“Your services are no longer needed. Retire to your duties,” Clythia said, not bothering to stop, advancing through the wheat fields, the golden stalks swaying gently around her.
“What are you planning to do?” The general was trotting trying to catch up with her quick steps.
“Nosy, are we now?” she said. “I only needed you here to transport me to the palace, in case I failed.”
“You told me to wait in the nearest village, which is two hundred miles from the Dadigon forest. If your magic failed you, how were you planning to—”
“Sometimes I forget how dim-witted you are. Summoning you, or any of my subjects, doesn’t require magic—not the type that required Inner Sense, anyway. As the royal descendant of Ilyana, I can.” She shrugged and stared at him. He wasn’t following, perplexed by the new information.
“Didn’t they teach you this in Sravask?”
Sravask was one of the military schools in DavinSaw, named after its city. It was known for its academic quality, producing the most lethal witches and wizards in combat. They were not only adept with magic but also weaponry. They knew their way with a spear, sword, and arrow as well as hexes, spells, and potions. General Arkansov was one of the elite this academy had produced. And yet, he or the academy had failed to disclose the source of the innate ability to answer for Ilyana and her descendants’ call. Baffling.
“I’m afraid not, my lady. I would have remembered. Many things about your lineage are obscured, shrouded in mystery. Until today, I thought you could summon me because of your magical prowess.” Was that disappointment in his tone?
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, keep thinking that.”
Clythia wouldn’t have disclosed this if she knew it wasn’t common knowledge. Did she make a mistake by accidentally revealing ‘the how’ of her summoning ability? She needed to tread carefully; her ancestors had made it a secret for a reason. How had her mother failed to teach her this? Or had Clythia simply forgotten? This made her hesitate to tell him of the ritual she partook in at Dadigon. Despite him being her trusted general, all she would gain from disclosing was, at the very best, a bruised ego for not knowing. At its worst, well, he wouldn’t take the cold-blooded murder keenly, and that would lead to undesirable consequences. The latter was a weakness a general shouldn’t have. But she wasn’t willing to find out if he had such a weakness.
“Summon me if you need anything,” Arkansov said, the banter not lost on her.
Clythia snorted. Taking that as a cue for dismissal, he Diseventuated.
Clythia looked around, half immersed in the sea of yellow. She stretched her Inner Sense, looking for a familiar presence. To the east, there were witches and wizards huddled. She Diseventuated, marking a small mound in that direction for her reappearance.
A hut sat nestled on a hillside. Farmers drank and dined beneath its canopy, their pointy hats set aside at the tables. A plump woman was leaning against the support beam, taking orders and shouting them back to the kitchen. Bowls and mugs queued at her side, level with her head, waiting to be ordered; with a wave of her wand, they flew to the customers. Men wore gaudy garments—pink cloaks or green tunics, blood-red breeches, or yellow hats—and a blend of these and more bright colors. The women’s attire was darker; browns, greys, and blacks, but they were silk or sparkly. There was no speck of dirt to be seen. It must be some magical-farmer humor because all their shoes were white. And they would remain that way, and their garments eccentric, thanks to her. Because of her sacrifice, they won’t stoop low to farm like humans with dirt and sweat.
Clythia had to ensure the laughter and joy she witnessed among the farmers remained that way. One thing was left to seal her bargain with the well of the Beast and the Shadow. Clythia walked a few steps and knelt, ensuring her actions would be visible from a distance. She placed her palms on the ground. With a slight tug to her Inner Sense, veins on her arms transformed into tendrils made of shadow. Those tendrils traveled to her outstretched palms and branched out in four directions upon touching the ground, accelerating until they reached the borders of DavinSaw.
The attention of the witches and wizards shifted to her, sensing the strange power beneath their feet. Confusion first marred their faces, but as she rose to her feet, uncertainty gave way to awe and shock. The plump woman’s wand-gripping hand went slack, causing bowls and mugs to succumb to the ground. Those in the front kneeled one by one, then the others followed suit.
Smiling ear to ear, she let the darkness of time swallow her whole.
----------------------------------------
Three months had passed since Clythia’s engagement with the Shadow. Many provinces threw feasts for their newfound abundance. Values in markets steadied, crops on farms flourished. Some even exaggerated that it was better than before, expressing their gratitude to the queen, teary-eyed. Requests from citizens turned into sessions of gratitude. But the elation in DavinSaw was short-lived.
