Interlude: The Good, The Badass and The Ugly

When Moira returned to her father’s study, along with Reggie and Lorelei, Cornelius was already there. The Order scholar was examining the hat that John had left through spectacles that shimmered blue with active magic. For a few minutes, everyone waited for him to finish.

”Hmm, yes. I believe you are correct, my lord.” The graying enchanter put the hat down and returned the spectacles to his breast pocket, ”It does greatly resemble our Rose-blessed medals. I do not believe that the effect is one we commonly use, but the underlying structure is unmistakable…”

Moira remembered learning to make blessed medals shortly after the Rose had passed to her. Or complete, rather. It was a particular type of enchantment used by the Order that required the Golden Rose’s touch to complete. She could vividly recall the feeling of warmth and purpose when she succeeded in finishing her first medal, and in doing so wielded her Blessing for the first time. Just as vividly, she recalled her father’s proud smile. Blessing medals to honor the accomplishments of the men and women she would one day lead had quickly become Moira’s most cherished duty.

”The recently discovered Late Bloomer, Mr. Newman, left this hat and adorning sticker for us to examine,” William explained to Lorelei as Moira wondered how her schoolmate got hold of such an item. ”I requested it because the magic of the sticker felt familiar, as Sir Stolt has just confirmed.”

The blind seer inclined her head to signal understanding, and the Lord Protector returned his attention to Cornelius. ”Has such a blessing been given without a Warden’s involvement before, or is this unprecedented?”

”It has been known to happen to knights from time to time, when they were cut off from their Warden for an extended period.” While Cornelius left it unsaid, Moira knew that it included not only knights unable to report back, but also times when a branch had been Wardenless, because the Warden fell in battle or because the Rose was stolen for a time. Only the Shield remained yet unmarred by the latter.

”For someone outside the Order, however… I cannot be certain without consulting the archives, but I believe I recall two such occasions. A woman in India with a blessed bead who turned out to be the illegitimate niece of a previous Warden. And a young man in France whose heirloom ring was found to be blessed when he joined. He eventually married the Sword Warden of his time.”

So the only person without a prior connection to the Order to hold such a blessing married the Sword Warden. Did that mean Moira was supposed to marry John? Was that the Lady’s will?? No, it couldn’t be. He had been hesitant about joining the Order, his school records showed him to be lazy, if capable, and he was well known to be an unsociable loner. Those were not the qualities of a great leader, as a Warden-Lord had to be. Granted, the cause of his feud with Frank was commendable and the past week had shown him to possess more backbone than she had thought, but still…

And yet a voice in the back of her mind persisted; a virtuous Late Bloomer wielding the Golden Rose in full bloom would be an incredible **** of good. Perhaps enough so to bring Wentworth and Dante to heel, and shatter the- Moira was brought from her inner turmoil by a hand on her shoulder. She looked at her closest friend and felt the comforting ‘look’ in Lorelei’s milky eyes, despite them being concealed by the metal band around her head that was part of the traditional seer garb.

Whatever thoughts might have occupied her father’s mind at Cornelius’ recount, he was evidently done with those for the moment. He held out the hat and sticker towards Moira’s seer friend. “Lady Varnik, what does your Blessed Sight make of it.”

Lorelei took the offered item gingerly, as if it was a relic of their faith. Which, in a sense, it was. For a long moment she concentrated in silence, and Moira knew that despite being blind, Lorelei would have closed her eyes as she did. “I see… A confused young man, fallen into his first barrier yet with no knowledge of the Abyss. He cautiously walks an all but fresh battlefield, when he comes upon a rat ogre prowling the remnants. At first, it scares him, but then he sees that a woman has fallen into its power and lies defenseless against its cruel drives. In that moment, confusion and fear give way to selfless valor and he provokes the beast’s wrath that the woman may be spared its attention.”

