Isle of Wysteria: The Monolith Crumbles

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  Deftly he reached out and removed the necklace from around her neck. She ignored it, as if she didn’t even notice him doing it. He rearranged some of the bones, working the subtle magic that controlled the afet dissolved within her blood. Slowly replacing the dirgina and allowing the real Spirea to resurface. With a clack of smoke, the necklace began humming, and he placed it back around her neck.

  Queen Sotol rubbed her temple, looking around as if confused. When she saw him smiling, she relaxed a bit.

  “Your contract is nearly fulfilled,” she mentioned softly. “I’m going to miss our morning rides together.”

  Oh gross, she does like him. In my body…she’s pining after him in my body. I can actually feel how attracted she is to him. Oh, this is unbearable.

  Tigera leaned in, so close to her now that their noses nearly touched.

  “Then perhaps we could negotiate a new contract?” he suggested.

  Oh no! She wants to kiss him. No! Don’t do it! I only want to kiss Alder, not this guy.

  The screech of a falcon drew their attention away from each other.

  Oh, thank Milia.

  The hunting bird dove down from above, unfolding its wings at the last second to swoop up over the tall grass. As it came to a rest, the animal’s flesh exploded, revealing a black skeleton. The bones reshaped themselves, and the flesh reknit itself into a man standing before them.

  “I need to speak with you right away,” Blair snapped as he folded his arms in dissatisfaction.

  “What is the problem?”

  Blair’s needle-like eyes flicked over to Tigera, indicating that he was waiting for her to dismiss him.

  The Queen looked at Tigera sidelong, then seemed to resolve something within herself. “It is fine. Anything you say to me, you can say in front of him.”

  Blair blinked. “Fine? Hoeun is part of the Alliance, his people…”

  “Perhaps you should take on a form with larger ears and a smaller mouth. I said it was fine,” she insisted.

  Tigera beamed with satisfaction.

  Wait…was this his plan? I remember now. He’s the Beastmaster Athel and I fought underneath Thesda. The one who was kidnapping people. Wasn’t he working for this Kabal back then? So, why is he trying to insinuate himself into it now? Just what is he up to?

  Blair sneered. “Very well, it’s not like I care. Father is displeased with you.”

  “He is always displeased,” Spirea said dryly.

  “You cannot give out orders to our operatives directly. You don’t have the authority.”

  “I was given a mission to fulfill, and I am fulfilling it. Does Dev’in want Athel Forsythia dead or does he not?”

  “Oh, he wants her dead. He mumbles about it to Mother for hours on end. But he also wants you to stay within your bounds.”

  That’s right. She has been tasked to kill Athel. If she kills Athel, then maybe I can get Alder back? No, wait, Athel said that she is still my friend, but how can I believe her? Ahh, I can’t think straight. It’s like my head has been scrambled. No, I’m not going to let people use me anymore. I’ll only bring pain, even more pain than I already have.

  “Boundaries are irrelevant,” The Queen said. “I need access to one of your sleeper agents. Athel has made a move that I must counter.”

  “What move is that?”

  “She has sent new delegates to Hatronesia to sign a treaty. I mean to sabotage her.”

  “Only a ranking member of the Kabal can activate a sleeper agent. Only a handful of people....”

  “So initiate me, then!”

  Blair threw his head back and laughed. “Not a chance.”

  Queen Sotol was not amused. “You have no idea how close you are to losing this war, do you?” she accused coldly.

  “Hardly. At the rate the Himitsu are harvesting, we will have all the souls we need in time to resurrect Valpurgeiss. What can she possibly do trapped on her island, unable to launch her fleets of traitor airships without our permission? Even if she found a way off her island prison, we are preparing for…”

  She reached out and grabbed Blair by the throat, her sharpened nails digging into his flesh. “I can tell exactly what Athel is thinking, you smug twig! She plans to use Hatronesian magic to force you to end the Rubric.”

  Blair blinked. “What?”

