Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
Given the sort of setting this is, I am not sure how much of her stated ambition is metaphor.
Overlady: Attack of the Minions (Thread II)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
- Fantasy
- Location
- Graveyard of Forgotten Thoughts
A timeline of Catt's maids:
Anne, Catt's original maid, was assigned by her parents. As a child, she was kicked in the head by a donkey (4-4). She followed Catt when she joined as a lieutenant.
Helene, who was first mentioned here as having sheltered Catt, and first seen in the next chapter. Catt brought her home with her in the aftermath of Henrietta's liberation.
An unknown number of maids was recruited in unknown circumstances after Helene, but before the trip to Cathay. Louise mentioned that all but one of Catt's maids were blurring together in her head in 10-3, suggesting there were more than just two by that time.
Near Goicang, Catt "rescued" two girls when they were attacked by locals for consorting with a vampire. They are the Cathayan maids mentioned in the most recent chapter.
13-6 revealed one of the Cathayan maids was named Xiaolian, while there are others named Elloise and Christine.
I think Catt's bite is an allusion to narcotics, among other things. It dulls the victims' mental processes (see Anne for an example of what happens long-term). Helene's reaction to being told she'll be fed upon this chapter makes me think of an addict anticipating her next high.
As far as I can tell, Maria was never one of the maids.
wait a minute, who is Louise's ex again!?
Assuming you're not joking, it's Emperor Lee, mythic east boy about Louise's age who may or maynot be a male and female set of siblings pretending to be a single person who has a thing for being very pragmatic and dragons. Louise is currently pissed at him to the point of considering dating Isabella over him despite not officially breaking up with him due to him not helping her with Albion by not telling her anything about the rebel plans despite knowing about them.
- Location
- United States
If that's the case then I would agree that Catt's maids can't really be said to be treated well, since they've been addicted and so would have difficulty leaving if they wished. There's some support for this - the description of "bored" was repeated quite a few times past chapter. On the other hand, it's all Helene - maybe she just has a fairly flat affect, and her being excited to be fed upon could be explained by it being pleasant as well, without it being necessarily addictive.
- Location
- Russia
Or her just being a masochist. Pretty sure that Louise's entourage is missing one of those.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
I think in Anne's case, it's more Donkey-kick then Catt's bite, she was chosen for Catt especially because she was slower and less likely to question her peculiarities.
- Pronouns
- She/Them
when was lee being two people alluded to? because i dont remember that one
If I'm remembering right, it's partly due to having a slip up about having a sister and partially due to his apparently tsun behavior. Don't really remember the theory well, but it's kinda funny that Louise is actually tsun and was dating two people that gave a collective appearance of tsun.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
There's no official confirmation in text or outside of text.
Lee mentioned a sister, then quickly corrected himself to say that she was dead.
Lee has also seemingly shown two different sides, one that is interested in Lousie and one that practically ignores her. Which one comes out is seemingly completely random.
It's also noted that Lee claims that his sister was the fighter while she was alive, and he was a mage. Louise has noted at least once that he seems much less physically impressive compared to a previous time she saw him.
So no concrete proof, but a bunch of hints towards the theory that could just be EarthScorpion messing with us. In true comedic sense it could theoretically be revealed that 'cold' Lee is the one that wants the romance while 'hot' Lee is simply helping out their sibling.
Louise is currently pissed because she spoke to Cold Lee to ask for some help/information and got the brush off
- Location
- Graveyard of Forgotten Thoughts
There's this part, where Catt considered the effect she was having on Anne.
Which is in line with something EarthScorpion said back when Anne was introduced.
- Location
- my house
Originally I was going through this and quoting choice lines and paragraphs, but I ended up quoting like every other one so let.me.just say this is hilarious, and one of my favorite of your works.
Also more people should write Overlord fanfic
Also more people should write Overlord fanfic
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
God don't even get me started on the anemic status of the fandom at times.
It's not helped, I suspect, by the presence of an entirely different fandom also called Overlord.
Shaithan
Re-class is happiest class
- Location
- The worst part of Germany
Nah, not really. The major problem for the Overlord fanfic (and fandom) community is that ultimately, it was a rather niche game with a rather small fandom. Also, it's from what, 2006?
- Pronouns
- She/Them
overlord and fable were my life as a tween. is sad that we are outliers. was also brought up on pratchett books as a kid so finding out as an adult that a pratchett did the writing for overlord was sick.
A niche game that's a knockoff of a much more popular but still niche game.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
I suppose the issue with Anne is that it's really hard to tell how much of her personalilty is from her physical head trauma in her case. She's not a good baseline. Now, Helene is still showing initiative (though also signs of addiction) but she's a much more recent feeding target. It becomes hard to say how much of an effect Cat has, though she does believe she's having one, so it's probably a good thing she's increased her number of maids significantly to spread things out. With more time to recover between feedings, it's possible the effects may be somewhat mitigated, though clearly not entirely given the way they all come off as creepy to Agnes.
EDIT: By the way, if anyone's interested there's an extra chapter of this story on ff.net that isn't up here.
Last edited:
- Location
- Myanmar
That chapter is already posted here. Instead of an interlude, it's part 13-8 here for some reason.
Yeah, it's kind of embarassing. I forgot to post 13-8 on ff.net and AO3, and then I couldn't just re-order them without losing my reviews and views, and since Louise wasn't in it I was like "Hey might as well make it the third interlude".
LoserThree
Finds writing poorly easy
- Location
- Greater Seattle Area
- Pronouns
- he/him
Conveniently, you can re-order posts here, kind of. Perhaps not the best use of time, though.
Temes1066
To Defy Gravity you must Let It Go
- Location
- Coleraine
What ever happened to this guy, he hasn't appeared since that chapter.
Hand, Head and Heart
"Brimir! It always comes back to Brimir! Why do the patterns of the Founder's life repeat themselves so frequently? Are we cursed to repeat his deeds, his mistakes?"
- Henry Wallingford the Shadowlord, before the Battle of Chaucy, 4822
Louise pretended to be strong. She pretended even to herself that Henrietta could have escaped the trap waiting for her and the half-elf, pretended that she would be waiting for her back at the secret lair in the Shire Wood.
