Memory and Memories - Part 1
by Armond

“Our lives are the sum of our memories.
Joshua Foer

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”
Dr. Seuss

  

(link to larger image)

Prologue

3rd day of the month of Rycdos, god of the harvest

1.
"If I made a sacrifice to Utos, ya think she'd go out with me then?"

Aesh flashed his hallmark 'prune face grimace' to his classmate. Anyone who knew the alquimista apprentice also knew exactly what it meant.
"As always, Pac, you think of everything in study hall... except studying."

'He could sacrifice all the pigs in Ogda to the god of fortune for all the good it would do him,' Aesh added mentally. 'The gods - if they exist at all - don't care one whit for humans.'

"And what will you sacrifice to him? Your virginity?" Aesh asked. "No, wait! You can't do that, ‘cause you're hoping to sacrifice that to sweet Lala Biddle."

"Shhhhhh! Don't say that out loud," a mortified Pac said, as he looked around the study hall nervously. “I'll catch so much hell if anyone finds out I'm a virgin."

"I won't bullshit you, my man, sex is fantastic, mind blowing, amazing..."

'Hmm, maybe I'm overdoing this a bit,' Aesh thought, as he saw Pac's mouth drop open. 'He's actually drooling!'
"...but it's not worth devoting your every wanking thought!" Aesh added.

Though Pac was his senior by half a dozen years, it often seemed to Aesh his twenty-six year old friend had the maturity of a toddler.
"...spare a thought to the Transmuting and Distilling text, and you might actually pass the exam tomorrow."

"You have the luxury to say that, since you aced it a year ago! You made the highest exam score on it...ever!" Pac wailed. “Everything comes easy to you! It's not fair!”

He'd always been jealous of Aesh; the young man seemed destined for glory. Pac wanted to hate him, but he couldn't, for Aesh was a genuinely good soul and a loyal friend, albeit one with a spicy tongue. Pac thought about storming away in a huff - as he often did - but then he considered the easy way Aesh had with the fairer sex. He hatched another plan.

"I know! Come with me tonight! You can hide close and whisper the sweet words to get me..."

"...into Lala's panties?" Aesh finished his thought.

"Well, yeah."

"Not a winning strategy," Aesh said, stopping himself from adding if he did that, Lala would more likely end up in Aesh's bed.
"You want to know the real secret to success with the fairer sex?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Pac exclaimed, clapping his hands. Finally 'Aesh the Impious' was going to share his magic words. "Please, oh please, oh please!"

"Gods! You are such a whale's anus sometimes. Show some self-respect, man," Aesh said. "Fine, listen up."

Pac literally fell to his knees before Aesh.

"One, be genuine. Be yourself. Can't stress this enough. Two, listen, listen, listen. Truly hear the woman, and be interested in what she has to say. Three, present yourself well. Look and dress sharp, and let her know you are a man with a plan for the future. For instance, to be able tell her something like 'I'm going to ace the Transmuting and Distilling exam tomorrow,' would be handy. Hence the need to study." 
 

Pac's shoulders slumped when he realized no magic words were being passed to him.

"Pleeeeease come with me tonight," Pac begged.

"Can't, my friend, I have a prior engagement," Ashe said, with a wink.

Pac's jaw dropped as he imagined his friend's engagement, ending, -he was certain- in wild and epic debauchery.

'Would there be two women? Or three?'

***

In fact, Aesh's prior engagement had nothing to do with sex, but was instead a stealth 'breaking and entering' mission, into a professor's dorm quarters.

"Professor Breviar of Guilon."

Aesh read the name plate beside the door to the quarters. He added in a low whisper, "Edefia's most notorious professor."

He slipped the lock pick in, wiggled it about just so, pulled it out, and gave a satisfied 'heh' when the doorknob snicked open at his turn.

Looking first to his right and left down the dorm hallway, Aesh stepped in and locked the door behind him.

Breviar's quarters were just as Aesh had left them from his last ‘mission’, dusty and musty. Wasting no time, the young man stood straight to the professor's study and bookshelves.

During his last clandestine visits, he'd browsed the Handbook Of Sirin (boring and tedious), Fundamental Stories Of Arcane Holidays (interesting, but useless) and Unknown Transmutations (scary and fascinating). It was this third tome he wished to dig into more. He pulled it from Breviar's bookshelf, settled the manuscript on Breviar's dark oaken study desk, lit a single candle, and dove in.

An hour later and a third of the way through, Aesh discovered a loose note page hiding between two pages. With a quick read, the young alquimista confirmed it was written by Breviar's hand. The characters were neat and small, flowing down the front and back of the page.

'Maybe he was taking notes and accidentally left it here.'

Aesh was troubled by that thought; the chapter in which it was hidden dealt with the power of impure transmutations, an evil subject, to Aesh's mind.

He scanned the first few paragraphs. Blinked. Rubbed his eyes and read again. Slower this time.

"No! Is this a joke?"

The words Breviar had written were so wrong, so antithetical to the core alquimista philosophies, that Aesh wondered if it was a weird sort of code, the kind one needed to hold up to a mirror to get its reverse meaning.

As he moved to the next section, where the professor proposed a procedure to accomplish his theory, Aesh's face flushed hot in rage, and he let loose a blazing strings of curses, with the only non-expletive words in it being 'sphincter,' and 'diarrhea.' For he'd uncovered a monstrous plot.

"The Masters must see this at once!"

***

"...to the inescapable conclusion his serum could render all organic matter inert."

Aesh was well past his ‘mea culpa’ for breaking into the professor's quarters. And, while the masters he stood in front of weren't thrilled to learn of his skulking about, that was quickly forgotten when he began describing Professor Breviar's experiments.

"...Also, if my calculations are correct, even tiny serum amounts if exposed to air - or gods forbid - to fire, may have a devastating impact. If the professor used this reverse chrysopoeia process - he called it anti-alkahest, or anti life - in any significant quantities, the extermination range is ...unimaginable."

The meeting chamber, so often filled with Edefia students clamoring to learn, was pin drop silent. The masters had passed around the notes Aesh found, each turning pale as he digested their meaning.

They didn't doubt Aesh's conclusions either; for the young man was a prodigy; he almost solved the Alquimista Puzzle with his last attempt, and they fully expected he would on his third try and graduate a master. This would be unprecedented. No one in their history had ever solved their famed puzzle box in less than seven attempts.

"We must find him and discretely bring him back," Headmaster Dolan said, breaking the silence.

"What?! No!" Aesh exclaimed. "We must warn the leaders of the Seven Kingdoms about this and-"

"-That is exactly what we will not do!" Master Dolan, hissed, cutting him off.

"Such would destroy our reputation! Worse, the rulers might even seek to disband our schools! Brand us as terrorists. The Alarians would love nothing more. No, this must be handled with the utmost delicacy. Tell no one! We will form teams and fan out into the Seven Kingdoms, seeking this rogue and dragging him to the university."

"Seriously?! That's absurd! And what if he doesn't want to come back? What will we do when-"

"-Silence, Aesh. We are indebted to you for discovery, but you will do as I have said. You will team with Master Bexon. Pack and begin your search for Professor Breviar at once."

"The hells with our reputation," Aesh muttered, "Breviar poses a threat to life itself."

...to be honest, Aesh muttered other words, but those blistering adjectives and nouns were all unprintable.
 

2.

The Qyrc Wilds, at the southern edge of the area henceforth to be known as 'The Dead Zone.'

"You... you've returned"

"You seem disappointed."

The man swung his legs off his mount. Once on the ground, he knocked the dust from his tunic. He walked, stumbling slightly, to the one seated on a tree stump next to a canvass tent.

His employer. The man known as Blood Burn.

"On the contrary. Another data point," Blood Burn said. "Did you happen to find any others there? A fella named Ballista, or another called Tusk?"

"I saw nothing. Neither bird, nor beast nor plant. Miles and miles of silence and desolation. It is a place of death."

"There is purity in what you witnessed. A perfection. You are a lucky man, Tyran. Do you need water? You look unwell."

"What I need are the hundred pieces of gold you... you..."

Suddenly, Tyran's eyes rolled back into his head, showing only whites now. He lurched forward in a stagger, his arms flailed once, and he fell face first into the dust with a thumpf.

A high pitched keening sound emanated from his body, like the flapping of a thousand locust wings. Then, his skin, organs and blood fell away from his bones, dried and granular, like sand. A sharp wind blew from the south, sending his dust back into the dead area.

Blood Burn looked over at Tyran's mare; she showed no signs of weakness.

He pulled a writing charcoal and manuscript from a nearby pack, flipped open to a blank page, and wrote:

'At seven weeks, the serum dissipates at edge of zone. Suspect serum remains active at epicenter.'

"All this from one drop! If I could produce a cup of the serum, and activate it through ignition, then the zone of impact would be..."

Blood Burn did the calculations in his head; he smiled when he came to the conclusion.

"...everywhere in the Seven Kingdoms!"

But it had taken every pence and penny of his savings to fund the production of this tiny amount.

He wanted - no, needed - to make more. So much more. He wanted to make the world perfect.

"I need a benefactor."

He knew where to get one, too.

'Glesea.'

After he fled the university those months ago, he followed a different career to raise money. He hired his services out to the highest bidder. Those services earned him his new name, too, for he crafted the deadliest of diseases and poisons. He learned during those months just where those shadowy bidders could be found.

'For it is said, you can buy or sell anything imaginable at the Glesea docklands, for a price.'
 

3.

Shea wrapped her midnight hair into a bun and pinned it up. Glesea was leagues and leagues away from Imis, across the Serene Sea, and Shea learned long ago with her mother that comfort trumped fashion when traveling.

Or at least she thought she had. It was hard to tell now with so many memories gone.

She turned and faced her flat's floor-length mirror. The reflection staring back showed a nondescript traveler, grayish cloak and hood, and worn leather boots.

The mirror successfully hid the Alarian 'elf woman' underneath the disguise.

"Good. No, adequate," she spoke aloud, then quickly amended. Her Caxenar training forbade overconfidence.

"Glad ta meet ya," Shea said to her mirrored reflection, "The name's Shyilia, from Crioca. Blade fer hire if'n ya have any messy jobs what needs fixin."

"Hmmm. I'll need to work on that," she assessed critically.

There was no disguising her excitement. Her aunt told her the Arch Duchess herself had requested Shea for this mission. di'Sona was confident Shea was up to the task - tracking the human known as Blood Burn, who was suspected of creating an unimaginably powerful weapon, if intel from the Qyrc Wilds was correct. He was sighted in Glesea only days ago.

