《Feast or Famine》Mad Tea Party (Redux) III
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Dante blinks at me a few times, bewildered. “What?”
“Y’know, a death game: random bunch of people get their knives out and murder each other for cash, survival, and/or ultimate dominion over the cosmos, depending on the genre.”
“No, I mean, I got that part, I watched Squid Game like everyone else. But–”
“Really?” I interrupt with exasperation, throwing my hands in the air. “You go to Squid Game before Mirai Nikki or, hells, even Fate?”
“Lady,” he says in a pleading tone, “I feel like we’ve got way bigger issues than my taste in shows. This is kind of a lot to take in at once, and I would appreciate it if you helped me understand what’s going on. I don’t know where I am, and I don’t really know who you are, either. You’re a vampire, or maybe a demon, but you’re also somehow from Earth like me? I’m so lost.”
“Right. Yeah.” I fidget with a strand of hair and try to stifle my embarrassment. Was I really about to launch into a tirade over stupid weeb shit that doesn’t matter? “Sorry, I’m easily distracted. You probably have a bunch of questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them. It’s the least I can do for another Earthling. But that’s also quite a lot of questions, so, do you want to get something to eat while I give you the rundown?”
I could go for a bite myself, actually–wait, no, I’ve already had two breakfasts and we’re barely past the crack of dawn. Maybe just something to drink. I take a quick glance around and realize that the food court has magically repaired itself after my fight with the not-cats; not a trace of debris remains, and every table is back in place.
“Now that you mention it, I am pretty hungry. But, is Earth money good here?” He looks down at his clothing and winces. “Scratch that, I don’t have any money to begin with.”
I grin and pat Dante on the back. “See, that brings me to my favorite part of this setting, which is that everything’s free! Just pick a place that looks yummy and tell them what you want. Let’s eat.”
I let him loose on the food court’s many options and pull up a seat a good distance away from where he’s busy looking at teriyaki. I resummon Cheshire while Dante gets distracted by decision paralysis, and my companion emerges from my shadow anchored to the charm bracelet.
Cheshire gives Dante a critical look and tells me flatly, “This complicates things.”
“Mhm. And not gonna lie,” I say in a low voice, “there’s a part of me whispering that we should kill him now before this all goes horribly wrong. But I’m pretty sure that’s the dark lord part of me, and I know exactly what happens when the dark lord tries to murder the hero in act one of the adventure: it doesn’t work, and half the time it’s the inciting reason for the hero to overthrow the dark lord and foil all their plans.”
“You think this is bigger than Averrich and the Game of Glass.” It’s not a question.
I blow a puff of air and fold my hands behind my head. “Is there really any doubt? Katoptris brought him from Earth, the Beast made him a contender, and Nyara gave him my godsdamned superpower. They’re trying as hard as they can to broadcast that this guy is my counterpart in whatever fucked up isekai story we’re a part of. So: when you get sent to another world as the dark lord, and the goddess who sent you there shows you the hero that’s destined to kill you, what’s the smartest move?”
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“You make friends,” Cheshire guesses.
“You make friends.”
Dante returns to us with a bag of food and sits down, pulling out a burger and fries. Then he pauses and takes in the new arrival. He points at the changeling and asks, “Wait, you were here before, weren’t you? Right before we got taken to the place with all the colors, but then you were gone when we came back, and now you’re here again. What’s up with that?”
She waves. “Hi! I’m Cheshire. I’m pretty good at disappearing tricks.”
He blinks a few times, glances over at me, and asks, “Remind me, what was your name?”
“Alice. Maven Alice. Yes, that’s not a coincidence, but it’s probably nowhere near the top of the list of questions you should be asking right now.”
“Huh.” He pops a fry in his mouth, chews it, swallows, and asks, “So, what’s your deal? I’ve obviously got a lot of questions about this world and everything that just went down, but I’m still stuck on the vampire demon weeb. Were you just messing with me when you called yourself a vampire, or are vampires also demons in this world?”
“Well, first of all, I think it’s very rude to call me a weeb.”
Dante gives me a very skeptical look. So does Cheshire.
“Not inaccurate, mind, but still rude. To answer your question, I am indeed both a demon and a vampire, but what this world calls ‘demons’ aren’t really much like what you’d typically picture, and to my knowledge there weren’t any vampires in this world before I started calling myself one. I am, practically speaking, just a human with a few magic tricks and some unusual eating habits. Oh, speaking of which: Cheshire, can you fetch me a smoothie?”
“Sure thing. I know what you like.” The changeling gets up and wanders off in search of that while I settle in for a nice, long stretch of exposition.
“A blood smoothie?” Dante asks with a raised eyebrow.
“Fruit, actually. I do drink blood, for the record, but I can still eat and drink normal stuff too.”
“That’s good to know. Alright, I guess… start wherever you think feels best.” He starts eating the rest of his fries and watches me intently.
I crack my knuckles. “Big picture stuff first: physics is fake, chemistry isn’t real, and the laws of reality as you know them are polite suggestions that the universe entertains only up until the point that someone with a bit of oomph behind them breaks those laws over their knee. I’m one of the people that can do that, and so are all of the other contenders in the Game of Glass. Magic is real, and it’s everywhere.
