Hope

“Did he… strike a nerve?” Irwyn glanced at Elizabeth looking rather happy with how things turned out.

“The ambassador thinks that he knows everything better than anyone else just because he is old,” she nodded. “The Duchy of Red is the Southernmost one and has minimal contact with us in the far North - there is basically no contact beyond the occasional gatherings. There is a reason someone who has been stuck in conception for centuries can be an ambassador without it being perceived as an insult. Few people here actually care what the Archduke does or thinks unless he comes to endorse those thoughts in person.”

“Are we in private?” Irwyn raised an eyebrow.

“Full interference as soon as the battle started,” Elizabeth nodded. “The faction that wants you dead doesn’t actually realize how good you are and we want to keep it that way. If they start to think you could be a credible threat in less than a decade… it would make things much more complicated.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Irwyn nodded. “But if no one cares about the Duchy of Red, why do I need the Archduke's endorsement?”

“It might honestly be better if you don’t know all the details,” Elizabeth said after hesitating for a moment. “But it’s important because the Archduke has real sway when it comes to communal decisions. And those affect us as well, if by choice.”

“I don’t quite understand but I will trust you know what you are doing,” Irwyn shrugged.

“I am not privy to every detail either,” Elizabeth bit her lip. “I asked my mother for help.”

“You gave me the impression your relationship with her was… far from stellar,” Irwyn broached carefully.

“Yes,” she sighed. “But I am not going to get you killed over my pride and reluctance.”

“I appreciate that,” Irwyn nodded affirmatively. Then immediately changed topic. “The ambassador is not really human, is he?”

“No, though I am surprised you noticed,” Elizabeth seemed just as glad to talk about anything but her mother.

“I got this feeling right away - like he was all flame under the metal,” Irwyn nodded. “But I thought that was more metaphorical. A misperception. But during the fight he moved in ways that simply weren’t possible with human physiology.”

“I suppose your perception of Flames is a lot better than mine,” she raised an eyebrow. “I could barely feel anything was off through the armor. And don’t assume that just because someone moves or changes themselves in impossible ways means they aren’t mostly human, especially among more powerful mages - Dervish for example can completely shed his flesh in battle and he was born pure human. But in this case, you are right: The ambassador is a natural golem.”

“He seemed… rather fluent,” Irwyn frowned and spoke only after a baffled moment. That was far from his first guess.

“Probably don’t say that in front of too many people,” Elizabeth shook her head. “Golems can get very touchy about being compared to the more crude constructs that are not even technically of their kind.”

“I will say that I have basically not the slightest knowledge of the topic,” Irwyn admitted to his ignorance.

“What you are probably thinking of are not really even golems,” she nodded. “Barely sentient constructs of metal or perhaps soil that stumble around with minimal capacity. But those are actually monsters called automatons.”

“Yes, I was thinking of something like that,” Irwyn nodded. “Monsters… that means that they don’t have a soul,” No monster did. It was what distinguished them from the rest of living beings.

“Exactly. But making merely a monster is a mark of poor craftsmanship,” she explained. “You see, any golem maker with a legacy worth speaking of can force their creations to develop a proper soul.”

“Isn’t that a bit problematic?” Irwyn frowned. “Both morally and practically, to have a sapient magical construct that is basically enslaved.”

“Old history Irwyn,” Elizabeth shrugged. “Nowadays golems with souls gain full citizenship as anyone born in their duchy would – their makers either become or determine their guardians - and it’s been that way for at least 5 centuries, probably a lot longer. A big reason why the practice is so rare in the first place. The only place with a widespread golem-making tradition is the Duchy of Purple where they can be conscripted for up to 30 years before earning their freedom. Everywhere else systemic slavery is mostly banned.”

“Mostly?” Irwyn immediately had to ask.

