> Perspective: Eve
> Date: February 7, 2018 — 11:40 AM
> Location: Sylvaris — Countryside Outskirts (Varethiel Manor Estate · 3rd-Floor Private Archive)
Naelor didn't start. He sat in the armchair with his hands on his knees and stared at the stained glass. 10 seconds. 20.
U-Um... is he okay? Did I push too hard? Oh no... I totally broke the Elder Master!
My stool creaked. I froze with my bottom halfway off the seat.
Nooo, stupid stool! Now he thinks I'm some impatient little brat squeezing a scary story out of a grandpa! I'm not impatient! ...Okay, maybe a teeny bit. But only because it's about Kai!
"From the moment she seized the princess by the throat," Naelor said. "That is where I meant to begin." His thumb rubbed his signet ring. Around. Around again.
"No. Begin there, and you will only hear a massacre. You won't understand why it happened in that city, on that day."
There's a why? Somebody k-kills 1,328,000 people, and there's a... a reason?
"I went to Pandemonium to talk about peace. The war had ended, and the demon continent was starving at the edges. On my 1st day, Demon Lord Malphas walked me through his own silos and asked about yields and frost lines. He knew every number. Then he told me to enjoy the capital while his ministers drafted the terms."
Of course it's grain. That's kinda cute, actually— wait, no... But a Demon Lord told an elf to go have fun?
"U-Um... enjoy what, though? Why was everybody so happy?"
"Because the Specter was dead."
The Specter. The dossier said that. "Because the Specter had fallen at Asura Academy." ...Kai was at Asura Academy.
S-Stop it! That's a giant school! A ridiculous amount of people go there!
"Asura suffered an attack during the peace talks," Naelor said.
"Every race had come to the table, and in the middle of the treaty, someone killed him. Afterward, all 6 races called it the same thing. An unidentified terrorist attack."
"Unidentified?" My voice came out way too high. "S-Sorry! But somebody had to give the order, right?"
"I do not believe any of the gods did. I sat across from Malphas. I've read our own Court's letters from that month. None of them sound like rulers who planned it." He pushed his spectacles up his nose.
"Someone did it below them. Or beside them."
Beside them?! Who stands beside a god?! That's not a normal job, you can't just apply for that! And if the gods didn't want it, why did all 6 of them tell the exact same lie? That's what you do when you cover for somebody. I know, because I told Head Maid Elise the cat broke that teacup few days back...
...We don't have a cat.
"So the whole city was celebrating?"
"The whole continent. For 7 months he cut their armies apart. Their children had a song about him, to scare each other at night." Naelor's mouth twisted.
"Even the starving came in from the outer rings. I watched a woman with no shoes give her last bread to a stranger. Because she was happy."
"And the Demon Lord? Was he h-happy too?"
His fingers stopped on the ring.
"No. On my 2nd day, Malphas learned that his own children were part of the attack. He left that same night. North." He looked back at the window.
"I've thought about it for 5 years, Eve. I believe he went to find the Specter. Or whatever was left of him in the ground."
Goosebumps ran up both my arms. I hugged them.
Dig him up?! Why would you dig up somebody you hate?! ...Unless you don't hate him? Ugh, stop making up theories, Eve!!
"Why would he do that...?"
"I don't know. Malphas knew something about that man the rest of us didn't. That is the part I have never solved."
"H-How did they even kill him? If he was so strong..."
"A rumor went around the taverns that week. The soldiers thought it was funny." Naelor folded his hands.
"The shooter didn't aim at him. She aimed at someone else. The Specter saw the shot and stepped in front of it."
"In front of... who?"
"A girl. Her name is burned out of every record of that day. All I know is that he took the bullet with his own chest. So she must have been very close to him."
A girl at Asura Academy. A girl he'd step in front of a bullet for. Kai in that stiff school uniform, right next to Elfie.
NO! Am I projecting this reality?!
My ring finger throbbed. Hot. I slapped my other hand over it and pressed down hard. Naelor's eyes went to my hands and stayed there.
He totally saw! Act normal!
"1,328,000," he said quietly. "I never told you the other number. 1,904,612 demons lived inside that veil. She killed 1,328,000. Exactly. Not 1 more. Then she stopped, in the middle of a city full of living demons."
She... stopped? She had more, right there, and she just didn't?
"Why?" I whispered.
"I don't know. Rage does not stop at a round number. Something in her was counting."
I pulled my feet off the floor and tucked them onto the stool's rung.
"I have buried children in famine pits," Naelor said. "Nothing in 300 years frightened me the way that noon did." He turned the empty goblet once in his fingers.
I hopped off the stool and filled it before he could say no. Water splashed on his desk.
Ahh, the ledger! No, it missed. Mostly. Damp is fine!
"Thank you, Eve." He drank.
"It was October 22nd. The 7th and last day of their celebration."
---
> Perspective: Naelor Varethiel
> Date: October 22, 2013 — 9:10 AM
> Location: Demon Continent — Pandemonium (The Sovereign Eye · Avenue of Covenants)
The ash from last night's bonfire still clung to the viaduct railings. Straw, pitch, and burnt burlap. For 7 nights straight, the people of Pandemonium had stuffed old army coats with grain sacks, built a 9-meter Specter out of them, and burned him on the Basalt Viaduct at midnight while the whole capital howled.
9 meters of grain sacks, every single night. My accountants would weep. At least the sacks were empty...
