The Fae Artifactor

by Honor Raconteur

Aran seemed to share her opinion, judging from the dark frown he sported, but he also looked resigned. They shared a look, and it was enough for Sevana to understand that he didn’t like it either, but was there any point in putting it off further? It had to happen sometime.

  “Alright.” Sevana huffed out a breath and looked down at her shirt. This one wouldn’t be easy to pull the collar down so that Aran had the right access. The material wasn’t stretchy enough to accommodate that. “Let me change into something more workable.”

  Perhaps on the outside, Arandur looked calm. At least, he tried his best to appear that way, although he had no idea how effective his acting was. The last time they’d tackled Sevana’s magical core, her body had not responded well, to put it mildly. The trouble she’d had with her senses lingered as well, not fully adjusted yet. He had known, or at least he’d thought he understood, just what this would entail going in. But the reality of it, being the instrument to slowly change Sevana over and seeing her suffer through the rebirth process, he hadn’t been prepared for it. For that matter, Arandur didn’t think he could even begin to prepare for it, even if he’d had a decade’s worth of forewarning.

  It was so much worse now. Bad enough when she was still a friend and a potential-something. But now? His heart twisted in an uncomfortable, sharp way in his chest when she came out of the bedroom, wearing her loosest and most malleable shirt.

  His fingers latched onto the cold hilt of his dagger in stranglehold grip, but he couldn’t force himself to draw it. A sick sense of premonition sat in his stomach like lead. Arandur intensely did not want to do this.

  Something of that showed on his face, as Sevana went straight to him and poked him sharply in the ribs. “Don’t stall. Nothing good will come of it.”

  Seriously, this woman. She met everything head-on. More than sweet words of reassurance, Arandur found this sharp prodding strangely more comforting. Or at least, he knew how to react better to it and his mouth twisted up in a brief smile that felt more like a grimace. “Are you really sure about this? Considering what happened last time—”

  “Aran.” Crossing her arms over her chest, she lifted both eyebrows in challenge. “Give me one advantage to putting this off.”

  Of course, he couldn’t. Groaning, he gave in with a nod. “Fine. Ursilla, the same spot over her heart as before?”

  “Yes.”

  Perhaps the women were sure of this. Arandur harbored his doubts, although he kept the rest to himself, and forced himself through the motions: draw the dagger, prick his index finger to draw just enough blood to the surface. The skin just above her heart was smooth and warm, as usual, and he focused very carefully on drawing out the design, as this was not something with a margin for error. If there was ever a time to execute something flawlessly, it was now.

  He only breathed easy when the last lines of the design connected. Carefully withdrawing his hand, he absently focused a touch of healing magic on his finger to close up the open wound, his eyes never leaving her. To Arandur, he saw not only a world of skin, but the magical energy that made up Sevana herself. She was in a hybrid state, a flux of energies both Fae and human, the two magicks pressing up against each other in a clear bid for dominance. Just looking at her made him cringe instinctively on some level. Really, all things considered, it was amazing that she’d made it back up on her feet at all.

  The blood on her skin slowly seeped in through the pores, and the reaction was sharp and obvious as his blood introduced more Fae energy into her system. The human magic reacted as if challenged to an open battle, struggling immediately against it. Arandur, having seen this reaction before, braced himself immediately for action.

  Ursilla moved in closer, watching her and mouthing something to herself. It was not, unfortunately, in a language that Arandur spoke. Something far older, likely. Arandur wasn’t sure if he was grateful that he couldn’t understand her or not.

  “This isn’t good,” Ursilla said slowly. She put a flat palm against Sevana’s skin, exactly where Arandur had drawn just a moment before, frowning in concentration. “Your magical core is reacting stronger than it did before. Why is it gaining strength instead of waning?”

  “Human thing,” Sevana answered, voice strained. Beads of sweat dotted her temples and forehead, the hollow of her throat, and her eyes dilated like a cat’s in the dark. “We excel at the last-ditch effort. Ursilla, tell me this is one of those things that will get worse before it gets better.”

