by Olivia Hart
“Maybe we could find another place for it?” Sebastian suggested as he wrinkled his nose. The dragon still didn’t have a name, but at least it had a place to use the bathroom now. It had picked up on the idea quickly enough when Sebastian had explained it.
“I don’t know. He’s your pet. That was the deal.” I turned away from the dragon to look back at the accounting ledger for the last year. Beryl was meticulous in her record keeping, but I’d had no idea how many things that the Dark Court paid for.
Every single person working in the Tower. Every soldier. Weapons. Events. Every bit of food. Then there were the taxes. My mind was lost in trying to keep track of it all. Why couldn’t we have computers here? They made everything simpler. It had been years since I’d had to do math by hand.
I sighed and put the bookmark in the massive tome. At least I wasn’t in charge of this. I hadn’t found any mistakes, but there were consistent payments to people I hadn’t heard of. Extravagant costs in strange places. Things to investigate when I wasn’t trying to prepare half a world for war.
A loud knock on the door made both of us turn. “Come in!” I said loudly, and my very out of breath steward rushed in. Malon was an elf that was as stiff and proper as you could find in the Dark Realm, but when he rushed into the room, all of that was lost.
“One of the ogres…” he said, unable to breathe enough to finish his sentence, “is out of control. Breaking things.”
I jumped up, my dress catching on the chair. The chair tumbled, and the dress nearly tore as it did. “Where?”
I glanced at Sebastian, and I felt him reach for the Queen’s power that was available to anyone that I’d built ties to.
“The southwest wall. The tower that is under construction.” I didn’t know exactly where that was, but it seemed that Sebastian did. He took my hand, and, with the help of my Queen’s power, he created a warren that ran through the Dark Court for a few moments.
He pulled me through the nearest shadow. The pressure of the void on me was no longer an unnerving sensation. I’d become quite familiar with it over the past few weeks as Sebastian nearly always teleported us through the city to deal with problem after problem. Being Queen was no easy task, and I now knew what Catarina dealt with.
We slid into the warren, barely more than a crack in that gray stone that separated the Mortal and Immortal Realms. Sliding across it, I felt my dress rip. I should have cared. A Queen would care that she was about to be seen in a torn dress, but I didn’t. There was a rampaging ogre breaking the city. Who cared about a stupid dress?
Sebastian pressed his hand against the stone, and we slid into the Dark Court only a few hundred feet away from the ogre. I’d never known what an ogre was until I’d become Queen of the Dark Court until I’d seen them in the visions given to me by the Dark Throne.
They were wrinkled beings standing fifteen feet tall with gray skin that seemed to be made of ash. They wore only simple linen shirts and ragged pants. There were no seamstresses to make their clothes. Only ogres made ogre clothing, and few enough people had made their way to the forests where they lived that the process was not well known.
They had no hair on any of their bodies, but they decorated their arms, chests, and heads with strange paints in geometric designs similar to tribal tattoos that weren’t disturbed as their wrinkled skin moved and shifted. This one had long squiggles running from his eyes down his neck to his shoulders which then split and wove around his massive arms.
Malon had been right to get me. This was an emergency. Therin stood surrounded by guards in silver armor and called out orders to more guards who were doing their best to surround the ogre, their pikes directed towards the massive thing.
They were no use though. The ogre was built to break things, fairies included. Crossbows pelted its thick skin, but he didn’t seem to notice as he took the roof off a house and threw it at the guards.
A fireball slammed into his back as one fairy with light gray wings flew towards him. This was the first time that he seemed to notice the pain of any of the guards’ attacks, and he bellowed in anger. Instead of breaking the city, he turned towards the guards.
I didn’t know anything about this ogre except that he was hurting my guards and he was destroying my city. At the same time, there had to be a reason for it all, and almost assuredly, it shouldn’t involve so much violence.
My wings began to whir behind me, and I flew to Therin as fast as I could. Sebastian was running behind me, but I didn’t have time to wait for him. This needed to end now, and it needed to end without any more bloodshed.
“What the hell is going on?” I yelled to Therin as soon as I was close enough for him to hear over the crashing stone.
“It’s obvious isn’t it?” Fucking dwarf.
“No, Therin. Why is he acting like this? Ogres don’t just break cities.”
“His handler is dead. I have no idea why he stopped working and started ripping roofs off houses. He’s an ogre. They’re no better than animals.”
Well, once again, my advisor was failing me. Without responding to Therin, I flew into the air. The ogre was back to breaking down the stone houses within reach. I watched as a wall collapsed and a cloud of dust rose into the air. After the roof had hit the group of soldiers, the rest of them had backed off and no one was throwing fireballs anymore.
“Hey!” I shouted when I was within a few feet of the ogre.
He ignored me, and I shouted again, “Stop what you are doing!”
Again, nothing. I gritted my teeth, not entirely sure that this would work. Something had happened to make this ogre start acting like this. Therin was wrong. He was no animal.
I felt for my connection to Sebastian and drawing on his powers, I made mist rise up from the ground around the ogre’s legs, slowly crawling up his body until it covered his arms.