Below the viaduct, the Avenue of Covenants stretched 3 kilometers through the caldera to the black steps of the Parliament. Demons packed both sides 20 rows deep—horned children on their fathers' shoulders, soldiers with bandaged arms, grandmothers holding up portraits of their dead sons. Across every portrait, someone had brushed the same 4 words in red paint.
HE IS DEAD NOW.
Mother always said you never cheer over a grave. Not even your enemy's. Then again, Mother never lost 7 sons to 1 man. Who am I to judge?.
Feast tables ran down the avenue, piled with black rye loaves, iron pots of bone broth, and roasted tubers crusted with salt—all free, straight out of the Parliament's war reserves. At the market end, a clerk in a red sash stood on a crate and tore up debt contracts by the armful while the crowd roared "FORGIVEN!" at every rip.
They're forgiving debts in the street just from sheer joy?.
The air had a bite it didn't have when I arrived 3 days ago. Malphas's aura kept this caldera warm, and the Demon Lord had been gone for 2 nights now.
2 nights, and I'm already wearing my winter scarf. How long until the frost reaches their homes?.
A skinny boy with ash-grey skin darted past my legs with a loaf of rye in each fist. Outer ring. The famine showed at his wrists, where the skin creased far too deep over the bone.
I had those exact wrists the winter I was 9.
He crashed into the armored leg of a towering knight and landed hard on his bottom. Red-black plate, a crown of thorns stamped across the breastplate. The Blood Crown. The royal knights of the capital.
Don't hit him. Don't you dare hit him—
The knight crouched, brushed the grit off the dropped loaf with his gauntlet, and handed it back.
"Chew it slowly, kid," he said gruffly. "Your stomach's not used to real food yet."
The boy nodded so hard his tiny horns wobbled and dashed off.
Oh. What a good man. Great. Now I'm going to be embarrassingly fond of a demon knight.
The knight caught me staring and gave me a stiff nod. "Envoy. Knight-Commander Vharos. You're the elf with the seeds, right?"
"I'm the elf who would very much like to deliver seeds," I replied dryly. "Your Lord left before he signed the terms."
"Yeah. He does that." His jaw tightened, and he didn't say another word.
Then the war drums started at the far end of the avenue.
---
The parade float rolled in behind 8 basalt-horned oxen in crimson harnesses: a siege platform captured on the Valerion front, stripped of its ballistae, lacquered black, and draped in crimson silk. Torn Asura banners dragged through the dirt behind its axle.
Standing on top was a girl who couldn't have been older than 15. Princess Christiana. Crimson-dark hair whipped around her small black horns, and a long sniper rifle hung across her back on a white silk strap. She didn't bother with a polite royal wave. She threw both arms wide and spun in a full circle so every side of the avenue could see her face.
"TIGRESS! TIGRESS! SLAYER OF THE SPECTER!"
She dug into a velvet pouch at her hip and flung handfuls of brass rifle casings into the crowd. Grown soldiers dove onto the stones, shoving each other to grab them. The man who won held his up over his head, and I squinted at the tiny signature scratched into the brass.
Every few seconds, her red eyes stopped on a face. When a young officer near me turned to whisper to his friend, Christiana pulled a small black notebook from her sleeve, scribbled in it, and kept smiling.
Is she writing down the people who looked away from her? At her own parade? Wait. I looked away 2 times already. Am I in that book?!
Behind her, sprawled across a mountain of red velvet cushions, lay Prince Belphegor, the 5th Prince, with his arm thrown over his eyes and a porcelain tea cup balanced on his stomach. It didn't spill a drop when the wheels hit the bumps.
He's asleep... At his own victory parade. Honestly? I respect it.
As the float rolled past my stand, he lifted his arm 2 inches. Elven ears catch everything.
"You're still boring, Tigress," Belphegor drawled. "Don't fall off the ride."
"Shut up, Lazy lizard!" Christiana shot back without turning around.
"Nobody's even looking at you!"
Average sibling bantering.
---
> Time: 11:20 AM
> Location: Pandemonium — Covenant Forum (Behind the Central Stage)
The Covenant Forum was a round plaza of black stone at the foot of the Parliament steps. They had built the stage against the Stone of Debts, the wall where Pandemonium carved its war dead. 7 months of tiny red names covered it from top to bottom, and across the very top, someone had painted a new line in gold leaf that was still wet.
THE DEBT IS PAID.
I came looking for the Minister of Agriculture and found him passed out on a bench, hugging an empty wine jug. Before I could decide whether to wake him, a lazy voice drifted out of the black silk tent behind the stage.
"Let the elf in. I'm bored."
Inside, Belphegor lay on a velvet couch with his boots up. Christiana stood at a tall mirror while a trembling maid pinned a gold chain through her hair.
"Higher," Christiana snapped. "If it sits that low, I'll look like a bride."
"You'd make a terrible bride," Belphegor said without opening his eyes.
"I'd make a perfect bride. I'd just shoot the groom if he ever talks back to me."
"See? Terrible."
She flicked a hairpin at him. It stuck upright in the cushion, 1 inch from his ear. He didn't even flinch.
"You missed."
"That was a warning shot, Lazy Prince."
Half-siblings, and they bicker over everything.
Christiana caught my reflection in the mirror and grinned. "Oh, look. It's the tea-pouring fossil."
Fossil?! I'm 300! That's barely middle-aged!
