Kliza turned and directed a sharp glare at her younger brother. "Don't mince words with me, Laermornan." Her voice dripped with scorn for her inferior. "You had a reason for asking what orders were given to Distanfae and it was more than mere curiousity. I sensed fear in you when you asked. You know as well as I that he's had that rune sword for two years, and that quicksilver golem for six months. There's been no secret made of Matron Vitrue's having ordered him to produce a new rune weapon for her. Why so curious, little brother?" There was no affection in the words of the dark-skinned beauty, only malice, suspicion, and scorn.

Laermornan's dark face flushed with fear and an anger he dared not express. He stared at the floor, his face partially concealed by his long white hair, unwilling to meet her eyes. "Because I know my brother, Kliza. To give him leeway with his orders is dangerous."

Kliza's eyes flashed. "So jealous of the second-boy's stature in our mother's eyes, are you? Do you truly think Distanfae would dare betray our mother?" Kliza's hand flashed out, grasping Laer's shirt and pulling him to stare into her beautiful, deadly face. "I don't want to hear of this again, Laermornan. Your jealousy has gone quite far enough."

Laermornan wanted to protest further but dared not. Inwardly he wondered. What would Matron Vitrue do to Distanfae if he was right? It was but the merest rumour he'd heard, but if in truth Distanfae had been ordered to make a rune weapon without their traditional limitations, they could all be in for terrible danger. After all, was not the ability to be controlled by another a limitation?

---

"Surely you see this is madness? Do not do this, Distanfae!" Laermornan Vitrue's dark face was flushed with fear and anger beneath his long white hair as he stared at his younger brother. "I warned you against pursuing these foolish studies of human magics! They've led to madness before, you know this! You must build in controls for the Matron!"

Laer paused in his pacing to direct a pleading gaze at his brother, who lounged in the comfortable chair placed near the easel on which the remnants of diagrams and scrawls could still be seen. The chair's purpose there had confused Laermornan when Distanfae first brought him to the room and began to explain his plan. It became clear though, when Distanfae retreated to it upon Laer's interruption. Distanfae seemed curiously unaffected by his sibling's discomfiture, merely watching him with a cool, calculating smile.

With a visible effort, Laermornan broke off his tirade, focusing his attention once more on his smirking brother. When he spoke again, it was in a calmer and quieter tone. "You must realize that you are not the first to attempt such a thing?"

"Of course, dear brother. I am not so foolish as you seem wont to think me." His voice held a silent warning that Laer interpreted easily enough. Distanfae was quietly warning Laer that his words of madness were coming dangerously close to insult.

Laermornan sighed then nodded slowly, resuming his seat even as Distanfae rose. He waved one hand wearily, gesturing for his brother to continue, though every word that came from his brother's mouth was confirming the fear he had been forbidden to speak further of.

"Thank you. Now, as I was saying, I have found the means to create a weapon that is indestructible..."

Laer groaned inwardly but couldn't help interrupting. "Surely you mean virtually indestructible, brother; nothing is completely indestructible. I may be a warrior and not a wizard but that does not make me a fool. Any sword can be broken, no matter how strong the spells that are on it. It is simply a matter of how much force is required."

His brother actually stopped and graced him with an appraising look followed by a wry smile. "Indeed, brother, you are correct. However, there is documentary evidence of weapons of this particular variety that the gods themselves have sought to destroy and yet failed. I suppose that as you say, they cannot be truly and completely indestructible. Let us say then that there exists no known force powerful enough to cause their destruction."

Laermornan's eyes widened. "If what you say is true, Dist, then how is it that these humans have not conquered all the world?"

Distanfae smiled humourlessly. "Indeed. That was one of my first avenues of research. First, let me state that my materials for this work come not from this world nor even this dimension." He smirked at his brother's clueless expression. "Let me put it this way. The humans who created these things are not from this plane of existence. Furthermore, while the magic that I have is human in basis, humans are not the true creators here. They have merely adapted the creation of vastly more powerful evil races in the plane from whence my information comes. More to the point, these evil races do, in fact, rule nearly all that is in that plane.

"However, my research has also indicated that the primary point of failure here is that while the weapon may be indestructible, the wielder is not. Furthermore, the creation of these weapons involves the capture and permanent imprisonment of a powerful soul, which hardly gives the weapon a strong reason to protect its creator.

"Indeed, it seems that these weapons often do not reach their full potential until they come across a wielder who fits with their personality... much like more ordinary intelligent magical weapons."

Laer idly fingered the tassels on the arms of his chair as he contemplated his brother's words. "Am I to understand then that you have thought of a solution to these complications?" Perhaps his brother was not so foolish as he had feared.

His brother's face seemed to be lit from within as his excitement broke through the emotionless shell he ordinarily displayed. "Precisely! Allow me to explain. You are aware of the existence of the quicksilver demon?"

"The ones that a recent exploring party was nearly destroyed by? Yes... although I thought there was some question as to whether they might not have been golems, left over guardians from some long ago wizard." Laer was careful not to reveal the extent of his knowledge about them, nor that he knew already that Distanfae had acquired one.

"Oh, yes, Laermornan, there was considerable question about those. It might surprise you to know that I managed to obtain one. They are neither demons, as has been the popular supposition, nor are they golems. They are a form of living metal, constrained in human form and infused with an elemental spirit."

Laer raised his eyebrows. "I thought you said they weren't golems? I thought that a golem was something inanimate with an elemental spirit bound to it?" He might not be capable of making one, but Laer was a trained warrior; he had fought golems before and had learned of them in the warrior's school.

Distanfae shrugged. "There are certain subtle distinctions between elementals and golems but they aren't really important. The point is that after I negated the spells that created it, I had a living metal. Not intelligent, mind, but aware. It is capable of behaving like a liquid, taking on the shape of its container. It is also capable of retaining solid form. Furthermore, it can mimic forms. I am sure that whoever discovered it found it perfect for creating cheap golems, since it can take a more precise form than the best carver or silversmith could give you.

"I've run a number of tests, including summoning elementals into the metal. Without a constraining spell, the metal can be shaped by the will of the spirit within, or even by the will of one merely touching it, if it has no spirit. It will also absorb other metals, as if consuming them. With proper coaxing, it will absorb other things as well.

"That has given me the answer, elder brother, for with what I have left of the living metal and a supply of mithril and adamantite, I will create an indestructible weapon that can change its form and can wield itself."

Laermornan shook his head doubtfully, not noticing that his reaction had caused his brother to palm a poisoned dart. "Wield itself? Surely the first Matron it attacks will simply banish it to another plane and then where will we be? Granted that a weapon that wields itself is less danger to you, for it is not obvious to whom its attack should be attributed, but the Matrons will doubtless have spells to handle tracking the controller of such items. I do not see how this can work. If your attempt displeases our Matron you will not long live."

"Too bad," his brother sighed, flicking his wrist. He watched his brother collapse. "But I can't take the chance that you'll speak of this. If you can't be convinced, then you'll simply have to forget."

With that he set to casting the spells that would ensure his slumbering brother would forget all about this little conversation.

---

Ranma rose from his steaming corpse where it lay against the cold wood of the dojo. Nabiki and Kasumi, to his surprise, had tried to convince his mother that he must have done all that could have been done, but she was adamant. No man amongst men would ever allow his fiancee, family, and friends to be slain, even if he did slay their killer.

He wanted to go to the grieving girls but knew there was nothing he could do for them now. He was a failure. He was no man. He deserved the curse that had been placed on him, for he had failed everyone.

He hung his head in shame and sadness, unable to bear to look any longer upon the anguished faces of those who would have been his sisters, had he not failed them, and waited for the end, for the gods to take his spirit.

He was not in the least expecting the frozen hook that pierced his chest with a frigid chill, sending a burning, freezing pain searing through him. The sudden shock of pain broke through the barrier of depression and loss and he reached out as the chain attached to the hook began to tug at him and grabbed at that which was closest to hand in a vain effort to secure himself.

His hand passed without obstruction through his dead body until to his surprise it snagged on something within. He grasped it tightly even as the hook pulled sharply. The object pulled free of his body as he passed through the dojo wall and his eyes widened with sudden horror as he stared at the glowing ball of white light. It could not be his soul, for surely that was what he now was. His body was dead and the only thing he could think of that this might be was the curse, and it terrified him.

In his desperation to escape whatever fate awaited him, for nothing good could be signified by being hooked like a fish, had he caused the curse to follow him into the afterlife? His horror was confirmed as the ball seemed to seep into his hand and as the white light passed down his arm, it became more slender and shapely. "Even in death," he murmured, finding it suddenly meet that he should become a woman in death. He had not been a man in life, why should he be allowed to be a man after life?

He felt his grasp on consciousness fading as the light spread and when the light finally reached his head, darkness consumed him. When he recovered awareness he was completely female in form. He had a sinking suspicion that the curse would no longer switch him. He wasn't sure why he thought that, yet it somehow seemed appropriate. His own mother had deemed him less than a man and if what he suspected were true, he... no, she, would probably never be a man again.

A soft laugh filled with delight and mirth echoed around her and she struggled to lift her head. After a moment her tired muscles responded. That doesn't make sense, she thought even as she raised her head, I'm dead, why do I have muscles still?

She was surrounded by a faint shimmer of white light that seemed to form a cylinder around her. Beyond it she saw the figure who was laughing, a man with sharp features, pointed ears, dark skin, and white hair that reflected the glow that surrounded her. Was this her judge?

He stepped forward and, having restrained his delight, sketched a deep bow in her direction. By ingrained response she bowed in return even as she wondered where she was. Was this the afterlife? Was that freezing hook really how souls were brought to the next plane? Or was she here to be reincarnated?

"Despair."

The word seemed to echo throughout the room and strangely seemed to have been said in a number of languages at once. The overlapping words did not interfere with the clarity of the speech and the meaning was not obscured.

"The pinnacle of skill you reached and it was not enough and so now you despair," the voice continued and Ranma saw that the handsome man was speaking. "You've nothing left to live for, have you?" He nodded when she gestured her assent.

Ranma wanted to protest, thinking that perhaps he was asking if she desired reincarnation, but what was the point? She couldn't beat Saffron, she couldn't save anyone, she failed her mother, and she was dead already anyway. She dropped her head, unable to hold on to even a spark of defiance. Let him do what he would. It could hardly be more than she deserved for her failure. At the least she could retain this measure of honor; that she would not protest the judgement given in the afterlife.

"You are a great warrior," he asked, though the tone of the question made it clear that he knew and expected but one response. She nodded once more. "What is your name?"

She struggled for a moment to decide how to respond. Ranma was her name and seppuku had restored her honor, leaving her within her rights to claim the name Saotome, but she felt a deep pain in her gut at the thought of being reminded, every time someone said her name, that she had been a man once, that she was a failure, that she had failed everyone she had ever known.

"Saotome Ranko," she replied finally. She was somewhat surprised to note that her voice sounded just as it always had in spite of her being a spirit now, or at least, as her female voice had always sounded.

"I can offer you a second chance," he said and she looked at him in puzzlement. "I can give you life again and a chance to change what happened." He held up a restraining hand at her eager expression. Reincarnation? She had feared that her earlier response and acquiescence had removed that opportunity; but a chance to change what happened? She could be reincarnated in the past? "You would not share in that change, however. That is to say, if you prevented the deaths that led to your despair, you would then never have despaired. A paradox, if you will. It would undo itself and your effort would be in vain."

Ranma slumped in disappointment. Even if she had to remain a girl forever, at least her mother would never have had to lose her family, her father would keep his life, her friends and her fiancees would live. Yet even this, it seemed, was still beyond her.

"There is a way," the man continued. "I can place your soul within a rune weapon, an indestructible weapon. The power of a rune weapon is such that even the gods themselves cannot destroy one. In such a form, even paradox could not destroy you and both your old self and your new weapon form would exist at the same time. But you yourself would be left alone, for those you failed would have you still, as you were then."

Not reincarnation then, she realized. She was no longer certain that this was the afterlife, but it mattered little. She stared at him, eyes wide and hopeful, hands clasped together. Did it really matter what this was, whether the afterlife, or who knew what else? She already feared that she had been cursed to be a woman forever, would it be so different to serve in a weapon? She imagined being a sword like her mother's. Swords had honor, they carried the honor of families, if in that way she could redeem her failure, could she refuse?

If even after death she could still triumph, how could her mother look at her with disappointment in her eyes? She nodded eagerly, not trusting her voice.

"You would live forever," he said in a warning tone.

She shook her head and waved her hand, "Doesn't matter."

"It might take hundreds, even thousands of years." Again she indicated that she did not care.

"What could you give me for this boon?"

Ranma slumped. A being of the afterlife or no, he wasn't giving free gifts. A moment later she brightened. He wasn't hiding the strings, either. She wouldn't find out only too late that there really was a cost; he was showing it to her upfront. But what had she to offer? Her face sank again and she shrugged listlessly. "I have nothing."

"You think you have nothing to offer? You have your skill, do you not? Offer me your fealty, warrior, your sworn loyalty to obey me as your lord until my death, and I will grant you this boon." Ranma was startled but a moment's thought made her realize that what she was being asked for was much the same as any samurai had given his daimyo, and was not she of samurai stock? Besides, what could he ask of his sword? That it kill? If she had been more willing to kill when she fought Saffron, she might have saved everyone. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

"How long?" she asked warily. "You said I'd be immortal. If you are too, I'd be stuck forever. How would I save my family then?"

He nodded. "A wise caution. Until I die, then, or a thousand years hence."

She considered slowly then remembered other tales she'd heard. "Will I age?"

"You will grow older, but only in mind, not in body or form."

She tried to think of anymore loopholes then sighed. I ain't Nabiki, she thought despondently. If he's trying to cheat me, it ain't gonna be hard. But it is a chance, a chance to regain my honor and to save my... to save everyone. For just a moment she wondered if she ought not reveal that she was a man, that there be no dishonesty on her part in accepting this. A sudden fear struck her then. What if he demanded proof and she could not give it? What if he took back his offer? This might well be her one and only chance to undo what had been done, to correct her terrible mistake. Could she take any chance on losing it? Inwardly, silently, she swore an oath, that the oath she would next give might be an honest one; "I renounce my manhood and my given name. From this day forth, I am Saotome Ranko only."

"I swear on my honor," she said aloud, hoping against hope that he would accept her oath and give her this chance, even if it took a thousand times a thousand years, "that until you die or a thousand year's hence, whichever comes first," thanks Nabiki, I guess I did learn something after all, "I will obey you in all things, if you faithfully grant me the chance to prevent the deaths that led to my," ahh... what was the word he used, "to my despair."

---

Distanfae nodded in acceptance of the warrior's oath. "So be it." He had been surprised that the powerful warrior he had sought had been female and human. Females might be the stronger in his race, but he was fairly confident that it was the opposite amongst humans. Still, though she was a tiny one, the strength was obvious in the well-muscled curves of her naked form.

Distanfae watched with pleasure as the captive beauty was released into the boiling pool of magically endowed molten metals, a mix of adamantite, mithril, and the living quicksilver metal, which in spite of the name it had been given was unquestionably not mercury, though its appearance was quite similar. Strands of molten jade and onyx, liquified by magic, threaded through the dark and light tapestry of the metals. His attention was caught by the sight of a fresh strand of red curling through the mixture. "Now where did that come from?" he wondered, "It's not as if she were an item of magical power, to be drawn in by the spell as a new element, she should be no more than a bound soul."

He waited as the mixture cooled. It retained its liquified state due to the powerful enchantments laid upon the jade and onyx, designed to extend the attributes of the mystery metal to the other four components while preventing the metal from completely absorbing the other elements of the mixture. When he deemed it cool enough he left the room. In the next room, already prepared, a scrying pool awaited. He barred the door then activated the pool.

The destruction of magic objects often caused considerable damage and he wasn't entirely certain that what he was going to try to do would work, so he intended to accomplish it from a distance. Casting a spell that would allow him to move the objects in the room, he picked up the simplest of the prepared items, a ring of eldritch missiles.

It was a very minor item of power and its destruction would not be more powerful than the number of missiles it held, at least to his estimation. Lifting it, he cast it into the liquid pool, still swirling as the immense spell energies he had released continued their work.

The ring vanished into a stream of gold but there was no sign of the half-expected explosion. Distanfae barely resisted letting forth a cry of exultation. "This will secure my place among the names of the greats!"

The ring was quickly followed by a wand of lightning magic. Once it was completely dissolved, a wand of fire magic, then water, air, and earth in quick succession. Each wand was among the more powerful of the non-unique wands, bearing in addition to the basic powers of their element, the power to summon elementals from the realms they accessed.

They were among Distanfae's most prized possessions yet he had never had the opportunity to use them. After all, his first use would likely be his last, for if his Matron knew he had them, they would be taken in moments. By binding them to his servant, he gave up the ability to use them directly, but they would never be able to be taken from him. Of course, technically, he was tasked to make this weapon for the Matron, but if it served him and he served the Matron, then he fulfilled the letter of his duty.

The spell was beginning to wind down, so Distanfae wasted no time supplying the next items. The cloak of shadows would allow his creation to travel from shadow to shadow and to cloak herself in shadows that would hide her even from the heat-sensitive eyes of his kin. He knew all too well the dangers of possessing a flashy or obvious magical item, even if that would fit his Matron's desires better. It would also allow her to form a sphere of darkness, mimicking one of the innate abilities of drow, particularly drow nobles. The ring of flight would ensure that she could emulate their ability to levitate, as well as allow her, in sword form, to act as a dancing sword, a sword that wields itself.

Lastly, an amulet of faerie fire would duplicate the drow talent for the colorful, unburning magical fire that they used for decorative purposes. The amulet was in fact stronger than a drow's native abilities, being used to manipulate the permanent glows left, especially those created by drow that had since died. Any drow could readily control their own faerie fire, but manipulating that created by another was far more difficult.

That constituted the larger part of his collection of magical items, at least the ones with considerable power. Most of the remaining items were defensive in nature. He didn't really care to supply his creation with any defensive magic. Weapons of this sort were indestructible, according to all the texts he found. What would the point of further defensive magic be? Besides, while he might not be safely able to wield offensive magic, the defensive magic he owned could well save his life. If after it did it was taken as a prize by his mother, the Matron, well, it would have served its purpose by then at any rate.

The last item lay on the table where the other items had been set out. He gazed at it for a long time, uncertain whether to risk trying to add it. It was a straight blade, about five and a half-feet long, of green jade, with a simple hilt. It was also a weapon of exactly the sort he was making. It claimed to be the soul of an ancient celestial dragon and its knowledge had been the impetus for his effort. He had no doubts about the likelihood of his surviving while trying to wield that sword. He was no swordsman and its indestructibility would be little comfort as the poisons of his kin destroyed him.

Glancing at the pool, he hesitated for a long moment. He hoped, though without much assurance, that even after his creation had taken shape, after the formative magics cooled and died, it might still be capable of absorbing other magic items into itself. Indeed, he was somewhat afraid that it might need to, might hunger for more. Another rune weapon, though? That seemed a bit much to hope for. His hesitation was enough and the decision was taken from him, for even as he watched, the swirling stilled and the liquid in the pool pulled away from the edges, rising quickly and flowing into its base shape, a simple sphere.

Distanfae nodded slowly to himself as he reentered the chamber where his new weapon lay. He had gone too far, sacrificed too many of the house slaves to the spell to take a chance on causing it to fail now. Besides which, the danger of the spirit of the other rune weapon being still active in the combined weapon was too great.

Moving carefully through the room, he eased past the now quiescent sphere to where the second half of his creation rested on a shelf. It was a thin wire mesh of gold and mithril. He lifted it up and set it lightly upon his thick white hair, where it instantly vanished, passing through his hair to bind itself to his head.

Bound together in the creation process, the thin mesh and the vari-colored sphere were inextricably linked. Distanfae was too careful to trust to the traditional means of controlling such powerful magic, particularly not when he had made changes to its design that had never been attempted before.

His insurance in place, he reached out and splayed his hand across the sphere, not quite touching the surface. Breathing deeply and tensing his hand to pull away if aught went wrong, he lowered his hand until it came into contact with the sphere.

When nothing untoward occurred, he firmed his grip and turned his hand, lifting up the sphere. Even as his hand turned, the massive sphere shrank until it rested easily and lightly in his palm. He admired his new weapon for a long moment then wrapped it in cloth and concealed it within his robes.

He turned to the door then paused a moment, reconsidering. The priestesses of the house, his mother and sisters, often kept spells ready that would let them feel the direction of another's thoughts, or know if truth or lies were being offered them. He had to keep this new weapon a secret until he had it trained, lest its incompetence bring upon him his mother's wrath, and while he had timed events so that his path from these chambers to those he intended to use for training would be most probably empty, perhaps he did not need to take even that risk.

Slipping his hand within his robe, he insinuated it into the cloth covering until his fingers came once more into contact with the smooth orb, still slightly warm from its recent heat. Ignoring the aura of depression and despair that was the captive soul, he made the first true test of his creation. Under his breath he muttered the command words for the cloak of shadows. A feral grin lit his face as the shadows on the wall lengthened, embracing him. A moment later he stepped forth from the shadows of an alcove in the training hall he had chosen.

The walls were a matte black and the entire hall was wreathed in shadows, the only light coming from statues above the alcoves, limned in the soft ethereal glow of faerie fire.

Removing the cloth wrapped bundle from his robe, he strode to an alcove at the head of the room where awaited a pedastal. Upon the stone column he placed the cloth, unveiling the weapon, tucking the cloth in around its base that it might not move.

He stared at it for a long time, marveling at his success. He had gone beyond the humans whose spells he had worked from, beyond even the great evil intelligences that had crafted the first rune weapons. "You will be ranked with the great artifacts," he thought to himself as he looked on his creation, "the creations whose name every wizard knows, whose creator's name every wizard fears."

Reaching out once more, he lay his hand upon it. Instantly his awareness of the despairing soul within was renewed. Muttering under his breath he invoked one of the powers of the light mesh helm that lay hidden beneath his hair and this time when he withdrew his hand from the sphere, that awareness remained.

Stepping back into a neighboring alcove, Distanfae focused his attention on the soul in despair. "Awake," he commanded it. Receiving no response, he pressed upon it with his will, forcing it to return to awareness.

"Where am I? I can't see anything, I can't feel anything?" He heard the youthful female voice say, the same voice with which she had spoken to him before, though he heard it only in his mind. It was in a language unfamiliar to him but that mattered little, for the magic ensured that he understood and was understood in his turn.

"Form an eye and then you will see," he suggested.

"Form? How? What do you mean? Who are you? Where are you?" There was a hint of anger in the girl's tone. Distanfae was unsurprised. He knew that the spirit he had taken would have, at first, no idea what it could now do, nor how to do it. That she would be confused, perhaps even forgetful of the events that so recently took place, was also within the scope of his plans and expectations. Through the helm he brought his will to bear and forcibly altered the form of his weapon, forming on the surface facing into the room a lidded cat's eye.

He felt a shudder run through the spirit at the strange feeling but before he could speak again he felt through the helm the eye opening. "You learn quickly," he commented smugly. When a second eye formed beside the first and opened as well, a frisson of shock ran through him. Quickly indeed! He had not been expecting such prowess from one who had been but a warrior.

A moment passed before the voice cried out again. "Where are you? And where am I? There ain't nothing here but an empty room!"

The uncertainty and frustration in the girl's mental voice restored Distanfae's composure. There was no reason to be concerned when she learned more swiftly than expected, it could not but help him.

"You died and I brought you back," he said dryly. "Now you will never die. In return, you will serve me."

"What?!" There was a definite anger to the voice now, but it faded almost instantly into resignation. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now."

"Besides, how'm I supposed to serve you when all I got is eyeballs?"

"Indeed," he replied, wondering momentarily at the rough nature of the girl's speech. Could she be as young as she appeared? He knew humans had far shorter lives, so her appearance of being in her early fifties, to his eyes, was probably well in excess of her actual years, but he had assumed that a soul of sufficient power would have required time to reach that power and so had theorized that the soul's power had kept the body young, or that perhaps her mental image of herself was as she had been in youth and so her soul had kept that form. The tone of the words made him question that theory. "You will need a more useful form. I will impose it on you and you will remember it, to take it again when I require it of you."

Without waiting for a response, he bent his will against her form once more. The sphere rocked forward then rolled over the cloth and off the pedestal, striking sparks from the floor where it struck. It rolled for but a moment before it swelled suddenly, growing upward, a shimmering reflective column of black and silver that quickly took on a more solid form.

The shape she now took was that of one of his former slaves, a strong woman of his race, though a commoner. Her life had been taken in the crafting of the spell, as had that of a male slave, their lives supplying their form to his control. She was larger, in proportion, than the slave had been, topping six feet by several inches and towering over him.

He released his grasp of her form finally. He had held on to it for several minutes after imposing his slave's form, while he shifted about the various materials that made her up. Imposing the form had worked well enough but had left her with curls of different colors running all over her body, even her hair. So he took extra time and submerged all but the adamantite over her skin surface, giving her the proper black sheen, then eliminated all but the mithril from her hair. It wasn't quite the snowy white of most of his kin, but it was far closer than that strange mix of silver, black, green, and red.

She remained as motionless as a statue until he moved forward behind her and spoke again. "You may move."

That final permission activated a secondary magic that tied her spirit's expectations and intentions to the body's simulated muscles and organs. A sudden shuddering breath heralded its success. She took a stumbling step forward then swayed before catching her balance.

"Too tall," she murmured then raised her hand to her lips as if surprised to hear her voice, deeper and rougher than the voice of her soul.

"You will grow used to it," he said and she spun to face him. She was still too new to the body to properly handle it, however, and the spin threw off her balance. She tumbled to the floor. She struggled to rise for a moment then pulled her legs beneath her, raising herself into a kneeling position and looked up at him.

"You! I know you," she said, her eyes widening. "I remember you..."

"Yes," he said, smiling softly. "And well you should, for I am your lord now."

"No," she hissed, shaking her head, her silver locks swaying with her motion. "I serve no-one!" She glared up at him in defiance and he chuckled softly. He had been expecting that, which was one reason he had created his helm. As well as giving him a conduit for control, it also served as a path for spells to affect her soul, for otherwise that which she now was would prevent any such attack.

"Do not move," he said softly and with those words the magical connection between her spirit's intentions and her body broke. She could still change form, if she knew how, but he did not expect that she would realize it.

While she knelt, motionless, he produced a powder and cast it in the air between them, muttering and gesticulating. She watched in wonder as the powder hung in the air, then began to glow softly. It swirled suddenly then coalesced into three symbols she did not recognize. A white light sprang from his hands, turning blue as it passed through the symbols, projecting light and shadow over her. He did not wait for any response, for he could feel the spell take affect and her resistance wane and then vanish entirely.

"Now rise, and learn once more to move." This time he mentally activated the spell, rather than verbally speaking its command words. Best not to make the connections too obvious.

Distanfae watched in silence as the woman struggled once more to her feet. At first she moved unsurely, wobbling occasionally as her balance escaped her. As with forming the eye, though, she displayed remarkable adaptiveness and was soon flowing through the moves of an intricate dance of leaps and strikes.

She showed no modesty or concern for her lack of clothing but Distanfae took no notice of this. He was used to females of his own race, who displayed little concern regarding such proprieties. Indeed, many of the rituals of their worship were performed in the nude.

---

A verbal command echoed about her but she ignored it. Moments later she felt a rising pressure as her return to consciousness was forced. "Where am I?" She asked. She realized that she couldn't hear her voice, then other lacks made themselves known. To herself she murmured, though once again she heard nothing, "I can't see anything, I can't feel anything?"

"Form an eye and then you will see." The words echoed around her, sounding strangely familiar.

She protested then fell silent as for the first time she could feel her skin. She concentrated all her attention on that sudden sensation, fighting off a sudden wave of nausea as she felt her skin changing, warping and rippling. In spite of the unsettling sensation, she forced herself to pay attention. When the changes ceased she wondered what had been done, for the only thing that had changed from her perspective was that she could still feel her skin.

He must have made me an eye, like he told me to. She struggled to open her eyes. It felt like she was half-asleep and trying to wake up. I'm sending all the right signals, she groused, why does nothing happen? An image formed in her mind, an image of an eye, and she tried to connect its appearance with the feelings that she had experienced during the change she had undergone.

Maybe, if I just... With a shuddery ripple, the eye reshaped into an open state and she could see once more. Delighted at her success she immediately went on, ignoring the words in the background, to form a second eye and open it as well. Even with two eyes, however, she could see nothing of particular interest and complained once more. She felt irritable, as if something was wrong, or wasn't working. It took her several moments to realize that she wasn't blinking, though her eyes weren't watering either.

She heard that voice once more and it took a moment for it to register. The last words she heard clearly, however. "You will serve me." Her anger flared for a moment as she objected but she couldn't sustain it, though after a brief return to her earlier despair the humor of her situation struck her. "Besides, how'm I supposed to serve you when all I got is eyeballs?"

She felt external pressure then a sudden sharp blow. Instantly she was growing, changing, a far more complex and wild series of changes than the formation of her eyes had been. In the blink of an eye she had gone from having nothing but eyes to having everything back, though she was not released for several long moments, while indecipherable changes continued.

She heard his voice again, but this time she actually heard it, heard it with her ears, not just her mind. The change was startling, perhaps more than the reshaping of her body had been, for in one moment she was motionless, capable of moving even her eyelids only by changing their shape, and in the next it was as if nothing had ever happened to her. She was breathing and moving perfectly normally, even if her breath had been a bit jerky there at the start.

Her balance was slightly off though and she took a step forward to correct it, only to completely misjudge the move. She swayed for a moment then murmured, "Too tall," in surprise. She had experienced the strangeness of suddenly being too short the first time the Jusenkyou curse had changed her from a well-built young man to a remarkably petite if well-endowed young woman, but she had never experienced being too tall before.

She heard a voice behind her again and spun to face it only to find herself in a heap on the floor. She sought to rise before giving up and settling back onto her legs to look up at the man who had spoken to her. Her recognition sparked a momentary conflict that was resolved when he revoked her ability to move, startling her and forcing her to realize that there was very little she could do to resist him.

The powder that he cast into the air between them she at first thought to be a sleeping powder or the like, such as Kodachi had once used against her. When it remained in the air, suspended by nothing at all, she felt a deep wariness. This was magic, unquestionably, and magic had never been a good thing for her.

Light washed over her and then she was taken back into the memories that had become hazy with her return to a corporeal form. She watched as he propounded his arguments again and she agreed to serve him. For a moment she felt that she should object but as the memory faded it fit in the holes within her own memory. It was real, she decided. She had sworn and she would honor her oath to the best of her ability, for the sake of her family and friends. She remembered more than merely what he showed her, as well. With the reminder, she remembered both the oath she'd sworn to him and the oath she'd sworn just before, when she had renounced her name and her manhood so that there would be no mistruth in the oath she gave him.

She fought against a sudden and stifling fear that rose in her. She had expected to become a sword, not to have a human form again, a female form. She had sworn to obey him in all things, what if... She forcefully thrust the thought from her mind. She was a Saotome, she would honor her oath, no matter the cost. It was her only chance to redeem her failure, to save her friends, her family, her father. Her fear was washed away by a sudden realization. She had a body, she was not just a sword! After she saved them, she would be able to see her mother again, to hold her, be with her! Surely, after what she had done for them, they would accept her, even if it had to be as a daughter? She would have her family again.

Taken from her reverie by her new lord's command, which once more gave her body to her control, she rose as he had ordered and began to learn her new body. Different as her new body was from what she'd known, it was far more familiar than what she'd experienced in those few moments of awareness as an undifferentiated sphere, and this was not the first time she'd had to get used to a change in form.

She quickly realized that the biggest difference between her current body and the one she'd had before is that only her hair responded to anything other than her direct intent. It swirled about her believably as she spun and struck, but her breasts did not so much as shift on her chest as she moved.

They were not all that was not reacting as expected. Even as she pushed herself to move faster, her breathing remained even and steady when she was paying attention to it and ceased completely when she was not. It was several minutes before she herself grew aware that her breathing was starting anew each time she turned her attention to it.

She stilled quite suddenly when she realized that and in the ensuing silence she realized that she could not feel her heart beating, then jerked when a hand fell on her shoulder.

Her senses warped then went dead as her body was once more twisted and altered. Finally a single eye was formed and returned to her control. Opening it, she found herself in the hand of the man who had made her, staring into a mirror at her own eye, set in the pommel of a long curved sword.

"Enough training for one day," he stated. "I've other things that must be done lest I raise suspicion." He looked her over. "Still too obvious," he muttered and she felt him reshaping her again. This time she was able to watch in the mirror as he reduced her length until she was little more than a dagger. He tucked her into his belt, eye facing outward. "Don't move your eye if anyone is looking at you," he ordered her.

This time she was awake and aware when he invoked the ability that took him through the shadows to his rooms. Even as her single eye watched the shadows stretch out to swallow him, she felt the response within her to his request, felt herself causing the shadows to move, even though she was neither deliberately nor consciously causing it.

"What was that?" Her query, though voiced from her perspective, was once again silent due to her lack of a voice, and his response was equally silent.

"That was one of the abilities of the magic items I fed you during your creation. You are to inform me if you grow hungry."

