White Devil

by Janina Franck

  Lilith felt the rage she had hoarded in her stomach mix with confusion.

  “Colm, he… Why… I do not…You…”

  Lilith found herself unable to finish a thought. This was the woman who had almost killed both Milly and Colm! Without warning, without reason! And yet she sat here, her arm extended toward Lilith, eagerly expecting a message from someone she tried to kill? It made no sense.

  Lilith brushed all thoughts aside for the moment and resolutely walked toward the other woman.

  “Do you realize what you have done?” she asked through grinded teeth.

  Xelma appeared to be taken aback by the reaction.

  “Of course I do,” she said, laughing mildly in order to retain the upper hand on the situation. “I stopped the civil war. I united the country and was made its leader as a result. Didn’t Colm send you here?”

  Lilith chose not to reply to that last question. Her entire body felt under pressure, as if all her anger was pushed into a space too small for it, ready to explode at any time. Upon arriving at Xelma’s desk, Lilith swept everything off it in one motion. Xelma jumped from her chair.

  “Young lady, behave yourself, or I will have to use magic,” she hissed.

  Lilith glared.

  “Try it,” she growled and leaped over the table.

  Xelma pointed her hand at Lilith, violet light surrounding it, but nothing happened. Panic spread over the woman’s face.

  The girl kept advancing on the mage slowly, step by step, while Xelma shrunk back with every movement Lilith made.

  “I wonder, was that the same spell you used a days ago? Why did you use it? Were you afraid someone might challenge you for your power?” Lilith spat, adrenaline shooting through her body incessantly.

  “N-No!” Xelma stuttered, frightened eyes pinned on the fuming girl. “It was necessary to eliminate any threat to the country. The military didn’t stand a chance against their numbers and abilities, so they needed to go. It was only a few magic users, they were a sacrifice for the good of the country, and I was told-”

  “You were told,” Lilith cut the woman off. “I am certain that you were told something, but you never thought about how, perhaps, a little girl who had just learned how to use magic, who did not have a bad bone in her body, would suffer for your ignorance. A little girl almost died for your arrogance, and if I had not been there, she-”

  Lilith let her rage unfold behind her with every step as she advanced toward the woman. “These people were your allies, not your enemies. But all you saw were faceless commoners who just happened to have an ability that could be used for good or bad. Of course, you considered yourself above this. Are you aware how far your magic reached? Do you realize that it had not lost its effect in the Highlands and attacked every magic user there?”

  Xelma fell back into her chair with realization.

  “Colm,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

  Lilith’s anger materialized behind her. She rose from the ground, above Xelma. Looking down on the other woman, Lilith spat out, “Yes. You attacked your dear Colm. And suddenly, you care. Now that you realize that it hurt someone you know and love.”

  “No, no, you’re wrong,” Xelma blubbered, staring at her hands. Then a flush of anger came over her and she fixed her gaze on Lilith. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you insolent girl! He’s fine, I would never let anything happen to him, he would never be affected by-”

  Lilith interrupted her, her stare cold as ice.

  “You are lucky that he is stronger than you, but even he would not have survived a second blast. I wish I could punish you. I wish I could hurt you. But I will not. Because I know that Colm loves you like family. If it were not for him, I could not promise anything. But mark my words, ever do something as reckless and violent as this again, I will come to you. And I will kill you.”

  Xelma visibly paled, but determination had not yet left her eyes. She strode to a fire burning away in the wall and reached out her hand to it, whispering three short words. The fire took on the purple color of her magic before returning to its normal hue after a few fruitless moments. Lilith watched in silence.

  The mage gave a squeak of distress before attempting to do the same thing again. Once more, the fire turned purple, but nothing else happened.

  Xelma whipped back around to Lilith, her entire body quivering, her eyes not meeting the girl’s.

  “You’re lying,” she screeched. “This isn’t… he could never… I didn’t…”

  Lilith remained silent.

  At this point, Xelma had returned her gaze to her hands, trembling with fear and grief. She sunk to her knees, reduced to a heap of crying and slobber, unable to say another coherent word.

  Lilith took another step toward her.

  “That’s enough,” Selene said.

  Lilith turned. At some stage, she must have gotten the door open and observed the rest of the spectacle.

  “Our job here is done. We need to go. Are you strong enough to carry me until Ayalon catches up with us?”

  Lilith nodded, and Selene took a chair and smashed it through the window front.

  “Then let’s go,” she said.

  Lilith swooped down with Selene clinging to her neck. Amethyst followed, happily babbling about Lilith’s wings.

  Yes, she then realized. She had found her wings.

  The mage lay in a heap, propped up against a wall, sobbing, crying, and wailing incoherently, as four shadows flew away in the night. Death had been there, watching. She had seen the woman realize that she had killed the one person she cherished more than anything else in the world. She had seen the honest and pure wish to end the mage’s life in the Anomaly’s heart. She had also seen that the love in the Anomaly’s heart was stronger than hate could ever be. Death had been ready to step in and act as the Enforcer, but it hadn’t come to that.

