Literally on the same page.
Overlady: Attack of the Minions (Thread II)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
- Fantasy
Literally on the same page.
The issue with this chapter, I think, is that it feels too much like an interlude halfway through a plot arc. Much like Louise, I went past the epic worldbuilding just wanting to get back to the Eleanor arc, occasionally pausing to go "huh, that's cool" when I saw something I recognized.
That aside, we did get a few more tidbits of interesting information.
This bit also raises questions about Brimir, Evil, and the Void. He was definitely an overlord, but was he the first or the second overlord? I think that previous speculation in this thread was that Brimir was the first overlord and that the Church was wrong, but that does not fit the timeline. The genocide of the dwarves occurred after the defeat of the first overlord, but before the attempted genocide of the elves. Brimir probably wouldn't have been in position to do the genocides if he was already defeated by the alliance of men, elves, etc.
It seems that Brimir was part of the group that killed the first overlord and got corrupted by the ghost of the first overlord. This raises the question: did the first overlord have the power of the Void or was he just a very powerful mage who got a major boost from using Evil? How did he get his hands on Evil anyway?
Finally, we saw the overlord armor set. Interestingly enough, the pieces correspond to the Void familiars see in canon - left hand, right hand, and mind. Like in canon, Louise got the left-hand bit. The heart is missing, but it might just be the tower heart instead of an armor piece. The armor pieces are definitely related to the Void line of succession, but their exact function still eludes me.
That aside, we did get a few more tidbits of interesting information.
I shouldn't be surprised by this. Not when I know how much ridiculousness Karin has gotten up to. And yet, it's amazing that she's gotten thrown back in time so frequently that she felt the need to compile and share with her daughters a do's and don'ts list based on her personal experiences with accidental time travel.
So the impression I'm getting here is that Sasha looked like Mikasa from Attack on Titan, but blonde with pointy ears. Eh, better than what Google images showed her canon outfit to be.
I think this is the first confirmation that Derflinger exists in this AU. I wonder if he's still in the same place as he was in canon because nobody important bothered to go into the rip-off weapons shop in the starter town?
This bit also raises questions about Brimir, Evil, and the Void. He was definitely an overlord, but was he the first or the second overlord? I think that previous speculation in this thread was that Brimir was the first overlord and that the Church was wrong, but that does not fit the timeline. The genocide of the dwarves occurred after the defeat of the first overlord, but before the attempted genocide of the elves. Brimir probably wouldn't have been in position to do the genocides if he was already defeated by the alliance of men, elves, etc.
It seems that Brimir was part of the group that killed the first overlord and got corrupted by the ghost of the first overlord. This raises the question: did the first overlord have the power of the Void or was he just a very powerful mage who got a major boost from using Evil? How did he get his hands on Evil anyway?
Finally, we saw the overlord armor set. Interestingly enough, the pieces correspond to the Void familiars see in canon - left hand, right hand, and mind. Like in canon, Louise got the left-hand bit. The heart is missing, but it might just be the tower heart instead of an armor piece. The armor pieces are definitely related to the Void line of succession, but their exact function still eludes me.
I'm going to support the idea that Brimir was the second. The story of the first Overlord that Gnarl tells Louise when she's sleeping seems to mostly line up with the First War segment of Louise's time hopping adventures as well as the vision that Louise has when she obtains the first ruby for the Gauntlet from the royal vaults. Furthermore in the vision Louise has, the Overlord addresses Sasha as being there with a male human mage. As for the rest of the pieces, I'm not certain that the heart is the tower heart specifically, or even an armor piece. I personally suspect it has something to do with love interests from what I've looked up about FoZ and the importance of mistresses in the two main Overlord games. Though i will admit that if it is the case, it is weird that Gnarl has made much fuss over the position outside of some thinking to himself about young Overlords aiming for harems. Though one could chalk that up to Gnarl knowing the sort of Overlady Louise is and perhaps there is some sort of delicate balance to the heart that his interference would cause problems as Evil!Louise is pretty fucking terrible at romance.
- Location
- Can't read map
Eh, still better then Cannon!Louise. No whips and exploding someone, has Henrieta playing matchmaker... Admittedly cannon behaviour on Li, Henrietta and Jessica would cause declaration of war on Louise, unlike commoner Saito with whom introduction was terrible first impression one after another.
Still... it might be tower heart if we go armor pieces instead of living beings/familiars. And effect of mistresses in gameplay was what?
In Overlord 1 was it just style and price of decorations depending on who is chosen? Hmm There was also each mistress providing upgrades for 2 of 4 minion colors?
In Overlord 2 there was each mistress providing own art style of decoration, but also mounts for minions depending which one is first?
I was more thinking about the plot aspect of the mistress systems of both games rather than the gameplay mechanic, as the mechanics handled by mistresses in the Overlord games seem to have been shifted to the lieutenant system for this game. As in the first Overlord game, there are two mistresses and the one you spurn sides against you when the previous Overlord shows up again and then in overlord 2 the devs said which one was canon and that one is the mother of the Overlad, and his mistresses include a childhood friend. Given the parallels, I figured that there's a good chance that the heart had to be a love interest. Furthermore the tower heart doesn't seem to be a unique item, given that Gnarl and Scarron talk about the consequences of the destruction of a tower heart like it's happened before, and that the Gauntlet was merely separated from it's rubies, leads me to believe that the heart doesn't refer to the tower heart as the other artefact we're aware of is apparently not really easily broken.
- Location
- in the trash
Anyone else expecting that the biggest obstacle to Eleanore offing herself is going to be Past!Eleanore, who is rather peeved that future her has fallen to evil and naturally quite unwilling to just lie down and die?
The17thImmortal
Seeker of Sanity
Sucker bet.
I wouldn't even put it past Past!Eleanor to go into the crypt anyway, just in an effort to both show up and spite her future self (i.e. succeed where the other her failed).
- Location
- Can't read map
Eh, past Elanoire being heroic captures fallen evil future self. After interrogation she goes:
"Better plan! I will show them all! I now know how to fix mistakes!"
... unsurprisingly this "improved" version of plan makes everything worse...
"Better plan! I will show them all! I now know how to fix mistakes!"
... unsurprisingly this "improved" version of plan makes everything worse...
"Don't, you tremendous fool! That is exactly what leads to me, and everything else! If I can't stop myself from making hubris driven mistakes ever again then at least I should stop the most ruinous of them!"
I'm less concerned with the younger versions of the oversiblings than I am with the possibility of Karin and/or Centurion getting involved, as their younger selves are probably more dangerous. They (or at least mostly Karin) have spent an awful lot of time in this story just making everyone afraid of them and not doing much else besides. Every update that feels like it holds the potential for an undesired family reunion just puts me on edge, and I hate that I love ES for it.
Part 12-5
"It is enough to ask somebody for his weapons without saying 'I want to kill you with them', because when you have his weapons in hand, you can satisfy your desire. How much better would it be to lay hands on my wretched half-brother's weapons before he ever could snatch them up? Alas, my studies have revealed to me that meddling with the nature of days and hours will not get me the crown, and so I must take another path to secure it."
- Louis de la Vallière, the Bloody Duke
The red light of one of the moons shone in through the tall windows of the de la Vallière estate, casting the galleries and halls in a bloody hue. Long shadows draped themselves across floors and walls like grasping hands. The soft humming of a maid as she checked the doors on her way to bed faded into the distance.
Two yellow eyes flickered to life in one of the shadows. Eleanore de la Vallière emerged, dark metal gauntlet at the ready. Carefully, delicately she eased her way up the stairs, avoiding the squeaky parts with long familiarity. She could make her way through her family home even without her glasses.
She eased open her room's door, and squeezed through the gap, carefully closing it behind her. Her sleeping chambers were just on the other side of this room. She couldn't make a sound. Not until the moment came. And, well, after that it wouldn't really make a difference.
Would it hurt, she wondered? Would it be a simple, clean case of non-existence, or would she feel pain when she cut away her own past? Maybe she'd even last long enough for history to reassemble itself, and that's when she'd vanish; when the world realised that she died when she was sixteen.
Reaching out, Eleanore groped for the drawer where she'd always kept a spare pair of glasses. It was a necessary precaution, when your brat of a little sister would steal them because she thought it was funny. For a moment, Eleanore considered whether the world would be better off if she instead killed Louise. It was no surprise that a girl who used to reactivate some of the house's old traps for her short-sighted elder sister to fall into would become an evil overlady. The malice ran deep.
But no. That would be wrong, she thought as she slid the drawer open and reached in. She had her own misdeeds to right. Maybe without her, Louise would have more of a chance since Mother and Father wouldn't be so distracted by Cattleya.
Eleanore frowned as her fingers found only wood
The drawer was empty.
"Oh," Eleanore said, a sudden coldness gripping her stomach. "Oh. Clever girl."
And then Louise hit her over the head with a hatstand.
Eleanore clutched her head. Blood trickled down her face from cuts to her scalp. "The hell? Where did you come from?" she groaned. In the dim red light, her little sister was nearly invisible.
"I've been here for hours! I came early! I was hiding in the closet!" Louise whispered triumphantly. "But now I don't need to hide! I'm going to stop you, Eleanore!" She resisted the urge to rub her eyes. She'd nearly fallen asleep several times in the warm, comfortable wardrobe. But now her veins were filled with utter clarity of purpose. If only clarity of purpose was better at burning out the layers of fatigue.
"For Founder's sake, just keep it down!" Eleanore hissed at her. "Do you want to wake everyone up?"
"I don't care! At least it'll stop you killing yourself!"
Eleanore's face snarled up into a mask of desperate agony. "Flames of the Sunken Abyss!" she hissed, flinching even as she cast the spell.
A small black flame fizzled out of the end of the Gauntlet, and followed a sad parabolic arc down to the carpet.
Hah! Eleanore must have drained her will casting the time-breaking spell. Now she could take her down silently and safely, using a spell like… um. Oh. Louise blanched, as she realised that the only Wind spell she had was lightning and there was really no way she could think of to make it non-lethal. "Wind Chains!" she announced, waving her wand around. "Oh, damn. It failed. I must be exhausted too."
"Idiot," Eleanore said, sounding more like herself for once. "Wind Chains isn't even a real spell."
"Y-you don't know that!" Louise hefted the hatstand again. She swung it at Eleanore's midsection, and missed, dropping the heavy wooden object as her injured arms gave way. Eleanore, half-blind without her glasses and this light closed in, and threw a tired punch that even Louise could step back from. The two sisters flailed pathetically at each other. They were both so exhausted that they barely had the strength to lift their arms, let alone cast spells.
"Your dang monkey kicked me into the past!" Louise growled, uselessly slap-punching at Eleanore's raised forearms. "Do you know how long it took for me to climb into the future? Far, far, far too long!"
"I am trying to fix things," Eleanore grated, falling into a bear-hug around Louise. "You are ruining everything. Stop being so loud, or else…"
"What is going on here?" a crisp, sharp and distinctly Eleanore-ish voice demanded of the fighting siblings.