"Oh," she said. She wondered what the connection was that had made him comment on her hunger but refrained from asking. His words led her to examine herself for hunger, of which she found none.

He had not told her not to move and whatever magic it was that had allowed her to move almost normally still seemed to be in effect. When he had first given her an eye there had been no indication which it was, whether left or right, nor had she been able to blink or look about readily. Now though it was clear that the eye he had left her with was her right eye, and she could blink and look about just by trying to do so, just as she had been able to when she had her full body.

The implications of that were fairly clear, even to her. If she resisted, she'd be a statue. That certainly limited the usefulness of her martial arts ability. Not that she could reasonably resist, having given her oath. She realized then that this was just such a string as she had feared and made a mental note to bring it up with him. However he was accomplishing this, if he was still doing it a thousand years from now, her promise might prove irrelevant.

She briefly considered raising her ki, remembering that certain forms of pressure point induced paralysis could be overcome by redirecting her internal ki flows, but rejected the idea. He had warned against merely moving her eye if anyone could see, he would certainly have still greater objections to her glowing.

She held her silence therefore and in that silence she watched as he moved about his room. It was a strange sensation, much like when she had accidentally eaten the magic mushrooms and become five years old once again, to look upon everything from the height of her lord's belt. It seemed almost surprising to her that the level of her eye was stranger to her than the fact that she was seeing only with one. She knew from having to learn to fight with different handicaps that one needed two eyes for proper depth perception. While she knew that she could not possibly have accurate depth perception with her single eye, it seemed unimpaired. Of course, a simple referral to memory pointed out that it was no different than closing one eye and she had never noticed any particular lack when doing that, yet somehow she felt as if everything ought to look flat, even though it did not.

She continued to watch in silence for most of the remaining day, observing her lord's interactions with his other servants and slaves, and with his superiors. She was interested to note, in that vein, that he seemed to show deference exclusively to certain women, never to men. That observation sent a definite shudder of concern through her. She had had more than enough experience with Amazons for one lifetime but it was looking disturbingly like she was involved with another group of them.

She also noted that the majority of the people he encountered had dark skin, pointed ears, and white hair, yet facially they looked, if not Japanese, at least Asian. She also saw a few individuals that looked deformed. The first one she spied received her sympathy for his deformities, his rough green skin, small size, and ugly, exaggerated features. When she saw several more that looked similarly deformed, she began to question her conclusion. Perhaps these were victims of Jusenkyou? Or could they be actually something other than human, like kappa, or the houzanjin, the people of Pheonix Mountain?

As it turned out, she had little cause to concern herself about whether she was visible. It seemed the magic that let her move normally was more responsive than she had anticipated, for whenever she entered the range of another person's eye she found her link suddenly severed, her eye held motionless. She did push his rules enough to test and lower her eyelid during one such time, when the one causing the effect was one of the green-skinned people; she made sure that the misshapen creature was not actually looking in her direction and from his lack of reaction she was sure that her defiance had gone unnoticed. She had to reshape her eye to lower the lid, rather than being able to simply close her right eye, but it did work. It also sent a wave of uneasiness through her, knowing that she had deliberately disobeyed him, her lord. It felt almost relieving to know that she could do so, yet she found she had no wish to anger him. At least he had not placed a geas on her to enforce her oath. Not that such would ever have been needed with her, of course. She would not risk losing her chance at redemption, her chance to regain her honor and her family.

Besides which, he had already captured her soul even after her death at her own hands, then given her an amazing new body that he seemed to be able to reshape at his will. More importantly, while she had been able to duplicate the reshaping trick and felt confident that she could also accomplish the traveling through shadows that he had used her for, she was all too aware that she felt nothing that could be replicated when he activated or deactivated the connection that allowed her to move normally.

To be certain, she could reshape her body and could move in that fashion, as she had already demonstrated by opening and closing her eye, but the concentration that required was at odds with performing her martial arts. Her art was meant to be done without direct thought, her mind free to work on strategy while her body fought the direct action, moving at the speed of reflex. She could still accomplish that when he turned on her link, but without it?

When he returned to his chambers, he closed himself in, locking his doors, then placed her on a table. He pulled a chair close and sat beside her, looking into her eye. "Memorize the shape you are in, then reshape yourself into a sphere," he ordered her.

Ranko concentrated, knowing that even had he not made it an order she would have done as he asked. She needed to learn all she could about her form, its strengths and weaknesses, if she was to succeed in her quest. If he was willing to guide her, to teach her, then she would put all her effort into learning whatever she could from him.

Focusing her senses on her form, feeling the long sharp edge of her blade, the curve of her cross-guard, the softer wrappings of her hilt. Once she felt she understood the form she was in, she began drawing her blade in. Since the pommel was nearly spherical already, she sought to retain it, and her eye, pulling the blade into the pommel, followed by the cross-guard and then the hilt, as the spherical end-piece swelled in size.

Finally she was once again a simple sphere though she retained her eye, looking up at her lord. He shook his head. "All the way."

Sighing internally, she closed her eye and then unmade it, becoming a perfectly smooth, round sphere. "Now I want you to find each different component of your make-up and bring them to the surface." Feeling her confusion, he continued, "You are formed of several things. Primarily, you are composed of what I will term 'quicksilver,' which is a reflective silvery metal, mithril, which is also silvery, but without as much blue in it, and adamantite, which is black. There is also onyx, a black stone, and jade, a green stone. There is a red substance that I haven't identified, and there should be strands of gold, silver, and a number of other minor elements from the magic items I fed you. Since these things have different colors, it is important that you become aware of them, so that you can reshape yourself into a form retaining the proper coloration."

Ranma thought about the different colors she'd seen in the mirror when he first made her into a sword and nodded to herself. Her blade had been silver. She had had a black handle with silver accents, and her eye had been green instead of the deep blue she was used to.

She turned her attention inward, no longer having any external senses except those of her 'skin,' and focused on finding the different elements that made her up.

She found the quicksilver first, though she didn't know what color it was, nor that it was the quicksilver, as she had no way to see it. It felt different somehow from all the other elements that composed her; more alive, more responsive to her touch. She focused on it, moving it outward to cover her surface and was surprised to note an immediate increase in sensation. Her sense of touch and temperature granted by her skin and the connection that her lord had not yet revoked from her was significantly enhanced by passing through the enlivened element. She felt as if she could feel the very grain of the wood on which she rested. She could even trace the subtle changes in the direction of the weave of the cloth her lord had wrapped around her base to keep her still, the variations between the angle at which the different folds met her surface. After a moment she heard her lord's voice in her mind. "That is quicksilver, or so we shall call it."

Reminding herself that she had a task to perform, she decided to return to this substance later on. She wondered if it would improve her sight if she were to use it to form her eyes.

Moving on, she sought next for the most common element. Finding it and taking a hold of it, she found it seemed hard and unyielding, though it responded to her efforts and flowed to coat her exterior. It was as if she had suddenly been wrapped in cloth. Her senses were muffled and vague. She could barely differentiate the soft cloth from the hard wood beneath her, detecting only the deviation in pressure between the light touch of the cloth resting against her and the stronger pressure of the wood supporting her weight. Again he informed her. "This is adamantite."

Even as she reached for the next element, wrapping herself in what she soon learned to be mithril in place of her adamantine shell, she felt her lord's hand light upon her, not lifting nor moving, just resting upon her. She stilled for a moment, waiting for him to speak, but when he did nothing more, she returned to the task she'd been given.

This new substance felt lighter and more giving than the previous, though no less strong. It was more sensitive, particularly to the warmth of her lord's hand, though she could not resist letting the lively metal she'd first found flow to the surface beneath one of his fingers. That gave her a wonderful sensation of warmth and more, it gave her flavor. She could taste the salt on his skin, feel the ridges of his fingerprint, even follow the pulse of blood through the capillaries in his fingertip.

She reveled in the sensations for a minute then withdrew the quicksilver lest lingering overlong anger her lord. "Watch it," she warned herself. She had to remember that much as she was used to teachers like Cologne and her father, whom she was free to antagonize, if she angered this teacher, he could do worse than rap her head, or suck her ki like Hinako. He could strip her of her ability to move; worse, he might be able to remove her soul completely, send her on to the next world as nothing more than a failure.

Returning her attention to her current coat, she noted that it felt energetic, though not lively. Where the sensitive metal had felt alive, this merely felt charged, as if it were full of energy, waiting to be released.

The next material gave her some difficulty, for it did not want to take a perfectly smooth form. Instead it seemed to want to form sharp flat edges, always at precise angles. It was unresponsive to pressure and reacted hardly at all to the warmth of her lord's hand, yet somehow she was still certain where everything touching her surface was. It took her some time to realize that some of the responses it was returning were off compared to the other materials. A bit of experimentation, as she moved a bit of quicksilver about herself to compare the sensations, made her believe that this sharp edged substance was reacting more to the light falling on it than to the touch of her surroundings, for the 'off' regions all seemed to extend in the same direction, to a similar degree, compared to what she sensed with the quicksilver.

Her subsequent attempt found a substance remarkably similar to the first sharp-edge substance. It formed planes at a different angle but otherwise reacted very similarly. The biggest difference was that when she coated herself with it, she still felt sensation beneath it. Moving quicksilver directly beneath it confirmed this. Whatever it was, it was transparent to some degree.

It was becoming harder to focus on further substances, for the remaining materials were far smaller in overall quantity to what she had been working with. It took her some time to realize that one of the substances in particular, a very soft substance that was easily formed and quite sensitive to heat, was in fact a singular substance. The cause of the difficulty was that there were innumerable divisions within it, not of varying substance but of differing feel and behavior. Remembering her lord's comments, Ranma wondered if she were not feeling somehow the different powers of the items she'd been fed, as he put it.

Far more startling, however, when she came upon it, was a rough substance that when left to itself formed into twisted ropes that then intertwined into flat planes. She felt it for some time with the quicksilver, wondering at one point if it wasn't her braid, before realizing that it was the same as the fabric that was bunched around her. Feeling it more directly, actually experiencing it rather than using her other substances to feel it externally, she found it was the source of the response to the command he had given that had taken them through the shadows.

---

Distanfae sat back and waited, watching the variegated sphere intently, until its surface became quite suddenly a silver with a hint of blue. Concerned about the consequences of coming into contact with the quicksilver before his weapon had attained complete control of it, he waited until it turned black to reach out for it, though he told her what it was. It turned suddenly silver again as his hands came into contact with it and he stilled instantly. He very nearly pulled away before recognizing the whiter sheen of mithril.

While she was distracted by her ordered explorations, he slipped silently into her mind, delving into her memory and personality. He very quickly located several key problems. "How curious," he mused to himself, "a warrior who avoids killing."

He slipped into place a temporary shield that would ensure her attention remained on her task until he relieved her of it, then set to work. An unwillingness to kill would make her useless in his society. He was careful not to attempt to remove it. Leaving her with holes in her mind would be a good way of setting a trap for himself at a later date. Instead, he very carefully rerouted her impulses, working around her strange notions of honor, unaware that she had already done basically the same thing after having decided that her honor now dictated she not hold back from the killing blow lest she fail her family a second time.

Finding a barrier in her soul he searched her memories until he learned what it was. For a time he considered merely strengthening it, until a better idea occurred to him. Once more he changed the pathways of her mind, ensuring that the sensation of cats would no longer trigger her fear. Debilitating fears were hardly a useful thing in his consideration, but the final result of her fear had value of its own. Two triggers he placed, that would allow him to activate or deactivate her feral state at will.

He withdrew then, feeling his shield's strength waning under the power of her mind. For a time he rested his hand on her still, thinking over some of the things he'd seen in her mind. He had by no means explored all of her memories but he had seen enough to know that she had experienced magic before, and had been both male and female at different times. Perhaps once he'd gained her confidence, she would tell him her story and he would learn what magic was like where she was from. He could, of course, simply take all that he wanted to know from her mind but he thought she would be more inclined to work faithfully for him if she did not feel violated. There was no need to push too quickly, he had time and to spare.

"That is enough for now, Ranko. We will speak again in the morning."

---

Ranko waited impatiently, frustrated that she had no way of gauging the passage of time. Several times she sought to find sleep but always it eluded her. Finally she could wait no longer, feeling bored beyond belief, and mentally crossing her fingers in the hope that her lord would not object, she formed an eye and opened it. She was all too aware that where her father had beat her for disobedience, a samurai's lord had the right to claim her life if she disobeyed an order, or even for no reason at all. She trusted that her lord did not intend such, else why would he have saved her in the first place, but she was not foolish enough to push it, at least not until she had had time to learn how far it was safe to push him. Silently she thanked her luck that her lord had not removed the connection between her spirit and her body, allowing her to easily look about.

She had to shift her eye's position on her surface about herself but finally she found what she sought. There across the room a large bed held the sleeping form of her lord. For a time she was simply content to watch him, wondering what he was. At first she had thought him an agent of the after-life; now, she was not sure what he was, though he looked human enough, apart from the white sheen of his hair, which looked strange on someone who was lacking the other usual signs of age, his ears, which came to points at the top, and his skin, which was a deeper black than she'd seen before, with a hint of blue instead of the usual brown. It was, at least, more interesting than feeling nothing but a black emptiness, without even the comfort of dreams.

When he began tossing and turning and then crying out as if in pain she quickly roused from her reverie. "So, I'm not the only one who has nightmares," she mused. "Well, if I can't sleep, then I also can't dream. I guess that means no more nightmares." She watched him for a few minutes more, feeling a growing irritation as he tossed and moaned. "I wish he'd quit that." It occurred to her suddenly that his well-being was part of her duty as a samurai. That thought seemed to inevitably draw up another, and she shuddered as she unwillingly remembered that even male samurai had at times been used for a more... physical... form of comfort for their daimyo, but she pushed that thought aside. There was nothing she could do if it happened, so best not to think about it, and simply hope it never did. "I won't let fear keep me from my duty," she growled to her recalcitrant mind.

Mentally asking his forgiveness, though he had not exactly ordered her not to do anything in particular, she shifted her internals about, thrusting the heavier materials to one side, so that she rolled forward and fell from the table to land with a thump upon soft carpet. Surprise stilled her for a moment when she landed with her open eye pressed against the carpet fibers and yet felt no pain, but a whimper from the bed returned her to motion.

Trying hard to remember, she swelled into a womanly form, trying to take the form he had given her. Looking down at herself, she shook momentarily in disgust. She looked rough, like a child's clay figure. Colors were mixed and bunched across her skin in a manner painful to look upon. Her hair, far from the thin, silky, and vibrant strands of red that had once characterized her, hung in lumpy cords, like mottled threads of yarn. "Yet another reason to protect him. If I want to stay a martial artist, I need his magic."

She tried to utter a soft curse but it came out as a garbled moan and she shuddered once again. Turning to the bed she took a step towards it and immediately lost her balance, fetching up hard against the wood side. Moaning another curse she gave up on trying to move properly, and reshaped herself into a rough semblance of a woman lying already upon the bed.

Rolling onto her side she looked on the troubled face of her lord and felt a pain deep within. She knew what it was to struggle through nightmares with no-one to care. She had had horrific nightmares ever since her father trained her in the Neko-ken and not once had he ever sought to comfort her. The trouble was, she did not know what to do to ease his pain... and get him to stop groaning like that. "Should I wake him up? No, he might be angry if I do; then what?"

She tried to think of what one did in such a situation. Her memories of her father and mother were of little help but finally she remembered one particularly bad night, when she had awoken in Kasumi's arms being cradled and rocked, Kasumi's hands stroking her hair.

She shifted closer, feeling thankful that while lying down she did not have to worry about maintaining her balance. Trying not to think about what he might think of this, or how he might take it, she deliberately suppressed her inner disquiet. Reaching out with her lumpy, misshapen arms, she drew him to her, running thick fingers through his soft white hair, in attempted imitation of Kasumi's comforting behavior. "Damn, this sucks." He quieted instantly, pressing against her. She looked at herself again and groaned inwardly. He'd hardly get a good night's rest sleeping on the equivalent of hard rocks. She shifted the softest materials to that side of her, that she might not hurt him, and glancing down, she saw a fine black cloth with gold glinting beneath.

When she felt him begin shifting as if to awaken, hours later, she reshaped herself into a sphere as quickly as she was able. Reaching out to the black cloth within her she fumbled for its trigger, trying to mimic her lord's use of it, and fell through the shadows onto the table. She waited uncertainly, once more reduced to merely feeling.

"Don't let him want that from me," she growled at the kami, unwilling to even voice what 'that' was. "I didn't let fear keep me from my duty, don't punish me for that." It was not a completely unfamiliar experience; she had spent most of her time in Nerima all too aware that honor left her little choice; but at least then her honor had led in multiple directions and she had had some excuse to resist honoring one commitment when to do so would break another. Now she had no such shield to hide behind.

Finally she felt the touch of her lord's hand upon her. "You were in my bed, last night," he said to her.

"You had a nightmare," she retorted defensively, torn between the familiar desire to offer insult to reduce her cursed attractiveness and the newer and still stronger desire not to hurt her chances of changing her past.

"I understand, Ranko. Thank you," he said calmly. Ranko would have gaped at him if she had had a mouth. He had actually listened to her? He had believed her?! "Wait here while I get ready, then we shall return to the training room."

Ranko did her best to wait patiently, playing around with her elements to occupy her mind. She was beginning to get painfully bored when an idea struck her. Once more she formed an eye, but this time she formed it at her center. She gathered the material she had determined last night to be at least partially transparent and formed a channel of the substance from her eye to the surface. As soon as it reached her surface she saw light and she cheered inwardly. The next thing she noticed was that everything seemed to be a shade of green or black. "Must be the jade," she decided of the transparent substance.

Unfortunately, the scene she was able to observe was as static and unchanging as her own senses, leaving her just as bored as she had been before. "Man, not being able to sleep sucks," she thought. If she had had a body she would have sat bolt upright when another thought struck her. "If I can't sleep... oh, man, what if I can't eat, either?"

Training

Once more she was placed upon a pedestal, resting against bunched up cloth that held her still. At her lord's request, she formed an eye and turned it upon him.

"You have learned to reshape yourself, to a degree. Indeed, you learned this faster than I expected," he told her and she felt a warmth grow within her at the praise, even as she tried to recover her startled wits. He actually complimented her? Her father had been quick with the insults, but he had never been free with support or congratulations. "Last night you learned to locate and manipulate the different elements that compose you. Today, we will take that further." Beside her on the pedestal he placed a ring, wrought of gold and silver braided, with a diamond set in a claw of gold. "Examine this however you wish. Take its form." He sat back on a chair in one of the alcoves to watch her.

She turned her eye upon it first and tried to match it, not changing her whole self, but merely extruding an extension of silver and gold and attempting to wind them about each other.

She winced as she compared the two. Her attempt looked scarcely like a ring at all. She absorbed it and tried again. Her second try was hardly better. She felt a shiver of irritation go through her as her mind played back insults as if Genma were there berating her inept efforts. She realized then that she had not heard anything from her lord. Why was he not saying anything? Had he just given up on her? She turned a worried eye in his direction but he was merely sitting and watching. Grumbling at Genma to get out of her mind, she redoubled her efforts. She would show him that she could do this. "After all," she smirked to herself, "I am the best."

"Sight is not enough," she mused, "or enough for me, anyhow. I ain't no artist." That thought gave her the key though. She was skilled with her body and hands, perhaps if she felt it, instead, she might do better. He had, after all, said to examine in it whatever way she wanted.

Flowing outward, she engulfed the ring in her most sensitive substance, which her eye could finally see and identify as what he had called quicksilver, highly reflective, like a funhouse mirror as its shifting form twisted and warped her reflection.

Her confidence grew as the quicksilver seemed to pour information into her about the ring and it was almost without effort that she grew fine strands of silver and gold, weaving them into a perfect ring, grasping a translucent jade stone. The last bit proved the hardest, for no matter how she tried, she could not convince the jade, which she had chosen as the closest she had to a clear stone, to take on the shape of the diamond. It simply did not want to form the same angles.

Finally she gave up on the jade, tried onyx briefly, then turned to mithril. The mithril formed the diamond's shape readily, for though it did not naturally form those flat planes and precise angles, neither did it resist being formed into them.

Pleased, she lifted the ring up to show her lord. He stood and strode to her. "Very good, Ranko. Now draw all of your substance within the ring, hidden within the gold and silver."

She blinked in acquiescence before unforming her eye. The strands of gold and silver grew in length and thickness as she poured herself within them, stretching them into a thin veneer over her twisted surface. Soon she had the appearance of the ring once more, but sized to fit a giant.

"Very good. Now, I am going to introduce you to another of your normal abilities. It is a very common attribute of powerful magical items, that they resize themselves to fit their bearers. It is a little more complex for you, in that the magic will consider both your form, your wielder, and your wielder's intent when sizing you. Since you bear the form of a ring at the moment, when I take you in my hand, you will resize so that you might fit upon my finger. I want you to concentrate on how this feels. It is possible that you might be able to control this yourself."

With that said, she felt the warmth of his hands upon her once more. Almost instantly vertigo swept her and she fought to focus as the touch of his fingers seemed to swell tremendously. Confusing as the sudden change was, her will forced the confusion away and even as the size change slowed, she caught the mechanism for the change and forcibly halted it. It felt like a pendulum, or a weight between springs, trying to get to rest. She pushed against it. She felt the touch of his fingers shrinking more than she sensed her own increase in size, but she also felt the increasing pressure of the springy resistance. The touch of his fingers left her and she felt the rap as she landed once more on the pedestal. The weight of the spring vanished. She was able to move it easily now, though she could not sense the change in size except in the changing texture of the pedestal as her surfaces moved across it.

"But," she protested uncertainly, "when I am a sphere I am much smaller than the human form you gave me. I don't remember feeling this change then."

"Ah," he said, "That is a matter of density. In that form--which is not human, incidentally, but drow, though you need not concern yourself with the distinction just yet--you have a great deal of empty space within you. For example, your bones are riddled with holes in the marrow, your lungs are empty space, your stomach and digestive system are empty. More to the point, your capillary system, the veins and arteries that run throughout your body to carry blood are filled with but empty space, for you are bloodless.

"You are mostly empty space in that form. Furthermore, you shrunk before you regained consciousness, when I lifted you as a sphere to bring you down here. I think in your natural state, given the volume of the materials that went into your creation, your drow form would be a bit of a giantess. Actually, you are even now larger in that form than a normal woman by three-quarters of a foot or so."

Ranko thought about that. She didn't understand much of his explanation, but thinking back to when she had tried to take on the form herself, she realized that without thinking about it, she had ended up as basically a single hollow shell. She had focused on the outward form and had ended up empty. That was probably why she had moved so strangely.

"Well," he said, "now that you know how to adjust your size appropriately, take on your drow form again."

"Uh, well, I tried that last night," Ranko admitted. "It didn't work well."

"Hmm. Granted, you weren't in the best shape to notice what I was doing last night, though you caught on with the eye quickly. I'll make the change for you this time, and I'll try to go slowly so that you can follow."

She felt his hands on her again, lifting her up and placing her on the floor. Even as he did so she shrank rapidly. Leaving her on the floor, he began her transformation once more. She concentrated on the sensations of the change. As she had, he began with the overall size and outward appearance. This time he was more aware of her appearance than he had been the first time he changed her and so her skin was the smooth black of adamantite from the beginning.

She was focused inward until he completed the process and when she redirected her attention outward she was startled to find that her eyes were level with his knee. She looked down at herself, half expecting to look as she had when she had eaten the mushroom that had reduced her age, that he had deliberately made her a child. Her body was not that of a child's, however. Her proportions, though small, were those of a mature woman.

She stared at up at him for a moment then reached for that spot in her mind that had moved when she changed sizes the first time, and lifted. She stopped instantly, fighting vertigo. Her eyes were expanding and it made the world seem to rush in toward her. Forcing down her unease, she lifted again, fighting the dizziness caused by her increasing size until she was looking at his shoulder. She raised her head slightly, a challenging glint in her eye.

"That better?" she asked. She knew that men tended to prefer to look down on women and she had no intention of revealing that she was actually a man. He had offered the body and the chance to save her family and friends to her, Saotome Ranko, and she wasn't going to take a chance on his mind changing if he learned that she was really Ranma.

He nodded then turned away and strode back to his seat in the alcove. "You need to learn to take this form on your own. I suggest you start piecemeal. Focus on one limb or organ and study it until you understand it, then try to recreate it."

Ranko nodded and dropped to the floor sitting cross-legged, unconcerned about her nudity. Focusing her attention on her hand, she soon had a second hand projecting from her wrist. When it looked and felt right, she absorbed both it and her original hand, then reformed and flexed it. Nodding in satisfaction, she moved on.

Her attention returned to her lord when he stood, after she had successfully formed an entire additional right arm. "Continue this," he told her. "I will return for you later."

She nodded and watched him leave then returned her attention to her task. Her focus and concentration were not entirely due to the fact that she'd been ordered to do this. She did not want to experience trying to walk around looking like a lumpy clay doll ever again.

He had still not returned when she had compressed herself back into a sphere and successfully regained her form, complete in almost every detail. Remembering a video game she had once seen, she stood and formed two additional arms, increasing the height of her torso to accomodate them and decreasing her overall height and size, and began trying to move them.

She found that she could switch the mental connection controlling each arm from one to another, but try as she might, she could still control only two arms at a time. Moving the upper arm on the right and the lower on the left, or vice versa, was also quite a challenge. She could manage it but it felt strange and it threw off her reflexes.

Finally she gave up on that, retracting the extra arms. Closing her eyes, she tried creating an eye in her palms, similar to a picture she had seen in a manga once. It worked, somewhat to her surprise, but she found that she could only reasonably look through one of her palms at a time. Looking through both gave her a terrible headache, though it faded quickly when she returned to looking through a single eye.

Removing the extra eyes, she glanced toward the door her lord had left through. "Still not back yet," she muttered. "What else can I do?" The question triggered a memory of the night before, when she had experienced how sensitive her quicksilver was. Feeling into her eyes, she realized that he had used jade to form the back of the eye and she had followed suit when creating her own.

Closing her eyes against the vertigo she had felt so often, she slipped quicksilver in place of the jade and opened her eyes. She staggered back in shock at the initial brightness but it quickly became tolerable. Though the room was basically poorly lit, with most of the illumination coming from the soft colored glows of the statues above the alcoves around the walls, it now seemed to be lit by bright sunlight.

"Definitely more sensitive," she murmured. A sudden noise caught her attention and she spun to see her lord striding into the room. He paused and stared for a moment at her eyes then closed the door behind himself and walked to her.

Taking her face in his hands, he tilted her head from side to side, staring into her eyes. She felt a momentary surge of anger as a blush warmed her cheeks. "I haven't got blood, why the hell am I blushing," she thought furiously.

"What is it like?" he asked, still looking into her eyes. His obliviousness to her discomfiture calmed her and she replied.

"It's brighter... and I can see a bunch of glows around you."

"Oh?"

She nodded and began pointing to different items he was wearing and telling him how they glowed. "You appear to be seeing magical auras, both of wizardly and priestly magic," he informed her.

"How are you coming with your shifting?"

"I went all the way to a ball and back," she told him. He held her back at arm's length and then turned her about, examining her both with his eyes and his mind. He stopped several times to point out an error she had made but throughout he was nodding and murmuring to himself and he seemed pleased with her work.

"All right, that is enough for today," he said and placed his hand on her shoulder.

She guessed his intention and put her hand on his. "Let me?" she asked.

"You know how now?"

She nodded. "You want to go back to your chamber, right? Through the shadows? I've done it once already, last night."

He nodded and she reached for the black fabric, grasping its power and wrapping them both in shadow. When the shadows receded, they were standing by his bed.

Turning to look at her, he inclined his head for a moment then seemed to come to a decision. "You look close enough and you've got the size right now. You can take the form yourself, and flee through the shadows if necessary. You have progressed sufficiently, I deem, that tonight you can sleep in the adjoining servant's quarters. I've had clothing prepared therein." He noted her grimace of distaste and guessed at its cause. "The clothing is appropriate for a warrior, I don't think you will find cause to object to it."

She relaxed, reminding herself that he had shown no surprise that she, a small female, was a warrior. She remembered his shows of deference the day before. If this was, as she had feared, some sort of Amazon society, then their clothing might be acceptable. On the other hand, if he offered her a Chinese cheongsam like Shampoo had worn, she would scream. Then again, maybe not. She was supposed to be a woman now, after all. She could not refuse female clothing if it might risk losing her chance. That was her reason to exist now and she dared not lose it.

She followed him through his chambers into an adjoining set of chambers, rather smaller but still nicely appointed. She stared for a long moment at the bed, realizing that she had not mentioned her inability to sleep. He had moved past her and was opening a large closet.

"I found out last night... I can't sleep. I tried all night to fall asleep. It didn't work."

He turned to face her, a tunic in his hands. "What? I wasn't aware of that side-effect. Curious. Do you feel tired? Irritable? You've experienced long stretches without sleep before I'm sure; do you feel now like you did then? Like you need sleep?"

She thought for a moment then shook her head. "No, nothing like that. Just... kinda frustratin', I guess. I used to really like to sleep. It made me think, last night..." She paused, uncertain as to whether she truly wanted to know the answer to this question or not. "Can I still eat?" she asked in a rush.

He set the tunic down on a table and sat on the bed, his eyes steady on her. "I'm not sure, actually. I'm sure you can masticate, that is. Chew, I mean. You've a full digestive system, physically, but it hasn't any of the liquids that are normally involved in digestion. You should be able to taste, still, and foods should travel through normally, but I don't know if you'll actually take any of it in. More to the point, anything that you ingest that isn't properly absorbed would be in the way when you tried to shift."

He frowned thoughtfully. "Though, you wouldn't need to wait for it to pass all the way through to get rid of it, either. And I don't know how that would relate to your potential appetite for magic items, either. Are you feeling hungry?"

Ranko looked down and placed her hand on her tummy, stroking its surface as she considered how unusual it felt to have not eaten for several days and yet feel no hunger. She raised her quicksilver eyes to meet his, which for the first time she noticed were a startling crimson, and shook her head. "No, I don't feel any hunger."

"Good. Well, we'll see about letting you eat something tomorrow. For now, you can spend the night getting familiar with your chambers and your clothing. Whether you need sleep or no, I must have my rest. An exhausted wizard is not safe to be around. If anyone comes, make sure you aren't seen."

After waiting for her nod, he left her there. As he had suggested, she first explored her quarters. The bed was quite soft and made her feel almost sad that she could not sleep. It looked quite comfortable, a definite step up from her usual futon. There was a mirror above one of the dressers that rather forcibly reminded her of her nudity. She stared at herself for some time. She had been cute. Now she was beautiful, with a face that equalled any of her fiancees.

In the dresser she found women's undergarments. "At least I won't need these," she smirked to herself. It was not likely her breasts were liable to sag. The closet contained a variety of clothing and as her lord had implied, much of it was well-suited to fighting.

She pulled out a few pieces and went to sit on the bed. Her mind wandered to Shampoo and Ryouga. They had had to deal with suddenly getting engulfed in their clothes when cold water found them unexpectedly, or having to scramble to find clothing after obtaining hot water. Now it seemed she would have to do the same.

She stared at the clothing for a long while, feeling as if there were something she ought to be thinking of or realizing, tickling the back of her mind. Shaking her head when she could not think of it, she tried on the clothing. It fit well enough, she supposed, not that she was any expert.

She was back in the closet rummaging through other clothing when the idea that had been percolating in the back of her mind finally came to the fore and she remembered the fabric that was part of her substance. She hurried back to the bed and shrugged out of the clothes then stared at them for a long while. Finally she picked them up again. From her hands a flood of quicksilver poured forward as she took a sudden drop in height.

Nudging her internal weight upward, increasing her size to make up the mass of the quicksilver she had stolen from her current form, she duplicated the form of the clothes with the black fabric. Keeping it attached where it would normally rest on her skin, at the shoulders, around the hips, and so forth, she left the remainder free to move just as normal clothing did. Retracting the quicksilver she balanced the weight to keep her normal height, trying to move the weight as she reabsorbed the quicksilver. "I'm gonna be able to do that without changing size at all, one of these days," she promised herself.

Striding over to the mirror, she admired herself in it for a while. The only problem she could see, other than the basic fact that her clothing would not protect her from feeling the cold or someone's touch, was that it was so uniform in appearance. "I look like a ninja," she said, smirking at herself. The feel of the cloth sliding against her skin was not quite what she half-expected. More like rubbing her thumb against her fingers, she decided. It was strange, to sense both the cloth rubbing her skin and her skin rubbing the cloth.

Having nothing better to do with her night, she sat by the table and began working with her elements, weaving first one and then another into tiny fibres, thicker strands, and finally woven material. The jade and onyx stubbornly refused to behave, of course, and she could not form any significant amount of fabric from the gold or silver, though they worked well as highlights. She was able to get a number of shades between black and silver by using strands of both adamantite and mithril in varying quantities. There was a significant quantity of a metallic red substance but it behaved strangely and resisted her manipulations.

"He mentioned absorbing stuff, magic and things. I wonder if I can get some other colors later?" It occurred to her that if the chance arose, she should obtain something that would match the blue of her eyes. If she could get that red material to behave properly, it would work for her hair. Not that even those changes would really make her new form look much like her old one had.

