High Command has lorded over the magical world for centuries, the power behind every throne and every crown. But a newcomer has disrupted this cabal’s staid proceedings, and she will write her name in the blood of all her enemies…
by CorruptiveSpirit
High Command convenes in a chamber of jade and gold-veined lazuli. There are twelve seats, five empty. They were once filled, as the remaining members have recently discovered, by a single woman. Bad enough to have been duped in that way, but Cecilie Kristiansen’s demise has left behind an enormous vacuum. Nearly half of High Command, gone in one strike—consumed by a parasitic, ravenous mage as much by their own ambition, hollowed out to be the catspaws of an even more dangerous predator. Worse yet, the foremost instrument of High Command’s power—Sealing and Containment, an organization through which they exerted control over all of magical society, dividing the legal and permissible from the unclean and reviled—was destroyed in the process.
So now the survivors conduct business in the ruins—seven fantastical masks, cool porcelain facade eliding the shared shame of them having been take in so easily by a mage they thought their lesser and tool, but eyes and teeth bared. Things had been too smooth, too effective for some time—the reason is obvious looking back. As a rule, one doesn’t seek ultimate power to find a compromise, and the those who remain are loath to do so now; the knives are back out.
“The solution is clear: the vacant positions will be inherited within the family, or to a cadet branch if need be, as we have always done.”
“Christoff was barren, and two others besides lost their chosen heirs to Cecilie as well. Do you suppose we wait out three pretender-wars, all while at our weakest?”
The Moloch and the Garita snipe at each other, as they have for the majority of the meeting. The rest bide their time, picking sides, changing sides, whispering to one another as they watch the two mages duel with words instead of spells. For now, at least; the tension is fecund with the possibility of violence.
The Cynosure steps into the arena with a raised voice. “I’m certain we can promote from within. There are doubtless mages loyal, skilled besides, and committed to the cause. I have just such a list in case of times like these.” She’s already pulling it from the ether with hands much too soft to have seen real work.
“And have any of these mages not worked beneath you? We all know the effect you have on lesser minds,” the Garita rebukes. The Cynosure is known to be a mesmer; her words normally root and blossom like flowers in the minds of her audience. But the Garita is as stone, unaffected by the charms or sighing smiles the other mage wields.
Still, the Cynosure tries. “That’s hardly relevant, as I see it. Who among our staff hasn’t had to come to me for help? I love all my ducklings equally; you can hardly begrudge me.” Her hand reaches out to take the Garita’s. A response is immediate, jade bindings arching over the Cynosure’s wrist, locking her to the table: the first spell at the meeting. The faint whistling of magic grows louder as each member readies their own retaliation.
The Cynosure laughs it off. “Please! I appreciate you, Garita, but I’d never be so base as to attempt a charm at this hallowed table.”
The Garita glowers back at the woman. She is made of sharp lines, drawn with rulers and compasses befitting her name. She’s earned this place with hard effort and great skill. The Cynosure next to her is a honeypot, practically spilling out of her dress and dripping with sweetness and spiderwebs, Art Nouveau to the Garita’s Brutalism. The jade shackle retreats and the Cynosure rubs her wrist.
“Please, stop flirting and just pick something; I would rather be anywhere else right now,” bemoans the Exegesis from her side of the table. She’s sat next to the other quiet members of High Command, content until now to simply listen and wait for the others to fight it out. Still, she feigns detachment—blowing over her perfect nails, going back to picking at them with a prehensile razor, a meaningless pastime for mages of her power.
“Really, we shouldn’t be making any decisions without a quorum,” the Moloch grumbles behind her mask at the head of the table. “Defined in our bylaws, I might add, as two-thirds of our total numbers, the number necessary to convene and conduct official business.”
“You mean to tell me every order and policy we’ve passed for the past year, or more, is defunct?” mocks the Exegesis. “We should do a serious review of whether Cecilie Kristiansen contributed one or five bodies to our quorum requirements.”
The Moloch is unfazed; law and the crippling enervation of bureaucracy are her demesne. “I’m glad that we are in agreement, Exegesis. If we’re to honor this establishment with the respect it deserves, we should cease all business until an investigation is convened, and finished, and then rejoin to resolve every point of uncertain legislation.”
“I’ll wring your bitch neck before that happens.” The Exegesis is on her feet now, suddenly furious, steel heels scraping and marring the jade floor. “This honored establishment once got shit done, and I swear—”
“Point of order,” the Moloch interrupts, to a growing din of snickers and jeers on both sides. “Threats of any kind are not permitted in the council meeting space.”
“That’s not a threat. I’d have you in pieces before I spend another weekend listening to us talk ourselves to an early grave. How the Huas would smile on our collective bureaucratic suicide. Us undone, without either of those trollop sisters needing to lift a hand.” The Exegesis spits on the floor, to the audible gasps of several members.
“Please, Exegesis.” The Cynosure smiles across the table as the scent of jasmine begins to emanate from her body, calming. “I understand your frustration with the situation, but we should at least retain our composure and respect for our peers. There’s a more constructive way to express your desires.”
“You stop that pheromone shit, Cynosure. And I spent gods know how long scheming to get in here, and not once have we made a move; we don’t conquer, we don’t dominate. If I wanted to butcher weak mages in back alleys, I would have joined S&C as a foot soldier. Fuck the quorum, we’re the most powerful mages alive.” The razor in the Exegesis’s hands ripples and blossoms into a dozen needles, drawing blood when she tightens her fist, digging into her own palm. “All this talk distracts us from the real business at hand: what of the investment? Where is it? Why don’t we have it?”
