A long time ago Ishtar had sworn to never let alcohol touch her lips, infact the very thought of ever drowning herself in the spirits was something that would have made her skin crawl. She had seen what it had done to her father during the troubles with her "mother's" other aspect.
And yet here she was in her bed room with four empty bottles of Esvaden whiskey laying around her bed with one more clasped in her right hand. Her throat burned from that brown substance that she downed and yet it still couldn't warm the cold pit in her body and mind.
" Yet another thing for the younger me to hate me over," she muttered with a hollow chuckle.
She had to hold back the bitter bile within her from escaping upwards as the bitter liquid almost made her sick with how it churned her stomach. Frankly she had been forcing the liqueur down her throat and into her unwelcoming stomach even though it tasted absolutely horrible.
"Why do people drink this junk and why am I still drinking it?" She cursed as before downing another swig of the whiskey.
She had always thought that beer, wine or whiskey would have a sweet taste to it, not a bitter and sour taste so bad that she imagined this was the stuff Silver Hawk used to make prisoners sing their secrets.
She looked at the nearest mirror which showed a young woman with an unruly mess of blue hair and crowsfeet underneath her eyes. It was a pitiful sight to behold and she wanted to grab one of the empty bottles around her bed and smash it into a million pieces.
But she did not carry out this desire, no matter how strongly it burned in her heart. She merely sat, transfixed by the image of absolute patheticness that sat in parallel of her. She wondered how the people would be disgusted at this worthless drunk that paraded itself in the place of their queen.
"Look what you have become, all mighty Queen of Avalon," she bitterly whispered as she fought back the desire to let her eyes leak tears.
"If only father could see me now." she whispered again after a gulp of the bitter liquid. "The realm is at war and all you do is hide in the bottle, I thought that I had raised you much better than this!"
She spoke out in a terrible impression of her father's disappointment. The pantomime warmed her up in a good way and after such a long time, Ishtar could finally smile.
Her musing was shattered when her door was swung wide open with such force that the wooden construct was almost thrown off its hinges.
Ishtar tried to jump for her bow which lay open her bedstand. Unfortunately for the oldest child of the Ddraig line, the amounts of alcohol that she downed for the last three hours took their affects and she was thus slower and more sluggish than she should normally be.
She knew that if this was a potential attacker, then she was already dead. The palace... nay, the entire damn city was under lockdown with hundreds of thousands of Knights and Asikari crawling about everywhere. If someone was strong enough to get past them and reach her, there was little her intoxicated self could do stop them. What walked into the room was far worse than any Lunar Empire assassin, for it was her youngest sibling, Joan Ddraig.
Joan was a totally different animal from her twin brother, Christian. Were as Ishtar had seen him to be more reserved, Joan was a unapologetic brash and unrelenting force of nature. Even though Ishtar was now the Queen, her sister pushed her door open and came striding in like this very bedroom belonged to her.
Joan paused and her eyes glazed over the bed and more importantly the empty bottles around the bed. She didn't even bother to hide her displeasure at the sight with how her face screwed up a deep scowl came to life on her face.
Joan opened her mouth to deliver some kind of tirade but Ishtar would not allow that to happen. She was drunk off her tits and the last thing that she needed was Joan's usual fire aimed at her.
So she raised her hand stopping her sister and speaking. "I am drunk right now and the last thing that I need is a sermon about whatever little faults you have found in me. I am sure that Leza, Sophia and the rest of the Ancient Ones will not be too offended if I have a drink."
"They might not mind, but the rest of Avalon might if this is what their Queen is doing at this hour."
Ishtar grimiced, it was one thing to think about what the people would think about her current situation, it was another to hear it from another person.
"Well they won't know about anything about this," Ishtar responded with a sigh.
She brought the bottle to her mouth in order to gulp down another swig of her whiskey, but the liquor didn't so much as touch her lips, Infact it soaked her bed and clothing as Joan had slapped the bottle so hard that she shattered into a shower of strong smelling whiskey and glass.
"What is wrong with you!" Ishtar shouted in disbelief.
"What is wrong with me!?" Joan asked her back with barely contained rage which physically manifested into sprouts of white flame that spontaneously came to life around her.