"If you came to whine about your agriculture then too bad too sad, Father's not here." She pulled on a white silk glove, finger by finger.
"He threw a tantrum and left 2 nights ago." She pulled on the 2nd glove hard enough to make the silk creak.
"I did the 1 thing this continent needed for 7 months! The generals couldn't. The Arch-Mages couldn't. Your precious little Elven Queen couldn't! And Father won't even look at me. Maria's been with him for 2 days straight, telling him I did what was necessary for our homeland, and he still refuses to believe I killed him. He keeps saying, 'It is not over.'"
She spun around, red eyes flashing.
"It's over! I watched his chest break open through my own scope! And Asura is crawling back to the peace table, still signing treaties after we gutted them. Cowards! Without their precious Specter, they're all cowards!"
It is not over...? Why would he say that.
"You're his average 'yes' man," Christiana said, studying my face. "I can tell."
"I only sell what's necessary, Your Highness."
"Liar." She grinned. "Good. At least you lie politely."
"Leave the elf alone, Tigress," Belphegor yawned. "Father said nobody touches him." Then he cracked 1 eye open, and his voice dropped.
"Did you sleep last night?"
"Of course I slept."
"Liar. You were on the balcony at 4 in the morning."
Christiana's hands froze on the gold chain.
"The stars were acting strange last night," she muttered. "That's all."
A sniper has to read her surrounding and adjust accordingly. If she says the sky looked wrong, I'd listen.
Belphegor sighed, swung his legs off the couch, and took the last hairpin from the maid's shaking fingers. He slid it into Christiana's hair himself. Slightly crooked.
"There. Now you look like a bride."
"I'll kill you if you ever touch my hair again!"
"After the speech." He patted her head right between her horns. "Do I have to stand up there with you?"
"No. You can sit."
"Then I'll come."
At the tent flap, Christiana glanced back at me. For just a second, she looked her age.
"Watch from somewhere I can see you, fossil."
This 15-year-old girl is far too arrogant, self-absorbed and ignorant. I hope someone can teach her a lesson, when the time comes. But I am not sure if there is anyone who can teach her that.
---
> Time: 11:31 AM
> Location: Pandemonium — Covenant Forum (The Central Stage)
I watched from the upper Parliament steps with the other foreign envoys, 30 meters above the stage. Knights lined both sides of it: the red-black plate of the Blood Crown, the red cloaks with white crosshairs of Christiana's order, the Red Scope, and the plain grey cloaks of Belphegor's, the Still Hour. In front of them stood 12 silent figures in unmarked black armor. The Obsidian Guard. Malphas's personal guard, left behind to protect his children.
He left in a rage, and he still left his own knights for them. Even a Demon Lord can't stop being a father.
Christiana stepped to the edge of the stage and raised 1 hand. Silence rolled backward through 100,000 people until only the wind on the banners was left.
"For 7 months, you were afraid of a name!" Her voice rang across the plaza.
"You put your children to bed with his name. Generals who hadn't lost a battle in 300 years refused to march if he was on the field." She smiled.
"I wasn't afraid."
"The other races wanted a ceasefire! They wanted peace, so they could sit with us and pretend we were equals! And while they were busy drawing borders, I walked into their academy and took their Hero away!"
"SLAYER OF THE HERO!"
"They call it terrorism? Let them! We lost nothing! We survived! We survived the Human invasion! We will win again, and again, and again, because the blood in these eyes was never meant to bow!" She thrust her fist into the air.
"And 1 day, when I wear my father's crown, Asura will learn its place. The whole world will!"
The crowd went insane. Blood Crown knights hammered their swords against their shields, and the roar shook the brass railing under my palms.
She seems to be a good leader for the demon race.
Behind her, Belphegor slowly lifted his head. He wasn't watching his sister. He was staring at his own hand, opening and closing his fingers. He pressed his palm flat against the stone step and looked south, at the sky. The lazy look vanished from his face, and for the 1st time all day, he looked like a Prince of Pandemonium.
I read the single word on his lips. "Cold."
---
> Time: 11:44 AM
It started at the southern edge of the sky. At first I thought it was an Ash Sky. But ash rolls in dirty brown clouds. This was a sheet of flat, perfect black with a dead-straight edge, sliding north so fast that I could watch it move. And behind that edge, there were stars.
At 11:44 in the morning.
No. No, no, no. That's not a cloud!
The black edge swept over the sun. The sun stayed, a dim white disk I could stare at without squinting, and all around the stage, the dark-fire torches shrank to half their height. Then the edge went over the northern rim of the caldera, and there was no edge left anywhere.
The entire sky was black and full of stars I had never seen in 300 years of reading the night.
Demon fire feeds on sunlight. Something just turned the sun down. And those aren't our stars...
The cheering broke into nervous laughter, then shouting.
Knights sprinted up the stage steps toward the heirs. Behind me, a minister slammed a sending-stone against the railing.
"It's dead! I can't reach Gehenna Gate! Nothing's going out!"
A wyvern rider launched off the Parliament roof and flew hard toward the southern wall. 30 seconds later, he came flying back over the northern edge of the forum—still heading south—and landed on the exact same roof. He slid off his saddle, sat down on the tiles, and stared at his hands.
He flew straight south, and the city put him right back where he started... Think, you old fool! Demons use carnage, blood, shadow, and vows. Never stars! Stars belong to my people, to the oldest temples, to the hymns my mother used to sing! So what are they doing here?
