yeah, he are gonna be mostly fine once he loots himself some new stuff."
Louise took a careful step back. "Okay, Jessica, throw the rest through," she sent.
"Right on!" Sounds of struggling filtered in from the background. "Everything's wicked here," Jessica continued more loudly. "No problems at all."
"Stop running!" Henrietta's voice was faint. "Just kneel down and it'll be easy for everyone!"
"Yeah, we're just mopping up the last of Baelogi's flesh creatures."
Mopping up sounded messy, Louise decided. That probably meant they'd oozed over the floor. "Well, hurry up and send the rest of the minions through. I'm going to break the portal link very soon."
"Sure thing!" A barrage of minions splatting themselves against the stone tiles began, and was shortly followed by minions screaming as they were brought back.
"Scyl," Louise asked, momentarily distracted. "What… what is the, uh, dead place? I mean, I thought it was the Abyss, but that would mean that if a minion died in the Abyss, they'd go to the Abyss when they're already there so…"
Wrapping his tattered cloak around him, Scyl shook his head. "Oh no, overlady," he said happily. "It no are the Abyss. Gnarl say that the first ever overlord once have minions go to the Abyss, but he sued the hornies for theft of his property 'cause the overlord are owning us all the time and he no are letting hornies have us." Scyl knelt over a new splashed mark, the blue glow of his magic causing the red jam to start reforming into a red minion. "The dead place are all misty and foggy and it are very boring. It are a punishment for dying, I is thinking. I has died a few times. It are real dull until someone bring you back."
"You're… you're saying you're so evil you don't even go to the Abyss because the overlord who made the minions sued hell? And won?"
"Yep!"
"Is there anyone else in… the place you go?"
"Oh yeah, lots and lots of stuff! Spooky humies and spooky orcs and spooky elfies and there are skeletons and stuff what are having black robes and having choppy things like farmers and elfies what suck and stuff like that. They is all running away from us and leaving us all bored."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Urgh, she didn't care about this. This was Scyl, who could have an extended conversation with a wall. Louise stuck her fingers in her ears, and sat down to meditate. Not to clear her mind, but instead to think about all the reasons she hated Baelogji and the Madame de Montespan and the Council and Wardes and the idea of Montespan doing l-l-lewd things with Wardes and… and… and the way the minions kept on screaming and everything else that annoyed her.
Jessica had told her to break her sugar. Well, she hadn't used that word, but Jessica was frightfully coarse sometimes. Most of the time, really. That was another thing that annoyed her, yes!
She was going to need a lot of spite and other useful negative emotions to channel the evil magic to break this portal. It was a good thing that there were so many things that got on her nerves. Really, if the world wasn't such a stupid place, she'd find it a lot harder to use her spells.
Exhaling, Louise listened to the whispering of her left glove, and started to chant. Black magic began to gather in her hand and at the top of her staff, dark lightning arcing itself around her. The light in her eyes shone out through her closed eyelids, painting them a bloody red. Wicked power draped her like a mantle.
This was going to be a big one.
…
Nervously, Jacqueline van Rien poked her head out of the window. "She's definitely still out there," she reported back, scurrying away from the sight of the dark goddess who stalked around the perimeter like a wolf around a house of little piggies. "And I just saw something that looked sort of like a bear, only it was all black and white. I think… um, she's turning people into monsters."
"That would fit with the way she does things," Magdalene said weakly, lying on blankets in a circle of candles. The children the cultists had brought here had decided that she was much less scary now that she was unable to raise her voice, and so had decorated her with tinsel. They had also decorated the treacherous tied up Maria, although they'd been using a lot more holly for that. "She wanted to do that to us, before I bargained her down." Magdalene's expression was pained, and one hand cradled her abdomen.
"Well, I think that's a jolly good thing. I don't want tentacles. They're frightfully low-class," said Jacqueline firmly. "We are a respectable cult who gather to summon demons and worship the better class of dark god – not some ill-bred peasants who worship fish and octopuses or whatever the cults of that ilk do. I do say that Baelogji was in retrospect a little low-class for us, because she's just being frightfully nouveau ri—"
But whatever she had been saying was interrupted by a sudden thunderclap which shattered every glass window in the building and blew out all the candles.
