Dark Magical Orchestra

“Explain to me again why we didn’t just fly to Asia?” Hylie’s features were a picture of impending nausea as she swayed back and forth with the motion of the ship.

“You can’t even feel the sway of a cruise ship this big.” Narshe smacked the demon in the back of the head. “Stop being a wimp.”

“Why you—”

“There are things beneath the ocean that bear inspection too.” Cosette explained, as she sipped some tea from a delicate porcelain cup and watched the waves sway in every direction. They had been at sea for several weeks now, on a large ocean liner bound for China. The princess’s connections had allowed her to get a cabin with both a balcony and private bathroom. It was here that she, Hylie, and Narshe had spent most of their cruise time so far.

Outside of a few passengers disappearing after Narshe had gone ‘moonbathing’ and the mysterious disappearance of large caches of alcohol from the ship’s reserves, things were progressing fairly normally so far.

“We’re performing rituals throughout the trip to try and pinpoint the location of the fortress.” Cosette explained.

“What fortress is that?”

“Don’t you pay any attention?” Narshe sighed. “The Fortress of Infinite Eyes. The Legion’s base! It was an island that used to hang in the sky. From there, the Legion would spawn its monsters and release them into the world below. Lord Enlu sent it crashing below the surface of the sea over a thousand years ago, ending the Age of Terrors.”

“Oh yeah, I think I saw that in the news or something.” Hylie scratched her head. “I was teaching Valdimap how to carve sculptures at the time, if I remember.”

Narshe put a had over her face is dismay.

“You carve sculptures? Did you ever consider fixing the ones you destroyed in my house?” Cosette sighed, returning to the topic at hand. “The exact falling point of the place remains unknown. It sank below the ocean, and was lost to history.”

“And no one has bothered to locate it until now?”

“With the Legion locked away, there was no way to do that. Now that they’ve been freed, the place should find some of its old magic again, and locating it becomes much easier.”

“It’s all over my head. Mmmmph.” Hylie’s face contorted in a sick, wide-eyed expression, and she rushed inside to the cabin’s toilet. A retching sound filled the air.

“How unpleasant.” Cosette took another sip of tea, and turned her novel back over. She read a few lines, as Hylie continued to moan, and finally closed the book in exasperation.

“I’m going to get some sun.” Cosette turned to Narshe. The vampire was hunkered down in the shade of the deck, with a wide sun hat on and an extremely modest white dress. The scathing daylight of the open ocean was still making her sweat, though the casual eye wouldn’t catch it.

“Suit yourself.” Narshe nodded, as she worked a crossword puzzle. Every now and then she would pull a little blue stone from her pocket and look through it at the paper, rolling her eyes as she penned in the answer.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, a bauble. When you look at this angle it reveals hidden messages.” Narshe proffered the stone to her mistress.

“Interesting.” Cosette examined the shimmering blue jewel, and tucked it into one of the inner pockets of her dress.

“Hey, I need that.”

“You’re a horrible cheater, Narshe. Try using your head for more than just spells.”

“Hm, big talk…” Narshe mumbled, as Cosette walked off.

* * * * *

As Cosette rounded a bend on the lower deck, she was greeted by the sight of someone she hadn’t expected on board.

“Why Princess, fancy meeting you here.” Arrant Young was leaning back against a railing of the boat, making a few notes in his little notebook. He quickly snapped it shut and made a low bow to Cosette.

“Mr. Young! What a huge ship, that we could be on board for weeks and not have met one another yet.”

“Yes Indeed. Well, I imagine your highness must be high up in the suites. We are staying down in the, shall we say, peasants’ quarters.”

“We? Hallie is with you?”

“Princess Hallie and Miss Tania are in their own rooms at the moment, but yes, we are traveling  together. Errands from the great dragons and such as usual.”

“I can only imagine what they have you doing.”

“As can I.” Arrant sighed. “Hallie always seems to know where she’s going. I wish I could say the same. But what brings you to the ocean? Surely any destination you have, you could fly with your, er, ‘foreign’ comrade?” Cosette could feel he was specifically avoiding the word ‘pirate’ or ‘ruffian’.

