"Sing the banner brown up high, I'll sing thee named, O -"
It was a familiar cheery song, to a familiar tune. Gwen finds herself joining in the melody on the second line even before she finds herself wondering who was singing.
The singer's pure pristine flutelike voice is more perfect than Mother or Father or Pathred or anyone she'd heard. If she ever got to the Royal Music Academy, she's sure anyone there would've schemed great schemes for such a voice.
And then she also remembers the strange shape in the stables, and the glistening knife just like in Mother's wild stories of assassins - but that has to have been a dream.
Gwen blinks open her eyes (see, her eyes are closed, that had to have been a dream) - and finds herself in what looked like the courtyard of some noble's palace.
It is a luxurious garden, with cobblestones between beautiful flowers and bushes half of which she'd never seen before. She's lying on a couch that felt like it was stuffed with the softest goose-down, wearing a white dress whiter than anything she'd worn since her christening. She'd never imagined she'd wear one again till her wedding, unless she actually does get away from her mother to the Royal Music Academy...
Next to her, on an intricate wickerwork chair that seemed to have a feathered back, sits the singer: a woman in the same white gown, a coronet on her head and an excited grin on her face.
"- and let us all unite, sky and land and men in perfect harmony -"
Gwen drops the melody to the familiar tune, looking around dumbly for a moment before suddenly realizing what has to have happened.
"- and dance in the day and dance in the night, sun and moon dancing with pure beams of light --"
Gwen sits up.
She smooths her skirts to delay things a moment longer, though they scarce need any smoothing somehow even though she... had been unconscious... in them.
"Hail and peace," she says. It's one of the standard greetings, the one Mother taught her to use just in case she ever went along on any diplomatic trips outside the shire.
Gwen narrows her eyes.
The stranger acknowledged her title, but didn't give the second part ('of Trinnshire'). She would've thought the hostile nobles in other shires wouldn't name either, and Pathred (who'd been at least acting like a friend) had definitely named both... but what does she really know when she's never been able to get outside Trinnshire yet? And Mother hasn't even let her go on any of the border patrols (not that she really wants to)?
Aloud, she says, "I've been kidnapped, right? Which of the nobles did it? Or are you telling me?"
"You... could say that."
She seems to sink down inside herself a bit.
"Though, I do expect you'll be glad to be here."
"Then Mother was sort of right after all, or maybe just right all along if you're kidnapping me straight out of Trinnsford itself..." Gwen shakes her head.
"Where am I? Who are you? How'd you do it?"
"I've seen all the best maps Father has, even the ones back from the Rebellion, showing all Maranon and the -"
"I was 'Lila' once," the stranger interrupts with a faint smile. "Use that name, if you need to."
Well, that's some way to give an alias. Was there a "Lila" walking around Trinnsford yesterday, or however long ago it was just before she got kidnapped? Or last year maybe, to scout it out? Gwen can't remember anyone by that name, but she's not sure...
"Are you a noble yourself? Or just one of their servants?" Gwen guesses "Lila" looks like a noble, but it's not like she's ever actually seen one of them. (Her own family doesn't count, of course, even though they technically got given a title.) "And which house is your lord from?"
Lila laughs.
And in her laugh, she leans forward... and the feathers that had seemed to be on her chair lean forward with her.
She has wings.
Lila catches her by the arms, lifting her up. "Stand tall and free, and do not bend a knee..."
Gwen knows that song! It's one of the old songs from the Rebellion, maybe Father's favorite.
"Who are you?" she breathes, almost falling back onto the couch. "What are you? A Fay - a rebel -"
Lila smiles good-naturedly. "No, no, neither. I was born a girl like you. Human. I've never been what you're thinking of as a rebel, though... but that's a long story." She shakes her head briefly, still smiling. "Anyway, I got these wings after I... in this language, I suppose you'd say 'took service with my lord'."
"First, back to standing tall and free." Lila stares at her for a moment.
"It seems to me that if you're running a Rebellion, or the aftermath of one, you should keep true to it rather than giving up halfway through to start telling a whole different story. I mean, if you really want to go off to the Royal Music Academy and marry Pathred and become Baroness of Vindria-in-Koafshire -"
How closely has Lila been spying on her!? And how does she have just the same stare as big sister Emma!?
