Returned
This is the eleventh part of the O Maker Mine plot. It is preceded by Found and Leverage.
Various Perspectives | Present Night | Universes A & B
A city disappears, its citizens with it.
The imperial treasurer’s matesprit is among them.
Mesier Beldon - grand highblood, shifter, powerful mage, and chucklevoodoo master - is not one to sit idly by.
He joins forces with Jikiro Takami and grants Jamie Abnale a new job.
He makes plans to rescue Chimer Latrai.
In exchange for information on the city and its vanishing, he has also agreed to bring back Lizzie Eizzil.
So long as his ritual goes as planned.
—
Jikiro hadn’t needed Akiote to come get him this time; he’d made sure he was ready and waiting in the dining room for Mesier Beldon and his secretary Vrayan Fennix. He had food ready if they needed it, though he kind of figured both of them would want to get right to business.
He was almost right. As Mesier went ahead to set some things up for the ritual outside near where Jikiro had performed his own incantation to contact Lizzie, the blueblood woman stayed behind to get some cushioning together so her boss could take riders more comfortably in his dragon form.
Jikiro tried to make conversation - he always did - but found her terse and snappish, though he got the feeling it wasn’t because of him. He’d just given her some necessary ink, after all.
In fact…examining her body language, the way she held her tail and ears, the look in her eyes and tiredness in her posture…
All that, plus the sense of familiarity he was picking up with his magic, led the tealblood to one conclusion.
“Hey. Not to be rude. But one undead to another, do you want some blood? My moirail’s a drinker, I can kinda tell.”
Vrayan sputtered, eyes flicking nervously around. “I’m not - this isn’t - I don’t -“
The ink maker was calm, his expression nonjudgmental as he got up from his seat at the breakfast table.
“Hey. I’m not judging. Do I look like a guy who denies myself much?”
The heavyset midblood chuckled at the idea.
“Takami rules say feed everyone who helps us, if they want it. And I’m glad you’re here.”
The mutant woman paused. Hesitated. Then, in a voice smaller than Jikiro expected:
“Just - just don’t say anything to Mesier when he gets back. This is a bad habit.”
Jikiro nodded, calm and serious, understanding this was something she hated admitting to and was only doing so out of need.
“Nah, none of my business. I get it. I won’t tell anyone else.”
He drew out some of his blood with magic in a floating stream, removed the ink from it and returned it to his body. With his free hand, he retrieved a glass bottle from his sylladex, and put the filtered teal liquid in it, handing it to the blueblood.
Then he walked outside to watch Mesier work, curious to see how things would go - wanting to be on standby in case something went wrong.
The grayshift from his own spell lingered unpleasantly in his head.
—
The tall grand highblood had gotten out his materials and tools, having already drawn part of the binding spell that would be needed to focus and direct his chucklevoodoos on the cleared ground Jikiro had prepped for him.
As he walked closer, the tealblood realized the symbols were done in a dark purple liquid, almost violet in hue…
The man’s own blood, he realized with a slight shock.
He was used to using his own blood for spells sometimes, but usually only in emergencies. Mesier was doing it of his own free will.
The warding spells must need to be strong as hell, then.
He guessed it made sense, considering what the shifter’s voodoos were - he’d never imagined the typically mental-based powers could manifest in such a way, tearing holes in time and space, but he was hardly going to say shit when they were about to be so useful.
Vrayan, for her part, used the firestarter ink he’d given her when she first arrived. The shifting gold and red iridescent liquid gleamed in the moonlight as she carefully daubed symbols with it using a brush he’d lent her.
Jikiro had recommended that type for practical reasons, but he also couldn’t wait to watch it all catch alight - he knew it’d be spectacular.
With his assistant now there, Mesier finished quickly. Jikiro nodded to him as he finished his last symbol, the tealblood’s usual thumbs-up feeling too casual for this troll and this occasion.
It was quiet, only mild insect buzzes interrupting the night air.
Then the purpleblood transformed into a dragon and breathed fire to activate the wards - a beautiful gold and purple with a core of black, creating crisscrossing arcs in the air - and shot into the void he created, vanishing in moments.
“Damn.” Breathed Jikiro.
—
Lizzie had been in her apartment when it happened, deep into studying for her next test.
She’d noticed a few people acting strangely, and Viltau’s tip-off had made her a bit on edge, but something like this?
How could she have ever anticipated the entire sky going white for a few moments?
The fleet itself coming to cull them all? The subsequent vanishing of its warships?
People told stranger stories too: of giant metal bugs in the sky fighting the empire, eyes on buildings, and glowing green lines in the streets as the entire city became one unified machine.
She didn’t know how much of it she believed.
She didn’t know how much she’d live to confirm or not.
Her one lifeline had been the message from Jikiro, though it had shocked her at the time and she’d yelled, flinging a glass at the sudden inky letters that had manifested in the air. It had flown right through them and broken on the wall.
Then she’d realized they were harmless, a message from someone she knew - not well, but she’d always found the other tealblood friendly, and Hazard liked him.
A weight had lifted from her shoulders as he promised her aid from Mesier Beldon.
Now - crouching in Indrid’s office building, having vainly tried to collect more information on what happened before she came home - she felt it pressing right down again.
She and the indigo were two of the few legislacerators left.
Indrid hadn’t smiled since all of this had started, not once.
Now her face was paintless and grim, her partially teal-dyed hair bedraggled as the pair of them huddled behind a stack of desks.
Gangs had finally taken the building the other night; the word was that between them and the corporations, they were winning, though not without heavy losses.
The other buzz was that the rebels had somehow defeated some of the last drones in the city.
