Princess Embralyne de Caldaros sat, fidgeting, inside the nondescript room of the guardhouse she'd been led to. As she awaited the Guard Captain's arrival, she desperately tried to organize the events of the past hour in such a way that she didn't see herself at fault. Well before she could achieve that monumental feat, though, the door swung open, and an armored man stepped through. The way he carried himself would've given away his position if his regalia hadn't.
"It wasn't my fault, Guard Captain," Ember announced, standing.
The man faltered a step before recovering. He made his way around his desk and sat, then gestured at Ember's own chair. She reluctantly lowered herself.
"Lady Ember Caldwell, I believe?" he asked politely. "Your name has crossed my desk before. I'm glad we can finally meet."
She winced. It probably wasn't a compliment that the Guard Captain had heard her name before. "Events might have escalated more than I anticipated," she insisted, "but I didn't act inappropriately for the circumstances, nor can I be fully blamed for what happened."
Indeed, every single action that had led her here had surely been justified beyond refutation. She just hadn't figured out how. The implication otherwise was unthinkable—as if a princess of the de Caldaros family would ever behave in a disreputable manner!
Perhaps she could have chosen to deescalate at certain opportunities, and one particular aspect of the incident was undeniably her fault. But the brawl, at least, had been out of her hands. Honor had demanded that she return violence with violence. She could have left those two silver-ranks in far worse shape, but she had been merciful.
The Guard Captain folded his hands together. Ember struggled to tell what he thought of the situation, or her words. "I will hear your story, Lady Caldwell, and I will even set aside the reports given to me by my subordinates. I always seek to understand the complete picture before I make judgments. That said, the facts beyond contention are these: two silver-rank adventurers were injured in a street brawl, several stands and stalls in the market district were"—he paused briefly—"pulverized, as the reports put it, and there was a fire."
"A small one," she hurried to assure the Guard Captain. "A small fire. I put it out as soon as I saw it."
Which had admittedly taken much longer than it should've. She had been so occupied with tossing around those two disrespectful men that she had only become aware of the inferno when it had grown large enough that she couldn't not sense it in her periphery.
The Guard Captain's expression was one Ember had seen on the faces of her tutors many times in her life. Long-suffering. "Nevertheless," he said, voice calm, "there was a fire in the market district, created by you." He waited for a reluctant nod. "And significant property damage, also by you—or at least predominantly so."
"I wouldn't call it significant damage," she hedged. "Between twelve and sixteen stalls at most."
Belatedly, she realized she wasn't helping her case.
The Guard Captain leveled a serious gaze at her, not hostile but not yielding either. "Your conflict with Mister Alberts and Mister Reid could be set aside as an argument between adventurers, which the city guard normally lets the Guild mediate. The other matters, however, involve the city and its civilians. Hence my involvement." A small frown. "Though make no mistake: the guard does not approve of open brawls between adventurers, even should they be contained. We simply… choose our battles."
Ember looked shiftily away. "I just threw them around a bit. They're not actually hurt." No more than a rough sparring session, at any rate. She knew how fragile mortals were. And while these lands might not be those her family ruled, she treated the obligations that came with power seriously. Her father wouldn't allow anything else.
And that said, those obligations didn't include suffering rudeness and aggression. She could return such treatment in kind, so long as her responses were measured. Which they had been.
"They started it," she pointed out defensively. "He threw the first blow. I simply retaliated."
A sigh escaped the Guard Captain. "Indeed," he said, "and I do wonder what led Mister Alberts into such a misguided course of action as to brawl with a…" A pause. "…a gold-rank adventurer."
If Ember hadn't been so confident in her subterfuge these past few days, she might have narrowed her eyes at the dubious tone the Guard Captain had used. She set that suspicion aside, because the man had asked an implicit question. She shifted in her seat.
