Pandora's Box

Chapter 8: Part II

"She'll do nothing then, your mother? It's as we've always suspected," Malachai said. The Citdael's newest junior officer sat in a high back chair of deep, plush purple, commanding the space near him like a high king on his throne. "She's jealous of your potential. Of your power."

Pandora paced around her sitting room; around the circular oaken table at the floor's center. The music box sat on the tabletop, closed for the moment, though the princess yet heard its soft, unmistakeable notes chiming in her thoughts. Broken pieces of memories flittered through her mind. She forced her will to grab at them, like a child plucking at fireflies. They fizzled into sand each time her mind's grasp nearly snagged one.

"I don't understand how she can just sit there and do nothing. It's wrong. If you can reverse a tragedy and don't, you're the problem with the world." Pandora's hands were a flurry of desperation. "If you can spare loved ones from dying then why on earth shouldn't you? Why shouldn't I bring back a king and husband and a father that everyone loves?"

"Maybe your mother wished to be rid of him," Malachai said coldly, letting the implication hang like a storm cloud.

Pandora twisted at the waist and slung her hand at her companion. A sphere of crackling purple lightning flew across the room, struck Malachai in the chest and bowled over his false throne.

"Don't you ever speak of my mother like that." Pandora hovered above Malachai, her face expressionless but for the gleaming of magical current in her eyes. "She may be a coward who fears her power, but she's no murderer."

"Of course, highness. Apologies. I meant no disrespect." Malachai looked sheepishly at the floor as he untangled his limbs from the ruined chair. "That is I mean to only to examine all possibilities that I may serve justice for your father." He bowed his head.

"For you."

The fire boiling Pandora's blood eased. She took Malachai's hand and cupped it between her palms. "We shall bring justice to the monster who did this. And we shall restore my father to the life stolen from him. Together."

Both turned toward the music box. Pandora picked it up and gently eased the lid open. The tiny ballerina immediately began her dance, steadily spinning while the melody sang its lullaby. An aura of indigo enveloped the device, and Pandora held her hands just beyond its shine as though warming her hands by a soft fire.

"What do you suppose it really is?" Malachai asked.

Pandora regarded the box's smooth, ossified sides. "I'm not sure. I can't find any markings or sigils. If there were any magical wards they would've triggered by now, right? I mean, what good would they be if they let just anyone open the box?"

"Good point," Malachai replied. "Then..."

"Then we fall back on what my mother taught me just as she insisted," Pandora said, as though the solution were already clear in her mind. "Her lessons never included a magical artifact that wasn't etched with some sort of activation spell or command word. Our history is full of secret societies and monasteries whose members kept the secrets of wands and swords and eyepieces bearing such marks."

Malachai frowned and his lips curled into something ugly. "Then this is just some child's plaything?"

Pandora rolled her eyes. "Yes. Obviously. I just happened to stagger across a baby's music box. In a petrified copse of trees. In a black pyramid that appeared from nowhere." She shook her head, letting the sarcasm drip a moment longer. "No, of course this is something more." An idea flashed.

"I'm going to try something. Stand behind me," Pandora said. "You're going to want to trust me on this one."

Malachai gave her a puzzled look, then wordlessly nodded and took his place.

The music box's aura died quietly as Pandora closed its lid. She cleared her mind and focused her will, letting her slender fingers dance through the air while she wove her spell. She uttered an ancient word of power, then directed her focus onto Malachai's ruined chair. A second later a wisp of smoke appeared at the center of the splintered wreck. A modest flame burst free a moment later quickly consuming the timber.

"Very impressive, but I don't understand." Malachai said.

"Wait," Pandora curtly replied. Pandora opened the music box and let it rest on an outstretched palm. Once again, she flexed her focus, tightening it to a crisp, clear picture. Her free hand danced, collecting shards of indigo power, drawing them together until a melon-sized ball of fragments swirled at the tips of her fingers. She snapped her wrist and a jet of amethyst flame blazed forth, incinerating her bed to ash in less than a heartbeat. Pandora pulled her hand back and immediately the fire snuffed out, leaving behind only a pile of gray silt.

"That was incredible!" Malachai rooted the ash with the tip of his boot. "I've never seen such power." He bowed reverently. "Yours is without equal."

Pandora's chest heaved from the sudden exertion of power. Traces of exhilaration tinged her fatigue. Malachai is right. There is no equal to my... power. She felt the weight of the music box in her hand.

And I can only gain more.

The daylight slicing through the half-drawn tatters of curtains stung the princess's eyes. With a hushed word she willed the drapes closed, killing the chamber's scant refugees of natural daylight. Her pupils quickly adjusted to the near-darkness.

"It's as I thought." Pandora closed the music box and returned it to the table. A tiny whisper in the back of her mind begged her to reclaim the treasure, but she shook the intruding thought free. "It's an amplifier. On its own it can't really do anything. But when you funnel some magic through it—"

Malachai blew a palmful of incinerated bed into the air. "You get ash."

"No, my friend," Pandora said, shaking her head. The smile she offered was larger than any she'd shown in weeks. And more devilish than it had ever been.

"You get whatever you want."