//------------------------------// // 12 - Fate Up Against Your Will // Story: Urban Wilds // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// For a long time, it’d been rare for Bitterroot to go to the Marble Heights neighborhood. She hadn’t needed to. The sorts of ponies with bounties for their capture weren’t the types who could hide in a neighborhood as upscale as Marble Heights. But after a job involving a noble heir, petty theft, and getting hired by a Royal Guard lieutenant, she’d decided she should at least know the area. Just in case. So it didn’t take her long to find and approach High Gloss’s mansion. It was an old place and, even in this metropolis, still had grounds; it’d probably been built at a time when space wasn’t at such a premium. The lawn was even big enough to have features like low hedges around the walks and a small fountain. A spiked fence surrounded the grounds to keep the riffraff out, “riffraff” meaning “anypony who couldn’t afford a yacht”. A select few guards patrolled the inside of the fence while gawking tourists patrolled the outside. Bitterroot slipped into those tourists and began snapping pictures of the house. The camera was an instant one, but its printer, rather than being integrated, was magically linked and stowed in one of her saddlebags. She could take pictures and have them printed off immediately without it being obvious that that was what she was doing. It possibly didn’t matter, but better safe than sorry. She took pictures of the doors, the gates, particularly large windows, anything that might be an exit for somepony. Then she took pictures of the guards; if Gloss was the Mearhwolf and the guards were involved, they’d need identifying. Even with the small crowd around her, it wasn’t too hard to take clear pictures. Snap. Snap. Snap. Unfortunately, she didn’t notice much out of place. She’d doubted she would, anyway. Even somepony stupid enough to not realize they were screwing up a gigantic ritual like that would at least keep their murderous ways a secret. But on the off chance that something had been left out in the open, Bitterroot would see it. Bitterroot managed a full circuit and a half of the mansion and plenty of photos before the crowds began tapering off. Dagnabbit. She’d only have a limited amount of time before the guards got suspicious of her hanging around. It happened after another quarter-circuit, right near the front gate of the grounds. An earth mare noticed Bitterroot, paused, then ran up to her on the opposite side of the fence. “Hey!” she snapped, apparently emboldened by Bitterroot being alone. “No pictures!” “Really?” Snap. Half to annoy the guard, half to get a good picture of her in case things went south. “C’mon, it’s a free country! I don’t see any ‘No Photography’ signs. I’m not on your property. And the house looks nice!” Bitterroot turned her camera on the house again and snapped another picture. “All of that may be true,” the guard growled, “but the lady of the manor requests-” Behind her, the front door of the mansion flew open and Viscountess High Gloss strode out. While clearly not as fit as she had been during her time in the Guard, she still looked strong and stocky rather than fat. A golden mane flowed down across her shoulders, standing out against her green coat more than Bitterroot liked to admit. She had a smooth face, either unscarred from her years in the Guard or fixed with healing magic. She also seemed rather young to have once been a guardsmare; maybe it’d been a one-term-of-service type of thing for her that she played up to sound grand. She didn’t wear much jewelry, only an earring, and her clothes were expensive but simple. Bitterroot fake-gasped, whipped up her camera, and began snapping pictures. “Viscountess!” she very nearly squealed. “Viscountess, look over here!” She jumped up and down and waved. But Gloss didn’t so much as glance at her. Instead, she said to the guard in a contralto voice, “Is there a problem?” “Viscountess,” the guard said, turning around, “this tourist-” “Don’t shout it,” snapped Gloss. She waved her hoof. “Come here.” With a huff, the guard stomped over. Gloss gave Bitterroot a look, her horn sparked, and although Gloss and the guard began talking, Bitterroot couldn’t hear a thing. Silence spell, maybe? She pulled up her camera and zoomed in through the viewfinder to see if she could read their lips, but whatever they were saying, she couldn’t catch it. After a moment, Gloss went back into the mansion, came out with a bag, passed the bag to the guard, and went back inside again. The guard walked up to Bitterroot with the bag and sighed. “Look. Ma’am,” she said. “We understand that everything you’re doing is, technically speaking, legal. But the Viscountess likes her privacy, and she likes ponies respecting that privacy, so it’s probably best if you leave.” The guard held out the bag and smiled falsely. “Advice from Celestia’s brassy twin.” Celestia’s brassy twin. It was all Bitterroot could do to not freeze right then