The silence of the throne room was broken by Larel’s yell and Zalia turned to see that the Diamond rank Astar had fled. She looked to Het’jel to see if they would follow but they didn’t give chase.
Before her sat the God-trap, the essence of the Monarch’s Ascended side trapped within.
“What do we do with this?”
She looked at Het’jel again.
“I do not know what that is, I have never seen anything of its like.”
One of their bodies came over to inspect the spinning concentric circles, carefully inspecting it.
“This will not hold them forever, though it will do so for a very, very long time.”
Knowing what higher ranked beings usually considered to be a long time, Zalia figured that meant almost forever in the time scale of a mortal like herself.
“We are going to have to find somewhere to hide it then. Its important that the Monarch isn’t freed by any of their forces while you wrestle for control.”
A flash of light and a wash of aura signalled the appearance of Nateysta behind them, in his largest form.
“That will not be necessary.”
Another huge figure appeared, a swirling mass of fire and earth mixing to create a core of lava. It was followed by yet another, this one a cloud with strikes of lightning crackling through it. A fourth appeared, a swirling tide of water growing to form an elemental larger than Zalia had seen before. Lastly was another Ascendant that she recognised. It was Scour, The Desert Storm, his appearance just as his title would suggest. Each of them was an Ascendant of extreme power, their overlapping auras feeling like the weight of the world pressing down. Lumin left Zalia’s side to go stand beside them, the wolf’s form diminutive in comparison.
“We will deal with this ourselves, now that you have locked them away. Entering into the space of another Ascendant is always a dangerous prospect, even in larger numbers. Now, however, the Monarch cannot retaliate.”
Nateysta raised his wings, casting shadow across the throne room as a small tendril of the Monarch’s power left the God-trap to reside in a sphere of his power. The other Ascendants of nature followed suit, raising arms or directing tendrils of power towards the God-trap, syphoning away little bits of the Monarch until the trap was empty.
“Each of us shall guard a piece of them to ensure that they will never rise again.”
The awed onlookers had to look away as flashes of multicoloured light signalled the departure of the Ascendant council. Only Nateysta remained, in his smaller form now.
Zalia took the God-trap and stored it away in her vault once more, hoping that she would never have the need to use the item ever again. She looked around at her allies and let out a breath of relief that she had been holding, very literally, since stepping through the portal to the throne room.
Boreal came up to rub against her leg, the loud purrs reverberating through the air. Zalia laughed, so relieved that they had succeeded against the Monarch that she couldn’t contain her joy. Even the power of Rozestrazix and the spirit of Heat and Stone leaving her body didn’t cut into the pure happiness flowing through her.
Larel came up and gave her a back crushing hug.
“You know, I didn’t think that the socially awkward, little low ranked archer tagging along to help clear a mine of minor elementals would end up here amongst gods and Ascendants, swinging so hard above her weight class too!”
Zalia smiled, extricating herself from the crushing grip.
“You’re telling me. If you had explained any of this to the me from five or six years ago, I wouldn’t have believed a word. In fact, I’d have thought you were a little insane.”
Het’jel, Hildebrandt and Matthias all came over to join the small group.
“This was quite an unusual fight, unique even in the experiences of my long life. Most surprising was the power that I felt coming from you Zalia. What did you do? While I have you here, where did you find an item capable of trapping an Ascendant?”
All eyes turned to her and Zalia gave her best sly smile.
“A girl needs to keep some secrets to herself.”
Both the eyes of Het’jel narrowed from starry orbs into suspicious, starry orbs.
“Are you secretly an Ascendant yourself?”
“What? No, no. Nothing like that. As for the God-trap, that is a little something I found in a temple in the desert with that sand storm Ascendant we just saw trapped inside it.”
Matthias stared at her with wide eyes.
“You are the one that freed Scour?”
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She looked up at the sky where Scour had just been, then back down to Matthias.
“Um, yeah?”
Matthias, in a move that shocked everyone present, went to one knee in front of her.
“What is happening?” she whispered.
“I cannot express my gratitude deeply enough. I have spent a good part of my life searching for Scour, a tradition passed down through generations of my family. It is from the teachings of that Ascendant from times past that the powers I wield come from. Thank you.”
Zalia got a hold of Matthias by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet.
“Ooookay, none of that. I stumbled across Scour in a long forgotten temple, that’s all. Please, it’s fine,” she tried smiling in a friendly manner, “besides, helping the old Ascendants of Endaria has kind of become a habit for me.”
“To the benefit of us all,” Het’jel added.
