Losinda had agonized over the decision to wait seven days, but after her friend Kadira visited her once more, she had come with carriages to transport the whole family, banking on the hope that Losinda would come to her senses and leave. She had sent the children with her instead, still intent on doing her best to ascertain Janina’s whereabouts

For four days, she had instead tried to reach every contact in the military she had, and all the still-living friends that her daughter Janina still had, but the former were all too quick to turn her away, citing the importance of the war effort, while the latter could not provide anything useful.

Both groups, however, said precious little about the threat that the capital was facing, the threat that Kadira, her one avenue into the gossip of high society, had informed her about.

Losinda walked out to the yard of the manor, where the guards were hard at work leading scores of mindless prisoners of war to the forest where they had dug a mass grave. Losinda could not fault Reizenbrahm for such barbaric actions, for the Golden Lands were intent on destroying them, and they could not afford to feed so many people in the event of a siege.

Still, despite their listless attitudes, they never could seem to hide their terror in the face of their mortality. Even now, their screams rang out like echoes, a growing din that combined with the battle cries of the practicing soldiers readying to defend the Reizenbrahm manor with their lives, even though the lord of the house did not bid them to do so.

No, he had been all too preoccupied with his work, pressing the prisoners for all the information they had, likely finding none. If he had, then his mood may have brightened even just a tad, but instead, he refused to talk to her, and would rather sleep in his study rather than their bed. Losinda could smell the fact that he had not showered in days now, even though the frigid autumn air masked his scent.

The truth was, Losinda was tired. Too tired. So many days spent wandering the city, so many nights spent writing letters, receiving very few in return. Janina had somehow disappeared off the face of the earth, and she was left to bear the blame for it. The gods knew that Daiclovius blamed her for it all, else he would open his heart and share in her misery. It was maddening, having to deal with his taciturn attitude, now of all times.

She retreated back to her bedroom to sulk in silence, thinking about anything she may have missed, any stone she may have left unturned, but every time, she would come up with nothing. There was nothing she hadn’t done to unearth the whereabouts of her daughter, no one she hadn’t spoken to that could conceivably inform her, no lead that had panned out with anything at all.

It was almost like she was chasing a ghost.

She cursed that idea with all her might, hoping beyond hope that nothing untoward may have happened to her daughter, that in her grief, she may not have left the capital and been waylaid by bandits too strong for her to overcome.

The idea was inconceivable. What bandit could possibly hope to stand before an elite of the military? Losinda could not fail to recognize her might. Indeed, the past weeks had been one big exercise in hearing every war story there was to hear about her dear Janina, to hear of her valor, spoken in hushed tones, yet nevertheless awesome to behold.

If only Janina had been born a boy, for both her sake and the kingdom’s, for if so, she could have gone on to achieve great things.

But there was no use obsessing over that fact now. All she had to do was find her baby, and hug her with all her might. That was all she could even think of doing. Words failed to describe the love she wanted to send her dearest first-born, all the things she wanted to convey. Words could not capture them adequately, and a hug would fall short, too, but it was the only thing she could possibly think of doing.

Losinda wanted to forget all about her own personal misgivings and give her a new chance, to respect what she had become, to love it, as was a mother’s duty. She no longer cared about any expectations she may have placed on the girl. Right now, she just wanted her here, present, safe, and loved.

She buried her head in her hands and sobbed over her vanity desk, blaming herself furiously for the fact that it had come to this.

A knock rang at her door. She quickly dried her tears and centered herself the way only a noblewoman knew how. In just a few moments, she had regained her composure, compartmentalizing all her grief and locking it in an airtight box deep inside her mind. “Come in,” she said. In strode her two hand-maidens, Safina and Moria.

“My lady, your lunch is ready,” the blue-eyed Safina said. She carried a tray of food enclosed inside a dome.

“I’m not hungry,” Losinda waved them off.

“My lady.”

“Please leave me be,” she said. “I am in the middle of something.”

Still, her authoritative voice did not move them. They stood their ground, sussing out the excuse for the lie that it was, and stepped forward. Moria was first to speak, always the brasher among the two. “My lady, is there anything we can do for you.”

“No,” she said. “There is nothing.”

“Anything at all,” she pressed on, where so many other servants would have taken the hint and just left.

“Well,” Losinda finally obliged them. “If you can tell me where my daughter is, then yes, do that. If not, then leave.”

Before Moria could continue to run her mouth and make Losinda truly angry, Safina took over. “We do not know.”

“Well?” Losinda asked, raising her voice. “Then leave me—”

“But we do wish to bring up some of our own misgivings,” she continued.

“Misgivings?” Losinda asked. “What could you possibly bring to me in this very moment that could, in any way, shape or form, eclipse what I am, myself, enduring?”