The two of them turned their heads. On the other side of the room, a bespectacled, glasses-wearing Eleanore glared at the intruders, her wand raised. Through her open door, could be seen scattered weapons of a vampire-hunting inclination - stakes, crossbows, and various kinds of religious iconography.
"Don't worry, this is just a symbolic nightmare thing," Louise blurted out before Eleanore-the-older could say a thing. "Um. I represent your good side and she's your bad side. That's why she has glowing eyes."
Eleanore-the-older turned red, insofar as any difference could be seen in the red-lit gloom. "You little—"
"Choose good!" Louise quickly added. "Don't let evil consume you, Eleanore! And don't trust the lies of your dark side!"
The younger Eleanore snorted, striding forwards. "Oh, please," she said, reaching out to pull the fighters apart. "Like I believe-"
Eleanore laid hands on Eleanore.
The world lurched.
On the edge of the estate, a faintly sizzling line formed. On one side, things were as they had been. On the other side, the landscape flaked away to fall into the sea of time. And now, the moonlight shining in through the windows was no longer a dull red. It was now a sharp, brilliant purple.
The moon blinked.
"What just happened?" younger-Eleanore asked, backing away. She looked around wildly, bed-mussed hair falling around her. "Why is everything purple?" She dashed to the window. "And why is the moon an eye?!"
"Eleanore," Louise hissed at the future version of her older sister. "Dang it. Remember Mother's rules! Don't ever touch your past self!"
"She touched me!" older-Eleanore hissed back. "This isn't my fault. It's hers!"
"She is you! I'm blaming both of you!"
"Stop muttering, you two!" the younger Eleanore shouted from the window. "Why is the moon an eye? No one has explained this!"
"I said this was all a dream," said Louise. "It's just a nightmare."
"I'm from the future and here to stop you," older-Eleanore said at the same time. The two of them glared at each other.
"Well, what is it?" demanded younger-Eleanore, hands on her hips. "One of you is lying!"
"Actually, we could both be lying," older-Eleanore pointed out, apparently unable to resist the urge to correct someone's misaimed assumptions even if the incorrect person was herself.
Younger-Eleanore bit back a comment. "Yes, fine. Both of you can't be right. Is that better?"
"Much better," older-Eleanore said. "And I'm telling the truth. It's Louise who's lying."
"I am not!" Louise lied. "This is all a dream. Time travel doesn't explain the moon turning into an eye, after all."
"Wait, that's Louise?" younger-Eleanore said at the same time. "And that is true. Why would time travel turn the moon into an eye?"
"It's a paradox caused by you touching me," the other Eleaonore said, straightening up. Her shoulders were hunched and she was bruised, beaten and exhausted - not just physically, but mentally and spiritually too.
"Oh, sure, blame it on a paradox," Louise said, thinking fast. The purple light outside the window was getting even brighter, which probably meant that reality itself was falling into the sea of time. That was bad. And it wasn't just a time paradox. Louise had touched her elder self and that hadn't destroyed everything. Maybe it was a specific thing that applied to the caster. "Sounds just like what a nightmare who doesn't want Eleanore to wake up would say."
"Stop interfering!" older-Eleanore screamed at her.
"I'm the good one here! You're evil! You literally have your eyes glowing with evil! Everything you say is a lie!" Louise retorted.
Tilting her head, younger-Eleanore considered her options. "That is a convincing argument," she said.
"No it's not! I can't believe I was ever stupid enough to fall for Louise lying to my face!"
"She's calling you stupid," Louise said, stepping closer to the younger Eleanore. If there was one thing she knew about her sister, she hated that. "I don't think she thinks very much of your intellectual capacity."
Eleanore-the older screamed and threw herself at Louise, knocking her to the ground. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" she yelled, bludgeoning Louise with wild punches.
"No, both of you stop it!" Eleanore-the-younger snapped. "I'm trying to evaluate your claims here! That means you're meant to wait until I pick one of you!" She stepped in, reaching out to pull them apart, and her hand brushed against Eleanore again.
A purple crack zig-zagged through the air, propagating out from where she'd touched her elder self. The room itself split in two, tearing the fragments apart with dizzying speed. One half held the Eleanores - the other held Louise. And as she watched, the swiftly receding fracture containing the Eleanores disintegrated further. It was already sinking down through history, in a whirlpool of hours and minutes.
And if Louise wasn't very mistaken, the bottom of the whirlpool looked a lot like a maw. Future-Louise had told her that everything had gone wrong in her timeline when she had thrown Eleanore down a time rift - and that Half-Eaten Chronos hated the caster of the spell. The eye and the mouth were probably his. And were going after her sister.
Well, she wasn't going to let that happen.
Louise took a deep breath. Time to put everything she'd learned in painfully climbing her way back up through history. It was how she'd managed to get here before Eleanore. She focussed on a time and place, staring out over the purple sea, and before her eyes a clock-stepping stone formed. She might only have one chance with this.
"You owe me for this, Eleanore," she whispered wearily, taking her first step.
The red light of one of the moons shone in through the tall windows of the de la Vallière estate, casting the galleries and halls in a bloody hue. Long shadows draped themselves across floors and walls like grasping hands. The soft humming of a maid as she checked the doors on her way to bed faded into the distance.
Two yellow eyes flickered to life in one of the shadows. Eleanore de la Vallière emerged, dark metal gauntlet at the ready. Carefully, delicately she eased her way up the stairs, avoiding the squeaky parts with long familiarity. She could make her way through her family home even without her glasses.
Unfortunately for her, this sixth sense only extended to things that were meant to be there. And she certainly wasn't expecting someone to have reactivated the old trapdoors in the de la Vallière estate. She screamed out as she fell, but the trapdoor snapped shut behind her as she plummeted down the slide. When the housemaid came running, she put the mysterious scream in the night down to just another unexplained happening, and went to bed safe in the knowledge that at least one of the old ghosts had escaped the purge by the young Duke.
This was no consolation to Eleanore, who was by then gagged, bound, and dangling by her ankles in one of the old hidden torture chambers. Her eyes glowed with uncontained rage as she glared at her little sister, who was leaning against the opposite wall with a smug expression on her face.
"Mmmph mph mphou mpht mpheer mphrst," snarled Eleanore, which translated to 'How did you get here first?'
"Oh, Elly," Louise said, her grin widening. It covered the relief that she felt that this had actually worked out. "You haven't fallen for this trap in years. Well, in the present you probably last fell for it a few weeks ago, but I haven't done this since… oh, probably since I was six. Mother and Father eventually managed to strip out the systems I was using and scolded me into not doing it anymore." She shook her head. "Lord and Founder, I was a little monster when I was younger. I suppose the evil force was even more potent in me, given that I was a six year old with far too much talent with the house's old traps."
"Mphoor mphil amprat!"
"I am not. I'm doing this for your own good. You don't know what you're doing. Trust me, it's much better that I intercept you now rather than let you get through to the room and try to stop you there. Thank you, future pirate princess me."
"Mmphuh?"
"No, I won't explain." She wasn't going to tell Eleanore about that - not yet. The former overlady crossed her arms, and looked up at her big sister. "So I suppose you wonder what I'm going to do to you, now that you're my captive." She grinned, her cheeks rounded. "What horrible torments I'm going to inflict on you? Well there's no need to worry. Because I'm going to do… nothing."
Eleanore made a concerned noise.
"Why would I need to do anything?" Louise stepped forwards, until she was face to inverted face with Eleanore. "After all, you're my captive now. You're too exhausted to cast another spell… no, I know you are. And tonight is the night that younger-you goes to try to kill the Bloody Duke. So I won't do a thing. I'll just keep you here until dawn, unless you tell me how to end the spell. And you'll have failed."
From the panicked look in Eleanore's glowing eyes, she took the threat seriously. Louise removed the gag.
"You can't do this! You can't!"
"Are you going to tell me how to end this spell?"
"You have to let me do this! This is the only way to stop mmmph mmph mpph."
Louise stepped back and tried not to look too satisfied. Founder, it was cathartic to be able to gag Eleanore when she started talking. It was the kind of thing her younger self upstairs would kill to be able to do.
"You'll probably pass out from being held upside down in a bit, judging how things use to go when we were younger," she said, with a false yawn. "Goodnight, Eleanore. I'll see you in the morning." Curling up on a pile of old bodybags, Louise closed her eyes, ignored her sister's muffled protests, and pretended to be asleep.
Of course, she didn't leave her like that for too long. The de la Vallière estate had several seminal works on the effects of suspending someone upside down for extended periods. There were pictures of the many ways that a man could die in such a position, along with recommendations of amusing twists to put on the whole affair.
Louise, who didn't want Eleanore to die but didn't mind a bit of unpleasantness therefore lowered her down once she'd passed out. It took less than half an hour. She must have been exhausted. It was never so rapid when they were younger.
Hmm. She probably should apologise for that.
She squatted down, sitting on her haunches. The Gauntlet gleamed in the gloom. It wasn't the same on her sister's hand as when she wore it. But then again, it hadn't had the form she was used to before she put it on the first time.
Its dark power called to her. She wanted to say "No!"; to resist it, to stand strong. And she could do it. Even exhausted to the bone and desperately needing sleep, she could stand strong.
But if she prevailed against its evil, what would happen to Eleanore? Louise felt very old. Her big sister, ten years older than her, was too fragile and too much of a mess to handle it. Louise thought that the Gauntlet and whatever evil that came with it didn't introduce anything that wasn't already there. She had a temper and wanted to prove herself - and so the Gauntlet turned it into fits of burning rage and drove her to stupid things to show everyone else they were wrong. And Eleanore… Eleanore wasn't a happy person, and the darkness within had prompted her to try to erase herself from history as a self-sacrificing martyr.
"Oh, Elly," Louise said, brushing her hair with her fingers. "I didn't know how much you struggled with the influence of the de la Vallière side. I suppose you're old enough that you might have met grandmother and grandfather. No wonder you're a wreck if you think you're on the edge of turning out like them. If you can hear me, don't worry about resembling grandmother. She's actually," Louise shuddered, "more like Cattleya than you. Or me."
For the first time, Eleanore wasn't a towering figure of meanness and bullying and petty cruelties. Curled up in front of Louise, she looked very small and delicate. Reaching out, Louise traced her fingers along Eleanore's jawline. They did have the same bone structure, after all, and everyone said she looked petite and adorable. Without the cutting aura of her-ness her sister usually radiated, they were more similar than - ha, than either of them had previously thought.
Too much treacherous de la Vallière blood to be a proper hero. Too much of Mother to settle for being anything other than the best. Neither one thing nor the other; always torn between two worlds.
As she saw it, there were two ways this could go. She could take the Gauntlet back off Eleanore and accepted the evil that came with it, this thing that was possibly the corrupted Void. She'd be back to how she lived her whole life, except now she'd be aware that it was the evil in her that fed the sulks, the sudden rages, and the inability to be honest with herself about how she felt about Henrietta.
