Dominions of Ice and Iron
My name is Princess Nycta. I ran away from the palace. I hid, surrounded myself with a outlaw shards, as if that’d be shield enough. I shouldn’t have expected it to work. I should have known they wouldn’t let me stay away — they’d hunt me, find me, seize me.
When shards of the court finally broke down the door, when light of royal staves burst into the camp holding me, cutting down the those around… well, I expected the queen, or the high general, or someone, anyone important. I thought surely I’d be dragged back to the metaphorical prison chains by a sort of warden — the rules enforced by someone who makes the rules.
I didn’t expect three Icehearts just like me.
Captain Mercia stood, icy teeth of her three legs digging into the hard snow. From on this hill, she saw the ramshackle snowbrick huts. All sat there far below, in the misty dark, thrown up along a long, inward coast. Seven huts. Most of them looked fit to hold one shards, or cramp two shards. Save for one exception, the largest, which could only be their target.
“Are we going to do it, or what?” The voice came from behind Mercia — right behind, as if to spook her. The captain (former captain, really) turns round to see Alavee.
The Whitefrost couldn’t sneak up on her, not when she glowed, a stave endowing her chassis with a warm glow that leaked from a few holes in her robes. The light-colored fabric caught the light of a moon and the stars (further compounding her lack of stealth). The hood wasn’t thrown all the way over her head, hanging loose around a round, flame-shaped face. Her eyes were bright.
Mercia let out a small sigh of exhaust. The basic math wasn’t hard to do, but they didn’t have enough information. “The worst case, here, is that we’re facing an enemy force numbering over fifteen shards,” she said. Even now, they can see the bright face-lights shining vaguely in the distance. Doubtless some of these vagabonds watched the coast, a night guard.
Alavee’s voice took on a cocky twang. “So? We can take ‘em.” She raised a long triangular arm in a mocking salute. “Let’s just go already.”
“If we’re all ready, don’t take it up with me. I’m not our transportation.”
So Alavee turned to look at the third shard here. Mercia followed her gaze with only a small shift of her head.
Dark linen wrapped Yincure, hanging off her in tatters. It was an odd fashion choice — she wasn’t a Deadfrost, after all. Where that fabric gathered thick and lose, the layers created a darkness made menacing by the knowledge they certainly obscured the knives or sharp spikes of chassis. Yincure had four arms, although the small pair were wrapped hidden around her torso. The limbs become barely visible as the linen begins to flutter in a growing wind. Yincure voice was soft, if shrill. “Where shall we alight?”
Behind her, Mercia’s cape begins to wave as the wind picks up speed. Not her cape, not really (that one had been taken; former captain, after all), but she’d grabbed another before they left. She didn’t feel herself without a cape.
Alavee replies first, with an expectedly bad suggestion. “She’s going to be in that middle hut, obviously. It’s the place to check. Let’s go.”
“And start off surrounded? No. We’ll work our way up the coast.”
“What if they run off with the princess as soon as they realize we’re here?”
“They will not,” Yincure stated quietly. The new wind had brought with it a fog, a shroud deep enough they could no longer see the huts on the bay below them. “We shall be silent and unseen.”
Mercia glanced sidelong at the glowing frostheart.
“Whatever. If they run off with her, I’m gonna crack one of you over it.”
Mercia spread her wings. They weren’t for flight, not really, but they helped. Mercia held out her cape, spreading it and holding it tight.
The wind rose to a roar, wuthering against their chasses. The three Frosthearts were blown right off their feet.
They descended, as if riding in a cloud. In a sense, they were — the royal tutors had repeated it enough times: clouds were no more than high hanging fog.
Less snow stuck to the ground by the shore. The salty smell that hung around didn’t leave much mystery as to why. They fall gently, with thumps muffled by the fog.
“Yincure,” Mercia called, head roving, not quite sure where the cloudheart had placed herself, “can you sense any shards in the fog?”
