Supplicium

[Guest Minta Rose]

Ager Terra Five, published late May-early June 2001, Ager Guilded Banquet Hall

[Guest Minta Rose]

April 2001, the shadowy lands, Final Fantasy

 

Seven years had passed since Rydia had first arrived in the shadowy lands. The first year she had slept nestled in the curve of the dragon Bahamut’s body, dreaming without emotion of the chilling exodus whereby she had arrived. Bahamut had kept her warm with his breath and had woven magic around her to fend off hunger and thirst. When finally she awoke, she became a favorite at the shadow monsters’ royal court for her fascinating tales of her strange native land, where archmages duelled and celebrated. When her former archangels broke the barrier between worlds, they were merely human and remembered nothing of serving her. For that matter, one had been so persistent in proposing wild offers of marriage that she had retreated to the shadow realm soon after the archangels’ expedition was complete. The equality of roles had confused her and the light of their sun was too bright.

 

“Do you remember?” she asked Bahamut one day, as they sat together in the moonlight.

 

“Vaguely,” the dragon rumbled. “My master was a dwarf, of that I’m sure--a ferocious fighter, if somewhat erratic. . .” In truth, Bahamut remembered perfectly. He was always glad to prompt her memory when she failed and enjoyed drawing the stories out of her. Some day she would remember it all, and then his duty would be done.

 

Rydia exclaimed, “Oh! Boaz! Yes, he was mad. . .and who was the other insane one. . .” She was quiet for a moment. “Insane, why that was Joat of course. And Minta and Rosemary. . .how could I ever forget them,” she giggled. Leaning back, she ran her hands through her green hair and sighed happily. “I miss them all sometimes. Everything was so full of life, like the sunlight world, only better. Sometimes. . .sometimes it feels like I’m being tugged back there, I miss them so much. . .I want to return,” confessed Rydia, leaning forward and letting her head droop.

 

Bahamut heard the longing behind her wish, considered his duty done, and was unsurprised by the pure white glow which fell from the sky and dusted the former mage. Rydia leaped to her feet with shock as the sparkling rain coalesced upon her, crying out “What’s happening, Bahamut! Can you see? . . .” Twisting her arms behind her back, she tried to brush away the burden.

 

“Why, they’re. . .they’re wings!” she breathed, slowly flexing. Greatly daring, she extended one wing around her shoulder to inspect it. Fine pearly down rose to brush against her curious fingers, while the flat flight feathers sparkled light green, like nothing else in the realm of shadow. She tucked the wing carefully behind her before trying to spread both wings out in their full glory. “But why me? Why now?”

 

Bahamut arched an eyebrow. “That should be obvious, my dear. You are being summoned back to Terra, there to serve as an archangel.”

 

Rydia’s wings began flapping and she rose off of the ground with a surprised squeak. “Help!” she called while rising, limbs hanging uselessly. “I don’t know how to fly! These things are moving all on their own!”

 

“I—can not help!” grunted Bahamut, his back muscles visibly spasming in futile efforts to move his own wings. “I have not been summoned.”

 

Rydia scrunched her eyes shut as the ground grew distant, going limp and whimpering with terror. Possessed by some archmage’s will, her wings continued to beat, carrying her beyond the foggy midnight sky and directing her towards the distant lands of Terra. . .

Edited by: Minta Rose at: 3/11/02 6:17:28 pm

[Guest Minta Rose]

Simultaneously, Server Guilded, Archmage

 

“What’s this again?” wondered little Minta aloud, playing with the wooden pyramid model. She turned it over restlessly from side to side. “Which way is the top?”

 

The nearby man in white coveralls explained, “It’s a tetrahedron, a four-sided polyhedron, one of the Platonic solids. . .” he trailed off as she stared at him with innocent indigo eyes, “Look, little girl, all of the sides are the same size and shape. Now, say it with me. . .”

 

“Tet-ra-hed-ron,” she chirped. “So which way is the top?”

 

The research mage sighed. Babysitting was not in his job description. Upon pulling her records from the research guild Minta had once attended, he was even less happy. She had reacted unfavorably to the workload and was permanently regressed. Now he was supposed to teach her the necessary math for Calculus for the Masses!, but how could he if she wouldn’t stay focused!

 

As if to give him a worse headache, Minta pulled out another pixy stix and emptied the flavored sugar into her mouth in one slurp. She wrinkled up the wrapping paper and tossed it behind her onto a heap of empty pixy stix wrappers. “I don’t understand,” she complained, reaching for a wooden octahedron and turning it over and over as well. “Why do I have to play with these stupid blocks that don’t even have top sides?”

