§
About an hour after our lunch ended, I went to the dungeon.
Okay, let me make it clear, the old dungeon of Narses Castle ceased operating as a prison centuries ago, that function having been moved to the Aldat Citadel in Upper Town. The only thing in the Castle even vaguely resembling a jail is a small holding cell in the security office. Even the trappings, the barred doors, chains and whatever else one might imagine when one hears of a castle dungeon are long gone. It’s just storage space now, but the occupants of the castle still refer to it by the Dorian word for ‘Dungeon’.
In that space, just like in the Pendor Estate in Atianus, is a personal tea and china storage room belonging to Benedetta, which is otherwise normal but notable for having an unusually large unoccupied area with a permanently-inscribed magic circle hidden under the floorboards.
Terese and Genette led Rod and me down to this place while wearing unusually grave expressions. I had the suspicion that Rod had said something to them while Mireia and the chambermaids were tidying up my hair and freshening my makeup. At the end of lunch, he had still been fuming about what he perceived as a slight to me. Maybe it was a slight to me, but I was still of the opinion that communications had simply gotten crossed up.
This trip had actually started when Genette went to contact the castle steward, an aging Dorian man named Makit. I don’t know what the precise contents of that conversation were, but instead speaking to Benedetta through their communication link as I expected, they led us here.
“What is this place?” Rod wanted to know. He had quietly waited on events up to this point, since he had full trust in Mother’s lady’s maid, and probably mine as well, but this was very visibly not a mailroom or meeting room or anywhere else you might expect a magic communication device to be found.
I had already guessed what was happening, but I didn’t get a chance to warn him before Dark mana filled the floor in front of us, tracing out every stroke and line of the circle hidden beneath, and a dangerous sounding contrabass hum filled the air.
Rod grabbed the hilt of his sword as a fountain of ink-like shadow, visible to mortal sight, began welling up out of the center of the circle, spreading out like water to form a ‘puddle’ a full pace in diameter.
Since I was standing on his left, I was able to place my hand on his pommel and caution him before he drew. He had done it out of reflex, anyway, so he stopped without questioning me.
In front of us, somewhat off-center of the circle, a black-haired head emerged, rising up at a steady rate, and then, to the right from our perspective, a blond head followed. As they rose further, Benedetta’s visage emerged, as taciturn and disciplined as always, as did the somewhat queasy face of a thirtyish mortal woman about four inches shorter than her.
Not mortal, I immediately revised. Although I wasn’t sure yet what she was, I already had my suspicions. I immediately expanded my spiritual vessel and put Fan Li in charge of assessing her.
They continued ascending, as if they stood on a rising platform, until they stood normally on the floor and the inky shadow at their feet drew back into Benedetta’s shoes. Benedetta wore her usual modestly-flared, high-collared, long-sleeved black dress, while the blond woman with her was dressed in professional mage robes.
“Ugh,” the woman declared, slumping dangerously as the magic let her go. Benedetta allowed a rare smile to lift the corners of her mouth slightly as she grabbed her companion’s waist to steady her.
Once the magic and accompanying noise faded, Terese dashed forward to take charge of the blond woman. Freed of that task, Benedetta turned toward me, stepped forward and then went into a deep curtsey.
I mentioned this when Lady Niaela performed one, but women in their senior years are not expected to complete the full curtsey. Getting more than halfway down is already impressive at Niaela’s age. Of course, Benedetta is not a mortal and her apparent age is probably fake, but I immediately raised my hands, trying to tell her to stop anyway.
She shook her head sternly before I could say it and finished the curtsey, dropping her head at the bottom.
“My Lady, I must beg your forgiveness for the actions of my subordinates,” she declared, staring downward. “They have failed to serve you properly, and the responsibility for their actions falls upon my head.”
She couldn’t have gotten word about my request to stop using ‘Young Mistress’ yet, but Benedetta has always called me my ‘My Lady’ in private, ever since she began acting as my etiquette teacher. Apparently she considered her companion and Rod to be included under the definition of ‘in private’.
“Please rise, My Lady,” I told her. “We are already investigating, but it seems possible the subordinates in question were unable to carry out their duties.”
She did not rise. Instead, she shook her head, while still staring downward. “I know that those whom Miss Genette and Miss Terese are familiar with were included in the casualties at Army Headquarters, but their staff were safely back in the offices, unharmed. I continued to receive my reports from them as usual, and made the mistake of trusting them to present briefings to you as well. It seems they had continued communicating with Princess Amana.”
“My Lady, stop this and stand up, or I will come over and make you stand!”
I know I shouldn’t have been getting flustered, but this was one person I just couldn’t stand watching debase herself like this.
“Ti,” Rod scolded me under his breath.
Yeah, he was right. My etiquette teacher (and sometimes Rod’s) was going to follow etiquette to the end, at least in front of her students.
I sighed, and told her, “My Lady, any slight on your part is forgiven and forgotten. Please raise your head and stand.”
She finally stood, her back once again ramrod-straight and head high. Then her lips curled just slightly again.
“I’m sure that’s the first time you ever called me ‘My Lady’, My Lady.”
