Rain Harlow
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Chapter 22: A Concubine Beyond Her Confines
🕑 Added 2023-07-19 05:20:51 +0000 UTCThe ball in the mansion was fit to go well into the night and early morning, though by appearances most exciting festivities other than private ones had ceased. It was all drinking and chatter that went on and on and on. Sammy wondered somewhat at that, then noticed some little powdery blue tablets that were quickly but quite openly dropped into drinks and dissolved in them with a stir and little fanfare.
The people that were chain-drinking those mixes seemed to hold their liquor better and were highly energetic and active. It was almost like a race to see who could drink more with some of them. Especially the younger-seeming aristocrats.
Well, they’re just having a drunken and druggy ball, aren’t they? Bet that shit is expensive. Like everything in this place.
She saw Azure in the midst of it all, playing it up like a champ. Laughing and being delightful. Chatting about fashion, horse riding, the latest philosophical treatises, and so on like she truly did care about nothing more. She drank very, very light, and Sammy noticed she also did not let any servant dissolve any tablet into her drink.
The mansion had a kind of extensive, walled-in backyard, with places for leisure and an extensive garden of hedges and bushes, more or less a flower-strewn maze. The bracelet wearers could go out there — the doors were open and the glyphs on them appeared dim. The entirety of it was dimly lit by hovering, glowing balls.
Magic mood lighting. Yeah, there are at least a few people banging out there somewhere.
Mirrors were not plentiful outside, but also not absent either. She wasn’t sure why at first, but then she noticed that each looked upon some crystalline decoration — a statue here, a pathway there. She imagined the mirror would catch the sunlight and cast it spectacularly into the crystal, perhaps even aided by some minor magic. The mirrors did seem far too pristine for being outdoors.
She saw enough of the wall to see it had extensive glyphs all along it, and it had at least one gate with the same.
Sammy never caught sight of the manor’s lord, as he’d already ‘retired’ and she wasn’t about to check on whether that meant he was actually passed out.
When that fateful after-midnight time came, though, almost everyone began passing out, suddenly hit with total drunkenness like all the stimulation of the night had been wiped away. It was a happy sort of passing out at least: that friend that drank too many times fifty. Laughter and garbled shouts and stumbling idiots crashing onto couches, chairs, and sometimes the floor, puzzled servants scrambling to keep them from breaking stuff or their own skulls.
“I’m glad that I’m recording this for posterity,” Sammy muttered to herself.
The bedlam was far from Azure, however. She’d already made her way into the hedges as if going for a walk for some fresh air. The hedges didn’t exactly swim in mirrors, but Sammy caught a smug grin on that devilish face, as it cast a potentially-final look at the open doors and fine glass windows of the mansion, before disappearing.
New Quest unlocked: “A Concubine Beyond Her Confines” — Help Azure escape the island.
● Rewards: +10 FE.
Oh shit, that means there must be something to this. 10 FE though… that means her chances are good, right? No black knight to fight.
Feeling as if she knew where the escapee was going, Sammy flashed over to the mirror that was poised near that wall gate, and across from some ridiculous crystalline thing like a statue of a disco ball. It was lit up even in the night by hidden inner lights, making it cast a beautiful, subtle iridescent layer over everything.
A well-dressed, breastplate and helmet-armored guard was at the gate, leaning up against the wall with his head back and his eyes closed as if he’d fallen asleep standing up. His polearm was on the ground.
Sammy watched as Azure very quietly and slowly walked up, but almost instantly the man started awake and stumbled a bit, as he tried to lean on a polearm that was not there. He caught himself, though, and his bleary eyes were soon squinting at a rather frozen Azure.
“Azure?” He slurred, blinking, yawning, then kneeling carefully to retrieve his weapon. “What are y- don’t think you can bring me another sh- d-drink!” He pointed at her with playful scolding. “Can you believe the shervants came way out here for me? Over and over! No, no, no, not shupposed to, I said. Nay. Two is too many! I can’t be drunk!”
