Teri Graves was a middle-aged GenX office lady at a large university, right up until the first day of the pandemic lockdown, when a major car crash on her way home landed her in the fantasy world of the book series she obsessively loves to hate, The Allisar Fireborn Chronicles. Worse? She woke up in the body of the doomed evil stepmother! Now she has to use everything she knows about the books to survive a story that’s already going off-script. She escaped a pandemic for this?
Table of Contents
Previously: A mysterious, legendary alchemist showed up and Teri was confused about it…
By the end of the first week, the household had sorted itself into two camps on the subject of Euxina Moonshadow: those who were fascinated by the legendary alchemist, and Lady Elisandar.
The “fascinated” camp was considerable, and included Teri herself. Lady Sariat told her that even the notoriously hard-to-impress kitchen staff had taken to leaving small offerings outside Euxina Moonshadow’s guest room (a pot of the good tea, a plate of the almond pastries that were meant for the family table) in the hope, apparently, that a celebrated alchemist might notice and respond favorably. Roos mentioned, deadpan, that the stablemen had started combing their hair before coming inside. Even Doctor Dourwin appeared in the corridor outside Teri’s rooms twice in three days without any medical justification, which Teri found both transparent and faintly hilarious.
Lady Elisandar’s camp had a membership of one, but she made up for it in volume.
“She left her hat on the dining table again,” she reported to Teri on the third morning, in the tone she usually reserved for war crimes. “On the dining table. Where people eat.”
“Mmm,” Teri said, which she had found was the most useful response to Lady Elisandar before her first cup of tea. Or her third.
“And she was in the library until past midnight. Junior Steward Bremwar saw the light under the door. What is she doing in there until midnight?”
“Reading, probably.”
Lady Elisandar stabbed her needle into her embroidery.
Euxina Moonshadow herself was impervious to the household’s reaction, which Teri suspected was nothing new to her. She barely noticed all the fawning, moving through Castle Luttiron with the same confidence she had walked in with, treating the castle’s rhythms as mildly interesting but otherwise inconsequential. She showed up to meals when she felt like it. She borrowed books without asking. She had commandeered a small table near the window in Teri’s sitting room for her own use, covered now in notes and small glass vials that Lady Sariat had been firmly told not to touch, and which Lady Sariat firmly told the kids not to touch.
The lessons had not looked anything like what Teri expected, and seemed to her more like extended psychological torture than anything else.
“Again.” Euxina Moonshadow sat across from Teri with her hands folded.
“I can’t just think it into reality! It doesn’t work like that! Nothing works like that!” Teri gestured at the shadows pooled in the corner of the room. “It happens when I’m not thinking about it.”
“I know.” Euxina Moonshadow looked at the shadows, a note of accusation in her voice. “So stop thinking about it.”
“That is extremely not helpful.”
“You’re approaching it like a locked door you need a key for.” She tilted her head. “It isn’t a door. It isn’t locked. It’s been open for some time. You keep trying to open it harder.”
Teri stared at her. “That made no sense.”
“It will,” Euxina Moonshadow said serenely. She had said it before, and would keep saying it until Teri figured it out or, more likely, went stark raving mad.
Theo, from his position on the hearthrug, made a sound that was suspiciously close to agreement.
“Don’t,” Teri told him, and he huffed at her in laughter. Euxina Moonshadow watched the exchange with her usual inscrutable expression.
It was the afternoon of the second day that Gervyn appeared.
He arrived, as Gervyn usually did, like a full herd of wild horses appearing out of nowhere. One moment Euxina Moonshadow was watching Teri attempt to intentionally snuff a candle flame using her magic (a new and humbling experience), and the next Gervyn was stumbling through the door, tripping on the rug, then sitting cross-legged on the floor three feet away. He set his chin in his hands and stared at Teri.
“What?” she grumbled, holding her hand out, trying to think the damn flame out. Unsurprisingly, it was not effective.
“Just watching.”
