The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension

by H. D. Strozier

  Absalom summoned a large steel mace into his hand and knocked the knives away. One flew backwards and struck Devdan in the arm. He didn’t bother reaching to take it out, instead using all his energy to duck the mace. As he ducked, he tackled Absalom to the ground so that the man just missed slicing Marie’s arm off with the mace. The woman with the long braid thrown over her shoulder summoned an ancient sword into her hands and swung it downwards towards Devdan. He rolled off Absalom and out the way at the same time as MaLeila recovered and crossed the room in one large bound, propelled by the manipulation of wind at her feet. She landed on her feet in front of the woman and magically grabbed hold of the metal blade, much to the surprise of the woman wielding the blade. It was a power MaLeila had slowly but surely been quietly developing. Sorcerers and sorceresses typically had powers that allowed them to wield the forces of nature, right down to rearranging the elements that made them up to transform them into something else. But what most couldn’t manipulate, or at least without an external force like telekinesis, were forces of nature that had been manipulated out its natural state into something manmade, something like the fine polished sword that the councilwoman used as a conduit for her magic.

  It strained her magic, the same way lifting a heavy weight strained a person’s physical muscles, but MaLeila had practiced the technique enough to be able to stop the woman’s sword in her hands. Not grab it with the wind or create an invisible shield that with enough strength and physical might, one could fight through, but actually grabbed the sword, imbued it with her magic as though the sword were an extension on her body like her staff had been before Tsubame destroy it.

  She snatched the sword from the woman’s grasps and threw her back in to the wall, grabbing the sword in her hand and twirling on her feet to block Absalom’s mace. MaLeila didn’t let herself feel guilty about the fact that she had taken another sorceress’ magical conduit, even though she knew it was an act fairly frowned upon even as commonplace as it was. However, she figured it was revenge enough for the many times her staff had been stolen, even if it usually backfired for the one doing the stealing. Using it to defend herself also wasn’t as awkward as using Tsubame’s staff, maybe because it was such a far cry from her own previous staff that she wasn’t constantly reminded that the sword wasn’t hers.

  She blocked Absalom’s mace, periodically trying to disrupt his footing by shifting the ground beneath them, so that when he tried to strike her with the mace, which was now cackling with dark electricity, he would fall forward with the weight of the mace when he missed her. He saw through her trick though and shifted his center of balance to adjust his swings. MaLeila wanted to take the mace like she had taken the sword but the mace was too imbued with Absalom’s magic right now and it would take more energy than trying to defeat him would.

  The rest of the council had spread out, with their various cultural and medieval magic conduits, trying and failing to get the upper hand and control over the group of sorcerers in the room, if only because they were severely outnumbered rather than magically outclassed by anyone in the room besides herself, Devdan, and their alternate world counterparts

  MaLeila ducked the mace and rolled up behind Absalom with the sword, deciding to use it as a conduit for her magic for a more focused attack on the man. The sword was a terrible conduit for her powerful magic though and briefly she wondered why the Magic Council would continue to use such weak conduits for their magic. Historically she understood that they hadn’t had much access to things like gold and platinum and by the time they had, the magical items were heirlooms passed down in families. Still, heirloom or not, the electrical attack she tried to channel through the sword only managed to shatter it and cause an explosion between her and Absalom that obscured him from her view.

  “Shit,” MaLeila said, finally and reluctantly summoning Tsubame’s staff to her hands again.

  When the view finally cleared, Absalom had his mace pointed at her. The spikes glowed black and charged with power until they shot out from the mace. In the split second MaLeila took to decide whether to stand her ground or move out the way, the decision was made for her when she felt Bastet’s presence appear next to her and then felt the woman’s physical body push her to the ground. The spikes struck the walls and a few unfortunate sorcerers who didn’t manage to get out the way in time.

  “Don’t let those things touch you!” Bastet said.

  MaLeila started to ask why until she saw that where the spikes struck the wall and the sorcerers a black vacuum was created that began to eat away and suck up all the matter it touched. The sorcerers in question opened their mouth in a silent scream as they were eaten away in a vacuum before dispersing into nothingness. The vacuums however, seemed to have limited energy and rather than eat away at the while building only left massive holes in the walls. What it did do though, was manage to disrupt Tsubame’s manipulations of the ballroom and suddenly jolt the room back to its original distance and space, the sudden jolt in the relations of distance and space causing the whole room to collapse on top of them.

  MaLeila had quick enough reflexes to create a shield so that she and Bastet missed the brunt of the collapse of the room. Only when the smoke began to settle and MaLeila could see the outside sun peeking through the large whole in the ceiling and right side of the room did she drop the shield. And immediately she felt the slight jolt of panic at something coming at her from the outer edges of her senses. Only years of honed instinct combined with Tsubame’s powerful staff allowed her to instantly summon a magical loop to redirect whatever was coming at her back at her attacker.

  It turned out to be one of Absalom’s black vacuum spears. And no sooner than it went through the loop did it come back out the same end that it had entered and strike Absalom in the chest. His mouth opened in the same soundless scream as the vacuum sucked the man and his mace up until they were nothing.

