Book 4 Chapter 16: Sister’s Home

++Legislation on restricting the means through which a magician may work to fight against kidnapping attempts has always been fiercely opposed by the magician families of Garamon, and, in all fairness, many of its older nobility too, whose warrior children are not that much less endangered by such practices. It’s simply considered a price worth paying to have the occasional city block levelled if it appeases such institutions. ++

- Remark upon the legal wiggle-room afforded certain victims of kidnapping within Garamon.

“I’m not scared of you, you know,” Victoria told the bastards dragging her along with them. She was working hard to try and muster up some veneer of aristocratic dignity and imperious outrage.

It wasn’t really working. Not through any fault of her own, mind. It was just generally difficult to muster up any sort of dignity when you were being carried like a rolled-up carpet with your hands bound.

What made it worse was the reaction she got. Most of the men ignored her, save for the two or three who heard her claim and snickered. That only made Victoria all the angrier.

“I’m not scared of you,” she repeated. “And you’re all too stupid to realise why.”

They didn’t take her bait, so she just kept going anyway. “My sister’s going to come for me. Isabel Vornholt. Have you heard of her?”

She could bloody well tell that they had. They looked nervous.

“Quiet,” one of them grunted, which only made Victoria realise that she’d touched a nerve. These were not powerful magicians, she knew that much. Doctor Brown would’ve boasted an advantage over any of them, and if there were a lot of the bastards, Victoria still found herself doubting that numbers alone would make a difference when Isabel swooped in.

“My sister can fly,” she said smugly. “She can fly and she fought off a whole invasion from the Voret families not one year ago. She’s gotten more powerful since then, and she’s not even twenty yet. Can you imagine how much magical strength a magician of her talent and age gains every year? Probably more than any of you gain in ten. Probably—”

Someone grabbed her face hard, pinching the mouth shut with a strong grip as he stared into Victoria’s eyes. She didn’t see anything human in him. No compassion, no doubt, no considerations for the fact that he was man-handling a fourteen year-old. The pitiless pits of his stare bored through her and knocked the speech flat.

“Shut your fucking cunt mouth,” he snarled, “or I’ll cut one of those pretty blue eyes out right here and now.”

Victoria just stared at him, moving her lips and lungs but not producing a single sound. She trembled, even as she went stock still. Unable to so much as shift a muscle save for the fearful spasms now racking her.

The man held her for a few moments more, then let her go and continued moving on with the rest of his group. They were in winding streets at the moment, but in a few more seconds they’d be in the open again. From there, with the lack of obstructions, they’d be able to speed up more by conjuring winds to help themselves run.

And now Victoria felt that prospect sinking into her mind like acid. She felt it twist her guts and eat away at her resolve. She felt herself doubting whether she’d get out of this.

That man had been serious when he threatened her. He didn’t care about how old she was, if Victoria had defied him again he would’ve made good on his threat without even hesitating.

These were serious, dangerous men, and now Victoria knew it more deeply than she had ever known anything else. Now she knew just how grave the situation was.

…But she knew, too, that she’d get out of it. Not because she was cunning or powerful, not because she had an actual plan, but because what she’d said before was true. Victoria knew that Isabel would be coming for her.

Granted, each subsequent step left her feeling like she knew that a little bit less than the one before.

Victoria’s courage kept on fizzling as they moved, and her body was soon throbbing with the hot, deep pain of muscles worked too hard and too long. She felt weak, frail. She felt like she’d been taken apart and reconstructed using material far less durable than the stuff other people were made of. Each of the men around her practically ate up the distance, but they didn’t let her difficulties slow them at all.

At first, Victoria wasn’t sure where they were heading. Then she recognised Laugrey bridge far to the south of them, the river underfoot, and saw a boat parked just by the banks and ready for boarding.

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“Where are you taking me?” she croaked. Of course, Victoria didn’t get an answer. As she drew nearer to the vessel she was able to make out letters on its side, a name. Some foreign words she couldn’t interpret.

“Where are you taking me!?” Victoria demanded, stopping where she was, panicked suddenly. A boat. But not just a ferry, this was too big for that, ocean-borne. Were they planning on snatching her right out of Garamon? Out of the Empire maybe? Victoria’s lungs started working rapid-fire like machine gun bullets fed by a belt. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Still couldn’t believe this was happening to her.

And she couldn’t stay where she was, because she was surrounded by dozens of nasty men who didn’t give a crap about anything relating to her save that she did as they told her to.