Or she could leave it with Eleanore, and in her current state her big sister would wind up dead soon enough, through some ill-fated suicidal attack or… or via some other way. She wasn't a happy person. And Louise knew that the holy Void was said to pass down the royal bloodline. This corrupted Void would come and find her and she'd be the overlady anyway.
Or it'd find Henrietta - and Louise doubted her friend, her love, would handle it any better than Eleanore. She was more than a little worried about the way that Henrietta was reaching towards necromancy, and the gauntlet would only make things worse. After all, future-her had said that Henrietta had murdered everyone in the capital, crashed it into the Abyss in a suicidal act of revenge and then taken over a big chunk of the Underworld. A mind like that couldn't be let near the Gauntlet.
Louise moaned, holding her head in her hands. No, no, no. Stupid logic. Stupid, stupid logic. She didn't want to do this. But when she put it like that, there really wasn't a choice at all. She'd have to become the overlady again - knowing that the evil power twisted her mind and the way she thought. Louise wiped her eyes, feeling them well up. It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair at all! She was happy now. She could be the daughter Mother had always wanted her to be – and more crucially, she could be the woman she wanted to be.
But no. Of course not. She had to give it up, after tasting a few short hours of how life could have been others. Dang it. Dang it all.
At least she'd have the memories of this brief moment to remind her that she didn't have to be evil. It… it would have to be enough. She hoped.
With a deep breath, she reached out and eased the gauntlet off of Eleanore's hand. And with just a hint of ceremony, she put it on.
Dramatically, portentously, meaningfully… nothing happened.
"Um," Louise said, wagging her fingers. The gauntlet still looked like it looked when Eleanore wore it. And peeling back her sister's eyelids, there was still a faint glow.
A thought struck her. Oh. Of course. Just putting on a magic glove wouldn't do a thing. This was evil she was talking about. She was willing to bet that the reason the power had passed from her to Eleanore was because she'd beaten her, and accepted the power. After all, it wasn't like Louise had been a normal mage before she'd put it on for the first time.
And it didn't want to come back to her? Hah! How dare it spite a de la Vallière like that!
"Listen to me," she said, voice low and intense. She didn't speak to the gauntlet, but instead directed her glare at Eleanore. "I've beaten her. I'm better than her. Look at what she tried to do with this power. She tried to kill herself in a very elaborate way. Me? I just defeated a dark goddess, just because they were in the way of my revenge on Montespan.
She paused, and wet her lips. "Look at everything I've done already. And there are still two more people on the Council in my way. So either you leave Eleanore alone and come back to me, or I'll go found the nearest volcano and throw the gauntlet in. I bet the forces of Evil won't like that. And then I'll go to Mother and I'll tell her everything."
Louise felt something dark and sinister pulse within Eleanore, matched by a second shift within the gauntlet. She smiled, a motion which had rather more displayed teeth than it should.
"Oh yes. Yes, I will. I'll tell her everything. I'll tell her the Void is corrupted. I'll tell her about the curse that the royal families carry because of that. And you know how she'll react to that. I'll be with her every step of the way. Listen to me, Void. You can either have me as your host, or you can have me as your enemy. You make the choice. Give me that power. Or else."
The creeping feeling of evil intensified. Eleanore contorted, heels drumming on the stone floor. She opened her mouth in a silent scream, something black and red and vaporous coming out in a sudden rush. It hung in the air for just a fraction of a second, before it darted to Louise and enveloped her.
She screamed. She could feel it sinking into her skin, into her muscles, into her very bones. It burned and it froze all at once. Just for a moment she felt horribly, terribly dirty - and then the moment passed.
The screams became hoarse laughter.
Hair steaming, eyes burning a fierce pink, Louise smiled. There wasn't much humour in her expression, though her face was flush with the warmth of victory. "Now that's more like it," she said, clenching her fist in front of her face. The metal of the gauntlet gleamed in the light of her eyes.
And she was angry. Downright furious at how much complete bull-sugar she'd been through today just to get this dang gauntlet back. She embraced her anger, pulled it in close and nursed it. Her hand sparked with bloody lightning; her nails burned with pink flame. The gauntlet pulsed in acknowledgement. Oh yes. Yes. It dang well knew who was in charge and it knew she was just about to smash the flip out of Eleanore's stupid spell.
Channelling her rage, Louise spoke a single word in the Dark Tongue.
The sun was rising over Amstrelredamme, shedding its light down on a smoking, ruined university.
With a faint and vaguely anticlimactic pop, Louise and Eleanore re-appeared in the basement of the Grand Archives of the University. The ritual site burned a bright pink, and the great tome of Chronos Chronophage ignited, crumbling away into ash.
"Did I do that?" Louise asked herself. "Um." She looked around, just to make sure that no one had seen that happen. Well, it was probably for the best. At least no one else would be able to use that wicked spell in future.
Cattleya's skull contrived to stare accusingly at them, despite its lack of eyes. It sat beside the overlady's helmet, which was going to need extensive work from Jessica to beat out the dents. Up overhead, she heard the distant sound of something collapsing. That was probably the minions. She should probably intervene, but all things considered they'd probably set the Grand Archives on fire already. After all, minions had been left unattended in the vicinity of a lot of paper. Even if they hadn't meant to, some red had probably missed with a fireball.
With a sigh, the overlady went looking for a broom to sweep up Cattleya. Hmm. She'd need to bring as much of her back as possible to make the resurrection as easy as she could make it. Maybe there was some kind of pot or urn down here. No, wait, that would be a terrible idea. Any pottery down here would be cursed, binding a demon, or otherwise a very bad idea to disturb. She could probably send the minions to steal something. Picking up Cattleya's skull, she pondered it, making sure not to prick herself on the exposed fangs. "Well, I stopped Eleanore," she told the skull. "And punched her quite a few times. And gagged her. So that's something. Felt pretty good, honestly. But no, don't glare at me like that."
The mouldering skull didn't say anything. Eleanore stirred, groaning, and Louise flinched and hid the skull behind her back.
"... little brat, I'll get you for…" She blinked herself awake and groaned.
"Welcome back to the present, Eleanore," Louise said, in a cheerful tone which even sounded forced to her. She dropped the skull. "In conclusion, no, you're not going to kill your past self. I've stopped you, and also destroyed the ritual. And I've taken this power back, because it's really bad for you."
"Mmgh?" Slowly, Eleanore curled up onto a ball. A slow, wet sob escaped from her.
"So, I know what I'm going to do. I'm heading back to my tower, and I'm going to finish what I started. That's two members of the Council down, and only two more to go. But now there's also the question of what I'm going to do with you." Louise wished she'd had more time to think of this. The fatigue was biting in and she just wanted to collapse somewhere soft.
"There's no need to bother," Eleanore said miserably. "I'm coming with you."
Louise blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Eleanore pulled herself upright; eyes bloodshot; dress tattered; fingernails torn. "So this is it," she said in a raw, choked voice. "This is what I get. I spend ten years trying to make up for… for trying to do the right thing! Ten years of trying to be good, fighting my instincts every day, facing the contempt of people who assume that as the heir of the de la Vallière family I must be wicked to the bone. Ten years – and all for nothing. When my little sister embraced the dark heritage of our family and within a few years she's slain the Bloody Duke and… and claimed our heritage in full. And I try to stop her and I find I'm just as pliable. Everything I tried… all for nothing."
"Eleanore…" Louise began, not unsympathetically.
A tear trickled down her cheek. "Was I even ever good?" Eleanore groaned, shoulders shaking with sobs. "Or was I just seeking attention? Trying to get validation from Mother, trying to be more than just the de la Vallière spawn everyone said I was? I leaned on my pride and pride was all I had left… and now pride isn't enough."
"Eleanore," Louise said, this time more sharply.
"Well, so be it! No more! No more futile attempts to be go—"
Louise slapped her.
"Ow!" Eleanore rubbed her reddened cheek, anger flickering back to life. "What was that for?"
"You're being stupid and emotional," Louise said sharply.
"I'm trying to join y—"
Louise slapped her again.
"Ow! Stop that!"
"You are not joining me!" Louise fumed, raising her hand threateningly. "What you are going to do is to go home to Mother and Father and you're going to keep yourself safe."
"No I'm not! I'm sick of being good! I want to embrace my dark heritage and... don't hit me again!"
"Then stop trying to join the forces of darkness!" Louise said, lowering her hand. She'd used her right hand, and thus it was stinging. If she'd used her left, Eleanore would probably be out cold again. "And you don't want to embrace your dark heritage. You're just having a breakdown. You'll feel different in the morning, especially once you've had a meal and seen some sunlight." Louise folded her arms. "Trust me. I've been trapped underground for months with no one to speak to but goblins. It leaves you a mess. Being locked up in jail is probably the same."
Eleanore blinked, clearly trying to fit the concept into her head. "But I want to rule over Tristain at your side?" she tried hesitantly.
"Well, you're out of luck if you're joining me for that," Louise stated. "That's not the plan. I'm destroying the Council – especially Wardes, that lying treacherous cheating dog, oh yes I'm going to destroy him long and hard – and then Princess Henrietta is going to slay the Overlady of the North and escape a hero and rescue me and then she gets her name cleared. And I won't have to wear clothes made of steel all the time and live in fear of assassins. Elly, you're going home. Back to Mother and Father. You need to talk to them."
"No, I don't." Eleanore tried to square her jaw, and winced because aforementioned body part was stinging from repeated slaps.
"Yes you do. Look, you just tried to erase yourself from history. You need to talk to someone, and Father is probably a lot more understanding about that than Mother. After all, he's a de la Vallière by blood as well." She considered how to say this tactfully. "I don't want you dead," she said awkwardly. "So you need to stay safe. And to have people who care about you around to look after you. And… look," she glanced over at the pile of dust and fanged skull on the ground, "... Cattleya is going to be, um. Irked. Even if I wanted you at my side - and I don't - I don't want my big sisters killing each other. You can't get better from that, unlike her."
She took a deep breath, and squatted down next to Eleanore. "And I need you alive and a hero," she said. "Something bad is coming. Something very, very bad. When you broke time… Elly, I saw the future. Or a future, at least."
"I don't like the sound of this," Eleanore said. Despite her red-eyed, snotty state there was still a glimmer of alertness in her eyes. That had to be a good sign.
"Neither do I. I met myself. She was thirty-six. The entire continent had torn itself apart. The estate was floating above the Abyss. Future-me said something had happened, that the world had torn itself apart. The Abyss is planning something big. Really, really big. Something we need to stop."
"You're evil. Why are you trying to stop the Abyss?"
"It's… it's complicated," Louise said. "But if I'm evil, and I don't think I am, I'm the kind that doesn't want the world torn apart in a hellscape." She leaned over, and gave Eleanore her hand. "So if you want something good to do, something that'll help you redeem yourself for what you did this night… then I think I know what you can do. And I'll help you with it." She frowned. "When I can spare time from the Council, at least. But yes, an alliance of sisters."
"Mother would tell me to kill you on the spot."
