Princess Isabella of the House of Bourbon, heir-selective to the throne of Gallia, speaking to her cousin

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She was falling. Above her, Albion was burning, and she was falling wrapped in flames. By her hand, the Albionese fleet was burning and she had left the streets of the port choked with bodies and even as she fell, she laughed. The glee at watching the Albionese traitors run and scream was almost beyond words.Louise de la Vallière sat bolt upright in bed, panting. Groggily, she rubbed her eyes against the sleeve of her nightdress and peered around looking for any clue of what time it was. She needed to get a clock, she realised. Rolling out of bed and padding over to the window, she unbolted the shutters and looked outside, over the frozen, snow-covered swamps under the light of the moons. Well, it was still dark outside. And… she knew she really should move her quarters down so she was not living in the stump of the ruined tower, but… she liked daylight. She liked being able to look out of her window in the morning.But argh, it wasn’t safe up here. Not now that she was a moderately famous name among the Forces of Evil. And she really should be more worried about evil, wicked assassins coming for her. Or heroes who didn’t realise she was really doing good things. Or even vampires.Her eyes refocused on the icy landscape before her, and she realised why vampires had come to mind.“Catt?” she called out, over at the pale white shape floating down over the snow. “Is that you?”“Yep!” her sister called back.“… what are you doing out there?”Her sister lifted up a wolf puppy. “Pierre was whining like he needed to do his business, so I’m taking him outside to find a tree so he can do his wolfy things.”Louise stared blankly into the middle distance for a while, as she contemplated her bare-footed, nightgowned sister flying around, holding a wolf at arm’s length. “Uh… very good. Carry on.” It was cold outside, and the chill had cleared her head somewhat, so she closed and bolted her shutter again, heading back to bed. She was clearly still recovering from her trip to the Abyss, and the way the day-night cycle had not quite been the same there. She lay back down, staring at the ceiling, mind a whir. Maybe she should see if she could afford some kind of… portal or something which she could put over her window and still manage to get sunlight and fresh air through it, while not being in a vulnerable bit of the tower.She also needed to take some of Emperor Lee’s advice and get magical protections against fire, lightning, wind, earth, poison, disease, crippling, surprise attacks, water, blood, necrotic energy…The recitation of ways that people might try to kill her lulled her to sleep, like she was counting sheep, and once more she dreamed.Long ago, before the dark ocean of the Great North Sea drowned the tainted soil of Doggerland, before Albion was snatched up from the earth where it had rested for uncounted aeons and cast into the sky, before the Markay were cast from their homelands by a Great Evil, before even the deep halls of Zazzergargh were left hollow and dead by the death of their makers… ah, that was a different world!In that time, the dragons, kings over men, ruled over the northern territories while to the south dwelt the elves, who roamed the lush green landscape along with their bastard children, and to the east dwarvenkind dwelt in their mountainous retreats. There was harmony, and peace, and everyone got along and fluffy bunnies and ponies frolicked in glades untouched by mortal hands and other things of that ilk.All in all, it was disgustingly saccharine.It was then, however, that many say that Evil first entered the world. The people who say that are wrong. Evil was there all along. It dwelt in the heart of the dwarves, who stared at the untapped seams of any land which had not felt their touch. It dwelt in the hearts of the dragons, who longed to have the precious things that were forged by the lesser races, to bring them under their dominion and reign unchallenged. It dwelt in the hearts of the elves, judging others as inferior and longing to correct their misdeeds and actions.And in the hearts of men, it came to full flower. For men were the least of the races. They worked day and night in the service of the dragons, and they came to hate them. Their tribes were inferior, weak, prey in the jungles of the elves and the plains of what is now known as the Holy Land. And in the mountains of the dwarves they did what those diminutive goldlovers would not do; they carried out backbreaking labour, farming and fishing