Biomancy

by Desdemona Gunn

  “Now then, the announcement. That little handling of things caught the attention of the Primarus, Mister Vimo Ghostfire himself.” This news made her eyes widen. The Primarus of Ghostfire knew about me? Damn. “The man swung by our facilities and was just appalled at the living conditions we so graciously give our prisoners that he makes us keep alive. Now, apparently the way we’ve been treating you prisoners is just not up to his standards. I thought keeping you people alive was good enough; I guess not.” This got a laugh out of her, but everyone else appeared to be glaring at their runes. She realized this was not a joke, as she had thought, and continued listening.

  “No, he thinks having a three by three room is too small, it could lead to insanity and promotes antisocial tendencies. Personally, I think you lot talk too much as it is. Primarus Vimo, however, thinks you all deserve more room. Unfortunately, since he is all of our funding and, you know, the law, we have to bend over backwards to give him what he wants. As such, we are giving all of you a full seven by seven-meter cell.”

  A cheer resounded around her, as if all the prisoners within earshot all cried out at once. She, too, would have joined them, but there had to be a catch, she knew it.

  “However, there’s a catch.”

  I knew it.

  “We can’t just give you undeserving shits more space, that’d be inefficient. No, we were going to put six of you to a room, but he deemed this too ‘unsatisfactory.’ However, he did allot two people to a cell. So guess what, prisoners of our lovely dungeon? You’re all getting a roommate.”

  Silence befell the prison. She couldn’t decide whether to be happy or not at this news. Yes, more space, room to move and function, but to share it with someone? And of their choice, or random? “Naturally, we will be choosing your roommates for you. Most of you will end up with someone from your own cellblock, so you should at least know who you’ll be shacked up with. The new cells are being finished up now, and you should be moved into them soon. Have a wonderful rest of your wake, you shits. Try not to kill your roommates. Or do, fuck if I care.”

  She looked across to Liam who simply stared back at her. They both opened their mouths to say something witty, topical, thought-provoking, even casual, but no words came to mind. Lost in their own thoughts, they both laid down and stared at their own individually patterned ceiling. Osa hoped that she would at least keep her ceiling. Or, maybe she didn’t. A new one to stare at and figure out could be fun.

  Her cellblock was empty. Liam had been escorted to the new facility two meals ago, and the last of the folks within sight, that poor little starry girl that hadn’t said a word since Osa first laid eyes on her, was finally moved out. She felt bad for her. When the guard grabbed her, the woman tensed up and started crying immediately. She was set up. Something bad happened to that poor girl. This fucking place...

  “Osadoguhn Viaxy?”

  “That’s me!” She bore her teeth in what most would consider a smile. A horrible, terrible smile. The man was another Atrok, this one with a surprisingly good Antrian accent. “Where’s my new digs, friend Kruger?”

  “This way, Miss Viaxy.”

  “Aw, has the nasty upper-ups broken your soul already?”

  He didn’t answer, just led her down the hallway. As they reached the stairs, he put a hood over her head and she was led carefully up the stairs. She was led forward a short ways before being stopped, feeling a slight tingle, then being led again. The hood was ripped off as she was shown into a cell, though in comparison, she’d hardly call it a cell.

  Yes, the entire interior was stone, but there was a window shedding light, two beds, one stacked atop the other, a desk on the side with paper and writing quills, seemingly enchanted to not require inkwells, and no bars facing the hallway. She turned to see a wooden door close, leaving her trapped inside a suddenly much more claustrophobic room. The old cell had bars, giving it the illusion of openness; this was much more a cell, now that she was in it.

  Shortly after being put in, she turned to see a man standing in the middle of the room. He was short for a Northman, though not terribly so, simply by averages. His face was plain, his hair slicked back, and he spoke with an unassuming, bored, authoritative yet non-threatening tone. She had heard it recently.

  “Hello, Miss Viaxy.”

  “My ‘Jailer,’ I assume?”

