Standing on a bluff made of an ancient skull, looking down into a vast miasmatic bog, and wearing nothing but her shift and her leggings with her sword tucked into a scabbard that hung at her hip, Caelel Silverhawk considered the nature of honesty and the difficult nature of truth telling in the face of diresome threats. Before her eyes, a series of watchtowers were congealing from nothingness, raw mana flowing through the focused efforts of Ruti, the Baron of Rot, his palms spreading as he touched his part of the Realm of Ruin and shaped it to his whim, powered by the souls of the dead that dwelt within his purview. Cae quashed a moment of concern, a feeling of worry, knowing that despite his expression, she had done the mathematics equations: They had enough motes to construct the watchtowers.
It was just a matter of effort and dedication.
Ruti lowered his dark palms and opened his eyes, smiling shyly as he looked upon his handiwork. Each watchtower looked somewhat liked a petrified, hollowed out mushroom, their tall caps reaching wide above the canopy of the swamps and marshes. They had fences around the edges, tarps laid out to keep the merciless sun off the back of the souls manning them, and at their heart, glittering crystals that could be used to send a signal to the center of the Realm - warning of attack, spies, or other trouble.
"That makes this boarder secure against any raiding forces that Pillage might send," Cae said, rapping her knuckles against her sword for good luck. Her brow furrowed slightly. "Will the souls here be willing to...man them?"
"They will," Ruti said, his voice firm. Then, sighing, he thumped back onto the ground. Grass crinkled under his backside and he rolled his head back, peering up at the sky, letting it shine upon his features. He was, as usual, dressed in the most miserly of dregs - rags and rotting scraps of leather. Cae looked up at the sky, rather than risk looking down at him. "I never imagined I'd be able to
build
so much, I always assumed I'd run out of energy and never tried."
"That's why surveying is so important," Cae said, her cheeks flushing as her finger traced the edge of her sword's pommel. "I fucked Citri."
The words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them - the guilt, gnawing at her belly, left her unable to do anything but. She realized, immediately, that they were the most terrible error. It was like feeling a mortal slipping between her arms as she flew high above the clouds, reaching for them...and knowing it was too late. They would fall, and fall, and fall, and hit the ground and come to red ruin, just like her and Ruti's relationship. She already began to reach, time seeming as if it was slowing to a crawl, her hand moving to cup over her mouth, as if she could cram the words back into her traitorous throat before they reached Ruti's ears. But...no. It was impossible.
It had already been said.
"Um, yeah?" Ruti asked, cocking his head ever so slightly to the side. "Of course you did?"
"I'm sorry, it was in the throws of passion, after a battle, and and I...I..." Cae blinked slowly, her glowing wings mantling in shock. "Of course I did?"
"I mean, I knew you did," Ruti said, smiling. "He's my fellow Baron."
Cae felt her entire face grow hot, and buzzing, like she had bees under her skin. "He...t-told...you?" she whispered, slowly. The idea, of two males discussing her lasciviousness, her wantonness, her sin! It was almost too horrible for her to even consider. And worse, that gentle Ruti was the one who-
"No?" Ruti asked. "Why would he need to tell me?"
Cae blinked, her wings mantling again.
"Anyway," Ruti said, pushing himself to his feet and smiling at her. "I'm glad you had such a good time with him - did you want to talk about it?"
Cae shook her head, mute in shock.
"Well, then, I need to rest," Ruti said, stretching his arms behind his back, cocking his head to the side until his neck popped. "Channeling that much magic was more tiresome than I expected." He reached down and smacked her rump with a single broad palm, making Cae squeak and jerk upright. Her eyes widened - and he froze, then stammered. "S-Sorry, just...uh...a flash...you know, sparks. Heh. Since. Um. Citri, and all. Bye!" He turned and hurried off, walking down the hill, rather than transforming into a butterfly or whatever else he might have done - considering the lack of magic he currently had, having spent so much, it was not surprising.
Cae blinked again.
"...I believe I need to study more," she whispered.
With the Rot boarder secured and with her scouts - including Shale - out to make sure that Pestilence hadn't marched, Cae practically flew through her remaining tasks as fast as she could, scribbling notes, sending missives, checking on supplies, working out battleplans, and finally, providing a report to Lord Arral, who took it all with a serious nod and a grunted 'very good, General.' This left her a chance to slip into her room, move to the drawer where she had concealed Lady Ruin's journal, and to take the book out. Cae set it down on the bed beside her, her brow furrowing.
The blank pages sat there, taunting her - now with whatever they might hold, rather than their emptiness.
Cae crossed her arms over her chest, her wings folding as well as she considered.