"Yes, but there are two reasons why you're not going to do that. Firstly, you're too exhausted to do that," Louise said. And like that, she knew she'd got Eleanore. If she actually did want to kill her, she'd have tried anyway. "And secondly, she's not a de la Vallière. She doesn't have our… certain way of looking at the world. Mother would kill me here, but I don't think Father would."
Eleanore considered things. And she smiled, a tiny, fleeting, weak smile. "No, I don't think he would."
"And come on," Louise said, wincing as she rubbed her puffy swollen eye, "it's probably for the best. I mean, if the two of us spent time in the same place for too long, we'd probably try to kill each other. I mean, not like you and Catt, but we'd probably try to strangle each other. As sisters, but strangling is strangling."
"I… can't argue with that," Eleanore said hoarsely. She smiled, wincing from the pain. "We're too similar for comfort, but too different to really understand one another."
"I was mostly thinking of how you're just plain mean, honestly."
"And you're a brat."
Pulling her sister upright, Louise helped her over to a bench. "So here's what we're going to do. As far as everyone else is concerned, tonight was the fault of the demon possessing Montespan. That basically discredits all the charges against you, so you're going to go home - and yes, face Mother and Father. You need to make up with them. It's been twelve years."
Eleanore winced. "I suppose it's a form of penance," she muttered to herself.
"And another thing." Louise took a deep breath, and walked over to the place where the ritual circle had been. She lifted up the cursed gem with her gauntleted hand. "You need to take this back to Father so he can put this in the secure vaults. I never want any chance of Athe or Baelogi getting out."
"You're… not keeping it?"
"I don't want it. I don't want any risk either of them will escape." Louise wrestled with herself, trying to push aside the anger and cling onto the warmth and clarity she'd felt when she wasn't the overlady. "And if you find Magdalene, she's got Montespan's body. If… if you're… if you're serious about finding a way of helping her, that's… that's something you can do."
"Louise, I…"
"But only if you make sure she suffers from your full meanness for her own stupidity of getting stupidly possessed by a stupid demon!" Louise quickly added.
Eleanore gave a shaky smile. "She locked me up for six months. That was always on the cards."
"Good. Good." Louise dropped the gem with a clatter, and rushed forwards to hug Eleanore, burrowing her head into her shoulder. They both stunk of metal, sweat, and blood. "And d-don't you dare get yourself into trouble again, Elly! I mean it!" she mumbled. "I'll never f-forgive you if I have to go through all this again!"
"I'll never forgive myself if I have to be saved by you again," Eleanore retorted, trying to sound arch and failing. "It's… it's n-not… I'd h-have managed things fine if you hadn't nearly killed me with that punch!"
Things rather degenerated into incoherent sobbing from thereon in. Eventually, they detached.
"Awfully dusty down here," Eleanore whispered, mopping at her eyes.
"So much dust in the air," Louise agreed, blowing her nose on her sleeve. "Well, I suppose I… I suppose I ought to sweep up Cattleya and gather the minions and get out of here."
"And I need to rest to get enough strength to make something to hold that jewel, then I need to find Françoise-Athenais and a horse and head home," Eleanore agreed. "And Louise?"
"Yes?"
"Rejoice, for it is the Silver Pentecost."
"Yes. Yes, I suppose it is." Louise rubbed her eyes. "Next year, I hope it'll be at home. Properly, I mean. Because there's only two members of the Council left. I can get them done in a year, right?"
The snow falling on Bruxelles made the city for once look pure and clean. The duc de Richelieu looked out over his white city, nose wrinkling into a sneer. It just showed that you couldn't trust appearances.
"Do you recall our previous discussions on the topic of Françoise-Athenais, Jean-Jacques?" he said, without turning around. "I do believe I gave you certain suggestions with regards as to how to stop her womanly mind from being distracted. And now I discover that she was apparently possessed by a demon." He whirled. "Did you not pay her any attention, or did you just not care?"
Jean-Jacques de Wardes was sat by the fire, hunched over in a leather chair. The large glass of brandy in his hand was mostly empty, so he downed it and poured himself a new one before continuing. "I didn't know," he said hoarsely. "She seemed like herself."
"Oh, so you're just an inobservant fool, not an utter incompetent," said Richelieu, expression twisted into a sneer. "If you'd known and kept it from me, then I'd be calling you out for a duel right now. A demon could have been a useful ally."
Wardes said nothing, but merely took a mouthful of brandy.
"Now because of your foolishness and her weakness, we have a scandal on our hands," Richelieu continued. "Of all the damn fool things! You should have been more attentive in your masculine duties! If all she'd been thinking of had been your trouser saucisson, she wouldn't had had time to think of getting involved with demons."
"I blame myself," Wardes said, voice hollow.
"That's wonderful, because I blame you too. In fact, that's what I've been doing; blaming you!" Richelieu thumped the wall. "And now we're going to need to find someone new for the Regency Council who can handle Amstelredamme which is going to be a veritable powderkeg. They have to be someone intelligent and capable, but also someone who won't have time to ask questions that we don't want asked.
He snapped his fingers. "I have it! Magdalene le Provost! She was always useful back in the day when she was one of your bevvy of beauties – and that idiot Montespan has completely ruined the chance of us calling on Eleanore de la Vallière. A shame."
"Magdalene's married now," Wardes said, taking another drink. "She's van Delft now."
"Oh yes, and isn't her husband one of our useful fools? Yes, that has real potential. She's highly intelligent and capable – and hardly a puritan – but she's a new mother and she'll be worked off her feet handling Amstelredamme. Exactly what we need to hold down the fort while the plan moves into its latter stages."
Wardes looked conflicted. "Normally I would agree," he said cautiously, "but do remember; she is a le Provost. She is from a de la Vallière cadet line."
"So? I consider that an advantage," Richelieu snapped. "Before the current generation, the de la Vallière family were perfect examples of the nobility. Yes, they might have been rotten to the core, but they understood the virtues of stability. God, if I could replace all the ducal lines – save my own – with old school de la Vallières, I would! Certainly I'd get rid of the current lot. People ascribe too much importance to 'good' and 'evil'. The de la Vallières were perfectly content to stay on their land, bathing in the blood of peasants and feuding with the von Zerbsts. And of course, they were so useful for suppressing the real threats to the Crown, like rebellious peasants. Heroes can be relied on to consistently stop portals to the Abyss, but they're less trustworthy when the peasantry are getting uppity."
Running his fingers through his grey hair, Wardes sighed. "De la Vallière cadet lines are… pliable to the will of the main bloodline. I have mentioned this before."
"Then you can go find her a magical amulet or esoteric ritual or something else of that ilk that'll stop that," Richelieu said, his tone acidic. "If you really believe it's a problem. And Magdalene is a tall, curvaceous beauty, so you should be able to keep your powder dry around her."
Wardes glared at him, but said nothing.
"I shall handle this. If I left this in your hands, no doubt I'd come back to find my clerks possessed by demons. Rikkert! Rikkert!"
A shambling, foul-smelling creature ambled through the door. "Yes, yer grace?" the cardinal's manservant asked. "If that was me you were wanting."
"Of course it was, you buffoon! I was calling your name!"
"Oh."
"Prepare the coach! I need to go to the palace."
"Oooh, very nice, yer grace. Did you forget to give the queen her present?"
Richelieu threw the poker at him. It bounced off his head. "Ow."
"No, you idiot! I have work to do!" He turned back to Wardes. "And as for you..."
Wardes nodded. "When the weather clears, I'll be heading to Albion. Our 'friends' will be moving this year, but I don't trust them."
"Good. At least you haven't forgotten our real plans. I'll hold down the fort here. As for the mess of Amstrelredamme ," Richelieu said thoughtfully, "there is an agent of mine who might be quite useful for this. One who serves a similar role to what you once did, in fact. I'm sure there are inconvenient facts in Amstrelredamme that could be made to vanish. Possibly by being eaten by a dragon."
Upon the return of the overlady to her dismal dungeons, she retreated to her bedchambers, to brood on dark and unpleasant things.
Louise slumped down on her bed, feeling awful. This wasn't unusual. Except now she knew that all of the… most of the… well, at least some of the reason she felt awful was that the Evil in her was messing with her mind. It wasn't all the Evil, of course - some of it was because she was bruised, battered, tired, and had just experienced probably the worst Silver Pentecost ever.
But would she be feeling like this if she hadn't taken the cursed metaphorical-mantle of the overlady back from Eleanore?
Gnarl had been distinctly unhappy with her when she'd got back and handed him the swept-up remains of Cattleya for her to handle later while the minions took care of the copious amounts of loot from Amstrelredamme. She'd never seem him like that before. He'd been all but spitting in rage over how she'd neither corrupted nor killed Eleanore and had instead just set her free. She desperately hoped that her story about how she'd given her sister Montespan to spread chaos and undermine the Council had been believed. But even if it had, Gnarl would probably been watching her.
"Corrupt or kill, your wickedness," he'd said, knuckles white around his walking stick. "Corrupt heroes, or kill them. You should never just leave them running around where they can get up to mischief!"
She shook her head, trying to get his quietly furious voice out of her ears. She was exhausted to her very bones, but she couldn't sleep. Her mind was too busy, buzzing with swirling thoughts until it almost felt like it could burst from the pressure.
Pallas padded up her chest, and licked her from chin to brow. When Louise sat up and glared at the cat, she mewed and washed her ears. Her expression was an innocent as an angel's, if the angel happened to be a cat and thus a sadistic little self-centred monster mostly interested in food, napping and petting.
"Bleargh," Louise muttered. "You little monster, are you nagging me for food?"
"Mraw," Pallas said wisely.
Swinging her weary legs off her overly high bed, Louise swayed for a moment, grabbing onto the bedposts. "Well, come on, then," she said, rubbing her eyes. "We'll get you a snack and get me some wine or something to help me sleep. Warm milk, maybe."
By the time she had got halfway down the torch-lit corridors, she was very much regretting her decision. Not only was she exhausted enough to collapse, but Pallas was twining around her ankles and generally being a pest. And now she looked up, she had been in fact heading the wrong way in her confusion. The door in front of her was the door to Henrietta's alleged jail cell, although in practice since Henrietta had the only key it wasn't much use.
Louise swallowed. She still remembered the easy simplicity of… of being so free with her feelings. How everything had seemed so simple. How she had so casually declared she'd just tell Henrietta how she felt.
She repressed a giggle. Maybe the tiredness was making her sleep-drunk. Because she felt like she could maybe say it to her.
… and if she couldn't, she could just collapse on her bed, which would be easier than walking all the way back to her own bedroom. Pallas had vanished, treacherously realising that there wasn't going to be any food here, Louise noted.
She took a deep breath, and raised her hand to knock on Henrietta's door.
Then she shuffled away and hid, until she stopped hyperventilating. She could do this! She had to! She'd fought a literal dark god! Telling a girl how she felt about her was nothing!
Louise knocked on Henrietta's door.
"Coming!" Henrietta called out. She opened it, and Louise laid eyes on her best friend, who was clearly in the process of preparing for bed. Her hair was loose, and she wore a black chemise and bloomers. A faint smell of iron wafted out of the room, but Louise ignored it. "Oh, Louise-Françoise, I'm so glad to see you."