and there. Oak said the mare he’d let into the storehouse had used those words. This was her. This was the mare. This was the place. The Mearhwolf was here. Whatever reaction she had, Bitterroot tried to hide it by leaning forward and taking the bag. “Oh, I know twins,” she said airily. “Twins’re smart. I should get going.” She winked to disguise the fact that she was taking in every aspect of the guard’s appearance, just in case her picture hadn’t turned out right. She particularly noticed the small bags under her eyes. The guard’s smile lingered perhaps a fraction of a second too long. Then she nodded and said, “I’m glad we could come to an understanding.” Bitterroot laughed and waved. “Be seeing you!” she said. She sidled away, whistling an insanely catchy folk tune about Winter Wrap-Up. The second she was out of sight from the mansion, she pulled open the bit bag. It was hard to tell, but it looked like a thousand bits in there. She pulled out one of the coins and inspected it. If it was a counterfeit, it was a good one. A thousand bits. Just to get a somewhat nosy tourist away. The funny thing was, Bitterroot hadn’t seen much of anything before being passed this bag. But the second money exchanged hooves to get her to stop trying to find things out, she knew she was on to something. Sometimes, the cover-up was more revealing than any evidence left behind. She quickly fanned through her pictures. They all looked good, sufficiently in-focus. Perfect, if not very incriminating. And the phrase and bits, though suspicious, would never hold up on their own in court. No, Bitterroot needed some proof proof. Without breaking into the house. Fortunately, the place was surrounded by vantage points. Circe had said that even simply calling up the spirits of the dead for as little as an hour had immense potential. They could provide guidance. They could spill the secrets they had in life. They might even know the future. It was a subtle art, of little worth by itself, but one that could open doors to skills of all sorts, across all forms of knowledge. And here was Amanita, using it to solve probate matters. Amanita and Phalanx had gone through several houses with no problems and lots of emotions before this one. Lilac Shade had been one of the Mearhwolf’s victims, and now her, well, shade, all spectral and smokey blue, was sitting in a magic circle in the house of her sister, Olive Garden. Once the teary-eyed semi-reunion had been completed, Olive had asked Lilac a question about inheritance. One thing led to another, and now Lilac was effectively writing her own will postmortem. “-give the cottage to Forsythia and her husband,” Lilac said. “They helped so much with construction and they’re the ones who’ll get the most out of it.” Olive nodded as she scribbled more and more things down. “We were planning on doing that.” The weird part was how good it felt. Spitefully good. Like every time the living and the dead settled a small inheritance quibble, Amanita was blowing another raspberry in Circe’s direction. (Even though Circe didn’t exist anymore. That was how spiteful it was.) Circe had bleated about power, but all Amanita was doing was acting as a bridge between life and death, and it was actually satisfying. Take that, half-millennium old lich. “Is there anything else you need?” Lilac asked. It took a moment for Olive to look through everything she’d written down. “No, I, I don’t think so. I, I should let you get going.” Lilac nodded. “And Amanita? Thank you for letting me put my family at peace, but… please don’t make me stay. It’s…” She went silent. “You don’t know what living is like until you’re dead. Fish don’t know they’re wet.” “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Amanita said. Not after Zinnia. “Thank you. I think I’d like to go home now.” “Wait!” Olive scrambled to her feet. “Lilac, I- I said this before, but I miss you. We all do.” “And I miss all of you.” Then Lilac smiled. “But don’t worry. It won’t be forever. See you later.” Olive nearly sounded like she was choking. “Yeah. Be seeing you.” Amanita smudged the circle and Lilac’s form dissipated on an unfelt wind. Olive collapsed onto her rump, staring at where Lilac had been, heaving deep breaths. Amanita coughed. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Yeah,” said Olive in a distant but steady voice. “It’s just… strange. Th-thank you.” “You’re welcome,” said Amanita. “If you ever want to get the family together-” “-contact you at the, at the card,” Olive mumbled, “I know. Will… Will she be… okay with it? She’s… in Elysium now, and-” Tremors of guilt rippled through Amanita’s body. She clamped them down. “If it’s just once or twice to see her family, I think so, yes.” That wasn’t a lie. Surely someone could temporarily leave paradise for closure with their loved ones. “Good, good,” said Olive. Sniff. “I… I always felt like talking about the afterlife was just… whistling past the graveyard, you know? A nice story we told ourselves so we weren’t scared of death. But