The lightning in a bottle Junior had captured did not flicker as fire did, and gave off more light than the torches. As Orenda made her way down the narrow staircase, she thought of how little the place looked like the dungeons she had always imagined when she read storybooks. It wasn’t dim, by any means, nor was it particularly damp. The first adjective that sprang to mind was, “loud”.

“Ever bit your fault!” The duke of the Sage Lake District was screaming, presumably at the duke of the Agricultural District.

“You punched me in my face, Erl!” Lorsan laughed, “Don’t start nothin, won’t be nothin!”

“We don’t throw chairs!” Erl screamed as Orenda entered the room and saw a long, wide hallway, with a table in the center where Sonny sat, playing cards with a younger man in a Urillian military uniform.

“It was a bench!” Lorsan argued.

“I don’t care who started it!” Orenda recognized the deep voice of the Duke of the Northern Mountains Province, “Both you kids shut the hell up!”

“Come over here and say that to my face, papaw!” Lorsan demanded, “Just ‘cause you lived a long life don’t mean it can’t come to quick end.”

“What on Xren happened?” Orenda asked Sonny, who took a long drink from a flask he pulled from the bag on his hip.

“I don’t even know,” he said, “somebody started runnin their mouth, somebody started throwin punches, somebody started throwin furniture, by the time I got ‘em all outta there the top half a’ the room was covered in these prickly plants… I guess they all lost their damn minds.”

“I think I have a concussion!” Erl shouted.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Sonny advised.

“I expected significantly better behavior,” Orenda turned to face the side of the room the vast majority of the noise was coming from and saw that many of the small cells housed only one person. Sonny had broken them up, likely to prevent further fighting, “from people of your status! Haven’t you been trained in etiquette? Don’t you know how to present yourselves?”

“It’s right proper etiquette,” Erl said, “to defend the honor of your mother.”

“Oh bull shit,” Lorsan attempted to stick his head through the bars that made up one wall of his cell, “shit to the bull. Y’all wanna tear your ass over Mary Sue- that little girl’s twice the leader any y’all are!”

“She isn’t a little girl,” Orenda said, “she’s an adult.”

“It’s a turn ‘a phrase,” Lorsan waved his hand to indicate he didn’t think his words held meaning.

“It’s factually incorrect,” Orenda said sternly, “and I say again that I can’t- that is, I won’t - have you people acting like this. I can’t imagine you would think I would.”

“He thought you was gone, I reckon,” Lorsan said, “He don’t pay attention.”

“Why are there poisonous barbs growing from the ceiling of the parliamentary chamber?” Orenda asked.

“I didn’t do that,” Lorsan said.

“Well I sure didn’t do it!” Erl snapped, “If that’s what you’re implyin, Lorry!”

“I ain’t sayin nothin,” Lorsan said, “I’m just sayin I didn’t do it.”

“He’s a mage!” Erl accused.

“Oh, now I’m a mage!” Lorsan shouted, “I thought I was a medic who couldn’t hurt nobody.”

“STOP IT!” Orenda shrieked, “Stop! Stop bickering like children! And tell me who was casting attack spells in a meeting of parliament the day after an attack on my life that left three of the servants dead! I want answers!”

“The ventilation ain’t good enough down here for that lava monster bullshit,” Sonny said as he threw a card on top of his partner’s pile and slid the entire pile to his own side of the table, “you gonna choke ever one of us and Erl’s got a concussion.”

“My name,” The Duke of the Sage Lake Province said, “Is His Grace, Duke Earlethan Uril of the Sage Lake District-”

“My name’s Lorry,” Lorsan interrupted.

“I can put that on y’all’s gravestones if you want,” Sonny offered, “Seriously Rendy, some of us like to breath.”

“I can’t have this!” Orenda argued, but even she heard the change in her voice and felt the magic radiating off of her, even as she tried to pull it back, to take it down, “I’m getting ready to leave! I can’t have this! I have to fix it before I can depart! I can’t have assassins and members of the nobility attacking at what should be a civil, diplomatic meeting! I. Can’t. Have. This!”

Lorsan’s eyelids fluttered and he leaned heavily on the horizontal rung of the bars that ran across his cell.

“Anybody else…” he asked weakly, “God, it’s like… it’s like it’s… all around… pushing… laying on top of… gonna… gonna lay down for a…”

He was apparently not the only one.

Orenda heard the sound of soft bodies hitting stone floors and remembered what she had learned about elemental magic. Mages grew used to being conduits; they pulled magic from the world around them. The magic of Xren was strong, strong enough to feel even without a focus. Being around one’s element strengthened them, sometimes to the point that it became difficult to control, that it felt as if the magic flowing through the veins and the magic flowing through the world were too strong for the skin and the friction between them would shatter the mortal shell housing the soul of a mage.

And sometimes? Sometimes when a mage was buried in the element they could not cast, the element that weakened them- all that power lay far away behind a wall, a wall that weighed them down, a wall that their body rejected as wrong, as incompatible. When Orenda had been a child she had once walked into a pool house in an attempt to hide from some guards while sneaking into a school- it was the first time she had experienced what the mages before her were undoubtedly experiencing now.

Lorsan hit his knees, like many of the others and struggled to stay upright; one of his gloved hands closed around the bars and she wondered if Sonny had taken any focus he may have had on him.

“Oh god,” he mumbled, and she was sure she only heard him over the other moans because she was focused on him.

But she did not hear the sounds of his retching over the others. They all merged into a cacophony of sound, and Orenda watched his body spasm and contort as she thought of her own illness, when she had been upon the sea, when she had been running through the snow.

Empress Orenda Nochdifache-Firefist, Orenda the Reign Ender, The Crimson Mage, was not afraid of water.