By the end of the second month, strange things began happening. The consequences of the Shadow’s magic, which she thought was at bay before the three-and-a-half-year mark, had rapped on DavinSaw’s door early. The heads of DavinSaw’s territory had been receiving reports of people who were using this new magic with no control whatsoever—as if addicted to a drug—thus leading some to unprecedented deaths.
Consequently, a meeting was arranged for Clythia and the leaders, overseeing DavinSaw’s providences under her command to come up with yet another solution to the magic none of them understood but her. Even she wasn’t certain she fully comprehended it anymore, or how she should fix it.
The five leaders had taken their places in their state chairs, edged with ruby and legs of gold. General Arkansov and some guards were stationed at her back. All eyes on the table were fixed on her, their expressions ranging from expectant to apprehensive. This wasn’t one of the meetings where General Arkansov swooped in and saved the day. A tinge of regret flickered within her for hiding what she had done. Maybe if she had told the general, he would have come up with something that could ease the leaders. She felt like a child caught in mischief, standing before scolding adults, insisting she hadn’t broken the glass, but rather, the glass had broken itself.
Clythia cleared her throat, shoving the panic forming in her mind and churning her gut, into a mental box.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Lords and ladies of DavinSaw, I’m pleased to see your faces so... frequently.” Clythia gave them a false grin.
The lady of Hypercas, Vina, shifted in her seat, her big brown eyes piercing Clythia with disapproval.
Hypercas was the largest province found in the south of DavinSaw, and it was primarily known as the heart of precious stone mining.
Its ruler was stiff-backed, her hair slick, glistening with gel, as if subdued to defy a hurricane. Her high-collared crimson dress was immaculate. Clythia wanted to slide off her seat, away from Vina’s fixed gaze. Although she was adorned in a blue dress, the hem etched with sapphires the size of an egg, and a heavy diamond crown on her head. Thanks to the general, despite her protest, he had insisted "Impression, if weaponized, can do half the work for you."
Clythia looked away, facing the others.
“So let’s get on with it,” Clythia said, gesturing with her hands for any of them to proceed.
Three lords opened their mouths, but upon noticing each other’s eagerness, they insisted for others to speak before them.
“Lord Lupis, begin,” Clythia said in a clipped tone to the overseer of Idra, a land notorious for its wealthy merchants in the southeast of DavinSaw.
The wizard had a heavy mustache. His deep-violet pointy hat was so tall it looked like he carried a pyramid skyscraper on his bald head, straining to graze the ceiling.
He crossed his puffed fingers on the table, leaning forward. “My queen, bizarre things are happening. Patients with uncontrollable shivering and sweating, flesh thin as grass, eyes hollowed, are flocking to the infirmaries. Using magic on them has worsened the disease, and many have died from it, quick deaths. Potions were the only thing that was working, until they ran out and the nurses prepared new ones with... with—” He stopped himself, staring at Clythia with wariness.
“With the new magic,” Kip's voice came—so much for being polite by not speaking first.
He was a contrast to Lupis’ plump figure: slender, with a nose too big for his face. His thick brows and green eyes mercifully salvaged his appearance from being the male version of a hag. And he ruled a small portion of land in the north, too close to the capital for Clythia’s liking.
“Yes, that,” Lupis said, nodding towards Kip. “So, I’m wondering, my queen,” his throat bobbed, “what is this magic? We are thankful that our crops are flourishing once more and our flowers blooming. But it is picking us,” he paused, “one by one.”
Kip opened his mouth, but Clythia raised her palm. “You speak when I tell you to. Show manners.” He pursed his lips into a thin line.
“Lady Casarda, what of Melop?” Clythia asked, regarding the woman with golden hair and soft blue eyes.
Casarda was the overseer of a large province in the west, where art bloomed and thrived, and where Wigmond Academia resided.
Like eccentric artists, her dress left nothing to the imagination, with a white silk undergarment visible beneath its sparkling gray exterior. Her bare cleavage accentuated her uplifted bosoms, barely concealed by the undergarment; the stares of Lord Kip and Lord Masai lingered on them longer than necessary. Lady Vina was glaring at Casarda’s face, chin up, as if to avoid finding a slithering worm should her gaze lower. Lord Lupis was looking everywhere but at her.
Casarda didn’t seem to notice or care about their reaction. “The same thing happening in Idra is happening in Melop. Niya wasn’t affected much, but Mirya’s hospitals are brimming with patients. However, I am here to discuss new information I have received.” Her voice lowered to a hush as she mentioned the last part.
