When Heroes Die

“One hundred and forty-four. If you come into the possession of any strange or enigmatic objects with no apparent purpose, ensure that they are never lost, broken or misplaced. They will almost certainly be of critical import in the distant future.”

– ‘Two Hundred heroic Axioms’, author unknown

Cordelia Hasenbach.

Routine was something Cordelia Hasenbach embraced.

Which was what made breaks to her routine all the more tiresome. She had broken her fast and had been going over the expected difficulties of the day with her closest advisors. The boon of coin they had received from the Chosen had created new avenues of negotiation with the Kingdom Under that needed to be accounted for.

She was walking around the walls of one of the Autumn palaces in Salia when a breathless attendant brought her a missive. Taking it, she leaned over the crenellations and then started to peruse the contents.

She skimmed over the letter twice more, while allowing the sound of her soldier’s morning drills down below to wash over her. Despite being eighteen and well-bred, the contents of the letter made her want to throw a tantrum. Even beyond the grave, it appeared Princess Constance saw fit to make problems for the Principate. Biting back an oath, she considered what to do.

The matter of Constance’s Scar had risen in priority and was now a pressing concern. Shortly after the tragedy had first occurred, travellers in the region had started to complain about an uncanny feeling when venturing near. Priests should have been dispatched in the aftermath to contain any potential undead breakout, but with the state of the Principate, the task had fallen by the wayside. As time marched on, that expanded from the ill-founded superstitious mutterings of peasants to claimed sightings of ghosts. At the start of her campaign, word had come that phantom raiding parties bearing Constance’s banner had been attacking anyone who ventured close enough to the Scar. The missive that Cordelia had just received warned of the rise of entire legions of angry shades.

Cordelia was uncertain how to deal with the matter. Traditional weapons had so far proven ineffective against the creatures, although the workings of Priests had shown promise. By Klaus’s reckoning, the threat had grown to the point that the Principate did not have sufficient priests to see it properly excised.

It was fortunate that Taylor’s origins remained clouded in mystery for most. The Alamans princes would undoubtedly have Princess Constance cast as a folk hero should the place of Taylor’s arrival be known. The brave princess who had so cruelly lost her life in an attack called down by the perfidious schemes of Cordelia up north. They would treat Taylor as nothing more than a tool to have Cordelia’s reputation tarnished and forget the cost of earning the Chosen’s ire.

The matter of Constance’s Scar was of critical import. It would have far-reaching consequences if serious effort was not made to see it properly contained. The imperilled region included a not insignificant swathe of Procer’s heartland. The spectral raiding parties had begun to pillage along Julienne’s Highway. One of Procer’s arteries was under threat. It had already forced Klaus to consider alternate routes for staging the next part of the Lycaonese campaign.

After Lange had fallen, she had marched on Salia with the intent of using it as a rest stop before giving battle at Cantel to the south. It was likely that there was where the final confrontation with the coalitions of Princess Aenor of Aequitan and Prince Amadis of Iserre would take place. Despite Agnes’s assurances that the outcome of the battle would resolve in Klaus’s favour, she couldn’t help but be nervous.

Be a dictator or don’t.

As a girl Cordelia had made a deep study of ruling, knowing that she would one day inherit Rhenia and intended to serve her people as best she could. She was acutely aware of the limits of Lycaonese wisdom, and so she searched for answers among the learning of other realms. She had looked far, in acquiring tomes. From one side of the continent to the other. She had yet to acquire any political treatises penned by the hand of Dread Empress Malicia, but it was not for the lack of making the attempt.

Her initial overtures to recruit the Chosen had been made at the behest of Agnes. Foul portents of what could come to pass should Taylor decide to stand on the opposing side of the field. She was a foe that Cordelia could not afford to contest with the strength of arms. Even should she be victorious, the cost would prove ruinous. According to Agnes, not all futures along that road ended in defeat, but enough did that Cordelia had considered the imposition of courting the Chosen worth the price.