"I'm not in love with him!" She throws up her hands - somehow ignoring Lila's wings - just like she did with Mother. "I was just talking with him! He was telling me about the Academy! And the city!"
Lila grins.
"- Well, if you did want to start a new story and be a Baroness, that's fine! But while you're playing a rebel just like the rest of your family, don't go bowing down to people just because you're in awe over how you think they're Fay. The real Fay would say the same thing, I'm sure."
Gwen narrows her eyes.
She's been played. By a mistress of the game.
And she still can't object, because Lila's exactly right. More than right; she's sure a Baroness wouldn't go bowing down to Fay either if one of them suddenly appeared!
She pointedly sits back down on the couch.
So what else should she be objecting to here? And how?
Well, Lila is serving some lord, who's kidnapped her...
... and Lila's at least trying to act like a friend. So maybe Gwen can really bring her around to being a friend? Like Great-Aunt Trinn brought around Grandma Marian back at the start of the Revolt?
Gwen lets her chin tremble in nervousness.
(Real nerves, suddenly come over her now that she's thinking about it.)
"D-do you know what your lord plans to - do - t-to me? Ransom me back - or - blackmail - or - s-something else?"
Gwen's eyes shoot open, and she pulls her bodice close to herself. If Lila is so dismayed even thinking about it -
Gwen swallows, her heart thudding. That's not the words she was expecting.
"You mean... he's going to lock me in a dungeon and let everyone keep thinking I'm dead? Or he's going to definitely actually kill me -" (she squeaks) "- when? Or -"
Lila shakes her head.
"No. You have already died. I'm told someone killed you. That is how you got here."
She runs her hands down her sides, her legs, her face...
She feels warm and alive, just like before. She doesn't feel any death-wound.
But... wait a minute; there's something she didn't feel.
Gwen hikes up her skirts to the spot on her leg where there should be the scar and the notch in her bone from when she got kicked by Applecore the stallion.
It's not there anymore.
That could be healing magic beyond anything in Trinnshire, maybe, but...
She's remembering now the fuzzy dream of that strange shape in the stables with a glistening knife. It's coming back to her, and it's feeling not quite dream-like anymore...
It feels still weirdly fuzzy, but it's slotting right into place in her memories as the last thing right before she's here --
The moment the first tears appear in Gwen's eyes, Lila is there, sitting next to her, hugging her in her wings.
It's a little while before Gwen looks over past Lila's feathers (as soft and comforting as goose-down).
She still barely remembers dying... but she's not really trying.
And given that she's here now...
"It's a beautiful garden," she says, not sure how to start, "but this isn't quite how I imagined Heaven?"
Lila releases Gwen from the hug and steps back.
"Some people call me that," she says with a shrug. "But sometimes the name doesn't fit. I'm not an angel like the angels you're thinking of. Or the angels I was thinking of when I first got here."
It really would've been easier if she could've called herself a Fay, but Gwen was thinking inappropos things about them too...
"Your story hasn't gotten to Heaven and angels." And then she hastily adds, lest Gwen run off in a different wrong direction, "- at least not yet."
Oh well, it's time to say it even more plainly. Hopefully this will help, or... well, she still won't be at a loss; she can keep comforting her; but she hopes Gwen will show enough spirit here.
"This isn't Heaven. Or Hell. Or Purgatory, or the Abyss, or anywhere else you've heard of. That's why you could say my lord kidnapped you - you wouldn't normally end up here, but my lord snatched you to here after you died."
"Sleep my child and lay thee down, hear the trouble-free waters..."
The first lullaby Lila sang, Gwen had never heard before. That just made things worse. It isn't that she's still hurt by having been killed in some way she could only half-remember; it's not like she feels dead (nor even like she had any idea how that would feel); it's not like she'd been looking forward to waking up in Heaven to-day; it's...
... well, by the third lullaby (one she'd heard half the mothers in Trinnsford singing to their babies), she was humming along, and she'd gotten her thoughts together enough to realize.
"... where am I?"
She twists the corners of her wings. That's not one of the questions she'd been expecting.
