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 dreamâŚexcept 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
Previously: Teri just tried to enjoy herself for onceâŚ
Ferdiff Allisar moved through the press of dying men the way a scythe moves through wheat that has forgotten it is wheat: without hesitation, without waste, and without the faintest awareness that it might be otherwise. He was a mountain given purpose. His warhammer rose and fell in arcs that seemed almost lazy, and yet men fell before it as though the air itself had thickened into judgment. Blood sheeted his pauldrons and he did not so much as blink against it. From the ridge above, where Gervyn stood with his advisors, his hands fisted white, his father looked less like a man commanding a war than like the war commanding itself through himâpatient, monstrous, magnificent. Gervyn had heard the bards call him the Iron King. He understood, now, watching that vast shape wade through the ruin of an entire flank without breaking stride, that the bards had been generous. There was nothing like iron in what his father was. Iron could be melted. Iron could be reshaped. Ferdiff Allisar, utterly untouched by fear, could not.
~ Allisar Fireborn Chronicles, Book 3: Blazing Heart
The banquet that evening was, by any measurable standard, a success.
Teri knew this because Lady Elisandar said so approximately ten times over the course of the meal, each repetition slightly more surprised than the last, as if she kept expecting the whole thing to combust. Which, fair. Teri was kinda waiting for that too.
The great hall of Castle Luttiron had been dressed in spring colors of cream, bright yellow, and a soft, optimistic green. The enchanted bunting had been redistributed where it glittered pleasantly and, more importantly, could not be immediately identified as politically loaded fabric by anyone who didnât already know. Roos had handled that well. She thought with chagrin that she was going to have to remember to thank him.
The food was excellent. The musicians were excellent. The Merrevane Players had performed beautifully. Lords Brevvik and Dray had eyed each other as well as Ferdiff throughout but no one started a fight, so that was a win.
Theo was hidden under the table at her feet during the banquet, then sat angled behind her chair during the following ball. People still gave him wary looks, only slightly less terrified of him than of Lady Greyrage herself, it seemed.
Teri was parked at the front of the ballroom, next to the Lady of the Castleâs couch, which was very inappropriately occupied by Lady Maret, who had not even asked if she could sit there. Lady Elisandar looked ready to throttle the girl herself.
Lady Maret was beautiful, which Teri had expected, and shrewd, which she had also expected, and had arrived at the banquet table in a gown of deep amber that made Teriâs own carefully chosen dark green look slightly funereal by comparison. She was pretty sure that had not been an accident.
âYou must find Castle Luttiron so quiet after the bustle of Orkkar,â Teri said pleasantly, reaching for her wine. Lady Sariat had surreptitiously told her that Lady Maret was the daughter of the noble family that ruled the large port city on the western coast.
Lady Maret smiled with all her teeth. âI find it charming.â
âHow kind!â Teri smiled back guilelessly. âYou must tell me where you had that gown made. The color is extraordinary!â
It went that way for three hours. Teri had once spent an entire academic budget meeting complimenting the dean on his PowerPoint formatting while he systematically dismantled her departmentâs funding, and this was no different. She was not good at office politics, but she knew how to âkill them kindnessâ with the best of them. It did result in a lot of guests looking at her oddly, probably waiting for the legendary fury of Lady Greyrage to appear.
Quite frankly, getting that worked up over an affair she did not actually care about sounded exhausting.
Ferdiff watched her throughout the whole evening, calculating everything he could. She did not look directly at him unless she could help it.
Ota drifted around the edges of the event like an anxious golden retriever in spectacular clothing and a fan festooned with outrageously large turquoise and orange feathers. His new outfit was delicate cream-colored silk, gold embroidery, and a wide brocaded sash. He wore a truly unnecessary number of rings and bangle bracelets, loudly jangling periodically when he offered wine to guests who didnât need more or waving his arms around during commentary on the floral arrangements that no one was listening to. In short, he was performing his usual role of decorative irrelevance with practiced ease, but twice she caught him glancing between her and Ferdiff with an expression that bordered on worry. It was there and gone so fast, though, that she wondered if she imagined it.
Lord Kerelyn Rustad moved through the evening by attaching himself to Ferdiffâs proximity whenever the opportunity arose, laughing too readily at things that werenât quite jokes. He angled his body toward the count like a moth to the flame, and Teri thought the metaphor was apt given how dangerous Ferdiff could be to both his enemies and his allies. Ferdiff tolerated him with absent-minded contempt verging on annoyance.
The children had been present for the banquet, scrubbed and changed into their plainer outfits by their stressed-out governesses. They were on their absolute best behavior, their restraint almost painful to watch. They clearly knew from experience what any other kind of behavior could cost. When she nodded at Lady Sariat to take them up before the ball started, the relief that moved through all four of them was so uniform and so carefully suppressed that it broke her heart.
Next time, she thought, and then stopped, because there wasnât going to be a next time. This was a coma dream and she was going to wake up eventually, or just die.
