The_Universe
First Post
Her breath screamed in her ears, her chest burning with exertion as she bolted up the narrow stairwells, following the woman who had stolen the child. In her own arms, hidden in the folds of her voluminous sleeves, a second child squirmed. Silently, she prayed to the Light to help her find its twin, even now in the clutches of a devious kidnapper.
The stolen child was to be a prince, the one in her arms given into the care of its father: the man who would be her husband. If the prince was lost, what of this child?
She pushed the dark thoughts from her mind, turning her attention fully to the search, before her. Light exploded into the dark stairwell as she reached the top. She tensed, half expecting the kidnapper to strike as she reached the fourth floor.
Her eyes widened. Cursing to herself, she dispelled the magical silence that Dorn had cast on the child to keep its presence hidden. She listened carefully. The kidnapper had to be in a hurry. She grimaced. She was probably already too late.
She took a chance, dashing down the corridor on the left. No doors ajar, not a single errant sliver of light escaped to catch her eye. Time was running out!
Drawing the infant deeper into her sleeve, she drew a wand from her belt. The words to activate it rushed from her lips, and one after another, the doors to this wing burst open. As light flooded each of the guest chambers, she ran to it. She prayed for a sign – any sign – of the thief’s passage. Seconds seemed to stretch into hours. Nothing!
She hurtled back down the hallway, hoping that the thief had been hampered. The halls were empty. What threat could a group of midwives present? Anger overtaking her, she activated the wand again, doors bursting open in a dark cadence with her pounding heart.
Here eyes narrowed at the second door’s opening. Wind blew against the open shutters; they clacked against the palaces outer wall, their sounds tapping out an accusation. She had been too slow. A single floor tile had been turned up, revealing a hollowed out space in the floor.
She ran toward the window, dropping the wand as she did. She pushed the shutters fully open with her now-free hand, her eyes searching the ground below the window. Nothing. At least, nothing obvious.
Readjusting her grip on the squirming child in her arms, she cooed to it, hoping to calm it. And then she leapt from the window.
The fall would have been short, but her free hand danced as she neared the ground, and she suddenly slowed, touching down with the lightness of a feather. Her eyes swept over the well-kept courtyard. No footprints. No evidence of passage.
The ancient Alder temple, now a monument to the Amastacian faith, stood behind her. Might the kidnapper have hidden there? She hurtled toward it, into the ancient doors that stood wide before her. She swept over the sanctuary. There were no children here.
Seeing a priestess of the order attending the altar, she shouted, “Have you seen a woman – older. She would have been carrying a child! A newborn! Please!”
The priestess shook her head, but before she could answer, Xath was back out the door. There had to be some evidence of the thief’s passage. She could not have merely vanished.
Vanished…
She thought back to the space in the floor. Large enough for a scroll case. A scroll!
She called the magic back to her, this time to her eyes. There was a shimmer, below the Palace’s window. It was distinctive…conjuration. Teleportation! She had literally vanished.
He desperation rose. The child could be anywhere.
She wheeled back on her heels, her long legs taking her back to the Palace, to the Queen’s chamber. As she ran, she dismissed her vision, calling to her another, simpler magic. “Preston,” she called, knowing that her message would reach him, no matter the distance. “You must scry on the child again! The kidnapper is gone!”
Before she could reach the Palace gates, an image flashed in her mind. A woman cradling a bundle of cloth that no doubt carried the child. Midwife Marann! No longer a buxom, smiling woman, her disguise had been apparently discarded in the interests of speed. She sprinted across a narrow cobblestone path. But where?
It didn’t matter. She had the prince. She had to be stopped.
Garron Dorn hurtled toward her, his face flush with panic. Grim faced, determined, she handed him the child. “Take care of the Princess. I have to go.”
And she did. Holding the picture that Preston had sent her deep in her thoughts, she drew upon the last bit of magic in the boots she had long-ago found. The world faded around her, and for a moment, she could almost feel the alien-seeming air of a new place around her, she could almost see the woman running ahead.
And then world did resolve around her. Blue. All around her.
And then she fell, water catapulting up over her. She could see only the barest hint of land to the east – she had failed to arrive at her target! She growled in frustration, anger. Now what?
Calming herself as best she could, her mind raced over the resources she could bring to hand. Nothing – too much had been spent on the battles in Caer Albion. She put her face in her hands, her legs kicking her toward the surface of the water. The answer hit her in the nose.
A tiny silver charm hung from a chain at her wrist. Justice!
She yanked the tiny copy of her friend from the bracelet, and after a brief splash, found herself looking at a flushed and angry paladin. “Wha…” the Paladin began, desperately seeking explanation for that had happened.