This was what she'd trained for. Sacrificed for. To do something important. Something that made a difference.

"Something Mother wouldn't understand. Speaking of… one last memory."

Shea knelt to the floor, fumbled around a bit, found the plank she sought, and pressed it in the secret pressure points that popped open the hidden floor space. Reaching in, she pulled out the silver necklace chain which held her memory crystal. It pulsed and swirled with warm hues.

Shea's hand itched to grab it and press it to her temple, to pull the memories it held back into her mind.

Her most precious life memories.

Of her mother.

She stopped.

"After the mission. Then I will. And I will find her. And we will talk. After."

The centuries-old Caxenar Cleansing ritual was a pillar of her training in the Shadow Arts. It's purpose, simple but brutally effective was, that a spy should have no emotional ties to compromise her.

A simple thing, to think of a memory and touch the crystal to the forehead, yet it was by far the hardest part of a spy's training. Most failed this test.

Not Shea.

She'd followed the ritual explicitly - she remembered her strongest, most poignant ones, pressing the crystal's tip to her forehead to remove each one. Shea graduated at the top of her class. She hadn't emptied herself of all her memories of her mother; that would be foolish, leaving her weak and stupid. No, the young Alarian had methodically sifted through her mind and soul, choosing memories that defined their love.

"One more to go."

Shea had saved her memory of their last meeting. Their argument, their parting.
It motivated her.

But now, before this mission, it too must go.

The stone flashed briefly.

Shea lowered the glowing crystal back, hiding it once more under the plank and stood.

"I'm ready."
 

4.

"One madman makes many madmen: many madmen make madness."

"But Paridala, revered one, the Keoba King will pay twenty gold bars for a reading," the gypsy man said, trying so hard to keep his exasperation hidden. Turning down the largest fee they had ever been offered -that any gypsy clan had, he suspected- by babbling a cryptic quote was not helping his efforts.

"Twenty! This Millcrest trip can surely wait until after?"

'Santini is a devoted grandson and skilled leader of our clan,' Aliana thought, 'still he has much to learn; he lacks in what is truly important.'

"-Pfft. The cards, my visions and dreams are not interested in gold, young pup. We go to give a reading to one more cocksure than even you, if such is possible."

"How will I explain this ‘going to Yaran to earn handfuls of coppers’ instead of ‘Keoban gold bars’?" Santini asked, waving his arms. "How do I answer our clan's anger?"

"Their anger?!" Aliana spit on the ground. "It is nothing! Tell them we go hungry if we stop honoring the cards. The anger of man is fleeting. Fear only the wrath of the gods."

"Ah! They will understand this. We go to appease an angry god,"

Santini had lived with his grandmother long enough to know that appeasing deities always seemed to end profitably.

"Among other dire portents I have seen, yes. A vengeful goddess. She is cosmically pissed."
 

Chapter 1

1.

4 weeks later - the 2nd day of the month of Jeuna, goddess of penance.

"I bear news, Empress."

The wizard bowed low and tried not to shake; he feared this would not end well.

She rose from her throne, her eyes growing black.

"It failed."

"You know?"

"No, but you reek of fear," the woman answered, shaking her head. "And what could make a wizard as mighty as Palenor quiver like a rabbit before the wolf? Why, having to report failure to his Empress. Speak."

"The spy we captured in Glesea a fortnight ago, died before infecting the people of Imis."

"Died? Sheala Faeyra died???" The sorceress' voice was a high screech. "I was assured she be unharmed! This. Was. Not. Supposed. To. Happen!"

The woman's eyes blazed red. She raised her right hand, and with a single spoken word, fire poured from it, engulfing Palenor in flames. His screams echoed the hallways as he ran, trying to reach the fountain in the courtyard outside.

He didn't make it.

"Bring the Archanist to me now," she screamed to the captain of her guard.

"I'll see to it, personally."

Normally, the captain would have delegated the messenger task, but just now he was more than happy to – hopefully - be out of her death-dealing range.

"And have someone clean up that mess. It stinks of burned flesh."

Within a few minutes, a man shuffled in, bookended between two armed guards; the prisoner's feet were manacled, but the iron ankle cuffs and chain were hidden by the floor length red robe he wore. His hood was up, causing shadows to obscure his face.

"You. Blood Burn! You swore she wouldn't die from the disease."

"If you had waited to hear the rest of the report, you'd have learned she didn't. She was killed by a knife through her heart."

"She was never supposed to die!"

The woman was silent for several minutes, her face growing grimmer with each tick of the clock.

"This will bring her mother into it," the sorceress hissed.

"I thought this part of your plan folly,” Blood Burn responded. “Why bother with the release of a watered down plague when the antipodal chrysopoeia is a thousand times more potent?"

"Silence!"

The woman then motioned to her captain again, who stepped forward quickly.

"Perhaps I was hasty, my Captain, was there more to wizard Palenor's report?" She sighed when she saw how pale the man had become. "C'mon, man, find your stones!"

"Yes, Empress," the man straightened to his full imposing 6' 5" height and cleared his throat. "The spy's flat in Imis was also searched, and in a hidden space under a floorboard, a glowing crystal was found."

"Her memory stone? ...at least there is that! Bring it to me! Let none touch it, for it brings madness and death to any who does save its owner."

"Yes, Empress, this has been learned already," the captain said, "by several wizards."

"Excuse me, Empress," Blood Burn said, sensing the woman's mood had risen. "I could craft another plague for Alari."

"It takes months, yes? Now Isaura will start sniffing around, so time is not our ally. Once the other kingdoms submit, Alari will see the folly of standing alone."

The woman motioned to her captain once more. "Summon the pirate Angrove. Gather my wizards. Bring the remaining six vials. We leave at dawn."

"I am to sail with you?" the red robed man asked.

"We have many ports to visit; this is your chance to see the world, Archanist," the woman answered. "And of course, I can't leave you here. There is no telling what trouble you may concoct in my absence."

"The true plague is quite safe from me," Blood Burn said. "From everyone else in the Seven Kingdoms, including the goddess even. Everyone save you. You've seen to that. You have robbed the world of perfection. Why won't you leave me be?"

"Because you are insane," she answered. "And the insane can cause such mischief if not watched."

"Insane? How so? All I seek is to remedy-"

"-Life's imperfections," she interrupted. "Yes, yes. You've explained. Many times."

"But how does this make me insane?" he asked, truly perplexed. "Or why are you not also 'insane' then? You seek to rule the Seven Kingdoms to bring order to the chaos and imperfections you see. Are not our goals similar? How are we different?"

"The difference is very simple, my dear Archanist. Yes, people will deem me mad for attempting to subjugate all other kingdoms under my rule. But when I'm successful, I will control the narrative, and history shall remember me as a savior."

"On the other hand, if you, are successful, history won't remember you at all. It won't even exist. For every plant and animal in the Seven Kingdoms shall have perished."
 

2.

The 21st day of the month of Jeuna
Imis

"I have gifts for you, dearest Sis."

Isaura didn't open her front door. She couldn't summon the energy.

"I want nothing from you, save Shea's memory crystal. She had one yes? It was part of her hideous Shadow training."

"True, but that hasn’t been found. Even if it had, well you know it would do you no good, for only Shea could touch it. Madness comes to anyone else. No, I have better gifts. Gift one, your daughter's murderer."

"What?"

Isaura flung open the door. The sisters faced one another, each pushing dominance into the other's eyes. Old habits. Hate, love and hate again, such history, such memories they had! Allies, yes, but just as often, bitter foes.

So alike in appearance, each possessing immortal Alarian beauty: unblemished olive skin, naturally rose red lips and haunting ice blue eyes. But for Isaura's smaller stature, and her midnight black hair to di'Sona's ginger, they could be twins.

Isaura yielded, too dead inside to engage in an extended test of wills. She staggered a step back into her flat, allowing the taller sorceress to enter, followed by a petite Alarian girl of no more than sixteen years, Isaura guessed.

"Kneel," di'Sona ordered, and the girl dropped to her knees.

Isaura avoided di'Sona's eyes, careful to mask her confusion. Decades of habit: never give a Faeyra family member an advantage or weakness to exploit. Yet... the girl before her was so slight, she wondered if a brisk ocean wind would carry her away.

"Her?"

'Her????' Isaura's mind screamed. 'How in the name of Aana could she kill Sheala?'

For when Shea left her...

'That day we fought ...said things we couldn't take back...'

...she ran away, to the Khedel Empire, Isaura later learned to her dismay, to study the Shadow Arts under Caxenar's dark priests. She didn't think she could be more devastated than when she learned Shea had graduated, with honors, for she knew the Caxenar rituals. She knew what that meant.

But she was wrong; news of Shea's death was a thousand times worse. The day Shea died was the day her heart turned to stone.

'How could one skilled in the Shadow Arts be killed by this waif?'

Yet di'Sona confirmed it with a nod, a snide smile playing on her face. They were so skilled in reveling in the other's pain, a talent practiced to the extreme by her 'loving' parents. Isaura ignored her sister's amused expression, focusing instead on the girl.

Conflicting emotions bubbled in her chest. First: searing anger. But also...

'...there is something about her... She reminds me of ...of...'

Isaura shook her head in self disgust.

'Compassion for Shea's killer? I will strike her dead! But first…'

"...I need facts!"

Isaura circled the kneeling girl, once, twice, taking her time, breathing in every detail.

She saw much now that she looked, much that was missing at first glance - here was intrigue. Deceit. All she hated. All she left Alari for.

'And my little girl is dead. Her soul, gone from the Seven Kingdoms.'

Isaura drifted to the open window of her flat to gaze on the harbor. Pulling back the cowl of her robe, she breathed the salty ocean air.

Hemm's Bay was quiet during the winter season, as the trading ships of the other six kingdoms stayed closer to their home ports to avoid the winter storms. A cool evening breeze caressed Isaura's face, and rays from the sunset made her raven black hair glow silvery.

"She loved the winter season most as a child, the bright Yuletide festivals and scrumptious feasts," Isaura spoke, to the wind, and sea below.

'Oh daughter! If I could make Ananke move her spindle back to then, I would do so many things differently. But the gods never give us second chances. We are cruelly sentenced to relive the memories of our sins, again and again.'

