by Dax Murray
She shrugged her cloak on, a gesture dismissing the assistants, and departed for the warmth of whiskey. She collided with two servants while making her escape, mumbled an apology, and slipped out the back door. Winter was starting to settle into the streets, but the sun was still bright and the merchants still shouting, the din of hawkers drowning out Eleanor’s words from her head.
The barkeep wore a look that told her that he was conflicted about his new regular. Glad of her coin, he was worried for how quickly she would go from regular to disturbance. Amalthea took the corner table, her back to the crowd, and let the mask slip slightly.
Before Eleanor, there was no battle she would shy from. The battle with the Academy to be admitted, the battle against them years later to study forbidden magic. The kind she wanted to perform on the tiny particles that make up everything, to break them apart and peer inside of them. She had no white flag to wave when they said no, so instead she tore the emblem of Imperial Mage from her robes and waved that instead, flourished it back and forth before she heaved it to the floor.
She didn’t know how to give up gracefully, but she also didn’t know how to do anything but press forward. Certainly she would sometimes pause to wait for an advantage, but she would always press forward.
Her whiskey appeared before her. How many of these would it take to forget the feel of Eleanor beside her? How many to forget her scent, the way she bit her lip when she was lost in thought? How many to forget the atrocity that was between them now and the hesitation they both had for the path the other wanted to run down? How many to sear away the love she held for Eleanor, and how many to burn away the hate?
Why did her whiskey taste like surrender?
#
Getting involved with an assistant is an incredibly stupid mistake to make, but zie was available. She keeps telling herself she isn’t betraying the Empress, but she cannot convince herself of the veracity of her words. If it isn’t betrayal, why does it still feel that way?
The assistant's arms wrapped around her, and their lips met and scrolls tumbled from the table as she hastily sat zir on top of it. Her assistant’s sleek, straight hair smelled of revenge, zir ears tasted of deep pangs of guilt, and zir eyes were the same dark brown of the Empress she was trying to escape. The arms of someone new, the running from or running to, all the things she couldn’t undo.
Be here, be now, she told herself. I’m trying to replace Ellie, Ellie can’t have this, Ellie can’t be here. She bit the assistant as if she was biting Eleanor, she touched zir like zie was Eleanor. The sobs came to her without warning, and they had nothing to do with the person entangled with her.
#
She lost herself for some time. But wasn’t that the point of all of this? The whiskey, other people, trying to erase Eleanor, or failing that, replace her. She needed a temporary reprieve to a life without inhibitions, limitations, and, maybe momentarily, wars. More importantly, the weapons in those wars.
She escaped to the city, beyond the palace walls and the inner ring. Getting drunk at the tavern was getting embarrassing as most of its clients were courtiers. The disgraced scientist: not good enough to marry and, in the end, not even good enough to bed anymore. She couldn’t even complete the impossible task she said she could and everyone would say it was her fault if they all died in a war. Mages could at least cast spells to enfeeble and hinder the enemy, and the stronger ones could cast offensive magic, and the most advanced could heal the wounded and give another breath of life to those who had lost theirs. But she wasn't even a mage anymore.
So she went further afield, to taverns frequented by people who didn’t know her name. She drank, she didn’t cause fights, she paid her tab. Sometime she paid other people's tabs. She found a refuge in a tavern on the outskirts of the city. The bartender didn’t look at her with a mixture of worry, scorn, and greed, instead xie looked at her as a sort of friend. She didn’t know what xie had seen in xir life, but she somehow guessed that the drunk stories xie overheard were a different sort than the bartender at the tavern in the upper ring heard. Less political gossip, less to do with who had replaced who as the Empress’s...whatever she had been.
The city had a voice she could not hear, but felt reverberating down her spine, beckoning her deeper. She visited the midwives, who knew a things about bringing a person into this world, and the morticians who knew how to send people from it. She needed to know how this travel to and from this world happened. She needed the knowledge, for staying in this world was not an option. A new dimension, a new world, a place without the Empress’s insecurities.
