293. Of reassurances, trouble and a little outburst

Cassandra Pendragon

We wouldn't have had enough, not by a long shot. Even though Mordred had convinced Xorlosh to part with almost everything the dwarfs had left, from mead to cured meat and pickles, we couldn't begin to hope we'd be able to feed the whole town. Even with the soldiers' rations Arthur had magnanimously shared we were still about a ton short… or maybe several for that matter. Luckily enough another gamble payed off quite handsomely. Once they had seen what we were up to, the remaining Captains, aside from Asra, were more than willing to share their own supplies, if only to ingratiate themselves to the people they hadn't even spared a second thought before today. As sordid as their behaviour was, I had still banked on it, otherwise this might have yet become a rather embarrassing exercise in finding appropriate but entirely unfounded excuses. Quite similar to elections, really. Anyways, with their support we managed to at least provide everyone with some bread and either cheese or meat and once the citizens, who still had something left after the fires, had warmed up to the idea they gradually joined in. After half an hour, several enormous, earthen pots were bubbling merrily under the sun and a thick broth with unrecognisable ingredients filled the square with the smell of cooked onions and wheats. Between all of our contributions and the fruits, that had already begun flourishing among the cherry trees, I was pretty confident that everyone would get their share. It still wasn't enough but it sufficed for the gesture I had intended it to be and judging from the gradually lightening atmosphere it actually worked.

All over the lawn and on the adjacent roads people were mingling, talking, gossiping, some were in tears, being consoled by friends or strangers, others were laughing and quite a few simply marvelled at the paradise, grown from dust and ashes. A few children had already found the courage to scale the trees, some elderly had taken in interest in the plants after their strong, almost magical smell had drawn them in. Most of the dwarfs were manning the pots, making sure everybody had a chance to get a bowl of warm broth without returning for seconds, the kitsune and my faithful soldiers in particular strolled through the crowd, apparently without much of a purpose but in reality prepared to extinguish every spark of violence. Their presence worked wonders, but it was still impossible to keep the peace with that many people in one place.

In the beginning we, that is me and my friends, hadn't had much time to do anything but scamper back and forth with the sweat on our brows, trying to prevent fights from breaking out and organising the distribution of a veritable mountain of food. If the charming inhabitants of Free Land hadn't been scared out of their wits that some of us might either swallow them whole or take supernatural revenge, in case they didn't comply with out wishes, we wouldn't have managed, not at all, but Viyara's size and Alassara's and my reputation had made them surprisingly docile. At least as soon as they had come face to face with one of us and once Arthur's soldiers had resolutely broken up a scuffle, we hadn't managed to prevent, throwing the culprits unceremoniously out on the streets, it had become almost quiet, pleasant.

By now I was facing an unkempt, dishevelled group, or rather army, considering there were around 500 of them, of slaves, trying to explain what I had been planning and to ignore the pitiful appearance and rather offensive smell of some of them. Truth be told, those were probably still the luckier ones. It didn't take much imagination to picture why some of the prettier girls and boys looked clean, well fed and… jaded. One thing they all had in common, though, was their expression. Somewhere between hope and anxiety they seemed hardly able to comprehend what I was saying, or rather they couldn't believe it to be true. Not much of a surprise, really, but it still made me thankful for the support I had brought along.

At my side Pete, Madame Sinis, some of her girls and Vanya, accompanied by a handful of her mercenary friends, did their best to reassure them, but it still felt like an uphill battle. Especially since I… might have profusely underestimated what it actually meant to organise and somewhat care for several hundred people. If it hadn't been for my powers, I wouldn't even have gotten them to listen to me, for starters and that was even without the uncertainty and hard work that would surely follow, should they decide to take me up on my offer. Also, some of them were clearly less than happy at the prospect of having to fend for themselves and all the trouble it would bring.

"Yes, like I said, we will try to buy every burned down house in the city. You'll have the chance to rebuild and make a home for yourselves," I iterated for the umpteenth time. "Until then, you're more than welcome to stay here. It might not be overly comfortable, especially when the monsoons are going to hit, but you'll be safe and you won't starve. Also… if you truly want to go back to how things were, you're more than welcome to return to your masters. I'm not stopping you, I'm simply offering you a chance to live your own life and maybe a little help along the way. I meant what I said. We're in this together and for better or worse, we need each other."