She laughed. “No, nothing like that. We’re surveying the seas. The Fortress of Infinite Eyes fell beneath the ocean somewhere along this route. We’re hoping to determine where.”

“Infinite Eyes? The Legion?” Arrant’s own eyes grew wide for a moment. “Well well, that would explain it. I’ve heard tales of strange things on the continent. It makes sense if you’re chasing down the Legion.”

“They should have been destroyed all those years ago. That would have saved us all this mess.”

“But then Babylon might have won, in the end.” Arrant shrugged. “But what am I saying? Shall I go fetch Hallie and Tania to meet you?”

“I’m not… I’m wary of Tania.” Her last meeting with the shamaness had been less than friendly. Tania had been blinded, and her ‘father’, the great dragon Nidhoggr, had been slain.

“She respects your power.” Arrant replied. “That’s the way of the wild—as she told me.” He suddenly changed topic. “I’m curious of your surveying spell, Princess. Would you deign to show it to me?”

“No need to be so formal all the time, Mr. Young.” Cosette smiled, “but I’d be happy to show you the details. Why don’t you all come to dinner with us, and we can talk magic afterwards.”

“I think we should all enjoy that very much.” Arrant tipped his hat with a smile, matching Cosette’s curtsey, and the two of them turned and departed.

* * * * *

Dinner was at a long table in a reserved banquet room on the fourth story of the cruise liner. Cosette, Arrant, Hallie, Malgrave, Jelcriste, and Tania were all in attendance. Cadmus once again declined to eat, and Hylie was still feeling too under the weather to present to company. As for Narshe, she had gone off to find dinner on her own.

“I’ll bring you some leftovers.” She had told Malgrave, who had only nodded as slightly as possible.

The guests were all dressed in their best. Hallie wore a lilac gown that covered most of her  chalk-white skin, and Tania was clothed in a southern-styled dress, girded in laces and petticoats.

It had been quite a while since Cosette had seen either of the girls, but longer in the case of Tania. The shamaness was blinded, and wore dark glasses over her eyes. At times, Cosette saw her sniff the air cautiously, and she wondered whether Tania was trying to figure out which foods were where, or if she was searching for hostile intent from her hosts. A few times Cosette even noticed her slipping bits of food to Tournelouse, who purred affectionately at the African girl’s heels.

Lord Malgrave was surprisingly amicable. His whole personality seemed to change in the presence of the younger girls, and he entertained the whole company with stories of adventures across Europe and Africa—stories of treasure and monsters and old magic.

He has children of his own. Cosette remembered. Adopted ones, at the least. It was still strange to think of the cold, ancient vampire as a father figure to anyone.

Jelcriste ate silently, regarding the guests (most especially Hallie) with suspicion. When Arrant tried to strike up casual conversations about magic, she found herself opening up about the details of a few more esoteric rituals. When she saw that Cosette too was listening attentively, the witch quickly cut off the topic.

At last, the dinner was finished, and the guests excused themselves. Malgrave back to his experiments, and Hallie and Tania off to their rooms. Jelcriste excused herself to the decks below. There was a casino on board the cruise ship, and she had been spending considerable time there since the voyage began. Whether winning or losing, Cosette could not say.

“Shall we try your spell now, Mr. Young?” Cosette turned to the scholar.

“Yes, let’s do that.” He followed the sorceress out and around the deck to her quarters, where she gathered the supplies for the ritual.

* * * * *

“So you array them all like this.” Cosette was placing various trinkets from her bag out upon the deck. The two were kneeling up by the nose of the ship, under an evening sky that was just showing the first glimmers of starlight.

“I recognize a few of these.” Arrant nodded, taking out his notebook. He made a quick reference, then jotted a few things in, finally returning the book to his coat pocket. The wind was a fair breeze, and the temperature was quite nice, despite the season.

Cosette finished arranging all the totems for her little divination in their places along a burned leather map laid out on the deck.

“And they move based on the pull or push of different magical currents.”

“I’m familiar with the idea. So you put something of Legion’s in the center, and see how its connection to the rest affects the objects?”

“Just like a compass, yes.” Cosette nodded.

“And with a few good readings, you triangulate the location of the fortress. Ingenious.”

“Triangulate?”