“There’s no time,” she said aloud, turning her thoughts back to the image that Preston had given her. She held at the forefront of her thoughts, and then pushed the image through the ring, to her companion.
“We need to go there. Now!”
Justice nodded, her eyes closing in concentration around the image. The world faded from them once more, this time reforming in perfect harmony with the image they had both received.
A narrow cobblestone path snaked through a well-manicured courtyard. Behind them, gilded walls of red stone rose toward the sky, dwarfed by the towers of the city behind them. They had been here before. Thanesport.
Before them, the royal palace shone in the sunlight, the ancient Imperial seat sparkling like a day-lit star. Xath started to run toward the narrow doorway at the end of the path, but before she could, grim faced soldiers wearing the leather jerkins of the Army of the East surrounded her, each tossing a wide, barbed net over her.
She ducked beneath the first throw, but the second and the third weighed heavily upon her. She risked a glance over her shoulder – Justice struggled with the soldiers as well, desperately trying to throw off the increasingly heavy burden that the shoulders draped over her.
She fought valiantly, but they had been well-prepared for her arrival. A trap!
The sun seemed to dim in the sky as the palace’s doorway creaked open. From the shadows within, a tall forbidding woman stepped into the light of the day. She smiled, the very expression a perversion of happiness. Ahrianna Blackadder.
“What a pleasant surprise,” she said, her hands dancing before her, the space between her words filled with incantation. “It would seem that the prince’s departure was not as flawless as we would have thought. Fortunate that I took precautions in case Mistress Marann was followed.”
A high pitched scream filled the air, piercing the city’s normal noises from the palace. “Ah, she’s receiving her reward, now.”
Terror and fury warred within the young woman’s mind. She had to get free! Whatever Blackadder could do, Xath would not let her do so without a fight.
The incantation between the woman’s words came to a sudden stop, and Xath felt claws raking through her mind. They would grasp – hold – if she let them. She fought them with every once of herself. She not only had the Queen’s child to save, but her own, as well.
The claws disappeared, and Xath found her mind free of intrusion, at least for the moment. She drew upon the deepest reserves of her own magic, desperate to turn something – anything – to bear against the dark woman before her. She nearly succeeded, but the nets proved too distracting…every layer inhibited her movements, prevented her from pulling the cords of magic that would allow her to release the spell.
She screamed in frustration.
No longer gloating, Blackadder turned her attention to Xath once more, and as the words began, the claws once more dug themselves into her mind. She concentrated – she pushed them back, shielding her mind from the enemy sorceress.
She could not see Justice, but she could still hear her struggling. If one of them could just get free, they had a chance!
Blackadder’s eyes narrowed. Xath had resisted everything that the powerful woman had thrown at her, but Xath had been over a thousand miles away, fighting battle after battle, while Blackadder had been here, resting. In a war of attrition, Xath knew she would lose.
The Sorceress’s eyes began to glow, and her voice dropped into a discordant cadence. Xath could feel the magic coalesce around the other woman, and could almost see the same magic pressing down against her, passing through her skin, a wash of fire stopping only…
Only…
Only at her womb. Dear God! The child!
Blackadder’s cadence continued, her words cutting into Xath’s ears like razor blades being drawn across a sword blade. They screamed through the air around them, and with each, Xath could feel less and less of the child growing within her. Her eyes widened. She screamed. Blackadder was going to steal her child!
She gave herself to the fury, letting it feed a last, heroic effort. She threw off the nets in a single fluid motion as the thing in her belly seemed to become…alien. As if it had suddenly changed to an invader, rather than something that had been a part of her.
Kegsplitter leaped to her grip as she darted down the path, away from the imprisoned paladin, toward the woman whose dark chant may have already destroyed her child. She let magic pour over the blade, letting the energy that gathered around it guide her strike.
The sword sung as she swung it in a low, flat arc. Blackadder was fast, and prepared for the attack. She ducked under the blow, her voice never wavering from the heinous ritual she had begun. Xath swung again and again, but even when her blade managed to bite into the woman’s flesh, she spell continued – the sorceress’s concentration held.
As the chant continued to burn in her womb, Blackadder’s eyes widened, settling on the silver chain that held the Queen’s amulet to her breast. Her eyes tightened, and through the twisting grimace that her words seemed to require, Xath thought she saw the hint of a demented smile.
A clawed hand darted out, and even as Xath jerked herself back, away from the woman, her talons closed around the chain. For a moment, the amulet appeared in the daylight, it’s rapid sparkle almost blinding in intensity. There were other spirit blades than Justice’s here…more than Xath had ever seen, if the amulet was correct.