“Until an hour ago, nobody had ever told me you were a viscountess! Why keep that secret?”
“Most of the domestic staff in Atianus don’t know, either. I find it better to pretend to be closer to their level. My husband feels the same, so we don’t advertise our status, there.”
“If you’re a noble, you have a surname, right?”
She dropped into a normal curtsey and stated, “My husband and I bear the surname ‘Mona’, My Lady.”
“What?” I yelped in surprise. Mona is Mother’s… my… summer residence in the Rahain mountains, as well as her… my… personal barony, and the source of my travel alias, Tia Mona.
But Mona is also the Fairy word meaning ‘Shadow’. Until that moment, I had never made the connection.
Benedetta made a sound that might have been a suppressed chuckle, then nodded. “The records for your alias include a cover story identifying you as my granddaughter, with your mother as my daughter. But Mona is indeed a barony, not a viscounty. We are theoretically promoted and retired by your father’s declaration. In reality, we’ve never governed it.”
I shook my head. This was information someone should have told me at some point. These fairy and elemental types are a little too easy-going.
“It’s time for my companion to introduce herself,” she noted as she turned slightly in the blond woman’s direction. The woman was now keeping herself upright, although Terese was still near her, watching her with concern.
Before the woman responded, Benedetta chided her, “You should have let me cast [Sleep] on you, as I would normally do when I bring someone along.”
She had mentioned ‘putting mortals in a trance’ before, when she spoke about transporting Genette, but this was the first time I ever heard it was the [Sleep] spell. I didn’t even know Dark magic had a form of the [Sleep] spell.
Her companion shook her head while wearing an apologetic smile and stated, “It wouldn’t work on me, anyway.”
She turned to me and prepared to curtsey, but I spoke first. Because, as I said before, this was clearly no mortal, and I was by no means her superior.
“I’m certain the one who should be bowing is me, Senior,” I stated, then did so, Dorian-style. “I am Tiana, acting Duchess of Pendor. Am I correct in believing that I have the honor of addressing Senior Gyges?”
Because Fan Li had already identified her as the Hekatoncheir who bears that name.
She and her siblings, Briareos and Kottos, don’t appear much in Ostish mythology. They only take part in stories regarding the advent of the gods, and a few random parables and fables.
But in the real world, she is an Immortal, in Ostish terms a goddess, who maintains a permanent presence here in the Mortal Realm by spreading her existence out across a host of hypothetically fifty bodies (in reality, I have no idea how many she has) of otherwise normal mortals. Although she’s considered a member of the Ostish pantheon, she is not part of the immortal Tutelary Council that Oranos heads. Like the HR manager and other Immortals I have met in my time here on Huade, she works for a separate organization.
Rather like the Watcher from the Marvelverse, she is stationed on Huade to observe the world and its events, presumably reporting what she sees to her superiors. She and her elder brother and sister have been watching this world since long before Senhion or even her boss Oranos came, arriving even before the primeval Old Gods that Oranos and his crew drove away. And, during that entire time, she has been living as a human being… or rather, as fifty or more human beings at a time, and rarely participating in the history she has observed.
The Immortal’s eyebrows rose. “My brother told me that you identified him on the spot as well, Your Highness. Although I am curious how you knew it was me and not my sister Kottos.”
“Please call me ‘My Lady’ for the time being, Senior,” I told her, without responding to her implied question. “How have you come to grace my castle with your presence?”
She gave a healthy laugh that proved she had recovered from Benedetta’s transportation magic. “Benedetta, her husband and your parents are all old acquaintances, child. Carson called me in to recharge the estate shields. The call for Benedetta came in just as I was finishing, so I tagged along.”
I tipped my head. “Is it okay for you to get involved like that, Senior?”
Holding up her hand, she declared, “Enough with the ‘Senior’, already. ‘Miss Gyges’ is more than sufficient.”
Nodding, I replied, “Miss Gyges, then. Can you really become involved in important affairs like this?”
With a shrug, she answered, “My bodies have to eat, so I hold occupations just like normal mortals. Living among humans as an average human isn’t interference. I often work as a mage or a mana charger, so this is just normal work.”
“Except we don’t need a mana charger here,” Benedetta stated with a side-eye toward her that made me cringe a little. Did she understand exactly what this woman was? “Why exactly did you insist on coming with me?”
“I’m just here to observe,” Gyges told her with a smirk. “It sounded fun, so I tagged along.”
Benedetta muttered, “Your definition of fun eludes me, as always.”
Yeah, she was treating her like just some lady she knew. Although she wasn’t being disrespectful of her, she spoke as if she were simply a peer. Perhaps she thought Gyges was just another mage?
No, we had been openly talking about multiple bodies and such things with Benedetta not questioning any of it. But I glanced at the others in the room and saw a lot of question marks floating around Rod’s head. Genette and Terese had the dutifully reserved faces of maids who don’t question their mistress’s words. They might be confused, but they weren’t going to show it.
“Um… I’ll try to explain later,” I told them. “Why don’t we head somewhere more comfortable than a storeroom?”