Bored, Ranko poked about her room a bit more and then looked at the door to her lord's chambers. "I wonder if...," she thought about what she'd done the night before, trying to ease her lord's sleep. "Nah, that's probably why he gave me my own room so quick. Shoulda' known I wouldn't be any good at stuff like that."

"What else," she mused. "Oh, wait, he told me to memorize that knife from before. I should practice it."

She spent much of the night forming different weapons and practicing with them in the limited space she had available, doing her best to remain quiet. One of the first things that occurred to her, as she held the first dagger in her hand, was that this solved one of the problems her art had with weapons; their ability to be separated from their wielder.

Of course, it was a bit strange working with weapons that were a part of herself. It was actually faster, she found, to withdraw the sword and reform it in her other hand than to physically pass it. She couldn't simply toss it, of course.

Not to mention the slight additional attention required to handle reforming the hilt as it came into and out of contact with her hand was rather distracting. Working on the speed of the changeover led her to trying to improve the speed of her shifting in general.

She was still practicing absorbing and reforming her sword, dagger, an eye in her palm, and other weapons, while smoothly moving her mental pendulum about to retain her size, when her lord entered her chambers the next morning.

She stopped when he entered but returned to what she was doing when he asked her to. He watched her for several minutes before commenting.

"You are learning very quickly," he commented.

Ranko smirked. "I'm the best," she said, raising an eyebrow, her confidence beginning to return as the idea that she would be able to change what had happened slowly sank in, "I've always picked up techniques quick." She rotated in place. "Like the clothes?"

He nodded but stepped forward to look more closely. "Not familiar," he muttered then smiled. "Well done indeed. I suppose I needn't worry about maintaining a wardrobe for you then?"

She grumbled inwardly at his having realized what she had done so quickly but nodded happily nonetheless. It felt good to have someone willing to acknowledge her achievements, instead of constantly deriding them.

At his request, she took them both to the training hall. There, she demonstrated what she had learned the night before. He commented favorably on her speed, and the ingenuity she had shown in crafting metal fabrics to relieve the steadfastly black fabric that was the only one she naturally possessed. She demonstrated some weapons kata, with which he seemed suitably impressed.

Finished with the short review, he brought her a dagger. "This is a non-magical dagger." He handed it to her. "Try to absorb it, try to make it part of you."

Nodding, she concentrated on it as it lay on her palm. Nothing happened and nothing continued to happen until she finally tried enveloping it in quicksilver. It was then absorbed in only a few moments. He seemed pleased, but she could still feel it within her. Though it was responding to her will, reshaping and taking its place within her, it still felt separate, she could still tell exactly where it began and ended.

"I can still feel it," she said, frowning. "I can reshape it, but it doesn't really feel... I don't know how to say it." Her frown deepened, her mouth turning down in an unconscious pout as she sought for words.

He sighed. "I wondered if that might happen. Try to let go of it." He gestured at the pedestal on which she'd spent so much time. Stepping over to it, she formed the material into a sphere and pushed it along until it passed out of her hand. To her surprise, it readily dropped away, separating completely. It lay there as she stared at, a small ball of steel, gold, and leather.

"Take it back up and try to reform it into a dagger."

Nodding, she sucked in a breath and bit her lip as she put her hand on the sphere and drew it back in. Sorting out the materials, she straightened the steel back into a blade and gave it as sharp of an edge as she could manage, then turned her attention to the hilt. Finally a well-formed dagger, looking nearly, if not quite, identical to the one she had been given, dropped out of her palm and onto the pedestal, where she glared at it in frustration. Why had it not worked properly?

"Don't look so disappointed," he advised her, touching her shoulder. "You were able to reshape it even without being able to truly absorb it. More to the point, you were able to reshape it and then release it, which is a better thing than you might realize. You could make a fair living just using that ability to repair weapons or jewelry, or even make original works."

She shook her head in protest. She was a martial artist not a jeweler! It might have potential though. "Ah... well, I guess I could keep some metal around to make throwing knives with."

"Right." Beside the dagger he now placed a clear gemstone. "Now try to absorb this."

Ranko could see that he expected something different from this attempt, so she did not begin with the quicksilver. Instead she started with the adamantite, as she had the first time. She picked up the stone and immediately it vanished into a pool of adamantite on her palm, showing none of the resistance the dagger had. Feeling the substance and testing its properties, she looked up in surprise. "This is the same thing that was on that ring yesterday. The jade and onyx wouldn't match its angles, but this seems to prefer those angles."

"It's a diamond."

"Oh." Ranko pushed at it for a moment then glanced up, a startlement widening her eyes. "It's not staying separate," she said. "It feels like it's really part of me now!"

A slow smile swept across her lord's face. His eyes glittered and she noticed that he was rubbing his hands together. "I was right! The difference, Ranko, is that the diamond you just absorbed has a spell on it. You can absorb magical items completely, as I had hoped!"

She looked at her hand, allowing the diamond to float to the surface, the center of her palm taking on a clear, crystalline quality. "What kinda spell?"

"Oh, a very simple one. It is merely a light spell, that allows the gem to act as a light source. See if you can activate it. Ordinarily it would require a command word, but it is part of you now." She noticed that he seemed curiously intent and eager and wondered about it briefly. Feeling through the stone, she found the same tingle that she had felt in the gold and several of her other elements, including the black fabric. Trying the same technique she had used on the fabric had no effect.

Sighing, she felt it more gently, looking for anything that might affect it. Finally she found it, a tight little bundle of energy which, as she looked more closely at it, seemed to have a very definite pattern to it. Examining it she seemed to quite suddenly know how to trigger it and she did so.

Light spilled forth from her hand, a glow that lit the room as well as a torch might have, deepening the shadows. She closed her hand, bemused as she stared at the light escaping through her fingers.

She glanced at her lord. Her hand fell to her side and her jaw dropped. He was dancing, capering about like a madman, chortling! "Uhm... what are you doing?"

He finally stopped and staggered over to the chair in the alcove, collapsing into it, sucking in ragged gulps of air. "Sorry, sorry, just couldn't help it. You can't imagine what a marvelous feeling it gave me to watch you do that. You absorbed a magic item and without knowing anything more about than that it was magic and cast light, you successfully triggered its effect! You have no idea, I'm sure, what an achievement that is."

"Uhm... right... how do I turn it off?" Ranko was looking at her hand as she asked, wondering if she was going to have a permanent built-in flashlight. She pulled the diamond back and slid a thin sheen of jade over it, casting a green light into the room.

Her lord leapt to his feet, startled. "Green?! How did you do that?" He grabbed her hand in his excitement then stopped suddenly. "Oh, jade, of course." He sighed. "It has a second command word to shut off the light. Without that it will continue to glow until the crystal is completely used up, at which point it will crumble into carbon dust."

Ranko nodded absently and looked into the diamond again. After a short search she found it, a second tight pattern of energy. She looked at it until she realized how to trigger it. Everything seemed to go dark for a moment as the light vanished, before her eyes adjusted once more to the dim lighting.

Her lord seemed to have completely regained his composure and she was about to question him regarding parts of her turning into dust when she suddenly realized that she still did not know his name. She stopped and stared at her hand as she tried to remember. She went over each minute she had spent with him, but for the life of her, she could not remember him introducing himself.

Looking up at him with puzzled eyes, feeling embarrassed, for surely he had told her at some point, she tentatively questioned him. "Uhmm... I... What'm I s'pposed to call you, again?"

His eyes widened and he laughed suddenly. "Oh! I didn't even realize I hadn't told you. I am Distanfae Vitrue... or Vitrue Distanfae, I think, in the style of your speech."

"Okay... Uhm... Lord Vitrue, if I use this light, will it hurt when it crumbles? It won't make the rest of me turn to dust with it, will it?"

"No, no, no worries there. Remember, you are basically indestructible. It won't overload the diamond, that is no longer possible. You may use that spell freely."

"Oh... okay... Uhm... so... why did it make you so happy?"

He turned away to sit once more in his seat. Looking up at her, he said, "You want to be remembered, don't you?"

"Well, yeah, I guess."

"You want to be remembered as the best, right?"

"Of course. I am the best."

"So do I, Ranko, so do I. Not the best warrior, of course. I am no great fighter. The world of wizards has its names as well, though, names every wizard knows. Creating this form for you was a masterwork I may never succeed in surpassing, not that I won't try. A rune weapon that can act on its own, that can take any form appropriate to its situation, that by itself was an achievement! My name will go down in history for that alone!" He grinned at her. "I am young for such an achievement, though I've little doubt I'm much older than you, for drow have very long lives. Many centuries a drow can live, even a thousand years or more, though I'll not likely last another thousand. But I've done even more than that! I hoped it might be so, I tried to do all I could to let that possibility remain. You see, many weapons of great power have been created over the years. Very few of these ever change afterward though, much less increase in power as time passes.

"You, on the other hand, not only will you continue to grow in knowledge and skill as long as you live, you can also increase in power directly! You can take other magical items into yourself, gain their power for your own use, even if you have little or no idea what they do or how they work.

"I'm not sure about the quicksilver... it can absorb things itself, without respect to the spells I've placed, as you saw when it absorbed that non-magical dagger." He tossed another gem, a small yellow stone, onto the pedestal.

"That is another light stone. Try it with your quicksilver."

Ranko placed her left hand over it this time, not picking it up. Strands of quicksilver dripped from her palm to cover the gemstone. She felt a minute surge of energy from the stone, then it melted as the dagger had. It, like the dagger, refused to bond with her. Looking into it, she searched in vain for the trigger to the spell. "It is not mixing," she said, "and I can't access the spell."

He stepped up and held out his hand. The quicksilver retracted into her palm then released the stone, returned to its original form, and she handed it to him. He murmured something then said it again, louder, a word that did not translate to her understanding. "You could not access it because the spell is gone," he said raising his eyebrows.

"I wasn't certain it would work the same, but I wasn't expecting this, all the same. At a guess, I'd say the quicksilver absorbed the magical energy from it. If the spell was gone because of the crystal's deformation, it should have destroyed the crystal." He looked up at her. "Did you feel anything when you absorbed it?"

"Yeah, like a little jolt."

"Exactly," he muttered. "I think, from my understanding of the behavior of the quicksilver, that anything that you absorb and leave in contact with the quicksilver will be drained of magic first, beginning with the simplest magic, then more slowly it will itself be dissolved and absorbed, becoming more quicksilver. That, at least, is how it seems to behave in the wild."

The sound of a door opening caught their attention. Ranko turned to see a man much like her lord enter the room. His eyes lit up when he saw Distanfae. "So, brother dear, you've finally left your laboratories!"

In her mind Ranko heard Distanfae hiss, "Make a sword, quickly, but where he cannot see."

She turned slightly so that her right hand would be out of the new man's sight. Behind her interposed body, a hilt rippled into being and a katana like her mother's honor sword formed from it.

"Finally given up on that foolish human magic, I hope? Disappointed though our mother would surely be." He turned his attention to Ranko and his eyes widened slightly. "Or just here for a quick dalliance, perhaps?"

"Neither!" Distanfae snapped irritably. "For your information, Laermornan, Ranko here is helping me test an... unfinished.. hmm... prototype, of the final product. Perhaps you'd care to see it in action?"

Ranko's eyes narrowed at the implication that she was unfinished, though she was more disturbed by the thought that she was supposed in some way to fulfill Distanfae's mother's expectations. "He better not want to marry me," she growled mentally.

The man she now knew to be Laermornan, Distanfae's brother, turned towards her and raked her up and down with his eyes, eliciting an unconscious growl from her. "Certainly, I'd be delighted to help you test it."

He crossed the room quickly and from another alcove along the wall he retrieved a single curving sword. Unlike Ranko's katana, which at Distanfae's signal she held in front of her in guard position, it was not a consistent breadth along its length. Rather, it had a rearward swell about four-fifths of the blade to the end, where the taper reversed until it came to a point.

When her lord's brother stepped up to face her, he gave her sword a long look then glanced at Distanfae. "Why did you make the blade so unusual?"

Distanfae growled, throwing Ranko a glance she couldn't interpret. "It's human magic, Laer, it works best with human weapons. This is close enough to a scimitar."

Laer shook his head disbelievingly then moved fluidly into an attack. To an average fighter he gave no indication of his intent, but Ranko read him more easily than she could any book. She deftly turned aside his attack. He recovered readily, blocking her attempt to relieve him of his sword for a quick win, but she could not hold back her smirk. Though he moved with a speed that many of the races that held the enmity of the drow feared, it was nothing to her own speed, she who even before learning the chestnut fist had been able to move faster than a normal human's eye could follow.

She did not want to end her first chance at plying her art too quickly, but it was not long before she was receiving a dark glare from Laermornan. He leapt backward finally and did not move in again when she failed to follow. He turned his glare to Distanfae. "Where did you find her? She's toying with me! I, who can win one fall out of three with Vitrue's weaponmaster, and I can't even make her sweat!"

He glanced back at her then at Distanfae's smirk. "It's the blade, isn't it? The weapon you created, it is more than merely indestructible, it is increasing her skill." Ranko wanted to protest but she did not even have to look at Distanfae to know that she should keep silent. For whatever reason, her lord wanted his brother to believe the sword she held was what he was creating. True enough in its own light, but if she were to claim that her skill was her own and he demanded she prove it; well, it would prove no easy thing to cast her sword aside. Once more the memory of her past and her fear for her future proved able to hold the tongue that nothing else had ever stilled.

Laermornan did not wait to hear confirmation from Distanfae. Wiping his forehead with a cloth, he bowed quickly in her direction. "Good fight," he said, then strode towards the door, swearing softly.

"Say nothing of this, elder brother. It is not yet ready," warned Distanfae.

Laer glanced at him and nodded then exited the room, closing the door with a resounding crash behind him. Ranko turned to Distanfae to see what he thought of her performance.

"That was well-played, Ranko. Now he is convinced that I've created a perfectly normal rune weapon."

"What..." Ranko paused, uncertain whether she should bring it up, then went ahead regardless. "What did he mean about your mother?"

"She is the one who obtained the quicksilver golem for me. She is the one who charged me with making a rune weapon. She doesn't need to know all the details. If necessary, you can be just a sword long enough to demonstrate, but I think we'll be able to work in a challenge. You, wielding an ordinary weapon, demonstrate that you are a more capable fighter than this House possesses... and your performance against Laer makes me think that that will be no great challenge; and after a test of loyalty, I expect they'll make you weaponsmaster, and designated bearer of the rune weapon. We should be able to pull it off, if we play our cards right."

---

Ranko stood poised in the center of the room, the blade of her katana directed to the floor. At the end of the room within his accustomed alcove Distanfae was chanting softly. Ranko forced herself not to react as he completed his chant and a number of glowing arrows of light sprang from his fingertips. They flashed across the room and slammed into her.

To her surprise, though she felt the impact as they hit her, she felt no pain, nor had she been knocked off balance. She nodded to Distanfae's questioning glance and as he began chanting again, she readied quicksilver just beneath the surface of the blade.

Once more arrows of light streaked across the room. Her katana flashed out to intercept. She was too slow on the first two, and though her katana blocked the arrows, the quicksilver was not there to meet them and she suffered the full impact.

The third hit square on a patch of quicksilver newly risen to the sword's surface but again she was too slow and had not yet begun to focus on the quicksilver and she felt only the impact. The fourth seemed to flow into her without obstruction as she focused on the patch of quicksilver, sending a surge of pleasurable sensation like the taste of rich food singing through her.

Another volley followed close behind and Ranko caught them all. That first successful taste had given her a hunger for the sensation, though even with the number of bolts she was catching, it was as a faint appetizer, barely touching the edge of the hunger she had been previously unaware of.

"Very well done," Distanfae spoke into her mind. "It certainly appears that I was right about the quicksilver, and the fact that you can absorb spells rather than merely drawing magic from enchanted items makes it far more useful. Now let's try something a little stronger."

He picked up a bow that had been leaning against the wall behind him, beside a sword and a crossbow, and began chanting. He did not fit an arrow to the string, though he placed his fingers on it as if they were encompassing the butt of an arrow. When his chant ended he drew back the string and a glimmering line of red appeared between the bent string and the bow. The bow twanged and an arrow of fire leapt through the intervening space.

It was met by Ranko's katana, impacting on hungry quicksilver. Immediately she noticed two things. First, the flavor was different, spicy and hot, and second, it was more filling.

She said as much and Distanfae nodded thoughtfully. "Neither spell is particularly strong, but I think we have enough now to begin to test. I've not seen what the quicksilver can do in this respect, but it should be possible for you to tap into the energy it has obtained. I'm not certain what you'll be able to do with it..." He trailed off and looked at her expectantly.

Ranko nodded, thinking to herself that he might be surprised. He had not yet made mention of ki and she did not think that he was really aware of the full extent of her prior capabilities. She was not exactly inexperienced at wielding energy, even if this was a different sort than that to which she was accustomed. She slipped her sword into the sheath hanging from her belt. After the near discovery by his brother, Distanfae had ordered her to keep the katana present whenever she wore this form, so that he would not find himself unable to present it when it was requested.

Reaching inward she focused her mind upon the quicksilver. Her awareness of the rest of herself and her immediate surroundings faded and then she became quite suddenly and very strongly aware of the energy flowing through the quicksilver. Slowly her perceptions became more in tune with the flows of energy and she was able to detect a deeper mass beneath the swirling upper layers. As she watched she could see that the mass was slowly assimilating the freer upper flows, which she realized were somewhat distinct.

Concentrating on that difference her perspective seemed to warp and shift suddenly, so that instead of looking at the flows from without, she was feeling them from within, as if her very consciousness had moved into the quicksilver. From this vantage point, the inner pool seemed quiet and still, peaceful but with a quiescence like that of a sleeping cat, though the thought made her shiver, as if it held a power that could be terrible when roused.

About it flowed the myriad energies she had recently absorbed. There was little remaining of one stream, a soft glow that tasted and felt like cool water. Another felt solid and thick, moving with sluggish power, reminding her of Ryouga, slow-moving but forceful. The last was spicy and swirling rapidly, touching a deep pain within her as she compared it to Akane's fiery rages.

They were slowly being absorbed, feeding the deeper, still pool, and the comparison of two of the flows to the feelings of his long lost friends put Ranma suddenly in the mind of his erstwhile English teacher, Ninomiya Hinako. There were definite similarities to the absorption of these energies and her ki-draining ability, leading Ranko to wonder if she might not be able to find a way to drain that energy away before a wizard had managed to shape it, the way that Hinako had drained their battle auras.

Reminding herself that Distanfae was waiting, she ignored the outer flows, expecting that like emotionally charged ki, they would be resistant to being shaped contrary to their nature, and drew instead from the quiet pool of neutralized power.

Her awareness expanded as she drew the power out, encompassing her whole self once more even as she became aware that she had drawn the conduit of power out of the quicksilver and into her adamantine element, though not yet outside of herself.

That she could cause that power to move at all was promising. Cupping her hand she guided the flows and smirked as Distanfae's eyes widened. Slowly and then with greater speed, streamers of purple flowed into the space between her hands, coalescing into an amethyst ball. It seemed to become easier as she collected it, responding ever more readily to her will, and she realized with a sudden start that it was more responsive than even her ki had been.

She cut off the flow when the ball was six inches across, focusing on maintaining the power and not allowing it to leak away into the air. Its responsiveness was giving her ideas. She had never really learned any really powerful ki moves. She knew from her experience with Prince Herb that the few she knew were barely the tip of the iceberg. However, she had had an idea for powering up her Moko Takabisha, though she had never accomplished it. She knew that there was ki all about her and she had occasionally wondered if she could gather that ki to fuel her attacks. She had never managed it, but this energy was responding far more easily to her demands, perhaps with it...

She glanced at Distanfae but though he had a look of curious attention, he made no sign so she decided that she was free to experiment as she would. "Control first," she whispered to herself. She concentrated on the sphere, slowly moving her hands apart. A broad grin grew on her face as the sphere swelled, lengthening into a sausage like shape. The center thinned, pinching inward, then the energy split into two balls, one following each hand.

A double Moko Takabisha was something she had accomplished before but she was still startled at how easy it had been to divide the ball. Holding her hands still she pulled the two spheres apart again, dividing them into four. Laughing softly at how remarkably easy it was to control she started them moving in a circle, orbiting about an invisible central point, then brought the four back into a single sphere.

How much further could she go? She knew that under the influence of the Neko-ken she formed claws of ki, though she had not succeeded in duplicating that feat while conscious. The sphere between her hands wavered for a moment then thinned, flattened, and extended. Smirking with delight, she delicately reached out and touched the blade, then absorbed it back into her arm. Concentrating, she drew up a bit more power, channeling it into her arm to join the first, then held up her hand.

Five elegantly curved and paper-thin blades of deep purple flashed into existence just beyond the tips of her digits. She waggled her fingers and the blades moved in precise correspondence.

She was absorbed in her own achievement now and did not notice the look of blank astonishment on Distanfae's face. She had only just accessed that energy for the first time and already she could control it with a precision that astounded him.

Banishing the blades she summoned a ball of purple fire into her open hand and then gave it a sharp push. It streaked towards the wall in front of her. A smirk appeared on her face at how easy that equivalent to the Moko Takabisha had been. The smirk widened when a questing thought stopped the sphere cold just before it impacted the wall and then brought it arrowing back. She noticed as she absorbed it that it had lost some of its substance, though hardly a worrisome amount. Of course, the fact that she had fired it off with such a light thought that she had not even begun to say the words did little to subdue her pleasure. While she had no real desire to learn to be ninja, in spite of the shadow powers she had been given by Distanfae, there was no harm in having an attack that could be initiated silently.

She felt a sudden pressure on her mind as the sphere vanished and realized that Distanfae had just exerted his control. "A scrying spell just activated. We're being watched. Draw the sword and prepare to defend. Don't absorb, just deflect."

She drew the sword in a single fluid motion and immediately entered the first steps of a basic kendo form. With her senses still attuned to the strange energy she could actually feel him casting the spell and it was a simple matter to interpose the blade between herself and the arrow of fire, dispersing it in a flash of sundered magic, the move made so smoothly and precisely that it seemed but an ordinary part of the kendo form.

It continued thus as he sent a wide variety of distance attacks at her, her blade intercepting them without seeming to disrupt the pattern of her motion in the slightest. Through the quicksilver, she felt the build up of each attack as he began it, then the coursing path of the attack as it crossed the room. Adjusting the kata so that her sword would intercept it was child's play.

Without the aid of the quicksilver, the attacks pounded into her, sending shockwaves through her, though none were strong enough to move her, nor did she feel any pain from them.

"Deflect, he said," she mentally muttered to herself. Carefully she drew up the quicksilver power again, holding it ready. She was taking a risk, she knew. If she guessed wrong about how to manipulate the quicksilver, she would end up absorbing the attack, which she had been ordered not to do. But she needed to try, because allowing the spells to impact against her, while resulting in flashy detonations that made it obvious she was not absorbing the spells, was not 'deflecting' them.

Again she formed a blade of amethyst, within the katana, concentrating on it in her mind, picturing a mirror sheen on a hard edge. As the next attack came, she allowed the amethyst energy to surface on the katana's edge.

An explosion flared against the wall to her left, courtesy of the bolt she had deflected into it. She felt like crowing in triumph but held it in, knowing that her lord would be displeased if she did anything that revealed too much to whoever was watching them.

The idea came to her suddenly that she ought to be able to sense whoever was watching. Distanfae had said it was a spell, well, she was able to detect his spells through the quicksilver, and even absorb them. Should she not be able to detect and neutralize this other spell?

"No!" Distanfae caught the current of her thought and quickly interposed his objection. "If the scrying spell ends prematurely, they will know we discovered them."

They continued their farce until Distanfae signaled that the scrying had ended. "Laermornan," he growled. "I told him to say nothing! Well, there's no help for it."

Ranko looked at him expectantly but he shook his head. "I've used too much magic as it is, putting on that show for them. I had to use several of my items to supplement my spells. I'll be able to do no more until tomorrow." He looked down in seeming thought for a minute then raised his head again. "Stay, if you like, and practice. I do not think they will bother to scry again. Return to my quarters when you finish, through the shadows."

He strode from the room and she watched him leave, thinking to herself that he was exhausted but hiding it, as she had done so often. She shook her head, dismissing him from her mind. He knew better than she how to take care of himself and he had shown no inclination to having her serve him in any more personal matter, for which she was profoundly thankful. He would doubtless be better after getting rest.

She immersed herself once more in the pool of energy then drew some out and into her adamantite again. Trading quicksilver for jade in her eyes once more, she looked at her hands and saw the glows. She had a sort of glow, all over, doubtless because she was magical, through and through. The presence of the extra energy from the quicksilver was noticeable as a deeper, richer color above the submerged substance. The energy she had freed from the quiescent pool was even more noticeable, the glow being brighter and richer. As well, it led her to notice that there were variations in the base glow as well, veins and flows that moved and shifted slowly, while in the brighter glow of active power, they flashed and crackled like lightning, the flows warping and twisting energetically.

Forcing a portion of the energy out of her body and into the open air, she returned her attention to her environment. Immediately she noticed that the area around her was heavily laden with energy, the residue of the innumerable spells, slowly fading. A slow grin quirked the edges of her lips as she contemplated the ambient glow that surrounded her.

She began breathing deeply and very slowly. Her breath grew ragged though, as frantic concern flared in her mind. Why was her ki not building below her stomach, in her hara? She felt nothing from the breaths. A slow feeling of despair swept over her as she realized that she had lost her ki. All the feeling of achievement and confidence seemed to drain from her. The purple energy that had at first so excited her now seemed little more than a fool's prize.

Her ki was a part of her, built up through pain and suffering of years, most of her life, in fact. This was not the first time she had suffered its loss. When under the effects of the Weakness Moxibustion, her ki had been useless to her, and the despair of those first few hours after Happosai had crippled him returned to her now with overwhelming force.

Through great strength of will Ranko eventually roused herself from despair to learn once more to control the quicksilver energies, but her heart was no longer in it. Dully, mechanically, she shifted quicksilver around in her body as she breathed, seeking some way of positioning and using it that would let her take advantage of the skill she had in manipulating her ki. If those skills could not be applied then all of that ambient energy might as well be so much hot air for all she could get from it.

Eventually she gave up. Her breathing continued to have no discernable effect on the energies. She sighed, dropping her hand and reabsorbing the quicksilver energy. A moment later she slapped herself on the forehead with a disturbingly metallic thunk. She had never succeeded in the drawing in of environmental ki because she had never really been able to feel it. Feeling someone's battle aura was easy as it made a sharp contrast to normal experience. But nature's ki she was ever bathed in and it always eluded her.

But why was she even trying? After all, she had felt the surrounding magical energies as soon as she immersed herself in the quicksilver energy? Purple energy flared about her hand and a dry sob cracked her throat as with startling ease, streamers of energy became visible as they coalesced from the surrounding air, swirling and settling into the amethyst ball.

Maybe she had lost her ki and maybe not... but she had a thousand years to master this new form of energy. "I'll be ready for you, Saffron," she hissed. Using the amethyst sphere as a conduit, she began siphoning off the external energies she was collecting, drawing them back within the quicksilver where they could be absorbed.

It required little concentration, though the mental image of Kasumi wandering around with a vacuum cleaner wafted through her mind. She walked about the room, absorbing the ambient spell remnants and thinking about what she had seen and heard that day. She had been created under orders by Distanfae's mother. He had spoken of her as a weapon, and had her pretend to be holding a sword for his brother.

"...after a test of loyalty..."

How did daimyo test their samurai's loyalty? How would this dark-skinned family's matriarch test her loyalty? What would Cologne have done?

She felt a sudden stab of painful realization and was almost surprised that it was not accompanied by clenching stomach pains. She would be asked to kill someone, she felt suddenly certain. It would probably have been someone close to her, had there been any such person.

"I can't sleep," she said softly, "but that doesn't mean I can't meditate."

Wrapping herself in shadows, she reappeared in her quarters. Her clothes shifted, largely vanishing, until she was garbed in what seemed to be a singlet and boxers. She sat on the bed and drew herself up onto it, settling into a lotus.

She focused on the Soul of Ice, having little general experience with meditation, and knowing, in spite of the loss of her ki, that she needed that emotional distance.

In The Service of the Drow

Ranko looked up as Distanfae entered her room. She noticed that he seemed unusually agitated. "Laermornan can't keep his mouth shut," he growled. "And now that they've seen the blade in action, I can't stave them off with talk of tests and finishing it. My mother has demanded that you be presented to her."

Less than a quarter of an hour later, Distanfae made his way through the halls, Ranko with him.

"Remember what we have spoken of," Distanfae warned Ranko mentally. Not waiting for a reponse, he strode through the doors of the chapel as they opened before him. As with most events of importance in their dark society, the presentation of a newly crafted weapon, representing as it did the culmination of a task given him by his Matron, would be performed under the auspices of the Spider Queen, the dark goddess whose worship perpetuated the evil for which their race had become known.

Ranko rested in his hands for he would not trust her to a servant. She wore the appearance of the katana she had fashioned to fight Laermornan, though Distanfae had guided her through the process of decorating its surface. Her hilt was plainly wrapped, while her blade, though otherwise that of an ordinary katana, bore blood-grooves in a concession to the weapon design expectations of the society it was to be used in.

The plain wrap was deceptive, for Distanfae had provided her with a silken wrap made from the webbing of a phase spider. It would be recognizable to any drow familiar with the weapons of the nobility, for it was oft-used in the better swords. A sword with such a grip could not be knocked from its owner's hand, and so would help explain Ranko's hold on herself, when and if she ended up as the weapon's apparent wielder. That its effects were due to its inherently magical properties had allowed her to make the silk part of herself.

She rested in a sheath, but unlike the silken wrap, it was not part of her. He had provided the materials and she had shaped them under the guidance of his mind, but she had done so with her quicksilver, for the materials were non-magical and could not be made part of her.

Of course, that was quite deliberate. She knew, though it made her nervous, that she would be placed in the hands of another, and possibly tested, used to kill. If she could not be drawn from her scabbard she would hardly seem a useful weapon.

He had informed her of the general patterns of behavior weapons such as her displayed. He had also told her what would happen when another's hand touched her, for which she still felt unprepared, though he had not explained why it did not occur when he touched her. He had made it clear that she should not allow Kliza to wield her. If the matron demanded that she be wielded by a House noble, Laermornan would be a better choice. Less strong-willed, he was male and younger, and could be influenced by Distanfae far more easily than the higher-ranking female priestess.

Without an eye, nor room in the hilt to form one, she was sightless. She was not blind, however. Her consciousness was submerged in the quicksilver pool and the chapel of this house was so wound about with magic that she could see nearly every detail. Most of it was a light magic that seemed without purpose, yet covered every surface, but there were also magic weaves of great power on the door and the altar and about several of the persons within.

Distanfae walked proudly forward, Ranko resting on his lifted palms. He inclined his head as he stood at the foot of the dais where his mother stood in front of the altar. Kliza, his sister, stood at her right hand. The snake-headed whip of a high priestess hissed at him from her belt. Laermornan stood to his mother's left, in front of, not on, the dais.

Kliza stepped forward after a nod from their mother, and grasped the hilt firmly in her hands. Taking the sword from his hand, she looked at it, examining the hilt, then drew it forth a few inches, examining the blade.

"Why so strange a blade?" his mother asked, fixing him with a baleful glare.

"It is the most elegant of the human blade styles capable of being turned to the purpose, Matron," Distanfae said, inclining his head in humility, but keeping his eyes on her.

---

Ranko wanted to shudder in disgust and revulsion when Kliza's hand touched her. As Distanfae had warned her, the touch of his sibling opened a conduit between them. Kliza's upper mind was opened to Ranko and she was dismayed at the nature of it. "She's worse than Kodachi," Ranko thought in disgusted wonder. Indeed, the eldest child of Matron Vitrue was a sadist, taking pleasure in inflicting pain and in her mind now was pleasure at the thought of dominating the sword. Ranko felt grateful that the conduit was at least partially one way. Kliza would feel nothing from Ranko's mind excepting those thoughts and images she deliberately sent, though Distanfae had also warned her that she might send certain images and especially feelings across the conduit entirely unconsciously.

Ranko felt the woman's eyes on her and wanted to vanish into the shadows waiting within the sheath, feeling dirtied by Kliza's hungry gaze. She forced herself to remain still and submit to the examination. Kliza ran her finger against the blade's edge, opening a cut and painting a portion of Ranko's edge red with blood. Ranko wished she could pull away, feeling disturbingly as if Happosai were caressing her. The pleasure Kliza was feeling at the pain of the wound was turning the drow on and disgusting Ranko as a consequence, since she could feel the woman's arousal.

Ranko felt suddenly grateful that Distanfae had agreed that they should conceal the quicksilver component of her, to avoid any questions about its effects. She did not care for the thought of tasting Kliza's blood. The liquid feel of it was ignorable, though in combination with Kliza's arousal, it felt disturbingly like a nosebleed. Ranko grasped at her sheath with hundreds of swiftly formed hooks, nauseous at the thought of being aroused by this disgusting woman, and unwilling to be wielded by her, even during their contest of wills. Hopefully it would not turn out too ill, as long as she allowed Laermornan to draw her in his turn.