  Ursilla did not answer, which was alarming enough. She studied it for a while longer, then actively pushed her own magic into Sevana. Arandur shifted a half-step to the right, trying to see exactly what she was doing. If someone didn’t explain it to Sevana soon, his very impatient Artifactor would lose what remained of her patience.

  Glancing up, he saw that Sevana was staring hard at her own chest, as if trying to determine for herself what Ursilla was up to. Considering her eyes were still not right, he doubted that she could see much. “She’s attempting to give the Fae blood within you an additional boost of power.”

  Sevana didn’t even glance up. “Yes, I caught that much. Is it working?”

  “I can’t tell,” Arandur admitted, as frustrated by this as she was. Put him in the woods, Arandur could track any living thing, could read the soil and water and the very wind to find his quarry without trouble. But he was not a magician, nor a loremaster, and this was far outside of his understanding. He could only report what his eyes saw, and in comparison to a loremaster, that wasn’t much. “Your magical core is growing increasingly unstable, the power fluctuating in high arcs.”

  “Don’t need to tell me that,” Sevana gasped. Her back arced, a muted scream caught in the back of her throat.

  Alarmed, Arandur instantly braced her with his own body, ready to keep her upright so that Ursilla could work. Although, really, couldn’t they move this over to the bed? The couch? She’d do better horizontal. “Ursilla, perhaps she should be lying down?”

  Withdrawing her hand, Ursilla nodded absently in agreement, eyes still trained on Sevana’s core. “Yes. I think this will be more of a battle than I’d bargained for. I did not expect this sort of resistance. Here, place her on the couch. Sevana, move slowly, I know that every nerve you have is alive right now with pain.”

  “Pain and really weird signals,” Sevana agreed, panting out the words before biting at her bottom lip. She paused mid-step, eyes screwed tight for a long moment, then blew out explosively. “Black magic! Ursilla, for the record, accelerated transformation? I do not recommend it. Bad idea.”

  “I believe there is a reason why you’re only the third to attempt it in known history,” Ursilla agreed in a falsely mild tone.

  Arandur appreciated their attempt at banter, as his nerves were stretched tight. He helped Sevana ease her way down onto the couch, mentally going through a list of what had happened last time. Loose clothes, cold cloths, gentle foods that she could easily digest─he could gather all of that up. Hopefully it would help, although even as he thought all of this, he watched Ursilla put her hand against Sevana’s skin once more. Perhaps this time his Sevana wouldn’t be laid out in a fetal position for the rest of the day.

  She barely put her hand against Sevana’s skin when both women froze, their eyes jerking up to look at each other.

  “Get out,” Sevana urged her strongly.

  Wait, what?

  Ursilla latched onto his wrist with strength a dragon would envy and hauled him bodily out the front door before he could even formulate a protest. “Ursilla! What’s happen—”

  The syllables still hung in the air when a concussive force of magic struck him sharply from behind. It burned him briefly, like steam from a magma vent, striking him off-balance. Staggering forward, Arandur barely kept his feet, his ears ringing. Shaking it clear, he turned and found the guest house now missing most of the roof, the door, and the front wall.

  “I had a feeling,” Ursilla muttered darkly, mostly in a rhetorical fashion.r />
  Sevana sat on the floor, the couch obliterated into dust motes and kindling underneath her. A storm of magic and air whipped around her in a stream of contrasting colors and force, Fae and human magic bursting free of the core that should house it in a visible spectrum as they battled for dominance. Sevana’s head was thrown back, mouth open in a silent scream, hands clutching at her chest.

  Horrified, Arandur whipped about and demanded of Ursilla, “What can we do?!”

  Ursilla stared hard at Sevana for an agonizingly long second, the wheels visibly spinning in her mind. “Her magical core is trying to reject the Fae blood.”

  Almost, almost, Arandur snapped at her: Yes, that’s bloody obvious, I can see what the problem is! Give me the solution! He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, keeping those words behind his teeth. Part of him recognized what Ursilla was doing—working through the problem out loud. Sevana sometimes did that. As irritating as that was, he couldn’t yell at her now and expect her to think coherently with his voice blasting through her ears.