“Stop it!” Sonny had grabbed her hard by both arms and was shaking her, staring into the burning inferno that hid her face, searching desperately for her eyes, “Stop! You’re doin that! You’re torturin ‘em! They’re already hurt! We don’t need to do this! I got this! Stop it! Stop it or I’m slappin the shit outta ya!”

Orenda was confused for a moment; why wasn’t he on fire?

Because he was made of sterilite. Because he was a Brigaddon, and they ate the secret supply of starfruit, and they were immune to magic. Even the unlimited magic of a god.

They subsisted on the fruit of the gods.

“Thesis above,” Klin said, apparently having appeared when she wasn’t paying attention, “that fire magic’s strong as hell down here. That ain’t my business.” He had spread his left hand over the glow emanating from the place his heart had once been, turned, and ran back the way he had come muttering, “stay down, stay down, stay down.”

“Take it off,” Orenda thought as loudly as she could, “Take it off! Take it off now!”

The fire burned away, and Orenda blinked, then stared at the worry in Sonny’s silver eyes.

“I… I did… I didn’t mean… to do that…” Orenda said.

Sonny’s eyes dipped down to the stone, the protrusion from her flesh, visible between her breasts in the fancy dress she wore. It did not seem to be glowing.

“You need a vacation,” he said as he pulled her into a hug, “I love you, Rendy, but you have got to get your shit together.”

* * *

“What did you want?” Orenda asked the glowing soul deep within the wine cellar.

“I ain’t drinkin,” Klin said, “well… I just lied to you an’ I don’t know why. I am but that ain’t why I come down here. I’m packin. I… I told you I was gonna pack for you too an’ I didn’t know how many of them blood absorbin rags I oughta get on accounta I don’t know nothin about that an I don’t even know where to go to find out, but you can’t really wash nothin up there; when you hang stuff up to dry it freezes. Like… a hundred? I can’t even ballpark it? How many… it’ll take a good three months sailin up there, a good three months back, and lord knows how long we’ll be gone. A thousand?”

“A thousand?” Orenda asked, “Klin I… I use perhaps seven to ten per cycle. Where did you come up with a thousand?”

“I told you I couldn’t ballpark it,” Klin said as Orenda traced his soul through the racks and racks of bottles, and eventually came upon him. He was taking bottles off the shelves and inserting them into his bag, the bag that seemed to have no limit to what it could contain.

“I know you’re a man, but you’re an adult,” Orenda chastised, “have you never met a woman before? Anyone who menstruates? How can one live for three centuries and be so ignorant?”

“I dunno, but I sure as hell figured it out,” Klin said, “ignorance ain’t as bliss as folks say it is.”

He paused, staring at the bottle in his hand and asked, quietly, “Ya alright?”

“Yes,” Orenda answered, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“On accounta it gets a hold on ya and… god,” he shoved the bottle into his bag and selected another, “I don’t… I don’t understand why you’re so much better at it than me. When I was your age it’d take me a good week to snap out of it sometimes. Xandra never did even call up the armor after that first time till the night she died. It’s… it’s just me, I guess. There’s somethin wrong with me, specifically. That’s… worth knowin…”

“It isn’t what I thought it would be,” Orenda said, “but it works very much like magic, doesn’t it? It isn’t that you call it up, it’s that you keep it down.”

“I ain’t good at magic,” Klin shrugged, “that’s for smart folks. I mean, I can do it if’in I have to but… I ain’t good at it.”

“...right,” Orenda said, “Klin… did you say your parents died in a fire?”

“...so…” Klin said slowly, “I know I ain’t good at… talking to folks and… whatnot… but all y’all are… I think… I think that conversation has just… changed… since my day. I don’t know that that’s… yeah. Yeah, they died in a fire. Kinda. They died a’ not bein able to breathe in a fire. Kinda like Xandra in… I mean in as much as… it wouldn’t the fire what took ‘em out, really, but they was a fire there and it sure as hell didn’t help nothin.”

“Do you remember who set the fire?” Orenda asked, “The night you escaped it? The night your parents died?”

“Yeah,” Klin said, “I reckon… I mean… not… not that good, actually… I was a little bitty… I wouldn’t but ten years old…”

He stared at the shelf in front of him as if he was looking not at it, but beyond it.

“I… the house was on fire so I just… I just run… the roof collapsed… it was kinda shitty anyway, thatched, ya know… but then I got outside and the wheat was on fire- this was before all these big plantations and stone walls and all that… this was before that city on the outside a town with the hotels… this was before… all that… it was just us and our shitty little houses and the crops… and I remember thinkin we was gonna get in trouble on accounta you had to give so much, almost all’a what you growed to the crown and we wouldn’t gonna have nothin left on accounta the fire- and somebody shot an arrow, on fire, over my head- I was in the middle of a big crowd at that point, we was all runnin, toward the castle; the castle still had the walls up, and I kept thinkin I had to get behind them walls- and this voice in my head kept tellin me… sorry, what’d you ask?”

“If you remember the people who set the fire,” Orenda prodded.

“Big sons-a-bitches,” Klin said, “keep in mind, though… the world seems big when you’re that little… big sons-a-bitches on horses. I kept lookin behind me but I had to keep movin forward. They had robes on… everythin looked bright orange and had real deep shadows, on accounta that blaze, on accounta the whole world was on fire… I didn’t see no faces… and it was over so quick…”

“Did you see any mage staves?” Orenda asked, “See anyone cast? Or just the flaming arrows?”

“I… I can’t remember, Your Majesty,” Klin admitted, pulled the cork from the bottle he was holding and added, “I try real hard not to think about it,” before he threw back the bottle and began to drink in that unsettling way he had where he did not seem to breath.