“Reza, my lady,” Moria took over quickly. Before Losinda could grow angry and rage against the impudent hand-maiden after what she gave back to Daiclovius, she continued hastily. “She is volatile and violent, a danger to the servants!”

She let her point hang in the air, the silence stretching long enough that Losinda felt it prudent to voice a question. “How so?”

“Only a few weeks ago,” Safina, the more calculating and bright of the two, said. “Your healer Reza brutally assaulted the maid Karina.”

“The yellow-eyed girl,” Moria quickly supplied.

“She only meant to prank the black-eyed girl, Shana,” Safina said. “Do you know her?”

“Yes, I do,” Losinda said. She was a mousy little thing, always bowing her head and pretending like those ‘black-eyed’ myths held any sway in their day and age. Losinda always had too much on her plate to try and mother the poor wretch, “What of her?”

“Your healer, Reza, selected her as the maid that would take care of her son,” Moria said. “And when Karina played her prank, she assaulted her brutally, she did!”

“She is hale and healthy now that the healer took care of her,” Safina continued. “But that was only a few days ago. In the intervening days, she was bed-ridden and too wracked with agony to even complete her duties!”

“And why,” Losinda said, “Did you not inform me of this earlier?”

“Because, my lady,” Safina said. “We were frightened by the healer’s might. We did not know whether…” she left her question hang in the air, but Losinda was shrewd enough to fill in the blanks. The servants were too timid to raise complaint about the woman that she held in such high regard.

“Be that as it may,” Losinda shook her head. “I have greater things to worry about. I will deal with the issue in time, but for now, you must only leave me be.”

They placed the plate of food on her desk and left, leaving Losinda to wonder about what she had just heard.

Was Reza truly that volatile? How come she’d never noticed? She’d always been so kindly and gentle around Losinda, and yet she held such a violent side to her. It was a mystery, one that somehow managed to distract her mind from her mental agony regarding Janina.

Unless… her own conundrum regarding Janina and this new side to Reza were one and the same? If the girl truly was as vicious as the twins said, then did that not mean that she had motive? After all, Janina had not been shy about voicing her own displeasure that a Goldman walked in their midst.

If that orb of hers that allowed her to give life to her husband’s shriveled legs could also take life in turn, then that also gave the girl a method, as well as a motive, to combat her daughter.

She stood up and made a bee-line for the weapon cabinet underneath their bed, where Daiclovius had interred his sword, Ice-Veins, and took it out, careful not to nick her own hands. The sword would immediately freeze the blood inside the blood vessels, and even an errant nick could render a whole limb into a lost cause. She put on the gloves next to it, held it in hand, and approached the door to her bedroom, which she kicked opened. Although she was a Lady, she was not too shy to train her body, and invest some points into her Endurance and Power, both of which now sat at a comfortable five each. It was nothing compared to the soldiers in the military, or the guards they kept in their employ, but it would make sure she wasn’t completely defenseless.

She didn’t care if this panned out to nothing. It was the last feasible thread she could even think about following, one that she cursed herself as an idiot for not seeing sooner. A lowborn peasant girl could have any given reason to slaughter her detractors if said detractors could threaten the lofty position she had found herself in. It was common sense to suspect her, and yet she, with all her Charm and Intelligence, had been fooled.

The more she thought about it, the more certain she was.

A passing guard saw her, and the sword she wielded, and took a step back. She stopped in front of him. “Where is the Goldman healer?”

“S-she helps the Lord in the dungeons,” he said. “She heals the prisoners and tries to soothe their minds.”

She walked past him while he was in the middle of his explanation, and kept marching down with a single-minded determination.

She walked down the stairs, past the prisoners, careful to keep Ice-Veins within her sheath. Two guards stood at the door. “My lady.” The older one said. “We cannot allow you entry.” He said.

“I need to speak with the Goldman,” Losinda said. “Out of my way.”

“The lord expressly forbade it.”

“Why?” She asked, taken aback.

“Beyond these doors, there are things that a lady such as yourself should not bear witness to.”

She rolled her eyes. “Out of my way right now, or I will be forced to fight.”

They put their hands on their swords, much to Losinda’s shock. They would not seriously consider fighting her, would they? That would be tantamount to suicide if she were to come to harm.

“My lady, we cannot allow you to pass.”

Something was wrong. Seriously, seriously wrong.

When the last of the prisoners had walked up the stairs, giving her enough room to maneuver, she unsheathed her blade and swung it at the arms and legs of the guards, who were too hesitant to react. By the time their swords left their sheathes, the nicks and cuts on their bodies began to solidify, and they fell on their knees, howling madly. She walked past them and scanned the dungeon. There were no more guards inside, only prisoners still inside their cells, waiting to be liberated from their mortal coil.

