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Diamond Chrysalis
Dead Branches Above The World

Dead Branches Above The World

"What are you doing?!" Lady Mirab asked.

The figure spun around. "How else would you solve this?!" he asked. "Can you replace her?"

Eluvie wanted to tell them to hurry up. Somehow, she had ended up on the floor. Her mouth was full of blood, and her face was wet with it.The bearded man picked her up and practically sprinted towards the door. In his arms, Eluvie was treated to the palace's opulence in all its blurry glory. She couldn’t pick out details, but the sheer size of the hall told her something.

"She's so light," the man muttered. There was something soft in his voice, like pity.

They burst through the doors and into a hallway. On the other side of the hallway was another set of doors: the external doors.

He was through them within seconds, and Eluvie was greeted with a face full of sunlight, but that paled in comparison with the jolt that shot through her body. Every inch of her skin seemed to hum with power, as if her hairs were all standing on end.

The voices were still silent, but she could almost feel them. The air was full of them, silent, lurking, astonished gazes fixed on her.

The man dropped her, and she immediately rose to her feet. She felt strong and free, like she had been carrying a house on her back, and it was suddenly gone. She could feel her face widening in a grin, and her tongue - she double-checked - it was back.

Her joy collided with reality and crumbled. They would ask about the boy. She hadn't saved him after all.

The other rulers came out of the palace's doors. She could see them clearly. Her vision, previously blurry, was now clear. There was Lady Mirab, decked in enough jewels to feed a family for years. Her hair was braided with colored pearls, she had bangles up to her elbows, and a dress sewn with precious stones. The other two were unfamiliar: a shaggy-haired man with large lips, and a tall one.

"Where is she?" one of the men asked.

Eluvie tried to frown, but the expression did not seem to come. She had been convinced that she was still standing before the bearded man, but he now seemed far away.

He nodded in the direction of the courtyard, and the others gasped. They remained still for a moment, with their mouths wide open.

"Is this safe?" someone asked.

No one replied.

Eluvie tried to examine herself. At first, she attempted to turn her head, but it would not respond. She remained puzzled for a moment. She could still see, but her vision was wider than it should have been. She abandoned all thoughts of moving her head and instead attempted to focus on herself. It worked. She found herself looking at the ground. The whole of it was parched. The palace rose like a stone monument in the middle of a desert. Around it, not even one plant grew. Instead, there was a vein of gold, as wide as a person and hundreds of feet long. It shimmered like clear water while also shining like liquid gold.

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The tall man looked particularly fascinated. "So, that is what they look like alive."

He looked up. The others followed his gaze, so Eluvie did as well. The sky stretched above them, pale blue and cloudless. And beyond it were dozens of dark lines, growing like tree branches against the sky's dome. Each one was just as wide as her own golden form, but their color, even distorted by the sky's blue, was a dull brown."I forgot that you've never seen one," the bearded man said. "This is nothing. If it were night, this place would be as bright as day. And at her full size, the whole palace wouldn't hold her."

"Pity," the tall man said. "So, how do we change her back?"

"She'll change," the bearded man said. "Let's make sure she fully heals."

His confidence worried Eluvie, as did her new situation. She did not know what was happening to her, how to stop it, or even whether to stop it.

"Umm…" one man said, "she's growing."

He was right. The golden vein had grown larger. One end of it forced a crack onto a wall of the palace and was swiftly climbing higher, while the other was doing the same to the tall fence around the area. Branches formed as it grew, then those branches formed even more branches until it resembled a tree growing on the ground and walls.

The experience felt strange to Eluvie, but light and comfortable. She felt as if she had been cramped for far too long and was now, finally, set free.

The process accelerated as she threw off her resistance. She reached the top of the palace's wall, spread out onto the gate, attempted to go past it, and hit a barrier.

She paused, regrouped, and pushed again. The barrier remained immovable. She looked at the rulers. The bearded one was smiling, and Lady Mirab looked annoyed. The other two merely looked fascinated.

She pushed at the barrier several more times, then gave up and attempted to climb it instead. She tried for several seconds, trying to find an opening. It couldn't possibly go all the way to the sky.

She stopped soon after she had begun. The barrier was curving inward. It didn't go all the way to the sky because it was a dome.

"It goes all the way around," the bearded man said, "even underground. You will never break through it."

Eluvie ignored him. She spread out, desperate to prove him wrong, but knowing that she wouldn't. She kept growing, intending to cover every inch of that place and find whatever exit was available.

Then, suddenly, she stopped. She pushed herself, trying to stretch further, but there was no give. It felt like she had reached her full height, like spreading out your arms and legs and discovering that you couldn't stretch any further.

"Impressive," the bearded man said. He turned to Lady Mirab. "That must be, what, a thousand feet? Two thousand in length?"

"It was more when we brought her," the shaggy man said.

All three men turned to Lady Mirab with varying expressions of condemnation.

"We'll discuss this when she is secure," the bearded man said.

"And when will that happen?" the tall man asked.

The bearded man walked over to the vein closest to him, knelt, and fingered it. Eluvie perceived the touch as feather-light but pulled that being away from him anyway. He approached another vein, pulled a jeweled dagger from his belt, and plunged it into the vein.

That hurt. Eluvie shrank immediately, pulling herself away from him. She retrieved every section within a hundred feet of him and, out of instinct, even pulled in some of her farthest sections. The man stood up, holding a shining golden rock in his hand. Eluvie felt no connection to it, but she was filled with fury nonetheless.

The man rolled the rock between his fingers and said, "You can stay like this if you want. If you do, I'll have a dozen men with pickaxes here in minutes. We haven't had any of you to mine for a while. Just this piece is worth kingdoms. When we've collected as much as we want, we'll dig up the rest of you and lock it in a cellar. After a week with no light, you'll be back to normal."

He threw the rock to one of his companions, who caught it and began examining it. Eluvie thought his threat was easier said than done. How could he lock her up when she could dig her way through stone? But she calmed herself. She had diverted their attention from her dreams and learned more in minutes than she had in decades. It was time to regroup. With a thought, she returned to her human form. Her clothes had reformed with her, clean and whole. She could see her wings, which were not hanging limply like in her dream. Instead, they were flexed outward, full of life, and fluttering slightly as she moved.

"Where are those servants?" the bearded man asked. Eluvie's attendants hurried forward. "Take her to the doctor and remove those wings," he said. "If she gets another blade, don't wait for my judgment, just cut your own throats."