now… And Lilac’s there and she’s okay…” She looked Amanita in the eye, trying to divine something. “I don’t know whether this ritual terrifies me or if it’s a relief.” Amanita guessed that would swing to “terrified” if the ritual was called necromancy. No need for that yet, though. “I think that feeling’s awe.” “Awe.” Olive nodded. “Yeah.” Deep breath. “You should… Thank you for this.” When Amanita and Phalanx were outside again, she asked him, “How many more stops do we have, again?” “Two or three, I think,” Phalanx replied. “Let me check.” He pulled a map from his armor. “Two,” he said after a moment’s examination. “We’re right here, and we’ve got stops here, and… here.” “Good,” said Amanita. It wasn’t even 10:30 yet. They could be done with this by- She looked at the map again. They weren’t far from High Gloss’s mansion. “You okay?” Phalanx asked as he folded the map up. “Or just thinking again?” “Just thinking again.” Amanita kept thinking as she followed Phalanx. Was she just paranoid? It might explain why she was so worried about slipping back into evil when she wanted nothing to do with it. But if High Gloss was the Mearhwolf… But she didn’t know Amanita was around… did she? She glanced down a cross road. Way at the end, she could barely make out that the houses were getting bigger, more upscale. But they didn’t go down that road. These houses, while expensive, were still compact. She’d been fretting over nothing before. Was she fretting over nothing now? But she was with Phalanx, and she probably wouldn’t even get targeted. Why would somepony want to kill her, anyway? Because she was a necromancer. So- “E-excuse me? Sir?” Amanita and Phalanx both stopped. A pegasus stallion in rather nice clothes and with a bulging set of saddlebags was standing in the doorway of one of the houses, waving at them. “Good sir guard,” he said, teetering on top of the steps. “My family is rather… on edge regarding the whole Mearhwolf situation, and some reassurance — to all of us-” He jerked his head back inside. “-would be greatly appreciated.” “Well,” Phalanx said, “I’m busy at the moment, but-” He glanced at Amanita. “-do you think we can spare a moment?” “Sure,” Amanita said automatically. Her train of thought was getting put back on the rails and this could give her more time to think. “We have time,” Phalanx said, trotting to the house. Amanita followed him up, still thinking. But the Mearhwolf only killed at night, and today was too early. For a ritual death, anyway. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try something else. “Oh, thank you,” said the pegasus, leading them in. “It’s a very trying time for us.” “For all of us,” said Phalanx. The living room had that aesthetic specific to the rich, where most of everything was either white or glass. White carpet, glass coffee table, white furniture, crystal decorations on the mantelpiece, white shades. It wasn’t much of a distraction for Amanita as she took a seat near the entrance to the kitchen, only something she vaguely noti- Why did she notice the shades? Because they were down. “In fact,” Phalanx continued, “we’re actually using a recently-discovered spell to let families talk with the victims of the Mearhwolf after death. It’s… an experience, but it helps them find closure.” The pegasus smiled. “Good, good. The guard’s here, everypony!” he called out. “Him and a friend.” Why was that second sentence necessary? Amanita heard something rustle in the kitchen behind them, twisted to look- -and Phalanx was forced forward as the glowing spearpoint exited his chest. The roofs of Canterlot gave Bitterroot a better vantage point and absolutely no excuse if she was caught. She just had to not get caught. Easier said than done, but she had experience. Gloss’s mansion was surrounded by more densely-packed houses. Houses with no access to their uneven roofs. Bitterroot settled low onto one of the more even roofs she could find and pulled out her binoculars. She began squinting into windows, one by one. It was an unfortunate but simple truth: when looking for ponies who didn’t want to be found, you sometimes had to look into some private places. Bitterroot needed to do it far less than most ponies suspected — often, her tracking was finished when she found a place her target liked to frequent, then captured them there — but she didn’t blame anypony for disliking her on those grounds. (Hay, she sometimes disliked herself on those grounds.) She didn’t have any surveillance gear the average pony couldn’t get, but still. And in this case, Bitterroot couldn’t even say she found something. Each window she peeped into held only an innocuous room. A library, a bedroom, a study, a living room, a ballroom… She looked more deeply into those rooms and didn’t see anypony moving around; every single one was empty. Why did the rich need so many rooms? If she were rich, Bitterroot knew, she wouldn’t want a big house with ten decent bedrooms, she’d want a small house with one absolutely phenomenal bedroom. She glanced