18.3
Jewel could not keep the smile from her face, Tsulogothulan had come to visit! It was incredible that ten years could pass so quickly. It was a bit embarrassing that she had not even thought of the Wizard with any of her newest spawn present!
Something she was going to correct shortly, but it could wait, she nodded to her friend.
“Yes, I’ve tried to keep your spells, but if I don’t pass it from one spawn to the other directly they don’t take! I lost so many when Gem-”
The Weird of swamps placed a clammy hand that was made solely for that purpose on her shoulder, lightly patting with a few extra fingers just to show how much they cared. Tsulogothulan was so nice like that.
“So you’ve said, it’s no problem, I can work over it with all of them during my stay. Well I think I’ll need something special for the pink one, she doesn't have enough of a tail for the working I made for your first spawn. But still look at you! So proud with how you’ve grown, so many different spawn and I think you’ve just about cleared thirty feet now from nose to tail!”
Jewel sighed and shook her head.
“Anna is still a bit clumsy for learning spell work, do you have any idea how hard it is to balance without a proper tail?”
The Weird hummed a moment, rolling their one eye around on one side of their pale wedge of a ‘nose’ before sinking it into the flesh to pop back out on the other side and dipping their head in a nod.
“Yes, I think I remember something like that when I still used legs to walk. It’s been a long while since I needed them for anything but kicking though.”
Jewel scoffed and shook her head.
“When was the last time you even kicked anything Tsulogothulan?”
Her friend tilted their head to the side, turning to gaze up at Jewel with that bright purple eye of theirs, a slight crinkle on one side that was the closest Jewel had ever seen to a smile on the Weird.
“Well in just a moment I’m going to have to do so to bring sense to an inconsiderate fool.”
Jewel blinked a moment tilting her head.
“What do you-”
With a motion that was far too fast a blur to properly follow a pale limb alike to a bark stripped tree whirled out of the black mass of indeterminate hair/cloth and cracked in two against Jewel’s cheek.
Jewel for her part staggered, thrown off balance, stumbling and then collapsing down onto her side for lack of room in her dining hall to properly flap her wings to regain her balance without damaging the stone work.
A thousand words stumbled and caught on one another on her tongue, leaving the Weird enough silence to stalk up to Jewel and glare down at her. The half shattered ‘leg’ dragging back into the slick black wetness of the Weird’s robes/body.
“That was for what you did you Fizzbunches, he’s an insufferable nuisance, but until your little tantrum he’s never done anything with intent to wrong or harm you, has stepped out of his way in that twisted city like way of his for you and yours at every opportunity and for that you mutilated him”
Jewel gawked, staring at him.
“I, but, what?! But He-!”
The Weird tried to loom over Jewel, but she was getting her feet back under her, pushing herself back up with wyrmflame and the knuckle of one of her wings, the both of them rose as a result, Jewel with her neck and Tsulogothulan like some rapidly growing tree of slick black strands, keeping that single violet eye fixed on Jewel’s own.
“You silenced him Jewel, you stole his voice, you killed the song of his streets, his domain is a broken, bleeding thing now Jewel, You’ve made of him an enemy that will never rest until he finds satisfaction, heavens and depths help you if he should die before he feels he’s taken from you just recompense for what you did to him!”
Jewel stared at the weird in bafflement, what was this?! she’d done what?!
The furious eye rolling on one side of her friend’s scythe-like beak of a ‘nose’ widened in shock.
“You didn't know?! Oh Jewel didn't you learn better than this with that awful Countess and her Bloody Guard?! Your words are powerful! Foolish girl!”
The figure shrank back down to something more man sized, knees jutting out ahead of them, deep heavy squelches sounding ahead of it with splashes of sulfurous water and mud up and down Jewel’s dining hall.
The Weird was intentionally making and dissolving legs (Jewel counted five at one time) just to stomp back and forth in frustration and make a mess of Jewel’s floors!
