Fey Vengeance
Foreword Please go ahead and give me some constructive criticism on what worked and what didn't for you, questions I didn't answer, et cetera. I hope you enjoy the story. Warnings: this is a PG-13 story or so. No yiff, but some implied romance and homosexuality. Some violence. Don't read it if you don't like that stuff. I'd like to thank the band Three Days Grace for inspiration while I wrote this; specifically, I'd like to thank them for their songs "Get out Alive" and "Let it Die". You should definitely listen to them. Thanks, - Xi Fey Vengeance The old black bear saw it all. He was lying half passed out in a pool of foul, reeking liquid and sludge on the broken grey-brown alley concrete. His fur was so covered in grime and body oil and sweat it had lost all color; patches of it were falling out, and others would have but for the fur around them. Instead they hung grey and puffy from skin hanging from the atrophied, emaciated remains of his body. Near-empty vodka bottles stuck in the slime around him and alcohol clouded his breath and rheumy eyes. He was dreaming of a pretty girl he'd known, decades ago, in the moldy halls of his high school. She'd been fairly plain, really, and a little dull, and she'd dressed like everyone else in rough canvas, but he'd liked her. There'd been something in her smile that said maybe, in another world, she might have been pretty. They'd dated for a few weeks before it faded into dreary unhappiness, and the Office of Family had found him a suitable mate a few years later. In the bear's dream the vixen smiled at him again, stepping towards him in clothes she could never have worn in life the way she did in his dream. Her paws did not get dirty when she stepped on his puddle; they didn't even get wet. He tried to give her a tired smile in return, but his face couldn't remember how anymore. But that was all right. Behind her a door opened in the crumbling brick wall. He blinked slowly; that had never happened before in his dream. The girl faded away as a young panther stepped into the alley, shaming it with his very presence. His silky fur was so clean it struck blue highlights onto the concrete. It was stretched taught over rippling, sculpted muscles on the panther's lean form, tracing every flawless, merciless curve. He dressed only in long slacks that shone a deep emerald almost as much as his fur shone black, completely disregarding the freezing cold. His sculpted face was dominated by huge eyes in the same shade, but he didn't even glance at the bear a scant few feet away. He radiated youth and beauty, but in such a way that illuminated his surroundings' dull hideousness rather than alleviated it. The bear turned his face away in humiliation, and his drink-fogged mind wondered if this was a little like meeting a God. Not that he believed in god, of course. He didn't hear the panther leave, but he could tell by the way the alley returned to being just another stuffy, run-down tunnel of stone again, with nothing and no one of consequence in it. Peeking from behind his eyelids, he looked around with the first hint of life he'd felt in - well, in a long time. But the panther was well out of sight. He looked at the door opposite him, but saw only a blank brick wall falling far past disrepair. There was no door. The bear did nothing for a moment while he processed this. Then he lifted one of the arms lying limp and soaked beside him and reached for a vodka bottle. - : - Did you ever, as a child, try to replicate the terra cotta armies of China with clay on your bedroom floor? Dozens upon dozens of misshapen lumps of clay, a scene from Prometheus's nightmares, but you were pleased because you'd done your best and you'd created something with your own two hands. Imagine an adult who did that again, because after decades of life he still could do no better, so that he could feel a dim echo of that sense of accomplishment. Now put those pitiful atrocities in a rotting city street. Now add one statue, of some victorious king, made by a master artist in the very flower of his talent, the smooth marble of its skin almost glowing with life in that street full of clay. That was how the panther walked through the city. He walked towards the wall shielding the vast grounds and manor of a member of the High Council as calmly as if it belonged to him. Two wolves dressed in the once-red of the State saw him coming, and, though he didn't appear to be breaking any laws, decided by his manner that he must have been. Normally this would certainly not have stirred them from their bored chatter and lukewarm drinks, but in this case they didn't even discuss it; they went to investigate. "Those are some mighty fine pants you're wearing, citizen," the first wolf said as they approached. "Mind telling us where you got them?" The pair stopped in front of him, blocking his approach. The panther glanced at the one who'd spoken, his vivid eyes a slap in the face. The wolf stumbled back a few inches, and his face contorted in rage. "We'll not tolerate insolence out of you, pup!" he snarled, aiming a heavy cuff for the panther's ears. "You'll treat the State's officers with the proper -" he broke off as his flying paw passed through empty air where the panther had been an instant before. The cat was suddenly a foot farther back, and neither of them had seen him move. "You will not speak again," the panther said with a peculiar echo in his voice. The scorn dripped almost visibly from his fangs as he spoke, but the echo held only command. Outraged, the officer opened his mouth but couldn't think what to say. "Now, see here," the other officer broke in. "You can't just -" he stopped as well when the panther turned his glance on him. "Enough," the cat said. "You will let me pass." Then he brushed by the shocked wolves and continued down the street, navigating the listless crowds as easily as if he were in an empty meadow. Behind him, the wolf in once-red clutched at his throat as he tried again and again to force words past his lips. - : - The leaders of the Secret Police may have had their own rivalries with and reservations over the Council in general and that member in particular, but they were not yet ready to declare them in even the musty lamplight of government politics. One did not accuse one of the six most powerful furs in the State lightly. Therefore, the guards and wizards assigned to protect the