She ran quickly through the room, searching for her husband and for that traitorous bitch, but she found no one else but the prisoners.

She scanned the dungeon once more for any hidden entrances, knowing that her husband was fond of secrecy and spycraft. She’d always chalked it down to some inane mid-life crisis that had lasted well into his twilight years, but now she found herself taking him seriously, searching her own memories of his personality for where he would place such an entrance.

Where he thought people were least expecting to search. She pressed every stone she could until she found one. It grinded itself into the wall, and the wall itself slid back like a door, opening to reveal a staircase. She ran up the staircase and down the hallways until she came at a door, which she didn’t waste time kicking in. There was a sight that made no sense to her, a sight as wrong as the sky being on the floor and the earth being in the heavens.

Janina was there, shackled with thick, iron manacles, bound in a cocoon of metal chains, and held fast to a wall.

Circles of a most arcane nature decorated the featureless brick room, too. Some of the circles contained curious glyphs, things that she could make no sense of, things that no one should make any sense of.

Reza looked at her in shock and horror, and looked towards Daiclovius questioningly, but it was Daiclovius who reacted the most. “My love, I can explain!”

Losinda chuckled incredulously at the sight. “Explain what?” She asked. “What is this?”

Daiclovius blabbered incoherently, in too low a volume to penetrate through the growing squeal in her ears or the rattling of the chains that bound Janina. She stumbled to the side and held onto the wall with one hand as one realization made its way deep into her heart, one that broke her almost immediately.

Her husband had invited into their home a witch.

Janina was done for.

Having failed so monumentally, as a wife, as a mother, and as a citizen of Aellia, Losinda only saw one option open to her. She brought Ice-Veins to her throat and relished in the agony as her blood froze.

000

It happened almost in an instant. Janina had always bent and stretched the chains, necessitating that they be replaced every now and then, but this time, she exploded the chains. Fragments burrowed into me, and struck Daiclovius just the same. His attributes prevented them from boring holes through him, but I wasn’t so lucky. I had to spend precious moments healing myself fully before I focused on the situation at hand.

Losinda needed healing. I threw my hand towards her, where Janina was busy shaking her awake, but was immediately gripped by Daiclovius, who howled wordlessly as he swung me towards a wall.

I immediately ejected my bone-tipped appendages and arrested my momentum. “She will die without healing!” I shouted.

“You killed her!” He screamed.

Janina’s shakes became more frantic. “Wake up, mommy, wake uuuuup!” She banged Losinda’s head to the wall several times as well.

Daiclovius wouldn’t let me through, and even if he did, Janina was loose. I would spend too long fighting her off to save Losinda’s life.

But all of that became moot a moment later, because in my metaphysical senses, I could feel her soul finally slipping away. Losinda was dead.

I chuckled.

Then? I laughed. I couldn’t help it. This was the most ridiculous, inane situation I’d ever found myself in, a morass of idiocy a mile wide and ten miles deep.

“I have done so much,” I said. “Given so much for the sake of this family, but every time, you imbeciles are determined to spit on my kindness, and throw away my charity like your nobles are already entitled to my help. I would have made you a king, Daiclovius, but you’re not even fit to be a noble.”

“You cannot fight me!” Reizenbrahm said. “You cannot—!”

“If you had let me do my job,” I said. “Then your wife would still have been alive. In fact, I would have no choice but to help her, seeing as how I am shackled by you. I was content to let this farce play out for a little longer, see if there was any part of this situation that I could salvage, but we are far, far past that.”

The restrictions around my heart began to tighten, but I didn’t care. “Daiclovius Reizenbrahm the eighth, I sentence you to die.”

I activated the Circle Magic I’d inscribed in the room. They were overlaid on the spells I’d used to transfer wisdom, hidden in plain sight. A hurricane of magic blasted through the room, and though Reizenbrahm could not perceive much of it, Janina did. She stood up from her mother’s corpse and looked in shock and awe at all the magic whirling around like a destructive tempest.

As one, it rushed into my body as a single potent tentacle of arcane forces, and scoured clean any foreign magics that still affected me. A weight lifted, and I could finally breathe, and finally, finally break free from this shithole.

“I see!” Janina shouted. She laughed in the air. “I finally see! The secrets to the Deep Universe, and a doorway to Daemoncustom!”

I scowled at her words, worrying at this maddening turn of events. If she turned into a demon, then that would make her a match for me.

No. I was forgetting! If she turned into a demon, she would only become Jogmomich, who I already had an understanding with.

“Go ahead, you racist piece of shit,” I laughed. “Do it!”

And she did. Whatever it was, it shook the very earth, the aftershocks throwing Reizenbrahm against a wall while I stabbed all four appendages on the ground to keep myself stable. A portal to otherness opened before her, and Janina reached towards it, her finger scratching words into it.

