Keeping her pregnancy a secret is proving to be a rather difficult task, especially keeping it from Elwen’s closest friends. It’s not like they are nosy or snooping around her business; on the contrary, most of them have a healthy respect for her privacy. The difficulty lies instead in Elwen’s eagerness to share the news. She has underestimated how much glee the notion of having a life growing inside of her would bring her, and now that she feels it first-hand, it’s hard to stand around and pretend she doesn’t have amazing news to share. It is only due to Maronette’s sobering presence that she manages to keep herself from blabbering it out whenever they spend time with one of their most trusted friends. The guard has pointed out, with reason, that between mind-reading spells, eavesdroppers, doppelgangers, and other sorts of scrying magic, even if they trust someone with their lives, it doesn’t mean the news won’t travel. The best way to keep it safe is to keep it between the two of them. And Elwen has to admit that Maronette is right, they had encountered all sorts of subterfuge, magic or otherwise, in the past, and she knows very well that secrets don’t remain secrets for long after you tell them for the first time.

Maronette being right, however, doesn’t make the effort of keeping her mouth shut about it any easier, and the only reason she has managed to do it so far is the knowledge that the BRC is working on the preparations for the Simulacrum spell, and once it’s cast, she and Maronette will be able to sequester themselves away from the busy city life and Elwen can focus her effort entirely on nurturing that life growing in her womb. And so, when she opens the envelope with the dark wax seal, she screams in excitement, prompting a very concerned Maronette to come rushing to her aid, only to find Elwen is not injured in any way, as she reads the summons to the Black Rune Club’s secretive headquarters.

And so, she and her wife make their way to the Wellsworth Printing Company headquarters in the heart of the city, and they step out of the wagon and through the doors guarded by Wellsworth’s guards to announce themselves at the reception of the multi-storied office building with a code phrase. And a moment later, a young scrawny man with an expression of being driven and high in ambition appears, wearing all black and taking a bow as he says:

“I apologize for the wait, madams. If you’ll follow me this way, the copies are ready for your revision and pending approval…”

“No apologies necessary,” Elwen says, trying not to chuckle at the cloak-and-dagger conversation, “I’m happy that we shall finally see this book printed. Come, Maronette.”

But as the two women begin to head towards the stairs in the direction indicated by the raven-haired, pale young man, he stretches his arm to intercept the guard’s path, putting himself between Elwen and her lover.

“I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve been instructed to take Miss Elwen upstairs alone to check the copy,” he informs.

“I care not what you were instructed, but if you have a particular interest in not having your face caved in, then I su-“ Maronette hisses before Elwen interrupts her.

“Ah, I see. Well, Maronette is my bodyguard, and you would not ask a Lady to abandon her protection, would you?” Elwen speaks, deciding that little good can come from letting Maronette finish her threat.

“I am only following instructions, ma’am.”

“I appreciate that, and as a well-trained lad who does what he is told, I’m telling you not to press the issue further. If your superiors have to be called, I doubt sincerely this matter will be resolved in your favor, and they shan’t look kindly at the waste of time.”

The lad swallows dry, and with a final glance at Maronette, he nods and simply begins to walk towards the stairs. Elwen gives a glance back to her lover, finding her still frowning and a little flushed, and offers her a shrug and a smile, as if wordlessly reminding her that there’s no need for threats when a strong-worded warning will do.

They march up the stairs, and it’s clear that the company is a front the second they reach the second floor. There are little signs of printing and a lot of signs of shady activities; people in black moving about, crates with triple locks piled in corners, from which Elwen could feel arcane energy emanating. All doors are closed, and there are no employees making casual conversation in the corridor. But when they reach the third floor, the whole pretense is dropped in favor of security. Three cowled guards of the BRC block the path and only step aside as the lad walking with them presents a runic stone with an arcane mark. They nod and allow the trio past them and into the third floor.

“Well, a lot of security on staff today,” Elwen notes as they move past the guards.

“Today? Oh, I suppose you have not been here in a while. Security is heightened for a couple of months now,” the lad explains, “but don’t ask the reason, I wouldn’t know.”

“I wasn’t going to. I’d be surprised if the Inner Circle were sharing their concerns openly with the rank-and-file members,” Elwen retorts.