“Plot them on a map and see where they intersect. Cu dungi triunghiulare.” Arrant spoke the Romanian carefully.

“Oh, of course.” Cosette’s eyes brightened up. “There are some English words that I’ve never had to use in casual conversation… Anyway, if we have some kind of channel, like this…” she fished Narshe’s bauble out of her dress. “You can measure how strong the reaction is, and get some idea of how powerful the Legion is in that area, as a function of distance.”

In the center of the whole equation was a mysterious piece of glass that reflected the light oddly. “A trinket I picked up a while ago.” Cosette explained, when Arrant asked. “It’s a piece of the Legion, so it resonates with their presence.”

At last, when all the pieces were laid out, Cosette put a finger on the piece of glass, balancing Narshe’s blue crystal between her other fingers, and closed her eyes, focusing.

The other objects on the map, small totems and tiny stones, began to wiggle and shift of their own accord, pitching from side to side. The blue crystal flashed a bright tone, then glowed more steadily. Cosette opened her eyes and took stock of the whole situation.

“Very well.” She sighed, as she committed the details to memory. The blue crystal’s slight died along with the vibrations in the totems as she removed her hand from the glass shard in the center.

“It seems to me,” Arrant cut in, “and this is just speculation, but couldn’t you get a much more precise reading if you put some kind of reinforcement between the two sources? Something that will magnify the connection between the two sources?”

“Hmm…” Cosette considered the layout. “You have something in mind?”

“One of the candles I came across in my travels.” The scholar mused.

Cosette searched her memory. “Is this the Legba candle with the Panicled Indigo fused in? The one from New Orleans?”

“Very good!” Arrant’s features turned up in delight. “Would you like to try? I’m sure it would only take a minute for me to get it.”

“Yes, let’s do.” Cosette nodded in excitement.

* * * * *

Arrant returned a few minutes later with his vast collection of candles. He removed from the collection a tall white candle with the carved motif of a serpent slithering up it. Little speckles of ground blue flowers were mixed into the wax, and the candle was just translucent enough that you could see them all without seeing through the other side.

“So we just set it here, in between the sources?”

“That should be correct.” Arrant nodded, “Perhaps we should get Narshe? It’s good practice to have someone else around when you’re attempting new spells, no?”

“Don’t worry,” Cosette shook her head. “I know what I’m doing.” She snapped her fingers, and the candle flared to life, occasionally sending up sparks of blue as the glitter and flower petals ignited. The serpent on the candle seemed to writhe in the light, and Cosette could feel the spiritual presence that emanated from it.

“Alright, here goes.” She placed her finger down on the glass once more, and concentrated. Arrant watched intently, kneeling down beside the girl.

The wind whipped around them both, picking up in intensity, and carrying a definite malevolence.

Cosette removed her finger quickly, but the ritual wouldn’t stop. Legba’s candle flared up, and the totems and talismans on the leather map flew off like bullets in all directions—one just grazing the tip of Arrant’s ear.

“What’s going on?” Arrant shouted.

“I don’t know! It’s your candle!” Cosette shouted back, over the din.

The scholar reached out a hand to douse the thing, but the design of the serpent on the candle wriggled from its wax prison, and snapped at his fingers, drawing blood.

“Oww! What the—?”

Cosette threw a spell of shadow at the candle, but to no avail. An ice spell followed after with similar effect.

The serpent seemed to grow, adding the wind and the night to its form, until it was a massive, looming monster.

“Look out, Princess!” Arrant stepped in front of Cosette, trying to shield her from the thing.

In a swift motion, the wax monster lashed down, and swallowed both Cosette and Arrant whole.

“Oh…” Arrant stood shakily, picking up his hat and clamping it down firmly on his brow before helping Cosette to her feet. “Where are we?” The landscape was barren and gray. The ground beneath their feet seemed to be a slab of stone, but it was caked with still wet mud, and a thick dampness was in the air, as though the two of them had arrived within some kind of cve.

“It looks like the energy from the candle somehow fed the connection.”

“To the point where the Legion was able to hijack the spell?”

“I don’t think it works something like that. The spell wasn’t hijacked, it was just… changed. The Legion can’t use magic.” She surveyed the area around them. It was a barren gray island. Overhead was only a pure black sky, untainted by stars or moonlight. Or is it sky at all? Cosette caught sight of a few fish wriggling in the abyss over head.

