TVisTV Book 4: Chapter 15 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 15 - Silver at Dawn

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.”

- Vincent Van Gogh.

Hana… No, Este Lize, she reminded herself. Her name was Este Lize now, and this was a game where the stakes for a careless mistake were far too high. She had to live the lie completely, breathe it, sleep in it, answer to it without pause or hesitation. Hana was a name that belonged to another world, another body, another miserable office chair in another miserable life where her entire existence had orbited around Myeong Mirae’s whims, temper, schedule, and impossible, impossible standards.

And right now, Kim Hana was feeling very much annoyed.

The resentment had followed her across worlds like a stain that refused to wash out. It was the old familiar feeling of being inadequate when compared to her former employer, now sharpened by a sense of imposter syndrome so deep it had become almost comical. She had been placed upon a pedestal, and the worst part was that she had, apparently, earned it. The evidence was everywhere; she could control the song of Mama and all the Priests bowed to her. The Knights lowered their voices in her presence. Commoners wept when she passed. Soldiers looked at her as if the sight of her alone might decide a battle.

She could command elemental forces that could destroy groups of men with a wave of her hand, freeze rivers, set forests ablaze, and force the earth itself to heave and crack.

And still, despite all of this, she felt like that overworked secretary at her core 

Now, Este Lize the Living Saint sat upon a woven mat in her section of the royal pavilion, the staff of Weirdwood resting across her lap while Pickles, the little creature that looked suspiciously like a fat, black and pink worm with teeth, wriggled happily beside her knee. She fed it a strip of dried meat, and the thing swallowed with obscene enthusiasm before producing a tiny burp.

She giggled despite herself. The natives of this world had called it a Dragon, but she could hardly believe it. To them, apparently, having such a creature attached to her was yet more proof that she was the Living Saint.

The whole situation often felt like an illusion, but if it was, she had decided, then she too was part of the illusion. She could taste the sharpness of the air before rain, feel the ache in her calves after riding too long, hear the murmur of soldiers beyond the canvas walls, and smell the smoke of the cookfires clinging to the air. This world could be absurd, terrifying, and occasionally stupid beyond measure, but it was real enough for pain, hunger, embarrassment, and fear.

And therein lay the problem, the accuracy of it all remained deeply inconvenient. Hana had always been a highly sexual creature, using sex as one of the ways to alleviate the copious amounts of stress in her life. But now her body felt exactly like that of a fifteen-year-old girl, which meant moods came too quickly, indignation burned too hot, and admiration for handsome boys could become a dreadful nuisance at the least convenient times. Such distractions might have been manageable if she had any meaningful privacy, but privacy had become yet another luxury surrendered to sainthood. It was a matter of survival that she present herself as the prim, proper beacon of divine propriety that the role of Living Saint demanded.

Hana had always been pretty and conventionally attractive in a tired sort of looking way. She knew that. In her old life, on the rare nights when Mirae’s schedule loosened its chokehold enough for her to go out, all she had needed was the right dress, the right makeup, the right smile, and the right amount of availability carefully disguised as standards. There had been rules to it, little calculations of attention, timing, and plausible innocence.

Here, everything was worse because she had to be not merely pretty, but holy, and beautiful to boot. Really beautiful! She touched her chest, remembered a certain someone, and felt a spark of jealousy. 

The gods certainly liked to take as much as they liked to give.

And, added to all of this was the constant walking temptation that was Crown Prince Velens. The girl felt at times felt like one of the ultra-rich complaining about money being too heavy, such were all the blessings she had received.

She adjusted a loose strand of white-silver hair as she watched him through a parted flap, distracted as he spoke with the Adventurers and soldiers who made up their party. His cloak was of fine sable, his profile clean and noble, and for the second time that day she found herself wondering whether his eyes were grey or light green.

Then she closed the tent flap to her section of the royal pavilion before anyone could notice her staring. She was winning. Of that, she was sure, she thought to herself as she wrapped her arms around herself in contentment. 

She was the main character in this fairy tale.

Her primary rival, that no-good, bougie de Sariens girl, was on the outs, branded almost a traitor to the kingdom of Aranthia. The only thing stopping King Elidion from declaring it outright was that even he could not threaten civil war without first counting the cost. If what Este’s attendants had told her was true, the blonde hussy was stuck somewhere in the North, hiding behind her grandmother’s skirts and presumably drinking cocoa and sulking while everyone else did the difficult work of saving the realm.

So now it was a cold civil war of sorts, with resentment simmering on both sides and every smile at court likely hiding an insult, and a marriage that would determine the fate of the kingdom.

Meanwhile, here they were, some of the Aranthia’s finest, preparing for battle against one of the tendrils of the Goblin horde near the Grass Sea, that endless plain of windblown grass. Este had imagined an army being sent to deal with Goblins. Siege engines, an endless line of supply wagons, and thousands of soldiers.

Instead, Aranthia had sent an elite chosen force.

Things were anticlimactic when you saved the land on a budget. Of course, more than half of the force’s was derived from her own magical power which was flattering in its own way.

Este adopted a meditative sitting pose with Pickles snuggled close to her side and tried to steady herself by reaching inward, toward the magic that was hers. Fire, the burning blaze. Earth, the final grave. Wind and Water, the sisters, always moving, always answering. Beyond them, she could feel other presences, other possibilities, each one pressing faintly at the edge of her awareness with the same simple insistence.

