A Ghost in the House of Iron

Prologue

TEN YEARS AGO

Rogemere slowed in his brisk walk through the temple to glance up at the glittering mosaic on the ceiling above him. There she was, arms spread in a gesture of calm benevolence, golden rays branching out from her like the beacon of hope and love she claimed to be. The goddess, as they'd chosen to call her. 

Once, he'd ruled a vast empire. Then this wandering peasant strode into his shining city, bronze skin glowing beneath her worn rags, and took it all away from him. 

Centuries ago, he'd made the mistake of underestimating the power of stories. Of belief. People were easily fooled. He'd learned that after executing that silver-eyed demon with her freakish magics. It was for their protection, and yet his subjects had turned against him. They were under her thrall, and chose their new “goddess” over him, their beloved emperor. 

Rogemere liked to think he learned from his mistakes. Even in death, she was his greatest enemy, his defeat. But now she was his greatest tool of mass persuasion. In a kingdom half a world away, he used the stories of her to build himself a new kind of empire, a new identity. He’d founded this church to steal her ever-growing influence away from her, take that power for himself. 

Hidden within this great temple where he reigned as High Priest, there was a laboratory. Separate from his newly built University buildings with their lecture halls and libraries, this was where true research was conducted. Where he delved into the dark forces of magic, entered trances during dangerous rituals, pushed himself and his mana capacity in ways he'd never allow of his students. This room was only for him. And one other. Her name was Vexia.

Rogemere glanced behind him to make sure he was alone before tapping his staff on the empty wall at the very back of the main hall, behind the stage. Where the crimson gemstone at the end of his staff touched the pale marble, a red glow seeped into the wall, spreading outward to become the soft outline of a door. He walked through, and the hazy outline vanished behind him, leaving a solid wall once more.

Inside, the laboratory was dark, lit only by small, eerie blue fires Vexia was using for some of her experiments. Above the controlled flames, various gases swirled in vials, and liquids bubbled in cast iron cauldrons.

"Ree-ohlnum," Rogemere said, and a reddish glow spread from the end of his staff throughout the room.

A woman blinked owlishly up at him from where she was hunched beside one of the long counters.

"You forget, my dear," he said to her, "I am not a creature of the dark, like you."

She chuckled softly, dipping her head back to her work as her teeth flashed in a smile. "If you'd spend more time with me, you would be," she said. "I don't know how you go out there every day. It's so bright and loud."

Rogemere stepped up behind her and wrapped his free arm gently around Vexia's delicate body, letting it rest on the roundness of her pregnant belly. She moved as though it wasn't there, was just an occasional distraction from her ever-pressing work, but when he laid his warm hand against her robes, over that newly stretched skin beneath, she looked up at him with a softness in her eyes he wasn't used to seeing.

"She's sleeping," Vexia whispered. "Thank the goddess for that. Her kicking was fierce, earlier. Was just about to drive me mad."

"Oh, I believe it is too late for that." Rogemere smiled.

Vexia giggled and ran her hands through her wild mane of brown hair. "Let me show you what I've done!" she said. "I've gotten so close. You can be here to see if it finally works!"

She led him to the counter at the far side of the room, draped in thick shadows. Strapped down the counter's slick surface were odd, gangly forms. Inhuman bodies, miniature and skeleton-thin, limbs splayed at bizarre angles. In the light of the flickering blue flames and soft crimson glow the unusual hues of their features were even harder to define. Skin rough and brown like tree bark, spiky green protrusions like the leaves of a plant, some so pale and effervescent they seemed more ghost than tangible thing. Some of the creatures, too tiny to be laid out like human corpses on funeral altars, were kept instead in jars, small glass prisons for squirming fae vermin.

"Look!" Vexia breathed, pointing to one of her subjects. A wooden stake had been shoved through the little monster, right in the center of its human-like torso, but the creature still groaned quietly, fingers twitching and head flopping with occasional throes of pain. Rogemere recognized its ugly, wrinkled features for those of a common boggart, pesky things who lived like parasites in the homes of humans, feeding off food scraps and stealing common household items.

"I'm not sure what I'm seeing, my dear," Rogemere said. "Is there something special about this... thing?"

"No, no, of course not," Vexia said. "I've told you my theory, remember? That every faerie, even the rather useless ones like this poor thing, are tapped into something else. That's how they get their weird little magics. I'm sure of it! They're not like us. They're not limited by their pathetic, fragile bodies. And this time, I think I figured it out... A way to get that power they have. All of it." She stared at him with those huge round eyes and beamed.

"Show me," he said, with hunger.

Vexia wiggled with excitement and reached down below her protruding belly to pull a wand out of a pocket in her robe. Rogemere noticed she had scratched some symbols into this wand, though they were hard to make out in the murky light of the laboratory. She waved above the dying boggart and spit out a few unfamiliar words. The etchings on the wand began to glow a pond-scum green, and he watched as the same symbols shone brightly in the wooden stake she had stabbed into the creature's chest. Wind that didn't touch him whipped through Vexia's tangled hair, pulled at her robes so that the iron links sewn into them jingled like frantic music.

"See?" she said to him. "It's working! I knew it would work!"

Then her head snapped back, muscles of her neck stretched taut, and her eyes began to shine with blinding green light. Vexia started to scream, a high-pitched wail of agony. Somehow, to Rogemere, her voice sounded like it was coming from miles away. He reached out to her, but found that even though she was right there, he couldn't seem to touch her.

"No!" Rogemere yelled, struggling against this unexplainable invisible force. He wanted to snatch the wand from her hand, wrap her into his arms. But though he stood right beside her, she was always just out of reach, slipping from his desperate grasp.

Her scream seemed to go on forever. Rogemere's eyes began to water from squinting into the light that shone out of Vexia's gaze. But then slowly, the light began to fade. She collapsed, and he swooped in just in time to catch her slumped form, his staff clattering to the floor.

"Vexia. My dear," he held her, sweeping her hair from her face while he murmured her name.

She blinked up at him, and he felt, somehow, that he was looking into the eyes of a stranger. Her bleary stare was a window into somewhere else, a realm of swirling chaos and ancient, unimaginable forces.

"Vexia," he said. "Come back to me. I'm right here. Come back."

"Vexia," she repeated, her voice not her own, but an odd, melodic echo. She grinned up at him, and there was something alien in the twist of that smile, something wicked. Then she began to laugh.