 

“Well, there’s so much you can do if you learn the math. . .like take a mage’s number and derive what sort of stacks he’s likely to run. You just input the Arena Archmage information into the Scipio equation, where x equals the mage’s number--”

 

“Boring,” yawned Minta. “Random is more fun! X here, x there, boom! Blood curse! One of those cool flying carpets! Lots and lots of zombies! Pow! And then I ride on the carpet and jump on top of the fort and steal the flag and run back home!”

 

The research mage protested, “Look, little girl, if you don’t learn algebra at least, how will you ever expect to learn spells outside your specialty? Raw talent alone will not allow you to survive! Should you try to cast those spells you’ve been accumulating, they will backfire horribly!”

 

“Will not!” Minta protested. “Watch THIS!” She tossed the blocks aside, stood up, pushed her overly long sleeves back from her chubby hands, held what looked like a glowing pixy stix in each hand, and began waving them around in distinctly ascendant patterns. The research mage gulped and started digging through his pockets for a Wall of Silence scroll. Why, oh why hadn’t he thought of taking it out previously? Panicked, he ripped his hands out of his pockets and reached for Minta just as she completed the spell; white light shot out of the straws Minta held and into the ceiling. . .and nothing happened. She pouted and crumpled up the empty wrappers, throwing them with the rest.

 

“Now, have you learned your lesson, young lady?” he rebuked her, stopping to fold his arms across his chest in triumph.

 

Minta pulled out another pair of mana crystal stix and held them high. Before the research mage could react, she had completed another spell. This time, the light which emanated from the straws was quite natural, sunny almost. The Sunray bounced off of the walls several times before zipping through the permanent inter-continental portal to the land of Ager. The research mage groaned and sprinted to the portal, but crashed into its surface with a wet “smack”—the portals were designed for archmages only. Minta peeked through the portal and giggled, “Wow, that was really random!”

Edited by: Minta Rose at: 3/11/02 6:18:43 pm

[Guest Minta Rose]

Simultaneously, Server Guilded, Archmage

 

Rosemary sat primly alone in the midst of the Calculus for the Masses! classroom, floor D room 3pi/2, shuffling the abacus beads, tallying up even as the other apprentices filed out of the room with glee. There was something important to be found in this interplay of number and unknown, another way to express what swirled cleanly through her own mind yet garbled whenver she spoke.

 

“Hey, banana,” someone at the door yelled back at the yellow-garbed mage, “class is over!” Lifting one hand away from the abacus without looking up, Rosemary dismissed her fellow student’s concern with a wave. Her tinkling wrist bells covered his laughter and escape to more cheerful levels of the guildhall.

 

She was accustomed to the pressures of staring eyes and questioning glances. Mistaken ideas and hostile mages troubled her not, for Rosemary had seen the truth in those ever-changing numbers. Someday, even her teachers would forgo their fear and turn to her for comforting answers, for in the end all ran eventually, inevitably, to her. Such is the nature of a vampire, she brooded; we are here to attract and consume everyone around us. Would that they could find their love somewhere else instead of joining with a damned soul!

 

The abacus rattled as she zeroed it—she had concluded that the answer did not lie anywhere within the guild’s influence—and stepped away from her desk. She stepped through the portal to Ager, which crackled as she passed, protesting the passage of a summonable creature. Seating herself in the gallery, she extended her senses into the other world, past the demons and foulness which always swirled near her, greedy for her love. She looked upon the mages of Ager, saw their silvery entanglements with one another, and held out her mirror before her as a guide.

 

Rosemary saw the spiral. Like a great silver fire it rippled across the mages, sometimes binding a particular mage in threads which leaped upward and flared, sometimes dropping to a mage’s ankles as its soul crumbled to ash. Sometimes it was a single thread spiraling outward from the fierce center and binding every mage in its arc; sometimes several arms branched out from the center, and its component souls lashed auxiliary threads at one another as they unfurled. The rare few souls which flew unfettered above the spiral only emphasized its far-reaching span.

 

Noting the twisting souls sending out thin snakelike threads every which way and being rebuffed, she smiled. She observed the orderly souls and their straight, short connections, and nodded. Witnessing the beauteous souls intertwining into a broad and improbable pattern, she agreed. Rosemary watched the flaring fountains of psychotic souls dance and send out tongues of flame to the others, and let her own flare in joyous reply.

 

Especially she watched one far removed from most of the rest, flying with unnatural speed and spinning out a single strong cord in its wake. Most of its bindings were broken, rippling in the wind of its passage or forming a solid belt around its midsection, yet burning light still pulsed and pursued down the orbit it could not escape.