But under a grey sky and a sad, pathetic drizzle her lies disintegrated. No one was back. Not a soul.
The rain was good. It hid any tears she had, as Jessica's new swain Hooke and the minions tried to lead the cantankerous old dragons into some of the ruinous buildings that could serve as a temporary den.
"This sucks," Jessica said to her softly, wrapping her human arm around Louise's shoulders.
"Yes." Louise bit her lip, and tried not to let her feelings surge out into her voice. "Yes."
"Come on, let's get you out of the rain."
"I'm fine."
"I know," Jessica said, "but your armour might get rusty if you stand out here too long. And I want to get it off you so I can start looking at what I need to repair. I don't have my full forge here, but at the least," she flexed her oversized, demonic arm, "I can hammer out some of the dents. And then I can get working on the hellfire bombardiers that I've always wanted to build. But I need to take care of your armour first."
"Well, as long as… as long as it's just for… for the armour," Louise whispered, choking on her words.
"Of course it is." No one with a pair of jet black horns with a burning crown floating between them should have sounded so kind.
Louise saw the little girl Magda gleefully riding the head of one of the dragons. She was happily smeared in mud. It was a lot better than the blood she had been just as cheerfully coated in when they found her out in the swamps. "Magda?" she called out, cupping her hands over her mouth.
"What? I'm not doing anything wrong!" she shouted back. Louise doubted that, given the fact that three times on the trip back she'd coaxed one of the dragons into breathing fire at the minions. When all this was over, she'd need to apologise to her own mother.
"Tifa and the others aren't here. Can you send one of your familiars to see where they are?"
Magda considered that. "Yeah! I want to tell them about the fun trip we had!"
That was good. She'd done everything she could for now. Maybe the familiar would find something. It was enough to allow her to say that yes, she was allowed to lie down.
Louise followed Jessica into the chilly ruins, and let her help her out of her armour and fuss over her bruises. And she missed her sister and she missed Henrietta and wished she wasn't stuck here on this cold, wet island full of idiots.
"Well, you know there's a solution to at least some of that," Jessica said, when she voiced some of those worries.
Louise considered it. "Set the idiots on fire to warm myself up?"
"Yep."
"That is a nice thought, isn't it?"
"It is." Jessica rapped her knuckles against the dented breastplate. "Sweet dreams."
There were no sweet dreams to be had. She slept poorly, aching and bruised from her fight against the golem and the hurts inside her heart. And when she woke, she found herself staring at Izah'belya's summoning sigil. She wanted someone warm and nice who would listen to her and tell her that everything was going to be fine.
But that kind of feeling was a weakness. Mother had always been very clear. Problems were to be faced head on and dealt with as soon as humanly possible, not left to fester. When you ignored problems, what had just been a spiteful princeling with a grudge would grow into a possessed madman who was trying to collapse one of the moons into the surface of the world in the name of his revenge. Such a thing couldn't stand. Instead Louise wrapped up warmly and wandered out to the windswept walls to try to contact Gnarl. She could not. But it felt different from the previous disruption which Jessica had said was caused by Albion's movement disturbing the magical currents. That had felt like trying to grab a greased ball only for it to slip through her fingers. This felt like walking up stairs and trying to step on a step at the top which turned out not to exist.
So. Assume something had happened to the tower…
God. No. She couldn't just casually assume that. The very thought made her want to whimper and curl up in a ball. It had been her home for the past two years and while of course she hated it and couldn't wait to get back to normal civilised life, only she got to destroy it. No one else! And Cattleya was there too, and if she died again, it'd be really annoying to have to bring her back to unlife and she'd be holding a grudge and Louise really didn't want to get into another fight with her big sister.
So. Assume that hostile forces had found a way to bring down the magical network she used to communicate with the tower. She tested that thought nervously. It wasn't a thought that felt like someone had a hand around her stomach and was squeezing. She could live with it. She didn't want to because of what it said about what she was up against, but she could.
Assuming… what she just said, what could she do?
Hands tucked up her sleeves, she paced up and down the ruined walls. Damp greenery still held the morning's mist - the morning's clouds, really. Clouds. That would be useful. Albion was the isle of mists, after all, and if she needed cover she would need to time her attack based on that. And she would need to find out what had happened in Port's Mouth. She had sent a lot of her minions there anyway, so she would need to see if she could get her blues there to revive the ones who had died in that place. Maybe if she timed it when the clouds covered the location, she could get in and out without being noticed. But then again, the Albionese had to know about the timing of the cloud-fogs, so they would be on higher alert whenever they came in. Maybe it would be easier to do that at night.
"Heya, overlady," Maggat said, trying to light his disgusting roll-up under the eave of a building. "It are wicked to see that you are on your feet again."
"Maggat," she said, leaning on the wall.
"Bit of an embuggerance, ain't it?" He dragged his filthy claw against the stone, and managed to get a spark and get the roll-up to light. "What with them capturin' the necroess and that half-elfy overlady too."
"Yes. I suppose you could say that," Louise said. She would never put it that way herself, but she did like the sound of the word. "Tell me, Maggat, what would former overladies have done in this situation?"
"Dunno. Probably sent us in to die and die again 'cause that's what we minions are for."
"Mmm." At least that was a way she was better than them.
"I think it are real great, the way we no is expendable when workin' for you."
"I… thank you?" Louise tried.
"I are lookin' forwards to see what kinda plan you come up with for this. It are probably gonna involve a bunch of explosions and screamin', though. All your plans do."
"... thank you," she said a little more coldly.
"It are no problem." Maggat ambled off, smoking that foul-smelling thing that he'd made from the green plants that grew in Shire Wood Forest.
Compliments from a minion. Well, from a minion who wasn't Gnarl (who was always ready with unctuous flattery). Would the wonders never end?
Louise distracted herself with such thoughts, patrolling the abandoned walls like she was a sentry. The grumbling rumbling sounds of the old red dragons drifted over, and that was a reminder that she could make use of them. They might be elderly and overfed on coal and charcoal - like forge dragons tended to be, but they were still dragons and could still fly. And when she got back to her tower, which would be just fine and there was nothing at all to worry about, she could have Jessica make her a wand forged in dragons' fire.
