20. Proactive not Reactive

Teri decides to do things differently this time...

Transmigrated Teri is an ongoing isekai/portal fantasy series about Teri Graves, an embittered middle-age GenX office lady who gets into a massive car accident and wakes up in the world of the fantasy series she loves to hate, The Allisar Fireborn Chronicles. She knows the characters, she knows the plot, and she knows that its all a massive coma dream…except for how nothing is as it should be. Worse? She woke up in the body of the doomed evil stepmother! She escaped a pandemic for this?

Table of Contents

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Previously: Teri found herself at a loss…

“Gervyn! Gervyn, stop, she’s resting—”

“I just want to see—”

“Doctor Dourwin said—”

“What are you two reprobates doing here, bothering Milady? She is grievously injured! Out!”

Teri opened her eyes.

The bed canopy was the same oppressive, brocaded burgundy silk. The stained glass windows threw the same rose-gold light across the same aggressively medieval stonework. Somewhere to her left, quack doctor Dourwin was out in the hallway doing his level best to hold back what sounded like the entire Allisar household, and failing.

Teri lay very still and took three measured breaths.

She was alive. ...or something like it.

Theo’s weight settled against her legs from the other side of the bed, warm and solid and immediate.

:You’re back,: he said. His tone was casual, but his tail, thumping the mattress hard enough to jostle her, was not.

“I’m back,” she agreed, under her breath.

:He hurt you.: He whimpered a little. :I tried.:

“I know.” She put her hand on his head. “I know you did.”

She kept it there for a moment, feeling him breathe, making sure he was whole. In her last conscious memory, he had been dragging himself across the stone floor, and she needed to know, before anything else, that he was all right. He pressed up into her hand with a small whine.

Then she took a deep breath, removed her hand, and stared back up at the canopy.

Right, she thought. Okay.

Ferdiff had killed her. She had been strangled to death in his man-cave that smelled of woodsmoke and old leather while her own previously unknown magic sparked uselessly at her fingertips. Now she was back in this wrong bed, in this wrong body, with approximately three weeks until the Spring Gala and the same cast of characters arrayed around her like pieces on a board game she never agreed to play.

The critical point was that this had happened before. Not the murder (that was new, and she had strong feelings about it) but waking up in this damn bed was old hat. She’d done it twice now, although the first time around she hadn’t understood what was happening. She had thought she figured it out the second time. Third time’s the charm, she thought, because she understood now.

:Time loop,: Theo said helpfully.

“Yes, thank you, I got there.”

:You’re slow sometimes.:

“I was murdered, Theo, give me a moment.”

She had read a few hundred thousand words of time-loop fanfic over the course of her AFC fandom life, and she knew exactly how it worked. You came back; you tried again; you made different choices. The loop either closed when you got it right, or (and this was the part the fluffy fix-it fics tended to gloss over) it didn’t close at all, and you just kept going until you went insane, or until something worse happened, or until whatever was running the loop got bored and decided you weren’t worth the trouble.

She did not know which kind her brain had dumped her into.

She had spent her first loop treating this world like a very vivid dream, something to wait out. After the fall and waking up the second time, she thought it might be an inconvenient obligation she could manage from a wheelchair with some administrative competence and an escape plan. Both approaches had ended with her dead on the floor, and the last one with Theo broken and howling.

She was not doing that again.

The door opened and Doctor Dourwin swept in, robes flapping.

“Milady! You should not have moved so much. I am relieved that you have finally awoken.” He came closer to the bed, warily eyeing Theo. “Can you tell me how you feel, currently?”

“Terrible,” Teri said. “And I still don’t like you.”

He stood there, blinking at her in shock.

She pushed herself up against the pillows, ignoring the concerned noises this produced, and looked at Dourwin with the expression she had once reserved for faculty members who implied that mere administrators should not dare to question them. She had a lot of experience with that, unfortunately.

“I have questions,” she said.

Dourwin blinked. “Milady, you should rest before—”

She held up a hand and his mouth clacked shut.

“Someone send for Lady Sariat; I need something warm to drink. I know Lady Elisandar is hiding in the hallway, keeping the kids out. Have her do it.”

“Ah. Ahem. Yes, of course.” He turned and flapped a hand at whomever was lurking in the doorway. “So, I should examine—”

“About my magic,” she said, right over him. “Specifically, about what happens to a witch’s abilities after a void howler attack. Specifically, about why no one has mentioned that mine appear to have been doing things without my permission.” She waved a hand at Theo, hoping he’d take the hint.

He went very quiet.

:Oh, good,: Theo said, pleased. :Finally!:

:You could be a bit more helpful yourself!: She rapped him on the head.

:Ow! Ow! I can’t! That’s not how this works!: He buried his head in the blankets.

“Call your colleagues in here, we’ve got a group project to work on.”

“Group project? Milady, I’m not certain what you mean—”

“Now,” she snarled, and he dashed out of the room.

:You are in a bad mood.: Theo scrunched up his face.

:I just got murdered, Theo! I’m allowed!:

:But you woke up again!:

:That only means I might get killed again!:

He slumped down. :Oh. That would be bad.:

“Exactly,” she answered out loud as Dourwin and his flock of nervous ninnies paraded into the room. Behind them, Lady Elisandar tottered in and bee-lined for her chair, followed by Lady Sariat pushing the familiar tea cart and doing her best not to have any kind of expression on her face at all.

Teri pointed at Dourwin. “Back to my question. What effects do void howler attacks have on low-level witches?”

Dourwin’s colleagues exchanged quick, loaded glances that meant clear as day that they had no fucking clue what she was talking about.

Lady Elisandar pressed a handkerchief to her mouth, although now that Teri knew what to look for, she could see the excitement in the old lady’s eyes. Lady Sariat set the tea service up with perfect composure and stood quietly to one side, watching everything.

