Why do I want to take down Striga?
Ferromancer’s question drives an ice pick through all my anxious thoughts about not seeing her again and replaces them with newer, much more anxious thoughts about why the hell she wants to know that. What does it matter to her? Where is this leading? And how do I get away with lying to soone who gives off the impression that she can read everyone like a book? I’m cooked.
“Why do you want to know that?” I ask carefully. I’m still in witch form, and so of my familiars are in the other room, but if it cos down to a fight I’m not confident in my chances. But that has to be paranoia talking. There’s no reason we’d fight. So why do I feel like I’ve stepped into the lion’s den?
Ferromancer tilts her head. She’s calculating sothing, taking the asure of my question, I know it. She’s not like Striga, or at least I don’t think she is, but I still get the sense that she’s extracting way more information from what I said than I want her to. “Because you, Archon, are an anomaly of the highest order.”
That throws for a loop. “Wait, what? What do you an by that?”
The other witch leans back, still sitting on the break room table. “When I was a kid, I watched cha ani and drew terrible comics about funny robots shooting each other with lasers. In high school, I joined a robotics club and went to tournants with my clubmates, and I sketched ch designs in my free ti. I have a master’s degree in chanical engineering. The mont I understood what my power was capable of—when I understood that I could create the kinds of machines I’d been dreaming about since I first saw the Gundam Epyon cut a space station in half with its beam sword—it was like my whole life had been preparing to beco a witch. To beco Ferromancer, the Witch of Invention. Can you say the sa?”
I can’t. Or at least, not in that way. The things Protheus cares about don’t click with at all. But again, why does that matter? I shrug and say, “Okay, so I can’t really get along with blacksmithing or pottery or making things with my hands, so what? Is this just about my reason for becoming a witch, or are you getting at sothing deeper?”
Ferromancer digs a cigarette out of her pocket and lights it. “You really don’t get how crazy your power is, do you? It isn’t normal. You can steal in an instant what another witch spent years cultivating and perfecting. You have the highest potential out of any witch I’ve ever t, and yet you’re completely incompatible with your power’s primary imagery. That doesn’t happen, Rachel. Why did the Jovians give an S-tier power to soone not suited for it? What’s so special about you that they’d do that? Why do they think you can beat Strix Striga?”
Those… are all very good questions, and I am regretting not thinking up a cover story before now. “Look, I don’t know the answer to that any more than you do,” I insist. “Even the Jovians aren’t sure how I’m supposed to beat her! Maybe there’s more to compatibility than just the stuff you were talking about.”
Ferromancer takes a drag of smoke and taps her fingers along the table. “You’re not comfortable talking about this, I get it. I’m sure you have your reasons. Tell sothing else, then: why did you choose to beco a witch? What does it an to you?”
That’s the sa question, really, and the sa dilemma, but this one’s a lot easier to deflect. “I like the attention. I like that I don’t have to work so crappy job to live comfortably. I’ve always admired witches and magical girls. I always wanted to be one. It’s why I moved here, honest. They always seed so larger than life, and I an, it’s magic! What little girl didn’t dream of magic?”
She considers my answer. “Truthful,” she decides, “but incomplete. Money and fa are common motives, but you didn’t pursue either of them until you suddenly needed to pay rent and Bombshell offered up the bank idea. You want those things, but they’re not driving motivations. Magic, well, you’re certainly an eager student, but I can’t imagine soone who just wants to play with magic agreeing to take on a magical girl with a confird kill count in the double digits, so that’s not it either. Don’t play dumb. Your reason is Striga, isn’t it? Striga is why you beca a witch.”
She’s cornered . I clench my fists, but getting angry isn’t useful here. I set the rage aside and breathe out. “Fine. Yes. I beca a witch so I could get close to Striga, and everything else is just a nice side effect or a ans to an end.”
Ferromancer’s gaze sharpens. “‘Get close,’ not ‘kill’ or even ‘defeat.’ This isn’t so misguided revenge fantasy or an ego trip about taking down the top dog—girl, you like Striga, don’t you?” She chuckles. “You’re crushing on the Witch Hunter.”
“It’s not a crush!” I snap without thinking. “You don’t know anything about us!”
And then I freeze, and I take a step back, and I start to panic. Ferromancer leans in, fascination written all over her face, and she says, “Oh, you know Striga. You’ve t her. Did she save you from sothing?”
This is bad, this is bad, this is so bad. I didn’t want anyone to know about my connection to Striga. I an, obviously the Jovians knew, but I didn’t think they’d tell anyone! Striga is mine. Sophia is mine. No one else can know about her. No one else is allowed to see the real her, because that’s sothing that only belongs to .
I’ll fight if I have to. If Ferromancer tries to use to get to Striga, I’ll kill her. I’ll kill anyone who tries to get between and my beloved Sophie, I don’t care who they are. Nobody can know the true depth of the bond between us. Nobody deserves to know what happened that day except Sophia.