“Speaking of magic,” I add, “you should be warned that this isn’t your typical nuts and bolts RPG-lite magic system. You might see someone throw a fireball or talk about spending mana, but the underlying framework isn’t really about energy, it’s about meaning; the spells you have access to, how you gather fuel for those spells, how you make your spells stronger and get more of them, that all comes from a place of meaning that’s specific to each magic user’s circumstance.”
Dante swallows another fry and admits, “I don’t really know what to make of that. Like, okay, magic is a thing and it’s weird. Where are we? What else is different about this world compared to Earth? And why’s the food free?”
“Practical concerns, fair.” I lean forward and steeple my fingers. “Broadly speaking, we’re in a universe called Pandaemonium that runs on meaning and is run by an all-powerful entity called the Demiurge. To my understanding, Pandaemonium is divided between the Spheres of Firmament, which are worlds where mundane physical laws apply unless violated, and throne worlds, which are made of soulstuff and have their own internal rules.
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“Right now, we’re inside one of those throne worlds, the Labyrinth, which happens to be the manifested soul of Katoptris, who that glass woman is a fragment of. It’s called ‘the Labyrinth’ because it is an inescapable maze prowled by horrible monsters, like the beasties that tried to take a bite out of you. There are pockets of relative safety within the Labyrinth, and this city is one of them: the Sanctuaries. Life inside a Sanctuary is near-idyllic thanks to a post-scarcity economy where everyone’s needs are provided for by the friendly and accommodating natives of the Labyrinth, so you don’t have to pay for food, lodging, clothing, or entertainment. There’s work if you want to feel productive, but nobody’ll stop you if you want to laze around and play video games all day for the rest of your natural life.”
Cheshire returns with a pomegranate smoothie and two Belgian sugar waffles, because she is a wonderful person who cares about me deeply. Cheshire also got a milkshake for herself, because even wonderful people can have bad taste.
Dante finishes the last of his fries and says, “So that’s what the glass lady meant when she called this place a paradise. But, if you can’t leave…”
“Then it’s really more of a gilded cage.” I inhale my waffles greedily and keep talking through bites of sugary goodness. “And, of course, when you lock animals in a cage, even if you feed them well, eventually they’re going to start nipping at each other and trying to prove who’s top dog.”
Dante snaps his fingers excitedly. “Like the wolf thing, right? The old alpha wolf myth, the one they debunked as only happening in captivity as a response to the conditions of captivity.”
I preen, delighted to have someone else who knows that little factoid. “Yes, precisely. Here’s the situation: the Labyrinth draws in people who have magic, or people who want magic, and it gives them a city full of people without magic who exist to please. The only consequences for your actions here are the consequences that other people with magic choose to inflict on you, and none of you can leave, so it quickly devolves into the law of whoever has the biggest gang or the most personal power. When that’s not a certain thing, you get all kinds of tensions that build and build until boom, there goes the neighborhood.”
I take a big gulp of heavenly pulverized fruit, the rapturous taste of pomegranate, before continuing, “Now, the bottle’s uncorked and all the murderers and warlords are spilling out, and every last one of them wants to get their hands on us to forge the key that’ll give them their grand prize. We’re targets now, and, no offense, but if you couldn’t handle three of the Labyrinth’s weakest monsters, then I have my doubts about your chances against the likes of Averrich and Vaylin. So, we wrap back around to my original question: do you want to win a death game with me?”
His expression turns grim, and he contemplates my question while digging into his burger. After a few moments he says, “I… don’t want to kill anyone. I know a lot of guys fantasize about this kind of thing, about getting dropped into a life-or-death situation and having to badass their way out of it, but… that’s not me. And this game… do we really have to participate? I don’t know how you feel about it, but what’s stopping me from just giving away my piece of the key? That woman said it was possible.”
I lean back and take another long sip of my drink, then raise two fingers. “There are two major problems with that plan. The first complication comes down to verification: how are you going to prove that you don’t have the key fragment anymore? Looking at you right now, I don’t see any sign of your fragment, but I know you must still have it in you. You might give your fragment to one pursuer only to have the next kill you to try and take it from your corpse. No one will take you at your word that you don’t have your fragment.”
“Ah. I didn’t think of that.”
“The second issue,” I continue, “is what will happen if any of those bastards actually win. The prize for winning this game is godhood, or something like it, and the people most likely to win a game of killing are the killers, Dante. Every soul with a talent for murder and more sense than ambition is going to want that finished key, and if one of them gets it then they have a dangerously good shot at becoming the absolute ruler of this city. You might survive the death game, but you and all the other innocents in the city definitely won’t survive the reign of terror that follows.”
Dante eats in silence, his face still showing grim contemplation. I could wait for him to gather his thoughts, give him a chance to process and come to some kind of conclusion, but I feel like pushing my luck.