and feeding their lords in their fortresses.In what is now Albion, back when it did was seated in the earth, there arose the first Overlord! Clad in armour forged of the bones of the dragon-lords he had cast down, he raised his mace, and ten thousand hands raised their weapons high. Traitors smashed the eggs of the dragon lords. Dragon eggs make wonderful omelets, especially when salted with the tears of their parents. Vast towers were built with stolen magical secrets, radiating Evil over the land and as it sank in, the world itself learned to hate and fear.The first vampires and necromancers called forth the spirits of the dragons they slew to fight their kin on equal terms. Animals were slaughtered en-masse, harvesting their life force to power his dark machines. The First Overlord even broke the seals on the Abyss, calling forth hordes of demons and binding the denizens of the Abyss into unbreakable contracts to serve those who addressed them with the correct words.The dragons fought back. Proud they were; proud and cruel by nature, but this war fed all their worst instincts. They refused to call for help from the magical races, and instead drew on the new Evil energies of the land. Their greed, their envy blossomed, and the forces of the Overlord died in horrible and imaginative ways, but it was too little, too late. The dragons were scattered and they were poisoned by Evil. Forever after, they would be tyrants with envious hearts, too slothful to reclaim what they had lost.Their fall did not go unnoticed! A last alliance was forged! An alliance of men, elves, dragons, markay, dwarves, and even a few halflings who had got caught up in the whole thing, possibly because they wandered into the planning tent when trying to find the kitchen! They would take the greatest, the boldest of the Heroes of their races, and they would slay the Overlord! They would cast down his towers, break down his wicked spires and restore righteousness to the land, no matter the cost!What a bunch of fools!And so it came to pass that…Louise opened her eyes groggily. It was light now, though the pink tinge sinking through the windows indicated that either she had been sleep-setting-the-countryside-on-fire, or it was dawn. Rolling over in bed, she came face to face with Gnarl, who was sitting on a stool by her bed with a book on his lap.“Ah. Good morning, your evilness,” Gnarl said, without a trace of shame. “The sun is up, and cheery little birds are singing. Why don’t we go and burn them all to death?”Louise worked her jaw. Eventually, she managed, “H-have you been reading stories to me when I’m asleep?”“Your wickedness, I would not lie to you,” Gnarl said happily.There was a pause.“I can’t help but notice you didn’t answer the question,” Louise said, stifling a yawn.“Your malevolence, what a thing to say!”“You still haven’t answered the… what are you doing in my room!” Louise snapped, suddenly much more awake and gathering her covers up around her. “Get out!”“I have begun work on bringing the forge up to proto-operational state, in preparation for your new forgemistress to outfit as she sees fit,” Gnarl said, slipping off his stool.“G-get out! Right now!” Louise began to search around for a hairbrush to throw at him, but by the time she found a comb he had already vanished. Sitting up, the dark evil force of evil darkness and evil rubbed her tired eyes on her sleeve, and yawned.Another day, another bunch of secretly good deeds to do in the face of her insubordinate and improper minions, it seemed.In her grand ceremonial dining hall, attended by hordes of loyal minions wearing various uniforms stolen from perfectly innocent commoners, Louise picked at her breakfast.“Wine for the overlady?” asked a blue-skinned minion, its manner a perverse mockery of the butler’s uniform it was wearing.The girl sleepily stared at the creature, getting her thoughts in gear. “Yes, but only one part in five,” she said. She blinked. “And boil the water!” she added hastily. “I can’t emphasise that enough! And if I get frogspawn in it again, everyone on kitchen duty is getting tortured!”The blue minion managed a grin which would be described as sheepish, if sheep looked like minions, and quickly concealed the clay jug of water behind its back. “I go get fresh water right now!” it squeaked, running off.Louise nodded firmly. Good. They were learning. Or at least they accepted her threats were meant seriously.An inchoate moaning, the dull groan of a damn’d soul who wandered the earth, marked the arrival of a denizen of the Abyss. Icepack held to her head, looking decidedly worse for wear, Jessica stumbled in looking miserable. “Mor’in’,” she managed.