033 – Troubles

***

In my dreams, the metropolis mingled impossibly with the citadel. All the city’s grandest buildings and tallest skyscrapers fused together into one steep pyramid. The streets buckled and the train cars tumbled into a toxic river. The airships circled ominously with outstretched wings like those of the devil-birds. Citizens strolled through this gigantic hodge podge structure. Time had dried them to black skeletons, but they still went about mundane tasks, jogging, grocery shopping, pushing strollers. I had become a floating specter only able to observe not speak to the inhabitants of this new city. I floated up on a current of air to the very summit of the pyramid and there saw the haunted idol from the abandoned settlement. She had her arms outstretched as if beckoning to me…

Yurk’s snoring woke me from the dream. I rolled out of my hammock onto the ice cold floor. The midnight gloam made the men’s quarters pitch black, so I felt along the freshly painted walls toward the door.

Once out in the training hall, I lit my staff. The tiniest bit of mana caused the lumestone to glimmer faintly. Everyone in the Hall of Discipline was asleep. No workmen beat hammers or rolled noisy carts up the ramps. For a brief time, the citadel was quiet. Even the devil-birds stopped their screeching. This was a good time to concentrate on my control and visualization exercises.

I took my place on the mat. The chill night air flowing through room helped me with the exercise in the way cold water helped break a fever. The ‘inner fire’ was just a metaphor for the aetheric soul. Many things were called fire: lust, hate, hunger, time, war. In this case, the comparison was a good one, because my soul burned away my mana and, if my reserves fell too low, it would scorch my body as well.

The natural well beneath the citadel provided an extra supply of mana. Absorbing mana while cycling produced faster results. I could replenish myself in an hour or two. A mage with better control of their fire could do so in ten or fifteen minutes of meditation. Often they would cycle as they walked around to slowly feed their souls.

“Do you need warming up? It’s cold out here.”

A pair of arms wrapped around my neck. Hwilla grabbed me from behind and pressed herself against my back. She rubbed her cheek against mine.

“I want to be cold. If I get any warmer, I’m going to keel over dead.”

“Then you should let me help you.” She spoke with a hushed voice, so as not to wake the others.

“The only help I need is a quiet setting with no distractions.”

I wanted to strangle this girl. My life was hard enough dealing with a crazy cult and my stalled training. A love struck weirdo chasing me around did not help with my stress levels.

Hwilla was not that much younger me, but had a much different life experience than mine, residing in the metropolis and going to school. She had joined Void Phantoms since a young age. She grew up in the female barracks, training in combat with the other novices. That setting gave her no chance for normal relationships—not even normal by this era’s standards. It made sense for her to obsess over her first romantic partner.

I reminded myself not to blame her too much for her actions.

“I’m not going to let you die, Strythe. There’s a way I can help you.”

“How’s that?”

“You don’t know how to control your fire because you can’t feel it. What you need is a good example. Feel this.”

Hwilla inhaled strongly. I felt her her push against me as her lungs expanded. As she did so, her fire flared up. It became blazing hot and radiated energy. Then she slowly exhaled. The intensity of her soul quickly lessened to a cool flickering flame. She breathed in and repeated the cycle.

“Come on. Do it with me.”

I matched my breathing to hers and tried to mimic her magic. A better person than me would have sent her on her way. This nocturnal hugging session was only going to make her inevitable heartbreak worse. But I needed to survive. It was much easier to recover from a broken heart than death. I had done so once, but did not count on it happening again. So I went along with her overly intimate training exercise.

She squeezed me tightly and blew into my ear.

“You know? There’s a whole set of secret training exercises. I heard about them from the other novices. It’s called ‘dual cultivation.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“It starts with two magi. Instead of cycling mana internally, they pass it back and forth for better results.”

“That sounds highly unsanitary. Please don’t get any weird ideas back there.”

“Well, keep it in mind. Maybe you’ll feel more adventurous once you fix your fire.”

This was not good. This situation gave the poor girl false hope. The midnight gloam came to an end. The shadow of the earth slowly slid off the face of the moon, and a dim violet light flooded into the Hall of Discipline. The only sound was our unified breathing.

***

The illicit training session had produced some results, although not astounding ones. I could shrink my flame by a small amount. It wasn’t easy, but it proved that it wasn’t impossible. Fightmaster Putrizio did not allow me to end my current regime of meditation.

