Violet

Far Off Unhappy Things: Solitary Reaper
Chapter 1: Violet

By Renko Chazakiël Rodenburg

There is no wrath in the stars,
They do not rage in the sky;
I look from the evil wood
And find myself wondering why.

– Lord Dunsany


She sat alone as she watched the sun set. Slowly it went from bright white to a more agreeable yellow, and then a smouldering red as in the distance it sank into the ocean beyond the world. Then it was dark. She was too far from the sea to see the stars, but that didn’t bother her much. They’d always freaked her out, little sparking gems of light beneath the black waters of the ocean.

“Oh Luna,” she called out. The doors of the balcony creaked open, and Luna joined with her.

“Is it done? It will not rise again?”

“Hmhm, it will not,” she said. “Though, it is more of an optical illusion, of course. I cannot halt the course of the sun itself.”

“But it will not burn us.”

“As long as you don’t leave the confines of this forest, it will never bother you again.”

“I know not what to say to thank you.”

“Then don’t.”

“In the morning, the nobles will arrive for festivities I am hosting. They know not, of course, that the purpose of the ball is to announce this era of everlasting night. I will demand they bow before me. They might not all yield. In which case-”

“You immediately want a demonstration of the weapon.”

“Yes.”

“There is a small chance that it will misfire. Would you not rather I test it out by aiming it pre-emptively at the fortress of whoever is most likely to oppose you? If it works, you have asserted your dominance. If it fails, no-one will be any wiser.”

Luna shook her head. “No. Do not worry. I am an adept diplomat. I will play my game well.”

“Adept enough to show me to your court, openly?”

“You must bide your time.”

Violet nodded. Luna, of course, thought that she was playing her. Trick the witch into helping you take control of the entire principality, then reward her with a backwater of her own somewhere to play with runes and glass for the next eternity or so. “I will go to my room. Send Eshel to me. He entertains me.”

Luna gave her a strange look.

“Not in that manner. I like his mind. He asks me questions.”

“It is not dangerous for him, is it?”

She couldn’t help but chuckle, and refused to answer the question. Best to leave some of her mystique towards Luna intact, lest she grow far too accustomed to her presence.

“After your little coup d’etat, when everyone has left, will you dance with me?”

“Lady Violet,” Luna said, indignated.

“To thank me.”

“If anyone sees me cavorting around an empty ballroom with a witch, it will not matter how well I play my part tomorrow morning. There will be whispers regardless of how I could have amassed such power so quickly. Rather that these whispers take the shape of rumors of me having fallen in league with dark powers, than rumors that I have prostituted myself to a witch.”

“Prostituted?” Violet spat. “Take more care with what words you use to address me.”

Immediately, Luna course-corrected. She stepped back from Violet, and bowed her head slightly. “I apologize, Lady Violet. They are not my words. They are what the other nobles will say, should our relationship be openly known.”

“Our relationship,” Violet said. “I like the tone of that.”

“Lady Violet! Do not mock me like that!”

“I will head to my room. Make sure that none will bother to disturb me, save for Eshel.”

With that she left Luna alone on the balcony. Her own room was on the top floor of the manor, on the east end. The inhabitants considered the east side of any building to be cursed, and Luna had no doubt put her there as part of a strange statement. She had been used to living in castles, and roughly hewn fortresses optimized for ease of defense, but Luna’s estate was all luxury. She didn’t expect a siege. Her kin had complete control of the lands, and should it ever come to an armed uprising, then they had well and truly lost control of the populace already anyway. At the same time they preferred to keep their own in-fighting to the shadows, cloak and dagger, keeping up an outward appearance of unified strength. Wouldn’t want the peasantry to smell weakness, after all.

