Orenda Nochdifache Firefist, newly crowned queen of the former Urillian empire, awoke because she was on fire. This involuntary arson was becoming much more frequent than she would have liked, though it wasn’t the flames themselves that caused her this annoyance, it was what the flames would always portend. The soul of a god that rested where her heart had once been would call up the sacred armor of the Crimson Mage any time it felt she was in mortal danger.

This was an annoyance in part because her dear friends the Brigaddons had not yet made for her bedclothes woven from their sterilite hair, which meant that the bedding was not immune to magical fire, and had therefore caught.

Again.

“Klin, don’t kill them!” She shouted as she rose from the flames, trying to will the armor to retract so the blaze would not spread. She did not say this because she saw Klin in the process of killing anyone, it was just that these assasination attempts had become so routine she knew the process by rote, and it was a constant vexation that the idiot could not remember that one simple command. They needed at least one of them alive or they would never find out where they were coming from or what their motivations were.

“Um,” Klin said as Orenda made an effort to wad all the flaming bedclothes up in the middle of the mattress, in a vain attempt to contain the fire. She had commissioned a bedframe of stone from the mason’s guild, but the mattress had caught and there was nothing to be done.

She growled in exasperation as she turned and took in the sight of Klin kneeling over a corpse that was still spraying blood from a wound in its neck all over her new bedroom, which she had recently had cleaned. She had removed all rugs, because the bloodstains were a great annoyance to the laundress, but even on the stone floors it would be a pain to clean. Klin was holding a dagger smeared with the same blood, staring up at her with guilt and confusion in his giant blue eyes.

“He ain’t dead,” he said hastily, “I don’t reckon. It takes ‘em a pretty good while to bleed out like that.”

He hopped to his feet and wiped the dagger clean on the edge of his nightshirt, which had been as stained as the flooring, then held it towards her.

“Now I want you to look at this,” he said as if the dagger greatly annoyed him, and gestured with his free hand to an earth crystal inset into the hilt, “Them fuckers is learning, I reckon. Comin’ up in here with enchanted weaponry and shit, actin like they gonna carve outt’cha heart. I know ya’ sure as hell don’t want my advice, but it wouldn’t a good idea to tell folk how ya’ killed Xandra. Ya’ got yourself a big glowing target on ya’ chest.”

“Klin, shut up,” Orenda demanded and watched the man she had mistaken for a corpse struggle. Klin had been right, he wasn’t dead; he was clutching at his throat and making strange garbled gurgling sounds.

“It’s just…” he said, speaking much more quietly, as if he believed he had no right to speak at all, “I don’t… I just ain’t understandin’ why it’s… it’s pert near ever’ night with this shit. I thought you had them rabbit people walkin’ around tryin’ to prevent this. It… it flat out ain’t working.”

“I know it isn’t working!” She snapped, “I’m looking at the same assassin you are!”

“Yup,” Klin said as if he was in absolute agreement and his passivity annoyed Orenda.

“Stop stabbing them!” She demanded as Klin began to cough and made his way to the wall of the room to open more windows to let out the smoke rising from the burning bed.

“I swear to god, I’m tryin,” Klin said and Orenda watched his shoulders shake and knew he was trying to hold back tears, but he would not be able to accomplish this feat, “I’m tryin, your majesty. It’s just… it’s kind’a… it’s a… big adjustment…”

“Heal him!” Orenda demanded, “Do something!”

“I ain’t real good at that,” Klin admitted as he turned and knelt by the man who was trying his hardest not to die, “But I can try ‘er.”

“Three centuries on the battlefield and you never learned basic healing spells?” Orenda asked with a combination of genuine curiosity at what had to be a profound feat of ignorance, and her rising annoyance.

“You sure could put that fire out,” Klin said as the stone in his chest began to glow when he placed his hands over the man’s wound, “For my part.”

Orenda was about to tell him exactly what she thought of his suggestion when the entire castle began to shake.

“Oh for fuck’s sakes,” Klin huffed as Orenda lost her footing and went tumbling to the ground. He moved his hands from the assassin to the stone floor, but Orenda did not need him to tell her what he was feeling; she felt it herself, likely much more strongly than he did.

Ten hearts burned brightly several stories below them. It was obvious to Orenda that a team of earth mages had made their way into the basement and were trying to knock the entire structure down from the foundations. If she could pull herself to her feet she would be able to make her way downstairs, but the entire building shook like a ship during a fitful storm, and she could not even crawl.

