Chapter 46 - The Easier Path [Part 1]
You cannot cup the water hidden in the loam, nor warm your palms upon the secret ember in the oak; You cannot seize the tranquil wind that dreams upon the stone. Let them lie in quiet until they fill this world.
- Unknown.
Seraphina sat facing the open sea, letting the salt-tinged breeze and boundless blue sky wash over her while warm sand sifted between her toes. Strictly speaking, she was not alone—Miriam hovered nearby, parasol aloft, and her usual guards lingered a comfortable fifty paces back—but servants and sentries were no more company than a sofa in an empty room.
The so-called “Living Saint” Este Lize's character profile had been left intentionally as an enigma by developers: a young girl gifted with staggering magical potential, yet otherwise her origins left intentionally blank by the game’s developers so players could project themselves onto her. Why had Seraphina allowed for such lazy writing?
Seraphina had failed then, and she had failed this day.
And now she found herself annoyed by the girl’s recent triumphal parade. The additions to the menagerie would be extensive, a Manticore, a chimeric creature that fused lion, bat, and scorpion, was the most impressive specimen.
The purpose of the menagerie, as well as being of academic interest, was to primarily de-sensitize the shock and awe the students would face should they find themselves against such creatures either in the wilds, or if they were truly unlucky, on the field of battle. Yet, if Seraphina’s memories served her correctly, there had been only one character capable of taming and controlling a mighty manticore, and he was the DLC character at that.
Without the Unicorn, Seraphina had no way to outdo and show up the sly minx and thus had retreated here to vent her frustrations. It was a reminder that some jobs you simply could not outsource.
Gritting her teeth, she cast Crystal Dagger, conjuring a shard of rose-pink crystal, drew back her arm, and hurled it across the waves. The projectile skimmed the surface like a spear before shattering a school of giant flying fish.
A wry smile tugged at Seraphina’s lips. Perhaps fishing could be entertaining, though the bright sun was unkind to her flawless skin. Well, at least it had been rewarding.
Her dutiful maid, Miriam, knew better than to offer comment.
Overhead, seabirds shrieked at the sudden feast below. One dove toward the water, only for a sleek, shark-like predator to surge from the waves and swallow it in a single gulp. Using this opening, the bird’s flock members made away with the remaining bounty of fish.
Nature could sometimes be instructional.
Today’s public defeat stung; her standing among friends, and, more crucially, her followers, had slipped. Seraphina had lost a lot of face, especially in front of Rashana. And, she had, if she was truthful with herself, run away.
For an instant, just an instant, she imagined vanishing into a quiet life, free from ravenous crowds and hungry cameras. Then she remembered: there were no cameras in this world, and soon enough, she would control every printing press in the Kingdom. Let Este Lize enjoy momentary acclaim; Seraphina had lost this battle, but she fully intended to win the war.
I lost! she seethed.
Her discreet correspondence with Bishop de Francey of Rochelle, whose talent for unearthing was almost unnatural, had yielded a discovery at so cliche and deliciously exploitable. Este Lize, the “Living Saint” and darling of the Church, was, it transpired, a foundling of the meanest sort. A dirty, unwanted orphan.
In Aranthia, where family and lineage served were of the utmost importance across all classes, serving as one’s passport to civility, such an origin was tantamount to original sin. Polite society at large might feign charitable sympathy, yet the false smiles and pointless displays smouldered a certainty: a child without parents must surely grow, like an errant weed, toward delinquency and crime. Or worse.
With an elegant flick of her wrist, Seraphina summoned another shard of crystal. She cast the shard far into the distance, as though the very motion would cast her worries away.
How droll, she reflected, that a would-be saint might be tainted by so simple a fact. She was sure that with a bit more effort, she could find the name of the brothel where the girl’s whore mother had plopped her out, if only to complete the tale with the appropriate tawdry flourish.
Yet for all Este Lize lacked in pedigree, she possessed one formidable strength: the patronage of a powerful order, the Church, whose coffers and influence could not be dismissed. Still, money and politics were brittle bonds; blood, by contrast, ran deep and inescapable. Families might quarrel like sparrows over crumbs, but present them with a common foe and they would flock together beneath a single banner, talons drawn. Seraphina would be more than happy to provide them with such a target, namely, the overreach in certain areas of the Church.
It was upon this truth that Seraphina now fixed her gaze. The Sariens, on her father’s side, already rallied to her ambitions. But she had hitherto neglected the matrilineal line—the proud and indomitable House of Carcaronne, presided over by her formidable grandmother, the Dowager Duchess Adelaide. A visit to that distant northern seat, perched upon the very fringes of the Frozen Waste, was a prospect she had postponed, pushing it to the back of her mind. The dowager duchess, she knew, commanded legions of men tempered by ceaseless skirmishes against Kar-Kaphon raiders, the barbarians of the North. Their loyalty, once won, would be an engine of war against which a lone orphan could scarcely contend—with or without the backing of the mighty Church.