The chain broke, and Xath thought she saw exultation on the other woman’s face. Xath spared herself a grim smile as the amulet disappeared – she had prepared for this. This woman could not take everything from her, today. Only everything that mattered.
There was a burst of motion behind her – Justice was free! Smoke rose from her armor, and the nets lay in flames at her feet.
Whatever had assaulted her womb was almost completed – she could feel it. Justice drew the steeldrake that had been with her for almost as long as Xath had known her, but had rarely been used. Thunder clapped behind her, hurling holy lead toward the woman trying to take her first child. The bullet thudded into the sorceress’s shoulder, and she stumbled back, and for a moment, Xath was sure she would lose the cadence of the spell, and her child would return to her…
Whatever had assaulted her womb was almost completed – she could feel it.
But her concentration still held. Before she could drive kegsplitter into the hole in the woman’s ample defense, another net flew toward her, trapping her arms at her sides once more.
Then she knew.
None of this mattered. The child was gone.
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she let the nets pile on. Nothing they could do to her could be worse than what they had already done. Her child, her son, she was suddenly sure, was hers no more.
Blackadder knelt before her as the soldiers pulled her toward Justice, patting an abdomen that seemed to have swelled. Xath spared a glance at her friend. She too had been trapped.
“I could have you killed with a word, and send your heads back to your friends,” Blackadder mused to herself. “Better, I could ensure that you joined us – I could turn you against them in a matter of days, and you would ride before my Master’s armies with but a word.”
Justice screamed curses at the woman, defiant unto the end. Xath knew that the end had already come. What happened now didn’t matter.
“But perhaps I shall merely send you back to them. Let you suffer with your loss, and wonder what will become of my child, and your Queen’s.”
Blackadder laughed, “I shall let you live,” you can tell your queen that her son will be raised a prince of a true Dynasty; and you may rest assured that your husband’s child will never want for anything. It will be the first of its kind, but not the last.”
She leaned into Xath’s face, hatred pouring from features that might once have been beautiful, “And if you yet live when the time comes to unleash him against the remnants of your race, we will together feast upon you. Don’t come for him, you fool. It is my child, now.”
Straightening, she grasped at Xath and Justice’s nets, her talons closing around the strands, her fingertips brushing – almost lovingly – over the two women’s armored shoulders.
The world disappeared, and reappeared.
But it didn’t matter. Everything that mattered was already gone.
The stolen child was to be a prince, the one in her arms given into the care of its father: the man who would be her husband. If the prince was lost, what of this child?
She pushed the dark thoughts from her mind, turning her attention fully to the search, before her. Light exploded into the dark stairwell as she reached the top. She tensed, half expecting the kidnapper to strike as she reached the fourth floor.
Her eyes widened. Cursing to herself, she dispelled the magical silence that Dorn had cast on the child to keep its presence hidden. She listened carefully. The kidnapper had to be in a hurry. She grimaced. She was probably already too late.
She took a chance, dashing down the corridor on the left. No doors ajar, not a single errant sliver of light escaped to catch her eye. Time was running out!
Drawing the infant deeper into her sleeve, she drew a wand from her belt. The words to activate it rushed from her lips, and one after another, the doors to this wing burst open. As light flooded each of the guest chambers, she ran to it. She prayed for a sign – any sign – of the thief’s passage. Seconds seemed to stretch into hours. Nothing!
She hurtled back down the hallway, hoping that the thief had been hampered. The halls were empty. What threat could a group of midwives present? Anger overtaking her, she activated the wand again, doors bursting open in a dark cadence with her pounding heart.
Here eyes narrowed at the second door’s opening. Wind blew against the open shutters; they clacked against the palaces outer wall, their sounds tapping out an accusation. She had been too slow. A single floor tile had been turned up, revealing a hollowed out space in the floor.
She ran toward the window, dropping the wand as she did. She pushed the shutters fully open with her now-free hand, her eyes searching the ground below the window. Nothing. At least, nothing obvious.
Readjusting her grip on the squirming child in her arms, she cooed to it, hoping to calm it. And then she leapt from the window.
The fall would have been short, but her free hand danced as she neared the ground, and she suddenly slowed, touching down with the lightness of a feather. Her eyes swept over the well-kept courtyard. No footprints. No evidence of passage.
The ancient Alder temple, now a monument to the Amastacian faith, stood behind her. Might the kidnapper have hidden there? She hurtled toward it, into the ancient doors that stood wide before her. She swept over the sanctuary. There were no children here.