“Once more, captain, I remind you that my hearing is not yet that keen. Perhaps soon, but not today. I can tell you the first hut you seek is three quarters radian to your right.”
“Alavee, check for hostiles.”
“Why do I have to do it? You don’t outrank me anymore. Do it yourself.”
Mercia crosses her arms, hoping her irritation is made invisible in the thick fog. She bites down an insult, and levelly says, “And here I thought you’d be champing at the bit to get back at our little kidnappers.”
The former had her reasons — Alavee had a hammer at the ready, staves that would be immediately useful for a fight, and the bright Whitefrost would give easily seen signal if something went truly wrong. Yincure was occupied maintaining the fog, and Mercia… she wasn’t ready. She didn’t have holsters or sheaths; she had flasks. Mercia cast a stave, and under her will, a silvery liquid is dragged out. It would be a minute before it was ready; even now, the fog around it is freezing, falling to the ground.
Alavee doesn’t reply to her taunt. Not until she feels the high, intimate whisper of Yincure, and suppresses a shudder. The cloudfrost says, “She goes as you ask, captain. Shall we follow?”
Mercia nods, knowing — or hoping, she supposes, since she overestimated her — that Yincure sees it. A black linen wrapped arm reache out from the fog to grab her. She jolts, and one of her weapons flies free. Then she sees the face, the linen parted to reveal the expressive line on the cloudfrost’s face, curled into a smirk or small smile, enjoying her startled reaction.
Mercia grunts meaningfully, and lets Yincure lead her after the lightfrost.
Just as the snowbrick hut comes into view, they hear the screams — a familiar voice yelling triumph and aggression, and another of terror — and they hear the cracks. The shattering sound of broken ice and dying shards.
The light-robed, glowing iceheart is standing in the doorway, blocking the exit. On the ground in front of her, a pile of ice shards and life fluid that must have been a frost heart just moments before.
A hammer rises from the cold metal gore, lifted to rest on the lightheart’s shoulder. A line on her face bends into a vicious grin. “Took you long enough.”
“Alavee, we are taking prisoners. Don’t shatter them.”
“Why have mercy? They kidnapped our princess!”
Before Mercia can respond, Yincure drifts in front of her. Yincure says, “I think you would prefer to leave them intact.”
“You too, Yincure? Don’t you care—”
“I’m not finished. We should leave them intact… because if they scratched a single facet on the princess, we should make them pay, should we not?”
Sharp points become visible around Alavee’s grin.
“No shattering, and no torture. You know the guard is going to come in after us. We don’t need to get in to more trouble.”
Alavee tilts a head, and her glow pulses in her confusion. “Why would they punish us, when we’re doing a better job rescuing than them?”
“Rather than rescuing,” Yincure says, voice a sing-song whisper from the surrounding fog, despite being right beside them, “I note we are instead talking.”
“Good point. Let’s rip their hearts out.”
A glance at the dark horizon — the great ringed guardian was rising. By midday, it’d be overhead, and drag the waters of the bay sloshing in, all of the kites and electric fronds pulled with it. Barely seen, with the fog hanging over the waters, but I feel turbines turning, the crunch as the weight of water breathes lightning into being.
I frown. Needs come in a hierarchy, and only one thing sits at the base of the pyramid: joules. Buzzing, arcing joules jumping off the wire. Wherever I went, I’d need power.
So I gambled; this tide farm would charge me, and keep charging me until the kites and pipes broke down. And thus the next level of the hierarchy gets pulled down to serve the first: metal for repairs and upgrades.
My fingers drum on my chassis. Smooth metal, ornately inscribed, polished and painted. My joints fold and twist silently, fluidly, the coating of oil fresh, almost enough lubricant to drip. The camera eyes watching, recording this indicated my diodes bright enough to shine like beacons in the fog.
And who’d make those repairs, get those upgrades? Loyal maids had soldered and tenderly inscribed my staves all my life. I didn’t need them; any idiot could work out engineering with wits and enough motivation. But the elegance, the skill of the royal technicians? I wouldn’t fool me; the road of self-repair only lead to looking like a walking derelict.