"What was that?" Magdalene croaked, gasping in pain as she convulsively curled up into a ball.
"Is it her?" one of the women asked, visible shaking.
Jacqueline dashed back to the window. "No!" she said, eyes wide. "The pillar of light – it's gone!"
"Do… do you have my glasses?" Mag asked. "I need them to see what's going on with the portal! Darn this injury!"
Jacqueline leaned down, offering them. "They're a bit cracked," she said nervously, "but I found them."
Magdalene winced. "Bother," she muttered, lifting her head slightly and accepting them. She moaned, curling up again.
"Wait, pardon me?" said one of her cultists. "I always assumed you wore those glasses so the light would catch them in that really dramatic way you always manage. I wish I could do it."
Magdalene managed a narrow-eyed glare, largely because her eyes were half-closed anyway. "No, you idiot. I need them to see. It's a hereditary thing."
"Mag's as blind as a mole without them," Jacqueline said brightly.
"Be quiet, Jacqui," Magdalene tried to command in a tone that failed at being commanding due to bloodloss and pain. She swallowed. "Now, pick me up. I need to get—"
"Uh no. Oh no." Jacqueline crossed her arms, and gave her the determined glare of a sparrow staring down a large and angry hawk. "You are going nowhere. You were stabbed, have lost a lot of blood and you are also heavily pregnant. And… uh oh."
"Uh oh? I don't like the sound of 'uh oh'."
"Mag, you're moaning and curling up like you have abdominal pains," she said in a tone of dawning horror.
"Of course I do. I was just stabbed. By Maria who I am very unhappy with," Magdalene said tartly.
"Um. No," Jacqueline said. "You were stabbed in your upper back. And, uh. Well, do you have a cramping, burning feeling in your abdomen?"
"Yes, but…" Magdalene paused. "I'm going into labour as well?"
Jacqueline twisted her index fingers together. "Uh… maybe? It might be just false labour, but, uh, maybe your body is thinking it might die so it's trying to get the baby out. So they have a chance of surviving."
"Oh." Magdalene considered this. "Bugger."
…
Louise lowered her hands, breathing deeply. She felt far less tired than usual. It was like something had been helping her. Something that had just the right kind of energy for her.
But then again, Baelogji had been drawing a lot of abyssal power through the portal. So – Louise smiled maliciously – she had probably stolen her enemy's power and used it to thwart her. That felt good. It was a warm tingly feeling, unless that was the stolen evil magic.
"How do you think Baelogji got her hands on a minion hive?" she wondered out loud.
"Oh, they is mega useful," Maxy said, adjusting a monocle he retrieved from a pocket. "It are made to make minions. So it are made with the secrets of life and death. She are prob'bly working hard to find one if she are tryin' to make a fake angel."
"But why can't I find one that works properly? It's so unfair," she complained, and then waved a hand. "No. Forget about it. I'll just take hers. Maggat! Make sure the minions are up in the rafters, and ready to cut the chains!"
"Yep, they is done! I has also put the new greens what came from the portal up there so they is able to jump down if needed! They are really liking the jumping."
"Good, good," Louise said. "The plan is nearly ready. Nearly all the chess pieces are on the board." She laughed out of sheer glee that things were working for once.
"Ah, that are proper overlady talk and a super wicked cackle," Maxy said cheerfully. "But what are the plan?"
"Oh, it's very simple," Louise said in a tone of de la Vallière-ish self-satisfaction. "Do you remember how I talked to Magdalene about how she fell out with the Madame de Montespan? That Affair of the Poisons that they keep on eluding to?"
"No," said Maggat.
"Yeah, I don't remember that," Maxy confirmed.
"Why don't you tell us stuff, Overlady?" Char whined. "The only fence against the abuse of power are a well-smarty pop-you-lay-shun."