Kliza moved to draw her fully forth, then growled in anger, drawing the eyes of the others to her as she jerked at the sheath. "So," she growled, smiling, a feral gleam in her eyes, "it does not wish to be wielded by me? Know this, blade, no weapon has yet defeated me. You will not be the first."

Ranko felt Kliza's will pressing on her suddenly, through the conduit. Now it was time. Kliza had initiated the battle, and Distanfae had made clear the consequences. "She is familiar with intelligent magic weapons and has experience in forcing her will on them. If you fall to her, then you will be wielded by her until she dies or loses favor and there will be nothing I can do about it. Our plan will work, but only if you can defeat her in a contest of wills."

Ranko smirked, confidence growing. How had she defeated Saffron or Herb, when all logic insisted that it could not be done? She prepared herself, picturing herself mentally, an image that quickly gained strength, standing ready to defend against Kliza's barrage. It was a technique suggested by her maker as offering the best chance for her to use her true skills in the battle. Prepared as she was, her mental avatar was dropped to the floor by Kliza's first attack. She rolled across the mental plain, howling in laughter at the images Kliza flung at her, seeking to entice. "Ok," she gasped, struggling back to nonexistent feet, "maybe she's not as bad as Kodachi."

Apparently Kliza had heard of one of the key aspects of rune weapons before; that they held the soul of a powerful being, and that they were generally controllable through their inability to feel any sensation except through their wielder. Worse yet, she was sending images and scenes filled with sensation, yet deliberately avoiding the forms of sensation that she was actually experienced in. Kliza apparently had little taste for the sensual pleasures unless they were combined with the giving of pain, and so her proffered temptations were amateurish at best, as she tried to avoid any intimation of pain.

Kliza was quick enough to recognize the failure of her tactic, however, as Ranko's amusement reached through the conduit, and so she switched to intimidation. Ranko's laughter grew, as Kliza threw her true desires into the fray, though she recognized that she could not win by staying on the defensive. Still, images of pain were hardly intimidating to one who could no longer feel pain, though perhaps Kliza believed it would be painful for Ranko if her wielder was in pain. She flung Kuno's poetry in retaliation for the images, poetry being recited by a painfully cute animal that she had been unable to avoid seeing on posters in Nerima, laughing wildly as Kliza withdrew in pain and confusion. With the poems and images coming directly into her mind, it was not possible to tune them out, and Kuno's efforts were horrible manglings to begin with, and not in the least improved by a cutesy delivery.

As Kliza finally regained her control, Ranko launched the attack for which Kuno's poetry had made such an excellent cover. Kliza shrieked in disgust, dropping the sword to beat at the shriveled little monster that was groping her as if it had a hundred hands. It vanished as the sword rang loudly against the ground.

Laermornan and the Matron stared at Kliza in shock and disbelief. Never before had she been bested in a contest of wills. The blade she wore even now had driven its previous wielder mad in retaliation for trying to take up another weapon as well, but Kliza had mastered five since obtaining it and it had not been able to object.

Now she had been defeated in mere moments. The Matron turned her dark red eyes on Distanfae. "What good is a sword if none can wield it?" she asked in a voice crackling with anger.

"There is one who can," he replied calmly, hiding his surprise. She had not even considered Laermornan. He knew that she was prejudiced against the male gender. Most drow women were, especially the priestesses of Lolth, but still, Laermonan was a weaponsmaster. He stifled a shudder, realizing that he had just played into her hands. Her anger was not, as he had thought, at Kliza's failure but at his own calm reaction to it. She must think that he had deliberately designed the weapon to be unwieldable by her.

Laermornan laughed, recognizing Distanfae's reference immediately. "That wench? The sword was wielding her," he exclaimed, bristling defensively, still angry over his defeat at Ranko's hands.

Distanfae kept his eyes on his mother, and spoke in a flat, even tone. "The sword does not grant any skill." Laermornan's laughter stopped short, cut off as by the stroke of a blade. Distanfae held in his smirk. He knew exactly what his brother's response would be, and expected that it would ease his mother's wrath.

"But... but she was toying with me!" Laermornan protested angrily, certain that Distanfae was lying. The Matron smiled at the thought of a sword wielder more skilled than her eldest son, wielding an indestructible blade. Distanfae breathed a silent sigh of relief. She would doubtless test his candidate, but with that sort of endorsement, particularly given the circumstances under which it was offered, she would, he hoped, give he and Ranko a fair chance.

"We shall see her skill," the Matron declared, silencing Kliza who had been about to protest and demand another chance at the blade.

Laermornan fumed for a moment. "She's an outsider," he snapped, "she's loyal to you, isn't she? Your pawn, to control this weapon!"

Kliza stepped forward, clearly angered by her failure and smarting at her humiliation. She glanced at her mother and visibly took control of herself, speaking calmly. "As my brother says, this woman is not known to us. If she is skilled enough to be worthy, then letting the household know of her before she is ready to be used is just as dangerous as letting them know of the blade itself. If it were known that we had acquired another blademaster, or even might do so, we would be seen as a greater threat. Another house might move to eliminate us before we could bring her and the weapon into play."

The matron looked back and forth between her children, then closed her eyes in thought. Her son had expected Kliza's failure, which he should not have, given her previous successes. So he must have made certain that she could not wield the sword. She would have to punish him for that, but if this alternative warrior was sufficiently skillful she might well make up for his insolence to his sister. Laermornan's words implied that she was, but Kliza's comment was true as well, though she could easily see where it was directed, if more subtly than Laermornan's last barb.

Kliza had obviously come to the same conclusion as her mother, and was seeking to strike back at Distanfae by putting barriers in his way. That did not, however, make her wrong.

Her eyes opened and fixed on Distanfae. "This woman of yours... she has already handled the weapon." She paused and Distanfae nodded without hesitation, knowing that his reaction to Laermornan's comment had confirmed that the woman wielding the blade was his proffered warrior and remembering that he had been scryed upon shortly afterwards in that same training session.

The matron leaned forward, searching his face. "You will go with her and the weapon and prove yourself in battle. Your life will depend on your warrior. I hope your faith in her is not misplaced. I will send someone to guide you to the battle in half an hour. Be ready. Now, be off!"

Distanfae bowed jerkily, allowing his anger to show, after a lightning-quick evaluation of his options. If his siblings felt that he was displeased or fearful of the outcome, they might be willing to allow him to fail by himself, rather than risking a direct attempt at sabotage, and possible detection.

His anger was not wholly feigned. He had not expected his mother to put his own life on the line. He suspected that she would make sure he was not actually at risk, at least until she had firm control over her newest weapon, but the declaration had surely given his siblings reason to think they might go unpunished if he failed to make it back alive.

Given that both his siblings had just been faced with failure before their mother, a show of confidence on his part, which might normally be expected to give them pause if they considered attacked him, would merely goad them to action to save face. Striding quickly over to where his sister stood, he took up the weapon, not meeting his sister's mocking glare, then strode from the room.

The matron looked at her daughter after Distanfae was well away. "You will guide him, Kliza. Take Laermornan with you, find something for him to fight." Her voice grew chill with warning. "Make absolutely certain that he faces nothing you cannot retrieve him from if she should fail. I will not lose both weapon and creator at once! Bring the weapon back, at all costs. It must not fall into a rival's hands."

---

Distanfae slammed his door behind him as he strode angrily into his room. He cast Ranko onto the bed, her sheath falling beside her. She quickly reformed herself, then as quickly averted her eyes, for he was stripping. "Garb yourself for battle," he said, pointing to the door. She jumped from the bed and pulled open the door to her chamber. "Not in yourself," he barked out over the sound of cloth sliding against cloth as he pulled something out of his closet. "Dress in the clothing I've given you. If you come through wholly unscathed, with nary a rent in your clothing..."

He did not continue, but Ranko caught his intent, as she examined her options in her closet. She had to agree. She was as displeased with the thought of the sadistic Kliza learning the truth about her. One Kodachi was bad enough. She needed to avoid the appearance of being a rune weapon, and thus, she had to seem less than indestructible.

Her task completed, she turned with some nervousness back to Distanfae's chambers. She breathed out a sigh of relief when she saw that he was dressed. Contrary to her half-formed expectation, he did not wear flowing robes. If anything, his appearance made her think more of a ninja. He was clad in tight-fitting black. In his belt were thrust several thin rods of various sizes, while his belt itself was formed into a series of pockets, which she could readily imagine holding poisons or drugs. A small crossbow hung by his left hand. All that would be needed to complete the picture would be a collection of shuriken and a mask.

In fact, aside from the obvious weaponry, it was not that dissimilar from the outfit the lecherous grandmaster of her art, Happosai, whose image and behavior she had used to defeat Kliza in their just passed battle of wills, wore on his panty raids. She herself had considered dressing similarly but apparently such garb was not common for female warriors, or at least, had not come to Distanfae's mind when he prepared the contents of her closet. She had settled for a simple outfit of tight pants of a light grey hue that were suprisingly flexible, an attribute she had tested with a quick series of kicks before settling on them, and a thick shirt in black and silver, the only shirt there that was actually sleeveless rather than merely short-sleeved. Thankfully it was also round-necked with only a slight scoop in the front. Modest but without impeding movement, it was still far enough from her desires as to cause her to make a mental note to fashion some new clothes before she had to go out again.

To complete the outfit, she formed bracers and leg guards of her own substance, actually flowing through the weave of the pants in a few spots rather than making a more visible connection around the edges.

Stepping up to his bed, she unfastened her belt, her face darkening at the thought of her erstwhile fiancee's probable reaction to her doing such beside the bed of a man. Shaking her head ruefully, she picked up the sheath he had carried her in, and slipped it onto her belt, then refastened it.

Holding her hand in the appropriate position to draw the blade, she formed the hilt in her hands, the sword extending from it to fill the sheath. Distanfae nodded appreciatively, noting in particular that her overall size had not so much as wavered as she gave some of her substance to the sword.

A thin band of silver trickled from where the hilt met the blade, sliding down the sheath and over the belt, through the weave of the cloth to her skin, allowing her to then disengage her hand from the hilt.

He looked her up and down then his eyes fixed on her chest. She felt a momentary urge to cover herself against his gaze, but held back. She would have to choose between disgust and dishonor if he demanded a sexual favor from her, so she by no means desired to draw more attention to the idea. She did send up a silent plea to the Kami. To her surprise, instead of reaching out to her, or making a comment about his later intentions, he questioned her lack of undergarments.

"My breasts don't shift about," she said. "I don't need them."

Distanfae shook his head. "That is exactly backwards, Ranko. Your breasts don't move, so without undergarments to explain their restraint, you will seem unnatural."

Ranko flushed and nodded, turning back to her room with a pout. She had been so pleased to realize that she would not need to wear them... Stripping off her top, she considered her options for a moment before taking up a cloth and wrapping her breasts tightly. She might not get away without wearing something, but at least a bandage was not overly feminine, and she could explain it away as being better for fighting if Distanfae should find it cause to question her. Silently she cursed at herself for not having thought to do it before. Distasteful as she found it, it was surely far better than ending up trapped with the sadistic Kliza, or reminding Distanfae that she had sworn to obey him in all things, even that. She suppressed a shudder.

She quickly finished dressing again and stepped back into his room, where she found him seated by his desk, a dark look on his face. She sat on his bed, facing him, and waited.

"I had hoped to have more time to prepare you," he said, his eyes dark with anger, though she could see that it was not directed at her.

"Don't worry," she answered. "I'm a great martial artist, and even if I don't prefer to use weapons, I am skilled with the katana. I won't fail you!"

"It is not a lack of prowess in arms that concerns me. First, you are not yet familiar with where we are, nor how to navigate down here. You'll probably have to use your quicksilver eyes just to see. We are underground, here. Far underground, and when we go hunting, it is in tunnels that wind and intersect like a maze. Sound behaves oddly and until you grow used to it, you won't be able to trust where a sound seems to be coming from. We carry no light with us in these tunnels, for light attracts predators and attention. We see well enough in the dark, but you are not yet fully adjusted to that. I hope your quicksilver will make up the difference."

Ranko nodded, hoping that her eyes would indeed function properly. Blindfighting when she could not trust her ears would not be fun at all. She remained silent though, listening with intent concentration on his lecture. She had no intention of failing him or herself. She had no desire to be wielded by Kliza.

He had paused in seeming thought for a long moment before shaking his head and walking into a side room that Ranko had not yet seen the inside of. She waited, wondering why he had cut off in the middle of what she had sensed was going to be a lecture. She had been forced to listen to enough of them from her father and the innumerable other quasi-authority figures that had plagued her to recognize the signs. He returned after a few moments and tossed her a ring of black metal set with a red gem.

"Don't absorb it just yet. Keep it handy. It is a darkvision ring; if your quicksilver eyes aren't sufficient, put it on your finger. If your vision doesn't improve, absorb it and activate its magic directly."

"More important, Ranko, is the sort of fight we're likely to face. First, and most important, kill no spiders!" He paused, searching her mind to be certain that she correctly identified and was familiar with the creature he was describing. "They are sacred to the goddess we worship here. Also, you must be circumspect. Use absolutely no shifting that can be avoided. We will be watched by the Matron the entire time. Remember that the darkness does not hide you here. Most creatures see heat, and in spite of being metal, you are warmed by your energy. More importantly, my magic masks the pattern of your heat, to make you look normal. To conceal yourself, you will have to use the shadow cloak, though I think there will be no need for that this time."

"The creatures that we might face out there often have special abilities or even magic. It is not a matter of a merely physical battle. Avoid looking into anything's eyes. Many creatures can stun or even kill with a met glance. I don't think such should affect you, but I would rather not find out in the middle of a fight. Many also attack with clouds of spores or gas. Those you can safely ignore, normally, for you are not vulnerable. However, in this fight we are trying to make you seem like an ordinary drow, which means you will have to avoid any such clouds, since you cannot reasonably imitate the effects without knowing what they are."

"I will be in your mind the entire time, to guide your understanding of what you see and here, to supplement your senses with my own, and to give you advice on whatever the Matron finds for us to battle. Eventually, you will probably learn to suppress your human instincts for avoiding danger or pain, given your invulnerability, but do not try to suppress them now! Hopefully they will lend some verisimilitude to your portrayal of mortality."

"One last item in particular. If we run across a floating sphere with a wide mouth, a single large eye, and numerous eyes on tentacles, avoid the gaze of the central eye at all costs! It is an anti-magic ray, suppressing magic within a conical region in its view. I don't know exactly what affect that would have on you. Generally it does not damage magical items, merely suppressing their power as long as they are in it... but if you freeze solid under its gaze, your nature will be immediately evident to Kliza and the Matron."

"Finally, don't suppress your killing instinct. I know you may be skilled enough to take down many foes without doing them any long-term damage, and we may well take advantage of that, later, to gain slaves. This time out, though, you cannot afford to show any signs of weakness, or Kliza will take immediate advantage of them."

---

It became quickly apparent to both Distanfae and Ranko that she still had a great deal to learn. Without the mental link he held open between them, she would quickly have shown their hand.

Her first and biggest shock was when they exited her new home. She had been quietly looking forward to getting 'outside.' Distanfae had told her they were underground, but the plainly stated fact held none of the emotional impact of stepping outside and seeing a vaulted cavern roof far overhead. Distanfae firmly suppressed her movement for the moment it took her to regain control of her urge to gawk.

It was by no means the last shock she would receive during their comparatively short trek through the city itself. Even before they exited the compound she had noticed movement on that far off ceiling and focusing on it, discovered to her amazement that it was produced by drow mounted... or perhaps belted was the more appropriate term... on the backs of large lizards.

Once they passed through a small gate that led into an empty alleyway, avoiding the main gates to shield their activities from the watchful eyes of the House's enemies, she was subjected to continued shocks and surprises. To this point, the only non-humans she had seen had been the small green-skinned servants. She could not count the drow in that number, they looked more human than not, differing only in their slender lines, the points of their ears, and the coloration of their skin, hair, and eyes.

Now she was quickly subjected to a dizzying array of sights. From seeing the lizards up close, ridden by proud drow in armor, to seeing humans led by in chains, accompanied in the same line by short, stocky figures that nonetheless looked mostly human, more of the twisted figures she had seen before, and larger, heavily muscled figures, all the non-drow she saw bore faces etched with pain, loss, or sorrow.

Elsewhere humans and other figures hurried by, eyes averted deferentially from the four drow, and in the distance her eyes caught a figure moving through the bustling crowds, a man that stood as tall above most of the crowd as they did above the ground.

Through it all Distanfae held her composure in his hands, guiding her reactions, and providing a running commentary of learning. Before they had passed three cross-streets, she had learned that the chained figures she had seen were not prisoners but slaves, that the short, brutish green-skins were a variety of goblin. The stocky figures she'd first seen were dwarves, captives from the surface. Others that she saw moving more freely, but with a dark skin like cold ashes, were duegar, dwarves native to this underground realm, sometimes allies of the drow, sometimes enemies.

The giant figure she had seen in the distance was exactly that, a cave giant, a slave to one of the Houses. Her own House, Distanfae's House, counted five cave giants in the ranks of its slaves, brutal, dull-witted, delighting in cruelty.

For all that she was learning, Ranko's demeanor revealed nothing to the watchful eyes of Distanfae's cold-hearted sister. It said much, however, to the keener sight of the watching Matron, looking through those same eyes through the magic the two drow females shared as priestesses of Lolth, their dark goddess.

Old though she was, Distanfae's mother was more observant than her other children. She recognized the face that Distanfae's warrioress wore. One of the House's servants. Perhaps she might have been tempted to believe the girl had been planted in the House by Distanfae, had she not herself been responsible for testing that girl's loyalty some months before, when she had been party to a ceremony to draw Lolth's favor. Fairly clever and reasonably pretty she had found the girl, but still a commoner, trained to household tasks and showing no signs of the trained ways of a warrior or priestess.

She also took note of the calm visage the fighter displayed, the way her eyes swept back and forth across the scene, but without the jerky motion of a watchful warrior, focusing on one potential threat after another. No, the motion was far too smooth for that. It almost... yes, it definitely reminded her of the gaze of someone whose eyes were being used by another. Not as she was even now using her daughter's eyes, for she was merely seeing what her daughter saw, leaving her daughter in full control, but as one who was using another as she might use a slave. There were spells that had a similar effect to this. They were less common than spells that let one see directly through another's eyes as if they were one's own, with or without the ability to control the other's movements and focus. The latter sort left one vulnerable to gaze attacks, such as the petrifying gaze of a basilisk, while the former, in which the vision seen by the subject was shown in a pool or a mirror, could be enchanted to break the connection when hit by such an attack.

Still, it was odd. She would have thought it Distanfae peering through her eyes had he not been there with them. She pondered the dilemma for a while before hitting on what she felt certain was the right answer. Almost she allowed a smile to cross her face. Deviously clever, Distanfae was, to find such an ingenious way of circumventing the usual limitations of those sorts of weapons. Her eyes narrowed, a frown furrowing her brow, as a further question occurred to her. Was it necessary that the subject's soul or mind be removed first, or had Kliza been at a real risk of becoming the sword's puppet when she sought to master it?

While the Matron watched and came to conclusions that though wrong were still surprisingly close to the truth, Kliza and Laermornan covertly watched Distanfae's chosen warrior. Neither recognized the servant her form was taken from, nor suspected more to her than a blatant attempt by Distanfae to retain control of the weapon their Matron had bid him create.

Nothing was said between the four as they made their way through the crowded streets, Kliza leading as they followed a path that would take them quickly to the city's edge, without traversing any of the larger ways that would expose them to scrutiny. Doubtless they were watched even on the course they chose, but so long as they avoided drawing too much attention, there was a strong chance it would be passed off as a band of nobles simply going out on a hunt for pleasure. Behind them followed just such a guard of drow soldiers, commoners all, as would accompany such an expedition.

They passed out of the city without incident, and as soon as they had entered the smaller tunnels, Ranko's silent introduction to the art of navigating by sound began, as Distanfae brought the sounds to her attention, telling her what each sound revealed to him. They had some time for this practice and training, for the tunnels in the city's near vicinity were regularly patrolled, and were therefore free of hazards other than the drow themselves, and the occasional outside incursion. No beasts laired within a several mile radius of the city, though beyond that various creatures lurked, their hunting grounds known and marked in the secret ways of the dark elves, so that while the drow knew how to avoid them, against any potential invader they served as an unwitting outer defense.

Ranko had been in natural caverns before, and so she was surprised by the rough but obviously unnatural tunnels she found herself in. Digging through solid rock is dangerous at the best of times, and she saw none of the wooden beams and bracings that she had seen in abandoned mines.

Her father being the greedy sort he was could not pass up an abandoned mine without checking to make sure no one had forgotten some wondrous treasure in it, a folly she had quickly recognized as such, since it was always his son that he sent in search of treasure, not deigning to take such risks with his own skin. In her opinion a mine would not be abandoned if it was still producing wealth. The idea that mines would hold riches sitting there for the taking had excited her the first time he had sent his son to search a mine, but she had been quickly disabused of the notion. So she was familiar with the sort of protections human miners put in place to ensure that they were not crushed in a wall or ceiling's collapse, and with the look of a cave-in where those protections proved insufficient.

Of course, it became obvious to her a moment later. These folk had a force on their side that none of the miners whose works she had seen had had available to them: magic.

Not all of the tunnels were so obviously hand-made. Occasionally they would pass into an natural cavern, often entering it behind the shielding bulk of a massive stalagmite, or through a passage that ran for a short distance perpendicular to the cavern wall, thinning until they had to walk single-file, and opening out where the cavern wall itself thinned into sudden non-existence. These odd, sideways entrances were practically invisible when Ranko looked back to see where she had been. She knew, with the distraction of her aural training, that she would not remember the way back were she to have to find it on her own.

Distanfae's attempts at training her were strongly aided by the fascination she quickly developed with the skill. She had been taught blind-fighting techniques before, though they had been more holistic, focusing as much on sensing where the opponent was, and feeling the motion of the air and the heat of the opponent, as on hearing his movements. Later, too, the use of ki-senses had been added, diluting the vitality of hearing alone still further.

Had her quicksilver eyes not let her see in even this pitch darkness, for none of them bore a light, she would doubtless have learned to navigate by sound more swiftly yet, but she would also have been exposed as heat-blind to Distanfae's siblings, which would have brought into question her semblance of a drow.

But being able to see even in the total absence of light did not reduce her enthusiasm for this new training, for Distanfae's examples quickly showed her that he could detect the approach of an adversary long before he could be seen, and know exactly where he was coming from, in spite of the strange way that sounds behaved in these limited environs.

She had been disbelieving of Distanfae at first. When a sound came that her ears told her was behind and above her, and he said that it was water dripping in a tunnel several hundred yards ahead, she had wondered what reason he had to mislead her. The way the sound's source changed as they moved forward convinced her otherwise, and the brief sight of ripples on the surface of water through a crack in a wall as they passed by had banished the last of her doubts.

His facility at identifying the sources and causes of the sounds they heard served to whet her appetite, but it was the sobering knowledge that until she learned this new skill she would not be able to trust her own ears lest they deceive her and cause her to fail this most important test that caused her to give Distanfae her full attention, less the slight awareness required to follow where Kliza led.

Distanfae informed Ranko when Kliza deliberately led them into one of the marked regions where danger lurked. He had not expected her to do this, since such creatures were usually left unmolested even by hunting parties. "She may have obtained information about an interloper in the area," he warned his champion.

In spite of this warning, the entire group was taken off-guard when the tunnel wall exploded outward, a massive claw on an armored forearm smashing Laermornan across the tunnel. Kliza whipped instantly into a series of backwards somersaults, putting herself behind her other brother, while the new weapon's wielder leapt forward. "An umber hulk," Distanfae cautioned Ranko mentally, "avoid its gaze." The beast was like a giant humanoid beetle to Ranko's eyes, heavily armored by a jointed exoskeleton apparently strong enough to smash through stone.

Kliza's troops held back and she showed no sign of concern over the probable demise of her two forward scouts, given their failure to warn the party. Her troops had been well briefed. They knew what they were there to see, what they had to do, the risks they ran, and the reward they might receive. They lacked only knowledge of Ranko and her skills.

Ranko had already surged forward. She leveled her sword at the beast that had emerged from the formerly solid wall and blasted it backward with a short-lived, high-pressure stream of water from her sword, courtesy of her elemental wand of water, preventing it from reaching Distanfae's brother with a second attack.

Having moved it out of the range of the others, she threw her sword to the side, a ray of black cold shining forth in the vision of the watching drow, as she sealed the rubble filled hole with a wall of ice. Her head cocked slightly to the side as she acknowledged Distanfae's advice. She leapt forward in a tight spin that whipped her around, giving her just a moment to look back past her creator and verify that nothing was coming up behind him, before she landed, facing the beast.

As the mild shock of landing coursed up her legs like a standing wave in still water, she let them fold beneath her, launching her into a forward roll that sent her smashing through the creature's legs, knocking it to the ground as she leapt back to her feet behind it, twirling in mid-air to face it. She saw the fresh marks on the wall beside it and realized that it had already recognized its peril and had been about to flee the conflict, though whether for good, or merely to seek another surprise attack, she could not tell.

It did not get the chance. With its face firmly planted in the stone floor, one firm sweep of the adamantine blade Ranko held sheared cleanly through armor and flesh alike, and the rounded head rolled forward. She stepped away as the oddly beetle-like body spasmed and then lay still. She cast her gaze back up the tunnel, seeing Laermornan only just beginning to struggle to his feet, two soldiers nervously offering aid that he had yet to accept, and Kliza sending a black gaze her way, while Distanfae looked both approving and slightly shocked. The rest of the soldiers had a sickly pale look about them that confused her. Surely they were not unfamiliar with battle? Would Kliza have trusted her life to untrained troops?

Only a few seconds had passed since the creature's surprise attack. Each of those watching had had a different perspective on what was happening, and therefore had distinctly different reactions. Distanfae knew that his chosen had never seen an umber hulk before, nor fought in this sort of an environment, nor made considerable use of magic before, so he was mostly in awe of her adaptability, that not only had she almost instinctively used a magical attack, she had even seen a strategic non-offensive use for the magic, and had not wasted a moment in figuring out an attack method that avoided the hulk's gaze attack.

Kliza was shocked at the skill the fighter had shown, and the sheer speed of the attack, though Ranko's speed had not been even close to what she had once been capable of. Even without making conscious use of her ki, she had been able to move faster than a human could see over short distances, and for short periods of time, but this body was slower than either of her old ones. Kliza, however, knew nothing of what speeds Ranko should have been able to attain, and was therefore suitably impressed by the speed she had seen. She was more interested, however, in the capabilities of the weapon itself. Water and ice were interesting enough, but either that sword was vorpal--magically keen-edged, that is, and capable of taking off even a magically armored limb with a good hit--or that female was unnaturally strong, given the near magical hardness of the umber hulk's armor. Since she did not look inordinately strong, Kliza assumed that either the weapon was vorpal or granted immense strength. Whichever it was, Kliza's desire for the weapon, and her corresponding dislike of Ranko and anger at Distanfae, had grown in proportion to the visibly increased worth of the weapon.

Laermornan was still smarting from the crushing blow he had been dealt--and from the blow the umber hulk had just dealt him, of course--when Distanfae had informed him that the sword granted no skill, and so this commoner had in fact defeated him. He did not believe it. To be certain, he, being a male drow in a matriarchal drow society, had no illusions about the relative abilities of males and females. No, his problem was in his belief in the inherent superiority of drow nobility over the common rabble. Seeing the girl strike off an umber hulk's head in a single swipe confirmed for him his opinion. The strength to do that had to have come from the sword, for she looked considerably less strong than Kliza. There was no question that the ice--he had not seen the blast of water that first knocked the umber hulk away from him, being at that point in considerable pain--had come from the sword. Logically then, her skill came likewise. Damn his brother, it should have been obvious that he was the appropriate wielder for the sword. Such a weapon did not belong in the hands of a commoner.

Matron Vitrue, watching from her throne room within their House, saw what Kliza saw and came to nearly the same conclusions. She did not waste time considering strength, it being obvious to her that the girl had not put any great force behind the blow. She made note of the ice-wall and the blast of water. Unlike Kliza and Laermornan, she had access to Distanfae's notes on the creation of his device, though he knew it not, and while much of the arcana was beyond her, for she was a priestess, not a wizard, she did understand clearly enough his obvious intentions to endow his creation with abilities taken from other items. So she took careful note of the nature of the abilities shown, and their behaviors and limits, that in time she might find what he had copied them from, and know their capabilities and inabilities in full.

---

Beneath the small troupe, who were once more traveling, having dealt with the corpse and the three umber hulks that had ambushed them again only a few hundred yards along, apparently part of the same group that the first had belonged to, a great xorn moved through the ground.

Ten feet tall and equally wide, the tri-symmetric creature nonetheless passed through the stone without so much as a ripple to mark its passage. Unlike the umber hulks, which carved through solid rock as fast as they could walk, digging side passages to established tunnels and waiting in ambush to obtain flesh to eat, the xorn was an outsider, a being from the elemental plane of earth that had sometime ago passed by accident through a portal and been stranded here on the relatively mineral poor material plane.

That was unfortunate for it, for xorns feed on metal and a variety of natural crystals, including gems, both of which are exactly the sorts of things that mortals spend so much effort extracting out of the bedrock of the material plane.

Trapped in the equivalent of a sparse landscape that had been but recently hunted out, hunger was the xorn's constant companion, though the increased proportion of magical metals in its diet had hastened its growth in spite of the relative lack of food. It would have taken little comfort in knowing that its flesh was harder than it had been, its teeth stronger, its three arms more powerful, its eyes farther-seeing, for constant hunger and loneliness are a heavy price to pay.

So it was in no mood to be charitable when after several days skirting the edges of the magically defended drow city, where it could sense much metal, but could not enter, it detected a great mass of mixed metals in the company of a few flesh-things. It had been nearly six days since the last similar meal had passed, a heavily guarded shipment of metal from a distant dwarven city that had fallen prey to its hunger, and it was by no means willing to pass up an equal meal even less well-guarded.

Neither the three drow nobles remaining, two of whom were sulking over Ranko's easy defeat of the three umber hulks that had attacked them shortly after her first victory, and the other, who was angry that the first two refused to concede the point proven and return, nor the eighteen remaining drow commoners--the two scouts having never shown up again--were in the least prepared when the pebbled green body of the unusually massive xorn burst upwards from beneath them, knocking many from their feet and into each other, as the nine-foot wide jaws swallowed Ranko whole.

All three nobles moved to attack as soon as they were able, Kliza directing her soldiers to do likewise, knowing the anger they would face on their return if they lost the weapon on what was supposed to be a mere trial venture, but the xorn had grown used to hit-and-run tactics from attacking dwarven and gnomish mining caravans, since both races were quite deadly in defense of their hard-won minerals, and had not even slowed its motion, passing directly into the ceiling and out of sight.

Ranko had barely a moment to even realize that something was happening before jaws had risen all about her and she found herself staring at stony flesh that pressed against her as the beast swallowed. Her first impulse was simply to pass through the shadows and out of the beast, but she suppressed it. Nothing should be able to hurt her, so she might as well take it out while it could not defend itself against her. Furthermore, she was protected, at the moment, from the watchful eyes of her creator's siblings.

A moment after her decision was made, she was dropped into a slightly less cramped area, which had liquid oozing from the walls. Ignoring it, she raised her left hand, about which the purple light of her inner power shone, flashing into a semi-solid crystalline shape surrounding it. The point of the crystal lengthened, giving the appearance of a blade not unlike that which she still held in her right hand. Though she had managed to make use of the few lessons Distanfae had yet given her on the use of the wands in her, she did not want to depend on that uncertain resource when by merely taking the extra moment needed to draw up her quicksilver energy, she could have an extremely flexible power ready to hand, one that meshed well with her life's experience with ki, especially since he had only had time so far to give her lessons on a few of the abilities of three of her wands. After all, she had no idea what she was now facing, much less whether the few abilities she currently knew how to access, namely fire, ice, and water, in their simplest manifestations, would be appropriate or effective.

Ignoring the muted rumble of the creature's responsive indigestion, she looked downward, where the amethyst light was drawing a glimmering response from below the pooling liquid's surface. A slow grin crossed her lips as she realized she was still using her quicksilver eyes, and so could see the emanations of magic. She sheathed her sword, then reaching down, she drew up the source of the light and frowned in disappointment. It was no magical item, but merely an unworked vein of metal glowing softly in the stone that surrounded it. Shrugging, she tugged at the magic, then stopped abruptly. The quicksilver faded from her eyes as she lapsed back to normal vision before giving a cry of delight.

Blue! The vein of metal or ore, or whatever it was, was blue even beneath the glow, which itself still persisted, mixing with the purple light emanating from her other hand to yield a purplish-azure illumination. It was not quite the stormy blue her eyes had been, but certainly a lot closer than the green or red or silver that were her only real options till now. Her hand flowed about the stone, then the stone dropped through the dark mass, an empty hole passing through it. Still grinning in delight, she reformed her hand and extinguished the amethyst blade, pulling out her real sword with a hand that had a blue glow shining from the palm. She had taken too long, she felt, to waste more time exploring, though she held no regrets considering what she had found. Still, best to get this over with before Distanfae became too worried, since either this creature's hide or something else was keeping him from speaking to her. Perhaps he simply didn't want to distract her. Either way, no reason to keep him waiting.

