Chapter 3 #3
Varius was very careful as Theira gave him a tour of her home. Too effusive, and she'd think he was mocking her; too silent, and she'd shrivel inside and never let on except for a slow withdrawal from their relationship, whatever it was. That was the last thing he wanted.
He wanted her to feel free, and even though she'd escaped physically, she clearly didn't. The past hadn't followed her here, but for Theira, that was a problem. She'd never rest easy until she had resolution, too.
Varius couldn't help with that, though in a way, perhaps his arrival was a kind of boon in that regard—she'd have to deal with it now. Whether there was a way to move on, he didn't know.
But he could look with unfeigned interest as Theira showed him the space she'd made for herself, and ask intelligent questions, and let her experience, for the first time, finally, what it might be like to share her home with another person.
His chest ached at the thought. Unconscionable, that she'd never had this before. Poignant, that he was her first.
And that was a thought to rein in, because interested she might be but accepting of his possessive urges was something beyond.
Theira had grown more relaxed as they proceeded through the house—the many guest rooms, a sitting room with haphazard books and a view of her garden, a peek into a precisely ordered laboratory that apparently had better protections against sorcerous surprises than the kitchen—but there was one room she hesitated at.
"You don't have to show me your bedroom," Varius said.
Theira shook her head, which didn't surprise him—that would probably be the door at the end of the hall. "It's not that."
Then she opened it, and here was where he felt her presence like the kitchen.
Which was to say, it was a disaster.
Color everywhere in various textures, made with different tools and mixes, sheets discarded, mounted across walls, fabrics in baskets, a shelf of pottery.
Varius smiled. "Your art room. I love it."
Theira looked at him and seemed to decide he was serious. She shrugged. "It's a bit of a mess."
"I'm shocked."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Varius lifted his chin in the direction of most of the canvases. "You decided on painting in a freeform style, didn't you? Your sorcery is always so precise—so that would be a departure. Something new."
Theira's lips curved. "I should have asked you to recommend me an artform. My sorcerous skills still come in handy for the composition of the paints."
He shook his head. "Better to explore. May I look?"
She gestured forward without a word, and he carefully stepped inside.
"You won't track paint outside the room," she told him.
Varius grinned. "You think of everything, my transcendence."
Theira snorted but relaxed a little further. He looked more closely at the paintings he could see, smiling—all bold colors, wild and raw. Some were clearly experiments with textures or techniques, but others—
Varius' breath caught as he gazed at one, the warm, bright, expansive blend of colors. "This is the hill above the Tridentis. Before the battle. You were there?"
"How in Gaia's name can you tell that?"
"The cast of light between the sky and the river at dawn—I recognize that reflection. You've evoked it beautifully here."
Theira was studying him like a puzzle. "You can really tell that just by looking at my mishmash of paint."
"Your art," Varius said gently. "I know you, Theira. And I am used to looking for you in chaos."
A quick grin. "And finding me."
His chest warmed. "Just in time for whatever you've made this time. I am surprised you've seen the hill from that direction."
Theira rocked her head noncommittally. "I've laid a lot of spells over the years."
Evasive—what did she have to hide from him now? Or maybe she just wanted him to figure it—her—out.
He would.
He always did.
And it hadn't been for purely practical reasons for a long time.
"Is there room in here for a second person?" Varius asked.
"You want to try painting?"
Next to her fearless expression? No. And he didn't want that to become a competition between them.
"Maybe something else," he mused. "It's been a long time since I've had the chance to build something rather than break it. Do you have any clay in your garden?" He thought he knew which book could teach him how to fix her broken mug.
Theira was studying him again—he had the impression that she was sizing him up, but for what?
Varius shook his head. "That was presumptuous, wasn't it? I probably won't have time—"
"You will," Theira interrupted firmly. "You will have time. And I have all kinds of materials you can play with on the lower level. Let's see what we can find that looks interesting to you."
Varius looked up. "There's an underground?"
Theira smiled. "I'm a sorceress, Varius. Of course there's a hidden level underground."
