Of all the sights Diantha had imagined, the last thing she expected to see in the heart of the mires of Alunziria was bright, fecund greenery, upon which grew an abundance of huge watermelons, gourds, sprawling vines heavy with tomatoes, carrots and rice being harvested by men and women young and old, a picture of idyllic farm life so perfect it sickened Diantha. These mudlarks are supposed to be miserable, she thought, not out of disdain for these uncouth and unwashed simpletons in their muddied breeches, but because this was unnatural.
As unnatural as mending a wound shut with only a motion of the hand. Diantha did not let Alvi slip out of her sight for one instant. In turn, that stupid bitch Irma kept an eye on the Blossoms; both eyes, actually, as Alvi had also mended the ruin that became of her wood-gored socket, with blood vessels and nerves gushing out like spreading roots. He can make whole an eye reduced to pustulent slitch, but not align it so it doesn’t look so fucking ridiculous. What a cruel joke.
The sounds were less unusual than the views in the swamp, but they were odd nonetheless. Not a rebel redoubt but a village so ordinary there were barefoot children running along the shallows, the sight of which made Diantha realize that these were not marshwaters but limpid brooks that at points were almost entirely transparent. No buzzing insects flew by, no slimy beasts hissed and growled from the shores. Here there were colors and flowers that never should bloom from a sodden rathole like this. It was beautiful, miraculous, horrible. The unchecked and unauthorized use of magic could only ever bring about disaster. This laughter and this warmth could not last forever, or very long at all…
Suspicious eyes regarded the Blossoms as they walked across the village. Reluctantly, Serra let a young man take Nightertale to a wooden post right outside a hogsty, and though she kept looking back mournfully towards the pegasus she’d grown so fond of, the beast itself seemed wholly indifferent to their parting, and promptly dumped a load of dung so fetid it made the pigs scatter.
At last they were led just outside the largest shack in the village. It was a simple enough logic for peasants, Diantha supposed, that the tallest building must be the most important. Thinking of the Tower of Rebirth, she acknowledged that such reasoning was good enough for magical girls, too. Alvi whispered something to Irma, who walked away at once, towards a group of youths gathered outside what appeared to be a communal kitchen. Diantha could not see their weapons, but she was certain they were rebels.
“How?” Was the only really important question that Diantha could ask. “Clear waters, bountiful harvests, the mending of flesh… The magic you wield is born of blood and sin. Who taught you? And what madness compelled you to heed such teachings? Clearance is not freely given by the Ruby Blossom, for outsiders to learn even acceptable magic, but this…”
“The Blossom cannot control all thoughts that man ever thinks,” said a man standing next to Alvi, an older whitebeard with a dark face roughly-worn by years. “Nor every word read or written. My Lady.”
“Just because I’m the first person you see who’s not coated in filth and grime, I’m no Lady. But I suppose I ought to commend you for being able to read at all,” she said. “Still, old man, I advise you to actually answer my questions. You are in a precarious position, I’ll remind you.”
“You are the one who is surrounded, my Lady,” he insisted. Diantha would laugh at the audacity, were she in a mood for amusement. Instead she wanted to lash him bloody until he learned respect. Wretched, toothless swamp people ought to express a little more awe towards Blossoms, even if only because that might be the only time in their lives they’d stand before someone who didn’t shovel shit for a living.
“Come, Cleto, don’t antagonize them,” said Alvi.
“Bah,” the old man scoffed. “See all the good that groveling will do you, then come back to me, if you can. Maybe you’ll be wiser, then,” he turned and walked away. Disrespectful as it was, Diantha was glad to be rid of him. Some men were nothing but trouble.
“We did not know it was forbidden magic,” Alvi said, some shame in his voice. “We didn’t know that what we had found was magic, to begin with. We-”
“Who is we?” Diantha asked. “Fellow healers?”
