Perspective: Asora - Queen of Elves
Date: February 5, 2018
Time: Early morning
Location: Aeralune, The Luminous Spire, Throne Hall
14 petitions before the sun clears the east spire. 3 of them concern the same work.
I kept both palms flat on the arms of the Living Throne.
Mild irritation. Mostly work.
Below the dais, Lord Faelen of the Zephyric Synod finished his bow.
Yep. He is gonna waste my time disagreeing again.
"Your Radiance, the Synod requests your judgment on the Aptitude Edict," Faelen said. "Should half-blood children sit the Royal Aptitude exam this year?"
3rd year in a row he has asked.
"Continue."
"Our ancestors built the examination halls for pure lineage," he said. "To open them risks the dignity of the halls, the confidence of the noble houses, and the sanctity of—"
I let him run. My mind walked to the east wing.
The coronation is close. Close enough that all 4 of them stopped sleeping.
Roshia has started military operations against demons. Aerilaya is spreading elven religion propaganda everywhere. Vaeloria is winning the hearts of elves with her kindness.
And... that Amelia girl cut her own hair... How revolutionary.
At least 3 of them did something right.
"—and tradition, Your Radiance," Faelen finished, "is the spine of the Kingdom."
"Tradition is what we call a legacy after it survives centuries." I tapped 1 finger on the crystal.
"Half-bloods sit the exam. This year, and every year after."
"Your Radiance, the Synod will—"
"The Synod may submit its objection in writing. I will read it after the Festival."
Somebody in the back row coughed over a laugh. Faelen's jaw worked in silence.
Equal access to education. I signed it centuries ago and never once looked at the handwriting under my signature.
The great doors banged open.
A sentry sprinted in. He skidded 30 paces across polished crystal on his knees, overshot the kneeling mark, and stopped against the bottom step of my dais.
"Majesty!" he told the floor.
"Your Majesty-ness! Sorry! There's a lady at the front gate, and she wants your time, and she's got wings, 4 of them, and flowers are coming out of the pavement where she walks, and the captain tried to stop her and now the captain isn't here, and neither is half the guard legion, and she said to tell you she's here, and you're still a prune—sorry! She said prune! I didn't say it! She said it!"
Prune.
Exactly 1 person alive calls me a prune.
"Who?" I asked.
"Sylaphine Blossom!" The sentry lifted his face. He was 19 at most. "The Queen of Fairies, Majesty!"
A scribe dropped his inkwell. A minister said a word no minister should know. Lord Faelen's spectacles slid down his nose and he did not fix them.
Impossible. She rarely leaves her labyrinth.
My crown vines twitched against my temples. I flattened them with my will.
Think. Fast.
I cannot throw her out. She is the only guest in the world I cannot throw out. If we fight in this hall, 3 spires come down, and every noble standing under them comes down too.
Better the 2 of us share 1 bad morning than this capital city shares a grave.
"Everyone, depart," I said.
Nobody moved. 80 courtiers stared at me.
"Now."
They moved. The ministers left in a clump. The scribes left with the ink still dripping. Lord Faelen reached the doorway last and turned back.
"And the Aptitude Edict, Your Radiance?"
"After the Festival."
He left. The sentry crawled out on his knees. The doors closed.
10 requests.
For a month, a fairy messenger delivered 1 polite request every 3 days. Meeting, private, urgent. I refused 10 of them in 10 different ways. Why would I spend a morning on a fairy queen? I do not like her. I never have.
She asked 10 times. Then she stopped asking.
So she stopped asking and barged in.
The doors opened again. Nobody announced her. Nobody stood in the corridor behind her either. No Spire Guard. No captain. 60 guards had held that corridor at dawn.
Where are my guards?
She walked in, and the crystal floor bloomed under her feet.
Daisies. Daisies in my throne hall.
Sylaphine Blossom walked the 40 paces to my dais and planted 1 daisy per step. Her emerald hair fell past her waist. Her green eyes glowed with that deep, patient light that made young elves confess things. 4 translucent wings, tall and wide, spread behind her in green and gold and scattered pollen-lights across my floor.