"We are ever prisoners to our memories," she sighed. Her heart was gashed and torn, and maybe would be forever. The long roads traveled had taken their toll, too. She had just returned to Imis last night after a year's absence.

'Returned to this... abomination.'

The girl was barefoot, and clad only in a gray cotton tunic. Isaura's trained vision detected more.

'Wrapped about her body - the strangest of magicks! Fading, but still there...'

The girl's dulled sunken eyes showed no spark behind them, only animal like dumbness; telltale signs the infamous iron collar circling her neck had done its work. The magical atrocity called the Torc of Penance.

Isaura strode again in front of the girl, grabbed her face, and jerked it upward.

"Creature, speak your name?"

"Aesh the Alquimista."

"You killed my Sheala?"

"Yes."

Her voice was as hollow as her eyes.

"Why?"

"She made me."

"Where are you from?"

"Ogda."

That stopped her; Ogda was the smallest of the Seven Kingdoms, and by historical accounts, the most peaceful. They were not known for producing violent criminals, least of all assassins. Nor soldiers for that matter; the kingdom was still rebounding from the terrible 'Black Death' that decimated the population some twelve years ago.

'Nothing makes sense!'

First, to her knowledge, no Alarians lived in Ogda. Second, there was the fishy remnant of peculiar magic encircling her. And finally, her male name.

"What should I do with you?"

"Kill me."

'Was there remorse in her tone then? No, I'm imagining.'

Isaura looked at her sister. "What is this, di'Sona?"

"Maddening is what it is. After weeks of intense interrogation using the legendary Torc no less, this thing is the sum total of what we could gather from Shea's mission," di'Sona said. From her robes, she withdrew a thin cane.

"Oh, we learned ever so much about the assassin's cover story, of Aesh's so called life as a devoted little alquimista from some quaint town in Ogda whose name escapes me. About a quest to find a missing professor, a tarot reading in Millcrest predicting he would find - brace yourself - the Queen of Wands. And of course, no quest story could be complete without the 'world will end if I fail' part. Bah! Yet even the Torc -the Torc!- failed to produce intelligible answers."

di'Sona began snapping the cane against her palm.

"She even tossed in 'the plague' for good measure, saying Shea suffered from a variant of it. As if an Alarian could be afflicted with a human disease. Quite a performance."

"I take it you found no evidence of sickness then," Isaura asked, her voice dull again.

She had felt the exact moment of her daughter's passing, even though she'd been half a world away. But since then, though, all feelings fled her. No, that was not right; it would be more accurate to say her emotions had been locked tight inside her.

"The only thing we found was a knife through Shea's heart, and nothing, -nothing!- of what Shea found nor why the creature murdered her. The fool said she'd never seen Shea until the moment she ran her dagger into her heart. Some greater magic is at work, I tell you, if the Torc didn't work. I failed, and I hate to fail!"

As she barked the word 'hate', di'Sona smacked the cane across the girl's face. Though her cheek welted angry red, the girl uttered no sound.

"Stop!" Isaura ordered; even though this creature killed her daughter, something troubled her about di'Sona's cruelty, and the girl's helplessness to stop it.

'Too much information and far too fast.' Isaura gathered herself mentally. 'Time to back up and disassemble this. Let's start with the obvious.'

"Is it not forbidden for the Torc to be used on any but the most depraved criminal? And is it not true the cursed device's power only works upon our people?"

"Impressive, Isaura! You've already discovered she wasn't originally of our race! You are a worthy rival! But in all bodily respects she's Alarian now."

"She?" Isaura's eyebrow raised high. "Aye, now, but not when my daughter was killed."

"Well done, you," di'Sona applauded. "I am well-matched! You see all, the she who was a he. I'm surrounded by such idiots, I forget what it's like to converse with an equal. Simply miraculous, is it not? I'm sure I've never heard of such a thing before. I did think the magical traces would have faded in almost three weeks’ time, but I see I'm wrong. My error amuses me."

"Your error amuses you? What does that even mean?" Isaura shook her head, refusing to let her sister's breathtaking self-absorption distract her.

"The Torc is a supremely cruel and inhumane creation. Why did you do this? There were other ways..."

"True, I could have used any number of mundane torture devices," di'Sona said, with a wink, "but the Torc is a rush!"

"Gods damn it!" Isaura exploded, "we are talking about the death of my daughter and the shredding of another's free will. Please tell me this isn't about your fetishes."

The ginger-haired woman stepped to the center of Isaura's drawing room, all hints of humor gone from her face.

"I ever remember, Sister, that even as wee ones, you strove to cast me in the role of villain, all evil and ambition," di'Sona's purple robe rustled as she stood to her full six foot height.

"Oh stop! It wasn't me who made your childhood a living hell, Sis. Thank Elasha for creating those sweet memories. I let you be."

"You didn't protect me."

"No one protected me, either. Neither mother nor father, and certainly not you!"

"Even so," di'Sona sighed, "I don't understand why we are always cross-purposed. Like you, I seek neither power nor gold. And like you, my goals are to serve our goddess and to protect our people."

"Priestesses hear confessions, Sister, I care not what your goals are," Isaura placed a hand on her hip. "Why. Did. You. Do. This?"

"I could say, 'to avenge Sheala.' I loved her dearly, and thought her aunt ought to, since her own mother couldn't be bothered to break from her self-aggrandizing travels-"

Hot yellow witch fire ignited around Isaura's right hand, and she pointed it palm up at di'Sona.

"-I came from across the Seven Kingdoms as fast as I could. Now... Why. Did. You-"

"-Hold!" di'Sona raised her hands defensively. "Hold, and I will tell you. Much as I would like to know which of us is stronger, tonight I am not your enemy."

The fire receded to a flickering glow around Isaura's hand, and she lowered her palm a little.

"Speak."

"May we sit? This will take some explanation. There is more at play here than, how did you describe it? My fetishes."

Isaura sighed, lowered her still glowing hand further, and nodded. She walked to a couch, removed a dust cover and tossed it aside. The rest of her furniture remained draped, as she'd just returned from her latest journey to their home kingdom, Thyli Alari. She'd mostly stayed away from their country's capital since her estrangement from Shea.

Satisfied, Isaura nodded to di'Sona. Once each sat at opposite ends, Isaura raised an eyebrow and tilted her head toward the kneeling figure.

"What of her?"

"Oh, you mean to sit with us?" di'Sona chuckled and shook her head. "She's alive in the barest of terms. She has no idea whether she's standing or kneeling; sitting would be meaningless also."

For some reason, that brought Isaura's grief and anger hot to the surface again. "Your explanation? Begins NOW."

"It was the end of the month of Rycdos, and Shea was several weeks into a mission to Caphila..."

"Caphila? Why was she there?"

"Arch Duchess Myantha herself gave the assignment, to investigate the movements of a human we designated as a 'person of utmost interest': the man known as The Blood Burn Archanist. He'd been on our watch list for some time-"

"-Did you ask her..." Isaura pointed to the kneeling girl, who, she noticed, was starting to drool, "...what she knew of this Blood Burn human?"

"Of course I did," di'Sona answered in a condescending tone. "She said she had no knowledge of him, absurdly claiming she was tracking another, a professor of some sort. Arrrgh! Using the full might of the Torc, she still failed to give us any actionable intel as to Blood Burn's whereabouts. Such an irksome little excrement."

The cane twitched in di'Sona's hand; if the girl had been closer, the girl would have received another sharp whip across her face. Isaura gathered it was a reflex action in her sister toward the girl. For some reason, that also bothered Isaura.

"Anyway, we'd heard reports of a bizarre weapon this Blood Burn was experimenting with somewhere in the Qyrc Wilds. When we learned he'd been seen in Glesea seeking a backer, we sent our best field agent, to gather information. We sent Shea-"

"-into danger? Your own niece?" The hurt and anger were raw in Isaura's voice.

"She left you because you stifled her. Forced her to trail around the world after you, as you snatched glowing trinkets and scraps of musty paper. She wanted to benefit someone beyond herself. I encouraged her to follow her own path and fly-"

"-to her death!"

"Not the time for this argument," di'Sona gave a dismissive hand wave. "Suddenly, Shea sent a cryptic message: she was nearby and needed to 'come in from the cold' to pass urgent news she had of the Archanist. We set a time and place and I had my best security team with me. As we neared the agreed rendezvous in Fayhold Park, my archer Gwyn Valstina and I heard her shouting."

di'Sona stood and began pacing.

"We ran as fast as we could. Gwyn knocked and fired an arrow the moment we came close to where she struggled with her killer; it pierced his black heart a moment too late. He slumped over Shea's body, knife in hand still dripping with her blood."

"I... don't understand..." Isaura looked at the girl, then di'Sona. "How she is here when you just said he was slain?"

"Almost slain," di'Sona said. She stopped pacing, and ran a hand through her rich red hair, smoothing it, before she smiled.

"In my panic for a solution, I beseeched Ymra."

"You invoked her???"

Isaura blanched at the mention of the dark deity's name. Asking any god or goddess for help was folly, but Ymra? It would be better to ask an earthquake to aid you than the goddess of destruction and transformation.

"Sister, you are an idiot."

"He killed Sheala! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"And I will kill you, if you ever say that again."

"You can try," di'Sona shrugged. "Anyway... I felt he must possess the critical knowledge Shea sought to pass to us. Her spirit had already fled her body, yet though mortally wounded, I sensed his remained. Healing was impossible for such a grievous wound, but in my haste I thought, what about a transformation? Legends of the Yaran werefolk and their miraculous ability to heal their wounds with a shift sprang to mind. True, it was a reckless gambit, to call Ymra, but I did, begging the goddess change him into an Alarian..."

"And the goddess..." Isaura didn't dare speak Ymra's name, instead staring at the girl again, "...answered?"

"Obviously," di'Sona smiled again. "And did as I asked, to transform him-"

"-into an Alarian girl. Whoa. Wait, wait, wait!"

Isaura stood and started to pace; apparently a family trait.

"Exactly how many times have you invoked a deity, and been answered?"

"This is the first time I've been answered," di'Sona frowned. "But I fail to see what that's-"

"- I mean I get why you did it, you wanted him to live, so you could question him for information critical to our kingdom, and to do get those answers, you believed he must be Alarian to be susceptible to the Torc."

The Torc of Penance.

Isaura wanted to spit to get the taste of the word from her mouth. Such a sickly named thing; a hideous magical relic from an evil bygone age.

