Broken Lands

Chapter 383 – Sophia’s Sigil

The more Sophia thought about it, the more she liked having a not-quite-real pyramid representing the Tower. The Tower didn’t exist, at least not right now. Sophia wasn’t sure if it should be rebuilt or not; tearing it down was a cataclysm, but she didn’t know what the consequences of building it again would be. It might be another cataclysm or it might be the piece that was needed to heal the Broken Lands.

With Sophia’s luck, both were probably true.

She nodded to herself and focused back on what she needed to do now. She needed a symbol to bind the Broken Lord. She also needed a symbol to represent the vanished Empire that Ansuz had stuck her with.

She’d worry about what she was going to do with it later. That was definitely going to happen.

The symbol ought to echo the original imperial sigil; that would help the ritual of judgement, since it would represent something that Ysalix Kestii knew he was subject to. It also seemed right, since it was at least sort of the same empire. Well, a child empire maybe? If it even was an empire.

Sophia shook her head. Later.

If she wanted to echo the symbols that weren’t the Broken Lord’s, she needed a sword to go with the tower. She didn’t use one often these days; when she did, it was usually the one from home, which was a fairly standard straight-bladed knight’s sword. While there was one sword that looked sort of like that, the blade was slightly different from her sword, with some fancywork on either side of the blade, a different shape to the crossguard, a slightly shorter hilt, and a round pommel instead of the hexagonal one her sword bore.

Sophia might have been willing to let that go except for one other fact: it was the sword used by the sixth Emperor and it looked essentially identical to the one that was broken in the Broken Lord’s sigil. It also looked a lot like the broken sword used by the ghost of Ysaliz when they fought him.

Using that as a symbol wouldn’t be good for a ritual of judgement.

Well, if it was handled properly, it could be very good. Sophia didn’t trust herself to alter the ritual appropriately. She was going to have to do it based on a seriously incomplete description and fill the rest in with aura manipulation and Intent already. That meant she needed to eliminate any possible weakness, and using the sword broken by the Broken Lord as a symbol against him might well be a weakness.

She also didn’t want anything to do with anything of his, no matter what the reason was. She’d be better off with a different sword.

The twin swords of the fourth emperor were quite different from Sophia’s usual sword, but unlike the sword of the fifth emperor (which appeared on the Broken Lord’s breastplate when they fought him because it was part of the heir-designate’s symbol) and the broken sword of the sixth emperor, they had nothing to do with Ysalix. Sophia couldn’t see the blades because they were hidden by the tower, but the hilts reminded her of an eastern-style sword with a small circular guard instead of the long crossguard Sophia was used to.

It wasn’t a sword Sophia was good with, but if she attached some feathers to it, that could even be an advantage. Unlike the Kestii Emperors, Sophia wasn’t a swordsman. She could help swordsmen by enhancing their strikes and defenses with her magic. The symbol of that was her feathers. Using a sword that was emphatically not

hers could symbolize that well.Sophia grabbed the sword and dropped it into place. Right before the blade disappeared into the tower, it appeared for just long enough to confirm that it was both intact and lightly curved. The sword’s dark areas darkened to match the pyramid, but that was all that changed about it. Sophia hoped that meant the Guide had accepted her Intent for what the sword meant. It certainly hadn’t rejected it, at least.

Those were the two pieces that were the same as the other sigils. All Sophia needed now was the feathers. She tried drawing one, but calling it a child’s scribble would be insulting to the child. Projecting her Intent helped, but it didn’t seem to be enough. 

Maybe she needed a model?

Sophia turned towards Dav. “Can I borrow your sword for a moment?”

“Sure.” Dav didn’t ask why she needed the sword, probably because he could see she was working on something with one of the Guide’s screens. He held out his hand as if he was offering the sword to her and it appeared, including the cord that tied the pair of feathers to the hilt.

Sophia took the sword, then shrugged and tried something silly: she turned the sword so that the cord and feathers hit the screen she was working with and concentrated on adding the feathers to the image. She apparently couldn’t draw feathers, but this didn’t seem like something the Guide would let someone else do, so there had to be a way to get something that wasn’t just a scribble. Most likely she’d have to trace the feathers. She was still going to try to get it the easy way.

Sophia held the feathers in place as best she could and concentrated on the image she wanted. The feathers should be connected to the sword’s hilt by a cord and they should fall so that you could see both of them. No, they should be like the pyramid - you should see silhouettes of both feathers. That wouldn’t work for the sword, it was better as it was, but the feathers would work well if they were black with a white quill. Maybe the cord should be white too? 

Sophia wasn’t used to working in black and white.

She pulled the sword away from the Guide’s screen to see if it worked at all and was incredibly relieved to see that her guess worked: there was a pair of feathers connected to the sword by a single short cord each. That was probably how the swords were added, too. The pyramid or tower wouldn’t work the same way, but maybe it could be added by looking at it while designing the symbol? Or maybe a drawing would work?