"… well, I did talk to her. And I don't tell you things because you're mere minions who don't know their proper place!" She blinked, trying to get her train of thought back on course. "Well… yes, uh. Ah! Yes, well, that was one of Magdalene's first cults that she organised along with Montespan. She said they were a lot more naïve back then. It was all about husbands. After all, you saw who makes up that cult."
"No," said Maggat.
"You never introduce us to all those pretty ladies, what with me bein' a famed para-moor and all that," Maxy agreed, adjusting the sit of his hat.
"Shut up. Well, they're all upper class women with arranged marriages. So they were looking for demonic aid in brewing potions that would help them control people. They carried out dark rituals, sacrificed animals to the Abyss, and so on. They managed to contact a dark spirit, but he apparently had other intentions and was planning to entrap all of them as a harem. It was all secretly a love potion." Louise shuddered. "Disgusting."
"So what are this having to do with Marzipan?" Scyl asked.
"I'm getting to that. Magdalene and Francoise-Athenais had been heroes, after all, even if they were now summoning demons, so when the recipe asked them to include some of the demon's hair, they… uh, cut off his head to make sure they had enough. Which meant that when Francoise-Athenais started distilling the final brew… well, they'd cut the demon's head off and things exploded. Montespan just wound up poisoning herself. Some messy things happened.
Louise shook her head. "Magdalene said she was never quite right in the head after that. She'd wanted to make Wardes love her like she loved him so he'd break off his planned engagement to me. Instead, she went mad. In a quiet, understated way that she could cover up; but still, mad. Magdalene used to have feelings for Wardes, but she got over them. Francoise-Athenais couldn't. It was like something was sick in her. She'd probably have tried to kill me once my parents organised the wedding with Jean-Jacques."
"Still not seeing what the linkie are," Scyl said. "This are Baloney, not Marizpan."
"Baelogji. And no." Louise cracked her knuckles. "It's Baelogji in the body of Francoise-Athenais. She's using her mind to think – and Magdalene says she's clearly drawing on her soul for knowledge, too. Which means the poison is leaking into her. I might be only human, but the dark goddess is being driven mad. That gives me a chance."
"But how is you sure?" Maggat asked reasonably.
"Look up at the giant demonic monster-baby," Louise said. "It has grey hair and pale skin. I wonder if she even realises that she's been compelled to make a child with Jean-Jacques de Wardes. She's a dark angel-goddess thing so she did it with evil magic to further her plans, but she couldn't resist the compulsion." She crackled her knuckles. "She loves him. She even kept the wedding dress when she'd replaced nearly everything else in her private hidden study. It's something she values tremendously.
Louise smirked, looking over at Fettid in her wedding dress. "And here comes the bride. Stand over there, Fettid. Right under the thing hanging from the ceiling."
…
Black wings fluttered in the night as the newly ascended dark goddess Baelogji circled Amstelredamme, trying to work out what the bloody hell was going on. Why had the portal shut off? She needed it! She needed to draw on the power of the Abyss to fuel her own digestion of Athe, and her perfect construct required it. She was using her ba… her beautiful creature to stabilise the portal, yes, but it was also feeding off the forces of evil.
Drawing on dark magics, she invoked the servant who had been in charge of the Abyss-side of the portal. "Bile Khem!" she demanded. "What is going on?" There was no response. She searched the aetherial plane for his presence, and found nothing.
"Oh," she realised, "he's dead." A heartbeat. "Oh. He's dead. Why is he dead?!"
Someone was plotting against her. Someone had to be! She pulled out her necklace from under her dress, glaring at the crystal which glowed a sickly green-grey. "Was this you?" she demanded of Athe's trapped soul. "What plan is this?"
She blasted the crystal with agony, but the trapped presence of her former lord seemed to genuinely know nothing. Unless he had hidden the knowledge even from himself, of course. Maybe he had! Maybe he was the sort! Or maybe the way she was doubting herself was some trick he was playing on her, because he was the Doubter after all!
Baelogji took a deep breath, and dove into the mind of Françoise-Athenais. She could help! She had to! Because Baelogji was a brand new dark goddess, bless it all, and that meant that things like this shouldn't be happening to her.
