Interlude One - Failed Again

Countess Carrisyn Thorne sighed in frustration as she stared at the motionless corpse of the half elf on the table. She peered at the unmoving, bloodied form, still strapped to the table a moment longer before flinging the blade against the far wall angrily. While her incisions would never be up to snuff in the medical world, they were still quite precise if she did say so herself. She'd had ample practice, of course. Thirty-two times now, in fact. Each with the same results and each at enormous personal and monetary cost.

When she'd tried the first time, she'd been so nervous she thought she would pass out, but each time it had gotten easier. She'd tried many methods over the first dozen subjects (some would say victims They would have died anyway if she'd not done the job first and it wasn't like she was doing it for fun, she reasoned) including herbal anesthesia, magic, and alcohol but none had been effective. Finally, she'd given up on anesthesia altogether and simply performed the steps for the ritual and waited through the screams. Each time in vain.

Her situation was becoming precarious, though. The resources needed for the crystal were staggering and with the war winding down against the Gedran Imperium, the kingdom was needing less and less iron from her mines. While the prince was supporting her secretly, his inability to provide resources openly meant his support wasn't something she could count on in a material way. She could afford one, possibly two more before she'd be forced to put her research on hiatus pending another revenue stream. That was without the staggering cost to her personally. The magic expenditure to bring someone from her old world to this was beyond measure and each time took more and more out of her.

Magic was a double-edged sword in every sense. Someone skilled in magic could conjure up astounding feats of power but it demanded a high price. Days or even weeks or months could be leeched away from the unwary mage's life. These summonings, 32 of them, had cost Carrisyn decades from her life. In actual years she was in her early thirties, but she was, effectively, well past middle age by this point. If she lived to see forty it would be a miracle. Magic gave and took, and few were willing or able to pay the price it demanded. Except the royal family, but they lived by wholly separate rules from others. No matter how she looked at it and despite how the storybooks had always painted them, old witches simply did not exist.

On top of everything else she also had political entanglements to consider. She scowled as she thought of Drudge. His open resistance to her orders could not be countenanced and punishment would have to be exacted. He had found courage somewhere and she could guess where he'd found what he thought was a safe harbor. She doubted he would be so quick to ignore her next time, but she'd also made him angry. It made him unpredictable and troublesome. Drudge's usefulness had run its course. These were all problems for a different day, though. For now, she had to get the body out of here and get a bath. The half elf had bled less dramatically than most of the other subjects, possibly due to the near total paralysis, but there was still a copious amount of blood everywhere, including on her.

"Sayuri!" Countess Thorne called. There was no response. "Goddamn that cat! SAYURI!!!" Carrisyn's yell echoed through the room and into the garden beyond the window.

"Yes, sir, captain, sir!" Sayuri appeared at the open window, her awkward salute infuriating Carrisyn more than usual.

"I'm not your goddamn sir, or your captain, Sayuri!" Carrisyn fumed. "I am fucking nobility! Call me lady or mistress or anything else. Do not continue to call me sir!" Where in the hell had she gotten it into her furry, empty head to call me sir, Carrisyn wondered for the hundredth time.

"Okie, sir, lady mistress, sir!" Sayuri stood even more upright, her salute achieving ridiculous levels of absurdity. Carrisyn felt yet another in an endless series of headaches coming on and pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation.

"Take this…thing away and dispose of it in the furnace," Carrisyn sighed, gesturing to the body growing cold on the table. Sayuri hopped the one and a half meters from the garden to the windowsill easily and bounded into the room. "And clean this place up, it looks and smells unsightly." Even with the window open the coppery smell of blood lingered heavy in the air.

"Um…uh," Sayuri stumbled, trying to get her words out. "Should I do both at the same time or one after the other and should I find out how the princess found out before or after the other things, lady mistress, sir?"

"Wha-"Carrisyn's headache intensified as she understood the issue. "Take the body to the furnace, then clean the room up, then find out how the princess knew. Got it?"