None of those ideas felt real. How could she go on without Henrietta? Everything she had done had been for her. Her plan to return to a normal life meant nothing if Princess Henrietta couldn't defeat the wicked overlady. All the bad things she had done, all the deaths and all the sacrifices - worthless. And her love, that feeling that she couldn't get Henrietta to understand but which she nursed in desolate fading hope.
Her vision blurred and she felt tears trickle down her cheeks. "Damn you," she whispered to the grey sky. "Couldn't you rain now of all times? At least let me pretend that I'm not crying?"
Maybe there was something sympathetic in the landscape, because the clouds chose that moment to open up.
It wasn't any better. Now she was miserable and wet.
But it was as she tried not to laugh hysterically at her own misfortune that she caught sight of dark clad figures, pale of features and slight of form, approaching through the rain. Melancholy melodies that spoke of unending pain and never-healing wounds sounded through the world. Her heart leapt.
"I never ever thought I'd be glad to see the dark elves," she said to herself, ineffectually blotting her eyes on her utterly sodden surcoat.
The news was dire. The minions; slaughtered by strange metal automata. The children; vanished beyond the ken of the spirit allies of the elves. Henrietta's undead; banished back to the underworld by terrible Void-cursed magic that terrified both the elves and the spirits. And both Tiffania and Henrietta were captives of a mysterious ally of the Albionese - according to Emerald, who alone out of the elves had infiltrated the city.
"And I promise it wasn't just to steal things," Emerald said, a claim which was somewhat dubious given the clanking of her overstuffed satchel.
"The fact that you keep on stealing things from the savages is not important, Emerald," declared Apostrophe, pacing back and forth. "What matters is that this is a disaster! A catastrophe! A cataclysm! Without a tyrant stepping on us with a pointy boot, we're not really dark elves."
"It doesn't have to be a pointy shoe. It could also be bare feet," another elf said hopefully.
"The footwear isn't important! What matters is that we're being oppressed and can oppress others in turn. And if there's no one oppressing us, it's all pointless."
"Isn't that going a bit far?" another one asked. "We were dark elves before we found her."
"Yes, but now no one will take us seriously." He flipped his somewhat-less-artfully-uncombed-than-usual dark hair. "They didn't take us seriously before, but there's a certain cachet to searching for a prophesied dark ruler. Finding your dark ruler and losing her - to humans, no less - just means you're a loser."
That only drew rumblings of concern and discontent. "My mother will make me go home and take up a position as a junior executive in the family business," said one dark elf, whose eyeshadow outweighed the rest of his garments by both coverage and mass.
"And Leafblossom and his Kommun cult will make fun of him."
"Damn splitters," Emerald muttered.
Louise had absolutely no time for any of this bull-sugar. She would have to step in to ensure they wouldn't walk away because she needed their power to get Henrietta back. "For shame!" she declared, raising her voice over the gossip and the wailing. "Why are you acting like this? You, the oath-sworn followers of your true queen of darkness!"
"Well, because she's lost to us and now we-"
"And now she needs you more than ever!" Louise folded her arms, glad that she had been at the top of the stairs so she could look down her nose at the annoyingly tall elves. "What kind of dark elves are you if you crumble at the least adversity?" Inhaling, she raised up her hand and forced raw evil to gather in her left hand, the heat haze black and consuming the light. "But if you lack a dark queen and feel you cannot go on, I have a solution."
"Uh, what?" asked Apostrophe, recoiling away from the ball of malevolent magic.
"I will be your dark queen," Louise said, clenching her fist and dissipating the evil magic before it could properly form. It rushed out before her, extinguishing lights and flames. The elves recoiled as one, and Emerald's nose began to ooze a scarlet trickle. "If you would abandon your queen, then you will serve me. And I will give you purpose."
"But you're not an elf!"
"That's not my problem." Louise leant on her staff, sweeping her left hand over the elves and watching as they recoiled. "Well, unless you decide to make it a problem for me. In which case, I will have to make it your problem. And you fear the power of the Void. Don't you? You fear it, and that is why you serve Tiffania, because she holds that power in half-elven hands."
The dark elves exchanged looks. "Well, you see-"
"-it's not that we don't want to serve you-"
"-we have a queen already-"
"You're scary in a totally different way to Tifa!" That was Emerald, holding a handkerchief to her bleeding nose. "She's scary-nice. You're scary-scary."
"Good," Louise said. "Since you're not serving me, you will do what I say."
"... run that past me again," Apostrophe said.
"I will be working to free your queen. You serve her by working faithfully as part of my plan for this. Therefore if you are loyal to her, you will obey me. But if you are not loyal to her, then I will make you obey me." Louise smiled nastily. "I know dark magics that can crush a mind, bring it into total obedient subservience. Because Tiffania is my ally, I would not use that on one of her loyal servants. But a traitor… well, that would be something else entirely. Which will it be?"
"I… don't think that's a choice."
"That is also not my problem. So choose."
"Give us one moment for a group huddle." There was a very short pause while frantic whispers emerged. Apostrophe cleared his throat. "As you are an ally of our dark queen, and we are her loyal servants, we will of course listen to your council."
"I thought you'd see it my way," Louise said, holding in her sigh of relief. She couldn't let them see that she'd been making it up as she went. "Then the first thing I advise you to do is for those of you who are rested and uninjured to begin scouting. I need to know major concentrations of Republican forces, and where our foe could have taken Tiffania and my necromancer. Once we know where they're keeping them, we can work on freeing them." Louise turned on her heel, dramatically swirling her cloak. "I expect results," she added over her shoulder.
There was a general mood of relief among the elves, partly because the terrifying and short overlady was asking them to do something they could actually do, and partly because at least someone had a plan and was giving orders.
"It worries me how well things go when I just make things up as I go, but how my plans tend to fall apart," Louise confided in Jessica as they headed down to the kitchens to warm up.
"Eh, I think you're just remembering all the plans which fell apart and had to be improvised."
"Yes, that is my point." Louise sighed. "I like plans. When they're all laid out, things seem like they're going to go well. And then they often don't."