Councilor were the best, with no trace of doubt to mar their performance. In a bare stone sphere deep underground beneath the manor, an arctic fox opened her eyes and stared sightlessly at the runes that covered the wall/floor/ceiling. The eyes were pure black orbs, without white, iris, or pupil, looking more like obsidian than flesh. They reflected the world around her, and beneath the reflection flitted figures that should never be seen outside of Hell. Her fur, though well groomed, was so thin it was nearly transparent, and rested limply on her skeletal, naked frame. A puff of breath frosted in the air as she exhaled; several minutes later another followed it. Some of the runes on her left side began to glow faintly. "Breach," she whispered almost inaudibly. Throughout the grounds guards stopped their patrols and cocked their right ears, listening with heightened alertness. "Sector nine. Mage. Panther." She stopped for several more minutes, not blinking, before taking another breath. The guards near the wall in question immediately and silently drew their weapons and began hunting; the rest drew their weapons but held their positions; it could be a feint. They only moved when the arctic fox spoke again: "Working alone." Inside the manor, a massive, armored polar bear slipped into a firelit parlor with impossible silence. He knelt by the armchair facing the hearth so that the occupant could hear his quiet voice. "Sir, there's been a perimeter breach. We need to get you under cover." Without waiting for a response, he began to pull the Councilor out of the room. The Councilor complied without struggle, but voiced his complaints. "Are you sure? In all these years, no one has gotten past the wards. Could not the Seer be mistaken?" The polar bear shook his head without pausing. "Absolutely not," he answered, completely certain. "I found her myself, near ten years ago; we've had her since she was a cub. She cannot lie, and she cannot make mistakes as long as we hold her in that room." "I see." The Councilor was taking it very calmly; the bear almost didn't hear him. "So he's come for me at last." "Who?" the guard asked sharply, stopping short and roughly turning his charge so he could peer into his charge's eyes. Not himself a wizard, he could not detect a lie, but the spells on his armor would show him any attempt to deceive if he focused. The other fur looked surprised that he'd heard. "Someone good enough to challenge me," he said simply. "No one else has ever done it." The bear's spells said nothing; the Councilor was sincere. He had to bite back a laugh at the arrogance, but it was sincere. - : - An infinitesimal vibration on the smog that passed for air, more an intimation of sound than a sound itself, made the Siberian tiger's ears twitch. Very, very slowly, he turned towards it, sinking even deeper into the bushes. He was just lucky that the wind had long since blasted the dirty snow away, then left itself; he would leave no footprints and his scent would not carry. The sound came again, and he felt his armor heat over his left shoulder. Even more quietly than before he turned towards the heat. His quarry was close now. His legs tensed, and he gripped the twin swords he preferred, the left reversed to run against his forearm. His lips moved around the name of his motivation as he prepared to strike. His younger brother should never have survived past infancy. Paralyzed since birth from the waist down, plagued with sickness, like nearly all children chronically underfed, their parents had given him up for lost. But somehow he'd pulled through - second by second, fighting back one disease after another, learning to walk on his hands, then on the makeshift treebranch-turned-crutches his older brother made for him, he'd pulled through. His smile had melted his brother's hart from the first day he'd seen it. That was why he'd enlisted in the Secret Police; they had the wealth, the power to keep that sweet smile alive, to provide food and treatment for his brother. Every check he received went to his brother, with a short note. He himself owned nothing but his blades, indulged in nothing but ink and paper for those two-line letters to his brother. Even now, when he was one of the best guards in the service, the memory of that sweet grin, those innocent eight-year-old tiger eyes, the incredible laugh, made him smile in helpless adoration. He'd not seen his brother in seven years, three months, and twenty-six days, but he still felt that same pleasure when he forwarded his checks. A shadow moved under the trees, and he struck with all the speed of five years in training and two of combat. He didn't know what had given him away, but his blades were stopped against another length of silver metal. He felt it absorb his strike without giving so much as a hair, then it flickered, and was gone. Damn, he's fast. The tiger's body moved without him, and he met the counterstrike on his right blade, staggering back under it. He simultaneously swung in with his left, but knew it wouldn't work. His quarry was smart, or lucky; he'd forced the tiger to block with his striking blade; it would take time to move close enough to use the reversed left. A bare fraction of a second, perhaps, but he didn't have that long. The silver flickered again, and slid precisely into his neck, beneath the voice box and between the carotid arteries, through the trachea and esophagus, and into the spinal column between two vertebrae. Instantly his body stopped responding, and the blade pulled neatly back out of his neck before he fell. He saw no one, just a pair of green eyes in the moonlight reflected by the sword that had killed him. His vision began to black out. Please, keep my brother safe, he begged the world - not praying, exactly, because he'd never known a being to whom he could pray. As if in answer, a vision of the young tiger filled his mind, exactly as he'd last seen him, just before he'd enlisted, smiling through tears as he bade his older brother goodbye. - : - The arctic fox still stared upwards, oblivious, but now there was a black-robed wizard at each of the cardinal points of the sphere. The runes in the stone were shifting in fluid, alien patterns, some beginning to glow as others went dark. "Sector eight," she whispered. "Units nine, seventeen, forty, dead. Moving north. Magic to guard-spells; not combat; spells holding." The wizards looked at