down at the lawn. The guards were still patrolling and none of them seemed to have noticed her. With nothing on this side, Bitterroot sighed and restowed her binoculars. She risked a twenty-foot flap-hop upwards to get more of a view. This mansion was one of those that surrounded a small inner courtyard (well, “small” still being bigger than her own house). There might be something in there. Worth a shot. Literally. It was common knowledge that earth ponies and unicorns rarely looked up, but still, a hovering pegasus wasn’t a hard thing to miss (and there was a pegasus or two in those guards down there). If you happened to be looking up at the right time, a pegasus flying overhead and looking down was obvious. So Bitterroot had devised a way to look down without actually looking down. And she had her tourist getup to thank for that. How far overhead? Sixty feet sounded good. Bitterroot adjusted her camera’s focus and zoom so stuff sixty feet down would be clear and big enough to make out. Then she adjusted her harness so that the camera just so happened to be pointing straight down. It was the natural state of a camera being unused, so it would attract little attention. Bitterroot bounded across the rooftops until she was about a block away from the mansion, then took off, rising to sixty feet, and followed a flight path that took her right over the mansion. Frowned upon, by pinnaestrian laws, but not actually illegal. Just the sort of thing a ditzy, distracted tourist might do. Bitterroot pivoted her head back and forth as she flew, oohing and aahing every which way but down. But as she passed over the mansion, she began hammering on the shutter button. With the camera pointing down, she snapped photo after photo of the courtyard and its contents, all while never looking into the courtyard. If anyone happened to see her, her attention would appear to be elsewhere. Thank goodness for magic; this trick would never work with traditional film. She settled on the rooftop opposite the mansion without a problem. Just to be safe, she hopped a few buildings over. She looked around; nopony was following her. Excellent. With the printer buzzing out picture after picture, Bitterroot pulled them out and began leafing through them. The first bunch were the ones on the ground, nothing particularly incriminating. She flipped through them automatically, coming to the sight from above the mansion, the roof, the edge of the courtyard, the courtyard in fu- Stars above. The courtyard’s contents stood out in crystal clarity. It was fairly clean and surprisingly barren, as if all the plants had been uprooted and cleared away. All that remained were some benches and the dirt floor. And in that dirt were drawn three concentric circles, one inside another. Nine feet in diameter to six feet to three feet. Along the circumference of each was written rune after rune after rune, forming sentences Bitterroot couldn’t read. A different object sat at the four… Bitterroot supposed they were the cardinal axes of the outermost circle. Objects she recognized from the list of items stolen in the Roost. And it was too small to make out clearly, but it looked like a black candle burned in the center. Yeah. That looked important. Her breath catching, Bitterroot flipped through the other pictures she’d taken. They all showed the same thing: a series of magic circles, ready for a ritual. Based on what Amanita had said, they might not even be proper circles, but it definitely looked like some sort of magic. This was the focus, the center of all the deaths. This was evidence and this was gold. She could take this to the Guard immediately, get them out here and- “Ahem.” Bitterroot twitched at the sudden voice; caught in her rush, she hadn’t heard anything come up behind her. But when she turned around, a big pegasus, wearing the same uniform as the guards around the mansion, was right behind her, several yards away, glaring pointedly at her. Well, the jig was up and the waltz was elevated. Bitterroot smiled anyway, painfully aware of the evidence surrounding her. “Hey,” she said. What would be the best route? Just bolt? He looked faster than her and could have numbers. Maybe she could pass the pictures off as accidental and- “I saw you taking the pictures,” growled the guard. Criminy. Bitterroot, still keeping her smile, took a step back, flaring her wings. “Alright, alright,” she said quickly, “I’m going. I just- really like the house, y’know? It’s very-” The guard’s eyes narrowed. Then he suddenly swept his wings down, launching himself forward, and slapped a damp cloth onto Bitterroot’s face. Bitterroot immediately raised her legs to try and push the cloth away, but with the loss of balance, the guard simply twisted, flipping her onto her back, then pushed down. With no leverage, all Bitterroot could do was beat her wings fitfully and scrabble at the guard’s legs. The fumes seeping from the cloth were heavy, almost like a liquid, and bitter. Within seconds, blackness began encroaching on