The arrangement was not entirely to Cordelia’s detriment, and not only in the form of material assistance.

Taylor had presented the opportunity to excavate the mind of someone from beyond the shores of Creation for insights. The attempt had borne little fruit. For once, it had galled Cordelia that a hero had been so unschooled in matters of politics. She had been tempted to castigate the hero for the shortfall in her education, but had instead withheld her thoughts. The station of the girl’s birth was not a failing of her own.

The hero’s inadequacies in matters of statecraft did not make her assessment of Cordelia’s protracted strategy any less correct. The seeds of her plan for the foundation of a Grand Alliance had only just planted themselves in the fertile soil of her mind. She would have presented it as a council of nations participating in the Tenth Crusade that could adjudicate internal disputes, but would not include clauses forcing the alliance to end after Praes was laid low. Cordelia had believed it would see the pillars of her reign cast in steel and forge a Principate that could finally turn its attention towards the true enemies.

She’d had been teetering on the brink of a decision, when Taylor had presented her poorly argued dismissals of Cordelia’s long-term strategy. Cordelia hadn’t given much weight to Taylor’s castigation of her plan at first. After consulting with her advisors and having them scour historical records of the previous crusades, she had conceded that staging the Tenth Crusade was more likely to fracture the Principate than see it forged anew.

And so Cordelia had begun to revise her vision for the future of the Principate. She had her advisors scour old records and unearth every fragment of namelore that she could. The cost in both time and silver might have deterred her once, but not when confronted with the evidence of how close she had come to skirting the edge of ruin. The bitter taste of how close she had courted disaster stung like salt-water against an open wound, but Cordelia already toiled to close the holes in her schemes.

The strategy that emerged from the furnace had been tempered by new wisdom. Her dreams of a Grand Alliance were not dead in the water, it was only the initial purpose of the alliance that required adjustment. The pact would be defensive, an agreement to unite in the event of extraordinary actions committed by any major Evil polity. It was unfortunate that a war on Callow could not be prosecuted to the last holdout, but Cordelia had conceived of an alternate method for scouring every trace of Evil from that backwards kingdom.

Taylor had delivered both the Revolutionary’s drafts for his vicious scheme in Aisne and what little of the Carrion Lord’s additions to the plans she had been able to unearth. It would take little work for Cordelia to see them wielded against Praes, and it would come as a significant blow.

Her investigations of the Pravus Bank had provided unrelated insights into the economy of Praes. The nation’s food shortages came as no surprise to her given some of their cultural practices, neither did their long history of grain imports, but it spoke to the presence of an easily exploited vulnerability. One that Cordelia would not hesitate to take advantage of.

The Calamities were villains, and stories were weapons that cut best when wielded in the hands of those on the side of the Heavens. They had seen fit to stoke the flames of madness within both Aisne and the Principate at large. Malicia’s thrust in Aisne was but one move of many in their contest, but it was a thrust that Cordelia had yet to return. Cordelia would see their madness returned in kind.

The people of Callow were a vicious lot of backward peasants, known for their long history of fostering grudges. Cordelia would turn the schemes of the Tower over to them, with her own additions outlining the fragility of Praes’s economy. She had no doubt that the people of Callow would burn their own fields to see their tyrants brought low.

In matters of internal conflict within the Principate, she intended to use Taylor’s reforms as a platform to quell her opposition. She had initially dismissed the idea of providing a political education within schools for the peasantry for their lot in life would find no benefit from it, but circumstances had seen fit to change her mind. Cordelia thought that she could maintain her hold on power for at least a decade without calling for a Crusade, before the other princes had eroded away her power.

That was sufficient time to educate opponents for each Prince within their own Principality and collect an abundance of incriminating evidence on every last one of them. She would use the information she gathered to incite dissent should they make the attempt at unseating her from power. It did not suit Cordelia to care about who ruled the lands to the south, provided they did so capably and were not plotting to undermine her rule. In light of their origins, were the Malanzas to be wrested from the reins of power, it would be a fate that they had earned.