Zalia turned to them.
“Right, what do we do now?”
“Now, you go home. You have all done well in helping us and I hope that peace can be found between our two peoples. I will not ask that you do more in stabilising my rule as the new leader of the Astar people but I will let it be known that any and all help will be gladly received.”
Zalia turned from Het’jel to Nateysta.
“And how about from your side? Is there anything else you feel we should do?”
“I must speak with you before you depart, but the others may go.”
Zalia nodded, then opened her vault. She then opened the entrance inside that led to Nature’s Reclaim and Ember and Aylie came sprinting through, looking ready for battle.
“Woah, woah. We’re all good. We won and now we’re coming home.”
Ember stopped mid charge, staring at her.
“Oh.”
Zalia gave both her and Aylie hard hugs, before gesturing for them to go back.
“Wait for me, I’ll be through in just a moment, okay?”
Ember nodded, then pulled Aylie back to Nature’s Reclaim with her.
Zalia wondered over to Nateysta, walking with him to the edge of the throne room to look out over the Astar city that she thought was their capital.
“This could have gone a lot worse than it did.”
“I do not think so. I and the others have been planning for such an outcome, though they have done so for much longer than I.”
Zalia considered his words for a long time before speaking again.
“The starlight wolf once told me that the Ascendant spirits of nature would not intervene, that they would not act beyond their nature. What changed?”
There was a twinkle of humour in Ro’s eyes as he replied.
“Tell me Zalia, would you have fought as hard as you did this whole time, or done the things you did, if you had known that the Ascendants of Endaria were working so hard towards this outcome?”
“Probably not, I might have even left Endaria for good somewhere along the way if I had known that the Ascendants were actually working toward fixing the root of the problems facing the kingdom.”
“And none would have blamed you to do so. It is not the duty of an Ascendant to interfere in the mortal world in a manner so direct as what the Monarch was doing. Even those who are of the Mythic rank are expected to act in a higher manner than the normal person. Beings of our power have such destructive capability that if we were to engage in fights within the mortal realm as others do, the world would nearly be destroyed by the strength brought to bear. You saw a little of this when I fought directly with the Thousand-eyed one above the capital, yet that was on a smaller scale than most.”
Zalia nodded, understanding a little.
“And that was why they all came here to help deal with the Monarch?”
Ro nodded.
“All of us are hesitant to interact directly with any mortal being and the Monarch had managed to abuse that by the dual nature of their existence. Half in our world, half in yours. None of the others would have interfered directly in the battle against the mortal side, yet when the Monarch manifested their Ascendant side to fight, they all began to move to join the fight, even if it cost some of us centuries of recovery to do so.”
Zalia frowned, leaning against the pillar next to her as she watched chaos unfolding beneath her. There were animals brought by Nateysta still fighting below while it appeared that the rebellion had also begun to assault the city. There would be much blood in the future of the Astar people.
“But I used the God-trap.”
“Yes, there was no need for them to interfere directly. They like to keep it that way, intervening with the mortal realm in small ways such as blessings or sending their worshippers, elementals or beasts to perform duties for them. It is like this that we stop what happened to my own world from happening here. You have gathered much goodwill amongst there number with your actions. Much of the work you have done towards this goal has reduced how much they have needed to act.”
Zalia nodded understanding.
“That all makes some sense now, at least. Are you still planning on going to reclaim your world?”
“Yes. The Thousand-eyed ones and their ilk have no qualms about interfering directly in the mortal realm. In fact, none of them are even from a world like you would understand it. We will need many Ascendants to remove their grasp on Cormaine.”
The happiness from defeating the Monarch had been slowly seeping from Zalia’s body but the rest of it left as she realised where Ro was taking the conversation.
“I promised to help you retake your world, when the time came. The Endarian people owe you as much as well.”
Ro didn’t reply for a while, staring out at the city with her.
“Yes, I will call on you all to help me retake my own world. The Ascendants here also owe me for my help in stopping the Monarch and they have each given me promises of assistance when the time comes. Do not worry though, Zalia. The time will come that I call on you, but I wish for you and your people to regain strength and grow beyond your current capabilities before that time comes. Go, be with your family. Rest but do not idle. You must be ready when the time comes.”
With that, Ro vanished.
The omen echoing in her mind, Zalia returned through the vault portal to her home, finding the love and peace of her family waiting. Despite their relaxing presence and the beautiful sights of the home and family Zalia had made, Ro’s words did not leave her mind. She had a feeling that they wouldn’t until the day he came to find her.