Reality's Plaything 5: The Infinity Annihilator

by Will Greenway

  Vulcindra lay in a sprawl on the floor staring at her. All the Kriar, valkyries, and children gazed with wide eyes and more than a little fear.

  Wren turned to Arabella. “You okay?”

  The red-haired bard swallowed and nodded.

  Wren focused back on Vulcindra. “Since you seem to know how to cure what’s wrong with her, please do so. No more bullying.”

  The elder looked at her hands and flexed her fingers. She touched her bloody face and the back of her head. “What did you do to me? I can feel something.”

  “Oh, that,” Wren shrugged. “I know I can’t trust you. So I left a seed of the soulbiter in you, stitched into your tao where there’s no defense from it. If I die, go unconscious, hades… maybe even if I belch it might be invoked. In fact, you know I forget the conditions for it being activated. It might even go off if you even look cross-eyed at one of my friends. I sealed it good too, and I triggered the master psyche at Starholme to watch you… if you tamper with it at all… you will be without a tao, without a nola, you will be everything but in a grave.”

  Vulcindra glared at her. “That—” She paused and swallowed. She drew a breath, she seemed to cool. She narrowed her eyes and rubbed away the blood on her face. The wounds on her skin instantly healed. “That was well done. Pray, how will I get it removed?”

  “You won’t. I know you would never kiss my arse—so I won’t ask. You want it removed you will have to ask Koass or Gaea. I left conditions in it so either of them can do it and I know you would rather spit blood than ask Koass for anything.”

  “Yes,” Vulcindra growled.

  “We don’t have to be enemies,” Wren said in a flat tone. “We’re kin. The problem is you don’t respect anybody unless they’re stronger than you, and I can’t keep using Starholme to keep you in line. It’s too dangerous.”

  The dark woman pushed to her feet. “One demonstration was sufficient—” She smiled. “Milady.”

  Wren closed her eyes and seemed to inwardly quail. “Vulcindra, tell me you aren’t planning on sticking around are you?”

  “Why of course, I am. I have to get you to remove that soulbiter. I am not going to leave my fate to random chance.”

  Wren grimaced.

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  Return to Contents

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sometimes it is those we are closest too,

  the ones we think we know, that can

  surprise and frighten us the most. I had

  heard that Wren confronted Hecate, that

  once she wielded the entire legacy of the

  first ones. To hear tell, and to see it for

  yourself are vastly different things…

  —Kalindinai T’Evagduran,

  Queen of Malan

  Wren didn’t further antagonize Vulcindra, nor did the powerful immortal seek to bully or intimidate. Instead, the dark lady’s demeanor went from hungry predator to delighted guest; a change that did little to alleviate the tension around her. She possessed incredible power, far stronger than Aarlen, and because of her magic and nola powers, probably even the Kriar time masters like Quasar and Eclipse. Long ago, Bannor lost his fear of powerful creatures, but he did find Vulcindra’s knowledge to be disconcerting. She seemed altogether too intertwined with the eternals, the savants, the protectorate—she knew them all and it wasn’t knowledge just picked out of their minds by a telepathically savvy elder. She had been involved from the shadows.

  Sitting on an unused treatment pallet, Kalindinai sat with her arm around Janai, who was in turn sitting next to Daena. Sarai, lay on the pallet in front of them. Shortly after Wren’s confrontation with Vulcindra, the little G’Yakki warrior Vera appeared in the doorway. She didn’t say anything, but she hung next to the blonde ascendant like a lost child. Wren, Corim, and Vera sat together on another unused pallet, they, like practically everyone else in the room, watched Vulcindra.

  The only person that didn’t feel threatened by the elder was Arabella, there being some past relationship between the two of them. Multiple times Bannor heard mention of ‘playing’, and with Arabella being a renowned bard from Corwin, he could only guess that they were somehow involved in music. How or where that connected to anything he didn’t know.

  One thing was certain, Vulcindra made the mecha healers nervous and Octavia acted particularly agitated by her presence. Hands rubbing together, and biting her lower lip, she fretted two steps back from Arabella as the dark elder examined and treated her ailment.