  She grunted in frustration and released him. “See, this is exactly why she beat you before. You don’t understand how her mind works. I do. You are frantically building fresh defenses all over Boeth in preparation of her direct assault, but you are wasting your time. The loss of so much life on both sides would offend her preposterous sense of aesthetics. No, she’ll look for a way to save as many lives on both sides as possible. She’ll create a situation where the Stonemasters will desperately want to do exactly what she wants them to do.”

  This caught Blair’s attention. “But, how would she do that?”

  “She’s going to have the Hatronesians declare war on Boeth. Under her instructions, they will claim that they are acting independently to save themselves from the Rubric, siding with neither the Alliance nor the League, and they will use an army of their sorcerers to lift a blanket of seawater and hold it over Boeth itself.”

  Blair’s jaw fell open.

  She nodded icily. “Those winged freaks will inform the Stonemasters that in two hours the sea water will fall down on them. If the Rubric is dispelled by then, the water will do no harm. If it is still active, their cities and forests will be dissolved to nothing but parched bones. Their caves and secret places will be flooded full.”

  Blair covered his mouth in terrified understanding, a smile forming on his thin lips. “She knows that the Stone Council cannot possibly give in to her demands. Valpurgeiss would never allow it.”

  “She doesn’t know your true goals, but she has correctly deduced your character. She knows you will never give in to those demands.”

  Blair’s eyes widened in blissful terror. “Which means…”

  “…Which means the Stonemasters themselves will have no choice but to rise up against the Stone Council. That is her true goal, to turn them against us. She knows that Stonemaster magic can tear apart Truestone like cotton. Athel and the Alliance navy will arrive just in time from a different direction, offering to help as a benevolent ally, inviting them to join her as she attacks the monolith itself. Those stupid little squats will sing her praise, not even realizing that she is offering to save them from a situation she herself created. Forsythians absolutely adore that kind of strategy. They have an almost pathological need to come off as being the good guys. It’s how they’ve maintained power for so many generations. It’s the same kind of trick she used to turn the navy against us. In the end, all those gates and fortifications you are building will be opened to her from within by the very soldiers manning them.”

  That’s right. Athel always tries to save everyone. She’s like some stupid little kid pretending to be a hero like the ones in those dumb books she always blathers about. Back on the Dreadnaught, she even saved my life once. But, why would she save me if she planned to betray me? But, she did betray me; she stole the man I loved…didn’t she? Oh, I’m so confused…

  Blair laughed. “Oh, this is exquisite. Truly, Athel Forsythia is a more dangerous opponent than I had ever imagined. What can we do to stop her?”

  Queen Sotol smiled devilishly. “Make me a ranking member of the Kabal, and I will tell you.”

  * * *

  “Oh wow, I’ve never seen so many different kinds of food in all my life,” Dwale whispered in awe as he looked around the extravagant dining hall. The glowing crystal chandeliers, the stone fountains, the parted waterfall through which guests entered, the gold filigree of the moldings, the thick embossed wallpaper, the priceless rugs. For someone who had been blind for years, it was visual overload. Dwale found that he had to hold hi
s hands up, limiting what he was looking at to just a few things at a time. It intimidated him in a way that was hard to describe. Not a fear, per say, but definitely a strong sensation of wanting to run away from so much visual noise. This was clearly a place to which men would enter only as servants. Being a guest there made him feel a little like a burglar.

  “Yeah, I always wanted to go to this place,” Setsuna said as she stretched back in her fine leather chair, kicking her boots off of her feet beneath the table. “This is supposed to be the nicest restaurant in all of Eddinburg.”

  Dwale looked around. “Won’t Dr. Griffin be joining us?”

  “Oh, he couldn’t come.”

  “Work?”

  “He was all tied up.”

  * * *

  Inside their ship, Dr. Griffin’s muffled screams could be heard coming out of a coat closet. The banging grew louder and louder until the door busted open, and he fell to the floor, tied in rope from neck to ankle.