A crown of living silver vines, blossoms, and fireflies grew out of her skull. Every blossom in it showed white. Her gown was deep emerald and soft jade, layered in flowing cloth, with silver-thread vines along the seams. Tiny blossoms on the vines opened and closed with her breathing.
7,027 years old. Old hag.
"Well, well, well," Sylaphine said. "It's been a long time, Asora."
"Make it quick. What do you want?"
"Oh, wow." She pressed a hand to her chest. Her crown blossoms turned yellow. "So cold."
"I brought information you might enjoy," she said, and drifted toward the throne with her wings trailing pollen. "So I think that coldness will thaw soon."
"You have 1 minute. Begin with the information."
"Begin with some chatter." She stopped at the foot of the dais and tilted her head.
"How's the throne treating you? I heard you're handing it off soon."
Why would she ask about the Kingdom?
"The Kingdom is stable."
"Stable." She smiled. "Mine is thriving. The harvest tripled this year. Everyone is happy."
Nah I won't give her the satisfaction of asking 'how'.
"Congratulations. Take it home."
"I worry about your elves, though." The blossoms in her crown paled to white again. "Your princesses look exhausted. And I heard people are leaving the Kingdom."
Who told her?
"My elves are not your concern."
"They're my neighbors. Neighbors worry." Sylaphine looked around my hall with open interest, and a daisy sprouted under her left slipper.
"Your border is shaking, by the way. Apologies for the earthquakes."
I know exactly. Scouts found 3 new labyrinth mouths in the Silverwood last month.
Her Labyrinths have been moving for weeks. There has to be a reason.
What are you planting, Sylaphine?
"I came to talk," she said. "Properly. The 2 of us, somewhere quiet."
"No."
"Asora—"
"No." I stood. The throne's hum climbed my spine and I let it.
"You crossed my border with no treaty, planted roots in my soil, and now you're planting daisies in my floor. That is trespassing, Sylaphine. I can call it war if I want to."
"War." Sylaphine laughed, soft and delighted, and every blossom on her crown went yellow. "Listen to you. You prideful creatures are one of the reasons the last war cost us 600 million lives."
600 million.
How dare she remind me of that.
I stood my ground. I held my hands still. I did not let myself sit down.
"What is your motive?" I asked.
The laughter left her. The yellow drained out of her crown, blossom by blossom, until every petal stood white.
"Take this seriously now, Asora," she said.
"We're going to talk about Revenhart."
The hall went quiet. The hum in the throne went quiet with it.
"He's back."
...
No.
No. I crushed that soul with my own hands. I watched it go out.
My knees locked. My crown vines pulled flat against my skull and would not rise.
"Impossible," I said. "I buried his soul myself."
"I know."
"Is this some kind of sick joke?"
"No." She smiled. It was a small smile, and not a happy one.
"I can even share my memories of that day. You can see it for yourself."
Memories. She means it.
She would never say that name in this hall for a joke.
Think. Not here. If someone heard that censored name, then the world might start asking questions.
"Not here," I said.
I raised my palm. Wind magic opened under our feet in a swirl of green, and the throne hall dropped away. The air thinned and cooled. The ceiling of the Luminous Spire fell below us, then the clouds, then the silver spires of Aeralune, and we stepped onto the Cloud Terrace at the top layer of the palace, where nobody climbs except me.
Cold white air. Clouds rolled past below the railing, and the east sun cleared the horizon.
I lifted my hand again. Veilweave rose around us, a dome of solid light.
Not 1 word leaves this dome. Not 1 syllable.
"Sit," I said.
"I want tea." Sylaphine folded her wings and looked around the terrace. "Face to face. With tea. That's the deal."
"Milk tea," I agreed.
"And no hair-pulling this time!"
"You pulled first, 165 years ago."
"You called me an aunty."
"You called me a bag of flour."
"You were wearing so much powder."
"It was radiance."
"It was a lot of radiance known as 'makeup'."
She is still so damn annoying.
"No hair-pulling," I said. "No powder jokes."
"The powder jokes are non-negotiable."
"Ughhh... Fine."
I waved. Silver vines grew from the terrace floor, wove together into a high parasol, and spread over us. A round table of white crystal rose beneath it, then 2 chairs of living wood. 2 porcelain cups settled on the table, steaming. A teapot poured itself.
