When Libertus landed in the other place, his whole body crackled with energy. It shivered up his spine and through his horn. When he had been called the first time, he had been pulled through shaken and off-guard. Now, he materialized in a circle of heated winds. Power crackled off his horn and down his body. It formed shapes around him — pieces of armor on his head and neck and over his chest. A cloth draped across his back, along of the weight of—
A rider.
The ogre.
The ogre was riding him. He could feel his thighs along his rib cage, heavily muscled and startlingly warm.
“Off me, you oaf!” started Libertus, in outrage. His front hooves came off the ground in sheer surprise. “When did I say you could sit on my back?”
He tried to twist his head around to give Daiki a true look of disgust, but the nature of the form meant he had to turn himself in a half circle to do it. An armored hand touched his neck. Libertus’ skin jumped under it in irritation, but he settled as he saw the armor matched the hanging armor of his chest: Eastern design, interwoven lacquer ware.
“We are here together,” Daiki — no, Rubedo — reminded him, quietly. He didn’t look like he had the last time they’d been called. He wore full armor that covered his chest and waist. His club hung from his hips. He wore a mask that blocked out his bulging eyes. His tusks showed fully. His ponytail now fell to the small of his back. Between the gaps in his armor, few that there were, Libertus could see his skin had gone completely red.
“I suppose,” said Libertus, mulishly. He himself had been reformed to match this martial creature. He could take the ogre’s weight with no issue at all. The hand on his neck was no larger than a normal rider’s. As for the workshop around them…
It was the same workshop. Libertus was sure of it. He could recognize the marble floors, and the tables, and all the equipment that had survived the first time he’d been summoned — except, for whatever reason, it hadn’t survived the second. The tables this time had been shoved along the walls, on their sides. The marble floor under them had gone completely cracked, a huge broken crater that sloped downwards in a series of deep spiderweb cracks that originated from—
—beneath Libertus’ hooves, as it happened. They were standing on a terrible smoldering wreck of some kind. Collapsed lab equipment. Countless little broken glasses, now fused together from the power of their summoning. They had, it seemed, arrived in a great bolt of lightning, one which had struck the workshop full on. There was no sense looking for the stain left by that poor girl. The char under them would have quite erased it.
“Oh,” said Libertus. “What a mess. Did we do this?”
“It would seem so,” said Rubedo. He unhooked his club from his waist and draped it over his shoulder. A preferred pose, apparently. He looked around. Libertus tried not to curl his upper lip as he felt him shift on top of him. “One does not pull a summoning like us for nothing. Who has called us? We come in answer.”
Lightning crackled around them. The workshop smelled like ozone. Rain fell around them. They’d punched a hole in the roof on the way down.
“And be quick about it!” snapped Libertus. “You quite disappointed me last time…!”
“Rubedo?” came a shaking voice from the corner of the workshop. Someone picked themselves up from behind one of the broken tables.
Libertus saw her and his ears went back.
It wasn’t the witch. It was the girl from before. Except — no. No, it must have been a different girl. She was alive, to start with. Her hair was shorter. Her eyes wilder. She stood, took a step forward, hesitated, then, shaking herself, she ran towards them skidding down the crater halfway down.
“Rubedo,” she said. “Holy shit. I just wanted a ride out of here.”
“Milla,” said Rubedo.
The girl shook her head. “No, Cam, and what the fuck did you just do? I didn’t call you to… to… holy shit!”
She saw the wreckage under them and shoved her hand into her mouth. The color drained from her face.
“Is she…” The girl covered her mouth and retched. “Fuck.”
Libertus edged backwards to stay well out of the range of any potential vomit.
“Really, girl,” he said, recovering. He could see now, despite her face, this girl was not the same as the one from before. “If you would stop swearing for one moment and actually explain the situation, perhaps we could answer you.”
“And the horse talks, too. When the hell did you get a horse!”
“Horse,” Libertus’ nostril flared. “Did you not see my horn—”
Rubedo settled a hand over his neck and gave his mane a slight tug. Libertus fell into an outraged silence.
“Master Cam,” said Rubedo, carefully. “You are the one who called us?”