“We were only toilers, then. Farmers, hunters, tanners. And when times grew desperate enough, we were scavengers. It was Bartio who found the ruins,” he pointed at a bald man so stout he was probably the cause of all hunger in Alunziria. “Along with some fellows from his hometown further north, he found an entrance into what he first thought was a castle. The gates were locked, he says, but not well. Oxen pulled the metal bars at the entrance, and the promise of treasure within blinded those men to any possible danger.”
“And what did they find inside this… Castle?” Diantha doubted that people who lived in these huts could recognize a real castle, but she took them at their word, for now.
“Some metals and glass, mostly. Some apparatuses were left behind, dusty and forgotten, and these first scroungers didn’t know what they were, but they saw there were these delicate bits that seemed like silver and gold, and some steel to melt down as well. But the castle was larger than it seemed, when you saw the ruins from the outside. Too large to clean of valuables in one trip. The silver and gold fetched the best price, Bartio said, but the glass jars and bowls found there were most interesting. One was a long thin tube with liquid ice inside it-”
“That’s called water.”
“No, my Lady Blossom, liquid ice. It was freezing cold, but flowed smoothly, and when poured on food it coated it with a layer of frost, and when it melted down some time later it remained well-preserved. What we put in those tubes was preserved, too, I still have a strip of bacon in one that’s lasted months-”
“Fascinating though your meals may be,” Diantha interrupted, “don’t stray from the details that are truly relevant. You were not with them on this first expedition, but joined later, yes?”
“Some of them wanted to keep the castle a secret,” Alvi said, “but it was too big, and there was too much inside for only a few people to claim in a timely fashion. And we’re not greedy, selfish folk, anyways. The metals were worth a fair price at market, and they brought back a plough and a pair of large, healthy sows for breeding, and a dozen piglets. The next time they needed hands to help, I offered mine. You have seen what most of Alunziria is like. We are a poor people, and of late we’ve known hunger more closely than anyone should.”
“It seems to me that the simple solution would be to cook and eat that bald, fat thing,” Diantha suggested, glancing at Bartio. Mia giggled, but no one else was amused. “Very well, I understand. You’re sad poor people and so you’re justified in thievery. Carry on.”
“The castle’s corridors were labyrinths, and many of the doors were locked. This lad from the big village to the west tried to dig through a shut stone hatchway, and, well… He shouldn’t have. The ceiling came crashing down on his head, and the collapse killed a couple of other men.”
“And rather than taking that as a sign that you were not meant to be there, you presumed that such defenses meant there were valuables inside, more than scraps of precious metals. Is that not greed?”
“Call it what you will,” Alvi continued. “We had to know. If we fled, if our friends died for nothing, we’d rue it forever, and the memory would tempt us to return anyway. By then, of course, we had realized that the place was no mere castle. We didn’t know what exactly it was, for we had never seen anything like it, not really, although I’m sure you’d know at once. To us it looked like… Some chambers were like hogpens, but tidy, well-organized. They were not dungeons, it didn’t seem like they were built for holding men, but beasts. Scattered along tables we’d find books and scraps of paper. None of us could read what they said, only Cleto knew some letters but his eyesight is not what it once was, but at times we’d find illustrations, though few of them made sense to us. Maps, charts, lines we couldn’t discern. Some of them things looked like… Like magic to us. Circles with these twisting scribbles, things of the sort. Again, I’m sure you’d understand what they were, but we didn’t. We just knew it was… Out of the ordinary.”
“Forbidden,” said Diantha. But the chill she felt now was less due to the actions of these men and more thanks to the ruins themselves. Vials, holding pens, research notes, precautions to collapse the ceilings upon breach… That was a laboratory, not a castle. “It is shocking that you survived. Those facilities are designed to kill outsiders that try to claim its secrets. What… What did you take from there…?”
