Chapter 21: Bringing Out the Big Guns

1 FE (Mirrors, Illusion) obtained from worship. Converted to Illusion FE.

1 FE (Mirrors, Illusion) obtained from worship. Converted to Illusion FE.

1 FE (Mirrors, Illusion) obtained from worship. Converted to Illusion FE.

Sammy found that she couldn’t help but bask in the glow of their words and impressions — their emotions and swirls of dreams sent to her. It wasn’t about just who and what she was, but who and what they were and how she could facilitate it. Mutual purpose. But she cared for them more and more with each passing day, regardless. They were hers.

And 3 FE in the bank! 22 to go.

Not long after the last slurry of energy for the night, Sammy’s Followers were all resting — that or exhausted and getting there. Dax had pushed hard to get down the road to Caneboro as fast as humanly possible. Toward the end of her night, they began traversing through the forest out of her apparent paranoia of being followed. She intended on taking a roundabout way few knew and more or less roughing it. They had a small tent, at least.

Though she had intended to touch base with Dax, it was clear the minimal sleep and drain of days past had her ready to collapse, so Sammy put it off and let her get some rest. She felt as if she had neglected Dax since she could’ve been helping with buffs, and planned to rectify that in the morning.

And I’ll remind her to get to her prayers! Slacker. But it was not a serious thought. She knew the woman was utterly spent. And possibly snoring.

With the time available, Sammy called the runebook to her and opened it up to begin. Immediately, she was struck by the vibrancy of dimly glowing, ebbing runes on a thick page that did not look like paper but somehow like flexible, white metal, with the hint of a metallic sheen.

Magic is so fucking cool! Too bad those crusty Dominion fucks are the big-time wizards here, or there might be a fun magic school for people.

The first rune filled one page in text of vertical lines, and the symbology jabbed into her mind just from the book being open, intensifying as she looked at them, or even just thought about them.

There were five more pages of the same, then page after page of smaller, simpler glyphs that made no sense to her at all. She supposed she had to learn the runes first, and the other pages were advanced concepts or something.

With the front page open, she meticulously studied the rune, trying to puzzle it out. Quickly, she found it easier to close her eyes and let it represent in her head, where they were even more clear than on the paper. Moreover, she began to see them cast ‘shadows’ of themselves in her head. When she tried to focus on them, though, they vanished.

She meditated on the runes, memorizing their shape and symbology, something that increasingly became more than just what vision could glean. Shadows spawned and spawned until they were a swirl, a storm in her head. Hints of possibility, she realized. Grasping things without grasping for them.

She began to get clustered hints of meaning, like clipped-off abstracts of a language, some daunting in scope, others nonsensical. ‘The meaning of a touch.’ ‘Space.’ ‘Upward when inverted.’ ‘Calming music.’ Each shadow was like a peripheral gleam from a gem of vast, dark facets imprinting into her mind, and slowly, very slowly, the meditation made the gem’s dimensions become fully actualized.

This is bizarre. I have no idea why it is making sense, yet it is. Powerful, complex words plucked out of some grand language of mind-bending abstracts…

One part of the rune would slow in revelation, and she instinctively switched to another, which occasionally bridged to the first and ‘darkly illumined’ more shadows.

So it went. She ‘snowballed’ each glyph of the greater rune until the revelations slowed, then went to the next and the next until the greater mass of meanings was complete, perhaps 80%. Going back to the start, she progressively filled the rest, tediously but inevitably.

“Done!” She said out loud finally, opening her eyes to see the rune on the page just like in her head, the dimensions warped and contorted strangely but beautifully. She could not put it into the words of her language, only understood that it was some core essence of reality… an abstraction of one of the myriad building blocks.

“One down, 5 to go!” But when she checked the System’s clock in her head, 4 hours had passed in her meditations. “Holy shitballs! I didn’t even realize.”

Still, it seemed fast, though she’d have to ask someone whether it was. It wasn’t bad to study, though. It wasn’t like math. Or statistics. It was visualization, meditation, and something like learning a language. Certain aspects reminded her of French class, which she honestly rather liked, not that she was truly fluent…

Ouh là là!