The girl recovered, just barely. She squared her shoulders and stuck her chin up. She looked so much like her dead predecessor and the witch that Libertus shuffled another step back on principle.
“Sure was,” said Cam, holding up the book in her hand. It was the same one the girl had held, the second before the lightning had erased her from existence. Libertus found himself doubting his own memories. “Rubedo, I call you! Do my bidding! However the fuck that’s supposed to go.”
“And Master Milla?” asked Rubedo.
“Dead,” said Cam, bitterly. “Camilla saw to that.”
Camilla was the witch then. Milla was the girl. Libertus so hated being brought into the middle of other people’s drama.
“And Camilla?” asked Rubedo, who seemed to be taking all of this in stride.
“Uh.”
“Where is she?” asked Rubedo.
“Uhh,” she said, rubbing her neck. “That’s… kinda complicated…”
“Honestly,” whinnied Libertus, “you had no problem swearing at us. Out with it. If the witch is near, we ought to know.”
The girl looked up with a glare.
“And what kind of sassy-ass unicorn are you supposed to be? You’re the ones who are standing on her, if that helps any,” snapped Cam.
Rubedo and Libertus looked down at the same time.
Libertus dropped his head, he pushed at the wreckage, carefully, with his horn. He could make out a broken table, a few scattered and seared scrolls and — yes, there it was: the smoking remnants of a fur coat. He fished it out and held it up in the bent crook of his horn. Grey and tan ash fell out of the sleeves. Cam fell onto her knees, covering her mouth again.
“Please don’t throw up,” said Libertus, but he felt a wave of nausea himself. He refused to hold the coat any longer. He shook it off his horn. It fell in front of the girl.
“A bolt of lightning,” said Rubedo, in realization, “summoned from above. This world quakes with our coming. You see? I am strong.”
“Lightning is my element,” Libertus pointed out.
“Our element now,” said Rubedo.
“That may be,” said Libertus. He started stomping carefully in a circle, just to be sure there weren’t any living witch bits in the pile. “Still, it seems a bit anticlimactic, I had wanted a word with her.”
“Such is a witch’s war,” said Rubedo.
“Wonderful,” said Libertus. “That’s it, then? Contract up, we go home?”
Again, that hand on his neck to steady him. Ugh. Well, at least Rubedo didn’t have reins.
“When one’s master falls, another inherits their names and power,” said the ogre. “So long as there are those who may call it, we will continue to serve in this world. We have a new master now.”
“Do we?”
“You are looking at her.”
“Am I.”
“I can hear you,” said the girl, dejectedly. She had pulled the tattered coat into her lap. She was turning it over and over. “This isn’t really her, is it? She isn’t really dead, is she? I didn’t think… I just wanted a way out—”
“There is no one who will stop you now. Was this not your will?” asked Rubedo. Despite the armor and rumble of his beast form, he managed somehow to sound gentle.
“Dunno,” said Cam. “Kind of hadn’t thought this far.”
She kept running her hand through the ruined fur coat. Rubedo slid off Libertus’ back. His armor rattled as he walked, his footsteps crackling in the puddles from the rain. He laid his club down and knelt across from her. He held his hand over her to shield her from the drops.
“What is your will now?” asked Rubedo.
“How the fuck should I know,” said Cam, in a scratchy voice. It was then that Libertus understood she was crying, and had been for some time. The rain had made it hard to see. “I didn’t think I could do it. I just wanted to get out. What am I supposed to do now?”
Libertus’ ears twitched. He could hear, from outside the workshop, the sound of heavy footsteps.
“Rubedo,” he said, warningly. “This place is not empty.”
Rubedo acted as though he hadn’t heard him.
“Do you want your freedom?” he asked Cam.
“I just wanted Milla to not be dead,” sobbed Cam. “Milla, and Lala, and Mia. They were all way better than me. Why the hell am I the one who’s not dead?”
Fists pounding on the workshop doors.
“This witch didn’t happen to have an army, did she?” asked Libertus. “We really ought to do something about this?”
“But do you want your freedom now?” asked Rubedo. He didn’t respond to Libertus. He just looked at Cam.