She thrust the sword deeply into the stony wall, smirking at the occasional sparks that lit up the dark. As she pulled the sword across, quicksilver flowed back over her eyes. She ignored the pained scream that sounded. "Whatever you are," she smirked, "You made a big mistake when you swallowed me." Drawing the blade out, she struck again, putting more power into her strokes.

She was not in the least expecting the consequences of her actions. The xorn had been passing through the stone as it sought to digest her, and when she finally damaged it enough to kill it, it came into full alignment with the plane, becoming embedded inside and out in the stone through which it had been moving. One moment she was stabbing and slicing, the next, held rigid, and seeing nothing.

This time she had no qualms about using the darkness to her advantage, and she gratefully allowed the shadows to swallow her. As soon as she was within the shadows, though, she realized that her clothing had not made the journey with her. Quickly she formed a long skein of cloth and rebound her breasts, then formed clothing as close to what she had had as she could manage to recall. Thankfully, the clothing she had chosen before had been black and silver and thus was easily within her abilities. Still within the shadows, she quickly mimicked several holes in her clothing, as if eaten at by acid, and thin spots on her boots, then returned to her companions. She fell into their midst, thankfully dry, the acidic digestive fluids having been absorbed by the dry stone just like her clothing. Though she managed to avoid hitting anyone, the suddenness of her appearance and the force of her impact with the stone beneath her caused a number of the drow to lose their balance, sending several of them falling into the others around them, or onto the floor.

Kliza rolled back to her feet and spun to face the upstart sword-bearer, infuriated at having been sent sprawling a second time. That the first had been no fault of Ranko's and the second technically caused by the soldier who had fallen onto her meant nothing to her. Matron Vitrue had informed her that she had seen enough, which meant it was time for the final test. She backed up through the ranks of her soldiers as they quickly reformed, and she threw her hand forward, even as Laermornan dragged a dazed Distanfae out of the way.

"Kill her," Kliza screamed.

Distanfae shook his head, hearing his sister's cry, and concentrated. "Ranko," he said through their link. "You must kill them. Hold back nothing. It is another test."

Ranko gave no acknowledgement. She merely blurred forward, a whirlwind of swiftly-dealt death. She showed no hesitation but she did evince mercy. Every blow she dealt was a killing blow, every soldier dropped after one hit, dead before they hit the ground, dead before they realized. Dead, before they had time to feel pain.

Kliza said nothing after the slaughter ended. Ranko held her silence as well, on Distanfae's orders. Finally Kliza spoke. "The Matron Mother is satisfied. She has commanded we return."

In truth, Vitrue's command had not been predicated on any aspect of the demonstration, but rather on the nature of the xorn's attack. Vitrue was not unfamiliar with xorns and knew well that they rarely attacked mortals except when very hungry. Moreover, she knew the reason: xorns cannot digest flesh, only metals and gems, and attack only when very hungry, and only to obtain whatever metals a party might have. To swallow the warrior whole implied that the conclusion she had earlier drawn about the girl was incorrect. The girl was not merely someone he had mind-burnt so that the sword could control her, with her as its puppet. No, that girl must have simply served as a model for the golem he had crafted, and so it was that golem which served as the weapon's puppet.

Once more she silently applauded her son's invention. Doubtless the soul of the warrior he had bound to the weapon--she, unlike her daughter, was well aware of the true nature of rune weapons, and would never have tried to simply force her will on it, as one must do with an ordinary intelligent weapon--had been female, as was only to be expected, and so he had crafted a body that would be pleasing to it. The sword had probably been displeased about having been separated from its body when it had been brought before her, which would explain its rather violent reaction to Kliza's ill-fated attempt to master it.

Yes, it made sense. A golem body made of metal--adamantite, she assumed--would be far less vulnerable to the sorts of attacks intelligent opponents would make when facing someone with an invulnerable weapon. Sleep, charm, poison, even mental attacks would likely fail against it, since they would be directed at the mindless golem and not the intelligent, souled sword. Yes, her son had indeed done well--but it was time to take control of this weapon for herself. He would soon learn that no amount of skill would suffice to keep it under his control now that she knew the truth.

An Advantageous Mission

Ranko spun on her heel as she looked about the room she had been given. No longer was she in Distanfae's quarters. She had proven herself and been brought to the attention of the clan Matron. Now she was a weaponmaster of the House Vitrue, though it was a provisional position, as Distanfae had explained it, dependent on her continued performance.

In the meantime she had been moved to quarters more befitting her status. Like Distanfae's quarters, her new rooms had, aside from the bedchamber, what appeared to be servant's quarters, currently empty, directly attached via an inner door, among several other rooms. They also had a few features that had not been present in Distanfae's rooms. Distanfae had ranted about the move at some length, for her new rooms were near the other high-ranking warriors and far from his chambers.

Furthermore, she was now under orders from Distanfae to accept orders from the Matron and those acting as her representatives. She had not really been prepared for the transitive nature of owing allegiance to one who himself owed allegiance to another. Now, in spite of her success, she could find herself taking orders from Kliza, a thought that sent a mental shiver of disgust through her.

Still, her rooms were an improvement. Instead of the simple servant's room she had had in Distanfae's chambers, she now possessed a suite of rooms that included her delight, a private practice chamber, apparently a feature of most of the rooms given to the higher warriors.

She also had a private bath, though she was willing to bet that the running water was somehow powered by magic. Stone walls and floors did not seem conducive to running pipes, though of course she had no practical experience there to draw on. Perhaps they were merely run by magic?

Distanfae had allowed her to pack all of the clothing he had prepared for her, and it hung now in a large walk-in closet that included a full-length mirror. There was another large mirror in the bedroom above the large dresser that contained various undergarments and nightclothes. Ranko smirked at the recognition that any girl would probably be delighted with the facilities she had, but the girls she had known would probably expect her to be disgusted with the mirrors and the clothes.

In point of fact, she felt the mirrors would be very useful. After all, they would help her maintain the illusion of her appearance, and not ruin it by accidentally letting her new blue surface on her face, or her teeth be jade green.

She sat in front of the mirror now, and let the blue substance flow into her eyes, replacing the usual jade. Her eyes were momentarily blinded by the sudden light. When they adjusted, she realized that the substance was still glowing. She cursed softly, realizing that blue though it was, it would not serve well for her eye-color. She snickered, picturing herself clothed entirely in a black ninja-suit, sneaking down a corridor while the guards stared at the moving beams of blue light that blinked in and out of visibility.

Smirking, she drew it out of her eyes, replacing it with quicksilver as hues of energy slid smoothly into life around her. She brought the blue out through her palm, forming it into a ball until she held all of it in her hand, lighting the room with a soft blue glow. As she had half-expected, there was an indeed an additional luminescence about the sphere, indicating that it was in some sense magical.

When she submerged her senses into it, exploring it from within as she had done with her quicksilver, she found to her surprise that it was entirely lacking the skeins of magic she was used to. There were no tight weaves that might represent triggers, nor even any threads. Instead, it was purely and simply suffused with magic, glowing with contained power.

"Wow," she muttered. "How much magic do you gotta have to just glow like that? Or is it because you're see-through?"

She played with the sphere as if molding playdough, squeezing it in her hand until it ran out through her fingers, pulling it like taffy, and rolling it back into a ball, getting a feel for how it reshaped, much as she had earlier done with the other substances that formed her. She found this confirmed, at least to her mind, her initial recognition of the blue as a metal. It did not try to constrain itself to hard planes, as the various gemstones she contained did.

Having recognized the essential metallic nature of the blue substance, she proceeded to put it through one of the general patterns she had learned to use on metals, drawing it out very finely and then weaving it as thread. Woven into a cloth as fine as her cloak of shadow, it still shone with its own light, casting odd shadows on the walls about it, shadows that writhed as if alive as she rumpled the cloth up and then smoothed it out again, thinking about where and when it would make sense to wear a glowing cloth.

Remembering the green light she had obtained from the enspelled diamond she had absorbed, she formed a thin sheet of jade and held it over the cloth. To her surprise, it blocked the light completely, looking black in the solely blue light and casting deep shadows as she lowered it over the cloth. Reabsorbing it, she considered the cloth. Mixing it with threads of adamantite darkened the color of the cloth considerably, but had no apparent effect on the light coming from it.

Taking the cloth in her hands, she pulled on it, feeling the lack of give. Oh, it moved smoothly enough, but it did not stretch. Was that normal? She drew forth a skein of her cloak and stretched it between her hands, watching as the fibers thinned and the gaps between them grew, and then loosened her grip and felt it flow between her fingers as the threads returned to their relaxed configuration. She had not particularly noticed the difference before, but now she considered it. Was there any advantage to be had there?

She drew forth the blue strands out of the cloth and reabsorbed them, her interest caught now by the potential of the elasticity she had just observed. Thinking back to her sparring sessions with Distanfae, she remembered the crossbow leaning against the wall. She absorbed the wayward threads of adamantite, then formed a simple slingshot, two upward pointing forks and a handle beneath. Her shadow cloak flowed up to form a cord bonded to the upper part of each fork.

She hooked her finger in the cord and drew it back, stretching it further and further, half-expecting it to break, not sure whether that would count as damage to her or not. It held, though, and snapped back lazily when she released it. She frowned and began adjusting the pattern of the threads in the cord until she found a style that seemed to maximize the snap back when she released.

Looking about for something to cast with it, she frowned in irritation. There were no small stones or similar loose objects in the room that she could use. She drew the diamond forth into her palm and looked at it, but shook her head. It was part of her now and she had yet to find a way to undo that. She was not even certain that she could, since that might constitute harm and thus be prevented by her very indestructability.

The diamond vanished into her hand as she stood and strode to the stone wall. Her eyes flashed as she verified the absence of magic, then she held up her hand to the wall. Quicksilver flowed forth from her palm, settling smoothly against the wall. With a wry grin, she reshaped the quicksilver into the kanji for 'wild'. It sank into the wall, absorbing the stone, then she withdrew it, leaving part of her name, engraved as if by a master, smooth with sharp edges and a face so flat it gleamed when she shone the diamond's light on it to examine her handiwork.

"Hmph, I guess Dist was right, I could make a living doing that."

Turning her attention back to the stone she had absorbed, she reshaped it then released it onto her palm as a half-dozen perfect spheres. They too gleamed with a perfect finish in the light of the diamond she had not yet shut off.

Shifting one between her first finger and thumb, she closed the rest of her fingers against the palm and slid the sphere against the cord of her makeshift slingshot and drew it back hard.

Aiming at the wooden door, she let fly and grinned when the stone thunked into the door. Stepping up to examine it, she found the stone deeply embedded, though it had not managed to make it all the way through the thick door. Quicksilver flowed into the gap, drawing the stone out and smoothing over the hole in the wood.

Pausing, she ran her hand across the wood, feeling the slightly rough texture of it. "That's something I don't have," she thought to herself. "I've got no wood. I wonder if I should try to get some?"

The wood vibrated beneath her fingers suddenly and she jerked back, confused, until the knock was repeated. Recognizing the sound now, she pulled the door open and admitted Distanfae, closing the door behind him.

He turned to her. "Well," he queried, "how is it?"

She glanced around her, then nodded. "It's fine," she answered, stepping over to set the stone spheres down on the tabletop.

"Good," he said, nodding sharply, and ignoring the soft clatter of the stones. "Do you think you'll be able to find your way back here?"

Ranko nodded. "I'm familiar enough with it, I'll be able to get here through the shadows with no problem. It will probably take me a bit longer to get used to the halls, though," she admitted, shrugging her shoulders.

"You'll learn the paths," Distanfae agreed, waving off that concern. "Have you felt any scrying spells while you've been here?"

"No, nothing."

"That's good. Remember to watch for them. It is vital that you not be seen shifting nor absorbing magic or magical items. Now, Kliza is on her way here to test you again. I can't be there to coach you and I think Matron Vitrue must have some idea that I can communicate to you mentally, because Laermornan rather snidely hinted that they would be testing you in a shielded chamber. This is very important! You must be seen to have skill with a blade. I'm rather worried that they may require you to set aside the katana and fight with a different blade, since Laer is still convinced that the blade is granting you the skill, so, just in case..."

As he unbuckled and handed her a scimitar, telling her to reshape it into a match for her katana form, they both heard booted footsteps in the hall.

"Quickly now, send me through the shadows back to my room!"

---

Ranko opened the door before it could be pounded on a second time.

"Come," Kliza ordered. Ranko followed without comment, noting as she did the contingent of guards and smirking to herself. Apparently Kliza was not all that confident of her superiority.

Ranko tried to keep a careful eye on their turns, watching for anything that she could use as a reference point. The sooner she could navigate these halls on her own, the better off she would be. Unfortunately, she was hampered by the need to work on the blade. She had barely managed to get the sheath and rough structure complete before Kliza reached the door and there was considerable detail left to finish.

Finally, bare minutes after Ranko finally finished the last of the details on the blade, Kliza led her into a room not terribly dissimilar to the one she had trained in with Distanfae. The critical differences were the higher ceiling and the presence of a variety of weapons hung on the walls. The high ceiling arched over and beyond the walls, which ended before they reached that height. Above the walls rows of stone benches rose outward. On one side the benches were interrupted by a more elaborate assembly of cushioned seating where Matron Vitrue awaited them.

The group of guards that had accompanied them now spread out around the perimeter of the room as Kliza and Ranko walked to stand before the Matron.

Kliza turned and smirked at Ranko. "Good luck," she hissed, "you'll need it." She stepped up to the wall and rose smoothly into the air, stepping forward as she reached the top of the wall. She turned and sat in a seat at her mother's right hand, her mouth set in a derisive sneer.

A door opposite the one they had entered through opened, admitting a slender male drow, dressed in what Ranko took to be fighting leathers. Though there were swords on the walls in profusion, he bore a sword already.

Somewhat to Ranko's surprise, and contrary to what Distanfae had led her to expect, though Laermornan, stepping forward to referee the bout, did speak of her sword skills, he did not ask her to cast aside her blade. That left Ranko wondering whether or not they did understand, and whether she should take advantage of their apparent lack of awareness to allow the blade she held to be knocked from her grasp, cementing the lack of connection between them, or if that would merely raise greater doubts about her ability.

Deciding against allowing herself to be disarmed, Ranko insinuated tendrils of quicksilver into and through the sword hilt as she drew the blade, then, while the blade was still in motion, slid a thin skein of her surface over the blade itself, to ensure that it could not be broken.

She stepped forward to face the leather-clad swordsman, who met her gaze with wary eyes as he drew his own blade. She was grateful that by Laermornan's words this was not a death-duel, but it was solely an intellectual gratitude. Any emotional uneasiness she might once have felt at the earlier possibility of a match to the death had simply not been present, something she guessed and hoped was due to Distanfae and not simply to a hardening of her own heart.

The drow sprang at her abruptly and as she parried his blow, she admired his skill. There had been remarkably little indication of his intent in his stance and in his red eyes.

Though her father had had little respect for weapons-users, he had not been lax in her instruction even there, and while she might not have been among the top in the world in skill with a blade, she was far from a poor swordswoman. The drow was indeed skilled himself, but it was apparent that he was used to moving faster than he was, and she suspected some form of magical speed boost that he had been denied in this bout.

As a result, not only was he not so used to fighting at his natural speed, he was also slower than she had expected a skilled swordsman to be. He obviously did not make use of ki to boost his speed, and even with the loss of speed she had suffered, she was still sufficiently faster than him to balance out any additional skill he had.

More to the point, perhaps, was her considerable, and clearly at least to him, unexpected strength advantage. Even her blocks were visibly jarring him, and her parries regularly knocked him off-balance. She marked each such loss of control by darting her blade in to nick his flesh, scoring tiny wounds as if marking up a tally. She could have knocked his blade out of his hands entirely but she did not want to antagonize the Matron by prematurely ending her entertainment, lest the Matron insist she finish him in spite of it being a non-death match.

She deliberately held back on the flashy moves of the Anything Goes style, sticking to the ground instead of taking to the air. Distanfae had said they would be interested in a demonstration of skill with a sword, and she needed to convince the matron that she was the right one to wield the blade that Distanfae was claiming to have created, not to prove that she could be perfectly lethal without one.

As opportunities arose, Ranko risked glances at the watching nobles. The Matron's visage seemed carven from stone, so little did it change, but Kliza's face was progressively darkening, while Laermornan just looked ill.

Finally, Kliza could take no more and rose to her feet. "Let's see how well you handle a group, then," she snarled, and shouted at the guards. They rushed forward, joining the swordsman's assault on Ranko.

Ranko changed tactics. Sweeping the swordsman's blade wide, she spun to catch the dropping blade of one of the guards with an unrestrained parry, shattering the sword. She dropped slightly and came in under the next sword as she continued her spin, and rising, caught him with the back of her hand and the hilt of her sword in the chest, throwing him backward into his compatriots.

With deliberate moves she began to disarm the rest of her opponents, never needing more than a single blow, with the power she had behind them, to remove the fighter, or the weapon, as chance and opportunity dictated. The swordsman she merely parried, until she had relieved all the guards of their weapons. The one guard who was foolish enough to scramble across the floor and take up a fallen sword had it shattered in his hands. The other guards left their swords where they lay. There was obviously no point in wasting good steel.

When she finally disarmed the swordsman, it was with confidence that she had controlled the tone of the entire affair and definitively proven her skills with a blade. She was surprised and disgruntled therefore, when she was casually dismissed by Kliza, in a manner that made it clear she was supremely unimpressed. She mastered her reaction before it was visible, however, knowing that Distanfae would be rightly irritated with her if she allowed Kliza to gain satisfaction from her response. He seemed to like his sister almost as little as Ranko did.

She was grateful that the swordsman and the other soldiers exited through the far door, rather than the one she came through, and was now leaving through, for she could feel their eyes on her until she was out of their sight, and she did not care to have another altercation away from watchful eyes. If Distanfae were to be believed, and she had no reason to doubt him, an altercation in an empty hallway might yet be observed magically by those in distant parts of the house.

More to the point, perhaps, were his comments about the Matron potentially reading his mind. If she could read his, she could surely read that of a common soldier, which meant that Ranko would have to avoid behaving suspiciously when anyone at all was present, even if she could feel certain that there was no scrying going on.

Her earlier focus on reshaping the sword Distanfae had given her into a proper replica of her own sword form had unfortunately, and in spite of her best efforts, taken too much of her concentration away from noting the passages that they took as Kliza guided her, and so she soon found herself lost.

Attuning herself to the sensations that had earlier indicated that someone was scrying on her, she examined her surroundings until she felt sure that she was not being observed from afar, then, once no one was in sight of her, she slipped through the shadows back to her room.

She was unsettled to find that Distanfae was not waiting there for her. She had expected, given his apparent concern about it, that he would want to know the full details of what had happened immediately. She pondered what he might doing that was more important, then finally dismissed that concern. There was little to nothing that she could do about it at any rate. Ranko turned her attention back to what she had been doing before Kliza's untimely interruption.

Sitting down at her desk, she picked up one of the spheres. She squeezed it lightly. Even though she had earlier absorbed it into her quicksilver, it did not flow as her own substance did. She could reshape it with her quicksilver, but not otherwise. She pressed steadily harder. With a loud crack, the stone gave way, shattering and sending shards flying amidst a small cloud of fine dust.

Ranko smirked at the destroyed stone, pleased that she had clearly not lost all of her strength, weakened though she had been by the loss of her ki. Thoughts of her ki reminded her of the other unique attribute of her quicksilver: the purple energy that she had found so easy to manipulate.

Picking up another sphere, she again held it between two fingers, applying pressure. This time, however, she deliberately grasped it off-center, and as her fingers closed with greater force, they pressed at an angle until the strain was too great and friction lost the battle. Her fingers snapped together and the sphere shot across the room.

It rebounded but a short distance off the wall, but Ranko did not seem disappointed. She had not expected great things from that attempt. It was merely a gauge, that she might measure the effectiveness of her next try. Holding another sphere, she drew up the purple energy and focused it in her fingers, marshaling her intent as she willed it to manifest as kinetic energy.

This time, the sphere shot off from her fingers with an audible crack, and smashed itself to splinters against the wall, leaving a starburst of white, chalky residue.

"One last try," Ranko murmured, her eyes alight with happiness. If she could pull this next trick off, she would have stepped well beyond what she could previously accomplish with her ki. This time she drew the amethyst glow into her fingers as before, and also drew power from one of her wands, forcing it into the stone itself, filling its center with glowing power. It was tricky, since she was striving to impose two entirely different intents on the two segments of power.

Her effort was vindicated as the sphere impacted sharply against the wall. It was destroyed, much as the first, but whatever pattern it might have left was entirely obscured by the circular sheet of ice that now clung to the wall, centered at the point of impact.

---

Ranko rose in utter silence from the shadows. Glancing back, she grinned at the impenetrable fence she had just bypassed. It had been wound about with spells designed to prevent exactly what she had just done, cloaks of shadow being far from unheard of. That had not stopped her. The ability to directly see the weave of magic about the fence and her own skill at manipulating energy had guided her to a magical variation of the Umisenken techniques of her father. It was not the Umisenken, per se. That was a ki technique. But it was built on similar principles, using the magical energy she possessed to conceal herself from that same energy acting elsewhere.

Though she kept to the shadows as she crossed the open yard, she did not use the cloak to draw them about herself. Darkness being ever-present here, it posed little barrier to most eyes. No, here it was the absence of the illusion that gave her a normal seeming heat signature that would most strongly ward her against watchful eyes, so long as she remained out of the light. Not that there was much light to speak of, only the faint glimmers offered by the decorative faerie fire that adorned much of the structure.

She was grateful that this was an acquisition mission for Distanfae, and not a mission for his mother. She shuddered, remembering the poor drow's screams as fire consumed her in her bed. Too long she had paused while contemplating the murder she had been ordered to perform. She had known that Distanfae could activate her abilities while holding her. She had not expected that he could do so from a distance, nor that the Matron would have become aware of it and would order him to do so. The streams of fire that had burst suddenly from her hands had been most unexpected and she had barely escaped unseen.

Though she now lacked the wholesale prohibition against killing that she vaguely remembered from before her death, to kill a sleeping person in cold blood was still harder to contemplate, much less perform, than the slaying of those trying to kill her. The matron's actions had made it clear, however, that if she failed to deal out a swift and merciful death, then her targets would die slowly, in great pain. She had since become swift to kill, though both Distanfae and she herself were disgusted at the Matron's seeming perception of her as an assassin, albeit for different reasons. Her disgust came from her upbringing as a martial artist, trained to protect the innocent, while Distanfae was simply infuriated by the silent and inglorious nature of the actions. He wanted recognition for his genius and anonymous executions offered nothing of value to him.

Slinking across the grass to the wall, she rested her back against the cut stone and, hidden by her back, extruded quicksilver to absorb a thin layer of it to cover her surface in a miniscule skein of like-colored stone. To get the stone spread across her surface, she discovered, it had to remain in contact with her quicksilver, which ended up spread around her body just beneath the stone.

The carvings on the outer wall gave her handholds enough for the first part of her climb, though she was grateful they were not limned in eldritch flame as was most of the larger statuary, but she soon found herself lacking a clear upward path, as the carvings gave way to smooth wall.

She tried to rise further by finding imperfections in the wall's surface, but after wasting two minutes trying to secure a handhold, she gave up on the idea. The wall was simply too smooth. So instead she drew her quicksilver to the surface, careful to bring it up only on the inner palm of her hand, lest watching eyes learn her secrets. Distanfae had warned her that though she might expect to get past one house's secrets, every house was watched by its neighbors, be they enemy or ally, and that she would eventually be seen was almost inevitable. It mattered little so long as she was not captured, and bore nothing that could from a distance identify her as a member of House Vitrue.

Placing her hand firmly against the wall, she extruded the quicksilver from her palm into the wall, then reshaped it into an angled depression with a slight outward lip. The quicksilver drew back in as her hand slipped downward into the handhold left behind.

Tightening her grip, she drew herself up then lifted her other hand and repeated the process. In this way she reached the upper walkway in short order. Her flight ring could have done the same, as indeed could the levitation ability of any elf noble, but she was far more likely to be seen when silhouetted against the lights or warmth of some distant house then pressed against a stone wall, colored almost identically to it, and bearing a heat signature that blended in perfectly with the ambient heat. She would also have risked making an audible contact with the wall due to her relative lack of experience with the ring's magic. That raised the specter of alerting someone inside the building, leaving her unaware and giving her opponents the opportunity to prepare an ambush.

She might have been able to jump that height when she was human, but this was neither the time nor the place to test unassisted jumping, considering the consequences of a failure, given her probable weight and mass. Too successful a jump might send her smashing right through the walkway, while a failed leap would end with a mighty crash, whether into the ground, or the wall of the tower.

The walkway was not the same color stone as the wall, so she pressed against the edge and shifted the stone she had collected back to the wall. It was slightly less than it had been, a bit of it having been digested during the climb by her quicksilver, but it had served its purpose.

The long balcony was of a black stone, so Ranko did not need to bother absorbing it, instead merely bringing adamantite to the surface and drawing all her other substances beneath it as she slid up to hang from the bottom of it. The rather elaborate balustrade actually extended a bit below the bottom of the walkway, providing ample hand and footholds as she began to work her way along it, clinging to the underside of the walkway like a great black spider.

"I need to find and absorb one of those spider-cloaks Distanfae mentioned," Ranko thought to herself, with a tinge of amusement. Its list of abilities had rather put her in mind of the infamous ninja of her homeland, and in particular, the two she had known personally, Konatsu and Sasuke. Now she was acting as if she were one of them, a far cry from what she had expected when Distanfae had taken her on. She had pictured something more of a bodyguard or honor champion, not an assassin.

Of course, this task was a thieving run, not even so noble a task as eliminating her lord's enemies, a task she had not yet been given. She did account it more honorable than the killings she had performed for his mother. This assignment was more akin to the sneaky tricks she had played when first learning the Umisenken, before she had faced Ryu with them. Reaching the end of the walkway, she swung around the bottom edge to cling to one side of the balustrade, and peered along the walkway. Seeing no-one about, she lifted herself quickly up and over and darted into the doorway.

Her eyes flashed in the darkness as quicksilver flooded them, showing her the weaves of magic in the corridor. As Distanfae had indicated, one of the doors in the otherwise empty hallway was far more strongly protected than the rest. "Gotcha," she crowed mentally, as she approached the heavily warded door.

She stopped several feet from the door, examining the tight web of protective spells. Unfortunately, her general inexperience with magic made most of the spells impossible to identify. By analogy to her wands she was able to identify a portion of one of the spells that was connected in some fashion to fire, but little else.

Her inability to identify the magics did not prevent her from studying them closely, however. She would probably be triggering several of them, and having examined the weaves before they were triggered might help her to recognize them in the future.

Satisfied that she had observed them as closely as she could, she approached the door slowly, waiting for any sign that she had triggered the protective mechanisms. She hoped to enter the room without setting the traps off, though she knew it was unlikely. As soon as anything did react, she would have to bull forward with full force, trusting to her invulnerability to protect her. She knew that if the worst happened, she would need to snatch her target as quickly as possible, in case a portion of the spells were transportive magics that would send her to some other location.

Finally deciding that she was as ready as she was likely to get, she moved away from the door to the wall it was set in. The walls were of course warded as well, but not as completely. Distanfae had suggested that the door would likely be sealed against all forms of entry, no matter if she slid beneath it without touching, or slid through the shadows, etc. Drow sorcerors knew spells to take on misty forms, or to pass through solid walls in the form of a ghost, or to take the shape of a small insect.

Distanfae had made it very clear that the only offensive ability she had that she could be reasonably confident that a drow wizard would not have, nor be likely to have specific defenses against, was her quicksilver; both its reshaping, and the energy it held. Even those came from beings that existed in this world, so it was possible for other wizard to have access to them, though that was far less likely than the probability of their having defenses against the wands and rings she bore, which were well-known creations.

Kneeling before the wall, she rested her palm on the floor and quicksilver flooded forth, reshaping the flooring, creating a thin, buried channel and a tiny opening. She spread out the minor amount of substance removed into a wide but very thin rise in the floor level, blending it smoothly at the edges. The likelihood of anyone noticing was, in her opinion, very small.

Shifting the connection to the pool of quicksilver from her hand to her foot, she stood and stepped away from the wall and stood facing the door. A thin skein of adamantite trailed almost unnoticeably across from the floor to link her and to conceal the hole beneath which her quicksilver continued to operate. She braced herself, as she prepared to slide under the wall. The slightest reaction from any of the wards and spells, and she would have to charge forward, shatter the door, and do what she came to do while at the same time reeling back in the tendrils of her extended substance.

Tentatively, carefully, she slid a miniscule tendril of quicksilver beneath the wall. Instantly she knew that her gambit had failed, as the wards swirled and stabbed at her substance. She cursed softly even as she passed instantaneously from stillness into furious motion.

The wards raged as her foot impacted the door. Her foot was swirling with amethyst vapors as she poured her energy into it, shattering the stone of the door and detonating a massive explosion. She passed through the smoke and flame without harm, and was not so much as slowed by a blast of lightning that shot from the far wall and lanced through her, grounding to the castle walls through her metallic surfaces.

Her eyes swept the room, casting purple shadows around the room as she channeled power into them to enable her to identify the magical items within. A strange, sickly orange mist rose in thin tendrils from a shattered alchemical apparatus to her right; a long sliver of stone from the door lying on the polished stone table just beyond, amidst a pile of scattered scrolls, gave evidence to the cause of the destruction.

Drawn inexorably to her left by a glimmering that teased her peripheral vision, she was shifting her momentum in that direction even as she frantically drew in the far-flung strands of her substance.

There! Beams of shining gold trickled from a drawer in the stone desk, but failed to illuminate the drifting smoke. A flaring mote of flame slashed through the air behind her as her foot dug into the flagstones, driving her toward the desk. The far wall rumbled as the mote expanded suddenly, filling the room with flame. She ignored it, having reached the desk, and drove her hand through the stone to grasp at what lay beyond it.

Even as her slender fingers closed about a pair of small, hard objects, she felt the tightening of a web that had been strengthening ever since she first breached the wards. The first defense, it was more appropriately timed for the speed of a cautious thief, to silently disable before entrance could be obtained, while the flashier and more immediately deadly attacks had been triggered by her forced entrance.

It constricted her movements for only the barest instant but even as it passed she was swept up by vertigo as the world changed around her.

Turning in a slow circle, Ranko cursed quietly as she gazed at her new surroundings. "I sure as hell hope I grabbed the right things," she muttered, looking down at her hand, still clasped tightly about the unknown magical items.

---

Thick black mists hugged the ground, becoming visibly impenetrable after only a few yards. All around the stones were tortured, shattered and melted, blackened. The only growing things she could see were clumps of pale mushrooms that shifted and swayed as in an unseen wind. The air was still and heavy and occasionally an agonized scream could be heard in the distance, though whether from human or bestial throat she could not tell.

The mists glowed red momentarily, as a forceful hiss sounded nearby. A brighter point of red light pierced the mists and landed nearby, an incandescent stone ejected from the tortured ground not far away.

Ranko examined the two items she held. One was a clear gemstone, though without a stronger light source it was impossible to be certain of its clarity and lack of occlusions. The other was an intricately devised amulet, made of precious metals--she recognized platinum, gold, and mithril--and set with tiny gems of several different colors and cuts.

A broad grin lit her face as she sat on the rough ground, focused on the amulet. It fit the description she had been given, and if Distanfae had been right about it, it would be able to bring her home no matter where that spell had sent her.

If it was what they thought it was, then it was both extremely rare and highly valuable. The only reason it had been at all accessible, and not even more securely guarded than the greatest treasures of their own house was the experiments being performed using it, by a rival of Distanfae.

She was, it seemed, not his only spy, and his other spies had been observing this rival wizard's recent purchases. They had pointed at outer-planar experimentation, something normally reserved to the priestesses of Lolth. Distanfae had considered it something of a gamble; he had seen it as equally likely that this wizard was either performing illicit attempts at demon-summoning and binding, or that he was legitimately performing tests or research with the priceless artifact known to be in the possession of his house.

Realizing that she would have to absorb the amulet and probe it before she could get out of this place, Ranko decided to attempt to ensure that she was not disturbed, and so melted into the form of a pool of liquid, sloshing about until she had managed to construct a believable approximation of a true liquid's habit of seeking the lowest accessible path.

Wasting little time, Ranko absorbed the amulet, sucking the gemstone into an internal cavity to hold until she finished with the amulet. Distanfae had supplied her with several small magical items, whose energy she had drained to prepare her for this absorption, but if it took too much, she would drain the magic from the gem to complete matters.

She would prefer not to, since she had not had a chance to identify the clear gemstone yet. The items Distanfae fed her energy with were all of little relative value, but the stone's worth was not yet known.

Mere moments after she had begun the process of assimilating the amulet, she felt a presence approach. She felt a series of taps on her surface, and from the lack of a mental connection, she surmised that they were from a tool or weapon.

