Chapter 47 - The Corruptor’s Realm

A heavy sigh escaped Claire’s lips as she stared down the oversized squirrel. She had learned, after failing to grab his attention on two separate occasions, that the art of conversation was lost on him. The chestnut-coloured rodent didn’t even seem to understand the concept of listening. It took a good few minutes for him to finally raise his head and note her presence, at which point he found himself face to face with an icy glare.

“Sorry, bad habit.” He shuffled his gaze and looked at the ground to avoid meeting her eyes. “What were we talking about again?”

“You owe me,” said the halfbreed, “for saving you.” The last bit was added when she noted his apparent confusion. His bushy tail had curled itself into the shape of a question mark.

“Ah, right, that. Well, funny thing, I don’t actually have much to give, but I can offer my services.”

“I want information.” Claire tightened her grip on the serpent coiled around her arm. It was trying to break free, set off by the scent of a potentially fruitless effort. “Tell me where I can find the more important borroks.”

“Right, about that...” The squirrel started twirling a finger around some of the fur on his leg. “I actually just got here a few days ago, so I don’t really know this place all that well either.”

“You… what?” Claire hissed through a set of clenched teeth. Great, I saved him for nothing.

“If it’s any consolation, the borroks do seem to get stronger the further you head up the mountain, so the strongest ones are probably living near the top.”

Next he’s going to tell me snow is white. Claire could feel her brow twitching. Resisting the urge to greet his face with her fist was getting harder and harder with every word he said.

“Okay. Bye.” Knowing that she was already on the verge of snapping, the rogue spun around and started marching off.

“Wait!” But the squirrel wasn’t about to let her have her way. He hopped to her side and matched her speed. “Is that really all you wanted to know?”

“Yes? Now go away. I’m busy.”

“With what? There’s not really much to do on this mountain is there?”

“Take a guess.”

“Hmmm…” The squirrel stopped in place and put a hand to his chin as he resumed mumbling to himself again. “Alone on a snowy mountain in the middle of nowhere… Wearing poorly made clothes…” He thumped his foot against the snow, over and over. It was a slower pattern at first, consistent as a metronome, but it soon broke its pace and accelerated alongside his words.

Claire didn’t simply sit around and wait for him to process his thoughts. Their first interaction had already left her equal parts drained and annoyed, and she had no intention of keeping him around any longer than was absolutely necessary. Except maybe as a pair of mittens.

With her annoyance outweighing her need for a new pair of muffs, she made her decision and subsequent escape. The rogue turned around, kicked off the riverbank, and started dashing as quickly as the knee-deep snow would allow. She would have been over the moon if her attempt to abandon him went as planned, but the snow made her far too easy to track and his speed allowed him to catch up in a matter of moments. Even though she had made it all the way out of the valley.

“I’ve got it.” He spoke as he hopped up beside her and slowed down to match her pace. “You’re here to sacrifice yourself to the borroks so they spare your people!”

“I am not a sacrifice.” The words were nearly spat at him as her poker face twisted into a snarl. Her fists were clenched tight and her fangs were bared. Not that he could see them under her scarf.

“That’s what they all say.”

Claire’s fury vanished as she took a moment to process the squirrel’s claim. His response was so ridiculous that she nearly lost track of her position and ran into a tree. “You’re an idiot.”

She gave him her best blank stare. He deserved it.

“Don’t worry, I understand. It’s not the type of thing you would want to talk about.” The rodent sighed and slowly shook his head from side to side. “You know, I’m going through some pretty hard times myself.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you my story if you te—wait, you don’t care?” He scratched his head and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Did I read my tropes wrong? That can’t be it, can it?”

“It doesn’t matter who or what you are. Leave. Me. Alone.”

“Oh, wait, I get it. I should’ve started with the story itself instead of a lengthy introduction. I’ll get to it now.”

“Please don’t.”

Claire sighed through the magical snake she had under her cloak. It wasn’t exactly as satisfying as doing it with her own two lungs, but it did at least make her feel a little bit better.

