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Belle settles very happily into her married life. There is no clear way for Beast to prove himself the missing marquis, so he doesn't bother; instead she studies and he translates foreign texts on magic for her and as the years go by she teaches herself enough Caelish and Suomish to read some of the non-Callian books without help and they eventually work through the entire library section on enchanting. By the time Belle is twenty-two she can invent spells on the fly, and can use mindreading to channel relatively simple spells through Beast while maintaining awareness of her own senses at the same time instead of dropping fully into meditation whenever she casts, and also to communicate subtly and nonverbally and silently in both directions with gentle tweaks to the castle that is her husband's mind. She has learned to read the writing on her rosepetals so all of her memories are forever preserved in their original clarity for her inspection, if she cares to look at them.
Using enough enchantment has wound up giving Belle a persistent aura. People stand aside for her if she walks down the street without deliberately suppressing it, sensing power without understanding it. She doesn't trip anymore; she's honestly not sure if she's incidentally cured her clumsiness or if the ground just adjusts to meet her steps and then ripples back into place after she's steady. Her hair and her skirts are continually stirred in a beautifully eerie way by a breeze that isn't there. Her voice carries as far as she likes, or as little as she prefers; she can whisper to one person across an oblivious crowded room. Sometimes she appears to be lit by an interior glow, when she's casting or using inlaid enchantments or just strongly emotional about something. Small injuries - she has tested no large ones - seal themselves with a faint hissing noise and a shine of sky-blue light, and she doesn't get ill anymore. Objects she reaches for move to meet her; plants bend to get out of her way if she strides through the forest, and some of them spontaneously bloom.
She is less likely to stride than to fly, though.
The books mention enchanter's auras, but not to quite the extent she's developed. It does, however, say that the aura is helped most by casting large spells through a willing vessel. Perhaps hers is just - more, because of her beloved Beast, because if she comes up with a way to fly or to cease to need sleep he's so eager to help.
She is just coming to the end of her last unread book on magic, wondering what is next, when there is a knock at the castle door.
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beheld_beauty
deslandes
Pain. Pain happened.
That was well enough, but the rest...
He is lying in chains on a rough stone floor with a hood over his head. Even his beast-strength will not get him free.
Someone found him, found him in the forest. At the forest's edge. He doesn't remember - their face, he can't think -
They burned his mind, this person, voiceless faceless pain trapping burning person. It hurt, and it was good-but-not-good, the way things sometimes are when they hurt and you like the hurt but you don't want what brings it.
Belle will fix it. Belle fixes things.
He loves her.
That was well enough, but the rest...
He is lying in chains on a rough stone floor with a hood over his head. Even his beast-strength will not get him free.
Someone found him, found him in the forest. At the forest's edge. He doesn't remember - their face, he can't think -
They burned his mind, this person, voiceless faceless pain trapping burning person. It hurt, and it was good-but-not-good, the way things sometimes are when they hurt and you like the hurt but you don't want what brings it.
Belle will fix it. Belle fixes things.
He loves her.
beheld_beauty
Oh mon coeur. I - I don't know how. I'll try.
She can write on his walls, gentle little marks that stay long enough to speak to him and then disappear into the cellars of memories. Perhaps with a firmer hand she can reach out and heal the scorching, the cracking...?
And then she will tell Luc to teach himself some Suomish and she will set out and she will find her husband.
She can write on his walls, gentle little marks that stay long enough to speak to him and then disappear into the cellars of memories. Perhaps with a firmer hand she can reach out and heal the scorching, the cracking...?
And then she will tell Luc to teach himself some Suomish and she will set out and she will find her husband.
deslandes
It works, somewhat. His memories become clearer, his thoughts less scattered.
He loves her still.
He loves her still.
beheld_beauty
She patches everything she can, feeling woefully inadequate, and then she finds Luc, and tells him to take this textbook on Suomish and go home and study it until she comes to fetch him, and he goes.
She seals up the castle behind her.
And she takes to the air.
My love, my love, tell me which way you were going, can you remember? She's scanning the ground for a trail, but her own presence changes so much about the way the plants lie and the light falls.
She seals up the castle behind her.
And she takes to the air.
My love, my love, tell me which way you were going, can you remember? She's scanning the ground for a trail, but her own presence changes so much about the way the plants lie and the light falls.
deslandes
He doesn't remember; it's burned, it's—
Glowing fog the colour of moonlight slams through the castle of his mind, boiling out of the cracks, leaving new burns in its wake. It doesn't touch Belle's presence at all.
When it's done, Beast is shaking and whimpering. Someone is speaking to him, but he doesn't hear words, only a voice, a cruel taunting laughing voice.
Glowing fog the colour of moonlight slams through the castle of his mind, boiling out of the cracks, leaving new burns in its wake. It doesn't touch Belle's presence at all.
When it's done, Beast is shaking and whimpering. Someone is speaking to him, but he doesn't hear words, only a voice, a cruel taunting laughing voice.
beheld_beauty
Oh mon coeur. I'm coming. I'll find you.
She flies faster. She does what she can to heal the damage as she goes.
She flies faster. She does what she can to heal the damage as she goes.
deslandes
(he tries to want it, tries to be willing, to let the magic through, but he can't - he hates it too much - so his mind keeps burning, and he keeps screaming, and there's nothing he can do about either)
beheld_beauty
Oh mon coeur. I love you and I will find you.