“Ghergeintat is a City and Fizzbunches is its Weird! What you did to him is a wound that he’s yet failed to close! He’s bleeding from the silence you cursed him with, he’s bleeding from the wound where you tore out his voice! And if he should die from it?! Oh if he should die?”
Her friend glared up at her furiously.
“You have to make this right Jewel, you have to make amends with the stupid insufferable cat, if I was murdered like this the Uloghai would be furious, but a swamp cannot form ranks and march to war! Cities can!”
Jewel stared at her friend, boggled, shocked, surprised, hurt.
“I didn't mean to do all of that to him! I just wanted him to shut up! He was ruining everything in Magarska!”
Her friend stared up at her, single eye rolling, but there was a sadness there.
“He wasn't ruining anything he was just being twisty like you should have known he would be, he was trying to stop the war, that wyrm child he’s helping in Magarska now moved too fast and didn't talk to him, the fool boy took action before the best time but Fizzbunches had a plan for that! Just like he always does, he was playing it out, and then you stabbed him in the throat!”
Jewel felt her flame all but go out, she felt the stones of the floor crack beneath her as the full weight of her body fell upon it with no lift of her will to gentle the impact. She tasted blood in her mouth from the blow of her chin on the ground forcing her teeth too harshly together, straining her gums.
A deep burbling sigh of frustration and her friend kneeled down next to Jewel.
“It’s done, it was a mistake, a huge mess, but you need to make amends or this is going to fester between the two of you. I know you can’t take back your sorcery, it's such an unfair and stupid thing with Wyrm magic. But even Fizzbunches knows that, even if he won’t admit it.”
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Jewel heard the words but she couldn't consider them. The only thing that was echoing in her ears was one fact. A truth so vast it drowned out all other thought.
“My Father died in that war, Tsulogothulan, Muriel died because we marched north out of season. And you're saying that I did that? That it was my fault?”
Her friend’s stillness was the first hint Jewel had that the words had slipped free of her lips instead of echoing cavernously in her skull. Her head felt so full and so empty.
Her heart was stuttering in its rhythm.
A hand brushing on her brow was cool, almost icy, shocking her to take a breath, to make her heart beat before it stilled entirely.
“Jewel, I’m so sorry, no that is not what I’m saying! Stupid insufferable flea bitten alley blight! Send me here to tell you this and it was because it was an accident? Twisty fiend! No, I'm not sayingyou killed your father!”
Jewel felt her flame flaring up, but it burnt, it etched at her insides and stung her tongue.
“But it's because of me they are both dead! They are gone because I’m a horrible daughter who betrayed them and doomed them and so many more!”
Her voice echoed through the manor, she could hear how it had filled the air and shook the stones to their foundations. She could hear the murmured whispers around the manner from her staff. She could hear Paul and Smithson making their way towards her with hurried steps.
She tried to rise, but the hand pressed down harder on her brow, the weight of a mountain, no, it was of the heaviness of a clinging, cloying swamp, perhaps all of Uloghai bog even bearing down on her.
“Would you shut up you stupid snake of a girl! Forget about Fizzbunches and his wounded pride and how you carved out his voice! Manipulative little scheming... Ugh! Even for how bad you hurt him, this was far too cruel...”
The Bog Weird took in a sopping breath, wind howling through reeds and cries of herons were in that inhale, soothing mist and golden warm mornings was in the exhale.
“Listen to me Jewel, You and I, we are powerful, our words, our actions, we are powerful, we are power. You even more than me, so much more than any wizard or Weird.”
Another sigh, a whole day in a single breath, in and out over Jewel. There was a whisper of sorcery, but it didn't tell her anything more insistently than the Weird was already saying. Care, hurt, pain, worry, a want to comfort her, even if she didn't deserve-
A pale limb made of something between wood and bone shattered on Jewel’s brow.
“What was that for?!”
The Weird huffed then slid their mass, the black stringy cloth that was hair, that was muck, that was rotting reeds slipping up the arm. Replacing the hand that was pinning her down by the crown of her head. The weight of an entire bog pressing her head to the ground spread out as the Weird of the Uloghai Bog sat on Jewel’s head.