Clythia cocked her head. “And what is that?”
Casarda took a deep breath. “I believe we all are facing the same issue. Some kind of sickness is everywhere. Our hospitals had zero patients on a good day and two or three on a bad. But now... I am saying this with the utmost respect, my queen, don’t get me wrong,” she paused.
Clythia gestured for her to continue.
“You used the Shadow’s magic to stop the blight, didn’t you?”
Clythia’s face went hot. She wasn’t sure she could hide her emotions at the back of her mind now. She fidgeted with her palms under the table. The others, confused and brows furrowed, were looking from her to Casarda. There was no judgment on Casarda’s face, only worry. How did she know? This was a royal family secret; she wasn’t supposed to know. If Clythia held her silence, the others would take it as the truth. She had to deflect the question quickly.
“And who told you such an interesting theory?” Thankfully, Clythia’s voice was smooth.
“I am sorry to interrupt. But what is the Shadow?” Masai asked in a squeaky voice, his shoulders barely above the table.
He was the eldest of them all, with gray hair gracing his head. There was something Clythia liked about gray hair; maybe she should dye hers gray. His southwest province was where tinkerers and innovators—the minds of DavinSaw—emerged from.
“It is an old form of magic used before the Sovereign’s reign. This land flourished with the power the Shadow yielded,” Clythia said. There was no point in hiding what the Shadow was. But Casarda would pay for her brashness. “It is a long-forgotten ritual, with no record of it found anywhere in DavinSaw.”
“Look, my queen. If you partook in the ritual of the Shadow, thank the gods,” Casarda said. Clythia wasn’t sure if she heard her correctly. Was this some kind of joke? But Casarda’s tone carried no amusement. Clythia masked her surprise with a stony face.
“Other kingdoms are facing the same issue as we are,” Casarda said.
“The gods have started to age.” A few gasped. “The pearls of the elves have turned to stone. There was an earthquake in Makefort.”
“What is an earthquake?” Masai asked, his voice shivering, leaning his minuscule arms against the table.
“It is exactly how it sounds,” Clythia said. “The earth quaking.” Masai visibly shuddered. Clythia knew this because she was well-versed in the world before the Sovereign. There were violent forces of nature that shook existences if nations didn’t destroy each other first.
“Many werewolves have lost their lives. Their groves disintegrated, many left homeless,” Casarda said, shaking her head. “And a volcano erupted in Cravax. Many died.”
All their mouths hung open, including Clythia’s. They were aware of volcanoes considering powerful witches and wizards who could command fire at their fingertips from fissures and mountains. But the radiating shock came from the mention of death in Cravax—the land of vampires—where it was nonexistent.
“And how did you come to know all this?” Vina asked, her eyes narrowed.
“The only continent not affected by the blight is Zalax,” Casarda's tone was quiet.
“The human kingdom?” Kip roared with laughter. Some snickered along.
“How is that possible?” Lupis asked.
Casarda let out a sigh. “The magic in all continents is tied to one or more objects. For example, ours is tied to the Tome, Cravax to a portal, Makefort has a cave—”
“Yes, yes, we know all that. Get to the point,” Kip interrupted. Clythia shot him a glare. Casarda’s jaw ticked.
“Do that again, and I will cleave your tongue from your sour mouth,” Clythia said. Kip’s face turned red; her irk making him find his palm particularly interesting.
“So, what I was trying to say was, every land has its own source to rejuvenate magic. The whole point of the Tithe is to access the best form of magic this land can offer. But before the Sovereign, there was another source of magic, the Shadow. All continents have them in one form or another. Species of all nations partook in rituals for the well of the Beast—a joint sentient entity linked to the Shadow—to give them magic. Because without it, the land would become inhospitable. Zalax remained untouched by the blight because they partook in the ritual, and an inside source from there told me,” Casarda said.
“Inside source from Zalax? Clythia said, rage curling within her. “Relations with other nations are forbidden.”
“Yes, forbidden by the Sovereign. And now the Sovereign is failing us, we need to seek out each other to get past this. Besides, my queen, I am the lady of spies. My spies’ abilities had wasted from snooping in worthless gossip.”
“And you sent them off to Zalax without consulting me?” Clythia leaped to her feet, her palms slamming on the table, making some of the lords jump in their seats.