"That's life. At least the dark elves are listening to you. Though," Jessica coughed into her demonic hand, "how much were you bluffing?"
Louise blinked. "Excuse me?" she said, sitting down in front of the wood fire.
"About the dark mind-control magic."
"Oh. The gauntlet taught me that one. I… uh, haven't actually used it. But it does make a terrifying threat, doesn't it?"
"Yes," Jessica agreed heartily. "But I wanted to talk about that kind of dark magic."
"Mmm hmm?"
"Okay." Jessica bit her lower lip. "So, I have an idea. It's maybe not a bad idea. But it's the only one I have, which makes it the most evil by default."
Louise had to concede her logic. "Go on."
"Well, if I was trapped in an ambush, and I could banish people into a freaky-ass void outside of existence, I'd try to do that. Like, to myself, or at least to my allies."
Louise leapt to her feet, her muscles protesting. "Ow!"
"Yeah, you really need to stop jumping up like that."
"No, no, you're right." Hobbling back and forth, she considered the idea from every direction. "It's a music box. She said earlier that that's what she learns spells from. So we're just going to have to do the moral and ethical thing."
"You're planning to break into her room and steal Tifa's cursed void artefact, aren't you?" Jessica shrugged. "Because speaking as a genuine demon, I'd like to say I'm totally cool with that."
"Of course." Louise forced herself to smile, clinging to hope. "It's for her own good, really."
"Huh," Jessica said, looking around the room. "This is not what I expected from the bedroom of an overlady."
"You've only seen mine," Louise pointed out. "But you're not wrong. It's very…" She trailed away. "Gnarl wouldn't approve," she said softly.
Tiffania's bedroom was almost sad in how stark it was. Whitewashed walls, a small low bed, and a table full of little trinkets which had clearly been found or made by the children given the mix of things like shiny rocks with a hole in them, pressed flowers, and human teeth. There was no status here, no majesty, no grandeur.
"If I were an evil cursed music box containing the knowledge of the darkest of magics, where would I be?" Louise pondered to herself.
"Probably in that box that's radiating pure evil," Jessica said, pointing at the bedside table. The aura of malice was so tangible that tendrils of darkness reached out from under the lid.
"I mean, yes, but… I just wanted to cover all the… forget about it." Louise took a step forward. "Should I open it or should you?"
"Well, let's think. I'm a demon. You're an overlady. It's an artefact of overlords past. The power of the overlords really doesn't like demons, to the degree that we can't even become your empowered familiars. And if there's a killing curse on it, it'll be less painful for you if it kills you rather than if it kills me and then Dad comes looking for you."
"Good point," Louise said, swallowing. She reached out with her gauntlet, and undid the catch, swinging it open. The music box was decorated in tarnished, corroded bronze, and the key was in the side. And the box was whispering to her and the Gauntlet was whispering back and the soft, just-unintelligible voices filled her ears.
"I'll… just leave you to this," Jessica said, stepping outside hastily.
Louise wound up the box, and let the music and its memories play over her.
She is younger than she is now. No, that is not right. She is not herself. She is Tiffania, and the attic is so dry and dusty that she has a scarf wrapped around her mouth.
She is lonely, but that is a realisation that does not come from that memory of Tiffania. This is her normal; this is her life, to dwell hidden in her father's house. She has no friends, not truly, because she must be hidden from both sides of her family. Her father has not told her this, but her mother has. Her mother loves her father, but she also loves the fact that he is a powerful man willing to hide a renegade cast-out elf with ties to the old royal family at the end of the other end of the world away from the elves who might come looking for rumours of an heir.
And thus Tiffania is a ghost in her father's house, there but not acknowledged, who plays in the abandoned attics as it sees fit and comes up with retellings of her mother's elven stories. Some of her father's servants know he has an illegitimate daughter he keeps hidden away, but only a few know of his elf-mistress and even fewer know he has wedded her.
She has no talent for her mother's magic. She is deaf to the spirits. She only had talent for her father's - and it has gone. It no longer works for her. And this is the worst time for it, for she has heard that something happened to her father in the civil war and her mother is worried sick. So of course she loses herself in childish play, as she once did in happier times.
There is an old music box up here. She is the only one who knows about this once-dusty old thing. She had dusted it down, cleaned it, and found the key in the little locked box hidden elsewhere in the attic. And it plays an archaic tune.
She dances to it in the attic here, trying to lose herself in the tune. Only now it's telling her something, something that she didn't know before. She wants to escape this place.
And it offers her the means of escape. And much, much more.
The last notes of the melody played out. Louise's eyes were misty. She tried to put the insight into Tifa and her compulsive adoption of the children out of mind. With a sharp exhalation she clenched her hand shut, dispersing the remnants of the power and scattering the borrowed memories.
"Now that's better," she said, her throat feeling dry. "Better than that mind-crushing spell. I can use this." She understood it now. The fact she knew she was casting with the evil-tainted Void brought even greater understanding than she could have managed before. The spell reached out into the void that existed before all things, for the Void was timeless.
Perhaps that might have been what the Chronophage's spell that Eleanore cast had been based on.
But that was something for later. She tasted the smug satisfaction, the smile of understanding, and held it close.
Louise shouted out one word in the dark tongue.
Maybe she should have opened the portal somewhere with a bit more space, though.
"... and it wasn't really my fault that the void portal tore a chunk out of the building," Louise grumbled.
"Sure it wasn't, Lou," Jessica said.
"Don't patronise me."
"I'm not patronising you. At least you got the children out." They had been hungry, thirsty, and ill-tempered, with the younger ones distressed and the older ones barely keeping it together, but they were all alive - and would be well, at least when they had some meals in them and rested.
And they had such tales to tell. Tales that had details that Emerald had missed, or not understood because she was an elf and even these children were familiar with the standards of Brimiric cultures in a way that a foreigner was not.
For example, they had been very clear that the strange dark magician who had broken the spells had spoken with a Gallian accent. And Louise was, while idly grumbling, racking her brains trying to work out who could be the overlord linked to the Gallian throne.
She had just one name on her shortlist, and it was not one she liked. "Of course," she growled through clenched teeth, feeling bile churn in her gut. "Of course!" She thumped the table, hissing pink seeping out from the spiderweb cracks left by the impact. "Of course it would be him!"
