Talia Leonhart
The first few days of coming to and fro from Nora to Numena were nauseous luckily mana pills could solve that issue. Entering the citadel now under major construction, a couple of areas were under said major construction such as the throne room and the training hall beneath. Thanks to a few dwarves, elves, and their artisans from each race respectfully. The elves did more of the very delicate work like carving in the stone, even some of the marble work was done by them mainly on the markings and drawing side of it. The dwarves did a lot of heavy lifting such as moving the stone which was no easy task for them either.
Even from the courtyards and streets that were being constructed, you could hear dwarves and elves alike shouting orders to casually chatting among each other, even other races were helping the process of reconstruction. From my own roaming and helping out where I can, I knew of four races who offered their hands in the reconstruction. Elves, dwarves, humans and the most unique of all the humanoid cat race, a few different tribes of them. Recalling their name, it was something like Artemi.
Weaving my way through, under and over various objects or apparatus. Finally getting inside the throne room of the citadel I was greeted by a dwarf who looked me up and down, without speaking pointed towards the open doorway, the doorway led to a large open area filled with lanes of limestone and black stone. When the idea was first proposed to me by Rias about a large open area with lanes of stone, I was a bit sceptical to say the least.
The entire area is around one to one fifty acres in size. Each lane of stone had names carved delicately into its surface, no name repeated unless for a reason such as to distinguish families from others. Names of every person who has helped so far even in roles like making drinks, all were carved into the stone. According to Rias, she is doing this to commemorate the help because without it this wouldn’t be happening. To all these people after the reconstruction is done and even before Numena will be their home.
“You with us queen consort?” An Artemi asked pulling me from my thoughts entirely. Shaking my head to pull myself together I smiled following behind the girl who nodded to everyone we passed down the stone lanes. Taking a look at the names in the lanes, I couldn’t make much sense of them even as the Artemi who I recalled was called Nue explained it to me. Nue was close to Artoria, close friends from what I could actively notice.
Thinking not much more of it, my thoughts lingered on Rias once again. When Rias wasn’t spending time with me or carving names with hundreds of others. She spent it sleeping beside me or building the beginnings of her army with her three sororitias Ciaran, Artoria and Nue. The three members of the sororitias were classed as ‘Grand commanders’ the supreme knights if you will. Knights who answer directly to me and Rias. Thinking on it now, Ciaran is the highest ranking of the three maybe five if Rias recruits Ciri and an unnamed being named only as hollow.
“Hey Nue. How’d you meet Rias and Artoria?”
“Well… I met Rias on her mission to Aslan a few years back. I healed her wounds after she saved me from five king cleric beasts who were blood-lusted. She nearly died… I don’t think she remembers as she became entranced and just ripped them apart. Her left hand became claws of black ice. Artoria is my teacher currently… teaching me how to read and write better. My writing currently looks like scribbles and doctor’s notes!” she laughed scratching the back of her head.
Rias only briefly spoke about her mission to Aslan to me saying she couldn’t fully remember it. One thing she told me though was the backlash from an intense amount of bloodlust far beyond what she normally would expect from herself. Even as Nue explained it though Rias is a pendragon, the reincarnation of Marin and Artura before unlocking her power how could she kill five king clerics on her own? A king cleric or alpha cleric beast is the leader of the colony or family, the strongest of them all, Like an ape in their little tribe. The main differences between an ape leader and a king cleric are: one the size of them, two the muscle mass and power behind their strikes and three the weight they can produce from a step alone.
A small King cleric is at least fifteen to eighteen feet tall. An aged and veteran one is maybe twenty-five to thirty feet tall. The muscle mass and power they hold equate to this. Not sure if it's true but in legends it says that the ancient king cleric beasts could fight off small wyverns about double their mass and height. If Nue was telling the truth that means Rias as a fifteen-year-old anti-social and worrisome girl killed five king clerics with the combined strength of a newly born to hundred-year-old dragon hatchling.
“Rias! Talia’s here.” Nue shouted as we watched Rias hang on the stone wall beside us carving in the name of a newly joined dwarf. It occurred to me now that each row was characterized into races, the furthest right lanes being elves and the furthest left being dwarves. Unlike the stereotypes of dwarves, they weren’t all small- short-tempered arseholes with a thick northern accent barely able to be understood. Not all Artemi were cute-looking girls who some people had a fascination with the cuter-looking ones, most of them were covered in battle scars and fresh wounds.
Elves did look somewhat stereotypical with the large ears and ever out-of-place fashionable clothing yet even with that clothing they didn’t seem out of place in a place like this. Indeed, they are tall and thin but under all that is maybe a thousand-year-old muscular veteran who has fought giant spiders or flaming wisps. They looked like normal humans just with pointy ears. Whereas the humans that joined the construction seemed out of place even beside the vampires who did a lot of the inside work because they weren’t immune to the sun, even though they were to wooden stakes, holy water and religious symbolism.
