Chapter 13: Chapter 14: A handmaiden on the Brink

The Lady turned to her favorite handmaiden, for it is known in Machrae Diir that her favorite is whichever speaks with her, and said, "Little one, I pose a task for you. Travel to the igneous runs on the borderlands of Zul, and find for me a razor shard of obsidian."

A pause.

"This one," the handmaiden said carefully, clacking claws together, turning slightly aside from her mistress, "Feels the Lady might instead like a flower from the Liminal Glade where Thlact Angaelkar touches Unsiiliar Heights. Perhaps she has not realized it yet?"

The other handmaidens shift. To suggest things to the mistress, the Lady, the Dark Archon at the End of All--this is a thing not done!

(Which is why, since the handmaidens frequently do so, it is continuously agreed not to have happened. That is, until the next time it does.)

"Why," the Lady says, "you are right, my dear. I WOULD rather have a glowing flower from the un-shade cast by the leaves of the crystal trees, where the laughter of the old manor, and the town overgrown, mix with the whispers of the all-seeing eye."

The handmaiden's tail frisked. The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. "This one is pleased to have been of aid as a mirror to the desires of the mistress."

"And I am pleased you have done it so well," the Lady answered. "Go then, child. Your way is laid out before you."

The handmaiden hesitated. "This one wonders whether she might... not today, but..." Shivers, yet--not wholly unpleasant. That certain sagging, loosening, of relief--as the breaking of a fever, the end of a long war reached at last, or maybe, just maybe--could it be?

Yes. Yes, it just might be like returning after decades to a home that still loves you, and finding that after all your journeys, you are finally at home with it again.

"Perhaps," said the handmaiden, favored of the Lady, "I might enter the Great Unspeakable, and reclaim... it?"

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An expectant murmur from the others. Nervous excitement--but of course, these are only the things the Lady put into them by her will.

(If they resembled nothing the Lady has ever shown, well... sometimes the old one sees new pieces revealed in those around her. That's all.)

"Is it possible," the Lady said carefully, "that one might soon be ready to reclaim her name?"

"N-not today!" the handmaiden blurted. "B-but..." her tail wagged slowly. She smiled, shyly, a shyness wholly unbecoming of one who should only mirror the majesty of her mistress. "M-maybe," she said, gulping down her anxiousness, "maybe soon, one will be, yes."

"Then on that day, it shall be so," the Lady said, and her smile was the warmest and saddest and most radiantly happy of all the smiles she ever gave her favorite.

Three days later, one less handmaiden was there to attend the Lady, there before the bladework throne and the guiding lights of stolen nova. There, in the heart of Zul, City of the Ashen Trance. That same day, a young outer devil began to appear elsewhere in Machrae Diir.

Of course, this was a pure coincidence, as it was that a handmaiden happened to do the Never-done, and spoke a suggestion to the Lady that she might have a task to go and speak to this strange new guest--only to ensure she was a friend of the realm, and no threat, of course.

The Lady assented to the desire the handmaiden had mirrored for her. Thus the handmaiden went to meet the new outer devil, whose name was Tfai Sul Ametra, and Tfai was pleased enough to speak with her.

"That's a lovely bracelet," Tfai said. "I wear one just like it." She smiled. "So strange... I don't remember where it came from. Anyway, I recently remembered this name I call myself. So I think I'm finally ready to figure out who the Lady truly is."

Her tail frisked. "And I think, in learning that, I may start to learn who I truly am, too."

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