All fall quiet. The subject of the investment, as they’ve taken to calling the hollow husk in question, is a fraught one. Especially embarrassing since they haven’t captured her yet: the one survivor of Cecilie’s very special curse, and potentially the culmination of all their efforts in manipulating True Names. No one even knows how this person has lived, if ‘lived’ is even the appropriate description; Cecilie’s demise killed every other of the hive thaumaturge’s puppeted hosts. The only thing High Command can agree on is that this singular survivor must be found and collected.
“The Exegesis is right,” the Garita says, voice booming. “For the purpose of accelerating our capture of the investment, I move to accord the vacant seats of our council to a single mage, until such a time as the issue of inheritance is resolved to the satisfaction of the council.”
Several eyes drift to the Moloch, the scorekeeper of the organization. She shakes her head, the edge of her mask glinting with the motion. “Highly irregular, self-defeating. It’s solving the problem of quorum with a nuclear strike. It’d be one problem solved, and another created—who would even receive this office?”
Several voices are already clamoring to stake their claim on this new position. The Exegesis groans as the Garita smirks back; a little blood in the water, and all sharks fight anew.
The Cynosure raises her voice above the chorus. ”As the head of internal operations for High Command, I would be honored to lead us in this new and frightful—”
“Not this again!” The Exegesis still hasn’t sat since her previous outcry. Her dress is twisting into a fishnet of braided chains, threatening to lash out. “We’re getting nowhere—”
The Cynosure counters with reserved tact. “Who else is there to vote for, that any of us can trust not to consolidate power and stab the rest of us in the back? Without trust, compromise, or love for your colleagues, our goals will give way to an ocean of fire and blood.” Flesh ripples at the edge of her dress, the surface fabric shifting, just as much part of the Cynosure as her hair or nails are. “I have always done what is best for this organization,” she swears, and means it as a threat.
“Enough of your sanctimony,” growls the Exegesis, her eyes burrowing into the Cynosure with lethal intent. Her breathing is uneven; her skin takes on a mercurial shine in patches traveling up and down her tight abdomen. “Maybe this organization should die—”
The Garita coughs into her mask. “Do you take that tone when you’re each three fingers deep in one another? Or is this purely business?”
The comment draws a sharp laugh from the Cynosure; the Exegesis rolls her eyes, but uses the interruption as an excuse to pull back from the edge. “This organization,” she says, turning to the hall, voice cooling and quicksilver stilling, “is trapped in paralysis. It has become the most unwieldy crab bucket in all the world, each of us toppling another over and over until we are all hobbled. Our infighting has kept us weak, has depleted our ranks, and it has distracted us from why this council was founded. We are here to achieve nothing less than the mastery of this world, true and total—the oldest and deepest of magics. The power of here-and-now is just a tool toward that end, as are True Names. As is the investment. Either we work together—”
And then the unexpected: the sound of shifting stone—the wall parts, without the volition or command of any of the council members, and in steps a woman, tall and masked, sheathed in a dress of platinum silk and coils of power.
The Council is silent for a moment. This is an impossible interloper, having found an impossible room, breaching impossible wards. She walks towards the table, pausing to present herself as the Cynosure and Moloch begin to rise.
The Cynosure keeps her distance and her composure, as if speaking to a wild animal: a brittle welcome. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, and I see you’ve brought your own mask. You are an aspirant, perhaps?”
The new woman offers neither bow nor curtsy; she doesn’t turn away from the collected table of mages to even make eye contact. “I am the Melusine, and you, it seems, have a staffing problem.”
“Blasphemer!” The Moloch is already stepping around the table, keys and pages clattering in her robes as she approaches the Melusine. She waves a nib-tipped hand at the interloper. “You have not been recognized by this body—you have not the right, nor the invitation to attend, let alone speak in the presence of High Command.”
The Melusine turns, her body blurring at the edges, and suddenly she is holding the Moloch by the throat. Her wrist twists slowly, stretching the Moloch’s neck to one side. “Is that so? And here I thought you were voting on who to hand five of your seats to—I’m offering my candidacy.”
The Moloch gurgles an invective and channels a curse through her hand, ink striking out in a blade that would stain as it cuts. The Melusine gives her no chance, throwing the other woman back against the table; the Moloch’s many trinkets and bones spill to the ground.
An instant, and the Melusine closes the distance between them—and then brings her fists down on the prone mage, again and again and again: total violence, suddenly and irrevocably unleashed. The Moloch’s mask cracks first, and then her teeth, and then her face, blood and bone spilling across the floor even as she tries to pull herself up by the edge of the table. A hand whips out, clawing at a final spell; the Melusine casually, effortlessly, snaps the forearm like a twig, then resumes her pummeling barrage. An eyeball erupts.
The hall falls silent, wincing at the gruesome noises of a very prolonged, very wet death. The Cynosure watches with unnerving intensity, so at odds with her saccharine facade; the Garita coughs and shifts uncomfortably. None moves to aid their supposed ally.
Finally, the Melusine stands to her full height, flush with victory, splattered with brains and bile; what was once the Moloch drips from her raw knuckles. She smiles, breathing hard, and swipes a hand through her hair, forehead smeared and hair coiffed with her victim’s blood. Her heel crunches the Moloch’s spine.
“If there are no further objections,” the newest member of High Command says, teeth white against the gore, “then the ayes have it.”