Then, I combined the power of mist and stone, and the mists became solid, locking the ogre in place. Immediately, I felt him try to break through the stone. I could feel it cracking, but it hadn’t broken yet.
I flew in front of him and looking into eyes nearly as large as I was. I said, “Ogre, stop and look at me. I’m not trying to hurt you. I want to know what happened.”
The ogre roared at me and strained harder. I took a breath and pulled even more mist from the ground. It swirled around him in massive clouds, and when I forced it to solidify, it covered all of him.
He roared again, and I waited for him to realize that he was not going to escape. I felt for his soul, letting a silver strand of power connect us so that I could feel him, so that I could understand him.
Pain and anger were all that I could feel through the thin cord. This was not all that different than the way that the centaurs had felt when Seraphina had executed one of them without any reason. This ogre was being mistreated, but I didn’t know how.
“Ogre, I need to understand what has happened.” For the first time, the ogre looked at me, his eyes focusing on me. There was an intelligence in those eyes, but it was stranger than most of the citizens of the Dark Realm.
“Pain. Many pains. Oluk not move fast enough. More pains. Oluk tired of pains. Oluk sit. Then more pains. More. More. More. Never stop. Oluk show fairy pain. Squash fairy. Pain stop.”
I glanced down at Sebastian who had finally made his way to stand underneath me. His obsidian daggers were out, and unlike a dragon, Sebastian knew that he could kill an ogre regardless of how thick their skin was. He wasn’t moving yet though.
“Why did the fairy hurt you, Oluk?” I asked as my wings carried me closer to him.
“Oluk not move fast enough. Fairy scream. Say Queen kill me if not move faster. Whip. Whip. Whip.”
Why in the holy hell would fairies be whipping an ogre on their construction crew? “Are you calmer, Oluk? If you promise to stop breaking things and be still, I’ll let you go.”
“Oluk will sit.” I nodded to him and let the stone turn back to mist and fade into the air. Immediately, Oluk sat
down, and I winced as another wall fell. Luckily, it was from a house that was already nearly rubble.
I flew down to Therin who was shaking and still surrounded by guards. “Why’d you let him go? We should have killed him while he was covered in stone.”
I ignored him and asked, “Why was that ogre being whipped? Did he commit a crime?”
“No, they’re all whipped. It’s the only way to keep them working at a reasonable pace. The trolls and all of the dumber beasts are whipped too. If we didn’t do that, they’d never get anything done.”
I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming at Therin. I’d known that the Dark Court was nearly as bad as the Court of Light, but this was insane. That ogre wasn’t a slave. He was just a worker. Who thought it was okay to whip a worker?
I took a deep breath, still hovering slightly above the ground. “Okay Therin, do you think that we should whip all the dwarves because they’re not producing as much gold as Beryl thinks we should be producing?”
“Obviously not. The dwarves are the best miners in the Immortal Realm. They’d revolt if you whipped them, and then you’d have no production.”
“Well dipshit, you just had your first taste of an ogre revolt. Luckily, there weren’t fifteen ogres here to join in on the destruction. Instead of getting nothing done, this one ogre undid days of work and killed numerous people.”
“Construction is to be halted until we can make sure that everyone is working without whippings. Oluk, that’s the ogre you’re trying to kill, will not be imprisoned or punished. If you had whipped me for doing my job too slowly, I would have murdered the fairy holding the whip just like he did.”
Therin scowled and said, “How will we prepare for an invasion from the Court of Light if we stop all construction?”
I shrugged. “I’ll figure it out. Somehow, we’ll get it all done, but we will not do it by hurting the citizens of the Dark Realm. I am not Seraphina.”
“Shut it down, Therin. Tell everyone to go home. Every single construction worker will meet outside the gates tomorrow so that I can personally talk with each group.”
I turned and left him sputtering. He’d do as I said, or I would have him whipped. I was done having everyone question every single decision I made. Sebastian had told me that when I became Queen, I would set the way that things were done in the Dark Realm. Well, this was where I was starting. I didn’t become Queen so that I could watch people be tormented just because they were “lesser Fae”.
I met Sebastian next to the ogre and explained what was happening. He pulled out his dagger and spun it around his fingers as he thought. “Therin’s not lying. This is how it’s always been, Rose.”
“Well, things are going to change.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to prepare for Seraphina while we make all of these changes?”
“We have to. I will not let the Dark Realm be as corrupted and twisted as the Court of Light has become.”
War Report 1
The village of Trine on the border of the Graylands was found burned to the ground. The village was a small farming community far from any major roads through the kingdom. No bodies or survivors were found.
Chapter 5
Seraphina
The raiding parties were beginning slowly. My armies were gathering. There was no need to move quickly. When I’d ruled the Dark Court, I’d inspected their defenses, and they were sorely lacking.
This would be a fast war, and other than the Dark Queen, they were outmatched. The more dangerous Fae wouldn’t come to the Queen’s call. The ogres, trolls, vampires, and harpies never had in the past, and I had no intention of instigating them into a desire to fight back. My armies would stay to the fairy and elf lands. It was the obvious route, anyway. No need to create new enemies just to take a longer route.