"And how's that going to turn out for us," a girl close to me inquired. She had already posed some rather dicey questions before and considering her challenging tone, she wasn't enamoured with me and my proposal. At first she had been nothing but another face in the crowd but now I actually took the time to truly look at her. She was pretty and well dressed, a human girl in her early twenties with long, blonde hair and large, green eyes. She wasn't overly voluptuous but rather trim and fit, almost like a dancer… or a fighter. Truth be told, I didn't trust her much. For one, I was still expecting one surprise or the other, courtesy of Asra the trader, I wasn't going to call him Captain anymore, to bite me in the tails and two… she didn't fit. She was too self assured, too confident for a slave and her looks simply fit the picture. If she had been bought for the bedroom, she wouldn't have had shoulders almost as wide as her waist and if she had been used for chores, she wouldn't have been as immaculately groomed as she appeared. To stick with my favourite Shakespearean quote: something was rotten in the state of Denmark and I had a feeling my new acquaintance was at the centre of it. Maybe she had been planted among the slaves to sow resentment? Possible but shortsighted. Oh well, in a way she was doing me a favour, voicing the doubts, her compatriots were too timid to even acknowledge, out loud.

"That's entirely up to you," I replied and slowly sashayed towards her, catching her gaze with quite a bit more intensity than before. For a few moments it was as if we had been alone amongst the flourishing garden. "But also not really what you want to know, is it? Tell me, what are you afraid of? You've already seen the dangers you will face. Hells, you've lived through them barely a day ago. Most of you have already lost their home. It's only a question of how lucky you're going to get with who will pick you up in the end. If you're so scared of what a future without chains might bring, why are you even here? It's almost like… you actually don't want me, don't want us, to meddle, even though we can hardly make it any worse for any of you. So tell me, what's truly going on here?" I had reached her by now, but the lure of my voice, bolstered with just the tiniest spark of energy, kept her rooted in place. She didn't even appear as antagonistic anymore but rather… docile, entranced, her gaze clouded as she looked at me with an almost dreamy smile. The ruckus of so many people, compressed into a tiny space, died down and in the ensuing silence it'd have been possible to hear a pin drop.

"Do you even belong here," I added, almost as an afterthought, our faces no more than a handspan apart. She smelled of strawberries and cinnamon underneath a blanket of perfume.

"I… no… I was sent here, I was sent to cause as much trouble as I possibly could," she said, her voice muffled as if she was half asleep.

"Really now? And by whom?" I gently placed my hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, I'm not angry, not even surprised, but I'd really like to know whom you're answering to." A pink tongue darted out from between her full, red lips and I could practically smell her struggling against the urge to tell the truth, to answer my questions without a second thought, while beads of sweat slowly started forming on her brow. She fought for quite a bit longer than I had expected, but finally she answered honestly:

"I don't know his name, but…" in the middle of her sentence I felt something stir within her, a cruel and all too familiar spark of magic. Without pause I manifested my wings, surprised yelps and gasps greeting the bright display. The sound of ripping silk tore through the silence and a wave of light exploded around us. The ones close by staggered and fell while the rest reeled backwards, the allure of my voice turning into a crushing tide of undiluted power while every single eye in the square landed on me and the raging thunderstorm around us, but I didn't care. I froze, the thought of what would happen, if I didn't intervene, rooting me in place. I had seen it much too often and the last time around I had even been cursed. But I had changed since then.

With callous disregard for her safety I enveloped her in a cocoon of crystallised light, a hermetic seal that would suppress every single form of magic within. My senses expanded, her slim, all too frail figure vanished behind a glare of silver and there I found it. A tiny ember, a black, frothing thing of dark desires and an inexorable will, a parasite, nestled into her life force and her soul, sucking her dry to fuel its own, twisted purpose. For a moment I faltered, the memories of how many times I had failed when it came to the Emperor's magic a suffocating pressure on my shoulders but I wasn't the little girl anymore, who had been forced to run and sacrifice all she had had to even come close to this kind of power. I was so much more, uncounted aeons coursing through my veins, providing me with the knowledge of how to break a puny, mortal curse.