The barb is tactically delivered. The implication that their guide is a mere entry-level foot soldier of the BRC would rub him the wrong way for sure, and Elwen does so mostly out of a petty need to sting him after he almost forbade Maronette from coming along. He nods and tries his best poker face, but she can tell she got under his skin.

“This way,” he says simply, leading them down the main hall.

They head towards a round lobby in front of a set of double doors, carved in black mahogany wood with highly detailed engravings that depict, on one of the doors, a skeletal humanoid, clad in robes and holding a tome, facing towards the other door, which, in turn, depicts a human clad in leaves, with flowers in her hair. She seems to be reaching out for the skeleton’s hand, or their book.

Elwen has seen it before, but she never understood the symbolism. She reckons it has something to do with the mystical side of the Black Rune Club, which she isn’t very privy to. She always deals with them from a business perspective, and always with the perspective of an outsider looking in.

The doors open without their guide having to announce their arrival, and four more cowled guards in black emerge, their faces concealed by hoods and black masks. Swords on their belts and, Elwen is sure, some magic to back up where steel might fail. Through the doors, she can see a circular room with a crescent-shaped table and several chairs that look more like thrones arranged so that seven mages can sit side by side, with the main throne in the middle being taller than the rest, and more highly decorated.

And standing idly inside the room are seven people, four of them are high-ranking Black Rune Club people that Elwen knows from her past, but the other three are unknown quantities, of course, though, she can’t expect to know every high-ranking member of the Black Rune Club. She has never been this deep into the Black Rune’s business before. It is unsettling.

The guards look at Elwen, then at Maronette, and finally at the guide. He swallows dry and rushes to explain:

“She wouldn’t come otherwise. I felt that we shouldn’t delay things and…”

But before he can explain things further, one of the mages approaches the door. A salt and pepper-haired man who carries himself with a lot of dignity, and his presence alone seems enough to suppress the guide’s pleas.

“That’s quite all right,” he says, and the guards visibly relax upon hearing that. “Elwen, you’re awaited inside.”

“Oh, good!” Elwen says, gleefully, at least outwardly, she’d die before she let those bastards know they have her rattled with their esoteric practices and secretive behavior. “Maronette, shall we?”

“You will enter the Circle alone, Elwen,” the man says categorically.

“But she’s my bod-“

“Your bodyguard may wait outside. You will be safe past these doors. Some secrets are for the eyes of our clients and allies only.”

“And which one am I today?” Elwen asks with a frown.

“Come in and find out.”

Elwen can tell by Maronette’s face that she doesn’t approve of it one bit, and the singer does her best to offer reassurance with a smile of calm that she doesn’t really feel before she nods and walks inside.

“Stay with her,” the older man says to the guide, gesturing his head towards Maronette.

And then he ushers Elwen into the room with rounded corners and the crescent table, as the doors close behind her. The room walls are adorned with frescos that seem to tell a story that begins in the time of knights, swords, and castles, of a knight who slays a beast and finds scrolls. Each panel depicts those scrolls changing hands at different moments in civilization. And after the first panels, it’s always people in black who guard the scrolls.

Elwen can tell that it’s a reference to the Black Rune Club’s history, but she doesn’t know the tale to be able to attach any meaning to the scenes. She walks towards a point that seems to be the center of the crescent table, and each of the mages takes their seat. Ceremonially, they raise their hoods to conceal their faces, even if they were visible moments ago, and each produces a black orb, apple-sized, with their individual Arcane Mark engraved on it. Elwen can’t see all the marks, but she is sure the orbs are more than just ceremonial. They ought to serve for summons, or some other magical function.

“Welcome to the Inner Circle Sanctum,” the mage seated in the center says, “for services rendered to this society and our cause, we have elected to grant your wish and perform a powerful spell on your behalf…”

Elwen feels palpable relief upon hearing those words. Of course, if she thinks rationally, she should’ve been able to know that they wouldn’t do all this song and dance to refuse her and walk back on her word. But still, she breathes out a sigh of relief once that is confirmed.

“The Simulacrum, yes…” she notes.

“Yes, the casting shall take a long time, and the procedure requires expensive materials. In order to maximize success, we shall need to perform the ritual in a zone of strong magic. And ensure that you carry nothing magical within yourself that might interfere,” another of the hooded figures speaks.

