Victor of Tucson

Over the next couple of days, Victor spent less time than he wanted working on his new Energy weaves. The soldiers on garrison duty were still members of the ninth cohort, and they’d gotten an infusion of excitement and enthusiasm when they’d witnessed Victor’s fights with the giants and then from their flawless destruction of the undead swarm. He couldn’t hold it against them when they asked for more training. After their extended bouts, Victor felt guilty going inside while they marched out to the roadway and began constructing barricades and rebuilding the watch tower on the beach. The only solution he could think of was to spend some of his free time helping with that endeavor.

So, he spent most of his days working with the soldiers, and then, in the evening, while he sat with Valla, he took time to visit with Khul Bach and worked on his cultivation drill, which he felt was very close to advancing out of the “basic” category. Finally, after cooking up a large meal and checking his Farscribe books and pages for correspondence, he’d sit with his notes and ponder the complex patterns of Energy that he hoped to weave. He was making progress, but it was slower than he’d anticipated.

When he’d created courage and justice, he’d had help from Gorz and Old Mother. Sure, he’d learned a lot since then, even made some spells of his own, but weaving Energies was different from building spell patterns. At first, he thought he’d do something simple by replacing the inspiration in his justice weave with glory. He’d thought it was a no-brainer—a complex weave, sure, but all the hard work had been done. It turned out that different affinities weren’t exactly plug-and-play. When he tried to build the weave in his pathway, the glory-attuned Energy didn’t hold the pattern where inspiration did; it kept slipping and drifting. He tried to force it with the power of his will, and though he could do so, keeping it where he wanted it, the pattern never “snapped” together; it never flashed and became a new attunement.

He wasted two days trying to modify the pattern to make the glory-attuned Energy work with it, but, in the end, he decided it was like trying to force a spring into a mechanism that wanted something more like a cog wheel. What he needed was to craft a mechanism meant for the spring from the ground up. What it boiled down to was that Victor’s idea of tackling what he’d thought would be the easiest new weave turned out to be one of the more complicated ones, so after two days of struggling, he decided to try working with something a little simpler. Rather than trying to put together another weave involving three Energies, he chose two—rage and glory.

On the fourth night after Karl’s ill-fated attack on the keep, after a hard day sparring and working on the watch tower, Victor sat down to eat a plate of sliced meats, cheeses, and fruits. He quietly munched as he flipped through the pages he was sharing with Edeya, turning to her latest missive:

Victor,

I received word from Rellia today. The legion has captured High Keep and, leaving a sizeable garrison behind, will begin the march to reinforce us at the citadels. She said Borrius plans to split the legion; half will march north along the western edge of Hector’s current territory, and the other half will march along the eastern perimeter. Along the way, they plan to split off support units to add to each keep’s garrison. They know we’ve called for the reserve cohort at the pass to join us, so they plan to take their time, ensuring they haven’t missed any other “surprise” armies like the one that assaulted you at Sea Keep.

The castles are intimidating, each guarding a side of the massive arch. Their walls must be a hundred feet high, built from the same white stone as the bridge. Only a narrow approach is possible because of the steep slope, and there’s no room to stage an army before the enormous gates. For now, Sarl and Kethelket have judged our best course of action will be to lay siege, holding ground out of range of the defenders and preventing any more of Hector’s forces from leaving the mountain. Sarl intends to build siege weapons, hoping to soften the defense and perhaps destroy the gate before our eventual charge.

It's good that we got here ahead of the army; it’ll take weeks to properly prepare for what looks to be a difficult assault. I hope you and Valla are well and that we’ll see you soon.

With affection,

Lieutenant Edeya

Victor frowned, staring at the page with unseeing eyes; he was busy picturing the scene, imagining the two tall keeps and the bridge between them. He was glad the army would hold off, dig in, and prepare for a real siege. He wanted to be there when they attacked. If they couldn’t breach the gates with siege equipment, then Victor would be the one to assault them. In days past, he’d determined that Karl’s axe was not conscious. However, it seemed to be made of incredibly dense, enchanted metal, and he had an idea that it would be better at smashing defensive structures than Lifedrinker. “Which is good, lovely,” he said, resting a hand on Lifedrinker’s haft. “You’re meant for better things than chopping wood.”

He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer but simply hummed with pleasure. She wasn’t the talkative sort. “Unless you count screaming in battle.” Amusement rippled forth from the axe, and his grin widened. Victor stuffed the last slice of peppery cured meat into his mouth and stood. “Okay, let’s go check on Valla, then get to work on that Energy weave.” With a final pat to Lifedrinker’s haft, he walked down the stairs through the long hallway to his bedroom. On some level, he knew something had changed the second he opened the door; he’d grown used to the layer of magical fog hanging in the air near the ceiling, and when it wasn’t present, he jerked his eyes to the bed, only to find it empty.

“Valla?” He frantically scanned the room, eyes settling on the door to the bathroom.

“Don’t come in here!” her voice cried from behind it. Of course, Victor immediately started for the door.

