CALAMITY, MASSACRE, TYRANT
North and East Amaris were lawless. The air stank of spilled wine and drugs and Magic. When Esme rubbed her fingers together, a sheen of filth coated them.
At the castle gates, her magical enigma, six Wraiths, and her promised two hundred Valosians stood in the courtyard, waiting. She put on her most authoritative voice and addressed them.
“Our prerogative tonight is simple,” she said to the rows of men.
“Close the illegal fighting rings throughout the Hand and Head and return all nobles to their homes. Merchants and peasants will be taken back to the Stomach and Foot.” There were several large carriages, perfect for hauling half-dead rich people back to their estates.
“After that, we will move to the Stomach, closing the pits there, and finally to the Foot, to those pits. There are ten pits that need closing. You have all been briefed on the maps, yes?” Sturdy nods.
“Good. Our citizens may be unwilling to comply tonight. They may lash out. Please do your best to refrain from hurting any of them, even if they should strike you first.”
“Even peasants, ma’am?” one man asked, gripping his sword a bit too tightly.
“If one of you so much as kills a rat, I’ll take your hands off,” Esme snapped.
The man glowered and dipped his head.
“You,” she said, sectioning out about half of the men, “will go north. You,” she said to the rest, “east. You will be finished in two hours, and then we will move.”
“Yes, ma’am!” the men saluted her, separating themselves on her order. The leaders of each group marched their men into the city. All that remained behind the gates were the Wraiths and her nameless man.
“Who’s watching who?” Samander asked, turning to her.
“Sam, above the east,” Esme said. “When they’re done, swing south. I don’t trust those men any farther than I can throw them.”
Sam shucked off his shirt and gave it to Tagas, who folded it nicely. “That’s quite far. You threw a man across a lake once,” he said casually, unfurling his largest set of wings. Bright white feathers pierced the night’s blackness. “Am I to appear human?”
Esme shrugged. “He was a small man. Why not allow ourselves a bit of freedom tonight? Appear as you please.”
Samander beamed. He pushed his hands into his hair and undressed himself of his glamoured human body.
His legs cracked backwards, tearing out of his tight pants.
Strong goat’s legs replaced his human ones, with shaggy black fur and paws where hooves should be.
Claws tore gashes in the castle lawn. His torso and arms were human enough, save for the eye in the middle of his chest. It was blindingly blue and able to see in colors Sam couldn’t describe to them.
His face was still smooth and dark brown.
But it wasn’t his only face.
Sam stretched and two extra heads yawned for him.
To the right, a lion’s head sprouted from his neck.
To the left, a ram’s. The lion ran its tongue across its teeth as the ram crinkled its nose.
Both animals shared his ultra-black hair and brown eyes, contrasting with the brilliant white of his wings.
A massive set burst from the middle of his back and four smaller sets lined his spine until the dimples in his back, where a tiny pair barely big enough for a dove twitched and flapped, stretching their muscles.
“I do not know how I wear glamours so much,” Sam spoke in three voices simultaneously: one with the bleat of a goat, one with the growl of a lion, and one with the timbre of a man.
“Oh, you look so handsome.” Tagas was reduced to a squirming, lovesick teenager at the sight of his unglamoured husband. “Come.” He tapped his cheek.
Samander was mindbreakingly tall like this, but still the beast of a Wraith bent three whole feet to press a kiss to his husband’s cheek.
“Off you go, my little love,” Tagas said, backing up as Sam’s massive wings sent gusts of wind out at him.
Urias scoffed. “He is far from little,” he shouted above the noise.
“I was the smallest of my kind!” Sam said before shooting off to the south. All five sets of wings beat like claps of thunder.
“Urias, Padrian, I’ll have you survey the north,” Esme commanded.
“I trust the men will be civil, but do keep them in line.” She waved them off.
Padrian’s glamour slipped, with his tail curling around Urias’s waist before they both dissolved into thin air.
The last thing she heard was the beginning of Urias’s “I wish you’d ask first—” before Padrian whisked him away.
“The rest of you, I’ll disperse soon,” she said. “Follow me.”
Daphna, Tagas, Mak’kon, and her magical, unnamed friend were left.
