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bramblepatch) wrote2020-07-30 12:50 am
bramblepatch) wrote2020-07-30 12:50 am
Entry tags:
Original Fiction: Regarding Geasa
(Crossposted from Patreon, SFW, 2097 words, Gen. Content warnings: parental manipulation, coersion.
Thank you, as always, to my patrons for their support, and this summer in particular, thank you for your patience. My patreon page has been on pause for the past two months to allow me time to work on my writing backlog; normal operation will return in August. If you're able to and would like to support my writing and art, consider checking out my pledge tiers and making a small monthly contribution? You can also leave me a one-time tip at ko-fi.
And, of course, if the only support you're able or wanting to give is your attention, I'm delighted to have you here! Please enjoy!)
“And Dominique, dear,” Perpetua Van Rompaye added, as Nique rose to leave. Already half-turned away, Nique didn’t see the faint tracing of the lady’s fingertips in the air, didn’t sense the subtle gathering of power until a hand closed around thons wrist and thon realized abruptly that the thick, unadorned band on the railroad magnate’s finger was actually a signet ring turned inward. The seal dug into the hollow of Nique’s wrist and thon gritted thons teeth, unwilling to give thons employer’s mother the satisfaction of seeing thon wince as the discharge of magic coursed through thons nerves, resonating with her words - “You will aid my daughter to the fullest extent of your ability.”
Nique ought not to have let thons guard down, but then, it was easy to forget that Madame Van Rompaye was an accomplished thaumaturge.She had that in common with her daughter.
The rush of power faded, and Nique pulled thons hand away just a little more forcefully than was really necessary. Thon smiled sharply. “That hardly needs a geas behind it, ma’am.”
The human body can carry the thaumaturgical strain of seven geasa, properly applied.
There were not a great many trains running from the cities of the Grand Centers on the second layer of the Great Hept to the frontier and the newly established fortifications of the Utmost Wards. If there had been, perhaps the Van Rompaye siblings would have taken separate trains to Utmost Solhaven, and Leonia would not now have been trying and failing to look as if she was not chaperoning her younger brother.
(Linus, for his part, did an admirable job of not looking as if he was being chaperoned; he’d greeted Nique politely on the station platform, and then proceeded to ignore both of his elders in favor of swanning off to try and befriend the other teenager sharing the passenger car, a mousy-looking girl with neatly pinned brown hair. He did not appear to be having a great deal of luck with that, but he was making the attempt nonetheless.)
“You can’t breathe down his neck the entire circuit,” Nique pointed out mildly, as the train steadily picked up speed through the pasture land outside of the city of Grand Furrowlith.
“I’m not!” Leonia objected, and then, “I won’t. Anyway, we’re not on circuit yet. It’s not as if we won’t have our own business to attend to once we get to the frontier. Plenty of time scouting for those meddlesome glyphs the dean wanted us to document, right?”
Nique chuckled. “And plenty of time doing errands for your mother?” thon prompted.
“Oh, I don’t think that will take too long,” Leonia replied, a little dismissive.
The terms of a geas need not be stated in full to take effect, so long as the intent of the binding is clear to the target and to the caster.
Half a day into the journey, Nique had settled into the lounge car with a novel while Leonia lingered over luncheon with another of the train’s passengers, and was a little surprised when Linus nonchalantly claimed the seat facing thon. Suppressing the urge to sigh, Nique closed thons book around a finger, and gave him a questioning look. The sixteen-year-old folded his hands behind his head. “So. You got business on the frontier circuit, huh?”
“It’s a little hard for me to assist your sister if I don’t follow along when she goes somewhere on business,” thon replied mildly. “When she asks me to pack my bags, I generally do so.”
In all honesty, Nique didn’t relish the thought of the frontier train, and thon knew Leonia more than well enough to suspect that neither of them would be making that particular circuit if Madame Van Rompaye hadn’t asked them specifically. Spending thons adult life mostly at Leonia’s side, at Footpath University and on the rails of the central circuits, thon had never really given a great deal of thought to the day-to-day workings of the outer layers of the Great Hept. Thon had never really been one to stay in one place too long – a tendency that thon entirely shared with thons employer – but generally that had taken the form of comfortable inner-route passenger trains like the one their group had booked passage on for this initial leg of the journey, with a respectable array of amenities onboard and frequent stopovers in the more comfortable kinds of cities.