The only light in the place seemed to come from beyond a hill, a short distance away from the two arrivals. “Besides, a malevolent power would hardly drag us to its front door and then leave us here unharmed? Would it?”

“So you think it brought us to the fortress? Is this the fortress of Infinite Eyes?” Arrant’s voice was slightly panicked, but excited as well.

“Probably.” Cosette said offhandedly. “We should investigate.”

The two of them walked together, climbing the short hill the light was coming from beyond. From the top of the hill, they found the source of the glow. It was a brilliant white stone that glowed with ethereal light. Motes of energy seemed to swirl around it like satellites, and it sat at the center of a vast platform of stone, interlaced with diagrams and runes carved in light that stretched for a hundred yards in any direction. The central stone seemed to be a power source for the whole device.

“What is this thing?” Arrant breathed quietly, as he surveyed the design with a kind of reverence. “I’ve never seen magic on this scale before.”

“Nor have I. Can you feel it? That power source is incredible.” Cosette commented, and the scholar nodded. “I’ve read about something like this in magical histories though. I recognize a few of the designs at least. It looks like a sealing ritual.”

“To seal the fortress, I suppose?” Arrant sighed.

“What are you thinking?” Cosette turned to him, watching his features intently with her golden gaze. The dimness was no object to her—darkness or light were the same to her daemon-bred eyes.

“I came to find that stone. Iormungandr sent me to recover it for him.”

“Your sea-dragon?”

Arrant nodded.

“But you can’t take it. It’s sealing the fortress.”

“Of course not!” He was taken aback. “I had no idea what its purpose was. I just had a dream with a message to come and find it.”

“Why does the deep dragon want to release the Legion’s fortress anyway?” Cosette looked inquisitorially at Arrant, who could do nothing but shrug.

“Maybe he doesn’t? I was just sent here—I expected there to be more instructions by now!”

“At least the seal isn’t broken. That’s some relief.”

“Some relief to whom?”

Arrant nearly jumped out of his skin, and Cosette gasped in surprise as she turned to face Nateel. The woman stood only a few yards behind them on the hill.

Cosette’s Asian cousin was wearing a long brown robe with the hood drawn back. Her black hair hung just above the shoulders, and twin, silvery earrings dangled at the sides of her face. Her eyes were a deep black—too deep for comfort.

“Long time, no see, cousin Cosette. I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure, Mr. Young?”

“Nateel? What are you…”

“Cosette, a shame you had to make a nuisance of yourself by finding your way here.”

“What are you planning to do? Or do I even need to ask?”

“Oh, come on now. You’ve got your villa, Archeme has her tower in the sky… you wouldn’t deny us a little place of our own, would you?”

“You’re slipping into plural again.” Cosette couldn’t help but point out.

“Ah, well.” Nateel’s features twisted up into a sneer. “When your mind is a prison for countless cosmic horrors, your psyche tends to fracture just a bit. You can’t think of yourself as just one being any more. We’ve all paid a little price for our powers, hm? You know what I’m talking about. It’s your family who did this to me, don’t forget.” Nateel glanced into Cosette’s eyes, and for a moment her eye sockets were filled completely with black. “Now, I’ve got a spell to break, if you’ll excuse me.” Nateel stepped forward, between Arrant and Cosette.

The scholar and sorceress looked at one another for a moment, and in a simultaneous moment of assent, they moved together.

“Arco Vet Metigall!” Cosette rasped, and chains of glowing red light arced down from the sky like lightning to lash at Nateel’s form.

Arrant shut his eyes with a silent appeal to the elements, and pressed a hand to the earth. A fist of dirt and stone as large as Nateel’s body rose up from the ground and wrapped its fingers around her in a moment.

“For shame.” Nateel was standing behind them in an instant, as both spells clashed together in a spectacular moment. “The thing about all these different kinds of powers is that they’re really quite useless against one another. I can make most people go raving mad with a look, but you two,” She shrugged, “no luck. Violence is rather ineffectual against people like us, anyway. Confusion, misdirection, intimidation… those are the tools of trade for getting what we want to happen. Fear is the real power, and we have it in ready supply.”