 

“Why am I so interested in this one?” Rosemary pondered, subconsciously sending waves of emotional power at her quarry. The power settled around the flying soul and made its terrors manifest.

[Guest Minta Rose]

Simultaneously, Ager Guilded, Archmage

 

Sighing, Tzimfemme placed both hands upon her bare hips and studied the newest placard someone had pasted on the walls of the Banquet Hall. Internally, her id was screaming with helpless laughter and composing a reply, yet her superego was frowning and blotting out the entire incident. She sighed again, opened up a tiny portal in lieu of a pocket, and pulled out the Pen of Moderatorship. Just before the portal snapped shut, a beam of natural light shot through. Tzimfemme swatted at the pesky spot as it rebounded several times and settled on her head like an annoying insect.

 

Now Tzimfemme was illuminated in her own personal Sunray—the only person in the crowded room so highlighted. “Day star BAD! This is gonna rot my brain or something!” she cried upon feeling the warmth. The milling hordes of the Banquet Hall began to stare and point as Tzimfemme tried to trace the spell, tossing her Pen carelessly into another miniature portal and spying through the little pocket of mana. Oddly, it had originated from no known realm on any server. . .what sort of mage didn’t have a number to call its own?

 

She thundered over to the pack of the Pen is Mightier than the Sword members who were loitering around the board, writing careful posts and appending them to the posters already on the wall. They turned, looked at Tzimfemme, looked at the Sunray, and commented severally, “I thought you gave up sunlight. . .Painters would kill for a lamp like that. . .What’s that strange non-flickering light. . .Are you trying to plumb your deeper writing skills?”

 

In the kind natural light, even Tzimfemme’s sarcastic smile looked beatific. “OK, whatever wiseass did this, it stopped being funny a LONG time ago! Back on the fourteenth, say!” Suspiciously she eyed two tPiMttS members who were ignoring her completely and scanning the ceiling with x-ray goggles. Behind her words, the inter-continental portal crackled angrily. Minutes passed with no effect. The pair of bards continued to watch something invisible to the naked (and still annoyed) eye. Tzimfemme spun upon her heel and began questioning other patrons of the Hall.

 

Said the bard to whom Tzimfemme had spoken, after he had removed the x-ray goggles and turned to his companion, “Did you also see that lone archangel who seems to be flying while unconscious?”

 

“Aren’t there regulations against that? I think there ought to be regulations against that,” replied the other, fiddling with the goggles’ dials and pointing them around at various posts.

 

Tzimfemme shook her head to clear it a bit. The Sunray was addling her thoughts as it addled the minds of all phantasm types. There was only one cure for that—a good fight if not necessarily a successful one. “That tears it,” she muttered almost humorously, perversely aiming her flail at an anonymous verdant mage far too weak to have plagued her. The Lobotomy whirled, flew, ignored all conventions of the Archmage Council, and embedded itself in the cowering mage’s midsection. Shocked, Tzimfemme leaped to his side and retrieved her flail, sniffing at the fresh blood spattered on its spiked handle, trying to incite a bloodlust.

 

Normally, Tzimfemme’s twisted precepts required some excuse to attack, if only “Gods, you’re incompetent—fifty forts on 2000 land, what were you thinking?!!!” or some hair-raising pun on the mage’s name or the bloodlust of hostility avenged. This time, instead of assuming the battle-hungry snarl, Tzimfemme’s expression frosted over to blankness. She rose to her full height with stiff posture and, muttering words low in her throat, leapt upon the mage with uncharacteristic single-minded wrath.

[Guest Minta Rose]

Ten minutes later, Ager Guilded, Archmage

 

Minta shot through the inter-continental portal to Ager, arms and legs tucked into the classic Nimball form, spinning head over heels and shrilling with glee. The research guild mage had turned his back for only a few seconds, but that had been long enough for her to ricochet off of the walls and gain enough speed to break free of the guildhall. His dismayed face looked through the portal as Minta sailed and landed on someone’s barrier-land. She hopped to her feet, dusted herself off, and snapped the portal shut with a cheerful “Bye-bye!” to her tutor.

 

“Where’d my sunshine go?” she wondered aloud, climbing up and down the node-studded earthen palisades of the barrier. At the top of the highest wall, Minta stubbed her toe on the razor-sharp bits of node and stopped in pain. Cautiously she wiggled her toes, then stamped her foot. “That hurt! Mean mage put this here. I’ll get her for that! I’ll summon up absolutely the worst creatures and make them all trip her and she’ll fall down screaming and I’ll laugh! . . .And then I’ll tear down this stupid barrier so she can’t be mean to the carrion birds at least,” decided Minta, spitting blood into the dirt where she had tripped.

