"Do the best you can. Try to do good. It is all that anyone can hope for."
— Dei
The overlady's exclamation echoed around the hall. And King Joseph laughed to hear such vehemence from his mosquito of a foe.
"Oh, the conclusion of your true identity was simplicity indeed," he said, grinning with devilishment merriment. Was this joy? Perhaps. Perhaps. "Did you not understand that I would never let a rival be a true threat to me? When you paraded yourself around the Abyss, my spies were watching. When you acted, my spies made note. Everything you have done, I have put together into my great web. I am the spider and you? You are the fly. I know everything about you, scion of the de la Vallières."
He bowed to her, hoping that perhaps she might break down in fear and he might understand the pleasure of seeing a defeated rival.
"That helmet is pointless, Cattleya."
The overlady was silent; her shoulders trembling doubtlessly from shock and terror.
"Trying to play games? Trying to make me doubt myself? Ah ha! Not today, girl! It is simplicity itself"
"Go ahead. If you're so clever," the overlady said softly. Clearly beside herself with fear at his investigative prowess.
"Tch! There are some things you cannot hide about yourself! No matter how you try!" King Joseph dusted off his lapels. "For example, the very fact that you bear a fragment of the void means that you must be close kin to the royal family of Tristain. The last known champion of the Sinister Hand was the cousin of the current queen, so we know that the bloodline is still close to the Brimiric line! That alone narrows down who you could be substantially!
"But that is not all! Your accent is clearly that of an upper class woman from the Germanian border regions! For all that you have the crisp syllables of the highest reaches of Tristanian womanhood, there is a slight front-loading of the consonants and a hint of guttural emphasis on certain words that indicates hearing traces of the Germanian accent growing up! That led me off course for a moment! I had thought that you might be a bastard, or from a poorer cadet branch of the de la Vallières. But then I had a realisation!
"Yes, Karina of the Heavy Wind, the Duchess de la Vallière, was born to a fallen house with a bloodline barely better than a commoner! And who is the greatest influence on the child – why, it is the mother! So the traces of a lower class accent clearly indicated that was the case!"
"I do not have a lower-class accent!" Oh, that had struck a piquant little blow on Cattleya.
"Why, mademoiselle, you do – just traces, but it's there. At least to an ear and a mind like mine!" King Joseph grinned maniacally. "And so I deduced your identity with ease! You are of course Cattleya de la Vallière, who has not been seen in public since the age of ten. Your hair is pink, as is hers; you have the shape of your mother's face; you have the ambition and drive of your father. And I know those two and what they would do if one of their children were to be an inheritor of dark power — they would not let them roam freely, but would instead keep them close. And alive. Because the de la Vallière family knows about the secret of the heirs of Brimir. How could they not? Just as my own line, your family has been breeding to strengthen the blood of Brimir so that you might wield this terrible, cursed power! If a pair of heroes knew their child was bearing Brimir's curse, they would keep her safe but prevent her from coming into the fullness of their gift. But you broke free of them! Too late to rival me, but you broke free!
"And so you are here, and I am here! Here, for our battle which will determine the fate of the world! Here for this duel of destiny itself! For the victor will become Brimir reborn, the god of this dying sphere, and for this I drew you here, Cattleya, to be a pawn in my games!"
In other circumstances, Louise would have envied him. He had a flair for speeches and more than that, he had clearly never had the problem of minions interrupting and saying things like 'what colour are the world being dyed' or 'who are you to say that the overlady are a prawn in your games?'. His monologue trod the borderline between brilliance and madness — as did the scope of his plans. The plans he had nearly guided to fruition.
But no. Not when he had threatened Henrietta. Not when he had put Louise through all this bull-sugar for the sake of power which had only made her life miserable. She would be a thrice-darned square-ranked wind mage if it wasn't for this cursed power that she had needed to take back from her big sister to save her life. And maybe it was the curse of Brimir's tainted blessing that made her want to kill him, but maybe it was just that she had been put through more utter nonsense in the past few weeks than any woman should. And now on top of everything else, he was gloating that he had falsely worked out that she was her older sister! And she couldn't even correct him!
She could hurt him, though.
