Editing Nu Yark Kadal Tower Journal

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Nu Yark Kadal Tower Journal.
Yur Arcology's daily dalliance with news of the tower.  Know your neighbors, Know yourselves.

Nonny's Anonymous Posts-Where the weird relax.  Submissions needed Weekly. 

Some Thoughts from a traveling sorceress...
There is something about this place that seems heavenly.  That's not the right word... Otherworldly. 

That's strange... Maybe its because I was born where horses were the fastest mode of travel.  Well there were wizards, and when those tormented souls came among us to torment Doretea and I we little knew how far their teachings would take us.  If we had told two of our tutors in the craft that one days they would be great wizards, able to control the forces of the world at a whim, and yet they would be enslaved servants to an evil beyond comprehension, and as it turned out, beyond our world, they would little have believed us.  So it goes.

I went mad early.  I was less a student and more a plaything for one of those monsters.  I began speaking in many voices and knowing many lives, as if I caught their souls, after a time of torment and madness.    He and I were foes from then on.  After I sunk an ensorcelled knife in his knee he never walked well again and no magic would heal him.

To tell you who I am would require I knew the answer. 

I will tell yu this. Nu Yark is a place where many from the vast shadows between Chaos and Amber are cast from the realms they know to one with ways beyond belief.  Here the billions of natives feed off each other and we from elsewhere are hardly oddities by comparison.  As an immigrant, I found my past sins made me fit in well.

I was enslaved by a Lord of Chaos in priestly guise and his wife, my virgin sister.  We rose an empire.  We ruled with terror, we reveled in fear.   But I never knew joy. It was always terror.  Pleasure was when the terror only hurt a little.  In time the people of the world rose up, followed a leader who was impervious to our hell of magic and they put us down.  Unable to kill us, they buried us alive in enforced sleep.  There we lay for centuries. 

But in a land of dark sorcery it was inevitable that a dark sorcerer would try to mine us for our secrets. When one plays with demons like us, one plays a high risk game and one pays ones debt with blood and souls. One came.  Carefully, he mined.  He studied, he wished to learn from my sister and my sister wanted her freedom.  When she broke free my nine companions and I helped her keep her husband in the ground.  For a time.

I'll not bore you.  Their were wars.  There was an empire.  And one day the Lady walked away from it and from us.   She had to.  She was Named and her powers fled.  For a time.

She took up with vagabond mercenaries.  And again she raised and empire.  More wars. More magic.  More death.... In the end... well, is there ever really an end? 

One day, when something of peace of a sort was achieved, the God of War and his drunk brother came and claimed my sister and I.  He told us that he had recently discovered we lived.  He talked to us like children.  

We were immortal sorceresses and mistresses of Empire!  We had rolled the world for500 years like goddesses!  My sister and I, never really friends, raised our might against this lone warrior and his laughing drunken red headed brother.   We who had stood battle in armor and blade for centuries bore our blades against him and the god of War slapped them aside.  He worked together and he stood silent as he tapped our blades aside as if we were squires.   

Time passed and we never came near touching him.  So we moved back.  We summoned our wills.  We summoned demons to devour him.  We summed the fires of the earth, the waters of the Oceans, the stones of the earth to destroy him. The skies darkened as lightnings cracked to smite him.  The howling of storms and the howling of demons and the howling of our elemental fury filled the air with a riotous din.  We showed our proud might to this presumptuous godling!

He said, “Do I have to do everything, Bleys?”

The Drunk stood unsteadily, taking a drink from a silver flask.    Looking at our hell falling upon them, he casually waved his hand.   A giant glowing symbol appeared of a kind unfamiliar to us.  A spell flew from it and all our forces were gone.  We stood under dark skies as it began to rain in the sudden absence of noise. 

He stepped forward and looked into our profound shock.  “I do not know what names you go by in this realm but I know what names you were christened in when you were born in the depths of Chaos.  You are Doria born first.”  He pointed to my sister.  He aimed his for finger at me, “and you are Desri, born next.  You have a older sister named Maylon and another whose name is unknown.  Yet.”

My sister howled, “How dare you presume to to make such claims and to bring war to our world!  What hell did you come here from?”

“I came from no hell, child.  I came from Amber”

The drunk chuckled, “Now, lets not be hasty, Amber is kind of a hell for some of us.”

Looking aside with a short scowl, he spoke, “I am Benedict of Amber.  This is one of my brothers, Bleys.  We will go by those names for now till we know what better to call you.  Our king has asked us to collect the lost stragglers of our family so we find ourselves here to collect you.  I have reason to believe that the two of you are my daughters.  It is good to see you are not defenseless.  We will see that you add to the knowledge gained in your childhood.”  

I started to tell him our childhood was far in the past but I was wrong.  My childhood had just ended when the red haired drunk looked in my eyes and my will was clamped like a sparrow in hand.  Even the will of the Dominator never held my mind so tight.  A whisper in my mind told me to relax and rest.

I awoke in a bright place and I felt no fear.  The little terrors that haunt the corners of my mind, the many voices were silent.  A servant left immediately and a forceful looking woman came n with what smelled like cooked meat but of a kind I did not know.. She was tall, sturdy, and clearly used to being obeyed.  I knew that kind my sister was one.  I tended to rely on fear.

“Its good that you are awake.  My name is Dame Margot and we are going to be good friends.   Now, Princess Fiona or Prince Bleys will be here in a moment to discuss your magical issues.  Now, I imagine you are hungry.  Lets satisfy what we can.”
“Where am I?  Who do you think you think you are to treat me like a child?”

“I'm Dame Margot.  Now, if you would like me to take this platter away I can.”

I was about to tell her what to do with the plate and damn her to the hell of crows when the smell filled me.  Hot.. a loaf of hot thick bread.  A jar of mustard, a bowl of pickles.  I knew these things but food was always a chore to me. Till then.  She filled a split roll of bread with meat and mustard.. chunks of some cheese.. 

I ate.  It was as if I had never tasted food.  I was ravenous, as if starved from birth.  As if every feast in my life had been cold porridge and rotted muscle.