Louise's heart swelled with warmth. Yes! She could do this. She could almost feel the warmth radiating off Henrietta. She just had to say the words, through a suddenly bone dry mouth. "Henrietta," she croaked.
"Excellent news, Louise-Françoise!" Henrietta said brightly. "I got to talking with that Albionese overlady - a half-elf, if you can believe it! So evil! - and I believe I've found something useful for us!"
"I… I…" Louise wet her mouth. "I've been thinking about us and…"
"So have I! It'll serve us very well! Well, you know, Tiffania is fighting against the Albionese Republicans - the ones who murdered my sweet love - and that automatically makes her our friend. But she wants to talk about a treaty between us so we can focus on ruining both the Council and the Republican government!" Henrietta clasped her hands to her chest. "And then! Just think! They executed my love, but we can recover his body. Louise-Françoise, I can bring him back."
"Oh," said Louise. "Oh." Her shoulders slumped. "I see." She looked at Henrietta, so happy and gleeful and… and vivacious and pretty and in love with someone else. Her eyes blurred. "I'm… so happy for you," she managed, before the exhaustion overcame her and she sagged down into the kind waters of unconsciousness.
Her last sight before sleep claimed her was a decidedly déshabillé Henrietta kneeling over her, almost overflowing her chemise, which seemed very unfair.
- Louis de la Vallière, the Bloody Duke
...
The red light of one of the moons shone in through the tall windows of the de la Vallière estate, casting the galleries and halls in a bloody hue. Long shadows draped themselves across floors and walls like grasping hands. The soft humming of a maid as she checked the doors on her way to bed faded into the distance.
Two yellow eyes flickered to life in one of the shadows. Eleanore de la Vallière emerged, dark metal gauntlet at the ready. Carefully, delicately she eased her way up the stairs, avoiding the squeaky parts with long familiarity. She could make her way through her family home even without her glasses.
She eased open her room's door, and squeezed through the gap, carefully closing it behind her. Her sleeping chambers were just on the other side of this room. She couldn't make a sound. Not until the moment came. And, well, after that it wouldn't really make a difference.
Would it hurt, she wondered? Would it be a simple, clean case of non-existence, or would she feel pain when she cut away her own past? Maybe she'd even last long enough for history to reassemble itself, and that's when she'd vanish; when the world realised that she died when she was sixteen.
Reaching out, Eleanore groped for the drawer where she'd always kept a spare pair of glasses. It was a necessary precaution, when your brat of a little sister would steal them because she thought it was funny. For a moment, Eleanore considered whether the world would be better off if she instead killed Louise. It was no surprise that a girl who used to reactivate some of the house's old traps for her short-sighted elder sister to fall into would become an evil overlady. The malice ran deep.
But no. That would be wrong, she thought as she slid the drawer open and reached in. She had her own misdeeds to right. Maybe without her, Louise would have more of a chance since Mother and Father wouldn't be so distracted by Cattleya.
Eleanore frowned as her fingers found only wood
The drawer was empty.
"Oh," Eleanore said, a sudden coldness gripping her stomach. "Oh. Clever girl."
And then Louise hit her over the head with a hatstand.
Eleanore clutched her head. Blood trickled down her face from cuts to her scalp. "The hell? Where did you come from?" she groaned. In the dim red light, her little sister was nearly invisible.
"I've been here for hours! I came early! I was hiding in the closet!" Louise whispered triumphantly. "But now I don't need to hide! I'm going to stop you, Eleanore!" She resisted the urge to rub her eyes. She'd nearly fallen asleep several times in the warm, comfortable wardrobe. But now her veins were filled with utter clarity of purpose. If only clarity of purpose was better at burning out the layers of fatigue.
"For Founder's sake, just keep it down!" Eleanore hissed at her. "Do you want to wake everyone up?"
"I don't care! At least it'll stop you killing yourself!"
Eleanore's face snarled up into a mask of desperate agony. "Flames of the Sunken Abyss!" she hissed, flinching even as she cast the spell.
A small black flame fizzled out of the end of the Gauntlet, and followed a sad parabolic arc down to the carpet.
Hah! Eleanore must have drained her will casting the time-breaking spell. Now she could take her down silently and safely, using a spell like… um. Oh. Louise blanched, as she realised that the only Wind spell she had was lightning and there was really no way she could think of to make it non-lethal. "Wind Chains!" she announced, waving her wand around. "Oh, damn. It failed. I must be exhausted too."
"Idiot," Eleanore said, sounding more like herself for once. "Wind Chains isn't even a real spell."
"Y-you don't know that!" Louise hefted the hatstand again. She swung it at Eleanore's midsection, and missed, dropping the heavy wooden object as her injured arms gave way. Eleanore, half-blind without her glasses and this light closed in, and threw a tired punch that even Louise could step back from. The two sisters flailed pathetically at each other. They were both so exhausted that they barely had the strength to lift their arms, let alone cast spells.
"Your dang monkey kicked me into the past!" Louise growled, uselessly slap-punching at Eleanore's raised forearms. "Do you know how long it took for me to climb into the future? Far, far, far too long!"
"I am trying to fix things," Eleanore grated, falling into a bear-hug around Louise. "You are ruining everything. Stop being so loud, or else…"
"What is going on here?" a crisp, sharp and distinctly Eleanore-ish voice demanded of the fighting siblings.
The two of them turned their heads. On the other side of the room, a bespectacled, glasses-wearing Eleanore glared at the intruders, her wand raised. Through her open door, could be seen scattered weapons of a vampire-hunting inclination - stakes, crossbows, and various kinds of religious iconography.
"Don't worry, this is just a symbolic nightmare thing," Louise blurted out before Eleanore-the-older could say a thing. "Um. I represent your good side and she's your bad side. That's why she has glowing eyes."
Eleanore-the-older turned red, insofar as any difference could be seen in the red-lit gloom. "You little—"
"Choose good!" Louise quickly added. "Don't let evil consume you, Eleanore! And don't trust the lies of your dark side!"
The younger Eleanore snorted, striding forwards. "Oh, please," she said, reaching out to pull the fighters apart. "Like I believe-"
Eleanore laid hands on Eleanore.
...
The world lurched.
On the edge of the estate, a faintly sizzling line formed. On one side, things were as they had been. On the other side, the landscape flaked away to fall into the sea of time. And now, the moonlight shining in through the windows was no longer a dull red. It was now a sharp, brilliant purple.
The moon blinked.
...
"What just happened?" younger-Eleanore asked, backing away. She looked around wildly, bed-mussed hair falling around her. "Why is everything purple?" She dashed to the window. "And why is the moon an eye?!"
"Eleanore," Louise hissed at the future version of her older sister. "Dang it. Remember Mother's rules! Don't ever touch your past self!"
"She touched me!" older-Eleanore hissed back. "This isn't my fault. It's hers!"
"She is you! I'm blaming both of you!"
"Stop muttering, you two!" the younger Eleanore shouted from the window. "Why is the moon an eye? No one has explained this!"
"I said this was all a dream," said Louise. "It's just a nightmare."
"I'm from the future and here to stop you," older-Eleanore said at the same time. The two of them glared at each other.
"Well, what is it?" demanded younger-Eleanore, hands on her hips. "One of you is lying!"
"Actually, we could both be lying," older-Eleanore pointed out, apparently unable to resist the urge to correct someone's misaimed assumptions even if the incorrect person was herself.
Younger-Eleanore bit back a comment. "Yes, fine. Both of you can't be right. Is that better?"
"Much better," older-Eleanore said. "And I'm telling the truth. It's Louise who's lying."
"I am not!" Louise lied. "This is all a dream. Time travel doesn't explain the moon turning into an eye, after all."
"Wait, that's Louise?" younger-Eleanore said at the same time. "And that is true. Why would time travel turn the moon into an eye?"
"It's a paradox caused by you touching me," the other Eleaonore said, straightening up. Her shoulders were hunched and she was bruised, beaten and exhausted - not just physically, but mentally and spiritually too.
"Oh, sure, blame it on a paradox," Louise said, thinking fast. The purple light outside the window was getting even brighter, which probably meant that reality itself was falling into the sea of time. That was bad. And it wasn't just a time paradox. Louise had touched her elder self and that hadn't destroyed everything. Maybe it was a specific thing that applied to the caster. "Sounds just like what a nightmare who doesn't want Eleanore to wake up would say."
"Stop interfering!" older-Eleanore screamed at her.
"I'm the good one here! You're evil! You literally have your eyes glowing with evil! Everything you say is a lie!" Louise retorted.
Tilting her head, younger-Eleanore considered her options. "That is a convincing argument," she said.
"No it's not! I can't believe I was ever stupid enough to fall for Louise lying to my face!"
"She's calling you stupid," Louise said, stepping closer to the younger Eleanore. If there was one thing she knew about her sister, she hated that. "I don't think she thinks very much of your intellectual capacity."
Eleanore-the older screamed and threw herself at Louise, knocking her to the ground. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" she yelled, bludgeoning Louise with wild punches.
"No, both of you stop it!" Eleanore-the-younger snapped. "I'm trying to evaluate your claims here! That means you're meant to wait until I pick one of you!" She stepped in, reaching out to pull them apart, and her hand brushed against Eleanore again.
A purple crack zig-zagged through the air, propagating out from where she'd touched her elder self. The room itself split in two, tearing the fragments apart with dizzying speed. One half held the Eleanores - the other held Louise. And as she watched, the swiftly receding fracture containing the Eleanores disintegrated further. It was already sinking down through history, in a whirlpool of hours and minutes.
And if Louise wasn't very mistaken, the bottom of the whirlpool looked a lot like a maw. Future-Louise had told her that everything had gone wrong in her timeline when she had thrown Eleanore down a time rift - and that Half-Eaten Chronos hated the caster of the spell. The eye and the mouth were probably his. And were going after her sister.
Well, she wasn't going to let that happen.
Louise took a deep breath. Time to put everything she'd learned in painfully climbing her way back up through history. It was how she'd managed to get here before Eleanore. She focussed on a time and place, staring out over the purple sea, and before her eyes a clock-stepping stone formed. She might only have one chance with this.
"You owe me for this, Eleanore," she whispered wearily, taking her first step.
…
The red light of one of the moons shone in through the tall windows of the de la Vallière estate, casting the galleries and halls in a bloody hue. Long shadows draped themselves across floors and walls like grasping hands. The soft humming of a maid as she checked the doors on her way to bed faded into the distance.
Two yellow eyes flickered to life in one of the shadows. Eleanore de la Vallière emerged, dark metal gauntlet at the ready. Carefully, delicately she eased her way up the stairs, avoiding the squeaky parts with long familiarity. She could make her way through her family home even without her glasses.
Unfortunately for her, this sixth sense only extended to things that were meant to be there. And she certainly wasn't expecting someone to have reactivated the old trapdoors in the de la Vallière estate. She screamed out as she fell, but the trapdoor snapped shut behind her as she plummeted down the slide. When the housemaid came running, she put the mysterious scream in the night down to just another unexplained happening, and went to bed safe in the knowledge that at least one of the old ghosts had escaped the purge by the young Duke.