  Vulcindra seemed to draw immense pleasure from the healer’s discomfiture. She grinned the whole time she worked on the red-haired bard. The process involved something to do with energies that utilized strange fundamental threads Bannor had never seen used by a creature before. Whatever it was, it seemed to work because the stricken woman began to respond with greater and greater strength.

  While Vulcindra worked, Wysteri and Mercedes secured Wyyr again. The savant’s glowing stasised body shackled and sealed inside of another stasis chamber to await Gaea’s judgment.

  “So,” Vulcindra said after a time. “How now?”

  Arabella drew a breath and pressed a hand to her stomach. Her movements no longer looked so pained, and much of her color had returned. She nodded. “Much better, thank you, Mistress,” she answered. “The pain is gone.”

  “Good,” the elder responded. She brushed back shimmering mass of shadows that was her hair. She turned and focused blood red eyes on Octavia and pointed a finger. “Kriar science cannot be used to treat matters of living magic. Treating symptoms and shifting body chemistry do nothing to rectify the root cause. Make sure all your little mechanical friends know that so they—” She seemed to catch herself. “Bah. Never mind. Damn Sroth, Koass—damned busybody eternals.” She turned back to Arabella. “So, where is this one Foross had you mimic? Is she here?”

  Arabella blinked. “Yes, she’s right there…” She pointed.

  “Oh really?” Vulcindra turned.

  Kalindinai was off the pallet like a shot. “No.”

  “No,” Bannor echoed. Damn, he hated not having a body. He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t protect Sarai.

  The elder rolled her eyes. “I promise not to touch her. Isn’t what happened to Arabella lesson enough? These mecha are master healers, true enough, but when it comes to magical life… they are wandering in the dark. Her—” She glanced back to Octavia. “Mother… Eladrazelle along with Marna Solaris are part of a Kriar backed consortium trying desperately to study and master the Jyril living magic. I will never forgive Theln for caving into them. Without her they would be completely lost.”

  Kalindinai gasped. “Wait—Theln? The elven sorceress?”

  Vulcindra’s brow furrowed. “Elven?” She put a hand to her mouth. Crimson eyes going wide. “Oh, is that what all that was about? I never knew why she got in such a row with me over that backwater Charon.”

  Kalindinai growled. “My family came from Charon.”

  “Aye,” Vulcindra nodded. “I had heard that she was a patron for a family from there. Some blood debt or some such. I understood immediately since Theln’s current apprentice is sitting right there.” She waved a hand to Janai.

  “What!?” Kalindinai growled whirling to face Janai. “You took the apprenticeship!? That was for Ryelle!”

  Janai leaned away from her mother’s fury. “Mother, she approached me, not the other way around.”

  Kalindinai rocked her head back, hands balled into fists. “And what are you going to do with it? You’re not interested in magic!”

  “I love magic,” Janai said in a defensive tone. “I don’t like uniforms and marching a bloody picket line!”

  “It’s good for you!” Kalindinai snarled. “Damn, so that’s what you were doing in Canth all those summers. That’s why you surprised us in Gladshiem.”

  Janai made a pained expression and rubbed the back of her head, not daring to look her mothe
r in the eye. Daena hunched down next to her, obviously trying not to catch any of the Queen’s ire.

  Kalindinai swung back to Vulcindra. “I was Theln’s apprentice two millennia ago. What does she have to do with the Kriar?”

  This place seemed to be a source of never-ending amusement for Vulcindra. She grinned. “Don’t be dense, Theln is Kriar of course.”

  “She is not!” Kalindinai declared. “No. She holds to our ways, taught me… No!”

  Vulcindra shrugged. “I don’t understand the confusion. The woman has a bloody shrine to that Ellistan fool—you must have seen it. They must have been mates for millennia. Of course she can be a convincing elf.”

  Kalindinai shook her head.

  “Pardon,” Corim chimed in. “Is this the Theln Azygos. The one who lorded the Dream Merchants?”

  Vulcindra nodded. “What of it?”

  “The Dream Merchants?” Kalindinai said bewildered.

  “Yes,” Corim said. “It’s not common knowledge, but it is part of the Protectorate briefings when you’re indoctrinated. We have to know about individuals that need to be handled with special care when encountered. She is one of them—she’s the only Kriar we know to have mastered magic.”