  MaLeila’s mouth fell open in surprise and next to her, so did Bastet’s.

  “Fuck,” Devdan said, his voice carrying to her ears, even as he stood afar with Anya restrained next to him, almost consumed by the shadows he’d manipulated to hold her.

  Fuck was right. They had been prepared for a fight. They had been prepared to have to subdue the Magic Council, to force them to submission so they could make official the takeover they’d staged. Now though, no matter what they said, no matter how many witnesses they brought forward, no matter if MaLeila was even able to broadcast the memory and allow the powers of the magical world to see it, particularly the Thornes, the Longs, the Romanovs, and the Hous, it wouldn’t matter. This would look like a hostile takeover, a bloody coup, all because she accidently killed the head of the Magic Council.

  Tsubame seemed to be the only person who wasn’t alarmed. Instead she made her way over and circled the space where Absalom had been. Then she said, “So glad I chose this world to come to. Miss Samara, you continue to surprise me.”

  23

  “I expect that once this war is over that you will be funding the renovation and repair of my hotel,” Farah said to MaLeila as she was finally headed to a suite in the half of the woman’s hotel that was still standing.

  MaLeila didn’t know whether to be annoyed at the older woman for coming to her with such a mundane task or to laugh in relief because of all the tasks and ramifications she had to deal with after killing Absalom, Farrah’s request would be the easiest of her issues to resolve.

  “If you want,” MaLeila decided instead, “I can repair the fucking hotel for you tomorrow with magic.”

  “You already almost exposed our world once. You’d do it again by magically reconstructing my hotel in broad daylight?” Farah asked.

  “If you haven’t noticed, I make the rules now,” MaLeila pointed out. “Besides, it’ll be fun to see what the media comes up with. Won’t be as easy as editing some footage of a missile.”

  MaLeila continued to her suite before Farah could say anything else. Of course, she knew if Farah had been
really concerned, the woman would have followed her but it seemed the woman liked and respected MaLeila enough to let her get away with walking away from her, something Devdan said she hardly even let him get away with. Finally, MaLeila made it to her suite. She made sure to lock the door behind her as she went to sit by the large glass window that looked over the now ruined courtyard, but MaLeila looked past that, past even the city in the distance as she slowly but surely began to unconsciously immerse herself in her ethereal senses, wondering what she should do next. There was a lot to choose from. Quelling the war, solidifying alliances with allies, as well as the other things no one thought about when they decided they wanted to remove one regime and instate another like economics, trade, food, industry, things Tsubame had taken one glance at the demographics and geography of Algeria the other day and given Devdan a potential five year plan for the country in great detail. Tsubame hadn’t always been a queen though. Tsubame had started from similar backgrounds as she, and from what MaLeila managed to gather, the woman became queen by a stroke of luck. She wondered if Tsubame had been this unsettled and unprepared when people first started following her. If she had, it was hard to imagine looking at the confident woman now.

  Still, even with all that to eventually get settled, MaLeila sensed there was something more pressing to deal with, something on the edge of her magical senses that she couldn’t quite figure out.

  “Don’t tell me you’re in here brooding and mourning over Absalom?”

  Just as quickly as MaLeila had gone into her ethereal trance, she was pulled out by Devdan’s voice. Bastet was with him.

  “A couple of weeks ago, you cussed me out for not knocking,” MaLeila said without turning to face either of them.

  “We did knock. You didn’t answer. Besides, Marcel was downstairs talking to Tsubame, so I was pretty sure I wouldn’t walk in to find him with his hands down your pants,” Devdan said.

  Bastet blinked. “Wait. What?”

  MaLeila just allowed herself to grin before saying, “I’m far from mourning for Absalom. If anything, I’m glad he’s dead. He probably deserved it for more crimes I’ll ever know that were just as or even more gruesome than the slave trade he sponsored and all things that came with it.”

  “There was probably nothing worse than that,” Bastet said. “But many things certainly came close.”

  “If you’re not mourning, then what the hell are you locked up in here for?” Devdan asked.

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy,” MaLeila said.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Devdan said with a shrug as he took a seat next to MaLeila.

  His proximity sent a jolt through her and she resisted the natural reaction to jump or fidget. Instead she kept her gaze forward out the window as Bastet sat on her other side. None of them said anything, content to sit there and stare out the window. For a moment, just a moment, MaLeila pretended they were back home in the small quaint house in the middle of the hood. The house that had been her grandmother’s, then her mother’s, and she supposed now belonged to her since her brother was hardly there. They were sitting on the couch, MaLeila fussing at Devdan to move his feet so she could curl up in the corner. Bastet sitting on the armchair with a book or on her laptop, exchanging research with Talia online. The TV blaring in the background.

  Finally, MaLeila sighed and said, “It all seems so anti-climactic.”

  “What seems anticlimactic?”

  “All this,” MaLeila said frowning. “I feel like we’ve been building up towards something all this time and defeating the Magic Council, killing Absalom; that wasn’t it.”