 

With deep slurping sounds, the ground drank the blood, warped, and collapsed into a narrow funnel. Darkness boiled up from the cleft, bearing on its crest a horned huntsman. “I hear your thoughts,” he rasped smilingly as the tide surged and spouted black fire above Minta’s head, “and I know your dreams. You want to see the best fighters on Terra, don’t you? You want to ride to war—”

 

“Piggyback!” interjected Minta.

 

“—and laugh as they battle without reason, destroying everything they touch?”

 

Minta jumped onto a protruding tongue of darkness and hopped up to stand beside the devil prince. He helped her to sit upon his shoulders as she rejoiced. “But it’ll cost you, little girl,” he wheedled. “One fresh human soul, that’s all I ask. . .”

 

“That’s an awful lot just to trip one stupid mage. . .I can give you all the pixy stix you want,” she thought aloud, taking a pixy stix and tugging the huntsman’s hair, forcing his mouth open.

 

The devil prince sniffed and snapped at the hand trying to feed him. “That won’t do at all! I don’t smell a speck of conscience! What am I supposed to do to a soul without guilt?”

 

Minta jumped down to the ground, shut her eyes, pointed one index finger, and spun until she was dizzy. “Take his instead!” she giggled breathlessly, firing a Curse from her outstretched hand before opening her eyes. “Ooooo, he’s in trouble!” crowed Minta, watching her target’s treants suddenly shrink down to normal proportions and consequently splinter under the invader’s flail. “I made him get in trouble!”

 

Licking his lips at the scent of despair, the huntsman turned the surging darkness toward the beleagured mage’s realm.

 

“Wait!” cried Minta. “Stay with me!”

 

“No, no, little girl,” snarled the devil prince, “he who forfeits his soul gets the devils. Begone, you child of. . .child of. . .” Exasperated, he released the darkness and rode away on the burning tide, black flames nipping at his heels.

[Guest Minta Rose]

Simultaneously

 

Tzimfemme’s mind splintered for self-preservation. The dominant part succumbed to the frosty compulsions and hallucinations, pursuing the outraged and bloody verdant mage with steady gaze. The part which remained Tzimfemme retreated and flung herself against the bars of her cage. “Oh crud, oh great vast steaming and unsavory piles of crud!” she thought frantically. “What do I do? This is not right! I don’t remember this persona. Oh gods, it doesn’t even have a name. . .

 

“I name everyone. Names can’t be helped. This isn’t one of mine. Oh no. I’ve lost it totally, finally, truly this time. I have gone off the deep end of Archmage existence. Or is this Archmage any more? Gods, I’m afraid. . .” Trembling, she barely had time to throw a soul-deep warning to her alternate personae before fleeing into her subconscious. While her unresponsive shell stormed the verdant’s fortress, Tzimfemme’s less public ventures slipped free of her control.

 

Tanks in an annex of Dr. Tzimfemmestien’s castle shattered. Out of the tanks stumbled one human female and one angelic male. The female tossed long black hair out of her eyes and helped the male to regain his footing as they stepped over broken glass and wires.

 

“Aeson,” she read off of the nameplate before his tank, “my ‘brother in duplicity’. . .who wrote this fluff? Something has gone wrong! I mean, just look at me!” She looked distastefully at her naked self and brushed crystals of cloning solution from her skin.

 

“All right. . .Sonje,” Aeson read, gripping the table’s edge and shaking his wings dry. “I agree, this was not successful. But I am still in contact with heaven! Let us be clothed,” he said, and it was so.

 

“Ewwww, pink!”

 

Aeson rolled his eyes, and Sonje’s armor changed to deep blue. “Is that better?”

 

“Not really, I’m still a girl. . .ewwww. . .” Sonje shuddered. “At least your mess-up was, you know, an improvement.”

 

For a few minutes Aeson did not reply. “I have a plan,” he volunteered when the silence became oppressive. “Let’s find the mad doctor and have her undo whatever it is she did. Something’s definitely wrong. I feel like I should be an archmage.” He spread his wings helplessly and took to the air, flying out from the annex with Sonje running easily after him.

 

Angling towards the highest clouds above Ager, Aeson dodged birds and the occasional archangel. With keen vision he scanned the realms. A surge of demonic power caught his eye, and he swiftly pinpointed its destination before returning to earth and retrieving Sonje. He ignored both her chilly skin and her squirming to break free.