Created during the time of the Blood Wars that decimated the Seven Kingdoms, it was, simply, an ancient torture tool of corruption. Its creator was an enemy mage whose name the world no longer remembered and he forged it in a way that made it only work on the Alarians.

By all accounts, the collar devoured the free will of the Alarian wearer, leaving a docile fool, unable to refuse any command; even if that command meant betraying one's people ... or her mother ... or her child.

Eimear the Holy captured the hellish device at the Battle of the Bleak Steppes, praise the goddess, and the Alarians had kept it safe in the centuries since. Their rulers decided the Torc would be used on the Alarians’ most wretched, depraved and murderous criminals only, yet rumors of its use beyond these bounds were whispered every century or so. Isaura fought for decades for its destruction, but always her sister wormed her way into the ear of whoever ruled Alarian people to convince them otherwise.

'The perfect interrogation tool, in di'Sona's mind,' Isaura thought bitterly. 'Is it all that surprising the power rush from using it is the sort of thing that gets her off?

Isaura once heard the saying, 'A person's character is his destiny’. But she now thought the saying told only half of it, for was it not also true that a person's character is the sum of his memories? di'Sona's childhood memories were all anchored in cruelty - she was tortured mercilessly by Elasha before she could walk, and has been paying the world back ever since. Now she was using one of the most evil devices ever created to continue to exact her revenge.

'But' Isaura paused, 'this one time, isn't it justified? Doesn't Shea's killer deserve this punishment?'

This still begged one huge question in Isaura's mind:

"Why? Why change her into to a girl? Why not simply into an Alarian man?"

"I didn't!" di'Sona answered. "Ymra's mysterious ways, not mine; my invocation only specified species, not gender."

"And you see nothing strange about this? You invoke the goddess of destruction and transformation ...on a whim ...and she answers you, for the first time in your life! How many times as a child did you pray to any god or goddess listening to strike Elasha down?"

Before di'Sona could answer 'countless times,' Isaura continued, "No, I'll go further than that - for the first time in what, centuries? - a deity has directly intervened in world events, and what does she do? She miraculously changes someone's species and gender, - again, for the first time in... in... history! - and you find nothing astonishing about that? Ho hum, just another day at the palace for my little sis."

"Oh, it was quite astonishing to see: bones reforming, skin rippling, things disappearing and others appearing. Messy too, definitely not a sight for the squeamish. Shame she wasn't conscious to feel it, but ...look, dear, it really doesn't matter what sex she is now, and it certainly won't in a very few moments."

With that the ginger-haired sorceress rose and walked behind the kneeling girl. Pulling a tool from a robe pocket, she snicked something on the rusty collar, and with a *click* it sprung open. di'Sona straightened again and walked to Isaura's front door.

"Wait!" Isaura called, confusion falling on her once more. "Why did you... where are you going?

"To bed. I'm very tired; family reunions are so fatiguing. But first I need to deposit this little gem," di'Sona twirled the rough iron collar before making it vanish into one of her hidden robe pockets, "back into the armory vault before it causes any more mischief. I thought you'd like some quality alone time with this creature."

"Remember what our history tomes tell us, love: the wearer continues to obey commands even after its removal, for her will has been ripped from her soul. Feel free to question her further. Or do whatever else you wish with her. I certainly have. Be creative; she'll do anything you ask. Anything. Take your most delicious revenge. Have fun! But don't dawdle; the tomes also say the wearer never lives beyond a few hours of the Torc's removal."

Isaura's gaze returned to the kneeling girl, and her jaw dropped, as the implications set in.

"Gift number two, and the real purpose of my visit, Sis. Enjoy," di'Sona blew a kiss from her red lips before she disappeared out Isaura's door. "You'll have the pleasure of watching the murderer of your daughter die. And people say the Faeyra sisters don't love each other."

They were alone now, the sorceress with her daughter's killer. A bleakness that can only come from a mother's loss of her baby overwhelmed her soul. She stared, and watched.

And when the kneeling girl's body spasms started and her eyes rolled back into her head, Isaura smiled.

Chapter 2 - The Cavern of Dearmad

1.
The Aalt Gorge.
21 days later. The 12th day of the month of Jeddos, god of winter

The sudden groan of a wagon wheel jostled Isaura from her daze. She sighed as she looked at where the sun hung, low on the horizon; time to stop for the night. It was deceptive; she'd wanted to make it to the Falls tonight, and she could hear them now. But they'd been traveling north all day and were still an hour or more away; Sapphire Falls was simply that massive.

No, best to make camp here, even if the Aalt Gorge's sheer edge wasn’t far away. The nearby birch and aspen offered respite from the north wind, even with half their yellow and orange leaves stripped from their branches...

'How I miss the golden Eemen trees of Alari...' The sorceress sighed at the thought.

Also, a small gurgling tributary stream rushed nearby, offering clean cold water. As soon as she spotted a stretch of ground that was mostly flat, she would park the wagon.

'Wagon' wasn't the best way to describe it, perhaps. The gypsies called it a 'vardo', a home-on-wheels. Isaura's vardo had a stove for warmth and cooking, if a campfire wasn't an option. One the left side, along with the stove, it had two closets, and a small table that served as both desk for Isaura's research and for dining. On the other side were bunk beds, one for Isaura, the other had been Sheala's for many years.
Painted in bright reds and greens and highlighted with gold leaf, Isaura's 'bow top' vardo was just as garishly decorated as any genuine gypsy vardo. This suited her just fine, since this was the disguise the sorceress loved most in her travels throughout the Seven Kingdoms.

Isaura wasn't in the mood for the role of traveling gypsy fortune teller today. Playing a crafty soothsayer used to be fun, when Shea traveled with her many years ago. But she doubted it would ever be fun again. Because of the vile thing who sat in the wagon behind her. The one she had decided to call...

'Ashe.'

Even thinking the name was a knife slash to her heart.

She didn't know why she'd picked it for the girl. She knew her real name -Aesh- but an intuition told her the thing needed another. But why this one?

Aesh, was a male name used singularly in Ogda. Ashe was so phonetically close, maybe the girl wouldn't even notice? To be honest, Isaura hadn't seen her noticing anything, but how could she know for sure if the Torc's damage was total and permanent? At the least, the name wouldn't draw questions on the trail.

'And, thank the gods and goddesses for small favors, her bizarre gender switch isn't an issue,' Isaura thought. 'For the little of her mind left by the Torc, she might as well have been a frog.'

"But ...Ashe," Isaura spoke to the nearby trees. "Why did I choose that?'

Was it something more than changing a few letters? Did the name represent what the creature was to Isaura?

Ashes and death. Death and ashes. Death of her Sheala. Ashes the remains of her heart.

Thinking this way, the sorceress could barely bring herself to look at the girl. Every so often she found elf fire circling her right hand; the deadly energy rose with a mind of its own, wanting to release on the girl. Each time she forced her hand back, and willed the energy to dissipate.

"That may be the way of the Faeyra," she admonished herself, "but it is not the way of Aana."

They rode on, Zinjo scouting ahead, she in the wagon seat, the hated thing huddled within, dumb, staring. Isaura's keen elven ears heard many things as they rode, the clinking of the wagon, the wind through the trees, the roar of the Falls in the distance, and her echoing thoughts, of this thing she'd named 'Ashe'. She picked at the thought like a scab.

'Did I choose 'Ashe' because of the sound it makes?'

That almost felt right; the "shhh" sound, an admonishment to silence; she never wanted to hear the murderous thing speak.

Isaura shrugged, defeated. "Whatever the damned reason, it needed to be called something."

Because, contrary to di'Sona's claim, Ashe hadn't died after her sister removed the Torc. She came razor close for sure; after a half hour, her body started to spasm, and she wretched and puked what little food she had in her stomach. A vicious fever fired her body and she lay in a coma for days...

...but didn't die.

Her little sister was the most disappointed, and not solely from a sense of injustice on Shea's behalf, though to her credit, there was a modicum of that. No, Isaura could tell di'Sona felt cheated the Torc hadn't lived up to its infamous and macabre billing.
If Isaura was honest with herself, she would have admitted that this one time, she wished the horrible device had lived up to its legend too. Hadn't she sat there taking pleasure from what she thought was the start of the girl's death?

That it hadn't come presented a problem – what was the goddess to do with her?

Her soul warred, split between hate and grief, and her devotion to the compassionate tenets of her goddess Aana. It would take little to tip the scales to hate.

Taking her from di'Sona was one of the hardest things she'd done, for leaving the wretch was a death sentence. Isaura had no doubt under di'Sona's ‘loving care’, the girl's end would start quickly but take long to finish.

'And didn't she deserve it?'

Yet she hadn't left her, for a solution came to the sorceress in a dream - a goddess-sent dream - which showed a way to grant the girl redemption. She would purge Ashe of all her evil. And she could! Of all the sorcerers, sorceresses, mages, wizards and witches in the Seven Kingdoms, only Isaura knew how.

'In the Cavern of Dearmad. Surely this is what Aana willed.'

Both logistical and emotional problems arose, of course - she would have to tolerate the thing's presence while they journeyed to the cavern, so far from Imis. The girl must be made up to assume the same disguise Isaura and her traveling partner Zinjo used when they traveled about, as gypsy peddlers selling... what was the popular term? Snake oil.

Isaura had no need of the coin from her sales, and she chuckled at the thought. She and her sisters di'Sona and Elasha were the latest heirs of the oldest Alarian clan, the Faeyra, and so by default, the oldest family in the Seven Kingdoms. Their duchy, Beurl'Aana, a contraction meaning Sacred Pool of Aana, held, in addition to the famed pool of the goddess of knowledge and compassion, the most fertile farmlands and vineyards in the Seven Kingdoms.

Isaura's older sister Elasha ruled it, and many years ago paid Isaura for her birthright interest. Isaura hated Elasha with a blazing passion, but her sister had paid a fair price. In return she promised never to return to the ancestral home.

Though she still kept a small villa near Beurl'Aana, Isaura was happy to take the –literally - wagon loads of gold and run. In the following years, she invested those funds wisely, and if anyone had bothered to tally those things in the Kingdoms, they would have learned that the sorceress was the wealthiest of the wealthy.

That meant little to her, but her freedom did - for she was freed from the burdens of ruling the duchy with backstabbing sisters. Free to roam the world pursuing her passion - knowledge.

'It was a wondrous life too, filled with light and love. Shea and Zinjo and I tromped where we wished, until...'