The clearly drunk man shook his head and shrugged with furrowed brows as if he could never possibly do such a thing on duty.
Azure seemed to take a very deep breath as if steeling herself. Then she smiled pleasantly at the guard, while ‘fiddling with her hair’ idly. Sammy could tell she’d pulled some sort of sharp, small metal pin out of it, hiding it in her hand. It was curved in such a way as to poke outward when held by the thumb.
Can she really take on a trained guard with- wait, is it drugged? Poisoned?
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Alan!” Azure cried, “Your diligence is well-known! But look at you, my dear, you’re falling out! You should at least sit down there by the monument steps. Here, let me help you.”
She began walking over with a kind smile on her lips. Alan smiled back, obviously a bit caught by her beauty. But as Azure neared, he shook himself with alarm in his eyes.
With fear and sobering conviction, he stood straight and held his hand up firmly, forestalling her. “Please, no — no, madame! I’m fine. And you shouldn’t be out here.” His eyes shifted around in paranoia and fear at the idea of being seen with her. “Our lord wouldn’t take kindly to this, no he sh-ore wouldn’t. We shouldn’t be talking. Pleash exit the gate area, madame.”
Azure’s expression sunk a bit as she paused. But there was firm determination, poise. She was going to make a move. And despite her bravery — possibly artificially enhanced — Sammy felt like it was going to be a shitshow for her to struggle with a drunk but probably very competent fighter.
So Sammy pulled the mirror inward and forged an illusion — first a swirl of bright flashes, enough to make the guard notice in his peripheral vision and look. He did so, head snapping over in dumbfounded surprise. Then Sammy flashed the most violently blinding, concentrated light she could summon right into his eyes as they stared dead on.
If they can see it, then it's light, and if it’s light, it can blind. That or make them think they are. Either way.
Alan cried out immediately, hands going to his eyes, polearm dropping.
Azure didn’t hesitate. After gasping and calling out, not exactly loudly, in faux dismay, “Oh no, what’s happened!?” she darted toward him and flashed her hand with the pin right into the man’s neck, and he had no way of seeing it coming to block. She backed away quickly after sticking him.
Alan winced in pain and his hand slapped his neck as if at a bug, even as he was stumbling and squinting tear-filled eyes he couldn’t get open. “What- no- my eyes! Madame, I can’t, I…” He was soon swaying mightily. “I… have to…”
The man dropped to the ground, totally incapacitated.
Rushing over to the fallen man, Azure took a set of huge, bronze keys from his belt and seemed to exult just to have them in her hands. But, kneeling in the grass, she pulled a completely separate key-like item out from a hidden pocket — That dress has pockets?! — and carefully, with sudden intense focus, touched it to a particular non-runic part of her bracelet. She was holding her breath the entire time.
The key seemed to fit itself between the twisted metal, and there was a little click and the bracelet fell off into the grass. Azure let out the breath she was holding in a gasp, like she’d been holding it in for far, far longer. Years. For a moment she stared at the thing in the grass with wide eyes, as if unbelieving. Trembling.
But in the next moment, she tossed the key down, stood, and marched toward the gate. She paused before it, head turning, eyes finding the mirror. It was a look of mystified wonder and a look of gratitude.
Sammy couldn’t help but grin. She also couldn’t help but cause a little shimmer to pass over the mirror, as if in acknowledgment. Perhaps it was even a goodbye.
Azure’s eyes widened, but she nodded and turned to the gate. She muttered continuously as she began sifting through the keys, going by memory and ritual what each one was. She stopped at one finally and held it out, saying out loud, “Left side wall, outside gate,” as if to convince herself. Taking another deep breath, she pushed it into the keyhole of the gate and turned.
It was something like clockwork, the way it clicked and did an exact quarter turn. The rune etched on the gate dimmed. Azure let out another sigh of relief, squeezing her eyes shut briefly, then she turned it again. Another quarter turn locking in, and the gate cracked open and swung slowly inward.