She thought she heard Klin mutter the words, “wine cellar”, but by the time the shaking had subsided, he was gone, and she was left alone with the man who had, during the commotion, officially become a corpse.

“Stay up!” she demanded of the room around her as she pushed herself into a sitting position.

But she watched with interest as cracks appeared in the masonry, spreading rapidly through the walls. She turned her gaze to the ceiling and watched the unlit chandelier sway, bend, creek- and fall onto the flames that had almost gone out on the charred mattress.

She cursed as the cracks widened-

Then she felt them, below her, as the stonework weakened and she was afraid to shift her weight- though she knew she was just postponing the inevitable.

She threw up both hands to cast a shield of flames as the room began to topple around her and did not even scream as the floor gave way and she went crashing through it.

“We pulled at least ten of ‘em out,” Mary Sue Brigaddon explained as she stood with Orenda looking over the rubble that had once been a tall tower where Orenda slept. “But nobody had told none a’ the staff and it all happened so quick there wouldn’t really no way to evacuate.”

“Were there any deaths?” Orenda asked.

“A’ the staff?” Mary Sue asked, “Yeah. Yeah we lost a couple folks. So far. It’s… it’s gonna take a minute to clear all this out. There’s gotta be folks with injuries still in there. There was servant’s quarters down under ya, ya know. I ain’t seen Anilla since-”

“I’m right here!” A tiny woman proclaimed, “I’m fine! And Sarya and Barbra Allen got out too! I think everyone is ok! But I wonder why the tower collapsed? I felt it before it happened and told everyone close to me. There were people in the basement trying to knock it down! Didn’t they know that people were in there?”

Orenda massaged her temples and tried to remind herself that Anilla’s naivete was not an act. During their time together she had come to accept it as a sort of coping mechanism. Anilla had to believe the best possible version of any and all events, for her own sanity- as grating as that made her to be around.

Several windows had been opened on the castle proper and dozens of heads poked out to stare at the destruction. Orenda glared at the visiting nobility, studying each and every one in turn. How many of them were unhappy with her? How many of them wanted her dead?

“Hey!” A woman shouted, and Orenda did not know which one she was, “We’re still meeting tomorrow? Or like… is everybody alright?”

“Go back to bed!” Mary Sue shouted, “Nothing to see here!”

“I dunno,” another noble argued, this one male, “I’d look at that. I mean… look at that.”

“Thesis’s glowing eyes,” Orenda said, turned, and marched toward the destruction.

“-main goal,” Klin was saying as she approached, “Is to figure out if anybody’s still in there. We gotta get the injured out and treated. I’ll scry the mage guild and get a healer up here-”

“You don’t need mages,” a man who looked very similar to Mary Sue with his tall stature, big eyes, buck teeth, and shining silver hair and eyes said, “Bunni’s here ain’t she?”

“It can’t hurt anything,” Orenda said, “to have all hands on deck.”

“Ya’ alright, Rendy?” Sonny asked.

“I’m immortal,” she said, “I’m not a concern. Are you alright? Is everyone else alright?”

“I reckon I broke some bones when it fell,” Sonny said, “But I got better. I’m fine. I’m a shifter, Rendy, you know they can’t take me out that easy.”

“Well,” Klin said as he lifted a stone and threw it behind him, as many other people in Urillian military uniforms were doing, “Dig, rabbit.”

Orenda stared at the destruction and the people working to sift through it looking for survivors. She hadn’t called them to action- had they come of their own accord or was it something Klin had arranged? She didn’t trust the Urillian military in the slightest; many of them had served under Xandra before Orenda had defeated her and taken the throne. And it was so strange to her that none of them recognized Klin.

Not that he was particularly recognizable. He didn’t look like a monster with the stolen soul of a god; he looked like a Urillian, like an earth elf, if one ignored his eyes, which it seemed everyone was willing to do. His apparent youth seemed to put people off more than his past; perhaps he was able to hide in plain sight so well precisely because he was so ordinary.

“Hey!” he screamed at one of the soldiers who had raised a mage staff that was beginning to glow, “No! Don’t be doin that! We need to move it slow like! If somebody’s trapped under this and you move it all up at once it’ll squish um! Only folks I see usin magic better be healers! I know, it’s heavy as hell, but we move this shit one stone at a time. If you a mage, you be lookin for magic signatures. I see some of um down there myself. There’s folks alive down there!”

“Our goal is to save the survivors!” Orenda shouted, “We’ll work through the night!”