“Good morning,” Louise said. The sight of such misery, such suffering, such self-inflicted pain made her feel better just looking at it. “You look terrible.”“I feel terrible,” the other girl groaned, slumping down in one of the high-backed chairs in the dining hall. “I never norm’ly get like this. I always handle my booze very well.”“Mmm hmm,” Louise said, explicitly not saying anything else.“… are you judging me?”“Not at all,” lied Louise, who totally was judging her.“Urgh. So mean.”Jessica was wearing a baggy buttonless white shirt, short in the arms, festooned with a burning red demonic inscription. She was clearly confused and suffering, Louise felt, because she had either been wearing such a thing to bed, or changed from her proper nightgown and forgotten to put anything on her bottom half. When the shirt rode up, Louise could see her underthings. It was moderately utterly shameful.But then again, Jessica had been raised by a demon. She was clearly lacking in certain standards of decency. Louise would just have to teach her in the time they spent together.“Are you cold?” she asked. “And… whatthat that you’re wearing?”“Do you have a problem with my t-shirt?” Jessica asked. “Oh… is it the writing? I dunno; I felt it was pretty funny. Because, you know. I have horns and… well, not right now, but when they’re out, it’s asking if you’re as…” she trailed off. “Ow, my head,” she concluded, clutching the icepack tighter.“Don’t you have a nightgown?” Louise said primly.Jessica stared back at her blankly.“Wouldn’t you say you’re showing rather too much leg?”Jessica continued to stare. “Hey, where’s your fridge?” she asked, obviously giving up on trying to understand Louise. “What’ve you got in the way of cereal here?”“Serial what?”“Any muesli?” Jessica asked hopefully. “Please tell me you have coffee at least.”“Muesli? What’s that? And… no, no coffee. It’s… a bit expensive, given it has to come all the way from Ind or Rub al-Khali, and I don’t like it.” Louise paused. “I have tea, because the minions drink it,” she said. “I’m having black sausage and bacon. Well, and rye bread. And… well, the mushrooms are called ‘Bloody Hellspawn Fingers’ according to the book, but they grow down in the tunnels and really aren’t that bad. And they’re not poisonous. Even if they do taste a bit metallic.”Jessica sighed. “Oh dear,” she said, looking Louise up and down. “Of course, you probably never ever have to worry about your weight, do you? You’re lucky there. And your sister feeds off the blood of the living, so she doesn’t keep cereal or stuff like that around. I… I guess I can have some sausage and bread. But no bacon. I’ll need to go shopping to pick up some food. So what’s the cupboard arrangement here?”“I beg your pardon?” Louise looked around. “Uh… well, uh, Catt gets her own food and I just have a coldroom.”“Oh, man, I’ll need to get a fridge, then,” Jessica said, wrinkling her nose. “And a cupboard. And an ice demon to bleed behind the fridge, obviously.” The older girl stretched, neck clicking. “So, about… oh, you’re having wine? Okay, I’ll have that too.” She caught Louise’s disapproving glance. “What? I was going to have it diluted! Half-and-half!”Well, she had brought this on herself, Louise was forced to concede. She had wanted there to be other people here at the tower so she had intelligent conversation which wasn’t Gnarl. And while Gnarl could provide intelligent conversation, he was both frightfully evil, and, she suspected, smarter than she was. Which was more than a little disturbing, because he was a goblin-thing.Perhaps he had stolen the Lord’s allocation of brains for the rest of his species. She wouldn’t put it past him.But now she had people more like her – well, not entirely like her, because one of them was a rather peculiar half-demon hell-princess who got all mannish when she got flustered and the other was her kind, sweet, nice older sister who just happened, in the best possible sense of the word, to be a bloodsucking monster – and she’d have to get used to having non-Minions around.She worked on trying to eat what she could, while Jessica made a fuss about her hangover. Yes, technically speaking it was a blasphemy against all that was right and proper that the other girl only had a hangover from drinking enough to kill a normal human being, but she was still being awfully loud about it. Also, it was her own fault. Louise stabbed her sausage, working the fork in, and took a vindictive bite from it.Wait. No! Those were evil thoughts! About someone on her own side! She shouldn’t do that!Even if it was Jessica’s fault for