Varius had been wrong—the door at the end of the hallway was not to Theira's bedroom, but to a staircase that led underneath her house.
He mentally calculated as they descended. Given how far they were going, she had a fucking hippodrome buried under the hill.
"Did you want to make sure Tychon couldn't come at you from belowground?" he asked her.
"That's one reason," Theira agreed. "But it's also heavily spelled. Really heavily spelled. Sometimes you want to try something especially destructive and don't want to destroy the garden, you know?"
Varius snorted. "I do know," he agreed dryly.
Gods, the times he would have given for an empty field for military exercises.
They reached the bottom at last. Theira opened a door, snapped her fingers, and light flooded the space.
It was the size of an arena.
Theira immediately started walking one way, but Varius had frozen at what was on the other side.
He suddenly struggled to breathe.
"Theira," he croaked.
"Yes?"
Varius took a deep breath, unable to tear his eyes away. "What am I looking at?"
"Hmm? Oh, that," she said offhandedly.
"'Oh, that'?" he echoed incredulously. "What bullshit. You brought me down to notice this, didn't you? The hell am I looking at?"
Theira's wild hair swirled around her as she slowly stepped back toward him, gauging his response.
"I did wonder what you'd make of it." She finally looked away from him and toward the object of their discussion. "What do you think it is?"
"It looks," Varius said, his voice tight, "like an army."
And not just any army.
In the cavernous space under her home, Theira was storing what looked like hundreds of giant figures made of stone—no, clay.
Varius laughed roughly. Did she have clay in her garden. She'd built a godscursed army out of it.
They were human-like—upright, two legs and arms, a head—but proportioned differently. The head was more like a dome, the limbs enormous. If they could move, a swing from one of those fists would crush a man. It would crush a dozen men.
And there were hundreds.
"They're called golems," Theira said. "I started building them after I moved here, in anticipation."
Of the war coming to her door.
She'd left the war behind, but she'd never believed she was free of it.
She played in her kitchen and made art and built space for refugees and also an entire inanimate army.
"So they do move?" Varius asked.
"Oh yes. Here, I'll show you." Theira narrowed her eyes and waved a hand.
Two glowing red dots appeared in the 'head' of one of the golems.
Then another.
Varius glanced at Theira, her brow furrowed in concentration, then back at the golems in awe.
The two golems took a huge step together in tandem. Then another, and another.
Varius imagined a hundred of these coming at him on a battlefield, visions of death and destruction flashing through his mind.
One of the golems raised an arm as if to swing, and Varius held his breath.
Then all of a sudden their eyes winked out and they went still.
Theira puffed out a breath and muttered something he didn't catch but was probably profane.
"And that's the problem," she grumbled. "They're immune to practically any degree of sorcery, and I can animate them all at the same time. I have a... well, to simplify, a sorcerous array that links them all together and allows me to activate them with barely any of my own power.
"But I can't control them separately. I can march them all in a line, and they can all swing at the same time, but making them do two different tasks?
Well, I can usually manage two, though I stopped practicing.
But three? A dozen? No." She puffed out another breath.
"It's frustrating. It was such a good idea. "
"It's an incredible idea," Varius told her. His mind spun.
This was why she needed a house away from Tychon's watch. It was all for this.
Theira sighed. "But with that limitation, their usage in a real engagement is too limited.
If they marched on a town, I wouldn't be able to keep them from walking through houses, because I couldn't change their directions.
If they faced different kinds of attacks?
" She shook her head. "I've resorted to using them as test dummies.
Though as a person who's actually led an army and routinely had to counter all manner of unexpected circumstances, I admit I hoped you might be able to come up with a more useful idea for them.
I've been loath to abandon the concept entirely, but—"
"I have so many ideas," Varius interrupted. "The first is: this array. Is there a way I can try controlling them?"
Theira blinked. Cocked her head. "Hmm. Yes, I think so. Why?"
"Your strength is in advance planning," Varius told her. "My job is to keep track of a thousand things at once while they're changing and adapt."