I sat. My sleeves of white and pale sapphire star-silk fell over the arms of the chair. Sylaphine sat across from me. Her wings folded behind the backrest and her emerald and jade gown spilled across the seat. The silver vines on her seams opened 1 blossom and closed it.
White and sapphire on my side. Emerald and jade on hers. 2 cups. 1 table. Nothing else we agree on.
"You refused me 10 times, huh? Why?" Sylaphine said. She pouted. Her lower lip pushed out and her wings drooped.
Still so childlike.
"11. The first request went to the wrong desk."
"11! You made me count 11!" She jabbed a finger at me. "Do you know what I had to do to get into this room? I had to toss your guards through space! They were so rude to me!"
Ahh, so she threw them into some other realm.
"Where are they?"
"A beach." She sniffed.
"In Elysium. A nice one. Warm sand, pretty water, a lot of dwarves. I'll bring them back once we're done talking."
I closed my eyes. I breathed out through my nose. I let the sigh run its full length.
Mhm 60 guards teleported away. They will return with sunburns and a new perspective of life. I'll need to find a new captain tho...
The crown blossoms on her head faded to white. The sun climbed. The tea steamed between us, and the wind outside the dome pushed the clouds across the railing without a sound.
Now... enough joking
I set my elbows on the table. I clenched both hands into 1 fist, put my chin on my knuckles, and leaned across the crystal until her face filled my sight.
Whatever she brought, It is impossible for Revenhart's soul to return.
"Show me," I said.
Sylaphine raised her hand. A single white blossom unfolded from her palm, and a pale light gathered at its center. Her fingers trembled once before she steadied them.
"Fine. Here are the memories."
The light in the blossom brightened.
"Revenhart has taken someone else's shadow," she said. "And he will be back."
Someone else's shadow.
Whose?
The petals unfolded. Light hit the underside of the parasol, and the whole terrace melted into water.
Okay. Memory time. Her hand is shaking, so it's gonna be a bad one.
I stood in the middle of the sea without getting wet. A hollow bubble hung in the ocean, and 2 people floated inside it.
Syla. Staff, wings, robes soaked red. Ouch. And the other one...
The other one had no face. The memory smeared it into white fog every time I tried to look.
She edited him out. The nerve.
"You cut his face out."
"Face and name stay with me for now," Sylaphine said from somewhere far away. "You get the magic and the words. Watch."
Wow. Okay stubborn hag.
The fragments came fast. A shadow dagger already at her throat before she turned. 60 slices cut through the air where she had stood, and space stuttered trying to keep up. 2 daggers melted into 1 scythe. Black wings of smoke opened behind the faceless man.
60 slices in 1 blink?! I can't do that. I don't know anyone who can do that.
And wings made of smoke? Is that even legal?
Then the floor of the world fell out.
The memory went silent. Syla's staff dissolved in her hands. Her mouth opened and nothing came out. Her wings swept the air and found no air.
The Ninth Depth. No magic at all. Oh no. She's screaming and nothing's coming out.
What the hell did I just watch?
My cup rattled on its saucer. I set it down and blamed the wind.
Then the hunter spoke. Soft. Friendly, almost.
"Not a single soul shall escape the crimes they've committed."
Why does he sound so—
No. Stop. Don't finish that sentence.
My hand was shaking. Stop shaking, hand.
The sky tore open, and Myriacron stepped through. The hunter looked up at him and smiled with half a face.
"Only a monster can deal with another, isn't that right, moth?"
He called Myriacron a MOTH?! To his face?!
Okay, that's kinda hilarious. Maybe I should laugh. Wait—no. No, no, no. Not in front of Syla. She'd never let me forget it.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Myriacron said something about a child of death. The hunter kept smiling.
"I do terrible things for the people I love, moth."
He raised a hand.
"Welcome to my hell."
Everything went white. The light in the blossom died, and the terrace came back with the wind, the parasol, and my cooling tea.
"You flinched," Sylaphine said.
"I didn't."
"Your teacup flinched."
"My teacup has a mind of its own."
She raised an eyebrow and waited. I lasted 3 seconds.