Then the singing started.
---
It was a woman's voice, soft and warm, coming from every direction at once. It was so gentle that my shoulders dropped before I even realized I was listening.
"Hush now, peaceful soul. Close your eyes."
"Mother is here. The sun can rest."
My racing heart slowed, beat by beat, until it was calm.
"Nobody is angry. Nobody is late."
Below me, the crowd began to sway. A soldier rubbed his temples. A woman sat down on the stones and leaned against the wall. On her father's shoulders, a little horned girl laid her cheek on top of his head and let her arms hang limp.
They're falling asleep...? All of them. But I'm not even sleepy. Why only them?
My eyes searched the crowd before I knew what I was looking for. The boy with the bread. He sat against the wall 20 meters from the stage, chin on his chest, 1 loaf in his lap with a single bite gone.
He ate too fast and dozed off, that's all...
I took a step down the stairs anyway, and a black steel gauntlet clamped onto my arm. An Obsidian Guard.
"Stay here, envoy."
"There's a child down there—"
"There are 10,000 children down there," she said flatly, her eyes on the sky. "Stay here."
"Lay down your hands. Lay down your head."
On the stage, Belphegor rose to his feet in 1 smooth motion and stepped in front of his sister.
"Belo... my head hurts..." Christiana groaned, pressing her palm to her forehead.
"Stay behind me, Christiana."
"I don't stay behind anybody...."
"Today you do."
"Sleep, my darlings. I will keep watch over the nightmares." The voice faded away into the void.
The song ended. 100,000 people breathed slowly in the heavy silence.
And at the far southern end of the forum, at the very start of the red carpet, someone was walking toward us.
---
4 Obsidian Guards stepped onto the carpet and crossed their halberds in her path. She didn't slow down. She didn't speed up. 1 step, she was in front of the halberds.
The next, she was behind them, still walking, and the guards stood frozen with their weapons crossed in front of empty air.
She was small, shorter than any soldier on that carpet. A floor-length black gothic dress trailed behind her, and tiny white lights drifted slowly inside the fabric.
The same stars as the sky above us. A black lace veil covered her face down to the tip of her nose, and a few strands of pale pink hair slipped out beneath it. In her right hand, she held a pale silver lance pointed at the ground, a long red ribbon trailing from below its blade.
On her left hand, a ring glowed soft pink.
On. Off. On.
That ring is pulsing. Like a heartbeat... Pink hair, Old High Elven, stars... every piece of her belongs to my people, and none of the pieces fit together.
"Who is that...? Is the singing coming from her...?" the whispers went through the crowd.
Christiana pulled free of Belphegor's grip and marched to the edge of the stage. Pale and squinting through her headache, she still lifted her chin.
"Who are you?!"
The girl stopped walking. Slowly, she tilted her veiled face up toward the stage.
"Shh..." she whispered. "The children are sleeping."
The headache tore through the crowd all at once. 100,000 people flinched together, clutching their temples, their eyes going heavy and glassy.
At the foot of the stage, Knight-Commander Vharos held a little girl in a red festival dress who had dozed off against his breastplate during the song. He was patting her back. Then he stopped.
He pressed his gauntlet to her neck, ripped the gauntlet off with his teeth, and pressed his bare fingers there instead.
The color drained out of his face. He laid her down on the stones very carefully and smoothed her little dress over her knees. When he stood back up, his face wasn't pale anymore.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
Black fire erupted from the stones under his outstretched hand and twisted into a 2-meter spike of barbed black iron.
Hellspike. The spell the Blood Crown used to break siege walls. It shot across the 15 meters between them faster than my eyes could follow.
And stopped 1 millimeter from the lace of her veil. It hadn't hit a barrier. There was nothing there to hit. It just hung there, humming, its barbs still smoking.
The girl lifted her left hand and touched the tip of the spike with 1 fingertip. Barely a push.
"No." she said softly. "I did not say you could touch me."
The spike spun around and flew back the way it came at the exact same speed. It punched through Vharos's breastplate, lifted him off his feet, and pinned him to the Stone of Debts, 3 meters off the ground, right under the wet gold letters.
THE DEBT IS PAID.
His legs kicked once. Then they went still.
The screaming started. The people still awake scrambled backward over the bodies around them, and nobody could get up, because the people under their hands weren't sleeping anymore.
They were never asleep. The boy—
He hadn't moved. The loaf still sat in his lap. 1 bite missing.
No. Gods, no...
The Obsidian Guard's hand was still clamped on my arm. It wasn't holding me back anymore. It was shaking.
Up on the stage, Christiana stared at Vharos pinned to the wall. Then she looked at the girl in the black dress, who was humming again, quietly, only to herself. The pride drained out of the Tigress's face, and the color went with it.
For the 1st time since I met her, she looked like exactly what she was.
This isn't a parade anymore. She came here for Christiana.
---
"Give him back."
She said it to nobody. Soft. The same voice from the sky. Then she took 1 step up the red carpet, and another.
"Give him back."
The whispers rippled out through the people still awake, slurred and confused.
"Him...?"
"Who is 'he'?"
Him? Who is she looking for? A prisoner? A son?
The Obsidian Guard's hand left my arm. She pulled her helmet on and drew a black sword in 1 motion, and the other 11 Obsidian Guards fell in behind her. So did every knight still standing in the forum. Red-black Blood Crown plate, red Scope cloaks, grey Still Hour cloaks. 200 of them, maybe more.