What surprised thon more, though, was that Linus seemed to be entirely in good cheer, with what was by Nique’s estimate months of rough rail travel ahead – Nique would have said that the younger Van Rompaye sibling was just as frivolous in fact as his sister appeared to be. Excitement over the adventure of it all might account for some of it, thon supposed.
Linus tilted his head quizzically. “So you’re not working for mama, then?” he asked. “Only it seemed as if she’d already arranged for you to join us, when Leonia asked.”
Nique blinked at him, and sighed. “Why,” thon asked, “do folk always act as if I’m just looking for an opportunity to turn on Miss Van Rompaye? I don’t know what angle you think I’m taking, but your sister has my undivided loyalty, Linus.”
“Oh.” That did, in fact, seem to bring him up short. “Well. Good.”
“Is there a reason you think your mother and sister would be working at cross purposes, kid?” Nique pressed.
“Not really,” Linus hedged. “I mean. I don’t really understand what it is mama’s asked Lee to do, it was something thaumaturgical, something with the protections on the Utmost circuit. And I’m more at home with the practical side of things. But it’s something big, Nique. I could feel it, when she handed over the equipment, and I’ve never been able to feel the railcharge the way Lee says she can, not from any safe distance.”
Nique could sense railcharge as well as Leonia could, the buildup of thaumic energy generated by trains running along the huge arcane glyphs of the railroad, which fed back to fuel the trains and power plenty of other workings in the countryside around the rails as well. Thon had sensed no other source of any such energy – but on the heavily traveled, long-traced inner routes of the Hept, the railcharge alone was enough to drown out lesser charges. “What kind of equipment?” thon asked.
“It was a wooden case, with a bunch of different little balls inside, all different materials,” Linus explained. “Some kind of foci, mama said. She just said to get them to the stationmasters on the Wards, but if they just needed to be fetched and carried, I could have done that. She already knew I wanted to do the Utmost circuit for my tour.”
“And if it was just a matter of needing someone to handle them safely,” Nique added, absently running thons thumb over the geas-brand on thons wrist, which suddenly stung with intent, running its own sort of charge up thons arm to the older geas-brand over thons heart, “there wouldn’t be any need to make sure I was looking after her.”
“And you are?”
Nique nodded seriously. “I am. I’m glad you’re worried about her, but trust me, Linus. She’s in good hands.”
Of the seven thaumic nodes of the human body which can anchor a geas, the four distal nodes are, and must be, subordinate to the three core nodes, in power and in effect. No person can bear more than one geas to any one node.
It was no difficulty at all for Nique to find the smooth wooden case Leonia’s bag – no one would question the young lady’s assistant looking through her luggage, after all, and once Nique knew what thon was looking for, the power of the artifacts within was easy enough to detect. Not the flowing, overflowing current of the railcharge, but something smaller and deeper, the exact flavor of it dulled by the protections laid into the carrying case.
Thon intended to investigate properly, of course. Nique paused, tracing a symbol of containment in the air over the case, and then moved to carefully disengage the latches. Before thon could lift the case open, though, the door of the little private bunk slid open and Nique looked up quickly as Leonia ducked inside.
“I was wondering where you’d gone off to,” she said brightly – a brightness that faltered as she spotted the case in Nique’s hands. “Ah. I was. Um. Well I was kind of hoping those wouldn’t be an issue...”
Slowly, Nique pressed the clasps closed again, and then released the containment charm thon had laid on the case. “Leonia. What part exactly of our relationship makes you think that hiding the fact that you have the ward foci in your luggage would make it less of an issue?”
“It’s fine! It’s just, you know, a side errand,” Leonia objected, although she sounded a good deal less than sure. “It’s not something I thought you needed to be concerned with, not when we’ve got that fascinating survey to do for the university...”
Nique sighed, and set the case aside. “You know it’s not just you that asked me to be here, right?” thon asked.
Frowning, Leonia moved over to sit at the edge of the narrow bunk. “Mother said she’d made the travel arrangements, but...”
She trailed off, as Nique pushed the sleeve of thons blouse up, halfway to the elbow, and laid thons arm in her lap. There was no visible sign of the enchantment anchored there – but thon knew that, given the suggestion to look, Leonia would have no trouble sensing it anyway. “Whatever your mother has tasked you with, I can’t not help,” thon explained.