Louise raised her hand, and with rose darkness. It surged forth, not exactly fire but still burning, and crashed down towards the king. But his wandsword lashed out, and shattered her burning darkness. It splashed around him, draining the colour from the world, before it died.
"Bravo, bravo!" King Joseph cried out, his eyes burning violet under his ancient helm. He saluted her with his wandsword, and the purple runes on it left scorch-marks on the air for just a second.. "Let us get to hurting each other!"
Shifting in place, Louise began to circle to the right, trying to shift so the cages were out of the line of fire. Her breath rasped in her lungs; her heart punched in her chest. She had lost her temper. She had lost her temper and if that had hit it would have killed him. And that wasn't what she wanted. Louise had to hold her rage tight, and never let it slip its leash. It was her only friend here, and her greatest enemy.
Watch the tip of his wand, for the moment when he takes aim. Watch his shoulder muscles for the straightening of his arm, watch for—
There! A flick of his wand, and a trio of crystals that shone a dark, malignant purple coalesced from the gesture. Louise stepped to the side, letting them crash and shatter behind her. Just a testing blow. Something to see if she would overcommit. But curse it, he was fast. If he could cast that quickly, she wouldn't be able to manage anything that required a more complicated incantation.
Another flick from him, and more three crystals. This time they curved in the air, and one clipped the side of her breastplate, tearing the surcoat but skittering off the steel. She felt the impact, and lashed back with a blast of broiling hot wind that he sidestepped.
"Ah ha! What fun! What revelry!" he called out.
He never levelled his wand-sword at her. A word in the dark tongue, and he was upon her faster than anything human could move, stuttering like the dream-theatre in the Abyss. She had no time to move her staff into a blocking position, and took the wand-sword to her chest. It scraped along Jessica's hellforged plate, throwing up sparks, and the impact drew a line of dull pressure-pain along her chest. And then the gem along the back of his hand flashed, and Louise felt herself tossed away like a ragdoll.
While she was sailing through the air, she wheezed out the levitation spell and caught herself. It was enough to get her feet under her before she hit the ground. But King Joseph was already waiting for her, blade raised.
With a single snapped word, Louise sent a wave of hellfire rolling towards him. The king took a moment to salute her with his wandsword, and raised an amulet that glowed the same purple as his eyes. The fire bent away from him, splashing harmlessly against the ancient stone of the fortress, and he retreated a step back.
Her blood ran cold. Warding amulets against fire. Sugar.
"My compliments to your armourer," he said, shaking out his arm. "Very good work. That should've caved your plate in and crushed your chest. Do you like my little trick?"
Both of them paused for breath. She could feel the dull ache in her chest. Not a cracked rib, but she'd already be black and blue by next morning. "Which trick would that be?"
"Isn't that meant to be my line? I act innocent as to how these things you do not understand are happening, you try to understand my brilliance. That manner of thing." He hunched forwards slightly. "You are letting yourself down. Be more coy! More playful!."
"No, it is… it is…" she took a deep breath, trying to stop her voice from shaking, "it is a real question. Do you mean your speed? Or the fact that you are walking around festooned in enchanted items?"
The king beamed at her, the petulance gone in a blink. "It is wonderful, no? But how am I managing it, Cattleya?"
Louise straightened up slightly, gripping her staff with both hands in a guarding position. "I am not a fool. You are the master of the Mind of God. You cannot cast another spell while all your will is focussed on contracting your presence in time, so each second lasts longer for you—"
"Ah ha! Très impressionnant! To deduce the mechanism so easily!"
"I have some experience with time-magic," she said bitterly. "But yes. You use your mastery of magical implements in battle, when you cannot focus your will on casting your own spells. And…" she brought her staff down, calling up a circle of fire around herself. It burned bright pink, the heat something she could taste on her tongue. Sweat beaded on her forehead.
But it would give her a moment to catch her breath.
King Joseph paced around it. "Come now!" he cried out. "Everyone knows how much you love fire magic! Show some imagination! Some creativity! I have been waiting so long to see if you can make me feel a little exhilarated! A little joy! Do not hide behind fire!"
Louise sucked in a breath through her teeth, her armour clanking as she turned to face him. "If you're bored, why not throw away your warding amulet?"
"And burn to death? How passé! That is not the current style in Versailles!"