“You’re not getting through us to the fortress.” Arrant braced himself before Cosette.

“I won’t.” Nateel laughed, putting special emphasis on the ‘I’. As she did, her laugh changed, becoming like a whole chorus of hideous, chittering chuckles. “Did I mention another advantage of being a whole bundle of terrors? It’s that you can just send your personal demons off to do your bidding while you make speeches like some sort of cliché villain.”

From behind there was a flash of light, followed by a tremendous crashing noise from the valley of the fortress. That same laugh seemed to come from everywhere, as the shadows around Nateel took a more solid shape, forming a complete menagerie of horrors around Arrant and Cosette.

“Do you feel very wonderfully ineffective? The island is going to rise now. Maybe you’ll do better in the next round of our little game.”

Nateel laughed again, as her whole body and those of her minions seemed to stretch and grow into the shadows, vanishing into the dark. Arrant and Cosette were left alone, as the rumbling sound in the distance continued to grow. The island of Infinite Eyes was quickly rising from beneath the waters.

“We have to do something!” Arrant turned to Cosette.

“I know, I know.” The princess put a hand to her forehead. “I can’t think straight with all this going on.”

“Look, the power stone isn’t broken, we just need to reset it.” Arrant pointed down the hill. The glowing white stone had been pushed aside, leaving the entire spell structure undamaged, but also powerless.

The two of them headed down the hill, quickly making their way to the center of the spell. “Come on, let’s push it back into place.” Arrant put his back to the stone and heaved.

Cosette put a hand to the stone, but stopped suddenly. “I don’t know…” She looked critically at the stone and the spell written upon the ground.

“What?”

“It’s all just so… easy.”

“Are you going to help me or not?” Arrant looked annoyed.

“No. Enlu’s seal couldn’t be broken by the Legion on its own—that would be foolish. We’re being used!”

“One of you is.” Nateel’s voice rang in Cosette’s ears.

“Give me true sight. Illmat Minaar!” Cosette spoke.

Everything washed away in a rush—as though the whole world had turned to ink and been doused in water. Nateel was still standing back on the hilltop, and Cosette was halfway down the hill to the power stone.

From the moment when Cosette had seen the black flash in Nateel’s eyes., it had all been an illusion.

“You’re getting really good at this, cousin. Naturally I couldn’t break Enlu’s seal myself. It’s a shame everyone isn’t as versed in these things as you are.”

“Arrant!” Cosette spun around. The man was just pushing aside the marker stone. “No!”

The scholar fell back as the great white stone toppled over, shattering in a dazzling display of lights and magics that skipped along the ground and fizzled in the air.

“What happened?” Arrant blinked once or twice.

“The curtain is rising. That’s what.” Nateel called from the hilltop. “And now the fortress is ours again.” She raised a hand, and the seals on the ground began to rotate and loose themselves. The flagstones in the earth spun and moved, like an elaborate machine, assembling themselves back into a circle of pillars, revealing a labyrinth beneath them that rose to fill the structure.

“Now that you’ve served your primary purpose to us… we would love to have you on the team… don’t you want to know what it feels like to share your head with something else, cousin?” Nateel’s myriad shadows leapt up from around her feet, as the whole island began to shift and buckle, rising up through the depths.

Cosette and Arrant stood back to back, as a circle of diabolic monstrosities of every description began to close in on them from all sides. Blades of shadow dripping malevolent red acid, aberrant limbs set into every angle, and ravenous jowls cutting apart their own tongues could only begin to describe the complete horror of the darkness that threatened to leap through their eyes and eat their minds.

Before the shadows could pounce, however, there was a terrific shaking of the island, as a massive, scaly shape penetrated the bubble of air surrounding the place, shaking the ground and knocking Cosette from her feet as it touched the stone. Another followed it on the opposite side. Two enormous blue claws, each far larger than Cosette’s villa were grasping either end of the island.