“We found… Light,” he said, his eyes wide, and strangely proud. “Better than gold, better than silver, we found… Yes, light, light is what we found. It was held there like a precious treasure, enclosed in crystal and thick glass, these receptacles as large as a man’s torso, restrained in bands of metal, a metal so beautiful, the likes of which I’d never seen, but value was the least important thing in the world for us, then. They were heavy, some bolted to a stone dais. Torchlight revealed their colors, and it was… Beautiful. Our small flames seemed to birth stars so luminous, but that didn’t blind us. I was too frightened to touch, so I wasn’t the first, but Nestor was bold, always the boldest, so he placed his fingers on the gleaming top of the vessel, finding a handle that he raised, turned, and then… And then the light was freed. It washed over Nestor, gleaming like fire, but it didn’t hurt him. Quite the opposite. It changed him. My Lady Blossom, I… I could not explain it to you. But he was changed forever, we could see, and so could he. After that, he could, in turn, change his surroundings. He could wield magic. And, soon, so could we.”
Diantha said nothing. Silently she counted just how many men surrounded her and her wards. How many women at work, how many children. All were dangerous, now. Alvi was transformed, that much was clear, and who else was, too…? And how could a crystal, a light, teach someone the Art?
“How many others have accompanied you? How many others have, like you, held one of these artifacts…?”
“More than you would like, to be sure,” he said. “But you understand, do you not…? We have chanced upon something we shouldn’t have, we understood that even then, but what choice did we have? Once we realized what powers we could wield, we had to preserve our homes, to allow them to prosper.”
“To bring to life gardens in a mire,” said Serra. “To incite rebellion.”
“The Prince-Regent calls it rebellion that we don’t pay his taxes and don’t allow his men to trudge unchecked into our lands. He is under the impression that all lands are his, that we are squatters in Vaduria, to be swept away when it’s expedient and exploited when it’s convenient. Can you imagine, my Lady Blossom, if forbidden treasures and knowledge were to fall into the hands of one such as the Prince-Regent? Nobles have prodigious appetites that are not easy to sate, while all we used this magic for was to provide for our own.”
This she could not deny. What these peasants had done was anathema, but a small revolt was benign compared to magic given to men with ambitions that befit a prince, a king. There was yet much that Diantha did not understand, and, representing the Rose, she was all too aware of the weight of her judgment.
“It would appear that outside of Alunziria, the knowledge of what you have done has not yet spread. That is for the good,” Diantha said. “But it must remain so. I must know all of your companions who delved into the ruins, how many of them have been exposed to the substances and materials there, and if any have been removed from there,” at the sight of Alvi’s grimace, Diantha knew the answer at once. “How many?” Again, there was no need for words. She wanted to scream. “You might as well have your pigs fuck me bloody. Any other miserable news I ought to know?”
“Nothing more miserable than our children finally enjoying full bellies and restful sleep,” Alvi had the gall to look offended. “There’s other healers in other villages ‘round here, I suppose, and it might be that they’ve been pillaging the ruins, if they could find anything. If you had seen the life we led, the deprivations we knew, you’d understand. Even knowing it was wrong, even knowing that no doubt it was forbidden, what is law compared to your son’s weeping?”
I don’t care about your fucking son and the suffering you use to justify anathema. The situation had turned into a nightmare. Unchecked and illegal magics, artifacts which somehow imbued even oafish mud farmers with knowledge and powers beyond their feeble understanding, all this in the middle of what could well become an uprising… With magic on their side, the fools might be emboldened into action. With magic as a prize, other fools might be tempted into escalating a mere tax dispute into war.
“Listen well, and take my words to heart,” Diantha told Alvi. “As of now, my girls and I are the only friends you have. Until we can understand what exactly it was that you have chanced upon, and the nature of this magic you now wield, you are a dead man, do you understand me? You have committed crimes that the Red Rose cannot forgive, but I am not the Red Rose, and if forgiving your transgressions is the price of averting a broader disaster, then I am willing to do so. Whatever is in that laboratory must be studied and contained. Destroyed, even. Is that clear?”
“I don’t know if the others would allow you to destroy the treasures,” he said.