"But I saw you flinch," she retorted. "The protection isn't perfect, is it?"
"Ah ha! But does it need to be perfect?"
With another word, Louise ramped the fires up higher and higher, until the roar was all she could hear. She held it like that as the core of the fire bled to white, until she could barely breathe through the heat, until her lungs protested, and then let it die down.
Above her, the hanging drapes burned. Around her, a ring of molten stone, bubbling and oozing.
"You… you tell me," she said, smiling despite the ache.
She could see his lips purse, as he continued to pace like a stalking cat. In his polished armour, the orange glow of the molten rock gleamed. "Such a little display of hysteria. I could jump that ring."
"Could you?" she asked. "Or would your spell result in you burning alive if you tried?"
The purple fire of his eyes dimmed as he narrowed his eyes. "No," he decided, after many long moments. "No, that spell doesn't work like that. I wouldn't burn more quickly. You are bluffing. A clever bluff, a serious bluff, but only a bluff."
"Am I?" Louise said with a smile, letting his pacing take him to a place where her left hand was hidden behind her body.
A pause in the battle, as the stone chimed as it cooled and the burning drapes crackled. She kept her eyes on his lips. And when she saw them move, she brought her left hand around.
His wandsword took her in the right shoulder. Metal screamed. Red hot, sharp pain bit down. But her left hand was on his chest now, and the palm held a half-formed spell. Soot and smoke filled the air and a wave of pressure tossed them both away.
Ears ringing, breath rasping, shoulder a mass of pain, Louise managed to lever herself up to one knee. King Joseph was down too, wheezing like she'd winded him. Some of the amulets hanging from him were dull and lifeless, shattered by her half-formed spell. But not all of them. And he hadn't knocked himself out. Darn.
When she tried to straighten up, her head reeled with sudden vertigo. Her hand went to her shoulder. She could feel the dent in the metal. No, more than a dent. The metal had been punched through. Not fully, and the padding had bled most of the force from the blow that had gotten through, but the sharp, hotness felt like he'd broken the skin. "Sugar," she wheezed, clutching her shoulder with her other hand.
It wouldn't affect her plan. Except that it might be a weakness he could use to kill her. Which would affect her plan. And why was she wondering now if Henrietta would try to bring her back from the dead too, now wasn't the time. She slapped the side of her helmet which helped to clear the fuzz out of her head, at least a bit.
Over on the far side of the molten ring, King Joseph spat blood, and clutched his chest. "And now you are making this boring," he wheezed
That made no sense. "I beg your—"
"'I beg your pardon'," he mocked. "This was meant to be our grand showdown. A fight to shake the world. Either you would kill me, or I would kill you. But you're just using these… these pathetic little tricks. Where is the grandeur? The splendeur? The magnificence?"
The sheer effrontery of that claim drew a wheezing laugh from Louise. "You showed up to this fight festooned in warding amulets! You've done everything to try to rig this in your favour!"
"Because we are heirs to the void! Because we both could be heirs to rule over all of Halkegninia!" He spat on the ground, and wiped his bloodied lip on his glove. "You show no regard for your inheritance! If you were truly better than me, you would have smuggled your army of minions in to fight me! You would have called up the forces of the Abyss! You would have taken my great web of plans and turned them against me! That is a woman who would have the right to beat me! But no! Not you! Not you and your silly little tricks and the way you just throw yourself into problems headfirst and hope that you can power through to the other side." With his wandsword, he levered himself upright, and levelled it at her. "You, Cattleya — you fight like a hero."
"You take that back," she snapped, even as her heart soared to hear it. That her mother's training was so clear on her was in its own way reassuring.
"No! No, I shall not!" He slashed his wandsword through the air, to cut her off. "Not one more word!" A lock of curled blue hair unceremoniously escaped his helmet, and he irritably huffed it out of his face. "So little regard not only for me — for me — but for yourself! How do you live with it? Live with this curse of hollowness, of unfeelingness?"
"... what curse?"
"We are hollow beings!" he proclaimed to the room, spreading his arms wide, head raised to face the darkness above him. "Cursed by the power that lives within us. The void was never meant to be trapped within mortal men. How mad must Brimir have been? We are drained by the emptiness in us, ruined souls, wrought and—"
"What on earth are you talking about?" Louise asked. She couldn't help but feel concerned. She had no idea what he was talking about and that worried her, because this man was brilliant, but — as shown by how he thought she was Cattleya — not immune to getting completely the wrong idea about things.