The quiet intensity and reverent fervor in Lorelei’s voice gave way to her usual calm, polite tone, showing that she was no longer Seeing, as she continued, “It is clear that Mr. Newman has acted in a manner that the Lady found worthy of reward. If She has further plans with him, though, She has chosen not to reveal them at this time. We can but trust that Her wisdom and the quality of his character steers him on the right path.”

“… I see. Presumably this woman is the person whose identity he did not wish to reveal…” Lord Brighton scratched his beard. “We will have to keep an eye on him, in case our guidance becomes necessary. Moira, I entrust you with leading this task, and with returning this to him tomorrow. It wouldn’t do to keep a gift from the Lady out of the recipient’s hands longer than needed.”

As Moira accepted the hat from her father and stored it in her Shield, she couldn’t quite stop herself from beaming with pride. After the harsh reality check on how much she still had to learn that participating in driving out the Emerald Order had been, it meant a great deal that her father had faith in her to lead this.

She paused in front of the door, the interior of the workshop beyond so dimly lit that her reflection was clearly visible in the window. Her worn, repeatedly patched clothes were as frayed physically as their enchantments felt, strained to the edge of repairability by the need to put money elsewhere. Despite modifications, the scavenged gear only barely fit, stretched tight over the curves of a body obviously made for a very different purpose than what she put it to.

Dropping that wistful line of thought, she pushed open the door, her entry announced by a small gong. A bald, red bearded dwarf in a leather apron was heralded by the grumpy sound of his voice. Despite 150 years in America, his thick accent still sounded like he was fresh off the boat from rural Scotland. “Cannae ye read t’ sign? Shop’s closed fer t’- Oh, it’s ye, Ida.”

The tone of annoyance had given way to friendly recognition as the artisan entered the room and saw her. She found a small measure of amusement in leaning into her own, rather milder, Arkansan drawl as she replied, “Howdy, Gisli, sorry for droppin’ in while you ain’t open.”

“Pish posh,” Gisli made a dismissive gesture, “me door’s ne’er closed fer ye, lass. Yer practic’ly clanfolk by noe. Heard ye took a job fer ‘em Rose knights thoe, an’ I dinnae think ye wanted t’ work fer t’ big boots.”

Ida’s features folded into a grim frown. “True, but the Emerald Order’s why half the kids at Rekindled Hope ain’t got parents anymore, so I made an exception. ‘Sides, most of my fightin’ ‘ll be beside contract mages, not knights. And they’re payin’ nearly twice my usual rate too.”

A rumbling chuckle emitted from the barrel-chested artisan. “I told ye yer skills were worth more’n ye charge, dinnae I?”

Ida found herself smiling slightly despite herself at the dwarf’s humerus mood. “True enough, if I ain’t got a problem with either gettin’ half the work or tossin’ my standards.”

Gisli chuckled some more while he reached behind his beard for a key hanging from a chain around his neck. He used it to unlock a drawer and took out a pair of holstered pistols, with barrels longer than would be sensible in mundane hands. “Well, there ye go. Rebuilt greound up as mana guns. Reckon t’is me feinest work t’ date.”

She reached out for the guns and unsheathed one, first gingerly but soon with the confidence of familiarity. They felt the same as usual, the same balance and the same comforting weight. Only a faint whisper of a tug on her mana revealed that they were different now. Replacing the belt of borrowed guns around her waist with these, she felt properly dressed for the first time in a month.

“They’ll pack more o’ a punch withæout raidin’ yer wallet fer reloadin’. Cannae shoot if yer æoutta mana thoe.” As the dwarf spoke, he took out a brown paper bag from the same drawer and put it on the counter as well.

“What’s that?” Ida wondered, as she picked it up and looked at the golden coins inside.

“Yer change. With what yer fixin’ tae use ‘em fer, I innae gonna charge ye other’n fer tae materials. Yer nae t’ only one with an axe tae grind.” The gunsmith spoke in a tone that brokered no argument. Not that Ida would have argued. Well, not much, at least. The orphanage was ever in need of funds.