This was no consolation to Eleanore, who was by then gagged, bound, and dangling by her ankles in one of the old hidden torture chambers. Her eyes glowed with uncontained rage as she glared at her little sister, who was leaning against the opposite wall with a smug expression on her face.
"Mmmph mph mphou mpht mpheer mphrst," snarled Eleanore, which translated to 'How did you get here first?'
"Oh, Elly," Louise said, her grin widening. It covered the relief that she felt that this had actually worked out. "You haven't fallen for this trap in years. Well, in the present you probably last fell for it a few weeks ago, but I haven't done this since… oh, probably since I was six. Mother and Father eventually managed to strip out the systems I was using and scolded me into not doing it anymore." She shook her head. "Lord and Founder, I was a little monster when I was younger. I suppose the evil force was even more potent in me, given that I was a six year old with far too much talent with the house's old traps."
"Mphoor mphil amprat!"
"I am not. I'm doing this for your own good. You don't know what you're doing. Trust me, it's much better that I intercept you now rather than let you get through to the room and try to stop you there. Thank you, future pirate princess me."
"Mmphuh?"
"No, I won't explain." She wasn't going to tell Eleanore about that - not yet. The former overlady crossed her arms, and looked up at her big sister. "So I suppose you wonder what I'm going to do to you, now that you're my captive." She grinned, her cheeks rounded. "What horrible torments I'm going to inflict on you? Well there's no need to worry. Because I'm going to do… nothing."
Eleanore made a concerned noise.
"Why would I need to do anything?" Louise stepped forwards, until she was face to inverted face with Eleanore. "After all, you're my captive now. You're too exhausted to cast another spell… no, I know you are. And tonight is the night that younger-you goes to try to kill the Bloody Duke. So I won't do a thing. I'll just keep you here until dawn, unless you tell me how to end the spell. And you'll have failed."
From the panicked look in Eleanore's glowing eyes, she took the threat seriously. Louise removed the gag.
"You can't do this! You can't!"
"Are you going to tell me how to end this spell?"
"You have to let me do this! This is the only way to stop mmmph mmph mpph."
Louise stepped back and tried not to look too satisfied. Founder, it was cathartic to be able to gag Eleanore when she started talking. It was the kind of thing her younger self upstairs would kill to be able to do.
"You'll probably pass out from being held upside down in a bit, judging how things use to go when we were younger," she said, with a false yawn. "Goodnight, Eleanore. I'll see you in the morning." Curling up on a pile of old bodybags, Louise closed her eyes, ignored her sister's muffled protests, and pretended to be asleep.
…
Of course, she didn't leave her like that for too long. The de la Vallière estate had several seminal works on the effects of suspending someone upside down for extended periods. There were pictures of the many ways that a man could die in such a position, along with recommendations of amusing twists to put on the whole affair.
Louise, who didn't want Eleanore to die but didn't mind a bit of unpleasantness therefore lowered her down once she'd passed out. It took less than half an hour. She must have been exhausted. It was never so rapid when they were younger.
Hmm. She probably should apologise for that.
She squatted down, sitting on her haunches. The Gauntlet gleamed in the gloom. It wasn't the same on her sister's hand as when she wore it. But then again, it hadn't had the form she was used to before she put it on the first time.
Its dark power called to her. She wanted to say "No!"; to resist it, to stand strong. And she could do it. Even exhausted to the bone and desperately needing sleep, she could stand strong.
But if she prevailed against its evil, what would happen to Eleanore? Louise felt very old. Her big sister, ten years older than her, was too fragile and too much of a mess to handle it. Louise thought that the Gauntlet and whatever evil that came with it didn't introduce anything that wasn't already there. She had a temper and wanted to prove herself - and so the Gauntlet turned it into fits of burning rage and drove her to stupid things to show everyone else they were wrong. And Eleanore… Eleanore wasn't a happy person, and the darkness within had prompted her to try to erase herself from history as a self-sacrificing martyr.
"Oh, Elly," Louise said, brushing her hair with her fingers. "I didn't know how much you struggled with the influence of the de la Vallière side. I suppose you're old enough that you might have met grandmother and grandfather. No wonder you're a wreck if you think you're on the edge of turning out like them. If you can hear me, don't worry about resembling grandmother. She's actually," Louise shuddered, "more like Cattleya than you. Or me."
For the first time, Eleanore wasn't a towering figure of meanness and bullying and petty cruelties. Curled up in front of Louise, she looked very small and delicate. Reaching out, Louise traced her fingers along Eleanore's jawline. They did have the same bone structure, after all, and everyone said she looked petite and adorable. Without the cutting aura of her-ness her sister usually radiated, they were more similar than - ha, than either of them had previously thought.
Too much treacherous de la Vallière blood to be a proper hero. Too much of Mother to settle for being anything other than the best. Neither one thing nor the other; always torn between two worlds.
As she saw it, there were two ways this could go. She could take the Gauntlet back off Eleanore and accepted the evil that came with it, this thing that was possibly the corrupted Void. She'd be back to how she lived her whole life, except now she'd be aware that it was the evil in her that fed the sulks, the sudden rages, and the inability to be honest with herself about how she felt about Henrietta.
Or she could leave it with Eleanore, and in her current state her big sister would wind up dead soon enough, through some ill-fated suicidal attack or… or via some other way. She wasn't a happy person. And Louise knew that the holy Void was said to pass down the royal bloodline. This corrupted Void would come and find her and she'd be the overlady anyway.
Or it'd find Henrietta - and Louise doubted her friend, her love, would handle it any better than Eleanore. She was more than a little worried about the way that Henrietta was reaching towards necromancy, and the gauntlet would only make things worse. After all, future-her had said that Henrietta had murdered everyone in the capital, crashed it into the Abyss in a suicidal act of revenge and then taken over a big chunk of the Underworld. A mind like that couldn't be let near the Gauntlet.
Louise moaned, holding her head in her hands. No, no, no. Stupid logic. Stupid, stupid logic. She didn't want to do this. But when she put it like that, there really wasn't a choice at all. She'd have to become the overlady again - knowing that the evil power twisted her mind and the way she thought. Louise wiped her eyes, feeling them well up. It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair at all! She was happy now. She could be the daughter Mother had always wanted her to be – and more crucially, she could be the woman she wanted to be.
But no. Of course not. She had to give it up, after tasting a few short hours of how life could have been others. Dang it. Dang it all.
At least she'd have the memories of this brief moment to remind her that she didn't have to be evil. It… it would have to be enough. She hoped.
With a deep breath, she reached out and eased the gauntlet off of Eleanore's hand. And with just a hint of ceremony, she put it on.
Dramatically, portentously, meaningfully… nothing happened.
"Um," Louise said, wagging her fingers. The gauntlet still looked like it looked when Eleanore wore it. And peeling back her sister's eyelids, there was still a faint glow.
A thought struck her. Oh. Of course. Just putting on a magic glove wouldn't do a thing. This was evil she was talking about. She was willing to bet that the reason the power had passed from her to Eleanore was because she'd beaten her, and accepted the power. After all, it wasn't like Louise had been a normal mage before she'd put it on for the first time.
And it didn't want to come back to her? Hah! How dare it spite a de la Vallière like that!
"Listen to me," she said, voice low and intense. She didn't speak to the gauntlet, but instead directed her glare at Eleanore. "I've beaten her. I'm better than her. Look at what she tried to do with this power. She tried to kill herself in a very elaborate way. Me? I just defeated a dark goddess, just because they were in the way of my revenge on Montespan.
She paused, and wet her lips. "Look at everything I've done already. And there are still two more people on the Council in my way. So either you leave Eleanore alone and come back to me, or I'll go found the nearest volcano and throw the gauntlet in. I bet the forces of Evil won't like that. And then I'll go to Mother and I'll tell her everything."
Louise felt something dark and sinister pulse within Eleanore, matched by a second shift within the gauntlet. She smiled, a motion which had rather more displayed teeth than it should.
"Oh yes. Yes, I will. I'll tell her everything. I'll tell her the Void is corrupted. I'll tell her about the curse that the royal families carry because of that. And you know how she'll react to that. I'll be with her every step of the way. Listen to me, Void. You can either have me as your host, or you can have me as your enemy. You make the choice. Give me that power. Or else."
The creeping feeling of evil intensified. Eleanore contorted, heels drumming on the stone floor. She opened her mouth in a silent scream, something black and red and vaporous coming out in a sudden rush. It hung in the air for just a fraction of a second, before it darted to Louise and enveloped her.
She screamed. She could feel it sinking into her skin, into her muscles, into her very bones. It burned and it froze all at once. Just for a moment she felt horribly, terribly dirty - and then the moment passed.
The screams became hoarse laughter.
Hair steaming, eyes burning a fierce pink, Louise smiled. There wasn't much humour in her expression, though her face was flush with the warmth of victory. "Now that's more like it," she said, clenching her fist in front of her face. The metal of the gauntlet gleamed in the light of her eyes.
And she was angry. Downright furious at how much complete bull-sugar she'd been through today just to get this dang gauntlet back. She embraced her anger, pulled it in close and nursed it. Her hand sparked with bloody lightning; her nails burned with pink flame. The gauntlet pulsed in acknowledgement. Oh yes. Yes. It dang well knew who was in charge and it knew she was just about to smash the flip out of Eleanore's stupid spell.
Channelling her rage, Louise spoke a single word in the Dark Tongue.
…
The sun was rising over Amstrelredamme, shedding its light down on a smoking, ruined university.
With a faint and vaguely anticlimactic pop, Louise and Eleanore re-appeared in the basement of the Grand Archives of the University. The ritual site burned a bright pink, and the great tome of Chronos Chronophage ignited, crumbling away into ash.
"Did I do that?" Louise asked herself. "Um." She looked around, just to make sure that no one had seen that happen. Well, it was probably for the best. At least no one else would be able to use that wicked spell in future.
Cattleya's skull contrived to stare accusingly at them, despite its lack of eyes. It sat beside the overlady's helmet, which was going to need extensive work from Jessica to beat out the dents. Up overhead, she heard the distant sound of something collapsing. That was probably the minions. She should probably intervene, but all things considered they'd probably set the Grand Archives on fire already. After all, minions had been left unattended in the vicinity of a lot of paper. Even if they hadn't meant to, some red had probably missed with a fireball.
With a sigh, the overlady went looking for a broom to sweep up Cattleya. Hmm. She'd need to bring as much of her back as possible to make the resurrection as easy as she could make it. Maybe there was some kind of pot or urn down here. No, wait, that would be a terrible idea. Any pottery down here would be cursed, binding a demon, or otherwise a very bad idea to disturb. She could probably send the minions to steal something. Picking up Cattleya's skull, she pondered it, making sure not to prick herself on the exposed fangs. "Well, I stopped Eleanore," she told the skull. "And punched her quite a few times. And gagged her. So that's something. Felt pretty good, honestly. But no, don't glare at me like that."
