11.0.0

After taking a few weeks to put her affairs in order in Lyr, Zyrdicia returned to Aparans prepared for an extended stay. Late summer was already fading into autumn in the North.

The fealty ceremony had been scheduled to take place as soon as she arrived. Dirk was unable to keep from gloating, and she could only laugh inwardly at how seriously he took the empty oath. The ceremony required that she kneel before the prince while he was seated upon his throne, or so he claimed. She was positive he was lying, but she allowed him to have his fun. She subverted the formal promises of loyalty and obedience with an innuendo of silent glances, which he pointedly ignored. She did not utter a single insult or cutting remark during the event itself - which was not to say that she did not mock the ceremony relentlessly behind closed doors with her friends. She knew that Dirk's ego would interpret her demeanor as evidence of his new-found feudal control over her. Letting him believe that was part of her own game, at least initially. It would make him feel the blow more when he discovered the truth, she hoped.

Zyrdicia made sure that she was remarkably well behaved and charismatic during the public ceremony. She was well-practiced at being magnetic and beguiling in the Temple in Lyr. It was a simple matter to translate that affectation into her public persona at the Blackpool Court. Her penchant for causing havoc she reserved for more private moments, for now. She had more pressing concerns - convincing his population that she was Saxarba was foremost among them.

Zyrdicia was disappointed to discover that she would no longer reside in the South Tower, isolated from the castle's day-to-day activity. A suite of rooms had been arranged in the main part of the castle, instead. She would be far away from the dust and spiders, but much nearer the watchful eye of the lord of the house. She had rather liked having the abandoned South Tower to herself. She was certain that all the daytime noise in the main castle would annoy her, and wondered whether that effect was deliberate. Eventually she would see to it that she repaid the favor by causing a nighttime din to disturb everyone else.

Upon her return, she was surprised to learn that the plague she had unleashed during the summer continued to ravage pockets of Baaldorf. Dr. Krankstoff claimed he had no explanation for its undiminished capacity to flare up. He lacked data about the transportation patterns common to the land. He could only assume it had to do with the antiquated mode of travel, and the southerners inability to institute effective quarantines. The population in some areas had diminished by nearly half already.

The disease delayed a full-scale northern assault. Blackpool had learned his lesson. Nearly losing his entire army had been enough to convince him not to push into infected territory. Zyrdicia was certain that cold weather would put an end to the tropical disease. By winter, his army would be able to proceed, weather permitting.

In lieu of a conventional invasion, the night of her return, as soon as they were alone after the fealty ceremony, the prince and his newest vassal immediately settled upon a more creative means of bringing Camarand to its knees. It was elegantly simple and required no troops at all.

"Why didn't you tell me that you could do this when you were here before?" he asked, smiling smugly. He was in very good humor.

Her own mirthless smile was just as vain as she replied, "There were many things you didn't know I could do then."

"And at least one I was unaware that you could not," he mused, running his fingers through his new possession's silken hair. He so enjoyed winning. He had expected her return under his terms to be delicious, but he was enjoying the victory even more than he expected.

"Let that thought keep you company this evening then. I'm going to Camarand to get started," Zyrdicia announced coldly. She drew away. There would be no affection from her for now, she decided. There was no need for that particular game. He had not won a damned thing yet, as far as she was concerned. He would learn that soon enough.

11.0.1

As planned, Zyrdicia gleefully accosted the southern lands with a barrage of "natural" disasters. Several times daily, an eclectic assortment of earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, and tornados ravaged various settlements, contributing to a continuing population decline. It was a very dark time in the South. One might have thought the world was ending.

In a sense, Zyrdicia was doing exactly what she had always planned to do with Aparans. She was annihilating the population and devastating the landscape. It was precisely the same game she had intended all along. The only difference was that the South bore the full brunt of her attack, while the North remained unscathed.

Blackpool hoped to use the disasters to pressure his southern opponents into submission. He had immediately sent Kings Greystone and Baaldorf word that by surrendering to him, they would spare their kingdoms further catastrophes. In Camarand, it seemed nature itself had now allied itself with the dark prince of the North.

Plagues of locusts followed by relentless hail ruined the year's harvest in the South. Famine soon joined pestilence in bringing suffering. Torrential floods and mudslides washed away hilltop villages. Unexpected walls of sea water submerged coastal communities. Lightning storms burned forests. Tornados swept up flatland villages. Without white magic to protect them, Camarand's villages awaited destruction like sacrificial lambs upon an altar to Zyrdicia's ego.

The havoc she caused occupied very little of her time, though she kept that fact a secret from Blackpool. The magic required no forethought and very little effort. Invoking such phenomena was truly a small thing for her, particularly after having absorbed Baphim's magic through Azriok's gift of the vanquished Sephiroth's wings. Her ability to unleash the destructive power of the cosmos had recently increased exponentially.

When she was not laying waste to Camarand, she was quietly preoccupied with her new toy. She had not enjoyed social upheaval quite as much since the early days when Lyr was in chaos after its liberation from the Crusaders, and she had a clean slate to recreate the city according to her whim. She saw very little of the prince in the first weeks of her return. She would awaken and dine with him and usually a few others - Geoffrey, Vector, Cai, sometimes several generals. Soon after dinner she would disappear. She claimed to be very busy with the task of the magical disasters in the South, and the need to set up the distribution network for the arcanium. She always returned near dawn, professing to be quite tired. Early riser that he was, the prince was usually already awake. They would often exchange a few words about her latest feat of devastation before she retired to her own quarters. She then slept all day. Or at least pretended to. More often then not, she would nap for just a few hours, then teleport back to Dagonia to play a little longer.