Lizzie wasn’t sure she believed that, but on the other hand…who knew, in these times.
“I’m out of acid.” Indrid said quietly, referring to her gun that took sulfuric grade. “I used it on the last ones.”
Lizzie had figured as much.
“Can you voodoo-stun them?” She asked, knowing the odds probably weren’t good.
Indrid shook her head, and Lizzie could see the tiredness on her face, the hang of her head and droop of her ears.
“If I do it much more before I sleep, I might melt my own brain.” She said, even quieter.
“Okay…” Lizzie said, thinking.
Footsteps in the hallway. Casual, unconcerned.
People armed to the teeth who knew they could take their time, that they were in charge now.
The midblood thought harder.
She looked over at the office’s windows, and put her sunglasses on.
It was night out, though just barely. Neither of them had suncloaks. They were a few floors up. The gangs wouldn’t expect them to take their chances.
Almost nobody would.
The tealblood jumped up, ran over, and took out her strife anyway, swinging with everything she had.
The office windows were decently shatterproof.
They were not Lizzie-proof.
Two hundred and fifty pounds of very determined tealblood wielding a baseball bat smashed the windows to bits just as the door opened, and ducked as the gang trolls opened the door and cursed at the weak sunlight hitting them directly in the eyes.
She dragged a nearby Indrid with her out into the air, and swapped her bat for her anti-grav disk.
In no way was it enough to take two big adult women dropping three floors like stones, but they did at least ensure that both of them didn’t end up stains on the pavement, merely bruised.
As usual in Civitrecce now, fires burned in the distance. Gunshots sounded from behind them and elsewhere.
Her skin burned slightly. They had to find shelter.
Then she saw the dragon fly overhead, teal eyes going wide with shock and relief.
Indrid would have to fend for herself.
—
Sometimes, Chimer hated her own stupid privilege.
Okay, that was a lie, she usually hated her own stupid privilege.
She especially hated it when it meant she was safe in a bunker while her city went to absolute dickweeds up above.
Yeah, yeah, if she survived she could help.
Big comfort that was to the terrified, dying trolls on the streets.
Her fangs ground together yet again, fins flicking in irritation as she checked the city feed for the millionth -
Oh shit that was her boyfriend.
Well, that was dragon boyfriend. The other one better not be pulling any shit, Sev was in not any state for that anymore.
“How are you - oh, yeah.”
She remembered the magical tracker she’d let him put on her.
It had seemed like a bit overkill at the time, but she’d figured hell, why not, she’d been in stupid bullshit situations before and wait, what was this? It was stupid bullshit situation #3 with the steel chair!
She poked her head out of the viewing room to talk to the few staff trolls she’d managed to get down here with her.
“Hey, hate to bail, but I gotta go. You all feel free to hang out here though.”
The midblood and lowbloods stared at her, stunned.
“But, miss Latrai - “
“Gotta go! Stay safe!”
Fortunately, that stunlocked them all long enough for her to run to the elevator and punch in the security code, allowing her to get bonus points and proceed to phase 2: get to her ride without becoming target practice.
—
“Well this is a goddamn unsatisfactory bitch of a situation.” Chimer said, flat and not with the humor the meme deserved as the universe decided to lovingly render gangs swarming the space outside the elevator and its immediate exit room on the camera feed.
Didn’t they ever sleep. It was barely night. Honk shoo time, for most people whose boyfriends hadn’t shown up to be really cool.
Literally what was here for them anyway.
Or was it because she might well be the last fuchsia left alive in the city? There hadn’t been a ton of them to begin with (duh, rarest caste) and technically, she cooperated with the empire…
She sighed. Yeah, okay, fair. Still sucked though.
For them.
Yup, there went the gunfire, and yup, there went the screaming.
Rest in piss, but if you decided to shoot at a big fire-breathing dragon, you were kind of asking for it in her humble opinion.
…Fuck, they kept going. She heard laser blasts too.
She heard pained roaring.
She swore and took out her trident - the only traditional fuchsia thing about her, three wickedly sharp tines gleaming.
Mesier would probably be fine. Probably.
She didn’t have any powers now. Hadn’t for sweeps.
Chimer Latrai ran for the door anyway, face alight with fury as she threw it open and gored the nearest troll she saw shooting at -
- a tealblood near Mesier.
Huh?
She blinked as the corpse slid to the ground and she retracted her weapon.
Who the hell was that? Clearly not a Civitrecce gang troll, they didn’t tend to come in teal, fat, and - she’d bet her fins on it - a legi or policeradicator.
Okay, her matesprit managed some fire-breathing, tide was turning.
“Mesier!” She said, raising her voice. “I’m here!”
The dragon turned toward her - and the tealblood leapt in to bash a troll trying to sneak up on him with her baseball bat.
Dope, Chimer thought, as she ran toward him and he to her, and she scrambled up on his back to reach the two-seat cushioning someone - she guessed Vrayan - had strapped onto the sharp scales.
Then everything went gray.
Color leeched away, time slowed down.
Her breath felt like ooze in her chest.
The warm air went still.
Everything did.
Everyone.
She couldn’t…think…
Chimer gasped as it passed. Fuck, shit, fuck - help the tealblood get on and secured, she was clearly injured - damn it.
“Mesier! We’re on!”
God bless him, he didn’t waste any time.
Black holes…
The world lurched sickeningly, and she felt a dribble of blood roll down her mouth and chin.
She’d take that to the gray.
She’d take anything.
Stars. Sky. Grass. No city.
She breathed deeply, body shaking a little in relief, fins drooping weakly.
Home.