  “Ha! You think this will stop me!” he yelled, spitting out the gag. “I’ll crawl into your room and try on all your clothes while you are gone!”

  Dr. Griffin squirmed forward like a giant caterpillar, but was halted by a metallic clank. Looking back, he realized that his ankle was chained to a steam pipe.

  “Dang it!”

  * * *

  Back at the restaurant, Privet kept glancing over his shoulder, as if he expected some Treesingers to rush in and arrest them at any time. “If we had kept going, we could have made Ronesia by the end of the week.”

  Setsuna plucked up a piece of buttered bread and placed it delicately on her tongue. “Oh, don’t be so stuffy. This is my treat. How often do you Wysterian men get a chance to be wined and dined by a beautiful woman like me, anyway?”

  Privet tapped his fingertips together. “Like you? Never.”

  “Exactly.”

  Dwale smiled knowingly. “Because there are no Wysterian women like her, right brother?”

  “Yup.”

  “Good thing, too,” Setsuna boasted, refusing to acknowledge his barb. “A Wysterian woman would have let that thief just make off with our coats as we came in.”

  “That was the cloakman,” Privet said. “It’s his job to take people’s jackets.”

  Setsuna cracked an eye open. “It’s his job to steal people’s jackets? And people call me a thief.”

  “You are a thief. He hangs the jackets in the cloak closet then gives them back to you as you leave.”

  Setsuna’s long pointed ears twitched. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Oh.” She sat up and looked out the window. Floating on an artificial islet, this place had an amazing view of the glimmering city below.

  She scratched her elbow. “Oh, well, I’m sure it’s no big deal.”

  Dwale looked up at her. “No big deal? But…you punched him in the face.”

  Unable to hold it back, Privet allowed a smile to break through. “Okay, you were right, this is fun.”

  An incredulous waiter came up and set their menus down before them. With a practiced flip of his wrist, their silken napkins were laid out on their laps.

  Setsuna gave Privet an impressed look, as if to say, ‘ooh fancy.’ Privet cracked a grin in return.

  Dwale could only gawk at the contents. “I didn’t even know there were this many kinds of food. Is this every dish from the whole world?”

  “Not quite, sir.”

  The waiter spun his hand around and a wooden tablet appeared in his palm. “What would the…ahem, ‘lady’ prefer this evening?”

  Setsuna craned her head to check out a silver dessert cart being wheeled to another table. “Let’s start with two of everything from that dessert thingy.”

  Their waiter sniffed. “Two, Madam?”

  “Yeah, that way we can take the ones we like back to the ship in a doggy bag.”

  Their waiter sniffed. “Pardon me, Madam, but this is Meeriuge Effus’ettu, we do not have…doggy bags here.”

  “Until now,” she said with a wink of her green eye, slipping a pair of gold coins into his shirt pocket.

  As their waiter walked away in disgust, Setsuna peaked over Privet’s shoulder.

  “So, what do you boys want for an appetizer?”

  Dwale furrowed his brow. “What’s an appetizer?”

  “That’s the food we eat while they make our food.”

  Dwale blinked. “I thought you just ordered that.”

  “No, that was dessert. Desert is the food we eat after we eat our food.”

  Dwale shook his head. “No wonder women are always worried about gaining weight. You eat before you eat and then again after you eat.”

  Setsuna slipped her delicate hands around Privet’s strong arm, giving the rock-hard muscles a little squeeze. “So, they have a thing here called the couple’s cozette, where you feed each other from the same dish. It’s supposed to be very romantic.”

  “Is that why you brought us here?”

  “What? Me? No, of course not. Dwale, your brother and I are having the couple’s cozette, what are you having?”

  “Hey.”

  Dwale sheepishly looked over the fine inscriptions, then folded up his menu. “Um, can I just have some gruel?”

  Setsuna laughed. “Gruel? Why would you want to order gruel from a place like this?”

  Dwale looked down, not wanting to answer.

  Setsuna picked up her own menu and scanned through it. “I don’t even think they have gruel here…”

  Then she realized what was happening and looked over at Dwale, who was sitting there, mortified.