The soul of the Madam de Montespan pulsed hate into her mind, as it always did. Baelogji burned through that. The human soul might have been strangely resilient for being trapped in the back of her own body for two seasons, but she could just force her way through. And what she found within was certainty that this was a plan by that wretched little overlady. The one with the potent magic which had been able to break Montespan's strongest wards.
"Yes," hissed Baelogji. "Her." It all made sense. Who else could break a connection between the Abyss and the land of mortals with such force? And she chose to attack when the forces of Evil were busy with the Cabal Awards! Such… such duplicitousness! She was a little bit jealous.
She would have been more jealous if she had been less absolutely livid.
Tucking her wings in, she fell from the heavens to smash into the ground in front of the theology building. The earth itself rejected her tainted presence, cracking and splintering. All the snow around her flash-boiled. Rather than use the door, she blew apart the wall with a casual wave of her hand.
Within the room, she could see the shattered remains of her ritual circle. Her foolish cultists were all dead, and some of them were naked as well. There was a great deal of blood around the place. Her perfect darling creation was still and not moving. She could feel only a barest trace of life from it.
And then she saw the… the goblin in the centre of the room. The goblin wearing her dress. Her dress! Her dress! Baelogji screamed at the top of her voice, the keen of a fallen angel. The windows in this place were already broken, but her voice ground the shattered glass into dust. "Mine!" she shrieked.
"Nuh uh," the green-skinned thing insisted. "I looted it! I are a pretty lady, you know!" It twirled, the once-white dress already turning a foetid green-grey just from being worn. There was mould growing on the bridal veil. "Perhaps I are gonna marry Maxy. He are a famed para-moor. That are worth all the poetry!"
Baelogji did not appreciate this statement, to put it mildly. Rather than engage in witty banter, she screamed again, advancing slowly on the thief with murder in her eyes. Darkness dripped from her wings, and a burning spiky purple halo floated above her head. "You will suffer," she grated, twitching. Her eyes were utterly insane. In one hand, a butcher's knife made of raw magic appeared. "For this. Affront. Like no being. Has ever. Suffered. Be—"
"Now!" Louise shouted, from her hiding place behind a pillar.
Up high in the rafters of the profaned Theology department, gibbering minions hacked at the chains. One snapped, with the sound of tearing metal that cracked like a whip. Then another gave way. The vast weight of the suspended monstrosity tore itself out of the walls, collapsing in a deceptively fast-moving parabolic arc. The petite figure of the possessed Madame de Montespan was directly in its path.
The giant angelic foetus crushed Baelogji with a wet and rather final splat.
…
Shuddering, Louise sank down to her knees. The ground was freezing cold, but it somehow didn't matter. All the excitement of the day was asking for its fee, and she couldn't quite find the strength to stand. It felt like all the exhaustion of her previous spell was hitting her all at once. Snow drifted in through the broken roof to settle on her head and shoulders.
"Th-that…" Louise croaked. She swallowed, wet her lips, and tried again. "That is not something you see every day. A giant angel-baby crushing someone. That has to count as a holy weapon. Or, um, an unholy weapon. I think I could go quite a long time without ever seeing it again."
"Yeah, we only seen that… like, two times before," Maggat said, shaking his head.
"Maybe three times," Maxy corrected. "I dunno. Does it count if part of the big thing is a giant angel-y baby, but it's also stitched to other thingies?"
"Oh yeah, I is remembering that!" Maggat said brightly as other minions started pulling on the rope they'd tied to Fettid, trying to pull her corpse out from the pile of meat. "We had meat for weeks afterwards!" He licked his lips. "And I is thinking that this are going to be the same!"
"Anyone got any apple sauce?" Maxy asked, retrieving a fine set of silver cutlery and a filthy napkin from a pocket.
"That are a decadent boor-shwah-zee dish."
