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The Real Theophania, vol II ch 8

The Real Theophania

vol. II ch. 8

This sprinted across the corridor, landing with a thud next to Ophius, already hunkered down to the next piece of cover – a broken down cart, that maybe held coal or iron ore in years past. Projectiles howled down the shaft, throwing up clouds of black dust in her footsteps.

Ophius was busy aggressively fiddling with magic. One hand dug around the pile of rubble, the other traced a geometrical pattern in the air. The patterns of their fingertips was reflected through the whole room, like the iridescent cobwebs of a giant spider. The strands suddenly coalesced into the image of a massive, holographic centaur storming down the narrow hall. Shouts of warning echoed from the down the passage, followed shortly by clatters of armed and armored men diving for cover. This was followed by shouts of dismay from the men who failed to make it out of the way of the charging beast, followed again by shouts of confused relief as the illusion failed to actually trample them to death.

“Just the distraction I needed.” Ophius, now that the hail of shatterbolts and magic missiles had stopped, reached in with both hands and pulled out a battered bullseye lantern from the rubbish. Instead of a candle holder or oil wick, there was a single, delicately carved copper flower, traces of canary yellow paint still clinging to it in places. “This was a mine,” Ophius began explaining to Thia, “and in the old days, miners carried canaries into the depths with them. The birds were more susceptible to toxic gasses, so if a canary fell unconscious, they would know that bad air was seeping in, and they would need to evacuate the tunnel.”

“Yeah. I know. My father worked the mines.” demured Thia, as if desperate to establish her working class background, despite literally being royalty.

“Your father owned mines. Sometimes he went down to inspect miners.” Ophius toggled some esoteric control on the apparent device. An ominous rumbling began deeper in the mine. “Anyway, when the old Wacites started digging in places without a good bird population, the magi had to come up with a magical solution. They remembered the canaries, though, and used it as standard symbol.” Ophius delivered a jolt of motive forced to the top of the “lantern”, and it sprang to life, humming, glyphs glowing. With an experimental jab or two, massive stone barriers rumbled down from the ceiling, cutting off the enemy, while others retracted from the walls, opening alternate passages.

“This way, princess.”

~~~

“Halt! These tunnels are subject to the authority of the Third Military District of the Subterranean Expeditionary Force! All travelers are subject to search and seizure at the discretion of military patrols! You will immediately stop and submit!” boomed the man with the second most ostentatious uniform.

Thia grimaced. Could they at least have been discovered 2 minutes later, when she wasn’t halfway through wading across this ankle-deep pool of mystery cave juice? Then again, they probably set the patrol right here on purpose.

Ophius, used to disguising their true form, had a deep cowl drawn across the head, and their face was not visible anyway, bathed in shadow as it was. Thia was not so lucky, and her face, striking as it was, drew the attention of the man in the first most ostentatious uniform.

“Now, now, my adjudant, no need to be so dramatic,” he purred, in the most outrageous accent, “I’m sure the fair lady has a perfectly legitimate reason to be traveling through an interdicted zone.”

“Yes, your highness, but we need to search those bags for smuggled goods. We have orders from General Hin-” the adjutant protested.

“Quiet, Mr Myers! I know what General Hindigs were! He gives those orders on my authority! I am Prince of the Fourth Circle, Heir to the Seal of Stone! Lord of the Depths, son of the Great Otorious Theanaopolous von A’ctelios the Third! My orders supercede all other orders-” Thia tuned out the prince’s tantrum. At least she wasn’t going to have to explain away the seven million gold they were smuggling, but she was going to have to deal with being courted by this idiot.

~~~

Thia pretended to take in interest in the decorative crystal acorns on the vanity. Prince von A’ctelios was behind the modesty screen, fixing his hair or his ridiculous velvet doublet or something. He was yammering off about how they would look stunning at the ball tonight, now that Thia had finally acquiesced to accompanying him. Apparently, “Countess Nirva Soryu, who foolishly rejected me” was going to be “absolutely devastated by being outshone by a mere peasant” like Thia. They were going to be “absolutely crushing” tonight.

Thia had only agreed on the condition that her “personal assistant” with a “crippling shyness” and “Venetian Leprosy – it’s non contagious if you let use the ointments, but don’t try to take the robes and mask off” be released from prison, and be let in the attached servant’s quarters.

Thia picked up a heavy crystal acorn and rolled it in her hands. She fiddled with the translucent straps of the scandalously low-cut (and similarly high-cut slit at the bottom) Underdark spidersilk gown she had been provided and asked to wear. In preparation for this soiree, Thia had been bathed by handmaidens like a pampered princess – an annoyance she hadn’t experienced since fleeing the old country. She had already made up her mind what she was going to do to the prince for making her repeat it.

