Keridwen of Khar Vell
Junction Point
Imafenduwell Hall
Tuesday had finally come to an end, and Keridwen walked down the hallway of Imafenduwell Hall with Thumper towards his family’s apartment within the Hall as the evening settled in. The trinkets they found and the candy they collected from one of the kitchens weighed both of them down as they made their way there.
“How mad do you think your family will be?” Keridwen asked in between eating sweets. “You think it’ll be bad?”
“Um, maybe.” Said Thumper. “Hopefully not too bad, though…how about you? What do you think Miss Lalauri will say?”
Keridwen shrugged. “She’s always mad at me, though. So it can’t be any worse than usual.”
“Uh, isn’t that a bad thing, though?”
“And it’s not even my fault, either! School is so boring! And…and I’m not even good at it, anyway. I heard your mom say that to Cecil the other day…”
“They did? Really? Oh…”
“It’s fine. I already knew I was bad at it. I wasn’t very good at it when I lived Khar Vell either…”
The pair had just entered the area of Imafenduwell Hall that connected all the different wings that stretched across Tesardess: Junction Point. The entire room was expansive, with high vaulted ceilings that were supported by intricately carved marble pillars. Its marble floors gleamed as if freshly polished, while the intricately carved scenes from the Hall’s history adorned the dark wood walls.
There were stairways leading to the upper and lower floors and different areas of the building. The room was lit by the soft glow of chandeliers and lamps made of brass and glass that hung from the ceiling, casting a warm and inviting light over the space. As one moved further into the spacious room, they would notice the museum-like exhibits that filled the space, like they did in many other regions of the Hall. These displays were filled with dusty and ancient-looking items, as well as strange fantasy creatures—many of which Keridwen had never seen before.
“Hey,” Keridwen continued. “Maybe it’d be best if we—”
A loud THUD shook the very floor and both of them froze where they stood. Then another THUD sounded. Then another, and another.
It was coming from the neglected hallway they found themselves in earlier, after they took another one of Thumper’s secret passageways. It was the same hallway that ended with the locked room where they found all of their new toys. They made their way down the hallway, being sure to tiptoe their way through it. Keridwen and Thumper peeked around the corner and were met with the sight of an immense, rusted brasshulk with glowing purple lamps for eyes and clawed hands that looked as though they could crush anything. The machine’s arms were as cluttered as theirs, weighed down by trinkets, devices, and ancient scrolls that were likely from the previously locked room. Hunched over, it diligently retrieved the items that had fallen to the ground.
“What’s that brasshulk doing?” Keridwen whispered. “Do they usually clean things around here? I’ve never seen one do that before.”
“That’s because they don’t clean things.” Thumper whispered back. “Especially not in the locked rooms like that one. We weren’t even supposed to go in there!”
As it bent down, Keridwen noticed something peculiar latched onto the back of its head. It was a smaller robot that looked suspiciously like a spider with two glowing purple crystals on its back. She had never seen one of those on any of the other brasshulks stationed around Imafenduwell Hall. It looked oddly familiar…
It’s that spider thing I saw when I first got here! The one that showed up just as the councillor and those peacemakers were leaving. It wasn’t a spider at all—it’s a robot! The councillor’s robot!
“Thumper!” Keridwen blurted out to him, much louder than she had meant to.
The brasshulk’s head snapped around so quickly that it seemed to blur, and its luminous eyes bathed the wall and the other side of the corner in light. The same corner that Keridwen and Thumper had just whipped around as fast as they could.
But not quite fast enough, though…
As she listened to the automaton lift itself back to its feet, Keridwen’s legs shook uncontrollably—begging her to runway as fast as she could. She didn’t dare, though, for fear that the metal man would surely hear her and give them both chase.
Suddenly, a high-pitched whine came from around the corner, forcing Keridwen to clamp her hands on her head, and she had to force herself not to scream.
“What was that, I wonder?” a voice intruded into Keridwen’s head. “Have those brats come back here? I’ll need to hurry then.” The voice in her head sent an awful buzz throughout her body. It felt oddly electric—it felt like a strange kind of magic.
And that voice sounded suspiciously familiar…
That’s because it’s the councillor lady’s voice!
Despite her fear, Keridwen took a deep breath and dared to take another peek around the corner with her hands still clamped over her ears. She jumped backwards in shock and let out a blood-curdling scream at the sight before her.
The brasshulk’s head had been inches away from her own face when she peaked around the corner.
“Ah,” the councillor’s voice once again transmitted into Keridwen’s head somehow. “There you are, little ones.”
Keridwen and Thumper screamed in unison, startled by the brasshulk’s sudden movement. Without a moment’s hesitation, Keridwen threw a small object from the locked room towards the machine’s head. The spider-bot attached to the metal head became dislodged and fell off completely after the collision. With a dull thud, the brass drone hit the ground, and Keridwen felt the councillor’s voice echoing in her mind, synchronized with the flickering of the purple crystals on the drone’s back.
