In what is commonly referred to as the ‘Enigma Vestibule‘ by the Apothecary Company, a massive room filled with dark-haired adolescents toil over vats filled with various solutions and meticulously sculpt and shape various material on spartan work benches. Others stand, stone still as they grind gritty materials with a porcelain crucible in one hand and make minute movements with their silver pistils with the other.

Every so often a quiet sob would cause the entire room of young women to lament and wail the names of their beloved friends and partners. Their very tears mixing into the liquids and powders of their trade. A klaxon sounded after one such fit, and with such a quickness most of them dove to the cold floor, save for two.

Both sported an eye patch, covering opposite deformities, one missing the left and the other missing the right ocular orb. Their eye patches nothing more than a small swatch of leather with a matching black thong to hold it to their skull. In rushed a handful of armored dragoons. Each helmeted minion carrying not rifles as their infantry counterparts sport but rather a single long slip of parchment bearing a striking sigil with a brief script scrawled beneath it in curiously, scarlet ink.

Each of their green eyes watched as the soldiers formed a semi-circle before them.

“8695554 and 287421 cease all unsanctioned activity at once,” the middle dragoon commanded, the parchment held stiffly between the fingers of her gloved hand.

The girls grinned dual empty smiles, devoid of teeth.

The unit stepped back in unison, holding true to their semi-circular formation, although one at the far end gagged at the sight.

“I warn you once more 869554 and 287421,” the officer’s voice squeaked out the designations with a once lost girlish tone.

The two bowed deeply and a quiet pop echoed in the silence.

“Ghastly,” said the dragoon that gagged.

The girls snapped up to attention and removed their eye patches to bare their eyeless sockets defiantly at their oppressors.

A dragoon shuddered, briefly, “I’m gonna hurl, 771284.”

the two eyeballs rolled about on the floor, weaving their way to within inches of the feet of the dragoon officer. The outer surface seemed to harden, and then crack, little green licks of flame poking out of the growing openings in the once eye-like casing.

“YOU - WERE- WARNED!”

The dragoon officer removed her helmet and in the save flutter of movement shoved the piece of parchment against her forehead. Her jade eyes blazed with an internal light at the eyeless pair, “By my oath to the Magistrate, I, Lady of the Shadows of Earth 771284 here by put Sheila Torrance of Earth - 869554 and Sheila Elizabeth Torrance of Earth 287421, to death by immediate execution.

The remaining soldiers quickly mobilzed the huddled cowering mass of girls out of the room as green flame erupted from the two eye constructs.

“Her will be done,” 771284 whispered before shielding herself with a combat parasol.

Anthology Two Presents…
TALISMAN: Harlequin Novelty
By Ashley Corgan

Sheila shot up out of bed, sweat pouring off her body. Emerald flew off her sentinel’s perch from atop the young girl’s armoire.

Landing at the foot of her bedspread, the 6 inch dragon spread her wings in a defensive posture, baring tiny fangs ready for any skirmish.

“It was - was just a dream, Em. I think.”

Sheila scratched the top of Emerald’s little head with her index finger while absently running her tongue over her the front of her own teeth. She could taste just a hint of colloidal silver and sulfur, and her eyes widened.

* * *

Emerald nuzzled the young girl’s head and with each movement the little dragon would nip off some of Sheila’s hair. There were times Em wished she could consume her mistress whole, not out of hunger but out of pity.

The talisman protector could taste the sorrow of her second awakening a little over a year ago, when those two awful creatures who wore the skin of men, the ones called Tex Arkana and Bryce, found Sheila that fateful afternoon. Sheila’s fright, her terror, and familiar heat emulsified into ethereal energy. That energy fueled Emerald’s awakening, ending centuries of blissful torpor.

Sure Sheila had some skill now, useful and slow to build, but the pint-sized, animated jade statuette knew of things to come. Happenings that would dwarf the dreadful heated fear of her sleeping mistress.

Yes, to mix Sheila’s weak, soft flesh with her own hardened, crystalline hide, together they’d never be alone.

* * *

- Dragoon Officer -
- Lady of Shadows -
- Designate: 771284 -

The placard, little more than a bronze plaque installed on a barren wall, was the sole identifying markings that acknowledged her existence. ‘Lady’, as she was so often referred to by the Magistrate and her inner court, lay on her back, stripped bare of her battle raiment and combat parasol.

Singed by the twin blasts of ‘The Dying Breath of the Serpent’ in her skirmish with a pair of Imperial Alchemists, she was given orders to recuperate in her quarters until two new replacements were brought into service. Given the final stages of the project that would be very, very soon.

Lady practiced her breathing techniques and focused her mind off the smell of burnt flesh and thought about the two Sheila Torrances to come. Or rather Sheila Christmases or even Lady of the House of Christmas and Shadow. It was her personal involvement in these abductions and enslavement that made her hate the Imperial Magistrate

The whole point of the Apothecary Dragoon was to eliminate the need for the sheer number of armadas spread throughout the Imperial Presence. The Imperial Alchemists had a single aim when they were first collected: the creation of an Ultimate Talisman Class that encompassed the properties of all 3 existing Talisman classes which are ‘Powerhouse’, ‘Defensive’, and ‘Being’. No known Talisman exists that even straddles two of the classes so this is not a ruse or feint for the Magistrate’s enemies to discover.