  “Well, there you have it,” Vulcindra said. “Can I look at the girl now?”

  “Why do you care?” Kalindinai demanded. The revelation that the Valharesh family’s patron mage was a Kriar had shaken the Queen to her core. Bannor felt it all through her aura. Amongst those things, embarrassment and doubt. He felt deep in the elder elf strong feelings muddied by this ‘truth’. Apparently, she had felt very close to Theln.

  “I care because I am curious,” Vulcindra answered, unperturbed by Kalindinai’s tone. She fingered the gold chain around her neck. “This must be some amazing child to have messed Arabella up so bad.”

  Kalindinai deflated. “Look. Only.”

  Bannor would have gritted his teeth if he had any. He guessed it was better to simply acquiesce than have Vulcindra get her way in some other manner.

  Hands behind her back the elder strolled up and looked down at the sleeping Sarai. Octavia, Wysteri, and Mercedes followed behind her with sour expressions on their faces. Bannor understood their demeanor better now. Vulcindra was a threat to them. Their healing abilities were paramount over nearly every creature in Eternity, but here stood a person that knew the secret ailments that were beyond their skills to fix.

  “Why was she sedated?” Vulcindra asked, red eyes narrowing.

  “She was overwrought from an earlier incident,” Kalindinai said.

  “Not good for the baby,” Vulcindra muttered. “Though it hardly phased this little brute. She’s still wide awake.” She raised an eyebrow, pursed her lips, and took a surreptitious step further away. “No no, little one, you can’t have my magic.”

  Vulcindra glanced over her shoulder at the mecha all watching her with wary eyes. She looked at Kalindinai. “This is a prime example of why I don’t like their meddling in magical affairs. It’s a deception.” She shook her head. “This body,” she gestured to Sarai. “It is a triumph of technical innovation and sophistication. It’s so good it could easily blind one to its abysmal failures as a magical vessel.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward Wren. “Those bodies are better because Marna has learned a little about the living essence but they are still flawed.” She turned and eyed Daena. “There—now that body—that is worthy.” She raised her chin and winked at the auburn-haired ascendant. “Want to sell it to me?”

  “What?” Daena lurched back with a frown. “No.”

  The dark woman shrugged. “Pity. Anyway, that’s quite some grand-child you have there Kalindinai.” She smiled.

  Bannor found Vulcindra’s smile unsettling. Of course, the elder knew something she wasn’t sharing.

  Vulcindra looked back to the three healers with an irritated expression. “Would you stop hovering. I’m not going to injure your patients.”

  “Perhaps if you took less enjoyment in making people uncomfortable,” Wren observed.

  Vulcindra moved away from Sarai and came to stand directly in front of Wren and Vera. “What I’d like to know is how you hooked up with the power of the first ones. How does some baby deserve to have that kind of strength?”

  Wren stared up at her. “When was the last time you actually helped a fellow savant without compensation?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Gaea rewards those who protect family.”

  “Gaea, Gaea, Gaea… are you some kind of bird? She’s just an aspect of Eternity. She has no will of her own—she can’t reward anything.”

  Wren brushed a hand through her hair. “Whoa, for somebody who knows nearly everything, when you get something wrong you get it wrong in a big way, don’t you?”

  Vulcindra scowled. “Perhaps I misjudged you. You’re just insane.”

  Wren rubbed the back of her neck and shook her head. “Your timing could be improved too.”

  The dark elder opened her mouth to speak and stopped. A blue haired figure had appeared in the infirmary doorway at her back.

  If ever a creature looked like the spirit of vengeance, the Lokori female covered with cuts, lacerations and dried blood looked the part. Golden glowing eyes narrowed, she stalked into the infirmary foyer her gaze pinned to the dark elder’s back. She opened her claws with a rasp of Eternity’s energies, sparks flaring around her lithe body dressed in tattered silver metal mesh.

  Vulcindra straightened up. She didn’t turn to face the creature. Her voice rose a notch from its usual deep timbre. “That—is—a—Lokori. They’re all supposed to be extinct.”

  Wren crossed her legs and continued to stare at Vulcindra. “That’s two wrong. Would you like to go for three?”