“Up until a few days ago, I was just a normal caveveaber,” he said. “But then I suddenly started remembering things after I got stung by a huge wooden bee.”

“Shut up,” said Claire. Did he just say he was a veaber?

“I had all of these visions and hallucinations, about the future, about the walls, and about a group of two centaurs, one of them a half. I didn’t think they were real when they first started, but they were too detailed, too right for me to ignore them.”

“Shut! Up!” hissed the halfbreed.

“I dreamt that Reverend Cheeseburger would die of unknown causes. And then when I woke up, he did. My brother, Gerry, even reacted the exact same way he did in my dream. That’s when I knew they were real.”

“That’s it! I’ve had enough.”

Paralyzing Gaze froze the self-proclaimed veaber in place, followed shortly after by a spinning strike. Claire smashed the watcher’s foot into her unwelcome conversation partner and sent him flying over the trees.

“Why didn’t you use the blade? That could’ve been an instant kill,” asked Shouldersnake, who had emerged from her cloak. “Now you have to chase him down to finish him off.”

“I thought you didn’t talk when other people were around.”

“The veaber isn’t going to hear me. He’s out like a light.” The pale blue danger noodle bobbed the part of its body right behind its neck, as if to shrug. “So? Are we killing him or what?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Really? Why the hesitation? He’s just a veaber. You’ve already killed a dozen like him already. And he even called you a ‘you know what.’”

“No means no. Stop annoying me. I’m not in the mood to deal with you right now.”

“All the more reason to kill something.”

“Buzz off.” The mage dismissed her guardian with a grumble and continued on her way.

The next leg of her journey was fairly uneventful. Trekking up the mountain came with few troubles or interruptions. The slope remained gentle throughout and none of the borroks she spotted along the way were particularly noteworthy. Murdering them would have provided her with a fair share of experience, but she avoided combat in the interest of time, just as she had in the morning.

Further contributing to her blood-abstinence was a sense of listlessness. The quiet wintery backdrop was one that should have left a lasting impression of beauty. But Claire wasn’t feeling it. The ice-glazed branches reminded her instead of all the times her father had shouted at her because she was inactive in the cold, the frozen needles of when he lamented her incompetency behind closed doors, and the falling snow of the time he struck her because she had wanted to remain by her mother’s grave.

She could practically hear his words, the brewing storm her only saving grace. Its winds whooshed by, drowning him out as the flurry grew into a blizzard. She almost didn’t mind it at first. The wet slop that plastered itself against her face was oddly calming. It numbed her and eased the pain that came with thinking about her past. Or at least that was what it did at first.

Comfort turned to irritation as her internal temperature plummeted. She was miserable. Her clothes were soaked through and through by all the snow. Her teeth were chattering, clicking themselves against each other at well over ten times a second, while the rest of her body trembled and shook like that of a frightened child.

Before long, she lost the ability to see anything more than two feet in front of her. Millions of snowflakes littered the sky. The countless specks hid the moon and obscured the distant stars beneath sheets of pure white. The icy powder went from knee to waist high in a matter of minutes, but she pressed forward regardless, in hopes of finding some sort of shelter.

She was nearly frozen by the time she finally stumbled into a patch of woodland. Hiding in the trees certainly helped, but it wasn’t enough. The harsh winds continued to pelt her. They bit at her skin and scales over and over, even with the yeti’s fur as her shield.

Claire’s solution was to fill the gaps between the branches by packing them with snow. What started as a tiny wall grew into a dome as she redoubled her efforts, spurred onwards by the easily visible result. The semi-circular structure proved surprisingly solid, its roof remaining in place even as layers upon layers of snow piled up over it.

The shelter provided her with warmth. Warmth that came hand in hand with silence. Silence that amplified the once-quelled voices. Louder and louder the whispers grew.

Until they were as clear as the day she first heard them.

All because the veaber had labelled her a sacrifice.

“Do you understand why you’re here, Claire?”

He was right there, right in front of her. Even though he wasn’t.

“I always thought that you would amount to something, someday. I’d hoped that you would step up to your responsibilities, and that you would come to understand the role that you were meant to play.”