Theira's eyes lit. "What an interesting point. Come this way."
She strode quickly into the sea of golems, and Varius followed the sorceress deeper in, wondering what he was getting into and excited about it.
He really hadn't been a proper Aurelian soldier.
Theira stopped at one golem that had a step stool next to it and gestured him up.
"This golem's head opens. You can control it from inside.
I'd thought it might be advantageous to be armored, though I couldn't stand it.
There's an... I don't know how to explain it.
Drop yourself in, have a look around. I'll get you set up from outside. "
Varius had been the top enemy of sorceresses for years. He didn't understand this magic, and it would be impossibly easy for her to have set something up where he stepped into her spell and she controlled his body.
The fact that Theira had distractedly scurried away without even waiting to see what he would do was the best reassurance on offer.
But really—Varius wasn't any better than her. He'd joked she wouldn't have been able to resist opening her door to him, and he was absolutely going to get in her clay death puppet.
He jumped into the golem.
"Pull the top closed!" Theira called.
Sealing him inside her sorcerous death puppet?
Varius sighed and gripped the lever above his head.
If she didn't take this as a show of trust from him, he wasn't sure what would do it.
As soon as the head shut, it was like windows had opened all around him.
Varius reached forward through the vision and touched solid clay. But he could see all the golems surrounding him as if there were no barrier.
"Can you hear me?" Theira's voice abruptly appeared as if next to his ear.
What the fuck? "Yes."
"Fantastic. I'm going to connect you to just this golem first, so you can try moving it. Ready?"
How in all the gods' names could he possibly be ready for this madness?
Varius grinned. "Yes."
He had no idea what Theira did—sorcery—but all at once he felt a kind of disassociation with his body. There were no words to describe it—he could hardly think in words, like he'd descended all at once into a strange drug haze—but he could feel the golem in his mind.
And he could move it.
Varius didn't take a step with his body. He took a step with his brain.
And then another.
"Perfect! Ready for another?"
He'd never heard her sound so excited. It took Varius a second to find his speech again. "Yes."
There was no possible other answer. Not now.
Theira added another golem, and another, and Varius adjusted.
He tried different movements, testing their range of motion, their speed, their strength.
A controlled punch was difficult because they didn't coil or spring well, but a swing of the arm would be deadly.
He felt resistance when he hit another golem as strong as the first, but no reverberating pain.
And after a quick adjustment from Theira, the cursed things could jump—Varius could level a house in one move like that, smashing through the roof.
Once he had the hang of controlling them separately, he told Theira, "Give me all of them."
A beat. "Are you sure?"
Was she hesitating, now that she'd granted him access to this terrifying power? No, she could disconnect him at any time—this was worry for him. "I need to know what I'm working with."
She took him at his word. "One full golem army, here you go."
And then it was like Varius' brain exploded.
He didn't know what his real eyes were seeing. He could see at the same time everything the golems could see—all of them at once. And he was aware, suddenly, of all the different bodies around him, like they were extensions of himself.
What would it be like, to command an army like this?
Could his mind truly handle this?
Varius took a breath.
With the whole golem army, he took one single step.
Boom. The sound resounded through the underground.
Then another.
His head felt like it was splitting from the pressure. Just one more step.
Just one more.
Just one more—
Varius' eyes snapped wide.
"Varius?" Theira's voice, almost distant. "Are you still with me?"
In answer, Varius took another step.
Then a separate golem took a step at a different time.
And another.
Slowly, breathing deeply, Varius moved hundreds of monstrous clay warriors with his mind as if running an army maneuver, like the most precise of his soldiers in tandem.
Inexorably, they surrounded where Theira stood tall in the center of the arena, her hair floating wildly around her. He arrayed the solid clay forms he controlled around her.
And then every golem but his bent down on one knee, while Varius' extended a hand.
"I'm with you," he said. "Let's see what we can do together."
Theira's expression turned fierce and exultant, and as sweat streamed off him, Varius felt it too.
All at once, they had a chance.
Together.