“The thing is, I’m stronger than most of those losers, and I don’t need the Beast’s handouts. I don’t need the grand prize and I don’t want it; I just want to stop the worst of those bastards from claiming it for themselves. You don’t want to fight? That’s fair, I get that, but don’t just run away; stick with me, stick close to me, and when they come for your key fragment I’ll do the fighting and the killing until every warlord is dead. And then, once we have all the pieces of the key, we can give it to someone who might actually do some good with it.”
Something in his gaze sharpens, and he quickly swallows his food and asks, “Do you have someone in mind?”
I share a quick glance with Cheshire, who nods approvingly. I turn back to Dante and tell him, “I do, actually. You saw her at the announcement: Esha of the Myriad. She’s one of the few people in this city to hold on to her morals, and she maintains a community of like-minded folks that try to restore some sense of normalcy to this crazy place. She’s got a proven track record of actually caring about the people here, which I think is a pretty essential quality of any would-be monarch. I was actually planning to talk with her about forming an alliance before you fell out of the sky.”
Dante takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, and when he opens them again I see blazing resolve. He nods firmly and says, “Okay. I won’t lie, everything you’ve told me sounds pretty daunting, but… I’m certain of it now: this is where I’m meant to be. This is why the Goddess chose me. This is what She asked me to do for Her.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “The Goddess?” Does he mean Katoptris? Nyara? Azathoth? Some entirely new variable to mess up the fucking equation? I fight the urge to freak out and keep my outer demeanor calm. I smile thinly and ask, “Which goddess would that be? There’s quite a few entities in this setting that you could throw that label at. You’re not talking about some religious shit from the old world, right?”
Dante shivers, and I no longer have any doubts about who and what he encountered. “She… She was fathomless, but so terrifyingly human. It was like staring into infinity. When She spoke, every word burned in my mind. I wasn’t really religious before today, but… there was no denying that. That was a capital-G God.”
“Sounds like you’ve had one hell of a morning. You wanna walk me through it? We might be able to shed some light on the situation.”
He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. So, this morning, I woke up early. Like, real early, and there was this itch in the back of my head keeping me from falling asleep again, so I decided to take a walk. And then… gone. No portal to another world, no delivery truck slamming into me, just one second I’m walking through the cold morning air, next second I’m standing in this endless hall with checkerboard floor, massive pillars of pulsing red crystal, and darkness in all directions.
“I thought I was dreaming, or maybe hallucinating, so I tried to keep my cool, but it felt too real, as impossible as that seemed. I wandered until I saw a glimmer of brightness, and I followed that glimmer until the black-and-white tile crumbled into an ocean of swirling starlight. At the edge, just before it all plunged away, there was… it was a throne, but it didn’t really look like a throne, just a well-made wooden chair, high-backed and ornate.
“Sitting there, slumped and too small for the chair, sized somewhere between a toddler and a preteen, was a doll in a puffy dress. Its throat had been cut and its chest stabbed, both wounds leaking this odd, pale, almost milky blood. It creaked to life as I approached, and its eyes bled black ichor, and then it spoke with the voice of the Goddess.”
Breathing steady, keep calm, do not freak out, do not scream. This is fine. This is fine, we’re fine, we’re not fine, but we have to keep our cool anyway.
The doll. The fucking doll, which I obsessed over in the schoolhouse, the doll with the pink backpack and the pretty dress and the red crystal hairpin that just so happened to be the symbol of motherfucking Azathoth, the embodiment of the entire universe, who is inextricably bound up with Nyarlathotep, the Lucid Demiurge, in ways I still don’t fully understand.
The doll was Nyara, or at least a vessel body of Nyara, and she is mocking me with that fact.
“What did she say?” I choke out, almost whispering, barely able to contain the storm of emotion rising within me.
Dante spares me a single worried glance, but then he continues his story. “She told me that I had been summoned from my world against my will by ‘the Lady of Shards,’ and that this broke some kind of rule, so She was going to balance the scales. She offered to send me home, to undo the summoning like it had never happened… but then She asked me to stay instead, and indulge a ‘selfish request.’ She…” he hesitates, words stuck in his mouth, before saying, “She asked me to save Her daughter, and said I was the only one who could.”
“Eh?” I blink repeatedly, completely blindsided by this one. I turn to Cheshire for answers, but she’s looking as confused as I am. “Daughter?”
Cheshire rubs her temples. “She never told me… there are no stories… there’s never been any indication that she has a daughter. I don’t even know who could–” Cheshire’s face goes pale, and then she slumps against the table and clutches her head. “Oh, oh no. No, no no no. Fuck.”
“Cheshire? Cheshire, who are you thinking of?” I can feel my anxiety rising higher and higher.
She looks up at me, expression desolate. “Think about it: who do we know that doesn’t quite fit anywhere in the cosmology? Neither Leviathan nor Titan, not Royalty, but with a throne world so vast and powerful that none can escape from it… and she’s the only being besides Nyara and Azathoth capable of reaching into the Zero Sphere. It all finally makes sense.”