Her room was more laboratory than living space, but she’d have a proper lab separate from her main living spaces soon enough. She’d have to bear living in her workspace for now. With everything for the big day tomorrow already done months in advance, she prepped her improvised workshop to continue working on a hobby project instead. Heating elements powered by currents of lightning she had trapped in jars of glass and tin hummed to life, and she had devised a tank of pressurized gas, fed into a tube, that when released and exposed to oxygen in the atmosphere ignited into a powerful jet of flame. These tools allowed her to work with small amounts of glass, gold, tin, and lead on her desk, no forge required.

She set to work and opened a leatherbound tome with illustrations of wild flowers. She flipped through it until she found the page detailing the Aster amellus. This what she would be attempting to reproduce today. An ordinary goldsmith or glassblower would of course be capable of making a neat image of the flower, but few- or none, really- would be able to render it as lifelike as she would. She took a set of lenses she had made herself, and put them on her head. Magnification of four thousand times would be enough for her purposes, requiring only a few of her lenses. As a sort of inscrutable prank to play on one of her siblings she had made lenses to allow for magnification of up to a million times, but it turned out there was simply nothing to see at that level of detail so the joke had fallen flat.

With dexterity unmatched in the Lands, except perhaps by the Lady Fleur, she worked strands of molten glass doped with trace metals into structures mimicking the structures of cellular life. Where necessary she softened her materials with alchemically rendered salts, or strengthened them until they were as hard as bronze. She was so entranced weaving the stem of the flower that she only noticed that Eshel had entered her room and was observing her well over an hour into her work. Undisturbed, she continued. From green stem she worked to silver and purple leaves sprouting from a golden crown, weaving capillary structures out of strands of metal and glass that now more resembled a slime of cellular automata than they did their base materials. One of these days she would start working on materials that would allow her to replicate animal cells, but for now they were out of reach. Artificial life. Though it’d be worthless for any material concern- it would simply shatter if subjected to labour, or when attacked- it’d be a tremendous spiritual achievement. Her own progenitor had done a similar thing with nothing but linseed oil and pigments, and like most of her siblings she desired to follow in his footsteps. Godhood. Just a century or so away.

When she was done sculpting the flower, she carefully moved it into a bed of heat resistant sand to cool down without being contaminated.

“Well?” She asked Eshel when she was done, putting away her lenses and gloves and tools.

“It looks just real,” the boy said, a reverent tone in his voice.

“It is real. When it is cooled it will need water, or it will wilt, like a real plant.”

“Truly?”

“If it survives cooling. The previous ones have all cracked and shattered. Something with the different rigidities of the artificial cell walls at different temperatures.”

“I see. Truly, Lady Violet, your skill is like no other.”

“What? This? This glasswork? The Lady Fleur outdoes me in glasswork a hundred times over. She’d laugh off the idea of artificial life wrought from silica and metal as a child’s game. Now the thing your mistress had me construct- that is a thing no one in the Lands could replicate.”

“Mistress Walkenburg does not talk to me of the things she has commissioned from you.”

“She doesn’t trust you?”

“I cannot disobey her. She trusts me, but she doesn’t trust no-one will read my thoughts, or enchant me.”

“Not a real thing,” Violet said, absent-mindedly.

“Enchantment is very real. I have seen it with my own eyes. You are a sorceress yourself, how could you deny the binding spell?”

“I didn’t mean enchantment,” she replied. She didn’t feel like explaining herself more, and Eshel knew better than to press. “Here, I’ll show you what your mistress had me fashion her.”

She walked from her glassblowing desk over to a large, wooden table in the center of the room. With a dramatic gesture she pulled the cloth from it, revealing a pattern of shadows burned into the wood, surrounded by inscribed runes.

“What is it? A magic table?”

She shook her head. “It is a conceptual weapon. It is not here, of course, not anymore- I have rendered it from physical into a thing that exists as an idea alone.”

“How can that be? How does that work? How can it be used as a weapon if it is only an idea now?”

“One question at a time, Eshel.”

“Forgive my excitement, Lady Violet.”

“As for your question- how can a weapon be used if it is only an idea? Would you claim ideas have never hurt people?”