“UGH! Stupid brats!” the councillor bellowed from wherever she was controlling the spider-bot. “What did they do that for?!”
Keridwen wasted no time and ran past the stalled brasshulk, delivering a swift and forceful kick to the spider-bot, which went flying down the hallway.
“STUPID BRAT!” went the Councillor’s voice through the drone’s magic crystals.
“HA!” Thumper exclaimed. “Nice one, Keri!” Then he looked up past her, and his smile instantly melted away.
As Keridwen spun around, she saw that the dwarven brasshulk had straightened up and was looming over them once more, its flood-lamp eyes now bathing them in an ominous crimson red light.
The automaton then looked directly at them, and the trinkets they each held, and bellowed, “YOU HAVE ENTERED A RESTRICTED ZONE. YOU ARE IN UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY THAT YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO INTERACT WITH. RETURN THESE ITEMS AND SUBMIT YOURSELVES FOR IDENTIFICATION AND A CITIZEN’S ARREST.”
“UH, Keri?!” Keridwen looked over to see that Thumper was shaking now. Then he looked back at her and said, “What do we do? What do we do?!”
“I…I don’t know!” Keridwen then started throwing the things she had taken from that locked room onto the floor in front of them. “Quick! Dump the stuff you took. Maybe it’ll leave us alone if we do that!”
It didn’t. Instead, the robot made a clicking sound, and all around the room, gates started rolling down and blocking the doorways leading to the other wings of the Hall.
Keridwen’s heart raced as she snatched Thumper’s hand and they dashed towards Junction Point. They barely made it through the iron bars before they trapped the children in the hallway with the brasshulk.
“HA!” Thumper shouted again. “It just trapped itself! Stupid automaton! We are your masters!”
With an eerie sense of calm, the brasshulk rounded the corner and approached the iron gate. It lifted the gate effortlessly, allowing it to pass through the archway and into Junction Point. Then it dropped the gate behind itself, trapping the two of them in Junction Point with the brasshulk. Without saying another word, it charged at them as the room’s hidden alarms sounded off.
“Run!” Keridwen grabbed Thumper by the fur and together they bolted out of the robot’s way.
The brasshulk, unable to stop itself, crashed into the wall and lodged itself into it well enough so that it was stuck. Keridwen dragged Thumper over to the set of iron bars that were blocking the way to the Aureate Wing. They tried to force themselves through the bars, but they were just a little too tight for the pair of them to get through them.
“Use your magic or something!” said Thumper, looking over his shoulder at the brasshulk. “Make the bars bigger or make the brasshulk explode!”
“I can’t!” Keridwen both grabbed his hand and dragged him along around the room as they narrowly avoided the brasshulk’s attempts at snatching them up in its rampage. “I can’t use my magic! Lalauri keeps getting upset with me! I don’t want her to be mad at me anymore!”
In its pursuit of the children, the automaton wreaked havoc on the fancy armchairs, cabinets, and the large fountain at the centre of the junction with its statue. The entire room was looking like a tornado had passed through it, and the source of that carnage was getting ever closer to catching them.
Suddenly, Keridwen heard Thumper cry out in pain while running close behind her. With no time to react, she was suddenly knocked off her feet by Thumper, and they both fell hard onto the ground. Keridwen came to a sudden stop as she slammed into a turned-over cabinet. She looked over to see Thumper in obvious pain, with tears were running down his face as he tried to alleviate it. She figured he must have tripped on something.
There was no time for either of them to recover, though.
Since the brass giant was always just on their heels, in that moment, it was looming over both of the fallen children, bathing them in a red light. “THANK YOU FOR CEASING ALL EVASION ATTEMPTS. YOU WILL NOW BE APPREHENDED AND SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR TRES—TRESPASSING!”
The brasshulk reached down for the children, and in that moment, Keridwen saw a glimmering metal blur flying in the air just above its head. Keridwen watched in shock as the councillor’s spider-bot landed on the larger machine’s head. The sound of grinding gears filled the air as the dwarven automaton strained to reach behind itself and remove the drone.
“Oh, no you don’t!” The voice of the councillor came once more through the drone’s crystals. “I’ve got you!”
A surge of purple electricity travelled through the larger machine’s body, and the red floodlights of the brasshulk’s eyes returned to their purple hue before it slowly fixed its sight back on the children. The Councillor was back in control now.
“Keridwen?” Came a voice from somewhere nearby. “Keridwen, are you here? What’s going on?”
Lalauri’s voice was coming from down the hallway leading to the Aureate Wing. Upon hearing it, the dwarven made a clicking sound and all the iron gates blocking the entrances to the other hallways opened. With one last look at the children, it rushed off into one of the hallways that Keridwen hadn’t travelled down yet and disappeared, leaving both Keridwen and Thumper alone amongst the wreckage.