It was an unconventional scheme that would rely on her maintaining an unblemished reputation within the confines of the Principate’s internal politics. Cordelia considered it essential that she be viewed as an acceptable candidate to rule in the aftermath of her grand reveal, but she knew that it was not beyond her faculties to do so. Cordelia wagered that so long as conflict remained situated at the level of Principalities rather than the broader Principate, they would be willing to band together in the face of an external threat.

While each Principality turned their attention inwards like vultures fighting over scraps, Cordelia would see to it that her purpose remained fulfilled. She would see the walls were manned and fortified, the roads were safe and in accordance with her agreement with the Chosen, the lives of the peasants were improved. It would cost her political capital in the Highest Assembly, but her reputation would soar.

She was Cordelia Hasenbach. She would salvage a nation from the madness the Tower had turned the Principate into, no matter the cost.

Lennox the Revolutionary.

The measured plodding of his boots against the forest floor matched the care that Lennox had once shown as he put quill to parchment.

Prod.

Step.

Prod.

Step.

One could not be too careful when embarking on a journey through the Waning Wood. The forest was fraught with perils both wondrous and mundane. He questioned the wisdom of the road he traced once more, but chose not to shy away from this turn of the page.

He ducked beneath the covers of another tree, then felt his boots sink into the loam. The faint bubbling of a spring echoed in the distance like the sound of rainfall over his family’s farm. A twinge of resentment. He dismissed the memory once more.

Mercantis was the spine of the ledger that upheld Calernia. It was no mere whim that motivated his choice of destination. Revolution whispered to him like the blossoming of new shoots come spring. It whispered and he decided to answer. Lennox would burn through the rot like fields of sugar cane faced by summer flames. The city of Bought and Sold would trade coin no longer, as he consigned it to a pyre of its own make.

The Revolutionary passed between the painted pages of a fern and stepped out into the fading golden light of the late afternoon sun. The brook babbled before him. Weary from his journey, he peeled off his boots and soaked his feet in the cooling water. It was almost inklike in its viscosity.

Like the crunch of discarded parchment, twigs crackled nearby. Lennox turned his attention towards the sound. A pale skinned figure with a black silken blindfold over one eye clad in a sober long-sleeved tunic with buttons of shade approached from between the trees.

The Revolution sung to him then. It sang like it never had before. Lennox could see all the uses the Prince of Nightfall could be put to. He could already taste the fruits of their collective harvest.

“Would you consider extending your banking into the fine city of Mercantis? I would serve as your intermediary, and there is much coin to be made.”

In his mind, Lennox could see the seeds of the story he was planting take root in the creature’s head. It was likely that the Prince of Nightfall could escape the furrows he had ploughed, but Lennox doubted that the raven haired creature would choose to do so.

“Why should I decide to fund this branch?” he replied.

“I would offer loans to the greedy and desperate within the City of Bought and Sold. Loans where they need only offer up their souls when signing their name to the agreement. It is within your means to offer coins at no cost to us both.”

Lennox knew that the only coin the Fae could offer would fade like summer crops with the changing of seasons, but that only served to further his goals. Coins would pour forth into the city of Mercantis like ink spilled from the well. The economy would adjust to its presence with the passage of years, then one day it would all evaporate like mist.

It would all come tumbling to the ground like books on a knocked over bookshelf when that time finally arrived.

“And what of your desires?”

“What you want is what I want. In this undertaking, there is nought that I seek for myself.”

A gaggle of children sounded out as the Prince of Nightfall laughed.

“A well-laid trap. A well-laid trap indeed.”

Their bargain had yet to be struck. An agreement was still to be found, but Lennox could see which way the wind had blown by the shifting of the grass.

Lennox had not set foot in Mercantis yet, but he could already hear the roaring of flames.

Akua Sahelian.