drinking so heavily. Which was a sin – in fact, it was two sins, Excess and Gluttony – so frowning on her actions was a good thing to do. But she was… argh! No! How could she be caught in a moral conflict here! That wasn’t fair! How was she meant to take schadenfreude – that word was one of the few useful things to come from Germania – from the suffering of a sinner when she also was meant to not think mean things?Any further moral debate was cut short by Maxy showing up in his floppy hat, trailed by two subordinate minions. “Overlady,” the brown announced, “present for you! It arrive through the heart! I do the reading of the symbols and it say it from person called Lee.”Louise blushed. A present? From Emperor Lee?Wait. A present. From Emperor Lee? “Stay there,” she told Maxy, “and get some blues handy.” She rose to her feet quickly, grabbed Jessica by the hand, and pulled the other girl out of the room. She wanted at least a solid stone wall between her and the result of opening that box. “Okay, open it for me!” she called out.“Open it!” Maxy, standing beside her, called out.There was crack of lightning, and a boom. Louise nodded solidly. One of the things the Cathayan Emperor had mentioned to her during a dance was how people who opened presents themselves were… what were the words he had used, ‘objectively suboptimal’? Probably. He had used those words about a lot of things. Now she could go and… “Check it again!” she yelled, to any minions still in the room.“Aww!” a minion called back. “No more pretty boomies!”“Sparky magic rock taste funny!”“Oooh! I wants a go licking it! Hee hee hee! Funny sparky rock!”Louise risked poking her head back in. Well. Breakfast was ruined, that was for sure. “I thought I told you to stay there,” she said to Maxy.The brown looked hurt. “I here to protect you, overlady,” he said. “What if… secret ambush planned when you was getting away from explody box?”The overlady stared down at the minion. “And it’s not at all that you suspected that it was a trap and so you wanted other minions to open it,” she said, wryly.“Nah, minions aren’t that bright,” Jessica said. “Also, they don’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear’. Not that that means much, of course.”“Yep!” Maxy said cheerfully. “I clearly too stoopid to not want to get revival headache. I just love them. Mmm mmm. I… I just too worried for overlady and so loyal that I miss fun of being blown up because I want to keep her safe!”“Well,” Louise said, “I think you should go check the box right now. And because it’s clearly safe, after that’s done, you may bring it to me.”She did smirk somewhat at the way that Maxy poked the lid open with the nearest thing he could find, which was the severed hand of a minion, and gingerly looked at it. The brown’s eyes lit up, and he came scampering over to Louise. “Present! For you!” he announced.Louise read the card.“To the Steel Maiden,Congratulations. If you are still alive, you are worthy of respect. You would not believe how many fools just open presents from an emperor. Contained within is everything I have ever promised you. I look forwards to meeting with you again. Perhaps for dinner.His Imperial Majesty,Emperor Lee”Under the card was a human head, coated in… in what looked to be gold leaf. With the eyes replaced with carefully sculpted jade orbs. It was the impertinent translator’s head. Not his eyes, though. They hadn’t been jade before.“Oh my dark gods!” Jessica said enthusiastically. “He sent you a head? Of someone who offended you? That’s so romantic! If you don’t want him, can I have him?”“What,” said Louise flatly, feeling sick. “You want the head?”“No, silly! The emperor!”“Uh…”“You know, if he keeps on giving you heads, you might want to consider returning the favour, if you know what I mean,” Jessica said, raising her eyebrows suggestively.“I… should find someone who’s annoyed him and send him their head?” Louise asked. “But I didn’t… he just killed the translator and sent me his head! I don’t want to give him heads. There’s… th-there’s plenty of things far more appropriate! And not… d-disgusting!”“Well, yeah, it’s a big step in a relationship and you should only give heads if you’re really going solid,” Jessica agreed. “I guess you only did meet him at the party for the first time. But still, seriously, if you do decide you don’t want him, tell me. I probably don’t have a chance with an emperor, but it’s still nice to dream! Especially when he gets such romantic gifts.”“Fine,” Louise said diplomatically, her cheeks flaming. “Well. Uh.”She remembered something, and really, really wanted to change the topic.