Teri curled her lip but did not reply. Theo decided to drape himself over Gervyn’s lap and go back to sleep. The traitor.
Euxina Moonshadow glanced at Gervyn, then back at Teri. She said nothing.
“Gervyn,” Teri said.
“I’m not bothering anyone!” he said immediately, which meant he absolutely was, and knew it.
“I didn’t say you were! I was going to ask why you’re not with your tutor.”
“He’s borrrrrring. You’re interesting.” He was looking at the flame, not at her, so Teri assumed he meant Euxina Moonshadow. Or maybe the candle. He was, after all, going to become the legendary Fireborn Mage, so maybe he came by his pyromaniac tendencies honestly.
Euxina Moonshadow picked up her notes and made an adjustment to something. “What do you see?” she asked, glancing at the boy.
Gervyn blinked. “Me?”
“You’ve been watching the flame since you sat down. What do you see?”
He looked at Teri, then at the candle, then back at Euxina Moonshadow, doubt writ large on his face.
Teri sighed. “It’s not a trap. She’s genuinely asking, so stop being a brat and answer her.”
Euxina Moonshadow raised her eyebrows at that, but Gervyn nodded, then said carefully, “The flame goes the wrong way sometimes, when Milady isn’t looking at it.”
She looked at Teri. Teri looked at the candle.
“Hm,” Euxina Moonshadow said, and wrote something down.
Aurguth lasted another day before she appeared in the doorway under the transparent cover of looking for Gervyn, who was demonstrably not there. She stayed for two hours, mostly silent, watching Euxina Moonshadow the way Theo watched squirrels. She came back the next morning, this time without a pretext.
On the fourth day, Teri was doing her slow, painful circuits of the garden with Lady Sariat pushing her chair (according to Doctor Dourwin’s orders, delivered with the cheerful sadism she had come to expect from him; why did he hate Lady Greyrage so damn much? She suspected Lady Elisandar would be thrilled to tell her) and Euxina Moonshadow walking alongside, ostensibly to observe whether Teri’s magic behaved differently outdoors. It did, as it happened. The shadows under the hedgerows leaned toward her when she wasn’t paying attention, which the alchemist noted without comment and which Teri found deeply annoying. Lady Sariat offered that it might be part of “Milady’s affinity for earth magic,” which got her an approving nod from Euxina Moonshadow.
They had just rounded the corner of the east hedge when something dropped out of the branches of a massive, elegantly pruned tree.
Euxina Moonshadow moved before Teri had fully registered what was happening, while Lady Sariat was still drawing breath to scream for help. Aurguth was airborne, fully committed to what had clearly seemed like an excellent ambush plan, until she was flat on her back with the alchemist crouched over her, one hand braced lightly on her sternum, not quite pinning her, but immovable. The girl might as well have had an entire house fall on her.
Aurguth stared up at her, winded and wide-eyed.
“Your approach was acceptable,” Euxina Moonshadow said in the same pedantic tone she used to discuss magical theory. “Your landing angle was wrong. You came in too steep. You gave me time to see your plan.”
Aurguth’s chest heaved. “You’re an alchemist.”
“Yes.”
“Alchemists don’t do hand-to-hand combat.”
“Most don’t.” Euxina Moonshadow stood and offered her hand. “Get up. Show me what you thought you were going to do after you landed.”
Lady Sariat looked at Teri. Teri looked back at her with an expression that she hoped conveyed: I have no idea either, but let’s not interrupt.
What followed was part martial arts lesson, part sparring match. Euxina Moonshadow moved Aurguth through the sequence twice, adjusting her posture, her footing, the angle of her weight, brisk and matter-of-fact. She had clearly learned it the same way she was teaching it: on the ground. Aurguth, to her credit, stopped being surprised about three seconds in and started paying attention instead.
Theo watched from the garden path with his tail moving in slow, approving sweeps.
:I like her more now,: he said.
“You already liked her,” Teri replied.
