Amazonia

  “Fox, how’s it possible for a Shadow-walker to pop in and out of the Shadowlands like you do?”

  Dinner in the room with blue walls had been better than anything Amazonia had ever eaten in her entire life. It began with a salad of greens, egg, and pieces of grilled fish, then chicken in a white wine sauce along with slices of ham, and ended in fruit drizzled with fire-honey and cups of a thick, red wine from Old Etrusca. In between the courses, Amazonia had listened and joined in as the others talked about the battle, Fox mentioning in passing that she was the only Shadow-walker Daemo in existence without any idea why.

  Fox, who’d been feeding off Imren’s forearm, delicately wiped her mouth with the red cloth at her place as she glanced at Dancer, sitting across from her. “How’s it possible for your chest to continuously let you breathe?”

  Dancer frowned as he looked at the ceramic cup in his hands. “It just does. It’s natural.”

  “So it is for me. I don’t think about it, I just open a gateway and either enter or leave. The only time I have to think about it is when I want to keep a gateway open… which isn’t often, as the longer you keep a gate open, the more likely it is for a Shadow creature to show up and try to make you a ghost in the Grey.”

  Amazonia took a sip off her cup and put it back down. “A ghost in the Grey?”

  Fox nodded. “The Shadowlands are like a negative Terra, where most living things are only shadows and the dead are alive.”

  “Not all the dead,” Troll remarked. “Corpses stay in their tombs, right?”

  “Only if the lid is on. Right before I was given to Mistress Jhadra, a man was found murdered in one of the chambers and no one knew who did it. Before she let the body be moved, Mistress Alexina had me take her into the Shadowlands in the chamber where the body was laying on the floor. No sooner did the gateway close than the corpse sat up.”

  Troll gave her an incredulous look. “This is a joke, right?”

  Fox shook her head. “I was terrified, but Mistress Alexina knelt down next to the corpse and told him she’d bring his killer to justice if he helped her.” She shuddered. “He was angry and remained that way, but he gave her a name and some details only he knew about. When I opened a gateway and brought us back to the real world, the dead man hadn’t moved a muscle.”

  Amazonia asked, “Did she keep her word?”

  “Domina, Mistress Alexina’s Daemo, and the killer one of Eurax’s men. I do know she passed the knowledge along to Mistress Jhadra, who likely investigated the matter and will use it against Eurax at some later time, but she told the Vigiles nothing when they came to investigate themselves. They took the body away and gave it to the man’s family.”

  I know by experience to never trust one of her kind, yet the tattoo she bears may keep her honest… at least, until the sword shatters. Down the table, the Nomads asked, “We understand that your people…”

  “Have a society always at war…”

  “With itself. How is it possible…

  “That your culture has survived for so long?”

  Fox gave them a sardonic smile. “We may be suicidal, but we aren’t stupid. There’s a saying among my people that goes: ‘one finger’s a poke but five are a fist’. Every one of us wants to get ahead, so after we crawl out of the spawning pits, we attach ourselves to whatever household or group seems best, or has the potential for greatness. Also, ever since the downfall of the princes, the Dragon Queen has ruled over us, giving our society the stability it’s needed.” Fox shrugged. “Well, at least the semblance of stability.”

  “If you’re the only Daemo Shadow-walker,” Dancer asked, “and the Shadowlands the only bridge between the worlds, how do your people get here?”

  “There are places where the walls between the real world and the Grey are thin enough to be breached by a strong mage who knows how to open a gateway. The problem is that they don’t have any power over the Grey like Shadow-walkers do, so whenever a mage takes a group across, they always expect to lose a few Daemo to the Shadow creatures.”

  “You do not try…”

  “To rescue them?”

  Fox turned towards the Nomads with a puzzled expression. “Why should we? I mean, it’s not going to help us in any way.”

  “Every Daemo for herself,” Dancer quipped.

  “Or for her Domina,” Fox said, inclining her head towards Amazonia.

  “Crave pardon,” a female voice said from the doorway. Amazonia glanced over as a slender female Daemo in a white dress bowed. “The play is going to begin shortly, and I have reserved seats for you all.”

