Challenge #04674-L290: There Are Rules

A painter has been gifted with a wondrous, dangerous power: Everything this artist draws upon changes to match the image at dusk. Paintings come to life, stones become gold, hills cleanly vanish into valleys, even bodies shift shape.
The usual suspects are trying to steal this painter away to make weapons, fortunes, give assassins impossible disguises, ect. Perhaps Wraithvine can help hide this artist before those unscrupulous schemers use this human as a tool. -- Deathshead419

Whatever the gifted magic, it has rules. For the artist Mirabille Giybrosh, anything they painted became reality. But only the things they painted, and only at night. By the daytime, if it wasn't returned to the canvas - or whatever they painted on - it would return to being ordinary paint. Usually in flakes and dust.

This did not stop anyone.

Mirabille looked like a ticket to an easy means of profit. They could paint an army. They could paint riches. They could paint a suitable bride. And no matter how often that Mirabille tried to explain it, they insisted on making ludicrous demands.

And it never stopped people stealing them. Well. Paying mercenaries very well to bundle Mirabille up and deliver them alive and hale to the well-paying lord. A lord who insisted on not paying any attention at all to Mirabille's explanations of how it worked.

This latest Lord Wilfull Ignorance was still going through the threats and bribes to fulfil hir demands.

"My lord, may I please explain--"

"No! No excuses. You paint me the wife of my dreams who will bear me my heirs or your head shall prove an example to any who defy me. Do it properly, and I shall reward you with your weight in gemstones."

The last fellow to promise that had paid in white quartz. Mirabille sighed and said, "I will need two canvases for a life-size full body portrait, and all the hues of paint you can supply."

Lord Wilfull Ignorance didn't even bother to ask why. They were stupid like that.

Mirabille settled in with their art supplies and began working on two portraits. One of the lady as described, and the other of a legendary figure. Wraithvine. Like all their portraits, they were as detailed as they could make it.

Mirabille gave both portraits equal attention. The work deliberately lifelike, until they both looked so real that the figures could step off the canvas as living beings.

Lord Wilfull Ignorance eagerly took the canvas to hir bedchamber, and shut Mirabille in their workshop. Knowing the general run of threats, they only had until the following dawn to make good their escape.

That was what they had planned for.

At sunset, the portrait of Wraithvine stepped off its canvas. "Well," said the image, "This is an interesting way to be summoned."

"You might not be real," said Mirabille. "But you're real enough for one night. I need to get as far away from here as I can. My life is in danger once this lord learns the truth I tried to warn hir about. We both have until dawn."

The image of Wraithvine listened, nodding as ze understood what was happening. Ze scribed a circle on the ground and said, "Gather all you need inside with yourself, and we shall go where there is true help."

When the lord woke in the morning next to a pile of pigment dust, ze would be equally shocked to find an empty studio with no way out but the door ze had just unlocked. Nothing of Mirabille remained there. Just a circle of chalk on the floor and a piece of paper that read, I tried to warn you.

[Photo by Aaron Blakeley on Unsplash]

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