771284’s function in all this is to quell any rogue Alchemist activity that deviated from the assigned goal. Sorcery was forbidden and thus the ‘Enigma Vestibule’ was engineered to nullify any corporeal based magicks. The Imperial Sigils written on the parchments Lady of Shadow and her Dragoon carry are the only thing that makes them immune to such power dampening, as the Imperial Sigils are inked in the blood of the Magistrate, thus allowing the Apothecary Dragoon to utilize their innate gifts unhindered.

Few even within the inner court even know of the Apothecary Dragoon’s existence, let alone the contents or nature of the Enigma Vestibule. And in the Empire with secrets come the majesty of power.

Lady held thrall over half the various Armadas and their resources, few had such command, even fewer had stronger hold on the Empire’s vast Presence. And all this pomp and honor out of a deal struck by her estranged husband, British Rule, Lord of Shadows.

The Cheryl Torrance of Earth-771284 was of no real use to Rule after a still-birth of the Chaos Lord’s first vessel, so he traded the gifted young sorceress to the Imperial Magistrate for access to a fresh young bride. She was little more than interdimensional bus fare.

So without a home all she was left with was duty. And hate.

And loss.

Lady actually loved British Rule, he took her from a broken home, saved her from a lifetime of apprenticeship to Albert Weisz, and imbued her with command of the dark emptiness of existence.

* * *

Within the room beyond the Enigma Vestibule there lay dormant a massive vessel, elegantly adorned with Alchemaic Gold so pure it was sheer enough to serve as window and yet so refined it was hard as diamond.

Every millimeter of the vessel was to be etched with nano-script into its surface, once complete those etchings would be filled molecule by molecule with Talismanic Materia. The Materia itself harvested from forced pairings of the Imperial Alchemist’s own talisman partners, hence the rather infrequent suicide attacks of late.

The vessel is the first of many to come. It in itself is created by the will of the Magistrate but by the hands of her slaves. Will it work, I might never know for if it fails so shall my purpose cease.

- Lady of Shadows, Personal Entry -

* * *

Lady’s spartan bunk suddenly illuminated.

A new day.

She stood up, stretching her renewed flesh and put on a new set of Dragoon Officer’s Armor. Her beryllium lined helmet slid carefully onto her head and the fasteners at the base of her armor’s collar locked neatly into place in a single, uniform click. It would shield her from the power of the dark forces she commanded since she willingly took her marital vows alongside the Lord of Shadows, British Rule.

Switching off her bunk’s singular light, again her bunk was bathed in darkness, she inhaled the recycled air of her armor, adjusting her lungs to breathing another few sleepless days worth of filtered oxygen, that is until the completion of the Seraphim Wing.

Apothecary Dragoon Officer Lady of Shadows, Designate: 771284, fished a freshly inked Imperial Sigil from a utility pocket on her uniform then took a step forward and shadow shifted out of her doorless, windowless room and stepped out of a poorly lit corner of the Enigma Vestibule.

* * *

Emerald leapt off of Sheila’s bed and made her way across the hardwood floor to the open closet. Half crawling and slithering through the piles of band t-shirts and a combination of used and unused undergarments the little green, winged serpent found her goal: a small wooden box.

The box itself was once used to house both her inert statuette self and that of her talisman partner Golem, a small humanoid shaped being seemingly formed from randomly carved stones. Both of them were kept safe in that same box through the centuries after being lost in the abyssal machination of the Ocean’s depths.

Inside she found Golem’s remains. The last of his inner will gone. He was nothing save for a few bits of broken antiquity, fodder for what her mistress called a museum exhibit.

Alone.

Emerald a once proud and beautiful, feathered serpent, a long ago protector of a simple migratory people was now free of plumage and peer.

Sheila promised to repair him but another dreadful being clothed in man-flesh called Weisz came and filled her mistress’ already troubled mind with slow magicks and his own memories.

Bitterly Emerald curled up next to the gritty remains, tiny jade tears rolled off her snout and mixed with the once strong debris.

* * *

Above the small city of Cottered, only miles away from Pacific City, hovered an unseen craft.

“Betrayal”, he hissed through grit teeth.

British Rule rapt his knuckles against the half helm that obscured his aged, yet good looks. His new colleague and lover, the anthropomorphic, shape shifter Snipe rubbed her nearly nude body against him.

“C’mon, Brit, we can take ‘em. We can take ‘em all, babydoll. They’re nothing.”

He sighed, the migraines from the shadow shifting ate away at his patience, and Snipe’s constant haranguing only exacerbated things.

“Besides, if things get a bit… hairy, we can always call on-”

“You stupid cunt, I will NOT crawl back to Gregor Christmas or his stupid mother empty handed… AGAIN!”

Rule backhanded the were-woman with no remorse. The last time he failed the The Christmas Family it cost him half his helmet which gave him a rather annoyingly painful reminder to not cock things up.

Snipe picked herself up off the ground.

“Hey lover, are you trying to get me hot? ‘Cause I gotta remind you that we’re minutes away from the shit hitting the fan and I think you want me…”

Snipe’s once lithe form bulked up into a far less attractive and much more hulking feral mass of fur, claws, and muscle.

“… ready to rrrrrrrrrrrrumble.”