The Tale of Amaretto

Twenty-Fifth Grain

In Which a Plan is Discussed and Weapons Arranged...

Amaretto took a deep breath and then said, "Aunt Katherine, since we are going into a place of science and technology, do you not think that we should use magic to break apart its evil?" Amaretto tried to pitch her voice so that it sounded dramatic, but she wasn't sure if it even sounded like that.

Katherine gave her a strange look and then furrowed her eyebrows. "Well it would be a little ironic if that were to happen and be the case..." Her aunt trailed off at what seemed to be just the right point, the confused look still in her eye.

Amaretto smirked and then said, "By the powers of this ring, I am sure that I could use the spirits of the earth to do my bidding and on top of that, I would be able to forge a way into the Cloister." Amaretto held up the pearl ring that Tempus gave her and understanding seemed to dawn across Katherine's face.

"You can't be serious! That ring is as of yet untested. We don't even know if it has been properly blessed!" Amaretto smiled at her aunt's theatrics. If there was anyone who should have been an actor, it should have been Katherine. Amaretto decided that once this was over, she would ask if she had ever done any acting. It was entirely possible that she had, but she might have had a different face. Or would she have a different face? Were fairy godmothers allowed to change their disguise at whim?

She pushed the train of thought out of her head and then said, "The ring was blessed, but we just have to make sure to appease it correctly."

Alice turned to look at Amaretto and there appeared to be a hunger in her eyes. "You have a magic ring and you never told us? How could you have kept such a thing secret?"

Amaretto turned away and tried to gently shield the ring from prying eyes, trying her best to look ashamed. "I know that you and Johanna practice magic, and even get the chance to speak with angels, but the work that you do could be seen as inspired by the church. If I were to reveal this ring, there is the chance that I could be burned for heresy." She tried to coyly look up through her eyelashes and her hair, which had dramatically covered her face.

When she looked at the women on the other side of the carriage, she realized that it had worked. They were buying it!

Alice looked at her and then said, "Well then, what is this about the spirits of the earth?"

Katherine shook her head. "You have to promise that nothing happens to her. You have to protect her no matter what happens."

Alice nodded her head vigorously. "Of course ol' girl, what do take me for?"

Katherine said nothing in response, but Amaretto knew that if she could have, she would have reached out and slapped Alice right then and there.

Johanna was the one to break the silence however after a moment. "There's the Cloister right now." Amaretto spun towards the small carriage window to see what the Cloisters looked like.

Rising up in the distance, Amaretto saw what her Aunt had been talking about. Tall Gothic steeples rose form a church like front. The main building was ingenuity itself, turned upon itself like a large octagonal house with five floors. On each side, there were long hallways with flying buttresses elegantly winging the hallways off of the ground as the halls were suspended in mid air and leading to towers on either side of the cathedral like building. The towers spun each other and seemed to have spokes that branched off into smaller towers that were gathered haphazardly to the small clusters on both sides.

The towers rose brightly into the sky and along with them, smoke clouded the sky in dense clouds. Amaretto stared in wonder at the towers as they rose into the sky, piercing the smoke, only to be enveloped again. The entirety of the Cloister of Science was a grand architectural design of metal and stone and haphazard angles and architecture, and somewhere, Amaretto marveled at the fact that this world, which was so different than her own, was so elegant and yet so wild in something as simplistic as styling a building.