:I like her more.:
Vycette came on the fifth day, alone, with a book under her arm, and set up in the window seat of Teri’s sitting room as though she did it every day.
Euxina Moonshadow was at her worktable, making notes. She didn’t look up.
Teri, worn out from a long morning of physical therapy (painful), “magic” training (useless), and trying to figure out how exactly she was going to defang Ferdiff when he showed up (frustrating), was halfway to dozing off in her chair.
“Do you play Axis?” Vycette asked without looking up from her book.
“No, I hate long, boring games. Too much like Monopoly.”
“What is Monopoly?” Vycette squinted at her.
“Uh, a game I played back home—I mean, in Zyphyrehon. Boring, so don’t ask me about it.” Teri waved a hand around, hoping to convey how little she was interested in explaining Monopoly to someone who would grow up to be an Axis master. It hardly seemed fair.
Axis, the game, was actually about ten times more complicated than Monopoly and required six players to start. Fuckin’ Chad had described it only vaguely in the books, but it had been fleshed out during a legendary D&D session at DragonCon in the late ’90s, then actually produced by White Wolf when they got the licensing rights. Teri had played it once and vowed never to touch it again because it sent her into a murderous rage. Much like Monopoly, when she thought about it.
Vycette turned a page. “I thought everyone played Axis.”
Teri did not even bother to reply, her eyes half-closed as she looked out the window.
“Stop talking around your question, girl.” Euxina Moonshadow spoke firmly, but it did not come across as sharp.
“I’m trying to learn the rules,” Vycette finally admitted.
“But you need six people to play,” Teri finished for her. “Tough luck.”
Vycette bristled but did not argue the point, since it was true.
“There’s a variant,” Euxina Moonshadow said, putting her pen down. Vycette looked up at her. “It’s called Axis Duel. Two players only, starting from the Revant position, but with three additional resource constraints that the standard game doesn’t use. It’s faster. More brutal.” She tilted her head. “I haven’t found anyone worth playing in years.”
Vycette closed her book. Her expression was perfectly composed and gave away absolutely nothing.
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“No doubt. It is popular in the capital but I’ve never seen it in Telsharden. A few Wayyard pirate queens know it, which tells you how difficult it is.” She stared at Vycette in clear challenge.
“I need to see the modified rules,” Vycette said crisply.
“Of course. I’ll write them out and have them delivered to you tonight.” Euxina Moonshadow turned back to her notes. “Come back tomorrow morning. Bring a standard Axis board.”
Teri watched all of it silently, mostly because she was in too much pain, but also because the idea of an alliance between the powerful alchemist and the future Revant Mage terrified her.
It was on the ninth morning, with Gervyn asleep on the floor again and Aurguth supposedly helping Teri sort through fabric samples for the gala while actually watching Euxina Moonshadow work at her table, that the alchemist said, without looking up from her notes, “The boy is going to be extraordinary.”
Teri went still.
“His internal magic is already looking for the edges of its container.” She turned a page. “He doesn’t know it yet. He thinks it’s just feelings.” She paused. “The elder twin is different. Hers is controlled in a way that shouldn’t be possible at her age. She’s been managing it for years without knowing that’s what she’s doing.”
Across the room, Aurguth had stopped pretending to look at fabric.
“And Aurguth?” Teri asked, glancing at her.
Euxina Moonshadow’s eyes flicked to the girl, just briefly. “Raw power.”
Teri nodded, and Aurguth’s ears went red. There was a reason Aurguth Allisar eventually became a powerful warlock called Aurguth the Dark, and had a massive black bear as her familiar.
“And me?” Teri asked, both curious and dreading the answer.
Euxina Moonshadow looked at her for a moment, assessing, then shook her head.
“You,” she said, “are a problem for another time.”
Authoria
You probably noticed the change in the chapter image. I’m gearing up to set the branding on this story so I can market it, which means finalizing the cover design and color palette. I liked the green hue I was using, but I like green and tend to overuse it soooooo blue it is…
NEXT: Miles Out
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