They would accompany Esme as she oversaw the cleanup of the city center.
She weaved through the chaos of the twisty roads, narrowly avoiding tripping on overgrown rats.
Magic smoothed its hands down her arms, whispering to her about how pretty that man behind her was.
It wanted her to shred his glamour off with her nails. Esme just barely resisted.
The city center choked and churned with filth and Magic, and the reek of death stung Esme’s nose. People wore bandages on their throats, groaning as they gulped down pitchers of ale. She had a feeling the pain had driven them out in search of relief. That made this her fault.
“I can’t believe it’s this bad,” Mak’kon whispered next to her, stunned to stillness at the sight of a woman brokering a bidding war for the newborn she held like a melon. The umbilical cord still hung between them.
Tagas shucked off his glamour, and a mouth tore through the skin on either cheek.
Each spoke in a different voice with a different command, and green magic thread spun from each set of lips.
He braided the threads, pale whispers of his will, spinning them into a string that slithered through the crowd to curl around the mother’s ear.
“You will cease this sale at once,” Tagas said with all three of his mouths. “You will go to the Lap of Virya. You will be treated. You will leave the baby. You will return for it in a week if you want it.”
The woman straightened. She tucked her baby to her chest, stepped off the crate she’d been using as an auction stage, and scurried off.
“We’ll settle this place all at once,” Esme said.
Tagas nodded gravely. He would be able to hear the whole city’s thoughts on the air, and by the way his mouths gaped and grimaced, they were not good.
“You reckon you can do it all at once?” Daphna asked, crossing their arms.
“That’s why I kept you both,” Esme said. “Daphna, you make them sleepy. Tagas, you fix their heads. When they wake up tomorrow, they’ll think they went to a bad party with bad drugs, and they’ll hate the thought of ever doing it again.”
“Might get a little deep,” Daphna said with a twist of their lips, but they shook off their thin glamour.
They were the most mortal-looking of all the unglamoured Wraiths, even though they weren’t very mortal.
Their chest widened and flattened, and their waist hardened.
Their hair shortened, and their young face grew an extra set of angles.
A little nodule poked out from between the muscles of their neck, and their voice deepened.
Their hands were dusted with black Magic and their hair weaved with blindingly white starlight.
Daphna popped open their shirt and sunk their razor-sharp nails into their flesh.
Then, their whole hand slipped in.
It pulled out a glistening, black bow inlaid with stars. The weapon was about as tall as they were and slid out with a squelch. They dipped back in again and pulled out an arrow made of moonlight. They knocked it and aimed straight into the sky.
“I can give you… three hundred meters in every direction,” Daphna said, voice thinned by the arching of their back. “Will that be enough?”
“It’ll be perfect,” Esme said, cracking a smile.
Daphna smirked as they loosed the arrow.
The sliver of white disappeared into the night and exploded in a rain of pale light.
As it fell upon the humans, they tickled their noses and cleared their throats and tripped over their feet.
The children dropped first, then the smaller adults, then the big, hulking men who didn’t think anything could take them out.
Everyone collapsed into snoring piles where riotous crowds had been.
Daphna put every human within a three-hundred-meter radius into a sleep so deep that the collective snoring was a roar.
“You think you could stab me with one of those?” Esme asked, toeing a knocked-out man with a foot in his mouth.
“Last time I did that, someone tried to bury you because they thought you were dead,” Daphna said, setting the edge of their bow at their wound and pushing the beautiful weapon back into their chest. Their people were born with objects nestled inside of them, and they were categorized based on the type.
Daphna carried a bow and endless supply of magical arrows in their chest and had inherited their talent for slumber from a thieving grandmother.
Those magic gifts combined into the power they had now—arrows made of sleep.
They could put someone out with just a prick or shoot an arrow that could drop an army.
“Yes, but the nap was orgasmic,” Esme said.
“Tagas, weave a new set of memories while they’re out.
No need to be gentle about it. Daphna, keep them under.
Mak’kon, put their blood back in. I’m going to survey our progress.
If something goes sideways, get rid of the bodies and don’t tell me,” she sing-songed, stepping over three women tangled like mating snakes.