“The Archduke of Red heavily frowns on the practice,” she nodded. “As had all the founding Dukes given they had all risen to overthrow the Tyrant. Duchy of Purple is the worst, hey have basically a serfdom where the nobility has blatant power of life and death over those on their demesne as well as the widespread conscriptions. It’s mostly tolerated because the Duchy is infested with perpetual monster tides - the entire region is basically in constant war with them. Besides them only the Duchy of White still allows a form of debt slavery where people can sell or bet their own lives in some cases. That has been on a decline in the last decades, ever since some fifty years ago when the current Duke of White personally inspected their courts after first taking power and made it quite clear he was not prone to bribes. A pile of dead judges sent a message, apparently.”

“Is it too much to hope they are a man of principle and strong moral fibre?” Irwyn half joked, half asked.

“My mother thinks the Duke of White is a pragmatic egocentrist who despises people trying to cheat him. The only principle he kills on is supposedly disobedience,” Elizabeth shrugged. “Quite ironic given the man is perhaps the most prolific habitual liar in the Federation if a quarter of the stories I have overheard from older nobility are true.”

“We have diverged from the topic,” Irwyn shook his head, as fascinating as it was. “You mentioned the ambassador is a natural golem?”

“Yes, sorry,” she nodded. “Rarely, and I mean rarely, random objects, magical phenomena or even spells can be granted a soul and become alive. Those are natural golems. There is ample literature discussing whether this is a mistake, if they just meet certain criteria or something in the middle. What is known though is that this happens exponentially more often at places with massively dense magic.”

“And the ambassador is a Flame golem?” Irwyn concluded.

“Exactly, though there is a bit more to it than that,” Elizabeth nodded. “There is one place in particular that is known to spawn golems in extraordinary quantities: The Everburn Isthmus.”

“Southern border of the Duchy Federation, right?” Irwyn recalled. “Eternally burning wasteland, supposedly after some ancient battle.”

“Basically,” Elizabeth nodded. “The consensus is that an Edict had been decreed there a long time ago with little regard for restraint. Mostly Flames though there are some signs of Light and Starfire also recorded. There is no consensus on what exactly has happened. Though since the deeper one goes the more unbearable the heat becomes - the edicts does more than merely make the Flames burn hotter as well. Not even the Archduke of Red has been able to venture anywhere near the actual center and they are literally pure Flame Named.”

“How is that even possible?” Irwyn gaped a bit.

“More than just heat, as I said. Everything also become more flammable, very much including mages that should be immune to such things,” she nodded. “But please stop side tracking me.”

“Sorry,” Irwyn shrugged in apology.

“As I WAS saying, the Everburn Isthmus has a comparatively extreme number of natural golems being born there, to the point they have formed a tribal society of sorts. Though not exactly. They don’t quite operate the same way humans do and don’t really have anything to compete over.”

“And they live in the wasteland?”

“Being a golem formed completely from flames and magic does wonders for their ability to survive in a constantly burning landscape,” she shrugged. “They do not need sustenance and do not age. Though, even their bodies will burn eventually if they delve too deep. There are also occasional mana typhoons that can disperse and kill them. Besides that, they seem to just kind of… wander across molten nothingness.”

“I frankly had never heard of such peoples existing,” Irwyn admitted.

“It is fringe knowledge,” she shrugged. “I am only mentioning this because the ambassador comes from one these tribes. An exile, supposedly, though that was some 500 years ago so details are sparse. The Duchy of Red is nominally their overlord and the Archduke ended up taking the young exile in. Then they failed to form a domain for well over a century after attaining the peak of conception and ended up relegated to here out of ‘trust’. He has been the ambassador since the times when my great great grandfather ruled the Duchy.”

“So he is older than anyone around which makes him feel more important than he is,” Irwyn nodded. Not that he didn’t think that having even a bit of trust of a Named mage wasn’t incredible but mostly because Elizabeth seemed to dislike the… man? Probably. Either way, it cost Irwyn nothing to be supportive in private.

“Basically,” she nodded. “But I also need to get going. Although I would love to just chat, I have been… busy to do everything.

“One last thing then,” Irwyn stopped her. “This one really private.”