“Show me not my reflection,” she spoke in an ancient Mtethwa dialect, “but the face of your brother.”

“Mpanzi,” her father grinned.

She missed his company. Their only allowed contact was when she received his tutelage in sorcery, although both of them had been finding ways to subvert those restrictions regardless. She would be with him right now, were she not about to attempt another summoning once again. Secrecy was paramount: the moment any other practitioners within the empire became aware of what she was calling upon, they would immediately move to kill her. That required her to perform her experiments on the outskirts of Wolof, away from prying eyes.

It had taken the best efforts of her family agents to procure an object tainted by the Aspirant from deep within the bowels of the Tower. It was a book that had been written in a language nobody spoke. The fact that any corrupted artefacts had remained came as complete a surprise. The Dread Empress had tasked The Warlock with purging that corruption, and surprisingly, the edict had been met with great fervour and enthusiasm.

“Papa,” Akua returned his grin with a smile of her own.

“I’ve finished converting that old Wolofite ritual from Petronian to Trismegistan sorcery. Some of the improvements I made along the way look like they will bear promise. Dread Empress Triumphant’s — may she never return — old seeking rituals were horribly wasteful in nature. While it would certainly locate and bind demons, it did so through brute force.”

The grin on Akua’s face remained firmly in place. While she would have liked to ask her father to elaborate, she had precious little time right now.

“Can you send them to me?”

Akua required sharper tools to bring about her long term goals.

“Of course. I’ll send them the usual way.”

Yvette.

The world rippled. Surprised, Yvette felt something calling to her. What was wrong? Trying to push away the calling of sleep, she rubbed her eyes and looked around. Her ma was standing beside the finished Titan’s monument. Yvette’s feelings were complicated. Taylor had promised to be there for her. Taylor had kept her promise. Everything would be fine if that was all there was to it. It wouldn’t be perfect. Her old family was still gone, but she had a new family and that counted for something, right?

But Taylor also wanted her to let go of her revenge. It didn’t help that Yvette couldn’t even think of a way to get her revenge, or that Taylor was usually right about things. It made her feel so helpless. What was she thinking about again? Oh, right, Taylor. She was standing with her hands against the stele and there was Light.

There was so much Light.

The glow of dawn shone in through the open rooftop, but it was completely overshadowed by the Light. Yvette didn’t actually know how much Light that was. She didn’t bother to try to determine how much Light was present. Yvette didn’t really have a good way to measure those things. Not without tools that she didn’t have, available only to those living in the east. The theory she had read about the Light talked about doing comparisons to lights summoned by sorcery. How much power would it cost her to summon that?

It was a terrifying amount. Somewhere between destroying the city of Aisne and blowing up all of Procer. The last of Yvette’s drowsiness fell away, and all she felt was alarm.

What was Taylor even doing? Was she calling down an Angel?

Yvette felt numb as she stared at the broken body beside her. Blood. There was so much blood. The fight with the Tumult had gone wrong from the very beginning. She had tried to help. Nothing she had did worked. Was that a bit of brain smeared against the tunnel walls?

Yvette’s breath came quickly to her.

“I warned her that you would drive in the knife,” the Saint of Swords dropped Yvette on the ground.

Was this her fault? Laurence seemed to think so. Maybe it was. Yvette started to bawl.

No, no.

This wasn’t okay.

Taylor couldn’t be dead. She had promised that she would look after Yvette. She had said she would be her ma.

“Come on, kid, We can’t sit on our asses. Let’s move.”

It was just like the Ratlings to take that away from her. They would never let her have a family. Was even the smallest corner of happiness too much? Taylor’s legs were all wrong. The left one was snapped at the knee and the right was driven through her gut.

Taylor had promised.

Akua Sahelian.

The golden mirror clouded over and Akua turned back towards the room behind her. Her gaze settled on men chained, paralysed and, whimpering on the ground inside of her ritual chamber. Chained. She wondered why the thought bothered her. Not the pleading, not the cries, not the spilling of blood. Only the chaining.