After a quick glance around, Azure passed through the gate. Immediately, there was a baleful aura that surrounded her, like dark smoke, fire, and gaseous dread. She fell to her knees, crying out in pain but strangling it to keep down the noise.
Sammy shot up on her feet. “What?! What happened?!”
The baleful aura did something like the prior buff she saw did: it flared then absorbed inward, disappearing.
Azure pushed herself up, clearly weakened, but the face that turned one final time to look through the gate was still firm in resolve. Sammy noticed a glyph, a brand in the center of her forehead, marring that great beauty with something baleful and dimly glowing red. She saw it only for a moment, as Azure was soon dashing off out of perception.
Various prior words and hints came back to Sammy. ‘Dared to run off and curse themselves.’ A contract. Magic runes everywhere.
Fuck, it’s literal, isn’t it? She’s cursed for breaking her agreement.
“System?”
Yes, User Sammy?
“Fuck you.”
There was no answer to that, and the System didn’t care, and the System just facilitated between two parties. But it needed to be said anyway.
Sammy tried to fish around for more mirrors to see what would happen. There was fortunately no great alarm in the mansion. If the lord or others were supposed to get notified by what occurred somehow, they were too out of it to have it register.
She found a separate docks area some distance away, including a few mirrors in the presumable harbormaster’s offices, all quite dark and inactive. There were numerous hand mirrors nearby, what she guessed were on board the ships.
It was annoying, but there was nothing more she could do. Nonetheless, her quest hadn't been completed.
Guess she has to actually get away then. At least I’ll presumably get an update.
Sammy continued keeping an eye out, feeling anxious about it but with little she could do. Wanting to distract herself, she engaged in some more rune meditations, which definitely did the trick. It took two more hours to get another rune completed. She believed that was quicker than the last. 2 down, 4 to go.
The quest “A Concubine Beyond Her Confines” is complete. 11 FE gained.
Thrusting her fists up, Sammy yelled out, “Boom! Suck it, you rich fuck! She’s sailing free.”
Still, it was somewhat subdued. The curse, and the feeling that she was probably still going to be hunted. At least, she assumed such a seemingly jealous figure would not simply shrug it off. But who knew?
Not long after the message, she felt a sudden intense communication from a mirror. “Samantha, Goddess of Mirrors?”
Sammy brought it up, and there was Azure, staring into a hand mirror expectantly and uncertainly at once. She looked dusty and had rather ruined makeup — running and smudged mascara, another smudge on her cheek — but was otherwise fine. Behind her was what seemed to be the inside of a gigantic crate, but transformed into a cramped, but serviceable bedroom.
This required some momentous and formidable planning.
“Goddess?” Azure said in further excitement, eyes seeming to detect something in the mirror. “Your Majesty… Her Majesty the goddess Redberry has told me the truth about what happened.”
Azure’s voice broke slightly, and her lip quivered. “That you are the one that helped me. That listened, that begged her to answer me, the one who was in the mirrors. Can it be true? Would one so divine as you care about someone like me? Worthless and cursed, discarded trash?” Her voice broke mightily then, tears spilling from her eyes anew.
Sammy had to seize her Goddess class to keep from breaking herself, such did the words and tears move her. But she wanted to do more than react emotionally, because of what she was. Because she needed to inspire.
So she pulled the mirror close to reveal herself fully upon her throne, not free of tears exactly, but with eyes cutting through the compassion with deliberate intent.
“It is true, Azure,” Samantha said, balanced between firm and soft tones. “I am the one who heard you, and the one who helped and campaigned on your behalf. But you are not trash, nor worthless. You are a gleaming star in the sky of the gods and your potential stretches as far as such celestial light reaches! If you are cursed by fate, I will help you defy it.”
She leaned forward, holding mortal eyes in hers spellbound, holding out a hand as if offering it. “I see your determination, I see the fire of your will! Let it awaken, and I will stoke it to brilliance!”
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