My eyes go wide as it clicks like a grenade. “Katoptris. It’s Katoptris. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahaha.” I can’t help but laugh, the anxious energy exploding out of me in bursts and bubbles. Katoptris, the Nightmare Queen, the Lady of Shards, the minotaur at the heart of the maze, the undisputed master of the Labyrinth that’s got us all trapped… is Nyarlathotep’s daughter.
And Cheshire and I are trying to kill her. Hahahahaha.
It’s funny. It’s so fucking funny that I’m going to die laughing, because Katoptris is the Demiurge’s daughter and we’re trying to murder her. I try to imagine the look on Bashe’s face if I told him that now, or if he had somehow known when I told him that I was here in the Labyrinth to kill Katoptris. He probably would have pushed me off the bridge right then and there, just to get away from the crazy girl who wanted to kill God’s daughter. Ha. Hahaha.
Dante looks between me and Cheshire with confusion clear on his face. “Uh, can someone loop me in?”
I try to stifle my manic laughter, but I can’t, so it’s Cheshire who speaks up. “We think we know who your target is, Dante. We have reason to believe that ‘the Goddess’ was talking about Katoptris, who the inhabitants of the Labyrinth also call Nightmare Queen or Lady of Shards. She’s the one keeping everyone trapped in the Labyrinth, and the glass woman you saw on that stage is a piece of her, which means so is the shard everyone’s fighting over.”
His face falls. “Oh.”
I wave at him with lazy airs and finally manage to recover control of my voice. “Keep going. Tell me what happened next.”
Dante purses his lips, pensive. “The Goddess told me that, if I accepted Her request, then the summoning would be completed and I’d be brought to another world, but with special powers to help me accomplish my task. Once I arrived, the first step would be to ‘ensure the right key reaches the right hands.’ But, help me understand something: why me? If She could grant me powers, then why not just do it Herself? And what did She mean when She said that rules had been broken?”
Cheshire sighs. “I can answer those. The entity that you call Goddess is one that we call Demiurge, and she has a truly infinite well of power to draw on. She is, in fact, so powerful that nothing could challenge her if she applied her full strength. So, to keep things interesting, she’s tied her own hands and agreed to abide by a set of restrictions. She has rules for when she can act, and rules for how other beings can act. When Katoptris summoned you and Alice, that broke one of the rules that the Demiurge cares about: the ban on interfering with Earth or its inhabitants. As a consequence, the Demiurge allowed herself to expend a certain amount of energy counteracting the violation.”
I frown. “But this raises an obvious question: what is Katoptris after? Why summon me, and then why summon Dante?”
Cheshire taps her chin thoughtfully. “It may be that Katoptris herself wasn’t responsible, but rather her fragment: the Beast presiding over the Game of Glass. She made you an offer, after all, and Dante wasn’t summoned until after you rejected that offer.”
“What offer?” Dante asks.
I grimace. “The shard. She offered me the shard that this death game is being fought over. The terms were… unacceptable. It was an obvious trap, so I said no.”
Dante furrows his brow. “But, I don’t want that thing any more than you do.”
Cheshire bites her lip and grins. “I think that’s exactly the point. In both cases, the Demiurge used her allotted interference to push the two of you away from wanting to claim the Beast’s shard. Subtly with Alice, giving her the strength to not need the shard, and more directly with you, Dante: telling you to give the key to someone else so that you wouldn’t seek the shard for yourself. If the shard is what you’re meant to save, perhaps that’s part of it.”
My grimace deepens as I realize that this means I might be playing right into Nyara’s hands, but I quickly replace it with a neutral expression. I can’t let Dante know too much of what I’m feeling about all this, not when I’m still planning to work with him.
Dante slowly nods. “I think that makes sense. All of that, really. Thank you.”
“It explains the healing factor,” I muse. “A superpower that helps you live through the death game but doesn’t necessarily help you kill, because killing isn’t why you’re involved. But, if that’s the case, then what’s with the sword? Did she tell you if it does anything special?”
He coughs and says quietly, “She, uh, said that it’ll grant me three wishes.”
I swallow hard. “Ah. One moment please.” I stand up, walk over to a nearby table, and slam my fists down onto it as I scream as loud as I can.
The table snaps in half, shattered by the force of my blow, and I stare down at hands that a few days ago struggled to take the lids off pickle jars. These hands that I have infused with demonic strength, these hands that have taken lives, these hands that I have covered in blood to claim every scrap of power I have because all I was given in this world was one healing potion and a shitty artificer superpower that only works half the time.
And she gave him three wishes. She gave me scraps, and she gave him three wishes, because God hates me and she wants me to suffer. She’s laughing at me, I can feel her laughing at me like a prickling in my spine and all along my skin.
Are you watching, Nyara? Do I entertain you, Toymaker? Are you fucking pleased with yourself?
I fix my hair and my hat, wipe the dust from my hands, and force a smile on my face. I turn around and stroll back to the table where Dante and Cheshire are still sitting. “My apologies. Please, continue.”
Dante looks at me with wide eyes. “They, um, the wishes have conditions. A lot of conditions. But, yeah, that’s what I have: I can heal from most injuries, and I have a sword that lets me make three conditional wishes. Are you okay?”