"Shut it, Char," Maggat said, squaring his skull-festooned shoulders as he added his strength to the Fettid-retrieving rope pull. "I is not hearing a word against apple sauce. It are like a Silver Pentagram dinner for us. It are gonna go so bad with this giant angelic baby when we is eating—"
"… Maggat," said Louise, trying not to gag. "Stop talking this instant. And it's called the Silver Pentacle."
The mound of fallen flesh twisted. With a wet sound it started shifting and twitching.
"Oh hey," Scyl said cheerfully. "The giant angel baby are moving."
"Yeah, it are gonna be much easier to get Fettid out," Maggat agreed.
"Wait, what?" asked Louise, blinking as the minion babble sunk into her head. "That's not supposed to happen! Kill it! Kill it dead!"
This order was greeted with its typical glee by the minions, who really appreciated the management techniques of their lady when she was in a bad mood. A living wave of weapons, stolen clothing and ill-tempered goblins swarmed the body, beating on it with whatever came to hand. Of course, naturally this meant that they were standing in the way when the reds behind them opened up with a barrage of fireballs, which led to the inevitable friendly fire.
"Char, you idiot!" Maggat shouted back. "Get your stupid gobbos under control! We is trying to cut its head off."
"You get out the way!" Char shouted back. "It are an enemy of the Redvolution!" He adjusted his filthy red beret, and gestured the reds forwards, hefting his musket. "Come on, cominions!"
In a burst of gore, something tore out from underneath the corpse.
"Fettid, are that you?" Scyl asked.
It was not Fettid.
With a sickening snap of bones the head of the Madame de Montespan twisted back into place. Mewling with pain, she held out one shattered hand, bones poking out through the skin. Louise could see the fingerbones slithering back into the skin, before the skin knotted itself back together. She tried to speak, but her shattered jaw hung uselessly. Dark light boiled below the skin, and her teeth realigned themselves with a series of grotesque, fleshy pops.
Char levelled his musket, runes on his hand glowing bright green. The weapon roared. The Madame de Montespan dropped to one knee, a big red wet patch in the right side of her chest showing where the ball had hit home.
"See," Char said confidently, summoning up a fireball in his hand as he advanced on the gasping woman. "Minons united can never be def—"
A backhand sent him flying back into a nearby wall, where he went splat.
Baelogji rose, and took a deep, shuddery breath. She coughed violently, hacking something up, and spat out a flattened lead shot. "That really, really, really hurt," she said quietly. "More than anything." Her voice wasn't angry. It was so far beyond anger that it had found cool tranquil waters beyond anger – and these waters were the only thing that stopped her from screaming from the pain.
Louise lurched, and just about managed to stagger upright. "Why won't you die?" she shrieked. Her arms protested at her attempts to level her staff at the blood-covered woman.
"I am a dark goddess possessing this shell of meat and filth," Baelogji said in the same soft tone. "I will not die. I cannot die." She tilted her head, smiling too widely from a mouth that hadn't healed quite right. "Which is something we will shortly have in common. I will give you everlasting life. Every least part of your body shall grow and divide forever; immortal and undying."
"You're not the first demon lord to threaten me with eternal torture," Louise said, stomach filled with butterflies. Oh God, she realised, what if it wasn't a metaphor and Baelogji had actually done that? She seemed like the sort. Being torn apart by butterflies would be such an embarrassing death. She'd never be able to look anyone in the eye again.
"They might have threatened it. I am going to do it. You bitch," Baelogji said, the calm cracking for just a moment. "Human bodies are pathetic bags of meat full of pain receptors. Do you know what that means?" A blink of an eye and she was in Louise's face, her still-broken hand wrapped around her throat. "Do you know what that means?"
Louise kicked her in the shin with her metal boot, and Baelogji collapsed with a faint scream.
"Yes, and you know what?" Louise snapped. "Pain hurts! Get used to it!" She ground her boot in, taking a surprising amount of relish in the pained cries of the dark goddess. She could get used to this.
Unfortunately no such chance was provided. A blast of dark energy sent her flying backwards across the room, through a broken window and into a snow drift.