Eshel thought for a moment. “In a metaphorical sense, I suppose that ideas can be weapons.”

“What if an idea could be a literal weapon? What if I stabbed you with hunger, or hit you with a terrifying realization?”

“I- I don’t know?”

“If I stabbed you with hunger, it would depend on how sharp it was, how deep the stab wound. If I hit you with a terrifying realization, it’d depend on the weight, the size of the realization, and where and how hard I hit you with it.”

“You talk as if they are physical objects. Is that it? You can render hunger into a physical object the way you render glass into flowers?”

As if to spite her, the glass aster on her desk split in two with a loud ‘crack.’

“The way I am attempting to render glass into flowers, mind you,” she said, laughing off her latest failure. “And yes. Sort of. My natural talent lies with divination, with throwing runes. I’ve divined a structure in the future, and this I have rendered physical and then rendered back into the ether in the present.”

“It makes no sense to me.”

“That is to be expected.”

“Ah, but don’t misunderstand!” Eshel loudly exclaimed. “I think you are truly wonderful, Lady Violet. Last week you made a wooden cat move, and the week before you taught a troll to sing in such a way that grains of gruel turn to grains of gold.”

“No, no,” she said, waving her hand at him. “I taught him to sing in such a way that grains of gold that I had previously hidden in the grain would obey, and reveal themselves. I only told him that he could now turn gruel to gold.”

“What use is the deception?” Eshel asked. “It will sing at gruel for hours on end, and only end up frustrated.”

“No, no, no, you don’t understand at all. It is going to travel to the Twin Cities, and there it will loudly proclaim its use to Prince Autumn. Can you imagine a troll telling the Deer God to bring him a plate of gruel, so that he can sing it into gold? Can you imagine our beloved Lord watching as the troll sits there, singing at gruel with increasing frustration as it does not turn into gold proper? This will surely keep the Prince up at night, wondering what in his own name was wrong with that troll.”

Eshel laughed. “Lady Violet, you are so mean!”

She smiled. What wonderful foreshadowing for her next prank.

“Tomorrow your mistress will have an important announcement to make. I wish to sleep before then, because unlike you all I actually need sleep, albeit rarely. Come,” she said as she gestured towards the corner where she had made her bed. When he had first seen it, he had complained it was unfit for a lady to sleep on a mattress in the corner of a workshop, so she wondered what he’d thought of joining her there.

“What do you mean?” He asked as he cautiously followed her.

“I mean to lay with you and then doze off in your arms. Is that a problem?”

“Wh- no- yes, I mean, surely you are not serious, Lady Violet, you must not make jokes like that!”

“This is no joke. If you don’t like the idea, then leave. I will not hold it against you.”

“Lady Violet! It is not safe. We should not do such things.”

“Not safe?”

“I could end up biting you. Less immediate danger, but not less real, would be manor politics. Mistress Walkenburg would see this as undermining her authority.”

“Bite me,” she said. “There’s only linseed oil in my veins.”

“Lady Violet!” Eshel chided her again.

“What?” She asked. “It’s just good fun to help me fall asleep. Like I said, if you don’t want to, then leave me be.”

“I, I must excuse myself then. I apologize, Lady Violet. I’ll see you tomorrow, perhaps. Rest well.”

To her annoyance he didn’t even look back as he left her room. To sleep, alone, then. Today had been a quiet day. Tomorrow would not be.

She woke up after a few hours of restless sleep, instinctively aware of the sun rising. She put on her dress in all haste before rushing to the western balcony, and found it still dark outside. She felt the sun tug at her spells, but the lensing effect held- the entire forest was cloaked in night. Downstairs the festivities were well underway, so she had to hurry with her final preparations if she was to make a dramatic entrance.

