>>5840641>>5840000>>5839999>>5839960>>5839933>>5839900There was a saying among the humans of Hawksong. It was one you’d never say within earshot of the Archmage, of course, but it held a kernel of truth:
‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.’
A devil was still a devil, though. The True Fey were no such thing—they were little gods, demigods, closer kin to your own noble and divine ancestors. Cousins. Friends. You didn’t delude yourself that you could FULLY trust them, as you would Pearce, or Testa, or Efron or Blanchette, or even Zith-Zi…
(Or Izzy?)
…But you would go to them before you’d go to any inhabitant of the Hells, bound or otherwise, or some sinister Serpent priest from beneath the crust of the Earth. If biology alone wasn’t yielding the results you needed, you would go to those beings of spirit whom you knew best and trusted the most.
Thus, you requested leave from your master.
“Leaving?” she’d repeated. “At the moment of your greatest triumph? A strange choice.”
“It’s not,” you’d disagreed. “I mean… it’s not a triumph. Those women… They’re not well yet. They’re deformed, disfigured.”
“Maybe to their primitive understanding,” the Archmage relied coldly. “The weak will wither in those forms. The strong, the SMART, will see you have given them armour, and knvies, and strength, and speed, and years of life. The ‘Master Race’… Those lizardmen, they call themselves that… They live longer than us, you know.”
She’d paused, regarding you more closely with a small, barely-perceptible sneer.
“…Well, longer than those of us born wholly human, I should say.”
“If you can call that a life,” you’d whispered, recalling Costella’s sobbing. “If the lizardmen meant to demoralize us… Well, this will still do that. A ‘cure’ that turns people into their enemy isn’t something that the Queen will accept, surely?”
The Archmage smiled slightly at that, and her sigh sounded like mocking laughter.
“She has accepted more than THAT from the Reptilians, as you and I know.”
You recalled the true nature of the Prince Consort—of Long Wang, ‘the Dragonborn’, absent from the coronation of the new Queen as he had been from the King’s funeral, if tabloid reports were to be believed. You’d had no time to dwell on that, or the implications. Maybe this half-cure you had devised was exactly what the deeply-compromised royal family wanted for Man?
But then… This wasn’t about Man as a race. Not only that. Itw as about izzy, and it was about YOU.
“I can do more,” you asserted. “I can go beyond.”
“Then go,” the Archmage waved a hand, turning from you. “go, with my blessing, Van Houtzmann. Go wherever you and the girl went.”
“Thank you, Mistress,” you said, doffing you pointed hat—by now bearing the buckle of Mage Apprentice, and bowing your head.
“Come back with something to impress me” she commanded.