Feeling she still had time in the middle of the night, she began on the next rune, finding it to be very similar, just different in its various flavors of meaning…

“I just hope and pray that this works, or I’ll simply never escape. I’ll die inside.”

It was a voice from the mirrors, again one that jumped out at her by the instincts that had been leading her to those in need of help. So she flashed to it, calling it before her and setting aside the runebook. It was possibly in the Southlands area, but very east of Geirkos, and maybe even further south.

The mirror was the large vanity variety in an oval shape, showing a rather luxurious room and a rather luxurious young woman in it, touching up on extensive makeup — which was interesting to see considering she had pale red skin. It was all dark. She had curling ram horns at her forehead curling to the side, then back to the front, and had long, pointed ears. Midnight black hair and luminescent purple eyes. Delicate and elegant, somehow.

Welp, this one could win Hell’s beauty contest for sure. Though I guess she isn’t really infernal? Hell if I know.

Behind her, a middle-aged man in fine servant’s livery was pacing back and forth. “Well, we can’t have that,” he said sardonically in answer to her first statement. “As I understand it, the insides are rather important!” He seemed a bit stressed.

The woman watched him pace in the mirror, expressionless. She sighed a sigh of bored, high society ennui. “Would you stop pacing? It’s dreadful. Are you certain you’ve drugged all the right people? And framed Fabian and me correctly for everything?”

The servant stopped on a dime, taking an annoyed breath and glaring at her. “If there’s anything Terrance Bahiore can do correctly, it’s shift the blame to others, Azure! I’ve not become the majordomo in this house compassionately helping fools like you!”

They stared at each other in the mirror for a spell, then both cracked up in mild humor. Azure did another touch of mascara on her lashes with a brush and said, “You bastard. I’ll miss you, Bobba.”

Terrance scoffed and waved his hand at her in annoyance. “Oh, don’t with that, now. That’s what all the voluntary captives would say, if they ever dared to run off and curse themselves. Or sail off, I should say. Well. I’ve told you everything. Remember: after midnight. An hour! Now. I need to get back to this insufferable party. Good luck.”

“An hour. I know. Thank you. I’ll see you out there, but then I won’t ever again.”

To this, Terrance nodded once, approvingly. “That’s the spirit I want to hear, girl.” With that, he swiftly left, with the sound of a door opening and closing.

Once the servant left, Azure quickly finished with the makeup but stared into the mirror for a longer spell. She squinted as if puzzled at it for some reason. In the process, Sammy noticed a strange bracelet on the young woman’s wrist, a glittering gold and platinum twisted band, but it was flat in one spot, and a glowing rune glyph was etched.

Sammy hesitated. Did the woman even need her help? She’d secured apparently quite-capable help already…

“Is this a sign, Goddess?” Azure said suddenly, brightly, eyes shifting over the mirror. “Have you finally looked upon me in my hour of need?”

Sammy froze up and blinked. What?

Eyes full of hope, the young woman closed her eyes and put her hands together flat in front of her in the sign of prayer, head bowing.

“Redberry,” she whispered furiously, “please bless my efforts this night! I made a mistake in youthful ignorance to contract myself. I am no longer a concubine. I refuse, I declare! I break the chains, I step out in courage! You are the Goddess of Freedom — I pray, forgive me and help me!”

Sammy was stunned, and she waited just as the girl did, held in suspense. But then she noticed her face get more desperate, eyes behind eyelids shifting, clearly beginning to lose hope at being answered…

Damn it, Redberry, you lazy boob-tree!

Sammy considered posing as her, but why would a nature goddess appear in a mirror? It also wouldn’t provide an actual blessing and might be some sort of faux pas or grave offense.

Instead, she cast her mind at Redberry once more in prayer. “Redberry! Hey! What gives?!”

The presence was pure sighing and annoyance in Sammy’s head, like a sea of predatory eyes in the shadows scowling at an intruder of their territory. “You’re getting way too comfortable in my dimming light, Moth.”