Back in her workshop she took from a drawer a set of golden armbands, that fit snugly over her biceps. A second pair went around her legs. The filigree bracelets entangled around her arms and legs like vines, and though aesthetic considerations had been secondary they were nonetheless quite pretty. From her dressoir she pulled a cloak, black on the outside but bordeaux on the inside, with a hundred runes sewn into it. There were no mirrors in the manor- not only did the inhabitants not need them, they also posed a risk as the Lady Fleur could use them as an avenue of attack, should she ever feel inclined. Lack of mirrors meant that she couldn’t see if her cloak had been properly fitted, or if she looked entirely ridiculous, but dressing to impress wasn’t the point of her getup. She hurried downstairs, and hid herself behind the curtains of one of the internal balconies looking out over the ballroom. From here she could watch the events unfold.

The nobles had already realized that the sun would not be coming up, and were discussing this amongst themselves and their entourages with great excitement. After a while Luna Walkenburg arrived in her ballroom, and had a servant chime a bell to signify her making an announcement.

“My good guests. The esteemed Lord Mesmer of Wayleidh. Lady Jasmine of the Northern Glades. Lord-Baron Theron Alabaster of Samherd. And of course all others so graceful as to show up to my invitation for this wonderful feast. As you might have expected, I have an announcement to make. As you might have noticed, this morning the sun has failed to rise.”

A murmur went through the crowd.

“To pre-emptively dispel any questions you might have: no, this is not a worldwide phenomenon. Only our lands are affected. And yes, this phenomenon is man made, and due to last indefinitely.”

The crowd went dead quiet.

“For years have I laboured, in secret, to bring about the eternal night. Last night, I have put my plans into motion. The tyranny of the sun is over. The human populations in our lands will wither and in their despair they will throw themselves at us for our assistance, for our guidance. The forests of northern Luson are now the forests of darkness, the forests of death.”

She smiled, and looked about the room.

“And all I ask in return is that you proclaim me uncontested ruler of the Principality, and swear fealty as my feudal lords.”

“RIDICULOUS,” the Lord-Baron objected. “Lady Walkenburg! You are stepping out of line. Why should we believe this is your doing? And even if it is, how will you enforce your hold on it? Undo it, and all you achieve is rolling things back to the status quo. Eternal night! Pah. We have ruled these lands the last four hundred years without such a thing just fine.”

“Lord-Baron Alabaster,” Luna replied with an exaggerated drawl. “Who do you think you are, addressing me like this in my own domain?”

This was the sign for Violet to attempt her experiment. She left the ballroom, went down two more flights of stairs and went outside. She took a handful of bones carved with runes out of her pockets, and threw them onto the dirt of the manor gardens once, twice, thrice. A bleak future. A shining ray, a hundred dead. Perfect. In the distance, a golden glow appeared as the immaterial lenses of her conceptual weapon rearranged themselves.

“Lady Violet?” One of the manor guards asked her, as she cackled maniacly as the distant light suddenly flared into a luminous ray, piercing the illusory night. All the power of the sun this land was denied focussed into a single, concentrated ray. She howled in triumph.

“Go tell your mistress that it has been done.”

“Lady?”

“Go, now.”

The guard hurried inside, and Violet snuck off into the garden, behind the gardeners’ little house. From here she could witness the proceeding of events. Not long after, the conglomerate of nobles followed Luna outside, where they gasped, confused at the show of light before them.

“Lord-Baron, how I had hoped you would be the one to first defy me,” Luna exclaimed. “Bear witness!”

“Lady Walkenburg, what is the meaning of this?” The Lord-Baron asked, a hint of fear in his voice.

“That is the unmatched power of the sun, concentrated entirely onto your estate, to strike it with the fury of the golden spear of the Deer God himself. A hundred times the luminosity of ordinary sunlight, its heat is enough to set the forest on fire for miles on end and to reduce stone to slag. Your estate has been vaporized. Your thralls are dead. Your family is dead. Your farmlands are cinder.”