“She didn’t,” Leonia hissed, tracing her fingertips over the inside of Nique’s wrist. “Are you ok? It didn’t...”
Nique chuckled. “Helping you on a task hardly counters your mark,” thon pointed out. “It’s close enough in intent that I don’t think she even noticed. And any edge cases, the heart brand should take precedence, you know that. If completing the task runs counter to your best interests, I can make that call, so long as I understand the situation well enough to rationalize it. I promise.”
Leonia scowled, lifting her hand to her own chest, dark fingertips hovering over the richly colored silk over her own heart. “Cut me a little slack, Nique, I kind of have to worry,” she pointed out, just a little petulantly.
“I know,” Nique assured her, placing thons hand over Leonia’s own. Thon could hardly remember what the actual words had been, years back, now - but thon knew the thaumaturgical form of the binding more than well enough to sense it still, with very little effort.
Only a little more effort was needed to be sure there was no interfering feedback, no further geasa affecting thons employer – thons best friend and, during their student days, lab partner and occasional co-conspirator in some ill-conceived thaumaturgical experimentation. A relief, although Nique wasn’t sure who thon would suspect of trying to influence Leonia. Not when Leonia’s own mother had thought it better worth her while to target Nique. There were, perhaps, hazards to being seen as not only the subordinate but also the less silly of the pair.
“Do you want me to see if I can unravel mother’s geas?” Leonia asked, after a moment, and Nique had to seriously consider for a moment – if anyone could pick it apart safely, thon was pretty sure it was Leonia.
“If it doesn’t fade on its own by the end of the circuit, you can take a crack at it,” thon decided. “Right now? I’m honestly more interested in whatever’s in that case.”
Leonia looked surprised, then narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “You’re sure that’s not, you know, the new geas speaking?” she pressed, and Nique laughed.
“It’s a wrist brand, Leonia,” thon reminded her. “It can’t do anything with how I think, it just obligates me to act.”
The heiress did not look convinced.
“When have I ever not wanted a look at whatever arcane gadget you’ve gotten your hands on?” Nique added. “Come on, let me see.”
The placement of the anchoring brand determines the scope of the geas in question, as follows: the ankles impel movement; the wrists, action; the gut, desire; the brow, belief; the heart, loyalty.
Thank you, as always, to my patrons for their support, and this summer in particular, thank you for your patience. My patreon page has been on pause for the past two months to allow me time to work on my writing backlog; normal operation will return in August. If you're able to and would like to support my writing and art, consider checking out my pledge tiers and making a small monthly contribution? You can also leave me a one-time tip at ko-fi.
And, of course, if the only support you're able or wanting to give is your attention, I'm delighted to have you here! Please enjoy!)
A geas, plural geasa, is a compulsion to act or to not act in a certain way, bound to the thaumic channels of a single person’s physical form.
“And Dominique, dear,” Perpetua Van Rompaye added, as Nique rose to leave. Already half-turned away, Nique didn’t see the faint tracing of the lady’s fingertips in the air, didn’t sense the subtle gathering of power until a hand closed around thons wrist and thon realized abruptly that the thick, unadorned band on the railroad magnate’s finger was actually a signet ring turned inward. The seal dug into the hollow of Nique’s wrist and thon gritted thons teeth, unwilling to give thons employer’s mother the satisfaction of seeing thon wince as the discharge of magic coursed through thons nerves, resonating with her words - “You will aid my daughter to the fullest extent of your ability.”
Nique ought not to have let thons guard down, but then, it was easy to forget that Madame Van Rompaye was an accomplished thaumaturge.She had that in common with her daughter.
The rush of power faded, and Nique pulled thons hand away just a little more forcefully than was really necessary. Thon smiled sharply. “That hardly needs a geas behind it, ma’am.”
The human body can carry the thaumaturgical strain of seven geasa, properly applied.
There were not a great many trains running from the cities of the Grand Centers on the second layer of the Great Hept to the frontier and the newly established fortifications of the Utmost Wards. If there had been, perhaps the Van Rompaye siblings would have taken separate trains to Utmost Solhaven, and Leonia would not now have been trying and failing to look as if she was not chaperoning her younger brother.