The mouldering skull didn't say anything. Eleanore stirred, groaning, and Louise flinched and hid the skull behind her back.
"... little brat, I'll get you for…" She blinked herself awake and groaned.
"Welcome back to the present, Eleanore," Louise said, in a cheerful tone which even sounded forced to her. She dropped the skull. "In conclusion, no, you're not going to kill your past self. I've stopped you, and also destroyed the ritual. And I've taken this power back, because it's really bad for you."
"Mmgh?" Slowly, Eleanore curled up onto a ball. A slow, wet sob escaped from her.
"So, I know what I'm going to do. I'm heading back to my tower, and I'm going to finish what I started. That's two members of the Council down, and only two more to go. But now there's also the question of what I'm going to do with you." Louise wished she'd had more time to think of this. The fatigue was biting in and she just wanted to collapse somewhere soft.
"There's no need to bother," Eleanore said miserably. "I'm coming with you."
Louise blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Eleanore pulled herself upright; eyes bloodshot; dress tattered; fingernails torn. "So this is it," she said in a raw, choked voice. "This is what I get. I spend ten years trying to make up for… for trying to do the right thing! Ten years of trying to be good, fighting my instincts every day, facing the contempt of people who assume that as the heir of the de la Vallière family I must be wicked to the bone. Ten years – and all for nothing. When my little sister embraced the dark heritage of our family and within a few years she's slain the Bloody Duke and… and claimed our heritage in full. And I try to stop her and I find I'm just as pliable. Everything I tried… all for nothing."
"Eleanore…" Louise began, not unsympathetically.
A tear trickled down her cheek. "Was I even ever good?" Eleanore groaned, shoulders shaking with sobs. "Or was I just seeking attention? Trying to get validation from Mother, trying to be more than just the de la Vallière spawn everyone said I was? I leaned on my pride and pride was all I had left… and now pride isn't enough."
"Eleanore," Louise said, this time more sharply.
"Well, so be it! No more! No more futile attempts to be go—"
Louise slapped her.
"Ow!" Eleanore rubbed her reddened cheek, anger flickering back to life. "What was that for?"
"You're being stupid and emotional," Louise said sharply.
"I'm trying to join y—"
Louise slapped her again.
"Ow! Stop that!"
"You are not joining me!" Louise fumed, raising her hand threateningly. "What you are going to do is to go home to Mother and Father and you're going to keep yourself safe."
"No I'm not! I'm sick of being good! I want to embrace my dark heritage and... don't hit me again!"
"Then stop trying to join the forces of darkness!" Louise said, lowering her hand. She'd used her right hand, and thus it was stinging. If she'd used her left, Eleanore would probably be out cold again. "And you don't want to embrace your dark heritage. You're just having a breakdown. You'll feel different in the morning, especially once you've had a meal and seen some sunlight." Louise folded her arms. "Trust me. I've been trapped underground for months with no one to speak to but goblins. It leaves you a mess. Being locked up in jail is probably the same."
Eleanore blinked, clearly trying to fit the concept into her head. "But I want to rule over Tristain at your side?" she tried hesitantly.
"Well, you're out of luck if you're joining me for that," Louise stated. "That's not the plan. I'm destroying the Council – especially Wardes, that lying treacherous cheating dog, oh yes I'm going to destroy him long and hard – and then Princess Henrietta is going to slay the Overlady of the North and escape a hero and rescue me and then she gets her name cleared. And I won't have to wear clothes made of steel all the time and live in fear of assassins. Elly, you're going home. Back to Mother and Father. You need to talk to them."
"No, I don't." Eleanore tried to square her jaw, and winced because aforementioned body part was stinging from repeated slaps.
"Yes you do. Look, you just tried to erase yourself from history. You need to talk to someone, and Father is probably a lot more understanding about that than Mother. After all, he's a de la Vallière by blood as well." She considered how to say this tactfully. "I don't want you dead," she said awkwardly. "So you need to stay safe. And to have people who care about you around to look after you. And… look," she glanced over at the pile of dust and fanged skull on the ground, "... Cattleya is going to be, um. Irked. Even if I wanted you at my side - and I don't - I don't want my big sisters killing each other. You can't get better from that, unlike her."
She took a deep breath, and squatted down next to Eleanore. "And I need you alive and a hero," she said. "Something bad is coming. Something very, very bad. When you broke time… Elly, I saw the future. Or a future, at least."
"I don't like the sound of this," Eleanore said. Despite her red-eyed, snotty state there was still a glimmer of alertness in her eyes. That had to be a good sign.
"Neither do I. I met myself. She was thirty-six. The entire continent had torn itself apart. The estate was floating above the Abyss. Future-me said something had happened, that the world had torn itself apart. The Abyss is planning something big. Really, really big. Something we need to stop."
"You're evil. Why are you trying to stop the Abyss?"
"It's… it's complicated," Louise said. "But if I'm evil, and I don't think I am, I'm the kind that doesn't want the world torn apart in a hellscape." She leaned over, and gave Eleanore her hand. "So if you want something good to do, something that'll help you redeem yourself for what you did this night… then I think I know what you can do. And I'll help you with it." She frowned. "When I can spare time from the Council, at least. But yes, an alliance of sisters."
"Mother would tell me to kill you on the spot."
"Yes, but there are two reasons why you're not going to do that. Firstly, you're too exhausted to do that," Louise said. And like that, she knew she'd got Eleanore. If she actually did want to kill her, she'd have tried anyway. "And secondly, she's not a de la Vallière. She doesn't have our… certain way of looking at the world. Mother would kill me here, but I don't think Father would."
Eleanore considered things. And she smiled, a tiny, fleeting, weak smile. "No, I don't think he would."
"And come on," Louise said, wincing as she rubbed her puffy swollen eye, "it's probably for the best. I mean, if the two of us spent time in the same place for too long, we'd probably try to kill each other. I mean, not like you and Catt, but we'd probably try to strangle each other. As sisters, but strangling is strangling."
"I… can't argue with that," Eleanore said hoarsely. She smiled, wincing from the pain. "We're too similar for comfort, but too different to really understand one another."
"I was mostly thinking of how you're just plain mean, honestly."
"And you're a brat."
Pulling her sister upright, Louise helped her over to a bench. "So here's what we're going to do. As far as everyone else is concerned, tonight was the fault of the demon possessing Montespan. That basically discredits all the charges against you, so you're going to go home - and yes, face Mother and Father. You need to make up with them. It's been twelve years."
Eleanore winced. "I suppose it's a form of penance," she muttered to herself.
"And another thing." Louise took a deep breath, and walked over to the place where the ritual circle had been. She lifted up the cursed gem with her gauntleted hand. "You need to take this back to Father so he can put this in the secure vaults. I never want any chance of Athe or Baelogi getting out."
"You're… not keeping it?"
"I don't want it. I don't want any risk either of them will escape." Louise wrestled with herself, trying to push aside the anger and cling onto the warmth and clarity she'd felt when she wasn't the overlady. "And if you find Magdalene, she's got Montespan's body. If… if you're… if you're serious about finding a way of helping her, that's… that's something you can do."
"Louise, I…"
"But only if you make sure she suffers from your full meanness for her own stupidity of getting stupidly possessed by a stupid demon!" Louise quickly added.
Eleanore gave a shaky smile. "She locked me up for six months. That was always on the cards."
"Good. Good." Louise dropped the gem with a clatter, and rushed forwards to hug Eleanore, burrowing her head into her shoulder. They both stunk of metal, sweat, and blood. "And d-don't you dare get yourself into trouble again, Elly! I mean it!" she mumbled. "I'll never f-forgive you if I have to go through all this again!"
"I'll never forgive myself if I have to be saved by you again," Eleanore retorted, trying to sound arch and failing. "It's… it's n-not… I'd h-have managed things fine if you hadn't nearly killed me with that punch!"
Things rather degenerated into incoherent sobbing from thereon in. Eventually, they detached.
"Awfully dusty down here," Eleanore whispered, mopping at her eyes.
"So much dust in the air," Louise agreed, blowing her nose on her sleeve. "Well, I suppose I… I suppose I ought to sweep up Cattleya and gather the minions and get out of here."
"And I need to rest to get enough strength to make something to hold that jewel, then I need to find Françoise-Athenais and a horse and head home," Eleanore agreed. "And Louise?"
"Yes?"
"Rejoice, for it is the Silver Pentecost."
"Yes. Yes, I suppose it is." Louise rubbed her eyes. "Next year, I hope it'll be at home. Properly, I mean. Because there's only two members of the Council left. I can get them done in a year, right?"
…
The snow falling on Bruxelles made the city for once look pure and clean. The duc de Richelieu looked out over his white city, nose wrinkling into a sneer. It just showed that you couldn't trust appearances.
"Do you recall our previous discussions on the topic of Françoise-Athenais, Jean-Jacques?" he said, without turning around. "I do believe I gave you certain suggestions with regards as to how to stop her womanly mind from being distracted. And now I discover that she was apparently possessed by a demon." He whirled. "Did you not pay her any attention, or did you just not care?"
Jean-Jacques de Wardes was sat by the fire, hunched over in a leather chair. The large glass of brandy in his hand was mostly empty, so he downed it and poured himself a new one before continuing. "I didn't know," he said hoarsely. "She seemed like herself."
"Oh, so you're just an inobservant fool, not an utter incompetent," said Richelieu, expression twisted into a sneer. "If you'd known and kept it from me, then I'd be calling you out for a duel right now. A demon could have been a useful ally."
Wardes said nothing, but merely took a mouthful of brandy.
"Now because of your foolishness and her weakness, we have a scandal on our hands," Richelieu continued. "Of all the damn fool things! You should have been more attentive in your masculine duties! If all she'd been thinking of had been your trouser saucisson, she wouldn't had had time to think of getting involved with demons."
"I blame myself," Wardes said, voice hollow.
"That's wonderful, because I blame you too. In fact, that's what I've been doing; blaming you!" Richelieu thumped the wall. "And now we're going to need to find someone new for the Regency Council who can handle Amstelredamme which is going to be a veritable powderkeg. They have to be someone intelligent and capable, but also someone who won't have time to ask questions that we don't want asked.
He snapped his fingers. "I have it! Magdalene le Provost! She was always useful back in the day when she was one of your bevvy of beauties – and that idiot Montespan has completely ruined the chance of us calling on Eleanore de la Vallière. A shame."
"Magdalene's married now," Wardes said, taking another drink. "She's van Delft now."
"Oh yes, and isn't her husband one of our useful fools? Yes, that has real potential. She's highly intelligent and capable – and hardly a puritan – but she's a new mother and she'll be worked off her feet handling Amstelredamme. Exactly what we need to hold down the fort while the plan moves into its latter stages."
Wardes looked conflicted. "Normally I would agree," he said cautiously, "but do remember; she is a le Provost. She is from a de la Vallière cadet line."