“What’s wrong?” He rested a palm on the warm wood, his need to see she was all right warring with his desire to respect her request.

“I’m . . . I think I made a mistake, Victor! I’m not me anymore!”

Victor touched his hand to the handle, and the house, recognizing him as the owner, unlocked the door with a click. Still, he didn’t open it. “Take a breath, Valla. Can I come in?” He tried to keep his voice steady, tried to slow his pounding heart.

“No! Ancestors! Oh, Victor! Just wait until night, close your eyes, and let me slip away in the shadows. Let me hide among the other outcasts in the world!”

“You’re freaking me out, Valla. I’m opening the door.”

“No!” A thud accompanied her objection, and he knew she was leaning against the other side of the door, pressing it closed.

“Okay, then tell me what happened.”

“One of my ancestors spoke to me. Somehow. Ugh! I don’t know how it’s even possible. Is she in my blood? Did I meet her spirit? No, she said it was just a fraction of herself . . .”

“Valla, slow down! Take a breath. What actually happened?”

“She wasn’t Ardeni, she was Ordeni.” Her words stirred a faint memory in Victor’s mind, and he tried to pin it down. It was something Chandri had told him . . . a story about the world forming.

“Oh! Aren’t they the people who got destroyed when the world was new? Didn’t they all gather to build a new city, using what they learned when the System arrived? Like, weren’t they really talented with Energy?”

“And the Yovashi called down a piece of the yet-unformed moons to annihilate them.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, that part sucks, but it’s neat that you have a piece of them in your ancestry . . .”

“A piece? Hah!” Soft thuds accompanied her words, and Victor could tell she was bouncing her forehead against the wood.

“Come on, Valla, just tell me.”

“My ancestor had the Rihven bloodline. She asked me to take it up.”

“Okay . . .”

“I thought it was the noble thing to do. I thought I should rise to the occasion, to bring forth this lost bloodline, to ‘share it with the world,’ or some other nonsense she spouted.”

“That’s exciting, right?” Silence. “Valla?” She didn’t answer for several long seconds, and Victor pressed, “Talk to me.”

“I just, well, I just didn’t expect such changes. I should have known better; the Rihven were compared to the Ridonne. Why don’t I remember any art depicting them? Did the Ridonne purge them from history? I didn’t know I’d look like this, dammit!” As she swore, Victor had to fight to push his amusement down; the woman he loved was in despair—this was the time to be serious.

“I don’t give a shit if you’ve sprouted tentacles and grown a dozen eyes. I love you, Valla. Come on! I’m a titan, not a chickenshit boy. Let me see what my lovely, beautiful, sweet, brave, powerful woman looks like.” In response, Victor felt the doorknob twist, and he let go of the handle as it slowly swung open, revealing her. “Holy fucking shit, you dummy! You’re gorgeous!”

“I am?” Tears streamed from her eyes, and Victor reached out to wipe them with a thumb as he looked at her, really taking in the changes. He could see why she’d be upset, even though she was totally wrong. Yeah, she’d changed a lot, but she was still Valla; she was still amazingly beautiful by any standard. Even so, if he’d changed that much with his first dose of the Quinametzin bloodline, he might have been freaked out at first, too. Valla was a good foot taller than she’d been, and though his house was built with high ceilings and accommodating doors, she was as tall as he was in his slightly reduced form. Her skin, while still retaining a hint of blue, was much paler, and strangely, Victor thought he saw a shimmer of silver in it as he rubbed her tear away with his thumb.

If the changes had ended there, with her added height and different skin, he imagined she would’ve taken them in stride. Those were the most minor of changes, however. Her hair, too, was different. Only hints of its seafoam color remained, largely replaced by shimmering, metallic silver tresses. Her eyes, once pure, glittering teal, were flecked with swaths of silver. Even her facial structure was different; he felt like he was looking at Valla’s long-lost older sister; her cheeks were higher, her jaw more defined, and her brow more angular. She looked more . . . regal was the only word Victor could think of.

Despite all those changes, Victor thought the last was the one she was really struggling with. Valla had grown wings, and they weren’t little fairy wings like a Ghelli’s. They were full-on, massive, feather-covered wings. They twitched, expanding and contracting awkwardly, one at a time, clearly throwing Valla off balance. He could see her struggling to control them as he regarded her. Even so, the wings, while big and maybe cumbersome, were beautiful. The feathers were silver with teal highlights, just like her hair. “Yeah, silly. If you were a ten before, now you’re a fucking twenty.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just trust me, okay? You look amazing. You’re the prettiest person I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some knockouts, as you know . . .”

Valla punched him, blurting out a noise that was half sob, half laugh. “Stop it! These wings are terrible! I don’t know how to keep them still! Look at the bathroom; I destroyed it!” Victor looked over her shoulder to see the towels, knick-knacks, and toiletries they’d accumulated on the counters were spilled and scattered all over the floor.

