Chapter 1: Tell Me Lies
Part I: Tell Me Lies
Little Lies, Fleetwood Mac
France, 1763
Rose was gone.
It was for the best, but now he had a thousand things to do, loose ends to tie up, projects to oversee. It was easier, when Rose was here, for him to think, to focus, but it was for the best that Rose was gone. There was only the sound of his boots hitting the ground, crunching the snow, his laboured breathing hanging in the air for a moment before vanishing. Eventually, Jean would find out what he’d done, and there’d undoubtedly be hell to pay. With any luck, it’d be someone else’s hell.
It was the only plan Ezio could come up with. Jean wanted Rose. Jean’s last wife had turned up somewhere out in the rural countryside, her skull bashed in and the scavengers already halfway through picking her bones clean. His wives before her, two of them, had similar fates, and the moment Jean Dussault decided he wanted Rose, Ezio had already decided he wasn’t getting Rose. That was as complicated as that needed to be.
They were running, instead. Ezio had already sent Rose ahead of him. If Jean came by before they were ready, Ezio would much rather the idiot found him and not Rose. He needed to go back to the farm, get their parents ready to go, send the livestock somewhere… packing didn’t even matter. Jean paid so little for managing his lands that they’d have better luck working anywhere else, no doubt. What little they had could be replaced, and it wasn’t important enough.
All Ezio was concerned about was making sure the lives were seen to. The livestock were half meant to eventually be butchered and half for some other purpose, but they were still living creatures, and Ezio saw no reason to abandon them, not over Jean Dussault.
He already hated that name, but he had a feeling he may later hate it more.
Ezio slowed down as he came closer to the farm. He could see the smoke from the chimney. He glanced over one shoulder, skirting around the fence. One hand moved to open the gate. Someone’s hand grabbed his; Ezio loosed a soft gasp and started slightly, grey eyes flicking up to meet blue ones.
Jean.
“Rosalie was supposed to meet me earlier this afternoon,” Jean said, in his typical nasally tone. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
Ezio’s gaze steeled, some of the tension in his shoulders relaxing. “I wouldn’t,” Ezio answered. But of course he knew. Rose was his twin, they shared everything with one another, and Rose’s panic over that meeting may or may not have been the catalyst for all of this. This was a bit earlier for Jean to come snooping around. That was why he wanted Rose gone first. “Rose was here this afternoon. She should’ve met you.”
“Don’t lie to me, boy,” Jean said, half snarling. “Rosalie tells you everything. So of course, one would presume she told you about this, and, where exactly she’s hiding.”
“Even if I did know,” Ezio answered, eyes steeling even more, “I wouldn’t tell you anything.”
Jean’s gaze narrowed, a puff of air releasing. It sounded annoyed, and this was the part where Ezio, if he was smart, would backtrack and change his mind. No one had ever said Ezio had a habit of doing the smart thing. He tended to do the right thing, instead, or at least, whatever kept Rose safer. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” Jean said smoothly. “I have ways of making you talk, whether you want to or not. I’d suggest, for your own sake, you knock this off. Where is Rose?”
Oh, Ezio knew that. It was no secret, though most of Mortain liked to pretend they had no idea. It was more pleasant that way. There were very few questions as to what had gotten hold of Jean’s wives, and mostly, those questions were uttered merely to keep Jean’s eyes off whoever was spreading his business around, not because anyone believed them.
He had a reason not to bend.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Ezio said, defiantly.
Jean snorted, his weight shifting. “We can fix that character flaw,” he answered, “given enough time. This is your last chance, de Lorraine. Where is Rose?”
He said that like it was supposed to change his mind. Ezio would never change his mind, never. There was never an instance before, and would never be an instance in future, that Ezio had put himself before Rose. This snivelling little shit wasn’t going to change that.
Ezio’s nose twitched, nostrils flaring in indignance. How dare he think Ezio would turn on his own twin so easily? The moment Jean had taken his hands, Ezio had accepted he likely wasn’t going to walk away from this alive.
But, Rose would be safe. Rose would be long out of France. It was worth it.
With that, Ezio’s nose and lips twitched one more time, and he drew his head back, snatching his hands out of Jean’s, and spat at his boots. “I would rather die than tell you anything,” Ezio said, his tone low and snarling. He was definitely going to die for this. “No one gets to Rose without going through me first.” And that was true, wasn’t it? It was always Ezio fighting for Rose. That much, clearly, had not changed.
Jean blinked slowly, his weight shifting again, head tilting back. He looked like he needed a large cup of coffee, or something. Good. Ezio had irritated him. If Ezio knew anything about men, it was that when they were irritated, they were paying attention. The more time Jean spent on Ezio, the more time Rose had to get away.
“That’s fine,” Jean said. “We can arrange that.” Jean shuffled to one side, and for a moment, Ezio was confused.
He picked up one of the firewood logs off the stack by the fence, tossed it in his hand, and then moved back to Ezio. The boy, and he was a boy, loosed another startled gasp, as Jean raised the log and slammed it into the side of his head. It’d be a few years before Ezio finally remembered spitting at Jean’s boots.
Power comes at a price. In your shadow, he will grow stronger, until one day, the shadow he casts is darker than yours. And then, where there were two shadows, only his will remain. You will have what you want, until the day comes that the shadow comes to destroy you.
Many years ago, now, some say hundreds, some surmise over a thousand, Magic Realm was created. Humans, of course, always are afraid of things they do not understand, wish to destroy things that are not like them, because different is strange and dangerous, and none were more strange and dangerous than spellcasters. Witches, warlocks, mages; humans have many names for spellcasters, and which name an individual uses is variant. Some prefer spellcaster, some would rather be called witch.
In ancient times, witches were the voices of the planet, the children of the forest, those who knew the natural world and how to care for it better than anyone else. The witches communed with the nature spirits with intent of forging lasting mutual relationships between those nature spirits and their tribes. The people loved their spellcasters, because through their spellcasters, they had knowledge, prosperity, and peace.
However, as the world began to change, so too had the peoples’ ideas and perceptions of spellcasters, and magic as a whole. It began to be feared, magic, seen as something too vast and powerful to control, too chaotic. In time, spellcasters and their magic began to be driven out of villages and towns, and then, humans began to become violent towards them.
Several old, and powerful, magical lineages, the Five Families, came together seeking a solution, and a way of protecting and preserving the magical arts and bloodlines. Together, they designed and built a new world within a different dimension, free of human presence, where those of magical blood could freely learn and teach magic, watched over by the powerful All.
But this peace was, unfortunately, not to last.
Many years later, long after the Five Families have, in some cases, died out, blooded out, or at least vanished from public view, the Magic Realm, watched over by the three Sages, began to fall apart. Some call it a curse, others call it an inevitability, but a strange vortex has begun to tear at the fabric of Magic Realm’s reality. The Sages, thus far, have managed to keep it steady, and prevent the vortex from tearing its way too far into the heart of Magic Realm, but the spellcasters are scared. This cannot last forever, and though the Sages insist otherwise, everyone knows the truth.
Magic Realm is doomed.
Worse, still, some speak of a screeching, so grating it is said to drive those who hear it temporarily insane, from somewhere deep within the furthest reaches of Magic Realm. No one knows what it is, or why it is heard, only that it is.
But some speak not of a grating screech, but of a beautiful, and mournful, song, crying for help. Whatever it is, only some can hear this song rather than the screech, and those that hear the song may yet hold the key to unlock the secrets of Magic Realm, and the vortex, that have been buried for centuries.
But what will they unbury? And what will unburying it destroy?