“Thanks, Nue. Oh, do you mind helping Ciaran? she’s a bit stuck having trouble organizing the knights.”
“Sure boss. No trouble for me… have fun lovebirds!” Nue wailed running off towards the temporary area for recruitment for the knights, the last two days when artoria wasn’t helping the orphaned children she helped Ciaran. Seeming to me that Artoria was helping the orphans that is why Rias asked Nue to help Ciaran to ease the burden of the recruitment. Nue and artoria all the same seemed to ease a lot of Ciaran’s burdens, ‘a sisterhood in the making’.
“Those two remind Ciaran of two members of the old sisterhood. A female angel of light named Kaine and a witch. Darcy. In a way, Kaine was like Artoria strong, holding much baggage with a soft spot for orphans and Darcy was a witch who used all her might to live in the moment eventually sacrificing herself to save Ciaran from Castil’s world-ending magic.” Rias looked at Nue as she ran maybe reminiscing on the past or seeing something in Nue that I couldn’t. unlike Rias, I saw someone different reflected in her. An old friend I once had in my life when I was Hera. Her name was Swan a nickname she picked as her actual name as a drunken joke.
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Swan like Nue was young and impressionable, loyal yet in the end swan betrayed me.
“Talia…” Rias placed her fingers between my own, she pulled me towards her away from everyone else. “Nue isn’t like Swan. Swan is gone… the wraiths have recovered their lost pride, and the current king of the phoenixes helps them to fix his grandfather’s mistakes well it's not like he can go against the leviathan king.” Rias laughed placing her free hand on my cheek. Rias… Rias was right. Swan and Nue weren’t and aren’t the same but that sense of hurt I had remained. This made it hard for me to trust someone who reminded me of Swan before everything happened.
‘I’m going too far again. I hate having trust issues.’ I closed my eyes scrambling my thoughts from the internal mess it currently was. Through thousands of years of being experimented on, turned into a slave then my own allies betraying me I thought I would’ve gotten used to the feeling of betrayal and not trusting people so easily. Yet I fell back into trusting people unless I could tell something was off with them like the three princes of Riel. I'd never trust those fuckers.
This thought was something I found hard trying to fix. Maybe because it happens so often my mind just gave up on trying to fix such a strong issue inside my head. I had to try anyway.
“Talia. You, okay?” I nodded trying my best to seem as if I was okay. “I know you’re not okay by just being near you. Go get some rest… you’ve been up for several days searching for that wraith artifact. Get some rest. Some sleep might help.” Rias sounded slow even quiet. Wanting to listen to her even just a little bit I nodded, as much as my heavy head could muster anyhow. “I’ll come find you when I’m done here.”
It didn’t take long for me to leave that area of the citadel mainly due to the workers changing shifts or moving onto other jobs. Wanting some rest, I moved towards the library that was quickly constructed by Lithran himself. The grand library of the citadel was filled with every book I, the elves and Rias have collected over lifetimes. The grand library sat around twenty to thirty meters from the throne room, a short walk even so my tired ass felt like it had been a very long one.
Upon entering the library, I took in its huge size. Several stories high of books just filling the shelves to the brim. Knowing exactly what book I wanted to read and finish, I made my way towards the third floor, the third floor was mainly used to shelve horror books or anything Lovecraftian. Which made a lot of sense when you think about it when most of the books here delved into the history of the eldritch gods. Walking past aisle after aisle I took a good look at my surroundings noticing that all the wood was grey aged oak taken from Lithran’s and Elinore’s Garden.
“They used all that wood to make this library… really it should be called an archive.” Each story floor was decorated with elven craftsmanship largely forgotten by the other races. Being five in total there was a considerable amount of grey oak wood used along with stone pillars keeping up the painted ceiling which was redone from Elinore’s memory magic. The painting was a re-made orientation of the Camelot throne room’s ceiling. Now instead of having artura on it, the ceiling had Rias taming aethna who I had heard in passing lived on the lightning fields of Chernobyl.
Aethna the dragon bond of Artura was different from her guardian beast bond reaper. Aethna was a born primordial dragon, an outcast in her society because of her black scales and her ability to use all types of draconic magic. I’m not sure why this would make her an outcast, unlike her ‘sister’ redeemer who was loved by the dragons. ‘Maybe it’s just favouritism.’ I thought picking up the unfinished book I was reading. Aethna to me seemed like she was more than just an ordinary black dragon who was an outcast, her strength was evident as Redeemer could never win in a brawl against her.
Reaper on the other hand wasn’t like his dragon friend. He was what they called a mechanoid guardian beast, beings made of pure metal that looked nothing like the animalistic kind. Reaper was the only one of his kind, a skeletal being with arms that extended into sharp claws maybe four to five feet in length with his tail acting as legs and a secondary weapon if needs must. His entire body was constructed by a raven steel mixture that included primordial iron. This made his entire body come out the colour of silver and gold in the light.
