Ingrid held the Ayaruan broadsheet rolled up in a tube in one hand as the meeting of the Feathers began. Everyone was present, even Rudolf, who had spent the better part of the invasion schmoozing with the top brass of the Taisian Air Navy. Reese was also present, with her new friend Mia, the masked woman from the Plane of Wind who, once able to communicate, no longer needed to be kept in a jail cell. The final guest at the meeting was an enemy millionaire who had, not coincidentally, also been mentioned in the broadsheet.

"Mr. Gojko, I would like to get your business out of the way first," Vaska said. "You may proceed with your proposal."

Adam Gojko stood at the map room table with his two aides. He looked and smelled like money. With animated hands he began to speak in heavily-accented Imperial: "Princess Vaska Maryy, I want to thank you for extending this promise of safety and good will to me and my aides, and for arranging this meeting. First of all, I must communicate the grave nature of my business. The entire Ayaruan economy has collapsed almost overnight because of an... edge case that we had not considered."

"You overleveraged on the assumption that a rare event would not happen," Vaska drawled.

"My company was involved in many innovative new financial instruments. The best minds in Ayaru and many of the best minds in the Federation of Kanti were involved in the creation of these new instruments. Almost every company in Ayaru had a partial stake in the massive loans that the King and the Air Navy needed for their war in Taisia.

"When the Bank was unable to provide working Wind and Metal Elementals to the Air Navy, everything started to unravel. Liquidity completely dried up, as did short-term spending by companies. Employees were no longer being paid, and therefore stopped working. No goods were being produced. We ended up in our current situation where we have no food, no goods, and no cash. We requested an urgent shipment of working crystals from Kanti, however the blockade by the Taisians prevented them from arriving.

"I implore you Princess Vaska, I am begging you, please allow us to borrow some of your Wind and Metal crystals so we can solve this liquidity crisis and save the economy. I promise forty-nine percent ownership of J.S. Gojko and Sons Inc."

"Worthless stock," Vaska said.

"It will skyrocket in price once this small matter is resolved. You will have ample funding for your... organization moving forward."

"Can you please describe these instruments?" Vaska asked.

"I'm afraid that they are so arcane and clever that it would take a very, very long time to describe," the man said.

"But essentially everyone was promising everyone else something important... a network of contracts?"

"That is essentially correct."

"And you are the only person in the world who can save the Ayaruan economy?"

The man froze. "Princess Vaska, I would like to remind you that you promised me and my aides safety and good will. We have your signature!"

"A forgery by the Keymaker," Vaska said.

"But you are the Keymaker!" Adam Gojko protested. Ingrid shivered.

Vaska walked to the porthole in the back of the room and stood facing away from them all. "Elizabeth," she said. "Have your airmen take these men away from this room and execute them all."

"No! I can... give you a controlling share! Fifty-one percent!"

"It will be done, my Princess," Elizabeth said. She activated a Colored Orb and called in half a dozen guards. The three men were frantically speaking to each other in Ayaruan even as they were dragged away, sobbing.

The door closed and it was silent.

"Is it true?" Ingrid asked. "This broadsheet, the Kanti accusation. Is it true?"

"If it was true," Vaska said, "then you trying to close the portals would directly contradict every single one of my objectives. If you consciously decide, in your very soul, that you will not close any more portals, then Titania will kill you. If you drag your feet too long on the task, then Titania will kill you. Do you understand that? I give you access to the most advanced fighter jet designs that the Empire has to offer, so that you can be safe when you are out flying. I have done everything in my power to help you and keep you alive. Would the Keymaker do that?"

"I..." Ingrid stammered. "I guess not."

"Excellent. I am glad you see the central problem I am facing right now. Anyway to answer your question, yes I am the Keymaker. I jump-started this inevitable war a few weeks early."

Ingrid's eyes went wide. She scanned the room. The other Feathers were looking at her with pity.

"You knew. You all knew," Ingrid sneered.

"My Feathers have absolute faith in me and my methods," Vaska said.

"So then why?" Ingrid asked. "Why help me close the portals?"

"As I said, to keep you alive."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Why?"

"Because from the moment I met you I have had an overwhelming physical and emotional attraction to you."

This was not the answer that Ingrid was expecting. It left her completely speechless.

"I told her you were a beautiful redhead that might be interested in other women," Glenice said, "and she demanded a meeting. After that first meeting she was crushing on you pretty hard."

"That's enough!" Elizabeth bellowed. "I will not have this repulsive, disgusting behavior between two women on my airship!"

"Now hold on there Elizabeth," Rudolf said. "The Princess will do as she pleases, and as for us, we have no further purpose to resume this meeting and therefore I will excuse myself."

"Me as well," Ivan said. The two men stood up and began to head for the door. Rudolf dragged Elizabeth up out of her chair as he passed. Ivan looked at Ingrid and winked. "Good kill by the way. Good kill. That old bastard had it coming I say."

Reese and Mia also left. The door closed.

"Are you going to kiss?" Glenice asked.

Vaska pointed to the door. Glenice sighed and shuffled out without another word. That left Ingrid alone with Vaska in the map room.

"You promised me," Vaska said, "that no matter what other secrets I held, you would stay by my side."

"I know," Ingrid said. She looked up at Vaska. Vaska's eyes were determined.

"How about we continue this... argument, in a more comfortable setting?" she asked. "Maybe we could have a little bit of fun as well?"