I had to lay low after that encounter with Hwilla. It had fired her up with boundless enthusiasm. She somehow developed the opinion that hard work and determination could accomplish anything, including romantic success. I would soon disabuse her of this notion. Romance was one area of human life that fell outside the powers of will and reason. My civilization had very little violence, yet sexual jealousy motivated almost every murder in the metropolis. We had not found a way to fully domesticate those wild instincts.

After Putrizio’s brief office hours, Yurk and Hwilla sparred in a match together. I fled the Hall of Discipline while the fight distracted her. She wouldn’t catch me. After that, I wound through the citadel to throw her off my trail. Going straight to my workshop could have led her to my secret hideout.

I wandered aimlessly for a time, examining the work being done on the citadel. The barge crews brought all the supplies up the mountain to unload at the main entrance. The grand hall became a central receiving area and a barn for the cult’s hoofed animals. Horses, oxen, and mules chewed fodder in wooden stalls. The mules pulled carts from here up the wider passages to the upper levels, delivering lumber and construction materials where needed.

The work crews that hadn’t been lured away by bribes converged on what would be the dark lord’s private suite. They had to get the place ready before he could come up the river. A hypocaust would heat the main audience hall. The workers placed a grid of stone blocks across the floor, with about half a meter between them. Flat panels of slate went on top of these to form a new, slightly elevated floor. Tiles would then decorate the surface. This left an open space under the floor. A level down, brick stoves would burn fuel and send hot air up into the air gap. Because the hypocaust was entirely sealed, none of the smoke would leak out, but the heat would radiate up through the floor panels to warm the chamber. On the far side was a chimney to vent the smoke and rising air.

These modern architects had very clever solutions to solve problems with limited materials and technology.

I remembered meaning to search the former greenhouse where the eye-titan had dwelt.

“Oh, Strythe. Is that you?” Zvidsi the dressmaker hurried over to me. “I have the hardest time with the Faceless, but I recognized you by your glowing staff.”

“Hello, Mistress Zvidsi.”

“May I walk with you for a moment?” She said breathlessly. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed us. “Perhaps somewhere less crowded.”

“Sure. I was going to the old greenhouse.”

“That sounds lovely.” She put her arm through mine and pulled me along. “I’d rather not be seen out with a man, for fear that people might talk.”

“What would they say?”

“Spreading nasty rumors. I have a reputation to maintain. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was, you know… tailoring on the side.”

“Oh right.”

We walked past some of the trollish warning signs that had yet to be painted over. Dripping hand prints and the eye symbol marked the walls. My staff lit the dark corridors, but bright daylight spilled in from the old greenhouse ahead of us. I took off my skull mask, which was against the rules, but I was talking to a normal person now and felt ridiculous with it on.

“Is it my understanding that you are Malisent’s new servant?” she asked.

“I’m not her servant, but she often treats me like one. Part of that is the fact I’m the only minion whose name she actually knows.”

“Has she mentioned me? She must be hideously angry with me.”

“No. When Malisent gets angry, her hair poofs up and she stabs people. From what I can tell, she’s more distressed than angry.”

“That’s even worse.”

“Then you should talk to her. Settle your problems directly.”

“I can’t bring myself to face her. I’ve been so unfaithful. Running off with another woman. I feel so awful for betraying Malisent, but it was inevitable. The passion had faded. I lost interest in our relationship and found my mind wandering to other, more tantalizing possibilities.”

“Question. We are still talking about sewing, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Just wanted to make sure.”

“You see. I had to run away, because… Dare I say it? Because I’d grown tired of… of black!”

“Black? Like the color black?”

“But it’s not a color! Black is a non-color, a void, a negation of color. I work with form and texture and movement in dressmaking, but without color, my work loses its vital magic. Her endless black dresses couldn’t keep my attention forever. I need the full rainbow of life!”

“Okay. Then why don’t you just tell Malisent to wear more color?”

“I could never ask that of her. It’s unthinkable for a couturier to force someone to abandon their personal style. And she wouldn’t do it anyway. Too much of her persona is tied up in the darkness. She’s a black knight, a dashing villain, a creature of night and shadow. To give it up would invalidate the wicked essence of her being.”

“Uh… But wait. You switched to working for Veylien. And she only wears white. Won’t you run into the same problem?”

“Yes, curse it. Before the novelty of creating in white wears thin, I can make a few dozen dresses, but it’s an artistic dead end. I’m bound to break faith with Veylien as I did with Malisent. All I want is to loyally serve my mistress, like a knight serves her lord, but my appetite for color seduces me from my duty. Alas.”