each other. The north point, a cobra who'd traveled for reasons of her own from India, pulled her hood back and nodded once. "Outdoor wizards, you may begin your attack," she hissed to the air in a flat, deadly voice. She met her companions' eyes. "East and west will reinforce the guard spells. Keep him occupied." Two of the wizards - one a very tall grey fox, the other a saber tooth, bowed their heads. The stone room shivered as something whispered out of it. The cobra met the hooded eyes of the falcon on the south point, then they looked at the fox between them. "Do you think it will take long?" the falcon asked, his voice expressionless so that it did not reveal his disgust at serving under a female - or his fear. She shook her head, flaring slightly as she guessed his thoughts. "No. He is powerful, but brash, this mage. He reveals too much, too soon. She will have his Name within the hour, two at most." The wizards outside wasted no more time; eleven points of light flared up in the forest as eleven wizards moved simultaneously, seamlessly to attack. The panther was stalking through the trees, lips and paws moving as he moved. The first spell hit him before he even had time to look up. Silver flames engulfed him, burning so hot that the plant debris beneath his feet curled away in smoking ashes, and when he fell to the stone beneath it gave under his feet and began to glow red. The panther shrieked in agony, his fur turning to ash and the skin beneath to blackened char in an instant. Then his paw moved, the bone showing through at the knuckles where the skin and muscle burned away, and the flame followed it, sliding of his smoking body in silver ribbons. Behind them the flesh began to knit even while he continued the motion, turning in a circle and leaving a glowing corkscrew of fire behind his paw. He was barely in time; the wizards' follow through attack screamed in and glanced off the fire; a thousand pitch-black darts that looked solid to a casual glance. A closer look, though, showed each to be a razor-thin window into a vast space that was somehow simultaneously black and roiling with chaotic color. The darts sheared to each side of the fire, burrowing thin tunnels in the still-glowing rock. It was impossible to say how far they went before they stopped. If they stopped. Two passed through the panther's leg, leaving identical tunnels in his flesh that did not heal as quickly the burns had. The panther screamed again, but he also moved. The wizard's third attack created a disk of cold so intense that trees a dozen feet away exploded as their sap froze, but it landed on empty air. The first wizard had barely realized that the spell had missed when a shining blade passed through his body from left hip to right shoulder. Red light speared from the cut, infecting his blood, spreading through it, making the shepherd shine from his toes to his ears. There were no ashes to fall to the ground. "He will attack wizard five," the arctic fox said in their ears. The snow leopard immediately raised a shield, making the air shimmer blue around him. A second later he felt power flare to one side and the panther's attack enveloped him. The leopard was skilled; his shield absorbed almost everything, even though he'd no idea specifically what attack he'd be facing. When the blade ran through his chest it was only hot enough to melt iron; the spell on it was gone. He screamed and shoved back; not a spell, just an instinctive defense. The blade left him, and he felt his heart heal and start to beat again. Blinking past the stars in his vision, he raised his paw to block the next red-glowing strike. The flames wrapped around his arm even as the panther gripped his paw, and in half an eye-blink the arm was gone, just a stump on his shoulder. Crying out in pain, the leopard ran a blade of lightning through the panther's shoulder, watching the heat open a paw-width hole through skin and muscle and blood and bone. The panther screamed in turn, and the leopard felt his arm begin to regenerate, but it was too late. That sword drew up from his navel to his chin and he died in a flash of blackness. The nine wizards remaining attacked then, and he very nearly died at that moment - until one of them stumbled into the trap the mage had laid for them. It was a tiny thing, a crystal no more than a quarter-inch long, and it reeked of danger even through all the shields on it, and eight of the wizards knew better than to probe it. The last did, too, but in an instant of thoughtlessness the boar's instinctive inquisitiveness betrayed him. The flash of green light passed vertically through his body, but it left him nearly untouched. All it destroyed was his sanity. The boar's power was keyed and ready for the battle, and surged through him in a ball of silver, leaving a fifty-foot crater, a perfect hemisphere - and the corpses of three of his companions. The remaining five hesitated for a crucial instant, the first signs of fear breaking past their control, and one of them couldn't afford it; that instant was all it took for a black shadow to flicker next to him and steal the breath from his body. - : - In a comfortable likeness of the parlor above, with enchanted granite a dozen yards thick on all sides, the polar bear swallowed a savage curse as the seventh wizard fell. Part of him was whimpering and curled in a corner of his mind from shock and loss. He knew these furs, all of them - well, not the wizards so much, but even they seemed decent enough sorts. And the fox's faint voice in his ear told him two thirds of those furs were already dead, not even an hour into it. They were there for all different reasons - the red fox who just wanted enough money and patronage to open a glass shop, the tiger looking out for his brother, the staghound trying desperately to exorcise the demons in his past with the blood of the enemies he killed - but none of them deserved to die. Was it worth it? Forty-two dead, including the wizards, all to save the small fur in the room with him, whose life was deemed valuable by the State. Looking at the Councilor, he knew it was. "Units three, four, five, twenty, wait," the fox whispered in his ear. - : - "Wait?! What the fuck are we doing here, we should be running our asses the other way, not waiting!" the otter's half-whisper held more than a little panic, and he clutched his glaive so hard the wood creaked. "Calm down, soldier," the