I laugh. “Oh, not at all, but that’s not really your fault. I’m probably giving a terrible first impression right now, and a part of me is very sorry for that, but you would not believe the week I’ve had. In the past few days I have nearly died a dozen times. I have been chased by monsters, bargained with fae and fiends, tore out a third of my soul, became a demon, killed a man for the first time, and was hunted like an animal by the bloodthirsty minions of an entirely different fae from the one I sold my name to. I have been tormented by this world, and then you come along with the superpower I wanted and a sword that can grant three fucking wishes. I am absolutely furious right now… but it’s not your fault, and you’re not the one I’m mad at.”
I’m going to kill you, Demiurge. I promise.
Dante says, “That sounds like a lot. I’m really sorry you had to go through that. And I’m sorry that I’m making it worse, for whatever that’s worth.”
I sigh. “Yeah, well, done’s done. Look, why don’t we take a quick break so we both have time to process things? I’m sure you need it more than I do.”
He scratches his head and winces. “I like to think I’m a quick learner, but, yeah, there’s a lot. Watching a few isekai shows has not at all prepared me for the real deal.”
I fetch a notebook from my throne world and quickly write something out, then rip out the page and hand it to him. “Here, these are the most essential pieces of information you should try to internalize before interacting with anyone else. Memorize them if you can, refer to the page if you can’t. The tl;dr is this: you can’t tell people you’re from Earth, and your healing factor is something called a Gift that marks you as a witch to anyone with the right awareness, so keep both those things hidden as much as you can. You’re an abnormality in this world, and nails that stick out get hammered down.”
He doesn’t look like he entirely understands, but he nods anyway. “Got it.”
“Take a walk, explore the mall, and grab whatever you want. Like I said, there’s no money here, and the people are extremely nice. Video games, comic books, whatever takes your fancy. And, hey, you might want to get a new outfit, since that one’s torn and I’m guessing not your real clothes anyway.”
He pokes at the hole in his shirt and chuckles. “Yeah, that seems like a good idea. Uh, meet back here in an hour? Two hours?”
“However long it takes. I’ll be here, and if I’m not, I won’t be far.”
Dante wanders off deeper into the mall, and the second he’s out of sight I break another table.
“Fuck! Fuck damn shit ass piss fuck. Goddamn it!” I’m breathing heavy, which is stupid because I don’t even need to breathe anymore, it’s just an automatic response, a lingering piece of my old humanity. I breathe out and force my lungs to still, force my body to halt its reflex to breathe in new air. I clench my fingers and hold my whole body still and stiff like the porcelain I’ve reforged it in.
Claws at my fingertips. Fangs and a hinged jaw. Red eyes like pools of blood. Porcelain skin, smooth and without sexual characteristics, without pores or hairs or openings. This inhuman body is mine, I made it, I guided its evolution toward perfection. I am yet imperfect, but I am closer, and that’s more than he can say, more than most anyone can say, but it’s not enough.
She gave him three wishes. She denied me three wishes. She knows that I want everything, and she taunts me with my lack thereof.
I laugh, dark and hungry and hateful. “This is war. If it wasn’t before, it certainly is now.”
I can taste Cheshire’s fear and I can see it in her eyes, but she swallows her hesitation and nods. “I’m with you. Wherever our path leads, I’m with you.”
I let myself breathe again, and I slump into a chair at the nearest unbroken table, tilted to face away from it. “Well. We’ve got an hour to kill, or more. Let’s make it productive.”
Cheshire settles in next to me. “What did you have in mind?”
I conjure [Swarmheart], [Hunter’s Marker], and Vorpal, and place them on the table. My fourth artifact, [My Heart], I keep safe around my neck. “The way I see it, I’ve got two advantages in this contest: my ultimate spell, [Feast or Famine]; and my witch ability, the Gift of Artifice.” I don’t know if that’s its “official” name, but it’s what I’m going with. “I should be working to get maximum value out of both, in whatever way I can.”
The most obvious idea would be to pump castings of [Feast or Famine] into an amplifier artifact, but I already tried that and it didn’t work. Back in the Reveler’s maze, after killing the boss monster, I tried to capture the resonances from our fight, hoping that the single casting of [Carrion Swarm] wouldn’t be enough to disrupt the purity of the resulting artifact. It didn’t matter, though, because the object I used melted like my birds and vanished into black mist. The Abyss, it would seem, does not appreciate being caged inside an artifact.
“Since I can’t directly empower [Feast or Famine] with artifacts, we’ll have to come at it from a different angle. Since I can cast that spell through the creatures I summon with [Carrion Swarm], it might be worthwhile to invest some energy in upgrading [Swarmheart].”
Cheshire hums and taps the chunk of amber. “I think we should be cautious with altering successful artifacts. We don’t know what kind of effect it will have, and it could cause anything from diminishing returns to complete destabilization. With how limited your library of spells currently is, I think it might be wiser to focus on versatility and expanding your toolkit.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Something to do with bats, maybe? They are associated with vampires, so you’ll get that little boost.”