This brought me to the third level of the hierarchy: heartstaves. Delegation the heart of governance, my advisers told me. I held that it suffices as an interim solution, until one attains total independence. They thought me foolish.
Alone on the roof of the cabin, a smirked, synthesized a single laugh to gently disturb the night air. Thick, fog-choked air meant the sound dies even sooner than usual.
This fog had rolled in quickly. Like the fog’d made it uneasy, a drone flies toward me, stationary airfoil wings at its side. The stave-circuits, the [battery] in it, I felt the eddies in the magnetic field. I make a cost-benefit calculation.
Two limbs rope out from beneath my dress, segments bending and twisting. Circuits hum to life, and my stave glows. An electron-stripped dart flies out and strikes the drone, and negative charge fills my hand to bursting. A clock cycle, and then a bolt of lighting darts out, fingers of current seeking and then fighting the attractive positivity of the dart.
A bolt of lightning lights up the night. The drone is stunned, critical circuits misfiring. It falls from the air.
Then my other hand magnetizes, wrenching the drone through space until my claws can close around it. My diodes brighten immediately, and my face opens up. Four more segmented limbs slink out from under my dress. My claws hook into the joints, the seams. I’m clawing at the metal, tearing the drone open.
The chassis splits, and I spy my prize. I raise the drone to my face. With the outer mask opened, charging prongs and exposed wires are visible. Breaking the mask frees dozens of small appendages I use to precisely manipulate the drone’s internals.
Why? Simple. I drunk deeply of the drone’s megajoules. I needed power, and this topped me up nicely. I could sense the current flowing within as it flew. As I calculated, its [battery] contained more than enough joules to refund the lightning bolt that brought it down.
I feasted until the drone was an empty shell, and I discarded it.
“Princess Nycta?”
The sound must’ve altered someone. A whiteheart crawls out from the cabin I’m on top if, six legs like a bug. They look around fruitless before spying the dead drone, looking up, and finally finding me looking down on them. I make an expression, then realize my mask doesn’t cover my face. Doesn’t matter.
I leap down. Holding my dress tight so that it doesn’t flutter up, I land with no visible bending or recoil, just an impassive figure approaching. They have the sense to cower, start backing up, but I left a hand and magnetically drag them toward me. I wrap my claws around one of their bug-legs. They writhe, struggling to get free, but they can’t. They synthesize a pathetic sound; I’m not listening.
I press my uncovered head close enough the sharp mouthparts beneath my mask can scratch their faceplate. In their fear, the patterns their faceplate diodes express shift, becoming noise and squiggles and ramrod straight lines.
“Don’t call me that.” I crack their faceplate. They mewl fear. The leg in my grasp gets pulled. Hard. They’re making error sounds. “It’s just Nycta.” I wrench, and the leg is torn off with cracks, snapping wires, errant discharges of electricity.
I ran away for a reason. When my own faceplate finally clicked back into place, I grinned sharp, staring down at them.
I could kill them. The current in them, their precious joules, they tempted me so.
But you don’t get people to fear you if you don’t leave them alive. They’d never get a chance to call me the right name if they were dead.
(Well, unless…)
So I just left them in a heap on the ground as I advanced into the main cabin.
The hierarchy of needs had a unifying principle: control. Controlling an energy source, controlling material resources, controlling people. Whenever I’d go, I’d need power.
So I gambled. This tidefarm would charge me; it represented a valuable resource. The question stood: was it valuable enough to be the stepping stone I needed, but not so valuable the dominion would fight to take it back?
I ran away for a reason, and through my lot in with these bandits. We gambled on stealing a tidefarm, seizing control, flagging a new base of operations. Power, control, ambition.
The great ringed guardian has risen, bright in the east, a massive planet dragging waters back through the bay, watching over its moons.
I wondered if there was a guardian watching over me, waiting to drag me back.
If there was, I’d just have to kill them.