  Bhaal strode over to Octavia. She kept her gaze fixed on Vulcindra. She spoke in that same echoing rasp that Bannor remembered, the one that made the skin prickle. “Mother told me to ask for healing.”

  The healer looked down at the Lokori’s extended claws and blanched.

  “Bhaal, please sheath your claws,” Wren said.

  The Lokori frowned, she looked down at the smoldering vortexes of energy whirling around her arms. She raised her chin. “Not trust that one. Though she is a child of Mother, she smells of death.”

  “You’re right, Bhaal,” Wren said. “I will watch her. Please sheath your claws so Octavia can tend your wounds.”

  Bhaal snorted. She flicked her hands and in a flare of white light the claws blinked out. She continued to stare at Vulcindra. “Heal me.”

  A nervous Octavia with the help of Mercedes and Wysteri began to strip the Lokori out of her armor. The Lokori stood like a statue, eyes unblinking as she glared at Vulcindra. Bannor was certain that any creature less powerful than the elder savant would have melted under that gaze. He wondered why the smell of death would bother the murderous creature.

  The dark elder still hadn’t turned to look. “She talks.”

  Wren raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Sounds creepy doesn’t she?”

  Vulcindra seemed to have developed a tick. “The Kriar said they couldn’t communicate.”

  “Obviously, they got it wrong.”

  “She’s staring really hard at me,” Vulcindra observed. “Are they really as dangerous as the legends say?”

  “In packs, they’re unstoppable,” Wren said crossing her legs the other way. She seemed to like this game. “Bhaal there has been given special powers by Gaea, Baronian coven dreadnoughts don’t even slow her down.”

  “And why is she here now?” Vulcindra asked.

  “Well, since I’m in contact with Gaea, she probably sent her here as a message.”

  “I see,” Vulcindra remarked. “How exciting.”

  “You seem excited.”

  “I am, actually,” the dark woman said with a smile. “Something new. Something dangerous. I like that.”

  “That figures.”

  There was a murmurin
g on the pallet where Sarai was sleeping. She writhed and moaned. Kalindinai stepped over and rubbed her cheek. Then laced her fingers with Sarai’s.

  Wysteri came over and laid a finger across Sarai’s throat. Her hand glowed and Sarai twitched.

  The third princess’ eyes fluttered open. She blinked and wet her lips. It took her a moment to focus. “Mother…???” she asked in a bleary voice rubbing at her face.

  “I’m here, Mimi,” Kalindinai said patting her hand.

  “W-what happened?” She asked. “H-how did I get out here?” She touched the shaladen on her wrist. “I’ve been out over a bell.”

  “Mimi, you were simply over-wrought.”

  She rocked her head back and seemed to remember what had been happening when she fell unconscious. She felt her right arm, obviously noticing Xersis was not there. “You took Bannor! Where is he?”

  “He’s right here, Mimi. He can’t see or do anything while you’re asleep.”

  Sarai made a growling sound and pushed herself up to sit. She pushed a hand through her silvery hair and rubbed her abdomen. She turned narrowed violet eyes on her mother. “You took him after that other savant, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Daughter, I did. It was fine.”

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “Mimi, simply because he’s inside an item doesn’t take away Bannor’s freedom to choose. The point is moot anyway. Wyyr is caught. I doubt it will come up again.”

  Sarai snorted. “Can I have him back then?” She held out her hand. As she did so, she happened to glance over. Her eyes widened. “Uh, hello…”

  Arms folded, Vulcindra raised an eyebrow.

  Sarai looked up at her mother and silently mouthed ‘who is that?’.

  “That’s our… guest… Vulcindra. She bagged Wyyr for us. Wren tells me she’s a Chakta Nola. She is apparently a consort to eternal Sroth.”

  “She’s mates with the assassin eternal?” Sarai covered her mouth realizing she’d said it aloud. “Uh, no offense, ki-domma.”

  “None taken,” Vulcindra said. She started to speak and stopped. She looked around, her gaze fixed on a place in the ceiling. “My but the Daergons are staring hard at this place. What did you do to them?” She pointed a finger at Kalindinai. “When we were outside their agents were following you. Now, there’s a half-dozen gates focused on this place.”