Seeing a priestess of the order attending the altar, she shouted, “Have you seen a woman – older. She would have been carrying a child! A newborn! Please!”
The priestess shook her head, but before she could answer, Xath was back out the door. There had to be some evidence of the thief’s passage. She could not have merely vanished.
Vanished…
She thought back to the space in the floor. Large enough for a scroll case. A scroll!
She called the magic back to her, this time to her eyes. There was a shimmer, below the Palace’s window. It was distinctive…conjuration. Teleportation! She had literally vanished.
He desperation rose. The child could be anywhere.
She wheeled back on her heels, her long legs taking her back to the Palace, to the Queen’s chamber. As she ran, she dismissed her vision, calling to her another, simpler magic. “Preston,” she called, knowing that her message would reach him, no matter the distance. “You must scry on the child again! The kidnapper is gone!”
Before she could reach the Palace gates, an image flashed in her mind. A woman cradling a bundle of cloth that no doubt carried the child. Midwife Marann! No longer a buxom, smiling woman, her disguise had been apparently discarded in the interests of speed. She sprinted across a narrow cobblestone path. But where?
It didn’t matter. She had the prince. She had to be stopped.
Garron Dorn hurtled toward her, his face flush with panic. Grim faced, determined, she handed him the child. “Take care of the Princess. I have to go.”
And she did. Holding the picture that Preston had sent her deep in her thoughts, she drew upon the last bit of magic in the boots she had long-ago found. The world faded around her, and for a moment, she could almost feel the alien-seeming air of a new place around her, she could almost see the woman running ahead.
And then world did resolve around her. Blue. All around her.
And then she fell, water catapulting up over her. She could see only the barest hint of land to the east – she had failed to arrive at her target! She growled in frustration, anger. Now what?
Calming herself as best she could, her mind raced over the resources she could bring to hand. Nothing – too much had been spent on the battles in Caer Albion. She put her face in her hands, her legs kicking her toward the surface of the water. The answer hit her in the nose.
A tiny silver charm hung from a chain at her wrist. Justice!
She yanked the tiny copy of her friend from the bracelet, and after a brief splash, found herself looking at a flushed and angry paladin. “Wha…” the Paladin began, desperately seeking explanation for that had happened.
“There’s no time,” she said aloud, turning her thoughts back to the image that Preston had given her. She held at the forefront of her thoughts, and then pushed the image through the ring, to her companion.
“We need to go there. Now!”
Justice nodded, her eyes closing in concentration around the image. The world faded from them once more, this time reforming in perfect harmony with the image they had both received.
A narrow cobblestone path snaked through a well-manicured courtyard. Behind them, gilded walls of red stone rose toward the sky, dwarfed by the towers of the city behind them. They had been here before. Thanesport.
Before them, the royal palace shone in the sunlight, the ancient Imperial seat sparkling like a day-lit star. Xath started to run toward the narrow doorway at the end of the path, but before she could, grim faced soldiers wearing the leather jerkins of the Army of the East surrounded her, each tossing a wide, barbed net over her.
She ducked beneath the first throw, but the second and the third weighed heavily upon her. She risked a glance over her shoulder – Justice struggled with the soldiers as well, desperately trying to throw off the increasingly heavy burden that the shoulders draped over her.
She fought valiantly, but they had been well-prepared for her arrival. A trap!
The sun seemed to dim in the sky as the palace’s doorway creaked open. From the shadows within, a tall forbidding woman stepped into the light of the day. She smiled, the very expression a perversion of happiness. Ahrianna Blackadder.
“What a pleasant surprise,” she said, her hands dancing before her, the space between her words filled with incantation. “It would seem that the prince’s departure was not as flawless as we would have thought. Fortunate that I took precautions in case Mistress Marann was followed.”
A high pitched scream filled the air, piercing the city’s normal noises from the palace. “Ah, she’s receiving her reward, now.”
Terror and fury warred within the young woman’s mind. She had to get free! Whatever Blackadder could do, Xath would not let her do so without a fight.
The incantation between the woman’s words came to a sudden stop, and Xath felt claws raking through her mind. They would grasp – hold – if she let them. She fought them with every once of herself. She not only had the Queen’s child to save, but her own, as well.
The claws disappeared, and Xath found her mind free of intrusion, at least for the moment. She drew upon the deepest reserves of her own magic, desperate to turn something – anything – to bear against the dark woman before her. She nearly succeeded, but the nets proved too distracting…every layer inhibited her movements, prevented her from pulling the cords of magic that would allow her to release the spell.
She screamed in frustration.