"Okay. Fine." I rubbed my wrist. "That was his voice."
"RIGHT?!" She slapped the table and the cups jumped. "That quiet voice! He did that when his family died. Remember? Nobody dared talk to him for a week."
"He forgave everybody." I stared at my tea. "Thieves. Liars. The guy who sold him fake medicine. Everyone except the people who touched his own."
"And then we betrayed him."
Ow.
"...Yeah," I said. "He has every right to hate us."
"So what if it's him?" Sylaphine leaned across the table. "Reborn. Furious. Coming for us first."
"No."
"Asora—"
"No. Sit. I'll re-explain it slowly."
"Ugh..."
"A soul has 2 parts that matter. The Well holds the mana. The Resonance is its signature. It's what makes that soul that soul." I held up 2 fingers. "Resurrection magic calls a soul back by its Resonance. Reincarnation sends it back by the same thing."
"Okay..."
"When I crush a soul, I smash the Well first. Then I grind the Resonance down to dust. Nothing left to call. Nothing left to send." I let that sit.
"0%. Not with god-tier resurrection. Not if Myriacron himself begged."
"I know." Her voice got small. "I watched you do it. Thousands of years ago. I still don't believe what I saw."
Of course she watched. She was standing right next to me. We have never talked about it though.
I sighed.
"Then you already know the guy in your memory is somebody else."
"He has his voice!"
"He fights differently."Time to be annoying and right."Revenhart fought with science. Gadgets. Satellites. Plans that took 20 years. Your guy has wings made of smoke and a scythe. That's instinctive combat. No offense, but you got outsmarted."
"I did NOT get outsmarted!"
"You lost your staff, your wings, and your voice."
"For 3 seconds!"
"That's still a lot of seconds."
"That's how Revenhart is! He makes you think you're winning!"
"That's not him. Whoever you fought was fodder."
A scary fodder with a scythe, but still fodder.
Sylaphine narrowed her eyes. The blossoms in her crown went yellow.
"You're awfully confident for someone who has no idea who I fought."
Ouch. Fair.
"Okay." I propped my chin on my fist. "Tell me."
*
Perspective: Sylaphine - Queen of Fairies
Date: February 5, 2018
Time: Early morning
Location: Aeralune, The Cloud Terrace
Ooh. Ooh ooh ooh. She said "fodder." She's gonna eat that word.
Kizo would be laughing at me right now. 7,027 years old and I'm bouncing in my chair in excitement.
I wrapped both hands around my cup.
"The man I fought was named Kaiser Everhart."
Asora's chin slid off her fist.
"...What."
"Kaiser," I said. "Same first name as him. Different last name."
"Tell me this is a sick joke."
"I WISH!" I shook my head so hard my crown rattled.
"That was my exact reaction! Same name, Asora! Blue eyes. Jokes around all the time. No magic. Not even a drop!"
Wait.
Why is she doing the thinking face?
Her eyes drifted off. Her lips moved with no sound.
"Blue eyes," she muttered. "Jokes. No magic."
She's counting on her fingers. She IS counting on her fingers.
Oh my gods. She KNOWS him.
"Asora?"
"The Academy," she said to nobody. "Class C."
"You know him!" I slapped the table and the cups jumped. "You DO know him!"
"He's a student at the Asura Academy," she said. "Back row. That is definitely not Revenhart, Syla. I've met him."
HOW does Asora know him?! I thought I was the only one with a Kaiser problem!
"Oh, you do know him," I said. "Then you know he wants revenge on us. For the crisis."
"What crisis?"
Mhmm pretending to be dumb.
"Asora. Come on." I rubbed my forehead.
"We both know about the Asura Crisis. We both know why we wanted Celestara gone."
She did not answer.
"If you don't cooperate, he comes for us 1 by 1. Then we fight him alone instead of together. Think you can take Revenhart by yourself?"
"You haven't proven it's Revenhart. All I saw was fighting style."
"But the—"
"Behavior." She tapped the crystal. "I have a different idea."
Uh huh?
"But fine. We cooperate."
Wait. What?
"Mark the date!" I pointed at her. "Asora agreed with me!"
"Don't push it."
