Brass Automaton

03 - Price of Beauty

John laid in the hay feeling more exhausted than he ever had before. He wasn't sure he could move again even if the brass automaton burst through the barn wall. He looked uneasily at the barn wall again, uncertain just how much probability there was in his errant thought. Reese seemed to read as mind, and said, "We should be safe here for the night. If nothing else we likely forced it to feed."

John remembered something about it feeding on blood, and thought better of asking for further details. He had only ever known Reese as his tutor, but she was like a knight of the realm jumping off the page and into the flesh.

"How did you know there would be quicksand in the clearing?" John finally asked. The weight of their second close escape ran through his mind over and over again.

"I put it there," she answered simply, before dashing up the ladder to recheck the barn's loft.

He followed her with his eyes. "But, then why didn't he follow us around the edge of the clearing?"

Reese kicked a pile of hay down on him and with a smile replied, "Because it always follows in a straight line."

John blinked as he processed her statement. "And what about the-"

"You ask a lot of questions, John," she interrupted in a firm voice. "Maybe you should be resting."

"And that's another thing," he insisted. "How are you still so energetic? Especially since you're a-" John stopped talking as abruptly as she had stopped moving, gulping at her stare.

"Only a woman?" she asked quietly.

"Well..." John answered, suddenly taking a keen interest in a course strand of hay.

Reese threw up her arms, let out an exasperated sigh, and climbed down the ladder. "Fine," she said in a huff, "after all, it's you it wants to kill, not me. I guess you've earned the full story."

John realized it had only been a matter of hours since he had demanded to know that story. Now the thought of it turned his stomach.

Reese snorted at his discomfort before starting, "Decades hence, the evil queen will not yet be a queen, but she will have given herself wholly to evil magick. She came to the castle in the guise of an old crone during a time of wary peace. We had been at war with our neighbors, the Rooskye, for generations. We didn't so much have a truce with them, as that all their border incursions simply stopped.

"The main connector to our countries was The Bridge, spanning the deep, and cold, Allooashinn River. For three years no one from Rooskye had come over it, and no from Oossah who dared to cross had ever returned. No one that is, until she came across, appearing out of the fog on a sickly mare. It collapsed under her as soon as it reached Oossah soil, and she begged the guards for aid. Soon enough she was telling her story in the Capitol to the Council of Nine."

John thought he heard a faint rustling outside, but he brushed it off as one of the farm animals. The brass automaton was many things, but quiet was not one of them, and he was enraptured by Reese's tale.

"She had a silver hand mirror with her, which one of the Council of Nine identified as belonging to the Rooskye royal family. She claimed to have been one of the royal nannies, and, even more shocking the only surviving Rooskye left!"

"You mean of the royal house, don't you?" asked John incredulously.

"No, of all the Rooskye. She described in detail the Oossah magical mirror, and then showed them that the silver hand mirror was of similar magick."

"But the magic mirror was shattered centuries ago! Only seven fragments still survive."

"Magick obeys no law save its own. Not even time. The mirror of legend during this time is yet whole. It's not until it's later shattered that the breaking spans through all of time."

"But-" John stuttered. "That is-" he failed again to form a coherent sentence.

"Don't," Reese demanded, "it just is." Her stern face softened. "Whether it makes sense to any save magick matters not."

John shook his head and pondered Reese's statement. He wondered just how many animals the farm must have when he heard more shuffling outside. Reese continued, her eyes looking up in remembrance, "She showed an invading horde in the mirror. The Tenyks. Once men, twisted by dark magick into slavering, bloodthirsty savages, closer in mind to beasts than man."

"The council panicked, of course, as they recognized the magnitude of the threat. They could clearly see in the mirror that the Tenyks were mere days away from Oossah. They knew there was not enough time for them to marshal the countryside and ready defenders before the evil horde arrived. So, when the crone offered them a solution, they leapt for it.

"They took her to the magic mirror where she used her magick to connect to every reflection throughout the land. Whether it was a mirror, still water, or a shiny blade, her visage was seen. Just as she was about to call every male in Oossah to arms, her form changed before the Council of Nine's eyes. She raised from her stoop, her warts and lesions gave way to smooth, unblemished skin, and the years melted away from her face until it was beautiful beyond compare."

"Every man in the room fell into a dark swoon for her, as did every man in all of Oossah who saw her reflection. Their wills became lost in their darkened lust for her beauty, and she easily added them to her army."

"She had an army, too?" asked John, feeling even more fright.

"Of course," replied Reese, cocking her head, "Who else would the Tenyks be?"

Before John could answer the door and windows to the barn burst open, giving way to snarling, mindless men in mismatched black armor.

"Tenyks!" Reese shouted, "Quick John, to the loft!"