Here I am.

The elements did not feel good or evil. They did not judge. They did not care what they burned, buried, carried, drowned, nourished, or destroyed. They only wished to be, and if being meant taking shape through her will, then they obeyed with the same serene indifference as rain falling upon a field.

To walk even one elemental path was said to invite madness with every invocation. That was what the Church texts and arcane doctrine claimed, at least. Too much Fire would make the soul wish for its beauty to spread and consume even its wielder. Too much Earth would make one too still and ponderous of thought. Too much Wind would scatter the mind, and too much Water would dissolve the self until nothing remained but foam bubbles.

For Este, it was simply a matter of willing them into the world. There was no cost, no temptation beyond her own enormous reserves of Mana.

When she wanted Fire, Fire was. When she wanted it gone, it was not. There was no spiritual corrosion, no grand battle for the integrity of her soul. If anything, the elements felt pure and easy. They did not ask whether she was worthy. They did not look at her and see a living Saint, a fraud, a weapon, or a bride to bind the nation in holy belief.

They simply answered.

And here, in this forsaken part of the realm, she was almost grateful to be away from the Church and its supervision. The freedom was limited, certainly, but limited freedom still tasted better than perfumed captivity. At the same time, she absolutely detested traipsing about the wilderness and sleeping rough.

Rough, of course, was relative. The royal pavilion was raised every evening for her use, ostensibly because she was the Crown Prince’s fiancée and the Living Saint of Silver, and therefore could not be expected to sleep in a common tent like someone who had not been personally blessed by Heaven and political convenience. It had rugs, screens, braziers, a folding bed, attendants, and enough luxury to make the word “campaign” feel somewhat distinctly dishonest.

Still, someone somewhere always seemed to be snoring, coughing, sharpening a blade, or arguing over dice.

Her thoughts turned away from her magic and back to Velens. The engagement itself had been approved by at least half the realm. The newspapers, or newspaper singular, had just begun to propagate like mold, spreading lies and rumors to the contrary, straddling the line between truth, fiction, and treason. Lies, it seemed, flew faster than the truth even in a world without the internet.

The newspaper, The Oracle, she had identified, was most certainly not her friend. She decided that one day she would break the darky, the kkamdung'i, responsible for writing such filth.

Despite everyone knowing that Duke Anatoli de Sariens had basically blackmailed Elidion into offering his son’s hand to that blonde slattern Seraphina, still people took the bitch’s side. Este did not know all the details of the initial promise between those two houses, but she knew enough. Or at least she knew the version everyone around her seemed eager to repeat.

Seraphina de-bloody Sariens herself, former betrothal and once-existential threat aside, was another problem.

Este suspected, though she had not confirmed it, that the girl might be someone like her. The old texts in the Church’s library’s restricted texts had named such people Visitors: men and women from different worlds and times, blessed far beyond the normal capacity of natives and fated to do great things in this world. 

How did she know?

Because once, after using Air and Water to bend light around herself and create a crude sort of invisibility to confirm one of her suspicions, Hana had followed Seraphina and eavesdropped on her. It had been risky, childish, and extremely necessary. The spell itself brought on severe migraines, both before and after its casting, and a sense of dislocation that made her quite nauseous. It also didn’t help that it drained her Mana at a prodigious rate and made her almost blind. It was a miracle she had been able to use it all to “acquire” Pickles’ egg.

The former secretary had followed the blonde girl and she could have sworn she had heard Seraphina speak in Korean. Only a few words, but enough to make the hairs rise along Este’s arms. Enough to make the world feel smaller and far more dangerous.

But those thoughts were neither here nor there. They were for another time after the bodies were placed on the pyre to burn.

According to the scouts, the Goblins had formed battle lines and were prepared to meet the Aranthians in open battle. Such a thing had not occurred in generations, according to the officers, scholars, and Adventurers who all sounded very confident until pressed for specifics. The Aranthians, for their part, seemed certain they would win easily despite being outnumbered at least five to one. Most laughed off the impending danger with the cheerful arrogance of people who had never worked under Myeong Mirae and therefore had never learned the value of anticipating disaster.

Este wished she could share their confidence. She had seen some of the drawings and Goblins were in her estimation quite horrid creatures that apparently breathed through their long hair of all things. Horrible, horrible things that decidedly lived in uncanny valley.

Despite her overwhelming power, despite the reverence of the Church, despite the Crown Prince’s presence and the soldiers outside and the Weirdwood staff across her lap, Hana remained a professional worrier. She had been paid extremely well for it in her previous life as Mirae’s secretary. Worry about the schedule. Worry about the wording. Worry about the flight, the contract, the meeting, the scandal, the dress, the lighting, the cousin, the rival, the family, the stock price, the headline, the thing Mirae had not yet noticed but would definitely blame Hana for once she did. To worry about anything and everything had been her profession, her habit, and, in some small humiliating way, her talent.

Damnit, she had to confess to herself, a part of me hates her but she did make me really good at my job.

So when the men outside laughed and spoke of Goblins as if they were vermin to be cleared by dawn. Este only stroked Pickles along his smooth, ridiculous head and listened to the wind moving through the Grass Sea. Something about this felt wrong. The Goblins waiting for them at dawn would not be the usual run-of-the-mill Goblins.

Este Lize the Living Saint was sure of it, but that would not stop her from blasting them all to smithereens at first light.