“I hate witches,” said the girl, her shoulders shaking. “I hate them so much. She was just keeping us for spare parts. She kept taking pieces of us every time one of hers broke down. She’s been doing it for years, too. Doing it. Did it? Fuck! There’s been so many before me, too. Did you know that? Did anyone know about that? Probably didn’t even care. Didn’t even. Fucking fuck. I hate her. I hate them all. I want them to die. I want every single one of them ground into the dirt.”
“If you live you may yet have that chance,” said Rubedo, gently.
“Provided we go now,” said Libertus, as the doors began to bulge. It was nice Rubedo was so good with children, really, almost touching even, but Libertus rather thought he was overdoing it, especially when the soldiers on the other side of that door so clearly had weapons.
Cam shoved herself to her feet. She draped the tattered sheet over her shoulder.
“Here lies Camilla the Shrike. She died like she lived,” she said, swiping her wrist over her face. She looked at the smear on the ground. She kicked a rock at it. “Fucking extra, and wearing way too much kohl. Fine. Rubedo. Get me out of here. I’m not giving those tin cans the satisfaction of pulling me apart.”
Rubedo held out his hand. She stepped into it. She was small enough to fit in his palm. He grabbed a handful of Libertus’ mane, and vaulted back onto his back. Libertus might have protested this rough treatment, but at that moment a dozen shining automatons came streaming in through the shattered door. Libertus called a wind, reared onto his hind legs, and launched himself out through the workshop’s broken roof.
They flew through the storm clouds and over blasted earth as grey and as barren as Libertus imagined the darklands in the Realm to be. The name began as he landed in a rock grotto, some leagues away from the workshop. Camilla the Shrike had set up among the mountains. It gave them plenty of outcroppings to hide under.
As Libertus landed, he felt his feet almost phase through the earth. The summoning was growing thin. The girl looked pale and exhausted as Rubedo lowered her to the ground.
“Aw, fuck, what did I just do,” she muttered, holding the burnt coat tighter around herself as she stared out through the grotto. “Once the tin men are done searching the place, they’re going to be after me. So are the other witches, once they realize her scrolls are up for grabs. What the hell do I do?”
“First you must dismiss us,” advised Rubedo.
“Dismiss you!” Cam looked up. “You’re the only protection I’ve got!”
“And our time in this world grows short,” said Rubedo. He had at least had the grace to get off of Libertus’ back. He knelt beside her. The ogre’s body had begun to flicker as well. The edges of his armor had already started to crumble away. He held up his arm to show her the gaps in it.
“You can’t just leave me,” she muttered, “you’re the ones who got me in this mess in the first place—”
Libertus thunked his hooves against the stone. They sparked like a miniature crack of lightning. The girl jumped. Rubedo held out a hand to steady her.
“Excuse me? You are the one who called us,” said Libertus. “You are the one who wished to escape, one way or another. I think by those standards we have kept the spirit of that wish in full. You have your freedom, Master Cam, and you should rather listen to my compatriot. If you hold us here much longer, you gamble with your life. You do know that holding a summon takes one’s magic reserves, don’t you? You do know that places an awful strain on you the longer you hold it?”
“I…” Cam held onto Rubedo’s thumb.
“You didn’t attempt a summoning without knowing that, did you?” asked Libertus. He could tell from the girl’s blank stare that she hadn’t thought about it at all.
“I didn’t think I’d make it this far,” she said. “If you’re such a goddamn expert in everything, what the hell do you think I should do?”
“I think you should study that book of yours,” said Libertus, huffily. A hand covered his snout and pushed his head away. Rubedo shouldered his way between them.
“And I think you dismiss us, and rest while you have the chance. Magic returns to you in your dreams,” interrupted the ogre. He pointed, with one large crimson finger, to the book in Cam’s trembling hands. His gauntlets had faded entirely. “Take our names. Keep them close. Summon us again when you have need of us. We shall be yours to command.”
“Really?” said Cam. She eyed Libertus with particular suspicion. Libertus snorted at her.
“Of course,” said Libertus. “That is how this works, you know.”
“I promise,” said Rubedo.
“All right,” said Cam.
She cut the summon. Libertus sighed with relief as he felt the other place fall away.