Until three years ago, her daughter rebelled, and after a terrible fight, left her.

"And this thing killed her. This Ashe."

Isaura spit on the ground.

Outfitting Ashe in Shea's old gypsy traveling costumes opened her wounds anew, for a memory of her daughter dressed in those same bright garish clothes bubbled up in her mind.

'No, no, no, my Sheala, my heart! You can't be gone, you can't!'

Isaura's grief turned to anger, burning bile in her throat, and she whipped her head around to look at the girl, hand raised, surrounded by elf fire.

Yet again she lowered. It was becoming harder to not release the deadly flames.

"It would be a waste of energy," she reasoned, shuttering her emotions again. "For the Torc hollowed her mind, and left no one at home. No one to feel the pain."

Ashe. Ashe. Death. Death.

"Whoa Sugarmane, whoa Dandy," Isaura called to the lead horses, jerking the reins once. She watched as a giant of a rider approached ahead.

"This place is flat enough; we stop here, Zinjo. Try to be quiet setting up camp, please? I really don't want any fellow travelers knowing we're here, hmm?

I vil be quiet as mouse," Zinjo grunted, and swung his legs over Patch, his sturdy Uthain mount, his four hundred pound frame making a large *thump* where he landed. Isaura rolled her eyes at the giant, and wondered what kind of mice he grew up with in Vostyae.

She turned back to the statue seated in the lower bunk bed of the wagon.

"Ashe, take your worthless carcass out somewhere and pee," Isaura barked, "then help Zinjo."

As a ghost, the girl rose from her seat, exited the back door of the wagon, and walked off the trail toward the edge of the canyon, searching for a bush to squat behind. Isaura learned the hard way at the beginning of the journey that if she hadn't told the girl to do so, at some point she'd have pissed on herself. Even after Isaura sorted that out, it still took a few messy disasters to figure out the right commands, for at first, the girl would simply squat wherever she was at the time of the command to let it flow.

Watching Ashe stumble over shrubs and rocks on her way to a larger clump of evergreen Manzanita bushes, the sorceress wondered - as she had dozens of times since their journey began - how little of the girl's mind was left to redeem?

Isaura had begun unpacking the newest grimoires she'd brought to study, when Zinjo's voice cut through the steady rumble of the not-too-distant falls.

"Stop, girl! Too close to edge!"

Isaura looked up and saw the giant's worry: Ashe stood a few steps from the edge of a sheer drop to the canyon bottom thousands of feet below.

"Idiot creature!" Isaura yelled, "come back here now!"

Wordless, expressionless, the girl spun on her heels and walked back to the wagon. Sighing, Isaura brushed a strand of hair from her face and returned her gaze to the grimoire she was translating from old Alari, called 'Rín-o', or 'Rending' in the common tongue.

'If Zinjo hadn't shouted, would the girl have kept on walking? And why wouldn't I want that?'

2.

"...Madame Izzie's elixir, a remedy for colds, asthma, or even consumption. Now, perhaps for your beautiful lady friends back home..."

- this drew guffaws from the rough crowd-

"...they could benefit from Madame Izzie's grand restorative, bringing speedy relief for the *ahem* diseases peculiar to the females of a certain age, and..."

As it turned out, their camp wasn't secluded enough; a party of Criocan men set up camp nearby. They were headed south to the fertile Symeon Plain in Caphilia to work the winter wheat harvest. The journey was hard and tedious, and so they sought a diversion, for one evening at least, from the traveling gypsies. It was an unwritten law - one never wanted to invite a gypsy to their home, but they were always welcome on the trail. As the first evening stars began to rise, the rough men gathered in a semi-circle around a roaring campfire Zinjo made near the gypsy wagon.

"Do ya 'ave anything ta make a gal spread her legs easier for me?" asked one of the bigger fellows who had gathered round the fire.

"No, my friend, I don't truck in such evil potions," Isaura scowled, her gypsy glamour becoming menacing; cloaked in her magic, the men saw a wrinkled warty woman, missing more than a few teeth, instead of the flawless youthful beauty of the Alarian.

"However, I've plenty of sweet smelling lotions and balms to chase away the most pungent of odors. That might help some, I'm thinking."

"How many would I 'ave to buy," a second man asked, nodding his head to where Ashe sat at the camp fire, "to have a roll in the hay with er?"

"Aye," another muttered, "I'd like that too."

Isaura gave the slightest of nods to Zinjo, who sat in the shadows just behind Ashe. She knew he was alert to the trouble, such as it was. Zinjo could easily handle this group. So could she with her magic, for that matter. Isaura sensed nothing especially sinister about these men. But she knew also men acted collectively in ways they wouldn't individually. Perhaps a show of force might nip this in the bud.

"Is going to be cold night," Zinjo said, as he walked closer to the Criocans ringing the crackling camp fire. The giant straightened his back so he stood at his full eight foot height. Next, he stretched his neck, making a series loud cracking pops. Finally, he leaned over and lifted an enormous boulder, tossing it in his hand like a ball. He carried it close to the fire and dropped it with a huge *Ker-thunk*

"Ah! Iz nice an comfy," Zinjo said as he sat on the boulder, and stroked his long silver beard. The eyes of the men were very wide now.

"That's my gran'daugh yer speaking of, gentlemen. I'll not brook anymore such comments, y'hear?"

"B-begging your pardon, m-ma'am, we sure won't," the first Criocan said, trying not to stare at Zinjo.

'Now that we've shown them the stick,' Isaura thought, 'it's time for the carrot.'

"Well, now, see'n as you are all fine gentlemen-"

Isaura smiled - in character, she was now the happy gypsy peddler again - and pulled a couple of brown glass bottles from her cloak. She held it out to the Criocan who first spoke.

"-I wonder if'n you would mind samplin one of my elixirs and tell'n me yer thoughts."

"What is it?" The man leaned away from her.

"Old gypsy recipe. We call it, um..." Isaura thought fast, tossing out the first words that came to mind. "...the Draught of the Paragon."

The man leaned back in slightly. "Wat's it do?"

"Oh, just the thing to warm a body on a cold night such as this. And, it makes yer brain all smart and such." Isaura handed him the bottle.

He sniffed it; his eyes watered. He sniffed again, and finally took a swig. He coughed, but a silly smile quickly traveled across his face.

"It tastes just like Southern Smash," he whispered to the fellow Criocan to his right. Then to Isaura: "Of course, ma'am, we'd be glad ta sample your drink and tell you our thoughts."

"Good, good! I think this batch is ready but it never hurts to get another opinion or two."

Isaura passed out another bottle; the first was already working its way around one side of the campfire ring. The man wasn't wrong; she concocted the drink using the same amber mash used in a Southern Smash, but she infused other herbal ingredients – and a little magic - into the brew. The result left the drinker warm, contented, mellow and drowsy; the Criocans would sleep well tonight. And have no more thought of bedding Ashe.

She walked to where the girl sat - statue still - and knelt beside her, whispering in her ear:
"Go to the wagon, worm. Splash water on your face. Rub your teeth with the tooth stick, your breath is putrid. Change into your night clothes. Cover yourself with a blanket, and sleep."

She had to be just that explicit. Isaura watched as Ashe stood, turned and walked to the wagon without uttering a sound. Earlier, when the men spoke of bedding her, Isaura thought, for the briefest of moments, Ashe's eyes might have widened in fear. But thinking on it further, she reasoned it was only a reflection of the flickering campfire flames.

Ashe.

The continuing dilemma: what to make of her.

Or the ‘him’ that surely lived within.

She'd clothed her in baggy pants, an oversized patch quilt shirt, soft leather boots and a gypsy boy's cap to cover her pointed Alarian ears. Yet the Criocans instantly knew she was a lass, not a lad.

Perhaps it was the Zinjo's hearty stews and fresh air of the trail. Or the lack of di'Sona's physical abuse. Or Ymra's divine transformational magic completing its change. But undeniably, she was becoming beautiful, even by Alarian standards. Her face was a flawless unblemished peach tone with a touch of rosy blush on her cheeks. Her hair regrew at an unnaturally rapid pace, already the short curly hair poking out from her gypsy boy cap was a lustrous midnight black. Her lips were the same naturally deep red as Isaura's, appropriately pouty, for a blossoming teen Alarian.

And her eyes sparkled ice blue with flecks of gold.

'Why? Something that evil shouldn't look thus.'

Could she ever forget this one had taken her Sheala? Her heart? Even when she suspected there was nothing of the murderer Aesh left after the Torc had hollowed her mind?

Or after the Cavern of Dearmad worked its wondrous magic, how would she treat her then?

"A true follower of the goddess Aana would forgive. A doubter would not. I guess I'll know which I am tomorrow, when we reach the Cavern, hmm?"
 

3.

Everyone held an opinion about the origin of the amazing hue of the Sapphire Falls. Some said the brilliant blue crystals fell to ground as a gift from the sky god Romtia. Others thought the dwarves mined too deeply, causing blue blood from deep within the earth to spew forth and harden on the surface. Still others reckoned it was the byproduct of some fantastical wizards' battle.

Actually, the deep sparkling blue of the water racing over and down the 2500 foot falls was a reflection of the azure crystal rocks that lay beneath. Ironically, none of those rocks were sapphires.

One thing Isaura did know - the magic permeated everything here; she could breathe it, and taste it. How else to explain the blue mist that rose and sparkled even at midnight?
Summer saw the falls visited by hundreds of travelers from the Seven Kingdoms. Now, the harsh winter deterred all but the heartiest of tourists.

They'd made good time this morning, after they parted ways with the Criocans. She'd even sold them half a dozen bottles of, what had she called it? The Draught of the Paragon. Isaura might be as rich as could be, but she still liked turning a good profit. And now they were at the Falls, which meant they were no more than an hour's ride from the Cavern.

"You mean to go through vith it? You sure it von't kill her? Or is that what you vant?"

As near as they were, Isaura marveled how Zinjo's voice could so easily slice through the roar of the Falls. People always assumed the giant was slow of mind, because of his hulking eight foot size. They would be wrong; Zinjo and she had been business partners of a sort for nearly twenty years. Indeed, he'd helped raise Shea. And in all their years together, she'd never met a sharper mind.

Their relationship had grown so close that she valued the very blunt statement he'd just made. She shared everything she'd learned about Ashe with him, the terrible deed she'd done, the girl's history as a 'he'.