The thought sat less comfortably than it used to.
The ball proper was dancing and more wine and the Merrevane Players transitioning smoothly into something livelier, and Teri presided over it from her chair with what she hoped read as regal composure but was mostly exhaustion. Her leg had been aching since the third course. Ferdiff danced with Lady Maret, both of them laughing together like the lovers they obviously were, and Teri felt absolutely nothing about it, much as when her estranged brothers tried to show off their fancy cars to their mother just to one-up her. Boys with their toys, she thought absently, gesturing for a top off.
By the time the candles had burned down to their third marking, it was over. Guests filtered toward their carriages or their carefully appointed rooms. The musicians packed their instruments. Lady Elisandar appeared at Teriâs shoulder to fuss, and Lady Sariat appeared at her other shoulder to manage Lady Elisandar, and somewhere in the middle of all of it Ferdiffâs voice cut across the room, quiet and demanding.
âLeave us.â
It wasnât directed to the room at large. It was directed at the specific cluster of people around Teri, and it felt like a door closing.
Lady Sariat went still for just a fraction of a second, a hesitation so small it barely existed. Then she dipped her head and went, drawing Lady Elisandar with her by the simple expedient of taking her arm.
Ota had been three feet away, inspecting a candelabra with apparent fascination. He set it down, made some vague gesture that managed to communicate both I was just leaving and I was never really here, and drifted toward the door. At the threshold he paused, and Teri had the distinct impression he might say something, but then he kept walking.
The door closed.
Ferdiff crossed the ballroom and took the handles of her chair without asking.
His study was dark and smelled of woodsmoke and old leather and sweat, a true man-cave. He wheeled her to the center of the room and left her there while he closed the door, then walked over to stoke the fire. He stood for a moment with his back to her, one hand resting on the mantelpiece.
Theo pressed against her leg. Heâd been quiet since the ball started, which was a little alarming. He stood at her side with his shoulder against her knee and his eyes on Ferdiff, and she could feel the tension in him like a coiled spring.
:Something is wrong,: he said, frustrated and on guard.
âI know,â she said, under her breath.
Ferdiff turned around.
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he looked at Theo.
âWhen did it manifest?â he asked.
She kept her voice even. âDuring the hunt. When the void howlerââ
âI know what the doctors said.â He moved to the chair closest to the fireplace and sat, and the studied casualness of it was worse than anything else he could have done. âIâm asking you.â
âI wish I could tell you. Theo showed up during the attack, but I donât remember it.â
âA familiar.â He said it with contempt, not admiration or even doubt. His eyes hadnât left Theo. âYou couldnât light a candle reliably six months ago.â
âI nearly died,â Teri said. âThings change.â
âYes,â Ferdiff said. âThey do.â
He reached down and when his hand came back up it was holding the fire iron.
Theo exploded off the floor.
He was genuinely, startlingly fast for eighty pounds of dog, but Ferdiff was a man who had been hunting dangerous things most of his life, and he was ready. He stepped into Theoâs lunge with practiced, brutal economy and brought the iron down.
The sound Theo made was the worst thing Teri had ever heard.
âTheo!â She grabbed the wheels of her chair, trying to move, but the chair skidded sideways and she fell out of it. The pain from her leg blinded her for a second, but all she could think of was Theo. She couldnât get purchase on the floor, couldnât get to himâ
Something crackled up through her hands. Heat, or electricity, something strange, a surge of energy that had no business being there, sparking at her fingertips and running up her arms with no direction, like a live wire with nowhere to go. The oil lamp on the desk guttered. The fire jumped in the grate.
Ferdiff looked at her hands. Then he looked at her face.
âThere it is,â he said, almost to himself. He sounded, horribly, like a man whose worst suspicions had just been confirmed.
He crossed the room in two strides. She clumsily tried to swing the chair into his path but he stepped around it easily, and then his hands were at her throat, and the magic at her fingertips went sideways, crashing uselessly into nothing, heating the air around her to no purpose at all while dark spots bloomed at the edges of her vision.
Theo was still moving. She could hear him, dragging himself across the floor, still trying to get to her.
Not fast enough, some cold part of her brain observed, with the horrible clarity of a mind that refuses to stop working even when everything else is shutting down. Not fast enough and I donât know how toâ
âYou became something strange, with your bizarre familiar and your untapped power,â Ferdiff said, almost conversationally, his grip tightening. âA wife I can manage. A witch I can manage. But whatever you are nowââ
The dark spots spread.
âWhatever you are now is more than I intend to allow under my roof.â
She didnât decide to stop fighting.
She just stopped.
âŚ
âŚ
âŚ
âGervyn! Gervyn, stop, sheâs restingââ
âI just want to seeââ
âDoctor Dourwin saidââ
Teri opened her eyes.
NEXT: Proactive not Reactive
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Uh oh. Groundhog Day??