It all began in a cliffside city wedged between sea and sky.
Le Creissant was a sight to behold, lingering sweetly as a daydream. Take a pleasant walk down the promenade, and you would be treated to pastel-coloured storefronts and pale pediments engraved with floral and foliate moulding. Store signs beckoned with gold cursive on frosted glass, promising shade and cool refreshment from the balmy summer weather, while sweet scents drifted from curlicue balconies adorned with wildflowers.
It was a visual delicacy, good enough to eat, but it would leave you feeling immeasurably guilty for doing so.
Château de Rosâtre was the centrepiece—an edifice of dawn-coloured marble fluctuating from pink to orange with the hourly migration of the sun. Within these hallowed halls, star maidens known as solarites congregated in flowing gowns of silk. They governed humanity under their benevolent rule and had been the muses of poems and art and songs for nearly a millennium.
Inside the palace, one solarite in particular was preparing to unveil an item of great importance.
Princess Laila Rose took a few steps closer to the mysteriously draped specimen and bit her lip in excitement. It had been escorted directly to the palace after being fished from the Crystean Sea, one of many items of sinister magical origin she’d catalogued.
“May I, princess?” Antonin, one of her Lightshield guards, asked.
Laila smiled, her face emitting a roseate candlelight glow, before gesturing for him to continue. “You may.”
With that, he stripped away the shroud to expose the colossus trammelled inside a block of ice. “Behold—the Abominable Iceman!”
Laila gasped, one hand flying to her mouth. Indeed, there was a creature with the look of a man pitifully imprisoned within the glacial chamber. Yet he was larger than any human male she had ever seen. Freed from the ice, he would tower a little over seven feet, stacked with concrete muscle.
Laila snapped her fingers and gestured to one of her servants. “Quickly! Pass me Calante’s grimoire.”
The sprite rushed to place the leather-bound tome into Laila’s waiting hands. The cover was studded with obsidian and etched with figures alien to even her worldly learning. Even now, Laila still struggled to resist the tome’s dark allure—the shameful taboo of its corruptive chaos magic.
She opened to the first page to display an even stranger language complementing this incomprehensible book—made from human vellum and written in blood. As she touched them, the words twisted themselves into her native Soltongue. A useful enchantment.
Laila turned page after page until she found the entry she wanted: “The Perfect Predator”. She glanced at the illustration of a tall, muscular humanoid with ink-blotted eyes that resembled the iceman, then traced over a word that jumped out among the rest: “occassi”.
“Got you!” Her heart pounded like a child who had discovered their first expletive. A name to the face; what could be better?
She devoured the rest of the entry, learning that the occassi had been given the gift to wield chaos magic, just like the god who made them. This allowed them to, according to the tome, “influence the dark, control the dead and wreak mayhem, malady and misfortune to the fullest extent of their delight.”
“Now what am I to do with you?” Laila cocked her head to one side.
She was a solarite; this made him an enemy. Her natural opposite. A monstrosity concocted by Calante’s malevolent mind to wreak havoc upon the world he had sought and failed to claim. Or so the myths went, in any case. Yet here the proof was in front of her.
“Léandre, I’d like for you to place our newest houseguest in the Chamber of Chaos with the other confiscated artefacts.” Laila explained this without turning, her chin resting on her closed fist. “What shall we call him? He should have a name, should he not?”
Her guard was not so quick to share her mirth. “Would it not serve us better to disintegrate this miserable beast?”
Laila clicked her tongue in mock disapproval. “Now, Léandre, there’s no need to be so discourteous. He is still a sentient being, after all, and he looks as if he could use a little warmth.” Logic would dictate that she despise this creature out of turn, and yet she couldn’t prevent the tender blossom of pity at his predicament. Harbinger of doom or not, surely no one deserved such a frosty fate.
“Your mother will not be pleased with this.”
Laila knew this, just as they both knew her frivolity was a thin veneer lacquered over the cracks in her confidence. For some reason, she was unable to show the iceman her back. She was unsettled by the way his eyes appeared to follow her across the room, the way his slitted pupils were so much like a cat’s.
She therefore resigned herself to an impasse with the brute, him watching her and her watching him. Her eyes roamed over every rigid line of his rectangular face, every rugged contour of muscle, until he was mapped in her memory. It was her way of ensuring that should he ever move even a fraction of an inch, she would notice.
While this was a ludicrous fear, such an emotion often made a mockery of even the most rational minds, and this titan seemed designed to linger in the primordial corner of the brain that urged one to flee or fight.
Yet it wasn’t quite fear that Laila regarded him with. There were nerves, to be certain, that heart-fluttering exhilaration of meeting with imminent danger. But it was the sort that allured rather than repelled. Already she desired to know every inch of this creature—his origins, the breadth of his power, his true nature. She wanted to unspool his brain and rummage through it for study.
She was so distracted she almost didn’t hear Léandre’s approach. Even in court heels, he had the gentle, near imperceptible tread of a forest sprite, aided by his padded silk armour. With him near, she was able to focus her attention on the grimoire.
“Take this away, too.”
Léandre hesitated, what minimal colour there was in his rouged cheeks now evacuated.
“What is it?”
“Forgive me, princess. It is only that…” A light bobble appeared in the elegant column of Léandre’s throat as he made a holy gesture. “I would rather not lay hands on such an item, if you’d be so gracious.”