 

“So, did you find her? What’s the big hurry?” the valkyrie asked once she was too far above the ground to safely escape.

 

“Devils!” the dominion exclaimed with disgust. “The devil prince and his hounds are riding across Terra. If we get to the mage quickly, we may be able to thwart his summoning before the demon-spawn breaks onto the surface of Terra. If we arrive too late—but we will not—will you fight alongside me?”

 

Sonje nodded and created a lance out of a passing cloud. “Sure, I hate the little fiends. Never mind that this is totally contrary to the original plan. . .”

[Guest Minta Rose]

Simultaneously

 

Rydia’s unconscious form lowered slowly to the ground, her wings beating gently. After a few moments, she recognized the lack of motion and stirred, groaning. Her face was greenish and pale, much the same color as her wings. Thankfully she gripped the solid earth, then moved one hand to clutch her whip as a shadow fell over her.

 

“I didn’t want archangels, I wanted unicorns! Unicorns, dammit! I can’t believe I just pissed forty thousand mana into the wind--” Hoofbeats sounded and the standing mage stopped abruptly. “Ok, so Gate wasn’t a total loss. So if I got the unicorns, how come you’re here?” He prodded Rydia with his boot.

 

“I. . .don’t know. . .” confessed Rydia. “I used to be a white mage but I left Terra, and I think someone summoned me back. . .at least I didn’t have the wings before. . .say, why do you have them?”

 

“Standard Angels of Apocalypse issue, great for dramatic effect and all that. Plus they’re a guaranteed babe magnet, not that I need the help, eh eh eh.”

 

Rydia extracted only one fact from all of his posturing and winking. “I’m on a guilded server?”

 

“Welcome to Ager, babe, it’s a total pit, except for here of course.”

 

Whether ‘here’ meant the guilded server, the guild, or the mage, Rydia could not tell, although she doubted the last option. She got shakily to her feet and let her wings droop. “Can I borrow some mana?” she asked.

 

The warlike Angel shrugged, “Sure, as long as you’re not casting that pansy Love and Peace. Worthless piece of--” The mage continued to rant while Rydia staggered over to the nodes. Centering her scourge between two of the largest boulders, she bowed her head and waited for the words to return.

 

Eventually they did, and Rydia sent the mana skyward with a flick of her wrists. It flashed when it left the Terran atmosphere, and a pair of dark shapes winked into existence. They sailed gracefully downward and bowed before Rydia, dipping their wingtips to the ground. The male dominion looked shyly down at Rydia, discreetly tucking a stray bit of hair under his turban; the female dominion folded back her upper veil like a bride, exposing golden eyes.

 

“I am Vivien,” she resonated, “and Helenus has been newly promoted to our number. Whom do we serve?”

 

Rydia gave her name, all the while wondering why the names seemed so familiar yet the dominions were unlike those she had previously known. She smiled when she assumed—wrongly—that the new summoning had erased their prior existence, and spoke with true joy.

 

“I’m so glad to see you--” she exclaimed, not adding ‘again’ as she wanted to. “Tell me, could you—”

 

“Devils!” gasped Helenus suddenly, his eyes bolting from side to side and his wing feathers rising in response to the cue Rydia could almost sense. “They have broken onto Terra! We must stop them, Vivien!”

 

In an eyeblink, Vivien’s veil had concealed her eyes and her twin glass wands had leaped into her hands. In another blink, both dominions had sped away, leaving Rydia to puzzle before remembering that she too now had wings. Clumsily she worked them back and forth until she was airborne; gingerly she turned while hovering and flapped after the dominions.

[Guest Minta Rose]

Several minutes later, Ager Guilded, Archmage

 

While Rosemary gazed into her mirror, she saw one arm of the spiral whirl its intricate orbit, scouring Ager. A few weak souls began to spin faster as their connections to the scourge snapped. Her quarry sent out a flare on a peculiar tangent and intersected one of the fleeing souls; the collision blossomed into a grey battlefield. Fading into invisibility, Rosemary rode her soul’s thread as it reached for the nexus.

 

She floated in midair, her insubstantial feet brushing treants’ upper branches. On her right hand, the defender laughed without restraint as black batlike shapes spurted from the symbol traced in blood upon the ground. On her left hand, a dominion and a valkyrie followed the trail the attacker won from the treants. Distantly a pair of dominions drew closer despite their fear. Gathering all the insane force of her personality, Rosemary smiled grimly as events arranged themselves around her. If these lonely mages wanted her approval so badly, they were going to burn for it!