"Alright then. What's your idea?"
"We have 7,000 years of memories between us," she said. "Pool them. Fill each other's gaps. Then we figure out what you fought."
"Deal. Everything on the table."
"Everything."
I rolled up my sleeves. I am so winning this one.
"Okay, my turn. When I ripped him out of that body, there was nobody left. Kaiser's soul was already gone. Somebody else took over."
"Somebody..."
"Old. Heavy. Angry. So here's my theory. Revenhart kept a copy. A duplicate soul. When Kaiser was born, it slipped in and lived inside him as his shadow."
"That's Celestial magic," Asora said. "Soul-splitting. The copy rides in the host's Well."
"Yes! Exactly!"
"Kaiser has no magic."
"Ummm."
"No Well... He'd need bare minimum mana for a basic soul, let alone a soul that's 7,000 years old."
"I KNOW! That's the part I can't explain!"
She's poking holes in my theory on purpose. She loves this.
"Then explain the Ninth Depth," she said. "The place with no magic. It's built on Revenhart's science, I'll give you that. The math underneath is his. But Revenhart never fought face to face. Not once. Gadgets, spyings, plans. Your guy swings a scythe in your face."
"So what if the reborn one got the magic and the abilities he never had as a human?"
"Well, yeah. Of course he would." She laughed, short and dry.
"He's the one who made the first half-blood Celestials and Cursed, so humans could have magic. If he came back, he'd pave the road to himself."
See? She believes me a little.
Then she went still. Her cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
"Wait."
"What?"
"What did Myriacron call him? At the end?"
"The Mighty God Killer," I said. "And the devil."
"Not Revenhart."
"Why does that—"
"Myriacron sees every beginning and every end, Syla. He knows what a crushed soul means. If Revenhart's soul was back, he'd say the name. Right to its face."
Oh.
Oh no.
"And listen to the words," she said. "'Welcome to my hell.' Revenhart never called himself a devil. He was the kindest person humanity ever had. And humanity's victim. He would never call his own place hell."
"He called Myriacron a MOTH!"
"He wouldn't do that either."
"A MOTH, Asora!" My wings flared. "My lord is not a moth!"
"Sit down."
"I'm sitting!"
"You're floating."
I sat. Hmph.
"One more thing," she said. "'I do terrible things for the people I love.' People. But everything Revenhart did was for humanity."
"Hmmm, then that answer was a lie." I said slowly.
"And whoever wrote that voice knew how Revenhart behaved. The uncensored version. The real one. You know who knows that?"
"Us."
"Us. And a few scribes who died 7,000 years ago."
Oh, that is so much worse.
"So somebody's pretending to be him," I whispered. "But why?"
"To distract you."
"Distract me from—"
I stopped.
My crown went pale, petal by petal.
The soul. I ripped Kaiser's soul out of that body. Myriacron said it came back wrong.
"What if it isn't Revenhart at all?" I said. "What if it's something inside Kaiser? Something that came out when I tore his soul loose. And it dressed up as Revenhart to mess with me and Myriacron."
"Why would it do that?"
"So Kaiser could escape." My fists clenched on the table. "While we stood there arguing about a ghost, he walked right out."
"Mmm." Asora folded her arms. "Syla, if you'd known it wasn't Revenhart, would you have chased him?"
"Yes duh." It came out before I could stop it. "Until he paid for disrespecting me."
"And there it is." Asora raised an eyebrow. "It used his image as bait. You chased the ghost, and Kaiser got away."
Ugh. She's right. She's so annoyingly right.
I picked up my cup. Put it down. Picked it up.
Kizo.
"At least he loved me," I said, quietly. "He said so."
Asora looked at the table a long time.
"He did," she said. "And he never took revenge on anyone he loved."
Wow. Asora said something nice. Somebody write it down.
"...You're right," I said. "Revenhart would never do that. And we crushed his soul." I looked up.
"So who is this?"
"Do you know about the Eclipse?"
"The Eclipse?" My stomach flipped. "The one that turned noon black and killed millions? My people too?"
"That one."
"What does that have to do with—"
"I don't know yet." She stared out past the dome at the clouds.
"But it's got to be connected to the Eclipse."
