aldersprig | Entries tagged with sidequest

Thirty-One: Whispers

Raizel watched the conversations move around in circles. They were trying to be deferential, but she was a kid by their reckoning (and they weren’t far off), and she wasn’t firm or authoritative enough to make it easy for them.

Raven got up after a bit and went wandering, came back, and murmured in Cailing’s ear. She flushed an interesting color and, after a few hissed exchanges, got up and went with the Raven.

Raizel fought down an irrational surge of irritation. It wasn’t like he could go back home, not on a train heading towards the capital. And what was Cailing going to do?

Her mind provided her with several images of what Cailing might do. She reminded herself firmly of Amos and Emma back home. Amos. Emma. Not the Diamond Raven, not a lovely girl she happened to own, not...

“Psst. No, don’t turn around, just stay like you are.”

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Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1477404.html

Thirty: Teamwork

“Why did you even buy us?”

“Kid,” Weckel sighed, “you are going to get yourself and everyone else in a world of hurt. Would you stop that?”

“Come here. Cory, right?” She had no idea what she was doing. Did it show?

“Cory. Mistress.” He was only a couple seats away from her; he settled on kneeling on the floor in front of her.

The Raven was either still asleep or faking it to see what she’d do. She put both hands on his shoulders and looked down at him. “Your Mistress made me angry. Your former Mistress. She treats people like things. I’d had enough of that already, and I haven’t been on the road that long. So I took away the people that were letting her think of people as things. It was, uh. I didn’t think that long about it. And that was dumb.” She steadied herself. “I said you had to teach me. So. What would your old MIstress do if you talked to her like that, and why?”

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Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1476210.html

Twenty-Nine: Overheard

Raizel napped for a while, only to wake to very quiet conversation circling around her. Her head was on the Raven’s shoulder, and his was resting on her head. It felt cozy, the way she’d only ever felt with -

she felt a stab of guilt. It had been days since she last thought of Amos and Emma, Emma back home without either of them and Amos probably on his way back from this same trip she was taking now.

Well, not the same trip. She found herself doubting that rational, calm, reasonable Amos might have ended up with a captive mage, several slaves, and a kitten, a favor from a spectre, a geas from a fairy...

...and a promise to a boy whore.

read on…

Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1474331.html

Twenty-Eight: The People

The Raven had done something, she was sure of it. She had expected to be in the part of the train where people crowded onto benches or sat in the aisles. That was cheap part, the part where most people like her rode.

Instead, she and the Raven and six people wearing what looked like really not enough clothing were seated on a U-shaped bench in a cozy car of the train with enough room for all of them - and maybe two more - and she was trying not to look as if she felt as horribly out of her depth as she did.

“So.” One of the attendants - a woman, maybe a few years older than Raizel, whose incomplete clothing was of finer stuff than some of the others - cleared her throat. “What is it that you do, mistress?”

“I’m a clockmaker’s apprentice.” Raizel said it flat. “I work for my father and my grandfather in the family business.”

“You - you’re an apprentice? And you’re - sorry, Mistress.” The woman bowed her head.

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Twenty-Seven: The Train

“Am I really here?” Raizel muttered to the Diamond Raven. It felt unlikely. She had been trying for this for what seemed like months, even if it had only been days, and here they were, on the platform, buying two tickets for the train.

That she had the Diamond Raven with her, that she was carrying a kitten, and that she was being followed by a rich woman who still hadn’t quite stopped muttering about her husband, the sword - none of that seemed unusual anymore. That she still had to unthrone a Poison King, tell stories about a Jade Knave, and that she still owed several other quests to several other beings - she was beginning to think that this was her life, to go from place to place solving other people’s problems.

“If you are not here, then neither am I, and I am fairly - although not totally - certain that I am here, and so must you be, too.”

“Did you really just bargain me an entire stable of assistants?”