“Everything all right?” he suddenly asked, noticing her lack of reply, as This quietly crept up behind him. Then she loudly slapped him in the back of the head, crushing the crystal acorn against his thick skull. Her captor-suitor passed out cold, crumpled to the floor like a prehistoric megafauna falling into a peat bog.

“I’m royalty, too, you know.” Thia murmured, petulantly, “Princess of these hands. Bitch.”

~~~

The Real Theophania, vol II ch 7

The Real Theophania

vol. II ch. 7

It was nearly high noon. Thia stopped at the edge of the clearing. She looked, still facing straight forward, at the field of wildflowers, remembering the girl she left behind in town. The sun, high above, carried down at the gap between trees, perfectly illuminating the clearing. She had been walking for 4 days straight through the wilderness. Her heart beat hard and weary with the burden of leagues. Her shoulders slumped, and the two heavy bags fell to the dirt for a thump. “I wish…”

Ophius slapped her once on the side of the head. “Get a move on. The wolves aren’t far behind us. You can rest when you’re dead.”

Thia sighed, just once, then picked up the heavy bags and kept walking.

~~~

They had stumbled onto an abandoned hut in the forest, bearing some of the signs of a long-dead witch-in-exile.

“Let me get this clear.” Thia said, breaking the sudden silence.

“Ok.” Ophius replied curtly, attention on the pin-and-tumbler lock securing the front door.

“That guy, the silk guy. The thief king of old town, or whatever.”

“Yes. The one we kidnapped and stuffed in a bag.” The first door swung open, revealing another one.

“He wasn’t just some local robber. Like the cleverest street urchin who stabbed all the other thieves, and now he’s in charge of that ghetto.”

“Correct.” Second mundane lock clicked open, revealing not a third door, but a perfectly smooth and flat glass wall. The lack of light beyond revealed no transparent window, yet it “reflected” the inner face of the second door. Curiously, however, Ophius and Thia, nor the field behind them. Like a broken mirror, frozen in time.

“That guy, who we thought was just some guy, is an agent of an ancient and powerful witch, who now needs us to bring this seven million gold piece ransom to liberate her other animate cloth golem doll thing, Edward. Who is not only also a king, but an actual king. Not a thief king of the slum of some backwater town. The actual king of a kingdom with armies and all that.”

“You thought. You assumed. I told you he had connections.” Ophius prodded the empty mirror with a bony finger, jolting with a precisely tuned bolt of magic. Arcane symbols swirled across the surface. Ophius gave it another few adjustments (delivered via a magnetized needle and steady hand), jostling the symbols into some esoteric pattern, unlocking the door.

“And the witch, who met us at the predetermined dropoff location, riding her broomstick, to hand us the gold, needs us to walk the to deliver the ransom. She couldn’t just have flown in and delivered it herself?”

Ophius rubbed their forehead. “No, look. She couldn’t have flown it in. The Witch-King has his own flying patrols, and the flying broomstick has limitations anyway, and – look, just forget it.”

~~~

Thia looked at the staircase. Thia looked back at Ophius. Thia looked back at the staircase, sat in the middle of the woods, carpeted steps, marble banister in all, rising 12 feet into the air to no second floor, building, or other artificial structure in sight. She reached out one tentative hand.

“Don’t touch it.” Ophius commanded.

“Why is there…?”

“Look, sometimes there’s stairs in the woods. Just ignore them. Do not go up them.”

~~~

It was nearly dusk. Ophius stopped at the cliffside. They looked at the hanging ivy and climbing vines that clung to the sheer face. Crimson rays glittered off the rock like a stream of gold. They dropped the two, heavy bags onto the gravel with a clatter.

Thia, smirking, raised one open palm and stalked forward, beginning to say, “Get a move on, you can-”

“I’m already dead.” Ophius interrupted, pointing one skeletal finger at a curious pattern in the growth. “But look there. See that? Where it repeats?”

Thia leaned in to get a closer look, and her half of the precious bounty swung forward. Instead of bouncing off the cliff, however, it carried straight through. The unexpected momentum pulled her off balance, and she fell to her knees, face first into the hidden tunnel.

“The adventure continues.” Ophius murmured quietly, and followed her in.

The Real Theophania, vol II ch 3

The Real Theophania

vol. II ch. 6

Thia inhaled deeply from the bouquet of wisteria her lover had just handed her. “Oh, I wish I could stay and smell this forever,” she whispered, wistfully, “I’m sorry I have to go.”

The buxom redheaded baker’s daughter, leaning over the second story handrail looking down at Thia, sighed dramatically. Thia appreciated the view from this angle and what the motion did to Rebecca’s nightgown. “Will I … ever see you again?” Rebecca fluttered her eyelashes enticingly.