"Captain Morra of the Obsidian Guard!" she shouted at the stage.
"Your Highnesses, fall back to the Parliament! That is your father's order! We hold her here!"
She's the captain. And she just gave 2 royal heirs an order like they were recruits.
Christiana opened her mouth to argue. Belphegor grabbed her by the collar and dragged her backward up the stage steps.
"Move, Tigress."
"Let go of me! I can take her—"
"Later. Move."
The knights charged.
---
The Blood Crown went in ahead of the rest. 40 armored knights in a wedge, halberds lowered, boots pounding the carpet.
At 50 meters, they slowed down.
Not by choice. Their legs pumped at the same speed, but every step covered less ground than the last. The knight at the point of the wedge shouted something, and his breath came out white.
Frost? It isn't that cold. Is it?
At 20 meters, their armor started to frost. Not on the outside. It crept out of the joints at the elbows and knees, from the inside. The cold was coming out of their bodies.
At 10 meters, the knight at the point reached out with his halberd. The blade crept forward. 1 meter from her. Half a meter.
A hand's width.
It never arrived.
He pushed, and pushed, and the gap stayed exactly the same. His face behind the visor went grey, then blue. The whites of his eyes clouded over with frost. Then he stopped, halberd out, his last breath hanging white in front of his face.
All 40 of them. Standing in a wedge on the red carpet. Frozen mid-charge.
She hadn't even looked at them.
"Shh," she told them as she walked between them. "Why so angry? You'll catch a cold."
The closer they got, the farther away she was. And the colder they got. What kind of authority is this?!
I have stood in High Queen Asora's court. I watched her stop 10,000 soldiers using elvian soul-channeling... But even she can't do this. Nobody alive can do this.
---
The demon sorcerers opened fire next.
20 of them in black robes along the forum's edge, chanting together. Black vines as thick as a man's waist tore up through the paving stones, covered in hooks, and whipped at her from both sides. Bone spears flew from the left. A swarm of black-fire crows screamed across the plaza from the right. A curse rolled along the ground toward her, a black stain that rotted the stone it crossed.
Every 1 of them stopped.
The vines froze a hand's width from her dress, hooks quivering. The bone spears hung in the air. The crows beat their wings and didn't move forward. The curse stopped at the edge of the carpet and sat there, steaming.
She tilted her head at the sorcerers.
"Is this what you want to do," she asked, "instead of listening to the lullaby?"
Nobody answered.
"Then forget it."
The vines fell apart into nothing. The spears, the crows, the curse. Gone. Not broken. No ash, no smoke. Gone.
The 20 sorcerers stood with their hands still raised. 1 of them lowered his hands and stared at them. Another opened his mouth to chant and closed it again. A woman in the front row started to cry.
They forgot?! They forgot the spells they just cast? Look at their faces. They don't even know what they were trying to do...
Those spells never came back. Not to them. Not to anyone. Every demon in that capital who knew the Thorn Vine Rite or the Crow Swarm forgot it in the same second, and 5 years later, there isn't a grimoire on the whole continent that can teach them again.
That is the truth. She erased not only the spells, but the memory of ever learning them.
---
On the stage, Belphegor hauled Christiana up the back stairs toward the Parliament doors. They ran past me, 30 steps, 40.
And came out onto the front of the stage again.
Belphegor stopped dead. Christiana stumbled into his back.
"Belo...?"
"We went up." He stared at the stairs behind them.
"We went up the whole way... Yet we're at the beginning."
The wyvern rider. The city put them back too.
The girl was still walking. Slowly. Up the red carpet between the frozen knights, toward the stage.
Christiana's lips pulled back from her teeth.
"Fine. If we can't run, I'll kill her myself."
She swung the rifle off her back.
"Hound!"
The rifle creeked a high clean note, and a red bullet left the barrel and bent in midair toward the girl.
"Hound! Hound! Hound!"
4 more red bullets, each from a different angle, curving around the frozen knights.
Ribbons opened behind the girl. 12 of them, pink and blue, made of light, unfolding from her back and swaying around her.
The 1st bullet hit a ribbon and stopped dead. The 2nd. The 3rd. The ribbons didn't move fast. They were just there, every time, before the bullet was.
She blocks before the bullet arrives. Those ribbons know where the shots are going!
"Kill Box!"
Christiana threw her left hand at the sky. 40 red glass plates bloomed in the dark above the forum, each 1 meter wide, hanging still. She fired straight up. The bullet hit the 1st plate and bounced, hit the 2nd, the 3rd, faster with every bounce, and came down at the girl from directly above.
A ribbon was already there.
Christiana fired 6 more into the Kill Box. They rained down from 6 angles at once. 6 ribbons caught them. The girl didn't look up.
"Belo, she's blocking everything! Every angle!"
"Not everything." Belphegor crouched at the front of the stage, eyes narrowed.
"Your 1st Hound. Before the ribbons came out. It slowed down before it got to her. It ran out of space."
"Bullets don't run out of space!"
"Hers do." He pressed his palm flat on the stage.
"Dead Air."
The air around the girl turned grey. A frozen knight beside her toppled over, his armor cracking. She kept walking. Her breathing didn't change.
"She doesn't need air... Her existence feels backwards!"
Nothing. She walked a straight line.
"Not moving through space the normal way, then... Wrong Hour!"