An utter fucking waste of a day. And an utter fucking waste of an avoidable migraine. Fuck the sun, fuck the mundanes, and fuck the GROies protecting those useless fucks. Above all else, fuck the little kobold cunt and whatever madness possessed her to haul around the sack of mundane wood scraps that sent him on this shitshow of a wild goose chase.

Watching the house for most of a day’s worth of exposure to the accursed ball of light and headache in the sky had confirmed his initial assessment: the old fucks living there were mundanes. Just his luck that he’d come across one of the rare mundanes who wasn’t a complete sitting duck. Good thing he had still taken a sip each of tarblood and numbing tonic before going in, just in case.

If that old asshole had lived somewhere less anal about the shitty GROie mundane protection laws, then the goblin would’ve made him pay for those bullet holes. Well, bullet scars now, but healing potions weren’t free either. However, even with the golden assholes distracted with their war, **** mundanes with an address in their territory was fucking stupid. So he’d have to take that out on the Skytail cunt instead… though he should take care that he didn’t lower her sale value too much in the process.

The sack of wood still bothered him though, almost as much as the cursed migraine he had been ‘gifted’ with by the daystar. Because it made no fucking sense. The most obvious answer was that she’d gone cuckoo from solitude, since kobolds tended to do that if they stayed alone long enough. But nothing else in her trail suggested that she had snapped yet. What he could find of her scavenging patterns hadn’t gone erratic; she wasn’t leaving behind good stuff unless interrupted and there was no indication that she was taking obviously useless junk either. At least until this sack of crap.

The only other unusual behavior was killing the rat ogre in the Emerald Order barrier on Monday, instead of running and hiding. Kobolds don’t fight unless they have either strength in numbers, home field advantage, or both. Everyone knew that. If she had lost her marbles and were hallucinating allies that she tried to fight alongside, then she would have to be extraordinarily lucky to win any fight.

But she had won. Which meant either she had gotten that lucky, defied her kobold nature, or had an ally… He had discarded the latter option because all tracks he had found suggested that she worked alone and didn’t stay in people’s company for long, and because of the usual way Skytail exiles were treated. She had to know about that, and if she didn’t want the same fate, she would be insane to trust anyone else who might know.

However… if she had an ally and the ally was the one who brought the wood… It wasn’t wood worth a lignomancer’s attention, but a human, or someone who could pass for human, might have taken the wood to the mundane junkyard as a favor while going there to meet up with the kobold.

The pair of old mundanes couldn’t offer an Abyssal any enticements worth going out of your way though. If they had enough money to pay an Abyssally relevant amount for chores, they would’ve been living somewhere fancier. So either it had to be someone who started their own trip right by the mundane residence, making it a trivial favor, or it would be someone with some kind of bond with the old fucks, like a relative. Or someone who knew jack and shit about the Abyssal economy and thought that the pocket change that a mundane would pay for chores was worth the effort.

Further supporting that it was someone who didn’t know their ass from their elbow when it came to the Abyss was the lack of magical security in the area. Even casing the house and the neighboring ones with seer’s eyedrops yesterday before going in had revealed zilch. Which meant that any Abyssals living next door or across the street would either be too powerful to bother with this shit, and too powerful to need to dump the rat ogre down an elevator shaft to kill it, or they knew nothing about home security. And anyone who cared enough about the old assholes to go out of their way to help with chores would surely put up some sort of wards, if they knew how to either make them or buy them.

Someone who knew nothing of the Abyss, and whose ignorance the kobold cunt knew about, would also be the only kind of person she could afford to trust. Someone who didn’t know what kind of easy payday she represented the moment she let down her guard. Someone that she might develop enough influence over before they found out to keep them from taking that money. Someone pre-primed towards soft, sentimental naivete by growing up with silly mundane sensibilities. Someone like a Late Bloomer, freshly awakened to magic.