(Linus, for his part, did an admirable job of not looking as if he was being chaperoned; he’d greeted Nique politely on the station platform, and then proceeded to ignore both of his elders in favor of swanning off to try and befriend the other teenager sharing the passenger car, a mousy-looking girl with neatly pinned brown hair. He did not appear to be having a great deal of luck with that, but he was making the attempt nonetheless.)
“You can’t breathe down his neck the entire circuit,” Nique pointed out mildly, as the train steadily picked up speed through the pasture land outside of the city of Grand Furrowlith.
“I’m not!” Leonia objected, and then, “I won’t. Anyway, we’re not on circuit yet. It’s not as if we won’t have our own business to attend to once we get to the frontier. Plenty of time scouting for those meddlesome glyphs the dean wanted us to document, right?”
Nique chuckled. “And plenty of time doing errands for your mother?” thon prompted.
“Oh, I don’t think that will take too long,” Leonia replied, a little dismissive.
The terms of a geas need not be stated in full to take effect, so long as the intent of the binding is clear to the target and to the caster.
Half a day into the journey, Nique had settled into the lounge car with a novel while Leonia lingered over luncheon with another of the train’s passengers, and was a little surprised when Linus nonchalantly claimed the seat facing thon. Suppressing the urge to sigh, Nique closed thons book around a finger, and gave him a questioning look. The sixteen-year-old folded his hands behind his head. “So. You got business on the frontier circuit, huh?”
“It’s a little hard for me to assist your sister if I don’t follow along when she goes somewhere on business,” thon replied mildly. “When she asks me to pack my bags, I generally do so.”
In all honesty, Nique didn’t relish the thought of the frontier train, and thon knew Leonia more than well enough to suspect that neither of them would be making that particular circuit if Madame Van Rompaye hadn’t asked them specifically. Spending thons adult life mostly at Leonia’s side, at Footpath University and on the rails of the central circuits, thon had never really given a great deal of thought to the day-to-day workings of the outer layers of the Great Hept. Thon had never really been one to stay in one place too long – a tendency that thon entirely shared with thons employer – but generally that had taken the form of comfortable inner-route passenger trains like the one their group had booked passage on for this initial leg of the journey, with a respectable array of amenities onboard and frequent stopovers in the more comfortable kinds of cities.
What surprised thon more, though, was that Linus seemed to be entirely in good cheer, with what was by Nique’s estimate months of rough rail travel ahead – Nique would have said that the younger Van Rompaye sibling was just as frivolous in fact as his sister appeared to be. Excitement over the adventure of it all might account for some of it, thon supposed.
Linus tilted his head quizzically. “So you’re not working for mama, then?” he asked. “Only it seemed as if she’d already arranged for you to join us, when Leonia asked.”
Nique blinked at him, and sighed. “Why,” thon asked, “do folk always act as if I’m just looking for an opportunity to turn on Miss Van Rompaye? I don’t know what angle you think I’m taking, but your sister has my undivided loyalty, Linus.”
“Oh.” That did, in fact, seem to bring him up short. “Well. Good.”
“Is there a reason you think your mother and sister would be working at cross purposes, kid?” Nique pressed.
“Not really,” Linus hedged. “I mean. I don’t really understand what it is mama’s asked Lee to do, it was something thaumaturgical, something with the protections on the Utmost circuit. And I’m more at home with the practical side of things. But it’s something big, Nique. I could feel it, when she handed over the equipment, and I’ve never been able to feel the railcharge the way Lee says she can, not from any safe distance.”
Nique could sense railcharge as well as Leonia could, the buildup of thaumic energy generated by trains running along the huge arcane glyphs of the railroad, which fed back to fuel the trains and power plenty of other workings in the countryside around the rails as well. Thon had sensed no other source of any such energy – but on the heavily traveled, long-traced inner routes of the Hept, the railcharge alone was enough to drown out lesser charges. “What kind of equipment?” thon asked.
“It was a wooden case, with a bunch of different little balls inside, all different materials,” Linus explained. “Some kind of foci, mama said. She just said to get them to the stationmasters on the Wards, but if they just needed to be fetched and carried, I could have done that. She already knew I wanted to do the Utmost circuit for my tour.”
“And if it was just a matter of needing someone to handle them safely,” Nique added, absently running thons thumb over the geas-brand on thons wrist, which suddenly stung with intent, running its own sort of charge up thons arm to the older geas-brand over thons heart, “there wouldn’t be any need to make sure I was looking after her.”
“And you are?”