  “Pleasure to meet you, I am indeed your jailer, the owner and manager of this complex. Welcome to your new cell.” His voice droned on without attempt to hide his boredom, though the authority was obvious.

  “Thanks, oh unknown nameless jailer.”

  He smirked. “Just wanted to make sure everything was copacetic.”

  “I’m guessing I don’t get to ask for my roommate to be Liam Albreight, since he left a long time ago and, well, he ain’t here?”

  “Your cellmate is not one chosen by you. One is assigned.”

  “And where is he or she?”

  “She. We won’t shack you with someone of the other gender. Don’t want... dissatisfactory things happening to our guests. I mean prisoners.” He glowered at nothing in particular.

  “I’d like to see someone try something with me. Ain’t seen any other Slagskin in this place, and you fleshy folks can’t handle my bits.”

  “Despite all the presented information there, we’ll be giving you a woman. Yours is actually a newbie. She’s just been assigned here under the charges of Planned and Plotted Murder, Unlawful Public Execution, and Possession of Substances Outlawed by the City of Bargatha.”

  “What’s a Bargathan doing in Arghan’Pen?”

  “Bargatha doesn’t have housing for any serious crimes. We get all the bad ones. Anyway, she’ll be with you shortly. Enjoy your time with us, Miss Viaxy. Or don’t, fuck if I care.” The man suddenly vanished and the rune below him began to fade from a brilliant turquoise into nothingness. I really should have known it was magic. Not like the manager’d trust a murderer alone with him. She laughed to herself as the door behind her opened.

  A young, skinny Nojernan woman, quite similar to the one she’d been watching for the past dozen or so turns, was pushed in. Her head was shaved bald and had piercings littering her face.

  A voice from outside the door called out to her. “Got locked up just late enough to get the new cells. Enjoy your new home, Miss NicCarmaig.”

  Chapter 32: A Thing to See

  The City of Bargatha, Ghostfire Prefecture

  He stared at his fellow adventurers before suddenly being blinded by deep blue, then quite suddenly seeing the gates of AIB before him. The sun was barely lower in Bargatha than on Xin, and the oranges of the sunrise were just finally fading. After taking in the open air, he pulled in his hands tight to his mouth and whispered, “I’m back, babe, and stand before the gates of my personal hell. Where do you hide, my lovely lady,” into his pink, glowing hands.

  They flashed and, seemingly instantaneously, Idrilis’ voice rang through his head excitedly with a wall of pink and Elon! You’re back! Oh by the light of the seven, I’ll be there before you can say— He laughed aloud, still unsure whether she just couldn’t remember the limit to the spell or if she was being ironic. She had a penchant for those kinds of messages.

  The gates sighed as he leaned against them, creaking against their iron hinges. He whipped out his pipe, packed it, and before he could even light it, he found himself enveloped in the arms of a starry-looking mass topped off with a tangle of green hair. A muffled sound emanated from his chest sounding something like “missed you.” Her hair shuffled around smoothly under his hand as he rubbed her head, pulling her into his chest as another hand wrapped around her back, pipe still in hand. “Missed you too, Lizzy babe.”

  They rested there, her head buried in his silk shirt she bought him a few months ago just for the voyage, his arm wrapped round her, his opposite hand o
n her head, her arms enveloping him. After a few minutes, she broke the positioning to kiss him, her hand moving from his back to the back of his head, while her left arm stayed at his back, pulling him in.

  Elon had never been one for kissing, and always just went along with it, satisfying whatever primal urge she had until she eventually either stopped or started kissing elsewhere. More than a few times, he’d felt a true emotional sensation when kissing Liz, but only in short bursts.

  For once in his fairly short life, he felt an emotion rush over him so utterly primal and fulfilling, all logic, preconceptions, built-up habits and recognition of the outside world left him in favor of returning that kiss with all the power he had. His hands moved to her cheeks, pulling her closer before awkwardly shifting around to her back, one hand to her shoulder blades and another to the small of her back. As the kiss continued, he flipped her around and pinned her to the gates. They stayed, lips locked for longer than he had ever held a woman to his face before she, again, broke it.

