The Deathless Dame, Part I

I’ve tasted death before, of course. ‘Tasted’ being the operative word — but yes, I’ve done so more times than I can count.

And yes, I am sure that many readers will cling to my each and every word on death, so that through me they may taste it for themselves. I, however, am inclined to keep the courses light — not for any discomfort they might invoke, but for its opposites: boredom and banality.

My deaths are repetitive. What I see and feel as I’m ferried off to that desolate realm only vary inasmuch as where I’ve been wounded and how quickly it all happens. It was a shock the first few times around to be sure, but having eluded the grave for a hundred and forty-three years, it now comes with all the gravitas of stubbing my toe.

Thus, I shall give my full account of one such death here, as an example, and abbreviate all others.

It was a hundred years ago exactly, if memory serves me right. Back then I was still in a party under the Thedegard Magic Company; exploring underground ruins, hunting monsters, and whatnot else.

There was Lord Wondhelm, Viscount de Dracon-Rouge, our stony-faced leader, and master of many elemental magics; Edgyth Leprester, a healing-magic prodigy, young but lacking in courage; Lord Gilther, Baron de Giltfort, the charming Professor of Pyromancy at the Royal Academy of Magic; and myself, Lady Estergast de Giltfort, née Hweting, Lord Gilther’s happily-wedded wife and specialist in transformation and illusion magics.

On this mission we were back in Wondhelm’s old stamping ground. A crew of greener mages had been working on a ley line development project in the forests of Dracon-Rouge, when out of the blue they were attacked by a pack of dire hares. Though rarely deadly, they were territorial, swift, and above all else tenacious; thus the mages were unable to proceed until the hares were cleared out.

It was late summer of that year; that time when the air was a tad chilly against the seasonal garb, but still too muggy for many layers, especially around dusk and dawn. I myself was wearing a lighter dress, a marble-white long-sleeved one bordered with gold; a light black wrap about my shoulders; and, until the sun set, a white veil over my face.

As I sat in the carriage, nestled up against Lord Gilther, I peered out the window, where Wondhelm’s head and Edgyth’s hat were not blocking the view. Twilight was drawing near; clouds of mist sank through the thick trees, still a ways off, making their greens all the greener. Where these clouds also shadowed the exposed ley line, they were dyed a royal purple.

By the time we were ready to disembark it was night, and we were given a rowdy welcome as soon as we set foot into the crew’s camp. It was a large group, and students more than half-comprised it; hence the black cone-hats that swarmed us and stuck to us like burrs on a winter coat. They had comments ready for us all, but one name cropped up more than the rest among these youths.

Mine — it was mine.

“Say, isn’t that the Deathless Dame?”

“Really?! Move, let me see!”

“I wish it was daytime so I could see her with her parasol!”

“So beautiful…so ethereal! I wish I could make my skin as pale as hers.”

“I want to see the Deathless Dame grow wings and fly! Apparently she does it all the time at parties!”

“I heard on her last mission she took a wyvern’s flames dead-on and survived! How wild is that!”

“Hmph! I’m sure she just uses her illusion magic to make it look like she’s wounded. How can anyone really be ‘deathless’?”

“Can she use her magic to make you disappear?”

“I can’t believe she’s over forty!”

I, in keeping with my mystique, only flashed a demure smile and waved. Lord Gilther tried to give me a little space from them, and at length an older gentleman who looked like the chief here got them to simmer down.

From there we explained our strategy.

“Listen well, for this will require a great deal of coordination,” barked Wondhelm, furiously wagging his beard and tapping with his staff on his duly-prepped-and-labeled map of the woods.

Wondhelm, a stickler for tradition, and a former seminarian until circumstances thrust the viscounty into his hands, wore a plain, drab green hooded tunic; his rank and achievements were marked instead by the gold and silver medals set in his belt. His red beard and hair, though balding, he had kept unshorn for many years.

