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chanelle-lize · 4 months ago

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The Sword and the Stone

A fanfic I wrote because I listen to Worlds Beyond Number to micro-dose heart-wrenching trauma. The beginning is a little odd, because the story is based on how I think Suvi and Steel's relationship will change in the future, but I don't have a specific enough theory about the future of the main plot to place the characters within a setting that is any more specific than a marble room that is vaguely dangerous for rebel wizards to be in. Contains blood, betrayal, character death, grief, and Suvi generally having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. ~1,900 words

A Wizard Trap (which is a trap for wizards) springs as Suvi does whatever Wizard Thing needs to be done to help solve the Big Problem. Blood trickles from her nose and sprays from her mouth as she cries out in pain, taking a massive amount of damage from the trap as it punishes her for continuing to do the Thing that she is doing, yet still she forges forward relentlessly. Ame, Eursulon, and the Fox are somewhere nearby, but Other Things are happening, so they are otherwise occupied.

Just as Suvi successfully does the Wizard Thing, Steel rushes towards the Wizard Trap, sword drawn, ready to finish off whichever traitorous wizard has dared betray the Citadel under her service.

“It’s me! Steel, it’s me!” Suvi calls out, her voice cracking with pain, exhaustion, and the relief of knowing that what she’s done will help fix the Big Problem, and that her adoptive mother will understand and everything will be okay once all of this is over.

Steel halts for a moment as she realizes who is in the trap.

“Suvi…?”

“Mom!”

Suvi begins to cry as she stumbles towards Steel, desperate for comfort, her arms slightly outstretched for a hug.

“Suvi… I’m so sorry.”

Compelled by a self-inflicted Geas spell, the Sword of the Citadel strides forward and aims a deadly decapitating blow at the neck of the Wizard Sky.

Time itself appears to slow.

Suvi’s heart shatters as Steel’s blade slowly swings towards her neck, and she holds Steel’s sad yet convicted gaze with a look of numb disbelief, until, with the clear, silvery tone of a crystal wine glass struck by a knife, the sword glances off some unseen shield, and a flash of brilliant blue reveals a dome of glassy light surrounding Suvi. The very air around her begins to tremble, and the sapphire pendant hanging from her neck begins to glow with a blinding white light.

Steel staggers backwards, sword dangling awkwardly in her hands as her stance momentarily falters. The dome of light chips where it’s hit, then cracks and fractures, silently shattering into slivers of glass light that hover for a fraction of a second before they coalesce into a column towering high over Suvi and Steel's heads, swirling as it settles into the shape of the Wizard Stone.

Steel takes another step back as the shimmering Stone, an eight foot murmuration of glassy midnight blue, appears before her. To Steel she is a giant, but to Suvi, she is just as tall as she remembers.

Stone stares down at Steel with a look of disappointment, rage, and compassion and silently raises a glistening hand. Steel’s eyes, at first flickering with terror and confusion, now lock onto Stone’s shining white eyes. Her arms fall slack to her sides, sword sent clattering against the cold, stone floor, as tears begin to trace down the strange white scars that lace her cheek. As her eyes begin to take on the same shining white glow, her expression twists from confusion to disbelief, and then contorts into a rictus of horror.

Suvi never would have known what was happening to Steel if she hadn’t experienced something similar herself. There were no verbal or somatic components to go off of, but it was unmistakable. This image of Stone had inflicted Steel with something akin to what she would have experienced had she cast the Identify spell on herself. The only difference: this magic was undoing her.

A Mirror Curse.

The thrum in the air intensifies, a deep, bone-rattling rumble joined by a shimmering, bright, otherworldly buzz that bends in pitch like a polyphonic overtone, deeper and clearer, until it begins to resemble the ringing, crackling chime of shattering glass, familiar, yet stretched and distorted as though by some temporal equivalent of a Doppler effect. Time begins to return to itself, and as the present moment finally passes on and makes room for the next, the approaching sound that somehow hadn’t quite gotten here yet finally arrives, and the brilliant crash that should have accompanied the shattering of the bright glass light dome finally rings through the air. Stone’s dark blue figure bursts in a salvo of slivers that spark and disappear like dying stars. The light fades from Steel’s eyes, and the Sword of the Citadel clatters to the floor, dead.

Eursulon, Ame, and the Fox see only this: Steel swings her sword at Suvi’s neck, but it bounces uselessly against a blue dome shield of light that springs up around her. Steel’s eyes flash white as the dome shatters like glass, and she falls dead to the cold, stone floor.

The perfect sapphire pendant around Suvi’s neck, having served its final purpose, cracks and crumbles.

“Mom!”

Suvi shrieks, her voice somehow sharper than the loud shattering of glass reverberating around her. She calls for her mother again and again, but does not move towards Steel. It’s Stone that she wants. She had her back for just a moment, just long enough for her to wrap her protective blue cloak around Suvi one last time, and now she’s gone, and so is Steel. Steel, who Suvi never would have guessed would ever choose the Citadel over her. Steel, who Stone believed could be trusted to take care of her child. And if she couldn’t, if Suvi chose to stand against the Citadel and Steel chose to stand in her way, she knew her child would have a shield to save her. She knew her child would still be safe even if the Citadel that was once her childhood home turned the steel-bladed Sword that once protected her against her.