“There have been,” Dourwin said carefully, “some observations. We did not wish to alarm you while you were still healing.”

“How considerate.” Teri smiled at him. It was not a warm smile, and she enjoyed watching them all take a step backward. “Why don’t you go ahead and alarm me?”

Grudgingly, he told her their observations in language so hedged and qualified that it nearly folded in on itself. (To be fair, Teri understood that directness had never gone well for anyone around Lady Greyrage.) It boiled down to the fact that her magic had done several inexplicable things in the immediate aftermath of the attack and her rescue, mostly involving fire, and no one had been entirely sure why.

Teri listened to all of it. Then she said, “And no one thought to mention this.”

“You’ve been mostly unconscious, Milady,” Dourwin grumbled.

“I’m absolutely certain that none of you would ever have mentioned it if I had not asked just now.” She knew it because they never had in her previous time loops.

There were more nervous exchanges, everyone eyeing everyone else and trying not to look guilty.

“And the cats,” Lady Elisandar said with a trembling voice, which Teri understood to mean the old woman was stirring the pot on purpose.

“What cats?” Teri asked the room at large.

:So cute! The house cats! They’ve been outside your door. They don’t like me, though.: Theo’s head drooped.

“And that matters why?” she asked him, but Dourwin answered.

“It’s unusual, but often a sign of a witch gaining power.”

Teri considered that for a long moment, calling up all the charts and breakdowns of the absurdly complex magic system Fuckin’ Chad had built for the series. It balanced “alignment” against “disruption,” with low-level witches like Lady Greyrage serving mostly as channelers of external, natural magic, and usually tied to the forces of disruption. Animals, as a rule, disliked disruption, and witches by extension. Cats weren’t particularly magical on their own in the series, but they often showed up where magical alignment happening.

(Some fans maintained cats were story critical and they would be validated, somehow, in the fifth, as-yet-unpublished book, but Teri had never agreed with that particular conspiracy theory.)

“Gaining power, or changing alignment?”

Another round of nervous glances before Dourwin spoke up again, his tone fawning.

“Perhaps both, but we have been wary of calling in an alchemist to test your meridians. We are only concerned for your well-being. It has been hard to judge the extent of the damage.”

“Because I was unconscious, or because you have no idea what you’re looking for?”

Dourwin looked affronted but did not reply.

“I’ll need books,” she said. “Whatever you have on familiar bonds and their effect on a witch’s alignment. And I’ll need someone who can actually teach me something useful, not—” She gestured vaguely at all of them. “Whatever the medical equivalent of this is.”

Dourwin drew himself up. “Milady, I am a doctor of some considerable—”

“I’m sure you are. You can fix my leg, or at least improve it. I don’t think it will ever heal right, but it hurts like hell, so give me some medicine and those magical wrappings that speed recovery. Then books, please. And an alchemist, if you can find one.” She turned to Lady Sariat. “And tea. Actual tea, not whatever that is.” She nodded at the cart, which appeared to contain broth and good intentions.

The corner of Lady Sariat’s mouth tucked in, very small and very controlled; in better lighting, it might have been the beginning of a smile. “Of course, Milady.” She put the mug of broth aside and began making actual tea.

The doctors filed out in varying states of wounded dignity. Lady Elisandar waddled over and made several attempts to fuss with her bedcovers, which Teri rebuffed as politely as she could. The room gradually cleared until it was just Teri, Theo, and both ladies-in-waiting moving quietly around the edges of her space.

Teri watched them for a moment. Her space, she thought. This is my room.

She was not going to play the amnesia card this time around, she decided. Lady Greyrage would never explain herself, and Teri would follow that lead. She did not have time to pussy-foot around anyway.

Ferdiff was arriving in three weeks. She remembered the study and the fire iron with crisp, deadly clarity. She remembered a man who had decided what he was going to do before she even rolled into the room, threatened by a magic that Teri neither understood nor even felt until her final moments, when sparks ran up her arms with nowhere to go.

She needed someone with the nerve to move against Ferdiff, not directly, but in subtle ways. She didn’t need to trust them, and that thought brought her to Roos, who had been mapping the household’s power dynamics for years (even if for his own nefarious ends), and who never fidgeted, never rushed through anything, never seemed to want anything badly enough to let it show. A traitor in the long run, yes, and not to be trusted; but a traitor with no loyalty to Ferdiff, which was exactly what she needed.

Proactive, she told herself. You are going to be proactive about this if it kills you. Again.

“Lady Sariat,” she said.

“Milady?”

“When you’ve finished, would you find Lord Ota’s manservant Roos and ask him to come see me?” She kept her voice even and offhand, one administrative request among many. “At his convenience. No urgency.”

The girl paused for a fraction of a second. “Of course, Milady,” she said, and if there was anything in her voice beyond professional compliance, she kept it admirably contained.

Theo’s tail thumped against the covers once, with great self-satisfaction.

“Don’t,” Teri told him.

:I didn’t say anything.:

“You were about to.”

:I was going to say it was a very good idea!: He put his chin on her knee and looked up at her with limpid, innocent eyes. :Also Sariat has very nice hands. Roos thinks so too.:

“Theo.”

:What? It’s true. I can tell these things.:

Teri looked at the ceiling, ignoring the suspicious looks Lady Elisandar was giving both her and Theo. Outside the window, the pale pink light of early morning was strengthening toward a bright day.

Three weeks. She had three weeks, a broken leg, unreliable magic, a telepathic dog with no filter, and a steward who might or might not be willing to commit something adjacent to treason if she asked him nicely enough.

She’d manage.

Probably.

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NEXT: Roos Redux

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