She could smell the smoke of his cigar, the cherry-oak aroma of his favourite brand of vekratt, and the cologne he used to mask the otherwise overbearing stench of blood that always clung to his fur and feathers.

“But I can’t wait any longer.” He heaved a sigh, a heavy, tired sigh. “You’ve already dashed nearly all your hopes for marriage. You rejected both Sir Rydland and Marquess Khazart. I’d pinned my hopes on Durham at some point, but then you had to go and remove his ability to sire a child.”

He took a swig from his glass, downing its contents in one breath before setting it back on his desk with a notable clink.

“And now you’ve even rejected Duke Ryarrd.”

Claire tried to shake her head clear of the illusion, the scene replaying itself in her mind. But she couldn’t. It didn’t go away, even as she clutched her skull and screamed.

“There are no longer any suitable candidates. I would say that we could look outside the country, but I doubt that would amount to anything beyond an international incident.”

She shook her head from side to side as she clawed at her ears. Her breathing was heavy, laboured, pained. She could feel her heart beating fast in her chest, pounding at a thousand miles a minute and threatening to leap from its cage.

But the words that were supposed to come after his disappointment, the words that were meant to condemn her, were never delivered. They failed to reach her ears. Because she interrupted them. Gritting her teeth, she wheezed the rebuttal she had once failed to voice.

“It’s... not my fault.”

After several deep breaths, she pounded a fist into the snow and continued.

“It’s not my fault! Ryarrd was a jerk!”

The blueblood closed her eyes and recalled the miscreant that was House Rembrandt’s heir. He was Alice’s elder brother, her tormentor, and the reason she had sought asylum with the Augustus’. It was a given that the two would never get along, a given that she would slug him in the face every time she got the chance.

And yet, her father had tried to force her to wed him.

He had to have known of the bad blood between them—there was simply no way he hadn’t—but the aging general had tried to push the relationship nonetheless. So that he could use his cunning, underhanded strategies to seize control of the younger duke’s assets and authority. Ryarrd would likely have been discarded within a few years of their union. And Claire would have been freed from his shackles. But that didn’t mean that she was interested in playing along.

“I’m not a pawn. You can’t just order me around like some sort of golem or servant,” she mumbled.

Reflecting on her past led her to suspect that he had only turned her into a ritual mage as a contingency plan. Ritual mages made for the best sacrifices. To the gods, they were worth tens, if not hundreds. Any rite that required its caster’s life was sure to provide a result that would be remembered. That was why he had forced her to take up the mantle. So that he could make use of her if she otherwise proved incompetent. It was such an obvious conclusion that Claire failed to understand how she had remained blind to it for so long. That was just the sort of man her father was. The sort of man he had always been.

He had never proven himself anything but cold and indifferent. The only reaction he had ever shown her was disappointment. He had never batted an eyelid at any of her successes or accomplishments. Any compliments he spoke were spoken in public, as a way of promoting her to other members of nobility. So that he could offer her to them in exchange for their loyalty. In private, he was as expressionless as a doll and bitter as an adulterous harlot exposed on the altar.

An answer to Sylvia’s question started forming in her mind as she contemplated the high commander’s twisted personality. Claire still didn’t know exactly what she would do once she escaped the lost library. She didn’t know what sort of life she wanted to lead. But one thing was certain. She was going to confront her father.

She was going to force him to acknowledge her, be it through rhetoric, might, or magic. Only then would she be free, free of all her obligations and everything else that had ever bothered her. Free to take Alice on all the adventures she wanted. Free to laze about when it was cold, without anyone to tell her that she couldn’t. Free to pursue her own identity, unbridled by her blood.

A calm expression appeared on Claire’s face as she raised her head and clenched her fists. A weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She felt amazing, like she could take on the world and all it threw at her, like she could do anything, anything, she set her mind to. Full of energy and vigour, she tore a hole in her makeshift dome and stepped out into the storm.

Only to return a moment later, her face once again covered in snow.

“Okay, maybe not anything.”