  “Then let’s get going,” Amazonia said, draining her wine cup before pushing back from the table and rising to her feet. The others did the same, and they followed the Daemo out the doorway to a long corridor with stuccoed walls painted with scenes of feasting and debauchery. As they passed a painting of a woman pleasuring two men from either end, Az chuckled. “Titan would throw a fit if he saw these.”

  “Mistress Alexina took the Ogri and the boy down a different set of corridors,” the Daemo replied primly. Then spoiled it by giving her Wardogs a broad wink as they laughed.

  Cool air tinged with the slightest tang of salt slid past them as they reached the doorway leading outside, the babble of voices growing louder and louder still as they left the building into the fading light of the sun. Row after row of stone benches, carved out of the steep hill’s side, rose in a semi-circle, filling up with hundreds of people streaming in from the theater entrance on their left. To their right was a circular area the same size as the arena Amazonia had first fought in before Lord Paulus bought her, with a wide raised stage behind it, connected to the building they’d just walked out of.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Looking up, Amazonia noticed the benches were organized into sections like the coliseums she was used to, but with wide gaps separating the benches into a lower, middle, and upper part. Behind the last row were set individual booths, each large enough to hold a small group, and a structure reminding her of a Greco temple, pillars and all, centered at the very top.

  The people streaming past them wore tunics and dresses of good quality for the most part, likely tradesmen or artisans, some with their wives or mistresses while others entered in small groups. Merchants had wooden carts set up against the far wall, selling pastries, clusters of nuts held together by steppe honey, and wine in greenish-grey goblets. A bearded man passing them had a goblet crafted to have a smiling woman’s face on one side and a leering goblin’s face on the other, and as he took a swallow, Amazonia pointed at it. “Hades hairy eyeballs, what’s that goblet crafted from?”

  “It looks like lava rock,” Dancer added, “but that would be too heavy.”

  Fox and the Daemo servant traded a look. Then both began to snicker, Fox putting her hand over her mouth as the servant said, “Those of us who are Daemo in Mistress Alexina’s household mold them from the waste secretions our bodies produce, dry them in a kiln, then sell them to the merchants as drinking vessels.”

  Troll gave her an incredulous look. “You’re making coin off of Daemo shite?”

  “My, aren’t we being eloquent tonight,” Dancer quipped.

  “It was Mistress Alexina’s idea,” the servant said primly as she led them towards the stone stairs leading up to the benches. “The technique was developed in ancient Babylonia, then lost after their empire fell… until she recreated it so her household can make more coin.”

  “Everything that was old…”

  “Becomes new again if you wait long enough.”

  Dancer asked, “What do you tell the merchants they’re made of?”

  The Daemo’s face took on a haughty expression. “We call it ‘Daemo glass’ and don’t go into details.” She grinned as they laughed, before continuing. “Mistress Alexina holds to the old rules of Greco theater, with the bottom section for noblemen, the middle section for common men, and the upper section for women. So, I’ve reserved a spot in the second section—”

  “We’re Az’s Wardogs,” Dancer said, the laughter leaving his face, “which means we need to be with her.”

  “I realize that. Which is why you and your companions will be in the last row of the second section, and Mistress Amazonia, along with Fox, in the first row of the third. You will be as close as I can get you to her while still adhering to the ancient tradition.”

  Amazonia nodded once. “That’s fine. Let’s—”

  “No, it isn’t fine,” Troll growled. “They can take their traditions and shove them up their bunghole until—”

  “Enough,” Amazonia snapped. “If I say it’s fine, it is. Any problem with that?”

  A spasm of pain flashed across Troll’s face. “No, Domina,” he said in a surly voice.

  “Good,” Az replied, turning towards the servant. “Lead on.” The Daemo gave Amazonia a slight bow and headed for the stairs, the others following behind. As they climbed up to the benches, Az gave the barest shake of her head. The old Troll… what was his name? I can’t remember, but he never would’ve backed down like that. The elegantly dressed men in the first section gave them furtive glances as they passed, while the men in the second section frankly stared. A few rose to their feet and offered congratulations, Amazonia inclining her head or saying, “Gratitude”, in Roma. No one dared approach her.