Her ribbons slowed for a moment. Then they caught up, and kept swaying.
He's testing her. 1 rule at a time. Air. Direction. Time. He isn't trying to brute force it, he's trying to learn what she is.
"Tigress. Listen." Belphegor didn't take his eyes off her.
"She's not behind a barrier. Nothing simply hits her. The space in front of her stretches. The closer your bullet gets, the farther it still has to go."
"So how do I get through that?!"
"Distance has to be made of something. Space. Heat. Motion." He spread his fingers on the stone.
"I'll take all of it out. Everything between you and her face. If there's nothing left there, there's nothing to stretch."
He's going to empty the space between them itself... God. That might actually work!
Christiana's grin came back, wide and vicious. She dropped flat on the stage, rifle on her elbow, eye to the scope.
"Crowned."
A red ring lit up around her pupil. Every demon still awake in the forum was staring at her, and I watched her drink it in.
"Watched."
The girl's walk slowed. Only a little.
"Leech," Belphegor said.
The air between the stage and the carpet went flat and dead. No wind. No sound. The frost on the knights stopped glittering.
"Called Shot," Christiana whispered.
"Face!"
She fired.
The red bullet crossed the dead road in a straight line and didn't slow down.
The black lace of the veil tore. A strand of pink hair fell, cut clean. And on the girl's left cheek, just below the veil, a thin red line opened.
1 drop of blood ran down her face.
She stopped walking.
---
The whole forum stopped breathing with her.
She raised her left hand and touched her cheek. She looked at her fingertip. At the red on it.
She bleeds...
She stood there for a long time, looking at her own blood.
Then she started to hum.
Not the lullaby. Something else. A children's tune with a skipping rhythm. Then the words came, whispered, in the common tongue this time, and every person in the forum heard them inside their own head.
"Don't you ever laugh as the heaven goes by... for you may be the next to die."
The people sleeping on the stones twitched.
"They wrap you up in a big white sheet, from your head down to your feet."
A man on the stones near the stage flinched in his sleep. His hands came up over his face.
"They put you in a big black box, and cover you up with dirt and rocks."
All across the forum, the sleepers began to move. Twitching. Kicking. Mouths stretched open with no sound coming out. A woman's fingernails scraped the stone.
They're dreaming. Gods, they're dreaming whatever she's singing!
"All goes well for about a week... and then your coffin begins to leak."
"The worms crawl in. The worms crawl out."
A soldier below me arched off the steps, his back bent, his eyes squeezed shut.
"A big green worm with rolling eyes crawls in your stomach and out your eyes."
"Your stomach turns a slimy green... and then there's only bones."
Some of them went still after the 1st line. Some fought it, kicking and clawing, through the whole song. A few of the biggest soldiers lasted until the very end.
Then none of them moved.
She lowered her hand from her cheek.
"That is what you are," she said gently.
"Dead."
---
"AHAHAHH!"
Christiana laughed.
It burst out of her, high and shaky, then stronger. She got up on 1 knee and pointed the rifle at the girl.
"So even you bleed! Did you see that, Belo?! She BLEEDS! Gods don't bleed! So whatever you are, you can die!"
"Tigress—"
"Shut up! I hit her! Nobody else in this whole city touched her, and I did!" She stood and planted her boot on the edge of the stage.
"Hey! Singing girl! You came all this way to cry over somebody, didn't you? Who's 'him'?"
The girl looked up at her.
"Give him back."
"Give who back?"
"His soul. You took it. Give it back."
Christiana went still. I watched it land on her face. The date. The bullet. The girl.
"Him." Her red eyes went wide. Then she smiled, slowly.
"The Specter. You're here for the Specter." She laughed again.
"It's you! You're the girl he jumped in front of!"
The girl said nothing.
"Oh, that's perfect." Christiana spread her arms.
"I wasn't even aiming at him, you know! I was aiming at you! And the idiot stepped in the way! He took it right through the heart, for you, and he died on the floor like the trash he was, and now you want his soul back? It's gone bitch!" She leaned forward, grinning.
"He's 6 feet under the dirt, sweetheart. Worms and all. Nothing brings him back. Not even you..."
The humming stopped.
The stars in the girl's dress stopped drifting.
"DO NOT SPEAK OF HIM WITH THAT MOUTH!"
The scream hit the forum. The stones under the carpet cracked in a straight line to the stage. Every frozen knight on the carpet shattered at once, armor and all, into frost.
When her voice came back, it was low and fast. Not gentle anymore.
"You named his heart with those little lips, didn't you? You aimed at me, and he got in the way, and you're proud of it... Go on, then. You love taking lives. Shoot me. Shoot me as many times as you want."
That's not the same voice. That isn't even the same person.
Christiana's hands were shaking. She raised the rifle anyway.
"Called Shot. Heart."
"Leech!" Belphegor shouted.
The bullet crossed the dead road. It reached her. It went into her chest and came out of her back. No wound. No hole in the dress.
2 meters behind her, it turned to grey ash and blew away.
"Called Shot. Heart!"
Through her. Ash.
"CALLED SHOT. HEART!"
The 3rd bullet went into her chest.
And the girl looked at Christiana. Just looked.
The bullet turned around inside her. It came out of the front of her dress, flew back up the dead road, and went into Christiana's chest.
Right where she had named it.
Christiana stopped screaming. She looked down at the hole in her own coat. Then she fell backward onto the stage and didn't move.