…
Louise opened her eyes, staring up at the black sky. Her ears were ringing. Her back felt like one giant bruise. And there was a minion about to give her the kiss of life.
The latter sight did what traditionally needed bed rest and medical attention, sending Louise scrambling to her feet in a sudden jolt of energy. She rose so quickly she shed the torn remnants of her stolen fur coat. "I'mallrighti'mallrighti'mallright," she blurted out. "Ow."
"Wow, I are so good at the kiss o'life that I no even need to kiss," Scyl said, wrapping his cloak around him dramatically. "Overlady! We is fighting the Baloney, but—"
Purple lightning crackled out and blew Scyl apart, splattering Louise in minion blood.
"You don't get to escape me," Baelogji said, floating through a sizable hole in the wall of the theology department. "But you can try. Run. Run. Run as fast as you can. And I'll still catch you."
"Ignition!"
Her wings went up like a torch, wreathed in pink flames, and she dropped to the ground. Louise kept her left hand levelled, even as she backed away through the knee-high snow drifts.
"Greens, flank her!" Louise shouted. "Reds, just keep on throwing fire at her! And browns, on me! And someone bring Scyl back!"
A rather depleted minion horde surged into motion, wading through the deep snow. From on high, salvos of flame popped and crackled as they splashed against the dark goddess' wards. Louise couldn't see her green minions, but she could smell them. More importantly, she now had plenty of brown meat shields between her and Baelogji just in case she started throwing any more lightning around.
Shuddering, shaking, the possessed woman pulled herself to her feet. Her wings were charred stumps. "That's it," she hissed. "I have had enough. You. Your repulsive minions. This city. I am going to destroy everything." She drew out a crystal around her neck. "I have so much more power that I can use! Oh yes! Yes! You're going to all die! And I'll laugh! Laugh!"
"But then Jean-Jacques will never love you," Louise retorted. Her words sunk home like a knife.
Baelogji froze up, eyes wild. "That's it. Everything dies," she breathed. "I don't love a mortal! I don't. I don't! No, you shut up! It's my body now! Not yours! Not yours!"
"If you're in there, Francoise-Athenais," Louise said, gritting her teeth through the pain of her back, "you have to fight back! It's your body! The only way you'll ever get it back is if you take it back! You used to be a hero! Did you ever wonder when you became the villain?"
The dark goddess howled, her left arm twitching. It seemed to be fighting her control.
It was working! For a plan she hadn't actually planned out, things were going well. She just had to cause enough pain and trauma to Baelogji that the Madame de Montespan could take over! Then she'd only be up against… the Madame de Montespan who was also a dark goddess and already hated her.
… wait. Maybe this plan wasn't so good.
Darn it all! She was in this whole mess because her plan to put Athe against Baelogji had succeeded to well. It better not be happening again.
But her path was set. She had no other choice.
And then she heard the applause. Someone was clapping in a very, very sarcastic manner.
"Oh my," said an all-too familiar voice. "Look at that. An overlady telling a cultist that she knows there's still good in her."
"You!" Baelogji – or maybe Montespan – hissed. Her voice was choral now, as if two people were speaking at once.
"Me," Eleanore de la Vallière said smugly from the shadows of the ruins of the theology department. Her glasses caught the light, when the rest of her face was in shadow. "You wouldn't believe what I found, Baelogji. Can you believe it? There I was, having broken out of jail, and then I stumbled on a binding circle in the theology department.
Louise's stomach sank. Oh. Oh sugar. With all her strength, she threw herself backwards – rather further backwards than she meant, in fact, because she had forgotten the canal behind her. Arms flailing, she slipped and landed heavily on the ice.
"It doesn't matter! I'll eat your soul and—" began Baelogji. "No. Oh no. What did you do?"
Gasping, Louise silently thanked that she wasn't in her armour. If she was, she'd have gone straight through into the midwinter water. Mark one advantage for being petite and slight of build! As it was, the ice was creaking alarmingly and her back was contriving to hurt even more. Her bruises now apparently had bruises.
But better that than what she just knew was about to happen. Louise was very familiar with her eldest sister, and she knew that tone of voice.