  They reached the gap between the second and third sections, and the servant walked along it to the center where a pair of guards were keeping one of the long benches clear. Amazonia got her Wardogs settled before taking the bench directly behind them, the space close enough to see them clearly, but far enough away that the babble of the crowd drowned out anything she would say to Fox, who settled in beside her. As the servant and the two guards left, she said in Fox’s ear, “A shame I didn’t think to bring a few pebbles. We could take turns bouncing them off Troll’s head and playing innocent when he looked back.”

  Fox giggled as the sun finally dipped down behind the western mountains, leaving the benches in a shadowy dusk. Then, in a deep alcove in the center of the stage where the building began, a glowing ball of purplish-white light formed, illuminating three Daemo females sitting cross-legged on pillows with a squat Daemo sitting in front of them. Each purple haired female had a hand on the squat Daemo’s head. Two more glowing balls of light formed, and after a few moments, all three balls rose into the air until they hovered over the round area in front of the stage, moving apart until they formed a triangle at the circle’s edge.

  The glowing balls illuminated both the circle and stage so well that Amazonia could clearly see the features of each of the Daemo sorceresses. “I’m surprised Lady Alexina isn’t one of them,” Az said, pointing at the alcove. “From the color of her hair, I thought she was a strong mage.”

  “She is, Domina, but she’s not an illusionist.”

  Amazonia frowned. “I thought magic was magic.”

  “Magic needs the energy from mana to work, so in that regard, it’s all the same, and all of us bred to wield magic absorb it the same way. But our abilities are all different. Besides,” Fox added with a smile, “even if she could cast illusions, Mistress Alexina far prefers being a Sword Dancer.”

  Before Amazonia could ask what that was, from somewhere near the stage, a drum began beating. The crowd grew quiet as from alcoves on the far end of both sides of the stage, a man with a drum led a small group out. Behind each drummer were six men and a Daemo female, all wearing white robes, and they followed their drummer down the stairs on each side of the stage to the circle, where the two groups formed into one.

  Besides the drummers, two men held lyres while two more held a set of pipes, twin long tubes made of reed, tied together with a leather strap. As the six musicians formed a small group while the others formed a group of their own, Amazonia pointed down at the circle. “Who are these people? The actors?”

  “They’re Chorus. Domina, haven’t you ever been to the theater before?”

  Az quietly snorted. “Fox, until today I’ve been a gladiator, and the only culture I ever got was music while fucking some nobleman’s son.”

  “Apologies for giving offense. Today first time in Colosseum.”

  Amazonia chuckled. “From sands. Forgiveness if knowledge shared.”

  “Domina, it would be my pleasure.” The drums stopped, and the lyres began to be strummed as Fox said, “Chorus tells much of the story and entertains the audience while the scenes are changed and the actors step into different roles.” From the right hand alcove, a man in the same white robes and wearing a stern, golden mask with an open mouth and rays of golden light streaming off it like hair, walked out and strode down the stairs. Fox pointed at him. “He’s the principle narrator of the story.”

  Chorus’s six musicians and eight singers began a hymn to Jupiter that Amazonia recognized, the narrator reaching the circle and striding to its farthest edge, facing the center aisle. As the hymn continued, she asked quietly, “How do they get those golden rays to stream off the mask?”

  “It’s illusion, Domina. The masks are linen, which are coated with a special resin that hardens while they’re attached to a mold so they get the face you want, and enchanted right before the performance.”

  “I see. I’m curious, how did you end up in Lady Alexina’s service in the first place?”

  Before Fox could answer, the hymn ended and the actor wearing the golden mask raised his arms. “All ye mortals be still and pay heed to my words,” he said, his voice clear as if Amazonia sat in the front row and not most of the way up the hill. “I am Chronos, father of the gods on all of the worlds, here to tell you the story of the greatest war ever fought upon Terra.” He paused. “The war between the gods and the Daemo Princes of the Underworld.”