As they turned to the darkening grove, Benjamin saw the gates slowly swinging open, and as they did so, hundreds and hundreds of tiny paper lanterns that had been placed in the trees earlier began to glow in a way that made it look like the stars were coming out on a cloudy night. It was a beautiful effect, and for a moment, none of them moved as the illumination increased.
Even with so many of the tiny lights, it was still barely twilight outside the grove, but once they walked it, things brightened considerably. The thin foliage had be rearranged to create the illusion of walls and corridors, and though each of those was was semi translucent, he had to agree that the illusion was remarkable. If they could make a near-palace in an afternoon, Benjamin wondered what they could do in a couple of days.
It was all form over function, though. The gates, the walls, and even the clothing, as beautiful as it was, were all a little threadbare compared to the last time he’d had a visit with the Throne. Was that because resources had been diverted elsewhere? He wondered, or was it some kind of compromise between the formality of the Arboreal Throne’s Court compared to the almost tribal nature of her plains-dwelling counterpart?
Benjamin couldn’t say for sure, but he did see servants from both camps bustling about. When they reached the main room in the center of the tiny wooden palace, a number of elves were dancing in the open-air ballroom while clay servants bustled to and fro.
Music was coming from somewhere. It was high and tinny, like wind blowing through branches, and what drumbeats there were, were fast, like an irregular heartbeat. Still, somehow, the elves in their suits and gowns, along with all the other creatures, managed to keep time to the chaotic rhythm as they whirled and danced beneath the open sky.
There were more anthropomorphic animals here, but they were from both the forests and the plains. There were wolven, praiedog-kin, strutting, long-necked ostrich men, and any number of other strange beasts. It truly boggled the mind.
There were dancers everywhere in that clearing except for the very center. At first Benjamin thought it was a dias, or a fountain, but when he saw it was an impact crater, but when he noted how fresh it was he decided it could only be one thing. That was where the Throne of the Sky Sea had landed after her long journey across the sky.
He pointed it out to his friends as they were escorted through the whirling storm of dancers and into the corridor beyond. Here, it was quieter, and even though the walls were more of a suggestion than anything substantial, the music was barely audible once the wispy door closed behind them.
Just as the room they’d left was almost a ballroom, excepting, of course, the earthen floor that had been swept clean of all debris but the crater and that had no ceiling, but the sky, what they were led to next, through several winding hallways was the suggestion of a throne room. There were five thrones, in fact, though three of them were empty. To the far left sat an empty throne of coral, next to it stood one carved from solid ice that wasn’t melting, and to the far right sat an empty throne of jade. Only in the middle, thrones were occupied.
To the right sat the Throne of the Sky Sea on the throne of iron. She was still vaguely molten in appearance, and though Benjamin knew she would rust in a few hours, he wasn’t surprised by her appearance. The Arboreal Throne, on the other hand… Well, it was all he could do not to let his mouth gape in surprise.
When he’d left her a few short months ago, she’d been a woman in her thirties. Now she was approaching middle age. Not only had the blossom in her hair wilted, but much of her hair and gone gray. He said nothing, though, and as Eighteen Sharpened Points bid them come closer, but stopped them with a gesture before they were even halfway across the room.
Benjamin didn’t need to be told twice, and dropped into a low bow immediately. It wasn’t because of the blade leafed guards he saw flanking the dias the thrones sat on, either, but because he knew this was what they expected because of his recent encounters.
He followed his lead but slowly and with obvious reluctance. Emma barely knelt at all, and when they’d all risen once more, the woman of molten iron called out, “You have the stink of sulfur on you manthing, but your friend's smell of disrespect. I do not know which offends me more!”
Dahlia looked at him with concern, which made Benjamin wonder what it was they saw and smelled about him, but unlike her sister, she said nothing about it. Instead, she asked, “You have called and we have come Ben-jamin, what boon is it you seek from us.”
“I apologize, ladies,” Benjamin answered quickly. “The things that I have had to do to get us closer to victory have not been pleasant, but—”
“You’ve all but switched sides!” the Throne of the Sky Sea roared. “Your eyes might not be dark, but your soul is tarnished beyond redemption, and I’ve half a mind to turn my forces toward you instead of the locusts.”
Ah, Benjamin noted, now that the other shoe had finally dropped. That was it. I have no idea if it’s the psychic surgery that I conducted with pieces of the prince or if it's just all of the contact I’ve had with the demonic recently, but this is why they were being so skittish. They think I’m a traitor.
Even the sly, cagey part of his mind that he loathed thought this was useless. Why would he turn traitor until the other force was dispatched? The right time to betray the fae would be after victory was won. Of course, that would be the right time for them to betray him, too, he realized.
He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he said, “I’ve done what I had to, and if I didn’t, then your lands would never be free, and one day, the Sea of Grass would shrink until eventually the mountains touch the sea. Is that what you want?”
“I want a land free of manthings,” the Throne of the Sky Sea seethed, her eyes glowing with an inner fire that rose as she spoke. “I want to look down from a cloudless sky and see a world unmarred by roads or—”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“What is it you require, Ben-jamin,” the Arboreal Throne asked, interrupting her sister. “You have made much progress, but you have kicked a hive of hornets as well. Since the fall of their city by the river, they have been enraged and are doing more damage than ever.”