Doberman in front of him whispered, crouched shivering in the cold and trying to keep his own voice calm. "We've got a job to do, and a bastard to kill; that's what we're doing here." He smiled over his shoulder at the otter, feeling his own smile tremble but holding it anyway. It seemed to help; his teammate stopped breathing quite so hard. He returned his gaze to the wizards twenty yards away. Only three were left now, pressed back to back in a sphere of thickened air, which rippled with their movements. Around them a shadow flickered, so fast the Doberman could only barely trace its motion. The night screamed around them as they fought with fistfuls of light and steel and fire, the earth heaving as their spells made it into a warrior. The Doberman looked to his other side, and his smile acquired a tinge of loneliness. The two huskies were looking almost calmly at the battle, waiting for the fox's word to attack, and their paws were twined together. The pair were very young - only barely out of training - and already they were better than he could ever be. They also had a personal relationship that was definitely against regs - against virtually everything taught by the State, for that matter, but the Doberman didn't mind. They radiated the kind happiness that lit up the dead world around them, made it seem livable, stirred emotions that he'd forgotten he could feel. Each loosely held a longsword and had a small shield strapped to their opposite forearm. Looking up, one of them gave the Doberman a tiny, sad smile, then leaned town to touch noses with his mate in a kiss that should have cost them their jobs and each other. Shivering, he turned back to the front. The three wizards were losing ground, step by step - what kind of demon could work the damage that mage had wreaked against the odds he'd faced? - and they were losing it in his direction. He shivered again. What in hell had possessed him to get himself transferred so far north? Tensing, he waited for the fox's word to strike. He felt a hesitant paw on his shoulder - the otter. "I - it's been a pleasure serving with you," the other soldier said. The Doberman nodded. "Ditto," he managed around his clogged throat. A tiny girl's whisper sounded in his ear, saying one word. "Now." He leapt to his feet, running as hard as he could, a katara in each fist. Fifty feet; it could be covered in very little time by a dog in a hurry. He was barely fifteen feet from the wizards when a black flicker solidified into a panther before him, facing the wizards with arms crossed to block a near-invisible shimmer in the air. It collapsed into sparks and runes flashed around the cat that stabbed painfully into the Doberman's eyes. He leaped, and landed on the mage's back, stabbing down as his companions attacked from each side. The panther's skin burned like red-hot metal, and the Doberman heard sizzling fur under his armor, but oddly felt nothing. So much for magical protection in the steel, he thought. The Secret Police had made allowances for cases when their ordinary guards might have to fight those who were more than natural. That was why their armor was spelled; that was why their weapons were as well. As soon as they punched into the cat's flesh the blades of his kataras broke off and seemed to come to life. The Doberman watched in horrified fascination as the metal wriggled, eel like, deeper and deeper into his enemy. His companions' blades did the same. The panther screamed, falling to the ground and writhing in torment as the metal disappeared into his body and began squirming inside of it. The wizards wasted no time, either, coming down with a sheet of ice and wind that knocked the guards away and opened a hundred gashes in him. Through some of them they could see little slivers of blood-soaked metal diving through the mage. The wizards sighed in relief as he screamed; two of them fell to the ground in exhaustion. The Doberman looked from them, to the mage, to his companions. They'd actually done it? Slowly, tremulously, they smiled at each other. Only the one wizard who remained standing even saw the mage draw a deep, shuddering breath, and smile. He kept the smile even when he screamed as a thousand shards of steel burst out of his body in all directions, losing their artificial life as soon as they left his body. They punched dozens of holes all the way through the Doberman before he even felt them touch. Again, there was no pain. He could only watch as bloody spots appeared all over the otter he'd led to battle and the huskies he'd thought might yet live to kiss each other again. Slowly, the sight faded as his corpse toppled over. The wizards were less lucky. As soon as they touched magical flesh the slivers came back to life, and the wizards screamed. But only for a second; the panther weakly made a sign with one paw and red light streaked over the ground to them, making sure there was not enough left to heal. Then he sobbed in pain, and laughed in triumph as the magic slowly remade his tattered flesh. - : - "...five, twenty, dead. Wizards three, seven, two, dead." The polar bear sobbed aloud in pain and anger. But after a few seconds to breathe, the Seer continued. "Sector one. South door. Intends to take the Seer, then the Master." The Councilor was watching him, his face a peculiar mix of calm and sadness and - resignation? "The furs outside are gone?" he asked gently. The polar bear sniffed and nodded, remembering that the Councilor didn't have the earbug that let him hear the Seer. He could have, but he'd said it would be too distracting. "Yes," he answered, then drew a deep breath, pulling himself together. "Don't worry; we're not beaten yet. There are two more wizards at the south entrance, and the four primaries with the Seer. The longer he stays here, the more she will learn about him; she can already predict his actions, and soon she'll learn his Name." He shudderingly let the breath out. "There are - also nine normal guards left, but... but they don't count for much anymore." His charge sighed softly. "There were sixty guards this morning, and seventeen mages," he said, looking at his lap. "It's... lucky, I suppose, that the primaries were visiting me, so that they can help." He didn't sound like he thought it was lucky. He looked up, catching the bear's eyes and holding them, pulling him to kneel at his feet. "I don't think they can hold," he said, his