"My brother... oh sorry, our brother, our father and our mother are out there and they are in danger. Instead of acting, you have been sitting in here for hours on end, have you no pride or shame !" at this point Joan's hair had morphed into literal white fire.
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"Doing nothing?" Ishtar's patience was spent and she now leaped off the bed. "What do you want me to do... wish them back into existence. For someone who seems to care so much, you have spent as much time and energy as possible to avoid our family!"
"You don't understand!" Joan snapped back, her previous haughtiness finally broken.
"Please Joan, do tell me what don't I understand?"
"You don't understand what it's like to lose your twin again!" Joan spoke more with a stinging bitterness that just seemed to increase the intensity of the flames that had become her hair.
Ishtar took a deep breath before speaking, choosing her words wisely. " I understand more than you know. He is my younger brother and I was the one who lost him again."
Both sisters flinched as the memory of the day their brother was lost to the greater Multiverse resurfaced. Ishtar remembered the second attack by her mothers dark aspect on the old capital and the resulting cracks in reality that threw him to the earth for five long years. She had been asked by their father to look after her sickly brother and yet when it started she could do nothing, it been Ishtar's greatest shame and her greatest failure, until yesterday's catastrophy.
"You didn't lose him. We all did, I remember the fires, the screaming and all those bodies. I just ran as fast as I could without even bothering to check on the brother I had promised to protect... I was a coward and a fraud, telling him to always stand by me but when push came to shove I ran... I just ran, and I didn't look back. I am a coward." a tear rolled down Joan's cheek as she spoke.
"No you weren't, the chaos did that to all of us. His not upset about it you know, you should talk to him" Ishtar knew that her sister hadn't spoken to Christian properly apart from the usual awkward greetings before she went to the western province, all in some attempt to never face her supposed failure.
"Just like me." she thought.
"How was... is he?" Joan asked in a lowered voice.
"He is different, I guess that's what you expect after five years of separation," she smiled remembering the difference between her younger brother's more meek and sickly self of old with his new more confident self. "He is no longer the same shy little boy in need of our protection, he has grown."
"I know... how are him and mom doing... I mean... you know?" this question made Ishtar's blood run cold.
She gritted her teeth together as she thought about that thing. Joan noticed how her face contorted into a mixture rage and disgust.
"Still holding on to that grudge?" Joan asked with a exhausted sigh, this conversation had been shared by both sisters for a very long time.
"It is not a simple grudge, it is frustration at how any of you could be so naive with that damn thing. It might wear a familiar skin, but have you all forgotten what it's other half did?"
"It is a she!" Joan snapped back at Ishtar's tirade.
"It is a artificial construct from what little was left of our mothers light aspect. Our real mother died when she was split in half. Heavens know that she wasn't all that much better to begin with." it felt so good for Ishtar to finally let out what had been boiling within her. "You might be too young to remember, but mom wasn't so great, even before she drunk the dark energy cool aid. And yet, everyone treats her and that damn clone like they are saints... her dark half caused our grandparents deaths for goodness sake. It might be half, but it was still a half of her."
She remembered that day when their mothers dark aspect had used the Phantom King's dread powers from the realm of shadow to almost end all realities, she remembered how it had been through her grandparents self sacrifice that they had not been torn apart by unreality in the first wave of all consuming shadow.
"So there is no fixing things between the two of you?" Joan asked.
"I can't look at her as my mother when I know that she is barely thirty percent of what that woman was." she also remembered the cold and distant woman who the true Natalia Ddraig had been.
"Your grace, may I enter," Dolton's voice rang out from outside of the room.
Ishtar could see the Fae standing where the door which Joan had almost knocked off of its hinges had been. She responded with a yes and the Paladin of secrets strode into the room.
"Your grace, princess Joan. There has been an update."
Ishtar wondered what it was this time, the battle in the northern ocean had ended five hours ago with a retreat of the Lunar Empires ships and as of yet, there had been no counterattack by them. Of course it could also be the deplomats who were being hosted in the capital when the attack happened. They were no doubt communicating with their governments.
"What is it, have the Lunar Empire started to go on the move?" Joan asked with that familiar fire returning to her eyes.
"This update is not from our reality persay. Infact it is from the Shade."