“Why aren’t you answering Azure?”

“What? Who?”

“Azure! Your believer?! Far south, uh, east in the Southlands? A concubine?”

“Hmph. One moment…” The distinctive feeling of being ‘on hold.’ If there were such a thing as gods-on-a-psychic-phone elevator music, it would’ve been playing right then. “Oh. Her. The Isle of Gold. I vaguely remember. Pfft. Why would I care about some stupid concubine that sold herself to a rich aristocrat with his own island? A trade king. Is her lavish luxury not luxuriously lavish enough?”

Exasperated, Sammy sent, “I mean, you should care because she wants out and you’re the Goddess of Freedom. Right?”

“It was a rhetorical question. Let me rephrase: I don’t care about Azure.”

“Would you just help her, please?! For me? Consider it a favor, if you must.”

“The favor you could do me is not bothering me with irrelevant favors like this.”

“... Deal.”

“What?”

“It’s a deal. You help her, and I won’t pester you about your believers again. Or, at least not anytime soon. You’ve already agreed, so get to it!”

“I did no such thing!”

“Please?” Sammy sent all the energy of cute, youthful expectation she could summon like she was begging a relative for money for some spontaneous nonsense. Batting eyelashes and a ridiculous, ingratiating grin — irresistible ‘just because I want it.’ The big guns.

Redberry was very aggravated and grumpy about it, with something like muttering curses, though nothing tangible was communicated. “Fine! But don’t ask me again!”

The communication was cut off, and Sammy was smiling quite smugly. Works every time. But her eyes focused on the one nearby in the mirror, who’d stopped praying, though her hands were still clasped, and her eyes were on the mirror as if trying to puzzle out what she saw. What had inspired her.

In the next moment, the horned woman’s eyes widened, and her head jerked upward at the heavens as she gasped. She soon shot up onto her feet, almost tripping, face rapturous because clearly, her goddess was answering her after a long truancy. She fell to her knees then, head bowing and whispering furiously once more, so low Sammy couldn’t make it out.

Soon, a glow surrounded her, ebbing outward, then absorbed inward until invisible. After a few moments, Azure stood, and not shakily as might’ve been appropriate. She stood tall and proud with a look of renewed spirit and vigor. A woman that would absolutely seize the day.

When she glanced at the mirror, she rushed over back to it, scrambling for a handkerchief to dab carefully at teary eyes.

Muttering to herself that she couldn’t cry, she corrected the minor damage done by tears and composed herself. With a final, preemptively victorious smile she said, “No one can stand in my way, now! Thank you, Redberry. You have put a fire back in me that shall never die! I swear it is true. Oh, thank you, Goddess!”

“You’re welcome,” Sammy said faintly.

Azure cocked her head at the mirror, right where Sammy’s eyes were, but which the woman could not possibly, literally see. She squinted and shook her head. “It’s so strange… I feel as if…” She shook herself again, dismissing the thought, then stood. She smoothed her ball gown with her hands — made sure all was presentable. And it was.

Well. I don’t care if I get the credit or not. Everyone makes mistakes. It doesn’t define us. So she’s a concubine, so what? She probably wanted adventure, romance, got swept up. Now she wants out. Maybe ill-advised, I dunno, but it's her choice. I’ll support it.

“It’s time for the last remains of my stay here,” Azure declared. “Yet another ball of drunks, and the latest on his arm… I’m done with it. Done with him. Goodbye, room. I loved and hated you.” She then exited.

Sammy flitted to other mirrors in the place. There were plenty, some she really wished she hadn’t peeked on, because it was quite a party in the common areas as well as the private, though many had already passed out. It was definitely an enormous mansion, and filled to the brim with well-dressed people.

She also noticed glyphs, glowing runes very frequently, etched on doors and windows, most of them exactly the same in pattern. There were also at least half a dozen — likely more — women, mostly younger, with the rune bracelets at their wrists, the glowing glyphs all different.

Holy shit, this is creepy. What happens if they try to leave? Fuck these contracts.

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