eyes softly forbidding the bear to speak. "I could be wrong. But I doubt it. If I'm right, that mage is going to kill me whatever you do, so I want your word that you will not fight. Now, if you please." "No!" the bear roared, trying to surge to his feet but unable to escape those topaz pools. "No," he whispered, and the Councilor sighed and released him. "Yes, you will," he said regretfully. The bear shook himself, trying to deny it. And anyway, the primaries would stop the mage, if he even got past the last two wizards. They were the best, and their devotion was beyond question. After a long moment he spoke the words he'd never had the courage to say before. "When I first came here I intended to assassinate you," he said very quietly. The Councilor didn't say anything, but didn't back away in fear either, so the polar bear went on. "It was... my wife, you see. I never thought the State would find someone for me I actually liked; I still think it was an accident. They don't want you happy." If they survived this he'd face a public firing squad for that alone, he knew, but he didn't care. "But I did - I loved her. We had two kids; one died, a fever, in the hospital. The other is in the Police somewhere, I think. But... a few years after, she - she got sick. Just a bad cough. She would have been fine if she'd seen a doctor. But they said she'd... have to wait, and she - my wife!" he whispered, tears flowing down his muzzle. He sobbed. "Sh-she c-couldn't wait, a-and -" he took a deep breath, steadying himself. The Councilor had laid a gentle paw on the black steel of his shoulder armor. He continued in a calmer voice, detached. "So you see, I wanted to strike back at the State, and you're one of the leaders of the State." "But when I finally got the promotion, and I looked at you, I... couldn't. I just couldn't do it. And -" he looked into the Councilor's eyes, searching for any seed of scorn or pity, but he could find only attentiveness, and sorrow. "And I'm glad I couldn't. I - don't know what you're doing in the State government, but I know you wouldn't have let her die." He looked down again. "I'm a traitor, Sir. I hate the State more than anything, and I intend to see it destroyed some day, if I can. But... I'm loyal to you. I always will be, I guess." The Councilor sat back again in his armchair when the bear had finished, regarding the armored behemoth at his feet. "I didn't know," he said at last. "I knew you meant to kill me, but I never knew why." "You -" the bear shut his maw with a snap and blushed as he interrupted. "Yes, I knew." The Councilor sounded sad. "There are many kinds of magic in the world. You couldn't kill me because you'd looked at me first, and I wouldn't allow it." He hesitated. "I... haven't done that to you for almost seven years now, until today. I won't stop you now if you want to finish it." The bear looked up at the older fur. He'd not thought it possible to do what the Councilor had just described. Illusions, yes - wizards could work those, with care, and through them they could control what someone did. Conditioning, of course - he'd gone through it just like all the Secret Police, but it hadn't worked on him because he'd known about it, had studied how to resist. But direct control? His stomach did a back flip. He didn't like that. He didn't like that at all. But it didn't change his loyalties, he realized. The Councilor must have seen him relax when he got to that conclusion, because he went on. "Thank you. If it helps, I've never met anyone else who can, and I can't do it easily, or without eye contact." Suddenly the bear's head snapped up in response to a whisper in his ear. "He's at the entrance." - : - The panther looked in silence at the two red dragons barring the door. They wore heavy cloaks of scarlet velvet that matched their matte scales perfectly and left their horned heads uncovered. He wore nothing, his pants long since consumed in the battle, but he held his sword vertically in front of him. The silver metal was untouched. The cold, dirty air between them crackled with power. "You will admit me," he said. They brushed aside his attack with a wave of their claws. Their motions matched perfectly; when they spoke, their dead, fanatical voices overlapped so closely it was impossible to distinguish them. "You shall not pass," they said. "We are the chosen, and ours is the power of the collective." A sullen red light was gathering at their clawed feet from all directions, rising up their legs and tails like sentient oil. "Our life is as nothing to the mass, and we do not give it for it was never ours. Our blood shall run like water over flame, and none shall resist the power that is ours." They drew short half-circle blades from inside their robes and raised them so that the handles brushed their snouts and the tips of the blades hovered just beneath their sternums. "The might of the dragon is of the mass is of the State. You shall not pass." With one smooth curving motion they drove the blades into their bodies until the handles rested against their lower bellies and the tips of the blades protruded gory from their necks. The panther stepped back as their bodies dissolved into the red smoke, merging together and flaring out into legs, a tail, a head, wings, and solidifying into diamond-hard crimson scales on a true dragon, easily forty feet long. The mage started to laugh as his sword began to shine silver. The dragon roared and attacked, breathing dark fire on him, and still he laughed as the stone dissolved under him and his flesh sizzled away. Then he moved, leaping out of the fire and landing thirty feet away, his body shining like a beacon in the night as he healed. Then he flickered, and only the streak of light showed his path. But the dragon moved just as fast, and with a roar of clashing magic they began their dance. In the spherical room beneath the earth, the arctic fox's back arched weakly. "I... know... you..." she whispered, a tear rolling from each sightless eye. "Almost..." The snake looked at her and smiled. The other three primaries were deep-tranced, their power roiling inside the dragon at the entrance. The enchanted sword cleaved through the scales like vapor, but like vapor they reformed behind it almost before the blade had passed. Spells slid off the dragon's scales or were absorbed without apparent damage. Beneath the scales was nothing but red smoke and