After the Milgravian Civil War

Author: Tom

They had not been able to look at each other the several weeks that it took to sail
home. What had happened on Milgar was too horrifying to process quickly, too terrible to forgive instantly. When they arrived at the Keith mansion on Telrion, Lady Keith shut herself in her room. Duncan wandered the grounds, losing himself in sword training. Time passed. Nothing changed.

Finally, Duncan decided to go to her and forgive her. He had been thinking about how
hard it must be for her to be separated from Petra. Thinking about what she must have been going through. Thinking about his duty to... no, his desire to keep her safe and sane.

\*\*

The door slips open without a sound. She's not in the room – nor anywhere on the
planet, as the Keith butler later informs him. On her bed is an envelope, his name in the arching curls of her handwriting. There's a letter inside.

*My dearest Duncan,*
*There is much for which I have to apologize to you. I have put the safety of my daughter... no, of our daughter, at great risk. I have gambled to make her a queen, a mighty ruler of magi. In the process, I believed that no corruption could harm me if it were in the name of her future.*

*I was wrong.*

*During the war,when I pulled the trigger that vaporized thousands of dwarves, when I burned a planet until light glinted off its surface, I could tell myself that I was following orders. That it was the bastard Seers in their high towers on Aeldrum that killed these people. But alas, no such excuse exists now. The strands of dead in the capitol, the burning of the Limontine cities, the Dan melting like iron in the furnace. These things march now beside old demons into my dreams. They are worse, in fact – for this time I am the architect of the dungeon in which I am to be tortured.*

*I am scared of myself, Duncan. How could it be so easy? But I know the answer, and I know the hard truth that it contains. I am unfit to be Petra's mother. I cannot keep our daughter safe, though that has been my life's ambition from the moment she was conceived.*

*Considering everything that has happened, I am glad that I lost this battle. I have been a fool. In these times, how could I ever expect Petra to be safe and to keep her hands clean if she were a ruler. I am drowning in the blood red sea, and I ruled but a scant few years.*

*I cannot even complain that you have become more distant in these times. What reasonable man would want to stay by a monster? I certainly could not, though I have myself become monstrous of late.*

*Duncan, if you can ever gaze upon me again and see the woman you fell in love with - the woman who vowed never again to slaughter innocents, who loved the cosmos and wished only to see the clear blue sky glow in the discharge of the Aether... then look at me through my eyes. Perhaps you will understand why everything looks red.*

*I'll be waiting to see if there is anything left of me worth a damn.*

*With my deepest regret and oldest love,*

*Lady Astrid Keith*

A second object slips out of the envelope. A picture of the two of them together, taken on Telrion at an oasis near his home. It was the first time she had smiled since losing her eyesight. Months of spending almost every waking moment getting to know her, trying to cheer her in the Keith home had seemed to have no effect. What was a young bodyguard to do for his mistress when no one else could bear to even look upon her? Duncan, just a little homesick and in need of the fresh Telrion air himself, decided to take her to his home - to get advice from his mother, who was always much better about these things than he was.

He had been awkwardly trying to get her to stop scowling so that he could take the photo. In a moment of frustration, Duncan had tried to kick away one of the desert rats which infest Telrion's watering holes. This failed spectacularly, as Duncan first missed the rat, then leapt back in surprise when the rat lunged at him in retaliation, sending him tumbling - into Astrid, who lay on top of him in the resulting heap. The picture was thus one of him looking away sheepishly while she sat on top of him, confused, but amused at his clumsiness.

It was in that moment, when she let out the softest of giggles, that he decided that what he most wanted was to hear her laughter and see her smiles for the rest of his life. It was not long after that she released herself upon him.

They talked for hours each night, laying on the hide of the Kallian in her tent before he had to reluctantly leave her side to guard the entrance. Astrid, he had been told, always drew out positive feelings through touch, even before she lost her vision - but now, it was as if he cut her only lifeline when it came time for him to leave. Every night he heard her sobbing, shifting in all directions as if the floor prickled with the thorns of the Zuli. He almost couldn't bear to hear her scream the names of her dying comrades; to watch her beg, weeping on all fours, pleading mercy for creatures he could not see. But a Telranian does not falter in his duty, no matter how painful the task.