"Okay, uh, Lou, assume for a moment I don't pay any attention to surface world politics. In fact, you don't need to assume it. And also assume I can't read your mind and so I thought you were just going on about destroying half of Tifa's bedroom with a badly aimed void portal."
Pacing back and forwards, gesturing wildly, Louise took a moment to manage to get her words in line. "My father said that no one expected the last Gallian king to pick the younger son, Joseph, as his heir. He was a failure, with no great victories to his name and no fame as a mage-scholar. Of course he wouldn't be a famous mage-scholar! In fact, I wonder if my father knew! I bet that King Joseph couldn't get spells to work properly when he was a child either!"
"Lou?"
"But his brother was a dashing valiant hero who'd won glory down in Iberia," she continued, ignoring the question. "And no one understood why the useless son would be the next king. And then Charles died suddenly, not too long after Joseph was announced the heir. And the Gallian insanity showed itself not too long after he became king - except now I wonder if he was just pretending because a mind that can pull this scheme off isn't ill like the others! But no one would suspect another simple-minded Gallian king! Insanity and sickness of the mind runs in that royal family too, because they don't marry outside the royal house and… oh curse it!"
"Slow down. What are you getting at?"
"He's an overlord! A bearer of the Void! King Joseph of Gallia is like me!" Louise snapped. "And the Gallians know enough, just like Louis did. Know enough to try to play the odds that someone like me shows up in their bloodline."
Jessica tilted her head, considering this. "Fuck," she opined.
"This might actually be a time for profanity, yes," Louise said. "Because he has Tiffania. He might have already killed her to seize her power. And - oh. Oh no."
"Please don't tell me you thought up some even less pleasant ideas."
"He has Henrietta," Louise said, blood as cold as ice. "Her father was an Albionese prince. She definitely has the royal blood of Tristain, like me. And if the Gallians know how the Void is inherited…" She took a deep breath. "Well, at least communications are down and Gnarl doesn't know about this yet. That's something good, at least."
"Why is this a good thing?"
"We're caught in a trap devised by a… a…" Louise faded away, her lady's vocabulary unable to express the depths of her hate.
"An utter bastard?"
"His parents were married."
"A son of a bitch?"
"I want to insult him, not his mother."
"A whole bag of floppy dicks wrapped in human skin?"
"Oh, I like that. Yes! We're caught in a trap devised by, um, a whole bag of floppy dicks wrapped in human skin," Louise whispered with heartfelt loathing. "This plan is impressing me. It'd definitely impress Gnarl. He'd betray me for King Joseph without a second thought."
"Yeah. Yeah, he would." Jessica squeezed her shoulder. "So what are you going to do?"
"I… I don't know." She swallowed. "Not yet. But… we'll have to wait until the elves find something. Maybe some of the children have useful talents too. I need to know where he's keeping Henrietta and Tiffania. And then I can start thinking about how to ruin him."
- Henry Wallingford the Shadowlord, before the Battle of Chaucy, 4822
Louise pretended to be strong. She pretended even to herself that Henrietta could have escaped the trap waiting for her and the half-elf, pretended that she would be waiting for her back at the secret lair in the Shire Wood.
But under a grey sky and a sad, pathetic drizzle her lies disintegrated. No one was back. Not a soul.
The rain was good. It hid any tears she had, as Jessica's new swain Hooke and the minions tried to lead the cantankerous old dragons into some of the ruinous buildings that could serve as a temporary den.
"This sucks," Jessica said to her softly, wrapping her human arm around Louise's shoulders.
"Yes." Louise bit her lip, and tried not to let her feelings surge out into her voice. "Yes."
"Come on, let's get you out of the rain."
"I'm fine."
"I know," Jessica said, "but your armour might get rusty if you stand out here too long. And I want to get it off you so I can start looking at what I need to repair. I don't have my full forge here, but at the least," she flexed her oversized, demonic arm, "I can hammer out some of the dents. And then I can get working on the hellfire bombardiers that I've always wanted to build. But I need to take care of your armour first."
"Well, as long as… as long as it's just for… for the armour," Louise whispered, choking on her words.
"Of course it is." No one with a pair of jet black horns with a burning crown floating between them should have sounded so kind.
Louise saw the little girl Magda gleefully riding the head of one of the dragons. She was happily smeared in mud. It was a lot better than the blood she had been just as cheerfully coated in when they found her out in the swamps. "Magda?" she called out, cupping her hands over her mouth.
"What? I'm not doing anything wrong!" she shouted back. Louise doubted that, given the fact that three times on the trip back she'd coaxed one of the dragons into breathing fire at the minions. When all this was over, she'd need to apologise to her own mother.
"Tifa and the others aren't here. Can you send one of your familiars to see where they are?"
Magda considered that. "Yeah! I want to tell them about the fun trip we had!"
That was good. She'd done everything she could for now. Maybe the familiar would find something. It was enough to allow her to say that yes, she was allowed to lie down.
Louise followed Jessica into the chilly ruins, and let her help her out of her armour and fuss over her bruises. And she missed her sister and she missed Henrietta and wished she wasn't stuck here on this cold, wet island full of idiots.
"Well, you know there's a solution to at least some of that," Jessica said, when she voiced some of those worries.
Louise considered it. "Set the idiots on fire to warm myself up?"
"Yep."
"That is a nice thought, isn't it?"
"It is." Jessica rapped her knuckles against the dented breastplate. "Sweet dreams."
There were no sweet dreams to be had. She slept poorly, aching and bruised from her fight against the golem and the hurts inside her heart. And when she woke, she found herself staring at Izah'belya's summoning sigil. She wanted someone warm and nice who would listen to her and tell her that everything was going to be fine.
But that kind of feeling was a weakness. Mother had always been very clear. Problems were to be faced head on and dealt with as soon as humanly possible, not left to fester. When you ignored problems, what had just been a spiteful princeling with a grudge would grow into a possessed madman who was trying to collapse one of the moons into the surface of the world in the name of his revenge. Such a thing couldn't stand. Instead Louise wrapped up warmly and wandered out to the windswept walls to try to contact Gnarl. She could not. But it felt different from the previous disruption which Jessica had said was caused by Albion's movement disturbing the magical currents. That had felt like trying to grab a greased ball only for it to slip through her fingers. This felt like walking up stairs and trying to step on a step at the top which turned out not to exist.
