Spirea laughed. “My plan? My plan was to send you and your closest supporters away for a while. Nevertheless, the strategy I gave you to attack Wysteria with sea-water would succeed in the hands of any but the most inept of leaders.”
I can feel her. She’s angry that this Erin came back so soon.
“Why are you here?” Spirea spat. “The invasion is just beginning. Did you think you could just stroll back here and assume everything went smoothly? A real leader stays close to the situation so she can make quick decisions.”
Erin stepped back and looked around furtively. “E-everything seemed to be going well...”
“They defeated you the last time by cutting off your communications. The whole point of sending you there personally was so that you could be on-site to make decisions should the situation change. This just shows how deeply incompetent you are. You were never worthy of the scepter you hold. It is my time to take your place.”
She’s already positioned herself to take the throne here? How much time has passed? What year is this?
Queen Strelan took another step back. With trembling hands, she held up her scepter before her. “Just because you have a scepter doesn’t mean you rule.”
Spirea smiled wickedly. “You're right of course. The rule of Stretis requires more than just a scepter.”
Spirea touched a rune on her scepter and the tip extended out into a long blade, dripping with venom. There was a flash of movement, followed by the clang of metal against stone. It happened so fast, no one else had been able to follow it with their eyes. When they found her, Spirea was kneeling over Erin, who had been forced down onto her back, the blade piercing through her chest and down into the stone beneath her.
Erin looked up in shock. The venom moved swiftly through her body, leaving squiggly black trails all over her skin. Her eyes trembled in horror, and then she was gone.
I...I can feel her pleasure from the kill. Her emotions are pouring into me as if they were my own.
Satisfied, Spirea stood up over her kill and turned around. The ministers and guards all fell down on their knees.
“Hail, Queen Sotol,” they chanted in unison. As they did so, a shadow seemed to fall over the room.
In the back of Spirea’s mind, the real Spirea curled up and wept.
Why? Why couldn’t they just have let me die?
Chapter Thirty-Four
Dev'in screamed as he grabbed the metal brazier. The material twisted effortlessly in his grip. Holding one end like a club, he smashed it into the thin layer of black tar beneath him over and over again. Blair stood motionless before him, black droplets of souls splattering on his face. His needle-like eyes twitched with the faintest hint of fear.
Dev'in tossed the brazier aside. “Did you know,” he began between heavy breaths, “that the scholars of Timmeron believe that the body’s connection to the soul is in the blood? When the blood is lost, the soul is released, and through the blood we pass on a piece of our souls to our children.”
Blair stood motionless, trying to hide his fear.
Dev'in walked over to the realm map, expertly carved with all twelve seas and all seventy-eight islands. Making a fist, he punched the stone and broke it in half with his bare hand. “However,” he continued, his voice howling. “The monks of Whilinham teach that the soul is anchored to the heart. For it is our passions that make us who we are. It is our connections to others that define us, and all of that comes from the heart.”
Dev'in grabbed the stone tablet and knocked it over, allowing it to land with a splat into the black shakes at their feet. “After living more than a thousand years, I have developed a theory of my own. I believe that that the place the soul and the body connect is in the skin, specifically the skin of the face.”
Dev'in took a moment to look at his wavering reflection in the black liquid beneath him. “I don’t even recognize the face staring back at me, nor the monster hidden behind those young eyes. I can’t even recall what my first face looked like. My real face.”
Dev'in walked up to Blair and slowly circled him. Blair stood still, staring forward. “I think it’s better this way,” Dev'in explained as he circled. “My first body would be horrified at the monster I have become, the terrible things I have done. Looking at this strange reflection makes it easier somehow. Makes it simpler to do things that would have disgusted me before.”
Blair slowly opened his dry mouth. “With the ruper spice facility destroyed, we have no way of replacing our depleted supply of black shakes.”
Dev'in raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think me so easily thwarted? There are many options still available to us, but they all carry dangers. They are all...distasteful.”
Blair swallowed and considered his words carefully. “I prefer to think of them as an acquired taste. If the gods did not want us to experience the distasteful, then they would have made the world without them. Who are we to turn our noses at the gift of experience?”
“You would think of it that way,” Dev'in criticized. “Even when you were little I saw it in you, a sadism that cannot be taught.”
Blair tilted his head. “Do I detect a rebuke?”
“No, not at all,” Dev'in corrected him. “In fact, I think it appropriate, in a perverse sort of way. I have made myself into a monster, and so it only makes sense that my children would be monsters as well. In a way, you are far more my child than your sister ever was.”
Blair took a little more confidence in this. “She convinced herself that the bright colors were an illusion. It was how she forced herself to survive in the dark. I survive by embracing them both.”
“We cannot create new keystones for the replacement Navy ships, and we do not have enough souls to fuel the upcoming sacrifice. If nothing is done, the spell that controls the seas will stop working as well,” Dev'in droned aloud, stating their situation.
Blair sensed his father’s thoughts and licked his thin lips. “Shall I warm up the tubs under Iso?”
Dev'in nodded. “We will liquidate a large group of people from some island. Convert their souls directly into black shakes. Bypass the ruper spice all together.”