"She killed Sheala, Zinjo, stabbed her in the heart, for goddess' sake! I'd say I'm showing admirable restraint!" Isaura shook the reins to get the team moving a bit faster. She wanted plenty of daylight hours at the Cavern.

"I loved leetle Shea too! Iz not you alone whose heart is broke," thumping his massive fist against his chest. "Do not further dishonor her memory by turning into one she would hate!"

"But Zinjo, her mind is broken, her body changed beyond all reckoning! I don't see what I am planning as killing anything. I think whatever twisted evil thing Aesh was, is already dead. Look at her."

"Da! Look!" Zinjo motioned from his sturdy Uthain mount.

Isaura looked back into the long wagon to see Ashe staring wide-eyed at the sparkling sapphire mist rising from the falls.

"You see? Not mindless! And last night did you not notice how scared she vas? Or yesterday at Gorge's edge. She thinking of jumping."

Isaura frowned; had she missed those signs? But surely he was wrong.

"You're imagining things, old friend. The colors and movement of the mist captures her attention, but there is no thought behind it."

"Be of open mind iz all I say, 'old friend.'" Zinjo spurred his mount forward and rode ahead to the Cavern.

4.

Dearmad, in ancient Alari, meant memory.

Few in the world knew of it, this Cavern of Memory.

As the wagon plodded forward toward the cave, Isaura's mind race ahead; she had a long history with it.

As wondrous as the Sapphire Falls were, they were nothing compared to the magic of the Cavern. An overly curious earth wizard named its unique stalactites and stalagmites, ajoiollite, in a tome he submitted to the Institute Of Magics in Breasine. With great pomp his findings were sealed in a vault there, and his rich reward for his astonishing achievement? To forcibly be dragged back to the Cavern and have the ajoiollite remove his entire memory. Or so they said; no one quite remembered the specifics of it.

That's what ajoiollite does: it captures the memories of the living, and holds them in its azure stone. Truly unique in all the world.

'Well, almost unique,' Isaura amended, thinking of the Caxenar Crystals of the dark priests, then of Shea's missing stone with her memories, then of Shea.

'Shea!'

"No! I cannot give over to grief now," the sorceress said aloud, "I have tasks to perform which require my complete attention."

She wrenched her mind from the abyss of grief, and back to the magic of the stones in the Cavern. The true magic it held was that once an ajoiollite stone captured a memory, any who touched the stone could experience it and could see it.

If few in the world knew of the Cavern, even fewer - perhaps a handful - knew its location. Isaura was one of the few.

She led Zinjo and Ashe deep within the Cavern, to an antechamber only she had found, one filled with hundreds and hundreds of ajoiollite stalactites and stalagmites.

 

"Please explain procedure again," Zinjo whispered, as he set down the canvas rucksack he shouldered. Even whispering, his words echoed throughout the cave.

"Each stalactite or stalagmite will hold a single memory. I am going to have one capture the memory Ashe holds of Shea's death. I would see my daughter's last moments."

"Vill only bring pain; do not do it," Zinjo whispered again, clearly uncomfortable with the confined space they were in. Then he spread his hands wide.

"Isaura, as your friend, one last time I beg you reconsider. You are not yourself now, and haven't been since her death. And if you do this for revenge, know this from one who knows it all too well. It does not bring peace." The giant's accent diminished and his tone gentled.

"Ask yourself, 'why do I do this?' Ask yourself, 'is this vhat Aana wants?' Ask yourself, 'will this bring Shea back?'"

"I know... it won't... bring her..." Isaura's eyes teared; she couldn't finish the sentence. "As for Aana's will, I believe this may indeed be her will. But what I do know for certain, is that I need to see how my baby died, no matter how horrible it is."

"For closure. I understand." Zinjo's thick accent returned. "But if zat is plan, why we come down so far, if need only one stone?"

"Here, in this chamber, the ajoiollite deposits are so thick that the stalagmites are all interconnected at their bases. I plan to fill every last one."

Zinjo looked from the hundreds of stalagmites surrounding them, to Ashe's blank face, and back to Isaura, as the meaning of her words sank in. She planned to empty the girl of every single memory she had.

"So plan vas kill her all along. Revenge."

"No! To give her a fresh start. Redemption."

"You are one imagining now," he growled, and the Cavern rumbled in echoed response.

"By all measurable standards she's already dead. This may give her a rebirth," Isaura said, unsure whether she was trying to convince Zinjo or herself of her motives. She turned to the silent girl.

"Kneel, and place your hands on the cave floor."

Ashe obeyed, and once Isaura saw her hands make contact, she pulled her wand from a hidden robe pocket, and spoke one word:

folamh.

Slowly, the stalagmites nearest Ashe flickered and blinked on, their colors shifting from muted blue to rainbow hues. The colors fanned out in all directions too, until after several minutes, all the stalagmites in the antechamber pulsed and softly glowed. Soon, each one settled, all with bright sparkling colors. All except those furthest from the kneeling girl, which were black. Isaura wondered at that.

Zinjo spun round and round, awed.

"These.... all these... filled vith memories of Aesh?" the gigantic man whispered.Isaura nodded, only half listening. The bright color pattern of the stalagmites continued to trouble her.

"And now she... Ashe... Aesh... her mind iz completely blank-ed?"

"Yes," the sorceress replied, focusing on Ashe.

She'd used the word 'blank' to describe Ashe ever since di'Sona first brought her to her room with the soul-crushing Torc fastened to her neck. But now she saw it was wrong. Dulled was more accurate, for now... now she was completely empty. Her entire life, as Aesh, was spread throughout the anti-chamber deep within the Cavern of Dearmad.

And her mind was a clean slate, blank as a babe's. She doubted the girl knew how to speak now, or even eat.

"How does zis work, Isaura?"

"This is the amazing part, Zinjo, it's so easy." Isaura took Zinjo's massive hand and placed it on a nearby brightly hued stalagmite. "You just touch one and see the memory."

"Iz... iz..." Zinjo's eyes widened. "I see tings! Out of eyes of other. Everyone looks so big! Iz little boy I think, talking to papa! They are fish together on warm summer day. Iz happy memory.”

Zinjo went silent for several minutes as the images from Aesh's memory played through.

"He loved hiz papa so much and so much love his papa had back for him," Zinjo whispered. "Iz that why this one iz bright?"

"Yes, I know it seems too simple, but the brighter the stalagmite, the happier the memory."

"How long will the stones hold the memories?"

"A decade, no more, and then they fade."

"There are so many!" Zinjo's eyes scanned the vast chamber. "How vill you find one you look for?"

"The furthest darkest stones are her latest memories. I suspect I'll find the one I seek in those over there."

Isaura pointed to the furthest grouping of stalagmites in the chamber, which were also the blackest.

As the two weaved to where Isaura pointed, Zinjo looked back. He saw Ashe, still kneeling, silent as ever, exactly in the center of the chamber. Radiating out from her in all directions, were the glowing stones, each containing separate memories, all adding up to a life.

He stopped so abruptly, Isaura bumped into his massive frame. "I feel like we valk inside her mind."

"Yes... I suppose that's true." She scanned the room again, still brooding over what she saw.

"This feels like we, hmmm, trespass where we shouldn't," Zinjo said, his discomfort plain. Then he made a sweeping gesture with an arm. "Iz this vhat you expect?"

"No," her head shook slowly. "Not at all."

Forty years ago, Isaura's beloved mentor was close to death. The wizard was known as Airas of the Shadowed Desert; no one knew his surname or where he came from. He often joked with Isaura that he had forgotten it himself. He saw something in her that made him accept as her as his apprentice, even though the ink on her diploma from the School of Sorcery at Grarinns was still wet.

Airas was the greatest human wizard, at least in recent times, and perhaps ancient times, too. But even so, his magic could only extend his life for so long. Realizing he would die before he could pass all his knowledge to her, in an act of supreme sacrifice, the two came to this very chamber, where he emptied his memory, and died. Isaura spent an entire year sifting through Airas's memories to glean the knowledge - the treasures - he intended for her.

Her mentor was a good man. No, a great man - she knew this - yet the memory stones of Ashe/Aesh were brighter than her mentor's had been. Brighter by a lot. But how? She was Shea's killer. How could it be?

When they reached the black stalagmites grouping, Isaura began calculating which held the memory she wanted. She would start with a base stalagmite, and work out a timeline using the memory she saw. She had become rather good at this through working with her mentor's memory stones those many years ago.

Isaura picked one that was not black, but greyed, the beginning, she hoped, of the critical sequence of events.

Once she laid her hand on the moist stone, the stalagmite sucked her into Aesh's point of view with a whooshing. She had forgotten how disorienting the effect was.

As she focused, she found herself looking at a smoke-filled room through Aesh's eyes. Across from her sat a woman who looked very much like Isaura did when she conjured her gypsy woman glamour, only this woman was genuine, a true gypsy. A purple scarf with gold medallions covered her head; and her outfit consisted of a short puffed-sleeved peasant blouse, and Isaura assumed, a traditional long flowery skirt. She couldn't see that from Aesh's seated position.

Wrinkles and lines etched the woman's face, her long hair was peppered and frayed, and she lacked a tooth or two. Her hands held a deck of tarot cards and were laying a pattern on the table.

'Interesting...'

With a raspy cackle, she named each tarot as she laid it.

"The Fool..."

Even from this memory, this echo of reality, Isaura sensed the fortune teller was not a fraud; she felt the aura of great power surrounding her.

"Crow of Avarice...The Hierophant reversed..."

Something about these exact cards nibbled at Isaura's mind. Something familiar. Someone she knew, maybe?

"Black Magus... Devil of Corruption... The Wretched Suicide..."

Isaura didn't connect with those cards, other than to know they portended dark tidings. She watched as the soothsayer laid the critical center card:

"The..." here the fortune teller gasped softly "...Goddess of Cauldrons..."

-If Isaura wasn't paying complete attention to this memory before, she locked in now, for that last card shown either represented Aana, goddess of knowledge and compassion, whom she was devoted to, or Ymra, the fell goddess of transformation and destruction, both of whom were pictured holding a cup or stirring a cauldron. And di'Sona had already told her that Ymra directly intervened, answering her sister's call in the most unprecedented way-

"...The Reborn One... The Yoke of Despair... The Queen of Wands... Temperance...
That the reading consisted almost entirely of major arcane cards alarmed Isaura as much as anything. Dynamic global events were in play.