"There was… a thief," she admitted. "Who I caught! In the process, however, there was some minor damage to a nearby stall, which Alberts saw and took offense at." She winced. "I believe it belonged to a family member of his. We were already on mutually unfriendly terms, so he escalated." She stiffened in annoyance. "He enjoys calling me a liar at the Guild, and I've shown great restraint in tolerating his slander to begin with. Thus, I met his actions in kind."
The Guard Captain showed no particular emotion on his face—deliberately blank, like before. "I see. And the thief?"
"…she escaped in the ensuing conflict. That, Alberts is solely responsible for." She lifted her chin. "As for his grandmother's stall, I obviously would've paid for the damages and offered my aid in repairing it. I'm not a barbarian."
He seemed pleased by that response, which Ember only found herself miffed by. Again—she was no barbarian. Of course she would've taken responsibility for that regrettable outcome.
"And the fire," he prompted.
She deflated and glanced away. "Yes. The fire." Her cheeks dusted pink in embarrassment. But perfection couldn't be expected from anyone. Not even Cinereus de Caldaros himself—King of Dragons—had gone his whole life without erring. "It was… an accident," she admitted.
"Why summon fire magic at all inside the market district?" he asked mildly. "Bringing weapons—magical or otherwise—into a street brawl drastically raises the gravity of the offense."
She shifted uncomfortably. She couldn't answer the question honestly. Dragons didn't 'use magic' in the same sense mortals did. Dragons were magic. Mortals needed to fashion weapons and armor to act as their scales and teeth, and that extended to magic too; they needed spell circles and other formal structures to wield that primordial force. Dragons did not. Magic obeyed her desires no differently than her limbs did. Not an extension of herself, as a sword to a human's arm, but the arm itself.
So she hadn't drawn magic into the fight. She was always suppressing it, and had apparently failed to for a fraction of a second, agitated as she'd been. A spark had flown off, and she hadn't noticed. A lack of finesse she found truly mortifying.
"It's a skill," Ember finally said. "Not one I can completely control. As soon as I noticed there was a fire, I put it out." She'd been, as she'd said earlier, too distracted by the hooligans she'd been tossing around. "Nobody was hurt, yes?" She knew the answer, but asked anyway.
He inclined his head. "Only Mister Alberts and Mister Reid, and from what I understand, not seriously. This discussion would not be so… informal otherwise, Lady Caldwell."
Ember bristled at the implication that some humans from the mortal lands would try to throw her in a jail cell, but only because of how ignominious such a fate would be. Despite her attempts at justifying herself, she knew she was likely more at fault than anybody else. And she wasn't above the law. Father had made it exceedingly clear that no one was above the law; that concept was a cornerstone of his rule. He would rip off the heads of his own council if he found them abusing their position.
Perhaps even his children wouldn't be spared from that wrath, though he had never needed to confront such an extreme. Because we know better than to test him, she thought, not without admiration.
"I will provide reparations for the damages done, of course," Ember said, lifting her chin. "And healing potions for the injured." Even if they're the ones who started all of this, she thought sourly. But grace was expected from a victor, and even more so from a princess. "I will extend my apologies to the City Guard, and the people of Prismarche, for the unpleasantness as well."
The Guard Captain leaned back in his chair, as professional as always, but a hint of exasperation leaked through. At least he didn't seem upset. He opened his mouth to say something—
—then, for some reason, broke off, his eyes flicking over Ember's left shoulder.
Confusion knitted his eyebrows together.
A heavy feeling settled over her at the same moment, disconnected from the conversation, and without any observable cause whatsoever.
Something's wrong.
The words echoed through her head, but were so faint a whisper they didn't pierce the leaden sensation that had gripped her, both mind and body.
"Is it… getting dark out?" the Guard Captain asked, a sudden, noticeable slur to his words.
Ember turned and saw that, indeed, the light coming through the window was dimming rapidly. Since noon had only arrived an hour ago, that didn't make sense. Yet the strange development, or the slur to the Guard Captain's speech, barely provoked a spark of fascination or worry. He stood and walked—staggered, really—over to the window to peer through, and the cloying, sticky feeling inside and around Ember continued growing.