Without her concentration, her liquid appearance was belied by her behavior. Her surface offered no give, as if she were a flow of lava that had cooled slowly, hardening into an unforgiving approximation of its former liquid state.

Though she paid little attention to it at first, when the presence moved away again, she diverted a portion of her concentration, with difficulty, into deepening her subsurface anchor, sending out tendrils of substance both wide and deep to ensure that any attempts to pry her up wholesale during her enforced distraction would fail.

She felt no desire to end up in yet another wizard's laboratory, being experimented on.

Ranko smirked as she finished absorbing the amulet. She had not been forced to drink the magic of the gemstone. Ignoring, for the moment, the weaves of magic she could now feel within the amulet, she began absorbing the gemstone. The amulet's purpose she was already basically aware of, so all she had left with it was to identify the various weaves and match them up to the powers it was supposed to hold.

The stone, on the other hand, was an unknown, tickling her curiousity. With the amulet safely absorbed, she had her escape route ready. She could take her a bit of time to explore the stone.

She brushed off the momentary distraction of a pair of presences returning, ignoring them even as they pried and prodded at her and the ground with metal implements of some sort.

Much to her surprise, the stone was proving a greater challenge than the amulet, teasing her with hints of its great power. Unfortunately, it was also taking more magic than she had expected.

"I need to have enough magic when I'm done to power this amulet," she mused.

The next time one of the implements touched her surface, she allowed it to enter then quickly sampled it. To her delight, it was magical, and she managed to consume nearly half the magic she felt in it before it was jerked forcefully from her grasp. She ignored the reactions of whoever or whatever had been wielding the object, focusing instead on pouring the stolen energy into finishing her absorption of the gemstone.

Her attention was recaptured when a blast of magic impacted her accessible surface.

"Just give up already," she growled, drawing in a bit of the residual energies from the blast. "Hmm, fire magic," she mused, sampling the energy.

An even more massive blast shattered the ground around her, and she cursed even as she took her deepest elements and drove them still further into the ground, improving her anchorage as another blast destroyed more of the rocks she had been nestled among.

"Haven't you idiots got anything better to do?"

Finally she finished absorbing the stone, and immediately she delved into it. There was only one major weave in the stone, with the smaller bits that she had learned to identify as triggers to start and stop the larger effect. She fed a trickle of her quicksilver energy into the weave, and activated one of the triggers. When she perceived no result, she tried the other trigger. This time the larger weave drew in magic, but she still did not detect any overt effect.

"Damn. I guess I'll have to wait for Distanfae to figure it out. I'd better get back, then."

Giving up on the stone for the time being, she focused her consciousness within the amulet, examining the myriad weaves within it. Here she was greatly aided by Distanfae's preparedness. Knowing the danger, given the focus of his rival's experimentation, that anyone violating his protections might be evicted from the dimension, Distanfae had given her a scroll to examine.

It was inscribed with a spell that would open a passage back along the most recent path that had been opened. It was an iffy proposition at best, since he could not guarantee that the amulet would have this same spell, nor could he let her take the scroll, as it would be missed, but it at least gave her a strong chance of recognizing the type of spell she needed, or even, if worst came to worst, of attempting to accomplish the spell effect herself by twisting her quicksilver energies, which Distanfae claimed were a variant of something he called spellfire, into a duplicate of the weave in the scroll.

As it was, she was in luck, for the amulet held a weave that matched what she had memorized from the scroll very closely indeed. Now all she had to do was get rid of these annoyances. She really did not want to be responsible for bringing demons back with her, and she rather expected that she had been dumped on one of the Abyssal planes, indicating that the beings accosting her were probably demons of some variety. Dumping them unhindered by spell contracts and summoning constraints into the drow city might reflect rather badly on Distanfae, and the future of her quest was dependent on his goodwill.

She had been quite perturbed when she discovered the extent to which deception and intrigue seemed to form the very fabric of daily life in the drow city, and so she no longer put great faith in Distanfae's word. He would aid her, of that she had little doubt, but he might turn on his word, if pushed far enough.

Now, she was torn as to how best to deal with the things attacking her. So far they posed little threat, but if she used enough power to defeat or destroy them, who could know what worse creatures she might attract. For that matter, there was no telling if these beings themselves did not have the power to harm her, and simply had not hit upon the right technique yet.

Why were they so interested, anyway? Could they detect her magic? Or perhaps she had some residue of another plane, so registered as out of place? Could it be as simple as seeing her as a vein of ore?

"Should I act like I'm softening and then melting under this barrage of fire spells? Or will that just encourage them further?"

Ranko was sure that were she still human, her head would have been aching. "I'm meant for fighting, not thinking," she groused, trying to decide.

Making up her mind, she surreptitiously formed an eye, hidden behind a shield of green stone, and shifted it about until she could see them. They looked almost black through the green filter. One of them was small, a winged demon with a pointed tail and small horns, it carried a short stave with a blade on the end.

The other was massive, and clearly the source of the fire magic. She could not reliably judge height at the moment, but it was easily five or six times the size of the smaller demon, and equally demonic in appearance. She did find it curious that both, like the images Distanfae had shown her, resembled the Western conception of demons more than the demons she was familiar with. In spite of the horns and the bat-like wings, the hair-less skin stretched tight over thick corded muscles gave the larger demon the appearance of being a caricature of a Western bodybuilder, of the sort that cared only about the appearance of great strength, and nothing about what it was meant for.

The larger demon cast another fireball at her. The ball of flame spat out from a long, curved, and wickedly barbed sword that was itself wreathed in flames.

Neither was using its wings, though the little one was hopping about a fair bit. The larger demon seemed to have basically settled into a pattern, destroying the rocks and ground that Ranko had infiltrated.

Having decided to take them out as unnoticeably as possible, and there being no reasonable way she could see of taking her drow form without thereby giving them a way to escape, she settled for infiltrating the ground beneath them. She extruded a thin tendril of substance, a dark black, with a rough surface to break up the shine, up and around the big demon's ankle. She drew it tight very slowly, stopping before he would be able to feel it through the boots he wore.

Then she lay snares for the swifter, smaller demon, loops of black on the ground. When he settled to the ground for a moment, she lashed out, pushing hard to get herself wrapped around his foot before he could take off again.

As soon as she heard its squawk of surprise, she tightened the snare around the larger demon's foot, then quickly she looped her way upward, binding them both in unbreakable strands, ignoring the screech of metal on metal as the big demon roared and hacked at her surface with his flaming sword.

She lashed out, twirling around his hand, forced to bring her own consciousness into it, moving as if she were the strands themselves to keep the focus she needed to maintain her speed. When she stopped consciously moving and reshaping those strands, he was held fast, his sword arm bound immovably to his leg, in spite of the improbably small thread strung between them.

A loop around the head and jaw, tightening each time their jaw moved, in mimicry, though she knew it not, of the way a python constricts its prey, served to cut off their cries and guard against the arrival of reinforcements.

She thought she had them, and was trying to decide what to do with them, whether to slay them, or bring them back alive for Distanfae's study, or knock them out somehow and leave them here, when the larger demon vanished from her grasp, leaving behind a strange free-standing sculpture of thin lines mapping out the shape of one leg and arm, and one wire for the head.

Cursing, her options swiftly dwindling, she began drawing her substance back into herself, taking her drow shape as swiftly as she could. She released the little one as she took shape behind it, reaching out with hands now, grasping its neck and snapping it cleanly. She cast it aside even as fire took it, surging down from the sky where the larger demon had vanished to. She spun, staring upwards until she spied it. She activated the spell as the last threads of her substance whirled back into her womanly form.

She dived through the portal that appeared, coming out of a roll in the very room she had so recently left. The room itself was empty but the air of magic hung heavy about it, and outside was a buzz of noise and activity. She began sucking the magic in, trying to replenish herself and close the doorway at the same time. She was too slow.

The large demon barreled through the doorway, slamming into her. She stopped it cold, its mass no match for her own, though it did force her to step back to keep her balance.

"Perfect," she crowed, as she realized where she was. She had what she had come for, and the demon would keep the locals well-occupied while she escaped. She had not known that she would come back to the exact point she had left from, or she would have been far less concerned. Distanfae's spell would only have brought her to the same general vicinity, as it lacked the precision and strength of the amulet, and a demon let loose on the streets of the city was far different from a demon released in the house of an enemy well-equipped to deal with extra-planar beings. They would doubtless be able to contain it, and any censure for its presence would fall on them, and they would likely suffer in restraining or defeating it, at any rate.

Using her greater mass against it, she easily threw the demon out the door, then sank into the floor herself. Once within the safe arms of the cold stone, she drew on her cloak of shadows, and reappeared within a dark corner some distance away, but still within the compound. Immediately she slipped away, racing through the darkness.

Funneling a portion of her mass into her hands she formed a long pole. She slammed it into the ground as she reached the outer wall, vaulting herself up and over. As she passed over the wall she thinned the substance of the pole, drawing it back and flattening into a blade as she shifted her hands on it, powering it into a forceful swing. The edge whistled as it whipped through the air, dirt flying from where she had pulled it free of the earth. The blade slammed into the stone street, carving a deep gouge. She pulled it free, drawing it back into herself, and cursing softly.

She had forgotten not to change her shape while in the drow city. She could not know for certain if she was being observed, particularly when she was not paying attention to the magic around her. Effective though it had been on the other plane, at least initially, she needed to tuck that ability back under her hat. She could only hope that the Matron had not seen.

"You are back!" A voice spoke into her mind.

"Distanfae. Yes, you were right. I was sent to another plane."

"And you have returned, so I assume you obtained the amulet?"

"Yes, and another trinket besides. I can't identify it."

"You are on your way to the House?"

"Yes, I'll be there shortly."

---

Distanfae hummed as he examined the stone lying in Ranko's upheld hands. "It is too bad that you have already absorbed it," he noted, "though I understand why you did so. Unfortunately, now that it is part of you, there is no way for me to cast an identification spell against it alone, and given that it constitutes your newest power, it is likely that its abilities would be the last that any identification spell would report."

He smirked as Ranko frowned at the crystal she held. "I guess you'll just have to figure that one out on your own. It will be good practice for you at any rate, since you still have untapped abilities within many of your items. I have not had the time nor opportunity to introduce you to any of the summoning aspects of your wands, and other such high magic."

"And you aren't gonna, are you?" Ranko asked, glancing at him as she considered the tone of his voice.

"No, I am not. There is no way for me to precisely identify the appropriate weaves, which means you would have to actually activate them, as you did for the lesser weaves. A summoning here would not go undetected." He looked at her sharply, and she nodded her understanding.

"No experiments, then."

"Not with any weave that is near the weave of the amulet in complexity, or bears it any significant similarity," Distanfae responded.

Ranko nodded and Distanfae turned towards the door. "I probably will not be around for a week or so. Keep up your training, but do not neglect to watch for scrying."

He swept out the door without waiting for her to respond. He knew her mind, and knew without question that she would do as he asked. Ranko closed the door behind him.

She sat gingerly on her bed, and held up the crystal to the glow of faerie fire that limned her ceiling, gazing through it. She saw nothing different, so at the least she knew that it was not another gem of true seeing.

Her eyes slid shut as her vision faded, giving way to the inner sight with which she perceived the weaves of magic that filled her being. Locating her gem of true seeing, she brought the two crystals together, where she could more directly compare their weaves.

They were similar, in areas, at least in the larger of the two unknown weaves. The smaller held little if any likeness to the larger weave or to the weave of true seeing. She was actually somewhat surprised by the similarity that she detected. She had rather expected that the crystal would have something to do with other planes.

Though the larger weave was still less complex than the weave of true seeing, it was not so much less so as to allow her to believe it to be a mere subset. She had, on first recognizing the similarity, guessed that the stone might allow one to see the true form of an outer-planar being, giving it the connection to the amulet that she had expected from its proximity in the lab. The weave seemed more complex than would be called for thereby, however.

Drawing up the amulet itself, she examined the weave within it. It was quite complex. Though on the whole there was little resemblance between the amulet's magic and that of the two crystals, she found a small portion that actually seemed to match exactly between the amulet and the unknown large weave. It did not belong to that portion of the spells that seemed related to the true seeing spell.

The confirmation of the anticipated connection between the two was sufficient to put a stop to any experimentation she might otherwise have engaged in. If the stone's powers related to planar travel, or indeed, to the outer planes in any fashion, then she did not want to chance using it and having some connection to the outer planes arise in her bedchamber.

Submerging the three items, she drew up the wand she had used to seal the wall of the tunnel with ice, examining its weaves and comparing them to the weave of the amulet. As Distanfae had implied, there were weaves within the wand only slightly less complicated than that of the amulet, and others that were far more complex, none of which she could play with right now.

Her eyes slid slowly open, coming gradually back into focus as she released her inner sight. If she could not test her truly powerful spells, she might as well practice with her quicksilver energies. She felt the most comfortable with them, at any rate, being of all that she had gained most similar to what she had known before.

Her extensive use of her ability to mold external matter in her most recent raid had given her an interesting idea with which to extend the utility of the marbles she had formed shortly after first obtaining this room of her own.

Opening the topmost right drawer of her dresser, she lifted out a small bag and loosening the ties, spilled a half-dozen mirror-smooth marbles onto the dresser-top. Lifting one up, she smirked at it. The pattern on its surface was sheared, shifted along a fault line a quarter turn from where it had shattered on hitting the wall and she had bonded it back together instead of fully absorbing and reforming it. That had been a test, not of her absorptive abilities, but of a power drawn and filtered through her wand of earth, but not actually triggering any of the wand's abilities directly.

It was representative of a success that promised extreme flexibility in what she could accomplish with her quicksilver. Drawing up unfiltered amethyst energy, she drew it out of herself. As before, she was readily able to form it into a sphere outside of herself, and move it with nothing more than her will.

Now she slid the glowing sphere of light into the stone. With bright anticipation glowing in her eyes, she lifted her hand, focusing on the energy in the stone, willing it to perform as she desired. Her eyes flashed and she broke into a beaming smile as the stone rolled forward then lifted, at first unsteadily, then smoothly, gracefully into the air.

More spheres of light appeared at her fingertips, flowing across the table and sinking into the marbles, which shivered, then lifted into the air.

In moments, she had six stone spheres orbiting about an empty focal point above her outstretched palm. Glancing at the wall beyond, her eyes narrowed and one stone after another left the circling pattern to smash against the wall as if shot from a gun, or from between her fingers, as so often before.

When the dust cleared, she saw all six stones arrayed in a circular pattern on the wall, embedded an inch into the hard stone. She waggled her fingers at them and they shot out of the wall, across the room, and stopped in front of her, hanging in the air above her palm, with a popping sound that reminded her of her father when he got his hands on a bit of bubble-wrap.

They were shattered, every one of them. Indeed, it looked as though portions of several of them had been pulverized completely. In spite of the damage each had taken, they held their shapes due to the energy within them.

A rap at the door startled her from her admiration, and the spheres dropped to her palm, still held together. She closed her hand around them, feeling them grinding and sliding against each other as she stood to answer the door.

Her eyes widened as the door slid open. Instead of Distanfae or Kliza on the other side, as she had expected, possibly accompanied by another troop of guards, there stood a single drow female, of low birth, if she was correctly remembering Distanfae's explanations. She was carrying a small valise. Her expression was one of fear and resignation valiantly suppressed. Only Ranko's nuanced skills at reading her opponents, activated by her half-formed expectation of finding Kliza once more outside her door allowed her to recognize the emotions on the girl's face.

"Mistress," the girl said, her eyes directed at Ranko's feet.

Intrigue And Shadows

Bemused, Ranko stepped back to allow the girl to enter. She noted that the girl, whom she guessed to be a servant newly assigned to her, carried with her only a single small bag. The girl stepped nervously into the room, her gaze steadfastly bound to the floor.

After a quick look into the hall, which remained empty, Ranko closed the door, and turned to face the nervous servant girl. Reminding herself that the appearance of youth could well be misleading, Ranko reached out a hand, intending to tip the girl's face up. Perhaps a look into her eyes could give her a better gauge on her new servant's age and intentions.

She was startled when the girl visibly cringed, breath catching audibly, as her hand came up. Ranko followed the motion smoothly, catching the girl's chin and lifting her face. Her eyes held fear even more visibly than her demeanor, and to Ranko's surprise, she looked to be near Ranko's age in terms of maturity. Of course, that put her probably five or six decades beyond Ranko in terms of actual age, but that was largely irrelevant in Ranko's opinion.

For all that she might have several decades more experience in terms of time, as a servant, Ranko was willing to bet that her actual life experience paled in terms of breadth when compared to Ranko's, which encompassed multiple worlds, multiple cultures, multiple genders, even multiple states of being.

"What is your name?" Ranko queried, holding the girl's eyes with her own.

"Sraelee, Mistress," she replied.

"And why are you here?" Ranko asked, lifting an eyebrow and waiting to find out if she had guessed correctly.

"To serve you, Mistress," the girl answered meekly, her eyes still betraying her fearful resignation, and also thereby indicating a relative lack of skill in the dissimulation so vital to the drow.

Ranko contacted Distanfae mentally as she walked her new servant to the attached servant's quarters, and informed him of this development. He confirmed her suspicion, that this new servant was not a sign that someone in the household was gaining respect for her, but rather a spy, placed by someone seeking to garner advantage for themselves.

She could, of course, ask the girl who she had been sent by, but not only was there a better than even chance that she would be lied to, even if she was given the truth as the girl knew it, it would only mean that the girl herself was unaware of the true person behind the scenes.

Indeed, Distanfae had confirmed that if the person behind the action was one of the priestesses, the girl could have been prepared with rituals that would allow the priestess to see through her eyes and hear what she heard, and she could easily be completely unaware of the significance of the rituals she had participated in.

It was a given, however, that the girl could as easily be complicit in the whole affair. Just because it could have been done without her knowledge, cooperation, or assistance was no guarantee it had been.

To refuse her, Distanfae warned, might well mean her death. Distanfae was aware that while he had removed the inhibitions that would have blocked her from dealing death under any but the most stressful conditions, his weapon was still far from a cold-blooded murderess, and would definitely be disturbed to learn that an action she put no weight in had led to the death of an innocent.

As she watched the girl examine her new quarters, Ranko pondered what rumour must be saying about her to bring such fear into the eyes of her servant. Although she supposed it might be nothing more than being required to serve a drow noble that brought the fear. One of the aspects of this society that she had learned is that anyone who was not a noble was, whether in name or no, a slave, and subject to the whims of the nobles, up to and including summary execution.

Ranko might not want to be responsible for the girl's death, but she was also irritated at the loss of her privacy, at now having to maintain the facade of continued life even in her own rooms, and that irritation was sufficient that she made no move to ease her new servant's fear.

She would learn soon enough, by simply living it, that Ranko was not one to give harsh punishments, or to demand services unwillingly given.

Ranko waited until the girl began unpacking her small valise, then she turned away, swinging the door nearly, but not quite closed. She opened her hand, looking at the stones still glowing faintly purple. She passed her other hand over them, pushing magic through her earth wand. The stones sealed back together, cracks vanishing, dust congealing and hardening.

She stalked over to the dresser and carefully set the spheres down on the counter. She could not play more with her quicksilver where her unwanted new servant could see her, but she wanted a bowl to put the balls in. She considered the spheres, thinking about the magic she had used to reform them from the cracked and partially pulverized wrecks they had been.

Settling on the low couch that ran along the wall opposite the door to her bedchamber, she reached back and touched the wall. Inside, her magic swirled up and into her earth wand. She did not seek to activate any of its powers. She merely wanted the wand's influence on her quicksilver energy.

One of the key things she had discovered about this was that the untrained, unfiltered magic was difficult to shape without bringing it out. Filtered through one of her wands, she could generally accomplish external effects that matched the wand's field of influence without actually drawing the magic out where it might be seen.

Behind her, the wall groaned, then shifted, strands of stone flowing down and circling about. With a clatter, a smoothly formed stone bowl dropped from the wall and landed on the couch. She lifted her arm and the bowl flew to her hand.

Her fingers flicked, and the stones on the dresser shifted then leaped across the room to her waiting hand. A startled shriek turned her head, and she saw Sraelee standing in her doorway, her hand to her heart, her dark skin unusually light. Sraelee's eyes turned to Ranko as Ranko dropped the spheres in the bowl. Her eyes widened and her breath caught as Ranko reached back. The wall seemed to shrink away from her hand, forming an indented alcove upon which she set the bowl.

Ranko crooked her hand at Sraelee, and Sraelee ran to her side, dropping her eyes. She fell to her knees beside the bed, trembling. Ranko looked into her unwanted servant's eyes. Asking the girl to be silent would only be counterproductive, revealing that this was something she wanted kept silent. Threatening her would increase the tension between them, and she simply could not match the threat level of the torture these drow were willing to employ.

She spent only an instant contemplating. Making snap decisions under pressure was nothing new to Ranma, and though many of her instincts were tuned to physical combat, bluffs and mental games were also part of being a martial artist.

She held out her hand, and snapped her fingers sharply. Sraelee looked at her for a moment, uncertainly, then gingerly proffered her hand. Ranko held Sraelee's eyes with hers as she took Sraelee's wrist in her small hand, and twitched her fingers. A swirl of stone snaked out of the wall, drifting across the intervening space and spun into a complex mix of twisting strands around Sraelee's hand.

With Ranko's ability to shape the stone, the bracelet's surface became almost perfectly smooth, giving the strands an amazing shine. Ranko glanced down, releasing her servant's eyes. She suppressed her grin when Sraelee gasped involuntarily at the sight of the gorgeous bracelet encircling her wrist. Ranko's face was impassive when Sraelee's eyes reached her face again. Ranko dropped her hand, and with a short, sharp gesture, indicated that Sraelee should return to her room.

Ranko was not certain of the bet she had made, that Sraelee would be unwilling to reveal the real source of her bracelet, where a simple gift would be perfectly normal and acceptable, but a magically created bracelet, if admitted to, would surely be taken to be investigated. If she was wrong, then she had increased her exposure by revealing that she could manipulate and shape stone, as opposed to merely being able to move stones without touching them.

There was little she could do about it, at any rate, and she felt the risk was worth it, particularly since the gift should ease Sraelee's fears about Ranko's potential for cruelty.

She still wondered whether her secret had been blown to the point that there was no reason to try to avoid Sraelee seeing her practice with the stone, or whether she still should conceal the extent of her ability to shape the stone. There was no question that she would conceal her other abilities as much as possible. Certainly she was grateful she had not exposed her ability to alter her own shape.

Thinking back over the last few minutes, she realized that Sraelee had seen her summoning the stones, but based on the timing of her gasp, she had probably not seen her drawing the stone from the wall to form the bowl. Ranko felt a rush of embarrassment as she realized that in attempting to salvage the situation, she had inadvertently exposed even more of her abilities.

Standing, she strode across the room and through the doorway to her bedchamber. Only a few months had passed since she had succeeded in becoming the house's weaponmaster, but they had been filled with missions for both Distanfae and for the Matron, with tests and challenges from Kliza and Laermornan, with theft, fighting, and death. And now, on top of it all, she had to deal with a spy in her own rooms.

Ranko tried not to feel resentment at Sraelee for disturbing her privacy. There was no guarantee that she was an unwitting spy, but as long as the possibility was there, she should not take out her frustrations on the girl. Even if she knew why she had been placed there, chances would be good that was being coerced in some fashion, be it by fear of her own punishment or death, or a threat to her family or friends. Assuming, of course, that she had any friends. From what Ranko had observed, friendship was not something commonly understood or practiced in this city. There were simply too many incentives and advantages to back-stabbing.

By the same token, Ranko had to be careful not to feel too sympathetic towards her new spy, either. No matter that she might be being coerced, she was still a dark elf, and chances were good that when her fear wore away, she would be more than willing to stab Ranko in the back if she thought it would improve her standing.

---

"I am not pleased with the Matron's interference," Distanfae told Ranko, "and I've no doubt you like it no better, but we have no real options at the moment. The worst of it is her insisting on all of this silent assassination. You'll never develop the reputation that will cement my legacy if no-one knows what you have done."

Ranko nodded, well aware of Distanfae's intent that she should be his entree into the annals of history. "Perhaps a token?" she offered, thinking of Kodachi and her black roses. Not that she wanted anything to do with black roses, mind.

She and her master were in his chambers, far from her spy. Her master had grown steadily more agitated as the months passed, and Matron Vitrue co-opted her for mission after silent mission, but never in a way that would allow any glory or recognition to come to her, or by association, himself.

This was not the first time she had heard this complaint, but it was the first time that she had had anything resembling an answer.

"Explain," he commanded, looking at her intently.

In response, she held up a a rearing horse she had crafted from black stone. "I've been practicing my shaping. This is an animal from my world, and part of my name once translated to mean this animal. If I were to leave a token like this on each mission, it would tie them together, but not necessarily to me. Not until you reveal it, but then all of them would be associated with your work."

Distanfae reached out his dark hand, and Ranko handed him the small figurine. He turned it over in his hands, looking at the intricate detail. "How long does it take you to make one of these?"

"It took me a long time to make the first one," Ranko told him. "I had to work at it for a while, making little changes, to get it to look right, since I did not have any pictures to work off of. But now that I've got it . . ."

Ranko stood up, and stepped over to the stone wall, rested her hand against it for a moment, then passed him another stone horse. He examined it briefly, comparing it to the other one he held, then set it on the table beside his chair.

"Excellent. So you can form them from something at the mission site. That will keep them from being tied to us until the right time."

"Gotcha, make 'em all on-site. Not a problem."

"Then the only question is whether they should all be identical or not," he mused.

Ranma shrugged. "I could do different shapes with practice, I'm sure, or I could do all horses, but in different poses and patterns, or all the same rearing stallion."

Distanfae paused in thought, and Ranko remained silent, giving him time to think. In her opinion, it was all a matter of whether he wanted to chance people putting things together too early versus risking them not putting enough together later, and as such, was really a personal decision for her master, and had little to do with her.

To be sure, she would be the one leaving the tokens, unpleasant though it seemed to be deliberately associating herself with assassinations. She would certainly have preferred to at least face her lord's enemies in personal combat, or to have even been facing her lord's enemies, and not those of the Matron.

Either way, once she had realized the possibility inherent in her first little creation, which had looked more like a child's clay rendering of a horse, she had felt obligated to perfect it and present it as an option for her Lord. The happier he was with his eventual fame, the more likely he was to give her the help she needed to find her way home and change what had happened.

So now she waited quietly, with a patience unknown to her former self, while her Lord pondered.

Finally, he sighed. "Variations on a theme are fine, but keep it to this animal. Just different poses, and such. If we're lucky, someone with surface experience will recognize it and start some rumours. It looks vaguely familiar, as if I've seen it somewhere before, so I think it is something that exists here as well."

Ranko nodded in understanding.

"You should probably destroy these two. We don't want the Matron tying these to us too quickly." He handed the two figurines to her, and she nodded and quickly turned them into a single variegated sphere.

"Should I place them where they will be seen immediately? Or hide them, so that they won't be tied directly to the event?"

Distanfae considered that for a minute. "Hide them," he sighed finally, clearly wanting to say otherwise, but bowing to the necessity of avoiding direct suspicion, "and I think you should also go back to those sites you think you can safely revisit, and hide them there as well."

---

Ranko slipped quietly out of the shadows in an alley near the Vitrue compound. This was her first open-ended assignment, the first time she had not had a single definite goal to get to, accomplish, and return.

Instead, she was to return to those sites she felt she could safely gain entry to and leave one of her new calling cards without being seen or detected. She could do this in whatever order she chose, with little in the way of time constraints.

So for the first time, she actually had an opportunity to walk through the city while it was alive with activity, and her attention was not demanded elsewhere. No-one was watching through her eyes, nor watching her behavior, at least, no-one that knew who or what she was.

She was quite deliberately not wearing house colors or a house emblem. If accosted, she should be able to overcome and evade any who might seek to take her, and avoid anyone seeing the Vitrue symbols near the various places she had previously visited.

With more freedom to observe, she was quickly entranced with the amazing variety of near-human species walking the streets of the city. Without Distanfae's influence, she could gaze on each and consider them at her leisure.

This was unfortunately not as advantageous as she first felt, for she felt first angry, and then ill as she watched chained groups of different slaves marched past in the streets beyond the alley. She knew there was nothing she could do without risking her return, but equally she knew that Akane would never have stood by and allowed this to continue. To be sure, she would not have succeeded in any attempt to free them, at least, not for long, but she would have tried. And Ranma was in a far better position to act than Akane ever would have been, but to do so was to risk losing Akane a second time, and that she could not do.

So she swallowed her ire, and promised herself that when Distanfae would gone, she would do what she could to end this barbarism. In the meantime, she had fear to sow. Though she was still sickened by her part in the death of children, her anger now lead her to feel pleasure at the thought that she had already ended the lives of some of these cruel drow, though she knew that it was improbable that her acts had improved anyone's situation. A death in this dark city left a vacuum, soon filled by someone of equal or greater malice, for the soft did not survive, neither amongst the slaves, nor amongst the drow.

Her back straight and her eyes ablaze with pride and anger, she strode out of the alley and down the street, easily avoiding the mingled crowds. She might not have the full strength she once bore, but while Distanfae's spells linked her soul to her movement, she had all the grace of a supreme predator, and the slaves and lesser drow parted before her.

She was nearing one of her first targets, only two compounds away now, when a procession caught her attention. She moved out of the way of the passing matron and her escort of priestesses and warriors, and deepened the shadows about her face, but one of the priestesses, not liking her erect carriage and the defiant disdain in her still burning eyes, moved toward her.

In an instant Ranko had decided her course, and after quickly verifying that no scrying was directed specifically at her, though of course the Matron and her lackeys were being observed from multiple points, she focused her quicksilver, preparing to drink magic as fast as she possibly could.

"Bow before the matron, filthy commoner," ordered the priestess, her snake-headed whip already in motion to punish the unmarked drow regardless of her reaction. The first snake head impacted uselessly against Ranma's impervious flesh, but before it could slide down, she drew powerfully on its magic.

The priestess gasped and cried out in horror when the snake head shriveled and fell to ash. Ranko fell back into the shadows while the priestess' attention was on her damaged weapon. Distanfae had told her previously about the whip that Kliza carried, and the significance of the number of heads, how they showed Lolth's favor. Ranko giggled softly, then silenced abruptly, startled that she would make so feminine a sound, be she emulating a woman or no, but scarcely able to contain her mirth. She rather doubted that Lolth would look kindly on a priestess that so easily lost a sign of her favor.

The matron had not been watching, obviously well-used to her daughters' ways, and their habits of punishing anyone they got the chance to. Doubtless she had done the same in her day. At least one of the other priestesses had seen, she was sure, but she was not greatly concerned. They had not had a good chance to peruse her, seeing her prior to the strike as just one more of the faceless crowd waiting to be struck for the glory of Lolth, and the planes of her face would have been obscured by the shadows.

She quickly moved on, not wanting to wait for the matron to get involved and pull her out of hiding with some spell. She slipped out of the shadows in another alley, but kept them cloaked about her as, verifying that the alley was clear, she descended into the stone roadbed. Having inadvertently exposed her ability to manipulate stone to her personal spy, she had no worries about being observed from within, and she had ascertained that no scrying was observing her from afar.

Within the heart of the stone she began to move forward, passing unnoticed and undetected beneath the iron fence and the grounds of the great house. She had more difficulty upon reaching the house, as it extended beneath the cavern's floor, rather than giving her solid stone to pass through. Still the walls were thick and gave her plenty of room to manuever without having to expose herself beyond them.

Occasionally she paused and forming an eye concealed behind a plane of jade, she would locate a shadow and allow her hidden eye to reach the surface of the stone, and verify the room beyond matched her memories of her path.

Soon she found the room whose occupant she had slain. It did not appear to have been put to a new purpose, though the remains of the prior occupant's belongings had been removed, with the exception of the furniture.

Ranko examined the room for several minutes, looking at the room in different ways, and feeling out the magic, until she was sure that it was not warded to detect her presence, nor being observed. Satisfied, she then examined the room to decide what to use to make her stallion model.

Finally, she decided to use the stone of the walls, and the substance of the dresser, which looked from a distance like a well-polished marble. In each case she avoided leaving any identifiable gaps in the material, instead drawing the substances from many places, leaving areas with numerous tiny bubbles of nothing in the material.

After forming the model, she stepped forward, the wall rippling around her as she exited it, and examined the model in the light, so that she could correct the color locations.

Walking around the space, she considered where it would be best to place the small horse. Beneath the bed was an obvious choice, but she had no idea what the cleaning patterns were here. She would prefer not to leave it somewhere that would provide evidence that she had returned, when someone realized that they had already cleaned that area. Eventually she chose to lift the heavy wardrobe and check beneath it. As she had hoped, it had a gap between the actual flat bottom, and the bottom of the walls. It was not, however, large enough to leave the horse there. The wardrobe balanced on it, rocking oddly.

She considered her options for a minute, then reshaped the figurine into a shorter figure of three smaller horses in full gallop, tails and manes streaming, and once more placed it beneath the wardrobe. Verifying that the wardrobe was now properly seated and that there was no dust on the floor to show that the wardrobe had been moved, she nodded in approval.