“I understand, and I wish that there was more we could do to prevent that before now, but we aim to stop in now and soon, too.” Benjamin paused for emphasis, making sure that he had everyone’s attention before he continued. “Currently, the enemy is less than two days to the southwest of us. We can smell the smoke of all that they burn, even if we can not yet see it in the sky.”
“So then march on them and destroy them,” the Throne of the Sky Sea declared testily. “Destroy them and then leave my lands, never to return. I cannot count the days it will take to remove the stink of manthing from my sacred lands.”
“You know what—” Emma said, bursting out from her barely restrained silence, but at an angry look from the aging Dahlia, she fell silent. Benjamin recalled that terrible pressure. He had felt it once himself. It was a good reminder that these were not mortal rulers but fickle, inhuman things that likely only wore the loose shape of humans for their own benefit.
“We aim to do just that,” Benjamin agreed, trying to keep his tone calm and respectful as the situation required. “That is why I ask you to muster your forces. You don’t need to face them fully, but I ask that you fight them hard enough from the south and the west that they take the threat seriously.”
“We harry them already for what little good it does,” the iron woman said. “I don’t see what good will come from throwing away more lives against a force that can summon such monsters.”
“The faster they march, and the more the maneuver, the harder it will be for us to make our final assault,” Benjamin answered. “We are outnumbered ten to one, and though I have a few gambits in mind to even the odds, when it comes to fighting, we will need every advantage, and a very large advantage would be if they were pinned down already and facing entirely the wrong direction when we strike. If we could hit them in the rear, then the worst of the fighting might be over before the Rhulvin even know what’s happening.”
“So then my subjects should die instead of you?” the iron woman laughed.
“Your… majesty,” Matt said hesitantly, unsure of how exactly he should address a throne, “I assure you, the manthings will do the majority of the dying on both sides of the conflict, but without your aid, we might not win at all. If that happens, then we will be gone, and you shall still have a land infested with locusts.”
“Tell us your plan,” the Arboreal Throne commanded. It wasn’t a request.
For the next half hour, they did exactly that. Matt approached the dias that the Thrones sat on and used a stick to draw the planned order of battle into the dust. He showed them the front that we planned to hold with sustained artillery fire, the flanking maneuvers where our skirmishers would be unleashed with rifts, and dragon fire would be used to deal with any enemies that proved to be particularly intractable.
In fact, the only things that Matt left out were the things that Benjamin planned to do personally. He didn’t mention anything about Miku or the Nether Behemoth, but that was probably because he knew just how much the Thrones would recoil at such loathsome details. Benjamin didn’t blame them. He would have preferred not to work with them either, but he had to play with the cards he’d been dealt, not the cards he wanted.
This long explanation didn’t appear to win them over, but after a short recess, where he and his friends were shooed from the room and given refreshments in another chamber while the Thrones debated, they eventually agreed to help the Manthings to position the enemy so that they could be crushed once and for all.
While they waited, Benjamin only picked at his meal while his friends feasted. This wasn’t because he feared that he’d be served more boar man or anything; it was because his mind was on the Throne and how much she’d changed since their time together. By winter, or perhaps spring, she’d be dead of old age and on to her new life.
It really was all the time we’d ever have together, he thought with a sigh. Suddenly, he felt foolish for wasting it.
Their agreement to help was delivered not in the throne room but in the ballroom, and after the short silence of their announcement, the revelry was kicked up another notch. Drinks were passed out, toasts were made, and even though the Throne of the Sky Sea was already beginning to rust, she moved to the floor and began to dance with one of the taller, less human-looking elves.
That was when Benjamin decided to ask Dahlia to dance. He didn’t know if there was a protocol for this sort of thing, and he didn’t care. He didn’t even care that he didn’t know how to dance to this strange music. He just didn’t want to have any more regrets.
So, he walked up to the aging beauty, noting that the lines on her face were more like bark than like wrinkles as he bowed low as asked, “May I have this dance?”
Eighteen Sharpened points glared at him, but Dahlia merely smiled at him and extended her hand to him.
The two of them went out onto the dance floor, and after half a minute, Matt and Emma followed. Benjamin had no way to keep up with the lithe elves, so he didn’t try. Instead he just danced a slow waltz like box step that he dug out of the prince’s debauched memories, and the Throne matched his footwork beat for beat while all the other members of her court whirled by.
If the elves were the river, then he and his partner were the stone that sat there, unperturbed. They moved slowly, but in comparison to the rest, they might have just been standing there as they caught up.
“I’ve missed you,” Benjamin said, meaning it.
“And I shudder to think what you’ve had to do to cause all of this damage when we only stitched you back together so recently,” she said sadly.
Benjamin gave her the high points about what he and his friends had been up to after that, at least until she started to frown. Then he said, “It’s fine. When all this is done, I’ll purge what needs purging and start again. When I’ve been purified, then maybe I can visit, and we can—”
“No,” she said softly as they spun together on the dance floor. “I didn’t even mean for you to see my like this. This will be the last time that we ever see each other I’m afraid.”
“I understand,” Benjamin said after a long moment.
“Don’t be sad,” she said with a smile that made him remember even more clearly what it was she’d looked like when she was young and beautiful. “This is the way of life. One day, when the fighting is done, you will yet be able to meet our children, and that will put all of this in perspective, I think.”
“Our children?” Benjamin asked, startled. He was sure he’d misheard her, but he didn’t see how.
“Yes,” she said, looking into his eyes as her smile widened slightly. “Twins. If you survive the war to come, I’ll arrange for you to meet them.”