A deal worth making

Hildegard von Rabenstein is using her training to avoid panic. Her father insisted that she learn the basic defense techniques against charms. Calmly breathing in and out while one is surrounded by demons and magical creatures is not easy. To her surprise the effect is suddenly broken. Her muscles obey her again.

What is to be done with this limited freedom? Her arms have been bound with a sturdy rope to a stone slab she is leaning against. Can she reach anything with her feet? A knife ideally, realistically a sharp piece of shattered potery? She hesitates. This will put certain parts of her not intended for the public onto full display. It cannot be helped. She is a knights’s daughter; better shame than defeat.

Something gets caught on her toes. It takes some contorsions, but finally she can inspect her finding. It is a copper penny, a bit singed, of the Principality of Ithaka. The Nornes surely have a grim sense of humour. Well, Penelope was also about to be forced into a political marriage. But, seriously this indicates that she is in the vincinity of the Mediterranean sea, a long way from home. That and the ritual strongly suggest that there will be no demands for ransom. She is on her own and in the hands of a wizard. Well, at least she was in the hands of a wizard. The two wizards had been speaking a language she does not know nor recognise, before things got destructive. That tells her exactly nothing. Wizards love to be mysterious.

In hindsight a wizard, probably the same wizard had attacked their group, when her brother called out in warning and a bright purple light hit her, ending all her recollections mere seconds after the ambush had been sprung. Her being here alone does not bide well for them. She hopes that her status made her valuable for the ritual and that her brother is all right.

This is a bit too much. She is trapped in a cave. Next to her, to her left in the flattened hexagon pattern they are situated, a pretty and foreign looking hugely pregnant woman is bound to a stone slab like herself, while to her right she is next to a demon sleeping with a hairless man teleported into the cave on her lap. They are both slightly snoring. She needs to either scream or giggle. She chooses to giggle.

Helena is keeping mum and trying not to move a muscle. She has seen the woman with the striped skin and the green and white strands of hair turn into a sword. She is not just among wizards. She is among unholy creatures. First the brigands, now this. She was hiding in the basement behind the storage rack for the potatoes to no avail. Worse, her little Julia is in a cage. And she can do nothing about it. All that is left to her is not attracting anymore attention on themselves.

Julia starts squirming and then screaming. No, no, No!

I am dreaming. Our griffon cavalry is in battle against a thunderbird. It is using snakes of animated lightning. This dream is strangely vivid. I am among them. I am throwing lightning bolts and balls that turn the feathers of our foe to dust.

Something is calling out to me. War drums? Horn signals? No – a baby’s cries.

I feel tired. Yet, I probably should be grateful to be woken up and to wake first. My face has been in a position one should have gone on a few dates for to find one’s faces in. I get up. My sight is blurry. I stumble a little as I rub my eyes. My vision cleared I find myself flashing my hairless goods to four women. I stop.

In my defense, so are they. Well, they have hair. Loss of hair has been an inevitable side effect. Wait, how do I know that? And why am I so far up? I fall to my knees. Damn, that hurts.

The mother squeaks. Empathy? No, it seem like she fears me and that I would take out stumbling over my own feet on her. What has happened here? People chained or roped to stone slabs in somebody’s basement are rarely voluntary participants. Does she think I am allied to the people who abducted her?

Well, from a certain perspective I was. This insight shakes me but again does not surprise me.

Musings on my memories or lack thereof will certainly not help that poor child, so I get up, noting again in a manner lacking surprise that my stomach is quite flat. I get up again, again almost stumbling over my own feet. My legs are too long. It does not matter. I kneel beside a baby in a cage. I lack tools. Do I need to smash something again? I am willing to try it. I put my hand on the cage and call for a smashing, but only the cage, not the content. It rusts and falls apart in seconds before my eyes. I want to see this again.

Wishes are dangerous here. I start really seeing. I am clad in an aura of multiple impossible colors. People are moving in trajectories through the room, except that they are not moving. They extent in an additional direction. Through the floor a strange ball of light becomes visible to me. And I see souls, hundreds of them in that new direction, dissolving into fuel. I yell, cover my eyes and curl up on the floor.