(As always, text enclosed in /text/ is italicized.)
-----
The door to Drift's forge creaked open, and Misha rose from his chair in the
adjoining bedroom. Gesturing for Madog to stay by Drift's bedside, the fox-man
walked into the forge to intercept the visitor. Keeping his voice down for the
sake of the samoyed sleeping fitfully in the room behind him, he hissed, "Where
have you been? He's been asking for you-" Misha's voice trailed off in alarm
at the look she turned on him, "-all day?"
Alexis turned her haggard eyes away and, shivering with cold, pulled off her
heavy fur coat and gloves. Hanging them up on a wall hook, she then leaned
forward against the wall, resting her weight on her arm. "It has been a -very-
long day," she said, her voice slowed as if almost too exhausted for coherent
thought. "I wanted to be by his side all day, but I had two absolutely
critical clients that it would ruin me to ignore. They introduced a lot of
loose ends that needed tying, and a few tied ends that needed loosening, and
all of it needed done /immediately/. I don't want to talk about it." She
ended that sentence with a negating sweep of her hand, drew herself up
straight, and then turned back toward the fox. "How is he? What happened?"
Misha decided not to push on the subject, at least for the time being, and
waved the she-bat through to her beloved's bedside. "There was an accident
with the ice crews," he said quietly.
Alexis listened attentively, but Alexastra already knew what had happened.
She had been by Drift's side for much of the day in a wide array of shapes and
disguises, providing all the subtle little nudges and odd twists of fortune
that had kept her beloved alive from the ice back to Metamor. With her help,
anything that could go wrong had gone wrong with Agemnos' plots that day. Even
so, in spite of all her efforts to ward and protect him, Drift had nearly
killed himself anyway. When the ice had given way under two of the ice crew,
plunging them into the frigid water, Drift had grabbed a rope and jumped in
after them. She had almost panicked when he vanished into the churning froth
of shattered ice and freezing black water. Had Lord Agemnos somehow bewitched
him? He couldn't swim! Only when he'd surged up out of the water, his
taurform body just barely long enough for his hind legs to reach the bottom of
the shallow lake, had she understood the method to his madness
. His thick fur protected him from the freezing cold water just long enough
to heave the two age-regressed Keepers out onto the ice, their bodies shaking
and their teeth chattering. Then he had transferred the rope to his mouth and
bitten down as his body collapsed in on itself, becoming fully canine. His
much smaller full animal form was far easier for the others to haul to safety
but by the time that had been accomplished he was just as soaked and frozen as
the two he had rescued. She thought he was crazy for doing it, but when
viewing him by mortal standards, she had to be impressed by her clever,
handsome little candle flame. He had burned very brightly indeed.
Now, though, he was at low ebb. The icy shock of the freezing water had
exacerbated the cough he'd been barely holding off for two weeks, and now she
could hear an alarming rasp in his chest when he breathed. That could be
trouble. It could also be opportunity, though: here inside the Keep, with
Daedra'kama well past, Drift would be a much harder target for Agemnos to
reach, and Alexastra would willingly take any advantage she could get. Once
his ice-carving party had made it to the healers safely within the Keep's
bounds, it had taken her the entire rest of the day to sabotage and uncoil all
of her old plans and plots against him. She truly was exhausted, and the
magnitude of all that had transpired that day began to weigh down on her; how
close and how often she had come to instant death.
"Little spider has too many webs," Madog said, breaking in on her chain of
thought. The mechanical fox, seated at the foot of Drift's bed, had fixed the
she-bat with a piercing stare the moment he'd laid eyes on her, blue eyes
following her every movement. "Careful, tricky lady, or you lose lots."
Alexastra lowered her head against her hands, closing her eyes and pressing
her forehead against Drift's soft-furred knuckles to get away from that
strangely unsettling gaze. "I am... aware of that," she replied. For the
thousandth time, she wished that Misha had never found that accursed
contraption. This was not the first time in their centuries-long lifespans
that she and Malabrinium, or Madog as he was now called, had crossed paths. If
he figured out who and what she was, as he had done so disastrously once
before, well... that was yet another potential threat source that she didn't
need. The odds against her were long enough already: she could almost feel
the walls closing in around her. Even with Nocturna's guidance and the
leverage of being closest to the target, she was still just one lesser daedra
up against the full might of the Lord of Avarice. It was only the first day,
and she was nearly stretched to her limits. How could she possibly expect to
last t
wo full months?
"May I- may I have a moment alone, please?" she asked, her voice threatening
to break in the middle of the sentence. "I just..." With a visible effort,
she forcibly resettled her composure. "I need some time to think."
Madog rose and left without a word, but Misha lingered for a moment longer.
He rested his hand on her shoulder, strong and callused on the pads with just a
hint of gray starting to creep into the fur. "We'll be right outside if you
need us," the fox said and started to pull away, but she stopped him by laying
her hand over his.