A voice spoke from her soul. Clear, proud, and cold, loud enough that I heard it from the steps.
"Demoness's Heart stopped... Using 1 life. 2 left."
A beat.
"Get up, Princess."
Christiana's back arched off the stage. She dragged in a breath that sounded torn, coughing blood, clawing at the hole in her coat while it closed by itself.
She died?! She actually died, and the thing in her rifle brought her back.
And the girl never touched her. She only looked at her!
---
Belphegor didn't look at his sister.
He stood up. The lazy prince from the parade was gone. His face was white and blank, and his breath came out in long white plumes.
"You hurt my sister..." he said quietly.
The girl turned her veil toward him.
"Dead Sun."
He pressed both hands flat against the stage.
The cold came out of him. Not out of the air. Out of him. Frost climbed his fingers, his wrists, his arms, turning his skin grey, then black at the tips. 2 fingers on his left hand went black and snapped off at the knuckle, and he didn't stop.
He's feeding it his own body. His own heat. Gods, he's burning himself to make it!
Everything in front of the stage stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped. The ash from Christiana's bullets hung in the air. The frost from the shattered knights hung in the air. The girl's ribbons froze mid-sway. The tiny stars in her dress went still.
Her foot stopped, raised halfway through a step.
He did it. He froze her. He actually froze her!
Her head tilted.
"It's too bright here," she said, her voice muffled under the veil.
She lifted her right hand toward the sun.
"The sun doesn't need to exist."
She closed her fingers over it.
---
Above the veil, the moon slid across the sun.
I saw it through the black sky. A dark disk moved into the dim white one and covered it, edge to edge, until only a thin ring of white fire was left.
Then the light went out.
All of it. The torches died. Every dark-fire lamp, every brazier, every lantern on the Parliament steps went dark at once. Across the whole city, in every direction, the fires of Pandemonium went out together.
Black. Total black.
Except for her.
The stars in her dress were the only light left in the city. Pink and blue and white, drifting again, slowly. They lit Belphegor's frost from below, and where the starlight touched the ice, the ice turned silver.
Then it cracked. All of it. Without a sound.
She looked at them.
I can't see her eyes... So why does it feel like she's looking straight at me?
In the dark, something rose from the bodies on the stones. Thin silver threads, 1 from every chest, lifting slowly into the black air and drifting toward her. They slid into her dress, and her dress got brighter.
1 more star. Then another. Then hundreds.
Those are their souls. She's taking their souls! She's wearing them.
"Look at me," she said.
Starlight spilled from her dress across the forum. Everyone still awake looked. I looked.
I couldn't stop myself.
My body stopped.
I didn't fall. I just couldn't move. My heart beat. My lungs breathed.
I could see and hear everything.
But my arms, my legs, my mouth were somewhere very far away from me, and I couldn't reach them.
Around me, the last soldiers running for the Parliament doors stopped mid-stride and toppled onto the stones.
Only Captain Morra was still moving. She had her eyes shut. She stood between the girl and the stage with the last Obsidian Guards and 30 knights of the Red Scope and the Still Hour, and together they raised a barrier.
A wall of black glass, 3 meters thick, burning with 30 sigils.
The girl held out 1 finger.
A small black bead formed on the tip of it. The size of a pea. No light came off it. It was so black it hurt to look at.
"Go find them," she told it.
The bead drifted off her finger. Slowly. Then fast.
It touched the barrier. The black glass didn't crack. It folded in on itself and vanished into the bead, all 3 meters of it, in less than a heartbeat.
It touched Morra's shoulder.
That's it.
Morra was gone.
Not torn. Not burned.
Squeezed into nothing, and the place where she stood was empty.
The bead moved through them. It didn't hurry. A knight swung at it, and the sword vanished, then his arm, then him. It went from knight to knight, guard to guard, and every 1 it touched simply stopped existing.
Then it left the forum, and I heard nothing at all, and I knew it was out there finding the rest.
Every knight. Every guard. Every soldier who swore to protect them...
It left the heirs. It left those 2 alive on purpose...
---
She walked up the stage steps.
Christiana was on her knees, coughing blood. She raised the rifle 1 more time. The girl took it out of her hands, gently, and set it down on the stage.
Then she took Christiana by the throat with 1 bare hand and lifted her off the ground.
"You pulled the trigger with these hands?"
Christiana kicked. Her nails clawed at the girl's wrist. Her heels drummed against nothing.
"Let's go somewhere away. Somewhere he can watch."
Belphegor reached for them. His black, frostbitten hand closed around his sister's ankle. He couldn't stand anymore. He held on from his knees.
The girl looked down at him. Her voice went soft again. Kind. The voice from the sky.
"You can come too. She'll be cold up there. Someone should hold her."
She drew a line through the air with her free hand.
The sky above the stage opened. It didn't split. It peeled apart, and behind it there were stars, millions of them, and a black so deep and cold that the frost on the stage lifted off the stones and fell up into it.
She stepped up into the dark, carrying Christiana by the throat. Belphegor went with them, still holding his sister's ankle.
The sky closed.
They were gone.
---
I don't know how long I lay there.
My body didn't come back. I lay on the Parliament steps with my cheek on the cold stone and my eyes open, and I couldn't close them.
Celestara, goddess of light, mother of my people. Hear me. Please hear me.
High Queen Asora. Somebody. Anybody.
I prayed until the words stopped meaning anything. Then I kept praying anyway.