Lord-Baron Theron stumbled forward, muttering nonsense in disbelief. As he did so, Luna drew a silver dagger, and stabbed him the back. The rest of the nobles screamed, took their distance from her and while stumbling around looking for their swords and daggers clearly regretted leaving their weapons with the guards in the manor armory. Theron Alabaster fell over, dead, a faint wisp of smoke trailing from the dagger embedded in his back.

“Lady Walkenburg,” A noble screamed.

“Luna!” Another snarled.

“You fucking lunatic!” A third screamed.

“Mind your language in the presence of your betters,” Luna said with a smile on her face. “Everyone who disobeys me will meet the same fate. Everyone who insults me will meet the same fate. Everyone who I catch moving against me in the shadows will meet the same fate. I will have your unquestioning cooperation, or I will set fire to these forests until I alone am left.”

“Lady Walkenburg,” Lord Mesmer said. “You cannot rule over a land of cinders and ash. You cannot annihilate us all.”

“Mesmer, be reasonable,” Luna said, still smiling. “This eternal darkness is a gift. Your wealth will triple. All that changes for you is that you pay your tributary taxes to me instead of to the recently deceased Lord-Baron. The infighting of our kind will stop, and in due time the darkness will push outward until we rule a land of comparable size to those of Prince Autumn’s.”

“I… see,” he muttered.

The nobles whispered amongst themselves, confused, frightened. This was it, Violet realized. Time for act two. She willed her bracelets to life, and slowly let them pull her upwards. It was difficult to float around with them, but she had put in plenty of practice the last few weeks. Suspended in the air, she floated over to the crowd.

“Violet,” Luna said surprised.

“Who is-” a noble stammered before spotting her in the air.

“Lady Yakinta?” another noble exclaimed, mistaking her for one of her sisters, for the Lady Hyacinth, the waker of the dead, progenitor of the blood-drinking blight that called themselves the nobles of this land.

“Luna, Luna, Luna,” Violet said. “Tsk tsk tsk.”

‘Violet, what is the meaning of this?”

“Luna, all that I asked you in return for my gifts was that tonight you would dance with me. Was that really too much? Was that one step too far? Was it your pride that led you to scorn a witch? Was I simply not to your liking? Is it my pointed ears, or is it my paint-thinner blood that turns you off so much?”

“Violet,” Luna said sternly, angry. “You are embarrassing me. Stop… floating around and come down to properly address the guests.”

“My sweet Luna, I can address the guests from here. And for them I have but three words. Huc Sol Advenit.” She brought it with a smile. As she said it, lenses turned, and in a sweeping motion- not focussed into ray to obliterate stone, but diffused, into a sweeping blanket to throw as wide a net as possible- came the sunlight.

There were screams, there were cries. When it was dark again, they were strewn about on the ground, badly scalded, throwing up blood, crying. Yammering. Praying.

“As of today, the Lady Luna Walkenburg is Prince Regent and Lord Baron of this Principality,” she yelled down. “In exchange for my considerable services and the ongoing usage of my superweapon to enforce her rule, I will take her as my wife. Should anyone object to this, they can take it up with the sun.” She laughed. Even when she’d had enough she couldn’t stop, and to not make a total fool of herself she decided to fly off and sit on the roof of the manor for a bit. Eventually, her fits of laughter subsided. With pain in her stomach from how much fun she had had, she rolled onto her back. What a decade well-spent. Incredible.

“Incredible work, Violet,” she told herself. Soon would be drama. What had happened today was a diplomatic disaster. It would take weeks for the victims of her little prank to heal, and then the boring part of setting up an empire would begin- endless negotiations, endless studies of law and order, endless social drama to figure out who was on top of who right now. That’d all be Luna’s problem. She herself was going to retire to the edge of the forests, to an old castle she had found there, and use her newfound wealth and influence to refit it into a proper laboratory. Perhaps in a few years Luna would have forgotten some of the anger that tonight had no doubt roused in her, enough that she could attempt to play her role as wife in earnest.

Perhaps.

She looked up at the endless black of the late morning sky, and fell into a fit of laughter again.