Ferromancer waves a hand dismissively. “Relax, kid, you can stop freaking out, and you don’t have to say anything else about your hero crush. All I needed was assurance you aren’t planning to kill Striga, and I’m confident I’ve gotten it.”
I blink, my entire train of thought once again crashing into Ferromancer’s unexpected statent. “Wait, what?” I squint at her. “You’re a witch. You wanted assurance that I wasn’t trying to kill Striga? Why?”
“Let answer your question with another question,” she says like a jackass, and then she stubs her cigarette out on the table and stands up. She adjusts her sleeves and the collar of her shirt. She smiles that icy, knowing smile. “What do you think of the Jovians?”
I frown. “In what sense?”
“Any sense. Every sense. They can’t hear you, if you’re worried about that. My workshop is warded against all outside intrusion. I’ve been thorough.”
Now that is a very interesting thing to specify. My eyes narrow. “You don’t trust them either,” I guess. “You think there’s sothing they’re not telling us.”
Ferromancer laughs. “I know there’s sothing they’re not telling us. They don’t hide the fact that they’re keeping secrets. ‘All in due ti,’ they say. ‘When you earn higher clearance,’ they say. Truth is, they only share those secrets with the witches they think they can control. No, with the witches they know they can control. I’m not one of those witches. Are you?”
I think that might be the most dangerous question I’ve ever been asked. More dangerous than the question that made a witch. Is this a kind of treason? Pandora gave magic, and the only reason I’m suspicious of the Jovians is because I’ve watched too much ani. But I am suspicious, and it sounds like Ferromancer has better reasons than I do.
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Worry not, Ms. Emily. We have no designs on the life of Ms. Lane. The words of the Jovian emissary echo in my mind. Do I really believe that the sidereals would be satisfied with just distracting their greatest enemy? Am I an investnt to them? Or am I a knife, aid at the heart of the only girl I’ve ever loved?
“I am afraid,” I admit quietly, “that I have been tricked down a path that will harm soone I care about very deeply. Before this conversation, I thought that was just paranoia. But the way you’re talking makes think you have a very good reason to believe that I was right to be worried. Ferromancer. Erica. Why do you care about Striga surviving?”
“Because she’s a thorn in the side of our secret-keeping overlords. Frankly, I think most witches should be in favor of her existence; her attention falls largely on those who are a threat to the order that the rest of us profit from. Do you think Radiance’s people or the Coterie complain when Striga murders another Syndicate mber or leads the defense against a Catastrophe? But the sidereals empowered those witches for so purpose or another, and they won’t tell us why. Are the Catastrophes accidents, or are they the perfected design?”
Her words are chilling. I’ve always thought of the Catastrophes as mistakes, as the sidereals pushing the envelope too far and risking another Texas for one reason or another. But maybe the only problem with the Texas witch was that she took herself out in the blast—the only recorded instance of a witch dying without a sequence of three. And the Syndicate, are they part of the Jovians’ design or just more distractions to keep heroes like Striga busy?
Ferromancer nods at and keeps going. “Think about how artificial this whole conflict feels from our perspective. The won fighting each other under Visage’s banner aren’t heroes and villains, they’re just faces and heels. There are magical girls in Vanguard that share more beliefs with Lilith than they do with their own teammates, and witches in the Coterie that would happily kill every mber of the Syndicate given half the opportunity. The only real differences between magical girls and witches are a few quirks of ability and whether they were empowered by a solar Jovian or a sidereal—but what, exactly, is the difference between those two categories? What do they believe? They won’t tell us, except that each despises the other. If the sidereals had a good reason for their war, they wouldn’t need to hide it. If the solars had a good reason for their war, they’d be shouting it from the rooftops to turn witches like us against our masters. We have no reason to trust that either faction has humanity’s best interests in mind.”
My wariness ticks up another notch. Why don’t the solars talk more about their side of things? I’d always assud they were more open with magical girls and just swore them to secrecy, but does that even make sense? The veil hides identities, but it doesn’t hide the existence of magic. What secrets do they have to keep?
The story we’ve been told is a simple one: once upon a ti, both factions of Jovians shared a ho among the many moons of Jupiter, with their capital seated on Europa. Then, a terrible war broke out, and the planet and all its moons were swallowed and vanished, with only a handful of Jovians escaping. The survivors—of both factions—bound themselves with an oath to only empower and guide, never intervene, so that the tragedy of Jupiter would not repeat itself here on Earth.
It’s usually assud that the sidereals—for obvious reasons—were responsible for the war and its consequences, but officially both sides bla the other. Ferromancer has a point about the solars; if they really are the good guys in the original conflict, why don’t they share more information about what happened? Are they worried about inciting so witch to repeat Jupiter’s end, or could it be that both sides were equally complicit in their planet’s destruction? If either faction wins, what assurance do I have that humanity wouldn’t lose?