Something else struck Isaura - the fortune reading had become very specific: 'Reborn One...Aesh? The Yoke is the Torc. And the Queen of Wands... I know who she is.'

"Ace of Flames... Queen of Keys... and" the old soothsayer sighed," ...The Apple Tree of Healing."

"What a clusterfuck!" Isaura heard the disdain in Aesh's voice. "Yes, it's true, we are so desperate to find Professor Brevair, I actually held hope this so-called fortune teller might be a lead when she sought us out. But Master, you see this is all fakery now, right? We must find him before he distills the antipodal chrysopoeia. To reason with him, show his path perverts life!"

Aesh's eyes turned to look at someone sitting beside him; an elderly human man. Isaura guessed he was in his sixties by the few gray hairs remaining atop his head. He wore the dark robes of an Alquimista Dominar.

"Must we listen to any more of this?"

The timbre of Aesh's voice surprised her; though exasperated, it was a pleasant baritone. And she could definitely tell his mind was lively and sharp. Not what she'd expected to hear from her daughter's killer.

'And what sort of voice did I expect Shea's killer to have?'

"You will listen and you will be respectful. And you will cease speaking so impiously, Aesh. Ailana Crow is the Paridala of her clan and is revered as one of the greatest soothsayers in the Seven Kingdoms. She is a genuine Power, to be revered-"

'A Power indeed, and not just one of...' Isaura found herself correcting the memory; she'd met Ailana decades before when she was a tiny gypsy lass, but even then she sensed her power as a seer, '...she is the greatest living seer.'

"-and has traveled hundreds of miles to deliver this reading. Kings and Queens offer her chests of treasure and beg her to tell their futures. Yet instead she came here. To see you. This is important, so pay attention."

"Yes, and I appreciate that, but heavens balls, Sir! This isn't..." Isaura heard his frustration in his sigh. "When I .... when I mix one compound with another, I can predict the results. My past experiments and learnings tell me the probable outcomes. But this 'card reading' ...it can't be rationally explained at all and-"

"-Silence, ignorant pup!" Ailana growled, which made Isaura smile. "Oy! You young alquimistas! Always so cocksure you know so much. Bah, my little finger knows more than you!"

"You are a key! You must heed the cards, for they tell of plague and death for the Seven Kingdoms. More death I see than the Blood Wars, even, unless you-"

"-I struggle to understand how these random cards tell us this, but," Aesh's view returned to his master, "if it is true, why would I do it? Dashing off who knows where because of this fanciful reading is not what we need! My efforts, yours and those of every able-bodied alquimista must be bent on finding Breviar and bringing him back to Edefia..."

'All the alquimistas were chasing one man?' Isaura thought, and recalled what di'Sona told her from her interrogation. 'Who is this Breviar? Blood Burn perhaps?'

"...How can I be ... no, strike that, if I am critical to... the fate of the world then the world is so very screwed. If the world is in danger, then common sense tells us we go instead to our Exarch, to have him warn the rulers of the other kingdoms. They with their armies and wizards are the ones to handle it, not me! Why must this be done alone by me? It's backassward nonsense!"

'Can't fault him a bit,' Isaura thought, 'a rational if colorful response to an irrational situation.'

"Why?" Ailana reached across the table and slapped Aesh's face, and not lightly. "I'll show you why!"

"This is your future, no, all our futures, if you go anywhere but to Imis, exactly as I say."

"I-Imis? In Alari? Among the elves?"

"Close that yammering foul mouth of yours, pup, and see!"

Ailana gathered the cards, shuffled, laid eleven cards down, and placed the remaining two facing up. The first showed a yawning pit, surrounded by doubtless dead bodies, falling into it like a waterfall. Under the picture were the words Lanr Deșeuri.

'The Waste Land? Isaura translated. 'On a world scale?'

On the second card, a skeleton, with sword held high, and jaw bones wide open, rode a gaunt white horse.

"The Broken Earth. The Skeleton Riding. The Void. Death. Don't believe me, boy?"

She shuffled the cards again, several times, counted eleven again, laid two cards down. Void, Death. And she reshuffled them a third time. Void. Death.

"Aiieeeeee! Ailana have same dream over and over for months. Is stuck in head! I see you, leaving today - you must! - travel alone - again, you must! - and when you arrive in Imis, seek she who will lead you to the Queen of Wands. So sayeth the cards."

"And how would I find this 'Queen of Wands'?"

"She will find you." Ailana rose, swept her cards up, placing them an old frayed bag. "I do pity you, boy, for all you suffer. Great change and woe come to you. Do not give into despair. The outcome is murky... many storm clouds gather, yet, perhaps, in the end you may find..."

"Find? Find what?"

"I say no more for the cards show no more."

"You've got to be shitting me, Master Bexon! You cannot seriously expe-

The memory dimmed abruptly, as they often did with the stones, it was as if the stone could hold no more.

Isaura withdrew her hand, and blinked, as she reoriented to the glowlights of the chamber.

"Vell?" Zinjo's tone was hushed, concerned. "Vas it one where... where..."

"Shea died?" Isaura shook her head slowly. Returning from a touched memory from one of these stones was always difficult. This was particularly hard.

"There's more at play here than I ever imagined. Way more, and he... she ... wasn't at all what I..."

...expected. She was confused; she'd assumed her daughter's killer would be heartless, ruthless, evil and someone to hate. Not a young, intelligent man, charming in his youthful passion, if not in his colorful language.

The wasteland and death? If Ailana Crow was right, the Seven Kingdoms were facing a massive extinction event. Was this the reason the Arch Duchess sent Shea to Caphila? Did di'Sona know? What happened to her there, and what happened when Aesh met her in Imis?

'I'm about to find out.'

Isaura walked past several more, her hands brushing the pulsing stalagmites, snatching fleeting images of Aesh's journey to Imis. She stopped in front of one of mixed colors, not gray, but spinning white and black.

"This one" her hands quivered, "holds the memory of..."

'My beloved's death.'

Isaura couldn't speak the words. Zinjo grabbed her wrist; a gentle touch for such a giant hand.

"Maybe you shouldn't. This is something no mother should have to see. I look if wish."

"I most certainly shouldn't," Isaura shook her wrist free of Zinjo's hand and grasped the stalagmite, "but I must."

She fell hard into the memory; it was night, the glowlamps of the Imis streets were lit, casting long flickering shadows. She realized again she was seeing through Aesh's eyes, and at the moment, his vision swung back and forth, fixing on a street sign for a moment -Achorage Lane- then swinging back the other way.

 

"Where the hells am I? How do they even hammer together these freakishly delicate buildings? Where the hells is the Queen's Point Inn? And why, why, why in gods damned hells am I here instead of hunting Breviar? I might as well crap in my hand and slap my face."

Aesh might be lost, but Isaura knew exactly where he was, in the Guild District, close to Fayhold Park. Where di'Sona said he killed Shea.

Aesh's memory played on; he wandered into the wooded area of the park, and Isaura imagined the lad must have thought it was a shortcut to the inn. In fact he was walking in the wrong direction.

"Stay away! Do not come near, I beg you!"

'It's her!!!! Sheala's voice! Goddess grant me the strength to see this.'

"W-who said that?" Aesh's head bobbed to the right and left, looking, Isaura guessed, for where Shea was. "I mean you no harm. Maybe I can help."

Something was terribly wrong with her daughter; she could hear such pain and weakness in her voice.

"Your accent ...strange," Shea gasped. "You aren't Alarian?"

"No, from Ogda. And here on an assmonkey's quest, looking for someone called the Queen of Wands. Where are you? Are you sick?"

"This disease won't affect you if you aren't," Shea sighed. Isaura felt the pain in her daughter's voice with each word. "You swear you're from Ogda?"

'What's wrong with you, my baby?'

"No pointy elf ears here. See?"

"Quick, then, stranger, come here," Shea rasped, "behind these blackhaw bushes."

Aesh followed where Shea directed, and soon, Isaura saw Shea's face through Aesh's eyes: Shea's eyes were sallow and feverish. Her cheekbones were drawn too, and her skin had telltale splotches. It looked like... but that was impossible! The Alarians’ natural magic made them the only race immune to...

"Plague! A variant, at least," Aesh knelt beside the young woman, putting his hand on her forehead.

"It's called The Wasting," Shea answered. "I... I've never been sick before and ...I hurt so bad, all over, down to my bones. I barely can move. But I'm compelled to."

"You're burning up! Crap! If I could run blood tests I might be able to formulate a pain easing compound. I do have something in my kit that will help a little. Then we've got to get you to one of your healers!"

'Yes, hurry! Take her to a healer!'

Isaura had completely forgotten this was a memory; she was living it as if it was happening in the now.

"No, NO! You mustn't!" Shea's voice was emphatic. "It's what they want! I'm infected with a disease magically designed to weaken Alarians. They've..."

A coughing spell came over her, deep hacking chest rumbles. Through Aesh's eyes Isaura saw blood trickle from the side of her mouth.

'No!'

The coughs subsided finally and Shea continued.

"They've... created plagues for the peoples of each of the Seven Kingdoms! We are to be first, because we are the strongest. We are the example. They think when the other kingdoms see the 'mighty elves' laid low, surrender will be quick to follow."

"Designed? By who? Was one called Breviar?"

"No, by a man called Blood Burn-"

'Breviar and Blood Burn must be the same man,' Isaura concluded.

The sorceress heard voices calling 'SHEA' in the distance, one of them sounded like di'Sona. She saw Shea grab Aesh by his arm.

"Let no one near me! They made me come here, used me as a weapon against my own people."

"Made you? How?"

"She betrayed me. Infected me..."

'She? She who???'

"...and forced a powerful geas on-"

Isaura heard voices calling her daughter's name again, sounding closer now.

"They can't find me alive! They'll catch it too! Spread it everywhere. Making us vulnerable. Crippling our race. I will not be the weapon that brings the Alarians to their knees!"

Isaura saw a blade appear in Shea's hands.

"Hey, stop!" Isaura heard the panic in Aesh's voice. "Put that down..."

She watched her daughter spin the knife so the blade hung over her heart. Aesh swung a leg over to straddle Shea, grabbing the knife, stopping her from plunging it in.

"Stop this, now! Please! You could really hurt yourself!"

"I can't kill myself, her geas prevents my hands from doing it! But yours could."

"I won't! It goes against all I believe in!"

"You will! The Wasting vanishes from the body at death. If I die before infecting anyone, it would set them back. Buy time. Maybe they could be stopped."