I still needed to find a way to deal with the Queen, though. She had more power than I did, and her shield would protect her from my soldiers. It would take hundreds of fairies to weaken her enough to allow me to kill her.
If that’s what it took, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make, but I would prefer to go about it a better way if possible. My armies needed to gather first, and that would give me time. Until then, I would simply raid villages. She needed to die. The more that I thought about the Queen of the Dark Court, the more I felt an instinctual need to kill her.
I didn’t know why, but the very thought of that black-winged fairy sent physical pain through me. Even if she hadn’t held the other half of the world, I would still want her dead.
I looked into the mirror as scenes of gathering armies throughout the Realm of Light flitted by. Giants were coming down from ice-cold mountains to the North. Unicorns were being drained of their powers by artificers. Engineers were building siege weapons.
It was all coming together nicely, and I smiled to myself. It wouldn’t be long before I ruled all of the Immortal Realm. I had held the Dark Court before, but now I would not be a placeholder Queen. The Dark Realm would bow before me, and I would not have to worry about their disobedience as I had before.
There would be no revolts or insurgencies as I’d worried about in the past. They’d be treated like the second-rate citizens they were. Hideous creatures that hid in the dark. I’d tax them until they broke, and the Realm of Light would prosper from it.
I let the mirror cloud over, and an image appeared in the fog. A man smiled from the other side, obscured almost completely. The only part of him that I could see clearly was a wild head of black hair. Hair that called to me somehow. I remembered that hair, but I didn’t know from where.
I put my face closer to the mirror and willed the mists to part, but then my door opened. I turned to see who had dared open my door uninvited and saw that it was my steward.
“Queen Seraphina, I apologize for not knocking, but it is an emergency. The centaurs are all gone.”
I stared at the man, rage beginning to overwhelm me. In a voice barely louder than a whisper, I asked, “Where did they go?”
“There’s no trace of them, Lady. No hoofprints outside of the stable. They all vanished. Is there some way that your daughter…”
The surge of pain that raced through my body was too much, and every muscle in me tensed in response. The uncontrollable need to stop him filled me as I heard that one word. Daughter. My hand shot out, and white lightning leaped from my fingers, crossing the room in an instant and striking my steward in the chest.
As the electricity filled his body, he convulsed on the ground, but I didn’t stop the flow of lightning. Second after second, I watched him shake on the ground. Smoke rose from his chest. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
Finally, I put my hand down, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. The pain faded, and I finally felt like myself again. When I opened my eyes, I saw the steward and confusion filled me. My mind was foggy. Why was he dead? I saw the smoke coming from his body and knew that I had somehow killed him. But why? And why didn’t I remember doing it?
But all I remembered was seeing that man in the mirror and then him rushing into the room, pulling me away. He’d told me that the centaurs had escaped, and then the pain had overwhelmed me. I’d closed my eyes, and when the pain had gone, he was dead.
No, I didn’t want to know. It had to be glamour. My own glamour.
The image of that wild hair filled my mind, and I left the steward on the ground, his corpse still smoldering. When I looked into the mirror again, the man was gone.
But the memory of that hair wouldn’t leave. Who was he, and how was he seeing through my mirror?
Chapter 6
Sebastian
Torches flickered on the walls, their light the only thing holding back the darkness. And Amra, of course. She sat next to me, the light that flowed from her an oddity in this world. She was bored, but she was doing what she could to learn from Rose.
A line of people waited outside the Throne Room, all of them with questions and problems for Rose to solve. Along the
sides of the Throne Room, Fae sat and watched. Scribes in flowing robes, scholars who would write books about the beginning of the Dark Queen’s reign, and other fairies who simply wanted to see what Rose was like.
Rose sat on the Dark Throne and waited for the next question. Today was her day to hold court and handle problems within the Dark Realm. I’d told her that there were other people who were capable of making judgments, but she’d told me that this was the way it was supposed to be done.
Amra sat on the ground next to me, and the dragon had its head in her lap. She ran her fingers over his scales gently, and I was glad that the two were getting along so well. At least I had someone who could watch him while both Rose and I were busy.
But Amra was busy as well. Yesterday, she and I had rescued the centaur slaves from Seraphina’s stables. They’d been given the choice to leave or join our cavalry with full pay and benefits. Many had been slaves for their entire lives, and they didn’t know anything other than the military. Others had left to find their families.
Rose had dealt with the way that construction worked after the incident with the ogre. She’d made a new law that no one was allowed to be “motivated” for work with pain of any sort. Surprisingly, it had been met by annoyance from both sides.
As with almost everything, she fought against the simple argument that “that’s the way it’s always been done”. They were right. The races that struggled with language were often pushed to work harder with pain because there was very little else that their supervisors could do to them. They were working here because it was easier than working in their homelands, and the food was better.
I tried to remember that things would get better. It wouldn’t always be this busy and hard. There wouldn’t be all of these decisions to make or things to fix. Eventually, Rose and I would have time together. We’d be able to enjoy each other again.