sullen light. The dragon's attacks were not disregarded so easily. Black flames covered the ground, sinking deeper and deeper into the stone while it melted around them in a hellish pool of molten rock. Its attacks with tooth and claw and the razor spines on its head, back, and tail left the panther's body parts scattered across the grounds to be consumed by the fire, and the silver light he used to heal faster cost him. He was beginning to slow. Every time he punched through the dragon's scales a little smoke would leak out and wrap around him, seeking an entrance; every time he would banish it, but a little later than the last. Finally he landed hard on the molten rock, and could no longer stand. A flicker of light beneath his body was all that protected him from burning. The dragon poured its burning breath on the mage until he could no longer laugh for screaming. His healing spell failed and his body began to dissolve. Then something hardened in his eyes, and he clamped his jaws shut, though he could do nothing for his tears. Whimpering in the back of his throat, he pushed the fire off his flesh, and inch, then two, then three. Bit by bit he forced it back until he could kneel beneath the rain of dark flames from the dragon's jaws. Gasping for air, he looked at the exposed, healing bones of his left paw in something like desperation. A tiny flicker of green fire gathered there, and slowly grew to pool in his reconstructed palm. Throughout the night he'd used red fire, and black, and silver, and even blue, though he disliked frost magic, but never green except in the trap he'd spent weeks on, that he should never have used so soon. Slowly, smoothly, his motions almost calm if you couldn't see the tremors, he pointed it towards the dragon. The light lanced into the dragon, and it roared in pain as red smoke gushed out. But this wound did not heal, and the smoke did not stop pouring. It sought the panther kneeling on glowing rock, gasping for air, and poured over him. The dragon screamed again and again, and the red smoke spilling from its chest thinned enough to show the green light expanding behind it. The cloud of smoke around the mage contracted, squeezing, but beneath the surface it roiled faster and faster until it burst out from him, thinning to mist, then vanishing altogether. At the same time the dragon gave one final shriek and exploded, each scale igniting with dark fire and hurtling outward. Two slammed into the panther as he stood on his shield above the molten rock, muscled exposed to the steaming, sulfurous, toxic air and eye sockets empty as he clenched his teeth and prayed, waiting for his body to heal. One passed through cleanly, taking his leg off at the hip, and he screamed despite himself. The other, though, lodged in his chest and slammed his broken body three seconds later against the nearest standing tree - a quarter mile away. It burned there for one endless moment until he feebly pushed against it, the sharp edges gouging into his exposed bone, and it finally loosened and released him. He collapsed on the ground beside it and did not move for a long time. - : - The cobra had time while the mage healed for a moment of cruel satisfaction as she gazed at the corpses of three primaries. They were fools, weak and treacherous, and she was well rid of them. She spared another moment in pure, undiluted envy at the mage's raw power. Not even two hours yet, and the wizards defending the manor were dead, and most of the guards. The fixed enchantments on the manor still stood, but they were threads, worn to nothing by his attacks and the battle outside their walls. Then she turned her attention to how she would survive the coming battle. She had no loyalty to the State, and was not overly interested in defending the Councilor. It would be a bonus, of course; her own career would skyrocket still further. But her primary motivation was simple survival. She might have run, had the opportunity presented itself, but until now the other primaries had held her in check. If anyone survived who could prove she had fled the State would hunt her down; it might have done so anyway if she could not vanish well enough. And now she had no way of knowing if the mage would hunt her down. She chose to fight because this was her ground, a place she could use to have a good chance of success. It did not bother her that he mage had defeated eleven wizards simultaneously, then gone on to defeat five more, three of them primaries. She had not escaped the castes of India and risen to within sight of the Secret Police commanders - the true power of the State, she knew; not the weak, toothless Council - by being weak or stupid. She began to lay her wards, using the power embedded in that room, when the arctic fox at the bottom of the sphere arched her back until she rested only on her heels and her head, emitting a high, thin whine. "I - know - you!" she gasped, more tears leaking into her thin, snowy fur. The cobra looked at her, and her eyes gleamed as she smiled her joyless reptilian smile. "Tell me," she commanded. The fox fought her. Thin lids closed over her eyes, shutting off the visions, and she whimpered. It should not have been possible. The cobra snarled and bent her power on the writhing figure, violating the child's mind and pressing against the places that had been conditioned to require obedience. The fox's muzzle opened wide on a soundless scream of agony, her eyes squeezed shut. There was no chance, of course. The spells on the room did not permit it. Three tortured minutes later, the Seer reopened her black windows and spoke. - : - In the underground parlor, the bear swore savagely as the five mages died. The Councilor was pacing worriedly back and forth in front of the mantle; he only grunted when he heard the news. Looking at him, the bear wondered why it seemed as if his shoulders relaxed slightly. He wondered a little desperately how one primary was supposed to kill this - this demon! No fur could have done this; other Councilors had withstood hostile armies in their manors; he'd seen them do it. It wasn't possible for one fur, however powerful, to break through all the layers upon layers of defenses so quickly. So contemptuously, it seemed from the reports. But somehow this mage had done it. He'd thought the stories about mages were exaggerations. He tried to comfort himself. There were stories about the primary