And then the head of the thing appeared, breaking through the mystic shell around the island in a tidal surge of power. It was the face of a dragon so great that no description of its grandeur or magnificence could be quite adequate. Each of its scales was far taller than Cosette’s whole body, and its jaws could have easily swallowed the entire cruise liner that Arrant and Cosette had so recently stood upon. The deep dragon, Iormundangr, surveyed the island with ten eyes, each as large as a house, and clicked together a mouthful of teeth that could have swallowed a sizable portion of the island whole.

“That is enough, Legion.” His bellowing voice shook the whole fortress.

“You?” Nateel’s gaze was fixed up at the dragon defiantly, but her voice seemed to come from all corners of the island.

“When Enlu sunk this island, he dropped it upon my neck, sealing both of us to the ocean floor.” The dragon’s voice was a rumbling as deep and powerful as the sea. “He proved to be an untrustworthy ally. If mortals were more than mere dust, I would take my vengeance on him personally.” A huge eye rolled down to glance at Cosette. “Vitriol against my I and my brothers  runs in your family, slayer of Nidhoggr.”

For many, to even speak before the grandeur of the great dragon would be impossible. But Cosette was trained in speaking face to face with those indefinitely more powerful than her. If killing her was the dragon’s aim, it would do no good to show cowardice. “If you’re going to blame, then blame Knale.” She spoke aloud. “I have no claim to that deed.”

“Hmm, child, you have surprising audacity to try and shift blame at a moment like this.” The dragon made a noise that might have been a laugh. “Why do you oppose the Wild? Either of you? I sense that the both of you have no love lost on Empress Carmine or Knale Sye Kolor.”

“Are you proposing some kind of partnership, dragon?” Nateel called up.

“We have enemies in common, and I have your island in my hands. It would seem that the two of you have options which are both limited and obvious.”

“He raises a compelling point.” Arrant turned to Cosette, who glared back.

“And betray centuries of my lineage?” Cosette hissed. “You planned this didn’t you?”

“I swear I had no idea!” The scholar was taken aback.

“They betrayed us all. Fair’s fair.” Nateel shot back. “Carmine locked demons inside both of our heads, didn’t she, Cosette? Maybe we can strike back. And who’s next in line to be Empress once Carmine falls?”

“If I cared about that…” Cosette’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Nateel. “But it’s true, I don’t want to fight either of you.”

Nateel smiled back. “It would be fun to be on you and Archeme’s team again.”

“All the same. Bind us an accord, witch.” Iormungandr bellowed. “That we will be at peace one with another as long as Carmine lives.”

After a moment’s thought, Cosette nodded, and knelt down, drawing a small design in the damp earth with her gloved finger. “Stand here,” she commanded Arrant, “and you here, Nateel.”

The two obeyed, and joined hands at Cosette’s command.

“We each vow this day, in the sight of the gods above and below, that we are allies one with another each. Let death fall swiftly upon any who should break this accord. And so shall we be bound until the day Carmine’s blood stains the earth.”

“Very good.” The dragon nodded. “And now, away with you, to the surface.”

* * * * *

A gigantic wave rocked the luxury liner, depositing Cosette back onto the deck, soaked and choking on salt water. It was not far from where she had fallen beneath the waves with Arrant, and Narshe and Hylie were knelt nearby, the first apparently doing some sort of spell to determine her mistress’s location.

“Mistress!” Narshe rushed to Cosette’s side. The princess coughed up a lungful of water and tried to rise to her feet, but Hylie reached her side first, holding her down. The Destroyer pressed a firm hand to her chest and muttered some hoarse words in low Daemonic, her eyes glowing a deep red for a moment as the bounds upon her wrists snapped apart, and magic coursed through her hands. Cosette’s eyes widened and gasped as her lungs were instantly purged of all their contents.

“What happened? Are you alright?” Narshe looked into the princess’s eyes, at the same time checking pulse with one hand. A vampire could be an excellent judge of a human’s vital condition. “We’ve been trying to divine your position for almost an hour.”

Cosette caught her breath slowly, as she scanned the deck for Arrant, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Those two girls have vanished too.” Hylie growled, apparently sensing her intent, then sniffed. “I smell something on you.” She leaned in and sniffed again. “Shadows? Dragons?” She hissed, just loud enough for Cosette to hear.

“We need to talk. Plans have changed.” Cosette stood up, regaining her composure. “Come with me.” She led the three of them to her cabin.