And then she stops writing and all she does is try to heal the burns, smooth the cracks.
She will find him and she will find who has him and they will not greet another day with their magic intact. Perhaps not even their life.
He's been gone for days, but he was walking and she is flying, but he was going nowhere in particular and she does not know where to go - she could channel through him at this distance, but she doesn't know if he's in a state to welcome her while he rejects the other, and she cannot bear to damage him further. She prunes the half-formed spell notion until it's something she can do herself.
She calls down starlight, for it's dark now, and she channels it through her own rosevines, and she knows which direction to go - though nothing else, given how much she had to simplify the spell - and she corrects her course and she flies.
And then she stops writing and all she does is try to heal the burns, smooth the cracks.
She will find him and she will find who has him and they will not greet another day with their magic intact. Perhaps not even their life.
He's been gone for days, but he was walking and she is flying, but he was going nowhere in particular and she does not know where to go - she could channel through him at this distance, but she doesn't know if he's in a state to welcome her while he rejects the other, and she cannot bear to damage him further. She prunes the half-formed spell notion until it's something she can do herself.
She calls down starlight, for it's dark now, and she channels it through her own rosevines, and she knows which direction to go - though nothing else, given how much she had to simplify the spell - and she corrects her course and she flies.
deslandes
Eventually, after flying all the way over the former Witchwood and then some, she comes upon a palace.
It doesn't look like the home of an evil sorcerer, and the howling of the Beast is not audible from within, but it is directly in her flight path.
It doesn't look like the home of an evil sorcerer, and the howling of the Beast is not audible from within, but it is directly in her flight path.
beheld_beauty
Belle sharpens her ears; the wind should funnel her sounds too faint for natural hearing... She can tolerate the pain of an invisibility spell, as she slows and approaches. She's cast it before, she only has to keep her focus on the rosepetal where it's written.
Unseeable, she draws closer and listens.
Unseeable, she draws closer and listens.
deslandes
The walls of the palace are spelled to muffle sound, but not to destroy it.
A Beast does howl in this dungeon.
A Beast does howl in this dungeon.
beheld_beauty
She does not have to be close to Beast to use him as a channel, but that's only because of her mindscape-reading spell and how much time she's had to be accustomed to it, and so where her husband is so will be his tormentor.
Her aura can adjust the world around her but not enough to let her walk through walls. She needs to invent something, for this.
She can't focus, not when her Beast is screaming in his mind and in the world -
She drops the read with a silent apology and forces herself to concentrate.
The wall parts with a hiss of pain from L'Enchanteresse.
Her aura can adjust the world around her but not enough to let her walk through walls. She needs to invent something, for this.
She can't focus, not when her Beast is screaming in his mind and in the world -
She drops the read with a silent apology and forces herself to concentrate.
The wall parts with a hiss of pain from L'Enchanteresse.
deslandes
Her husband and his tormentor are in a mere cellar, not truly a dungeon at all. The Best writhes on the ground, hooded and chained; a man stands over him -
The man whirls, and hisses. He flings a hand back toward the Beast.
The stone of the cellar wall grows clawed hands that reach for Belle.
The man whirls, and hisses. He flings a hand back toward the Beast.
The stone of the cellar wall grows clawed hands that reach for Belle.
beheld_beauty
She can be no match for this man, none at all, if she has only herself to channel through. She flies across the room, away from the hands, and reads again.
Mon coeur. I need a channel. I need you, have you the strength?
Mon coeur. I need a channel. I need you, have you the strength?
beheld_beauty
Wincing, she casts. She doesn't counter the stone hands - those, she can dodge - but she counterattacks. She calls fire and sends it shooting at the other enchanter. She keeps her eyes open. She can cast through Beast without dropping into a meditation that would kill her if she did it now.
deslandes
The other enchanter throws Will through Beast's mind to shield himself from the fire, reflecting it back at Belle.
beheld_beauty
Wind will obey Belle by aura alone. "What are you doing?" she shrieks, batting the flames back. "Why did you take him?"
deslandes
"He belongs to me," the stranger snarls, raising another pair of hands from the floor.
(His face, the sound of his voice - are they a little familiar?)
(His face, the sound of his voice - are they a little familiar?)
beheld_beauty
"He does not," hisses Belle. She thinks up a variant on her wall-walking spell. She can go right through the hands, now, though she continues to dodge them so he'll waste his concentration. "Mine to have and to hold till life leaves us -" Cold will be harder to redirect than fire, mightn't it? She calls it up, sends a wall of it at the enchanter from behind. "Not yours."
deslandes
The strange enchanter does - something.
The Beast howls.
A spell in the glossy grey-green of Earth closes like a fist around Belle's mindscape—
—and the stranger flinches back, his spell falling in shreds from her mind.
The Beast howls.
A spell in the glossy grey-green of Earth closes like a fist around Belle's mindscape—
—and the stranger flinches back, his spell falling in shreds from her mind.
beheld_beauty
"Thorns," Belle hisses, and she forces the cold into his body, deeper, deeper, till he stops, till he can do her husband no more harm.
beheld_beauty
Belle falls to her knees beside her husband and tears away the hood, peers into his mindscape, unlocks the shackles by touching them and aura, soothes every wound she can see in his interior castle. "Mon coeur," she murmurs. "Mon coeur."