  Now, the door opened again, and a member of the Khenoris Clan entered, took one look at the situation and closed the door again. A few minutes later he returned with several guards who led the mage out, while she muttered the words “devil…” and “white…” over and over again. Where they took her to was none of Death’s concern. She knew the woman would not die. Her time had not yet come.

  Instead, Death’s attention remained on the little group flying away, as well as one of the neighboring countries where she listened to the official order to muster the armed forces and special troops.

  She was also present as a centaur jumped off a cliff at the southern cape of Macrin and drowned herself.

  Death came to her and spoke, I have come to take your pain away.

  The centaur smiled before closing her eyes for eternity. Death separated her soul from her body to lead her to where she belonged. Death didn’t ask why she had taken her own life. Death didn’t need to know. All she knew was that the pain of living had become unbearable to her, and that was all that mattered.

  At the same time, Death went to see her child. The artifact she had created by putting a little bit of herself inside and given to this world. Its power had been abused many times, and every time it had become a little more corrupted. Death wondered whether a heart in which love was stronger than hate could withstand the corruption instead of being taken over by it.

  The Anomaly worries a lot. But she stands up to fight like a warrior, too. I wonder…

  Everyone had made it out in one piece. Selene had sent Griffin and the others on the fastest route back to the Highlands, while she, Lilith, Zero in dog shape, and Ayalon got ready to rush to the steamrail station at the edge of Tsoaluo. They didn’t waste any time. At most, they spent half an hour collecting their few things and ensuring that everyone was alright, though Amethyst lengthened the proceedings a little by chattering at Lilith about her wings.

  “You must be at least partly bird,” he said, but after checking, he critically added, “but you don’t have feathers, you might want to change that. I don
’t think it’s healthy not to have feathers when you have wings. Just look at insects, they have wings, but no feathers and they really don’t live very long.”

  Lilith quickly glanced at her wings. Like she remembered, they were white, leathery, and extended from her back like an extra pair of arms.

  As she regarded them, they fell to dust.

  Amethyst had gasped.

  “Your wings! Are you alright? Lilith, you’re not dying, are you?”

  Lilith had smiled and shook her head.

  “No, I am fine. See?”

  She willed her wings back, and they materialized on her back before falling to dust again once she commanded them to.

  Now, Lilith tried to navigate her way through a conversation with the man sitting behind a desk at the station, trying to exchange some of the Onyx coins Colm had provided with tickets that would bring them all the way to Taq.

  “Look, there are no more steamers east,” the man pointed at a map hanging behind him on the wall. Lilith recognized the same formations on it as she had seen on the map in Colm’s cottage. “The tracks were damaged and it’s going to be a while until they’re repaired. I can get you tickets for an indirect route though. It’ll just include a stop in Nenbalon for a couple of hours.” Here, the man pointed to a town marked on the map Northeast of their position. Then he traced a line between that town and the mountains that reached along the Eastern border of the continent. “There’s another steamer that stops in Taq from there.”

  Lilith frowned. They would lose precious hours. Then again, perhaps they could find some information during their brief stay. After all, Colm had advised them to check with the Guardian of the Great Library in Taquin, but who was to say there weren’t any knowledgeable people in this other city as well? And it did still seem like the fastest way to travel, not to mention the most comfortable. She supposed they could fly directly, but she didn’t trust her newly found wings to carry her all the way, and even if they did, they would all be too exhausted and aching to do anything productive for a while. A few hours didn’t seem like such a big problem, when taking that into consideration.

  The clerk noticed Lilith’s hesitation and sighed theatrically.

  “Look, I’ll even do you one better,” he advertised. “I’ll make it an open ticket, so you don’t even have to take the first steamer or go all the way to Taquin. For the same price, I’ll give you a ticket that’ll let you take two separate trips along any route, valid for one week. It’s a special offer, take it or leave it, I can’t do you any better than this!”

  “Your persuasion does you credit,” Selene chimed in, when Lilith still didn’t respond. “We’ll take them. Two humans, a dog, and one dragon.”

  The man looked over the counter and eyed Zero.

  “That dog a Wereperson?”

  Selene’s eyes flickered for just a moment. Lilith wasn’t even sure if she had truly seen it, it had been that quick.

  “No.”

  Lilith glanced at Selene. Technically it wasn’t a lie, she supposed, but still…

  “He is a shapeshifter,” Lilith corrected the mistake.

  The man whistled through his teeth.

  “Now that’s something you don’t hear every day! A real shifter? No conditions? Impressive, that is! Bet you hear that a lot though, huh.”

  Selene’s face darkened and Lilith noticed the girl’s shoulders tense up as the man kept ogling Zero with open curiosity. Zero began to whimper slightly and tried to hide behind Selene’s leg. It would have worked better if he hadn’t been such a large and hairy dog.

  “Please, when did you say the steamer was going to leave?” Lilith commandeered the man’s attention again. The man glanced at his clock.

  “Oh yeah! In about ten minutes! You had better get on. That’ll be a silver each.”

  Lilith handed the man four black coins with silver engravings, then he gave her four pieces of paper and they rushed to get on the large metal tube hovering on a slick metal track just behind the little sales hut.