“Keri…” said Thumper once they were alone. “Miss Lalauri’s going to be so mad…what are we going to do?!”
Her own heart beating at a dizzying pace, Keridwen simply looked at the wrecked room in front of them as they rose to their feet, covered in bruises, and said, “We have to tell them what happened. We’re just gonna have to tell them the truth.”
*
“But it’s the truth!” Keridwen insisted, her voice straining. “Why won’t you believe me?”
With her eyes closed, Lalauri simply pinched her brow and sighed deeply before saying. “Keridwen, this would hardly be the first time that you’ve snuck away from Miss Elara when she’s trying to teach you. It is also not the first time that you’ve made a mess of some place with your magic, which I keep telling you not to use—”
“But I didn’t use magic! I didn’t!”
“Keridwen, this place reeks of magic! I can literally smell it all over this room! And it couldn’t have come from Thumper because nulliwumps don’t create magic, they nullify it. So, if not from you, then where did the magic come from?”
“I told you, though. From…from the spider-bot.”
Lalauri sighed again and looked down at Cecil, sharing a look with him that Keridwen couldn’t quite decipher. Did they know something about the councillor’s drone?
“Keridwen,” said Cecil. “You had mentioned that you and Thumper had come across all of these trinkets, the dwarven brasshulk, and the councillor’s spy drone in that old dwarven treasure hold you showed us.”
“Yes!”
“And while we believe you about the spy drone because we encountered one ourselves tonight, we didn’t find any evidence of this rogue automaton you keep mentioning…” Cecil then fixed a raised eyebrow at her. “And I find it hard to believe that a person controlling a tiny drone could cause all of this destruction all on their lonesome.”
“What do you mean there’s no evidence?! Look around! Cecil—Lalauri, please! I need you to believe me! I know you don’t want me using magic anymore—that’s why I didn’t use it! Even when we were being chased, I didn’t use it! Please—PLEASE! Believe me! I didn’t do this!”
Lalauri sighed deeply once more, her eyes fixed on Keridwen. She then looked down once more at Cecil, and he curiously gestured to her as if to say, “Go on.” What exactly he wanted Lalauri to go on with, though, Keridwen didn’t know. At this point, however, she feared the worse.
“Look, Keridwen…” Lalauri said awkwardly, clasping her hands together. “As you said, I’ve spoken to you multiple times now about the consequences of using magic—no, Keridwen, wait. Let me finish, please…I know I’ve talked to you about this many times before. However, I also acknowledge that I have not done the best job of explain why it is important that you avoid using magic. So…I’m going to try and do that now.”
“But I—”
“One of the main reasons magic is so bad is that…look, I understand that the concept of The Cost of Magic must sound so complicated to someone your age—complicated and ambiguous. And that’s partly because it is. Magic is complicated and the costs of it are often ambiguous. But basically—”
“But Lalauri!” Hot tears were now streaming down Keridwen’s face, her fists clenched tightly at her sides. “Why won’t you listen to me?”
“Shush, child! I’m…I am trying to put this all in a way that you can best understand because I know I haven’t done that properly for you.”
“…But…”
“Basically, what you need to understand is that magic will always ask you for something. It’s literally the first universal law of magic. For most, that simply means a shortened lifespan, but that’s not the case for everyone, and really that’s the best-case scenario. In that sense, the Cost of magic is very ambiguous. Magic puts on a show to make you believe it is simply wondrous and inspiring—full of possibility. But it is also dangerous, intelligent, and incredibly insidious. The reality is, Keridwen, that your magic—if you allow it to—will drain you of your very life-force and/or cause great bodily harm. We know that—we’ve seen that play out with you time and time again! Little One, I just don’t want you to hurt yourself…and I’m just concerned that if this continues—if you continue using your magic—”
Keridwen screamed. She let loose a scream of frustration that strained her throat and came from a place deeper inside her than her little heart even knew to be possible. A tumultuous blast of magic exploded from her, and she became a terrifying little hurricane of arcane anger, forcing back all that was near her. It lasted no more than a minute, though. Then everything in Junction Point fell still once more.
Keridwen had been belittled and shushed. She was exhausted and falsely accused.
With tears streaming still down her face, she turned from them and ran. She ran to her room as fast as her little legs would carry her, ignoring Lalauri and the others calling her back to them. Once inside, she slammed the door behind her. Without even meaning to, she had magically locked the door, and several pieces of furniture flew to the door to further barricade it shut as she flung herself face first onto her bed.
While her bed sheets muffled the sounds of her loud sobs of frustrating, there was nothing to stifle the potent sting she felt of disappointing them all despite doing exactly what they had said. And even worse, still: none of them—aside from Thumper—believed that she had even tried to do what they asked.