Blair smiled and leaned back, inhaling deeply. “That will be noticed.”
The door opened at the far end of the hall and Marc ran in, his feathers visibly ruffled. “The Kingdom of Madaringa. Their royal family just announced over the prism stream. They have withdrawn from the League. They are joining Wysteria.”
Dev'in punched Blair square in the stomach. Blair doubled over in pain, retching his guts out onto the floor.
“We shall use this to our advantage,” Dev'in roared. “We will make an example of them. Something that will cow the other islands into obedience. We will make them weep with grief.”
Blair coughed and wiped his face. “What shall we do, Father?”
Dev'in kicked Blair in the head, knocking him to the floor. “Liquidate the people of Madaringa. The entire royal family, all the nobles, all the merchants. One member of each common household. I want that entire island to howl!”
Marc took a half step back. “But, Madaringa is the backbone of the war effort. Without the shipyards...”
“It doesn’t matter. The time of cleansing is approaching, so long as we have all the materials necessary, it won’t matter if we have shipyards or not.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Okay, so let’s try another one,” Mandi said, setting Molly down on the table so they could see eye to eye. “Let’s say someone grabs you like this and picks you up, he’s trying to take you away, what do you do?”
“This game is weird,” Molly complained. “I wanna play magic fairy today.”
Mandi patted Molly on the head, mussing up her little pigtails. “Look, kid, every girl needs to know this stuff. You need to know how to protect yourself.”
“From what?”
Mandi through for a moment, then held her hands up like claws. “From boys.”
Molly stuck her tongue out. “Boy
s are yucky.”
“Yes! Yes they are, very very yucky, don’t ever forget that. Okay, so stay with me here, if he picks you up like this what do you do?”
Molly shrugged.
“You hit him in the throat right here.” Mandi took Molly’s little hand and touched it to her own throat to show her the spot.
“After this will you turn into a magic fairy?” Molly asked.
“Only if you do it right, now it works to make a fist, but it’s better to just use two knuckles like this. The jab will poke deeper, cause his larynx to close up, his hands will come up to grasp his throat, and then you run away while he chokes.”
Molly pulled her hand away. “If I hit people, they won’t want to be my friend.”
Mandi placed Molly back down on the floor. “Trust me, kid, the only way to get through life is by yourself.” Molly skipped over to her toy box and pulled out a tiny red dress and handed it to Mandi.
“The more connections you fake with other people, the more collars you put on yourself, the more they weigh you down,” Mandi explained as she took the dress and walked into the closet.
Molly sat down and thought, tugging on her toes. “You mean be alone, like I was before?”
“Yes, exactly,” Mandi affirmed through the door. “Only when you are alone are you truly free. No one can hurt you, no one can betray you; no one can lie to you.”
Molly look hurt. “But, when I was alone, that hurt too.”
Inside the closet, Mandi was quiet for some time. “You get used to it after a while,” she admitted.
The closet door flung open and Mandi fluttered out. She was now barely more than a foot tall, with long golden insect-like wings that held her aloft. A cute pair of curly antennae poked out from underneath a head full of shiny metallic silver hair. The red doll dress was a bit too small for her, barely more than a low-cut mini-dress.
“Tah-dah!” Mandi boasted, fluttering around Molly’s head. “You asked for a pixie, you got a pixie.”
“Magic fairy.”
“Yeah, whatever kid, close enough.”
Molly stuck out her lip. “You're too big, the dress doesn’t fit right,” she complained.
Mandi’s arms fell down to her sides as she hovered in the air. “Gimme a break kid, this is as small as I can go. Do you know how hard it is to get this small?”
“But the dress doesn’t fit.”
“So I'll buy a bigger dress!”
“Yay, shopping!” Molly gushed, jumping up and down. “I'll get my shoes.”
“Wait, I didn’t mean right now,” Mandi yelled, but it was too late, Molly had already scampered off.
There was a thud at the front door, and Mandi could hear raised voices. Flittering over, Mandi could clearly make out one of the voices as Molly’s father. When Mandi fluttered up the the peekhole to look through, the heavy wooden door flew open, cracking Mandi hard in the head.
Time seemed to slow down, her vision fading in and out. Voices slurred as she drifted in and out consciousness.
When Mandi’s senses snapped back into focus, she found herself on the floor, her tiny body pinned between the wall and the front door.
“My orders are quite clear, sir,” came a new voice. Mandi looked up, her head throbbing. There were three men in the living room, wearing a black version of the Navy uniform.
The Himitsu secret police.
“One member of each household is to be taken into custody. Who else lives here?” came the dark voice again.
Molly’s dad pushed her behind him. “There is no one else, just me and my daughter. Please, she’s just a child,” he sobbed. “She had nothing to do with it.”
“This is the price of sedition,” a second dark voice explained. “When your leaders voted to leave the League, they made her a part of this. We're just doing our job. If you want to complain, complain to the ones who cast the vote.”
Mandi realized what was happening and tried to free herself, but the pain in her leg and shoulder were so sharp she nearly passed out.
“Take me instead,” her father wept. Molly started crying as well. She didn’t understand what was happening.
