The Great Pandemonium: The Direction of the Dawning Sun

Act I. Akkali's Reckoning

“Stilled were the songs, when Ax did fall,
and the City became but a dream.
The ash-in-born from the Leilen-well
were cast to the Shackle and to the sea.”

—The Ash-in-born, traditional Enkiri verse, as collected by Teren Isyleid

Act I. Akkali's Reckoning

If one good thing could be said of the dripping sound coming from the leaky pipe in the wine cellar, it was that it kept perfect time.

Every three hundred drips the guard would walk past the door. Every eighteen hundred drips the clock tower down the street would ring out the half-hour. The plopping of the fat droplets onto the cold limestone floor echoed in the cellar and could be heard throughout the basement of the manor. If one knew what to listen for, they would always know how much time had gone by.

For days the aching pains coming from the markings that ran down Akkali's body had not ceased. Each heartbeat pushed liquid fire through them, though their color was as icy white as mountaintop snow. The throbbing eventually synced with the dripping water, which made it easier to ignore, since burying the constant plop-plop-plop of the pipe in the white noise at the back of her mind was a skill she had kept up for years. Still, the dripping did not cause her pain. At dawn she could leave the cellar and the leaky pipe behind.

The pain would come with her, lurking in the corners of her consciousness where she forced it to hide, always waiting for her to give in and let it consume her. If she went down that path, if she let the pain govern her mind, she knew she would never come back. That madness would eat her alive from within was the only kind of death she truly feared.

One of us has to keep it together, right, Teren? Won't do to have us both go mad.

Akkali sat in silence just beyond the sliver of lamplight that leaked in beneath the cellar door. Banished there to keep her away from the other slaves at night she found the wine racks to be piss poor company, especially since she would not let herself get drunk. It was the only room in the manor that had walls thick enough to contain her—just in case the experiments went awry and she exploded due to some magical miscalculation on her master's part.

Or worse, decided to make something explode. Like the head of one of the passing guards, perhaps...

Would you like some brain matter with your chardonnay, mistress?

Silently laughing off her own suggestion, she simply sat and waited in the darkness with patience learned over a decade of torment. The guards would give up actually guarding the door in another few thousand drips and spend the entire night drinking and gamboling down the hall. They knew none of the lazy Enkiri would try anything, not with the coronation coming up. They knew that the Enkiri nowhere near that smart.

Akkali knew that they were fools. And very soon, they would be dead fools.

Once they settled in for their nightly game of Iron Maid she would be able to make her move. Absorbed in betting with sticks in place of coin they were not allowed to carry at night—just in case slaves broke free, they at least would not have any of the nobility's money to escape with—none of the bastards would see it coming.

Expertly removing the cork from the wine bottle pinned between her knees, she dumped out just enough of the liquid to make room for her concoction. She upended a small vial of tasteless liquid into the bottle and then pushed the cork back in just far enough to make it look like it had never been opened. Setting it down on the ground in front of her, she crossed her legs and continued to wait.