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Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1465849.html

Twenty-Five: The Ruminant of Roelkia
“You’re amassing quite a reputation,” the Diamond Raven commented, as they made their way out of the Judge’s office. “We should hurry if we’re going to catch the train today. I know you’re on a deadline here.”

“I don’t understand it.” Raizel shook her head. “It has to be you, people know you

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Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1442662.html

Twenty-Six: The Price

Raizel shared a look with the Raven. He looked at her, then at the two attendant, at the woman, and back at her.

She cleared her throat. “Your husband is a sword?”

“My husband is The Blessed Sword. It was given to him by the gods. To become the sword so that he not die! That’s what they

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Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1442468.html

Raizel sat down. She wasn’t sure she had another option. The Diamond Raven stood behind her, his hands on her chair. She wondered at that, but she could ask him later.

“I have to get to the capital,” she told the Judge. “That has to be what I have to do first. If I miss the census-”

“Yes, yes, they have impressed on everyone how awful it would be to miss the census, I understand. And yes, you must pay taxes. Where would we be without taxes? I’d be out of a job, for one.” He flapped his hand in her direction. “No, no. This, I want you to do while you go. People are starting to hear about you, you see. People listen to you. I’m not sure why, but it’s not mine to reason why. It’s just mine to assign the tasks as they come to me.”

read on…

Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1439737.html

They made it to the bathhouse without further incident. Raizel had never been inside a place like this, but she’d heard the stories and descriptions from people in the town that went down into the flatter lands: There were rainfall devices where you soaped off, and then big drinking-trough tubs to soak in and bathhouse boys and girls to wash your back and your hair.

She left her things in the locked box she could see from her tub, the key around her wrist, and stood under the lukewarm falling water scrubbing herself with a bar of soap her trei had bought them. Next to her, the Diamond Raven, clad in nothing but a golden rope around his neck, did the same.

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Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1437666.html

Twenty-Two: Lost and Found

“Why her?” The Diamond Raven shifted so he was standing almost between Raizel and the Left Hand. “Why this stranger on the street?”

“Because she’s not a stranger, is she? She’s the one that everyone’s been muttering about. She’s got you, which is interesting in and of itself. She’s made it through some pretty strange things, and I just saw the two of you put off a deserter, and almost nobody has managed that. He’s been following people around and sticking to their sides like burrs. And yet he wanted you, when he wanted nobody else, and while he was there, something magical answered your question, which I’ve never seen happen before.”

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Twenty-One: Pssst

“I don’t think she really wants the kitten gone,” the Diamond Raven commented, when they were out the gate and on another road. “And I don’t blame her.”

“It’s pretty cute, isn’t it?” She looked down at it, and it looked up at her and mewled. “I bet it’s terrified. All this being moved around by people bigger than it-”

“Empathizing?” the Diamond Raven chuckled. “Sounds like your life. Or, come to think about it, mine.” He touched the gold lasso around his neck lightly. “I’m pretty tossed around, too. And even in the same way. Can I hold it?”

Read on...

Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1436714.html

Twenty: The Kitten

The gardener in front of them cut a strange figure, her pockets wriggling.

Raizel bowed politely anyway. If she had learned anything so far on this trip it was that she might find the god-touch or even stranger things in places she was expecting nothing of the sort. “I, uh. I offer apology? We were hiding from,” she dropped her voice lower. “We were hiding from a deserter who wanted to accost us, and this was the first open gate. I didn’t mean to trespass.” She might have said We didn’t mean to trespass, but she was fairly sure the Diamond Raven had meant exactly that.

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Dream: The King’s Castle

Story based on a dream I had
💤
The King was raving.

Not that anyone would ever say that; he was the king. You didn’t mention he was raving — or hallucinating, or having fits — if you wanted to hold on to your head, your soul, and your volition.

But the King had gotten it in his head that one of his trusted advisers and lieutenants had betrayed him, and was going around the castle, using The Voice that filled every corner of that huge edifice, declaring that when he found that Lieutenant who’d betrayed him, he would kill them, rend them, destroy them.