"That's not how a pathogen works! A disease affecting the body wouldn't vanish-"

"Shea, where are you?" voices called, closer now.

"Out of time! My people are here! Stranger, forgive me for what I'm about to do. Warn di'Sona about the sickness when she finds us... tell her of the danger to Alari. And tell my mother ...I..."

"Tell your mother what?" Aesh asked.

"I... I've lost my memories!" Shea wailed.

"SHEA!"

Her geas prevented her hands from plunging the knife in, but it did not stop her from forcing him. She reached her free hand up and touched Aesh's forehead. And even through the memory, Isaura felt her daughter using the magical compulsion she had taught her many years ago.

"Wait... what did you... no please, please, please don't make me...-"

When Aesh's hands pushed down, Shea's face smiled, then went slack. But as it did, Aesh felt - and through the memory Isaura felt too - a jolt of energy.

'What was that?' Isaura felt the in rush and it was so familiar. To her, it felt like soul.
di'Sona - close now - yelled 'Stop! Murderer! A whizzing sound followed, and the memory went black.

5.

She didn't remember kneeling, perhaps her knees had given way, she didn't know.

'She's gone. She's really gone.'

Her hand went to her face, so wet. Disoriented, Isaura looked to the cavern ceiling to see if it was dripping. When she touched her fingertip to her tongue and tasted salt, she understood - tears.

'What a fool I am.'

She thought she'd made peace with Shea's passing in the months since her death. Thought she was prepared to face this memory.

'My baby!'

She felt now, in the deepest corner of her anguished soul, that the only time she would have peace was when she herself died.

Isaura lost track of time for her thoughts were of her little girl: the day when she was born, first walked, talked, calling her 'Mama'…

"No, no, no.”

'Was that whimpering?'

She turned to where Ashe knelt in the Cavern's center, but the girl was more blank than ever. Dulled and dead.

Isaura's heart grieved and ached, knowing the truth in full.

"Stop, stop, stop!"

The whining came again; she turned in the other direction, to see Zinjo, hand upon a black stalagmite, his eyes wide and across his face, an expression Isaura had never seen on it - terror.

"Zinjo? What's wrong?"

When his singular response was a howl that rattled the cavern walls, Isaura sprang up and ran to him. She yanked his massive hand free of it - not an easy task - and even then, he kept bellowing.

Her hand stung as if a dozen bees had attacked it, and she guessed she was probably hurt far more than the cheek she'd slapped.

He blinked several times before he whispered, 'Zank you.'

"What they did to little one to make her talk... thing they tie around her neck... so evil!"

"You saw? You felt?"

"Da. I touched next memory stone. It... The Torc, is alive with thing of fire and pain, and ...is rape of soul, I tink."

"Alive?"

Isaura had wondered what the ancient bastard-of-a-wizard had done to make the device so powerful and so attuned to Alarians. But if he had bound a daemon to it, that would explain much
.
"They - your nasty sister and her followers - did other things too. And not to make little one talk. Just to be cruel."

"Yeah, she's one fucked up bitch. She lives for moments like that, when she can justify her perverted sadistic cruelty. She probably got herself off when she questioned Ashe alone with the Torc wrapped around her neck."

"Da, something like that," Zinjo said in a hushed tone, looking at the black memory stone.

Then he turned to face Isaura, his eyes fuming. "Are you fucked up beetch too?"

"Wait, what?"

"Look," Zinjo's arm swept around the cavern, and ended pointing at Ashe. "Look what you've done! You kill her. Empty her. Spread her insides all around. You justify doing so just like nasty sorceress."

"And ...she's innocent, Zinjo," Isaura whispered. "I saw it. Shea made her do it. Ashe -Aesh - had been trying to help, to ease Shea's pain. I've never been so wrong in my entire life."

"I vould see this, if I may?" the giant asked softly. "Would see for both Shea and Ashe I think."

Isaura brooded over this, finally giving Zinjo a nod. What right did she have to say no? Zinjo loved Shea too, suffered when she told him of her death. And, it was Ashe's memory; he had as much right to see them as she.

She pulled his huge hand to the pulsing ajoiollite that held the memory. And touched it to the stone along with her own; they would watch together.

Seeing it the second time was no better than the first. This time, she heard the concern for Shea in Aesh's voice even deeper this time, and the horror when he realized what she was making him do. But more than that, her anger was stoked white hot at whoever infected her baby, and bound her with a terrible geas. Even as they pulled their hands away when the memory faded, and tears filled Zinjo's eyes, hers were red.

"They. Must. Pay."

'I will hunt them down, and show them real cruelty. Faeyra cruelty.'

di'Sona, too, must answer for what she did to Ashe. But then, so must she, yes?

'For I am guilty too.'

Somehow, but... how would she atone for what was done to Ashe?

She could start now, this moment. For she had another inspiration.

"Her memories! Zinjo!! We... we'll return them!"

"Zis you can do?"

"I know a way."

'I think...'

She learned it those many years ago; when her mentor's memories started to fade; she found how to transfer the ones she hadn't studied into her own mind. It was tricky though; if you took someone else's memories from their Caxenar stone, you went insane. It was an unalterable fact and the dark priests learned this terrible lesson over and over.

The ajoiollite crystals were different, gentler and more discrete in how each held a single memory instead of all packed together as with Caxenar stone. Yet when Isaura had taken the remaining year of Airas’s memories into her head, it nearly drove her mad.

'But hopefully, since Ashe was empty... and they are her memories...'

"Da! Good!"

Zinjo's grim face lightened, but only for a moment. Worry soon flooded his face. He motioned to the black stalagmite grouping.

"You cannot give her back zese. Will keeel her."

"I may have a solution for that too, old friend. Would you mind fetching your rucksack?”

Once the giant returned and set it in front of her, she pawed around until she found the dark velvet sack packed in its lower compartment. From it, she withdrew a pair of white cloth gloves, which she slipped on her hands. Then she pulled a hefty pinkish crystal from the bag, and held it up to look in it.

"Vats that?"

"Cabrcon. Otherwise known as a Caxenar Crystal. Shea and I discovered them in the Ergus Mines, the place where those morbid dark priests gather their memory crystals."
A scowl crossed the giant's face. "Vin you visit that cursed place?”

"A year before you started traveling with us," Isaura answered, smiling.

She remembered how excited Shea was to go spelunking in those dark caves. Even as a five-year old, she loved action and adventure. Isaura wished she would have admitted then her daughter wouldn't follow the tedious wizard's path of knowledge as she did. It would have saved so much heartbreak if she had.

"And it does vat?"

"Like ajoiollite, it can hold memories... but it's not as, um, gentle, as ajoiollite."
Zinjo rolled his eyes; years of traveling with the sorceress had taught him she loved to be begged to explain statements like that. Finally he huffed,

"Talk, witch."

"Better yet, I'll show you, if this works as I hope."

Isaura touched the stone to a blackened stalagmite, which brightened, turning back to its neutral azure, and the cabrcon crystal darkened.

She touched another, and it also cleared. She continued touching the stalagmites one by one.

"So, zhis crystal is just like these stones? And you suck bad memories into it?"
"Yes, er, no. The stalagmites are different. They- somehow - separate memories, holding only one each. Preserving them. It's why they are so miraculous. This..."

She held up a now pitch black crystal,

"...can suck out all it touches. Were I to touch one to your thick skull, all Zinjo memories would be gone... pfffffft."

"Evil!" Zinjo took a step back.

"The dark Caxenar priests teach their students how to selectively remove memories as part of their training," the sorceress said, as she placed the darkened crystal back into its bag. She pulled a second bag from the pack.

"Why you possess such things, woman?"

She didn't answer, for he knew why. Unlike her fellow wizards, she didn't lust for power. She craved knowledge.

Isaura spent her life traveling the world, learning, collecting and discovering. It was the reason she and Shea had their horrible argument, causing her daughter to leave her and follow her own path. She said wanted to do something meaningful, not follow her mother around boring libraries or dank smelly caves listening to old men or women dribble out their secrets.

'Oh Sheala!'

The sorceress paused, her body quivering slightly, her despair threatening once again to overwhelm her. She slammed those emotions down hard. As she had every other time her grief for Shea welled within her. But each time was harder.

Huffing a bitter sigh, she withdrew an unused memory crystal from the bag she held. This she touched to the stalagmite which held the memory of Shea's passing. When it clouded whispy gray, she clutched it and kissed it, before returning it to a separate bag. Isaura knelt to tuck the bags back into a rucksack compartment. Once done, she stood.

"Come," she said, and walked to where Ashe knelt, "we are ready to try this."

"And... without dark memories, she vill..." Zinjo was going to say 'be okay,' but stopped his mouth from uttering the words. Of course she wouldn't.

"...think again?"

Isaura bit her lower lip. "I don't know."

She knew of no one whose memory was emptied, and then refilled. And Alarian history told her the Torc destroyed the minds of all who wore the terrible device.

'Yet ...by removing all memory of the Torc' the sorceress thought and hoped, 'wasn't there the chance her mind could work once more?’

"What else can we do?"

Isaura knelt beside the girl, caressing her face, whispering:

"I'm so, so, sorry for what they... we have done to you. If you die now, I swear to Aana the world will not forget you, Aesh. I swear that... that..."

Isaura once more felt wetness streak her cheeks - when had she started weeping? - and Zinjo’s massive hands gently rubbing her shoulders.

"Iz good, witch woman. You are not goddess. You only do best. Iz time."

Isaura nodded, stood, and drew herself up to her fullest height. She straightened her robe, and withdrew her ebony wand from a pocket again. With a flick of her twisted she uttered:

faigh air tilleadh

There were no explosions or bursting lights and sounds, as Zinjo had witnessed on other occasions when Isaura spoke aloud the fell language of the magic. But he did see, slowly, one by one, first from the furthest, then moving closer, the bright swirling stalagmites winking out, returning to their natural azure blue.

When the last stalagmite blinked off, Ashe suddenly gasped and would have fallen to the floor had not Zinjo caught her and scooped her up.

Her eyes opened.

She focused on the sharp stalactites pointed down at her from the ceiling above, and

...screamed...

...her voice bouncing and echoing throughout the Cavern of Dearmad.

Next, her head craned to see who carried her. When her brain told her it was a fierce huge giant, she screamed a second time.

Her third scream came after she looked down at her body.

That one was loudest and longest by far.

  
end, Part 1