So. Assume something had happened to the tower…
God. No. She couldn't just casually assume that. The very thought made her want to whimper and curl up in a ball. It had been her home for the past two years and while of course she hated it and couldn't wait to get back to normal civilised life, only she got to destroy it. No one else! And Cattleya was there too, and if she died again, it'd be really annoying to have to bring her back to unlife and she'd be holding a grudge and Louise really didn't want to get into another fight with her big sister.
So. Assume that hostile forces had found a way to bring down the magical network she used to communicate with the tower. She tested that thought nervously. It wasn't a thought that felt like someone had a hand around her stomach and was squeezing. She could live with it. She didn't want to because of what it said about what she was up against, but she could.
Assuming… what she just said, what could she do?
Hands tucked up her sleeves, she paced up and down the ruined walls. Damp greenery still held the morning's mist - the morning's clouds, really. Clouds. That would be useful. Albion was the isle of mists, after all, and if she needed cover she would need to time her attack based on that. And she would need to find out what had happened in Port's Mouth. She had sent a lot of her minions there anyway, so she would need to see if she could get her blues there to revive the ones who had died in that place. Maybe if she timed it when the clouds covered the location, she could get in and out without being noticed. But then again, the Albionese had to know about the timing of the cloud-fogs, so they would be on higher alert whenever they came in. Maybe it would be easier to do that at night.
"Heya, overlady," Maggat said, trying to light his disgusting roll-up under the eave of a building. "It are wicked to see that you are on your feet again."
"Maggat," she said, leaning on the wall.
"Bit of an embuggerance, ain't it?" He dragged his filthy claw against the stone, and managed to get a spark and get the roll-up to light. "What with them capturin' the necroess and that half-elfy overlady too."
"Yes. I suppose you could say that," Louise said. She would never put it that way herself, but she did like the sound of the word. "Tell me, Maggat, what would former overladies have done in this situation?"
"Dunno. Probably sent us in to die and die again 'cause that's what we minions are for."
"Mmm." At least that was a way she was better than them.
"I think it are real great, the way we no is expendable when workin' for you."
"I… thank you?" Louise tried.
"I are lookin' forwards to see what kinda plan you come up with for this. It are probably gonna involve a bunch of explosions and screamin', though. All your plans do."
"... thank you," she said a little more coldly.
"It are no problem." Maggat ambled off, smoking that foul-smelling thing that he'd made from the green plants that grew in Shire Wood Forest.
Compliments from a minion. Well, from a minion who wasn't Gnarl (who was always ready with unctuous flattery). Would the wonders never end?
Louise distracted herself with such thoughts, patrolling the abandoned walls like she was a sentry. The grumbling rumbling sounds of the old red dragons drifted over, and that was a reminder that she could make use of them. They might be elderly and overfed on coal and charcoal - like forge dragons tended to be, but they were still dragons and could still fly. And when she got back to her tower, which would be just fine and there was nothing at all to worry about, she could have Jessica make her a wand forged in dragons' fire.
None of those ideas felt real. How could she go on without Henrietta? Everything she had done had been for her. Her plan to return to a normal life meant nothing if Princess Henrietta couldn't defeat the wicked overlady. All the bad things she had done, all the deaths and all the sacrifices - worthless. And her love, that feeling that she couldn't get Henrietta to understand but which she nursed in desolate fading hope.
Her vision blurred and she felt tears trickle down her cheeks. "Damn you," she whispered to the grey sky. "Couldn't you rain now of all times? At least let me pretend that I'm not crying?"
Maybe there was something sympathetic in the landscape, because the clouds chose that moment to open up.
It wasn't any better. Now she was miserable and wet.
But it was as she tried not to laugh hysterically at her own misfortune that she caught sight of dark clad figures, pale of features and slight of form, approaching through the rain. Melancholy melodies that spoke of unending pain and never-healing wounds sounded through the world. Her heart leapt.
"I never ever thought I'd be glad to see the dark elves," she said to herself, ineffectually blotting her eyes on her utterly sodden surcoat.
The news was dire. The minions; slaughtered by strange metal automata. The children; vanished beyond the ken of the spirit allies of the elves. Henrietta's undead; banished back to the underworld by terrible Void-cursed magic that terrified both the elves and the spirits. And both Tiffania and Henrietta were captives of a mysterious ally of the Albionese - according to Emerald, who alone out of the elves had infiltrated the city.
"And I promise it wasn't just to steal things," Emerald said, a claim which was somewhat dubious given the clanking of her overstuffed satchel.
"The fact that you keep on stealing things from the savages is not important, Emerald," declared Apostrophe, pacing back and forth. "What matters is that this is a disaster! A catastrophe! A cataclysm! Without a tyrant stepping on us with a pointy boot, we're not really dark elves."
"It doesn't have to be a pointy shoe. It could also be bare feet," another elf said hopefully.
"The footwear isn't important! What matters is that we're being oppressed and can oppress others in turn. And if there's no one oppressing us, it's all pointless."
"Isn't that going a bit far?" another one asked. "We were dark elves before we found her."
"Yes, but now no one will take us seriously." He flipped his somewhat-less-artfully-uncombed-than-usual dark hair. "They didn't take us seriously before, but there's a certain cachet to searching for a prophesied dark ruler. Finding your dark ruler and losing her - to humans, no less - just means you're a loser."
That only drew rumblings of concern and discontent. "My mother will make me go home and take up a position as a junior executive in the family business," said one dark elf, whose eyeshadow outweighed the rest of his garments by both coverage and mass.
"And Leafblossom and his Kommun cult will make fun of him."
"Damn splitters," Emerald muttered.
Louise had absolutely no time for any of this bull-sugar. She would have to step in to ensure they wouldn't walk away because she needed their power to get Henrietta back. "For shame!" she declared, raising her voice over the gossip and the wailing. "Why are you acting like this? You, the oath-sworn followers of your true queen of darkness!"
