Chapter 35: Draught

Shiori lay on the floor where she had collapsed when the Duke first brought her to this room. She had thought to remain unmoving as a protest against the Duke.

She had lost. She was a prisoner and powerless. Motohara was dead.

She had sobbed after the Duke left her in this room. She couldn’t hear her sobbing because the Duke had attached the Reverse Mirror to a metal collar around her neck.

“An Anchor to keep thee from Speaking any troublesome thing,” he said with a wink.

She couldn’t hear herself sob. She couldn’t Speak magic with the thing around her neck. She couldn’t remove the beautifully decorated metal collar with gold filigree.

The room was the same: a beautifully decorated prison draped in silks and velvets. But the windows were barred with iron and polished brass bars blocked her from reaching the carved oak door.

She shuddered as she recalled what was between those polished brass bars and the door. She didn’t want to think about that.

Shiori guessed that the Duke needed such a room since few of his concubines were willing when he first acquired them.

Symphon said there was a spell on her. He was right. She couldn’t hate the Duke. The best she could do was analyze him with detached objectivity.

She knew she was his prisoner. She should hate him. Shouldn’t that be enough to break the spell on her? Obviously it wasn’t enough. She had to understand what the spell did to her to break it, not just know it was there.

Symphon had come for her, fought for her, and been hurt trying to save her. The thought brought new silent tears that mixed grief with self-loathing.

At the thought of Symphon, her connection to him reformed. Apparently the internal magic involving true names couldn’t be suppressed by the Reverse Mirror near her vocal cords.

She could feel that Symphon was coming! He had figured out her location. His arm still hurt, but he didn’t care. He was worried for her. He loved her.

More tears.

Shiori sat up. She couldn’t tell Symphon to stay away. The Duke would kill Symphon, and she was helpless to stop him.

So she just needed to not be helpless anymore.

Her book, The Last Word, lay next to her on the ground. The Duke had read it in front of her, laughing merrily and complimenting her fortitude and inventiveness at various points in her story.

At the story’s end, he was surprised and closed the book. “The story stops here?” he asked. It made perfect sense to him that the book wrote itself as she read it. “And the cover is still blank. Read more,” he commanded.

Instead she lay there. At least she could refuse the Duke in this one thing, for now. Eventually he’d control her. She’d be a puppet, like Motohara had been.

Tears welled up at the thought of Motohara. She took a deep breath.

She had to do something. She picked up the book that was supposed to tell her story and keep secret her true name.

The small note Motohara had written to her when this all started fell out. It had been hidden among the blank pages in the back, so the Duke never saw it.

Her breath caught in her throat, which felt odd because it made no sound thanks to the Reversed Mirror at her throat.

Motohara had used a leaf as a distraction, making the Duke think he had scribbled ‘Motohara’ on it as a makeshift Grimoire. The distraction hadn’t worked long.

The Duke had wanted control of Motohara’s true name again. That was his preferred way to control people.

But if the leaf wasn’t Motohara’s Grimoire, what was?

Shiori turned over the small note, which read ‘From Masahiro Motohara’. She tried to read it aloud, but the Reversed Mirror at her throat stole away the sound.

Shiori didn’t know how Grimoires worked. Somehow The Last Word was her Grimoire that kept her true name secret. As she read the small note from Motohara power thrummed in her, like when she read Symphon’s Grimoire.

The small note was Motohara’s Grimoire. It didn’t matter that he had written it when his true name was Mores Praetor. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t Speak aloud.

And he was alive! He running from some nightmare of the Deep, but he was alive!

Shiori stood and looked around her lavish prison. Motohara wouldn’t survive the Deep long. Symphon would arrive and the Duke would kill him.

She needed to think of a solution.

First, she cut her connection to Symphon. Knowing his name weakened him, but an open connection would weaken him more by disturbing his connection to the true words in his well of power.

Symphon felt her touch his power through his name. He knew she was alive.

She cut connection to Motohara, who needed all the power he could get to survive.

Second, she read the book on the plush bed in her chamber.

When she reached the current time, the book stopped creating new words. Shiori cursed, but the curse was yet another sound swallowed by the greedy abomination clamped to her throat.

The Last Word wouldn’t give her any secret tool to gain her freedom or sabotage Duke Praetor.

Despair made her limbs heavy again. She fought down the tears and looked toward the polished brass bars keeping her prisoner.

A bluish liquid in an ornate crystal bottle sat on the floor beyond those polished brass bars. Shiori thought she might find something to throw through the bars to knock over or break the bottle. She found nothing.

Her heart pounded with terror.

The Duke had explained as he prepared the bottle: “This, my young guest, is the Barren Draught.”

Shiori’s eyes widened in terror. She was certain a whimper would have escaped her lips if the Reversed Mirror hadn’t captured the sound.

“I perceive that thou knowest the Draught?” the Duke said as he placed cut, dark green laurel leaves into the blue liquid. “‘Tis a challenge, keeping a Princess as a tool. I’ve managed it before.”

The Duke continued to explain as he worked.

Shiori lay where he had left her, her heart racing. Kawamura’s books talked about the wars and conflicts in Nyx since the Royals fell long ago. Most born Princesses were cursed to one misfortune or another.

She remembered one Princess imprisoned by the Praetors. It hadn’t occurred to her that the Praetor who kept that Princess as tool to grow his power had been this same Duke millennia ago.

“That was before this trend of Yamato Princesses, mind you,” the Duke murmured words to the potion, which glowed with a pulsing heartbeat-like light.

“The trouble with keeping a Princess is my allies who fear a child. Any child from a Princess would be a King or Queen, a being of impossible power.”

Next, the Duke took out a polished brass cage. The bars were close together to keep the pink skittering bug inside. It resembled a scorpion, but moved with far too much intelligence to be a bug.

“Aqra,” Shiori said, terrified, but no sound game.

The Duke turned to her. “Didst thou say ‘Aqra’, my guest? Yes, it is. Thou knowest much about the Kryptics of these Realms, yes?”

The Aqra were horrible Kryptic bugs born in the Deep, known to congregate about places of power and old memory. Tombs laden with powerful artifacts were their preferred nests. Their poison was the worst part.

The Aqra’s poison was not limited by mere time or space. Kawamura wrote about a Princess that had died days before being stung by an Aqra. The poison traveled through time.

The Aqra's poison was the key ingredient in the Barren Draught. That was how the Duke would guarantee that Shiori never had children.

An antidote to the Aqra’s poison would save the life of its victim, true, but not the lives of future victims. Even the neutralized poison’s effect would still cascade over time itself, ensuring no children could be born to the victim.

He would make Shiori drink the poison, rendering her barren, hence the Barren Draught's name. He wouldn’t fear her bearing a King or Queen.

Shiori pulled her eyes away from the pink scorpion that writhed horribly as it dissolved in the liquid. When it was ready, she would be made to drink it.

She needed to find a way out.