“Speak then,” she nodded affirmatively.

“I have had another vision,” Irwyn admitted.

“You mentioned them before,” she recalled. “Something about omen and improvement.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “And I think I have improved by a fair chunk, though I did not have the chance to properly test that against the ambassador. But it’s what I saw that I wanted to mention,”

“It hints at things, right,” Elizabeth’s expression was severe. “Like it did the last damn time. Fuck, I still cannot believe we really just completely dismissed the possibility of undead in Abonisle.

“Hardly your fault since the magic got even Dervish,” Irwyn shook his head. “And yes, I saw… quite something. I am honestly am not sure I quite believe what I saw.”

“How cryptic,” Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“What I mean by that is that I came to a conclusion so insane even you would think I am delusional if I explained it to you,” Irwyn admitted. The Name still WEPT in the hypothetical distance with grief Irwyn did not quite remember.

“Then why bring it up at all if you aren’t going to tell me?” Elizabeth did not press him, just raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I figured you ought to know,” he said. “But also, it gave me a big clue about the writing problem I have. I am basically convinced it’s based off of an oath. Whether it was actually me who swore it or if it’s just an imitation… well that is basically the whole gist of my earlier point about believability.”

“But since you think it’s an oath it has a wording rather than esoteric conditions a curse might,” she realized.

“Well, yes, that is true,” Irwyn nodded after a moment of hesitation. That had not been the angle he had been going for but she was right.

“I could take it to a linguist,” she mirrored his nod, thinking. “They are excellent at finding loopholes and unexpected restrictions. I wouldn’t be able to hide it from my Mother but it would be mostly discreet. Depends of how damning you think it is.”

“Not damning at all, at least outwardly,” Irwyn shook his head, then shared. “Just strange. You could probably play it off as something from an ancient text to be honest…”

Ezax von Blackburg stared at the pitch-black screen. And that was exactly what it would be for most people, just a useless piece of furniture. Except it did project an image like any screen ought to… it just did so in an extremely and needlessly convoluted way. Segmented and shuffled images translated into flashes of Void magic in accordance with a code of perhaps a million points that described individual colors which he then needed to reconstruct in his head to form an image from it.

It was ridiculously convoluted, made no sense, and was an absolute waste of effort where a normal screen would have been just as effective, if not more.

But it was tradition for the Duke to receive all image correspondence this way. No one really remembered why it had started nor when but the nobility just insisted that it must have been for an excellent reason and therefore could not be changed. And as annoying as it was, it did not even make it to the actual long list of traditions Ezax had been attempting to undermine for the past 4 decades. Because it was, ultimately, harmless to him. A minor restriction he endured to not give his enemies another thing to grumble about.

He refocused on what he was seeing – a side project before he had to return his attention to running of a nation about to go into a Lich War. Namely, images from Steelmire. It had been a slaughter, apparently, though that was not why he was looking at them. The inquisition had concluded that the massacre had been an undead ambush butchering them to the last. That in itself was disturbing given that their leader had attained 8 domains, marking them easily among the hundred strongest mages in the whole Federation. Rather, Ezax was revisiting the situation because his wife smelled a rat and he trusted her intuition implicitly.

And those efforts have finally borne fruit - the image before him showed a dead young woman… perhaps in her twenties who happened to seemingly be staring straight into the cameras. One of the hundreds of pictures taken by the inquisitors and then shared to the Duchy of Black. And they were thorough specialists… in soul magic and countering necromancy.