Bitterroot’s vision and she struggled to keep her eyes open. As her struggles weakened, the guard began smirking. Finally, she was too tired to move anymore; her legs fell against the roof as darkness overtook her. He didn’t even have time to look surprised. The spear punched through Phalanx’s armor like a train through a tin can. He gave a little hlkht, blood coming out of his mouth, and slouched forward. Amanita yelped, scrabbled to get away, and twisted to look. An earth pony had burst from the kitchen with a spear in hoof and impaled Phalanx right through the back. She quickly yanked the spear back out, letting Phalanx topple onto the coffee table, and jabbed at Amanita. Amanita managed to duck and the spear, its edges glowing with some sort of magic, went over her head. Reflexively grasping the spear in her magic, Amanita yanked hard; the earth pony tumbled forward, across the sofa, and onto the coffee table. The glass surface shattered, fragmenting into dozens of razor-sharp shards. In the corner of her eye, the pegasus moved, and Amanita jerked around. He’d made no attempt to stop her or the earth pony and in fact was reaching into his bag. If they were trying to kill her, she didn’t want to know what he was reaching for. She awkwardly lunged forward, half-tackling him to the ground. Potions, enchanted objects, ritual ingredients, even an entire dead raven spilled from the bags. Amanita recognized some of them from Circe’s lessons: basic magic disruptors, given the right rituals. Since she was a necromancer, they wanted to be sure she was- The pegasus kicked out, pushing Amanita’s rear legs away and setting her off-balance. She collapsed onto her stomach and quickly rolled over to get her weight off her lungs. She was confronted with the earth pony, up again and plunging the spear at her chest. Amanita kept rolling; the spear narrowly grazed her back as it stabbed into the floor. Screwing her eyes shut, Amanita dumped all the magic she could quickly muster into her horn, then let it fly. The earth pony was bowled head over hooves and smashed into the fireplace. Something cracked. But before Amanita could stand up again, the pegasus jumped on her. Reverse-flapping his wings to stay on her, he simply hit her, driving his hooves into her face over and over and over. She tried to raise her front legs for some protection, but the pegasus was strong enough to force them away. Blood trickled into Amanita’s eye and she bit the inside of her mouth. In desperation, Amanita grabbed the nearest object in her magic and hurled it at the pegasus. That object happened to be one of the glass shards from the destroyed coffee table. And in its course, that shard stabbed into his throat. The pegasus’s steady blows stuttered, giving Amanita just enough time to gather her magic. As Circe had said, the carotids were a good balance between being vulnerable and quick to kill with, so those were what she targeted. Getting a firmer magical grip on the shard, she wrenched out and blindly swung it back and forth, back and forth, ripping open his throat more deeply with each wild slash. Warm blood spurted from his arteries and onto Amanita’s face. Still she swung. She swung until the pegasus drew back, a hoof to his throat in a vain attempt to stop the flow of blood. She kicked him off and red painted the floor as he rolled away, shedding materials from his bags. Panting, Amanita whirled to the earth pony. A red crater marked where her head had hit the wall. She was holding her head, moaning, doing her best to keep a hold on the spear. She blearily focused on Amanita and took a step forward. Amanita telekinetically ripped the spear from her grasp and rammed it into her chest. Stiffening, the earth pony made a wet gurgling sound. When Amanita pulled the spear back out, she tumbled forward onto her belly and didn’t move. Still, she was an earth pony, and Circe had always said whatever you thought you needed to do to kill an earth pony, do it twice over. Amanita stabbed the downed pony through the heart several more times, more blood roiling out of each new wound. The spearhead moved through flesh with a strange ease, and for her last stab, Amanita pushed so hard the spear embedded itself in the floor below. The pegasus was still alive, but only barely. A grotesque amount of blood had pooled beneath his body and the entire room reeked with its metallic stench. Blood was still trickling weakly from his neck and he was barely holding himself up. He gave a confused look at Amanita, then collapsed with a final gurgle. Amanita sat there, panting, her entire body shaking. It couldn’t have taken more than a minute, probably less. Yet now, there were three dead bodies in what remained of the room, two of them by her hoof. It’d been easy. It was a necromancer’s response; murder was their default method of problem-solving. But if they were trying to kill her, was it so bad? Self-defense. Technically. It wasn’t like she wanted to do it until they’d killed Phalanx. Come to think of