"Well, because she's lost to us and now we-"
"And now she needs you more than ever!" Louise folded her arms, glad that she had been at the top of the stairs so she could look down her nose at the annoyingly tall elves. "What kind of dark elves are you if you crumble at the least adversity?" Inhaling, she raised up her hand and forced raw evil to gather in her left hand, the heat haze black and consuming the light. "But if you lack a dark queen and feel you cannot go on, I have a solution."
"Uh, what?" asked Apostrophe, recoiling away from the ball of malevolent magic.
"I will be your dark queen," Louise said, clenching her fist and dissipating the evil magic before it could properly form. It rushed out before her, extinguishing lights and flames. The elves recoiled as one, and Emerald's nose began to ooze a scarlet trickle. "If you would abandon your queen, then you will serve me. And I will give you purpose."
"But you're not an elf!"
"That's not my problem." Louise leant on her staff, sweeping her left hand over the elves and watching as they recoiled. "Well, unless you decide to make it a problem for me. In which case, I will have to make it your problem. And you fear the power of the Void. Don't you? You fear it, and that is why you serve Tiffania, because she holds that power in half-elven hands."
The dark elves exchanged looks. "Well, you see-"
"-it's not that we don't want to serve you-"
"-we have a queen already-"
"You're scary in a totally different way to Tifa!" That was Emerald, holding a handkerchief to her bleeding nose. "She's scary-nice. You're scary-scary."
"Good," Louise said. "Since you're not serving me, you will do what I say."
"... run that past me again," Apostrophe said.
"I will be working to free your queen. You serve her by working faithfully as part of my plan for this. Therefore if you are loyal to her, you will obey me. But if you are not loyal to her, then I will make you obey me." Louise smiled nastily. "I know dark magics that can crush a mind, bring it into total obedient subservience. Because Tiffania is my ally, I would not use that on one of her loyal servants. But a traitor… well, that would be something else entirely. Which will it be?"
"I… don't think that's a choice."
"That is also not my problem. So choose."
"Give us one moment for a group huddle." There was a very short pause while frantic whispers emerged. Apostrophe cleared his throat. "As you are an ally of our dark queen, and we are her loyal servants, we will of course listen to your council."
"I thought you'd see it my way," Louise said, holding in her sigh of relief. She couldn't let them see that she'd been making it up as she went. "Then the first thing I advise you to do is for those of you who are rested and uninjured to begin scouting. I need to know major concentrations of Republican forces, and where our foe could have taken Tiffania and my necromancer. Once we know where they're keeping them, we can work on freeing them." Louise turned on her heel, dramatically swirling her cloak. "I expect results," she added over her shoulder.
There was a general mood of relief among the elves, partly because the terrifying and short overlady was asking them to do something they could actually do, and partly because at least someone had a plan and was giving orders.
"It worries me how well things go when I just make things up as I go, but how my plans tend to fall apart," Louise confided in Jessica as they headed down to the kitchens to warm up.
"Eh, I think you're just remembering all the plans which fell apart and had to be improvised."
"Yes, that is my point." Louise sighed. "I like plans. When they're all laid out, things seem like they're going to go well. And then they often don't."
"That's life. At least the dark elves are listening to you. Though," Jessica coughed into her demonic hand, "how much were you bluffing?"
Louise blinked. "Excuse me?" she said, sitting down in front of the wood fire.
"About the dark mind-control magic."
"Oh. The gauntlet taught me that one. I… uh, haven't actually used it. But it does make a terrifying threat, doesn't it?"
"Yes," Jessica agreed heartily. "But I wanted to talk about that kind of dark magic."
"Mmm hmm?"
"Okay." Jessica bit her lower lip. "So, I have an idea. It's maybe not a bad idea. But it's the only one I have, which makes it the most evil by default."
Louise had to concede her logic. "Go on."
"Well, if I was trapped in an ambush, and I could banish people into a freaky-ass void outside of existence, I'd try to do that. Like, to myself, or at least to my allies."
Louise leapt to her feet, her muscles protesting. "Ow!"
"Yeah, you really need to stop jumping up like that."
"No, no, you're right." Hobbling back and forth, she considered the idea from every direction. "It's a music box. She said earlier that that's what she learns spells from. So we're just going to have to do the moral and ethical thing."
"You're planning to break into her room and steal Tifa's cursed void artefact, aren't you?" Jessica shrugged. "Because speaking as a genuine demon, I'd like to say I'm totally cool with that."
"Of course." Louise forced herself to smile, clinging to hope. "It's for her own good, really."
"Huh," Jessica said, looking around the room. "This is not what I expected from the bedroom of an overlady."
"You've only seen mine," Louise pointed out. "But you're not wrong. It's very…" She trailed away. "Gnarl wouldn't approve," she said softly.
Tiffania's bedroom was almost sad in how stark it was. Whitewashed walls, a small low bed, and a table full of little trinkets which had clearly been found or made by the children given the mix of things like shiny rocks with a hole in them, pressed flowers, and human teeth. There was no status here, no majesty, no grandeur.
"If I were an evil cursed music box containing the knowledge of the darkest of magics, where would I be?" Louise pondered to herself.
"Probably in that box that's radiating pure evil," Jessica said, pointing at the bedside table. The aura of malice was so tangible that tendrils of darkness reached out from under the lid.
"I mean, yes, but… I just wanted to cover all the… forget about it." Louise took a step forward. "Should I open it or should you?"
"Well, let's think. I'm a demon. You're an overlady. It's an artefact of overlords past. The power of the overlords really doesn't like demons, to the degree that we can't even become your empowered familiars. And if there's a killing curse on it, it'll be less painful for you if it kills you rather than if it kills me and then Dad comes looking for you."
"Good point," Louise said, swallowing. She reached out with her gauntlet, and undid the catch, swinging it open. The music box was decorated in tarnished, corroded bronze, and the key was in the side. And the box was whispering to her and the Gauntlet was whispering back and the soft, just-unintelligible voices filled her ears.
"I'll… just leave you to this," Jessica said, stepping outside hastily.
Louise wound up the box, and let the music and its memories play over her.