She was so tired, all at once. Exhausted like she'd never been in her life. Who cared if the sky was darkening? All she wanted to do was slump over and succumb to this awful feeling.
The Guard Captain did just that. Staring out the window for only a second longer, he leaned forward, then heavily slid down the wall and hit the floor with a thump of his head against stone.
Ember foggily watched the event, thinking it was all very strange. For some reason. She couldn't figure out why. Or make herself care.
Something's wrong!
The second time her instincts screamed the warning, she responded. Not with any sort of moderation, a measured judgment to an attack. Knee-jerk. A hand against hot metal. Insidious magic was trying to seize her, and it needed to burn.
So it did. An orange-and-gray pyre erupted in an instant, dragonfire wreathing her from head to toe. The fires of her ancestors burned hot inside her, more so than in even the rest of her family. Where Vulkarius had inherited their father's skill in tooth, claw, and blade, and Solfirus their father's mastery of magic, Ember had inherited his flames.
Gems boiled inside the sockets of her armor, and the metal itself sloughed off in steaming pools at her feet. The chair she'd been sitting on vanished, leaving not so much as a pile of ashes. Even the Divine Treasure hanging around her neck glowed white-hot under the ancestral flames of the Caldaros family.
The magic, certainly, evaporated like mist under sunlight.
And she could think again.
She bolted to her feet and spun in a circle, trying to orient herself as lucidity returned. Her eyes locked onto the Guard Captain, and concern spiked through her. She hurried over to crouch next to him.
Breathing. Not dead. But who knew for how long?
She stood and peered through the window. Inky blackness had slid across the sky, midnight invading the city of Prismarche ten hours early. She didn't know what could have caused that, but it didn't take a genius to deduce it had to be bad—very bad.
She peeled off her half-melted armor and dressed herself in another, lighter set, then hurried out of the office. Her eyes flicked around to note all the slumped-over bodies scattered throughout the guardhouse. The magic had affected everyone—possibly the whole city. And that was the especially worrying part. The magic hadn't even been targeted at her, yet she too had almost fallen under its haze. No matter how off guard she might've been caught, that warned her of a spellcaster of substantial skill and power. Someone even she wouldn't be able to take lightly.
As she shoved outside, the sky revealed itself. The sun had turned black as well, and a ring of wispy, gray fog surrounded it. That menacing sight didn't hold her attention for more than a second, because her eyes turned to the source of the magic.
Floating a thousand feet up—centered on that shattered sky which had been hanging over this city since her arrival—was a lone figure surrounded by eight huge white pillars. Not pillars, she realized. Thin and long, vaguely cylindrical, but also jagged and misshapen, like splinters made of bone. Ember's stomach sank. Yes: bone splinters. Massive shards, harvested from a colossal beast. Each was carved with blood-red runes, the symbols pulsing with magic thick enough to give her a headache.
A ritual. She had suspected it from the start, but the confirmation chilled her.
Long lines of gray were seeping into the sky, gathering in the bone shards, and she traced those trails downward. They split, growing thinner and thinner, and she saw that each connected to an unconscious townsperson. Draining them, like it almost had her.
A pair of children, a young boy and presumably his sister, were slumped against a wall. Not even teenagers. A tingling sensation washed through her, hackles rising. Father had said the mortal lands were a realm of chaos and madness, but she hadn't expected to find… this. She hadn't been here for more than a week.
She looked back up at the ritual gathering underneath the shattered, darkened sky. That it was centered on the previous magical phenomenon was certainly no coincidence. She peered closer into the middle. Floating in the midst of those eight white pillars was a tall and thin man, his long black hair fluttering in the wind—a haunting image, framed by his ritual's profane theatre. Antlers sprouted from his skull, bent and branching in wicked patterns.
He seemed more monster than person. But then again, the kinds of mages who became experts in magic like this almost always were.
As if sensing her attention on him—despite the great distance—the man stiffened.
Then calmly turned his blindfolded gaze her way.