Speaking a word searches for it - but what could possibly explain this?
She bit her lip. Then...despite herself, she found herself thinking on the first thing the journal had shown her: The argument between the woman who would later become Lady Ruin and her future husband...what was it she had said?
"Soul architecture," Cae said aloud.
The pages flipped as if an invisible wind blew them, and then settled. The two words
soul architecture
burned into existence, on the upper left edge of one of the pages. More text began to swirl into existence on the page, but Cae didn't even bother to read it: She lifted her head as the room around her bled away like smoke, and the past took its place. She found herself...not where she expected. Some ancient sepulcher, some strange and occultic room, something unfamiliar, something...not...
Not the training halls of Heaven.
They were empty and dim at first. Then, skidding backwards, Alia fi-Fiar, the future Lady Ruin, came into view. She was dressed in simple traveling robes which billowed around her slender form as if caught in a hurricane force wind. She skimmed along the ground on a skein of crackling lightning, her arms spread wide, and a quarterstaff jacketed in brilliant white light hovered between her palms. She twitched her fingers, and each twitching movement caused the staff to twirl, plunge, thrust, shift back before her face - interposing itself again and again against a flaming sword as a heavily armored war-angel that Cae recognized as her Proctor - though a younger, less scarred version of him - sought to cleave her body in twain.
"I see you're not much," Alia said, her fingers twitching to bring her staff twirling up to cover her head as the Proctor's flaming sword swept down. "...interested..." Twitch. This time, the staff thrust forward - and it struck against the Proctor's close faced helmet with a sound not unlike the ringing of a vast, golden bell. The war-angel stumbled backwards with the resounding force of it, a ripple of distorted air blooming around the impact. "...in academic curiosity!"
"Corrupted wench! Hells take you!" The Proctor roared, stumbling backwards, his hand going to his dented helmet. "You tore an angel's soul apart!"
"I did put her back together again - and got permission," Alia said, her hands lowering so their palms faced the floor. This brought the glowing quarterstaff down low to the ground as well - less threatening.
"You committed a cardinal sin - you broke the
design
of Heaven itself!" the Proctor growled. "When you
put her back together
, as you so callously call it, you left the angel in question altered! Changed! Fundamentally!"
"I did?" Alia sounded honestly somewhat taken aback. She frowned and then lifted one hand, snapping her fingers. A familiar book came into being with a flare of black magic. It dropped into her palms and she held it in her left hand while a quill shimmered into existence in her right. "How so?"
The Proctor growled. "You make mock of the Creator herself with your vile blasphemes. Each angel is born of a mortal soul - a soul hewn to perfection by cycles of reincarnation! When a soul is
born
in Grace, born of Heaven, it ascends to us, and is given wings and angelic might - for it needs no shaping, no tests, it simply is what it is. And you altered such a creation...you marred an artwork ten generations in creation, leaving-"
"Yes, yes, but
how
are they different? Is it subtle? Gross?" Alia asked.
The Proctor roared in fury and rushed towards Alia. She clapped her book shut and then thrust her quill out as if it were a weapon - and weapon it was. The feather shot from her palm, shrouded in a red flare, and plunged into the Proctor's face plate and into his cheek, puncturing it and creating a scar that Cae knew
quite
well from her time in the Academy. The Proctor kept plunging forward, ignoring the pain and the fire and the blood. His flaming sword swept out and when Alia's staff interposed itself betwixt him and her, it was shorn in half with a spray of splinters and a
crack
of splitting stone. Alia's eyes widened and she skimmed backwards on her glowing lightning.
The Proctor didn't swing wildly - instead, he held his sword in both hands, waiting for his moment.
Alia didn't give it him.
She spoke a single word that echoed in the room and distorted space. The walls of the Academy shivered, threatening to crack and break, while one of the pillars trembled in its moorings and then cracked in half. The sword clattered to the floor as the Proctor transformed, in a single flash. When the light faded, Cae saw that he had been reduced to a mouse: Small, white furred, with a bright pinkish-red nose that twitched in what could only be the mouse version of pure wroth. He squeaked and scrabbled wildly atop the armor that had clattered around him. To Cae's surprise, the same shocking transfiguration had struck the mortal sorceress as well...and that made the knowledge click in Cae's mind. The most powerful mortal arcanists could, with great training and effort, speak the same language as the vast Choir that perpetually sang the Creator's glories in Heaven.
The danger of speaking the language of Creation itself, though, was the word had to be in your mind as you spoke it - and thus, it worked its way upon you as well. Alia had turned herself and the Proctor into a rodent, by speaking that word into being. Cae shook her head slowly - wondering how Alia would...