The silver threads had stopped rising. The forum was silent. The whole city was silent. I listened for 1 breath. 1 cough. 1 child crying.
Nothing.
In front of me, a soldier lay on the steps with his eyes closed. His chest wasn't moving. Below him, the woman who had sat down against the wall. Below her, the boy with the bread.
They're dead. All of them. The whole capital.
I'm the only 1 alive in this dark... Why me?
Then I heard footsteps.
Slow. Small. Coming up the steps.
She walked out of the dark alone. No princess. No prince. The stars in her dress lit the stone around her feet.
She stopped in front of me.
My body came back all at once. I gasped and threw myself forward onto my hands and knees and pressed my forehead to the stone at her feet.
"Please," I sobbed.
"Please. I'm an elf. I'm only an envoy. I came here to talk about peace, I swear by my blood, I never hurt anyone, please, please don't—"
My eyelids were getting heavy.
No... Not the sleep. Don't let me sleep. If I sleep, I'll never wake up.
"Please..."
A cool hand touched the top of my head. Light. Barely there.
"You have a kind heart," she said softly.
"Keep doing the kind work."
The hand left.
When I lifted my head, she was walking away. Down the steps, across the dead forum, down the red carpet, south, toward the gate she came through. Her dress grew smaller and smaller in the dark.
Then she was gone.
The veil split above the city. A crack of grey daylight opened across the sky, then another, and the black fell apart in pieces, and the sun came back.
It shone on 1,328,000 sleeping faces.
I lay on the steps and felt my fingers move, 1 by 1, and I cried until I couldn't breathe.
---
> Perspective: Eve
> Date: February 7, 2018 — 10:12 PM
> Location: Varethiel Manor Estate · 3rd-Floor Private Archive
Naelor stopped talking.
Then his breathing went wrong.
Short. Fast. Way too fast. His hands went to his chest and clawed at his robe. His face went grey, and sweat ran down his temples.
"Elder Master?"
"I can't— she's— the humming— I can hear her—"
He slid off the armchair and hit the floor on his side, knees pulled up, 1 fist pressed against his heart.
Heart attack?! No. No, wait. His lips aren't blue. He's breathing, just way too fast. And his eyes... he isn't even seeing me. He's seeing those steps.
He's not in this room anymore. He's back there!
I dropped to my knees beside him. My hands stopped shaking. I don't know why. They just did.
"Elder Master Naelor. It's Eve. You're in your archive, in Sylvaris." I took his hand off his chest and pressed it flat against the floorboards.
"Feel that? That's your floor. Cedar. It's 2018."
He was breathing in sharp little gulps.
"Breathe with me, okay? In through your nose, 1, 2, 3, 4. Out through your mouth, slow, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6."
He tried. It came out shaky.
"Again. In... and out, long. That's it. You're doing so good."
I soaked a handkerchief in the cold water from the carafe and pressed it to his wrists, then the back of his neck.
"Tell me 5 things you can see. Anything."
"The desk." His voice cracked. "The goblet. The window. Your... ribbons."
"1 more."
"Your face."
"Good. Now 4 things you can touch."
By the time we got to 1 thing he could taste, his breathing had slowed down. His shoulders came down. He lay on the floor of his own archive with his eyes open, crying quietly, and he let me hold his hand.
Wait. How did I know how to do any of that?
Never mind! Later! He's okay. That's what matters.
I looked up at the window. Black. Stars.
It's night?!
The clock on the wall said 10:12.
10 PM?! We started before noon! That's almost 11 hours!
He kept stopping, though. He'd lose his place and start the morning over again. He'd stare at the window for 20 minutes without a word. He described that same frozen knight 3 different times, and every time, he cried.
And I never moved off that stool once. My legs are totally numb. Head Maid Elise is going to skin me alive...
Naelor sat up slowly against the desk.
"Those who defied her were not struck down," he whispered.
"They disappeared from memory. Spells. Names. Whole lives. Gone, Eve. As though they never existed."
He stared at his hands.
"I've called her many things over the years. The Empress of Misfortune. Horror itself." His voice dropped to almost nothing.
"She stood higher than the cosmos. More eternal than eternity."
He laughed once, and it broke halfway.
"And she told me I had a kind heart."
I didn't know what to say. So I squeezed his hand.
"Go now, Eve," he said.
"It's late."
"But you—"
"I'll be fine. Go."
---
The servants' corridor was dark.
I didn't run. I walked very, very fast. Every candle I passed, I checked 2 times that it was still lit.
Don't look at the windows... Don't look at the windows... Why are there so many windows in this house?!
In my little room in the maid quarters, I changed into my nightgown with my back to the window. I yanked the curtains shut.
Then I yanked them again, just to be sure.
I dug the Kaiser plushie out from under my pillow and hugged it so hard its eyes pressed into my collarbone.
Okay. Okay, Kai plushie. You're on guard duty tonight. If anything with stars in its dress walks in here, you protect me. Deal?
The plushie stared at me.
I'm taking that as a yes.
I crawled under the blanket and pulled it up to my nose.
The Goddess of Misfortune. Naelor said she used to be a goddess of fortune. Before the hanging. So what happened to her?
And that dream this morning. The dark. The stars. The voice asking me what a god is.
Was that... her?
My ring finger was warm under the blanket. Not hot. Just warm.
Please don't let me dream tonight. Please...
I closed my eyes.