“Oh, my love,” Thia began waxing, “if only were like only the winter, and an illusion of scarcity to be soon and surely proven false in the next spring. And when glorious summer was heralded by the marching of resplendent peacocks in the wood, and you felt my spirit always with you like the wind that shakes the barley growing the field, and to be in autumn rewarded for your faith by the bountiful harvest of my return. Your dutiful ministrations, digging furrows in my soil and sating my carnal thirst would never leave risk to failure that I would rise to you again. You are like a merciful mermaid rescuing a poor sailor from my shipwreck of lonliness. You are my seelie queen, guiding me when I am lost in the jungle of despair. You are-”

“Ahem. AHEM.” Ophius sharply slapped the thighs of the poetic princess perched atop their alchemically augmented shoulders, since she wasn’t deigning to stop at his polite taps. “Tick tock. Tick tock. Time to go. We need to get out of the city before the Night Watch starts looking for those filthy interlopers who ransacked the Thief King’s manse. The fire I started in his granary won’t be distracting them for much longer.” The burlap sack on his bag wriggled aggressively, as if on cue.

“mmmr brpmm hmmrAAAAP,” came muffled murmurs from within, before being punctuated with a harsh rip, “AND THE STITCH WITCH WILL HEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU DID TO MY FACE! My kingly visage was sewn with the finest Melcene silks! That, eueugh, HEMP twine you stitched my mouth shut with wasn’t even tensioned proper-” Ophius shut up their kidnapping victim with a sharp thump to the spongy skull. Cloth golems could be so dramatic.

~~~

The Real Theophania, vol II ch 3

The Real Theophania

vol II ch. 3

Thia quieted down as the barmaid dropped off their food. Her ravenous hunger overcame the desire to continue the story, and she tore off a comically large chunk of “turkey” (probably some god-forsaken hybrid of ultra-rat and ritualbound-kitsune, given how backwater this town was) off the comically large drumstick before continuing the tirade. “Listen, all I’m saying is, you can’t really claim to know that ‘Oh, this sword was called Excalibur, but that’s the one the lady of the lake gave him, the one he pulled out of the stone was Caliburn, his other sword.’ The story is so old, and the names translated so many times, there isn’t a real, canonical version of the swords you can say is true. That’s just something you say to sound clever to people who haven’t read as many scrolls as you.”

Ophius stared at their traveling companion, gaze a perplexing mixture of intense focus and complete disinterest, as if watching a wild animal partaking in a strange grooming behavior that you didn’t really understand, but were enraptured by the display of acrobatics. Of course, being ancient undead, Ophius didn’t need to really “eat” regularly, just absorb biomatter in order to fuel the alchemical spell engine to mask their constantly decaying flesh. “You’ve got a bit there,” Ophius pointed with a half carved flute (this decade, apparently, was Ophius’s bardic century), at the drips of hot oil and viscous gravy splattering Thia’s already muddy dress. The dirt, as well as the lingering stench, was a memento of today’s search. Thia was adamant she’d spotted a swarm of fireflies (probably Will-O-Wisps), and chased the lights right into a pit half-filled with brackish water. The other half was filled with the still-fleshy carcass of some unidentifiable large woodland creature.

~~~

Thia raised a torch to the dusty stone archway, brushing away dungeondeep cobweb.“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. What lies beyond is the empire of the dead,” she murmured along, tracing her fingers across the carved letters. “A warning, to turn back. Or caution, for those who continue.”

Ophius interjected, walking bravely deeper into the crypt, “Good thing I’m already dead.”

~~~

Ancient gears and chains screamed in protest at being reawakened from their long slumber. A cacophony of old iron and stone sang from the darkness, as the guardian statues awoke, slamming the swords down the hallway and against the walls. Gleaming sawblades rose from between the flagstones, scythed through the air where Thia had stood moments before, and sank back into the floor. Ophius, hoisting the startled princess, threw her back onto solid ground without even a backwards glance. Their eye sockets flashed a malevolent fuschia as they pierced the darkness for motion. “I told you: in the old alphabet, it was spelled with an ‘I’, not a ‘J’.”, Ophius explained, exasperated, gesturing at the letters painted on the tiles – one pressure plate already sunk. “And speaking of old secrets lost to time, his sword was named Arclight. Any idiot can write a scroll and say it’s antediluvian lore. I was there.”

~~~

Ophius waited for the barmaid to walk off again, then dipped a clean kerchief into the strong spirits she had just dropped off. Thia raised her own glass and tapped it to Ophius’s. “Another job well done,” the refugee princess celebrated.

Ophius shrugged one sleeve back, revealing a small golden figurine of hummingbird, and began polishing it with the cloth. “The Wings of Nirva recovered. Thought lost forever, since the dragonkin lost their war with humanity. The Radiants will pay a princely sum for this.”

Thia grinned, downing her drink. “Can’t wait to spend it on wenches, drink, and a midnight haywagon ride to the next town.”

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