  Although he still wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her.

  They both glanced up as the roof of the guest house abruptly splintered with a horrendous cracking sound, lifting up in the air, pieces of it caught and swirling in the magical maelstrom. The force of it was as strong as any windstorm that Arandur had ever witnessed and thinking of all of that pressure battling inside Sevana…it tore at his heart. Even if she survived the fallout of this magical duel of forces, the structure of the house was quickly tearing itself apart. What if some piece of it collapsed on top of her?

  “I don’t think we can just let her battle her way through this.” Ursilla spoke quickly, half under her breath as if more to herself than to him. The way she stood, several feet from the ruined house, spoke of caution, but her eyes were glued to the kneeled form of Sevana on the floor. With no heed to the crowd of uneasy people gathering all around them, Ursilla gnawed on her thumbnail. “Her body won’t be able to handle the pain and shock of this much longer; her heart might fail.”

  A few overheard her and gasped, then spoke in quick whispers to each other.

  Arandur stoutly ignored them—ignored, too, his heart beating out a terrified tempo. “Ursilla, tell me what to do.”

  Those dark, sharp eyes of hers turned to him in a brutally honest evaluation. “You’re sure that you can reach her? Even through that magical storm of power?”

  Antsy, desperate to get in there, Arandur shifted from foot to foot and kept his answer as succinct as possible. “Yes.”

  “You might be correct.” Ursilla returned to studying Sevana carefully. “You might be the only one, in fact. Both halves of her magic will recognize you. I’m afraid I have no neat solution to this, so listen carefully. You must inject her with your blood again. But this time, do so repeatedly until her magical core concedes the battle. You must override it. Do not stop, even if she screams or fights you. Time is not on our side in this.”

  Ursilla barely had the last word out before he moved, sprinting back inside, slipping the dagger free and slicing the tip of his finger open as he ran back in. The magical storm did not spare him, even if it did recognize him on some level. The wind battered him fiercely, bringing stinging tears to his eyes, ripping at his clothes and forcing his footsteps to slow. Arandur slogged his way forward, calves and thighs straining to push his way inside. More than once, something came whistling at him, a piece of wall or furniture, and he either had to duck or lift an arm to quickly block it. It left his forearms littered with bruises and shallow cuts.

  Ignoring the minor pains, he bent forward, eyes opened in slits to help protect them from the fierce wind, forcing his way through the howling wind. His ears nearly bled in protest, the sound so horrendous, ears popping at the change in pressure. Eons passed in minutes as he finally made it to the eye of the storm. His heart broke to see Sevana hunched in, nearly fetal with pain. She didn’t like to show weakness and yet tears poured down her cheeks and she openly sobbed when she could catch enough breath to do so. Bloody gashes decorated her chest where her nails had bit into the flesh. Animal instinct, trying to claw out the thing tearing her apart.

  Arandur put his free hand over both of hers, drawing them down so that he could reach her chest. He half-expected a fight, because she was barely sensible, but her eyes tracked his movements. When he pulled her hands away, she allowed it, clutching at him in a grip sure to leave more bruises. The trust in that gesture nearly broke him as nothing else had.

  Focusing solely on her bloodied skin, he quickly traced out the emblem. Her magic flared again in protest, hard enough that it wrenched Sevana’s spine up in a snap, a scream rattling through her constricted throat. Arandur saw no progress because of his actions but Ursilla had been clear: Do not stop.

  Grimly, he bent to the task and did it again. Then again. Wind and stars, he didn’t think a human’s power could be strong enough to battle Fae magic like this. Ursilla was right: why would an Artifactor’s power be enough to fight his blood? A sorcerer’s he could understand, but this? Sevana wasn’t even particularly powerful for an Artifactor. Why?

  Then again, no one had ever attempted to transform a human magician.

  “Come on,” he growled, mostly to the blood swirling about her magical core. The force of the wind was such that the words were snatched from his mouth and even he could barely hear himself. Arandur had to blink back more tears, eyes streaming in protest, and clear his vision so he could see what he was doing. “Come on, work!”