"So? I consider that an advantage," Richelieu snapped. "Before the current generation, the de la Vallière family were perfect examples of the nobility. Yes, they might have been rotten to the core, but they understood the virtues of stability. God, if I could replace all the ducal lines – save my own – with old school de la Vallières, I would! Certainly I'd get rid of the current lot. People ascribe too much importance to 'good' and 'evil'. The de la Vallières were perfectly content to stay on their land, bathing in the blood of peasants and feuding with the von Zerbsts. And of course, they were so useful for suppressing the real threats to the Crown, like rebellious peasants. Heroes can be relied on to consistently stop portals to the Abyss, but they're less trustworthy when the peasantry are getting uppity."
Running his fingers through his grey hair, Wardes sighed. "De la Vallière cadet lines are… pliable to the will of the main bloodline. I have mentioned this before."
"Then you can go find her a magical amulet or esoteric ritual or something else of that ilk that'll stop that," Richelieu said, his tone acidic. "If you really believe it's a problem. And Magdalene is a tall, curvaceous beauty, so you should be able to keep your powder dry around her."
Wardes glared at him, but said nothing.
"I shall handle this. If I left this in your hands, no doubt I'd come back to find my clerks possessed by demons. Rikkert! Rikkert!"
A shambling, foul-smelling creature ambled through the door. "Yes, yer grace?" the cardinal's manservant asked. "If that was me you were wanting."
"Of course it was, you buffoon! I was calling your name!"
"Oh."
"Prepare the coach! I need to go to the palace."
"Oooh, very nice, yer grace. Did you forget to give the queen her present?"
Richelieu threw the poker at him. It bounced off his head. "Ow."
"No, you idiot! I have work to do!" He turned back to Wardes. "And as for you..."
Wardes nodded. "When the weather clears, I'll be heading to Albion. Our 'friends' will be moving this year, but I don't trust them."
"Good. At least you haven't forgotten our real plans. I'll hold down the fort here. As for the mess of Amstrelredamme ," Richelieu said thoughtfully, "there is an agent of mine who might be quite useful for this. One who serves a similar role to what you once did, in fact. I'm sure there are inconvenient facts in Amstrelredamme that could be made to vanish. Possibly by being eaten by a dragon."
…
Upon the return of the overlady to her dismal dungeons, she retreated to her bedchambers, to brood on dark and unpleasant things.
Louise slumped down on her bed, feeling awful. This wasn't unusual. Except now she knew that all of the… most of the… well, at least some of the reason she felt awful was that the Evil in her was messing with her mind. It wasn't all the Evil, of course - some of it was because she was bruised, battered, tired, and had just experienced probably the worst Silver Pentecost ever.
But would she be feeling like this if she hadn't taken the cursed metaphorical-mantle of the overlady back from Eleanore?
Gnarl had been distinctly unhappy with her when she'd got back and handed him the swept-up remains of Cattleya for her to handle later while the minions took care of the copious amounts of loot from Amstrelredamme. She'd never seem him like that before. He'd been all but spitting in rage over how she'd neither corrupted nor killed Eleanore and had instead just set her free. She desperately hoped that her story about how she'd given her sister Montespan to spread chaos and undermine the Council had been believed. But even if it had, Gnarl would probably been watching her.
"Corrupt or kill, your wickedness," he'd said, knuckles white around his walking stick. "Corrupt heroes, or kill them. You should never just leave them running around where they can get up to mischief!"
She shook her head, trying to get his quietly furious voice out of her ears. She was exhausted to her very bones, but she couldn't sleep. Her mind was too busy, buzzing with swirling thoughts until it almost felt like it could burst from the pressure.
Pallas padded up her chest, and licked her from chin to brow. When Louise sat up and glared at the cat, she mewed and washed her ears. Her expression was an innocent as an angel's, if the angel happened to be a cat and thus a sadistic little self-centred monster mostly interested in food, napping and petting.
"Bleargh," Louise muttered. "You little monster, are you nagging me for food?"
"Mraw," Pallas said wisely.
Swinging her weary legs off her overly high bed, Louise swayed for a moment, grabbing onto the bedposts. "Well, come on, then," she said, rubbing her eyes. "We'll get you a snack and get me some wine or something to help me sleep. Warm milk, maybe."
By the time she had got halfway down the torch-lit corridors, she was very much regretting her decision. Not only was she exhausted enough to collapse, but Pallas was twining around her ankles and generally being a pest. And now she looked up, she had been in fact heading the wrong way in her confusion. The door in front of her was the door to Henrietta's alleged jail cell, although in practice since Henrietta had the only key it wasn't much use.
Louise swallowed. She still remembered the easy simplicity of… of being so free with her feelings. How everything had seemed so simple. How she had so casually declared she'd just tell Henrietta how she felt.
She repressed a giggle. Maybe the tiredness was making her sleep-drunk. Because she felt like she could maybe say it to her.
… and if she couldn't, she could just collapse on her bed, which would be easier than walking all the way back to her own bedroom. Pallas had vanished, treacherously realising that there wasn't going to be any food here, Louise noted.
She took a deep breath, and raised her hand to knock on Henrietta's door.
Then she shuffled away and hid, until she stopped hyperventilating. She could do this! She had to! She'd fought a literal dark god! Telling a girl how she felt about her was nothing!
Louise knocked on Henrietta's door.
"Coming!" Henrietta called out. She opened it, and Louise laid eyes on her best friend, who was clearly in the process of preparing for bed. Her hair was loose, and she wore a black chemise and bloomers. A faint smell of iron wafted out of the room, but Louise ignored it. "Oh, Louise-Françoise, I'm so glad to see you."
Louise's heart swelled with warmth. Yes! She could do this. She could almost feel the warmth radiating off Henrietta. She just had to say the words, through a suddenly bone dry mouth. "Henrietta," she croaked.
"Excellent news, Louise-Françoise!" Henrietta said brightly. "I got to talking with that Albionese overlady - a half-elf, if you can believe it! So evil! - and I believe I've found something useful for us!"
"I… I…" Louise wet her mouth. "I've been thinking about us and…"
"So have I! It'll serve us very well! Well, you know, Tiffania is fighting against the Albionese Republicans - the ones who murdered my sweet love - and that automatically makes her our friend. But she wants to talk about a treaty between us so we can focus on ruining both the Council and the Republican government!" Henrietta clasped her hands to her chest. "And then! Just think! They executed my love, but we can recover his body. Louise-Françoise, I can bring him back."
"Oh," said Louise. "Oh." Her shoulders slumped. "I see." She looked at Henrietta, so happy and gleeful and… and vivacious and pretty and in love with someone else. Her eyes blurred. "I'm… so happy for you," she managed, before the exhaustion overcame her and she sagged down into the kind waters of unconsciousness.
Her last sight before sleep claimed her was a decidedly déshabillé Henrietta kneeling over her, almost overflowing her chemise, which seemed very unfair.
…
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I have a lot of things to say about this update, but one thing really stuck out to me was this bit as I was trying to respond to everything.
I'm pretty sure there is dramatic irony to be found here. As Richelieu isn't aware that it is Louise who is the Overlady that sees the Council as a threat to the Crown to be taken out and has been very successful in doing so thus far. And this is all glorious as every last one of the problems the Council is facing that is Louise's fault is exactly the behavior Richelieu wanted out of the nobility and it comes from arguably the most Vallière of the Vallières in a generation or two.
I'm pretty sure there is dramatic irony to be found here. As Richelieu isn't aware that it is Louise who is the Overlady that sees the Council as a threat to the Crown to be taken out and has been very successful in doing so thus far. And this is all glorious as every last one of the problems the Council is facing that is Louise's fault is exactly the behavior Richelieu wanted out of the nobility and it comes from arguably the most Vallière of the Vallières in a generation or two.
CalumTraveler
Age Raveler
- Location
- Corner of No and Where.
I could feel the exhaustion Louise felt through the entire chapter. Time travel can be really exhausting, especially with having all of those emotions to deal with, good or evil, afterwards.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
only wood.
judging by how things used to go
been otherwise.
spell in the future.
probably have been
- Location
- Wall Gazing
I am getting a distinctly Blackadder vibe here. That is a very good thing.
I'm pretty sure it's not polyamory when one of the people involved is dead. No, I believe you use an entirely DIFFERENT term for that. (something something "crack open a cold one" something something)
- Pronouns
- she/her
Really sad Louise had to put the gauntlet back on at the end. She does seem to be a lot more self-aware in the last section, which is a good sign... OTOH Gnarl is probably plotting her death and replacement after she refused to recruit Eleanore.
I can't stay mad at Montespan. Six straight months of NTR is too cruel for me to not pity her. Hope Eleanore remembers to detox her soul before she tries to put it back. Also thank god she agreed to try therapy, that was headed for a repeat performance.
If Magdalene gets put on the council, should be perfectly plausible for Louise to wrap up that in under a year. Seems like Henrietta might turn out to be the bigger problem at this rate.
Last but not least: RIP Ozy?
I can't stay mad at Montespan. Six straight months of NTR is too cruel for me to not pity her. Hope Eleanore remembers to detox her soul before she tries to put it back. Also thank god she agreed to try therapy, that was headed for a repeat performance.
If Magdalene gets put on the council, should be perfectly plausible for Louise to wrap up that in under a year. Seems like Henrietta might turn out to be the bigger problem at this rate.
Last but not least: RIP Ozy?
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Serial monogamy if they stay dead. Polyamory if they become undead or straight-up return to life and continue the relationship.
And necrophilia...
Gnarl is loyal to the position of Overperson. He makes no attempts to actually interfere in the movement of the Gauntlet from one arm to the other, though he does make efforts to ensure it's transfer from one overparent to an overoffspring should the need arise and no one has taken the Gauntlet for themselves. He may be upset over Eleanore, but that wound is going to be soothed by Magdalene's appointment to the Regency Council and possibly the recruitment of whomever is going to be helping her with the Minion Hives that was talked about ages ago.
I have no clue where you and the others are getting polyamory from, almost to the point where i question if you lot know what that word means. What has happened is that the love triangle between Louise, Henriette and Wales is now a threat to Louise's desire to have Henriette rather than an obstacle when his being dead was looking far more permanent. This being companion love triangle to the one between Louise, Henriette and Lee.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Louise has a crush on that prince that she's tentatively gone on a couple of dates with. This chapter has Louise acknowledging that she is sexually and romantically interested in Henrietta and attempting to act on that interest.
Henrietta has repeatedly shown romantic and sexual interest in Louise. She has also never stopped referring to Wales as her Love and has shown continual interest in bringing him back to life.
We have two overlapping love triangles. And Henrietta has shown no guilt about being interested in Louise while working on bringing Wales back.
A polyamorous or a "don't ask, don't tell" open relationship is the "worst" solution here. And possibly the one that Henrietta would suggest.
I recall nothing from Henriette that indicates she feels anything for Louise aside from deep friendship. And I say that as someone who loves looking for that kind of thing and who has reread this piece several times. If you've got examples of Henriette having romantic feelings for Louise, I would love to see them before I get my eyes checked because I'm clearly going blind if I've missed such content.