"No more," I whispered softly, echoing my words from before, and my core reacted. Guided by my past I carefully dug into her until I could feel the foreign spell under my wings and with nothing more than a wish made real, I turned it into yet another spark amidst an infinite sea. The girl collapsed, the light receded and silence returned. When the slaves around me looked up from the ground, blinking owlishly, all they saw was a beautiful but pale kitsune who had just caught a falling girl in her arms, just before she would have hit the ground. Shit, that hadn't gone as planned. Not in the slightest. I had always suspected that Amon still had a few pawns in Free Land but I had never dreamt of encountering one the very next day after we had sent him packing. On the other hand, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, now, was it? Knowledge was power and the small bundle of flesh and bones in my arms might have the answers to some of my questions, whether she actually knew them or not. But first, I had to deal with the spreading panic all around me and maybe get rid of most of our uninvited, remote controlled guests.

While my theatrics from before might have been more impressive I had still been hovering far above the crowd, almost like a real star. This time around, the outpour of power had happened mere inches away from the closest slaves and they weren't taking it in stride. Most of them were prostrated on the ground, almost as if they were expecting some kind of punishment to follow. Ingrained habits at their finest and seeing them squirm and inadvertently push their heads against the soft, fragrant grass, unable to even meet my eye or run away, even though they were trembling with suppressed fear, made me feel sick to my stomach. It had never been easy for me to accept even as much as a formal bow, but this was on a completely different level and I had to swallow my first impulse to shout and rage at them, ordering them to stand tall.

With a silent curse I looked away, my ears ringing with the much less silent curses, pouring from Pete's and Madame Sinis' mouths. Close to me, nothing moved but only a few handful of meters away the braver, or rather less broken, ones of the bunch were scrambling to get some distance between us, their eyes wide with fear. To them it must have seemed like I had simply struck her down with nothing but a few words and they were understandably less than eager to become the next victim of the strange, erratic, magical creature. Unfortunately they didn't even know which way to turn, since my outburst hadn't gone unnoticed.

Close by, the air was hissing violently as majestic wings, made of pure fire, manifested and Ahri rushed towards me. She hadn't seen what had transpired but my actions might have given her a tiny clue as to what was going on. Further away, a golden mountain of scales, teeth and claws was slithering towards us, the earth shaking with each of Viyara's serpentine movements while silvery and golden flames danced around her opened maw. Aurelia was at her side, her wings unfurled for the first time since the battle we had fought and together with her burning gaze and the long, slick canines that poked through her lips I could quite understand why nobody was overly eager to get in her way. Behind them, the kitsune and dwarven warriors were reaching for their weapons, arcane chants and gravelly orders overlapping in a cacophony of sounds while our trio of elves was standing at Erya's side, magic dripping from their fingertips. Mordred and my mom were already half way across the lawn, not headed for me but rather for Reia and her friends, their magic already marshalled into a protective formation that was flickering into existence around the kids. And my personal entourage of five highly trained fox kin was charging at me, weapons drawn and spells at the ready.

I chuckled ruefully, reigning my own energies back in. When I spoke it was as much for the benefit of my friends as it was to calm down the terrified humans, who were sitting ducks between us. "It's over, we're safe." My voice still held a tinge of power but it wasn't oppressive or even palpable to most but it served nicely to shake the slaves from their stupor and relax my overeager guardians. "At least for now." With at thought I rose into the air again, my wings spread wide while the rush from my core intensified and the timeless cadences in my voice swelled to new heights. My eyes ignited with transcendent fires, the world turned into a mirage of silver and blue while I searched for the remaining sparks of the vile magic I had just absorbed. It was still swirling through me, I hadn't eradicated it completely, just yet, and with that much of a focus it wasn't overly difficult to search for similar, related specks of energy. Bit by bit they appeared before my eyes, sixteen distorted dots in an otherwise pristine landscape.

"Hear me, what you've witnessed wasn't an accident. The fiend we've driven away, we've beaten with the sacrifices we've made, isn't yet entirely gone. Some of his soldiers are still living and breathing among us, unseen, unnoticed, even they themselves don't know whom they're shackled to. The girl is fine, she'll wake within the hour, but until then… there is still work to do." I raised my arms and fanned out my tails, sparks of light dancing along my outstretched limbs. Lightning flared and sixteen torrents, sparkling with transcendent forces, thundered from my finger and tail tips. A heartbeat later, sixteen bodies fell to the ground, as if they were puppets whose strings had been cut. I could already feel the rising tide of terror, while everyone around me began to wonder if they would be next. Until a dark, sickly green fog rose from my targets, a disgusting miasma that didn't leave much room for doubt. But I wasn't finished, yet. Not even close.