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Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1434675.html

Nineteen: Evil and Escape

“For people who know about this thing—” the Diamond Raven warned.

“For people to know about it is truth! Is all of us who rotted for the Tzar laid to rest! Is everything that went wrong put better!” The deserter was foaming at the mouth. Raizel took a step back. He only spoke louder. “This is the thing that makes it all better! Do you understand? This is the truth that I deserted for!”

“But what is it?” Raizel asked for the third time.

It is a spell so dark your eyes cannot comprehend it. It is a spell so nasty that your mind will shy from it. It says that the Tzar who won the Seventh War did so with the darkest of magics. It says that he bled his own people’s souls to do so, and did so knowingly. It may shake the foundations of your world. It may change everything. It may change nothing, save that people will know exactly how far their Tzars will go to hold on to this Empire.

read on…

Crossposts: https://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1432667.html

Eighteen: Treason and Heresy

“No!!” The deserter shook his head, more as if to clear a bug from his ear than to negate a thought. “Not for me. ‘No aid for deserters,’ I know so well. Do it for the nation, then.” He pulled a tattered old piece of paper from an inner pocket. No, she realized, vellum. “Do this and I will lie down, never at peace, but troubling the others no more.”

She took the vellum carefully with just the tips of her fingers. Next to her, the Diamond Raven was looking at the paper too.

“If this is real-” He sounded sick.

“Real! Real and then some! It is exactly what it looks like and nothing more, I swear it on my honor!”

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Seventeen: Crossing, Cross

“You’re old enough to be out on your own, yes?”

“Of course I am.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “I am here, aren’t I? Everyone may keep calling me child, but I have an apprenticeship, I am carrying the weight of my family to the capital, and I - yes. I’m old enough.” She threw up her hands. “Why. What did I miss?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think this boy whore was putting you on or anything of the sort,” he reassured her, although the thought had not been on her mind until he said it. “No, it’s just that a fox - well, that sort of fox - it’s,” he coughed. “Well, you’re on a trip, it’s the right sort of time to make that, I suppose. They’re…” he looked away, blushing. “Usually made from bottle-brush and red-tail, which you can find on the side of the road a lot. And then you use some scented oil and carve a piece of the bottle-brush, and it’s, ah. Used in sex.”

“Oh! One of those!” She grinned at the blush on the Diamond Raven’s cheeks. “I’ve made those before, although not with the red-tail. That must tickle…”

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Sixteen: the Arrow Pulled

The Tzarin and his people wanted to leave slow and late the next day, so Raizel and the DIamond crude mountain people, and they found themselves angry and uncomfortable with their result.

The Raven was quiet as they walked, which suited Raizel. It was early, the sun was low and rising lazily, and she wanted to make good time while the weather was clear and cool.

When he started humming, she tried to ignore it, but the tune was catching, the sort of thing that spiraled its way into your ear and took up residence there. She found herself humming along.

It was only when she caught him glancing at her sidelong, smirking, that she stopped the humming, flustered. “What?”

“You sing very nicely. and you handled those idiots quite well.”

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Fifteen: Singing of Fire

Diamond Raven was fussing at her as she walked over to the veiled Tzarin - but he walked with her the whole way. Raizel didn’t listen so much to his words as she listened to his tone. He wasn’t happy with her, no, but he was also worried for her. Worried about her? What could be all that dangerous about singing to a Tzarin? He might laugh at her. They all might. Courtiers, she had heard, were like that.

She stepped into the brilliantly-veiled tent - as covered and as decorated as the Tzarin himself - and bowed. “Prince, I hear you would have me sing for you.”

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Fourteen: Walking with the Veiled Prince

She missed the carriage immediately, but there wasn’t such a thing going from Esteronzerai to the train station for at least two days. In two days, if she made good time, Raizel could already be on the train.