"... We have names for this place, but most of them wouldn't mean anything to you..."
... wait, doesn't Gwen's world have a sometimes-open worldgate in it? if so, that'd help her understand...
Lila makes a magic sign with her fingers, looks over Gwen's shoulder, and sees a page flutter into existence with the answer: Yes; among her people it is called the "Gates of Night."
Oh good.
"... You've heard of the Gates of Night? You could perhaps call this this the Gate-house of Many Nights."
Yes, she's heard of them. She never really thought about what was on the other side, where the Fay had (in long ages past) come from, but it at least matches something.
The terrible gnawing lostness and loneliness starts to fade a bit.
"Oh. So... we're still... next to the worlds? Even if I'm not in any of them?"
That feels like a rock holding her down against the wind of... dark cold night.
But this Lila... or at least her lord... has a plan, she's sure.
So she repeats a line she'd never heard outside people's tales of other shires, or the old time before the Revolt: "What does your lord want of me?"
"Nothing demanding! Unless you're very demanding about the genre of story you'll be in."
"Oh?" she asks skeptically. "So what if I decide Mother's right after all and I need to raise another Revolt?"
Lila throws back her head and wings and laughs.
"I'd love to see you try! I don't think he'd mind if you tried - he might be amused too! - but I really don't think you'd get anywhere. Nor that you'd really want to raise a revolt, given what you were hoping to do with yourself before you got killed."
"Maybe getting killed by a conspiracy of all the nobles in every other shire, just like Mother kept saying they'd try to do, changed my mind."
"Did it?"
She's pretty sure it didn't. But even if Gwen is a radical now, she wouldn't mind.
"I guess you'll need to wait and see."
She won't let Lila play her again.
"So what does your lord want of me? And - is there some other way to talk about him, by the way?"
"What he wants of you is - he wants to create stories. To design worlds to create stories, around the stories he wants to build!"
Lila gives one sweeping nod.
"And for you, he wants to put you in to subvert another sort of story where you're in the place of someone who would've been the villainess."
Gwennyth frowns. "Like... like the nobles all called Grandpa Kosvin a villain in the Revolt?"
(That brings back some unpleasant thoughts of her death... but she shakes her head. Now she's farther away from home, and Mother, than she'd ever dreamed of getting!)
"More specifically... I was talking earlier about how there're many worlds. And in some of the many worlds, there's a genre of story around romantic rivalries, and sometimes adventures. My lord will set up a world as if it's one of those... except, he'll let you design many of the details as long as they stay within the bounds he's set on the story.
"And then, he'll have you be reborn into that world to grow up as the person who would've been the villain in that story... with the wheels of Fate conspiring to get you into the story."
"Fate," Gwen snaps.
She'd never liked that word. Nobody in her family had, except maybe her big sister Emma. Fate, after all, would've doomed the whole Revolt... but hadn't it won? Or now, wouldn't Fate have been set to doom Gwen to a life building out her mother's dreams?
"... Tell me about the whole world, in fact. What can I do with it? Just how much of it can I design? And just how much can I spell out about where you're going to put me in it?"
Oh, the hair is metonymy for personality? All right. Red hair (she pauses a bit about silver's creativity, but goes in the end for the powerful emotions), with hime cut (she doesn't want to be a standard villainess, and doesn't want her hair impractical).
Being an Elf sounds fun... but when she's about to say it, it just feels too much like "make me exactly the sort of noble who thinks she's better than all the commoners and mistreats them so they all know she thinks that."
So, no, not an Elf. There'll be no Elves at all in Villarosa. Everyone's equally a Human.
... and what? No, the same standard sort of Human body she's had all her life.
The same "technology level" as her own world, but the one with less of the misery and inconvenience, of course. And yes, absolutely weave powerful useful magic into the beat of everyday life.
In fact... does the powerful useful magic have to be with gems and plants like in her old world? Or can she design how it works?
(Lila translates that to the Worldbuilding Department's internal terminology as "faux medieval" and "high magic".)
Oh yes, absolutely; Gwen can design the magic system and whatever other points of Villarosa she wants! In as much detail as she wants! The Worldbuilding Department will fill in all the gaps and make it work out as well as they can.