Importing the image from a drawing would make a lot of sense. If there was some way to get the Guide to recognize a drawing, it would explain a lot about the later images. They would depend on the artist at least as much as the Emperor’s art skills, and it was easy to see how that might change over time. The differences in the way the tower was depicted in the various sigils were big enough that Sophia was certain the tower itself changed, as well.

Sophia held the sword out for Dav. “Thanks.”

“Did it work?” Dav took the sword carefully.

Sophia nodded. “Yup! I needed the feathers for the image, and getting them off a sword should work better than just using feathers from my Hoard. Yours already have the cord attached.”

Dav moved beside Sophia. “Can you show me what you’re working on?”

“Mm, in a minute.” Sophia frowned at the image. It looked like the others, more or less, but it seemed like it was missing something. The feathers in particular were right but they also weren’t right. They looked like feathers, but they didn’t look like her feathers. 

They weren’t magical.

Sophia nodded to herself and concentrated on the image. It should glow with magic. That was as much her symbol as the feathers were, so it was an important part of whatever she made.

Yes, the feathers looked right now.

The pyramid looked different, too. It was no longer simply a silhouette, though it was definitely in deep shadow. It was now a pile of black stone block with white streaks that highlighted the cracks and damage of time. The sword tilted to one side where it was plunged into the peak of the tower, with a pair of feathers tied to the end of the hilt. The entire thing glowed with magic, or at least with light since that was the best thing for those who couldn’t see magic.

Yeah, it was just right for a combination of Sophia’s symbols with those of the ancient Kestii Empire. Sophia approved the symbol, then concentrated on making the symbol visible to everyone else.

“Sorry that took so long,” Sophia apologized. “This is what I came up with. I think it’s pretty good for something I put together off the top of my head.”

“I like it,” Ansuz said firmly almost immediately. “It is definitely suited to an Emperor of Kestii.”

“That’s great, but what does it have to do with the glass jar?” Xin’ri held up a container with a stopper. Sophia had expected something that looked like a potion bottle, but this looked more like a jar, even if it had a folding metal enclosure to keep the cap on instead of a screw top. “Also, I hope that it’s not a problem if the jar held crystallized wolfsbane flowers in glowolive oil until a couple days ago when I used the last of them up. There might be a little residue; it’s almost impossible to get it out without sustained heat, so I was going to do that when we got back to Mazehold.”

Sophia blushed. She’d completely forgotten to tell everyone what she was doing, hadn’t she? “It’s a ritual for laying an unquiet spirit to rest. Since Ysalix Kestii was a subject of the Empire, using a current symbol of the Empire will empower the ritual. Uh, sorry, I mean siege magic. That’s what you call rituals here.”

Silently, she pulled up the message from the Wanderer and forwarded it across the mindlink. She was happy to share what she knew with her team, but she was still a little wary of Arak Shade. She wanted to ask for advice from the others before she talked about the Wanderer out loud.

“I’ve never seen siege magic used for anything other than attacks, usually with several mages working together,” Arak objected. “You know siege spells to do other things?”

Sophia sighed. She didn’t know very many rituals at all. She’d participated in several, but the only one she actually knew was the one she used to put out the fire caused by the fire beavers. There were others in her notebook. At least, she was pretty sure there were some there.

Despite that, Sophia did know how to work with other spellcasters if they followed the same spellcasting tradition she did. No one in the Broken Lands did, at least not anyone other than Dav. Dav knew enough to work with her to an extent. “You can use a ritual for that; rituals are great for one spellcaster directing others’ mana. It’s not the only way to do it, though, so it’s really pretty rare to see rituals used at all back home. When they are used, it’s usually for other stuff, stuff that’s really specialized. That’s the other strength of a ritual; you can do things with rituals that are a lot more difficult than a spell. There are a lot of reasons for that, but I’m not the person to ask about that. I sort of remember the theory, that’s all.”

Arak looked thoughtful. Sophia was certain he’d have more questions later.

Sophia took advantage of his pause and reached out to take the jar from Xin’ri. She should probably answer Xin’ri’s question, too. “It’s probably fine, but … hm. I’m pretty sure wolfsbane is poisonous. Is the mix also a problem?”

“If you eat it, yes,” Xin’ri answered with a smile. “I wouldn’t drink the oil, either, even though the mana crystallization process concentrates the dangerous properties in the powder and the glowolive oil stabilizes it so that it can be used as a conditioning agent. The poison’s still there, just locked away until it’s activated. Handling it’s fine as long as you wash your hands afterwards, but you’ll definitely know if you have even a small cut on your hands. The oil stings like a firewasp.”

Sophia nodded as if she knew exactly what Xin’ri was talking about. Some of it was familiar, but that was mostly from other conversations with Xin’ri over the past couple of years. The important part was that the residue in the jar was toxic but not overly harmful with simple precautions. “I can work with that. It’ll probably make getting whatever is left into the jar harder but it should make it easier to get him to pass on once the jar is sealed. He’ll want to leave.”

It wasn’t quite as simple as that, but it was close.