  “You smell funny.” A smirk was smeared so far across her face it was pointless to resist it, so she let it shine to its full extent.

  With a full teeth-bearing smile, he retorted “I’ve been on the sea for three turns and the first thing you say is that I smell? Well thanks, I love you too.”

  She pulled back in for a hug, nocking her head over his shoulder and resting calmly beside his head, ear beside his. “I said funny, not bad. And in my defense, you do. But, I suppose I can’t blame you. And hey!” She pulled back to look him in the eyes. “The first thing I said was ‘Oh my gosh, Elon! You’re back! I’ll be there lickity split!’”

  “You thought that, not said it.”

  “I said it, you only heard it in your head ‘cause I was whispering at my palms frantically.”

  “Frantically?”

  “Of course frantically! I heard the voice of my beloved out of the blue for the first time in turns. I sent a message back posthaste and bolted for the gates.”

  “So, your graduation’s in a shift or so, right?”

  “No, it was this—” She cut herself off suddenly, her face stunned. “Oh. Oh Elon.”

  “What?”

  “Something happened... We... We need to go to Arghan’Sul. Trust me.”

  His hand gripped hers tightly, though hers gripped back just as hard. The building before them was decidedly non-pleasant in sight, demeanor, purpose, or really any sense of the word. It was ugly, stone, towering, and an architectural stain on the equally boring and metropolitan city surrounding them. “Liz, love, why are we at the Arghan’Sul Penitentiary?”

  “It’s not my place to say. Just... come with me.”

  Inside, he was pissed that he missed graduation. I couldn’t have missed it. No, I had a damn calendar on my wall, I counted the fucking desses, I know I got it right. That bitch of a dean probably changed the date just to fucking spite me. The office they walked into was equally stark, barren, and industrial. This looked less like a prison and more of an asylum. A lady sat behind the desk looking rode hard and put away wet.

  “Can I help you two?”

  “My name’s Idrilis Arroway? I... Made an appointment?”

  Elon rose an eyebrow at her, and she just smirked and shrugged.

  “Arroway, Arroway, Arro— Ah, I got it. You got it just in time, we only allow visitations in the first two desses. Outside contact is frowned upon here.” Gods be damned, this is a fucking asylum, isn’t it? “Follow me.” The two of them were led down a few stark, barren hallways that continued the theme of the building before entering a room featuring a wooden table, three chairs, and blank walls. Two doors faced each other, one they entered, one for the prisoners to enter through.

  “Remember, you stay seated, you don’t make physical contact with the prisoner, you talk and leave. You may not leave anything with them, nor take anything from them without running it through us first. Guards will be on standby and we will be listening. Call us if you need anything.”

  “Thank you,” Liz responded. Elon sat, and she followed suit.

  “Liz, what the fuck is going on here?”

  She responded by grabbing his hand tightly, resting it on the table, and staring forward. Soon enough, a Nojernan woman walked in, obviously skinny and clothed in the typical grungy prison garb: loose-fitting roughspun cloth shirt and pants. The woman reeked of licorice, puzzling Elon. A thick black hood covered her head until she was seated, at which point it was violently removed. The constellations of her head and arms were unmistakable to Elon.

  “Cherry?!” He didn’t even notice the guard leave the room with the hood.

  “Zippy! Lizzy, oh thank the gods. I thought I’d never see either of you ever again!”

  “Rhod, it’s so good to see you.”

  “Cherry, what the fuck happened? I was on a boat. I came back to grab Liz and send off, but she brought me here. I didn’t even know it was you we were seeing. What... What did I miss?”

  “Zippy... I fucked up. I fucked up bad.” He could see tears start to stream down her face as she bowed her head. He barely recognized her without her mohawk, or leather, let alone crying. “I... Graduation... Rena, Zippy. I...” She waved at Liz as she collapsed on the table in a fit of tears.