Laila received this with the arch of a brow, considering if he was serious. Of course she, who had only ever seen temple sermons as an excuse for a light nap, would allow herself to forget how devout forest sprites were to the nation’s faith of Caelestis.
“Surely you do not intend to make me believe you are afraid of this dusty old tome, Léandre?” Her voice was a birdsong lilt, playful and sweet. Seeing that her guard would not relent, she sighed arduously and packaged the grimoire back into its fine cloth sleeve and clipped its briefcase shut. “There. All locked up, nice and tight.”
With the matter resolved, Léandre turned back towards the ice block and regarded its occupant with a sneer. To a pious mind such as his, this was an abomination. Degeneracy could be read from the titan’s fiendishly pointed ears alone.
Léandre picked up the shroud and tossed it back over the block in disdain before pushing the cart towards the gilded hallway.
Impératrice Amira Rose was an individual of exacting standards. Perfection was the guideline by which she was ruled, and her heightened senses made it so that she saw possibilities for refinement everywhere. This gave birth to her love of décor, and there was no room in the château that had not been tinkered with to reach optimal conditions.
The Superna was one such room, a private dining hall well-acclaimed by many for the oak dining table set on a gilded mount and veneered with floral marquetry. Amira had it shaped carefully to her vision—a distinguished placement of ecru table linen hemmed with filigree lace, gilt-rimmed porcelain dishes and ornate silver cutlery. Atop the pristine folded napkins were printed menus for the three courses she had selected. A basket of bread smeared with garlic butter and rosemary garnish awaited to soothe her appetite during the interval.
All was arranged as it should be.
That was, apart from the conspicuously empty seat across from her that ought to have been occupied by her daughter. Amira acknowledged this vacuum with an unsatisfied twist of her mouth. Laila’s arrival had only been delayed by five minutes, but it was five minutes more than she was willing to allow. Thus, it was not for the first time, and certainly not the last, that she lamented her daughter’s shortcomings. Just as she was about to give voice to these thoughts, Laila arrived in a blonde blur before her chair.
“Deepest apologies, Maman,” Laila blustered, tidying the unruly curls that had sprung free from her chignon. “I had to see to our new delivery.”
Amira pursed her lips, unsatisfied with the excuse. Such efforts she had gone to bring her desired heiress to life—meticulously choosing the mound of kaolin and rosewater that she had hitherto moulded into the shape of a perfect daughter. Yet perfection she’d received anything but.
To Laila’s fortune, she did not air such a view, electing only to offer the biting critique: “You missed a curl.”
Laila diligently tucked the baby curl behind her ear. Solarite hair was prone to wild, curlicue textures, but Amira kept her platinum locks ironed straight into obedient layers via hot comb.
Laila enchanted her seat so that it glowed with aether and withdrew from the table. “So, what are we having?” She picked up the menu to bring it up close to her face, then hummed in pleasure when she saw a few of her favourites present. “Shrimp and sparkling wine bisque, scallop and orange salad served in a tulip, and peacock confit in burnt honey and lavender sauce with figs. An impeccable feast as always, Maman.”
“Why thank you, aurore,” Amira replied, the hard line of her lips shifting the merest fraction. “Now, why don’t you tell me what this business is with Calante’s new… unfortunate deposit to our doorstep?”
Laila explained her findings and helped herself to a few slices of warm bread. By the time she had finished, the bisque had arrived on floating dishes also glowing gold with aether. Amira always preferred the use of enchantments to serve herself, finding too much margin for error when it came to trusting others.
“An occasso, you say?” Amira’s brow arched in interest.
“Believed to be one of Calante’s most deadly creations, judging by the entries in his grimoire.” Laila dipped her bread into her broth and swirled it absently. “Apparently they are to be his underlings upon the event that he returns to unleash havoc on the world. I took the time to verify it with the passages in the Solaribus, and it’s believed that a sighting of occassi is meant to herald the first signs of impending doom.”
“That’s just ludicrous,” Amira said once she’d taken a spoonful of bisque. “Astrologists have been bleating about the end times for a millennium. Now all of a sudden with the appearance of a carcass in the ice we are expected to panic?”
Laila couldn’t help but agree. She had little use for superstition but would concede that a race of creatures forged from chaos was certainly a threat worth investigating. “While I am no sooner willing to invest in the threat of Calante than you, Maman, what we do know at the very least is that occassi exist. What if this creature is not a lone case? If there are more out there, lurking somewhere, should we not investigate?”
“I do suppose that is worth confirming,” Amira conceded. “The question then becomes: How do we approach? I wouldn’t want to spare too many bodies in case it all ends up being a fruitless endeavour.”
“I believe there are scholars who specialise in the study of chaos who may be of some use to us. With your blessing, I am happy to make contact with them.”
Amira nodded, taking another spoonful of soup.
“But, Maman, I must ask, supposing that there are more occassi… what ought we to do about it?” Laila ran her tongue over her lips. “If Calante truly did leave measures in place to bring about a doomsday event—”
“Don’t be absurd,” Amira said at once. “Asemani made certain that her son would no longer belong to this realm. Even if there are creatures that might have been born of his power, that does not go on to validate any apocalyptic prophecy. Let us confront one manic human theory at a time, shall we?”
“As you wish, Maman.”
“And what have you done with this occasso?”
“He has been left in the Chamber of Chaos along with the other artefacts.”
“Good. I should like to see this creature.” Amira dabbed her lips with her napkin. “But not until tomorrow. Today, I shall have to host talks with the Magisterium and seek their advice.”