“If we take you, there will be no one to take care of her,” the first Himitsu stated matter-of-factly, the eyes on his dog-like face were hollow to look at. Molly’s father lashed out, but he caught the strike. Blue arcs of electricity came off the Himitsu’s paw, jerking the father’s body around like a limp rag doll.
The second Himitsu scooped up Molly, who screamed in terror, tears flowing down her face. Pointing out two of her knuckles, Molly struck him in the throat. The man yelped in pain and dropped to his knees, clutching his ruined throat, gagging for breath. Molly rose to her feet and made a run for the front door.
Despite the pain, Mandi pulled herself up on one elbow and reached out to Molly with her tiny hand.
The Himitsu from Hazari threw out his paw and released a bolt of lightning that sprayed out into the entryway, hitting everything. Arcs of electricity played over the wood frame, shattered the windows, set the curtains ablaze, and wracked both Molly and Mandi with indescribable pain.
As Mandi lost consciousness, the last thing she saw were the Himitsu picking up Molly’s unconscious form and loading her into the awaiting cart outside. All up and down the street, throughout the city in tens of thousands of households, the same tragedy was being repeated over and over again.
Kid...
Then all was dark.
Three hours later, news of the purge hit the prism stream. Enraged at the news, seven more islands formally declared their withdrawl from the League, and began forcing all Navy personnel off their lands at gunpoint.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Order all squadrons to fall back,” Admiral Roapes ordered as he fought to stay erect in his chair.
“Again?” his adjunct questioned as he stood over the call tubes. “We're already at three miles.”
Another one of the oversized mushrooms hit the deck of The Indomitable, releasing a green cloud of spores. Men and women backed away from it, but for many of them, it was already too late. It felt like the spores were everywhere. A sickly mist that clung to your skin. It made you feel like every inch of your body was writhing with infection. Many sailors went too far in their attempts to scrape the spores off after being exposed, rubbing their skin raw with the most caustic soap they could find. Rumors spread like wildfire that Diades and Paxillusians were carriers of the strange disease, and on some ships, sailors from those islands were forced to leave on longboats at gunpoint. Rumors that bad fruit brought on the symptoms faster caused thousands of tons of food to be dumped overboard by a fleet already starving at half rations.
Admiral Roapes coughed. His whole body was slick with fever. His skin was peppered with black dots. Tiny oozing sores that felt like red-hot needles in his skin.
The signalmen went to work ordering all squadrons to fall back further. “I can barely see the shoreline from here. How are they hitting us from this far away?” one of the pilots complained as he turned the wheel and brought them about into the wind. He too was covered with boils.
“Have the doctors made any progress?” Admiral Roapes asked, sweat pouring down his face. He took out a handkerchief, but it fell from his hand before it reached his face.
“Every doctor who goes near the sick has come down with symptoms themselves. Now the healthy doctors are refusing to treat the infected,” the attache reported.
“Bunch of cowardly cork-eaters,” Admiral Roapes grumbled.
“Admiral, the Stone Council commands you to make contact with them,” the ship’s StoneMaster relayed up through the call tubes.
“Finally,” Admiral Roapes said, straightening his uniform. “Mr. Hamley, you have the bridge while I speak to the delegates.”
The sores on the bottoms of his feet made walking extremely difficult. It felt like stepping on hot coals as he stumbled down the hall and entered the prism stream room. Inside, the crystal array hummed darkly
, a single crystal in the center glowing in a dim brown light. Admiral Roapes touched it and it slid down into place. The room around him swirled away as if it had been a sand sculpture caught in the wind, and he found himself standing in the center of the Council Chambers.
All round him, rows of delegates from each island sat at their desks in rings, giving the entire room the general shape of a bowl. A single beam of light came down on top of the Admiral, making it impossible for him to make out the features of each delegate. They appeared to him to be little more than silhouettes sitting in their ornate chairs.
Admiral Roapes saluted smartly and recited his Oath of Allegiance. When he was done, he turned and addressed the chamber. “Delegates of the Stone Council, I thank you for hearing me at this time. I am here to report...”
“We are not pleased with your progress,” one of the shadowy delegates hissed, cutting him off.
The venomous tone caught the Admiral a little off guard. “The situation has changed, my sailors have...”
“This better not become a repeat of the first invasion,” another silhouetted delegate threatened.
Admiral Roapes did his best to hide his offense and cleared his throat. “The Wysterians have changed tactics. They have infected our ships with some sort of plague. No one seems to be immune. Even the plague ships are affected, if you can believe it.”
“Sailors can be replaced,” a dark figure opined. “Time, however, cannot be regained once it is lost. We are running short on time and your objectives have not been met.”
Admiral Roapes balled his fists. “We can’t move cargo and people between ships without spreading the plague. I have ships of good people who are starving to death. Could we not at least separate the infected ships and send them to Notorn to be cured?”
“You may not.”
Forgetting all decorum, Admiral Roapes raised his voice and pointed a finger accusingly. “What about the back pay we are owed?”
“What have you done that is worthy of payment?” a shadow accused.
Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen Page 51
