1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Grehafen

The reek of rot and death fills Dakadza's nose, and leaving Aidan in the shadow of the overloud ward doesn't change that. The necromancer's creature isn't targeting the King Consort, then.

He grips his knife carefully, ready to stab his own leg or arm for blood if he needs—

"Oh, it's you."

The odor collapses in on itself, the wight slipping into another plane for safekeeping on its master's order.

Or, rather, its mistress's.

Dakadza's attention latches onto the female scowling at him, ink smudges highlighting the pallor of her face and masking that some of the dark stains on her heavy gown are some kind of ichor, as obvious to his magic as yelling would be to his ears.

"You have your mother's politeness, I'll grant you that," she says matter-of-factly, spinning on her heel and heading for the door Aidan had told him to take, "if not quite her discretion. I hope I didn't bother you too much out there in that courtyard."

"You know my mother?" Dakadza asks—but of course this female would, since they'd both lived here at times, and apparently they'd gotten along. But then, so had... "My sister?"

"Lallie was fighting too hard against what her magic was trying to tell her, to be able notice me on her own, and I never mistook her for one of the jerks." She holds the door for him to enter the room.

He peers in the oddly ashy office before carefully accepting. He doubts red magic makes a person malicious any more than his earth magic does him, but... "Who is the wight?"

Pleasure fills the woman's grin and makes her eyes twinkle. "Nobody dwells in it, I assure you. Not anymore. He deserved longer, but I didn't want to risk him figuring out to break free, leaving me responsible for a lich."

That doesn't answer his question, and deserves by whose judgement?

"There's something poetic in using a person's remains against those who idolized him."

Dakadza's understanding of local politics is lacking enough that he doesn't even want to guess who she's talking about.

He eyes her, the first red mage of this sort he's had opportunity to study. Her magic isn't particularly strong or even focused, mostly air with a blur that reminds him of the faery bit in Geddis. This female didn't create the monsters that sometimes hunted the marsh where he'd grown up, and... "You aren't an elemental."

Faery can't be elementals.

"Of course not. The red magics require a mage, even for those born with affinities for bone or blood and such."

Does she not realize she's part faery, or is she just not admitting it? Storing the wight in another plane suggests she has some awareness of that side of her heritage, but...maybe not.

The female gestures at a large oddly shaped rock, by one singed chair. "That's what you're after, I think."

Dakadza hoists it. It's awkward but no heavier than Geddis is. "Thanks."

"Pass my regards to your mother, if you see her before I do."

Yeah, his mother's opinion of this female would be a good thing to request, when he next saw her. "I will."