  Her expression became sympathetic. “You don’t know how to read, do you?”

  Dwale shook his head in disgrace. “That is reserved for house-husbands. Breeders…don’t need to know how to read.”

  Privet moved to say something, but Setsuna beat him to it. “That’s okay,” she said, placing her hand over his. “You know what? I don’t know how to swim.”

  Dwale wiped his eyes to make sure there were no tears there. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. I never learned.”

  “But, you grew up in a swamp.”

  “I know, right? Do you know how hard it is to live in a swamp when you don’t know how to swim? Going home from school, I’d have to walk around every pond and puddle, tracing the edges between them sometimes so I wouldn’t fall in. For the rivers, I’d have to find a ferry or make a bridge from a fallen tree. Took me twenty minutes sometimes just to get to the neighbor’s house. Sawyn would always be calling me to hurry up. Now she was a great swimmer. One time when I was twelve I lost my footing and fell in. I was thrashing and screaming, but all that did was give me a mouthful of water. Then suddenly I felt her hand grab me by the wrist and start pulling. She had dove in to save me, ruining the beautiful summer dress father had just bought for her.”

  Setsuna leaned back and rubbed the mark on her wrist. “She pulled me out all on her own. Father was furious, of course, but I just told him that it was my fault, he decided not to punish her for it.”

  Dwale sniffed, feeling a little better. “That must have been pretty hard, I guess.”

  Setsuna smiled and reached over to give his hand a squeeze.

  “Is that how you got that scar?” he asked, perking up.

  “Oh, this? No, this a powder burn from when my pistol went off in my pants.”

  Dwale burst out laughing, remembering to cover his mouth when some of the nearby patrons began glaring at him.

  As she sat back, Privet gave her a little tap with his foot. When she looked at him, he gave her an approving look that said ‘thank you for making him feel better.’

  Setsuna giggled happily to herself, soaking in the praise from Privet like it was rain after a drought.

  “
Okay,” she said, hoping to get more of the same. “Since they don’t have pictures on the menu here, I’ll show you what the items are so you can pick. Privet, read them off for me.”

  “Um, okay,” he said, taking the menu dubiously.

  Energetically, Setsuna spun around in her chair, so she could see out across the dining hall.

  “Lobster A l’orime.”

  Finding the dish, she waved her hand, and a women at the far end yelped in fright as her dinner plate fell through a swirling black gate of mist that appeared underneath it. The dish reappeared in front of Dwale, falling up though the gate in front of him, before falling back though and coming to a rough landing back where it belonged, only slightly ruffled for the journey. The women’s husband fanned her to keep her from fainting.

  Privet dropped his menu. “I don’t think this is a…”

  “Keep going,” she bade, ready for the next one.

  Privet sighed. “Squab terrine.”

  Another plate disappeared, this time in the balcony seating. The mustachioed man leaned forward over the strange gate laying where his plate used to be, only to have his plate reappear and hit him square in the face.

  “Oh, that one looked good,” Dwale mentioned.

  “Sunchoke Veloute.”

  A woman wearing a huge feathered hat screamed.

  “Chilled oysters in gelée.”

  A man yelled, his toupeé falling off.

  “Foie gras stuffed grouse.”

  An entire table screamed and fell backwards in their chairs.

  “Cilantro stuffed rabbit saddle.”

  Setsuna felt a hand on her shoulder, which startled her. Her gates all snapped shut as she spun around, her green pigtails whipping out and smacking the owner, as he stood there, arms folded, a plate of rabbit saddle dumped over his head. Their waiter stood to one side, the cloakman with a black eye on the other.

  The owner tossed her gold coins onto the table contemptuously. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave, madam.”

  “Why? I’ve got money.”

  She slid her finger through the air, and it opened up like a zipper. Reaching inside, she withdrew a handful of gemstones and jingled them around in her hand, like she was holding out a treat for a dog. “See? Shiny shiny.”