“A Hell Egg,” Barika said from beside her. “You are really trying to make one.”

“Start checking the ritual. Those papers on my desk explain the necessary corrections. Be sure not to touch the basilisk skin by accident. Even skin contact with it is deadly.”

Barika turned away from her and began to follow her instructions.

Akua’s eyes slid off the half dozen men to the inscriptions surrounding them. A page from the Aspirant’s book had been torn out and placed at the centre of the boundary as a focal point for the ritual. A circle — the boundary — marked the inside of the spell. She could not afford for the creature to escape by modifying its own bindings when her summoning succeeded. Already her mind had picked out the additions she would need to make to the ritual.

Akua turned towards the desk to her left and seized an engraving pen, a vial of blood as well as another containing powdered walin-falme. She stepped carefully as she entered the chamber, making sure not to disturb any of the myriad runes inscribed onto the floor below. She knelt, taking care not to crease her silk dress as she did so, then began to finish this final series of corrections.

Akua looked down on her work half a bell later, satisfied with what she had assembled. Leaving the chamber, she returned the remnants of her reagents to their rightful places, then entered the chamber once more with her ritual knife in hand and a banner in the other.

“I could find no further errors,” Barika stated.

“Leave the chamber.”

Barika was out in a heartbeat.

Akua walked around the outside of the ritual circle languidly as she chanted. She gripped a knife in her left hand and a banner in her right. She did not expect the banner to see use today - it was unlikely the demon would be found on her first attempt - but it would be remiss for her to not come prepared. The standard had been modelled on Triumphant’s work, not just the bindings but also the embroidered design - a snake swallowing its own tail. With the help of her father, the enchantments had been refined - adjusted to account for the exact nature of the creature that she sought to contain. Experiments with the book had proven essential in establishing what it was that the demon could do.

Akua’s movements were unhurried, for the spell was a compound of many smaller seeking spells designed with the intent to locate demons. One at a time, each of the throats were slit.

She came to a halt before the control array for the ritual. Her chanting concluded, the final man gurgled as his life came to an end.

An inky blackness blossomed into being inside the barrier. These first moments were pivotal. Akua turned towards her instruments and made adjustments to the ritual as she worked. She had designed the spell to be modular. With the control panel, she could adjust variables in order to narrow in on what it was that she sought.

One of her instruments let out a shrill whine, indicating that her prize had been found. Akua looked up into the blackness within her circle. Within it stood a tall girl clad in the attire of one of the priests of above. Akua was about to start the process of binding the demon when her paranoia called to her. She turned back to her instruments as a final precaution before she chose to act. It took effort to suppress the surprise she felt from the readings they displayed.

Her measurements indicated that the nature of the girl was changing. It would not be long before nothing remained of what she had attempted to bind, and something else existed in its stead. She assessed the information she had a second time and came to an unlikely conclusion. The girl was either changing into an angel, or another construct that emitted similar levels of Light to one. Akua dismissed the first outcome as impossible, but the second was no more reassuring.

The situation still presented a tempting opportunity despite the hazard involved.

The creature’s nature had not fully metamorphosed just yet, and Akua was capable of modifying her existing bindings to match the emerging nature of her prize.

While she had come prepared to bind a demon, an angel was in many ways a much more powerful tool.

Yvette.

Yvette climbed off the pillows to her feet and ran towards Taylor.

“Ma, ma, what are you doing whatever it is stop it's scary I don’t know what’s going to happen and I don’t think any of us can survive that.” she panted and pulled at Taylor’s arm, but Taylor didn’t move.

Her breathing came quick, ragged.

What else could she do? Should she call the Saint? No, she would just tell Yvette to kill Taylor again. Or she would tell Yvette that it was perfectly fine. Yvette didn’t trust the Saint. Huh, the shadow cast by that rock looked kind of like a sparrow. No, think. Can’t be distracted. Her attention narrowed inwards from every animal on the farm to only the sheep.