“Yeah. Alas. That sounds rough,” I said. “Look. I can’t pretend to understand this stuff. But I’m not the one you should be talking to. Even if it doesn’t work out, you and Malisent can at least settle your differences and get some closure. Good communication is the key to any… uh… tailor-client relationship.”

“I know that in my heart. But I’m too much of a coward,” she said. Zvidsi clung onto my arm. “What? What is this place we’ve come to? I thought we were going to a green house?”

“It used to be one. This large round hole used to be a glass dome. Now nothing grows here but moss and lichen. This is where the eye-titan made its lair.”

I had wanted to return here, now that the beast had fled, to examine its home. On my first trip here, I had sensed something odd in this place. The monster had laced some magic into its lair. The stone floor bore some type of crude aetheric construct.

I waved my hand over the floor. The construct, which was not quite a rune, but something similar, reacted to my presence. It sent a pulse of energy down a winding tendril of essence. In effect, this thing was a spiritual trip wire. It gave out a signal when living things intruded here, and would rouse the eye-titan from sleep. A simple alarm.

The eye-titan had created this thing with some type of monster magic. That fact did not necessarily give evidence of the beast’s intelligence. Beavers built dams, but they weren’t engineers. Termites built huge towers that, if increased to our scale, would dwarf the citadel. So this monster might have created these constructs out of instinct, the way that the huge devil birds could manipulate the wind to keep their huge forms aloft in the sky.

While the alarm sensor wasn’t useful as a rune, I could figure out how the mechanism of how it worked and use that principle to devise a rune, one more efficient that could be worked into arrays.

Zvidsi looked nervous being here. “The eye titan? It’s said the titan Uluximor had ten thousand eyes. And when he died, they burst free from his corpse and flew across the continent.”

“He must have been pretty big,” I muttered. The eye monster was almost the size of an elephant. I couldn’t imagine a monster big enough to have a thousand of those ugly things crammed in his head. “But I’ve seen enough here. We can leave if you’re ready. You probably want to get back to Veylien before she notices you’re gone.”

“I’m just miserable about this whole situation. You’re a craftsman, Strythe. Surely you must understand my woes.”

“Not really. I’m more of a mechanic than an artist. My favorite color is brown.”

“Ugh.” She looked at me like a slug had just fallen from my mouth. “Why?”

“Because it’s boring and nonthreatening and if you spill coffee on yourself no one notices.”

“There is nothing wrong with rich earth tones, but brown alone is wasted potential. You have to accent it with other shades and colors.” Zvidsi loosened one of her measuring tapes and snapped it out like a whip. She held the tape up to me, making quick estimates as to my size. “Aren’t you a swordsman now, Master Strythe? Then you can’t wear a Faceless uniform forever. And a swordsman’s reputation is everything. How will people remember you if you look like a pile of dried leaves?”

“I’d rather people forget about me. As far as I can tell, being a famous swordsman means having people out for your blood.”

“You simply must have a consultation before your debut into society. It would be a fashion crime to let you walk out into the world like this.”

Zvidsi shuffled around me, looking at me from all angles. She bent down to measure my inseam.

“Strythe! What are you doing here with this woman?” a voice rang out. I was starting to hate the sound of my new name because people were always barking it at me. Hwilla appeared behind us. Her fire blazed hot. “And with your face uncovered. How shameless.”

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Zvidsi sputtered. Her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. She hid the tape measure behind her back.

“Then someone please explain to me what’s going on here.”

“I’m just out searching the–”

“We’re lovers!” Zvidsi grabbed me around the waist. “This is a romantic tryst. We’ve stolen away to this forgotten garden to consummate our passions.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Strythe, you cheating bastard! After all your excuses, it turns out you were chasing after other women. I’ll never forgive you for this!” Hwilla stormed off.

“Wait. I…” It was too late. She ran down the corridor and disappeared and disappeared into the darkness of the citadel. I looked to Zvidsi. “What was that lover business all about?”

“I didn’t want anyone to think I was doing secret tailoring for another client. There’s no blame in having a fling with some handsome young swordsman once in awhile—but making clothes on the side could tarnish my sterling reputation as a dressmaker.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to tarnish anything.”

Hwilla gave me trouble when she loved me. Now that she hated me, things would be even worse. My last life taught me very little about dealing with women, and less about crazy women who were well armed.