"Fine," Ingrid said. "Yeah, that sounds wonderful actually."

----------------------------------------

They did not continue their argument.

Titania loomed over the bed with a face filled with hate. Ingrid and Vaska hid under the blankets to avoid her gaze. "You know," Vaska said as she poked her head out from under the blankets to confront Titania, "it was pretty devious of the Queen of Light to pick Ingrid to hold the Light Crystal. I am grateful to my father that he was able to negotiate some semblance of protection for both of us."

Mother blames me! Titania said to both of them. Mother blames me for Ingrid's bad behavior. She says that she will reward my success as she would punish my failure.

"That seems reasonable to me," Ingrid said as she pulled her head up on her pillow.

"The Queen of Light is very concerned with promises and oaths," Vaska said. "Your Light Elemental has very specific instructions and limitations and the Queen likely made it physically impossible for the poor thing to deviate even a tiny bit."

Mother once had forgiveness also! She could forgive broken promises. She could adapt! She could make an exception and allow me to kill both of you, saving the world from your evil! But something is wrong with Mother. Something is broken in Mother.

"You are just now figuring that out?" Vaska asked. "Something has been very, very wrong with the Queen of Light since this whole thing started, since the sacrifices were created in the Elemental Planes, and since the Queen of Darkness was sealed away."

"So how did you do it?" Ingrid asked. "How did you make the keys? How did you travel around Ayaru?"

"I am bonded to the High Daughter of the Queen of Darkness, the first Elemental ever created. The Firstborn. She is... very adept at moving around through the Plane of Darkness. As for the keys, they always existed, I did not make them. I stole them from the masked people. And finally, you spend a lot of time out flying and not keeping track of where I am."

"Why don't you just zip around in the Plane of Darkness to find the members of the other Great Houses and murder them?" Ingrid asked. She thought this was a sensible question.

"They thought of this possibility," Vaska said. "The Framers of the Precepts. For the same reason that Light Elementals cannot kill the Matrons or candidate Matrons, any other type of Elementals cannot be used to kill members of the Great Houses. In fact, if the Firstborn detected that I wanted to murder the King with my own hands, she would likely kill me."

"How were you so precise at appearing exactly where you needed to be?"

"Perhaps I should just show you. Get up, put on some clothes."

The portal Vaska created was solid black, without any light emanating from the other side. It was very small, small enough to fit in the room but large enough for both women to walk through at the same time. Titania sheepishly followed them through the portal, then vanished from sight.

After passing through, the darkness mostly receded and revealed the surroundings. It was a world that Ingrid did not expect, not a world of absolute darkness. If anything, it closely resembled the Elemental Plane of Life in many respects. It was as if they were inside a cavern deep underground, a cavern made of polished purple, silver, and obsidian crystals. The roof of the cavern was missing, open to a solid black sky featuring an eclipse over a purple sun, surrounded by a purple halo. Within the cavern, various types of fungi were growing, filling the air with white spores which accumulated in a snowy blanket on the ground.

The strangest aspect of all however, was that this cavernous world was just out of reach, forever exiled from touch. The space immediately around Ingrid, for several paces, was a second world, devoid of these features. A foggy black bubble that followed her around as she moved, causing the walls of the cavern, the crystals, the fungi, and the spores to vanish if she got too close. Within that bubble of nothingness, she could see the real world, or at least a dark reflection of it. She could see the bed that she and Vaska had just occupied, the door to her room, the open bathroom, the shower... all tinged in a pale, twilight copper color, but otherwise colorless, vague.

"You can see the outside world from within here," Vaska said. "Or rather, a projection of it. There is no sense of verticality here, it is all projected down to our level. You would never be able to fly a fighter jet in this place."

She opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The ghost of airmen wandered the halls. Ingrid could see their faces.

"Does opening the door in this world open it in the real world?" Ingrid asked.

Vaska shook her head. "No, this world is just a shadow. However, doors here are never locked, and even if they were locked, the Firstborn would allow me to simply teleport behind them."

Ingrid, I am frightened, Titania said. There is an open portal here in this world. Not the one you opened to get here, another portal. One that my Mother cannot detect from the outside. Also, I cannot reach Mother here. There is another, sleeping, that listens to me. I am frightened she will wake up.

"Another portal?" Ingrid asked. Titania was nowhere to be seen, not even in her small childlike form.

Yes, another portal. Near the Queen's Prison.

"The Queen's Prison is near to everything in this place," Vaska said. "Firstborn, take us to the other portal."

The crystalline walls of the cavern, the fungi, the blanket of snowy spores, and the projections of the outside world all rapidly shifted at blinding speed around them. They were traveling thousands of miles an hour, Ingrid realized, or perhaps tens of thousands. Suddenly it all stopped, and they were surrounded by the ghosts of soldiers. Ayaruan soldiers.

"What are the Ayaruans doing with a portal to this place?" Ingrid asked.

"I'm not sure," Vaska said. "I think this must be the Royal Palace in Jelka."

"They created a portal inside the Royal Palace?"

"Seems like it. Let's find an empty room and then go back to the other side. We need to know what their objectives are."

"Now?" Ingrid asked. "Shouldn't we get help first? Maybe tell the Taisians where to attack?"

"No need," Vaska said. "This sort of investigation is exactly what the Firstborn excels at. Just watch."