“Oh yes, Gnarl said this morning that he’s bringing the forge back into condition and you’d probably want to spend time down there getting… you know, it set up how you like it. I’ll tell the minions to help you, but, you know, the trick is to treat them like they’re particularly stupid peasants, so you’ll probably,” she yawned, “probably want to wear metal boots or something in case you need to give some of them a kicking.” She winced in remembered pain. “They have very hard skulls. I’ll be in my planning room, working on… something. And if you see Catt before I do, tell her to come see me. I’ll want to talk with her.”It was late afternoon when Cattleya made her way up from the depths of the dungeons where she slept, rubbing her eyes. “Urgh,” she said, “I’m feeling really rotten. And not just because of that demon blood, or the way she’d been drinking so I have a second-hand hangover. My body feels all cold and… and I had to even teach myself how to handle my blood freezing! Good afternoon!”Louise looked up from the tome on black magic she had been flicking through. “Afternoon,” she said, distractedly, making an annotation on the sheet of paper beside her.“The Abyss played heck with my body clock,” Cattleya said. “The way there’s no real sun and so I can be awake all the time there? No thank you! It’s probably going to take me a week to get back in out of synch so I’m not trying to go to sleep at dawn and waking up at dusk!” She smiled, showing a hint of fang. “Though Anne missed me and was very enthusiastic to see me again.” The smile turned into a frown. “She’s spending a lot of time with the minions, though, so I had to make her bathe. They are adorable, Louise, but they are sort of pongy!” Cattleya plonked herself down in a comfy chair, crossing her legs. “So what’d you want me for?” she asked, bouncing up and down.Standing up, Louise folded her hands behind her back and momentarily cursed the fact that she wasn’t wearing her armour. These dresses may have been wonderfully slinky and dark, but she felt better giving orders when she had a protective layer of steel plating. And high heels, of course. “I have spent most of the morning and this afternoon working on my plans to capture Princess Henrietta and bring her here, where she’ll be safe and out of the Council’s hands,” she began.“Yay!” said Cattleya. “Go us!”“… do you mind? I’m trying to explain here!”“Sorry! I’ll try to save the applause for the end.”Louise cleared her throat and started again. “The princess is confined to her rooms in the palace in the inner city of Bruxelles. This is a heavily defended and fortified location, and there are… you know, guards and magical warding and the like. That’s bad… good… something we don’t want. However, over the last month or so, my strategic situation has changed radically.”“Because me and now Jess have joined you,” Cattleya said, knowingly. “Also, you’re sounding an awful lot like Father! Well done!”“… I have been reading some of his books, yes,” Louise admitted. She spun on her toe, and headed over to the pinned-up maps. The map room was still broken, despite Gnarl’s promises that it would be working soon. “There was a chapter on ‘How to rescue damsels when you cannot carry out a direct assault’. It was much more useful than the von Zerbst one, which didn’t seem to even accept that you might not want to swing in through the largest window on a rope or silly things like that.” Louise glowered at the thought. “But, getting back to the…”“And… I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but you’ve grown and kind of filled out a bit!” Cattleya said, refusing to give up on her previous tangent. “Not much; a bit, but still! When you’re in the armour but don’t have the spikey helmet on, you’re looking a bit more like Mother!”Louise blushed. “We’re going off topic,” she said, hastily, flattered despite the ‘not much’. “Theis,” she said, “I can now begin working on plans to capture the princess. I have a date. The best day to strike will be the day of the Springtime Summoning Ritual. Not only will there be fewer watchers around, but it’s a sacred day to the Founder and so since we’re doing this to keep the Princess, one of his descendants, safe, we should have additional favour.”Cattleya raised her hand. “Um… what if he frowns upon a vampire, a half-demon, some goblins and an overlady trying to kidnap a princess?”“Nonsense,” Louise said, confidently. “The Lord sees into the hearts of all men, and he’ll know that we’re doing it to protect her. And with the secret way in you discovered at the party, we can now get into the palace without having to go past the guards and the like. That means we can, if we can get a proper plan, make Henrietta simplyfrom captivity and embarrass the Council greatly!”