I snort-laugh. “Have I really not used bats at all so far? Man, that is such a missed opportunity. Yeah, okay, let’s do that. But… not just that. I have some ideas I want to try out.”
I banish Vorpal and [Hunter’s Marker] but keep [Swarmheart] handy, and then I quickly dart over to the nearest store with goth-adjacent jewelry and snatch up everything remotely bat-themed.
“When it comes to using my Gift, the biggest bottleneck right now is my inability to separate out resonances from each other. That makes any live combat situation practically useless in terms of artifact creation, and that’s only gotten worse now that one of the two spells in my kit is anathema to any artifact.”
I explain my process to Cheshire as I start casting instances of [Carrion Swarm]. The first casting summons a group of centipedes that immediately start eating each other. The second casting summons a group of bats that screech at the surviving centipede, and then I repeat both castings.
“To get stronger as an artificer, I need to learn how to divide resonances, and I think it’s possible–no, I know that it’s possible. The Beast said as much, and it makes sense. I just have to learn how to do it. So consider this a bit of essential practice.”
I flicker on my soul sight, painting the world in paper and ink, and then I reach deeper within myself, seizing upon the spark of my Gift, and my vision changes again. The world around me, already cast in bare sketches, disappears entirely. The tables and shops, the figments and their strings, they all dim and fade.
Cheshire remains, her soul appearing identical to her physical form. The chunk of amber in my hand also remains, though with two key differences: first, the amber glows brightly and the centipede within wriggles and squirms; and second, the object vibrates with magic that I can hear and understand.
I hear the name that I gave it, and I hear the raw freshness of its existence, so young and so fragile. I could crush this with a thought and scatter the dust. I hear gnashing teeth and carrion cries, a pit of crawling, biting nightmares. It tells me that its primary purpose is to evolve many lesser bugs into a single greater bug, and that its secondary purpose is to amplify the creation of lesser bugs to be used as meat.
I turn my attention from [Swarmheart], and in front of me I see and hear writhing strands of lingering magic. The strands interfere with each other, digging into each other like parasites, and they intermix in ways that makes it difficult to identify distinct threads.
I see birds eating bats eating bugs, all of it wreathed in black mist and shot through with black lines like a strange circulatory system. It’s chaos, and every time I blink the pattern changes, the balance shifts, and what’s eating what cycles from one to another. The sound of it is like nails on chalkboard and a dozen untuned instruments struggling for dominance.
I know there are four spells creating this mess: my repeated use of [Feast or Famine] to slay the not-cats is undoubtedly responsible for the black mist creeping into everything, while the various resonances of animalistic consumption were born of the three different variations of [Carrion Swarm] that I’ve unleashed.
I scowl at the cacophony. How the hell am I going to untangle this? I try to focus on one strand at a time and let everything else fall away, but it’s all too muddled, too contradictory. The second I bring one into focus, another surges in front of it and steals my attention.
I wade into the maelstrom, having to avoid tables and chairs by sense of touch–ow, ow, my ankle–and once I’m close enough I reach out and grab hold of one strand: a solitary bat, flapping its wings, mouth open wide.
The vibrations of the bat expand and surround me, flowing through me, thrumming in my bones. Sound. Proliferation. Focus.
I release the bat and grab one of the crawling bugs, and when its resonances fill me I immediately note the similarities to [Swarmheart]. These resonances are untamed, they lack purpose, but they still have that core of consumptive, adaptive hunger.
Still, though I can isolate a single resonance with my sight by grasping it, it’s not a perfect solution. I try to pull an individual resonance into an artifact, but the surrounding resonances come with it, tangled and blending into each other. My first attempt melts as soon as I give it a name. I try again immediately, and my second attempt fails like the first, but that seems to clear up the Abyssal resonances in the area, which should make future attempts easier.
My third attempt explodes, which I really should have predicted. I recast [Carrion Swarm] a few times and try again, still going by brute force and speed, which results in another exploding artifact I have to toss away. On my fifth attempt I try another tactic: I unsheath my claws and try to picture them as a severing force, pushing my will into the blades on the ends of my fingers. I slash through the resonances in the air with the intent to separate the bugs and bats, and after a few tries and a spot of mindfulness meditation I’m finally successful; my physical motion is echoed in the metaphysical world, cutting a clean line through the strand I was targeting.
This, too, is not a perfect solution; the line is clean, but the two halves are not pristine, as each possesses a few trace remnants of the other portion. Even with such brief contact between spell echoes, contamination is rapid and extensive. The resulting artifact doesn’t explode, which is a relief, but from peering at it with my sight and listening to its whispers I come away with the understanding that it would eventually degrade from growing instability if I used it regularly.
Hmm. This does raise an interesting question: if I can create artifacts, can I destroy them? Could I reclaim this object’s resonances and repurpose them?
Willing it to dissolve or return to its source doesn’t work, nor do any of the command phrases I try on it. So that’s not part of my Gift, damn. But, maybe if I treat it like a resonance when making a new artifact?