11.0.2

Invitations to dine privately with the prince always seemed to conflict with some act of destruction Zyrdicia needed to cause in Camarand. She either dined with him with the rest of the castle's residents in the main dining room, or she disappeared on her own for the evening. Time alone with him was not a luxury she chose to indulge in. She had no time for the long, private conversations that had defined their interaction earlier in the summer. And she certainly had no time for any other sort of interaction he might have had in mind. After a few days of her elusive behavior, he seemed to lose interest as well. He had what he really wanted from her, after all - she was spending every waking moment laying waste to his enemies. Nothing else really mattered to him. Or so he thought. Had he known then how she actually spent her time, it would have mattered to him quite a lot.

Dinner conversation at Castle Blackpool traditionally was confined to the realm of non-existence. It was common for those seated at the lord's table to enjoy a meal in eery silence. That changed when Zyrdicia arrived. The rare occasions when she joined them in the dining room were the only moments she took out of her busy schedule to socialize with anyone at all.

Despite the fact that her presence was scarce, her laughter was as infectious to the castle's residents as the plague was to the South. She teased them all mercilessly. In response to the new levity, Geoffrey babbled and Vector orated upon various subjects of interest to him. The lord of the house tolerated it, mainly because he occasionally found her amusing.

"So whom did you meet at the Magic Guild in Lyr, Vector?" she asked as they discussed his summertime visit to her city.

"Nevvert, the Necromancer, was particularly intriguing."

Her eyes widened with interest. She asked, "Intriguing, eh? Is that because you know that he is not just a necromancer, but also a necrophile?"

Vector looked utterly taken aback. Cai coughed suddenly. Geoffrey's brow furrowed as he tried to figure out if that meant what he thought it meant.

Dirk glared at her across the table and remarked, "That is hardly appropriate table conversation."

"It's not like I described the act in question," Zyrdicia countered, her expression devoid of contrition. "Besides, it's true! Vector's new friend uses magic solely to reanimate--"

"Nevvert has a rather high opinion of you!" Vector stammered, interrupting.

"Who wouldn't? Probably because he wishes me dead," she laughed. "Anyway, his opinion will probably change when he sees the next issue of the Magic Guild Journal. I had business with a vampire in a cemetery one night and discovered Nevvert at work. After I stopped laughing, I sent an article to the journal editor describing the relative 'inadequacies' of his magical practice in considerable detail."

"I heard a great many bitter complaints about your practice of lambasting the other Guild members in the journal. Did they not expel you from the Guild for that at one point?" Vector asked, attempting to change the subject.

Zyrdicia nodded, "More than once. There are a few members who not only lack magical competence but also a sense of humor. They always beg me to return, though. Their lives are boring without me. The terms of my most recent return stipulate that I now have uncensored editorial license to mock whomever I please, however I please. It becomes a permanent part of the Guild archive this way. Wizards will laugh at him for generations now." She smiled impishly, "Since you are a member, Vector, if you have any secrets that you don't want disclosed to your magical colleagues, you had best not let me not find them out! And if you share Nevvert's unusual professional interests, don't think that he won't eventually disclose that fact to me."

Vector seemed to pale visibly. He became very interested in the food on his plate.

"Don't you worry about people doing the same thing to you?" Geoffrey wondered.

Zyrdicia stared at him for a moment in confusion. "You mean the same thing that Vector's friend does to the corpses? No, I can't say that such a concern has ever troubled me." She thought a moment, then added in perfect deadpan, "They would most likely find me considerably less passive and much more dangerous. Is it something you worry about, dear?"

Geoffrey's face turned bright red. Almost everyone at the table suddenly erupted in laughter. Dirk's lips curled despite his attempt to maintain his stern composure, "That's really quite enough about corpses!"

"Don't tell me - tell your brother! He's the one who is worried about receiving unwanted affection as one."

Geoffrey looked terribly embarrassed. He sputtered, "No, that's not what I meant! Don't you worry about people mocking your own secrets?"

"I don't have any secrets. I publish the details of my life openly. Between my biographer and the tabloid paparazzi in Lyr, my private life is well-documented. What they don't know, they invent, and my imagination is always preferable to theirs."

"Surely not everything finds its way to your biographer," Dirk said under his breath, barely loud enough for her to hear.

She nodded, and lowered her voice as she replied, "Absolutely everything." He sliced the beef on his plate, refusing to look at her. She watched his cheeks flush slightly in anger, then patted his forearm and whispered, "But you shouldn't worry. You will be an old man by the time the next volume of my biography appears. Philip has already finished the draft of the sections involving you, though."

Dirk shot her a poisonous glance, but said nothing. She was surprised that he believed that his private affairs were no one else's concern. She could not resist needling him further and whispered, "Next time I'm in Lyr, I'll pick up a draft of the manuscript for you to look over. You can verify for yourself that I didn't leave out a single detail. The night at my palace is an entire chapter unto itself." She knew from the grim look on his face at they would argue bitterly about this later behind closed doors - if she gave him the opportunity. She intended to do so, only because the argument would be entertaining. She found his outrage amusing. He really should have expected as much from her. He knew her biographer had access to the details of her life when he read the first volume. It was foolish to think she would not document the sordid details of their previous interaction for all the world to read.