"What did I do?" Eleanore repeated, stepping out from the shadows. She was dressed in the uniform of a prison guard, which strongly implied that somewhere there was an unconscious man tucked into a closest somewhere. She twirled a piece of white chalk around her fingers, even as the interior of the building started to glow a bright blue-white. "I corrected your binding circle. You'd made it too specific. It was only drawing power from Athe." Next to her, her little monkey familiar gestured, with both middle fingers raised.
"No no no no no!" Baelogji moaned. She staggered, something moving under her stolen flesh. "You don't know what you've done!"
"That's funny," Eleanore said. "I thought I knew exactly what I'd done. I modified your binding so you'll be dragged screaming out of Marzipan and trapped in the same gem you bound Athe into."
"That was rhetorical!"
"Temper, temper," Eleanore said mildly. "Honestly, I'm somewhat curious whether Marzipan will be trapped in there with you. I'll be taking notes. And no doubt she'll be… ah, rather furious with you for using her body to sleep with Jean-Jacques. If she makes you suffer enough, I might even release her in a decade or so." She scowled. "But you and your dark patron? Never."
"We can… we can make a deal. You don't need to do this! I can give you power! I can… I can…"
"You can do nothing," Eleanore said firmly. "And you will do nothing ever again. Save, perhaps, amuse me. I'll be sure to gloat at you. I might not have Mother's record for defeating dark gods, but you're one to add to the list. Or perhaps two. I think I'll count Athe too."
Blue light crawled under the skin of the Madame de Montespan. She twitched and convulsed. "Damn you!" screamed one of Baelogji's two voices. But only one of them. Because the other one whispered "Thank you."
And with a roaring hiss something dark and shadowy came tearing out of the mouth of Francoise-Athenais, pouring into the gem she held. Blue light wrapped the woman, before slowly fading. Montespan stood there for a moment, her mouth open, before she sagged and collapsed. Her vacant eyes stared up at the sky.
"Oh," Eleanore said with a tone of mild interest. She stepped over and nudged Francoise-Athenais' empty-eyed body. She was breathing, but it was the slow, deep breaths of someone in the deepest of sleep. "Looks like her soul did get trapped in there after all. How curious. Silly, silly Marzipan. How far she'd fallen, that the spell caught her too. I'd cry for her, but I'm still rather irate about being locked in a cell for nearly six months."
Eleanore whirled and delivered a kick to a place that left Louise wincing. The body on the ground didn't twitch.
"And she's not pretending," Eleanore continued. "That's always important to check. If I were her, I… well, I wouldn't have made the same mistakes she did. But if I had, I'd be pretending to have my soul trapped so the person playing my role would turn their back on me and I could punch them in the kidneys so hard their head exploded."
Stooping down, she plucked up the crystal necklace from the fallen woman's neck, holding it by the chain at arm's length. The gem glistened a wet black-purple. "Disgusting," she said softly. Stooping down, she dunked it into the snow. Gesturing her wand, she transmuted the snow around the stone into lead, before picking it up and tucking it into a belt pouch. "That should hold it until I can find a safer means of containment."
Eleanore exhaled, the smile on her face the satisfaction of a job well done. Then her expression hardened.
"Now. As for the rest." She cracked her knuckles. "Little sister, get your behind up here this instant!"
Louise sank down in shock. Shaking, she edged her head above the precipice of the canal.
"Oh, and take that ridiculous helmet off," Eleanore said, folding her arms and tapping her wand against her shoulder. "It looks awful on you. Almost as bad as your dress, which is both completely unsuitable for the current climate and more generally completely unsuitable. You look like someone's draped the dress over a hat stand which has had two cherries placed at chest height. And deep red is not your colour."
The dark evil overlady of darkness and wickedness opened her mouth.
"Not a word from you, young lady!" Eleanore commanded. "I'm in a good mood, so I'm prepared to be merciful. Take that stupid hat off, come home with me, and maybe I won't tell Mother what you've been doing. Maybe. If you're good for the rest of your life."
…
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