“That’s… fine, I suppose. I have nothing of the sort with me.”

“Of course not, but we shall double-check all the same,” a female voice says.

“Alright then… Shall we begin?”

“Right now.”

The leader speaks this time, and the door swings open to Elwen’s right. A secret door, just a portion of the wall sliding. Not by magic, but by clockwork and engineering. Beyond it, there is a windowless room, decorated with arcane symbols. And a figure wearing a red robe waits for her. The vestments are different than any of the Black Runes’ usual uniforms, so she feels a certain unease at that.

Elwen makes a courtesy with a short bow towards the honored members of the Inner Circle, as she has been in the theatre business long enough to recognize her cue to exit stage right. She then moves towards the hooded figure, wondering who’s the poor sod tasked with the thankless job of detecting magic on her and ensuring she is clean of magical items.

She expects the Circle to be short behind her, but to her surprise, as soon as she crosses the threshold, the secret passage behind her begins to close, leaving her in that small, windowless room. Without any source of outside light, as the door closes, they are plunged into darkness, and she can swear she sees a glimpse of red towards the stranger before three magically glowing crystals, set on torch-holders, suddenly come on.

The hooded figure now stands a few feet away from her. They are tall, and, Elwen notices now, up close, they have a rather full, feminine figure. She lifts her eyes towards the hood, and the shadows concealing the face beneath it aren’t naturally occurring. The angle is all wrong for that. It’s magical darkness.

“Well… the effects are quite dramatic, and I’m shaking in my boots,” she says with impatience, “but can we get on with the show?”

“Oh, we shall,” says a vaguely familiar, sweet and soft voice.

And then the two hands pull back the hood, dispelling the shadows to reveal the face beneath it. And Elwen is, for the first time in gods only know how long, left speechless.

 

***

 

Their guide stands with Maronette in the round lobby that serves as an antechamber to the Inner Circle room. And Maronette has a distinct impression that he isn’t there just to keep her company. At first, she is restless, pacing around the room and walking in literal circles as she waits for her wife to return, but as time passes, she finally calms herself enough to sit down. It is hard to say how long Elwen has been inside the Inner Circle room, with no exterior windows for Maronette to keep track of the passage of time, but the bodyguard believes that she has been in there for at least a couple of hours when she finally decides that something isn’t right.

“This is bullshit, I’m going to fetch her…” Maronette gets up and heads towards the door.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you…” the guide says, in a serious, warning tone.

“Are you going to fight me?”

“I don’t have to.” He offers a shrug. “The door has a magical ward. Try to force it open, and it will put you to sleep.”

Maronette stands in front of the door, hands on her waist, feeling a hundred thoughts collapse through her mind. She has no tools to bypass a magic door, but she is far from helpless.

“Alright then, if all I can do is wait, can we go somewhere else, at least?” Maronette asks, “Somewhere with a strong drink perhaps?”

The guide chuckles as he gets up, and there’s a smirk on his face.

“Are you asking me out for drinks?”

Maronette lets her spine bend slightly to mark the curve of her hips and pushes her chest outwards as she gives her best sultry smile towards the pale lad tasked with babysitting her.

“Why, is that something you want to do?” she asks, in a throaty tone.

“Look, I’m flattered, bird… but I actually have a job to do.”

“Guarding me, isn’t it? Why do we need to do it here?” Maronette says, putting some whiny pout in her voice.

He walks towards her, reaching out to touch her arm with a confident grin across his features.

“Well, it doesn’t, but wh-“

Maronette would’ve felt bad for him, in most other circumstances, as her hand reaches out to grab the back of his head and she slams him against the door. Immediately, a pink shimmering light crosses the whole surface of the door, and sparks of it fly into the lad’s eyes. He falls to the ground, fast asleep, and with a forehead bump on the way, no doubt.

Maronette kneels next to his unconscious form and goes through his pockets, retrieving the Stone she saw him waving at the guards, and then she simply walks away from the lobby. She is sure that the Inner Circle has their own passages to get around the building, so all she needs to do is find an alternate path, preferably one without a magically warded door blocking her passage.

