"Heyyy, Hey little baby with the stolen spirit. Wake up." The voice sing-songed gently in Fiona's ear as she began to regain consciousness.
"What… is it," Fiona asked, groggily pushing herself up out of bed and rubbing her eyes. She suddenly froze. She had full control over her hands. Her body wasn't little anymore. She immediately looked around. She was in her old bedroom in her parent's house. She had a grungy old t-shirt on from one of her favorite bands. Golden light was streaming through the windows. Was all that a dream?? Her gaze suddenly snapped on a tall blonde woman standing in front of her. Her hair was pinned up in braids with gold and jade hair sticks. An intricate gold and green dress draped down her shoulders glimmering in the golden light.
"There you are, I was wondering when you'd come to," she said with a smile, her unnatural purple eyes glimmering with amusement.
"Who are you! Where am I?" Fiona suddenly reeled back onto her bed holding an arm out against the intruder.
"We're in your dream, silly," the woman looked around. "Quite a nice bedroom, really. Is this where you lived in your past life?" She picked up a manga from the desk with two scantily clad women on the cover. "How… interesting." She looked at Fiona with another smile.
"Ahh! No, please put that down." Fiona felt her ears grow hot.
The woman did as she asked, putting the book down casually on the desk again. "To answer your question, I am called by many as the Snake of Time. I visited you just yesterday, don't you remember?" The woman took on a teasing tone.
"The snake! You! You bit me! What the f*ck! And now you're here! Invading my dreams and my privacy! Wha-what do you want?" Fiona looked around again to see if she could find any weapons within reach, but all she could see were pens and jewelry and she didn't think that would improve the situation at all.
"You don't have to be so concerned," the woman said, still amused. "If I wanted to harm you, you'd be long dead by now. I just…" her grin widened predatorily. "Want to have a little chat."
"Why does that make me feel even more uneasy," Fiona said, grabbing a pillow, and wrapping it to her chest. "Well what do you want to talk about? It's not like I can stop you."
"You truly are a newcomer to our world," the woman said, her tone suddenly taking on a tinge of sadness, as she looked around at the room again. "I wonder what your world was like…" She spoke softly, almost to herself.
"But no," her gaze snapped back to Fiona. "We have other matters to discuss."
"Tell me, what do you wish to accomplish with your new life? What are your goals with this gift you've been given?"
"Goals?" Fiona asked incredulously. She felt like she was suddenly back in career or college counseling. "I don't know! I'm a freaking baby right now! I've been alive for like three months! And you want me to have goals!? Is that why you broke into my house and bit me?? So you could ask about my goals!?" Fiona grew more incredulous and angry with every sentence.
"So…" the woman smirked. "You don't have any."
"Well I wouldn't say that," Fiona suddenly felt like she had been chided by her mother. "Wait no! I don't have to explain myself to you! You have no right to question me!"
"Right?" The woman chuckled and looked sad again. "In this world there are no rights." She looked at her palm where an illusory flame sprouted. The whole room began to shake violently. "Only power." She said the words softly, almost sadly.
Fiona screamed and the whole room started to collapse, suddenly the dream shattered and Fiona found herself back in her baby body screaming and crying in her crib. What… was that? She found herself suddenly terrified as one of the maids wrapped her up in her arms and started singing a lullaby to calm her down.
"Golden Madonna?" It was late at night and the lamp was burning on the earl's desk, casting a soft warm light on him and Gourmand. "I think I've maybe heard the name somewhere, but I don't believe I know what it refers to."
"Golden Madonna is a perhaps somewhat loose group of powerful mages who chose not to form their own churches."
Avery's eyes bulged. "You mean they're all basically archbishops or stronger?"
Gourmand rubbed his fingers. "Not… necessarily, sir, but indeed they have members who are that strong. I'm not privy to many of the details of the group, but I do know they're quite mysterious and act largely independently for their own interests. The reason I bring them up in this case, is that whoever cast that veil must have been a very powerful time mage. Not only did it freeze time for several minutes for three of the servants, it was also very difficult to break, and it seemed that the perpetrator was able to move freely within. These are things that only a master of time can do. However, among the nine churches only Helios is a master of time, and as you know his headquarters is on the Numinos Isles. There should be no reason for him to come to Kinder to interfere in political affairs especially in such an obvious manner."
"So you think that whoever did this must be a powerful independent mage of some kind?"
"That's my initial thought, yes. And if that is the case it stands to reason that they really didn't come meaning to harm Fiona. For one, they probably already would have done so if they wished it. And for two, members of Golden Madonna don't usually have that many reasons to interfere in politics, especially in ways that might backlash on them. It's likely that whoever did this wants us to know who they are, and that they didn't come with malicious intent."
"What are you saying? That they came to parlay? Didn't they bite Fiona?" Avery was more angry than perplexed.
"I can't be certain, but I think there might be some kind of special magic reason at play here, something that could attract a mage of this standing. In fact, it almost seems like…" Gourmand had his fingers to his chin, pondering. "It almost seems like they didn't come to parlay with us but with Fiona." They both suddenly looked at eachother and then back towards the rest of the house where the baby was sleeping.