it, why kill Phalanx at all? Just to get to her? If the Mearhwolf thought the ritual would go off tomorrow, maybe she thought she couldn’t be caught, so even a guard’s death wouldn’t- No. No. Don’t think about it. Speculating will get away from you again. She needed to take stock of her situation and make it slightly less awful. First order of business. Rolling him onto his back, Amanita took a closer look at Phalanx’s wound and sighed. “Dangit,” she muttered. It was bad. She’d need a potent ritual to fix it. Maybe her attackers had some ingredients and she could get it done now. She pulled open one of the pegasus’s bags and began rummaging through. Most of the stuff inside was damaged, but it’d still work. And even though a lot of the materials looked to be anti-necromancy paraphernalia (Circe had educated her on them), some ritual items were universal enough that it didn’t matter. Candles and matches, good… Wood, looked like yew, go- It took her a moment to realize what had just happened. Her bodyguard, perhaps her best character witness, one of the only ponies who had actually seen her do good for the past few days, one of the very few ponies who would absolutely vouch for her, had just died. He couldn’t protect her. He couldn’t change others’ minds about her. He couldn’t help her. Meanwhile, his killers, the ones who were probably associated with the Mearhwolf, were dead. Dead by her hoof. They couldn’t give testimony. They couldn’t tell anypony why they were doing this, what their ultimate plan was, anyone they were working with. She was sitting alone in a destroyed room covered in blood and surrounded by dead bodies that she absolutely didn’t want dead. And what was her response? Dangit. Not a profuse, panicked litany of far worse obscenities. Not utter shock. Not despair. Not even much in the way of anxiety. Just a mildly irritated Dangit, like she had just left her house but realized she needed to go back for her wallet. Because she was a necromancer. Death meant nothing to her. They might be up and kicking again in just a few minutes. She’d learned from a monster, true. She had the same skills as that monster, true. She’d even done some of the same things as that monster, true. But if she’d learned anything recently, it was that saying she and Circe were similar was like saying that most ponies had an above-average number of legs: true only in the most technical sense, laughably wrong once you tried applying it to the real world. Their similar skill sets said nothing about intent. Phalanx was a guard; by any metric, he knew how to kill people. But did that mean he was no better than the Mearhwolf? Ha ha, no. The very last vestiges of insecurity lingering in her head were finally destroyed, butchered and sacrificed on the altar of self-actualization. She was a necromancer. Not some limited medium who could only talk to spirits. Not some experimental, one-trick ritualist who could only resurrect. Hay, either of those alone could change the face of Equestria, and she was both and more. She was a full-blown, sunblasted necromancer, with a skillset that gave most ponies nightmares, herself included. Might as well own it, nightmares and all. And as for there being no famous benevolent necromancers? It wasn’t the worst thing to be the first of. Her powers were hers and no one else’s. Might as well get to using them for good now, no matter what she’d done with them in the past. Maybe it would bury the nightmares. Amanita tore apart the pegasus’s bags in her search for materials and gathered up the ones that had been scattered in the fight. Not enough for a full, direct resurrection, but she could easily pull off at least one reparation, more likely two or even three. And maybe there was something else in the house? They’d felt okay killing her in it, so maybe it was theirs, so maybe- Unfortunately, a quick search didn’t yield much of anything. They might’ve hidden it, but Amanita didn’t have time to look. She sat back down, staring at her materials, thinking fast. Which was the best course of action? She needed to bring back at least one of the ponies and get word to Code or somepony else in the Guard. But what would she do with the other bodies? Just leave them here for somepony to find? What if someone had heard their commotion and decided to investigate? And the ritual took time, so should she do that first or go for Code? Or maybe- Her eyes fell on the dead raven and she was briefly disgusted with herself as an idea sprang to mind. She didn’t need to Code, she just needed to get a message out. Was enthrallment legal for animals? …That was irrelevant; this was important. She’d ask for forgiveness later. Twilight seemed big on that. As she stretched out a wing and inked up a quill, certain familiar reflexes of enthrallment bubbled back to the surface of her thoughts like miasma in a swamp. She hated them. She welcomed them, embraced them. Her entire body was shaking, but her magic was steady as she sketched out the right runes. Ansuz… Laguz… Uruz…