She and the Diamond Raven joined a small group of people leaving the fanciest hotel in Esteronzerai, all seeming to have the same thought she had. It was a strange and mixed group, including a tinker with his cart and his apprentice, a furrier carrying what seemed like a whole forest of furs on her back, a woman who introduced herself as a librarian who was going to the capital to pick up some new books, she with a bodyguard, and a small retinue of courtiers gathered around a person wearing a broad hat ans swathed in veils.

They were, one of the courtiers explained, from Mipodek to the south, and they were also travelling to the capital, although they were taking their time about it. It was supposed to be a trip of exploration for their young Prince - which was something like a Tzarin - to learn more about the lands around Mipodek. Their Prince, it turned out, was the one in all the veils.

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Thirteen: Attracting Attention

She could only see the glow at first, but as she straightened back up, she could make out features - plains-people, plains-straight hair and plains-flat nose. She bowed again, just to be safe.

“Oh, none of that,” laughed the voice. Male, or male-like. “We’ll take care of this place. It doesn’t need these stones to be sacred, you know. It doesn’t need anything but this place to be sacred. But if you’re worried - and you look like you’re worried - there is something you can do.”

There was always something she could do. “Yes, honored one?”

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1422591.html

Twelve: Watch What You Say

The man who might or might not b the Diamond Raven struggled, but he couldn’t seem to do anything about the cord around his neck and, rather than have Raizel tug it tighter, he followed her. “I have things I should get-” he protested, but she didn’t listen, and then “I shouldn’t leave a candle burning-” and then “someone needs to watch the sacred spot.”

“Someone does,” she agrees. “But having it be you might be a bit silly.”

“And why would it be silly for it to be me?” He raised his eyebrows at her in challenge.

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1419253.html

Eleven: The Diamond Raven

Esteronzerai was the biggest town Raizel had been in yet, and it was where the carriage’s route diverged from Raizel’s, whether or not she had been stopping to lasso a wizard. She bowed to the driver and, her grandfather’s words in her mind, tipped him, although she had not been responsible for the payment for this trip.

He bowed a little back to her, and did not seem offended by the amount. “Good luck on your journeys, child.”

She had, at home, outgrown “child” when she was old enough to watch the next-youngest children. It was strange to put it back on for this trip.

She smiled at the carriage driver anyway, because she thought he meant to be kind, and then turned her attention to Nadya. “Where do I find your Diamond Raven?”

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1418967.html

Ten: The Perils of One’s Past

She should have thought of it before she agreed, she supposed. She might be stepping into some long-held family feud — their mountain had several of those — or maybe into the sort of thing where the city wanted to move someone whose home had stood in the same place for three hundred years. Their town had dealt with that, too. She might be running into another conspiracy sort like Trinner Tralen, who thought, perhaps, that the city or the empire or this architect were out to get him.

And maybe they were. She thought about Trinner Traln and the spectre sliding into him. She didn’t even know if she’d done the right thing there.

The architect’s nervous cough interrupted Raizel’s train of thought.

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1417378.html

Nine: Yederya Wizard

The woman studied Raizel. “You have skills I don’t?”

“Well, I can’t design a building,” Raizel admitted, “or build one. But in the last two days I’ve been dusted by a pixie, blessed by a spectre, and kissed by what might have been a goddess.” Also by two whores, but she didn’t think that counted. “Also, I grew up on a mountain side, and I have on occasion bound wild goats, a catamount, and once a small wyvern that was getting into the garden. I might be able to help you.”

“If you could, I could start building on time. I can’t pay much - I’m not that rich of an architect yet - but I will put your name on the building. Do you think you can do it?”

“Tie up a wizard? I’m willing to try. The carriage stops in Esteronzerai anyway, doesn’t it?”

“That’s where it turns off to go north,” the woman nodded. “His name is - well, the thing that he calls himself is the Diamond Raven.”

read on…

Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1416080.html

Eight: A Kiss

Raizel took breakfast in the inn’s bar the next morning, feeling well-rested, content, and ready to face the rest of her journey. Perhaps she’d even hire a coach.