in the Seer's chamber as well - frightening ones. He'd have been terrified to work with this Indian wizard, but now he fervently hoped all he'd heard about her, and more, was true. She - Something clicked. He turned to the Councilor. "You know this mage," he said flatly. It was not a question, but he paid more attention to his armor anyway. The Councilor stopped dead, turning slowly. "I did," he answered calmly, meeting his guard's eyes. "Once, a long time ago." The way he said it placed another piece of the puzzle in the bear's mind. "You were friends," he said. "We - no. We were never friends. We've been enemies since you were a small cub." Something glimmered in the armor, but settled. The truth, then - almost. The statements were true, but not quite complete. The bear let it go; it was not his place. His ear twitched when the Seer cried out. "She has his Name!" he cried. The Councilor whirled back to face him. "What?!" The bear saw those topaz eyes engulf him, before he fell into darkness. Several moments later he woke again with his head in the Councilor's lap. The older fur was pointedly not looking at him. "I'm so sorry," he told the bear, sounding sincerely apologetic and distressed, studying the far wall. "It's... dangerous to learn a mage's Name. The wizard may have survived, but you probably would not. I didn't... I'll understand if you would rather not look at me again." Something burst in the bear's steel-clad chest. Ignoring the gentle nudging from his armor, he reached hesitantly up to the Councilor's jaw and tilted it down so he could look deep into his eyes. Even more hesitantly, he touched two fingers to the other fur's lips, caressing them lightly for one brief second. They both blushed a hot red, and he hastily stood up. "I guess there's nothing for it but to wait for the mage to attack and see if the primary wins," he said awkwardly, and retook his station by the door. The Councilor returned to sit slowly in the armchair, facing the mantle on the opposite wall. - : - The panther lay so still he might have been dead. His breath frosted in the night air once... he inhaled... then twice. Then the air shivered around him, and an echo of a word that could not exist whispered in his ears. His eyes opened against the dirt, and he dragged himself onto footpaws that shook still, holding himself up, standing naked beneath the moon. So. They Knew him now. He staggeredcarefully onto the still-glowing rock field, light glinting again between him and the heat. He walked unerringly to a spot some distance from the manor entrance and held a paw out over the lava. For a moment nothing happened; then a hilt poked out of the stone. It rose higher, followed by the slightly curved silver blade. Once he had his sword, the mage walked into the manor. The spherical room was not difficult to find; with the manor's primary enchantments down there was nothing hiding it. The mage walked in openly; it was no use trying to hide from a Seer. The cobra smiled at him. "Good evening, * * *
." He flinched. "Put down your sword." He bent down, his fingers loosening of their own accord, then slowed. His lips pulled back in a snarl as the pulled himself slowly, so slowly, back upright. So. This was not her first time using someone's Name. Though its use could bind any fur ever born, a Name was infinitely long - it had to be, to describe everything about a fur. There were words that could fully Name someone in a sentence, but only a Seer could use them without going mad. The primary knew this; the talent was to choose which part of the infinite Name to use for a given command. It was a guessing game and an art, one she excelled at. The panther didn't give her a second chance to experiment; he flickered, and then he was flying across the room with fire in one paw and his shining sword in the other. She threw up the strongest shield she had, and spoke. " * * *
! Stop!" She smiled coldly as he faltered in midair and fell hard to the stone below, but he didn't pause. His lips moved silently, and black darts flew from his claws. They ricocheted off her shield, but, unlike outside, they did not burrow into the stone. They glanced off the glowing runes, flying crazily through the room. Oddly, he put a shield around the Seer; for himself, he caught them and hurled them back at the cobra, who stepped back to the curved wall and worried about warding them off. " * * *
! Stop them!" she cried, and hissed in triumph when the darts vanished. But immediately he flickered into being in front of her, sword swinging. "Die!" she shouted. She'd used the wrong part of his Name for it, she knew, but it bought a fraction of an instant as his body instinctively tried to obey her anyway. That was all she needed. She flared her neck and hissed the words of the spell, moving her hands lightning-fast through the symbols she needed. The air seemed to stiffen up around him, and his fur dulled from glossy to matte black. He gasped as her power wrapped around him, and fell to his knees at her feet. "Despair, * * *
," she whispered to him, looking into his emerald eyes, and she saw him obey. He knelt before her while she wove deceptively simple patterns with her hands and body, remaining flared the whole time. She crooned his Name to him, chanting. "Despair..." The arctic fox shut her eyes and curled up on the stone, weeping as she fought the shackles on her mind. Gathering all her strength, she whispered his Name, using a single word that not even Seers could safely speak. Then she screamed, literally like a soul in Hell. The mage shuddered as the word washed over him, then shuddered again. The cobra staggered back as her spell snapped like so much overstretched chord. Immediately she counterstruck with a bolt of acid, putting everything she had behind it. That bolt had once burned through the walls and enchantments of a powerful temple, far to the south, and let a young girl escape through the smoking ruin and flee to the north. The bolt met a wall of shimmering green and stopped cold, fading into the air. She had time to gasp once, looking into his haunted, iridescent eyes, before the silver blade pierced her chest and she dissolved in a flash of light. Her dying scream melded with the Seer's. - : - He groaned and bowed before the cobra's corpse, clutching his ears and crying, but there was no time. He forced his paws to the stone - they didn't help anyway - and crawled