He was giving this brief to everyone present, but particularly a group of four students who had been chosen to accompany us as backup and to observe us. “Even the slightest misstep,” he continued, “could cost you and your companions your lives. You’ve only been selected because of…erm…why were they chosen, again?”

“They were the first to volunteer, sir,” interjected the crew chief.

“Ahem! Right. Then the stakes are all the greater for you: this is the chance for each of you to prove yourselves to a team of elite mages, namely, us.

“The dire hares, according to the report we received, have a burrow in this clearing.” More pointing. Very pointed pointing. “We’ll follow this path up to the clearing, but we’ll have to be careful to not alert the hares to our presence. To that end, I shall use my earth magic to deaden the impact of our footsteps, and Lady Ester here will use her own magic to turn us all invisible.”

This, I thought, was overkill for what amounted to slightly aggravated and engorged rabbits that can poke and prod (Edgyth trawled through the archives later and found that three fatalities from dire hares had been recorded in the past two centuries), but Wondhelm was never one to take any risk. I played along.

“You’ll still need to make sure not to tread on any twigs or stumble into any bushes, however,” I added as a gentle caution. “This is an invisibility spell, not a dematerialization spell. Furthermore, once you’re all invisible you won’t be able to see yourselves nor each other, so staying close together is important. I recommend walking hand-to-shoulder, single-file.”

Hearing some mumbling to my right, I turned that way, and there was Edgyth. She was fiddling around with her crook, spinning it in circles on the ground — not to draw up a magic sigil, but just to soothe her nerves, as I’d discovered.

Edgyth came from a very powerful family in the capital of Thedegard City: her father, a statesman, and her uncle, a metropolitan, ran a hospital there together, meaning that she had been surrounded by healing magic her whole life. But, though some may rush to call her climb up the company ladder textbook nepotism (er, neptiïsm?), her talent was on a level which seemed to indicate it came from nature, rather than nurture. Perhaps her only fetter was her complete lack of social skills.

Her crook, while a nod to her uncle, probably reminded people more so of a shepherd — and she, with her cream-colored dress and hat, fluffy blonde hair, and timid demeanor, of a sheep.

“Would you like to chime in, Edgyth?” I asked candidly.

The girl jumped, letting out a small yelp, but in a few seconds she was back to order. “I—I was just going to say, erm, if you do get split up,” said she, with more clarity but still tripping over her words, “it’s probably best to head back towards the camp…At least, er, that’s what I’d do.”

Wondhelm cleared his throat again. “No, Edgyth, you’re perfectly right. Now, once we reach the lip of the clearing, Lord Gilther will take the responsibility of trapping and killing the hares. He’ll be using a new technique he’s developed, the Cyclone-de-Feu, to accomplish this. I only ask that you do not let your excitement at seeing a freshly-minted spell get to your head in the thick of the mission.”

One of the students stuck his hand up. “If I may, can we see a demonstration of the spell before we set out?”

Now Lord Gilther, who was to my left, finally stirred. The firelight of the camp danced along his silken, scarlet longcoat, which he wore over a black doublet and matching breeches, and likewise it gave his firm, tanned skin a healthy glow. He removed his hands from his pockets, took a moment to straighten his mustache, and strolled out in the midst of the circle we had formed.

“Well,” he began suavely, “as much as I would love to, it’s still very inefficient for me to use the Cyclone-de-Feu at the moment. And, while I know my dear wife is strong, I’d rather not have her carry me all the way back home after this mission.”

I giggled softly. “Thank you for the concern, my lord. However, by my estimate you’re actually the lightest one in our party — aside from myself, of course.”

A round of laughter. Though I'd made the joke at my husband's expense (for he truly was skin-and-bone), Edgyth, who was more buxom than myself, took umbrage at it, and puffed out her cheeks and began to pelt me with her fists in her usual adorable manner.

There was another round of oohs and aahs for the Deathless Dame as I cast my Invisibilité spell on myself and each of the others joining this foray; one student, a particular admirer of mine, even had a brief jumping fit. But once the mission was underway, things went smoothly.

For a time, anyway.