The barmaid leaned over the table while she was refilling Raizel’s mug. “There are opportunities around here, you know, for someone as clever as Esterzon Gorenz says you might be. And if you really destroyed that Black Missive he’s been going on about for years-”

Something about the barmaid, or maybe something about the pixie dust still brushed across Raizel’s eyelashes, was a little strange. She looked closer - closer at the clever decolletage, that looked lower-cut and more dangerous than it was - and realized she could see a spark of divinity hiding in the woman’s chest.

Until then, she hadn’t know she could see such things. Perhaps it was just the dust.

“I destroyed the Missive and the, ah, the multi-hued falcon, ma’am.”

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1415892.html

Seven: Moving On

The black-and-blue light danced upwards like a geyser and then seemed to be sucked downwards, towards the books.

”No!” Trinner Traln shouted. Raizel glanced at him just in time to see him jerk away from Esterzon Gorenz and dart towards the idol.

The blue-black light seemed to suck him in. No, sucked in a portion of him, a light like that from the idol. It pulled out a Trinner-Traln-shaped shadow of strange mystical light and the whole thing was sucked into one of the tomes.

The specter was there in front of Raizel again. “Finally,” it croaked. It settled atop Trinner Traln - and was gone.

Among the tools in the chest was a flint and steel. Raizel lit a small fire and burnt all of the tomes, watching as the flames danced black and blue, stinking of evil.

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1414174.html

Six: The Evil Idol

Raizel was in a plane of white in front of a black spectre, without fifty sed and nowhere near the train station.

If she got out of here, she was going to curse Trinner Traln and that idiot Esterzon Gorenz with every trick and hex and lie all of her grandparents and great-grandparents had taught her.

If.

That was looking to be the problem.

The spectre opened its maw. You will kill the idol.

Why did everyone want her to kill and destroy and get rid of things? What was she, the trash-picker? Was this more of the ridiculous nonsense about the “mountain people?”

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1413499.html

Five: Pixie Dust

Trinner Traln and the round man were, of course waiting for her.

“Pixies,” she swore at both of them. “Pixie dust. What were you thinking?”

“What?” The rotund man stared at her. “There are pixies in that cave? And you didn’t bring any out?”

“What do I look like to you, man, an insane woman? Of course I didn’t bring a pixie out.”

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1412398.html

Four: The Narrow Cave

The cave was, indeed, very tight, and if Raizel had been any better fed, she would not have fit. Trinner Traln and the round man shouted at her and each other as ehs slipped through the opening, moving more like a snake than even like crawling.

“How did you even get this in here?” she called.

“Ah…” Trinner seemed to have rolled into one of his jittery, quiet times. The large man guffawed.

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1412133.html

Three: The Black Missive
by Lyn Thorne-Alder

The walk to the strange man’s cave was only an hour because of the rolling limp that affected his walk, and, it seemed, his speech patterns. He would go up and down, up and down with his tales as they walked, telling Raizel all about the Empire’s plans to read everyone’s mind, only to turn around and whisper, so very quietly, that the birds were there to spy on him, and then be back to shouting again.

Three times, Raizel offered to go on ahead, and three times he turned her down, each time more angrily than before. The last time, he swept both hands in wide denial, as if clearing off a table. “You only want the falcon for yourself! I will get some other child to get it, someone who is less greedy!”

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1411861.html

Chapter 2: Taking Off
by Lyn Thorne-Alder

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Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1410683.html

Day One, Chapter One: The Quest
by Lyn Thorne-Alder

New Story with a short timeline! This is Side Quest, a story for Camp NanoWrimo July 2017.

And so it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Tzar Vimyxa that representatives of all the families of the nation should come to Buscontra, in the north, to be counted and taxed.

Raizel was the only choice, when it came down to it.

Her parents still had three children on apron-strings, one on the teat. That effectively tied them to the home, for the little ones couldn’t make a trip like that.

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