Standing from the balcony of her room, Xana beheld the Shunned Deep. Perhaps it would hear her. Just some hours ago, she had thought it unfruitful to speak to the abyss. Yet, here she was pleading in her mind that it help her in some way. She was no President though. Presidents could make alive the abyss and project thereupon their will.

I should have studied to be one, she thought. However, her brain was altered after her Pyrantial Tests so that she would be a Prophet, and that alone. There was no turning back now.

She was not helpless though. Pyrancy was better than nothing. She set a black holographic film upon her eyes and stared into the Shunned Deep. She was plunged in almost immediately. I have the power to see the world. I have the power to touch the soul of the abyss. I have the power to touch forever.

She would always tell herself this as the words brought her solace and strength.

She heard the murmur of the Deep and she cried out, “Help me! Help me! Somebody, please! Help!”

There was no answer, only more groans. She tried reaching out to something that wasn't there. She tried helping where she would fall. She flailed her arms, heaving, and kicked her legs into nothing. No one but her, no one listening or looking. She dropped the film; her eyes opened to the high ceiling of her room. She had dropped to the ground in her ecstasy.

Dy'Anne was her tutor now that she thought of it. What if it was all a lie? What if she had taught her all the wrong things about talking to the abyss knowing she would try this? I passed the Tests on my own. She assured herself.

Xana slept and woke. She had not planned to as she feared she would arise as Xanarona. But no, she hadn't even dreamed.

Her maid walked in. Aqna. The one who had served her since she had matured. She had brought clean clothes and food.

“Aqna. Aqna.” Xana sat on her bed, weeping. “She wants to kill me. Dy'Anne wants to kill me. Help me.” Xana pitied herself; she squeezed her thighs in grief so much that she wounded them.

Aqna wrapped her arms around her friend and allowed her to cry at her bosom. Xana wept awhile. She desperately clutched Aqna's robes and said, “Tell my mother! Tell her everything! Tell her there is a place underground and a body is hung there, and that they are planning to kill me, and that they want me dead, and that Dy'Anne is evil, and that they wouldn't let me go, and that…and that…” She wept.

“It's okay, Xana. It's okay. I will tell the Empress everything. I will tell her everything.”

“Thank you.” She sobbed some more.

“Let me go now, and tell her,” Aqna said. “Let me tell her.”

“Please come back. Promise me. You'll come back.” Xana looked at her friend with burning eyes.

“I will return. I promise.” She left with this.

Xana went to her balcony, looking down and waiting for Aqna to pass from under to the Silver Pyramid where her mother resided. Aqna walked, in no particular haste, passed by the Shunned Deep and stopped before the Pyramid to speak to someone. Why did she stop? They were far enough that she did not see whom Aqna spoke to. Aqna and whoever it was started back towards her station. Why did she not enter? Who stopped her? As the two figures advanced nearer, Xana knew who it was. There was no mistaking that headpiece.

“Dy'Anne,” she croaked. “No! No! No!”

She searched her room for anything sharp. She got her rippling pen and held it out, defensive. The door opened; Dy'Anne emerged with Aqna, holding a tray.

“Drop the pen, child. Save your strength.” Dy'Anne didn't even regard the threat. She set the tray down and patted the bed. “Come sit here. I need your blood.”

Xana looked at Aqna, betrayed. She said nothing. She wiped her eyes and sat where Dy'Anne had ushered her to. I am all alone. Was it only, Aqna? Was Bulma, her music instructor, another spy? What of her mother? Was she in on this?

“Give me your hand,” Dy'Anne ordered. Xana showed the woman the inside of her elbow. She inserted a needle attached to a cord and drew Xana's blood. As the canister filled, she asked, “Did you dream, child?”

She did not respond.

“Aqna.”

Xana's maid went behind and pulled her hair, almost from its scalp. Xana flinched in pain.

“Did you dream?” Dy'Anne asked again.

Xana shook her head. A tear dried up under her eye and Dy'Anne rubbed off the silver flakes. “Don't cry, child. It doesn't suit you. Bring her food, Aqna.”

She ate before them and lay on her bed when they were gone. She remained like that all dawn, not moving to do anything but eat. At mid-dusk, a crash woke her up. She slogged out of bed and, from her wide iron balcony, watched a crackle of light in the distance. The sky lit up, casting poor shadows over the Drafts. She saw reserves running in the direction of the crash and Pyrants rushing into the Pyramid. She went back to bed. She did not inquire; no one would tell her a thing even if she did. By dawn, her door squealed open but Xana did not turn to see who it was. She felt someone's weight on the bed next to her, and a familiar hand stroking her back.

“Xana,” The Empress called. “It's your mother.”

She said nothing. Rage fueled her insides and her palms clenched into fists.

“I know you are going through a lot now.” The Empress started. “And I am sure you'll be okay very soon. Dy'Anne didn't want me seeing you but I thought you'd be worried after the crash last night. Everyone thinks your mother will be assassinated especially after the Iron Capital charade. I can't even come here without escorts.” The Epmpress chuckled lightly. “But last night was just a pod-crash. Dead engine, they told me.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Xana did not look, she only said, “How could you do this to me?”

“Do what?”