“For being stupid and thinking things that were not true. No wonder you are doing so poorly, that Muriel seemed to have the right idea, damn woman leaving us all to pick up her slack”
Jewel huffed and strained her neck, but she had to stop when she felt her claws and the knuckles of her wings starting to crack the stone beneath her. She did not appreciate being pinned by her friend sitting on her, but she was not going to ruin her dining room over it.
“What do you mean by that?”
A pale hand with eleven fingers began gently drumming against Jewel’s left brow, the faintest tremor of strain in the Weird, the weight that was bearing down to keep Jewel from lifting her head wavering just a moment before it firmed up again.
“She was always smacking you around when you acted foolish, the same with your Father too wasn't it? With his spars and training, I don’t think I properly get it, not how my family ever did things, but I won’t argue with how yours showed you love.”
Jewel wanted to deny it, to recoil back, but she couldn't not with the weight pressed down on her head like that.
“How could they love me? After what I did? After I failed them?”
She said the words but they didn't sound as sure as she had been thinking them over the years. Worn thin, fragile, exhausting. Tsulogothulan shrugged, she could feel how they grew shoulders just for that through the...
Had her friend literally made a rump just to plant it on her head and pin her with it?!
It was a lot softer than she would have expected.
“That’s just how it is Jewel, only a much bigger and dumber fool than you could claim that they didn't love you. And I’d say they were in the right on that score with you besides, or are you no longer the girl who after she killed a Wizard in battle still saw fit to honor his death and sooth the wound he left in the world?”
Jewel shuddered but said nothing. The weird sighed again, and the weight eased a bit more, there was a trembling strain of weakening the longer that Tsulogothulan kept her pinned. She could probably force her way free now but suddenly the fight left her limbs.
The wyrm gave a heavy, aggrieved sigh.
“Fizzbunches sent you to tell me this? Tricked you into telling me that-”
The weird bubbled and croaked into a hissing sound of brush in the wind.
“Right, no, sorry about that, twisty alley blight got me good, using me to try and hurt you like that, but you did wound him awfully Jewel, hurt him deeper than anyone or thing I’ve ever seen before. Deeper than I’ve ever seen any weird hurt.”
Jewel took another heavy breath, the weight on her head was barely more than a cart full of iron. By her estimate, likely movable. But she did not try, she spoke instead, her voice feeling thick.
“His trick wouldn't have hurt if I didn't already believe it, if I hadn't already been saying it to myself year after year. Ever since Muriel, ever since Father.”
A hand wiped at each of her eyes, scooping the tears from her face like they were plucking stones out of a creek.
“Fizzbunches is nasty like that when he’s been scorned, and he’s still going to be sour with you after this Jewel, He will keep trying things to hurt you until he feels like you’ve been pained enough to match what you did to him. Until he’s satisfied he will keep at this. But he’s a cobble-brained twisted up fool too.”
The Wyrm let out an even longer breath, emptying her chest almost entirely of air, her throat simply buzzing the stale emptiness to speak.
“Maybe I deserve that.”
The weird broke another tree branch over Jewel’s nose. It actually stung without her flame reinforcing the scales there!
“Stop it, stop being stupid you overgrown newt! I’ve only got so much dead wood in the Uloghai to break on your immense density.”
Jewel felt a tickling laugh force its way out of her chest. The chuckle not growing too strongly, not like the frenzy that had been in her moments of joy since her father’s death, not desperate with the hope to drown out the pain of her guilt.
Instead it was just a gentle chuff.
“I suppose for the sake of your bog and its store of pale timbers I will strive to be more wise.”
It was at that moment that Smithson, Paul, her Spawn and a good twenty of her footmen charged into the Dining Hall. Only to find the Weird of the Uloghai Bog sitting on top of Jewel’s head laughing with the voice of croaking frogs.
Jewel sighed.
“I missed you my friend.”