For my sixth attempt I slash more lines in the mass of resonances, cutting the threads into smaller and smaller segments until I can isolate a few pure strands that I bring together into the next artifact. At the same time, I clutch the previous artifact with all my strength and will the resonances within it to travel into the new artifact.
The impure creation crumbles to dust in my hand, and its resonances are drawn into the new object. I try to cut away the unwanted elements of that batch, but I’m not fully successful, and the result is still impure and thus doomed to degradation.
I sigh and crush this artifact, too, to release its resonances. I repeat the painstaking process of severing resonances, and this time I only use those which I can verify as truly pure.
The seventh artifact is at last my first success, but its not a complete success: [Echoshriek] has the right passive property, which amplifies the quantity of bats that I produce when I summon them as part of [Carrion Swarm], but its active property is a form of echolocation that I just do not need when I have Cheshire pulling recon duty with her weird geist senses.
“This is a slightly bigger problem,” I admit aloud. “I’m making headway when it comes to separating out resonances, but I don’t even know where to start with altering resonances, and it looks like having the bats focus all their noises on a single target still gives off echolocation rather than ‘sonic stun attack.’ Ideas?”
Cheshire circles me and looks around at all of my summons. “Maybe the centipede is a bad target? I know their antennae can sense vibrations, but I’m not sure that’s enough to disorient one, and I doubt it would give much sign of it even if you did stun one with sound.” She stops in front of me, pulls off her beanie cap, and says, “You should cast it on me instead. I’m hypersensitive to certain noises like you are, and I can give you the right responses to sell the move.”
I hesitate. “Are you sure? You don’t have to.”
She smiles at me. “It’s fine, really. Go ahead.”
“Okay.”
Cheshire takes a few steps back, and I do quick cleanup: I unsummon the critters that hadn’t already faded away, make a final volatile artifact and toss it to clear the lingering resonances, and then I cast [Carrion Swarm] half a dozen times in quick succession–making use of [Echoshriek] to pump their numbers–to make a truly impressive cloud of bats, all with orders to give their best debilitating shriek at Cheshire when I snap my fingers.
I give the command, and all the bats scream at Cheshire in unison. I wince at the sound, but it’s much worse for Cheshire. The catgirl clutches at her ears and doubles over, face tight, teeth gritted. The image makes me uncomfortable, but I try to focus on crafting the artifact.
I steady myself, breathe, and imagine all the resonances in the area pouring it into a new artifact: “[Shriekwave].”
A focused blast of sound surges out of the bat-winged brooch that I used as a base for the artifact, and it slams directly into Cheshire. The catgirl cries out and wobbles, and if she was acting before she definitely isn’t now.
“Cheshire!” I call out, and make to move toward her, but she holds up a hand and shakes her head.
“Keep going. You wanted to test if you can make artifacts stronger, right? Here’s your chance.”
“I… I did, yes. If you’re okay.” I hesitate only a moment before summoning more bats. They fill the air and once again blast Cheshire with sound. I seize those new resonances, gather them, and pour them into [Shriekwave], naming it aloud for a second time.
To my soul sight, the artifact looks like a living bat with an oversized mouth and four wings. As the second set of resonances is drawn into the artifact, the bat starts to glow brighter and brighter, and for a moment I’m worried about it exploding, but then the glow settles.
The whispering tells me that the artifact has the same properties as before, but now both properties have been strengthened and amplified. The test is a success.
Cheshire is still reeling from the second blast, eyes wide and blinking, ears flat against her head, but she gives me a thumbs up when she sees the concern on my face. “One more,” she half-shouts.
I swallow my objections and nod, trusting her to know her own limits. I repeat the process a final time, and as soon as I tell Cheshire that the artifact is stable she stumbles over to me and melts back into my shadow, charm bracelet falling into my hand.
“Are you okay?” I ask Cheshire, concern in my voice.
“I will be,” she murmurs, invisible and intangible but her words spoken directly into my ear. “I just need some time without a body, I think.” She chuckles. “I can at least confirm that thing packs a real punch. Oh, you should probably drink somebody, after spending all that mana.”
“Good idea,” I murmur back. I spare her one more moment of concern, then get to hunting.
Finding a figment to feed on is never difficult, but I have to consider all the resonant implications of the act. As annoying as it was to realize, I have to accept that I’ll get more mana from a woman than a man, and more mana from a woman I find physically appealing than not.
If I feed to kill, I’ll get multiple times as much mana, but I’d rather not do that on someone who isn’t trying to kill me. If someone threatens my life and my agency, I’ll do the same to them without hesitation, but someone who treats me with kindness, even as a result of their programming, deserves the same level of consideration.
I know it’s still hardly a moral act, but at least I’m abiding by some kind of principle.
I feed on four willing women, careful to control my hunger and take only a safe portion from each. The fresh mana floods into my system and invigorates me, makes me hungry for more, but I fight the urge to go on a feeding spree by thinking about magic instead.