  “Of course it feels anticlimactic. We’ve still got a long way to go. Europe’s embroiled in war. America is trying to help her all the while trying to quell the rioting in her own streets and then we’ve got to convince the rest of the International Union to recognize your new sovereignty,” Bastet said.

  “More than that,” MaLeila said absently. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it, don’t feel like we’ve missed something big, something really important that’s going to explode in our faces.”

  She’d had this feeling before. This was the feeling she got right after her mother died, right before the magical world put a target on her back and she was forced to prove to the magical world her worth, forced to prove that she was a force to be reckoned with to the point where she’d even been able to put fear in the Magic Council. They were on the brink of something.

  “Whatever it is we can’t all just sit here and wait for it to happen,” Bastet eventually replied with a shrug. “It’s be a long couple of weeks. Get some rest. We’ll worry about whatever’s about to happen in a few days. The world hopefully won’t implode in on itself by then.”

  “Are we okay?” MaLeila suddenly blurted out.

  Both Devdan and Bastet turned their gaze from the window to MaLeila at her sudden question. She hadn’t meant to ask it so bluntly, hadn’t really meant to ask it at all but the question had been on the edge of her consciousness for weeks now with Devdan and the uncertainty about where they stood only intensified when Bastet returned too. The answer was something she had to know before moving forward, since it seemed like the three had fallen back into the natural rhythm they’d once had over the years, none too worse for wear during their separation the last few months. At the very least, MaLeila need to know where they stood and that they were all on the same page.

  “We’re sitting here like we didn’t deliberately do things to betray each other. Is that all gone now?” she continued.

  Devdan spoke first. And as always, he didn’t hold back his opinion to spare her feelings.

  “No. We’re not okay. That kind of stuff doesn’t go away in four months apart,” Devdan admitted.

  That was true, and MaLeila no longer felt the same naïve disappointment or hurt she would have felt a year or so ago at that statement. Instead, she found quiet acceptance. The first step in fixing a problem was realizing there was a problem. MaLeila started to say as much but Devdan beat her to it, as though reading her mind.

  “We seem to be getting there though.”

  Bastet added with a shrug, “We’ll live for centuries. In that time we’re bound to fuck each other over multiple different ways. We’ll probably have forgotten about it in another hundred years or so though and be fighting over something else one of us did.”

  MaLeila snickered at that, trying to imagine some of the things that they would no doubt come up with to grate each other’s nerve in the future. It seemed impossible that after that many years knowing each other that they’d still be able to. Then again, Tsubame and Marcel at least, she didn’t know about Nika, had a weird way of annoying each other and pushing the boundaries of each other’s patience. Marcel’s impatience was just more visible than Tsubame’s.

  “Seriously though. We need to rest,” Bastet said stretching out like the cat she was named after.

  “Yeah,” MaLeila muttered. “I already offered to restore Farah’s hotel tomorrow and that’s going to take some energy.”

  If either of them had any concerns about her apparent lack of concern for the secrecy of the magical world, neither commented on it. They let her get up and go to her room, where MaLeila didn’t even take off her dress as she collapsed onto her bed. Her body instantly fell into rest, but her spirit did not. It had been a while since she had a vision like this, where her spirit travelled through the ethereal realm making her feel as though she were between waking and dreaming. The experience had been common when she first became aware of magic. Most times they were strong premonitions and impressions of events about to happen, where she only got a vague idea or sense of what was going on. Sometimes though, her whole conscious would be transported through the realm to another place, another time in the future and only once a time in the past; when she was able to talk to Claude Thorne.

  She had both experiences this time.

  Her senses were extremely sensitive when she was like this, without t
he physical sensations to distract her. So even though whatever the threat was wasn’t a danger to her yet, she still sensed something lurking. And it was enraged. Not a wild rage, but a slow building rage simmering to a boiling point, the type of rages that she had come to learn were the most dangerous because they festered, permeated every piece of your body and soul so that it was unstoppable once it finally spilled over unless the opponent was able to match that rage with an emotion just as intense. She’d seen this rage before. The first time when she encountered Devdan and he tried to kill her. The second time in herself when she left a dead body for the council and threatened them. It would have just taken one more wrong word to send her over the edge, but they had fortunately let her be… or maybe unfortunately since it had given her rage time to simmer longer and now look where the Magic Council was.

  Suddenly darkness rushed towards her, darkness so black that it looked blue or purple. It contained the simmering rage. There was no sound in this world, so MaLeila couldn’t scream, but she instinctively tried to bring up an ethereal shield. She didn’t have to as suddenly she could see the physical world again looking as surreal and dreamlike as her visions tended to be. Tsubame was looking into the dark sky with a pensive expression on her face. MaLeila wasn’t sure if the woman could see it, but in her current state she could easily see all the seams that held the universe together, the slight ripples that reminded her of waves as the universe kept itself in balance and order.

  “Have I angered you enough to confront me now?”

  The anger from the darkness that was just still on the edge of MaLeila’s senses exploded like an atomic bomb into a raging inferno, the slight ripples on the universe suddenly becoming intense rage and then, there was a tear.