  “I... I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted him to hear it from you.”

  “I— I can’t. I can’t. Just... tell him, Lizzy.”

  They both looked at their mutual friend, the friend that had brought them together in a hysteric fit like Elon had never seen. “Liz. What... happened?”

  “It was graduation. She... She was doing her final project. She told you about it, right?”

  “She was planning to prove shadow magic wasn’t abstract, right? She was gonna move something physically with just shadow.”

  “Right. She did her diatribe and lectured the audience, which was great. She was the smartest most confident person up there. Unfortunately, her confidence...”

  He stared into her artificially green eyes. “Go on.” He didn’t say this as a plea or a request, but as a statement; a command.

  “She brought Harena on stage with her. She was gonna levitate her with the shadow magic. Everything was going swimmingly: a ball was conjured and played with for dramatic effect, and she started to envelop her in it, like a suit. She was supposed to be completely covered with this, then picked up a meter or two off the ground and put back down, the audience would applaud, she’d talk some more, and they’d be done.”

  “But.”

  “But... she started to cover her in shadow magic, and as soon as it hit her, she started acting funny, twitching wrong, trying to stay still but obviously wincing and twitching. It moved fast, and when it covered her body, she screamed and started shaking. I...” Tears started streaming down her face as well, her voice was breaking worse than Rhod’s.

  “Go on. Liz.”

  “Before I could kill the spell, she was writhing and screaming.” Rhod was looking up at him now, tears staining her face around her eyes, making it visible, for once, where her eyes actually were. “I managed to remove it, but it had seeped in and infected her. Zippy, I fucked up. I... I pulled the wrong...”

  “Oh gods. Cherry. No.”

  She bounced her head in short, frantic nods. “They’re both black, Zippy. They have the same color, they come from the same pool, you just have to filter it right. I... I didn’t filter it right.”

  “You used death instead of shadow.”

  At this point, she burst into another fit of tears and collapsed, slamming her head into the table. He wanted to grab her hand, pull her close, hug her, but he knew the second he touched her, guards would fly in, drop him like a fly, and shove her away, never to be seen again. It killed him.

  “I killed her, Zippy. I fucking killed her. It wasn’t supposed
to happen, they’re just so close... I— I— They threw me in here, called it premeditated. They think I planned it, that I wanted to kill her. In public. Like that, Zippy, she didn’t deserve to die. Not like that. Not from me. Oh gods.”

  Fuck it. In an instant, he stood up, kicking back the chair behind him, and flexed every muscle he had in his body in one solid arcane impulse. Being a mage of the alteration specialization, he knew that a strong blast of alteration would act as an anti-magic pulse. The prison, he had noticed, had a strong anti-magic field, designed to dampen very specific schools of magic, but a solid arcane blast, as he had learned in the past, could knock any enchanted field, including an anti-magic one.

  This was a good, strong field, and he knew that only the best wizards built it. After he sent out a blast, he collected every last drop of energy and sent out another, and another. He grabbed the hands of the two women and poured whatever strength he had left into a single teleportation spell to Bargatha. His cobalt tendrils enveloped him and the two ladies as they rapidly disappeared from the prison and reconstituted on a hill outside Bargatha with the table and chairs.

  He collapsed with a wheeze as Liz and Cherry looked around, seeing the city in the short distance. “Zippy, this— We’re in Bargatha.”

  “We are. Cherry, get the fuck over here.” Together, they combined into a solid, powerful hug. When he got ready to release, she grabbed tighter and kept pulling him in.

  “Fuck. I missed you, Zippy. I was lost, scared. I didn’t know what to do. I... I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “I’m sorry, Cherry. I shouldn’t have left.”

  “No.” She backed away from the embrace and stared him down, tear-stained eyes honed in on his. “You will not blame yourself for this. Just because you were following your potential future does not mean it’s your fault that I fucked up. It’s my mistake, plain and simple.”