  The steamer was quite full, but somehow, they managed to find a small cabin that was still empty and large enough to comfortably hold Ayalon. As soon as they took their seats, the tube began to move forward with a smooth motion, quickly gaining speed. Lilith was reminded of the movement of a brook flowing across flattened stone.

  There was a faint, steady whooshing sound which reminded her uncomfortably of falling… Falling on that dark day, moments before she had seen Milly for the first time. A glance at her companions proved that they were not altogether comfortable with the experience either.

  The door to their compartment slid open. Their heads turned in unison and Lilith couldn’t help but notice that Selene instinctively reached for the dagger hidden in her boot.

  “Oh my, I can’t find a seat anywhere! Would you mind if I joined you for a while, dearies?”

  The dwarf to whom this cheerful voice belonged would have reached to Lilith’s hip, had she been standing. His silvery hair was braided so neatly and elaborately, it seemed like delicate carvings on marble. He was wearing a ruffled salmon colored dress, adorned with darker bows on the hips and chest.

  He didn’t wait for a response but closed the door behind him and took a seat to Ayalon’s right, looking up at the emerald dragon with sparkling eyes. His eyes then also took in the other members of the cart. They seemed to linger for a moment on Lilith, before moving onto Zero.

  “Isn’t the steamrail a marvelous invention?” he asked. “It’s such a comfortable way to travel. A lovely cup of tea would make it a simply delightful experience, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “It is our first time,” Lilith admitted, since no one else seemed to be about to respond to the stranger.

  The dwarf clapped his hands together.

  “My, my! Then you are in for a treat! This will take a few hours, so why don’t we get acquainted? My name is Catarina. You may refer to me as ‘she’. May I ask all of your names?”

  “I am Lilith and these are my friends, Selene, Zero and Ayalon.”

  Colm had taught her that dwarves didn’t have words for genders in their language, so when translated, they were all called “he”, even though the translation was far from accurate. Some dwarves that moved among different countries preferred to be considered female and would specify their gender in the local language when that was the case. As a result, Lilith presumed that the dwarf had been speaking Pbec. It was likely that Catarina’s name had also been a chosen one, rather than a given.

  “What brings you to Nenbalon?” Catarina continued her bright inquiry.

  For a moment Lilith hesitated, wondering how much she could safely tell the dwarf. A short moment of reflection made her settle on the particulars.

  “We were sent to retrieve an item,” she explained. “And we need to pass through Nenbalon.”

  “Oh! That sounds almost like a treasure hunt. I was quite fond of those myself when I was young, although I always thought the most precious things could be found in books, don’t you agree?”

  Lilith was quick to give her assent.

  “For what reason are you going to Nenbalon?” Lilith asked, politely continuing the conversation.

  “No reason at all, really,” Catarina laughed, waving the notion away. “I just wanted to go home. You see, I was in Stelry, recently, on a visit to the Taq embassy in Sari, except then I was called to Tsoaluo for business last night, and well, now I just want to go home and sit by a window, snuggled in a blanket with a good book and some tea. I cannot imagine anything more enjoyable, I assure you!”

  Lilith smiled at the earnestness with which Catarina described her leisure.

  “So you live in Nenbalon? It is our first time. Is it nice there?”

  The dwarf shook her head vehemently.

  “Oh, by the Enforcer, no. I wouldn’t live there for anything! Although they do have some nice pawnshops. They’re quite useful to find rare items, books, jewelry, whatever
you’re looking for, really. There is also a nice small historical archive there. I’m sure it was only a few years ago, I spent almost an entire vine there. Yes, it must’ve been just after I finished my studies in Fintel, I was doing an internship in the archives. A wealth of information about all sorts of things, terribly interesting, but sadly so unorganized. How I wish that I could return there now and just tidy it up a little and bring some order into all their mess. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget about the boardwalks. You see, since Nenbalon is so close to the Cursed Lands and the marshlands surrounding it, the ground is constantly changing and sometimes not very steady, and to make sure that during rainy times people could still get about, they built wooden paths in the air, like bridges between buildings, above the roads! It’s a marvelous little walk, you’ve never seen the likes of it! If you have a little time there, you simply must take a stroll.”

  Lilith laughed in delight at the stream of information flowing from Catarina’s lips.

  “But all that sounds wonderful! Why would you not like living there again?”

  “Well, you see, dearie, Nenbalon has its nice parts, certainly, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be walking the streets at night. Especially not in the outskirts of town. And I would be very careful about my choice of inn. The city may appear nice by day, but night draws a different sort of clientele and some people are all too happy to join them in their dishonest pursuits.”

  Lilith noticed the rest of her group tense up at Catarina’s careless tales, and she was certain the dwarf must also have noticed. Even still, she carried on talking undisturbed.

  “No, no, Nenbalon is nice for a short visit, but I would not want to spend too much time there anymore. No, I live in Taquin. In the heart of Taq, in fact. But how about you, dearies? Where are you lovely folk coming from?”

  Lilith glanced at her travel companions, but none of them made any attempt at answering the question for her. Then again, it would have been difficult for them to explain and possibly raise more interest than they would wish. Lilith found herself in a tricky situation as well. Where exactly she had come from, she didn’t know either, after all.