XXXXXXX
Ishtar tried her best look as naturally imposing as she could in her father's large throne. She kept her eyes on the doors of the throne room as she awaited a guest who had never walked the floor of this throneroom.
The doors were slowly opened, the scraping of the golden doors rang out across the room and first came the Paladin and Vortiguard, Hector Mychana with his great bronze spear.
The man cast such an imposing figure that it was easy to forget that he still had the limp which he possessed from yesterday. Behind him was strange creature, it stood at eight feet in height and it was adorned in blue robes that were literal waters with currents and sea life that Ishtar would occasionally see across it.
Its face was an ocean green copper mask that was sculpted into the visage of a bearded man with a mischievous grin that put her on edge.
"Lord Manzi, I welcome you," she declared to the Mizihimo Lord.
In response the spirit bowed in an extravagant and overly dramatic manner as he replied "I am truly grateful for your warm reception crown princess Ishtar."
She scowled and tried her best to keep the rightful venom out of her words, "I mean you no disrespect my Lord, but I would not be seated here if I was not Queen."
The Mizihimo's copper mask morphed into even more mischievous face, like he was onto something that Ishtar did not know and she was really close to throwing him out of her palace.
"Queen?, how can you be the Queen when you're mother and father still live in the Nexus of Narratives."
"Enough, how dare you. You come into my throneroom simply to play pointless jests, get out!" she snapped and some of the guards in the room stood in attention, ready to physically remove the Mizihimo if it was needed.
"Your grace, if I may, hear him out," Dolton stepped in and Ishtar whipped her head towards him in suprise.
The Paladin of secrets was supposed to be a secret figure behind the scene. He was never supposed to make himself known to anyone other than those with level 0 clearance. Even if he had not declared who he was to everyone else in the throneroom, he had just drawn attention and questions to his existence.
She wasn't the only one who was shocked, she could see looks of disapproval from the other Paladins in the room and First Minister Mithrose looked ready to launch his tophat at Dolton.
"Explain yourself?" she demanded.
"I am a simple scholar of cosmological studies from Star-Watch." it was a bad excuse at hiding himself. "This Nexus of Narratives that he mentioned, we can confirm that it is real."
"Excuse me for being ignorant, but what is Nexus of Narratives?" one of the many ministers asked.
"The Nexus..."Dolton paused and took a deep breath before continuing. " It's a strange universe that our exploration division discovered about 84 years ago . We don't know how old it is but what we do know is that millions of years ago, it experienced a large influx of both light and dark energy that utterly changed it into how can I best explain it... a realm of collective stories given life"
"Collective stories?" Ishtar might have heard what he just said but she didn't understand a single word.
"He is claiming our parents are in this Nexus of Narratives, are they safe there."
"When we investigated the Nexus and it is easily survivable." Dolton responded. "Infact, King Roland and Queen Natalia in their youth visited this reality multiple times in the past, so they are safe."
"Not entirely true my dear like man. In the Nexus they might be, life still beats in their chests, but I would not say that they are safe, for Nimue has them as prisoners," Manzi interjected, the Mizihimo's face mask had now morphed into a face frozen in a rapturous laugh. "Though do not fear, for your young prince and his little band go to rescue her.... oh dear, I should have led with that little tidbit."
Ishtar was speechless, she wanted to demand more answers from the Mizihimo standing Infront of her, but where would she even begin.
"I do suppose that an explanation is in order. When your dear Nimue opened cracks through reality to escape her little attack, she dove right into the Shade, it was quite a noticeable event. Your brother and plenty of your people found themselves on one of my brother's domains, but their presence even in a lord's domain was too potent to hide." Manzi then paused and he rubbed his mask as if exhausted. "Also, why are you mortals so bad at controlling your presence in the Shade. Up here you are all difficult to track but the moment you step into our home then you are glowing like stars for everyone in the realms to see..."
Ishtar silenced Manzi by slamming her fist into the armrest of her throne. "Is he safe?!"
"Of course he is safe, I have sent my one hundredth son to lead him to the Nexus of Narratives," Manzi scoffed as if he was insulted by her question. "That brings me to a matter of our business. You need to get to
the Nexus of Narratives and the only way to that is through specific currents of the Shade ... so tell me crown princess Ishtar, do you fancy a guide."