At last, *that* memory comes back to him. The small tugs on his cloak in the middle of the night. The dim light of a candle. Her nightgown hanging off of her body with only the merest of perches. Astrid, trembling as she fumbled at the buckles of his armor, grasping for an innocence and a youth lost to her.

The full form of her body, at first fluttering rapidly in confusion, but soon becoming calm and solid - as if a slack sail filling at last with the aetheric winds. Her soft
hair seems to tingle against his cheeks even now.

“Damn it all. You should know that I would never stop loving you, you poor, shattered woman.”

He places the picture carefully on his bunk and leans back against the wall.

“Look through your eyes, eh? This is one of your silly puzzles, isn't it.”

In that way, mother and daughter are alike. Too clever for their own good and overfond of showing it off.

“Her eyes... her eyes.”

She doesn't have working eyes, but I could hardly see without eyes. Besides, she clearly wants me to come after her. The puzzle can't be *that* hard,
right?

Duncan looks at the photo again.

She's wearing the mask. The mask *with her rudimentary aetheric* sensors. *Her eyes. That's what* she uses as her eyes. Of course. Silly me. Look at her through her
eyes.

He sets off to do
just that.

\*\*

With the research staff gone, the Aetheric scanning room is empty save for a solitary woman staring blankly at one of the displays. Her body makes her unmistakable – it was as if someone had cleanly cloven her in two and replaced the missing right half with a petite suit of armor. At the center, where her sternum rightly should be, some sort of glowing cylinder gently pulses with light, filtered as if one were looking from the bottom of the sea.

Yes, Princess Montral is unmistakable in the way the entire Keith family is unmistakable: Enough collective prosthesis to make an army of automata.

“Is there something I can do for you, courier?” She did not turn her head.

“I told you to stop calling me that. Surely you must be used to my standing by now –
after all, how many years have I been in my Lady's service?”

“21 years, 5 months, 3 days, 4 hours and 33 minutes. 34 minutes now.”

Duncan freezes in place. “It does not matter, particularly. When last I had life in me, you delivered a message 5.34 minutes late. Perhaps you do not remember, because as a good courier you never looked at the messages you delivered. But it is for want of timeliness that I have been given my current form.”

At last she turns to him. “Strange that a Dwarf's hold would be the resting place of
so many scientists.”

Dread passes through Duncan. A memory is blinking in his mind.

Many years ago, like every good Telranian boy, he had committed himself to a task to prove his manhood. In the circumstances of the war in Episure, the elders of his clan had decided that he and his clan brothers and sisters should prove themselves in combat. He had been assigned to a regiment operating on Elime, notable mainly for its Aetherically dampening atmosphere. In the only truly worthy ground combat of the war, the Imperial Marines stormed the Dwarven defenses, reinforced by levies from Halket, Lexitan and, of course, Telrion.

With energy weapons dampened and air support neutralized, the fighting devolved into pockets of intense close quarters combat. Couriers - young boys and girls like himself - were ordered to cross the deadly melees to deliver messages which the air refused to carry. One such message was destined for a team of engineers attempting to disable the Dwarven landline network at its source, a stolen Imperial Difference Engine buried deep in a bunker complex. Never before had he raced through such a maze, ducking gunfire and lasers as he wound his way down. Never since had he felt such a mix of horror relief as the moment when the entire complex crumbled into a rubble pile behind him, just seconds after he left.

“You mean...” Her stare stops him.

“I do not begrudge you the life that was taken from me. You could hardly be called the prime mover of my demise. But to forget is impossible, and to be ignorant is folly.”

She glances for a second at the photo in his hand, turns slowly and deliberately as the
hands of a clock, and picks up an opaque red plate, fitting it into the scanner.

“You'll want this. Lady Keith has respect for your intellect, but I believe it more respectful not to play silly games when your amygdala is no longer functioning properly.”

Duncan does not move until the ticking of her leg motor fades away as she leaves down the hall.

“No wonder... And all those years... Ah, what's the use thinking too much about it.”

He places his picture under the red-shifter. As expected a small blip smolders on her cheek. Written in microscopic quicksilver, undetectable except in this magnificent magnifier – of her design, of course – Astrid had left a brief message: Telrion's coordinates and a string of travel vectors.

“Well then. What adventure must await, that I cannot even know my destination?” Duncan chuckles.

“Just like the old days.”