  As if waiting for the command, his blood finally moved as it needed to, surrounding her magical core on all sides. It coated it thickly, like a plaster mold around unfired clay, not leaving any trace of her core visible on the outside. Arandur wanted to pause, to hold his breath and see if it would be enough, but he didn’t dare. Ursilla’s words still reverberating between his ears, he once again drew the symbol upon her chest. This time, even as he did so, the mad swirl of magic buffering him like a whirlwind slowly lost its fervor. The speed and intensity of it faded as it lost its force. Arandur dared a glance around them, measuring it with his eyes, and found that the destructive velocity and power was now halved, at least. A strong summer breeze had more force than this.

  Sevana drew in a shaky breath, the first she’d managed in the past several minutes, then another, her lungs working frantically for air. Arandur scooted around on his knees, offering her his chest to lean against, and she took it, but stayed upright. The way she moved spoke of tender joints and muscles still aching with raw pain.

  They both watched her magical core with baited breaths. The wild magic flaring out of her gradually drew back within her skin, as it should, then turned into a more muted glow as the Fae blood finally battled her magical core under submission. Arandur watched it sharply for several moments, but it seemed that they were finally over the worst of it. “Ursilla?” he called over his shoulder.

  The elderly Unda scurried inside, carefully picking her way over the debris of the wall. What was left of it. Barely anything of the house still stood, aside from the kitchen area, which still had at least the base cabinets standing. Sitting on her haunches, she examined Sevana with hands and eyes, lips pursed as she did so. “Well. That didn’t go at all as planned.”

  Sevana almost laughed, but it turned into a painful moan. “Don’t make me laugh. That’s not nice.”

  “I wasn’t trying to, child,” Ursilla returned tartly, but she smiled. “If you can laugh about this, you’ll be fine. Don’t scowl at me so, Arandur. She will be fine. I think, however, we’ll delay the next few treatments until her body’s recovered from this ordeal.”

  Arandur thought that went without saying, but was relieved to hear it regardless. “I think some healing is in order.”

  “Yes, quite. Let’s—”

  From the outside, a shrill voice demanded, “Sellion! What have you done to my guest house?”

  Arandur glanced behind him to find Rane standing there with
an incredulous look on her face, marred by the concern furrowing her brows together. Someone had reported to her the events of the last few minutes, but she obviously realized that Sevana hadn’t chosen to break the building on purpose. Curano stood at his queen’s elbow, also looking around in vague horror, although he seemed somewhat impressed by the sheer force of the destruction.

  “Her magical core went berserk on this last treatment,” Ursilla answered, slowly gaining her feet again, each movement speaking of compromised agility due to her age. “But not to fear, Rane, Curano. We’ve handled it, and I do not think she will cause an accidental explosion again. The healers are what she needs now.”

  One look at Sevana, still leaning weakly into Arandur, was enough for Rane. The queen nodded decisively. “Yes, that’s quite clear. Here, take my cloak. Wrap it around her. I’ll escort you to the healers myself. I cannot rest easy until I know that our guest is comfortable again.”

  “I will stay and oversee the repairs here,” Curano informed his queen, still eyeing the area with a judicious look. “Our people need reassurance that this was not a disaster.”

  “That’s an excellent plan, my dear,” Rane approved.

  Most of the time Rane annoyed Arandur. He found her shallow, somewhat flippant, and vain. But in this moment he could kiss her. For once, she was being helpful in all the right ways, and her very presence would make it clear to the healers that Sevana was to receive every possible care. He accepted the warm cloak, made of some furry creature by the feel of it, and wrapped it around Sevana carefully. Her body felt chilled to him and she clutched the cloak a little tighter to her before burrowing back into his arms.

  “If I lift you, will you be alright?” he asked her softly.

  “I think so,” she whispered hoarsely. Her throat sounded as if it were raw, as it likely was. “No vertigo, at least.”

  “Alright, let’s try it.” Easing his arms under her knees and around her back, he brought her in close to his chest before lifting her up slowly. When she didn’t flinch, he dared to think that she would be alright with a short trip to the healers.