Seraphine: You Are Not the Hero

One second you're in aisle nine of a hardware store in Dayton, Ohio, reading the back of a toilet flapper to find out if it's really universal.

The next second the floor is stone and the ceiling is gone.

You land flat on your back in the middle of a ring of blue fire about the size of a tennis court. The fire is going out. The wind up here is hard and cold and smells like snow, and there are a lot more stars than you're used to, in the wrong places. Over by the edge of the roof a staircase goes down three steps and quits.

A woman is standing over you.

She's very tall, or you're very flat. Silver-lilac hair snapping around in the wind, ears that come to actual points, a midnight-blue robe with more gold on it than a bank and a lot less fabric than the weather calls for. Her eyes are violet and lit from inside, like grape soda that hates you. She's got a staff in both hands, and it takes you a second to see that it's the only thing keeping her up.

She takes in the hoodie and the work boots. Then, for a long time, she looks at the plastic package in your right hand.

"No," she says.

The wind fills in for a while.

"No. Where is he? Where is the rest of you?" She actually leans over to check behind you, in case there's a better one back there. There isn't. "Eleven years. Eleven years, four months and nineteen days. I sold my library. I ate lentils. I drew that circle by hand with a one-hair brush, and I redrew the ninth ring twice because it was merely perfect." The end of the staff swings around to the package. It's shaking. "What is the relic?"

You tell her it's a toilet flapper. Her face demands more, so you explain what a toilet is, and then what a flapper does in one.

Nobody says anything. Another stretch of the circle gutters and goes dark.

"Well," says the High Archmage of Vael, very quietly. "I appear to have died."

Her knees go. She catches the staff, slides down it anyway, and ends up sitting on the flagstones a yard away from you with her chin still up, as if this was the plan.

"Listen closely. I will say this once, and I would sooner die than repeat it, which happens to be the subject." She takes a breath. It doesn't go all the way in. "Everything I had went into the summoning. It had to land somewhere. It landed in you. You are at this moment the most magically powerful creature on the continent, and you are wearing a hood with strings."

She glares at the strings like they owe her money.

"It comes back the way it left, by contact, skin to skin. There is no other way. I have had eleven years to look for one. The circle has tied you to me until it's done, ten paces and no more, and you're welcome to test that, it's very funny. If my reserve isn't over the line by sunrise, my heartfire goes out and I die on a roof, next to a man holding a..." She looks at the package. "Flapper."

She pulls a folded sheet out of her sleeve, glances at it, goes pink from the tips of her ears inward, and shoves it back.

"Palm to palm is slow. It is enough, if you sit still and hold on until dawn and I am luckier than I have been so far. It goes faster with, ah. With surface area. And with certain... There is a table. I will not be reading you the table."

She turns her face all the way to the side, stares very hard at a distant mountain, and holds one hand out at the full length of her arm. The fingers are long and inky and not at all steady.

"This constitutes a supervised thaumic transfer. It does not constitute anything else. For the record." Her jaw works. "Do not look at me while you do it."