“And also not get cut into lots and lots of itty bitty chunks by elite palace guards, which would be a pain for me and just kill you dead!”“… thank you for that, Catt,” Louise said, shuddering. “I have established several steps we will require for my draft plan. I already have a windship, and I will need to go with Jessica to scout out the Abyss under the palace to find where the rift entrance is, but the greatest problem we have right now is that the tower does not have the power or range to reach the portal gate near the palace.” She threw her hand out dramatically, pointing at the map. “This is a problem, because we haven’t won until we get Henrietta into the portal! And I really, really don’t want to be chased for several days ride by… like, griffins and dragons and the like when we’re trying to get away.”“Dragons breathe fire. Well, fire dragons do. They’re utterly horrid creatures,” Cattleya said firmly. “Anything that avoids firebreathing dragons and also being chased in daylight, I’m in favour of.”“Luckily, from the repaired bit of the tower heart I got from the Bloody Duke, I can bring one of the lesser towers online if I can get to it. All I have to do is touch it with the Gauntlet,” Louise tapped her wrist, “and it’ll be under my control. Moreover! I paid Jessica’s father for information on the location of that tower, and it’s under the control of a lower-class necromancer without two ecus to his name.” Louise sneered. “The fool seems to just be using it as a high place for lightning strikes while he tries to bring bodies to true life. By eliminating him, not only do we get the tower back, but we’ll be able to stop the attacks on nearby villages which might draw Heroic attention to the tower.” She paused. “Also, he kills commoners and that’s bad,” she added.Cattleya pursed her lips. “So! What does the necromancer have on his side?” she asked.“Uh…” Louise rummaged through some papers, “some bandits who work for him, some flesh-monsters, some zombies, and his familiar is a winged horse. He’s a water mage, but he’s also shown a talent for wind magic.”“Sounds tasty,” her sister said dreamily. “I was hoping he had some vampires because vampires are just the best! But that sounds nice enough. Oooh! If I save the winged horse’s life, I can take it back and my unicorn can have a friend!”“Your…” Louise paled. “The unicorn’s still alive?”Cattleya wobbled her hand uncertainly. “Mostly alive,” she said, cheerfully. “I mean, alive, dead, it’s all a bit fuzzy! You know, like kittens! They’re fuzzy too!”The overlady looked her in the face. “Cattleya,” she said, “answer this truthfully. Are we in danger of a vampire unicorn breaking free and trying to drain the blood of the living?”“Nope! Almost certainly not! Hardly at all! It’s still mostly alive! It’s just a bit… corpsy! Anyway, Jess and I didn’t takeof its blood and I gave it some back and now it’s all friendly because it knows that if it starts being mean again and trying to impale me, it’ll be punished for being naughty! Also, you know, it’s still missing a few legs so even if – through really bad luck – it escaped and started trying to kill us, it could only hobble!”Louise let out a sigh. “Fine. Well, the point is, the first step of the plan is to recapture the lesser tower, so we can get to the capital directly. I’ve been thinking of the fastest way of taking down the tower – because if we can kill the necromancer, that means his constructs won’t be controlled any more, and since it’s a tower and you can fly, you can get up to the top and get in that way.”Cattleya raised a hand sheepishly. “Uh, you know I can’t go into houses without someone inside letting me in, right?” she asked.“That is why you will take a minion with you, who you can let in and then they can invite you in,” Louise said smugly, stepping away from the map to perch on a chest. “I think about such things. Which means all I need to do is to get you onto the island the tower is on.“An island?” Cattleya echoed.“Yes, it’s on a tributary of the Senne.”“That’s… flowing water,” Cattleya said, cautiously. “I can’t cross that.”“Correct,” Louise said. She smirked. “However, I have invented a way to get you onto the island, which should allow you to silently take out the necromancer and so leave him and his forces leaderless.” She patted the sea-chest she was sitting on. “I’ve had it packed with grave-earth, too, but I want to see if you can fit. If you can, blues can drag you over.”“Uh.” Her sister frowned. “I don’t follow.”“Get in the box, Catt.”