In the darkness, his body was practically invisible apart from his two large circular white lucent eyes. The best way to describe his eyes was always ‘light from a lighthouse.’ In the dark, if you saw his eyes, it was either you're safe because you are behind him or you're screwed. Rias wouldn’t like to admit this but a part of why she was feared so much as empress of onrath was because of aethna and Reaper. Reaper became his own myth and a legend that hunters, adventures, and kings have searched for but none of them ever return only their skeletal remains are found.
…
I placed my book down for a second and fell asleep due to my exhaustion only to wake up inside a place that I didn’t recognize from this lifetime but my life as hera no, somewhere else that I couldn’t recognize. Looking around frantically in this blind space, not being able to see anything buildings or animals I wanted to scream out just in case someone could hear me.
“There’s no point in screaming young one. Hello.” An owl around two feet tall perched on top of a large rock peered down at me flapping its wings. “Hello. Yes, up here. Nice to meet you, former wraith queen and current consort of Numena.” The owl spoke with a beautiful motherly voice befit of a kind person. Looking up at the owl I took in its appearance that of an auburn feathered barn owl that had just reached adulthood, hearing my thoughts the owl spoke again.
“My name is Caryll. This is a form I just like to take to hide in place sight… let's take this slow with introductions. As I’ve just said my name is Caryll and I’m the primordial concept of creation, I inherited this role after my father the creator was killed by Orin ancormon. Even after trillions of years, a primordial concept being killed is mind-blowing.”
“aren’t you sad?”
“Well, yes. Gotta move on eventually right can't linger on the past forever now, can you? Think about it this way… concepts can’t be killed. Somehow Orin achieved that, the feeling of a concept dying outweighed the feeling of sorrow I felt for my father’s death. Anyway, let’s hear your introduction.”
“My name is Talia Leonhart. I’m queen consort of Rias Pendragon and in my former life, I was Hera first wraith and their queen. I honestly don’t remember my last name.” The words left my mouth with an exasperated sigh of relief grabbing the attention of the concept of creation. Who nodded ever so slightly in her owl form.
“I’m not surprised as that dipshit mordid made a pact with the concept of myths and legends to erase artura and yourself from the annuls of history. Rias’s other former lives being forgotten is a different matter altogether probably the reason she is a nexus being and concept as well.”
“…Wait Rias is a concept and a nexus being-?”
“oh yes! There is a lot I can’t tell you but in one of her former lives she evolved to become a true eldritch god and then she became the primordial of war even primordial of lies. It was she who created the original liars’ hand before Orin became the concept of truth and reworked it a bit. The nexus being part is probably from her first life… I don’t know the specifics, but she became cursed and won’t be remembered when she reincarnates. I think you already know that though?”
It suddenly became apparent to me that Rias in whatever life came before Marin’s, she became cursed to always be forgotten if she reincarnates. This subsequently made her a nexus being who can rewrite history itself, which in part didn’t make sense as she wasn’t the only cursed reincarnation. I was as well… somehow only people who knew us personally remembered us and our former lives. If this was true that meant all along mordid and his band of traitor knights knew who Rias was but didn’t want to tell Lyron.
The same could even be said for Nick as Rias’s brother he knew the truth of who she was maybe in part but refused to say anything to himself or others. This even raised another question that began to linger on my tongue who truly was Rias’s mother and father as her father is covered in mystery and illusion, unlike her mother. A woman with a concrete past yet felt as if she had two just like sifta. ‘her family tree is mighty confusing.’
“Have you realized now? Rias’s brother Nick is castil. Talos’s chosen and Marin’s brother, Sifta is the primordial dragon of time and fate. She has had many names in the past… currently, she is Sifta but the rebels call her Roan. Her demon name Mahalath is the most known to you none god like races. It's her true name that we higher races fear. Skuldlach.” The owl hopped from her large rock perch onto my shoulder. To my amazement, I felt no weight of the owl being on my shoulder.
“Could you not call me ‘the owl’. You should block your mind more because people could read it easily like me. Don’t worry I won’t though. Back to the story, Skuldlach betrayed her sisters well not all of them as Quinn has a habit of not staying dead.”
“Explain slowly please.”
“Ah okay. Onwards towards that spire if you please and I'll continue. In the beginning of Babylon there were fourteen disciples, thirteen and the one forgotten. Five dragons’ yada yada. Anyway, after some time the fourteenth disciple began to pull a rebellion together with Skuldlach and nine of the fourteen disciples amongst these traitorous disciples were two Ancormons.” Caryll paused taking a second to breathe. After sometime this rebellion caused a rift between the dragons and disciples which then caused the first war. The war of gold.
“Skuldlach betrayed her sisters and killed Quinn but as that dragon can’t stay dead, they saw the truth, going so far as to help Skuldlach. Two dragons were banished but Quinn had been hiding a secret of who she was. Veil Lockehart, the concept of darkness.”