“Your consent is inconsequential. All that is yours to decide is how much suffering will follow. The situation will be contained, your uprising will be pacified, and all will be resolved. That is the best way this ends for you.”
“I have no wish to make an enemy of the Blossoms,” he said, “but I speak only for myself. Cleto and Bartio have their own ideas. And the other healers to the north, closer to the ruins… What will you do to them, if they do not comply?”
What do you think my Rose does to seditious outsiders, you imbecile?
“They will comply, once they are persuaded that it is within their interests,” said Diantha. “Your cooperation paves the way to concessions, which we can impose upon the Prince-Regent, as necessities for making peace. It is more practical for him to continue to look away from Alunziria and pretend it does not exist, so we can leverage that to ensure your gains, as he’ll just implement the reforms you require.”
“You can leverage that,” he said. “It would also be practical for you to abandon us. It is as you said, we have committed crimes that the Rose cannot forgive.”
Perhaps I should not have been so hostile. She felt stupid, and she recalled Lillia’s voice, her scorn and mockery.
“I misspoke,” she tried to salvage the situation. “I very much would like to avoid such extreme ends. But I really must stress the danger that unknown magics can pose. Outsiders are permitted to learn the Art only with supervision, so a method that simply… Gives you that power, that which should be a cultivated knowledge, a developed technique, not an effortless, natural thing… That’s no miracle. In our histories, whenever we had lenient Councils and Grand Masters that eased their wardenship on the Veiled Powers, tragedy followed. War and slaughter, like magic, are not forces that can ever be controlled once inflamed. Millennia made the world forget, but in the Stonetree, we remember. The Deadlands, the World-Wound, the Heavenscorn Hollow… Each a bleeding scar and a burning reminder of atrocity. Of folly and arrogance. Whatever the intention, there are forces that once unleashed are not easily restrained, a fire kindled for warmth and safety but that grows out of control.”
“Your Rose would know, I’ve no doubt,” said Alvi. “As I said, I’ve no wish to make an enemy of the Blossoms. No matter how they treat us with their words. It is unnatural, I’ll grant you that, what has happened to us. When I look within, I cannot trace the origin of this knowledge I suddenly have. I just… Know, the same way a child knows how to breathe. It does not feel like me, but I don’t know how to express the strangeness in words. How can you know something you have never learned? I know how to shape flesh, if I’m allowed to touch it, I know gestures and the feeling on my muscles and my joints, but I cannot explain how it works, how I came to change like this.”
That’s what magic does, Diantha thought. She had tried to impress upon her wards this lesson, but it was not intuitive. It was no simple matter, rewriting the world, and transformation was an almost impossible ordeal, but to change what is, a promising road was to change what was. A past that was never lived, memories never acquired, thoughts never conceived… Mundane logic was no impediment to the Art. But this was irresponsible to a degree that boggled the mind. To simply give one such talents, devoid of memory, of context, of any understanding, was more curse than boon. By year’s end, how many of these fools would be lost to madness, or dead? They did not know it yet, but this gift would soon consume them. The world was well rid of these thieves and traitors, but Diantha hoped only that she could stop these flames from consuming anyone else.
“Then perhaps in understanding the nature of this magic, the reason the ruins were abandoned like that, we can also help you understand this yawning emptiness within you,” she offered. “Then, once I am confident of the safety, you can keep the fruits of your miracle.”
“I cannot promise the others will agree,” said Alvi, extending his hand, “but I’m willing to put my faith in your Rose- in you.”
Faith was a beautiful way to say self-interest and survival, but it would suffice. Diantha meant to shake the man’s hand, but her own was bare, her gloves discarded once lost to blood and sweat and the revolting filth of Alunziria.
“Teana, shake his hand, won’t you?” Diantha ordered, and her student obeyed. “Now there’s a good girl. Now,” she turned to Alvi, “convince your other companions to be quiet and well-behaved. Then we head out, towards the ruins, and towards those other fellows who took things that were never theirs. Now run along and don’t waste my time.”
The Rose's Torn Petals 