The Ogre's Pendant & The Rat in the Pit

The saint snorted. “Magic of the darkest kind.”

“Agreed, but dream-glass itself is by no means light or dark: it is simply useful due to how spiritually porous it is. One can press nearly anything into its being. Then - just as the colour in the glass of your temple stains the light - that captured essence will suffuse any mirage caught within and any illusion that it births.”

He looked appraisingly toward the tower through the breaks in the illusionary canopy. “I do not know what they use here in their enclave, but in the city’s prism they have pressed the essences of dragon’s bile, strychnos, and death’s belladonna.”

St. Cristabel gasped. “A thimble of one of those might fell a horse! This whole garden is made of that?!”

“In a sense, yes. Ah! The fork. We must turn here.” He followed a branching path to the right, continuing to avoid the reaching boughs. “Though just as this illusion is but an echo of what it captures, the poison magic is not as fell as the true venom. Standing among the images might cause merely itching or rash at first.”

He gave a low, dark laugh. His eyes grew distant. “Wizards can be bastards, Cristabel. In the city, the illusion tricks you into thinking that your skin is merely irritated from sweat. As you press deeper into the image, its poison seeps into your flesh while you merely think you are sweltering from the heat. So, you throw off your cloak. Perhaps even your shirt.”

Ducking beneath an illusionary branch, he continued his explanation. “Here, such an action is twice as devilish. The heat in the City of Glass is true, for it lies in the heart of the desert, but that of this bower is a lie. You think you are cooling yourself of the heat, but you are truly opening your body to winter’s full grip. It bites into your flesh even as the poison coils its way toward your heart. By the time you have grown too weak to press on, the cold and venom have robbed you of all faculties.”

A tree with a wide trunk loomed to their right. “Look there. You pause before that tree, thinking to rest yourself for only a few moments, and once you let winter clench you tight, you will go to sleep and…” He sighed. “Well, that is the devil of this illusion: it strikes when you have let your guard down. That is when one can be cut deepest.”

St. Cristabel sniffed. “Dishonourable. Wizards are bastards.”

“Are we truly, Solidblade Knight?” a voice called from ahead. “The poisoned garden may kill, but quietly and without suffering. Yet, from the accounts I’ve heard, you split folk asunder and melt them with your god’s vitriol.” A mocking note entered it. “I know which I would call the more bastardly death.”

St. Cristabel growled, her face reddening beneath her freckles.

“Steady,” Kyembe pressed his hand to her shoulder. “Ku-Hassandra, I cannot see you!”

“Can you not?”

He blinked. “What are you-By the stars!”

The path utterly vanished as though it never were.

Kyembe and Cristabel whirled about within a hidden clearing, their hands tight on their weapons. No path lay through the trees where one could escape.

Even the track they had entered by was gone.

A white arbour rose in the clearing’s midst, enclosing a marble dais upon which stood a round, stone table. A map of the continent was etched into its stony surface - split in half by the Sea of Gods - and surrounding it were strange spheres chiseled in a circle. Each bore a symbol that the knight did not recognize, though the Spirit Killer did.

Ku-Hassandra was seated on the far side, with the white furs of a snow bear sheathing her lean form. A river of ebon hair poured down her shoulder.

Three tablets of weathered stone lay before her, more ancient than the table itself. “And you were mostly correct, Kyembe - though you missed nearly as much as you gathered. For one, the poison does not touch those invited in. You and the Traemean knight are quite safe.” She looked toward Cristabel. “Though such a privilege may be revoked if guests unwisely turn…rude.”

St. Cristabel sputtered, but the Sengezian’s eyes were fixed on the stone tablets. “Are these what you have found?”

Ku-Hassandra indicated a pair of chairs opposite her. “These accounts most matched your enemies: chiseled by the Philosopher Peronius seven centuries before the rise of the Tigrisian Empire.”

He did not move to sit. “What are they written in?”

“Eastern Byblosic.”

Kyembe made a noise of disgust. “A language so dead that its bones are dust.” He looked to Cristabel, who glowered at the wizard. “Could you read it?”

She glanced to the tablets. “I fear not. I have mastered a handful of tongues, but I am no grand scribe; I cannot read dead scripts.”

His eyes fell to her mouth. Though he heard the saint’s speech in Gezi - his mother tongue - the words her full lips drew were entirely different in shape. “What about your gift of tongues?”

“It is no use here,” she sighed. “My words are understood by any ear as all words become clear to mine, but Amitiyah has not graced me with the comprehension of scripts. My apologies.”

“That explains what I was hearing,” Ku-Hassandra mused. “I had wondered how you had Putong-Dai with such fluency. But no matter.”

She drew an elmwood scroll-case from her furs and placed it before her. “Our archivist has studied the language and translated it to Makkadian.” She tapped the scroll. “The accounts reveal no weaknesses or origins, but they do mention habits of these shape changers…lycanthropes, they were called.”

“That is helpful enough,” the Sengezian eyed the scroll case. “And the price?”

“It will not be much.”

Kyembe’s eyes narrowed. “Ku-Hassandra, we have only met once to drink and barter for spells. I do not think we are so close that you would part with lore for ‘not much’.”

“You helped me regain my object of power.” She touched where her chest met her throat. It must have hung beneath the furs - a mummified hand dripping in sapphire rings. “I owe you for that.”

The Spirit Killer was unmoved. “We owe each other nothing, Ku-Hassandra. It was your spell that aided Wurhi and I in escaping Avernix’s camp: you saved our lives as we saved yours. We are equal now.”

For a heartbeat, he caught a flicker of guilt across her face.

It was gone with the next breath.

“Perhaps I feel I owe you more.” She looked away as though some aspect of the illusion caught her eye. “Your journey through the Forest of Giants nearly claimed your life while our trek after Avernix’s camp was quite safe.”

“I cannot say I trust-”

“Kyembe.” Cristabel placed a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps you should hear what this ‘not much’ is before resisting. We are pressed for time, and we have a friend to save.”

Ku-Hassandra raised a brow. “You have some sense to you, Solidblade Knight.”

“I caused you offence and you caused mine. We are equal now.” The Traemean’s tone was as stiff as her words polite. “And we have a friend to save,” she repeated.

The Spirit Killer nodded to her appreciatively, and turned back to the wizard. “And what do you wish?”

“Nothing much, as I have said.” Ku-Hassandra lifted her chin. “I simply would ask for a favour at a later time.”

“And what would that be?”

“I do not know, yet. But being owed by the Spirit Killer is good enough, I think.”

He snorted. “I have dealt with enough demons to know that ‘an unnamed favour later’ is the most costly of prices.”

“It does not have to be.” Ku-Hassandra leaned forward. “Hear this:” She raised her hand, folding her delicate fingers into a fist. She kissed her knuckles: the beginning of oath-making in the southlands. “In return for this needed knowing, I - Ku-Hassandra of the City of Glass - will call upon you, Kyembe of Sengezi, for a service. You may choose what service you wish to perform. I have many needs, and I am sure one of them will be acceptable to you.”

Crimson eyes narrowed. “And I may refuse if it is not?”

“Yes.” She said simply. “I will merely ask for something else.” A smile took her delicate lips. “Eventually.”