 

“What’s this?” puzzled the verdant mage, turning his attention away from the bleeding earth and the devils, as he was simultaneously shorn of his mind and soul. “Who is she. . .why is she attacking me? . . .what’s this arrow mean?” He neglected his lands and the last of his treants fell.

 

Tzimfemme snarled with redoubled delusions, stalking forward with a reaper’s practiced tread, bloodied flail chopping efficiently and fevered chants overriding her own rebellious mind. Somewhere deep inside, she still wailed and protested against her compulsion.

 

Aeson’s mind filled with silvery overviews of the battlefield, plotting where souls and soulless constructs congregated. To the central vortex he paid no attention. Desperate, he changed course to intersect the chaotic knot of devils and devil-plagued mage.

 

Sonje’s mind also thrilled to images of devils chained to the mage and to the land with threads woven from damned souls, draining them dry body and soul to fuel the infernal flames. She felt the victims’ hunger, shrieked with equal lust for revenge, and pursued Aeson.

 

Helenus and Vivien trembled with irrational fear. Wide-eyed, Helenus succumbed and tried to flee, but Vivien barked “Stay!” and seized the clasp of his cloak. His wings pumped frantically to counter her, yet she hauled him dutifully towards the combat.

 

Rosemary smiled again bitterly and stoked her soul, knowing that it burned above her like a beacon. Indeed, all of the creatures whom she had touched now converged on her location, variously battle-hungry and hesistant to fight. She called again more strongly, singing to the insanity, teaching these wayward creatures how all conflicts must end. Incipient blood loss and lost souls tantalized her, and she nearly dropped into substantial form in her starvation.

 

Aeson and Sonje snarled at the devils as the treants concealing the infernal horde died. Though the devils had not yet lifted a claw against them, their minds overflowed with memories of devils gnawing still-living angels for weeks on end, devils swarming over mages until their fingers slipped off of Terra and they fell, devils from which they were created. This last delusion threw them into a blind rage. Aeson grasped Sonje in his arms and pumped his wings until they blurred above his back. Screaming and gnashing their teeth, they charged into the unholy crowd.

[Guest Minta Rose]

Later, flashback to simultaneous time

 

Minta would later treasure the story that I’on’e would wheeze and whisper into her ears: how they panicked at first when the devils’ flesh melted and ran and fused onto their own.

 

“Why?” Minta would always ask, nestled snugly in I’on’e’s sacklike lap, poking at a particularly hideous blemish on the fallen dominion’s scarred flank.

 

“Because we knew what was happening!” it would spit from one mouth or the other. “You’ve not yet had your soul distilled, haven’t felt the noblest bits boiling away while the rest rots. . .”

 

. . .They flew at the devils, Sonje jabbing and slashing wildly with her lance, Aeson drawing deep breaths and exhaling clouds of holy power. Against the endless swarm, Sonje splintered her lance into shards of ice, and Aeson began to vomit as he ran short of mana. He shifted her into the crook of one arm as they fell to earth; immediately they stumbled to their feet and half-ran, half-flew at the nearest devils. Devils’ flesh ripped under their fingers and teeth.

 

Scenting triumph, devils deserted the soulless verdant mage, leaving him to the flail’s cold fury, and mobbed Aeson and Sonje. The entire mass screamed as its wounds intermingled and its blood scalded. Falling to their knees, the dominion and the valkyrie were crushed together when Tzimfemme flung the verdant mage’s headless body atop the pile; she jabbered triumphantly into the din and struck out indiscriminately with her flesh-warping skills. Vivien flew as fast as she could, but impeded by Helenus’s struggles, did not reach the battleground in time.

 

Helenus shielded his face behind his wings as the horrid intermingling began. Less resilient devils lost their power and stained the ground with their greasy ashes. Greater devils mortally wounded one another, adding blood and flesh to the writhing, taffy-like mass. Sonje was the first to succumb as she broke beyond pain into howling laughter. Aeson fought for a bit but his body and soul also twisted into the new form. The corruption touched the stoic Tzimfemme and disintegrated her mental prison to powder. Once more in control of herself, she backpedaled frantically from flying bits of devil flesh as I’on’e dug itself free of the corpses. . .

 

. . .After this retelling of the tale, I’on’e would extend a psuedopodal arm and disgorge a heavy black object into Minta’s hands. “Ooooo, thank you!”, she would chirp, turning the lump of anthracite over and over. “What is it?”