"You are breaking my flow!" King Joseph snapped. "This is a great showdown between the heirs to Brimir's cursed power, the sort of thing which will be written in the history books. I have been practising my speech! All of this! Years of work, to set up a showdown and you are not respecting it!"
Louise's eyes flickered to the corners of the room, and not seeing what she did not expect to see, she relaxed slightly. She had to keep his attention on her. "No, I really don't understand. What do you mean by 'we are hollow beings'?"
King Joseph clasped his free hand to his chest. "Oh, please, this pretence does you no favours. The Void numbs all. It is beyond time, beyond cares, beyond feelings. I have killed men and felt nothing. The sun does not warm me; the smile of my daughter is just an expression; my mistress's embrace is an unpleasant thing I must go through because no one would respect a Gallian king who did not have a mistress. I am an empty man, a hollow man, caught in this blighted world! And yet I am still a king! So that is what I need from you; your power, or a splendid death worthy of me! So that I might burn the world in a tragedy that might stir my numb heart to life, or else a death knowing that my death will change the order of the world!"
Louise opened her mouth, and tried to consider what to say to that. "That's… just you," she managed, and knew it was the wrong thing to say.
But maybe saying something was better than nothing, because that made sure the mad king's attention was fully on her. Rather than on what was going on behind him.
Through the shadows of the throne room skulked an awful, terrible, repugnant — and quite pungent — creature. Fettid was a careful creature despite her minionly stupidity, at least in circumstances like these. It was one thing to jump atop an enemy and stab them repeatedly while tittering wildly when one had other minions to provide support and to drag one's corpse back to the blues when the enemies finally managed to land a fatal blow, but in this circumstance and in this place, her overlady needed her.
When the overlady and the other male overlady were talking, she moved carefully and slowly, taking advantage of her innate invisibility to slip between patches of shadow and shimmy her way along the deep blue banners. When they stopped talking and started throwing big blasty spells and burning fire at each other, that was when she made a scamper for the nearest bit of solid stone cover and kept her head down. The overlady had been very clear about her orders.
"I need you to do this to me. That means no stabbing, no helping me out in the fight, nothing until you have done this. Am I quite clear, Fettid? I don't want you to see that his back is turned and stab it. That is not what you are here for. Am I making sense to you, Fettid? If you do that, you will have failed your mission. That makes you a failure as a minion. Do you understand, Fettid?"
Louise's instructions had continued along these veins for quite some time, and something of it had sunk in. Fettid's eyelid only twitched slightly as she glanced back to see King Joseph's exposed back, so tender and vulnerable and just asking for a shanking - no! No! She was going to be the best minion she could!
The overlady and the man-overlady were still talking. Fettid climbed up the curtain, leaving only a few disgusting stains behind her, and then threw herself over to the chains that the cages were suspended from. Then it was simple enough to climb down. Sure, she accidentally got onto Henrietta's cage and thus had to re-scale the chain to move over to the correct one, but that was just a small implementation detail.
"What is that smell?" Tifa whispered.
"Oi!" Something rapped on her cage for above, and she looked up to see a green-skinned goblinoid wearing what had probably been a nice dress before minionly life took its toll. "Is you or is you not the overlady what is not our overlady but is the overlady named Tifa?"
"... that is the overlady what is me," Tifa said, brain momentarily dislocated by the minionly contortions of grammar. "Um. That is to say, I'm Tifa."
Henrietta made a muffled noise through her gag.
"Oh, hi necro-princess!" Fettid said brightly. She idly picked her nose with a long thin piece of wood. "I are here because the overlady sent me, overlady what are Tifa!"
"Are you here to get me out of here?"
"No. Noooo. No. That no are my orders. They are well complicated, though. An' hard to remember. You ever had that problem, overlady what are Tifa?"
"... are you picking your nose with a wand?" Tifa asked, her child-care instincts coming to the fore. "Don't do that. Use a handkerchief."
Fettid looked at the wand. "Oh! Right! Yes! That are what I is here for!"