The Eclipse.
2 words, and my body noticed before my brain did. The blossoms on my crown burned a sick, toxic yellow. My 4 wings folded flat against my spine. A sour taste hit the back of my tongue.
No. Nope. We are not doing this. Do not think about the black sky.
I grabbed my cup to give my hands a job. The tea shook anyway.
Count petals. 1, 2, 3...
Under the table, a hair-thin green vine slid out of my slipper, climbed the crystal leg, and looped around the edge of Asora's plate. It dragged 1 of her frosted star-berry biscuits into the shadow of my skirts.
Hehehe. Mine.
Asora did not look down. Her blue eyes stayed on the clouds, calm and regal. She picked up the silver sugar tongs.
Clink. 1 white cube dropped into my tea.
Clink. A 2nd.
Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.
6 cubes. She stirred 3 times, slow and precise, and pushed the cup 1 inch toward me.
"Drink your tea, Syla. You look pale."
That vicious old prune!
I stuffed the biscuit in my mouth and took a petty sip. Molten syrup coated my throat. I swallowed with a straight face and smiled sweetly through the diabetes.
"Delicious," I rasped, my throat sticking together. "Tastes like petty revenge."
"I'm glad you approve."
Wait.
My hands had stopped shaking.
I looked at the cup. Then at her. She had not smirked once. Her spoon sat still beside the saucer.
She saw. She saw my hands shake, and she handed me something to be mad at.
That's Asora being nice. By wrecking my tea.
Do NOT thank her. She'd die of embarrassment.
Her face dropped every trace of smugness.
"Focus," she said. "The War of Races. 2013."
Ughhh. Right back into the nightmare.
I wrapped 2 of my wings around my shoulders and told myself it was because of the wind.
"Hard to forget," I muttered. "6 Sovereign races. 7 months of butchering each other. Rivers clogged with bodies. Then the ceasefire, and everyone sat down for 1 month of peace talks."
"And during those talks, we broke the truce." Her crown vines flattened against her skull. "We had to."
We?!
"I didn't break any truce."
"You weren't invited."
Rude!
"We assassinated the Specter," she said.
I blinked. My upper wings twitched behind my ears.
"Who's the Specter?"
"You don't need to know." She leaned forward with a tiny, infuriating smirk. "You already know that person, Syla. Use that dusty little brain and work it out."
Ooh. Look at her being mysterious.
I puffed out my cheeks.
"Fine! Keep your stupid secrets!" I kicked the crystal table leg. "Who cares about some human assassin anyway?"
"He wasn't an assassin."
The smirk died. Her voice dropped an octave and lost every drop of humor.
"The Specter was a walking calamity. In that war alone, he killed over 25,000,000 people with his own hands. No massive spells. No divine authority. Just weapons. He cut down thousands of my High Elves without blinking."
25,000,000?
With his own hands?
Okay. Maybe I'm glad I stayed locked in my flower garden.
"He was a monster who deserved to burn." Her knuckles whitened around her saucer. "The Asura Empire could survive 150 more years of war. We could not survive him. So we built 187 strike teams, tracked him to the Academy, cornered him, and split up to overwhelm him. Do you know who put him down?"
"Who?"
"A demon soldier. Or someone dressed as 1. Christiana, 1 of the Demon Lord's daughters." Her thumb rubbed the rim of her saucer, back and forth. "She fired the shot that shattered his heart. When he stopped moving, we cheered. We thought we'd won."
The thumb stopped.
"1 week later, he came back."
...Excuse me?
"He was dead," I said.
"I know. We checked the body 3 times."
My throat went dry, even with a gallon of syrup sloshing in my stomach.
"Then the sky went dark." I could barely hear my own voice.
"October 22." She said the date slowly, and for exactly 1 second her eyes went somewhere I could not follow. "High noon."
Why does she say it that way?
She has said that date out loud before. Alone. A lot.
"It's the only date my priests leave blank on the calendar," she added.
"Blank?"
"Later."
Later?! She drops that and says LATER?!
"The sun vanished behind the moon," she said, "and only a rim of white fire was left. Do you know why she picked a solar eclipse?"
"To be dramatic?"