Returning to the wall, she passed through the stone and out of the complex. She briefly considered stepping back out and traveling openly through the streets again, but decided against it. She had already caused one commotion. She did not want to have a whole series of incidents that would allow someone to put together a picture of her movements.

She could have stepped through the shadows to her next target, but shadow-cloaks and similar magics were well-known to the drow, and they would likely have protections against such a move. She might use the cloak merely to move quickly across the city, but even there she could not be sure that she would not trip some ward or spell that would call attention to her.

So instead she passed through the stone, using the opportunity as a learning experience, working on different ways to move beneath the streets. Moving through the stone in the shape of a woman was slow work, a fact she had learned previously. She had figured out a way that worked reasonably well, however, which involved extending a tendril of substance some distance ahead, and then shifting herself along that tendril, while transferring the stone in the opposite direction. It amused her, sometimes, to imagine what someone would think, when the stone in her target location was substantially different in appearance than that in her starting position, if they were excavating, and came across stone that had a feminine profile.

Now, however, she began experimenting with looser shapes, traveling in a shape more reminiscent of a worm or snake than a woman. She soon found that moving like a worm was more effective. Unless she actually excavated a fair area, she did not have enough room to move like a snake. Instead, it seemed most effective to stretch forward, absorbing the stone ahead of her while her lengthy body slimmed down in the channel, then to extrude that stone at the rear of the passage, restoring its solidity even as she shortened and thickened back to the width of the passage.

This mode of transportation still required caution, however, as she had to avoid extending herself out into any opening she might encounter, and she had to constantly detect magic that might be ahead of her, and route her way around it. Occasionally she was forced to go quite a bit out of a direct line, when a large complex lay athwart her path. She also had to pause regularly, to extend a probe up towards the surface, finding a wall, and rising up to about five and a half feet above street level, then forming an eye concealed behind a flat gemstone, to verify her location.

To an extent, the spells and wards she had to avoid were an aid to her navigation, as each compound of one of the ruling families would shine to her senses as a great beacon of complicated magic. Nonetheless, they were little more than massive blobs of magic to her senses at a distance, and while they helped confirm her position, they were not sufficiently identifiable from afar as to act as true landmarks. Therefore regular position checks were necessary.

She soon arrived at her next target. This time the room had clearly been put back into service, and it was occupied when she reached it, though to her surprise, it was clearly a slave that had taken place of the drow warrior she had slain there, the chains around the neck and arms making that clear enough.

She examined the room carefully from her vantage point, a concealed eye above the normal sight-line, on the wall opposite the main entrance to the suite. From what she could see, the furnishings were still far too rich to belong to the slave, so she guessed that the chained female surface elf was a body-slave, a pleasure toy to whomever had taken the room.

She considered whether there was anything that she could do for the slave, as she formed a small statue of a rearing horse, much as she had tried initially at her first stop, and slid it unnoticed onto a high shelf.

She had learned little about the transportation artifact, and though she could probably trigger it, she did not think the chained elf would fair any better in that demonic environment than she was here. Perhaps in time it could be used to return such a slave to the surface world, but not, certainly, until Ranko herself had chanced to visit there.

She could kill the slave, and free her thusly from her bondage, while at the same time inconveniencing one of her master's enemies. But this was an enemy of her master only in the sense that any drow not of her master's household was his enemy, and of course, at this point she could not even be certain that the slave's owner, or the normal occupant of this room, was a drow, though it was certainly the most likely possibility. Not to mention which, the slave might well prefer to cling to life, even in the face of her slavery.

She could steal the slave, but what then would she do with her? Freeing her in this city would only result in her recapture and torment for having escaped. Freeing her outside the city would likely only lead to an unpleasant demise. Taking her to House Vitrue would simply mean exchanging one dark master for another.

Showing herself to the elf and allowing her to choose whether to die was also out of the question, as if the elf chose to live, she would then be able to reveal Ranko's presence and appearance.

Lying in wait to slay the slave's master, if he or she should turn out to be cruel, would likely only get the slave killed, or if not, she would be turned over to yet another cruel master. Noble drow, she had observed, were more often cruel than not, to the degree that only her master had not shown cruelty when presented with the opportunity, and that was likely only because he saw her as a prized creation.

It had been hard enough facing the idea that other people were kept here as slaves, but somehow it was harder to see it right in front of her, and harder still that it was a single slave. It was oddly easier to look past the sympathetic horror she felt when she saw slaves in large groups than it was to face one single elf.

Ranko shook herself free of her musings about the surface elf's possible family and friends, and left the building quickly. She could not stand to face such a horror when she felt so helpless to change it, especially when she knew that Akane would never have stood for it. She would have fought it to the last, just as she fought against perceived perversion, and she would have either died or been taken a slave herself.

Ranko could take up her fight, but in doing so, she would be discarding her chance to save Akane, and that she could not face. She would prove herself by saving her life, and if they could then not accept her, she would find a way to move on, knowing that at the last, Akane lived. But she could not move on, could not live a life with honor, until she had reversed the failure that lead to her atonement.

She did promise to herself that she would watch for anything that would assist her in changing this society. Once Distanfae reached the end of his years, and kept his end of the bargain, perhaps then she could take the time to free the slaves. If she could reach the surface, she might be able to figure out how to use the amulet to transport slaves to the surface. She rather doubted that Distanfae, or even the Matron Vitrue, would much object to her stealing and freeing the slaves of other houses, as that would effectively weaken them. Of course, they would probably be equally pleased if she simply slaughtered them all. She would simply have to hope they never gave her such an order, because for Akane, she would do it.

As each death stained her hands with more blood, Ranko was slowly coming to the realization that she would either have to keep all that happened to her here a secret, the keeping of which would inevitably, given Akane's suspicious nature where she was concerned, lead to strife, or face the disgust, and likely hatred of those she loved. Still, she had no choice, if they were to live.

Though several of the sites she visited had boosted their wards, or added new defenses, including one where there was a vicious, bestial creature left chained in the room she had previously visited, she had no difficulties with them.

As on her initial missions, her ability to detect the spells, and to manipulate her own internal magics, as well as her ability to pass through the stone without having to move out-of-phase with it, got her past the additional magics with little trouble. Creatures such as the one in whose belly she had discovered her enigmatically glowing blue stone tended to either phase through the stone, passing through it like a ghost, which was readily detectable through magic, or to claw their way through it, as with the armored behemoths she had destroyed on that same mission, causing both noise and vibrations which could be detected.

Her own passage through the stone was silent, and as yet, no wards or spells had been devised against it. She had been warned by Distanfae that if she was not careful to keep her powers hidden and secret, it would not take long for the city's wizards and priestesses to devise defenses attuned to her, at which point her missions would become ones of brute force instead of stealth.

Ranko was of mixed minds about the possibilities, as she had little desire for skulking about and killing without a fight, but the sort of fights she would have in the open here would result in quite a bit of collateral damage, killing relative innocents. Her own indecision on the topic was irrelevant, however, as Distanfae's intentions were clear, and she had no desire to cross him and risk her eventual reward.

When she finally returned to her new home, it was with a genuine feeling of accomplishment. She had taken a concrete step towards furthering her Lord's goals, and had done so in a creative rather than a destructive fashion. In a small sense, this was almost a rebellion, a repudiation of the silent assassinations the Matron had ordered her on through her Lord.

It had been a bit of a challenge, thinking of enough different stances for the horses, as well as finding suitable substrates for them in each location, as well as suitable hiding places, but it was a challenge that she found undeniably preferable to figuring out how to silently kill someone before the Matron activated one of her area-effect destructive magics.

She was pleased, when she slipped into her apartment, to see that Sraelee was absent. Of course, she realized that the young girl was probably even now, wittingly or no, willingly or no, reporting her observations to someone.

This was not the first time that Ranko had dealt with an unwitting spy, in point of fact. Her own fiancee, her uncute tomboy, had all too often given over her secrets to her rival Ryouga, as he took advantage of his porcine Jusenkyou curse to pose as her pet.

It was not easy to deal with then, either.

Still, she decided, she should take advantage of this opportunity to bathe, and leave some evidence for Sraelee to clean up, both to give her something to do, and to ward off any potential rumours about her inhumanity. Not to mention, she mused, wandering into the bathroom and beginning to disrobe, it would avoid any possibility of Sraelee trying to help her bathe.

She was more than a bit worried about that. She could hope that it was not part of the drow custom to have a servant assist with bathing, but that would certainly run contrary to her usual luck. It would be quite difficult to retain the illusion that she was a living being with someone running their hands over her unyielding surface.

Unfortunately for Ranko, her luck ran true to form, and even as she lowered herself into the warm water, she heard the outer door of her chambers open and shut, followed by quiet footsteps.

Almost instantly the realization came upon her that even though the bathing room door had no obvious locking mechanism, she could have locked it. It would have been trivially easy, a bit of quicksilver absorption on the door and wall and she could have effectively joined them at several points, making the door and wall a single unit, bonded until she separated them.

She had made only the barest reach forward, however, before she had to forestall her motion. It was too late, if she reached out to do it now, the door would doubtless open with her halfway there, whether she moved herself, or reshaped herself.

She waited tensely, expecting the door to open at any moment. When it finally did swing inward, she had to stifle a gasp at the release of tension. Sraelee slipped in, her body language still that of a timid mouse as she crept to the side of the bath, holding a stack of towels and what Ranko guessed was a robe, which Sraelee promptly set to the side.

She knelt by the bath, and Ranko tensed for a moment, before relaxing as the girl moved no further. At least she was not apparently going to put herself at risk by touching Ranko uninvited, so she did not have to worry about the girl passing on news of the inhuman and ungiving feel of her skin just yet.

Ranko made a note to ask Distanfae if there was another level to the control he could give her, something that could imitate the give of flesh, the feel of skin sliding over hard muscle. She could emulate that visually when she was moving without any difficulty, but unfortunately, when she was not moving, she might as well have been a cast metal statue, as far as anyone else's hands were concerned.

Her current situation was safe enough, as she was already ensconced in the bath when Sraelee entered, and was not moving. What was to come next, however, was a puzzle. If she rose nude from the bath, there would simply be no way, if Sraelee looked at her at all, that she could possibly miss the absence of movement in her breasts.

When fully clothed they could be passed off as being well wrapped, though since they did not compress when being wrapped, she actually had to slightly reshape herself to get the reduced reach and separation that should result from the wrapping. Regardless, neither wrapping nor reshaping would work here.

She could wrap herself in a towel, assuming that she could get her hands on one without Sraelee lifting her eyes. That was doubtful though, considering that Sraelee was holding them. She could form a cloth from herself, but all her experience with fabrics, to this point, was of fine weaves, not the thick substance of a towel. If she simply formed her substance into something that thick, it would be solid and immovable, not flexible and mobile. Of course, that was also ignoring having to conceal the reshaping from the girl as well.

Ordering the girl to leave her was another possibility. Allowing her quicksilver to rise in the back of her left eye, Ranko glanced toward Sraelee without turning her head. She saw no noticeable sign of magic about her face or eyes, so she did not think that there was anyone watching through her eyes. Of course, there had not really been any tasks for Sraelee to do for her so far, refusing service now could trigger the darker consequences Distanfae had warned her about.

Ranko made a mental note to keep an eye out for a magical item focused around illusions, and to ask Distanfae if any of her current items had illusionary powers. A simple illusion would make this situation much more manageable.

Fed up with waiting, she made up her mind, and stood suddenly, twisting as she did, to place her back to Sraelee, drawing on her memories of Kodachi to stand as imperiously expectant as she could, and held out a hand.

Startled into awareness by the noise of water sheeting off of Ranko, Sraelee lurched to her feet, hurrying to get a towel into her new Mistress' outstretched hand.

Taking the towel and unfolding it in one quick motion, Ranko swirled the towel about herself, securing it with a thin tendril of her own substance all around, to ensure that no slippage could occur. She had all too much experience with the sort of incidents that life liked to throw at her in bathrooms.

A slight shift of her foot drew the stopper from the floor of the smooth stone basin, then she stepped out of the bath. To her surprise, Sraelee had managed to get another towel unfolded and onto the floor to accept her feet. She glanced at her unwanted servant once more, a hint of quicksilver still present in her eye showing no sign of magic about her.

The girl would expect to assist her in dressing . . . what to do about that? After a moment's thought, she sent Sraelee to her closet to draw out a set of leather fighting gear, and then, while Sraelee was effectively two rooms away, Ranko dropped the towel and quickly produced that portion of her substance that was drawn to the form of cloth and wrapped herself, not wasting any time with trying to form any of her metals into cloth. Speed was her goal, not appearance.

She would have preferred to have her entire clothing self-formed for this, since then it could not be damaged, exposing her, but at least this way, even if her clothing was torn, she would have an excuse for her lack of sway.

Distanfae had informed her that she had another training session, and she was not sure if it would be just the two of them, exploring more of her minor powers, or more weaponmaster testing with observers.

Decided that she had given Sraelee enough time, Ranko drew a quick breeze across herself from her wand of air, even as she used a momentary morph to reduce her hair to a solid block, forcing out all the water, before letting it relax back into innumerable strands, and stepped out into her bedroom.

Having someone assist her in dressing was a strange experience, that brought an unusual combination of reminiscence and longing over her. Aside from being dressed by her father when she was very young, her most clear memory of being dressed by someone else like this was when, during her first year at the Tendo home, all of her clothes had been dirtied. The Tendo sisters, Akane, Nabiki, and Kasumi had all banded together to dress her in Akane's old clothes, which she was forced to be a girl to wear.

Sraelee was far more timid and tentative in helping her than the forceful Tendo girls had been, so the nostalgia did not last long. It was also advantageous for her, as it made it easier to allow her to help without permitting skin contact. Soon she was well-attired, and left her servant in their rooms as she headed out to met Distanfae.

---

She was very pleased to find that it was to be a training session on her wand abilities, with just the two of them present. He was equally pleased to hear that she had finished her task of placing the statues at the sites she had previously visited, excepting only the mage's room where she had left a raging demon.

That building had suffered a partial collapse in defeating the demon, and was undergoing active reconstruction, making an approach too hazardous to attempt.

They were once more in the chamber where she had first experienced her new form. Distanfae sat on a chair set in an alcove in the wall, a spot where he had only a small area he would need to shield if she lost control.

Ranko was hopeful and excited. Though she had been able to make use of her wands in their first fighting, guided by her own instinct for combat and Distanfae's constant coaching, she had not been permitted to explore them further on her own.

She knew several higher techniques with her fire wand, as the Matron had forced her to use Fireball and Burning Hands more than once. The first sent out a tiny mote of light; when it reached its target or hit an obstruction, it exploded out in a massive rush of flame. The second could perhaps be best described as a personal flamethrower that shot out from her fingers.

She had also learned most of her minor wand powers, on the job, as it were, from Distanfae's coaching while she was in the field, and in training sessions like this one. These mostly consisted of cantrip level elemental control spells, such as lighting a fire, generating a shocking spark, producing a gentle breeze, or propagating a crack through stone, and minor attack spells, such as producing a flame that could be thrown, a powerful gust that could turn back arrows in flight, electrocuting anything she could touch, and similar minor effects.

She had managed more impressive feats than these in her first outing, by simply channeling her quicksilver energies through a wand and willing an effect, but she hoped that Distanfae was now going to touch on summoning, something that she was sure she would not manage by simple effort of will.

Ranko perked up when Distanfae shifted and began to speak. "Eventually, you'll be able to summon elementals of immense power, however, to begin with, you will need to practice with the smallest possible summonings, to avoid undue attention and damage. We will begin with air, as I have seen in your memories that you have a technique that produces a whirlwind. You may be better suited to communicating and appreciating air elements, as even the smallest air elemental can become a whirlwind."

"However," he continued, "we will not start with elementals. Each of your wands should have the smallest summoning spell capable of obtaining an elemental as the first spell that shows the attributes you've identified in the amulet you recovered. However, while it can procure an elemental, it can also draw weaker creatures, that will be merely aligned with the element. In this case, I want you to focus on summoning a snake. It will be a small but poisonous snake, useful for an assassination if the victim is not someone likely to be protected from poison. Later, we will discuss the other creatures you can summon, but I'll warn you up front, spiders are within the power of the spell, yet you should never summon them, lest you incur the wrath of the Spider-Queen, Lloth, the goddess we worship above all others."

"You will need to picture the snake in your mind."

Nodding, Ranko delved inward. Though the wands, dissolute amongst herself as they were, lacked any identifying physical features, they contained both magical weaves, and independent pools of magic, the flavor and feel of which made them easy to identify.

Focusing on the feel of her wand of air, she examined the weaves. There were a series of weaves that held strong similarities to the amulet, of steadily increasing complexity. Choosing the simplest, she examined it until she found the much smaller weave that should activate it, and fed it a trickle of energy while picturing a snake in her mind's eye.

With her focus turned inward, she saw a chunk of the magical energy in the pool associated with the air wand get drawn into the weave and vanish. She also noticed that a trickle of energy began to flow into that pool from her quicksilver energy, as if the pool was suddenly downhill from the much larger quicksilver pool.

Sending her focus back out, she stared in surprise at the three snakes she could now see flitting through the air just below her eye-height. "They're flying!" she exclaimed.

"Almost any air-aligned creature can fly," Distanfae confirmed in a lecturing tone, prompting focused attention from Ranko, "as most water-aligned creatures can swim without surfacing for air. Most earth aligned creatures will be able to burrow even if they have no obvious means of digging, and fire-aligned creatures will be immune to fire, but vulnerable to cold. Lightning-aligned creatures, though spectacularly rare, can travel almost instantaneously to any point in a body of water, and some can also travel through clouds."

"Cold-aligned creatures, should you ever gain an ability to summon them, are the inverse of fire, being immune to the cold but vulnerable to heat."

Ranko held out her hand, allowing one of the snakes to coil around it. She noticed that the scales along the back were lifted into two ridges, and the snake actually had tiny horns.

"With time and experience, you will be able to focus more tightly precisely which sort of snake you get, and what sort of effect its venom is likely to have. And of course, simply being able to summon one of an appropriate elemental alignment means you can get one adapted to flight, swimming, or fire, and so forth."

The snakes vanished suddenly, and Ranko glanced questioningly at Distanfae.

"How long they last will depend on how efficiently you fuel the spell, and possibly, whether you can manage to continue feeding the spell or not. That was about forty seconds or so, which puts you a bit above the minimum level of efficiency for casting the spell at all. At its most efficient, the spell can keep the creatures present for about two minutes; a long time in a fight, but not much use outside of one. Outside of a fight, an Unseen Servant is usually more effective, but I have no magical item imbued with that spell. If you find one, be sure to pick it up, they can be quite handy."

"As you learn more, you may be able to figure out how to extend the spell for more duration, or increase the number of creatures summoned, or the distance at which you summon them. For now, just know that the higher spells can all be used to summon snakes, but you won't get any benefit from it, as your minimum spell is already two steps above the spell to summon them."

"Keep an eye out for scrying spells, and I will leave you to practice. You may practice summoning snakes, centipedes, and scorpions. There are several other animals you can summon, but for now, those will do. Most of the others are more likely to make enough noise to draw attention."

With those words he left, and Ranko quickly focused her attention outward, making sure that there were no scrying effects focused on the room or her, then turned to her fire wand and cast its first level summoning, going for a scorpion this time. With her attention not entirely turned inward, she actually witnessed the appearance from thin air of five three to four foot long fiery red scorpions. There was a faint shimmer in the air about them, as of a heat haze. Unlike the snakes, these scorpions actually appeared and remained on the floor, milling about as if looking for something other than her to attack.

She turned her attention inward again, examining the summoning weave she had used until she found the ethereal tendrils of magic leading out from it to the summoned creatures. A brief, testing tug on the tendrils had instant effects, as the scorpions vanished.

Moving on, she summoned centipedes using her water wand, again getting five centipedes. Lacking a good means to keep count, but wanting to test whether she could make them stay longer, she also summoned snakes with her air wand again, getting only two this time. Leaving the snakes alone, she focused on her wand of water, found the threads of magic that led to the centipedes, and studied where it went into the summoning weave.

Attempting to push her quicksilver energy had the same effect as the tug had, returning the centipedes to wherever they had been summoned from, but she was undaunted. She proceeded to summon snakes using her earth wand, and to attempt to do so using her lightning wand. The lightning summons failed completely, and she remembered Distanfae's comment about lightning creatures. Had no snakes appeared, or were they just not obvious?

She examined the lightning weave, and concluded that it had in fact failed, as there were no tendrils of magic leading out of it.

Thinking back to her first real battle in this body, she was reminded that she had managed to seal the wall with ice, though she had no ice wand. Studying her memories, she was surprised to realize that the wand whose magic she had used for that was the one she now identified as her wand of fire.

Somehow, acting on instinct, she had managed to not only use that wand, but to alter its elemental nature. Feeling that this must have been tied to using her quicksilver energy in the attack, she carefully filled the fire wand's weakest summoning weave with quicksilver energy, letting the energy take the pattern of the weave, but not activating it yet.

After several frustrating minutes of failed attempts, she finally managed to draw the quicksilver away from the weave while keeping the pattern unchanged, and successfully activated it.

Apparently, it was not a direct effect of the quicksilver, as the snakes she summoned were clearly fire-aligned, bearing the reddish coloration and visible heat haze identical to those she had first summoned with the wand.

Repeating the procedure to get the weave again, she focused on it, not changing it in any detail, merely willing that it should act with elemental cold. After a moment she felt something had changed in the weave, though she could not identify it. Activating it confirmed her hopes, even without an ice wand, she had just summoned four cold-aligned snakes. They were an almost crystalline blue, as if coated in ice, and she could see delicate patterns of frost forming on the floor around them.

She tried a variant of it, attempting to get a fire-aligned summoning from her earth wand, but had no luck, even after six tries, so, reluctantly, she gave up on it.

Growling in frustration, she moved on to trying other combinations. Eventually, she came to the understanding that she could force any of her elemental wands to act as a wand of cold, though no other change had worked for her. The only explanation she could come up with was that it had something to do with the Soul of Ice training from the Amazons.

Feeling sufficiently practiced in the various summonings, she turned inward again, focusing on comparing the weaves, examining the differences, both between the weaves of the same spell on different wands, and between different levels of summoning on the same wand, probing for what changed, and what remained the same.

This was unfortunately not as easy as she had hoped. Although the spells she was looking at had been invented long before, each wizard that learned them inevitably placed their own stamp on a spell, and the wands she had, though similar in design and intent, had been made by different wizards. She did not know this, though she came to suspect it. The air and earth wands had weaves that were too similar, given the larger differences from the other wands, making it evident that much of the variances she was observing were not related to the change in element.

This was also demonstrated when she drew off a copy of the weave using her quicksilver energy, then forced it to shift to a cold-based weave. The changes in each case were more minor and less obvious than the differences between wands.

Comparing the various levels of summoning showing that the levels were more similar to each other than the spells were between wands, even as they substantially increased in complexity. From what she could see, it as really very similar to the difference between a drawing using a large child's brush, and one made by a fine brush. All of the weaves were of the same basic quality, as if it was not a child wielding the child's brush, but the same master as wielded the fine brush.

Rather, it was the tool the master had used and the intricacy of what he drew that varied, and as she slid her magic into them, she saw that the thicker, simpler weaves would be easier to cast by simply throwing power at them, with little finesse.

It was not merely that the higher levels required more power, although they did. It was that they needed more power, but provided more slowly, with more control. Tying it back to the arts, a desperate but otherwise normal person might be motivated into a feat of strength, moving a car off a loved one, or some other task that would normally be beyond them, powered by a surge of adrenaline and emotion. A master of the art could do the same thing, and would be able to apply that same power, with more control, and for a longer time, by virtue of having trained their strength and stamina.

At the same time, Ranko saw a distinct inefficiency, given that the spells were in wands, activated from stored power, power channeled in ways designed by the crafter of the wand, and not the wielder. Why was the simpler weave drawn with a large brush, when from what she could see, the same effect, if drawn and activated using the mastery implied by the highest spell, could be achieved with far less power?

Eager as she was to explore this question, Distanfae's sudden interruption was unexpected and startling, and would have set her heart racing, if the spells that moved it at all had allowed it.

"We are under attack! Kill anyone not bearing the house rune, focus on those that show skill, but waste no time with honor or fancy attacks. I'll call if I need you."

In Defense of the House

Noting that she was not hearing anything unusual near her, Ranko passed immediately into the shadows, stepping out in her apartment. She checked quickly, but Sraelee was not present. She moved out into the hallway, listening for the sounds of combat. Hearing nothing, she slid through the shadows to the hall outside of Distanfae's quarters.

Instantly she was on the move towards the sounds of combat, forming a sword matching the appearance she had previously presented to the Matron. She called up her quicksilver energy as she raced down the hall, both to have it ready, and sending it to her legs in an attempt to speed her movement as she was used to doing when working with her ki.

She caught up with the fighting at the end of the corridor, took in the combatants in an instant, and just as quickly had her blade sliding into a ribcage, unerringly finding the space between two ribs with the slender edge of her blade at the precise angle that led her straight to the drow's heart.

It took a significant and unexpected effort to keep from stopping and gagging at the unanticipated and slightly disgusting consequence of using a sword that was a part of her own body. She actually felt the skin and blood as her blade slid in, just as though she were sliding her arm into his chest, like one of the old kung-fu masters snatching someone's heart in a Hong Kong serial. With the end of her blade hidden in his flesh, she pushed her prepared quicksilver energy out through the tip, forming a concussive blast similar to her Moko Takabisha, sending the dying drow flying off the end of her blade and into another drow, this one a female, that she picked as being in the opposition. The drow was knocked off balance long enough for Ranko's blade to slide smoothly across her throat, opening it into a wide gash and cleanly severing a blood vessel, to judge from the pulsing flow of blood upward.

Ranko slid past the startled defender, who had gone in an instant from being in a two-against-one deathmatch to being the only survivor, as a dark figure swept past him. Ranko did not realize it, but she had instinctively suppressed the enchantment that gave her a convincing infrared signature, allowing her to appear normal to the drow infravision. In its absence, she was as cold as the stone walls, and so nearly invisible against them.

Since the drow generally did not bother with lighting in their halls, aside from the gentle glow of faerie fire, the magical lights which were easy on the eyes whether looking with heat sensitive vision or light receptors, she passed down the hall towards the next knot of fighters very like a moving shadow, though she was not actively using the shadow cloak to conceal herself.

She was still not used to taking magic into account, and might have been caught off guard by the healing magic the female drow whose throat she had slit possessed, but the defender she had left behind saw the drow's throat wound sealing, and promptly slid his sword into her, before stripping the body of rings and necklaces in the hopes of finding that healing magic for himself.

Her quicksilver energy was still pooling in her legs, and she was upon the next group in only three impossibly swift and long strides, her excessive mass, well beyond that of a normal human, much less a slender and light drow, took her into and through the first opponent in this group, a massive hulking figure that filled much of the corridor before she encountered him. He was wearing an emblem that was not that of House Vitrue, and when she plowed into him, he crumpled in on one side and split in half as she moved through unimpeded, the two not quite fully separated halves being sent down the hall and rising up towards the ceiling.

The shock of her arrival was such that two more of the enemy slumped dead to the floor before the last one broke and ran. Ranko raced after him, catching up in an instant and lopping off his head as she passed him at a run, her senses reaching out ahead, looking for more targets. She was quickly growing accustomed to the feel of flesh sliding across her blade, though the feel of that huge man-thing actually coming apart as she impacted it was horrifying. She was sure that if she had still had a normal body, she would have been promptly crouched in that corridor, decorating it with the contents of her stomach.

Of course, if she had possessed a normal body, it would never have happened like that in the first place.

Coming to an intersection, she cast a quick glance down the three paths. Seeing a group charging toward her down one of them, she chose it and raced to meet them. One of them hung back as the others met her charge. As with the last group, this one was not purely drow, being apparently led by two female drow, priestesses to judge by their snake-headed whips, and three large furry though otherwise man-like beings, heavily muscled though smaller than the hulk she had encountered, and then the one male drow hanging back.

What little light there was suddenly vanished, as if a bag had been drawn over her head, but Ranko was unperturbed, continuing forward until she made contact with someone, then knocking their arms wide and spearing her blade through them and pushing through another concussive blast, while drawing her quicksilver itself, rather than merely the energy of it, to the surface. She suspected the darkness was a magical effect cast by one of the drow, and if it was, she might be able to draw it in.

Snake heads skittered across her shoulder, fangs sliding uselessly across her impervious surface, and she lashed out, catching the whip in her palm and crushing the snake strands in her grip even as the hand closing into a fist snapped up to where she expected a face to be, and she heard a satisfying crack. A surge of pleasurable energy flooded into her from the whip, which crumbled within her grasp.

When that same hand, quicksilver at the ready, lashed forward to grasp the throat beneath the jaw she had struck, her other hand bringing her sword around to strike, she felt a rush of uncontrollable lust and heat race through her. An unearthly scream wailed out, vibrating her palm through the very throat she was clutching, the body slumping in death before her sword could come to bear.

An angry presence surged within her, as if part of herself had risen in rebellion, but her iron will pressed it down with the power of her infinite confidence in herself. She cast the body aside, using the momentum of the exchange to spin her the other way. Her sword having passed the halfway mark overhead and beginning to descend, she forced its course back towards the right, away from the now dead body, and she felt it bite into flesh.

She fired off a concussive blast through the sword, then pushed her energy out into the air, seeking the source of the darkness and drawing it in, unraveling the spell as she consumed the energy. The aftershocks of pleasure were still ricocheting around within her, and her eyes were burning with a fiery red glow as she leapt onto one of the strange man-things, bearing it down even as her sword sank into the chest of the one beside him, sliding down between the clavicle and the ribs, into the chest cavity. Her left hand, gleaming silver in the light, flared suddenly as her fingers closed on the chest of the man she was bearing down, extending into claws as they sank into his flesh and another rush of wild pleasure surged through her, as light and strength fled his eyes.

Flame washed over her, the panicked mage who had hung back having shot a fireball into the tight confines of the corridor, risking his own life from the concussion wave racing down the hall, in his fear at seeing her destroy the group of fighters before him. Red energy filtered in amongst the others, as her quicksilver drank in the thin threads of magic within the otherwise normal flames. A frustrated cry sounded behind her, and she spun to see the last female drow, her face blistered from the mage's panicked attack, throwing something at the floor. A wave of spiders seemed to bubble up from it, expanding to fill the width of the hall and flowing towards them.

Ranko smirked, tugged her sword free, incidentally breaking the dying being's clavicle and top rib, took two running steps, and leaped over the mass of spiders to smash into the angry priestess, leading with her left hand. Again an unfamiliar wave of pleasure spread through her, and she groaned at the sensation, noting at the same time the pleasant softness of the breast she had grabbed, pierced though it was by her taloned fingertips. The body grew quickly chill beneath her hands as the drow died, and a forest of massive ice crystals suddenly surrounded them both, piercing through the drow's body and constricting Ranko's movement. Embracing the shadows, Ranko fell through them to appear behind the frantically casting mage, and slid her arm easily around his throat, cutting off his words, and slipping a finger almost casually through his skin to soak again in the exquisite pleasure. She was not sure where the pleasure was coming from, or what was happening, just that getting her quicksilver into someone while trying to draw in magic was enough to draw out a rush of pleasure like nothing she had ever felt, while killing them nearly instantly. She barely even noticed the screams, after the fourth time.

With this group finished, she went back on the hunt, prowling down the halls. She found one lonesome drow concealed in the shadows attempting to pick a lock, and she slipped silently up behind him, then reached out and spun him about, pinning him with her arms as she examined him looking for House markings.

He stared at her with frightened eyes, tugging fruitlessly on his trapped hands, then cringing in pain when an attempted kick hit what felt like a steel post. Finding nothing that would reveal one way or the other whether he was an invader, or merely a thief, or a member of the house trying to take advantage of the commotion, and she growled in frustration, but remembering Distanfae's demand that she focus on the powerful, she threw herself off of him and down the hall, searching for other targets.

Finding a hall with windows, she sprang to one and looked outside, and grinned widely. There was quite the melee going on in the courtyard below, and she bounced easily out the window and off of a ledge, coming down with a smashing blow that took her straight through the largest target, a man that towered two and a half times higher than most of those around him, bearing the mark of the enemy house. She entered his back just above his left shoulder, shattering his shoulder bones, in a diving punch, and exited through his abdomen, clutching the shredded remains of his heart in her hands like a prize, even as she found herself crying out at the magnificent intensity of the pleasure and lust roaring through her body like an inferno.

The rushing flood of energy crashed upon her like a tidal wave, and it had no time to die before she was in amongst the fighters, her sword wrapped in gleaming quicksilver as she charged through the throng, hungrily drinking in their lives. Poisoned blades and crossbow bolts shattered harmlessly on her skin as she tore her way through their ranks, her entire being now surrounded by a rising glow of magic, manifesting here as a flat plane of amethyst, here as hungry red flames, and there as sickly green, as she began to draw in the leftover energies of the magical battles that had been raging prior to her arrival. Combined with the energies she was drinking in through her quicksilver, whether it was their ki, or lifeforce, or magic, or whatever she was drawing in from those she killed, she was overflowing with it all.