"Okie, sir, mistress lady, sir!" Sayuri saluted again and made her way toward the half elf strapped to the table. "Finding out how the princess found out keeps getting pushed way back. At this rate I might never find out what I need to find out about." She muttered under her breath, scratching one of her ears in worry. Carrisyn scowled at Sayuri for a long moment before shaking her head and making her way toward the door.

"Don't forget to clean the manacles, the blood rusts them if you don't," Carrisyn warned.

"Um!" Sayuri called. "Mistress sir lady! Sir!"

"Oh my god! It's lady or mistress!" Carrisyn snapped, whirling around. "Get it right! Where are you even getting sir, from? Why do you keep calling me sir?"

"Huh? Oh! Um, should I still put the dead body in the furnace if it's not dead, lady, sir?" Sayuri looked very confused.

"I don't have the energy or patience to deal with you, right now, put the body in the furnace," Carrisyn pinched the bridge of her nose again, despite it not helping at all. "I'm going to go to sleep, and I don't want to be disturbed.

"It's just…" Sayuri fidgeted nervously, causing Carrisyn to sigh and drop her head in frustration. "If it's still alive, is it a body or a person, mistress, sir?"

"Sayuri, I do not have the power to care what you are talking about right now. The instructions I gave are so simple not even you can mess them up," Carrisyn had just about had enough.

"It's just that she's alive," Sayuri gestured helplessly toward the body on the table. "If you want me to take her to the furnace I will but you said 'body' and I don't think if the person's alive they're a 'body', right?

"What do you mean she's alive?" Carrisyn cocked her eyebrow. "She's dead, I checked myself."

"Okie, but her heart's beating. I can hear it from here," Sayuri shuffled her feet, eyes flicking back and forth nervously between Carrisyn and the half elf.

"Let me see!" Carrisyn growled, brushing past Sayuri, her heart pounded with excitement at the prospect. Through the open wound in the half elf's chest Carrisyn caught the unmistakable movement of a beating heart. "Oh my God. I found her!" Carrisyn breathed, fingers shaking with nervousness. Carrisyn picked up the crystal with trembling hands and pressed her finger down on the top hard enough to draw blood. As the blood dripped onto the dull rose-colored crystal a light slowly grew inside it, finally brightening to a deep crimson glow. A moment later the crystal split into five equal shards.

Carrisyn closed her eyes and, despite her exhaustion, called up a cascade of magic which flowed from her into the crystal shards beneath her fingers. She was so excited she nearly forgot the words she'd read a thousand times over. Taking a deep breath to steady her pounding heart she began the ritual.

"Heart, for it is the fount of life," Carrisyn whispered in a language few could understand. So saying, she pressed one sliver of the stone between the half elf's broken rib cage and plunged it deep into the beating heart below, magic writhing and coursing through her like an uncoiling snake. "Mind, for it is the reason of life." Carrisyn pressed a second sliver in the hole she'd cut in the half elf's forehead and deep into the soft tissue beneath. "Bone for it is the foundation of life." Carrisyn pressed the sliver into the hole she'd carved in the half elf's hip bone. "Soul, for it is not for us alone." Carrisyn winced as she thrust the fourth sliver into her own wrist. "And binding for we are all in our way." Carrisyn placed the final sliver into the head of the small wand she used. "All in harmony. All in shadow and shine. All are one and all are eternal."

A wind kicked up for a moment and a deep, crimson glow filled the room, bathing Carrisyn and the half elf in its lurid brilliance. The glow and wind quickly died, and everything was silent. Carrisyn swayed drunkenly, her head swimming for a moment before regaining her balance. The heart continued to beat in the half elf's chest and Carrisyn smiled in exhaustion, mentally and physically spent. We've finally taken the first step, she thought. Her joy lasted the length of time it took for Sayuri to nudge closer and bend down.

"When should I take her to the furnace, sir?" She whispered quietly near Carrisyn's ear.