Right. How about a diagnostic spell? She needed to find out if anything was wrong with her ma. Yvette began to cast.

The last word left her mouth and her spell took. Yvette frowned. Something was different. Taylor was changing. Was she dying? No, she was fine. There were also trace amounts of Trismegistan sorcery. Someone was trying to teleport Taylor somewhere, but that wasn’t important. That wasn’t what Yvette was looking for. But wait, if Taylor was different now, then how was Yvette supposed to continue her research?

Don’t scream, don’t scream.

She couldn’t help it, she howled in frustration. The back of her neck prickled. All of her notes had relied on Taylor, and now they were all wrong. Well, not exactly. She just didn’t have an easy way to continue.

Wait.

Something was wrong.

Yvette frowned and looked at her diagnostic spell again.

Someone was trying to teleport Taylor somewhere.

Teleportation magic was ruinously expensive. How was that person even affording the cost? Components already in hand, Yvette incanted the diagnostic spell once more. She needed to verify the results.

Who was doing this? It had to be someone from across the sea. Nobody else bothered with this kind of sorcery. Maybe Yvette could learn something from them? No, focus. Bad thoughts. They were stealing her ma.

Yvette reached into her pouch for components, then turned to her gift and muttered a diagnostic spell. She fumbled it twice between her snot and tears. What was she missing? Was it an inkwell, a quill, or paper for analysis? No. She needed to focus. One more fumble, but the spell took.

Relief flooded Yvette. She relaxed.

Taylor hadn’t lied. She was alive. Her ma was alive and everything would be okay.

“Even though Taylor’s head is caved in, and her legs are a mess, I’m certain that she’s not dead. She promised she would be my ma. She promised that she wouldn’t leave me, and I believe her. Besides, she’s still alive, I can feel her. She isn’t human like us. Just wait a little while longer, and she will be back.”

“Necromancy is dark magic. If she isn’t dead, then we should lay her to rest.”

Dust. So much dust fell down from above. What? Laurence wanted to kill Taylor? Why? Taylor hadn’t done anything wrong!

“Just because she’s not human doesn’t mean she’s evil. The elves exist, and they are a Good race. Think about all the good she’s done, does that seem like the kind of thing an Evil person would do?”

“Harden your heart. Steel is the only end a revenant deserves.”

“She’s chosen by an angelic choir, and you aren’t. If anything, that makes her better than you. So, if we're using that as a scale, she’s the hero, and you’re the Evil monster who doesn’t do anything except judge people unfairly and swing a sword. When have you ever built anything? She helped rebuild a whole city oh look, ma’s woken up.”

Wait. Revenant. Why was Laurence calling Taylor a revenant? She wasn’t undead, she was-

Akua Sahelian.

Akua let out a long breath and felt her mind cool as she sunk into the meditative trick that her family had tortured out of the Watch. The quantity of modifications she had needed to make to the ritual in order to adjust it to the new nature of the creature had almost had her call the attempt at binding the creature off. Instead, it appeared that her contingencies had borne fruit.

The bindings were not as thorough as they would be had they been purpose built for an angel instead of a demon, but the threshold for failure was within acceptable margins, and thus she was prepared to push ahead.

Akua touched her finger to the rune on the standard, then triggered the adjusted array.

She frowned as she felt interference from the other side. A single glance at her instruments reassured her that it did not come from the creature - it had mercifully remained placid the entire time. It appeared that another was making the same attempt, instead. This presented a complication of the type that Akua did not expect, but their first exchange had given Akua enough information to determine that her opponent was far less skilled.

The binding would go ahead.

Yvette.

Her hand slipped.

Oops.

The spell finished casting despite her mistake. Yvette’s eyes narrowed. What did she mess up? She asked it to determine more about whoever was summoning Taylor. That would be useful to know anyhow. She looked at the results.