Though the enemy quailed before her and sought to flee, she was too fast, too relentless, and while here and there someone who had been close enough to the periphery managed to slip unseen into a corridor or gate and get out of sight, the vast majority fell at her hands. Her own side stared in dumbfounded awe and fear, too overcome by the terror of what they were seeing, and the fear that she might do the same to them, to cheer at the sudden turning of the tide.

Bereft of enemies to slaughter, Ranko ran through the three main outer courtyards, but the other two were free of violence, being further out and have been already passed by the mob she had fought, so she returned to the inner halls, searching out more combat. As the last vestiges of the feelings the stolen energies sent through her faded, Ranko slowed and finally stopped, pulling into the shelter of a closed door to think. What had just happened?

"Was it bloodlust? Something Distanfae did? Or just a side effect of . . . pulling whatever it was out of them?" She found she did not want to think too deeply about what it might have been, and realizing in retrospect the connection between drawing energy in through her quicksilver and the intense feelings, she promptly submerged all of her quicksilver, and took advantage of the pause to draw several balls of stone from the wall, then headed back out on the hunt.

She would kill, but she did not want to like it, much less love it. That was a sure route to madness. Now she prowled the halls with cold purpose, finding that she had to not only suppress her quicksilver and the urge to drink from those she killed, she also had to restrain her own love for the fight. The joy she felt in fighting, in using her skill and demonstrating her prowess, had generally been tempered in battle by her training to resist the mind-clouding effects of adrenaline. The training she had been put through to keep her from devolving into a mindless brawler once the body's hormones and chemical fight-or-flight responses kicked in were not being triggered. This body had no hormones, no chemical reactions, it did not change as she fought.

Her muscles did not loosen up a few minutes in, nor begin to tense up and stiffen as the fight dragged on and on. Her fists did not begin to ache from being clenched, nor her calves start to burn as she tried to keep up her footwork. She had been killing now for several minutes, and as she killed yet another drow, this one by a shot stone that passed through her head, she was noticing the absence of fatigue. She was almost instinctively cycling her quicksilver energies in the way she would with ki, to refresh her muscles and clear them of the buildup of acids, and now she forcibly clamped down on that. There was no need to waste her energy and focus on something that could not happen.

Every now and again she would pass dead bodies she had not killed, and she spared them a glance only to see which House's seals and marks they bore.

A thunderous boom echoed down the corridors, and Ranko, by now much more accustomed to navigating using sound, and identifying the direction of a sound, immediately shifted her direction to target the source of the sound. Anything that could make that loud a sound, whether it was an explosion, or a giant's hammer, was a legitimate target by the guidelines Distanfae had given her.

She passed through a pair of door that had been shattered, and found herself in a large amphitheatre, with stadium type seating leading down to a central dais. This was indeed the focus of the strongest fighters, for the Matron and Kliza were both on the central dais, a cluster of defensive fighters around them, mostly sword wielders.

There were three mages, Distanfae among them, holding up some form of glowing shieldwall against an advancing group that was hurling obviously magical attacks at them. Ranko was surprised that her House had chosen such a poor defensive position as the bottom of an amphitheatre. Did they not understand the value of high ground in combat?

At any rate, that was not a problem she suffered at the moment, being probably twenty feet above the attacking group and behind them, though at about a twenty degree angle to one side. They were well focused, and while she was momentarily tempted to keep the high ground and rain spells down on them from above, she suspected that they were probably equally capable of throwing up a spell wall.

So she ghosted down the levels instead, racing up behind and diving into their midst, letting her full force smash into the rear of the group.

As they broke up and scattered, one quick witted wizard cast down a small figurine, and a muscular horned demon appeared, wielding a flaming sword in one hand, and a black shield with stylized points not unlike his horns adorning it in the other.

Instantly she marked that wizard as her primary target, ignoring the demon for the moment. Bad as the presence of the demon might be, getting focused on him would simply allow the other wizard to summon more. Spell fire was starting to land around them from lower down where they had been able to drop the shield they had held up against incoming fire, after she had disrupted said fire, and were now back on the attack themselves.

She lunged at the remaining non-target, the female spell caster, as a means of getting a better angle on her target while diverting his expectations, even as she palmed the spheres she had drawn from the walls earlier. More prepared now, the female drow drifted up and back through the air, getting out of the range of Ranko's lunge. That mattered little, since she had not intended to actually reach her yet anyway.

Instead, she pivoted the moment her foot caught the ground again, and fired several spheres, rapidly one after the other, at the mage she was targeting. To her frustration, the spheres pinged off a suddenly visible bubble around him, that faded out of view again a moment later.

Abandoning her attempt at misdirection, she shot towards him, now having an angle to get past the demon, whose swing at her had shattered a stone bench behind her, and who was even now spinning to strike again. Quicksilver energy surged into her as she drew it up again, to boost her speed, and into her sword, focusing on the idea of breaking that shield. Her hands came together in front of her, sword point leading the way, as she focused all the energy of her lunge into the unbreakable tip of her blade, and her own strength on preventing it from moving from one side to the other.

Unfortunately for Ranko, magic can be capricious in the rules it follows. Her attempt to break the shield failed utterly, as she had no real clue what the shield was, nor what it would mean to break it. The shield held up beautifully, and attempted to redirect the entire kinetic force of her attack into her. Here it too failed, not particularly because of her unbreakability, as in fact it would have done her no physical harm, but because of her innate resistance to magic cast on her, something of which she as yet knew nothing.

Her only real experience with foreign magic, aside from the ineffectual efforts of the demons in her brief extra-planar sojourn, was from Distanfae, and as her creator and by the design of her very self, she had no resistance to his power so long as he wore the control mesh. So at this point, she was wholly unaware of the anti-magic effect, but that made no difference to its operation, and the attempted rebounding of the kinetic energy was a magical effect that she unknowingly resisted. In doing so, the entire kinetic energy of her leap ended up dumped into the shell itself, and the wizard was sent rocketing across the chamber like a rifle bullet while Ranko stopped dead, having dumped every drop of kinetic energy into the strike.

A heavy blow from a flaming sword struck sparks across her back in her brief moment of shocked astonishment, even as a strange swirling blackness filled the center of the room, and a horrific being like a misshapen lump of melted wax appeared, long blobs of wax like tentacles waving about it.

Feeling that the wizard would at least be shaken up by his high speed flight, Ranko ignored the demon again and targeted the remaining enemy, only to find that she had already fallen.

"Ranko, get out of the way, let the servant past!"

Distanfae's voice echoed in her head, and when the disgusting wax lump charged towards her and the demon, Ranko scrambled out of the way and let the two collide.

Glancing back down at the group below, who had apparently summoned the disgusting thing, she saw Distanfae wave at her. "Go on, there are sure to be more of them. Find any that remain and end them, then search all the fallen you find for any items that appear magical and collect them."

Nodding, she sped over to where the first wizard slumped against a wall. His shield had apparently not protected him from the kinetic force of the impact against the wall, and he was either dead or out cold.

Glancing about, she saw that the demon was apparently gone, whether slain, or banished back to his source, though the other attackers still clustered together, fewer now in number, with the molten wax thing still there amongst them.

Coldly snapping his neck to be certain he was dead, she despoiled the body, collecting a much larger variety of items than from most of those she had killed. Two of these she set aside as of especial interest. They bore markedly similar patterns on first glance to the planar traveling artifact she had not yet begun to master, and so probably had similar extra-planar magics.

Finishing with him, she returned to the site of her last conflict, and returned to processing the bodies, then moved on. As she sped through the halls, often coming upon unsuspecting members of her own House and giving them a sudden shock when she appeared from the darkness to scrutinize them before racing on, or rising from the shadows behind their opponent to slay them, she pondered her unnerving loss of control, and the strange and addicting sensations of pleasure.

Even now she could feel the desire to send her quicksilver to the surface again and drink in the life of those she slew, as though she was wasting them, as if she were casting good food on to the ground uneaten, and it disturbed her. Aside from the Soul of Ice training she had learned, her training had not focused overmuch on the ways of emotional control. Primarily, she had been trained by the insults of her father to ignore his jibes as best she could, but she had never been terribly successful at this at the best of times. He knew her far too well.

At the same time, he had fairly well inured her to the insults of most others, as they knew far fewer of her weak points than he had, and he had trained her well at spotting and using their own weaknesses against them to cause them to lose their own emotional control, and so maintain hers. That had fallen by the wayside with the shift to killing attacks.

When you could kill someone within moments of laying eyes on them, having the ability to rouse their temper to a fever pitch was a useless ability, and she had said hardly a word since the battle began. As such, she had not had her usual outlet of spewing her emotions at her enemy, throwing them into the insults and epithets she hurled at them along with her fists, and so her concern simply festered, as she fretted over what she had done, and what she still desired to do.

It was one thing to kill when you were ordered to do so by your lord, when honor demanded it of you. The tweaks that Distanfae had made to her mind had kept that from bothering her overmuch, unnecessary as they might have been, even though she did not know of them. Now though, she wanted to kill, desired to kill.

Even when she recognized that someone was from her House, it still took an actual effort of will to hold back her strike. She wanted to kill them, and more than that, she wanted to drink in their death, to consume them and revel in the pleasure it gave her. It made her queasy to think on it, this bloodlust, it left her feeling evil and dirty and ashamed, but that was not enough to kill the hunger that grew inside her.

Finally she remembered what Distanfae had said to her about telling him if she felt hungry, and she wondered whether this was what he meant. Had he intended for her to do this? Would he guess what she had done if she told him? Still, now that she connected his words, his orders, to her state of being, she could not hold back from telling him, except to decide that it would have to wait until after the crisis, lest she distract him at a critical moment.

Feeling more self-assured now that she at least had a plan regarding her unnatural hunger, and with the hope that Distanfae would be able to do something about it, she continued clearing the compound. Her mop-up had not lasted very long before she was recalled to the amphitheatre by Distanfae, where she found the wax thing blessedly gone.

Before Kliza and the Matron, she was ordered to give an account of all that she had slain, and she spent the next several minutes going over every kill. It was only now, as she continued to tell of those she had killed, that she realized that when she thought of some of those she had killed, the ones she had so reveled in, she could remember their names. It sent a chill of terror through her.

It was impossible, but she could not dwell on it, having to continue explaining those she had killed, though she did not say anything about relieving them of their magical items, and when all was complete, the Matron had bent her wrinkled lips upwards in a pleased smile, of all things!

That what she had done had made the old crone happy made Ranko feel dirtier still, as if it somehow made every kill a little worse, a heavier weight on her soul. She still remembered the child's body embraced by flames, flames that had come from her body, from her spirit.

She knew that if the old lady knew that she had taken pleasure in causing them such horrendous pain, it would have pleased her even more, and she considered again whether it was possible she could keep what had happened from Distanfae, but she knew it could not be.

Group leaders began coming to report, and soon it was confirmed that the House was once more clear of invaders.

There was a brief period of discussion as they examined various tokens the group leaders brought with them, and whether they were actually representative of the House that had attacked, or if they might not be false tokens meant to cause them to attack a stronger House and so be destroyed.

Ranko listened in mild interest as the numbers of the attackers were tallied and compared to the reported force levels of the various primary threats, the Houses that would be most likely to attempt such a move.

Finally they were released, and she followed Distanfae as he made his way back to their training chamber.

"We only have a short time. They will be monitoring us as soon as they get some privacy themselves."

Understanding his implicit command, Ranko quickly explained how events had suddenly moved out of control when exposed quicksilver through which she was attempted to drain magic had for the first time pierced living flesh, and the rush of pleasure and power that had resulted.

Distanfae considered her words briefly, then a smile slid across his face and Ranko shivered as she realized the implication. Far from being shocked or worried, Distanfae was excited by this new ability she had demonstrated, and would almost certainly want to test it out.

He had time for only a few quick questions before they sensed the scrying begin, and they had to shift to a less revealing discussion, but she understood the thrust of his question. Though she had been attempting to draw magical power, the fact that she got the same rush of pleasure from killing the slaves and fighters as from the wizards confirmed that it was not magic that she was draining from them, but something more universal.

Was it their ki? Ranko could hope so, but she rather feared that it was more fundamental still, that she had somehow consumed their very souls. As one who had been ensnared as an incorporeal soul after death herself, she had no room for philosophizing about the existence or absence thereof of souls. She knew that they were real, knew they could be intercepted on their way to an afterlife, if there was such a thing, by means of magic, and she had a dreadful certainty that this is precisely what she had done.

Certainly the fact that she knew their names was evidence in favor of her having consumed their memories, and while Happosai and Hinako had both sucked the ki from their victims, she had never heard them mention capturing any memories in that way.

When she finally returned to the relative privacy of her room, she found herself simultaneously relieved, dismayed, and appalled at her dismay at realizing that Sraelee had survived the attack. Though it was disturbing, it was nothing to the turmoil she was already experiencing about her actions during the conflict, so she forced herself past it.

Allowing Sraelee to draw her a bath, she slid into the water and slid into meditation, and began exploring what she had absorbed, mostly going into items that lacked an obvious elemental focus.

Looking at her powers in meditation was like looking at a pool of water into which someone had been dropping bits of other liquids, like dyes or food colorings. Some mixed readily, others less so, and beneath it all swirled the immense amethyst waters of her neutralized power. Unlike when she had merely absorbed a few spells, the droplets were far more varied and intricate, lacking the simple attributes that had made the association of spell and resultant energy so obvious before. More critically and disturbingly, there were chunks of color that looked nearly solid, that seemed to float on the surface, dimpling it in but not mixing.

As she slipped between these pooled energies, and sampled those which had no strands being drawn into the amethyst energy to be neutralized, she found herself experiencing brief flashes of memories that were not her own. It was made especially peculiar, however, in that each memory would bring up related memories, not for direct experience, but simply as relevant facts and events, that made it clear that even the memories she had not yet directly experienced had nonetheless made it into her form's memory storage.

Were their souls mixing with hers? That she might become as evil as so many of them had been was a sickening thought, and she wondered for some time whether she had any hope of reaching the end of her servitude as a person who would even seek to achieve the goals she currently held, as a person who would give everything, do everything, to save those she had loved, even if she then had to lose them.

She vainly sought to expunge some of these memories by drawing up the energy of them and putting it through her wand of water and hence into the waters of her bath, swirling the waters about in a passable imitation of a Western spa, something she had only had the opportunity to experience a few times before, while constraining them to remain within the tub.

Unfortunately, she found that even this usage of the energy brought the memories they contained to the forefront, though in this case it was somewhat felicitous, as she was treated to the memories of an early training session of a wizard struggling to learn the basics of manipulating the elements.

That was sufficient for her to recognize that this was a situation that could improve her ability to serve her lord. She exited the bath and made ready for bed. The necessity to feign sleep, at least for a reasonable period, was one of the more annoying aspects of Sraelee's presence most of the time, but at this time it served her purposes well.

Lying in the bed, she resumed her meditations, and proceeded to work her way through the memories, gaining experience both in what they had learned, and in manipulating the memories, finding related ones, and particularly in sorting them out into coherent threads of a single direction in time and a single individual, and so spent the night reliving the more notable and salient memories of those she had slain, along with quite a collection of less useful dross.

She came out of it in the morning with a nice collection of ideas to apply to her own weaving of the amethyst energy. While for the most part, the memories were not directly applicable to using her wands, since they were pre-formed spells and not subject to much in the way of changes, manipulating her amethyst energies to recreate spells was both excellent practice, and in the long term, would hopefully allow her to directly cast and thereby manipulate and alter, copies of the spell matrices in her wands and rings.

It was also akin to cleaning her room, as she separated and integrated the knotted masses of memories, they flattened and smoothed, and she was able to slowly clear away the lumps and unpleasant blobs that were clogging her core.

Though it felt wrong to her, to be stealing knowledge in this way, too much like the cheap tricks her fiancees and rivals would pull back in Nerima, her honor was in serving Distanfae well now, not in appeasing her own conscience. She had committed herself to doing what it took to fulfill her vows to him.

She realized that it was almost inevitable at this point that he would have her consume several more people in tests to determine what she was getting from them, so working out all the details she could now would hopefully minimize the number of such tests that needed to be done.

Of course, if the Matron found out what she could do, it would be just like her to demand that all future kills be done in this way to maximize the benefit to the House. Ranko was not sure what she would do if it came to such an end. She hated the Matron, but Kliza was no better as an alternative, and Houses simply were not ruled by men in this city, so plotting an overthrow to put Distanfae in as the Head of the House would only end in the House being a target for every other House in the city, and even she could not defend against such an enemy as a new weaponsmaster rather than a powerful magical artifact.

After confirming through the shadows that Distanfae was up and active and not currently being scryed, she slid through the shadows to him. Before they began, Distanfae warned her that she would be involved in a retributive attack, once they had confirmed which House had been involved. A failed strike against another House, one which did not succeed in eliminating the members of the House's blood, the members of the central family, would result in a protest before the Council of Heads, and the Houses would band together to destroy the failing House, as punishment for the failed attack, and House Distanfae would be expected to lead the strike.

The attack would probably not happen until the next day, or possibly the day after, so they had some time today to go over what she had collected.

Ranko began to explain in more detail, now that they were not expecting to be spied on at any moment, what had occurred the day before. She also began explaining what she had learned while processing their memories the night before, and with Distanfae's coaching, she attempted to cast some simple spells for the first time by replicating the methods of the casters in her memories.

She had a little success with the simplest cantrips, ones that needed nothing more than words or gestures. Beyond that, however, she found herself hampered by the limited senses of the people in her memories. They could not see the threads of the spells they cast, nor did they need to understand the forms the magic took when they cast them.

The shaping was done, at least in part, by ritual and physical components, and there were no simple clear analogs for her to follow. Replicating rote physical motions was certainly no hardship to one who had trained for so long as a martial artist. She might be able to do something with the physical components at some point in the future, but they were esoteric and highly varied, and apparently most wizards memorized a subset of their spells each day, and so knew which material items they would need for the casting, and could carry them.

For her to carry items she would have to abandon her ability to travel through stone, which was the only travel method she had that stood a significant chance of eluding detection, so duplicating the spells in that fashion did not seem to be a productive use of her time compared to mastering her internal weaves.

Not only were her wands inbuilt and easily triggered, but she could see their weaves, and as she got used to them, she could potentially duplicate the weave, and in the longer term, hopefully begin creating weaves herself, using the knowledge she learned from the wands, without the need for external components, gestures, words, and the like.

If she was right and all these things served to structure the magical weaves, and she could weave the strands of magic herself using her long developed skills in the use of ki, she should be able to bypass those crutches entirely.

This was somewhat confirmed when Distanfae revealed that it was not uncommon for the truly powerful older mages to have some spells known so well and so thoroughly understood that they could cast them on the fly, with no obvious external actions at all. Indeed, it was rumored that a certain infamous surface mage had protective spells that he kept up all day long, or at least, they always seemed to be active in the moment they were needed. Whether he could actually maintain them without end, or could cast them without the slightest bit of delay was a matter of some argument, albeit one that Distanfae did not care much about.

So they returned to the study and development of her wand skills. This time, he actually let her step up to summoning a more powerful elemental, starting with her earth wand, since as he said the more powerful elementals were among the few beings that could slow down even a powerful demon, such as the one she had seen summoned in the amphitheatre.

He also told her a little about the servant of the spider-goddess she had also observed, the melted wax thing that had gone up against the demon. None of her wands were for summoning demons or deific servants, but there was no guarantee that a weave in something she had picked up might not be.

Finally, after that bit of practice, they began going through the loot she had collected the day before, and hidden in his quarters. Even now she did not retrieve all of it, lest they be suddenly scryed and their loot observed and despoiled. Instead, she would draw a few things at a time through the shadows, and he would examine them.

Some he was able to identify, such as clothing that bore little more than what might be termed seamstressing spells, spellwork that caused it to adjust to fit the person that was waring it, or to repair minor rips and tears, or weapons enchanted for sharpness and strength. These were relatively useless to her, and he directed her to attempt to use these to practice using her quicksilver to consume the magic from them without absorbing them. She noted as she did so that it was not nearly as pleasurable an experience as drinking the souls of the attackers had been the day before.

The items she had held especial hope for Distanfae confirmed to be likely related to summoning, indeed, one of them was probably the very item that had summoned the demon the night before, though he could not be sure which, and these he set aside with the intent that she should absorb them, but at a later time, after he had set up to monitor the process more closely.

She had captured one of the snake-headed whips as well, and he looked at it for a long time, before shaking his head.

"I am deeply curious to find out if you can consume a divinely enchanted item, but I am afraid that it might tie you somehow to the service of that god or goddess, so if we ever try it, I will have to consider very carefully what token it should be. It certainly will not be hers. This will have to go to the Matron to be disposed of properly."

Other items of her collection were less easy to identify, amulets and rings, hair ornaments, daggers and swords and hammers with less obvious enchantments, and these were returned to their hiding place until they could be gone over in more detail.

There were also seven wands and three rods in the collection, and after a brief check to see if any were the sort that Distanfae wanted to hold back for himself, he had her absorb them directly, giving her a new collection of spell weaves to study. The rings would probably end up going the same way, but rings were trickier to identify than the wands, and while wands were generally purely wizarding, being effectively a means of storing and casting spells, rings and amulets were as often of religious significance as mystical, and could as easily hold a divine blessing or curse as a stored set of spells.

She conducted a quick examination, scanning the weaves. One, she was disappointed to note, appeared to be substantially similar to the fireball spell from the Elemental Wand of Fire, and was the only weave in that wand, so absorbing it had probably been a waste. She made a note to work on trying to find a way to see the weaves in an item without needing to absorb it.

The others were less obvious, though one bore some vague similarities to the summoning weaves in the elemental wands, and another had a portion that resembled the weave from his Ring of Flight, but not closely enough to expect that it was specifically flight related.

The rods were even more unfamiliar in the form of their weaves, and Distanfae informed her that they might have to be wielded like maces to activate some of their powers, or cast to the ground for others. If they needed to be cast to the ground, then it was likely that this power would only be available if Ranko was in the form of the rod and being wielded by someone else, since she could not cast part of herself down, and even then it might well fail, if it tried to change her form.

She practiced drawing the rods out a few times, reshaping them as closely as she could match her memory of them, trying to use only the substance that was originally part of them, something that had not been an issue with the wands. Generally, triggering a wand's effect caused it to come from whatever part of her was being pointed at something, drawing on her or her wielder's intent. If the rod's magic activated when it was used to attack, she was not sure if any attack would suffice, or only an attack that actually used part of the rod's original material. She was a little perturbed that he had revealed this complication only after having her absorb them, as she was a little worried that she might now trigger some magical effect anytime she punched or kicked something or someone.

She was certainly not going to attempt it on him, and while she could summon those snakes and scorpions, she suspected they might not appreciate being summoned just to get beaten up, so unless Distanfae actually ordered her to, she was not likely to do that. She was also not going to suggest testing it on someone else, since as weapons the effects would likely be harmful, she would probably end up killing or maiming someone who was already unlucky enough to be a slave of the House. If she could not attempt to free them, she could at least not act to make their lives worse.

She described them as best she could to him, explaining what they resembled, and what they did not.

"Set aside the one that looks like a fireball, as that is most likely what it is. A bit of a waste, really, but if you can perceive any differences, it may help you learn the spells a bit better. Bring out one of the others." He provided her with a wooden target, before going to stand behind her, setting up a shield for himself.

She drew out one of the wands, and finding it had only one weave in it, pointed it at the target and triggered the effect. A brilliantly white light shone forth in a beam from the tip of the wand to the target, obliterating the target into a mass of shards and splinters.

Distanfae groaned, covering his eyes as they burned at the sudden brightness, but gestured at the target, and it reassembled. "Painful," he commented. "Even if the damage was not significant, it could be useful against a large group, blinding them all, but do not use it when we go to crush the invading house. Too much chance it would blind our own troops. No good for quiet infiltration, either."

Ranko nodded. It had not been exactly loud, though it had not been silent. The shattering of the target had made more noise than the beam itself, and the sound of the beam was hard to put to words, almost a hissing sound, but not quite. As if it was boiling the air as it passed, maybe. Definitely not a tool for stealth. She spent a moment examining the weave, making sure that she would recognize it in the future so as to avoid using it unintentionally, then withdrew the wand and brought out another, glancing at Distanfae for agreement.

He nodded, and she felt the weave of it. She tried to activate the weave, but though she poured power into it, it did nothing, the power just swirling in the weave. "It is not working." She shook the wand experimentally, but there was no change.

"Unusual," Distanfae commented, his eyes narrowing in thought. He pressed his fingers together, then snapped his fingers suddenly. "Ah, I might have it." He conjured a rat. "Try touching the wand to the rat."

The rat glowed with a much softer white light than the searing beam of the last one, but there was no other apparent effect. "Wands of touch spells are much less common," he explained, "but they are sometimes made. From the white light, maybe a healing effect?" He cast a bolt of energy at the rat, shattering its leg and mangling its side. "Try it again," he instructed her, as the broken animal lay still, nearly dead.

She refilled the weave, and touched the rat again. The damage visibly reversed, the rat squeaking as its leg straightened, and the skin along its side came back together. The hair that had been burned away did not return, leaving it with a bare patch, but it was clearly healthy again.

She withdrew the wand, and pulled out another. This one caused the target to lift into the air slightly, and she found she could raise and lower it, though she could not direct it in any other direction.

Distanfae looked vaguely disgusted. "Levitation," he commented, "a banal spell of little value, it is hard to believe the idiocy that resulted in someone commissioning a wand of it. It only works on willing targets, so don't bother trying to use it in a fight. Not nearly as useful as a flight spell or mount, and only lasts a few minutes anyway. A waste of good materials, that wand."

The next wand refused to cast against the target, but when cast on the rat, a light struck the rat, but to no apparent effect. Distanfae had her try again several times, in case it was just a fluke failure, but the spell continued to have no noticeable effect.

The wand after that sent the rat squealing and running away to scrabble at the door as if in terror, while Distanfae grimaced uncomfortably. "Fear effect," he said shortly. "Indiscriminate, useful to break up pursuit, but don't use it in a fight with allies. It won't necessarily affect everyone the same way."

Distanfae dismissed the rat and conjured another one for her to test her last wand on, after it also failed to cast against the target. To her minor relief, it had no apparent effect on the rat either.

"Are the weaves of those two wands that will not cast on wood, but do nothing to rats the same?" Distanfae watched curiously as she compared them. She shook her head.

"They don't look the same at all."

"Well, one or the other might be something with a targeted creature, but that only affects a particular sub-type, such as the undead, or demons, devils, that type of limitation is not unknown."

She shrugged. "Maybe. It did not feel like it was not working, though." Inside, she was wondering about what he meant by undead. Was that not sort of what she was? Did he mean that some of them might work on things like her? Or did he mean movie undead, zombies and vampires and such? Were they real?

She did not ask, preferring not to know. After all, even if he told her they were, until she saw them for herself, it could still be that he was mistaken, or was just credulous of claims other people had made in encountering them.

"Try one of the rods on the rat," he ordered, and Ranko cast the levitation weave at the rat from her outstretched finger, not bothering to produce the wand, and lifted it to where she did not need to kneel to strike it. A rod formed in her grasp, and she struck the rat lightly with it.

As it turned out, the lightness did not matter. The rat visibly withered, its muscles shrinking away. It struggled weakly for air for a moment, not even strong enough to fill its lungs, and expired.

"That looked like, hmm... either withering, or life drain," he said, prodding at the floating dead rat before vanishing it. Another one appeared before her, but the next two rods did nothing. Well, not truly nothing - they killed the rats, since it apparently demanded a true strike to activate effects and not merely a tap, so Distanfae was not satisfied with a gentle prod. But there were no other visible effects from them.

He looked ready to dismiss her, then paused. "I gave you the ring of Flight to emulate a Drow noble's ability to levitate. Your new wand of levitation is more suited to duplicating that without revealing additional abilities; see if you can cast the weave on yourself."

Ranko nodded, and focusing on the weave, touched her fingers against her body, and cast through it. She lifted smoothly, easily from the ground, rose to touch the ceiling, and descended again.

"Excellent. Use that in future when pretending to be Drow. Go on now, I need to think about this, and which of these you should be safe to reveal in the next fight."

Ranko slid back through the shadows to her room, lurking in them for a moment to determine where Sraelee was. Finding her in the room tidying up, Ranko slid into the corridor and up it until she found a well shadowed alcove, into which she stepped, and continued down the corridor where she entered her rooms through the door.

She felt a little bad again, seeing the girl with her woven necklace and remembering how she had felt on discovering that she had survived the battle. It was not honorable to wish ill on others, and she made up her mind to think of something nice to do for Sraelee and to do it.

"Good day, Sraelee," she said as she closed the door behind her. Sralee sprang up from the floor, a dusting rag in her hand and bobbed her head nervously. "Good day, mistress."

Ranko moved on into the room, paying attention to Sraelee from the corner of her eye. As she expected, much of Sraelee's nervousness eased when she was not the focus of Ranko's attention, presumably because she was not as likely to be punished when no-one was watching her. That might indicate that she had not actually served under the two elder Vitrue, who had that scrying magic that bugged Distanfae so much. Or it might just indicate they did not bother using it against menial staff.

Ranko settled on to the bed and returned to her meditation. She was particularly curious about the two white lights she had produced, one that was healing, and the other destructive. She drew up a strand of her magic and fed it through the healing wand, trying to let it color it the way her elemental wands did. It took a bit of playing around before she found a path she could send magic on through the weave and out again, but she was finally able to draw out the white energy.

Holding the white aloof from the others in her pool for the time being, she went through the adjustment process with the destructive white beam. When she finished, she found she could not tell the difference in the two pools of white energy, and when allowed to mix, they merged into one blob with no sign of swirls of mixing color, nor when pulled apart was there any overriding tendency to separate into two of the same size. Whatever the underlying element or concept was, it was apparently identical. Interesting.

She pulled up some fire magic and plucked off a bit of the white magic and mixed the two to see what would happen. The blob of fire magic, normally a fiery red-orange, rather than mellowing to a pink or light red, simply became brighter, gleaming rather like the point of fiery light that was the compressed form of the fireball spell before it detonated.

When she tried the same thing with magic from the earth wand, she got a brilliant green magic that surged and frothed, swirling, expanding in little tendrils and then relaxing again. She drew it and the red spark down into her purple quicksilver energy, subsuming and consuming them rather than leaving them free in her pool. She kept the pool of white energy, though, planning on playing with it later.

Much like her ring of magic missiles, running magic through the wand of levitation caused no change at all. The wand of fear produced a disgusting, oily black magic that she wanted to expel rather than consume. Instead, she ran it through the healing wand, expecting that to turn it to the more comfortable white energy. Instead, it came out looking raw once more. Disturbed that she might have damaged her healing wand, she quickly poured more magic through the wand, which came out as white as when she had first done it.

Perhaps, then, they were some form of opposites? She ran some of the white energy through the wand of fear, and it too lost the white qualities, and looked like ordinary magic. Well, her ordinary magic, anyway, the purple stuff from her quicksilver. She did not know what truly ordinary magic looked like in this weird quicksilver view of pooling energies.

Tired of being static, Ranko rose from the bed, noted that Sraelee had retreated to her own room to give her peace as she lay, and slipped out the door. She returned to that alcove, and moved through the shadows to one of the rooms she had passed in her rampage through the halls, and had noted as being empty. It was not merely empty as in unoccupied, but empty as in nothing but bare walls.

The door was shut where it had been open when she had last passed it, but there was no other sign of activity there, and it remained empty, which suited her just fine.

Drawing out a katana-styled blade, and checking to be sure she was not being observed by scrying spells, Ranko began a kata. Quicksilver flowed up from her pool and down into her limbs, substituting for ki to allow her to move as she remembered, with crisp speed and flowing movements. Pulling at the white energy, she slid it into the blade, watching to see how it showed in normal sight. The blade did not glow, exactly, but it seemed to leave a shimmering white afterimage, a visually pleasing effect whether it did anything interesting or not.

She pumped in the red energy, only then noticing that somewhere along the line, she had started perceiving colors to the energies that at first she had only noted as being cool, or spicy and fast flowing, or sluggish. She was not sure what caused that, precisely, whether it was because she know knew what they were associated with and so her mind was applying that to interpreting the imagery, or whether they had gained colors that they had not previously had. The blade burst into red fire, leaving a trail of rising flames when she swished it about. Pushing the energy up until only the top half had red energy likewise limited the flames on the sword.

She drew back the flames and substituted the cool energy of the Wand of Elemental Water, and a watery seeming blueness surrounded the blade, though it was obviously not truly water, as nothing was dripping from the sword. She slid in air, as she had done once before, and the blade froze over as she stepped into the next move of the kata.

Back and forth she changed the energies, with this and that interesting effect, until she tried the combination of earth and white that had given her the green energies. The green energy that had surrounded the sword then had looked like tendrils of vines or roots wrapped about the blade, but the very next move of the kata, when she swung the blade down, literal roots had surged forth, anchoring into the walls as though an old tree had slowly grown there, working and worming its way in over centuries.

She pulled the energy back immediately, but the damage was done, and the root system and the stunted trunk of some sort of plant remained. As she watched in shock, a tiny bud swelled and burst, a flower bloomed and died in seconds, and tiny petals fell.

Vengeance

Not yet posted.