down to the very bottom of the sphere. It was very dark now; the lamps were out, and none of the runes were glowing. He lit a tiny ball of white light over the small white fox writhing on the stone. Grabbing her head, he tried to steady her, but she bucked out of his grip. Grimly he tried again, swinging a leg over her body and sitting on her chest to hold her down, while light lanced from his paws into her mind, searching. He knelt for a long time over her, and slowly her thrashing eased until she lay quietly under him. His tears flowed freely now onto her fur. "Why?" he whispered in torment. "How do I live now, knowing who I am? All the centuries of eternity, knowing all my flaws, every cruel twist of my soul? How do I spend forever alone with myself?" He bent over her limp form, weeping, and slowly the light faded from his paws. The young arctic fox opened her black eyes, focused for the first time in ten years, to look at the mage's face. She stared wonderingly at him, and gave him a single, fragile, hopeful smile. He bent lower and kissed her forehead very gently, then sobbed one last time as a near-invisible flicker passed from his paw into her, and her eyes glazed again, this time forever. He shut them with a shaking paw and carried her tiny body out of the spherical prison. - : - The Councilor had convinced the bear go stand in a corner, out of the way, when his earbug died. Now the older fur stood calmly in the center of the room, waiting. After a moment of silence, he looked at his guard. "I am going to die here," he said very softly, searching the polar bear's eyes for - something. "There is nothing you can do to stop it. Every other fur on these grounds is dead because of me; I don't want you to die to. Please, do as I ask. Say nothing, no matter what happens, and don't move. When the panther leaves, you'll never see him again, and that will be that." He smiled sadly. "I hope you meet your wife again, someday." For a moment the bear didn't know what he meant, until he remembered the ancient stories about gods and afterlives. The Councilor should not have said it; the State had banned such superstition a century ago. But the bear felt a small, dead part of his heart wake at the hope. The door opened, and the mage who'd defeated what armies could not walked in. His black muzzle was tear-streaked, with more still falling from his emerald eyes, and he carried a small white fox in his arms. Neither had any clothes, and every plane and curve of both their bodies radiated a quiet beauty, a nobility, that cast the rest of the room into shadow. There are reasons gods don't walk the earth. Before them stood a short Eurasian Lynx in his fifties, a paunch stretching his waistcoat. He met the mage calmly, and the bear saw a seed of the same nobility in the Councilor - a candle to a bonfire, perhaps, yet nevertheless. "Welcome back, Alexander," he said formally. The panther shivered and collected himself. His eyes traveled mockingly over the plump cat. "Time has not been kind to you, Tadrith," he said, his voice dripping scorn in an attempt to hide the tremor beneath it. The Councilor - Tadrith? - shrugged. "Time passes for all things. Had you waited another three decades before you came back, you might have had no need to kill me." The panther snorted while his tears continued to drip onto the child he held. "Not all things. It can be made to pass one by, if one is willing to make the sacrifice." "Can it?" Tadrith asked quietly, searching the panther's eyes. The mage ducked his head to avoid the scrutiny, and he half-laughed. "I thought not. You know better, Alex." The eyes came back up, furious, and he bared his fangs. "You lost the right to call me that the day you left me." Tadrith swallowed a lump in his throat but held his ground. "I've never left you, Alex. I've waited thirty-three years for you to come back to me." The panther took a half-step back. "I've come to kill you," he said roughly. "I know. It took you longer than you thought to gain the strength, but you've kept your word. It's okay." Tadrith stepped forward, lifting his chin. "We both knew that immortality would harden your heart with time." He sighed. "It won't pass one by, but time does different things to different furs." He took another step forward, coming within arm's reach of the limp white form, and looked without fear into the mage's eyes. "Before you kill me, I'd like to ask you for a gift," he whispered, and for the first time his voice cracked over a bottomless longing. The dark face crumpled. Slowly, the mage knelt and laid the arctic fox on the floor, smoothing her limbs and caressing one fluffy ear, then stood again and faced the shorter lynx. Moving very, very carefully, he ran two fingers under Tadrith's jaw and tilted his head back, staring into those topaz pools. Tadrith smiled up at him. "If you ever get tired of immortality, Alex, come visit me. I'll be waiting." Alexander gave him a kind, bitter half-laugh. "Tadrith, we're not going to the same place." Then he leaned down an inch and kissed the lynx softly, slowly moving deeper, their lips opening as their tongues touched, explored. His right hand silently drew the katana from its sheath on his back and ran it down the space between their necks, resting the blade against Tadrith's fur. The lynx wrapped his paws around the panther's back, pulling him in a little closer. They slowly began to lighten the kiss again, drawing their tongues back and closing their lips. Just before their lips separated the mage swiftly pulled his blade back, opening the Councilor's neck. Tadrith dropped instantly, without a sound. The bear stifled a cry of anguish. Something stopped him from leaping to attack, and he silently cursed the strange power that held him still and silent while his master's murderer cleaned and sheathed his sword, then bent to pick up the arctic fox again. He looked directly at the armored polar bear, who recoiled from the bottomless misery in those emerald depths. The mage carried the fox to the opposite wall, where a door was waiting. It opened in silence for him, and he stepped through. Just before it closed, green flames began to lick at Tadrith's body, quickly reducing him to ash, then consuming even that. The door shut, and when the bear looked again, it was just a mantle again. *** And that's it. Comments appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed reading it.