She visited the hedgewitches, fortune tellers, and scryers who didn’t have the wealth or connections to get into the Academy. Those souls who knew magic in their bones and wielded it as they pleased, without regard for theory or history or tradition. They didn’t just practice magic, they lived it in a way that she had never thought possible. Their sorcery was not a sword, their wizardry was not a weapon, and their thaumaturgy was not a tool for the Empress. They were sages and seers, not soldiers. She needed this knowledge, too. She needed to know her powers in a context disconnected from mass destruction. A magic that could be helpful, maybe even joyful.
She knew there was no other choice now. The haze of loss was starting to lift, and she needed to find a way to surrender to losing her Empress to a path down which she could not follow.
#
“I didn’t want you to go. I was hoping we could make things work, that we could find a way to come to some sort of agreement.”
“Your Majesty, there isn’t a way for us to come to an agreement on this, not without one of us sacrificing who we are, what we believe in.” It was the first time she’d seen the Empress in months. She was still getting instructions from her, and making progress reports to her, but they had all been in the form of notes by way of messengers. But a page had been sent to her, interrupting her and Maya. The page managed to maintain some manner of composure, where Maya had collapsed in laughter, and Amalthea had been stunned to silence. The page asked that she come with her, that the Empress wanted an in person report. Now.
So here she was, clothes hastily put back on, the scent of Maya clinging to her, trying to keep the conversation on track, when the Empress wanted anything but that.
“And since you insist that I continue on this path with you, don’t you see how you kill me? I cannot deny you anything: you are my ruler. You are my employer. You are my conqueror. I will make your weapon for you, but I will not make it gladly. You cannot have me in such a manner.”
“I didn’t mean...:”
“You didn’t? You decided this. I told you what I was truly looking for and you flinched away from me. You wanted all of me or none. You didn’t want me distracted by my searching. You didn’t like what I was searching for.” Amalthea punctuated her words with pointing, and gesturing, and she wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t summoning a storm.
“I just…”
“Your Majesty.” There was an edge to her voice now, a warning that she couldn’t verbalize in any other fashion. She had said what she needed to say long ago, rehashing it here was not how she wanted to spend her time.
“You’re right. I know you’re right. But I know I am right, too. Can’t we both be right?”
“How dare you. How can you…” Amalthea was red with rage, and it was all the more painful to hear this from Eleanor a second time. Ellie couldn’t see how wrong she was, couldn’t see how terrible and horrific the path was.
“Then let’s try again!” Eleanor cried out. Then covered her mouth, silence awkwardly pressing against them. Amalthea could see on Eleanor’s face the want to take the words back the moment she said them.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, I can’t keep hoping for you.” Eleanor whispered, attempting to look apologetic.
“Ellie, please. You broke up with me. You said you wanted to end our relationship, you were the one who said you were too hurt by my research into the existenc
e of other dimensions. You were the one who said you were too hurt because I objected to creating a weapon capable of killing thousands of people in mere seconds. You decided this. The reasons you left me still stand. I am not going to stop my search, and you aren’t going to stop asking me to build this weapon. We can’t work. I am sorry, Ellie, Your Majesty. I am sorry.”
The Empress let out a sigh, Amalthea wondered if this conversation had been played out as many times in her mind as in Amalthea’s.
“You’re right, I ended things, but I am still Empress and you are still the Imperial Scientist. I am glad you are making progress, but I brought you here to tell you that it must be complete by the end of the month.”
“That’s impossible.”
“My darling, did you not once tell me you could do anything?”
Amalthea tried to swallow the lump forming, but instead it looked like a nod of acceptance. Which stung more, the endearment, or her own words being thrown back at her?
“Good. Then see to it. Anything you need, anything at all, to get this done, it is yours. Just ask.”
Amalthea knew from her years listening to Eleanor issue them to everyone in the court that this was a dismissal. She just wasn’t used to it being applied to her.
“But I don’t -”
“I am done discussing this with you.”
Amalthea ran, not to her laboratory, which would have been wise, given that she had three weeks left, but to the city. She needed to drink and have the city drown her desperation.