“You just got ‘em, silly. It’s going to take a little getting used to. Why do you think I was so obsessed with learning to make myself smaller when I’d first started to look a little like a Quinametzin? It’s hard to change your mental image of yourself. You need to practice with those wings, but think about it, Valla! You’re going to fly!” He watched her eyes, watched the tears still pooling, but saw something light up in them, a glimmer of excitement. “Yeah, I’m jealous of that, dammit! Hey! If I make myself small enough, you could fly me around . . .”

“I’m not carrying my lover around like a baby!” She growled, and Victor noticed another change; her sharp, catlike teeth were mostly gone—her dentition looked very human now. Was that a result of her embracing her Ordeni ancestry? Was that one of the differences between them and the Ardeni?

“Okay, forget all this physical stuff. How do you feel? Did anything else change?”

“Yes!” She started to cry again, tears bursting out of her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. Victor pulled her close, still standing in the doorway, holding her against his chest and stroking her head, smoothing his fingers over her light, surprisingly fluffy, silvery hair. “I . . . I’m not crying from being sad! When I looked at my status sheet, I got hung up staring at my race; it says I’m Ordeni now with a Rihven bloodline.” She sniffed and, pressing her face into his chest, kept speaking, “But when I finally looked further, I saw the biggest change of all. I worked so hard to get my affinities up over six using the techniques I’d learned from Tes. So hard!”

“Yeah?” Victor was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Had she lost her affinity?

“Now my air affinity is over eight. Just like that, without any work!” She pushed away from him, scowling, and boy, could she scowl with those angular silver brows. “I feel like I cheated!”

“Shit, Valla, are you kidding?” Victor shook his head, bemused. “You worked hard to get it up to six, and now it’s eight. If you hadn’t worked hard, it might not have risen as high. You’re not a damn cheater. Anyone who can advance their race will do so. You know that!”

“Not everyone does . . .”

“Well, they aren’t our peers. We need to be strong, and this is how you do it. Fucking-A, Valla! Your affinity is awesome! This is going to help so much!”

Valla sniffed, the waterworks drying up. She looked into Victor’s eyes, and he savored it, enjoying a little dive into those beautiful silver-teal orbs. After a moment, she let go of his arms and took another step back, shaking her head ruefully. “I can’t even put my armor on.”

“Ah, shit.” Victor glanced at her new, huge appendages sprouting from between her shoulders and frowned. “We gotta think of a way to fix that.” He frowned, shaking his head, putting the thought away for another time. “We’ll figure it out. On another note, though, how many racial ranks did you get? I got three . . .”

“Ten!”

“Damn! I’m glad I gave you one of those apples, then.”

“Well, you’re the one talking about how we need to get stronger, but that’s a good example of how you don’t follow through with your own advice . . .”

“Not true! If I ate another apple, I might get two ranks out of it. You think two more racial ranks for me is as valuable as having an ally as strong as you? How about having to worry less about the woman I love? How much is that worth?”

“A lot because this woman isn’t going to let the man she loves do all the heavy lifting anymore.”

“Right,” Victor nodded, “heavy lifting. Like when you fly me around . . .” Again, Valla punched him, and he took a step back, laughing. “Hey! Careful! I think your knuckles are bigger.” With that, she chased him out of the bathroom, and as she ran behind him into the bedroom, her wings unfurled, and she laughed, leaping after him. Soon, they were entangled, wrestling on the bed, and their horseplay transitioned from laughter to kisses, and not much sleep was had in Victor’s house that night.

When he woke in the morning, he lay with his face in the pillow, listening to the odd sounds of Valla muttering and cursing to herself, accompanied by the repeated sound of her wings folding and unfolding, sometimes slowly and sometimes with an audible crack as they snapped to their full span. He slowly turned to his side and peeked through one half-open eyelid to see her pacing back and forth through the room in nothing but her underwear as she fought to gain control over her new appendages. “We’ll stop early each day so you can practice on the way, too,” he muttered.

“We’re supposed to . . . how did you put it? ‘Haul ass on Guapo,’ not dilly around so I can learn to control my gods-damned body!”

“Gods, huh?”

“Well, how do I know? Sure, we have ancestors, but your grandmother believed in a god. Tes mentioned old gods. Who knows what’s out there?” She snapped her response at him, and when she turned to regard his sleepy smile, her angry, furrowed brow softened, and she laughed and flopped to the ground, sitting on the carpet beside the bed. “I’m ridiculous!”

“Nah, you’re great.” Victor sat up and stretched, yawning. “Anyway, it’s okay if we take a little extra time; the Ninth is just sieging the road leading up to the first citadel while they wait for the reinforcements. Come on! Let’s get breakfast, and then we’ll get on the road. Have you got an old breastplate or something you can wear ‘til we find an armorer qualified to mess with Tes’s wyrm scale?”

“Of course. In any case, I’ll need you to help me cut some holes in the backs of my shirts.”

“I dunno, I kinda like you like that.” As Valla’s cheeks bloomed red and her eyebrows drew together, Victor laughed and rolled to his side, burying his head under a pillow, bracing for her retaliatory attack.

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