Oh, but what if she says two things that contradict each other? Like, say, horse-keeping is unknown, but there's an annual festival where people ride horses?
Then there'll be an annual festival where people try to catch and ride wild horses!
... if there's more of a contradiction than that, then the Worldbuilding Department will still try to do their best. Maybe there'll be ancient magic involved making it work out somehow. But yes, in extremis, they have occasionally ignored one design specification in favor of another.
All right; she'll try to keep them from having to do that.
As long as she knows where the limits are...
... Her imagination is starting to run wild. Why not that horse-catching festival? Or why not a unicorn-catching festival for the girls? And give the unicorns wings too? And there'll be trees that bear ready-baked pies several times a year? And - wait, how's she going to get to Villarosa? Will she just be stepping out of their version of the Gates of Night or will it be something different?
Yes, that winged-unicorn-catching festival sounds fun!
And as for how Gwen gets to Villarosa...
"We can't just send you through a worldgate... or we could, but that'd be a different sort of story."
Which they do sometimes; Lila has enjoyed arranging a few summons matchups.
"We don't want you to be a stranger in Villarosa, after all; we want a story where you're already firmly rooted there and people know who you are."
Gwen nods slowly. She knows very well how foreigners can easily be the talk of the town. That was what first got her talking with Pathred, after all. And she was ready for it at the Royal Music Academy, too, if she'd ever gotten there.
"So how're you going to arrange it?" she asks. "Are you going to give me a false story about where I'm coming from? Are you going to say that people just suddenly appear by magic sometimes, like unicorns?"
Lila smiles, intrigued. "You could certainly build a world like that if you wanted to! I'd be interested to watch!
"But no, we're going to... There're two stories you could tell about what we're going to do. You could say that we'll have you be born into Villarosa, just like any other baby, without any memories of your life up till then. And you'll grow up in Villarosa until you're a teenager, until you're leaving home for boarding school and the plot of the story is about to start - and then, you'll get back all your memories."
Gwen frowns. She doesn't like the idea of being a child again, especially not one without her hard-earned memories.
"...And the other story?"
"There'll be a baby born in Villarosa who is... not entirely unlike you... but is growing up on track to become the villainess in the original 'canonical' story, that you're being sent to subvert.
"And then, just when the story is about to start, you replace her, in her body."
Gwen's skepticism is pushed out by sheer confusion.
"-- Those're two different stories! Can't you tell which one is - I mean, whether the baby is going to be me? You've got to be able to find where my spirit is! I mean, you brought me here after I died!"
She throws up her hands.
Gwen interrupts.
"Of course it matters! Are you going to be mind-controlling me into whatever you think makes a proper villain? Or are you going to be sending me to replace someone else - and then what happens to her?"
Lila nods slowly. That does make sense, from Gwen's perspective...
"First off, the original villainess is another person you get to design - within limits, but broad limits. She needs to be recognizably a villainess, but what sort of villainy is up to you."
"... so I can say she's like Great-Aunt Trinn?"
She's sure the nobles in all Maranon are still counting her as a villainess for the Revolt.
"... perhaps. I did mention it's a genre of story about romantic rivalries?
"But as for soul magic... I honestly don't know. I can't cast soul-magic through our windows into worlds like Villarosa, or any other sort of magic either. I'm sure someone has done it, but I haven't heard what they've found."
Lila doesn't want to ask. It'd spoil the story. It'd nail down too firmly a point it's been glossing over.
But with Gwen asking...
She nods, and reluctantly flicks her fingers to conjure two notes and send them: one to the Worldbuilding Team and the other to the Observation Team. One or the other of them should know.
Worldbuilder Juliett Foxtrot, to Psychopomp Lima Ida
Re: soul magic and reincarnationI am not aware of that either. As you say, it is irrelevant to the story; also, it is magic foreign to the world. I can volunteer that spells cast within the world have never detected our Select persons as being different from the original villainesses - but those spells could be being actively misled, as also spells cast in our Select persons' origin worlds have not detected anything special about their deaths.
It also remains possible that we are all thinking inside a framework different from that on which the Will of the Multiverse operates, and therefore asking meaningless questions.