“My, oh my, how you’ve fucked the dog this time,” Jogmomich appeared from nowhere and stood before Janina, who looked at her askance. “Didn’t someone tell you, little girl? There can only be one demon for every mortal, one me.” She looked at her mortal counterpart up and down with disgust. “You are but one of many, many roots that eventually lead into the single tree that is me. But even if you did seize your destiny and become a demon, you would still have been nothing. You wouldn’t even have amounted to a mindless imp. Simply put? You would have died.”

Janina fell bonelessly on the floor, and in her place, only one Jogmomich stood. She then looked at me. “If you turned into a demon, you would have become a mindless imp, however. But if you want to reach Rezdnaq the Red?” She chuckled to herself. “My, you have such a long way to go before then. Do be diligent.”

Reizenbrahm watched in horror, somehow able to see the demon. She walked up to him and chuckled. “Don’t feel so bad, pops. You did the best you could.”

Jogmomich disappeared, and only two living beings remained in Reizenbrahm’s dungeon.

He howled like a man truly beaten, a man with nothing left to lose, a man who would die right now if it meant taking the object of his hatred down right now.

And that object happened to be me.

Immediately, I threw every lethal attack I had on him, microorganisms meant to infect, kill and destroy living matter in every way, shape and form, poison meant to paralyze and kill, bone spears meant to pierce and destroy, and my appendages, with my own Power boosted by a factor of ten.

Reizenbrahm took it all head-on, nailing him to the wall as his body shriveled up and died before my eyes.

I wanted to take no chances, so I prepared for one final coup de grace, only to be blown back by an incredible explosion.

Fire burned around Reizenbrahm, who now looked like an avatar of hell itself. The parts of his body, the holes and gouges I’d made, were replaced by burning, solid fire, traffic-light green like his eyes.

“If I cannot trust you to help me seize power,” Reizenbrahm said. “Then I will seize it for myself. A new God has awakened, and he has no mercy for infidels like you.”

I healed myself up as quickly as I could and stood up to face him. “You know nothing about magic, Reizenbrahm. If you fight me now, the result will remain the same, but more will die.” And I couldn’t afford to have this fight be in the manor. My son would be in danger.

“I will not listen to an oathbreaking wretch like you!” He howled, and fire gathered around him.

I pulled out the Focus from my pocket with gritted teeth and imbued it with a purpose. “Find Shana, protect Farhaan.”

I could feel it weaving a spell form made of Circle Magic inside of itself, and in the next moment, it was gone from my hand, displaced by a small rush of air filling in the vacuum.

Reizenbrahm directed towards me a column of blazing green fire, and I met the attack with my own magic.

000

“By all the divines…” General Marick Armin whispered to himself as he saw a gate to the golden desert open up in the very heart of Altaluvia, out from it pouring hordes of savage Goldmen. From their vantage point up the natural slope of Altaluvia, the outskirts of the city were being ravaged.

Captain Eril could not believe his eyes. “Will we die today?” he whispered to himself.

The goldmen poured out into the streets, a slaughter of both soldiers and civilians alike. Those madmen had no scruples, and soon enough, entire houses were being set ablaze as well. In just ten minutes, it was as though hell had arrived at Altaluvia, and its demons were having a merry time wreaking havoc and destruction.

While the general was a gibbering mess, it fell to Eril, his second, to take control. “Retreat up the city!” He roared. “Reinforce the inner districts!”

“But sir!” One soldier said. “What—what about the others?”

“We pray for them,” Eril said. “And defend what we can.”

As one, the soldiers retreated, similar orders ringing out through the city no-doubt. Any commander worth their salt would know that there was no use defending everything when you could protect the few things in reach, and he found more soldiers aside from his company of a thousand waiting for them at the walled-off inner districts.

“Open the gates!” Eril shouted.

From the parapets above, where soldiers were lined up, no one made a move or said anything.

“Open them, damn you!”

One officer muscled through the crowd. “We have standing orders not to open the gates under any circumstances!”

Eril could not believe his ears. “With me is General Armin himself!”

“We cannot open the gates! Die bravely, soldiers!”

Eril could weigh the pros and cons of forcing the issue, but he did not have to, as a braver man standing next to him took it upon himself to rouse the others.

“You heard him!” He shouted, raising his sword in the air. “For country!”

Yes. He had already dedicated his life to the military. If they needed him to die, it was better if he took as many of those shit-stained sand bastards with him as possible.

The first goldman’s head ducked up the slope, and more followed.

Knowing that his wife and children were on their way to Filomena eased the burden as he took his place in the shield wall and braced as much as he could.

It took no time at all for the combined weight of the horde of invaders to overpower the shield wall and trample them underfoot. Eril’s last thoughts were of home.