"To cut off the sun." She did not smile. "The sun fuels the soul vitality of the Beastkin, the magic of the Dragonborn, and the dark fire of the Demons. Smother it, and you cripple 3 entire races before you start. It wasn't rage, Syla. It was a plan."
A shiver ran through every feather on my wings.
I stood in the Fey Wilds and watched the stars come out at noon. None of them were mine.
"I saw her." My voice barely crossed the table. "In my Dimensional Library. Behind 6 layers of sovereign illusion. A girl in tattered black robes. Jet-black hair floating in the air. Her eyes were black. No pupils. No whites. Just black, ringed with white fire."
My fingers dug into my emerald skirts.
6 layers of my best illusions. She walked through them without slowing down.
"She cut through my barriers and reached several labyrinths. My fairies didn't even have time to scream."
"How many did you lose?" Asora asked quietly.
She knows the number. She wants me to say it out loud.
"342,100." The number burned behind my eyelids. "In 45 minutes. In my own sacred world."
She looked at me. 1 second. Then she walked past me and kept going.
I'm still alive, and I don't know why.
Asora let out a short, hollow laugh.
"Consider yourself lucky, Syla. You had the lowest casualties of anyone."
Lucky?!
"Lucky?!" My blossoms flared yellow. "342,100 of my children—"
"I lost 821,513."
I shut my mouth.
Her voice came out flat. Her crown vines pulled tight against her skull.
"821,513 High Elves in the floating capital. 40% of everyone bound to the Living Throne. Gone before I understood what I was looking at. And Malphas lost 1,328,000 in the nether-realms. In 1 hour."
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Her finger was tapping the crystal. She did not seem to know.
She's not shouting. She's tapping... She used to tap when she's holding back tears.
"I count them every night," she said, quieter. "All 821,513."
I didn't know that.
7,000 years, and I didn't know that.
The wind outside the Veilweave died. The dome hummed with cold light and sealed us in with the silence.
"The total across every Sovereign homeland that day," Asora said, looking straight at me, "was exactly 4,382,911."
4,382,911.
Not 4,000,000. Not "around" anything. Exactly.
"Why?" My voice cracked. "Why that number? Why stop there?"
"Remember it." She leaned across the table until her silver crown vines nearly brushed mine. "And remember the blank square. My priests have scrubbed it clean every year for longer than my reign, and nobody remembers why. I went looking after the Eclipse."
"And?"
"Count the days, Syla. From the day the ancient priests bound her in chains, hoisted her to the starlight gallows to hang, and set the sacred fire to her flesh... to October 22, 2013."
Chains. Starlight gallows. Sacred fire.
A blank square. October 22.
There's only 1 woman those words belong to.
No.
No, no, no.
12,000 years. Exactly 12,000 years to the day.
12,000 years, converted to days...
"4,382,911 days," Asora whispered.
"1 dead soul for every single day since they hanged her. She didn't slaughter us out of malice, Syla. She collected an overdue blood debt."
My chair screeched backward across the crystal as I shot to my feet. My wings flared to their full span and scattered gold pollen across the table.
"Celestara?!" The panic finally broke through my throat. "The Celestine Goddess?! Are you out of your mind?!"
"Sit down, Syla."
"I will NOT sit down!" I waved my arms. My blossoms flashed a violent, toxic crimson.
"Celestara was kind! She healed fools! She let strangers sleep in her house! She wished she could be normal! Her own followers hanged her because they were scared of her light! Why would she come back as a psychotic butcher?!"
"Because she didn't come alone," Asora said, completely unbothered by my screaming.
"And she wasn't 1 person."
I stopped mid-pant.
"...What?"
"Think, you foolish fairy." She tapped her temple. "How does 1 girl stand in the silver cities of Aeralune, the Fey Wilds, the Dragonic peaks, the Abyss border, the Elysium engines, the beast lands, and Valerion, all at the same noon? 7 realms. 4 continents."
7 places.
1 noon.
She didn't walk. She couldn't have walked.
"She split herself?"
