Beatrix Prompts Summer 380YE – I

by imperialvirtue

Cast into the flames 
“Together,” Lupo says and I place my fingers on his as we step up to the firepit. Michelangelo looks up at us and I smile, nothing to see, just a small leather pouch that falls into the flames and quickly curls to ash. The stench reminds me of the funeral pyres of the Mourn.
I do wonder if it was the right choice. But then, you are gone, and there is no use in causing him any more pain.

Secrets in the mirror
Later that night, when the wine is drunk and the feast is had and her hand lies on Garravaine’s chest as he sleeps, Beatrix thinks what would have happened, had she been wrong. If the mirror she had insisted on revealing had shown his other form.
It is well known in the League that the Mirror of Betrayal drives people to madness. She is not sure whether she could look into that mirror and live.

Ordeal
The Ordeal of the Sevenfold Rose they called it, poetic words for something so foolish, so useless, rending each other limb from limb when there were more important battles to be fought so soon. Beatrix grit her teeth as she pulled out another vial of Marrowort oil, the only thing to be done in a mere minute, her very soul screaming as she spread it across a leg she knew needed straightening, that would heal with much more strain now. She wanted to shout at them, to shake them both, but there was nothing else to do but step away from them when told and put a protecting arm around Igraine, shivering to the bone, and the real ordeal, Beatrix thought, was to be forced to watch.

Courage
What is Courage?
To try, to fail, and to try again. To find your strategy inadequate and adapt it, for the benefits of all, for the endurance of the Empire.
What is Courage?
Her knees buckle and her body shakes and her hands chafe against the rough stones of the Sentinel Gate as she tries and tries and tries again but there is nothing but fear and anger and
What is Courage?
She does not know.

Cicisbeo/A woman’s touch
Beatrix had never much considered herself drawn to women. She could understand the attraction, of course, but that was it, and she had always thought of hiring Nessetta as her wedding gift to Garravaine. Garravaine, who always said that he did not need anyone else but her, but how could he know if he had never tried? For a while, she had contemplating offering him to have her on his own, to learn and enjoy, but he would not have wanted that. Still, it had been about him, mainly, her presence a mere accessory.
And yet, when they were lying together, a tangle of limbs in lazy afterglow, Nessetta’s soft hands still lingering on her skin, Beatrix thought she could almost get used to a woman’s touch.

Regio
The stone is cool under her hands and makes her fingers tingle. Beatrix has never felt comfortable around places of magic. Too much incertainty, too many outcomes no one could calculate or control. “I call upon the Mask of the Prince, who commands what is and will be…”
She can feel the air shift around her, the threads of magic opening paths where there were none before. She does it, erery time she enters Anvil, just to be safe, just so she will waste no precious
mana entering the Hall of Worlds if she is needed. It has not been necessary yet, and the uncertainty tears at her nerves as Beatrix steps through the stone and into the space between the realms.

Andrea
“There is something I need to tell you,” Garravaine says and catches Beatrix’s hand as she shuffles past him, her arms full of freshly rolled bandages. “Oh?”
His eyes are pained as he reaches behind him and holds out the black mask of plaster, the armour of her soul. “You might need this.”
“Tell me.”
He sighs. Saying the words makes them real.
“Andrea fell last night.”
Bandages unravel on the floor as he places the mask into her shaking hands.