She is younger than she is now. No, that is not right. She is not herself. She is Tiffania, and the attic is so dry and dusty that she has a scarf wrapped around her mouth.
She is lonely, but that is a realisation that does not come from that memory of Tiffania. This is her normal; this is her life, to dwell hidden in her father's house. She has no friends, not truly, because she must be hidden from both sides of her family. Her father has not told her this, but her mother has. Her mother loves her father, but she also loves the fact that he is a powerful man willing to hide a renegade cast-out elf with ties to the old royal family at the end of the other end of the world away from the elves who might come looking for rumours of an heir.
And thus Tiffania is a ghost in her father's house, there but not acknowledged, who plays in the abandoned attics as it sees fit and comes up with retellings of her mother's elven stories. Some of her father's servants know he has an illegitimate daughter he keeps hidden away, but only a few know of his elf-mistress and even fewer know he has wedded her.
She has no talent for her mother's magic. She is deaf to the spirits. She only had talent for her father's - and it has gone. It no longer works for her. And this is the worst time for it, for she has heard that something happened to her father in the civil war and her mother is worried sick. So of course she loses herself in childish play, as she once did in happier times.
There is an old music box up here. She is the only one who knows about this once-dusty old thing. She had dusted it down, cleaned it, and found the key in the little locked box hidden elsewhere in the attic. And it plays an archaic tune.
She dances to it in the attic here, trying to lose herself in the tune. Only now it's telling her something, something that she didn't know before. She wants to escape this place.
And it offers her the means of escape. And much, much more.
The last notes of the melody played out. Louise's eyes were misty. She tried to put the insight into Tifa and her compulsive adoption of the children out of mind. With a sharp exhalation she clenched her hand shut, dispersing the remnants of the power and scattering the borrowed memories.
"Now that's better," she said, her throat feeling dry. "Better than that mind-crushing spell. I can use this." She understood it now. The fact she knew she was casting with the evil-tainted Void brought even greater understanding than she could have managed before. The spell reached out into the void that existed before all things, for the Void was timeless.
Perhaps that might have been what the Chronophage's spell that Eleanore cast had been based on.
But that was something for later. She tasted the smug satisfaction, the smile of understanding, and held it close.
Louise shouted out one word in the dark tongue.
Maybe she should have opened the portal somewhere with a bit more space, though.
"... and it wasn't really my fault that the void portal tore a chunk out of the building," Louise grumbled.
"Sure it wasn't, Lou," Jessica said.
"Don't patronise me."
"I'm not patronising you. At least you got the children out." They had been hungry, thirsty, and ill-tempered, with the younger ones distressed and the older ones barely keeping it together, but they were all alive - and would be well, at least when they had some meals in them and rested.
And they had such tales to tell. Tales that had details that Emerald had missed, or not understood because she was an elf and even these children were familiar with the standards of Brimiric cultures in a way that a foreigner was not.
For example, they had been very clear that the strange dark magician who had broken the spells had spoken with a Gallian accent. And Louise was, while idly grumbling, racking her brains trying to work out who could be the overlord linked to the Gallian throne.
She had just one name on her shortlist, and it was not one she liked. "Of course," she growled through clenched teeth, feeling bile churn in her gut. "Of course!" She thumped the table, hissing pink seeping out from the spiderweb cracks left by the impact. "Of course it would be him!"
"Okay, uh, Lou, assume for a moment I don't pay any attention to surface world politics. In fact, you don't need to assume it. And also assume I can't read your mind and so I thought you were just going on about destroying half of Tifa's bedroom with a badly aimed void portal."
Pacing back and forwards, gesturing wildly, Louise took a moment to manage to get her words in line. "My father said that no one expected the last Gallian king to pick the younger son, Joseph, as his heir. He was a failure, with no great victories to his name and no fame as a mage-scholar. Of course he wouldn't be a famous mage-scholar! In fact, I wonder if my father knew! I bet that King Joseph couldn't get spells to work properly when he was a child either!"
"Lou?"
"But his brother was a dashing valiant hero who'd won glory down in Iberia," she continued, ignoring the question. "And no one understood why the useless son would be the next king. And then Charles died suddenly, not too long after Joseph was announced the heir. And the Gallian insanity showed itself not too long after he became king - except now I wonder if he was just pretending because a mind that can pull this scheme off isn't ill like the others! But no one would suspect another simple-minded Gallian king! Insanity and sickness of the mind runs in that royal family too, because they don't marry outside the royal house and… oh curse it!"
"Slow down. What are you getting at?"
"He's an overlord! A bearer of the Void! King Joseph of Gallia is like me!" Louise snapped. "And the Gallians know enough, just like Louis did. Know enough to try to play the odds that someone like me shows up in their bloodline."
Jessica tilted her head, considering this. "Fuck," she opined.
"This might actually be a time for profanity, yes," Louise said. "Because he has Tiffania. He might have already killed her to seize her power. And - oh. Oh no."
"Please don't tell me you thought up some even less pleasant ideas."
"He has Henrietta," Louise said, blood as cold as ice. "Her father was an Albionese prince. She definitely has the royal blood of Tristain, like me. And if the Gallians know how the Void is inherited…" She took a deep breath. "Well, at least communications are down and Gnarl doesn't know about this yet. That's something good, at least."
"Why is this a good thing?"
"We're caught in a trap devised by a… a…" Louise faded away, her lady's vocabulary unable to express the depths of her hate.
"An utter bastard?"
"His parents were married."
"A son of a bitch?"
"I want to insult him, not his mother."
"A whole bag of floppy dicks wrapped in human skin?"
"Oh, I like that. Yes! We're caught in a trap devised by, um, a whole bag of floppy dicks wrapped in human skin," Louise whispered with heartfelt loathing. "This plan is impressing me. It'd definitely impress Gnarl. He'd betray me for King Joseph without a second thought."
"Yeah. Yeah, he would." Jessica squeezed her shoulder. "So what are you going to do?"
"I… I don't know." She swallowed. "Not yet. But… we'll have to wait until the elves find something. Maybe some of the children have useful talents too. I need to know where he's keeping Henrietta and Tiffania. And then I can start thinking about how to ruin him."
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