No longer gloating, Blackadder turned her attention to Xath once more, and as the words began, the claws once more dug themselves into her mind. She concentrated – she pushed them back, shielding her mind from the enemy sorceress.
She could not see Justice, but she could still hear her struggling. If one of them could just get free, they had a chance!
Blackadder’s eyes narrowed. Xath had resisted everything that the powerful woman had thrown at her, but Xath had been over a thousand miles away, fighting battle after battle, while Blackadder had been here, resting. In a war of attrition, Xath knew she would lose.
The Sorceress’s eyes began to glow, and her voice dropped into a discordant cadence. Xath could feel the magic coalesce around the other woman, and could almost see the same magic pressing down against her, passing through her skin, a wash of fire stopping only…
Only…
Only at her womb. Dear God! The child!
Blackadder’s cadence continued, her words cutting into Xath’s ears like razor blades being drawn across a sword blade. They screamed through the air around them, and with each, Xath could feel less and less of the child growing within her. Her eyes widened. She screamed. Blackadder was going to steal her child!
She gave herself to the fury, letting it feed a last, heroic effort. She threw off the nets in a single fluid motion as the thing in her belly seemed to become…alien. As if it had suddenly changed to an invader, rather than something that had been a part of her.
Kegsplitter leaped to her grip as she darted down the path, away from the imprisoned paladin, toward the woman whose dark chant may have already destroyed her child. She let magic pour over the blade, letting the energy that gathered around it guide her strike.
The sword sung as she swung it in a low, flat arc. Blackadder was fast, and prepared for the attack. She ducked under the blow, her voice never wavering from the heinous ritual she had begun. Xath swung again and again, but even when her blade managed to bite into the woman’s flesh, she spell continued – the sorceress’s concentration held.
As the chant continued to burn in her womb, Blackadder’s eyes widened, settling on the silver chain that held the Queen’s amulet to her breast. Her eyes tightened, and through the twisting grimace that her words seemed to require, Xath thought she saw the hint of a demented smile.
A clawed hand darted out, and even as Xath jerked herself back, away from the woman, her talons closed around the chain. For a moment, the amulet appeared in the daylight, it’s rapid sparkle almost blinding in intensity. There were other spirit blades than Justice’s here…more than Xath had ever seen, if the amulet was correct.
The chain broke, and Xath thought she saw exultation on the other woman’s face. Xath spared herself a grim smile as the amulet disappeared – she had prepared for this. This woman could not take everything from her, today. Only everything that mattered.
There was a burst of motion behind her – Justice was free! Smoke rose from her armor, and the nets lay in flames at her feet.
Whatever had assaulted her womb was almost completed – she could feel it. Justice drew the steeldrake that had been with her for almost as long as Xath had known her, but had rarely been used. Thunder clapped behind her, hurling holy lead toward the woman trying to take her first child. The bullet thudded into the sorceress’s shoulder, and she stumbled back, and for a moment, Xath was sure she would lose the cadence of the spell, and her child would return to her…
Whatever had assaulted her womb was almost completed – she could feel it.
But her concentration still held. Before she could drive kegsplitter into the hole in the woman’s ample defense, another net flew toward her, trapping her arms at her sides once more.
Then she knew.
None of this mattered. The child was gone.
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she let the nets pile on. Nothing they could do to her could be worse than what they had already done. Her child, her son, she was suddenly sure, was hers no more.
Blackadder knelt before her as the soldiers pulled her toward Justice, patting an abdomen that seemed to have swelled. Xath spared a glance at her friend. She too had been trapped.
“I could have you killed with a word, and send your heads back to your friends,” Blackadder mused to herself. “Better, I could ensure that you joined us – I could turn you against them in a matter of days, and you would ride before my Master’s armies with but a word.”
Justice screamed curses at the woman, defiant unto the end. Xath knew that the end had already come. What happened now didn’t matter.
“But perhaps I shall merely send you back to them. Let you suffer with your loss, and wonder what will become of my child, and your Queen’s.”
Blackadder laughed, “I shall let you live,” you can tell your queen that her son will be raised a prince of a true Dynasty; and you may rest assured that your husband’s child will never want for anything. It will be the first of its kind, but not the last.”
She leaned into Xath’s face, hatred pouring from features that might once have been beautiful, “And if you yet live when the time comes to unleash him against the remnants of your race, we will together feast upon you. Don’t come for him, you fool. It is my child, now.”
Straightening, she grasped at Xath and Justice’s nets, her talons closing around the strands, her fingertips brushing – almost lovingly – over the two women’s armored shoulders.
The world disappeared, and reappeared.
But it didn’t matter. Everything that mattered was already gone.