"No." Asora's lips curled into a wicked, teasing grin. "The shadowed entity with the eclipse eyes who invaded your labyrinths, my spires, and Dragonia was a consciousness. An avatar wearing an eclipse. And... I think it's the exact same thing you fought in your labyrinth. The one that protected Kaiser. The one that mimicked Revenhart's voice."
My jaw dropped.
"You think..."
"Mhm. Maybe another sweetheart of his." She tilted her head and enjoyed my bewilderment. "Considering how many women flock around that boy."
"ASORA!"
"What? I'm only following the evidence."
I hate her. I hate her so much. And she might be right.
"The construct went to the Elves, Fairies, and Dragons," she said. "To pin us down."
"Pin us from what?"
"I don't know."
Oh, that's the worst part.
She doesn't know either.
"But the real one," Asora said, and her smile vanished, "the flesh-and-blood girl, went in person to the Demons, the Dwarves, the Beastkin, and the humans. Her name was Elfina Lunaris."
Elfina Lunaris.
Elfie.
I sank back into my chair.
"Wait." My voice came out small. "Kaiser was furious at me because of her death and my involvement in the incident."
He called me a murderer... That I helped kill her.
But it was necessary... It was for peace...
"She's gone," Asora said grimly. "She died in the Asura Crisis. But in October 2013, when the Specter fell, she lost her mind. Her beloved died in front of her."
"The tragedy is, he fell victim to an Anti-Healing Soul Crusher. A curse built to pulverize a soul, so it could never be called back."
The same curse we did to Revenhart.
Asora's eyes flicked to mine. 1 second. Then away.
She heard me think it. I know she did.
"So what did she do?" Asora asked. "She retaliated. The trauma made her lose her mind, and what woke up wasn't a scared little girl. It was the Goddess of War. She marched across the world and butchered 4,382,911 souls in hours. And she burned their divine essence as fuel for her reawakening."
"Divine essence of who?"
"Everyone who stood in her way."
4,382,911 people to bring back 1.
That's insane. That's completely, entirely insane.
...And I understand it perfectly.
"How can you be so sure?" My voice trembled. "No human girl rewrites soul laws. Nobody can. Not even us."
"Because she wasn't a human girl."
Her words landed 1 at a time.
"Elfina Lunaris is the reincarnation of the Goddess of War."
"Celestara."
The silence on the terrace had weight.
"We're gods in our own domains," Asora said. Her voice shook with something I had never heard from her in 7,000 years: awe. "You command the illusions. I command the light. But Celestara didn't follow the laws of magic. She rewrote them mid-spell. When she woke up as the Goddess of War, we weren't fighting a Sorcerer. We were fighting someone who created magic."
A bitter smile touched her lips.
"That's why every Sovereign race signed an unconditional surrender within 7 days. We were fighting Asura. Her, on their side. It would have been suicide."
My nails bit into my palms under the table.
"But she's gone!" I grabbed at the word. "We killed her! The records say she died during her 3 months of godhood, before she ever fully awakened!"
Asora looked down into her tea.
"Maybe we did," she said. "Maybe she's gone. If so, the races should thank whatever mercy is left in this world. We could never survive another Celestara."
She lifted her eyes to mine.
"The records also said Revenhart's soul was gone."
My blood went cold.
"The entity in your labyrinth wore the Kaiser's face. Kaiser Everhart has no magic to fight you. And the shadow protecting him moved with the same eclipse resonance that slaughtered our people 5 years ago."
Oh no...
Asora stood, her star-silk robes sweeping across the crystal.
"It all links back, Syla. Kaiser Everhart. The Eclipse. Celestara."
She looked out toward the eastern horizon, where the sun touched the tips of the Aeralune spires.
"Your fairies wrote Celestara down as a children's fable. My elves kept her heresy trial sealed. 2 cultures, 2 completely different versions of the same tragedy. If we want to survive what's coming for us, we have to stop lying to each other."
She turned back and held out a pale hand.
"It's time to talk about the true story of Celestara. The goddess who held the cosmos in her palms... and threw away her divinity for the love of a fool."
I stared at her hand.
The fear in my chest didn't go away. The yellow in my blossoms didn't fade.
A goddess who gave up eternity for love.
And the fool who used her.
Slowly, I reached out and took Asora's hand.
We were going to find the truth.