“Where did I go wrong?”

“Xana?”

“I have done everything you've asked of me. I have done nothing wrong,” she sobbed.

“Oh, my Xanarona!”

“It's Xana!” She shouted at her.

“Xana. I am sorry. What has happened to my daughter? Come, let me check you.”

Xana slapped her mother's hands away. “Don't touch me!”

“I have had enough of this! We have all been trying to cater to you and make you better but you've always been—” The Empress dropped her tone. “It pains me to say this about my daughter. But you've always been ungrateful, Xana. Yes, ungrateful.”

“And is that why you want to have me killed? Because I am not like you or your stupidly perfect mother.”

“Don't speak of your grandmother in such a manner!”

“I'll say worse,” she challenged. “Dy'Anne ran a spear through me. Right here.” She showed her the spot. “She tried to kill your only daughter to reincarnate someone that has been long dead.”

“I told you that that is unfathomable. I am a realised Pilgrim and I'd be damned if I didn't know that immortality could be achieved. Your Grandmother is dead! She gave up her last breath before my eyes.”

“I saw her heart pulsing with life with my own eyes.”

“Dy'Anne said you tried to kill yourself and she had stopped you.”

“No, she tried to kill me. She stabbed me with a spear!”

“Then show me the wound, Xana! Show me!”

“It's healed.”

“Can you hear yourself? Healed? Xana?” The Empress shed a tear.

“Are you calling me a liar, mother?”

“The only liar here is me. When I inspected you the dawn before, I did not tell you the truth. Your nerves are over-firing. Hallucinations. You are seeing things.”

“I'll cut myself then, so you'll see it yourself. I'll heal, you'll see. And it would look like there was nothing ever there.” Xana searched from cabinet to cabinet for anything sharp.

“Xana, calm down. Guards! Guards! Come in here! Now!” The Empress roared. The guards rushed in.

When she couldn't find something enough to harm her, Xana hissed, “Nonsense!” Then she ran towards her balcony ready to jump. The reserves intercepted and restrained her.

She tried to wriggle out of their grip but failed.

“I don't know what to say, Xana.” The Empress turned to leave.

“Mother, wait. Mother, wait.”

The Empress did not look back, however. “Bind her. Untie her when she has calmed.”

Later that dawn, when a reserve came to unfetter her she asked him, “What's your name?”

He ignored her. “I am powerless to do anything. At least tell me your name! I deserve to know!”

“Nara.”

“Nara, why are you doing this? You can help me. You can help me out of here. You seem like a good person. Help me send my brothers a letter. Please, I'll reward you when this is over.”

He continued unbinding her and began leaving as soon as he was done.

“I'll kill you.” Her voice was death-cold and mad at the same time.

He stopped.

“Nara, right? I'll find you when this is all over and I will kill you.”

He left.

She'd kill them all. Dy'Anne, Aqna, Nara, Bulma… My mother. They had left her to rot and I'll kill them!

Her heart beat faster. She rubbished her hair, scratched herself, and barfed till there was nothing left in her. She felt as if she was turning inside out, like her world was spinning. Music! Music! Her fingers trembled; she would be alright after she played a song. She would play her best one: “Within and Without the Abyss.”

She got out her bow and instrument, wobbled out to the balcony and set the instrument on a table. She glided the bow against the strings; a scraping sound escaped from it like iron scratching against iron. What? Her fingers shuddered, the bow fell to her feet. She picked it and tried to play again but the bow would not stay. Again and again and again she tried. It was all for naught, she could not stop herself from shaking.

She lifted the instrument and slammed it against the ground, over and over till it was falciform. A grumble interrupted her frenzy.

Ghmmmmm… Ghmmmmm! The Shunned Deep. It called louder than ever. She covered her ears but could still hear it, could still feel it in her bones.

During her very first lesson in Pyrancy, Dy'Anne had told her, “A Prophet is Pyrancy embodied. While others depend on the physical, Prophets harness the mind. We understand the language of Krakas itself.” Xana remembered seeing Dy'Anne’s eyes blacken as she spoke. “I see the Shunned Deep, I hear it, but… but I cannot reach its end no matter how deep I fall.” Her voice quivered with reverence before her pupils returned to their normal state. “ It is eternal. Such is the depth of a Prophet’s prowess, child. Eternal.”

Xana had thought the words mere aggrandisement. Prophets laboured the same as other Pyrants. She had spent time reading tomes upon tomes of works of renowned Prophets and they had been practical in their speculations. As Pyrants capable of bypassing the blindness of abysses, Prophets determined good mining spots, and mapped out regions devoid of area-eating rumbles before terminals were raised.

However, it was a separate feeling now for Xana. She could not fight off the Deep, her eyes blackened of their own accord and she felt a force pull her down but she did meet the iron floor. She sank into the Shunned Deep, and it consumed every part of her. Words formed in her mouth but she heard them not.

She touched infinity until she didn't. There was a back-breaking stop and she was dragged back up as quickly as she had fallen. Herod's dull light warmed her face. She was pulled out of the abyss and was suspended in the sky, among the clouds.

She saw the shadow of the Iron Capital’s Great Dome looming beneath her.

“I can see the whole world,” Xana cawed.