 

I’on’e would chuckle, like poorly oiled gears, “It’s a Black Ankh. You won’t have to worry any more about those horrible angels coming down to snatch you away and force a conscience into you.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because you. . .are. . .special,” I’on’e would smile toothlessly. “I always knew you were, but now that I know the ways of the inferno, I know how very unique you are. We have you to thank for summoning the devils who enlightened us.”

[Guest Minta Rose]

Several minutes later, Ager Guilded, Archmage

 

Finally she had learned how to glide, and Rydia covered ground much more quickly. As she sailed over the last ruined fortress, however, Helenus and Vivien scrambled past her. They were airborne, barely. Vivien’s veil had melted away; tendrils of charred fabric and skin peeled away from her facial bones. She labored for breath with a tongueless mouth. Helenus’s eyes were dimmer than the shadow realm and sealed half-shut with unsheddable tears; he scattered singed feathers with every beat of his mottled wings. Spun about by their heedless passage, she tried to hover and called out, “What happened?”

 

“They fell!” wailed Helenus over his shoulder, his voice cracking. “Dominion. . .or two. . .couldn’t see. . .they fell! The devils got them!” He flapped his wings with a struggle and continued after Vivien, pleading for her to answer.

 

Rydia longed to retreat, but was called back abruptly by distant, familiar shrieks. She was uncertain, but those florid curses sounded much like her former mentor, Tzimfemme. Hesistantly she proceeded until a chunk of solid earth crumbled to blackness underneath her. Dodging the black flames which consumed the ruined realm, she flew faster to escape the demons’ touch and caught sight of the central battlefield.

 

Innumerable treants’ feet had treaded the once-fertile soil into rock-hard ridges. The ridges channeled away mingled blood, sap, skin, bark, and feathers from underneath the heap of corpses. Rydia turned her eyes to the bottom of the heap, looked upwards past broken branches and gobs of molten flesh, and saw something horribly bloated and distorted birth itself from the heap.

 

Rydia had no thought for her scourge or the lack of nodes. She simply raged and ordered everything within her sight to aid her. The entire pile shuddered and glowed with pure white light. The fallen dominion jerked its quadruple legs free of the charged corpses as each one crawled sluglike towards the abomination; they slithered forward and touched I’on’e, exploding upon contact and leaving a wound on the fallen dominion. I’on’e fled silently into the blackened portion of the realm yet the corpses pursued it. The series of explosions faded into the distance and Rydia became aware of another familiar voice chanting into the silence behind her.

 

“Rosemary!” she shouted, but the madwoman paid no attention. The snub enraged Rydia more than it ought to, and she spun around and reached for her scourge. Flicking her whip in midair was difficult, and she lost altitude trying to correct. Waves of energy from Holy Word propelled her backwards as they surged forward on an incorrect tangent; instead of striking Rosemary, they passed in front of her, and Tzimfemme knelt directly into the spell.

 

Her wing feathers rose and prickled as Tzimfemme got to her feet and began to speak. Rydia found herself frowning and some unknown energy building like static on her skin. Too late she realized that it was the archangel’s holy attack, her lungs filling of their own volition and expelling air which transformed when it passed her charged lips. The blast of holy energy welled toward Rosemary and Tzimfemme, knocking the latter unconscious and forcing the former to flee, howling with hungry agony.

 

With shock, she jerked her feet upwards, away from the unbearable heat of infernal flames which ate the land. She glanced at the black fire encircling the battlefield and dove forward, scooping Tzimfemme up from the ground and lifting her with difficulty. Still, Tzimfemme’s dangling legs were well clear of the earth when the last bit of fortress crumbled away and the realm submerged into searing blackness.

[Guest Minta Rose]

Simultaneously

 

Tzimfemme scrubbed her arm where a spot of devil’s blood had raised a blister. “That could have been me. . .” she whispered in a hollow voice, looking at the trampled and bloody ground beneath her feet where I’on’e had been created.

 

“It was you,” Rosemary replied, appearing wraithlike before her astonished quarry. “Don’t you know?”

 

She thrilled to Tzimfemme’s blurted “No!” and watched the fleeing soul entangle itself further with Rosemary’s own. Tzimfemme was greedy for explanations, and Rosemary feasted on her desperation. The realm had served its purpose, and Rosemary turned her attention away from it as it burnt and crumbled back into the inferno.

 

“You do know. To this destroying you came, hoping to be submerged. With the demonic or with the dying, you did not care, only that you would have to run no longer!”

 

Tzimfemme squeaked out some frightened denial; Rosemary did not spare enough attention to listen. More fibers of soul tore loose and were absorbed into the vampire’s flare. Hungrily she gazed at the undefended soul and how weakly its threads orbited. Already the belt had so decayed that the center was bared. Whatever connections had kept Tzimfemme tied to others and to herself were torn away with the touch of corruption, flapping on the astral wind.