Nique nodded seriously. “I am. I’m glad you’re worried about her, but trust me, Linus. She’s in good hands.”
Of the seven thaumic nodes of the human body which can anchor a geas, the four distal nodes are, and must be, subordinate to the three core nodes, in power and in effect. No person can bear more than one geas to any one node.
It was no difficulty at all for Nique to find the smooth wooden case Leonia’s bag – no one would question the young lady’s assistant looking through her luggage, after all, and once Nique knew what thon was looking for, the power of the artifacts within was easy enough to detect. Not the flowing, overflowing current of the railcharge, but something smaller and deeper, the exact flavor of it dulled by the protections laid into the carrying case.
Thon intended to investigate properly, of course. Nique paused, tracing a symbol of containment in the air over the case, and then moved to carefully disengage the latches. Before thon could lift the case open, though, the door of the little private bunk slid open and Nique looked up quickly as Leonia ducked inside.
“I was wondering where you’d gone off to,” she said brightly – a brightness that faltered as she spotted the case in Nique’s hands. “Ah. I was. Um. Well I was kind of hoping those wouldn’t be an issue...”
Slowly, Nique pressed the clasps closed again, and then released the containment charm thon had laid on the case. “Leonia. What part exactly of our relationship makes you think that hiding the fact that you have the ward foci in your luggage would make it less of an issue?”
“It’s fine! It’s just, you know, a side errand,” Leonia objected, although she sounded a good deal less than sure. “It’s not something I thought you needed to be concerned with, not when we’ve got that fascinating survey to do for the university...”
Nique sighed, and set the case aside. “You know it’s not just you that asked me to be here, right?” thon asked.
Frowning, Leonia moved over to sit at the edge of the narrow bunk. “Mother said she’d made the travel arrangements, but...”
She trailed off, as Nique pushed the sleeve of thons blouse up, halfway to the elbow, and laid thons arm in her lap. There was no visible sign of the enchantment anchored there – but thon knew that, given the suggestion to look, Leonia would have no trouble sensing it anyway. “Whatever your mother has tasked you with, I can’t not help,” thon explained.
“She didn’t,” Leonia hissed, tracing her fingertips over the inside of Nique’s wrist. “Are you ok? It didn’t...”
Nique chuckled. “Helping you on a task hardly counters your mark,” thon pointed out. “It’s close enough in intent that I don’t think she even noticed. And any edge cases, the heart brand should take precedence, you know that. If completing the task runs counter to your best interests, I can make that call, so long as I understand the situation well enough to rationalize it. I promise.”
Leonia scowled, lifting her hand to her own chest, dark fingertips hovering over the richly colored silk over her own heart. “Cut me a little slack, Nique, I kind of have to worry,” she pointed out, just a little petulantly.
“I know,” Nique assured her, placing thons hand over Leonia’s own. Thon could hardly remember what the actual words had been, years back, now - but thon knew the thaumaturgical form of the binding more than well enough to sense it still, with very little effort.
Only a little more effort was needed to be sure there was no interfering feedback, no further geasa affecting thons employer – thons best friend and, during their student days, lab partner and occasional co-conspirator in some ill-conceived thaumaturgical experimentation. A relief, although Nique wasn’t sure who thon would suspect of trying to influence Leonia. Not when Leonia’s own mother had thought it better worth her while to target Nique. There were, perhaps, hazards to being seen as not only the subordinate but also the less silly of the pair.
“Do you want me to see if I can unravel mother’s geas?” Leonia asked, after a moment, and Nique had to seriously consider for a moment – if anyone could pick it apart safely, thon was pretty sure it was Leonia.
“If it doesn’t fade on its own by the end of the circuit, you can take a crack at it,” thon decided. “Right now? I’m honestly more interested in whatever’s in that case.”
Leonia looked surprised, then narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “You’re sure that’s not, you know, the new geas speaking?” she pressed, and Nique laughed.
“It’s a wrist brand, Leonia,” thon reminded her. “It can’t do anything with how I think, it just obligates me to act.”
The heiress did not look convinced.
“When have I ever not wanted a look at whatever arcane gadget you’ve gotten your hands on?” Nique added. “Come on, let me see.”
The placement of the anchoring brand determines the scope of the geas in question, as follows: the ankles impel movement; the wrists, action; the gut, desire; the brow, belief; the heart, loyalty.