As she emerges back into the main corridor, one of the hooded guards approaches her, but she simply lifts the stone to show the glowing mark, as their guide had done. Maronette realizes then that just because she has been dating a witch for a long time, she isn’t exactly knowledgeable about magic. The stone doesn’t glow, and the guard frowns and reaches for his sword. In a fraction of a second, it dawns on Maronette that the ability to display the rune might be something that only mages can do, or only the user. That is bad.

However, the smooth, rounded-edged stone is slightly flattened and quite heavy, and that is a good thing. Maronette might not be a mage, but she knows how to do something very well. And tossing rocks is one of them. She throws it, and before the sword can clear the scabbard, the stone crosses the air and hits the guard square on the face with a sickening crunch that must be a nose breaking. Maronette winces as the man falls to the floor and rushes past him, grabbing his sword on the way as she dashes down the corridor.

It doesn’t take long for three or four guards to be after her, and she can hear their boots stomping always a few feet behind her as she runs through the Black Rune Club’s offices. Soon, more of them join the pursuit.

‘Of all the stupid things you did, Maronette, this one might take the cake,’ she tells herself as she jumps over desks and uses her shoulder to open doors without stopping. Soon she’s running through a room filled with printing presses, knocking over workers carrying trays of blocks and blank pages, and sliding under them to emerge on the other side and dodge pursuers. There are now perhaps six guards on her tail, and she knows the number will only grow until she’s caught. But she’s not going to get caught. Not until she gets her wife back.

The pressroom has a wooden mezzanine from which overseers and bosses can look down upon the workers, and, with quick calculations, she jumps onto a press, tosses herself towards a chandelier, and swings enough to land on the mezzanine. The guards below shout at each other to find another path, and she decides that’s her chance to shake them. She runs past a sort of book repository and, finally, sees a person at the end of a long corridor leaving a room, calmly, seemingly unaware of the pursuit going on in the building, so she rushes there. As fast as her legs can carry her, she manages to pass through the door before the first guard emerges at the top of the spiral stairs.

And as she enters the room, she finds herself in a dimly lit room, darkness broken by a few streaks of sunbeam coming through the gaps in the roof above. All around her are old wooden cabinets filled with large square drawers, and numeric codes written on bronze plaques in front of each. Some sort of archive room? Well, maybe they will have a blueprint of the building there, she reckons, as she moves forward in the gloom. Unsure what to look for, she just begins to open drawers at random, and she reads the names in each of the ledgers inside. Clients, stashes, accounts; all, she is sure, very useful for a committed enemy, but nothing that will help her out of the present pickle. And then she spots a folder ledger named ‘assets’ and, reckoning that a building is an asset, she opens it to flick through it. She is quick to lose interest once she realizes it’s all text and almost no figures, meaning there’s no chance of a building blueprint being in there. Outside, she hears the stomping of guards approaching the archive door and then moving past it. Taking a deep breath, her eyes return to the pages, and then, just as she is about to drop the ledger and go try another, she spots a small symbol on the corner of the page. She recognizes the arcane mark that was emblazoned on Natalie’s rump. It is hard to forget the sight of her former lover bent over in front of her, lying on top of her wife.

“Fuck,” Maronette curses, as she looks at the page and spots Natalie’s name.

And then her heart sinks. She can’t believe the words in front of her, but she can’t stop reading either. Natalie is listed as one of the many assets of an ‘associate contact’ of the Black Rune Club, and the text leaves no doubt that she is under a Geas that forbids her from mentioning anything relating to the Club or the mage that placed it on her.

“Fucking hell, Natalie… What did you get yourself into?” Maronette says to herself, and then sighing, adds, “what the hell did you get us into?”

She continues to read, skimming over reports of a handler over this ‘associate contact’, and praising the contact for accurate information and ‘great first-hand knowledge of the Arcane, and darker things too’. That doesn’t sound good, Maronette reckons. But there’s no mention of a name anywhere, just that mark. So, Maronette, moving by instinct, flips to the last page of the book, where, as expected, the handler has written a few things to keep in mind. Sequences of numbers that are likely padlock keys and passwords, addresses, and a drawing of an Arcane Mark and the name of the wizard to which it belongs. And upon reading it, Maronette recoils, dropping the ledger as she curses under her breath again.

“It can’t be,” she says, remembering the name of an old foe, “what do you want with Natalie? What do you want with us, Lumei?”