"What are you here for?"
Fettid wracked her brains. "The overlady tell me, she tell me, Fettid, give the wand to the other overlady what are Tifa. And then the overlady who are Tifa must do what the overlady say. She needs to use the evil portal spell to take her and the overlady's henchwoman who are a necromancer away. And she need to hide out there until the overlady come find her. This are the only place in the world where the man overlady no can find them, 'coz it no are in the world."
"Will that… of course it will work! Give me that," Tifa said, so overjoyed she did not seem to care where the wand had gone. "All right!" She gave Henrietta a bright-eyed glance. "We're getting out of here! Try not to throw up! It takes some mages poorly!"
While gagged, Henrietta could not say, "Wait, what?" but her expression definitely implied that was what she intended to convey.
Tifa shouted a single word in the dark tongue, and her, Henrietta, their cages, Fettid and incidentally a hemisphere of the ground vanished into darkness, the world snapping shut behind them with an anti-sound that muted even the noise of the battle.
But the noise that echoed out once the anti-sound died away was the high pitched scream of King Joseph.
Louise's heart leapt in joy. Not only was Henrietta safe now, but she'd also taken away the risk that her foe would decide to cheat and kill Tifa to snatch her power here and now. She gave him her best smile, her eyes burning pink.
"Your move, your majesty," she said sweetly. "Didn't you say you wanted me to smuggle in my minions? Well, I did — and now I've taken the prisoners out of our reach. Now it's just you and me."
"I don't understand," King Joseph said, his voice numb. "They were our prizes. We were going to fight over them. You were going to lose and then I was going to claim your fragment of Brimir's void. And then I was going to claim the fragment of the half-elf. And I had your necromancer there to serve as my backup. I don't understand. Because they were there for you too. So you'd fight me. You let them get away."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I'd rather we both lose then you win," she lied. "Because you have put me through so much bull-sugar that I thought about what would hurt you most and went for that." Huh. At some point, she'd stopped lying. She really did hate this self-centred, petty man. Yes, being an heir to the Void had ruined her life, but she wasn't going to try to destroy the world!
"No. That doesn't make sense. Can't you feel the void calling to you? Wanting to be whole?"
"Yes. I just don't listen to it. And I hate you. You… y-you whole bag of floppy d-dicks wrapped in human skin!"
The king was silent. Then; "Non. No, I refuse to accept it." His voice cracked. "I w-will not be defeated by a little girl who doesn't even swear. I had a grand duel. A battle for the fate of the world. A prize of power for the winner. And you. You ruined it."
His cheek twitched. His hands clenched and uncleaned rhythmically. His shoulders trembled. Deep, dark sea-blue, the colour of the ocean at night, crept from him, welling up into his shadow which bled out and out.
Louise's mother had always been very clear about what one should do when one's opponent started acting in this manner. But Louise couldn't kill him. She couldn't. She didn't want his power.
"Feelings," the thing that was hopefully still King Joseph said, eyes burning the blue of the most intense flames. "These are feelings. Yes." Raw darkness dripped from him, the evil staining the stone, eating through it like acid. "I remember. A little bit of them. But not like this. Never like this before.
"Never this hate. Never this rage. Never this—" he hissed, lost for words.
Oh. Louise bit her lower lip. King Joseph had been talking about how he couldn't feel things. She also appeared to have driven him into a hateful, rage-filled nervous breakdown. That hadn't been in the plan.
Her mother hadn't had anything useful to say about that, but her father had been quite clear that living to fight another day was often the superior route compared to desperate last stands. And she could still do this. She just needed to survive the next… while. The next while. And get outside.
With a whisper to her gauntlet, she brought up the rune of detonation, and tapped it. Down in the heart of the island, the infernal charges detonated. All the lights went out. And then the island lurched. It knocked King Joseph from his feet. Louise, on the other hand, had whispered a levitation spell and so remained upright.
Something cracked in the ceiling, and a deep, wailing horn-cry sounded out. Archaic words in a language older than Old Romalian sounded out.
Floating, Louise de la Vallière made a run for it. And behind her, she heard the mad king's furious scream.
It shook the earth. It shook the island. It cracked the ceilings.
yup. Demon tail afterwords is soooo important.