Ame, Eursulon, and the Fox look on in shock, not believing what they’ve seen and not daring to move, until Suvi, suddenly overcome by wracking sobs, wobbles and drops to her knees, and then down to the floor. All three rush towards her, but Eursulon easily outpaces Ame and the Fox, making it to Suvi’s side in three quadrupedal bounds. Gently, Eursulon slides his paws under her back and knees and attempts to lift her from the cold floor, but she rag-dolls as he lifts her. He slides his right arm back out from under her legs and instead supports her head like one would a newborn baby, pulling her into his chest, and casting Lay on Hands to heal some of the damage she’d sustained from the trap.

The tears welling up in Ame’s eyes are spilling over as she and the Fox catch up with Eursulon. They pause, watching for a moment as he silently weeps, gently rocking from side to side as he clutches a limp, wailing Suvi to his chest. Ame pauses in consideration and looks to the Fox, and they move towards Steel, quietly setting themselves to the work of putting her body to rest.

Suvi wails herself hoarse, her body dead-weight in Eursulon’s arms. But as she feels and hears him breathe, her breathing also changes. Her wails calm to hiccuping sobs. Her breath falls in time with his. The tone returns to her muscles, and she begins to bear her own weight. Eventually, she reaches a hand up, clutches a tuft of Eursulon’s fur, and breathes a deep, shuddering sigh. Eursulon’s hug tightens slightly as he curls around her and breathes a shaky sigh of his own in response.

As though somehow waiting for this signal, Ame and the Fox join them. Ame rests a gentle hand on Suvi’s shoulder as the Fox noses his way under Eursulon’s armpit and worms his way between Suvi and Eursulon’s chest. Overwhelmed by the additional affection, Suvi once again begins to sob. Ame gives her shoulder a comforting squeeze.

Eventually, Suvi stops crying again, and after a short, intimate silence, she takes a loud, long inhale through her nose and declares, “We have things to do.”

“Hm?” from Ame.

“What?” from Eursulon.

“I wasn’t sleeping, you were sleeping,” from the Fox.

“This is… so nice, but we do need to complete our mission, and this hug is getting so warm and I want to get out.”

“Of course,” Eursulon intones, loosening his grip on Suvi a little too abruptly.

The four untangle themselves from the grief heap and begin readying for their next objective. Suvi prestidigitates the blood from her clothing before becoming preoccupied with adjusting and readjusting a button on one of her cuff sleeves.

“Ready to go?” Ame asks.

“Yeah, uuh…” Suvi glances at Ame, then back at her cuff, but it’s long enough for Ame to see her eyes beginning to water again. “Is… “ She falls silent.

“…Suvi?” Eursulon quietly probes.

Suvi glances towards Eursulon’s voice, but doesn’t turn her head. If she turns to look at him, she’ll have to look at the spot where she saw Steel’s body fall.

“Is she…,” she makes out, before her voice cracks and falters.

“Oh! Uh…” Ame fumbles nervously, “I assumed… I didn’t, um… I’m sorry, did you want to say ‘goodbye’ first?”

Suvi looks up. “You already did it?”

“Yeah.”

Suvi’s shoulders visibly drop away from her shoulders and she exhales a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.

“Okay… okay…”

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah!” Suvi gives a shrug of nonchalance and flashes a smirk that accidentally squeezes a couple tears onto her cheeks that she quickly wipes away with the back of her hand. She steadies herself with another deep breath, then swiftly looks over to the spot in the room she was trying to avoid. Her heart lurches as her gaze meets the little brass censer of ashes placed neatly on top of Steel’s spell book next to Steel’s sheathed sword, but she fights back the wave of emotion and strides forward with a soldier’s grace.

Suvi bends down on one knee and looks like she’s about to simply pick up the items, but she pauses as she reaches for them. Slowly, she readjusts, shifting to a full kneeling position, and she slowly pulls the sword about halfway out of the sheath before letting her fingertips gently rest along the blade.

After a little longer than a minute, Suvi slides the sword back into its sheath, wipes her face with her hands, stands, clips the sheath onto her belt, then picks up the censer and spell book. She turns around, startled and slightly embarrassed to find Ame, Eursulon, and the Fox silently watching her.

“I was casting Identify,” she declares a little too loudly in the echoey, marble room. Suvi hates the awkward pause that lets her voice bounce around the room unimpeded.

“On the sword.” Another awkward silence.

“And what did it tell you of the sword?” Eursulon inquires.

“It’s… fine.”

“Ah... Good.”

“So, there are no dangerous enchantments on it then?” Ame asks. Suvi visibly winces, turns, and strides out of the room, and the rest of the group quickly follows.

“That is why you cast Identify on it, right? To see if there was something wrong with it?” Suvi's stride lengthens, a change that is barely noticeable to Eursulon, but a notable increase for Ame.

"Suvi?"

“There was nothing wrong with the Sword.”

Suvi rounds on Ame, who bumps into her in her haste to keep up with her longer-legged companion. She takes a step back and looks up at Suvi from under the brim of her hat.

"It's a sword. It cuts and it kills. That's what it's for. There's nothing wrong with it. It does what it's for."

“Ok... That’s good, then.”

Suvi stares down at Ame a little longer before answering.

"Yeah."

Turning back around, she brushes off her jacket, and, after a moment of fiddling with the button on her cuff, begins striding forward once more.

#this is the first fanfic I ever put out into the internet wilds I think #I'm in the queue to get an AO3 account so I'll also post it there when I get it #I never did fanfic in my youth though so I need help understanding literally all of it #please infodump essential fanfic writing knowledge in my dms please thanks #fanfic #fan fiction #the wizard the witch and the wild one #worlds beyond number #suvirin kedberiket #the wizard steel #the wizard sky #the wizard stone #the sword of the citadel #hey remember how brutal Suvi was about the Chalice because she chose to be that? hm.

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