 

Rosemary called to those loose threads quivering around Tzimfemme. They bowed and strained in her direction like so many reeds, yet Tzimfemme’s strongest connection prevented them from joining with her. She struggled to prevent the snarl from vocalizing. Her devils had rotted Tzimfemme’s superego away, and Rosemary had consumed her ego—even now the faded soul before her was nothing but emotion. Why could she not be eaten?!

 

“What is that?!” she cried aloud, losing control and reaching out for the thread.

 

Tzimfemme looked bewildered and scuffed at the soil. A fragment of parchment fluttered up, and she knelt to capture it. The handwriting was her own. “ ‘. . .for the sake of my art?’ . . .” she puzzled.

 

The scrap of parchment began to crisp at the edges as the blackness encroached. Slowly the naked mage’s face gained expression once more. “Art? I had a reason? . . .There isn’t any better reason,” she shrugged, and tossed the scrap aside. “Look at this, just look!” she ordered Rosemary, with emotion. “Totally wanton destruction. It’s beautiful, in the right light. Makes me feel creative. Methinks I’ll make a tribute out of it—too bad I never got the victim’s name.”

 

Rosemary returned her attention to the world of souls. Impossibly, Tzimfemme’s soul had rekindled. New twisted strands leaped out of the center and wove themselves around the idea, and the idea branched backwards to the strongest connection.

 

“You can’t do that!” screamed the vampire. “It’s unlawful! You are mine!” Underneath that Rosemary’s thoughts gnawed, “I refuse it! Surrender as you had before, and do not flee!”

 

“What do I care for laws?” Tzimfemme retorted with sudden passion. “Would laws have sent me to this!” In her sudden euphoria for life, she began to rave, and never noticed the bolt of holy energy which knocked her unconscious.

[Guest Minta Rose]

Several hours later, Ager Guilded, Archmage

 

Rydia watched her former mentor pace back and forth outside the Ager Guilded Banquet Hall, almost charging in each direction before bumping into an obstacle and changing direction. She regretted not having a realm in which to tend her, but Tzimfemme, after she awoke, couldn’t give coherent directions on where she should be taken. Every question about authority had resulted in Tzimfemme firing off some unrepeatable reply, and eventually Rydia, disgusted, tired of asking. It was almost a relief when Tzimfemme halted for five full seconds, her lips moving but not in the same patterns as before, then dashed into the Banquet Hall.

 

Snatching at a nearby public-use quill (and ripping its tether out of the table), Tzimfemme found a clear spot on the walls and began to scribble. After the quill ran out of ink, she improvised with spilled ale, and then took blood from the scar her fleshcrafting could not erase.

 

“---The Last Wish and Testament of Tzimfemme---

 

Whereas, I have never stopped feeling any emotion which touched me;

 

Whereas, I am not and no longer can be the object of obsession;

 

Whereas, I have developed a persona with whom I cannot identify;

 

Whereas, I do not know, never should know, and still must not know;

 

Whereas, I have lost my immunity to the wiles of others;

 

Whereas, I am plagued, and cannot force myself to repel the invasion;

 

I must conceal myself for shame of what I have become.

 

Dress me in parti-colored robes without indication of rank or title. Bury me in the lands of Orlan, the Sexy Sexy Man of Terra. Plant nothing upon the grave, but soak it with blood whenever necessary. Do not visit the grave unless you want to know what I do know. In one reset’s time, exhume the grave and pray that you find me whole and well.

 

Yours in fear,

Tzimfemme

The Naked Mage”

 

She splintered the quill with a convulsive hand motion and let its parts fall, reading what had poured out in her frenzy. A fang slid out unnoticed and pierced her tightly clenched lip, and she sucked thoughtfully on the wound as she wondered.

 

Outside, Rydia started to pace as well, wondering when her charge would exit. Fending off repeated questions about her being an Angel of Apocalypse, her mind turned towards finding more of those strange and apparently very impulsive mages. Their description matched Tzimfemme’s, without question.

 

“Crypt,” she announced, startling the nearby patrons. “I’ve got too much class for a grave. . .I think. I hope. I don’t want to be forgotten.” Fitfully she turned towards the door, then halted and a glint of debauchery appeared in her eyes. “And by the gods, I’ll not let them forget what a pain it’ll be, getting me into it!” With a malicious smirk, she opened a portal thoroughly at random and swaggered through it, shouting back to the Banquet Hall, “Don’t wait up!”