Her head jerked forwards as a strong hand smacked into the back of it, shaking the thoughts loose in Victoria’s skull and sending her to stumble forwards. She impacted the man in front of her, who shoved her back hard. She fell, then before she could even register having fallen more hands seized her and dragged her back up to her feet. Her dress was ruined, the new one Isabel had bought her just that day. Her head hurt, she was dizzy, she could barely think, and now she was moving so fast towards that boat, the one that promised to snatch her away from Garamon entirely.

Victoria started to cry.

She cried like she was a little girl again, and no matter how hard she tried to stem the tears her body just wouldn’t listen. The men didn’t listen either, caring no more for her sobs than they had for her threats and demands, just continuing to drag and shove until Victoria stumbled onto the boat and was forced below decks.

It was dark and cold, swaying slightly on the river. Everything smelled of must and old metal. It made her sick. Her fear made her sick. Her weakness made her sick. Victoria didn’t even have the will to try and call on her magic, however much that would have done. She couldn’t even bring herself to make the attempt. That was how weak she was. Too weak to try.

Then the ship tumbled. Victoria didn’t realise what was happening at first. She felt the shockwave before she registered the magic, heard iron tearing as something punched through the vessel and whipped by just a handful of paces from her to leave a gaping wound through both sides of the ship’s hull and everything in-between. It rocked, then tilted, water and air sucking through, smoke coiling, men screaming. Something landed right in front of Victoria, visible now thanks to the daylight spilling into the ship’s bowels.

It was a man’s arm.

She screamed, then something fast and strong grabbed her and dragged her right to one of the holes, and Victoria screamed even louder. It took her long seconds of flying and struggling to finally realise what had happened, and even then it only really sank in when her eyes settled on Isabel’s face as the two of them pulled up to hover a hundred feet in the air.

Below them, still on the river but now sinking deeper into it by the moment, the vessel was a ruin. Magic was flying from the deck and explosions going off around it as some other magician duelled what seemed to be half the kidnappers at once. Victoria barely noticed that, though. She was suddenly too preoccupied hugging her older sister.

“Are you okay?” Isabel asked her, voice uncharacteristically soft and concerned.

“I…think so.” Victoria’s head still hurt, but the dizziness was gone and now she was back with Isabel again. She saw her sister’s relief last for all of a second.

Then the anger took over.

“I am going to drop you down at the riverbank, I want you to stay there and focus on shielding yourself. Are you okay with that?”

“...Yes,” Victoria replied. She wanted so much to stay by Isabel’s side, but she wanted even more to keep from being so fucking weak that she prevented her sister from even retaliating against the kidnappers.

Besides, she wanted to see them pay too.

In moments Victoria was wrapped in a bubble of aether and left to drop down, landing without much of a bump. When the bubble split open she found a blonde man standing before her with an easy smile. He raised his hands placatingly as she stumbled back.

“Hold on,” he said quickly. “Calm down, my name is Ilgryn Voret, hello, I’m your uh…I’m your sister’s gentleman friend.”

Victoria didn’t know how to respond to that, and before she could decide, Isabel got to work on the rest of the kidnappers.

Victoria had been expecting some continuation of the magical duel. She’d been expecting some epic battle of wits and arcana, to see what her sister could do in action.

Well, she did see what Isabel could do. She saw her arc high up into the air so fast that she was a mere dot on the distant heavens in seconds. Then she saw that dot hover a second, lingering higher than the clouds before rapidly enlarging once more. Isabel swooped down and pulled up a few dozen yards shy of actually ramming the ship.

The great block of aether she’d been dragging down with her, did not.

It hit with the sort of force Victoria would’ve expected from someone dropping a second ship on the first, tearing right through layers of iron cladding to fall deep into the vessel. Then the whole thing exploded violently enough to tear the ship fully in half. Bits of burning or even molten iron went flying in all directions, sizzling into the river or slicing into the cobbled banks. A piece actually would’ve hit Ilgryn Voret, though he’d erected a barrier before Isabel struck, so the globule of metal just splashed harmlessly a foot from his face.

That barrier didn’t stop the shockwave running through the ground, though. Victoria’s teeth rattled for a moment as it passed.

There wasn’t any smoke at first. It was not, after all, a chemical explosion. No. This was pure magic. Victoria could feel it on the winds now billowing outward, radiating waves of raw power. In that moment she finally felt just how vast the gulf between her and Isabel was. In that moment, she finally understood how big the gulf between Isabel and the rest of humanity was.