The young woman was a void mage though. A spy, in fact. Steelmire used to be large enough to warrant a few. And from those eyes, Ezax would get what he needed. He reached forward, across the imagery. Across Time and across the laws that gathered reality. He could not quite break them for he was not Named. Not yet. Only Edicts could be truly unbound. But he could bend them a little. And the Void in particular was quite good at bending the rules imposed by Time. Yes, it was just a picture of a corpse, but in a way, a spy was an extension of his Sight. Sight, that was the domain of eyes. And as for eyes…

THE FATHOMLESS EYE ALWAYS stared back. So, as the corpse stared at him through the image… Ezax returned the favour. For he was no novice who feared the dark. He was that which others knew to dread. A thing that watched from depths beyond mortal description. And as he stared back at the girl, it was the simplest thing to steal the sight that dared look at him. The Void concerned itself not with death nor detachment of time. The rules of reality tried to impose themselves on him and stop him in his tracks… but he had enough weight of Fate on his side and the rulebending was not too egregious. In the end, he confidently succeeded.

He was rewarded with scattered images without context. He had stolen the sights, not thoughts or sounds. And he had taken quite a bit. Days he had to filter through… which took him almost a whole second. Most of it was useless, really. Steelmire had indeed been taken by an ambush and the spy had not realized what was happening until mere moments before her death. It was in said death that Ezax found what he had been looking for:

A face.

One he recognized. One he was quite confident had not joined the ranks of the undead. Ezax allowed himself a grin. And they had apparently been so very thorough in the coverup too. He had to wonder why… so he called the person who could figure it out.

“Avys, can we talk?” one of his rings 'shone' in a black antithesis of Light, sending a message to its pair.

“A moment,” a voice projected through it, though it was not technically audible to anyone but him. “You can bring me now.”

And Ezax did. This was, after all, City Black, the seat of his power. For all the bickering miscreants who fancied themselves his opposition, he had made sure that the few among them who could even begin to compete with him in magic were far away. Therefore, he found his beloved and locked onto the unique flavor of her presence without an issue in one of her chambers, then GRAFTED IMPRESENCE from the Void’s very essence between them. And since distance did not really exist deep enough into the Void, it was child’s play to bridge the difference between there and here. Avys stood beside him in all her beauty, a clandestine meeting no one would even expect could be happening.

“Did you ask me to wait just so you could strip?” Ezax raised an eyebrow in exasperation and very intently did not look down.

“No,” she lied with a straight face. “I was merely dismissing the masseurs.”

“You don’t have masseurs,” Ezax grinned.

“Calm could have found me a pack,” Avys shrugged.

“That aside, I found something about the Steelmire mess,” he formed them a seat of Void magic including a table and an elegant raven black dress for Avys, which she immediately pouted about. “Here, take a look,” he quickly distracted her by reproducing the image. It was a exponentially more difficult to do properly with Void magic than with something like Light… but possible. He just needed to selectively redirect and absorb just the right amount of natural light from the room’s source to form a reflection. Convoluted but easy enough for him.

“This is familiar,” Avys immediately stared at the picture with a frown. “Isn’t he part of the Birthday boy’s guard?”

“Exactly,” Ezax grinned at the nickname.

“Oh, that’s cold,” Avys grinned right back. “Did he kill his own niece? I think we were even invited to the funeral out of politeness.”

“I did my part,” Ezax shrugged. “Tell me when you figure out the why, or if you need more help.”

“Speaking of help, I need something for Lizzy’s boy,” she nodded.

“Lizzy’s boy, is he now?” Ezax couldn’t shed the grin.

“Please, you should see them,” Avys rolled her eyes. “I need you to delay the Declaration by a day.”

“The Archduke will not like that,” Ezax frowned slightly, “He dislikes stalling things out longer than necessary. Especially in a case like this.”

“Which is why you will tell him it’s necessary to save the talented young man his ambassador has been talking his ear off about for a good chunk of the morning,” she grinned. “The rest can be stalled by excuses as long as we have the Archduke behind it. The script is half ready for you, I was just writing it when you called me.”

“I thought you mentioned a massage.”

“I can multitask,” she did not even hesitate in answering. “Though if you need a massage yourself it can be arranged.”

“I am working, Avys,” Ezax shrugged.

“No, you are taking a break,” she stood up from the chair with predatory grace and very slowly walked towards him, staring Ezax down hungrily all the way.

He got the message and dispersed the dress.