In spite of her upbringing, Alexastra found herself drawing solace from the
gesture and decided that he deserved at least her thanks in return. "Please
thank Caroline for staying with him and getting some soup into him," she said,
having smelled both on Drift's hands. "Thank you also for staying with him
until I could get here. I don't know what I would have done without..." She
trailed off as realization dawned on her. "...without your help," she
finished, uncertainty gnawing at her again. Did she dare? Did she dare trust
her life to mortal hands? Did she dare to ask for help from the creatures of a
day? She let his hand go, but only reluctantly. "Don't... don't go far."
-----
Night had fallen over Metamor, dark and moonless, the wheeling stars hidden
away by a thick layer of cloud. Misha went to bed and Madog went... wherever
he went each night while his friends slept. The bells of the night watch
tolled out the hours as they passed, quiet and peaceful. Through it all,
Alexastra tended to her beloved, soothing his fever with water-damped cloths
laid over the short fur of his brow and belly.
It wouldn't last. Nocturna's first warning had been very specific. Thus it
was, when she heard the creak of the forge door opening and the clack of a
cloven-hoofed footfall, that Alexastra rose from Drift's bedside with a smile.
She was going to enjoy this. The goat-morph intruder, his fur greying with
age, made it four steps into the forge before he felt a sharp-clawed hand clamp
onto his shoulder. He opened his mouth to scream, but then cut it off when a
mithril-edged razor nestled into the curve of his throat. "Now, now,"
Alexastra whispered in his ear. "None of that. Dear Edward needs his rest.
This way, please."
Backing her nervous captive into the hall, she shoved him face-first hard
against the wall and held him there by the back of the neck, her razor
disappearing back into her sleeve. "Hello, Thestilus," she purred. "Nice
disguise. Using the deceased father to torment the sick son? That old trick's
only been done a few million times, so it doesn't surprise me that you'd try
it."
"What are you doing?" the goat-disguised imp protested, struggling until she
smashed his face into the wall again. "Let- ow! Let go of me! Have you lost
your mind? We've got work to do!"
"I don't work for Lord Agemnos anymore, you idiot," Alexastra replied.
"Edward Snow is now under my protection."
"You're insane!"
"You have no idea what I'm capable of doing to you, Thestilus. Don't push
me."
"You don't- ow!- scare me, traitor!"
Alexastra trilled an amused laugh, smiling as she traced a finger up to his
ear. "Silly little imp. To think that I would settle for merely scaring you."
Without another word, she stabbed her thumb claw through his earlobe and
ripped it downward. When he opened his mouth to scream, she cut it off by
squeezing his throat, stopping the airflow. "I said none of that. I'm quite
busy enough already concealing your regeneration from Kyia without having to
damp your screams, too. And don't expect any assistance from Lord Agemnos,
either. His eyes are elsewhere."
Thestilus choked, tugging futilely at the she-bat's grip. "I-impossible!"
he squeaked out. "Nobody- hide that!"
The she-bat merely tsked. "Impossible just means you don't know how to do
it yet," she replied. "I do." She'd been casting an illusion into his mind
from the moment she'd first grabbed him. It was an effort to maintain it in
all its detail, but she was a daedra spymaster. Deception was her
stock-in-trade, and she hid any sign of the effort from her prey through
practice and raw force of will.
She patted his ear as it "healed" with typically impish speed, her illusion
flawless. She'd only needed to do it for real once in her life to remember the
essence of the moment for all time, and its realism went unquestioned by the
imp in her grasp. "There. Now that I have your full attention, let me make
this clear. Drift is -mine-. Go near him again, and this will be as a lover's
caress. Say anything, and... well..." Her smile was chilling. "You get the
idea." Throwing him to the hallway floor, she blocked the door back to Drift's
room with her body and fixed the false goat with an icy glare. "Leave. Now."
The imp fled, hooved feet clacking a hasty retreat into the night.
Once he was out of sight and hearing, Alexastra blew out a deep sigh of
relief, not quite believing that it had worked. Nocturna had warned her to be
very aggressive with Thestilus that night, to leave in him a lasting wariness
of her. She would never have dared tread so closely to the edge of Nocturna's
neutrality without that open permission. She hadn't actually harmed the imp,
merely made him think she had.
Stepping back inside, she shut the door behind her. She could hear Drift
whimpering in his room, in the midst of another nightmare. Settling down on
his bed, Alexastra gently cradled his head in her lap, stroked his fur, and
softly sang for him an old Suielman lullaby until his dreams were soothed.
Looking down at his handsome face, she gently brushed a shed strand of hair off
his nose and then leaned down to nuzzle the itch away.
"No more nightmares," she promised him in a whisper. "As long as I have any
power to do so, I'll keep them far away.
"I love you."
-----
"She attacked me!"
"I know."
"She switched sides!"
"I know."
"She threatened to throw me to the Lightbringer!"
"I know."
"She's ruined /everything/!"
"I know." The Lord of Avarice leaned back in his chair, steepled his
fingers against his precisely trimmed brown goatee, and smiled as a powerfully
built man in black armor stepped from the shadows and backhanded the nearly
hysterical Thestilus into silence.
Agemnos' smile widened. "Everything is proceeding exactly according to
plan."
Fin.
!DSPAM:4d20cedd90011804284693!
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