I’ve made progress with my Gift, but my solution to the problem of mixed resonances has in turn created two new problems: it takes a lot of time and effort to divide mixed resonances into usable material, and the process is inefficient and wastes much of the source. Neither of those are obstacles when dealing with any resonance that I can reliably and repeatedly generate, but they’ll severely hamper my efforts to make use of resonances produced by enemies.
Oh, and the severing technique I’ve learned also requires physical manipulation of the resonances in question, which is not otherwise a limitation of my artificing. So in three ways this technique is a step back from my normal process, even if it allows me to overcome a prior obstacle.
It works for now, but I need to practice differentiating resonances without relying on physical separation. I don’t want to become overly accustomed to a slower, more demanding technique. If I can master purely mental manipulation of resonances, then I’ll gain an incredible level of adaptability in combat against foes that rely on spells more than their innate abilities.
I return to the food court and lean against a wall, contemplating next steps. Cheshire emerges from my shadow, still incorporeal but looking better.
I give her a nod and a wave and ask, “Want me to manifest you? We can grab more food, if you’re hungry, or you can turn into something fuzzy and I can give you lots of skritches.”
She looks like she’s about to object, but then admits, “That actually sounds great, yeah. Just the pets, thanks, I’m not that hungry.”
I find a bench to settle into and chant the incantation to make Cheshire corporeal again. She immediately transforms into a fuzzy white cat and curls up on my lap, and I scratch her behind the ears and stroke her fur rhythmically.
After a few minutes of that, Cheshire speaks up. “While we have the time to set it up, I have a few ideas on how we can improve your spell utilization.”
“Hit me.”
“Now that you’ve won your first throne duel, you’re able to take advantage of more of your scion powers. One of your unique privileges as a scion is the ability to create new spells, but the other half of that privilege is the ability to create spell presets. You can, in essence, set a spell into a particular configuration and then give that configuration its own name that you can cast directly. When you activate one of those preconfigured spells, it’ll skip the priming stage and move directly to unleashing. That will improve your cast time, and it will also make it easier to rapidly switch between different versions of the same spell.”
I lick my lips. “I like it.”
Cheshire purrs and leans into my hand. “There’s more: when we make a preset, I can link it to an artifact and have it activate that artifact as part of the casting. You won’t be able to cast that preset without the artifact in hand, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve taken the liberty of making one such preset, [Carrion Heart], which is set to summon a large quantity of beetles, boosted by [Swarmheart], and as part of the casting it will activate [Swarmheart] to turn that swarm of beetles into a single giant beetle.”
“Very efficient. Good choice, too, with the beetles; no offense to Mr. Wiggles or Sergeant Slicer, but I confess that Madame Hornsby was my favorite.”
Cheshire giggles. “I thought you’d approve.”
I continue my affections as I ask, “Any other presets?”
“Yes, one, and this one is a more sizable alteration: [Shadowbat Swarm] is not keyed to an artifact, though it will benefit from your [Shriekwave], but it represents a significant divergence from the baseline [Carrion Swarm] spell. These bats are digging deeper into your demonic connection to the Throne of Shadow in order to partially bypass the limitation we introduced to the spell to make it work with [Feast or Famine]: unlike your regular summons, these bats can fly outside of your max tethering range, which is otherwise a fair bit smaller than this food court.”
It’s a decent-sized food court, but even if that range completely encompassed the food court I’d find the limitation glaring. “Is there a catch?”
“Several. The less serious catch is that these bats will be insubstantial and frail, incapable of causing physical damage and easily degrading in response to physical trauma; however, as their primary purpose is to deliver a spell that, as we saw with the ravens, destroys the delivering host anyways, I consider that flaw largely moot. The more severe condition is that as beings of shadow they will be particularly vulnerable to fire or very bright light.”
“Hmm. Still worth it. Thank you, Cheshire.”
We stay like that for a while, the Cheshire cat purring in my lap, and inevitably my thoughts return to the would-be hero with the sword.
Three wishes. Those are, in all likelihood, what the compass was leading me to. So, one wish to beat Averrich, two spare. Do we try to leverage those other two wishes to gain some advantage, or do we want Dante to waste them so that he can’t use them against us if we come to blows?
It would be nice to not have to kill that boy.
Aloud, I lament, “What has my life become, that a magical compass leads me to a wish-granting sword when I ask for help killing a mad faerie king?”
“An adventure,” the cat says wryly.
I laugh quietly, and together we wait for Dante’s return.
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Heroes of Errand
This is a D&D inspired story. So if you are looking for the tabletop feel then you've come to the right place. Every person is unique and each carries different skills and talents that others lack. These skills and talents add their flavours into the lives of others to make it something truly remarkable. Embark on a journey with a bunch of adventures, who will try their best to make sure everyone has a story worth retelling. When a body appears at a celebration held in their honour, the Jellybeans are forced into a murder investigation. As the political tension rises and a need for immediate answers looms ever closer, the odds of them getting a noose around their necks tighten by the second. This story will continue for the next writathon, I'm putting away time to write for it during the next one. Book 1: Fallen Blade Chapters 1-17 Book 2: The Cursed Blood 18-Present Cover art is done by Jack0fHearts
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