I can’t tell anyone but Ferromancer about these suspicions, I suddenly realize. This workshop may be warded, but my apartnt isn’t, nor the hos of any of my friends. There’s no way I could talk to Mordacity about this, or Femur.
“I think I get it,” I say, still quiet. “A part of wishes I didn’t, because the scenario you’ve just put in my head is terrifying. You’re suggesting a world where it isn’t magical girls against witches but humans against Jovians. Do you truly believe that?”
“I’m not certain,” the witch admits, “but I’ve spent half a decade playing nice with ‘our side’ and they still haven’t let in on what they’re planning, or what they did before coming to our planet. And I’ve heard from a very reliable source that the sa is true on the other side of the war. The solar emissary, Rhea, is allegedly just as tight-lipped as Pandora when it cos to the deeper reasons behind everything that has happened and will happen. You ask , I say that’s a problem. And I think we deserve to do so digging of our own. Which brings to my final question of the evening.”
My head is still spinning with the implications of Ferromancer’s accusation, but my attention snaps back to the other witch with those words. “Go on, ask.”
She chuckles. “It’s quite simple, really, and I’ll forgive you if you feel a bit exasperated after hearing it. Rachel Emily, would you like to beco my apprentice?”
“Your apprentice?” I gawk at the Witch of Invention. “I—you—after all that!? Wait. Wait a second! Was this a goddamn job interview!?”
Ferromancer properly laughs this ti, full-throated and shaking. “Oh, the look on your face. Sorry, sorry.” She brushes a strand of hair out of her face and smiles at . “Yes, I suppose you could call it an interview. Put another way, I needed to make sure you weren’t going to beco my enemy so day. I’m satisfied on that front, so all that’s left is the question of your intent. I was fairly confident in your answer going in, and I still am, but I understand all the poking and prodding may have left you a little more hesitant than usual.”
She winks at and I grumble to hide my blush. Am I really that obvious? God, she probably had pegged from that first afternoon over lunch. Yes, I absolutely want to be Ferromancer’s apprentice. Realizing she’s the only person I can talk to about what the Jovians might be planning didn’t make want that less, even if the path to get to that revelation hit a little too close to my Sophia fixation.
But there’s still one detail that doesn’t make sense to .
“Why?” I ask, crossing my arms and staring her down. “I an, why make the offer? No offense, but you struck as the real lone wolf type. What do you even see in ? I promise I’m not fishing for praise, I genuinely don’t get it. Is this just because I can copy your devices?”
“That’s one reason,” Ferromancer readily admits. “Another reason is the role that the Jovians expect you to play, which I’d like to interfere with if I can get away with it. Then there’s your affinity for familiars that I’d like to nurture into mastery. And, to be blunt, you’re also curious, intelligent, and adaptive, which makes teaching you much more enjoyable than the teeth-pulling I’ve had to go through in so other gigs.”
Her complints have flustered. Are my cheeks red? I really hope they aren’t. No one’s ever given such high praise, and I can’t find a single hint of insincerity in her voice. Does she really think I’m smart?
Ferromancer’s expression transforms into another smirk, smug and wry and terribly knowing, and she adds, “Plus, you’re real cute when you blush like that.”
Internally, I scream until my brain is just the letter ‘A’ repeating infinitely. She called cute—was that flirting—am I being flirted with—stop blushing—she thinks I’m cute when I blush—stop blushing, damn you! I am not a useless lesbian, I am a smooth actor who only hasn’t told my infatuation of seven years about my feelings for her because why in the world would a girl like her love a loser like and no, stopping that, this is an equally terrible thought spiral to go down and I am moving on!
I thought I’d worked through my flash of feelings for Ferromancer after our first eting, but here I am with my heart pounding away like a jackhamr on th. Wait, no, a rabbit on th. That doesn’t even make sense, what am I talking about!? I need to stop. I need to say sothing or I’ll look even worse than I’m sure I already do.
“I… am not used to complints,” I mumble. I take a few steadying breaths and try to compose myself. “But, thank you. I’ll try to believe them. And, as for your question: yes, yes of course I want that. You’re an incredible teacher, Erica, and right now you might be the only person in the world that I can speak to in full confidence like this. Especially if your suspicions about the Jovians are correct. So, yes. I’d like to be your apprentice.”
Ferromancer sticks out her hand. “Then welco to the team, my star student.”
I take her hand gladly. “Thank you, teacher.”
After we arrange another eting, Ferromancer tells to go ho and rest while she finishes up so other work. The excitent I feel for our new relationship bleeds out of as I make the trek ho, replaced completely by exhaustion over the day’s trials and revelations when I step inside the apartnt and see my wonderful couch-bed waiting for . I fall asleep in minutes. Maybe seconds.
That night, I dream of a white city, a bleeding sun, and a deep, dark pit.
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