The goblin’s frustrations gave way to a wide grin. Catching a Late Bloomer would be a nice payday. Not quite as big as if the kobold turned out to not have been neutered, but the odds of getting it seemed better. Would be unlike a High Dragon to let something like that slip by when kicking someone out. Meanwhile, it was technically possible that this ally was some runaway chasmer kid. But chasm folk were scared shitless of the Abyss, or they wouldn’t be chasmers, and they usually beat that fear into their kids quite thoroughly, so that probably wasn’t it.

Despite the mostly wasted day, he returned to his home in a good mood. Not so good that he didn’t want to work out some frustrations on his stress relief toy, but on the other hand if the day had otherwise gone well, he would’ve probably wanted to use her as a way to celebrate anyway. His grin stiffened a bit, however, when opening the door greeted his nose with the scent of blood. ’This shit again? I thought she had figured out that it was futile by now. Guess I’ll have to put her back on the leash...’

Following his nose, he found her in a storage room, lying in a pool of blood that was flowing from a long, jagged wound running down her thigh. While the dark green smeared across the lighter green of her naked skin was an enticing sight, savoring it, or having some fun right then and there, wasn’t really worth risking the costs of having to find a new toy. While she wasn’t bleeding forcefully enough to have hit the artery, she was still bleeding enough to potentially bleed out. In fact, she probably would have if she had done this shortly after he left in the morning.

While taking out a healing potion and feeding it to her, he took a bit more stock of the situation. The stupid bitch had made a mess, but thankfully it had mostly gotten on the floor and on some metal scrap, so he would just make her clean it herself later. Her collar was set to punish suicide attempts, but he could afford neither the fancy ones that directly limited thoughts nor a type with a smart, AS-based control unit. Which meant it only kicked in once she actually hurt herself. By the looks of things, she had dropped down onto a sharp edge on a piece of scrap, in such a way that even if the shocks from the collar made her body lock up, gravity would still drive the edge deeper. Somewhat clever, really, but it also meant he would have to keep her chained by the bed for a while, so it all worked out to being dumb in the end.

The healing potion closed the wound up nicely, leaving a scar to join the collection on her forearms from previous attempts. It didn’t wake her up, but that was nothing a few slaps couldn’t fix. She stirred with an unarticulated groan for a moment before her eyes, of an exotic, naturally pink coloration, gained focus and her mind caught up with events. “Fuck!”

“Oh, I will,” he replied with a grin, following it up with an actual order before she had time to get all annoyingly defiant, “Follow me.”

He proceeded to head for the bedroom, without looking back. Judging by the brief crackling before he heard her footsteps, it took a warning shock from the collar to get her moving. She really should have learned better by now, but no matter, he knew how to get his toy nice and pliable.

From the nightstand drawer, he took a small jar containing a light purple powder. With her **** pace, his toy caught up just in time to see that. Her eyes widened in fear, while her nostrils flared for entirely different reasons. “No! P-please don’t! I’ll-”

“Come here,” he cut her off harshly, but she backed away fearfully regardless, even as the collar started with the low intensity shocks again.

“A-anything but th-” A stronger shock cut her off this time, also causing her to fall onto her well cushioned backside. Instead of answering or issuing any other orders, he simply followed her. As she was only making a poorly coordinated attempt at crawling backwards, it was simple to catch up and flick a pinch of powder into her face.

The reaction was near instant. In a moment, her pupils expanded to half again the size. Her expression changed from hysterical fear to the conflicted expression of inner turmoil as her fear and her defiant tendencies fought a losing battle against rekindled addiction. Clearly, he had gone a bit too long since he last rewarded her with the good stuff.

“P-please… give me m-more…” The addiction had won, as he knew it would. Chuckling, he returned to the bedroom with her scrambling to follow along.

“Sure, sure, you can have some more,” he picked up the jar again and gestured with it for effect, “but you’ve gotta earn it. And you know exactly how…”

She froze in her tracks a moment as the need beat back other, less important impulses. Then she sank to her knees. “A-as you wish, m-” she sank audibly, “milord.”