#
Amalthea allowed herself to collapse into the velvet armchair in the corner of her laboratory. It was one of the original gifts the Empress had given her, before that fight, back when they were still in sync. The slow disintegration of their relationship could be tracked: it could be timed, it had a date, this chair came before that date. Amalthea tried to ignore everything that predated their mutual decent into their separate self destructions. It was an impossible task, given what her laboratory represented, but the small personal touches, such as this chair, were easier to ignore.
Now, though, was victory. There was no one else around, and Eleanor’s voice was ringing in her head. She finished. She had built the weapon that her former lover, now haunting specter, had asked of her. A weapon her ruler had asked her to build for the purpose of destroying her own family.
She’d delivered the news to the Empress. All that was left was to wait for the arrangements to be made and the date to be set for the demonstration. She and the Empress had tried so hard to make it work after that first fight, but all Amalthea wanted to do was run away every time the Empress had tried to convince her again of how this was the correct path. These conversations played out again in her head while she paced her laboratory, as she wandered the town, waiting anxiously for the day she would detonate the weapon.
It’s too sunny, Amalthea thought as she woke up. It was demonstration day. The weapon would be used near the edge of the largest city in the northern territories. Unless someone was out wandering, no one should be killed. The Empress wanted to show it off, without lethality. A show of her might but also her mercy. A potent warning: stop arming yourselves and we won’t resort to this kind of destruction. It was also a demonstration to any of her generals who might yet think that the Empress was not as strong as her fathers.
Amalthea had to be the one to detonate it. She knew how to use magic to reach between and into these particles. Amalthea used magic to contain the particles she would rip apart and collide into each other, and used still different magic to amplify the effects. She had to be the one to detonate it. She had not yet taught the tricks to anyone else. There wasn’t enough time to before the Empress wanted the demonstration to happen. After, the Empress said. There would be time afterward to teach all of the higher level members of the Academy.
She promised Amalthea more honors, more awards. Parades, feasts, and celebrations in her honor that would go on for days; she would be the hero of the realm. There were words that were alluded to, a promise of a crown of her own, a promise of legal recognition and a promise to put their fights and their differences behind them.
The sun was beating down on her in the field, and she built a magical sphere in which to protect the Empress, who wanted to watch her detonate it, and the Empress’s guards and generals, who wanted to relish in the destruction she was about to unleash. Once everyone was safely inside the sphere, she walked purposefully to the center of the square she had drawn in chalk on the ground, and set the small box on the ground, turning around to wait for the signal.
There was a night, long ago, when Amalthea showed off for Eleanor, teaching her about various protection spheres and invisibility spells. Amalthea smiled, remembering the night, and how she’d taught Ellie how to look for the small signs that gave away the presence of an invisible intruder, or that a soldier was using a protection spell. But that was over now, those moments couldn’t happen again. The temptation of Ellie’s unspoken promises kept intruding into her thoughts.
A general started the countdown. Amalthea began to fall into the bones of the earth, grounding herself, while seeking out the small particles in the box. Distantly aware of the countdown, she found what she was looking for.
Five! She held the particles in her hands. Four! “No! Wait, stop!” Three! “She isn’t safe!” Two! “She’s not protecting herself! She’ll die! She forgot--” One.
She opened the portal, revealing a new dimension she’d not yet seen. A glittering starry night shined there, a sharp contrast to the hot sun shining in her home dimension. She stayed there long enough, a foot in each world, to detonate the explosion, the energy from the explosion fueling the portal, making it stable enough to cross through. She watched the guards restrain Ellie while the world was consumed by heat.
She had a thousand words she wanted to say, to signal her surrender, that she has lost Ellie. She had soft words of longing, harsh words of betrayal, and grief filled words of disbelief. But in the end, it didn’t matter what she chose, Ellie would get the message either way.
“Goodbye,” was all she said. She cast the doubt out of her mind, she released herself from the world, taking the final step into her new home. The portal closed behind her, and she stepped confidently into the night of a far away dimension, taking her knowledge, her power, and her discarded dreams with her.