Yvette was not happy with what she found out.

The point of origin the spell pointed at was somewhere to the southeast. Yvette wasn’t exactly sure where. Her diagnostic spell had failed when it passed the maximum distance she had accounted for. It was too far away to accurately judge.

That didn’t mean she was unable to work it out on her own. Taylor had fought the Warlock before. Was that why Taylor was summoning the light? Was she fighting with the Warlock right now?

Yvette’s alarm spiked when she saw another spell start to thread itself around Taylor. It looked like the start of a binding spell. Yvette muttered out an incantation and severed it. Good. The problem was gone. It was only a few heartbeats later when another binding appeared. This one was far more complex than the last one.

Yvette tried to shatter this one, only for her attempt to slip through it like a knot and come back towards her as an arrow of force. She yelped as she dodged. She concentrated, then made another attempt.

It was harder this time. She needed to account for her opponent being tricky, but Yvette could be tricky too. The purpose of wards could be modified. So she started to corrupt the variables. It worked for a few heartbeats, before her opponent started to undo her sabotage.

“Whoever you are I’m not letting you take my ma do you hear me!” she shouted out in anger.

It wasn’t fair. Everyone kept trying to steal her family from her. Yvette scrambled against her enemy, but they were clearly better at magic than she was. Maybe it really was the Warlock? Taylor’s presence began to shrink.

Yvette felt the early onset of despair.

“Don’t you dare steal and bind my ma she’s good and I know how much she hates being trapped I won’t let you do it I won’t.”

No, this couldn’t be it. Yvette wouldn’t allow it.

What else could she do?

She continued to fight while she thought. Taylor’s presence had shrunk to the size of the room.

There was a magical law that prevented two bindings existing simultaneously. She could bind Taylor herself. Should she do it? Yvette doubted that Taylor would be happy, but there was nothing stopping Yvette from releasing the bindings afterwards.

Taylor vanished from the room. All that remained of her was the faintest trace of her presence.

Yvette panicked.

That settled it. The other caster was far too skilled for Yvette to contest her like this. It felt like she was six years old again and her Da was shouting at her for counting wrong. Yvette didn’t like what she was about to do, but she would do it anyway if it would protect her new ma.

She would have to be quick. First she needed to slip Taylor free of this ward, then she would need to substitute her own.

Could she do it?

If she wanted to save her ma, she would have to.

Three… Two… One…

The ward was changed for a moment. That would have to be enough.

Guilt ate at her as she began to incant as fast as she could.

“Four bars, unyielding chains;

Cast in kindness

Your servant beseeches you;

Heed my call.”

No, not call, Call.

It was a plea.

She felt something then as she reached out. Her call reverberated outwards into that non-space that Taylor called her own and struck against the changing presence there.

Her spell settled into place. She realized then that she had made another mistake. Why wouldn’t she? Yvette always made mistakes. She always forgot something. Normally it didn’t matter. Usually it was fine. It wasn’t fine now. The temporary cage she had made wouldn’t work. It was designed for Taylor’s old self, not whatever she was now.

Tears of anger and frustration began to rain.

Yvette felt a presence turning towards her as she cried. It was heady, overbearing in a good way? A strong sense of caring and approval smothered her. That was weird.

No, it was Taylor.

Her ma reached out and modified Yvette’s spell before it faded away.

She changed it so that it would bind her.

The binding settled into place.

Taylor appeared in the room once more, only a few heartbeats later.

Akua Sahelian.

Akua felt a moment of clarity as her binding fell away.

For in her failure, a truth had been glimpsed. For the span of a heartbeat, Akua had seen beyond the veil.

She had sought for some time to settle on the scope of her goals, to find what it was that she intended to claim. Now she knew without a doubt what that was. She was no Black Knight, no Warlock, no Empress most dread. Akua would not settle for an empire, a continent, or even the whole world.

She was Akua Sahelian and one day she would not only inherit Creation, but everything else beyond it as well.